Castle Super Beast - CSB337: Freakbeast Discussion Alert, Sickos Only

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

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Thank you. I'm... Bro, let's fucking go! Yeah! I'm not sure how much I'm enjoying this phase of you gleefully celebrating my HP draining out of my soul. Bro! We're like the part of the intro for the podcast or the music's going and the intro's going. And I hear...

I hear like that sniffle, that tell-tale sniffle. How you doing, buddy? 6 a.m. Yeah. 6 a.m. That was bedtime. That was bedtime. Mm-hmm.

For you? For baby? For me, for me. Yeah. For you? Okay. And it's 3 p.m.ish now? Yeah.

It's night shift, bottle feed. You know, getting, getting her done. Um, yeah, that is a, that is a different baby at night. Oh, yeah, the night baby is very different. Oh, the night baby. The night baby is not the same baby. You thought the day baby had no patience? Night baby has no patience for your no patience.

Night baby is actually more alert and ready to party because day baby is usually when she'd be sleeping in the, in the womb. but now like a night baby is when like you know punch mom would go down to sleep and then that's when baby wakes up because the rocking stops and they're suddenly like whoa so yeah night baby's like feeding and then not getting milk drunk night baby has got eyes open looking around yeah you know so dude you know night night baby for me was how i hit like master rank with bison okay okay because it's like Well, I'm up.

Yeah. I'm fucking up for like five more hours. So, hey, I got some games to talk about this week. I fucking knew it. Yeah, yeah, but no. What am I going to do? Try and sleep. Can't do that.

It's not safe. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you what. Day baby is getting wrecked by night baby. Not a champion of the sun whatsoever. It is, it is an unfortunate reality that soon after leaving you're the safety of mother, you will discover the fact that the past version of yourself is a jerk and has no care for the future version of yourself, which is now the present self. It's, it's, it is quite the conundrum. There's, so one, like, there's one little, so yeah, there's, there's you taking glee in, in my dismay, you know.

In a couple of years, you'll, you'll be rubbing your hands. at the next one. Yes, yes, exactly, you know, whatever, whatever comes next and seeing how because everybody pays in their dues and then they get to laugh with glee and everybody else going through it. I will say I am taking some glee at finally dishing back the ultimate to the audience because for years they've all been making us take damage by talking about how long or how old they were when they started listening or whatever the fuck, all that time damage. And now I finally get to see people go, oh, my God, I'm dying at the idea that these chuckle fucks have kids now. So I'm like, finally, I get to reverse the damage back at you, listener, as you realize that time has passed and that, yes, there are children and families involved now.

That feels good. That's a little, that's a little solace. I think my favorite one is last week. I told a story about my boy, and there was a threat about it. And somebody asked like, oh, did he get all his teeth? And I was like, bro, he's had all his teeth for like 14 months. He's like 26, 27 months old. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I thought he was just a little baby. Sidebar. As I was talking, I was like the desktop is visible. And the avast antivirus that I scrubbed and deleted from the computer aggressively with every tool possible. An icon just went and just popped up on the desktop while having this conversation. Was it a, uh, was it like a browser plugin you, you missed? No, no.

It's just, it found new ways. It's time to start over. Oh my God. Oh, the evil. Um, anyway, okay. Anyways, um, I also had it super late now. I went to bed at, uh, I fell asleep around two is. And then I was woken up, uh, every hour by,

Ah, oh, mom, mom. Ah. And then I got up at 620. Okay. Oh, so for you, that was wake time. So I'm having the opposite thing, whereas, like, for me, I get one of those days where that doesn't ruin me. It actually superpowers me. I'm, like, wired.

Okay. Tomorrow will be my downfall. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You push past and then when the third wing. says no, you don't have a third wind. No. Okay, so what you're describing, right, the night terror.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in all the, in all the prep folks that I've been learning about and everything that, that's, you know, all the education going on, what I did not learn about is there is a phase in which, okay, so you know how, you ever see a giraffe get born? it's crazy because when a giraffe is a baby they just like the the mom just like plops them out and they land they start walking around they land in superhero pose they land like fist down head up and they're like where are we going right you're my mother you have you lead me to food you lead me to milk let's go they come out ready to rock right humans um our heads are so big that they can't fit if we fully cook before we come out. So they have to get, we have to get pushed out earlier. And, uh, you know, what that means is a whole lot of

your body is still figuring out how it works and how to develop while you're out of the womb early, right? That's why the, uh, first three months after you're born are called the fourth trimester. Correct. Um, so, you know, we got, warned a couple times by some nurses that they're like, hey, yo, just so you know, from week six to about week eight, it's going to get bad and there's just no reason for it, right? We're like, okay, let's just, let's just bunker down and get ready for that. What nobody mentioned was that, that weeks two to three or two to four, it seems. Yeah.

There's a phase where, um, where baby doesn't know how to digest. That's right. And then intestines are, and all of that are new and don't really fully get how to push the milk through completely. So when you're, uh, in the first, you know, two weeks or so, it's kind of just in and out, no problem. It's like just no thought. I would describe it as in and out.

Yeah. And then the color changes, right? Then, yeah, you're just a tube. And then the color changes and things start getting a little more wrinkly, and they start figuring out how to, like, process and do the whole bit. And then the gut biome and the flora start activating and whatever. Long story short, in the middle of the night and at random times, the baby needs to learn how to, like, push it out. Yeah. But does it know how and just has a feeling?

I don't even know how to poop my own pants. And it's like, but you knew how to poop a week ago, right? But it was just an automated thing. But now it's like, no, no, no, that was a system that's no longer playing. It's been updated. The new firmware dropped. And now manual control. Manual control.

But you don't know how manual control works. So until you figure it out, you're just stressing, sweating, grunting, crying, and getting upset as you go, yeah. Now, I got to be honest. Wally, I'm nearly 40 years old and the podcast had to be delayed because I was still dealing with learning how to do that. Correct. Understood. But, but. Sounded just like that. Yes. Yeah, and I get it. But the idea that you can put yourself in the place where you need to be on the bowl and then figure it out while you're there, hopefully, means that it all gets where it needs to go, right? the baby is like doing the thing where you can feel like her stomach tighten and you can feel the push but yeah but what's also crazy is that because she doesn't know like what to do and how things work she's also like straightening her legs out which actually closes you off you know it's the complete opposite position you should be in while forcing really hard what a what a doofus oh my god how do they not come on come on

Get it together. Right, right? And so, and like, she's kicking and doing all these, like, completely, like, not. And she's trying random things. She's sticking random poses onto random feelings while pushing, not knowing how to do it. And I'm like, is this? And they're like, yeah, it's normal. This is normal.

This happens a bunch. Hey, Willie, I would like to apologize for implying that I would call your child a dufus. Your child is a perfect angel. That was facetious. I take that. I hear that. It is understood. She is flawless and shall remain that way.

And even her inability to figure out how to poop is the most flawless, perfect way to not know how to do that. So I forget what it was. It was something similar to this with my guy. It was a little later, like five or six months. And I looked at him. And I was like, you're being a real big baby. And I just like completely froze because I had meant it uniron. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I had actually meant you're being a real baby. really big baby about this. And I froze in place like the world's dumbest statue. So, so we had, I had, we had, we had that moment earlier this week where it was like, we were just changing and she's crying, you know, and I'm wiping it off and doing stuff. And, you know, you're doing that thing where it's like, okay, now after, like, okay, I got a, I got a, it's, I know it's really early and it's really blurred, but I got a lock on and I got a smile. And I was like, that's not a real smile. And then I did one. And she kind of, it looked like she was mirroring it back. And I'm like, this is too early

I'm getting tricked but maybe I'm not one wellie babies don't know shit no they don't they don't right baby doesn't know shit of course not no and two they're not scanning you for reliability of

but she is she is no no no but I am catching on to what she is noticing in the blur that is her vision right for this period of time and what she will notice is the light source in the room especially at night time when when when the night baby is alert right when night baby is alert and like you tried and there's a whole thing about dimming the lights trying to do night feeds so that you don't over stim and all that stuff oh dude i did i did

all that shit in in in every light off in the house i have i have really good like i have very good um night vision yeah so like i all i need genuinely in my house i need the the the light that the microwave clock is giving off to to do my life so we can do Yeah, I'm able to do that, too. The problem we ran into is that, like, if we do that, she never wakes up, you know? So then you're like, oh, that's the fucking dream, bro! But she won't drink. Oh.

She won't wake up to drink, is the problem. Our guy would drink, well. No, no, that's the thing. We need to get her. She will be too sleepy to drink, and then you're like, ah, right? So then you have to do the stimulation, and then eventually, after wasting 20 minutes, trying to get her sleepily to drink. I want you to drink sleepy and she won't do it.

Then you're like, okay, well, now we got to do a diaper change, which is going to fully wake you up, you know. Hey, hey, drink, don't drink sleepy, play hungry. I mean, yeah, you know. And so, but what I notice is, so she locks on to the, to the lights, right? And then also she started responding to, um, when the bottle, because I did some, I did like paste feeding positions. There's a couple of feeding positions that you do that are based on,

like trying to not have them gulp too much milk, you know? more air more spit up more burp etc yeah i i hit him with this i had him i got the dog yeah i hit him i hit him with this yeah with that one yeah that's so that's the one i was doing i was i was trying yeah that's my favorite also check out how much of a baby this dog is that i'm just cradling him like a human infant because he's just a sweet guy um i pointed i pointed out uh you're you're a very nice new carpet uh in the back there thanks bud um is that carpet a material would be really comfortable for dragging dog ass across? No, he doesn't do that.

Okay, okay. Dude, this dog's ass is pointed to sky. It's so high, sky. Even if he wanted to, right? Yeah, okay, you have the perfect anti-worm situation going on. Perfect. Yeah, nice. There you go.

No, so doing the feed, I was doing like a lying down sideways outward position, and that's one too where you have an arm free, which is nice and stuff. But when doing what you did, that, but that, like, arm. cradle and then bottle diagonal kind of thing like she starts to cry when the bottle gets pulled away but like if it gets pulled away too far she goes fast she cries faster and if i just put it aside a little bit but it's still within that first area she doesn't cry as quickly you know so i'm like okay there is some recognition a little bit the the sound of uh is proportional to how far back the bottle is pulled from vision so what i would do man genuinely is like when i would go to pull the bottle out

I would also dip my shoulder so that it was coming, like baby was leaving the bottle and bottle was leaving. Losing, leaving vision. Ah, okay, okay. Right. But, like, also, he was moving away from the bottle.

It wasn't just me yanking it out. Yeah, yeah. But also, he was asleep half the time that I fed him at night. Okay. I'm not getting that. Yeah, we're in a different situation here. But it's just interesting to see these things

and to go back to what you were saying earlier about just like, well, they don't know shit. And it's like, I don't know. So we had a moment or I'm just like, oh, she has never known joy, right? That emotion has not kicked in you. That's like it's, at, yeah, it's three months, it's, there is, you'll see a smile and a laugh. No, like, that's the first one.

There's no, she has not yet known what happy is. And that's crazy, right? What a thought. I'm looking at your, and like, you're like, and it's like you're sleeping, you wake up to cry to eat and then you go right back to sleep and that's all that life is and it's a wild thing to kind of have that dawn on you right and then all and then at the same time you're like okay and so when it's like oh we got to pull you spat up we got to pull you away from the food to wipe you off a little bit and she's like this is a nightmare how dare you yeah and I'm like you know

this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her yeah so um like we're still dealing with that and we'll deal with that like the food being taken out of her mouth is the worst thing that's ever happened in her life so like my guy scraped his knee right

and he fell on the playground and he scraped his knee on the asphalt right and he started to lose his shit and I'm looking at him I'm like this is the most painful thing that has ever happened to him in his entire life it's crazy no wonder he doesn't know how to

deal with it of course of course there's no you know no shot it's it's yeah the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you and like period when because their memories aren't so good when you put her down for tummy time in a couple of months and she's mad at you that's the maddest she has ever been because your behavior is outrageous you caused it yeah um and you know and i mean it's not to mention this course that like they kind of heard they talk about like you know stimulating while you're doing bottle feeding get your voice in there use calming tones and you know sort of get them used to the sounds of you but when it's night feed and you're like i'm trying to not wake you up too hard i want to keep you a little bit sleepy then i'm kind of just like feeding in silence and i'm like i hope that's not you know um because those are because the because the night bottle is pretty much the the main one that i do like i hope that i'm not like implanting robotic, silent, you know, feedings at this point.

Willie, I love you, buddy. You are doing a thing that I'm very familiar with. It's fine. It's fine. It's probably fine. It's totally fine. It's probably fine. Do you talk to the kid? Like, you're a chatty person. You have a chatty TV show that you do. You go, hey, hey little girl, what up, etc.

You're good. Whenever you, whenever you, like, because everything's, everything's like pushed to the extremes because of the media landscape that we live in, where you read something, it's like, do you still face syndrome? Did you know that if you, if your face is emotionless and slack too often around your baby, you can give them some kind of mood disorder? It's like, yeah, and so what happens is moms just start beaming, ah, yee, big smile every single second. That's not what still face is. Stillface is, child is, child is, terrible distress and you just cold eyeballing them with no comfort. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, just be like a normal guy. Hmm. And you're, you're, you're, you're killing it. Uh, uh, at first three months, don't drop the baby. Don't, don't drop the baby. Don't drop the baby. Don't drop the baby. You're good. Yeah. Clean baby. Well, the thing is, is that none of, none of us are going to know. until we got to get some a decade or two's worth of information out there before any of that

you know comes to fruition i forget what it was she she took like a toy away from him and he had a complete meltdown and she was like oh man i hope that didn't like hope that wasn't like a formative moment moment and i'm like i will find out in 15 20 years yeah yeah no that's i'm not too worried about it and you know and there's stuff where like because especially because i'm like i can hear this now I know the sound of like the the low low alert cry versus higher alert cry and stuff so there's times where I'm just kind of like yeah I'm just changing your diaper we're doing this quickly because I'm getting you out and back to bed sleep quickly so I'm like right now is not the time for big comfort stimulation etc right and that's actually like

again what a what a couple of the nurses were like saying is like yeah no go for an in and out us back to bed as quickly as possible type of night situation but that's also the the majority of where my, you know, handling of baby stuff is kicking in. So I'm kind of like, hmm, after our period of time, well, once we're past this three month phase and things, the cycle starts to look a little more normal. I'm sure there will be, you know, more of a chance to, to get quality time in there. But it certainly does have the, we've been going back and forth of just like, man, she doesn't exist yet, you know, we're just, she's just loading still. And we're like, there's no, there's no period of time where babies like, hey, I'm here, what's up? What's going on, guys?

I'm just like, yeah, okay. We just got to keep the loading bar going, you know? Okay, so I'm going to be so real with you. The first three months, that's the easiest it's ever going to be. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. That is by far, you're the most tired you're ever going to be by far, by far. But it's definitely, it's like, I look back on it now.

I'm like, oh, that shit was a cakewalk. Yeah. I don't. We'll see. We'll see. Your child currently does not have the capability to want things and understand that they have not been given those things. Or much less the idea that the things that I want, that I am being given, I am also shoving them away with my flails. Because when I drink milk, it's my whole body going...

I remember what it was. I remember what it was He was like two, three months old And he was trying to pull his own hair out Oh fuck And I was like Why are you doing that And I tried to stop him

And he was like, no, I want to do it And then he would go to pull I'm like, what are you doing? What are you doing this? Random, mashing buttons Hoping for a result that'll work Yeah And so that's what it comes down to

With the whole like Learning out of poop and intestines thing Is like you just she's just got to eventually figure out the right position at the right time when her stomach is going to be like and that is how you feel better you know? Yeah. I mean

there's like you'll try out a hundred different things you'll football. Oh yeah yeah yeah we do the bicycles and this tummy rubs and all that. Yeah the bicycle stuff. I do I did the taps on the stomach and like I remember Paige was like I don't think you should be tapping on the baby that

tapping on the baby's stomach that that hard I'm afraid that you might break the baby And then as that happened, the baby suffered a great deal of relief. Oh, well, there you go. As a result. And she went, okay, well, never mind. No, I mean, there's, I mean, I've seen there's drops that people have for gas. There's a little like a windy tube for like fart tubing, you know.

But all of that shit is just like, it turns out that it's like, yeah, you can help relief it somewhat. But the more you do, unless they're going to learn and the longer is going to take them to figure it out. so that's why they need to go right off that cliff so you gotta just let them climb up and become the king of iron fist oh okay and it's the constipation and the anger from constipation that actually lets them survive how do you think you go all the way up to the top perfect um yeah that's that's that's kind of it you sound like you're doing a good job buddy i wouldn't worry too much well thank you we're just doing it we're trying but fuck so it's funny because all of this stuff i i i i wasn't really worried about like this was all stuff that I I I was like oh no I got it it was if I'm not looking at the baby the baby person to flames that was my big issue like if I if I can't see the child now so that's a car flew off the road into my house um yeah there's there's a level of that I'm kind of I you know getting more comfortable with that's fine there's things too as well where I'll do things like okay so when I'm reading up on

refreshing my kid like a baby CPR and baby heimlich stuff right there's a little you're also reading stories from people

and everything and you're kind of like oh yeah let's just already put out there in my brain that it's not a matter of if it's just when

she's gonna choke on food at some point right there's not that's not true it's gonna happen and you're just gonna need to jump in there and make sure that you're ready for it and know exactly what to do

and just preemptively be already in a situation where you're like, instead of freezing and panicking and freaking out so hard, be preemptively prepared for that eventuality. That can be a useful attitude,

but the phrase of they will choke, it's inevitable, is not true. Okay. That is not a truth. That would be great, if so. I just want to make sure to know what to do when it's happening and recognize all the signs right away. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. but like it's and just you know reading whatever just reading other people's like feedback of how like it's like you from the moment you introduce solids or anything like that or even whatever the case is up to years you know like two three or whatever the case is you're just like going into every meal thinking about that as being like hey just make sure you catch it make sure you see the signs of them not breathing you're listening to the sounds that sounds like a good way to be horribly anxious every time you feel them well okay I think there's a healthy compromise here I think like for example I don't think

you are going to healthily compromise when bottle feeding right there's I saw a thing that was like listen for a breath every three gulps and I'm like okay yeah so I'm doing that currently you know and there are there was once when like there wasn't there was gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp gulp and i was like whoa whoa whoa whoa and then she went and i was like ah you see you drank too much because you don't know what you need ha you do know what you need because there's a whole thing about letting the baby choose how much to drink and stuff but if you actually let them drink as much as they want to they're going to drink themselves until like to death they can't stop they're like fish yeah jokes on you man

me i was ready to be freaked out and when nothing happened i knew it like are you listening to your own description of this story i'm i'm i'm listening i'm listening out for what we're just making sure that it's like okay hey i can you're you're you can you're doing the right breathing you know and i'm sure later on when we get to the solid food and so on there's there's all there's other stuff to to look out for but i just the the way it kind of came across in every in the stories i've read about like people who you know administered um like yeah like life-saving stuff to choke their baby was from just like when they're swallowing something, especially something new for the first time that has a different texture, kind of seeing like,

oh, did they swallow or are they kind of just like, you know, is there... Sometimes. Yeah. So you got to remember, I'm coming at this from the toddler perspective. And the toddler perspective is, is that dirt from the ground? round in his mouth. How much? Ah, it's fine.

Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. Like, the, the, your, your tolerance for ridiculous nonsense will increase dramatically. I also was around, I have a memory of a one-year-old somebody's, somebody's baby that was around that, uh, bit into, like, it was playing with chicken, you know, and had a piece of chicken and just took a bite. that was just way too big and did the thing where um didn't know how to spit it out so just kind of held it in the mouth and like got stressed and started having like a freak out and then

started hitting himself in the head while trying and didn't and it was like it was intense and pretty scary and I was like holy shit okay you got to be ready for that and there's a really there's a really easy solution to that by the way I mean like make sure the pieces of chicken are not so big that that can happen? No, no, you're going to fuck that up. Scoop. Like, I'm going to tell, I'm looking you in the eye, I'm looking directly in the camera, you're going to fuck that up.

Or, you're going to be in the process of fixing the food and you're going to turn around and they're going to grab like the largest item they could possibly fit in their mouth and bam. No, the solution is when you look at them and you're like, why aren't you chewing or you're doing that weird, my mouth

is completely fucking full chew? Yeah. You just immediately grab their chin with one hand and you scoop them. Just grab it out. Yeah. You just scoop the whole thing. And hey, if you were eating a meal and I did that to you, you'd be like

what the fuck, right? Guess what? Kids also hate that shit. And they'll bite you. Well, yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I will say that the case I saw like, it was one of those ones where I'm like, I don't know if

this is formative, but like what you were talk about with page the other moment like I'm like that feels like the kid was really shaken up by that and kept crying for a while afterwards and like it's the first time I ever saw like baby like doing this and hitting their head to to like solve a problem nothing nothing's for me okay cool all right let me hit you with this let you hit me with this okay you know that fucked up thing that happened like when you were like a really young kid and you remember it and you're like wow it was fucked up and formed affirmative? Sure, right? Whatever it happens to be. It's something, right?

Sure. When you think back to like, I don't know, three, four, five, six and you're like, oh, that was terrible. That obviously had negative effects on my life going forward. The thing you're thinking of, it's actually pretty fucked up. It's not like they took my toy away and I lost my shit. It's like, oh no, I got lost in the mall. Or like my brother sucker punched me and I fell off a table. or, you know, something like that. I suspect that it's going to be a really, like, it would be a really negative thing until time passes and it becomes normal and then it becomes less severe, perhaps, you know? I can see that being the case as like, you know, life continues onward and like,

you know, your life is only two weeks long, therefore another two weeks is the longest thing in the world. Eventually that becomes a year. Also, they're not gaining, like, discrete memories either. Yeah, yeah, and their sense of time is all fucked and all that shit, like, for sure, for sure. but um but yeah as as the as the banality and horror of day-to-day existence becomes more normal i suppose these moments stand out less and less hopefully you know but um anyway these are all thoughts that

are on the mind when when these things are happening you know you're good all right you're good and that's that's what's going on well i talked with you for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours before you guys even got pregnant and you were probably solid then right and that was like a year ago or more like you're crushing it oh thank you i mean it's it's it's it's it's more just it's not about like you know is this is this fucking up or so it's more just like huh there's so much they don't tell you and even when they do tell you they don't tell you about part two three four five and six oh well you know a lot of the a lot of the adults and older people and parents and relatives in your life just lie

just lie yeah just lie no i mean i just i love how like all the best practices are just like or if it's for your own sanity then just don't do it there's a there's a there's there's like a um one of those things that's like really important particularly for young moms who could be dealing with ppd or pb a um particularly if you have multiple young children right and it's like

if the baby's just in one of those minutes where they're just going to go nuts you know they're just they're just going nuts right and you've been uh you've been like trying to sue them for like two three four hours put them down in a safe spot and walk away probably yep walk away for 10 minutes yep that's 10 minutes that's what they tell to people who they're specifically for like like there's a whole thing about like no we know we know we say don't shake your baby but really really really don't do it and in fact if you feel like you're like just put them down and walk away like there's a whole thing about that that. Yeah. They go ham on that. Um, it's, it's for sure. Like you, you do are, you do kind of go like,

okay, all these little tips, all these little tricks, you know, that, um, you're supposed to have a handle on. I, I know that both me and Punch Mom are kind of just like the type of people that we want to go, okay, um, what are the tradeoffs, right? So one of them, for example, is like, if you use the suss, right? The suss is magical. The suss will... Our guy wouldn't take one. The whole time.

Not even one time. Interesting. So the... Not one time. The pacifier is magic, right? Because you just... It's the comfort reflex of... Gop, goop, boop.

It makes me feel like I'm sucking on the bottle. By the way, for those of you who are not from Quebec, suss means pacifier. The pacifier, yes. So the Literally just means pacifier Yes we call it a cis So anyway

The pacifier works wonders And it really calms her down But then you are You hear that it's like Oh but if you are not doing bottle feeding If you're just breastfeeding You don't want to cause nipple confusion

So maybe you should not use that pacifier Until a month or more in when they get used to things or whatever and it's like would you like a counterpoint well i my counterpoint was fuck you eat shit i'm trying to sleep and it works right now the counterpoint to that would be a baby that doesn't take a pacifier so well we do have one grade a pacifier around the house that he's a big fan of its name is page ah there you go yes and uh this means that mom will become mega trapped for a year plus

on demand every single time he needs a pacifier and you gotta be able to identify the body cues that are like you're rooting but you're not really rooting

you're not hungry rooting you're rooting for comfort you know there's a difference between and you know where is it right and you're like oh yeah yeah

you need milk so but anyway so we kind of were just like, you know what, fuck that rule. We don't care. We're going to use it temporarily here. And then looking it up a little bit more, it turns out that it's like, okay, and talking to another nurse about it, it was kind of like, oh, okay. So the main two things are, it's not about don't use the pacifier too early.

It's about don't use it to replace hunger because then you miss the hunger cue and you don't want to be like, she's trying to suck and you're not giving her milk. You're instead just calming her down with this. that's bad because you're missing a feeding and second um um uh uh when there's um there's different there's like a particular like anticolic really good ones that are like one piece you know like the the avent for example um and you want them to to calmly suck on that but then they suck on and swallow more saliva and if they fill up on saliva there's less room for milk which is also bad you know so they're so the thought process is essentially like

like only after a feeding when they're not worried about food anymore and they're trying to and you're trying to put them down, that's a perfect time for it because they can't have much more extra anyway, you know? So it's like, it's like, yeah, you can do this thing that's not what they're saying there, but it makes perfect sense for this context, you know? I would offer the counterpoint, is the baby clean, fed, and alive? Yes. then

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like now that I've now that I've gone through the entire infant phase right and the early toddler phase

every single piece of advice that I ever received actually just boiled down to hey don't be like a stupid asshole and like that like every single one is like hey if you think something's like

a terrible crutch you might be crutching on it a little mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah no um i even start i like i even was like i had an idea because i was like she was using the snoo you know because it's like you know that's the best example okay okay because the snoo helps right now and you'll pay for it later but you need help right now okay so learning

about you know what's crazy too uh just for for for people that are all like how do baby things work right and all these words read so like it's it's it's The baby goes in this thing, and it just rocks them back and forth, and it plays white noise. And I'm like, what's the deal with white noise, right? And all that stuff. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it helps them quiet. And it kind of cuts out the little bit of the sound of their own, you know, crying or voice and stuff like that. It covers the sounds of your farts.

And just relaxes you, right? And you're like, oh, all it is is it's kind of just like a machine that's recreating, you shaking and going shush. And you going shush, you shushing, you shush, is you creating white noise with your mouth, right? That's what that is, which then leads me to go, so when you tell someone to shush as an adult, you're just creating white noise. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say right now, you should not tell adults to shush. It's crazy, but the idea I have had a zero percent success rate with that. Like, okay, the idea of going, I shushed my wife once. Yeah, oh no, no, no, no, that's an escalation point. But, but, but saying,

shush and going shh, the act of doing is creating baby white noise for them to comfortably be quiet and go to sleep. That's what that comes from. Well, because they're supposed to be out in the forest with the animals, man. They're not supposed to be inside this sedentary box of wood and stone. Anyway, so there's

all that. And also, some pretty cool tech too has been taking baby out swaddled in the in the big old snoo swaddle and just keeping them burritoed up and I'm just like yeah you're comfy you're fine we don't need those limbs flailing everywhere you know and dude I love the swaddle I remember when we were swaddling him there was like a movement or some shit like don't swallow your baby it's bad for you I don't give a are you out of your mind I don't give a fuck if I couldn't swaddle I would have lost my oh no no it's great for you and they love it and it's great um

And you loved being swaddled. And in fact, the fact that they are swaddled allows, I can put her down and the snoo and not even turn it on. And then when she gets a little fussy, instead of starting at one and then having to go up to two, three, four, five, you start at zero. And then you get to go up to one. You get an extra step in there. It's good. It works, you know. Swaddling rules because it stops them from trying to eat their own hands.

That's true, too. to those of you who don't have kids you would be astonished how much time you're having to spend trying to keep them from eating their own body I still like swaddling when I was a kid I loved rolling up in the sheets

and like rolling to the corner of the bed the corner between the wall and the bed like I love burritoing up and hitting that corner do you want Punch Mom to wrap you up

like a big woolly burrito I mean no but I'm just saying that I Oh that was like the least convincing No I've ever heard from you But I do remember Thoroughly enjoying that That was my favorite part of the bed to be on

And the extra bonus was when it was hot The wall is cool You know so you can cool down By flipping your pillow over And you're getting a whole cool wall To like regulate your temperature with it You want to be bandaged up Like that edits of that Grappler

Backy guy who's sitting in a hospital bed It is comforting. It is comforting, you know? I mean, it's just weighted blankets. It's just a weighted blanket. Yeah, which I did. I got one of those, you know, trying to know. Yeah, just fucking metapod me up, man.

Let's go. You know. No, deeply satisfying. So anyway, that's what's happening over here with the Punch Dynasty. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Tales from the Punch Dynasty.

All right. So what else is going on? You know what? Before we switch over to the rest of your week, I'm just going to fill in my part of the baby cast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hit the dad quarter. Let's go.

So, okay, every phase of your child's existence is depressing because you're saying goodbye to a little guy or a little girl that you're never going to see again. That version of them is gone. So I hear. So the version of my little guy who wants hugs every single time I offer them, gone. Wake up in the morning.

Hey, buddy, you want a hug? No, Mama hug. I'm like, oh, what? Like, ugh. But it has been replaced with the little guy who also walks up and says, Dad, hold hand. Oh. We got I love yous this week.

Oh! Okay. We told him to say good night to Elmo, and he said, good night, Catmo, see you again real soon. Oh. And then I'm like, tell him you love him. And he went, I love you, Catmo. And then he did the whole room.

Oh. Right? So it's like, okay, that guy, gone. Oh. New guy wants to hold hands and says, I love you, dad. Ooh, that's a good one. God, damn. That's a good one. Fuck.

I want that. I want it now, Pat. Give me. I want that now. So here's the thing. This is a dad thing. Right? dads really want to get to the more active parts of the baby's life but when the tiny little perfect angel that weighs eight pounds is older that version will be gone shut the fuck up i'm so jealous you only get to do it the one time i've never been more jealous i want i want the i love you i want it

Wully, no, I'm so serious about this. It's, it will be gone and it will never, ever come back. It'll never come back. So you really, really have to enjoy it now. No, I'm, I'm, I'm taking it all in. I'm taking it in. You're going to start doing, where's my perfect angel who did this? Like, um, the, the, the, the, the baby reflex when you pick them up and they scrunch their

legs, one day, that will be the last time they ever scrunched their legs when you pick them up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next time you do it, you won't know, you will have realized, oh, that time was the last time. Yeah, no, I took, I took, um, there was the, there was one of those, there was a, uh, a particular feed that was happening on a nice calm day as a cool breeze was coming in. And the, the sun was shining through the trees. And I took a photo and I showed punch bomb and I'm like this is the photo that I look at before I go into Normandy right this is the this is the one you if I show this to someone I will die like that's I took it I took that photo I took the photo that I can't show anybody because if I do that's the end right

I'm going into the last act like I'm like ah okay there it is got it there is only there was only one there was only one phase that I actually like look back on and go wow that was rough and it was a phase that was rough for dad specifically and it was the boy was active and alert and knowledgeable enough to know that I didn't have any boobs for him so fuck you dad so that's what I was I there's a couple months where it is actually like I hate dad yes that's so I fuck I was telling you about that last week it's the worst feeling in the world

no you're not there yet no no no no no no no you're not there yet No, no, no, no, that's later. Okay, but she's already, like, really upset at the fact that I don't have boobs for milk, and that's tummy time and comfort are not really chill time anymore, right? So we can trick her by having her fall asleep on... The cardboard cut out. No, no, no, no. Or the, um, uh, meet the fuckers fucking attachment.

No. Um, what we can do is we can trick her and have her get sleepy enough on mom and then I can you know get in there and like kind of steal her safety tummy time the vibe um but i'm really just transplanting you know the the the mom nap really i'm just i'm stealing from mom's precious bonding for a good for good little while you are assistant to mom no i that is your life a hundred percent a hundred percent but i do feel like i'm like siphoning from her attachment moments where it's like yes now that she's bonding with you i will take her and she will sleep here Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Do it. Give me some of that beautiful, love, and energy. Um, but, um, the, the, the, the suss can make baby after feeding, be chill enough, whoop? To, Timo just got leaked for two XKO. Who gives a shit about our children? Word.

Did they, did they leave Timo in the fucking beta? Did they just leave it in there? Like, idiots? So the, okay. There have been rumors. We just combo broke out of a fucking baby talk. There was rumors about a 10 character count coming in. So if that's the case, and they already kind of leaked Blitzcrack a minute ago, then... Oh, my God. The fucking... I'm not surprised.

There's a photo... There's a photo of the upcoming battle past that just has fucking team. Okay. So they also, so, but, but with the support page with Blitz Crank, they also kind of don't care about like, like, hey, you know what? Game's good. Game's good again. They don't care. They don't give a fuck. They got Blitz and Timo in there, just like I told them to because they listen to me. Thank you. There you go. There you go. All right. And you know what? And while we're here, I take back everything I said. Perfect. Perfect. Incredible. Done and done and done. While we're here, yeah, whatever, because we don't have to, it's starting up and everything. But the, the whole bit about like, you have to unlock. You have to unlock. characters and whatever for the beta. Oh, no, we'll get there. Okay, all right, all right, all right, we'll get there. Fine.

So, okay, back to our children who aren't Timo. So Pacifier calms you down, use all the swaddle and pacifier and 15 things to distract you. And now that you're calm, now I can get some, yay, you're going to be chill on dad time, you know, without rooting. But you just have to have a million other things taken out of the way first, you know? Um, all right. So, uh, uh, uh, uh, yes, dad cast segment aside. Um, I'm going to teach my baby to fight your baby in fighting games. I'm going to teach my baby to fight your baby in real life.

Well, that's, I have a boy that's two years older. This is not going to be fair ever. You're just trying to get my, my future child canceled. Ah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do... Did you hear Pat Jr. beat up a little girl? What the fuck? I'm gonna get some mitt work started nice and early. She's gonna throw hands.

It's gonna be fun. Um, punch, punch forever. All right, fuck it. We'll fly over. Let's go right now. Oh, right now. Right now. Right now. Right now. I'll put money down.

She's, it's crazy actually how strong, like she is in terms of, like there are times where I'm like out your hand yeah it's no yeah and the leg kicking out or the position when I'm like you know you're holding leg up for diaper change or when I'm like hey can you look the other way so that your head doesn't flatten out and she's like nah I'm looking to the right though and I'm like okay well let me just turn you to the and she's like I said and then you're like I can't force it because I'll just snap the kids yeah like she's like I am not looking to the left son I have never what my life had a greater test of strength than trying to get my son's hair out of his hand.

Because it's like, I'm an adult man. If I really wanted this hair out, I could do it. But I would probably smash your little fingers to bits in the process. So I have to find the exact level of strength that will open your hand and not hurt you. Speaking of hurting hands, I'm also extra paranoid when I'm pulling the sleeves down. And I'm like, oh, are we seeing all the fingers or is a pinky trapped somewhere? you know that's fine

well then we learned a trick where someone just showed us you know just invert it grab the limb and pull it through and I'm like yeah that's fine

duh got that new baby tech yes okay the secret baby moves now for the they weren't written on the cabinet I had to look them up

online I mean they're pretty useful for the fourth time as we escape the baby segment um okay what else happened i finished um rage bound ninja guidance oh cool uh went back to clear that off because i was like yeah i feel like i'm getting glare and um yeah sure sure enough you know short and sweet um excellent game just really cool um you know a well planned

a lot of fun with the sort of throwback Ninja Guide and stuff and new stuff as you have these really fun bounce off of bullets and deflection segments and things like that. And then very much made for

speed running and replaying and getting your scores and all that stuff like we talked about last time. You know, so a really fun system where you kind of are playing two characters and one integrating with either moves with each other. And like a lot of different ways to approach some of those boss fights, which are fairly challenging right out the gate. And it makes sense because

Ninja Guidein, the original series was hard. And then the newer games, the, you know, the 2000 Ninja Guidance were also hard. So this is kind of part of the brand identity, you know? And I really liked it. And right afterwards, I was curious, oh, there's a really sick kind of like final sequence. Also, that's like a really fun, like, um, limiters off type moment, you know, you always have your, your little vanquish style like outro sequences. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Okay. So I was really curious. So I was like, now that I've played that, how is Shinobi doing? So I jumped over and I popped in Shinobi and I played that for a bit. That game's great. It is. Now, you've played, you've played a bit of both, right? Yes, sir. Okay.

Now, it's interesting because it's not the most direct comparison because they're not going for the same things. However, if I can be real here, and I know this is probably not an up, this is probably an unpopular opinion. I have more issues with Shinobi so far that I do with Ninja Guyden. Yes. What's that? Um, playing the two of them, I'm like, oh, this is a, there's the main thing that's different about them besides the fact that what is small contained Metroidvania, like levels that are open, like, like, and stuff.

And the others are just like traditional kind of nest progression. Um, Ninja Guidin is a case where your character can do a couple things. You have a pretty simple, but good move list. And the enemy placement and, um, progression of the stages is fairly challenging off rip. You can make it harder into and progress and go and add to it.

There's things you can do to make it harder as well by trying to maximize your style points and everything. But for the most part, placement of enemies is kind of bullshit and coming for you and the world is more challenging and things are aggressive. Bosses are also coming at you much more aggressively as well. In

Shinobi, you have a beautiful art style. You have a character that feels so fucking fun to do combos with and has a really generous free flowing like 2D character action style lots of relaunches and ability to juggle corpses and do some stylish things and nothing in the world is actually trying to hurt you and nothing in the world is actually being aggressive so far and even the more challenge no no it's it's it's coming from like the old devil may cry standpoint of mom enemies are there to be killed and styled on and like

one of the things right off the bat is like oh touching enemies does not hurt you you can walk up to them they're only oh we got some we have some words to talk about fucking contact damage this week okay so there's no contact damage on the enemies and in fact they so they only hit you when they swing right so uh that's you can design your game to be that way certainly like there's a a lot of character action games that do work that way but if you're going with that style, right? I think if you're going with no contact damage, then the level of aggression, I would expect,

especially on the hardest initial difficulty that you could pick, booting the game up, would be much higher. I really kind of found that like the game is super stylish and fun while you're comboing the shit out of everything, but not much is challenging you are doing a whole lot to really do anything. um so it's really interesting that you're bringing this up woolly because i have an incredibly

similar discussion to add to this later uh i'm not going to get there in this conversation it's too broad but you are i'm i'm literally going to point at you and say woolly we are starting to lose touch oh yeah yeah because we are freak beasts okay i at this shit. I saw the thread so I know where you're going later on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are starting to, like, lose touch with like normal humans. Okay, but that part aside, I know what you're going to get into, but that part aside, really, when you walk up to a room pool of enemies, they have very, very basic. And it's the beginning of the game, so I'm like, okay, this is going to be a little bit. So I went a little bit further. And I got about, I, I played about four hours. I got through, you know, like three areas of like, stage thing you know and some of the areas there's like the bosses

are kind of very very passive with it as well very slow patterning on them lots of downtime in between actions and then the challenging things where they're like hey only open this up to unlock a special challenge thing

these are harder enemies that are more elite and they so far were they're not that much more elite no they just have more armor they're the same slightly more elite yeah they have more armor and you have to break that one armor shield down

to then make them a normal enemy. But it overall was like, oh, yeah, besides comboing on these dummies, the challenge here is extremely minimal. And the game is gorgeous and it's fun to progress. And the platforming is a lot of fun too because of all your movement options. But combo beasting aside, I want a game with enemies that are doing more. And I did appreciate everything else that was going on with it. But, like, you know, a lizard cube is, you know, it's kind of like, similar to Streets of Rage 4, the ability to, like, juggle the corpse and do a bunch of cool shit is like, you know, they put a lot of the tension into that.

And they made sure that your move list from the moment you start from off rip is pretty extensive. But it seems like either I'm going to have to go, you're going to have to wait quite a bit for the challenge to kick in or unlock a different difficulty. or so because it does feel like if this is what the you know this difficulty the shinobi difficulty is going to kind of be like for now I'm like I was having a bit more fun where ninja guide in you have a little bit less options but the stage is much more aggressive coming at you and like I as you would expect from ninja guys as you would expect yeah and I was like I was having more fun with that you know so well will a quick comparison point for those two games do I have good news for you if you're looking for a side-scrolling game

that will kick your fucking teeth hold the hold the thought hold the thought um with shinobi did you feel any of that at all yeah I didn't feel challenged by it at all okay it was mainly just how to combo things right where's ninja guidance every now and then the level would would would like in classic in classic ninja guidance uh style the level would be like i'm throwing a bird at you while your platform yeah flip out die you know yes exactly right uh okay cool um and what i'll say to is that like the purest form of like when you can do cool comboing stuff is against bosses in ninja guide and rage bound um and the the difference between like the volley of attacks and like the amount of phases they go through and

stuff is just like it's so far it's just night and day you know so anyway all that to say it's it's still a really cool gorgeous game looks and sounds amazing and it's a ton of fun to to combo the shit out of everything but um even with the adaptive difficulty where you can customize it like you can't dial it up yet i hope you can unlock things to dial it up but that's my biggest complaint with the game so far um so yeah it's it's absolutely gorgeous but it really doesn't push back on you at all. It's like a, it's, it's like a,

it's like a, it's like a, yeah, it's like a 10 out of 10 that just lays there. Yeah. Yeah. You need some pushback. Come on. Right? Put some effort into it So yeah, that's it, that's it

I'm doing all the combos You know, I know that you're gorgeous And I know the music is amazing And the voice acting is cool But that's it It's all just that's what we're coasting on No, no try Yeah, yeah

Also, also I have fond memories of Okay, so Ninja Guyin I remember playing with my friends back in the day Shinobi, I didn't really But I remember watching My friend play Shadow Dancer So I have strong memories

Of like ninja and dog Running through the city Doing cool shit I played revenge Of the Shinobi 3 Which is Shinobi 3 Minute To completion minutes before

Playing Art of Vengeance Because it is basically The sequel to that game Like the run and the white the white outfit and all that stuff. Well, Shinobi 3, not Shadow Dancer, though. No, not Shadow Dancer. Okay.

Because Shadow Dancer has the dog. Yeah, Shadow Dancer does have the dog. And, um, like, I'm, I was emulating it, so I'd do some rewinds, but like, compared to, like, Strider or Ninja Guardian or something like that, like, no, it was, it was, it was, like, way closer to what you would think of as a normal video game. by today standards back then on the Genesis and there's

there's a bunch of levels that are just one to one remakes like falling off the cliff and jumping in the platforms on the falling rocks that's just a straight up remake of a Shinobi 3 stage and they're kind of about the same difficulty

like when I was playing through Shinobi 3 it really stood out to me is that like you throw a dart at somebody as soon as they come on screen and they don't even get to activate their attacks They just die. Right, right, right. And then even in this case now, you throw one Koonai out, and then you can track right to it if the person gets, if they get activated for their, like, instant kill attacker.

So, but I'm also looking at it like, so the Koonai is like a juggle tool, right, that you can use to extend your combos and, like, you know, zip around and, and bob them up and stuff. And you can get an upgrade that lets you throw out three Kunei. or throw out multiple kunei in a combo and I'm like I don't want regular gunshot replaced with color up the entire time I want the ability to throw a single kunei out

when I need a juggle and give me the option to do three or do the three within the combo you know so you can deactivate and reactivate certain skills and spells but stuff like that are permanent upgrades that take away something that

might be useful for certain combo moments so I was like ah don't do that let me let me take that off you know um I kind of it's a weird situation where Shinobi feels like they put so much into it

that there's less of it like they gave the player so much ability for player expression that enemies don't really have any ability to express themselves at you They don't. They don't. And what I'm reminded of is like, I'm kind of when I'm playing it, I'm enjoying it. It's really, it's cool. But I'm kind of like going like, Strider 2014. Oh, you. Like, I liked Strider 2014. And I felt like it had this kind of open ended world thing. And you're also getting challenge out of the enemies with that. And you're metroivating across the map and stuff. you know yeah so that's kind of the thing and you know um i what you'm gonna call it uh um yeah lizard cube you know a solid job with with with all of that and and we'll see with increased difficulty

and stuff and later on in the game how it goes and stuff but um the blasphemous dudes like just fucking crushed it with rage bound um and i think i think blasts i think they're their current like metric it goes Blasphemus 1, ragebound, and then Blasimus 2 at the bottom. Okay. Interesting. And then on beating ragebound, you unlock hard mode, which has a third ending, you know?

So, yeah, it's like, oh, sick, all right, jump back in there. So, now, that aside, of course, I was also like, hmm, with skong drop in, I should go.

Yeah, that skunk. That skong did drop. That skong did drop. And with skong dropping, let me go get that old save file on Hollow Night and see what I, what I needed to do to refresh. Yeah, what was left there. Let me go see what I could refresh on.

So I went to my, to the switch two, and I loaded up and found my cloud save from 2018. And, yeah, and I was like, okay, cool. this was right where the last boss was when I was kind of like feeling like you know there's too much game here but there's a bunch that I didn't go out and fully explore you went to the final boss

but you just didn't do a bunch of side stuff exactly so I took the time to go back and use the refreshing opportunity to do stuff that I didn't do you know one of those being Grim Troop right

so went did that That dude's a bitch Yeah Yeah that was fun Um And you know When it comes time to To make that choice

I was kind of like Okay let me just see what I'm in for here You know And like it's like Oh there's a super boss If you go back and And face the Face grim directly

So I'm like all right Fuck it let's go And Difficulty It's like okay here we go This is kind of what I'm talking about Here comes Night King Grimm

you know and I was like and that was a nice sit down and grind it out challenge and yeah got that done you know took a couple tries took quite a quite a couple tries

not as bad as some of my Eldon Ring full day you know lock ins but very cool boss fight really loved it and I really loved

how um yeah it was I guess it was about like, you know, I was probably go at it for like an hour and a half or two hours or so, I'd say. And it felt like, well, maybe less than that. But in any case, it felt like what was cool is this is a really, really hard boss fight, but it's also way less random. And it is therefore allowed to be aggressive in ways where if your pattern recognized, is you know picking up you can handle how quickly and bullshit things can get at you you know um so I kind of

I liked how that that played off with that boss compared to you know some of the other two the other hard bosses in the game and then after checking that out I went to godmaster and sort of checking out some of that as well um godmaster I feel

very strongly is bad so I really and I mean this I really strongly dislike Godmaster interesting okay once I saw what it was I went oh this is like a boss butch this is just

like boss rush it's a mode that is a DLC section you know and I was like okay cool well I didn't feel as compelled because it was like there is some new content but it's at the end essentially yeah no that's why I don't like godmaster

there are like it's just a boss rush, no. Like, multiple brand new bosses that are literally the best boss fights in the game are at the end of like 22, 23 boss gauntlets. Yeah. That's

fucking stupid. No. Also, the game's like true, true ending is hidden behind a 25 boss, boss rush with a unique final boss. That's fucking ridiculous. Like, I definitely, I'm always down for the true arena in Kirby, where you

have them all there ready to go and you can just go at it. But it shouldn't be that like, well, okay, the true arena also has like usually like a hidden final boss and then a little piece of lore that you get, like whether it's morpho night or the true void, you know, and all that stuff. But the idea that like, no, there's actual original characters and content in this DLC, but you have it essentially at the end of this mode. Yeah, that turns a lot of people off. And for me, included, I was like, okay, well, I see what this is. I'm not going to go all the way through this to go see what that content is, right? Grimtro. Yeah, no, pure vessel is like the best boss fight in that game, and I'm not going to see it because I don't want to go through a 23

boss rush. What they easily could have and should have done, I think, would have been to make God home an area where there's a unique dungeon and new characters and bosses and all the new stuff as a part of progressing through that zone while you have access to challenging all these old bosses and doing these rushes for points and for other stuff, you know, but like putting them together and putting the progression mandatorily at the end is like, yeah, that that's not a, they didn't, I think plan that the way they ought to have. That being said, though, I was like, okay, cool. Now that I've done that, I think I'm ready to scong. All right. Take it away. Okay, so before I get to skong, I need to do some housekeeping for the Pat Stairs at

Twitch channel. So I mentioned last week that I was doing a sub-a-thon. Ah, yes. The sub-a-thon. By the way, I would like to wag my finger at you. There's something you did last week. I did not appreciate. When I read out some of those goals, you were like,

oh, you're not going to do that. You just didn't believe me when I said I would actually do those things if those goals got reached. Which ones were they? The clown shit And Vincent pricing my mustache and getting mutton chops Okay, fair enough

I mean So first of all Yeah Yeah yeah yeah Second of all This Thursday I have a barber's appointment To mutton chop myself up on 9-11

Is it important that it's on 9-11 No it just happened to be The date and I think it's really funny Because I'm going to go on on my borderline Landstream and be like, look at my face, never forget. Okay. Well, because I think that's really funny. Well, um, fair enough. Fair enough, you, you have committed to all of it.

Um, I mean, I have not seen this level of commitment to the bit from you in, in this, to such a degree. Hey, listen, when someone came into my sub and was like, how many subs would it take for you to suck a dick? I was like, whose dick you got? Let's talk about it. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, more than, more than, more than I'm used to, you know. So if you have not been following up, I've hit the following goals.

I got new emotes. I showed you those. I showed you the zero emo. Zero, pretty good. There is now a massive backlog of posts that people have sent to page on Blue Sky that she is posting every single day when I'm streaming or like here. She just posted one about Virtual Fighter that makes me want to throw up. Um, I hate it. We did the CSB tier list stream on Sunday.

Nice. And I'm of the opinion that, uh, what hard-ar deep nut wheelchair miracle, piss bottle dominance is the best podcast title. That's, that's a fucking strong contender. Number two, number two in my heart was Julius Caesar the first Roman cancel. I think that's the best one you ever wrote. Oh, I forgot about that. Because it's like poetry.

There's like four layers. It's really, really, really good. I fucking forgot about that one. Yeah, okay. All right, all right. My blue sky title has now been changed to mystery syringe enjoyer accepting DMs. Don't like that. Don't like that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's the one I don't like the most so far. So I was about to say, like, that's a line. never thought you would cross, but here we are. I took suggestions. I took the most like ones out of a thread and I put them on a straw pole. Okay.

And that's the one that won. Every Rubicon has a price. I'm doing a Bioshock Infinite LP this week, which I don't want to do. I really don't want to do it. Okay. Mutton chops on Thursday. We're going to blindfold me and I'm going to run

a page through R.A.2 Classic with only my mind palace to help. Can I add a a stretch of like, you have to begin that LP by watching the pre-footage of the initial trailer. Oh, I'll get so mad. Just to set the tone. I'll get so mad. Just to set the tone, you have to watch the early, the reveal first.

I'll get so mad. Yesterday I hit the goal. I am going to do a stream in which I cook chat a meal. Wow. But I will also eat the meal for chat. Wow. Because I'm not going to feed it to the thing. Full on muck-banging.

next up is next up is Lisa the Painful LP if you're into Oh shit Yeah go down to

Twitch.com TV slash Pat Stairs at Put gift subs in There's a nice little tracker on there To let you know What's coming up But that's

I also have like Man there's a lot coming out this month Like I'm doing a 2XCO stream As soon as the podcast is over Like 630 Yeah Yeah that's dropping

Pacific Because it's out now It's out But that's what's going on With there But while I've been doing The Sub-Athon I've also been streaming

an absolute fucking shitload of skong. Yeah. A crazy scongful amount. So let's start, let's start in reverse. How much skong have you sconged? I just want to say something to keep in mind with Lisa the Painful is that it's a similar situation to fear and hunger and other games like that where Lisa the joyful is like the completion of the ideas and a full.

It goes Lisa the Painful plus Lisa the Joyful, right? Joyful comes after, yes. Yeah, that's why, yeah, the goal is Lisa the Painful plus Lisa the Joyful. Okay, Joyful is like an improvement to everything and it's stuff. But it's also Lisa the Painful, too. Yes, exactly. And you don't really need to bother with the first one, Lisa. It's actually not about, just not.

Yeah, it's painful and joyful. Yeah, okay. I have sconged a couple of hours. So, um, basically, you know, out of the first area into that, you know, into that first, whatever zone. I think, okay, the last two things I did was, because you can progress in any direction, right? You can progress in many directions, though the early game is significantly more linear than the later game because of progression and movement abilities. Yes.

For Lisa, one, you can read a wiki about what happens in it, and that's all the context you need. you don't need to play it for skong um the uh the last thing i did was unlocked fast travel um which is that's good which is adorable um very adorable and uh did a bunch of um did did the the uh dive jump uh platform thing to get all the way to above the the um the camp and i fought a barf monster Oh, that thing is A fucking piece of shit Yeah, I killed it Yeah, you got a single shard, didn't you?

No, I... Well, what... Wait, oh, oh, the reward. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, wow, that fucking thing's an ass. But it was just like, okay, so I'm looking at it and it's like, what are you supposed to do here? It does a ton of damage.

Oh, you can keep running to the left. Oh, what if I just chill underneath here and jump up and hit it one at a time? And then you just... You can do it! Yeah, and I saw I'm taking damage, and I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, we're going to see what happens. Let's ask a different question. In terms of movement slash traversal abilities, what do you have right now?

All I have is the lance throw. That's it. The Lansar that lets you do what? It just, it's the, the attack she does in Holo Night, where she throws out the Lance with silk and then pulls it back in. Oh, okay, sorry. You mean the R1 ability, the one that uses silk? Yes, yes.

Okay, okay, sorry. Also, I swap my buttons because in Holo Night, I want healing on R1. so I swap Circle in R1 Because actually Silk Spear, you're talking about Silk Spear This is the spear, yes. Side note When you want to dash and have charged attacks Ready to fight a boss

But you're holding and you're charging down the attack button But then you want to use an opportunity to heal Between aggressive boss fights phases of like say Night King Grimm Having heel on Circle sucks Because you have to let go of your charge to do the heel. So moving heel up to R1 allows you to keep your charge and then cancel straight into the heel and then not have to let go and do that, right? So...

Okay, well, to you, I say, that makes perfect sense for Holo Night, but in Silk Song, the heel is a single button press that locks you into place, so it's not near, like, you can actually get, you can actually get the charge out through the heel animation. So I swapped it preemptively because that's what I played Hollow Night Like. And I'm expecting that button to get more magic spells on different directions. What button do you have the silk move on right now? The silk move is on a circle. Okay.

And heel is on R1. Okay. And the rest are as they were. And the rest are as they were. It's the same thing. You're going to, you're going to change. Yeah? Okay. Because in Like keep going as much

as you want, but like you're going to end up changing. Well, in Hollow Knights' harder fights I was like, this is a detriment in the ability to need me to hold down these two face buttons while, or press these two face buttons, you know, in a way that

is not intuitive. So I kind of assumed that a Hornet was going to get abilities kind of like that, but maybe not, you know? So I'm going to, okay, So you don't have any traversals, so I'm going to be, I'm going to limit my, my discussion to things you either know in your heart to be true, like a double jump. Sure.

There is a double jump in the game. A charge slash, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or something that was shown off in a prior trailer. I, uh, right. Sure. I did do one of those bouncing red flower, uh, traversal things. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, okay.

Okay, I see what we're doing here. You know? So I have played an absolute shit ton of Silk Song. I've streamed it, I think, six nights now. Yeah. I'm way in there. I'm encountering a very strange thing happening with Silk Song. It is so much larger than Holo Night that I feel like I've been halfway through the game for nearly the whole time I've been playing it.

Almost the whole time, I'm like, oh, I'm like halfway through. And then I open up like four more areas. I'm like, oh, I'm like halfway through. So is it because, because there's two things about Hollow Night. One was every time you walk into a big majestic area and it feels like important, or is it that you have a big boss fight with something significant and that, the gravity of that makes you feel like something happened? It's neither.

Okay. It's neither of those things. So there's, there's a bunch of reasons that, that, that, that, that, combined to that. First of all, um, you get a huge amount of powerful traversal abilities really fast. Nice. Um, really, really, really fast. You get a, you get her run. Okay. You get the float and you get, um, like an air dash like that. Which all, like, like, so I'm expecting, super fast. So I'm looking at it going, right. What I want and expect is her kit from her boss fight to be fully available, right?

Yeah, you get way more than her kit, right? Because you also get a double jump. She doesn't have a double jump in Holiday Night, right? And it's been in trailers, and it's also, I don't know if you looked at the, I don't know if you looked at the fucking controller layout very closely, but you also get a harpoon, which is mapped to L2. Okay. Basically, you get to do everything that she could have done.

And then there's a float and a run and all that. But you get a lot of those like super, super, super early. Cool. As a result, you're going to notice that a lot of the areas that you deal with in Sop-Song horizontally are like three times as large as they are in Holo Night because they expect you to be running your shit off. There's a lot of length to that map and stuff what I've seen. Yeah. The, um, uh, what I also just shout out to the clear reference of animation on its sleeve. One, when she turns around and does the full Alu card leaning down and then starts running.

I'm like, it's the exact Alu card animation, turn around one to the other. And when she jumps. There's a lot more Castlevania in this game than there was in Hollenai. Okay. And then second, I'm seeing Metroid Dred, not Dread, Metroid Fusion. When she jumps and grabs the ledge and you flip off of it, you know, that's a very Samus-ass-ass-level platforming thing. So I'm going to tell you something that I only just started doing. It's really important because it's part of her core kit and it's never explained. If you slash a projectile

and there is a clash, the projectile loses its hitbox entirely. Okay. Good to know. So if an enemy throws like a knife at you and you slash and you see the ting, the projectile is now part of the background. Okay. Yeah. Essentially no longer exists. Yeah. Similarly, if you parry an enemy slash part of their hitbox, the distended hitbox that is part of their move will lose its hitbox properties. But their body will not. Yes, Hollow Knight worked that way. There are moments of Night King Grings swinging at me where I clashed with his sword.

and yeah, that one attack gets its hit removed off of it, but the next in the combo obviously doesn't. Also, I haven't used it very much, but if you want to start sequence breaking some shit and you get really good at the Pogo with her new dive kick, if you click in an R3, she'll use Silk to do a taunt.

Taunt will lure enemies closer to her, which you can then use to platform to places that you wouldn't otherwise be able to go. Interesting. I mean, right all way in the first area, I pogoed up to get the extra berry, you know, and I was like, okay, I see what you want me to do here. It's not the Holo Night Pogo. It's the diagonal, obviously. But the fact that you know the boss fight version does a full screen dive. And right now you have a shallow one is like, I'm like, yeah, okay, I want that upgraded version for sure. Well, you're not going to get it. But it needs to be Pogo distance for platforming reasons, because the game's going to ask a lot of you, platforming-wise.

Did you beat the path of pain? I'm not there yet No, no, no, no Okay, so the Path of Pain was for real In Hollow Night Oh, oh, I don't remember I don't remember You would remember

You would, it's fucked Okay The Path of Pain was for real And it required all of your platforming abilities And really pushed the Pogo Idea to the maximum Like it's, it pushed that idea As far as it can go

Okay So when you look at Hornet And you start playing Skong I am far enough in that I can say this with like full like confidence this is the type of game that you get

when you let a couple of guys build their own toy forever for themselves under the impression that they themselves will be playing it forever and what I mean by that if you're like man I wish I could play a silk song but is there any story

that I need to find out about Hollow Knight? No, there's none. You absolutely need absolutely no foreknowledge of Hollow Knight to play Silk Song at all. I would highly, highly recommend that you beat Hollow Night before starting Silk Song because

Silk Song is a full difficulty level higher in every way. Everything does double damage compared to the Holo Night equivalent. Because Hornet is sprinting everywhere all the time, you actually have way less time to react to enemies coming into your field of view.

The platforming is, on average, way harder. And part of that is that the dive kick is way more finicky than the Pogo. Than the Pogo, yeah, yeah. You're not slashing straight down. That changes a lot. I have seen a lot of people, so I adapted to the dive kick immediately and had no trouble, but I've seen a lot of people going like, oh, this fucking, the angle on the fucking dive kick is, God, damn, fuck.

And then I went back to Holo Night and discovered, oh, yeah, no, the, the, down Pogo in Holo Night is like fucking super powered compared to her dive kick. It's so much better than her dive kick. So for me it's not it's not the angle it's the distance you know of reading how shallow it is and like wanting that dive. You have to be really close to things to Pogo on them. Yeah and I just I'm like I'm like I her attack when she does it to you is like a much further one and you know even after just coming off of

Shinobi where you can do a dive kick shallow or hold it for a deep one you know that would change that would improve everything for me if I could just get a full distance dive kick you know

okay um also um I thought what if instead of getting a full distance dive kick

you got a completely different Pogo attack instead interesting okay huh cool just just yeah yeah if you could choose from a wide variety of pogo

equipping stuff interesting okay so um this is minor mechanical but it's fairly early so there's no charm system that combines with itself no and i noticed it was more limited because you were stuck putting navigational charms in the navigational slot or passively in the passive. Yeah? I like freedom. I like... Okay.

I'm like kind of having to dance around. Personally, okay. For anybody who's out there, personally, I don't mind if you, you can say whatever to me about it. The game is all... It's totally fine. There's such a minimal... Yeah, it's okay.

And also, you will get one of these fairly quickly. So, you start off the game, and you have a slot for yellow charms, blue charms and red charms which are like passive abilities defensive abilities and attacks and there's also a white charm slot for like you know the silk spear right and you may discover in fact that you could switch to a different set of attacks that have different sets of colors so instead of one of each it's like three yellows and one blue and no red. This weapon has different applications. Or there's one that has three reds for three subweapons and like one of the other two. Okay. Customizability. Good. Yeah. Right. And that is what's replacing open system. The, the, I'm going to mix and match charms to get weird effects is I'm going to replace my entire move set. And then that entire move set is going to change what types of

things I can have equipped. That makes up for it then, yes. Because playing with charms was really, really dope and finding builds, but of course not doing the same thing as an understandable thing for your sequel. Also, Hornets

navigational upgrades are stronger and better than the Hollow Knights navigational upgrades. Because Hollow Knights Air Dash was an air dash. Hornets Air Dash is an air dash and a

full-body sprint that includes a vault that launches you off platforms. Okay, okay. Navigational, yeah, it's traversal, not, because I'm like, Hollow, because Hollow Knight. Yeah, her traversal abilities are just straight upgrades to the Knight's traversal abilities. They are better. Okay.

Because, like, I'm like, Hollandite gets a fucking teleport back home anytime you want ass, you know, spell, but, uh, yeah, yeah, movement. Interesting. Okay. Um, that you also get, you also get, like, um, you also get, uh, charms that don't have like unique they don't create like a unique effect when you combine them but they synergize

extremely well like there's there i found a sub weapon that uh shoots out a drill that hits like 10 times and i have a charm that adds poison damage to sub weapon hits okay so it fires out and it's purple and it does like fucking 10 hits plus six more hits of poison damage so i have to say that right off the bat when i saw how much you heal with her silk ability I immediately thought oh they're going to wrap this difficulty up like a motherfucker

this healing is too good when I started people were like I don't like the heal because you can't heal as many as you want right it's always three right are you all right sir did he just bite his tongue are you dying one second sorry

oh no oh no Wollley's dying anyway so he can still hear me um um But Hornet's heel is three pips every time. It's pretty fast. And it will lock you in place in the air if you do it.

Well, we need to take break. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.

Okay. Excuse me. A little worried. All right. I am not bleeding out the tongue. No. I'm okay. Oh, you totally bit your own mouth.

I'm okay. Yeah, her heel Locks you In a place in the air So if you get to like A really high spot And like a boss fight Yeah

You can heal up there And nothing can touch you Um The reason why Um You get three pips And it's fairly generous Is because everything does like

Twice as much damage to horn it As it did in Hollow Night Okay Yeah Um You're starting with five crests You can get hit three times You're gonna die

And Contact damage With bosses is two pips Yeah, so I saw, so the barfing boss, like, was four, I think, or so, like, it was... Well, he's, he's fucked up. He's like an obstacle. He's not even, you're not even supposed to fight him. So I noticed that right off the bat, and I'm like, okay, yeah, you're letting, and again, the heel is so aggressive. So I'm like, they are giving you a massive heel because

you're gonna fucking eat it. Yeah, you actually have a really small health bar, like a weirdly tiny health bar. It's one of the reasons why I feel that this game is a direct sequel to hollow night in that like hey you beat hollow night last week right uh because hornet has like half as much health as the night and she is twice as mobile um and the boss fights and the arena fights really expect you to be fucking going for it like i was doing some of the stuff the other night some arena fights where they're throwing like multiple mini bosses at me simultaneously that i'm Like, this is just as hard as, like, the really hard shit. Okay.

Like, a Dark Souls or an Eldon Rain. Now, you also had the ability with the knight to make a build that was less about finesse and perfection and more about, like, taking hits, right? And, like, if you want it to be, like, sturdy with your, uh, your charms. So, you can't do that. Okay. You can, however, make a build. that is more about perfection. You can't sturdy up.

You can actually frail up if you prefer. Oh my God. The build that I'm running now has traded the heel for an attack. I no longer have a regular heel. My heel is now an attack. Okay. So like, freak beast alert.

If I can put on the warning, you know warning freak beasts are discussing that's hottest shit and i love it however i have heard that people are having a bad time it's really hard like this i would put the difficulty level of sulksong around like in between elden ring and shadow of the earth tree okay and it's not a DLC, it's its own game, but it was a DLC. And you... It was supposed to be. You can feel that this game was built out as the thing you do at the end of

Hollow Night after you beat HoloNute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But now it's its own thing. Okay, okay. And it was play tested for seven years. by like 10 guys who got super good at it. By the way, Patch coming out next week, I saw.

Already going to nerfs some of the bosses. So I'm like, first newster thing I saw, Patch is coming out to make the game easier. And I was like, damn, already. Fun fact, the bosses they're nerfing are not the boss they need to nerf. There's one called Moorwing, which is pretty crazy. I'm not surprised. However, you can skip it.

Optional. It's a skippable boss. There is a boss. I'll just say that it's the savage boss that is like I fought the second encounter with it. And it's one of the first times I've ever been streaming a game and said the phrase, what do you even want from that? Okay. Now, like I was actually like gobsmacked.

Okay. Now, that barfer was something that I felt was like probably a, again, it's either it's an obstacle or a comeback later situation potentially in, you know, the flow of things, right? Don't stand here and swing at it. That is a, you will have an ability that will allow you to ignore him. Okay. Are there so far, however, like as many hours is you written now, multiple examples of this is a challenge you should. handle later, but you can do it now if you're stubborn. Oh, all the time. Great. Now, here's the thing. Now, above my head is the text, Freak Beast, Discussion

Alert only for Sickco's. Correct. I ran into an issue where I was talking a page about this, and I talked about it on stream, in which I had to go through an entire Reddit thread and blue sky thread and back and forth, back and forth with people, because I was like, I'm a little

disappointed that the Metroid elements of Silk Song aren't as present as I thought they would be because it's actually quite rare that I have to get stuck or run into an area that I don't have the progression ability for, right?

Like, you know, oh, I don't have the double job. I can't do it here. And instead, I've actually been like cruising fairly cleanly through it. To which I had to be informed by my audience, that is because I am not getting difficulty locked out of the bosses that,

that have the traversal ability standing behind them. Okay. Right. Right. I'm actually just walsing through Moorwing or the last judge or fucking whatever. And getting the hook shot equivalent or the double jump and then going, oh, it's weird. There aren't that many areas that are locked out of my current progression. And the thing, of course, with these types of this game and, well, anything of this nature is failure means losing currency means corpse runs.

right now the game does something really smart early on in the game i was like this is stupid who is this for you can go to a merchant and you can trade 80 rosary yep which is your currency and you don't get 80 on the fucking rosary though do you pat you get you get you get an item in your inventory that's 60 and that fucking bug takes 20 20 rosaries off to roll them up you can later cash in 140 for a bead of one 20, which is a slightly better... That's a better rate. And I'm like, why would I use this shit?

And the answer is, there are areas in the game... There's an area in the game that has the fucking... There's an area in the game in the upper left that at the door has a rosary string converter. And you go, what the fuck is this for? And then you walk into the zone and you go, all right. And you walk back to the control... You put them all...

Rosaries and I go because you're going to fucking lose them. Because you're going to lose them. Also, also, and this is one of those things when we're talking about shit that takes years and you're like, what were they doing? They were designing rosary beads to roll on the floor off the ledge into your doom.

Yeah, they're like, you know what? No, that that charm that sucks them all up to you, that's going to have a lot of value. That's going to have a lot of value. Choose to put that on or you're chasing money around on the floor like an idiot. It's like, hey, you only have one spot for a yellow charm. Do you want the compass, which is insanely used?

Do you want the ability to even get currency at all? I fucking knocked a corpse of a, that I was supposed to retrieve the item off of, onto spikes. You know, and it's just like, yeah, no, fuck you. It's gone. So the difficulty isn't just

the enemies. The enemies are quite strong and their movesets are kind of all genius. Like, in a way that I didn't feel was the case in Holonite. There is, you know, you'll fight like bug warrior that has like, you know, some daggers and they dash and they go under the ground. And then you fight

bigger bug warrior that just slashes in like a dive kick. And like, by themselves, whatever. Fighting those two enemies together is like actually insanely difficult. It's crazy how difficult it is to keep track

of multiple different enemies. that are all attacking you with different attacks simultaneously. The entire game feels like the Ornstein and Smoke fight being reduced in miniature to normal enemies. Godskin. Godskin runs. It's really, really aggressive. And on top of that, the boss runbacks are really, really mean in this game. They're really mean.

So that's a combination of two things. One is the average expectation of your platforming abilities in this game are way beyond what every other Metroid game would expect of you. It is a game that is like asking the platforming abilities of Celeste for you, but is also a Metroid game and has like super tough combat. And it's so interesting how if this were packed at the end of Hollow Night, it would be an expected upgrade in that progression. Absolutely. But because it's packaged as its own thing. It's right at the start. It's meaning out everybody who's coming in going the perfect time to join and to plays to play the sequel.

And it's not treating it like a mandatory section that you had to get through the base game to get to. So, Wully, don't look too closely. But there's people in chat cursing a very specific runback. there is a run back against a very difficult boss this is a boss that starts as an arena fight which means you have to fight every enemy in the zone in like a set of combinations and then turns into

yeah then turns into a boss fight at the end like run the arena then fight the boss and the boss is pretty tough if you do not find a secret bench the run back to that boss is literally the entire zone. Okay. And the zone is really, really mean.

Yeah. It's really mean. There is, and so, and so what the, what I can, I can, like, I can intuit the dev idea, which is if you're going, wow, this is a really insane run back, what would be the solution? Maybe I should explore more and see if I can get some upgrades. Oh, there's a secret bench. or that, you know, what have you, right? Shrida of Amata, royal rat authority.

Sure. But the secret bench is really secret, like really secret. And it takes the run back from the entire zone to half the zone. Okay. There is the act one final boss has a runback that if you can, and absolutely crush the platforming is like 90 seconds, right? If you can't absolutely crush the platforming,

it's like 10 minutes. If you get there at all. Okay. Like, it's all these different things that are compounding on each other to create new levels of difficulty. It's the enemy boss difficulty, equivalent of the end result is greater than the sum of its parts.

I understand. So the boss runback to the Act 1 final boss is really not that bad. I was doing it in 90 seconds and I fought the boss 12, 15 times and he was pretty tough and then I beat him. But if I was taking five, 10 minutes and dying on some of those runbacks, that 15 attempts, first of all, they're not going to be as good. because I'm going to get fucking frustrated, that's going to balloon out from half an hour to like two hours, three hours, four hours. Right?

That boss is harder because if you're not absolutely super locked in on what you need to do to get him every time, you're going to get there sweaty and frustrated and annoyed. And we haven't felt this in a minute because Eldon Ring all but took it away, right? Eldon Ring put your statues of America or your bonfire graces right outside the boss doors

for like the worst of those bosses. Well, the other thing is that part of Eldon Ring's core design was like, wow, this is pretty hard. I should leave and get stronger or go somewhere easier. That is actually legitimately not an option in Silk Song. Every time I was like, wow, this is pretty hard. I should go somewhere easier. Turns out I only found harder areas. Okay.

So, and as the massive joke that it is, health upgrades are, really rare. And you need four pieces of a mask to get a health upgrade. Not three. Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, you need four. And the health upgrade pieces are behind by far

the game's hardest content. The hardest boss I have fought in the game so far awarded me one fourth of a single pip of health. Oh my God. Okay. Okay. It was a arena fight into a boss fight.

into a Metroid escape that was really hard, and it gave me a single quarter of one PIP of health. So I've noticed that at least, again, when I came across that bouncing off of the red flowers, you know, that first one I saw, where I was like, oh, you need precision on this dive. It's not going to be nice. There's spikes everywhere,

and you either land it or die. And you have a limited number of tries because that's your health. making it to the end, killing everything, getting, you know, the piece or the rosaries or whatever behind there. And then the game's like, good job. Now go back. You know, at which point, I'm like, or hollow night tech, let me just pause and quit and reload on that bench.

That is a move. I have been using a lot. Fuck you. You're not making me go backwards. I can bench it. I have a question for you. did you complete the white flower in hollow night 2017

the white flower is a quest that wants you to get from the west end of the map to the east end of the map without taking a single hit no I don't think I did that well guess what yeah what if they threw you a bone and said you know what you can take a couple hits

and you're like, oh, well, that's all right. And then they're like, because it's timed. Nice. Because it's time. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? It's not like it's a big deal.

It only has the single most important upgrade in the entire game locked behind it. Most important. it has the nail damage upgrade sorry the needle oh don't yeah you're gonna do it you are gonna do it and yeah okay um you mentioned earlier that there is something that trades off healing for damage

how good is that that trade off though so it what it may so uh it's it's it's it's it's really a 50 50 uh it so what it is is it trades off the heel for a really really strong attack that if it hits it heals per hit oh so it's like the same wait hold on it's the same level of healing but you have to hit all the hits and i miss that shit all the time because enemies are super fast and super mobile but when you fight a boss and you the boss enough times in a row that they get unconscious. Not only am I going to heal up, but I'm going to do like 15 hits of damage. Yeah, that's fantastic.

So it's, it's Feaster Family. That's fantastic. Okay. It also has my favorite move set and it has one of my favorite charm allotments. So that's what I'm going to be using. Like that is also, even in, even in situations where it's not practical, I, like, that challenge, like, speaks to my soul and says, like, You designed this so that this is possible.

Now I have to do it, you know? That sounds great. Okay. Okay. It's, um, it's, it's, it's an incredible game. It is absolutely astonishing. Its breadth and width is crazy. There are, like, in that interview, they said, oh, we just kept thinking of new things and just kept wanting to put it in.

The amount of, like, new mechanics. nonsense that you encounter and ideas is so enormous it's so crazy as long as you're willing to absolutely fucking fight your ass off through it to get it

like it is it is for sickos and it's it's legacy as the hollow night bug game that's cozy chill is like is getting a bunch of people into it who are discovering that they are in fact not sicko freak beasts

so so the game is deceptively simple and always has been right it looks like the most basic platform swing your sword and jump around get the boss move cute bug thing for sure um but yeah i did see the compilation of like this game is rage bait i'm breaking my controller you know like everyone that like again the cute art style is a lie yada um to it which i mean makes me raise my eyebrows even higher like i'm like there there there are some shit in this that i'm like you i absolute mother i appreciate who you're talking to here you know um but this is kind of the and well anyway it's interesting that this comes right after that Shinobi discussion, right? Because... Very interesting. Yeah. However, however, what I will say is that Shinobi, you're so cool right

away that you can be distracted by how cool you are. Whereas in this game, you have jump, swing, heel, and so far that's it, you know? No, you get pretty cool. But then you, yeah, okay. Well, here's the main thing. Once you get the ability to sprint, harpoon, double jump, and air dash, um, the game's going to demand. You use all that shit all the time to avoid getting killed. So when you find a boss and you do like a good attempt, you are

you are way cooler and more impressive than Hornet was in her own boss fight in Hollow Night. But I'm also remembering... Like she's zip zooping. But like the ability to fine tune builds in Hollow Night 2 was really high because things as simple as when you put this charm on, you no longer get pushed

back a little bit on each hit. And I'm like yes. I'm just. I'm I'm sacrificing my slot for no pushback or just that little bit of extra meter, a little bit of extra soul on each slash or whatever the case is. Increasing charge time.

Those little microchanges, or a microchanges rather, made a huge difference. Sweet, sweet, sweet. It's exactly what they said it would be. It is way larger than it appears. Of course, of course. Like that was something with Holo Night, but like now we have Holo Night to compare it to, I have already, I'm not even, I'm not done.

I have like at least six areas I've gotten to and not walked in the door. I am already like 20, 30% past a Hollow Knight's total size. Man, okay. It is, it is, it is, I, I got to a point. that there's a room that looks just like the Castlevania inverted castle clock tower room. Oh shit, okay, okay. It looks just like it. It's even got the fucking pendulum

in the background. And I'm like, there is absolutely no fucking way we're going to do an inverted castle. And we're not. Mm, mm, mm, okay. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But they did make that room look like that on purpose after all. and I was like

you can't be fucking serious with this shit fuck I was supposed to do a quick late night stream and call it a night it's interesting how like for a character who

because Hornet talks whereas the night doesn't yeah she does talk she has dialogue but it's also like I mean so far she's sassy she yeah but so far it's like as far as I know like her plot backstory stuff

wrapped up in Hollow Night, right? So this is all just brand new world, brand new adventure. Who knows where we're going? It could be anything, right? I think, I thought so. You sure about that? No, I'm not. I'm far from sure.

But that's the impression. All right, well, I'll just tell you this. Hey, who's, who's Hornet's dad? Okay. Now, who's Hornet's mom? Now, what's Hornet's mom? and what does what does that animal do now what's the name of silk song okay so i do uh appreciate the quality of the gibberish voice acting it's really good i really like

my boy shirma i love the singing the real Like, you have a good voice and you're singing gibberish. It's great. Yeah, no, there's a, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, you know, just fun to that vibe right off the bat. Um, little, like, little, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, onion night equivalent. I guess, like opening the door for the, the, um, um, Sherma, Sherma.

Sherma, Sherma, Sherman is the one that's singing at the door. Singing a songs, man. Okay, okay. I was thinking of the shopkeep that was singing. Because the shopkeep is also singing, and that shopkeep is cool. Oh, uh, Shakra. Yeah, I, it's, I don't remember yet, but, uh...

Don't worry, you'll get there. Very cool. Where were you? Where was I? Oh, I was cleaning up the dog barf. In conversation. Oh, no. What I was talking about before?

I don't know. You know, that game's good, but it's also for sickos. Buy sickos for sickos. yeah like that it's it's kind of it's kind of tricking on people about how sicko it is it's it's kind of funny again just the i guess the the the part where um because i've seen it breach containment right i've seen the so to speak i've seen you know uh um the the the the normy world whatever people that are kind of like not really playing

paying attention to indie games be like oh yeah Silk Song heard about that like jumping in trying out the first game or picking it up because the whole the whole big fever pitch around it taking so long to come out has led to it becoming massively

mythical and sadly exactly exactly and it has thus garnered attention of folks that like definitely missed the first time around or like wouldn't grab necessarily a just a random indie 2D Souls-like thing but as a result

it's I think yeah it is misleading some folks in on what they think it is or cute bug game uh-huh and everybody's talking about it so let's go see what and why and oh shit oh fuck

you know it is it is an interesting like relaunch to the franchise you know that this big buildup has happened you know because the first time around it was unexpected out of nowhere you know i don't think like quiet kickstarter type of thing um people obviously that are like listening to this and playing

to paying attention to games and indies and stuff are like no one have heard but in general it was more of a word of mouth thing that that brought it up to where it was um yeah versus this time around where it crashed steam on day one crashed steam PlayStation store and the Nintendo E-shop And there's a list of games that all had to clear the way and move aside for it There's a really embarrassing email

that I wrote to Humble Bundle because I bought Sok's on from them because they still had keys but then they didn't have any keys when I went to redeem it so I sent in a refund request and the refund request was like a little pissier than maybe I should have wrote

wrote. I was like, I just bought this game. How come you have no keys? It's only been out for an hour. And then the lady wrote back was like, oh, we have keys now. Very sorry for that. Do you still want the refund? And I had to be like, no, I was, I was just being emotional. Jesus Christ, man. What the fuck? Okay. Wow. I didn't think a human being was going to read my refund request. yeah uh yeah no that game's incredible but it is for sickos uh there was a there's a part early on in act two where they start throwing buzz saws at you you know like holl and i does they start throwing like touch and dying in this environment will touch and kill you and um it's like 35 40

percent through the game and i'm looking at this going like people are going to quit right here like this is where a a not insignificant percentage of people gonna quit right at this spot are you seeing like are you seeing a line for optional versus mandatory path though mandatory path is still pretty fun yeah okay now there's a bunch of optional ways to get into places but the optional ways to get into places are to get really really fucking good at the platforming, which is probably going to be your problem in the first place in the mandatory section. Okay.

I also, like, if you can, if you can freak beast your way all the way up to God, yeah, you can come in the back door. But the whole reason you wanted to get in there a different way was so that you didn't have to freak feast your way to hell. Through the front on the other side of the, yeah, right, right, right, exactly. Like, yeah, good luck, idiot. um yeah okay i i i also feel like it's a game too where i imagine your path your your your like option non-optional your mandatory path you still have to find it you know you still

have to wander in the correct direction um and so they're all the correct direction eventually eventually they have also the game also has a really so there was a moments in Holo Night, but there's like 10 of them in Silk Song where you hit a dead end and you're looking at the dead end and you're like, I don't even, I don't even know what the fuck gets you through this door. Like sometimes it's like, oh, I can't run high enough or jump high enough. But in Silk Song, you're looking at a thing and like, I don't know what the fuck would even know. Well, yeah, the Holo Night ones were always when you walk out to an empty cliff and the map is like, this doesn't line up with anything. And you're like, this is, this, the camera has

panned over so that the cliff is now 10% of the screen, why would you do this? And you're like, you know why. So like, you know, I'll give you like a really good example. I think I'll give you the best example of why I think this game is a sicko game for sickos. The game has a double jump, right? It has a double jump. That means it's really good. And a platforming game that has hard platforming, double jump can be pretty clutch. It can save you from a million different scenarios. Well, in order to get the double jump, you have to complete, as of right now, the hardest platforming section in the entire game I haven't counted. That is also timed. Damn.

Okay. Okay. And so, like, I got to the, I got to get the fucking double jump. That's huge. And I went, wow, I got really good during this process. I don't even need the fucking double jump. you don't even need the reward anymore turns out I did but still

but still it's it's like it's ridiculous there were people in the chat earlier there were like I beat the game without getting the double jump because I couldn't I fucking couldn't do the platforming to get it okay it's like that's crazy well I'm going to at the very

least this now that I know this time around I'm going to approach this knowing that it's never fucking ending and it's infinitely big and it just keep shoving more in there so that I'll just sample and chew at it for a little bit and then put it away because it's a it's pretty big dude because I did describe how the my the end of hollow night for me was unfortunately like for you know not any mark against the quality of the game

but I just it felt like that Okami thing for me where I kind of was just like I'm I'm ready I'm ready and it won't stop, you know. So, um, I got off earlier, you know, and there was a lot more to do clearly and a lot more to challenge and a lot more lore to it as well. But, uh, I think this time around, kind of like with the persona games where I come in going, yep, when it says, when it starts giving you ending vibes, completely ignore those. Just don't even think about it for a second um you know what's really that'll that'll make you feel a little better uh has not given me an ending vibe even once at any more i've even gotten to like an objective that's like do these things and open up the biggest motherfucking door and i go well that's not the end it's too much

fucking blank space on this exactly exactly exactly yeah not to mention the all the the the classic and then the zone changed haven't had that yet okay I've had the zones change in like minor ways

like there was an MPC that I found that was dead when I got to them because I had gone too far in the main quest before meeting them oh

oh one of those god damn I'm not a fan of that yeah okay interesting I never met him darn

yeah game's incredible game's absolutely unbelievable all right scong talk it's good it's a good scong what else is going on

what else I hit master rank on Geef so that's so that's in Street Fighter 6 I am now master rank on Geif

and I'm master rank on Bison and I played enough of both of them in this season that I am comfortably at 1450 on both. Cool. So like right where I came in and I'm like, I now feel confident

that to say that I am okay, I guess, at Street Fighter 6. That is, that's a fine place to be. Yeah. It's also, I think Viper is about to get shown off not too long. Yeah. That's a pretty cool paint.

For me, I'm just, it's a holding. pattern until Alex like I want to play as fucking Alex man how was Sagot for Ingrid you How'd you find Sagat Nah

I don't like to play characters that have projectiles I okay I just I like I never internalized well unless unless they're guile I guess

but I just never internalized the fireball gameplay you know like I just I like that Sagat has big stupid face buttons. I'm a big fan of that. I was about to point out that Tager has a fireball and I was like, oh, wait,

you completely dodge that grappler. I'm sure. Well, now I've played a bunch of Tager, but is fireball's okay. But it's not like, it's also like, it's like basically instantaneous and it's just as good on block as it is on hit because it's just situational.

What else? I played a cute little origami style platformer called Hirogami. that was a sponsored stream. That was earlier in the week. Just a very little charming origami game. Everything's made out of like stop motion

little paper guys. The primary thing of note is that they are the only people that put out a statement that was like, we are not moving our release date away from Silkson. We're staying right here. Stay the course.

It came out the day before. Silk Song came out one day early and then I did my sponsor stream that day and then the Vod went up the following day and if anyone saw that Vod and was like I'd like to buy Hirogami they couldn't because Silk Song crashed steam

and I'm like I appreciate your fucking huge balls. Yeah no when you say hold hold hold you think it's because you're you're standing up to the onslaught little did you know the world was destroyed

under the way the store went away that's fucking crazy yeah the store was gone oh my god um anything else that I not that I could think of

off top my head I will say that I probably should watch K-pop demon hunter you should you should you should because I was walking the baby and a pickup truck passed me on the street blasting golden at like max volume and I was like

that's a combination that means this thing is popping yeah we're there that's about right the F-150 blasting K-pop sounds about right yeah like I felt I felt the K-pop as the truck passed me it's good man it's good you know that's um Yeah. And, you know, I'm, I'm super down for this, like, whatever, whatever this, um, Puss in Boots, you know, criterion collection is of, of Spiderverse style thing. Like, certain, you know, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's a certain type of, of animation quality and, in, an action style that, that they're doing. Um, more of that. We want more of that. That's just great. And we want it without, um, um, it's like, um, it's a certain type. Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, costing fucking carroshee you know that's pretty much it for me this week I did a lot of skong

did a crazy fucking amount of skong this week is shockingly enough on Pat Stairs ad on Twitch more scong it's also going to include Borderlands 4 with mutton chop pat on 9-11

going forward never forget I'm playing 2XCO tonight around 6.6.30. It's out now. It's downloaded. I have Vanguard on my PC now. Timo Blitzkrag.

Yeah. Well, Timo's not out yet, so it'll be a Lowy, Blitzcrank. And then Bioshock Infinite starts this week. So you guys get to hang out with me as I get super pissed at like literally every single narrative in gameplay element of that game. Like, hey, Booker, they're all looking for a guy with your hand tattoo on his hand. Couldn't you, I don't know,

fucking cover that shit up with literally anything? No? Go to a big crowd and make a big spectacle of yourself, then kill a guy super hard for no... All right. Does this include Barry Allette?

See? Yeah, and the other is okay. Yeah, I'm not gonna hate listen. Listen, people kicked in a not insignificant amount of subscriptions so that I would play Bioshock Infinite. I'm not going to go well, I'm not the DLC. No, if I'm going to like

butt hurt play something, I'm going to get my whole butt all hurt. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Max damage. All right. Looks like racism goes both ways. What if in the sky?

Oh my God. I fucking still think, like, just the, on paper, the concept, you know? Again, just like with Rapture, the Ayn Rand fucking hellscape, you know, the Columbia Sky Racism City. What a, what a cool basic premise to start from. Anyway. It's actually, like, really flat, though. because like Bioshock 1 was like

what if a bunch of rich people thought they didn't need the poor and they made their fancy society under the ocean right but like Bajshok Infinite is like literally what if a bunch of racists had blimps like that's as far as it goes in the concept like there's no additional depth to it at all Sky crimes I fucking you got I'm there you got you got you know I'm paying attention my I think

Boshock Infinite genuinely might be in the running for the worst aged game of all time like because it got like amazing reviews and people were like oh my God this is the greatest and then like two or three months went by and everybody beat it and everyone just started sitting around I'm going, wait, it's shit, isn't it? Oh, fuck. Oh, it's actually schlock. Oh, it's stupid. I don't know, and I don't, I'm not sure.

Because there's people, like, not everyone turned on that game. And. Well, luckily enough, this Saturday, I'm going to do my part to help the rest of you move on. There's a, like, the, the, the, the online, whatever you call this, gamer, I don't know, hardcore industry follower narrative versus the gamer zeitgeist. Yeah, right, versus the folks that were like, yeah, man, Assassin's Creed, fuck yeah. Like, it was just another AAA that came and was like, yeah, that, that game, that was cool and that was it. So this, the, the, the turn that you're describing was not a universal for sure. Like, I have, I've, I've seen that in my life, you know?

Well, see, because now you're thinking about the story, but what I'm also thinking about is how it actually doesn't play particularly well, and the environments, while beautiful, actually don't, like, play very well at all. Yeah, but if you're somebody that's just like, I got powers out my hands and I'm shooting my gun and I jumped on the hook. You can't, you can't have discussions over the type of people that you could jangle fucking keys in front of it. Oh, wow, it's shiny, makes it noise. And they have money, Pat. those key janglers have money

listen we're not doing a fucking hyper popular podcast for Madden players okay I mean people in this audience have taste at least taste enough to listen to us oh boy oh don't did you know if you listen to this podcast you're better and smarter than people who don't

didn't we just tell them they don't matter didn't we no no you told them they don't matter oh you are you are standing aside as a conscientious objective oh yeah no no i'm i'm running the sub-a-thon they matter more than they matter more than ever i love dude people kick in five subs guess what best friends now i love them kicking 10 subs i would kiss you if we met mhm give me to give me to kiss the hundred subs hey let's i don't tell my wife the animals are leaving the planet is is is hurting yeah but they don't need anyone else else? Just you?

Yeah, just me. Cue the Jared Lido. I don't want to. Yeah, well, if you're a fan of Tron, then you got to take the damage. I'm not a fan of Tron. Fuck, man. I love Tron. Sounds like I'm free and clear here. I love...

Sounds like I... Sounds like I convincingly won this exchange. Tron is so cool. And then I saw the trailer for the new one. like wait more tron and then they're like the most coolest fucking here he comes it's the guy and then jared lito turns around and you're like no well i got to tell you every single time everything from tron comes out someone next to me goes wow it's so cool and then it comes out and it actually sucks and that includes the original tron and that guy is you

It's, you know what it is? It's mirror's edge. Yeah, I know. You had that Olivia Wild thing as your fucking background for like five years. Still do? It's, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, uh, uh, uh, nine inch of else. But gay, but gay, getting daft punk was, was a, was a pretty fucking sick way to do it. That was smart.

And then this time around, I believe they're getting 9-inched ales. So... Oh, cool. You know. But yeah. Then they got to get fucking Jared Lido involved. All right. Shall we take a quick word from our sponsors?

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Out here in jolly old England. You are, is that where you want to? I'm going to give up on this bit. Are you sure that's where you want to be? Because there's restrictions on that. I mean, you want to, I would tell. to other places, you know? Oh, wow. No, I was pretending to be, uh, the whole thing's a complete wash. Yeah. Not ExpressVPN, though. I actually really, really do like ExpressVPN. Yeah, no, next time,

next time go Kiwi, you know, that's, that's what I say. Um, hey, uh, did youry darn it? That is not the same place. That is a different country. Um, the hobbits were here. They were. They, they, they were. Okay. That nailed it. Yeah. Um, now just get your, get your, uh, your, uh, your rugby going and you'll be fine. Hey, did you know, did you know that, uh, there are ISP loggers that are out there trying to get in and get all of your information and then depending on where you live, um, in some places they're required to, to log that online activity. and then they sell it for profit. Yeah, it's the same guys who email me every single day on my business account telling me my Gmail account's going to get closed down.

It's trash. They'll, you know, there's yes, there's requirements, but then they legally can sell all the information about you to third parties and make money on the profiles that they form on you based on your browsing history. That shit sucks. It's trash. It's garbage. wants that. So stop that with ExpressVPN. You click a button and just like that, you get to be in a

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Thank you, Rocket Money. Thanks, Rocket Money. All right. So, yeah, we skonged it up for a little bit. Talked about that patch. Oh, may I take one? extra moment to speak on the patch. Yes.

Let me find it. Hey, congratulations on beating Moore Wing. I'm glad you were able to and beat him now. He was harder before. You should feel proud even though I beat him before he was nerfed when he was harder.

Good job. There you go. This is like one of my favorite copy pastas. I actually unironically love it. And some of it is ironic. Some of it is not ironic. Like I, I'm willing to admit that like, ha ha, yeah, I beat. Yeah, you're going to get their fat. I beat CR and Shadow the Earth Tree pre-nerf. Yeah, my dick's bigger. And you're like, and you're getting there much quicker than most people are by blowing through through it in that first week or so. However, you're, I don't know what act you're in.

but like okay so I'm an act too okay there are patches for things in act three that you have

not seen yet yeah I didn't fucking know that game had fucking act three until I read I thought for sure so

for sure that game only had two acts because it's so big and now I'm seeing act three in that thing and I'm like yeah

fuck so whatever ass bosses that you're gonna encounter you know, when this drops. You know what, though? I'm a little annoyed.

There is a, there is a fucking boss that I fought. Um, that fucking cross-teckoned off the fucking screen like four times. Oh. Just like the phase transition just completely failed out and they just left. And I had to quit and restart like multiple times. Ooh. And it sucked.

Um. And that's not in the patch notes. They didn't fix that in the patch notes. It sucks. Every time you use the word act in a story, because... The assumption is always three acts, right? Because of, yeah, because... Nearly exclusively.

Yeah. Or five. If it's using theatrical terminology, then it's always a three-act story, right? Yeah. Okay. So, um... Yeah. We need more video games based around iambic pentameter.

Fuck iambic pentameter I fucking hate iambic pentameter Shakespeare can go suck my shit off that though the bard talk normal idiot I know you were born in 16 whatever I don't give a fuck I don't even know where it came from

but I just remember one of the earliest Jojo memes I ever saw was old man Joseph in a really shitty scantzlation deep fry with the bad text fuck iambic pentameter laid over it That's great I love it

I was like, yeah, man, whatever that means. Anyways, the, the, the, the, that quote, that quote will, will now apply to, to anything that comes future after this. There's also some like bug fixes proper on that list of things, like, yeah, there are. A lot of them are like, actually don't read that, that list. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, there's a, there's a couple, there's a bunch of them that are like, you lose ability to do X forever, fixed. Yeah.

Or, um, get stuck underneath this spot forever fixed. I mean, I don't know what the, I want to see the credits to see what the QA team was like, but hopefully the three people they talk about were not including a QA team that needs to go and make sure that these games are clean. Because if so, this, this will. be the first of many patches as people discover shit. Surprisingly enough, I've actually encountered a couple of bugs in Silk Song. No, seriously, though, no, I've run into some bugs.

See, you can't, see, if you're going to say a three-person team, then you're either one person was in charge of the entire QA process or... It's not a three fucking, there's like, there's a 20. Or there is a massive team that was hidden third party that was hired. they're just not getting their credit. Yeah, no, what I believe, if you had to put a gun to my head right now, I think they had a problem with playtesters

because I think they used the same dozen playtesters like the whole time. Now, play testers are not QA, right? These are two separate jobs and two separate roles, mind you. Someone who can, you know, reflect the game flow back to you is not the same as somebody who's going to scrape for bugs and report on compliance.

Well, there's too many bugs. of the game. I would get kicked off that fucking project. I swear to God. I would just load up that fucking database which is like, there's a bug in the town. It's name it. What database, Pat? They said they

don't know what Jira is. They don't do it. That's funny. I feel really good right now. Do you want to go into a story that'll continue to make me feel really good? I'm sorry I'm all out of those I'm all out of those I can give you I got other stuff here on the menu if you'd like

I got a brand new story that just happened it'll make me feel really good okay so I'm really glad that Mr. Cannon or whoever it is is in charge of following my social media accounts to decide what to do with 2XCO ah saw my ancient tweet. I don't know if you remember me making this, but on July 27th, I said 2XCO's roster looks like shit,

but if I can run a Blitz and Timo team at launch, it's a good game, and I will send its praises. There you go. That was over a month before Blitz got fucking Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Timo got leaked out like an hour ago by accident.

So that was probably unconcable more than anything if someone's paying attention out there because they actually are mind you but yeah somebody probably chuckled when they saw that sure like I said

reading an article that's talking about freak picks you know it's kind of funny but yes other mascot character that has merch associated that's a big

league staple uh shows up here it's um it's it's it's really interesting because they they clearly had a course correction at some point there was an interview that was not that long ago like i want to say like a year maybe 18 months ago where they just flat out said there are no yordals in the game we are not planning to put yordels into like the base roster maybe later because their size is too much of a problem And the backlash to that was super extreme. And most of that backlash was, are you really going to make a league fighting game and not put like fucking Lulu or Timo in that, or rumble in that shit?

Are you fucking nuts? Are you crazy? Yeah, I think the betas showed a whole, gave a whole lot of info, not to mention the, um, getting, getting hands on at the different, uh, offline events. But like, there's a very clear like, okay, there's a lot of cool shit people are vibing with. There's some stuff gameplay-wise that's not quite cooked yet, and they changed a whole lot after those betas. But the number one thing was just like, you know, league, league characters, roster size, et cetera. And it came up every time. And, you know, we talk about that constantly.

It's like it goes to the first thing that goes there. But also just looking in general at the discussion off of just this podcast fucking echo chamber sometimes. It is quite clear that like, no, you gotta get that roster ramped up. So yeah, that's getting 10 out there right off the bat. And also, I hope they continue to be very cavalier about leaks and not give a shit. And just like, oops, here's a JPEG of, oh, this loading screen. You weren't supposed to see it. It's thrash.

You know, like... It's pretty funny. I think that's the right way to go about it. Just, oh, no. Every single thing to do with this game's long-term interest is, is going to be what characters are coming. So, like, everybody wants to have the big fancy reveal trailer, but, like, if you just, like, if you just, like, for example,

leaked out a picture of Swain, sorry, Swain, not Swain, that's stupid. Swain, I'd be like, oh, yeah, okay, Swains, all right. You know, and it's one of those things, like, Street Fighter has a massive roster at this point. A lot of fighting games have massive rosters, but this is like a, you know, a game where it's pulling from somewhere else. like a Marvel rivals kind of thing. And if you're going to do 10, man, those 10 have to be like rock solid.

And I remember talking to you, of course, about this like a year ago. And I listed off like a huge list of characters that if they were included, meant the game sucked. Like, like the reverse of this. Because it would be the wrong picks of the hundreds. It's like, like, there's like 50 to a, to me. maybe a hundred characters that if they included them in like the first 20, I'd be like, oh, this is a bad game.

So, straight up. So, I mean, everything post beta that we've gotten now, which is Vi, Blitzcrank, and now Timo, it's like, yeah, that's probably... Vi is like the most no shit thing imaginable. Ever.

Your main character lineup, right? Blitz is like archetypally mandatory. And so it's Timo. Timo's like the games like primary mascot. I see those hats, yeah. Like, yeah, no, if Garen gets to be in this game, it is dead. It is dead in the ground if Garen gets to be in this game.

The other Darius, right? More boring Darius. Yeah. So, and I guess while we're on that with the Timo leak as well, I saw the other part was they, yeah, as they launched, they announced the the closed beta that's live from today onward and give the updates on what changed to what's going on with that. Big one that I saw was

this was just one case of like weird reporting or people making threads about like it only launches with six and you have to unlock the rest and that led to a bunch of like shitty feedback on that where... There's a bunch of very, very anger about this. But it's completely unjustified

in the sense that I I want to know in the canon of free-to-play fighting games what the genuine expectation was for people that really hate this. I know, like, the typical thing is that, like, you have a couple characters that are free on rotation. Six is actually fairly high. Like, it's more, it's 60% of the roster. So, there's the other bit. um they the other as far my because i i just went to go check and it's like so you know lee you build up your your currency your your your blue whatever to unlock characters and then um originally valerant had

you had a thing where you had to wait for the character to exist in order to build up experience to unlock them and then uh they went back and removed that and made it so that you could build up currency to spend on a character before they exist right um but they capped it so that you can't save up for more than one character to buy at a time on drop, right? So I'm like, okay, so they want you to be able to do that. You know, that makes sense. If they're switching that system over, I'm going to definitely expect that this will probably be the case here where they'll be like, you can probably save up as much of a currency as you want to, you buy a character on drop,

but they'll maybe cap it so that you can't go over a certain amount. But the other thing with this was the tutorial, gives you two tickets to buy two characters. Yeah, so this is where I kind of break down on it. So people are saying that Killer Instinct started with six free characters. But then you could also buy various

versions of Killer Instinct that would just act like a normal fighting game. The full package and stuff. And like earlier today, somebody who'll remain nameless was being weirdly passive aggressive over me going, oh cool, Blitz and Timo. I would like them

with like, basically. basically, oh, hope you have fun unlocking them. And it's like, and then I find out, like, in the 10 minutes I saw since then, beating the game's tutorial gives you two tokens, so you will always be able to just grab the two characters you want when you start the game, which completely bypasses this entire discussion. So that's the thing, right? That came out right after that post, and that got lost because I think that was like

a community manager communicated or so, but one way or another, you know, when they're talking about of the three characters that are locked, two of them, you'll have the ability to use the token to get right off the bat. So there's only one character you're going to have locked to progress to. And like, okay, let's say, let's say it comes out and that's not a big deal. They announce, hey, part of this season is going to be Mordecaiser and Yorick. They would never put Yorick in the game, but let's just say, let's just say they would. And you go, oh my God, Mordecazer and Yorick fucking top forever. Oh, I definitely want to play as them. oh but I'll have to grind

I'll mock the characters oh well no because you're starting to XKO you would actually do the tutorial and you'd use your two tokens to get Mordecaiser in your arc immediately yeah like that just overtly solves the problem right away so I know there's that the multiverse's like comparison point

but like I think like getting those and going straight to what you're looking for is you know that's pretty reasonable for that roster size so yeah that's that's cool also they really want you to to do the tutorial if they're giving you fucking two free characters for fucking doing the tutorial.

Also, I believe that offline mode you have the full roster available the whole time. So it's only for online, right? You can go... Yep. Yeah, okay. So there's that part. So, you know, I kind of am also just like, this is like the whole

free fighting game thing is brand new territory. I'm curious to see how it goes and plays out and what's going to work and not work because obviously free to play FPS is not free to play MOBA. It's not free to play fighting. They have different appeals. It's all different. It's all a different thing. So, you know, I hope, I want to see, like, what's going to work here and how this is going to flow, because tech and revolution is not

the example. And K.I. Free Mode is not the example, really, you know. Um, so I kind of, uh, yeah, this is going to set the tone, I suppose, and, and we'll see what people are willing to go for with the game being free. And like, you know, we also don't know what grinds are going to consist of necessarily. I don't know if we're talking about earning a character of that last one, whether we're talking about a day, a week,

or... I'll get back to next week, obviously. When I unlock it'll probably be jinks. It'll be my last unlock, but and the game's money-making plan is skins.

Yeah, that's exactly where I was going to go next. Yes. So, you need to be able to get the characters you want to play to buy skins for them. So I'm under the assumption that it's probably going to be a lot. It's going to be easier and cheaper to get characters than to get their skins. It's going to be not expensive to buy skins. Yes. And their cosmetic chaos screens and the, you know, perhaps stages and other shit like that,

you know, profile icons, etc. I'm expecting those things to be all grindy seasonal et cetera stuff because that's what they want you to lock in on is the cosmetics more than the character I'm thinking I'm guessing but we'll yeah we'll have to see what that looks like um the other thing

if they go on on the way that league does it what I assume is going to happen is as the roster increases in size the amount of characters that are free to play will slowly increase to be a percentage of them

the rotation is going to be a bigger... We're starting with 10 characters. When there's 24 characters, it'll probably be... 16. They'll probably throw two more... They'll probably throw Blitz and Timo on the free roster. Okay. So it's proportional or it scales up as you go. Yeah, that would make sense.

Now, that being said, if I were them, I would rotate those fucking characters around. Because free-to-play people are going to create like the majority of this game's player base just in terms of matches played

You don't want I don't I definitely I really want to play as like I'llawi and Blitz and Timo I don't want to play against Yasuo Ari. It's the Jago problem. All fucking night Yes, King all night. Killer instinct had the Jago

problem. Jago was free thus Jago was the only person you fought online in a ton of online matches for a long time and it sucked. The rotation is extremely important to get rid of that issue for sure. Um, you know skill levels aside and and whatnot like you I the if you have the idea of like there is a character that needs to be a reference point for people to be like okay well I you always learn off

of the basic Ryu you know darius is going to be free forever then that makes that's fine but you need to allow there to be a variety so that it's the yeah the feeling is not ruined by the weighted darius is this game's jago he's also the character on the icon on your computer for Legends of Root and Terra. He's as much as the games like Ryu as anything. Yeah. He's also got like a really simple, clean kit. It's easy to pick up and

understand. Yeah. Yeah. Opportunity for them to sell an extremely annoying Timo-K-O cosmetic screen. You know. Well, I hope you like, so when I say Timo in the game changes my opinion on the game,

I want to be like really clear about why that is. Timo, is like Timo is a joke about being toxic Like he's a poison character And is like

He's the kind of guy That if you play them well You can feel The slurs manifesting On the other side of the computer You can't hear them But you know they're there And they don't have to be accurate

But you know they're at you Right And the inclusion of a character whose entire existence is to make the other guy really fucking mad makes me way more interested in the game in general because it means they're willing to do

like stupid mean shit. Enabled toxicity is all you need. Yeah. And again, like, and would you spend your your fight bucks to purchase further cosmetic toxicity? Oh yeah, fucking Timo up the fucking screen.

Timo life bars. Timo win quote. Like, fucking let's go. Let's fucking go. You know what I want? I want a fucking Timo rage quit icon.

Hmm. Okay. Okay. If they have, listen, hey, here's the new guide to 2XCO, day one,

all right? Do you want to hit the top of ranked immediately? Okay, here's what you do. Play Timo. And if the, if the,

If the disconnect loss system works correctly, you will just get up into like gold and plat within a couple of hours as people disconnect. And drop the fuck off. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay, we want to make money, right? We're here to make money.

We want to recoup some of the development costs on this game that took a while to make, right? Okay. I buy the ability with Timo to have a chat pop up on the side of the screen as if I'm typing into my keyboard. Oh, that's good. I like that a lot. You get a little log of, like, text chat pop it up while you play.

I like that a lot. Oh, spend the money. Spend the money to make it happen. And it's, and one of the things that Rye was actually really good at is when they did Rune Terra, they were able to translate Timo's, like, annoying ass, fuckhead gameplay from, like, a moba to a card game. and it's obviously very, very different but like the feeling in your chest

playing a Timo deck or against a Timo deck was the same. He would just hide mushrooms on your cards and so you would pull a card to play your thing and there'd be fucking five mushrooms on it and you would just instantly die and you go, that's fucking bullshit! I can't fucking believe!

Oh, it's this, man this character! And then you'd be on the other end going, you had the mushroom on his thing. So that's why, I want from him into X-O. When you play T, right? I want that energy. When you play Timo, you can't see whether your

opponent can't see whether you're on a wireless or wired connection. They just see a little Timo head. No, Timo should be able to, his super should fucking activate Pink Crimson and just fucking, just he becomes like a disconnected fucking hitbox that teleports around at random. Am I plugged?

That might not? Wully, Wully, his passive in league is invisibility. There is actually the genuine, like, reality that he could have a super that legitimately randomly places traps invisibly on the screen, and nobody knows where the fuck they are. That would not even be outside the realm of possibility. It's happened before Testament and now to both do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the thing with this now, too, as we segue out here, it's even more. important too that this game now that we've seen this weekend

because the Tokon beta went off this weekend this game these are not direct competitors in style like on a surface level tag fighter thing they are but there's very very different styles of game in terms of what type of tag fighter is very different and I think seeing

extended gameplay of Tokon we're learning you know don't look at that as Marvel because it's not Marvel. No it is its own beast. Right? So I mean yeah Nenpacked kind of you know evaporated

and went the way it did invincible we're seeing like yeah again a little bit of K.I kind of some marvely stuff to it but a lot of Battle for the Grid kind of vibes going on but Tocon

had a one-day beta, and, uh, and no one got in. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's fine, whatever. They went random with it. Because it's, it used a PlayStation beta system, so there was no, like, numbers and codes and stuff or whatever. It was like the, um, yeah, I saw a real longer talking about how content creators are like, well, I'd cover it, but I don't know anyone who got in. I didn't get in.

And then a massive second wave of codes went out. Did they? Okay, okay. Well, whatever. If it's random, it's, that's fine. But, um, watching the, the, the, no, we are more important. Give me a code. Okay.

Me, though. It's weird. I'm a big boy with big boy pants, and I need to tell the people about my big boy games. There is a part of this where when we, if you play in people watch, you play it might help advertise it. Sure. But there's no need to, if we don't get it, they don't want to do it that way. They don't do it that way. That's fine.

They do what they want. They mark it how they want. That's okay. but watching it and watching the um there was the first tournament uh tampa never sleeps did a little bracket there we got to see some of the game uh for one jesus christ it's gorgeous it looks so fucking stylish pretty hot um love that pencil board you know kind of like look and sketch to everything as well um a whole lot of fun really seems and i hope i hope that we get to see this game launch with no English voice acting.

Like, I, I, I hope that we're locked in and... I actually completely agree with you. Yeah. I 100% agree with you. I hope that we commit to Star Lordo, you know? I want, I want all of that to be the only way to play it. What's fucking Captain America's Super called? Ah, shit, anyway, whatever.

Might as well be called Statue of Liberty. Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's great. You know, justice. Um, but no, anyways, um, shit's, shit's gorgeous. And, um, the, uh, the part of it that I think took, surprised everyone is watching it play out in a way where you're like, okay, is it going to look more strive like? Is it going to look more Marvel like or so dragon ballish?

It's kind of its own thing, but it's not, if you're looking for the feel that you got off of just, like, insane, not-so Marvel movement and left-right character, mixed dirt. Like, that exists, but hot tagging left and, like, crazy with Marvel and Infinite and Marvel 3 and stuff, not a thing, right? Tagging as much... No, you're playing, you're playing, like, you're playing off-brand strive that has extra characters on it. Yeah.

And I did see, I felt, some people were talking about feeling that the game was, like, kind of, not sauceless, but it just didn't have enough, like, mix going on with some of the characters, and people were kind of, you know, giving it, like, some flack over that. I feel that it's unjustified in the sense that it's, like, it's true that it's not crazy with the movement, but it's really early. And we're going to have to see how that shapes up, because, like, for what I was watching, and I was seeing, like, OK, Captain America, very basic character. He's got that shield tech, but, like, for the most part, everything else is very vanilla. So I'm like, all right, not much to him.

Pretty straightforward. I don't expect to see a whole lot. And then I saw a clip of nerd Josh doing the most insane ping pong shield shit in the corner up and down that was like, oh my God, that's crazy. That's sick, right? So I think before, you know, kind of pushing it away, like, like, give it a chance to work, the combo system with the counter, a little more Gran Blue fantasy-esque is like, yeah, I do prefer. I do think it's a little more limiting but I bet this is also that thing where you see this version of the game and then when it comes

back around there's going to be probably some massive changes to the gameplay. There might be new meters that didn't exist, you know, and then a whole other new system or so that comes into play and then we get the final after that, I imagine. One of the most surprising things, or not surprising things, but the way the progression of the game works is so different from everything else because

every tag battle is about your team versus my team and we slowly whittled it away until one person is standing and in this game you start small and end big so it's the complete opposite momentum

you know it's really weird yeah you don't get your four characters until the end of the match you know unless you're crushing it and doing really nuts and domination on the opponent but they'll also die real quick you know um but you don't

you're going to, and a lot of people were not tagging at all. They were sticking to their one character, just calling it assists, you know, so, which is easy for people to learn for sure. But, you know, as the whole, like, the game is marketed as, like, it's like this, the big 4V4 thing. But, like, 4V4 is your, like, payoff for doing, for progressing to the end of the match of sorts. And, um, you don't have, um, Uh, uh, uh, yeah, you just don't have all the tools right away. And then, even then, tagging is it, you have to wait till a specific opportune moment to switch to your opposite character, you know, or to switch to somebody else.

So you just don't get this seamless like bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, in out, in out, left, right thing going with it. They want it to be a lot more, like, toned down, um, and 1v-ish, you know? Mm-hmm. So in a weird way. They might have made, like, a Marvel game specifically for me is what you're saying. Yeah, well, in a weird way, for anyone who's listening to this, who's been like, I don't understand how assists work and I'm intimidated by too many characters on the screen. This has the most characters on the screen ever, but they're also... It's actually, like, way more relaxed.

The most ignorable, because you can just stick with your main and not worry about it. Hey, I have a housekeeping question. I just referred to Marvel as Marvel. Are we referring to Marvel Tokon as Tokon? Yes, Tokon's Tokon. Okay. Because otherwise, that's going to get a super fucking compliment. It is.

It is. Tocon's Tocon. That's going to be the way to go about it. And, yeah, I think that the idea that it was going to be like a Marvel replacement is like, well, it's Arxis, first off, right? Like, they do things their own way. Nothing they're making is going to have that particular feel to it. And I don't think. I would say it's like a Marvel replacement in that it's going to be a new game that

has good net code that you can fucking play. Yes, and if all that matters to you is that you're using Dr. Doom and he's being cool, then sick, right? So here's the thing, right? But if you're here for triangle jumps, then maybe not. Here's the thing.

And this goes into the 2XCO thing, right? I think way more people care about being Dr. Doom and him being cool than care about triangle jumps. I completely agree. Like, way. I completely agree. And that's why. watching this footage, I was like, oh, these two games serve a different purpose and exist in, like, different spaces.

Even though from the walking in, you're like, Tag Fighter versus Tag Fighter, here we go. The replacement. It's here. And it's like, not quite. They're, they're, you know, the one is a sicko game for sicko freaks that has Marvel characters. I would say 2XCO is more the sicko game in terms of how dirty and oppressive and not so it's going to get. If anything, I think Tokon is the one that's more chill and it's a little more like specific character focused, you know? The kits you're seeing and the way that the combo system kind of works is a little, it's more restrictive in Tokon. It's a little more limited. We'll see how it opens up, but for the most part, it feels like you're meant to get your bearings fairly quickly. And once you get your bearings with a character, it seems like you can get them with the rest of them, right?

Everyone seems to be fairly similar, and then they have their trait that mixes things up or so. But they kind of want people to, you know, and I guess the idea is to, like, if you pick your character and then you have the other three that you're not really wanting to use, if you do decide to mess around and switch over to Captain America, or Iron Man, you're not going to be so lost with them. You might be like, oh, yeah, okay, it's not too bad. I can wrap my head around this, you know? It kind of seems to be splitting the difference between DBZ strive and, like, the traits are like just a little, little dash of blaze blue in there, just a little little sprinkle. Grand blue, you know, as well with that, yeah.

I'm not super familiar with Gran blue. Um, you know, and with the, with the, uh, auto button with the super button layout and stuff like that, you know, but it is, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, they're basically is like, two XCO is a bit more hardcore about it. Two XCO is definitely, you know, it's got all the FGC folks that are on that balancing team that are, that have been working on it for a long time. So it's coming out, you know, much more geared in that direction. And like, the blitzcrank, like tutorial video where they introduced blitzcrank. So they show you. him they show you they show you blitz correct they show you the grapple and all the tech and whatever and then they go okay so um if you do the lariat he does like a bit of a run or he does like his windup or whatever um you can do a a a cara cancel to get the first steps of the lariat canceled into the command grab and the this is the first video introducing the grappler character to you and they show you a Kara command grab and refer to it as such. Right?

It's for sickos. That's like this is, this is their intentions laid bare is they've made this one button special game have the ability to do, you know, carapot busters. I gotta say to XKOs, like, like expertise discussion is so weird. Like, we want everyone to get in. That's why specials are one button. Meanwhile, it's a tag game. CARA canceling.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's because, essentially, like, again, that's a team where they're, like, the whole, like, lower the floor, raise the ceiling. Like, we're sending it to space with this shit. Here's a really good example. Someone in the chat was like, I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about with carac canceling.

What is that? Exactly, exactly, right? They're using FGC lingo. That is sicko technology for sicko language. The stuff that Stephen King sees on. Twitter and his eyes bug out. I don't know if you ever saw that one, but like Stephen King quote tweeted someone talking about Brian. Someone was complaining about Brian and TechN8, asking why a snake edge, like saying that Snake Edge needs to be modified because it's a tracking mid or like

it's a tracking low and they wanted something on the, and it's plus and not punishable and not launch punishable. And like Stephen King was like, this seems. like the English language, but I'm not sure. Like, every time I look at it, I think I can understand, but then it keeps getting more deep and fascinating, you know? Like, yeah, so anyway, um, they're baking it into the tutorial with, with, uh, uh, 2XCO, whereas Tokon is like dumbing it down and simplifying, you know, um, I think there's, there's room for all, for all kinds on the bus, man.

There's room for all kinds of, of space here, you know? And, and, and I always remember. two that there was that leak list that that came out some time ago or whatever where it were like token got leaked um as a project and on that list was a proverbial marvel for on that leak list that that was specifically outlined to be not tokon you know so um i don't know if i believe i don't know i think it'd need a whole lot of space and i think marvel themselves can always see the success of this project and be like we're doing this for money now now, you know, um, but at the very least, like, the idea of an accessible Marvel character fighting game that has a bunch of characters everybody wants to see dropping in regularly, um, is that should exist. And I, then that's dope. I think that alongside two XK are pretty two, two pretty solid things holding up the, the throne. Um, and we'll, we'll see what

happens with Invincible. But I kind of think that people, People don't care enough about Invincible for that to really take off too much, even though K.I. is great. And Invincible is great. But they're not banner holders, I don't think. Yeah, I don't feel it. Maybe, you know, as we've discussed, this is the Sicko Freak podcast for Sicko Freaks. But I don't know. It's going to be like Power Rangers, where I love that game, but it's only going to be as appealing as somebody who's down for, you know, Virgil. quotes coming off of Adam you know doing left right mixups on you so um

or rather the quantum ranger excuse me anyway so that that's what's going on there uh before we leave these two um I want to talk about just one little tiny thing about Tocon and T2XCO

I'm not joking around when I say that my opinion has actually like I called it out like ha ha Timo blitzcrank I'm so serious that every opinion I have has completely

inverted on this game because now that no hold on okay all right because now it contains characters I actually really like and want to play okay like there was always going to be the possibility that like oh they added characters blah blah blah

and I was like uh still but like but that's what's also what's going on with DBFZ and Tocon is like, yeah, I would like to play Star Lord and Captain America. That seems really cool. I would like to play Iron Man and Ghost Rider and Doom. Like, absolutely, 100%. So, you know, what's funny for me with Tocon is as awesome as it looks. I didn't see anyone that was like my particular main material.

Oh, they'll get there. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying is, but the woolly character does an exist yet, right? However, when I'm interested on the premise of what's going on, I'll find a way, right? So, you know, Biking wasn't around. I'll play sin. I want to play this game, right? I saw Star Lord do... Can you give me a second? All right. This guy's freaking out like there's something at the door. BRB? Um, so, yes, as somebody who's like, I will often fall in love with a character more than the game itself. And if that character does not exist, then I can totally just fall for functions. Right. And I saw Starlord do an X rainstorm from the top of the screen. And I was like,

yeah. Gunslinger. Yeah. That's the one. That's all it took. I don't care about anything else. You know, Kamala doing like Spencer Zips was pretty cool. But EX Rainstorms. all the way from the top to the bottom is the hottest shit. And I'm going to play that character no matter what. Great. In there. You know, and furthermore, I'm almost just like, when I started playing rivals, I didn't know that I would particularly care about Ileana or Moon Knight, but here we are.

Yeah, I never in my life thought there'd be a game ever that I was like, yeah, Mr. Fantastic. Let's be right. What? You know? And on that note, actually, it's funny because, like, I feel like for all the Tokon guest picks all you can just just look over at rival's homework and like just be like yeah we can put blade in this game you know yeah who wants ultron sure that works the full fantastic four uh-huh why not like all of fantastic four as one character at oh my god of the four yes okay right yep

um yeah you know and you know we already whatever we see the the strange leaks and all that stuff, but they can easily grab any one of those and just yank them in there. But yeah, I'm leaning towards Starlord. I think he looks pretty sick. Also, when those Dr. Doom shot gun, like point blank gun shot finishes look sick to. But anyway, anyway, we'll see. What's unfortunate, I will say, the one thing I didn't like cosmetically was that like Maybe this will change, but it seems like the intros are like these really long, it's not quite blame the beasts, but it's just like Tocon fighters versus Tocon Warriors teams. And it doesn't seem to be like character lore focused, which is- Seems totally pointless. Yeah, which is a bummer because the thing we care about that you'd love to see more of is like these characters having their interactions with each other.

And one of the funnest parts of Marvel rivals is the conversations and best. banter they have with each other before the round starts you know the little the little interactions they get when they're talking shit to each other or cracking jokes and stuff and it's like fighting games are a perfect opportunity to do that don't don't don't lose out on that chance you know so um i i hope we see more specifics with with with you know the characters coming more than coming out as lower more than just generic uh token teams um all right what else is going on uh so i know again you wanted uplifting stories um all out of that yeah but how about this you you uh you're reading any you see any of that uh restricted mode youtube shit going on i've seen it

you know it's bad when red letter media makes a video about youtube monetization the thing that they hate the fucking most that they never want to talk about is the content part of the gig long story short on this one YouTube is in the process of in shitification as you do I've often said to anybody who asks about the gig about this type of job that I'm like

yeah you never know when these sites are going to shit their bed and completely fuck up what works so you know so just be always be cautious and careful of things exploding and yeah sure enough that has happened a bunch of people on videos are seeing a ton less views and overall people that are subscribed to channels

are not seeing videos they subscribed to because an AI detected restriction filter has turned on so people's accounts are not seeing stuff that the AI filter is deeming crass essentially and they're basically being put on

baby jail timeout because the robot thinks their baby and advertiser friendliness is of course up to paramount and especially in this fucking MasterCard visa a time, um, everyone's, you know, twisting up those panties. So long story short, go to your desktop browser, go to your icon in your character, on your profile, and turn restricted mode off if you see it on. Because if it's on, there's a decent chance that channels like ours that

cuss and say bad words, I've said a bad word once or twice, might be hidden from you and you might not see what the fuck we're publishing because YouTube AI said nah um the sales like the kind of thing that they'll have to roll back because people who don't see videos they like anymore don't watch those videos which means they aren't served ads

so like you know like yeah and I think they also don't care as much in the sense that they I know they did some bot um cleansing or whatever so there is a general downturn on views and the what counts as a view has also changed some people figured out some stuff because the algorithm is always a mystery. But all this to say in general that, yeah, that thing is a way that

a channel you're subscribed to might not show up. Their videos might not show up if you have this stupid thing on. Meanwhile, in the short side of YouTube, they're automatically putting on an AI filter that makes shit look like garbage and changes the coloring. I saw it on our bullshit. Yeah, you can't avoid it.

It's automatically on. And... It's fucking up my skin. Something's fierce. Well, it's so bad that, like, the Will Smith embarrassment tour is embarrassing enough on its own but they're making it look like his crowds are AI generated because a bunch of weird monster faces

are showing up in the crowd but nope it's actually real crowds that are just being AI filtered into looking not real you know so it's it's mandatory because of course that's how they roll everything out on this fucking platform so good stuff guys just a heads up on that

turn that shit off also will yo stop Oh, if he knew how... Like, I'm not a music critic. Oh, if he knew how to stop, he would have stopped a long time ago. But you don't get... Oh, man, you need to find yourself a new bulb to cuck you or whatever.

I don't know. Pat, you do not get to the red table if you know how to stop. That's not how you make it there. Anyways, anyways, um, beyond that, Um, I got a little bit of, a little bit of damage over here. Were you a fan of, uh, Prey 2006? No. Oh, okay.

I was a fan of, I, ironically enough, am a massive fan of Prey 2017, which has its own controversy over using the name Prey, because of the fact that they fucking killed Prey 2 in the attempt to absorb human head, which led to human head's bankruptcy. And now a large collection of Prey. 3-2 footage has surfaced. Apparently it's awesome. That doesn't sound convincing.

Well, I'm not going to watch. I'm okay, I'm going to pull it up right now. I took a look. So, okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's one of those things are like, I'm getting older and I'm getting to the point. I'm like, why watch thing to get, man?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no. So, so this is, well, for the sub-a-thon, of course. but you didn't subscribe to my channel to make me watch this so the thing is this right this is a weird situation because I've heard you say nothing but good things about price of 2017 but yeah except that game was supposed to be called psychoshock and I am and that's it like you're there's no

you're not it's not like the name makes any sense that anyone's defending the idea that they should have used the same name to erase this thing clearly What I do remember is I have early trailer footage in my head of this game teasing itself as a first-person shooter with horror stuff going on and then there's portals in it. That's the first game. That's what I'm talking about.

And then portal was also a thing. And then I remember it's like, oh, but portal lets you put the portals anywhere. And this one, portals were just set parts of the stage, I think. That was the main distinction, yeah. And it kind of just ate the lunch of that tech, even though it was a puzzle game and a different thing entirely. It's not an action shooter at all. In portal, you can place them anywhere, but you're placing them inside featureless fucking gray rooms. With no enemies.

Like, all sorts of complicated environments was fucking right. Well, minus turrets. Not a fair comparison. Yeah, yeah. But it just, it was that first thing of like, oh, whoa, teleporting portals, that's cool. and then immediately like nah fuck that shit look at this though

infinite looping and splingshotting yourself out and all that cool shit and it just kind of like got forgotten as the game that had the portals but not as good to me anyway but

yeah so there's more footage of that and you know it's long since gone and whatever and that that name's been completely absorbed and taken so it's like double dead but this footage

existed so I'm assuming somewhere a dev on it got really pissed off and just went nah fuck this it's been long enough um

okay well some folks definitely are like yeah extra mad now with I think the part that that is super fucked up is that like

pray to sorry got massively massively massively massively massively massively fucked over uh huh and that sucks but pray

2017 is legitimately one of the best games ever played my life so like but it shouldn't even be part of the same conversation because again it should just be called psychoshock or which is a fantastic name this is really cool that's super cool there's a skill in the game called

psychoshok like it was very obviously going to be that no no we own the name pray use prey what like the same it's not even going to be prey too yeah yeah just use it again okay but now when you look up prey you're also getting fucking uh predator because that movie is a thing and when you look up pray too they're like oh is it the sequel to the to that movie with the with the predator in it so it's fucking it's double it's so dumb it's so dumb terrible what a bad idea

And last little bit, I just thought it was cool. I saw Octopath Traveler Zero got announced. And it just... They're demobilizing that game. It's a mobile game? It's their Gatcha game. That's why the... Wait, hold on, hold on.

The gimmick was like, here's how many characters you can have from all sorts of different things, including, like, Final Fantasy 6, right? Um, but they, they've, like, demobilized it. And they're turning it into like a regular game for human beings. Ah, okay, okay, okay. Not, which is like, I could go for more of that, please. So, yeah, not just ported, not just phone ported, de-gatchafide. I don't know if it's gacha, but demobilized.

Okay. I would, I would pay upwards of $45 for Honkye Star Rail, regular game. edition. It would be great to enjoy games like this with all of that shit removed. But even the ones like when I played that Mecca game the other day or the Mega Man game, it's like even when you try to clean it up, you're not really cleaning it up. The guts are always there. It sucks.

Oh yeah, that game, that game fucked up that shit really bad. That Mega Man fucking thing. All right. The one detail about it, I saw that, it seemed, I was like, oh, it has a character creator. That's a cool thing to do for like a sequel, but I guess it's, yeah, it's not quite a full-on sequel in that way. All right. Dude, I, I'm like passively scrolling the 2XCO subreddit. This is like the most fascinating shit in the world.

I've never seen people, like more people who don't play fighting games, interacting and talking about fighting games. in ways that like like, it's like traveling back in time to like the 90s about the like, oh, get rid of the fucking screen shake. They're not going to remove the screen shake to make a D-Gen like Marvel. What does that even

mean? Wait. How would removing the screen make a D-Gen? What do you talk like? It's like SRK and like 99. It's incredible. Wait. People are complaining about the screen shake? Sure are. What's wrong with screen shake?

I don't fucking know, man. I don't know. I mean, okay, hold on. Screen Shake is in Street Fighter 6 tells you when you're plus on block, right? Yeah, and they're super mad about the delay on tagging and shit. It's super fucking funny. Remember, these are league players. League players and fighting game players talking to each other.

So I saw there was a post that someone made a, like, that was like a meme or whatever, about the fact that there's um so the way they phrase it is token beta comes out and there's no practice range and it's a meme of somebody getting upset or whatever yeah i saw that yeah yeah yeah no no no okay i like i i i want me a you know i want me a lab or whatever but the funniest part is the first post underneath it was just somebody like with the screenshot of inglorious bastards with the dude counting to three like this And it says, practice range. I'm like, oh, you exposed yourself.

You fool. You called the training mode. You called the lab a practice range. Did you fellow fighting gamer? Fellow fighting gamer? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You counted without your thumb, idiot. oh man what a great use of that fucking post i like fantastic just it's it's the shot of him like

looking at he's got the three leather the three fingers up and from across the bar he's just like hmm i see that's how you count huh uh i actually i look at i look at 2xKO with like there's there's like an anthropological social perspective going on here of like forcing people who play League of Legends to interact with non-League of Legends human beings aka human beings and that's just so fascinating. That's just

so interesting. I mean, Persona fans survived it. They when Arena and Ultimax came out, you know. See, I got confused for a second and I thought you were implying that persona fans

survived contact with League of Legends and my brain went no they just died no no no no no they just died immediately no they need they need single player games where you date people and feel comfortable they key you can't you can't put that out there against no you know who'd be you know who'd play league yoske oh yeah yeah he's really comfortable using the type of language a league player would uh would use would he be playing league or would he play dota he play league okay yeah okay and probably some like some daisy he'd play fucking talon and fucking feed mid tarkov and then and then fucking crash out yoske'd play some tarcov and he and he'd do the he do the he do the he do the lean no no

yoske would not play tarcov fucking um fucking futaba would fucking play Yeah, okay, fair. Fine, fine, yeah. Okay. Nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we're bringing Futaba into the mix, then sure. All right.

Let's take some letters. If you want to send in, man, I just, that's such a good, like, what, what games would fictional characters play is, like, tickling my brain really specific. If you want to send in a letter, send it to Castle's Super Beast Mail at Gmail. That's Castle's Super Beastmail at gmail.com. Oh, that's right, dude. Fucking Shigaraki from Hero Academia is a league player. That's canon.

Oh, sick. Okay. Okay. Dojima is a beast at Candy Crush. Mm-hmm. Uh. That's funny. rain was going to say kanji plays cooking mama someone said it i was thinking the same thing i literally

is yeah there you go all right um let's see over here what do we got um um hegg hegeland heggland asks dear esteemed drag queens rachel tension and petty cake hmm are those real are those real people let me see that's you and me no i know but i'm wondering if these names are used no i don't think so racial tension and petty cake why not just go with patty cake petty i guess all right fine anyway um i think i feel like it's i got to do the snaps you got to you got to you got to you got on the line between between i'd rather serve cut than my country, thank you. There you go. Let's go. Paris is burning or whatever. Um, you can't just go Paris is burning or whatever, dude. Like, you're, uh, most low effort shit ever. The, the line

between, the line between drag name and, and derby name is extremely razor thin. Um, I, but I do, I do appreciate, I appreciate a good derby name. Anyways. In my eighth grade classmates, in my eighth grade, my classmates were all starting to get more money from paper delivery, bigger allowance,

family businesses, and so on. There's also a really nice bakery that sold subway-style sandwiches with their own fresh-made bread, had a stamp card where if you bought 10, you got one free.

Coincidentally, this bakery is five minutes away by bike, and my school had weirdly long lunch breaks, like an hour. so the hustle went like this at stand up and say oh man i could really go for one of those sandwiches anyone want me to pick one up and enough people said yes and i ended up getting a lot of free sandwiches this is the fucking best and i would get all the stands you're trading your labor for unknown gain that is not harming anyone this is a plus hustle at peak i got three free sandwiches

in one week before the others caught on and it fell off but i must have gotten over 30 free sandwiches that delicious half year. Hey, your friends and classmates are fucking idiots. You're literally going out to get them for them. You're providing them the fucking time to not go get it. I know. You're not doing it for nothing. Fuck them.

I know it's not the greatest, but I bought a lot more sandwiches than I got for free, but they were just that good. how did I do? Pristine distilled pristine pure 101% hustle There is not an ounce of scam Anywhere to be seen

There is no difference in that Between The cashier asking you Hey you don't have your optimum card Can I scan? Can I use mine? Store card? Yeah. And they go By the way, a lot of places

Think that's like criminal That's insane The person standing at the fucking register all day. Yeah, use the fucking air mask. I don't get the fuck. The person who... Take my points. The person who wants a service gets it identical to what they have requested

and an unseen benefit that is that it reaped on the system. And also they got convenience. They got what they requested plus convenience. Brought to them. True, true, right? Hey, anyone want me to pick one up is actually like you're doing labor. You're going

out to retrieve it for them. You know, you could stand on business and say that like that is my cut is getting the stamps and it is and of course the people at the shop know what's going on and they don't mind because you're bringing them business for 10 sandwiches constantly you're coming in going hey give me 12 sandwiches they're like yes sir here you go win win win you know it's it there's no this this drives me so fucking crazy willie this is like what's wrong with society people discover that someone is benefiting in a way that they are not personally benefiting

and they would rather stop benefiting at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, then allow somebody else to get something. No, no, no, no, there's no villain directly in the story, but it does sound like after the people found out they kind of stopped doing it because they're like, uh, I guess you're getting that free sandwich, you know?

What the hell? You're stealing my stamp. I went and got it for you. I'm not stealing shit. I'm the one who bought it because I went down there, I'm so mad for them. They're so right about this. Pure hustle. I would be mad my whole life about people finding out and going, oh, I hate them. I would be mad forever.

I mean, you know, they seem to be taking the perspective of I ate good for a half year, you know. So, yeah. You got it while it lasted. I actually had a version of this. Mm-hmm. I would charge, um, When I was recreating unsolicited backups of PlayStation 1 games in high school, for personal use only, I would charge $5 to disk. And, you know, FF9 and FF7 fucking crushed it.

Thanks, guys. And at some point, sometime, someone to go, hey, that's, I just went to stay. And I found out that CDs don't cost $5 a disc. And I went, yeah. They're like, well, you're ripping me off. I'm like, okay, go pay 65 instead of 20. Idiot? Like, what is your fucking problem?

Yep. I lugged, I lugged that 24 can of C6 soda, you know, to my locker. That's, that was, that was my, that was my fucking labor. It takes me all day to fucking print this thing out for you. Can't use the computer at all. Shoutouts to the Dreamcast burners that actually printed out a label and stuck it on the, stuck it on the disc to. That was so crazy. That was so nice.

Like extra service, you know? I remember, I remember when the Dreamcast piracy, I hit, there was a moment. And it actually kind of backslid for PS2 piracy. Like, PS2 piracy had, you had to use a slide tool and shit like that. But there was a moment with, like, Dreamcast piracy, then I'm like, I think we might be flying fucking way too close to the sun on some of this shit. This seems a little fucking, it seems really easy to get really professional. I mean, yeah, well, the Dreamcast one, like the downside was that it fucked with the lens,

you know, like it didn't like that over extended period of time. Fuckily, the rest of the Dreamcast was extremely durable. I mean, it was really just the lens. that would break. Yeah, no, it was a fucking piece of shit. That console sucks. It was just the lens that would stop working. The only reason why I got more than one all the time was just because of that one issue.

It was fine. It was desperate to kill itself. Desperate. Yeah. Anyway, good hustle. Pristine, good stuff. You know, yeah, that's one of the last good ones there. Don't get a whole lot of hustles in life these days, you know?

um all right let's see I'm so mad on their behalf I'm so mad for them dude I'm like they're they were so right they were so right what was your last good hustle

um uh uh Hey, so by the way, I'm running a sub-a-thon this month if you want to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go, there you go, there you go, there you go. Yeah, yeah, all right. I resent you for forcing my hand on this.

Oh, okay. And outing the hustle status. Ah, okay. I got some Uber rides back in the day. That was cool. Um, but yeah. Let's take one.

Uh, Max or hateful dead says, Dear Castle Castle. She sure did, Willie. He sure did get a lot of Uber rides. Dear Castle, Castle, Castle. We recently got a new manager at my job,

and she felt the need to give me a talking to about my lack of uniform. She didn't like that I don't come into store wearing my work shirt, which I haven't done in two and a half-ish years that I've worked at the store. I work, I work graveyard shift at a grocery store as a stalker. The store is closed before the shift even starts. So my uniform is on before the store opens at 6 a.m. Last manager didn't care. None of the co-workers had an issue as far as I know. what is the dumbest thing you've gotten in trouble with or taken aside for at a previous job? Oh, the worst thing I ever got in trouble with that was stupid as fuck was telling a customer the correct price of an item.

They were completely losing their fucking minds and screaming. And my manager was like, hey, what's his problem? I'm like, he wants the, I forget what it was. It was like, let's say tomatoes. He wants the tomatoes for like two bucks, but it's actually three bucks. they're like just give him the fucking thing for whatever he's asking i went no that's no and then it became my fault that the customer was yelling and making a racket because i told him the correct price and the fact that security had to be get called was my god

because i wouldn't just capitulate and so the end of that story was my manager just went past me and went yeah here here it is just just just stop Jesus Christ Yeah, okay Now, like, you have a detect... This is why you just let people steal And don't give a shit, this is why You have taught me to just let anyone steal

And for me to go, I don't know, fuck I don't steal as much as you want I mean, you, like, you can tell, I'm sure When the person is walking in And the outrage is planned in advance, right? Like, when the... Oh, yeah, you can tell, yeah, yeah, this is the performance. I am now, I'm coughing and preparing

to get into my role I'm at the grocery store So that I don't have to talk to my fucking horrible wife Who else can I yell at here Oh cool, it's me It's me I don't think I've ever I can't think of getting taken aside

On something like this at work But I do recall that Back at QA They were not too fond of of my use of me and my friends using wet naps as a term for all incompetence whenever something would come up. I bet they wouldn't like that.

They didn't enjoy that. It's really fucking funny. That's really fucking funny. Yeah. The short version of the story was that we used to get wet naps to wipe down our controller station kit and hands and everything before we left for the day. And everyone, of course, you're going to sit

at a desk that someone else might be sitting at tomorrow. So it's important to just clean your stations. Sweating all over it and shit. Et cetera. And it was a simple thing. You'd get a couple of them by the end of the desk and they would just have them on call available on a regular basis. Eventually, when cutting down on costs and saving money, they eventually decided to get rid of wet naps, making it important. Nobody had the ability to clean their stations anymore.

and hey guess what people got more sick and we saw it people were literally getting more sick and people would come into the office sick and get other people sick and spread that shit around and the cost of people not showing up would be reduced man-hours on the project which would ultimately cost more than the fucking simple

go down to the pharmacy and buy more wet naps look I saved the money look I saved it I saved on it and just like that right one person being out for the day is the cost of all those wet naps that you saved money on

thrown out and every time they made a stupid decision that was completely backwards and financially made no sense and was the worst thing for them made everyone's life worse over such a simple, simple thing that anyone competent could manage and handle

I would just turn to my friend and say wet naps dude wet naps that's it nice little litmus test dude it sucks there's a lot of people listening of this that know exactly what I'm about to say

it sucks when you're completely right about something where you're just like I don't want to be you're like a hundred times out of a hundred dead on about something suffering from success and everybody around you is like, no, and you're like, okay, I'm just going to wait for the, there, okay, there, it happened.

It happened just like I told you. Now it's my fault. I'm being negative. Yeah. I could have warned. I literally tried to stop you. Just the demoralizing conversation that I have to have with friends that are working that are just like,

it's like, no, no, no, the problem is that you care too much. You're putting, that's definitely the problem. You're putting too much of your, yourself because you're a good person who wants to do a good job and feel proud in what you're investing yourself into. So you're putting too much of yourself into it. And they don't want that. They don't care about that. It's just going to destroy you because they suck and they do not give a fuck about the fact that you're putting that in. And the fact that it's it is mismanaged entirely is it's not on you. You need to put less of yourself into it. You need to care less. Like it's just

It's not worth that stress, you know? Like every single person I've ever talked to in my life that starts a story. So I was at work, and I figured out a better way to do something. And then I just go, oh, I know, oh, this story's going to suck. Oh, my God. Oh, they don't know it sucks right now, actually. Because the story is just starting. But over the next couple of days or weeks, the story is going to become dog shit and horrible.

And just stop. No. Hey, unless you work for yourself, don't work hard. And even then. No. Yeah, I, I, we had to have whatever. Okay, no, QA shit just goes on forever. Please make the tests dumber.

Please make them hard. Please make them worse. Please make the fucking lower the bar and higher worse, actually. Anyways. Can you just say that you tested all? the bugs. Can you just say that so that we can tell my boss that we did 10,000

hours of testing on this? And then I can just put the check mark in and go on my vacation. Can you just say that you did it? So you joke, but it's literally like I'm not joking. Yeah, yeah. I'm doing a silly voice, but it's not a joke. No, it's like you've estimated

that this project needs you to look at these areas of the game and cover it in this way. Can you go back and find some better numbers for me? And basically what that means is can you go back and decide which areas of the game are not as important to test that you are just going to be like, yeah, we'll just take a risk and not bother checking here as hard. And in the end, if anything goes wrong, of course, it's still your ass because you decided which areas should be lighter on focus.

But we just don't have the bandwidth for it. So, you know, make that decision accordingly. And if anything goes wrong, it's your fault. But yeah. hey Wully I have something to talk to you about the project and it's really important can we move from email to a phone call this seems like it's something we should really talk over the phone oh just hash out all the details on a phone quicker without without a much faster no paper trail you say hmm you know what's funny to me that is literally every job in the world

Every single time someone's like, hey, you know what? We should take this in a Discord call or a phone call or whatever. And I go, no, email's fine. I get to my emails very fast. I'm going to tell you right now, unfortunately, you don't get the, not every job gives you the ability to resist that. I know, I know. Sometimes they're like, hey, come with me. We're going to go in here and do this.

And in that situation, if that's happening to you, what I can say is at the end go, okay, so can I get that all in writing, just to confirm that we're on the same page here, right? And at the very least, just go like, yeah, yeah, gotcha, everything. Okay, just please write all this down and send me in an email, so I'll have it to remember, you know, for future sake and just always get that receipt. Oh, sorry, dude, I totally forgot. I totally said, what were the details about that? Oh, can you send that to me an email?

Yep, just need that receipt if you don't mind. Or, I mean, if you're balls are you, you just skip that process and go, I live in a one-party consent state. So I'm just going to fucking work on my phone. anyway. Yeah. Good stuff. Corporate culture.

Oh, lots of fun. Always love that. Can we get the cyberpunk corporate culture that has like cool arm cannons and cars and sexy robot ladies instead of as a trade-off?

Walmart is installing lights that make you anxious. can we please get that cyberpunk future instead of this one this cyberpunk dystop you just fucking sucks yeah all right um i'm just sad now i'm just upset yeah all right that'll do like robot legs are my flying car like yeah give me my fucking chrome body that i can yeah i'll pay whatever i don't give a shit just give me the full robot adam smasher my human humanity right the fuck off i don't give a shit so cyberpunk at least gives you the tradeoffs there uh whereas you know like um i haven't seen it but i'm i'm hearing that like alien earth is pretty good

and it's just the full on i i have seen of something from alien earth that has made me way more interested okay in in anything alien okay in like decades and it's an alien that's not the xenomorph that hates the xenomorph interesting okay i don't know anything about it but i Except that, like, we're in that Wayland-U-Toney corporate dystopian future where the company runs the planet type of shit. And it's like, yeah, you don't even get the cool implants. You don't get the fun sandy to, you know, while you're living in the hellhole. You just have a fucking Zeno chewing your ass out. Like, okay, I can't get cool robot legs, but Jeep drivers can get an ad every time they stop the car.

This sucks. Now, to be fair, about 40% of the side missions in cyberpunk were me picking up a body that had a log on it with somebody that was asking to get something in writing. The person who was going like, yeah, can I get a, can I get that in writing afterwards? It's like, oh, yeah, cool. Hey, no problem. You fucking, you know. And they just, in a, in the, you know, in the, you just, in the, the middle of a junkyard somewhere or wearing a perfect suit. So anyways. All right, folks. That'll do. Have a good one, everybody. Bye-bye.