Castle Super Beast - CSB357: GUARDNUTTERS! Can We Get Much Higher?

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

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Yo, yo. Hey, man. What's going on? What's good? You got high this week? You look like you got high this week. No, man. I guarded that shit.

Nah, but a guarding is getting high, bro. Bro, that game is... Guard nutters! Oh, dude. Can we get much higher? Can we get much higher? That it? So did you?

You get high this weekend? Oh, I got high, baby. Yeah, man, I was going to call you a fucking pussy for not getting high. Oh, I got so high. I can't get much higher, baby. We're in. We garden up. You know, I was sitting there waiting for the thing to start, you know.

And I'm like, I feel like this is going to be a mediocre to bad game that is going to be absolutely spiked. into the fucking earth by the fact that it was the last video at the Game Awards. The expectations slash mockery available are so high. Guard. So you start that like, I was expecting this and you describe reality and I'm waiting for the butt. Oh, that game's trash. That is, there you go. Okay.

All right. So that games like it's it's mid. It's not trash. I disagree that it's trash, but it is the forgettable four. It's not doing anything that I particularly find interesting. And it bothers me by what it does do. So I disagree with you very strongly on that. Okay.

I do not think the problem with high guard. and I'm going to say it like that every time, is that it is not doing anything that I'm interested in. I think the problem of high guard is that it wants to do literally every interesting thing from every multiplayer game I have played over the past 10 years, and it does all of them kind of bad. Okay, okay.

That is, they make you do the tutorial in that game. They make you before you get into a match. And I can fucking see why. Because there are like five different multiplayer shooters in there. And then it doesn't go on like, it does the tutorial, but then there's like, watch this video to explain a bit more. And yes. Which should have been in the tutorial. And that the intro video at the TGA's is not quite giving you.

what exactly this game is. And when you see what it is, it's, it's so confusing. It is, it is a, a mess. Okay. Of, of, of, of ideas. It is, it is a soup with a hundred ingredients that tastes like nothing. Well, I'll tell you what it is. What it is at its core is running around a giant empty map with five other people in it,

scraping to find things. But, but. So you find people on your team, right? No. two on your team and three on the other team. Bro, I was like loading in and I think I saw someone in chat say it and then I looked up at the like the little party

you know list. Yeah. And it's like this is 3 v3? Like it feels it feels like you're loading into a game of night rain but then another team loaded into night rain as well and you have to go find them and beat them while you're on the night rain map. So we need to...

It's crazy. Like, you ever play something and then you're just bubbling with like development suspicion? I mean, like we're... Yeah. Oh, that, well, every time I see a bug, I, the fucking numbers go boon, like I see the... Before we get to development suspicion, we need to describe what the game actually is to those of you who may or may not know. Because, you know, it's high guard has many mechanics. It came out, first of all.

It's out. It came out. And my guess. Congrats. Thumbs up. My guess, as with others, was the reveal being so awkward at the TGA's, or not so awkward, but it was just you showed it off. And then everyone was getting excited for a thing that seemed to, to, to, bring about some Titan fall three energy and, uh, you showed off horseback guns and people were

pretty underwhelmed with that reveal. And then, um, it was, it felt as if it were supposed to be, and it's out right now. So that is the case. It literally turns out that's the case. Actually, it, Jeff Keely was like, no, can I show it? And then, okay, Jeff. But the actual plan was supposed to be yesterday or the day before morning that it was it was going to come out and it was going to blast a bunch of social media stuff shadow drop and out now and that stuff still happened like they didn't change the lead up at all they actually just waited until the day of launch to put out a bunch of videos and they also they I mean the the thing that came out was also saying that like has it worked well for apex so you know they wanted to sort of do it again here

that that was in the interview um in the apex case that i i remember that being mostly defensive against fortnight stealing mechanics the apex came out like that for two reasons one it was fucking if you fortnight was stealing everything but two isn't that game made by fucking EA? Don't they have like infinite resources to let you know about Apex? Once it's after it's out.

Well, you know, and this is I guess some of the former team, right? Like X-X-Respawn folks. So. And so like, yeah, you kind of get to this and I mean, I'm not going to be able to pull all the different shooter things that

it's doing from its sources. Okay. But I can feel them. As you're putting walls up and as you're mounting and as you're going from one phase into another, yeah, you can feel these are coming from places. So you load into your high guard tutorial and it's like, hey man, you can run and you can jump and you can shoot. You can slide. You can you can type of all slide. You can do regular shooter things. And the controls on controller seemed pretty solid.

They felt pretty good. The frame rate felt terrible. just god awful I had to turn everything down all the way to the lowest I could on my 4090 to get like a good like solid frame rate

just ridiculous I booted up on console because I didn't feel like doing the fucking I installed the PC version and it was like hey you didn't you have secure boot your secure boot thing is yeah and it's like here's the instructions

to do that and I'm like no I'm not gonna do all this for the bit I did that ages ago. Okay. So, okay, first up, you can hit rocks with your pickax melee weapon to gain currency to buy from a trader like a MoBA. On top of that, if you don't have money to buy from the trader at the Mova, you can go to Apex chests. Yes. And you can get guns from Apex Legends that have been retroactive.

fit for this game. Go go get go do the mining game for the currency and go to the shop. Exactly right. Or apex chests are out there in the big map. And they've got you know, gray, blue, purple, purple, you know, usual. Pick one. But then what you're doing is you're defending a base

and when you start, what you're going to do is you're going to use your wall strengthening icons to make a couple of walls around your base really strong so people can't break through. But what they're doing is that they're going to have two points to blow up on either side of your base that you have to blow up both or one point in the middle that you have to blow up.

But it takes longer. It takes a little longer, but not nearly longer enough in the middle to blow it up. And you've also got on the larger map besides the bases, you've got the zip lines. Yeah, go fast. You can zip it back into the action and or respondabilities and things. Now, Wully, so you get out into the map and you start to get into the gear up phase, which is actually listed at the top of the screen as gear up for like two minutes. And what you're doing is you're rummaging around your half of the map

and you're running around on your horsey or your bear to open up chests and mine for loot so that you can gear up for the ensuing conflict. like Apex, right? Sure. Now the maps are absolutely enormous. They're so enormous compared to the player size that I have a sneaking suspicion, the mounts were added after the player size was locked down because there's no fucking way. No. I don't think so.

I think it's not that the mounts were added later. I think that's part of the design since it's the whole horseback integration is big part of everything. I think it was meant to support more players and for whatever reason. Yeah, you know, perhaps just like the stability or whatever

the case is, they're like, nah, we got to do this with six people. And in a giant apex style map where everything's closing in and so on, obviously you're... It is kind of a line. It's kind of like a blood gulch kind of like, you know, one base at the end of each side. And the rhythm of

those games is that like action is far and few in between at first and then it ramps up and gets more and more. Right. And here by making it so that it's made so that like that happens as well, but it's the, it's the different modes putting you, having you spawn closer and closer to the action to make it replicate, I guess, that feeling of like you're getting into more gunfights towards the end of the timer, you know? Yeah.

So how does this play out? So there's a reverse flag that shows up. It's called the shield breaker. And you need the shield breaker to break in. to the opposing base. So, you know, a couple minutes, it'll go, oh, the shield breakers right here. And go grab that and bring it to the enemy base.

You can break in. So what you do is now you're playing capture the flag. So you started by playing Rainbow Six Siege, by building up your base. But the only thing you could do is reinforce walls. You couldn't do any of the cool stuff you do in Siege. Then you went out to scrounge up to play Apex, but the loot drops are actually really boring.

And they're all just rarities, and that's it. Or you did your MoBA deadlock mining and currency exchange. You got currency to buy it. Yep. Now you're playing capture the flag in reverse, right?

So you grab the flag and you bring it to the enemy base and you get into the enemy base and once you're in the enemy base, you're now playing Counterstrike. Ah, the raid phase. Because now you're trying to break in and set up the bomb.

Yes. And all that. So now everyone is spawning either just outside the enemy base or inside your base and the whole fight is taking place in this. Right. So all of these are done significantly, significantly less interesting than their contemporaries, but there's five.

You do five different types of games in one game. But my experience was leaving the base, gearing up like to a blue, getting to the shield breaker, one team instantly wipes out the other team. in like a single firefight, then it takes 20 plus seconds for the team to respawn, at which point the team with the shield breaker is already inside the base, at which point the defending team loses in about two minutes, and the matches are so short that no one gets their alt once.

Okay. I had a match that last. lasted quite a while. And I got my alt like three times. Oh, wow. And it was just a matter of chasing around the giant map to figure, it was figuring out where to go and what was going on was taking some time. But I managed to get it multiple times.

But yeah, the, the phase where everyone rushes the base or whatever, we had someone on the team that like put a quick response. On alt, I guess, was their ability, like tentacles that you could spot out from quicker. So that meant people could get back up faster and change the rhythm of things. I see somebody in the chat saying, I saw people with longer matches. I don't know what was going on with Pat's matches. I can tell you, if there's a clean sweep, if all three people of one team survive and take out the whole other team in one firefight at the shield breaker, it is wildly. difficult to come back from that because there's there is no contestedness to stop you from

just walking into the base. My match lasted like 40 minutes. That's crazy. Yeah. So there was there's a whole bit of back and forth with the, uh, got some of their points down. Now we go back and got the shield breaker over there. Now we're rating. And so on back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, in the meantime, I don't, I, again, whatever the mechanics are pulling from, all I can comment on is like, hey, I think horses are cool. I love horses in video games. I'm really, I'm a big fan when they feel great to use. And I don't have any issues with this horse here. But it ain't a robot. It ain't, it's a fast way to get around the map, I guess, ultimately. But like, as far as designing the whole thing. around it goes. I'm like, yeah, you jump on and off like torrent. It ain't, it ain't like a strong enough concept to build a whole identity around. It's a strange way to go. Hear about a fancy achievement. Me and I think that's not all. I heard. I think I heard. Where we loaded into a game and the other team all disconnected within 30 seconds,

at which point we unlock the achievement. Protocol 3. Win a raid in under 12 minutes with one member of your team never dying. Nice. So I think the funniest thing is I think we would have gotten that achievement on all of the matches we played. Because they all went like that. Wow. Okay.

Yeah, I did not at all have. it was a much longer situation going on there. And yeah, I just, there's a thing that I'm hesitant to all to whatever I see a fantasy thing. And I get a little bit of that like, okay, are we doing anything interesting here? The mixture of fantasy and guns can be done in an interesting way. nothing I saw here particularly spoke to me. I just, you know, I was already sad. I remember when Apex was revealed and I was sad about the fact that that wasn't what I wanted it to be.

That wasn't more Titanfall. But I'm like, okay, there's some characters here and I can find something to gravitate to, I suppose. and I really didn't see anything here between the sword, the shield breaker, the overall... They all look, they're like T-Mew Apex characters.

There's... I don't know what the word is to describe, like, just, it's just a blend of everything and thus nothing is distinct. It has no identity at all. Well, so you know the thing we say

about the, like frame, war, like face, like... Absolutely. But this is like the actual feel in circles too. Yeah, so we make fun of that for titles,

just grabbing two things, two words and sticking them together to make a generic forgettable game name. But this is the feeling of it in the game itself. You know? I just, yeah.

It's five different genres combined to make kind of nothing. Well, it came out. And there it is. Like, that's, like, if this had not been the last reveal at the game awards, it would still have a mostly negative review. But like, we wouldn't be talking about it. We wouldn't even think about it.

We wouldn't have probably even heard about it. So I guess that works out for them at all as well. I mean, there is, there is a gamble that is like, yo, can we get some players to come from all walks of online shooters? Can we get siege people and moba people? And can we convince people to jump over from counterstrike and everywhere? Can we pull them all in? I feel as time goes on, I feel like Cliff Blizzinsky is actually one of the smartest guys to ever be in the business. Despite the fact that he's like a moron scumbag, like possible thief.

The fact that he was standing around for lawbreakers going, every really big genre has room for like three games. Yep. The really gigantic one and then like the second one that's not quite as popular and then the third one. And like, yeah, people who play Fortnite aren't looking for a different game to play other than Fortnite because they fucking play Fortnite. And if they don't, they probably play PubG. that shit is done so

but at the same time whatever but at the same time if something comes along and has enough like one visual pizzazz or thematic pizzazz and two like enough of a

oh you're blending things we already know and I'm familiar with this and it's working so deadlock for example is something that comes along I played it during my yeah okay

I went back to it because deadlock is an example of something that's like nope it's here There it is. And you recognize everything that's happening here. But yeah, that seems to be working. The amount of juice on display loading up deadlock compared to high card was so, so shocking. Or rivals, right?

We're just like, no, we're throwing our hat in the ring, third person. And it's team shooting. You know what it is. Push the payload. But it's the characters, you know, it's an art style that's really successful. And it feels fine. feels good. I think MMOs and MoBas really show off that distinction the strongest,

where it's like, hey, I want to play the oldest MMO ever. Well, here's your World Warcraft. Hey, I want to play it on my PlayStation. Okay, here's Final Fantasy. Hey, I want to play Dota. I don't really like Dota. Okay, play league instead. Oh, I don't really like it.

I want to play it on my console. Okay, play Smyte. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's it. That's the end of the fucking discussion. Now the weird part is that like I looking so

popping it on and like seeing the start about like seeing these making these observations and feeling this way I'm like I also don't play the genre so I don't know sometimes if this massive map feeling for example is something that like maybe there's some people that like this maybe there's a game or a genre maybe you know what I mean maybe there's a part of this where like no no no no actually

we like this because this is what I don't know Rust felt like or something. You know, there's always that, I'm always playing these going like maybe somewhere else. This is coming from somewhere. So you know what games have big maps?

Games like Battlefield that have vehicles in them, but the vehicles are like a significant part of gameplay. But the vehicles only work when a couple of people have vehicles and 50 don't. Or your, what you might call it? Pub G's and I was going to say World War Z but So you're going to list a huge amount of games

that have way more players in a map Exactly, exactly. And like, yeah, that's the thing, right? But you can't have way bigger matches in High Guard because there's so many fucking mechanics going on at the base defense level that if you had like 10 people inside

like the point, it would be a completely unplayable mess. That's why Siege has what, 6 v6, but everyone dies instantaneously. You don't have a 6 v6 on the fucking point in siege. There's like two guys left on each team by the

time you get there. Yeah, again, I am imagining the, like, let's say you double up and yeah, you go 6 v6 exactly, or even bigger or wilder, the moment you have to get now spawning into this base assault mode, it just becomes

madness, like a complete shit show. Also, horseback does not apply to the raid modes. It's more, that's more for the open field and thing character. Anyway, whatever. So here's what I don't get. So you know, you know how Mobas have like little guys that go down the lanes and then they have the tower to stop you? This, the map is like built with the two bases towards each other.

It kind of feels like that, except they removed the little dude. that would be there in a moba or the little extra guys that you would shoot in Titanfall right for points and they've replaced them with fucking nothing like with nothing

it is a dead ass empty map yeah I mean there's a character that can like make these little demon spawn and they think they go get you like ammo and there's an alt that is like another thing that's on the map ultimately but no

you're just riding around the map and you might run into somebody. You might run into someone or you might just mind some ore, you know? Yeah, yeah. It feels like fundamentally flawed out of design because like the only things

that push players to interact with each other is the shield breaker. And that pushes all players on the map to interact with it immediately the second that it spawns, right? There's no like secondary, nothing. And like when I was mining and getting loot, I didn't see other fucking players. I saw people when I got to the fucking shield breaker. And this is like their first game, right?

I don't know. The company, probably. The people like, no, no. But, but like, because the thought is that new studio, right? People that coming from from, of course, that are experience coming from elsewhere, but new studio, new game idea, everyone kind of wants it to be a little bit of everything because that's what you're designing for something that can drop into the market and hopefully just grab a little bit of everything.

Every single one of those gameplay types could have been a much better game if the other four types had been removed. If you just committed to one? There are five. What about two? Yeah. What about two?

Well, I'll say like Deadlock is let's take a Moba, but let's make it. Let's take a game and make it free freaks that have lost touch with their humanity. But instead of like Mova angle, it's a shooter, you know? Yeah. Sure. Let's take the complexity of the Mova and also add the complexity of the shooter to the Mova. absolutely sick freaks Or

Yeah I mean the fact that that game You can be like I'm going on a side quest To find a mini boss in a room under a building And well I mean that's that's you know That's juggling man I guess I guess That's juggling

But it's just like meanwhile the game continues up here But no this is valid too There's that and or yeah like I mentioned rivals It's like hey what if we just took the camera And put it back here You know Yeah, I'm calling you a sick freak AMD bros. And also, also, I will, another point to rivals favor is not everything and everyone is a gun.

And it's not about picking up guns or equipment. It's about like your character's kit in particular or whatever, you know. I saw a video, Seajan put out a long time ago, I think it was like six months ago that was like basically like learning deadlock is like the most miserable. experience. Yeah, I remember that one. I remember that one. Where he's just like, there are so many things happening and you lose so hard for so long. He's like, I don't know how anyone without infinite free time is getting into deadlock. Luckily, if you, Steam has a ready supply of guides with infinite free time, especially if it's free. I feel it sucks that like we are you know in a we're in a place where brand new awesome ideas are exceedingly rare.

All you really get is like refining things that already have we've been doing and adding and adding enough quality of life and just keeping it basic and addictive, you know, is kind of all you're trying to really do like perfect. existing recipe. But yeah, too much in the gumbo pot. And, well, gumbo's meant to be a mix of all things, maybe bad analogy. Yeah, but you still need core ingredients. I just, yeah, I just, I feel like

this is a type of thing you can commit resources to where you don't really get much of an identity and like you're hoping that the horseback is going to be the identity. It feels like a lot, you know, when you see the mounting the fucking the statue pose

with the gun and the you know moments it's like you're you're looking for that to be the identity is like not strong enough I feel like we're in the so video games I think right now it's now that we're at the technical

debt era in which like getting nicer things and substantively transformative new like technological experiences is basically done with we're at the point that like film hit once we had like color and decent cameras in good

microphones and that like we're past the point where you can point a fucking camera into the snow cabin and have a scene going on in the background of Citizen Kane through the window and everybody loses their fucking mind because they'd never thought to shoot two simultaneous scenes with one through the window in the background right that was like the fucking Ness and the Super Nintendo and the Genesis level right now we're like okay so what is it style, narrative, you know, Junicequa, all the little bits. It's less easy to just be like,

I mean, when Battlefield came out, it's like, hey, you want to fucking fight in World War II with like 100 fucking players? Holy shit, dude. Yeah, I do. So, you know what game was like similarly ambitious, I'll say? is Mecca Break in that it went

Can't believe there's a whole fucking battle royale Just fucking hiding around In that fucking game It's good too And they just They just made them all different modes Instead of making

It's like instead of taking mash mac And you know Capture the the Whatever point capture And death match And then Stratum's static Whatever the barrier

Rush mode or the flag mode They have all these all these modes and then they have the standard modes and remix modes. But like, the whole premise of the game is, yeah, I don't give a shit. I just want to pilot my robot,

man. And does it feel good when I'm in the robot? Yeah. Okay, cool. What do I do? Am I killing the other robot while I'm on a point that's moving or flying around to capture the flag moment or is it a big open space? Whatever.

I just want, like that's all we're trying to do here. Make sure that feels fun. And then the things we're doing that around can change, which is, I mean, also that's what Titanfall is, really.

And it works in that context Because like you're able to just kind of And within that too you also kind of figure out like Oh people like this mode more than the others Because like the playlist in Titan Fall for example Is like that shit never goes through all the modes ever Like you the first month that game is out Maybe you can try other modes

But then it immediately just falls into fucking The classic death match or point captures You know you can't fucking get any other things things going. Yeah, I kind of just like, you see a much simpler approach in a game like Mecca Break. That works out.

Yeah, I have some games that I play this week on Beat the Backlog that are like blank plus blank and they focused on one tried and true idea and one different tried and true idea. And everyone's kind of trying to chase like the Reese's peanut butter cup

of video games. By the way, bad example. Have you had a Reese's peanut butter cup lately. Me and Paige heard they changed the recipe like six months ago. It's been a while. And had one. Shit. Oh no.

Like shit. Are you crazy? What? No, they're terrible. They're shit now. They changed it? That's insane. Man.

Like straight up shit. I got to know. I would not eat one if you handed it to me. Because like I'm picky about my my sugar, but like for a long time. You'd be so mad, dude. Yeah, well, for a long time, I just kind of like, the branding worked. If I saw an orange wrapper thing, I'm like, yeah, okay, let's run that. Let's try that out, because I love Reese's pieces in particular.

Fogg, that's stupid. Especially considering there's so many other peanut butter cup, like, imitators that taste way worse. I feel like there's a lot of ones that try and fail horribly. The only other ones that I thought were really solid were the Trader Joe ones. I never had that. Those are good. I like those. But like a lot of them fall flat.

So God damn it. That's... Yeah, no, God awful. I'm super, super upset about it. Is this a Canadian thing? Or is it like a... I don't know. I think it might be worldwide.

God awful. Fuck. So we played high guard, Willie. What's your takeaway? Midguard? Yeah, I deleted that shit off my fucking computer. I don't give a fuck about that. I mean, it only...

How many matches you do? How many matches you do? That's the question. I played for about 40 minutes. You played one match? I played one match. Okay, Wully? Do you know how many matches I played?

Yeah. You want to guess? Five. I played three matches. One. One was an instant disconnect. Okay? You want to guess how long I played for?

Mm-hmm. You want to guess? Well, you said your games went quicker. So does that mean 40 minutes? Every single person I see spent like 45 fucking minutes with it. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not, no. No. I like the part where I didn't expect it to go as long as it did.

And the part where it was like, all right, now comes the next phase. And it was like 30 in. And I was like, oh, this is also. like a MoBA deadlock length of time for the match. How long does the game of siege go for? It can go for a bit. It depends. It does have a timer on it, though.

Someone and people in chat will be able to answer us. But Rainbow Six siege matches can go really fucking fast. Okay. Like near instantaneously fast. But they can also go to about 25, 30 minutes. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. It's multiple rounds.

That's right. multiple rounds. Ranked. Attack, defend, attack, defend. Yes, yeah, yeah, you both have to get your shots. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so boy, ranked for this would be, take a while.

Even, like, even stuff that, like, came and went that I spent a bit of time on, like, Gundam, the Gundam hero shooter. I don't even remember what it was called. Shit. That one. That was fun, though. I, like, I did enjoy that.

I got to tell you, I played a lot of fucking multiplayer games across an enormous amount of genres. And you know what I keep coming back to over and over and over and over. There is a really, really specific sweet spot for how long any given multiplayer match can last for each genre. And for a shooter, it is 10 to 25 minutes is the sweet spot. Anything shorter, you're like, what the fuck? I didn't even get to play compared to the matchmaking. any longer? And you're like, I'm not going to start a match because I don't want to get stuck here for too long if I'm losing.

So this is the real question inside your statement is if you're getting stomped out. If you're getting curb stomped, how long must you commit? Oh, in High Guard? Not long at all, man. Oh, wow. Because it felt like I was getting curbstombed stopped because we were. just like, what are we doing? How are we playing? And then the, and then, uh, my team came back and blew up the main, the main thing in the middle. And then it was like, oh, shit, actually, we were

fine. Um, yeah. Okay. Okay. It, it felt it felt it. That also works for co-op stuff too. That works for a helldivers mission. Yep. That works for a dark tide mission. That works for a left for dead mission. How long, I want to sit down and play dark tide? How long is one mission going to be? Is it going to be 15 to 25 minutes? Yes. Yes. Yes, it is. If I play a Helldivers mission, even if we scrape the whole map for shit, it's like half hour.

And then you got, and then I guess, and the thing is it too is like, you've got your hero shooter stuff because everyone's got their little ability as well, their R1, you know, so someone was like put up the wall

and you're like, here is your Groot wall or your, you know, whatever, your basic deflection wall and any other thing. And in the raid phase,

then it serves to replace a wall that was blown up on one of the reinforced things on the base, but in this open, giant thing, it's a mild inconvenience in the firefight, I guess. It's, it's, like, um, and it, who gives a shit.

And I saw, I guess, what looked like eight or ten characters. Yeah. Uh, there. Um, free to play. Um, so the idea is,

I'm assuming they're going to look at the cosmetics too and they are not inspiring. This is where I was, going. Free to play. They're not inspired. Therefore, you're going to win people over with the aesthetics and the cosmetics because that's where you spend the money, right? And I'm like, I already can't feel, I feel it's tofu in my mouth looking at the game.

What are you going to pull people over with to spend money on? Yeah. Because like, like, I, yeah. What's the, what do you, what do you throw out on top of this? What condiments? I don't know. Yeah, no, this game is like cooked. Oh, man.

It's, it's, oh yeah, I don't know. Somebody needs to point, somebody pointed out, thanks, sci-fi, Brony. Where, um, when I loaded into the tutorial, I don't know if you noticed, but the default gun you start with in the tutorial is, it's labeled missing string and it has an ammo count of missing string. Oh, I didn't see that. Oh, yeah? No.

I, again, I played, I booted up the PS5 version. Yeah. And I went to talk to, um... It was not a good start. It was not a good start to that experience. Um, yeah. I, there was even the, the, um, the part two words like, you know, your main, your main arm, side arm and then pull out your, your heavy anti-titan weaponry.

Oh, yeah. And I just felt like I held triangle to pull out the anti-titan weaponry and I kind of went, ah. Oh, my mistake. the gun was named missing string missing string missing string wow

okay what a good one well anyway hey they brought back um fuck what was his name I kill you I'm better

you kill me you're better the the one from Apex and Titanfall and it's the same voice actor from the tutorial

real guy. Oh, that's fine. All right, whatever. Blisk. That's fine. Blisk. The guy who's voice actor who talks to you in both games is the guy they got for this one. That's cool. Okay, well, I'm not here in that lore, you

know, I guess. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, did you know Viper had a daughter? No. Man, I did not. Wait, Viper. Who's Viper?

From Titanfall? From Titanfall. Oh, right, yeah. His daughter's Valkyrie. She's a playable character. But she's not inside a Viper. She's not inside a Titan. So she's got there.

Every character they put out for Apex, you're just sitting around going. Is this one going to be a pilot? No. No. The closest thing you got is, here's a pilot's daughter. and she's got to do all the stuff that he did and say his quotes, but with a jet pack instead of an actual. And I remember I was like,

does she run on walls like in Titanfall? And the answer was no. Like just put that exact character's kit into the game. And then the answer to that I think was like, we can't because they'd be too strong. I'm like, yeah, that's the curse. It's just,

it's just a different game entirely. yeah, look, every day we fall further from God's light with this shit. And by the time Valkyrie dropped, it was just like, can I get crumbs of feeling like I'm piloting a North Star? No, kind of, when she hovers for a little bit. Maybe.

It's so like, we're battered and bruised in this relationship, man. I got to have another apex moment where I'm sitting around going, oh man and somebody says oh what about apex i don't want to play apex in a team like you you can play apex solo now it'll still cue you into a team match but you'll start the match solo like i don't mean that i obviously don't mean that why does everyone get confused every time i see that i just want a fucking solo cue god damn it yeah um and i think and i think too uh just to say that like

I always, as someone who often is like, yo, try new things, et cetera, and you're seeing this, again, this, this gumbo game here. But it's a new IP. It doesn't actually have to be, like I love robots and I love wall running and speed and all the cool shit. And it just comes together in a really dope way that makes it feel fun to eject out of your both Titans and grapple each other in the air. And fucking, it's sick. But it doesn't have to be robots. It doesn't have to be any of that stuff, like realistically, right? Any, like, a shooter could come along that feels that good to move and play that is completely

differently themed, that has a completely different thing going on, but it's just, it's fun in its loop and in what you can do and how the movement goes and all that. That would just as easily capture my heart, right? So every time I'm actually, like, I'm saying Titanfall because I want more Titanfall, but if the devs leave and go work on other shit and it feels super sick and cool and just as fun, I'm all for it, you know? So I don't want the, this to look like, no, you're obsessed specifically with that IP.

Because I'm like, nah, once upon a time, that IP meant nothing, you know? And it came out and it was cool. So other IPs can come out and be cool. But not if it doesn't feel like much is going on with it. Nah. Did you play anything else? I did. I did. I did.

Um, so, uh, yeah. I had a week of some stuff going on. So one, I had the Twitch rivals event, Twitch rivals of Ather 2. It works nicely to put both titles together because they both have the word rivals in them. It's almost like if you wanted to name a total war game after Warhammer, that you should, you could. Don't, don't bring that up. It's almost like you could put the two words that are the same together. They very clearly, they very, very obviously wanted to do that.

And every time it comes up, they're like, I understand why you want to do that. But for very specific reasons, the name of the game is Total War Warhammer. Like lawyers sweating. It's definitely Sega and marketing. Marketing teams sweating hard at their brand getting fucking diluted. But anyways, no, Twitch rivals of A-13. two happened. And yeah, that was wild. That was, that was a fun little thing. You know, I was already, um, I mentioned before. Like, I was always like really down with rivals of Ather as the, uh,

platform fighter that kind of did some cool things with what Smash's ideas were. Um, you know, I feel like it was the, of all the different platform fighters, of all the different smash likes, this was the one that felt like it was trying the hardest to like do some new shit, do some cool Even I agree with that. Yeah. And one of the best ways that, like, sold you how much they cared was when they got shovel night as a guest character, to this day, I think it's the best representation of shovel night in a thing. You know, getting a guest character, getting 2B in your game is not that big of an accomplishment. Yoko Taro will turn that trick out on the streets for nothing.

Hey, um, hey, our mobile game is going to get a. a persona five crossover. It's dead? Oh, it's fun. Wait, put 2B in there right on the last day. Just get that ass in there on the last second, right? Yeah. So this is something where I remember seeing the

shovel night implementation in a lot of games was like, you know, it was fine. Blade strangers had shovel night. You know, there was another like forgotten, like, Smash, like, for Indies that I forgot the name of that had him in it. But the one that was in rivals was like super lovingly crafted and faithful and had you shopping to buy little upgrades in between rounds.

And it was, it was, it was incredible. It was something like, like a, what a Sakurai would do to bring the character into smash, for example. So incredible. And, yeah, it just, from that, you could feel like these characters had just really creative upbees, really creative ways of getting back on the stage. You know, I remember seeing the orcane one where it's like, oh, he goes through the bubbles and teleports back to the puddle if you put it on the ground.

Right. Which is like pretty nuts, but obviously has its limitations if you use the water. And I remember seeing Crag from day one where it's like you build a whole pillar and you stand on top of it instead of a jump. And I was like, that's really original. I remember. I remember that one. Super cool.

So I like, yeah, I liked that. That's why I liked him. I was like, that's an awesome upbee. So here we go. And so that game now has a sequel, and the sequel is really cool. They added all these things like using your B abilities, like your specials, from on the ground or on a ledge and all these different things that, like, you know, add to the gameplay. They added parries and stuff. So I just had a great time with it.

They invited me to join this, this Twitch Rivals format, which is pretty crazy because it's like a cruise battle, right? Which is usually team versus team. Right. But everyone has one stock of life, and as soon as you die, the next teammate jumps in right away. Like, I won't even say KOF style because KOF style implies like a round between or so, but it's just immediately. It's like a tag battle, essentially. So, Pokemon style. And we jump in and then you got to do what you can with that one stock.

And then, you know, if you take out your opponent and then do any more damage, then you did your job. you know. Um, and, uh, so that's what, that's what we did. Um, it, for the amount of game you're going to actually get done. Like, I definitely was like, I was going and expecting to be like, on blast playing full sets a little bit. And then I saw the format and it was like, just get in there and do what you can. Flail for about a minute and don't immediately choke and you'll be fine, you know. Um, uh, so yeah, my team was, uh, SK, uh, Dan Fornes of literally the rivals of Ather Dev and Armada. And the whole time we were talking, we just got,

Dan was just kind of given some cool tidbits on, you know, like how the development went and what was what he was up to and everything. And I feel like, yeah, the fact that this one rivals of Ather, like, IP is turning into like a bit of a franchise for them is cool because it was good enough that they now not only have rivals of Ather 2, but they've got. the card game and they've got like the you know like I think it was like a rogue like thing as well they've got like these whole atherverse going so um cool stuff you know had a good time and we didn't win certainly um I I tried to hold my own and for the most part I uh I got some

good hits in um you know there's a number of others on those teams Dan Reichert was on a team Ludwig there was there was Tearsu you in there even Did you beat anyone of note and be like

yes I ruined their day I think I got Tearsu twice and I think I think right after that Ludwig

beat me I'm not sure anyone else I'm not sure but we did get a chance to fight every team ultimately so

And a big thanks to Ned, Reggie's friend, Squaredy McFish, is his tag. He came over and he kind of just gave me some good tips on like, you know, how to play Craig and how to do not terribly in this game and kind of improve and stuff. And yeah, he really, he helped a lot. So, yeah, it was just fun little thing. Appreciate the opportunity to take part in it. And rivals of Ather is fucking cool. that's a game too that's like

got a like it is got a workshop of like cosmetics that they're selling because again this is how we make our money and I will say that like if you are interested in cosmetics they went there's a lot of them that you can go all the way and get these like

Game Boy skins for like like you know handheld sort of vibes you can get low poly model versions of the characters I got a version wearing a business suit you can get one that's like mecca. So I got like an Ava themed one. Like you get all kinds of stuff going on on that shop. There, Dan's trying to get that money out of your pocket. And they know what to show you to, to, to get you in there. Um, so, uh, unlike a high guard shopping spree. Unlike. Uh,

rivals of Ather has some, some interesting cosmetics and fun stuff in there. But, uh, yeah, that's, that's what, that's what that was it. Um, I am. I like that game enough that like every time I walk by it at like, you know, I walked by it at, um, combo breaker and stuff. And I'm like, let me get in a set. Let me sit down and play some rivals of Aether. And I'm, and I'm still willing to do that. And now especially that I know how to play a little bit better. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not necessarily going to go like out of my way a lot of the time. But I feel like I'll be in the mood every once in a while, especially since I don't have, uh, you know, a multiversis to, to turn back to or. Oh, that's true. That's not possible anymore. I was pointing out that, like, they just announced the workshop, which lets you put in your own characters and create your own characters, which they brought into the first game. And, you know, the incredible, like the Makoto rat and the cool Luchador aunt came from the workshop. So what if somebody just took a bunch of models that were saved before the collapse and suddenly the next workshop character is LeBron James or Bugs Bunny? Or Garnet. Well, then they would have to go and take those down.

Well, it's a workshop character, right? Just don't make it an official release and do what you want. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Anyway, it was cool. And, and yeah, this is in a world where Brawlhalla continues to exist. And, you know, icons.

Someone asked me, yo, Willie, when's icons? Yeah, man. There's some platform fighters out there, you know? But this is the good one. Anyways, that's all there is to say about that. This week I also went back. We had another episode of getting to locals. So went out to the monthly tournament that's out here.

The air dashers have a tournament called Kizuna. And yeah, it was just cool. First time at the venue that they have for that. Set up a TV, got a little walk-around, you know, camera with a microphone. And we just basically did the things we do at a local walk in, catch up with people. Hey, what's up? Hey, have you seen the latest patch out? What do you think of Caitlin?

Oh, shit. We talked about what's going on with that. Talked about some of the changes to other stuff. Oh, Juggernaut. They made some changes. Is it enough? Uh-huh. And then, okay.

Let's go. And then let's go sit down and get some random games. in. I popped on, I brought some shit with me, including a game called Soul Calibur 2 Plus. And Soul Calibur 2 plus is a pretty cool project because my main thing was I want people to hear that character select screen walking by and be like, yo, who's playing Soul Cal 2? Let's fucking get it. Because everyone on planet Earth loves Soul Calibur 2. And that's just the default. Everyone plays it. Everyone. Completely right. And so I popped that shit on and the volume was up and sure enough people did, you know, be like, yo, whoa, we're playing some SoulCal. And I specified that this version, if you look up at the top, you see Link, Spawn, and Hay Hatchie all in the same version because it's a modified GameCube hack that has all three. It was really messed up how Link was the character that was the coolest by far.

but Hayhachi was the best one of those three. So I don't know if that's true. People were discussing this while we were there. I mean, I remember that being the case between people I spoke to in that era. I don't know if he was. I thought it seemed like after some people thought he was the worst of the three. So then he had spawn could fly and do fucking error, air unblockables and shit. So, but Link was kind of crazy.

I don't know. The weapons were nuts. He hatchie had his electrics, but Link had the fucking bow and bomb and boomerang and again, Spawn can fly. But yeah, they have them in there and the models are basically modified to exist models from other characters in the game. They didn't

fully import them yet, so the project's not 100% done. But for getting to play all three in the same game, which is what I think we all kind of were hoping would be possible at some point. It's really cool to be able to do that. Not to mention some other fun custom costumes and horrible fan-made ones too. So that was,

that was dope. Um, we popped on a game called Damon Bride in which you play as a character that, okay, so, um, this is from Examu, the studio that made Arcana Heart,

uh, back in the, the Otts, they thought, well, if you're, if the, if the,

if the characters and the world of Arcana Heart, heart are not hidden. for some people. What if we designed a game where, you know, you had some older characters in it that were still fighting? Yeah, then you wouldn't feel like a creep if you accidentally say the phrase Arcana Hot while you're talking about it. Did you did? Arcana Heart. Love Max made in which which you know is a special piece of Parasite Eve DLC.

It sure is. Got to make sure to install that. The same team made a game here. And basically the deal is you can fly and dash and you have a stand. But your stand is a demon. And that demon is your bride. And, you know, I... You're appropriately aged bride?

I mean, they're... Yes. Yeah. I played as a dog. And the dog's bride was Satan. That's about right. So, you know, that's a thing. Bro, this looks like a fucking melty blood hack.

It's an, it's an anime-ass arcade fucking game. Yeah, it was only in arcades for like 20 years. And then one dude finally said, you know what, I'm porting this? And they went, I guess we have an official port now. So that came out like a month ago. I'm on Steam. And I have a message on the screen I've never seen before in my life. underneath this game is also like it says is this game relevant to you this game doesn't look like other things you've played in the past as such we don't have much information on whether or not you'd be interested

are you lost sir did someone send you a link to this game why would you be here you're on the wrong side of steam kid oh man that's so funny holy shit that's phenomenal Yeah, Dave and Bride might be up your alley, you know? Who knows? Steam's got to learn you a little better. And, you know, whatever. It's a fine fighter. It's got some crazy mix-ups and it's very fast-paced.

We had two people come on and kind of do a more experienced match to show like what high-level play looked like. But again, I played as a dog whose bride was Satan. And when you You know get rid when you knock When you lose Your your stand Or your persona in this game You know you you are divorced

You have your your your your your your your your your your your your your bride Reflect mechanics and Bride bursts and shit like that Everything is called a bride thing so you can just imagine All the all the the the shit talk that comes from that Motherfuckers are getting blown up and we're yelling about pre-ups,

etc. So on and so forth. Yeah. And then beyond that, we play... Is there a move called annulment in that game? One would hope. There's a system called engagement. And as your engagement goes up, your projectiles get stronger, but, you know, as it

gets lower than, yeah. It's so weird, though, because my brain, instead of the, my brain automatically goes like, oh like SEO YouTube engagement and it's like no as in the original pun for the disgusting oh you're fucking oh no your brain's ruined it sucks

that we live in a world where nine out of ten times I hear that word it's making reference to is your content garnering enough engagement am I causing enough arguments in my chat influencer brain full on

full on brain rot Anyway That was cool And then Played some 2XCO Um Yo, Timo sucks now

Really bad I mean you say that But like motherfucker made it to grand finals Using Timo Like he's Okay yeah no but he's not Cracked like he was before So you gotta work a little harder

No I don't want to When you get hit your shit is not as fucking active I didn't pair Timo with Blitz so that I could work harder He's, I mean, look, of all the people feel in it, I would say that like,

that's, yeah, he's, he's, he's taken a hit. Um, Rie is fine still. You know, they took, they took away her,

her extra air dash shit to just, it was obnoxious. Um, and, you know, Echo can't be as egregious as he, as he was. But no,

everyone's still. got their shit. More than anything, what I'll say is Brom is absolutely ridiculous. Brom... Brom has gotten buffed.

I don't know how to play Brom and I feel like I should learn it. Brom has gotten buffed and is so much more annoying now. The ability to just jump in, fucking get that double that shield that he holds down. You can't do anything about it. Or you can do very little about it, depending on who

you're using. And he doesn't use the ice that like gets spent usually. So he stays in his buffed state for longer and like, fuck me, is he terrifying? Caitlin, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say, I have to say that

as much as she ain't for me, like, seeing the way she plays, how that's distinct from the other zoners, it's like, it is properly different. I kind of was like, she's fun. She's, she's, that's well done.

You know, it's not my kind of character. But the aiming headshot idea, it's kind of like Hawkeye's Gimlet in a way. Anytime anyone does anything, you got up to. You stop, pop. That's pretty cool. And approaching and playing around it is very different. So I was kind of thinking like, yeah, traps and guns, but she's significantly different from Jinks. I feel like she's just a better Timo.

As somebody played Timo all last season, like her projectile is better. than Timos. It leads to more her trap activates instantly, unlike the mushrooms. When her bola grabs you, her bola is kind of like another version of time winder. Time winder at home. Yeah. But she's good, like in the sense that she's good at keeping you out and annoying you with the shots from a distance. You have to approach carefully.

Yes, both her and Timo mean you have to like approach stop, wait, block, and then, you know, move in carefully. but when she misses fucking killer. Absolutely. Yeah, miss one shot and you die. Get cooked. But no, that's cool. Also, if you hold the LR tag button combination, you can, just like with all things where you can take off the jacket and stuff,

with her, you take the hat off. So there you go, right? I did my rank and I'm in Platt, which is crazy. I was in Grand Master like three weeks ago, and now I'm all the way down. and I got to say I'm a little discouraged. I didn't realize I was going to get that much worse over like three weeks. Again, you don't have to be 50% to be moving up.

You know, it's not, it's not a, I did mine. I think I got Emerald and, you know, ultimately I'm just going to work back up into there so I can get better matches. It doesn't, it, it, eh, I don't think, again, I don't think about the pre-grandmaster stuff as like the real matches. Think about the post-grandmaster stuff as the real matches, you know? Like, it's not... No, I'm worried about getting back up to Grandmaster.

You're fine. You're fine, dude. Well, here's the thing, because I started an Emerald in season zero, and now I'm starting in Platt here, which like, that means I got worse. No, that means you're going to... That means I'm worse today than I was the day before I played it for the first time. I hear you and you want a baby mope and wine,

but I'm going to tell you you're wrong for very clear reasons. That's just statistics. Your placement matches were five matches, but really that means you fought two people. Because you fight one person who's good and another person who's bad, and then that's your placement. Like in a street fighter, you fight 10 sets. Yeah.

And it goes, okay, based on 10 sets, here's what you are. but you're getting a placement based on two human beings. It's bullshit. You're not, that doesn't mean anything. And second, you're going to smoke through everybody in platinum and get back. Like,

it's not even a thing. So, so all that to say, though, as far as, like, I'm glad to think that the idea of the character, I guess we'll just go right into the 2XCO talk, but even if the character is,

like, not someone I want to play as that I don't want to be on the roster, the gameplay stuff is still figured and solid and that that'll continue to be the case hopefully Um also they added I uh they added another way to unlock characters so

You know when people were kind of essentially Because yeah you bust out a new character like eight days of just playing the game Surprise I was not so Pete they announced originally like you're gonna have the Coins you you can buy or you can have spend the coins you can earn after three weeks on a delay Um And then they added the like or there's of a special event to get them and it takes like yeah a day or two

of just playing a bunch of matches to get them so they're being pretty generous about that Yeah when they had like a dog shit character I don't want that's how I'm gonna unlock Right right no it's and and it seems like um they're willing to be very generous about

you about you getting the characters unlocked for a fairly low investment or time in exchange for those cosmetics being fucking ridiculous you know on top of that I mean we'll probably get into it a little bit earlier but like guys

what the fuck with your so stupid sponsorship scheme like the dumb thing with the adding to the subs right bro that was so weird because they ran a Twitch sponsorship thing like a month ago

and it was like played to XCO get money and it was like the most normal fucking thing in the world. But now the new T-UX-KO sponsorship is like, hey, if you give in, if your community gives you five

subs during the one hour you watch Skull girls, oh my God, 2X-KO, then we'll kick in half of a sub. Is this some shit that Valorite was doing and that's why they changed it to that? I don't know.

Because that's such a stupid thing. And like the obvious answer to this is don't make the community have to kick in subs for that to kick in to that bonus to show up. Just make it so that if you sign, if you just want to give out subs, have a thing where it's like if you integrate and sign up your thing, your two XKO integration with Twitch, then random people will get gift subs for being, for streaming the game. So here's the thing.

It's such an obvious, easy thing. Give out, give them out while people are playing. The Valper thing, you know how that worked? What? If you got five gift subs from. anyone in any category for an entire fucking month, it would say Valoran gifted you a sub. So for a whole month, I would look over and go,

oh, thanks Valerant for gifting a sub. But the 2XCO one is like you have to sign up to play 2XCO during a specific set of times for a certain amount of hours. And it only counts when you're playing 2XCO. They tried to take... My phone fell out of my fucking pussy. Damn. Get it up deeper.

I hate when that happened. They tried to take the existing model that they used and then change it to be greedier here. And that sucks, man. It's not even that it's gradier. It's just so much less effective. But it's like the...

Literally, you can just make it like, hey, are you streaming and you're on the, um, the plugin? All right. There's a, you get a ran. him shot at getting a gift sub. And that applies to everybody. Literally anything.

You know, and it's the kind of thing, and I know we sound like massive pussies about complaining about like free money essentially, but it's like, you had to like sign an agreement and you had to stream it like a minimum amount out of time so that you'd make like what, like $10? Well, like, fuck you. No. Well, no. Look, I don't, I disagree in that it's a giant pussy take because I feel like if we get

that extra gift sub from like a riot or a way. whatever, that is, that's nice. For a small streamer that has way less concurrent views, it's a way bigger deal to have that gifts up. And you can make a lot of people's days and a lot of streamers days by giving that out in a better fashion, you know? And you too can stream 2XCO to the lowest numbers of anything on your channel because everyone's watching Sejam and Diaphony and the rest because holy.

shit. That game is not popular unless you are those guys. I literally can't even say his name correctly. Every time you say it, I'm just like, oh my God. Oh, that's so fucking funny. It's pronounced. I can't say it correctly on purpose. It's pronounced the appone. Look, it's also stupid because what you're describing is like people buy gift subs, thus you get the extra and you're like no no no but it would be much more useful for people that are not getting five gift subs as regularly right yeah so you can make this feel a lot better for a lot more people by taking that stupid thing off so as far as i saw they're they're pulling it back and doing something but i don't know what yet um anyways you know what they should do they should give me some more money

Okay. Okay. That's my plan. Now we're cooking. And I'll say that I like the game that I already like. Yep. Okay. Okay. Let's go. Let's go. That would have been a better choice. You know, come on, Ryan. We actually already did that last month. Like, I literally, there was a Twitch sponsored broadcast thing and I did like some late night streams for Twix KO and they paid me some money and I went, this stream sponsored, but I like this game. So let's play it. three hours from like 11 p.m. to 2 in the morning.

How about that? Yeah, they also, while I was doing the Get Into Locals thing, at the local, they announced that the Montreal UMAD event for this year is going to be a 2XCO official tour event as well. So that's really cool. And I'm always, like, logistically it's easier, but I'm always a fan of like when games circuit takes place within the community's existing events.

Of course. And not doing your, and not being like, no, we're going to do our own fucking thing over here. And, and, you know,

you may or may not be a part of it. Anyways. So that's cool. Not too happy about some of the allowee changes, but whatever, it's fine. They made it so that her,

like, her medium button, which she needs to do everything, does less damage, ultimately, in combos and now you have to use her just frame fucking super precise timing mechanic that nobody uses more

I think it was really funny because when I was reading through those patch notes I DM'd Javi and I'm like, I'llowie has a just frame Yeah I get And he said What was it that he said Uh Um like nobody no

Nobody uses it It's really tight News to me LOL I like I saw that shit early but like I'm like This, like, it's hard, man. Nobody knows. It's hard. And speaking of...

Use this fucking thing that you don't know exists. She has, like, he has a, like, a, a hit of her tentacles that has to be, like, perfectly timed input-wise to get, like, the best damage. That's not feasible. Shut up. Speaking of feasible, did you see Caitlin's, like, expert level five combo? I did not. Okay.

So, harkening back to the days of Crimson Viper and Street Fighter 4, her advanced crazy shit is partial charge her gun is like a big part of how you make her her effective you have to do five partial charges in a row with her you have to perfectly partial charge her her two shots and then her heavy punch button and then to two shots again in it's it's crazy man um effectively it's like her and i vi has kind of the same thing where it's like you know, if you hold the... You hold the button down the full length of time and you get like a stronger version.

But if you let it go about halfway through, you get the stronger version, but it doesn't take as much time. You know, but you got to be fucking perfect on your button release, you know? Anyways, that's 2XCO. I also finished off Arkham City yesterday. And...

Isn't it nice how that game ends really strong compared to the way that Arkham Asylum ends. Okay, so I have to say I didn't know I was going to, when I wanted to push for one more mission, I did want to do more like walking around and leveling up and stuff, but I was locked in like

from the moment you do the steel mill. Yeah, no, they lock your ass in. Yeah, so I didn't know it was the point of no return on that, unfortunately. Yeah, man, that's a way better game than Arkham Asylum. Like, they really stepped it up. I can see that, like putting the time goggles on, you know, and traveling back

as far as a sequel goes I can imagine coming into this game and being like holy fuck what a step up from asylum now it did Matt it did it start the process of Rocksteady

like massively lying like crazy psychos about how their game was going to be because I remember there were there were interviews about Hugo Strange strange being the the primary villain of that game and how he wasn't just going to

intellectually dominate Batman he was gonna physically dominate him. And it's like, you fucking lying shit, you shit, liars, you fucking lie. Oh, my God. It's shit. And like, Protocol 10 is so stupid. Like, it's like, you're going for the, you're going for the, um, the antithesis of everything Batman, like, represents.

But like, the whole thing was just, nah, fucking kill, like, literally just kill them all with infinite money. Just do it. whatever the case was um i i can't believe how much mark hamill committed himself to this game like i just such a great job you know he loves the role but like holy fuck he loves the role and uh i was looking at that that scene being like fuck you he's never dead you can't lie to me and then everyone is no, but for real, though. No, he's dead.

But you can, but I never, I would never believe this if you guys weren't there in the, in the past telling me. There's a sequel to that game in which him being dead is a massive part of the story. Of course, right. Yes. Because you all exist in, in the past and you can tell me this, I, I have to hear that. But I'll tell you, Wully, I'll tell you, I'll go, okay, I'll go, I'm back in the past. Fuck you, he's not going to stay dead. That's bullshit.

The whole bit with him is that. you should never believe that he's dead, you know? But when someone pointed out that part of the reason why Mark Hamill went so hard was because this was supposed to be his last time doing it, and his finale to the role, I was like, oh, that makes sense too. Wow. As a send-off. I could talk to you about Arkham Knight a little tiny bit if you want.

Well, I mean, look. Some of your expectations there. I'm well content to assume that he remains dead. However, this is not the last you hear of the Jockelman. That is an extraordinarily astute observation. Dio had so much time to plan and record everything he was up to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Uh-huh. No? No. Yeah. No. actually. Okay. If you say so. And

and then their obsession, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I like that they showed great restraint on the joke Baines. They, they truly resisted the urge. They really toned it the fuck down. In fact, they have Baines show up. And then

he's like, no, let's, let's fight together though. And then afterwards, he's like, ah, I tricked you. And then I tricked you. I'm actually a fucking asshole. And then Batman's like, get in the box. And he's like, no. And then you blow up all the Titan. And he's like, no.

And you're like, he's between the flimsiest bars you've ever seen. And you're like, what? Did they, like, did they know how bad it was last time? And they did this to specifically be like, yeah, we're sorry. Meanwhile, friendship ended with Bain. Now Edward Nigma is my best friend. Because full obsession on the riddle. the riddler.

I truly like Oh my God. Hey, Wully, Arkham Knight is, I'm just looking for funsies, Arkham Knight is 80% off right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all, they're all, yeah. You should, you should hit that up just in general for your own, like actual ownership.

No, I'm, I'm well aware. I mean, the whole bundle was fucking nothing. Yeah, I own Arkham Knight now. What else was there? So yeah, the Ridler Trophy shit was like, again, peak hilarious, egregious insanity. We, you know, the realm of Assassin's Creed 2 and surpassing it. But what I didn't realize at the time was that the Redler hostage things were locked behind different hundreds of question marks.

I thought those were separate. I thought there was Ridler hostage scenarios. and then there was collecting his bullshit. But the fact that they put it behind it is like extra nuts. So fucking whatever to that. I, yeah, I didn't end up running into the mysterious stranger on the roof again. But I did catch in the chat afterwards. They said that that was Asriel.

And I was like, oh, my God, yeah. The edge lordiest Batman that ever was. That fucker in his in his bat suit. It's really ridiculous. It's the, it's the Commando Action Batman Action Figure. Like, it's so the peak of, like, what if Image Comics Batman existed? It's hilarious. And I guess beyond that, yeah, you know what?

The fact that, like, you have Robin and Catwoman and stuff playable is like, that's all fine. That's all cool. They're, you know, they're not actually different from Batman. Like, you can play them the same way. but you have to just... Catwoman is just the slightest, timiest bit different. You only have to learn the difference

of their animations and the timing of like how their tools work as well as like how to zip up to ledges versus how to climb walls with her. But like in general, the idea behind them, the group is the group management stuff is like

when the group is surrounding you, take out the hard the heavies with your takedown or spend the combo on the the whip everybody you know the same the same overall gameplay between the characters

but little bits of differences um that was all that was all fine I just wish I didn't have to spend up there's interesting seeing like the time has been kinder to those games hmm like they like they like they like

they like maintained their quality and now like you look people look back on night fonder than they did then? Well, I guess the thing is, I have to know about what comes after and how that goes, right? Because from here, I'm like, oh, if Arkham to City had such a quality jump,

city to the next, being that level of good would be incredible. But it seems that's not the way that the timeline goes. Yeah, you've said it many a time, you know? It's actually like really clear is like they did make

some improvements like predator stuff and combat stuff and it's it's better um too much batmobile stuff which people were a little disappointed by um and um the ridler shit's totally out of control the ridler shit they completely lost their fucking minds it almost sounds like it mirrors batman begins the dark night and a little bit and uh dark night rises like dark night is the fucking best and rises is not the dark night though one of the big things for night is that it's a it's a generation later so like it's it's real nice looking

oh they also like lied about the story like crazy to the point where it actually hurt the story because the narrative and rock steady treats you woolly like you are dumb for not seeing through that shit within like one millisecond of a character appearing on screen oh okay well because I mean

the the clay face bit I didn't catch. They actually totally got me really good with that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And then explaining later that, like, oh, if you scanned him, you'd see he had no bones. Yeah, totally. There's scenes in which it's one and then the other. It's awesome.

Or he makes reference to the theater and acting and stuff, which, again, that was also something where I'm like, I didn't know that Clayface was a Thespian. Yeah, that's how he got his goopy face. But, um, yeah. No, overall, like the, I can see how like the trajectory from these two games would create lots of excitement for the future, you know? You're on a ramp that's shooting up. So boy, oh boy, can't wait to see what comes next. And then I've, and so I've, and here's where the divisiveness and the arguments begin, you know. One way or another, though, yeah, good game.

and like the product of its time heavily. The Ridler Trophies is one thing. The other thing that dates it super hard is the DLC campaign, the Harley's Revenge. Yeah, dude. Holy shit. Like, it was a, like, okay. I never did that, actually. So I bumble and stumble and fumble around, you know, trying to do my best with the systems.

and I think I, you know, kind of got a bit of a hang on some of it, but there's other stuff that I'm, whatever. My gameplay aside, that chapter is not a DLC campaign in the sense we're used to now, which is like a whole other chapter. And it's more just like a level add-on. You know what I mean? It's like they added a stage on as opposed to like a whole campaign. And it amounts to run through the steel mill for the third. third, fourth time, and then run back out and then run back in, you know? And you're kind of like, at a certain point, it's like, there's a door here.

You got to run outside and do these things and then run back into the steel mill. I'm seeing you fight robots. You're fighting robots. And you're like, oh, you're creating the most contrived reasons to push the next part of this DLC forward. And, you know, it, yeah, it's kind of, it feels like a nice. ice old filler chapter with like there's Harley stuff at the beginning and Harley stuff at the end but like in between you're just kind of running through it. And then they take away Robin for him

a bit there. So you don't really get the full Robin upgrade screen or breakdown or whatever or anything. You know, it wasn't there wasn't much to that at all. But all that, all that aside. Yeah, you know, solid stuff there. Solid stuff. Solid stuff. Um, just again, that Mr. Freeze fight stands out as the, the fucking, the coolest thing. It's crazy how amazing it is. Um, and, uh, I, like, definitely feel like, uh, it's kind of interesting because like for the predator sections, I think, um, part of what was like kind of holding me back was like trying to metal gear it where it's like go completely undetected when it's like, you can make noise and get

people afraid. and that's all fine. It's not, it's not, there's no ranking. Yeah, Batman is not doing a ghost ranking. Yeah.

And that's, I'm so used to trying for that, that I think that kind of like, I was, I was kind of obsessing with that point of it. But overall, with the combat stuff, whenever you walk into a room

with a fuck ton of dudes, I'm like, I kind of, I'm like, okay, cool, let's get a nice big combo going, you know? Like,

I got the feeling of like, let's get that number red. Let's start getting those, boom, Boom, boom, boom, take downs. And, you know, and I even, I went into the challenge modes as well to, to, you know, play a little bit and stuff. And like, yeah, when you have the, the flow going and then you're using your tools and tools start taking dudes out as well and everything. It's like, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, that works out pretty well that I enjoyed.

So, so, um, I kind of, uh, I did get that experience out of it, even if some of that, uh, uh, uh, uh, I did get that experience out of it. was not reflected. So good shit. Good shit on this. I'm, we'll see what the future holds, but the fact that there's so much to be said about both night and origins. And it's just,

there's like, there's people in a circle having a conversation. And I'm, I'm like, hey, what, they're like, and they're just,

they're moving to like protect me while they're having the conversations. You know? I did not play. And I did not play. play for a really specific reason, which is apparently it's a really good Arkham game unless you get a bug that completely ruins your safe. Fuck.

That's it. Fuck. And they never fixed them, a bunch of them. That sucks. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a, that's. So you would break it within two sessions. Just enough. Oh, I read. Just enough to be really annoying. At the finish line, I was running into fucking bugs

where my controller stopped working and it was not and it was not unplugged or disconnected from Windows or anything. It was just the game itself, you know. Oh, if someone in chat says there's an unofficial patch. Huh. God, of course. Just like with asylum, there's always something. There's always something.

Anyways. Yeah, here we go. Yeah. Here it is. Okay. Yeah. though anyway, I will say too

that, yeah, whatever. Anyways, I we'll see. I'll leave it at that. Only other thing I briefly wanted to mention was I booted up and finally started playing the Cult of the Lamb. I also have been playing Culta to the Lamb. That game's fucking great, man. I didn't realize it was just

an Isaac like replacement. So it's not. Half of it is. And then the other half is... The other half is Stardew Valley. Yeah. Yeah, sure, sure. Which ball pit was also some of that too. So yeah, Isaac with your with your with your animal crossing. Um, I, well, it's, okay, whatever. The two parts of this game that it is, I was like, oh, that's really fun. That's cool. I enjoy the community little start, yeah, sure, Startero Valley or, you know, um, Animal Crossing or fucking

Harvest Mooning with a cult twist to it and then doing runs and grabbing weapons and you know rolling and then killing things and rogue lighting. I think cool game man. I think it feels super good.

I will say I'm very glad for you and for me that we're playing it now because they put out the Woolhaven DLC. They did. But when that game came out it was kind of bear like you could beat five bosses and then you were done. Okay. Like there was no like

heat equivalent or to keep going. You were just completely finished. But they've added like relics of the old past. They added the sex update. There's been a lot of work done on that in the past couple of years.

And when you boot it up, you can see that. Like there's a bunch of different things on that main menu and then in the game as well. There's tabs. Here's shit we added. Yep. I thought The game was way, way heavier on the, like, cult farmstead side and way, way lighter on the, like, going out in gameplay type of thing, going out in action game. Kind of depends. You know, well, I'd say it's 50-50.

I'm about day 30, and, like, it is about 50-50, but the 50-50 isn't always evenly spread. So, like, I unlocked a ritual that tells my followers to stop eating. Yeah, the famine. For three days. Yeah, the fast, yeah. And then I just do a bunch of fucking dungeon runs back to back, back, back, back. Sure. And then when I get back, I build a bunch of shit.

So I was thinking that it was going to be like, well, hmm, I'm trying to think because like Powell World also is like, it's up to you if you want to spend more time just going out and then, or base building. But I thought it was going to be like your most of the game is about strategy and base building and farming and crops and all that stuff. No, that's 50, 50. It's 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes. And then when you need resources, you go out and get them type of thing. But it's actually like, no, there is like, but anyway, all this to say was like,

you're not just going out for resources. You're going out to fucking beat the game. There is a proper, you know. No, but then you're, then where I'm at now, I'm at day 30. Yeah. Now I'm going out for resources. Yeah, because you beat you, when you beat one of the one of you beat. I beat two.

of the guys. And then you can just keep going further into their... I have a fucking group of like 20 dudes and I'm like, oh there's no food. There was not a single fucking food in my camp. So I'm going to tell them to fast and I'm going to go fucking go get food or else they're all

going to die. And I just unlocked the goddamn building that lets them farm the food themselves and I'm like, oh, that was my number one thing that I was doing to man. They can. plant the seeds, they can fertilize them, they can water them and keep them growing, but you have to

manually go pick them up. When you get to fucking stage four, you could do it. There you go. Okay. Okay. And, well, and now you get close to that thing of like, well, just let the game play itself then. You know? Well, no, because you got to go get seeds.

Sure. Ultimately, yeah, I, I, and I do like how the game is like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, these aren't your friends. use them. Bro. You are meant to use them. Do not be a slave to your cults members. So I streamed it

the day came out a long time ago and I hadn't touched it since then but there's a Twitch stream because I made, I used the Twitch extension so everybody was in my party, right? And then I've been playing it right now and Paige is overhearing me

at like 1130 midnight just talking just the most endless shit to these these cult members. Like I built an outhouse so they could shit in a toilet. Yep. And then I fed them a bunch of food. Yep. And then I left to go. And then I came back.

And two of them had taken a shit in front of the toilet. Yeah, that's crazy. And I'm like, what kind of fucking Neanderthal? What do you do? Took a fucking shit in front of a toilet. What the fuck is wrong with all of you? And I killed one of them for funzies. Fuck them.

When they, when you build the outhouse, Why don't they always use it? I don't know. I don't know. I really don't. It's fucking weird. And I mean, shout out to the game to making like poop cleaning like something where you're like, no, no, no. My broom is getting upgraded each time.

So this is actually rewarding. Don't feel too grossed out by it. There's one of my guys that like for four quests in a row was like, let's trick somebody to eating poop. Oh, I got the guy. I got the guy that was like, I want to eat the poop. Yeah, no, but like, hey, let's, let's truck a guy and have me poop. It'll be so funny. And like, what the fuck is wrong?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is where the Isaac stuff comes into play where I'm like, poop is not just in the game. It's a part of the game. Right? And that's where I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel that. Playing with the Twitch thing on, though, sounds like a lot of fun because I, walking by that spider that is about to kill like a cult member and that person's a part of your chat and being like. Like, I don't ever have spare cash on me. So. Yeah, that sounds kind of funny.

Sorry, bitch. And then I guess there's a couple things to are like, yeah, you get the cards and you do your runs. Was doing the run where you get to unlock different gowns is pretty cool because like there's significantly different ways to play the game. Didn't feel like combat was that like hard, but the- It gets way harder. I imagine. But when they give you the option to put on a thing that's like, hey, damage over time, your damage increases with each kill until you get hit, you know, that seems like,

oh, fuck, just melt everything if you play clean, you know, or start with four cards and then you lock the rest out. When you get the, when you kill one of the bosses of the upgrades that you have available, get the one that lets you return to the cult. Oh, I already chose the other one. Yeah, I already chose a different one as well. And then the second one. Yeah. Because once you've killed a boss, if you go back to their dungeon, you can just run the dungeon forever.

Like, you will just keep going in the next door. Yeah, yeah. But unless you have that, like, teleport back, you get stuck at only leaving at the end. You have to kill and go back in. Yeah, I saw that warning. That's a big one. This is the first time in a video game. That's not true.

Soul's Old Soul games did this Where I picked up the knuckles And I fucking did not like them I really don't like them at all I hate the knuckles in this game And that bugs me because I usually love the knuckles Yeah the combo takes too long

Souls game knuckles were also bad Until they've you know addressed it But the knuckles in this are like weak week Then the damage comes And that sucks Man In a game where you got to roll and dodge And be on your toes

I don't want that shit at all. Yeah, that game has a really violent curve in terms of like complexity and difficulty. Like for the first 15 days, every single time you go back to your cult, there's like a new building to build and you have a new inspiration to do and a new doctrine. And then you hit like two bosses in around day 20 and then all of a sudden you are not just flying through and killing the boss. You are you are either leaving or failing and then coming back with all the stuff you got. to build up your base and it's like three, four, five days before you get a divine inspiration.

For just an example, I much prefer the gloves in Hades. Oh yeah. Where you fucking, you know, and you can move and dash through. And then when you want to commit to it, get that sure you can going,

you know, like with a big AOE. Like I love that stuff. But this, this thing of just like week, week, week, week, week, week, week, bam is like, nah. Otherwise, though, if I could, yeah, really, really love the game, really charming, really fun.

And, you know, the, the animal crossing, the new flesh-ass, you know, style of, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, a smiling tree friends, happy tree friends, right? Absolutely. It's cute animals being hurt. You know, I've been loving how I'll be talking about it next week. It's not super long. It's like to do the whole thing, it's like 20, 30 hours. They just added the DLC But it's not like

You know the other farming games I've been looking at Which are like 100 hours minimum I had it so I picked a favorite and like I gave them like an am the amulet to like live twice as long And then when they died I fucking resurrected their ass And I'm like What is did you did you do any things where you gave somebody an amlet gift amulet gift Yeah I did

What? There's an early quest to do that Okay so tell it did you know it if you talk to them again, you can tell them to hide it or to show it. I did not notice that. So you can have it show amulet or hide amulet. I think is that not just a visual thing? I was wondering if it was not visual, but if it was a, it's going to create jealousy amongst the others type of mechanic.

I don't know if that's a thing. Okay. Because I did it and then I hit it, but I was like, hmm, I wonder if that actually has a gameplay implication. Because that'd be interesting if so, people getting jealous and stuff. Anyways Good good game Good shit Before we talk about my stuff

I gotta take that dog and feed him Okay Just want to let everybody know I'm going to be doing tomorrow More Expedition 33 on Wednesday And then I'm out of town for a bit I will be back Next week

In the middle of the week So I'll let you know on my socials but yeah, nothing for a couple days after now. All right, BRB. A quick word from our sponsors. Whom we love? Mm-hmm. Let's see.

This week podcast is sponsored by Rocket Money. This is the place to go. if you are currently, like a lot of us, uh, signed up to a bunch of stuff that you don't even remember that you subscribed to. If you are somebody who is regularly, you know, getting your,

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Look at this stuff. So I'm going to pull up over here right. Pranzone. I did my own... That's my weird dog in there. So I did my own little 3D model of like me and it's very quickly done and I have my name on the base and stuff and it's like it wasn't much. Look at it. But then here we go. It's like a mirror. Right. And then Prongzone made all us and then didn't stop there. There's the woolly model.

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They also do custom dice. So if you want to print your own custom D20s and things like that as well, you can do that too. All right. Thank you, Heroforged. Thanks, Sarah Forge. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify, and that is your go-to solution. If you're getting into an online business, if you're trying to get something off the ground, if you want to launch your business, or if you want to take it to the next level, you're an entrepreneur,

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Nice. It's a lot's a mouthful, but all it means is it's really smooth and it feels really good. And when it gets cold up here, like it has been in the last couple days, snow's outside, storms going kind of nuts. I just want something that feels good on my body. And this is doing that. It also helps that it puts my energy into dad mode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've needed to look at my wardrobe and consider that.

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Now available in Canada, too. So that's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Superbeast. free shipping and 365 day returns at quince.com slash superbeast. Thank you, Quince. Thanks, Quince. All right, what's going on? Ah, man, I played a lot of fucking Star Dio Valley this week. Not a whole much to report other than, man, that game's really good.

How does pasture is doing? Incredible. I'm in winter now. No farming in winter. So I got to do other. I got to go hit rocks. make friends. I've also been looking into,

now that I know I actually really enjoy this genre, I've stumbled upon what I think is like, so there's a million of these being made right now, and I'm going to assume that that's because of the pandemic and the lockdown. There are like 20 that are going to come out like this year. And they're not out now, and I had this gut feeling that like most of them are going to come out within like a two or three month span and die.

Well, I honestly assume this has been the case with cozy games for years now. Like I'm assuming that this is a space where there are cozy likes coming often and they're offering most of what you got going in Stardew, but with a little bit of this or a little bit of that thematically. So it's it's kind of a, it's kind of a weird situation. So I don't know if you ever gotten into a new genre and you're like, okay, what else is there in the genre? Like full genre. I mean, my entire channel has been that. Right. Yeah, I pop into something I didn't play before and then go, oh, what else is going on here?

So I'm like, okay, let's look at, let's look on Steam and see what we got. And it was a kind of point of frustration that I was recommended like 25 different. different things and I'm like, oh, I'll obviously sort which ones I want to check out by review score. Well, that doesn't work when they're all very positive or overwhelmingly positive, does it? And it's like, could it be that cozy people have a low blood pressure and everyone's kind of fine with the state of affairs in the cozy genre? So it either means, it either means cozy people are easier. on games. Yeah, I'm just here to chill. Or it means that this genre has tons of excellent games. I don't think it is the first one because when I do find negative reviews of these things, they are like

super detailed and mad about the most granular fucking things that no one would give a shit about. So, yeah, this, the whole point of the genre is to be unsweedy, but you can see. sweat. But then, like we said... Oh, yeah. I started my stream earlier this week in the middle of summer and I was, no, fall, I was sweating my ass off. But at that point, I was like, I was like German kid playing call of duty just fucking, ah! But then at that point, you've got your factorial and satisfactory for you, you know, like... Oh, that's, that's, that's, that's not a... I'll, Factorio feels less sweaty than some of the Stardu shit I've been doing. Hmm.

Because Factorio doesn't have like an endless ticking clock of days. Because there's just, there's only so many days until the fall festival. And I got to get my Grange up. Okay. Bro, I got to get my nine items for my variety for my max Grange. Do you get really, really sweaty about your placement of, of like, crops and like how far they are from certain things and buildings? Every season when all the crops die, I like reorient it according to what I actually have. Okay.

Because that's a potential source of sweat is, uh-oh. There's no point in changing it before the season. Are you emulating the fallow system properly? No. Are you fighting back against, was it Joja Corp? Yeah, Joja. It's just, it's Amazon. It's just literally just fucking Amazon.

And there's a thing that I actually really don't like And start out where Amazon is here to like ruin your shit And fuck up the prices and destabilize the economy and all that Or Walmart, right? And but all the items you buy at Joja costs like 10% more than they do at the local store. Like the actual, it like it should cost 10% cheaper at Joja But then you feel that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right, right. Right, right. Instead of the greed being that it's more expensive, it should be cheaper, but you're killing the local businesses. True. But yeah, no, that's incredible. I've also been playing a bunch of Colts of the Lamb. I have ascertained an enormous steam wish list of cozy games that I will be working through to some degree in the future. You're going to burn out the cozy. You're gonna. You're gonna. You can't.

And not a whole lot other than that. So Space Marine too. That game's excellent. You should give it a shot at some point. They're coming out with a new class this week, the Tech Marine. So I was like, I'm gonna dip my toe back in and see what I'm doing. Because it's been a while since I've played Space Marine. They have like a horde mode now.

They have like a, they call it siege. But they have like an endless way. wave mode now, which is like something that game desperately, desperately needed and works really well with. And I have a bit of a, a bit of a fucking, like, finger wag at whoever runs their interface. Because you do five waves. And then it says, hey, every five waves, your rewards from the activity are guaranteed. But if you keep going, you can lose them.

Right. That's the, that's the hook to it. Um, so if you want to get your guaranteed rewards, return to the battle barge, which is like the hub where you send on missions. So I clicked on start and then I went to the button that's labeled return to the battle barge and clicked on it and then went back to the matchmaking hub and got zero, zero of the shit that I had supposedly guaranteed earned. because what the tutorial prompt actually meant was go to the elevator to finish the mission and then there'll be a button that says continue or return to the battle barge

don't use the one from the start menu you dumbass you idiot that's that's horrible okay I thought of you was going to be like you know oh drop the stuff off somewhere or some shit Dude, it actually sucks because, like, the option in the main menu is literally the exact quoted phrasing on the tutorial prompt. It's just wrong. It's just straight up wrong. I also played some stuff on the backlog, some of which was of no note at all. So I'm not even going to bother with it.

Fair enough. Damn. I played abiotic factor. So if you look that up, it's going to look a lot. like Half-Life 1. Like a crazy amount, like Half-Life 1. Does a biotic mean something that is not biotic? I don't know. I don't know what it means.

What does that word mean? I have no idea. Physical rather than biological, not derived from living organisms. But it looks a lot like Half-Life 1, all the way down to having a cross-bosal. that shoots like a uranium rod. The difference being is that unlike Half-Life-1, it is a scrounge and craft

and base-building game. So you start in essentially Black Mesa and there is a portal event that causes bullshit to come in and attack you just like in Half-Life 1. But it's Christmas time. But instead of just getting guns and whatever, You are breaking apart computers off the shelves for their innards and putting couches up against doors and cooking food.

And it has like this massive labyrinthing skill system. And then later on has tons of different levels that are you going to essentially like a bunch of different zens. And it's great. And it's fucking awesome. It's one of those games that everyone plays at multiplayer, but me. Do you know those? Okay. Oh, it's such a cool co-op game that Pat will never play in co-op once, ever.

Not even one time. Okay, yeah, this, okay, I'm looking at the trailer now, and it's like, we're doing our own half-life too. And if you've got nostalgia for it, here, here you go. Yeah. Gotcha. But yeah, it's absolutely excellent. I tried out Fields of Mysteria, which is. is a bunch of people obsessed with Star Doe Valley made an anime-based Star Doe Valley.

Yep. And I played it for about an hour and was like, I need to not play this anymore because it does that thing that newer games in that type of genre do where it's like, wow, you can jump in this game. I wish I could jump in Stardu. Oh, no, I have to stop playing it. I have to stop. It's got its third major update.

Yeah. That'll be done at some point this year. I played something called... Man, like, shit plus anime being a valid... Yeah, absolutely. ...being a valid thing is like, wow. Anime's popular. No, for sure, for sure.

I mean, shit plus anime was... Souls Plus Anime was that Xbox game, right? that could be like five different games god there was the blue one and then the red one scarlet nexus and that's not a soul's game at all no no no no what was the what was the code vein because the code vein was that was that was that is that right yeah but there's also like uh uh code vein a AI hack code what's it was the was the anime one i was thinking of yeah there's a million of that shit's but yes anime is good people like anime Let's see

I also played Raji an ancient epic Which is a Highly Indian action game With a lot of voice acting And a lot of Like back and forth Between like

Oh who was it Was it was Vishnu and Shiva I think it was Okay Just back and forthing As you're doing like Kind of like God of War

Light action game Highly highly Indian is wild. That's okay. Well, you know, like, you know when you play a game and it's like, it's made in this country, it's about this culture. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

Like, you can play a game. Like Okami is a highly Japanese. Yes, you can play a game that's Japanese. You can play a game that takes place in Japan. And then you can play a highly Japanese game where it's like, you're not even playing as like people. You're playing as Japanese gods in the folklore. And I'm like, oh, yeah.

You could play a game made in Poland. Or you could play Witcher 3. Yes, yes. Which takes place in Poland. I completely understand. Yeah, the way E33 is highly French, yeah. Yeah, Rachi was cool. It was a lot stronger on its visual and story presentation than it was the game.

I also played wordplay, which is Bellatro Scrabble. Oh, okay. And the problem with Bellatro Scrabble in a, a, in a segment like beat the backlog is that I'm streaming Scrabble, which means that I get to be made acutely aware of how many more words everyone watching knows. Yes. That I do. Yes.

You're playing a word game with a crowd and you are one brain. And there's always, like it feels like the crowd's one person who just knows every seven-letter word of all time. I can just see it instantly. It sure does. It sure does. I'm down to cut to test any Bellatrol-like, so I'm throwing that on. Yeah, wordplay was really good. I finished it.

I'm like, wow, this game made me feel really stupid, and I kind of resent it for making me feel really dumb. Excellent game, great game. Does it have the juice? Hardy recommend. Does it have the juice? No, it's just super clean. It's just super clean and pleasant.

Because a lot of the Balitro clones like Aottenjo, it was Balotro fucking Mahjong or the Tetris one I talked about the other day, are like, it's an idea, but it's barely, barely executed so far. You know, like, so, yeah. Okay. And last but not least, I played a very, very interesting game called Indica. Indica, you play as a young lady in a looks like Russian Orthodox convent in the 1900s early as you go about your life and do wildly, wildly banal and miserably boring tasks

while a narrator causes you to have schizophrenic breakdowns and you will walk over to hit tasks and get weird-ass, totally non-diogenic level-ups, which allow you to go into a skill tree and level up like Catholic grief

and all sorts of shit. This looks super interesting. It's super interesting. Wow. Okay Immediately won the like bold font and branding and the banner of these nuns with yellow Stark things around them is strange and then this trailer Is like everything's taking place with like camera locked in fish eye mode on some of the cat what the fuck is this game?

It's it's very weird Indica with a K and it has nothing to do with weed Nothing very very very very fucking weird this looks very interesting like one of the early things you do is that a nun tells you to um fill up a bucket of water and and put it into a barrel and you have to get five buckets and bring them over to the the well and put them in the well and then pull the whole well down and then pull the bucket back up and walk back takes like 15 fucking yeah yeah and then And the whole time the narrator is going on about how like, this is bullshit because there's a spring just like three minutes away that you can get blessed water from.

And why don't we just put blessed water in the well? And then the well water will be blessed. And then you put all that shit into the barrel. And then the head nun comes out, looks at you and knocks it over into the water. And then you get like a level up, which I put into guilt. And then I got a fucking loading screen tip that said points don't matter. They don't do anything. Oh, this sounds so interesting.

Man, like, real life being the horror of real life back in the day is absolutely subject for gamification. And a very striking design. Oh, it's really weird. They do a lot of weird shit with the camera. Yeah. They have like a fake GoPro attached to the character's head. But facing their face. Exactly.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, the, um, No, the visual, the design choices in this are fucking interesting and cool. Right away, I'm intrigued. But yeah, no, that's true. Indica with a K. Okay. I don't like that.

One of the screenshots on the Steam page, if you look carefully, is like a 2D pixel art platformer. What the fuck? Yeah, I see it. I see it. And like, it's the kind of game where I don't know if that's, even in the game for sure. It could just be a lie on the Steam page.

Impossible to know. Wow. But that's pretty much it. This week, Pat's going to be playing a bunch of Stardu. Also, today, Tuesday, the 27th at 6 p.m. Pacific, Paige and I will be watching Fallout. They finally

pulled that time off of fucking midnight. So Paige and I are going to start the stream at 5 p.m. Pacific and watch it at 6.m. like normal people. Apparently, that shot is called a snorikam.

Oh, yeah? Which is like a body-mounted camera rig. Oh, cool. That focuses on your face in that awkward way. Interesting. Cool. You can go see that at twitch.tv. slash pat stares at and YouTube.com

slash pat stares at. All right. What's going on? A couple things. One, hey, guess what? Alex now has a fucking trailer. And holy shit. Do you get the feeling sometimes that some characters, people are the devs are like, man, I like this character.

And then some characters, the devs are like, this character is my actual child. But Alex has never been that. This is. He should have been. This is, this is, Alex, we're sorry. We're going. we apologize, we're going to cradle you and give you everything. Street Fighter 3 was the best one, and he deserves special treatment.

He had the fucking spotlight and franchise robbed and stolen from him as the new generation, as the newcomer that represents Street Fighter with his move list being a little bit of everything. They went, nah, Ryu though. And then every other game continued to switch up different protagonists. some of which we will never ever hear from again. Goodbye, forever, Abel. But. I like Abel. Abel's cool,

but Menon directly replaced. Manaw is better. And like the same way that Yep. What's her name? Acky replaces Fong. Yep. Manor is better. And if you want your RECA options with different routes, then you got Jamie. We're done.

And then yeah, the other protagonists where it's like obviously Luke and Rashid were the protagonists of each of their games Blah, Alex now coming back in this Street Fighter 6th treatment

is so fucking incredible. It's really obvious from the trailer and his music, the fact that he has two themes and they're easily the best pieces of music in the game and one is performed by fucking jam project. Now to be fair, every character that has come back

is being given like special treatment right see viper and sagat and like it's everyone is really fucking cool so far but they're going above and beyond with like you said exactly jam project and then

all of you're seeing his kit but you're seeing a billion other moves and grabs and things in that trailer going what the fuck is he doing now so do you remember do you remember what we were talking about we were talking about you were talking about whether or not they would even

allow the chop into back turned throws, right? And turns out he has a back turn for every throw. He's got a... Every single one. He's got a stance. He's got the fucking prowler stance. And I asked, all I want to see is stun gun headbutt and the stomp. And then they decided to make his other primary part of the kit is stance that goes into everything. that shit. Yeah, right? And you're seeing how much love for the wrestling side of this character is being shown. And then the trailer ends on a fucking one-winged angel. And you're like, dear God, Kenny is not just telling them what to do. He's in, the call is coming from inside the house. And you see, sure enough, he's doing is on the screen. That is Kenny Omega. Doing the mocap talking to, to the team. And 100% he's taking his favorite.

character and you're seeing Kenny's love being put into everything Alex is now. It's like, yeah, all of that, all of that from being his favorite makes a ton of sense. I imagine that they would have brought him back and made him a really cool version, but this over the top level of, we're getting jam project, probably because Kenny called some favors in, you know, got endo on the line and just went like, yeah, give him a big hero theme while he's heel turning, mind you. but the lyrics are about how despite the outer darkness inside as the soul of a hero. Holy fuck, he looks so good, man.

I think I will get to master with Ken with Kenny. Yes, my God. Yes. No, no, don't correct it. Don't correct it. With Kenny Omega. Street Fighter faster than I did with Bisoner Geef. I sure hope he's good.

I feel like, you know, to. It would be ridiculous if they did all this fancy love and he was not. Also, a lot of the DLC characters for Street Fighter 6 have been like... Solid. Too real. Yeah. Well, the thing is, is that having all those options, the downsides when you have to balance them is that there needs to be weaknesses.

And for many characters that have... Some people are not able to handle stance characters because there's too much going on, right? As long as it's only one stance, it's fine. giving someone a kit that is like a handful of tools that are like I don't know when to is its own can be its own detriment sometimes right I just hope the stance is like down and two punches just like a really really easy input I don't like that Acky's is down into kicks uh it's slightly more awkward due to the right trigger yeah I had to map um I had to map different Blanca controls specifically for using Blanca because of the coward crouch situation. But one thing that does fucking suck is charge characters are being killed off before our eyes. Yeah, that's not surprising. It's a natural reaction of modern controls.

And the idea that like, because I knew that people like kind of some people struggled with charge characters. I didn't realize that it was like all out war on this archetype, you know, people that are like legacy, like Honda, Blanca and such get to maintain those charge moves. But Alex is a character where they're like, eh, it was part of his kit of mixed things. It wasn't a core part of his kit. He's not Gile. Yeah. And it's like, man, I don't like that. Because the thing is, is charge moves because they take time to set up, you can allow them to be.

better than a move you can do while moving forward or while moving around, you know, like a flash kick is better than a sure you can because you have to sit still for a minute before you do it. But you also have to work on like how to hide it into your gameplay and stuff. And I always thought that, you know, you could make up for making a game a move that strong with it being charged. Scissor kicks for Bison are a pretty great example where they're like, nah, you know what, fuck it. Let's just simplify everything. And I don't want things to get homogenous. As long as Gile continues to be one of the most popular

characters of all time and he definitely is, there will be at least one charge character in every street fighter game and it will be Gile. Yeah, and like, Gieff is a grappler and I just, I don't like the idea though that like there's only room for, there's the default fighter and then there are the pure other genres of

character, you know? There is the charge character identity that is only that or the grappler identity that is only that and everything else has to be simplified in this motion way. Like I kind of feel like there's room for more, you know, and I like hybrids. Let me ask you a question.

So for the DLC characters for Street Fighter 6, right? Sagat's really good. Bison's really good. Aki's really good. Ed is super good. My is really good. Terry's really good.

Terry's good now. At what point do you look at the roster of a new fighting game made by Capcom and be like, oh, Akuma's also excellent, as always. Do you go,

I don't want my character to be in the base roster. I want them to be year one DLC so that they're really strong. I mean, the accusations that you make paid DLC strong so that you make people want to buy it,

is they're never beating that. Every game is doing it. How is that an accusation? If you make characters mediocre, why, I'll be fucking pissed if I bought them. It's just, it's that thing that, yes, but for them to be dominating every single time, you know,

is like, it is a business decision. It's just one where you're kind of like, I want a normal character to join the cast and ultimately fit right in. But knowing that- not like good, I'm going to be so mad. I don't like the idea that whoever you buy will dominate the meta for the entire season that they exist in, you know? Like, I don't, that that's a suck thing.

That sucks. It also sucks to have this whole like pay to win, but like the Yud and Yang edition, you know, of like you get on board or get lost. Kick rocks. I'm okay with that on one condition. And that is you have to put out six characters a year, please. Put out enough characters. Sure.

The time in between who gets to live on top is. But the feeling that like, no, I'm paying the money, therefore I should be winning with the character I just bought. My new toy needs to be the best. It's like, fuck. No, my new toy just needs to be competent. Like they can't, they cannot release a bad character. No, no, no. That's outrageous.

And that sucks for multiple reasons because there's also people who are like, I want to continue playing this game and for and for people who are like I'm competing or I'm like playing it to be good you actually kind of you have to be able to buy each character

because they're part of the game kit you know so there's a little there's a bit for anyone who like kind of plays and wants to stay abreast of like being a high skilled player there is no I'm not getting this character you know so the feeling of buying something and then being like oh well they're kind of

pointless or they suck is that's not fun but they can't just the fact that it's a like smash four of the smash ultimate every piece of dLC was ridiculous as soon as it dropped tech end as soon as the new characters out shit's terrifying right i feel like like like with faccom rom i think people are saying like no no no they toned it down a bit but like everything from eddie upwards was like kind of going insane for a while there um it just it feels like you can pull it back a little bit. Make sure they're good. Don't make it so that they're undisputed number one every time, you know. But who knows? Who knows? Maybe the plan is always, like, start high and then pull them down after. Terry. That's probably the plan. Yeah. Well, Terry didn't feel like that, but like my obviously turned into that immediately, you know. Um, Alex has fucking got the love and, and looks super don't. I love him. And seeing him talking shit, you know, and like, acknowledging the crowd booze and all of that is just so much fun in terms of...

Did you notice that they made Alex specifically for me? In what way? He's releasing on Patrick's Day. Oh. Well, how about that? For me? I mean, I thought your birthday would be more of your Patrick's day, but if you, I guess you could. I get two.

You get two. You get two. That's cool. Okay. Meanwhile, I'm born in December, so I barely get one because that shit gets rolled into Christmas. So, hey, that sucks. We're all, we're all eating good over here. That just sucks so much shit.

Life is fun and totally fair over here, you know, enjoy, enjoy your two. Couldn't you just celebrate a half birthday? That's what some people end up doing, but that I didn't, nobody did that with me. That wasn't an option. You should do, you should celebrate a half birthday now until you catch up. All the way to 40s. So it could take a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, yeah, whatever. I mean, the, the, this shit barely is anything until until the kid is old enough to care and then it becomes a thing again. Yeah, yeah. Um, Alex fucking rules. That's amazing. Um, some other stuff going on. There was a big old series of Dragon Ball announcements this week. Um, they had a big, big release of stuff. So sparking zero DLC, um, Super Sayan, Bardock, Demon Piccolo, Super 17, all that stuff. Whatever. That's fine. Uh, new game project, um, age 1,000, which apparently is the timeline that, the Dragon Ball MMO that got cancelled was going to take place in, so some existing Toriam a note stuff

that is getting pulled into its own game thing. A 40th anniversary special video showing off some panels getting animated. That was like, that looked all right, look cool. And then a new Dragon Ball Super series starting called Dragon Ball

Super Galactic Patrol. So Dragon Ball will continue. I'm watching I'm watching it looks like a Twitch stream of Sean Schimel

watching the announcements get announced at the at the Dragon Ball conference just losing you shit because like every time they announce one of these fucking things he's like yeah

like every single time they announce a new Dragon Ball anime or nothing he's just like yeah I'm Goku yeah I think they also announced a the it's like a Battle of the Gods remake I believe with Yeah The Bearest there

Battle of the Gods Kai essentially um which is weird because it was already a movie yeah well I mean I didn't I missed maybe I should fucking catch this instead uh what is a really there's this feeling now that sucks which is I'm watching the 40th uh anniversary video, and you're seeing the Toriyama panels starting to get animated and move and stuff. And you're like, oh, that looks nice. That's a nice way of bringing it to life. Is this AI? Is this AI?

Did AI these panels or did someone actually animate these? Oh, that's a cool. Look at the Friza and Goku are moving. And I just- You can't do that. You can't live your life that way. It sucks. But you're going, you're doing the fucking, this is suspicious.

you know um but no there was some 3d uh stuff that looked really faithful to the to the original you can't you can't go down to the glory hole and sweat too hard about what's on the other side you'll you'll ruin the whole thing um i will peek through the hole before i do anything else thank you very much i will stare inside and see what the fuck is going on in there oh i wouldn't I'd never go to one of those things. That's disgusting. Ah, yeah, I see. You set the analogy up and then you're like, and then you get it. I tricked you, you're disgusting pig.

There you go. Coward. Absolutely. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. I think what the announcement, like, not, not, I haven't been obviously following super and stuff, but like, I know they announced the, um, there was the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, where, like, kid, good, he was happening. again just now. And I guess I kind of thought was like, I kind of thought like, oh, that's doing a weird side thing that's kind of like keeping the franchise going. But it was actually canon and continued. It was just its own like weird new chapter. Um, with Daima. And with this

announcement, I think it's something I, I didn't quite put together was like, Dragon Ball is now back and will continue forever. Has Dragon Ball ever not been back in the history of the world. Well, between super and like it actually being not around, like Z. It was like, yeah, Dragon Ball's done, but we're still making... I think there's been a day in my life for 20 years.

I haven't seen Goku somewhere. There was a, no, before this whole Bura's super sane god Super Saiyan stuff started and they brought Dragon Ball back, it was done. They were continuing to make and sell things as an IP, but the story was like closed off. It was like, UB is the end of the timeline and that's it.

Did you believe that then? Well, yeah, because there was no more story. They were just making games and selling products. I don't believe that shit. You know? I don't believe that shit for a second. I think that like committing to retelling things or like, yeah, Kai and doing things where you're like you can re-release stuff or whatever, that it felt like, hey, we have a giant.

world fucking class IP that we can keep using but like I didn't necessarily until they reopened up the story moving forward in time with all this current stuff

which if I'm not mistaken I think it was explained to me that Super takes place before the finale oob scene this is all post Z pre ub yeah okay so There's still a, there's still a timeline ending, ending to make it there.

Yeah. So, anyway, it just kind of, I don't know, we spent a lot of time with no Dragon Ball story happening. So now that it's kind of like back and there's multiple series going on, it's kind of like, oh, shit, like in a, in a post-Huriama world, I, you know, I guess there will always be more Dragon Ball, you know. But manga's end sometimes. and I thought this was a case of a manga that ended, but, you know, yeah. Like, even if you go on to Boruto or fucking, you reanimate the end of bleach or, or animate for the first time, I should say, or whatever the case is, you open it back up. There's always got to be money being made. Make no mistake.

I always assume that's the case. But, yeah, it's like, okay, there's, like, proper, just the story will go on regardless. I would have assumed that in any case that I think post-toriamather would be a, well, I guess it's a new start of a new series name with Galactic Patrol and then that'll come to an end and then they'll just announce a new name perhaps. They're going to do Dragon Ball. Okay. Not a lot of strong feelings about Dragon Ball. That's fine. Moving on.

No, it's forever. I can't feel strongly about it because it's forever. and I never believed that it wasn't forever for one second of my whole life. Well, what about the 10 years when there was no new story happening in Dragon Ball? The mean the 10 years where I saw Dragon Ball shit everywhere, every single day, that stuff? But none of it was new story. It was just retellings or products coming out. Sure, sure. All right. Yeah. in any case

there is that there was the Mario Galaxy trailer Yoshi's there and um sure yeah there looks like he'll not doing his taxes looks like it's doing they're doing what what you do with the with the sequel on that one seems fine um

Ubisoft Insider reports that watchdogs the franchise is completely dead. Wow. There will not be any more games. Now that is something I already knew and didn't need confirmation on being dead. But you knew that in your heart, not in reality. No, I knew that when I looked at the Legion sales numbers.

See, I always think there's a chance that that iconic hat from watchdogs might show up again somewhere, somehow. Now, so shit. No, now that the company is about to be carved up like a fish, I'm, this is the time to announce things like this and or just let us know ultimately that beyond good and evil is, was never real. And you all bought it even when we made a trailer and showed you some gameplay and a monkey and page and a page.

I never believed that shit. even once. Like those always looked like the most, yeah, fucking make whatever, I don't give a shit. And they were never followed up by anything ever. I wanted to believe.

I wanted it. I wanted it. What do they even get out of that? Like that a bunch of nerds are like you're going to come out one day. So honestly, the likely you get the, the, the, the people that care about the name of this game are like, yay, but then really it's just a new genre that comes out.

Oh, not a Junichari. It's a new game that comes out, but it's like really, but it's probably an existing genre and it just finds a new way to enter whatever space. Like if you wanted a hero shooter, you go, we're making a new fucking beyond good and evil themed hero shooter. It's, it's, um, uh, uh, Nazgoth. All right? You a fan, you a fan of Kane? You a fan of Nazgoth. existed way more than Beyond Good and Evil 2 ever existed.

For sure, it came out. What I mean to say is that when you see it and you're like, is this actually a sequel to the thing? Is it even the same game? What are we looking at? What is any of this? And nothing made sense and it went back to the drawing board four times or whatever. And at a certain point, you can just imagine any major business meeting being one where they're

like, okay, what are we spending? money on over here. Does the current market makes sense? Can we still just release a single player adventure game? No, the time to make that was like 15 fucking years ago. And then when time goes by and they fucking

wasted all of it and nothing came out, then it's time to start cannibalizing and morphing this into the current meta, which is like, can we make this something else that can make a lot of money over time? Is there anything else popular that we can turn this into or whatever

the fuck the case is. But anyways, watchdogs, uh, uh, that's, that's the word on the street. Also canceled that, uh, Prince of Persia remake. Uh, which one? The Sands of Time one. The second Sands of Time remake.

No, the first one. That came out. Am I crazy? Wasn't there a Sands of Time remake that came out? Are you all right? No, I'm thinking of a game. that was it based on maybe the movie? Didn't it come out around the same time as... We've forgotten Sands?

What am I thinking of? Thinking about Pop 2008? No, not Pop Zero. Look, I obviously was not following the Sands of the Prince of Persia franchise super closely. So I thought there was a game that came out that was a Prince of Prisia Sands of Time remake. But nope, okay. What came out alongside the movie? Was that forgotten sense?

I want to say it was forgotten sans. And what was forgotten sands? A fourth game in that trilogy. Gotcha. Okay. There we go. Okay. I thought it was a remake.

I'm my mistake. Okay. It was okay. I wasn't paying close attention. It was okay. Yeah? It was all right. That trilogy kind of sucks.

That first one's like a fucking rock star and the remaining ones are just like, fucking weird. I only played the first one and loved it and I never went into fucking metal thong fucking massive edge lord shit. I think the third game carrying on from the

secret ending that no one got from the second game was a bold choice. Really bold. The franchise kind of becoming spiritually succeeded as Assassin's Creed like Assassin's Creed had its own premise and stuff that I thought was cool from the jump.

But yeah, it did kind of like suck, at least for a while that it was like, oh, they're not, they're completely giving up on that stuff. But then they started doing things with it again, you know. And with Lost Crowns still awesome. It's fucking incredible. Lost throne, whatever that game is. Yeah. And I heard that the pink one was all right too.

I remember being really confused why they put out two. side-scrolling Prince of Persia games simultaneously. I think they're just one, like one was made by the was it the Dead Cells guy?

I don't think so. By the way, it's no longer pink. They completely changed the game's color palette and art style so that it would be not nearly as interesting. Yeah, this, this They looked at it and they went, this is too unique and looks too good.

Prince of Persia. This conversation is awful. We have no idea. None of us are following Prince of Persia sharply. So I have, I'm literally going, is this? Do you remember? Was this kind of a thing? I saw announcements for it and we talked about it. But I don't know. But yes. Anyway, all I came here to say is watch dogs dead. Yeah. Watchdog's dead. Prince of Persia's dead.

All right. What the fuck is happening? Multiple canceled Assassin's Creed games. What the fuck is happening? with a yakuza 3 Kuami. Oh, so it looks like shit and there's a sex abuser who replaced one of the actors for the main characters. I only saw the first part of that. Yeah, so it's been a controversy going on the whole time. So sometimes they replace actors for the Kwame games.

You mean that shitty brick texture I'm looking at is not the worst part of the story? No, so they replace the guy who plays Rikia with a guy who just loves getting into sex abuse scandals. And there's also changes to the story that just basically says, hey, remember that guy? He lived. Which they already did for zero. Which they did for zero. Yeah, yeah. Which is like maybe the worst thing they've ever done in their franchise of like not,

even like letting characters survive unexplainably. Oh, that's Hamazaki. Who even gives a shit about Hamazaki? Oh, okay, my mistake. So wait, Hamazaki's actor, not Ricky's actor. Okay, so are there multiple characters who they're retconning survival

across the games now? Oh, there's one. There's one that's kind of a big deal. There's the one I know about in zero. Yeah. But is there another one? So there's two, there's one character that you meet in eight,

that bafflingly survives from three. Okay. And I'm hearing that the other character who hard dies also lives and makes me think that they want that character to go do something in nine, which would suck because the character's a loser. No one's ever really gone. Yeah.

Well, that fucking voice acting dog shit aside, I saw some screenshots of side by side areas of three with the remake and it's insanely dog shit. Like the lighting is awful. So it looks like and and and and apparently some folks are saying that's just the demo area. But then an IGN thing, they got their hands on the full game and they're like no, no, no, the whole thing looks this bad. So I played a little bit of pirate yakuza and a bunch of areas in that game have something. wrong with the lighting. Like there's a legitimate, like,

it's overbloomed or something. Like something in their engine is screwed. Like, it looks like there is a toggle that they have on by accident. Looking at the brightness of everything here and the way that the textures are unlit

on everything. Every sidewalk, every surface, the water itself, everything is completely just like, it's not self-lighting at all or self-shadowing at all. It feels like this is a simple render and lighting thing that can be fixed. But for whatever fucking reason, the thing that they're putting out into the world looks like this. And I swear to God, like the pillar with the brick texture you can see wrapped around it looks like the shit I was doing in 3D Studio Max in high school.

Like just going make a rectangle, put a brick texture on it. It exists now. It's possible. The bare minimum. That making a new game every 14 months for 20 years does start to catch up to you eventually. Is it possible that Negoshi and his gang of dragon are paying to sabotage the production? It's much more likely that everybody who really gives a fuck on that team.

the, the, all the, all the, all the pros are all working on, uh, another century. And, and, and the, the, the, the younger staff and the less experienced staff are working on the Kawamis and the pirate adventures. That, that, another century did look like a pretty game. But I would like to believe that dudes are coming out of their, their cubicles and going home. And then a bunch of, a bunch of dudes are in the parking lot going, gra, eh. That's possible. It's not even improbable.

And salary men are going on their way home. And that's negoti's work as the gang of dragon sets up. Fuck. This looks bad. It looks bad. So here's the thing that's actually really important is that Kawami, sorry, Yakuza 3 kind of sucks. But already. And normally you'd be like,

skip it. Except, oh, so sorry about that. Whoops. Except Yakuza 3 is the emotional core of 5, 6, and 8, and guidance. Okay. Like the set of the Yakuza 3 are wildly important for four of the other games through lines and endings.

Very sorry about that smack in the mic. Appreciate it. It wasn't that bad. I played a little bit of it in QA. We had it in the office for some evaluation. But yeah, obviously, I just got to take a look at it at the time. And I remember seeing it and being like, wow, this is like Shenmu, but everything is cooler and faster. Like normal game made for human beings.

I feel so vindicated. I remember Matt brought it up and I remember like I was arguing about him with Shenu but it was lots of people there were lots of people

that I was like saying for years and years and years who gives the fucking shit about Shenmu that shit's ass we have Like a Dragon now and that was like a full decade before finding out that the Like a Dragon series

are direct unofficial sequels to Shenmoo. Okay. Give me a minute. I might have some words. I... Pat? Hmm?

I might owe you an apology. Oh. Oh, shit. Give me a minute. And we'll come back around to this one. Okay? Oh, shit. Give me a minute and we'll come back around to this topic.

But... Today or late? Like, what? In about a week's time or so. A week's time? In about a week's time. All right. Ooh, boy.

Is Yakuza a great replacement for everything that came along? Yeah. I see. Yeah, I see. Well, that aside, unfortunately, I was hoping that like each of these older games getting remade was a good excuse to be like, oh, well, perfect. can jump on the Kawami versions. Kawami 1. So here's the thing.

Here's thing. Yakuza 1 is old and busted in a way that sucks like few games do. Kawami 1 is better, but not actually that good either. Yakuza 2 on PS2 is better than Kuami 2. And both versions of 3 suck. Okay. But if this is not in go watch Clems talk about Drake and Guard instead of playing them territory, right? This is play it, but know what you're getting into.

So there's something that's really interesting that the Yaka's a series used to do, which is they used to give you full game recaps at the very beginning if you wanted them. Right. full recap of like every major event and character. And the last time they did that was for four. And that's one of the reasons why four was the one that we started the LP on. Also, four is the first of those that I can easily recommend to everyone because it kicks ass and isn't fucked up. Those first three games kind of fucked up in a lot of ways. That fourth one though

That fifth one Ooh that zeroeth one Ooh that sixth one Ah Seven though Yeah I do get a feeling At least maybe I'm guessing here

Based on zero That like ultimately there's a formula That like you lock into Where you're showing up for The serious plot and the goofy side quests But the walking around Camarocho stuff Is like It is what it is every time

Right You'll see marginal improvements every game. And then when they jump generations, you'll see above average marginal improvements. Yeah. Well, in any case, I guess, like three, there's just, there's no answer here then. Nope. The answer is watch the cutscenes of here, here are you hanging out with the kids at the beach? Bummer.

And then, and then make sure to watch all the dialogue where he goes. goes on the quest to feed the puppy, and he talks to the little girl who says she could never date a black person. And Kira Yu doesn't push back on that at all because he's like, yeah. And then go fight a bunch of goons that kidnapped the kids. And then go fight a bunch of goons that kidnapped the kids again. I thought those games were coming at each other from the Korea, Japan, China angle. I didn't know we were catching strays.

Very rarely. Like, Jesus Christ. I just thought I was... I was once in my hands as fists is fine. I can live in that world, you know? Yeah, he does push back. Okay, I forgot. Yeah.

All right. It's a small racist child. Don't worry. She won't be important. She will be important. Anyways, all right. And the only other... thing was there was some there's currently a lawsuit that Hasbro's shareholders are taking to them

for printing too many damn magic cards apparently. Such a good follow up to last week, isn't it? It's kind of like, I'm trying to get the gist of like what exactly this meant because yeah, last week we talked about like if you want to play the game apparently just print the fucking cards out and play it for fun, just make your proxies. Nobody, if you don't want to get into the fucking FOMO bullshit market of this stuff, to which I have friends who reached out and were like, yo, cool, check out my cool proxy decks. That's all I've been doing. We, like, there's people out there that are just enjoying the gameplay part of things. And I was like,

yeah, fuck yeah. So I want to be clear. So this is the shareholders of, of Hasbro suing Hasbro. Yes. It's not like a weird ass individual. And it's not like specky. card scalper freaks. But apparently the card scalping aftermarket pricing, I think the deal is that like they printed more of the things that were the highest value to kind of, based on what the aftermarket was doing. And this breached quote unquote the fiduciary duties of the directors and officers of Hasbro by overprinting things that

were supposed to be more rare? So they're saying that they're overprinting past consumer demand and wasting money essentially. And it appears that the core of it isn't that they are printing too many cards. It's that they're printing too many different cards.

Oh, too many sets. Yeah, because every fucking two weeks, there's some fucking new pile of shit. And thus people are not buying every new set. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. People are actually

skipping some sets because they know other sets are coming later that they want more. There's no urgency behind getting the current one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, it's a bunch of bullshit. But it's good to know that the

shareholders of the playing hard company are also psychos, just like every other shareholder. Well, that's very different for what I was expecting, because, I mean, I thought when I saw it that it was going to be like scalpers going nuts because overprintings hurting their margins or whatever the fuck. But it's actually you're making too many card products. Yeah, it's shareholders being mentally unwell. To be fair. Because they're evil. To be fair, I feel like.

the people I know who follow magic the most are in a perpetual state of anger and frustration about keeping up with shit in those games. Doesn't that just make you super excited to try something? Is that like super exciting? Get into it so you can know who's into like Game of Thrones or Magic or League. Get into it so you can be bitter like all of us. fucking breakdown. But is this not also catching up to all these game franchises too?

Sometimes when I jump in. Like for a minute there, I was jumping into Silent Hill and it was like, yeah, get through those games so you can be miserable like us, you know? Yeah, well, you, you, you came in right at the inflection point of like 15 years of trash. It's fucking, it's so weird, man, but, you know, and that's a, there's a lot of game fight. There's a lot of fighters where it's like that too, where it's just like, now you need to get into this fighting game so that you can get good at it like we are and then hate it forever

and hate every new thing they're doing because their decisions make no fucking sense whether or not I like Monster Hunter is going to be up for grabs in two and a half hours I'm not sure if you're aware of that

Wilde's performance patch on PC is coming out at 6 p.m. Pacific today And if it sucks again, I'm going to be so fucking mad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So you can be a fan. You are a fan of Monster Hunter. I adore Monster Hunter. I love Monster Hunter. I will talk to you about the galactic hip check from Plezioff or Green Plezzi all day. But at any given three year interval, you can be as upset and as mad at everything having to do with it as possible. Like, wilds is a good

There's things in wilds that I don't like. There's things in wilds that I do like, but when I got like a couple months away from it, I'm like, a lot of my opinion on that game was under this thick sauce of terrible performance. Right? Like, because every time I played it, it ran like shit on my very nice computer.

And that was, in addition to me eating a bunch of Monster Hunter world terrible performance sauce, but this one has more. So it like affected my perception, which means if I go back to Wilds in five or ten years with a newer new computer, my opinion will soften. Not change, but soften. Being a fan is suffering. You know what that reminds me of? I don't know if I said it last week, but we're talking about getting into the genre, but the but the standout game is the game and like the the spinoffs and all that shit is like don't even

bother monster hunter is that yeah it's it's the king of that oh man i got really into monster hunter what other hunting games should i play and people go the other monster hunter games um the what the what was it for you right the one right before world right was the ultimate was the shit dude that's the one you got super pissed off at me because I was playing an early copy on the 3DS while during the podcast. Yeah. And I just wouldn't stop. And I was like, I can totally do the podcast. I can totally do it.

And you're like, you really can't. You literally cannot. Well, we learned that lesson, didn't we? Here we are. That being said, every time your face gets blinded out with white, I know you're opening a fucking browser up there or booting something. Well, yeah, I'm looking up the thing you're talking to me about. Yeah, as long as it was. long as it's not gameplay.

Oftentimes it is gameplay. Like if you'll mention like half the fighting games you mentioned I've never fucking heard of. So I go to YouTube and I go, no, no, no, I mean literally being like, uh-huh,

I'm just doing my dailies over here. Like, like, like you, you could hear, you could hear brain leaving for, for playing other game thing going on. Um,

all this to say, if you're out there and you're printing monster hunter cards and just playing with the homies off your printed at home shit. You're crushing it. You're eating good. And I salute you. God bless. Bro,

I would kill for a monster hunter car game. Hmm. That doesn't already exist in some form. There's no tie-ins. No, it doesn't. You'd think that would print money. I think you said that by accident,

but I agree with you. I mean, there's street fighter tie-ins with, like, magic and there's, like, Street Fighter. I mean, there was, yeah, but,

but like, Do you mean, do you mean like a card game video game or do you mean like physical cards? No, no, like physical cards. And what I would do is I would buy the cards and then I would put them in a little card pack and then I would put them in my closet and be like, I have the monster hunter cards. That would be cool if the game was there's a monster on the board and then the players are all playing together to beat it. Yeah, that'd be cool. You could do a kingdom death monster hunter. Right.

And then maybe like, yeah. And then maybe there's a thing where, like, you put a booster pack down and then, like, there's, like, parts that you all take from beating the monster. So you carve it up and split the rewards and get to keep those cards or something. That could be cool. There's something there. It could be. All right. Let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to Castle Super Beastmail at Gmail.com. That's Castle Superbeastmail at gmail.com. We got one coming in over here from Kay asks dear high guard and battleborn Oh man I'd rather be high guard I gotta be high guard I'm high guard No I don't want to be back I'm not you're not Randy Pittsford No but not just then you got to be in his porn folder

I don't want to be in the porn folder There's a USB stick and it just says battle on it. Randy, did you write Battleborn on an unremarked porn folder so that people would think BattleBorn is popular? I'm convinced he made that subreddit. I'm convinced. Do you guys find that the live service genre is surprisingly limited in what genres and gameplay

styles can actually incorporate? Absolutely. We somehow keep seeing barely different iterations of the same types of games and that it continually proves that you have to get in at the ground level to stand a chance lasting at all. Yeah. There are like four different types of games that can do it, and that's it. We just hit on this earlier, but I really do feel that it is like all you see is people,

every once in a while someone invents a new idea, and then everything else in the lifesaver genre is just copying and trying to tweak. And I feel like it's a microcosm of the industry at large, really. You're just seeing it, yeah, you're just seeing it in a smaller scale with games that are like, you know, um, live service in this way for a particular like shit period of time not even live service like I'm I'm looking at

I'm looking at like literally 30 different star do valley like games on my fucking wish list and like a lot of them a lot of them are like a little different I like a little I think when it comes to live service to like there's a lot of people that don't know how to convince anyone to spend monthly subscriptions payments to play a thing.

And there's a couple of people who figured out how to do that. And like, you have to. And when you're trying to convince someone to give you money continuously for a thing, if they don't really know what your thing is yet, the idea that they're going to stick around is really low. because, you know, like, you can try out a game in a bargain bin, and if it ends up sucking or whatever, then sure, you took a stab at it. It was what it was, and it's over with now.

But you can't do that with a live service game. It has to be able to convince people to stick around, and thus you have to communicate in a familiar language. Thus, you have to copy things they already know and go, it's like that other live service thing that you've been playing, but now we do our own version. You know, it's a hard thing to convince people. Um, yeah, that, that, that is, it's, it's wildly limited. It always has to have something where like nearly all of them succeed because you have to be able to sell advancement or power.

And that by default, like, limits you to like a very specific set of genres. And a couple months ago, we talked about how like single player gaming in general or anything that comes out that is in the, the state of. age is kind of like fighting against the major live service beast a fortnight or so and then they're going to basically distract you for two weeks before the kids go back to their fortnight. So if you want to pull them off of the current live service beast they're on and convince them to stick around the other one, you better be doing everything that one already does or at the very least have an analog for it, you know, and that's kind of impossible when you're starting out. So, yeah, kind of sucks.

Kind of hate it. Anyway, here's another one coming in from Shade, who says howdy clown face Magwai and domesticated predator. As a 37-year-old with an 11-month-old, fuck everyone who doesn't like the baby sequences. I'm getting past and future. Last week, you mentioned the Xbox Blades. There was another feature on the Netflix app where you could watch movies in a party, and it would put your avatars on screen like Mystery Science Theater. I remember that.

You could react, throw popcorn at the screen, et cetera. I thought it was hugely popular. All my friends used it. It died silently. are there any features you thought were a huge improvement or hugely popular that died with a wimper that you miss? I did not know about that feature. That sounds pretty fun.

Yeah, it was good. I never used it, but it was really good. Watching shit together is great. That's like, what a cool idea. I'm trying to think, I can't... They're definitely... Yeah, because I mainly use Steam now, so, like, every Steam feature just improves forever.

I hate the death of split screen. I really, really hate the death of couch co-op in general. It feels like it's a rare thing these days whenever it's back. But, you know, I'm all for it. I also... Yeah, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry.

Hold on a second. I got to go. Oh, me too. Cool. That works. Hey, everybody. That's the end of our podcast. I got to go.

Okay. Take it easy. See you next week. Bye. Bye-bye.