Castle Super Beast - CSB359: Shadow The Hedgehog Loves This Podcast: Return To Steam Community Forums

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

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Yo, yo. Hey, Willie, how are you today? All right. Boy, we got, this is a fatty podcast. We got a big boy podcast. This is a big, big one. This is, this episode. Yeah, this is the podcast with a fat ass.

This is a big booty Latino. You can see this podcast back from the front. You can, like, oh, let's go. This is the big. Do you need to go to the doctor? You seem like you have a problem. Shadow the hedgehog is. is attracted to this episode of the podcast.

All right, that's good. We're not going to beat that. That's perfect. Hey, what's up? I'm back home. And I have spent the first time that has, what am I'm trying to say? Yeah, just start over. Start the whole sentence over.

Yeah. It, my fucking, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, it's, there's baby, yeah. Baby's, uh, baby's, uh, the little, little bit of, uh, got to, got to, you got to meet some of the family, you know, there's some extended family and stuff going on. And, uh, because the, the, the, the mat leave is the perfect opportunity for that. There's a little bit of an extended, you know, hey, meet the kid while you can while she's a couple months, tour and, uh, you know, had to come back to work. So it's time to, it's time to start swearing. Just be, be free. Will he just walk around the house and swear a lot. I mean, I'm dong out. I'm just fucking swanging. Yeah. I'm swanging. You know, that, that much is happening for sure. Bro, I was, I came out of the shower the other day and my toddler was like, dad, put your penis away. And I'm like, oh, geez. Okay. Holy fuck. Well, I, I wait for an empty house on that one. But at the very least.

It sucks, man. It's fucking not cool. No way to, no punchline there. I'm just like, fuck. Nizbebe. That's it.

That's all. And you know you're getting a taste of? You're getting a taste of the absolute existential crisis that's getting real close for me, which is, all right, little man, go go have school. And I'm just going to be here for a whole day. and you're not going to be here.

Like, I just, I, I see it. So you know what makes it worse is, like, video call every day, but she doesn't understand, like, what a screen with my face on it is? No, that doesn't mean nothing. So it doesn't mean anything. So there's no warmth to it. It's just, oh, yeah, I'm staring at a picture of view on a box. You're looking at a moving picture.

And, you know, she's seen a couple of those, I guess. Kind of like the frame we have, but it's like, I don't know. Okay. So I'm like, oh, but it's, but it's me though. And she's like, yeah. Yeah, that's too young to appreciate that. Fucking. Fucking sucks, man. Well, at the very least, it's given you a little bit of a break. I'm sure you got some decent sleep. Fuck break. Baby. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck off.

Oh, that's cute. I don't care. Hey, you know what? You've had plenty of time to get, like, just, drill down and get good at the next big thing in fighting games. That's 2XCO. Plenty of time to practice. All right. Let's start there. That's the exact noise I wanted to come out of you. I mean, I like, I'm, you know, here's, here's, here's the, here's 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, the, the, I'm glad it's not canceled.

I'm glad it still exists. We'll see what that means, but it obviously doesn't bode well. You know what? Let's backtrack a little bit. Yeah, half the team of 2XCO. I've gone on the assumption that people don't know what we're talking about. Half the team of 2XGO just got let go. And that's 80 people of 160.

Very suddenly as well. With very little notice. A lot of heads up from, or rather, not a lot of heads up, obviously, because, you know, people on Twitter that are FGC folks. You know, we've seen Nerd Josh, Pat the Flip, Alex Jaffe, and I think, yeah,

Carol Leon as well, Caroline. Some of the balanced team people, some of the people that created some of the character designers, etc. Yeah, all go likeo. And it, I guess the idea is,

you know, they're going to maintain what the 80 members remaining to put out what other characters are already done and, you know, move forward with that. And yeah, I mean, when you just look at it forensically, you're like, okay, well, 10 years of

development. I have one thing. Apparently the plans for 2XCO long term are going to be revealed next week, according to the Rufelmonger. Yeah, I did see that as well. So we're going to get more news about that. And I know prior to that there was the uncongable update that basically was talking about shortening combos and, you know, making some changes gameplay-wise.

I, I, yeah, that's a thing where like, hopefully what the most of what that means is like 40-42nd Warwick flipping you around shit is going to stop. But like, in any case, yeah, I, you look at it forensically and you go, okay, well, 10 years of development is fucking crazy long. It's, and I think we can all agree that, that it was crazy. they got to a 10-year development spot. That they, like, they rebooted the game two or three times. That is a lot of grace.

And it's for a free-to-play game as well. So you're not going into a stress standard release cycle. You're not going into it. Even, like, things that, like, publishers love, like, pre-orders, or you can, like, take some numbers to, you know, get data or whatever. It's like, yeah, no, you're just going into a free-to-play sort of, you know, riot ecosystem. And I remember when, you know, people that I know weren't that on the team were basically just like, I had somebody on the, somebody working on the game basically just went to me like,

hey, buy our skins. Please really got to just buy the skins, you know. And I was like, yeah, okay, I can see that this is a situation where once it comes out, it's going to, you know, test the waters on PC for a bit. And you're going to see. And I think a lot of those insane pricings that you saw in the skin. was a like, let's make up for this 10 years of development. And I think the, this is all just speculation.

But I think the console release was a like a dot on the calendar. That was like an X, you know? So there's a lot of little pieces here. And like, I think, I think there's a value in going through like every little piece because it's all kind of like fascinating from like a like you said, a forensic perspective. Now, this is not a post-mortem because the game's not dead. This is, thank you. to exist for minimum two years from today.

It's important to put that up front, yes. Because they're going to get that year of stuff out, and then they'll, at the very least, go maintenance mode, something like that with Rootera, something like that. But you would, but like, you would get the impression that it is dead in some ways from the way people have been, like, kind of talking about it and stuff. Well, this is a large scale downgrade of potential. And what you're seeing, what I would say is that you're seeing a deflation of hype because overall there's a feeling of like, oh, when you see that happen, people are like, well, I don't feel excited about, you know, something that I see going downhill with this. That's a, that's not promising. So that's, that's the energy, right? But it's not, but it's not like, it is not a dead thing.

So there's a lot of little pieces. And like, so the timing is, as I stated on social media and many other people goes, the game came out three weeks ago. what the fuck that's insane how could that it's like okay that's not exactly true not exactly true they did come out back in september was that the right month but it came out in in last quarter and it's been on the pc beta for a while and now we're on the console side of things and it's been a couple weeks into that and from the statement that they've released which is the only thing that we have i don't have any inside information i don't think you have any either but from that statement, they said, we've seen like a dedicated core associated with the game on PC and now console, but they're not acting in the way that we need them to act.

But in turn, and also just in terms of like iteratively from what we do know, we are currently playing 2XCO Alpha 2, right? Yeah. If we're starting with, if we're starting with World Warrior. Yeah. So, yeah. If we're starting, we went through like Project L and that game never came out. And then we went with 2XCO version 1. Champ Edition, super, super turbo, alpha 1. So like we run the gamut on these.

We're around circa alpha 2. Actually occurred is that, and this can, this is only my supposition based off of my gut only. I don't know anything. But I am under the assumption that the requirements from right. management for what numbers or what kind of popularity the game needed to hit were responded with absolutely we're going to kill it we're going to do really well etc maybe knowing that that wasn't a reasonable goal but with the assumption that if if you know the canon said that shit's fucking ridiculous you're crazy we're never going to do those numbers out the gate that the game would be canceled that day rather than make it to market but what I feel

more strongly about is that the reason why this is happening a couple weeks into the console release is that there was a moment where they're like, okay, it's beta though. It's not out yet. These numbers aren't like indicative of the future of the game. Wait till the console release

happens and then we'll get all the PlayStation and Xbox guys in here and we'll be able to get the numerical data on their spending habits to see what the and then what happened was is that it was somewhat clearly replicated from the PC experience.

And from some of the other rumors to as well, it seems like, you know, like, it would look to me as if like, okay, acquire, like seeing rising thunder, acquiring, um, uh, um, radiant, um,

and, and, uh, working on this. Like there was definitely a, someone high up somewhere that was like, yo, okay,

there's a fighting game passion project, league of legends thing that would, be cool. And as we expand and whatever, like, it would be, uh, uh, this is a genre we can go into and, and, you know, succeed in, right? Um, they did, it, it seemed as if like, you know, with cards, with Rune Tara, with Valerent and all these other things as well, you know, the, the, the, there's a very clear incentive to not just be the League of Legends company. Um, yeah, they, they branched out in a lot of stuff. They had a bunch of little small games. They had Rune Tera, they had Valerant and they have, uh, now 2XCO. And, and they have, and they have, and they have, and

had high tail, which they then dropped, and then hightail came out by itself. And they are working on an MMO, which they have also restarted development on. Okay. So they have a, yeah, they have a way of going about things that is like, you know, I mean, speaking of high tail, like, they have a long tail on development where it's like they believe in the thing and are willing to let it go and let it restart and whatever in the hopes that it'll eventually get where it needs to be. Now, obviously, there's no possible way that like something after like this long of development with this many with this much going on and and you know it sounds like it was a complex game to make because they had to restart that many times and you know um when you see you know you don't see 10 years

worth of content in terms of those characters the amount of the in the game and stuff you just see probably lots of ideas that went back and forth until that it you know was iterated upon and released um yeah there's no way it's going to be profitable out the gate in a way that, you know, is going to hit someone really high up's bottom line, right? So here's the problem. And this is the big, big problem for Riot's perspective, right? And specifically for the 2XCO team is like, there is no way that this could possibly have

come out in the black, like enough in the black that it'd be worth it right away. but that's because it's a fighting game. Yeah, the genre can't do that. Because Valerent all took about six years to build. And it came out and Valerite was very successful right away. And that's the problem here is that people are going, well, you can't expect it. It's like, but that own company did have that experience

where they spent a huge amount of time in investment on something with the expectation that it would blow up right away. And it did blow up right away. And that was a shooter. And again, the people they brought in were like, you know, ground of the, what the community, what the fighting game community was in North, is in North America, you know, like people that can explain better than anyone else can what this whole FGC thing is, right? But if you want a Monday morning quarterback, even if this game were not 2v2, 1 v1,

and even if it released with the 20 or so characters that Tokon is now promising, timing, doesn't make those 20 characters fun to play, guys. But that's neither here nor there. We can complain about that later. Yeah, actually, it's not here. It's there. But I'd say even if it was like a 25 character roster with 1V1 traditional fighter that was what it needed to be and for everybody to be like, oh, yeah, I'd still don't think that would.

have hit, it would be in the black in this situation. So, I think that this is a huge variety of timing and design errors that is being made by people who maybe are too in love with the thing that they're making to see it objectively. But they all, and they also have the grace of someone high enough up. that is willing to give it more space than a traditional studio with a traditional, like, chain would get. Like, the amount of leeway they're given because of belief in the project is immense. And I'm going to say you can see that continuing in the fact that the gate, it's not canceled.

It's continuing to exist. You can still play it and there's still more shit going to come out. Right. So, you know that XKCD comic about how people. don't know math and how experts wildly overestimate the level of knowledge that people who don't

know math are into. Yeah, like the input for a round trip and Stinger, of course. Yes, yes, that was made today about you and me talking about Devil May Cry, right? And I feel like there's something going on there

with 2XCO and developing a fighting game. So, it is unsurprising that a bunch of Marvel players made a tag

fighter for freaks that is not really shocking yeah those mixes are sick what is shocking is that they didn't think they were making it for freaks

that's the weird part so the 2XCO like stated design ethos is to offer a fighting game that is free and instantly accessible to everyone who plays it

particularly League of Legends players because they have the characters that they like. As a result, it has led to a game that has one button specials and no motions, right? The control simplicity is

and combos are like loose and movement is loose and it is easy to control and literally pick up and hit buttons. Then they made a game with six fuses in which six, five, in which every fuse

is the most degenerate version of a tag game mechanic. Freestyle tag is disgusting. Crazy shit. And will annihilate anyone who's new to the genre. Assists by themselves are not as immediately

understandable to the point where this is the game that taught me how to use assists. Right. So, right? Now, and so thus you kind of have something where you go, hold on, are you making this for beginners? Are you making it for freakbeasts? Right? And you go, is it both? That's confusing.

And I think the philosophy you're seeing is one that you saw in Rising Thirteen, thunder to some degree, but just take this dialed up more, which is low ceiling, low floor, high ceiling is the thought process, right? In the end, if you, if you are fighting, in the end, you have, yeah, if you're going for low floor, low floor high ceiling, you want the, I'm sure part of that is like, games that are low, low floor, low ceiling don't survive. They don't make much money and they don't really last that long.

You need a reason to stay. They're flash in the pan, and like any other genre, right, like really high, like skilled players doing cool things makes beginners interested, makes people that don't know what's going on go, oh, what's that, right? So that is a thing that is worth aspiring to and showing off. And when you have a sick fucking Evo Moment 37 where people don't know what's going on go, oh my God, that's crazy shit, what the fuck, let me find out what this is. those are smart things to design for, and you get people who can make that happen. I think when you have a situation where low floor and low floor players are playing against each other, you're hoping that it'll be fine because they'll be competitive with what they can keep track of.

And then once you scale up and scale up and scale up, high versus low is ridiculous. But your hopes are that you're going to fight people that are going to be playing. at the same speed and pace that you would, right? I think that, yeah, I do think if they kept things too simple, right, that would have, like, not paid off. I think that Rising Thunder was a good example of kind of both, but that high ceiling and Rising Thunder wasn't super high, and it was already kind of hitting its limits, right? And Rising Thunder would have had other issues for, like, the long-term health of that game.

It would have. But yeah, and I think Tier 2 as well, you know, the basic idea of like the appeal is you have a billion popular League of Legends characters that could show up. Anyone can be next. The roster being what you tune into more than anything is like when you comes to making money, like even if the game is like more complex or less or so, like there is definitely when you look at like the, you know, world tour. sort of people that are buying the cosmetics in the Street Fighter 6 and stuff like that. There's a bunch of people that are just happy to like get their characters, get the costumes, mash a couple buttons and enjoy it, you know. So I think like we're back to talking about the roster to some degree.

We are because that's that's all it. That's what it comes down to. And and now and so like this is this is like kind of I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. But like the announcement of the cut in staff is more damage. to the game than the cut in staff because the people that like this game and want to evangelize this game to others and get people into it, well, hey man, by the end of the year, there's going to be 16 characters. And the next year, they'll be 22. And like, I don't know if that's true now. Yep. Don't know. And, you know, like Caroleon, for example, Caroleon, rather, will

design like Alawi. And, you know, some of the people that we saw, like, were, you know, people who are making some interesting characters in the game, I feel like, I'm not imagining the thought is on the table to like what to design beyond what currently exists with the restructure. You know, you have half your team gone. That is a whole lot of non-essential extra things, quality of life things that are now on the back burner. Now you're just kind of survival mode, I imagine. and once they get comfortable, then they can probably think about, okay, where do we go from there?

But the thing I don't imagine this team would ever want to compromise on because of who it's made up of would be like making lower effort characters that come out more frequently but don't have as many interesting things going on. Yeah, that's another thing. And I don't know which came first. characters in 2XCO have bespoke mechanics per character. Everybody has...

Very interesting stuff. Something. That is another layer of very significant complexity to throw on... Hey, you know what? Hey, Jimmy. Jimmy not play a fighting game guy. All right, you want to learn

Darius and Allowie? All right, let's teach you about bleed and setting up tentacles on the stage. that's like Darius's bleed mechanic is the easiest by far and that is still more than an average fighting game. If you give a fuck though, which admittedly jumping online with a buddy and pulse comboing is... Bro, you're totally right. I loved it when me and you sat next to each other on the couch and jumped online. That's the killer. That hurt me so. The fact that the couch shit, was not there.

I'm going to, that's the blow up I'm going to fucking carry with me forever. I don't know why you even made it a tag game

if you cannot have two people sit on a couch and play. It is the most baffling decision. And I know, it is counter to the game's own like stated goal.

And I know that like the inherent issue there is because of modern online account system. as opposed to back in the day when it was like, who the fuck cares? You're just playing together, go.

Or they'll just duplicate the primary user account. Right. But nowadays, online account systems and each controller being tied to a profile. Like, I remember, like, there's ways around this, but I do remember, you know, like 360-era compliance where it was like, no, a controller must be tied to a profile and you can't just duplicate it, you can't just duplicate controllers, et cetera.

And then you can get waivers and so on. And nowadays you can do other things. Regardless, people don't care about that. They want to just sit there and play with their friend on the couch. That's a ridiculous thing to not do. Now, whatever the case is, though, again, as this is not a post-mortem, I'm kind of like, this is a fun game to play. I'm glad that it's not, you know, a death announcement and that we know that there's a

set amount of content that is coming for a while now. but yeah man it's a fucking bummer when of course you just see like yeah a bunch of people that you know um you people that have the ability to like work on games like this like the the you know the the nerd joshes and the hoesies of the world and stuff and all the people that are there fgc people that you know i know you don't really get these opportunities uh in north america that often if ever right if you live in japan you got a punch of studios where you can go get a gig. If you're like a Woshige, which is the player who was a competitive, he was a competitive of a fighting game player, and now he's like the Street Fighter 6 battle planner, right? And like,

you have the opportunity to go land a gig there or go to land a gig at Arcsis or go land a gig at Band Dynamco or whatever, you know, but like a fighting game project like this in North America is extraordinarily rare. So you got this and, you know, I would say to like invincible versus also like brought in some people that, that we recognize. Um, you. Yeah. You have a bit of a weird thing too where like over the time frame that this game was announced and when it eventually did release, there was a dearth of tag fighters at the time. And that got filled up right quick. And around the time of release, we were looking at like, why is there so many people fighting for the throne of Marvel versus Capcom when there was so much silence but a few years ago, you know? So, yeah.

think, I think that like, um, the idea of the free to play fighter is something that can, you know, it can be sustainable. It can be something that can make money. It can be something that can get people on board. I think the idea of the fighting game that breaks containment and recrubs the, the fucking Jesus. That doesn't exist. That's not what the genre is. I don't think it'll ever necessarily be that.

There's only one point in time that could have ever been possible. Like literally in the history of the world, there was only one point in time. Street Fighter 2 arcade machine? No, so Project L got announced on October 16th 2019. If instead of being announced to be in development,

despite the fact that it had been in development for three-ish years at that point, it was releasing in October of 2019 five months before the pandemic with the only fighting game that had rock solid net code and thus a giant

open audience of people to play a fighting game because they're stuck in their homes all the time, then yes, that game could have broken containment and become very popular regardless. FF14, like,

it looks like it doubled its goddamn subscriber number during that time, and that was an already established MMO, but still. Yeah, I think though, like I think optimal conditions and timing would, would make a huge difference for sure.

I think there's a limit on the level of general interest for, you know, the genre. And I'm someone who, you know, I've had this discussion with the Reggie many times. I used to believe in the Savior and I no longer do, right? That savior doesn't exist. That's not a concept that applies that whatever that's going to realistically happen in this way. But it doesn't need saving. It's fine, right? Just play and enjoy the games you like.

What I think you're describing, though, in optimal conditions where it comes out, it's a pandemic, everyone's at home, NEPCOD is good, and everyone recognizes their League of Legends characters and they jump on board and play with their friends together. This thing would break through and reach for the heights of Mortal Kombat. You know, that would actually be awesome.

But that's the mountaintop, right? Like, it would go as, it would reach through and break containment and be as possible as MK. I need to make one complaint. Sure. I like the way the game looked in 2019. Oh, the shading. Like a completely different game.

Although I prefer the art style now. But more than anything, and I can't get over it because it goes to like my roster complaints, the stage that they are playing in in that five second bit of gameplay is a desert stage from a place called Sherema. which meant that in that version of the game, Azear was planned to be a fighter. That location implies a character. And that version of the game is way more interesting than the version of the game that we have now

because it does not have Azear. Yeah, but unfortunately, though, I feel like the scope of the team cut and this discussion is now beyond the roster pick discussion, right? I feel like this is a... I think that had they not rebooted this game multiple times, we could have gotten a game in which we were splitting hairs about a roster because the roster had 20 to 24 to 30 people in it,

and it was a solo game. So we didn't feel like the roster was halved. And then me and you griping about the roster would be like, like the same way we gripe about Street Fighter's roster. Right. But it just wouldn't be this mass. of profitable thing under those circumstances, right? You, you, and then the other thing, too, is you can go like, all right, let's pull back on, like, if you have, you know, good, fast, cheap,

pick two, right? And then you go, all right, you get your giant roster and you get your, I'm only bringing, I don't truly believe this, but I'm only bringing it up because I've seen people talking about it, but like making it a one v. one more simple approach thing, right? but let's say it plays like Blade strangers like let's say it's like and it's nothing interesting at all or or

not even that let's be as generous as possible it is a re-skin of Rising Thunder they just reskin then awesome you get you get yeah you get a you get a decent fighter that has a bunch of characters people love and stuff in that Is that enough?

So the issue I have here is that I think this game had 10 years of leeway, and that leeway got to exist whether or not it was in development or out. Right? If they had built this out in three years, they probably would have gotten like multiple years of like, nah, let us. But bro, it'd been in dev for some. so long. It's crazy. I don't want to sympathize with some number crunching psycho management piece of shit. But like it's been in depth for so long.

And the idea that you go and you go, how's it doing? They go, it's doing okay. What the fuck, man? We were making best friends videos when this shit started development. It's, it's, the 10 years is wild. And the thing too, I remember with the timeline was the part where it was like the timer started in everyone's brains, not upon project announcement, but upon Riot acquiring Radiant. When they bought out the Rising Thunder company, it was like, oh, we know what this means. And that's when the actual clock started, regardless of the announcements.

And that's also when the clock started for Riot. Yeah. We just bought a company, and they'll probably expect some kind of return on investment. What I will say is that, like, yeah, I, again, I'm happy that it's not, like, just completely fucking dead. Whoever believes in it and whatever is left there, I would like to imagine a possibility of, like, stabilizing and then maybe some sort of comeback story here. But that's, right now, the writing does not look good on the wall.

At the very least, again, if we have another year of content or so, then cool. We'll see what happens in the meantime. And for obviously everyone that's unemployed in the middle of this video game crash, that fucking sucks. It was nice to see that everyone on the team is getting six months of severance. That's quite great. That is quite a good bit of handling that you don't see other people getting fired in these situations getting. so, you know, very cool to see that. And, like, again, it's just like, man, I wish it was as simple as, yeah, and there's other studios working on games like this where these talented people can like just, you know, switch jump over to and like start working on.

But it's like there's just, there's just not that many in North America, you know. but yeah that is a solid half year of those people being taken care of after putting many years into the game so you know that's nice to hear let's see what happens I need to I need to

I have one last thing that I have to say and it's about the numerical thing I saw a really fantastic reply to me going what the fuck you know this is happening and somebody in my comments said, I can't believe

that to XKO players, all of my opponents of which I know for a fact have spent like $100, because you can see, are being told that that's not enough to keep development going the way that it is.

Because you're, like time, price, like you're seeing the spike of that, the weight of that 10 years is, ranking those skin numbers up, you know? It's what you're seeing.

I think that I don't know if it's a factor of riots above the company decision and how they would ask for the price to go. And I don't know about like what is it because there's like a large upfront cost or whatever. All the characters being locked, sorry, six characters being locked out of the tiny roster is not great. It's not super exciting. But on top of that, the sticker shock on a costume is

too high. It's too high. It doesn't, like, they have the rotating shop to activate your like, oh, no, I could miss it. It's high enough that that's not activating enough. And you're only going to play two characters. And what I...

Right? Yeah. Well, and so what I saw is like just the people's saying that like, oh yeah, but they figured this out with Valerant already. So they're taking the, they're taking the economy lessons they learned from their other gajonras where this made money and applying it here. Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense because Valerant is catering to degenerate counterstrike. And I saw, and then I saw other people like posting like, um, what happens when the FGC meets real video game, uh, economies, right? And you're seeing like this type of fucking rotating shop shit and all that stuff.

that fucking the FOMO systems and all that shit that sucks. So remember when we talked about a peak and the peak devs were like $8.8 is actually $5? Yeah, right. Okay. And all that? A fucking skin in 2XCO costs the same as Street Fighter 6. Buying the gate. Yeah, it's cost of buying a game.

Yeah. It is full. And it's impossible to separate. You can obfuscate it with the coins and the credits and all that shit. And the thought is, there will, like, this is four whales that care about the cosmetics that much. That is, that is. If it's four whales, then put the whole shop up available right now so that they can just go crazy. Whatever they want.

Yeah. Yeah. The rotating shit is, I goddamn hate it. One more, one less. You know how what happens when I see the rotating shit? It's like, oh, I really want that cost. I can't fucking. I can't fucking justify $28 on a fucking blitzcrank skin.

That's fucking absurd. And you know what? Yesterday, before all of this happened, I bought that blitzcrank skin. And you know what the thought that pushed over my good sense was? I got paid my winnings from the box jam slam. Oh, okay. So my brain went actually to X-KO. paid me.

Okay. But most people aren't in that situation. I'm very simple about it in that I'm like, especially if it's a free to play a game or I'm like, no, I like this. I enjoy this this much. I can put a number there and go, yep, I do.

Right. I'm willing to do that if I want this and I'm enjoying this this much. The idea of the like, I mean, it feels like we're so far beyond the like, you know, don't reward the predatory practice world. we are. No, we're infinitely beyond that shit. Um, but, uh, uh, one thing before I forget what I was going to say, we're going back. We're talking about the, the version of the game that could have been just fine, which would have been, no one would have been mad at re-skinned Rising Thunder with a bunch

of League of Legend characters, right? Here's the thing. I think that game could have come out and existed and probably have sideskirted some of the troubles they're having now. Um, I feel like, you know, for better and for worse, the ambitions of like the team and the people who acquired the team, they're looking at this, the way they're looking at Valorant and League and all their other games where it's like, you're not just going to enter into the space and not transform it in some way we want to like make something and do something that stands out aside from even just the characters or whatever, right? And so in this case, the whole 2V2, the co-op, the duo's thing is the identity thing that kind of made them, I think,

push forward as hard as they did with this design. Because it is true that like no one had ever really capitalized on this. Street Fighter Cross Tech and fucking didn't do anything with it. And, you know, duo and crews in Smash isn't really the same thing. So like I think the vision of yes, this will be big because of the league characters, but also getting you and your buddy to sit down and play together, which again, we just addressed one of the, of the issues there, um, was part of why they wanted to push beyond the idea of just making the

rising thunder reskin, right? I don't believe that. Because they say it. So how come I can't do it? So how come you can't do it? Yeah. Like yeah. And I and I and I, and I, and I, and I think, how do you spend all this time in dev? And I bet you that's our goal. And I, and it comes out and it's like, you can't do it. And I bet you, I bet you. It's probably because it's like, oh shit, let's re-rebell. the game to not be as nuts. Let's get the fighting to be not as tedious. Let's work on. Oh, my God, these characters are complex. The shit's going on. Fuses got reworked. All these, the, the burst system, all that stuff. And then getting ranking to work a certain way. And then you're kind of like, okay, um, couch co-op, which is harder to do on consoles is on the list of things, but it's not in

the highest priority when I think it should have been. But it, I can see that being something They're like, yeah, we're talking about it and we'll get around to that in a season or two or whatever the case, you know. Hey, I want to play a game right now. And this is the least fair, most disingenuous game possible. And I'm sorry to anybody who worked on this that hears this and goes, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about because it's quite possible that I do. I would have traded every single minute of development time on every fuse in the game for having couch co-op in. this thing. Yeah, it's, it's, and that's a, that's a, that's a too, because one, you remove uses from the game, which are a like a huge part of the games like gameplay loop problems.

Yeah. No, I, I agree. I can, I agree with that. I want to know which came first. Fuses or the understanding that the roster was going to be really small. Because to me, fuses feel like a non-unified system to make Brom feel like five characters. I think you take the knowledge of games like, you know, Marvel games where you have different assists and then you have like CVS2 where you have different grooves and then those make the characters play fundamentally differently. And you have a lot of people on the teams that are like, you know, that admire those designs and remember fondly games where you have lots of different ways to play the same characters. and I think you then also bring in the idea, which again, didn't work out perfectly, but the idea of,

and if you want to do Juggernaut, you can, but it didn't turn out to be the thing that we're hoping it would be, right? You think, where it's like, it's actually the same and you're fine to play as a single player character because you're just, you're not, right? It's not the same level. I think Juggerna might be like the best example

of why the fuse system was like a massive waste of time because they're spending, balance time balancing juggernaut at low levels because juggernaut at low levels is crazy like when you're just starting out juggernaut is super strong but then it becomes a joke at higher

levels because freestyle and 2x are so good and it's like why don't you just not have any of those? And I think too as well like because I don't I don't think that fuses are a waste of time when I think of like when I think of the people that are playing it that are like hey we know

like fighting games and whatever their main thing, the team that's balancing and working on that stuff is like, we're working on the, does the fighting game play fun part of this? And then the, then the team that's working on the, can you sit here online with your friend on the couch and go? Is like, they're not the same people, right? But still, can you go online with your friend on the couch people, even though the people that have to figure that out are not the FGC people that got hired? This is still a higher priority feature that should be top of mind. Like, there's no, there's no, there's no getting around that. There's two guys having like a really silly semantic argument in the live chat right now.

And one of them is super right. It's super wrong. And it's that Sage Jan put out a really great video last week about why freestyle is so popular at the higher levels. And it's because the game's meta keeps shifting to what is a really broken thing X character can do with certain fuse. right so like timo like ruled the roost with double down because and also a jinks for a little bit because timo got to do a fucking ridiculous stupid thing with double down that other people couldn't do but now that we still have the echo yasuo ari hegemony or what if you want to call it um they excel in freestyle because of the way that their assists work and since they're the best that it's the freestyle show

Also, in sheer numbers, because I didn't see that video, but I will say that in sheer numbers, every fuse creates a, let's call it a cortisol spike. I like that. Right? There is a cortisol spike that occurs when you're fighting against a fuse. And when you're fighting against freestyle, it happens twice, right? Yeah. There's a moment where you're worried about what. your opponent's about to do when their double assist is coming out or, you know, with their double

downing and switching over to their partner. But when you're seeing a freestyle, you see it happen once and it's not over yet. You have to continue being like, oh, and then what? Right. So, yeah, yeah. The only way around it is to lab your jester gooting, of course. But the fuses are in the situation where it's having these wild swings of it's double downs patch. It's 2X's patch It's Reestyles patch And it's like The fucking point of the things is being lost

Because whoever is really good Dominates with one While we're pulling out the magnifying glass And getting into these things though I mean I don't want this to make it seem as if like And without that this would have made all the money You know it's like no If only they had listened to me

If guy who's never worked on a game in his life Pat we've already established this That if the game had my favorite characters the game would have been successful. Okay, Willie, I'm going to stop you right there. I'm going to stop you right there because there is a pearl of truth in your statement. There is a world.

No, no, no, no. There is a genuine pearl of truth in that statement was because the opposite version of that statement is true, which is this doesn't have my favorite character. I'm not interested. And the more people that is true for, the worse. And right now, that's true for a weirdly huge amount of people who are into League of Legends. Yeah. And I think too as well, like when it comes to the, um, uh, not even like the,

the functions, uh, discussion, but more so, okay, game simple, no fuses, just well made, one v one fighting games made in North America. Um, um, that are fun, good to play. What do we got out there? Well, there's one on my shirt right now called Punch Planet. Oh, yeah, I didn't know where Punch Planet was made. It's literally right here. And this is a great game that has nothing complex going on with it.

It's like Street Fighter fucking two. And it's got a bunch of cool characters. And yeah, it exists. And it's fucking great. But there's, you know, it's not League of Legends characters. You know what? If I can have one more magnifying glass moment, and it relates to the cannons specifically,

because back in 2016, the canons were the potential to be heroic figures. Like, these dudes are going to fucking save fighting games. Why? GGPO. Net code, man! GGPO is the- G G GPO's going to save fighting games.

Well, I'll tell you what. It did. It did fucking eventually get every one of these stubborn studios to fix their bullshit. Yeah, absolutely. And guess what happened? The cannons who saved fighting games with GGPO got to watch fucking street fighter come out with their dream. which is, hey, big fighting game with good net code. Years before them.

You missed it. You, like, you guys should have been first. You should have been the fighting game that every week for the entire CSB podcast ever, me and you were going, what the fuck is going on with Capcom? Why can't they have net code like Project L? This is bullshit. It's been years. but instead

Street Rider 6 came out and Street Rider 6 has incredible net code and Strife came out has great net code and now instead of being like I can't believe there's a fighting game that's free and has the best net code and you can play it oh my God

instead it's like oh yeah fighting games have good net code now and here's another one with good net code yeah no so honestly to put a bow on it it's basically like you know bummer that fun game has

half its team size, you know, let go. But also this project has been given an insane amount of grace. And I'm, you can only be so surprised, I guess, after the amount of time. But I'm still like, and I, and I'm looking at the messages too of like the team that are like, you know, like, hey, I just got let go. Still believe in this game and hoping it does well and stuff. I'm like, yeah, I hope so too, you know. I really like to XKL. I'm playing it every. day. I'm hoping for the best, man. My son asks me at 7 in the morning, am I going to play the kitty cat game?

Because I play Timo. Right, right. And I go, yes. And I play 15 to 20 minutes of the kitty cat game. Yeah. And I'm climbing up through Emerald with Timo and Blitz. And you know, and but

like I said, it is, it's not a post-mortem. And you know, it is a hype dampener. And like let's see what the fuck this turns into you know what I want them to tell us next week genuinely what would actually like soothe some of my chest

what are the characters that are going to come out this year just straight into the I think like I maybe it's because it's a free to play game and maybe the rollout is a different thing it feels weird that this game that they want us to be excited for long term I don't know if the characters that I like will be coming to

it. They could do that. They could basically go, all right, here's our timeline. And then they can put a point where they go, this is what we have planned up for the next, you know, 12 or 24 months. And then they can just go like, after that, we'll have to see what state we're in. But yeah, I don't think it would be a bad idea because you do want to do something to raise spirits at this point and get people give people a reason to give a fuck or like not feel as bummed out as they currently do if the game's going to continue hold on somebody's in this live chat's actually useful today someone says that our our opinions on how the game won't die are going to age like milk no no no no no we're saying it's not going to die this year and we'll see what will happen later

but they have committed to broding out this year's worth of stuff of the 2026. Correct me if I'm wrong, but riot, so they tend to, it seems like, let shit, like they're giving, they gave it a, true Terra still exists. It's just a, a skeletal husk. Right, right. So, like, yeah, it's not, there's no promise of this continuing to get updated. or content or anything or whatever after what is already made is coming but like let's see what that turns into you know and I'm imagining the idea of keeping it going

is that in the time frame that what's already being worked on is then scheduled to come out let they can see where the game is at what it's making and whether it makes sense to continue going or not right but it seems like they don't pull the plug easily over there compared to other places.

So I, you know, if you, if I'd be measuring anything at any other studio by standard metrics, I'd be like, oh, yeah, they would have killed this a million years ago for various reasons. But like, they let shit rock. So I'm like, all right, if we're doing it, let's see what this becomes because, yeah, it's a fun game. You know, that's it. Also, I think they should have hit Echo and Yasuo and Ari and Timo with that Nerf bat within, a couple of weeks. Hit him harder.

Like, like, like, I think it was nuts that for season zero of that game that a roster of 11 was actually a roster of four.

I think that is crazy. Yeah, the balance stuff is... And yes, one, and you're still the best characters in the game. And some of that is like,

it's like the kid, some of that is the kit, right? The identity... built too good. The identity of the kid. The moves they have, being faithful,

like you can't turn Echo into something that's not Echo. An Echo on paper is one of the sickest fighting game character designs ever. You know, gameplay-wise, what he's doing is rad as shit.

And if I didn't have to fight against it, I'd be cheering. That fucking down H in the air with Yasuo fucking haunts my shit. It's so dirty. But these are, but, but,

These are different, these are multiple different conversations. Yeah, no, they are. Separate from the large one. If only yes, they had to add that double overhead. The game be doing gangbusters right now. My time, my time killed to X.O. Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous, you know. And I mean, yo, there were a lot of people,

there were a lot of people out there praying on the downfall, you know? And they prayed harder. They prayed, they did, like, they did pray harder. You know what, man, I got to tell you, I had a preview that this was going to happen, like in my gut. Because I did, uh, I did the Caitlin stream. Mm-hmm. Like, Caitlin came out. I did a stream of it.

And I started up a private lobby. It's like, all right, guys. Come on. Hop in. Like, one guy. Oh. Like, you've done, like, Street Fighter Six community events, right? Yeah.

And there's like a line down the fucking fighting hub. I had a room full of people when I did the two XCO nights, but some of, and like admittedly, like some people like, I remember Solidus couldn't join because he was on a European server or whatever. Yeah, but like the one that I did was with Caitlin and was the console launch. What day was it out of curiosity? Well, it was Tuesday. Okay.

It was Tuesday evening. So, it was right after the podcast. Okay. No, it was the podcast that week was Monday. Okay. sidebar, I used to do getting to fighting games on Thursdays and when we jump online

I would get very little matches with people moved it to the weekends Saturdays because guess what, that's when people are home on a Saturday night looking to jump online and play some games. So midweek is honestly just not as like good for a random fighting game afternoon. I've noticed.

I would... The switch over made a difference when I changed it up. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway, that's a whole lot on the, on the subject. But there's other stuff going on.

Thresh would have saved it. Just saying, just saying. Well, even Thresh is like, even though Thresh could be dropping in fucking three months time. He could be dropping in like four weeks, yeah. You know, what? Yeah. He's not.

It'll be driven, probably. And the correct Thresh, not this fucking handsome human guy Thresh bullshit. Heimerdinger would have saved 2XK. Oh, man. Hemerdinger would have ruined that game right out of the game. That would have been unbelievable. I mean, I will say this. Like, it does, this is a, as someone who's used to playing games that, like, I'm playing

something and I'm continuing to enjoy it while people around me are going. going like your shit's dead fuck off whatever like yeah this game now this game now fully enters that right i like you can just play and still enjoy your game while people are like going like it shit's dead or whatever but um i'm like okay well that was really quick for this one that does have an effect though right and it definitely has for people who are getting into two x go or into two x go it has a monetary effect on your willingness to buy the overpriced costumes when the the the existence of the game is a question mark. Yeah.

And this is a quantifiable thing. You know me. I don't like it too much, but riding the wave matters. Absolutely. Like, as somebody, I'm someone who's like, if I like a thing, I'm just going to play it on my time when I feel like it as I want to. But if you are a newcomer to something, being there with. the wave is a huge part of what will make you want to stick around

and anything that interrupts that wave is crucial. It can be detrimental. We used to, before we rehashed it a million times in a row, we used to get the question all the time, hey, you guys seem really excited about fighting games. What fighting game should I get into?

And our answer was universally the most popular fighting game right now. Whatever, whatever year we answer. that question, it was always whatever the thing, the game with the most players

was right then. If it looks cool to you, was my caveat. Yeah, if it looks cool to you. Because if you look at Tekken and go, I'm not, that's not for me. It's like, yeah, don't, don't, don't do that. Yeah, but like when Street Fighter 6 had been out and it was Street Fighter 6 is like, Wave, we were like, it was Street Fire 6. When it was Strive,

it was Strive, when it was World Combat, we said fucking don't. And you know what? Just don't. What does happen, and I've watched this occur, in real life is I've watched people come in for Street Fighter 4 kind of just, you know, ride the wave with everybody and play it and then go like, oh yeah, these are pretty fun. And then randomly go like, oh, what's this shit over? Is that melty?

Melty? But what the fuck is it? Oh, whoa. Hey, this is kind of sick too. And then just fall down a pipeline. And then before you know it, you're in Discord calling out uni matches, right? Trying to get uni two sets running. And you're like, you know, you've demonstrated that you're somebody that is like willing to

go that hard for the one thing that you love and you're okay living in a world of like you and 50 other people who you know by name will be playing this game forever you know and that's fine for some but if you are somebody who joins and is like I want to get into third strike right now and you jump on fightcade you get ready to talk you just hey hey Hey, hey, you get wazzled, right? You get wazzled. You get turned into a Justin Wong. You get turned into a Justin Wong YouTube video is what happens.

And I'd still wash anybody who starts, I'm going to get in the fight. Is that how you want to go? Do you want to go forgotten dead in a Justin Wong Wazler compilation? That's no way to go. That's no way to leave this mortal coil, man. There's a PC gamer article this morning about this. the late, I think her name's Molly. I can't remember her last name.

But she basically said the fighting game community is extremely strong, as in like resilient, but it's small. True. And she basically goes through the article. I'm like, who the fuck was this game for? Was it for league players? Then why is it so degenerate? Is it for existing fighting game players?

Then why is it a niche within a niche? I think it's right. I think the answer to that question is, like I said, a little bit of everyone, low ceiling, low, floor, high ceiling. It was for Marlon Pie. That's who the fuck this game was for. It was for Marlon Pie.

And it was for, I'm going to make the sickest characters ever and you're going to have to deal with them. And it was for a combo fiend so that when Warwick crosses you up and wall bounces you, he goes, ooh, you know,

yeah, yeah. And, and, and it is for those people I played and ranked where there's like one, like Echo who's really, really good, but there's like a Darius who barely knows how to play.

And like the two players have a name that shows that they're almost like a couple or something. You know? And you're playing like people, like some friends or a partner is playing together. And you're like, okay, okay, okay. They're like one person is showing their partner how to play the game and they're spending their Friday night playing together. And which I fought a bunch of teams like that. And I was like, that's cool. I wish that was more.

Oh, you know. And this is like, this is pure anecdotal gut, right? And it's based off of my ranking. I think less people are playing the game now that the console versions have come out than they did in season zero. And I say that because

the people I'm fighting in Emerald right now are stronger than the people that I fought in Master on the way to Grandmaster. Like, I think, I think the population of the game got crunched because people are much stronger at lower ranks than they were last month. So it did get crunched because the number. Well, also, it's also because like the numbers were lower and then slowly scaled up and so did skill, right?

But yeah, there was that initial ranking period. Like, it did compress for sure. And then the other thing, too, is the effect of the new lobbies has been that, like, you are. are physically in lobbies with like wild ranges of skill exactly you know so you're seeing you you used to be in a room with less people but you're all within the same range and now you're in a room full of people but there's beginners that have never played and sonic fox there with you at the same time you know yeah uh anyway okay moving on um how was your week my week was great i had a great week. Wonderful week.

Starting off, I was at a concert on Sunday. I went to see Final Fantasy New Worlds out in beautiful Victoria on Vancouver Island. Not distant worlds. No, distant worlds is the other one.

Distant Worlds is the really, really, really big one, which we missed because we forgot about it. So we went to New Worlds, which is a smaller scale concert. It's like a more intimate concert. We ran into some of the boys there. Some two gentlemen who recognized us.

They were very friendly. And not weird. If you go to a video game concert in a city, you are going to, yes, you're going to run into people who know us. Yeah. Had some particular bangers. I did a little weepy concert cry over certain picks. That being said, pretty good. excellent performance.

Some minor nitpicks that I don't know, I don't go to enough of these to know if they're minor enough. No track list or set list at all. Oh. So walked in going, I wonder what they're going to play. Okay. Unusual.

Which is kind of strange because like Final Fantasy is there's a couple songs in that. series. Yeah, no program. Yeah, so distant worlds does have a program and they, you see what's going to be on it. But there's a couple of hidden ones, obviously, the biggest bangers are like surprises to get the pop off the audience. You're also, the thing with these concerts, to keep in mind,

is they're touring, but like the musicians aren't touring. The musicians are local, right? Well, the conductor was definitely touring. Yes, that's the conductor. The conductor. The guy who does distant world. So, so the conductor and a couple of the people on the, will go to a city and they'll find local orchestras and work with them to play the songs. And that's how these these concerts are like, I guess, possible, you know, or whatever. But I found it. I thought it was a really, it was a very strict, because man, Final Fantasy's got a lot of fucking music. And I've listened to it at some point over decades, right? It's kind of a strange experience to listening to an orchestrated rendition of a song that you know, but you can't quite place

because there's too many options, right? Like, I didn't want to spend the entire rendition of Find Your Way from FF8 going, is this one from eight or nine? They didn't put it up on the screen? No. They would say afterwards, and that was, force your way and then find your way. Okay.

There were some moments where I was like, which one is this? Okay. Which like, maybe I'm not a big enough of a fan, but considering the music spans all the way to fucking 87, that's tough. This is, this is very much sounding like location and, you know, show makes a difference, right? Yeah. Because I've been to a couple of them here and there's a screen. you can tell exactly what's playing because it's on the fucking screen and the sprites or the models are doing their thing while they're playing as well. Yeah, that's distant worlds has that. Yeah. But a new world apparently doesn't. Okay. And on top of that, I think that there are some songs I did not expect to hear that I was thrilled to hear. I got to hear close in the distance, which I was not expecting. I got to hear insatiable, which I was not expecting.

and a couple of others. I don't think there was a single song from six at all. Damn. And that was like, me and Paige, because Paige's, like, adoration goes from the year 2000 back. And the, the concert was like overwhelmingly

from the year 2001 onwards. Right? Yeah. Very, that's really weird. Yeah. I guess it's just such a, because I'm like,

They're always going to hit, like, they're not going to do a bunch of it, but you're going to hit Dancing Mad. Like, that's also, that's going to almost a guarantee. Maybe this is me being a nitpicky little bitch. But when the conductor, who is, I think he's the guy who's running the show, was started the show with Besade Island. Right? Bessade. F10. It was a very good rendition.

He's like, and that was Basad Island. Oh, no. Final Fantasy 10. And me and Paige were like, are you, what? Mm-hmm. Like, like, just, just like this, like, mm-hmm. Brutta, no. Brutta, how could you?

Huh. Yeah, okay. But overall, it was a, it was a very pleasant, very nice concert. But I was a little nitpicky about it. Um, wait a little bit and distant worlds will come back around. Yeah, I know. And catch one of those because like that, that should be a lot better because I, yeah, a lot of those things were not happening there. Uh, it actually just made me go, man, I got to go to distant worlds.

Like that was the takeaway from it. Um, on top of that. So that was a nice experience. Uh, got to. play a couple of games this week. I did a sponsored stream for No Man Sky yesterday. Did you?

And I'm doing a sponsored stream for No Man Sky this Monday as well. Interesting. It is interesting. What are they selling? I don't know what's happening with No Man Sky that they're all of a sudden like, hey man, because it

is a fairly concerted push. Huh. But a double sponsored stream and a TikTok is not like the usual. That is a big push. There's got to be something new dropping. Either there's the final update is on the way or they're getting ready to transfer off of No Man Sky promotion and onto Light No Fire promotion. Right. And so there's that being said, going back to No Man Sky like 10 years later, man, man, it's really nuts to see just like It feels like a completely different fucking game.

Like they've just constantly worked on that thing nonstop the whole time. Down to the part where I loaded into a death planet that every single element on that planet was something that I know wasn't in the goddamn 2016 version. For a second, I thought you were pulling a blanket up to your chest. Yeah, it is a blanket. It's my stinky blanket. it looked like a sheet was coming up and then a dog was attached to it yeah man it is yeah he's a blanket incredible um did you so restart um oh yeah yeah okay my old file was so old it was like this shit ain't gonna boot the version of the game this fucking thing is attached to you go fuck yourself okay uh so that was cool uh i also played um Let's see. I played more Star Doe Valley.

Yeah, no. It's the fucking peak. I played some of the Monster Hunter's three. Monster Hunter Stories 3 demo. They put a lot more work and time and money into this one than they did Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2. Like this feels like they really want stories to be like a big boy addition to Monster Hunter. That demo is fucking great. It is an R-A-engine game that really really.

Runs incredible. I was about to ask about how it runs. It runs great. How about that? It looks great. And something that is very interesting to me because a lot of the complaints from Wilds, from a lot of people is that Wilds has really like, it's streamlined it too much.

It's too new. It's too modern. And Stories 3 is like it pretends that it's, in a world in which like Monster Hunter World and Wilds didn't come out and it's like obsessed with the design elements and interface and UI

of Monster Hunter like four. Ah, okay. Like the sound effects and the menu styling and... Which makes sense because it's a spin-off so you want to like harken back you know. Yeah, but also that's like

the best that that shit ever felt and looked and sounded. My impression too is that from the outside is that Monster Hunter is one of those franchises that it's hit a size where every new major entry is also going to be a re not reboot but reintroduction essentially of the franchise to the market so what you're describing will continue to happen with each big drop you know yeah so that demo's great it's one of those demos that you can continue onwards like it's basically the first chapter of the game just came out five months early. Yeah, no, it's great. I'm, I'm, I stopped. I did the thing where I got to about two and a half hours on the demo.

I'm going to stop playing this because I fully intend to start over when it comes out and probably stream it for a little while at the very least. Cool. No, that, that thing's great. I have high hopes for that. I also played some backlog stuff, uh, which, uh, have you played peg, is that P-E-G-G-L-I-N? That sounds.

So Peglin is... Does one play this alone, or do you play it with your partner? No, you play it alone. Peglin is just... Okay. Vampire survivors, but Pachinko. It is a Pachinko rogue-like. I don't know how I feel about that.

It is the fastest I ever put a game on the must-buy because I threw one little, I threw one little Pichinko ball and it bounced on a bunch of things. And then my little goblin shot the monster I was fighting because my points were so high. And then I did lots of flashing lights. And I went, yeah. I'm, okay, I'm kind of torn here because I don't like Pichinko, but I do like Lucky Hit. Is that how it is? Anyway, yeah, no, Peglin's awesome. Peglin's great.

I also played a very, very strange game called Refined Self, the Personality Test Game. Refined Self, the personality test game takes place as you, as a person, playing a video game based off of the experiences of a human-ish robot finding themselves and discovering a personality. This sounds like a fucking DSI title.

It does. It does. From that era. The way that it works is as you side scroll through an environment, you pick up items or examine things or talk to people. And every single thing you do decreases your battery power. No, it increases your personality. Whatever.

You have 100% timer in the top of the screen. And every single thing you do increases it. And when you hit 100%, the game ends. and it will track literally every single possible thing you could possibly track, such as did you go left or right? Which dialogue did you choose? How long did you spend on choosing a dialogue? When you did the coffee mini game,

which version of items did you give the coffee people? How did you handle this guy? How did you handle this guy? How long did you sit on the menu before making a decision? Wow. Just like, yeah, possible permutation, right? And it's building up a personality test. And it can be like explorer, cleric, or whatever, right?

And when you hit 100%, you enter into a boss fight, and your abilities are determined by your personality. That you did. Okay. And then I lost that boss fight. And it goes, would you like to play again? And I go, no, I'm good because I'm doing them beat the backlog. But it is intended for you to make multiple runs through this non-

game to become strong enough to beat the game. Okay. And at one point, I got into an elevator and the game says, hey, you're getting pretty close to 100%, but do you want to keep playing? You could decrease the meter by 50% for free. And so, like, it's actually like much longer if you desire to go down that path. So, so this is this indie game type three? It's a metaphor for depression.

It is a metaphor for depression. Okay. Cool. It's about being a sad gay robot. Yeah. Yep, that's type 3. Yeah, yeah. It's very cool.

It's very interesting. Not my thing, but it's cool. I played rabbit and steel. Oh yeah, I played that. You played rabbit and steel? I did play rabbit and steel. Rabbit and Steel is like a fucking, it's like a lie.

It's like, no, it's like a fun little game with rabbits. That's FF14, isn't it? It's literally, literally FF14. Yeah. From the music to the art style of the rabbit. To the kits. So, Wully, I don't know if you played it as the dark night equivalent in Radb and Steel. I think I try to have like a spin.

They have an attack. They have a jump and they have like an invulnerability. And it's like, I'm looking at that. I'm like, that's heavy slash. That's plunge. That's black. It's like one to one. It's absolutely.

crazy how one to one it is. And it is like, hey, man, do you want to play FF14 raids by yourself or the friends? But you played all the FF14 raids? Min came over, popped it on. And I was like, oh, okay, it's dive kick or Fuzzies for FF14. It is the dive kick of FF14. I just want the meat. I just want the meat.

A bunch of people that love this thing made a game about it inside of it. Yeah, yeah, that's it. as a game made entirely out of the meat, it's pretty good. I liked it. It's cute. It has great music. It has a good gimmick with its roguelike elements about like buffing up your individual skills. I, they are using every trick in the book.

Like I got most of the way to the end of the first run and I'm like, I'm seeing dynamo. I'm seeing ExaFlair. I'm seeing Living Liquid style magazine. fucking mechanics. I'm seeing pizza party into push. Perfect Alexander. What's that? Perfect Alexander? Oh, no. They did do, they did do, not perfect Alexander, but they do have some Alexander time stop, pre-placement from A4 Savage.

And it's, yeah, no, they got Pyretic and Blizzard and all the good stuff. And it's like, that's, it's, it's for degenerates. I got the whole hanging, standing in the danger spot, move out to safety part of the thing. I'm like, oh, this is, yeah, I get the bit now. I understand how it works. Very cool. Very cool. And the day that I played it, they actually came out with like a big DLC that added like extra classes as well.

So that's awesome. Cool. What else is on here? We did rabbits and steel. We also did Oblivion override. man you ever have you ever have like a somewhat negative opinion of something and and then like one detail goes in your head and you go oh okay so oblivion override um is made by somebody who clearly likes dead cells a lot like a lot yeah yeah oh i see it in your face i see it in your face yeah yeah yeah yeah so they like dead cells a lot of like a lot yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so they like dead cells like that's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. So if you've played dead cells,

it is go through a side-scrolling environment and do combat stuff and kind of Castlevania way. And then you have doors that don't open because you can get there in time. And you have item pickups and meta-progression and all the things. And man, it is exactly the same as fucking dead cells. Except that's robots.

And they're pretty cool robots. And you unlock like, I think it's like 10 or 12 other classes that are all. significantly different. So it's not quite as solid or smooth or interesting as dead cells, but then you unlock all of the dead cell style mechanics, such as, you know, weapons and side weapons and all that stuff on top of a bunch of classes and the classes are all really cool.

Yeah, this looks to Dead Sub, Oblivion override looks to beat to Dead Cells what 20xDX is to Mega Man. Absolutely. Yeah. So not my favorite craziest game, but I'm like, it's got some, it's got enough juice to be alive in my heart. And then I played a game that was recommended by my wife, page called This Bed We Made, which is awesome.

This bed we made takes place in 1958 in a town called Molyelle, a fictional hotel located about two blocks south of St. Catherine. It looks like it's probably near where like the national bank building is in René la Vec. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. But it lives in that fictional location

where if you look out the window, you can kind of recognize the skyline, but it doesn't exist on a real street. in which you play a maid and you play a very nosy maid who you go through the the little thing of like you gotta rinse you gotta wash the sheets and fix the bed and you know those little

mini game kind of things but your character's a gossip and a snoop and as a gossip and a snoop you get embroiled in a murder mystery which includes like going to clean someone's room and finding out that person has a makeshift dark room that has been stalking you. And like I, you know, it's got lots of little choices about, hey, who do you want to confide in? And did you clean up that spill outside the bathroom?

You didn't? Okay, now Pierre slipped and fell and hurt his hip kind of thing like that. Seems to be big fans of L.A. Noir behind this game. It's super cool. It's like, I don't really want to. want to go much more into it. Yeah. But it is just a super cool concept of basically going around and finding clues and snooping around as a maid, as a like a notably gossipy.

Noisy little hen. And you're like, I broke into everybody's lockers and looked at all their fucking bullshit. And one of the things about it is that whether or not you interfere with evidence is one of the factors going forward. forward. So on almost every single item or piece of evidence of the game, you can just decide to throw it away to clean up the room. So I just threw away every single piece of evidence I fucking found. I just picked, I just went through like the guy stalking me's room, threw all his pictures away, through his medicine away. I threw his gun away. Like, just throw it away. Your job is to clean the room. Yeah, I cleaned it. There you go. Oh, please. I'll know somebody was in there. Oh,

does she have Lexon? In fact, it's So one of the things that people really Like one of the things that only hits for me And probably for you Is that everyone in there has an English accent Right There is all these Anglophone's right

Anglish In a big hotel in Montreal Of course What? And the thing is Is that it takes place in 1958 Milneufant

the Clyde Revolution. Oh, way. Okay. Right. So it's not actually crazy that at the really good hotel would be voiced entirely by Anglophones. That being said, they are actually supposed to all be French. They're just speaking in English for the American audience that wouldn't understand French-accented people. Of course.

Because they say, meird. Right. And that's it. Yeah, it's a really cool one. when was Charles de Gaulle? Oh, when de Gaul came by and did all that bullshit? He was like the 70s, wasn't he? 60s?

60s? I thought it was 60s. The gall comes to Quebec. Expo 67. It was 67, yeah. Literally. What a fucking asshole! L'Ive la Quebec Libra.

Oh, what a piece of shit. But those of you who don't know, in the middle of the quiet revolution and the calls for Quebec sovereignty, Charles de Gaul comes from France to fucking talk at Expo 67 and stands up and says in French, yeah, long liver, independent Quebec.

Woo! It's like, shut up, dude. Cut to the fucking MGS Les Enfantorrible timeline from that moment. Just scroll down. You know? Yeah, yeah. And then the events occurred. What an asshole.

This bed we made. Yeah, that's a cool one. We have to sleep in it. Yeah. But also it's about, it's about maids, dude. Don't you get it? Ah. This looks very LA noir. I'm just going to say it again. Last but not least, I've been playing, uh, I got sent to code. Somebody, uh, who works over at the people who make roots of pacha notice that I was getting into cozy games and, uh, I guess they follow me on blue sky. Uh, and they're like, hey man, you want to try out roots of pacha? And they sent me code for roots of Pacha. That's roots of P-A-C-H-A.

So I will just straight up tell you that there are crawlers for certain genres and like Cozy is one of them and you will get... Cozy Maxon. And you will get the email that literally says, because you played this and this, we are... Yeah, it was like 90 minutes after I made the post on this. We are reaching out. It was very, yeah. And, um...

Hey there, Mr. Stairsat. Loved your content. I love it. So I get a lot of those. Yeah. And like, a lot of them are wrong. Like a lot of them are like incorrect. Of course. They're formatted incorrectly and they're not going to. No, this is a guy who reached out.

Okay. And I'm playing Roots of Pacha in the morning because it's low stim and the child can see it and not get skibbitty toilet out to hell. Pach is really solid. You're a caveman. You're cozy maxing your game, but you're a caveman. And that includes like digging your crops up with like a sharp rock instead of a hoe and fishing by bashing fish with a rock in a different type of minigame. And its core conceit is that you're not like buying and selling your stuff. You are contributing to the clan and you're paying out with like essentially I owe you dollars from like goodwill.

Oh, you don't own your land? What's that? You don't own your land? nobody owns land. There's no concept of ownership of land in the caveman era. Willey? Oh, okay. I thought... It's just the land. I thought we were going somewhere else for a second. All right. Okay. All right. And one of the bigger gimmicks is that it has no combat at all.

Okay. And it's replaced combat with puzzles. So you go up into like the spirit cave and you're running like mirror puzzles or like, like very simple like hey the statue has a symbol on it figure out what it means oh it means it wants a pine cone or you know cranberries or whatever the fuck um and it's it's just really really charming uh in particular i really like the way that the tech tree works in that game so on star do valley you just straight up and starty valley just goes hey you know how to make an oil machine or um or a pickle jar or whatever the fuck, right? Or you know how to make a type of sprinkler. In Roots of Pacha, you'll be doing your daily shit. And then eventually, after you like sing to animals for a while to try and get animal husbandry going, somebody would like, man, there's got to be a way to go faster. Animals go faster.

And then you go and you workshop an idea with them and you provide the materials for them to figure out the idea. And then you invent the idea of, what if I wrote an animal? Is it a stick? That's crazy. Right? Actually, it's a. saddle in this particular case. Okay. Or, you know, you're the first people who've been doing agriculture. So your grandpa's like, there's got to be like a better way to keep seeds around. And so your, your grandpa invents the idea of like plant nursery.

Okay. It's very Flintstones. It's very charming. And the music's very good. I like it. I think it's cute. Yeah. I'm like, I'm imagining it's very granular compared to.

to like early age of empires won, like starting in the Stone Age, Age, starting in the Stone Age. That's a real-time strategy game, man. Yeah, but in just in terms of like developing inventions and affecting your... Oh, no, it's, it's, it is a tech tree. It's just couched in the idea of, like, idea-making.

Okay. Okay. Cool. And that's pretty much it. I'm going to be playing Mugenics later today. Yes. I'm going to be playing Mugenics as soon as the podcast is over. I'm going to check that out.

Say goodbye to you and then I'm going to get up and pee and then come back and start the Muggenic stream. Yeah, I think I'm going to check that out either tomorrow or on Saturday. But yeah, I want to take a peek. I fucked around with it. for about 20 minutes yesterday. And I was like, this is definitely good enough for me to go right off the podcast.

Okay, okay. There's just like an overwhelming amount of charm. It's very cool. Into the fucked up kitty breach. Well, yeah, I also have a fucked up kitty. And Paige is going to bring over the Elmo so we can hang out with. him because he has he doesn't show up on stream anymore because we don't want to bring him across the yard

but he's 17 and he's alive god damn it okay um it's his time so i'm very interested in that that'll be over at twitch dot tv slash pat stairs at and youtube dot com slash pat stairs at slash live cool um break or or or switch yeah i could go for a pee okay what about you could you go for a pee Yes, that means yes. Burb. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. If you're getting your business started, if you're trying to figure out how to sell a thing online,

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So thank you Shopify. Thanks, Shopify. And this week, the podcast is sponsored by Warby Parker. They make glasses and shades like the cool one somewhere and over here. I'll take the blue pill, man. You think that's air you're breathing? Oh, man. You look really smart with those on.

They're non-prescription shades. they're pretty dope. And as somebody who enjoys a good pair of shades, I don't wear glasses, but I do know that, you know, as Punch Mom does, I have seen her struggle with getting her prescriptions. If you lose a pair, getting replacements, it is quite a pain in the ass. It appears if you have to get new glasses. And sometimes the experience can, the experience can, be overwhelming and massively overpriced and complicated. So, Warby Parker, again, I'm not a glasses wearer, but I like a good pair of shades. They got the...

You know what? I like not being attacked by the sun. Yes. And having multiple iterations of how you can handle that is very nice. And with the lineup they got in particular, it was really cool to use their virtual try-off. because basically you go to the site. I clicked a bunch of ones. I looked through the category of shades.

I saw a couple that I thought would look cool. Checkmark, clicked a button, and then it did a little AR match with my face, and I got to look at it from all angles until I eventually... Oh, that's nice. Yeah, and basically what you see me wearing right now is more or less what I saw. And I was like, yeah, I like that look.

That works for me. That's cool, you know? And that was that. I do, I have found myself making the mistake of trying to go outside for some desperately needed vitamin D and getting horribly attacked by the sun and making the mistake of leaving home without them. So I appreciate a good new pair, especially now in the cold winter months, because I got to go get that sun, but I don't want it to Mario three my eyes. Yeah. Um, yeah, so, uh, and it was pretty cool too because as I was customizing, you can kind of go through a bunch of different colors, not just for the lens, but the type of gradient shade you want. Uh, the frames. Again, tons of options to pick from. And then the virtual try on again, super easy to take a look at. Um, you don't have to go with flimsy outdated frames, spending half your paycheck for it. Warby Parker. They've got prescription glasses starting at 95 bucks. So you can actually get quality and stylish frames for an affordable price. And yeah, they, that includes contacts, online eye exams and sunglasses as well.

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Please support the show and tell them that we sent you. Thanks, Warby Parker. Thanks. You've saved my eyeballs. I need them. You do. All right. get up to this week. Couple of different things. Off rip. One played a game called combo devils,

which is currently got a Kickstarter campaign going. It's a platform fighter, so it's another of the smash likes. However, this one was able to crush its goal in 12 hours, I believe, right away. sign. So good job. Congrats to the team, Punkzilla, Koreshmael and everybody involved, because they basically were like, yo, we got a sick idea for a platform fighter. And he jumped on stream with me, Reggie, and our friend Squirty McFish, who is also a heavy platform fighter player and was able to, like, kind of show us what was going on with it. The reason why it stands out and is notable is because it is a platform fighter. It's a smash-like, but it heavily, leans into traditional fighting game mechanics as well. So, yeah, I think I was mentioning it before, but you can knock people off the stage or you can just beat them up till they hit 200 damage on their life bar. And die. And then you die. Right.

There are stages where it's like you can get knocked off the sides left and right, but then there's just a wall and you can just go fight in the pit and just fight. You know, play footseys, jump off the wall, hit each other attack, and just go like, yeah, fuck. recovery, I'm going to kill you. So I love that part of the game. That's really sick. It also has, I guess the word would be like standardized hit stop where what I would mean by that is in Smash Brothers, when you're doing a combo to your opponent, a lot of the times they can like use their stick to like DIY to like wiggle out of this where they are

and like not continue. You can not continue the combo based on where you're. opponents holding the stick, you know? In this game, it's more like a fighter where you land a pit, you do your next hit. You can do a combo. You know, you can be a combo devil. You land a light. You can go into, well, so this someone, he explains something to me.

Tiltz in Smash Brothers, which is like the attack you do, halt tilting the stick forward, is like a medium. And I was like, oh, I never pieced that together. So just tapping A is jab, tilting to the stick forward is like a medium, and then a smash attack is a heavy, you know? So yeah, it lets you just kind of fight like the ways you kind of know how. It's got supers. So characters can do literally like a motion input and land a super with their meter. Or you can do X moves instead and spend your meter like that too.

You know, lots of cool stuff that is just like, oh yeah, okay. This is the bones of, you know, the games that I'm familiar with. and my favorite thing probably about it that was really fun when we were playing is I am ass at edge guarding and edge hogging and offstage play because it's terrifying. It's so scary to be safely on the stage

and you've knocked your opponent off and you're telling me I have to go jump over the death pit to hit them and kill them and then land back safely and not die. I? What the fuck? I can't do that shit. It's super hard. I was like playing smash ultimate. I was like, I'm going to start edge guarding. And what I actually meant was I'm going to start just throwing my ass off the stage and killing myself. Yeah. Yeah. Like it was so funny because our friend, the Squirty McFish, who came over, like at one point when I was playing against him, Reggie was like, hey, can you emulate like a platinum or like a gold ranked player? And he's like, oh, okay, yeah, sure, while he was fighting against me. And then he started doing things like rolling around a bunch, hitting me off the stage,

and then he'd go to the edge of the stage. And while I'm recovering, he's, like, charging up a big attack. And it's like, oh, God, that's totally me. That's me using Ike, knocking you off the stage. And then I go to the edge of the stage and go, uh, while you're trying to recover. And that's the best I can do. That's also me. Yeah.

Exactly. Like, exactly. The callout was so fucking real. I'm charging the B going, I hope he tries to land now. And, you know, when you're fucking, you know, when you get good at these games, you're like, nah, I knocked you off,

and I'm already in the air chasing after you to spike you down. And then I can so good, I can recover underneath the stage back onto it and flex and fucking do a taunt or whatever. And I'm like, that shit's terrifying. It's so scary, I always die. So in this game Stages have walls

A lot of stages have walls On the extremities And like on the platform you're on And when you land on them You cling to them like Mega Man X So recovering You can wall hop up You know

And you can then stay on the stage a little bit Like you eventually slide down and then die But it means that you can both be on the wall Fighting vertically and recovering is not as scary because as long as you cling you can then like try to make it back up

you know it's so cool it's much more it feels more intuitive to like me playing like platformers and like again like a Mega Man game or any game where you cling to a wall you know it's just like it taps into that and I feel much more confident jumping off the stage to kill you

and that was huge it made it so much more fun to be like yeah I knocked you away and now I'm jumping on the far wall way over there to like climb up get a spike and then try to recover, you know? A vertical combat is super sick and no other smash-like game has anything like that I've seen. So, um, uh, good shit.

Combo Devils looking really fun. Characters are kind of fun, the fun designs as well. Um, picked a Mohawk dude with the Ava unit color, unit one colors and that was it, say less. But they've got a, that's why he looks like that. Yeah, yeah. I saw that guy. I was like, what a strange. Just, oh, yeah.

Okay. And then you said that. I'm like, oh, that's what they're going. It's Unit 1 in a track suit, you know. And then they've got Riu McLeod is what I'm just literally just fucking Fox, Fox Shoto, you know. And a cool character with like a spear and like a bat and stuff and just a bunch of like fun original characters. Overall, it has a aesthetic feel and soundtrack that's very much like Lethal League, Third Strike, you know, it looks like there should be a too mellow song in the game. There currently isn't, but it looks like there should be.

If you know what I mean. That's a really specific poll. Yeah. Yeah. It's that vibe. So, um, I mean the, the sound, the, the, there is a, I forgot the lyrics to it, but like, the character select theme is like, yeah, let's go. Make your first pick.

Come on, y'all. Like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like you, it's like you, it's right there. And it sounds dope. It sounds great. I forgot what the words are, but fuck it, you know. Yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, very cool game. I really like combo devils. And yeah, go check out the Kickstarter if you like the sound of what I'm describing. The episode is up to as well. Shoutouts to Korshmel. I had a little special project go live. So I have been keeping an eye on Kill 6 Bill 6 Billion Demons is a cool

comic that I talked about not too long ago. It's fucking awesome. And the creator of that went on to make a really cool tabletop game called Lancer. And over on... Wait, does that got the robots in it? He puts the robots in it. And so when me and John wanted to do

a little tabletop thing and check out the game, Lancer, and I reached out to one Tom, Abadden, And he was like, yeah, sure, I'll DM for y'all. So the creator of Lancer and Kill Six Billion Demons is DMing a campaign. And it was fucking cool to just play this robot game. And also he drew some art as well of my characters, of our characters and stuff. And just such a cool fucking dude.

And like, as someone who has not tabletopped since high school, I feel super rusty at just like, improvising and coming up with interesting things and stuff on the fly. Like, I can definitely feel there's moments where it's like, okay, the prompt is you walk in and do something or say something interesting. And I'm like, uh, bro. So when I was playing D&D, I was like, fucking stream every day. I got this. All right. What do you do?

Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, hello. Like, I, I, uh, hello. Like, I like everything, I need time to plan. If you give me time to plan, I'll bring you some cool shit. But under pressure, I do not perform well. So I'm looking back on it and I'm like, ah, fuck, I wish I had time to think about this stuff a little bit more. But overall, yeah, I, you know, I had a lot of fun. I am playing a French-ass Frenchman, not a Quebecois, but a Zoutelard.

Oh, proper Frenchman. Frenchman, Parisin. And I've got a robot called Gentleman, please stop. And yeah, it's just a cool little D&D thing going on over there. Not D&D, Lanser. Not DMing, GEMming, right? Because DMing is trademarked Wizards of the Coast or whatever the fuck. I didn't even realize that was a thing.

But like the dungeon master is, you don't, you don't use that for non-Dungeons and Dragons games, apparently. Yeah, game master, depending. Yeah. So anyway, that's out now. You can go check that out versus Wolves Lancer. Continued playing some more Expedition 33. And I, we were playing some more yesterday. hit a little bit of a wall and um really not not the worst more just like um without taking the time to

kind of like fully optimize builds and um doing a little like not really scraping but um you know some exploration but not a ton of it um basically like reggie was hitting the floating manner, flying manner, and doing not as much damage as he should have been for the level he was at. That's when the game's telling you to nut up. Yep. And so just looking at the characters and the builds, I was like, okay, so far, I've shown him, like, of all the, like, I basically, like, he got through all the flashback quest, and I was like, okay, now let me tell you about the broken shit. and I showed him like the stand all build, right? And that has been like, okay, you melt this boss, you melt this boss.

Okay, cool. This is the nerfed version. I didn't even have, you know, I didn't have a cohesive build the entire time. I just went, does this skill increase damage? Yes, it's going on. That's it. Right, right, right. Fuck defense.

That's it. That's it. And so walking into this area and seeing like, oh, you're not hitting anywhere near as hard as you should, but we're doing a low defense, high damage. build or our gameplay style. Like, we've got to go back and rework some of this. But like some of it is like, I didn't actually have to go back and like sort a lot of this out on my own.

So we kind of stopped the session. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go figure out what you need and what's missing. Because there's some pictos, for example, that could help to put it all together, get the synergy better. But right now it's like for the level you're at, we should be hitting these things harder. And it's currently not happening, you know? I went to go back.

In that entire game that I actually made was a Verso basic attack burn build. Okay. Because I had the sword that just gives like fucking 10 burn on hit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was just like, okay, everything that says burn goes on this character.

And then, so I started trying that out, for example, because what you can do is Verso Burn Build sets up Miel doing burning canvas. Right? But to make him efficiently stack burn, putting all that on, and then having him do the triple attack, builds up a bunch of it.

But to properly make the nuke viable, you have to get a bunch of pictos that extend the amount of shots you can do so that you get 20% chance of burning on your shot and then 20% chance of getting a shell. And if you gain a shell, you have a chance of gaining AP, which gives you a chance to do more shots.

And then apply that to powerful and then apply that to rush while you're just going so you're trying to stack as much of that as possible to get into S rank and then you hit and then you do triple the amount of burned, you know? We were missing some of those, for example, so the build wouldn't work. All this to say, I kind of went back and took a look at some of the shit and I was like, okay, yes, act three lets you wander or it lets you just hit the target.

But if you choose to wander, there are places where the game is going to be like, yo man either go grind and level up to play this like a normal RPG or get your synergy to be proper feast or famine because you're only partially feasting right now and the enemies are fucking famineing so what i did or yeah feasting on you rather to be maximum sicko freak hours is i beat sprong in act two yeah yeah yeah and i was like because somebody to i think it was Blue Wizard said, you can't beat Sprong. And I went, bet, okay. Okay.

I just parried for 40 minutes. For an hour. Yeah. And then I found the Claire obscure enemy in the, in the, that area. And I'm like, okay, everybody gets an extra 40 luminous. So now I just have cheater on for the whole rest of the fucking thing. There you go. Uh, I, for me, it was I walked up the mountain for Frozen Hearts.

Oh, that fucks it up so bad. That, that was crazy. And just walked down like buff SpongeBob. Just. every like Lund and Ciel's muscles were veins huge gripling I don't know what the fuck they were thinking even allowing you to go to fucking frozen heart just came back down the mountain and stomped the fuck out of the rest of that game it was so insane um but but yeah like i'm not I'm surprised but like playing through in the you know with this way and stuff and and to be fair too as well like reggie's been like again like fucking sick on the paris you know the instincts are there, but just like not taking the time to truly tweak those pictos, kind of just going, a little of this, little of that and stuff is like, not enough, not enough anymore. It's really interesting because Reggie's having like a normal humans experience of Expedition 33.

And he is the first person that I would have spoken to about that, that had like a normal human's. Because everyone I spoke to had the same experience that you and I did, which they were fiending it. And as they were fiending it, they were exploring everywhere. And as they were exploring everywhere, they had all the time in the world just be like, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. Yes. Bown. Kabam.

L-Ping does put a little fire under your ass, which means you can't really sit and stare and, you know, puts around as much as you'd like to. And furthermore, and there's, yeah, and there's, it's also the type of thing, too, where, um, I was definitely being like, look, I want to be hands off, let you wander, let you do your thing. And at a certain point, too, he was kind of just like, hey, I don't mind. You can just tell me what your suggestion is here or what you think of this or what we're, you know, so I'm like, okay. So I've been a little bit more like, all right, here's my suggestion. Here's what I did or whatever. You can take that or you can leave it.

But like, I do know that some people are like, yo, chill on the back seating and stuff. And I'm like, I'm going with what he's comfortable with. you know, we've discussed beforehand how much he wants to or not, doesn't want to, or go with stuff like that. So, um, but yeah, uh, it was, I was surprised to see that, that little, uh, wall because I was like, oh yeah, again, this is what other, I, I just didn't see it in, in, in, in my game, but like, this is kind of what it's supposed to look like, I guess. Um, the other thing, I hit credits on Cult of the Lamb. Oh, nice.

And I say it that way because that doesn't mean it's the end of the game. No, it doesn't. There's a very clear new game plus that continues. Or not new game plus. Post game. Post game that continues on that that has more content to it. That seems interesting. But yeah, the straightforward, simple run of that, at least hitting the first credits through.

Fucked out of fun. Great game. Loved it. Very simple, good. you know, enjoyed the whole ride. I want to take a minute to underline a fucking knuckle bones. Yeah.

Is the shit. It's pretty good. It's pretty great. Knuckle bones? Which is perfect for a little dice game. Sorry, you cut off? I said knuckle bones is also perfect for like, it's simple.

Yes. Which is perfect for a little dice game. It is up there. It is like I have my trip, my tears of like, I've got triple triad. I've got Pazac. You know? I've got,

um, uh, yeah, those two. I mean, Gwent is, Gwent is cool. I liked Gwent.

Um, but, fucking knuckle bones as far as the game inside the game goes. Holy shit. What a fun game. You're just rolling dice. You're rolling dice on the corner, but you're rolling nine dice and you're lining them up to,

to like, crush your opponent's dice rolls. And, And it's such a simple concept that's, you can watch time fucking evaporate playing it, man. I'm curious to see what the new FF7 one is, yeah, it was Queen's Blood, right? That's what I see.

Oh, that one. Oh, that one's really good. But, like, making a good fucking game within the game is an underrated art, man. I would spend a lot of time on a knuckle bones carve-out game. I would have no problem committing to, just playing a bunch of that. Yeah, that's great.

So I'm probably going to check out Woolhaven, but just kind of, kind of, you know, going to check back in with that. Yeah, not much else watched a Super Bowl. Oh, yeah, did they do a football? They did. Fucking crazy, dude. It wasn't the most exciting game. but there was a brief moment when the score had the potential to be 6-7.

And then it wasn't. And then a bunch of people, I'm sure, lost a ton of Kalshi bets. But anyway, I will say that something that I did learn from the Super Bowl commercials this year was the world of crypto and AI, like, they know how people feel. And they have resorted to the most underhanded, like, we have to get you going along with something. And then they rug pulled you in real life. So they did a commercial where, I don't know if you saw it, it was just a karaoke screen with Backstreet Boys. And who the fuck isn't going to stop and sing along? Room full of people, whether it's a full bar, a house, anyone, everyone, everyone's going to stop along and sing.

fucking Backstreet Boys. And they let it run for like most of the chorus. And then right before you get to the Backstreet's back part, it just drops to fucking Coinbase pops up on the screen. And everyone across the entire continent goes, ah, and it's like, oh, you got, you rug pulled the world. Congratulations. You know what you are.

You know how much people hate it. Campbell! Don't you love gambling? No, man. And you got. everybody to sing along and then you fucking nigh it. They know.

They know what they are. Anyway, um, that's about it. Uh, for this week. Yeah, I think,

um, I think I'm gonna play meugenics tomorrow. And then, um, I want to push forward on Expedition 33. Um, we're close to wrapping it up. So I'm probably going to,

do another session of that on Saturday. That's the plan for now. So tune in, Wully versus on Twitter. and on YouTube. I really want to play Vigenics. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. What's going on? A bunch of stuff happened. One. Oh, yeah? Oh, did things happen this week? Oh, they were good, though, right? We already talked about 2X-KO.

That wasn't good? No, that wasn't good. Okay, give me a good one then. All right, how about this? Discord is going to require face scan for all accounts. based on a teen appropriate experience by default. There's your shot. All right.

What's the chaser? Three months ago, Discord says, hackers stole government IDs of 70,000 users. Yeah, it was back in October, right? That was back in October. Yeah, wow. So that's cool. Yeah, I'm not going to fucking put my fucking driver's license

or face into this fucking chat program. Bro, if you want to continue using Palantian, I mean Discord. You better put your face. No, I'm not going to do it. I'll just be, yeah, or be a teen, whatever.

Or install. Fuck you. Or install the thing that's going to track in the background to make sure that you're, it's the only way. I don't have to do that. No, fuck you. Like,

I'll write a fucking team speak server for my friends and I'll fucking talk to you on Zoom. I don't give a shit. Fuck you. If you, if you, If you fucking think for a second that like this, the, the actual thing they want to do here is protect the teenagers. No, they're doing this so that they can go public and be like, look at all this information we have to sell. I got a fucking bridge.

I got a bridge with your name on it. It's called the Jacques Cartier. And it's currently for sale. That's funny for me. and it's currently for sale. Oh, that's like, wow. Oh, yeah, it's a good bridge, guys. But, um, I mean just, hey, we're putting the face scan tech in.

Yeah, so, uh, cancel your, uh, your, uh, your, your, uh, your nitro and, uh, complain incessantly. That's it. Fuck them. because they already waffled on it slightly going well you know most users will never see the check

because you know there's no reason to think you're not an adult and you're not accessing adults and it's like yeah so you guys want to go public and you want this information thing

to go well so it'll look super good when a huge amount of the only people who pay for your service just leave. And then everyone will be like, wow, you guys are really good at business to make all your customers leave right before you offer your stock for sure. It's funny because time is linear, right? But it's also a flat circle. But you can look at things that happen in the past and then see where we get to how we got here.

So the last time we talked about Discord was, I think in October when 70,000 of these things. things leaked. I don't know if we covered it or not. We might have. But I definitely remember we covered maybe back in April or so. Discord was announcing that they're interested in moving towards being an IPO.

Yeah. So all of a sudden, we're worried about the kids, you know, and it has nothing to do with the massive change to our business model and our revenue growth plans. Not at all. We got to figure out

which people in Discord are kids so that we can send that list to our friends at Roblox and they can DM them. It's like if you can just create some sort of pipeline, you know, that you can then just funnel. You know, I have never heard the word pipeline used in a positive manner in literally my entire life. Like not even a single time. Hmm. Like, legit. Like, think of one pipeline you've ever heard of.

Yeah. Production pipelines, real pipelines. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's pretty pretty, yeah, not,

not a good word. Can't think of a good use. Um, so, uh, yeah, no, anyway,

again, looking forward to seeing, um, the revenue growth that I mean Discord undergoes once this plan is implemented

You guys have a Discord If any of you guys have like a cool Discord clone that you've been working on in the background Ready for a release Now it would be a great fucking time to put that out

Right this second It would be a sick time I hate how decentralized a bunch of communities have become as a result of this, but it's also like, we're already here. I'm stoked. You mean that one that's based off of a vibe coding through chat, GBT? Yeah, that one's going to go great. Return to Steam Community forums.

Dude, Steam Community. Sewer, man. Oh, Midlight. They're the worst. I thought GameFax message boards were fucking wild. Holy shit. Go find some, like, forgotten gem of a game and just take over the community forums. And I saw really, I saw really, this is the way we must go on blue sky.

And I don't remember who posted it because it was retweeted by a mutual. And it's gone now, right? But it was basically a guy saying, bro, I just want to come home from work and play video games with my buds and look at pictures of boobs. and every single day there's some freak I've never heard of trying to get in my way. And I was like, man, that's so true.

Pretty succinct. What else is going on? Apparently there is going to be a Baldersgate TV show at HBO. Wow. And Larian is finding. out as I announced this for the first time. Was such a good, exciting part of that?

Like a super, oh, it was so exciting to see that they were going to do a post-Balders Gate 3 story entirely controlled by Hasbro was scrolling on TikTok and seeing the video of DeFora Wilde finding out about it. And being like, oh, cool. And I'm like, the fucking shit sucks already if I'm watching her find out about it.

So, you know, going through it, there's a whole lot of dancing, tiptoeing, and egg shelling around the idea that Larian's not involved. And, you know, like, they give their blessing. And, you know, they're hoping for good things. But they, you know, this is a D&D based brand. And, you know, they don't necessarily own that. So. So.

And it's kind of crazy, too, because of like, I just, we're, talking about a Balders Gates HBO show now and just from the years of talking about this franchise prior to this game coming out it was just like oh that that old thing that

like a bunch of like it just it was such a forgotten gem it feels like you could say it's from the forgotten realms yeah you know oh fuck um and uh yeah and then the classic just like

you know can't wait to see how this goes from the producer of The Last of Us. So, yep, yep. I have zero faith in this at all. I would like to be proven wrong. So you know what the strangest thing is? Is they're doing a Balders Gate show instead of, I don't know. Dungeons and Dragons one.

Well, what's hot? What's hot right now? What name carries more currency right now? Dungeons and Dragons. It's been a staple for decades. Well, Baldersgate is getting all those awards, and that's thanks to Hasbro. Well, I mean, if you're going to do a Baldersgate 3 one specifically, well, then at least you would hire back all that. No, they're not.

Again, you know, Hasbro accepted their awards for the great job that they did. you know, at at Balders Gate 3. And so, of course, they move forward with the show. I'll tell you what they should, what they should do is they should gang up with a bunch of people that worked on the game. And they should get a bunch of fucking green screen footage

and shove that behind the actors and just do their own ass show with their own budget for real reels in response to whatever the fuck HBO puts out. They should do that. They literally should do that. That would be awesome. Like a Dragon powered by Japan Unification, a series that feels like it was made in spite in response to the Yaku's Amazon show that doesn't seem to be getting a season two. Doesn't sound like. So is this, I've got to take a look at make sure this is the one we're talking about. It's the one where you saw the screenshot of the live action actor. Just placed on top of the-placed on top of Camarocho from the game.

And you can check out this. There's a trailer and the trailer features a bunch of actors, some of which have been involved with the Yakuza games. RG themselves are directly involved with the production of this. and they're teaming up with Japan unification, which is like another existing group. And they're like, nah, fuck it. Kiryu glows with aura and does heat moves, IRL, actually. So they're going to just keep doing this over and over until they hit it,

which they would never will. He also pulls out a gun and start shooting people, by the way. Sure, fucking. Hey, do you, are, is the, is the Kawami 3 shit on there? week. Well, we were going from live action adaptation to live action adaptation and now the through line is Yakuza because

the next line of the story here is the Yakuza games. Kiwami 3 is apparently the end of the Kiwami series and the beginning of a new line of Yakuza games. This was announced just before we

went live. So I have the deets on this because this this is so I'll just I'll just start right I'll just start right now

yakuakuza Kawami like a dragon Kwami 3 is bad it is a bad game it is it is a hallmark of all of the types of things that people make fun of bad HD re-releases where all the shadows

disappear and all the artistic rendering of everything disappear and the new actors don't do a particularly good job compared to the old actors that they've replaced. And on top of that, there's like legitimate controversy with this game. So did they just announce the Devil May Cry 2 timeline? Yes. So they cut about 70% of the side quests in this game.

And they cut a bunch of the gameplay stuff. And it's like kind of a shadow of the former self. It's not a good game. On top of that, one of the. the one of the replacement actors is like a known sex pest. And when they were asked, hey, what's up with hiring this guy who's like a sex pest? They're like, so we wanted the character he played to come off really sleazy. And this guy's like a scumb bag.

So we hired him on purpose because of that because he's super gross. And you're like, wow, that's. Not something that you would expect for method acting. They just came out and said it. Yeah. On top of that, on top of that, there's a dark ties storyline, which follows Mene, the villain of the game of Yakuza 3,

and what he was up to at various timelines. And the checklist for side content for Mene is doing good deeds around town, to improve his boss's reputation because he just got out of jail for sexual assault. So like the side content of the new campaign is cleaning up your sex abusers boss's image in town, which is just like fucking gross.

And this is... Noggi's gone, right? He sure is, man. sure is. This is not, okay. Hmm. And on top of that, and I'm going to spoil it, I'm going to fuck. Mene lives in this fucking version of the game, which is a pretty dramatic change from Canon.

And not only does he live, he joins the secret Didoji organization that was in the background of some other games. So when they say, hey, we're going to go ahead with a new Didoji universe or whatever the fuck. They're going to put out like, yakuza 4, but it's different because the Didoji are there. And Yakuza 5, but it's different because the

digs. And they're like, they're just like, they're straight up doing a devil may cry two fucking timeline often in the fucking day. This sucks. So, okay, I'm trying to figure out because I don't really know, but I'm, is this something where they looked at FF7 and went like, ooh,

we can do that too? The Yakuza re-slash make of the but it's a fucking crime thing in the real world doesn't fucking work like that okay so instead of just instead of Kawami being

we're redoing we're remaking the games and improving them or whatever it's also yeah no what we're doing is we're creating an alternate timeline series where we bring all the villains back to life to form like the fucking anti-Avengers

or something it's fucking stupid it's fucking stupid and is there any wrong with Ichibon time going forward like just... I don't know! I'm the way that... Dude, it's so... Is there any... Was there anything that explains why this decision was made? They're retconning the deaths of like every one... Yeah, I've been hearing. Yeah. Yeah.

Two or three. It's fucking ridiculous. And they're clearly building up to something and it's to make some... It's fucking stupid. Okay. So there's a there's a, uh, organization 13 in the background of... Yeah, whatever. So the core gang over at Like a Dragon are working on Stranger Than Heaven. And these guys working on the Kiwamis, I guess they want to spread their wings and fly. And they're doing it in a way

that it's just fucking it up. And we talked about this last week when we were just looking at, look how bad these textures look. The lighting looks bad. What the fuck are they doing? I remember when I started playing Yakuza in Hawaii.

You can go back and watch. I'm like, what the fuck is going on with the lighting on this beach? At some point, They screwed up the way the lighting worked after Yakuza 8. Like something broke in their lighting engine and they just never fixed it. You know it has pretty good lighting? What's that?

Gang of Dragon. That's right. So it's, I think, so also Yukes helped make, um, Kauami 3. Oh. Well, Yukes usually does a decent job. No, they don't. They're shit. With.

Everything. games with fighting game stuff. Okay, what about wrestling games? The shit. They supported, you had acciasmic, ace, and then Yukes came in and did, which was the wrestling games Yukes did? Oh, they did a ton of. What was their franchise?

Am I forgetting? What did they work on? They worked on E. W.W.E games. Oh, God. Fuck that. They did all the garbage. Evil zone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, never never, never, never, never, Smackdown, Rumble, Smackdown 2. My mistake, no, no, no, they were the 2K guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so they're making that, gotcha. My mistake. So, yeah, so, fuck.

So this, this game isn't even like core, all core, like, like a dragon guys. It's fucking outsourcing and shit like that. Evil zone. Yeah, evil zone. zone. I just said that shit. Oh, God. What was I?

What, what, what, what was I thinking of? Was it just the fucking Smackdown versus Raw? I think there was like, yeah, okay, never mind. I think that we had fun playing a Smackdown versus Raw. The very old ones were good, but they've been shit for like 15 years. And I was like, oh, shit. Oh, okay. It's over here.

Yeah, all right. I'm super glad that, um, we got to Yakuza at eight and then we, we, that has like a definitive end and then they can just go fuck up all these games in a row and be scumbags and we can just wait until there's another good like a dragon game. But it's very obvious that the the

stars of that group are working on Stranger Than Heaven. Is that the name of the game? It's just stranger than fiction. No, no, no. But yes, the fucking old, the timelines one. They've been given the Like a Dragon series to just...

Stranger Than Heaven, you're correct, yeah. Projects Century. And they're also working on Virtual Fighter. It's almost like they've spread that game too thin. Maybe they shouldn't be working on fucking five projects a second. Well, I just... After talking about how bad the current thing looks, I never would have expected the next news story to be.

And also, Bad Thing is now the new series canons that were following through on. That is the wildest. I can't, but like, what? Not even seven days later. Anyway. That's fucking crazy, dude. Cool. Well, look, when the going gets tough, you know, when the name gets abandoned,

when the name gets, what gets ruined. and maybe just take the numbers off, you know? That works for some people. Maybe it's time to just return to Overwatch. No, fuck that. Fuck you. The time was right. The brand needed it.

The identity needed it. Hey, so we were, we need to just start fresh. Overwatch 2 will now be known as Overwatch. Yeah, no, you guys are lying. fucking losers. I like how they're like, we've got to return to Overwatch and then what are we going to do?

We're going to focus on a PVE experience. Like, stop saying that. God, when was Titan? Was Titan like 2006? I was working in QA, so 2005, 2006 is about right. 2005 to now. They have been trying to make a PVE thing for this shit for 21 years. And they put out nothing.

And if I'm not mistaken, the switch to Overwatch 2 was also because they were trying to emphasize the fact that PVE was going to be a huge part of the game now. Absolutely. What is up with the Overwatch team going, I can't wait to do like, you know, multiplayer like, but, you know, against the CPU? And we are like a full adult human being away from that idea of failure. Like it's, it's not, for a fuck sec, you know how many fucking horde games have come and gone since then that are awesome? I was playing a bunch of Deep Rock Galactic last week. That game's incredible. It's been out for years.

What, you can't fucking have, you fight some bots? Devil's Advocate? Have you seen Domina? Who gives a fuck? That's a character designed straight, straight for porn hub. they are now completely, completely leaning in Randy Pitchford style. They are 100% aware and committing to it. It's so fucking, it's so cynical.

It's so lame. Yeah. It's like, I, you know what I'm sick of? I remember the, I'm sick of all this stupid multiplayer shit. And then they go, hey, you go, hey, this sucks. they go, oh, oh, we're going to jingle these keys. I was about to say, I remember every time a new character got announced, it was always like, okay, scroll down the news to the second story, right?

Every time there was a new character that got announced for Overwatch, go find out what else happened at Activision Blizzard that day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so fucking pathetic. Don't you guys have any pride in your own fucking, work. Hey man, distraction is a very useful tactic. If I don't want you looking over here, and I just keep you looking over here, you don't worry about what's over here, no matter what's going on, you know? Soaks on you. I'm always worried about what's over there, but that's just my

personality. Well, it turns out what's over here is a copy of mine's eye. Oh, yeah? Did someone buy it? Um Well, it's on an island, so Um, you can go play it. I don't want to. Okay. Well, um, then you might be part of the conspiracy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're part of the guy behind mine's eyes kind of going through full blown psychosis and he wants to put people in the game so that he can shoot them during missions and all sorts of nonsense. Well, you are, Because you're sabotaging, you're sabotaging Minesai. So, they're allowed to get me. I mean, I wasn't, but now I kind of am.

You seem like a fucking asshole. Yeah. Remember what I said about scrolling down to the second story when the Blizzard character gets, when the Overwatch character gets announced? You know, you might be, if you, you can scroll down to see if there's any other stories about Mind's eye that came out this week. Oh, yeah. What do you got?

What do you got? I don't know. They're just, there's, there's, there's, people who, uh,

might have been, uh, in the headlines saying things like, I have never met Jeffrey Epstein. Um, you never want to be in a, you never want to be in a headline. Jeffrey Epstein's shirt.

You never, causing a lot of questions. You never want to be in a headline with the words I've never met Jeffrey Epstein in quotations next to your, name. That's not a, that's not a good look. Um, and, uh, for that to be hand in hand with the, they're all out to get me and destroy my, my, my, my bad game that you seem paranoid for some reason. Well, like, have you ever met somebody? I'm sure you have. I'm sure you have. They, they, you offhandedly mentioned something and they just start getting fucking

terrified and paranoid about being accused of some minor league crime that you're not talking. about and you're like you now appear to be the most guilty piece of shit in the world. I would never steal anything. Okay. Fucking what, uh, I now think you stole something from me in my house today. Yes, because the, the brain of the person that, that committed the crime is now has to stand here and figure out a way out of their actions. and if they had a better plan,

they would not have been in the situation to begin with. So here we are. Yeah, well, look, man, you know, you keep isolating people until you wind up all on your own. I still remember. On an island somewhere. I still remember seeing a clip of Co-Carnage's stream where he got the back down from the mind

Zai sponsorship like 90 seconds after he started the stream. And if he hadn't had somebody like have their eye on like, I think it was his business email where they canceled it, he would have just done the whole thing. And then, oh, well, we canceled it so we don't have to pay you. Like, just actively trying to fuck people over. Wait, wait, what happens? It was so co-carnage had a sponsored stream signed up and ready to go. for Mind's Eye, that they canceled after he went live, but before he started playing the game. So that if he hadn't had somebody with eyes on like his contacts, he would have just accidentally done a full sponsored stream for a canceled thing.

And then they wouldn't have had to pay him. Holy shit. Cool. Good. And I saw that. I'm like, that is a type of filthy. I've never even personally encountered. That shows good judgment and good character, you know, that establishes trustworthiness and good moral clarity there.

Speaking of good moral clarity, what if I told you that you could unlock new themes for your vape by hitting certain levels of puffs. You know, I actually, I saw a vape meme or whatever on my phone earlier today and I looked over at my baby and I've never yelled at him and I've snug and kissed on him. He's the greatest guy. And I was like, man, if I ever find a vape in this house, it's time for me to turn into my dad when he would get pissed off.

because I'd lose my fucking mind. I would lose my fucking mind. But to be fair, you didn't grow up in a time when vapes had Cheevos, bro. Because now you got Cheevos, and that's different. Right? You got to, you got to get your themes. Listen, little baby Gowron, extrinsic motivation is good, but intrinsic motivation is better. It's tough.

What? Why? Why do you do that? Misclic. Vap achievements. Because big vape is actually secretly behind this podcast, and they don't want to hear you talking bad shit. I think the people that run these companies... Uh...

Should I hit the button again? I can hit the button again. I can hit the button again. Yeah, okay. And the button is right. You can all fill in the blank. The button is right there. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. You know, Pat, you've already, like, you've built a brand on, you know what they should do? Yeah. You know, there's a limit to how much I can say on this publicly available platform. You can just let it trail off right there. I think everybody's fine to let it trail off. Hey, would you believe that me having son has actually made me way angrier at the world?

like the world. Oh, because from the outside, everyone would look and say, oh, Pat has chilled out, right? Pat and the angry. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Having a son is like an incredible thing for my life and every day is happy. But like society is pissing me off. But the twist is that it was always in. It has just been redirected.

Yeah. Okay. Stupid society Um Fucking vapes You're a fucking idiot Don't do it I don't suggest

I don't think your kid can make it to the moon society man No it's not even going to this cracked up It's not even made out of cheese Bullshit I hate you're an adult and you vape You look like a stupid bitch You look oh man Like people

huddling in the smoker circle outside of a restaurant or whatever, they looked like losers, but at least they were like smoking a cigarette like an adult. Smoking a vape looks like you're puffing on a child's toy for losers. You know what sucks? Thinking about space exploration used to be cool. I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. And now when you think about space exploration, it just sucks and it's just shitty and upsetting. and lame. That sucks. I'm really,

I'm really fucking tilted by the fact that thinking about Splace exploration ain't cool anymore. I used to really like that. Yeah, that's,

it's lame. Anyways. Okay. Well, if we want to have our boomer yells at Cloud Moment, there is an article I saw called

Film students who can no longer sit through films. And... You have to put subway surfers on a smaller TV underneath them. And basically, it's describing how students of film and film professors are talking about how they are having a hard time getting film students to watch films. Oh, okay.

Like, as homework. Failing. Featry length. Like, what are you supposed to make a movie? That takes a long time. time. Yeah. You know, as you can imagine,

people are having a hard time not pulling out phones or second screens or getting distracted while they play films in class and such. It's a little bit of a Noah get the boat. You know what? You know what?

Fail all of them. And then no movies. And publicly shame their parents in the village school. for giving them an iPad at one year's old. You know what they should do. Right. Yeah, into the pillory.

Into the stocks. And there's a fake little effigy of an iPad in front of them. I mean, I would say if you're applying to get into the program, then it's a film school program. They should just run a test where it's like, hey, just watch this. movie and then they just watch you watching the movie and then and if you get up the electric spot on the floor no you just look like you walk out or you look or you whatever and they just and then the lights come back on and they go thank you you can leave now and that's it

just you're like part of the application is you watch a movie and they watch you watch a movie that's it um all right let's take some letters i usually only watch movies on 2b anyway I mean, bro, Lawrence of Arabia in like TikTok form? You fucking, the most efficient way to watch it. If you've got a letter, you can send it to Castle Super Beastmail at Gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beastmail at Gmail.com. Let's see. Over here.

Hold on a second. I got to stop somebody. Somebody made a comment and say ADHD people banned from film school. People with ADHD who love movies can sit through 100 movies in a row because there are attention is not deficit in a general sense because they love movies. It's based on kicking iPad kids out of film school. Cool. People don't understand what attention deficit is.

If the thing is engaging to you, you're locked in on it. Yeah. The attention deficit is named as which because attention deficit kids wouldn't pay attention in school because school's fucking boring. It is. Let's see. One coming in from... Let's, uh, L says, hey, Pats and Wolves. Um, I recently finished playing through Pentiment and that game shot straight to my top

10 of all time. If you haven't seen it, it's a 15 hour, uh, point and click where you solve mysteries and live life as a manuscript illustrator in 15th century, uh, Bavaria. Um, wasn't until after I beat that, it's really good. Wasn't until after I beat it that I learned that it was by obsidian. Um, and it turns out Josh Sawyer, uh, the director of New Vegas, has a history degree on the Holy Roman Empire and put it to good use. Going from 3D RPG fantasy to one of the most obsessively written historical

fictions I've ever seen, all presented in gorgeous LucasArtsy style with an ace attorney evidence. Can you think of any studios that, well, basically, studios that try something new and nail it on the first try? Can you think of any studios that crushed it with a new IP going all out on the first go? Okay, so to be clear, while obviously lots of people work on games, that game is like an obsessive baby pet project of Josh Sawyer. Right? That is less so obsidian trying something new and more that Josh got his way and got to make his fucking weird. Dream game after a long time.

Yeah. There's definitely a bunch of those. And when there's somebody that like, yeah, stakes out on their own and they've had a lot of experience, you see a studio nail it in one shot. I think of Team Reptile. Lethal League was a fucking slam dunk out the gate. and then they just went on to crush it with like blaze and then bomb rush cyber funk and then hyperfunk is coming. You know, like right away they nailed it. But yeah, there's definitely examples of that.

Oftentimes it's, again, somebody leaving after building up the experience and then dropping it on the dream game. RGG is going to make a fighting game. They're making virtual fighter. And as we all know, there's never been a bad virtual fighter game, which means that it's out of their wheelhouse and it's going to be incredible. Buick says, speaking of which, Dear D&D nerd and Lancer nerd, given the recent advances in gaming culture,

I think we finally have a way to succinctly phrase the vibes you both feel towards Mortal Kombat. M.K. is the fighting game for gun and ball gamers. It is. Am I stupid or is it really that something? No, no, he's completely right. Nailed it. Nails it.

Yeah. Yo, it's so cool This whole head came off, bro. Mead the dopamine from murder. Uh, okay. Dear versus Punch Dad and Father stares at. I'm an avid casual Magic the Gathering player with my fair share of money spent on cards. I play commander.

Avid casual? Um, I guess maybe like a dolphin. Not pro. I play commander exclusively with friends. and I wanted to pose a scenario to you regarding the discussion around proxies. Follow me, if you will. You're playing a super popular online game, but you're doing so offline with just your close friends. They have pay-to-win mechanics, gear boosts, upgrades, etc.

That some of your friends invest in. You like this game a lot and throw down a couple bucks to stay in stride with them. Not sweats, level money, like the online players, but some hard-earned dough. Now imagine that one friend who shows up with the best in slot gear, sick cosmetics, and starts running the brackets, and he tells you that he pirated all the items for free. How do you react to that? Do you keep playing with them? Do you drop the game entirely, regardless of how much fun you had without them?

And even if they bought all the stuff legit, how would you feel any differently about it? The practice is predatory either way. You slice it, but I'm playing casual with friends because I don't want the game that comes with being a sweat. If you guys are already cool with using proxies, then all of you should have unified texts. And just play however the fuck you want. So this is where I go. Is the game about, like, if the game is about just balance and the fun of building your own decks and doing whatever, and you should be able to play with different things that for, not even going for the meta, but just having fun with your friends, you can build a deck of different cards and different things that fits your style, then it shouldn't matter. Proxies should be fine because you should be having fun, customizing and doing your own thing.

You're playing in a casual environment. you should go to the copy store and print out a fucking set for every single person at your table. And it's everything. And if it's not about that and it's just about the money and it's just about pay to win, then the bag's on you. I don't know what to tell you. Like that's you're in on a shitty system to begin with that the money is prohibiting your fun. Yeah. If your buddy is like paying into a pay to win system to play outside that system, they're an idiot.

Like, or like, if I would have, another way to flip that is like you and your buddies are all like fucking stacked and buying a bunch of shit and have the best. And then you have a friend who's really poor and can't afford to keep up, but would love to play with you guys. Fuck you poor. Get out of here, you dirty pleb, unwashed. You ever have that situation in your life in which somebody asks you out to a restaurant that's too expensive for you, right? now and then they like hassle you and you're and you're like I don't want to go because I'm broke. Okay. Okay. And they put that on you and how awkward that scenario is. I know what you're describing not because it's really happened to me, but I've done that with friends. Okay. Yeah.

But I have done that with friends and I will exclusively do that if I'm covering it. Yes. that I will hey hey we all want to go to this laser tag and they go I don't have money for laser tag don't worry I got you a couple bucks yeah you can come a laser tag that I will I will do that specifically mentioning that point yeah this is the same emotional state of this guy is like no I want to go out to the fancy restaurant and sit there while all of you guys don't eat because I bought all these cars the guy got a little muddled there but you know like it's it's fucking ridiculous All right. And one last one over here. Hey, Pat and Wolves. No funny name because I'm not that creative, but I've been a fan since the first machine of episodes. You guys were talking about Cult of the Lamb, and it reminded me of my experience with the game. I played it on my PS5 with my girlfriend a couple months ago, and we got into it pretty hard, but two major issues popped up. First of all, co-op, the partner has to wait and cannot do anything while going through menus, and that created a lot of

pressure to deal with cult stuff quickly so we can get back to both playing. Thankfully, the co-op partner can do everything too, but the first player then has to wait. That wasn't as, uh, that wasn't that bad, but it was still, it was still fun to build up the cult, etc. But then we started running into the second issue, which is the loading time on opening the list of followers, whenever the game has to get you that list, literally stops for like a minute or longer depending on how many of them you have. given that we've already spent quite a few hours already

we had to select at least two followers to return to the cult, usually more, and it's built up to such an amount that the downtime per run that it got so bad that we decided to drop the game entirely because the Hulk and gimmick of the game, the cult became more of a chore instead of the fun part. That is fascinating. The PC version would probably be better,

but we're playing local co-op. Yeah, I guess console. Yeah, they should change that. so the town doesn't chug when you game and get big. That's ridiculous. Have you ever had a small annoyance that made you drop a game entirely? Oh yeah, millions.

I've had, I've dropped games. So going through the backlog thing, people have seen like, just the most banal annoyances. Just absolutely crush the game, in my opinion, instantly.

Like, just the way a certain move feels if there is a jump in a jumping Sonic 4, Sonic 4. That's bad. Sonic 4. Yeah, Sonic 4 and Sonic Gen, it's the spin dash, it's not the jump. But I just go, I just go, eh. It's, yeah, there's a million things. I value controls dramatically, right? I think that's an

absolutely enormous, enormous factor in playing a good video game. One of the things that'll ruin a game for me is if I can't turn off trigger effect on the PlayStation DualSense things you know that thing that you pull in the trigger and it stops it to make you feel like you feel like yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't want to

get RSI I can get RSI from these fucking triggers so that that shit's dunzo donezo if I can't turn that shit off I mean I feel like the most recent example was just straight up high guard it like you one sit down

of that and it was like this is not at all what I feel like playing out of video games. I think it should be really proud. I mean, for the same amount of time that you did. Yeah. Like, you know, that was, that was a,

you should feel good because like, there's, there's a, like, there's a part of me that it's like, like, I did the high guard stream, right? And like, you're, I remember I told you the same thing in what I played marathon. It's like, you know, when you're playing a stream

of some piece of shit that you hate? And, or at least not having fun at all. And you look, over? This one's doing numbers. Oh. I don't even care. I'm going to turn it off. I look, I honestly am like, look, a part of this came from Titanfall devs and maybe horseback is fun.

I don't know. I came in like, let's go. Show me what you got. And yeah, yeah. There you go. No, that happens. though it's like that before that it's been a while since I've like walked out of the movie theater so to speak you know we're like I start the game up and went fuck this immediately I would

if I had bought Highguard I would have played it for like six hours before before like putting your cash in is a difference yeah oh sorry if I bought Highguard on stream I would have played it for a hundred and nineteen minutes um if I had bought it back in the day I would have played a for six hours before just going, fucking, no, I'm not, no.

I, oh, by the way, apparently 5E5, much better. Interesting, okay. Which is like,

someone, someone in that studio won a really intense argument. And good for them. Interesting. I was going to say, this doesn't really count because it wasn't that bad,

but I played a little bit of Damon X. Mackina, and I kind of went, ah, I stream that, I got to a point where I'm like, can I play it my robot, please?

And I turned it off. Yeah, I just didn't go back to it. Like, can I please play the robot game? And they're like, no, you're going to listen to this anime shit. Yeah. I bought it. Fucking, you know, like, yeah. So, anyway, there you go.

That'll do. That'll do. Have a good week, everybody. See you.