Castle Super Beast - CSB373: Never Reheat 2 Year Old Beef

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Download MP3 | Watch Video Episode Full Timestamps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT44TUsVZDuKxJqgbhZrh6_hEVMU02wcpfzsQ_7Rfei8DkTcgVVBO3S6sKmPIS8v3-gY5vb0P1CDeeJ/pub The Hardest Card Game I've Ever Played  ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS?!  Here's The Thing: It's a Bad Version of The Thing  Pokemon Cards Anti-scalping Tech: Answer Our Riddles Three  Seeing The Matrix on Opening Weekend HIT DIFFERENT Watch full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive Reggie In The Lab Limited-time Plushie only available this month! https://www.makeship.com/products/reggie-in-the-lab-plushie - Visit http://drinkag1.com/SUPERBEAST to get a FREE AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 in your AG1 Welcome Kit! - Head to http://factormeals.com/castle50off and use code castle50off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box - Sign up for your 1$-per-month trial today at http://shopify.com/superbeast - Invincible VS is out now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Docket: PS5 Class Action Lawsuit Targets Sony Over Price Hikes Jess Cox - This Is A Genius Way To Prevent Scalping PlayStation Has Started Revealing Public Player Counts - Insider Gaming Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Update has been downgrading newer GPU drivers that users install manually from Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA websites. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Was Almost A 1v1 Fighter PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst says single-player Sony games won't come to PC going forward Random Avatar Matches and Avatar Arcade, two brand-new modes for Street Fighter 6, will be added on May 28 alongside the release of Ingrid GenAI In Games? Most Players Just Don't Care, Study Finds Capcom Execs Still Excited About GenAI, Is Still Ramping Up Hiring  

Yo, yo. Hey, well, what's up? You're stuttering, man. Oh. Oh, boy. You're stuttering it up. Uh-oh. Hold up a second.

Oh, no. I think... What's going on? Are you downloading all those horse porns again? All of them, yeah. Oh, yeah, you just hit a button and all of a sudden it's better. Yeah, I was trying to mute Chrome. And it was active.

up. There we go. We're better. That's it. That's all it takes. Yo, what's up with cat shit? It stinks. And it's full of the toxo. It is full of the toxo. Now, I had the toxo a million years ago for sure, probably. So you're immune to it with the voices then? Probably. The voice, well, the voice says hug

cat. Is the voice I was like, are you immune to the voices, or have you just formed your personality around? I think I had the voices already. I think, like, maybe it's a little stronger. So apologies for the a delay today. But I have a 17-year-old cat

that fell into his poopies. And so we needed to take a very scary shower. Showering with the cat is terrifying. This is the second time in a month I've told you about it. It's very scary. Because you have a very angry creature. Because in the shower, cat reverts from pet to creature.

Right? Doesn't matter how much time passes. No matter how much time passes, they still hate getting wet. Yeah. And so you're naked in the shower and you're just like, wow, I hope this creature doesn't grab a hold of anything important. Man. But on the plus side, when you have to bathe your elderly cat, they smell really nice afterwards. There's no like shower booties or anything like that to cover up the claws for temporary.

No, man. You ever try to put clothes on a cat? No, but I can imagine. They don't like it. Yeah, yeah. They don't like it. Yeah. I'm just like, like, you know, if they, if they've got a muzzle and a cone, you know, and stuff like that,

then I figure they might have something for exactly the scenario you're describing. So they do. There's a little, there's a little plastic things you can put on a cat's claws to cover them up. But you have to, you have to, like, literally put a little hat on each individual claw. Oh, boy. And the cat doesn't like that either. Okay. like an outlet plug or like a USB

Yeah, a little bit Yeah, okay Yeah, that's asking way too much, fair enough Somebody just asked a question, why am I naked? Do you take showers with covered in shit With all your clothes on? Bro? Is that what you do?

Make sure to really rub the poop into your clothes? It's just, it's, we're fast forwarding the process here And you're just, yeah, why Why put risk on anything? Why not just cut straight to the chases? Because then you put the cat in a towel and hand it off to your wife, and then you take a real shower right afterwards. Boy. Okay.

Well, that's a morning. Yeah, man. It is. That'll wake you out. It is. Cool, cool. As far as weeks go, I didn't have a ton, a ton, a ton going on. but there is one thing that I have been playing and I wanted to talk about it.

Ice man. What the fuck is Iceman? That's the, you know what? That's the best answer. That's the best answer in the world. Let's just, let's not dig into that at all and just continue. Okay. That is the funniest thing you could have possibly said.

Okay. Oh Oh is that one of the new drakes Yeah Oh my God I don't even know what they're called Oh Jesus I don't even know what they're called

That's hilarious That's really good That's super funny I'm like we are so checked out I mean yeah I caught all I caught Was just the amount of people just laughing at the concept of like,

it's been two years since the walk. Dude, I'm, so I'm not a rap aficionado. I dip my toe in now and then, right? This is like Fisher Price, Cassio speak and spell beats over like ad libs. Yeah. It's the worst shit ever.

It's unbelievable. All I saw was people just going, yo, never reheat two year old beef. Right? Just don't do it. So Drake is still talking about the Kendrick Lamar fucking blowout. He's still hurt over it. And he's got that angry scar.

And he's doing all the just jaded, scorned, all the things that show how hurt you are after the lawsuits didn't work out. He's still making new music talking about the beef. Also, he put out three albums in a day. So I think he can get out of the deal with the studio that he sued. Oh, my God. So all I heard. But like, I got to tell you, most of it isn't even like his. butt hurt feelings. Most of it is

wow, this is trash. This is terrible. I just saw some people laughing at the fact that one of the songs was called Ran to Atlanta, you know, because it's like, that's basically when he's trying to reclaim the thing that the verse where Kendrick was like, yeah, you basically appropriated and ran to Atlanta and hooked up with all

these other people that were more influential than you and you're like, oh, I'm going to reown that now. And it's just, it's nuts. It's nuts to still be on it. And like, literally, after that, like, we're all going to move on Super Bowl moment. Like, I don't think Kendrick ever mentioned anything pertaining to this ever again. He just moved on, as did the world. That's crazy. So it's really funny because I'm scrolling through TikTok.

And now, once I watch a couple of videos, now I'm in the Drake algorithm. And I got to see just my favorite sequence. of events. And this happens for anything, right? Which is Drake puts out three albums. He is now all top 40 songs on streaming. Legitimately very impressive. Now, granted, he put out 43 songs. He's a very popular artist. So, like, that makes sense. But yeah, all top 40 spots. And then I woke up this morning and scrolled once. And it's like, Drake suffers the largest decrease in streaming numbers in Spotify. His I'm like, oh, because people listen to the songs. And then went, I'm never listening to that shit again. Oh, my God. Oh, someone just wrote, but the future refused to change.

I don't know if that was meant to be a double entendre or not, but that was fucking bars if it was. If you understand what you're actually saying with that, that's incredible. Future did refuse to change. What is going on? What I was talking about, which deserves way more attention than... It sure does. This.

Whatever it is. Reheated beef is disgusting, bro. No, this is interesting. So I played the hardest card game I think I've ever played in my life. And that is a video game card game, I should say. Okay. There's a game that came out called Death Howl. I don't know if you heard of it.

I have not It is a It is a very beautiful Indy style Pixel Art walk around And You are a spirit Who is

Basically like it seems like Oh I got such a preview code for this Yeah it looks like you're I have heard of it It looks yeah I think it's pretty new And Or at least it's been around for

You know A couple months And And you are a spirit of a mother who's seeking your child who is being taken into the afterlife is basically the intro. And you're chasing after them. I would like to apologize to death hell because I sent a preview code. And I was like, this art looks great. And then I loaded it up and it showed a card at the bottom of the screen.

And I turned it off and uninstalled it and erased it from my mind. Wow. Okay. So you did take a look for a second. All right. So I kept going because I was curious based on the visual. and the fact that, you know, I do enjoy a good deck builder, and I do enjoy some, you know, a turn-based and grid-based tactics and all the things, you know.

I enjoy me some Slay the Spire, and I enjoy me some Into the Breach, all these things I've talked about, etc. So this game is basically doing all of that in one, and you walk around, and when you get into a fight, it becomes an isometric tactics grid, and then you get a deck of cards at the bottom of the screen and you have to beat the enemies. And it is fucking insane how brutal this thing gets.

Like, it's so wild that it's basically what I can tell what I'm walking into is a game for people who are extremely familiar with deck builders, extremely comfortable and looking for a challenge. right it does feel like this ain't for your first rodeo or your second or third um is um

hmm i was just talking about this in the car and i'm like you can't tell people to die anymore because that's like too rude right we're past that part of the of the internet um but the word perish that has taken its spot then perish um because paris is non directed it's It's like, I guess you'll just perish. And what I hear from you describing this as somebody who, you've played a bunch of card games. And if you're describing it as psycho brutal, then the game to you is saying perish. Yeah. And it's got some, it's got some like particular kryptonite for me, but it's got some for you as well.

And it's interesting to bring this up in the context of the game design because what they're going for, is what I feel like what they're going for is a actually not the the uh overuse of the term but the actual souls like you're thrown into a pit and it's insanely hard figure your way out and survive right um but the uh the the way the game works is when you walk into an you walk into an enemy and then the fight starts

and there's like three or four enemies on the board and uh you have like five pips of act five action points as you would in say Slay the Spire, you know, and cards have different costs, right? However, every step you take on the board costs an action point. Unless you have a particular card that moves you for the cost of one, you want to walk three spaces. You're losing three of your five points. Okay. And then you only have two points to spend on all your cards, which cost anywhere from zero to one to two to three to four,

etc. And your good cards usually cost two or three in some cases. Movement also costs. Movement also costs. So your ability to do things in the game is extremely limited. This game is called Death Howl again. Once you manage to fight something and take it on, whatever you hit, you'll do whatever damage.

Let's say low single digits, Ernest. You do a couple hits. here and there. If you do like four damage to something, that's considered holy shit, that's a ton, right? Okay. You have low numbers, low baby numbers. You have 20 HP total, personally.

Right. When they hit you back, they hit you for like six. Oh. When you take poison, you get poisoned and you can also get a like double damage status dropped on you by basic enemies and suddenly that one damage of poison

turns into four damage per turn that you're taking. Okay. Once you beat the fight, each time you kill an enemy, it gives you a kind of soul currency. The damage you take doesn't heal. You continue moving across the map

and you do not heal until you make it through more fights until you get to your bonfire, quote unquote. Once you get to your bonfire, you can unlock it's a fast travel point you can go to but you can heal up

and turn your sole currency into things that add like skills to your character but that same currency is also used to buy new cards this seems a lot so if you want to heal

you cannot make new cards I but I want Okay This feels like So Souls games And their and their progeny I guess you would call it

They have like a really Simple set of rules Which is hard Maybe even unfair encounters With full resets And like the goal of long-term progression The most mistakes you can make Are in that fight

Now you're describing that like pulls resources that you may or may not have gotten just to get your full reset. Exactly. Furthermore, most of the time you're working your way over to, like, let's say a side quest

or a main path, you're going to fight small group, small group, big group at the end. And the big group with the harder enemies that can do 10 damage to you and basically two shot you, you're fighting that at the end of the gauntlet.

done, hoping that your 20 hit points can make it all the way and take out the big group. Right? And then again, once you unlock that fast travel point, you can go back to them. However, if you pick up a side quest item, a side quest begins and you can no longer quick teleport or fast travel. You must slowly walk your way through everything. Okay. So this is a road light, right?

Yes. No, no, no, no, it's not. It's not a roguelight. It's not. Okay, because Jigokuro in the chat was like, well, I don't understand. Slay the Spire does this with camps where you get to either, you know, buff or heal up. And I'm like, yeah, but Slay the Spire is a rogue light, which you're supposed to die 80, 90% of the time. This is like a continuous, like journey, right?

This is like a proper single player game where you go level one, level two, level three area here, there. Yeah, it's interesting. It's really interesting in how they're going about this and it's nuts. Well, why don't you just say game is bad and move on? Because we're a podcast. Because that's not interesting. And I don't just think game is bad,

but I, because there's parts of the difficulty that I admire and like, and there's parts of it that I find insane and ridiculous. And by getting into the conversation about it, we'll have content and discuss something interesting about video games. That is the shittiest fucking sentiment, Impossible. You see, because video games are interesting to talk about, and I think that there's something

here worth discussing. I'm going to talk about something that sucks ass in a couple of minutes, and I have like an hour in my gut to talk about it because it's interesting. So, uh, right. So you cannot fast travel anymore once you pick up a side quest card and begin a side quest, which puts you on a gauntlet. It's crazy, right? The challenge has been, never been hot.

And essentially, when you die and you get spit back out to before the fight, your resources, your corpse run is that your sole currency that I'm talking about gets dropped on the board and you have to go back and win the fight to get it. Right. All right. That's normal. That's, yeah, so that's there. And or if you, but while it's on the board, you have to go pick it up or every turn, it, it's, or every turn, it, it, ticks down until it goes away. That's a Lords of the Fallen mechanic. Oh, yes.

Nobody liked it. Nobody liked that. Your corpse is slowly deteriorating if you don't get to it fast enough. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the corpse is slowly deteriorating overturns. Furthermore, if an enemy goes on top of the corpse, it powers up and eats it like

bloodborne. And now the enemy has it and is harder to fight. Okay. So all this is established, and this is your baseline. This is what the difficulty of the game is doing. Needless to say that you start out and you make a left, you make a right, and there are enemies you cannot defeat right around you in the first starting area, right? Got it.

Very typical. I'm kind of like, okay, come back later is the idea here. And you do get a little bit more powerful and you come back later and you're still getting absolutely curb stomped because at no point does that HP of 20 points, ever go higher and things are still hitting you for more. I'm not seeing that level up occur, right? You're just becoming a more perfect player. You are getting more efficient at it and you're, you are spending those sole currency points to buy new cards and those new cards are better, but, and this is a huge, huge thing now, with all this difficulty in place, I find it absurd and kind

of obscene in places and nuts to be that brutal about things, but there's a lot of games I love that are all about the challenge. And if you know the genre and you're walking in going, yeah, like fuck my shit up, fam, all of this makes sense, you know? What is crazy is that the games, the actual path it sets you out on

gives you 20 cards and you have, how do I put this? The deck it gives you to start with is a losing deck that cannot win. Oh, well that's thematic, but also, oh. But like, if you keep playing and just buying and buying cards and adding it to your deck as well,

you will not be able to win because it is too many cards and there's too many bad cards and you will not get your good attack cards often enough to be able to survive. So the thing the tutorial gives you, there's no tutorial, but the thing that it introduces you with is incompatible with succeeding. Well, I got to tell you,

I got to tell you, you're given a losing deck and then following it up with, the thing the tutorial gives you, no wait, there's no tutorial is like this whole conversation in,

in fucking isolation. That sounds so brutal. So after fucking, after like staring at this and going, well, hold on, what do you actually want from me? game because I hit the point of like going, this is insane, this is insane, etc, all these layers. And after a point, I was like, wait, hold on. What do you actually want here? Right. And so it turns out

that like the way to actually play that the game doesn't explain to you is that you have to start removing cards from your deck. You have to learn to delete the cards from your rotation to get better stuff more frequently. You want about 15 cards, which is the minimum. And you basically want the minimum amount almost at all times to even have a shot at surviving. And the way that it sets you off down the wrong path is double nefarious in addition to everything I've just said because some of the cards they give you are like block cards, which are you'd think about using them the way Slay the Spiler block works. Sure.

But you, but it's worthless because the block cards give you like one or two points of block in many cases. you're getting hit for numbers way above that. So that entire defensive mechanic of like trying to block the damage, you'll never block full incoming damage, and you're dedicating five or four of your 20 card deck towards cards that just do this. So it gives you...

Mitigate a tiny amount. It gives you a failing mechanic as part of a deck that's too big to begin with and shoves you off and says, go, and puts all those things in place. It's batch it. It's the craziest thing. I can't believe it's this difficult and this insane. You know, there's something that I learned a while ago,

there was a phrase that became popular in FF14, and ever since I learned it, I've discovered it's actually like true of almost every game I've ever played, which is the best mitigation is more damage. Yeah. The enemy can't hurt you if they're fucking dead. Yes. And so the way I started succeeding,

and getting further into the game is by always carrying the minimum amount of cards, making sure that some of those cards exhaust so that I can get an even smaller rotation in the fight and doing, yeah, just big number and that's it.

Also, you have to, I mean, it goes without saying, but you have to position yourself to know what the enemy's attack patterns are and know what other attacks are and how to position to move around them, et cetera. You can't just walk up, wing it, and hope for the best. and the and then and then even then even if you're playing moving properly because like I said moving costs money costs resources that you then can't play your best cards around you still might get RNG'd out you still might get fucked on with that you know so it really is like I'm looking at it as like a I like I like the parts of this that are well besides the beautiful arts And so far the story

Yeah, it's very striking. Very cool. It kind of looks like I wish what Nidhog turned into. Sure, sure. I can see that, yep. That art style expanding into itself. Instead of never making a sequel. Instead of never making a sequel.

I like the idea of like some of the, you know, obviously the not hand holding, games can be hard and present you with hard challenges that you've got to come and smash your head up against. But the idea of like, it's not just the undeaded aside, It's also like giving you the wrong equipment that's going to make you, it's giving you, it's making you encumbered. It's not just undead asylum. It's undead asylum.

Plus you have heavy shit on, which makes you with bad defense. And when you roll, you can't roll properly. So you, but you don't know that you're supposed to take your shit off. And it sends you into the fight and you can't move or do anything. And you're not blocking any damage really because anytime you hold up that shitty shield, all that damage gets taken. and you can't, you can only fat roll. And the game was like, yeah, actually you were supposed to take it all off and play naked, idiot. And you know what, man?

The guy who just got every achievement and slay the spire too and is sick of his thousandth and 20th run of Caves of Cud, here's this description and goes, yeah. Must be, must be, you know. But that's kind of the bit is like the stuff where it actively gives you, like, bad things is where I'm like, this is where I'm like, this is to. much. This is madness, you know? Furthermore, I'll just get a side note. There's some controller problems as well. Like, if you play with the mouse, you're fine, but on a controller, it doesn't select a UI properly. Pathing is bad, which is really annoying. Because there'll be a trap. You'll have traps on the board sometimes, and you'll be like, I'm going to step around this. And then it's like, nope, the autopathing says you have to go on it. Like, but I can

use the same number of moves to avoid it. And it's like, nope. Right? So the shit that you're just like, this is actively annoying and hostile. There are things you can pick up that are like rings to continue the soul's analogy here but those rings will be a really good benefit but the condition is it adds more cards to your deck No I hate it Which then makes the whole thing point less

That condition better be pretty fucking great It wasn't it's not so far the two three that I've picked up that to do that it's not it's never been worth it Yeah I just I'm I'm blow away by as each of these new things get introduced, how actively hostile this game can

be towards the player. And if you are a deck building aficionado, if you're fucking living and breathing that world. If you are strong. You might be able to run this and parse it and be like, I want to suffer, pit it in my veins as hard as possible.

It seems if that you're, like from what I can tell, I was looking over the steam reviews. For the people that fit that mold, like this game is great. Like the top steam review on this game's page is like, hey, you have to absolutely adore deck builders and grid-based strategy games and be good at both. And you must be a master of both

because you don't have the resources to move efficiently. Or if you had, like, a lot of the time, just playing it straightforward, you will be like, I will, like, your thoughts are, let me walk up to that thing and hit it. And you spend the points to walk up to the thing then you only have enough points left to swing once and hit it for a little bit of damage

and then you can't move to safety so then you just die, you know? Yes, yes, it really is and I will say that like it also is a game without perfect information so you don't know where the enemy is going to move in advance so you can't plan around that in a puzzle like way either

you know? Yeah, yeah. Oh, and there's other little wrinkles to it that are, these are more interesting quirks of the, of the system. But it's the world is split into these different areas, but every area has its own nature deck that is associated to the area. And then you have color, colorless cards that are, that are permanently with you. And if you choose to make, like, cards from the area, then you can get, like, benefits to playing the same card in its own. But it's more expensive if you play it in different areas, you know? So.

Oh, that's. little fun things like that. Incredibly complicated. Yeah. It's a cool idea. But like, of course, again, you, you, in the hunt for synergies, which is the only way to survive, like, you, you basically have to, like, sacrifice a lot of your options, you know. And what I ended up doing is, because I kept playing and I started to figure it out. And then I'm like, okay, cool.

I see what's going on here. And it does scratch the itch that I have when things are going. well, but God damn it. And it does also feel like the start of the game is going to probably be the hardest because as you get better cards, let's see how the enemies and stuff ramp up on you. But, you know, what I kind of ended up doing was like, okay, I had a deck where with the bare minimum, my first attack was cheap and it would push enemies away, and then my second attack was ranged.

And then I would just spend my last points to move out of the way of attacking. Or there's certain cards where if you choose to discard them, on purpose, because a lot of your attacks also will say discard two cards in your hand. So if you have like three attacks, you're not going to get to do three. You're going to do one good one and two are going to get discarded. But you can put stuff in your hand where you get a benefit for discarding. So it'll draw a new card or it'll give you one point of shield or something like that. So there is a rhyme and reason and rhythm to it here, but it just, it of course explains nothing.

And if you want to go hammer nails into your foot, virtually. But you're down. Maybe I do. But you might be down for it. You might be down for it. It's cool. See, I'm glad to, here's where I'm at.

I'm glad to hammer nails into my foot all day if the hammer and the nails are consistent and don't change shape. That's where I'm at, right? I threw myself into the grinder on, on Mr. Radon for life. a full evening because it was the same thing every time and I could learn how to handle that hammer.

But this run, this run, you don't have the same weapon and you don't have the same spells and your shit's changing as you go. That's too much. Hope the RNG's in your favor. Hope R&G is on your side. I've been like enter the

gungeon like 10 times and that shit can get really hard, but like your personal strength. can also scale to infinity in a game like that. Same with the enemy forces. You don't seem to be describing a game that can like fucking scale your own power to infinity. Yeah.

Again, knowledge adds a good bit and like upgrading your character in certain ways. Like one upgrade I got after putting a bunch of those excess points in, which you might never do if you want to, build new cards. If you build up enough, if you, if you build up enough excess points and put them into the skill tree, some, one of the things is, um, when you kill an enemy, you get one of its moves as a card you can play. Oh, that's cool. And then that might help you survive the fight if it's got a really good card on its hand. Like, um, there's, this one owl that basically just like stares at

you and does 10 points of damage, like if you kill it. But, you know, you get one really good move for one really good turn. It's going to, and it's going to be gone in this turn if you don't have the points for it, by the way. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Death's Howl is the name of it. And it's, it is definitely a masterclass in, this is hard to insane good, mixed with this is hard to insane bad. And it's both. It's making me feel both things.

And I haven't quit it yet. But I want to see as I go further in which of the two is going to come out on top. I might stop. I might stop. I don't know. You're probably going to stop. It's very pretty. In the world of which you have highly limited time.

Yeah. Anyway. Hey, would you like my review of the PlayStation 5 rogue-like shooter sequel to Returnal Saros? Saros. Yes, Returnal 2. It's a one-sentence review. Oh. I was on the play. I was playing Kingdom Heart.

and I scrolled down. I'm like, should I play Saros? And I moved my controller one thing to the left and went $100. Oh, my God. All right. Oh, my God. No thanks. Hold on.

Is it a, is it the same length as Returnal? Yeah. Give or take. Jesus. That's Canadian. Yeah. Plus tax. It's $1,400.

$5 with tax. Yep. How long to beat? 20 hours. Oh my God. Yeah. I had a similar experience. Someone recommended that new anime racing game that looks super realistic, but they have anime characters. Yes.

I also was going to look at that. Okay. I forgot what it was called. Shifter or something? I also forgot what it was called because this exact scenario happened. Screamer. Yeah. This exact scenario also happened.

Oh, yeah. That new game that's like a. realistic thing. Yeah, I'll do a stream of that. Let's take a look. $80. $80. Is there a demo? No? Why not? How is there not a demo for this $80 racing game? Yeah. I was like, this is a full... That's crazy with no way to preview see what's going on. And then on top of that, too, and this is just me, but like, I was like, okay, this is this thing with the anime characters in it. who made it, what else do they make? I got to figure out if this is,

who's a producer on this that's making this game cost as much? And it's the folks that make MotoGP. And when I looked down their list of previous games, I saw that it was all previous MotoGPs and other racing games. Yeah. And that kind of bummed me out because

I realized that I don't want a racing game for people that make racing games. I want a racing game from someone that made some other shit, because then I'm like, If you told me, you told me you made like Tetris and now you're making a racing game, I'm way more interested in what you have to say about racing. Okay, so hey, did, hey, do you want to buy Saros the new PlayStation exclusive rogue-like?

Or do you want to play Mugenics and Hades 2 for the same price? That price is madness, dude. Oh my God. Yeah. Come on. I just went and double-checked. I went and double-checked on Steve. It actively paused me in my tracks.

I was like, yeah. Like, for example, though, because it was mentioned, it's like this is like a such, it's fighting game coded in a racing game. And I was like, well, I do remember that other fighting game-coded racing game, buck up and drive, where it's split screen, top-gear view, like outrun style, and you're both driving and spinning at each other on the track,

trying to hate each other and make each other, and make each other crash while you're racing. And that's just dope as fuck, and you have life bars. It's great, you know? Like, you're, you're, yeah, you're, you're, you're, yeah, you're, you're, you're, you're road rashing, but two player and fucking going at it. And that's, I want, I want ideas like that coming to the genre from, from outside, you know. Um, burnout is, is, is sick and split second to sick.

And all these games were very cool. Split second. Oh, my God. What a great game with only one flaw. Did you play a lot of split second? Not a ton, but I was watching Schmup God Pat play a bunch of it too. Because I got about 80, 90% of the way through split second, and it was like, it controlled so well, and the race gimmick was so awesome.

And then if you were in front on the last lap of any track, the CPU would go twice the max speed of their car to just flip. lie past you in a way that made it unwinnable. Yeah. All this to say ultimately that I'm like I'm infinitely more interested when that's who's behind it, you know? That pricing is madness. I can't...

That's my review. My review is me live on stream going a hundred dollars. No thanks. Wasn't Returnal also expensive on release? It was. 60 bucks. Hey, Willie, because I'm sure this is in the news about all the consoles getting more expensive. It's a bad sign when people who stream video games every day look at the price to your game and go, yeah, right, no thanks. I mean, again, my first thing. That's dire. The first thing I do is I go, like, is there a demo? And second. Oh, returnal was $40, apparently. Okay.

And then second, I go, like, is this a, like, full length? Ratern was 109 CAD. Wow. $59. 60 bucks. I saw 60 bucks. Everyone's arguing. Everyone's arguing.

How much the game costs? All right. Well, fight amongst ourselves, and the person who survives was correct. That's how it works. Anyway, yeah, yeah, that's what are you doing, guys? You know, okay, and then at that point, of course, Reggie. was like, well, you have a demo, it's called an hour and 59 minutes.

It's like, yeah. On Steam. Yeah, I guess so. On Steam. Which I just, I've, I've never really done that thing. I haven't done the review, the return thing at all, but really? Never. No. But it just is. Because, because I've picked up games and spent like 90 minutes, like, fucking with them and be like, I can't get this game to run at all.

Right. Like, I can't get it to fucking boot. Or this run. so bad that I'm going to send it back. Like, that's my primary use for review. Like, I bought Battlefield 5 on release, or 6, 6 on release, and I was excited to play it. Couldn't get it to boot for an hour and 40 minutes. Yeah, fuck that. That's crazy. And, like, it costs like 100 bucks.

I'm like, I'm not fucking, fuck that. There's a couple times where I play something, and if I'm like, I don't get what's going on here. I'm almost like, I'm so used to possibly learning after the fact, oh, you didn't, there's something you were missing that made this all click. For example, once this podcast is out, someone might get in touch and be like, oh, Death Howl, here's what you didn't know about it. Actually, there's like this one little trick, Death Howl hates it. And this is what makes the game make sense, you know, or something to that effect.

And at that point, you were long past that two hour mark. But yeah. In any case, that's wild on that pricing. Yeah, and I guess the only other thing I was going to bring up to is I got to try some of that team fight fuse. I was, so I had this in my gut and it was like, hey, so I have seen some opinions. Yeah. I have not messed with it myself and I would like to know.

Is this as fucked as I am seeing people talk about? So it's going, it's hard to say, but I think that like what we have right now, evidence-wise, is just there's the, uh, the competitive side and then there's the casual side and then there's just the overall what's good for the game, right? Uh,

one, I'll say that like, as far as what's good for the game goes, this is a brilliant move. It's super smart because it's just you, it's the most fun fuse easily by far. Easily. Well,

let's, let's have the other two parts of the discussion before we decide that it's good for the game. Sure. Sure. Um, it is banned from combo breaker, understandably,

not because of like what it is, but mainly because if you signed up as a duo or as a single, it's too late to change your registration. Yeah, yeah, that's new character rules. And so the mechanics of how to set the tournament up around this thing that wasn't there at the time of your registration, which is now locked, don't make sense.

That's fair. That's super fair. That makes sense. Yeah. What is happening is, of course, yeah, lots of the top players are, as we were talking about last week, talking about how this feels just way too busted,

feels insane, and it'll be too strong, and it'll feel too much like a wacky party thing inside of the game competitively. Are you playing Guilty Gear or Suka here? And then there's like, casually, the part where it's just,

it is a really fun thing. It is a blast, and it makes, it encourages people to just team up with anybody, and just press buttons, just do stuff, you know? You have a limited amount of time to do stuff, and there's downsides to it. But in general, if you want to jump on with a friend

or do the Duo Finder, and I've seen a bunch of people that are just jumping on Duo Finder and hitting the comms and playing together with no real game plan, you just call in your partner and Go-Nuts. I think that's healthy for, like, encouraging what the game's philosophy is and getting people to play duos more. So, uh, plus it's not as, it's not like the, the insane batchit nonsense of street

fighter cross Tekins mode where it literally never stopped, is stupid. And the Marvel Infinite version where it resurrected your dead character was also stupid, right? So this being the seven second limiter on it, they, you know, we'll have to see like what the right amount of time is. but it feels like it can be tamed. And so Sonic Fox was saying it can be nuts, but also you can counterplay it. And so this is kind of overblown

because once you kind of understand how to address it and defend against it, everything seems really strong at first until you learn how to play around it. You know, not to draw it out too long, but like the fact that you have to spend both your bars on you and your partner's side, the fact that you can,

defeat them by hitting the partner and knocking them away and that you only have to block one characters mix-ups because the other person is always hitting mid right you don't have to worry about overheads or anything like that there's stuff like that where you're like you can fight back you know um now that's all on paper on paper yeah what's your actual experience of using it do you use it and people's brains just shut off and go oh fuck my actual experience of using it and then fighting against it and then playing the rest of the normal matches is that freestyle is still stronger and harder to fight against. I'm actually watching you fight somebody with freestyle right now.

Freestyle still seems really good. Freestyle is more insane. It is a, right, it is a, so team fight is really strong, but it is, but freestyle is still crazier. And like, the best way I summed it up, well, to talking to Reggie about it was like, when you have those seven seconds begin, you have seven seconds of your brain going, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, and you have to really like pay attention

and panic and deal with the chaos. Freestyle, that is happening for the whole match. Is there an assist on the screen split your attention? Yeah. And then you wait for the cool down every six seconds, and then it'll be there again. And with team fight, once they spend the meter, they're out of meter,

so then they can't do it again. So you might not even see it, you know, for the rest of that match. They also, if they spend their meter trying to parry, trying to end a combo with a normal super, doing a level three, all these things that take meter mean they can no longer team fight, you know?

So like, it's unlike freestyle, which is always going to be there, you just wait for the cool down. So freestyle is still a better fuse automatically. I'm like, I fear that more. And I was able to fight against people doing team fight stuff and fight back. I was able to kind of deal with a couple folks that were like,

some people's game plan was round start, back off, calling the team fight, rah, go in, right? Like, I'm not even going to stop for a second. And I was able to like, bionic arm those people, you know, block a little bit, get them off, et cetera, and then just kind of handle it, and then they're fucked. So that's how it felt in execution. Also, when me and Reggie were kind of trying to figure out

how to make it work, we were getting some cool synergies going, but like it didn't feel like it was better than, we were individually, you know? Right. So that's kind of how I felt about it, is that it feels like very strong, but not that, but it feels like freestyle is better. And the best... What about at the casual bitch baby level? At the casual bitch baby level, um, because I assume, like, because one of the things

that 2XCO has had a problem with is like they'll have a character like, you know, uh, uh, Brahm and they'll be like, Brahms is fine because he dominates at low levels. And it's like, yeah, but he sucks at high levels, right? And vice versa with various fuses and whatnot. And it's like, because if you have something that it's like, at top tier, it's totally balanced because you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. But it just completely fucking stomps out new players 100%. That's also a problem.

Yeah, I saw one of the most insane videos was to kill Sage with Brahmin and Timo. And Brom jumps out, holds the shield up, the opponent's in the corner. And Timo just throws. does their bullshit. Just throws poison at them. And that's it, right? That was really, that was disgusting. Yeah, I feel, so at the casual level, you call in both characters, and they both hit you and start wailing on you for like about 650 damage.

And that's like a really good double down combo or, you know, a basic, like you're doing, the amount of damage they're doing when they both touch you is the same amount as a really good extended combo. from, you know, any of the other fuses. So, but the difference, of course, is, again, here you used two-beater from each of your character to do it versus one bar and your cool-down assist. So that's what I think is happening casually. Another really good angle for this is, I don't know if you heard about it, but there was a Red Bull knockout event that took place. I did not hear about this.

And the Red Bull event had duo's doing team fight a bunch. it was a bunch of players bringing that in. And we got to see what high-level optimized, you know, versions of the game of it looks like. And there's some really cool insane shit, right? There's some nuts combos that involve like, I think it was like, like, Ari and Timo just kind of like O-T-G spike, O-T-G spike. And they're just like volleyballing the opponent off the ground for seven seconds, you know, building up the. And then what's happening is Timo is building up his mushroom. You know, or his other like stuff, his badges, right?

But in the end, the final match was Sonic Fox and Inzem using Team Fight versus the twins. And I don't know if you've heard about the twins, but... I have not heard about the twins. The twins is the coolest shit in the world. Here's why. They're the strongest Japanese players. They're literally twin brothers playing duos. and 2XCO.

And they basically are like the epitome of thinking the same, with the same brain. They're sitting. You ever see those little things where you have like twin five year olds, but you separate them by like a door? And you say, okay, guys, raise a hand or stand on one

foot or do a dance and like nine times out of ten, they'll do the same thing. It's crazy. Because it's the same, it's the same guts. It's the same like pieces. So, so the twins And that's the name spelled out, T-W-I-N-Z, are drift-compatible fighting game players that are crushing it in Japan,

and they're so strong. And they won, they beat Sonic Fox and In-Zem for grand finals, and they did so using freestyle, you know? So that they're still, like, they're showing the power of that, that fuse, right? All that's great. All that's super fun. It's really hype as well, you know, like they're always playing together.

That's the deal. And then at the end of the match, Damascus gets up and goes, I want more. And he pulls out a second first place trophy. And he puts it down. And he's like, now that Grand Finals is finished,

for the real winner, you two have to fight each other. Looks like good old double dragon. Yeah. Fucking double dragon rules. So they had, they're like, let's go, right? You both are, you both get your trophy, but like, want to use the real winner. Do you accept?

And they're like, let's run it. And I don't think they've ever been seen fighting individually before. I don't think they've ever been seen playing the game not together. So they had to face each other down. And the portrait on the screen, which had the two of them together, becomes like a versus, you know. And then, just to show you how much they understand the bit in the moment. moment, they're like, okay, we always fight together. We've never been seen alone. Jugg or not versus juggernaut. Of course. Perfect. Amazing. It was so hype. It was so hype. It was a brilliant

fucking way to end things off. Fucking kudos, man. France, they, they ran a sick event. And yeah, and in the end, so the twin whose name shows up more is Haru, but, uh, uh, the, uh, the, the other brother won, actually. It was Atoshi who won the set. But a really cool, like, bit and a good gimmick. And I don't know that, like, this is always applicable, but for at least this kind of event where duos are encouraged, double-drageting at the end just to fucking run the set

and see who gets the real trophy is hype as hell. Mm-hmm. That is kind of, like, a storybook, kind of. Like, that's how you would write it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And of course, it's first to one. It's all for, it's not a real, you know, a placement in the bracket or anything.

It's, you could, they could decline if they wanted to. But of course, you like, yo, let's fucking make it hype, guys, you know. And in the end, too, he chose the trophy that had his brother's character on it because it's like, now, fuck you. I want that one with Yasuo. Yeah, so that was great. Anyway, that's pretty much it for me. just want to remind folks that this week

going to be heading out to anime north so one yeah I'm going to take Wednesday I'm not going to stream on Wednesday I'm going to take it to just prepare because we have a lot of packing and stuff to figure out logistics etc. In Toronto, anime north there's going to be a Woolley versus panel

there's going to be a versus Wolves panel going to be going down with Reggie John's going to be in tow. Come hang out. It'll be the 22nd to the 24th this weekend. And then as a heads up, the week following, I'm going to stick around in Toronto. There's some family and people to visit over there. So I'm not going to be streaming all of next week.

Podcast. I'm going to give it a shot based on the setup. We'll see. We'll see what we can do. But in terms of the regular stream, that'll be gone. And I'll be back to regular stream. as of June. So once the new month starts,

I'll be back and that'll be the plan. And because there's only that much time left, allow me to just remind everyone that we're closing it on just about a week left to go grab your reggie. So go hit up the makeship Reggie in the lab campaign and get yourself a little Reggie

because that thing's going to be gone forever in just over a week from now. Forever. Oh, my goodness. Forever, ever. All right. What's going? Oh, yeah. And Phoenix Wright and Pragmata are going to continue, of course.

Of course. What's going on? It was Caboos' fourth birthday. Hooray, Caboose, you had a birthday. Good job. Oh. A little boozy. A little boozy had a birthday.

He got extra treats on his birthday, not too many because we got to keep him trim so his knees don't explode because he's crippled. This is important. And as a result, I had a big old 24-hour stream again because, man, I actually think those things are a fucking blast. I had a lot easier time with this 24-hour one than I did the last one. Are you getting the hang of them? No, I got a better night's sleep beforehand. Fair enough.

So the first one, I actually, you know when you have like a very important alarm to wake up for? and so you're like, oh, it's four. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had one of those, right? This time, that didn't happen. And I decided to start at 8 o'clock in the morning, which was like half an hour after I got up,

instead of two and a half hours after I got up. Because that first 24-hour stream between like 8 and 10 a.m., that's when I started to reel, like, turn into a fucking bowl of yogurt just just wait wait wait you started right after waking up this time right after waking up I got up at 735 took a shower and came over to the office oh my god we're different people I can my day cannot begin

I got I got right into it too like you can go watch the beginning it's like it's right into it my boot up process is like hours long man Holy shit, okay. Dude, I gotta get up with the guy every morning, and he wants to read books and go to the park and eat breakfast. Fair enough. Obviously, I am nightparent. It will, yeah, yeah, see, yeah.

I became morning parent. It just worked out that way. Anyway, so the three games that have only the most tangential relation to Caboosa's birthday, because they all featured gross dog creatures in them. I played Reanimal, which is functionally Little Nightmares 3. It's not called Little Nightmares 3.

There is a game that is literally called Little Nightmare 3. Isn't the font? Isn't the font just the font of Little Nightmares? It's really like... No, no, it's not. It's like block font instead. But regardless, Bandai Namco owns the name Little Nightmares. So when the team wanted to leave Ben and Amco, they had to make their own game.

And it's called Reanimal. It's very good. In terms of games that are your tiny child character in a spooky environment being limbo inside Little Nightmares 1 and 2 and 3 and Reanimal, this is definitely a confident, the second best one. of the trilogy quadrilogy no of all of that whole genre I would say inside like takes it away oh okay okay okay inside is

okay hold on we're counting immaculate we're counting reanimal inside and Little Limberers 1, 2, 3 yeah okay because like that and limbo limbo yeah right because that's that's that that's like a whole genre in and of itself right um

it has full co-op which is fun. I didn't use it, but it is fun. And it is a really well-made, a little trip through a bunch of very spooky environments with an extraordinarily confusing story that ends very confusingly. But yeah, it's just a bunch of great, like, puzzle and action scenarios

with running and platforming in this very, very cool aesthetic. It's a very easy game to review. Very good. Very short. like I picked it up and I blew through it in four and a half hours and I don't know about replay value like there's some hidden masks you can find but like well okay what I'm thinking of I don't know about little nightmares but with inside and fuck the other one we just said limbo limbo. I wouldn't think of replaying either. I would think of just like that one run through and then, you know, the plot is very simple and cinematic. So inside had a couple of things that you could find that would change it.

Like there was a fundamentally different ending to inside that you could find very early in the game. But yeah, no, these are not like, these are replay because I want to do it again. not because there's something different that I might find. But yeah, no, I think reanimal is great. And if you're kind of into that, then it's absolutely a game to play. It's also getting DLC, which I assume is why the ending is a little flat. It's a little confusing, confusing sake. It's one of those stories that it plays it straight.

And then you get about halfway through and you realize that, like, a significant proportion of what you're seeing is metaphorical, like directly. metaphorical instead of literal. Yeah, I'm also remembering the Little Limers 3 apparently is like not great compared to the first two. I also heard that and that's why I didn't play it. Yeah. No, like my tattoo artist was like super into them and I remember he was just telling me that like the third one

just shits the bad for some reason. Don't know. Oh, there is a secret ending and reanimal. Interesting. Interesting. Well, that's cool. I wonder what it gets you. But yeah, a very cool game. No notes.

It's a really cool little game. If you like any of the prior ones that I mentioned, you should check it out. Then we bang that one out and we gave caboose some treats and we put a little party hat on him. And me and Paige wore this pug hat. Yeah. Which I can't wear because it gives me migraines. And Paige wore it for about 10 minutes. And she's like, oh my God.

head is sweating. Oh my God. Is it the wrong size? No, it has not to do it. It's a headband. Oh, it's elastic. Okay. It's a, it's a furry like headband. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll squeeze. If I wear that on my head, I'll get migraines and I'm not going to get migraines five

hours into a 24 hour stream. Yep. Not going to do it. And then Paige also had to take it off because it was so, because the pug fur shit on it is so warm that it was causing your head to sweat. Like, that's not good either. And then we played the new Game in the Dark Pictures anthology

Directive 80-20 So before we even start Let's go through the hit list Of the dev team Behind Until Dawn and Fucking The Dark Pictures Until Dawn

After you say each one Reminds me good or bad Until Dawn It was great Good Everybody loves Until Dawn Except for that one part Man of a Dan

What's that Except for that one thing But yeah Yeah I think until dawn's fantastic. It's great. It's great. Man of Madan, some people think it's good. Some people think it's all right. But it's like on the positive side of things, right?

Little Hope is the worst game they've ever made easy. It's terrible. It's offensively bad. House of Ashes, good. Good game. Good game, House of Ashes. The Devil and Me, not a good game. Not good. I wouldn't say it's like terrible, but not good. The Quarry? Quarry's okay. Some people like it.

I'm not a big fan. Casting of strength, Frank Stone, me and Paige gave up. We got halfway through that shit and just quit. Okay. Boring. Right. Okay.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember. I remember... It's the Dead by Daylight one. There was one of them that you just ripped to fucking shreds. I guess that was the one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the other thing is that Dead by Daylight was supposed to have Frank Stone be a killer

in their upcoming, like, you know, roster, and they canceled that. because of response to casting Frank Stone. Okay. Like, fuck that game. And now we're here at Directive 80-20. And Directive 80-20 says, hey, do you want a really incompetent remake of the thing? Oh, God, I'm offended.

Oh, fuck off. I just got here to this thing appreciation club. I just arrived. and I'm super mad at that. The thing is so incredible because it came out in the 80s or the 70s. It came out a long time ago and you'd watch it today and be like, wow, this is obviously one of the best movies ever made. It's literally a perfect film. I watched it like fucking whatever a year ago.

It is a perfect film, end of story, move on. All right, so I'm going to go over some real basic things. I'm not going to spoil anything, but we're going to go over the basics. So, dark pictures game, you know, you can pass the controller back and forth to play its different characters. They added a round robin mode now, so you're not locked into different characters. You just pass the controller. God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

This is so unfair because by setting that up, now I'm just like, okay, so we're thinking about the thing, right? All right, go on, talk about this game now. Like, it's a... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, here's the thing. Here's the thing, Wully. The game's advertising... The games advertising is absolutely clear.

It's about a monster that can mimic you and pretend to be you, and it could be anything. No, that's the, here's the thing is the problem. Yeah. So, and no, I'm not going to spoiler cast it because some people, it's a narrative experience. It's a narrative adventure. People can go into it as they want. And also, more importantly, I don't have to spoil the game to talk about the problems. Right.

So that's your setup. So first of all, it is a full-sized game. It is, so the Dark Pictures Anthology of traditional. been three or four hours long and they've been like short little things and they come out relatively off and so they do a bunch of different ideas. This is a bigger one. It's closer to like until dawn sized and um the quarry. That is a bad move. The the core conceit doesn't last long enough and in fact you feel them stretch it like quite long. So the first thing that happens is the very first thing that happens is you have a Canadian guy on the spaceship that is clearly

a British or Irish person trying to do a Canadian accent and it is the worst shit I've ever heard in my life it is terrible and in fact most of the acting is quite bad so bad bad start bad start real bad start performance captures a huge part of these games yeah um bad not good um

so you know we go through you know managing the space station oh I'm going to talk to the robot, which choice will you make? And it'll give you that little thing about, oh, you've branched the path. Now so-and-so is the caring version of themselves. They'll act differently in a later cutscene. You know, that kind of thing, like you would expect from until dawn. The story is that a big, gross alien monster hits your ship with a big pile of goo on the way

to a planet to colonize it. And the big pile of goo starts replicating members of the crew. and start being an evil monster. You know, like the thing. Problems start immediately. And I mean immediately. The first scene in the game in which you see a monster pretending to be another person,

it is a hunched over lady with a hoodie over her face to hide her identity. And the only choice available to you playing the game is to push up on the analog stick to go closer to her with your handout going, hey, hey, are you okay? Hey, in a game about making choices, this is one of the most important choices

I could possibly make. And I didn't want to make this choice. This leads to a struggle and a fight. But of weird note is that, right away, this is the first encounter. Okay, we've encountered a hostile lady who the player knows that it's an alien monster that changed, right?

And it decides to chase our hero around as a human being with a stick. Okay. Like, it doesn't turn into a monster or do anything weird. It's like, is it moving super fast and does it have the ability to kill you with that? No. No, it can't kill you, yeah, but it's just walking around. Okay. And here we go.

And we've, in this section, we have discovered how they've decided to make this more of a real video game. That's not very amuggous. It's not. But it is amogous. We'll get there in a second. And the way that they've decided that, hey, these have recently been, they choose your own adventures, right? Your only gameplay is quick time events and exploring an area and choosing story outcomes, right? Like, that's been the narrative structure of nearly all of these games for a while.

And the people behind the Dark Pictures anthology, and they said, you know what we need to do? We're going to make this more of a video game. We're going to put gameplay in here. And what they have decided to do, they have added the gameplay of really bad stealth sequences. As you crouch behind waist-high sci-fi cover in a very basic stealth game. And oh my God, Ronnie Salmon in the chat calls it sawdust gameplay. Oh my God, that is a great term. Because it's just there for filler.

It's just there for filler. very, very dull stealth gameplay and, you know, we do it in the first section and I go, well, at least we're not going to do that that often. Right. Okay. So we load up and we get a bunch of characters

and then we establish that there's problems with the ship and they're trying to figure out why that character's acting weird and the player knows that it's because they're an alien. You know, so on and so forth. This is where we discovered that they're not just cribbing from the thing. They're also cribbing from aliens. So we have like a one-to-one recreation of Dallas going in the vents to seal the alien off, stuff like that. And it's all like pretty mediocre in terms of like acting and plot.

When the real problems start happening, and I mean big systemic problems, is a couple hours in you get to play as a guy named Sernan. He's a Turkish guy that me and Paige incorrectly thought was German, so we did a German accent for all of his dialogue in the entire game only to find out after we beat it that he was from Turkey. Oops. That's fine. We've been throwing

a German accent on Francisco von Kama even though her objection is unaccented. It doesn't matter. Yeah, that's fine. And we play a section of Cernan, we get to know Cernan, and then the game goes 22 hours later and does like a big red thing and like

skips warden time. And what we do as CERN is we do a stealth sequence from the alien pretending to be a member of the crew, which I succeeded and got away. Then we flash back to the present, now knowing that Cernan is guaranteed to survive all events until that happens. Right, right, right, right, right, right, yeah. Which that happens with three characters, or they flashed. forward to sections at the end of the game, and then you succeed them. And then the game tries to go, oh no, so-and-so's trapped in the ice lab. You should save them. And I'm like, I don't have to save them. Because they're alive in a later scene. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But they might hate you.

Yeah, but like it is, it is a massive systemic, like, narrative issue. that like permeates the first like 80% of the game that would that would my overactive like plot brain would fucking zoom in on that and hate it well we started to make decisions based on not we knew characters were quote unquote safe for later right right right that's wrong that's terrible that's not how you're supposed to play or enjoy a narrative game right and like I look back on that and it's like, oh, those sections in the early game have no, nothing actiony or exciting going on at all. So I am of the opinion that these scenes from later in the game were spliced back into the beginning to help with pacing. It sounds like you're describing a game that's like the same length as all the others except they're fucking dragging that shit.

Yeah. So this is a minor spoiler, but it is it is the biggest part of the game's problem and it is a fundamental mistake and how it goes. It takes the vast majority of the game, I think six out of eight chapters for even one character to suspect that the alien is mimicking people. And you know right away. You know within the first interaction. That's fucking annoying. This means you go. through scene after scene after scene after scene where they're like, why are they acting so strange?

Or how'd these extra people get on the ship? And you're like, because the fucking alien, like. Yeah. So, so like, steel man, a good old John Carpenter or a good old, you know, Ridley is going to take its time before the threat is unvean. Sure. Would you say six of eight hours? No. And as soon as we have that moment, we have multiple scenes in which characters are split up, right, in some kind of action sequence and everyone's suspicious. And then they meet back up and nothing. Oh, okay. If I told you that this is a game based off the thing and the thing monster, and it features one, which one do I shoot moment in the entire game?

Would you be surprised? Wow. Okay. So is it just, So is it just mainly like, I don't know if the group I'm with is... No, it's not like that at all. It never, it comes up once. It comes up once.

And there's a bunch of reasons for this. There's a bunch of like mechanical reasons for this that I don't think they planned around correctly. One of which is that when the alien is imitating somebody, about half the time it speaks, it has audible distortion, like monster distortion on its voice. Yeah, okay. So you can't actually blend in with anybody. Yeah. You can see them for two seconds. Or they'll be like, just open.

the door. I'm your friend. Why don't you? And it's like it's fooling no one. Right. It's doing monster trap. And it's like if you're not going to have them trick the player into who's a doppelganger or not, why are you using doppelganger? But the second one, and this is

really important. I had characters get injured and lose an eye. I had characters get injured and have frostbite damage and fire damage and like get scuffed up and bleed and have cuts on their faces. we discovered very early that every doppelganger that is presented will be pristine and uninjured.

This led to a scene in which there was a room full of injured people and them going, it could be any of us. And I'm like, it can't be them, them, them, them, or them. Because they're hurt. Because they still have the injuries from the earlier scene. Right. Right. Right. And I'm like, this is like, this is the guts of this type of story.

is it could be anybody. And I never thought that once. And what you just described is also applicable in a game like, no, I'm not a human, but that's the actual gameplay is, hey, good job, you just noticed this person is not, or dirty, right?

They looked way too clean. And Page, and I'm going to say 99% of the chat, had no doubts about anyone even once in the entire game. It was incredibly obvious who was and who wasn't and what was. And like they have some moments where you get split up and there's like a door and you're like open the door. I need to get in. And there's two of those. And one, laughably obvious.

It's a monster. And then two, laughably obvious. It's not the monster. Just trivial. That's. And on top of that, okay, we eventually get some monster. We get some thingism. And if, okay, we're a thing creature.

It can transform in the things. It can, what's that? Cool design. Well, there's, mm, mm. So, John Carpenter's the thing only shows you the thing a couple of times because they only had the budget to make a couple of dummies, right? This is a video game where you can make multiple models and squash and stretch them. What if, um, the thing that can be anything,

turns itself into the same enemy model like 40 times nothing changes and it's like head to toe the same the same monster man okay the way that the fucking dog exploded is completely different from the way the head splits open

and that's all really interesting we have a situation where there's like a big pile of goo on the wall and like the same monster that has been chasing you the whole game just comes out of the wall And I'm like, it's just, I should be seeing less of these and they should all be unique and they should all be people that I've tried to trick me. And then from a mechanical perspective,

the last hour and a half of the game is back to back to back to back stealth sequences against the same monster with every character in the roster. And it's bad stealth. and it's kind of offensive because you get this thing at the top of the screen that goes new objective

avoid the creature that's the same as the last objective which was avoid the creature and the objective before that which was avoid the creature and the objective before that which was avoid the creature and these weren't fun

those times either are you just like is the camera just jumping around does multiple people are escaping a maze or something like yes actually almost Yes

Okay, all right, all right And on top of that, they have Their twist, which most of the game builds up The fact that there's a alien on the ship as the twist, even though they show it to you within 10 minutes At the start of the game. Very strange. Then they have their secondary twist,

which is okay. Mm-hmm. And then they have their third twist, which seems like, it'll go somewhere and then they just do absolutely nothing with it at all. And it's one of those twists where your brain just starts to go, why? But what? Wait, no, that doesn't, how?

Okay. And then the game just ends. Not like sequel hooking or something? No, no. Okay. The big twist of the game Doesn't make any sense Like from a from a practical or narrative perspective

Like it does like I don't understand how it can exist in the game's own Reasons in the game's own universe So we ended the game just going like What? Waste of time More than anything waste of a good premise man I'm so curious

how these games are written because okay it feels like a first draft is what it feels okay because I'm looking to see like yeah of the dark pictures

of all the supermassive games okay until dawn Larry Fezden and Graham Resnick okay not a lot of the quarry um a couple of the same names

are popping back up here for men of Medan Little Hope and so on. Looks like Directive 80-20 is the same writer as no, no, these are new people.

Yeah, well, it should stop. Also, so this game also does not feature any of the dark pictures, anthology, like curator, like in-between chapter, like, like, you know, narrative hook, where there's like a, you know, a spooky guy in a study.

doing cryptkeeper shit until I was in the last chapter of the game and in the last chapter of the game you could pick up one of the coins for man of madame and your character goes huh that's weird that shouldn't be there and he stands up

and the curator which is a British guy in a suit with a bowler hat is standing behind you a posing and I went what and then a couple extra scenes throughout the end of the game had the curator just standing in the background

in modern day clothes and a bowler hat A posing And I'm just like What the actual fuck is this And what it is is that If you, when you pick up that item They unlock something called zero death replay Which is every time your character could die

The curator shows up A posing in the background And if you get through the entire game game with all characters alive, you get a scene with the curator who gives you like a vague sequel hook. But like, I swear to God, we're on a space station running from monsters and there's

like a dude aposing in the background and it looks like shit. Okay, and it's meant to be like a narrative like if you see him. It's meant to be like, oh right, the dark pictures. If you see, okay, sure. Well, that answers my question. I was going to ask like, is this actually part of

the, the... Yeah, no, it is. And also because they're assholes, they, they imply that 80-20 is a sequel to one of their prior games. And you see a little callback and you're like, I don't know, this fucking week. Okay. Fucking. Because the time. Yeah, just a waste of time. Just a waste of time.

How long is this anthology? How many are there? Oh, we've done them all. So in total, we're going up on 40, 50 hours, I guess now. Oh, wait, no, but no, I just mean to say, like, is this the last one? Or is everything they released? This is the last of this season. Okay, okay.

Wow. Yeah, total waste of time. That sucks, man, because after until dawn, it was definitely an exciting idea to think, oh, we're going to make more stories shorter so that they can come out more frequently. And if they're all hitting that quality, then great. Oh, this is the first of season two. Oh, good. Oh, yay.

So that's directive 80-20. It's bad. They should go back to not having gameplay in these games. That's a bold statement of me to make. No. No gameplay, better than bad gameplay. A million percent, especially when it clearly feels out of place and nothing that they've done before this seems like they would know how to. Yeah, that's, it's bad.

It's not good. Damn, all right. So that was a massive bummer. So Paige came over to do a 10-hour stream as a big old to help me out. And we were like, wow, this is shit. Wow, what a bummer. But then I moved on to Ace Combat 5. Guess what?

Flying planes. Fucking cool. Is there even a dog? Anywhere? Yes. You're playing as the ace of the war dog squadron. Oh my God. Okay.

Got you. Got you. Ace Combat just kicks ass. I don't think there's anything like, I don't think there's anything specific that I need to talk about. How fucking sick was the music? It's fucking. Incredible. Yeah, okay. Done. Ace Combat 5. So I couldn't finish it. I couldn't get far enough into it to finish it. I'm going to be finishing it later this week.

And Ace Combat always has a lot of too much sincerity. I think it's Matthew Mercer's first acting role in which he sounds like a child. He sounds like a little boy. It's super weird. It's strange. and um Ryko Nagase's sister from Ridge. So Ridge racer model. The Ridge racer mascot. Her sister K. Nagase is a character

in the story. What? The lore. She flies planes. She flies planes. Wow. Um, very weird. Um, Ace Combat 5. Hey, guess what? A war happened. We're flying planes. It's very dramatic.

Mm-hmm. multitude of mission types, it's super awesome. I stopped at the perfect moment in that game because it's doing something that I haven't encountered in an ace combat game. We have objectively won the war as of Mission 18. Oh. Of 27. Oh. Okay.

And I'm like, what, hmm. Keeping the peace. Okay. Peace reigns. Yeah, okay, okay. We're doing flybys of like a soccer stadium as the VP does like a speech to mark the end of the war. And I'm like,

something's going to pop off. Something. Doing blue angel stunts. Yeah, absolutely. It's probably the Belkins again. It's almost all. boys the Belkins. They're such fucking assholes. God damn, this unsung

war. These motherfucking dirty yukes and they call this fictional country. They refer to it's as Yucadabania, but your, but your, but your wingman referred to them as dirty yukes and I'm like,

ooh, ooh that hits. I can feel it. Coeco's and kipps. Yeah. Oh, it hits. but yeah I'll be getting back to that as of me that was pretty much the end of my week I'm did I do anything else

oh I played Subnotica 2 yesterday I did a sponsored stream through Twitch I played Subnotica 2 didn't mess around with it too long maybe about an hour or so it's an early access so it's not the polished perfect SpitShine game that Subnotica 1 is

I have lost my thalasophobia. I was about... Since I played Somnata 1. I was about to ask you, don't you have theosophobia? I did. I...

So Subnotica 1 made me so anxious. That's why I started the Mind Goblins video series. Yes. Because I'm like, this is a weird, extreme reaction to swimming in the ocean in a game. I mean, to be... This is absolutely nuts. It is not an irrational fear.

Large shadows and bodies of water underneath you should be unnerving. Yeah, it should be. But yeah, I played a bit of subnaic a one, too. It's cool. It's fun. Oh, that's it. It's not done. That's my current review of it.

As of this week, I got a lot going on. Today, after the podcast, I'm going to be doing an FF14 stream at 7 p.m. Pacific. with my new friends Hina Bobina, Mint Castella, Ecto, and Kromu, Kromu. So me and four V-Tubers are going to be playing FF-14. I've become Bricky, I guess. You are the meat-tuber. I'm the meat-man, just me. But I got this meat dog, so it works, right?

So we're going to be hanging out and doing a bunch of old stuff and shooting the shit. Yeah, you know, I was talking to Hina. We were chit-chatting and had like a stepbrothers moment. where I was like, oh, you're my new best friend because we're talking about what classes they should add in the future to FF14. She's like, yeah, and you know who I really

want? I'm like, chemist. And I'm like, yes! I've been saying chemist for literally 10 years. You have the best taste. Like, period. You are 100% right. What's the source on that job? Final Fantasy tactics.

Okay. I want a healer that throws potions that smash on the party member's face. And it does a little bit of damage because you smashed a bottle on their face. But then they get a heel. But they get the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I want the big heel to be to take a bottle and turn it upside down and just fuck.

It's right in their fucking face. That's what I want. Baldur's Gate 3. Like in Balders Gate 3. All's gay three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So there's that.

And then I'm going to do some more Kingdom Hearts and some more Ace Combat 5. All righty. I accident, man. So I got to a very tough boss fight in Kingdom Hearts, too, which I won't mention the name of it. I accidentally speed ran it. You know when the audience is like building you up?

Like, oh, man, this is going to be so awesome. I beat it in like 30 seconds. And I was like, oh, that was a cool thing. And then I looked through the comments and people said that this could not have been more ideal. You got the quick time event within five seconds, won it. And then you took enough damage to go into your critical limit. And then you picked the one move the boss can't handle. Okay.

to do four times in a row and just, and I like, I naturally did the speed run technique. Wow. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I had, I had a, there's a Boston Pragata that like,

it was kind of strange because like, it kind of just showed up, sat there and died. And then it turns out that like, I was doing a heat loop over and over on it so fast that it managed to not do any of its cool shit.

Sick. And it's like, okay, some builds will delete your ability to see the cool thing. This is one of those games. I am getting a little annoyed at it becoming a staple of my channel

to skip the cool part of the fight. Yeah. Yeah. This has become like a thing where two, three times a year, everybody get excited for the boss fight, and I just fully skip one or even two phases. Like the fight I'm talking about, I skipped both of the second and third phase.

Yeah. I think I wouldn't mind if games did like hard, like, limitation tricks to make sure that you could have these moments occur. Because like there's things like damage threshold. Because the other thing that's really annoying is like something that happens is, you know, dialogue is happening and you're walking and talking, and then you interrupt one because the next one triggers because you walk too far. Right, yeah, because you walk too fast.

Super annoying. Hate that shit, right? Just actively, like, make it stop. Like, have a thing in place that makes you able to see that. Bosses are, it's a little bit trickier in the sense that, like, if it's a game where they can do one of many things and then you're supposed to hit a threshold, then sure. But doing what the Thank You DLC in Expedition 33 does, where you're like,

okay, time for a cutscene to occur. Now, Phase 2 begins. is like, okay, great. Now you're gonna actually get to see it, you know? Yeah, so like FF16 had that, where you hit like a damage threshold and the boss just went, pooh, cutscene, like immediately.

Like just, and to try and stop this from happening. But if you hit it hard enough, you can still skip those things. Because what you do is you just go from cutscene to cutscene. Right, right, right, right. With a big, like, bonus popping. Yeah, but that's it for me this week. Make sure to check out tonight's show.

It's going to be a big collaboration, very excited. I've already moved my character over to the correct server. And you know what? You know what's great about making new friends that are also V-tubers? They're showing me a bunch of technology that I didn't know how it worked. Like, have you heard about, what's this called? It's called Fugie? Fugie is what people use to put everybody's avatars on the side of the screen.

in your Discord call. Oh. So that your audience doesn't have to fucking guess who's talking if they don't know everybody's name. Wait. So like when I'm talking,

my little Discord avatar I'll go br-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-r-d-d- And when, but it'll be on stream. It won't be like just hidden away in the Discord. Okay. Sure.

Somebody in the chat says, oh, you don't really know about that? I'm old and I don't collab that much. with people. Give me a break. Booli, you're the first night collab the most with. Everybody knows what your fucking voice sounds like on my show.

Not much need for what you're describing. But sure, I'll take some fucking blowfish meat. I am super worried that I am going to be the oldest man in the world in a couple of hours. Because I'm going to be in a group

of like everybody in their 20s. You. And I have a kid. I'm married. I'm bald So I was going to say you might be But my impression from the outside is that like Okay vtubers traditionally

Like especially like you're going You know the original like once from Japan Yeah you're the oldest man in the world Yeah that's correct But English vtubers It feels like there's actually a gamut of older and younger folks Like not there's there's a couple of English vtubers That I've seen where I'm like

Oh that's somebody that's our age or actually older There's you know So there's a couple people going for it. So maybe not. I think I'm just going to be the old person. I think I'm just going to be very old. But I'll live.

For a while anyway. No, that's, that's, what do you, would you not want to be that? You want to fucking, you want to be hip and young and

in there with the, like, I just don't want to be dead. That's, that's it. I think, so here's, well,

here's the thing. It's always this moment where you go, oh, remember this and the group goes, no. Sure, sure. I just, it's just the person. Because they go, I was five years old. And I go, okay, well, 9-11 was a big deal.

Sure, sure. I just, you, seem, to me, you have been comfortable deciding to be the old man, even when you were not old. Yeah, you're right. I had practice. So, yeah. Old soul, that's what you say. Sure. Yeah. All right. Let's take a break. I gotta take a break. I gotta take this dog. Oh yeah, you know it's time, huh?

BRB. This dog has a great sense of time. Oh my God. Oh my, stop hitting me. How do you do? Quick word from our sponsors. We love our sponsors. love our sponsors so much. The podcast this week is sponsored by AG1 and

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It's a mystery. It is what can be the cause? Literally, you know, it's like, oh, shit. Your body isn't digesting the worst things. for you, well, then you can feel kind of normal for a second, you know? So yeah, um, get yourself some food that'll actually, uh, make you feel better as well, uh, not just psychologically, but literally like you wake up not hating yourself because you're like, oh shit, my body's not in pain because you're not eating like crap. You're eating good stuff, healthy stuff. So,

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I've said it already, but that game is coming along. I'm seeing there's people are getting really good with my favorite character is Cecil. I think it's super sick that he's in the game. And Cecil is apparently keeping up with the God level. Dude, that's awesome. Viltramites and such. You know, he's using tech that is the cost of a small island nation's GDP. to keep up.

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Thanks, Invincible Versus. All right. Uh, what's going on in the news? Probably something. At least, at least one or two things. Sure. Uh, this is something I actually wanted to mention last week. We didn't get around to it in time. But kind of just funny. Um, so, uh, this, Yeah, Jesse Cox was talking about this over on Geekenders,

but there was a store in Japan, BIC Camera, that sells Pokemon cards. Sure. And as you might have heard, scalping has become quite rampant. It is a problem. So, to deal with it, Bick Camera has decided to fight the scalping, you must agree to three conditions when you buy Pokemon cards. Are they riddles? Yes.

One, you must complete a quiz of 15 questions based on the Pokemon universe. Only those who answer the quiz questions correctly will be able to purchase the item. Second, also if you take a photo of the quiz, your refused service. Second, you must open the pack of cards in front of them. Oh my god, this is just safe supply for Pokemon cards. This is just safe supply for Pokemon cards. You must prove that you know what Pokemon is. Then you must open the pack in front of us.

And third, you must agree to let them, they cut along the box's perforations to open it so that you cannot resell the box. as if it were new and unsealed. Smart. Yeah. Scalping has always been a problem, but scalping has never been the problem it is now.

I feel like you could, I feel like if you charted like the economy in real dollars and inflation alongside things that are being scalped, the lines would basically touch as they went up. Because I would say that there's always been, You know, you know about the whatever, like rise and grind.

You know, you got the hustle bro. Yeah, you got a hustle. Looking for that leg up. But I would say that the knowledge of taking all your currency and making it as liquid as possible and moving it into things that have appreciating value has become widespread in common and known. Yeah, I know a guy who put all his money into Pokemon cards because it was like a shelf stable asset. There you go. Right.

You know, and it's what folks have been doing with paintings for years, but now it's just, it's attracting all the worst attention. Because instead of, you know, paintings with a bunch of assholes in a gallery, you've got kids getting like shoulder blocked out of line while, you know, a fucking dude hits up the vending machine and just buys everything there. So what you're supposed to do traditionally is buy the cards off the kids and then resell them at a markup. But in today's internet connected world, you can now track shipments and correlate all this nonsense to cut the kids out of the deal. Like back in the day, if you were going elementary school and some of the high school kids ran by, I'm like, I will pay you 20 bucks for any Pokemon cards you have on you right now. You'd be like, fuck it. I don't give a fuck. I'm going to use the 20 bucks to go buy more Pokemon cards.

Right? I'll pay you for that Charizard sticking out of the spokes of your bike Yeah It's in horrible condition No of course of course but that and that also Is just a through line because that's what baseball cards were like as well You know yeah all the way through But yeah you basically get to the cut the middleman out level that we're at now

Rarity as value no intrinsic value All extrinsic market value And I will say that you know from what I can tell with Pokemon and like Magic the Gathering and a lot of these card games. There's a lot of people that are fans of the thing that also are part of the market. And, you know, there is an interest in that worth growing as they're looking at it as like, oh, I play. I like the game, but also I want a high value thing because sure, that pays off. But anyway, all of this is like the same assholes that are buying up every video card in every other fucking scalping situation, PS5s, you know, back in the day.

and the Pokemon card company, whoever the fuck they are, and all the console companies are seeing, oh, people are buying up cards as fast as we can print them. This is crazy. Why would we ever create a system in which people who actually just want the cards

can get them? Because you are cutting the nose off of your future. So one of the things that, I don't know if it's a news article this week or whatever, but every single fucking video game console has increased in price since launch. Yeah. Not decreased, increased.

And some by like 150. There's a class action lawsuit against Sony for the price hikes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, Sony was like 150 U.S. dollars, right? And it's like, well, we got to save costs on the PlayStation. Well, what are you going to do when nobody has a PlayStation and then doesn't want to buy the next PlayStation because they'd never had a PlayStation because the PlayStation's too expensive? like you want to talk like you want big picture when you and me were kids it was the like default that you had a brother or a sister right you have two kids three kids sometimes four kids right so when mom and dad were like we'll buy a two hundred dollar Nintendo what was that that was actually like I'll take my brother and I for for example hundred bucks a dollar PlayStation that was actually a one hundred dollars a PlayStation that was actually a one

$125 PlayStation for each child. Right? Now, a lot of kids are only kids because birth rate down and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Okay. How much is, oh, it's $750 fucking dollars for PlayStation 5?

And... That's fucking crazy! And if you don't get it, and you got to go get it off the back of the truck, then, uh, crank that up. 150% and it has no games yeah

well that's another story that's a different story from this week that's a different story you can't live in a world where like console exclusivity

becomes less of a thing because there's PC ports and then also yell it has no games because by yelling it has no games you're demanding that exclusives come back it's fun to say though

I think it's really fun to say you're creating hostile world where exclusives come back if you fucking keep saying that. No, but for real, like Sony and Nintendo and to a lesser degree Microsoft are like, we want lifelong consumers of our products.

And it's like, well, you can't get lifelong consumers if you don't allow them to get the foot in the door as children. Right. Like, you know, you know how I bought a fucking a GameCube? I bought it with lawnmower money. Right.

Right, right. You know how long it would take somebody to buy a fucking PlayStation 5 with lawnmower money it would take like the entire fucking summer and maybe more that world doesn't exist anymore it's just yes but that's my point

the world you can't keep pricing these things like that world is still here I uh it's not I the PlayStation 6 should just be a cheaper PlayStation 5 it should be the same box just cheaper

But if it can't If it can't Wow everybody By looking in like the most realistic Whatever blah blah blah blah blah blah It doesn't matter how much it It waos people If people can't afford to buy it

Exactly exactly exactly It doesn't It's the same shit every week Me and Paige will be like driving somewhere And listen to the radio And it's like Gen Z doesn't Go on vacations

Why is that Do people just want to stay They don't have any money Yeah They don't have any money It turns out Nintendo going humble on the tech for years has the right idea, but they also were not... But they're not humble on the price. They're never been humble on the price. I bought two Nintendo Switch 2s on the day of launch and some people were like, that's stupid. Why do you need that?

And like, because I'm going to have to replace one one day and it will be cheaper now than it will be later. And I didn't think I was going to be proven so correct, so fast. Like Nintendo does half the equation, but then they don't pass the savings onto the buyer, basically. They save money on the production and then still put out the price and lock it in and never drop it, you know, so that they can get the best of both worlds there. Anyway, I think this is fucking sick. I love the idea of assholes being in line trying to think about, shit, what does a rare candy do? fuck. Or getting one of the 15 questions wrong, you know,

and then also having to open the pack in front of everybody to prove that you give a fuck. I think it's great. I think it's fantastic. It would also be kind of hilarious and wild if you were a massive Pokemon fan, but you fucked up one of the most basic questions ever on the thing. It's like winning the lottery in Canada. Oh, the skill testing question. Yeah. Did you fuck up bed mass or pedmas depending where you're at?

Oh, good job. You're at $2 million, dumbone. Like, fuck. That being said, there's also potential here for a great bit where the questions are insanely hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the good IV for Vaporion? Man, I don't fucking know. Well, goodbye. How many pixels is missing no made up of?

40? Yeah, yeah. No bad guy, you have to stop playing so much Pokemon. You just answered the question. He said, it's defense. That's get out. If you answer that one correctly, they tell you to go home and stop playing Pokemon.

You've done too much. For your own good, you're not allowed to buy this anymore. Yeah, no, you should stop. Trick question. You solved. answered the 15 questions, you're not allowed to buy it. You're not allowed. You're too, you're in too deep. You need to get out of here. You needed to get 10 right in order for this to be allowed, actually. You answered too many questions. Yeah. If you get all 15, some nice men are going to come help you.

Anyway, great policy. Good bit. Um, something else that's changing for the first time there's a widget that's updating on PPS5 that's going to start showing player counts for certain games. Fucking sick. This is awesome. So, I mean, I can just imagine the fucking Steam

Spy, like, the, like, the FGC numbers posters? Those guys are, like, coming in their pants, dude. Like, it's that South Park shot. Just Stan, no, just a fucking nut everywhere. I can't believe.

Randy, Randy rather. Yeah. The level of like you have no, because consoles have always been the like, oh, well, the console numbers are high. It's always been the OS that you can use. It's always been the option select. Way back in the day when consoles and physical sales

were like the number one thing, NPD sales results would come out. And you'd be like, okay, this is like a ballpark figure of whatever. But at the bottom was in a little asterisk that always said the same thing, which was not including Walmart. which is the biggest retail in the United States. So you'd be like, well, I don't actually know what these things are.

And that's what we have on Steam with Steam Spy and all that. Because yeah, you get the Steam numbers, but consoles, particularly the PlayStation, do bigger numbers overall on a huge number of games. So missing that is like missing half or more of the pie. But now we have Steam and PlayStation numbers. You're going to know. You are going to know if a game is doing well. or not. Huge caveat, though. Huge caveat. Because, yeah, because Twitch stream numbers is also something

people use as a metric, right? You look at the two XCO stream numbers and you're like, oh, I hope the game lives out the year. Well, the other one is people use signups at tournaments to see where things are at. How many people are entering the bracket. But the huge caveat is the, it's not every single game and it's not every single count. No. It's only the big. Obviously, they know. that they don't want to discourage anybody from playing something that is not popular.

So it's going to show you either the top 10 and, you know, how many people in the top 10 in your region, or it's going to show you the trending ones where a smaller game

that recently got an update of some kind, which led to like a lot of people playing it again, it'll show you the tick up in percentage for people returning to an older game. So you can just

expect the Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty and a couple of three games to be up there. Everything multiplayer. Like everything multiplayer is just going to dominate that that whole time. But so now we're back to the old metric of, hey, brand new game supposed to be hot. They say it sold a lot. Why didn't it break into the top 10 for even a day? Right.

So Marathon is a lot better than I thought it would be. And the people who play Marathon are having a really great time. Marathon's numbers are bad. they're not good Sony put out some statement a little while ago where they like downgraded the person oh god it was such fucking financial

nonsense they downgraded the value of the acquisition of bungee in confidence by like $350 million dollars but like the long and short of it is the marathon is not performing the way they want it to I keep forgetting is marathon paid

and ARC is free Marathon and ARC are paid Both are paid. Okay, okay. Yes. I think marathon numbers dipped below Destiny 2 numbers at some point over the past couple of weeks, which is really bad.

Because they gave up on Destiny 2. Like, that's in maintenance mode. Woof. Okay. Unfortunately, when you make a violent cutthroat game for sickos, it tends to, you know, concentrate on the dankest sickos. Yeah.

And I know, and I see folks going, like, I want the real numbers. It's like, you're never going to get the real numbers because that... You can get the real number for Grand Theft Auto, but, you know... But, like, the company giving up the real numbers is giving up their, like, critical market information, you know? Like, hiding what is not successful and inflating what is is a big part of this thing. Yeah, but I tell you, like, sometimes, sometimes you get that experience on Twitch and you're like, I'm the world's number one streamer at this game because it's never been fucking streamed on this platform.

You are once again speaking to the Gorater God. That's right. I am the Gorotere God. He is the Gorater God. There is no other. It's just him. Lest we forget.

I kind of forgot for a second. But as soon as you started to do this, I always would talk about fucking Goritaire. Gorita. Yeah, I think, I think Yeah, I get the move It's the kind of hype people up for You know, stuff that's trending and whatever

Whatever the case is But you are really, all I can think is just you are empowering Those fucking number gooners And you know what, man? You know what they can do? They can do something great where they're like, hey, ghost of Kansai or what the fuck? You know, the next one that they'll probably do. Look, these numbers are so crazy.

They're so much bigger than Yote and Tsushima's. And it's like, well, a lot of people like me didn't buy Yote because they were waiting for a PC release. And now that there isn't going to be a PC release, I'm going to still not buy Yote. So, PlayStation CEO, says single player Sony games will no longer be coming to PC going forward. I have to say this was obviously going to happen because of the way they put it out.

They would, they're they when they put out their like they publicly put out like their business strategy for going to the PC market. And you and me heard it and heard it on the podcast and immediately were like, wow, that is obviously not going to work at all. Their idea Is as speculous Go ahead, sorry Their idea was that Six months to a year

Or to 18 months After God of War came out They would put the game out For full price on PC And then you would play God of War on PC And you go wow, I'm crazy about God of War And then Ragnarok would come out on PlayStation And you go

Well I got to help on that right the fuck now Because I'm crazy about God of War I'm going to go buy PlayStation 5 That is No one If we lived in 1998 and PlayStation's cost $200 fucking dollars, yeah, you know what? Maybe. I don't know, but we don't.

You know, I just watched the latest Super Best Fred's video on YouTube, and I'm so crazy about them. I got to go get the latest one on Vessel. I got to get in there early. that is a deep pull also I'm pretty sure those vessel videos are gone some of them I'm pretty sure those no longer exist

some of them are gone forever I'm telling you dude it's it's like you know how much competition I have like I have a PlayStation over here so I was waiting for ghosts of Yote to come out for example and I'm like man I really love

Sushima I would love to play Yote but I keep my one PlayStation over here at the office. Yeah, I think that the consensus we kind of secretly came to was, wow, that's a terrible idea. Nobody tell them. Just let them go. Nobody tell them. Yeah, just, oh, no, no, no, no, totally.

Yeah, we're going to be so hyped to go get that latest sequel on the, on console after we pick up the PC version. Totally for sure, man. And then, and then they go, hey, yeah, I don't, don't get it. The PC numbers for these games that we release at full price a year and a half later

aren't doing what we think they should be doing. I don't get it. I get it. You're releasing them for full price a year and a half later. That's it. Yeah, I think that you know, it's pretty

clear they're like, okay, we're not going to be doing this shit anymore. But if they ramped up and kept doing this, they'd run into the same problem Xbox basically runs into, right? Where you, everyone looking at it, goes, well, why do I need that particular box? And then Microsoft themselves says, well, you don't because see this right here? That's an Xbox. I sees it.

It covers my water. Like, congratulations, you spend a lot of time and a lot of money making people expect games on a console that you didn't have a chance to, you didn't feel like supporting for the long term. And now there's a bunch of Gosa Sashima and God of War fans that are just like, darn. Like that's the level of emotion here. Well, darn. Ultimately, it's a bummer because I think it's cool to have more shit ported elsewhere, but their reasoning was always this dumbest shit ever. It was always insane. If they wanted to do it, they should have done a day and date. And then they would have made a bunch of money. But now that

they're not going to do it, I'm just not going to buy some of those games because I have to... Yeah, like, if you don't, like remember the word attachment rates, right? I do. If you don't give a fuck about that and just want that

to be like nothing, then you go, yeah, we'll sell software and make money like that and it'll be fine, right? But you're, because you're actively trying to push people to go get the hardware. I, I, I imagine.

You know what? If Yote goes on a steam sale like discount on the PlayStation 5 at some point during a holiday, and by that I mean 50% off or more, yeah, maybe I'll pick it up. So that's... Because that's what I did for Sashima. I didn't buy it on release there either. So the banner of this article is a picture of Wolverine, right? And I'm wondering what how that...

that's going to affect things, you know, especially if it's like this is not a sequel to something coming out like Horizon or, or. It's a sequel to Spider-Man, too. Okay. But it's a brand, but it's a new, it's a new IP starting out, you know. Anyway. So there it goes that. You know what's really funny?

Because they said it's only the single player games because the multiplayer games actually do benefit massively for being on multiple platforms day and day. If they're cross-play. It keeps their populations up. And that keeps them. viable as sailed products for longer. Yep.

No. So that's, it's specifically single player. That's as specified. Yeah. Now remember, the New Horizon game is coming out on PC

and phones only. Correct. Anyway, beyond that, yeah, we talked about the hikes, et cetera. I mean,

you know, Marvel-related somewhat, but, there was an interview where they were talking about Tokon and it was originally actually planned to be a 1V1 fighter and the...

And they saw all the success 2XKO was having and they're like... The director said originally they planned for it to be a 1v1 and they're kind of like, yeah, this is pretty standard like it'd be a normal fine fighting game, but they felt that it didn't encapsulate what the word marvelness should mean.

that's interesting yeah that's very interesting and then when they said we could do 2 v2 or 3 v 3 they're like yeah but that's already that's already been done

that's kind of standard what if we tried some crazy shit so specifically the word marvelness I like that inspired that I like that a lot

and pretty random but cool I will point out when I see it, when Ingrid drops on May 28th in Street Fighter 6th, they're also... Then Street Fighter is, once again, back to the basement. They're adding two modes,

one called Random Avatar Match and Avatar Arcade. And these are both things that should have been there from the jump, but it is... That was kind of my understanding when I saw the trailer for it. I was like, it's actually really weird that it took like multiple years to get to this. Yeah, because people played the Avatar battle stuff,

and they still do, and it's a goofy side fun mode that's there for freaks. But you still have to go grind out World Tour to get your character maxed out, and then to get all the moves and to get all that shit, and to furthermore to get the costumes for your secondary characters, all this stuff.

People don't want to do the grinding out. So this is just, hey, also, when you go down to the random battle hub, you have to fight whatever toxic asshole is sitting there. queueing up. This is a just a rank, not ranked, but this is an online random match that you queue up against with other people and everyone's at the

same level. They all have maxed out skills, maxed out stats. You can go build a character out of the same ingredients and everyone can just start playing and fight against other people randomly and multi-player. And then second, there's Avatar Arcade mode where you can go fight against

some of the story NPCs and other other World Tour characters just in a straight arcade run, and you can fight against the real main cast as many times as you want to get... Yeah, and you can unlock their costumes. To unlock their costumes and their points and stuff for you.

Yeah, cool. So it's just a fun, secondary way to go get all that done instead of grinding through a world tour. Yeah, it's a way to distract you from the lack of value with the new character coming out. Or from the lack of costumes coming to the main fighting ground, you know? It's like new costumes. It's crazy.

It's crazy. how long it takes. And like ever since the logic of that has been explained, I understand, but it still is just like a poor decision here. Yeah. I like, you know, at a certain point, I'm like, I don't care. Yeah, oh, we only have the what, you should have allocated

your resources differently. Yeah, that's it. I will not listen to the reasonable explanation of why it takes so long for these costumes when I can see you guys selling like an $80 term Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, like avatar collab on the fucking storefront. They just think, again, they, they, they got a separate studio entirely, just putting stuff out there with a great output, but they're not working on the part of the game that people want updates coming to.

So, uh, yeah. Okay. Um, I mean, there was another, there's like, whatever, there's an article, Capcom execs excited about Gen A.I. Meanwhile, creative. Shocker. Meanwhile creatives are. What a uniquely poor time to announce. this as the new limits on AI mean in most cases using your tokens is more expensive than paying

an employee. Oh, has that happened? We, yeah, we, we, we, we, we talk, I briefly mentioned it a few weeks to you that Claude did something to their tokens because they were running out of money. And so people were like, I blew through every token I have on 930 on a Monday morning. What am I supposed to do? And the answer is, you're supposed to spend thousands of dollars on your tokens so you can pay more for this piece of shit than an employee that would actually know what they're doing. So Capcom very behind the times. The time to have announced this to get people excited and shareholders would have been like three years ago. Yeah.

Not now during the pop of the bubble. Well, it's so this, I saw this article pop up and looking at it, it feels like, like essentially after the folks that made the games, because we know that the artists and the people working on the teams are actively like fuck this shit. After that Resident Evil 9 yassification fiasco, it feels almost like, okay, you click on this to hear that in the meanwhile, up on the in the C-suite at the investor meeting and the earnings reports, they're like, no, no, no, no, guys, don't worry. It's still all about it. We're not losing sight, right? Never mind what the artists and creatives actually have to say. It's so, man.

So like, for example, we didn't even cover it, but Xbox has said that they're going to, they're killing co-pilot for Xbox. And that they have also killed their AI and gaming initiative, which is nuts because the lady running Xbox now is an AI person that came from the AI division. And was like, we're going to do it. like we're like two months later and they're like no fuck it kill it um wild that capcom was like you know what we should do we should put shit in our mouth right now and you're seeing well look it's like again these execs and all the folks folks on this stuff is they're getting emboldened by things because like one of the things that popped up was a study the other day of like how many gamers actually care about AI in their games or goat or whatever and

there's a whole lot of people that don't care actively or undecided. Of course. Right. There's a lot of people that don't know, don't give a fuck, and are neutral on it. And it's like, as the, as that, as the, as the, you add time to this axis now, as we add the x axis of time and people start losing their jobs more, do you suppose that they might start caring a little bit more? Or, I don't know, um, over time, you are more likely to have to interact with a part of your computer or a computer or your phone that uses the AI in a way that you're just constantly frustrated by. That's like, so for example, like, you know, co-pilot keeps wanting to reinstall itself on every computer that Windows uses.

Even though Windows themselves actually remarked that less than 3% of people click that button on purpose. Oh, yeah. You accidentally clicking on the little fucking star thing. Yeah. The icon has now been established. The little star thing in multiple. All the stats. that you see about to keep people care about AI or people use AI, they're all legitimately

like untrustworthy because Google says we have 8 billion AI searches a day because we mandate it with every Google search. Or they'll go, hey gamers, do you like AI in your video games? Full stop. No distinction between generative AI or the CPU difficulty. characters doing things. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Right. Right. Yeah, it's, again, the equivalent of going to fucking Fextra Life and having one of their streams load up. And it's like, hey, you love the Twitch stream Fextra Life. Did you know how much you watched that? I remember, I remember streaming Dark Souls like some mornings, like way back.

And I had like a pretty good amount of people in there. And I'm like, I think I might be the top Dark Souls 3 streamer right now, like at this time of the day. And then I'd like look at the category and it'd be like fexter life with like 44,000 fucking people. And like, how? By fucking how? And then I found out, oh, it's playing on every single fucking page on the entire wiki network. You open up a wiki and it starts running that shit and there's nothing you can do by just

lying is how, you know? Real numbers, guys. Real numbers. Anyway, I fucking, I feel like I'm almost actively avoiding some of them. Anyway, it's just. Fexter life has actually gotten super Like it used to be something that I would use occasionally And then like over time

It just became like the most unusable piece of shit Oh yeah I mean opening that up Or a fandom site on your phone You want to feel that shit just start fucking You want to feel your phone turn into a A fireball in like seconds Anyway

Let's take some letters Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to Castle Super Beastmail at gmail.com. That's Castle Super Beastmail at gmail.com. Please send in only good letters. If you're writing a letter and you're like, this is a bad letter, fuck it. I'm going to send it anyway. Don't. Decide to make it good instead.

Okay. I was about to her. Okay, something just popped up and you know what? I got baited. All right, let's get... I don't know what's going on here. Where is this going? What do you got?

I got baited by Hello, Mighty Number 9 backers one and two. Oh, I got to check my email. I backed that crap. You've both gone on to state how there are a number of questions that shouldn't be answered. So how about the opposite? Have you ever experienced a moment in fiction where you got an answer to a question you wanted and you liked it? Also, I'll take, oh, thank God type answers if my examples end up. being the easy choices.

I have one. I have one. There was a thread recently on the subreddit for Final Fantasy 14 in which they ask, is FF14 the best use of retcons ever? And the general consensus was no, but it's up there.

There is a really obvious thing that you can watch happen in a Realm Reborn and Heaven's Word where they shoot some shots for like, way, way, way later with no plan as to how to get there. Okay. And then when it comes time to cash in on that,

they come up with really good answers to those questions that they originally never had any plans for. Interesting. Okay. Really, really, really good answers. Okay. To the point of like retroactively making like certain pieces of music much more poignant

because you're like, oh my God, that song was about this the whole time? No, it wasn't! They engineered these events You made it work. To fit the lyrics of that song.

Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I respect it. I respect it. That's one way to create. Build yourself into a hole, dig yourself into a hole

and then find a way out. No, I mean, yeah, they're mentioned here, but it's like the basement, the basement and attack on Titan. Yeah. the attack on Titan base. Phenomenal.

Phenomenal. And yeah, also the, no, credit there too to the main antagonist and sinners, good motivation. You know what? This is like kind of barely tangentially related. But I was talking about, I was talking a page about good twists in movies. And we were chitch chatting. And I'm like, I think probably my best movie experience twist in my entire life was seeing The Matrix. And she did not see The Matrix in theaters when it came out.

She saw it on video later. And I got to experience a version of this conversation I have not had yet before, but I guess that's how it is now. Where she looked at me and goes, what's the twist in the Matrix? And I go... It's so ubiquitous. And I'm like, oh, wow, actually. It's so ubiquitous that it was never... It couldn't be a twist.

It was the pitch. Because it only lasted for the week. of its release in theaters. The one box office weekend. That one weekend was the only time. Because I saw the trailer for The Matrix at another movie. It cannot be told what The Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

For yourself. And it was just Kung Fu stuff and Lawrence Fishburn talking about like weird nonsense. I'm like what the fuck is going on. I gotta go see this movie. I don't know what's happening. Okay. So if you're a young and you're listening to this and you happen to not know, when the Matrix first came out as a movie, it did not tell

you what it was about and you did not know about the computer world subplot at all. The only thing you saw was Lawrence Fishburn and his little speech to Neo to Keanu Reeves and he says no one can be told what the Matrix said. It would cut between like Trinity doing kung fu magic shit. Yeah. And that was it. That was the whole fucking trailer. It was a kung fu action movie with people in leather and that's all you knew and then you heard that line and that was it and you're like, oh well I like that stuff. The whole campaign was, I'm going to go see this because it looks cool. And also, I would like to know what The Matrix is. So anyone who was in the theater watching that movie for the first time that weekend saw the whole thing about the world and waking up in the real world and all that.

No idea raw. And that is a thing that fucking changed movies. It was insane. That lasted for that weekend. You can imagine, right? It's a paradigm shift. a school on Monday. Yeah.

Your shot of seeing that unspoiled was over. I almost imagine. So you know what? That's actually like Terminator 2, right? Because in T-T. Because Terminator 2 is weird because it assumes you didn't even see the trailer for the movie. Well, but I thought that it was, I thought T2 was marketed as like, uh-oh, the Terminator is back and not that he's the protector this time. No, the trailers did in fact show that Arnold was going to protect the kid.

Oh. So it's actually really strange because the movie pretends you didn't see the trailer because it builds it up as suspense as like, oh my God, there's two. What do you? Oh, no. Okay, okay. Well, yeah, then I guess that that was spoiled entirely going in. And it was very weird.

You could have just not done that. You could have just been like there are two Terminators now. How are they going to survive? And at the very least, the get down moment and you're like, oh, shit. You're right. But yeah. Okay. Let's see over here.

All right. Dear Willie and Pat, long-time listener, first time sending mail. Recently, I've been playing Marvel Rivals. And there's a new character called Devil Dinosaur. He is, as you can imagine, a big red dinosaur. I played the animal dinosaur literally last night. He's fun. Yeah, I got to play him in match,

and as people always lock into new characters for the first couple weeks, when I was playing him in an actual match, I was overwhelmed by a primal feeling of, I'm a fucking dinosaur. It's hard to explain it any other way. It just feels like you're an actual dinosaur. It feels like they fulfilled a character fantasy

of playing as a big-ass dino perfectly, and the only other time in recent memory that I've encountered this was when I played insomniax Spider-Man games for the first time, just swinging around through the city. So has there been any key moments like this in games where you feel enraptured enough to feel a perfect character fantasy being fulfilled? Absolutely. Every game featuring a robot, the robot either has to move too fast or too slow. Sure?

That robot needs to move like an orbital frame from zone to the enders or it needs to boost around like a freak like armored core. Or it has to be slow as shit like mech warrior or armory. armored core. Yes, you got to clunk the fuck around. Whichever, whichever armored core we're talking about. Yeah,

Steel Battalion. There you go. That is absolutely, that is a perfect. If you, if you watch any Ace Combat stream I ever do, when I am pulling up,

you will watch me literally be like doing this and leading back in my fucking chair to pull up harder. And it's the only games that do that. Every Ace Combat, I have laid, I am physically moving around my whole body to get harder turns, which isn't real.

So similar to the devil dinosaur thing. I've talked before on this podcast about, like, recently I talked about how Nagoriuki feels perfect for his, the character's plot and story and his system of containing your blood rage and not letting it overtake you, all the things you do to keep yourself right on the limit, but not going over it. and it's showing restraint and trying to be, you know, zen in your style of fighting is a very cool thing. Also, Aska, as mentioned earlier in the show, about being so distracted by the card game you're playing that the fight isn't consequential and you're just annoyed by it. But I think that Killer Instinct, actually, was one of the fighting games that did a really good job of making characters feel like their ideas and identity are worked into the way they play. Agonos, when you're getting the bricks and chunking up, is amazing. I'm a wall. Yeah.

I don't feel like I'm playing a character. I feel like I'm playing a wall. And like your whole thing with Agonos is every time you land a combo with him, you can put another chunk of armor into your chest. And you move even slower and you're even, and you hit harder and you can't do anything, but you're tougher. So it's fine. The tradeoff of speed for armor is great, you know?

and one of the sickest ones too is Folgor. You're a robot. Your robot doesn't have a normal meter. He has an engine that spins. I remember playing it. The more you get in there, the more you go on offense, the more you dash in, attack, do stuff.

Your engine starts spinning faster and faster and faster until the engine is fucking full speed. And then you can do a bunch of new moves, get a bunch of crazy shit going with your character, do cancels, etc. The other way to Reva, your engine is by using your comeback factor, your instinct meter. And that just revs your engine up right away.

But if your engine is already revved up naturally and then you pop instincts to overclock it, the engine fucking overheats and spits out the giant height beam because it can't handle how much speed out, how much output you're putting into it, you know? So yeah, it's just like, I'm like, that makes sense with the way you play him plus what this does put the two together and you get a super hype finisher as a result it's it's great um that's a pretty good question there you go uh dear whoever uh funny clown in a k says i remember you're talking about forbidden solitaire and the conversation brought to mind something that my friends called the funny clown effect the idea of an scare evil clown that kills people

was originally supposed to be a subversion of a normal clown but never Now, the evil murder clown is so ubiquitous and invoked so regularly without fail that if you put a clown in your story, then the really surprising thing would be if he was just funny and friendly like a normal clown. I'm actually a big fan of things that are so suspicious that when they're played straight, you're like actually baffled. Right, right, the unexpected straight punch. So my question is, does anything push your buttons based on this effect, a popular subversion that has so constantly been overdone, that it's, now boring, but the original take is the subversion. I think that wildly suspicious guy that doesn't betray you is my favorite.

Yeah, yeah. I have... Like, what? You didn't? You didn't? There was a versus wolf's bit with a mascara snake could who looks so evil and slithers, but never actually betrays you. I similarly would say If you had a super cool old man mentor In the tutorial And he survives

Get the fuck out of here I can't believe it He survived the tutorial Are you insane? Oh my God Yeah That would blow my mind Knock my socks off

Um, all right. And last one here. Um, dear nobody pat and heartless woolly. What's up? Kupomaniac asks. I recently finished R.E. 9 and I couldn't stop comparing Raccoon City to the return to Shadow Moses in, in Metal Gear Solid 4. That's, that is by far the most obvious comparison possible. I thought Raccoon City was intentionally intermittently interesting, but dull overall, though, whereas I think Shadow Moses has more going for it personally. Uh, have other games done nostalgic chapters. like this and have they been done better? Not all that much. In terms of RE9, I will say that Raccoon City, they actually really pull

back on the nostalgia. Most of the Raccoon City section in R&9, it does not take place in areas that you'd be familiar with. It takes place in parts of the city that you never explored. The difference for me between MGS4 and RE9 is the MGS4 plays a lot

in the same spaces. Like a lot. Like it's almost entirely in spaces you know, and they do a couple of interesting things. The main thing is that playing through MGS4X4 is kind of shit because you're doing it against the robots like the weird little hand robots like nearly exclusively

and it's kind of miserable. Whereas in RE9 it's actually like just a natural evolution of that game's Leon gameplay and it plays pretty well. But the payoff for Shadow Moses is great. Yeah, people are saying... I have three that come to mind, right? People are pointing out, I just lost it.

Okay. It was gone. I would say. But the best ever is the USG Ishimura in Dead Space 2. The best ever is the USG Ishimura in Dead Space 2. So the USG Ishimura is the ship that Dead Space 1 takes place on. And in Dead Space 2, you must travel through it to get to a different part of the space station. And because the marker causes some, you know, nightmare visions, you are,

repeatedly attacked by things that happened in Dead Space 1, but they're not happening for real. And then once you calm down and go, oh, that was just a Dead Space 1 flashback, they attack you with something real. Okay. From an unexpected angle that you wouldn't be able to deal with in Dead Space 1. Okay. It is A plus.

I'll get there. It is stellar. The ones that come to mind for me are, give me a second to delete that. Oh yeah It's fine Early Right away in Super Metroid I really love that like one of the first areas you walk into

Is where you killed Mother Brain in Original Metroid Oh I didn't know that Yeah the room you beat her in an escape Is Literally like it's right by the intro And you walk through and you see the grids And a lot of those areas

That's a fun one Um And there's a small one in fear and hunger. The Mares Manor kind of looks a lot like the Mares Manor in the way it's set up and stuff. But then I'm also remembering, of course, Dark Souls 3. Yeah. It was Anurlando. Right. But was it Firelink? And much like RE9, the amount of time you actually spend in the 3.

same location is very minor. Right? Like it's the main part of the castle and like you find the old Firelink shrine but like the actual amount of rooms is fairly small. Because I remember when it was like, wait, is this Firelink? Is this Firelink? And then it takes a while and then

at the end of the fucking DLC. It's like oh no, wait, okay. Here you go. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are some of the big ones. Cool. All right. Personally, I'm a big fan of if you're going to return to an area and do a kind of like, remember this place?

You need to you need to be sparing. Yeah. Right? Like there's only so long I can spend in the, remember this before I'm like, okay. That's enough. Oh, fuck. The librarian near. Oh yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah. Forgot about that. Cool. Yeah. All right. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah. Much better emails this week. There you go. I will see y'all in Toronto come hang out and we might do the podcast this coming Tuesday

I'll let you know take care all right