Castle Super Beast - CSB391: Neurospicy is a Self-report

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Download MP3 | Watch Video Episode Full Timestamps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vT5gb77xKsyoGS-vDHSUp9kZTrMy3Euiy9pwx7kceoZv7RS09Kqjh6ep7qLAytMQayzQca18tlHVE_y/pub Watch full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive Z-Com: CLY IS LIFE, NEESH BLORK WON'T MOVE Townfall: The Absolute State of Stealth In Games Control Resonant - Where Combo? Earthbound Brain Rot Bladen't NEW CASTLE SUPER BEAST "LEGACY" SHIRT & DESKMAT AVAILABLE NOW: https://www.orchideight.com/collections/castle-super-beast Go to http://heroforge.com/ and use code CASTLE to get 5% off on all orders of physical miniatures. Save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at http://drinkag1.com/SUPERBEAST Docket: Sega wanted to cancel the entire Sonic series but the first movie saved it, says Sonic Team head Iizuka | VGC  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says Xbox is simply 'streamlining' after cutting over 5,750 jobs in three years Xbox - "Continuing Our Reset" - 'First, we are eliminating 268 roles across Halo Studios, other first-party studios, and the XGS management and central functions layer.' -Activision will expand its remit to World's Edge, as well as Rare-Bethesda will expand its remit to include Obsidian-King will expand its remit to include Microsoft Casual Games-Playground and Turn 10 will come together as one studio focused on the Forza and Fable franchises Mahershala Ali is pissed about Blade Microsoft Patents AI System That Rewrites Game Stories In Real Time For You Rockstar has revealed a GTA 6 collectors box for $400 — it does not include the game. Monster Hunter Wilds Director Says Capcom Rejected Multi-Headed Monsters That "Went Too Far" Into Horror A theatrical re-release of 'SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY' is happening with new scenes included. One will be the scene featuring Claire Temple.  

And we are in. Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello. How's everyone having a day? That's great. Yeah. Days, days, days happening.

Days happening. Boy, the redirect sleep phase of my life has just been ratcheted up to degrees that I didn't know were possible. Oh, fucking sick. What we got? What we got? It's just the simple, like, it, we, we, we got. you just ate and went to bed, but you decided that you're, it's not bedtime. And for three maybe plus hours, there is no bedtime.

There's just tagging off between holding you and waiting for you to just decide when the night is over. That old one month we talking about here? Yeah, we're, we're, we're well, we're past a year and, you know, we're in the 12 to 18 range right now, you know. Those sleep regressions don't stop until they're like two and a half. It's fucking psychotic. It's absolutely that shit crazy. They just,

you're like, because you hit this moment at like a year plus, you're like, ah, the sleep regressions obviously must be, no, no new brain skills must happen. Um,

yeah, like there's a couple, like, there's a couple nights of like, yo, I'm, we might not work tomorrow. Like that,

I might call it. I might just have to call it a fucking, you know, rain game or whatever. Life is happening over back here. Holy shit, does that get crazy? Yeah, I think you remember there were a couple of podcasts I showed up and you, like, we do that thing where we turn the camera on and you just go, you good?

Mm-hmm. And I go, uh, uh, mm-hmm. And I am not successful. I have not successfully migrated my own, like, new recording pattern into my, like, sleep life pattern. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, your, your body, like, violently resists that type of timing change.

Violently. Violently and aggressively. Um, it's, it's quite, it's quite a problem. And I'm smashing up against the walls of both parts of my day. The bookends of my day are like, the car just hit the brakes and slammed like this. But the bookends didn't move. Just all the contents just went, gr-h-h-ha-ha! Yeah.

Mm-hmm. You know, so it's real bad. But anyway, hey, weeks are happening. We got to get a move on. So apologies for the, apologies for the delay, everybody. That one was on me. My bad. Oh, good.

We're going to, we got some stuff to talk about. Nothing big happened this week, I'm sure. That's a lie. Things did happen. Definitely nothing. Every week, nothing big. In terms of me personally, I have. have spent a good bit more time with that ZECOM, aka Star Zero Company, really enjoying it,

really cool. Even though it runs like dog shit, it's a very fun game. And, hey, they've, like, improved it, like, a little bit. Well, so, yeah, it runs through. That God, it's not, like, action-based. Well, an NVIDIA driver update. that made a difference, you know, in some cases, because I had a, there's a previous one from just before then.

That basically, now I'm seeing, it's weird, though, because it's like, okay, it's, the space, the hyper jump hyperspace is still popping like crazy, cutscenes are barely putting it together. But like, it's doing a shader warmup every time as it was, but the shader warm-up is not going as long as it originally needed to. No, it's like a quick shader warm-up, yeah. And I'm like, why isn't the shader warm-ups just not there after the first time, you know? So I do have an answer for that.

So, like, it used to be that it wouldn't give you a shader warm-up at all. And that was what happened with Eldon Ring and why Eldon Ring would stutter so long until you played it for a long time. And that would be fine until you played a different game and it would un-warm-up those shaders. right? And so then we got the shader warmup where it's going to load all the shaders in and it's going to be good but it's only going to do it the one time or on like video card load

on video card to dry update. But then the shaders could also get pushed out by other games as shader warmups. And so now we have okay, it's going to fucking check every single goddamn time you boot the game and warm it up to what it needs to be.

I haven't looked into it but can the G-Force experience like roll back drivers on a particular game while leaving it for everything else. No. No, no, it cannot. You just go like, I've had this exact scenario occur and it's like, no, you just got to pick your poison. Like, okay, okay, update the drivers, but not for this one. Please leave this one alone. I'm sure, I'm sure you can fucking finagle some bullshit, but like I wouldn't, I wouldn't be fucking with that. Not fun. And Anyways, but as far as the actual game goes, yeah. So this is the most I've like directly engaged, I think, with an excom style game besides like sitting in on the playthrough, you know, which I got a good feel from that, but not certainly the, the hands-on variables.

So you, you said you completed it and hit the end of the story mode and we're just waiting for an update to see. For what? Zerocom company? No, man. I streamed it like three times and then I put it on the shelf. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Do you remember? Well, I was describing to you people who are like hitting that point.

Trying to mod it because they hit it. But no, not me. Do you remember what cycle you got to? Oh, fucking 15. Okay, okay. You are assuredly way past me now. So, oh, oh. Okay, I put my feet up and I kick something. Wully, you sound like the devil.

Currently, do I sound like the devil? You currently sound exactly like the devil. You are Satan now. Did I hit the, uh, did that accidentally hit the? Do you not hear that? I don't, but I know it's passing through the mix. Hold on. Is it, is, are we better?

Are we, are we? Yeah, now, now you got it. Okay, yeah. So, like, I put my feet up and it hit something that landed right on the devil button. Okay, yes, yes, yeah. Right? That's the, you know, the mark of my dignity shall scar their DNA button. Oh, there you go, there you go, there you go.

Good, good, good, good, good. Okay, well, anyways, that's a, yeah, that's a pretty cool escalation of things. So right now about, I guess I guess halfway through, a little over halfway through. And the party size has increased quite a bit. You get to really, really, even though, like, so I haven't lost anybody, but like, you just, you get to keep expanding and expanding and getting new people on. And is it still a four people, a mission? Yes.

So that, and that's kind of the problem is like, I have, imagine you have like a mass effect roster of like cast members that you'd like to run and spend time with and play with. And then you've got a bunch of no names that you've recruited that are like, you guys are here. The no names still talk, though, which is crazy. Yeah, they still talk. They still have little interactions and moments. And I believe the way it works is like they have kind of like a set name and personality. And then the aesthetics of who they are just changed according to like what you set them to be or they're randomized. whatever there nothing they say will be personalized to whatever race they are or you know any other specifics but they're the the full hireable roster can go out quite a bit um but in terms of the main roster you're hanging out with like there's a bunch of cool people there and you're certainly yeah you're not there's too many for you to use on all the missions you know like because i was saying when i last talked about it that like i want to go out with uh tricks and cabby

all the time. That's the crew. We're having a fun time and I'm bringing a droid with me. And that has changed quite drastically, especially when you get the ability to do a secondary class for everybody. And that just makes you solve any problems you have with like you can, you can, you can, you can change them initially to from what they are. But like I kind of, but like by getting that secondary class in, if there's just one secondary ability you want to have everybody get or something that.

that they can specialize in, it smooths out the ride entirely. So now I've got a couple of different favorites. There is a character named Cly. Okay, that's why there's enough room on that menu for a second. Yes. Okay.

So for example, Jay is somebody who, I wasn't too keen on initially, right? But she has her talent is final shot. which is if you are, if you take the life off of somebody down to, let's say the last 10 hit points or so, she'll do the, she'll take them out for you, right?

If you get them down to like 5% or less, she'll just finish it off. And that is incredibly useful because there's a lot of times where, a lot of times you just kind of, ah, damn, I didn't quite. You get to that magic pixel, but they're not dead,

especially when you're fighting somebody who has resonance, right so the um the the the cultists the coil every time you kill one they transfer their uh whatever you know whatever you want to call it their bit their magical force thing shoots out and does yeah yeah um fucking dumb bids and and it buffs the other ones and so you get these tougher and tougher enemies but you always get them within that magic pixel and the the uh you get an assist which really helps and sometimes you can buff how much damage the assist is doing doing for that particular character, but Jay will just finish it off. So you get these really great plays where you take the shot, your assist takes them out,

and then just Jay finishes them off, you know. But I didn't really like the other stuff she was doing. And then you get that secondary ability to go like, all right, I like tricks because he's got rocket salvo, which is a phenomenal full 10-APE rocket blast. It just detonates everything in an area. but you also have to be very careful with him because he has a he has auto fire

and if you have full AP and you shoot something he's spending all of it you know so I just want to go so then now I'm like okay give that rocket to Jay and now she can do it while also doing final shot and stuff like that you know yeah that's that's okay okay if you only have four people

but those people are actually eight different Phenomenal. That's, that's actually, what do the droids get? So, because they can't, the droids just get, the droids just get an expanded group of droid skills, right? Similarly to how a Jedi, a Jedi would get an expanded group of Jedi skills. And, like, yeah, they're not, they're not, they're specific to them. They can't change what they do. But you get a couple of different alternate, like, choices within that framework, you know,

like within the Jedi framework or within the droid framework, you can pick a couple of customization. to it. And the droid choice remains competitive the whole way through because, like, very few things are going to be, like, loading out with three types of grenades on you right off the bat and the ability to give one of your other teammates another shot, you know? You basically just have, like, yeah, a support class that'll reposition enemies, blow them up, take out droids, and then give you an extra shot. And if you've been building your main character, Hawk, to be the strongest member of the team, then you getting an extra turn is worth more than a fourth member might be, you know? Something that also is really, really useful is like, I was talking about concussion grenades last

time. You get an environment where there's pits and like, or a Star Warsy style like, you know, corridor thing situation. And like anything moving the enemy out of place becomes the number one thing. Because it's an instant kill. So a concussion grenade blasts a group of enemies off into the abyss, and it doesn't matter how strong they are, right? And that's all of a sudden... Gravity is always stronger. It is.

And I was initially struggling with the Jedi as a, like, bat, not great member of the team because you've got to run up and swing your lightsaber, which is not an instant kill. You know, it's still just like... Really? Yeah, it's still just like, it's damage. That's stupid. You would think you'd be like, okay, well, when I close the gap, the gap it's over.

They should have balanced that character around like super high damage. And, uh, fuck it. Um, you can get high damage from later on you get a, um, lightsaber throw. And that is really good and does a fuck ton and like hits everything in its path, right? But in terms of just running up and swinging at something, it's high, but it's like not insanely high by comparison to some of your crazier guns and shots and blasters. Um, now that being said, the ability to force push and pull, however, that's where we start talking. And it's like, not every mission is going to have a pit you can shoot someone into, but for the ones that do, that's fucking phenomenal. Um, and I was saying earlier, someone else joins the team, uh, that is, uh, basically,

Amanda is hanging out. And, um, I don't know if you've seen. seen or met. I've seen this character. People like them. Okay. Clye is awesome. She's great. And yeah, she's Amanda. She's got few words. And she's on the team. And she plays like one as well.

So like that means that her talent is jetpack. And you can jetpack from one side of the map to the other if you spend the points on it. And wherever she lands, bop. Things get blasted away. And you can use that to whatever ability advantage you can imagine. For me, I made her secondary point as a medic, actually. So, because, like, picking up and healing and stuff is a little bit difficult at times because my main class is a sniper. So I'm not moving and I'm getting stacks and buffs for not moving. So the ability to have someone that can move around and take care of stuff and then move back and here you go, toss a healing is pretty useful. something interesting about

what's happening to as well is like okay so you pick up a bunch of people on the team there's a weird thing so you get good banter with a lot of the cast and characters you know everyone's got their little like kind of dynamic going it really

like hawk at least like especially like the femmehawk that I'm playing really feels like Fem Shep sometimes and just the way the lines are being delivered. So I'm going to say something. Male hawk also kind of sounds like Femm Shep the way they deliver their lines.

Not in like the male female voice, but like they're clearly like aiming for like a really specific thing. It feels like a Shep kind of captain talking with their crew, making the Shep kind of banter, right? Yeah. Not exactly the same. Not exactly the same. And there's a couple moments I've hit of like having a heart to heart that do hit

definitely like that too, you know? Though it's weird though because like, okay, you get your droid and that first droid that you have on your team, you walk up and check, how's the droid going? And droid's like, beep, boop. And you're like, okay. And you're just like, oh. That's it? Like, where's, that's my buddy.

I've been, like, I've been building my bond with you and stuff and nothing. And then you hire a second droid. And that second droid, you're walking up, shooting the shit, doing all kinds of one-liners. And, hey, how do you get on a droid's bad side? Boop. You press their buttons. Burr. Ah!

You know? And, like, one droid gets all the love. And the first droid gets nothing. And I'm just like, what? Why? Is it this, the game doesn't believe you want to have one

until you choose to go get a second one? It's so weird. Yeah, maybe, actually. That might actually totally be it. It's super weird. Like, you're yucking it up with that second droids so much

every time you walk by it. And the first one is just like complete dead, nothing to say or do, you know? Um, and, uh,

yeah, there's that aspect. Um, there's a couple others that join as well that well I mean whatever I'm sure you've the the in a in a mass effect like way as well some of the others that join have conflict and you know how you play the role as as cap and I suppose may or may not decide how these things go I don't know for sure but I have come across like a cycle where something importantness happening and then another character on a team is like yo i really need your help to go do

my main mission right now can you help me right right and you're like oh but that's the same week that we have to do the big thing you know um so you got to piss somebody off the proms tomorrow dude yeah it feels like you got to piss somebody off and that's going to be the thing i hope that doesn't anyway we'll see if we get a a fucking um uh a a rex moment you know but uh so far so good. There's a very distinct feeling to walking around the base though that is like when you are going in between missions every time you lock you come back to the ship people are there's two types of people on the on the on the base there's the movers and then there's the standers. Yes. The movers are great because they're up to different things. Cabby's

working on his tools right. Trick is cleaning his gun but sometimes they're on the computer sometimes writing a report. Maybe they're over there. Maybe they're having a conversation together. They're in the back. Oh, that's where you guys play your Pazak and stuff. Cool. All right.

And then there's your droid standing in front of your med bay. There's your carth standing next to the hollow deck. And there's your Zep from the Grungleman and Binkus. And Zep from the Grungle Man and Binkis is. standing in a very well-lit spot, and he does not move. And all he does is stand in a really nicely lit place and his lips move. And at first, you're like, wow, that's really, that's a really nicely lit spot. And like, 20 cycles later, you're like, this is a animatronic.

This does not feel real. Yeah, he's, he's trapped. Sorry, because he's a store. Sorry, one second, BRB. Oh. All right. Apologies, everyone. Life happens while you record a live stream. That's just what it is. That's true. That's true. I... Page pulled the fucking fridge door off the fridge yesterday while I was streaming. That's crazy. Um, wow. I, I, like, I do, I am pining for fjords a little bit. Like, I do yearn somewhat for the days of the offline recording. a little bit.

That's just not how it is anymore. Well, it depends. It depends. I still do some offline recording, but the vast majority of it is, is. No, they need to see you sweat going on. Yeah. Well, but that's like the, to me, I'm like the trade-off. The sweat. That's fine. All right. And that increases your entertainment value than sure. But the trade-off is, is if we're a bit late or if we got to fucking get up and run out of here, then too bad, right? If you want to be there live for the conversation, then you got to understand that live means a bunch of things because life is happening. And the other thing, it's like we have a hard out today and we started late because of me and we just had to take a break.

But guess what? I'm doing a 24-hour one tomorrow. Yeah. And so I'm not doing a podcast tomorrow. And I'm definitely not doing it the day after. You know what I'm going to do on fucking Friday? I'm going to Thursday, whatever? I'm going to sleep.

That's what I'm going to do. No. the real ones from a million years ago remember when it was just like hey this was you know this was recorded in a pocket dimension where everything we say

is allowed to be wrong and bounce off the walls back at us there's no correcting and we live in a world of like all of that happens on release day at the same shot you get blasted with a shotgun of correction as opposed to drip feed in

over the course of a couple hours I actually I gotta be honest I like above all else like like people back seating you makes me want to eat a gun but people going nah man that's just like super wrong is actually totally worth it because like because the level of annoyance that people have with you when you say something stupid is like minimum to mediocre but the amount of pissed off people are when you're saying the dumb wrong thing that's completely wrong for like the equivalent of like eight days in a row and you can't and you can't stop yourself because it already happened. Yeah. Yeah. Not to also just like the days of like some shit going down in like a

blood-borne LP and then like two weeks later you're like, ah. Yeah, that's that's specifically what I think back on as opposed to like getting up and hearing it the day of and then all right getting a nice good night sleep. You know. Yeah. man glad you've been enjoying ZECOM though that game I that game I made a new I made a new category

on my Steam like I categorize all my Steam games into like actively playing or like fucking done like done with you know shit that's like I got everything I was going to get out of good or ill but I also have one that's called Waiting for Patches yeah right

right right and Zcom and Dawn Walker and mortal shell are in there. Right. Just waiting. Oh, and Rogue Trader, of course. This will get way better with patches. It's...

But like, what I was in the middle of saying is that basically, the NPCs that do not move throughout the ship feel so dead. Feel so much more dead and animatronic. And they feel like almost uncanny valley moments are occurring. While the ones who just happen to be up to a different... thing each time, you're like, hey, what's up? Let's go chat with you, you know? You know what's weird? Because like every time I saw Cab ever when I played it, he was like doing some bullshit at his desk.

Well, you never actually stood up and left the desk. And Trick was always like fucking with his guns, right? And that's not actually foundationally different than the medical robot that stands in front of the, uh, the med bay. except for the fact that the med robot doesn't move at all, at all. And neither does. I mean, whatever is it, I think it's Nebo or the dude that I've been referring to that is effectively, um, blork. You know. Yeah. Blork does not move at all.

And it's like, I'm thinking, because Paige is, is crawling through Mass Effect 3, right? And like, the people in Mass Effect 3, they're in their spot. They're always in their spot, but they're like fucking doing something. They're like working at a computer or like meditating or fucking whatever. Yeah. It legit bugs me. And like if that dude in particular, the one who is at the weapons counter that is actively never going to be doing anything but standing standing there on a mission, then he should have the most to do walking around back there, setting up weapons, moving things around, talking to you out the side of. his mouth while he's busy working on.

You know what I mean? I should come into him being like, being like, hey, not now. Cawk. I'm, I'm, I'm in it, you know? And there's, there's like ongoing lore about how bad his,

his rations are and all this stuff that's like, you know, and charm, it's charming and endearing and stuff. But like, holy fuck, does it just hurt to never see the character move? And then just get,

bap, that, bat, bat, bat, bab, and it's funny because this is, this is a complaint born entirely out of, uh, uh,

uh, a more expensive perspective. So like you tend to not have this problem when you're playing balder's gate or pillars or divinity or a CRPG where the isometric camera or Diablo, you're like, you kind of expect them to just kind of stand there and where their spot is. But now that it's behind your shoulder like Mass Effect style camera, you're like, all right, so are these people just standing still like robots? In some cases, literally yes. Because, yes. but yeah it's it's it's the perspective it's it's the the the more like grounded inside view

because like in in excom like there's no fucking characters there's room right yeah like the characters are just a room um so the other problems with the game to uh just that last week i was talking about grids versus no grids and as the game has gone further uh that problem has exacerbated and become uh worse so though what was frustrating before was grabbing the cursor, you know, or sometimes switching over to the mouse even, just to really get yourself into cover. You're like, come on, you're glitching in, and I see that I can get you into cover and only use one action point, but you're making me fight for it.

You're not going to give it to me. Please just let me click into a grid where I can, you know, hit that spot. And then I'm also getting into like, I'm throwing a grenade out and I want it to hit four enemies. And the fourth one and the third one are just outside the circle. And if I just pixel perfect position, I can get all four, but you're making me fight. You're making me fight to get all four. And it's like pixel hunting, you know? And I'm like, ah, right?

That's frustrating too. And something else now that's gotten worse is when you're picking the said Mando, Cly, and you're using something like the jump of jump jet ability, you pick a place to land. And sometimes the place you can land, like, you have to choose where she's going to land. and that's going to send people flying in the opposite direction, gravity, right? The propulsion. Right, okay. And the propulsion point you pick matters.

So sometimes you're like, I want that droid to hit that wall and die, but I want that dude to fall out of cover. And I'm specifically setting this up so that he falls out of cover into Overwatch and I can get my shot on him, right? It's tactical. But you find that exact position, you know, you finagle it and then you get it in. And you're like, there you go. I got wall and drop into

Overwatch and then you click right you press to confirm and then she can't land there and it's like there are parts of the circle of access that are just not landable parts that don't indicate that it's just because the physics of the map

are like yeah we just don't have enough clearance for her to be here so she can run here on foot but landing here is just not it's just not gonna happen so then you were like oh this circle is not real, I have to find a real one inside somewhere and I don't know where this next best places, you know? And you're also sometimes trying to do that, but land close enough next to a

wall that she'll then go into cover. If you can do that and save AP points. And all of this is like, now this turn that should have been fairly quick is taking like a couple minutes to like get all that going, realize it doesn't work, find the next second best option to then land and cover as well and do another thing. And you're like, and it's the difference between spending AP and not. And in some cases. And you're like, man, a grid would fix all of this bullshit. All of that. You know what?

Do you know what is just playing on loop in my brain as I listen to you describe these nitpicks, these tiny little nitpicks? All I'm hearing is, man, you should really play Midnight Sons. Yeah. Like, like, because this system is from Midnight Sons. where it was built for Midnight Suns and Midnight Suns levels like I described are minuscule.

They're really small. They're like the size of a basketball court. Right? And so the, that, all these little things you're describing work perfectly there because the enemy is like almost right. The enemy is either right next to you or one move away.

And the way that they handle that is that also uses like a, card system. So you're building a deck for every character. Yeah. And Midnight Suns also has like the behind the back exploratory social thing, but it's actually a lot more built up there, like a lot more built up. Like it's much more depth. I mean, there is a snapping system that's supposed to make this less frustrating, but it doesn't always work, right?

Like, I can, Midnight Suns feels like it could be the sequel to Zcom. Wow. If that makes any sense. even now. Okay. Okay. Okay. Like, it doesn't look as good, but it runs a lot fucking better. Yeah. I mean, admittedly, like, you're trading up your Star Wars for your MCU, um, but or not, not C.U, but whatever, for your Marvel universe.

Also, hey, I'll say it. The guy they get the, the fucking fake Tony Downey, um, what's his Tony Downey Robbie? Tony Downey Robbie. The fake Tony Downey Robbie, um, is, it's like, it's like, it's, it's, like pretty close. Like it's obviously, it's obviously not the real Tony Downey Robbie, but it's, it's pretty close. Um, is Midnight Sun's, uh, 616? Um, what? What? What? Do you mean the team? Is the universe like the, the comic, Marvel mainline comic universe? Oh, I don't fucking know. Oh, okay. I don't know that fucking nerd shit. Yeah. You fucking kidding me? Tell me more about fucking path of exile.

It is not. Okay, thank you. Anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's just like, it is a, it is a bit that is like, what you get in openness

and like kind of scrambling situations by having an open map, you lose in these things. The more complex you want the mechanics to be mechanically and, and to allow you to do these cool. Like, it's like playing pool.

you know, in a way. And like, you can allow insane precision trick shots. And, like, if you want to do a crazy snooker thing, you can do a crazy snooker thing. You know, you get an ability to, like, shoot everything within this wide range over here and, like, all these really particular things. But just, like, if you can tell me it's not possible to get them all in, then fine, it's not possible. But, like, you waste time trying to line that up, you know? And, yeah. And this is not a case.

I saw someone saying, like, oh, you're using Overwatch too much. No, no, no, no. Usually, Overwatch is with a leftover AP that you spend on your turn to carry. Your reinforcements come jumping in. That's not what I'm using it for. Yeah, Overwatch in that game is like, okay, well, I'm not done with my action.

It's not my primary action. But if you get a nice combo possibility, then it's cool to make it happen. Especially if you have your Overwatch stats buffed for a lot of bonus damage, right? On that note, the language of XCOM is kind of, like, it's, I can see. how the goal is to make it clear to people, no matter what your background is or

familiarity, what each stat is talking about. But sometimes it gets so lost in the sauce and long in the tooth. So sentences such as three stacks of chance to hit increases critical chance

and drops three stacks of chance to hit by five percent per stack. And like, you're reading this in a description and I'm like, okay, 15% accuracy increase. And then it's going to drop to 10 after. Okay, fine. But like, you can just say accuracy.

Like, I, you know. No, we have to, no. We, we, there's a part in Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave where it starts describing locations. And it's like, and it says like, there are different places that the party can go. these are called and then it opens quotes locations. And it's like this is like such a fucking weird way to say this. Reduces penalty in chance to hit is like, just say it lowers the accuracy, man. Like we don't need this.

We can just say words that mean things that we already know. Yeah, I guess it's just established perhaps if you've played in XCOM for a long time. Is this like the nomenclature that's been there for years? that that's a that's a open-ended question like yeah i know i'm thinking give me a second no like xcom was actually like fairly clear and midnight suns was really really really really really clear mid night midnight suns like because it's it has to be like a card game so the effects have to be like causes status and then as you will it says the status and the status is like extremely clear yeah i i did not encounter that with all the others it seems to be just a

of this particular one where everything is worded in the wordiest way possible. A Star Wars brand guardian looked and said, critical chance needs to explain what a critical chance is. That I don't... Yeah, Star Wars people don't understand a crit. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Actually, at this point, I have to feel a little bit of sympathy because what a crit actually is, it can depend fucking wildly on what you're playing. Well, like, what percentage of increased damage is a crit in your mind? So in my mind it ought to be double.

It's double in my mind. But it can range anywhere from 25% to like 250% extra. And you know it's double because the number is twice as big. Yeah. And it's also yellow. You know? Yes, it ought to be. But in this case, you can make crit like a different type of bonus number, you know?

Anyway, anyway, yeah, we're just things like that. Yeah, you should try it. Suns. Okay. You'd like, like come back next week and say, I, I loaded up Midnight Suns and just, just for the context. For, for, I mean, for what it's worth, I am enjoying the Star Wars flavored pizza that I'm currently eating, you know, um, and the, but you kind of wish instead of slices, it was cut into squares. I do. I, I, I kind, well, no, the, I, I do wish it was cut into squares. Yes, a square pizza in this case would be great. I actually agree. But it's not cut into slices. It's actually not sliced at all.

It's a big open pizza. It's an open pizza. And says, take, take, take as many bites as you want. And then you just look like a fucking freak. And then people are like, why are you eating so much? And you're like, I don't know, it's not cut. You know? I don't know when to stop. I want my clean lines on my food. Thank you. But the cult, the cult is, is an interesting villain that I'm curious to see more of. So I'm following through. I'm a big fan of the way that the cult is like, you know, a magical force cult, but it's like it's a, they have

no idea what they're doing at all. Like they're unaware that they live in the Star Wars universe. Sure, sure. They're just like, ah, this weird bug! You made me strong. Ah! That's it. That's all they got. But it's also like, can you even call it a cult if it's like it's like calling a necromancer

in charge of skeletons a cult? Like, is that really a cult? Or is that just a necromancer hiding behind 200 skeletons. Depends if the skeletons have like... You know what I mean? And like, okay, well, I guess if the necromancer is like, hey, you're Murray, you know? Because the necromancer doesn't have to like talk to the skeletons. Yeah.

Well, like they're being puppeted by spell. Well, the idea that like the, the skeletons still have their personality, but that personality is serve the hive, you know? Yeah. Anyway, it's an interesting thing. But like, it is, I'm like, I'm like, there's cults. But like then there's like that. And you're like, I, the cult problem is, um, more dangerous and scary and annoying because you're like, oh, people are, we're in their right mind and now they're

not, you know, but like, man, you, you mentioning this just brings to mind like the, in the pathfinder setting. One of the most interesting like, like twists on necromancy I've ever seen is that there is a country in the pathfinder setting that is, uh, run by necromancers. Like, it's a necromantic bureaucracy. and they use it to form the basis of their industry. Okay. So like workers in the factory?

Yeah, it's it's it's it's necromancy as labor. Wow. Like just like just regular ass labor. Is this the sequel to the blood of the Dawn Walker conversation? You know, ethical necromancy? No. Wow. Fucking sign up for a for a 10,000 year contract with a litch to work in the mail room.

Yeah. In any case, yeah, yeah, yeah. Game is, I will say, like, story and plot stuff is interesting, though, and like, I like what's happening. Even though I'm like, hey, there, it's blurry, it's Shepard when I put, take the glasses off and put the new bet ones back on. Good stuff. And, and I feel more comfortable, I guess, with the, with the, the, the X-com style of game. Midnight Suns, I'll take a note. I'll take a note.

Yeah, no, it's, I think that might actually be more to your taste specifically because it ignores a bunch of these problems. Like, it's a card game that I like it. Okay. And I famously don't fucking like card games. Well, you know whose taste it's not to? Mahershala Alza. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. He doesn't like card games.

He doesn't like Midnight Suns. Oh, yeah? Oh, okay. Anyway, beyond some Zcom, just wanted to shout out a little, a little cute. fighting game I played this week called generic fighter maybe and this is really fun because here I was

literally like concocting like saying Discord fighter who knows it and like then you so you actually think of I watch you just picture in your head before you type anything picture in your head a webcomic just any webcomic right

imagine the characters in the webcomic are looking at a TV screen playing a fighting game Oh my God. Okay. Now look up generic fighter maybe. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. So the demo features three characters. John Eric. Oh, yeah. The main character. Bortante.

Bortante. And Zerkichichichin. Okay. Okay. What archetypes do you think John Eric, Bortante, and Zerki-Cichichin is? Um, Ryu, Chunley and Gee. I mean, you can, you can call it Chunley, but spikey, rush down, annoying.

Sure. Big crap. And John. Eric. Balance man. Um, it's really funny. And, uh, yeah, it was fun. You know, I just, it's animated quite well for the goofy memes sort of style it's going for.

And I just, I love the idea of like, these are just naked. Not stick men, but like almost, um, almost like, wojacks, you know? Almost like, almost like wojacks are like rage faces. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of that going on. Um, but like, again, well animated and there's something in a name and there's something in a silhouette. And these characters have both. And it, it looks, looks like it's coming along. So generic fighter maybe, uh, take a look.

We got a, we got a demo for that coming out on, uh, we did on getting to fighting games. Um, okay, dokey. Yeah, that was it. Uh, beyond that this week, had some more sweaty sets and Avatar. It's cool because that game has, um, grappler is not necessarily a set archetype as much as it is a groove you can pick. If you pick a groove that says make your grab big, strong and scary, then you are now playing a grappler. Um, it's fun. Yeah, it's fun.

But that was, that was cool. Uh, we played a little bit more Dark Souls 2. That's coming along. We have completed Earth and Peak and have hit the famous volcano up into the Iron Peak. I think it might be, that elevator might be the most extremely obvious moment of, wow, they cut a lot of this shit out, huh? That I've ever seen in any game I've ever played my life. It's funny because it's a very strong moment that goes back to like the original crits of the game. But it also is something where people that love D.S.

to have come to be really tired of the dead horse of that moment. But it does truly represent something where you're like, this is silly if you think about it. And the takeaway being like, if only the elevator went down instead of up. So I thought about this a ton of times. And like, like it really screams about how much,

how fast and hard they had to cut this. because all you would have to do is like put a mountain behind the windmill that have like a little orange glow on it. Sure, sure, sure. But also when you're on top of the Iron Keep and you like rotate the camera, you shouldn't have shown that it's lava infinitely as far as the eye can see in it. That's that's a weird fucking detail. I mean, when you first walk out into Hyrule Field and you look around, you see a volcano with smoking. around it, you know, and there's a little bit of like, oh, okay, that's a place. Like, you kind of, it is impossible to miss a massive lava formation somewhere in the landscape, you know?

You could have, yeah, you could have put a mountain behind the windmill or apparently, apparently there's a mod that does it. Okay. Let me take a look at this. Okay, if you're out here in the defense squad going, it's not supposed to be a physically possible space, and that's the best you have. That sucks. That's a stupid opinion. Get the fuck out of here.

That's lame. They've done, they've... Oh, I know for a fact that it got cut. They've done the thing we're talking about in the other games. DS1 doesn't do this. Yeah, and you also, like, the games also have like a bunch of teleporting nonsense for certain areas like this. Like, you could have just walked up to a portal.

You could have. You could have. But, but, like, there was an elevator already built into Earth and Keep. So, fuck it. We don't have time. We have to keep going as fast as possible. And, you know, channels have built their entire content on, like, no clipping the camera from out of Firelink Shrine to show you how you can see.

Yeah, illusory wall has been able to show off, like, just how many bits and bobs of these games have been, like, retrofit and, like, jammed into each other. The place physically does make sense, and this is here and that's there. And it's, you know. And like, there are some aspects to it. Like, for example, the trip down the well towards the rotten is all a, that's a coherent space like thing. That's really cool and interesting because it's coherent. But no, this is just a dumb thing that they didn't do.

Don't fucking hand wave and go, no, it's not supposed to be. Time is convoluted. Like, hey, hey, fuckheads. Don't tell me that the standing door far high in the sky next to the Duke's archives that, that opens, if you know, clip up there is part of some kind of masterful ploy by Seath to have a hidden thing. No, they just fucking move the level at some point during development and forgot to move the door because it wasn't tethered to the environment. I also forgot how, like, as much as I'm, I find it really like dumb how these games are all like, yeah, you got to quit, load out,

go sit at a bonfire to update the state of the world because people can't walk place. Oh, that's terrible. I think that one sucks really bad. It's the dumbest thing about. the Souls games for sure. It frustrates me to no end and I'm like, this is just, this is engine limitation or laziness. I don't know what to call it, but whatever. But in DS2, the fucking ladder maker gets a cutscene to walk up, place the ladder down and update the world. And like that gets only him. Only him. He gets an asset and updates the state while everything else that's way more important is like it's super weird it's fucking weird so strange man um yeah teleporting hold on let me light this metal gear on the bottom on the windmill on fire this this 100% iron rot windmill cover let me

light that on fire on my torch um that's a natural understanding so you know what i discovered i was talking after the windmill fire point and and pointing out to regium like yeah there's no way you're going to figure that out it's just that's just one of those things where hey we're Unless there's a message right in front of it. We live in a world where the extrinsic now matters and the internet matters. And so the internet has brought to you the knowledge that you can do this. That's how you find out, right? And then someone pointed out, actually, there's an NPC you can summon who walks around with you.

And if you're clearing out Earth and Peak with the NPC, when you pass by the windmill, they stop and point to it. Hey, piss off. Like, oh, okay, yeah, no, totally. That's so, so much better, actually. That makes a lot of sense. We're supposed to be walking around clearing with an NPC, as opposed to somebody that wanted to do it without, you know, by themselves or wanted to challenge it or that way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. Okay, perfect. That's a great way to get that information. What the fuck? Like, you have to get them. You have to clear out the area with them and then walk by that thing. Not even the summon for the boss fight. Do the stage with them.

Crazy. Not even a dev note, not even, and like, even a, like, walk up to it and get a prompt that doesn't do anything unless you go back with a torch. There's so many ways, you know? But it's a baffling moment that we hit there. Anyways, all that continues. In Onimusha, I got to Budai, and that's a fucking great fight, man. Um, yeah, if you're going to go for the bros looking bad dudes looking for good fights, if you're going to give me that Agni and Ruggia energy, then...

Good fights with bad dudes! That's it. And he comes in and it's a great fight with a bad dude. And his main thing is the lightning. And like, I was talking about... Can you deflect a lightning bolt, Wolling? Bitch, I will e-send the lightning. You know why?

because it's an over- Yeah! It's so good. Escenting the lightning feels like fucking, oh, it's drugs. And the same thing

for when you e-send, his ESN, it's so sick. Nah, man. Like, you take those hits, you all are nothing on it, right? You're either you're getting murdered on it

or you're getting the crit. I got to tell you, I got to tell you, that game. has one of the best boss fights I've ever played in my entire life. And the whole game, I was like, boy, I hope they do this. And then they do it. And you're like, this is exactly what I wanted.

And it's way better than what I thought I was going to get. There you go. They're okay. All right. It's, the holy shit, it's everything I ever wanted. Like that panel of the dudes freaking out at elite beat agents. You are everything I wanted you to be. Yes, please.

I'm not even mad. well okay there's one thing i want but like um i will say that like i also hit uh uh uh cogero too and you're like it's it's it's i did not like cogera too at all okay it's i did not like cogerot too i enjoyed cogero too but the thing about it is like oh you're you're you're adding the extra limbs to it and you're like you're getting you're getting this you're getting the you're getting the your version of of gauntlet lady involved and like it's it's it's defiling the purity you know and and a little bit of gearless Joe in my life would be really really nice right about now um but uh that was that what that leads to is a fun moment as well so i i enjoyed that i really really dislike that

like a lot and I disliked it for a very specific reason which was like yeah yeah I'm gonna do it this isn't that oh let's go man really I did mind it like oh I didn't mind it oh and like it's a while before you get coger 0 3 okay I didn't mind it too much like that like I was I was very annoyed um I feel like for me the things that bug me are what I'm like we're doing it and then like someone else gets involved and I'm like get out of here you trying to have a fucking shirtless fight in the rain right now no it's 2B2 man

I guess technically so yeah we started out on big walk as well big walk is happening and that continues and that is I can say from just one session of it that is what you would want

you would have wanted the witness to be. Do you know what I mean? The things you like about say missed and the things you dislike about what Jonathan Blow did with the witness. Really? I think are addressed by how House House makes... Okay.

So what you're saying is that it's like got cool puzzles and it doesn't feel like a weird, weird, creepy guy is jerking off in the seat next to me. That is correct. Okay, good. Because that's what I felt like when I was playing The Witness. It felt like Jonathan Blow was like huffing and puffing, like maybe one or two chairs over.

And I was like, Jesus, fuck, can I just do a puzzle? Either that or sitting quietly in the dark. Feeling sad because Soldier Boy is playing. But, no, it's, it's, it's, it's quite well made so far. And like you can see they thought about it quite a bit. And they've put that into play. And yeah,

in terms of just like letting you discover how the puzzles work and what to do and how to think through things, really, really fun. And like letting you create your own language around what you're looking at and how it works and stuff also really, really smartly made. So yeah, that's pretty cool so far. All that to say tomorrow, we're going to be doing a little bit more.

And then this week, Thursday, to be decided, may or may not stream. And then Saturday, same thing, may or may not stream. I know I said we might hit a slop stream, but to be honest, just I'll let you know on my socials because we might be busy. But that's basically my week. That's what's going on. All right. Okay. Oh, all right.

Let me unclench my body, get everything loose. because I actually I actually played like a enormous variety of hot new releases this week. Hot new, hot new. All right, let me go, let me go look at the live tab on the

YouTube studio so I can actually like keep track of these fucking things because there's a bunch. Let's see. Clenching up more than just one part of your body. That's a little bit, a little bit. All right. So in order

I played Silent Hill Townfall Yeah I was town I have heard things About that game Yes Let me ask you Let's go here

What have you heard about Townfall So I hear that Townfall Is an immaculately detailed Um Really well done environment where you feel like the place you're in

is a living, breathing, small, like European... Scottish town. And the details they put into everything there are impeccable. Absolutely. And I hear that simultaneous to this is a really tedious

stealth gameplay section that continues well beyond comfort and refuses to go away. Okay, so, yeah, hey, you nailed it. So Silent Hill Townfall, I'll start with this. I think it's pretty good.

I think it has some glaring flaws, but I think that overall it's pretty good. It's very scary. It has a very interesting premise. It does very interesting things with Silent Hill as a setting. In particular, it introduces a new, character archetype to the Silent Hill type of narrative that is fascinating for them to explore. Can you can you say what that is? Sounds interesting. I, I will, I will, I will not say what type of

character that is because that will really give it away. But what I will, but what I will say is that we've had, you know, repentant abuse victims. You've had kidding yourself, a lot of kidding yourself, people. We've got people caught up in bad situations and being torn up about it. Right. And we've had like cult worshippers, cult sycophants,

cult people who are kidding themselves, you know, all these types of things throughout the series. All the way down to like guy who just happens to be in the wrong apartment. Right. Right. Yeah, sure, sure. Like pass or by who just happens to be in the wrong

place. Teaster. And there's a bad town. Yeah, and now we have a completely new character archetype that, oh my God, I am like gonna die. Oh, God. Oh, boy. Oh, geez. I'm gonna do it this time. Anyway. Oh, wow. Um. Oh, dude, don't, don't, don't touch your toes. That's crazy. All right. That's crazy. You are the color of your shirt right now. That's insane. No, I'm getting so mad. What the fuck. All right. Okay. Anyway. The blood just rushes to my face every time I do anything. It's fucking silly.

Anyway, point being, there's a completely new type of person. I'll tell you in private if you want to know what kind of person it is. Well, okay. If what you're saying about this game, though, is leading to, like, a thing that's like, ah, the negatives here are making this journey questionable. The negatives are pretty pronounced. So that makes me pronounce not want to fucking know or not want to bother, If depending, you know.

All right. I'll, so basically, I'll, I'll give you the taste, um, of, of what it is.

And that will help you decide whether or not you want to. Yeah. That works. Yeah. A new archetype sounds very interesting. Um, but if it's not worth it, because I,

I know, like even the cool shit about F is stuff that I'm still thinking of like, yeah, okay. Let's, let's, uh, Oh, interesting. Okay. All right. No, that's good enough.

That's that, right? That's a new type of guy. That's a new guy. That's a new guy. Yeah, yeah. And the game does a lot with that new archetype. It's very scary. It has, it's stealth or combat. The combat is fairly limited, but it's like you get a plank of wood or a pipe. And it does have durability, but the durability isn't as bad as you would think. enemies have decent tracking, can run fast, but you can also hide in closets or do some stealth gameplay. And you're given a little CRT monitor that you can track enemies

through walls on it. It's actually very similar to a siren where you'll dial in the enemy and then you'll see it through all walls. And then when you point it, you can always track where it is. And that's your radar for your cell sequences. And switching between the two enemies

or three enemies or whatever in the area is how you figure out, oh, their back is turned down. Now, right? While you're hiding from an enemy, how long before the coast is clear? So with regular enemies, 25 seconds before they, if you aggravated them and they're chasing you and you get out of sight and you hide,

they'll leave within 15 to 30 seconds, depending, right? Not too long. And you can make sure to check them out through with your CRT. So it's not a problem. With regular. Now what about say an old crazy person or something to that effect? Uh-huh. A special enemy.

A special enemy. Don't worry about that. And there are some fun stealth sequences in the game. Like there are some decent things where you're trying to sneak around. And in particular, there's a really good stealth sequence where you are trapped in a hospital trying to bring a patient back to life. but the doctor on the intercom is just screaming at you to go faster and how stupid you are and how you can't even fucking get these blood pressure right as you're trying to solve the puzzle and just like just nagging on you and then you have to explore the hospital to get like the correct

dosages of medicine because the places understand it's a really great sequence what's not a really great sequence is at the end of chapter three and the end of chapter six There is a extremely prolonged stealth sequence against an invincible pursuer. And this thing is so bad that I'm pulling full points off the game's score in my mind. Yeah. Like it is absolutely unbelievable how bad this enemy is when they show up. It's crazy terrible. Um, so the enemy is 100% invincible and kills you in one hit.

And by hit, I mean, like, they have a nebulous, like, range around them that's like a whole body hit. Um, and, uh, they also have a extremely inflated, um, a sense of hearing. So what happens is you, you're, you're, you're stealthing through. And the enemy is locked onto your position. Like say you're in a, you start, you come down a little staircase and you see the monster stomping around, right? And it's doing a little circuit, like a clockwise circuit of a little room, right? As soon as you move into a new room over the left, it circuit changes to go explore the new room to the left.

And once you leave that room, it's circuit changes to follow you to the new room. But that's okay because yours closets in every room that you can hide it, right? But on top of that, the enemy actually can hear you opening the hide closets. So when you go into a closet to hide, the enemy runs into the room, starts going crazy, and then stands in front of the door you're hiding in front of for like 20 seconds, and then we'll leave to pace back and forth of the door you need to leave by. Right. Right. So I have heard that like this particular moment is, is something that like you can spend five plus minutes sometimes waiting for the pattern

to clear off to get away from the thing. The stealth, you know what, I'm going to go look. The stealth sequence that I did at the end of chapter three is like nearly exclusively with this guy. And it takes forever, dude. Like it,

I want to say it was that sequence alone took like a fucking hour. Man, just. And it was, It was miserable. It was terrible. And walk away levels of pain coming in here. Yeah. And like so this is what's weird is like,

I know that it's not even the same franchise or such, but I'm like, there are examples of great pursuit, for example, Resident Evil, right? Yeah. Like when you have a pursuer that like doesn't know your exact location, but knows your general location, like is Mr. X not?

not like a well thought out system of like Mr. X is the best pursuer and it's meant to be threatening but you can get away from it and he's not it's not just cheating but you have to use everything. Okay. I looked about an hour and 10 minutes. That's insane. Um, it's, it's, and it's bad. I died a bunch. And the fact that Mr. X has so many things that like, I felt it was really well done right away. But like the all the shit that you're like, by the way, this is extra levels of like programming in depth and things they put into it to make it feel not like what you're describing, but still threatening, you know? Yeah.

So I'm going to just say, I don't like stealth in horror games at all. I like avoiding and fighting. That's the, I want the stealth to be, I juked them, right? Because I play Resident Evil. That's where my survival horror, like, narrative starts. This guy, you can't act, you can't hide well, and you can't juke him. And you can't find it. There's actually no options other than do the zone perfectly.

So at the end of chapter six in one of the game's final sequences, they do the same type of level again where you're having to explore this very large area and solve puzzles while the pursuer is tracking you through the main middle area. But at that point of the game, you have a flare gun, and the flare gun will either stun him or distract him to the other side of the room. And so that sequence is fine. it's not good but it's fine but that one that's the exact middle part of the game

is actively miserable it is it is quote unquote that part when you're replaying a game where you're just like I don't even care I'm not gonna do it so so like the the I mean here it is it's canned but like my stealth rant which I've done before is that like there are

things where moments in Last of us where stealth works because tension is high, but also you're not complete, it doesn't last forever. It's right. The moments come and go and you're not completely crippled by what's going on. Stealth and Last of Us is a tenderizer.

For the situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not when, it's not cooking it. It's like you're setting it up and you're making it easier to deal with. And you usually breathe a lot before you come into that moment and then you might even pop out of it

into a combat sequence, whatever. But exactly, right? It changes the flavor a little bit. in Batman, you have stealth, but you have so much that you can do while you're stealthing, and it's a whole aspect. You have a lot of options. Stealth is like, you are the danger,

you know, uh, uh, fucking, you know, um, you are the one that they're afraid of. Therefore,

stealth has a lot of forms and a lot of options and having options makes things fun to do. But having no options or less options makes things more frustrating. And not knowing what the options are is always going to drive me crazy. So for example, if you remember years ago, talked about how, okay, you're playing Assassin's Creed and it's got a stealth system. Cool. What does the game think stealth means? Does stealth mean crouching? Or does it mean walking

slow? Does it mean both? Does it mean walking at full speed, but as long as you're crouched, you're okay? Or is it just about the area of the footsteps? Is it about... Is it anything, but is it anything less than running? Is it, is it, is it cover? Do you have to be in the bushes or at below a height? Or can it be standing walking slow behind the enemy? Or is it just none of the above and the vision cone. Is it the vision cone up to a certain distance or vision cone forever? If you're straight in front, where does it stop? Metal Gear Solid had a vision cone.

You can see what that is on the fucking thing, but you don't know what it is in a lot of these modern games and some of them interpick and choose these pick things randomly. So stealth is always annoying and always frustrating because you don't know how many of these 10 fucking things you have to do. I hate it. It's not fun. In Townfall, in Townfall, it appears to be a vision cone. However, not a single enemy in the game has a face.

So, like, actually figuring out where they're looking feels impossible. And the distance they can see is also impossible to determine. Fucking great. You know. And the excuse that it's a horror game, it's a survival horror game, means that, like, being, making them stronger and more powerful and having the ability to scare you more is a higher priority as opposed to a game where it's just like guards you know, or dishonored or something like that.

So now you have like the game tweaking up the annoying factor to because they're conflating what's annoying with what's scary. So I'll say like the most of the stealth in the game is like well enough designed because if you fuck it up, you can fight, you can fight your way out of the problem and you'll just lose resources. Right? Um, the,

the stealth in these two sections is way over. over the line. And it's the capstone section. It's the capstone events of both of those sections that are terrible. Now, I will say,

I think the final sequence in that game is kind of astonishing and how ambitious it is because the final sequence in that game is they put you in front of this gigantic puzzle board

and just say, figure it the fuck out. And it has like 20 icons on it. And none of, not a single one of those icons is explained. You just have to intuit it.

And then in between every puzzle solution, you have to, yeah, you have to, you have to stealth through the high enemy area back to different parts of the level to solve puzzles at that new spot until you can loop back. The puzzle is diabolical. Like it is, it is really, it is a test. It is very extreme.

And a lot of people are going to get, locked by it. Like it's, it's, because it's, it, the stealth gameplay is really hard. And then the puzzle gameplay is just like, I don't know what to fucking do here. And it's, and it's committed to the stealthing gameplay. It's not lighting, lining up on that. Um, puzzle stuff, as long as it's, as long as it's like all within the boundaries of the game and not like, hey, did you do a wiki dive before this game? Then too bad for you, you know, then fine. Um, the game only has, um, three characters. Two of those characters are great.

And I mean like great Silent Hill characters. So I guess the trailer shows you or everything. Yeah. Really, really fantastic Silent Hill characters. Simon, the main character, I wouldn't even say he's bad. I'd say they forgot to make him at all.

um his actor or his writing or whatever uh he never shows an emotion once in the entire game he has extremely little dialogue he he's are you done are you done with it oh yeah i finished him one go um how many endings are there there are three uh sorry there are five but there are three real endings and two joke endings um uh he he he is he is like kind of nothing which sucks because like his character is like a big part of the game yeah well in the trailer the attitude like of what we're seeing felt like that was going to be what was interesting to explore yeah he doesn't have anything going on um at all i also got the bad ending when i start when i beat it um the bad ending is the best of the three available endings which

is fucking weird actually um also this is a minor mechanical spoiler I really, I mean really strongly dislike how they categorize your ending type. The ending type in Silent Hill Townfall is determined by only one factor. And there's two stats. One's called discoveries, which is puzzles, solutions, collectible pickups, and notes found, like documents, right? And then the other is kills. and those are the metrics that matter. Those are the two metrics.

And the only thing that determines your ending is, is the kill number higher than discoveries? Is discovery number higher than kills? Or are they about the same? It's the only thing that determines your ending. I will take it over how long did you stare at this photograph. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah.

Okay. The other thing is that the game forces, kills on you. Yeah. Like forces. So it's... Okay. It's a rough way to do it.

Also, the penalty for, like, not wanting to deal with the stealth gameplay is fighting enemies, and then that gives you a quote unquote, worse ending. It's unsatisfying. That being said, for four and a half of the game's chapters,

it's really solidly put together and really interesting. it's fascinating in a lot of respects. Oh, it's not just kills. Okay, what is it? Type it in the chat, because I definitely got that murder ending. But like not closing out strong is enough to ruin an intriguing start.

Oh, here's the thing. I thought the ending that I got, which was the bad one, actually ruled. I went and looked at the other two, and I was like, those are actually much less satisfying. Then the bad one that I got.

Now, to be, for me, my experience with both Silent Hill games, both one and two, and especially two, was this is pretty good. This is good. Wow, this is great. Okay. And then the ending is, holy fucking shit, this rules. Right? So that was my journey to a wall of quality. if what you're describing is something interesting that then drops the fuck off and bumps up a little halfway point, like, that doesn't sound great at all.

Now, I'm curious, stack this up for me with F. Oh, I actually made a tier list the other day on one of my streams. F is the second best Silent Hill game. Silent Hill 2 is the best Silent Hill game because it set the stage for everything. thing and ruin Silent Hill? Sure. F is the second best Silent Hill game. And you're talking about like the full clear, all the, like final.

Yeah, all of it. Full clear. Yeah. F is, even if you only play it once, F is, is excellent. It's just absolutely fantastic. It is, it is an S minus, right? To S on a Hill 2 is S. And I put Townfall at B.

Like, it's a good game. like it's a solid horror game but it has like really really glaring flaws and if you really strongly dislike stealth gameplay then it's then it's much worse than that

stealth is a deal breaker for me yeah no I don't I can't I will I will walk away shut it down fuck this it's so unfunny frustrating in a particular way that I would rather not. Yeah, it kind of is unfortunately. I would call it, I would call, um, I would call, um, I would call sign of hell townfall a four out of five, but like, barely, like a three point nine out of five.

You know what I mean? And like, your, your tolerance to stealth sequences. So I expect anybody who dislikes the stealth gameplay in this to hit the end of chapter three and shelve it. Okay. Because it's that, that sequence is that bad. Because there's things for all For all the things I complain about disliking sometimes in games, like I can actually deal and just grin and bear it sometimes. Like grinding sucks in RPGs, but I can turn my brain off and do it, you know? Grinding sucks in some RPGs.

And I'd say most, actually. But there's a couple. You have to really hit like a really specific like curve to be like, I'm, oh, I'm getting to use my new abilities. And right when I'm tired of my new abilities, here's another new ability. You know, it like. Like, I remember during the LP, after we were done recording, I'd like pop on a fucking podcast, jump on the belt, and just run around with Gao and start unlocking skills.

And I would just, that's it. We're just running up and down the belt, you know? And I'm like, yeah, okay. This is not what I enjoy about RPGs, but I can just commit and do it and then feel good about getting it, getting the skills in the end, you know? But, yeah, annoying stealth sections, which last a fraction of that amount of time will drive. me crazy and make me walk away. God, yeah. And this is like, yeah, I

tested thief. You know what I mean? Excuse me. Excuse me. I need to take a five-minute break. I wish townfall didn't have any fucking stealth in it at all. That's kind of where I'm at. Hello? Can you not hear me? I can't hear you.

Sorry, sorry. My mute button. Sorry. Silly, Willie. First you're the devil, now you're muted. Yes. No. The devil's trying to get you. So, so, uh, uh, I fucking, I have tested the shit out of thief. I tested the shit out of Hitman. I tested the shit out of DeusX. Like, I have dealt with so much stealth, right?

And like, fine. Not every game is going to be gunpoint, right? Do you remember gunpoint from like a billion years ago. That game was sick. That's a great stealth game, you know? But mediocre implemented stealth in games where it's not even necessary and or stealth that is mandatory and like breaks the rhythm up and is not tense. Because once you learn the rules of the monster that cannot be killed, it's no longer

a threat. It's just. Oh, not here. You learn the rules really fast and it's just like, I don't know what you want me to do in this situation. Yeah. it's in in in in in in townfall it's basically constantly like okay i guess i'm just gonna have to make a break for it and hope i get around the next corner fast enough before it's see like it's it's it's rough it's like

a really bad alien from alien isolation yeah but but even then you can go like there's these big um there's these big fucking game dev speeches about you know uh how great mr x was designed or how the alien in isolation was designed. And like, like the great monsters that track you and all the work that goes into making that feel alive and smart and engaging, but not exactly what you're describing here, which is, I know where you are.

I can hear everything you're doing. I'm no clipping. And just also knowing where you, where the map is and where the map wants you to go. And we're just going to just fucking, it's scary though, right? Because it's annoying.

It's scary. Are you scared? Because you're annoyed? Yeah. X is is like crazy incredible. Like, I can't think of anything that comes close. Dude, I just experienced Mr. Freeze for the first time.

You know, like we have solved this in so many ways, in so many games over time. And it sucks to see that something is paying so much attention to detail in these places. But maybe their idea of what is tense is just different. You know, but that's a bummer. Okay, so this is, this is dropping the combo that Silent Hill has been on then. Yeah.

So I thought it was, I thought it was pretty good, but the stealth can be a massive deal breaker because it's not a good stealth either. So, oops. What else did I get up to? I also got up to, God damn. Yeah. The SACs was like dedicated, like, rooms. It was scripted in a lot of moments, but there's, but then it was chasing. you through the map like organically, you know, once the, what's the script breaks?

I'm going to have to go a little faster because I actually have so many to go over. Yeah, and there's some stories today that we got a cover too, so. I played a bunch of control resident. I played about 12 hours of control resonance. Yes. I am no longer streaming control resident. Fuck. I don't, I don't particularly like control resident. Okay. And I had been going through like a back and four. and back and forth and like experimentation and like modding the game. Just like, okay, like what is happening here?

What is my, what is my issue with the game? And why is, why does every, why are there other people who are like, wow, this is the mind-blowing incredible and why am I just kind of not enjoying it at all? I have to say turning to Nexus mods as a solution increasingly for, for new releases. is like, I just, I, man, I don't want to do that, you know, that's... Yeah, I know. I know. The only reason I started poking around in, in, uh, resonant is I wanted to see if something would have made a big difference and it didn't really.

Yeah. Well, because what I've, what I've seen, it's funny because like the conversations with that are like, um, there are, there are some, some spaces online, like, for example, like, there's a character action games, our slash character action games is a subreddit, right? And it's very, very like, I'd say surface about it because it's like, hey, if it's got an air combo, it's a character action game. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, it's, you know. So like Control Resonant may look like a character action game when you're looking at gameplay, but it is not a character action game.

It is an action. Is the combo list like light, light, light, light, light heavy? You're already, you know, you're already wrong. Combo list. Already. combo no pat so so yeah yeah um

so the first thing that's really strange when you start the game is it asks you to pick your light attack and i'm like huh so you pick your light attack and your light attack is either stabby daggers or like an axe that you swing or like a big scythe and the second choice that they want you to pick is your heavy attack and it's either a big slamming hammer that you can charge it's like a whip that you can charge up for like a perfect whip attack or like a spear that you hold and it does like this sounds like meena the hall and sure and your action uh you you have a a you can hit square three times for light attacks and you can hit triangle three times for heavy attacks and you have a dodge and that's it uh and uh you need to spend a lot of upgrade

materials to buy the other light attacks or the other heavy attacks like you there's a item called a living shard that you can buy to like give you like oh i could have the daggers and the axe moves but you can't have them at the same time you actually have to go into you have to hit start so let us be quiet thank you um you uh will go oh i have unlocked the the axe instead of the daggers. You hit start to go into your layout and then you pick your light attack and you go, I would like my light attack

to be axe instead of daggers. You can't have both of them at the same time. Similar with heavy attacks. You can have the hammer or the whip or the drill at the same time. Devil, sorry, devil may cry one. We are pausing and.

Well, no, because Delme cry one you could switch between Ifret and Alistair with a button. Here you have to hit start and switch over in the menu. It's called your load out. Okay. Right. Skill tree. No, hold on. There's more. I'm going to continue to go down the

sequence of events as they occur. So you get a dash, you get a double jump. And you get a, the double jump is really extreme. Like it is a fucking enormous double jump. Like you can really go. Imagine of Kage. Love it. And you also have like a, the enemies have like a stun meter, um,

where if you stun them, uh, you can like, click in left stick and you'll do like a, like a cinematic kill. More games need irresponsibly high jumps like a toge. We just need stupid high jumps in games. Um,

so you're running around an open world and you're doing missions and they become remedy missions once you get a hold of them. Um, and then the next upgrade that you get once you upgrade some of your, your, because you have a big ass upgrade tree for each of these, uh, attacks.

So you, upgrade them like five times, then you unlock combo enders. And there are six combo enders. There's, you get fists that do a bunch of blunt damage and knock enemies away. There's a fist that do a launcher. There is a spinning blade and a spinning blade that goes around you, like roundtrip. There's like a big gigantic axe, and then there's a spin attack that goes multiple times. And so you unlock one or a couple, and then you set your combo ender.

and now that you have your combo ender, the core gameplay loop is there, which is three light attacks, and then the combo ender you chose, and then heavy attacks sometimes. You can't swap between any of them. You have to unlock the one move that each of them has. So the move that the daggers have

is when you dodge and attack again, it has a really good dodge attack. And the axe has a lift attack, but it's out of dodging. And that's the one move. And then maybe 12, 13 hours in, you can unlock the ability to go square, square, square, triangle. And that's the game's only combo.

That is the only combo in the game. And then you get powers. So on top of that, your L2, R1, R2 are dedicated to, are you throwing rocks, Are you making a big shield around yourself? Are you doing punches that are on fire? Are you setting your weapons on fire, etc? And those are cool, but like your basic combat is actually really, really simple.

And I was struggling with like finding the fun on that for a while. So the way that combat encounters work in the game are super weird. There's two types of enemies. Like they're type, like genres. One is big enemies, and they have like a big red dot on your minimap, and you have small enemies, like fodder, like just absolute like generic fodder. And the combat encounter doesn't end until you kill all of the big enemies. The small enemies will respawn infinitely until you kill the big enemies. So what I was doing was like, oh, I have to kill all the big enemies.

So I would go and I would go fight the big enemy. and the big enemies individually are not that tough or not that scary. So I got into this weird gameplay loop where I discovered the best way to kill this guy was to stab him and combo him. And then when the enemy swung at me, I would hit circle to spot dodge perfectly and get a damage bonus and then continue to mash on them for like 30 seconds. And then they would die.

And I would do that to every enemy in the group. Okay. So to good faith steel man here because I legitimately was super interested in... Oh, I'm building up to my good faith steel man actually. Okay. So after I dropped it and was like, I don't really feel like the game is engaging, even though I had gotten three powers. Like the powers are very much like... The powers are very much hard counters.

Like, oh, this guy's flying through rocks. This guy is weak to fire, hit fire. I dropped it and I talked to people about it and they recommended that, hey, actually, one of the things you're supposed to do is if you do the falter and the instant kills on the little guys as fuel, you get a huge damage buff.

So even though the game tells you, hey, make sure to take out all the big enemies to win, the actual loop is build up your character's power on the fodder and then cash it out. out on the big boys. And I did that a bunch. Offstream, I did laugh for like two hours. I'm like, this is a very significant improvement to the game's flow because it means that

you're going from big boy to little guy to big boy to little guy. And that gives you more of a reason to move around. There's a reason to fight the different enemies as opposed to just focusing on the objective. Big guys. Yeah. But at the end of the day, like the core of it. it is that the move set is really limited. And so the thing about that is there's a huge talent tree.

Yeah. Like an enormous talent tree of just like tons and tons of specs. And it is everything that I hate about talent trees in action games. So here's like, I'm sending you a picture. This is like one third of the tree. It's like a big tree and you upgrade one and then you branch out and stuff like that. And I'm like, okay, the talent tree is where all the juice is going to come in. The talent tree is almost exclusively, hey, when you use Inferno five times in a row, it increases stagger damage.

Summons have 50% more health. Summons explode when they die. If you do a perfect dodge, you get a damage buff for one attack. No two attacks. There are no moves. Modifications of the existing movesets. Like the whole talentry is every discussion we've ever had about how I don't want to do 10% more damage to enemies that are on fire. Yeah. Tweaking the existing five things that you do.

Yeah. So I was like, all right, I will kick it up a notch. I will install the weapon switch and style meter mods that someone made the day the game came out. Of course. Oh, my God. And I will, and I will, and I will see if this is the issue. No, it's not. The overall gameplay is just really, really simple.

And the game's structure points people like me into playing the game in a real, really simple. really unfun way. So when you beat a resonant, there's a bunch of bosses all over the place called Resonance, the game gives a big old pop-up and says, hey, every time you kill a resident, all

the world events will repopulate. So get out there and make sure to do world events to get your XP up. Which means that after you kill the first resident, the most optimal way is to cleanse,

the entire map of all the really boring side activities before you move on to the narrative interesting side quests. This is so interesting because this is almost like when FF16 is coming out and it's a franchise that you like and care about the other entries in, but it steps into a world that you're very familiar with. And now you're judging it not.

on the merits of the previous franchise, but on the merits of this is a fucking action game, you better deliver. So, right? A normal person. As you should. A normal person who doesn't want to do it, the,

what do you call it, the normal version is to basically do anything as you personally encounter it? would um and someone in chat has actually explained just now that when you kill all the residents you get a massive XP boost which actually makes it more efficient to leave everything until the end so i don't know why the game goes out of its way to give me a tutorial prompt telling me to get on it because they all repopulated i would say in most cases just wander in that direction of the main goal and anything that strikes your fancy on the way is worth doing right but like the game literally says hey everything repopped once you kill it And I'm like, then just take the prompt out. So regardless. Hold on. Just one last thing. So the actual way that you probably should be going through it is you go be kind of aiming towards a main story thing.

And then if you encounter a side quest or a cool thing, just do it. Right. Don't go for map completion at all. Don't, whatever. And that's weird because the game has a big fat XP marker called map completion level at the top. right of the screen after you do every single fight and encounter in the game. And what's tied to it. But you say, you mentioned FF16.

This is much simpler than FF16 in terms of combat. Like even if I was doing cool narrative stuff, the actual base gameplay, people, I was like, it is much simpler than 16. It is much simpler than God of War. And people were asking me like, well, it's not simpler than Dynasty Warriors. Is it? Like, it is absolutely simpler than like a, a. Dynasty Warriors game. Because in a Dynasty Warriors game, you at least get like six or seven convict. So there's something I want to bring up here that like it didn't enter into our very

extensive discussion on FF16 because I still, I did enjoy it. But it makes a difference here is, what makes a difference here is like the hardest and the more engaging fights in 16, even though you could do the melting like setups, you know, where you just like wait for the cash, wait for the stagger and cash out. What you're doing defensively while you're going. going nuts on your, the equivalent of a rotation matters, right? You're doing perfect dodges in this game. And so, um, an example as fucking timely as ever is Oni Musha, Way of the Sword, does not have an extensive combo list, right?

No. You're doing a very basic simple set of combos with a couple variations therein, but this is nowhere near comparable to, there's like hold the square or hold the triangle, maybe. There's nothing Bionette is doing or any of the other game. You know what I mean? Like, of course, right? No, but it has four defensive options. And you're engaging in all of those defensive options and the things that they all do aggressively

while you're doing basic combos to the thing. And your brain is always activated where instead of going into a bunch of different styles, you are defensively styling with your options. So you're staying engaged in a different way, right? And that's what's actually quite refreshing. But so the movie. list not being long on its own doesn't have to be a requirement for the game to be good, but something else needs to be engaging. And I was going to say, what are, is fighting the

enemies at all dynamic in a way that, no, not really. Okay, because this is where you're, the fight in Onimusha, what you're, what they're doing and what you're dealing with is as interesting as styling and doing a bunch of dynamic combos in a game. Yeah, no, the, the game, the game comes into its own when you have more powers. So I have the ability to throw rocks. I have the ability to punch fire. I have the ability to do a big telekinetic push

and like knock people off cliffs and stuff like that. But like the enemies have one or two moves tops like each enemy type. And the like it feels like they wanted people to like play around with it

then fight it. Does that make any sense? And also all the boss fights are terrible. All three of the boss fights that I encountered were like fucking awful. Visually stunning, mechanically dull as paint drying. Because you're fighting a gigantic enemy with big health. So all you're doing is like dashing out of the way of their attack and just doing your light combo. Okay.

And it is, I can't, I literally can't think of any boss fights that are like simpler. It's like, it's like a Zelda boss fight with no puzzle elements where if you, if Link just had to fight Gomo with this sword. Like, it's fucking weird. Remedy prior to this, everything else that they specialized in has been gunplay plus special abilities or gimmicks or things, right? it's that's typically the thing this is them stepping outside of that here right did you did I lose you again so I lost all that remedy typically specializes in gunplay shooters you know gimmick or element or special thing this is them stepping outside of that and going into action full on but they they haven't really done that I hear that like I heard that end

game control one goes like become star wars crazy but yeah so control one is like a really good example of uh it's exactly the same as this game except you're shooting a gun and using your powers instead of mailing and shooting your powers but the core of it is that in control aiming and shooting a gun is more interesting than standing in place and mashing a button like like the act of aiming yeah is is more than the act of meleeing in this game. Okay. Wow.

So I am I am going to plunk away at it but I gave it 11 and a half hours and was just like I'm just really bored. I already bought it. I haven't installed it yet.

I would love for you to play it for a couple of hours minimum and tell me how you you feel about it because I have explained this like maybe four times and people are basically responding that I'm nuts or I ruined it. But one of the things that game has is assist mode is that you can like decrease the amount of, you can like make the the stringency of the perfect dodge like a lot stricter in the assist mode. And that wouldn't make any difference at all because like I wouldn't be getting perfect. dodges, but I'd still be spot dodging in place to dodge like these very clear enemy attacks.

Yeah, I don't, I mean, making this timing more strict is not where the fun is going to lie there. It's doing more things. Or being asked, I want more moves. Or being asked to respond to more dynamic things, you know? Like, I want, I want more moves. Like, that's what I want. Like, I feel extraordinarily limited. and the resonant powers that you get aren't that interesting.

Hmm. Okay. As moves. Yeah, I'm going to. They're just not. This was something that was on the potential list as something I might, you know, do an extended look at down the line because I was like, oh, is this my entry into the remedy world? I guess I'll do a little more investigating off-camera. first to see what's going on.

But that is unfortunate because I was like, when things walk into the world of action, you know, I'm like, I'm like, hey, I was not expecting fucking metal gear or

Final Fantasy to wander into my house, but welcome. There's a seat here. Please, you know. I think that me saying how unsatisfied I am, I am with it as an action game

has people in our chat right now going well it's not an action game this is insane this is like saying well if I don't like the shooting and control that's okay because control isn't a shooter you're a nut you're a crazy person it's a video game the act of

playing a video game is playing it like the narrative experience and the story and all that exploration is obviously vital but like it's you're playing a fucking video game and hitting buttons to make things go like fuck off

but I am definitely on the edge of this feeling like a lot of people are having a very good time with it and would you say disagree with every complaint I have and I'm super interested to seeing what you have to say about it okay would you say that you recognize remedies

gameplay style or gameplay loop here and that they've converted it to like they've introduced action into something they already do no this is control one it's just melee instead of shooting okay like it's it's very very very similar to control one

it's just melee instead of shooting but I think their shooting is better than their melee combat I think All awake 2 is the best game they've ever made by far not just because it has the most interesting story and it does the most interesting things but also it's a very solid survival horror shooter like, you know, checking, checking corners and managing ammo and shit like that. And I think it's a lot closer to something like infamous or prototype.

But infamous and prototype also had way more moves and things you could do. Okay. Like, way more. I would say the game it's closer to is prototype on the 360 and PS3. And you could do way, like the story and prototype and like the overall game was like kind of junk. but like the stuff you could do in prototype was awesome. And here it's just like you just don't have a lot of things you can actually do. It just feels constantly limited.

I think playing this game as like the first game I played after fucking Onomusha was disastrous for my perception of this game. I feel like I played something recently where I was like trying to do a couple of, I had a light button and a heavy button and I was trying to do a couple strings. and I was trying to do a couple strings and realized that there wasn't any variation to what the game wanted you to do and kind of was like, ah, shit, okay. Well, like, when I see that, I'm like, fine. What else do I do while doing this combo? What else is happening to make this more interesting, you know? Because, like, again, to just reach a random example, like, um, astral chain, you know? like, the...

Astro chain's fucking sick. An individual character doing an individual combo like you've got a couple of variants to the combos you can do. It doesn't have anywhere near as many as we're used to, but it would look pretty simple

on its own. But then when you go, yeah, but combine it with the fucking you're controlling two things at once and you're setting up the line and all and you're like, oh shit, this one piece is actually simple because it's part of a hole

that does a lot more, you know? So I'm like the inherent simplicity of, of a combat system is not a problem if the rest of what the game is doing rises to the occasion. And so that's, that's kind of what I would look for here. So I'm kind of on the cross here. People are very, very mad that I don't like it and that I don't like it because it's very simple. Oh, sorry, it might have been high-fi rush. It might have been high-fi rush where, but no, but that has good variation to it. So I'm trying to remember.

Anyway, I'll take a look. I'll see what's going on. Yeah. I'd like to hear your opinion on it. You might have a much more positive opinion on it because you had a more positive opinion of 16. Because 16, I just broke open and was like, oh, this is the best way to play it.

And the best way to play that game sucks. And just for reference, remind me how you felt about Grand Blue Relink and... Oh, it's good. Grand Blue Relink's really good. The combat in that was like... Yes. Yeah.

Right. Okay. It's really solid. Everybody has a different gimmick. Everybody has like an A and B thing as well as a specialty thing where like I would say I would say. I would say control resonant is maybe the level of complexity of Grand Blue Relink if you only got to play as two characters. Okay. And well, the other thing I was going to.

And you combine them in one. So the other, the other point here would have been Zenless. How did you like Zenless? Zenless is okay Zenless was really simple Really simple You know what This reminds me a lot of Zenless

Where Alan Not Alan Dylan has more to do Than a character in Zenless But all the upgrades And Zenless are statistical Percentage Like it's not new

Zenless Like I want new moves Zenless is a good example of like It's very stylish But very simple And The What makes it

Definitely work is how many characters you're flying through as you're playing Yeah. The other thing is that I was like maybe it's not fair to compare this to Devil May Cry but this has less overall moves. Yeah, which is why I'd like to grab other examples besides

these ones. But at the same time, Devil May Cry One came out 25 fucking years ago. So like, no. At what point do I, should I be able to expect an action game to have more than two moves? But just for the sake of a more interesting conversation.

Like, I'd rather go to other places and other more contemporary examples to see what, you know, what's going on with that. Okay. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's interesting. So that's Alan. No, God, that's Dylan. Sorry, that's, that's control. Oh, the other thing, I don't like Dylan at all.

I don't like Dylan at all. I think he sucks. Um, he's like a wet blanket little pussy man. and it's it's it's miserable like I really really really really liked Jesse can't stand him can't stand Dylan

oh man miserable to play ads he's like a cat that you dumped into a bathtub just a likable a likable pro tag goes a long way for a game like this too

you know that's yeah okay he was he was cooler when he was evil in control like period um after that

I started earthbound yeah um it's the first time I've got hands on on earthbound in fucking 20 years um don't know anything about that game

other than the final boss fight don't know anything about that game other than the final boss fight so does go um yeah the the

wow I can really see how this just brain rotted the fuck out of Toby Fox like like like like You could like, Vibes. I, I, I've described in the past, like you'll run into something and you're like, man, if you encountered this when you were 10 years old, this shit would have become your whole

personality. And earthbound is absolutely that. This, this is earthbound. Like this. Calling your fucking dad on the phone and he just wires you money instead of being present and having to call your mom because you're homesick and having to call your sister to move pasta yeah did your mom make you pasta yeah mom made me pasta cool and they're like what's the coolest thing I'm like family did porkie get any pasta you know finding out that porkie was like the direct

inspiration for cartman really makes a lot of sense because like I'm kind of astonished at how much I hate porky I think he's had like 20 lines of dialogue is that the order that that went in yes yes it is seriously Matt and Trier big earthbound fans oh my god I didn't I don't think I knew that

that's crazy yeah okay yeah did Porky get past yeah but yeah poor no

too bad pork Porky like talks to me like I want to say like eight sentences in I would like I would kill this child oh yeah

oh yeah like just what an absolutely miserable piece of fucking shit extraordinary like what a motherfucker pokey

call him porky, call them pokey, call them whatever you want. Yes. Like if Earthbound had come out literally yesterday, literally yesterday, alongside like look outside and Undertale and Delta Rune, it would have blown up just like those games. It feels like Chrono Trigger in that way. We're like, this could have come out at any point in history

and it would have been the big deal that it was at the time that it came out. Because it's made by an outsider. It's made by a person who's, like not super as far as I know the history of it with Itoi was the Shigashato It Toi was that like this

was not someone who was super coming from the games industry with it So you're getting a lot of someone outside of video games Making one which has a whole flavor to it's incredible And like I got to the happy happy cult And like my I'm like staring at them I'm like is this that fucking real cult that blew up those subway stations? Yes it is

Apparently not I don't believe that for a second. Apparently, the, the, the, there's, there was a different, there's a different detail there. Because yeah, okay, the happy, happy cult is not the same as inspired by the sarin gas attack cult. Om Shin Ryuko, Shin Kiro, rather, sorry, I pronounce that wrong. There's another cult that was slightly less terror. more politically influential called happy

called happy science and is that the one that Abe was under no no no no Abe Abe was the other cult with the with Korea and the yeah the no no no the Abbe cult was a different one but this one happy science they were the ones that were making anime and Mother's Basement made some videos about them I gotta I gotta say the do you definitely feels like

like it would be appropriate in earthbound to tell us about that Um, yeah, uh, so earthbound, but so by the way, for the record, like, you hate Porky more than anyone you've ever known and you have seen one percent of his power. Yeah, no, he's, he's, uh, he's the original Eric Sparrow. It is like, like, just what a miserable little piece of fucking shit. Like Eric Sparrow and dog eyes and, um, God. Man. Dog eyes. Holy shit.

God damn it. And dog eyes and who is the other fuck that we were talking about the other day? Um, um. Fuck, dude. Shit. Fuck. There was another one that was right in there and you're just like, oh, you. Um.

You know, so, so it's earthbound is, is stellar. It's, it's fucking great. And I think. I'm sorry, not even Jimmy. Um, um, fucking friend of freak. Uh, uh, uh, a, uh, a, a, a, a, a, a Vic Van liar. You know what? You know what?

You know who you can add to that? Fucking iguazo. Um, um, like, you know, I, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a carry over here. There's, there's a really, there's a really clear carryover where I remember playing, uh, I remember playing, um, sleeping dogs. And there's that first mission, that last mission, mission where you have to go get dog eyes and you're

it's just like cross the entirety of Hong Kong to get to him. And I remember just like just muttering under my fucking breath. Just like go faster. Like just right and

what happened to your sister. That feeling times a hundred is every single second that I was playing Ace Combat 8. Okay. Um, Ace Combat 8 came out for people who got codes or bought the fancy edition yesterday. And Ace Combat 8 is a Game of the Year contender.

It is, it is so incredible. It is so amazing. Literally all, every single mission, and I'm not going to talk spoilers at all, guys, is like you just like screaming at your plane. just go, like just like redlining it, like speed lines going back like missile, like the peak of top gun every single second

as it should. And the story is so fucking sick. It is a next level for sincerity. There has never been a more sincere story told

on this earth than you and your plane. It's broken through all previous barriers of sincerity. Also, it is doing something that I will like laud and cheer for

in that Ace Combat 8 of all things has a huge part of its story that has been completely hidden in its pre-release like the game has a big surprise at mission one okay and it's like and like i was like really we're doing this that's incredible um i wanted to say uh on earthbound um that when it comes to like how chill the vibes are

and how much the game is like a positive experience and an overall and such um that is so it's so surprising how that persists and and is a really nice vibe but they're like everything's chill everything's happy fuck that kid that kid sucks right now let's beat up this weird hippie in the street let's beat him with bad like you you like pokey porky the level of like, oh my God, this fucking child is like, Flawey ate shit. Flawe ate shit on fucking Porky. Nothing.

Nobody has it on him. And it's delivered simultaneously with just like, let's listen to the vibes. Let's have some music. Let's get our friends. You know? And just, I was humming the music the whole time. The only, like, it's weird because like I, I didn't give the game a chance back when I should have because one again like renting RPGs back in the

the SNS days for me was we would again bad for a house full of kids we needed multiplayer games we needed fighting games to keep everyone busy um but also RPGs where you couldn't see the fight happening really bugged me too and I had dragon warrior for the Ness and I remember being like I don't like that I can't see the fight at all I don't like just first person and text I also don't like the first person battling. That's my that's like one. That was why I initially like bounced off, you know, but like coming back to it now later, it's, it's fucking phenomenal. But yeah. Yeah, that's great. That game is like genuinely ascended by its music. Same thing with Ace Combat. Just like good music, good timing on the music. Fucking makes all the difference in the world. Just makes all the difference in

the world. Uh, Earthbound's got some teeth to it though. Like it's, I've had some moments where I just get stomped out. I'm glad I'm using the virtual console version where I just rewind back out of a boss fight. If no one warned you, Earthbound will fuck you up in difficulty. Oh, I'm aware of that now. Yes. And that is not going to get easier. In fact, the last stretch of this game can be a slog if you are not strong enough.

And every, when you get to each boss, it's supposed to. to feel like, holy fuck, can I even do it? So for the record. Yeah, each boss I've gotten to and I'm like, I can't. Yeah. Okay, now there's a very, very, very important detail that I did not know until much later. That is a game changer. When you do damage and take damage, your life starts ticking down on the timer.

Oh, the game tutorializes this. The rolling ticker? Yeah, no, there's a tutorial for that. the game. So it explains that the rolling ticker is there and that you can do things while the ticker's still going. But, but like, you actually, like, the faster you get at screaming through the menus, the more possible. Yeah, no, the game tells you that. Okay, okay.

The game literally says, hey, if your character's about to die because they took too much damage, you can heal them as long as it doesn't hit zero. Yeah, okay, okay. Fair. Well, never, then, yeah, I can just, you. Get good at flying. I don't have enough HP for that to matter right now. Fine. Because if I'm getting like fucked over, I can't get to the item fast enough.

Get good at flying through the menus to make impossible fights possible. Yeah. Oh yeah, game's great. Game's fucking great. I'm super excited to keep going. I'm glad I put it on the Sub-Athon goals. Super sick. Yeah, Ace Combat is the sickest shit.

I don't have anything to say other than fucking play Ace Combat. and everyone play Ace Combat Like this isn't like Oh if you're like Oh I don't know Like no if you look at the idea of plane Going fast and Duke Top Gun And you're in any point going

Oh that looks cool Yeah you should play Ace Combat 8 And just for the record Earthbound is Earthbound is Metal Gear Solid Earthbound Mother 3 is Snake Eater Oh, okay.

Yeah. Well, it never came out, so it must not be good. Ah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I do have one other thing to say about Ace Combat. I've played a lot of Ace Combat games.

I've played one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven in Ace Assault Horizon. So the only one I'm missing is zero, actually. So that's like a hundred and something missions of Ace Combat of Planes. right? And I've done stealth missions. I've done bombing runs. I've done all sorts of shit, right? And I'm like, well, okay, we're at Ace Combat 8 now, which is actually the 10th, right? And, like, how, how many different way, how many different missions can they have that when your options are flyplane, shoot missile, drop on? How could they possibly like, like, get? get me super excited. And then, and then, like, one mission in, they tricked me. The game tricked me and startled me with a mission.

And I was like, oh, wow, we're doing crazy shit here. Okay. Because I was going to say that, like, you know, if you were to ask that question about an armored core game, the answer is, shut the fuck up, loser. Piloting robots is fun. Yeah. You know? And I would assume that it's like just fall in love with the sky and who cares is the answer for

every ace combat game. I would assume. Yeah. This game, it loves plane. Like I can't, I can't even explain to you how much this game loves plane. Did you know that plane is the only thing that can save us from one?

war. But also, but also, Woley, plane is war. Ah, man. Like, it's like,

it's the Gundam cool robot, right? Existence of it. But it's, it's actually like way, way more on the nose than Gundam ever was about how bad war is. And you'll spend half an hour talking to people about how this war is. how this war is the worst thing that ever happened.

And every single anti-industrial military complex thought just floods out of your body, like, come as soon as you get into that fucking cockpit and go, woo, yeah, woo, like, yeah,

hey, you know what? I hear the same from anyone who's fired a gun at a shooting range. I hear the same, you know what I mean? Like, yes. Like, Oh, whoa.

Like, yes, I've heard the same many a time. And like, you're like, you're like, like, you do your mission and you're like, oh, oh, that was incredible. That was incredible. But it was bad. But it was wrong. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You know, you're fucking watching Cana Reeves doing his wick things and quick fucking reload and mozambique drills. You know, when you're like, well, that shit's cool. but also gun is war. Yeah, gun is war. And that's why the answer is Gundam Stargazer, where you make a big, fighty robot that's just here to take pictures of the stars. We got to get our sponsors and we got to get...

Oh, yeah, sponsors are my love. We've got to get to the news. But tell everyone what's going on on the schedule. Tomorrow at 9 a.m., I'm doing a 24-hour stream. I'm going to be doing a huge amount of variety stuff. the how many Resident Evil's can I beat in a row is being kicked to October because that deserves its own stream.

We're going to be watching all the Kingdom Hearts cut scenes off the compilation and starting Birth by Sleep. We're going to be doing all the tier list goals. We're going to be doing Fear and Hunger. We're going to be doing some other backlog stuff and I'm going to finish Pragata. Are you resuming a safe file in Funger?

No, I'll be starting. I only play it for like 90 minutes last time. I will be starting at 9 a.m. I will be finishing the next day at 9 a.m. It is the last day of September. Please come by. Current goal next is turning my ass to Ollafel for four months in 14. Can you just not play while that's happening?

No. In fact, this goal actually works because not playing would have been an option, except I have a Monday night engagement every single week with the gals. It's like, yeah, I'm a Lollafel now, and then you just stop playing. mandated for at least 12 to 14 more fucking potato times. That is quite unfortunate. Quick word from our sponsors over here. Whom we love.

Yes, this podcast is made possible by the following sponsors. For one, our shirt and the desk mat. You can get over at Brickie's shop. So Orchid8.com. Go to the Castle Super Beast section, and you can get the legacy shirt and desk mat, which are available now. a title for every single stupid thing we've ever said. A lot. A lot of things.

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get a million different details onto your miniatures. And once you're done, you can have it 3D printed. and shipped to you. You can have that done in bronze. You can have a standee. You can just have it printed in color as is, different scales and sizes and options,

color plastic and acrylic. And you can also just have the 3D model itself, which you can do with what you will. If you want to just download the 3D model and print it yourself or figure out something else to do with it. So I imagine with the 3D model you can probably import to something like Tabletop Simulator. You know, that seems like the most applicable thing.

So it's really useful for stuff like that. Awesome. You do it all right there in the browser. And as you've seen, we've had a ton of detail thanks to Prawn Zone in these little Castle Super Beast and Friends miniatures. And now we got Joe Guns in on the action as well. We've shown off some of those models. It's super dope.

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Thanks, HeroForge. And this week, the podcast is sponsored by AG1. and that is your solution to getting some greens in your life. I have not been eating a lot of greens. I've started correcting it now, thankfully, but for a while I was being really lazy about it, and that's bad. But while trying to figure that out,

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And it tastes pretty great too. So I'm happy with that, getting my multivitamin, probiotics, superfoods, antioxidants, all of that. in one scoop. So for a limited time, you can save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 next gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com slash superbeast. That's drinkag1.com slash superbeast. Thank you, AG1. Thanks, AG1. Okay. We got a couple stories going on and unfortunately not a ton of time, but let's hit what we can. At the top of the what the fuck is going on list

is an interview where we hear from the head of Sonic team saying that Sega at one point wanted to cancel the entire Sonic series and the live action film changed the course of the franchise and saved it. The story is fucking stupid. I don't know what the fuck is.

wrong with their fucking brain. We've told so many insane stories over the years about how Sonic team, like, have, there's two, there's like the, there's the classic Sonic, the Sonic Adventure style, and then Sonic Boom and all these things. And they're kind of trying to figure out what to do with this franchise and what to do with this character. And behind the scenes, you know, you have these moments of like, oh, they're really great about, like, fan games, for example.

And they have, like, ages and, you know, all these things where they're open, one, One, open towards fan creations. They've got these comics that are, you know, fun. They've got, like, Sonic Boom had fun stuff going on to. And you're like, Sonic ebbs and flows, but there's a feeling that overall, there's always going to be a Sonic thing coming out. And sometimes it'll be a huge stinker. And other times it'll be really cool.

And you'll be fucking singing that first boss theme forever and, and, and, uh, uh, popping off as, as it goes into, I don't know, like, whatever. cutscene shit. But it turns out that over the course of the years, Sega has been like, yeah, actually, we're willing to just kill this franchise

and stop making Sonic games entirely. That's fucking crazy. And the character was, even though you're like, this is a staple of video games and a mascot that has been here since childhood and it's insanely important, they were going to hang the towel up

until the movie came out and saved it and made it popular. again and revitalized. That's so ridiculous. That's bad shit. I'm seeing someone say 30% hit rate. Like is that actually like what we're talking about on landing it? Because just give it to Whitehead and just have him make it.

Well, they did. They did. And that apparently wasn't enough. Right? Sonic Mania and everything from that, not enough. Yeah, I don't know. But this was 2020 when this happened. like it's just

the idea that it's actually like saying yeah we were thinking about never making a Mario game again actually that's well Nintendo would rather burn everyone alive in their studios than than say that insane story and they do it with a smile too

yeah sure I just the this being there in the background makes every moment of every decision they make that that like does check out feel like how did you even get here? Did someone grab control away from them to make something good happen? Is Sonic being good happening despite Sega's best efforts to tank everything? Like, yeah, yeah, I guess. Yes.

Speaking of everything, tanking, you know, hey, Microsoft, what's going on? Are you cutting over 5,750 jobs? are you are is that is that is that is that is that going to keep going up what's going on um so satia uh the new CEO over there says it's streamlining it's just streamlining fuck off and they're resetting they're resetting and so continuing their reset we've updated the story to say that uh they're eliminating another additional 268 roles across halo studios and other first party studios. So right on the heels of us talking about, hey, Kojima's going to save Fizant by taking it over to Xbox.

Halo Studios gets fucking rocked. XGS management overall. And we were wondering what the fate would be for the various umbrella, you know, partnerships they've had. And they've expanded to explain that Activision will, They used a word remit, which I think everyone's kind of going like, I haven't seen that used in business terms. What is that describing? And I think it's just like, this is now within your responsibility.

So with everyone that's been cut, there's a whole, there's a lot of understaffed sections that need to be staffed and or responsibilities that need to be passed on. So Activision is now going to be handling World's Edge as well as rare. Bethesda is going to be handling obsidian. King will expand its remit to include Microsoft casual games. Playground and turn 10 will come together as one studio focused on Forza and Fable. And yeah, as we saw, Double Fine is going its own way. Arcane is question mark. We don't know what's going to happen with Arcane.

They're still figuring it out. Compulsion, same bit going its own way. And then Ninja Theory was not able to find. a buyer and so Ninja Theory is going to be shutting down. And yeah, that's, of course, over half of the overall video game workforce at Microsoft. And, you know, again, this is always all going alongside posting profits in various quarters and all these non-st things. The Thesda being in charge of Obsidian is ruinous. Is, is...

Dude, it... Listen, AAA games are cooked. It's just what it is. it is. It's just, the slow crash continues, et cetera, et cetera. Because... Well, no, AAA games in the West are cooked. Like

Nintendo and Capcom are just fucking blowing it up. We'll see. We'll see what happens, you know. Never. I... I feel like for the West, we're seeing the implosion here, and then for the

not West, we'll see how long Saudi money goes, you know? But or how long the spite dollar can last. And I think the spite dollar is tied to the petro dollar. So this is going hand in hand with the other Microsoft story, which is back in July, they have patented a system with AI that rewrites game stories in real time for you. So there's a patent nicknamed generative narrative experience, game experience with player feedback. And it basically describes narrative state graphs, which are structured maps with all possible events, choices, and outcomes in the game forming nodes. The AI system will track the player's path through this graph, monitor their interactions and emotional reactions towards NPCs, assets, and the world, and use the generative models to modify the grid.

based on the evolving data to create new nodes or modify existing ones to better match the preferences of each player. Yeah, you know what this is going to actually be used for? This is going to be used for you starting up like a video game and it's going to be like, hey, how racist are you? And you're going to type in the skin tones and sexualities you don't want to see. And the game is just going to morph to make sure that you don't have to encounter those. Okay, so our nodes are saying low woke score. let's take that and let's check online to see what a low woke score version of the story ought to be.

Then you're going to have like a patch note that comes out for the new halo that says, oh, unfortunately, the Saudi Arabian version of the game has been patched. It was erroneously allowing a woman to drive a car in a cutscene. We have fixed this oversight with the AI generation. The textures have removed the rainbow graffiti from the wall of that. one block in the game. This has been edited out. Of course, this is also the implication here

that whatever you take it to mean, the game is going to watch you react to its content and then change its content accordingly, implying that the idea here is the game is going to watch you the entire time you play it. So that's fun. Love that. That's great. McDonald's.

big fan of that good stuff good stuff Microsoft I'm excited I'm excited for that I'm just all I can he was like it seems you're listening

to Joe Rogan in the background would you like us to remove vaccines from the game would you would you like to do that can we just hard cut smash cut to a body of water drying up

in the meantime while Oh, wait, is that Joe in the background? Would you like to change all the bosses into apes and chimps? I also, please enjoy them showing up with five fucking fingers and, and art germ lighting on everything. I mean, that's, yeah. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Uh, what else we got going on? What a pile of shit. Anyway, so, you know, as we said, Arcane, we don't know what's happening over there, but who knows what'll happen with that Blade game that's supposed to come out. Arcane is like the most latest and newest of, hey, make a hamburger. We don't do hamburgers. We do steaks. Do a hamburger anyway.

This hamburger sucks. You're fired. Like, just over and over and over. over like that red what was it called red mist or red red wall whatever the fucking the vampire game that it was a piece of shit like they did they aggressively did not want to make that game and then they got fucked over for it doing poorly uh red fall um red fall so well so the thing is a blade game that is uh them sticking blade into what they do which is dishonored tie style things and we all know blade is super hot right now uh uh

It's still not... Never been hotter. Game not canceled. Game not canceled. Supposedly still coming. Right? Speaking of Blade experiences that you will never have. Marashala Ali is fucking pissed dog.

He sat down and did an interview. There was like a GQ interview they did. Did he like pass up movies to just sit around waiting for the Blade movie to start? In 2019, they pitched a deal to him and he agreed. agreed and got on board with the Blade movie. And Fige basically had him sign a contract to get started. And so he moved his family to Atlanta and started training in swords and working out to become Blade. And he did so for years while they could not figure out how to get the movie made and they could not figure out the script.

And he blew out his knee and like got injured. And like there's a whole fucking insane thing of, like he literally picked up his life and moved to become blade and did all of that while waiting to see what would happen and they never got anything done. So in the interview, they bring up Kevin Feigy has a quote where he says, I feel like a giant loser. I feel like it's the biggest failure of my career. And Mahershala just goes, I agree.

He should feel that way. Straight up. He stopped. He did not make. They paid him, right? Like tell me they paid him. He did not. But like he turned.

down and did not work on multiple films in the time that he would have been able to over this and so now the thing he's making, your mother, your mother, your mother is basically only possible because the people that got together to work on Blade but it never happened are like, well, we're going to do our

own thing anyway. And then Ryan Cougler used the costumes to make sinners. So everyone that wanted to work together is doing shit anyway without Marvel. I saw people just hemming and hauling about like what could have happened and the most plausible you know, pie in the sky theory was that they could not figure out how to make a

Blade movie that didn't just violently clash with every other Marvel MCU movie possible. Because, well, Blade has to violently murder hundreds of vampires with the fucking samurai sword, graphic violence style. And like, how does that work with, you know, I don't think, Spidey Man and Iron Man. I don't think that's it because Deadpool, Deadpool came out, right? Deadpool is... Was Deadpool part of the MCU now?

Deadpool was part of the MCU now and is also fully, like, all of that is 100% insane, violent, gory, whatever. That's not the deal. Allegedly, behind the scenes, the deal and the problem with everything with Blade is that they were trying to secretly turn it into a Midnight Suns movie.

So it was going to be about Blade, but it was not going to be about Blade. it was also going to be about Punisher, Daredevil, Moon Knight, Elsa Bloodstone, and his daughter, Bloodline, as a sidekick, all getting involved. And apparently, apparently all those characters had more, were more foreground than Blade actually was at the same time. And then further rumors talked about how they were going to introduce Bloodline, Ghost Rider, Frankenstein, Black Knight, and then the rest of the aforementioned characters. and it was just too much going on in this one. So just don't. Just make a Blade movie where the man kills the vampire.

Like, that's all everyone wants. And they were trying to turn it into a cross-connecting, you know, joint for like future MCU setup shit instead of just making the simple thing. You know what I'm noticing? Like, ever since that last phase has really sputtered out, like Marvel is like desperate. to get the thing back on track for like the plan. But like every failure means they need to do the next part faster and faster.

But they don't write any of their movies. They just kind of fucking freeball it on set. They try to get writers who hopefully are going to do a good enough job and basically bank on that. The whole, like they roll the dice on that part of it. Right. And so like now we're at the part of like, oh, well, we have to catch up. Okay, we'll make the Blade movie five different movies. Oh, wait, the Blade movie didn't even come out.

what do we do a re-release end game and put Loki in the after credits to get people excited like you're not you're not excited for Rosario Dawson DLC coming to Spider-Man bro I'm so I'm so out I'm so out I couldn't give a shit

no more or less on the bloat on basically going this needs it's almost like what happened with like a game like Marvel Infinite where it's like this needs to include these things because this is what matters it's on you to make it good right and like honestly James Gunn and Guardians of the galaxy are like as are like some of the worst things to ever happen to them because they

were so good while being about characters that nobody knew that it created an inflated sense of we can do this with anybody look we can take any group that nobody knows or cares about and make them stars and like the guardian's effect has fucked them up forever on this and like yeah but you fired that guy yeah well you you know but like it's like that like that now now he made a superman movie that I went when watched and enjoyed instead it's crazy how bad it's been in everyone chasing in those footsteps so it's like yes you want to just blade has was a bunch of fun Wesley Snipes movies blade coming back what a bit of cool thing hey look we can do we can set it up and do more with him but instead you get greedy and you go know it all has to be right away in the first thing so yeah um he's fucking pissed about that obviously and understandably um other stuff going on the GTA 6 collector's box has been revealed. And for $400, you can get a 6-inch Mac of the Gator, GTA-6 Oakley Frogskin sunglasses.

You can get a snapback hat. It doesn't have the game, and it doesn't. It does not have the game. So just take that statue and shove it right up your ass. I didn't even get halfway down the list, Pat. Yeah, no. You don't want to hear about the shot glass, the spoon, the keychain, or the enamel pins? Bro, I, like, you ever, like, talk to, like, a publisher and they're like, hey, we want to send you a code.

And then we also want to send you a bunch of stuff. And I don't know about you, but I just go, man, just send me the code. And they're like, no, no, no, no, we'll send a bunch of stuff. And then they send a bunch of fucking trash that you just throw right into the garbage bin because who gives a fuck. That's who she. And the idea that people are out there going, ooh, collectible stickers for Grand Deftato! Like fucking grow up.

Oh my God. Like that's who Seema box is a footrest to this day. But at least it had a copy of the game in it. Yeah, that's insane. That's insane. That's some dog shit. Yeah, and the only other thing is this is interesting. But with the new monsters and some of the stuff showing up in Monster Hunter's wild,

Monster Hunter Wilds. There's some, like, horrory, scary looking things that... There's a really weird-looking one that looks really cool. Rom Popolo, was the big black bubbly creature. Yeah, but there's an even weird or new oil one. Kezu, the big teeth, you know, with worm thing, which looks like a creature I designed in college. It's crazy.

It's like almost one-to-one with that. You drew a lot of dicks in college? I created a creature for my design class at one point, and it was... Great, a penis monster? It was a bit of a penis monster. It was. That thing's a penis, dude. You know.

And Yamatsukami with the human teeth, right? Super freaky. But all of that was like a direction they were going in, but multi-headed monsters was rejected because it goes too far into horror. So they drew a line at that and they don't want monster hunter to become a horror game or feel. Now granted, they will have you fight a bug that controls a mecca? Sure, Guran Ligand bug. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's fucking stupid But yeah, two heads No, no, no too much I mean They did in fact have an octopus That pretended to have multiple heads Ah, that's cool See, no, but it would pick up skulls

And go like a hydrant I dig the idea that it's like Yeah, this needs to still fit into the natural environment and the natural environment can be horrifying You know, it needs to be scary in a nature is metal kind of way, not a full-on, like, like Eldridge can be also like a thing, but it, but like, yeah, I get what the idea is. It's still got to feel like Discovery Channel a little bit, you know. So that's, that's interesting. I believe those are separate statements, Wully. I'm not sure.

I'm looking at an interview here that says Monster Hunter Wiles director says Capcom rejected multi-headed monsters that went too far into horror. this was three days ago so you can check it out but interesting I didn't know that there was like an overall design philosophy like that adhered to that they adhered to but because fucking Kaiju are part of the day

you know they want to pretend that they have like a persistent like reality in the in the ecosystem but that's also nonsense because they're all magic and Capcom has its horror series to play with monster designs yeah yeah anyway all right let's grab an email

Also, you fight Omega from Final Fantasy in there. It's a fucking giant robot. Like, this is bullshit. This is fucking nonsense. Speaking of which, I saw like, I don't know, like, what is, I don't know, like, behind the scenes, contextual pseudo-spoiler, but not even a spoiler, but I just saw like a thing from like, hey, the R.E. movie, people were practicing how to move as a monster. And it's just a bunch of people strapped together doing cartwheels.

And I was like, what the fuck is this? this movie, dude. You should, you should, uh, it was crazy. I was like, what? You should, you should watch, you should watch that movie. That was so nuts. Um, very interesting stuff. That is my, that is my, that is my opinion on that is that.

It is that is interesting. Uh, all right, let's take one over here. If you've got an email, you can send it over to Castle Super Beast Bail at gmail.com. Uh, hello, Project Pat and Wu-Tang Wool's, long-time listener here with a question. The king bores me. I'm a pretty open-minded guy when it comes to games, and I can get into almost anything.

But with that being said, there's some games where I prefer the bootleg inspiration rather than the original. For example, I couldn't care less about the Resident Evil games, but I loved and Super God into Signalis and Crow Country. Sure. For whatever reason, I did not get into Bloodborden, but I loved...

I would not consider Signallis and Crow Crunchy Bootleg, by the way. They're independent, but they're incredible. Inspired by and, you know, so... on. Yeah, yeah. I did not get into Bloodbord, but I loved Lies of P. Are there off-brand versions of games that you, that you prefer over the original? This doesn't apply because it's the same franchise, but I, I mean, I've been obvious about this. Like, old Castlevania never super pulled me, whereas newer Castlevania did, but it's like, it's the same franchise reinventing itself, you know?

I think, to a degree, well, R.E. was a little bit of that, but I got the idea eventually. Depends how far you want to push this. Is Hollow Knight or Castlevania bootleg? Like, no. Like, that's just a whole genre. And it's Solzing while Metroidvania. It's its own thing, you know.

Yeah. No. Yeah, I can see a lot of people liking Saints Row over GTA just because that shit's hilarious. I would actually also agree. that. I think St. Roe the third is the best Grand Theft Auto game. That's probably the only one I can think of, honestly. Okay. I remember people calling Silent Hill one to rip off

of Resident Evil 2, and that was stupid then. And it's even stupider now. Let's take one from Kestrel, who says, Dear Champion of Light Woolly and Heart of Herald of Darkness, Pat, the end of the last pod, Willie said, I remember the discourse on the topic of Bionic Commando. What struck me was, didn't call it discourse back then, labeling it discourse now makes those arguments sound more important than they actually were. Sure does. I disagree. Flame wars, online

drama forum, wanking, those are plenty of terms we used that were more accurate to the kinds of arguments we had about video games back then and other bullshit on the internet that doesn't matter. Do you think the word discourse legitimizes arguments on the internet sometimes or has this word been marred by how people use it? Okay, for me, I completely disagree.

Discourse is used today 100% pejorative. I see it alongside the chef going, discourse. And like when I use it and when I see other people use it, it's not to make it sound like it's actually discourse. It's to say it like, it's fart sniffing and it's totally an insult. So you're completely right. And I use it identically.

But other people do in fact use it to try and legitimize their console war or fucking flame war. I see it. And that's why me and you use it exclusively pejoratively. Because that is my only interpretation of it. When you say, man, yes, I remember the discourse back in the day. You're saying, I remember the shitpost, the absolute nonsense. Yeah, no, this is like me going back in time and describing how I was enjoying a GameCube game to PlayStation Sam. And what was coming out of his mouth was the discourse.

The console wars, I remember. Yes. That's, it's 1,000% pejorative. Yeah. All right. And last one over here from Adam says, Dear Squinsett emails and judges from afar call out. I recently went down the cannibalism Wikipedia article and discovered that human meat was referred to in certain Congo tribes as the flesh that speaks, which feels way, way,

worse than just saying people meet or whatever. Are there any euphemisms you've come across that are upsetting or annoy you more than just straight up saying the actual thing? From the 1300, Adam. That's horror. That's horrifying. That's really bad.

I don't like that. I'm going to say that. No, that probably wins it. Sometimes you guys write emails where you ask a question, but the example you give is the definitive, like, top of the thing. Yeah, the meat that the flesh that speaks will not be defeated by any answer we'll give here. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Long pig ain't got shit on the flesh that speaks. That's terrible. Holy fuck. I hate that. Enjoy that one. I will hold up my hand and say the word neurospicy makes me dislike you. Like straight up. But that's more of a self-reesome.

report, but yes. Don't care. Don't care. Okay. Okay. No. No. Mm. Yeah. Okay. Makes me makes me, makes me actively dislike you in a very serious way because you're talking, you're trying to like, you're like trying to. It's a self report word. Yeah. You're an asshole. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know what I mean? You're, you're like, you're like, you're like either a child or a moron, or a or an asshole. Like, there's no in between. Like, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're,

Fuck you. Um, yeah, that's for different reasons. The mental illness equivalent of you saying, just call me a slur. Just like, it's, it's, whereas, whereas the previous example on its own is just nightmarish, that is because of the speaker, right? Like, you're not, you're not salting your human experience. You're bipolar. Take your medicine. Like, fuck.

I'm toxic, he-he. All right, all right. That'll do. Have a good one, everybody. Bye. Bye.