Get Played - Big Walk with Alexis Quasarano

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Alexis Quasarano (Stranger Things: Tales from 85, Harley Quinn) joins Heather, Nick and Matt to discuss House House's new cooperative game Big Walk!EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/getplayed Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guaranteeCheck out our merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayedFollow us on social media @getplayedpodMusic by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.comArt by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For our exclusive show Get Played DLC, ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? episodes go to patreon.com/getplayedJoin us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayedWanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] on Get Played via Gumball.fmAll of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

What do we do? What do we do? You know what? I'm going to go get the fire extinguisher and see if I can't. Wait, wait, Heather. We can't hear you. What did you say? Heather.

Heather. Hold on. I'm going to try to find Heather. I'll be right back. Wait, we don't know. Nick, wait. Wait, no. I can't hear you guys.

You have to come back. All right. There's a lot of smoke. So I can't see much. Matt, are you still here? I was still here, but I couldn't hear what you were saying when you were walking like. Oh, I'm just getting the fire. No, wait, stop.

Wait. I got a laser pointer right here. So I'm going to use the laser pointer. Why? The laser pointer not helpful in this situation. We can see fire. We need stuff to put the fire out. I think, Heather's over here.

If you see the laser pointers, right. Oh, Nick, great. I think he got the fire extinguisher. I can only find the hose. He didn't get the fire extinguis. He got the laser pointer, which is actually not helping. Oh, okay. Well, then you take the hose.

I'm going to go see if I can find. I can't do anything with the host. I actually need the... I got the fire extinguisher. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and use the fire extinguisher. Actually, you know what? Seems like the fire is concentrated over here. Wait, Nick, back, I couldn't hear what you were saying.

God damn it! Okay, okay, okay. I found an alarm. Should I hit the alarm? What do you think the alarm's going to do? What is this situation? What is an alarm going to do? I'm so sick of these bad bitches.

I dropped the fire extinguisher on my scrotum. I hit myself with the scrotum. I'm trying to fight a first aid dip for my scrotum. Okay, I just, I just, I heard, I heard Nick screaming, I heard Nick screaming in the smoke, but I couldn't see, I think he died in the fire or something. I wasn't sure what happened to him. I don't think this is going to be useful at all.

Oh, you know what? Water will help. Well, yeah, for sure. I'm probably going to just toss this, uh, scrotum first aid kit. Ranch is dead. I just found Ranch's corpse. Oh, that, no, I can't. Ranch, ranch, ranch, are. Rest in Power Ranch. We'll miss you.

Make God laugh. Oh, God. Good news, guys. Good news. It's not smoke. It's a humidifier. Wait, then what killed Ranch? What killed Ranch?

What killed Ranch? I'm going to go for some clues over here. There might be some in this part of the offense. I'm going to go injure my scrotum over here. I killed Ranch. We go to the red building and wait, where are you guys going? I thought we were going to the red building as we play Big Walk on this week's Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we made friends online. We made friends online and speaking of making friends. We've made some friends over the past few months here at HeadGum with our HeadGum interns.

It's been a long day without you, my friend. Hi, Ethan. Hi, hi Ryan. And I'll tell you all about it. Hi, Nick and Heather and Matt. And what was your name? Jesus Christ, I could not have gone worse. Just so the listener? Just so the listener knows.

Yeah, hang on, hang on. Ryan just bested to Ethan, like, let's sink up, like, one, two, three. Let's say the thing that we practiced all night. And then botched it in a way that it was like their first, they wouldn't have done worse if it was their first time speaking. I was just going to say, hi, Dick, at first. Then I was like, well, we should say hi to everybody. What a catastrophe.

I take back my singing of the song. And Ranch, of course, is our producers, who's been working with you a lot over these past few months. You're doing great. Thank you both for it. As their direct report, Ranch, I think we have to talk after this. You might need to have a convo. Yeah, can we rescind credit or whatever? Whatever the deal is here.

Despite that debacle, the two of you, I think, are, get the silver and bronze next to Rochelle's gold. Thank you for all you've done while you've been here. We're going to miss you. And good luck back at school. Thank you. Do you have anything you want to plug? Ethan's letterbox is Ethan held? Ryan's letterbox is Ryan Lettso.

It's pretty much it. I hope the clip is just ranch cringing so much. She's collapsing like a star. I'm sorry. Just like folding in on herself, like being crushed by a magic spell. I kind of feel like an interesting thing has happened here, though, because we've had Ryan separately, we've had Ethan separately. I don't think we've had the two of you together. It's almost as if you both being in one place is causing some sort of rift in the space.

I can continue up. Can we start over? I mean, to be fair, I didn't know they were different guys. You thought it was going to be a situation right now where one of them was going to ask you to shoot the other one. At the opposite end of the body type spectrum, we had a convo speculating about who our buffest listener might be. Yes.

And what was the context for us asking this? I think we just like big, beefy boys. We like big beefy boys. Ethan and Ryan are very slender, young men. But we're talking about big, we're talking about big beefers. And a listener named Johan, I believe is the pronunciation. I apologize if I'm, if I'm butchering that, posted in our get played discord, I think I might at least be one of the buffest listeners.

You guys also indeed almost killed me because I started laughing while back squatting. Then he lifts his lifts. squat 210 kilograms 4162 pounds bench 145 kilograms 320 pounds deadlift 235 kilograms 520 pounds

I'm 6 7 290 pounds a two time master's national silver medalist in power lifting in my country and I look like this and I'll show our guests the picture and then we'll put

that in this if we clip it just a true an absolute lad an absolute unit a real unit. Congratulations, Johan. You are our buffest listener. Until somebody tops you, but for now you

have the title. There were people that were like, I'm pretty buff, but not as buff as this guy. Which I think it's, I just like the idea that a bunch of big buff guys are listening to the show. Yeah, God bless. Yeah. There's a lot of, I feel like there's a lot of very fit gamers. I feel like that's like, there's kind of a thing of like video games and anime with all like the training montages. It's just like there's a natural channel from nerd culture into

self-improvement. There's a huge, not huge, but a substantial TikTok trend of people doing Saitama's workout from One Punch Man and getting so fucking shredded that it's like within like six months, they're unrecognizable to the person who posts initially. Ethan, Ryan, I have a pitch for exactly one of you. I think one of you should just get shredded. It's not going to be me. I guess I'll have to do it now. I guess I'll have to. I look forward to it next year.

All right, let's introduce our guest, comics and TV writer from Deadpool, Harley Quinn, and Stranger Things, Tales from 85. Alexis Quasarano is here. Hi, Alexis. Hi, I'm so happy to be here. Oh, my goodness. Thanks so much for making time for us. It's so great to have you on the show. We've mentioned you on the show a number of times.

We shouted you out. And also, in one of the contexts we shout you out is you and Rochelle have a Magic the Gathering crew. Yeah. Yeah. What is the, what format do you all play? Commander. And how did this like, are you convening weekly? What is the schedule? We were doing weekly for a bit.

Yeah, I think if we're lucky, monthly now. But we are going to the Hobbit pre-release on Sunday. Cool. Yeah. So what kind of deck do you play? Right now I am playing a Shrewfus deck. He is like a cute little mushroom and he makes a bunch of mushrooms. I like that.

And it's great. And then I just have a bunch of mushrooms and I kill people with it. So is this like a, I assume this is a green deck of some kind. What is the green mono? Green mono. Don't come at me, please. People listening. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, first of all, listeners, if you're listening to the show, don't come at us. Don't come at our guests ever. What are you doing? Especially for Johan. Because I don't know what we would do. Well, no, no, no. Johan's on our side. If you're messing with us, you're messing with Johan, I'll stick Johan on your ass.

Okay. I can squat you to fucking hell. He squat somebody to help. I'll take, I'd mess with the Zohon before I mess with the Yohan. Yeah, we're moving further up the alphabet. I want to ask, Alexis, have you ever played the Pokemon card game? Oh, I played it a bunch as a kid. My parents would give me $20, drop me off at the Sherman Oaks Westfield.

Saturday morning go play and then I'd play with a bunch of adult men who were like, do your parents know you're here? And I was like, yes, this is a children's game. And then they'd win and I'd go home. Great. Yeah. And then I tried playing again as an adult and I would lose a 13 year old, so I stopped playing. And I got too expensive to make decks. So now I just collect pretty cards I like. Okay. Yeah. Okay. What was the, so the, the, I'm inferring, I could be wrong, that the MTG, you know, a play is a fairly recent thing for you. Like, or have you been doing it? for a while. I started in during COVID. I played like one game and I went, I don't know what the fuck this is. And I didn't get it. And then I stopped playing. And then a couple years later,

tried it again. It clicked finally. And I was like, oh, I love this so much. I wish I played this when I was a child. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I did play it when I was a teenager. And then I've, I fell off of it and I like keep making in the same way I keep vowing to get into a fighting game. I keep vowing to come back to Magic the Gathering. I even bought a fucking Commander deck. And I still have not done it. I still have not taken the plunge. But, Ranch, you got into it pretty recently as well.

Yeah, Alexis is actually the one who taught me. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's great. We also, we have My Chemical Romance Magic cards. We do. Those are canonical? They're fake.

They're fake. But they're cool. We like them. I kind of feel like that's like not without, that's not outside of the the realm of possibility of just like making them real. Like, why not? Yeah. They get Garfield ones, right?

Yeah. Which, yeah, we both got, right? Did you look at them? Yeah, I bought those two. And now, and the Miku commander deck is coming out next week that I will be trying like hell to get. Wait, Miku from. Yeah, Hatsunei Miku. Holy shit.

Yeah, they made a whole commander deck for her. Wow. Yeah. Secret layer, August 10th, baby. This is the thing about Magic the Gathering, though, that is equally frightening and baffling to me is that so many things are happening. in the world of the cards that like sometimes I'm just like, well, I don't even know how to get in here actually.

Would you say like buying a prefab commander deck is like just like easy enough and then from there you just like kind of build your own once you learn it better? Yeah, that's what I did. I got a pre-con. I forgot the name of it, but it was like a witch. It was like green and white I believe or green and black. And yeah, it was like a witch and I was like, I like her art.

That's cool. Yeah. And then I saw that they had balder's, Gate card. So I was like, well, I have to build a Halson deck, which was not that strong. I kept dying. But it's fine. It was the first deck I built. It was really fun. And then, yeah, so now I just buy

precons and I'll try to upgrade them. Or if I find, like, a card I like as a commander, I'll, like, try to build a deck around it. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. We got to return to Baldur's Gate, but I did want to ask what it's like to play against Ranch. Because, like,

I just, we've heard some tales of her, you know, prowess at these sorts of things. She is a nightmare. I mean that in the most respectful way. She's terrifying and I'm scared of her. Yeah, yeah. She has a really mean deck that is a pre-con and it's so rude.

Alexis is always making deals with me beforehand. What is your deck? It's a demon deck. It's black and red and the commander is this, this demon name. named Valgavath who basically ate a haunted house and became infinitely big. Cool. But yeah, it's pretty mean. It just drains your life very slowly.

Some of the cards are custom and they're photos of whoever you're playing against sleeping. But Ranch and I will make top deck, like, designs for our commanders and we, like, decorate them with, like, jewels and bedazzle them. And it's really obnoxious, but really cute for us. That's really fun. That's great. I have a nickname for you, just a pitch. Tarantula?

No. Pretty good. A nickname on a nickname is very 1920s. Yeah. I just don't like spiders. Oh, you don't like spiders. Okay, okay. Got it.

So that's your weakness, we know. I just got to say, I love how much you loved that. I thought it was pretty clever. Tarrantula? I was pretty proud of myself. And in silence. Heather and me looking like this. I don't know.

Okay. Her nickname's already ranch. Yeah. I do sometimes, though, when I'm typing an email to Rochelle, I'll often forget that your name is not ranch. It's like how you don't ever call your mom by your first name. Right. You're like, they have another name. Yeah, they have another name.

That's something you got to worry about moms. You just wouldn't do. It's not called mom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends on your family situation. For the most part, you're calling your mom, mom. my mom did have her name legally changed to mom as a mononym mom and them all right now's who's sitting in silence tough guy hey here's thing I'm not trying to

be funny I'm being real let's talk balder's gate because I like I it's my favorite game all the time I love it so much I'm gathering from your your the Halson deck that you you romance Halson or or played every game every game okay yeah yeah I have romanced him bear form and human form. Okay. I try to do it in Austerian and Halson, like, dual daddy dating thing. But sometimes I'm like, I should just give Halson my love. Like, I don't want him to feel like I have to share him.

But I know he's very much open to everyone and that's fine. Yeah, he's definitely like a polyamory guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which like, like, like, hey, different sorts of folks, that actually put me off of it because I was like, all right, dude. You know what I mean? He's the, he's the bear guy. that dies in the grove when you meet him, right? No, you killed him in the cave.

Got it. Got it. Okay. You killed him immediately. I tried to do a run with my husband who did not want to play with me. And so I was like, you should play as the dark urge. I think you would really like that. And he said, no, I'm good. And then just made a drow character in general. And I went, okay, that's a choice. And then decided to murder everyone at the grove. And I was like, what are we doing? He was like, well, they're being really racist to me. And I was like, yeah, because you're the drow. You should have been the dark urge. You could have gotten like new. like cut scenes and I wanted him to have that experience and he went no that's fine I just want to

fuck that like hot mommy demon and then and then murdered everyone and we just saw haltsin dead on the ground and I was like this is the saddest thing ever and he was like he deserves to die and I was like oh my god how many playthrus have you done oh don't ask that okay um a lot well because my maybe like seven seven yeah it's interesting to me because in a game like that you could play it a million times and see like a bunch of different things. Yeah. Are you going in there and are you sticking to what you know or you are intentionally seeking out stuff that you hadn't seen or done before?

I'll try. Like the first time I did it, I got so scared because they were like, oh my God, the end is coming if you don't get here immediately. And so I missed a bunch. And I like didn't get a handful of the like companions because I just like was trying to get to the end of act one. And I like thought that was the end of the game. I was wrong.

But so I missed a bunch of my first play-through. So second play-through, I tried to, like, see what I missed. And then I've been playing with my friend Monica because she lives, like, in Chicago. So it's like our way to play together. Yeah. And so we have done two play-thrus right now or so far. And like each time we play, we try to do a different class type or, like, job that we wouldn't normally do. So I think our next one, we're either going to try to both be the dark urge or one of us might be the dark urge.

But then she found a build of like a month. who uses sausages to fight with. Yeah. Might try that. Yeah. Sausage monk might be O.P. You might have to give it a try. Yeah.

I'm excited. But we do take turns romancing people. Like, she's a big Gail girl. So I let her have Gail second time around. She was like, I'm going to romance someone else. And I was like, you do you, girl. So. The thing with Gail for me is that he's just too thirsty.

Gail is the wizard with the mask who dies pretty early. Jesus Christ. I ended up marrying him my first play through. Yeah, I married Gail, who. Yeah, I ended up with him. He just, like, guilted me into being with him. I liked Gail, which maybe says something about me. But I connected with Gail, and I did, he was my husband and my second play-through.

I think, like, I find his character interesting. He is kind of beta and pathetic. Like, he is kind of, like, thirsty. But I think that's kind of like, he's motivated by desperation because he's worried about, you know, his, I mean, everyone has a ticking clock they're dealing with. but his in particular is like so tethered to something otherworldly that he can't control. In my first play-through, I romanced Shadowheart, which I think is like the default sort of like thing

they want you to try to do. And then I abandoned a second play-through. I was actually just remembering that I kind of want to maybe just fully abandon and start a new one. And because I had started to romance Lazelle and I wanted out of it and she kind of just like wouldn't let me out of it. And it was like, I, uh, because then she wants to taste your skin. She wants to taste the skin.

And I'm just like, I, she was too scary for me to disappoint. So I was like, I think I just got to leave this, leave it where it's at. Yeah, see, I'll take all that that you got from Bezell. Have you done like an origin? Have you played as a companion? No, I just like, I, it's, it's so throws me off to have these characters whose voices I know so well be mute. You know what I mean? Like I did do a dark urge play through that I, I did not finish.

I should do a full dark dark urge play through because there's a lot of that stuff that I've seen only in like clips of other people playing it. It does seem like an amazing amount of additional content. But have you done that? Have you done an origin character? I've tried to do a dark urge either as pure dark urge and just like committing or trying to like be a good person at the end. And I always get really sad at the grove and I do give up. So like two of my seven I've given up because I just got really. really sad.

Yeah, yeah. For me, it's hard to do the, like, the bad guy stuff. Like, I just kind of, that's not why I'm playing games. I don't want to really do, like, even though the dark urge, like, seems interesting to me and I want to see, I've legitimately never seen any of the content from that because I'm just, like, not searching it out or anything. Well, here's, here's what I'll say. You don't have to be the dark urge, like, you don't have to be an evil dark urge.

You can fight the urge. You can be, you can still be a virtuous character and just resist your inner impulse. impulse to, you know, towards homicide. And like, that's interesting, too. I just was, like, kind of leaning into it in my play-through. I probably should actually do that because, like, yeah, I don't find the evil stuff as interesting, even though it's, it's fairly fleshed out in Baldur's Gate. But, like, like, like, very early on, I mentioned that they'd married Gail, and I like

Gail, and he was like, he's also, like, a very useful party member. In my Dark Urge play-through, you know, you meet him and his hand is reaching through the portal. and my dark urge just cut off his hand and then that was all that was it for that character. Like he was like an NPC that was like the biggest part of one of my previous playthru was just gone.

But then you can play fetch with Scratch with his hand. And Carlach's head if you cut off. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh my God, you killed Carlac. Wait a minute. Yeah. This sounds pretty funny. Throw the head, Scratch, we'll bring it back to you.

In my, I'm also remembering. in my first play-through, I think the reason I romanced Laisel in my second one was that Laisel died in my first play-thru, like, upon meeting her, basically. So I never even got to experience her, so I wanted to see what she was like, and then I was like, she's actually a little too much of it. Lysel, you meet

in the ship, right? Yeah, okay. She survived as far into the game as I got. I was wondering what your party, who consisted of your party, but I can only imagine it was probably just like Laisel and like, that's it. I think Shadow

Hart's in my party. She'll go with anything. Yeah. But I don't remember who else. I think Astyrian lived. Oh, yeah. Okay. So you had a decent party.

Yeah. I think it was those guys. Yeah. And then everyone else was dead. Make short work of a lot of stuff with that crew. Yeah. It's all right. And there was people yet you yet to meet.

Yeah. Yeah. What a game. What a fucking video game. It's just also kind of like the, and whatever, this has been talked to death. But just like that it still works. That if you, like, you can do so many. things that would like make a be either other games would like prevent you from doing or that

would induce progression breaks yeah but here it's just like that the game is so functional that so many contingencies are built in to make sure that you can like I guess essentially kill every origin character or every key character can can die and then you can still get your your way to the finish line I've been it's interesting that we're talking about it right now just because like I have been itching to start it again like I yeah something uh something has come over me And I must get over there. Have you done co-op? I have never done co-op.

It's really fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. I've done co-op. Oh my God. It's good.

I got it. It was like, we should do it. And it's one of those things. We're like, yeah, we should do it. That'd be so fun. And it's like, what are you for you? 10 o'clock at night? I was like, what are you doing?

It's like real D&D. Yeah. Yeah. And the same friend, we would play it like, we would start our session, our D&D sessions during COVID. Well, it was during COVID, so it was easier. We would start at like 11 p.m. and played until like 3 a.m. Because you just weren't getting up and doing anything.

Too late. But it was a tough. It was a tough hang. Some of the guys getting sleepy on the Zoom. Getting sleepy on Zoom tough. Yeah, you can't be getting sleepy on Zoom. No. You get screenshot.

That's fine. You're done. You're cooked. You're fucking cooked. Sleepy. Hang it up. Can you imagine something more devastating than having sleepy thrown in front of your first name? How do you come back from that?

Nothing you can do. Nothing you can do. Imagine everyone's calling you Sleepy Nick? Don't make me think about it. Sleepy Ranch? That's cute. He doesn't deserve that. Here's the thing.

We put Ranch to sleep. No. I can't believe Ranch has to listen to this more than once. It sounds like hell or purgatory. It sounds like a nightmare. I imagine it is a very clinical sort of process where it's like sort of divorced from the second time. You're hearing it for the first time and either enjoying it or not. Second time, it's all technician.

Well, I would imagine that's why ranch like wears headphones and watches television while we're recording it first time. So she doesn't have to hear it twice. Yeah, that's why she's building IKEA furniture right now. Hey, buddy, when we were kids, summer meant freedom. No homework, no teachers, no school. Sometimes just out there, unsupervised, till the sun went down. Drinking from the hose.

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Go to Lisa.com for 25% off mattresses. Plus, get an extra $50 off with promo code Get Played exclusive for our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com promo code, get played, one word, for 25% off mattresses, plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know. We sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code Get Played. I mentioned your on the podcast previously. I've mentioned my visit to your Animal Crossing Island and how it felt like I'd been playing a different video game.

Can you talk about like those sorts of games? I mean, perhaps Animal Crossing in particular, but like there was just like such a level of craft present. Thank you. And a level of artistry that I just am not capable of. Thank you. So, yeah, it was during COVID. It was a lot of me scouring Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration. And it also just be like, what's the funniest thing I can make or the silliest thing?

And then just spending hours working on. I don't know. It was just very like relaxing and calming. I could just lock in immediately on it. Also, it was just like, we were on Zoom at work and it's like not doing much. So I would play during work. I'm so sorry. My old bosses are listening to this.

I think one of them was also playing Animal Crossing on Zoom during meeting. so it's fine, but I'm so sorry to say I blew up my island. You blew up your island? You blew up your island? Yeah, because with the new, the like update that came out recently, you could like clean everything up and basically start over. Yeah. And I didn't realize I cleaned up the whole island and not just the one section I was in.

So it's all gone and I'm trying to rebuild it. Whoa. So can you describe the feeling of that? Was that like, oh no, oh no. Are you sort of like, oh, well, that's all right. Yeah, maybe because I haven't played it in like a year or so that I was like, this is okay. I still have the items I can rebuild.

I can make it stronger. But Pocopia came out right after that update and I went, well, who cares about this now? I'm fucking even cares. I'm into Pocopia, which way more overwhelming, I think. And I feel like I'm you with that because I'll look at other people's games. And I'm like, how are they making mansions and castles of like crystal where I can barely put a house together? I went to an island that was known for being, it was a place you could go to get brand name signs. And I went to the island.

It's a Japanese island. And I was like how, because like on all of the restaurants and stuff, it was like official logos and things. And I was like, how, wait, am I supposed to take a picture of the logo on the, on the restaurant? Like there's a like a very like one-to-one family mart. And then I kind of noticed in the distance like an arrow and I went, okay, and I followed the arrow and went up a hill. And as large as the horizon were logos made block by block so that if you stood on a square that was also like highlighted and you put up your camera, it would become a perfect logo inside of your camera. And they had made 15 logos that were larger than like the, the horizon of Manhattan in your in your field of vision it was crazy that's insane

you imagine walking around in real life and finding something like that and being like what the fuck what is that who did that why would you do that yeah why to what end i might even have a photo of it you guys keep talking while i pull it up um but i put over a thousand hours in the animal crossing so i felt like i did i did what i used to do i'm good did you spend any time with a tomodachi life? Oh, yeah, maybe. I love that game. So much. Wow. I, my little, like when it first came out, my little ritual was I take my edible, I'd get in bed, and then I would just start drawing stuff that I would make into items. So, and then I'd wake up in the morning like, what did I make for me? And then I would see all my little creations. And so it's like, I've made the Black Parade album cover. I made

the Uzumaki, like, character for her face. I made Rocky. I made Rocky. And, from Hail Mary. Okay. Yeah. That was hard, but I thought it turned out well. I made Puchita from Chainsaw Man. Nice. I made Ramiel from Evangelian.

So there's our little pets and they follow my little Tomodashi around and it's so much fun. Fuck. Yeah. It's good. Wow. I make Hideo Kojima and he tried to fall in love with my wife. He's in L.A. tonight. Should we invite him?

I can't even know I don't ever want I don't ever spring information like that on me ever again the fact that he I could I could run into him oh yeah you guys met him yeah right how was that?

He recently posted I mean it's insane yeah it's really saying yeah it's insane he was he was so cool and so nice and also very funny yeah and it was like everything you'd want from like a person who you like idolize

he recently posted on Maine a new Weezer song a screenshot of him on Apple music listening to a new Weezer song. Weezer's my favorite band ever. So the fact that he's just like me for real, I'm kind of just like, I like him more now than I was like, actually, I can never see him again. You think he's just walking around?

Yeah, he was at the IMAX. Isn't that here? The IMAX Museum or some shit? I think it's here. Yeah, he's here, I think. The IMAX headquarters is, yeah, in Marina del Rey. Yeah, he's here then. He should have to make a press release when he entered.

our shared space. He doesn't need to do that. I'm just predicting something that probably won't happen, but it could happen. We know Hideo Kajima's fandom of In-N-Out Burger. We know where our interns

are headed after this. They just looked at each other. I'm an IMAX shirt too. IMAX shirt. Yeah, and Ryan is wearing an IMAX shirt. He'll be like, I was just there. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Do you think he's going to strike up a conversation

with you? Yeah, he's got, well, he wants to talk to people too. I think we'll find out about this because we'll see a pick on Kojima's Instagram that'll just be with Ethan and Ryan. My two new best friends. So you make games. So you're, and now you're negging it?

I'm making friends with it. We're making friends. Power move. All right, let's talk about some video games we've been playing lately. It's time for the question of the day. The question. we always ask our guests and everyone what are you playing what are you playing hi it's me to visit their name of my manchette and i'm really i's got my friends in the room and there's so many

people in here so i don't even know where to begin this may be the most people we've ever had for a get played record we've sometimes had a you know and more people in here because we've had multiple guests or we've had like you know someone sitting in but like i i think the i think the The guest plus, plus ranch, plus both our interns is like quite a, quite a volume of individuals. It's a... Well, now also with the addition of you. And with the addition of view, of course. It's an enormous a number of people.

Yeah. I'm intimidated, but also want to take off my shirt? No, don't do that. Okay. Don't do that. It's a bad instinct. It's warm. It is warm.

It is warm in here. It's so fucking hot in Los Angeles these days, listener. Probably fine. It never... What? Probably fine. Oh, that is hot? Yeah.

It's not, it's worse. It's getting worse. Hmm. I'll have to read up on it. Get your water. Get your food and get your toilet paper ready. Get your water. Get your food.

Get your toilet paper. I mean, from an emergency preparedness standpoint, that is sound advice, I guess. Also for preparing to take a shit standpoint, pretty, it's spot on, I think. Well, I don't know if you need water and food for that. Well, you got to make the. Yeah, you got to make it. I got, I got. We're thinking way in advance.

Yeah. I read a thing recently, I don't know if it's true or not, that the human rectum is not supposed to be wiped. That sounds untrue. This has to have been posted from an anti-wipe propaganda. Yeah, it's like, there's things like there's like the no shampoo movement, you know. I read that an animal's rectum doesn't need to be wiped because they were on a proper diet. And if we're eating the right food, you don't have to wipe.

Oh, interesting. I could buy that. But what would be the right food for us? And also, don't like, can't we observe this in primates? Like, I imagine primates, like, you know, we look at our ape brothers and sisters. Yeah, they don't wipe. Are you sure they don't wipe? What?

You've seen an ape wipe? I would not be shocked if apes wipe. That sounds like a specialty video on your feed, buddy. I have not seen video evidence of this, but I suspect that happens. I have a suspicion that Ranch is Googling do apes wipe. I am now. I kind of feel like. do clean their rear ends.

Wow. They use leaves as a form of natural toilet paper. With bleach? Leaves. Oh, leaves. So there's a natural, like, you know, we can see that connection, that through line from leaves to using paper. Yes. Yeah, because it's the same thing.

Really? When you think about it. When you think about it, it's fundamentally the same thing. Yeah, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about it, and the conclusion I've come to is that it's the same thing. Leaves are paper. Leaves are paper. Paper is leaves. Mad up or dug up, what are you playing?

I've been playing quite a few things actually Resident Evil Merchant. Let me, um, I feel like I, I'm going to just say this. I don't have enough to report my findings.

I have some friends that are fucking sickos, okay? What? There's some sick, sick guys that I know. What are my buddy Patrick and my buddy Jeremy, they both have sort of been dancing around

Xenoblade Chronicles for years. Yes, right. Every generation of it. They get it. Don't play it. Get the new version. Don't get it. They've been playing the Switch 2

definitive edition of the first one and they're like, it's actually good. So I got it. And now I'm sick. Now I'm a sicko that's playing this thing. You have the It Follows curse. The music is good. The music's fucking great.

The characters look awesome. The character designs are somewhere somewhere between Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. They're sort of like right in the middle of the Venn diagram of those two things. A little kingdom heartsy though, too. The movement is very kingdom hearts coded.

Now I'm intrigued. The combat I don't love because it's not action forward, but it's not turn-based either. It's kind of like everything's on like a cool down. So like you'll do something and then you have a couple other attacks that you can do. You got to wait. You got to cycle through.

I just think it's a little, the cycling is, it feels inelegant, but it's just because it's new to me. So I'm playing that. I'm playing. Oh, shoot, there was one other thing. Oh, I'm sure we'll eventually or should discuss the Pocopia update, but I'll get this one out there first.

I saw the new Spider-Man. I love Spider-Man. I loved the Spider-Bed movie. Immediately went home, reinstalled Spider-Man remastered for the PS-I. Because I never played it after, I only played it one time the first time through, but before it was remastered.

So I booted that up and I keep doing side things. I never do the side things in this game. I think I've done like three main missions and have found all the backpacks have taken all the photos already that I'm enjoying being in New York City, baby. Wow. But it's also, it's just a really good game.

The game is really good. And the movie, I think, borrowed a lot of combat from the games. And so I was like, I kind of want to play the game. I enjoyed watching the movie, but the movie made me want to play the game. And I just, I love seeing my guy. I love Spider-Man.

I fucking love him. He's a good guy. He's really, really good. Is he? And Tom Holland is a good Spider-Man. He's a fucking incredible Spider-Man. You think about our top guys, and it feels like among the superheroes, it's Spider-Man and Batman are the ones that are consistently, like, people are like, I will, I'm with this guy regardless. Yeah, those are top guys.

And then everyone else, it feels like there's so much variance. There's so much like, I don't know about this one. This one kind of underperformed, you know? I think that there is one more pretty reliable top guy. Go for it. Wolverine. Yeah, Wolverine seems like he's kind of inter to that. Because he's kind of Spider-Man and Batman kind of.

Right. He's crossed that threshold. He's a little guy, but he's angry. He's a little guy, but he's angry. There's a part in the new one, Tom Holland popped off the top, no shirt. And I know he's little. He looked fucking huge. And I was like, whoa, when did he get fucking huge?

He looked fucking beefy. He's jacked and his workout regimen has been popular on TikTok. Yeah, he's fucking huge. Ripped dudes are like, I'm doing the Tom Holland workout today. We're going to see how far I can get. And they'll get halfway through it and they'll be like, I feel like I'm going to die. And these are like ripped dudes. I mean, I feel like that stuff that people are doing is like it's not for average consumption.

Right. No, that has to be like your job. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, God bless our jacked short. I love it. But he looked bigger than I've ever seen him, like, wide. Yeah, he's a big guy. It was crazy. And I also, I just, I don't believe it. He was giving Kylo Ren. He was sort of, yeah, he was like flat or like that, um, that big Captain America, you know, where he's all fucking big. Oh, yes, I know what you're talking about.

The big one. The big Captain American. No, what was, I can't, I can't pull the artist's name right now. Why can I think of it is Rob Leafel? Yeah. It's like, yeah, have you ever seen the one where, you ever seen the nude version of that? I have. That's pretty good. Ashton answered, yes. But that's what I've been playing. I'm looking forward to digging in more to Xenobled Chronicles because what I've played so far,

I feel like there's a lot there's a lot there. And I'm interested in learning more. Can we take a quick tangent? Because we talked about my favorite game that Alexis Hubby's connection to. We should talk about, your favorite game series that Alexis also has a connection to Kingdom Hearts.

I mean, I think I showed you this one. I saw you at Ziggs one time, but I have the two become one keyblade tattooed on my leg. I think about getting more Kingdom Hearts tattoos all the time, but it kind of just feels like I can't do that.

I could. Yeah, why not? You could. Yeah, why not? Because I want to get stupid ones. You know, I know on our text thread this has been discussed, but we haven't discussed it on the show,

which is that Kingdom Hearts is coming to Fortnite. And look, I might have to get back in there. There's always something that's going to get me in. You know, last time it was, last summer it was the Simpsons. Yeah. The summer of the Simpsons coming back. Simpsons coming back. Came back. Yeah, I'm getting back in there. Yeah. I'm getting in. I love Kingdom Hearts. King of Hearts 2 is my favorite video game. Oh, it's perfect. Yeah. It's the perfect video game. Yeah. Kingdom Arts changed my life. It was the first. I got a PS2 for Christmas in like eighth grade. And my dad got me the top, what's it called? Top Gun. That's the movie, right? Top Gun? Yeah. Okay. He got me the Top Gun video game and I went, why? And he goes, oh, that's for me. And then I had to wait the day after Christmas to go to Best Buy and I saw

Kingdom Hearts and I went, this looks fun. And I got that. And I went, oh, wow. Yeah, truly perfection. I think that there is a generation of people for whom the Kingdom Hearts opening theme is going to be just like the menu screen theme. Yeah. is going to be one of the things they hear before they die. I must walk down the aisle to it at my wedding. It was in serious contention

instead it went with the orchestral version of Buddy Holly by Weezer. It is. It is. Do you have full creative control of the wedding? For my stuff. Yeah, so there was also a PS1 with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Crash Team Racing.

It is so painfully nostalgic and was crafted at the time to be a mournful song and the older you get, the more achingly haunting that those piano notes become. Yeah. When I hear it now, I'm like, it makes me sad. Oh my God, I'm fucking dying.

I'm getting so old. I think of all the time about, I mean, because I've replayed those games so many times. I've still never finished three. Same. Same. But I'm gonna, I want to play it. Every time there's a lull in the schedule of games coming out.

We got to finish three before four, comes out, guys. We've got to finish three before four. We have plenty of time. I think, yeah, I don't, yeah, I think we have at the very minimum of full calendar year. Well, there's a big D23 update. Oh, yeah, coming in the next couple weeks. Yeah, and just a few weeks.

Yeah. And the Kingdom Hearts Twitter account has come back to life. Mm-hmm. And that collection is coming out for, for modern platforms. I'm probably just going to rock with the PS4 disc that I've had since launch. but should all make a pact right now

that we'll finish Kingdom Hearts 3? Let's all promise that we're all going to finish Kingdom Hearts 3 great you too Heather

Jesus you gotta play 4 we just said I can't take a different pack you have to just say congratulations when we do it

okay I will absolutely I'll try really hard to finish it was it was pretty rough yeah

but I wonder but I heard that the DLC is like the thing that makes it good, actually. Okay. People are like, the Remind DLC is like worth getting to.

Okay. Heather, what are you playing? Oh. Heather's unraveled a scroll. It would be, it would be a bit of a scroll if I were, if I were to actually. With some scrolling will be involved. Hop up. And that's why they call it that.

I'm reading from Nintendo Power summer of 1996. Take me back. Hop up to a new perspective in virtual boy adventure game, Prince Doran, a dragon with moves like a kangaroo must scale seven airy terraced worlds to return to his kingdom and rescue his family. Despite its challenging leaps and mazes, dragon hopper isn't a difficult game to finish. Since the game doesn't force players to build levels or spend hours trying to defeat a frustrating guardian, a few hardcore gamers might even finish their quest in one weekend. But the game has so many random spells and hidden areas that players,

won't be able to find all of them in a single game. It's a sure bet that many players will return to unite Dorian with his dragon family over and over again. This is a preview for Dragon Hopper, a game that was never released, 1996, 30 years ago. Wow. And yet, hope springs anew. Because, thanks to Virtual Boy, Online, Dragon Hoper.

Thanks to virtual boy online on the switch to, Dragon Hopper was finally released. Wow. Why should we care about Dragon Hopper? Well, perhaps the name Rioda Kawade might be of interest to you. Who's that? Well, that's the guy who directed and developed Paper Mario, Paper Mario 2, Paper Mario 3,

a man whose work we've treasured. And yet his virtual boy release went ignored for years and years until this week. And let me tell you, I smashed, start, I jammed my switch two into my virtual boy headset, and I crammed my face into those red lenses. And I played Dragon Hopper. For how many one minute? What? I played it until I got sick.

Did you beat it in a weekend? I did not beat it in a weekend. I haven't beaten it yet. But guys, this game, imagine, you know, Link to the past, like top-down perspective. So imagine if Link could jump toward camera, right? What's he doing over there? And that his jump. Stay back.

His jump was effectively two stories. Right? So when you jump, the floor that you're on goes way off into the distance. And new platforms appear as they fly past your. your screen. Oh, fuck. And the way you progress through the game is doing an adventure on a 3D plane that is effectively behind your head that you discover by jumping towards camera, flying a little

bit and landing on platforms that are then revealed as individual two-dimensional maps. The game fucking rules. That's awesome. It rules. It is fun to play. It is, I can imagine depressing to have worked on this game. and then it gets previews and then is never released.

It's like the Westworld of fucking video games. Like disappeared lost media. It's good. It's really good. Your text about this game in the group chat was very funny. And where you said we got two new virtual boy, two new unreleased virtual boy games

before Grand Theft Auto6, which is actually insane. Yeah. There was another one. It's, I forget it's called like air racers or something like that. It's effectively F-0, but in a three-dimensional, like you can fly kind of like Star Fox

through the courses, a little bit harder to handle. Then there are all also, I hadn't been on the Virtual Boy Online since the last update, and there are additional virtual boy titles that are so pricey if you were to purchase the cartridge

that they were out of my ability to buy. And those were also really good. One's by Atlas. fucking Atlas game. But D. Hopper, as it's called by its fans. Who, you? There are other people playing this. There are Reddit threads about the game, guys.

It's not just me. I love that they're doing this. I want to celebrate that they're doing this. It is awesome. It is awesome. that they're doing this. It's great from a standpoint of like, you know, the curation in terms of like you were saying about lost media.

But any time, and preservation, but any time Heather describes something like this, booting up a virtual boy game that never released from 30 years ago, it's always in my head, like, I bet Mary was out of the house that day. Mary had to run some air. You can now also swap the color palette on Virtual Boy Online so you don't have to look at red and black. I prefer the red and black as the creators intended.

I also miss. I can now look at blue while I throw up. I also miss and people have already data mined it and they have released it as a ROM, which means you can play it on the original hardware. And I do miss the heat of the original Virtual Boy when it's up against your face. because it's almost too pleasant to play it on Switch 2. Yeah, the hot face distracts you from the neck pain. Act as sort of a balm.

Well, you know, I mean, there was that study done. And it's like the Virtual Boy refresh rate is something like 10 million frames per second. Like it's some insane way that they process the visual information. And I think the Switch 2 version is a slightly more seasick experience than the original virtual boy. That being said, that was my game of the week was Dragon Hopper.

I'm so happy it exists. I'm going to go home and play it again. I love it. I love that you love it. I think it is awesome that it's out there and that people are responding to it. How about that? August is the perfect time

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Nick, what are you playing? I either, thank you so much for asking. You're welcome. So, Matt goes by many names. Mr. Games, the finisher, the franchise, the Xbox Kid. Of course, we know Rochelle goes by Ranch and now Tarantula. But I have some nicknames of my own. Dear listener, Nick.

The spiller. Spillmonger. Tiger. Wags. Ben Spiller. Ben Spiller. Berger Boy. And of course, the Port Authority.

Because I buy ports. That's right. I've realized how little I've been home these days recently and how that is affected by gaming time and, you know, time and, and, and, or lack thereof. So I decided to blow the dust off my old, my Switch 2. And then I double-dipped Mina the Holloware and started a new game. Wow. And here's the thing. So very early on, but my pledge to myself, to my co-hosts, to our guest, to Rochelle, to our interns, Ethan Ryan, to Deo Kojima, and most of all, to the listeners.

This is going to be the next game I finish. I need to see this on Bish doing again. Instead of the whip night star this time, Matt, I followed your lead and went with the daggers, whisper and vespers. as my starting load out. But I'm just, I'm, I think on the new platform is actually going to be enough of a change where I'm going to be like, you know what, I'm actually going to really, really play,

get synced some more hours into this game I really enjoyed and just like bounced off of because of life reasons. I think it's good because just the portability factor. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm such a gaming PC guy, but it's just like I have to be, like I'm tethered to one specific spot. And so I was just like,

fuck, as much as I want to play it on that, I'm just going to fucking make use of this other piece of hardware that I own. So I'm doing that. I was also going to pick up Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, but the Steam reviews of the PC version are absolutely fucking trashing it. I guess it's just like really has just horrible performance. I'll read one. This is a negative review from a user named Gourmet.

Such a fun game. Of course, Sony has to ruin everything. The PC port plays miserable. The settings don't display correctly. The net code or the port performance makes the online play very bad with rollbacks. spikes. So apparently just the performances like I guess even with yeah I got a 4070 TI Super

a good graphics card and it's just like I guess people are getting like sub 30 FPS with with decent gaming rigs so it's just such a fucking bummer. On the Sony thing real quick at my screening of Spider-Man. Thursday night the Sony logo pops up on

the screen people in the crowd booed and it was so funny. That file laptop suck. Who's the PlayStation Portal 4? You know, there's a handful of use cases. Hey, I love to hear it, Matt.

I love to hear it. Yeah, sometimes your wife watch a TV. You only have the one TV. You want to play a Spider-Man on the... Yeah. I want to shout, I believe, as of today, date everything from front of the pod, Ray Chase is on GamePass.

People haven't experienced a game we really enjoyed. So if you haven't experienced that, give it a go. I had one more gaming-related thing I want to talk about. So my Japanese language tutor, Iko Tanaka, has also worked with Heather and always asks about you. Thanks, I'm your wife. Does she has made, look, there's a complicated conversation. At this point, maybe two, we get, we, we, we, we, we're just keep the illusion.

And she asks, I'm your guys' son. I can see it. Yeah. She did say, what can I teach you that would impress Heather? What? And so my pitch was. this. What?

What? Okay. So... In the context of video, I would get played co-host. Okay. What I teach you that would impress Heather? It's nice that you have a podcast with your wife.

This was my pitch. The names of the PlayStation buttons, which you may already know. But clockwise from top. Triangle, Sankaku, circle, Maru, X or cross, Batsu, and triangle Shikaku. Now, Heather, are you impressed? Yeah, I think that was pretty good. Okay, all right. I mean, it's less impressive that you were reading it off a screen.

So it's not like you knew those things. I'm referring to my notes. He's got an earpiece in, too. I think he's doing a Serenau. He's doing a... Interesting kind of... This is semi-interesting context, I think. Maru Chan Ramen, we do people who know that brand.

Maru means circle, and Chan is a suffix that's affectionate, familiar. So Maru-chan roughly means something. like Mr. Circle or Circle guy, which is why it's a circle with a little face on it. That's fun. I like I found out that Croke-Missure is Mr. Crunch. That's really fun. Crook Monsieur.

Mr. Crunch. I got to say, Mr. Crunch, much better. Yeah, much more approachable. Also, in Japanese polygons are just number plus kaku, which means corner or angle. It also means, like, to write or to draw. So, San is the number three. triangle is so triangle is three angles

San Kaku and then she is four so square is four angle Shikaku. It's just one of those things where it's like oh I like the way this is constructed and you don't have to remember a word like I know there's a Latin root that leads to it but a rather arcane sounding word like like octagon you know what I mean it's just like like it's a it's an eight angle what do we follow the triangle thing all the way up to its logical conclusion that is great

I also explained how in America on the PlayStation controller, cross the X button is confirm and circle is canceled. And Iko said, um, that's stupid. So. It is. But anyway, that's what I've been, that's what I've been playing, Meena the Hollower and also this week's game. But I want to turn to our guest. Alexis, what do you been playing? I am back on my Final Fantasy 14 bullshit. Wow.

Talk us through it. I started in 2021, I think. and then I was like newly unemployed and I played for like three months straight and I had just like force myself to stop because it was so addicting. I mean as a black mage if anyone cares. We do. Thank you. Thank you. On this show?

What else would we be? That's like the main thing I care about actually. I used to no one caring about me talking about Final Fantasy 14. Everyone goes shut up. We're interested in it because I think we've all sort of like are just like aware of it but have not. really gotten in there. Yeah. I started playing, my husband and I were like, let's do this together. He's fallen off and I have continued. So I'm like an expansion ahead of him. I just finished End Walker, which was beautiful chef's kiss. I have a friend in Japan. Shout out to Hanon. We play together

weekly, which is fun and very fun to learn how to yell at other players in Japanese while we're going at it. And then I just got a new friend in last night into it. And he, He is addicted. He's been playing for 24 hours. Whoa. And so we're going to play together and I'm very excited. 24 straight hours. No, just like in the last 24 hours, he's played and he's like up to level 10 now.

Got it. Did you play 11? No, I've played 7, 10, or X and I've watched 16 be played. I wanted to play 11. I had a boyfriend in high school who played a bunch and the way you talked about it really turned me off. Oh. So I just stopped. But I was really intrigued by the 14 lore with like the 1.0 when like the servers were just like terrible and the gameplay was so bad that they had to destroy the world.

And it became lore of the game when they rebooted it. I think that's very fascinating. And I want a Blackberry style movie about the like oral history of that. Wow. So Matt Johnson, if you're listening, please make that movie. That was a cool idea. That's a great idea for a movie. Thank you.

That video of the final like the end of of the. the OG Final Fantasy 14 is so compelling. Yeah. Where they're just like, it's just a bunch of players just watching the world end. I love watching compilations of online games ending like that and just like seeing the end of the world and people having a party and it's very touching and sad but also beautiful. But then they also did that they did a Realm Reborn and that it succeeded. And it's like, oh wow, you fixed it. It's good now.

Yeah. I love it when that happens too. It's real good. When it's good now, what's better than that? It happened. No man's. guy, you're like, it's good now. Cyberpunk.

It's good now. Another game that I'm always like, should I do a third play-through of cyberpunk? Don't have time for it. I'm perpetually tempted to go back to Cyberpunk 2077. Did you ever get a chance to play any of that? No, I watched a little of it. I might start it now that it's good.

We'll see. I mean, I'm going to be unemployed on Monday, so watch out. I saw it on sale, just the base game, not with the expansion, on Steam for like 17 bucks. I feel like that's pretty good entry price for what I think is a really great game. I have a question about 14. Sell me on it.

Like why should I play it? Why do you play it? What do you like? What's so good about it? I think, I don't know. The music is so good. Like talking about the Kingdom Hearts music, like there is a song in 14 that makes me tear up.

And like yesterday I was playing the game and someone was playing that song on her harp in like a community area. And I just like sat there and watched her play and like cried at my computer. I was like, this is beautiful. But I don't know. The story is like extremely confusing. But it's Final Fantasy and I love it. And I can't really tell you what's happening, but I can feel it in my body. Yeah.

I've never played an MMO before that. And I thought the community, very welcoming. Everyone is so nice. Like I was doing something wrong in a dungeon and something. when the chat was like, hey, you should just like turn this setting on. And I went, thank you so much. And like, they weren't mean about it. And, like, I died.

And I was like, I'm so sorry. And they're like, that's what healers are for. Don't worry about it. And I was like, oh, my God. Everyone is so sweet here. And like, what's his name? Jonathan Bailey, right? Is that his name from Wicked?

He's a voice in it, which did not realize till halfway through Shadowbringers that that was him. And I was like, oh, my God, it's Jonathan Bailey. He plays a cute little cat boy. Love it. Um, it's just like, I don't know, it's very like theatrical and like dramatic and it's just like very fun and the challenges are like the puzzles are fun. The dungeons are fun. It's just chaotic as fuck. I, I've like flirted with wanting to play it. You can play for free up to like the first three expansions. Okay. Um, it's, or you can pay like $10 for the base game right now. I got 10. I could do 10. Yeah. Yeah, you could do 10. But there's like that whole name. That's not as much as I can do. 10. It's not going good. It's worth it. I'm wearing a barrel for those of you that can't see the show.

It's worth it. You should play. Yeah, you should play. I mean, I played, I don't know, 20 levels or something, some introductory amount of Final Fantasy 14. And I was like, this feels like I'm sliding towards a black hole. That's what I buy. Because I, you know, the one MMO I spent appreciable time and was wow back in the day. and I was just like this is ruining my life I have to stop this and that's what's prevented me

from going back to any other MMO but I but if a 14 is the closest one's come to yeah once I learned you could craft and make clothing and have all the craftsmen like side hustle I was like oh baby because I really like I started looking at outfits and I was like I can make a knitted sweater

like a chunky knitted sweater perfect and then I had to like realize I had to level up to like 70 and so and so I just grind for like a weekend just to make a sweater. Anyways, it's good. You can go fishing. You can buy a house. Fishing in Final Fantasy 11 would just devour weekends.

Yeah, now you're selling me on it. Just grinding on sewing sounds so appealing. It's really nice. You can go mining. Yeah, I love that. That was the thing that's always by, I like, I love gathering resources. Do you ever have a moment when you're like playing any game? Like I think about like, like, like Eldon Ring, just like, like, you know, you'll,

writing, you know, you're writing your horse and then you're just like, oh, I'll just go over here and then you like just pick something up and then you just sort of like, that was a chunk of my finite lifespan. Like me just like riding my horse to go like pick this thing up. Yeah. I mean, I think Eldon Ring right now is the game I have the most hours logged in on PlayStation and it's like, I think 200 hours or something because I played it twice. But, um, that expansion's coming out for, or it's coming out for Switch, and then there's a Tarnished Edition update

that is adding two new classes to the game. And I'm like, I might have to mess around with at least one of these new classes. But you get what I mean, right? It's just like, yeah. Like, I'm just like, I'm, Eldon Ring specifically, it wasn't even the point of what I was saying.

It's more just like, it's any game. I'm just like, this is what I'm doing. This is like my thing I'm just decided to do right now. The life you're living is riding a virtual horse is what you're saying. Yeah. The thing that... Or mining fake ore and just watching a number increase. Let's reframe it.

This is not what I'm doing. This is what I do. You know what I mean? Like, I do this. That's better. I didn't even mean an existential crisis kind of way. I just sort of like, it's just weird. It is crazy to think about.

And I will like a printout of all my stats at the end of my life. Yeah, right. how long I wrote a horse in a video game. Like across all games. Certainly more than a real horse, which I haven't done. I've only done that once. Yeah, I was it?

I mean, it's fucking terrifying. It is. They're huge. They're huge. They're enormous. I had to act in a sketch with a fucking horse once, and the bit was...

You were the hog standing? Okay. The bit was... It was a... The sketch premise was written by... By Tim Calbackus. It was a very funny sketch. but it was like, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Yeah. And the idea was it was a game show where you were a cowboy who was given a horse, but you weren't allowed to look it in the mouth or else you'd lose the horse. And so I had a real horse and it was me with a cowboy, like, dressed up as a cowboy. I love me in the Western where I look. But then my whole thing is that I was supposed to like try not to look and then look and be like, oh my God, it's so beautiful. And it's basically it.

But as part of it, I had to grab the horse's head and like turn it towards me and look at mouth and I was just like and like the horse handler was basically you really got to wrench him just like really grab him towards you and I was like this thing's going to fucking bite my head off yeah he's gonna kill me with a single kick it was so scary they when I did it I wrote it I wrote a horse in YPO Valley in Hawaii yeah and it was like the most beautiful it was just actually the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life um but like the guy was like for some reason he with me like he helped everybody else get up on the horse and he was like do you think you can handle like a crazy one

and I was like, I've never ridden a horse before. He was like, you're gonna be fine. And I was like, wait, what about, what about like a normal one? And he was like, okay, so he doesn't like it when there was like a rock that everybody was using. Yeah. To stand on and then put their foot in like the little saddle, like, foot holder thing.

Yeah. With my horse, the guy was like, he doesn't like this rock. So like, could you, how like, how like, could you toss your leg over the horse? And I was like from the ground, it's like, it was like, it's like eight feet tall this thing. It's fucking crazy. We had to like, I had to spend an extra like amount of time with the horse, get the horse used to me. So then I could gain the trust of the horse.

So then I could stand on the rock. Otherwise it wasn't going to do it at all. And then my horse just like pissed the whole time. He was, he was like, can you handle a crazy one? Yeah. Was he out of normal ones? Was that the issue? He was out of normal ones.

The last one was crazy. that's an that's an unreasonable request this guy was an absolute maniac he was crazy at one point he was like guys look at this

and there was like a little like pond or something he dug his hand in and he pulled out like five live shrimps oh my god it's like this guy what the fuck is this guy it's crazy five live shrimp when you say you spent the whole

he spent the whole time pissing what do you like what do you mean exactly every opportunity he had to take a piss the horse took a piss. Now is a horse just pissing just standing there? A little bit of both. Like sometimes he would like walk and piss, but like he would mostly like any time we were stopped,

he's like, I'm gonna piss real quick. But it's not like a like a dog where I like raise his leg or something like that. No, they just piss. Yeah, but I just knew he was pissing because I heard the piss from up above.

Horses are crazy. They're so crazy. And then he was also like wanting to go faster and everybody and the guy was telling me he was like, you have to be rougher than you're comfortable with being. I was like,

I don't want to like rough up an animal like at all. Yeah. You got to like really like, it's actually pretty bad. No, you have to like really use force. It was like, it was actually really gorgeous and I like felt very connected to that horse. It's rewarding. It was because like we had like we had something because then he like learned to listen to me. And I learned how to like get it to listen to me.

And it was like it was it was really crazy. I missed that horse. Yeah. Well. Then I looked at it in the mouth and it fucking disappeared. Horses are great. You're a horse fan? I'm a horse girl.

What do you do? Like what's your horse? situation? I grew up going to horse camp every summer. My parents had two horses, so I've been riding horses since I was like a toddler. And I almost had a horse. My parents were going to buy me a horse that I had been training on, but the woman who owned it was like, oh, you did a really good job at breaking it and I'm going to keep it. And I was like, huh? And I was so, I was like 10 years old and I was so sad. And then my trainer gave me a new horse to break in. And it was like a crazy horse. And like we were like taking like a little stroll through like the basin of like the LA

River and it saw a bag and it freaked out and it bucked me and then I got dragged for like a mile like hanging off it stir up and then I didn't ride a horse for like 15 years after that because it was pretty scary. I had to ride the horse back to the barn though and I was like oh my god but I didn't get hurt just you know how lucky but yeah it's like because like that's anything could have happened that's yeah. so crazy. I've been like bucked off before where I've got like the wind knocked out of me and like almost like had a concussion kind of deal. But like I don't know.

It's the risk you take when you ride one of those magnificent beasts. You're getting on a like eight foot animal that is crazy. It's weird. It's weird to think that like the first person who ate a lobster, that somebody looked at it and was like, what if I got on it? I'm going to get on. Right. and that that horse had and none of his horse friends

had that ever happened to before there's one first guy and everyone all the other horses were like what the fuck is happening to our horse yeah the first lobster seeing the other lobster get fucking boiled and going back to the other lobsters being like guys we can't go up there

my dream vacation that no one ever wants to do this with me is go to Scotland and there's like an eight-day horse riding tour that goes to all the Outlander filming locations. Oh, that'd be so fun. But you're on a horse for eight hours a day for like a week and no one I know wants to do that with me. It does hurt.

Get used to it. You do get used to it. Yeah. After day eight? Yeah. It's like cycling for a long time hurts also and then you just get used to it. Yeah.

Just hearing all this horse talk. I think they should get rid of the crazy ones. Like it seems like the crazy one should be just not be in the rotation. I'm just saying like like like, hey, this is a crazy one? you know what, I'm just going to let this one go. You know, I see what you're saying. Yeah. And I agree.

Okay, great, we're on the same page. I do think, well, the actual crazy thing about this was, my wife and I were the only two people on this tour that spoke English. Like the other people on the tour, they were Korean tourists. And they only spoke Korean. they were just excited to do the horse. So because there was a language barrier for one, the tour and two, the instructions, because the people doing the tour did not speak Korean, they got the easy ones. And then the last one was like a crazy one.

But why do you have that? Like, why is that in the rotation? Get them out of there. Get them out of there. I don't think you need a crazy one. It doesn't feel like an asset. I've ridden a horse once and had a bad experience with it. I was very young.

I was like 10 to 13 somewhere in there. And it was a horse party where they had a horse at the party. And they were like, you get up on the horse and you get to ride. It's like one of the girls wanted to ride horse. Yeah. Sort of like walk you around a circle sort of situation. And I got on the horse and it ran as fast as it could away from the party. And I was just on the horse with no ability to like know how to give instructions.

It had like wrestled its lead away from the guy who was running the horse party. I just wrote it and eventually it went back to the party, but it was like the scariest thing that I experienced as a child. Yeah. And then I have never ridden a horse. I didn't fall off or anything, but it was just going fast and they were yelling things at me. Yeah. Didn't matter.

It's crazy that that's the scariest thing that's happened to you in your childhood when I've heard other stories from your childhood. Let's talk about Big Walk. It was developed by House House, which previously developed Untitled Goose game, an indie wrestling game pushed me pull you. We talked about an Untitled Goose game on the podcast. I finished that game the year came out.

I had a lot of fun with it. Did you play Untitle of Goose game? Oh, wonderful. A real, real hoot. Honk. The honk button really good. The honk button was very, very well implemented. This is a, it feels like a much more expansive.

much, you know, a game with a little bit attempted a broader appeal. It's not quite friend slop, but it's friend slop adjacent. And it is very much just like a multiplayer game that I think you can play with as few as a party of two.

And then up to like a lot of people, right? I think it's eight. Is it eight? 12. 12. It's 12 people. Who has that many friends? Well, that's the thing. That's actually too many people.

I kind of feel like you need like like four and under is probably like the zone, I think. I barely got one friend to play with me. But the gameplay is basically you're limited in terms of your communication and in terms of the context for what you're supposed to be doing. It's just kind of like an explore and here's an environmental puzzle. The task is a little bit obtuse. It's a little bit inscrutable. You're supposed to put together kind of like the logic of it on your own while working in,

concert with the other members of your party, but there will also be things like because voice chat is proximity based. If you get out of, like, too far away from each other, you can't hear what the other one is saying. You have gestures as a way to communicate, but, you know, those are also limited by line of sight. And then there's a, there's a very aggressive day-night cycle, which means that, like, you know, again, if it's in the dark and it's not a lit area, you can also, you can lose track of whoever you're with. So it requires a lot of cooperation. to actually progress, but it's also extremely chill. Like it somehow is able to navigate all this

while also being like just like a fun sort of hang out fuck around experience. I really enjoyed my time with Big Walk, which we were able to at least me and Heather and Matt and then me and Heather and Matt and Ranch in a separate session were able to play together. But I thought it was a real hoot. I also played with my friend Miguel

before I squatted up with you guys. and it felt like I was able like it felt like to be dropped into the game with absolutely no context. I almost feel guilty that I kind of guided you guys through the first section because when we first, when Miguel and I first played, it was just like what the fuck? Like even the idea of like achieving a goal was obtuse. Like you didn't even know that there were goals to achieve until you came to a place that had. like slots to fill with a what we called a nugget and it was like a two ball two ball snowman. Yeah. But until you happen upon that, it's just like, I don't know, what are we supposed to do?

What is this? Light? Do you light this? Do you carry it with you? Like, everything is unguided. And then it begins to form its own internal logic. So you're like, oh, okay, this is a light. and if I leave it here, it'll help at night

because the night cycle part of the night is pitch black. This game is not something a game where everything is basically in the environment. It's like the U.S. elements are at an absolute minimum. It's never telling you, you know,

via text, what to do on screen, outside of a tutorial area where there's text on to just displaying what all the controls are. So, yeah, a lot of it is just inference. You're just going from zone to zone, like trying to figure out what the task is. and how to retrieve whatever you're trying to retrieve

and then trying to figure out ultimately what the purpose of that is. I'll be honest, we put a few hours into this. I still really have no idea what's happening. Yes. But I'm enjoying myself. And I'm liking being a little guy. I'm liking being a little guy.

I do think it is kind of fun that they're a little bit ugly. Because like you can't really quite place what they are. We sort of landed on their like birds kind of. but they don't have wings. Yeah, there's no texture to them. There's just color. It is just like a, you know, a couple of, like a sphere, like a snowman-like spheres, a very prominent nose and then like stick limbs.

But they're in an environment that is not like, you know, photorealistic, but is more approximating like a look of like what a real like sort of nature with some artificial elements would be. Yeah, the splash screen for the game is these characters sitting on actual photo of rocks and water. So that's what they're trying to aesthetically convey in the game is, here are these weird little squeaky guys, but they are supposed to be in the real world. And I think that's also to help guide you to the puzzles, which are these, you know, matte blocks of bright color in the environment that you will see at a great distance because they are so incongruous with the rest of the landscape. You know what this kind of, it kind of reminds me of not aesthetically, but kind of like in terms of tone and vibes is like a team eco game.

Yeah. Like you think about Eco or Shadow of the Colossus and it's just sort of like, okay, I'm not given, I'm given minimal context for what's happening. I just kind of vaguely know I have a goal and I'm just going to explore this open world and then get somewhere and figure out what I'm supposed to do. It's a lot of that. and but the collaborative element makes it just like a little goofier and uh also you like the ways you can interact with each other yes i do think that like one i'm sure other games haven't like

i've never experienced a game with like proximity chat before i just think that's so that's such an interesting layer to it because like you could be saying something and then like you know heather could be saying something and like then just like walk away and not hear what she's saying and then like, you know, it sort of, or like, it creates a barrier when you're solving a puzzle, what I think is interesting, that, like, you know, people play games like this on, like, Discord or on, like, FaceTime, and that sort of, like, cuts out a layer of difficulty of the games, I think is important to the experience of playing the game. No, they're actively discouraging you from doing that. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you know, like hopping in a group chat or being on Discord or what have you, and just using the, the in-game chat. And as such, a lot of the puzzles are just on your own. around this where it's like, for instance, there was one we were messing around with where there's a telescope, there's a station with telescopes, and then on the other side of those telescopes are platforms that have signs that display poses, and that indicates which of a series of titles that have pictures of those poses are supposed to be placed back at the station with the telescopes. So it's like, if there was voice chat there, then someone would, you could just have

run there and like the person could just tell you what it is instead you would be looking through the telescope and see whatever pose they're making to like like i don't know it just it just adds a little bit of fun of like how do we we're separated how do we convey this information to each other uh for this this task we have to do together also i did want to say yeah because of the voice chat of it all hearing the voice hearing your voices come out of the characters is so funny to me because you're playing in first person and you're seeing the other characters so because it's a

video game you kind of just are like I'm sitting there and I'm taking this and I'm like okay this one is like because you had been you had played it a little bit Heather so you had you were sort of guiding us like you were the tutorial for the game so I was just sort of there playing

and thinking this would be funny if this was how the game actually was and this wasn't you okay so fucking this thing is is like you gotta put this here, you do that. Like, just like the idea that a character in a video game would be so casually explaining how to do it.

Yeah, you gotta, okay, we gotta fucking get on each other's shoulders and then the top person is gonna hit this button. I had such a problem with that because it's like, I'm very curious if you guys, have played with more than two people. Yeah. Do they change the puzzles to be? Yes.

Okay. So depending on the number of players that you select, the sort of modular elements of the puzzles increase. So for the height puzzle, when I played with Miguel, it's just the two of us on each other's shoulders touch the button. But when it was all of us, we all had to stack. That's cool.

So that it was a much taller crane to press that button. That's fun. Yeah. It took my friend Jake and I so long to figure out to get on each other's shoulders because we thought at the base of the crane, there's like an indent, like circular indent in between the pillar, like the metal work. So we were just chucking the balls, trying to get it in the hole.

And then we were like, this doesn't seem right. And then we finally got each other's shoulders and did it. And I was like, oh, it felt really good. It is really satisfying because you get the, you get, after a, after you solve one of the puzzles, there is like a sort of like confetti pop. And so little confetti falls down. And then you hear this like little like unwinding crank

that releases the nuts. it, then you have to place somewhere else. And it's just like, it's very, very satisfying sound. Yeah, I mean, just for, just from a design standpoint, it's like, I always like the problems, not puzzles, sort of like there's not one, there, there is like a solution for these. So I guess they are more in the puzzle end, but there's, there's not like a, a, a, necessarily like a specific way you have to do it.

You know what I mean? Like, for instance, the, the one other one we were doing with all the, the, basically a red light green light sort of situation. It was like we were finding out our own methods to, you know, indicate which should basically series of lights. You're trying to just turn on the green lights, not turn on any of the red lights. If you turn on a red light, it basically fucks it. So you have to start over.

So we're trying to figure out a way to convey to each other which ones were red and which ones were green. And so you kind of figure out your own shorthand as you're going. But there's also the element of like, if a puzzle is like, I know what to do and I know how to do it, then that just feels kind of like filler in a game, right? Like if it's, if it's, I know what to do, but I don't know how to do it. It's like, okay, that's another layer of, of, I've got to actually figure this thing out. This actually is a puzzle.

This isn't just a thing that's an item on my checklist. But when you can, you can satisfactorily hit a, I don't know what to do and I don't know how to do it, but have that not be a frustrating exercise. It's, that to me is like the really like dazzling sort of puzzle design. Yeah, the only thing I was truly frustrated with, and this will come as no surprise. to anybody who's listened to the show is the walking speed. You're too slow. It's even when you're running, you're too fucking slow.

I appreciate that you can't leap off of a cliff without taking like a pause, which you're not damaged, but it will make you drop your whatever you're carrying, your flashlight, your nugget, whatever. I don't mind that. What I do mind is how fucking slow these ducks move. They move so slow. This is pet peeve of mine Why have a sprint button

If you're if there's no limitation on sprinting? Just make that the default walk speed right Like like you have to press L3 On a PlayStation you're all we're playing on PlayStation To uh to uh to sprint but like why should that even have to be a toggle Why shouldn't that just be how fast you move? I mean the game is called big walk not big jog Okay that's fair it's fair criticism

It's called big walk not big jog But I do have an issue with how slow but it does make it nice to just appreciate the walk. Yeah, yeah. Well, then from that standpoint, I feel like... If you could only just walk, though, you know what I mean? Or if, like, the sprinting was like, hey, you have like a... You're going to run out of energy and you're going to start panting at a certain point.

I don't know. It just feels like when you can do it an unlimited amount, you're just going to default to that move at speed. I do like the... I mean, the thing that makes this game really sing to me is the... the voice chat. You have to play it and communicate with each other. You can type stuff out or whatever.

No swears allowed. How do you type stuff? Well, on PlayStation, we had the little middle the touch pad. Okay. And you can, you press in on that and then like a little keyboard pops up.

Oh, you know, I saw a button on the switch where it was like chats. Okay. I haven't tried it yet. It's not particularly useful. I think the nicest way in which it's helpful is if you have a large group, putting the names over each of the guys.

Oh. So like you just, because it, it's pretty, it's a pretty substantial length of time that the text is over your head. And if it's like, uh, who is, who am I talking to? Yeah. You know, that's hard to, because if multiple people then would be like me.

And it's like, no, no, no, you, like, all of that is easier if, and I know that you can modify the way that your character looks to a certain extent too, but like with a, with a color selection area. An actual diabolical way to play the game would be to have everybody have the exact same color scheme. It would be so

frustrated. Is that what the paintbrush is for? Yeah. I've been carrying that around being like, this has to be for a puzzle. Well, that's the crazy thing is that like you find stuff like, you get every sort of that one like red structure that I was calling the silo

that had like, that's the thing that I actually love about the game is that like everybody is going to call something in this game different based on like just any amount of like just you know external input but like finding the items like the laser pointer or like the walkie-talkie do you then have to sort of make choices and that's going to dictate how you communicate in the game because like you take two walkie-talkies out you're sitting pretty like because then you have somebody you have at least uh you know a way to actually communicate without you know the proximity or whatever but the laser pointer allows you to be a little bit more creative and specific.

Yes. Because then you have to then just hope that the person on the other end of the laser can ordain what you want them to do with the information that you're giving them. And that to me is fascinating. And there's no inventory. There's no, that you don't have like a backpack or anything. You can carry one item at a time.

And that is a thing where like a smaller group is a little bit more constrained because, you know, there might be four to six different items you could all use at once, but you can only carry one of each of them. And if you get one of those nubs that are one of the key items, then, you know, you got to drop whatever you're carrying so you can haul that back. What do we think about this? I was just thinking about it right now. I think if you took a bite out of one of the nubs, it would taste good.

The nuggets? The nuggets, yeah. I bet you they kind of like are like a candy and you can take a bite and it would be really big. Like mochi or something? Yeah, or like a nerd. gummy cluster or something. Yeah. I bet you they're really good.

I bet if you took a bite out of one of the player characters, it tastes like flavorless cake. Yeah. Like the texture would be cake. Is the whole game maybe a, is it cake sort of thing? Yeah. At the end, we're going to learn up their cake. I don't think you can eat the nugget.

I think it seems to be a little bit too. It seems more like like a thing that's kind of almost made of concrete or like ceramic. I don't think of it as something that's squishy. I think it sounds like rubber. though, it kind of goes when you drop it. Yeah, but like, I think if you dropped a nerds gummy cluster, well, one, first you would hear,

because like some of the gummies, the nerds are going to go flying off this thing. But that gummy, it has a gummy quality to it. I kind of want to take a bite out of it. Lexus, you said you had trouble finding somebody to play with it? Yes. Yes.

Weird that none of my friends want to play this game. I have like, my friend Jake and I play and then I have a couple other friends who I was like, they had interest, And I was like, let's play. They're like, we promised our college friends we'd play with them. And I was like, oh, okay. And you can't play with me as well?

And they were like, no, we promised them we'd play. And I was like, it's not like you can play with other people. Like it's, I feel like, I don't know, but they were like, we're already set to play with them. And I was like, sure. And then I text Zig about it. And I was like, play this fucking game with me. And he goes, I'm in Vegas this weekend.

And I was like, okay. Zigg goes from, here's the thing. He was here last week, went straight to his head. now he's in Vegas. It's just kind of like, what is this guy's fucking deal? At the Star Trek convention. Yeah, okay, get over yourself, dude.

How embarrassing. Goes on one show, and now he's a fucking big shot in Vegas, embarrassing. But he was like, maybe I'll play in the evening in Vegas at the hotel. And I was like, yeah, that's a great way to spend your time in Vegas. Famously, nothing to do there at night.

Yeah. That sounds alpha as hell, honestly. This is all to say, please say, get on it and play with me. I wish we had the timeed out where we all could have squatted up together. But I will say that playing with the two of you and then also playing with Ranch,

I was having a blast. And it's like, I feel like we're always going to frustrate Heather when we're playing one of these games. But there's enough joy in this one and the stakes are low enough where it felt like you were like less angry than usual. Is that a fair characterization? I think that's true.

I think because some of this stuff is so silly. like it would have been hard to get upset because like there was a part today where we were playing and well one we kept losing Weiger Like Wyger was just like disappeared That was hard for me Because I was like there's one thing we need to definitely do

Which is just stay together Right Because other than the fireworks Or if you're carrying a flashlight It is impossible to find each other That the shrubs are too tall And at night it is too dark And so when I'm talking to Matt

and we're making a plan of where to go next. And I turn around and you're, and Nick is gone. You see Nick's eyeball in like the dark distance, just like going further and further away. And I'm like, what the fuck is he doing? And there's no way to know. And I, and I was so, I, my phone was in my hand, which was like rigid with stress.

Because I was like, do I text him and say, come back to the fucking silo? Yeah, I had thought about sending a text when I got lost at one point when we were doing one of the puzzles, but I was like, that kind of defeats the whole thing. It felt bad. But at one point, Nick was in charge of the flashlight today. The camera.

Oh, the camera. It was the camera. He took the camera. Oh, like the infrared one? Yeah. And then we like lost him for a second. And we go, where did you go? And he goes, I accidentally kicked the camera down the mountain.

And he came back without the camera. He couldn't find it. Look, let me address this. There were a few incidents involving me and falling off of mountains. One was when we were playing with Ranch and that I got separated from the group because I fell off a mountain and I couldn't find my way back. But there was a little like I feel like you were, you're creatively using the laser pointer to signal where you were, which did lead me back to you even though it took a little bit of time. So that was what. Today, yes, I did accidentally kick the camera off of a cliff and then I couldn't find it.

And so I was away from the group because I was trying to find it. And then later on I separately kicked one of the nuggets off a different cliff. That was an accident. And I was, again, trying to find it. It all worked out. I'm just saying, like... Yeah, because I found the nugget. Yeah.

I got a loose nugget. Matt and I, again, somehow together without Nick, see the nugget rolling down the cliff and we're like, what happens? I was like, he fucking dropped it. I was like, no, it may, no, you were like, maybe it's shot out of a thing. And that's like part of the goal is you have to find it after it shot out. Yeah. And as we're watching it sort of like...

like ugly fall down the hill. It was like, no, he dropped it. I was trying to. Why did he drop it? So I was separate to help to try to solve the puzzle because it involved us being in separate locations. The nub popped out. I was with the nub.

I picked it up and I was trying to, if you hold L2 and R2, if you hold those two buttons together, you can hold an item over your head. And I was trying to do that to demonstrate to my friends who were at a great distance that I had the nugget in hand, but instead I pressed L1 and R1, which kicks an object into the distance. I do that a lot. Yeah. So I get it. Yeah.

What has your experience with the game been so far? You said you're playing with a friend. Yeah. So like, are you guys like when you're when you're finding these things, what's your like sort of communication style for like finding these things? I feel like for us at least or my experience with it, having more than one has been helpful because you have it at least have somebody to bounce something off while somebody else is fucking off. But I kind of feel like you have to like when you have one person you got to be really locked in.

Yeah, we we've been together and the whole like for the majority of it and both of us will forget about the spatialness of it with the sound. And like one of us will just keep walking and I don't hear him. And like today we were playing and all of a sudden I just heard him go, ah. And I just heard of fall down a hill. Yeah. And it was very funny. but once we got the walkie-talkies, that was a game changer for us. And then at one point towards the end of our session, we were walking in the dark without a flashlight.

And he was like, I'm going to get lost. And I was like, you're good. And then all of a sudden, I didn't hear him. And we both separated. And I was like, well, I'll find him at some point. And then we just kept walking. And I went like around the coast and I found something else. He, we didn't see each other for 20 minutes.

And then we ended up back where, like, we were originally. And he's like, I could just see him running towards me going, I have so much to tell you. I have so much to tell you. It was fun just to like, yeah, but I didn't have the urge to text him to be like, where are you? It was just like, we'll find each other at some point. It would just completely break the game, I think.

Yeah, you can definitely like min-max this by going around the built-in systems. But I just, I feel like it's just not that experience. And you don't feel like you're incentivized to do that. It's kind of more of an escape just to, linger in the world. If we were communicating through another means, I can almost guarantee we wouldn't have been, like, or at least me. Because when we were

playing, I was just, like, laughing the whole time because I just think it's so funny. Like, I just, we wouldn't have had that same experience, I think. It would have been still fun and funny. It would have been more mission oriented. It would have been like, oh, I'm on the cliff. Can you see me? I'm on this cliff. It just wouldn't have been like, I just,

I just think it's like the funny, accidentally funniest game I've played in a long time. We were trying, like, picking each other up for instance. Oh yeah, Nick kept trying to pick me up and kick me. And then I, yesterday I picked you up. Wait, can you pick each other up? You can pick each other up.

But you can't, you can't kick. No, you can't kick. But then I picked you up yesterday and tried to walk you into the ocean. That's fun. And we're saying we picked up the walkie-talkies. We were saying 10-4. Oh, yeah. I'm saying over even though we didn't have to, which is very funny.

Yeah, I've noticed that my friend Jake and I, this is the first time we've done a co-op together and we both work really well together and really good communication. and that's nice. It is, I feel like a strong suit of the show, why the show works, nobody's ever going to be fucking so mad at each other,

right? So like when we were communicating in the game, kind of just felt like we were hanging out. It was kind of, no, that's the thing. It felt like a hang.

Yeah. It felt like, you know, a weird hang as bird people in this mislike environment. Yeah, it did sort of remind me weirdly,

when we were playing today in particular or reminded me of, when I was saying, it reminded me of when we in Japan. Because if you would turn the corner, we were like, wait,

where'd Weiger go? But Ranch, I want to ask you, because you played with us a little bit too. Do you like games like this? And I feel like I also should point out, you said that you were the first one

to point out that our characters all had big asses. Yes, it's true. Huge. This is exactly the type of game I like to play. Yeah.

And I'm excited to try playing with Mark. I think this will be a very good test to our relationship. Separate rooms, of course. Well, this is the thing, too, because, like, it's not, you can't even play on the same account or, like, it's not co-ops. So, like, you have to have a separate system or a separate way of playing the game. And, like, my wife is interested in playing the game because she saw how much fun I was having. She was like, wait, I want to play.

But, like, we can't play it just on the one PS5. But you have a Switch, too. I was a switch, too. Look, I got it taken care of. Don't worry about it. My wife wants to play. I'm going to find a way for my wife. play the game, right? I'm just kind of that kind of husband, you know what I mean? Because it sounded at first like you were saying it's impossible.

No, no, no, no, I just kind of like, maybe she's not going to be good at the game. I'm kind of like... Oh. No, she'll be great at it. It's going to be... Because I was watching a video about it last night and she was just like, this looks so funny and fun. But I think part of it is like the communication. Like, if we're too close in the room, it's like I don't want to be doing that.

I might have to go join Ziggy. in Vegas to get this time going or something. It is, it kind of like has the cosmetics of like, oh, this is going to be a meme game. This is just like whatever. This is like trombone hero or something. This is just like a fuck around experience. But then when you actually get into it, it's like, oh,

wait, there's no, there's a lot going on here. This is like a really fully, fully fleshed out, fully formed design concept. It's six years of development. Six years of development. And then you see how much, you see how well it's being reviewed and how well it's being received from the community. It's just like, oh, this

is in a way this is kind of a triumph. It's like a really impressive, you know, experience at least from what I've played. If I have a criticism, it's that I wish, because I just looked up to how long to beat so this brand new information to me. I wish it was a three-hour game

instead of a ten-and-a-half-hour game. Not that I like how many things there are to do. I just think for the, for me, I could play through a ten-hour game, no problem, but like getting somebody else to want to also do that for that long is I think it's a bigger act. Especially if you're like you, because once you set a game up,

you can't play with fewer people than that game size, correct? Yes, you can. You can change it. Oh, you can change it on the fly. So is that what we do with our game? Yes. Oh, so ours was going to do. Okay, then I retract what I was about to say.

Because it's like, you know, you've got a larger squad. It's just so hard for adults to all coordinate their schedules, but whatever. Yeah. I do, I did like, I did really, enjoy my time with this game. And I really liked Untitled Goose games, entitled Goose game, but this is like a much more, a much broader, a more fully fleshed out experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the puzzles. It has the same, I get the same feeling when I played

blueprints. Oh, sure. Yeah. It is very blueprints as well. I mean, I feel like an idiot when I play blueprints because that was very challenging. But the satisfaction was worth it. But I get the same, like meditation feeling when I play this game and it's really nice. Another game where you move too slow. Blueprints. Heather wanted to be the fucking Kool-Aid man in this fucking house. I just want to be able to run fast in games. I do think you move too slow in blueprints, even the run speed.

I've been thinking about blueprints. I've been wanting to get back to it, but I know I will spend eight hours a day playing it if I touch it again. That was a problem. When I was really playing the shit out of it, I was like, I was like, I can't stop playing this. This is a really just fascinating singular design. This is like a heroic achievement. But I also don't think I like it. You know what I mean?

It's like all these thoughts were kind of coexisting. Yeah, it was our game of the year. It was our game. None of us ultimately enjoyed our time with it. By the time I got to the conclusion of the story, I was like, fuck this game. But I also think it's a masterpiece. It's a really, really strange experience. But anyway, you watch like really good blueprints runs.

And it's like the people who really know what they're doing, they're taking those low value rooms and cul-de-sacking themselves really early. So that later on in the run they have like the high-value rooms, the rooms with more resources and more exits. I mean, that of course makes sense. But I don't think of like, oh, one of my first starting zones, I'm going to completely wall off from progression by taking just like a closet or something like that. So it's out of the rotation.

For this feeling that you're describing, I felt that way when I played Animal Well. Have you messed around with Animal World? Yeah, Animal Well, I think is extremely worth your time and everybody's time. Also, this same feeling is the feeling I get when I watch Lost. Like, yeah, hell yeah.

Perfect show. Yeah, okay, we're like, best friend. Like this, like, even walking around, we were describing a lot of the puzzles, like Nick was describing a lot of the puzzles has lost shit. It does have like a hatch vibe. Yes, we were just like walking around

and being like, what the fuck? Even Ranch yesterday, I was holding, I had to hold down a button for one of the puzzles and Ranch was like, you're like Desmond right now. I'm kind of like Desmond right now. But the, the, it's almost like an ASMR for not knowing what's going on.

Or like you kind of feels good to not know like what the ultimate thing is. Animal Well is like, uh, it's the only game. that I think I've seen described as having like layers kind of where like there's like the one thing that you're doing and then you keep playing and then you're you it's never explaining to you what the objectives are but you're just kind of finding these things as you go and it's um it's fucking awesome it's just like it's a genius genius game switch it's on everything you can play it on anything i will be getting that tonight yeah it's really really great has it been two years since i came out already i think so that fucking sucks yeah i'm so upset. It's fucking... I hate the slow decay of time. It's really upsetting. Well, there was part of it, too, that was like

an ARG, where people had to commune together to solve a puzzle in the day. And it's like... It sounds so nice. And it's a solo dev made this thing over several years. It was just... Billy Basso. It's so... Like, I... Maybe we talked about it in our Blueprints episode.

I did not make the through line from animal well to blueprints. I know they were completely siloed completely into different developments, but it's like, not saying one informed the other, but it's just like, oh, yeah, those were very similar sort of experiences, even though they're very different designs. Yeah, just like, because like, you could play it and finish it and be satisfied, but I got like, I think I beat it three times through the different layers, and it's like, it's just so, and there's, there's stuff in it that I didn't do because I was like, well, I'm not crazy. I'm not going to do all that.

But it's really, really good. The big deviation that Big Walk has from those two games, which is, I don't know, it's interesting as far as, besides it being like those are, those are very much single player experiences and this is by its nature communal, is that like, this game is just really funny. It's just got like a lot. And it's all like, it's not comedy that's, oh, we've got an NPC with a funny quip. It's not that sort of comedy. It's like, it's just baked into the way you interact with each other.

A little beaks moving when they talk. Yeah. It's so cute. Yeah. I like that when Matt disconnected, his bird's eyes turned into X's and he just fell over like a dead corpse. Sort of sorting out the Wi-Fi, my new space. And I lost connection for a second. And then I died.

I also went AFK and then my guy fell asleep. And then I came back to Heather being like, Nick's asleep. Sleepy Nick. And you're playing from, and we maybe haven't even conveyed this. You're first person. So, like, you can't really see what your own guy is doing, which is its own thing. I would like it to be third, I think. But I think having it be first is, it's the right choice.

I think it's meant to be, like, it feels like all these decisions are made to make things a little bit more abstract and a little bit harder for you to tell what you're doing. Because it's kind of, this kind of fumbling nature to it, you know what I mean? Yeah. And it's not that that, that, I know first person is such a common. in perspective in games, but not, like, not in this type of game. It's the main perspective for life. It's the main perspective for life, yeah. It's kind of your only perspective for life. Kind of only a lot. But, but again, I'm thinking to things like the witness and missed and they retract that this is not really the kind of perspective. I think it's just like it adds a little bit,

it makes it feel a little bit more alien that you're, you're disconnected from your own body in that way. Yeah. I don't know. I also, I mean, I want to play through all of it because I want to know what the fuck is going on. I want to know what to what end? Why are we here? What is it or and also I would like to know are there answers to these questions? Is there a reason we're doing this that we're on this island solving these puzzles and what is the ultimate goal? What happens when you solve all? Is there a story or is it just a big confetti? Yeah. If it's just a big confetti, that's fine to me. Yeah. Because it means you completed it but like is there something is there something here's or something going on? Because the loss was kind of a big confetti, right?

It's just like that, and they were at church. We can't talk about that. We can't talk, because if, I was going to tell you right now, if you can sit there and be glib, we can't have this conversation. Matt, I'm on your side always when it comes to shit like that from Nick. But I also want to say, do you see the primetime trailer that came out today? I did. Did you see the Lost reference?

No. I guess I didn't. I guess I didn't. Maybe I always thought that the trailer was released. Well, Hansen-A-Patterson says, we're going to be bigger than lost. And it's so coded for you. I mean, one, I can't wait to see that, too. But it's like, they weren't just in church.

Yeah, it's more than that. Okay. I'm missing a lot of context because I only saw the pilot in the last episode. He's evil. If you die by my hands, that's why. He relishes it. You have a tattoo, a lost tattoo And he likes saying.

But here's the thing, I can't get somebody to watch 100 plus episodes of a television show. Oh, that reminds me, I made the Dharma Initiative logo as a head on my Tomodachi Island. And he just walks around. I think he's dating David Gronenberg. My Animal Crossing Island's flag was a Dharma initiative. Oh, nice. Mine was the H-24 logo. It was called the Americana.

And then my basement was the Midsamar burning scene. And I had a bear in there. Shall we do a segment? Let's do a segment. A segment. It's time for our favorite. I picked this segment because Alexis knows ranch. It's time for our favorite segment involving ranch.

It's dude ranch. I'm going to name some video game characters and we're all going to have to decide if we think Ranch knows who they are. Got. So does Ranch know this dude? Does Ranch know this dude? Ranch is as usual when we're doing this segment covering her face with both hands.

Yes. And to that I say, Ranch, it's okay if you don't know these people. It's okay. You're not getting in trouble. I still want to give it away. Okay, okay, fair. Here we go. First one. Samus Iran.

Samus Iran. I vote no. Ranch does not know who that is. Samus is an interesting one because even as someone who's played a lot of Metroids, I'm still unclear in the canonical pronunciation. What the fuck? I forgot what the game was. Okay, so Samus is from Metro.

But does Ranch know what they look like? I was going to say with a character. in Super Smash Brother. I think you would have gotten that would have been acceptable for sure. Well, say, look,

well, that was the tutorial. That was the, that was the example. For you. I think it was a tutorial for you. What I was driving at is I should have saved this for afterwards. But Iran or Aaron? Because I feel like I've always heard Samus Aaron.

I think Aaron actually is what I've heard the most. They don't know how, like, I just say Samas, usually. Yeah. They don't all have like voice acting, so it's kind of like, I feel like it's a name that's rarely vocalized.

Right. Okay. Someone knows. One of our listeners will know. And hopefully they're buffed too. Next one. Dante. No.

No. The answer I have is no. I'm not know that dude. I'm going to say yes. All right. Ranch, do you know who Dante is? Dante is from Double Make Cry.

Holy shit. I know my friend. Wow. I've actually just recently started watching the anime. Incredible. Wow. Amazing.

I mean, really could have gone either way. Yep. I can't remember the name of his guns. He's got the white gun and the black gun? Ebony and Ivory? I don't know if it's Ebony and Ivory. I don't know. I don't know either.

A guy that I've always known of but had not really played the games, but I'd like to investigate more because I think I like Dante on paper. He's a corny motherfucker. He's corny as hell, but that's part of the fun. Devil May Cry one and three are both rad. and then I never played the series beyond that. I mean, two was kind of a misfire. Okay.

I'm going to look it up at what the word. So Lexus has a point. Does Ranch know Marcus Phoenix? No. No. I'm going to flip it and say yes. What? Ranch, do you know who Marcus Phoenix is?

That's a bird from Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, God, Ranch. Pretty good guess. It's not a bad guess, actually. But no, he's... Yeah, you can't hear Sonic being like, come on, Marcus, get it together. Sorry, my flame went out, Sonic.

Suck my dick. I already did. Heather was correct. They were... Dante's pistols are Ebony and Iver. Wow. How about that? Marcus is from Gears of War.

He's like the main guy from Gears of War. Oh, Gears of War. All right. Doesn't know the game either. He doesn't know the game. I was thinking it was the lawyer game. Oh, for all. Phoenix Wright.

That's a pretty good guess, too. Yeah. Right. You know who Phoenix Wright is? He's from the game Phoenix Wright. He has objection a lot. We could go back to Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. We've covered one game on the podcast.

I actually wouldn't mind going back to those games. They're really fun. They're fun. Okay. Should this be, I think we've maybe made Discovery here. I'm not saying for this one, but maybe for future Dude Ranches, there could be an extra bonus point before does Ranch know the game? because there will be the reveal of whether or not she knows the character, but then will she also, will she also know the game or does she not know the character?

But when we say that what the game is, she'll be like, I know what that is. Who gets the point for the game? Does Ranch get the point? Yeah, Ranch gets the point. Great. Okay. Does Ranch know who Beautiful Joe is? No.

No. Ranch, do you know Beautiful Joe? Beautiful Joe is my best friend of Joanna. No. That's correct for your life, but incorrect for the game. Did you say beautiful or beautiful? Beautiful. Wait, what? View to build to the beat. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful Joe. He does like a pose with it. No, I don't know. I don't know. Beautiful Joe is from the game. Beautiful Joe. But what a compliment for your friend Joe. Very nice. That was really kind. I love it if my friend told me beautiful.

for interacting with Joanna, I'm sure she's going to love hearing that. Does Ranch know who R-O-B is? Yes. No. No. Ranch, do you know who R-O-B is? I can't even pretend to know who's R-O-B. He's also known as the robotic operating buddy.

He's a Nintendo robot. he's in Smash Brothers And he's also a real tangible guy They made a little robot Let me just talk through my logic For saying why Ranch knew it I thought she might have known it

Because Heather has talked about Physical robots on the podcast before She knew Smash Brothers earlier Robots come up And sort of theoretical robots also No but R-O-B has been addressed In that sense Smash Brothers

What knowledge was addressed earlier And then also R-O-B is in Super Mario Galaxy. Oh, that's right. But then I realized Ranch didn't see it with us. That's right. Did you end up seeing the Super Mario Galaxy movie? I did go watch it.

I don't remember ROB. Okay. Yeah, he's in it. It was one of the other million things that happened in that movie. Is it in the like airports area? Yeah, Mario's like looking for instructions or a map or something and R.B is like,

hold on, I'll get it. I'm looking for a map. Is he orange? No, he's not orange. He's sort of like regular one. Gray. Gray. Yeah, classic robot.

Who's winning? I forgot to keep school. But Alexis was answering more correctly. Okay, good. Yeah, I feel like Alexis is more right. What about Tingle? Does Ranch know who Tingle is? No.

No. I don't think Ranch knows any of these people. No. Ranch, who's Tingle? I don't know. I don't know. I thought maybe the meme crossover could have made its way past game or stuff. Tingles from the Zelda franchise.

He's a little sick fuck. He's a little, there's a tight green suit, and he has his, like, little, he's kind of freaky. I don't think it's fair to characterize Tingle as a sick fuck. I think he's a little sick fuck. Do you think he'll be in the movie? I think Tingle's going to be in the movie.

I don't think he'll be in the movie. I think tonally the movie is not going to touch on Tingle. But it would be fun. I think he might be in the sequel. I agree with you. They should put Tingle in. And put Tingle in. And finally, does Ranch know or have any idea who Tiffany and Claire are?

Yes. I don't even Yeah, I don't know who that is. No. I think I know who they are and I think I also know what game it is but let's find out Ranch's answer. Do the name's Tiffany and Claire ring a bell at all

from video games? Oh, you guys are done guessing? Yeah, I mean, I say yes. Tiffany and Claire are from Mary Kay and Ashley's Sweet 16 license to drive. That's right, there are two other playable characters in Mary Kay and Ashley's Sweet 16 license to drive. The other two characters are, of course,

Mary Kate and Ashley. I thought it was a Barbie game. Close. It could have been either way. Honestly, toss Barbie in there. Why not? Are Tiffany and Claire canonical anywhere else

in the Mary Kate and Ashley verse? I don't think so. They just made up some new characters the game. They just these two random girlies. Wow. It'd be funny if they were also

just like Mary Kate and Ashley live like different hair. It's like in Diddy Kong racing where they're just like, here's tipped up the turtle. Who the fuck is this guy? Who's Claire? Who's Claire?

Claire, all right, Claire. I guess I'm playing. and Claire because someone else claimed two of my other friends claimed Mary Kate Ashley. I actually can't think of a more devastating thing than booting up Mary Kaye and Ashley Sweet 16 license to drive. You're excited to play with your three other friends. Mary Kate and Ashley, immediately off the board. Stuck with Tiffany or Claire. Although if you're a Tiffany main, you're sitting pretty. Well, if you're at, yeah. But here's the thing. You don't want to be a Tiffany main?

I might be a Tiffany main just so I know I always have my character. Actually, my preferred character is Tiffany. Claire is O-P. That says we get played. Everybody's just is Rachel Chen. Ranch, twitch. TV slash yard underscore underscore Sard. Ranch, what are you streaming these days?

BioShawk. Wow. How's that going? It's good. I'm getting into it. Oh, hell yeah. Keep us update on your progress. Our music is by Ben Pronti.

Ben Pronti. Our artist by Duck Brigade Design, Duck Brigade.com. We got merch at kinshipgoods.com. And a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon. Get played D.L.C. Matt, what's this week? This week, we're drafting games from the year 1989.

Year in gaming, 1989 draft a seminal year, a transitional year from the 8-bit to the 16-bit era. We're partying like it's 10 years before that song. Right. Subscribe at patreon.com slash get played. Alexis Cuelserano, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

What an absolute treat. Please come back on the show. Thank you so much. It does feel like a loop closed kind of. Yeah. So you've come up a lot on the show, so it was great to have you. It's always fun when Rochelle texts me and she's like, they're talking about your Animal Crossing Island.

Are your ears burning? And then I get really nervous. Anything you would like to plug? I guess watch Stranger Things, Tales from 85 on Netflix, Harley Quinn on HBO Max. Read comics. Read a book. Go to the movies.

Have fun. Harley Quinn's such a cool show. Thanks. It's such an awesome thing to work on. And thank you for joining us. unfortunately also you got played cool that was a

head gum podcast what's up everybody I'm Kyle Mooney and what's up everybody I'm Beck Ben and man oh I got we got something to tell yeah we definitely do yes it's a brand new podcast on headgum that's right and it's called what's our podcast

yep and that's because we don't have a single idea what our podcast she'd be about yeah we don't so we actually have guests Come on and they tell us what they think our podcast should be about, and then we try it. Yep. Guests like Mark Maren, Jack Black, Brittany Brosky, Caperlant, Bobby Moynihan, Meg Stalter, and Tim Balls, Landon Axler, Corey, Jony McGreeze, and Dender.

And Dender. New episodes release every Wednesday. So subscribe to what's our podcast. On YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms. Yeah. I'm going to go do it right now.