Get Played - Cloud Gaming

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

Matt, Heather and Nick talk Fortnite, Baldur's Gate 3 and Final Fantasy VII before diving into Cloud Gaming. They discuss the pros and mostly cons of the cloud, owning digital media and more. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod.Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com. Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com. Check out our Anime watchalong podcast Get Anime'd and our complete Get Played, How Did This Get Played? and Premium DLC back catalogue only on patreon.com/getplayed. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So we're talking about cloud gaming today. Okay, great. I just want to make sure I'm not overlapping with anyone else. today okay great i just want to make sure i'm not i'm not overlapping with anyone else but i figured i'd talk about um you know lakitu and kind of like how he's been like both a villain uh you know an antagonist for mario and super mario brothers but then he's like kind of helping mario out in super mario 64 by operating the camera and rescuing him super mario kart so it's just kind of like the shifting yeah uh that's not that. That's not what you fucked up. We're talking about cloud gaming.

You idiot. How could you hear cloud gaming and leap all the way to a cloud in a game? Oh, I thought because he flies around a little cloud. Yeah, you thought, but you

thought wrong, you dipshit. It's not cloud gaming, okay? I'm sorry. I'm on the phone with your parents, and they are disappointed in you. Yeah, and they didn't even know about this part. They're going to have a field day with this. But while we're here going over notes, I have some notes in front of me as well. I'm going to be coming in and talking about Final Fantasy VII

and Cloud Strife and how he, you know, was a soldier, a Shinra soldier, and he has, like, friends, Barret. Stop! Unbelievable. That's un-fucking-believable. Fucking stop! Fucking idiot. You just fucking yelled at me when you're going to be even fucking dumber?

Say the stupidest fucking shit I've ever heard in my goddamn life? What? It's Cloud. His name is Cloud. That's not what we're talking about, you fucking idiot. Cloud gaming. Cloud gaming. Cloud games. Not cloud in a game.

Not cloud in a game. Cloud games. No, I get it. Just jumped into a pile of shit with both feet yeah and then you rolled around in leaves and you went to the mall i'll tell you what we're talking about we're talking about cloud the 2005 puzzle video game from the makers of flow flower and journey cloud we're talking about cloud the game it's a game a game where you play as like a boy who flies in the sky and like interacts with clouds cloud the game god the game is called cloud heather you're somehow the stupidest of all i can't fucking believe how cartoonishly dumb you are

is that true yeah it's like you got your fucking both hands stuck in a pickle jar right now. That's what's going on. You know what I would do if I had both hands stuck in a pickle jar? The same thing I'm doing right now. Shitting my pants and talking to you guys. We battle enemies and also battle spotty Wi-Fi as we discuss

all things cloud gaming this week on 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 Weiger. Hey, it's me, Nick Weiger. I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and. I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where, I don't know, if it's your first episode, here's a little onboarding.

We used to be a podcast where we would masochistically expose ourselves to the worst video games of all time. But that was a long time ago. Now we're just a podcast where three friends talk about the latest and greatest or not greatest or literally anything we want to talk about in video games with a strong undercurrent

of Fortnite. And that's the show. If it's under the umbrella of video games, we're talking about it. If it's like a movie, video games, we're talking about it. If it's like a movie. Yeah. Video game song or something.

We might. Yeah. I don't know. We haven't done video game food, really. We could do that. But that's sort of maybe stepping on the toes of some other. Well, if I may, we have an outstanding invitation. Yes.

Which is having you two over while I cook from one of the many video game cookbooks that i own the official licensed street fighter cookbook uh god of war cookbook or the unlicensed legend of zelda cookbook so uh maybe time maybe sometime this spring you know i i have you guys over for uh for for some video game cooking uh i just i i'm down I'm down for that. It's a lovely invitation. I do have one precondition, which is that we don't play the Virtual Boy again. Yeah, yeah. I would like to just eat the food if that's okay. Yeah, if you could keep the Virtual Boy just in a box in your garage.

Maybe you could have it set up and we could shoot it. It seems like an opportunity, to maybe uh play the apple vision pro uh so maybe maybe mess around with that if you make this compare contrast though i'm gonna be mad yeah all right try this now try this yeah which one makes you feel sick yeah does the apple vision pro require me me resting my chin on a stack of books? Yeah. If not, then I'm probably

going to like that one more. The Apple Vision Pro makes, I think it's going to make my face feel hot. Yeah. But I am interested in checking it out. I heard a cool demo about it.

And by the time this episode comes out, I will have pre-ordered my Apple Vision Pro and I'm really excited about it. I am going to sell a computer in order to afford it that's a good call but hey no but because it works as a monitor oh yes so i can sell a computer and still write with it i am strapping myself i'm like fully committing to a vr future like a VRAR future for this. Yeah. But I can sell my laptop and then use it as a secondary monitor right wherever I am. I did hear about a demo and I'm really excited to share it with you guys.

They're remaking or they're making special documentaries under the Apple TV Plus umbrella. So like Prehistoric World or whatever the fuck it's called the one with the dinosaurs Jurassic Park prehistoric planet you watch it in Apple Vision Pro and the fucking dinosaurs walk out of the screen and like walk around you wow or like there's like bugs and stuff that because it's like can tell where your hands are the bugs will come and like land on your hand but see that's the stuff that i'm like i'm convinced that then if you die in there you die for real like they shouldn't be able to i shouldn't be able to touch the bugs yeah some of the stuff is like a little bit unsettling and i also just go going back to

what you're saying about writing with this thing because i have an oculus and i am sure the apple vision pro is much you know i don't know what the resolution is. Higher fidelity, yes. I'm sure it's much better. I'm sure it's higher fidelity. But I cannot imagine, like, reading a PDF with my Oculus headset. Like, that feels like that's just going to, like,

make me as dizzy as being on a merry-go-round, you know? And, like, so the idea of, like, using that for writing. Well, how big are you making the PDF in your, because you control the size. It sounds to me like you've made it like 300 feet across and 20 feet stories tall. Yeah, it has to run to get to the end of every word. Things gotta be oversized.

That's the whole point. Yeah. It looked like an iMac screen. I swear to God, if I have you guys over and I cook some video game meals and I'm like, hey, try out the Apple Vision Pro and you immediately start auto jacking, I will be...

I guess I'll just be like, yeah, that makes sense. And even buy the auto jack upgrade. Yeah. Where'd that come from? Nick had it pre-installed in his OS. Part of my cyberware. Yeah.

Hey, speaking of the podcast and kind of things that uh you know like like like formats and and logistical concerns uh we haven't talked about what we are doing with with our we play you play which is yeah for anyone new to this every month or we have been playing through one game and dedicating an entire episode, the final episode of each month to discussing that game at length. I think what we're doing, we have not set this in stone, but I think what we're going to do is to make that more sustainable and also to make sure that the games that we,

you know, give this this sort of designation, get the attention that they deserve, especially a meatier, longer game. It's better if we really invest some time. And I think we're going to go to bi-monthly with that format. So we're not going to do one this month. I think our next one will be at the end of February. That feels like the plan. Yeah, that's the assumption I was operating under as well.

Yeah. Just the podcast goal is to move further and further away from playing video games. Yeah. We're just going to talk about the ones we like. Right. Because people like that. We're going to talk about them. But we'll still talk about a game at length.

I think there will be times when we'll maybe not have devoted 50 hours to playing a game in a month. But we can still always talk. We always talk about it. Yeah, we can always do an episode about a game. And we can always talk about things that we're playing currently. Yes. But also we should talk about how last week we did our own personal top 10 games of all time. Yes.

And we committed those on the podcast, and we asked our listeners to chime in with theirs in our Discord server, and a lot of people did. and we asked our listeners to chime in with theirs in our Discord server. And a lot of people did. I mean, I read, I felt like I was reading through dozens of top 10 lists. Yeah. And like I said in the Discord. I think it was more than 100 top 10 lists.

It was great. I mean, to be pedantic, that could still be dozens. Did you enjoy that? Like, why would you say that? I did enjoy it a little bit. Did you? Like, it was like 144. Yeah. That's 12 dozens.

Still qualifies. Sure, dude. Whatever. Whatever you want, man. The... But anyway, what I was going to say is I read through over 100 top 10 lists in the Discord server. Just say tens of people. I read through tens

I read through several Ones of several Yeah On the discord And I was just like Oh yeah that game Oh yeah that game

Like repeatedly Like someone had A few people had Turtles in time Oh yeah On their top 10 list And I was like That I didn't say

On the podcast But when I whittled it down To my Or when I just made a list Of like 73 or 76 And I remember It was like games I didn't say on the podcast but when I whittled it down to my or when I just made a list of like 73 or 76 and I'm around when it was like games that I could think of that would could potentially qualify that was on that list and so to see people like committed to putting in their top 10 I was like oh that rocks I love that I a couple of days after recording the episode I think maybe listening back to it yeah uh I, I felt a wave of regret.

I think it's inevitable. I definitely was like, I could have done that, I should have done that, I forgot that game, I could have given more attention to this game.

Because I somehow forgot about the game inside completely. Great game. And I think that would be in the top 10. But probably in that 10th spot. That's the thing.

So it could have been anything in that 10th spot, really that's the thing. So like it could have been anything in that 10th spot really. But so many people did share their top 10s on the Discord. And one of our listeners and Discord user named Majawa on our Discord compiled all the data and compiled all that data. It made a ranked list of all the games mentioned in everyone's top 10s. And I thought that was so interesting and so cool. And I would like to share the top 10 games ranked according to the Discord. And this is based on how many times each one was number one or, you know, where how many

times they were ranked or whatever. You know, I don't know actually how he did the data, but it seemed like it was really complicated and he seemed like a really smart person. Some numbers were crunched. Numbers were crunched. And all I did was look at it and copy and paste. So here we go. This is number 10.

Tears of the Kingdom. Nine. Breath of the Wild. Sure. Eight. Elden Ring. No surprise there. Seven.

Persona 5. Love that. Six. Red Dead Redemption 2. Seven. Persona 5. Love that. Six. Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. And now I believe these are tied for fourth. Okay. Ocarina of Time and Baldur's Gate 3. Wow. Three. Hades. Two. two chrono trigger and number one with the most votes disco elysium i would say our listenership has impeccable taste yes really good list that is really what some really great games and this doesn't reflect the months after we did the Disco Elysium episode where people would say, all I talk about is Disco Elysium. Interesting. Seems like, actually, people really like that game. Yeah, weird.

Huh. Huh. I like the idea that Ocarina of Time and Elden Ring are kind of the same game. Yeah. Because they're both placed exactly the same on the list, but also like actually Baldur's Gate three and Ocarina of Time in the same spot. Oh, never mind. But Elden Ring is also on the list.

So it's like I misheard. I misheard. And now now I'm just you know what? Be pedantic with me. Just fucking throw me in a well well the other thing i was gonna say is the what to your point like that's that's the thing and i play i had the you know og legend of zelda the famicom nes legend of zelda on my personal list that game kind of just is you know people made this point in breath of the wild came out but that game just is breath of the Wild. That is just Elden Ring.

It's just the prototype, you know, 2D top-down version of it. It's the same sort of principle. The idea that there's this big, vast world that you can kind of explore, you know,

at your leisure, but certain parts of it are, you have to, you have to achieve certain things to access certain parts of it and you can get to places

where you're completely overwhelmed and the enemies are overpowering you very early on, if you like. So, you know, that approach has existed in gaming for a long time. But yeah, I think that's a great list. I think also that at least our active Discord users seem to have a lot of fondness for RPGs. A lot of RPGs are heavily represented in that list. Big time. Big time. And thanks, Majawa, for represented in that list. Big time. Big time, and thanks

Majawa for compiling that data. Very interesting. I love data. Y'all love data? I love data. I love metrics. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Metrics are really interesting, too. I like to look at a graph.

Big graph fan. I love graphs. What is, you know, upgrading your character over the course of a campaign beyond making some numbers go up? Ooh. It's basically data. It is. In many ways, it is actually because. It is. It's just data. You're evaluating the data such as the amount of health that my character has, the amount of damage it can do versus other data sets like, you know, what resistances an enemy has and what attacks they're capable of and what reward you will get for defeating them and how that will affect your character's inherent stats.

All that is it's just data. It's all just data. And it's you know, it's all just data. And it's, and you know what's interesting too? It takes data to make the data as well. Like it takes data to make the games. That's an interesting point. You have to,

it's like a different type of data. Yeah. You use data to make something where you can simulate data. Heather, what do you think about that? I feel like you guys are doing something and I don't understand what it is like you're just saying

the word data over and over again but I don't know what that like what is that is that like a thing that you're doing yeah I'd say it's a thing we're doing okay great could we say what it is I don't think so okay I think

I think we'll look back on it someday and consider it data i want to say thank you to the discord and yeah that there's no edit there i just immediately hard shifted uh i want to say thank you to the discord because they gave the the battle bus as i said at the top there there's a strong undercurrent of fortnight in this podcast it's because i play fortnight every day love the game and um uh the discord battle bus which is our our subgroup on the discord who plays fortnight as a community not only did we recently do a private server event where it was only get played listeners and that was so much fun it is a blast to be able to hear the entire island all at the same time on the same channel

like that's not an opportunity that you get in a normal fortnight game but also they sent me a get well gift and um it is a bunch of uh fortnight goods and it made me really emotional and i just want to really say thank you to whoever it was that organized that. It was really kind. Matt Apodaca finally brought it over to my house. And there's some sweatshirts. There's a pair of Nerf Fortnite guns, which I guess I'm just going to like carry around my house. I think California is an open carry for Nerf only, actually.

So I think you're fine. I think you're okay. I think you can take that most places. And there's a couple of, oh, what do you call those guys? Those little guys with the big heads and the big eyes. Funko Pops. Funko Pops. That's it.

There's a couple of Funko Pops. And anyway, it was really, really kind. And I just wanted to say thank you here on the podcast, which I don't even know if you guys listen to anymore. Like you might just have found Fortnite and you're done. You might just be. That's okay. That might be your primary community.

But yeah, it's really great. And I also want to say thanks to Matt Apodaca for getting me a ditto Trubbish. Hey, no, I can't take credit. I truly can't take credit for that. It's really great. And I also want to say thanks to Matt Apodaca for getting me a ditto trubbish. Hey. No, I can't take credit. I truly can't take credit for that. Somebody did send that in months and months ago. Maybe upwards of one year ago, somebody sent that. And I've just held on to it because I hadn't seen you in a while.

I had nothing to do with it. I would love to take credit for it, but I can't. That was a gift from a listener, and I don't even know. We talked. Yeah. I wish I had the the note uh i bet you i have the note somewhere in my uh garage it was sitting in a box in my garage yeah yeah oh my god i read it on the air i read it on we talked about it on the show yes uh at some point my memory's shot so i don't remember this and i'm saying thank you as if it's a brand new thing that happened to me. It's brand new to you in that I now you have it.

You didn't get to have it when I opened it in studio because you were on Zoom when we were in the old studio. It's specifically a ditto Trubbish. Yes. Yeah, it's a ditto Trubbish that's reversible. So you can be a ditto or a Trubbish. Wow. Pretty fun. That's a lot of fun.

Super fun. And then I got this third item that i'm apparently not supposed to shout out but it's really cool yeah and that's it they're like a mysterious cube that everyone's searching for no i think you could say the artifact i can say what it is yeah yeah i well i got a a kv8a d10 sony black triniton crt from a listener and i love crts uh so this was it's a tiny tiny tiny little sony so like now i have the option of having two different uh game systems hooked up simultaneously in my hole where I live. Wow. Yeah, it's been a while. But I'm really excited because I love

a Trinitron. I love a Sony. I love a CRT. This was really great. Thank you so much. Someone gifted you a CRT. That's amazing. Yeah. It's really amazing. For our listeners, Heather calls her garage her hole. I just figured I'd clear that up.

Those are separate locations, man. What? There's the garage. It's more, yeah, yes. And then there's my hole. The hole is your, your like, your stash. It houses your retro gaming collection

your goods yeah yeah different place it's both physical and abstract yes also

when I did go to um when I dropped that stuff off at Heather's yesterday I got to go in the garage and Heather turned on the lights with the voice command

and as soon as I went home I started looking up um smart home stuff I was like I have to do this I was like this is

I'm living in the fucking dark ages. This is bullshit. If I'm going to do that, I just want the full minority report where I just say, I'm home. And then the lights come on and classical music starts playing.

But you can do that. And then a wooden red ball comes out and you're a murderer. You can, not only can you do that. Pretty hologram of my dead son. Yeah.

Nick, you can do that with existing technology and it's proximity based so you don't even have to say anything. So you can not only can you do that my dead son yeah Nick you can do that with existing technology and it's proximity based so you don't even have to say anything so you can set it up so that when you enter it's already it turns on the lights based on the time of day

like you can do all that shit now I want to say I'm home okay you can say that you want to say it though like like Ricky Ricardo kind of well I don't know if I do that no you want to say it, though, like Ricky Ricardo, kind of. Well, I don't know if I'd do that voice. No, you want to say it, and you want to do the voice exactly. You told me. Probably would not do that.

He said, I'm going full Ricardo. Anyway, thanks again to everyone who chimed in with their best of lists. And thanks to majawa for for however you say your username thank you for perhaps it's a majora's mask reference another game i weighed putting on my own list uh but what but but thank you uh for compiling all that because that was really uh that was really fun to read i first gave age you1 a try because I was tired of taking so many supplements every day and wanted a single solution that supports my entire body by filling in nutrient gaps daily. I need energy. I wanted to simplify my morning routine with easy habits. Since drinking AG1, I've felt energized,

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I think we should spend a little time talking about games we're playing right now. So I'll ask the question, guys, what are we playing? What are we playing? Hi, I'm the Resident Evil merchant, and I'm here to ask you one question. What are you playing? Are you teeing that up to anyone in particular? Yeah, and also, how's it going? Yeah, are you all right?

I'm fine. Did you hear that Resident Evil 10 or Resident Evil 4 made it into my 10th spot on my best of? I did hear that. I did hear that. I want to say thank you very much, Matt, for putting me in your mind palace. No, you got it. Yeah. I think I was the only one on the show that put it there. Yeah. And you had the you specified the remaster, right? That was the Resident Evil 4 version. Why would you do that?

Well, here's the thing. Why would you do that? I put the property. I put the Resident Evil 4 as a property. It could be any version. Yeah. I probably would reach for the remaster because it plays cleaner and I just have the newer hardware. Yeah. I'm not gonna dig out my PS2 to play the... Just get a generally

better all around it. Technically GameCube, but I'll let it slide. Yeah. I played it on... Well, there was a PS2 version. Yeah, I played it on the PS2. Yeah, there was a version where the game proper lives in our hearts and our hearts are a square. They're a cube. GameC cube game cube nick what are you playing wow thanks for asking resident evil merchant i have been continuing my campaign uh my replay

of balder's gate 3 wow i'm playing on tactician which is hard difficulty and i'm 40 hours in and i thought i would spend a little bit of time just talking about difficulty, because this is a game that I think a lot of people have said, like, it's so hard, it's so difficult, which I think is fair. But we were talking graphs earlier. I think the issue with Baldur's Gate 3,

especially if you are new to D&D, or you are new to, honestly, if you're new to 5th edition rules, or just Lian games because they have their own kind of bespoke ux which is its own challenge the thing with the thing if you're graphing out this game with complexity on one axis and difficulty on the other axis this one is all the way to the far end of complex but I think in terms of how difficult it actually is once you understand the systems and how they integrate with each other,

I think it's kind of in the middle. I think it's like an extremely complicated game that seems punishingly difficult because of its complexity. Like, you know, the kind of the counter example would be something like Super Meat Boy, which is super duper simple. You run and jump, but it's very difficult.

It makes those simple mechanics, it puts them in an extremely difficult context. But I think Baldur's Gate 3 feels fair if you understand how everything works, which for me took me probably, you know, 30 to 50 hours through my initial playthrough. And I was still discovering things towards the end of that. But the other thing is it has kind of an inverse difficulty curve. And this I'm particularly feeling on my second playthrough, because part of what makes it overwhelming is the myriad systems. And I mentioned the opaque UX, like all that stuff happening in the early on. You're just kind of like, well, all this stuff, this game doesn't have like a lot of tutorials. I don't really know what's happening. It doesn't really teach me

things in the way that a lot of games over teach very simple things. This game basically doesn't teach a lot of pretty complicated things. So there's that element where you're like learning how to actually play this game, you know, mechanically, but also just the way the D&D systems work, your party members all get any player character, all get a huge power spike at level five, notably martial classes like your fighters, your paladins, your monks of the world all get an extra attack at level five. Your spell casters get much more powerful spells and, you know,

a spell like fireball, which is just such a, a workhorse and such as just a direct damage dealer, but also a spell like haste, which is just completely OP and is, is perhaps the most valuable use of your, uh, uh,

your spell casters concentration resource, which is its own complexity that the game doesn't do a great job of introducing. But like, you know, because, because of that, because your characters are kind of weak and brittle and because enemies

deal such heavy, such heavy damage, particularly on tactician difficulty in the early game, it feels like just kind of like, fuck, this is, this is, this is such a,

this is so challenging, but really it's just getting over that initial hump. One thing I really like about the tactician difficulty is the AI gets more complicated. It doesn't just buff enemy hit points and damage, although it does do that, but it also gives them additional attacks and attributes. They have ranged attacks they didn't use previously, or they have additional resistances, or they're using, you know, charm spells or sleep spells or other, you know, crowd control spells that they didn't use previously.

They seem more fixated on your ranged characters and your spellcasting characters and kind of playing like mage breakers, which is like very, just makes kind of the lance board, if you will, a little bit more interesting. And also, so all that said, I'm having a lot of fun playing through it as I went through the Underdark, which is a section that kind of comprises the back end of Act 1. I found those combat encounters like challenging, but not like unwieldy or unmanageable. Yeah.

Like I was just kind of like, you know, like, OK, every move kind of counts and I have to be careful about what I'm doing here. And I may end up with a downed character. But, you know, like like I found it manageable. And a big part of it is just like learning how to play this game. I also just want to note that like I'm you know, there are a lot of exploits you can use in this game, which whatever. If you want to play like that, you go go for it. I'm not doing that.

I'm not like filling my inventory with explosive barrels and then dropping them all in front of where I know enemy and enemy encounter is going to take place. And then blasting with a fire arrow like I'm not doing stuff like that. I'm playing the game. I would think more more straight up. But, you know, that stuff, again, does exist. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's a difficult but fair game. I want to talk about a couple other things real quick

as I ramble through this. But again, the second playthrough of this game, Baldur's Gate 3, that I put as number one on my top games of all time list, which we did last week, Recency Bias Ahoy. But I'm loving it more on the second playthrough. I'm playing as a paladin, and as a paladin, you have to worry about being an oathbreaker,

which is a D&D thing. But there are all sorts of scenarios where I'm like, well, shit, I said I was going to do this thing. I kind of made this vow to this character. And even if it's a better opportunity for me to handle this quest this way i don't think i can do that without becoming an oath breaker which is not what i want to do for my player character so like it's just it's just another thing that to balance and i

think the game um overall handles that aspect really well uh the the acting you know whatever people have talked about this at length new neil dubon's performance as a star and uh won a game award obviously it's incredible uh his the way his third act character quest resolves just gives him this remarkable showpiece and it's just so like it it's it's just an an incredible bit of humanity uh for this vampiric character and the torment that he suffered and and and i just i think it's just it's such a such a great resolution to it. But it's he's he's obviously so great. But also Devorah Wilde is Laizel, who to me, it became my favorite voice actor who portrays Volo, who's a famed character from D&D lore and is like the this huckster kind of professional bullshit artist who writes all of these like, you know, just like fake histories of of of the realm. And, you know, kind of tags along with your party and it shows up at your camp at various times. It's just it's just such a such a funny performance uh one other thing which is so there's they've added honor mode which is like their hardcore mode you get one save and if you die you're done that's it so they've

added this i i found myself watching a lot of honor mode fail videos uh where people are like their run is ending and it's part of the reason why I would not do an honor, honor mode run myself right now is because the game is still pretty buggy. So it's things like, you know, um, they're 80 there. I know where they are in the game. They're 80 hours into the game.

Uh, and, uh, they, the whole party moves onto a, a, an elevator and then the elevator just moves without them and they all fall into nothing.

Oh, that's just game over. Like, that's it. So, like, it is very, like, satisfying to watch some of those and people seem to be good sports about it. But, yeah, I think tackle that mode at your peril. But, yeah, incredible game. I got to get my hands back in there.

I feel like I just need to wrap it up because I've thought about... You're in Act 3. I'm in Act 3. You should wrap it up. Act 3 is no slouch. It's a big boy. There's a lot of content in Act 3, and it's also the jankiest section of the game. But like I was talking about, there's some character quests. Your party member quests resolve in really interesting ways. I think the overall narrative resolution you know it it narrows a little bit in terms of necessity but there are a bunch of different in terms of narrative necessity but there are a bunch of um different paths you can take i think it's absolutely worth seeing through the i kind of have like a spoilery about it's not like about story kind of it's kind of

about like an interaction that you can have okay ask. Ask the question and I will decide if I want to give you an answer on or off pod. Did you fuck the mind flayer? I have an answer. I'm going to give it to you on pod, but we can maybe bleep it. Okay. I did. Wait, but why would we bleep it? And everyone was mad at me.

So I have to just tell you, it followed me through the end game. People were like, I can't believe you did that. I have to tell you, I've been so frustrated because I've been pursuing a relationship with Shadowheart, right?

And we're at a spot right now where we are in love. But she can't do it. She can't do anything about that yet because she is um pursuing um she's a disciple of char she's like i gotta take care of my my own professional shit before i get her religion is sort of preventing us from doing the deed which is absolutely fine that said there have been opportunities for my for my tav yeah uh who is a uh oh what is it a wood elf um i can't even remember what i was also a half i was a half wood elf i

was a bard my first playthrough my current playthrough i'm a tiefling paladin uh oh yeah wood elf barbarian is what i was and so um you know i get propositioned by the mind flayer i get propositioned by that like hot devil lady oh yes devil lady uh what's her name mizora yeah mizora and then i stumble into this brothel yeah dude just walk out. Turn around. Curious. You're a red-blooded wood elf. You have needs.

Your desires can be satisfied Was I getting the third degree from everybody in the party? Yes. Did I go to camp, leave everybody there, and then go back? Yes.

Shadowheart, I gotta say, very understanding and compassionate partner uh, partner. It feels like the part of the, the, uh, you know, why I think some people think of the Shadowheart as first off, she's such like a, like an important, you know, NPC, but also I think people think of her as like kind of the, uh, default slash canon romance option is because she's written to be permissive of your character exploring other things,

which seems to be kind of like the, to me, my interpretation is the developers kind of saying like, yeah, we know if you do one playthrough, you might want to try these different, see what happens if you do this, see what happens if you do this.

We don't want to necessarily punish you for that. And now having this conversation, punish you yeah for that but now having this conversation we for sure need to just do a full Baldur's Gate 3 chat yeah because we're putting we're we're we're collectively semi in spoiler country right now but yes uh but so I'll stop there and say what I've been playing and then Heather uh great unless Heather you want to you want to jump in and say well I just wanted to say I haven't had the opportunity to sleep with anyone in Baldur's Gate because literally everybody in the entire world of Baldur's Gate is mad at me

yeah like mad at me and again I'm slogging through a game that is only demonstrative of the butterfly effect of I went in a room and I looked

in a box and I have had to kill everybody I've come across since and it is a nightmare yeah I would go so far as to say it's unenjoyable oh my gosh yeah you kind of just want to relax you kind of want to

meet somebody that's like kind of funny and then like kind of hang out with them a little bit everybody everybody on both if i go into an area that's both sides are in conflict i and i talk to one side they're like there she is fucking executor and i'm like oh okay i don't know what i did to these people and i go to the other side and i'm like hey can i like you you've set fire to this thing and they're like you killed so and so die so like there's nowhere for me to go i'm truly a lone wolf in the world of balder's gate also multiple people have left my party left yeah left left yes i was i was reading about how this happens like what might lead someone to leave your party in act one uh and it seems to be uh like yeah you if you commit genocide there's these two party members will leave they don't like that but i'm

not it what there was no point at which i was like, I'm going to murder everybody. Right. It was I'm under attack. Like there was no point. And literally the attacks all started from I wanted to look at a box like that's it. That's all I did. I looked at a box in a fucking room at like early, early game where there's like a paralyzed woman in a building yeah i know exactly what you're talking about yeah and and she's like don't go through this

stuff and i'm like well i want to just look which is what i would have said if there was a dungeon master so i like open the box and then she starts screaming and then like people come come in and i'm like oh my god what just like they attack me and then i gotta kill them and then like people come come in and i'm like oh my god what just like they attack me and then i gotta kill them and then the other people see and it's just been like a avalanche since then like a miserable avalanche where every major character i encounter is upset at me from the go yeah from the drop i mean i would just say like you know walk into a wells fargo and be like i'm just gonna look in the vault for a little bit and see how that goes for you yeah it's like yeah it's like I'm playing

I don't think people at the coffee bean next door would be upset though you know what I mean like but if you're playing a thief like if you're if you're role playing a thief like a thief is gonna be like well is there anything in value in here? And that's all I wanted to know. Just is there anything of value in in this box? There wasn't, by the way. I think it was like grain, like it was nothing. You can you can approach that that any number of ways. But that's one where also and this happens throughout the game that I like is that you can just like heal the person who's you just heal the person who's who's has paralysis. And then that lets that gives you access to that

room that's just like another way you can approach it uh but yeah it's it's i think you just probably want to want to roll a new character at this point especially hearing from last week that you killed carlack who i think is an npc that you would really like the way the character is written i didn't kill carlack carlack attacked me on site carlack attacked me on site yes who i didn't even know was an np or a a party character two party members have left the fucking group i found like a hole in the ground that led to like bandit tunnels walked into the bandit tunnels don't know what i did to them they immediately were like and this wasn't because i was in there they were like it's you you opened the chest a different chest oh yeah i know exactly i know this this as well that's a fun i had that same thing happen where

i'd oh i'd my first playthrough yes i'd i'd i'd open the chest because i just like came across that some gnolls are attacking. Oh, yes. Yeah. And I got the chest and I naturally opened it. And then I found the hideout, which is underneath the Joaquin's Rest, I think it's called. Joaquin's Rest. And that hideout, they were like, I already found the chest.

And I opened it. And they're like, you fool. You've killed us all. And then they just attack you. And it became this huge combat. On my second playthrough, I like found I found the hideout first and then got the quest to retrieve the chest intact. And so I did that and got like a, you know, some some nice payout from it. So, yeah, it's a bunch of different ways to play it.

That one doesn't necessarily turn everyone in the world hostile on you, though. Everybody in the world is hostile to me everybody I think I think you got to re re-roll this bad boy no I'm playing I'm gonna see if I can play all the way through I'm

sure you can well gosh I got it I have to wrap it up because I do I do I loved what I was doing this game I feel like that game also taught me some bad habits and now like

when I'm playing games I'm like mad and also taught me some bad habits, and now, like, when I'm playing games, I'm, like, mad, or, like, a little resentful that I can't save scum the way that I like, because, like, you can, like, very granularly save scum in Baldur's Gate 3, and you can in other games, but not to the degree, especially, like, more, like, older games, it's a little harder to do. It depends on the game game depends on the platform

i mean a lot of a lot of old school pc games i mean like you know you can you can absolutely save scum your way through the whole thing uh i'm i'm stuck at a part right now that it's it's absolutely my fault in the game that i'm playing um i'm playing for the first time ever well not for the first time ever but for the first time with any real seriousness final fantasy 7 wow because i know that i love it uh rebirth is coming out on the leap day this year hey we get a leap day isn't that nice how about that get one what is it every four years yeah anytime we're electing a president in leap day oh great do it on the opposite switch that up I don't need an extra day in the year

where it's the worst year we don't worry about leap day we don't worry about the Olympics we don't worry about a president on set them all a different that's too much of it for a year but anyway I'm playing Final Fantasy 7 and to

my surprise I had never made it out of the tutorial area really which I would consider the Midgar part sure of the story kind of the first

the first half or the first part first act or the first part of the first act yes so once we left Midgar for the first time

I was like there's more to it than this. There's so much in this fucking game. It's just just can we stop down on that real quick, which is that for me, the moment because I played this game on PlayStation one, you know, the year it came out. And the moment when you step out of Midgar, which you spend like whatever the first five to 10 hours in. Yeah, it's like five hours. It's a substantial chunk of gameplay. And then you step out and then you get the world map and you and the theme hits the main theme hits for the first time. Yeah.

For me is like such a memorable gaming moment. I don't know if it hit you the same way, Heather. I so. I I didn't. I don't think I got to out in the regular world with Final Fantasy VII. My first real like, oh, this game has its, its hooks in me was Final Fantasy VIII. VII was like, okay. But VIII, I was like, holy shit, this is awesome.

And you get access to the world map very early in that game. And I didn't even know, I don't think I knew that there was a world map in Final Fantasy VII. Which I, you know, got and then I was like, this is nice. Okay. And then, also, it's good to, it's important to note, Final Fantasy games now come out like once every six years. Yes. Final Fantasy VII was 97. Final Fantasy V now come out like once every six years. Yes. Final Fantasy VII was 97. Final Fantasy VIII was 99.

Final Fantasy IX was 2000. And Final Fantasy X was 2001. So if you didn't like a Final Fantasy game back in the day, another one was around the corner. Now you have to be like pot committed to the lifestyle of Final Fantasy XV has to fill out years of my life in order to like be 16 was the most recent one you could say no i chose my words correctly i chose them correctly

anyway i'm really glad that you're that you i i have a save for final Fantasy VII on my PlayStation, which is right before the final fight, and I am not powered up enough to kill the final boss. And I think it's permanently ruined because I think I'm in a save area where there are no more random encounters that you can trigger. So this is sort of the issue that I'm having. I'm in the Temple of the Ancients. I've sort of blasted through this thing because I did find out that this game does have some of the modern conveniences that are in the pixel remasters. You can turn off random encounters. You can basically always have a full limit meter and things like that. Basically always have a full limit meter and things like that.

But in other Final Fantasy games where I've done exactly that, I'll make more stops at stores and buy items and stuff. I didn't do that for this, and I'm at the boss in the Temple of the Ancients, and I keep getting turned into a frog, and I don't have, what is it, Maiden's Kiss or whatever? That sounds right. I have a potion to turn me into not frog, and I keep getting smoked, and I don't think I can leave the Temple of the Ancients.

I might be able to. I'll have to, by the time this comes out hopefully I'll have gone past this point so just that I'm saying that just so that everybody doesn't tag me and be like this is what you have to do I'm figuring it out I got it I'm gonna go home and do this literally when we're done

but I'm stuck there but I will say I'm really really enjoying the game. I truly just didn't know what it was, really. Like, obviously, I'm familiar with Sephiroth. I'm familiar with Cloud and the rest. Tifa. Who else is there?

Aerith. Aerith. Barret. Sure. I didn't know Red XIII. Oh, yeah. I didn't really know Red XIII, and I didn't know Kate Sith. Oh, yeah.

And let me tell you, I'm not really happy with Kate Sith right now. Wow. Oh. Because you're a big cat lad. Big cat lad. And two prominent cat party members. Got double-crossed by my new new friend Kate Sith. Oh boy. Maybe the word Sith should have been a

clue and... Wow. Anyway. All this to say, I'm enjoying it. I was gonna just go ahead and jump into Seven Remake, but then I was like, I feel like I'm doing myself a disservice. I feel like I should eat my vegetables

before I have a little. But I also like vegetables. The idea of somebody in the year 2024 saying that Final Fantasy VII is vegetables is pretty incredible. We've come so far. It's obviously a great game. Many games stand on its shoulders. It's totemic. It's iconic. It's like it's like it's it's it's totemic. It's like it's it's iconic.

It's a it's a huge game. But I think in the year 2024, it's it's not as fun to play as maybe a Final Fantasy 15 or something. Right. Like it's a little slower. It's like the turn base part of it is like it's tough and like it looks bad. But now and I will say I was flying around on the fucking that airplane that you get. And I was like, I think I'm going to be sick. Like it was making me ill.

Like it was making me nauseous to when I was looking for the Temple of the Ancients. Yeah. The way it kind of the airship kind of scrolls all over the globe. It's I get what you're saying. It could maybe be a little dizzy. Maybe perhaps on a on a higher resolution, on a modern resolution in particular. Yeah, and I'm playing it on Switch too,

by the way, which is great. I'm glad you're getting into it. Yeah, and hopefully I roll credits on that and then go straight into remake so then I can go straight into Rebirth. If there's time, maybe I'll do Crisis Core as well. Wow.

I'm trying to be as Final Fantasy VII as I can. That's me. I love it. I really love this. It makes me really happy. Thank you. I'm having fun. So how many Final Fantasies does this make for you now?

Obviously 16 we've talked about, but you started playing the Pixel Remasters back from 1. And I know you played 1 back in the day. Yeah, I played 1 and two back in the day. I started with the pixel remasters at three, even though I played three on the DS. Right. That was like kind of like a remake remaster. So it's different. And maybe one of my favorite DS games.

I loved it. I started with four. Didn't finish four. I think I got about 10 hours into four or something. Need to go back stopped completely jumped straight into 16 and that's basically it and then Kingdom Hearts games I've seen a fair amount of Final Fantasy 9 played yeah watching my uncle play Final Fantasy 9 because I'm familiar with those characters

I think 6 among the Super Nintendo generation is worth playing through 4 you probably got a sense of I love 4 but I don't know if you necessarily need to go back to that I think 5 is worth messing around with a little bit just for the job system but it's kind of cool but it has

a less interesting narrative than a little bit thinner. But yeah, I love that you're on this mission to play through them. I also, back in the day, I played through like half of 10. Like on the PlayStation 2, I played through like half of it,

but I never finished it. But I'd like to do them all. I probably won't get to the MMOs. 10 really does feel a bit like the final fantasy like if you were gonna like like give the era a tone 10 feels like it ended a like an era of like a certain kind of tone because 11 was a departure 12 was a departure 13 was a departure departure. 14, obviously. 15. They're all very, very different, I think, from a sort of... Again, it's a tone that kind of follows from...

There's like the 1 through 6 tone, and then there's the 7 through 10 tone. And now I don't think there's a consistent tone to a final fantasy game i i think that's a great point and well said and i think also in terms of combat systems and just just sort of gameplay in general things like the sphere grid and the way that final fantasy 10's combat worked kind of felt like oh this is the final iteration of this sort of you know uh this kind of classic final fantasy gameplay and everything senses kind of had some its own little spin on it um heather what have you been playing well i'm gonna be i'm gonna save what i've been playing for our our like topic du jour uh because i i feel like that's that's why I've been playing what I've been playing. But I will say that, you know, the analog pocket updated its, what would you call them, filters.

So they now apply to all of the retro cores that you can sideload into the system. And you can make classic games look like they're being played on a Trinitron. And that is, uh, the only thing standing in between me and enjoying like classic games, like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI on my analog pocket. So I'm, uh, enjoying that. Um, but then, uh, as mentioned, we had a big, uh, Fortnite event on the discord. So I've been playing a lot of Fortnite, uh, both in, uh both in part because of the Discord and then on the side with my own squad. The game right now is, somebody asked me on Twitter and I think also in the discord how I'm enjoying this season and I have to say last season was Fortnite OG where they stripped out everything and brought it all the way back down to its roots and there wasn't a lot of cover and it was just like a very very

procedural gritty like you had to have great position in order to progress through the game the game now is just a game for snipers and i am a sniper that's like if if i was going to say i have a class in the game it's sniper is my class and has always been my class and i'm gonna say some um something a little uh i think the snipers are overpowered in this season. And I and I've been looking at online discourse about the game on Reddit or wherever. And I think that's the general consensus is that the snipers are overpowered in this season. And I think it is taking it is it's removing a little bit of the uh the feeling of adrenaline and victory when you do get a good sniper shot off but it's also making the game unfair for a lot of more close range

battles like you can land a couple lucky sniper shots because the um aim down sight is so fast on a sniper uh and the and the bullet lag is so so it's so dramatically reduced from previous seasons that it it feels a little feels a little op i'm not gonna put down the gun obviously but i'm hoping that right uh the next update to the game uh introduces some what was that no just i'm not gonna put down the gun is a funny thing to say. But but yeah, and I don't know, I'm doing on a personal journey. I've decided to start playing ranked Fortnite and I don't play ranked Fortnite in squads. I only play ranked Fortnite in solos and I'm enjoying that journey. I think I'm platinum three now which is nice uh not anywhere near the top but certainly not anywhere near the bottom because i just

started i'm also enjoying uh fortnight rocket racing which is the now the new built-in racing game in fortnight it's there's too much fucking fortnight i know rochelle plays fortnight as well because i didn't realize that we moved on from the og fortnight season uh rochelle are you playing the current season and what are your feelings i am playing it and i'm so happy that og fortnight is gone yeah og fortnight suck do you like the do you feel like it's like the sniper meta like do you do you like playing like that yeah 100 um i mean you can there's like mod benches now so you can get like a four-time scope on your sniper rifle whoa and yeah it's just it's the way to win what skin are you using currently eminem that's so funny

i dipped my toes back in it when they added the new stuff, and I checked out Lego Fortnite. Honestly, not to be saying all these different things should require its own episode, but I think we could revisit it just with some of the stuff that they've added. Because the Rocket Racing rules, it's really fun. Lego Fortnite is really awesome.

And Fortnite Festival is uh the like harmonics uh rock band in in fortnight game uh and it's it's great it's it's just uh it's exactly like rock band but with no plastic instruments yet i'm hearing that there'll be uh there's a plan for that at some point but i've just been like playing as Ash from the evil dead. Just like playing like Billie Eilish songs in Fortnite festival. I was like, this is great. This is really fun.

I love that. I can, I can play that all day. I'm down. I'm down to talk Fortnite some more. I haven't revisited in a while, but I have a talk, talk to over the holidays,

spent time with both of my nephews, both of whom play Fortnite. It seems like every night wow kind of got the you know the whatever the that that generation's perspective on it um but one thing that came from both of them was just like i don't understand what no build mode is for and i had to be like oh well that's for old people like we have trouble with the building it It's hard for us. So it's like a more accessible mode. They're like, oh, okay. And then they were like, go away. Why are you squatting outside our window?

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That's code getplayed50 at factormeals.com slash getplayed50 to get 50% off. All right, let's talk about cloud gaming, which is a topic that's unfortunately in the news as of this record via a gamesindustry.biz piece. This is actually our buddy Stephen Ray Morris, a listener of the pod, a great podcaster and podcast producer in his own right, brought this to my attention. But the headline I will read, the new Ubisoft Plus and getting gamers comfortable with not owning their games. This is an interview with Philippe Tremblay, who's a Ubisoft executive. I'll just read a little bit of this quote. One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to,

a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That's the consumer shift that needs to happen. They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. I mean, I'm sure we got comfortable with that, but that just was the choice that was presented, the non-choice that was presented to us. There's a transformation that's been a bit slower

to happen in games. So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game um you know i wrote some bullet points but i'll just read one bullet point i wrote is just i hate this yeah yeah because i think that's like that's bullshit it's it sucks and it's stupid. I've fully gone back to physical. I've gone back to physical media in a big way in the last, in 2023, continuing on into 2024. I haven't bought a digital game in some time. Well, it's bad because I live in an apartment, so I'm running out of space.

But I've gone back physical completely and the only way that I like I don't agree with that at all but the Xbox Game Pass like service is that and I'm comfortable

with that because I didn't buy the game I'm paying for the service to play the game to lease the game for them for the time that I have Xbox Game Pass. But if I own if I purchase a game, if I spend money on a singular title, that's that should be mine. That should be you should own that. Yeah, I mean, I think I think this is more just like talking about even removing the optionality of being able to purchase something. And it's like that's kind of a bummer. I mean, that is a bummer. But, you know, we've seen this happen with with movies and TV where there's just a lot of lost media out there. And, yeah, of course, that's always been the case to some degree.

But it's like these things, some some things have never been given physical releases and then they're just pulled from streaming services and there's no way to buy them digitally, so there's just no way legally to consume them. Now, part of the state of gaming with all of its myriad platforms and a bunch of stuff that you just can't play anymore on original hardware with any sort of ease, a lot of stuff already is lost. Yes. But as platforms have kind of like as there has been a little bit of convergence and a little bit more platform neutrality and a little bit more of stuff being released on everything on PC and Xbox and PlayStation and switch, it would be become a bummer if some of that stuff starts getting pulled just by a publisher's whim. Yeah, it's it's it's it's just so bad because you see that stuff to happen. Yeah, it's just so bad because you see that stuff too. You see it happen a lot in the TV and movie space in particular. You see stuff just completely disappear.

Sony just reversed. They were going to... I think they reversed it. If you bought stuff digitally on their PlayStation store that was like a TV show or movie, they were like this service is going away but it was with a select it was one of those weird things was with a select library that they'd licensed from like some some particular studios i think it was discovery yeah it was okay so it was with discovery specifically so it included a lot of like

and i don't know who's buying you know a, a season of Ice Road Truckers on the PlayStation platform. But if you did buy that, you should have it. Yes. It should not be a thing that kind of goes away. And I think just like there was enough outcry where they reversed that. I had to have a big conversation one time with my with my mom because the she bought. She bought. She paid money.

Yeah. To have to own. i'm using air quotes the live action mulan movie on disney plus when that was an option she's like oh good i own this so now we can just watch this whenever yeah and i had to be like you know that it's just gonna be on it's gonna mean to disney plus in like two months and it's also going to be there so you all you did was bought an early ticket for it basically you can't take that off of disney plus and use it and watch it somewhere else in a different platform yeah and she was like no i own this i was like okay cancel your disney plus subscription and see what they do with that you're not gonna get this movie it was a huge

thing and she was just like no no, no, no. I had to. I only got into it with her because I was like, you have to stop doing this. And also, what are you doing? What are we doing here? You can't. You can't. So if you own a copy of the movie Amelie on Apple, like, yes, a major like it's not like, oh, I bought Amelie on Roku Plus in 2008. Like if you buy the movie Amelie on app on the Apple store on like iTunes or whatever, they no longer have access to Amelie.

So you it shows up in your library, but you can only watch it up to the point where you last watched it. And for me, that's about 75 percent of the way through the film. So, like, I can never watch Amelie ever again, even though I purchased Amelie whenever the fuck I purchased it. That is, that's why not owning the thing is dangerous because there are tangible real world examples of purchasing the thing, which is technically leasing the thing and then not having access to it in the future. Like I will, I know that Final Fantasy First Soldier was a live services game and there wasn't exactly a one player mode, but that doesn't change the fact that it represented a huge chunk of my playing experience a year and a half ago, I think. And I can never, ever, ever, ever, ever play it again, which is fucking crazy. Like, yeah, you have to hope for for a fan server going up or something.

I really think that the difference between, and maybe this explains some of the reluctance of gamers to shift to this rent and lease model, is that we spend an enormous amount of time with the media that we are engaging with in video games. It's not a two-hour film. It's more akin to a book because you spend an enormous time reading a book. And the idea that you could buy a book, read a book, have an incredible emotional experience with that book, and then someday it would just disappear from your shelf and you

wouldn't be able to go to a library or purchase it or have access to that book ever again like but final fantasy 6 is like a 70 hour game like to to to only give you access to that in a short period of your life and then never again that's why i think that's why gamers are like no fuck this i'm not going to spend all this time with these characters and love this world and then someday you can revoke my permission to use it that's nuts yeah and i think it's you know there there's an important distinguish uh distinguishing uh you know kind of line of demarcation to have between, you know, online games, service games and, you know, MMOs, things like League of Legends or Fortnite, which are free to play, but supported by purchases or season passes or, you know, an MMO like World of Warcraft

or Final Fantasy 14, where there's a subscription fee, these kind of ongoing experiences versus a single player experience that at a certain point, yeah, games get patched and updated as in the initial releases, some of them get supported for years, but at a certain point it is in a finished state and you should be able to just play that thing indefinitely. You should have permanent permission to be able to do that. But I think we're reaching a point where even if you buy a physical copy of a game as I bought all of my PS5 games physically, it's like you're

getting a disc with a copy of the game that needs to be updated and at a certain point in the future, they are going to stop supporting that and you're just not going to have a playable disc with you're not going to have a version of the game that you can play offline.

So it's interesting, though, it's kind of like you want to have some safeguards against that, but also it just all the pressures seem to be pushing towards this eventual sort of thing where, hey, it's just going to keep getting worse and we're not going to have any sort of choice and whatever. We'll be leasing all our furniture someday. You just won't own anything. They're just going to figure that out too. But all that said, Heather, you talked about a game that you wanted to discuss in the cloud gaming aspect of the portion of the show. What is that game and what can you tell us about it?

Well, it's a game and system. So I got the PlayStation Portal in part because as uh finish up my treatment here uh for uh this this recurrence of cancer that i had uh there are weeks where i'm pretty much bedridden and uh i i initially dunked on the playstation portal last year being like what the fuck who cares this is stupid stupid yeah and now i am so grateful that it exists um because i i really really it's it's a surprisingly great machine and also here's a here's a little a little side bit a little side bit uh not too long ago video game systems had music that played uh like, you know, the Wii channel that has just the song that's playing. There's like a lot of musical cues in older game systems and in operating systems. And the Vita had a sort of music that played the entire time. I think the PSP did too.

The PlayStation Portal has a song. and i fucking love it like i love that it exists i'm like i'm like oh yeah i remember when booting up a game system like gave you some music or like at least a musical cue to like begin and the playstation 5 doesn't do that like it's just like on or off um Beep. What? It goes like beep. Yeah, it is just kind of a beep. Beep. Kind of a retro beep. And I feel like when I have the opportunity to play video games, you know, I have my fucking game system set up in my garage, as was mentioned earlier in the show. So I have to leave my house. And if I'm going to

go to my garage to play a video game, I'm already there. It's going to be Fortnite because I've already, you know, I've committed to leaving my wife in another building to go play video games. So let's just, you know, like fully sink into the sludge, like become a bog person. But if I'm playing in a house with the PlayStation Portal, one, Fortnite is not a game you can play on the portal because the lag is too bad. Like you can't play, you can play, you can't play an online game against other people that are so dependent on your ping on the portal with any hope for success, which means that my PlayStation 5 library has opened

up to me and all these games that I have sidelined in the past two years while I've become addicted to Fortnite are now re-available to me. So I've been playing God of War. Fuck yes. Wow. to me so i've been playing god of war fuck yes wow god of war ragnarok and it is so pleasurable to play it on the portal offline madhav badaka said i don't even turn on my tv anymore yeah that's right so i watch the tv but if i'm playing you know i watch like tv yeah god of war is not a cloud game but it's a it's delivered to me via remote play and and cloud gaming and i'm stunned at how good it looks on the portal because like also there's like a a sort of mental preparation that you you have when you turn on your ps5 and you're sitting in front of a tv you expect it to have a certain fidelity but you don't

expect that when you're staring at a handheld gaming system right you've it's only through remote play on the ps4 were you ever able to experience like modern graphics on a portable Also, at least in my experience, the PS5 portal setup is smoother than the Steam Deck. And I don't know if they're graphically comparable if a Steam Deck is a portable PlayStation 5. But man, it just looks so fucking good. And I am so grateful that it exists, especially right now. So that's what i've been playing is more ragnarok it is so you talked about lag with online games this is a question for both of you because you both spent a lot of time using the portal but like you're not feeling that over

your wi-fi as you're streaming these games from your your ps5s, and I think it's just... For single-player games. It's going to depend... That's going to depend on the quality of your... Of the Wi-Fi in your home, your proximity, and then also, like... I would guess... Well, first of all, you can't even really use it at, like, cafes and, like, some hotels because if there's, like, a...

You have to agree to agree to like terms and services type thing on some wi-fi's which are which often is the case in a public wi-fi situation uh it doesn't allow it doesn't let you do that on the portal because it doesn't have a it doesn't have a browser but they there is a browser somewhere in there it just doesn't come up for that for some reason but i. But I have no problem. I've played all of Alan Wake 1 on it. I played some of Control and some of Alan Wake 2 on it. And I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 on it.

It plays great. I've had no lag, anything like that. Yeah, there is a tiny bit of lag. But once you adjust to it, it just feels like the game like it's not like a variable lag. It's like a sort of like a permanent feeling to the game that is like in a game like God of War, I don't think I would be able to do any of like the high end combat challenges with it. But like for like, you know, going around the world, totally fine.

A game like Baldur's Gate three, there's not going to be any conceptual lag that you experience. Like it's going, because the game is all turn-based, like it's not, you won't feel it. Sure. So I don't know.

I, I really like it. And I was shocked at how won't feel it. Sure. So. I don't know. I I really like it. And I was shocked at how much I liked it. And I was also shocked at how how how kind it is to use. Like it feels like they really put playability above the visual aesthetic of the machine itself, which is not typically Sony's forte. Like Sony will be like, fuck yeah, we made a perfect rectangle of black glass. The buttons, you have to hold both of your arms above your head in order to like press the buttons.

But it's an incredible looking device. And that's not the case of the portal portal looks like a weird little boy like it is a strange tablet with like a broken ps5 controller snapped to each side of it but when you're actually using the device it's like oh this is ergonomically pleasant and and it's a good i can't believe i like it i really like it it's really great uh i wish i wish it had the option for cloud stuff because a whole part of the playstation plus service depending on what tier you have you have access to their classics catalog which are cloud-based so like games from the play PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era, PlayStation 1,

are all cloud-based and they don't let you do that. But it's a Wi-Fi device. You should be able to just then log in that way or whatever and play things from the cloud. But it won't let you. But this is like the whole issue with cloud gaming in general

is that like it c it seeds more control to publishers and media companies in terms of what you are and aren't allowed to do with your hardware that you've bought and with your games that you should have um some some ownership of uh you mentioned baldur's gate 3 heather and i should i i feel like it's worth noting in the context of this discussion that this consensus 2023 game of the year uh this you know multi-million selling um you know grossing you know 500 million dollars on steam alone a game is fully offline which is the thing you've talked about yes and it's it's the kind of thing where big big it's larian technically like a kind of an indie publisher i guess but like it's it's the kind of thing where big, it's Larian technically like a kind of an indie publisher,

I guess, but like it's, it's, it's the, the, everyone's going to, all the, the publishers rushing to imitate this are going to take the wrong

lessons and no one is going to be like, well, we should make our game offline as well. Cause it seems to be, there's some consumer resistance to DRM and some eagerness to, you know, like people will buy something if it's, if it's good enough and not pirate it, even if there's even if it's playable offline fully,

they're not going to do that. Like they're completely not going to emulate that care, that aspect of it. But it is interesting that, you know, that that in the context of this discussion, in the context of this trend, that that happens to be the case with BG3. I think if I'm thinking about this, trying to think of the positives of this trend, and Matt, you already touched on one, which is it is a tremendous value for consumers in the same way that Netflix is a great value for consumers.

Yes. Like it's just you're getting a lot more content for one flat rate. Spotify, an incredible value for consumers. Obviously, this has led to labor being screwed. But if you're just thinking of it from the perspective of not the people who make this stuff, but the people who consume it, yeah, it is you are getting more stuff for for cheaper. So I guess that's a positive. I do think there's some some pluses to indie games having a wider audience through these distribution models like, you know, something like when Netflix released into the breach on their gaming platform that kind of breathe new life into this game. And hopefully create that created a nice payday for the developers, I assume.

So, you know, those sorts of things I think are are helpful. I think not having to upgrade hardware as frequently is another thing you know uh but i i think they'll find a way to for us to keep buying new what new playstation portals or whatever the fuck they want to sell a friend of mine speaking of not having to upgrade hardware yeah a friend of mine was very into destiny 2 for a long time and you can play Destiny 2 via the cloud and I was like well how do you play it what systems do you have and he was like oh I don't have I don't have one I played on

Amazon Luna and I was like you wow I was the only person I've ever met that played that one had Amazon Luna and played only Destiny 2 it was the only game they played they loved playing Destiny 2 on Amazon Luna and played only Destiny 2. It was the only game they played. They loved playing Destiny 2 on Amazon Luna, of all things.

I think that there is a lot of privilege at play by saying, you know, we should be able to own our games because games are fucking expensive and systems are fucking expensive. And there's a lot of people out there who, you know, are barricaded from video gaming because of the initial price point. And I do think that it is important to cite their access to games. But like Nick said, it almost always comes at the expense of the people making the content. Like it almost always is like labor gets fucked when you are leasing content to consumers because it's known that all of these streaming companies were the ones pressuring, say, the Writers Guild to accept a shitty deal this summer when the Writers Guild went on strike because they were like, we don't want to concede to the demands of the people making the material. We only want to put market pressure on people to stream their content and never own it again. I don't know.

I feel like there should be. There should be like I wish that there was. The problem is whenever it comes to like ownership or leasing or any of this shit like you've got. Like you've got all of the rental pressure on on housing in the United States is the only way that certain subsets of the American population can live of a house, you raise the rent and squeeze them until they can no longer afford the very place that they're able to live. And in the same way, like fucking Disney Plus has increased in price like three times in the last two years. So I don't know. It's it's a shitty thing. I wish I wish we I wish the Internet didn't exist sometimes, but then neither would our show, so I don't know.

That's true. Eh, maybe still for the best. We should wrap up this discussion just because of our schedule today, but any other thoughts on this? Any other thoughts on cloud gaming? The only time I ever thought it was good was when I was playing Yakuza 0 at the beach,

like on my backbone i was like this is insane that this is an option yes uh and and you know what what yeah what a value like it was just amazing but um you know uh i i don't think i i'm skeptical of i'm skeptical of cloud stuff just in general because it's you know it the day the internet goes down, for whatever reason, it's all gone. All of it. But, you know, every time that I move, and I don't have internet for a day for some reason because, like, it hasn't happened to me since the last couple times I've moved but when I've moved in the past and didn't plan ahead and didn't have internet for like two days the one thing that always helped me out was my dvds and like my uh lord of the rings dvd specifically like oh I have to kill a lot of time because I don't have netflix yeah I'm just gonna watch all of lord of the rings um so I physical media get back into

it I think it's a I think it's a great idea just for everything. Books, movies, games, music. Do what you gotta do, but make sure you actually have your stuff. Alright, let's, shall we do a segment? Let's do it. Let's do a segment. I have some games, I have a list of games right here, and Nick and Heather have to tell me exactly how big they are.

This is the size is right. So this is and I probably do it. I may be confused about what bigness is here. Are we talking about the length of the campaign? Are we talking about the size of it on disk? We're talking about, yeah, file size. OK, file size. What a strange segment.

Okay, here we go. We did it once and everybody liked it. And because we've made our list of games, our top 10 games last week, some of these games are on those lists. Oh, wow, okay. So these are games we're all pretty familiar with. So let's see if you guys can tell me

the file size for The Last of Us on PlayStation 3. Okay. And is this, because it's called The Size is Right, I assume this is Price is Right rules, where it's closest without going over? That's right. Okay. Hmm. I have a guess.

Yeah, go for it. 23.5 gigabytes. go over 23.5 gigabytes Okay 23.5 gigabytes On the board I'll say 12.1 gigs 12.1 gigs okay Nick took the way under Heather is closest

The answer is 30 gigabytes 30 gigabytes for The Last of Us on Playstation 3 Isn't that something That's wild I thought there was a chance that it's, you know, it was one of those things that's smaller than you think just because of last-gen assets. But yeah, it is a very detail-rich game. Now, is that from the PS3 version?

That's right. Wow. What is the capacity of a Blu-ray? I don't know, actually. It's kind of interesting to think about. It's got to be close to the capacity. Yeah. I would think it was pushing it. Yeah.

For sure. Okay, how about this next one? All right. This next one, Kingdom Hearts 2. One of the ones near and dear to me. All right, so this game was on a DVD. Hmm. So that was like, what was the DVD capacity?

6.4 gigs? Something like that? I'm going to guess 650 megabytes. Good guess. I think it had some, you know, some voice and some rendered cinematics there that pushed it a little bit higher. But I won't just go $1 more. I'm going to guess 3.0 gigs, even. And Heather, what did you say?

650 megabytes. Nick, I'm sorry to say that you went over. Damn. And Heather is closest yet again. 828 megabytes. Wow, okay. Under a gig. That's two points for Heather.

None for Nick, but still anyone's game. How about this? A game we all love. Disco Elysium. Assume we're doing Final Cut. Yeah, let's go Final Cut. With all the added voiceover. Yeah.

Okay. I feel like this one is, I'm going to say 11 gigs. 11 gigs on the board. I feel like it's bigger than that. I'm going to say 9 gigs. 9 gigs. Unfortunately, 2 under, Heather. The answer, 16.167 gigabytes.

Wow, okay. It's on the board. All right. I'm going to smoke a cigarette and do crank in celebration. No, no, no. Okay. How about this right here? Cuphead.

What is the file size for Cuphead? Hmm. Not a slight game, but not too crazy. Yeah, gorgeous art. You know, like a great score. But those music files aren't necessarily the thing that's going to bloat your disc size all that much. But it's also, this is tough. I think this one could be like sneaky small, like a little bit smaller than you think.

I'm going to say four gigs. Okay, four gigs on the board. Heather, what do you think? I'm going to say, I'm going to say something insane. I'm going to say one gig. Heather is the closest without going over. Wow.

It's 1.9 gigabytes. Wow, okay. Wow! So it is a reasonably small game by modern standards. Yeah, pretty small. Wow.

Here's a not small game. Okay. Baldur's Gate 3. I should know this one. I definitely had a clear hard drive space to download it. And I think it's gotten bigger from all the updates that it's gotten. But I don't know what it's at currently. Heather's got a guess? I can go first if you want to.

Yeah, go for it. 160 gigs. 160 on the board. Let's see. I mean, I've got a 500 gig solid state drive in my PC, and I don't think it's occupying, you know, what, like 40% of it? I don't think it's that much. I don't think it's that big, but it is big.

I'm just going to cut that guess in half and say 80 gigs. Heather went over the answer for general new system requirements for this game. If you're installing on PC, 150 gigs. Wow! I almost said 150.

150 gigs. On PlayStation 5, it varies, but it's still over 100. Big Chunky Guy. Big Chunky Guy. That's a huge game. So now, look what Daddy did. Oh, God. The Big Chunky Guy.

Where did we just talk about that? On the podcast. Okay. I forgot. I was like, I hate hearing it from you. Another episode of the podcast we recorded. Okay, last one. What's the score right now?

It is two. You have two. Heather has three. Okay. So we can either tie it up or Heather could roll ahead here. Or we both go over. Or we both go over and then Heather's the winner. Okay, got it.

There are three outcomes. Sonic the Hedgehog 2. What is the three outcomes. Sonic the Hedgehog 2. What is the file size of Sonic the Hedgehog 2? What was the capacity of a Genesis cartridge? Because it was one of those things where it was in megabits, not megabytes, right? So, like, this is, like, this is one of those games where it seems to be shockingly small. I'm going to guess 128K. Oh my

God. I'm going to guess 1 megabyte. 128K? 1 megabyte? The answer 50. 50 MB. 50 megabytes? Wait, but that's megabits, right? Not megabytes? It must be megabits.

This is according to my research. So what does megabits, right? Not megabytes? It must be megabits. This is according to my research. So what does megabits translate to in terms of K? Okay, he's trying to get K in here. Or in terms of megabytes. Because Heather's definitely going to be over if it's megabits. Right? But see, then this is the thing. I'm seeing here 55.38 MB.

No way. That's huge. But it's not specifying what version is the thing. There's so many versions of it. It could be Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the DS or something, you know? Okay. Which uses the block system. Well, this calculator I have, what was your guess, Heather?

One megabyte. Okay. So I think you actually do get this, because one megabit is, Heather? One megabyte. Okay. So I think you actually do get this because one megabit is an eighth of a megabyte. So that's about six megabytes total if we're talking about 50 megabits. Wow. So Heather takes it and Heather's our winner. Congrats, Heather. Of the price. Oops. I mean, the size is right. Yeah, let's not get sued. No, no. The size is right. That's it.

That's it. We can't do that. Right. Don't. Can I get like an eighth of a second of a fail horn for losing? All right. That's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

You can check out her on social media yard underscore underscore sard our music is by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com our art is by duckbrigadedesign

duckbrigade.com and check out our paywall on our Patreon patreon.com slash get played we have our full back catalog of

played episodes available there everything before our affiliation with HeadGum as well as our show Get Animated, where we are continuing our watch of Pluto. Yeah, that's right. And I think this week, we

are talking about episode five of Pluto. Is that right? I think it's four. Ah, four? Fuck! Fuck! Alright, well, we're talking about episode 4 of Pluto on our

our Get Animated Sister podcast it's available at patreon.com slash get played that's where you can listen to that it's a I don't know it's a fun show it's neat to hear us talk about anime we have a good time I sure like talking about anime

and I sure like talking about anime and I sure like talking about the show with the two of you. Yeah. And some of the listeners of Get Anime don't even watch the shows. They just come to listen to us talk about them.

And that's nice and we love that. Yeah. And guys, I think the cloud got played. What do you think about that? Yeah, the cloud got played, which eventually means

we will got played. What do you think about that? Yeah, the cloud got played, which eventually means we will get played.