Get Played - Hades, Hades 2, and Roguelikes

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

The gang talks about Manor Lords, Magic the Gathering Arena and Rocksmith before diving into their discussion about Hades, Hades 2 in early access and the Roguelike genre in general. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod.Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com.Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com.Check out our Anime watch-along 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/getplayedWanna 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.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Welcome to Get Played, your one stop shoe for good... Uh, okay, can we... I messed up. Can we do that again? Yeah, let's do it again. Great. Welcome to Get Played, one-stop show for good games

Good good games bad games. I guess you got it. I don't know why I'm having trouble. No, you're fine All right I I feel like I keep failing this intro and I we got to get through it a little farther that time though So you're making progress. All right. Here we go Welcome to get played your one-stop show good games, bat, not bat games, this isn't Batman. This isn't Batman. Do you wanna, I'm having like a, yeah go ahead.

Can I try it? Can I actually just read what you have? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to Get Played, your one stop show for good games, bad games, and all the games in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather and, okay well I'm not Heather, so I fucked up big time.

Okay, that was close though. You almost got through it. You did good though. You got through almost the whole paragraph. Yeah. I'm your host Heather and Kim. Okay, well I'm not Heather, so I fucked up big time. That was close though. You did good though. You got through almost the whole paragraph. Yeah. I'm tired. Nick, do you wanna? Yeah, I'll take a crack at it. All right, here you go.

All right, here we go. All right. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. Nope, nope, nope. I went back into muscle memory there, I'm sorry. Oh fuck, that's so embarrassing. God, can't believe I said that shit in front of you. It was disgusting.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Welcome to How Did This Get Played? The show where we talk about bad ga- No. That was our old format. That was an easy mistake to make. That was an easy mistake. Yeah.

Welcome to Get Played! Ah, ah! Yeah, now you just sound like a different guy. Let's just reset it again. We'll be fine. Matt, you do it, you do it. Welcome to Get Played, your one stop show for good games, bad games, and all the games in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Matt Apodaca, along with my fellow hosts, Nick Weiger and Heather Ann Schmambel. Fuck!

That's me, Heather Ann Schmambel. No! Fuck! I got it. I got it 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 Nick Weiger along my fellow house Heather and Campbell. I'm the I'm your fellow host Heather and Campbell fellow host Matt Alpadaca Hello to exactly one person Fuck god damn it. We made it really far that time though. That was a really good run

It was a great run really really good run. I got some really good bonuses on that run Yeah, my I got some killer boons going into this next one. All right one more. We got this one. We got this one all right All right one more we got this one. All right We're gonna get played the ones up show for games for games and all the games in between it's time to get played I'm a host I'll get Along with my fellow host Nick Weigert That's me Nick Weigert. I'm here with our third host Matt Apodaca. Hello everyone I guess it we're doing really good with Doug.. We should probably just stick it out with Dougette. Yeah, Dougette fucking crush it.

Way to go, Dougette. You wanna see my extra hair? Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahaha!

We beat the shit out of an immortal skeleton and get horny as we discuss Hades, Hades 2, and Roguelites this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. Every host of Resident Evil Merchant, along with my fellow host, Nick Weigar. That's me, Nick Weigar, and I am here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello everyone. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Get Played played a show where we used to talk about bad games

Then they got tired of it and we talk about good games And then we got tired about that and so we started talking about any games we want hey um yeah Resident Evil Merchant that was great. That was really good Then did I land the part? It was not an open audition. No. Appreciate you being on time, but we really would like, we'd like Heather, our normal.

I escorted her out the back. This is it, the one you've been waiting for. The episode where the Resident Evil Merchant's here the entire time. You're just gonna be here? The whole merchants here the entire time. You're just gonna be here? The whole time! The whole time? The whole time!

Cause I was honestly excited we were gonna talk about Hades today, it's one of my favorite games of all time. I'm excited to talk about Hades, I played it all week! How did you play it? On a Switch! Oh you have it? Okay, I didn't realize you had a Switch. I got a Switch, I have big hands but I got a. All right, the original one was a jumbo kind. Is there um, I don't know

I don't want to give you what is there an amount of money that we can give you know to make Yeah, I heard you guys doing that intro I had Heather a five spot and let her get out of the bag. That's a lot of money. There is an amount of money. For her, yeah, not for me. For her it was five dollars. Five dollars! She maybe just wanted to leave.

Yeah, probably. After you guys kept screwing up the intro. Anyway. Wasn't all on us. So, Hades, huh? Yeah, it's Hades, it's a great game and Hades 2 is in early access right now. We're gonna talk about Hades 2 a little bit,

but I think we're more just generally going to talk about Hades and the franchise and the genre in which it exists. Roguelikes. Yeah. Roguelikes, yeah. Is the original rogue a game? Yes, there was a Rogue. The etymology of it comes from that,

and that was like a very, very early computer game. And it kind of established the format of, you know, die, live, die, repeat, basically. Kind of hard to get the Resident Evil merchant out of here. They asked such a good question. And do you know, do you know? I'm gonna be a home runner, I swear to God. I'm gonna be a Ohtani of the podcast today.

Do you know if the original Roguelike was like due to programming limitations or was it like the choice, an artistic choice? I believe it was a little from column A, a little from column B. But you know, I wish I was more prepped with all of this research. But yes, I do know that the original Rogue game,

which came out in the early 1980s, I believe, was basically just sort of like established the template for a game where you'd see how far you could progress, but you're ultimately going to fail and give it and have another shot at going through it with a different sort of procedurally generated dungeon. Was that game considered fancy at the time? I don't know if it was considered like fancy, but it was certainly considered innovative.

Well, because like Pac-Man is the same map all the time. It's not like the... Right, it wasn't procedurally generated. It's not like, oh, where am I? It's not like that. I mean, the thing with Rogue, and I played, I never played the original, original Rogue, but I certainly played games derived from Rogue

that were that sort of like, it was like the ASCII art right it was just like letters, numbers, symbols like keyboard characters comprise the graphics and so it looks relatively crude but I don't know it's just it's like really extensible and it's just it's kind of really extensible and it's just, it's kind of a, you know, as a story generation engine, it's kind of, it's really remarkably creative. Can I, can I say my joke that I said before? Yeah, please, go for it.

You know who Rogue likes? Gambit. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. He liked that one. I don't remember any of that stuff happening. Oh, it's not the news. It's not an absolutely historical fact. It's still a work of fiction. But maybe, as a fictional character, things that happen in other fiction is true. Oh, is that kind of the rule? It sounds good. I mean, that's a Kingdom Hearts law.

Yeah, that's... That is sort of Kingdom Hearts logic, huh? If you've seen it happen on a television show, it's a Kingdom Hearts law. Yeah, that's... That is sort of Kingdom Hearts logic, huh? If you've seen it happen on a television show, it's a reality. Yes, yeah. I don't remember if you interacted with him, but past guest of Get Played, Ray Chase, is a voice on X-Men 97.

That's right. No way. Yeah. Oh, he was a good episode. I like that guy. Yeah. Yeah. Good dude. Good dude. Good dude dude so you're just

here yeah I'm here okay so you're sure you're absolutely sure that you're not gonna leave don't know about that but hey we've been talking about it for weeks I just you know I thought maybe maybe this would be the one we'll see I mean I'm still dedicated to a serious discussion about video games. I'm not gonna become like, character painter. I'm doing my best. That is true. You are moving the show along. I am sweating through my shirt.

But I wanna do a good job, you know, for you guys. That's great. Like, I'm not here to be like... Although I do have a segment. Oh Boy, cuz I have a segment. I'm not here to do that But we can do yours and I can hold on I can wait. Hold on my segment. No, no, no No, go ahead. You could you could do yours. My segments only one. It's one Okay, do you want to do it now or you want to hold you want to wait on breaks format?

I think it goes after the talk about the game I'm really remembering one of the roguelikes I played, and we're not in this part of the show yet, because we're talking about it, was on a BBS. It was like a, you know, would dial into this bulletin board. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and there was like a,

there was a roguelike you could play on the server. And then if you die, like you got one, you know, it's permadeath that if you died Do you go it was only once per calendar day where you can do a run kind of interesting thing about that BBS Something I did we got the internet at the same time. You were a little older than me But like I was around when the internet was a thing But I that was one of the parts of the internet

I never experienced really. Like the dial up, like black and white. I had dial up, but I never experienced like the billboard or the bulletin board type of website. Yeah, it's just like it was really crude, you know, forums with no GUI or any or whatever. You were just like all text-based. But yeah, those were some of my first online interactions with any with other humans.

And there's no chat in that right? Like you couldn't like chat with somebody. I think Madame Bodaka is trying to call Heather right now. He's got his phone out. I'm just like worried. I'm just trying to check and find her location. She's fine. I gave her five dollars and a coupon for Red Lobster,

going out of business. My memory is it was less like a chat room and more like a forum post. Like you would like leave a post and then someone could reply to it and there were private messages and what have you. So when you were making decisions in a forum, you'd be like, I go left?

Well, okay, so this was just a thing that you as an individual could play, and then there was like a leaderboard. So it wasn't like you were actively playing with other people. It wasn't like a multiplayer game. It was a single player experience, but it was housed on a server.

Still, I'm still a little confused. Okay, so it's like, I would log in. We're all on the BBS, the three of us and Rochelle. But it's a single player experience. It's a single player experience. We're all logging in once per day. We can do a run in this roguelike that's set up on the server and based on your progress you maybe end up at a certain point and you end up on the leaderboard. So I like, like, let's say I do a run and I get to like level six of the dungeon

in this hypothetical roguelike and then you do a run Resident Evil Merchant and you'd get to level nine of the dungeon. You get even deeper. Then you would be like, you know, like, oh, you did better in the roguelike. Do you save like by sitting on a toilet or something? My memory of it, of this one was that you would go,

you could say like, if you collected gold from like killing something, you could return to the bank and you could bank some of your gold there. So you like, you would wanna do that with some frequency because then if you died, you would still have whatever you'd stashed. Could we consider the original Super Mario Brothers a roguelike?

Well, I mean, this is a discussion of of taxonomy Yeah, because it's like you know how a lot of those arcade games a lot of those one-quarter arcade games and Super Mario Brothers would is is Had more of a continue system than any of those I'm talking about Mario Brothers. No Super Mario Brothers the one of the pipes No, the you were talking about Super Mario Brothers for the Famicom, for the Nintendo. Exactly. It's kind of like a save, you can't save on that. Yeah, I mean, it just depends on how you wanna classify it. I think probably people would not say

that is like a rogue-like in the strictest sense. Because it's the same level design. The same level design, there's nothing procedural. And there's, not that you need this, but like in a rogue light, there would be something you would potentially gain beyond just your own Increase in mastery that would make subsequent runs a little bit easier or more efficient or allow you to skip It was a question popped into my head and you know sometimes you guys just ask questions

No, I mean I think a lot of those games were just like a look like the early arcade games were how far can I get on one? Credit and then that's ultimately where I'm going to end up on you know, like the equivalent of the leaderboard on the top scores. Have you ever wanted to drive a car? The new Toyota 2024 Toyota Yeah, we actually this is not one of our ad reads we have. Oh, really? We have like prescribed like sponsors. Oh, I thought you guys just started talking ads.

No, we don't just like riff into ads for random products for no money. That's not really how we do it. I thought if you did it well enough, you got paid. Yeah, we don't, the industry doesn't really work that way. You don't really do an ad on spec and then hope that someone will compensate you. I think a brand like Toyota would just be like,

well, thanks for the free publicity. I'm really sorry. No, you don't need to apologize. I'm just, I didn't want to get too far before, you know, realizing it was futile. Rewinded back to the days of chillaxing on the beach and all day fun with Spring Break on DraftKings Casino. Play exclusive games like Fan Fave, rocket.

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Restrictions apply. Anyway, I kind of I kind of bloviated a little bit too much talking about Roguelikes. We're going to get into that in a second, but before we do that, Resident Evil Merchant, I think you have a question. I want to know, what are you playing? There we go. That's the money maker. This is the best day of my life.

Matt, you want to start things off? Yeah. Matt, you want to start things off? Yeah, you know, I did, I had to take a little bit of a break from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And not because I'm not having any fun anymore. I'm still enjoying the game, but you have to think about what I've been doing since like November. I saw a TikTok of a lady and she was like, towards the end game of Final Fantasy VII, I don't know if I'm enjoying myself anymore. Do you find that's your experience?

Wait, I'm sorry, you say a lady? You don't mean a character in the game. You mean the person who's playing the game. No, a real human lady. Okay, got it. Was playing the game. She's like, oh, I'm on hour 100 of Final Fantasy Rebirth and I don't know if I like it anymore

because I've done all the side quests. I think it's good, but I think I've just burnt myself out a little bit. Maybe it's a little bloated, perhaps. Maybe that's what that TikTok is getting at. Yeah, it's definitely- I haven't played it, so I guess I- I'll go ahead and say it's definitely bloated.

There's too much stuff to do. But I had to put it away for a little bit. Like I said, I think maybe last week, picked up Bellatro again, been playing Bellatro. Ties into today's episode quite a bit actually. But I've also been playing a different card game on my iPad called Magic the Gathering Arena. Wow, okay.

All right, here we go. And the thing about Magic the Gathering Arena is, I love it, I fucking love it. My friend of the show and our friend in real life, I don't know if you've met this person, Resident Evil Merchant, Ify Wadiwe, just gifted me a commander deck of Magic the Gathering cards. Oh, I follow him on Twitter.

Yeah. Another mutual friend. Wait, you follow Ify on Twitter, Resident Evil Merchant? Yeah, he's great. Oh, wow Twitter, right? Oh, yeah, he's a strong guy He's a big dude. He's really strong. He doesn't need this gas though, so we don't have to gas him up or anything But uh, but what? Another mutual friend Dan black. Yeah was trying it has been trying to get me and gabris into commander Which it may be talked about on the on the podcast before so I have a commander deck of my own and I have messed around

With empty G arena on on the iPad as well one of the appealing things to me about magic the gathering is on PC. Yeah, it's on PC. Yeah I'm gonna have to play it on there. Yeah kind of runs like shit on the iPad. Yeah Maybe I'm just on my iPad an older generation iPad you get a sleepy iPad. I got a sleepy iPad The thing that I love about the game I got a sleepy iPad. The thing that I love about the game Well, you know what my worst the thing I hate most about an iPad Tell me was he you got it flat on a table is fine But you hold it up and all the water comes out the bottom I'm trying to think about what you could even mean. Yes

the game I'm picturing like a You know one of those like ranch. do you ever find that the iPad? We have too much water leave her alone Are you just like are you picking up an aquarium? I'm trying to do parse what you're saying yeah I was thinking like one of those like touching. What do you what I know the difference Do you think I don't know the difference between an iPad and aquarium look if this is not never mind forget I am Tell us about a magic. I'm not trying to derail something that I like Something that I like about card games in general and like in collecting cards is I like to look at the cards because I like

The art on yeah for sure. That's just like my favorite. I agree with you completely There's just something about just like wow look at this this Masterpiece in this tiny little square. It's beautiful. It was so pretty They're so they're so nice to look at for sure And you know and the thing about I know that there's like a way to play Magic the Gathering that is complicated There's a little more involved the commander rules are pretty easy from what I understand or easier for new players French just ran away

She eggs into the studio to let someone in okay. It's okay. We're a lot We'll allow it the thing about it though is I actually don't know if the game in arena is commander or not But I'm just been playing no. I don't think it is no no no no so if it's not commander Then I actually understand the game pretty good because like the car the thing about the cards is it tells you the rules like it Tells you all the stuff that you need to know on the cards No, I actually think knowing and and you know it's been years since I played MTG But I think knowing the the base game makes Commander easier.

Okay. So I'm just like, I'm playing that pretty much every night on the couch, on my iPad, or you know, while I'm trying to go to sleep, playing some more Magic the Gathering arena. I've not played an actual game of Magic the Gathering with the cards, but I like, I bought a little box. I bought a little box that closes

with a little magnetic seal. Love that. Bought little cases for the, or little cases, little sleeves for the cards. And I think I'm gonna make Ify show me how to play. But that's it for me really. I'm playing something completely different. I'm surprised, given how much you like Pokemon as an IP, that you aren't playing a Pokemon card game.

The card game for Pokemon, I've never really found interesting to me. I liked the Game Boy game quite a bit. And the anime. And the anime. Well, there's a Pokemon card game game for the Game Boy. Yeah, it was really good. For the Game Boy? For the Game Boy.

So they made Pokemon and then they made Pokemon, the card game and then they made Pokemon, the card game, the video game? That's right, yeah. That's a lot. I know. What were they smoking back then? Did they make like Pokemon the game, the anime, the game?

Pokemon Yellow version is sort of modeled more after the anime. Oh, because you got Pikachu followed. And there's Jesse and James from Team Rocket. Oh really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're in that version of it as well. I gotta say, I think this is a more focused discussion

than it often is with Heather. I don't know what it is. Resident Evil Merchant has kind of been a stabilizing present. I took Adderall! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Well, thank you for the questions for Resident Evil Merchant. But that's what I'm playing. I'll probably get back to Final Fantasy pretty soon

because I want to wrap it up. I know that doesn't sound like such an endorsement, but I would like to, I gotta see it through. I have about 80 hours in. No, yeah, yeah, you're so close. No, I gotta get out of there. Yeah. Wow. Nick, what are you playing?

Thanks for asking, Resident Evil Merchant, and maybe for people new to the show, just to give some context, Resident Evil Merchant normally comes in just for the segment and asks, what are you playing, in the same way that you would normally ask, what are you buying, what are you selling?

Can you imagine if this is somebody's first episode of the show? Every episode is somebody's first episode. They're gonna be so disappointed if you guys don't ask me back to host every week. Well, we'll have you back on the show. Maybe not fully in the hosting chair, but this is a nice sort of change of pace.

But I guess- I guess I'd do some onboarding. Sure. Yeah, right. We'll talk about it. I'm from the world of Resident Evil 4, and in that game, I am a merchant who sells goods. So you come up to me and I go, what are you buying? Or what are you selling? I'll buy that for a high price.

I'll buy that for a high price. I'll buy that for a high price. I'll buy that for a high price. All that stuff. I lost my job due to some HR issues. So then I asked if I could... That's sort of not what was disclosed previously. It was more of a recast. Right.

It was a recast because of HR. So then I... I mean, we might have paused on hiring you for our show, knowing that backstory. It's an NDA situation, so you don't have to worry about it, but anyway... I didn't know that NDAs worked like that. If you did something bad, then you can't say. It's a sort of a standoff. Like I've got an NDA on them and they've got one on me.

Okay, I guess then yeah, then you can't break them. Anyway, I come to the show and I ask everybody what they're playing. And sometimes I hang on for too long and Reddit gets angry. But this week, this week I'm just trying to do the whole format as I've been threatening for a month. So you admit, you admit it's a threat. What?

I'm doing- Because that's like not something you do- I am doing such a good job of- Threats aren't like what you do to friends or- Let's stay on target, man. I'll answer your question, Resident Evil Merchant. I was going to talk about Hades too in early access, but we ended up pivoting to doing this episode. So instead, I'll talk about Rocksmith.

So I have been learning piano as an adult. And this is a thing I've been working on for the past few months and I've just but I've just been using kind of traditional You know that self teaching methods instructional videos texts, you know, I got some some You read your phone. Yeah You're doing good at the piano PDFs of exercises and stuff and such such on my iPad that I use.

And I have some knowledge because I played woodwinds when I was younger. So you know, I do some stuff like music theory and reading music. And the way you talk about music in the music-centric episodes of Get Played also demonstrates a volume of knowledge that you would not expect from somebody who loves sports as much as you do. That's so nice. Yeah that's kind of a nice that's a that's a nice thing to say. I may be a little backhanded suggesting that I can't be both a sporto. For a total dipshit you have some information. But no that is that is nice and nice to know that you check in on the show, Resident Evil Merchant. I listen every week. I mean, it's insane to think of you having like a phone with like a podcast app that

you check in. No, I'm an iPod shuffle. Okay. And you preload it. You can download. Do you guys not know about an iPod? No, I know about an iPod. It's just kind of antiquated.

It's not like how a lot of people are... Most of our listenership uses a different sort of. You can use it, you can download one podcast. That's why they're called podcasts, you know this? Yo, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Pretty amazing. Anyway, you've been playing Rocksmith. So here's the thing.

I was basically traditional sort of instruction, but Rocksmith has a bunch more piano content now, keyboard content, and I have this MIDI keyboard. And so it was a little bit of an odyssey to get it up and running because my iPad has a USB-C import and my – finding a MIDI, which I think is USB-B, I forget exactly what it is. But finding a connector that goes directly into USB-C was like – it was a little bit of an ordeal to try to find a place that actually had that specific thing It's very easy to find one that goes into USB a and then use an adapter

But the problem is because it is a rhythm game There is a noticeable input delay if you're using an adapter so it had to go Directly into I needed one like, you know, so you need a mini controller in a USB C direct Exactly. Yes. Yes. So I was able to track one of those You had just have one. Yeah, I could just asked you are you gonna come to my shop? We forget you're much your personality on the show that you actually are actually are a merchant You have a bunch of where some of which might be useful to us. Yeah anyway, the the main thing of Rocksmith is the main reason I like it is because less about

learning like a Billy Joel song by Rote, but more because it makes exercises that are extremely useful. One of the best ways you can learn, one of the most useful things for learning any instrument is just practicing scales. But most melodies are based off of scales, but it is extremely tedious and can kind of be directionless and can be hard to self-motivate to just sort of like have a metronome going and I'm just going to practice whatever at my F major scale up and down with two hands, but having it gamified, and now all of a sudden

I am trying to impress the computer so it gives me a little medal, all of a sudden now this is like a fun thing that I'm looking forward to. Okay. So as like a pedagogical method, like just the fact that it's gamified makes me wanna do it in the same way

that like an exercise app, the same way my dumb fucking rings on my stupid ass Apple Watch makes me want to do it in the same way that like an exercise app the same way my dumb Fucking rings on my stupid ass Apple watch makes me want to get some more steps in Oh, we kind of your be kind to your items. What do you think about that? Look at that? Those are some full rings I got some full rings over there. Wow. I had myself a day. Look at that. They're really low, but they're over there full. My guy's doing doughnut Can I ask? I ate a doughnut today. Well you earned it. You ate a donut? I did. What kind? You know what's so funny about this statement? It was a Long John, it wasn't even the circle one.

I thought Long John was a fish. You think I'm Long John Silver? Silver? The chain? The thing about this is that, you know, I think it's safe to say we were trepidatious about you being here But the longer you're here the funnier I think it is But also I have to say Nick yeah if you learned If you had never mentioned this and you just suddenly could play Billy Joel songs, that's the funniest thing you could do.

That's so funny. I would come out of nowhere. Wait, so can I ask about the interface? Yeah, of course. All right, so the iPad, does it have descending notes kind of like a rock band? Yes, it is the same sort of presentation, but you have your actual keyboard laid out,

and because it's a MIDI controller, in real time it is reading your inputs as I'm like whatever hitting C4 on the keyboard, it reads that in the iPad. So it is pretty elegant and it is like actually playing it as you're going through the game but it feels like you're playing it. There is an app for the goggles. What do you call them? Apple goggles.

Apple Vision Pro. Yeah, those guys. Right. You can have the lights go right onto the key. That's cool. So you can, it looks, it's like Rockman, but the whole keyboard is a controller. That's pretty good, that's innovation.

I've been curious about Rocksmith actually, because that was one of the ones I have never played, because it's real. You have to actually play an instrument, yeah. But I did, I hadn't mentioned this on the show, I took a five week extension course at LACC to learn intro to guitar. So now I have like a very foundational understanding

of how that stuff works. And I've been wanting to get reps in on my own in a similar way where I'm like, I know how to, now I know like what to do. I just don't, I haven't learned songs, but I have like a very basic understanding of like, where to put my fingers and how hard to press and stuff like that.

So maybe I should investigate Rocksmith for my own use. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't start, like if I was just starting from scratch, I would not start with this. I mean, I'm sure there are people who've had success with that, but I do think like having a little bit of a baseline of knowledge like you have, I'd be curious what it's like in the guitar side,

but I don't know, I think it's a pretty sleek package. And the other thing I will just say just on the video game note, I love learning new skills, and I always like to just like, I feel like that's part of like what's fun about life is continually learning new things and absorbing new information

and figuring out how to do things you couldn't otherwise do. But I'm realizing how beneficial it's been for my general mindset as an adult learner, as someone in his 40s who was just like, learning a new thing takes time, but I can do it. Yes. How much I get motivation now from having beaten Sekiro and beaten Isshin, the sword saint.

That's fucking go, dude. Because it's just like that, if I can do that, if I can beat this famously hard last boss of this famously hard video game, if I can do that all by myself, then I can learn piano. I can only hope. I love this mindset. In 30 years, when there's some new old fuck that's gonna be the President of the United States, I think a requirement should be that he or she or they had to have beaten Sekiro

in their lifetime and use that as a, it's just part of their platform. Man, it's gonna be really interesting in 30 years if you got like lame ass presidents who do like never played a game. I know, it's possible, but I would hope. You won't even like be able to like identify with them. This is assuming of course that in 30 years we still have a functioning democracy. Fair.

But. What if like there's sort of like a Balkanization of the states, and then there ends up being like multiple presidents? Or, you know, you're familiar with this, like let's say some shadow organization, uh... Sure. Like an umbrella corporation or something, releases La Plaga unto the world or something.

Who knows? I mean, there is a president of the United States in Resident Evil 4 isn't there. So your daughter gets kidnapped. Yeah. Not my president. So you're saying that you, not my president either. He's my president. Oh, he's your president.

No, he's my president. Wait, which one are we talking about? The one in the game or the one in the game? We know which one we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, we know. We know which one we're talking about. You know. We know. Is it a chaos about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know. We know which one we're talking about. You know. We know.

Is the chaos vote to vote for Biden now? Do you think? Is the chaos vote to vote for the sitting president, to vote for the incumbent? Yeah, is that the chaos vote? Is everything so upended? That's interesting. I do think we don't have time for this. All right. Fair.

Nobody wants to hear us. Stay on target. That's the motto I'm trying to live by. I have one question for the panel. He's not gonna live through a second term anyway. Fair. Not because anything's gonna happen to him because he'll pass away quietly. Yes.

Yeah. On stage. So, the question is, if you could apply the Rocksmith philosophy to any other skill, what skill would you like to learn via Rocksmith interface? For example, fishing, cooking, gardening. I was going to say specific to cooking, proper knife skills. The other thing, I can cook decently and I can follow a recipe, but like the actual proper knife technique,

you know, there's a bunch of stuff that chefs do. They like rocket back and forth. Exactly, and then different kinds of cuts, like sometimes when a recipe's calling for it. Julianne. Exactly, like that sort of thing. It's like is like I don't know this is probably just kind of chopped. I've seen you with a cup.

Oh yeah. You know? You with a knife. This guy's spilling all the time! Right? Yeah. I know that from the podcast. Said like as if you've heard about it.

Yeah. That's really cool though I didn't know that you were taking a piano class. We got a percussion, we got a rhythm instrument, we got ourselves a little band over here. I'm inspired to learn a musical instrument and I think in a couple of weeks, if you guys let me back, I'm going to play a little song for you. What would you learn, I'm curious? In a few weeks enough to play a little song for you. What would you learn, I'm curious. In a few weeks enough to play a song? Garageband.

Garage, you mean like the app Garageband? Yeah. Okay, I don't know if I, whatever, but I wonder if I call that an instrument. Oh, you, be careful, that sounds like gatekeeping. I'm not trying to gatekeep, I'm just sort of saying. Garageband is real music. I thought we were talking about like a traditional sort of instrument that you might see in a band or an orchestra. I can't gatekeeping. Well, alright, fine. You sound like somebody who doesn't think a synthesizer is real music. I thought we were talking about like a traditional sort of instrument that you might see in a band or an orchestra. All right, fine.

You sound like somebody who doesn't think a synthesizer is real music. I think a synthesizer is very real. This guy doesn't think a... Harp? No, this guy doesn't think a theremin is a real instrument. Oh no. Well, if you're learning the theremin,

I mean that'd be a... No, I'm not learning that. That'd be really cool. I told you what I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna learn garage bass. I've seen videos I'd classify as more of an app, but maybe we're being pedantic there I've seen videos about how there means work, and I still don't understand. Yeah, there's a pressure. I don't know I don't know either

How interesting to that we both talked about apps how about that? Hmm? Hmm? Something to think about yes I mean it is Rocksmith is on a bunch of different platforms How about that? Something to think about? Oh yeah, something to think about. I mean, and his Rocksmith is on a bunch of different platforms. I think I'm getting investigated. I ended up like, it's just for my setup, because my keyboard is in a different part of the apartment from where my PC is and where my consoles are,

that just made the most sense for me to put it on my iPad. Hey Natalie, hold this while I play piano. I'm doing something Natalie hold this while I play piano That's his wife right yeah, love it Resident Evil Merchant. What are you playing? All right, so I got this Tycho Baseball simulator from Goodwill one of those like old 90s LCD games yeah, sure sure. Loving it. Loving it. Tough as nails.

Really the ball comes in like bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. You gotta swing at the right moment. Yes, yeah. Those don't have a lot of margin for error. Tough game. What? You don't believe me? I can't get it out of my bag.

No, I believe you. I just think it's just so funny that that's what you're playing. But it's good. Well I want to save the larger discussion for Hades which I've been playing. Okay. But yeah I've been playing a Tycho baseball game. I've played this game with a squirrel down the street but I don't think that's what you're talking about. Whoa wait what is the game? Just kind of chase him?

No. No I've got a little box. Okay. Then I put a peanut in the box and I cut a hole in the box. And then the squirrel goes in the box, eats the peanut. And when he sticks his head out of the hole, I try to put a hat on him. That's the game.

That's cute. Like a little bowler. Yeah, a little chef's hat, a little pirate hat. That's the game. That's cute. Like a little bowler. Yeah, a little chef's hat, little pirate hat. That's fun. Little, I got a little... Little baseball cap. Tricorner. Sure. Like all those hats.

Oh, like a militiaman. That's fun. What about one of those hats with like the little holders for like the beer cans? That would be really like a foam dome. Oh, that's a fun one. But maybe it's like two acorns or something. I had to build these so that it's tough, but I could do it like well

I was like pitching a hat little straw goes into his little mouth. Yeah, that would be cute I would think also just some celebrity hats, you know, you put a little Lincoln hat on there Maybe one of those Winston Churchill hats. Yeah, you know, I don't think this is good. Yeah, I Think a little MAGA hat on the squirrel would be fun. It would be kind of funny It would be kind of funny to see a squirrel with a little MAGA hat on the squirrel would be fun. It would be kind of funny Why is he thinking about any of that? Make the forest great again Maybe one of those tall Pope hats that would be fun. Oh, yeah, I mean we saw a Pope Hat on a turtle. We know the turtle pope, yeah.

What's up with, what about the squirrel pope? Yeah, squirrel pope. Paul and Rays. I wouldn't presume you two are so familiar with the characters from SpongeBob, but Sandy Cheeks, the squirrel character, has a little astronaut helmet, because she exists underwater

and she needs to be able to breathe in the ocean. So maybe a little Sandy Cheeks cosplay. That would be adorable. Well those are the two games I've been playing. Yeah, it sounds like a really fun game. Tycho baseball and head on a squirrel. Do you think the squirrel gets something out of it? Do you think that you're like, oh I'm in this hat now. He gets a peanut. Oh, he gets the peanut. Yeah, he gets a peanut and then he sticks his head out. Usually nervous. They don't go, it gets the peanut. Yeah, he gets a peanut and they stick his head out usually nervous They don't go straight out of the hole

They they broke her head out, and he's just gonna be real quick. What kind of hat does Pinocchio have Pinocchio? You know he's got a little yellow hat like a little yellow hat a little fedora. How you classify it? Yeah, it's fedora like huh yeah a little feather maybe We're thinking Disney's Pinocchio. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah What if I was a little boy like that guy right? Yeah when he sings that part if I was a little boy Would you treat me this way would you treat me so bad? It does have a little feather you're right. Yeah, I don't know if it quite. Is this a fedora? Can I get a look at that? Yeah little feather you're right yeah I know if it quite is this a fedora can I get a look at that yeah uh no it's decidedly not I don't know what I would call it

but I wouldn't call it a fedora it kind of comes to a point yeah but I don't know I don't know what how you'd classify it. Do they sell those? Can you buy one? You absolutely can buy a Pinocchio hat. I'm gonna put it in my shop. You can buy it from walmart.com and it's just called Pinocchio Hat. Pinocchio Hat. And that's our preferred place to shop here on the Get Played podcast, Walmart.com. I don't disrespect Walmart, except that it puts small businesses like myself out of business.

Oh, that is interesting. You must have a big issue with a lot of stores like that. I have to get so specific, which in a way is a pressure of capitalism. Like the things that I used to carry, ammunition, weapons, Walmart can carry those. That's true. So I have to have a more artisanal experience. Like, do you want three pieces of spaghetti?

Do you want a pocket that you can support? It's got to be stuff you can't get at Walmart. Yeah, you can't buy a pocket at Walmart. No you can't. You buy pants. Here's how you get, let me tell you this technology I got for my pocket. You got a magnet on the back of it sewn into the fabric and then you keep a magnet on the inside of your shirt so you can attach the pocket to any shirt or pant or hat that you want. That's pretty good. And then you can take it off when you want to put the pocket on something else.

I forgot to mention, and I know we're past this point, I don't have much to say about it. I finished Fallout and I fucking loved it. Wow, the show? I thought it was fantastic. Very good. Really great. Thank you. I love that show. I love it I wish they'd make a show like that about Resident Evil land. Yeah, they've tried some Resident Evil Adaptation trying don't think in it. Yeah, they've all kind of deviated from the source to varying degrees It's unfortunate because I do think a straight adaptation of Resident Evil 4 would be good.

Yeah. Well, you don't have to do that much to it. I mean, yeah, it would be corny, but if they lead into it, I think it could be fun. There's corny shit in the Fallout show, but it rocks. It's all, I don't know. It works. It all works. Because it's treated with sincerity.

Yes. There's side quests in the show, and you are very aware that they're side quests. It's so funny. They did a, they knocked that out of the park, home run. Yeah, I'm thinking for the squirrel, especially since it's a game. Little Mario hat.

Oh yeah, I like it. Maybe put a little S on it for squirrel. Pretty good. What about a Batman cowl? That would be fun. Oh man, cuz it kind of looked like a little bit Yeah, it does right? Yeah, and he's like I'm in Gotham City. Yeah, that's okay. He says he says Batman's famous line. I'm in Gotham City. That's pretty good though Coming over here Joker. Can you imagine if you say joke get speak like that? Hey Joker get over here I'm in Gotham City. I love it. That's the kind of thing the Batman says.

Superman's my friend. I don't know if I can do that voice. Hey Superman is my friend. No I can't. It's lively. Why don't you leave the voices to people that can do them? I agree. I'm not a good impressionist.

Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. We should probably talk about the game that everybody heard want come in and play this week. I think Batman's gonna- Yeah, we should probably get to the game everybody heard wanna come play this week. No need to be cruel. I think Batman's got a diaper on under

that helps him with the situation. Wait, hold on. You think he's wearing a diaper? I'm just trying to figure it out on You think he's wearing a diaper I just trying to figure it out I mean cuz like how it's not it's not easy to get That suit on and off right I If I was gonna have to use a bathroom a certain point a billionaire you think it's a hard pair of pants to get out Oh, and the more detachable parts I was thinking about like what if there was like a detachable like cup area so there's like I can just take a piece out he got interrupted and he just runnin' around? Just talk out?

Hey I'm Batman, I got my hog out, I'm in Gotham City I do think from Gotham City The more removable parts there are to the suit though, the more vulnerable parts there are That's the thing, right What if the only way you can hurt Batman is in the chin or if you wedge a knife on the side of his codpiece? Jesus. I think that might be possible. That's horrifying. But I do think I think if you're Batman

I'm not. You have you have a well if you were you couldn't tell us anyway But I think if you're Batman, you have a pretty regimented bathroom schedule. You're just like, okay, I gotta take care of business. I'm gonna go out and fight crime. Yeah, you're not eating a big meal before you gotta go. But I'm also just like, still, you're running around, you're using a grappling hook,

you're jumping off of rooftops, you're engaged in a hand-to-hand combat. And certainly, you're gonna get winded, you're gonna be dehydrated. Maybe he has the technology. You're engaging to hand-to-hand combat and certainly you're gonna get winded You're gonna be dehydrated. Maybe he has the kind of you're an aid at minimum Maybe it's a fremen technology where it just gets sucked up. He's got a stillsuit. You think he's got a stillsuit I could buy that yeah, what if it just gets in his boots His boots are just filled with shit Hey

Yeah, he comes around a corner, and he's like I I'm the darkness, but everyone's like, what is that fucking smell? God fucking smells like shit. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. And if he's like stuck in his, cause there are canonical episodes where he's like gotta be Batman for a long time. Like he's on a mission to Hong Kong or something, right?

So he's in the suit for a long time So you think the piss and shit comes out the neck hole? I think there's not crime all the time like it fills up all the way I think it's like overflowing out of his neck And he's like I fucking stink could also just be a dietary issue for him at that point like maybe doesn't need to hit up It's too close to his mouth. Yeah, don't don't get the Wendy's Baconator before you do your crime fighting shit. I do think. Good note.

He's able to just go when it's convenient. Like maybe it's not always convenient. He's gonna be holding it for a long time. But you know, all those grunts are gonna get knocked out at some point. And he's just gonna go piss in a corner. He doesn't necessarily always have to like find a bathroom. Well maybe like the bat wing or the car has like a thing that goes over his dick so he's just going while he drives.

The craziest thing about this subject is that Nick brought this up. Well, I've talked to actors who have like worn like elaborate costuming and obviously that's a fictional thing as opposed to Batman who's real like but it's like in a fictional setting very often you're just you're you're like like trapped in one of those things you're basically sewn into it and so you got to have like a catheter or a diaper or some sort of like method of of relieving yourself that doesn't involve taking it all away. Wait a minute wait a minute you're telling me that the actors who play superheroes that got catheters? I think sometimes they do. Holy shit!

They have some sort of thing that's hooked up so they can weave themselves. What shoving a tube up your... I've never done it. I can't imagine it to be pleasant. But it also probably depends on what type of catheter. Yeah. Barbed. Yeah, I would imagine that.

I don't think people would like that. That would not be your first choice. I don't think... Well, you don't think that would not be your first choice I don't think well you don't want it to come out you want it imagine the Embarrassment if you have a catheter in and it slips out and you start being and you're iron man And it's going all over that fancy suit. Yeah, sorry going like this Might also just rust up. be careful. That's some strong piss. Mr. Iron Man, I am Jarvis and I'm detecting large amounts of urine in this suit.

Resident Evil Merchant, so your impressions are so, they're just not there. Yeah, just so much of you is coming through in your impressions. I appreciate the effort, though. I've never heard a British person speak, so it's hard for me to imagine it. You certainly have.

You've heard British people. I'm not sure that's true. What about the topic at hand? Hades, Hades 2 and other road lights. Thank you for getting us back on track, Resident Evil Merchant. No, welcome. I'm really bummed that Heather's not here for this discussion. I kind of am sort of, I am bummed too. But I am excited to talk about Hades and Hades 2, developed by Supergiant.

Hades was released in September 2020 after a prolonged early access period and Hades 2 just entered early access this past week, if you're listening to this on the Monday. I have not spent a ton of time with Hades 2, but I have played a bit of it. As of this recording, it's been out for, in early access, it's been available for like less than two days, so we haven't had a ton of time with it. But I will say, and so we're not gonna talk

at length about Hades 2, I also don't think, well, I knew Heather hadn't gotten a chance to play Hades 2, I'm not sure if Resident Evil Merchant played it. Did you play Hades 2? I'm loving it. So you are playing Hades 2. I'm playing Hades 2, Manor Lords, Hades 1. Those are the games.

Wow, okay. You're touching on all of them. Early access for two out of those three titles. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. What? Matt's looking at me. I'm just like, I don't know. Matt doesn't know if you're-

Are you telling the truth? Yeah, are you lying, I guess. I have no reason to not believe you, but I also like- Let's engage in a conversation about it. Manor Lords, really interesting game. You're going to build like a castle in a small medieval village. Yes. And then you have to also build up your armies in order to defend that castle.

It's an excellent game. Excellent game. Hades 2, sexy. It is sexy. And then you have to also build up your armies in order to defend that castle. Excellent game. Excellent game. Hades 2. Sexy. It is sexy. It's definitely sexy.

Okay, I guess I believe you. Sorry to cast in any doubt for a second. It's mostly Hades 1, because I want to make sure I understood what was happening. Hey, can I ask a question of the panel? Please. Do you think, given that it's a roguelike, that it would have been more thematically interesting if the game had been about Sisyphus?

You know, Sisyphus is actually a presence in Hades 1. I know. I know. He's got the rock and he blocks a... Boldy. Yeah, Boldy. But like, the game is about trying to achieve a goal and always being pushed back down. So I'm surprised that they went with like Hades' son and not the characters as of this. I think I will probably trust their judgment in terms of how to tackle the mythological element of it

because it's just like I think Zagreus was the right choice for a protagonist. It also I think just like the way that tied in because of his familial link to Hades, the titular Hades, it just, that I think worked really well for the narrative. And it certainly continues in the sequel where you are playing not as Zagreus, but as Zagreus' sister.

Yes. Yeah, Zagreus' sister. How do you say her name? Malinui. Malinui. I believe it's Malinui. Malinui. Malinui.

Malinui. Something like that. There's a little bit of an accent over there. Do you guys know my name? Resident Evil Merchant. I just call you Resident Evil Merchant. Yeah, but do you know my name? Do you have a canonical name?

I mean, I honestly don't want to know it, because I think that'll remove some of the magic. Okay, then I won't tell you starts with an R though Is it a Resident Evil merchant? I've never played a game in early access. I'm realizing it's right. I've never really done that. I mess around what I do I do it a lot. I but I really done that. I mess around, I do it a lot, but the thing is like, there are certain games I will choose not to. Like Baldur's Gate III,

I didn't play it all in early access because I knew it was, first I just wanted to wait for the final release. But a lot of times it will be things like the way I played Manor Lords, which I talked about last week, is I'll just mess around with it for a few hours. I'm fine tossing some money to the developer

and if it's a game I'm planning on getting anyway, I'll be like, okay, well, I'll mess around with it a little bit in early access, but I'll wait till the final release to actually play it. But yeah, I guess what I'll say I have in common with you, I don't ever play a game at length in early access. I'm not ever like, I'm not gonna play through all of Hades 2 in early access. Apparently'm not ever like, like I'm not going to play through all of Hades 2 in early access. Apparently it's finished, the build that's out there right now you can finish.

You can take all the way to the end game. Yeah, I was watching some YouTube videos. There are people who've already put dozens of hours into this thing. It's like crazy how quickly people, content creators churn through this stuff. God bless them. But yeah, you can reach an end game right now, although I don't think there's an actual ending that's in the game. But you can get to that point. Oh man, that would be a bummer if you beat Hades 2 in early access and there was just a blank screen at the back end. Yeah, and I think that's part of the reason, like, you know, that's part of the reason

I want to wait till the 1.0 until I actually dig into it. Well, I know for a fact that I could probably play this game all the way until it's officially released and not get there, because so far in Hades 2, I'm dog shit at this game. Well, that's also the kind of the nature, I think, of this game. And I think also it's set up for you to fail a lot

and fail early, and you get a lot of resources to improve your skills and and improve your survivability and and open up the the number of weapons you have access to. Yeah that's that sort of dopamine cycle of the game is that you you play a little bit you can't get very far but every single time you go back to to the the dungeon you've got a little bit of an advantage that you didn't have before. Yes, yeah, a little bit extra knowledge, but also a little bit more tangible improvement

to your character's skills and attributes. I'm curious. Like an extra heart. Exactly, yes. I'm curious, Resnick Wollerton. Yeah, what? You're gonna say you have an extra heart? I have an extrain even works. Yeah, what? You're gonna say you have an extra heart? I have an extra heart. Okay.

I'm tall enough that my body, my body has two hearts like a dinosaur. Dinosaurs that add more than one? Yeah. I don't have, we don't have time for this. With the dinosaur effects. Well, the, the, the, the Dipl, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I think it was just like sort of like, oh, this will be an easy thing to add on to my course load.

And the professor was this great character who just like loved dinosaurs. But day one he was just like he gave this, this British dude, had this British accent, which you're maybe hearing for the first time with my impression of it. What's it going to sound like? But he would be like, you know, like dinosaurs were these majestic creatures and they, whatever, they ruled the earth for thousands of, and they, whatever, they ruled the Earth for thousands of years, and they also did this, and he showed a slide of like, just two dinosaurs fucking.

It was like, take a look. And he's, and they certainly did this, and he switched to a slide of a dinosaur just taking a shit. I was like, this is great. This is getting clear. Next slide's a dinosaur sucking another dinosaur's dick. Like, he clearly drew these. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I love you. I'm curious Resident Evil Merchant because I've talked at length about Hades. Yeah. One of my favorite games of all time when we did our top 10 list on the podcast.

Yeah. It was in my top 10. It's my favorite rogue light and it's a genre I love. It feels so good to play. It's so polished. Every run, no matter how much of a failure, still feels like you're making progress because of the way the story advances. I don't know your history with Hades and I know you spent some more time with it this

week, but talk us through your own experience with Haiti. Well when the game came back came out back in the back. 2020. 2020. Dangerous time. Really was. Really scary. One must be tough also for you with the customer facing retail. I mean you. I wear a mask all the time. So it's not really a question. I can just see customers being perhaps a little bit skittish about meeting you in person. Fair, fair. So I played it on release. Tragically, my switch broke. I again don't understand why, how much water comes out of it when I hold it up.

You're not supposed to put any water in. Water is not part of it at all. You know when you hold up your switch and the water doesn't come out the bottle. You've asked this about it. I've said no, that's not the experience. I still don't quite know what you're describing. I guess you just doused it in water. No, anyway.

Not every toy is a water toy. I know that. Did you drop your switch in the toilet? Is that what happened? No. Okay. No. You're telling me you've never held up an iPhone an iPad a switch Or like you and when you hold it up water doesn't come out

I just I just I piece it together. He just dropped the all of these things on the toilet Damn, they're just used in the water with all his tell him the toilet with his electronics And was just dropping them in the shot somehow flushing It would sort of like get it out, but it just got more water in actually I use a dry toilet Other water got in there. I do think we have to talk about Hades I want to interrogate this dry toilet. What's going on there? Some toilets are dry, right? Some toilets are dry.

Some toilets are dry. Some toilets are dry. A latrine. That's true. So my experience with Hades was until my Switch broke because it was full of water, I was, I guess I didn't get it. Wait, hold on.

What? I'm just trying to parse what is actually true Did your switch break and that's why you didn't play as much Hades Yes, okay. Yeah, so I you know I give it a shot in 2020 My switch broke because it was full of water, okay But But alright so so I didn't get I didn't get a chance to really explore that, like, the cycle that makes it so addictive.

But then when you guys were like, oh, we're going to do weirdly, I was like, okay, I'm listening. We don't sound like that at all. What? Again, you can't expect them to. I don't know how to do wubba. I guess that's true. You're right.

What do you do? How do you do wubba? Is that it? Wala. Wala? I can't do sure you're right. What do you do? How do you do wubba? Is that it? Walla. Walla? I can't do walla. Anyway, so I broke out my new switch. Yes.

And I race against the clock until that thing fills up with water. No. And so I'm playing Hades this last week and I gotta say, I got it. Yes. Ooh, hell yes. Fucking got it. I was like, Oh, okay. Because I initially I was confused. Like, my my experience of like the

roguelike concept is that you you get a certain way and then you choose to bail so that you aren't you so that you can retain your your goods depends on the design. Some let you you bail early as others are just so you go you go retain your goods. Depends on the design. Some let you bail early, as others are just so you go till you drop. But in this, you just go until you die. And I guess that was not clear to me before. So yeah, I beat a fury, beat another fury. You're surprised at how long the run is.

Yeah. Right. And that there's not really a save feature. You can turn off the Switch, but that's risky because what if the next time you turn it on it's full of water? Yeah, I'm realizing the way I play these games, I never abandon, like I never like stop and resume mid-run. Like I get to a completed run.

And so I don't even actually know what happens if you're like, you know, in the second biome, you've beaten the first boss and in the middle of it, you save your game and resume. I guess you just pick up from whatever your last encounter was. Wait, there's an auto-save feature? There is. Yeah, there is.

Yeah, yeah. Oh. Yeah, I guess I've never exited a run here. But it's a very quick auto-save. Yeah. It'll just like, when you go to exit, it will say when the last time the game was saved. I really like the leaves that show up on the bottom of the screen when you first-

Yeah, they're sort of like, beautiful. Moral, like, yeah. Art design across the board. Excellent work. Art direction is pristine. And that's one of the things Supergiant does. It's just like, everything is so fucking polished. There's so much writing.

It is such a high level of quality level of writing. There's so much voice acting Yeah, and the way great and the art direction is on the way that they reference the thing that you just fucked up Yeah, that's great. That's great game design. I have to shout out Courtney viney's sorry I've never said your last name before voice of Dusa That's right. Dusa great character for the first one. From the game. When I was streaming more on Twitch and was playing Hades on Twitch,

she'd hop in the chat and give me tips. That works. Wow. I need to shout out Bono. Who's in U2? You guys know this band? Yes. Yeah. Just wanna give them a shout out. You got a favorite song with or without you?

Where the streets have no name? From U2? Sunday Bloody Sunday, yeah, I'm just curious. Or do you like that more? It's a beautiful day! Oh, a beautiful day, okay. That one I love, though. Yeah, well, more modern.

Let it slip away. I've never really dug in on them. Yeah, I'm not like the biggest U2 guy, but I've heard they're great in person. That Sphere show supposedly was a spectacle. I feel like I've never really dug in on them. Yeah, I'm not like the biggest U2 guy, but I've heard they're great in person. That Sphere show supposedly was a spectacle. I feel like I've heard too that they're like great guys, that they're like cool guys. Yeah, well, hey, we talked with past guest,

Devin Bryant about this, because he'd worked with U2. He did. Yeah. Yeah, I like Devin. I miss that guy, he's a good guy. Good guy. I also like the song, Don't Lose Your Head from the Face Off soundtrack by you two.

Oh sure, you know there's also a Don't Lose Your Head by Queen that's on the Highlander soundtrack. Oh wow. I do think that's where they got the idea. Could be, I wonder, is it a cover? Don't lose your head, like that. Yeah, I think it's where they got the idea. Could be, I wonder, is it a cover? Don't lose your head, like that. Yeah, I think it's a different song. Not gonna help, because again, the impressions.

Right. That's the song, the tune go like that. The tune go like that. Anyway, so yeah, so my experience with Hades this week has been very pleasant, far more addictive and exciting than the first time I played it back in 2020. Matt, I'm curious about, first off, your history with Hades,

because I know you've played it quite a bit back in the day and you've been playing Hades 2 some as well, but what's your history with this game and how are you feeling about Hades 2 thus far? I feel like I first got Hades on Switch, so it was obviously way out of early access at that point. No, yeah, I mean, look, I'll say this. I think when we did our Switch draft or whatever,

Mount Switchmore or whatever the fuck we did, I had, I picked Hades because that was the platform. I originally played it on yes, it's also deep pandemic So I think I was doing a lot of gaming on my switch because I could like have it on my TV And you know move it on to handheld or what have you so I don't think I was like in the initial I I jumped it by the time I heard about Hades everybody was talking about her yeah already Yeah, so I was like I got to see what everyone's talking about and I just played it. I it's one of these games where I still just kind of pick it up on and off Just to see what you know how far I can get because it is just like a satisfying thing to just clear

You know clear an area see how far I can go and it's so fucking playable. Sorry keep going. It's so playable But I've only ever beaten Hades one time. I've only taken the guy down once. Right, so the way the game progresses is, and I've rolled credits on Hades 1 and I played a lot of it. I got pretty far in playing heat runs, which is like the post-game content. The way the game works, where you can up the difficulty in various ways, is that once you finish a successful run, which involves killing, taking out the titular Hades,

spoiler alert, once you do that, I think you have to repeat it 10 times. And then the, you know, kind of like, once you finish it. Without stopping? No, no, no, 10 successful runs. So 10 successful clears, and then each time you have a successful clear, the story advances some,

and then when you hit the 10th one, that's when you roll credits, and that's when you get the finality of the story. But there's more dialogue and more shit that happens after that as well. I'm shocked always every time a character has an exclamation point over their head. So I'm like, I've seen so much of this game.

But I really loved that game and then you know Was excited for Hades to didn't think we'd be doing We'd be talking about it so soon You know, but I I've been messing with that quite a bit in loving it It has made me want to go back and finish off the other runs. I switched my Hades play through to a God mode play through and on God mode, I thought God mode was, it was just like an easy mode,

like maybe everything was easier. It's not easier. It's still challenging. You can die and have to start all over. But every time you die, you do gain higher defense. So you are sort of stronger every time you die in God rest. You can get your vulnerability probably up to 100%. Mine's at like 26% right now or something.

What is your favorite weapon? Oh, it's, I'm so glad you asked. You're welcome. My favorite weapon, I like the fists because they're fast. All right. But there's an upgrade that you can get for the fists that there's like a magnetic boom for them so you can bring enemies to you and then take them out.

Ooh. That's your special. There's a regular attack and there's a special attack. There's a dash attack that I don't dash attack that much. I'm more of a special. You kind of have to mash both buttons at the same time for it, which to me, feels like you're a little out of control

in a situation where you're trying to constantly maintain control. And I'll throw those little things you can do, your cast. Yes. I don't usually like those little things you can do your cast. Yes I don't usually do those in regular battle, but in like a boss I'll throw all of them into a boss just cuz it it it ships away at their their health a little faster You know, even though I unlocked other weapons. I I really found myself kept going back to the bow and arrow Yeah

So that's what I was going to say because I'm usually such a melee sort of guy in this sort of game, but the bow feels so great. They really nailed that range combat feeling. It's really, really satisfying. That and the gun, honestly, both feel really, really good in the game. And I just remember being shocked the first time I got both of those and was like,

oh wait, I'm actually having fun playing this. This isn't a thing I'm just getting through because there's different things you're gonna lock by finishing runs with each weapon. And yeah, obviously the various aspects that you unlock as you keep going, that changes things a little bit. I like the spear a lot too. That's a fun one.

The spear is good. I'll have to try the gun again, because the first time I tried the gun, I didn't really like it. Something that was interesting in the last year that came out that I didn't really get to talk about on here, I guess it was at the end of last year, maybe we were banked up for the holiday,

and just never got back around to talking about it But God of War Ragnarok released a rogue light mode. Yes, and so did Yeah, and the Valhalla mode and story rocks and They did a really smart thing was they basically are just like we'll just do Hades Like we'll just do exactly this and like there's there's boons for your

Selected weapon so you can go on a weapon path so you can like pick the the blades of Olympus for example And then all your upgrades will be for that throughout the thing and you could you get rewarded for doing runs with the other weapons though too. And it's just so fun, because it's such a satisfying loop. You go through the same areas, that you take down bosses and mostly, just other creatures and whatever,

then you ultimately get to fight Tyr, who's the Norse god of war. And then you get sent back to the you know to Valhalla yeah started over It's a very very satisfying There's a very satisfying story beat in in that that is like one of the coolest things that they've done in a long time And I loved that but I have not messed around with the no return mode in the last of us part two Yeah, I'm curious if Resident Evil Merchant has because I have messed around with the no return mode in The Last of Us Part 2. Yeah, I'm curious if Resident Evil Merchant has, because I have messed around with that as well, but I like that these are being added. It feels like an interesting way to add, just add a half to the gameplay and just a mode

that's like endlessly extensible. But I do want to ask you Resident Evil Merchant, but before we get to that, I do have a quick tangent which is God of War, Hades, both dealing with like Greek mythology, Greek gods. It's just a thing, another thing, I maybe said this before, I'm so glad that like nobody owns like the Greek god IP. You know what I mean? It's like such a, like it's so great that things like Dracula and Greek myth are in the public domain. That we don't have to deal with someone's failed children

or some corporation hoarding the rights for it. The Dracula estate. The Dracula estate has to approve uses of Dracula. It's like that fucking sucks. And it sucks the, you end up with things where you end up with franchises that are kind of like, there are all these people who could have all these creative,

there are these fan communities that could create all this this amazing derivative content, but they're not permitted Because someone has shackled the IP. What was that Nicolas Cage Dracula movie Renfield Renfield? Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, I like to see Dracula. Yeah, sure. Why not? I'm sorry resident evil merchant did you ever mess around with the last of us like I you know, I didn't get the chance to play it because it came out too long after the game came out. Right, yeah. So- And I could be wrong, but one of Heather's favorite games

is Last of Us Part II. Is that a game you also respond to? I dislike it. Oh, interesting. I dislike it. Interesting. I think it's unfair. You know, a lot of those people have families.

Yeah, I mean, I would say that's maybe baked into the messaging though of the game itself. You're kind of dealing with like the moral, you know, trauma of having to massacre a bunch of people to exact revenge. You have to understand where I'm from. Uh-huh. Kingdom Hearts Law. Those are people. That's real people. Oh, got it. Okay. So I don't approve of that kind of... Kingdom Hearts law. Those are people. That's real people.

Oh, got it, okay. So I don't approve of that kind of... Those people don't... They don't deserve it. No. But I also just don't think the game is necessarily endorsing it either. Uh... No. It's complicit.

That's... Any depiction of something bad in media is endorsement. We know this. I do think it's cool though that two games with like celebrated and extremely tight grungy gameplay and combat added these modes because then you can just play, because the loop of playing those games is like,

I don't know if I wanna go through the entire story of The Last of Us Part 2 again, but I want to have the feeling of playing the game. So adding that mode, I've been interested in checking it out, actually. I just have not. But it works great, very effectively in God of War, and the story they tell in it is very good. Can I ask you guys a question? Yes, please. What's a roguelike? Is a battle royale a roguelike?

Hmm. You know, it's interesting, because like the, I think if we're gonna have a taxidermical discussion, people would probably say no. I think probably roguelikes are usually thought of as a single player experience, but there is also an argument, and this goes back to what Matt was saying

about Super Mario Brothers, kind of in a sense like all games with any sort of failure mechanism are fundamentally the same thing, right? Also the items are randomized in a battle royale. Right, yes, yeah, yeah. So that very, very much speaks to the spirit of a roguelike.

But I think a lot of times what you're dealing with with a roguelike is what it gives is it's a single player version of that kind of multiplayer experience, right? It's the same sort of thing. I don't know. I don't know exactly what's going to happen here I but I know the general rules and I know the kinds of things I have in my arsenal the things I have it by That it can utilize and then I'm just gonna we're just gonna see what what happens in this individual session I'm remembering to return all which was a game I think only I played.

Yes. Fucking rules. And it's so good, and I wish I had finished it. Very satisfying game. If we're just shouting out games, you know, FTL and Into the Breach, both subset games, two of my favorite games, Into the Breach, you know, and both those games have music from Ben Prunty who composed our Get Played theme song. And you know, other games that like Cult of the Lamb, which was a game that came out in

2022, has a roguelike element to it. Along with city building, I did Bellatro you were talking about, Vampire Survivors, one of my favorite games in recent years. I got another philosophical question. Please. Is Animal Crossing a combat-free roguelike? Interesting. I just think such a core thing of these games is that there's a point where you fail and you restart And I because I think because of Animal Crossing you're continually like working from the same

Like like you're you're you're just building and expanding the same village, right? I think it's a little bit different is a rogue like in the way that real life is a rogue like where you just go to Sleep and start your day With the same information you had before but in a new attempt to fix whatever you have going on. Yeah is that really the appeal of it? It just feels like a day? It feels like a new day?

It's like well I had a shitty day, maybe I'll have a good day tomorrow. Is that really what we're getting out of these games? Maybe it's undergate. I think that the permanent improvements that you get in a roguelike, say from the Mirror of Night in Hades, where there's an element of slow conquer. For sure. And that's, I think, the appeal.

And we should talk about, because you brought that up, the Mirror of Night in Hades is now, with the version they have in Hades too is this card system, which I really like. I love it. It's really cool. And you have a lot of cards in the grid. The moment for me when the grid expanded,

I was like, oh shit, there's more cards. I literally said, ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's really cool. And then as you progress, there are, you get, you know, you're just choosing

which ones you wanna use. It feels like it has a little bit more extensible and flexible than what you have in the Hades 2 equivalent. Or the Hades 1 equivalent, I mean. So far in the Hades 2, I'm interested, there's not a whole lot of story for me happening right now where it's still, there's still a large mystery

as to what is even going on but I'm really liking the new characters and I like I like the only weapons I have so far are the main staff that you start with and then like the two knives and I've been using that a lot more because I like the fast weapons I keep getting killed by whatever the first like area like early bosses. I can't remember what they're called at this point but I'm gonna keep I'll keep messing with it for sure because I am excited that but I just like I didn't think that this was the type of game you could make a sequel to because it's so replayable there's almost no reason to make a sequel.

Yeah, and it also feels like they explore the story so thoroughly in the first one, but again, they do that new protagonist and like some returning characters, some returning gods, but also some characters are returning in different forms and then there's some new characters. I'll just say, first off, Hecate, I think, is that how you say it? Hecate?

Hecate? Yeah. I want to, it's spelled like Takate, so I want to say Hecate, but it's not that. But is voiced by Amelia Tyler, who is the Baldur's Gate 3 narrator. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's just an incredible voice actor, and it's a really cool performance. And it feels like, at least again, like you that's super far in the story of this game Feels like a character who's really central so it's really well cast

I also like nemesis who's a mean and muscly which is exactly my type love it Someone who's gonna yell at me and beat me up. I like the Shoot the little frog frog is cute as shit Brinos or something yeah, yeah, yeah So so cute yeah, and also there's just there's just other things that it iterates on like for You know the way the way casting works is is really different. There's a mana system now. Yeah, which is like a I don't know It's it's just like a completely it was it was really simplified with Zagreus And then it kind of makes sense with this character

With Melanin millenia we yeah, Melanin we Linna we millenia we it makes sense with millenia we I should know this that like it is like a little bit more of a magical character, so it makes sense Yeah, she's a witch exactly right Cast being now like an area of effect thing is like pretty cool. Yes, that you can bind characters, you can bind enemies in place, and yeah, there's all sorts of strategic concert or like calculations of that. I do want to go out on a limb here and say I prefer the first system for casting. That's fine. I didn't, like it's already a complicated thing to keep track of everything There is a there is a little bit more going on in Hades to where having bounced back to Hades 1

I do I do enjoy the simplicity a little more but I Some of the stuff in Hades to like the fact that you can sprint now. The sprinting is great I'm glad you brought that up because yes, I dash like fucking a madman in Hades one. Yeah, you can't dash as much I do really like that your your cooldown on the On the dash has a visual tell which is a trail behind your character. Yeah It's like it's just like it's it's just again just really elegant really well thought out and and very visually pleasing But yes that you can hold down the dash to sprint and that sprinting

has its own boons, which like, you know, you can get one with like a whirlwind that follows you or whatever, or a cloud of ice. Like that shit is really, really cool and feels like something new. I'll just say about the mana system real quick, as somebody who played a shitload of Hades 1, for me, it's like the right level of like, here's just another layer of complexity for returning players to make you feel like, oh, okay, this is a new system, I need to wrap my head around. So I'm appreciating in those terms.

I do like, and it's not that complicated where it's like, instead of using your attack, you just hold it down. Like you just hold it, hold down whatever the input is. I wish that the, that, that people weren't so precious about the IB of Jesus Christ. Because I think a game like this with those characters would be wild to play. I do want there to be a God of War where he does fight Jesus. I think it would be good.

That'd be rad. Well, he could fight the Old Testament God and Christ could be like a baby like the Freya The Freya character is like his like friend. That's like helping him out Yeah, and that that Old Testament God is a bad dude. It's a maniac raffle motherfucker The the what I was going to say on that be ten good people Or I'll kill everybody Find me 10 good people or I'll kill everybody. This guy's crazy.

I was going to say there actually is and I was like kind of, I was like this is like a little bit edgy that they're going there with Hades 1 because there's all the aspects you unlock that are from other myths. So you know it's stuff that comes from various Eastern myths, various other, like, you know, just cultures, mythology, but one of them is the aspect of Lucifer. Oh, interesting. And I'm like, that is, that's kind of almost daring that they're kind of saying, like, Christian mythos.

They're even, like, kind of making that association. I feel like a lot of people would be skittish about that, but I think maybe because it was Lucifer and not Christ It was okay. Let's remember that in I think Assassin's Creed 2 you can fight and kill the Pope Hey Crusader Kings 3 you can eat the Pope Video games are good. Yeah video games are good. Um Gosh, I'm trying to think of something else too that I love from from Hades 2. Oh, I like when sequels do this

cuz Sometimes if it ain't broke don't fix it. Yeah art direction pretty similar Yeah, looks great. It looks I'll also just say because a little bit. I've got this fucking widescreen monitor And it looks just gorgeous and widescreen first games gorgeous,, but I do see a little bit of improvements to this one. I also think the, I don't know how else to phrase this, but like the video game's camera is closer to the character I feel like. I think maybe it's a little slightly zoomed out in Hades one, but maybe that was just the difference of playing it on Switch. Switch versus the computer. I'd have to, I'd have to. I think you're just used to the character being so small on the screen

Maybe yeah, I don't have to compare him head to head because I wasn't ever checked that but it's possible It's possible and a lot of the music is similar, but there's new touches and like To the music that work. There's a little bit more synth. I've noticed in in the soundtrack and I'm There's a little bit more synth I've noticed in the soundtrack, and I'm heavily in favor for that. I believe the composer is Darren Korb. I could be wrong about that. I think Darren Korb is the Hades composer who's also the voice of Zagreus in the first game.

You gotta be careful with that synth. I hear Nick Weger doesn't think that's a real instrument. Hold on. Wait a minute, yeah, it is Darren Korb. Yeah, the other thing I was gonna say, and this is along those lines of just retaining a thing from the first game, when you defeat the final enemy in any encounter

in any individual room, there's hit stop and then this slow down of time. It is so satisfying. It just gets such incredible feel to it. Especially because you don't know always that that's the last one, because you're looking around. Yeah, because these things come in waves.

It's very nice to know when you're done. Right. Cause you're like looking around. Yeah, cause these things come in waves, you know? It's very nice to know when you're done. Yeah. It's great. That feels really good. I wish that happened when you took a shit. So the experience, hold on. You just like never know when you're gonna stop?

Yeah. So you drop heat into your dry toilet. Drop heat. And then just time stops for a second so you drop heat into your dry toilet and then Just time stops for a second so you can process it everything slows down. Oh, thank God. I'm done Yeah, yeah, so you'd be like oh wow okay. That's over. Yeah, cuz you don't know Yeah, you know you sometimes don't know is this actually come especially as you get older like is this finished? I don't know no, that's true Sometimes it is a relief to just like let it go yeah, and it's like you're done with this yeah And sometimes just like I gotta get on with my day at a certain point. Yes

You know That something has to something's gotta give yeah, what you're fucking Sitting there, and you're like still I Yeah, what you're fucking? Sitting there, and you're like still I Want to be done with this I can hear people canceling their patreon And more people subscribe is upsetting me I

Do think that this is a genre that? I do think that this is a genre that Podcasting yeah podcasting that rogue likes. Oh, yeah that was I was surprised to learn that I loved oh For me this was like a total like 2010s. Yeah, it was like it was binding of Isaac is 2011 or something like that. It's just like that that I think like kind of it wasn't that game, but that was one of the things that I think leads to this renaissance of all these, or this resurgence of this genre. And then, yeah, there's just been so many, but for me, first off, it's like indie developers,

small developers, solo developers, can put together these games because structurally, it allows you to get a lot of gameplay without building like a ton of like geometry, without building a ton of assets. So like that's part of it. So you're getting like really creative designs from people who are not coming from necessarily like these huge like AAA development, these giant development teams. So there's just a bunch of different attempts at it.

And I think that's part of it. But yeah, I also just think like, again, it's such a game of – I said this previously, it's such a genre where failure is progress and like I lose at this thing but I get better at this. This is a thing a point Resident Evil Merchant was making earlier. So I think that's a big part of why I like it so much. In five days as of this recording, there is a game called the Rogue Prince of Persia coming out.

Whoa. It's Prince of Persia. It's a Prince of Persia rogue like. Wow, that sounds like your kind of game. Developed by Evil Empire, published by Ubisoft. I never I bounced off of the Metroidvania Prince of Persia But I was enjoying that quite a bit too, but I will I will check out the rogue Prince of Persia. Absolutely Seems like you were gonna say something. Yeah

I Do I mean I love this genre so it's exciting that there's collective breath. I do, I mean, I love this genre. So it's exciting that there's more coming and that they're just like continuing to make more and that Hades, that to speak to the early access part for a second. So I hadn't ever played a game in early access really, like I said, the fact that they would even consider this early access, this game plays perfectly. Okay, so Hades had a pretty lengthy, Haiti's won at a pretty lengthy early access period. I think with Haiti's too, and I don't even mean this cynically.

I think that they maybe were able to wait a little bit longer until this was in such a polished state. And again, you know, an independent developer and publisher, I think this extended early access period with a very polished product is to some degree part of their marketing, right? It's like, hey, everybody, we got this game out. It's already this good.

Imagine what it's going to be like in 2025. They're getting all this positive buzz about this. And also, I think just like people who are avid fans of the first one are excited to be kind of like in on the in here early and messing around with a with a version of it and seeing how it improves. But yeah, I'm not sure how much they're they probably just didn't didn't need as much player feedback for this for this round because it is just like a second version of something they already basically already had perfect yeah it's it's it is it is really it is really though an incredibly impressive game either even at this date yeah I'm

running it in 5120 by 1440 so just an insane widescreen resolution next time it's so so crisp and so fast next time you boot it up could you do me a favor yeah and take a picture of that monitor with it on I gotta see what it yeah, okay sure Yeah, is there an unfair advantage that you have by being able to see more of the map? I don't think so cannot with this sort of game I think with I think of you're maybe playing an FPS, you know, you have a little bit of a wider perspective or something But you know, it's I I don't't know I actually don't know if high level I would I imagine eSports guys or people are playing at high levels don't necessarily need the wide screen they want they just want a

higher frame rate I don't fucking know not my world not my world either trying to think of something else I want to say oh I did have one thing that I wanted to kind of like just just Talk about which was yeah, just regarding supergiant And you know what a cool studio it is But also just I think at the time in which Hades 2 is coming out it was coming on early access We've also like we've had kind of a deluge of like shitty industry news a bunch of layoffs a bunch of studio closures Matt I know you loved hi-fi rush. Yeah that team You know that that studio got got killed unfortunately

Tweet from the from the guy in charge of that studio really really just a fucking just a fucking bummer It's it's awful, and then like hell divers do we didn't talk about that oh? Yeah, they were gonna make it so that you had to have a PlayStation login to play the game on Steam and so many people Gave it negative reviews and were like fuck this that Sony was like never mind Yeah, I think because you know you see these I would just want to say like a like a little bit of maybe some Positivity is that you can point to a company like super giant or a company like Larian that is independent Yes, and that is making like some of the best art that this medium has to offer.

And it's just encouraging that there are people like that who still exist and create these things out of labor of love and that audiences respond so positively to them even when you see all these big corporations that have all of these Shareholders that they're answering to making such onerous decisions in terms of their their own workforces their own creative output So yeah, that's I that from that aspect of it I think it was just like a real positive and kind of a week of negativity and good to celebrate it good to celebrate it Yeah, yeah Evil merchants, Thank you. It's so fucking awesome already.

They could just be like, hey, here it is, it's done. And I'd be like, this is, I love it. But yeah, there's an even better version coming next year. Risen Evil Merchant, any final thoughts? Uh, let's see. Uh, I think Aphrodite gotta be careful. She's showing a lot of titty. Yeah, she's not really wearing anything,

just kinda covered with her own hair. Yeah, you gotta be careful. There's another Capcom property where some people got in trouble for that kinda thing. Darkstalkers. Oh, I remember the Darkstalkers games, yeah. There's like a cat. What happened, where can I see it? You could probably play it on a collection. Yeah, I remember the Darkstalkers games, yeah. Yeah, there's like a cat. What happened? Where can I see it?

You could probably play it on like a collection. Yeah, I'm trying to remember, because what was the cat name? Like Felicia or something like that? Yeah, Felicia and Morgan. And Morgana, yeah, I remember Morgana. And then there was like an underaged character who was also sexy.

And you're like, oh no, don't do that. No thanks. Anyways. Yeah. So, yeah, that's my, my final thought is you gotta be careful when you're walking around like that. Yeah, for sure. It's just good advice in general. It was a different time.

You're a little hornier. In Greece? Yeah, it was horny. Yeah, fair. Horny back then. There is literally one of the fucking Dionysus' whole thing is fucking. Yeah, they're all horny as shit. His dick is out

You see it too nasty Not like mine fuck covered in wine Don't want a mod. What's going on? I made my own mom. Oh got it got it Matt any final thoughts I'm excited to continue playing it I'm sure you'll be hearing more of us more discussion about it in the future and probably when it is officially released but I Just I love these types of games, and I'm glad we talked about it today

Yeah, and and maybe you know when we when the game is in a more finished state I think there's a major update coming later this year. I think it's gonna be Officially released in 2025 is what they said it It's it's a it's a while away, but when that does happen, maybe when there's some of that, maybe we can get Heather's perspective when she's back on the podcast, because I'd love to hear what she thinks about the game.

Yeah. ["Dumbster Steal"] Hey, you present even more to you. You said you had a segment. I do. Okay, great. It's called Happy Meal or D had a segment. I do okay great. It's called happy meal or dumpster steel Okay, great

Now we all know that happy meals What? dumpster steel Steele Okay, got it. You took it from a dumpster, right? Okay, my dumpster so happy meals are known for their video game tie-in toys So Happy Meals are known for their video game tie-in toys. We all remember such precious ideas and moments like Super Mario Bros. 3 with a little spring. Right.

But how about this? I'm gonna tell you a Happy Meal toy and you tell me if it's real. Anybody saying Happy Meal. Or if it's fake. Okay. Jumster Steal. I think I understand but I think you did say that there's only one? Yes. One round. Okay. Dumpster Steal. I think I understand, but I think you did say that there's only one?

Yes. One round. Okay, great. Okay, great, okay. I'm gonna name three items. Okay, got it. You tell me which of these was in Happy Meal or wasn't in Happy Meal.

You just tell me, Happy Meal. Happy Meal or Dumpster Steal. Dumpster Steal. Got it. And the three items are, and you have to name for each of them. Okay, got it. Plastic, plastic bag, Ronald McDonald puppet. I'm gonna say dumpster steel. Hold on a second. Let me name all three. Okay, consider. Got it.

Wait, is there one answer for all three of them? You I named the three. You want to do it one at a time, then it's three rounds. That works for me. Let's let I'll just let you run it the way you want to do it. Name all three. No, You wanna do it one at a time, then it's three rounds. That works for me. Let's, I'll just let you run it the way you wanna do it. Let me name all three. No, let's do it one round at a time. Then I'll say Dumpster Steal is my answer to this one. Dumpster Steal, what do you say?

I think it's a Dumpster Steal too, because I'm picturing the puppet being made out of the plastic bag. It's a plastic bag Ronald McDonald puppet. Yeah. You think it's Dumpster Steal? Dumpster Steal. You're both wrong. It's a happy meal toy. That's a real happy meal toy. Okay.

I read too much into your delivery because it felt like you were thinking of it. That's called poker face. Got it. Okay. Number two. I wasn't expecting such gamesmanship. Uh, gardening tools. It's vague enough where it feels like you can you can find a way to justify as a real one But I also think this is a dumpster steel

I think it's a dumpster steel too, but I can also picture like little plastic ones that you take like to the beach or something Yes, you know, but I'm gonna say dumpsters. Those are both happy meal toys. What and what was the tie-in? gardening It's the IP of gardening got it number three Happy meal or dumpster steel okay? Toothbrush toothpaste Well, I'm just gonna say happy meal at this point. I think I'm gonna say happy meal as well Well, I'll switch back to dumpster steel because I think we're for yeah

We should we have one of us has a chance you go happy meal. I'll go dumpster. Okay. I'll get I'll stick with happy meal Nick Weigar is the winner of a meal or dumpster steel. It was real. It's real. What was the context for that? brush your teeth Are all of these real? I don't know what's real. Is that real? Rich would you like to look up whether or not gardening tool was ever? Happy meal toy rancher producers doing some doing some googling to look up whether or not gardening tool was ever a Happy Meal toy? Rancher producers doing some Googling. Uh, yes.

Happy Meal. Wow. Do you have any context for what it was? What was the tie-in? Gardening, I told you. What country was it? Was it in America? Nature's Helpers Happy Meal.

How does your garden grow? Yeah. Gardening. The concept of gardening. Wow. I kinda, here's the thing, when we prep segments over here, usually there's like, we have like a lot of notes. Uh-huh.

And stuff. Resident Evil Merchant had this segment ready to go off the dome. So this was 1988 to 1991. I still feel the doubt in your voice. No, I'm not doubting. I'm just looking for more context on this. Okay, wait, what was the other one?

Toothbrush and toothpaste. Okay, hold on. Happy Meal, toothbrush, toothpaste. Maybe type in brush or teeth too, just in case. Well let's see what I can find out here. I'm doing some light banging. Okay, this was a Ronald McDonald Hamburglar toothbrush, and this was part of the McDonald's happy meal.

I guess this makes sense. This is the kind of thing these food corporations do. Is there like, our food is extremely unhealthy, but we're going to act like we're doing something positive for the kids, and this feels like the era where they could maybe go with that. This is on a list. This is a listicle of the saddest Happy Meal toys in McDonald's history. Yeah, the Happy Meal Bedtime collection is what it was. Wow.

And then what was the last one? Plastic bag Ronald McDonald puppet. Okay, plastic bag Ronald McDonald puppet. plastic bag Ronald McDonald Puppet happy meal toy happy meal toy Yes, this was a This was a hand puppet kind of looks like shit. I feel like I died Hey, boy. I would have bet my life my family's life Everything I own all of my money,

on this not being true. I'll just say it just like usually, Resident Evil Merchant is just making stuff I would say. I'd say it has a long history as a fabulist. So I'm just kind of amazed that Resident Evil Merchant came in here loaded with some fast food trivia to stump us. This was from 1976. Wow. This is, this is, I was, if,

think of the meta game I was playing on the, on the fact that you guys think I lie all the time. I apologize. It's also, I do, I apologize, there isn't even more to it. It's also interesting that era where before this was always a tie-in with some IP. Yeah, it's like we're just gonna give you McDonald's toothbrushes

We're just gonna give you a Ronald McDonald. It could be argued that things got worse. I think yeah, I've been pretty convincing like so These shitty toys of yesteryear were like almost charming in their Innocent earnestness. Yeah, well said that's this week's get played or pretty Yeah, well said that's this week's get played our producers No, that'll just be the same. I mean a regular segment now. You're real fucking segment after that. Hold on What was it real about my thing? It was real. It was a rat. It had a title and had items I did research. You're right. Yes, it was honestly more prepared than any of our segments. I wouldn't go that far With mine at least. Producers Richelle Chen, ranchyard underscore underscore sard on social media.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, benpruntymusic.com. Our art is by Duck Brigade Design, duckbrigade.com. And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash get played where you can find our entire pre-Headgum back catalog plus ad-free main-freed episodes and also our Patreon exclusive show Get Animated. Matt, What are we watching this week? Nice try Nick. You're not gonna trick me. It's anime and we don't know we're watching this we know There's no way we have no idea where we're we're sourcing a random anime You guys have two shows

Yeah, we do we have another one we do with Heather get animated like a patreon. Yeah, do you know ash? That's a format. Oh It's not a guy leaving the building once yeah, yeah ash comes on the show Terrifying ash is our you there our you yeah like you ever have like a summer camp like fling You know it's like a dates like summer camp. I don't know okay It's like a dit. It's like summer camp. I don't know. What's that? Okay? Anyway, you can find anime hem and all of our get animate episodes over patreon.com Slash get played because the format is we are randomly watching a random episode

Of a random anime that we don't have any context for it's pretty random. It's it's pretty rando It's rando Resident Evil Merchant, thanks so much for being here. Anything you'd like to plug? Yeah, so I've got a podcast. You have a podcast? Yeah, it's called Get Played. I appear every week where I introduce a segment called What Are You Playing? And this week it was a pleasure to work with you boys.

Well great to have you here for the whole time a genuine surprise I will say a genuine surprise that ranch none of us knew this was happening, but here we go We just thought we were doing a little bit about it. I just wanted to do a good job And I hope I did a great job. You did a really good job. Nobody can say you did a bad job You did a good job. I did get confused about that fish versus donut thing and I'm sorry I don't even remember what that was What what was that long John Silver? Oh? Right right long John is what those long donuts are called yes

What do you call a donut that a fish eats? Is this a joke what? Now we got played I guess we got played. I guess we got played. Shoot. That was a hate gum podcast.