Get Played - Summer Games Fest 2023 with Albro Lundy

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Heather and Matt are joined by Rick and Morty writer Albro Lundy to break down the reveals and hype of Summer Games Fest 2023 showcase! They talk about "Pokemon with guns", what we actually know about Sephiroth, and more! This month's We Play, You Play: Street Fighter 6! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd on patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Heather just sent me a new trailer for a brand new game premiering at Summer Games Fest. Why don't I... I'll just watch this while I wait for her to get here. The return of Garlax the Unbiden. Champions assemble as you travel once more to the world of Wolflax, unleashing custom combos with the Water Oath, Neo turn-based action fighting FPS

with real-time online scavenger gameplay, and announcing crossover events with Leptune 9 and Levi's. Or shift your perspective in world premiere time shift warrior fighting styles, which let you control the Excalibat Zenerator and drive five fully operational Thundercraft vehicles in a top-down 3D third-person racing dating sim. What is this?

Break necks and break hearts as you try to find the right words to get a car naked and fuck it. Two-player simultaneous street action brings you an unparalleled magic system. I don't want to fuck a car. To launch epic multi-punch gameplay across a biome that includes wheat, sand, stone, and rice. Wheat? We've been fighting this war for a hundred years. Now it's our chance to turn the tide.

I don't know who you are, so stay the fuck out of my way. Head underwater where you're an immortal rift dolphin before crashing against the genosphere. Who is Chamel Briggs? Is a genosphere like Levi jeans? Only you can discover the truth in free-to-play unlockable mode Chamel Briggs. Crush Mindquake from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Never stop. Never surrender.

Now I'm going to eat this shelf I crafted. Garlax the Unbidden. Battle War. Demon's Raw Machine. Skate Fort. Slam Blood Cyberfault. Hell's Maiden. The Loftening, Darkblood Synapse, Time Virus, Teresmo Christ, Bregadeath 2. Only on PlayStation 5.

Xbox, Steam, Nintendo Switch, and mobile. And PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Samsung Game Hub, Google Game Play Now, Apple Arcade Vision Pro, and coming to Sony Q in fall 2027. Premiering on, introducing Game Chest from Netflix.

Only available at Amazon Extreme. Break the world. Rise the next. Fuck you. My head is a gun. So, like, the car fucking was barely part of it. We board the hype train and ride it to Summer Games Fest Station as we cover the upcoming year in gaming this week on Get Played. Thank you. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to Get Played, the premiere video game podcast. What's happening? I, you know, I just want to say, Nick's not here. Just elephant in the room, right?

Nick's not here. say Nick's not here just elephant in the room right Nick's not here because he thought hmm he's on a little doughboys tour and I know we don't like to cross streams too much but seems like if you have two shows you gotta make time for both right not just one yeah you don't tell mommy you love her and tell daddy to fuck off no no so I want So I want to announce today, I haven't cleared this with you. I don't know if you're going to be okay with this. Wait, what? Wait, what? I'm declaring a war against Doughboys.

Oh, okay, sure. Except not Mitch, though. Wait, what? Mitch is fine. So only Nick? Nick only. But when he's here, it's fine. But Nick on Doughboys? Dead to us. Dead to us. Okay, it's fine. But Nick on Doughboys.

Dead to us. Dead to us. OK, I'm in. But Mitch, we love Mitch. We do. I love Mitch. I always got the sense that Mitch didn't like me. No, Mitch loves you.

What is this? We can't talk. This is not a podcast about other podcasts. It is now. Consider yourselves warned, Doughboys. You're fucked. Nick only. It is now. Consider yourselves worn, doughboys. You're fucked. Nick only.

No, Nick's in D.C. right now because he said he had to finish the job. I don't know what that means. If you're just tuning in for the first time this week, welcome to Get Played. We're a video game podcast. We typically have three hosts, but this week we only have two and a really exciting guest. But before we get to that guest, is this how this goes? He always says these words. What do you mean?

What are you going to do right now? I don't know. Because I'll be honest for you, for like 20 seconds, my brain did turn off. I'm sweating so bad. I know. It's fine. Okay. Were you about to get into what are we playing?

Like my hands are physically leaving water on the table. That's bad. There's a lot of electronic equipment on the table. That's bad. There's a lot of electronic equipment on the table. Also, what is it saying about the show that Nick is the like, the social rudder of it? That's actually fucked. Yeah, I know. When you really think about it, it is,

if he's the guy. He's the guy. Johnny Convo. Okay. Wait. So, what normally goes like this, we've got he because he does it yeah he does it oh i didn't even prep because like normally you're supposed to ask what's like a thing like you how do you want to be introduced which i guess we could ask now yeah well let's get to it when it's time to introduce well when do you think that is? Because I have a take. I have a radical take.

Okay. Intro now? I think it's now. Okay, great. Albro, how would you like to be introduced? As a friend and a kind person. Okay, great. We've got a really great guest today. A friend and

kind person. Please welcome to the show, Albro Lundy. Hi, guys. Hello. Hi. Happy Summer Game Fest. Hi. Tis the season.

Can you believe it's finally here? I couldn't even sleep last night. Albro, you and I work together. We do. When the industry's not on strike. That's true. And I know you're a huge gamer. I mean, I thought I was a gamer. We do. tip too far into the conversation at hand today, but while I was watching these, I was like, are video games bad? Well, I had the thought

that it's like if every movie trailer for the next year was for the same movie. Like, it's the same shit. And it really bummed me out. Like, I used to be a video game journalist, and I had to, like, go to these events and cover them constantly.

And I eventually it burnt me out so bad from just basically watching the same like a guy loads a gun and then you're a third person and he's doing cover mechanic and the world is red and gray. And it just was like there were like six titles that entire time that we're getting ahead of ourselves. No, for sure. I want to do the interview segment with Albro that Nick normally does. Okay, great. And I will try very hard to be—Albro knows me and knows that this is the hardest thing I've ever done. This is a blast. I love that Nick is storming the Capitol right now, but it's here that it's truly falling apart.

All right. So you're a big gamer until today, and then you're thinking about giving it up. I mean, so it's fun. I listened to the last couple of episodes, and I hear Matt sort of sheepishly talk about how he's played 45 hours or 65 hours of Tears of the Kingdom. I hit 155 last night. I have not been sleeping. I feel bad about it

because it's a fucking amazing game. It's so, so good. But last night I beat the game last night because I was like I need to end this. I need to finish this moment in time. I'm creeping up on that as well. I mean, I'm at like 85, like 90 hours or probably at this point.

And I don't want it to be over, but I need it to be over. Yeah. I have other stuff I got to do. I played the first game, Breath of the Wild, when I finally got my hands on it. It had been out for a little while, so kind of like that immediate sort of shiny luster was a little bit worn off. So I kind of played it how Heather would. Like, I

blitzed to all the towers. I like only focused on stamina. I was like, I'm going to unhinge my jaw and consume this game whole. So this time around, I was like, I'm going to I'm going to taste every single note that this thing has to offer. I'm going to ride my horse to every goddamn location.

And while it has been amazing and immersive and truly just hooking myself up to a dopamine IV for 12 hours at a time, I now have spent so much time on the game not building mechs like everyone else has that now I'm starting to feel guilty. I'm like, what did I spend 155 hours on? Like, what was I even doing? And it was, like, it was nice when I, like, finally fought Ganondorf. Spoiler alert. He's the bad guy. Yeah, no shit.

What? Again? I was hoping it was going to be Mario. Shit. That's the next one. Mario and Nick Cage are the bad guys in zelda 3 tears of the gamer um but yeah like that i i hesitate to sort of like this this watching all of these trailers i was like oh there's there's an entire genre called like lovingly rendered guy and gothic armor that i've never touched in my entire life that was

kind of like 50 of what we were watching so so the fact like they call one of the things that stood out in this conference was at one point they said this game is a souls like or a souls born like yes which is not the the company that made the game doesn't make those games. Yeah. But you would never call the Sonic game a Mario-like. No, but I guess it's in the same way that the term Metroidvania is a type of game. I don't think they would have called it a Metroidvania in the copy. It was such a weird moment.

Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. It felt almost meta. Yeah. You have to differentiate yourself in this field of everyone that looks the exact same like you have to either wink to the camera or just hope that yours is the best graphics with the biggest team of people that's been killing themselves for two years not yet not to get too far into that again but i do think they probably had to say that to get people interested in what that game was. I don't know

the name of it. The Lies of P, right? The Pinocchio game? It could have been Lies of P. It could have been Witchburn. It could have been... I wrote them all down. Now I'm serious. I wrote them all down. Me too, yeah. So we'll be able to go through this. I guess beyond Tears

of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, what other games do you typically gravitate toward? Would you say you're a big fan? Apodaca naturally relieving me of the interviewing duty already. I sent a text earlier. I'll help you. This episode has an arc. Matt slowly becomes the social guy.

Oh, no. He becomes the Nick. I got to buy a plane ticket to D.C. real quick. Heather knows I was raised in a pretty Christian family, kind of like everything to do with all media, film, books, television, games, I'm catching up on. I, like, have to shed my PG husk at all times. So the vestigial element from that is that I really gravitate towards Nintendo-y games. I really like stuff with engaging bright colors

with sort of interesting design rather than sort of grounded real-world graphics. The last couple games I got really lost in were things like Hades. Hell yes. I really loved, is it Grease or Grizz? Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, I love the color and music.

Anything I can kind of like sit in the dark with for a couple of hours while being super stoned is kind of perfect. And then I really enjoy Smash Bros. Like, I'm not awesome at it. I feel like saying you're good at Smash Bros. is inviting yourself to get hit by lightning. But I really enjoy the game, and I really enjoy, I wish I could get more into PvP combat stuff. I just, everyone's so good and the learning curve is so terrifying each time. Like if a game is out for two weeks, you're bad at it already. A hundred percent.

You know. One of the things that we're covering Street Fighter VI this month, which is our like big arc game for everybody to play along with us in a segment we call We Play, You Play. But one of the things that they've added to Street Fighter VI this time is a Smash Bros. like control scheme that strips away all of the like six button combo stuff and makes it more accessible. That's really exciting to me. The thing I love about Smash is that I get to do that anime thing where like two guys punch each other so hard that they fall in love where it's like at a certain point you play you play the same jigglypuff like three times in a row suddenly you're brothers and you know like you can you're dancing rather than fighting you know you're like

taking turns reading each other's mind i love that that's amazing and i totally understand that that element is in stuff like street fighter um i just wasn't in a video game friendly family, so I didn't have a chance to access that. But that thrills me. That gets me really, really excited. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, so I knew this, but our listeners didn't know that you were from a Christian family. And now you write on Rick and Morty. Has there been any, like, pushback? I think it's part of, like, a gradual arc for my whole family. We're now sort of the lefty progressive sheep of the family, sort of our collective group. I have a very gay brother. So that's all well and good. And now I kind of just feel like now that I have the green light to consume everything, I very much need to.

So but I'm behind the eight ball everywhere. You know, like I write television. I've seen none of television. Like I like the the thing I did during the pandemic was I was playing a lot of Smash online, but I realized that that was just going to be a time sink. So I started playing Smash online while watching Prestige TV. I like finished The Sopranos and The Wire. Now I'm almost done with The Americans. Like it's, I really like,

I feel like the Zoomers are doing 10 things on 10 screens all at once. Yeah. Like I'm doing my best to get there, you know. I was going to say like Smash is like a good game for like also maybe doing something else like you maybe should be paying attention because you don't want to lose but like it's like it's just smash it's like you know i can just start another one pretty quickly and it's a nice moment for either thing that i'm consuming where i have to do either like the sitting up in the chair meme

to actually engage someone or i have to like stop video gaming so i can pay attention to this really good episode like it's a great feeling for either one. That's great. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of taking Adriana. Yeah. Has there been like a thing that you have come to very late? I mean,

I know you just named two or three prestige TV shows, but is there like a, for example, Mary just saw alien two years ago, right? Is there a movie or a TV show that you came to super late and you're like, there's nobody to talk to about this? Yes, I want to scream at people about the thing all the time. Because also one of the things about growing up in a sheltered environment is that you just don't get to horror stuff ever.

You're afraid of it and you create this like gray area in your head where all the scary stuff lives that like is perfectly designed to freak you out and then it turns out like a good horror movie is just an awesome movie and it's where most of the cool high concept stuff is like it's hand in hand with fantasy and sci-fi and so stuff like alien and aliens and the thing um all like brand new to me and i'm my mind is blown by it. You know, like Schraub basically picks like every weekend, he'll show me something that everyone else has seen, but I haven't.

This is a fellow writer, Rob Schraub. And I like, he just likes to experience his youth again through me. I'm kind of like the dinosaurs get loose. What? It was, it was a thing like early,

early on in me, like working in in TV where I hadn't seen anything. So I'd be like, you guys, I got this great idea. What if someone sent a robot from the future back in time to murder the leader of the... And everyone would be like, does he know? Is this a bit? Like, hey, he becomes his friend later. So I feel like it's that for everything. I'm going to pitch people like,

what if a bunch of pals got together and did kart racing? That's so funny. I don't have a ton of... I wasn't raised in a religious household, but if it's rated R, you can't do that or whatever. So there's stuff like that that I have missed along the way.

I still feel bad if I catch a glimpse of a South Park. I'm like feel bad if I like catch a glimpse of like a South Park I was like oh I'm gonna get in big trouble I can't those kids are really bad but last year last year when I had COVID I watched all of the Evil Dead movies and I was like this is my personality it was like Bruce Campbell's the greatest movie star on earth I love him I love these movies I don't want to talk about anything else and still like if somebody's like Evil Dead right I'm like yeah fuck, Evil Dead, right? I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah, Evil Dead.

It rules. Yeah. I've told these two stories on the show before, I think. One is that my kindergarten, which is now permanently shut down. Because you went back. Used to show us hard-R horror movies at nap time. horror movies at nap time which i have a like i've said it on the i'm still hunting for this uh thing that i saw when i was like a child which was a woman in a shower with spiders crawling out of her mouth and i saw it at school uh and then the other thing is that my parents were really

um proactive about showing me R-rated movies because they were like, you know, we want that we would pop, they would pause it. And then they would be like, so here's how this effect is done. So that I was never scared of the things because I'd be like, oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. I can see where the blood is like squirting out is like a, is like a squib. Okay. And my parents weren't in the industry or anything. They were just like really interested in like educating me on the process so I wouldn't be afraid. The flip side of that is that it's very hard for me to get scared watching a thing or like playing a game. Because I'm like got that desensitization filter or screen up the whole time. So you play Nintendo games predominantly because of this Christian upbringing.

And basically kind of any buzzy indie that makes it to the switch. You know, I, I loved hyper light drifter, you know, like I, I, I really liked,

you know, I mentioned Hades. I also sunk a bunch of hours into wizard of legend, kind of like a very similar roguelike game. I will say wizard of legend sounds like one of these random games. I feel like all these games wanted to be called Wizard of Legend and they Googled it and they were like, fuck. But I, yeah, and I like, you know, I like puzzles.

I never got to the Portal games, but I feel like I would have really, really liked them. I never got to like Half-Life and stuff, but I feel like I would really, really like it. That's the thing with all of these, like, movies and games is that, like, I get to them and I love them very, very much. And everything is just exposure therapy. So, stuff I would have been scared. Like, I'd love to try a Resident Evil game or maybe I'll play Alan Wake because everyone in the chat kept saying Resident Evil as to Alan Wake. The footage is playing. But I, it's, now I'm open to everything.

Like, I really want to consume all of it. I just don't have the time to. So I don't own a PS5. I don't own the, what's the latest Xbox? Xbox Series. I don't have the Xbox Series. Is that true? It's called Xbox.

I mean, the branding is Xbox Series, and then it's either for S or X. Because they're the same console, but one is digital only. So they call it the Xbox Series. And weaker. It's actually weaker, isn't it? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. What a weird... When you turn it on, it goes like this.

You could have told me anything. It's called the Xbox Requiem, and I would have been like, wow, we've been out of gaming for a while. I'm a perfect mark for you guys today. If you want someone to leave this room, believing something. Our main goal on this show is to trick and deceive. So I'm glad. I'm good.

Good to know. How did he get played? Listen and see. Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. We want it. We can, we got this nice guy in here.

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at MagicSpoon.com slash getplayed and use code getplayed to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. Matt, I realized something. What's that? We did this out of order. What do you mean? We're supposed to do the thing where we ask each other what we're playing. Well, we could do that now.

We haven't really done that, really. We talked about it a little bit. I like the idea that Nick is watching a feed of this right now, being like, no, no! Wait, but isn't that the way it goes normally? It's like, but before we introduce our guest... I want to stop you right. I'm just going to stop you for a second.

Just because that's how we think it goes doesn't mean that's how it has to go all the time. You know, Nick's here, and he's always... We're like Snowpiercer right now, okay? We're on the back of the fucking train, okay? Nick's in the front of the train, Ed Harris, eating his steak, his Wagyu beef. We're in the back

eating fucking slop. Let's get to the fucking front of the train and throw his ass off. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Can I be the guy who takes the axe and puts it in the fish for no reason? Yeah, hell yeah! Albro, a lot of times when I'm on Twitter, people ask about, like, my writing journey and how I got to a place. Do you want to talk about how you got to, like, I know you weren't a sketch comedian, you know? I wasn't.

How did you get to where you are? Like, what was your journey? Did you go to school for writing? I was, my last quarter at UCLA. I took three film classes because I was done with all of my poli sci prereqs. And were you like film? I was going to be I was going to be a lawyer. I was like all set to talk for the rest of my life, which I'm doing a bad job of not doing, I guess. But the like I took three classes. I took like intro to stand up comedy. I took intro to screenwriting and I took intro to the business

of film and kind of like all three of those professors, God bless them. At the end of the quarter, they all sort of like took me to the side and they were like, Hey, are you interested in this at all? You, you showed a, you know, both an aptitude and an enthusiasm that says you'd be pretty decent at it. So I kind of just called it audible. Um, and so you do, you know, you do your, your odd PA gigs. Uh, but I, but I was just lucky enough to – I was telling jokes on Twitter. I was writing scripts in my spare time. I thought – and now I have my favorite job on my favorite show with my favorite people in the entire world because I wanted to write animation. There were shows that like – I grew up without TV, like without it in the household.

So the only stuff I got to watch was on Toonami when my parents were asleep, when we were on vacation. Um, and so stuff like Samurai Jack was incredibly amazing. And you get little, little hints of Dragon Ball Z and I'd be like, Oh, what's that?

I want to do that. And then you, you get to the entertainment industry and you learn that stuff's all written by the artist, like by people who have an additional skill that you don't have. Um, and they're all juggling two plates plates like a genius instead of just one. So I, but, you know, I still wanted to work in animation. I still wanted to write animation.

I love immersion so much. I was just lucky enough to, I reached out to animation writers who were doing the thing. A couple of them were nice enough to meet with me. Eventually I met Mike McMahon, my TV dad, and he hired me on Rick and Morty, and I've been there for the last five years. So just luck. I feel like, you know, there's a, everyone should say luck when you ask them how they got somewhere, but like me especially, I just luck. I'm so fortunate to get to do this. I really love everything. I feel like my one superpower is I have this fresh enthusiasm for everything because I grew up with none of it. And so I get that juice of being just kind of like a teenager who hasn't experienced anything before applied across

everything that I could be learning or doing or writing. Yeah. I mean, you and I and another writer on the show have an anime thread of text messages. And I feel like that enthusiasm, I used to attribute it just to anime. I used to be like, oh, Alvaro's the anime guy. But now I know that that is for everything. I'm the battery. People get to chuck at stuff. If they need extra energy, I'm there.

You haven't been to a sports game with me. Sports games I treat as sanctioned yelling. I'm there. Like, you haven't been to a sports game with me. Sports games I treat as sanctioned yelling. Like, I'm just, like, allowed to express. And I guess, like, that's why I eventually gravitated to comedy because everyone, it's free-flowing and everyone has energy. And I was just excited to meet people who had that same level of enthusiasm for stuff. I do love anime. You can have me on that other podcast, too, when you eventually get to the show. That other Our Sister podcast, Get Animated, weekly episodes where we're currently covering the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. That's right. But you mentioned something that I want to circle back to,

because you said that you would reach out to people and ask them for advice or whatever. When we told Nick that you were going to be on the show last week, he was like, oh, I know Albro. Tell him I said hi. So we're laying that message. Second thing he said, we hung out one time and we were baffled by this. Because Nick doesn't hang out with anybody.

So I wanted to ask you, what was that like? We got drinks in Mar Vista like seven years ago. Nick was incredibly generous and kind to meet up with me he was a funny guy who also liked sports on the internet um and ever since i like so it was very funny when heather started this podcast uh because i was like a wagger i know that guy um yeah nick's great i know we're all talking about how absentee he is yeah um yeah incredibly cool dude and was very kind to a young version of me. OK. Well, I was hoping for some dirt. So moving on.

I mean, the truth is, I think that you and I have the exact same number of Nick hangouts. I got pizza with him once and I know it like I'm like, oh, the time I got pizza with him. I think I've hung out with Nick one time, too, but it was for Doughboy. Oh, man. You dialed back the Doughboy war, but I was excited to kind of be like an ambassador in the Capitol when the nuke started flying. I was like, whoa, am I part of podcast history? I'll never dial it back. This is an anti-Nick Doughboy podcast now.

He's also, I think because, you know, the chances of him actually listening to this episode are extremely low. Yes. And everyone don't, I'm just kidding. You don't got to tag the Doughboys. You don't got to tell Mitch. Wait, I think everybody could just be in on it. Mitch. Wait, I think I think everybody could just be in on it. I think if you are a listener or if you are Mitch or if you are going to tell Mitch that this is happening, let him know that everybody is supposed to keep it away from Nick. OK, that's good. Yeah. Like we are all in like what's about

to happen is that everybody is about to go into the second screening of the Blair Witch Project. And your goal is to not to walk out and be like, holy shit, that was real! So that they have a good time. In the same way, you're all complicit in this game where we're going to declare war on Nick from Doughboys. Yeah, that's how that's gonna go.

But, I think now it's time, Heather. I think you can ask for it now. What? The big question. What is the big question? You know. know what we ask it every single week oh what are you playing just like that that's the question oh that was so anticlimactic hey everybody it's me holy shit that's joel miller it's yeah it's me joel just stopping by because i i found this comic book over there in the corner that ellie likes to read y'all read this comic book before uh no but i pretty sure the last time you were here it was the exact same thing you said to us

oh anyway he's pretty he's fascinated by books. His world doesn't have a lot of other... It's not even so much it's for me, it's just that I can't make heads or tails of which ones are which. It's all, it's might as well be in another language. Please help me relate to my child. Please don't make fun of the way I speak right to me.

I'm not coming in here saying how you guys talk. All sounding all normal and all that. You know, Joel, somebody plays you on television, Pedro Pascal, and he's one of the front runners for an Emmy nomination. Really? Yeah. They think he did a really good job portraying you. How did it make you feel?

I think I need a slice of that pie i think i get the emmy too if you play me on the t if you play a living person on the tv they get the trophy to give me the hardware that would be a horrible precedent why because rupert murdoch would have an Emmy. Donald Trump would have an Emmy. The Slender Man would have an Emmy. So, Joel, did you come here with a question for us? Oh, no. I just found this comic book and I saw that you guys are in here. What? The comic book.

I thought you said something else. What did you think I said? Comic book. Well, saw that you guys are in here. What? The comic book? I thought you said something else. What'd you think I said? Comic book. Well, some of the pages are stuck together. There we go. But,

yeah, I guess I was just wondering, oh, hey, look at this. It's one of them trading cards that Ellie also collects. Is that true?

Does she collect trading cards? I think in the second game it's trading cards. That's what Last of Us Part 2 is about. That's right. It's all about trading cards. Ellie gets really into trading cards? I think in the second game it's trading cards. That's what Last of Us Part 2 is about. It's all about trading cards. She moves her hyper obsession into old media, into cards.

The cards are based on the comic book. Zulia, I do have a question for y'all. What are you playing? Well, Joel, I'll go first. i'm just gonna leave what oh okay bye bye joel uh so i wanted to cover this in uh in the upcoming segment but i think this is the right place to do it which is the fort, beep. So this is the final.

The way you did that as if it was just normal English. It was ready. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. So today, as of this record, is the final day of this current season of Fortnite. Uh, we've seen a lot of things happen this season. A lot of new biomes, a real big, uh, big change to the map. Uh, we've had, uh, swords came and went. We had, uh, ODM gear came and, and is going, probably going to go away.

Uh, in a collaboration with, uh, Beyond? No, across the Spider- the spider-verse uh we've had some spider-man items we've had a star wars event but all of that is going to change with fortnight wilds which releases as of this record in 24 or 48 hours of some of the weapons that have been shown in this season three trailer, we have also heard of the lever pistol, the mythic drum shotgun, helicopters. Fucking can you imagine flying a helicopter in Fortnite? I can. I can now. Not before, but now I can. Kylo Ren carrying like a Naruto skinned AK-47 while flying at Optimus Prime. Yeah, crashing into Ariana Grande.

There will be a epic or legendary thermal bolt action sniper and potentially a ropes and chains launcher uh a lot of cool stuff is coming to my favorite game in just a couple of days wow i saw them enter the temple in that trailer and i was like oh man what's gonna happen in this indiana jones pastiche and then optimus prime yeah they're, they were like, psych, bitch. There was a moment during your preamble where you were like, fuck a car, where I was like, oh, she's talking about the Fortnite trailer. And then maybe this was in that copy, too. There was, yeah, no, they showed the trailer.

The trailer just dropped as of Summer Games Fest, which is a weird time to drop a trailer, is a day before the thing. That's a strange hype cycle. But anyway, yeah, Optimus Prime is like the big collab, but he gets shrunk down to person size, which I'm all in favor of the collabs that like make sense of the physical space of the like the relationship between these characters.

He should have been fucking big. I'm cool with it as long as he also turns into an even smaller truck. Like if he can be rolling around at everyone's knee height. And still shooting. It's the ultimate crouch mechanic. If that mechanic works, I hope it is across all skins. So that if you're like fucking, I't know wily coyote or some shit you turn into a like deformed truck but yeah it's uh it's uh it's jungle themed uh there's temples

there's uh like bomb flowers and poison flowers two kinds of llamas uh If you don't play Fortnite, none of this means anything to you. Yeah. But imagine Optimus Prime with a Dragon Ball sickle chasing down, I don't know, is Walter White in the game? I don't think so.

Not yet. No. But they'll add him and Asak Schrader to the game. My impression of Fortnite is still the PUBG ripoff, like the first moment where it's like, oh, you drop on an island and everyone kills each other until there's one left. So everything you're describing right now sounds like a total fever dream. I'd say give it a try.

Use an ODM gear. It's like, what? Wait, ODM from Attack on Titan? Yeah, yeah. It's in the game. What is there to grab onto? Everything. You grab onto trees and buildings.

And massive stacks of wood. Yeah, massive stacks of wood and you can attack. Big stairs, yeah. It was honestly, I think, my favorite weapon of the entire season after the sword,

which a glitch was discovered very late in the season, so they suddenly took the swords away from all of us, which was a real bummer. But you could use ODM or Spider-Man hands. That's you're describing a way cooler game than a like battle royale shooter. It's so good. It's so good. That's awesome.

But yeah, so that I've been playing my last moments of this season of Fortnite. And I've been also playing Zelda, though I am not nearly as far as you guys. Mostly because I'll get fixated on doing something I'm not supposed to do until I actually get told by the game I'm not allowed to do it. Yeah. Which I've now received two red X's. And I'm extremely proud of it. That's pretty good, actually. I think those are a rare collectible.

I want to watch you solve some of those puzzles. I remember listening to you talk about just like smashing a conglomerate you know this utter. The lava puzzle where I like literally just made a ball and climbed it.

You're playing the game like Katamari. I'd say that's the beauty of the game. It's every game. I mean, there have been multiple times before I found the paraglider, which is in the starting area, that I would get to a place that I could not get down from. would get to a place that I could not get down from because you're not supposed to collect all of the stuff you can to build a bridge and then tilt it towards the sky but if you if you stagger like if you put use minecarts as a a junction in between like long periods of logs oh interesting you can climb up the logs and then rest and get your stamina back and then continue

to climb up logs. Incredible. Which is what I've been, my puzzle solving is, this isn't a puzzle, but let's make it into one. That's what I've been playing. Great.

Albert, what have you been playing? Besides, I guess, Tears of the Kingdom. Wow, like only Tears of the Kingdom and nothing else. I haven't been playing Sleep or playing Eat. I guess, and. Wow, like only Tears of the Kingdom and nothing else. I haven't been playing Sleep or playing Eat.

I guess, how have you been approaching certain tasks? You said you haven't been building mechs, but have you had a lot of fun just thinking outside the box a little bit? I really like the genre immersion the game has. I don't want to spoil anything but a thought i keep having and that i definitely had during the final boss fat boss fight last night was like oh my god i can't believe that this franchise has come to a place where it feels so organic that i'm getting to do every version of movie in it like i i love the uh the moon bounce physics in the Water Temple. Like, I love the mine cart mayhem of the Fire Temple.

Like, I love the Mario level that is jumping from ship to ship in the Rideau, like, Wind Temple. Like, there's so many different games wrapped up in it. And so my favorite thing to do is just, like, wear a cool little outfit and go conduct myself like I'm the sheriff of this here town, you know. Or whatever the game requires of me, I'll slip into that skin. I guess, and then, like, before Tears of the Kingdom came out, was there anything that you were like, oh, I better say goodbye to this? Oh, man, I wish there was. There's so many, like, cool indies that I haven't gotten around to

that I definitely have purchased but not played. Sure. But, you know, I was waiting for this game for six years. I was going to buy a physical copy because I didn't know that I had the memory on my SD card. And then at, like, 1230, I was like, fuck it. No, like, I need to be part of this. And, like, have not, you know, talked to my family since. But, I don't know.

I'm trying to think of things about the game that I'm doing creatively. And I think like I'm a little insecure about the fact that I'm able to put so much time into the game without being a chaos agent like Heather is. But also now I'm also the game invites you to think about what else would be cool because so often you think like they introduce stuff you never thought the game could do. So one pitch that I would really love to be added to any DLC, I keep praying for it to happen and it doesn't happen to me, is I want there to be a light route anglerfish thing where I'm walking up to a light route and I'm all relaxed because I'm safe now. And then suddenly all the ground around me rises up. I'm like, now I'm just rooting for more content, you know?

God, it's such a cool game. I'm trying to recreate the light cycle from the last one, but yeah. God, I wish I played it more interestingly. No, I just love staring at the sunset. I'm playing it the most normal way possible. Like, I'm just, I have, a couple times as I've been playing it, I've been like, God, I'm, like, kind of stuck. I don't necessarily know.

Because some of, like, the clues that they give you about where to go next can be, like, a little obtuse sometimes. That I'll, like, look at, like, a guide just, like, for the first hint. Like, I just need to know where to go. And then I get there, and then I'm not looking at it for like, I just, I don't want to really spoil what I was just doing, but I needed help getting somewhere.

I didn't know where to go. As soon as I went there, I started to follow the path more, um, uh, just like on my own. And now I'm at a spot where I'm like, I can't believe I fucking got here by myself.

This is like such an amazing, cool thing that I'm doing. And it's a story thing that comes later in the, in the story. like, I can't believe I fucking got here by myself. This is such an amazing, cool thing that I'm doing. It's a story thing that comes later in the story. I think I know what you're talking about. I was looking for someone. As it was happening, I was like, I can't believe I get to do this in a Zelda game. It's unbelievable.

I can't believe I get to do this in a Zelda game. It's such a cool thing. I'm really loving that. Are you guys talking about trying to build a launcher that gets the horse onto Great Sky Island? We are talking about that. No, it's a part where you have to build a launcher that gets the horse onto Great Sky Island? We are talking about that. No, it's a part where you have to make a big robot that

shoots flames out of his dick. Honestly, I would love to see Heather Quests incorporated into the game. If a guy walks up to me and is like, and the text is like, please launch my horse to Sky Island. Now I want NPCs to beg me to break the physics of their world. Rid me of this horse.

They do always talk to you like that. They make a noise like they're about to fart before they talk to you. But I'm playing that still, obviously, and I'll be playing it still for a while. But the main thing that I'm really playing right now is Diablo 4. And the thing about Diablo is it's just clicking. It's just all clicking. It is just clicking. And that's all it needs to be.

It's so fun. You just go around and you click. Click, click, click. That's all you do. That sounds like my worst enemy. But you have different things that you can do, right? So like you have the one click B, this one

attack, and then you have this other button on your keyboard. Maybe that's your flamethrower if you're a sorcerer like me. And you just hold that fucker down. That's just the two, you have two buttons? Well, no, I have like five. Okay. That's just, I gave you a second example. You made it sound like it was just like Minesweeper.

No, no. It's got so many buttons. You don't even believe it. Okay. Okay. Oh, okay. I'm back on board. No, it's got a lot of buttons.

But I've been playing that. I squatted up with some of the fine folks in the Discord. And boy boy was that a fucking blast. Man, our Discord has, I mean I play with them when I play Fortnite all the time and they are just the best group. And if you're not on the

Discord and you want to play with us hosts, just discord.gg slash getplayed. That's right. Fuck yes! I did it! That's where all the cool listeners are. So if you're... No, it's true. It's true.

I'm going to go ahead and say this. You want to be there and you're cool? Join in. If you're not cool and for some reason you don't like us,

don't go in there. We don't want you in there. If you listen to the show for some reason and you're like, well, I like when they talk about the games but I hate when they

do everything else, we don't want to hear it. Like, well, I like when they talk about the games, but I hate when they do everything else. We don't want to hear it. I first gave AG1 a try because I was tired of taking so many supplements every day and wanted a single solution that supports my entire body by filling in nutrient gaps daily. I need energy. I wanted to simplify my morning routine with easy habits. Since drinking AG1, I've felt energized, strong,

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Exactly. As I was done talking about the other thing. See, you were talking about the summer of Discord, and now it's time to talk about the Summer Games Fest. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Guys, I made a list of all the games covered in a Summer Games Fest. And I can read it all

as a straight list. And then, or we can just go through one by one and see if we have anything that we remember about these incredible game trailers that were dropped this afternoon.

We can, I think that's a good way to do it. Great. Let's do it. Prince of Persia. Look. afternoon we can i think that's a good way to do it great let's do it prince of persia look that's my fucking god they like i was already sort of like okay like what are we what is this even gonna be right out the gate they fucking dropped their fucking matnip and i was like let's go this is

it for me i i'm happy now whatever else they show it could be all bullshit the rest of the time and uh i but this prince of persia is back to its sort of like its roots kind of like it's a two like not 2d but uh it's like it's a side scrolling sort of like platformer game uh and that's that's interesting to me because i've never played one of those before do you have any experience with the Prince of Persia? I watched this trailer and I wrote down Prince of Persia Metroidvania. It looks cool. I don't know.

I'll be checking that out. It seems like I really loved I've recently been a Metroid guy, so that style of game is right up my alley. So I'm excited to see my guy in a familiar but different setting for me.

I have Prince of Persia on my Macintosh Classic. Oh! Which is the... Oh! Oh! That's a text from Zelda. That was my first introduction to Prince of Persia. Okay.

And it plays really poorly. Yeah. It's not enjoyable. It's kind of funny that it's like, I mean, the Sands of Time is probably like the thing that made it like a... PlayStation 2. Yeah. Like it made it like a, you know, if you could call it a household name, like a good franchise. I feel like Jake Gyllen you could call it a household name, a good franchise. I feel like Jake Gyllenhaal made it a household name. Well, because people were talking about it in a different way.

In the way that like, hey, maybe this was not cool. Like immediately. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the franchise. So I'm excited to check this one out for sure. Cool. All right. Up next was Mortal. By the way, if you're like, what the fuck is a Summer Games Fest?

E3 used to be a big conference that would happen in the summer, and they would demo all the new games, and games journalists would get to play previews, and that got scaled down and then destroyed itself. So now there's like these solitary events like the Summer Games Fest that just announces all of the upcoming shit. So that's what we're talking about. We're not just randomly choosing games. These were things on a YouTube. And it's hosted by Jeff Kiley, who's like a, like, he was a journalist, right?

And he started like the whole, I don't know what his... I don't know. I don't know. But after they showed Prince of Persia, they showed Mortal Kombat 1 and Ed Boon came out to talk about it. I believe when I was a kid, Ed Boon came to my school to talk to us about making a video game and showed us drawings of Mortal Kombat before it came out. Have you only gone to the coolest schools of all time? At my kindergarten, they showed us R-rated movies every day.

And then someone came by and explained how to make a video game. Or I was like a government test subject. Yeah, you're like in the Black Widow project. But I grew up in Chicago, so I was like, who was the guy who came in and showed us the drawings of the four-armed guy?

And it was like, we have a video game company. I must admit. Anyway, I don't know. But yeah, I watched Mortal Kombat 1. This was my first exposure to Mortal Kombat 1 footage. I haven't really played much of the latter day Mortal Kombat games. I knew enough to know that now when you punch somebody, you go inside his body and you see his ribs explode. Yes.

That was nasty when they were showing that. That was sickening. There was a point where Raiden did a fatality where he cut somebody in half and then used his electricity to grab the halves that were cut in half and then pull them together with electric force and smash them into bits. And I felt like the second half of the fatality was boring because I was like, no, the cool thing is the cut in half. The second part is just salsa. But yeah, I was, uh, I, I, there's something about the frame that like limited frames of animation in mortal combat games where it's

like suddenly your legs leg is extended for a kick and it was neat seeing that incorporated in a 3d mortal combat game i guess i've never really actually focused on the new stuff as much but i like i like that it looked okay that's enough right unless? Unless you have something to say. I mean, I wrote down Mortal Kombat New 52. Because I was trying to, I was like, oh, I recognize them. But they, yeah, they're different now. I feel like. Those guys are brothers now. Yeah, exactly. Cool.

They're siblings. I really liked that you can, I think this was the game where they were talking about how now you get like a buddy that you can sort of like tap in i thought it's really cool that mortal kombat lets your bar friend shank them in the heat of battle i think it's cool that ed boone is still like the guy for mortal kombat because like that doesn't always happen where like the guy who started it like gets to do it you know if it does they might end up in uh prison for insider trading yeah that should also be uh but and so uh yuji naka who created sonic the hedgehog uh there was a sonic superstars uh trailer that debuted but yuji naka is in jail currently he's been sentenced to jail for two and a half years for insider trading anyway what are you gonna say

and inventing Sonic? And inventing Sonic. Well, that's sort of the big thing. They're like, you get arrested for a crime, but the real crime was what he did many years ago, which was actually invent Sonic. They talked about how excited they were that Jean-Claude Van Damme voices a character.

And I was like, just make Jean-Claude Van Damme a fucking character. You're like starting your universe all over again. Like get him in there. And I was like, you know what? Maybe people can't do that. And then the next fucking thing they showed was that Nick Cage is a playable character in Dead by Daylight. Well, first we saw Path of Exile 2.

Okay. And then after that, after that we saw some i guess i couldn't figure out if this was a street fighter 6 crossover with another game or if this was a mode coming to street fighter 6 where ryu is a robot fighting dinosaurs so it was the former it is um a street fighter collab for this other game called Exo Primal. Okay. Which, to me, sucks.

The other thing is better. If dinosaurs and robots are coming to Street Fighter, that's good. Yeah. But Street Fighter going to dinosaurs and robots is bad. Yeah. Or not interesting to me. I don't care. I'm not going to play Exo Primal. I was bummed out because the, and we'll get into this when we cover it, but the World

Tour mode is so crazy anywhere. I was like, oh, they're going to just put dinosaurs in there. Yeah, just put dinosaurs. Who cares? All right. So then we saw Nicolas Cage in Dead by Daylight. He came out on stage wearing a very nice suit. Let's take one step back for a second.

They show him in the trailer. The audience is laughing. They can't believe this. They think it's so crazy jeff is like please welcome nicholas cage those laughs turn to applause yeah because everyone's excited to see the guy that they were laughing at yeah i think that audience should have been ashamed of themselves. How dare they? Yeah, it's stupid. Who cares? You didn't know he was there.

And then I felt like Nick Cage came out sort of feeling that laugh a little bit and used it. Yeah. Because he brought so much enthusiasm. I love him. He feels like he's permanently locked in Caster Troy from Face Off. Yeah. Like he's like, he was wearing like a shiny suit he was extremely smooth like most of these if you drop a celebrity into a thing unless it's keanu reeves yes like it is awkwardness it is just like so you guys like video games well

you're gonna love me Brian Cox from Succession and Fortnite the Roys are coming to Fortnite imagine that squad holy shit fucking sniping as cousin Greg oh my god the fucking

Gojo guy oh my god Nick Cage was so polished on that stage Oh my God. The fucking Gojo guy. Oh my God. Okay. Anyway. Nick Cage was so polished on that stage that I was surprised when he got sort of like ushered off really quickly because I was like, you let the man cook. Let him cook. Keep him out here.

And he was doing, he was like, it was all so clean that I was like, well, he can't be like going over time. Like none of this feels like a run on. And then they were like, come on, man, get out of here. We also had what I would consider genuine enthusiasm for the thing he was talking about. He was like, I'm excited to be in this. Someone close to my family really likes this game,

so I thought, oh, cool, I'll go do that. I'll go be in this game. Joel? Hey, sorry. Oh, I think he said that I loved so much was from the scream to the grunt. You know, I'm with you. Oh, I like that. He called.

I wrote down a couple of things that he wrote, too. Well, first of all, I was like, his plugs look incredible. His hair looks so good. He looked amazing. I thought his outfit was great. He looks amazing. He looks good. Yeah.

And I also wrote down that he's maybe my favorite lunatic. I love it. I just love him. Which is funny because I also wrote down is he insane now? Question mark. He owns dinosaur bones, Heather. What do you think? I would too. Well, yeah, I guess if you're someone like him who's just like, well, I guess I'm just gonna

do post-game side quests now. Like I've sort of done everything. Yeah, I'll go be in a video game now i don't care uh he wrote down or he said um well so i wrote down oh my god oh my fucking god they brought up nick cage and he's like thanks for inviting me to your really cool club i thought that was a burn and then uh he called Dead by Daylight a museum of horror which I was like, this guy gives a shit about what he's talking about. This rules. He rules.

He also was like, Sadako was in this and I like Sadako. And I was like, what? That's not a real guy, dude. This ghost you're talking about ain't real. He's in there i started that segment going like ah we're gonna put nick cage in every video game now and i ended that segment going put nick cage in every video game yeah he was great i was so happy to see him and

that was the one like celebrity presentation of the whole thing kind of like there's some guys that are in the games but nobody nobody nick cage caliber. Keanu is in Fortnite as John Wick. I propose to Epic Games that you put in four Nick Cage characters in Fortnite so that you can play as a squad of Nicks. The guy from Family Man. The guy from Weather Man. The guy from The Wicker Man. The guy from Mandy, but only after he's drunk a mason jar

full of LSD. The Nicolas Cage man universe. All right. After that, we saw a preview for The Witcher season three on Netflix,

which I thought Henry Cavill wasn't in it anymore. Yeah, I thought he was gone. They made a big to-do. I'm so fucking confused. I wrote down, I don't watch this show, but thought it was gone. They made a big to do fucking confused. I wrote down, I don't watch this show,

but I'd like to. And then when the trailer was over, I wrote, nevermind. Yeah. I've, I really like fantasy, but it was hard for me to get excited about the witcher.

Cause I didn't know the game world. And I, I feel like I have to stop doing that because if I had denied myself access to the last of us, because I hadn't know the game world. And I feel like I have to stop doing that. Because if I had denied myself access to The Last of Us because I hadn't played the game, then I would have robbed myself of a cool experience. After The Witcher Season 3, we were shown Witchfire. Yeah, I don't know. We're in the stretch of the showcase here where everything they show is the same

and like bullshit and just like nonsense wait wait wait because the next after Witchfire was Crossfire yeah that's basically the same thing you see how they booked it right Witcher, Witchfire Crossfire yeah they're doing a Laurent

but Crossfire was for PS they're doing a LeRond. Crossfire was for PSVR 2, and I was excited to use... So the only thing I want to do in VR is use two pistols. Yes. And have them aimed in different places. That's it. But apparently I should be able to do that in a game that you've already played? There's a game. I can't remember what it's called.

But I was listening to somebody on a podcast recently. They were like, we need to figure out a different kind of game for VR that isn't two guns. Like all VR games are that. Oh, is it? Yeah. So it is sort of just like, or it's like Beat Saber. Like those are like the two types of like VR games. The only game that I've played extensively in VR is the one where I punched my own ground on accident. is sort of just like or it's like beat saber like those like the two types of like vr games the only

game that i've played extensively in vr is the one where i punched my own ground on accident which i think i've told the story i think you did yeah yeah there's a medieval game where that you're in an arena and people come in and you can fight them with a sword if you have it but i usually throw my sword at them and then rush them and punch them because the punching works. And I got somebody knocked down and then I leaned over them and punched them as hard as I could

and cracked my own fist against my garage floor. The game that I'm thinking of is Pistol Whip. Check out Pistol Whip. I think you'll like it okay yeah uh up next was remnant 2 yeah like this like the thing about it's never what is remnant this this i like this stretch in the show i suddenly started to feel so bad for everyone who worked on these games because i I was like, how would it not run together? Like, you would feel so bummed out as the same voice said over and over, like, new abilities,

new world, new friends. And simultaneously all the gameplay looked so similar. Everything has a... And I haven't played the Souls games, but I now have kind of, from watching gameplay videos online, a grasp of what they look like. They all kind of look like they're starting to ape that now in a really dedicated way.

It was a bummer. I also thought that there was something funny about Witchfire, which was just that the copy in the ad is like, it's time to burn some witches. Is it? I don't know. We've done that already. That time was a couple hundred years ago. And you were wrong. After that, we saw a new Sonic the Hedgehog game,

which was Sonic Superstars, which is a 2D Sonic game. And then they were like, and you can play as all the Sonic friends. And I was like, fuck. Playing as Big the Cat in 2D is going to be great, and you can't do it. It's Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose. Only his best friends, it sounds like.

Yeah. It's horse shit. It's horse shit. They all turned into jellyfish at one point, though, so you could pretend that jellyfish is Big the Cat. I guess. No SBO? No, yeah, no SBO. No shadow. though so you could pretend that jellyfish is big the cat no sbo no yeah no there was an there was an ominous dog that showed up at the end of that trailer ominous dog yeah ominous dog uh i really wanted to be excited about sonic 2d and i wasn't

that's my takeaway from it i I was like, oh man, I feel nothing. They're doing too many different types of things. I think they're sort of like, everybody loves Sonic so much. It's true, there are a lot of big fans of Sonic but they're pumping out

too much Sonic stuff right now. They gotta scale it back. Later on, there's a Crash announcement and I'm like, we hold on. much Sonic stuff I think right now. They gotta scale it back. Later on, there's a Crash announcement and I'm like, we hold on. Too many? We don't need all this Crash.

I love Crash. He's my guy. I'm not playing this. After Sonic, we saw an anime game, which I have written down here as Anime Game, but I did not catch the name of it. Oh, you're talking of... Perhaps could you be speaking of Honkai Star Rail?

So, yeah, I don't even know what platform that's on. I don't even... Yeah, I don't even know... Did it seem like it was an expansion for an existing game? I don't know. It did. I was surprised when the name at the end of it wasn't something I knew of already. Yeah, it was like an expansion for like Genshin Impact. Genshin Impact, yeah, absolutely.

The next game was Robot Pinocchio. Lies of Peace. Lies of P. Lies. The thing about Lies of P that I think they've just missed a big point. We aren't making up this game. It's real. And it's a Souls-like game where I believe you play Pinocchio.

Yeah, like full metal alchemist, metal armed Pinocchio. And so this is metal alchemist, metal armed Pinocchio. And so this is what I wanted to bring up. They're making his arm weird? Sweetie, it's his nose. You fucked up. Maybe his power is lying. Like maybe

you equip lies and then you can look at people say a lie and like your nose will impale the person oh interesting when the tight what i so i thought i misheard the title and then when it came up at the end and it said lies of p I was like, nobody said that out loud? Yeah. That's a bummer, but also like, I can sort of go along with the idea of not calling it

Pinocchio the game or something because it's like, okay, this is a game for kids. I know the story of Pinocchio. They're trying to go a different way. What if, because the one thing I will say is that this game, out of a whole bunch of games that very much blended together, I thought this one had the coolest art.

Like, it had really interesting, really cool looking art. And I was like, oh, what if his lies are the reason we're in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? That's why he lied so bad. I think it should have been called Kill-Nokio. Like, just one, like, coming this fall.

Kill Nokia. All right. After that was Akira Toriyama's Sand Land, which looks like Dragon Quest. It looks nice. Looks cool. I liked the way this looked. Yeah. I liked Sand Land.

My one note, I wish it was Sandler Land. If you're at Epic and you're in charge of Fortnite, we also would like a Adam Sandler pack. Yeah, absolutely. Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, click. Uncut Gems. And the

Rain Over Me guy as a bonus. If you saw a squad of the Uncut Gems guys running at you, you'd be like, fuck. This is how I win. They announced an Annapurna showcase, which Annapurna made Stray, which we've covered on this show. Yes. Then there was a game called Throne and Liberty, which I have no notes on.

No. I was just stressed out. I was on Throne and Liberty. After that, I have Fuck, on. No. I was just stressed out. I was thrown in liberty. After that, I have Fuck, I Missed One. What was that called? I think it's called Warhaven. It's funny because I think I could just say anything. Warhaven, nothing, nothing, no excitement, okay?

No, there's a couple things coming up that I'm stoked about, for sure. Oh, yeah, okay. Then we saw Party Animals. Yeah, the trailer of which was people playing the game already. Yeah, it was like people on Twitch laughing while they played the game. Which, honestly, look, it's not my kind of game, but what a great way of selling. Have you guys seen the newest trailer for gran turismo the movie yes it's a real classic style hollywood trailer where it's the the guys who made the movie sitting on chairs a la like uh like citizen kane you know like we're about to make a movie and

perhaps you'd like to be invited and like that kind of thing except it was like these guys who were like hey we know the premise of our movie seems ridiculous so here's the guy who did it yes it's real the real guy who played the game so much that he became a racer yes and then here's the guy playing him the actor and the actor's like you are so fucking cool yeah like, that's what this felt like. It was like, hey, this might not be your kind of game, but we're going to show people enjoying themselves playing it. These fuckers are having fun. So maybe you want to give it a second shot. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

It looks like Fall Guys, but with little animals. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, all right, cool. Great, cool. This is a type of game now. Yeah. Yeah. Dying Light.

No. No idea. No is a type of game now. Yeah. Yeah. Dying Light. No. No idea, no memory. It did not imprint. Crash Team Rumble. Aforementioned too much Crash. I don't think we need Crash doing all the stuff that Mario does, too. You know what I mean? I don't know if we need a Crash Mario party.

Then we saw Alan Wake 2, which earlier Albrecht said that the chat was blowing up with Resident Evil, Resident Evil. Because it looks like Resident Evil 4. It looks so much like Resident Evil that I'm interested in playing it. Because I have not played the original Alan Wake. People say it's good. It has its fans. Doesn't it have a famous author behind it? I think it's Alan Wake.

Well, there was a guy. The game is Alan Wake. And then a guy came out to present it who was Sam Lake. Oh, yeah. Sam Lake, who is the physical model of Max Payne. Ice cold. I'm still not over it. Well, yeah. No, so I didn't play Alan Wake 1 either.

I remembered having really good flashlight looks. Yeah. That's what I'm sort of interested in. I was like, oh, they got a nice flashlight. And the new one, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen the trailer, the flashlight's back. Let's just say they got some more batteries. With more flashlight.

And it looks, I'll say, it looks better. High beam. Foglight. It seems like this one is more like Twin Peaks inspired, kind of. I think it this one is more like, uh, like twin peaks inspired kind of like, I think it's like sort of like a weird world kind of, uh, so I'm,

I'm interested. It looked the, the, the reason I looked at the chat at all was because this trailer didn't play for a second. There was a black screen and I saw one comment I was very happy with was, which was Helen wake up, but it looks cool. I thought that game looked interesting.

That's the type of resident evil thing. I think I'm going to try on for size. Yeah. Uh, the next game name is not fake. It's Warhammer space Marine too. Yeah. Who's interested.

I, I, I, I'm in his, I feel bad about this because I feel like there are a lot of people listening who are like, I like, I I'm excited about Remnant 2. I loved Remnant.

And I just am like, I've never heard of that. But that's fine. And, you know, we're a video game podcast. We should know all the video games. Well, yeah, I mean, here's, yeah, if you, we should not, no, we shouldn't. We shouldn't know all the video games. That's not what you listen. This isn't a news show. I need to know that they know all the games.

We are barely competent idiots who talk tangentially about video games after this we saw yes your grace snowfall and i know that i think nick i think nick likes yes your grace or pitched it at one point for us to do in the old format as like a weird game. It's like 8-bit graphics over a fully lush, modern background. Yes. I dug the look. It seems like the gameplay has a fascinating amount of grounded governance to it, where one of the mechanics is shake a peasant's hand.

That was in the trailer yeah that does sound like a nick game you guys there's like five buttons you have to press to get him to drink a cup of water this guy has to sigh yeah i was uh i was not dismissive of yes or grace grace snowfall i just thought that the name was funny uh after this, we saw John Carpenter's Toxic Commando. Are you excited about John Carpenter game? I, if he's excited about it. Is he?

I don't know that, well, he likes video games a lot now, right? Like I hear he's mostly a video game playing guy these days. Yes, and this is the only reason why I would even be excited about like a zombie shooting game is because he's doing it like like that's interesting it was like oh like maybe there's like some angle that he hasn't found satisfying yet that he was like I'll do it myself like I'll get in there and I'll pitch this game

or whatever the one mechanic I liked was driving through zombies that that we need that more. When I saw Toxic Commando, I saw Toxic Commando and then I saw a car hitting a body and I was like, my god, it's a video game built entirely around that one guy from RoboCop. All the bad guys are glowing green, like former

barrel of acid guys that turn into goop when you hit them. That guy makes the worst sound. Can we pull that clip up? Can we just see that clip? Because he makes, I swear, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but I swear before he gets hit, he goes. So I was a little let down when it was when it was just zombies yeah I was like

oh okay little less zombie a little more toxic but John Carpenter I'm still excited yeah okay I think it's this I've never seen it before oh no Okay! Now I gotcha! We've seen a guy get hit by toxic waste. He's melting. He's grabbing another guy. Don't touch me, man! Don't touch me, man!

Don't touch me! Oh, yes. Yes. don't touch me man you can see why I was excited for a video game built around that concept I guess as somebody who had never seen something like that before for so long it must have been so thrilling having seen a lot of something like that before for so long. It must have been so thrilling. Having seen a lot of things like that, I'm thinking about maybe going to church.

I hadn't seen that clip in so long, and it is so much longer than I remembered it being. I remembered him making one noise. He makes a noise for like 50 seconds. Yeah, you undersold it. He's in a lot, a lot of pain. A lot of pain. And then that guy,

don't touch me, man. I guess I'll have to watch that at some point. Also imagine a chemical that aggressive, like that is at street level right on a road. Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay. Then we saw Baldur's Gate 3. And I know that that's a Nick game. Yeah, that's a Nick game. Nick's excited about that.

The trailer starts with someone going like, I've now taken the Baldur's sword and I will rule the Baldur gates and the Baldur people and I was really stoked on the idea that that game just has the word Baldur before everything. For every single I gotta get in my Baldur car and go say hi to my Baldur wife. Excuse me, sir,

do you have five Balder apples? Balder son, come here. I'd like to tell you something. After that, we saw Spider-Man 2 exclusively for the PlayStation 5, where you can play as Peter or Miles. Yes. Love that Miles is just like one and one now. Yes. One and one.

He's Spider-Man. And I think we talked about this on Get Animated. He's going to usurp the main Spider-Man throne at some point. Because he's just so beloved and has such a great history now that he's just going to be the guy. Yeah. Which is awesome. There's a couple takeaways.

They showed the box art. That was an exciting thing. I was like, you know, it's just going to be on my shelf. Cool. They mentioned that Venom is not Eddie Brock, which is usually who he is in the classic story. And then they dropped the release date, which was October 20th of this year. Yeah. Which I'm very excited about.

Yeah. It's going to be a big spider year. Yeah. It's the year of the spider. It is. They talked about the main villain being Kraven. That's right. Which I love.

Kraven's my guy. He's an interesting villain. There's a lot of theories going around about who the Venom is. And, you know, could be be maybe it gets on Kraven. Oh, okay. Is that bad? I don't know. Well, I don't know, Heather. Is that bad? Think about this. Kraven the hunter, this

fucking big, tough hunter guy gets a hold of the alien symbiote? He's twice as strong now! Well, that's the other thing I have written down is, in quotes, who is Venom? And then not in quotes, LOL. Yeah, like it's like, we got to know who this is. Because when they were like, it's not Eddie Brock.

It's not. Who is Venom? And everyone knows we are Venom. I was like, yeah, who is Venom? Well, there's a big. There's a big one coming up. Let's get to it. I feel like there's a couple of these.

We have to talk about Pal World, which is next. Pal World. Pal World. Pal World. Pal World. Pal World is Pokemon with guns. I'm all in on Pal World. That's it.

There's nothing else. If you haven't seen a trailer for Pal World, it's Pokemon with guns. That's what Jeff said before the trailer. And then the first part of the trailer is Pokemon. And the second part of the trailer is Pokemon with guns. Yes. And it sounds like it's like hyperbole or like it's just like a thing to say to like make it like understandable. Like for a typical audience, these look like they're Pokemon.

They look like Pokemon. They look like they're Pokemon. They look like they're just the actual Pokemon. But they're holding not like soft guns. No. These are regular guns.

Tactile missiles. Yeah. If you were like, I want to see Chikorita hold an AR-15, this is the game for you. I don't like guns in the real world,

but in a video game, I love them. And in a Pokemon video game, I super love them. And this is a Pokemon video game. I, like, all the comments were lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit, because I saw, like, Pup Lip and Latios. Like, I saw actual Pokemon looking Pokemon in there. It was pretty nuts, and I gotta say, I was listening to the audience after that trailer aired and literally somebody said, what the fuck?

The audience had like a hot mic. It was like a little too hot. Because I think maybe they wanted to juice the applause or something. Like, let's get this mic nice and hot. I heard an audible, what the fuck? It was so funny. thing like let's get this mic nice and hot i heard an audible what the fuck it was so funny um and i gotta say um well the next game was this lord of the rings game that was like this looks like shit i yeah i wrote i'm bored now yeah and then the next one i wrote armor game question mark

yeah but then then we got to a big moment which was a mobile final fantasy 7 game called ever crisis which has this the tagline we still don't know sephiroth i screamed i was like what the fuck are you talking about we know everything about this guy he's in a hundred. He's in remakes of his own games. He's in everything. He starts this game by answering a cell phone or no, calling somebody on a cell phone. Yeah.

Which one of the things I love about the sort of anachronistic technology of the Final Fantasy VII world is that when Advent Children came out, they did a huge cell phone collaboration. And so you could buy the cell phone that was in Final Fantasy Advent Children. Yes.

Unfortunately, that means that in order for that to make sense, all of the phones have to be that era of phones so that if you watch it chronologically, you can see the same flip phone, like kind of appear throughout all the final fantasy seven games. Yeah. And fucking Sephiroth has a flip phone.

We don't really know Sephiroth. This is the game where you like see him go back to his studio apartment. And he's like sad. He's like calling his mom. He's got like, nobody knows me. He's eating the his mom. Why am I like this? Nobody knows me. He's eating the chip crumbs in the bag. Oh, but wait, there was a moment here,

because he throws to a commercial, kind of, where he's like, speaking of Final Fantasy, and everyone's like, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. DoorDash has your back. And Jason Schreier pointed this out, and he said that was definitely an all-time Jeff Keighley press conference moment.

It was just exactly the wrong thing to say to the wrong people at the wrong time. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. I've never seen someone apologize for the ad before and after. So funny. What does that mean, speaking of Final Fantasy?

I don't know. It was a bad segue. Was he trying to say, I bet your Final Fantasy is a DoorDash. A freaking lunch. Yeah. Who knows? So then we saw another thing, and I didn't write it down. And then we saw, Like a Dragon, The Man Who Er who erased his name all-time great title that rules

so yeah like a dragon is a yakuza spinoff yes so it's yakuza like a dragon yes the man who erased his name yes got it well it's not so much as it's a spinoff i think i think in japan the yakuza games are called like a dragon but in the states they're called Yakuza because it makes more sense to the Western audience. I have been schooled. I think with the last release, they pivoted completely back to Like a Dragon. And now every Yakuza game going forward will be called Like a Dragon. So this is just another tale in that. Fuck.

Okay. After this, I have submarine man. Yeah. Under the waves, kind of a spooky seeming ocean kind of game. Uh, there's the ocean's kind of like a new,

there are a lot of ocean games now and I, I've started to see it as a trend and you know, I, I don't hate it cause I think the ocean is a lot scarier than, you know, outer space or hate it because i think the ocean is a lot scarier than you know outer space or even just the regular ground but ocean watch yourselves because it seems like there's a lot of them kind of a lot of ocean stuff i know this isn't the podcast where we would normally discuss this sort of thing but have you you guys seen the whistleblower whistleblower from the Navy who two days ago, like a decorated Navy guy who was the head of the investigative division of the UAP phenomenon, who just flat out said, we have a ship intact and the government is hiding it from Congress.

Yeah, I did hear about this and that it's not manmade, they said, or something like that. Yeah, it has no like. They can't even figure it out at the subatomic level. Yeah. And also this is like the podcast where we would talk about something like that. Well, but I say it because all the new stuff I've been seeing on this, like, yeah, in this area of like UFOs are real and nobody gives a shit. Yeah. Is that they all dock in the water.

They dock in the water because you don't get fall damage that way. That's true. Yeah, you can't. And, but, and they're also like, actually, that movie Signs was a lie. I can swim all goddamn day. They made a deal with M. Night. They're like, yeah, tell them we're afraid of water. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, back to the ocean being kind of scary. There's so much of it that haven't gone down there. They're probably like, somebody gets close and they're like, hey, turn your ass back around and say you can't go any further than this. We're all fucking zap you. After Submarine Man, we saw Call of Duty Season 4 Warzone, and it takes place in a new map that looks exactly like Amsterdam, which they're calling Fondle, which is the name of the big park in Amsterdam, Fondle Park, which also means wander or walk, I think. So it's kind of a weird, you wouldn't, Call of Duty, Warzone, walk. For this one, I wrote wrote down who gives a shit i i wanted to log on just to walk around that map yeah uh because that's where i'm moving to

oh yeah uh all right uh up next is porsche xbox not for sale yeah i was like this was like such a waste of time because like also they were kind of ugly. It was kind of just weird. You can win them in a contest. There's only like 75 of them or something. Why? Why would you spend so... It's like, look at Porsche.

It's been around for 75 years. Holy shit, it's awesome. Here's an Xbox covered in the Porsche colors. 75th anniversary Porsche. And then the first thing they said is, this is not for sale. Are you familiar with the Audi Xbox One? That looks like it has actual wheels.

What the fuck is that? Can it drive around? I can't drive around, but Microsoft, around the time the Xbox One was a thing, made an Audi Xbox One. A similar thing for the Porsche, but that's the...

That is the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. I know. It's pretty bad. I like it. Imagine getting run over by that. Yeah, exactly. I want to see that thing scurry around the house. I want to have to chase after it. It was a promo for Forza Horizon 3.

It looks like a car, but it's a computer. Yeah. Wow, it's ugly. Carputer. It's incredible. Alright, then we saw Fae Farm. Yeah, that's ugly. Carputer. It's incredible. All right. Then we saw Fey Farm. Yeah, that's just like a farming sim kind of game. Then we saw Marvel Snap. I love this guy.

Very enthusiastic guy. Because at least he was like doing something. He was like, I'm excited to talk about this game that I work on. And even Jeff was like, you have a lot of enthusiasm. I was like, that's kind of what you want. You want some boring guy coming out like here's my marvel snap game okay after this i have king arthur legends rise is that what did i get that name right that's right and i couldn't believe that that's what it was called like every story about king arthur is how he does it how he becomes becomes him. I was like, finally, someone's going to tell this story.

Yeah, good. Oh, good. That sword stuck in that rock, huh? Interesting. Then I have, I don't know, I give up. I don't know what this one is. Oh, yeah. Wayfinder, I think.

Okay. Wayfinder. Wayfinder. Then we saw Twisted Metal, the TV show trailer. I had a nice laugh. I'm excited about seeing that. And just to Mitch! Mitchie Boy who they didn't show in that little preview Will Arnett

introducing the clip and it was a clip of Sweet Tooth voiced by Will Arnett and Anthony Mackie's character but there's an image of Mitch as Stu in I think Rolling Stone or something and he looks great imagine being in Rolling Stone.

I'd love it. Can you imagine? I can only dream. The paper of note? That was, I ran out of my ability to focus on this at this point. Okay. And started writing jokes. Okay, so you probably don't remember.

Not like WGA jokes. Not like just wrote. Just like funny things to say to your friends. You know how you prepare to go to a party? The way that you guys have notes for the thing. I started taking my notes. Precisely. Oh my God.

They also didn't help your attention span because this chunk of the show was all space games then in a row. Yeah, like Lisfanga. Wait, Lysfenga? I think that's what it's called. Okay. And then Immortals of Avium.

Oh my God. Which was, they showed it like, and they brought out an actor from the game and he, every character in the game has like a crazy name, like a space, like sci-fi fantasy name. And then his name is Jack. crazy name like a space like sci-fi fantasy name and then his name is jack and i was just like okay like this is just like another one of those types of games where it's

like a guy who's like uh you know he's maybe a little sarcastic and like everyone else is like i'm serious because i'm in this world and he's like whatever you say man uh like it's all just like the same kind of bullshit i, we didn't talk about this. Back at Lies, if I could just go back to Lies of P for a second. They don't show any talking. They just kind of show vibes and the mood of the game and stuff. And then he's basically like, can you believe all this? It fucking sucks.

I can't wait. He looks like Timothee Chalamet. Yeah,'t wait. He looks like Timothee Chalamet. Yeah, he does. But then he talks like, whoa! Not like quite like Mr. Meeseeks,

but like, kind of like, you know, not far off. But then, Heather, this was the big one where you talked, then next was Fortnite,

Fortnite Wild, which you talked about earlier. I did lock onto my screen for a fortnight yeah i was like oh man no are you sent a text that you grabbed it so hard that it shattered uh can't wait but then the last thing that they did they're like okay oh so fortnight was before the final game yes i did okay so i only missed like two or three games yes and so then the final game that the then jeff kiley's like guys the rumors were true which i guess there were rumors about this showcase uh like going around like this is what

they're gonna talk about uh and they show final fantasy and then everyone's like oh i guess i guess doordash did have our back right right and you know i haven't played remake one but people were really excited about the footage that they were showing for Remake 2, basically. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Rebirth, or whatever it's called. I've played all the way through Remake 1, right? And I found it baffling because the charm of Final Fantasy 7 is not its photorealism. Yeah. I enjoyed it, but it's really a weird game to play.

And it's a game about, spoilers, spoilers, I mean, it's been years. Yeah. It's been years. It's a game about how Sephiroth knows that they're in a remake. Yes. Which is fucking crazy. It's Evangelion Rebuild. Yeah.

It's the Matrix 4. So the big reveal in this trailer seems to be that Sephiroth is altering the timeline of the game so that there are more surprises. And he reveals that he killed Tifa. Well, here's the thing. We still don't know a lot about Sephiroth. So we don't know why he's doing this, actually. He's like, I killed Tifa. Who's that lady?

Which is a weird thing to say. Yes. And then the other big reveal of this trailer was that it comes on two Blu-rays. That was my favorite Hot Mike audience participation is that that title card came up and someone goes, on two discs! A lot of people, because I bought that first one digitally

and I just like never finished it. But I guess the first one also has two discs, but one of them is like an install disc because it's so big and like it's like an install. So it's like not hugely disappointing if it's on two discs and the first one is just like, install the game. That to me, on two discs sounds like it's game on both discs.

Well, yeah, because the original Final Fantasy came on three discs and that was a selling point of Final Fantasy VII. That's what I was curious about, including that in this trailer. Are they saying on two discs, like, get excited? Yeah, it's huge. Or are they saying on two discs like get excited or are they saying on two discs because when two discs show up you won't be like why well the why is there two they've also said because i've been like sort of vaguely following the interviews about this game and the upcoming release hype cycle that it is open world and the first one was very tunnel like very like oh you to go to Aerith's house.

And so you're going to run down this like corridor to get there. And that was kind of the way the whole game progressed. So they showed a lot of like loving glory shots of Cloud and the rest of them wandering around in a field to make you feel like, oh, wow, they can really wander

around in that field. Don't go too far. Don't go too far. You got to do the story. Yeah. But that was that was basically it was like, I mean. I'll say that I'm excited for I'll get that game, I'll play the first one and then, you know, do that.

But was there anything in this showcase at all that you were like, video games are back? Let's see. Let me look at my list. No. Albro, as somebody who only plays a particular type of game, I mean, Pokemon with guns was probably a big selling point. I mean, I would never get

around to playing it, though, because I know what it is. You know, am I just going to hold down the trigger for several hours as an adorable thing? I don't know. I made a list of the ones that I thought were cool, but also, they all seem

like things I'll never get around to playing. And mostly, the thing that did stick with me the most was Pal World. Yeah, it's such a shocker. Pal World is good. I mean, they sort of shot their wad with me with the first game being Prince of Persia. I'm like, well, that's it. That was it for me for the entire presentation. But I just think presentations like this,

like a couple weeks ago, there was the Sony State of Play, and that's less of an audience thing and more like a, here's just a bunch of stuff that we did, like it or not. In the same way, like the Apple one that was just a couple days ago, it's just like, here you go, here's what we're working on type of thing.

And this is like, he has these relationships with developers or whatever. And they have like, oh, we'll send you this trailer or whatever. That's just kind of all it is. Because his next thing is in the Game Awards, which is in the fall, I think, or something. Or around the end of the year. Aren't there going to be Nintendo Directs and stuff? Oh, yeah. Nintendo doesn't participate in these things because they're like, well, we just do our own thing and sort of make our own schedule.

We'll go six months without telling you anything and then be like, surprise, we've been holding on to Metroid Prime for three years. And it's out today if you want it. They'll also have directs come and go without revealing anything really cool. Exactly. Like everyone's like, oh, new Tears of the Kingdom stuff. Absolutely not. Kirby's a car now. Which, granted. No, don't get me wrong.

That was a soft game of the year. That was it. That was great stuff. Guys, why don't we get into, I feel like Nick does such a good job of this part. Transitioning from one thing to the next thing.

What is the thing? We're transitioning. We just have a couple questions in the question block. Actually, see, it was a trick. Heather and I rehearsed that for three hours. And this is just a question and answer sort of thing. We got it all from our Discord, discord.gg

slash getplayed. This one's from Hired Goons. Hi, Hired Goons. The pinball community in LA has been growing in the past few years and has become an obsession of mine, eclipsing video games. Any of y'all fuck with pinball at any point in your lives? I fuck with pinball heavy. Oh, hell yeah.

Do you have a favorite pinball board? We, my dad, very randomly during our childhood, had a client pay him in a pinball machine instead of money. Wow. And it was like a Xenon warrior princess thing. So it was also like the raciest thing any of us little Christian kids had seen. And when you hit the ball with the bumpers, a noise would play like, uh, uh.

So after like three weeks of pinball, and this, yeah, I'm a kid who doesn't get to play a lot of games, so like this flashing lights is enough to hook me. My mom is like, get that out of our house. I don't want you to cheat on me. Out of our house. But I was recently,

I went to Vegas with Steve Levy, one of our buds over at Rick and Morty, and he took me to the Museum of Pinball. Oh, cool. And I like fell so in love with just how many games there are for all these movies that like you wouldn't think would have a pinball machine. Like I played the Johnny Mnemonic pinball. Oh, it's so good. And that's like, they're all great. It's a level of craftsmanship that i feel goes really unappreciated and and when a game is awesome it's it's truly awesome i sort of think

it's like the vinyl of video games kind of because it's like there's a lot of like you know people talk about like vinyl the warmth this is like the the tactile nature of it it's like what really makes it great and like I do feel that way about pinball machines because I'm like, this is a pain in the ass to keep up. To make it work still is hard. Hearing somebody getting paid in a pinball machine,

I'm like, they're not cheap. They're kind of expensive. Anytime I can play pinball, I'm having a blast. It's always fun. Even if you only play for 10 minutes minutes or whatever. And I can get so sucked down one. The machine I fell in love with when we were at the Museum of Pinball was the Lord of the Rings pinball machine. And so I returned

home and I've been trying to convince my parents to get it because they're huge Lord of the Rings fans. So I was like, oh man, if this is kind of like a retiree splurge that could happen. My little brother hopped on it. He's been looking for a machine.

But my favorite thing is that he goes, if you look up Lord of the Rings pinball machine on Twitter, it's all people talking about it. Like, it's a girl they met at a wedding and had the perfect night with and then never saw ever again for the rest of their life. Like, all these tweets that are like, I'm just thinking about Lord of the Rings pinball again.

It's really beautiful. That's so funny. I really like Lord of the Rings pinball again. It's really beautiful. That's so funny. I really like the Addams Family pinball machine. I think that's an excellent machine. I really like the gimmick of the Jurassic Park pinball machine, which has your ball can get trapped and then you'll

hear, the T-Rex is loose! And a T-Rex head will slowly grind machinery. It'll be and bite the ball And a T-Rex head will slowly grind machinery. It'll be... And bite the ball and then eat it. And then I think that's how you become multi-balled. Wow.

My brother is obsessed with that machine. Yeah, it's a good machine. He's lobbying hard for that instead of Lurther. Good machine. Adam's family is a good machine. And then there's one that I've talked about on this show, which is a machine that was a tornado-based machine that had a spinning disc in the middle that was magnetized so that if it was activated, the ball would get sucked into a tornado and then, like, flip out in some random direction. And when that was happening, they also had a giant fan on the back of the machine that would blow wind at you.

That's amazing. I feel like the people that then make these things are like, how do we make this more interesting than just a ball going around? What do we add to it that's really cool and fun? The Terminator one has just a gun that you fire in order to I'm serious. This next one's from

Kuato. I think this is an interesting... Is the question, open your mind?, I think. This is a question, open your mind. Open your mind. What is, what is your line for gore when it comes to games like Mortal Kombat or those new Tomb Raider games? It feels like we've passed the funny slash comedic line,

at least to me. I'll tell you where my line was. We saw it happen when we watched that fucking RoboCop clip. That like radicalized me in a negative way. Yeah. I don't have a line currently, but I have been upset by violence in movies. Yeah.

But I think that's more like the context of what I'm seeing. Very, very rarely, I'll be like, huh, man. Like, there's this moment in Midsommar that I was like, huh, that I don't, like, there's something about

just imagining the amount of pain that person is in that upsets me. Like, the actual thing I'm looking at is not like, oh, no, I don't want to see this. It's more like, ugh, I think that's a thing that upsets me like the actual thing i'm looking at it's not like oh no i don't want to see this it's more like oh i think that's a thing that can happen i i hate that moment i i think like the thing that makes that moment so brutal for me is that the camera stays there and just forces you to look at it and and i a thing that i experienced recently where i found my line i was truly i was like oh oh every time it happened, was the Love and Death, the new Elizabeth Olsen

I haven't seen it yet. It's like, it's great. It's really good. But like that, I found my line and it wasn't with someone ripping someone's spine out like Mortal Kombat. It was just how grounded and horrible. That's like, yeah, like, I feel like you can get kind of close to something like that in like

The Last of Us Part 2, for example. There's like very, like, very real looking violence uh in that game and it's like that's partly or mostly what the game is about you know but the end of audition the movie also i was like hmm yeah what i'm seeing isn't scary it's just imagining what I'm seeing is upsetting to me. Does that make sense? I think so. Like, if I thought a lot about that guy in Robocop. I'd never leave my mind now.

Imagine how much pain his eyeball is in. Yeah. This next one's from Callus. Hi, Callus. If they made a fighting game out of cereal mascots, who would be the best fighter? I think I have a clear-cut answer. I do, too, but I want to hear yours. Tony the Tiger.

He's fucking big. Yeah, he's huge. And his whole... He's a tiger. His persona is built on, like, I can do... Like, he plays baseball. Yeah. He fucking dunks basketball. He works out.

You don't think I can't fucking kill you? Yeah. I think that guy goes toe-to-toe with the fruit brute. Okay, yeah, yeah. And I do feel like the Boo-Berry mascot has that Kitty Pryde turning intangible thing. Oh, sure. That renders the brawn, you know, pretty useless. I want to think...

you know yeah pretty pretty useless i i i want to think before we move too far off it the idea of being beaten to death by a tiger but he's killing you as a man is he's not tearing you limb from limb with his like tiger abilities it's equal it's also brutal that he's wearing a handkerchief around his neck not only am i killing you, I'm also fancy. I think my answer would probably be the Trix rabbit because he seems to be unkillable. Like, I don't know that he's, like, particularly good at violence, but I do know that he can't be stopped.

Yeah. You know, I wouldn't discount the Lucky Charms guy either because he's, you know, obviously made a deal with the devil of some kind because he does have magic. I think the cookie

crisp dog has PCP strength. You know, he is just like, he doesn't feel pain on a chemical level anymore. Speaking of, the guy from Honeycomb.

You want Honeycomb? He'll fuck you up. Great question. This one's from Ghost Pumpkin. Hi, Ghost Pumpkin. Would you please tell us more about the animals y'all live with? Because animals are cool. Albro, do you have any pets?

I don't. I'm allergic to all of them. Oh, no. I do have a squirrel that torments me, though. What's the vibe? I mean, he sounds like a rude guy. I mean, I tried to grow cannabis on my balcony, and he destroyed my plant. He sounds just like a rude guy, but he I mean, I I tried to grow cannabis on my balcony and he destroyed my plant. And he sounds just like a party.

Well, he's and he's one of those squirrels, too, that like knows you can't get him. So when you faint in his direction, he doesn't flinch anymore. He's like, no, do it like, yeah, I'll be out of here in 10 seconds. Yeah. So now we have kind of like a Dennis the Menace relationship where, you you know we acknowledge we're in the same show together that's great yeah but no pets we believe that a neighbor is feeding one of our squirrels because this squirrel has gone beyond fearless to follow like it will come right up to your foot and you'll be like, no, come on, get away from me. And we'll try to enter the house, which is not squirrel behavior. No.

Yeah. I have a dog. Her name is Sushi and she is adorable. Yeah. She's the kind of dog that has eyebrows, which is great. But she really loves Mary and does not really love me does she tolerate you? she does and she asks she's extremely communicative

and she will ask me for things like when it's dinner time she comes up and like like hey give me my food but like and I don't mean this with any sort of like oh my dog doesn't love, my dog just straight up doesn't love me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It loves Mary. Yeah. Like, hugely loves Mary. Yeah. If we're both sitting on the couch and the dog isn't next to Mary, if it is on the opposite side of me, it will be throughout whatever movie we're watching, very slowly inching its way across my body to get to Mary. Yeah. Does not love me. I have two cats and they're my cats. I've had them since I was 14 years old.

Basically, one of them. I've one of them is 18. Jesus. Yes. Defiantly alive. No, the day he passes, I'll actually be really, really sad. He's my guy, Sawyer. And my other guy, Hurley, is I think 13 or something.

And he's a really funny idiot. He's like a big, dumb guy uh they both love my girlfriend so much more than me and i've been with them their entire lives it's brutal it's brutal they go they they they'll sort of sit by me when i'm like working from home but as soon as she comes home they're like i'll kill this guy if you want the dog our dog is like if I give our dog something it likes it leaves me and shows it to Mary

which I'm like I gave you the thing yeah there was a dog in the office when we could have dogs in the office at the old place and he was like it's one of my co-workers dogs and he was like, it's one of my co-workers' dogs and he was like really into me

for some reason. A lot of the dogs that would come to the office would be like, Matt seems like a cool guy. I was like, can I hang out with Matt? He kept like chewing on like stuff

and then being like, hey, I'm like done with this but like if you want it, you could have it. And he was like bringing all his stuff. He was like, I was chewing on this

like Himalayan like salt like stick. I'm done with this. You look like you could do some chewing. And he would always just bring me all his stuff and I thought that was so funny.

But that's it for the question block, guys. Thanks so much for writing in and being a part of Discord. Albro, thanks so much for being here. Thank you guys for having me.

Is there anything you'd like to promote? A fair deal for writers from the amp tp nice hell yeah nice uh and for for everyone else too it sounds like we're headed towards a couple more parties it would be it would be nice if everybody got a fair deal yes but what my guess is what's happened is that they aren't making any money it's all fake it's fiction they can't figure out how to profit from the system they've set up and it is there i think the whole my fear is the entire thing is about to collapse yeah we're just gonna go back to i love lucy style uh we'll go back to only three channels uh over but I hope it works out for the best

it seems like the SAG strike's coming we'll see what happens Heather is there anything you want to promote? we never promote anything I don't need to promote anything please listen to our sister podcast which is us it's us

our other podcast it's us my sister and Matt's us. Our other podcast. It's not like, yeah, it's us. My sister and Matt's sister get together. All of our sisters go do this. Yeah, it's like really crazy. It's called Get Animated, where we are currently covering the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is a mid-2000s mega hit. If you liked anime in the mid-2000s, you know about Haruhi.

But we're also going to be taking a little bit of a break from haruhi yes to cover uh the latest spider-verse movie in no across across the spider spider-man across the spider-verse yes into across beyond yeah across the spider-verse excellent film we're covering that i think in this upcoming episode yes and then we'll be returning to Haruhi Suzumiya. Matt, Nick always does the sign-off parts. Yeah, and I know that you probably don't want to do this because Albro's your friend and you couldn't do this to him. I just met Albro and I don't want to do this to him,

but it felt like somebody has to, so I'm unfortunately going to have to say to you, Albro, I'm very, very sorry. You did get played and I am sorry. No! Fuck!