Get Played - Wolverine In Games

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Heather, Nick and Matt take a look at Wolverine as he's appeared in video games over the years before the release of his newest game from Insomniac.EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/getplayed Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guaranteeCheck out our merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayedFollow us on social media @getplayedpodMusic by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.comArt by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.comFor our exclusive show Get Played DLC, ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? episodes go to patreon.com/getplayedJoin us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayedWanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED or write us an email at [e-mail] on Get Played via Gumball.fmAll of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Well, guys, I'm pretty excited to share some big news with both of you. Oh, big news from Heather. You always got fun stuff happening. I know you guys are familiar with The X-Men. Yes. Excellent series. And I thought to myself...

Excellent. Matt. Very nice, Matt. Don't step on Heather's news. I was saying. You know what? Normally I'd be angry about that kind of behavior. But today I'm so excited to share with you what I've taken upon myself that I'm going to let us slide, buddy.

You know what? Good one. Hey, thanks. It kind of doesn't feel so good for some reason. I was reading these comics. It's so interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Wolverine has bone claws.

Sometimes it's got metal claws. It's really cool. So I went out. I got myself some bone claws. You got some bone claws. I got bone claws. I didn't realize if it was a body mod you could do. Yeah, you can, you get.

I met this guy downtown. He said he could do it. The guy downtown said give you bone claws. Yeah, he gave me bone claws. And you want to see? Uh, yeah, sure I want to see Here we go

That's gonna be really cool Yeah, I can't wait to see the bone claws This is gonna be fucking awesome Like I've seen them in like movies and stuff But imagine seeing in real life You're gonna fucking sick When I've seen them in stuff They come out a lot easier

It seems like Heather's having a really hard time Yeah, but doesn't It doesn't It doesn't She's turning into a baby kind of. Wolverine in the movie I did say they hurt every time

so this is probably part of it. It's just very painful. This is going to be so awesome. It kind of just feels like it's hurting more than it should. Maybe they're clogged up or something. Do you think they're clogged up? Hey, Heather, are they clogged up?

What's going on? No, no, I'm getting me out. Any moment now, any moment. Just focus on my hands. Okay, okay. Yeah, no, it's we're going to come out of it. I think when they come out, we should be prepared for the possibility that it might be a little gross

yeah it might be a little great there might be some blood and stuff it'd be kind of funny to like put a marshmallow on the end of a you're a roast of a campfire or like some onions and like some chicken or something that'd be fun too yeah with the bob uh hey heather yeah seems like the bone claws didn't come out I'm pretty sure the game out the wrong way oh fuck

that's a little anti-climatic I'm sorry. Let me drop trial and show you. No, it's okay. It's okay. Please don't do that. Don't do that. In fact, put them back in.

Okay. We, hey, Bub, and snicked as we discussed Marvel's Wolverine in video games this week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to Get Played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, and I am here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we're talking about the beast himself, who's not the beast.

What I was going to say? Wolverine in video games. Wow. Bub. Hello, everyone. Bub. Fuck you, Cyclops. I'm the best at what I do.

and what I do isn't very nice, Bub. My dick has a claw. Snicket? Snicket? Snicket. Is that the animatopoeia? Yeah, yeah. I always read it as snicked.

Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked.

Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicked. Snicker.

We're going to be talking about this diminutive Canadian freak. And his presence and video games. James Howlett, aka Logan. What? His name is James Howlett? Yeah, he was born in like the 1800. He changed it to Logan?

I think after Weapon X, he didn't have his memories. Oh, so they started calling him Logan. So he's like, what's my name, Bub? And they're like, I don't know, Logan. Your Weapon X. And then, I don't know. I don't know how he got the name Logan. I love that you know this.

I can't. Well, I don't have all the information. I just know bone claws. and metal claws. I know that at some point when I was a kid I saw the cover of the nastiest comic

I could imagine which was Wolverine pulling the metal out of his body and they had bone claws for the longest time I thought nasty

I was raised in a time when he had only bone claws when he only had metal yeah I didn't know about bone I couldn't even conceive that it would be bone underneath But it's kind of actually really gross that it's bone underneath.

Well, it's not. It's going to gross that it's bone underneath. Wait, it's not bone underneath. All his bones got replaced. Well, all his bones got replaced. The metal. The metal is metal. Yeah, the bones are money.

Yeah, the bones are money. If you're, if you're tuning in for the first time, we are three people who have no idea what we're talking about when it comes to Wolverine. And we're not looking it up. But I'm the best of what I do. And what I do isn't very nice, Bub. I want to fuck Gene Gray. I do know that. I do know he wanted to.

He's got a hard on for old JG. My whole body's a hard on. Who can't blame him? I can't jerk off because I cut off my own dick. And it grows back like a slug's eye. Healing factor. My whole thing is I've never been much of a comics guy. I feel like there's like the Olympic rings of nerddom, right?

And they all kind of intersect and people have their own disciplines. Like, you know, like you might be into science fiction and also pro wrestling. You know, I mean, those might enter a lot. Right. Or you might not know anything. Or you might not know anything about, you know, one of those two things. But, hey, I know a bunch about anime. You know what I mean?

Everyone's kind of got their own little spheres of interest. For me, comic books was, Western comic books was never one of them. Yeah. And I mean, no Jonah Hex. No. I only like Jonah Hex. That's the one I have an encyclopedic knowledge of. No, I just like, so like I know stuff just from absorbing.

thing. Right. And for being around people who do know this stuff, but I can't speak with any authority to the Wolverine canon beyond the movies I've seen. I have an ongoing subscription to an X-Men comic drawn by Peach Momoko. Oh, cool. And I don't even know the name of the comic. It's not the uncanny X-Men, which I think I've said on this show before.

It's like the something X-Men, not the uncanny. I'm not looking it up because we are not experts on this show. feels like something I knew the name of the artist. I knew the name of the artist. That's something. People who know it. They could be shouting into their car radio.

They know it, yeah. I love those guys and those freaks, but we're talking about one in particular, but we'll get to him a little bit later. Yeah, we'll get to him a little bit. And I also subscribe to the last Ronan, which once in a while will just drop an issue with a new take in the last run.

That's the TMNT comics. And anything where Kylo Ren stars in a Star Wars comics, so Legacy of Vader, and fall of Kylo Ren, et cetera. Wow. I have to get back into a, well, gosh, this is a whole thing. I would love to get back into having physical comics, but I already have too much stuff. I agree with you.

I was like, I'm reading so much comics online that I should start reading them physically. And now I have literally a bathtub filled with comics boxes because I don't know where to put them. Yeah, that's actually... What? What do you bathe? With a hose in the backyard. You ever drink from the hose when you were a kid? Oh, I remember drinking from the hose.

That's, that's, that's, course. Some of the most refreshed I've ever been in my fucking life. There's a whole, this is a whole online thing of there's like, they've talked about this on the guys podcast, but there's like a whole nostalgia culture around drinking from the hose. I'm just like, man, that's when being a kid was being a kid. You play to like your parents didn't even know where you were And then we'd get dog You'd come home, you drink from the hose You piss outside

Kids today, they're on their phones, you know It's a whole type of guy Yeah, I just did used to do it I did drink from the hose I drank from the hose You know, you're kind of splashing each other with the hose That's kind of fun It's kind of fun

My grandmother would pull the trigger And it would spray really hard And she'd scream you stink And I'd try and drink it a little Well it's kind of funny to you know You're getting tasked Maybe we're doing some watering. Adult walks by.

Intrusive thought alert. Uh-oh. What if I splashed the adult? Am I going to get in trouble? They often think it's kind of funny and they like it. It's kind of fun. Your mileage may vary, I guess. Yeah, go ahead.

If you're listening, go ahead and splash adults and see how they like it. Nick told an intrusive thought video game story that I don't think he's told on the podcast before he told it in the writer's room the other day. Intrusive thought? Well, you had an intrusive thought. Well, you had an intrusive thought acted on it and gotten huge amounts of trouble and were banned from video games for a month. Oh, yeah. I'm teeing you up to tell the story because I don't think I should tell the story for you.

I think I just have a different interpretation of intrusive thought. But this is a— These guys all in. You don't want to hear about my intrusive thoughts. Smash my dick in the pizza. This is when I was a boy. Me and my brother were boys. My brother, Malphabler, Nate, older than me.

we were playing Final Fantasy and my dad was like I'm going to take a nap and I'm setting an alarm and when I wake up for my nap you have to get off the video games and like I think either help them with chores or do our homework

whatever the fuck, something like that and me and my brother schemed to sneak into my dad's where my dad was sleeping and change his alarm so he didn't wake up and we could play Final Fantasy longer and see this is classic kid shit

that's good stuff Because you're not thinking about when he wakes up. No, we're not thinking about the consequence. You're going to get to do this for the rest of your life. Yeah, conceptually forever. But let me tell you, the board game, don't wake daddy is based on reality because he was hopping mad when he woke up and his day was in tatters. And we were banned from playing video games all together for a full month. It was like, I've been in worse trouble, but that was like definitely time.

was like, oh shit, we're, we're fucking in it. How many, how many spanks you get? I don't get, we, we weren't spanking household. That's why I'm so bad. That's why I'm so bad now. I never got fucking spanked. What's my damn excuse? We should talk a little bit about Hideo Kojima's fizzint, which has, this news came out about this just yesterday as of this record.

We, of course, love our pal-Kohima. We love the guy. A dear friend. Yeah. He's like our best, we talk all the time. Yeah. He's never posting our pictures of us on Zoom with him. But trust us, we're always on Zoom, chopping it up with our old pal, Hideo Koje.

And yet, anything we talk about here is going to be rumors in conjecture because we don't talk to him about games. We talk about everything else. We talk to him. Look, I tell him about my dreams sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a really good dream analysis. Yeah. Matt's got a recipe for carrots that he likes talking about.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just take the carrot and I bite it. As reported on from by variety of all places, Hideo Kojima's Fizint moves from PlayStation to Xbox's Death Stranding Creator Plots, TV and film projects with new publishing partner. I can read a little bit of, of, of, of, Kojima's ex post. As confirmed earlier through our official channels in mid-June this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Fizint Project.

Fisint is an important project, both to me personally and to Kajima Productions, determined us to keep the project alive. We've spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. We have decided to team up with Xbox, a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future. So there you go.

He calls it a genre-defining action espionage title. So I posted this take first in our text thread and then on social medias. My theory is there is a physical component to the game fissent, hence the name. And when Sony, in June announced we're not doing physical media anymore

that this put a massive barrier in between what he wanted to execute and what Sony was willing to back. Now people online have said Xboxes don't necessarily have physical disc drives. Right. Right? But I wonder if there is still some element

of physicality because he's constantly talking about having libraries, physical media, et cetera. I wonder if there's some capacity, some component of this game that requires a physical release and Sony just won't have the pipeline for it anymore. This is a good theory.

It makes sense. It certainly lines up with the timeline. I do wonder what, like, I totally buy that there's some physical component. I think a disc might be a bridge too far because there's so many. And also, like, what are you going to do on PC, which is, of course,

major platform for Microsoft and you know no one plays games with physical physical games anymore I wonder if there might be something like it comes with like a book you know what I mean it's like a book you have to look stuff up in while you're playing it's like it's like playing a fucking Carmen San Diego game or something yeah yeah I mean I I also you know earlier this year PlayStation was backing off of releasing their games later on PC also so if they were trying to like maybe not corner him, but like keep him on one platform and where he wants to be more platform agnostic. I could see them, you know, budding heads over that. It also could just be a simple

return of investment on death stranding. Maybe, maybe these were expensive games to make. And Sony was like, we don't, we did not receive the profit margins that we were hoping for. And it is worth publicly severing our ties to Kojima. What I find interesting about it is he's been so tight-lipped about the way that Konami stuff fell apart. Yes. And yet went public with the surprise of it being canceled and also an appeal to the vulnerability of both him artistically and his company. It felt it felt a little aggressive.

A little personal. A little personal. And I also know the dude has in interviews talked about how happy he is that Cojima Productions, he can look at the window and see Sony across the street. So I don't know. I don't know what happened. It could also be bigger than Kojima himself because, you know, I know there's a thing that tends to happen, particularly in Japanese development where and there was more a case

in the odds where like O'Too theory kind of got out of control. And you had people like Shinji Mikami, you know, single-handedly steering Capcom and unprofitable directions like deciding to make head like Reson Evil 4 a GameCube exclusive, arbitrarily just because you like that platform. Obviously it eventually goes everywhere. But like I wonder if there's maybe something larger than just like if they're just kind of like, oh, budgets are kind of just getting out of control. And that doesn't contradict what Heather was saying about recouping their investment on

death stranding and death stranding too. But again, it could just be fucking bigger than just fizzint and Kujima Bruckians. Because people are widely speculating too that Robert Pattinson is the star of the game. Yeah. which would be fucking cool as hell. I mean, really cool. I like the guy. I like him.

I love him. I think he's great. I, but like. He's a capital boy. I just can't. Is he, is we of one of our top guys?

I think he might be one of our top guys because like, honestly, I didn't really think that much about him during the twilight era because I didn't watch those movies. I just, you know, I didn't read those books. I didn't care. Ranch, do you have a twilight phase? Of course she did. Of course. Ranch, are you in the twilight phase?

I go in and out I made a music video that was entirely based on the Twilight baseball scene Wait, what? Yeah Is that online anywhere? It is. But there was a My Chemical Romance song in the movies too, right? Am I mistaken?

No. Okay, so Stephanie Meyer really wanted Mycumper Romance to do the soundtrack. Oh, that's right. They kept saying no. And then on their latest album in 2011, they wrote a song, about, it's called Vampire Money, and it was, I think Gerard's quote is like, the song is about asked so many fucking times to do the fucking Twilight movie. Of course, I mean, it's all that to say.

I can't remember the first thing I saw him in post that where I was like, oh, this guy's fucking good. And he's just good all the time. Maybe tenant, I feel like there's a big tenant. Maybe it was a good time, actually. Good time. Yeah, good time. He's great and good time.

But he's just good. He's batting a thousand. Makes good choices. He's got a capacity that people pointed out to make giffable moments better than more than any other actor. Like people have already memed the fuck out of just the primetime trailer. Yeah. Why don't you have a seat? You know how this sounds, right?

Pretty good. That was pretty good. I think I said this to Nick at one point. That was appointment viewing in my house. The trailer? No. Oh. The show.

We would watch that show as a family. Oh my God. Christ. Yeah. Insane times. But if Sony is like, this is going to be too crazy. I just think it's so insane. If that's true and it's this genre defining thing that, you know, Kojima is saying himself, I guess.

But like, I would just be like, hey, you know what? Here's the money. Like, let's see what we can do. You know what I mean? Like, it kind of just doesn't make sense that they're cutting their losses before. Yeah, the hype cycle for the game for him. turning to stealth combat action is already, it's already started. Like people are like, oh, after his horror game, he's going to go back to,

he's going to do stealth action again. Yeah. And it's also kind of not, it's not 100% clear what the game even really is because when they announced it, it like panned out and he was at Paramount Studios or something, right? Yeah. Not what it was. Maybe it was the Sony lot.

Yeah, it was. But it was, so he was like, okay, so this is also like a movie or something? Like, what the, what is this? Who knows? And so who actually knows what it is? Here's what I will say. And the contra Sony's decision here. When does the man miss?

And I'm not talking about, like obviously there's oddities like Boktai, the sun is in your hand. Sure. The solar powered Game Boy Advance cartridge game that was whatever, like a more curiosity than anything. But we're talking about big, like, fucking AAA swings. I mean, how fucking weird was. death stranding, how much was in the run up to that game the general perception, the consensus take that he's, the man's lost his mind. Like what the fuck is this baby?

Why is it called death stranding? What the fuck does that mean? And then it comes out, it's like, oh, this thing is just so dense with ideas and world building and mechanics that it ends up being like an indelible game and the sequel is even more so. So like, I don't know. it feels like an odd thing, odd guy to want to bet against, but, you know, there's economic considerations here,

whatever. I'm not, I'm just glad that this is going to be made by somebody or this is going to put it out by somebody. Yeah. And I'm platform neutral. I don't give a fuck. It's a system selling.

I'm going to buy whatever system it's on because I'm not going to, it's going to be the most expensive game I've ever purchased. Because I'm not going to not play a Kojima game. Yes. And the fact that it is now Xbox, it will be on there first.

Who knows what fucking ULICs? I imagine PC day-a-date, right? Probably PC day and date also. Yeah, so like, yeah, you know. But then having a PC that could even run it probably, you know, at that point, who could say? I know that you're fucking, yeah, my rig's going to be all right. Heather, I'm just like, I've said this before, but like as someone who likes building things, likes tinkering as much as you do, I remain surprised that you've never gotten into PC building. I think you would absolutely love it.

I've literally built the original Apple computer from scratch. Right. That's what I mean. It was like, you do that. So, like, why not build a modern game, like, gaming right? Why don't you build a computer you could actually use it? Because I don't like, there isn't enough. Like, the end point of me building a Gundam is that I have the Gundam and I like the Gundam.

Like, I had a PC for years and I turned it on like three times. Yeah. Like I just don't need a piece. I have a steam deck. Yes. And I don't use it. I don't fucking use it. I have the OLED steam deck and it's like, I don't know.

Like, I just don't, I don't see the point of me having one. I kind of feel like if you had one, I had like a really good one and saw what was like capable of doing, you would like, you would like switch. Capable of what? Like, what do I need that's like, Fortnite can't be rendered any better? I mean, I don't know. I mean, I guess sometimes I was just even looking at, like I just feel like I've seen stuff on PC that looks better than console even.

Yeah, 100%. It's the most powerful platform available right now. I can't speak to Fortnite, but I mean, you can always have a faster frame rate. You can always, you know, I mean, like you always have a higher resolution. To what end? I don't, I'm just saying like this, this exists. And I think you could also have an aesthetically pleasing tower that you could assemble. And then that would be a thing that would just be like a nice thing that you could look at the same way a Gundam is.

And then you wouldn't have to buy whatever Xbox it is because you'd already have the PC. I already had, but I had a Gundam PC. It was literally beautiful to look at. It was stunning. One of our listeners purchased it. Like, because I was like, I can't, one, I don't have anywhere to put this. Two, I never use it. I think then what we need to do.

is talk to who's the new apple guy? Turnus. Turnus? Is that his name? His name is turnus? It can't be that. It can't be turnus. It can't be a new word.

We went from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook to the mononymed ternus. John Ternus. Wow, John Ternus is it. I'm calling this guy J.T. I don't know about you. We got to get J.T. on the horn.

Tell him to stop fucking around. Start making Apple computers as good as PCs. Again, again, like, what do I need? If I want a game on an Apple device, why not use an iPad or my fucking the iPhone duo that I'm definitely getting? I want to fuck that phone.

You keep saying this and I don't know what's possible. I think you're going to be disappointed when you get the phone. I think boys can fuck it better than a girl. I will. Just turn it into like a taco? Yeah, that's like. Like, yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.

I'm thinking about it. I just think whatever it ends up being on, because like the next Xbox console might not even be a physical thing. Right. Who knows what it's even going to be. Maybe Fisant will release on an unfizant car. I'm just like, I just look, to the next point,

when is the guy missed? He's, look, we're also just, just like we love him. Yeah, that's yeah. We're operating from a biased perspective here. So like, you know, whatever he does, whatever the next thing is, we're going to, like, we're always going to see what it is no matter what. Yeah.

Even if we didn't like the thing before. If it's a physical jar of urine, I'm still going to be interested. You're still going to drink it. I was saying that. Wait, you're not supposed to do that. Kuchima issue statement. There's been a lot of misapplication of the jar of urine. People are drinking it.

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And let me tell you, Factor is pretty delicious. It's very simple and it takes care of my life. lazy ass in a way that I can't even do for myself. I've tried the Korean-style salmon, the parmesian rice and pork tenderloin, and the harvest chicken salad, and they are all spectacular. Let's eat real. Head to factormeals.com slash get played 50 off and use code get played 50 off to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until 10, 31, 2026. That's code get played 50 off. That's 50 off at factor meals.com. Get played 50 off at factor meals.com. See website for more details. I want to shift gears real quick because

something happened in between the last episode we released and this new episode because we were off for Labor Day. Tim Curry passed away, Rest in Power, a great character actor, who was a huge presence in video games. And a lot has been discussed about his, in the wake of his passing, of his appearances and Command and Conquer Red Alert, which are so great. And if you haven't watched any of those compilations, I mean, just so fun, just such just a classic scenery chewing performance.

But I knew Tim Curry in a video game context from the Sierra game, Gabriel Knight's Sins of the Fathers, which I played as a kid. And I just have a couple clips here that I put together of Tim Curry's performance that I thought we could listen to here for anyone who hasn't experienced this before. Gabriel Knight, cool name. It is a cool name. It's an interesting because, you know, Jane Jensen, who created this series, the first one is, has this art style that I think is aged really well. It's this, you know, I believe there's some rotoscoping with the animation, just like this VGA graphics, you know, Sprite pixel art based aesthetic. And I think it still looks good. the second game is all FMV and does not feature Tim Curry.

And then Tim Curry is back for the third game, which is very early 3D. The second and third games kind of look like shit. But the first game, I think, still looks great. And, you know, it's more interesting from a story perspective than from a gameplay perspective, as graphic adventures often are. But let's play just a little bit of this. This is him in the booth. Drakhan means dragons.

I wonder if Mosley would know he was being insulted if I called him, Drachenbri. Tim Curry is among Hollywood's most talented and versatile actors. Using his sensuous, masculine voice, Curry created a distinctive personality for the title character of Gabriel Knight. This is a newspaper clipping

about a murder committed in 1810. That murder is an exact match of the voodoo murders right down to the marks around the bodies. So House of Cards was just a guy doing an impression of this? It really honestly is, yeah, it's like this was the reference that Kevin Spacey used to base's house majority leader character. Gabriel Knight is very, very cool and impossibly handsome.

And of course, they came to me. Just such a charming man and such a great talent. And it's so great because he plays it so big. but it's also so perfect for this game. Yeah. But also, like, I've seen him go bigger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a certain amount interesting when you're, I guess, a performer like that to know how to exercise,

like even a little bit of restraint is very interesting. Yeah, he, I've seen the clip where he's like, I'm going to go to the only place I can. Space! Yeah, that's the road alert. Yeah. So great. Maybe one of the all-time. obviously just one of all-time performers.

Just like just an incredible. All time. Incredible talent. Rest in power. Let's talk about some video games in this video game podcast. Before we do, I have this idea for a thing. A thing. Like it's not a segment.

Okay. It has a couple of names. It's either. It goes by many names. It could be, it could be shelf it or melt it. It could be dope or dusty. It could be fantastic. We're just plastic.

And what it is is it's a light goods review segment where we bring in a thing that's just hit the shelves. We all talk about whether or not it's a good thing, whether or not we recommend it. Okay. Because, you know, nerd adjacent, video game adjacent stuff is kind of... It's an edible good? No. No, it's not an edible good. It's an item.

I'll stop looking my lips. But I also... Yeah, put your fork and knife down. But it's also, like a second. would require like multiple items. Okay, okay. And this is just an item. It's like, you know, just hit the shelf.

Well, let's try it out. This will be a pilot program. This is hot off the shelf. Was shelf it or melted? Which one do you think is a good one there? Heather stepping out of the room. Shelf it or melted is good. Because shelf it, to me, sounds like put it away, but then melt it sounds like destroy it.

It sounds like neither is. I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah. Or because, but, oh my God. Okay. Heather has returned with a guy. All right. So this is the new Puppetronics Pikachu.

Great. Which I feel was falsely advertised. Mm-hmm. Because I thought he was going to be a fully animatronic dude, right? He's not a fully animatronic dude. But he is touch sensitive. So if you wanted to like, if you wanted to touch him... He doesn't sound like that.

No, yeah. What is that noise? Well, maybe he's waiting to be... He's what you want to like touch his like nose or... So he's a puppet. This is a nightmare. He's a puppet. Yeah.

And you have to like... What are you, what are you physically controlling and what is happening automatically? He also, he's responding to his sound. So you're rubbing his head right now. You seem to be doing some sort of gesticulation like in his back. Is this like a traditional ventriloquist sort of dummy that you're manipulating? So. You have to tell me it's real.

Like what are you doing? What are you doing right now? So he, he, he, I feel like, because I showed this to Matt. Yeah. I feel like he was advertised as a fully animatronic standalone Teddy Ruxpin style thing. Yeah. He is not that at all. No, you got to do stuff.

You got to do so much fucking work to make this thing move. I like that you can you can like touch him and he'll he'll respond to like his tummy tickles, his nose. Yeah, that's cute. He's got like a, he's got like a, you know, he's going to sneeze. Aw, that's adorable. He's got like all the sensors in him. I feel betrayed that he, in the advertisement, they're showing like somebody holding him

the whole time and what they're doing is all of the mechanics. Right. So that stuff's not happening automatically. Yeah. his eyes opening and closing, his tongue sticking in and out. So you can put your hand. That involves. Oh, it doesn't even feel.

It's, this is like, it's like a, there's like a, there's like a, there's like a, a, a handle in here that you can hold that has like a trigger, like a trigger, like a trigger basically. Yeah, it's like multiple triggers. There's like, triggers for your thumb, triggers for your finger, triggers for your, like, it's like a, it's like a pipe gun. It's also so loud when his ears are way. Yeah. It is way too loud. Yeah. Like the mechanical clicking of his eyes opening and closing.

Yeah, it's excessive. He also, I think his cheeks light up and I don't know how to. Light them fucking cheeks. They're not doing, they're not doing shit. It's right on the edge of being the best toy of all time. Yeah, but I think it's kind of got some, I don't even know if I'd go all right on the edge. It feels like it's got a, it's a prototype of what could be the best toy of all time. Because, like, all they need to do is release this.

Oh, hot in there, too. Yeah, and that bad boy over here. Like, all they need to do is release that. And I'm jamming my forearm up as cloaca. With the animatronics. Nix, like, naturally good at it for some reason. Like, they called it puppetronic. And I thought it was like, oh, you can control it or it's animatronic.

Yeah. It's just like a sort of mildly mechanical puppet. Yeah. What does he do if I do this? Ah He did nothing He died He just froze out

He's blushing He's got his little red cheese He disassociated I will say I think he looks great He looks great He looks awesome He looks fantastic

It also I will say He is not particularly like huggable Because it is a thin layer fabric over hard plastic I'm gonna toss this some bitch over to ranch Shelf it or melted

dope or dusty Fantastic Just holding it like a baby Or just plastic How does he How is like a gun Which one is good or bad with shelf it or melt it Shelf it

You put it up on your shelf Like if it's a goods If it's a goods review Semi segment Then it's like Hey do we like this or you know What I think of something being on the shelf I think of it being like put away

What about this? Goods or bads? Goods or bads is good. Goods or bads is good. That's really good. Because it's not just good or bad. It's worse for civic. Yeah, it's goods or bads. I give this a mild bads. I mean, I don't hate it, but it just feels like... No. What's the price point for this bad boy? I believe it was $74. That's a lot of money for what that thing does. Again, I thought it was like a Teddy Rucksman. Yeah.

Oh, she got it to shock. What did you do? Ranch, what did you do? Branch kissed it. She got it to shock and light up. Okay. And then we all just forgot that. Right. She made him electric cute.

He could sit there. I do like having him here. Yeah, we'll say Kauaidas. He was very, very cute. Yeah, he's super cute. I love you, Pikachu. He's so cute. But I just wish it wasn't, if it wasn't so loud, I could get the rest of the way there.

You know what I mean? Like, I think the fact that it's like hollow and, has these things, I could sort of forgive that if those mechanisms were quieter. Yeah, it's too noisy. You release that item at that size. Yeah. Price point $500, but it works on its own. Like it's a full animatronic standalone and has a bit of a cushion to it.

Yeah. It'd be the most popular toy for like multiple Christmases in a row. There's not like a Pikachu Megan. No, it doesn't have to like run around. Okay. It doesn't have to kill anybody on my behalf? I guess we should probably turn it. Maybe turn this guy off.

He's making noises of his own accord. He's just reacting to us speaking? I guess so. He's got a switch on the inside on the base. Does that make sense? He's begging not to be turned off. Ranch pulls his heart off. Oh my God.

King of Fatality. So you, it's a minor bads? Yeah, I give that a bads. I'd say, hmm, is my, what is low goods? You know what? Goods? Yeah, mild goods. Mild good.

I think it's fine. Goods minus. Goods minus. I'll go Bads Plus and Matt will go goods minus. Yeah. I will say I was so bummed when I took him out of the box and discovered what he was that it's a bads for me. Because I would not have purchased him if I knew what he was. I do feel like the advertisement was fully misleading.

Yeah, it's the snorlax bed all over again. Yeah, man. Richel, you seem to have made fast friends with our pal Pikachu. What's your verdict? That's very good. Wow. Well, then guess what, Ranch? It goes home with you.

Now you have to feed him. That's your holiday bonus this year. Turns out my dog hates it. Hates it. I do think of all three, of all four of us in this room, if any of us were to take home. Mamaguay, Ranch would be the one to do the best with it. I think she'd immediately turn it into a gremlin.

What are you talking about? I don't know. I don't think so. I think Ranch follow the rules really good, take care of it. I'm going to follow the rules. You're going to get this thing wet. Get a little wet. Soak it with a hose. I think, well, yeah, of course. I think of the rules, getting them wet, maybe not so bad. Because you have more?

Yeah. Not so bad. Got it fun. Feeding them is what makes them evil, right? Yes. Feeding them after midnight. Feeding them after midnight. I'm going to say, Heather, I think there was enough discussion from that Pikachu that very well could be a segment just with one goods. Oh, okay. I think you could bring something in and be good, is this goods or bads? And that might be enough.

It could be Heather's Whole presents goods or bad. Okay. But we could all do it. We could all do it. Okay, great. Well, in the future, that can be a segment. I didn't know where it would go in the show. I thought it's kind of a light, like, oh, this came out this week and I brought it in sort of a thing.

I remember how excited you were to order it. Yeah. And seeing you here so dejected by it, I feel upset on your behalf. Next week I bring in my Hatsuni Emiku, Real Doll. The fucking Varong fleshlight. Look how big it is. My God. I'm crawling this damn thing.

All right. So that was the first goods or bad. I loved it. I think Pikachu made me one of the cutest things that's ever been created. Great, great, great. We should do a DLC episode. Cutest things? Yeah, DL cute.

The cutest things there are. That's really good. The cutest things in video games or anything. Damn, looking cute. Yeah, damn looking cute. It's good. Done. Put it in the bank.

All right, let's talk about some video games. The question for the room is about video games we're currently spending time with in our leisure time. That question is, what do you play? What are you playing? What are you playing? What are you playing? And I'm here to ask my friends what they're playing. And what kind of games they like to play?

what they've been playing lately. And I'm going to start with you, Maddo, Maddo, what are you buying? Oh, what am I buying? Playing. Oh, playing. What are you playing? Yeah, Matt, what are you playing? What are you playing?

I'm not saying, I mean, you know, it's only a matter of days now until Resident Evil, Zach Crager's film. Can't wait to get that call. You think you're going to get in? You think they're flying by Marvel movie rules. Be casting at this point. Day before the movie comes out. I don't know the rules.

I'm just, I want Craigor to know I'm available. Ready to go. I wear my costume every day just in case. I think if... Is that your costume or is that just your clothes? I mean, for movies sake, it's a costume. Oh, sure.

But these are my clothes. Yeah, got it. This other guy, this got it to the movie. I believe the term is wardrobe. Yes. And see, that's... You know the industry. Talking the talk.

Yeah, right. This guy that's in the movie is his name Austin Abrams. Yeah, okay. He was in his other movie weapons, right? Yeah. So what I'm saying is if we get you in this movie, there's a chance you could be a different Zach Kregor. You could be part of his regular company. I would love that.

Be cool. I would love, you know, I've got to work with Gregor. I'm more than one movie. He needs me. I'm fine. Wow. You just might not get to play yourself in another movie. Oh, like I could be like a fancy lady

You could be like a fancy lady Yeah, I think you'd be good as a fancy lady Yeah Can I just, can I hear a little bit of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Get out of my ballroom I'm a fancy lady That's pretty good

I believed it I believed it, that's good I can see it, I can picture it You're wearing like a glass glass Splash Oh, you jumped in a pool or something Oh, you splashed water Oh, got it got a glass of wine or something like that

Yeah, I'm just gonna tell you Guards. They have like a whole team. Guards! People that add sound effects. You don't have to do the sound effects. You don't have to do it. Guards!

I think calling for guards, though, is something a particular kind of fancy lady might do if she's upset at a ballroom. Yeah. I think it's good. I'm going to hide in the behind this little room. Can you take that again? What was that again? I just didn't hear it. They're at the gates.

We got to go in a... I got to hide in the little room. You got to hide in a little room because they're coming. They're at the gates. Guards are coming in. Guards. You're going to hide in a little room. Got it.

Betrayed. I was starting to get real vision of this movie. Whole arc here. Yeah, this is good. Honestly, maybe getting in a writer's room. Yeah. I'm sorry I was never able to give birth to a child for you. This is why you shouldn't play a fancy lady.

Matt, what are you playing? Okay, well, I feel like this is like a huge announcement. Oh, my God. Where are we going? I famously haven't finished Kingdom Hearts 3. Game came out seven years ago. And I had waited 14 years for it. So this is now 21 years after the fact.

As far as waiting for the next one. Did it come out seven years ago or six years ago? 2019? Oh, fuck. six years ago seven 2019 really I think maybe 2018 even or something

anyway there's a way to find Nick's on the keys he's looking it up Nick's typing in Ranch might be looking up first Ranch might be looking up first Ranch is looking it up

who's gonna do it faster Kingdom Hearts when come out Google 2019 2019 before everything went crazy but in January of 2019

oh god yeah so the first patient with COVID-19 had uttered their first cough yet it's true the year that the disease was discovered,

even though the pandemic went wide in 2020. That's why it's called COVID-19. Anyway, 21 years awaiting, finally put to rest. Wow. I've rolled credits on Kingdom Hearts 3 and the Remind DLC. Wow.

The DLC, I will say the DLC, I thought was a lot of fun. It's sort of like a little bit of a alternate telling of the final parts of the game. with different or just kind of harder boss fights and stuff and then there's a boss rush mode that gets you a secret ending

which I'm just like, I'm not gonna do that. But I did beat the initial story part of it. You know, there was parts of playing the game where I was thinking maybe I'm sort of over this. You know, they front loaded it a lot. They front loaded a lot of the Disney stuff.

That's like the most of the first parts of the game until you get to about like the final act where it's like actually here's everything you've been waiting for the convoluted inscrutable lore and just fucking

combat after you know boss fight after boss fight after boss fight and it was that's when I was like this game is good like this game is actually really good a slow starter but once you once you get into it because I mean also they took out all the final fantasy stuff there are some final fantasy characters

in the DLC which was exciting to see but I mean I teared up when I rolled credits I was just so like moved by what I understood the story to be and also just getting to

you know having this task taking care of it off my plate felt very I don't know it felt like a big moment so I was just like very excited to get that done I love those characters I love the games and I have played basically all of the ones that are not

defunct mobile games and the rhythm one I just don't think I'm gonna I just don't think I'm gonna do it but so I'm just like I'm very ready for Kingdom Hearts 4 next year which I can't believe it's coming out next year there's been some leaks on steam of like the achievements and people who are gleaming with the story and what's going on

Yeah, there was like a big achievements league. Big achievements league. A bunch of games. The idea that you would try and work backwards from achievements to understand a kingdom heart story is really ambitious. I think there's a list of what all the worlds are. And I'm just like trying to stay away from any of that kind of stuff. But I just was like so happy to have finally done it. And that's sort of the main thing that I had been doing.

I've been dipping in and out of stuff here and there. I think this month there's a lot of games sort of vying for my attention but I was I was very happy to get it done and have my mind changed about the game in general so that's what I've been playing. I know you're trying to avoid this information

and I apologize curiously get the best of me I did Google the achievements there is an apple dumpling gang land Nick I literally I'm gonna like pretend to get really fucking mad okay just like maybe this is like

something we could sort of maybe use to like get interest in the show I'm gonna put my microphone away Nick I just fucking said I didn't want to know are you I just didn't want to know that you can't just sit here and tell me there's gonna be a fucking apple dumpling gang I just said I didn't want to know

I'm sorry I just like I I'm gonna hit you now don't don't don't hit you don't hit don't hit you don't hit Ow. Well, that doesn't change the fact there's an apple dumpling game biome in the game.

Stop telling me that. You know what else is in there? Race to Witch Mountain. No. And so, like, maybe people would think that fight was real. In listeners, people... I tried to look really uncomfortable.

So they have the camera cut to me. Like, if the clip goes out, people would be like, oh, my God, what happened on the show this week? People are going to get crazy with it. But, you know, I have some theories about what some things, based on things I've seen that they've released

that I know it's gonna be out certainly no Cocoa's gonna be there Nick is looking up the Apple Dumpling gang Have we, are people familiar with the Apple Dumbling gang? It's just some guys. It's just like, movies used to be so simple. It's like, yeah, there's two guys with hats and there's three kids with hats.

And you know what they made like six of these movies? They're the fucking Apple Dumpling Gang. And it's kind of not really telling you anything about them other than they're the Apple Dumpling game. And also, what even is that? The Apple Dumpling. Gang rides again. I kind of think Apple Dumplings sound good.

They are. They're good. I've never had that. You've never had an Apple Dumbling? I don't think so. We've got to make that a DLC. Matt's first Apple Dumbling to celebrate the world in Kingdom Hearts 4. Fuck, this poster is kind of low-key good.

Apple Dumbling Gang, Wanted for chicanery, Skull-Duggery, Tomfoolery, and habitual bongling. You hear a lot about chicanery and Tomfoolery and stuff like that. You don't hear much about bungling. Habitual bung. Well, because that's like a competent gang would not be doing that. But this is the apple dumpling game. A bunch of narrow do wells. That's awesome, Matt.

I'm really happy you did that. You know what? Guess what? I'm not a fucking tourist, okay? I fucking play these games. I've played all these games. And I have a definitive ranking in my mind. I don't know if I have it necessarily off the dome.

But I'm going Kingdom Hearts 2, birth by sleep. Dream Drop distance Kingdom Hearts 1 Okay Then I'm gonna go Kingdom Hearts 3 chain of memories And I'm for sure

Forget oh 358 over two days DS1 I think that's all of them I think You know there's probably Kingdom Hearts recoded

That was a mobile game That then they remade into a DS game That I have not played And I'm not going to That's it for me I love Kingdom Heart Let your heart be your guiding key.

I love it. That's awesome, Matt. Heather, what are you playing? Boys, I've been playing Fortnite. Overdrive season continues, the game-themed Fortnite season. But on the side of that, I haven't had a ton of time to game. That being said, I have played Chrono Trigger for an hour every day before bed. I love that.

And I'm determined to beat it before we go. to the concert in October to be the first time I've ever truly actually beaten Chrono Trigger. I'm playing it on my Ein Thor. I love the Ein Thor as a machine. And I also feel like something I've never appreciated

about Sprite graphics because I normally play them on my, I think it's probably a 25 inch CRT. Yeah. Is that when they're very small, they're very pretty. They feel very precious at a smaller screen ratio

The Einthor top screen is about the size of an iPhone ProMax. So it's a chunky, it's a decent size screen without being too overbearing. It's not the size of a Switch, but it's not the size of a Game Boy. But yeah, I'm continuing forward. I'm not yet farther than I've ever been. Okay. And I've also made the same mistakes. I feel like I've always made in the game.

Like there's areas that I go to and I'm like, God, right, I'm not supposed to do this yet. And I fought all the way here. And it was just because I was like, you, oh, you must be able to go. Oh, if you can go in this building, I go through that building. It takes me a lot of time because the enemies are overpowered. But I'm like, oh, this may be a secret area. And then you get to the end of it.

And the guy's like, you shouldn't be here yet. And you're like, fucking shit. And you all backtrack all the way through. Games at that time hadn't accounted for how you would play the game. Anyway, super having an enjoyable time. I have put, because of just the amount of work I'm under, I've put near automata on a slight pause. I do intend to get back to it.

Despite how ugly that game is, it still plays incredibly. That's what I've been playing. Nick, how about you? When you say it's ugly, what do you mean? Matt, it's an ugly game. It's all gray and stuff. the palette. You don't mean the art direction. You mean technically? Physically, technically, it's an ugly game. Like the, because you're, are you playing,

what are you playing it on? PS5 Pro. It is, I mean, it just looks like a much older game than it is. It is not a game that was like graphics forward. It was a game that was experience forward, I think. A lot of the environments feel like early PS3. Got it. And you're like, This is tough. This is a bad environment. But that's why I've been playing. Nick, what do you've been playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking.

You're welcome, Nick Weiger. This is where people get mad at us in the podcast because I also have not had a lot of time. And so I've been kind of limited in my gaming hours. You guys hadn't get to do it. I know, I know. I've been playing, I just said I've been playing an hour of games per day. I was saying it as me.

I was being somebody annoying. Don't be mad at me for that. I'd be playing for that. be playing Fortnite, nobody wants to hear about it. Fucking play tons of fucking Fortnite when I can play video games. You have to pick which thing you're going to be mad about. You can't be both.

I wanted to play new games. Games I like. And I wanted to like them. I've been, you know, I've been, I've been working a good amount lately, so I've been limited in my leisure time. But when I have been playing games, I have sought out, I've sought out new experiences because, yes, I'm still chipping away at me to the hollower.

determined to finish that. But I picked up a game called Sovereign Tower. This game was not on my radar. I kind of found it through my discovery queue. It was developed by Wild Wits games, and it came out on August 6th of this year. My mom's birthday. So how about that?

Little birthday gift to me on her behalf. A month later. Anyway, here's the... That's not how that works. You can't do that. Here's the steam description of Sovereign Tower. Plays the Sovereign of a Magical Tower in the story-rich roundtable management RPG. Recruit eccentric knights, assign quests, and balance egos whilst curving away, while curving out your kingdom's destiny.

If destiny doesn't go your way, keep turning back time, uncover secrets, and rewrite fate again and again. This is very much a Wiger game. It is a text-based RPG, like so much of it is happening through dialogue boxes, and it's as much visual novel as it is management game. I think this might be one of those games because we don't talk about the different quadrants here. You know, there's a, there are four quadrant games that we all can enjoy, referring to each of us. And then there are games that are very much for one or two of us. This is a game that's maybe only just for me. Matt, you might like it.

But I, yeah, I don't know. It's just so. I have a hard time. And the gameplay is pretty minimal. I have a hard time when one of the lead descriptors for a game is text. Big. Yeah. But it does have dating as well.

So there's that. All right. So basically what happens is you're, you know, you're the sovereign. The sovereign of the tower, you deal with audiences with your court. So basically like farmers, nobles, clergy, et cetera, where I'll come to you and ask for, you know, like, and we have this problem. You have to solve it. And then you can weigh the possible solutions in terms of which. actions it's going to endear yourself to or alienate yourself from. So like an aristocrat will come

and be like, oh, the press have too much freedom. You need to crack down and you can go with them and be like, yeah, you're right. I'm going to go ahead and take your side or you can be like, fuck you. You know, like that's the people deserve to have the truth come out there or whatever and deal with the consequences as a result. As you go, you level up things like, you know, audacity, wisdom, tyranny, kindness, depending on how you roleplay, you're sovereign, and then also the different factions are, as I mentioned, like the people, nobles, merchants, scholars that you can appease or displease. There's also a little bit of a, not a time loop mechanic, more like a rewind time mechanic by way of a basement demon who can like help you undo things so you don't have to completely like kill a run if you just, if you fuck, one thing up. There's all the other element of this in addition to to dealing with your court and all this palace intrigue is you've got knights and knights have, they come to you, they have personalities

and they're a bunch of outstanding quests that you can assign them to based on those personalities and and their equipment loadouts. Knights can, you know, succeed or fail. They can die, which is a thing that can happen. And then as I mentioned, NPCs are romancible. So that's another thing that's kind of simmering there. I find the art direction really appealing here. It has this, you know, I went to a K-town color studio. I know people are aware of this phenomenon, but this is a thing where it's just like, people will look at your, a color expert will look at your skin tone, your eyes, your hair, et cetera,

everything you got going on and sort of steer you towards like, hey, these are the kinds of colors you should be wearing. This is the kind of jewelry you should be wearing. These are the kind of, this is what a glasses frame that flatters your face, you know, that sort of shit. A pseudoscience or not, I found it really compelling and I do actually like it aesthetically, me following this, um, uh, their palette guidance. All that said, the palette for this game kind of reminds me of the autumn warm palette I was assigned by my color expert. I'll show you some of these screenshots here. Oh, yes.

We can kind of see this. It's just like, you know, it's, it's, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, uh, line art I find really appealing. Um, and yeah, we just see everything's just kind of muted, you know, uh, it's like a past. Still game. Very much so. Yeah, very much sort of lives in that realm. But yeah, a lot of warm colors as well. It's a really cool looking game.

And because of the lack of, like the basically minimal to non-existent animation, that has to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of making the world feel alive. And it very much succeeds. And I think the most compelling endorsement of this game is it's got that like one more turn quality you kind of got of just like, well, I'll just do one more thing and just sort of see what happens. The civilization kind of being the ur example of that phenomenon. So I think it's really cool. If anyone, it likes this sort of thing and it was similarly not on their radar, this is one I would definitely steer you towards giving a go or maybe putting

on your wish list for what it goes on sale. Because I think for a certain sector of gamer, this is a really, really strong execution of this sort of gameplay loop. So yeah, Sovereign Tower. That's what I've been playing. Yeah. James, take me to the window. I want to see the fountain one more time. It's beautiful. It's so beautiful.

I loved you. James. Got it. Maybe Rage can put some violin under there. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah, that was really good. Fancy lady coming to him over near you. Okay, so you're the whole thing is you.

All right, I'll see you guys next week. Uh, buy Resident Evil Merchant. Bye. I'm excited for Fancy Lady, though. Sounds good. I already, you know how you can

pre-book your movies in advance on the A-list app? It's already taken up one of my slots. That's one of those ones where it's so contingent on who'd be making it because I always said like, Sophia Coppola's next movie is called Fancy Lady.

I'm like, I'm fucking in. Yeah, I'm fucking, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tarantino's Fancy Lady. I'm like, I kind of don't know about that one. If there was a Sophia Coppola movie called Fancy Lady that started,

what clearly looked like the Resident Evil merchants. That's eventually what media has to become because like all of the middle of the road stuff is going to be AI slop. Right. It's at least a background movie poster on like The Simpsons or something. Sophia Coppola's fancy lady.

I did have a similar idea where I was just like, I'd like to do a movie and just cast the Jollybee in a role. and he's just like he's just a guy in it. It's not like the movie about the Jollybee. He's just like an actor in the movie. Right. Like it'll be a movie about like a baseball team or something like that. Yeah. And he's not playing like a baseball team.

He's not playing a guy. He's not playing a guy. Yeah, he's like on the team. Yeah, he's like Sanchez. Yeah, yeah. This is actually a pretty cool idea for a for a movie, Nick. What concerns me is that it fills every page of your journal. And he can do this and he can do this.

And then he'll be my friend also. I'd be friends with that. Journal closed Jollybee kind of got a Pikachu sort of quality to him Jolly B also really good I think as far as character designs go really really strong

Yeah Pikachu would fucking shred him though In a battle Single combat Well either way the bee is cooked Because if the bee stings him he fucking dies Yeah that's true So either way Is that what is lightning type

Or electric type versus a flying type? Bug Or bug type Yeah bug type Yeah, bug, maybe split-type, flying type. He probably has some air moves. He's cooked. Yeah.

You hate to see it, really, but he's... Yeah. What else is cooked? That chicken. Hell yeah. My man. We should order that for dinner. We should order Jollybee.

Instead, it's 92 degrees at 6 p.m. and we ordered barbecue, baby. See, if you can guess when the... You're listening to. a DLC and it sounds sleepy. We're not here to talk about that. No. Hey buddy, you know

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Insomniacs Marvel's Wolverine? The game is called Marvel's Wolverine. The developer is Insomniaac. But yeah, if you're calling Insomniac's Wolverine, the actual title, Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine. Released September 15th to 2026. As of today's record, the review embargo has been lifted. And none of us have played it. We don't have review codes.

We're not critics. We're not journalists. We just like video games. We're just sloppy boys. We're just sloppy boys. But it's currently sitting at a 78 on Metacritic. Oh, my God. Brings me to something, a theory I wanted to bring to the room at the top of this.

Is the Wolverine problem the Superman problem where he is so OP that there is a natural ceiling on how good a video game based around him can be? The combination of his adamantium claws and his healing factor. makes it so that it's really tough to have a compelling game design around those attributes. I think this is a game you guys haven't played. But Godhand is a game of constant combat. It is constant violence.

I mean, there is a story, kind of, and it's full of funny, weird jokes. But the game is just running up to people and beating the shit out of them and you have to create your own combos to do so. I think if Wolverine has a problem in video games, it's because nobody is making the feeling of combat the thing. Like any of these guys,

Sekiro is an overpowered guy. Like all of them are insanely overpowered. But Segero is also kind of a glass cannon, you know? I mean, like you can get fucked up real, real quick in Sekiroo. Got the best ending. So, you know, I can speak with some authority to this. It's like you don't feel indestructible. I think in the way that Wolverine does.

So you invent a problem. Like, oh, Earth is being bombarded by X-rays. And as a result, Wolverine is no longer invulnerable. But he still has all his aggression, all of his moves. He can still heal like fucking Halo over shield or Fortnite's over shield. Yeah. Just invent a reason. I think that gets to, though, to the Superman 64 problem of the kryptonite fog.

where it's just sort of like, well, Superman doesn't have all his stuff anymore because he's been depowered. But now it's like, well, now we lose what's fun about the power fantasy, which is being overpowered. So it's like, I don't know. You could, this is, these are good pitches from your part, Heather, on your part, Heather. I'm just saying like, like, there might just be something inherent to this character that makes like the best version of a Wolverine game of B plus. Bayonetta is like a fucking violence machine. Dante's a violence machine. Like, there are games where the main character is a violence machine.

I think that all you have to do to make, I still think it's a power fantasy. I still think if you put it on easy mode, perhaps you eliminate the beam. You know, the whatever beam is affecting the planet. We'd say we haven't played this game. There might be a beam. There could be a beam.

And we don't know if he's in it. If Cyclops is there, there most certainly is at least one. I just think it's not an unsolvable problem. And combat is the thing that is best in games. I do want to speak to the... Combat is the thing that is best in games. Put it on a shirt, it's true.

All the rest of the shit that you guys like in games is wrong. No, I do. You were describing a game with no animation in this text base. I'm like, oh my God. I think there is like a, I have two thoughts. I think we haven't played it. I think a 78, I'm going to just zoom out for a second.

Zoom out. Satellite going around. the moon. I think aggregate review systems need to die. I don't think they're as helpful as it's as they make them seem like they are. Like I, because then you see like, audience scores for, you know, movies and TV shows go down when there's like something woke in it or something. And then people are like, oh, see, it has like a 20.

percent audience score, but then the critic score is like 90 or some shit because it's like actual good piece of art or whatever. So I just think it's like, it's just messy. I was looking at a lot of the reviews and most, I would say a lot of them were positive but not effusively positive. They were like, this game is like a like a seven and a half eight. And then I did see a few that were like, you know, two and a half out of five or whatever. And that's like 50%. So it's all these different things coming together and they're all different metrics. A seven and a half out of 10 is way different than a 2.5 out of 5. Those are like just completely different scales.

Right. So I just don't know how helpful it is to see a score like that. I'm going to play it because I like Wolverine and I'm interested in it. The common complaint that I've seen is that they don't think that the story is very good. And I do think that that's the thing that would make the Wolverine problem, the Superman problem fixable, is if the story was worth a damn.

Because at the end of the day, I kind of don't care if there's not, like, let's say they made a Wolverine game without a fail state, and he just like actually can't die, but it's like waves and waves of guys or something. And it's like a bullet hell, but the guys are the bullets, right? God, that sounds like paradise.

And then you're just like taking them down until you satisfy a certain amount of, you know, rage or, you know, and then you're moving on to whatever the next story beat is. I kind of am like, it should just be Donkey Kong Bonanza with Wolverine, but instead of walls and stuff, it's fucking guys, and you're just fucking them up.

I kind of don't, I kind of don't even really care what the story is. I want to just, I want to slicing dice, baby. I maybe let us down an unhelpful path, because we have, none of us will play the game. We can't speak to it specifically. I'm just talking about the, you know, I'm not. When this episode is out, the game still won't be out.

No. So, like, we're just talking about the pre-release consensus from people who add review codes. We're talking about Wolverine in games. But we're talking about Wolverine more generally in games. And I do kind of wonder, I do think it's at least worth interrogating, you know, like how you could or couldn't make a good Wolverine game and when he's succeeded and when he's failed. Because I do think like things like when you think of like Wolverines probably.

best use cases, you know, and I think those are games where he's not the lead of the game. It's, you know, thing like X-Men Arcade or Marvel versus Capcom. It's like those are games where it's just like, well, we're just not going to really deal with his core elements. And we're just going to be a cool looking character with a cool moves, but cool movesets. There is a game where you play as Wolverine for the Sega Genesis. Sega Genesis is X-Men, 1993. You could choose between which X-Men you wanted to play as. It was a big showcasey title back in the day.

Is that the one where you had to actually reset your console at a certain point? Yes, I believe so. Yeah. It is a you get to play as Wolverine and he's good at, you know, like he has. He has his healing factor. He's combat heavy dude. And I think that was a success. Like, I've seen Wolverine in games and he works.

I agree. I have too. But, yeah, it's just, I'll, I'll, just say I'll just leave it at that. I agree. I have also seen him work in games. The X-Men Genesis Mega Drive thing for people who aren't familiar with it, this was a thing, there's a point in the game where it tells you to reset the computer. And a lot of players just like got stuck there and never figured out what that meant. This is the age before you had internet walkthroughs. And what the game actually wanted you to do was a fourth wall breaking thing of

resetting your own console and that soft reset would allow you to progress but how the fuck was a kid supposed to figure that shit that's crazy because also you've been taught if you reset you lose everything right that's the end of all your progress like you you can't press reset while you're playing a game in this I mean I mean I've played a lot of X-Men games I've played a lot of like games where Wolverine is like featured and stuff I just was sitting here thinking of what would be like my ideal X-Men game for a second. It's a game that doesn't exist. Because everybody

wants to, everybody's impulse is for it to be action forward. Like where you're just like in charge of any of these individual X-Men and have free reign over their abilities to do at any time. Where are you going with this, buddy? Turn-based X-Men RPG?

I mean, I think that you got you do midnight suns right like a more a tactical game but that does have RPG elements it does have a strong story I don't know that game might actually work for your criteria I have to try it yeah I mean I do

I've played it a little bit but it's also it's not just the X-Men Wolverines there blades there yeah sure sure I want an X-Men Claire obscure style action turn-based thing oh you want like a JRP with the X-Men yeah okay all right

that's interesting that could be fun then you can have more of their moves in it, but you don't have to worry about the thing that they ran into with the Avengers Square Enix game, where they were like, how do we fucking balance this? Where everybody's, you're playing as all these characters, but it has to be this certain way, and it just doesn't work. That way everybody's kind of on the same. When it's turned-based, I think you can lock it down, I think.

You think it's like, in terms of play balance, is just what you're speaking to with characters that are in. And also, just like it's probably too hard to develop all. all of everybody's fucking powers. You can get like 10 X-Men in a turn-based game because they're not doing their shit all the time. They're taking turns. I want...

Yeah, they're taking turns. The clip I brought in of Ghost of Yote when I was like, this is my happiest I've been doing combat in a while. That's what I want out of an X-Men game. I want you choose a character, there's five characters. Yeah.

You choose them and you're locked into them for the entire game. and the combat feels and looks like that. And then I'm in. I'm in. I just want waves of enemies trying to crush me while either optic blast or berserker barrage or fireworks. Yeah.

Like a good version of the X-Men arcade game, which was just a punching, kicking, fighting game. Is that a place to begin? I mean, the X-Men arcade game, because that's maybe the first Wolverine game I remember playing. as a kid, which is, there's a fucking six-player cabinet. The lineup I have here, it was Wolverine,

and then also it was Colossus, Cyclops, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, and Storm. What's Dazler's deal? Dazzler is like Jubilee, I think. I think Dazler is a singer that can produce light. Get the fuck out of here. We got already a Jubilee. But Jubilee can't sing. I don't need Dazzler.

Man, imagine being. You got to make some cuts. Google Dazzler. Six-player cabinet for the, those at home, what that meant was multiple CRT monitors. Okay, I might be in on Dazzler. He doesn't.

I just knew if he Googled it, he'd change his mind. Let me Google Jubilee for comparison. Aye, aye, y'i, she's a kid. The X-Men arcade game, I think, is still possibly one of the best X-Men games. Because it satisfies the fantasy of

Right, because we're playing as them. What we're grafting, well, kind of what your pitch about the, about a JRP, we're grafting the conventions of an existing genre, the well established at that point, arcade beat them up, and then just being like, let's just, let's, we're putting the X-Men in it. And it's going to abide by the same rule set of these other games in the same way that the Ninja Turtles or the Simpsons can get their asses handed to them. But, you know, can also do a lot of damage. It's the same sort of thing. they're just going to have the cosmetics and the movesets of the X-Men that you know. Something I hadn't really thought about

until you just pointed it out is that in like an X-Men or Ninja Turtles beat them up game kind of makes sense that there are people attacking them and wanting to beat them up. Right. In The Simpsons, those are just other guys.

I think they got, didn't they get brainwashed by like Mr. Burns' jam or some shit? I think so. I forget what the rule, the story is. It's much scarier for the Simpsons. They're just people. Yeah, they're just right. Yeah.

Marge got a vacuum. I know. Barton Lisa are children. They're children. They're getting their fucking ass kicked by adults. Bad stuff. Yeah. It's no good.

I really think that like that was the, for me, like as a pizza party game as a kid, if they had the actual, the six player cabinet, because they weren't all six players, some of them were conversions, some of them, you know, didn't. But like, if you got the actual one, that was like a fucking big ass TV and six kids could crowd around it and everyone gets one of the available X-Men. That was a fucking blast.

To this day, if I'm at like a barcade or something and they have the X-Men thing, and if I don't have enough like friends with me that want to play the game, it's never an issue because there are always people who want to hop in and they ask, can I play two? And now I have two new friends.

Then where everybody's just playing. And it's a good game, and I think it holds up to jump all the way to modern day. The one that came out more recently, Marvel's Cosmic Invasion, not an X-Men game, but there are X-Men in it. Has that same beat-em-up quality. It's still really, really fun. The thing is, Wolverine has had his own games, too, but he's also, he's primarily going to be in X-Men games, right? Right. Because he's one of the main guys, which I think is another thing that, like, is very important.

maybe the issue with some of this. I kind of think that he's an effective background guy. I don't know that he's necessary. I mean,

I know he has comics and stuff that tell his story. But I'm just kind of like, I'm a little bit more interested in the other X-Men. Does he need to be the main guy? I don't even know. He doesn't need to be the main guy.

I have some footage here of this is, I just brought it some clips of this is the, the OG, the first Wolverine game as, as far as anyone's, the first game where Wolverine is the lead, which was Wolverine for the N. ES. And we can just look a little footage of this. We have a little saber tooth cinematic, a single

screen cinematic. I hope you're not afraid of the dark, which leads into some 2D side scrolling gameplay. And can imagine Sabretooth said that to you? I'd be scared. I'd be fucking scared. Yeah. So the thing about this game, as we see, it's not, it's not necessarily the finest sprite work that E.S. had to offer. But, you know, we are seeing Wolverine run around. The thing about this game mechanically is that when he uses his claws, as he just dispatched them there, it drains his health. Yeah. Which to me seems, like, I understand there's a, there's a philosophical thing of like, of like, oh, well, it does hurt him. So he has to use his healing factor.

But it seems like mechanically that's kind of undermining what's cool about Wolverine. Yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be using your claws all the time, right? Yeah. I use my claws too many times and I die. Yeah, I got to punch things instead of using my famed claws because I'm worried about my health pool. Yeah, I had to shoot a guy with a gun because it hurts to blast my optic ray. So they were kind of figuring things out. And like it feels like apparently there was another game where Wolverine that came out for the Genesis and S&ES called Wolverine Atabantium Rage.

I've never played this game. But this was the first one where Wolverine actually regenerated health. So that was an attribute that did get figured out in the next generation. Yeah, they got it completely wrong in the last one. Actually, he drains health. Like, no, that's not what it is. It's the opposite, actually. Snick. Oh, fuck.

Heather, as the resident fighting game expert here, I've never played X-Men Children of the Adam, but I did play X-Men versus Street Fighter and, of course, the Marvel versus Capcom games. Well, all of those games sort of exist on the same continuum. A lot of the same sprite reuse, a lot of the same moveset reuse. Like the same way that Ruse Fireball has maintained an input consistency over the last 30 fucking years, a lot of those moves in Children of the Atom became the moves that you would use in X-Men versus Street Fighter or Marvel versus Capcom too. It is a cool-looking game.

It's so fucking cool-looking, man. The sprite work. And I'm sure if it animates anything like X-Men versus Street Fighter. It did. It used, like X-Men versus Street Fighter and Marvel versus Capcom used those sprites. rights. So like the way that Wolverine would kind of like his, his idol animation where he's like got his claws out and they're all over the place. Yeah. That's the same animation from those earlier games. I fucking loved playing as Wolverine in those games. Yeah, they were fun. Like I'm, I'm reliably picking Wolverine in Marvel versus Capcom. A hundred percent. Yeah. It was only until, it was only in late game play when I started being like, actually I want to play as role. Like when I was so deep in Marvel Capcom 2 that I was like, I want to play people I've never played that I have no business playing.

Then I would be playing non-Wilverine. But Wolverine was like a, like Wolverine Riu? Let's go. What's the name of the fucking cactus guy? I can't remember that cactus guy. There's a cactus guy. Cactus guy. When I wasn't playing Tronbo or something.

Yeah, when I wasn't playing Tronbonne Bonn, I wanted to build around the cactus. What's the Apple guy's name? Turnus. Is it Ternus? What, what, can you explain as, as people know more about Wolverine, the character more than me? What is the Adi-Mantium Claw versus Bone Claw thing? Because it's like, I think, I can't remember which Marvel versus Capcom. There was also a Bone Claw one.

I know he is in two, but like it's, but I don't know if he was also in one. But what is, what is the difference? Here's what happens. Yeah. From my understanding, limited understanding. Let my light skipping stone of X-Men interest over the course of my life, right? Well, first of all, he's born. James Howlett in the 1800.

Right. His power, his actual X-Men power is healing factor. Yes, that I'm aware. That's his power. So in the, when they're trying to create

a super weapon out of the guy, they fill him with adamantium because he can heal from it. He can take it. And the claws are a side effect of them filling him with adamantium, right? Then Magneto meets up with him

and he's like, I control, metal is like my thing, my dude. and he sucks the adamantium out of Wolverine's pores. Very, very violent, awful injury. Yeah, so he's just a, he's just a goo man. So then he's just like...

He's just a big pile of skin. So then he's regular... He's regular guy, but he has become so... Like his body has used the claws for so long that when he heals, he heals bone claws into his body. And then he has bone claws, which break one. when he hits people. And I think this depends on the canon and who you ask.

Because I thought he was bone claws. Because in the X-Men Origins Wolverine, he's got the bone claws. Like as a kid, he has bone. And I think it just could be different ways of telling the same story. Truly, I don't know. I don't know. 100% no. I think it is like he had that.

And then he's like existed through time. Like, you know, there's stories where he fought in World War. War II with Captain America and stuff like that as just a guy, not as an X-Men. But the main thing that is true is that that weapon X, you know, grafted the adamantium to his skeleton. Here, I asked, yeah, AI, because that's how you Google something now and you're technically asking AI. Yes, right.

It's an escapeable. The originally idea is that when Wolverine first appeared, you know, it was. appeared in comic books, his creators did not plan for him to have bone claws. His sharp blades were part of his costume gloves. Later stories explained that a secret military group bonded a strong metal called Adamantium to his entire skeleton. In a 1993 comic story magnator ripped all the metal out of Logan's body, writers then surprised fans by showing that natural bone claws were always a part of his real skeleton.

There we go. So he's always had him. Well, I guess so. So that's like an extra thing? He's got the healing factor But he's also got an extra thing I would say the healing factor is extra So the bone claws are the main thing

But no because I remember correctly He's the Wolverine not the healing man I remember correctly In the comics his it was that when he healed His bones His bones became His bones made bone claws Because he was so he was so used to having them

That that's what he thought in his natural style was You know I like about Wolverine That meme where he's looking at a picture I do like the meme where he's looking at the picture I do like the meme where he's looking at the picture. I just think he's cool. He's like my NBA group chat all the time.

What context? It was like Bruce Brown got traded and be like a Nuggets fan posted a picture of Wolverine looking at Bruce Brown. For me, my most recent, beyond a Marvel token is my most recent recent video game interaction with Wolverine is a Marvel Snap. And I'll just show you the default card art. There's a bunch of variants, but this is some cool fucking card art, right? Yeah, he looks fucking beefy.

He looks awesome. Looks buff as hell. Clause are out. Classic, that's Wolverine in my mind. And I think mechanically, this is like a pretty good wolver, like way to honor Wolverine in the context of this game, which is the, this is a two-three card. When discarded or destroyed, regenerate this with plus two power at a random location. It's like, you know, get stronger. get a little bit stronger.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's kind of a way to like, you know, it's kind of like as healing factor in play, you know? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, I get it. They should make the card really sharp. Yeah, it would be interesting

for this to be this non-physical card to be sharp. I'm not quite sure how they would implement that gameplay-wise. It hurts when you're touching your phone and you're like, oh. Well, phones always cause psychic damage. Oh, fuck.

There's also a variant that is the meme. I think it's pretty good. Pretty good card variant. I do, I mean, I have something that I want to share. Oh, okay. Because he's in X-Men games and stuff, but he's not just in X-Men games.

He's not just an X-Men games. He's also in... I don't think he's in Fortnite. Deadpool is. He's in Fortnite. He is? He's in Fortnite. What a weird thing to do to him.

You ready, Bub? You ready, Bub? I'm going to shoot you with a shotgun. A gun. You can also play as Wolverine and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Which is one of my favorite Tony Hawk games Probably the Tony Hawk game I played the most

On my PlayStation 2 So we're watching some footage From Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 It's of course the famed Foundry stage Wolverine not in the remake Oh, that's too bad Licensing issue Yeah, yeah, that makes sense

But the Doom guy's in the new one That's pretty cool I don't know if I'd want to grind a molten bucket You have to do it No, I mean, like in the game, yeah. But like IRL. So we're watching footage of Wolverine Claws out. Seems like a dangerous way to skate.

Yeah. And he is skate. He's skating the foundry level of Tony Hawks pro skater. It's time. A certain amount of time to do a bunch of tricks. And Logan is doing his best. I will say that when he grabs the board for whatever kind of move that is in skating, he really gets his butt out and it looks like he's, he's just a normal

man in tidy, in tidy whiteies, except tidy blues. I just, the secret characters in this game are really fun. Darth Mall is also in this game. They always had some really good secret characters, but I loved playing his Wolverine because I've always, I've always loved him. And so the fact that he was in one of my favorite games as a kid, pretty, pretty fun. This is a funny addition to Wolverine and games. Yeah, because also just think about the things we know that he does already.

You know what I mean? Like, we know that he has bone claws under there. He's got a healing factor. And he's the best of what he does. But now he freaking skateboards, too. He fucking shreds? He rips people to shreds. Now he shreds on a skateboard.

Yeah, he's doing a catwalk grind into an F.S. Bordeslide. It's just pretty fun. Yeah, it is. I kiss the rail, Bub. I taught Tony Hawk how to do the 900, Bub. You want to see some. bone gloves, let me pull down my pants.

Jesus. That is sick as hell. It's really good. So for me, like one Wolverine game that was on my radar, and I looked up the timeline, and this is when I was working in video games. And I remember this one, this game coming out, and it like, not being as good as the Hulk game, but similarly being a game that was like of this kind of era, this sort of Xbox 360, you know, PS3 era, where it's like, oh, they actually did a good job of making this feel

like a fun superhero game was X-Men Origins Wolverine, which came out in, I think, I believe, 2009. And, you know, it came the aftermath of X2 Wolverine's Revenge, which came out in 2003, which was playable but not nearly as good. This game was much more of like a, like, hey, all right, this is like a pretty good B game. Yes. Did you ever mess around with that? I didn't mess around it, but I know people liked it and that the reception of it was people were like,

hey, this is actually, you know what? This is actually pretty good because a lot of the X-Men movie games, there's one called X-Men the official game, and it fills in the story gaps between X-2 and X-3 The Last Stand. Right. And you can play as your top three favorite X-Men

from the movies, Wolverine, Ice Man, and Nightcrawler. Man, I do like Iceman. He's cool. I also, I love Nightcrawler. But unfortunately, if you could believe this, none of the three of them really play quite right in this thing. Or not in a way you want them to.

I believe I played many hours of X-Men Legends. Oh, yes. X-Men Legends 1 and 2, Rise of Apocalypse. My then gaming friend, Jim, and I, he was like, we got to get this. I got to play as these X-Men, because he, likes the X-Men. So we bought it and we played all the way through it multiple times as multiple characters.

Yeah. And it was enjoyable. It's like a top-down fighting game. It's not bad. Those are the first games that I try to emulate on something to see if they can do it. Wow. Because I love those games and I love the Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which is a similar concept, but just with wider Marvel.

But I do like the X-Men ones just a little bit more because I like a lot of the Marvel characters, but I don't know how interested I am in like Beta Ray Bill or some shit. Do you know what I mean? Or is that a guy? Yeah. No, it's a guy. Beta Ray Bill? Yeah, Beta Ray Bill is like an alien that can wield Molnir.

He becomes like a Thor guy. Wait, he can wield. But what is he? What? Look him up. He's a guy. Beta Ray? Beta Ray Bill.

Like Ray, like Ray Gun? B-E-T-A. R-A-Y. Space Ray. Bill. Beta space ray space bill Yeah he's cool I do like him

So he's basically looks like an alien Thor Yeah he's like an alien Thor Oh But he's good and he has the ability To wield Molnier Oh wait this guy's good Yeah he's good

You don't get to wield Molnier by being bad Yeah you have to be like pure of heart Like Steve Rogers in end game Yeah he's good You can only do it if you're good You gotta learn a little bit more about Molnier Bater Ray Belf feels like a beta to me named appropriately

fuck out of here you want alpha ray bill hell yeah here's in miniature we're kind of you can kind of see what happened to video games

over the course of oz in terms of their cultural import in the contrast between X2 Wolverine's revenge and then the aforementioned

X-Men Origins Wolverine which is that you go from the you go from the you go from the first game where it's like it's Hugh Jackman's likeness but it's voiced by Mark

Hamill, great voice actor of course, but like, you know, like to the second one, Hugh Jackman is just like in it. Like he is the voice of it. Yes. And that doesn't always work. No. The Spider-Man 2 games that are the game based off the movie, all the Spider-Man games based off the Toby McGar movies, they got Toby on his way off the lot to do those things. I'm sure he was maybe doing a little bit better and though I can't speak to his performance when he doesn't but I can't imagine him phoning something in.

I was a level designer on a game called Pirates of the Caribbean the Legend of Jack Sparrow and the publisher basically told us like a Beth publisher's Beth publisher's Bethesda was like we have the budget for one of two options we can either get a Johnny Depp sound alike

and the rest of the cast or we can get Johnny Depp and none of the rest of the cast everyone else does it sound alike and of course they were like yeah it was get Johnny Depp and I will say

it was similarly kind of like not the most engaged performance especially after his sister did a pass on the script which was part of it it's fine everything was fine that's like normal

but that's just like that's just like that's how these sort of things work yeah that's just like yeah here's the thing you get fucking blooming nightly in there and they're crushing it. Were you a Marvel Ultimate Alliance guy, Matt? I love those games.

Yeah, so I love those games. And I love the, I specifically, I like both entries, the first two, which are delisted, you cannot buy anymore. Ah. But same with X-Men Legends. Right? I would just get, if they ported them, I'm not even thinking about it. Yeah.

I'm just getting them. But Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, which was a Nintendo Switch exclusive for some reason. I got that at launch And I bought all the DLC I loved it I think it's really really good It's in the way those games work It's like an action RPG

You know where you have a team of four Characters that you're sort of managing And you get sort of different stat bonuses for You know using actual teams Like if you use 4X men you get like a boost If you use all the Fantastic 4 You get a boost if you use like the you know Like if you're using

Blade, Moon Knight, Ghost Rider, and Morbius, the Living Vampire or something, ate a team together, you get a Midnight Sun's bonus. So it's fun to sort of see who synergized with who, but then you also have stuff. There's sometimes you can unlock moves within characters. Like I think the Hulk, or like a bigger character can throw Wolverine. And like it's cool to watch Wolverine sort of like flying around the field

and like fucking people off and stuff. I think they're really, really fun, you know, action RPGs. They're really, really good. I have a concept. I have a concept for a video game, which is Professor Xavier's School for the Gift Ed, right? You play as Xavier. Great. You have to essentially, you know those like raising Sims where you have to like put points into like education?

So what you do is you choose a team of four X-Men and you have to raise them. and then you send them out on missions and you get to watch the missions. They're like autoplay battlers, right? But if you're doing a bad job as Professor Xavier, maybe the X-Men turn on each other. Like, because there's too much drama. Like Wolverine attacks Cyclops or whatever.

So you have to like in between missions sort of balance not only combat training but also like personal training. Like you have to be like, hey, sometimes the rage can get the best of us. Yeah. Sometimes love is unrequited. That's an experience of being a lot.

But if you spend too many, too much time persona style, doing the personal stuff, then they're too weak to take on the mission. Yeah. And now the Sentinels have been deployed by Trask or whatever the fuck. So it's like a constant life management. It's like soccer manager. Yeah. So yeah, you're kind of describing a, so it's like a text-based RPG slash management game where you are dispatching heroes for various tasks. Sounds like you're kind of describing Sovereign Tower with an X-Men skin.

game you were dunking on earlier. Except it sounds to me like that game didn't have any visible combat. No, yeah. Like, I think part of the fun of it would be these short levels where like... You're actually watching the simulation. Yeah, where the characters are sort of like AI based. Yeah.

And you can see like, oh man, Colossus is just like going to the corner. He's not doing fucking anything. He's no shit. In this next one, I'm going to have to focus a little bit more on Colossus. Yeah. And hope that Wolverine and, uh, and Gene Gray can keep their shit together. So I'm going to focus on Colossuses next.

I'm going to be like, hey, buddy, pretty clear you're going through something. And he'll be like, the Soviet Union is collapsing. We should touch on Marvel rivals. And none of us play hero shooters. We did mess around with Marvel rivals for a one off episode. But, you know, Wolverine's in that one. So that one exists. That one exists too.

She can't say we didn't say it. We said it. That one's one that exists. And I didn't actually main Wolverine. I was maiming Rocket when I was playing that game. The game was so chaotic that like I, like I maimed the shark. Oh yeah, Jeff the Shark. Yeah, but honestly, could barely tell what the fuck was happening on that screen.

It was a little too fast for my ass, yeah. And I play shooters every week, every day. I am interested. Every day. Play shooters every day. Is that what you're doing? Yeah. There was...

What happened to you? There was apparently a Marvel pinball... A Marvel pinball game that had its own Wolverine table. Like, they had different ones for different X-Men. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, like my rib, like, chopped out. I...

I'm trying to solve this Wolverine problem that I actually... I don't have the experience with to know that it's a problem. I don't know that it's a problem. He positioned it as a question because he's like, what if this new Wolverine game sucks, do all Wolverine game sucks? And I think in this investigation, we've uncovered that that's not the case.

It doesn't seem like it sucks. It seems like it's like it's maybe like a fine game. Like you were saying like a 7.5 out of 10. But not like a fucking certified banger. Like for instance, the Spider-Man game. What's a shame about it is that. that a 78, like there used to be a time when these B-level games,

you'd be like, fuck, I had a pretty great time playing no more heroes, not a AAA game, right? I feel like now, and I don't think this is adulthood that's done this, there are so many games and there are so many incredible games that you don't have space in your backlog for B-level games. No, and I think it's in particular because of this month, you know, like control resonance about to come out. So like there's just like a lot of stuff that's

like vying for attention. And I you know, the thing, the main criticism that I've seen is that the story is kind of just like whatever. And I'm kind of like, well, if the combat's fun, I kind of don't. They're also saying that it's linear in the way that

the last of us or uncharted is linear instead of how linear a god of war game can be where you can, you know, kind of keep playing after the game is over, kind of. The concern I have with it is that what I've seen of some of the gameplay segments Leans very Focus M, shorthand for a AAA experience where you're constantly being guided

by like an off-screen voice or on-screen prompts or like use Wolverine vision to see where the next objective is and it's just like a straight line forward. I mean, I don't want it. I think we all agree. We want all games to be good. We want, you know, good games. We want good games to be good games. We want good games to be good games.

I want, if anything happens from this, I just want there to be more ratchet and clank. I kind of just, I'm like, I'm good on Marvel stuff, I think. I think a lot of places are making Marvel stuff. I think insomnia can go back with their head held high. return to the franchise that has fucking no skips. They're all bangers. Yeah, they have their great original game that they've made. And I'll just, yeah, I would love to see more from that franchise.

I really love drift apart. I'll just add to something Heather was saying a second ago. As someone who, when I worked in development, worked on some truly bad licensed games, it is kind of nice that we're at a place where, you know, and so much of this comes down to Rocksteady's Batman Arkham Asylum, that in the aftermath of that, the expectation now is like, hey, you know what? A Wolverine game is a disappointment if it's just pretty good. You know what I mean?

And so, like, I do like that, like, game development has gotten refined enough and the industry has gotten mature enough. And publishers are aware that the sales of a game are linked not just to the license that is attached to it, but the quality of it, at least to some degree, they're aware of that, where you've seen the level of quality, the level of expectations continually ratcheted up such that here we are. And people are at minimum getting a B game with Insomniac's Wolverine, which we'll all find out for ourselves in a matter of days. Yeah, when I tell you guys if I like it or not. All right, shall we do a segment?

Let's do it. Segment. Take it away, Ranch. All right. This segment is called Credits, colon zero. Credits colon zero. There's a new segment that Rochelle is surprising us with. Credits colon zero.

It sounds like a Kingdom Arts game. Or like a Godzilla title. This game will test your video gamer cred with trivia questions from a video game trivia game that me, Ranch, found for 50 cents at a second-hand store in San Luis Obispo. Wow! So how it works, everyone starts with four credits

and every time you get an answer wrong, you lose a credit. If you hit zero, game over, unless you pay Ranch, me, four quarters to buy four more credits back into the game. I have whiteboards for you to write your answer, and then when I say, so you will reveal your answers and say them aloud.

Can you clarify what you did this trivia thing you bought in San Luis? This is a physical trivia book? Yes. It is a card game. Wow. Called video game quiz. Hey, I've got a question, Ranch.

Do you take yen? Because I don't have any American dollars, but I do have some nice crispy yen here. Wow. Unfortunately, this cabinet only takes quarters. Fuck. But you have four free credits right now. Can I do dishes? Is there a...

We have four free credits. We could possibly run the board. I know what's going to happen. So I have four on the board. I'm going to put four right here in the corner, just for me. Oh, that's what we do? I don't know. We don't have four.

I'm not trying to break the game. All right, all right. One, two, three, four. Four little ticks. Four wide. Four credits. I wrote the number four. I fucked up.

You've already lost a credit. Yeah. All right. I am drawing a random card right now. Okay. First. We're all answering each question. Yes.

Okay, got it. Okay. Question number one. Released in 1971, which computer game featured a journey to Will Lomete Valley and a possible game over due to the player character dying from dysentery? What was the year? 1971. I feel confident I know this. I'm just surprised the year is so early.

I feel good about it, too. What do we do? We all turn at the same time. And then tell the answer to the listener. Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail. Wow, everyone lives. Good job.

Nick, you also have to say. I said Oregon Trail. You did? I wrote a V. Because I think it might be called the Oregon Trail. Like, I could be wrong. It is the Oregon Trail. Yeah, so I was maybe the only one who got it right.

Oh, my God. We're playing my actual role. That's right. We all got four. We all are in the game. All right. Question number two. Before it's released by what code name was the Xbox 1X called?

Oh, fuck. Wow. The original Xbox. No, Xbox 1X. Oh, Xbox 1X. Oh, fuck. Can you repeat the question? Before it's released, by what code name was the Xbox 1X called?

Fucking, that's good. That's good. Swinging here for a guess. Huge swing. Yeah, I got a big swing, too. All right. Revely your answers. Okay, I went with Xbox Next.

I went with Xbox with a 3, but in the, like Alien 3. Like cubed, yeah. I wrote Xbox One Honker. Okay. Those were all incorrect. It was actually called Project Scorpio. Project Scorpio. Project Scorpio.

I lost a credit. I mean, that sounds like a real code name is the thing. It's like how, you know, this might be a future question, but the GameCube was like, you know, the dolphin. You know what I mean? It's just like they tend to have more esoteric names. All right, I lose a point. Or I lose a quarter.

So I'm down to three credits. It's just who survives the longest? Is that how the game works? You can buy back in. With cash that I don't fucking have. Okay, great. We could just Apple pay. That's true.

Get Apple Pay. I was told the cabinet only takes quarters, so. Would you accept Apple Pay? The cabinet only takes quarters. Ranch drives a hard segment. As much as I want your money. I don't have any quarters on me. And this is sort of finding part of the construction of the game.

How likely would it be that we had enough quarters to play? play Kate the game keeper fucking life is ruined all right if what it was going to be caring around yeah we have to answer yeah we have to answer right if you don't answer you we'll lose a credit yeah yeah otherwise it doesn't work because someone could just abstain until everyone else is this is your first time playing a game what are you talking about well I thought it would be part of the strategy but if that was the that was it your best strategy would be to sit out like the the whole time until everyone else eliminates themselves one by default hmm hmm because there's no benefit to getting it right

It's just surviving. Yes. We're going to survive by not playing. Don't talk game, Drey. I'm just saying. There's no guns in this game. It's hard for me. Not yet.

We don't know what the bonus round is for ranch. Hold this to your temple and answer the question. Okay, question number three. Kratos faces off against which of the seven wonders of the ancient world brought to life at the start of God of War II? Which of the wonders of the ancient world? Which of the seven wonders of the ancient world brought to life? at the start of a god of war too. I don't know how to spell this.

All right. I don't know this, so I got a one out of seven chance here. What I wrote down was wrong. I scratched it out. It's not right because it's not the right, it's not the right era. Okay. I have to write something.

You do have to write something. Yeah, you got to write something or else you're going to lose a credit. Fucking A. I think I, well, I'm not going to embarrass myself, so I'm just going to write nothing. Wow. Wow.

You're seating a point. I'm seating a point. Wow. I know my answers are incorrect. Okay. All right, Heather, you want to go first? I went the Colossus, I believe, of Rhodes. That's smart.

That's probably what it actually is. I think that's right. I chose Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which I defined as a big-ass nasty garden monster freak. I will tell you right now, I wrote down the Sphinx and immediately knew that was incorrect. The Sphinx is not one of the seven wonders of the world, but the pyramids are.

Yes. The answer is Colossus of Rhodes. I should have thought which of the wonders is a guy, and if I give it more than a second thought. I maybe could have gotten there, but I didn't. I have not played God of War II, but I do know the ancient wonders of the world. I do, too, from civilization. Oh, well, I know it from learning.

I have played God of War II. I don't teach a shit. I like God of War II. I love it. I just erased a credit because I thought that's what you do. No, you've got three. Matt and I each have two. Yes.

Wait, did you say we can earn credits back? You get a quarter. You get fucking quarters. The machine only takes quarters. So, Captain only two quarters. Could you, so at the start of the game, if I wanted to give you quarters for credits, I could potentially give you as many quarters that I could give you, have a bunch of credits, have so many credits that no matter what I do, I could still win the game.

That could be a strategy, yeah. Yeah, but you'd have quarters. You could, I'm just asking, can you pay to win? Is this game paid to win? It sounds like you could have if you have enough quarters. We're going to do this again Every time we're just lugging around A fucking pillowcase filled with loose quarters

Ranch never tells us she has a segment again And then all of a sudden is like Guys I've got it We're like chingle All right All right By what name with a Sega Genesis Known outside of North America

All right Here we go You ready? Yes The Mega Drive It was the Mega Drive Wow everyone got that right Yeah.

Hell yes. Is that a better name than Genesis? Mega drive? It's hard, man. Genesis is cool, though. Genesis is, like, you feel like, oh, shit, something's starting here. Yes, right. I prefer the Sega Phil Collins.

I like the idea that I'm going to move past it. I like the idea that they looked at the markets and we're like, and we're like, okay, it's the mega drive in Europe. It's the mega drive in Japan. America likes Bible. America likes Bible. Let's call it the Genesis I can feel him Sprinting down a loop

Tonight Hold on Like it's a Masonics running To do do do do do do Okay next question What are the nicknames of the four Pac-Man ghosts What are the nicknames for the four Pac-Man ghosts Let's go

Fuck there's one I'm forgetting I'm gonna take a guess Are we ready? You have to have them all right to get the point. Okay. I'm going to use my lifeline real quick. Hello, Dad. Yeah, I actually don't need your help.

I just want to let you know. I kept my credit. I thought you were going to be on the phone with your wife, Miss Pac-Man. The answer is Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde. Oh, I have Inky, Blinky, Clyde, and Sue. I have Inky, Blinky, Blinky, Blinky, and Sue. I have inky, blinky, dot, and Clyde. Wow, Nick takes it.

Wow. What was it, Nick? Inky, blinky, pinky, and Clyde. I wasn't sure if it was another Inky. No, there are all three, there's three Inkey's and one oddity. And the oddity is Clyde. I like Clyde. Yeah.

Where did I get Inky Blinkies Clyde and Sue? Where did I get Sue? I was confident. Who knows what's going on in there? Confident it was. Sue. Fuck. Back in the game.

We're perhaps thinking about runaround Sue? I don't know. I feel insane. I feel like I'm from like another multiverse. I will say dot sounds right. Dot sounds right.

Because it's like kind of like oh yeah, the Clyde doesn't quite have the same punctuation on the end of it. You know what I was thinking of? What? All the little dots in the game. It's smart.

All right. I've got two. Matt has one. Heather has two? I'm about to have to give ranch some quarters. Well, if you have any,

which I think is son of a bitch. Sue replaces a ghost in Miss Pac-Man. Wow. And this sort of reveals our bias. Yeah. This is actually pretty damning.

Holy shit. And Nick and I were going to have to... I know that Sue is in the fucking game. We're going to have to, you know, take this time to... No, the question was Pac-Man. Yeah, we're talking about the first one. Fuck. The original Pac-Man, the true Pac-Man.

Miss Pac-Man had a better game. To me, it's the same. Also, she replaced Clyde, so I would have been wrong either way. Yeah. All right, next question. In the 1998 game Metal Gear Solid, what is the name of the rogue black ops unit led by Liquid Snake? Oh, fuck. What is the name of the Rogue Black Ops unit led by Liquid Snake?

Why is this? Oh. No, it's not. I know this. It's not what I just wrote. Fuck. Rogue Black Ops Unit led by Liquid Snake? This is good.

This, in this. When I hear it, I'm going to be mad. This card game you got from. San Luis Obispo? For 50 cents? This is good stuff. Yeah, the only feels is our hard question.

I get my answer. It's not that we're supposed to be a fan of this man. We're just stupid. I wrote down a thing. I wrote something down too. I know it's wrong, but I wrote it down. All right, let's do some reveals.

Ready? I've got fox trot. Foxhound. Rogue black ops unit working to the side of evil. The Republican Party. Oh. You dropped this king?

I lose a point of, course. The answer is Foxhound. It was Foxhound. Matt stays in the game. Let's go. But I have one credit left. I fucking need it. No, I only have one credit too. I think I heard that that one give me, I've got one. No, you've got one left. Oh my God, one. Oh shit. Yeah. Foxhound. I was right about being Foxx something. Yeah, but not right all the way. Stupid bitch. I knew Fox Town. I feel dumb. Because it was the Kojima logo for a while. Yeah, it was on the jacket. at Arc 8.

Right. Stupid. We all should have gotten that one. But only Matt did. Only Matt, the true fan. Kind of the best of this. All right. I'm kind of like Wolverine.

Take it easy. I'm the best of what I do. What I do is very nice. Bub. All right. Which American toy manufacturer released in television home console in 1979?

Fuck. I know what it's not. Ranch, I'm ready anytime. I think I'm out. Toy manufacturer. I'm just going to write something. Even though I know this is not right. At a certain point, you're just got to take a swing.

You just got to take a swing. Ready? Go for it. I believe it's Calico. I wrote Mattel. I also wrote Mattel. It's not Calico. Calico made the Calico vision.

Who made the Intellivision. It's Matt. Wow. Heather is eliminated. It's down to me versus Matt. Matt's tell. How about that? What?

Run and tell that. Yeah. What? That one I did not know. I just was like, it's not Calico, and it's not. I sort of knew it wasn't collegial vision. Wait, what? Yeah.

Hold on. Let me see where you're getting some quarters. Heather's going to look for some quarters. I can't remember the last time I was carrying a loose quarter. I usually like to have a couple. Because sometimes... I don't have any quarters. I don't always trust putting my card in a meter.

Oh. I wish meters were tap. Yeah. I fucked up. I got no quarters. I'll just card a meter or I'll just risk it Yeah All I have is crispy thousand yen bills

You sure this game doesn't take a $20 bill a match? People may not know this about the Sunset Boulevard Parking meters that are out here Yeah I park of those motherfuckers all the time I never get a ticket I haven't been paying those for years It's because

The cops got defunded and nobody's doing that anymore You fucking dumb All right What's the next one? I guess it could be the final one. I should have known Fox Sound. I'm fucking mad. I'm mad about Calico.

Okay. Fuck. Possibly last question. Dumb bitch! So Matt and I can both lose. Stupid whore! But we tie for first at that point? Yeah, we tie for first if we both lose.

Okay, okay. I mean, hell! I think we tie for second, Heather's in third and knows no winner. Okay, great, that makes sense. What is the family name of the men? main antagonist of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. What is the family name of the main antagonist

of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard? This card game's hard as shit. I have not played Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, so all I can do is to wager a guess. And I'm not sure about Matt, but I'm guessing he'll be doing the same. I know

the name of the protagonist. Well, that may or may not be helpful here. So far, I'll just give you a peek. Yeah. It's not. Not helpful to be at all, actually.

Oh, fuck. Matt, we're going to need an answer. Okay, I'm going to write something. Matt, you want to reveal your answer? Yeah. I wrote the Mr. X's. I wrote Trump. We'll be right back.

God damn it. What is the answer? The answer is the Baker family. Yeah, that's Baker. I just wouldn't have gone out. I just wouldn't have gone out. I started the game when I was on my tear of Resident Evil games earlier this year. And I stopped it before I met the family because I was too fucking scared.

I was like, I can't. This one's actually a little too much for me. But I think maybe this Halloween season and perhaps after seeing the new movie, I might kick up my Resident Evil play through yet again. Surprise you're talking to me because I'm a loser. Perhaps this is the inspiration to do so. Heather, you're not the loser. you just came in last.

You just, you're the loser. You just did the worst at the game. Man I tie for second. Ranch, that was a great segment. Bring it back. 50 cents well done. And this is why we pay you the big bucks. We'll be overloaded with quarters next time.

That's this week's get played. Our producers are Shell Chan Ranch, Twitch. Twitch.tv slash yard underscore Sard. You stream anything, Ranch? Still on BioShok. Wow. Wow.

Music by Ben Pronti, Ben Pronti, Benprudty, music.com, our art by Duck Brigade. Design, duck brigade.com. Get played at Murchatkinshipgoods.com. And a bonus episode every Wednesday on our Patreon, get played, DLC. Matt, do you know what we're doing this week? Yeah, we're doing a little something new. We're doing something we hadn't done before. Y'all familiar with the alphabet?

Well, a little bit. A through C, the letters. Yep. Of the English alphabet. Well, we take to the RNG, which are also other letters. Mm. The ranch number generator. We have it land on a letter from the alphabet, and we determine what is the best video game thing under that letter.

And we are going to do this for all the letters eventually. But we get to a couple. And let me just tell you something. Absolutely riveting conversation. Truly. That was riveted by that description. Because it's just what the mind conjures. When you get the simple prompt of a letter of the alphabet, where does your mind go?

And we don't know what letters come in. No, we'd have no idea. And we just take it from there. Subscribe over at patreon.com slash get played. And Wolverine, you got played this week. Bub? Can't believe it didn't get Foxhound. Fuck.

James. Let me see the fountain. One last time. That was a hit gum podcast.