Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

Tim, Blessing, and Andy give their reviews on gen 9 of Pokemon, Andy and Bless discuss Somerville, and Greg Miller interviews Karen Fukuhara (from The Boys) about Callisto Protocol. Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:03:00 - Pokemon Scarlett and Violet Review 00:57:00 - ADS 00:58:01 - Somerville Review 01:11:44 - Callisto Protocol Interview Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course, I'm Tim Gettys and I'm joined by the new face of video games blessing at Eioia Jr. What's up, Tim? What is up, bless. And rounding out the crew for today, it's the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Great afternoon, everybody. Yeah, definitely a little off center to our shot right here, but it's okay, you know. Tim's a little closer to blessing.

That's me then. I can move. There we go. It's also a wide shot. I'm not used to seeing this wide. I love it. Fancy boys doing wide things. So many things to talk about today, you guys, on this kind of funny games cast.

Because, of course, this is the show we do each and every week where we talk about the latest in video games. Man, so I legitimately, guys, I went through. I was just like, all the news you need to know. We rank, review, recap movies, you know, all that stuff. No, no. This is the games cast where we talk about video games and all the things we love about them. That's what it is. Of course, you could watch it every week on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com.

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The new episode this week. A spoiler cast of God of War Ragnarok that I highly recommend you guys check out. It is us, it is Greg, and it is the director, Eric Williams, breaking down the entire game, talking about the making of and all that stuff. And there's some megaton bombshells in this episode.

Even if you weren't planning on watching it, at least watch the last five minutes, because there's some realness going down in that that I'm really excited about. And a fun little tease, some housekeeping for this very episode. We're going to talk a lot about Pokemon. We're going to talk about some Somerville,

but Greg Miller got to sit down with Karen Fugahara from, we know her from the boys, we know her from Bullet Train, and we're about to know her from Callisto Protocol that's coming up very soon. That's really exciting. Greg got to interview her about Colistow Protocol. That will be to end this show,

this episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast. Today we're brought to you by it, Shady Ray's, but we'll tell you about that later. Let's get right into it. Pokemon Scarlet, Pokemon, Violet. They are out there. The review embargo dropped last week. We didn't have enough time to fully beat it.

and all that stuff by then. So we're like, let's hold off just a little bit. Blessing being the lead reviewer of this one. All three of us have played it. To some extent, we'll get into all of that. Gen 9 of Pokemon. Bless, as the lead reviewer on this, what score would you give it on the kind of funny scale of one to five?

So I'm giving it a four out of five. It is a four out of five game that I fucking adore and love and have been addicted to, even past beating it. Like, if you've heard me on podcast, right, you've probably heard me talk about how I'm not, usually a completionist kind of person. Usually I am like, let me mainline, finish a game, get my experience with it,

and then move on to the next thing, right? I don't have time to be 100% in games. And also that's not where I necessarily get all my enjoyment out of it. Pokemon Scarlet, I beat it about a week ago, right? Like, I beat it pretty much the day before the review embargo went up. And after beating it, usually that's where I'm, for any game, I put it down and I move on. I've been playing it since then, right? This is the rare game where I'm like, actually, no, I kind of, I don't want to leave this world.

I'm actually enjoying this so much. And so much of that comes down to the steps forward that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet bring to Pokemon. I am historically, for the last, I'll say for the Switch Generation, right? The Switch generation for me was the moment for me to get back into Pokemon because I was very much, you know,

I was super into Pokemon Blue, super into Pokemon, the gold generation, super into Gen 3. I was a Pokemon Kid, right? So I played a lot of Pokemon Stadium, too. I watched the anime. I was there as a kid.

kid. But then I had a falling off point toward the DS and 3DS era just because I didn't have a DS or a 3DS. And so excited to get back into Pokemon during the Switch era. And the Switch era for me was kind of, or has been a, you know, kind of thing when it comes to me playing Pokemon. Just because, you know, Pokemon Let's Go, Pikachu and Evie was very much the casual. Hey, we're coming off a Pokemon Go. Let's make something to speak to that audience kind of game. And I enjoyed it for what it was, but it didn't set my role on fire. Pokemon Sword was the one I was like, all right, let's go. This is it. The next step. I played it and I'm like, oh, okay, it's just more Pokemon.

Like, it's nothing great. And also, it turns out Pokemon hasn't evolved all that much, right? Like, Pokemon has pretty much been the same, you know, over the years. And that was kind of my learning point of that. And I was like, all right, is what it is. I'm fine with it. Pokemon, brilliant diamond. I was curious about because that was Gen 4.

That's where I dropped off. And I was curious to see, like, all right, maybe I can use this as a jumping off point to get into that generation of Pokemon. Got halfway through that, and I was just like, I'm bored. You know, I'm not feeling this. This isn't my thing. This is not what I was looking forward to out of a Pokemon game. So I put that aside.

And then Arceus came out a few months later. And I was looking at that as the, oh, shit, this looks like it's going to be my console Pokemon that I've been asking for since even the N64, right? Like, give me an open world to explore. Give me, you know, realistic Pokemon, yada, yada, all this stuff, right? I start Arceas and it comes out, when it comes out in an unfortunate time, right? Because there's Horizon, Eldering, Seafood, Dying Light 2, all these games coming out, around that time distracting me from it.

But then it was just that thing of, ah, this isn't what I want out of a Pokemon game, right? It's different. It's a fresh take. And I know that people out there love RCS, right? But it just turned out to not be for me just because of how much it veered away from the things that I like about Pokemon personally. So leading into Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I've been in that place of Pokemon fatigue, right?

All right, Pokemon, it's just a franchise that's not speaking to me as an adult Pokemon player, right? somebody who wanted to see more evolution out of the series. Upon starting Pokemon Scarlett, I was utterly shocked by how, after what, two-ish hours into getting into the game, walking around the environments a little bit, seeing the direction they were taking in terms of,

all right, yeah, things are a little bit more open, here's the three big mainline quest that we want you to embark on. And also, here's all these tasks associated to these quests that you can take on in any order. Right, here are the eight gyms, and instead of a laid out order for you to take these gyms out in, just take them on how you want, right?

Explore the world, have fun, you know, go wherever, right? The true open world feel and formula. Getting into that flow of it and actually, like, it actually playing out that way where I'm like, all right, I'm going to go left and I'm going to figure out what's over here and tackle things by own pace. That shift was alone enough for me to go,

oh shit, all right, this is pretty fun, right? I got into that for quite a bit. But for me, the thing that has made my Pokemon Scarlet experience special is that the more I played it, the more and more I got hooked on it, and the more and more I feel like they've addressed so many of my concerns and my qualms of Pokemon. I think the Pokemon designs this time around are a step up. I've met my new favorite Pokemon, right, in this game, right? My new favorite, like, groups of Pokemon, not necessarily my favorite Pokemon all the time,

but, like, Pokemon, like, Tand Mouse and Mousehold, like, that's my shit. There's a Pokemon. I forget if it's new for this generation, but I think it's called like Serulege or something like that. Looks dope as fuck. I love it. And like the list goes on in terms of Pokemon that I bet in this game where I'm like, I really enjoy this design. This is really cool. The character designs in this game leaders, the characters, the characters, the characters, the characters, the characters, the characters, the characters, the character's that you meet, the teacher's at the school. I've seen so many character designs where I'm like, damn, like they're actually doing it. Like, I am actually interested in these characters. The story, I would say it's a step up from pretty much any Pokemon story that I've experience in the games that I've played, I really enjoyed the story and where it went this time around. And just the pure freedom of gameplay has done so much, so much for me, right? This is the Pokemon game that I would say is the, my turning point into going from, oh man, Pokemon's boring, Pokemon's not doing it for me to me now being like, no, I'm obsessed with this one. I am fully into this one. That all comes with the caveat of the monkey's paw curling. And even in this game being my dream set up for a Pokemon game, right?

The monkey, the Mankey, the Mankees Paul. The Manky, thank you. The Manky's ball curling. And this game just having just terrible performance, right? It is the frame rate being inconsistent throughout. Inconsistent, but consistently below anywhere it should be. Yes, and I've been describing it as consistently inconsistent, whereas the fact that like, the frame rate is constantly chugging, but also because it's constantly chugging, my eyes get used to it. And I'm like, after a while, I forget that it's even chugging, right?

I get immersed into it. But it is very noticeable frame rate drops in this game. it is bugs where, you know, I experience, and not just the bug type Pokemon, right? Like the actual bugs in this game where, you know, thankfully throughout my experience, I didn't really have that many bug bugs. But now that the game's out for everybody,

there have been things that are shared where I'm like, oh my God, really? Like, that's a thing you can do in this game. There's a video that was circulating from, I think it was IGN, where they found out that if you're playing handheld on the switch, if you press forward on the analog stick and you connect a personal.

controller and you press forward on the pro controller as well as the as the joycon your character will move twice as fast which is fucking crazy uh there's another one where if you like if you're riding on your on your legendary Pokemon right the one that you get early on in the game uh when you're riding around on it if you want to climb a surface usually like if the surface is too steep you'll try to climb and then your Pokemon will slide down like any other open world game if you turn around and jump up a surface backwards then you'll get up that surface I've been a supporting the hell out of it. It's great. Are you serious? Oh, yeah. The Mario 64 tactic. It's ridiculously the lack of polish that is in this game. And funny enough, that's like

my main critique. If that wasn't a thing, I think this would be like my five out of five Pokemon game that I'm like, oh man, they've done it. Like this is maybe my favorite Pokemon game at all time. It just runs so bad is the thing that is so unfortunate about this game. And it's a thing that like it's so bad on docked, like to the point where I would describe this game is nearly unplayable, uh, docked, right? Like, there are times where I was paying it on my desk that way because I wanted to charge my switch and legitimately, it was annoying. I was like, this is, this is straight up bad here. Handheld, it plays better, but there are still a lot of issues to it. So, uh, with that four out of five is still where I stand on it. I enjoy,

I enjoyed it that much. I know a lot of people, a lot of people are going to be like, oh, man, like, with this performance, giving it a four, but like, you got to understand. I fucking adored my time with this game despite that stuff. But, uh, yeah, the performances, is rough. That's kind of where I come down on it. Andy Cortez, I'm really interested. What do you think about Pokemon,

Scarlet, and Violet? I'm kind of right there with blessing, along with a lot of other people kind of in our space where, yes, the game runs like absolute garbage. This is one of the most unpolished things you can experience on the Switch.

It's not just the Switch's hardware. There are games that are prettier and bigger that run better. It's clear that Game Freak just didn't have enough time with it. presentation, pretty shitty. Like, the amount of times that there's a legendary Titan Pokemon you experience that just has like a dumbass animation. And you could tell that we want to do more with this.

However, there's so much in this world that we have to work on that we just can't give everything the love that it needs. It seems like GameFring didn't have enough time to really develop this like they would have liked to. It seems insanely rushed. And the game is still super fun and super addicting. addictive. I've played this way more than I played Arceus. I put maybe around eight hours into Arceus. It just wasn't my jam, and I think a lot of it was all the other games that came out around that time.

But for whatever reason, I can't put this game down. Even when I'm not streaming the game, I'm still busing it out. And I think a lot of it is that this game has a lot of different ways for different players to enjoy it. whether you're like, yeah, I thought I would just want to go through the story. And I think this game actually has, I finally got to a point last night where you were presented with a hook in the story

that was like, God damn, oh, we're okay. I wasn't expecting this. And when I played sword and shield, I thought for the most part, like I'm just ignoring most of this. It doesn't really matter. But they finally kind of came up with an idea last night that really meant something and was good.

And I was like, God damn, okay, game freak. I wasn't expecting that. On top of all the other bullshit they sort of give you. This game just has a lot of things to explore. Going back to your school and talking to the teachers is something that I often forget

because I'm so busy just in the world trying to find this one Pokemon and I got to eat a fucking spicy sandwich in order to help myself find this shark cadet, this char cadet little night fire Pokemon because I goddamn Crockalore the ugliest motherfucker I ever seen in my life. God damn, the second generation or the second evolution of Foycoco is the ugliest dude I've ever seen.

And I finally evolved into the third one and I was still pretty let down. But I think because it is so easy to quote unquote catch them all, it's become so addictive for me. Where in the old days, walking through a pixelated hedges and bushes and stuff and you don't know what you're going to fight. That, I never, ever felt incentivized to go do that. Like, the level of R&G there was just too much for me. I felt it was so inconsistent, and I hope I find this Pokemon and not just another fucking wheedle or whatever, but here being able, like, the thrill of seeing a

Pokemon you haven't seen before is always super exciting. It's funny people in my Twitch hour right now were like, or last night we're like, oh, wow, you're excited at older gens of Pokemon. Like, which Pokemon have you played? I've played all of them. I've only played like three hours into like Gen 3 up until Gen 7 or whatever. So you only really get the like normal types, the flying types and the bugs. You never get to meet the ice or dragons.

I never see the cool ass ones. Yeah. But that thrill is still there. It's still super exciting. I don't know whether I prefer this to RCS's method of just throwing a Pokemon and hopefully catching it. I still think that I overall enjoy battling these random Pokemon and leveling them up and maybe finding a Pokemon that I am kind of like hey you should I recommend you leveling that one up because that one turns into something cool all these threads are there and all these sort of story paths that

you're mentioning bless of not only the gym leaders the usual sort of shit but also this version this game's version of Team Rocket try to like stop their plans there's a lot of different things to kind of concentrate on and it can get a little bit overwhelming at some moments but I usually just kind of get distracted by whatever thing I'm closest nearby. Last night I looked everywhere for a pair of glasses that I really wanted to find. Really sucks that you can't dress up your dude. What the fuck? Really, really sucks that you are just stuck to your school uniform.

I think that's like, yeah, it's such, like you can change your shoes and your socks. And you have four outfits. It's spring, summer, winter, fall versions and that's it for your. You can change your clothes or you change your shoes and your socks and like, a hat or whatever, but you always have your school uniform on, whether that's like the shorts and the button up with a tie or like a, or pants and a button up, like you're always your school uniform. And if you play Scarlet, it is more of like a navy and purple outfit. And if you play Violet, wait, sorry, I said that backwards, but if you play Violet, it's that. If you play Scarlet,

it's more of like an orange orange shorts. Oh, weird. That's great. And like, you can't change that. And that shit doesn't match with like anything. Exactly. Yeah. I found like some dope-ass shoes, because one really cool thing I like about the shoes is like not only do they have these high top sneakers that are like red, blue, green, blah, blah, blah. But as you keep going, you'll find like the poison color scheme of shoes or the ice color scheme of shoes. And I bought these sick-ass poison ones that are like pink and purple. But then I realize I can't change the pants. It's clashing. Anyway, that's a whole big thing.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game. Like, again, it runs like shit. I know. I know it runs badly. I've experienced much of it Much of it handheld, a bit of it Also docked, but I'm still Having a lot of fun with it and I

Just hope that we get to see more and more Optimization and patches come out Because this game is like so close To being a perfect Pokemon game One more complaint all throughout there I think Are some of the ways in which Like the Pokemonisms of this game can kind of Get in the way of itself. Again I think you mentioned

This both like off mic but I'm mini games Yeah like the gym tests and shit Where one of the early like they're not all bad actually but like one of the first ones you you'll probably run into is like a gym test that is hey go over here and take like push this giant ball into the goal and that's what you had to do to face the gym leader it's a big ass mean it's mind's dumbingly stupid it is so dumb it it is definitely one of those that you wish there were those accessibility settings like ratchet and clank has where you could pass the puzzle like skip the puzzles get rid of that let me let me

chris anka friend of ours front of the show um tweeted out like i wish there was just an to let me skip the first three hours. I mean, there has to be an option that was just, I've played Pokemon before. Yeah. Oh my God, yeah. It's just fast for, I cannot mash these buttons fast enough

to get through these cut scenes, or to get through these dialogue, uh, tree, not even trees, but just sequences. I'm listening to the same shit I've heard in every other Pokemon game for the first and one. Another thing I would love to is like a fast forward feature,

like through the animations. I know you can, in a lot of Pokemon games, you can turn off the animations for like the battle animations. I don't think you can in this one. Yeah, I was telling you this. I was like,

in every Pokemon game, you were like, oh man it's so slow. I was like, oh, bless rookie maneuver there. You got to go and turn off the animations and I looked here and I'm like, oh, they're not in this. Yeah, they're not in this. It's just, they're stuck at that speed. And it's not even like the fact that like, you know, because I like seeing the animations, I want a

speed through the text because I know what double hit does. I know what moves are super effective. I know, like, it's all the, all the shit that you already know the effects of and like what all that shit is. Just like get snappy in this. Like make it like persona 5, right? Where it is, all right, you're in, you're out of battle.

because I hate doing a There's one move that What's the name? Mousshold has Actually all of Mouss holds moves Spoilish Moushold I guess All of his moves are like The multiple hit moves, right? Like he has one move that's called

Beatup where it is For as many Pokemon are in your party That's how many hits you'll get And I love Use the move D-Doom Yes Use the move

It was a triple hits Like I know God forbid you get a critical hit on one of those You know what I mean? Like, boom, dude, we're talking. Boom.

It's like, come on, let's just fast forward. Dude, every time cloth, this big ass crab motherfucker, every time he's like in low health, he gets buffs and debuffs for every stat.

For every stat. So when you get low help, it's, it's attack up. Special attack up. Something else. Yep. Up.

And then defense. Down. Another thing down. Here's what I'm saying. Pokemon. Game free. It's the year 2022. It's the year 2020. Let's move on. Let's push this genre forward.

I don't give shit about moves that don't do damage. Okay? Get them out of here. I don't care about tail whip. I don't care about tail whip. I don't care about growl. Tail whip, I'm with you. I'm winning these games without these moves. What I want is give me like tail whip drops your defense, right?

It drops the enemy's defense a bit. Let it at least do like 20 damage. so that I don't feel like it's a complete waste of a turn because I not only hate wasting a turn, it feels like a waste of time and also status effects, let them only last for like four or five turns. Fucking fighting electric Pokemon

of getting paralyzed every move is a hell that I wouldn't wish upon my worth enemy. You gotta get good, bro. Yeah, you gotta get good. I don't know about that. I'm with you to an extent with the tail of stuff. By getting good, hit a paralyzed heel. That's the solution.

Or, you know, use the berries, use the abilities. Yeah, you got to heal, man. It's about the game. You gotta play the game. It's just a waste of time. It's just like, I hate having to just like, the option is use an item.

That's like the cure for this right now. It's just annoying. It's just annoying. Like on the flip side of the way in which I think the Pokemon is and it's kind of getting away themselves, there are some things that I think really help the process, right? And you can now, like, there's no wild encounters now. Like, all the Pokemon are walking around in the wild areas.

And like, you can just, you start battling. else by walking into them. Or you can press the right trigger to, like, throw a polka ball. That'll then start the battle with them. Or you can hit R1 or just shoot your motherfucker for it and get all these materials. And that's what I love, right? It's the fact that because all the Pokemon are running around, if you hold R, you will send out whatever your first, your lead Pokemon is.

And you can basically have them auto battle Pokemon that are just chilling. And that'll get you XP and that'll get you materials that you can then use the craftyms. and it is such a, I think, a great mechanic and process for that. And that's the thing is like, in terms of the Pokemonisms, I feel like this is the best we've ever had. And I feel like there's so much improvement to be made. So many things that we're talking about here are annoying and have been annoying for years. I'm not fully with you when it comes to some of the more paralyzy stuff,

but when it comes to the items for those, why are things like X defense and X this and X that? Has anyone in history ever used those ever once? Like, that is a legitimate question. I just mostly forget that they're there. And it just like, it just kind of, there's a lot of, I know people that play competitively know all of those stuff, but it's like that's not the casual audience.

But competitively, you can't use items. That's not 99% of like the player base, you know? So it's like, I just don't understand like why that type of stuff is in this game when it like is just not necessary when the Pokemon have those moves or like holding the items. Holding items is different.

Using the items to add a temporary stat boost for one battle. Just like I can't fathom that ever being a good piece of the turn. I feel like there's a lot you can cut out in that regard. Exactly. And then I feel like that's just where the menus just start getting a lot. And then just like we didn't. need this. There's already enough going on. But in terms of where Pokemon's

been, I feel like every generation adds some new stuff, takes away some things. And it's always kind of odd the choices they make of what they keep, what they don't. How many hours are you, by the way? So let's just start here. I don't know if you heard about games daily or anything. I was expecting to play. I was talking a lot of shit about this game

before it came out. I was like, this is going to be the first thing I skip out on. I'm just, I'm out. Like, Pokemon's let me down too many times recently. Sipping the hatred. Um, sipping it hard. And admittedly, I was just like, this is a me problem. I just need to back out. It's okay. But then Ash won the championship,

and I'm all freaking hopped up on this shit. And I was like, and Bless was really the one that was like, he kept looking at me while he was playing further review. I was like, I don't fucking believe you, you know? And then you were saying,

all the tutorial stuff in the beginning. I'm like, that's the stuff I hate and can't get past. I expected to play this game for like three to five hours. I played 25 hours. Or the weekend. Over the weekend. Yeah,

since the game came out. I'm like 25 hours in over several days. I have not had a Pokemon game that I cannot put down since Gen 3 like this when I was so, so into all of it, right? Like, I legitimately want to do every single thing. I'm going to catch them all on this. I'm doing it all. I already have 200 Pokemon, Andy.

I have 200 out of the 400 available. Right at this point, I have now done everything in the game, like all the team stuff, the, uh, the, uh, legendary, or not legendary, whatever, the raid situation. And then the, I have one gym left to, to do. the rest of the game, whatever it has. It's weird that they count them all's badges. I wish they separated it a little differently, but I like that their badges.

Like I like that it adds to it. I'm like, I've only beat like three bosses. But I feel like this game has learned a lot of the right choices from Arceas and Let's Go and Sword and Shield and other just different generations

and kind of put it together where I'm most of the quality of life. I think this is the most high quality of life a Pokemon game's ever been. There's still so much room for improvement and so many little things I wish they would change. So many things I wish they'd bring back. One of my favorite features of the DS games

was being able to use the left shoulder button as a as a. So you could play the game one-handed. And it's just those little things that I'm like, God, with how repetitive so many of the moves are, I'm just trying to hit A. It'd be nice to just have that option and they just took that out.

Being able to turn off battle animations. Why did you take that out? These weird things were like, why? Why? When you made so, you clearly care, The way that Pokemon Center, Pokemon, Mart, and the TMs are all there. Fantastic. When your Pokemon is going to learn a move and it's like, do you want to learn this?

Do you want to forget one? Do you want us to suggest which one for you? You can change your move. I love asking Pokemon. Like, what's up, bro? What do you think? I don't know. You know, drop this shit, you know?

Maybe this is a feature that's already been in Pokemon, but you can go back and remember moves. You can remember moves. So that's the thing. These are the quality of life stuff that makes so much sense where, and in some generations recently, like you have been able to do it. I don't think it's ever been this fluid to be able to go back, remember

stuff, forget stuff, like change your moves on whenever you want, change your nickname, do all that stuff just from the menu. Even while on Pokemon that you catch, like, if they're higher level, like, if you go back and try to remember a move, they have a list of moves. So now whenever I catch a new Pokemon to add to my Rari, I then go in and I'm like, cool, now I'm going to customize all your moves

with all these moves that you've already forgotten. And it's fucking great. Like, I don't have to worry about the tail of the world because now I'm like, yeah, like get side kick in there, get fire blast or whatever in there. The TM situation that they have is the best that they've ever had it. Totally getting rid of HMs and like this, the legendary that I'll never forget the, never remember the Mariden, Kerriden, I think.

Yeah, I was playing Violet. But I, I like, I like, janky as hell in so many ways, but it's just like in terms of getting around the world, especially in the later game stuff when you have all the abilities. I'm like, this is fucking awesome. Like, and the way that they allow you to fly without using fly and like all the stuff that we've seen hinted at in some ways in the different games, like, A lot of what I loved about sun and moon show up in this. And some of the things I like a little less, like the gym tests or whatever, that originated in sun and moon.

And I just want them to improve because I really like the idea of it is good. And like there are some of them where I'm like, okay, no, this is a good one. Like this one that's basically, hey, solve this, like, I figure out this riddle by talking to people in the town, right, and battling them to get pieces of the riddle. And I'm like, that's cool. That's good. And then you get to one that's like, yeah. Where's Waldo? Where's Waldo?

And I'm like. Actually, there's multiple of them. They're kind of like that. Well, there's one of them that I was like, all right, this is kind of a fun bit, whatever. But yeah, stuff like push the ball into the goal or like find the 10 different this Pokemon thing that are hidden throughout the town. I'm like, we didn't need this. Like you could have done a different thing here. Yeah.

So real quick, I want to say to this before we move on just about my overall impressions of it. On the technical side, everything everyone's saying is absolutely true. I've never played a game that runs this poorly. it hurts my soul that it runs this bad and that like something that is this amazing as a Pokemon game is just riddled with so many problems to the point that like I played 95 plus percent on handheld and had so many issues and I was like oh I have a moment where I get to play doctor might as well try out on my TV I had to turn it off after a couple of minutes I was like I'm going to get sick watching this yeah it's so bad when you're in some of the cities like you're

talking about um buying the different glasses or like searching for those walking by the stores trying to understand which ones for socks versus which ones for glasses versus like the 10,000 restaurants that they have. And it's like this, it's so hard when the names aren't even popping in until you're like right next to it and it creates this like just

visual just disgust. Yeah. And the thing that's funniest about it is RCS barely ran better but looked like 300 times worse I think. And a lot of that was I think RCS's decision to run at a much lower resolution. It's at least

to the naked eye it seems like RCS is running at like I don't know I'm just throwing numbers out there 640p compared to like 720p like RCS looked really really noisy and a lot more alias than this game looks I do think that in moments

when you don't have a gigantic open world around you and it's just character art and Pokemon art like this is the best I think either of those have ever looked either of those, yes. I'm going to say something, I'm going to stand by. No game of the Switch has looked, no Pokemon game has looked better than Let's Go. Let's go at the best

art style, it's stuck to it, and it just looked good the entire time. Simple, grid-based, all that, but like, when you look at what that game did, it ran great, well, you know what I mean? As great as it's going to, but compared to this, fantastic. And it just looked good the entire time. There was no weird ass shit happening or anything. Yeah.

I feel bad for the people that have dealt with those sort of catastrophic bugs. I haven't had any of those, luckily. My game crashed seven times. Oh, really? That's crazy. I haven't had anything like that. I've just had frame drops, luckily. I've had two crashes in 30-something

hours. Any tweet, I've seen it all. And like, I still love this game. That along with Bushes popping in four feet in front of you and droves and gangs of Pokemon popping up five feet in front of you. Ridiculous. But so, so like, that goes back to something that I

love is like them taking the best from all these other games like we've seen the Pokemon in the wild before that we've seen it and let's go and even the like the the self that the auto battle stuff like those are great features that we're in other games that are now kind of being enhanced even in our CS we see the Pokemon and sword and shield there's the wild areas I like that in this one you see families of Pokemon you see Pokemon bullying other Pokemon like you see Pokemon like taking a bath in the waterfall and stuff like you really feel like you're in a Pokemon world and I think that to me you guys both mentioned the story in different ways and I feel like a lot of the other games, like the story is not bad.

Like, I feel like if you pay attention, it is as good as this. I think what makes this one shine the most is that all the different pads you go down are a lot more intertwined than they, than they, like, promoted in the marketing. Like, I think the marketing's kind of bullshit of them just being like, you can do whatever you want

and it's open world and do anything in any order. No, no, there's an order. You're just like pretending there's not. You cannot play this game however you want. You just simply can't unless you glitch out and do some backwards-ass shit and like, I don't even know. But it's like there's certain things,

there's an order to this that you have maybe a little bit more leeway than some of the more. Yeah, but in all the Pokemon games, there's been like, not all. I feel like there were several moments

where I'm blocked off from going places in this game. A ton of them. Yeah. So it's like, unless you, you go, well,

it depends on how you like navigate it. Like, I don't want to get into spoilers. Yeah. Because there's like, because, like, well,

I can't cross the river here, so I got to go back over here and do this other thing. But I feel like that's only, there's only, out of the all the main goals, I feel like there's only two where, like, you physically can't get into unless you, like, progress a bit more, right? Like, one of them is like a high place and the other one is like in the middle of a river. But I think aside from that, I think you can get anywhere.

But even then about the not physically getting there when, when you're going up versus a team that's like all level 70s. Like, I just feel like if they were going to do this whole, like, you can go anywhere, they should have had some level scaling. They should have, like, helped you be able to play with the game. I didn't have the problem because I had a great time, and I looked out in a way that kind of like brought me where I needed to go. But I think that in terms of the story, it works the best because all the stories don't get too crazy, at least as far as I've been so far, and work together to all tell a story of this region. And this region is this one island that makes sense.

You're actually going to all of it throughout, and it feels like one world as opposed to like separate stages you're going to. And this is the closest to playing the anime I've ever felt. And I think that right coming off of my high of the anime into this, I was like, holy shit. Like that's why the gym test and all that stuff, while I want them to be a lot better and there's a couple that are horrible, I'm like, this reminds me of the anime stuff before they got to go to the gym. They had to do some weird stuff and like the where's Waldo and all this? And I feel like I guess I was just kind of right place, right time so into this that I let a lot of the things that I wouldn't like in other games, not go, but I feel like works here in a way that it didn't in the others. And I think it's because of the setup of this game. I can't wait to see what they do next, hopefully in five years.

That's my thing is. I think there's been a lot of talk on why this game runs as bad as it is, as it does. And I think there are so many elements at play, right? I think it's the fact that, you know, game-free. I would say, I don't know if, were you guys laying on it, but I would say that this is probably the biggest, like, scale they've had for a game-free game, both in just in terms of, like, how big the world is, but then also it being a true open world, like.

There's so much verticality, too. A lot of verticality, like, rotate the camera however you want, right? Like, this feels like playing a true open world game in that sense. And, like, Game Freak is a dev we know from making handheld games, right? And usually it is, like, the locked in place, like, you're looking down in a grid, right? And they've had those steps toward here, right? They've had Pokemon Sword. They've had Pokemon RCS, right?

And I think those have gotten us here. But I think that progression has been a bit quick for them. And it's been especially quick considering, what, since it was no. November last year that we got Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. And that is three games from Game Freak in the last 12 months. And that is two open world games from GameC in last. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl weren't Game Freak. That wasn't Game Freak?

Okay. Gotcha. That was a different company. Okay. Even still, right, Pokemon RCS and this game, that's two open world games in the last 12 months, right? And that's like insane. Like that's crazy. And I think giving them more time would help.

I saw a floating around. I was talking to, I think, Jake Decker from GameSpot. And he was talking about like, GamePreek is a small studio. like small relatively studio right talking about putting out these two games in the last year it's like a hundred and something people at that studio um i think if they want to scale up in this way and they want to go for something

of this scope they need I think they might need more people i think they'll definitely need more time and i think they'll probably need more resources even from Nintendo it's really interesting because like the unfortunate reality is i don't see it changing anytime soon and i think that there would be things that need to happen for it to change and they might all happen in the same time to cause this.

But the problem with Pokemon is it's the biggest entertainment franchise in the world. So what that means is it's not just a video game. There's a video game. There's the card games. There's the anime. Let's just keep it there. There's so much other shit. But all three of those things need to come out at an annual cadence to be able to support each

other because that's how they work. Right? We need to go to a new region. We need the new Pokemon to sell the cards. It's like they need all this. That's the thing is I was talking. I don't think I was actually in the conversation. I saw a conversation on Twitter.

I forget who was in the conversation. It was game media. media folks, but they were talking about how like, yeah, think about the fact that if you delay a new generation of Pokemon, say you delay Pokemon Scarlet, right? What does that do to merch? What does that do to Pokemon cards? What does that do to the anime? What does that do to lay? And the list goes on in terms of the ripple effects that has. And that's not an excuse, right, for them to not delay the game, but I think it's more of a reasoning of, oh, this is why it's so difficult for Pokemon to do it. And that's why we're in the place we're in now where we have a Pokemon game that runs

this bad. And an interesting thing, too, is the anime is seeing similar issues where there's just not enough animators to be able to get this done at the cadence that they need to. And so they're seeing a lot of bugs, bad frames per second. I mean, honestly, so many people were complaining. I've been recently, like, looking into and reading about the stuff a lot. But like this season and even the last couple seasons, people were really upset about the animation quality because it's like really poor. And the animators essentially put out a statement that are like, guys, we're trying our best. Like, when they, there's like, the seasons like being delayed and put into like chunks and stuff just because they're like trying the best to keep up.

And then the final episodes they put so much into. They're the most animated episodes of all the time. But it's going to go from that back to like, I don't know, maybe like, maybe it'll run as well as these games do, unfortunately. But that's the thing is like maybe everyone at some point, it's a united front, they're like, no. That's what I look. We're taking a pause. Because like I was having this conversation, I think on this show and maybe on Twitter also of like, you know, the exact thing we're talking about in terms of Pokemon is such a franchise and IP that spawns. way beyond the video games now, right?

You're talking about movies and Detective Pikachu, and I'm sure we'll get more movies soon. You're talking about anime. You're talking about all these things. It is such a machine. And it goes back to the sonic problem. I'm like, all right, they should delay this. Do they have incentive to delay this when it makes so much money?

And I kind of come back to the idea of quality and, like, the long-term reputation of the product. I think that's the thing that Nintendo cares about. I don't know if Pokemon company cares as much about it, but, like, you know, Nintendo's not going to put out a Mario, just put out a Mario. They're not going to put out a Zelda. just put out of Zelda, right? Like,

Tri-Force Heroes begs to differ, but no, I'm joking. I'm joking, I'm joking. Yeah, no, that's a good point, but you understand what I'm coming from, right? Whereas, whereas, like, Federation Force. You know, if, like, we would never get a, knock-on,

is there wood around here? Knock-on glass, I guess. We'll never get a Mario game that runs as badly as Pokemon, as Pokemon Scarlet, right? Like, I don't think we'd ever get a Zelda game or, like, a mainline Nintendo IP that they care about

that runs as bad as Pokemon Scarlet. Pokemon, or Pokemon, or Pokemon, in general, though, is, like, a top Nintendo IP, right? Nintendo in quotes because Nintendo only partially owns Pokemon. It is Pokemon company or it is game freaking creatures or whatever the makeup of it is.

But like, I wonder what the conversation is like at Nintendo. Because like, as somebody who does partially own the IP, if I'm Nintendo, I'm stepping in to be like, yo, like, can we help you or can we like not put these out so rapidly? Why does this game run so bad? We're going to ruin the reputation of

Pokemon if you continue to put them out like this. I hope those conversations are happening because it is unacceptable the way this game runs for such a high billion dollar franchise yeah like one of the most grossing entertainment franchises period the number one it's crazy it's like yeah it's you're so right it is unacceptable man it's this you know it sucks because i feel like we're going in circles and as an industry talking about this but it's because we all know it's true it's like it's an indisputable fact that this is unacceptable for how this game runs for

quality of the game for the polish of the of what is expected of this franchise of being a Nintendo product of a video game of a triple a video game this is what this is and it's like anybody that's like it's not a AAA video game they're only saying that because of how shitty it is but it's like it is you know like that's it's so unfortunate in in so many ways add on the switch hardware add on all these other factors there's so many different variables that just contribute to it being a really like below average experience and in some some cases a really shitty experience. Yeah, it's technically. But that said, like,

goddamn, like the game is really fun. The soundtrack, we haven't talked about the soundtrack yet, but I fucking love the soundtrack. I feel like you can hear some of the Toby Fox influence because he did some of the themes, and he tweeted out that I think he did one of, like, the field themes, and Nintendo

has, like, uses the some of the variations in, like, some of the other themes in the game, and I think it actually comes through when you get to some of the themes. I love the music in it so much. I love the I love the field music, and I, I don't love the battle music, the normal battle music. Jim boss fights, though, when it starts popping off and it sounds like the arms theme song, I'm just like, let's fucking go.

It's so fucking good. And real quick, I want to talk about the crowd. An interesting, yeah, I love that stuff, man. And that's why, to me, Sword and Shield was such a letdown because when we were first talking about it of like, like, the concede of this game is it's open worlds, the first actual open world Pokemon were adventure like that. That's the point. The last one, the whole thing was like, yo,

they treat this more like sports than ever before. This is the league. There are 16 different teams and all this stuff, and there's the arenas you're going to. And I was like, this is what I want from this is awesome. And I love the way that they treated it like a spectacle. And then you get to this game, I am just, on one hand, impressed that all the normal fights are just using the in-game engine. And it's like you can just move the camera around,

which means you don't see your Pokemon 90,000% of the time because it just doesn't know what to do, whether the Pokemon's... You can click R3 to like readjust your camera because that was the thing I noticed still. I was like, why the fuck can't I see my Pokemon? Yeah. It's just ridiculous though. It's like it just looks like shit. Like it's like and especially

when you see people in the background popping in and out, Pokemon walking through you. It's like I get what they're going for. They did not need to go that. Like to do that when the game doesn't run so well. And then you see the gym fights that function more like how the most recent gens have but with even more flare to it where it's like the camera's

cut in between, like doing the anime zooms, the letter boxing of like when the gym leaders say stuff, which God, they even imagine if there was V-O! Like even, oh man, even the way that like some gym leaders and some like high profile opponents will throw the polka ball, their moments are like

that where I'm like, oh, that's cool. Awesome. Yeah. So hype, man. And that's, it's that level of polish. The polish of the gym fights and some of the more key story fights that I'm like, yeah. It's there. It's all here. Yeah. The ingredients are here. Just that please put more budget

towards it. Put more people on it. Give it more time. It's just, it's such a bummer that it's still so fun despite all these issues and imagine if it wasn't like that. I was talking on my stream the other day about how I, being in this sort of school and having in school uniforms and every time you like go to a loading screen

in the school, you see like the emblem of your school, I guess, or whatever. And I was like, when are we going to get a Harry Styles Pokemon? And everybody was like, what the fuck you talking about. I was like, yeah, like, Griffin Door and Slytherin, like, have the different houses. And they're like, you said Harry Styles. I'm in Harry Potter's style. But think about that. Wouldn't that be dope? Like, like, you get drafted into a certain house and like sorting had their bullshit like Harry Potter fight, you know? Yeah, man. And honestly, I, the, I've been all over the place to this a little bit, but the, um, the idea of the school being kind of like the main

reason of this whole thing existing. And like these kids not being like 10 years. year olds, they seem a little bit older. And the idea of, hey, you're, they're like, yo, you're in school. Now we're time jumping a little bit. Now you're going out in the wild to figure your stuff out, giving a reason for why there's like these people all over the world doing their own things in different ways. This is awesome. Like they did such a good job of just setting the stage for why we're doing the things we're

doing in this instead of just it feeling like, I'm playing Pokemon again, doing the thing again. I felt like I had a purpose in this one. And I still do. I'm not done with it yet. Do we know why we build relationships with these teachers? I don't know. I didn't dive.

Like, what are the benefits there? Because, like, every time you go back and talk to a teacher after you, for those who haven't played it yet, you have a home-ex teacher and a history teacher and a math teacher and blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. And you go learn from them. And it's, like, a very, very short lesson, maybe about a minute long in total, them just asking you a question and then you answer. And they're like, all right, that's it for class today.

But then you can go back and talk to these teachers and they might ask you something like, oh, you're back. Hey, how's, you know, how's Pokemon catching out there or whatever? And you just catch up for a bit. And then at the end of it, it says, your relationship is grown with so-and-so. And I don't really know what that benefit. It's the exact persona wording when you level up your social link in like persona 5, where it's like, oh, yeah, and your relationship with this person is grown.

And I don't think that's what it is. And this could be a your wrong thing because I started off exploring that stuff. and I was like, actually, I don't have time for this. Let me just play through the actual game. But yeah, I had questions about it too. Shout out to Game in chat. Game in the Patreon chat says the nurse with a heart. Oh, man.

A bunch of baddies in this game. They really are. A bunch of baddies. I don't like, I have, I might be a spoiler conversation of, like, how that stuff might affect. Because I have ideas of how that could do stuff based on, like, post-game content. But as far as I'm concerned, I think it's just there. I think a lot of it is just there for a tutorial in terms of, like, like, oh yeah, go to biology class

and they teach you about Pokemon types or like go to Mac class and they teach you about like mechanics or whatever. That said, like, there are certain like story stuff going on with some of the teachers and the school faculty that had me like, oh, interesting.

Yeah, he's cheating on her. That's crazy. Oh, damn, like, he's fucking having an affair with it. I mean, honestly, jokes aside, there are some things in this game that, like, don't do that, but I was surprised of like, huh. Like, there's a teacher.

This is a little more intense. and darker than I'd expect from a Pokemon story. There's a teacher who I'm like, are you related to a gym leader? Like, there's like stuff implied where I was like, are you this gym leader's sister? And I was like, wait a second. I kind of want to know more about that.

You got sister. Wait, what do you think? I was thinking of something else. Are you thinking about different sisters? I don't know, maybe. We'll talk about later. Yeah, we'll talk about later. Yeah, honestly, I feel like I could talk about this game forever.

Like, I cannot believe. I can't wait for y'all to actually finish. I know. Because the game's so close. James ending is really good. Yeah. Really good. That's awesome.

Like getting them, like, I got emotional during it. And I was, I would never, ever expect that from Pokemon game. I think that's only happened once for me. And that was like Pokemon gold when you go,

uh, at the end, go back and meet, uh, like the original book, uh, red. That was like the only time where I've gotten like,

oh shit from a Pokemon, like gotten hype for it. It was a moment in here. I'm like, oh, snap. Like, I, I'm actually like,

all about this right now. It's still really, uh, just bothersome and annoying when you look at a gigantic mountain cliff face and it's the same repeating tiling texture. It's just chips. Why it's the mountain moving?

Oh yeah. All the LODs are popping into place. Yeah, the terrain has like LOD as well. It's just yeah, this game is so messy in so many ways and so great in a lot of different ways. So like I didn't know this about Moushold. Somebody asked if I read the Pocodex entry

from Mousshold and I guess I must have not because like there's a, I'm on Bobapedia right now on the Mousshold page. Again, Mousshold, basically, tandem Mous is a Pokemon that's just two mice that's like just hanging out with each other, right? And the whole pun is two mice in tandem, right? Tandem mouse.

You evolve Tandem Mouse at level 25 and it evolves into Moushold. And it gets like two children, basically. So like now you just have four mice battling. And I fucking love it. Child labor. Child labor, yeah. This thing here says, Mousshold has two different forms.

The form is determined by, an internal value with a one out of 25 chance of being a family of three. Instead of a family of four. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Three leave clever. I will say that this game incentivizes me. Normally when I play through a Pokemon game, back in the day, I used to just be like,

I'm going to get my team. I'm only going to use them. I don't really care about catching them all. Maybe I'll do that at the end of it. That's it. In my older age, I'm like, I always try to catch them all in the beginning. For the first couple routes, I'll be like, I'm going to get all of them before I move on.

That ends up stopping after. You give up pretty quick. I get like two badges. I'm like, I'm gonna, I just want to fucking finish this. This game, I'm like, I'm clearing out every single area as I move forward. I'm having so much fun. It's incentivizing me to level up different Pokemon. Sword and Shield, I thought was like mind-numbingly easy and handholdy.

This one, I feel like the ease of it works in its favor in terms of like, it's just fun. Like they're getting you to want to train different Pokemon and play with the new ones and old ones and like see what happened. The way I've strategized in this game, I think goes beyond the way I've strategized any Pokemon game prior where one, I found this game at moments to be challenging, and I think it was the open world this of it where I would go to a gym, and I'm like, oh, okay, I've gone too far. Like, this time is a bit more powerful than I am, and I, like, I would have those moments where I'm like, all right, I'm going to try it, and then I'll get, you know, two back-to-back where I lose, and on the third one, I'm like, all right, I need to, you know, do this with this

Pokemon, do this with this Pokemon, and, like, make this Pokemon my lead. And I'm actually thinking about gym battles more than I would in previous Pokemon, where I'm just fucking steam rolling through them. But now, like, my team, my current Pokemon team, every Pokemon has some sort of role, right? Where, like, I have Tinkaton on my team, which is like a fairy steel type. And most of my Pokemon, or actually I guess half of them have, like, two types of them, right? Because now I'm thinking on that level of like, all right, I got to have multiple types.

Each Pokemon, like, you're going to have one of each type if I can get, like, more of it variety. Oh, like this one type has a psychic move. Fuck, yeah. Oh, my God. I guess so excited about that shit. But, like, my Tinketon, for example, like, one of the moves. Oh, what's it called?

It's called fake out. I think it's called fake out, right? It's a move where you go, it's like quick attack where you'll go first every single time. And once it hits, it'll make the opponent flinch, but you can only use it once per entrance

of that Pokemon. And I think you have to use it on the first turn of that entrance, right, so it's always a thing of, all right, if a previous Pokemon got you down to like little health, I'm immediately, if that Pokemon dies,

right, I'm immediately throwing in Tinka Tung a ton to then do fake out to like knock them down a little, or like if I can do that and then follow it up with my gigaton hammer, gagatun hammer, that's like my immediate like go to with that Pokemon. I have another one, uh, fucking mousehold, right, who is very fast for some reason. And like whenever I have that, that motherfucker family out, like they're going first on any turn. And like that is my, all right, like you got three different moves I'm going to,

depending on the type, right? I have bullet scene, which is a grass type, like repetitive move. I have beat them up or beat up, which is like my dark type move that is like the six hits if I have a full team. I have population bomb, which is an aggressive name for a move, but it's essentially a move that can hit up to 10 times, right? One to 10 times. And it's the role of the dice. And I'm like, you are my ringer. Like, you are, I am having you out there in crucial situations when I need to, right? Like, I am thinking about my Pokemon team way deeper in terms of strategy than I've done in any other Pokemon game. It's fantastic. I love

this game. On a gameplay level, I think this game is up there in terms of Pokemon for me. I'm out there with you in terms of like playing a lot of new ones, changing it out, thinking about the strategy, gym to gym to gym. But then I hit a point, I would say maybe like 65% of the way through where I was like, okay, I'm starting it to a point where we're hitting a level,

like level 45 or something like that. I'm like, what's my team looking like? And I made some hard decisions. And you know what? I had to be true to my heart. And I had to do what I got to do. So, Andy, let me tell you my team right now, right? I have an archa nine named Moose.

I have a joltion named Torretto. I have an umbrion because umbriand's dopey. shit, right? Darkness, are you kidding? I need a shiny one, though, because the black with the blue looks way cooler. I have a Geridos. Of course,

a Lucario, you know? Show a little love outside of Gen 1 and 2. And I have a blanket on the last one, but he's a dope. Oh, Haunter. Haunter. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I'm so close to making the decision to getting rid of my fire crocodile. I did it on the one. No. What? Going for an arcanine. Because, like, I need a, fire Pokemon. Oh, you're fucking up, man.

Torch Song? I immediately No, no, no, no. Celadurge. Yeah, Celadurge? Yeah. I think, yeah. Oh, he has a move that he gets called Torch Song. Oh, that's a great move. He's just, he's just ugly as fuck. And like we know, like we know, whenever you play Dark Souls games, you have fashion souls. And that's where you just like, hey, fuck the build. I want to look dope as hell. And that's usually my strategy

in Pokemon. I want, like, the coolest look. Pokemon. And I just don't love this third evolution. What miles better than the second evolution of Procta Lord? Dude is ugly. Ugly. I had a, I had like a horror movie moment of like looking at my polodex and it looked like it only

had two evolutions and I was like, or like two forms. And I was like, oh, is this the first Pokemon game where they're not doing a third form? And I was like, I hope not because this motherfucker is ugly. Yeah. But yeah, I'm getting to the point where I'm like, do I want to go for but also the Shark Cadet guy that I ended up catching after several hours of

like I can't find this dude. Eventually I had to eat a stew that helped me find fire Pokemon easer. I ended up catching him. He's got a really cool second evolution. I'm kind of building it up. I have this stupid little dragon named Baggin. And ended up evolving into like some weird ass. I don't know.

He looks like a, I don't know, just like a cylinder. But apparently the third evolution where he becomes his full dragon form is like really sick. It's just one of those like, you know, patience, you know, is key. and you're rewarded if you're patient with it because otherwise he looks pretty stupid in Evolution's 1 and 2. I just want a dope-ass, sexy-looking squad, you know?

And Celadurge or whatever. Skelladurge. Just not doing it. He looks like a fucking clown, bro. He's got the-the-dark side, Andy. He's got the fire on the side of his head. He looks like a clown. He looks like a clown.

I love this little guy. Also, I didn't realize that somebody in my YouTube comments helped me out the second form. He's got that little fire thing on him, right? He has like a sombrero, but the thing in the middle is the fire egg that then hatches into the fire bird. Oh, I didn't realize. The bird and the crocodile.

I love that fucking bird. Yeah, it's really cool. It's when you in chat where Ushi Noneko says, Palmo is my current main Pokemon. So cute. When I tell you, I got Pomo's ass out of my party. I had to get rid of Palmo. Pomo was such a weakling.

That's the most basic second evolution where it just looked like a lighter skin version, bigger version of it. Yeah. Yeah, I was kind of. a bummer. And Pomo was getting their ass beat in every single battle I was in. I was like, bro, get out of here, man. I have an azumeral as my

water dude, and I'm close to getting whatever this version of Butterfree is. It's probably like a much older gen that I'm just not aware of, but it's a big ass butterfly that has side beam, which is pretty neat. I may get

it out of there as well. There's a lot of routes we can take, because, again, the ease of not only catching a shitload of them, but also the fact that they don't make it super rare. It's not a super rare occurrence to see third and second gen, or third and second evolutions out there in the wild. I mean, I caught the joltion and umbriand. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a, the area that I'm exploring around right now has a flary on somewhere out there that I want to find, um, I probably need sandwiches or whatever. I walked around one area because like on the map, you saw the, it had like a picture of an Evie. And I walked around this area for like 30 minutes. Me too.

Didn't see one. Me either. And I was like, where the fuck? All right. You got to eat sandwiches for that shit. Because those are the rarer spons. And you, not only just sandwiches, but any meal that'll show you like encounter type, fire. And if you eat that meal, then you go out and suddenly there was a fuck-o-o-sharkedatts when really they were a super rare spawn.

But you eat the meal that kind of coincides with the type. So not only for encounter types, but catching those types or, you know, whatever. it is that serves you in that moment. But man, I'm having a lot. I just want to keep on playing. Me too. I'm sure we're going to talk about this game more. Time to come. I'm sure it'll pop up somewhere in our game in your conversation, which blows my mind. Because I would have never expected that, but it's definitely up there for me. Not number one.

But, you know, it's in the top. It'll probably, honestly, it'll probably make my top ten list. If I sit down, I think, I mean, I'm loving this. It's in my top five. Like, there's not even a question. Like, despite the fact that it is horrible. so many ways, but like, that's not the game. It's the rest of it. Um, but we're going to talk a little bit about Somerville, a game that both Andy and Bless have beat, but we're going to do that for a word from our sponsors. Shout out to Shady Ray's for sponsoring this episode. Look how cool I

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or Shady Rays will pay to ship them back. Act now for their best Black Friday selection. Redeem only at Shadyrays.com where you can find all their newest and best shades. Redeem only at Shadyrays.com where you can find all their newest and best shades. Somerville. Andy, let's start with you. Summerville is a game that I had pretty high hopes for, I think especially because they really wanted to get the game out there in time for Game of the Year.

conversations. I thought, oh, damn, we must have something super special on our hands. Somerville is by some developers from inside, from Play Dead, studio Play Dead. And I believe... Jump Ship is the name of the new studio. Jumpship is the name of

New Studio. I believe it's a lot of artists from the team. Not necessarily a whole lot of designers. If I'm remembering that correctly, I could be way off. Correct me in the comments down below. Somerville is a kind of adventure game side scrolly type thing where it's you and a family and some shit goes down in the world and I don't really want to spoil a whole lot but you are trying to survive in this world after there's been kind of like an alien-ish attack on where you live it is gorgeous art style is phenomenal our direction's phenomenal

I love the sound design. I think the game is pretty mediocre at the end of it, though. It's really short, though. It's about four hours long. And I feel like there's a lot of good ideas there, just not a whole lot of execution. And I think that it really feels like a bunch of artists made a game would not necessarily like a huge emphasis on design.

There's a lot of like physics puzzles that can get kind of clunky. I think this game is so frustrating to control. There are several moments where you need to grab a knob or a switch or something, and you have like this sort of power with you. And the amount of times that I thought that what I was trying to do wasn't possible, simply because my character wouldn't grab on to the thing. You have to be in like the perfect pixel area to grab onto something. Or else, I mean, again, there have been several,

times where I'm walking around like I guess I can't do this and I'll circle back around like 15 minutes there like oh I could grab it it's just I wasn't in the right spot it's really really frustrating to control the game has it may be fixed now but when we played it about a week and a half ago something like that a lot of performance issues for a game that isn't really necessarily that graphically demanding it doesn't look like it isn't like you're playing a crazy 4k ray tracing type video game it the game ran totally fine until you hit certain patches where it's dipping down into like the 20 and 30 frames per

second areas. So those moments are a bit frustrating. But yeah, I think that it's going to be on game. It's on Game Pass right now, actually. I think it's worth at least trying you out, but I don't think it's going to knock anybody's socks off. I think it's unfortunately a game that I was overall a little bit disappointed by at the end of the day. It's such a cool concept. and it's really nice presentation as well but man I just at the end of it felt a little bit disappointed by everything and it gets towards the end of it gets super obtuse

with it's storytelling and it's trying to do like it's trying to be really heady and it just kind of fails for me unfortunately plus yeah I think I'm a bit higher on it but I don't disagree with a lot of what Andy's saying I think for me it's a game that I would say is really good or I would say it's pretty

good, right? I think for me, my disappointment just comes from the fact that this is a studio made up of people that came from Play-Ded and Play-Ded, of course, made Limbo and Inside. And those are both games that I'll put up there as like, oh, these are masterpieces. Like, these are masterclasses. Inside is one where I would almost describe as a perfect video game just in terms of the puzzle design, the story, the meaning behind it, the amount of animation and polish in every single movement, right? Like, you know, the storytelling just kind of within this world, you know? Yeah. And like, it's establishing a location, establishing an interesting world that you want to know more about the mystery of Inside. Inside did so much in its genre. And that is with puzzle design where, you know, inside is a 2D puzzle platformer. Pretty much like every other bit you are running into a puzzle that you've got to figure out how to solve. But every animation feels like it accounts for the puzzle that you're solving. It feels like they went in and they're like every moment is going to be accounted for. Every moment is going to be polished in this game. Um, Somerville, I think it was working off of a lot of what made played Ed games and made inside special.

Right. I think the visuals are there. I really like the art style. The mood, the tone. The mood, the tone, the way they established the world. And like the opening, I'd say 30 minutes of Somerville are off the chain. Like so much so that I finished the first 30 minutes and I texted the slack and I was like, y'all, you guys might have to play Summerville. Like, this game actually seems like it's about to do something.

Uh, but then I think the game is then let down by. multiple things. There's a lot of what Amy's talking about. The game doesn't run consistently. And that was the thing that I thought was by PC. I was like, oh, maybe my PC's busted. I don't know. But then I tried it at the studio PC

when capturing footage for Roger. And I was like, oh, no, it runs bad here too. Yeah. And I also heard that it doesn't run well on Steam Deck either. Oh, yeah. Steam Deck was just a non-issue for me. I'd boot it up for five minutes. I was getting 15 frames.

Nope, just immediately shut it off. So the game seems badly optimized, at least on PC. Um, the animations, right, talking about like how good the animations are and inside are. I like some of the way that the characters move in this because there is kind of like this rag dolly like, okay, this fits within the style, but then you get into places where it just doesn't feel polished, right? Where it is.

My character is sneaking through a crevice and so they put their arm up to like put it on the wall. But then their arm will start wicking out and like you can definitely tell that it's fighting against the textures. Uh, there are moments where, uh, I think the, um, I think the, um, This game being more of a 3D environment that you're traversing as opposed to a 2D space, lends to more your character getting lost where it is, all right, I'm going to go out the front door and then you walk a direction and you're like, that's not where I want to go.

And then like you have to walk around the thing. It's kind of hard to get a read sometimes on where exactly you are. See, I have a beat them ups. Yeah. And honestly, like, I described it in our TikTok review as adventure, choose your own adventure game, jank. Like I think it's a bit of that as well where it is. All right, what's the thing I want to do? Okay, let me go do this.

Oh, can I do this? all right, let me try and do this. I can't tell if I'm supposed to do this because the animation is not great, right? It's kind of that process where you're doing things like, oh, I'm going to open this door by lifting up this plank that's blocking it

and you kind of have to understand that you need to go to that plank and then lift it up, but like the animation just, I don't think is all the way there to convey that as well. And then some of the puzzle design, I think it can be hidden.

There are puzzles that I do really like in this game and I think it succeeds enough in this puzzles, but then there's a handful of puzzle. that I don't think follows the rule set of how to make a good puzzle. Right? The idea of like, all right, introduce one mechanic, introduce another mechanic, now let those mechanics play together. All right. Now, like, there's a way in which you introduce rules to a player that I think lends to them having those eureka moments of, oh, okay, yeah, like, I learned this thing. Okay, this is how this thing is supposed to go. There's a puzzle early on involving a bucket and like liquid in the game that like, involved elements that I think they just didn't teach you at any point, right? I played the beginning of the game about

three times up to that point and I was spending attention to it the second or third time and I was like, all right, when do they teach me? Why did you play the beginning of the game? So many times. The second time, I think, is because I lost the save. Because there was no cloud saves. There was no Steam Cloud Save. Oh, I think that's what I was. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I played the first hour and a half of it here at work and then Barrett was like, oh, there's no Steam Cloud saves. In my mind, I thought he meant that I couldn't play it on Steam deck. Yeah. But, and then I went home and I was like, oh, that's what he meant. That fucking sucks.

I got to restart all of this. Yeah, and so I play the game multiple, the beginning of the game multiple times. And there's a puzzle you get to where it is. All right, take the bucket, get some liquid in it. And now, like, these little guys will follow the liquid or whatever. And I was like, you guys never taught me that. Like, you guys never taught me this rule. And that led to me being stuck for, like, 15 minutes until I got it.

And I was like, how the fuck was I supposed to get that? Yeah. And I think there's a couple of moments of that throughout the game. There are really good puzzle moments that give you the, the, the eureka moments. And then there are others that, like, I'm not the biggest puzzle gamer. I, like, tend to avoid them.

But, like, I just, there's no worse feeling that when you finally complete a puzzle and you go, oh, that was, that was the solution. That's really bad. Like, that's not a good solution to whatever it is you were trying to get me to do. Especially when the point of the game is puzzles.

Yeah. And I think a lot of it is them trying to just utilize a lot of, of physics-based stuff as opposed to just like this is a binary puzzle where like it's either you do it or you don't sometimes it isn't always clear whether doing it is possible when really it's like oh I was standing three degrees to the left if I would have just kind of maneuvered my way I don't want to spoil anything but again it's just a lot of it is physics based in some moments and it gets really frustrating and like when that stuff works like for again inside as

as an example, when you push something and inside and it falls through another thing, and it's like, wow, this is all happening in real time in the world, oh my God, that shit is so cool. And I think that's what makes games like that special and fun. And that takes a lot of dev time and a lot of polish and a lot of work. There are times in this game where it's like, oh, man, you needed more time with that. Like, you needed more time to polish this through and actually make this a thing that gives that, ah, shit, this is a cool kind of moment.

But then there are other moments where I'm like, oh, this is a really cool mechanic, right? Like a lot of the puzzles are, uh, deal with shifting states of matter. And I think when that stuff works where it is, all right, let me go through this. I'm going to melt all this, all the stuff that's around me. Uh, I think that stuff is fun, right? When you're dealing, when you're dealing with, okay, I need to get this cord over here and pull it over here. And it kind of works like a last part two almost with the rope, except it's not like, it's not as impressive as that because like, that was really impressive.

But when you have those moments and like shit comes together, it's like, oh, man, that's dope. But I think there's also enough times where, uh, it feels shanky and it just doesn't feel as polished where that stuff can kind of let down. And I also agree with Andy in terms of the ending. The ending is so obtuse. And you can tell that they're really trying to go for it. They're really trying to, I think, have that, like, it sucks that I have to keep referencing inside, but it's the same, some of the same folks. So I kind of have to. They're trying to have that, like, oh shit, like kind of ending, right? That kind of recontextualizes the way they view of the game and, you know, understand what's going on. But I think it was a bit too much for a bit too long.

and by the time I finished shit, I was kind of like, all right, what the fuck did I just play? Like, what is happening? I don't understand this anymore. You also get the multiple ending type things, which you've seen a lot of video games these days, where it's ended here and continue the machine or, you know, break the mold

and start a new horizon sort of thing and largely just kind of fell flat because usually when you end a game and you get the quote-unquote bad ending, it usually feels kind of final, and like that's the moment. That's the moment that I kind of have come to grips with, and I will have to accept. But in here it just really felt like, well, let me just restart the checkpoint.

Like, I don't know, there was something about it that just felt like so inconsequential that I was like, oh, let me just go for whatever the better ending is. There's still a better ending out there that I wasn't able to figure out or find out because the final puzzle was just so kind of confusing. but yeah, even I was telling blessing about the ending, like, well, did you know that you could do that at the end? And he was like, oh, shit, no, I didn't know that. Well, there's an extra thing on top of that that I wasn't able to figure out.

And this, you know, this might conclude the most vague review of a video game ever. Well, it's pretty clear. It sounds like we know where you guys are at on it. Yeah. It didn't reach the heights that we'd hope it would from people that were involved. I'd give it like a three out of five. I'd give it a three out of five. And I give it a four out of five.

And it's one that I'll say, if you're a fan of the genre, for sure check it out. Like I do think there's a lot of good here and a lot of fun to be had. Like, I'm very glad I played it. But also it is not. And it's super short too. It's in a super short.

Like I beat it probably in like three hours. And I think the story, the tone and the vibe and the art style for me was there all the way through up until the ending. Like there are moments in this game. Like there's one moment where you're walking across like, I'll say a big field with a bunch of with a bunch of tents. It's like the most vague I can put it that like I thought was visually really stunning. I was like, oh shit, this is really cool. Um, but yeah, like, it just didn't reach those heights of like, if you're somebody who's only into this kind of genre or this kind of game for something that's the level of inside, then this probably won't be that for you. But if you're something that really likes puzzle games or really like, really likes puzzle platformers or like adventure puzzle games, I think, I think it could be worth it.

Especially on game pass, I think, um, yeah, is an ideal way to get into it. Wes, are you super excited for Callisto Protocol? I am. You know who else is? Who's that? Greg Miller. Greg Miller is super excited for Callisto Protocol. Imagine how excited he was to meet one of the game stars and star of the boys.

Karen Fukahara, did he ask her about the game and Jack Quaid? Of course he did. Check it out. Monkia. As I live and breathe, Karen Fukuhara, how are you? Thank you so much for coming in. In making the time to Skype in with us and Zoom in. How are you?

I'm great. How are you? Thanks for having me. I'm excellent. It's exciting to have you here. of course, I'm a big boys fan, but I'm also a huge fan of Glenn and everything, striking distance has been working on and how close to protocol looks. So it's exciting to be able to talk to you about that.

I want to start with how did you get involved with the project? Yes. I auditioned during the pandemic. So I did my audition in my living room with my boyfriend, with my, you know, the drill, the lighting kits and your like little tripod. and everything. Yeah, and it was one of my first auditions, or like, I think maybe I've done three in the past, two to three in the past video game audition. So it was very new to the genre. To be honest, I had to do a lot of research, like, upon booking the role of, like, little terms

that I didn't know. I'm such a nuke when it comes to the video game in the world. What terms stick out to? Like, NPC, what does it mean to, like, idol? What is the Z-Pose? You know, things like that. And, you know, Google was a great friend, but also Chris was so nice. And he was able to explain everything to me. So I was in good hands. So talk to me about that.

You know, I think video game actors, voice actors, like, as the years have gone on in my career's progressed. I've seen it kind of fall away where it used to be, of course, you'd book a big name actor, they'd be a voice actor, they'd come in, they wouldn't know the project, they'd just bounce on it. Obviously, when you're dealing with something, a game in 2022, you're talking about mocap, you're talking about all these different things, you're talking about it actually being you in the performance capture. When did you say, okay, I want to start auditioning for video games. You talk about this being like your third one. What drew you to them? honestly to be honest with you i i i i didn't ask it just came into my emails that's awesome um yeah it was

it was dealt with in the same way that i would um any other film and tv role uh or film and tv audition um it has the breakdown so you kind of know who your character is and then you get the side so you have your lines and um you get to really play um and what i what drew me most to this project in particular was, A, getting to work with Glenn. Obviously, I found out that he had worked on Dead Space, which is a cult classic within the genre. And finding out that this was, you know, he created striking distance in order to make this game. So it's really his passion project. I was really interested to see what he had planned for. And then on top of that, I was told that this is not just, you know, the type of gaming that I was familiar with from my childhood is, you know, none of it was story-based.

It was like Mario Party and like, you know, like Mario Kart, like Nintendo games. I always talk about it, yeah, running, hitting the question mark running. You finish the level, move on to the next one. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so it's just grown so much from that. nowadays and being able to play a character that has depth, that has a past, you know, that really has like the why behind all of it and the player getting to connect with these

individual characters, like that was what drew me to being in a video game. When you talk about like, you know, your past with games in the O'Mario Party and just, you know, the more Nintendo stuff, were you keeping up with this? Were you surprised by getting this audition and looking in and seeing where games were at? I was surprised. I was shocked. Once I got the role, I was talking to my boyfriend and he plays games and I have a lot of gamer friends. And we watched Dead Space on YouTube because I didn't realize that people like play games and then they have viewers play. Yeah, totally.

It's a huge world. It's a huge community. It was my first time being exposed to it all. And in my boyfriend's words, he said, it's just like a movie. But it's better because you get to play it and you get to be the characters. And I think that's excellent, you know. I think every audience member watching a movie or a TV show has wondered, like, oh, what is it like to be these characters in these fantastical worlds? and in the video game industry, like you can do that.

So, yeah, but it's really exciting. It's an exciting space. What's always cool about it, I feel, is that especially for you coming into Colista, right, is that it's survival horror, right, but horror is such a big part of it. And every horror movie, right, when you're watching it at some point, you go, oh, why would you do that? Or why would you do that?

That is how it is to play a horror game and have someone on the couch next to you, where they are like, why would you go down that alleyway? Why would you do that? Like, you get to have that experience here. Yeah, no, that's exactly what I say whenever I watch a horror film, which is not that often, but I'm like, you get a phone call. I'm like, don't pick it up. You're alone in this house. Exactly. Yeah.

So one of the things that obviously we've seen your character in the trailers, we haven't heard a lot about her. So tell me about who you play in the Clisto Protocol. Yes, I play a character named Danny Nakamura. She is a resistance leader of a group called The Outer Way. And she grew up, was born and raised on the planet of Jupiter. And in this game, she's trying to uncover the secrets in Black Iron Prison, which is located on Jupiter's dead moon, Calisto. And within that process of trying to find out this dark secret,

she encounters Jacob, who's played by Josh Duhamel. That's all you're going to give me. What? Tell me more. I need to know more. I'm trying to think. The game's so far away. Yeah, that is a lot, I guess. How do you get in the headspace of somebody who was born on Jupiter, who's leading

the resistance? What do you do for that when you get your sides? You get your script. You look through it. Oh, yeah. You know, just like digging into my own dark secret, and I mean, dark past. No, you know, she, what I love about,

is that she, um, she's really become the person she is because of her hardships. Um, but she hasn't really, uh, she's jaded, but she hasn't lost, um, her path, really. Uh, she, she, she, she's not exactly, like a typical hero, but she has this sort of, um, like code that she lives by. And I think that's what, um, that's what's really interesting about the character. For you being now on the other side of the project, right, going from just learning kind of where video games are at to now obviously doing press for that. What for you was the biggest surprise that you think you learned about video games from the experience? A lot of things. I mean, technical aspects like, you know, filming for video games is a lot like film and TV, but there's

there was a huge learning curve, especially for someone like me that's never done it before, you have to imagine everything. You have to imagine that there is this like huge explosion in front of you on this planet that you've never been on. And of course, we get concept art to look at beforehand and we have like a table read per se. But when you're acting, it's all imagination. And so working that muscle was a challenge. My first day, I kept running into walls.

And Chris was like, that's an elevator. Like, you have to press these imaginary buttons first. Like, you have to imagine that you're going up. Like things like that was a huge challenge for me. Spatial awareness is not my forte. Well, again, like when you're on a soundstage, right, in the ping pong ball suit and like you're saying, like you're getting this stick that has a neon tape at the end,

that's a gun and this is what's going. I've had so many friends who are actors and games talk about it being like, it's like doing the lowest budget stage play where, yeah, everything is imagined, right? You're on this set and maybe you have a crate to work off of, but you have to imagine that creates a car. Exactly. And, you know, with our game, there's a lot of like suspense and like brutality and like gore involved. That's a Glenn game. That's a Glenn game. Yeah, that's a Glenn game. Yeah, that's a good game, that's a good game. Yeah, but you're also imagining that aspect, right? Sure.

So it's when I'm, you know, when I'm filming something for like a TV series, let's say, there are practical effects happening. There's people like shooting blood into your face and like things exploding, actually exploding in front of you. And like the tension that you feel being on set and being. and feeling and being in that like reality of things that all comes from you in video game. So yeah, it's, it's really difficult, I would say. And if you don't have like the courage to really dive into it and really invest and stick to like, oh, you're really doing it.

Like this is really happening to me. then like that your performance is not believable. So, yeah, it takes a lot of like mental gymnastics, I would say, to do video game. I can only imagine, yeah, especially, you know, coming off of, you know, the projects you work on that are these big budget shows and movies, right, where they're spraying the blood in your face and you don't have to imagine much. They're telling you what it is, right? Sit there and imagine it's got to be different beasts.

So the question then comes as we approach, you know, December 2nd release day here for Clisto Protocol. How are you going to experience it? Are you going to play it? Are you going to sit next your boyfriend and sit there and yell at him? Like, why are you doing this? Oh, my goodness. No, this will be the first story-based game I will play in my life. So I'm really, really excited.

I am kind of worried because if it's really difficult, I don't know if I'll get through the game. And then if I can't, if I personally can't get through the game, then will I be able to watch the end? I don't know. that's when YouTube comes in handy That's when YouTube comes in handy. They'll have it for you, yeah, for sure. Exactly, exactly. I was telling Chris earlier, I was like, maybe I can watch you play it.

He knows all of the little aspects. He knows when all the jump scares are, all of that. Close your eyes now. All right, get ready to tap a button now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You do it that way. Yeah, that'll be my second backup plan. Yeah. As we wind down here, one of my questions is related to one of my friends in one of your friends. friends. I need to know when and how long did you hold this over Jack Quaid's head? Because Jack is such a big video game player that when you discovered you were in the spiritual successor to Dead Space, I hope you held this over his head and just made him feel like that. Oh, I love that you

mentioned Jack because he is actually one of the only people that like found out the trailer was out before I did. He was so excited. He texted me the trailer. He was like, Karen, oh my God, you're in this game. And I was like, oh, my God. Oh, the trailer. Oh, the trailer's out. I didn't even know. He is really excited. I am definitely going to get him a game. He's out here in Toronto filming with me. So I'm going to slip him an early Christmas gift. And hopefully he loves it as much as we do. I'm sure he would like that. I did ask him if there were any embarrassing questions he wanted me to ask you and he said text back wanted to ask you wanted you to be honest who do you think made a better morbius for Halloween you were Claudia and then he did send

this image in case you have if anybody hasn't seen that's what we're judging off of there for what it is so funny um so we had a Halloween party uh uh with some of our castmates and crew um a few weeks ago and Claudia, his girlfriend and I, like, had no idea what we should be. But we had been talking about watching Morbius for the longest time. And we had just put it off so long. So on the day, we watched it all together. Jack had watched it, but he joined us. And we ordered everything on Amazon before, but only half of the things arrived.

As that is definitely the 2020 experience for Halloween. Yeah. So we only had the teeth, but the teeth were not made to put in your mouth. They were like table decoration. So they didn't really fit. They're really uncomfortable. And then we had the beard, but it was just a mess. And I would say one of my best costumes ever.

It was just like super fun getting to do it with her. and like Jack was there. It was just, it was a ball of fun. So I would say we're tied. You know what? She ordered the costume. She ordered the costume. So I'll give props to her.

Well, fair enough. Karen, I can't wait to play Clistor Protocol. I'm so excited you're in it as a fan of your work. So congratulations and we can't wait to see more. Thank you so much. Please let me know how you think about, like what you think about the game. I am excited to see your reactions. Oh, you'll see it right here on the Kind of Funny Gamescast.

Yeah.