The Ringer-Verse - Big Game Adaptations, 'Borderlands 4,' and 'Silksong' Revisited | Button Mash

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Ben, Steve Ahlman, and Matt James enter the vault to round up recent news on game adaptations (including 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,' big-screen 'Call of Duty,' and live-action TV series 'Tomb Raider') and share their spoiler-free reviews of Gearbox's 'Borderlands' comeback, 'Borderlands 4.' They close by delivering their final verdicts on the difficulty and quality of 'Hollow Knight: Silksong.' Intro (0:00)'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' and adaptation news (5:37)'Borderlands 4' reactions (23:23)'Hollow Knight: Silksong' follow-up (57:39)Outro (1:15:54) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Steve Ahlman and Matt JamesProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfair Radio.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business to keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. hunters and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Bedlinberg, senior editor for the ringer and ringerverse button masturbator here today

with two lovely guests who are now embarrassed to be talking to me. First, the ringers deputy art director handsome Matt James. Hi, hi, Matt. Hey, Ben. No recovering. I made it awkward. Now it's a mutual masturbation session. Okay.

That didn't help. No. Anyway, we need to pod at 8 a.m. more. It's later for me. I'm on Eastern Time, so that's not my excuse. I don't have one. Couldn't decide whether to go with handsome Matt or Matt Trap for your intro. We neither way, but I don't have a Borderlands-inspired nickname for our second guest.

But he is a junior mint and a midnight boy. Steve, oh, man. Actually, given my rage-baiting hate of Expedition 33, I think I am the Matt Trap. You can call me. Yeah. Maybe you're Steve the Psycho Bandit, Alman. Oh, there we go. Okay.

Well, we're in the midst of a ridiculous run of releases, a hollow night silk song-style gauntlet of big games. We covered Silk Song itself last week, and we'll return to it this time for a few closing. thoughts. Our main topic today, however, will be the latest in a long line of looters' Gearboxes, Borderlands 4. Next week, we have Hades 2 on tap and Silent Hill F to dissect, followed by Ghost of Yote, and so many more, running right through Metroid Prime 4 in December without much of a break. I thought we weren't doing the holiday rush anymore, that big games could just come out any time. And maybe they do, but also the holiday. season is happening, how will we

summon the strength to play so many video games? I genuinely don't know. I got excited more and more knowing that Silent Hill F is coming out within mere weeks of Ghost of Yote, and then that is seemingly going to be taking up the rest of my year, but then we still got some more stuff to go on, so I'm

genuinely very excited. Yeah, within one week of Ghosts of Yote, just no breather between. And we weren't supposed to have Hades 2 and Silsong, and they just kind of got dropped into all of this. Just crashed the party.

Two very, very, very big games. Yes. And not only in terms of impact, but in terms of scale. Yeah. As if we didn't already have enough to play. Remember when we were all thinking, hey, Borderlands moved up from September 23rd to September 12th. It has to be a clue.

This is the same publisher as GTA6. So this must be a sign that 2K is clearing the decks for GTA, which is definitely going come out. Thank goodness, GTA got delayed. I mean, some of these other games would have come out later to avoid GTA if that had stuck. But still, I am thankful now that we don't have to reckon with that now. The way that we're talking about it, does it really feel like GTA 6 feels more and more like a threat than anything else? It feels like there's this massive economic bomb that's just going to hit everybody and nobody's going to do anything and it's going to be like soft COVID again where everybody's stuck inside and we're going to be walking out like it's the end of 28 days later.

We will do many podcasts whenever that time arrives. And I know that there are a lot of people who are looking at it as some sort of savior of consoles or AAA blockbusters. And, you know, we talk a lot about the many problems with gaming and the gaming industry, especially Western AAA development, just lots of layoffs and games taking too long and too much money. And everything's a sequel or remake. Yet somehow there's no shortage of great games to play at pretty much all. times. They could stop making games entirely for years. Not that I'm suggesting

that they do that, that would really lead to a lot of layoffs. But if they did, I could probably play pretty happily for quite some time without noticing the difference, but it might be tough to come up with podcast topics. We'd have to do a lot of nostalgia, a lot of anniversaries. We'd have to get creative. Let's do it.

Stop all the games. Yeah. I've got to finally catch up in Final Fantasy 14. I'm only a few expenses behind. Yes, our piles of shame would finally shrink. Anyway, people, I'm sure, feel for us with this difficult plight. It's a tough job to play all these games, but Buttmash is up to the task, I hope. As if most people aren't just playing steal a brain rot on Roblox or Fortnite. Let's be real, because this podcast is primarily

for the dwindling percentage of gamers who are not steal a brain rot right now at this very second, which is probably many, many millions. Okay, look, lots of games means lots of game adaptations. Mortal Kombat 2 may have been delayed to next May, but the adaptations keep coming. The rest of this year, Splinter Cell Death Watch next month, animated Netflix show in December, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, and Fallout Season 2, the latter of which I believe we will be covering weekly on Butmash, so get excited. We're going to New Vegas. But briefly, before we get to Borderlands, can I throw three bits of adaptation news at you? recent developments here.

First, since our last pod, we got a meaty Nintendo Direct, which had news about Hades, Metroid Prime, new Mario Tennis and Yoshi and Fire Emblem and Pokemon, virtual boy, of all things, making a comeback in the year 2025. Did not foresee that, no. But did foresee, as anticipated by Buttonmesh, some announcements for the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Brothers, not a new 3D Mario, but to. to new old 3D Mario's Galaxy and Galaxy 2, coming to Switch 2 in two weeks,

which in a fine display of corporate synergy will set the stage for next year's new Mario movie, as Princess Peach said in the Super Mario Brothers movie, there's a huge universe out there with a lot of galaxies, and we will be seeing some of them in the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Coming next April, Steve, are you ready for Rosalina? yes not so much so for chris pratt's return for mario but then again this made a billion dollars this was very fun i had a great time with it i think i did not anticipate peaches peaches peaches

to take over my summer the way that it did but i hope for another musical roundabout that this is this is going to be really fun to know that its galaxy is actually a very interesting choice for things to adapt like to know that we this could be going into some sort of like space exploration and Rosalie obviously playing a major part in this. I'm fascinated. I don't really know what this means. Matt, what does this mean? Well, I always love it when a movie has the word movie in the title.

That's always a good. Yeah. You know, all of the greatest works of art that come out in the cinema have the word movie in the title. I'm looking forward to it, obviously. The first one was good enough. It was, it's fun for people who like Nintendo. I didn't blow my doors off as a Mario movie.

But Galaxy is a rich text. Yeah. And more importantly, if they want to finally re-release Galaxy 2 because of it, that's the greatest win of all out of them picking Galaxy as the subject of the next movie, in my opinion. Yes. I got a sneak peek. I got to play some Galaxy and Galaxy 2 on Switch at a Nintendo event this week.

And it felt good. It felt good to be back in Galaxy, just shaking that controller, shooting some stars. It's been too long. So I'm happy about that and Galaxy 2, getting some love, getting some shine, as one might say in Mario. And you have to clarify that it's a movie

because it's Mario. It could be a theme park for all you know. It could be a TV cartoon. It could be a new 3D Mario, which it isn't, sadly, but it will be one day. So yeah, I had a good time at the first movie. I thought it did what it had to do,

which was make a billion bucks and make the kids happy. and that was primarily who it was for, and it did that job, and it established a franchise, and now that franchise will proliferate. But I am moderately more excited for it now, knowing that it's Galaxy, just because I have fond feelings for Galaxy, and I like some sci-fi in my Mario movie. Other big movie news, Activision and Paramount, are making a Call of Duty movie. This one probably will take some time, but the really interesting thing here,

is that the town's Matthew Bologna reported at Puck that Activision turned down a pitch from Call of Duty player and Medal of Honor architect Stephen Spielberg. Who says no to Spielberg? Activision does because Spielberg wanted full creative control. So, Steve, as a former toxic occupant of call of duty lobbies in your younger years, what do you think of the facts? I mean, allegedly by you, you made those allegations. We weren't there. You self-incriminated. Don't know why I would accuse myself of such things.

But you did. You self-reported. Anyway, are you pleased? Are you surprised that it took this long? Are you disappointed that it won't be the Spielberg vision? I can't think of a more allergic to success take than turning down Steven Spielberg's creative control. He's at the point in his career where anything that he makes is an event now.

and to know that he is an avid gamer of not only video games in general, but call of duty of all things, that the most popular blockbuster director of our lifetimes has interests to make the most popular video game of our lifetimes, like arguably, I don't understand why you reject that, only for the sake of creative control. And that actually is the more frightening thing of all,

because I think other than brand control money or a level of brand integrity that Activision Blizzard would have to want to maintain for this, that they're more precious about that than the creative input of one of our greatest directors that has ever lived, then I kind of can only read this as a bad, bad, bad sign for whatever they choose to make.

because they had the golden, the top of the mountain came to them. And it was like, yes, let me make this. And they said no. I don't think that that could have gone any worse. But that being said, the idea of a Call of Duty movie is interesting, genuinely, interesting,

because there are so many ways for that to go. Because that franchise has been all over the place. That franchise has done, like, genuinely, like, interesting stories. and sometimes, like, can't be fun things that can also be taken not as seriously as a fun action romp. So the property is certainly rife for adaptation, but again, I could never, ever, ever get over

the fact that you would reject Steven Spielberg for something else. Matt, what do you think? Well, to be fair, Call of Duty feels like more of a Michael Bay joint to me than Steven Spielberg. Yeah, but are you going to say that Stevenberg's not a fit? Like, you, like, oh, this movie isn't right for him.

What? Are you kidding me? I mean, I, yes. Actually, yes, I am. I think it's not a fit. Here's why I think it's not a fit. Would you want Steven Spielberg to have directed the Borderlands movie? My guy, this franchise started with World War II.

Steven Spielberg made one of the most influential World War II films of all time. Yeah. Look, you're not. You're not wrong. They're both about war. I'll give you that. The tone is a bit different to me. I think, you know, first of all, you're right. They should have gone with Spielberg. He would have made it something respectable. But I don't know that that's really the tone they want. I don't know if they want a good movie out of this. I think they want something for people to eat popcorn to. And I think that they, probably don't want a call of duty movie that perhaps wrestles with the more inconvenient elements of war that Spielberg would likely touch upon were he to create another war movie, as he has done in the past. And the full creative control thing, like, I think it probably scared them off because I think they want, there are probably like 20 executives that are going to want to

tone police, the living hell out of what this call of duty movie is going to be in the modern world here. Yeah. And I think that that is why Spielberg did not get chosen for this. Yeah. And those takes aren't incompatible. What you're saying is not incompatible with what Steve's saying, which is this might end up being some bland, safe, corporate nothing. Right. Yeah. And that's perspective. That's what they want and that's maybe what we'll get. And you can both be right about this. I think that it makes sense from their perspective, but also is maybe bad news for the movie from a creative perspective. I don't know, maybe Activision just recently rewatched Crystal Skull or something, and they're wondering what all the hype was about. But if it's not that,

I think I could defend it from a business sense because Steve, you said a Stevens-Bilbert movie is an event. Well, I think a Call of Duty movie will be an event, regardless of who directs it. Right. And again, again, nobody here is wrong. And you guys are especially not wrong here. Like all of this says is like, okay, so the most popular director of all time wants to make your movie and you turn him down. Okay, so it's clearly not about making a good movie or it's not about making something that you don't have full control over. And that's really what this is all about. And that's actually like a sad movie to me.

And the guy who made Saving Private Ryan wants to make it and you say no. then obviously if this movie turns out not to be that great, then people will always wonder what the Spielberg cut would have looked like. Yeah, the Spielberg cut is not going to have a joke about pressing F to pay respects, which I think it's kind of where we're headed with this movie somehow.

Frankly, Matt James, you cannot prove that. You cannot prove that because we'll never see it. Can't prove a counterfactual. It's true. But no, I mean, it's possible also that Spielberg was envisioning this in the World War II mold, which Call of Duty has kind of left behind and maybe would not want to start there, right? Maybe they want to start in more of a Black Ops cinematic universe. And who knows, maybe Spielberg's pitch just wasn't really aligned with the direction they wanted

to take this. Because as you said, Steve, there's been so many incarnations of Call of Duty. It could be a future sci-fi. It could be past. It could be distant past. And so maybe his pitch, if he specified a time period or a conflict, just wasn't what they were looking for. But I assume that regardless of how good this thing is it will be a blockbuster, it will be a juggernaut, it will probably spawn a series. Whether we need that or not is debatable because this is another one of those series where Call of Duty, the games kind of take their cue from cinematic war movies, right? I mean, when you play a Call of Duty campaign, you are more or less playing an interactive movie with that type of production value and propulsiveness. So it's one of those adaptations of something that's sort of cinematically inspired to begin with.

And then you wonder, well, why do we need this exactly if it's just the movie version of a game that was itself movie inspired? But I guess the primary reason why we need this is because people will see it and pay for it and other people will make money. It's probably going to be a new Mountain Dew flavor, a Taco Bell about this movie. And that doesn't really fit in Spielberg. I can't wait for the Call of Duty Dorado. Popcorn Bucket.

Get hyped. Also get hyped for our last entry here, which is that Prime Video is moving forward, after all, with a live action Tomb Raider series, which will be filming next year. This is the series that has been in development for years from Phoebe Waller Bridge, who is the creator and will also be the co-show runner. It was announced. And Sophie Turner is officially following in the footsteps. picking up the holsters of Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander and playing Lara Croft.

So it looked for a time that this was dead, that it wasn't going anywhere, that it was in development hell. And it turns out rumors of its demise greatly exaggerated. So we have not only animated Netflix, Tomb Raider, but also live action, prime video, Tomb Raider, with some stars attached and with Phoebe Waller Bridge, which alone, her involvement has to make you feel a bit better about it. So what's your current level of optimism? Matt, you're nodding. Are you excited? Yeah, and normally I wouldn't be about yet another incarnation of Tomb Raider.

But I think with Phoebe Wallerbridge's name attached to it, I think that kind of guarantees to me that there's going to be an interesting viewpoint around this project that is intriguing because you could take this series and do a down, down the middle boring adaptation of it and I have to believe that there's something more interesting going on just by her involvement. Yeah, there's, Phoebe Waller Ridge has been like so many fascinating choices, even pre and post fleabag, which is probably her most like notable project and universally renowned, the thing that would pretty much get her anything going after this.

But the things that she's chosen to like spear. head or even write on have also been fascinating. She worked on the screenplay for No Time to Die, the final Daniel Craig James Bond movie, as well as the better seasons of killing Eve. And to know that this is something that interests her, again, like there's this thing where you kind of are worried about the ideas of like the biggest and best creative minds or like the ones that are like real

auateurs have to do IP now. like the director of weapons whose name escapes me. Jack Craigor. Yes. He felt the need to pitch to James Gunn for a DC movie whether or not that movie is going to get made.

You'd think that like such a rising star director like the stink of IP or like the stigma of IP still hasn't gone away because that's really what gets business done. And I'm curious as to where

Phoebe wants to really put this project in her lexicon's of things that she wants to say because she's obviously interested in things that, in the things that are going on in the world around us and like kind of the emotional state of being, I don't know, like a Tomb Raider or a international man of mystery

or a serial killer that falls in love with a detective. Yep, I think the things that are probably the most curious is how Amazon wants to make this long form. Because with the success of fallout, it's kind of unprecedented. The amount of prestige that fallout garnered with the amount of Emmy nominations and awards that it came with, there's a lot of pressure, I think, for Amazon to kind of be the one that gets video game adaptations right. We have the HBO's. We have the Last of Us's.

But as something to give us a good solid show in the vein of like the boys or even Fallout, this is something that Amazon actually might have an ace up its sleeve for because they seem to be able to do these things in a timely and relatively like by comparison to HBO inexpensive way. Yeah. And Zach Krieger, of course, is making a Resident Evil movie, which aligns with what we're talking about here. And yes, Phoebe is in her franchise era for sure with no time to die, which was good and successful. And she was attached to Mr. and Mrs. Smith until she wasn't. And then, of course, as an actor on the other side of the camera, she was in Solo, a Star Wars story, and Indian Jones and the Dial of Destiny two great movies that no one. Very good movies.

With me about, just a universal approval rating, as far as I'm aware, I'm glad you all agree. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And I'm interested to see what she does with this character. We've talked about the future of Tomb Raider before, both the games and the adaptations, suddenly a hot property. And a lot of these adaptations turn their source material into hot properties, too. There was a study published this week by a company called Ampure Analysis that looked at the effect of adaptations on the things they're adapting on how it drives engagement with the games and found that on average, there is 140% player growth tied to these adaptations. So we talk about the adaptations just on their own merits, and we cover that on this podcast. but also it does have an impact on the games and it can help resuscitate those franchises.

Now that 140% player growth, there are certain adaptations that are doing a lot of the lifting there. And so if Fallout comes out and is a sensation and The Last of Us is a huge hit, then that's going to drive a lot of growth. Not quite so much for borderlands, for instance, which according to this company's measurements, the movie somehow drove 20% increased engagement, with the Borderlands games, I guess that's good that it didn't sour people on the entire concept

of engaging with Borderlands in any medium. One thing that should drive player engagement with Borderlands is a new Borderlands game. Let's talk about Borderlands 4. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech.

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We haven't really talked about the Borderland games at any length on Buttmash because there just hasn't been a new one since we started this podcast. So a bit of Borderlands back ground for the non-gamers listening along and you can fill in any gaps I leave here. In addition to the numbered sequels to the 2009 original, there have been multiple spin-off shooters, multiple tales from the borderlands, graphic adventure games, plus expansion packs and DLC and mobile games. It's set in a future where planets are divvied up

by megacorporations, but no, it's not alien. It features a planet named Pandora. but no, it's not Avatar. There are lots of vaults, but no, it's not fallout, but there are a lot of elements of other familiar properties. It's a space western. It's known for its somewhat sophomoric humor, shall we say. It's comic book style visuals, it's online and offline co-op,

and its blend of first-person shooting and RPG elements, as well as some standout characters like the aforementioned Claptrap, the mascot comic relief voiced by who else Jack Black in the movie. The most famous antagonist in the series originally from Borderlands 2 is handsome Jack. If I had to summarize the state of the series, the reception to the main game so far, the first Borderlands was arguably the original looter shooter, or at least the first to really popularize that term in that gameplay. It's Halo or Doom meets Diablo.

You pick a class-based vault hunter, you shoot stuff, you get procedurally generated gear and treasure. So that was super influential, became the blueprint for a lot of later looters shooters. That's tough to say. And live service looters shooters. Then Borderlands 2 was probably the peak, both in terms of popularity, critical reception, one of the best-selling games of all time. Borderlands 3, still a massive sales success, but it was seen as something of a stagnation for the series. And then Borderlands 4 took several years to come out, which coupled with the movie bombing, put some pressure on this game to be good. Does that about sum it up? Is that where you guys

were with this series? And then we'll talk about whether this game turned out to be good. Steve, if you want to start? Yeah, I've had a very interesting relationship with this series. I think Borderlands 2 might be one of my favorite Diablo clones ever, not only because of how good and fun it was at the time, genuinely. But I think the multiplayer experience was something that was novel and really something that was enjoyed, especially for the era of like the ease of, like the generation of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 eras of the ease at which you can be online with your friends

from a home console. Genuinely, I think that was probably the first time that I really dove deep into organizing a party and getting on phone calls with my friends to play borderlands with each other. Yeah, that was a while ago. That was when people

called each other on the phone. And I was like, what do you mean discord? What is that? But I think in the aftermath of two, we've had like, genuinely, I love tales from the borderlands. the tale tale boom that was that game, it genuinely had a great story and an immersive way to kind of explain how this world works, which a lot of people that kind of barrel through the

campaign of any Borderlands game might not think to care about because you just think to shoot stuff and there are just crazy people in the desert that you're killing for, you know, whatever type of loot that you want. I think three was kind of terrible. And I think the public perception around its lead director, Randy Pitchford, has probably been the thing that has spoiled me the most on the franchise as a whole. Because not only did a game that was beloved into, not learn from any mistakes into, it seemed to double down on the things that we did not like from the mouthpiece,

the person at the center of its development, had a bit of a contempt for its own audience. and I really do not like that. It really rubs me the wrong way. When the person that is in charge of directing massive amounts of teams to get these done undermines the work of those teams just to be like, nah, fuck you, you don't know, you don't appreciate my vision, blah, blah, blah. And like, it's not even so much your vision as it is actively having a sort of contempt

for the people that have genuine critiques about your work. Yes. Pitchford is not the best pitchman for this series, really. I mean, he steps in it constantly. He's very active. He is constantly replying to people, which is good sometimes, but also not good at other times. I remember him tweeting through the reception to the Borderlands movie. And then earlier this year, when it looked like Borderlands Four was going to be 80 bucks, which mercifully, it is not. They walked that back. But there was a bit of a. a storm when he said essentially, if you're a real fan, you'll find a way to afford this game. He's basically just like grind for enough loot to buy borderlands more or less. So that wasn't great. All of which to say that he's even been stepping in it recently, that, you know, there have been a myriad of performance issues,

both on console and on PC with this game that have been loudly addressed by fans. And he's more or less been like, your expectations are, way too high and even in the most generous of terms, screw you for not liking this and not giving this a chance. Basically, you do it then.

And that's the level of getting to like my actual thoughts of the games. That's kind of in a microcosm how I feel about this game because in the time between Borderlands 3 and 4, we have had a myriad of games that have done

what Borderlands does. and in some cases quite a bit better. And when I see a Borderlands 4 come out, I really, really, really need a game that comes out to have something to say and have something new and novel to give us

because in a world where your formula caught fire and got a lot of attention for the right reasons for being a very good game, you should kind of want to capitalize on that. And that's where I kind of bump on this. it's so quick to get me right back into that grind and right back into those,

albeit fun, patterns of playing a Borderlands game. And I want to throw to Matt with this, I was like, did you feel like you were just playing the same decent game that you were playing maybe 10 years ago? I wish. Borderlands is always the appeal of it to me, much like you,

has always been the co-op experience. I'm big on co-op games. I've had my best friend who I've played through all of the mainline borderline games with over the years. And it's just kind of a fun game to hang out in the story and the humor is there. You can take it. You can leave it. It's a hangout game for me. It's let me catch up with my guy while we're blasting some stuff mindlessly and like pick up some loot.

maybe we'll find some good weapons that change the way that we approach things in this game. And it's been a very kind of satisfying experience over the years. And one which I am feeling more and more as the years go by, like maybe I am outgrowing. I'm certainly evolving at a greater rate than this series, I feel like. Do you have a grapple, though? I don't see you with a grapple hook. It's in the other room.

Okay. So, yes. I cannot believe that they were this late to the grapple. I know. I know. Sorry, continue. Am I enjoying Borderlands Four? Like, kind of, I don't think it is bad.

I just kind of feel like the magic of it has kind of faded for me and that this particular installment doesn't make anything better for me. It, in fact, kind of makes things worse. Like, you know, this has an open world in it, fully open world, which on one hand could be more engaging, but in my experience, has made it a little bit more overwhelming.

The areas in Borderlands games tend to be fairly large anyway, but still not being a completely open world had a bit more of a natural flow and direction to the areas, whereas in the open world, it is just expansive and overwhelming. And overwhelming is kind of the word that I keep coming back to and playing this game. My general experience of this game is trying to read three paragraphs

about what a weapon or modification that's lying on the ground does while two different characters are yelling at me and three different map markers are trying to get me to go in different directions. Is the shooting good? Like, yeah, sure, it's good. The enemies are tremendously spongy, but you sure can shoot them a lot, and the guns are cool, and they do cool things. And, yeah, I don't know, man.

I think it's just kind of faded for me. And nothing about for, including the performance issues, which I have experienced on the PS5, just two to three second lockups for no reason, seemingly. Nothing about the new elements is really doing it for me. Where are you at with it been? Yeah, I never know how much to fixate on performance problems. There are some significant ones here,

particularly on PC, but also on consoles, where Gearbox has been recommending regular restarts to avoid slowdown. That's basically the solution until they patch it, just turn it off and turn it back on again. That will help. It often does. But, you know, that's the sort of thing that if you're not listening to this podcast, the second it dropped or you get this game later, then that may have been fixed.

That's not necessarily core to the experience, though it's certainly something you should be wary of if you're heading into it on day one or day eight or wherever we are right now. Definitely seems like a game that could have used a little more time in the oven instead of a little less. Give it a couple more weeks instead of bumping it. forward because, yeah, it's pretty buggy. And there's some serious glitchiness and slow down here. But beyond that, I would say, I mostly agree with you.

I think you have basically captured the appeal such as it is of this series, which is that it can be fun to just brainlessly slaughter stuff. It's just the kind of game that hopefully you're playing with someone. If not, you could put a podcast on. Maybe you're playing Borderlands for right now and listening to Budmash. that's probably okay. And then you have like three voices at least talking. Right.

I crushed an audio book playing this game, by the way. It was really great. Yeah, you can mute border lens if you need to. I think you'll probably be okay. But you do just kind of shoot and watch the numbers go up and get shiny gear. And that definitely scratches some itch. And it has been a while since the last full-fledged borderlens game. And in its defense, it's not like completely.

reheated like they're serving the same thing that we had before. It's the same at the basic bedrock level. It's very recognizably Borderlands. But they've tried to mix up the formula in some ways, which you would hope after what, I mean, they started developing this game before Borderlands 3 came out, which was 2019. So you would hope that there'd be some new tricks. And there's a new setting.

It's a planet Kairos, not Pandora or a moon of Pandora. and there is, I'd say, improved mobility and navigation of the environment, and maybe some of this stuff was overdue. But there are a lot more ways to move than there used to be, whether it's the grappling hook, the glider, a vehicle. You can just sort of summon this thing wherever you are at any time. There's dashes and double jumps and slides. You can swim for the first time in the franchise, I think.

No instant drowning. So that's good. Swimming. Great. That's what we come to Borderlands for. Just, you know, take a dip, basically. But it reminds me at times of modern doom in its movement variety, just like in the number of ways you can kill stuff.

And it is somewhat overwhelming at times because it depends on your character, of course, in your class, but there are all kinds of upgrades, not just the gear, but special abilities and with the ways that you can move and then their enemy abilities and things that upgrade them. And so, you know, like there's, there's a decent amount of variety in the combat, like on a engagement to engagement level,

if not really on a larger level, because it is basically still a looter shooter. But, you know, it's the most open world that we've seen in this series. It's not the most open world because you do run into invisible walls sometimes. or I guess I should say invisible borders, even that we're talking about borderlands.

But there's that and like surfaces that you can't really climb or interact with that just kind of gate you in a weird way. But it's bigger and in some ways better, but I guess not in always. Maybe it's too much of a good thing or too much of the thing that was good years ago, but maybe the thrill has worn off. Are you finding the navigation systems a little bit difficult? I've been having issues with the way pointing a lot

where you'll set a marker and your little arrow path will show up on screen directing you where to go. And then you encounter an enemy or something else happens and that wayfinding just completely disappears until you get out of that area or kill the enemy that is next to you. And I just find that super frustrating. The most frustrating thing as far as navigation is concerned, Again, since this is an open world, it's consisting a lot of, okay, far off waypoint,

take your vehicle and follow your GPS path to get to that point. That trail that it illustrates through the map and through the game is on a cool down. So you can ping it, and once it pings, it sends it, and you see that yellow line. Like, if you ever played like Hogworks Legacy or anything like that, you just have that, like, like long piss trail that you follow throughout the world. But that line does not last long enough. It just fades away. And I'm like, okay, we'll hit the button again.

And it's like, br, br, brit, brit, brit. Like Google Maps when you're, like, driving somewhere. It doesn't just, like, fade away within 30 minutes. Better memorize this route. You get it. You get it. And it's the mere fact that, like, the line has to then be redrawn. And sometimes that line, the first line, doesn't fade away.

So you've got two lines intersecting all over, and it looks like a poorly etch-a-sketched GPS trail. It doesn't look great. And there's a lot of things that doesn't, like it feels like the game is getting in its own way for no good reason. Because after all of this time, I think the main reasons that,

like the big problems that I've had with, like, that you've illustrated kind of, Matt James, is the fact that when I'm looking at new loot, I still have to, to like look at the like green boxes versus the red boxes, see what numbers go up, what numbers go down. And I'm like, is this better? Like, am I getting shot at like two or three times

before I have to either kill this next person or just take it? Mark is one of those guns that won't shoot until you release the trigger? And I was like, there has to be a better way. There has to be a better way after all of this time to just like, okay, what if there's just like an ability that we all had that like, I kill everything and then I just like suck up all the loot in this area. And there's a very, and there's a good menu system that allows me to see everything that this stuff.

Like, there needs to be a better UI for me looking at my guns other than just, okay, Mark this is red. Mark this is red. Mark this is red. Go to vending machine sell. Yeah. I'm kind of torn about this, the inventory system because in some ways, like, it's always been overwhelming. And like, one of their dialbacks in this, it seems to be that that chests and rare chests are much more rare in this game. They're less,

you just see them less often, which I think is like the one dial back that I don't want in this game. No, yeah, give me the red chest. That's the cool thing. Like, I beat a big boss. I get a red chest.

Yeah. And so, like, dialing back like those rare chests, it is the worst change. you can make to me. Like, why don't you just give me, like, less garbage, like less green and blue things popping up all through the world and keep those chests being more common?

It's just like, man, I feel like border lens at least you'd have something fun to, like, open up that had a chance of being good. Now, like, with them more infrequent, it's even more disheartening when you open. open up some big box after beating a boss, and it's just all greens in there. It's just very deflating in that sense.

It's the mere fact that, like, for all of its flaws, I think Diablo Four actually has a very good system of throwing a bunch of loot at you that you can understand what it does. Granted, it's a lot more to take in. There's a lot more stats. There's a lot more things that interact with one another. But the sheer organization of all of those things

really counts for something for a game that is throwing so much stuff at you at any given point. And for a formula that is purely about optimization, DPS, and finding the best possible ways to execute your character, this is, like, it feels like something that should have been developed a long time ago.

And I haven't even gotten to the fact that the skills in this game are kind of tough to fully grasp. They're complicated. They're very complicated. Yeah. What class did you primarily go with, Ben? Did you try most of them?

I'm a tank at heart. So, okay. That's where I went with. But yeah, I mean, that was also, I guess, maybe not the best choice. I don't know, because that was very skill dependent. And, yeah, deciding how to stack those abilities and what the multiplayer, like, you know, I'm not much of a build crafter in general, I guess. So maybe it's just a bad fit for me if you are that type of person who wants to just

like min-max everything and figure out your damage and get your, and, you know, if you're playing with a group, I think if you develop complementary loadouts and characters and classes and everything, then that can work. Yeah, definitely. But, yeah, if you're playing solo a lot, then that doesn't deliver the same satisfaction. No. If you're playing solo, you should probably pick Vex who has that dog that draws agro. Yeah.

Or make some friends. Yeah. Or makes a brand. I mean, if you can. Yeah, it's tough. I chose the one that has, like, the auto guns that you use your special, and it just kind of, like, shoots anything nearby, which is great, because it's already complicated enough.

Let me just pick a skill that automatically does some stuff is how I felt. And I didn't regret that. I mean, I feel like I'm talking very negatively about this game. There are some things that I like about it. Like you said, the mobility, the way you hop on and off, the scooter works, like, pretty well in this open world. and the mobility changes, you do feel like, fairly capable of navigating all the environments pretty easily,

although there are some areas where your wayfinding is tossing you through an environment where you have to scale a large amount vertically, and it is not readily apparent how to do that, and the walk around if you don't do that, verticality can lead you in a very large loop while your navigations. Okay, I'm getting negative again. It is like a fun game. And I feel like I'm like being too negative in this pod on it

because I think if you just want to open it up and not think too much and it's fun. It's just, man, the things about it just don't click with me. And I want them to because I really have had great times with this series. Yeah. I do enjoy punching people though as Master Raymond, as I call it. call him, but the forge knight, he's a big hulking dude, and he can punch people, which is nice. But, no, it feels formulaic, and maybe that's fine for people who like the formula. Your complaint about the disappearing navigation lines, I'd prefer a game where I don't even want

navigation lines, where I just want to explore the open world, because there's something exciting around the next corner, and what will I stumble across next? And so usually I don't really like having my hand held to that extent unless I'm just on a deadline or something. And so the idea that it's not good enough at telling me exactly where to go at all times, like maybe that's part of the problem that we wanted to tell us where to go. But that's so fascinating. I never felt like the Borderland series is one that prompts exploration. No, me neither.

And especially in an open world game where you want to explore, one would want to explore. I found myself being like, no, no, no, give me every mission. Give me all the missions. Now I go to the waypoint. I want to go to this waypoint so I can shoot my stuff, so I can get my stuff, and then go back and cash in to get XP and money. Yes. Yeah, what I mean is that part of the benefit of moving to an open world,

maybe, is that you get that appeal of the exploration. And so if that's not really something that you're looking for from the series, then maybe the impact of that is pretty blunted. So it's bigger, but maybe diminishing returns. And I don't know, maybe it's not just a Borderlands issue. Maybe it's just looter shooter fatigue in general. Because I was thinking about some of the destiny similarities here. And I think you could say that Borderlands was a big influence on destiny and kind of pioneered that genre.

And, you know, Borderlands was not really a live service game, but it sort of established the model for future live service games and then maybe kind of turned into one itself. But now it feels like borderlands after having helped give rise to destiny is now learning from destiny or copying destiny. Even though Destiny 2 is struggling these days too, it just the destiny influence here feels fairly strong to me just with that sort of seamless open world, with the vehicle use where you can just summon essentially a sparrow. I guess it's a digi runner, but same difference. and the gliding and the world design and the movement and the UI and the Echo 4 companion is very destiny-ish. So I don't know, maybe they're hoping to peel off people who have been stuck playing Destiny 2 for a long time and now are sick of that too. So is there a reintention of this formula or is it just, yeah, we saw what this is and it was fun. And maybe it's still fun.

Maybe if you haven't played, you haven't been back to a borderlands game. in several years, then maybe your appetite has built up again, and there's some pent-up demand there. Or maybe this will be your first borderlands. And if it is, then that will probably be fun because you won't be jaded and cynical because you've played borderlands before. But if the idea is, did this completely reinvent the wheel so that if you were sort of bouncing off at borderlands or just hiring of it, this will bring you back and hook you like the first time? No, but not everyone is looking for that. I'm not sick of loot because Path of Exile 2 is a Diablo clone where you get a ton of loot and random drops.

And that is a super great game. So it's not that. I do think it might be borderlands fatigue. That movie really took it out of me. And as Steve, you're saying, the Randy Pitchford stuff has been draining to keep track up. At one point, he recently had been quoting support information from, like, statistics of how many people are calling into their support hotline and that the number of people who are doing so and complaining about the game performance is actually like super low. To which my response is just kind of like, when in the history of video game playing, of my entire life, have I encountered a video game problem

that then led me to pick up a phone and call someone? Like, how is that a realistic metric? Not since the Nintendo Power Hotline, probably. Yeah, exactly. Not since it was like a 900 number that my parents wouldn't let me call before even magazines started putting game help in them. Yeah.

I feel drained by the series even before I boot the game up. And I think it's important to remember that if you're listening to this and you're someone who doesn't have borderlands experience, like you said, Ben, this could be a great place to hop in. For us, players who've been on the ride for a long time, it might be time for us to hop off. Yeah. And this is extremely online, sicko-gamer stuff to some extent, too,

because most people who are playing this game probably do not know who Randy Pitchford is. And also, we know based on the box office that most of them did not see the Borderlands movie, which was wise. So that movie made $15 million in this country. So that was our bad. I mean, we did it for content to some extent so that we could do a button mesh about it. But if that soured you on the franchise, that's user error. That's a skill issue, perhaps. So we can, we can.

Thanks, Randy. The movie was, yeah, blame the victim of Borderlands movie. but, you know, we don't have to hold the game accountable for the movie's mistakes necessarily, but I feel that fatigue too. Right. I wouldn't exactly count the Borderlands movie terrible as it was against this because bad video game adaptations have been around since time in the wariam. I still love Prince of Persia. I still love Doom.

I still love Assassin. I don't really love Assassin's Greek. But still, like, it doesn't hinder any of their success. It doesn't hinder any of their success. doesn't hinder any of those that success. If anything, it would buoy it. If anything, regardless of how bad that thing is, regardless of how bad, the Call of Duty movie is probably going to be. There's still going to be a lot of people that play Call of Duty after this. There's still going to be a lot of movie skins that are made from it. And at the end, it kind of feels like a distraction

from the actual thing that we want to be good, which is the game of itself. And yes, the things that are good in this game are pretty nice, but it only gets so far. And at the end of the day, I just want to shoot my stuff and play my audiobooks. Hey, it's pretty great for that. Yeah. I just think the movie, like, more than, like, usually there's a bad video game adaptation. You throw your hands up and go, oh, well, anyway, back to playing the game.

Order Lance, the movie, did something to my brain that I can't really shake off. Really? Yeah. Was it like mean-spirited movie making? The humor of the series? it just instantly revealed its flaws to you or something. It just kind of burrowed into my brain, and I can't fully exercise the demons of that movie

when the word borderlands comes up. Yeah. Good job on that one. I think the person that you should really talk to is at Randy Pitchford on Twitter. Yes, he will probably reply. He can really help. I've heard he's very understanding. Maybe he can quote it me some stats of all of the people

who called in after seeing the movie to give feedback on the movie as you do whenever you see a movie. This was the biggest inauguration ever, energy. Yeah, I don't need to know more about your past, your adolescent 900 number calling. You can save that for button mash after dark. But no, I think, you know,

if you're just hopping on board, this is not a bad place to begin. It's borderlands, it's backgrounds. It's something you put on to kind of tune out and enjoy just the kinetic button mashing to use a term that is familiar to our listeners. You know, it's just, that's what it is. And it's not that much more.

And if you were hoping for more, then maybe that's disappointing. But I think it's fine for what it is and what probably most people want it to be. And it's been received more or less that way, not overwhelmingly warmly, but, you know, warmly enough, I guess. And it's also not a bad place to begin. I mean, story-wise, yeah, there are ties and callbacks, but. you could start here. It tells its own sort of standalone story,

and it's not a bad one. And, you know, sometimes there are more serious aspects to it while still retaining that borderlands silliness. Some of the new characters are cool. So, you know, it's not a Reeve review that we're giving here. But I think we're focusing on maybe just this feeling of the charm wearing off. It's an us problem to some extent.

I think it is. Yeah. Or, yeah, maybe as you said, Matt, We are just so highly evolved now that we have moved beyond borderland. I think so. More or less, we're so sophisticated. We're so mature that we've just outgrown this series. That's what's happening here.

It feels like the like the guy still wearing his Letterman jacket and his class ring at the bar telling the same story. And we're like, yeah, it's fun, but now it kind of feels sad. I'm not like, it's not like I'm above anything that's going on in this game, except maybe the humor. I'm definitely above the humor. Fuck that humor. The humor, okay, the humor is not as bad as it was. It's not as bad as it was.

No, they've turned it down. And in Borderlands, too, it was very much of the time, 2010's millennial, like, joy puk your face off level stuff that we did tolerate. I'm not going to let society let that go that, like, this was the hit thing. People love this. But, like, the things that. really are good about the Borderland series are still there. Like the combat and the switching between different kinds of guns for different kinds of functions and like the moment to moment gameplay

being exciting. That's all still here. But there are games similar to this that I would rather be playing. Like there's a game that just came out. I think it's called Metal Eden, which is a highly the mobile shooter that I played the demo for on PS5, that if there weren't so many games coming out right now, I would have bought that full game to play it because that has a similar adrenaline rush, gunplay and mobility while doing some things that feel interesting to me in terms of the shields of the enemies

and how you get past those all while considering traversal in the arena. I like this kind of border lens gameplay. I really do. It's the thing surrounding it that I can't really escape while I'm playing. Yeah. Still just delightfully weird weapons in this game, and so many of them, almost an infinite number. And sometimes you just want comfort food.

I mean, I cried at the Downtonabie movie. So who am I to say that people do not? final one. It was. I hear you. I almost cried at the borderline. It was the grand finale. For different reasons.

It was a very grand. Lady Mary's doing Lady Mary's finale. I know spoilers. I don't think that qualifies a spoiler. To be clear. I know spoiler culture has gone too far, but stuff seems not for doubt.

I want the best for the crawlies, of course. Okay. One game I would not describe as comfort food is Hollow Night Silk Song, no matter how much you like it. Comforting is not the adjective I would use. Matt and I talked about this game at length last week, and we promised that we would come back to it and give some additional thoughts after we had poured even more hours into the game, which we have, and Steve wasn't with us so he can weigh in here. Matt, you have finished the game. You have beaten Silk Song and gotten the true ending here. I have not.

Yet I have spent many more hours playing it, but I've run into a bit of a wall, one might say. So we're going to give our second thoughts here, second in the sense that this is the second time talking about it, but also perhaps some second thoughts in terms of the difficulty level and how we feel about it. So Matt, you've seen it all now. So why don't you give your more or less final verdict? All right. I think it's a phenomenal, phenomenal game. I think it lived up to the hype. I can't really believe the scale of it. It is way bigger, way longer than I anticipated it being. I think that it has elements of it that are absolutely brilliant. I think it tells an interesting story and an even more interesting setting. It's filled with tiny little

details that show how much the developer cares about this world and these characters. It has brilliant boss fight mechanics. It has reinvented the control scheme in the series in a way that breeds new life into it, the mobility of Hornet versus what you experience in Hollow Night is different enough to give it way more life while simultaneously feeling familiar. I think it's an incredible experience. I have a couple issues with it. that take it from essentially like a high nine,

maybe even 10 score down to a low 9 score for me. And I think that the primary criticism that I have of the game as someone who got good and beat the entire thing is that it's too hard. And I say that fully know. I put the time in on this game. I beat the actual last boss. It took me several hours to get through.

I felt that that fight in particular was actually very fair. And I learned the move set little by little. I programmed my reactions to all of these moves to the point where I can do the first two phases of that fight now without getting hit fairly consistently. and that boss probably took me four hours. I didn't really have a problem with how hard it was is the very last boss of the game.

There are other bosses that I have huge issues with. And in terms of why I think this game is too hard, it is just like, if I spent four hours beating that final boss, which I did, and I felt very satisfied beating it, I would have felt the same satisfaction spending two hours, three hours, beating that boss. And I don't think it's too difficult to beat.

I just think the difficulty is at a level that is negatively impacting my experience without me really gaining anything from that extra tinge of difficulty that they've injected into it. If it were, you know, 10, 20%, 30%, easier somewhere in there, I still would have felt a tremendous challenge, tremendous sentence of accomplishment. And I think it's just tuned a bit too hard. And I think a lot of people are going to fall off this game.

Yeah. And I think that's a real shame because I think there's a very poetic sort of message about perseverance and confidence in yourself in this game. And you don't really experience, that if you fall off this game and don't beat it. Just the opposite, in fact. Yeah. Yeah, the way that you put this to me when we were chatting online the other days,

I've never spent more hours actively not enjoying a game, I think, is great. Which I think was a pretty good way of putting it. Because I identify. I want to get your thoughts on this, Steve. But I feel the same way. I admire this game. I appreciate this game. I really like this game.

It has delivered some super. super satisfying triumphant moments, but I can't honestly say that I love Silk Song because it's just hard to love. It feels like it doesn't want to be loved or I have to pass too tough a test to earn its love. I feel like it doesn't respect my time maybe as a way of putting it.

And maybe this is a me problem, I guess also just the stage of life that I'm in. And I'm not playing this game in the way, that I think it would ideally be played. I'm trying to juggle five different games that we're about to talk about. And so one eye is on the clock and then there's real life and fatherhood and, you know, things that get in the way of gaming. Yes.

Fatherhood is hard mode for all games. Yes. Yes. Yes. It's really, it's the final boss of finding time to play video games. And so maybe I'm just not at the right stage. Like, if I could play this game at my leisure, it would still be frustrating. because it's not a game that you can just pick up and play for a short session and feel confident

that you'll accomplish anything because you might very well not and you'll just be banging your head against the wall. But I got to the breaking point for me and we're not breaking up to be clear. We're just taking some time apart, me and Sulk Song. And I hope that we can find our way back to each other. I do want to finish it at some point when we get past this other gauntlet of games. but I got to one gauntlet in the region called high halls. So for those who haven't played, gauntlets are these locked rooms that you enter without much warning in many cases.

And then you're kind of trapped in them and there's just wave after wave after wave of enemies. And this one was particularly cruel. This one, I don't know if it's like, it's 10 waves, nine waves, 11 waves, depends how you classify it exactly. But just when you think, surely, this must be the end, then there's three more, right?

And maybe I'm not using the best strategy or something. I don't know. I'm sure there's probably a better way. I read that you can get NPC assistance if you do certain things, which is one of the cool things about Soxong is that you can trigger these accompanied battles. If you do certain things, I wasn't aware of that with this particular fight until I went online to look for people who I could commiserate with, basically. I didn't know about that.

either though, Ben. Yeah, Redditors who were also extremely pissed off by High Hall's Gauntlet, and there are many of them. So that might make it a bit easier, but this it just crossed the line into frustrating and maddening. I'm a pretty

even-tempered fellow, but this game just made me mad a lot of the time. Oh my God. It's just to me, I'm hulking out while I'm playing Soxong. It stinks because the stuff in between that, I really love.

And yet I'm playing with this constant sense of apprehension, really. I'm playing scared. Yeah. Because I never know when I'll run into one of those difficulty spikes. You know, between them, it's fine, and I'm enjoying the exploration, and it's such a huge world and intricate. But then, without warning, you stumble into one of these bosses or battles that will just take you hours and hours, which might translate to day.

and days of playtime. And meanwhile, you're not really getting anywhere. And we talked last time about the frustration with the runbacks and just all the little impediments that this game imposes aside from the fact that just the bosses are hard. That in itself is not bad. That can be good. That can be satisfying. Sometimes that makes it all worthwhile.

But all the other stuff that just adds to the difficulty of it eventually has repelled me. or I had to put it down for a time and say, I will come back to you when I'm ready. And maybe when you've nerfed some stuff, we'll see. It doesn't sound like they're going to. They did do a patch and they nerfed a few things, but that wasn't the primary goal.

Actually, the developers talked about it this week and addressed the difficulty. They were asked about it. And they said that, you know, you were talking about how much more mobile Hornet is than the night. And they essentially said, well, we had to make the enemies harder because Hornet is more powerful and more capable. and more capable. And that's true. I'm sure that's true on some level. Yeah. But it's not a proportionate

scaling of difficulty in my mind. It just feels much harder. And so if we're having this hard and at times frustrating an experience with it, then I just wonder a first time player, someone who didn't play Hollow Night, someone who's just getting on board here, it's hard for me to imagine than surviving this. And just real quickly, you know, it's not up to every game development. to make a game that has to be beloved by everyone, right? It's okay to make a game that's for a certain niche audience. There's nothing wrong with that, right? So, like, I, yeah, like, I'll say it's too hard,

but at the same time, like, I respect the vision, you know? Like, if you want to make a really hard game like this, like, good. Like, we need all kinds of games, you know? Yeah. Yeah, there's the Eldon Ring effect. were talking about last time, where because Hollow Night was such a sensation, it is massively mainstream, and then

that opens it up to this discourse, this conversation. Whereas if this were niche, they didn't choose to put it on Main Street. Right. Like, they're making their game. And I think, you know, we've heard an interview. And people really like their games. Yeah. We've heard we've heard in interviews how like they weren't even paying attention to the hype cycle. Really, they just had their heads

down making this game, which is good. And that's the way. I found that very hard to believe. It's been seven years. You didn't hear that people universally renowned Hollow Night. I mean, you didn't get word. Head down, just working on making this game impossible. But Steve, based on some of the sounds

you've been making here, it sounds like you think we suck at Silksong. No, no, I don't think you suck at Silk Song. I've only played like about maybe four hours of Silk Song. I'm very much... So one boss, basically. Yeah, about one and a half bosses. And I'm like,

okay, I'm having a good time. is nice. It's challenging, but like, I'm learning. I'm getting good. This is, it's wonderfully made and gorgeous to behold. And I haven't exactly had the time that you guys had to dive that deep into it. But I'm very concerned now that this is like this is. Yoda.

You will be. You will be. Like, almost bullshit. From soft level. Except that I feel like they're in comparison with FromSoft games where you can kind of always find a way to deal with a boss, right? Maybe it's a different build. Maybe you're using summons.

I feel like in Silk Song, the only real, like, modifications you can make are ones to your tools. But, like, really, essentially, there's no getting around, like, having to learn the fight and deal with it. There are fewer avenues around a difficult encounter than there are in From Soft Games.

Yeah. And one thing we said, last time and the developers also said is that you can go do other stuff. And there is so much stuff to do and there is so much to explore. Yeah. And this is this is the opposite of what we were just saying about borderlands where we want it to hold our hands more. Soxong doesn't. I mean, it's it's more directed than the original Hollow Night. At least there's a goal, you know, where you're supposed to go. But it's pretty opaque at times exactly what sequence. And that's by design. Yeah. And that's a good thing. It is. You want to find your way through this and be a little

lost at times. And it is a little like Eldon Ring in that sense and that there is this more open world and you can do things in all different sequences. And if you get stuck on something, you can go do other stuff and maybe that stuff will make you stronger. But I've done a lot of that. And then occasionally you run into something like High Hall's Gauntlet, which is not an optional fight seemingly. And I am just stymied. Yeah. So yeah, you're in for a rough ride, Steve. And maybe it will ultimately be worth it. But But, Matt, your playtime when you beat it was 85 hours you sent me a screenshot. I mean. Yeah.

And that was, I'm sure there's some idle time in there as well. But I didn't look anything up for this game until I'm trying to figure out how to not spoil this. I rolled credits. And then in order to get to the stuff that I needed to get to after that point, I had to look something up. And then it turned out I didn't have much to do at all at that point, but I had to look that up. But I played the majority of this game not looking anything up, and there's some idle time in there.

So 85 for the full completion, I think I was around 60 when I rolled credits. And that was, I explored every nook of the map that I could find. I did all of the side missions before I rolled credits. So that is a very, like, like high-end. estimate of how long the game takes. I don't think most people play as obsessively as I do to find every

little thing. So don't get scared away by that playtime. And of course, there were fights that I was stuck in for hours. Right. That's the thing. A lot of that playtime is the same play over and over again. Yeah, just in that zone of trying to get good at a fight. And I think I really came away from this game. feeling like I had, and I've played plenty of From Soft games, but playing this game and thinking about this whole difficulty,

dialogue and, and get good and everything, I kind of realized that like, get good, this game taught me that what that feels like isn't like putting your nose to the grindstone and like, summoning all your rage and like being aggressive and what it feels more like is more of like a Zen feeling

and of a patience and of a tucking away all of that rage and just a calm focus. And that's the state that I finished this game in. Like when I was on hour three of that end boss, I was just like, all right, and came back to the game, sat down at my desk with the switch, to in my hands and was like,

I'm not going to beat this right now, but I'm going to put in some reps, right? Like I'm going to keep programming my brain for these attacks. And I kind of like put some music on and just was just kind of chilling out, being

like, even if I don't beat this, I'm still making progress at this point. And that's when I managed to break through and beat that fight, which is funny because I was at time using the switch to D-pad when I beat the end boss of this game, which is hilarious, because I've been playing this mostly on the pro controller with an actual D-pad.

So I just have, I feel like I've learned a new level of like patience and calms in confronting difficult scenarios from this game. But I'm trying to like extrapolate to like how I can use this new superpower in my regular. life. We'll see how that goes. The new Zen, Matt James, just ready for anything that confronts you in life now that you have finished Silk Song. I aspire to that. We'll see if I get there. But yeah, too often I'm on tilt while I'm playing this and just thinking, why won't you let me love you? Because I really like a lot of things about this game. Stop punishing me for my affection for you. It feels

unrequited at times. There's just so much that I like and want to enjoy. without just feeling like I am made to suffer. That's my lot in life. So we'll probably revisit this yet again, I would imagine, on the end of year pod, when we talk about Game of the Year and decide whether this difficulty is a problem when it comes to ranking this game on end of year list.

But absolutely, you should play it for the experience. And hopefully you will enjoy that experience. It will not scar you psychologically forever. but be aware that that might happen to. Okay. Thanks for listening, my mashers. Thanks to you, Matt, and to Steve for joining me on this journey that we've taken today. This has been fun.

Yeah, thanks for having us, man. Yeah, it's a blast. Got by that rough start. Sorry again for the intro, but glad you guys. And we would have forgotten about it. It stuck with me. We've worked it out together. Stay tuned for continuing cover.

of Gen V, Alien Earth, Peacemaker, and more on the Ring of Verse and House of R. Look for more button mash next week when we will tackle Heddies 2 and Silent Hill F. You can contact us at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com. You can start submitting your nominations for the September edition of Ringiverse Recommends to Ringiverse Recommends at gmail.com. Thanks to Devin Rulado for producing this podcast and to Arjuna Ramgapal for letting us mash more than usual during this onslaught of big games. Until next time, may all your loot be legendary. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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