Triforce! - Triforce! #180: The Steam Store Dredge

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Triforce! Episode 180! Lewis doesn't think he's cool enough to hang out with HatFilms, Pyrions been getting some questionable games in his Steam Store and Sips just want games to end, for crying out loud. Go to http://expressvpn.com/triforce today and get an extra 3 months free on a 1-year package! Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Good morning. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Triforce podcast from lovely sunny England. Wow. It's so nice now. It's raining here. What happened to this place? Yeah, it's come. It's like living in a different country. Yeah, smells different. The people are different. They look different to me. They're stealing my jobs. I see where this is going. I see where this is going. Well, I've been enjoying this sunshine. You're having one of those midlife crises where you're just like... You blame foreigners. Yeah, you're becoming more conservative and more racist. It's the mid-year crisis where I'm like, why is it not like this the whole year round?

Like, I've been sitting in the park. Yeah. I've been reading my book. Right. It has been beautiful. I've been drinking fruity cider outside of pubs however just to reiterate it is currently raining here so i can't really join in oh don't worry it'll get not we had that little bit of rain yeah it blew past us in like 20 minutes

it's it's light but i'm going to kew gardens today which means it's going to rain when we're in kew gardens well you do know that we're in England, so it's always sunglasses and umbrella, the combo. True, true. You know, you can never fully trust that sunny day. Yeah. You know, those black clouds could roll in any minute and shit on everything. So I had a nice day yesterday.

I went and hung out with Hat Films in their warehouse, which I did, so this is the second time i visited and uh we did some we did some weird fun painty challenges it was nice it's like i've suddenly got this little extra group of friends who are very um they're very rude i don't know it's like my mom wouldn't approve of them do you know what i mean like oh you're not gonna go and play with those hat films boys again are you and i'm like please you're not gonna go and play with those hat films boys again are you and i'm like please mom i want to go and play with that fails they're like no no they're bad influence you come back from hat films and you're all sweary you're talking about uh you're making

risque jokes you know yeah i feel like did you remember at school there was always a group of kids who seemed to be much more mature not not just cool, but they seemed to realize that everything else that was happening at school was boring and for idiots. And so they just sort of met up and had their own cool things going on on the sly. There was a group of guys like that at my school and they just didn't get involved in anything. They always seemed to be doing some extracurricular thing of their own. Like they had a band or they had some group that would meet would meet up and everything and you know they they were just very cool all the parties they talked about it was only them that went they knew loads of girls and i was just like damn i want to get in with those guys like they seem cool but uh i was happy with my

dnd nerd friends right no well i i am too but i i i i i also though i felt a bit like a square i felt like my mom would give me a packed lunch and stuff and sent me off to sort of make friends, in a sense, as well, because I brought with me, after last week, I brought with me a list of the things that I noticed that they didn't have. So I stole a bunch of stuff from the office. I ordered some stuff on Amazon. So it was like bin bags, kitchen roll, wet wipes.

I bought like a respirator. I bought just loads of cleaning supplies. Right. I also bought them a dartboard as like a gift, I guess. Because I felt like they could put a dartboard on the wall, which they liked. So that was a nice gift. Yeah.

And I think they actually preferred the bin bags more. The thing about it is it's kind of a bit of a boys club, the Hat Films warehouse. It's a bit smelly. It's a bit, like, kind of grimy and really dirty. And there's, like, just wood shavings and bin bags full of shit everywhere. They actually liked the bin bags the most. And we filled up, like, three bin bags full of stuff.

The thing is, like, it had this kind of sour milk, like some horrible rotten food smell coming from somewhere. We didn't really know where it was coming from. But Al Smithy kept smelling it the whole day. And he was like, is that bin bag there? And I was like, I don't think it is, because I've been smelling that bin bag. I don't think that's where the smell's coming from anyway.

We didn't really make that much of an effort to locate the smell or really think that much about it. But later on in the day, Al Smithy was complaining about it again. And he took a big gulp of his coffee and was like, because it was one of those sealed Starbucks cups. And he realized he'd just picked up one of them off of the middle table. And that was obviously one that had been sat there for about six months. God.

It slowly turned to cheese. He could have got very ill. He could have got very ill. He may in fact be ill right now as we're speaking. The thing is he took a big swig of it thinking and then knew something was wrong because it was obviously like stone cold. But obviously also the other thing was he going through his mind is on my this must be paint water and the other thing is he didn't want to just spit it and spray it everywhere he just wanted he wanted to spit it into something else it's hard to spit it back into those starbucks cups

through that little hole so so he's like running to the bathroom with this mouth full of fetid like cheese that is so disgusting but the thing is it was it smelled so rancid like through the whole day we all we all knew what that smells and we because he was so confident it was from the bin that the the the sort of the just the that trap coffee cup lying in that those those coffee cups with the lids on you never know what's inside them i'm always it's like i i don't really drink out of cans anymore because when i was like a student i used to drink a lot of coke cans you know and i remember the same thing happened to me you know i left this like i'd obviously left an old coke can somewhere for ages god knows how long it's probably full of spider webs and like i don't know god mold what grows on a coke probably nothing nothing. It's probably just normal Coke, actually.

It probably wasn't a problem. But, you know, you get in your mind the idea of what could have grown in that Coke can. Like, how disgusting could it have gotten in there? And then I just took a big old gulp of it. So, yeah, I don't really... I like to see what I'm drinking. Yeah. Because a lot of the times you don't look down.

Like, I was taking a picture of my cider the other day at the pub and as i took a picture like man what a world we live in eh i was taking a picture of my cider at the i almost missed that sentence it was so banal jesus christ the are you like 15 years old why are you taking a picture of your cider at a pub? Well, you know. By the way, we've been calling him the midlife crisis guy. We were like, take a photo of your phone. It's a way to communicate. I don't send emojis.

I just send like pictures of my surroundings. That's the easiest way to do it. Because it's so fascinating to see a picture of a cider. Well, my mum sends me pictures of what she's up to all the time. You know, going to a garden centre and hanging out with my dad in the garden you know like it's it's garden related usually but it's nice it's interesting you know what we were talking about video games just before you you were you got back and we started the podcast no wait hang on a sec though what were you taking you're taking a picture of your cider and then what? Sorry, where was this leading? A bird shitted my cider

right at that moment. He's a critic. He is a critic. Good stuff. He hated me as well. Oh, fuck me, man. He thought. Oh, that's good.

Yeah. That's great. Oh, God. So, I have been recommended a game. This is on my Steam store. Right. Along with some other ones. I've got... Let me see what I've got. I've got... This is on my Steam store, along with some other ones. I've got, let me see what I've got.

I've got, this is on my list of new releases. There's Necromunda Hired Gun, which looks kind of, it's a first person shooter vaguely in the Warhammer universe and, or 40K universe, and it's kind of shooty and all that kind of stuff.

There's a game called Solasta Crown of the Magister, which looks like a sort of D&D-ish RPG, which doesn't look too bad. There's a few other thingsasta Crown of the Magister, which looks like a sort of D&D-ish RPG, which doesn't look too bad. There's a few other things. And then Love Stories, Sex and the Furry Titty. That's the name of the game. Is this on Steam?

This is on Steam. And the picture that pops up is of a dude getting a tit job from a fox woman, and he's jizzing all over her tits. Now, it says this game is marked adult only you're seeing this game because you've set your preferences to allow this content because there are a lot of games that are adult only that are not pornography just straight up porn yeah this is revolting why why am i looking at this steam why am i looking at this i i don't want to see this because uh

you've bought previous titles i have never and you bought anything like this. The secret games list that nobody else can see. This is an absolute lie. Do you know what it might be? Some comedian gifted me one of these games about seven years ago. You're right. It's number one on the new and trending. I'm seeing it as well. It's disgusting.

It should not exist. Hang on. I've got to check this. But this stuff sells, man. Sex has always sold ever since Roman times. This isn't sex. When they had the dicks on the paving slabs of Pompeii and stuff. This is cartoons and bestiality combined. What's this one called? Love Stories, Sex and the Furry Titty.

I don't have that on my top seller, actually. I heard a theory this week that it was that chick from Goof Troop that made everyone into furries. It seeded that furry. You're right. I think you're right, actually. What's Goof Troop? You've never seen Goof Troop? No.

I'm forward to the Goof Troop. Let's have a look. Yeah. Goof Troop. Oh, it's got Goofy in it. What's her name? Roxanne. troop oh it's got goofy what's her name roxanne goof troop is a um there was like a um a cartoon television series that starred goofy and uh somehow somebody had decided to have children

with goofy because he has a son named max in it and uh his neighbors uh his neighbor is like uh what's his neighbor like it's like a keeping up with the joneses kind of guy he's like a... What's his neighbor like? It's like a keeping up with the Joneses kind of guy. He's like a grumpy middle-aged guy, but he has like the big RV and he's got the nice pool and everything. And his son is friends with Goofy's son and they're called the Goof Troop and they just do everything together.

He's a single father. They go on wild adventures like camping. Goofy had a kid. And Mrs., whoever he humped uh fucked off and left him with the kid that story is not mentioned at all no the series focuses on the relationship between single father goofy and his son yeah yeah this was made in the 90s so it was kind of relevant at the time like divorce rates were definitely higher than they'd ever been you know single single moms and single dads were a lot more common than they'd than they'd ever been you know single single moms and single dads

were a lot more common than they'd than they'd been especially like in like in the middle classes i guess which is what uh goofy and and max and his neighbor seemed to be like middle upper middle class yeah and this is the sad part a large portion of the show's humor comes from max's relatively normal personality sharply contrasting with his father because if your dad is goofy yeah and you're relatively normal that's like having a dad who's just like his brain was fried like he did so much acid back in the back in the 60s yeah now he's a single father yeah and goofy's just like oh dude man why am i tripping over stuff and he's just like oh dude max tripping over stuff and he's like dad please just sit down friends coming over dad could you please go upstairs

just hear him crashing around up there yeah it's just my dad who's drunk he's just crazy that's a good take lewis the girl from uh goof troop it's got to be that's got to be the one of the contributors to the whole movement right i'm gonna look up on wikipedia what it says about furry fandom accidentally furried up a bunch of people and ever since it's gone just gotten worse right in 1976 a pair of cartoonists created the amateur press association Vootie, which was dedicated to animal-focused art. Many of its featured works contained adult themes, such as Omaha the Cat Dancer, which contained explicit sex. Right. So this sort of built up from there.

According to a fandom historian, Frank Patton, the concept of furry originated at a science fiction convention in 1980. at a science fiction convention in 1980. I feel like, you know, although I'm a big fan of Robert Crumb, he has quite a lot of anthropomorphic stuff in his work. Fritz the Cat was a prime example of that. Yes. That happened in the 70s. And I wonder if that was also a part of that. What was the movie about Crumb?

It was called Crumb. Oh, it was actually called Crumb. What was the other one that I keep getting confused with thinking that it was about crumb it was the one american splendor he's he's yeah maybe it's that and then there's that other one that had um it was like nicholas cage was in it or something it was called uh fuck i can't remember with and it was about robert crumb no it wasn't about crumb but i always think that it that it is i always get like the whole sort of there's like three or four movies and like two of them are to do with crumb and then two of them are not but like i always assume that they're like i always get them mixed up for some reason i don't know why it's like they came out like early 2000s or something and

i always get them all american splendor came out 2000 2003 yeah and that had Paul Giamatti in. I was a fan of the American Splendor comics before that, I must say. Nice, nice. They're obviously influenced by... Well, it's weird, actually. Harvey Pekar is not a very interesting figure in terms of his life. He collects old jazz records.

He works as like... What does he do? He works in a hospital as basically like an administrator. He does a lot of filing and stuff. Right. He's generally pretty miserable. And he does a lot of comic book stuff where he has a story and he meets a lot of comic book artists and gets them to write a story. Robert Crumb's done some for his. Loads of people have done stuff for him. It's interesting. Paul Giamatti does a good job of playing Harvey Picard. And Pekar appears in the film. So it's kind of weird.

But yeah, it's a strange thing, American Splendor. It's very, very strange. But yeah, that whole Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar and all those guys, that sort of alternative comic scene, I was a big fan of all that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But the Robert Crumb movie is excellent. His brothers were even crazier than he was.

Because he's a deeply, weird guy yeah it wasn't he didn't he do like lots of uh like like he had like a drawing style like he would draw females but they would always have like there was there's quintessential sort of uh elements to each of his drawings like he always women they were always big or and but like yeah i don't know it was i can't remember all of it he drew like i've got a ton of his stuff and the the artwork in i mean he's first of all he's a brilliant artist he really is yeah um and there's a scene in in crumb where he's teaching his son and they're drawing the same woman they've got a picture of a woman this is from like the wild west sort of era the frontier era and she'd been arrested for something you know and they had her mug shot and everything uh or something like that it was some picture like that and his son has

done a brilliant brilliant drawing but robert crumb has captured something else about her that means that his is slightly better like there's some essence to what he's drawn that really captures her expression and her attitude and stuff like that and his son is a brilliant artist but isn't quite there and there's something about robert crumb's art style that is unique yeah and brilliant um but yeah so he did loads of stuff and he was his his comics were really really filthy and he had his his ideal woman was very tall had very powerful thighs big powerful butt and huge boobs and um he seemed to like quite long hair as well and he talks about how this stems from he he when he was a And he seemed to like quite long hair as well.

And he talks about how this stems from, when he was a kid, he had an aunt who had very big thigh-high boots and he would cling to them, like he would sit across them, like he's sort of mounting her boots while she was wearing them. And that was a big kink for him. But in the comics, the thing is,

he's not being dominated by these women. He wants to be, he wants to dominate these big women. I think that that's his thing. Cause he does all kinds of weird comics. Well, he manages it in the comics. I saw a talk with him. I saw a talk with him in London. Me and my mate went to see him. This was about 10 years ago. And Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist was interviewing him and he was very nervous. He obviously doesn't like talking in front of a room full of people. Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, was interviewing him. And he was very nervous. He obviously doesn't like talking in front of a room full of people. Steve Bell's questions were not the best. And at the end, when it had finished, he just goes, we done?

All right, cool. And he tries to jump off the stage. But there was like a little sort of barrier around. So he sort of vaulted over this barrier, almost fell off the stage, made a bit of a tit of himself, and then just ran backstage. That was the end of Robert Crumbly. That was the end of the show. It really weird yeah yeah he was some people are some people are a bit sort of uh chaotic like that right like they just like you you can you can sense how nervous they are and then everything just seems to socially go wrong for them like oh

man like it escalates goes wrong and i mean i i don't know if like i've ever had anything like that happen to me where like i've been so nervous or so keen to get out of somewhere that i've tripped over something and then had to run away because i was so embarrassed and stuff it's like oh i feel like that happens to me quite often i don't know i feel like it is part of that he's he's he's a kind of weird guy. He's done these like kind of underground weird comics for a long time about often about very weird stuff. And you have to kind of be a bit weird to have that viewpoint or at least be able to express that viewpoint confidently. Yeah. And it's succinctly as well in like these very small.

It's a very it's very short form comics you know it's almost like the whole joke is there in a single frame often yeah no no no it takes

it's quite a lot of you know a picture paints a thousand words you know that's what they say yeah and a chart paints a thousand pictures yeah

which is even better this is just rambling at this point just a quick correction for last week we said that um that zack snyder directed punch drunk love and of course it was sucker punch not punch drunk love that i misspoke thank you for the many many many corrections yeah yeah it was a simple mistake uh but yes please do continue with the uh with the corrections i love it when the only comment on hour-long podcast is

actually um but that's the internet it Well, no, it's good. It's good. We don't check it. It's good to be corrected. It's good to... We just all accepted that as fact and moved on. We don't often, but we did get something wrong, and we've admitted to it, and we've said sorry,

and now we're ready to move on. I think we should do a public apology of some kind, some kind of quite long letter. I would like to apologize just go for it now unreservedly to anybody on your all right let me just stand up hold on i would like to apologize on behalf of the triforce podcast and especially myself uh for misstating that the film punch drunk love was directed by zach snyder i was thinking of the film sucker punch but this is inexcusable and whilst it could clearly be written off as a slip of the tongue, the fact is errors like that on a podcast

of this importance need to be corrected at the time. It's only a shame that we do not have a fact-checking team on hand to correct us on the fly. This is something we're looking at to improve the veracity of the claims we make on the podcast i would like to extend an apology once again on behalf of myself sips and lewis for misspeaking on the previous that's that's me thank you for so eloquently covering my ass flag okay are we done do i just walk off the stage at this do i jump over this thing i'm just gonna jump over this barricade what are you singing while you do it that would be a good exit if you went fell over and kept singing it while you ran backstage i'd like to see that oh man oh man i've been uh browsing the uh the steam queues uh video games again um and i've come across a couple of pornographic titles which

again i'm not like thrilled about um but one thing that uh one thing that always surprises me about browsing through steam queues is that it's like it's kind of like going to a flea market or like a garage sale right you're rummaging through title after title after title. And sometimes you just find some gold, right? Like when you're not expecting it. But for every one game, there's got to be a thousand terrible ones on Steam. And some of them, I'm always left thinking to myself, who bothered to do this? Like, why? Why did they come up with this mediocre idea? Why did they decide to pour time, effort, and probably money into this mediocre idea? It looks like shit. Like, it doesn't seem at all interesting.

Oftentimes, it seems to just be trying to, like, cash in on some trend or whatever. Or sometimes too late. You know, like, this is like, like you know sometimes the game comes up five years after that trend has expired or whatever and you can tell that they just thought it's time to get in on this one but but then they're too late sort of thing it's like a minefield it's it's crazy it it blows my mind every time i just feel like a lot of these things like if a lot of these people just got together and actually made something decent it would be better than just lots of little shitty games you know i wonder if part of it is um i mean if you look at like phasmophobia for example which i played uh the other day for

the first time it gave me terrible nightmares um it was actually quite fun yeah now that was a game that was really popular with streamers for a while so a ton of copies copies. I think a lot of people over the last few years have realized that it doesn't matter if your game is a bit scuffed and crappy. If it's got a core mechanic that's funny or enjoyable or especially multiplayer, bash it out there. You never know. I mean, you know, fucking some big streamer

might pick it up. Suddenly you've sold a million copies. Everybody's playing it. Fall Guys and Among Us and games like that. Among Us was around for years and then it suddenly became huge yeah and now it's like one of the most ubiquitous things that my door got like an among us birthday card like i said like it's everywhere oh yeah it's everywhere it's a huge game it got into the into the mainstream for sure like my my son's school they're because you can play it on mobile and stuff so all these kids are playing

it because i think in a lot of cases, they see their older siblings playing it and they think that this is the thing to play or whatever. Because kids will just play anything. Like you put them in front of any game and they will play it. Like, I mean, we're like, I was the same like when I was a kid, you know,

like if I got a game for Christmas, that's what I would play, you know, even if it was like Kid Icarus, you know, they were sold out of Final Fantasy and I just got like kid icarus or something i'd play it like you know super star wars on the sneds that was that was a game i love the super star wars they were legit yeah any super star wars fans in chat i'm sure they were they were great games actually those were really fun but um yeah it's yeah it's a weird one yeah but like um like among us like with some of these games their their loops are different, right?

Like if they're multiplayer games or competitive games or whatever, like the loops are kind of, they speak for themselves sort of thing. But like I've been playing a couple of weird games recently. Like I played Power Wash Sim, which was... Yes, I've seen your stream announcements and I've been thinking, what the hell is that game? And I look and I think, yes, that's a Sips game. Yeah, but so Power Wash Sim is actually pretty good.

And one of those games, it's like, it's just like, you're just like, it's like a painting puzzle, but, you know, it's very satisfying at the same time. And it was just kind of chill and enjoyable or whatever. And, you know, surprisingly, because it just sounded so dumb, you know, it was one of those games where it was like, oh, yeah, here we go. Like, it's just a dumb sim, like, I'll play it for a bit, see what it's like kind of thing. And then ended up finishing the whole thing, which is pretty good. And then more recently, I've been playing Weed Shop 3, which is... Weed Shop.

Weed Shop 3. Yeah, you have to grow weed and sell weed to a variety of customers and you can sell them bongs and stuff. And it's it's a bit like crude in places and stuff. But again, it's like, I don't know, it's just got these like these half decent sort of gaming loops that they kind of keep you, you know, you have to buy supplies grow stuff and then sell to customers and you make profit and you slowly upgrade your shop and it it turns into a better shop and you get different customers and stuff and it's all like fairly satisfying it's a bit grindy or whatever but it it's fine and but it's again it's so simple like it's such a simple sort of concept for a game and again i don't know how so many of these games on steam can't do it. Like, they get it wrong. Like, their simple ideas for a game loop or concept or whatever just seem so bad. I don't know. Like, it's just crazy. It baffles me.

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which is a protocol to make speeds faster than ever. I've never noticed any slowdowns. And the third thing is it's very easy to use. You don't need any technical know-how. You can set it up on your phone, on your iPad, on your computer, on your TV, with just a single app. Very easy.

You don't need any technical know-how. Your grandparents could do it if they wanted. Boom. So there you go. Please protect yourself with the VPN that we use here at the Triforce podcast. You could use the link expressvpn.com slash Triforce today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package. That's expressvpn.com slash triforce. Thanks for listening. Thank you. At the other end of the spectrum is the copy of a game that's been just the same game again and again. I've played Days Gone this week on Steam. I've put like 40 hours in, so I've played it. Fair bit.

That's a lot for me these days um and it's basically this third person action adventure in the vein of every game on the playstation since 2000 yeah joe or feels like you know it's it's the same you walk around in third person you shoot zombies it's like the last of us or uncharted or it feels actually felt to me like a little a bit like uh like a bad version of death stranding in a sense because it's kind of you're driving around delivering stuff to people right you know kind of you know you deliver in that game wasteland uh not really sort of hunting bounties mostly but it's in the same mechanic it's go here kill someone get the thing take it

to someone else kind of thing i mean i i honestly a lot of the time felt like i was i just wanted to play death stranding again um it's it's like if you like some sons of anarchy the kind of biker-y not really the aesthetic is not like for me really like i like i could tolerate it if there's a good story or whatever but it's not like it's not enough to to sell to me like just based on that if you know what i mean no well in that case this is very tolerable i'd say this game's fairly tolerable other people might disagree but i i felt i felt like it has got a good story but you have to trek through a lot of fairly repetitive tedious gameplay to get there um and it's but i actually sort of didn't mind that

that repetitive gameplay i wanted to shoot some zombies in the head with various guns and hit them with spiky baseball bats and stuff like this i just felt like i was in the mood for smacking some zombies after watching army of the dead last week um and i i honestly enjoyed this game more than that movie so yeah like i i i it's the story kind of it's not it's predictable and obvious and like kind of I don't know very tropey very standard and then it does sort of take an odd narrative choice in the game

it feels like it's going to be one thing like oh you know you'll go to it'll turn into some subnautica lab stuff suddenly and you know then you'll be doing this thing, and you'll discover all this stuff. But no, it kind of just stays mostly in the wilderness.

People are struggling to survive. I wouldn't not recommend it. I think initially I was bored by it, but it just sort of kept going. Yeah. It kept sort of... I thought the game was about to end, and then it was like oh no here's

this whole new region where you're doing all the same stuff you're doing but there's a funny balancing in the game though right like sometimes if i'm playing a really good game and i'm getting into it at the start um like in my mind i'm thinking oh it's almost over it's almost so i can't believe like this game is so short you know but like you're in in reality you're nowhere close to finishing it sort of thing. But you're like, oh, I hope it doesn't just end here. I hope this isn't the end sort of thing. But you can quickly get to a point where you're like,

okay, it hasn't ended yet and it's going to keep going. Okay, it's going on too long now. You're just like, oh, please end for Christ's sake. I've played enough of this game. Oh my God, that's exactly what it was definitely there's definitely points in in games right where like they they can get it wrong like the length of the game i would say kingdom come was a prime example of that for me in that i very rarely finish a game because i just get bored of them especially single player games like i eventually get into like there's that intro period

and then you get into a good bit and then it's like the story is playing out but it takes so long and kingdom come the the ending of that felt like it was really fucking dragging whereas i feel like the ending of say the witcher 3 which i come back to is like one of my favorite games was really hype and i thought the story built up really well and it was just the places you went to were really interesting and exciting and then the final built up really well and it was just the places you went to a really interesting exciting and then the final Battle was really cool and everything and it was like yeah It was a hype game and then then it was over and you're like well few the credits roll and you feel good But some games like you said they don't quite know how to end it

Yeah, or they make you do some like, you know, the endings nearly here But they're gonna make you go and find ten things out there and you've got a ride all over the world again collect Yeah, fuck me. Come on, dude. Just do it. Just end the game. I think a lot of the time they know shit We said it was gonna be 60 hours. It's only 58. Let's stick another couple of hours away Let's make them go out and just collect one more bundle of bare noses before we finish this one off like Some of those those mechanics just feel so like they've always felt a bit dated but especially now it's just they keep relying on them and you just think come on like let's get something did you feel that way in mass effect 2 which i i mean

i i i think i played mass effect one i finished that game twice i think mass effect 2 is the only game that i finished and then immediately restarted and played through again. It's such a good game. It's a great game. But I don't remember ever really feeling overly bummed out by any parts of it. But it's such a long time ago now

as well, so I don't really remember. Because I mean, Mass Effect 1 had a lot more grind to it than Mass Effect 2. I never played 3 because the reviews were so bad remember because i mean mass effect 1 had a lot more grind to it than mass effect 2 i never i never played 3 because the reviews were so bad at the time um but mass effect like 2 was was when i i started playing mass effect 2 and then people like you should play the first one because you know it feeds into the second one i was like oh so i went and started one i was like man this is a pain because there's a lot of like driving around and yeah there's that part of the game where you

have to do the surveys of the planets and drive with the truck and all that yeah but it's still essentially you're shooting stuff and it looks cool and everything so i didn't mind but that that was a good game they got the balance right there i think between uh the story because if the story starts to accelerate like this is what i didn't like about death stranding i know you guys loved it they waited all the story stuff at the start before they let you get on with playing the fucking game i feel like you need to be playing the game and get absorbed by minor things and then gradually the plot grows bigger and bigger oh yeah i mean we're not saying death stranding it's a perfect game it's got like it's fucking it's a it's a mess it's a mess in a lot of places for sure like

sometimes you have like these 20 30 hour stretches but you're just hiking around and it's like it does feel like multiple different games in one you know it's it's but it's overall you know it was such a i don't know it just worked like as a as a fun thing in a sense like that's weirdly i don't think it was supposed to work as well as it did with the bit of the story because once the story was over i was like oh weirdly i don't think it was supposed to work as well as it did with the bit of the story because once the story was over i was like oh man i don't want any more story for now i'm kind of done i'm just gonna i'm gonna play the game for a bit and then i i can i can have another hour of story now i need like another bit of yeah you sort of earned it by uh i don't know having fun it's weird oh man i wish i keep saying this but i wish that they would uh like after you've done the story

and maybe they they would need to add like some dlc or something for it but i would love it if you if it would just open into like a kind of like you know you fix the world a little bit in the game like with leading up to the story but like if it opened up a little bit more into a sandbox where you actually fixed more of the world and just kept doing the deliveries building stuff up um you know little like little side things could come up or whatever but really the focus was just like creating good logistics routes and doing deliveries and like building up some of these like hubs and and stuff would have actually been pretty fun and i probably would have played the game a lot more yeah i really like the mechanics like they you know

like it felt good to to load up a lot of you know parcels and on to your back it was great getting the upgrades that made it so you could carry more the trucks and stuff were kind of cool like i i think the fighting could have just been sacked off entirely you know like the like i i think the fighting could have just been sacked off entirely you know like the the the random sort of um what were they called yeah i did so little fighting i know it just felt like such a it just i did so little that when i had to do it i had to do it for the quest or whatever for the main story i could didn't know how i didn't know what any of the fucking things did yeah i never i think i used a like, piss grenade or poop grenade or whatever the fuck you're supposed to use. Are there poop grenades?

Nah. Yeah. It's just, like, all bio stuff, right? It's pee and blood, isn't it? I think it's some of your blood. Jesus. Yeah, because your character is, like, the part of some weird guy. And so, as a result, his biomatter, like, affects these monsters.

So, you can, like, you can scare them away with your own blood and they run away yeah pretty scary monsters that's not why they're scared it's it's cool man death stranding's fucking great game it is but i agree with lewis though in parts it is a fucking mess. Like, it's just... Yeah, for sure. And I think Day's gone. Day's gone, too. Like, it's a shitty mess in places. Like, there's these...

The open world is not open. You know, you drive out into the world. Because I drove out on the bike, and I was like, oh, man, this is really cool. I'm going to just randomly explore parts. I think it's, you know, and I think I'll discover hubs, and I'll discover things.

No, it's just shitty shacks with a couple of zombies in, and nothing to even loot, no story, nothing to pick up no collectibles like kind of they are they are but you know it's it's mostly this very sad empty world and it feels like they're very late in development they shoehorned in these question marks that appear so when you're driving down the road a question mark appears on the mini-map you drive towards it and it's like a guy trapped in a car with like two zombies outside you kill the zombies and he has this incredibly it's like morrowind level fucking conversation with you at the end where

the worst voice acted guy goes oh oh thank you for saving me from blah blah blah the zombies were gonna kill me so when it's like that're like, please let me skip this garbage. But do you reckon that what's happened is they spent so much time on the main game, but now when they're like, oh, fuck,

we've got to do all of those side quests, they're like, oh, fine, just do whatever. And they just bosh them in and one of the developers is like,

oh, I'll do the voice for this one. We can't be bothered to wait around for the voice actor again. So that's why it's shit. Because bad voice acting in a game sticks out a fucking mile like it really does it's shocking it's really weird as well how like i mean the game is like it's got like it's got like four areas basically and the three areas

that you start with and you do you think are the only areas right until sort of you follow the story all the way down and it gets this whole extra bit and it's like it's like damn you don't i guess you don't realize when you're playing a game how much content there's going to be. These days, you buy a game, you don't know whether it's going to be seven hours or 14 hours or 45 hours. I played this game for 40 hours and I just opened up this brand new fucking zone. And I'm like, Christ, I suppose it's good value for money.

And I don't know who from above decides that this needs to be in there or whatever. I'm happy. I'm not angry that my game has content. But it's kind of just, it's not. I'm just wondering because you don't know when you buy a game. Almost like what's going to be in there anymore. Unless you check sort of Steam beforehand beforehand and they're like, yeah This is this game seven hours, but overwhelmingly positive. It's worth playing and it's like, you know, still 25 quid

You're like, oh, I'm just I'm just not sure. Yeah, it's a weird one I've been like I said, I've been playing a lot of like weird stuff lately, which I've actually enjoyed subnautica Have you finished subnautica? Yeah, I finished the new one in about i think it was 18 hours so it's it's yeah see that's what i would have expected that's the sort of the i feel like that's like a pretty standard length these days for like that type of game as well the nice thing with that game though is that you you there is there there's like a sandboxy element to it where you could you could really increase that time uh if you if you wanted to spend a lot of time building your base collecting resources you know exploring there's tons of cosmetic stuff isn't there there's loads of cosmetic stuff for the base like you can build

yeah a huge base if you want it yeah yeah you can for sure yeah um so that that adds a lot of life to the game and probably a little bit of replayability as well but the story is very sort of like once you've done it like i don't know if you'd really bother to do it again um i don't think there's a lot uh locked behind the story either like you have to go to different areas to get blueprints for stuff but that doesn't rely on you actually completing any story you know what i mean you can just go i finished the first one i started playing two but it made me seasick like it gave me a really bad headache playing all right i've tried messing with the fovs and stuff like that i haven't actually gone back to it because i it made me it messed with my brain so bad i couldn't get that a couple times yeah

yeah i had to stop like and i i didn't want to go back because i know that if i play it again that's the day written off because i'll feel like shit again all day, which is fucking weak. But I found with the first one that the best part of the game was when... I was just surprised that the second one was so similar. Like, I was like, I understand they're making a sequel to a successful game,

but what made the first one great for me was the first time you get your little submersible and you find out that there's these huge areas underneath like you go down this little cave something opens out and trying to navigate those like when you take down your big sub and you're going right down through this narrow lowering it in like that was so it was magic and then you know you find these new areas it's lit up and then you go out in the prawn suit and everything and i loved i absolutely loved that whereas i found with this one i was like well you knew all that was going to happen again but you'd already experienced it yeah like you can

never recreate that i mean the game takes place on the same planet it's all the same timeline technology and stuff like that you know it's just it you know it's just a continuation of the of the first game really um yeah so you so you do lose a lot of that initial magic i mean that magic is is so cool like when you get like this you do experience it sometimes in like in no man's sky and in various other things where you you you get on i gotta say i never experienced much magic in no man's sky and i'm not even saying that as like oh yeah everybody didn't like that game so i also don't like it i've tried like three times to like that game and it's just it looks like it's your kind of thing that's the weird i know it's odd

but the aesthetics are just so displeasing to me like i hate how everything looks in the game i hate that the space stations are just these big cubes right and stuff like i don't know there's just so many things that are off-putting about it to me and it's just impossible for me to get into it like every time i've tried i just find it just so uh tedious like i just can't get into it i don't know maybe there's just maybe you just got burned one too many times yeah by it i don't know because it did have a very shaky start and um but no i've i've i came back to it relatively recently and i i was very impressed and i i think most games have that right there's these these this moment where you're like damn this is a cool place where i am and yeah it's

it's nice to hold on to those i do want to still check out subnautica yeah and it's it's worth it honestly it's it is good i enjoyed it like i i probably went through it a bit too quickly like i probably could have done a bit more exploring and stuff but um i was satisfied like it was pretty good like i i didn't i didn't dislike it it's i don't think it was as good as the first in the sense that like what we said like the first one had those moments where it felt magical like you know you just it was it was so different right like i'd never played a game where you have to explore the ocean and stuff like it was just it was great yeah and the second game does it very well uh as well but if you're if you've played the first one you know

most of the surprises are like you know there's not there's not that much different to it yeah it was just it was the same to me it was a shame i think how much by its nature was kind of repetitive because obviously they can't make a completely different game called subnautica 2 but it really did feel like the same game and i thought i've already done this and the plot of the first one was not what kept me intrigued like the plot was like something i had to do rather than something i was really driven to to do it was okay i did quite like the the ending, but the plot stuff was my least favorite part of the game.

So really to remake the game and say, it's the same game, but a different plot. I'm like, so the game was the same, but the worst part of the first one for me, the story, the bit that I was just like, come on, get over, get on with it, you know, that was the bit that they changed. So it kind of just felt like it was literally the same game and the bit i didn't enjoy the first time was the only new bit yeah

it's a shame yeah i mean it's gonna be like that sometimes no flame intended big fan of subnautica but i just uh there's not enough there to drag me back i think have given how much i saw about four four hours or something like that and i was like oh this is just the same game yeah it's weird it's weird right there's there's certain games that universally everybody just thinks that everybody should like yeah and then and then oftentimes or not maybe not even oftentimes but there's definitely been some times where i've come across a game where everybody is praising it and i feel like i should like it and everybody's convinced that i will like it and then i just don't like it just doesn't click for some reason yeah yeah um i wouldn't say that's no man's sky because i think like no man's sky has

like a healthy raft of people who just don't like it there's this game uh that i've been playing this week called tainted grail oh yeah i've heard of that yeah a lot of people it's okay yeah it's not bad i mean it's everybody that's everybody that drops by the stream says is this basically slay the spire and i mean i would like to say the cut the deck building genre is not defined by one game they're like a million no but that's like that's just such a twitch chat thing right like if you like i i imagine that most people come by your stream and see you playing something that's not dota and say wow they changed dota 2 a lot that is we have a command for that exact wow dota 2 looks crazy it's been a while since i last played it like literally every time i stream someone will drop

by and make that joke yeah i'm thinking you you must realize that you're not the first to make that joke because you've heard it somewhere yeah you must like you didn't invent that it must be like a meme in people's brains it's just it's a twitch chat it's bizarre they just do it all the time for every game it's bizarre yeah so it is obviously it's a Twitch chat. It's bizarre. They just do it all the time for every game. It's bizarre. But yeah, so it is, obviously, it's a deck builder, so you could say this is basically Slay the Spire,

but by that, you know, by that token, Slay the Spire was ripping off some other deck build. Like, no, Slay the Spire is obviously probably the best deck building sort of progression game

like that, but this is quite different. It's more like, it's a rogue light, they call it. So you die, but the progress that you've made towards your overall goals cards you've unlocked characters you've unlocked and

everything you retain carries through um yeah so you're supposed to sort of you're supposed to sort of die on the first boss and then you kill the first boss and get enough stuff to get to say yeah so so in a sense like it's still 60 hours but it's the way it's built or should be built is that you eventually like um like hades yeah yeah like you just exactly it's hard to it's still 60 hours, but it's the way it's built or should be built is that you eventually, like, like Hades. Yeah. Exactly.

It's hard to, it's hard to one shot the game with the starting ability. I mean, it's all, it's impossible really like the cards that you unlock and the things you unlock back in the village. You need to, you need to buff up your village. That is sort of your,

your hub. If you like, you get new characters to come join it and then they can give you buffs to take out into the opening worlds. And then then when you you start to beat the first one every time but you unlock new characters and they you haven't unlocked the cards yet for them and some of them are very powerful so you want to try and play them so it's like a different place this called tainted grail sounds good it is good there is one issue with it which is the name it's a deck building card game tainted so forgettable

i forgot it's love so if you look at um there's this whole fantasy genre that for some reason has all of these terrible fucking names like i don't know why they all want to come up with something like that like here's one and or wrecking dawn that means nothing that means nothing like and or i don't even know how to look that up right so all of these games it seems to me an awful these roguelikes have a name like splinter realm the reckoning of the lord of splinters yes of course yes the lord of spl. I'm very familiar with him. I must check out this game. I mean, Tainted Grail is an awful name. It doesn't roll off the tongue.

It doesn't mean anything. And I've yet to figure out, although I have skipped all the storyline stuff that's popped up, what the hell a Tainted Grail is. Like, I don't even care. It's just a fun little game. The names are so bad.

I just don't get it. Like, it's set in this, like you have these candles called weird candles, I think. Weird spelled W-Y-R-D, huh? Just to be actually weird. So call it Weird Realm or Weird, Weird. There you go. Boom.

There's a name for you rather than Tainted Grail. And that's actually not the full name. It's got a longer name than that. So it's just, I don't know. It always makes me laugh. The names these guys come up with for their games crack me up yeah yeah so did i tell you i had my jab this week how did you feel afterwards i had my first what brand of jab did you have so i went i went up to uh clifton which is the sort of nicest area of bristol because i live in

the center did you have your jab administered to you by like a foppish dandy in his uh vast kind of so the the vaccination center was next to the zoo clifton prep school and it's like the it's like the classic um old um hall you know that you have for these these you know in these old schools where i seem to remember we sort of had one that we called the old gym which is basically a kind of a small slightly too small for any sort of real sports to be going on in there

it's just a hall that's just about big enough for a badminton court. The main equipment would be medicine balls, that would be the main piece of equipment. Yes, and some of those big blue mats Yes, and ropes that's it. Yes, ropes hanging from a ceiling. Yes, that's the kind big blue mats. Yes, and ropes. That's it. Yes, ropes. Hanging from a ceiling.

Yes, that's the kind of stuff that was in there. But it was very idiot-proof, the whole thing, right? It was very much kind of, you got there. They'd obviously gone, they've obviously been doing this for months now, vaccinating people, and I assume they've been dealing with, first of all, the oldest people who are...

That is the system. Anyway, there was a lot of people standing around who didn't need to do anything right but I feel like I still probably did need to do stuff when it was hopeless people

but yeah it's so idiot proof you just sort of blunder in fill out a form sit down everyone's done it you know how it's like

yeah yeah but um it was just it was just so it's such a nice setting this school it had it done it like

it was like beautiful trees and like i was just like what kids are going to school in this clifton place the best kind of kids so i walked all the way back home which it's about it's about a 40 minute walk so i walked there i walked back and then my friend was like oh i'm i'm gonna go to the zoo do you want to come i was like sure because it was a nice day so i walked all the way back to the zoo uh walked around the zoo by the time i'd walked around the zoo i was feeling pretty uh dizzy right and tired because it was a hot day and so then i walked home and just fell asleep on my sofa and woke up about

10 o'clock at night feeling like shit of course because i shouldn't have shouldn't have fallen asleep on my fucking sofa at 5 in the afternoon Did you feel poorly the next day? So yes the next day. I just felt really well I think I think I just felt fucked up because I messed up my sleep. Wait, what job did you get again? Sorry, I got the Pfizer jab. Yeah. All right. Okay. I Heard that Pfizer Generally, you feel worse after the second jab like Interesting the AstraZenecaeneca it's like after your

first one you feel kind of shitty because i felt bad headaches after the first one i'm just so glad i didn't have covid because if the fucking jab knocked me out then fucking i try not to think about it it was so bad it was actually did have it you can you can get it yeah i know i just i feel i feel even ran up feel new sympathy for everyone that said to me that's how the jab and felt a bit poorly they were like i can't imagine what real covid was like i was like don't like it was it was really really fucking awful and i didn't even have it like i didn't need to be hospitalized and shit like that there were people that had well some really grim treatments like the the treatments were fucking rough like

pipes up your legs to get re-oxygenate your blood and shit like that and oh my god unbelievable yeah it's insane it's hard yeah it's nuts i'm due for my second jab pretty soon actually um same i thought i was gonna hear from it from them this week but i haven't so i might have to i might have to chase them say i want my second i would be like for some reason i thought i would be more robust to it i don't know in my mind i was like i eat healthy i walk around a bit you know but no i was not no funnily enough a uh virus that kind of targets like uh your respiratory system and stuff doesn't really give much of a shit about all that it just goes for it you know just says yeah it's true i

did um so i noticed yesterday when i was with films that Trott is doing, I don't know how long he's doing, but I think he was like a couple of days into fasting. Right. And he had this kind of slightly dazed look about him. Why is he doing that? I think it's just like a healthy thing. No, it sounds really healthy.

And he looks after himself. Not eating food. Who thought of that one? Apparently it is good for you. It's like driving your car around with no gas. It makes sense. No, it's like it is apparently good for you. It's the thing that humans have.

It's almost like paleo kind of thinking. When you were a caveman, you didn't necessarily have food every day. That was when we didn't have anything. we hadn't discovered writing or the wheel and everyone's harking back to this era when we lived hand to mouth like if we saw food we ate it because it might be two days this wasn't people weren't happy like average life expectancy was like five years back then i know i know we need to go back boris should come out i think we should wind back society the days of caves if you see someone you don't like them you may hit them on the head with a rock that is the future of britain be strong man be king now i'll make fire i'll make fire vote for ugg so no i i feel like i feel like it's in

my mind 37 i've been not i've been eating every day three square meals a day for 37 years and when someone tells me oh your body will be fine i'm like my body's forgotten how to not eat you know i don't have that i don't feel like I can just on a dime. I'm not, I'm not just not confident that my body will be able to keep up. I was before I'd had the COVID thing. But after that, I'm like, I'm less confident. And so I don't know. I think maybe you read about like Wim Hof and people like this taking the ice baths and doing or not like like even like David

Blaine or whatever not eating for like 40 days or whatever yeah putting himself in a box and not eating for 20 days you know it's a magic trick it's a magic trick it's not magic it's like a jerk do you not remember the thing where he froze himself in ice

do you remember that I remember that he would swap out with a double so he could go and have a fucking lie down and get a burger. And then he'd crawl back in. It's a fucking trick, people. Oh, my God. I like it. He set that one up near the Millennium Bridge where he was in a glass cage, right? That's right.

And people would go and say, oh, he's playing a fucking cunt. Fuck off. Get your fucking magic dickhead. Remember they were throwing chips and stuff at him don't ever do that kind of thing in the UK what are you thinking we hate people we're not going to be supportive he was frozen in ice for 66

hours it's fine it's all this is fine he was I mean these are all endurance things they're not magic they're endurance I felt like I had to endure that whole episode. Yeah, endurance was for the fucking audience. Yeah, for sure.

Right, I've got to go to Q Gardens, lads. I've got to go look at the houses that were open. Nice. Well, there you go. Enjoy, that sounds fun. Thank you for listening, everyone. I'll sniff some flowers on your behalf. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I've got a big rose just bloomed in my front yard, and I've been sniffing it every day. God damn. It's fine's fine well there you go you could support us on patreon and follow us on spotify where there are new episodes every wednesday thanks for listening we'll see you next week