CSB317: The Jankoisseur feat. Casey Explosion

Hello, what is up?

Hello, everyone.

Hello.

We are joined by a sloth.

Hey, Casey.

Hey, how's it going?

Fantastic.

Welcome to the Castle Super Beast.

Appreciate you jumping on with us.

We have, this is our first VTuber guest.

I guess that's technically accurate.

That is the case.

I mean, I have a rig, but I have not yet.

You used that rig the one time.

It's very difficult.

It's very complicated.

It involved getting a VR headset and base stations and arm trackers and a belt.

It was a whole lot of tech.

Just point your iPhone at

your face.

So there's the face tracking version of it that I had as well.

But the full body thing for the 3D thing was way more complicated than just the face rig setup.

What I'm hearing is that you spent 10 times as much work to get like 1% of the output.

I mean, there is a simplified version that is like available.

And in fact,

I would say the like, you know,

the face rig kind of setup is,

it's definitely good enough.

But I did like the ability to have like the 3D model, you know, and the ability to like use that for other potential purposes or whatever.

But yeah,

I went in to figure out how to do that.

I see that your rig is working just fine.

It's working great.

Do you have a spaceship built around you to make that work?

I do not.

I do not have the room for that kind of stuff at all.

I've got a little webcam, and I bought face rig on Steam

when it was like 75% off, like

five years or more ago, and it's fine.

It works okay, it's good, It's doing its job.

Well, thank you for being

here.

Oh, there it is.

Yeah, that makes more sense.

Awesome.

So, if anyone is unfamiliar with Casey, I know Casey primarily from her incredible, incredible recommendation lists on social media.

In which I don't know how you asked you this: how do you keep up with the 400 indie games you cover a day?

Do you really want an answer or

an answer?

Okay, so I follow a lot of different indie developers, and they are very cool about sharing each other's work.

And

I'm also following a lot of other

people who are tuned into some of the weird indie games and stuff.

And sometimes people just at me, and sometimes I'll just

browse upcoming what's upcoming on Steam.

And

I just find stuff that's neat.

And sometimes I'll just be looking at

whatever certain publishers are coming out with.

I'm always keeping an eye on

shout out to Dave from New Blood, who's always

putting out bangers.

But he does come into my stream to make fun of me.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, you know, I didn't tell you about that?

I was playing Devil with controller, and I ran into some bugs that only exist on controller.

And I'm like, Dave, what's up with these?

He's like, we don't have any of the testers play on controller because it's for babies.

Okay, okay, great.

Yeah.

I keep trolling Dave because

he tries to send me early copies of the games.

I'm just like, nope, gonna buy it.

Nice.

But yeah, I play first-person shooters with controller whenever I'm

playing.

Yeah, whenever the option is there, because I am old,

I get like a bit of RSI if I'm playing with mouse and keyboard too often.

So anytime, anytime there's the option for controller, I'll take it.

And some

very, very, very cool first-person shooters have great controller support and some don't.

Proteus

has fantastic.

Oh, that slaps.

That feels really, really...

There's a nice bit of

nice bit of snap to to it.

Like a little bit a little bit of snap to.

I'm in a goofy spot with playing games on mouse and keyboard now because in my in my house

Whether or not I have access to the mouse or the keyboard depends on where the baby hid the mouse or keyboard

So I have been I have actually like navigated my desktop using the steam function where I hold the PlayStation button and move it around with the analog stick because I can't turn anything off because I he hit he hid the mouse.

I mean you have basically your your home couch setup is like my streaming one where you're like, it's a couch in front of a TV.

This is not a table with a PC, you know?

So

it gets a lot less comfortable to deal with.

Well, yeah, but I also have a tiny gnome that thinks it's really funny to take the mouse and like try and hide it in the bathroom.

It's funny because one, like, I'm just thinking of Ultra Kill and how like I feel every time there's like a controller issue or configuration bit, I feel like Hikita just seeing my complaints about something with the controller is like begrudgingly being like fine I guess we have to support this you know angrily

but I'll be but like you can also put on the

the little the little warning message on Steam that's like this game is better with the controller you know as a thing and I'm like thank god I like seeing that that's nice

because I think just it's at this point been long enough that my childhood being based on Nintendo into Super Nintendo into the first you know four or five generations of controller usage, PC Moz and keyboard stuff is just always going to be like a second preference to

wanting to hold a stick or a d-pad and buttons to play a game, you know?

Even if it's suboptimal in some cases.

This is such a good segue into talking about City of the Wharves, honestly.

Because I discovered over the weekend, over yesterday, whatever, the day before,

Fatal Fury, City of the Wharves, I really don't like that game at all.

Really?

Yeah,

I really genuinely don't like it at all.

And it comes down to like one thing.

It's the control.

It's the controls.

I do not like the way the controls are mapped out, and I can't find a way to map them out in a way that makes me happy.

Huh?

Okay.

I did find

the defaults were not

great for me, and so I ended up switching them up.

So,

yeah, okay, so I guess we'll just we'll jump into our Garrow chat.

Uh, all right, right, Casey, did you play Garrow Mark of the Warves or City of the Wharves?

No, I didn't.

Um, what's what's what is this one?

Um, it is a

sequel to uh

Garot Mark of the Wolves from 1999, which is a game in the Fatal Fury franchise where Terry Bogart is.

Oh, nice.

So okay, yeah.

So, uh, I know who Terry Bogart is.

Yeah,

he's

from Humphrey Bogart's son, isn't he?

The actor.

That's the one.

Nailed him.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right?

Right?

With the suit and the sharp dressing.

And he's got a big red hat, and he tosses it around.

And then every once in a while, like Street Fighters Ken will pick it up and toss it back to him.

And he has no job and no prospects and a dead girlfriend.

Hey, she's fine.

Is she?

Yeah, she's tall.

Oh, okay.

The Blue Mary

train is

leaving the station and all aboard.

Seems like that's the way things are going.

Yeah, Blue Mary's fine.

But anyway, no.

Yeah, the latest Terry Bogard game has just come out.

So, in terms of the controls, I've always found that, like, so SNK games that are four buttons make it really nice for a controller that has four buttons facing.

Absolutely.

And that felt, you know much more comfortable than the like dealing with triggers too much back in the day um but what i've found for my configuration on this since i'm yeah i'm i'm much more pad oriented on my fighting games these days is i switched um l2 and r2 uh the default for them is like uh

punches on the on r2 it's really it's a really strange default on kicks on l2 and i think it's because the thought is that most people have their trigger finger ready to go more often so they put them on that side.

I swapped them so that punches are, you know, on the left side, kicks are on the right.

And then I think what works best for the extra options for L1 and R1 is

faint on L1 and Rev on R1, so that you have your two breaking options.

That feels like the most comfortable way to play it right now.

So what issues are you having?

Really simple.

I don't like to do a motion and then click something with my left hand.

Ever.

Ever.

and this is a five-button game that uses EXs constantly.

So, back-to-back, two punches, two kicks, like you know,

special move into special move into special move.

So, my first thing was, I'm like, oh, I'll put R1 and R2, the right side trigger and bumpers, with the EX buttons.

And so, I basically turned it into Street Fighter with the hards, you know, light, medium, hard, right?

But then, Rev, the button that does level threes, overheads, overheads, and anti-airs, is now on L1, which is awkward as shit.

And so I'm like, oh, I'll put rev on, I'll put rev on, because it's a five-button game.

It's not a four-button game, right?

Rev is your fifth button.

Yeah.

So okay, I'll put rev on R1, and, you know, then I'll have, or R2, and then my bumpers will be the EXs.

And, like, doing EX into EX while using like L1 or L2

sucks for me.

Like, it actually is such a massive bummer that I'm like, oh, I hate, like, I hate the feeling of playing the game.

Okay, so for

me, I've basically like, I'm able to press

square and triangle together with one finger, and same for

X and circle at the bottom and such.

I have tiny little baby man hands.

I can't do that.

Question, like a child's hands.

Question, though.

What do you do for Street Fighter?

Do you still play on stick?

No, I play on pad on Street Fighter.

Okay.

So what I do on Street Fighter is

I have all six, light, medium, hard, going

square triangle, R1, and same thing for kicks.

And when I do an EX move in Street Fighter, I'm hitting, for punches, I'm hitting R1 and square.

Yes, that's what I'm on.

And I'm hitting R2 and X for kicks.

That's also what I'm doing.

But you do have to do motions with that and the trigger, though.

Yeah, but nothing on my left hand.

My left hand is for motions, my right hand is for buttons.

I literally never use L1 and L2 in a fighting game ever in my entire life.

Okay,

so in this case, you would need

L2 for

the two kicks, basically.

Yeah,

which sucks.

I don't want to do it.

Because

the right side triggers are fine to do motions with.

Yeah, no.

The right side of the controller is for fighting.

The left side of the controller is for moving.

Yeah,

I agree.

It does feel awkward to do stuff with the L2 in particular.

I think

you can mostly avoid that input, though, if you

like, so are yeah, I guess, are you able to hit the

X and circle with your thumbs on the pad at the same time?

No, I don't want to.

It's awkward.

My finger like fits between the two because my finger isn't big enough because I have a tiny baby man's hand.

Hmm.

Okay.

Remember when people, well, remember when I was drinking those small Red Bulls on stream and people were like, wow, you need to cut down?

I'm like, this is the small 250 mil Red Bull, but people thought it was the giant can because of my tiny hands?

They're very small.

So

this is,

I mean, there's a couple of different ways, I guess.

Like, I don't know if you're looking for solutions, you know, there's a perhaps.

So here's the other thing.

I'm not looking for solutions.

That's actually, so let me ask that first before I start trying any.

Yeah.

Because on top of that, I don't like that the bread and butter combo system is EX into EX into EX.

Okay.

And like one of the things that it was really strange, and

this is a warning to everybody out there.

So I thought I really liked Mark City of the Wolves.

I thought I really, really liked it until I played it by by myself and then realized that every time I had ever played City of the Wolves before that, I had played it with you, Woolly,

where I was like hanging out with a friend of mine of 20 years playing fighting games.

Oh, oh, yeah.

But then when I actually went to play it like, you know, ranked matchmaking, I was like,

it's fine, I guess.

It's okay.

And then the controller foibles.

And I'm like, I should just go play Street Fighter if I want to play a fighting game.

And also, Street Fighter doesn't have that fucking human garbage over there on the character select.

That's a very compelling

extra bit that I would say, yes, applies to this game as well, right?

No fucking Ronaldo.

And also, Virtual Fighter is only three buttons.

You know, you can do a whole fighting game with just three buttons.

It's all you need.

In terms of the control stuff, yeah,

again,

there's potential solutions, but again, if you, if you're not really looking for one, then that's fine.

I think the EX system

of going from move into move and stuff is pretty good.

I think it works well.

I like that that's the one, that's one of the major like new flavors that the game has, but everything else is very old school.

So people that have been like fighting game fans for a while are kind of like looking for something that feels, you know, like a like a throwback fighter.

And this, this is one of the best bets at that.

This feels very retro.

Like the,

again, defensive options, the way you can do a lot of,

you can do a lot on defense and on offense.

And it's very tame with like,

I guess, comeback factors and things like that as well.

So

it definitely appeals to like, yeah, if you, if you enjoyed fighting games in the late 90s to early aughts.

Yeah, and I do feel as well, like I'm like, the EX system, I'm not sure what in particular is the part about it, but maybe, maybe is it because of the fact that you're having trouble doing it that's making that oh, well, that's part of it.

I mean, it's not fun when I try to do it and my hands feel bad and I go,

okay,

I hate it.

Um,

like, that game has one too many buttons.

I wonder if you could like put like two punches and two kicks on, you know, L1 and R or R1 and R2, respectively, and kind of throw rev like on a different trigger and then just have that be like, it's rarely being used as a part of a motion input.

So, you know what I mean?

It could kind of be like, which of these buttons are you using most?

You're going to use your two punch and two kick combinations more often.

So put them on the R side and then put the Rev button.

And I mentioned this, and I mentioned this earlier, and some folks were like, why don't you just get a fight pad or something like that?

And it's like, that would probably solve my controls issue, but that is me spending like $80 on a game that I'm not sure I even like to figure out if I do like it, which when I have this other Street Fighter game over here that I know I like for sure.

A controller, a controller with six buttons up front would also, you know, help for sure, as would a stick, right?

This is one of those things where for me, I'm finding less and less that there's games that I, that I'm, I, I jump on stick for but there still are some you know things that feel uh things that are marvel based whatever that feel like marvel versus capcom to me i kind of still jump back to a stick on you know uh so so are you playing

on a stick for for city of the wharves no i'm not um i feel like uh i've gotten used to pad for uh most things now But like, I have so much muscle memory with like Marvel versus Capcom on a stick that like for that, I still have have to go back and do it and similar for dragon ball fighters as well i still have to go back to a stick to play that game um hey casey um let me ask you because i saw a question in the chat that that that opened this up to a broader question in my mind somebody said that pat has a really simple system where if the game feels bad to control at any point he just pulls his parachute How do you feel about that, like game feel as an extreme?

Because fighting games are like literally nothing but round-to-round combat.

And so if I have a bad, icky feeling, I just go

and I'm like, I'm done.

I'm completely done.

Because you're playing so many weird indie games, do you have like a higher tolerance for like

jank game feel or what?

Probably, but

I kind of get what you mean.

Sometimes sometimes, if something rubs me the wrong way, I'm just not feeling it.

And yeah,

that's me out.

Folks in the chat asking,

do I play many fighting games?

I'm more old school.

So I'm happy just to let Pat and Woolly talk about this because

I haven't played Mark.

Well, I was going to jump into it a little bit later, but Pat, you brought it up right away.

So I'm like, okay, we're just going to go heavy into it.

I know, but I wanted to have a more inclusive conversation first before jumping into the deep end.

But you're going right into it, so I had to follow.

I'm happy enough just sitting this one out because I got pizza.

I had pizza.

I should have eaten something.

I would share, but it's not going to fit into the.

I've got a grill in front of the microphone.

It's not going to fit in there.

I can't share.

This would be a great time for a stuffed, like,

sloth hand prop to stick up from the bottom of Pat's camera.

Well, I mean, I actually.

Why it's the comic dog style.

There you go.

But like, this, I mean, he's not doing much today.

Just like a shaking kind of Muppet hand.

All right, Wally.

You said you had a wider conversation you wanted to try.

No, no, no.

I was going to get to the fighting game stuff later is all I meant.

That's all.

But that's okay.

Because

I did have, I mean, we can talk about

the other part of this, which is 2XKO in a little bit.

But I did have some thoughts about, like, with Mark of the Wolves and, well, God, City of the Wolves.

Hey, I'm going to stop you there for a second.

How often do you botch that?

Because I botch it every single time.

I'm still saying Garrow.

I still say Garrow.

Like, I mean, it's exactly.

I've said Mark of the City of the Wharves every single time I've talked about that game.

Because it's been 20 plus years.

You know, it's just, it's just baked in at this point.

When I say Garrow, though, I think most of the time people know what I'm talking about.

Because

in most cases, you're not talking about the game from, you know, yonder.

But yeah,

I don't think it feels bad.

I think it feels great.

I think it's a lot of fun.

And I think it's like a

very nice...

I'm glad that this kind of game exists

in a time when

fighters are fairly modern and leaning in towards

the new things the genre can do.

I do like the idea of building something that has a backbone that's structurally traditional, but still has some flair to it, you know?

And,

of course, it's also just satisfying to like see these characters after all this time again.

And there's a part of that, the nostalgia value there, too.

Yeah, it's bummer about the controller issue you're describing there.

I mean, I like again, I do feel like.

Part of that is obviously me, but I do feel the game's a little bloated with buttons.

I mean, it's yeah, they added a fifth one.

A lot of games are six-button games these days, so it doesn't, I don't feel like it's that big.

So, here's the thing: I don't think that that is a five-button game

because EXs are so important, that feels like a seven-button game.

So

I also think this is where arcade stick usage comes into play, where it's like, you know,

if you're playing Street Fighter VI, you have drive impact on one L2 button

or L1 and wherever you set it.

And then you have your parry over there as well.

But you're using the shortcuts for those, right?

So this is a game where you can use the five to do everything you need to.

You can do breaks or feints or EXs, whatever you need with just those five.

So if you're playing with stick, you're usually combining the two, and you're only going to use those extras if

you are having a hard time not combining them or so.

But

I think this is more or less a

I have that you're the first person I've heard mentioning this as an issue.

And I do think that like if you it's also again something that can work if you're on a stick or something.

You don't know that many people with tiny child's hands.

No, but I mean, there are solutions to this issue, I think.

But

overall, that part aside,

yeah, taking a look at what the game has,

the things that stand out to me the most that are like worth talking about

is the fact that you can edit colors on your characters.

Oh, it's awesome.

So

great.

And

basically that one guy.

So, well, yeah, no, because what if you put him in the wrong soccer uniform?

Uh, what if you put him in the wrong footy uniform, you know?

Oh, that would be wrong to do that would be terrible.

Um, no, so the uh, so basically, Casey, like for a long time, um, you know, in a fighting game, you'd have a bunch of different colors available, and then there were a couple that came along back in the day, like, um, Capcom versus SNK is one of them, where you could go in and edit the characters to be whatever costume colors you wanted you know um in fact i want to say that there was a moment in japan where um there was a competition and somebody uh made cami's outfit like all flesh colored in the arcades back in the day or in the in a in a a console like tournament back in the day and capquam was like uh-oh we didn't expect this that's no that uh-oh you know and having a lay naked looking sprite jumping around was a problem so they they might have been like okay we're never doing that again, you know, because of,

I think it was, yeah, Aru and the Daigo was telling this story some time ago.

But anyway,

that was a, there was a moment with that, but like,

SNK, you know, the, the, where the Terry Bogart games have always had these like little willingness to be like, yeah, go in, make your own outfit, color, costume, etc.

KOF11.

It's great.

It's great, yeah.

And KOF11 in particular, or, you know, KOF-13

that came came out afterwards, like, because the sprites in that game were so beautiful and they had a whole new lighting system, they could even, like, in a lot of cases, it would be like almost like a Photoshop color swatch where it'd be like, okay, anywhere that is red on my Shirunui, you can click on that and turn it blue.

But in that game, in KOF 13, you could even go like, no, no, no, just the pants.

I just want the pants to be one color, just the shirt to be another.

And it was like very, very comprehensive.

It was really awesome for like a color editor in a game, you know?

So, yeah, now a lot of games like sell you colors and kind of have it as a microtransaction to be like, you know, or something or something unlockable in some cases to be like, here's the different outfits and things like that.

And in this case, there is going to be, it seems like, different overall outfits for the characters, but you can just jump into the color editor and make very top to bottom customized looks.

And so when you go online, you're fighting against everyone's unique versions of their characters, you know.

Um,

you know what else?

You're you're going online to fight Wooly, yeah,

you're going online into the only fighting game I've ever seen in my life that instead of giving you like a placement match, just goes, Hey, are you good at the game or not?

And you just have to pick where you start matchmaking, yeah, yeah, it says, like, are you fighting like a hundred people in a row that are like fucking professionals that are like, I'm just a little baby, I'm just a little newcomer, I don't know how to play.

I mean,

starting yourself out low while like

knowing a lot is

nuts.

I mean, that's crazy.

They have built a Smurf option into their fighting game.

It is absolutely unbelievable.

I think there is the acceleration system, though, where like, you know, a bunch of wins against much higher ranking things at a lower account clearly shows that you don't belong here and we're going to shove you out as quickly as possible.

You know,

if you are in any of the lower ranks and you like, yeah, you clearly beat people an entire tier above you, it's like, all right, just take the points and get out.

But yeah,

I think there's been one or two other games that have done that as well, where it's been like, hey, where would you like to start?

You know, are you, do you think you're a beginner?

Do you think you're intermediate or advanced?

And then from that point, there's still a whole bunch of ways to go.

Because the highest you can pick, I think, is like the end of grade C.

And then you go all the way up to like S and beyond.

But anyway, but colors are really cool.

Seeing everyone coming in with their different looks right off the bat.

And yeah, I took my time.

I took a cane and I made a little Dante and Virgil, you know, blue and red jacket.

I made

an Edgeworth colored, you know, like outfit for the character as well.

Like, I went in there and had some fun with those colors.

And I made a little JoJo, you know, color palette as well.

So

I like that you get that option on cosmetics right off the bat.

And

there's also, I guess, like, it's not quite Tekken level cowboy hat and floating bear

and shotgun coming out level of goofiness.

You know, it's kind of just like it's still the outfit, but you're doing what you you want with it.

Yeah, and their season pass is also incredible, which is there's no season pass.

You just, characters will come out.

Everything for the first season is all included.

Like, that's great.

And the full game plus season pass is cheaper than all other base game fighting games

as well.

All right.

So these are good things.

Smart move on that.

I think as well the fact that the game includes a whole lot of music from every previous entry in the Fatal Fury franchise is great

because I've, you know, like listened to and heard some of the new music and stuff and I'm enjoying it, but I definitely am like, oh man, I want to hear some old Mark of the Wolves.

And

it's weird too, in a way, because I feel bad almost replacing the new songs because I'm like, I'm not even giving them a chance to fully sink in, you know, because I'm so attached to...

the music from super long ago that I'm just shoving that in as part of the replacement OST.

But it's almost like with when Smash Brothers kind of allowed you to do that.

You know, you go like, all right, every stage you can have a rotation of, you know, five plus tracks on random.

So if you go to the wrestling ring, you could choose the old wrestling ring theme or the new one, you know, and so I just put that on like full random.

Oh, the whole every track every time.

Every single track has an equal amount of chance showing up on every stage that allows it.

Okay.

Yeah, I specifically chose to

make it it so that the stages for the characters are like the alternating versions of those themes, you know?

Yeah,

so there's that part as well.

There's a couple bits with like story mode.

I don't know if anyone has seen it.

I mean, whatever.

Spoilers for

if you're

the embargo literally was like, hey, be careful about spoilers.

I'm like, it's a fucking fighting game.

What do you?

Yeah, okay.

Well, there's a

Billy Kane is truly the goat of this of this world.

Um Billy Kane is awesome, and I'm glad that Billy Kane is around and important and being cool because I always liked him even from the beginning.

I didn't realize he was shaving his head.

Like his hair grew back.

Yeah, but he had it under the bandana.

Oh, I thought he was just bald as shit the whole time.

No, no, no.

He just had a British bandana on, and that was it, you know?

I thought it was ball

uh yeah that that that stuff's a uh pretty dope as well so anyway i think um this is gonna be a game that kind of is like i like in the same way that samurai showdown kind of existed sort of like

in the you know a little off to the side or so i think this is this is something that'll be around as a an alternate you know main stage fighter that that that can exist um

and i think it's they did a really good job like i'm not gonna go too, too long and hard into the amazing stuff the game is doing defensively, but they came up with some brilliant, brilliant stuff.

Suffice to say that, you know, you can just

defending feels really fun to do when you get good at blocking at the last minute.

And then they even put in, they put in parries.

Like you can tap forward at the last second on a multi-hitting move to basically do a third strike parry.

And you can get all the excitement of like what you could do in a game like third strike, you know, the legendary Evo Moment 37 type of thing.

You can, that's all possible in the way this game has been uh set up.

And furthermore, it makes it so that like, um, it's the opposite of kind of what Tech N8

was recently doing with its busted patches, where um

offense was just, you know, like uh the name of the game.

In this case, if you're really good defensively and you can read your opponent, you can do amazing sick stuff that's going to look stylish as hell.

So I'm glad that they've made the game, you know, all of that.

And

boy, oh boy,

there is Ronaldo.

Yeah.

So, Casey, are you up to date on the Ronaldo solid man in the Fatal Fury situation?

No idea about it.

This is news to me.

I am.

If it's fighting game stuff that is like

in the last 20 years, maybe,

I'm like, I am, I'm, I'm completely out of tune, except for maybe Mortal Kombat.

So, and

so I

mean, I freaking loved fighting games back in PS1 era.

That was where I was

out in a big fan of.

Yeah, I'm in Ireland, yeah.

Okay, so out there, y'all like your football

footy, even

I am aware of it.

It does exist, not everywhere.

It exists.

All right.

The controversy about the inclusion of a very famous soccer player into the Fatal Fury game, City of the Wharves, is that he is an admitted rapist

in your fighting game.

Jesus.

It's not good.

It's fucking horrendous.

And allegedly, whatever, but it's like...

Allegedly admitted.

Legal, allegedly.

I've said it to my lawyer directly and then

thrown out a conversation.

money was exchanging hands.

And it's fucking garbage, is what it is.

And so here's my question.

But it's also a famous, it's also a famous sports player.

And so that

is something that comes in and just tarnishes this game that has been very highly anticipated for 20 years now as a sequel to something from 2000.

And yeah, it's just a garbage element of this whole thing.

So I have a question about this.

I have been told that

soccer rape man on the roster is actually a really strong character.

Is that true?

He's a very strong character.

He can kick the soccer ball.

So you're saying he can kick the soccer ball in a way that makes him particularly hard to defend against.

Yes.

So what you're saying is that this is like the worst possible scenario for like, I don't know, a tournament setting where you're going to see this dude a lot on the screen at a major tournament.

I mean, look, Reggie and I have already said a couple times on stream that it's just like, yeah, um,

good luck for cup.

Commentary on this is gonna be wild.

It's gonna be exciting.

It's gonna be absolutely batshit.

And

there's this player character that would not be allowed to attend the tournament.

100%.

100%.

I mean,

um

the the uh the literally the the level of like oh no what if the character is someone you see very very often and is not just some dumb addition furthermore because it's not dlc it's not like you can just be like oh yeah just don't include him there

it's in the base roster so that that's fucking garbage as well so no and so to the to the end of all of this to be honest

oh no oh man no um to the so

the kind of the bottom line on all this isn't, and when we first brought it up as well and stuff, where people were, for anyone that was just like, yo, that's, I'm out.

I don't, I fucking hate that.

It's like, absolutely, completely, totally, I get it.

That is perfectly

acceptable as a reason to be like, I fucking don't want to play that.

I have my controller issues, and that's what put me off, but like, I have no desire to fight for this game with that dude in it.

That's always going to be some of my willingness to go, yeah, I'll push past it.

Yeah.

As someone who is a very big fan of the fucking franchise with a tattoo of the circuit board of the previous entry of the game on my arm,

I am someone who has always wanted and been waiting for this goddamn game for such a long time.

And

I'm happy that

it is not a franchise that has gotten ignored and deleted, but the fact that you have to monkeys paw it back into existence with this part of it, and it's just never going to be

not a part of it.

It just sucks because I'm like, this is the first time we've ever had this in this genre in a way.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And

then the idea of overall of being like, well, guest characters as a whole now, just everyone needs to just chill on real life people perhaps getting put into games because of exactly this type of dog shit.

I would like to apologize to Tekken for being so like

mean about them putting in the Walking Dead character into Tekken.

In hindsight, you know what?

That was great.

And at the end of the day, that is Negan, the character, not the actor, the human being, right?

There's always, you know, that bit.

Or there's even characters like,

you know,

I forgot her name, but in King of Fighters 14, there was the eyeball idol.

Oh, that was like a VTuber or somebody?

Not a VTuber, but a real J-Idol that has concerts and stuff.

And it's a character inspired by her, you know?

And

excuse me, there's a couple other things like that as well over the years.

Here's someone inspired directly by this person, or in some cases, it'll be like basically an alt-of-reality version of them, or it'll be voiced by them or so.

Sylvie, yeah, there you go, that's the name.

And, you know, you still get a bit of that distance or so.

What's kind of interesting is seeing how everything with the other guest character, Salvatore Ganachi, has

people are like, yo, this guy is goofy and fun and he actually likes the franchise.

Yeah, like he seems, his character seems really like stupid in like a goofy way.

Yeah, and so like, and that was one of those bits where like his animation looked really silly too, but it was like, oh, well, that's on purpose.

From the jump, you could see that he's doing the animations that are meant to look silly.

And then if you go look further, they're like, oh, this is all the way he moves in the music videos and everything.

So it feels like people are like, Okay, this goofball kind of DJ's funny man, you know, they're they're they're kind of turning the corner on that to some degree.

And uh, at least the guy likes the franchise and has something to do with it in a way.

But it still doesn't change the fact that it's like, yeah, but both of these inclusions are basically because it was prescripted from Saudi Arabia top-down.

I saw a great thread that was like, which is the worst fighting game character, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Yoda from Soul Calibur.

And it was like, oh man, what a shitty conversation to have.

Yoda was in Soul Calibur?

Yoda was in Soul Calibur 4 and he straight up ruined that game.

It was crazy.

Because you could not hit him because Yoda was too small to be hit.

It was like odd job in Goldeneye on the N64.

Oh my god.

It was terrible.

It was terrible.

But

the fact that Yoda is as a Star Wars character,

a Star Wars character being in a Soul Calibur game was goofy as hell, and we're like, this doesn't fit at all.

What the hell are we doing?

But now,

like, you don't feel a part of your soul die

with the inclusion

with the inclusion of Yoda in Stole Calibur.

So

I think we're going to say that Yoda's fine, actually, in retrospect.

I apologize to you, Yoda.

You weren't as bad as it could get.

Yeah.

I'm a fan of the

guest characters in the Mortal Kombat series, because

I don't know,

not exactly everybody's favorite fighting game series, but since I was a kid, Mortal Kombat has been mine.

I freaking

love the 11 you got.

You got Robocop.

This is.

And he fits right in.

Casey, I want to say that you have done us an excellent service.

by

like kind of allowing us to talk about our little fighting game toys And then, when you see, because you're not super familiar with the genre, and then we're like, hey, what game do you actually like to play?

Mortal Kombat.

It's got RoboCombo on it.

And that is what Mortal Kombat is doing, and that's why it sells the most.

Also, also,

the thing about Mortal Kombat's guest characters is that there's a thematic kind of connection in that they're all parts of that B movie.

We're willing to cross over with each other.

Like,

they had spawn in us, right?

They got freaking spawn, and they got Keith David to voice him as well.

This was perfect.

Like, yeah.

Brilliant.

Old, old.

Loved that spawn cartoon show.

Old movies with, like, you got T-1000, and you got Predator, and you've got Alien, and you've got Tonan movie in which the T-1000 fought the alien.

Like, Fox could have done that, but I bet you there's a comic book of it already existing, right?

There was a, there's a Robocop vs.

the Terminator Super Nintendo game.

There is a there's been Alien versus Predator a million times, obviously.

I mean, Spawn versus Batman versus Alien was a thing at a point.

Oh, yeah, I heard that.

Yeah, all of these franchises are super willing.

Judge Dread versus Aliens happened at some point, unless I'm misremembering.

Yeah, so they

did.

I think you're right.

These crossover, like, old movie character

creatures and characters have all have that willingness to show up in things.

And like, yeah, MK did grab all the right people for that, you know?

And then like now they also did, they went on, they grabbed Omni Man and

what should we call it?

Homelander.

Homelander.

So yeah, that's.

And that makes sense because they made fucking Injustice, which had evil Superman, so you might as well throw the other Evil Superman into the other fighting game.

And also they're like super peak, violent, horrible, you know, people.

So it's like, great, that fits into this setting too, you know?

no, they did a good job picking out their guests over the franchise years, for sure, and recently.

Oh, we got to switch off fighting games, or I'll be duty in an hour.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

So, so, anyway, um, um, that's what's going on, but uh, as a fighting game, uh, City of the Wolves is a is a good fighting game, and um, it is, it is a fun to play one, and uh, as a product of international capital, it is

new emotions, new emotions are being felt by everybody.

This is the world we are now living in.

Yeah,

the whole bit.

And

anyway,

the whole bit about,

like, we all know, you know, you're using the phones made from

horrible conditions.

No, we can't.

And I'm not about to.

I am not about to.

But I'm just saying, like, but you know, that feeling is always like,

right?

And then there's the, like, what percentage

does Saudi Arabia own of this company?

It's like, oh, is so 96%.

Okay.

And then you go and look at the list and you go see, like, oh, how much of Capcom do they own?

Oh, that's

a good idea.

It's one sentence.

I'm saying one sentence, which is to say that, like, it continues to feel bad and gets worse over time.

And I just know that, like, this is a new thing, but I know it's going to continue

fucking careening and getting worse as we go.

Just go play old fighting games under a bridge.

It'll look like a fighting game stage.

Fight Cade under a bridge can never be stopped.

Okay.

That aside,

there's a couple other things.

But Casey, how was your week?

What did you get up to?

What have you played?

What's going on with you?

My week was wonderful.

I went to Dublin at the weekend to see the PlayStation concert.

Oh, yeah, I saw your week.

Which was

freaking awesome.

Cool.

Okay.

So they, like, if you, if you're not, not aware, they had, they put on this amazing show that

played a lot of music from,

you know, various PlayStation IPs, like God of War and Horizon and Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima.

And I didn't know at the time, but it was like, this was the first,

the first date on the entire tour.

And

so I was like,

one of the first people to see it.

It's like, it was cool as heck.

And

orchestra, Like a lot of great orchestration.

There was very talented musicians.

Like

they got at the taiko drums for doing Ghost of Tsushima stuff.

So like it was

real hecking good.

Did they do that a lot?

Anything from like they did one from Bloodborne?

Not that old, no.

Oh, I think

it's

no.

They did Astrobot.

I was about to say, did they hit Astrobot?

Because that's my order.

They did.

Yeah.

I am Astrobot.

Astrobot.

It's great.

I did not know that there were PlayStation concerts happening.

Genuinely.

Yeah, this was just this year.

Like, really talented musicians.

I was very, very impressed.

Had an amazing time.

That's why I don't know about it.

So, you know, the Final Fantasy concerts have been doing their thing here in North America for a while.

And it seems like the way they kind of set things up is they go to a city, they get the local orchestra, they practice, and then they perform.

So that's how they kind of, like, the touring concert is not quite a whole orchestra themselves traveling around, you know?

Right.

But, like, yeah, an opportunity to catch some video game music live is always awesome.

That's super cool.

Um,

was it uh so it was just it was all like PlayStation first-party stuff, and was there there anything like third-party that happened to you know?

No, I think it's all first-party.

Okay, and so you had like you know stuff from Uncharted as well

and

like that one one song from Bloodborne, which was really oh nice.

They remembered, they did.

Oh, I was very I was very happy.

Was there a little uh the the cl the little big planet theme?

Did that the sack boy pop up at any point

no okay no they're that shit's no gravity rush either no gravity the music and gravity rush is excellent hmm yeah it's just it was just like no knack either they didn't the they were knackless okay well well then bloodborne is the crumb for people like us then

you get you get a crumb

cool did you play anything cool this past week or two weeks or what have you oh god i've been playing so many cool games it's

This month, this month alone has been absolutely

100%

like, I cannot hold all these watermelons or lemons or whatever the meme is.

I can't hold these pots.

Is it limes?

Oh, I'm thinking of.

I can't eat all of these pancakes.

I'm thinking of pots.

I can't put all these pots away.

I'm thinking of that stock photo of a guy dropping a bunch of lemons or limes.

Okay.

I'm just constantly all of the all of the games are falling on top of me.

I've been playing Look Outside, which I know I know Pat has played.

I did play Look Outside.

That is so, that might be my game of the year.

It and

you say that, right?

Yeah.

And I went, that's fucking ridiculous.

That's silly.

And then I played Look Outside, and I was like,

I don't think it's my game of the year, but like,

I could listen to somebody argue that it could be

that kind of place in my mind.

Yeah.

I picked it up, and the impression, well, it was recommended to me as a like fear and hunger-like, you know, experience in a smaller setting.

So, I spoke with the

writer on it, Frankie C.

Francis Colomb.

I don't know if Frankie C.

She's the artist as well.

Frankie Smile Show?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, I was chatting with him about the writing and what to expect.

And I did not know

that it is made by tons of the people who worked on Barkley Shut Up and Jam Guide.

Oh, and Barclays.

And I was like, what?

And it's like, okay,

Francis Colomb was the Barkley 2 artist.

And C-Boy RD did all of the music and a lot of the writing for

Look Outside.

And then one of the other writers is the guy who wrote Katana Zero.

So, like,

this is star-studded.

Wow.

So, I don't know Fear and Hunger, right?

I don't know anything about it other than it's mean, and that if you play it on stream, you got to mod it so that there's less dicks.

I mean, I'm playing cyberpunk right now, so you know.

But what I can tell you is that it,

my interpretation, would it

be is that whereas Undertale took from Earthbound like all those wholesome vibes,

Look Outside takes like the nightmare shit.

So the RPG element, I guess, that I'm curious about is because I've seen it compared to Fear and Hunger, but one of the main things with Fear and Hunger is that like you die in two seconds

on a random encounter with I reloaded many saves in in my my time with look outside

okay I had to restart look outside because

it turns out like I got to the to the first floor and I was having a really really tough time with it it turned out I'd missed a whole load of stuff that was like somebody came to the door and I told I didn't answer it but

apparently I could have got a cool a cool maniac friend to come and stay with me and be in the party and now we're going on going on a little adventure adventure and having fun murdering horrible things and making horrible friends

i love this it's it's it's amazing

it is also like very stressful i was gonna say is it is it very hard on top of that by default or is the okay is it safe so like as as a really good example so think of like an rpg maker style like rpg with like first person battles kind of thing like an smt thing but like one of the first things that happened is i picked up a baseball bat yeah baseball bat bat will help increase my attack.

And then all of the special moves on the bat, like that would use your MP equivalent, are does way more damage, increases the likelihood of the weapon breaking.

And then in the middle of the fight, my weapon just like snapped in half, and then I was left with my fists and

wasn't ready, and I fucking died.

Yeah, okay, okay.

Nice.

There's also a.

Sorry, go ahead.

I going to say, something else I was playing recently.

There's a real great game for Sickos

called The Tower of Calamonvo.

What is that?

It is super old school, kind of Diablo 1 influence.

How do you spell that?

How do I write that?

Oh, there are.

Tower of Calamanvo.

Yeah.

Calvinists.

This looks just like Diablo 1.

K-A-L-E.

Monvo.

Okay.

Oh, this is for Sickos, isn't it?

Yeah.

And there is a demo.

I would tell people to try the demo because it's a game that has quite a bit of rough edges.

It is gloriously archaic.

I think that's how I described it.

And...

Like it's it there is no controller support.

You're playing mouse and keyboard and conveniences

Is it for sickos leaning on the window going yes, yes, yeah, so that's the sicko?

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Yeah, it's a it's if you if you crave like

a very, very old school kind of kind of action RPG dungeon crawlery thingy, this this game is

super super good.

Would you say that this game is operating under the logic that Diablo 2 was too streamlined?

Yes, okay, all right, oh, that answers

so many questions.

Pat, as a person who has made the mistake of

Diablo-like identification in the past, I would like to ask a question.

Yeah, go for it.

If I see two orbs of different colors on the HUD at the bottom left and right.

Is the number one signifier?

That's a Diablo.

Okay.

Yeah, is the two orbs.

Got it.

In there.

Because those games are about meat grinding.

They're like pre-vampire survivors

like meat grind.

The orbs.

Speaking of vampire survivors, have either of you played

Halls of Torment?

I have played Halls of Torment.

It didn't really do it for me.

Oh.

I thought it was a nice

remix of

the Vampire Survivors flavor.

Yeah, the Diablo-like visuals were pretty cool, and the unlocking and progression were pretty fun.

I think

I still prefer vampire survivors as a whole.

But this was, I'd say, this was the one I'd spent the most time with as a secondary, you know?

Yeah.

Some of them made the mistake of putting too much control in your hands and asking you to do more than just walk.

And I see that as a downside.

I'm like, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, there's a just here to walk.

But they want me to aim.

And I'm like, I don't want to aim.

No.

No, I'm not here for that.

I wish it was a 30 minutes till dawn.

Yes.

Yes, that's the one I'm thinking of.

It's a

little bit.

It's a great game.

Yep.

It's good.

But I don't know.

But it requires aiming.

The Hollow Cure one as well does require some aiming.

Or it has the option, I believe, that's on, but I think you can turn it off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Keep it simple.

Make it all about the stick.

Yeah, what else have I been playing lately?

Got a game in my inbox couple of last week called Smooshi Come Home, which

that one's really neat.

What is that?

It's a little 3D platformer.

Kind of reminded me of a short hike, if you've ever played that.

Oh, short hike is really, really lovely.

It's very like...

You play a little bird who's climbing up a mountain

to get good signal on

mobile phone useless but i never got around to it

it'll take it'll take you an hour hour and a half tops it is very short hike very very beautiful game really love it you get um you collect feathers to like increase your stamina and it's just it's just really nice cozy core like the higher up you climb

cozy core

something like that it looks like a playstation game

yeah smooshy comes home kind of reminds me

Smooshi Come Home kind of reminds me of that.

You got like

a little bigger, but

it's that kind of a game.

It's just

nice.

It's just a nice time.

And of course, Blueprints as well.

Yes, I spoke at length, at length, at length about Blueprints.

Let me ask you, have you felt like the RNG is too mean in Blueprints?

Yeah,

but I haven't gotten that far into it yet.

So.

Hmm.

I actually have a question about that, Casey.

When you're going through a lot of indies, what's your personal

checkpoint for like progress or at least like getting an impression of it?

Do you kind of like you know, a lot of games obviously have like their onboarding kind of early part and then you kind of take some and then it's variable as to like when it gets to the meet or so.

But like to come to cover a lot of stuff in a short period of time, like yeah, how do you approach that?

Well, um a lot of a lot of indie games are quite short so that's helpful

that can be very very helpful and it just depends on what

where where along the way i vibe with it another game that i was playing i was streaming last night a game called rosewater which is a it's a very old school point and click adventure um fully voice acted Kind of old LucasArts kind of style thing, but they got these nice rotoscoped animations.

And if you've ever watched the show,

it's beautiful.

It is absolutely beautiful.

The moment that kind of it kind of clicked with me, like it's this kind of like steampunk western kind of vibe to it.

And it's reminded me a bit of,

did anybody here ever see The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.

with Bruce Campbell and he's this kind of

science fantasy western setting.

No, no,

what?

Oh, oh, my God.

It is amazing.

And, like, the villain in it, I think, was it Billy Drago played him.

So it's like, holy crap.

Like, this.

This is such a good example of every single conversation I have ever had with you, Casey.

Hey, Casey, what's up?

Hey, here's this thing you never heard of that you're going to add to your wish list.

Thank you, Casey.

I'm sorry.

I didn't know about Rosewater until you said it just now.

Yeah, the rotoscoping looks incredible.

That's really good.

Yeah.

I love the other thing.

The guy who voiced Arthur Morgan is in that as well.

Oh, really?

Nice.

Okay.

There's something fun about the old, like, um, Lucas-style point-and-click and scum VM games, basically,

where it's not just like the detail of the rotoscope moments, but it's also like standing around and having conversations where people are kind of animating a little too much and things are a little too exaggerated.

It's like, it's like the rotoscoped actor decided to dial up

the physical

comedy to like 11 specifically to create, like, I'm tumbling off a roof, but my limbs are everywhere as I'm doing it.

You know?

It's because they're acting, man.

This looks great.

Yeah, so that's a game specifically.

I'm thinking like the onboarding period, like

what clicked with me was

like, you, you get the start, start, the first act, you're in this town of Rosewater, and

then

after,

like, after that first act, you get all your gang together, you get posse,

the main mystery is uncovered, there's a treasure hunt you're going to go on, and you get this steampunk wagon, and

you're going off on the trail, and all along the way, you're getting all these little these kind of like mini-adventures

and little mini mysteries and things like that.

And it's like, all right, this, this, this is really this part of the game, this is really doing it for me because it feels like, yeah, it's kind of like an episodic kind of TV show kind of vibe to it.

It's like,

I'm having a little, little, little kind of like this character-centric episode this time, and then next, next time, it's a, it's a much bigger mystery, or you know, it's got such a great vibe to it.

I love it.

Okay, is it point and click in gameplay as well, or is it just the aesthetic?

Yeah, okay, it's all point and click.

Gotcha,

right on.

So, I've yet to finish that one.

I was gonna wait and wait until I finished it to add it to my Steam Curator page and give it like the official thumbs up saying, hey, check this out.

Got so far into it last night, I was playing for like five hours, and I was like, I need to go to bed.

I need to go to bed.

So it got very late.

So I feel like when it comes to like keeping on top of indies and things like that, I remember the exact moment.

Well, there's too many.

Well, I remember the exact moment.

The exact moment when I felt like I'm drowning and I just will never be able to keep up.

And it was when Humble Bundle started.

Yeah.

Oh, that's horrible.

That was the big moment.

You got to stop buying bundles.

Yep.

Because you're like, these are great.

There's 12 of them.

They cost like very little.

That's insanely affordable.

I will play four, and the others will just be in my library.

And it's like not their fault.

I have like games that I have reached out to publishers to get codes for, gotten the code, went, can't wait to play this.

And that was like 18 months ago.

Yeah.

It's yeah, that

it's tough.

There's a return to Metroidvania on Humble Bunnel.

Oh, I love Metroidvania.

I mean, so like a friend of mine who was, you know, working on a game was just kind of describing for me like, you know, when he looked into like the metrics on like, yeah, the amount of releases and the things that come out.

And basically, like, you know, the, the, the, it's.

You know, like the back in the day with Wii, when there was like the shovelware days, right?

Yes.

Where you're just like, oh my God, this eShop is going to be filled with like, God knows what Drec.

But every once in a while, you'd be like, oh, look at this muscle march.

What is that?

You know, and then that'll be like a weird thing that stands out and be as a quirky

gold mine.

But with Steam, like, there is multiple great games that you personally would love that fit your own thing that come out every single day.

And there's just no, either no marketing or no word of mouth or nothing to get it in your face.

But it's just, and tomorrow there will be another two or three, and it's just constant, you know?

Yeah, it doesn't stop.

Today, Old Skies just came out, and I haven't picked that one up yet because I want to finish Rosewater before I get that.

Old Skies from the guy, the guys made Unavowed.

It's another point and click.

Okay.

That just came out today.

Okay.

Either of you played Unavowed?

No, ma'am.

No.

Really hecking good.

First, like,

old school point-and-click adventure.

Great voice acting.

Just keep going.

Oh, the wish list and just adding more shit.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sorry.

Well, this looks like a

noir version of the game you were just describing, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it's really wonderful, though.

Some really great voice acting in that one as well.

And

that's one of the games that actually got me into the genre in the first place.

I see.

Yeah, so

I do genuinely apologize if your wish list is getting, I'm, I, I'm just in

piling more stuff on the pile.

It's unpresentable, but that's better than the opposite where like I remember being a kid and being like, oh man, I hope a good game comes out this year.

And part of that was like way less games came out, but also it's like, if EGM didn't point it at me, it might as well have not existed.

Yeah, friends at school might bring it up, or sometimes I'd go see something new on the shelf at a rental store, you know, like I'd go to the video store and you'd catch it that way or so.

And you know what, too?

I will say that, like, for the beginning of the Xbox 360 era, when

Xbox Live Arcade was happening, so I used to work in QA, and I feel like everyone

back then would like all everyone tried to keep up with like the Xbox Live Arcade releases at first.

You know, you were grabbing grabbing a little bit of like almost every new thing.

And then at a certain point, it's like, oh, no, you can't grab every single one of these things.

Certainly, even just keeping up with like what catches your attention, you know?

Yeah.

Like this month has been positively just

untenable.

Like untenable entirely.

Yeah.

Like Casey and I were chatting about it just briefly, but like French Lost Odyssey is out today.

I'm going to be streaming it later today.

I'm going to be streaming it myself as well.

I'm looking forward to that a lot.

We played the preview versions, and that preview version was excellent.

And then

all subsequent reviews of the full game have been excellent.

I feel like

in my brain, there's someday,

there's

that potential.

Like, maybe one day we will, like, there will be a time where I'm stuck in a cabin, but I have internet.

You know?

Yeah, and I'll.

That's going to be.

This is my horde

for when it happens.

That's going to be when you're in a nursing home.

Ah, ah, yes.

Okay, there we go.

Yep.

And in between, like, the nurse helping change your poopy diaper, you'll be like, do you know about Mark of the Wolves?

And then they'll pretend to play it with you.

Another one that came up, White Knuckle.

I'd never heard of a single one of these.

Oh, God, yeah.

Okay, sorry.

I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, no, it's good.

It looks so good, though.

I need to play this.

I mean, just a list?

This is one of those, like, okay, go back and listen to this list afterwards.

Oh, it's by...

It's being published by Dread XP?

Okay.

Oh, interesting art style.

Yeah, okay.

3D climbing.

Your hand is...

Latching onto things.

Full controller support, apparently.

Okay.

Interesting.

Wait, it's a roguelike?

It's a climbing game roguelike?

Cool.

Apparently so.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And it's interesting how, like, retro art style and things that are like reminiscent of earlier generations are more than just an aesthetic choice, but actually like a budgetary practicality, you know, as well.

In a lot of cases.

I love a lot of horror games, and I find like the retro, the kind of retro aesthetic, it's more than I

personally I find that it's more than just

a nostalgic thing in in the term in terms of like the lack of detail can often lend to your imagination filling in the blanks I totally agree yep yep and I can't I can't I kind of like horror games that look too shiny and pristine and and stuff it it doesn't it doesn't do it for me the same way something creepy and grungy and grainy does.

Like there's this amazing, it's not a strictly horror game, it's a first-person shooter called Rot,

and it kind of veers into

it kind of veers into horror after like towards the end of the first episode, and it gets super creepy.

The brown Soviet shooter, right?

Yes.

Oh, that game is absolutely like chef's kiss, amazing aesthetics.

Because like whatever it's doing, the guy who made it made his own custom engine for it.

And

whatever it's doing visually, it looks like

the shadows just all kind of light just drops off.

It's like dark in a way that other games just are not.

And it's

creepy as hell.

I've heard a lot of good things about it.

I owe it.

Okay.

Head Oh, play it.

Play it, play it, play it, play it.

It's amazing.

Cannot recommend it.

There's a creepy horse in it as well.

I mean, like, I think, you know, like, obviously, games like

Crow Country, like, that, that relies on its art style, really, you know, to like pull off what a lot of what it's doing besides the, the, the emoji parts.

And yeah, a lot of the time you can also, you know, mess with the

aesthetic as well and do interesting things, you know, like, um, it's not perfect, but for what it does, inscription is an awesome way to play with the visual style of things being a throwback.

And then, you know, you kind of establish a look and the way the characters behave, and then you change that up.

And yeah, there's, there's a whole lot to that as, as,

but it's also like, it's an elegant way to make it make it immersive, but also, again, it's, it's like you're not attempting to achieve reality with this, and it's not too expensive.

You can, you know, in a lot of cases, go with something that like we

enjoy the look of like really detailed, nice pixel work or a good low-poly model in more cases than something that is like approaching realistic, but like it's still kind of like Uncanny Valley, you know?

Well, one of the things that happened is so Gene played and put out a review of Expedition 33 today where he lavished his praises, but he pointed out something that I had

like

unconsciously picked up, but I didn't know how to put it into words, which is Expedition 33 like looks like a 360 game

like it looks like an unreal engine 3 game with like the way that the the specific like broad shading of like greens and blues and reds are

okay i don't know it's nostalgic for the 360 i want lost odyssey vibes like yeah no that's

like hitting me over the head i want that i want that badly right on

okay

i can't wait till we have nostalgia.

Oh, give me that sweet chromatic aberration.

Oh, remember when they put this shit in every game?

Oh, yeah.

I mean,

brown shooters is like already a thing in our brains.

I feel like,

well, you know, what are, like, the...

We need to get far enough away from the generation to see what the flaws are in the things that are

being attempted by its peak releases, right?

Oh, I got one for you.

Oh, man, remember when games used to cost too much?

Oh, look, they made these new ones cost too much, also, as a form of nostalgia.

So,

somebody in the chat, I think that it slipped by me.

Somebody mentioned Tail Concerto.

The developers of that have a new game coming out next month, Fuga Melodies of Steel 3.

Oh, that's

the

furry orphans.

Furry orphan crushing machine, I believe, was the game.

Have you ever played

the first game is amazing?

No, but I've heard a lot about it, and

I bought it and I haven't touched it yet.

But yeah,

what I've heard of it and described in detail is pretty fucking incredible.

So, like, Fuga exists on the spectrum of

type of game that I would like to get through both of the front mission remakes

and Valkyrie Chronicles 1 and 4 first

before I can get to Fuga 1.

So there's like five games in the way.

Do you know what?

What I would most compare it to is like Darkest Dungeon.

It's like the

transfer microscope over to you, Wooly.

I love me.

It's like a little

linear kind of path kind of exploration.

It's like,

yeah, I mean, the

sorry.

No, just everything about the

well, certainly at least the Darkest Dungeon character loss,

you know, parts of that, and Mecha as well as right up my alley, too.

Yeah, are there other elements that are similar that you're thinking of?

Sorry about that.

Not really.

It's just, it's like

there's always a tension to Fuga because

it does have

that mechanic that

was rather controversial when it came out.

It was like, no, I don't want to stick the orphan in the cannon.

And

you don't have to.

It introduces the mechanic to you.

I will

say in-game, you really don't have to do that.

It's one of those things that

a mechanic that's there as

a threat.

Oh, really?

Oh, okay.

As such a.

You can do it.

But, like, you don't have to.

I unlocked child labor as my first technology.

Nice.

It's important.

The kids need to work the furnace with their tiny hands.

Okay, so we're talking about like, you know, things that get like the current generation throwbacks.

And, you know,

obviously, yes, we didn't say it, but the quote that we bring up every time is: the, you know, whatever you find now weird, ugly, and uncomfortable, and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.

CD distortion, jitterness in digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit, et cetera.

The thing that I'm realizing playing Cyberpunk 2077 right now that I want to see is a future game that harkens back to open world jank,

where you walk around the corner of a world and you see the NPC's T-pots populating, dropping out of, you know, spawning into existence.

Like, the fact that the cops barely can track their way over to you when you like get a one-star or two-star thing.

Open world jank is still a problem.

The Oblivion Remaster came out yesterday.

And

from what I've been seeing of it,

it is an Unreal Engine wrapper on top of the old engine.

So it looks really shiny and fancy, and it is like flying apart every time you interact with it.

There we go.

Okay, I mean, I'm describing a game that on purpose is making fun of these problems, but it is hilarious that this is still doing that thing.

I have played a a lot of jank, Polish, and Eastern European shit, and I will tell you that it has to not be on purpose.

Like, like, you like, you can make like a bad movie on purpose, and it's usually not as good as a bad movie by accident,

right?

Which is why, when Tommy Wiseau says it was supposed to be like that, I'm like, I don't believe you for that.

I don't believe you for shit, Tommy.

But, like, jank is

accidental.

Casey, are you familiar with the term Eurojank as coined by Pat?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, so

that particular game.

I can be a bit of a connoisseur of jank.

A jankour.

Well, you should play Witcher One.

If you want some fucking jank shit, you should play Witcher One.

That is the most.

That is the game that has been fixed the most from its original release that is still massively fucked up.

You know, honestly, I recommend playing Witcher One without any mods or anything.

Just play it.

Just go.

Just go with it.

Someone.

Just

go right in.

Do it.

Someone has.

A couple years ago,

someone said something to me, and I'm still thinking about it, which is,

I've been picking my own LPs and games to play on stream, and I've been eating too good because

I've received the same

comment.

Because back in the day, you know, with best friends, we used to suffer every now and then.

Well, we would pick games to fuck with the others.

And now, by choosing my own meals, I've been eating too good.

And that you need to remember to wash the taste of something terrible out of your mouth, and you need to return, return to jank, return to the call of bad you know so that you don't forget your roots and i'm like damn do i truly need to drop like games i love and the cyberpunks and the and doing my silent hill return uh um um or dead space exposure for the first time in order to go play uh some horrible asset flip you know do i truly need to feel the real the cold bitter wind to remember what it's like you should play uh what's it called

It's a very strange game.

Someone in chat can help me.

It's called something like, hey, you want to play those games, don't you?

Oh, yeah.

What's the name of that?

Let me check here.

Let's.

Someone in chat, because Vinny recommended it, but

the name is really specific and weird.

Okay.

Okay, somebody in the chat got it.

It's called, yeah, you want those games, right?

So here you go.

Now let's see you clear them.

And it is a mini-game compilation of like dozens, if not hundreds, of games based around fake ads from like TikTok or YouTube.

Oh, that's great.

Here, I'll post the Steam page.

That's super good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

I love the sound of that.

I mean, so, like, I mean, to be fair, like,

out of spite, I did just sit down and

marathon through Omicron the Nomod Soul in its entirety.

Uh, uh, so I have not the same, man.

I did, you already did that shit years ago, and then I, but I did it again, and I'm just like, okay, so there was that, but I know there's a, there is something, yeah, people are yelling, you're,

you've gotten weak.

There's a weakness inside of you that only bad games can strengthen.

Do you want

a really cool game that is

something for sickos?

Like me again.

There's a game that came out this year called Asylum that has been in development for like two decades nearly.

It's the same developer as Scratches.

If you remember Scratches,

like this really weird, missed-like kind of first-person point-and-click adventure.

Okay.

And

I

freaking loved it.

And I couldn't finish it because of a game-breaking bug.

And I would still recommend it anyway because, like, it is the, it is, it's, it, it feels like a game from like 30 years ago.

So it was announced

in July of 2010 and it came out March of this year.

Yeah, it's amazing.

The voice acting is really great and like the the character models are really really

really off-putting.

They are upsetting to look at.

They got that like that weird kind of turn of the century early early 3D model looking weird ass faces.

Are these and it's like

am I seeing a pre-rendered mansion that you're navigating through?

Like mists?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's all.

Yeah.

It's.

There's nothing today that plays like that.

I just...

I loved us.

Okay.

It's flawed as hell, but

it's one for the Sickos.

Okay.

I'm here for the Sicko recommendation.

The Sicko recommend.

Yeah, yeah.

Perfect.

No, that was, that's a lot of them in a very short period of time, and I'm going to have to go back again.

And I've been making note and just adding adding things to my cart as you've been talking, but

that's a lot of cool shit.

I could keep going.

Yeah, you really could.

This would be a decent time to at least tell people where to check you out and

where to find you.

I'm on Twitch, twitch.tv/slash KCExplosion, where I will be streaming some

Claire Obscure Expedition 33 later on today.

Oh, yeah, you gonna stream it in French?

No, I don't think so.

Is that an option?

Well, I mean, oh, no, no, I mean with your voice.

Oh, right.

I'm afraid my French is non-existent.

Darn!

Stream it in Irish.

Damn.

I'm letting the side down.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

But no, I'm really looking forward to that.

And I have a Steam curator page where I stick all of the games that I recommend on there.

And one of the things that I find really neat about

the whole Steam curator system is like it's

Valve has let it just

go to crap, but it's actually a really, really good functional feature.

So if you follow my curator page, stuff that I recommend will start showing up on your Steam homepage.

So you can get like games for sickos.

Okay.

Casey, I have like a really stupid question, and this is extra stupid because I've followed you for years.

How do you

get to your Steam curator page?

I can throw you the link.

Okay, yeah.

Because I don't know how to get to that in Steam.

It's not a stupid question.

And in fact, it's a very, very.

It's good of you to say.

So when you're looking at the Steam homepage, I got this up here now, and

on the left side, there's like

Steam

categories.

Right.

And

recurators.

There you go.

Oh, my God.

I can't believe I never saw that.

I followed

Casey Explosion.

Okay, I did it.

I did it at some point.

You're not the only one to find, like, where the hell are the curators.

And

most of them are not good.

But

I think there are some really, really great ones.

And it makes some ones that do put in the extra effort and do things right makes them stand out a bit more.

It's all the more important.

It's a great feature.

Oh, you played Rainbreaker?

Yeah, that was really good.

It is?

I was thinking about it.

I'll tell you now, it's a very flawed little game because

it feels like it was meant to come out in early access.

And they just kind of finished it up and put out what they had.

Oh.

Yeah.

But for what it is, it's actually, it's really fun and it's like 10 bucks or something like that.

And it's it's like it's priced accordingly, I thought.

But like the music is really good,

some great visuals, and it's very, very much cut from the same cloth as Hades.

Like, they know what they were doing there,

but like the moment-to-moment gameplay

is really good, it's it's snappy and responsive, it's it's it's it's good shit,

but But

be prepared for

a much smaller,

much, far smaller experience than what I think it could have been.

This should have been an early access game that was added on to

over years, like Hades was.

And it's like they just

kind of pushed this thing out, and

like I think,

I think that the publisher

should have funded that

for

a good stretch.

It could have been a lot better than it was.

I have a question.

Speaking of games that they're going to just push out, whether or not they're ready or not, that the publisher probably should have funded it for more, no matter how long it's been in development and should have released early access.

Hey, Wooly, did you play the Alpha Lab 2 for 2xKO this week?

I sure did.

I sure did.

Yes.

There you go.

I was just going to say that I think, just as a sidebar, I think the

Hades style development is like a really awesome way to go about it if your studio can afford that, and if you can make that work, you know, because I mean, they did a great job with it.

Well, Hades gets like a free pass compared to other things because the first version of Hades and Hades 2 was better than like half the games on Steam.

There's that, right?

There's the quality of what they put out, certainly.

And I think too, the genre as well makes a difference, too, where like Hades has

narrative and story and bits, but like for the most part, the raw core run is what you're enjoying the most of.

And every time you play it, you hear new lines of dialogue you've never heard before.

So like it was the perfect genre for that type of development.

and you know, the I mean, their previous game, Supergiant, would do stuff that was just like, yeah, packed all in, Bastion, Transistor, etc.

Um, but scaling up this way also seems to be like a way that you know you can start low, and then as people are as word of mouth spreads, you know, the 1.0 release has the best chance of being a big thing because people are already invested, you know, uh, heavily.

Um,

so yeah, no, that was that's that's a great one, but yes, development

takes long, and sometimes

despite how awesome

the things are looking,

boy, you got to just get it out the door, ready or not.

Yeah.

Casey, unfortunately, we're segwaying back to

fighting games.

Apologies.

Oh,

before you do it, you've asked me where else to find.

I completely forgot the YouTube.

I have a YouTube channel now, Casey Explosion on YouTube, and I have meant to have a new video out soon, but it hasn't happened yet because I'm still script scrobbling on the script.

But my top 12 games of 2024 video was out.

Top 12.

Why not?

Because

there were too many good games.

Do you know how long I was working on that script and

trying to see which ones would make it...

I had to not include a lot of stuff and had to cut out so many honorable mentions.

And it's still three times as big as any other video that I've done before.

And also,

it was 12 months.

Why not 12?

Yeah.

There you go.

Alright.

Cool.

Number three will not shock you.

Yes.

Right.

So I wanted to give a slight amount of background for 2xKO to Casey because she's not deep into the fighting pits like we are.

Can I take this as an opportunity to have a quick bio break?

Absolutely.

Back to you in like one, two minutes.

Yeah, no, I'll take one myself, and I'll take the dog out as well.

He probably could use it.

Sure thing.

Okay.

All right, BRB.

Apologies for this.

No problem.

There we are.

Let's take a quick bio.

We're back and once more free from the tyranny of piss.

It is a cruel.

So did you hear the one about the pizza?

What?

Did you hear the one about the pizza?

No.

Never mind, it's too cheesy.

See, I was worried you were trying to connect

the subject that Pat mentioned with what you mentioned.

Oh, kick her out of the show.

That's terrible.

Oh, my God.

I was.

That's a lot.

I'll take that.

That's a lot better.

Okay.

Oh, I need a sponsor to soothe my wounded spirit.

Um,

yeah, that'll sort us off of the tyranny of piss, I believe your phrasing was.

Yeah, it was, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Gotta make the rest of the chat.

Gotta make them piss.

This week.

The podcast is sponsored by

boot.dev.

Oh, man.

I need this because I don't know how a computer works.

I pretend like I do, but anyone who watches me start my stream muted knows I don't know how a computer actually works.

Okay, well, if you need

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There's much lower end places to start, but this is...

No, I'm going to go straight to coding.

Okay.

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No, is the answer.

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Wait, what is lore?

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All right.

All right.

Casey is the perfect guest for this, as they have relayed to me

while

you were still in the bathroom, Willie, that fighting games are an old-time thing for them.

You were telling me about how much you love Bloody Roar.

Oh, awesome game.

Yeah,

Bloody Roar was like, there was a

PlayStation 1 eras where, like, my peak fighting game kind of era was big into Darkstalkers,

rival schools yeah that's

that game freaking slapped yeah

that was so good and it's about to it's about to get re-released on steam actually after a long time they're finally putting out a collection with it

super cool no way yeah still confiding collection too um so wait does that mean that like your your default form is the sloth, but then when you bloody roar, go beast mode, it becomes a cow?

Why not?

It can be whatever you want.

So, mid-combo.

This level of fighting game background is perfect for the question that I have been wrestling with really hard every time I think, talk, or play about the Project L/slash League of Legends fighting game

2XKO.

Casey, if you were looking forward to a fighting game that had been in development for

just under a decade.

How many characters do you think should come out on the launch day of that game?

64.

I love how every time, like, Pat, your ability to load the questions up with all the toppings is unrivaled.

The most loaded questions of all time.

Yeah, here.

Yeah.

So, would you say that 10 is a weird number for that?

possibly is

it was

the way you were phrasing that it was either going to be a really big number or a really small number right so i i i probably overshot so the

alpha lab 2 was this weekend or whatever right

um and i played some of the alpha lab i'm sure you did too woolly yeah for 2xko

um

and

it it's crazy to me how because casey the alpha lab for this let you know, you know, essentially a free alpha that you could, you could sign up for and play, right?

And my initial impressions were, hey, this is pretty cool, but there were only like six characters available because, you know, it's a test, right?

And I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see how many more.

Like, oh, this roster is going to be really cool, I bet.

And now.

Oh, wait.

Now I know the skin.

It's the League of Legends fighting game thingy.

That's the one.

That's the one.

And so then

wonder.

The total roster at launch would be 10,

which is most people were expecting like

30,

something like that.

And it has completely changed every single way that I feel about this game entirely.

And

because one of the things that I was worried about, I played the Alpha Lab, and I'm like, all right, let me sit down and play the Alpha Lab.

And I saw...

The same three characters in every single match I played for hours.

I saw Darius or Ari in every single match I played during the Alpha Lab for hours.

And

it was like, oh, this is going to be a bummer.

Yeah, so.

Oh, yeah, I was watching you play this the other day.

Why did I blank on this one?

Oh, you actually saw my stream of the one.

I was actually watching your stream, yeah.

So, well, it's not out yet.

This just washed over my head completely.

It just did not, nothing latched off it uh it it is it's not out yet but uh it'll be coming out uh shortly and it's been in development for a really long time and uh yeah as a league of legends related property you know it's had um a really long time to develop and they've had uh i guess the ability to kind of

i think i think the goal with you know each of the games is kind of like whether it's this or rune terra or um valorant and stuff they always kind of are like we want to make a big big splash in the space of the genre genre that we're coming out in if not like take it over, you know, or at least land in those top three most discussed games, you know.

And they they certainly picked, you know, the the

the team that like has the ability to make a like really good fighting game that is like also being made in North America, you know, without necessarily going to like one of the Japanese developers that made like Guilty Gear or Capcom or something like that.

But I think in

seeking perfection out of the gameplay, which is very, very tight, and I have a lot of points on my impressions of the alpha from this weekend, it just took them so long to get the roster out that we're going to probably, yeah, I think this first year, variety is the number one problem that the game has right now.

It's not just that the roster's small, Casey.

It's they're all like really normal looking characters.

They're all really, really standard.

The guy you were...

I was watching...

You were playing

the other day, and

playing as a guy who looked like a knockoff of Garrison from Battle Chasers.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

That was like Darius.

Darius, yeah.

Is that...

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Because, like, League of Legends has a massive roster, but the ones they've picked

are all from the beginning of the game's life cycle, and they picked all the normal human rights or human adjacents Elawi came later right I believe that I was told she is later

but um

it does I'm also reminded every time we talk about the the the lack of giant freak you know characters that we love um

is the I'm always reminded of that

Asia top 100 versus North America top 100 and how the Asian top 100 characters are all like the pretty

humor stars.

They're all the pop stars, right?

Everyone that is beautiful and young and hot is the most popular.

So like North America is way more down for the volleybears and blitz cranks, you know, but like that is a

localized

flavor.

That being said though,

oh, well, just character variety, I'd say is yeah, number one thing with it as well.

Because the other problem that goes alongside character variety is that in a game like this, where it's team-based, you're going to see them more characters more often because it's teams of two that you're fighting against.

And if somebody on that team is really good as an assist

that jumps in to support you,

that character is going to be seen even more often because they have...

a really good utility that means like people are not just going to pick two that they love they're going to pick the one that's a great partner

and the one they love.

I'm seeing a future in which there's the three out of ten top-tier characters and the two good assists.

And now all of a sudden your 10 character roster is down to like four.

And this is kind of what happened with

Marvel versus Capcom and Dragon Ball.

And a lot of kind of fast hyper fighters tend to have a similar thing where like you're going to find, you know, you're picking two characters that you're a fan of and maybe one that you don't care about, but man, are are they great as an assist to help you throw a beam out or do something that's great for your offense?

And then, of course, there was the Marvel vs.

Capcom Infinite, where they said, well, let's just put

the stones in place.

Let's put the Infinity Gauntlet stones to replace a character pick, you know.

And I think here, this game kind of has something similar where the fuses are all like a very, very unique way that your team is affected.

And variety is going to come more from fuses than from the cast yeah no one likes that but that's not enough because

looking at the game you want to see this giant source roster of hundreds of characters it's coming from a place where the whole thing is i want

i have everyone's got a list you know and when you're kind of like every person who's interacted with league has a big list of like 50 characters they would like to see and way too many people are like, How did zero

of the people in my

onto this roster?

Right, you're getting prepared to be like, I guess I'll accept seeing five that I want, and then the remaining 50, you know, will show up later or something.

And you're like, actually,

even a full team of two characters with characters I like in the current roster.

So, that's that's the number one

thing I'd say, the number one

flaw right now that we feel for sure.

And then at the same token, I feel like when you look at, okay, how much work is going into each character and like, how is this

taking so long?

Jinx is the new character that was available.

And did you mess with her at all?

No, I didn't.

She's incredible, right?

She's a very, very sauced up.

like zoning character.

She's really good

and it feels a lot of fun to use her tools together.

She can, you can immediately see that like the way she plays is she's got her little Gatling gun that you can shoot straight forward or you can like aim it upwards in like an arc that sweeps.

She can send out little robot monkeys.

She can send out little flying drones and bouncing like, you know, biting traps.

And then she has the ability to like shoot them to make them fly further forward towards you or like electrocute them.

And then they move in different different screw patterns across the screen.

And overall, the combining of like all her little traps and your ability to shoot your guns and shoot your missiles and fill the screen with stuff is very, very like,

there's a lot of freedom in like how you can play as her, you know?

And then when you get really good, you can start to see like her combos involve very skillful juggling of your opponent with like...

Using your big rocket hammer to launch them into the air, throwing out a trap, shooting them, and then the trap is bouncing behind them to like grab them back, and then you continue the combo.

It looks really cool.

She seems like a very well-built, you know, in the same way that, like, a lot of these characters, like, they think about a lot, and they make sure that each time a character comes out, they put a lot of work into it.

You can see that.

And so, I feel like the philosophy here is like a part of the reason why things are going to take this long is because each time they build out a character, they're going to make sure that they're very thorough and complete and have a whole lot going on with them.

But I'm just like, I don't know if that the trade-off is going to mean as much for general audiences.

Because, as someone who likes fighting games, I love when a character feels like they have a very complete kit that works really well within itself.

But, like, are we trading off quantity and quality in a way that, you know, might hurt the game in the long run?

So, Woolly, I totally agree and understand everything that you say.

And what's interesting is that somebody who used to agree with you and now no longer agrees with you is Tom Cannon, the lead developer of this game, because he just gave an interview a couple days ago about how he feels about the roster going forward.

Oh, yeah?

I have the quotes up here.

And so he thinks that the quantity over quality is the road forward?

I can say that we have champions that we're working on that you haven't seen yet.

I'll tell you, for me, a number that would feel better than 10, just my personal opinion, is around 24.

i think that at 24 you're like okay now there's enough to keep me going and then we can add more and more but as what would be a good enough for me or rather a good starting point 24.

um yeah i don't know if he's saying they're gonna hit 24 by the end of the year so then we're so then we're no he's so he's agreeing with me then i'm saying i think the number of characters going up matters more especially given the license this is connected to and the impression that you want to have for a game like this coming out free to play for a lot of people, picking characters and just connecting with them is the first thing you do in a game like this.

And the fact that there's a lot of, I can see why they take as long, but I think more variety, more characters is more important for a game like this.

So there's a second part to this, which is has something that I really want to criticize very heavily.

He goes on to say, we're not close to that now, so we're going to work quickly to get to that point, which is 24.

And then we're going to keep going.

The reason why I'm being a little cagey at this stuff is because honestly, we're still getting better at this.

This is a new fighting game team, even though we've been at this for a little while, which in a little while is 10 years.

Even though we've been at this for a little while, we're not on like version five of a franchise, right?

We're building this team, and as we go, we're learning how to do things.

You're seeing the game get better, look visually better, and the character kits get more dialed in.

As frankly, we're getting more familiar with the game and better at our jobs.

So, my main complaint about this statement is: first of all, it it is very reasonable, and I get it.

My main complaint is: he goes, Well, we haven't been, you know, this isn't version five of the game, right?

And it's like, I know for a fact it is version three of the game that they have built up, this is the third version of 2xKO after it used to be something else, and then they scrapped it, and then they used to be something else, and then they scrapped it.

So, they are essentially on their third iteration of this game.

I think, I think what he's i i took that to mean like releases because there is a difference between internal re-scrapping and starting over versus sure but they could have the public release this game at least twice by now definitely it could have been but i think that there's a there's a huge difference in the amount you learn from a release and from the public getting their hands on something and taking that into your sequel versus the internal like shit we fucked up start over you know i uh i

i do you know i don't know tom Tom Cannon.

I've never met him and I've never spoken with him.

And I'm sure, and I know he's behind GGPO

and this team is clearly working very hard.

I think they have made the game wrong if they are at the point of nine years of development that they're coming out with something that is actually under like 18 months to two years of development.

Like, that's kind of like what happened with the anthem.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't think anyone would, I think it's clear that like it something did not go according to plan if this is the launch roster for sure.

And it's the and it's um the whole time we've been talking about this game over the years, uh, uh, looking forward to it, it's been all the discussion has always been about, man, what a big roster to pick from.

Who are we going to get?

That's like that has been the assumption for like eight years talking about this game.

They like, and I don't know what their plans were, but I feel like they, like, they really should have looked at the fact that the expectation was was for a big Marvel style roster

the whole time.

I think

besides the fact that Riot is like, I guess, willing up to a point to

macro this.

Yeah, but they were willing to up to now kind of like let it go and just keep cooking.

What I will say is that like, optimistically,

yeah, the game, the problem that we're describing is a fixable one.

It just, it's like you need to start putting out the characters and getting that number up.

And as that number goes up, this problem becomes less of an issue.

And I think that you're going to see that over time as well.

And it doesn't have to have the,

by being free,

it's not the

Concord thing, right?

Where you're like, okay, guys, please pay for 10 characters and enjoy this incomplete kind of you're fighting the same character a lot vibe for a while until it slowly gets where it wants to be.

I think that, like, by coming out free and then doing this, it's one of those games where you can play it, get in, and be like, maybe I'll tune back in when I see who I want to play show up.

Maybe I'm looking for, again, Volleybear, Blitzkrag, Timo,

right?

Vi,

any arcane character, whatever the case is.

And it can be something like that.

But overall, this is a solvable over time problem that you're not hitting the wall of like, I spent my money where the fuck is the variety I'm looking for?

I worry about that because like, so League of Legends has 170 characters-ish, and 20 of them are free on rotation at any given time, right?

So 20 is two times as many characters as you need to field a full match in league, right?

This game's going to come out with 10.

How many of the, and it's a free-to-play fighting game, so some characters will be available for free on rotation.

I assume it's going to be two or four characters on rotation.

That is going to be

a lot of matches against the same characters.

You mean the free?

Yeah, into XKO.

Because you're going to have to unlock characters in that game.

If they're not on rotation.

Okay, so was League where you...

was it doda or league where it was full roster and you buy cosmetics dota that's full roster at all times uh okay league you had to unlock through game currency or purchase or buy

and they rotate the free ones around

okay okay and 2xko they announced that they're going to have a tournament mode that's offline that unlocks all the characters yes which says that the main online mode will have most of the characters locked which means like I think Darius and Ari as a tag team is really like outrageously common now.

And all I can think of is wait until those are the only free characters available for like an entire month.

Has that

release structure worked?

Have they done that for all their other games as well?

Yeah, I believe so.

Okay.

Because this feels like a game where the Dota approach would actually be way better for

what they're going for, and that

this would be a good time to try that out instead.

That would be a good time to try that.

But to do the Dota approach, they need to have like 4 billion cosmetics for all the characters.

Yeah, so

I did see, yeah, I did see as well.

Yeah, in SageM talking to the team, they mentioned that there'd be some unlocking through some way that we haven't seen yet.

Is it your credit card?

Who knows?

It probably is your credit card.

But yeah, no,

definitely for a tournament and for the ability to play this game in locals and things like that, there needs to be something that is friendly for where have every character unlocked, ready to go, like a normal fighting game.

Hey, Tracy, let me ask you.

You said you saw me playing 2XKO.

If you were the kind of person who was like, oh, that game looks cool, and it's free, would you be excited to hop into a free-to-play fighting game where there were only two characters available to try?

Not particularly, though.

I don't play too many free-to-play games in the first place because I don't like the monetization kind of models.

So it's kind of not my scene

there far.

Nah, not too keen on it.

No.

So yeah, they need to work on the roster and get that up

to snuff for sure.

There's a bunch of other stuff about it, impressions-wise, that I've felt that I think I want to touch on just before we get off the topic.

Go fast!

Okay, well, roster, big problem, agreed.

That aside, the stuff that it's doing really well, and I think what'll be the hallbark identity of it is like the co-op elements are fantastic.

The co-op elements in this as a tag team fighter that you play as two people together are better than anything that's happening.

Do you feel like a lot of people are going to use that?

I think it'll.

I think possibly.

I don't know.

It's hard to guess.

It encourages it in a lot of ways.

And the fact that they put in a bunch of new stuff to like do more as a duo,

I'm encouraged by that.

I feel like

it was a lot of fun kind of just originally, you know, seeing how you could play together and switch off back and forth.

But now that they have ways where you can be,

if you're very good at fighting games, but you have a friend who's not too sure how to play, there's a specific way that you can come in with them as an assist that helps you, and they can learn the game while you are taking over as the main character and stuff is like a fun teaching kind of mode, you know?

That's the sidekick,

the sidekick fuse.

Yeah, I think stuff like that's really, really great for like also making the game stand out as a unique thing, you know?

People played Smash Brothers in teams of two before, and of course there's a Multiversus which came and went, which also had a dedicated kind of duo mode.

But this is actually playing in a way that is legitimately like refreshingly new and fun, and you have synergy with the person you're playing with.

And I think this is the standout that

is going to make this game, like if you are somebody that wants to play cooperatively with your friends and stuff together, this is going to be more memorable for sure as a feature compared to other fighters.

You know, if you have somebody be like, hey, you should try this game out.

In fact, I'm pretty good at it or let's play together.

And then you'd be like, okay, I've never touched it before, but you show me the ropes.

I'll just join a team with you.

And then they can kind of walk you through it.

I think that's a really cool thing that other fighting games couldn't do.

And so

that feels stronger here because they have this thing, right?

The sidekick thing I mentioned.

Let me ask you, how do you feel about the length of matches?

Because there's a video.

Gonna get there.

Gonna get there.

Let me just hit some of the things, right?

So Juggernaut also is a really cool way that you and your friend can both be on the same team and you can almost like play together.

And if you can jump in on rounds where you know you think, ah, I got this match.

Let me take over.

Or let me just watch you play and so that's another way as well of you kind of playing together with a friend and a lot of what i've wanted fighting games to do has been my main feature i want them to have is squat up on the title screen give me the same thing that an apex legends or fortnite or any of these other games do where you're encouraged to just jump into a discord chat with your buddies and play together you know um i would love that and i think that here you have you have that ability right so like i i'd like to see them further lean into these really awesome uh things they're doing.

I think that

something as well that is nice is like, okay, they've made the combos shorter and

that overall has, you know, affected, that feels better too.

In a lot of cases,

you don't have the same super long Ari combo loop that we saw that took like a million years before.

And

that's a...

that felt very boring to just kind of stare at a long thing lasting forever.

And like the kind of flip side of it is that like shorter combos kind of get into like this ideal damage range faster.

And then if you do like extensions and try to style too much, it really, really scales downward and like kind of stops it from paying off.

So there's a little bit of a feeling where I tried to do some more advanced stuff with Elawi and I kind of realized it's like even when I pulled it off, the damage wasn't worth it.

So there's a little bit of a homogenizing effect there that I'm like, okay, well, I hope that the variety with your assists and stuff can still keep that fresh.

But overall, shorter combos does, you know, feel like you could get back to the game and it's more engaging in that way.

I also think the change they made in the Alpha Lab 2 where you can do push blocking more frequently is great because you call in your assist to do that now, whereas before it used to cost a meter, which I'm like, I don't want to spend a super just getting you off of me for one second.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

You know, so putting that on your partner is a lot better.

And that means that like, great, I've used my partner up to push push you off.

Now I don't have an assist for a couple seconds, but like, hey, I'm not as, it doesn't feel as bad to use that resource because it does replenish, you know, after a couple seconds.

And then I also think that when you, beforehand,

when you died, if your character had a leftover meter and you switched to the new character, that leftover meter, you wouldn't be able to do anything with it.

But now they have a very elegant solution where you can use that leftover meter to do a super assist with a dead

partner.

And I think that's a really smart way to use something that was otherwise just sitting there pointlessly.

You know, so that was that was well done.

I think there's also when you jump online, you get an end user license agreement that basically says, don't be a fucking asshole, and we will kick you if you're a griefing shit, you know, which is like, I want to see how they enforce this, but the messaging that basically is like, if you, if you're a rage-quitting baby, if you don't like, you know, playing with others and playing nicely, then there's other games for you.

Get out.

Yes, like League of Legends.

I appreciate the, you know, the wall they put up on that agreement sign.

Let's see how they enforce it, you know, but it's nice to see that it's...

If you're a whiny diaper baby, we have League of Legends over here for you to diaper baby your way as much as you want.

Please try one of our other offerings on the Riot Launcher.

Now, yes, so character variety.

Now back to so as far as the problems go, that's the one of them.

And then the second thing is,

because they've increased the ability for you to, okay, so shorter combos also means that they've increased your ability to like tech roll, get out of situations,

avoid situations where your character was stuck on the ground and then you had to like wake up and guess, you know, what was about to hit you.

Now you can evade that a lot easier.

And so as a result, some people are playing much more defensively and much more keepable.

Much more defensively.

I noticed that at the lower level matches, when people don't really are not too familiar with the game, things were more or less fine.

It was going along and everything was

every match was reaching its intended conclusion.

And then when I fought against a lot better players, there was a lot more like, actually, I'm going to hang back and run away from you.

And that resulted in more timeovers.

So that was an issue.

That was a really long timer.

It's like 120 seconds.

Yeah.

So that was something something I saw.

Other channels were discussing this too.

I felt it when

I had some, yeah, some of the matches against some stronger players, and people were just like, you're chasing them down the whole time.

And they're like, I'm going to, I'm, you know, I'm playing runaway essentially.

Is that we used to joke about it because in Street Fighter Cross Tech and the timer and the damage numbers and the ability to just run away was the optimal way to play.

And here this has happened again in some bad ways where, like, you know, one of the examples that was given in a Broski video was a situation where um

both characters uh one person was down a partner so they had two on one side and then the opponent had one character left the one character left was likely not going to win because on her own she was just gonna likely be outclassed and so um it was a situation where if she were to fight back at that point she would be giving her opponent more resources by fighting.

So it's better for her to just die.

But then the opponent is like, I want those resources, so I'm actually gonna wait for you to come to me to make sure that that, you know, and so it became this moment of both characters being like, I'm not gonna come to you, and I'm not gonna come to you, and you're like, uh-oh, the incentive structure to fight has broken.

Right.

Which is a very

specific thing that can happen when people are playing the game at a level where they understand how the resources work and how much it's like, you know, I need to prepare for the next round.

This round is already gone.

You never want your fighting game to become something where

the best move is not to play, right?

Injustice is one example.

The thing I think of is King of Fighters 12, where

it became a motion, like every, you know, minute or less or every couple, maybe like 20, 30 seconds, you would build up your this meter that made you so strong.

And for the next 10 seconds, I got to run away from you.

We play cat and mouse.

And then when it's gone, we can go back to playing the game normally.

That's not fun.

That sucks.

You know know what's really interesting though this is actually something that happens in League of Legends all the time really well yeah it's like okay two of my guys are dead there's a big team fight coming up it would be three versus five they want to take the tower the smart move is to not fight them at all and let them take their let them take the objective because if we fight them we'll lose and then we'll be even further behind yeah that is bad if you are if your game incentives break apart and you're like the bet the best move is not to play Then you need to change the rules of the game to make sure that doesn't happen no man it's accurate it's accurate to League of Legends They're doing

so what I will say is between the last alpha lab and this one they like they did address some of that stuff So this is a new problem we're seeing and hopefully you know they address it the same way they did the stuff last time, but they got to fix that for sure.

I think that I think

that also the calling it an alpha lab is so silly.

The game's been in debt for nine years and it's still an alpha?

Guys.

Yeah, okay.

You're not content locked yet?

You're not even in beta.

As opposed to beta or content complete, yeah, a release candidate.

Are you serious?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The

what else I mentioned?

Oh, yeah, like I kept accidentally, they changed the sweep inputs to be like,

I think it's like down forward for sweeps and like down and down back is for launchers.

And I kind of prefer the invert of that, but whatever.

That's extremely minor.

The last thing I'd say on the negative side as well is: I tried ranked and I couldn't get a single match, so it seems like ranked is not working.

Not a single one!

Nope, and I saw a tweet that implied that there was a particular range of time where they told people try ranked from like 5 p.m.

to 8.

From like there's a window where they said, We want to try this out here now as a part of the test.

But for the regular duration of the alpha lab, ranked was just not working.

Couldn't play one single match.

Nope.

Nope.

Other bad note about the ranked is that apparently when it does work, it resembles Guilty Gear Strive's ranked system, which is that you are in a room with your ranked opponents and you're basically, it's like tower floors where

you have to fight everyone in that room as opposed to just hitting a button and saying, find me anyone anywhere that matches my criteria.

Hey, man, hey.

And that sucks because things take time.

It takes time to polish these things out.

And so that ranked option sucks because you just give people the ability to dodge ranked fights or to pick and choose.

And Guilty Gear Strive gave us a lot of reasons why you need to not have people having control over what ranked fights they're going to have.

You need to just hit the button and get some things.

So I hope they fix that too because that's a bad idea.

Hey, I have a question for both of you.

Especially because you're both on opposite ends of the level of interest on this.

Because

I want to know if I'm being an asshole here.

I feel like for every year of development on a game over four,

like nitpicking becomes more like justifiable.

Right?

Like if 2xKO came out in two years and it had all these little issues, I'd be like, well, you know, they're working on it.

But at this point, like,

I expect this game to come out with a mirror shine.

Well, there's as far as for to me, the thing is, like, when we talk about Silk Song, it's like lasted so long and has become such a topic.

Silk song must be the greatest game ever made.

And we do feel it more because our jobs involve talking about it week to week.

What's that, Casey?

I'm just saying, let them cook.

Don't be weird about it.

Just let them cook.

I'm hoping that so for 2xKO, getting my hands on it.

So, Pat, for me, I'd say getting my hands on it, it feels like I'm confirming that I'm having fun with the way this game plays, and it feels more real.

So I'm excited about the things I like, and I want more of that, right?

If you're looking for an out or a reason to not care about these games, then you can be like, that shit sucks, I'm out of here, fuck that.

If you want a ripcord or a parachute to escape.

No, I'm in the opposite camp.

I want a reason to care about this game because there are tons of characters I want to play in it, and they have not put even one character I want to play in it.

Okay.

And so all the other little minor issues are like infuriating.

And I could ignore all of those if they put a character I wanted to play in it.

I think that like

there's an in the overall, like, well, I feel like I like Alawi, so I didn't feel that part of it, but I want more.

I want to see all those.

Yeah, I want to see all those other characters I mentioned.

If they put Two of the Nautilus in this game, I would never complain about it again.

I would run that team team no matter how shit it was.

But with this, and you know,

we mentioned with Gero a little bit and stuff, like in terms of like, when I, when I touch it and I go, like, yo, this is a thing that I'm going to have fun with.

I enjoy what's here.

And there's these problems.

I'm, I want to see these things ship up and get into better shape.

I'm, I think they can.

And yes, I'm also invested in the genre.

So like I'm optimistic about good entries in that, like working out and helping the health of fighting games over in the long run.

So I'm always, I'm going to be like, well, is that a fixable problem or is this fucked forever?

And if it's fixable, then it's like, okay, cool.

Well, I hope by this time, within a couple of months, or maybe even by next year,

we won't even be thinking about that.

You'll just be like, oh, yeah, here's what's going on with it.

And

it'll be a good part of CFTC.

I have a reverse thing to say about the roster, where I don't know if there's a character they could put in that I would be like, roster saved, but I do know that there's a character they could put in that I would be like, this roster is cooked.

Like, if they put in, there's a character called Garen.

Ronaldo?

No, no, no.

There's a character called, yes, yes.

There's a character called Garen that they could put in.

And I'm like, if Garen made it into the launch roster, I would be like, this game has no hope of future.

Because Garen is the guy that Darius is ripping off.

Oh, the other Ryu.

The other guy.

Yes.

The evil, the, the, the good, the hero guy.

I remember in Runterra, he was a thing.

Yeah.

I mean,

if he's a launch default expected thing, just push it later.

If he has to be there, then let him show up.

Just push it later.

He needs to show up in four years.

But yeah, that's kind of all it is is just it's a matter of perspective, right?

I look at these other things, and like to me, what matters a lot is how the game feels to play,

what's going on with the whole 2v2 system or 2v1 system,

how fun it is to

use the characters, find combos, matchups, all that stuff.

The ingredients that we enjoy in a fighting game.

And

the roster is something where I'm like, if they say they're going to fix it, right?

They said they're going to announce characters and they're going to come out.

So all we can do is just wait to see how frequently that happens.

You said something really interesting.

You said that you described all the mechanics as the ingredients that

we enjoy in a fighting game.

Well, the, no, no, okay, the stuff that I...

No, no, no, like, no, no, I understand what you mean by that.

And I'm like, I think there's a genuine difference of perspective here.

It's like, to me, the single most important ingredient in every fighting game is the roster.

Yeah, no, no, no.

Let me, I completely agree, right?

I don't want this to sound like, oh, I'm like FGC pill-brained, and that's all I care about the functions versus the cool-looking thing because, hey, look, I got me a muscle mommy, like, I'm not sure.

And I'm happy, and that's dope.

Even though that game's for like babies, because like Richter Belmont's in it,

um, more to the point,

more, more to the, the,

the emphasis I want in what I'm saying is that if they said, yeah, I don't know, we'll see when these characters show up, and that's all there is to it,

it would be so depressing and crazy to just be like, who the fuck, like, literally, like, you don't know.

So cool of them to do.

And, and, uh,

that's thankfully not what we've heard.

It's just they say more is coming.

There's nothing else to do but see whether they whether it comes fast enough.

And I hope it comes fast.

I would love to see that.

I hope it comes fast.

You know, if they just went, yeah, I don't know.

So I'm

completely

at the other end of this.

I don't I

you have to have good characters to to hook you into something, I think.

Completely

there is there is

That's that's why all the all my favorite fighting games from back in the day are like here's here's a bunch of cool people

You gotta hook on something, you know?

So like we've we've talked like at length like over like ridiculous because the number is small, but like it's actually to me anyway a much larger problem is that like

league has like a crocodile man and like a sand demon and like a evil scarecrow and like just a bunch of millions of weirdos, right?

And every single character on this roster is like a normal looking human with like a weapon.

You need something for the sickos.

Yeah, you need you need that shit for freaks.

And if someone out there is like a big echo and brawn like main team happy, then like if someone out there is like, I got my mains, then it's like, that's great.

I have seen those people.

I've seen them.

They're satisfied.

But no, you don't want to then end up fighting a ton of mirror matches.

That gets very dry very quickly, right?

The Skullgirls problem, you know, we've discussed is that Skullgirls

had a small roster on launch and you could pick up to three at a time.

So you saw that roster three times faster than you otherwise would have.

Completely agreed, you You know, Marvel Rivals is out and it has a bunch of characters that a bunch of people care about and they drop new ones every two seconds and it stays being discussed because people are discussing what's going on with Emma Frost right now and then it'll be Blade and then it'll be, you know, whatever else is coming.

Like, does someone have the balls to go up to Tom Cannon and be like, why does your shit suck so bad compared to Marvel Rivals?

Just like the most disingenuous version of the real question possible because I mean I don't know that yeah like what what's the difference between

between net ease and what they've given that project versus what riot has given this one I don't yeah

you know um I will say that when he says the part where he's if you're if the quote is that hey they're a new team that makes sense too in the sense that like okay they're like that's a very honest i guess like it sounds like yeah we were learning and we fucked up

that part of it.

I

take that.

I don't see, I don't, I'm not given reason to think that that's not true.

So I think they're just saying, like, yeah, we're going to try to fix the roster.

And there's not much else to get into besides, cool, I hope that's what happens because I like the game otherwise.

You know what I mean?

We only have 20 minutes to hit news and emails.

Did anything happen this week?

Sure did.

Yeah, I'll skip over talking about Phantom Liberty, but that thing's going great.

And this Saturday, I'll be at the Spring Overture Montreal Air Dashers Fighting Game Tournament.

It'll be streaming on Wooly vs as well.

That's So Mad for short.

So tune in at 1 p.m.

They always come up with a new one.

They always come up with a new one.

So So Mad is streaming at 1 p.m.

on Saturday.

We're running the brackets over on Woolly vs.

as well.

So, tune in.

You'll see me and Reggie jumping on commentary for some fighting games.

It'll be a good time.

Yes, okay.

So, one

PAL World

has

stated its defense against the lawyers that Nintendo's patents

lawyers have filed against them.

And their stated defense,

there's a lot of different ways they're coming at it, but one that has been quoted is specifically that

this lawsuit has no merit because there are games that also have done the exact same thing, and they name drop specifically Rune Factory 5, Titanfall 2, Pikmin 3, Deluxe.

There's a whole bunch that they go on that the same things Nintendo is coming after them for.

They're like, these other games have done that.

right?

Yeah, they're totally right.

In particular,

those three make it easy to see how a player character can perform an action to release a monster or capture them like a ball and fire in the direction by releasing a button.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Far Cry 5, and Tomb Raider showed that there can be different types of throwable objects.

Pocket Souls, Octopath Traveler, Monster Super League, and Final Fantasy XIV made it easy to imagine that one could pick targets on the field, show an indication of a likely capture operation, succeeding.

So they've basically brought their homework and are going, there's receipts all over the industry.

Why us?

So I don't know how well this works because I completely agree with their argument.

I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not a lawyer.

But it also feels like you getting a speeding ticket kick and pointing out your window.

What about all those guys speeding while the guy's writing you up?

Yeah, I don't know.

I think

the gist of what they're saying here is that they're trying a bunch of defenses and

we'll see what sticks.

But if Nintendo has a very

narrow uh registered series of patent rules that are uh clearly things that have been in violation in a bunch of other examples and they're cherry-picking pocket pair in particular it lends strength to their to their defense

like

is part of their argument that nintendo should sue the developers of pikmin 3 for infrared

yeah yeah yeah well i mean so yeah the question is is like if nintendo goes oh thanks for the heads up we are now launching lawsuits on all of the aforementioned games.

Titanfall is now getting sued by Nintendo.

You know,

I don't know, but it was interesting to see that come up as part of their defense.

The less that happens,

we do not need more mechanics locked behind patents in games.

It's

no.

It's ridiculous.

Yep.

It is.

And I don't know.

And speaking of that, did you see that this year, the patent on the insanity system from Eternal Darkness is now up?

Yes, I did.

Yeah.

That's another thing.

That and the nemesis system things, they never should have been locked behind patents.

It's bullpucky.

Yeah, the fact that they got away with that, you know,

Bandai Namco got away with loading screen mini-games for a long time.

Sega took over the arrow pointing you at an objective like crazy taxi.

Oh, it's all bullshit.

It's horrible because it's quality of life features being patented by publishers, you know?

So yeah, I guess a game can now use the insanity system if they choose to.

And I guess fighting Psychomantis doesn't really count as that because it's not you, but it is the boss doing it to you.

I don't know.

There must be some reason why, you know.

I mean, certainly other games have messed with the player, but

this particular one where it's based on like, you know, calming down, getting rest, and your mental state affecting like everything in general,

you know, like was just like they were allowed to get away with locking that down.

And I have to wonder if there were other games that had cool ideas that were like, nah, we got stopped because of the patent.

Probably.

Even if it wasn't significantly close to a patent, it can have a chilling effect.

Yeah, so

we will see what that means.

But fuck that entire process, you know.

Quality of life.

I want games to borrow from other games as soon as someone figures out something good that can smooth over.

Or rather, anytime you go back to a game, imagine going back to a third-person shooter that had like

PS1, no analog aiming, you know, no cover,

L1, R1 to turn, and

yeah, just like what, wow,

horrendous, you know, or like Mega Man Legend style, you know.

Anyway, um,

what else is going on?

Um,

Claire Obscure, uh,

Expedition 33, uh,

they released their RPG, and also Oblivion has released itself as well.

Yeah, why aren't they trying Horizon on Expedition 33, man?

And that seems really unfortunate, but they're taking it like lol by tweeting out, oh my god, it's like Barbenheimer.

So they're just like, yeah, it's fine.

They're both like, we got, they got ambushed by an unexpected remaster.

I'm so million times more excited for Expedition 33.

Oh, yeah.

Like, no question.

No, it doesn't even doesn't even compare.

Big really enjoyed Oblivion back in the day.

Like, I was old school morrowind.

Also, I don't understand their shadow-dropping logic now, because they shadow-dropped Hi-Fi Rush to kill it.

I don't think they're trying to do that with Oblivion.

I mean, it feels like an Elder Scrolls shadow drop is just meant to crater whatever's happening around that time frame.

All I can take from it, with my gut, is that I remember Microsoft was really mad there was no Fallout game to come out alongside the Fallout TV show because it'll be a while before the next Fallout game.

And my gut of Shadow Drop Oblivion Remaster is,

oh my god, Elder Scroll VI is so many years away.

It is.

There isn't going to be an Elder Scroll VI.

It's not coming out.

Oh, it's not coming out?

Just straight up?

Nope.

It's just going to stay in development.

And

you're going to be an old man with a long beard down to your toes, and then you'll get a teaser for it

and you will die.

Your soul will exit.

Yeah, it's just, it's just going to, it's not happening in our lifetimes.

They're going to keep Todd Howard in suspended animation, just bring him out every 10 years

for another

Skyrim.

And he will say, Leave Jaren to me.

I feel like there have been a lot of open world RPGs that have come out since Skyrim that have massively improved on it in every way.

And then I look over at what they're doing with Fallout and how their Fallout games have not improved on any of themselves at all.

And, like, man, I would be sweating if I was having to make a new Elder Scrolls game.

Freaking

Dread Delusion

is a better, it's a better Morrowind-like than anything Bethesda has done.

Yeah, Dread Delusion is awesome.

That is so goddamn good.

And Kingdom Come Deliverance is a way better Oblivion than Skyrim ever was.

So, this is one of those cases where the genre has gotten away from the leader of it.

Well, the big problem with Starfield is it was even shittier Fallout 4.

And you're like,

what the fuck?

Everybody else out there is getting better and better.

And, like, this game's like a genuine step down.

Hmm.

Well, at the very least,

you know, Expedition 33 is, again, they seem none too bothered.

They also, like, you know.

Drowning in high praise.

Yeah, they went tee hee at being the best rated game of the year so far.

So, like, fucking, yeah, good on them.

Um.

There have been multiple, so we talked a little bit about this earlier, just touched on it, but just, like, PSA, beware

there are multiple fake beta test scams going on now and Konami has warned about it for

there's a fake silent hill f beta test going on and CD Proyect is warning of a fake witcher 4 beta test where they're basically putting out a fake page where you just sign up and and or

zeeting or skeeting or or whatever

pages that look like official signups to to get your hands on games that are you know about to come out or highly anticipated or so double check to make sure and and and verify that those are real if you see any of these things because

yeah, you can get your

Your data stolen.

So watch out

They were already running this this we started seeing this scam on like YouTube channel play people like people like different various channels have been getting taken down by fucking crypto shit and you know fake messages and whatever but like it's expanding now out to like if you're looking to sign up for these games so watch out.

Um,

you see the new uh Night Rain Elden Ring character trailer, yeah.

It was a big boy,

the Raider.

Uh,

I never thought that like

Earth Bending would have a place in this setting, but it looks rad as hell and kind of boss-breaking.

Yeah, it's like, look, I'm on a high spot and you can't hit me, yeah, which is really good,

you know, the whole thing about like Souls games where they're like, you know, you got to get down there and, you know, roll around with the boss and survive and do it the hard way.

And then the character's whole bit is like, nah, I'm up here, though.

Like, how about I just snipe you from high ground?

Is it weird that I'm not interested in Nitrain?

Well, it depends what you're coming to the Souls games for.

Yeah, it's always been more of a single-player kind of experience farming with a little bit of the co-op on the side.

Oh, I'm not going to go with grabbing it.

Like, ever.

I'm going to play a solo version of that game.

I've ignored multiplayer in every Souls game that I've played the entire time.

But playing the beta for Night Rain and just jumping online with people and doing some runs with it, I was like, okay, this is fun.

The beta kind of convinced me on the idea because

it's overall the idea that there's like an Elden Ring arcade

experience that is just...

It's not meant to be the next entry in a full-size fromsoft single-player adventure.

It's just meant for if you feel like doing where we drop in, but also Parry's roles and fighting the Nameless King with you know

a set, fast, kind of like paced version of the game.

I could be in the mood for a one-hour quick souls romp without necessarily wanting to restart a whole character in a campaign.

I just want to play Elden Ring roguelike.

Chalice Dungeons?

No, roguelike i am honestly

i cannot wait do something

sekaro related because that game is

that was oh my gosh if they do

that could be a bit

it could i'll i'll i'll wait i got time i can't believe they never did the dlc they were they were hinting at in sekaro

lies of pea as well as um

god i loved that one more than bloodborn at home is what I'm told.

Yeah.

Oh, it's oh, Lies of P is great.

It is really, really good.

It is probably my favorite non-From Soft Souls game.

It nailed it.

And one of the things that really, really impressed me about Lies of P is it didn't run out of steam towards the end.

Every single new area was like adding in fresh enemies and fresh mechanics and like new enemy types and combinations of enemy types and it was like

damn this just this was just hitting on all cylinders nice and the

i'd loved incredibly excellent final boss

yeah that that final boss was incredible like

and the music okay wow yeah no it's it's it's it's on the list for sure um i've it's it's been nothing but praise all right um yeah that was pretty much it the There was a Doom Dark Ages trailer that dropped, and

Doom looks cool.

It's just going to shoot demons.

You're going to shoot the devil.

But now

these trailers have more plot than ever.

And it's just funny because I can never forget the beginning of the first

remake or of the first new Doom game where it's just like, grab story, get it out of my face.

I want to fucking kill the demons.

So you're going to shoot the devil.

Yeah, and I sure hope that's what Doom is about.

And when we go into these narrative trailers, I hope that that energy where the Slayer is like, I don't fucking care, shut up.

I hope that continues to some degree.

But yeah, looks cool.

Yeah, Ghost of Yotoi.

It got an announcement, a date.

Yeah.

Yeah, October of this year.

Yep.

I'm hanging out until that gets ported to PC.

Then I'll enjoy it.

Yeah, I think I'm going to do that as well this time.

I really enjoyed Tsushima on PC.

So will that be when they announce the third ghost game then?

Yes, yes, it will.

And this will be to promote it.

They'll do the PC release as a fucking late thing.

Well, you know, if they're paying for it,

it's an interesting strategy, right?

All right.

We've only got a couple minutes, so let's wrap up with an email.

If you want to send an email, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Also, to anybody watching this live, in about an hour, I'm going to start streaming Expedition 33 over at twitch.tv slash pat stairs at.

All right, let's take one over here.

Hello, Willardo and Patricio.

My name is Jorge, and my question is about my experience with games.

The thing is, I have a busy life.

I'm a neoatologist working in a Niku.

Oh.

Oh, that's a for realsy property

important person.

That's a job.

That's a real, real, real job.

Being a a longtime follower, yours attempt to pick out games that definitely I found spectacular or A-plus for my personal enjoyment.

That way I can maximize my quality time when I get to play games.

But sometimes I can't help but think I'm missing out on something by not playing bad games or cringing throughout a horrible story.

You think I'm crazy, or have you, people that you know, had this feeling as well?

So we just touched on this earlier in the episode.

For,

I think watching people play the bad game is enough to get that experience if you would like.

I don't know that you need to go spend money on it.

Yeah, suffering for yourself.

It's overrated.

Yeah.

Buy good games and enjoy those regardless of whether you're watching someone play them.

For bad games, you know,

maybe save your money.

and enjoy the suffering remotely.

Yeah, I don't think you're missing out, man.

I wouldn't worry about it.

You should just spend all of your time doing good things.

Controversial statement, I know.

Do you dive into bad games from time to time, Casey?

Yes, but

I won't play too many bad games.

The last

genuinely bad experience I had was trying Concord.

And then

I wasn't

agreed with you.

That was not good.

You're one of the people.

But I do think that there's a lot of.

Yeah, I'm one of the people who played both Concorde and Battleborn.

Oh, wow.

That is.

Battleborn was actually okay.

Yeah, it just wasn't fun.

Concorde was not fun.

You have accomplished something.

I don't know what, but

I don't know what it is.

Did you play

EA's Dead Moba Dawn Gate?

No.

No one has.

No, I do think you do need to mix things up a bit.

I don't think you necessarily have to play a bad game to appreciate a good game, but

mix things up a little.

Play something a little janky or a little rough around at the edges.

It's always nice.

Yeah.

Like

that game I was talking about earlier, Tower of Calamanvo.

It is a very dedicatedly old-school experience.

It's not going to be for everybody, but there's a demo.

You can try it.

It might be for you.

It might be fun.

You might like us.

You might have

some of the stuff

kind of rub you the wrong way.

It might be a bit abrasive, but

it is a fun game.

And I like,

I always recommend playing a variety, you know?

Not stick with any one kind of thing.

Because

it makes...

Like,

if I stuck playing the same type of game, I would get bored.

You know what that reminds me of?

You ever see

these content creator thumbnails that are just like, games just aren't fun anymore.

There's no good games out.

And it's a screenshot of Call of Duty or Battlefield.

Uncharted.

And you go to the channel, and literally all they play is Call of Duty or Battlefield.

Quadruple A only.

Yeah, 100%.

I think as well, we're in a position that is.

So because of the old channel and because of the fact that like

coming from QA, we had that let's celebrate the bugs energy, which then meant bad became good and overall created a thing where looking look finding the bad was a cause for celebration and fun and popping off and stuff.

Like, there was a bit of a like

a culture created around that you know from from the the the old days and so um

having that be something you can do with friends almost like watching a bad movie is a fun thing i think you can do you know if you're gonna play a bad game if you're gonna subject yourself to it do so with friends you know on a on a on a friday night maybe get some drinks and just subject yourself to it together with the safety of strength and numbers you know and yeah um it's like when I when I took people to see the greasy strangler when they did a screening of that in my local cinema, that's not a movie you just go to see, that's a movie you inflict on other people.

There you go, there you go, right.

Have you ever seen that movie?

I have not.

Oh, dear God, help me.

All right.

Um, I'm sorry, go check out the greasy strangler, it's horrible.

Okay, I'll put it on the list of bad movies to watch with the wife.

Greasy Strangler.

Casey, thank you so much for joining us.

Appreciate you.

Thank you so much for having me.

Sorry if I was a little quiet when you were

getting into the real fighting game, Grognard, kind of like

into the minutiae.

It's like, I found it fascinating.

Not at all.

But I had nothing to add.

No, you're fine.

I mean, it just happens to be a week where two big ones released that we've been waiting on a while and we got our hands on them.

Any week, it could just be random, but it happens to be one of those things.

You know, it would have been the same if, like, Devil May Cry, something related to that, were to happen or anything else.

I think it's important to have somebody around sometimes to remind us that nobody gives a shit about fighting games.

There you go.

I give a shit, but just not a lot about the more modern ones.

My tastes will always be the old school.

Because you're right.

Yeah, and thus, Pat, there's no reason to ever get excited ever and let's just

And let's just dober on everything.

Let me hang it up as I'm streaming them this weekend.

God damn it.

All right.

We're out of here, everybody.

Thank you.

Have a good week, everybody.

Take care and thank you.