CSB313: Embrace The Whoament

All right, there we are.

Yo-yo.

Hey, what's up?

How you doing, Wolves?

Not too much.

Are you?

I can't stop coughing.

It's bullshit.

Some kid at the fucking play place infected me with some kind of fucking bullshit.

I'm fine, though.

I just can't stop coughing.

So I got these lozenges that I'm supposed to only have 12 a day, but there's no medicinal ingredients, so they can go fuck themselves.

I'm going to eat however many I want.

Do they taste like candy?

They're candy.

Yeah, that's the problem with those lozenges is you kind of taste like cherry candy.

Yeah, they're good.

Well, at least I'm better than I used to be where I would just crunch them.

And that, man, you can get a lot of them and you crunch them.

You get a lot.

I've definitely done the thing where I'm like having them and even going to bed, I'm like, okay, let me pop one in and let me like I don't I want to suck it to like you know let it help the medicinal do its magic do its thing, but you're going to sleep and you don't want to die like an idiot.

Yeah, it's like the most choking hazard shit ever.

So what you got to do oh my volume is down again.

Okay, hold up.

Let me try to fix it.

It's doing the thing again.

Oh, it is.

It's not just Pat.

I also put my volume back down to where it was for you and I'm going to do the I'm going to crank the gain up on the action.

Yeah, do it.

Okay.

All right, hold up a sec.

Fucking, yeah.

Volume.

That's fun.

I'm going to put you back down to 50.

Yay.

Live.

Live is fun.

All right.

They got a good snoof in there.

Good.

Good.

I'm

glad you got a snoof.

That's good.

So

we,

yeah, we're talking about lozenges.

And so what I did was

pre-bite it to like crack it into like smaller pieces to be a non-choking hazard.

And then kind of.

Aren't like smaller pieces like a way larger choking hazard?

No.

One big thing is going to block your windpipe and kill you.

Smaller pieces will not block.

Well, I guess.

I guess a small piece couldn't block my mouth hole.

I mean,

that was my tech, was to pre-pre-chew, but then nothing

could do it.

Um,

anyway,

uh, yeah, I guess

I didn't have too busy of a week personally.

Yeah, me either.

Like, I, I'm, I was sitting here and I'm like,

not much.

Actually.

What did we do?

Did some more cyberpunk

wrapped up.

I think.

It's hard to tell when a quest is really done, done, because people you meet tend to call you back, you know, from time to time.

But I did the

river date.

And

that was fun to

be like, you know, they're there,

cop man, you're a nice guy, but not like this.

And then to play the VR game with the kids.

There's a, like, the way kids play cops and robbers in the future is they put on VR headsets and then you all play this alternate reality, sort of like running around the neighborhood, shooting pop-up enemies type of thing.

I mean, that's not even that different from now if the kids just play the Call of Duty.

Yeah.

But like, you can run by the neighbor, and in the the meantime they're doing it, but they're also basically

being lucky and wild or

Dick Mullen style cops

talking about their worst days on the job as they're gunning down the bad guys.

And

yeah, you know, if I could, if I could tago and cash my way through recess, I would have done so.

You know,

this is a horrible aside, and I'm sorry to bring it up.

But, like, you're describing they're in VR headsets and they're running around.

So it's AR.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Because, like,

I know you saw Ready Player One.

I think we saw it together.

No, I read Ready Player One.

I did not watch the movie.

Oh, okay.

Oh, my memory is fucked up.

Well, at the end of Ready Player One, all the nerds come together for a big fight, and then it cuts to them in the real world.

And there's a shot of like a group of people running down a sidewalk pretending to be in the game

with their with their fully enclosed VR headsets on.

And I'm just like, they're going to run straight into traffic and fucking die in like two seconds off camera.

Yeah.

Terrible.

Yeah, no,

the first thing you'd obviously probably do is put up a boundary for where you are on the map and stuff.

But then again, look at Pokemon Go, you know,

people try to catch a Snorlax, run it all up into those dangerous, abandoned warehouses.

I've seen the argument recently that Pokemon Go was just the world's most ambitious

pedestrian traffic data collection tool.

Yeah, so apparently Niantic was using the, well, I mean, their previous game, I forgot what it was called, but a lot of this was all like data collection.

They got you.

For sure.

They got you.

For sure.

but you know, like

they got you, but

you got that Raichu, so

I didn't get shit, I didn't get anything good on Pokemon Go.

The exchange is fair, I suppose.

Um, the I remember the uh, the Evo when that was popping was just like people running back and forth, you know, while the event was happening, like running from your bracket to go catch some shit because someone would be like, oh, there's a fucking Hitmonchan over there, And then everyone would be like, yeah.

Justin Wong in particular, fucking running up and down

the convention.

Yeah, no, it was a thing.

It was a thing.

And it was interesting at the very least for

the place I used to live that had a

like

the block had like four stops on it.

So it became, it was a corner that had multiple stops and it became like a hotspot.

People set up a tent, people were pulling out lawn chairs.

Temporarily displaced the creepy homeless people that were there because there were so many like teenagers and young adults crowding it.

So they already were like, they already kind of moved out because they like put lights in and like kind of brightened up the place and cleaned it up a bit.

But like overall, like that and then the church on the corner there as well kind of set up a they set up shop and they made a whole,

you know, like,

you know, you're here to catch Pikachu, but why not catch the good word?

You know,

here's some water.

Here's a granola bar.

And if you're looking to catch

some salvation, maybe talk to one of our animals.

I love that shit so much, man.

It's so good.

I'm like, hey, you do what you got to do, you know?

I can't hate on it.

If you know your audience and who you're trying to reach and that's your bit, then fucking go for it.

My favorite version of this is every single sentence.

This is like, like,

you know, who else had a really hard time in their 30s?

Uh-huh.

Jesus.

Yeah, how do we know?

There's a whole blank era where we don't know what happened.

The Dark Eaters.

That's why I started with 30s.

The end of the dark era.

The end of Jesus' emo, goth core phase.

Pokemon go to the polls.

Yeah.

Anyway,

so yeah, Cyberpunk was cool.

Did a bit more of that.

How come our cyberpunk sucks?

How come fictional cyberpunks are cool, but our actual cyberpunk?

Lame.

Wasn't there a quote that was like, cyberpunk is a warning?

Didn't that wasn't that?

Didn't the creator say that?

This is actually like a straight-up warning.

Yeah, no, it was always going to suck.

It was never going to not suck.

We have decades of cyberpunk film and literature, and

the people who are cribbing those ideas for our dank dystopian future are leaving behind the only thing about it that we like, which is the aesthetic.

Oh, I mean, I've been having conversations with

Punch Bomb about this, but like, I'm kind of just, there's a bit of a weird moment that we're having where you grow up kind of just rolling your eyes almost almost at how cliche the classic like adventure story good versus evil tropes are.

Because it's like, yeah, obviously we don't treat people like that.

Yeah, we know this is bad.

You don't like yada yada, evil hatred.

And you just kind of get so, it's so cliche that you roll your eyes at that.

And then there's, you're kind of like able to look around and go, hmm, there might be a point in time where actually stories that tell you to not be a piece of shit might become rare.

And

this range of time where we've rolled our eyes at how many things were all about this might actually be something important to teach people in the future if they don't get access to media that doesn't mention, hey, being a piece of shit kind of sincerity is horribly underrated.

Yeah, I'd say so.

And

I think the only time you can see sincerity not being underrated

is when you're playing an ace combat game,

which is the most super

story you will ever, ever encounter.

Yeah.

No, it's it's like

it's just weird because you know, I mean, whatever, there's, there's,

there's just this

like, obviously talking about metaphor last week, you know, there's a whole giant fucking

well to dive into with all of that.

Like a metaphor.

Yeah, every single time.

There you go.

But yeah, you know, it's just, it's just baffling to kind of to kind of

wonder, like,

is that going to be, is there going to are we going to actually see within, you know, a short period of time, a change in the way stories are told or the way,

or the types of, of messages that, that are.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, I mean, it's all cyclical.

Like, fashion comes around and goes around.

And it's like you had, you had, like, edge lording as a response to Puritanism.

And then, like, apathy/slash irony as a response to edge lording.

And now we're going to roll right back around to good vibes.

And then good vibes are already leading back into Puritanism, which will lead back into edgelording.

I think what will likely happen personally is

I think the like massive AAA corporate budget storytelling is going to completely give up, you know, and cave to pressure.

It already has.

Of course.

While indie storytelling and stuff will continue to be what it is, because small groups of people will put out the messages they want to.

But I think you're going to see a larger gulf between

milquetoast AAA releases and

real shit coming out for $4.99.

I think the, I don't know if you're talking about games or film or art in general, but

I feel like we're at the point, we're right there

where

the milquetoast toast thing

isn't saying anything at all

like like it's not even that the message is like bland

like i think we're getting to the point where you're getting there's like wow there there was no message

there was nothing there was this did you enjoy the adventure i did not i you didn't even butter this toast dude did you did you have a couple of moments and call it a day yeah yeah i i i get what you ever heard that term, and I'm so mad.

Oh, because I invented it.

That's really good.

It's the thing that happens in the trailer for the kids where they go, whoa.

Oh, that's so good.

It's the kids flying on the big thing that takes them for a ride.

And Hazelite fucking loves them because they put one in every single mission.

The mindshare out on woments right now.

Yeah, they put them in every single mission.

Every single one of those Pharaohs games is full of them.

But every trailer for every kid's movie must feature at least two or three moments.

100%.

Oh my God.

And that is, yeah, that's the way it's going.

But it's just...

Because I think, you know, as we're talking about these nothing releases,

there's always going to be a mouthwashing style

thing that drops.

But I think there's almost like there's almost a good,

like, thank God mouthwashing is what it is and is at the scale that it's at.

Because

if it were a larger quadruple A style release, then there would be a much more detailed

faction of people going, but I don't get the problem with Jimmy, though.

Right?

There would be a larger discussion around, no, but Jimmy actually did nothing wrong.

Like, I don't see what...

Yeah, Yeah, it's right at the perfect level where it's not like edging on Griffith, just like, I'm going to be, Griff didn't do anything, right?

But it's, it's large enough that there can be a discussion about the Jimmy.

And, and, you know, and and then an active, like, you know what?

I'm going to go make my own pro-Jimmy game, actually.

And, yeah, and the just fucking.

I'm going to call it yick.

That's, that's, hey, that's a lot.

That's unfair.

That's unfair.

Jimmy is a fucking fucking murdering piece of shit rapist.

Come the fuck on, man.

So, you know, you know what my favorite part about Yik is?

And it's what made me go from like eye-rolling and dismissal to

genuine, like, aggressive stance?

Two things.

One

is

the game prominently features an unsolved death, possible murder of a young woman in

California,

which happened right at E3 2012.

Yes.

The family was like, please stop including this.

Yeah, the mystery water tower death, right?

Right?

And the dev was like, no, it's my vision, even though, whatever.

But the second one is that the creator of that game gets super mad when you call it Yick because it's spelled that way.

It's Y2K.

It's probably supposed to be Y2K.

It's Y2K.

Yeah.

And I'm i'm just like no spell it better

spell it better

okay well anyway so but

yeah that's that's that's kind of what i think um we avoided with with mouthwashing being the scale it's at uh that would have been terrible

beyond uh cyberpunk however um

the uh the following opinions are hashtag sponsored oh are they i have i have played Iron Saga vs this week, which is the mecha fighting game that just released by Game Duchy.

I have a strong suspicion that these sponsored opinions would be extremely similar if they were not sponsored, considering you just said the word mecha fighting game.

I mean...

They came to the right guy.

You pick getter robo, and then you get to choose between one, two, and three.

And then as you're fighting, you can switch between all three formations, and you can open get to avoid getting hit and use the switching as a regular.

It's fucking awesome.

That's really cool.

It's got,

yeah, so in particular,

it has not like not like Sunrise robots, so there's not like a lot in there in terms of like Gundam type stuff.

Oh, you're not kidding.

That is actually Great Mazinger.

Yes, yes, Mazinger Z.

You're not talking like legally distinct.

No, no, no, no, no.

It features a bunch of original robots, but also Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, Ghetto Robo, and

God bless the machine, Dan Cougar.

So that's fun because, yeah, for years, you know, Super Robot War is obviously a cool way to get all your robots together.

But there's always been that part of me that's like, but I want to...

I want it in my genre, though.

And it looks like we're finally getting something like that.

So you can pick your boss, Borot, and toss a bunch of junk shit out and win.

win um

so uh yeah go check out go check out uh iron saga vs and yeah the the the the quick look we took online as well had some fun with it um of course it's one of these games where uh it's been out for like a day and people were already beasting doing crazy shit online yeah yeah that's how it is um but uh i enjoy it and i and i think um I like that they kind of made it,

it's got a lot of systems to it, but like the pacing is, it it reminds me of

it plays like what i wanted uh battle assault to play like oh my god so if you remember um gundam battle assault

right you play as big zam in that game yeah and and i always was like i like you know the idea of this but like you know gameplay wise it's kind of all over the place um

once you're once you're it's it's cool that hey look you're the big zam but then you're like wait we have to actually play this thing

That's not great.

No.

And Endless Duel is a better

example of like, here's a bunch of Gundams doing some cool shit, and it actually feels fun to play.

And so

in this case, it has,

yeah, a bit of those two going on, but definitely

it

takes its cues from being a legit fighter.

You could air dash around, you could move.

Combos are kind of like fairly short.

There's a lot of resets to them.

Overall, it plays like a non-it plays like a non-hyper game, but then there's really cool moments of like,

you know,

unique mecha-based things you can do.

Like you can, if you can pull out your, your arsenal for each character, switch between,

let's say you're playing Dankuga, you can use the sword, or you can switch to the, all the different types of

firepower, and you have grooves that change up the way each character plays and stuff like that.

It's, it's, it's pretty cool.

Um,

so yeah, no, if you have any

mecha love in you, take a peek over at Iron Saga vs., or at the very least, check out the video and consider picking it up.

There's a real charm.

I'm watching some of the footage you did of some of the

super old style mecha versus your new style, like sleek, cool Gundam.

Yeah,

yeah, the new ones are all just like Jehooty, sexy fucking angles and then slim waists.

Then you got this dude with the stretchy arms and the pink head.

Boss Boron.

Oh yeah, boss is doing it.

Absolutely.

And he's a goofy little man.

And then the pilots too, like, look like that same art style as well.

Like some of those original mecha pilots look like

visual novel antagonists talking to you.

But no, but the original robots too have some pretty fun

designs and gameplay elements to them.

You know, there's a very like, there's like a military kind of police one that has a shield and you can switch between

having a gun with limited bullets or like just Captain America shield-based fighting where you can use like kind of like your shield barrier to like, you know, create

an offense you can run behind and stuff.

There's some fun stuff to it.

So

yeah, it's a game I've wanted for a long time to exist.

And,

you know, my hope is that if

it, if it, you know, kind of gets any, any, any momentum going, some other guest star mecha could show up, you know, maybe some of the, some of the, the old classics and favorites might, might find their way over there.

So

it would be cool.

I know that, like,

even with when it comes to super robot wars, there's like always these like guests that don't stick around the whole time.

There's what, there's people you expect to show up every single time.

You know, all the aforementioned classic super robots and

your Gundams and your Avas and stuff.

But

there's that one where you can be like, oh shit, Virtual On is in there.

Big O is in just specifically that one.

Or Gurin Lagad is in specifically that SRW, you know.

So

there's a willingness to, you know, lend their license to at least one single game, if not for a whole franchise, you know?

Anyway, fingers crossed.

And yeah, so this

is pretty much like what we did.

And then coming up this week, besides, yeah, taking a look at Cyberpunk for

tomorrow, we've got

an announcement.

I'm going to be heading down to the Red Bull Canadian qualifier Kumite

in Vancouver.

Oh, hey.

Cool.

And I'll be doing some commentary for Street Fighter VI as the battle for BC takes place.

And then the four top placing

folks will be entered into the Red Bull Kumite

Canadian qualifier.

The winner of that gets a trip to Paris to

join the LCQ.

So,

yeah, gonna be coming through.

Reggie's in tow, Punch Bomb's in tow.

You're not allowed to compete if you're commentating, right?

No,

I don't imagine you can.

Hey, what are you up to this weekend?

Cleared my plans, so not a whole lot.

Okay.

I'm going to

go in person and see what's going on over here.

You want to kiss this dog?

I'm going to go get

round two on the boost.

You want to kiss him?

I'm going to kiss him.

So, we'll see what's up.

But yeah, you know, that should be a lot of fun.

And

yeah, shout outs to Red Bull for, you know, maybe

making the facilitating the ability.

Yes.

That is really cool, though.

Side trip to the white spot.

We could go, man.

We could go white spot.

Is it a good idea?

It's pretty good.

It's pretty good.

Okay, well, you know.

The last white spot I went to, it was staffed exclusively by non-whites.

Well, there you go.

And I sat there and I looked around.

I was also me and the wife and the baby, also the only whites in the white spot.

And I was like, this is pretty funny.

I said it to myself.

I mean, is there a big sign outside that I can stand next to and just yuck it up?

No, the signs at like the top.

Because that's the whole point.

They don't have like a commemorative history of the white spot thing inside that you could stand next to.

Because the whole point is to just, yeah, get right next to that sign and

do the bit.

Okay.

It's pretty good, man.

It's pretty good.

They got a good chicken broccoli.

Hmm.

Is there any seasoning on it?

Yeah, no, tons.

Tons.

Bread crumbs and Indian spices.

Absolutely.

All right.

All right.

Not bad.

Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

We'll see what's going down.

Swing by.

And yeah, so

that's pretty much it.

That's the plan.

You know, I've never actually touched

foot down in

BC

proper outside of once on the layover to Japan.

Oh, no, that doesn't count if you're not, if you didn't put, like, the airport, airports aren't real places.

Yeah.

So we can all agree that an airport's a fake place.

So, no, I've never actually

seen Vancouver or any of that.

So, yeah, we'll see.

I've been to Chicago 10 times.

No, I haven't.

I've been to O'Hare 10 times.

That's different.

So,

we'll see.

We'll see what's going on out there.

And

then,

well, the week after schedule will be affected, of course.

But all this to say,

at least one more cyberpunk session tomorrow.

And

that's going to be it.

So, yeah, check us out over Wooly vs on Twitch and on YouTube.

And unfortunately, all of this is happening right during the City of the Wolves Beta 2.

Of course.

Of course, City of the Warves beta 2 will happen now.

Yeah.

What are the exact dates?

It's from

Wednesday at

11 PST, I think.

You could get that day in, right?

Well, that's the travel day.

So it's like...

It's fucked.

It's fucked for the whole thing for me.

But at the very least, it's going from Thursday to Monday, I believe.

They should change it.

They should change it for you.

Yeah, they should do.

It's fine.

It's fine.

You know, you'll probably be able to get some time in at the Kumite, right?

Possibly at the very least.

Is it going to be a super-focused event, or is it going to be like, you know, whatever?

I think the actual Battle for BC has other stuff there, but you know, I mean, I'll walk with my,

whatchamacallit, my Steam Deck, and see what's possible.

So, yeah.

Anyway,

yeah, not much to it, though.

That's about it.

How about you?

All right.

Well, a couple things of note.

I'm continuing plugging away at all these fucking different monster hunter games to figure out my feelings on

wilds.

I recently went through the entirety of GU and Rise as Low Rank.

and

I have discovered the exact

criteria for whether or not I like a Monster Hunter game.

And it's if it's done.

Okay.

It's so interesting to be like re-litigating.

Well, because I'm trying to understand

what's going on.

Oh, why am I so annoyed by this?

Okay.

Right?

And then there's like an incredibly negative reaction to me, like being blase about wilds.

And the answer is, is that when I played Monster Hunter way back in the day, I played 3 Ultimate, which was the final finished release of 3.

And then the 3DS version that came out later was 4 Ultimate, which was the final expansion included version of 4.

And then Generations came out, which I didn't really care for all that much.

And then Gen U came out and I ignored it, but I went back like, no, Gen U is great.

And then World came out and I was like, wow, this is great.

But I didn't love it as much until its expansion came out.

So the first version of the previous games you played was always the final version of it?

It was always the final version because we never got the base version outside of Japan.

That says a lot, actually, because, yeah, if they improve the game and add features and do the whole bit, then you're getting the best version each time.

Yeah, because like you go from try, which has 18 monsters, to 3 Ultimate, which has like 51

and like 10 more weapons okay and you're like that's a big difference yeah

so if you if you only played you know the golden and royale and you know what i mean then yeah that's that's a very different

thing

which i'm playing now and i'm having a blast with rise

and it's like it's weird i really didn't feel all that strongly about rise when it came out which disappointed me it's like oh right

Because it came out during COVID and it was fucking not finished at all.

It didn't even have a final boss.

They had to patch it in later.

Oh,

okay.

And so I look at Wilds and I go, oh, why am I not?

Oh, right.

Because it doesn't have a final boss and they're patching it in in two weeks.

And they're back to doing timed event quests with special monsters that you can only fight for three weeks.

Oh, right.

I'll get to it when it's done.

Yeah, so even in the past, you didn't get into them on launch.

Yeah.

That's an important thing to note.

Yeah, okay.

And that's it.

I figured it out.

I spent a hundred hours going through old Monster Hunter games to be like, huh, this one's why is that?

Oh, right.

They're not finished.

They're literally not finished.

And with World and Wilds, it's extra bad because what they do is they're like, hey, man,

title updates coming out.

But you know what?

You want to fight Arch-Tempered Ray Dow?

Get new armor, like brand new armor into the game?

Cool.

You can fight Arch-Tempered Ray Dow from the dates of April 29th to May 30th.

Fuck off.

How about I wait until the final patch where you turn all those timed event quests into permanent mainstays?

So the other thing is, I know that with like Rise in the Wilds and stuff, there's been, you know, like Iceborne and these big DLC releases.

Yeah.

Did the previous games have like big side chapters like that as well?

So

the way that it it used to work

is fairly different, and each one has changed.

So the basic deal is you have your main games and you have your portable games as a division, right?

And for a while, there were only portable games, and it's not a clean break, but whatever.

So it used to be

way the you know in English you would only get the final version that had every event quest that ever came out for it in Japan and so like you're playing for you and you're like what the fuck there's Universal Studios Japan quests in this fucking game because they used to be like Street Pass unlocked USJ quests.

Okay.

Way back.

Jesus.

But now that it's being kicked over to fucking English, right?

You're like, well, I'm not going to do that.

So they just have it all unlocked, right?

And then World came out.

And World comes out and it's Monster Hunter World.

And then they have an update a couple months in with Devil Joe and also Arch Temple or Teostra or whoever it was.

But Arch Temper Teostra is time limited.

And then the wait a little bit, and they add a new monster.

And Arch-Tempered Kushala, oh, but Kushala is time-limited, and so on and so forth.

And the world really popularized for them

that

there would be permanent additions, but also they would constantly be running timed events, events that would run for a week, or a weekend, or a month, or what have you, right?

And

I personally find limited timed events in a game like that to be infuriating.

Like, I was busy a bunch when Culva Taroth came out, and I was like, oh, cool.

I have like two weekends to grind out like 400 gold weapons.

That doesn't sound exciting at all.

Can't you just leave it all in there forever like you did with all the prior Monster Hunter games so I don't have a fear of missing out?

No, okay.

And then Iceborne comes out, which adds like double the amount of monsters.

But then Iceborne gave me the worst version of this, where Iceborne added timed and additional content that also required you to grind the shit out of it.

So you'd get to the end of Master Rank in Iceborne, and I hit, what happened was, is I hit Master Rank like 21 when I completely beat the game's final boss.

And they're like, did you know you could fight Ruiner and Nergy Gante if you get to Master Rank 100?

I'm like, cool.

How long will that take?

Oh, I don't know.

45 more hours of grinding on things that you don't have any things to get.

And so then, oh, well, Safa Jiva came out and all these things that were timed.

And eventually,

in the final patch for world,

the final, final, final, final, final patch went, okay, everything's available forever.

There's just no.

And I looked at that and I was like, I wish I had just not interacted with the game even once

before that happened But but now here now here we are right because everything you're saying and everything about this is just reinforcing in me that there's no Benefit to early adoption outside of scraping your own curiosity, right?

Absolutely.

It feels like you know, you're just like I need to know I want to know now and it's happening now.

So let's zeitgeist it and hit it, but

it just fucking punishes you for doing so so.

And just chilling and when waiting is so much better every time.

Here's where it gets slightly more complicated.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Rise comes out and it's just straight up unfinished.

And they do the title update.

Hey, here's the ending of the game one month later.

Here's a new monster, new monster, new monster every couple of months, right?

But Rise, because it's on the Nintendo Switch, And it's a portable system that can't always be guaranteed to have access to the internet, all of its event quests come out and you just download them and they're forever.

So they walked it back.

They went, nah, event quests are forever.

Don't worry about it, right?

Which is nice.

If I want to do the event quest to turn my Palico into Sonic the Hedgehog or my Palamute into Foxtails, right?

Great.

Super, right?

And that worked out great and everybody was happy.

And then Wilds comes out and it's back to the way world was

the the thing that i talked about when i deleted my file and i started over all that the kicker was that they said hey by the way for people who have beaten the game there's an event quest to get a new peat helmet It's available for one week starting today.

And I was like, oh my God, they're doing it again.

Oh, my God.

They want me to have this game completed, installed, and ready.

And for me to jump on every time they say so, and I don't want to.

So when I say there's no benefit to early adoption, FOMO-based content is the artificial benefit that you can add.

Is like, oh, well, if you get it early and if you're playing often, you can get one of these things that's not going to be available for a while.

Same thing for anything locked content in like a free-to-play game or so.

Now, of course, if you care a lot about the thing and you have friends that are playing it at the same time, then obviously it makes sense to go play it as is.

I, you know, I'm just in general describing, I'm like, if it's something that you're like, eh, if you're, you know, you're, you're still waiting on or deciding and or are not completely swayed by, in a lot of cases, it seems as if just like getting into it in a better state down the road doesn't seem to have many downsides, unless you're, again, waiting with friends and so on.

So I, there's a couple, oh, sorry, after you.

I know that the genre is a huge factor too as well, because games that are massively

about the community are like, well, that community is not going to be permanent, right?

There's a, there is a time for how this is,

there's a moment here that you need to keep up with.

And if the moment versus the quality release version of the game are not in sync, then that fucking sucks, you know?

So if it's a game that doesn't involve community as much, then you can definitely, you know, be a bit more patient with that.

And then there's also that bit where it's like, you, you, sometimes you're like, well, this game also, you want to show your support by knowing that, like, you're like, hey, I bought this to show that I want this type of content, even though it might be something that you're like, I'll get around to it later or so, you know, so

obviously this is not a

complete 100%

consistent thing.

So

I want to go through like a couple of the obvious responses to my

feelings on this.

The first of which is like, well, you wouldn't feel that way if you hadn't deleted your save and you had to restart.

No, I felt that way even more strongly during World because when I was playing World, I felt, oh my God, I have to do the fucking Tooster quest.

I fucking hate Tooster.

Oh, but the only time to get the gear is this time.

Or I'd have to wait till the

end of the year for the festival.

And like that feeling of being actively manipulated is horrible.

I hate it.

I hate it.

It makes me not want to play it at all.

I hate it.

Following up to that, well, I mean, you don't have to do

those kinds of quests.

It's like, well, no, but the series' history is that they're always available.

And also, Monster Hunter exists in a sort of meta-genre that you've probably heard me describe Warframe as, in which I've called it an arsenal game.

I also called Destiny 2 that,

in which, like,

checking off all the boxes and getting all the toys too many is a big part of that experience.

Right, right.

Like when I'm playing Warframe, the goal of me playing Warframe is to get one of each warframe.

That's the long-term goal.

It's the checklist.

It's to fill up my doll collection.

When I play Monster Hunter, at the end of the day, it's really...

personally satisfying to go into the chest or the quest list and see everything

with nice check marks next to it and nice and neat and proper and like, oh, I have completed it.

And when they're running these constant time things that are floating around, it's extremely frustrating.

It's really frustrating.

I think,

yeah, okay, I get what you're saying there.

There's clearly other reasons,

you know, save deletion aside.

Although, when you were describing that the like the end of the onboarding tutorial, like new game then led to like stuff that you were enjoying.

I guess like the thought was like, okay, well, at the very least, you can like sit in that

new game plus world for a bit and poke at it every now and then until a proper full update drops and then you get everything you're looking for.

Yeah, but also waiting for the timing on the updates is too long.

Like it like it's not It's never like, oh, you new update dropped.

Oh man, let's work on this for a while.

It's a new update dropped,

and you have to do it within a month.

But also,

when you do sit down and hit it, it's going to take you like two days, and then you're going to be done and put it right back on the fucking shelf until the next update drops.

I hate playing games like that.

I hate that.

You know what I'm realizing?

I hate dropping it for 60 days only to pick it up for one and bang it all out and then drop it for another 60 days.

I fucking hate it.

I wish Monster Hunters just went back to

release

nothing

expansion.

I get it because look at how I've fucked myself over with the early access games, you know, with Darkest Dungeon and Hades and shit that I'm like, I'm enjoying this so much that I go too far into something that's going to get reset or re, you know, or changed drastically when a big content drop occurs.

So I definitely feel that.

I'm realizing too that

if I think of like an RPG, like a like, you know,

let's take SMT, where my,

in most cases, I'm looking at these games, as we've discussed in the past, where I'm like, I'm going to experience this once.

So

if I choose to experience,

yeah, but I'm probably not going to.

So

if I'm somebody who's knowing that I'm not going to, right?

Then I'm like, well, why, for me, it makes makes more sense to like

play the different finished like final version.

And in cases like P5 Royale, for example, I'm kind of like, I don't know that I'll ever, right?

And that sucks because I'm like, I really enjoyed that game, but I don't know that I'll go back and do that.

I just, you know, and I don't know that I'll go through all of SMT5 Vengeance either, having done the original.

Even though I know there's a, I know there's a lot of new cool and shit that I would, I would thoroughly love.

But I'm also like, well, if I'm going to start five and just do it from scratch all over again and get through vengeance, just pop in fucking Nocturne and do that because I haven't done Nocturne, right?

Like I'm that person.

If I'm going to go back through Royale, just pop in fucking Kusunoharaido one and do that instead.

Right.

So for me, the fact that I'm also not looking to replay anything that really is another reason why I'm precise about my picks.

So one of the things that people point out as I'm talking about this that I think is really genuinely funny and dead on observation that I'm talking about I really hate this slow update cycle and where I burn through the game entirely and then I'm completely done for X amount of days is, but don't you play FF14?

And the answer is not anymore

because I caught up.

When I was following the bleeding edge of the FF14 patch cycle, there was always tons of other stuff I could catch up on or do in the background.

But then when I finally got to the point where I'm like, I have done everything I could do and I'm just sitting around waiting for more,

I'm so fucking bored with this.

Which by the way, it's really strange following a game as intensely as I have as FF14 and finding out that there is a patch live today

by me looking over and seeing people say that there is a patch live today

now.

That's funny.

Because

that would be like I would move my schedule around and wake up early to do it versus, oh, there's a patch today?

Weird.

I just have these.

I just look at anyway.

I was like, I look around.

I know.

I just, I just look around sometimes and I'm like, I don't know how or why I ended up here.

Like,

in terms of just the way I, the way I, I, I consume this, this medium is just so diametrically opposed to everyone I'm talking to right now that it's

designed

the norm on it.

But, um,

yeah, but it, but it's, it's

anyway, I'm actually sliding closer to where you are as a result.

Like, I've been playing a bunch of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and I'm like,

yeah, I'm going to wait like at least a year because I'm going to wait till all the DLC comes out because they said that every DLC that comes out is going to come along with a bunch of bug fixes and balance changes.

I'm like, oh, okay, I'll just wait for that because the game's not done.

And I think part of that reason is like,

even for the best, even for good games, release date is not done, like not done at all anymore.

Even for games that are like that.

It used to be bad games came out unfinished, but now good games come out good and get better

for sure.

Or significantly better.

Not just multiplayer, single player, everything, everything.

It's like, get it out the door, ship it.

We can fix it later.

We will fix it later.

You know, there will be these patches, but like if you're getting inert,

it's going to be early access even when it's not early access.

1.0 is still,

you know, not so secretly early access.

Like, I think God's largest joke that ever played on anyone was every single person that is listening to this podcast and me going, you know what?

I think now's the time to start my BG3 playthrough.

Well, look, I just started Cyberpunk, right?

And I can't.

They literally said it's done.

But here's the thing.

Let's imagine cyberpunk launched and it worked and there were no bugs.

Okay?

I know,

but like...

I didn't even make a face so you knew it was.

Just imagine, right?

That part aside,

if it was still functioning,

the amount of shit that has been added in posts that's just new quality of life content is still enough that it's like, damn, you probably should have waited to get into this after Phantom Liberty and all these other quality of life things, not in terms of just getting it working, but in terms of new shit.

You know, there's a huge gulf between

strange, strange,

repairing what's broken and then like what was added afterwards.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

It is really quite baffling how pervasive it's gotten and how I have gotten.

I don't know.

So I don't want to say it's like more willpower because that's not what it is.

The pull of the new is like less.

Like I am treating full releases like they're early access games now.

Okay.

Right?

Yeah.

Like, yeah, I am treating Monster Hunter Wilds like it's got an early access tag on it, and it has a fucking version 0.6 next to it.

Okay.

Good, good, good.

Same thing with KCD2, where I'm like, I've still got a couple bugs in it, and it's got three expansions.

I'll just wait.

And like, this comes right off the heels of me playing through Kingdom Deliverance one six years after it comes out.

And you know, I think about Hades, and I think about our experiences with Hades.

Yes, yes.

But how I, why day early access came out for Hades,

burned as hard as I could, beat Kronos once,

and went, okay, on the shelf till version 1.0.

Like

it's done.

But I, um,

I, I, like, I also also am just thinking of how

while I feel this, like, like, this is a feeling that I've had in the past as well, but it gets amplified now because there's so much good shit that gets ignored.

And that wasn't the feeling back in the Xbox 360 days.

Oh, right.

It was like, oh, my, oh, thank God.

When something dropped, when a big XBLA release came out and we were all talking about it, it was like, oh, fuck.

Yo, go check it out.

That's crazy.

And like, that was.

Dominating the conversation for last three weeks.

Yo, Braid, have you seen this game, Braid?

What the hell?

Yo, you got the potion.

It's nuts.

Like, you're high and shit.

This game's stupid.

I fucking love.

I love it.

But no, but like, literally, it just, yeah, the conversation was dominated by whatever that particular release was.

Now there's too much.

You know, and like there might be another thing in a given month.

And if you had to choose between three things in a month, it was like, oh my God,

it was crazy.

You know?

Embarrassment of riches.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's just this complicated thing.

Like it's, it's like, it's better and that makes it worse, if that makes any sense.

Like games that would have, like, PC games, like, let's say Kingdom Come.

That's a kind of PC game that used to come out back in like 99 to fucking 2008.

And it would come out and it would be like massively fucked up.

And like two patches would come out and people would recommend it but you'd be like isn't that game massively massively fucked up and they'd be like yeah but but it's like it's weird it's the only game that's doing that kind of thing right

um and the first game that i can remember that stopped being like that was the witcher one

where the witcher one was massively fucked up at launch And then they released a bunch of patches and then they released the enhanced edition and then they released a bunch of patches for the enhanced edition and they built it up to being

not so fucked up.

Okay.

But that took like two years.

And that CD project.

I had like a funny moment yesterday where

I kind of was in the mood for just like a quick little dinner game.

You know, nothing too intense or so, but it's where my ballatro is.

A little bit of an amuse bouche.

A little amuse bouche.

We

say so.

I would.

This is where my ballotro kind of like quick thing would go, you know, and it's like, not too committed for jumping on like arrivals or anything right now.

I just wanted to let a little bit.

But for the last little while, I had been picking away at metaphor like aggressively.

Yeah.

And now that's done.

And I was like, huh, right.

Okay.

That is done.

I can, you know, like, there's stuff that I do when I'm more committed to like figuring out research for upcoming LPs or whatever.

But I was like, let me, let me see.

I'm like, well, and I'm kind of pretty much done with Balatro.

Like, I've unlocked just about everything.

I've gotten just about almost everything.

I think there's only like two or three things I haven't done.

So I'm like, okay, that's not really coming to front of mind right now, you know?

And I kind of was like, huh,

is there anything?

I'm like, what am I?

I was like, I kind of had a little nothing to look at moment that I was like, wait, what the fuck am I talking about?

And then I just went back to UFO 50 and popped open a game I'd never played in UFO 50 and went, oh shit, I never played this one.

UFO 50 is like uniquely incredible for this example.

And I did, you know, yeah, and I just, I'm like, hey, let me just jump back in there.

And I picked one of those great games I never played and was like, fuck yeah, this is a great one.

It was awesome.

You know, and that, that was exactly what I needed for that short period of time.

And that solved the problem.

And I'm like, I will continue to be able to pick it this one indie game UFO 50 for this exact need for a while.

You know?

There's an incredible comment that just rolled by me in the chat from Deadeye Marksma.

You guys unlocked a memory from high school where I was hearing from friends that the Mass Effect 3 ending was terrible.

So I waited until extended cut was released until I even took plastic off of the case.

So

there is a long ago, back when I used to listen to the Giant Bombcast religiously, they did Game of the Year at the end of the year that year.

And they had the argument between a guy who played and reviewed Mass Effect 3 at release and the guy who had played Mass Effect 3 after all the DLCs and the extended cut came out as to whether or not it deserved a spot on Game of the Year.

And that argument was fucking fascinating because it kept going back and forth.

The game I played had the shittiest ending I've ever seen.

Yeah, but it's not like that now.

But it did, and I bought it when it did.

And just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.

I mean,

that's why that list is so insane because people's unique experiences have to be fought and get pitted against each other.

Yeah, no, usually those unique experiences were basically down to your own personal tastes and timing.

But Mass Effect 3, before its DLC and extended cut, is a dramatically worse game.

And it's weird to talk about people with when they played this or when they played that and shit like that.

Like, man, if you waited to get into Mass Effect until after all of that shit, you would have had a really smooth, great experience, Wooly.

Yes.

For sure.

But now, with that, now, but now, hey, I got to keep that same energy.

When someone comes up and goes, guys, I don't know what you're talking about.

The first version of Street Fighter V I played was the championship edition, and it was excellent.

There was so much stuff.

There was all these characters and content.

I had a great time with Gil.

You know,

you don't know.

Are excellent.

And somebody points out that Baldur's Gate 3 won Game of the Year before it got its real ending.

The epilogue for BG3 was added after it already won Game of the Year from every publication.

The game's real ending was a patch.

So what is it?

Game of the Year Plus now?

And then you think about something like Elden Ring, which isn't usually the type of game you would talk about, about releasing unfinished, but it did.

It released a full patch version before final because there is no way in hell you're telling me that the base version of that game was not supposed to have the little icons on the map for NPCs.

Or how about Bloodborne, which launched with an anti-loading screen that was just the game's logo, which was clearly the fucking demo build shit.

We can't talk about this without

while neglecting to bring up Azura's Wrath, which had the final two missions sold as DLC after launch.

And you know what?

I have heard the realistic and reasonable explanation for for that was supposed to be a large-scale DLC, but then they didn't get approval for that.

So they took the cutscenes and they sold them so that you could get the ending, to which I say, fuck that.

That's still terrible.

Garbage.

Absolute garbage.

And I want to say Pop Zero.

Right?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Prince of Persia.

A sequel hook to nowhere.

It fucking sucks when you release your fucking game and it has no ending.

And people who buy it and play it right away just get punished hardest for that.

Hey, I've got a name for you.

You want to get targeted?

Listen to the name.

You want to talk about endings that didn't happen?

Let's talk about Deus Ex.

The game series that has one game with an ending.

Four games, and there's one that has an ending, and the endings suck.

Like,

what, like,

what was with the, the, uh,

what, like, what was the original with that?

Uh, the original, you went through the whole game and you got to the end, and the endings were unsatisfying, but it was the natural end conclusion of the story that had been built up in Deus Ex 1.

And then Deus Ex 2 is a, Invisible War is a a massive mess that goes nowhere.

And then with Human Revolution, they cut like 40% of the game and then sprint to the end and then had an ending cobbled together at the last second that doesn't make any sense.

And then for Mankind Divided, they again cut like 40% of the game and then just end on like what used to be the middle point of the story.

And they're like, I will pick it up in the sequel.

And then the sequel got canceled.

Always a fan of

series like Half-Life, where it's like, hey, Wooly, get into these games.

They're really good.

You should catch up so that you can suffer.

Unfinished for decades.

So that you can suffer like we are right now.

Unfinished for decades.

Catch up to us and join us as we sit here, plates empty, starving.

You know, I know you didn't,

like, you were enjoying yourself outside the room, but no, no, get in here and suffer with us.

Bro, there's somebody in the chat said Mankind Divided is the first game I've ever said.

Like, wait, it's over out loud.

I got one that's like crazy.

I know you haven't played it,

but Legacy of Kane Soul Reaver

builds you up to this massive, massive final confrontation.

And then you walk into a room and a guy comes and talks to you, and then credits roll, and you're like, What?

What?

What?

Are you?

Are you serious?

Like, it's crazy.

It's so nuts.

Yeah.

Anyway, annual reminder that you should read Vagabond.

It's a very good manga series.

I encourage everyone to read it.

It's very good.

So, yeah, it's

a very strange place with new releases.

Like, now when I look at a new release, there's like how, like, it's, I'm playing like this fucking devil's future-telling bargain with myself.

Like, how much do I expect this game to change in the future from its 1.0 version?

Well, so, so here's the thing: it obviously obviously changes from series to series, but Monster Hunter is clearly something where there's some games where you can get the incomplete plate and still enjoy it and go, all right, I've enjoyed that ride.

And then when it comes back around, that'll be fine, right?

So I just talked about SMT5.

SMT5 was glorious.

Really enjoyed the journey through that.

And then everything we're getting afterwards is even better, right?

So sure, but even though I'm not going to get there.

But Monster Hunter is clearly a case of like, oh, actually, this initial thing is not what I'm looking for and is unsatisfying and is actually a negative.

So if the thing you're getting incomplete is a negative and you're not, and it's not enough to enjoy it.

It's not a negative.

I just miss, you know, in the plate metaphor, I'm just like, oh, this usually comes with potatoes.

You know,

I just kind of want to wait until it comes with potatoes.

And the thing is, too, is I'm sure there's folks out there that are like jumping in heavily multiplayer driven with it and just kind of like mainly enjoying it for that aspect, right?

Even though it's incomplete, you're like, absolutely.

It's a thing we're doing with the friends.

So that'll be what it is for now, you know?

And then it becomes like what you said earlier, which is like, well, is the community going to move on?

Am I going to miss the zeitgeist?

And the answer is

in this example,

it's fucking Monster Hunter.

So no,

you're not going to miss anything.

People will continue to play their personal favorite Monster Hunter forever.

I mean, at the very least, if the community does move on when a big announcement of some kind happens, there's still that moment as opposed to at random, you know?

Like, when you're jumping on, you're playing GU.

Did you do any like online games?

So when I'm saying I've been playing these games, I mean I've been streaming them and I've been streaming them exclusively in multiplayer.

Okay.

And people have been just been no problem filling up every single room.

Because people are watching you play at the same time and jumping on.

off.

Yes, but even if like, even if I we can put it to the live chat right now, because those people are also playing multiplayer without me,

nobody's having trouble getting into a match in GU or World or Rise.

People in the chat are playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite online.

Okay.

Easily enough.

Fair enough.

I feel.

Not a problem.

Because there's always that little bump when a new game comes out and people do go back to the older ones.

You know, like Strive drops and a bunch of people start playing Exert again, you know,

either because they don't have it yet or because they miss the difference or for one reason or another.

But the world has been reminded of this franchise, so you're like, let me go boot that thing up.

People are going so far as to mention that not only are they having no problem getting matches, they're not having any problem getting matches on their 3DS and Switch emulators, which can only play with other 3DS and Switch emulators.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, no, people are never going to stop playing literally every single Monster Hunter game.

So

the worry of like, oh, will the community move on?

It's like, actually, no, they will never move on.

But at the very least, if you are deciding to be like, all right, I know where I'm at on this game.

Let me chill and wait for it to be finished.

You know that what you're going to get will be an update and like further expansions and not a like, go buy the new release says Atlas a year ago.

You know, Oh, you like, fuck you.

Too bad you spent your money, idiot.

Buy it again, right?

So like, like, Metaphor is a really good example.

If I had not been so aggressively and wonderfully sponsored to cover Metaphor, I probably would have tried to put that game from my mind entirely for like multiple years on the threat that they would release Metaphor Royal Edition or whatever the fuck.

Well, you know, again, knowing that they're probably not going to based on what they said, you know, it certainly adds a lot of confidence to getting it now.

But I know people, I have, again, like I said, you're the only one I know that's beaten it because some of the friends we have that are RPG players and stuff, there's some like I know people that are like, yeah, I want to, but I just know that I can't right now.

But I'm, I'm, and I'm like, yeah, I'm putting it out of my mind.

You know, I know I'll get back at some point.

I think there will be some sort of something that they do release metaphor related, you know, for sure.

But I just, I'm going to trust that they weren't full of shit when they said we're not doing

Royale style releases anymore.

You know, I could see.

Well, they said they weren't going to do.

If they were, it was going to be DLC.

DLCs.

Yes.

So they could still do metaphor Royale.

It would just be a DLC.

I mean, there's two distinct areas that they could expand upon if they wanted to, you know, certainly.

So,

yeah, okay.

But yeah, no, very, very interesting feelings coming away off of Monster and especially when it coincided with me going back to an old game like KCD-1 right before the new game, KCD-2, and me hitting the same conclusion on both of something that I usually wouldn't be able to do, which is like, ah, I'll just wait.

This new territory for Pat, quitting the MMO and just like, ah, I'll wait.

I'll wait.

You're being a good influence on me, I think.

Probably.

There's so much good shit.

On that note, a game that is definitely completely finished, and I'm going to be going back to, not this week, but next week, is a game that is extremely charming indie that I believe is two and a half, three hours

old, long called Home Safety Hotline.

Have you heard of Home Safety Hotline?

No, but I like that name.

So, Home Safety Hotline takes place on on a fake computer.

So 1996, you know, Windows 3.1 fake ass computer where you check your email and

you check your,

you know, you check your, you know, your videos and they all have terrible mic quality and your employee orientation, et cetera.

And your job is that you are going to be a hotline for people who call you with possible issues with their home for safety reasons as to whether or not you should advise them to call the police or minor things they can do in their home.

So things like, hey, I got these weird noises coming out of my bathroom and it smells in there sometimes.

You might have frozen pipes.

If you have frozen pipes, you should contact a

plumber, et cetera.

So what you do is people,

you sit at your fake computer and you read through all the articles of, oh, is it frozen pipes or is it black mold or it's carpenter ants or something?

You know, these kinds of things.

And

you'll get a call in and it'll be complete dog shit 1996, like sounding phone call about some Jagov going, ah, I get walls, you know, I don't see any ants, but uh, right,

and then you will go down your list of possible causes, figure out the one that you think is the case, and then submit that as the thing that they're dealing with.

And then you'll get graded at the end of the day, kind of little papers please.

But it's very calm, it's very relaxed, there's no time limit.

There's just you're just going on like, oh, could this be carpenter ants or maybe mice or bats, right?

And at the end of the day, you'll get graded.

And if you get graded, you get a nice little score, not a big deal.

It doesn't really matter.

And then the next day, they will

open up more of your home safety hotline encyclopedia, which will, so, you know, the first day I didn't have access to the bat answer or frozen pipes, right?

And so it's like, okay.

So, you know, every day there'll be a little bit more because there's a lot to handle.

And then on day two and three, they start adding things like

hobs.

So hobs wear a false face

and they can live in the cracks of your foundation or your pipes.

And if you do believe you have a hob in your living room rearranging your things, you're going to need to put out a pot of cream in the evening.

But don't antagonize the hob because they can metamorphose into a boggart.

Okay.

And then you get a call and you start going down the the thing.

It's like, oh, that sounds really weird.

And the dog's afraid of it.

Sounds like you might have stair slugs or bed teeth.

Okay.

Just more and more of these to unlock.

And you're starting to like essentially do paranormal

home safety repair.

Low stakes SCP.

Extremely low stakes.

But at the same time, and this is the kicker, the only mistake I made was that I took two calls in one night about

hobs,

and I was like, oh man, I think this guy might have some pipe growths.

Didn't have pipe growths, just had regular old frozen pipes.

The mundane don't leave.

Yeah, okay.

You could still have frozen pipes.

Doesn't mean it's a, you know, it's a pipe hob or a pipe growth or a stair slug.

Okay, okay.

Identify your Phasmophobia ghost, but also sometimes it's really just

a creaking.

Sometimes you just got mice.

yeah cool sometimes it's just bats

it's very charming oh yeah it's really really cool big old windows 3.1 ass filter absolutely on everything and yeah yeah yeah okay a super cool game i don't have time to get to it this week but i will definitely go back and get to it next week uh and bang it out i think it's super neat i think it's super neat um

seems like it was part of the future games last year

sure

so yeah okay interesting

So that's pretty much what I did for games and media and whatnot.

The only other thing that happened to me this week is that

I was going through my phone

and

I don't use,

you know, I use Discord, right?

But in our D ⁇ D group,

we don't use Discord.

We use Facebook Messenger, which I hate, right?

This is of note because I was like, oh, you know,

I have to talk to the gang and reschedule a certain DD thing because I have something I need to do.

And so I go in, I'm like, hey, blah, blah, blah, guys, can we move this like an hour?

And everyone's like, great, great, great, right?

Totally normal.

Except, so I don't use Facebook Messenger.

And what I've discovered is that there was actually, for multiple weeks,

a message sitting in my Facebook Messenger that I had not clicked on.

I'm like, that's strange.

It's from somebody I'm not friends with on Facebook.

Who could it be?

And I click on it, and it is from the day after Jimmy left the DD group.

From Jimmy.

And I'm like, oh,

this is

unexpected.

Epilogue?

Okay.

Oh, I wonder what it could be.

I wonder if it will totally justify every emotion I felt during this whole saga.

So for context,

the day that Jimmy left the group, we all hit level three and we're talking about the level ups and new abilities we were going to have as part of our level three characters, which is a big level in DD

5.0.

Jimmy writes,

by the way.

If you wanted to hide that you took sea invisibility from me, you probably shouldn't have shown the fighter so excitedly i never wanted to fight you guys inner party conflicts only lead to hurt feelings just from a vet to a newbie don't build your character to fight the others work with the remaining players

so I spoke to Paige and I reached out to the fighter because I'm like, what the fuck is he talking about?

So here's what happened.

You remember when I said that Jimmy had been shape-changing and going invisible constantly in the background to constantly take attention for themselves, right?

Everybody else was playing, right?

At level three,

light clerics, the class I had to switch to because of all that stuff with the warlock that Jimmy took my class because he lied about it.

They get see invisibility as a base level ability.

And I believe that when Jimmy heard that, he thought that

he was to fuck with him.

And then admonished me as a vet to a newbie not to pick abilities after inner-party conflicts.

And this is after leaving.

This is just after leaving.

Just

out on the characters.

Just after leaving.

Yeah, a little parting message, just so you know.

Yeah.

You shouldn't pick abilities that fuck with with other people's characters.

Oh.

You shouldn't.

Oh,

taking responsibility on the way up.

A couple of things here.

Oh, yeah.

One,

as a vet, he should know by looking at Cleric, like Cleric, see invisibility is a mandatory prepared spell.

Right?

That's part of the kit.

Two, I didn't hide shit from anybody.

I was talking about my brand new automatic prepared spells.

Three, and we checked with the DM on the ruling on this.

Even if

other people in your party are invisible, it is still assumed that the party knows where they are

because they're saying out together what's going on.

I'm moving around here and there, and we're working as a group.

So, like, one,

knowledge check error, two,

ruling check error, three,

social error as to my intentions.

Hey, man, you're new, so let me just, I'm just being kind, you know.

I'll tell you what, man,

I was losing my fucking mind.

I was,

I was, I was showing this to Paige and just yelling, the fucking audacity,

the guy who fucking

lied about his clients,

his character, and all his skills specifically to fuck me over is lecturing me on inner party dynamics.

And he's wrong.

This is like the epitome of everything where it's like

being corrected by an asshole who's wrong.

Who like who's incorrect?

You know,

there's a better way to be social and get along with everybody in these in these types of games and you know you wouldn't know it but you know i'm sure you'll get there eventually as you get experienced with this i'm i've turned the corner on this i've 180 and i've changed my mind this is actually the best dnding first experience you could have this is awesome this is on brands and this is perfect for you this is great

and i were like for this whole saga we're like you know what

You know, we don't want to make waves and we don't want to be seen as unreasonable and we don't want to be the problem.

And I'm like, I am now ready to be the problem.

I am now ready to be like, nah, uh-uh, not dealing with this.

Fuck this.

I'm out.

This is, this is inserting passion where there might not have been any.

You know, this is, this is a flame ignited in your first game here.

I am, I am now pro-Yimpy.

Good stuff.

I, I also think, and this is, this is like a really rare,

like for life, like for life situation, there's lots of personal, like dilemmas and interpersonal issues and

butting of heads that happen throughout your life.

And oftentimes, it doesn't resolve very cleanly or kind of fades away.

And then

you wonder, like as time goes on, you're like, was I being a dick?

Or could I have said, was there a thing I could have said that would have smoothed things out?

Or, you know, and you, you doubt.

And I have been given like

mandate from heaven to be like, nah,

nah.

Well, nah, you're good.

Well, here's what you got is you got confirmation that after the cutting of ties, that it lived rent-free enough for him to look you up and send a filtered message to your unfriended account to just get that off the chest and communicate one last thing that he couldn't let go of.

Right?

It's like, I just want to send this out so that

I can know that even though I'm leaving,

I wasn't the problem.

It was really everybody else.

That's kind of incredible.

That is.

It also makes me wonder if the stated reason for leaving being didn't like the Paladins behavior is only part

of the reason for leaving.

And the fact that they were sitting there going, oh, they gotta have sea invisibility.

Now I can't do all my stupid invisibility shit for attention might have actually been a factor.

And despite instead of based on what he thought, based on what he thought you were doing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look, I just, I wish it'd be great to see the stats on, like,

as a veteran, how many campaigns have you participated in?

And how many have you left?

And how have they gone?

Have there been, you know, other instances that have gone this way?

Or do you tend

complete them, no problem, top to bottom?

How many groups have disintegrated around you unexpectedly and without reason?

It would be interesting to know those numbers, you know, if there was a little disconnect rating for your, you know, for your IRL DD sessions as a veteran.

So I feel really bad because this message is weeks old.

And Baller Swagbro put up a super cut of the Jimmy narrative.

Like the entire Jimmy story, where they cut the podcast and Paige's stream and my stream.

And I feel bad because this is like

the denouement

of that whole thing.

And it came out right after he cut up that big video.

Sorry, Baller Swagbro.

I mean,

it's always nice to kind of like, you just get a little like, ah, that's where you were mentally, you know, at this point.

But also, but also, you never get that from anybody.

Like, this is like, this is more closure than people get in their divorces.

Like, like, for real.

But at the same time, it's like, I'm hearing those words you just said, and I'm thinking of the person who's screaming at the top of their lungs in character and, you know, getting into like actual

fights.

Yeah, like.

That's solid.

That's a good bit.

I'm now glad that this has gone this way.

Yeah.

It's pretty funny.

It's pretty fucking funny.

It made me very mad, but it also made me feel really good.

Like, really good.

All doubts are gone.

You know, you could have had a straight, normal, boring-ass marriage, but now you got someone

pouring shit on the floor and being like, yeah, I'm dropping this on the floor.

Now what?

What are you going to do about it?

It's getting spicy.

Keeping things exciting.

This is the best possible first campaign for you.

So I'm super excited to go back to DD next week.

I'm super, I'm super, super, super fucking excited to go back to DD next week.

I'm so fucking excited.

This is going to be great.

I mean, it's going to be great.

You know, there's that part where it's like, where does everybody else, you know, weigh in on this from outside of you guys?

So I can tell you, I can tell you right now.

Paige is like, oh my God, Paige is a like mind of like, oh my God, that motherfucker, the audacity.

We spoke to the fighter and the fighter knows him pretty well.

And the fighter's like, I don't know what the fuck he's talking about.

And then we spoke to the DM and the DM's like, that's not how that works.

That's, that, that's not how that would work.

So everyone is like, like, me and Paige over here are outraged.

And then the others are like, what?

Huh?

Did you send a read receipt?

I don't know, maybe.

I don't know.

I think I have that turned off, but who knows?

Okay, because that's an important decision: is whether or not you mark it as red or you leave it in the event.

That's a great question.

Who knows?

Yeah.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Because that's, you know.

So here's the fun thing, right?

That matters.

The idea, let's say I have red receipts on, right?

It took me weeks to see it.

And so then the question becomes: who the fuck is checking to see that somebody has read that message weeks later?

That's the worst.

I mean, because like

this Jimmy, Jimmy is.

Yeah, Jimmy.

Jimmy.

And again, the decision is yours to decide whether to let it rock or even just little,

all right, A.

Thumbs up, champ.

Whatever you say.

Sure thing.

Good stuff.

Good stuff.

All right.

So that's it for me this week.

For the remainder of the week, I'm going to be streaming Split Fiction with Peach the Live tomorrow.

So go check that out.

That game's great.

And then taking the day off on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, and Friday, I'll just go back.

We'll do some more.

We'll do high rank and rise with the chat.

So go hang out at twitch.tv/slash patstairs at

all right.

Quick word from our sponsors.

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I'll tell this afterwards.

I'll tell I have another story, actually.

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yeah, I'm thinking of those times of just like approaching the fridge and it just immediately denying.

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fuck

and then you get the butter knife and then you cut around the cheese so it looks like you made yourself a little block and didn't just bite into it like an animal uh no i will slice out whatever i'm going to use i don't do that that's not a thing that's a hypothetical i'm just i'm just wondering if anyone's ever done that no nope not quite

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That's probably a much better idea.

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Alright.

What

was the other story?

It's not my story, it's my wife's story.

But I think it's interesting enough to bring up.

So, Paige took the baby for a walk, put him in the stroller,

went to the bakery, got some croissant, got some miscellaneous groceries, takes the baby to the park,

playing with the baby in in the park.

Having a good day.

Wait, what's that noise?

Caw!

Looks over.

Raven.

Crow or raven.

We're not sure.

We don't do taxonomy in this house.

Stealing her, Croissant.

Oh.

Pecking through the bags.

And then when she was like, what?

What do I do?

The raven or crow.

took the entire bag and just flew away.

Stole them.

Stole all the breads.

Right out of hand?

No, right out of the stroller.

Just mugged her.

Flew away with an entire bag of bread.

Okay, if it was big enough to grab a whole bag, that was probably a raven.

Probably.

We've been told this, but

we don't know the difference.

Crows are smaller.

Ravens are the page was clear not to antagonize the bird because they remember.

Oh, yes.

And be friendly to the bird.

But also, the bird just like

stole or destroyed her entire run of groceries.

On the way up, just passes by her ear, like, nevermore, bitch.

Ridiculous.

Like, I'm sitting here streaming,

and I just get a text message.

I have been robbed by crows.

That's like, it's

real shit.

Real shit.

And what?

Just literally unbelievable.

Oh, you want to come get it back?

Then come take it then.

No, you can have it.

I don't want no food.

A crow is touched.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

They got bird flu going around or whatever.

Uh-uh.

Okay.

Well.

I'd say important to identify the size, too, as well.

And know if you're dealing with the

larger, more like

I'm going to swoop down and grab anything small and moving.

Well, the real thing is that we have to make sure that, like,

dog, like, the birds don't steal this dog.

No, that's that's that's exactly.

The dog is small,

and you know, there has been actually, okay, I want to say there was a, I think it was made here, but there was like a fake video of someone of like a,

I think, like, a falcon comes down and grabs a kid and then like lets go after like a couple feet or whatever.

So falcon won't grab your kid, but I have seen people

walking there like Yorkies and Chihuahuas

with the anti-hawk suit.

What does that look like?

It's a lot of spikes and bright colors.

You can look up anti-hawk chihuahua costume.

Oh, sick.

That's punk as hell.

Yeah.

Because if you have a Yorkie or a Chihuahua or like a small poodle or something, we're talking like two pounds, that's indistinguishable from like a gopher or something.

Now, will that also stop a coyote?

No, nothing's going to stop a coyote.

Do we have coyotes?

Yeah, I'm sure.

Probably not like

as at least it sounds like.

They do.

We do have them.

Oh, yeah.

Because it sounds like America has them

in.

Wait, West Coast.

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're out in California and stuff, so that would make a lot more sense.

Yes, they would.

Oh, there's coyotes out in the eastern townships

out where you are, oh, yeah,

not downtown, no, no, but but, but, like, you know, there's coyotes everywhere.

Well, okay, the question is, is not, are there coyotes?

Is there a coyote problem?

No, right, because some areas

some places have coyotes, and some places have a coyote problem.

So,

um,

all right,

so what's new in the world this week?

Um, fucking evanescence is new, yeah, man.

This is someone,

someone who's been trapped in the year 2005 is just completely losing their fucking mind.

Hey, look, it's like if you're waiting for like which one of these evanescence tracks is going to be associated with Devil May Cry, it's like the answer is this new one, the brand new one.

They worked together.

Like, great, perfect, awesome, nailing it.

Um, Early Aut's new metal should be the sound.

You know, it's not, I have to say, like, this musical choice is not something I would have predicted or called, right?

But Addie is correct that it feels right for

Devil May Cry to be associated with Early Aught's New Metal.

And it's doable.

I totally agree.

Right?

100%.

Biscuit, Paparoach.

I had a moment when they saw the announcement too, where

I was like, huh.

And I went, oh, fuck.

and I was like wait no

new evanescence song not Limbiscuit oh no sorry not Lincoln Park

because I was like yeah okay okay right right right cool cool cool they should use old Lincoln Park songs is what they should do I mean that would be that would be right in the right up the alley certainly

he should fight Virgil to the to fucking faint

I'm not going to complain about that.

That's what I would have put together.

I'm not going to complain about that.

you know

um

drew maybe drop some high voltage in there while you're at it who knows

in the end is certainly on on the table but no in the end is it's for when self fights gohan stop it

that's what that song was made for

anyway um i i think uh I think we're on a we're on a good track with this.

And

you know what?

Afterlife, pretty good song i like it

amy's doing it

why why wait for fan amvs of your of your animation when you can just make him official this just puts like the devil may cry anime

like as if it it's like

hey man um

After we go out and see Daredevil with Ben Affleck, do you want to get back and like watch the new Devil May Cry anime?

Like, it is firmly placing it in that time extremely strongly.

This is when it would have happened, and this is when it would have come out.

Yeah.

Like, it almost feels like the show is pretending that it came out in 2005.

Now I'm like upset that

Dragon Ball never officially reached out to get Adam's song going for any part of Super

To officially get it.

So when Vegeta pops off, you go, ah, I never conquered, rarely came.

I swear to God.

It's, yeah.

If they keep this up and if, like, you know, the idea is that this is going to move forward in time, they are going to probably run out of like high-profile new metal bands.

Oh, absolutely.

But so far, so good.

I think back, and I realize now that, like,

someone who thought like this

did have a shot to do it way back

because that's what's going on with fucking Warrior Within, Prince of Persia, that was, like, had that God smack song associated with it.

God.

And, of course, Haze.

Featuring corn.

It's just, it's extra upsetting because I really, really liked the Santa Time soundtrack.

And, like, everything about that was so fucking solid and sick and awesome.

And, and

I never bothered going into the.

Those three games are so funny.

I never went into the Grim Dark.

I've never seen anything be like, okay, it's normal.

It's Edgy.

No, no, no, go back.

Go back.

Go back, go back, go back.

Yeah.

And, you know, maybe, maybe that one Penny Arcade comic is single-handedly responsible for

for making that happen.

I think there was one Penny Arcade comic about the Metal Thong

chaffing up

the girl's ass in the second game, and it just changed the entire trajectory of that franchise.

Did you see the

release trailer and announcement for Venom in Guilty Gear Strive?

Yes, I did.

Okay.

and

i'm gonna be honest it took me a second because my brain actually

like responded incorrectly and i was like venom isn't

oh right he's tagging along with fucking robo kai yes yes because i'm actually my brain my brain has auto-completed it to robo kai is coming back to guilty gear well robokai is now just a floating head as the story ended and they went and they left together.

They had a nice little epilogue moment.

They had a really, you know,

touching scene of him getting out of the Assassin's Guild.

He sacrificed everything, but he didn't die.

And, you know, somehow survived and got his happy ending with him and Robokai in their gay little bakery together.

And for some reason, I guess they've had to give the life of the gay little bakery up to return to the fight.

But now he's calling himself the Phantom.

Can I just say having a character say, I don't know who Venom is, my name is Phantom, and then having the word Venom appear in giant letters on the screen the whole time?

Because they're like, you, the player, needs to know.

We're not even going to pretend here.

Like, if they go Bedman, and you're like, oh, wait, what?

Ooh, what's happening there?

I'm a Bedman fan.

I don't get it.

But no, it's fucking Venom.

And if you want Venom, you're getting your Venom.

And it's like

basically the same design, except now he's got a stylish brown jacket over that exposed chest.

And at a flash, it kind of looks like his chest is exposed anyway.

So you can't.

He looks cool.

Yeah.

Impossible hair continues to be a thing.

And I guess just at a glance, like, yeah, it's exactly what I expected, you know.

But I'm surprised in the simplification of his moveset that they've,

again, the placement of the balls, and you're still playing pool, and everything's knocking into each other.

but uh, they got rid of his um spinning uh double-head morbid, the DP input, like one of his what I thought was like a signature move, you know, that's like my favorite move, yeah, and he doesn't do it, and it's like, wait, but that's that's such a signature move of his, that's so weird to take that away.

Um,

but uh, yes, if you are

interested in the complex,

like visual calculus play style of a pool player in a fighting game.

Um, then, like, this is all that.

And then some, because you place the balls, you hit them, and then as usual, you know, you can, you, you stack them up for damage, but you can charge to delay or have them bounce off the wall behind, and you're just Venom's fucking nonsense, man.

Do the metal math on the balls, you know?

Um,

yeah,

cool, good stuff.

He's he's he's back.

And then Robokai's there as a floating head to

land the last hit, to talk shit, and to have his little stick body and cape out.

There will be no full Robokai,

but

for now.

I guess he could get a full body if they wanted to, you know.

But

I like

the two of them there.

This is how Cliff is going to come back.

I'm just curious as to, like, why did you have to give up the gay bakery?

It was very nice, and he was having having a good time yeah something's probably gonna happen to the gay bakery and he's like he has to he's just gonna have jam storyline and like his biggest moment is like

he had he changes and then uh gets into his his you know baker's outfit and then like he tucks his hair back and you can see his face clearly and it's like a oh my god look at him

I'm just trying to think like I would actually really like it if it's like hey what happened to the bakery he's like I don't know how to make any money.

I'm an assassin.

I didn't learn any skills that would help me run a bakery.

Yeah.

Probably

hottest Guilty Gear dude, I'd say.

I think a lot of people would agree with you.

I think that is uncontroversial.

Good stuff.

He's out.

And I saw a quick clip of him doing

the big ball super and like rushing past it, throwing the opponent to the ground, and then they get back up, and the ball still hits them because there's time for it to travel while you get knocked out and get back up.

So fucking annoying, it's gonna be, it's gonna be uh, some bullshit,

but please look forward.

Um, and then another fighting game uh announcement: Tech N8 changes were revealed for the new upcoming season, and there's just kind of a big one that's going nuts right now, but teching throws now hurts you a little bit in tech n8 that's weird very strange i don't know i don't know what they're cooking i don't know why uh i there must be a reason there must be something to some of the other changes i'm guessing but harad has basically been like hey you know wait till you try it and people are and tech n fans long time players are like all basically like this is insane this is why would you do this this has never happened and yeah that's a really drastic change to make it seems like um, because for a lot of people, like myself included, throw teching is super difficult, even in a game where it's like press an attack button to escape.

I was going to say, teching throws in Tekken is extremely difficult compared to other games.

It's like one of, it's the throw, it's the game I have the hardest teching throws in.

It's interesting because you don't have to input like a throw

button combination to

escape a throw.

You have to just hit like left or right punch, you know, one or two.

But it's just like the timing of of it.

You're often busy doing something else.

Your inputs are not going to be clean.

And, you know, in this case, it's like, yeah.

So I guess the idea is if you're really, really good at Tekken, you can recognize the throw that's coming at you based on the hand position.

So

you can, when you get good enough, you can recognize a throw that has one hand up over the other between left or right arm being up is one or two types of throws.

But if you can constantly break those

and there's no threat, like I know something with King, for example,

like really good players were

unable to make effective use of like throw mix-ups with him for a while.

So he has stuff that you have to break with like three even at certain points.

I think the idea here is you can't just escape throws forever and eventually you can die if you're on your last little yeah, but no one in Tekken can escape throws forever.

It's super hard.

It's very, very, yeah, it is.

So I don't know.

The idea is probably that is probably just at high level, you can't do it forever.

But I don't know.

We'll see.

You know?

Oh, it doesn't, you don't die from chip in this case.

Okay, so it just, it just reduces a little bit of life, but it doesn't actually.

Okay.

Dunno.

But it's a very, very big change to a game that's, you know, never been like that.

It reminds me of, I guess, like, it's almost like a deliberate moment going back to Street Fighter 2, where

when Super Street Fighter 2 came came out,

you could never escape throws until they added,

you couldn't

completely get out of it, but they added throw softening, right?

Someone would like Ryu or Ken would grab you and flip you, and then you would flip out if you pressed your own throw input quick enough.

And so you'd still, you'd take half damage instead of full damage.

But the idea was, you know, there was no completely getting out of the throw if you got hit with one.

And it's kind of like that here, I guess.

It's like, nope, it's your fault for even getting grabbed, but we can reduce, you know, the amount of damage it would do.

Strange.

Still baffling change to me.

I'm totally.

Who is this for?

I would imagine high-level players that are able to recognize the type of throw coming at them almost every time.

But yeah, anyway, that's that's

it there.

Another

big piece of news that has dropped dropped is at GDC 2025, the formation of a brand new industry-wide union for game workers has been revealed.

The UVWCWA.

This is great.

United Video Game Workers Union formed with the tenured communication workers of America.

So the idea here is this is a Canadian

and U.S.

covering union.

And typically, I guess the difference between this and a lot of the other game union news we've been hearing about is most of the time a number of employees at a particular company would

create one and then invariably get shut down or punished or whatever the case is because it only covers the employees at that particular place.

You know, so I'm going to use an example.

This is not a company that this has happened at, but it's just like, you know, if you try to start a union at Capcom USA,

well, Capcom USA can go, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, and shut those offices down fast enough to kibosh the union.

Again, I'm not talking about Capcom USA specifically.

That's just an example.

But this allows people to just join a general.

I work in video games union.

And so by being larger and by being not specific to a company, it's much more difficult for a particular company to punish any employees for joining it.

Because how are you going to know they joined the union until they come to you with collective bargaining, which will be in a couple of years once tons of people have joined this union.

So that's the idea: if there's enough numbers behind it, then it, you know, you might like what might certainly happen and what will happen is, you know, when there's a

number of people in a given company that like are members and then those who aren't, and then the treatment might, you know, be different between those

as things ramp up.

But certainly, if this covers enough ground and enough people join in time, then yeah, there's nothing that

when the company is

not above the organization at this point, but they're directly bargaining with an outside force, then yes, they get better bargaining power.

So

very cool.

Even at its most base level, even at the most base level,

not even describing collective bargaining, right?

Just, hey, there is a large video games-based union that a certain multitude of people are paying their dues which means hey as part of the union I think example not the company this is a hypothetical I think EA fired me or fired my team or laid us off illegally and I think I'm owed severance

well now I can go get my union lawyer or I can go to my meeting with HR and the boss and go unlike more most situations in which I would have to do this out of pocket I have a union lawyer who will come and fight you and fuck your day up for as long as this takes.

That's it.

So just pay me my fucking severance.

And you're also talking about people that are not necessarily, again, it's not the people working under the company at the company that are beholden to them, but that lawyer or any of those people that are potentially

doing this full time from outside.

You know, again, yeah, they can get more done.

I think a big cool detail too, as well, is the fact that it's partnered with the communication workers

of America means that like existing large-scale unions.

An existing backbone for this, exactly.

Which means it already had, those guys already have union lawyers.

They already have bookkeepers.

They already have guys who know how to manage a meeting.

They've been doing it since 1947.

So the framework for everything to have a number of employees

in a union outside of the company that they're working at is right there.

So they get to just one-to-one, take that template, apply it to video game employees.

Great.

Just good news all the way around.

And it covers Canada and America in one fell swoop as well.

Even

like, even like, okay,

even the existence of the union at all

is a force for positive good because it may create in at least one situation,

man, I really want to fuck this team over, but I don't want to be the first company to fight this new team.

Sure, sure, sure.

I don't want to be

the very first testing ground

for battling the new video game union.

So, you know what?

I'm just going to chill a little.

Make no mistake, like they're going to fight against it and find ways to do so, right?

But the difference is it's going to be a lot harder when you can't just shut shut down an entire studio branch or team by, you know, simply going, hey, whatever, we can find a reason and just go, yeah, we're shutting that down, we're canceling that game, we're getting rid of this project, whatever the case is, and then, you know, nip it in the bud.

This is much more difficult for them to do that with, but they'll find a way.

They'll find a way.

But yeah.

And also, if we're talking about unions and we're talking about an industry, like the oftentimes on an economic scale, you end up in this kind of situation where, okay, well, the guys are making unions here.

Can we outsource that?

It's like if it's a manufacturing thing, like, yeah, you might be able to outsource it to a country that doesn't have good unions or doesn't have a good civil liberties protection.

But

we're talking about video games here.

We're talking about essentially what is an artistic medium.

It's not, you're not making crackers, you're not making car parts

or you know, large-scale mass-produced goods.

You need the certain people that you have hired to do it.

So, what you can do

is go, we're starting a new

studio that just happens to be placed in a country that doesn't allow unions, but then you have to convince your whole team to fucking move out there, which is hard.

Yeah.

No, I think,

you know, a part of this too, as well, is like North America.

I know people that work

from, you know, from Montreal here with companies in the States.

I know people that move down to the States to work and go back and forth as well.

The fact that this covers both is pretty dope.

Because, yeah, you know, like when it comes to stuff like

SAG and

ACTRA, which is the Canadian equivalent there, you got to go

figure out specifically what your country does.

And there's differences between the two and such, but this doesn't get in the way of anybody that is actively working across border for better job opportunities.

So

good stuff.

I mean, we're going to talk about it, about Ubisoft in a little bit, but like Ubisoft should be uniquely threatened by this type of unionization because

like,

you know, get like 500 Ubi employees in a room and ask them, hey, how many of you have had crimes committed against you by your boss?

And have them raise their hands and have other people in the room see how many people are raising their hands.

Yeah.

It's probably a couple.

Perhaps more than a few.

It's more than two.

I can say that with confidence.

Yeah.

Did you just want to talk about

Ask Creed Shadows doing well?

Not really, but

good for them.

I know for a fact that there are sighs of relief being heaved.

I heard a lot of doom and gloom about what would happen if Assassin's Creed Shadows didn't do well.

But it is doing well.

What other newbie UBI news was there?

Not to my knowledge.

Oh, okay.

I just wanted to kind of just make fun of them because they're creeps.

Okay.

Yeah, I honestly wasn't even going to go into it.

But

I know buying the game's map is a microtransaction microtransaction in that game

like the in-game map

i saw co talking about it and just being like ugh and i have to agree

um

i didn't did i see a single-player battle pass yes you did

okay all right yes you did yeah okay yeah yeah yeah

um hey there's another game speaking of yasuke there's a game called yasu yasuke the lost descendant uh why so much noise about yasuke now Well,

I think there was noise about Yasuke a couple years ago, and then a couple projects got announced

around the same time.

So there was an anime, there was Askreed, there was a film project,

which was involving Chadwick Boseman, which I think never ended up happening.

And then now there was this other indie game here.

And yeah, action game,

definitely woolly-coated Jet Set radio style character design aesthetics with the running up the wall,

glowing skates as you slash and grapple hook around the city and swing a sword around.

It's full of all kinds of

wonderful little

woollyisms.

Looks like something interesting to take a look at.

Definitely early as hell, though.

And there is

good old framerate jank going down.

Oh, man, it is a gray box room.

Yep, and you're also looking at one of those games where this feels like this is where you'd be seeing Twitter

or

Blue Sky tweets of like, here's what I figured out today, wall running into this move, or, you know, just like games that are that are developed in front of you live on social media, essentially.

I gotta say, I saw some folks on my timeline describing how, you know, it's a lot harder to find indie games and like games are like underperforming.

And

there has been some blame put on like the singular decision to disallow direct linking to Twitter has like damaged the game's business.

Like every controller that you own has a button that might as well have been put a screenshot that you just saw onto Twitter.

And

that is not available anymore.

And I think about like games like Yakuza Zero and Yakuza 7, which just exploded as a direct result of that.

And a bunch of mini games that you would see just tons of little clips of.

I'm just like, oh, what the fuck is that?

Yeah.

No, that sucks.

That's a real shitty thing.

I feel like

stuff that comes like, you know, when City of the Wolves is about, Warves is about to drop.

And like a big part of that of fighting games releases these days is like hashtags for a given character, you know, and the tech being inside of it and stuff.

And that's going to be all divided up as well.

I, yeah, this, it's, it sucks.

It fucking sucks.

I, I hope that, uh,

there's some sort of solution, but I feel like, uh, I also hope that Blue Sky adds some DMing images soon, because I feel like

you can't do that.

And I don't know.

Okay, well.

Because there's good for DMing images and there's also evil for DMing images.

Sure, but I've I've tried to DM images and I felt and I noticed I couldn't and I was like, oh, that sucks.

And I wanted to do that and was stopped.

So I was like, well, let me go fucking figure something else out then.

You can DM text, but you can't DM images yet on BSky.

Yeah.

So.

Also.

Well, anyway.

Then beyond this,

there was the Future Games Show spring showcase.

I watched that.

It was very interesting.

A whole lot of stuff got announced and or shown off.

We can't cover all of it, but, you know, we can talk about some stuff that

was noteworthy or caught your attention.

Seeing the trailer for Expedition 33, Claire Obscure,

I am

overwhelmed with Lost Odyssey vibes.

Oh, yeah.

Overwhelmed between.

So I played

hours of it, and guess what?

Yes.

Like, at first, I was kind of very strongly.

Yeah, at first, I was kind of like, oh, it's a traditional RPG with the kind of realistic visuals.

That seems like it's up the alley.

But now, looking at combat, especially seeing the camera angle and the way you like timing mini-games slash some stuff, it's way, way, way up that alley.

And that's great because I fucking love Lost Odyssey.

Very, very excited for that.

That game fucking rules.

We saw they mentioned the new hell mode for Onimusha 2.

The game's re-release is all you need.

It's the best Onimusha game.

So adding a new difficulty, that's nice, but like,

dude,

you don't need to sell me on it.

It's Onimusha 2.

That game's great.

Better than Jean-Renault?

Oh, yeah, much better.

Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, no question.

What did we see?

Do you see Kingmakers?

Okay, so yeah, Kingmakers, like,

this is club space argument the game, right?

This is the best.

What if one tactical soldier with modern day weapons and knowledge,

you know, with guns had to fight all of the knights and medieval armies?

What could they do?

So, like, they've shown Kingmakers before, before, but like, the trailer just having you go through a time portal and use your fucking Dodge Ram to just

make out like a score of British soldiers is just so fucking incredible.

Well, so that's the thing is, like, okay, on the one hand, it's just like, okay, this is the argument.

What if one soldier versus old knights?

But then, on the other hand, you're like, what if America versus ye old British?

It's amazing.

I love it.

Fun stuff on that.

And it's always like Dynasty Warriors, numbers of soldiers coming out.

Absolutely.

They showed off

something else that is, again, I feel woolly coated.

NitroGen Omega,

a TTRPG

that has got

taking a mecha team, getting the kids and the robot, customizing the robot, doing your moves, and

stylish, fun

Saturday morning robot action going on.

I want you to know that when I was watching this stream, I looked over in my chat and it was just like 25 lines of text in a row that just said woolly.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Correct.

Wooly game.

Yep.

Woolly.

And

it's turn-based.

Let's go.

Yeah, I know, right?

Let's fucking go.

Yeah, I appreciated

the character designs looking trigger-esque trigger-esque as well.

A lot of that was very much my speed.

I'm hoping for good things.

I've seen other projects that like

there's other stuff that has promised

robot RPG-ing that has not scratched my itch completely.

I kind of didn't fully click with Wolf Stride, but I'm hoping for some good things out of this one.

I think it's super messed up that the best two games you could play as a turn-based mecha game are Into the Breach

and

PlayStation 1 version of Front Mission 3.

Like,

that's such a slam dunk as a genre, and it's like,

that's what we got.

Yeah,

there's,

you know, Phantom Brigade, but...

That's not for everybody.

There was the the game I saw, like I saw a trailer for this before, and then like they had more footage here.

The remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time.

I hope that game is

as interesting as its title's premise.

Well,

it seems like you take a look at that protagonist and you go, it's fucking Chrono.

It's Chrono walking around.

It's right.

Yeah, and I think the title premise and the bit there is like, okay, how well is the game behind the game going to be?

Because clearly, it's a bit of an inscription set situation, right?

There's going to be the fact that you're playing the RPG remake.

It's basically like, what if we did

like Chrono Resurrection, you know, in a way that don't mention that name to me.

Chrono Resurrection, where we're just going to have limited existence, limited scenes of these moments, but it's going to be in an octopath traveler style visual,

you know, design.

But there's a metagame behind it where I guess the studio making it or something.

There's some sort of plot behind the remake of the game plot or so that adds a puzzle element to it.

So let's see.

Let's see what's going on.

You know, I know that it's not, it's not just, hey, look, it's an RPG.

No, it's a puzzle game.

It's

actually very similar to Tunic.

Did you play Tunic?

No, but I remember that's that's the game where you find instructions from the manual to learn what's going on in the game and stuff.

They mentioned it here too as well.

Yeah, finding the instruction manual in game because it's like, oh, you remember that game, right?

If you don't, we've included the manual.

So

interesting premise, you know, I think what you're seeing in the visual style is not meant to be like, necessarily like, oh, look, that'll attract you.

Don't you want to play this RPG?

Like, that's not the point, you know?

Yeah.

So, let's see what they're up to.

They might be cooking.

Uh, or that it'll be terrible.

Like, that feels like it's either going to hit or just

yes.

The name of the game is the remake of the end of the greatest RPG of all time.

That is the name of the game.

Um, better be a really good game.

I'm just saying, like, it's got to be the greatest RPG of all time, or else this is stupid.

I mean, the logo for it is definitely Xbox Live Indies font.

You know.

What else was there?

There was I Hate This Place, which was kind of like a cell-shaded Derby girl looking thing.

Seems all right.

Seems like you're

running.

Yeah, like little

Derby girl Harley Quinn style character doing stuff.

In Naya, it was like a cool looking little Dead Cells.

So I did that.

I did a sponsored look at that game.

When I played, it was super early.

A cool little Metroidvania, very fluid animation.

Yeah.

Combat looked pretty swag.

There was the other Vania was Madragora, I think.

It looked much more traditional RPG

mechanics while Metroidvania Ng, or just Vania Ng, I should say.

There was the

System Shock 2 Remaster.

You know,

fucking thank God.

That game...

like, GOG is doing its own thing, which I don't know if we talked about, but, like,

it's, it's really nice to be, like, oh, could there just be a normal, easy way to play System Shock 2, please?

Now, I'm not sure if they were just doing a side-by-side or if it's actually a feature, but it seemed like you could just switch back to the old game if you didn't.

I'm not sure.

I think, well, it looks like it's just the old game cleaned up.

Yeah, it looks quite close, but I don't know if you could play the old game within the the remake or not um but it's it's so it's not the remake is a totally separate thing

so this is this is a re like this is like they're remaking system shock 2 but if you don't want a remade system shock 2 well here's regular system shock 2 just cleaned up

Okay, because in the trailer when they started doing the side-by-side swiping,

I wasn't sure if it was like, is that?

Oh, because System Shock 1 got the same thing, where they re-released it, cleaned up, and then they made a full-scale remake

in modern context.

I mean, I'm always a fan of when you allow that to be possible.

And even better is where you- It's hard, though.

But even better is when you can switch it off immediately, you know, and like have the real, have like, yeah, the new thing and the old thing interchangeable right away is nuts.

I don't think any game is ever going to be as impressive as Halo Anniversary in terms of that specific gimmick.

The only other one that pulled it off, but unfortunately, the game itself fucking, you know, we don't talk about is the Turtles in Time bit, where they had the Turtles in Time, you know, a real thing running behind the remake, but then it was so bad it got delisted.

You know?

But yeah, that's a feature I appreciate.

What was there?

There was

Roofie and the Riverside.

Did you see that thing?

It's I don't I did.

So I saw everything there.

Yeah, I thought that looked okay, so I have a soft spot place in my heart for Sonic Robo Blast 2 and that style of 3D.

I love that style of 3D a lot.

And this is a game that looks a whole lot like that like that, which is basically 3D

crisp textures, old retro style,

but high-res textures on a 3D environment.

Mode 7.

What is the name of the game again?

Ruffy and the Riverside.

Okay,

that would explain the results I'm getting.

Are you FFY?

Yeah, I was typing.

Okay.

I was like, wow, the search engine optimization for this Roofie game is terrible.

Oh, my God.

It's like, Ruffy and the Riverside.

Got it.

Yeah.

And then it seems like the deal here with, you know, kind of having this sprite-based character running around in a 3D world is

you can target something and grab its texture and apply that texture to another part of the world.

That's cool, man.

And then change the world.

So, yeah, you pull ice and then drop it on the ocean, and then the whole ocean freezes.

Or, you know, I guess you can.

Oh, there's a demo available right now.

I'm always a sucker for this visual style, so I'm going to lean into it whenever I see it.

We saw it before a little bit, but I guess a little little bit more of South of Midnight.

South of Midnight looks really good.

I'm probably going to cover that when it comes out.

Yes.

Yeah, looks cool.

And

also just huge

shout outs because Compulsion, which is a Montreal-based studio, I had some friends that were working there, actually.

The last thing they made was We Happy Few.

Oh, that game's not good.

But this is a massive departure, it looks like.

Yeah, sure is.

Right.

This looks completely different.

so

yeah, interested in seeing where what's going on with this, but awesome art style, cool stuff going on with the um

visuals and the frame rate in particular, and uh, combat.

We'll see what's going on, but uh,

looks dope.

And then we uh got to see a little bit more of baby steps,

uh, what the fuck is Bennett Foddy cooking?

The what if I woke up hung over,

so I that's that's the good but I couldn't figure out why what made it hard.

Like what was the control scheme?

Terrible control scheme.

But they won't tell it, they weren't telling you what the control scheme was,

right?

They didn't, they didn't, you don't know what it was, but you're like, clearly we're struggling to walk, but I don't know why yet, you know?

And now they explained it in that.

So every step has to be manually input with the stick.

Yeah, it's co-op.

It's co-op again.

But you're, you're, you're, I guess you have to perhaps like, you can't fully swipe it forward.

You have to kind of like because quop is they're asking different skills of you, right?

Quap is asking you to hold complex keys in a particular pattern to emulate running.

Bend the knees and then bend the feet.

Getting over it is asking you for mouse precision on your aiming.

And then the game about climbing.

Same thing.

You have to hold multiple keys on the keyboard.

Like

this, it seems as if it's asking for accuracy of your thumb control on both sticks.

So, not exactly quop, right?

Quap is keyboard confusion.

I think this is asking you for precise stick placement.

And, you know,

getting

from just standing to onto a thin little, thin little tree, thin little thing, and then jumping off of stuff, it's going to be insanely difficult.

But it seems as if at the very, like,

what he's doing now is it's a big full open world game that you have to walk around one step at a time, but falling off of ledges and into bullshit just leads you to new areas.

So, like, you don't have to do the hard path to get to things.

I can't wait.

You can explore on your own pace.

I can't wait for the VTuber super cuts

of them getting super mad.

But, you know, that's obviously the whole point.

It is.

It's to see Corone losing her shit and start barking.

Yeah, pretty much.

It's pretty much the only things I noted

to bring up.

I don't know if there's anything else that you.

I have a minor piece of game development news that actually

fits into

our

earlier discussion about waiting for games to come out.

So

the new Civ has come out, the new

uh, Civ 7, right?

To uh mixed reviews, right?

Primarily that's got a weird new interv interface that has some bugs in it.

Turns out

there is a direct causal link that caused that game's interface to maybe not be so good.

Because the number one developer in response to fixing Civilization 6's interface bugs was a gentleman who is not currently working at Phyrexis.

I've Luigi Mangioni.

I've heard, I've heard about this.

Yes, contributed some mods.

No, no, no.

He fixed hundreds of Civ 6 bugs.

Hmm.

Like 25% of the total bug count on Civ 6.

That's crazy.

Yeah, okay.

But he is

currently indisposed.

Indisposed.

Currently indisposed.

Hmm.

Well, you know,

I mean, you always hear about like those

power wiki editors and stuff where, you know, there's like a whole lot of people on the job, but like there's always the one or two that just they're there's always the power user.

The power user, you know, and like they're that that like that one person that gets shit done more than the other people are getting shit done.

I got a buddy of mine

who works in the tech field that is like that,

who will finish all of his work and then be like, Where's more work?

And he's like, You have finished two weeks of work in an afternoon.

I have nothing to give you.

You have to wait until your coworkers are done.

That's nuts.

That's nuts.

What a

wow.

Very good at regression

and bug fixes,

this Luigi Mangione.

How about that?

um yeah

okay

oh what was uh that other game with the

animal use protocol

it's like a first-person shooter with some animals going on

animal use protocol um

i want

i want every so you you have a you have a rat the talk you play a monkey

uh it is it is

Oh, God.

It's by the

stasis bone totem people.

Oh, that's who's making it.

Okay.

Which is why it's so fucking weird.

Very bizarre trailer.

Yeah.

I'm going to say that animal use protocol may be the most upsetting game title I've ever heard in my entire life.

It just sounds so fucking nefarious.

And that's probably true.

That's probably pretty fucking nefarious.

Well, yeah, I mean, between the rat and the monkey, I'm assuming you're breaking out of a fucking testing.

No, you're, I think you're sent in.

Okay.

Um,

yeah, yeah, not great.

Um, there's also that furry game with trains for an incredibly specific set of audiences that will love it a lot.

Oh, yes.

I can't remember the name of it.

Whatever, cozy, cozy, cozy

fuck express or

uh loco moto.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Animal crossing on a train.

Why not?

That's fine.

Why not?

I'm surprised it hasn't been done already.

I'm sure it has been.

I mean, it might be fucking ReFantasio outside, but

it can be cozy Animal Crossing inside this train.

You know.

Did you know, by the way, why it's called ReFantasio?

I don't know why.

So,

ReFantasio is obviously, it's the Esperanto version of re-fantasy.

Of course.

Right?

Of course.

And re-fantasy, as in regarding fantasy or return fantasy, is because they're like,

we want to return to the traditional fantasy genre.

But they lied.

Well, no, they didn't.

They actually did return to fantasy.

They lied.

They're liars.

So,

after doing a bunch bunch of games about kids in high school, and we're like, when's adults?

And they're like, fuck off.

Here's dragons and knights.

And we're like, yeah, okay.

That's fine.

Yeah, like when I remember when it was like the title Project Free Fantasy, I was like,

what does that mean?

It's like, oh,

we want to get back to our roots.

I saw some of the prototype stuff they showed off at GDC, and I have to say,

it's always a fucking trap when you see that unworkable promo shit because, like, you always have this, oh, that looks so much cooler.

Oh, shit.

Hulkenberg's whole design was so cool.

Oh, no.

Why can't we get that?

It's like, oh, because it didn't have a cohesive thing, and they didn't find it workable.

But still, oh, that old menu looks cool.

I like what we got.

Let's take some letters.

If you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

You can, in fact, send a story of when you were robbed by animals.

I'm sure it happens often.

Okay.

Dear clearly visible castle and barely visible beast, Levi here.

Why does the adjust brightness slider until the image is barely visible setting in every game suck?

Literally, I can't think of a single game where it works well.

And since it does suck so much, why do games still use it so much?

I legitimately don't understand why developers can't figure out a better way to do it this

depends heavily on your monitor and heavily on your video settings i've noticed um

i find it does lie a lot of the time uh but obviously i get a weird version of this when switching from direct hdmi input into

an Elgato, right?

Because the fact that we play through a capture device means we're seeing shit differently.

The colors get thrown off in a lot of cases.

And in some cases, it like brightens things, but flattens them out.

But yeah, I feel as if in horror games where it's like you set it just to be barely visible.

Very visible.

Barely visible.

And then when the actual time in the game happens where you're at night, it's actually just there's nothing.

You can't see shit at all.

And I'm like, that fucking sucks.

I have to go gamma

it up.

So I've done, I went down a multitude of deep dives on this subject because it drove me nuts.

So I want to give a shout out to Resident Evil 6,

the game with the worst brightness indicator of all time.

An indicator I have never seen a single human being ever correctly use.

Are you familiar with the RA6 brightness indicator, Wooly?

No.

I will find it for you, although I can probably see that you're looking for it right now.

No, because I was actually thinking of the, when you use

the, when you switch your PS4, your PS5 to

not 4K, no, what setting is it?

Where it has its own baked in

OS level

version of this that you configure.

And that actually worked, but not the individual game settings.

HDR.

I've sent you the

RE6 one.

It's a black number six on a spotlight on the ground.

Says adjust brightness so that number six is barely visible.

It is literally impossible to use this to

do your game.

Because if you make the six barely visible, your screen is completely black.

That's so dumb.

It's so completely black that you try and do that, you will not be able to find the options menu to fix your brightness because the menus will be so dark.

I have never been able to figure out what the fuck is going on with this.

So

RE6 started this because I was like, what the fuck is going on here?

And what's going on here is I have determined what the actual failure state of the brightness indication on every calibration screen is.

And it is the word barely.

The word barely in terms of barely visible is not clear

and is wildly determined by personal taste.

Yes.

Okay.

Super simple.

A dev considers to be barely visible at a brightly lit PC in the middle of the day versus a darkly lit television in the middle of the night is a night and day difference.

Also, it depends on whoever calibrated the test.

I know this because I got into a fucking thing a while ago around this time where I would go and find E3 footage and dev footage of the games running and me going, I am under the assumption they're running it at the intended brightness for their own game and comparing it to the settings the game tells you to set.

Always wrong.

Always wrong.

Games being shown in trailer or dev footage or at shows almost always have the brightness at default or higher.

Like, I can count the number of games on one hand that I was like, I need to turn the brightness down because I can see into dark areas.

So, my assumption with

the, is that barely visible is if there's a monster in the darkness,

what do you want that to look like?

You should be able to see a silhouette.

Exactly, right?

What you should be like,

how visible do you want that thing in the darkness to look or so?

But yeah, it doesn't end up turning out, it doesn't end up working out that way.

I feel like with Elden Ring and with FF7, I had to constantly change it.

Shit, hold on a second.

Doorbell, BRB.

Oh, you know, I gotta elbow.

All right, there we are.

Yeah, no, excuse me.

I think

it's election season, so

some representatives just rolled up like,

hey,

how's it going?

Like, oh, you know,

going good.

How do you feel about becoming a state?

Yeah, no, okay, cool.

Were they really asked you that?

No, but it was basically unsaid.

It was just like,

you know, it was like, ding-dong, hey, you know why we're here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know why.

I got to be blunt, man.

camping, if I was polling in Montreal and hit ding-dong and an Anglophone black man showed up to the door, I'd be like, I know, okay, bye.

You have a good day.

Like, how are you doing?

All right, cool.

All right, yeah, okay.

No, I'll mark you down.

We good?

It's good.

We good?

All right.

Yeah.

No, it's just, it's just

the

timing, the era, the moment, you know?

Anyways,

what do we got going on?

Yeah, every brightness indicator should say

adjust brightness to taste and then give you a dark scene and a bright scene.

Yes, so the ones that show you the actual game actually are way better.

So I think Cyberpunk shows you a screenshot of,

or does it know?

Something else I was playing recently shows you like two or three moments of the actual footage.

footage and you're like yeah okay now i know what this means here um adjust to tastes yes no please do

um

what i would like if you were if you were making a if you were making like soup and this and the the fucking instruction said add salt until you can barely taste the salt until you can barely taste the salt that is very different depending on the individual um no it wasn't cyberpunk it was a different game i forget which uh i would love you you know what I want?

How about this future?

How about a future where, like, benchmarking aside, you tweak your PC setting and watch it live change in front of you to taste?

You know?

Live render switches that you can just, like, write in front and go, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that.

That's pretty rare, though.

But I don't even mean, like, unpause, repause.

I mean have a rendered, like, scene in front of me where I'm tweaking the strato settings, where I'm tweaking, you know,

every

pass to see what it looks like right away, you know?

Anyway, there you go.

Oh, you know what?

Somebody in the chat mentioned something, and I really got to give a shout out to every character creator that places your character in a lighting environment that does not exist in the game.

Yes, yes, yes.

The backgrounds that are nonsense and mean nothing.

Dragon's Dogma, right?

You change your lighting to see how your lighting is going to look in a cave, at day, at night, you know, in the city.

All different environments.

Huge difference.

Lighting is the difference between the Street Fighter VI character faces in World Tour and then in Fighting Ground.

Yeah.

You know?

Every time someone went, oh God, what's wrong with Terry or Mai's face?

Into, oh my god, they look incredible, is like, yeah, that's that's the lighting from the mode specifically.

All right.

Frosty says, hey, Chewy and Fuckface,

I'm going to Galloping Ghost for a day as part of my vacation.

Would like suggestions on what unique cabinets I should look out for.

Looking for games like Armadillo Racing that have control schemes or mechanics that can only be enjoyed via cabinet.

Keep being awesome.

I don't even remember the last time I was in an arcade.

I can definitely, I mean, unique mechanic-wise, if you get a chance to check out Punch Out Arcade, that's a lot of fun if you've never played it because you have like a boxing control screen and it's a different version of Punch Out from the Ness or Super Punch Out or any of those ones.

The arcade one is very different.

My favorite thing that I played, and my favorite, I think like my favorite arcade game from going to Galloping Ghost was Blue Dolphin.

Go Find Blue Dolphin.

It's amazing.

It plays like

a

Contra game, but like with Dreamcast era, Naomi, visuals, sound, and style.

Go find that and play it.

Black Knight, go play that pinball game.

It's got the best soundtrack ever.

The music is incredible.

You'll know it from the incredible theme with the choir going as you approach the machine.

Yeah, Punch Out, Black Knight, Blue Dolphin.

And if you see Out Foxies, try that shit because it's wacky.

It's a crazy fucking

arena fighting game, not fighting game, split screen.

It's weird, but

you should try it.

It's very, very unique.

Yeah, there you go.

That's what I would say.

Kay says, dear Western Patton, Eastern Woolley.

What's up, man?

Quick one here.

What are our stances on opening and eating or drinking something in the store before paying for it?

Is this tech off of, is it off meta?

Is it niche?

Or should it be an automatic DQ if the TO finds out?

I was raised with...

So, like, I remember my dad got really upset one time when I was eating pizza, walking back to the car.

I was just eating a slice, and he's like, don't eat on the street, whatever.

So he's all uppity about that part.

Not a big deal.

I'm not astonished at the incredible intensity of the response in chat.

I am blown away.

Personally, based on that and based on that kind of overcorrection, I would say, nah, I'm not down with that.

I think it's weird.

I think, you know,

buy it, then eat it.

You know, opening it up and walking around is a little...

Yeah.

I don't see the issue at all.

Okay.

Well,

I have no issue whatsoever.

If I may, I have done it like once where I just opened up, I went to get like a pre-made sandwich, and then I grabbed,

I took a bite of it, and then I walked up to the self-checkout and then scanned it in, and then bought it and walked out and never dealt with a human.

And I'm just like, what?

Well, Pat,

your experience walking around the store in general might be quite different from mine.

That's true.

On a regular basis.

But, like, I mean, I worked at a grocery store and no one gave a shit.

But no one ever gave a shit.

I will say that when people are

already finding ways to, you know, float around the aisle and see what's what I'm up to.

I don't want to give any extra ammunition by deciding to opening to open up anything or whatever.

I'm actually overcompensating in the other direction by grabbing a basket and holding up and very, being very clear about

I am shopping.

You don't need to follow me.

I'm shopping.

Look at me shop.

My personal on the other side of that situation experience is that there is one dramatic indicator of

what causes you to get followed around and expected to be a thief in a major grocery store, and it's how you smell.

It's do you smell like booze from five feet away?

If you reek of alcohol,

the guy is gonna glue to you.

Well, certainly that that would be a fast indicator, I'm sure, but I've definitely had it things like that happen from people that are nowhere near close enough to get a whiff.

You know, sometimes it's simply just on site, and it's like, okay, right, we know the deal.

Um, yeah,

just anyway,

I feel weird about it, it.

And

I'm way just, I feel weird about it.

And I'm on top of that,

trying to cause as little issues as possible as a shopper in general 24-7 for the rest of my life.

So I'm going to very firmly wait until I have purchased the thing before I open it up and consume it.

Yeah, on a, on a,

like on a social equity situation in the world that we live in, there's everyone has going to have a different experience.

But on the etiquette aspect of it, I don't find it to be rude.

Like, I don't, like, some, like,

some people would react to this kind of thing like it's like a social ill.

How could you do it?

What if your card bounces?

What's like, you're going to pay for it?

What if your card bounces and you have no cash?

Oh, then you're fucked and you're a dumbass.

So then don't do that.

Then don't do it.

If you don't know, you can pay for something.

Maybe don't eat it.

Or wear your good shoes.

You know, I think just play it safe and just don't fucking do it.

Wait like 30 seconds.

Just be a human being and just clear the chart.

Clear the fucking checkout and then open it up.

Go nuts.

You know, and again,

I'm compensating off of being told, don't eat the slice of pizza walking from the store back to the car.

That's extra insane.

Yeah, but it's him.

And pizza's been paid for.

Yes, exactly.

But it's him just being like, it's the, you know, people will see, and you look like whatever, like a food eater on the store.

You look like a guy who wants to eat a person.

You know, and that's not, that's not proper or whatever.

So, you know.

But yes, no.

While

I'm

very aware of my body language while I'm standing in the aisle of a store, I'm very aware of the angles I turn.

I'm very aware of how I walk, and I'm very aware of where I'm looking and how I'm looking at things.

You know,

I am examining this product that I am interested in purchasing and I'm going to, I'm going to purchase it, you know?

A lot of the times I like to, I often like, if I'm going to, if I know exactly what I want and I'm making a B line for that area, I'm just, it's like, I'm

like almost robotically, if I don't have a

basket, I'm robotically holding the items, you know, and sometimes I'll be like, ah, yep, be right back.

Hold on a second.

And just,

that's my, that's my MO.

I once had

an interaction

that is technically part of this discussion

in which

I brought in

I brought in the stroller with the baby.

And then I'm like, oh, I'll put the items underneath the stroller.

And then I'll take them to the cache.

And then I'll take them out of the bottom of the stroller and run them on the thing and buy them.

And someone's like, hey, you can't do that.

You got to use our basket.

I'm like, where am I going to put my stroller

and my baby?

And they're like, well,

you're not.

And they just kind of

stopped.

And I'm like, I'm doing gross.

What, are you telling me that like moms with their six-month-olds coming to the grocery store have to put the baby in a cart, like a fucking cart?

Are you serious?

No, you want me to hold the store bag on my shoulder while I'm pushing the car?

What are you talking about?

Are you insane?

Yeah.

Someone write, Wooly's the kind of person to whistle while walking behind someone.

That's tough.

Because performative innocence is suspicious.

That's tough.

Listen, listen.

As somebody who's

watched enough people cross a street late at night as they were walking across paths, and I'm like,

it's what it is, right?

I will, you know, if, depending on the setting, depending on where we are or what's going on or what's happening, I might, yeah, I might absolutely preempt that.

I might have my,

I'll pull my phone out.

I got my headphones on.

I'm not interested in you.

In fact, I'll make the distance on the sidewalk.

I might walk this way.

I might even preemptively cross the street.

Hey, lady, don't worry about it.

I'm on the other.

I don't even just, you know.

You should just scream out, I'm gay.

Yeah, well,

just do it.

Not always.

That'll make them feel a lot better.

Yeah, well, you know, that's one of the many things they might be afraid of checked off the list.

So,

you know, it's just the way it is, man.

It's just the way it is.

I'm gay and you look broke.

See,

I fixed it.

Problem solved.

You know what, Pat?

You're right.

I don't know why I never thought of that.

My whole life, here I've been living this way.

I should have just been doing that instead.