CSB308: Bayonetta Equips The Doohickey

Hello.

Hey.

How you doing, man?

Welcome to Wait La Wait

Late Nights.

This is Castle Super Beast Night Rain.

Oh, that's true.

It is.

It is.

It has happened.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's fun.

What's up?

What's happening?

You know, a couple things.

Not too much.

You're back over there.

I'm back home.

Even though I had my little dog with me the whole time.

Yeah.

You truly

chose to drop in as the most ridiculous storm we've ever had.

Historic once-in-a-lifetime storm.

Yeah, the amount of...

So we got, I think they said it was five winters worth of snow in one night.

It was 40%

of the entire snow budget for the city in one

three-day period.

Yeah, that Monday.

70 centimeters over 48 hours.

If you're American, that's two and one-third feet of snow over 48 hours.

So, you know, that little balcony thing I have right by the kitchen there?

Like, that thing was like the snow looking at it was almost like like eye level,

you know.

And at a certain point, it's like, okay, what's the weight calculation?

Is this going to collapse if we don't start clearing it?

That would be cool.

You know, turns out light snow, not too bad.

You know, it spreads out kind of light, but it still is like just insane in terms of volume.

It was very fluffy, lime snow.

But I did have to essentially just go back there and just shove just a couple human beings' worth you know um off uh

it was

it was kind of goofy it had been a fairly you know regular ass Canadian winter

you get some bad days some good days but we're ready for it

yeah no no no one expects to see their entire

the entire sidewalk just gone

at one point

Min just sent me a picture and it was just like try to find my car and it's just like there it's there's nothing.

There's just nothing there.

There's buildings and there's nothing around.

This is one of those times where

I'm so glad that my family is the way that it is.

Cause I'm like, the plan was, hey, dad, can you drive me to the airport?

And he's like, yeah.

I'm like, dad, can you still drive me to the airport?

He's like, yeah.

I'm like, but this shit.

He's like, don't worry about it.

Okay.

And so, like, we went to their

condo and their condo, the driveway at the end of their little parking lot, got completely snowed in by like three feet.

I'm like, isn't that going to be a problem?

He's like, nah, I got the truck.

And then he showed up to the Airbnb.

We were staring like an hour early.

He's like, oh yeah, it's not a problem.

Whatever.

We'll take the back streets through fucking Lachine.

We'll avoid all the traffic.

It's not going to be a problem.

Man.

Yeah.

No, it's, it's, like, I feel like

I've seen people going, like, aren't you guys, aren't you the most, aren't you supposed to be the most ready ready for this?

Isn't like Canada supposed to be on top of it?

We are.

Well, you are.

Yeah.

Quebec, like, literally, we are.

It was that much, though.

Montreal's snow removal business

is a fucking industry in and of itself, and it is professionals.

It has invented

the three-vehicle system.

I've talked about it in the past, but literally there is the,

like, all three simultaneously.

You've got the

big truck in the road scooping it all up.

You've got the snow plow up ahead of that truck, which is on the sidewalk, scooping it into the sidewalk.

And then you've got the third truck on the side just receiving it.

So one is scooping it up and shooting it to the side, and the other is just catching it.

And all three

are going down the street in unison.

It's a synchronized system and it works for snow.

It works really good.

We saw some of the airport stuff.

It was like 10 trucks in a row, just clearing out a whole runway all at once.

Cool.

We saved Maine in 1997.

Oh, yeah.

That's sick.

There you go.

Right.

We have the.

We could have used some of our own saving during that ice storm.

Little fucking 98.

In 90, a year later.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

That was brutal.

But in any case, though, you know, that did happen.

Hey, fortunately,

how about that working from home?

Working from home is awesome.

I like that I have returned to a human palor.

I saw myself described

as

a

stick figure on a paper bag put over a bare light bulb.

I should have sat you in this seat to see what would happen with the Vivek lighting, as they're calling it.

But yeah, no, you know, what can I say, man?

You know,

our lighting is tuned for black.

At some point, at some day in the future, you're going to sit in this general area and I want to see if the fucking reverse happens.

And it's just like, well, that's just the kind of shit we got to deal with.

Because you've got colored lighting on.

I do not have.

This is all just like

sepia bright white light.

But

yeah, no,

that was

quite enjoyable watching you become minus one

for real as the numbers go.

So, hey, you know what?

Let's backtrack a little bit.

I recently visited Montreal to see family and Woolly and Punch Mom.

Let me tell you.

If you want to travel with a little toddler,

just fucking don't.

And that's not to say that the little toddler was a problem.

He is an incredible little angel and was a kick-ass little dude on the flights and the travel and all of that.

But holy fuck, do you have to bring a lot of luggage for a toddler?

Not a baby and not a child,

but a toddler.

You got to get the books.

You got to get the toys.

You got to get the snacks.

You got to have the multiple bottles that you've been trying to keep cold.

You got to get, oh, you got to get the fucking car seat.

You gotta get this and that.

Oh, my fucking God.

The way you were describing it was like he has discovered the concept of boredom.

Yeah, which means he can become bored.

Yeah.

And he hates it.

He hates it.

And on both flights, my wonderful little guy thought, you know what?

You know when's the good times to take a nap?

Takeoff and landing

for just takeoff and just landing.

Oh.

The first 15 minutes and the last 15 minutes of the entire flight.

And nothing in between.

Yeah.

Dog was a champ, by the way.

Dog was hung out in his little bag.

Yeah, no, I'm convinced that, like, you know, Moozie's unflappable.

There is, there is, there is nothing that will concern.

So I thought, like, the dog hangs out in my lap here or down there in his little bed or in the bag, right?

And it's like, yeah, but this is my empty office with just me, right?

So I'm like, well, it might be a little different in a bigger room with lots of people.

He doesn't know.

No.

I'm just going to chill on my lap or in between me and Reggie for like six hours.

Who gives a shit?

Yeah, no.

And I mean, hey, look, and obviously it goes without saying, but

that kid's.

That kid's that those charisma stats are like

a handsome little guy.

Yo, those charisma stats are high.

He's a cute little dude, and he's given high fives.

Yeah, no.

Oh, my God.

You're getting replaced.

Oh, I sure am.

I sure am.

Paige messaged me to remind me something that I forgot to mention on my stream the other day, which is on the way back.

So first of all, man, hey, Wooly,

love you.

Love Punch Mom.

Your hospitality is incredible.

You are amazing hosts.

It was great to see you.

Can't wait to see you again.

Boy, I'm not coming out there for a while.

Going to Montreal sucks.

Being in Montreal fucking sucks.

Like, just the fucking vibes are shit.

Vibes are god-awful and trash.

Now, this is storm aside.

But, but, but, as the bonus, on on the way back, on the way back, the last things that happened in Montreal,

pulling my luggage into the airport, my fucking belt busted, and I had to go all the way home with my pants almost falling down.

Good.

Good for you.

And then as me and Paige were getting off the plane, somebody dropped their overhead luggage onto her head.

Okay.

And it left a fucking wheel mark on her forehead.

Oh, like a bad one.

Yeah.

Damn.

And we were like, one final gift from the French.

Get your ass out.

That's what you fucking deserve.

Dude, I was carrying a baby in like four bags, and I'm like duck walking because I don't want my pants to fall down in the airport.

And I was terrified.

Yeah, look, you know, someone asked on one of the streams, like, yo, like, for all the shit that you talk about, Montreal or whatever, tell us some actual good things.

And I think me and Reggie did.

Oh, yeah, you got some time there.

But I'm just like, like,

I'm not going to run the defense for why I live here and what I like about it every single day.

No, I don't want you to.

I just want to run the offense for how great it is to be back in BC.

That's fine.

That is fine.

It's awesome.

I just, I definitely.

There is better.

Yeah.

But

the energy that unfortunately this brings is everybody that then takes this and comes to me going, why are you living in a literal turd?

And it's like you just.

Because he loves the smell.

Yeah.

Anyways,

I'm just...

I've said my piece on it.

But you guys are there, so it's not all so bad.

Oh, well, that's quite.

And my mom and dad, my sister, and my,

I keep calling, dude, I'm so still not used to being an adult man that I keep calling my nephew my cousin.

What?

I keep going, oh, my cousin.

No, that's not your cousin, Pat.

You're almost 40 years old.

That is your nephew.

Yeah, stop.

Yeah.

I'm just a 40-year-old little baby.

Okay.

But

something fuck.

Okay, okay.

Well, how about this?

How about this?

Did you enjoy the restaurant?

Oh, I sure did.

Okay.

Thank you for taking us out.

That was fantastic.

Wasn't that kind of cool?

It was super cool.

It was incredible.

I will have to return the favor at some point there are there are cool things we are still discovering um

i'm not i don't want to i don't want to we got to take you down to the white spot oh

holy i forgot about the white spot yeah yeah it's like it's like it's like a three star but it's like it's like it's fun to sit in the white spot and be like

you don't want to call it that

no but um there's there's some there's some cool places that i'm i'm i'm keeping close to the chest for now that i i don't want oh I don't want to blow up just yet.

That's one of them.

No, but like, hey, man, seeing you guys was like one of the highlights of my year.

I really mean it.

We had such a great time.

It was so nice to see you guys.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And we got a good time playing some fun shit.

For example,

Virtual Fighter V.

Virtual Fighter V is a fucking good game and no one's playing it.

And that's fine.

Yeah.

That's fine.

Just, it's, it's, six will come, and, you know, there will be another like little bit of an attention rush towards like learning the rhythm of what this all is for a little bit.

And, you know,

it'll sit in its place where it's like, good, it's not dead.

It exists.

It's not lighting the world on fire, but it's in the corner, and at least the Yakuza people love it.

and are keeping it alive.

And

maybe that's all it needs, you know?

I don't know about profitability.

I don't know about.

Oh, this definitely lost money.

No,

this definitely lost money.

That being said,

no, always, always fun to like, like, as I'm going through assumptions, like, oh shit, there's like rhythms and systems to this that I'd like never really fully internalize.

Oh, well, that's the, that's the problem is that like it's the Dunning Krueger shit in fighting game form.

It's like you never feel like you're any good at the game ever.

Right.

Like at no, at no point do you ever feel like you ever got good at virtual fighter five.

Like there are like that first half set of matches before Reggie and you found your rhythm.

I was stomping you guys in the dirt and all I could see was that I was playing like trash.

Right.

All I could see was like, oh man, this is so, I'm not even, I'm not fuzzy.

I'm not even evading.

I mean, there's every game has so many things to think about.

And like this one just introduces its own set, you know?

And on top of that, like, that's all before, like, you have to then Reggie goes and picks boring karate super hardman and is like, I'm going to do the really hard on block string to

complexity, please.

You know, and I'm like, I'm like, this game's hard enough before you add that to it, you know.

I say, as I pick a character that's two characters in one.

So, Virtual Fighter V

Revo exists so that when Virtual Fighter VI comes out and people start to get into it, you will be able to point back at VF5 Revo and go,

Revo is better, man.

This new one's trash.

You guys don't even know.

And people who are really into VF5 can go, pfft, this isn't nothing compared to VF4 Final Tuned.

Come on, Final Tuned was where I was at back when Go and Brad were the new ones.

Again, I said it during this, during the

actual stream, and to reiterate,

like the option select select article: give every virtuous fighter a 10 on 10 because the future of the franchise demands it, no matter how mediocre.

Absolutely,

100%.

It's like that, uh, hey, I gotta give Leo the Oscar for revenants because he deserves one, but maybe doesn't deserve one for this one.

Yeah, opposite of this.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, okay, the Grammys do that, the Oscars do that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, listen, if we don't give this guy a Grammy, he'll fucking kill himself and we won't get that good album next year.

So, come on, the pity award.

um

so there was a little bit of that um

and then there was some avowed there was avowed which is a really strange game uh so i played about six seven more hours of it uh on my own show in first person and let me tell you boy boy those animations are made for first person made for first person you can tell yeah yeah it's it's it's extremely clear i mean i remember i remember like when i saw mirror's Edge third-person mods, and it was like, and you're like, no, no,

no, this wasn't built for this at all.

Her torso is just,

yeah, yeah.

So, Avowed is really interesting because people keep comparing it to Skyrim, which is a game that came out 25 years ago.

And every time I see that, somebody goes, Pat, did Skyrim didn't come out 25 years ago?

To which I say,

yeah, I know.

It didn't.

No,

Morrowind?

Who cares?

But the point is,

is that

Avowed is really interesting because

it looks like Oblivion or Skyrim.

It looks like a big open world RPG on your New Vegas or your, you know, that kind of thing or cyberpunk, right?

But what they've done is that Obsidian has realized that they don't have infinite money to compete on that scale.

And so what they've done is they've said, okay, what can we do?

What can we cut?

What matters?

Kind of thing.

And so you have a game like that where you go to swing your fucking axe at somebody in town and they're completely invincible.

And the entirety of suite of mechanics for what happens if you act badly in town just doesn't exist.

Yeah, it seems there's no.

And I can definitely.

Agree with that because it's like, well, okay, yeah, you do that in town once and then it goes bad for you and then you don't do it again.

So save time, save budget, reduce this whole thing down, and just won't even let you do it.

Yeah.

Somebody in the chat says it's not a scrolls-like, it's a kotor-like just in first-person, which I actually think that would be a much better example.

Um, very good first-person combat for this genre.

Okay, I really like it.

I unlocked the parry, I unlocked bullet time for the guns, and it feels really good.

See, but when someone says a kotor-like,

I then go to like, oh, so the

story and the RPGing and the conversations and all that are the compelling very much more like that.

Yeah, okay.

Talking to random character for 15 minutes.

Yeah.

Getting some exposition.

It is.

It's got a good parry.

Let me just say that.

The parry is good.

It has the right timing.

Okay.

So I didn't see anything that was my

jet.

Yeah.

I just, it just, it really wasn't my

thing.

However, Fishman Garris

are a very quick way to my heart.

They're super.

That is a shortcut and it's almost cheating to

put both of those things together.

And I'm like, if you're going to be hanging out with other versions of that, you know, like voice actor you love and great character design and you just,

you know, smash it together,

you can do that.

You can cheat me over to your side.

It's bullshit, but it works.

It kind of feels a little bit like Mass Effect in that you go to camp and then your boys stand around at their designated spot and then you go to talk to them and you exhaust just every single fucking line of dialogue this person has.

And then later after a big event, they'll refresh that dialogue and it does like the very similar shot reverse shot as Mass Effect,

even though your character doesn't have voice acting because you're a fucking disgusting mushroom person.

Overall, like, yeah, no, it's very solid.

It's not going to set the world on fire.

Like, it is not ambitious or

against the grain, like something like Kingdom Come Deliverance is.

It's, it's like a, it's a very well-put together, reasonable,

interesting RPG.

Like, this would be pure double A back in the day.

So, you've spent a ton of hours in Pillars.

What is the, does this feel like the same world and the same

setting?

And, like, are the characters and overall vibe like

matching that?

Yeah, okay.

100%.

So like, um, this is one of those things.

It's like, it's a spin-off.

So hey, this is, you don't have to play Pillars one or two.

You don't have to.

But if you do have two games worth of background on the setting,

literally every single thing that comes out of someone's mouth will add a little extra piece of context for you that you'll be like, ah.

So like Kai, Hot Fish for example, is a former

sailor in the Raoatai Navy, which is like an imperial force of fishmen, very expansionist,

which multiple party members in the past of the prior games have been, but he has a different take on it.

And so, his view of his country's army is now the third perspective you have received of party members throughout the series.

Okay.

That kind of thing.

Okay.

And the other thing is that I don't want to go into it here because it's the podcast and this reaches very wide, but I described that the end of Pillars of Eternity 2 is such a ridiculous fiction-annihilating calamity

that

feels like they really never intended to continue

the setting at all.

And

this game starts up with, okay, so that thing is going to be the primary problem that you need to fix in this game because it is a dramatic cataclysm.

Okay.

But they don't go into how that happened.

Oh, so far.

Like the root cause of the problem, that's for Pillars 2.

to go into.

Okay.

All that matters here is we have the problem and we must.

We're living in the

effects of Pillars 1, but we can't do anything that would fuck up the proper.

Yeah.

And they do interesting things.

Like they'll have characters that died in Pillars 2 and be like, oh, they're back.

And you'll be like, what?

They're back?

And yeah,

they are really fucked up.

It was crazy.

It was wild that they survived that shit.

Like the character in particular that is back is a character that I atomized in Pillars 2.

Like full jib, like corpse explosion.

And and i guess they got better okay

uh did you with extra hours note that like is it as as the guess was like one um

did you switch up party members from town to town no i did not the the first big area is is very meaty so i was just doing that though what's interesting is that they have um

At the end of your first big main quest, they have a big storyline moment, which asks you whether or not you want to accept powers from a strange new source or not

um and if you do you get completely unique abilities associated with it okay something like a jedi power something like that

um but if you don't you get an extra generic skill point

and you don't know what these powers are going to be before you get them

so despite the thematic uh despite the thematic thing going on there there's like do you want to get to the end of the game with like 12 extra skill points in the regular tree because that would be really strong.

Or do you want a wide cavalcade of irregular abilities that you may not care about?

Some

take any Eldritch Power a game offers me.

So that was easy.

Is that kind of like in Baldur's Gate 3 when you go the,

I forgot what the name of the run is, but the like

tadpole run, yeah.

Well, no,

it's more like either or rather than yes or no.

Okay.

But yeah, Avowed is a really interesting game.

I like it.

It was pretty solid for me, like stable-wise.

I'll pick away at it in the background.

Definitely not going to keep streaming it.

I hope that Garrus isn't the front-loaded, like, strongest

party member in the game in terms of just

wanting to hang out with.

I hope that they have to be able to do that.

I don't know who any of the other ones are.

I think one of the reasons that people are comparing

Avowed to very similar but larger scope games is because it costs the same.

Damn.

Okay.

Like that, like somebody in the chat pointed out, $100 in Canada.

Yeah.

And it's like, if it's $100 in Canada, I should be getting a $100 in Canada game, like Kingdom Come Deliverance or Baldur's Gate 3.

And I talked about it a little bit on my stream.

Or Hunter and Net Impact.

Yeah.

For RPGs

in the next 10 years, the phrase, why isn't this as big as Baldur's Gate 3

is going to be like a fucking death knell, like over and over and over and over and over.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not?

Why not?

Okay.

Why didn't you guys patch multiple expansions worth of content in like Baldur's Gate 3?

Because that's the thing.

It's like literally as we speak, there is a giant Baldur's Gate 3 patch that's like about to sitting there in a stress test.

Coming through right now, and apparently needed its own patch before the patch and whatever's going on.

I saw a very similar tweet that was like, hey, How come Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is cheaper and it didn't cost as much to make, even though it's so big, and it is.

It's quite a large game.

And it's like, oh, could it be because the fucking devs are in fucking Eastern Europe and their dollar isn't the same value?

So it's actually,

if you did the fucking local Europe to Euro or USD, it would actually cost like a billion fucking dollars.

Is that why?

Is that why, maybe?

But it is interesting because I'm like, as I'm playing Cyberpunk right now, it's like that game's still getting touched and updated in quality of life and improvements and stuff.

You know,

it's a nice feeling that it's like, oh, yeah, there's a long tail of service on this game.

And,

you know, they legit want it to be like the best quality of life version of itself.

That's so crazy that they could keep supporting cyberpunk for so long, and that it has nothing to do with the fact that the cyberpunk devs own the second largest PC game retailer, and they are paying their people in Polish dollars, which is like one fucking quarter of the CAD.

And so they could spend a million hours on it, and it's fine.

Hey, man,

you got to put your blockbusters out so that you could

fund your A24s or whatever, right?

We got to fucking outsource these RPGs to Europe.

God damn it.

It's not a fair comparison to go, why is not everything like a Larian game?

You're totally right, unless you're paying with your money.

Which point it is.

But

what I was going to say is it's not a fair comparison.

However,

personally, I'm just going to be less interested in the not Baldur's Gate 3-1.

Yeah.

So what's the fuck?

Having, because, again, full outsider, like, touching a couple hours of that game, I can't believe how fucking incredible.

Like, it's super nuts how far it goes.

And, um,

and watching Avowed, like, just starting up

its intro section and going through that slice, I'm like, okay,

like, I see what's going on here.

I don't know that, yeah, I I don't know, like the length, the hours.

I don't know that I need, I would need that much

to grab me, to grab me, like I would have, I would, I would definitely need to see a bit more Baldur's Great 3-ish things going on without putting that on every game.

It would have worked if I saw more of it.

People are pointing out that Baldur's Gate 3 is actually cheaper than Avowed by about 10 bucks.

Okay.

And that is a lot.

But

it's just,

I think the funniest thing by far is that we're in the era of how come this isn't as good as Baldur's Gate 3, which is gonna last like a long time.

And the reason it's funny is because from the year 2000 to like the year fucking 2009 when Mass Effect 2 came out, I don't know if you remember because you might not have been into this particular sub-genre of RPG, but of CRPGs, uh, the refrain was, Why isn't this as good as Baldur's Gate 2?

Oh, was was a thing for like a decade.

I see.

Okay.

Because Baldur's Gate 2

was like the largest scale RPG of its era by orders of magnitude.

I feel like what I've always heard about is like fallout in terms of being able to do anything.

Why aren't there more games like that?

Was a

comparison point.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because it's hard as fuck.

Understandable.

I think Bethesda talked a lot about, like, hey, how come you guys haven't fixed that bug where you pick up items and all the items fall down on the table because it recalculated the physics?

And it's, and they were like, because we're calculating like 5,000 objects physics in a room and we have to keep them loaded into the cell so that when you leave and then come back, all the items are still correctly tallied in the cell.

It's fucking hard.

It's really hard.

What's funny about holding games up to unfair comparison points that are like really standout good examples in the genre, though, is that

there was a time when we would touch an action game and be like, I wish it was a bit more like Devil May Cry.

And

that continues to this day.

But it's like, oh, that's not fair.

It's the peak of the fucking genre.

But yeah, I do too.

And then fast forward to, hey, look, everyone has high times into Aerial Raves.

Everyone's doing a stinger.

Everyone's doing,

you know, and you're just like, oh, it took a while to find it.

But Fliance has high time into Aerial Raves.

Yeah, like it took a while, but we kind of got there.

You know?

It's, yeah,

it's weird to see it happen after a period of time.

And it's not always going to be good,

but the bones are there, you know?

Oh, yeah.

No, do you remember Ain't It Cool News and their movie review system,

which was fucking

was it full price matinee and wait for home video, I think it was.

Uh, uh, Angry Centaur Gaming ACG has an incredibly similar thing, which is buy it day one, wait for a sale or pass.

Uh, Avowed is very much a wait for a sale kind of game.

It's good, and I really like it, and I'm a huge mark for pillars.

But for the average person, I would say that there's like a lot, a lot better place to use your full priced dollars

um

yeah

okay by the way I got the game for free yes oh true sure just letting everybody know hashtag

yeah code um

and then uh we played some night rain We played some night rain.

Where are we dropping, boys?

So there were a lot of things I thought about about Night Rain, but that I want to get into right before we get into Night Rain, if that makes any fucking sense.

Yeah.

That Night Rain beta was limited.

It was highly limited.

It was limited in scope, in time, and in features.

Four characters is definitely not the release count yet.

Yeah, but you also, you always dropped in at the same basic place.

In the full game, you're going to be dropping in at like the random fucking arcs.

Different arcs and such.

And the terrain regeneration, the terrain randomization is not in, or was not in that network test at all.

So they said that there's going to be procedural effects to the world.

I don't know that it's going to change the map in terms of like locations of buildings, structures, and like valleys and peaks.

I think it's more about like, this is a poison area.

This area is burning now.

This area has a storm going through it.

So what they said was, is that the physical geography of the map would not change.

Hills, valleys, that kind of thing.

But what would be physically placed on the map would change and that would be um that would be buildings but it wasn't clear if they meant castles or if they meant like small structures or camps yeah uh but that swamps storms etc would would vary it up so you could not rely on your your you know your existing knowledge on every run so i got a session in before we started uh we did our session uh that we started one afterward and i got one afterwards yeah And that afterwards one was a really good one.

Oh, yeah.

Did you get so?

One of the interesting things that we got was that

two of my guys disconnected in the last run that we did.

And I got to actually play Night Rain in the solo mode.

And it was very cool because we found out how they're going to do it.

Multi-boss bosses will not spawn the fucking ads they have for the extra players, and the monster health will decrease

accordingly to what it's like, okay, that's exactly how we thought it was gonna work um and that felt awesome did you get a run like that or were you all like i clean three people i didn't get a solo run i got uh i got a two-person like extended run for a while where that last time around knowing how to play about more um i we got i got a lot further i got to the end of day two on a two-person run um

and then i got a clean clear with three oh you got a clear i got a clear and i have learned quite a good bit since that first session.

So I was going to tell you.

Tell me more.

Yeah.

So the

session, so obviously

we went through the different classes, got a feel for them.

The overall feeling of holy fuck, go, go, go is not just the game design, but also the fact that the demo is on the clock and you have your three-hour window.

So a really, really specific clock.

Yeah.

And it takes like, again, like, you can die quickly, but at least it's going to take about 20 minutes before

the run is done, you know?

Like you're committing.

So

the Wilder, you know, the kind of just your default sort of starting character, very like solid, safe choice with roles.

Normal man.

You know, a generous ass buckler, parry.

grapple out of the way and big fucking exploding punch alt you know

very solid starting strength starting weapon as well overall distribution is is kind of endurance and and and uh and strength based um or rather mainly or rather just balanced more than anything i'd say um guardian is more strength and endurance based right because he's a big boy and you've got the walk and poke you know with the with the shield and extra stance i believe he's the largest playable character in from software history

like in height huh i guess so if you're yeah, if the custom characters can't he is enormous.

Go beyond their thresholds.

Yeah, and in a game with tons of mobility and with the ability to fly up and slam down and shit, like,

it really ends up just feeling like fromsoft.

Well, I called it arcade mode, right?

It feels like hyper.

This is a Marvel versus Capcom version of this game

with

if you've got an hour and you want to get some souls in you and you're not too concerned about lore, you just want to get a run on some bosses.

Kind of like what people do.

Essentially, I feel like it's like Fromsoft is like the things that people mod the game to get quick enjoyment out of on multiple replays.

They're like, why don't we put that out?

Well, that is literally the exact phrase from this game's director was we were watching a lot of speed runs and randomizers and we were like, what if we did that?

What if we had a version of the game that was like a really fast run, but it was also randomized?

So the second character I started using and did the run with was the recluse, who is essentially, you know, Ranny the witch style character.

And yeah, her whole thing is she's got shards, she's got the wave, you know, casting spells, and then as you run out of FP, you're going to like kind of grab the damage out of the air and it'll stalk one pip of a certain ingredient, combine three to cast a spell.

And then the randomized, not randomized, but the ingredients, you'll have to memorize all different types of combinations to know what that means it's a really fun and interesting way to sit in the back and kind of like support but what's interesting too about those builds is that like if you pick up a weapon that you want to use regardless of what your intended character is you can still swing it around oh absolutely you know yeah use it levels are gonna be like hey you gotta get to at least level nine before you can use this special weapon but like if you pick up a great sword as the you know uh the recluse and you have the right level uh requirement fuck it you can use that you you know?

So, they're not, they're not doing anything where like your build needs to have, it's like, oh, you can only use magic and light dex weapons or so.

They're not restricting you out of that.

So, you can change

your game up a little bit.

I think better than that is even like, I picked up

the bird poker

on my last run, and it's like, I couldn't use it for almost my whole run,

but it gave me 10% of my fucking life back when I killed anything, even when it was not in my fucking hand.

Yeah.

And it's like, okay, yeah, no, that's, that's worth it.

You put that on the fucking character.

It's, it's a, it's a, It's a third accessory slot.

Yeah, yeah.

And so

and it turns out like some of the buffs that go on your weapons, even if they're in your pockets, they still apply.

Right.

So that's a huge, huge deal for your build.

Even if I would like it if they would put that forward in the next game, because I hate having multiple weapons equipped, but they all take the same equip load.

Like, can I be the equip load of my shit when I switch to the fucking item that's on my hand, please?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's that.

But then you also, of course, run the risk of turning every other weapon slot into a ring, essentially.

Yeah, good.

Fucking sick.

Just put five rings on it.

Let's do it.

But

what I didn't, so what I got around to,

you know, on the last run

was

the Duchess, who

glass cannon, boy, do you die.

You basically take one hit and you're done.

She has like no life to start with.

And you get that double dash, right?

I apologize for not taking that character seriously.

She's fucking incredible.

Is it the double dodge that does it?

No.

It's the

time rewind ability, the ghost call.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

That thing is phenomenal.

And like, we were just not seeing anyone using it it properly, right?

And on top of that, um, I picked up a um, I forgot what it's called, but those like those boons that you equip before the run that are like permanently.

Right, right, the the trinkets or whatever the fuck you want to call them.

So, so I put on a trinket that was at the end of a um

light

combo, you get a free restage.

Oh, that's

so oh, that's the last hit.

This is Marvel.

Yeah, the last hit of the quick combo causes the ghost to just to restage all that damage, whatever was going on.

So I fucking put that thing on and just go to work, and it's unbelievable because, like, you get that going constantly, and then you back off and you wait for your team to do anything like clutch and any really good play, bomb like, let's go, double it up.

You know?

Yeah.

And you,

I also had another like trinket that was

plus to how fast my ult regains.

Yeah.

So, like, there's a lot of moments where you're just getting mobbed by way too many and then going invisible just to get a couple of backstabs in a row, you know, and then restaging them.

She's so fucking good.

By the end.

It feels like the game is going to be extra, extra, extra mean because they're going to give you this level of

ability juice

yeah i well i'm like i didn't even i switched to other weapons a couple times and i was like no no she works best with this fast deck stab and anything slower than that is like going against because she has to stick and move you know and i and so like i i went i i went back to the the the default dagger for the whole run you know at a certain point i i picked up like another like rapier and i was like okay this is kind of fast but that and the double dad the iframes off of the double dodge you know, are just fantastic, man.

So, yeah, like getting to day three.

Did you get to see any footage of it?

I am watching footage of day three right now while you're talking.

Because day one is, you know, it's that first environment.

We all run through your, you know, your Limgrave-like area.

Day two,

same area, but like the bosses get harder.

Everything gets a bit more aggressive, takes more damage, etc.

But day three, you just get teleported to a brand new final location, which is a big old boss fight, big old desert area, and that boss fight is the wow.

That's a cool fucking boy.

It's yeah, you get that three-headed Cerberus, and you're fighting it together, and then it does its big tail whips and stuff, and then splits into three, and then you fight each, you, each of you fights ahead before it eventually comes back together, you know?

Um,

it's a lot of fun to kind of have those like split bosses, boss fight moments, because

there's, you know, there's the heroes of, I forgot, the forts area and such, where you're like, there'll be, there's a couple bosses where there's like, oh, there's three of them here for you each to take one.

It's a race almost.

Go, you know.

The little duders, the little deutspheres,

each go fighting one.

That's a lot of fun, you know.

And

like, yeah, I kind of was able to just piece together, like, yeah, those boon, those, those trinkets are

massively game-changing.

hugely incredible abilities on those um

the uh some of the things that uh some of the strategies involved like uh we were fighting against uh the three knights for example that were in the forest at the end of day two really really like like tough but like one of our the guys i was playing with hung back and it kept a bow specifically for when someone would die.

He'd drop a warming stone and then just bow an arrow your body from a distance.

Is Is that smart?

Instead of going into the shit, you know, they just like, and you just like, oh, yeah, you just bow an arrow from a distance, get you back up, and then use that warming stone opportunity to heal at the same time, you know?

Little, little strats you kind of see coming together

working out really well like that.

And like, yeah, obviously, like, looking for syncing up with people's alts and restaging them.

It really was just

a lot of fun to kind of see the full pace of that that stretch out.

Um, your ability to withstand the rain as well.

Like, I did one run with some risky, crazy dude that was like, Yeah, I'm going to run into the rain and like get the stuff up.

There's stuff there.

I won't.

That's worth it.

Yeah, exactly, right?

And so, by flying into the rain a couple times, and I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna follow.

Like, you seem to, you've got it down.

You go in, and it's like, Yeah, you know what?

Almost dying, but getting an extra estesip is worth it.

Hit that church up.

Yeah, no, that's definitely.

Hit the second church up, you know?

Definitely super worth it.

And by the end, we were like coordinated enough that like fighting a boss

and just like ganking it from all sides and like staggering into staggering into staggering.

It's like, oh, no, we can take this boss out in about 15 seconds if we just go hard, you know?

If you get those good items and all that good synergy.

Yeah, absolutely.

Like that lightning thing that I got, which is just, hey, roll and a lightning bolt fucking AoEs the zone.

Roll and you get a lightning bolt.

Zapping is one of them.

Yep.

Slow walk to get

what was it?

The arcane rain.

Yeah, rain going.

And one that I picked up, and we saw it initially and didn't quite know what we were looking at.

Whatchamacallit?

Summon swords.

Oh, yeah.

Summon swords is actually a post-boss buff that is every couple of seconds, they'll regenerate.

That's so good.

You're not casting them.

They just

carry in great swords or what?

Not great swords, whatever.

Yeah, phalanx blades.

Or whatever the fuck.

Yeah.

They just resummon every couple seconds on their own.

Those

passives are the best I've ever seen.

I saw one in, I just checked out somebody's footage of them fighting the final boss, and they had one where

hitting dash causes

a

giant ice explosion

that stays in place for like 10 seconds and causes frostbite.

And it's like, that's so good.

Yeah, there's a, there's a, yeah, I got that.

You start sprinting and you get hoarfrost explosion right at the start of that.

That's so good.

You know,

just these, these,

like, I don't know.

That, like, they're gonna,

those are your run winners, essentially.

You get one of those and you're like, oh, I have a fantastic fucking chance here to build around that ability.

Because it's free extra damage.

You know what I mean?

It's like another party member just hanging out, in a lot of cases, doing normal actions you would otherwise regularly be doing, but they just cause extra damage to whatever's near you.

Hades buffs.

Yeah, man.

I would like them to put this game out and for it to be good, and then I would like them to put an expansion out every year until there is a new

Souls game.

I mean, they can, again, they don't have to treat it like that.

They can treat it even, they can update it even more frequently, you know?

Every couple months, they can drop us some shit.

Give me more, though.

Like, I didn't even get to the final boss of that network test, and I'm already being like, give me more, though.

Just put every single asset you've ever made into this.

Free.

Easy.

Super easy to do.

Affordable as well.

They don't have to spend too much extra extra money on the implementation there.

Do what all the modders have been doing, including dropping characters from the wrong game.

Just drop them.

And just letting it work.

What was I going to say, though?

Yeah, the one thing, though, is just that, like, again,

it's scratching an itch.

It's not going to be the same itch as, fuck it, I want to do a run.

Absolutely not.

And the number one itch that it doesn't scratch is, I would like to explore an interesting new area in a from software game.

What it actually does is like that, hey, you know what?

Let me load up some Apex right now.

Or,

you know what I mean?

Like, one of those games.

Oh, absolutely.

I've been wanting a game that uses this system forever.

Yeah,

it's taking over the where we drop in itch more than anything souls related.

And

yeah, and you know, for sure,

the last day as well, like not the last day rather, but the Sunday, like a lot of people queuing in for those games as well were like,

okay, I'm just, we all know, we know that what I called happened, where people were just pinging the same areas going like, yep, we're going to hit the church, we're going to drop in, we're going to get that, open that chest, we're going to take out that crucible or the perfumer.

We're going to go up, turn around.

There's going to be some good shit inside the treasure chest out there.

Hop up over the castle, make our way to the rise.

Once you go to the rise, drop back down, go to the next church, get your sip, fight the dragon.

You'll probably get a by that point, the rain's gonna come in, chase the rain back to the

camp, jump over the camp.

If you have time, you can fight the misbegotten.

If otherwise, go up to the top, take out that first boss, day one clear, and you got some good shit for it.

And that optimization is important to ruin with randomizing the map just enough that that doesn't work anymore.

And instead, it just becomes: do I have time to get to this next spot?

Yes, go, go, go.

Hopefully there is something we can deal with there.

And, you know, it would also be interesting to see characters get introduced that, like, really fucked with the system.

For example, like someone that was like, actually, I can survive on my own without helping you guys.

You know?

Oh, I have like an ability to create a bubble in the rain, or, you know what I mean?

Or some sort of like survivability where I'm going to go off and get things that you guys don't have.

Or,

I mean, there's already like those trinkets I mentioned, create unique goals for example uh getting a stone sword key and opening up a an ever jail gives you a huge buff but you have to accomplish that goal first it's interesting because like you know obviously everybody's going to be way more effective if they team up do 3v1 on these bosses but if everybody splits up That means you are tripling the possibility that everybody gets the really good accessory that they want.

That's it, right?

And or whatever the goals might be.

I had a game as well where

one of the, though no, the game where

we cleared it, one of the people I was playing with became essentially a support class that didn't exist.

They became a perfumer that would shield us

and would heal us and would work together and used shopping and abilities to do support group shit, you know, when none of the four classes are dedicated towards doing that right now, you know.

There's passive abilities that kind of help pick your friends up, and oh, there's the things where

you can get a trinket that says every time you sip your restis, if people are near you, they get a healing as well.

Well, that's good, right?

There's little things,

yeah, there's little things like that, but like someone going, I'm gonna buy stuff that generally supports the group and buffs the group, and you know,

enchantments that do that as well, like you have a whole other type of class you've built yourself into, you know.

So, yeah, the ability to have the freedom to turn to do that type of shit as well with the characters is awesome.

I agree with chat.

I think that either this game's final boss or maybe a hidden boss that you need to fulfill certain conditions with should be like white glint or rusty.

Something AC just drops in.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

No, do it.

Fucking do it.

Suddenly, just the

your computer's voice, like that guy, I forgot her name, but she's just like that dialogue starts kicking in, you know?

No, you know what it should be?

It should be fucking Laughing Hyena.

It should be fucking Patches.

I mean,

that's free.

Patches is going to be there.

There's no chance it's not.

The only question is, is Patches going to be playable practically?

Yeah, that might be true.

Mmm, maybe.

Because you can take NPCs that are like, you know, beloved characters and make them playable.

There's no reason why not.

They have simplified movesets.

You have three things each character can do.

You can take anyone that was standing around as a main character in those games and go for it.

You know?

That would be super sick.

But yeah, no.

Or even like, I can see that being a sort of like, you know,

DLC thing where it's like, you want to play patches.

We have the patches here.

Here you go.

Playable.

I think it's absolutely insane that after all these years of saying, when's Capcom going to come out with Capcom versus Capcom?

That from Software came out with FromSoftware versus From Software first.

Or Elden Ring versus Dark Souls or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

We'll see how far they go with it for sure.

But like, no, the idea that like, okay, at the very minimum, maybe if you don't get a playable patches, you might be able to get like a patches helmet or, you know,

or patches could be a unique event, something like Karen and Hades.

Yeah, you know, maybe you're picking up a Fume Knight Greatsword.

You know what I mean?

Maybe you're picking up a fucking legendary weapon that you recognize from a thing, and then that's there too.

Like, there's a lot, like, the Moonlight Greatsword is going to be there for sure, obviously.

It's just, well, you know, but like, I.

I don't know.

You should have to do something extra to get that fucking sword.

Like, that can't be dropping out of a chest.

chest like that must be like kill seeth

spend spend the entire day just getting that thing yeah and then it's and then it it fulfills its usual promise

that would be pretty cool um

oh yeah no the the arcade rules that we can apply here mean anything's possible but uh it was a really fun test that was that was great um good good taste for what's going on and like yeah that's that you play a game in in this, and like, this is high up a limited beta.

And I'm just like,

I'm going to fucking stream a lot of this fucking shit.

And I just

never thought we'd be here playing Smash Brothers roster games in our head

with

the front soft characters.

Yeah, yeah.

You know?

Because they, they're on the felliver coming.

Oh my God, Yo, it's Nefelli.

Like, what?

You know?

In their very first trailer, they're like, okay, that's

the fucking centipede demon.

And that's also the, what was his name?

Gwynn's kid, the fucking

Nameless King.

The Nameless King.

You're like, all right, well, those are

fucking Dark Souls characters.

He's riding the goddamn dragon in there.

So it's like, okay, it could be anybody.

It could be anybody.

You want to fight three Gwynns at once?

Why not?

Would you purchase Havel DLC?

Yeah, fuck it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sure.

Give me that.

I'll go be Havel.

I'll have another fucking rematch with Artorius.

Fuck it.

Put me in.

Artorius and Sif

Ornstein and Smoke.

And you can't

come.

They're not one of the two.

Okay.

Okay.

As a boss, certainly.

But what if you played as one of each and then you could fucking

No, no,

the boss would be Artorius, Ornstein, and Smoke.

Oh, God.

At the same time.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

What would actually happen is

Solaire would be who

they'd give you.

They'd give you Soler, yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, I would say

any NPCs that were human, like made within the game engine, you know, have a higher shot, have the highest shot, if anything.

Absolutely.

Anyone that's like a a boss boss is a boss because their logic already exists.

Well, one of the things they said is that the name of the boss is not the name of the boss that you pick on the character select.

So, like, the actual boss's name is like Gladius.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the name of the boss, when you select it in the level, is Tries Magius or some shit.

And they said that that's intentional, which to me says that you're going to be picking like

Wolf Swordsman.

And you're like, well, who could it be?

And then the day threes are going to change, and then there's going to be like the big final, final progression points.

So, very cool.

Yeah, that's that's Night Rain.

Um,

and you know, that's that's that that's about that.

Um,

yeah, I had a good time chilling.

Uh, very good time.

Thank you very much for having us.

It was great to see you guys.

Seriously.

Yeah, absolutely.

I want you to gush with my appreciation.

You made it a really great visit.

Thank you.

It was a really great time seeing y'all.

And the baby really likes all you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah, Reggie got a pound.

Yeah, Reggie got a little fist bump.

It was so cute.

Oh, man.

So.

Just while we're talking, Montreal, just threw this out there.

I don't know if you saw, but like, apparently they announced today that we're finally getting the Quebec to Montreal, to Toronto, Shinkansen.

So, hey, man, so

you know, when you, you know, when you graduate from your college or your university

and you still have somebody that you know that goes there, and in the very next semester, after you've graduated, they're like, hey, you know, that thing you complained about every single fucking day?

Yeah, they're fixing it.

Yeah, that's very much what's happening.

And it's like, oh man, that fucking thing.

Well, granted, it's six years from now.

Yes.

But the 300 kilometer per hour high-speed rail train is finally getting built.

And it's going to do three hours.

Tio to Ottawa.

Three hours.

Montreal to Toronto.

Yeah, it's going to be TO, Ottawa, Montreal,

Laval, Toileti, and Quebec City.

Holy shit.

Our entire livespan.

Been waiting for that.

The 401 can go fuck itself.

Fuck that piece of shit.

I mean, like, but just also, like, in Japan, riding that fucking super train, and just, you're like, why can't anywhere else on the planet figure this out?

Why just

the reason?

The reason is really simple.

Because the time it takes to build the train is longer than the election cycle.

That's the reason.

Oh,

yeah.

Yeah.

That's the

reason.

Dear, dear God, that sucks.

So, so this is no, this is cool.

This is fucking, that's a big deal.

And like, it doesn't benefit me directly at all because I'm on the west side of the country.

And the west side of the country, let's say they did like fucking Edmonton all the way out to Halifax, right?

It's like they're not going to put this through the Rockies for like fucking 20, 30 years.

It's the Rockies, right?

Yeah.

But let me tell you, as somebody who just took a very arduous trip with dog, baby, wife, and me

from the Vancouver airport to the Montreal airport, hey, man, do you know what's like the easiest airport in this city in this country to reach?

Fucking Toronto.

It's like the like

to go on direct flight to Toronto and then hopping on a train for a couple hours.

That's a million times easier.

It would be really nice if train alternate.

I mean, we have, we have a, obviously we have a rail system, but like high speed to get places.

Yeah, the the trail from the train from fucking Toronto to Montreal takes like a day and is like super expensive.

No, like getting a being able to do Toronto as a day trip is an insane thought.

But

you know what?

You know what, Woolly?

I think that I

am going to keep my ass out of an airplane for a little while.

Perhaps.

I think that maybe now is the time to plant my butt

and chill the fuck out.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, kind of wild how both of our last trips were immediately followed by wild shit.

I got to tell you, and this is obviously like, this is obviously personal.

And I'm talking about the Delta crash in

Toronto, which fucking thank God nobody died.

So hey, that's great.

So I'm, you know what's, you know what's the worst place to read about a plane crash is?

Is fucking taxiing onto onto the runway.

I'm like, huh, what's new in the world?

Oh, shit.

And then I made the mistake, the big mistake of going, hey, wife who's terrified of flying, check this out.

Yeah,

dope.

So there was some hand gripping.

There was some hand gripping.

That's a bad call.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I told her I loved her.

And that everything was going to be fine.

You know, there's also...

As I shuffled in my seat with my broken belt and my falling down pants.

There's a reason why Final Destination is not selectable on the Movies You Can Watch list.

But we arrived safe and sound, no problems.

I tell you what, though, oh man, I don't know if you saw this because Paige transcribed it on social media, but we were standing waiting for the plane to board, right?

And we happened to be at one of those gates in Montreal where you can look out the window and just see straight in the cockpit.

And I looked over there and went, oh, hey.

And this is like, you know, the packed gate where like everybody's just waiting for that last 10 minutes.

Oh, hey, you can see the pilots through the glass.

And Paige went, Yeah, really?

And I went, Yeah, you can see them jerking each other off a little bit.

And I get hit with the good ass, like one of my favorite emotions in this world is your wife going, Oh my God,

shut up.

And then right before, right before that becomes like, what?

And

the two old guys directly behind me sitting down start going,

like into their coughing hands.

And I go, what?

There you go.

What?

It's fine.

Got him.

It's fine.

Mission accomplished.

Yeah.

So that's pretty much that.

Just those pre-flight jitters, man.

You got to

take care of that.

Anything else you're going to throw on top of the week there?

Yeah,

for people who didn't know it,

because I talked about it briefly on my stream, but there's four child behaviors that are normal, and you'll get two, and you don't want them, but you'll have to deal with them.

Biting, hitting, running, and climbing.

We knew that my boy was a climber, and we have discovered that the second behavior is

running.

Oh, well, yeah, isn't that just human beings?

We use our feet.

You know, you learn how to run, and then you're like, I can do that.

I can get there faster.

And this was discovered in the airport.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

Fuck.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

The kid clicked.

R3 for the first time.

Okay, buddy.

I'm going to put you down while I get the.

Oh, shit.

Oh, go!

Oh, fuck,

Rody run, camera shaking.

Oh, my God, dude.

Oh, my God.

Just

oh, boy.

So, luckily, he's he's a little baby, so he's not that fast, but he's just fast enough that at one point I had to like run and you know, do the scoop, like the under-the-arms, like scoop, because he was gonna like fucking run into the into the back kitchen of a Tim Horton.

Oh my god,

And I'm like, no,

not for you, baby.

So

we're probably going to get one of those fucking little backpacks for the baby

that conveniently has a dad or mom tether onto the backpack to make sure that you can't lose the backpack.

And the fact that it happens to be securely attached to the child is just a nice little bonus.

The kid leash.

Oh, fuck yeah, dude.

Okay.

Absolutely.

Okay.

It's like, oh, yes, the leash is very demeaning for the child.

And you know what is also demeaning for a child's trucks.

Yeah.

Booking it mid-diaper change.

Just going, I'm done with this.

So we're talking to my mom, right?

Because now that you have the baby, you talk to your mom and the baby, and the mom tells you all this shit that's new, despite the fact that it's old.

And she's like, Oh, yeah, you know, I had one of those for Patrick.

I'm like, You did?

I was a leash baby.

I didn't know that.

Damn, you should have won us.

You got astral chained.

That's great.

Just

wow.

And she also told me that, like, back in the day, she had, you know, those little tiny plastic strollers that you can fold up real easy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was my stroller.

And she said that before she used like the little backpack leash thing, that I would attempt to escape the stroller and fucking go.

And like, that's why strollers now you staple the children in like it's a car seat.

I guess, I guess the thought process is like, okay, how many times does that leash get maxed out?

If it, if the answer is frequently, then that is.

If the answer is once,

then you've made the right decision.

There's a justification as it has occurred.

Right.

Because like, I'm sure you have lived in the world.

You've seen a fucking five-year-old just fucking sprint out into traffic.

And even when you saw it walking by, you went, ooh,

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The hope is that you're like, everyone can move faster than the kids' little legs can carry.

But you look away for a second, I'm sure.

So, like, you know, I had him by his hand, and my dad and baby are walking, and people are smiling.

And then he went, no, and yanked his fucking hand out.

And like, so fast, I was like, oh.

And like, okay, no, we're going to, we're going to,

we're going to, we're going to restrain this child from his own dangerous impulses.

Okay.

And then, and then apparently just never mention it again, mom.

How did I not know I was a least child until like three days ago?

I mean, how did that never come up one time?

Well, clearly, it was stopped early enough that you know the memory never formed, so that's good.

I guess

you know, you don't want to get old enough to remember.

Oh, but yeah, hey, uh, so that's pretty much it for me.

Uh,

visiting you was great, visiting my mom and dad was great.

Uh, so glad I don't live in Montreal anymore, we'll never go back to live.

Might visit maybe later one day, probably not.

Love it.

Great stuff.

Bye.

Super cool.

Awesome.

Can't wait for the train.

Yeah, no, that train's gonna be good.

Can't wait for the shitty.

Maybe I'll take a trip on a little train because I like the train.

If you want to see more of my stupid crap, go down to twitch.tv/slash Pat stares at

fucking

pirate Yakuza comes out tomorrow.

Oh, wow, that was fast.

It sure is.

It's almost like they release them more than once a year.

Almost.

Huh.

When did 8 come out?

Was it early?

Fucking two months ago.

That's not true.

Hold on.

Let me check it out.

Infinite wealth

release date was January of last year.

Hmm.

So

10 and a half months later.

Yeah, they actually turned it around in just about a year.

Cool.

Or sorry, no, 13 months later.

Yeah, so no, over on my end.

So,

yeah, Reggie's off for the week.

And

with that, I'm taking the opportunity.

I have some shit to do.

So, no normal stream,

potentially something Friday.

But I will I will post it up on my socials.

So, uh, yeah, Wooly Wools on uh on Blue Sky and and such.

Um and uh Woolly Versus on Twitter and uh not Twitter on um YouTube and uh Twitch.

Um

let's take a quick bathroom break.

I'm gonna do it.

Alrighty.

Uh Yes, I forgot to mention on

Sunday there is

the

Regime Royale,

City of the Wolves exhibition.

I'm sorry.

Rome himself,

one

commentator for the FGC jumps on a lot of

jumps on a lot of SNK games, is holding the Regime Royale, which is a

City of the Wharves

exhibition, excuse me.

And a bunch of different

creators and players, and I believe I saw an Evo champ in there as well.

So shit's wild.

There's going to be some exhibition matches.

And

yeah, me and Reggie are scheduled to jump on and get some games there.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Take a look there.

It'll be on Sunday.

I don't know the full details as to when, but that's going on.

And

potentially Friday, I might jump on if I can figure out the schedule.

Figure it out.

We'll figure it out.

Wait a second.

That's when I'm going to try and jump on.

Oh,

William, look at that.

Yeah, go figure it out.

Wow.

Yeah.

So we'll take a look.

It's not a tournament, by the way.

I believe it's just an exhibition with

people playing each other.

So just FYI.

Cool.

Yeah.

Shoutouts to Rome.

Good stuff.

And shout outs to an open beta that is open to everybody for the entire duration of the days that it's running.

So that's wild, but at the same time, like the Night Rain thing was like, I bet you anything they ran those three-hour tests and then they turned some dials and they're like,

is this going to work better?

Because that shit was fucked on day one.

Yep.

That is that is what a network stress test is supposed to do, after all.

The thing that's most fun for the players would be least helpful for the devs.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

It sucks, but I get it.

I just think that like

what you what games should do is like think about your first time touching it as like

give players more and then you can almost like have to like have a first thing where it's more about like people are going to be experiencing this for the first time.

First impressions matter, you know?

and then, like, okay, the more technical things can kind of follow.

Um, although, admittedly, in a network-type situation, you don't know what you're getting.

Like, if it's a botch the whole time, and they have to shut the servers down for the entire first day anyway, then it ends up being a wash, regardless.

You know what, man, it's hard.

I think they did the right thing because

the network test showed us that from software's biggest fucking weakness is network connectivity,

um,

and it still is

so, um, fucking fucking fix that shit.

A lot of drops that were not necessarily salty drops, you know?

Um, yeah.

Um,

anyway, so we're gonna warp it up a bit there.

Uh, I don't know if you saw what I was putting up, but like, uh, yeah, like charged characters are fucking dead, man.

They're dead,

it's over.

I totally agree with you that it fucking sucks.

Like, put one.

Hey, if Balrog comes to Street Fighter VI,

fucking God is my witness.

He must be charged.

It's, you know, I mean, the legacy characters, like,

the new character showing up and not being charged is almost like to be expected because that's fine.

But Guy can't fucking quarter circle off Sonic Boom.

He's not allowed.

Yeah.

Now, now, buttons did point out and very, very fair point, counterpoint, is that like

in a game with just a fence guard canceling, which is essentially you just defend and then immediately do a special move, or in a game with the rev system where you go from one special into another, into another,

not having the charge

to cancel from one into the other

puts that character at a disadvantage.

Oh, absolutely.

But when we talk about fighting games, we're obviously talking about Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter.

Well, so the interesting thing is that in terms of doing one charge move into another, there's like two ways to go about that right there's one that is like um well think of well think of ballrog with the full on charge down forward right or no rather uh charge down back and then um

uh keeping

it you're going let me get this right because yeah you played him like you're going you're going from down back to down to forward

and then

up to and then down forward to up forward yeah and then holding the down and and then going up for the head, but afterwards, exactly, right?

So you're killing it.

And that's such a unique, crazy, awesome thing.

It's fun, right?

It's fun to do.

It's such a cool, specific thing where, like, oh, you're doing a charge move to from back to front, holding the down, and then using it later.

It's like a unique, really interesting scenario to, you know, to have that be possible.

And then the other thing is,

you know, Blanca in six with his Ultra 2 and

with his level 2, and and Ash Crimson in KOF both have these installs that let them just do no charge, back, forward, up, down, you know,

whatever, down, up, just go right into the input and then it lets you string one into the other, you know.

So I was like thinking, like, it was like, hypothetically, if you just defend guard cancel and just go down up, you know, or whatever the case, and you don't need, you don't have the charge because you didn't expect to, you weren't holding a charge when you did a perfect just defend there.

You can, you know, you can potentially get away with having it be like, okay, a chargeless scenario.

But whatever the case is,

yeah, it's the type of thing that it, even if you're, well, I say it's weird because people that go, like, I've never, I have a hard time with them.

I don't get how to use them.

I'm like, it's weird because they're easier to use.

Like, you actually

get the hang of doing charge inputs

in a lot of cases faster than doing.

That's not the issue.

The issue isn't doing a charge motion in a vacuum.

It's in the fight, right?

It's how to bask it.

It's how to use it.

It's way harder.

Unexpectedly.

It's a different thing, right?

But in terms of just getting the move out, period,

that initial thing is like a simpler basic input.

So someone in the chat says Zawa Amaz says they require too much forethought.

And that's basically the thing.

Because when most people are learning,

learning to use it in the fight.

Yeah, learning to use it in the fight, exactly.

Learning to calm down and be patient and hold hold is antithetical to if you're just learning to just press buttons right away.

For sure.

Totally, totally get that.

But no, I think that it does elicit a different, fun, unique style of play that

if everything just

motion over the years, then like, yeah, a lot of emergent kind of design elements to these characters wouldn't be the same.

So yeah, I hope that we just don't see them going fully fucking extinct.

But anyway.

Guile will live on.

And if Balrog ever comes back, he will, he will have his shit.

When a legacy character gets changed into motion, it hurts a bit more than a new character just always.

And here's where: is

Kane from Garrow?

Is he a legacy character?

He's fucking been in one game.

Yeah, that counts, man.

That counts.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

If you existed, then that's it, you know?

Like, yeah.

I never in my life thought I would see Kane ever again in anything.

I thought he would show.

I thought that if Garrow wasn't happening, that he'd show up in KOF.

I felt like those characters would show up eventually

in that line.

Pianoing being gone makes sense.

There's just,

you know, that you just don't need.

I get it.

And this is someone who learned how to piano.

Like,

mashing input things is like

that's an arcade stick thing that makes less sense in a world in which most people people play fighting games on controllers.

But yeah, so

we'll see.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

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That's bad.

That's not good.

People are going to take advantage of that.

Yeah, well, hopefully, I won't know what's going on.

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Shoutouts to boot.dev.

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All right.

Is our piece of news?

I know there's one we're going to talk about because it fucking sucks.

There's a couple of them.

There's a couple of them.

Where do you want to start?

Well, how about this?

When you are trying to dethrone Overwatch, that's right.

You've got to learn how to think like Overwatch.

That's right.

You've got to become the Overwatch.

Fuck yeah.

And to become the Overwatch, you have to master the art of the sandwich.

Oh, what's that?

The Blizzard.

Which is that?

The Blizzard Sandwich.

Oh, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

What if we hit you with a little bit of human torch?

Yeah.

Massive layoffs.

What?

And the thing.

Oh, I like the thing.

Oh, he's got a big punch.

And a big sandwich.

All together.

It's almost like I didn't notice the filling.

What?

Oh, okay.

So the massive layoffs are, it is like seven people.

It's like the Seattle team that was like

to help out.

The entire U.S.

support team.

In the U.S.

support team.

And like, Nor, you know, was like,

you know,

you know, hey, this is a Chinese game.

This is China.

You know,

they're out in China.

Like, what do they need Americans for?

I mean, they're only working on Marvel Comics properties.

I apologize.

I didn't know that it was seven people total.

I thought

it was a lot of

work in the major studio.

Okay.

That being said, okay, so I apologize for the use of the word massive.

That was an incorrect word to use.

Sometimes seven's really massive, dude.

Come on.

So, yeah, this was a bit confusing initially because the first reports were

Marvel Rivals director laid off and entire teams.

And it was like, what is going on here?

And then it was like, oh, okay, it's the U.S.

team.

And there was confusion.

And they didn't, and none of the people knew what was happening or why.

And so, further clarification, it seems as if basically they had a research and development

and level design team in the US and NetEase seems to just be pulling out of America and just go and basically being like, I guess the plan is to do everything in China going in future except for

the community management.

Honestly, genuinely.

But they did totally time it

right between the two fucking reveals.

So the weirdness of it being the director into not the director, a support U.S.

team is that's certainly not the same story.

It is dog shit to announce that randomly or to not announce it for the people themselves to discover it and publish that and post that in the middle of the day where you're announcing the latest patch updates and the two character trailers, right?

That reads as a very clear, let's bury the story or bury the news by just putting this shit out there.

You see the thing?

He's got pants.

And that's horseshit, right?

Small team, large team, support team, not team.

Like, that's just, don't do that shit.

That feels fucking bad.

That sucks.

Why do that?

Super lame.

Um, and, and I would also say, too, that, like, uh,

you know, the game is an insanely successful hit.

It is.

So, I think

the lead on this is, hey, you know what?

We did a really bad job on Concorde.

You're fired.

Oh, okay.

But you told me to do that.

Wow.

Suck it.

Hey, we did a really good job helping out with Marvel rivals.

Hey, you're fired, but we did a good job.

You're fucking fired.

fired.

It doesn't matter.

Doing a good job doesn't matter.

Yeah.

I've also seen, you know, and then some discourses like, well, the research and development phase is done.

They don't need that.

And it's like, that's not the way that's awesome.

It's an ongoing.

No, they, well, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, that is a dishonest thing.

Like, it is an ongoing live service game.

There will always be new content coming.

There will always be new modes.

Like, these games, more than any other genre, constantly have new types of content and new things going on with them.

The ongoing need for that could support a team of people that are in charge of working on those things.

Americans like

girls with big butts.

We figured it out.

Yeah.

Fire them.

We don't need them anymore.

You know, so before, like, like in as much as it...

It is not that initial story that was confusing about the way it was reported.

We don't need anyone diving in going, stay away from the corporation.

Don't.

Oh, man.

Who do you want to defend?

Fucking one of the largest Chinese gaming companies in the world or fucking Disney?

We need to dive in front of the fucking Netis.

Listen, listen.

China and Mickey Mouse.

Back off.

They've got this.

It's good, man.

Don't worry about it.

Don't you dare attack my corporation.

Back off.

I'll cut you.

Yeah, no.

You know,

it's just

why sandwich that shit on the same day, man?

Come on.

Oh, because, I mean,

you go to fucking Marvel Rivals' channel and they're talking about the thing and the human torch breakdown.

And that's the thing that'll get more views.

Yeah.

No.

Guang Guang is going into the details on the character.

And you know what?

You see that thing costume and he's wearing the suit and he's got the hat on and it's like, oh, he looks so cool.

And he says, oh, I love the thing.

And he says it's clobbering time.

If that character did not say it's clobbering time and Johnny didn't say flame on, that would be the most fucking ridiculous fucking miss.

You know what?

You know what would been really great if they're like, we don't need the American RD team anymore.

And then the thing came out and he said, it's time to smash.

And you're like, oh my God.

The smashing begins now.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Holy fuck.

Oh,

Yeah.

Yeah.

See,

here's one of these times, though, where I am curious because, like,

so being online, being, you know,

getting cutting edge industry news and updates and such, it feels I'm like, oh, this feels like you've poured water on whatever you're announcing because you've done the stupid Blizzard sandwich thing.

right and everybody hates that shit and it adds a bad um you lose you lose

goodwill

that people have been enjoying with the game by doing this shit.

Oh, no.

I just, my brain just auto-completed the stupidest series of thoughts possible

because I just remember when Blizzard announced that you are gay?

Do you remember that?

What was it again?

You, the player?

You, the player.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

And then

my brain just fired up this fucking random skeet from like weeks ago that was the phrase, I became Chinese in prison.

What is that?

It's what a Yakuza villain would say.

Okay.

Is what it is.

And then I'm just like, hey guys, the Lunar Festival is almost over, but don't worry.

You were Chinese all along.

Don't worry about it.

Secretly revealed.

You didn't know it.

Yep.

You were secretly, you secretly were.

Oh, that's right.

Shen Mu.

Years ago, I was Chinese.

Yeah, I remember that.

That's a real quote.

That's real.

Shen Mu.

I don't even remember.

What a pile of fucking shit that game is.

Oh, my God.

I'm glad we got 25 Yakuza games instead.

What was I even in the middle of saying?

I was saying something.

Anyway.

Wait, did that happen?

Oh, no.

Yeah, that did happen.

That did happen.

I forgot.

Oh, anyway, don't worry about it.

What?

It did happen that characters became Chinese in prison in the Yakuza game.

That were not Chinese.

That did occur.

Okay, gotcha.

Okay.

Okay.

Understood.

No,

I was just going to say that, like,

I feel like sometimes because of like the way we get information, it's hard to step back, zoom out and see like what

the act the feeling is at large.

And so a game this big, like there's no way that like this type of story or news or whatever would ever like be more than a flicker of a dent of any kind whatsoever in the larger announcement of like the big new content update.

But it does certainly feel like, at least from the

weird front-facing industry bubble that we are in, that like a lot of people are like, well, that fucking sucks, Netties, right?

That's a bad feeling thing to associate with this new update.

Absolutely.

And it's just like, does that fall off happen?

Does that end like five minutes after?

Oh, Woolly, most people aren't even going to get this news.

Yeah, I guess so.

The people listening to this are hyper-enthusiasts.

So

that's all I wonder is just like, I'm like, oh, is the people that are kind of all sort of being like, yeah, that felt shitty.

Is that just.

Who gives a fuck?

They don't care.

No, no.

Get video game now.

Of course they don't.

I'm just saying that like when Blizzard does this shit and it's like

the level that they fuck up at, you torpedo goodwill.

Well, the difference is that massive gestures of that.

That's goodwill over decades.

Right.

Netties doesn't have the same cultural cachet and on top of this after all of that there's a there's a

intermediate little general zeitgeist within type of people who look at this news which is like hey you should join a union which is then followed up by so that the company can leave your comp country forever like amazon

burn it all down shut it all down yeah

um

i mean what there were i did see the uh the montreal Amazon workers protesting and doing their thing like a couple days ago.

So

that is cool.

But, like,

boy, is that an instantaneous

press the button to fold an entire company into a box

and have it prime delivered back to America?

So, the trick is, is that if we want to get unions working for Amazon in Canada, it's up to our American brothers and sisters down south for y'all Amazon workers workers to start a union.

Go for it, boys.

We're right behind you.

Good luck.

Yeah.

Anyway, so there's a little bit of that going on.

You know, there are theories, of course,

that perhaps some of that RD that was just laid off, you know, well, maybe you can pick up the slack with Microsoft's Muse generative AI model that's

capable of creating gameplay ideation videos.

That was just announced.

And then the video got delisted, I think.

And then part of it was.

Hey, did you watch these videos?

The people talking about it, I could not handle, so no.

But I watched

some of the gameplay ones.

Yeah, I watched the gameplay ones.

Can I just reiterate my earlier statement from social media, which is, hey, let's put all ethical and practical considerations aside.

Yo, this stuff looks like, bro.

It looks pretty.

Who the fuck is this for?

This looks like garbage.

Um, so the idea is basically that it is trained on

a

uh, what is it?

Trained on, what was the game here?

Let me pull it up.

Kill.

What was the game?

Ninja Theory's

Bleeding Edge.

There we go.

Bleeding Edge by Ninja Theory.

And yeah, so basically, you feed in...

a little bit of gameplay and then it goes on to sort of generate what it predicts would be more gameplay.

So

if you were, you know, trying to

not level design and

not come up with gameplay ideas, it could just throw a couple out there.

Hey, man, this, the real purpose of this, man, is for game preservation and so that you can be like, hey, I would like to play a Togi and it will give you

what your friend's description through Google Translate of what a togi might look like that has horrible input delay and is constantly visually shifting in a fucking nightmare form.

I have watched multiple people on YouTube go into this gameplay AI shit, and they all suffer from the same problem.

Have you noticed these clips are always really short?

Like really short?

Well, yeah, you know why that is?

Well, they're generated, right?

Because they completely fail integrity after like a minute.

They completely slop out

after like literally 60 seconds.

And then, you know, you wait a little bit of time and then they throw more into it and crank the juice up.

And,

you know, and it goes on and on.

But the overall thing is like, okay, so I guess it's to not have

level designers.

It is to appease shareholders who want to

see something with Jenna.

It has no realistic reality function.

Take a screenshot and then turn it into like the equivalent of a vertical slice without being a vertical slice.

It's a this isn't vertical slam.

This is a fucking investment scam.

This has absolutely no value in any context whatsoever.

Well,

this will never be used.

Well, thank you, Microsoft Research blog.

Good stuff.

Good stuff.

Can I point out that

this is so ethically and creatively bankrupt that not even the name is unique.

Unity's Gen AI pile of shit is called Unity Muse.

How about that?

I didn't know.

It's literally not even the first Gen AI Muse.

Well, they stole even the name.

Like, come on.

It just, the flavor is extra strong with

this set with layoffs and such going

rampant.

But hey, there you go um

i i

this is so

microsoft's so fucking cooked man like this this is like a fucking death fucking rattle

uh speaking of cooked yeah

headline funko fusion is deemed a complete commercial and critical failure this is the part where i look up what funko fusion is that would be the funko Pop game that came out last year.

What the fuck is this?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Precisely, right?

Now, here's the thing.

You know me.

I keep a bottle of champagne ready to pop every time a story like this happens.

And it just, it's just, you know, it's a little bit of like, okay,

good, good.

Let's let's start correcting, right?

Let's start, let's let nature start healing again.

However,

this story is also

hand-in-hand delivered with, and thus the studio that made it laid off 20 people that worked on the game,

which obviously fucking sucks.

And it's kind of like...

How about firing the exec involved in the dog shit idea of a project instead of the people that got assigned to just working on it.

No, man, shit rolls downhill.

You know?

How about the people who thought this idea was worth executing on?

Fucking

just get

shit rolls downhill.

It doesn't work like that.

The people who made the bad decision are also in charge of the firing.

Well,

hey, you should form a fucking union.

Anyway,

just,

you know,

as said exec is boxing their things up, just to give them a Funko of themselves

in memory.

I was just thinking of a Funko Pop burning an effigy.

Oh, and how funny that is in my own mind.

And then there's piss inside.

Do you even know that story?

No, I just know you keep talking about Funko Pops full of piss, and now that's the default contents of a Funko Pop to me.

Well, what do you think is in that story?

Like, what do you think pieces of that story contain?

Okay, nowadays, when something comes up and I have no idea what's going on, I assume it's happening on TikTok.

No, this is a page story.

Okay.

This is a real life story from my wife and Funko Pops and Piss.

Okay, so because I assume usually that's the case, and that if this is happening in real life.

Real life?

Okay, well, it can't be...

Like, I was like, okay, maybe like some weird shit from years ago and childhood.

But no, because Funko Pops are from adulthood.

They're relatively recent.

Yeah, Funko Pops are from adulthood.

So it can't be that far back.

Hopefully that was it the dog?

Did the dog.

Oh,

brother, no.

So, I don't even remember all the details.

It's the head,

the big

long and short of it.

You know, you end up in somebody's house, and it's a friend of a friend.

And on the way to and from the bathroom, you discover that there is a line of Funko Pops that reek with 10 feet piss smell.

And you're like, what the fuck is going on here?

And then you run away.

Okay,

okay.

They're in the splash zone.

Yeah, no, no, they're not in the bathroom.

They're elsewhere.

They're on the Funko Pop piss shelf.

Oh, they're just getting wafted?

No, that's what they're for.

You know what?

You go ahead and ask her to tell you the full story because I don't remember it very vividly because I wasn't there.

Okay.

Oh, somebody in the chat remembers.

Paige went to someone's house.

Their house smelled funny.

Room full of funkos.

Whole room smells of human piss.

Paige bails.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I thought

you were, I thought it was that they were lined up in the splash zone.

In the bedroom,

the splash zone was the bedroom.

Okay.

And the funkos were the targets.

God.

And so ever since then, I'm just like,

funkos are just filled with piss.

Right.

Right.

Yes.

Well,

you know, that's why the game didn't stand a chance.

That's why, because everyone remembered that story and they're like, wow, those little piss dolls?

Because I'm like, I'm thinking about the fluid dynamics of how a head could store

some inside

hollow enough.

Yes, that's what I'm assuming, right?

That there's like enough room to, you know.

Yeah.

oh my god i okay dude i am i am at the the funko piss power

steam page and i did not know that this feature on steam exists there are positive reviews on this game and i did not know that developers could respond to individual reviews on the steam store page

There are multiple pause.

Oh my God, there's so many developers.

There's a developer response Okay to every single one of these top reviews

Let's find out buggy game crashes.

It is horrible.

Thank you for leaving a review We really appreciate you taking the time since your review We have made a bunch of updates to improve gameplay and performance blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

That is

okay

so um when you uh when you go to the Netherlands yeah uh if I if you ever go to Amsterdam uh when you fly over there, they give you a little collectible model house.

Is that to piss on?

The model house has a little bit of booze in it.

Oh, yeah?

Right?

It's a little house-shaped booze bottle as a collectible thing.

That's what I'm imagining.

You know what you can fill that bottle with, bro.

That's what I'm imagining something constructed in the same way with a similar delivery system.

Yeah.

You know, and the head, and you can just swirl it around, and you hear the

inside, and you're just like,

and then as you swirl, but then after the first couple shakes, it stops swirling because it froths up, yeah,

and it gets a little bubbly, so you can't really shake it as much.

Yeah, that's when the smell is at its richest

fermentation.

Oh, yeah.

Funko, Funko fermentation.

Yeah, that's fun.

It's finally a girl.

Jesus Christ.

Don't piss on stuff.

Hey, that's my advice for the day as a dad.

Don't piss on things.

Piss in a toilet.

That's a good advice for everybody.

Oh, I mean, like, or on the Funko Funko Pops, I quite fancy it.

I can't stop you.

If a Funko Pop was outside, I'd piss on it.

I'll be honest.

Please look forward to the limited edition Jankim Funko Pops.

Ah, that's good.

That's good.

Everyone's a fan of something.

Yeah.

All right.

Look,

Hollow Knight got delisted on the

Silksong got delisted on the US eShop in Nintendo.

And it's still up in the other places.

I got put back.

Did it?

Okay, because I was.

Okay, well, then it's not a story.

Well, you know what?

They were changing it to add Switch 2 to its

thing.

I thought it was a...

It's coming down to go back up to Switch 2.

It was really funny, though.

When it happened, it was like, give me a fucking break.

All right.

Well, then, nothing.

And never mind.

Cool new games.

Check out this game called Class 07.

Oh,

you got set that too, huh?

I just saw the footage of it.

So it's up on Steam.

It just looks like a really cool

cell-shaded high school

thing.

And you're a student kicking lawn chairs and benches around off of walls and it's ricocheting at people.

Shit looks rad.

They put up a fucking they put up a

blue skeet of that girl using a fucking plastic Virgil chair to take people out.

Animation looks cool.

Style is good.

Just the

high school beat-em-up

brawler bit and physics

takedowns, good animation.

This is about as woolly-coated as anything has ever been.

Oh yeah, I'm all about that.

So, you you know, add to your wish list.

That's that's a thing that's happening.

Looks cool.

Looks cool.

And

another, and similar in terms of like

cell shaded

cell-shaded

action game as well.

So, this is more so in the vein of a narrative ultimate ninja storm-like.

There's a game called The Hidden Ones

that is

just put out some footage and looks

really nice.

It's definitely

got that, like, you're seeing the Cyber Connect Naruto game style

influence in the camera movement when the gameplay starts.

Every time you go into a super and it just becomes like fully

detailed anime cutscenes and shit like that.

Yeah, people that played a lot of Naruto

are making their Arena Fighter that

overall, visually,

definitely, definitely, notably impressive.

But does it play

like Naruto?

Probably.

Good, though.

You know, if it plays like an Arena Fighter, then it plays like an Arena Fighter.

But worth,

I'd like to call attention to it because it looks really fucking

visually impressive, I I find.

It does look pretty cool.

Yeah.

That's called The Hidden Ones.

And yeah, I mean, you know,

that's pretty much the deal.

You know,

the only other thing is just if anybody wants to pick up the Canadian GameStop

franchise or France GreenStop franchises, you can can purchase them.

Yeah, you can.

They're now for sale.

Yeah, who the thing's going to be stupid enough to buy that shit?

Says

comes included with wokeness and DEI.

Is that true?

Is that true?

Yeah.

Comes included, apparently.

So, oh boy.

The Canadian and French operations of GameStop Corp are for sale.

And according to CEO Ryan Cohen,

it comes with high taxes, liberalism, socialism, progressivism.

Oh, are you fucking serious?

Included at no additional cost if you buy it.

Hey, how about this?

How about the fact that every time I've gone to an EB games or GameStop in literally the past 10 years, it has been the worst shopping experience for that entire year?

But that doesn't, but you see,

you're applying a thing that doesn't even matter because this is the fucking idiot that bought it during the for the meme with the squeeze bid.

This is the guy that got it in like the last two, three years

for the whole GME bid.

So it's like

it's just been whatever.

It's been a history of stupid shit.

It's not like this is anything

notable.

I can't believe this company has not gone straight up bankrupt yet.

The memes, dude.

I can't believe it.

The big squeeze into

the huge

short against all the corporations that were hedging against it.

And then memes.

And

to fucking go full circle, a wall of Funko pops in a brick and mortar store.

Hey, can I buy a game?

Nah, man.

Buy these figurines.

All right, I'm getting the fuck out of here and going to fucking Best Buy.

Like the Zerg creep, you know, a wall of Funko showing up in your brick and mortar is a fucking kiss of death.

That's what it is.

And the more they take over, it's like, oh, it's taking over two walls.

Oh, man.

It grows.

This shit is done.

It grows.

Anyway.

Alrighty.

Let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Please send good emails.

So before you hit send, reread your email and ask, is this shit?

Like, actually,

maybe.

All right.

Let's see here.

Hey, Pooley and Dooley.

There's some criticisms about Night Rain from the network test, saying it's a cash grab mod made by from Software and it doesn't deserve to be 40 bucks.

I find it interesting since mods have become so robust.

They're the equivalent of having Scholar of the First Sin overhaul on each PC Soulsborne game.

Additionally, some mods turn it into a different game.

What are your thoughts on this criticism?

I think the amount of game you're getting from FromSoft in each one of their releases is absurd.

And

to call anything you're doing a cash grab is like they're well within their rights to make more money on the franchise they've built with the amount of insane fucking the sheer volume of the gameplay you've been given.

I think

and it's a reduced price at that.

I think one of the most ridiculous sentiments that you can encounter for like a wide variety of situations in life is, I don't think this is worth the money.

This looks really easy.

Okay, so do it then.

Well,

well, I want you to do it, though.

Like, if it, hey, listen, if mods from software games are so robust and so feature-rich that you feel that Night Rain is not a good value, then fucking don't buy it.

The only time that this anger comes in where you're like, oh, I actually want the stuff in Night Rain, but I do want it.

Even at reduced price at that.

And look, you know, in terms of like,

also Rainbow Edition and all that shit back in the day in Street Fighter 2 getting incorporated into ST eventually.

Like, I think overall, these are good things to have them officially, like, acknowledge and, like, work into

the actual IP.

But yeah, Elden Ring is, and from Software, it's one of those things where you're getting so much more bang for your buck with all the shit they make that, like,

I'm absolutely happy to support.

what this is for its limited scope if it is.

But the idea is that this is also something that could go on for super long with tons and tons of content over time, regardless anyway.

Literally, like, chill, it's 40 bucks.

I cannot possibly imagine looking at Elden Ring and going,

I can't believe that.

Like, it's the mother of

the largest fucking games ever made.

It is a shitty entitled take.

That's a dog shit take.

Fuck that.

Let's take one over here from Rad

says, hey, Willie and Pat.

I was catching up on the podcast a couple weeks ago, and you were talking about how all the directors have left Platinum and the company's a shell of its former self.

With that in mind, does the plot to Bayo 3 seem better in a weird shit way now?

Like there was a vibe foreshadowing its structure?

No, no, no,

no, no, it was dog shit, and that's it.

No, bad, it was bad.

No, dude, you know what?

They made it bad on purpose because they were going to quit.

No, no, no, no, fucking didn't.

I'm taking Jean with me, goddammit.

No one can have her.

That's insane.

That's completely stupid.

Furthermore, we've seen other franchises where the reins get handed off to someone else and they can still do a great job with it.

Camilla did not make Devil May Cry after one.

The shit we love the most didn't come from the first, you know, like.

Yeah.

You don't, like, that's dumb.

I disagree completely.

It is not, it is still, it is still bad.

Oh,

it's so bad.

It's so fucking bad.

It sours me on that game so fucking bad.

Also, that game came out unfinished.

They changed the way Viola's gameplay worked in a patch

to work.

Like, like, I well, I just, I'm just thinking about how, like,

the

gene bit was like

such an explosive what the fuck, but then like

what followed immediately after

like

you like you didn't feel angry enough, you know, you didn't like that you only had half of the of the context of that moment, you know, and and seeing why it was necessary to just completely evict so I saw people talking about this and I don't know how um I don't know how legitimate it is, uh, but I saw folks talking about how Bayo 3 was supposed to let you pick any world in any order, which is why they all have entirely self-contained storylines.

But then they just decided to make it linear near the end of development, which makes the story just fucking play like shit.

Okay, okay.

I thought you were going to talk about it, I thought it was the

conspiracy that Bayo 3 is

a legacy of Shinzo Abe product that's all about that's all about

reversing the birthing crisis and that's why that's why

but then Bayo showed up with the doohickey

and that's why it it you know yeah

you have to you have to fix the the birthing crisis

that's the that's the that's the conspiracy.

I can't handle.

I cannot handle the doohickey.

I can't.

It is the least serious thing that has ever been.

You're just losing it.

You just can't handle it either.

Holy shit.

You fucking fuck my fucking microphone.

I can't hear my cell anymore.

That's the first time I've heard that word.

Oh, you haven't heard that word?

I didn't know that.

That's really silly.

That's really funny.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

We got this.

We got this.

All right.

Oh my god.

Okay, we got it.

All right, we got it.

No, no, Brick, come on, come on, come on, we got another, we got another email in there, we got another email in there.

Oh, come on, come on, you can do it.

You can push past the thing of a bob.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Oh shit.

Okay, come on.

See, because you keep laughing and this keeps cracking.

I've never, I just, I just, I've never heard that word before.

That's insane.

That's insane.

Why would you use that word?

That's so insane.

That's fucked up.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Yeah, we're good.

We're good.

We got this.

At the end, fuck off.

Every time you look.

All right.

Okay.

Okay.

Quick,

hello, doped Pat and

Enhanced Wooly.

Yeah, what's up?

Big updates in regards to the Enhanced Games,

aka the steroid Olympics, the Dark Olympics.

Oh, the thing that's never going to happen because that would make me happy.

All right.

So the Dark Olympics is what Willie called it back in 2023.

So

it seems to be going forward.

All right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Letting athletes take as many performance-enhancing drugs as they want to see what happens.

It's a classic dumb idea that you hear from your friends when you're drunk.

However,

Over the years, the amount of funding and people interested in turning this event into a reality has been increasing dramatically.

Last year,

the Enhanced Games received a multi-million dollar investment from various parties.

And so there's a full press release afterwards here

talking about how they're trying to make this happen by having athletes that will

get rank-based prize money for competing.

Nice.

And

they will also be giving million-dollar bonuses to athletes who can break break records, world records,

while doing this.

And

yeah, and so far,

the only athlete that has

on board is

an Australian Olympic swimmer.

Yeah.

But yeah, there's tons of quotes, and it looks like it might be happening.

Or at the very least, there's renewed interest and money pushing forward.

I want everyone, every single competitor to look like

maximum flex pickle from fucking Grappler Backy.

Grappler Backy characters.

Just guys and girls that look like they're about to burst like balloons.

And then I want one of them to burst like a balloon, like it's scanners.

Okay.

Okay.

Just a bunch of Abigails on the the starting point.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I got you.

So early 2026 is what they're hoping to be able to announce a host city at the very least.

But yeah, keep an eye out for the Dark City is going to host this.

Fucking cool city, that's who.

I mean, shit, man.

You throw money on that shit.

I could see that happening in the sphere in Vegas.

I could see that happening on fucking asteroid M.

I could certainly see that happening in Saudi Arabia.

I could see that happening.

Yeah, why not?

Detroit.

Why not?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Detroit doesn't give a fuck.

Anyway.

Yeah, all right.

More Dark Olympics updates.

We'll keep an eye out.

Hell yeah, brother.

We'll keep an eye eye out

as we get closer to the fucking the Abigail run.

Oh, man.

Just that

Yoshi's Island commercial, you know?

Oh, which one's that?

Oh, with the eating, the feeding guy.

Oh, right.

Oh, I hated that thing.

Yeah, no, and nobody liked it, actually, because, like,

I mean, like,

because even if you're like one of those weirdos that's like, oh, yeah, Vor,

it's like, okay, but nobody actually wants the person to explode.

Hey, that's our audience you're talking about.

Yeah, but like, but the actual exploding traumatized everybody, man, that shit fucked everybody up.

It was like, Nintendo, you could have just said Yoshi's Island.

You know, we didn't need that.

There's a famous tweet that goes around that's like video game ads in the fucking 90s were the worst thing ever.

It would just be a full-page ad of guys screaming at you, going, Are you fucking stupid?

And it it would be the logo for Yoshi's Island in the corner.

I mean, there's an exact font of like the old Ness ads.

It was like white page, giant like text with like a single image, and maybe a kid in a fisheye lens staring at you,

you know, calling you an Arsler.

Yeah, like, like, like, what are you?

Like, it was just like, Jesus Christ, yeah, I'll play Yoshi's Island.

It's a good game.

Calm the fuck down, guys.

All All right,

I gotta go.

Hey, have a good night, everybody.