CSB293: Castle Super Back

Hello, welcome back to Castle Super Beast.

Ha ha,

I like what you did there.

This episode is brought to you by Painkillers.

Yeah, what'd they give you?

I got the combo of...

Well, at first I was doing some Robax, Robaxiset, and a leave.

And that was...

The music's still going by the way.

Just letting you know.

And I'm muted also.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

Everything seems extremely normal here.

So

that's great.

Oh, I'm delayed also.

Oh, that's great.

okay well i'm i'm oh i'm doing it podcast over

yeah let's just end it right here

all right restarting obs okay bye-bye

Fucking piece of shit.

God damn it.

Well, all right, so we want to just restart the whole sync and all that stuff.

No, just keep it all keep the audio going.

Keep it going?

All right, yeah.

Good.

Little bonus section for the audio listeners here.

Cool, yeah.

You get to hear the true deep dark secrets.

I didn't hurt my back.

This is all a ruse.

It's a big ruse.

It's not a ruse.

It's a metaphor.

It's a metaphor for hurting your back.

It is a metaphor.

All right, we're going to go back live.

Let's try this.

Yeah.

Bro, the internet sucks.

Yeah.

I mean, what else is new?

But hey, we should be back live.

Are we back?

I don't know.

It might take a second before they recognize it.

It's possible before anyone notices.

Yeah.

Isn't like streaming live incredible?

Yeah.

It's pretty fantastic.

Especially when we're fighting a really specific drug window.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I definitely

do pine for the times before live mattered when we just recorded offline and it was and it was done when it was ready and you and everyone got it when it was done.

Yeah, I appreciated that time.

Though I have to say there is there is a definitive like little I do appreciate being able to take the tone of the world as we as we speak.

No, no, the benefit of holding your finger up and catching the pulse is

there.

However,

the whole thing with like schedules and stuff, we used to just go, hey, how's your week looking?

When should we do it?

And then...

And the answer was always the week's looking good because none of us do shit.

Whatever the fuck.

But ultimately, it would shift and move and slide.

And so the moment it got nailed down to a specific time with expectations.

Oh, it's hard now, actually.

Really, I didn't enjoy it.

I have a dentist appointment.

Oh, no.

Because like, what the fuck is they're late?

What the fuck is being late when there never was a time?

Yeah, man.

You know, there never was a time.

You know, I literally, I fucking, this, this gig is to not have a job where you can be late.

The whole point is for that shit to fucking not matter.

I mean, it's like, no one, I mean, Wooly, you're your own boss.

So the only person that you have to answer to is yourself.

And when you hear that originally as like a young person, you're like, oh man, that sounds so relaxing and freeing.

And then you're like, wait a second, I can treat myself like a complete piece of fucking shit that no one would ever be able to get away with.

Hey, so if I were employed by myself at this point, the thing to do would be to get your insurance and be like, I'm off of work with an injury.

Bye, bitch.

But because I'm self-employed and I'm not out here spying on myself to see if my claims are real or not.

This motherfucker's posting kite flying pictures when his back is supposed to be out.

Can you believe it?

Exactly.

I'm in fact, what I am doing is going, all right, well, maybe we can compromise and I can use enough drugs to feel okay for two hours to do a mini podcast.

You totally can.

And by mini podcast, I mean a normal length podcast.

For normal people.

In fact, double because a lot of podcasts are about one hour these days, really.

I can tell you that, like, you, you can, unless you have the genetic thing that I have,

you can definitely use enough drugs to get through a regular length podcast.

Oh, Oh, yeah.

You can beat a bunch of red and white checks.

So I was originally just going with some Aleeve and

Robaxacit and some.

Oh, that's bullshit.

You need that prescription nonsense.

Yeah, I know that smile.

I know that smile.

Yeah, all right.

Codeine, baby.

Yeah.

Cody.

Codine's your friend.

This podcast is brought to you by Codine.

Oh, your friend.

Your friend Codine.

Yeah.

The first love.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The mayor.

Codine Travers.

So, Wooly, what happened to your back?

What happened?

Well, so, I mean, basically, I have been

attempting to be healthier by...

Last time my back got fucked up, it was because I laughed too hard at the

disco Elysium bit in the diner.

And I was also, you know, at my most, like, heaviest and like just on a terrible couch for streaming long term.

I'm going to tell you right now, that was a bad sign.

It was a very bad sign.

A non-strenuous activity taking your ass out is bad.

Absolutely.

And it was a bad chair.

It was a bad,

like,

and it was a bad

lack of activity, you know, and such.

So I was just like, oh yeah, my back is in no shape for any kind of sudden thing.

I have since done a lot and and I've been trying to move a bunch more and so what I've created a bit of a regimen where I'm like okay I have my little boxing thing on the wall behind me I've got my walks I can take I've got

the workout gym and then I've got a boxing gym that I do to you know whatever so

after a little bit of time off and after the cabinet stuff went back to do some boxing proper in the boxing gym

and

I start

I had not moved in you know I guess it's been about like two weeks or so

so I started out with how you usually start with boxing: grab some jump rope.

So you skip, do some skipping rope movement, you know.

And

about two jumps in, I felt oh, like immediately.

Immediately.

Like, immediately.

I jumped and I felt the pull.

And it was like a

something's not right.

You know?

And it was like, it was that sudden, like,

okay.

But it was, and it was like, all right, but then I was like,

I don't know, I guess like it, it, it, it hurt, but then I was like, ah, this could just be a little,

it could just be a little tightness, right?

So 10 rounds later,

stupid.

Are you serious?

I kept going, and, uh,

it, and it was ultimately like

It was, I was able to, I was actually able to complete it the moment I kind of felt that thing.

I was like, it it didn't kick in because it didn't kick in right right right away at the fullest right

um

and

like i did some stretches but i didn't do i guess the right stretches or so uh but anyway

that

by the time i finished i kind of was like okay let's see where we're at with that and i kind of sat down and i was like oh yeah i'm gonna need some ice and I got some ice and I started icing it and I'm like that feels like it needs some

and

yeah I mean,

got home and felt the return of what was there a couple years ago.

And

it basically started getting like a lot, like, you know, a lot more painful and stuff.

And there's more to it that I'll, you know, but like I will say the part where I kept working out, which is the part that elicits the crazy reaction here, it was, I would, if it was not enough info,

it hurt, but it didn't fully kick in until afterwards.

That's the thing.

Okay, so it was deceitful.

And I will say that, like,

I know when I feel something enough to stop,

but in this case,

that's now a verifiable untruth, I have to say.

That is not

accurate.

I've been injured before in a way where I know when it's extreme enough to be like, hey, that's something that is clearly wrong.

In this case, it was not enough immediately because I've also felt similarly in other times where I've been like, ah, it's just like you need to

stretch that out a bit, give it a second.

And

there's been times where it has not been serious where you kind of have something like that, right?

I have a very important question.

These times that you were referring to where you were like,

but it wasn't like a big deal.

Were you

in the second half of 30 in those instances?

Yeah, yeah, I know I was.

I was.

Okay, well, the God has decided that now you are in the second half of 30 for real.

Yes.

No, I know.

And it is over now.

So, you know,

winging it is now over.

For sure.

But

anyway, I felt it

on the skip.

And then,

yeah, when I got back in and like, you know, things had cooled down and stuff, I was like, okay, fuck.

Well,

I can tell that certain movements, certain things are, like, really, really sharp.

It was like a seven on 10 pain or so.

Lie down and then go to get back up.

And I'm like, and like upon getting up, I'm like, oh, that's a 10.

That's a 10 on 10.

Like, whenever you do like the pain scale rating, there's always a bit of a like,

I never would go that high on the numbers because I'm like, I don't know.

I'm like, well, a 10 is my arm is getting ripped off, right?

Yeah, no, that is like, dude, there are two pain scales.

There's the pain scale that the average person does, and there's the pain scale that people who have had a lot of pain in their life go through, which ends up getting them under medicated because they go, well, I'm not dying.

It's just like.

agony.

That's what my

exactly.

Right.

And so that's the thing is like, I'm like, whenever you get asked about that one to 10, you know, I'm like, well, yeah, I'm not bleeding out.

My intestines are not in my hands.

That's a 10.

So we're not here, right?

But it's like, no, that's not probably actually what they're asking you for.

And, you know, what I just, and I do know that, like, what I felt was

excruciating, right?

In the moment of getting back up.

And I was like, right, I remember this.

I remember this from a few years ago.

Fuck.

So,

all right.

Well, fortunately, I kept a lot of what I had from back then.

So

I've got the brace that it's on.

I've got the chair.

I've got the pads.

I've got the heating thing.

All these little things.

The inversion table was downstairs.

We pulled that out.

I got the kneeling thing.

All of that stuff that was there ready to go.

I was like, right, good.

Held on to that.

So this can help right off the bat.

And it was just, yeah, it was just one of those things where staying in the same position in any, whether seated or not or standing or whatever just sucked.

just kind of walking around, living day-to-day seven on ten, like type of pain.

And

yeah, I don't know.

I had definitely had a moment of being like when it was at its worst waking up, where I was like, oh fuck, like, if this is what getting old and like having this chronic thing is like, if this is what it is, this is a really horrible

existence.

Yeah, Paige has had, after her back injury with her, I forget what it was, it was discs or something, but she's walking and all that shit, but she's basically in constant pain all the time.

Yeah, I have a stepdad as well who's

got some serious back injury stuff, and it's a regular thing.

And like, you know, you definitely, it's one of those bits where, like last time, you kind of realize that, like, oh, you need this for every single thing you do.

Your lower back is involved in everything.

It's just everything, apparently.

You know,

so yeah, so it's just, it's fucking, it's agony, you know?

Anyway, so, I mean,

I remember my dad when he blew up his finger, blew up his index finger, and then they reconstructed it, but it hurt.

It always hurt because there wasn't enough meat left, so the bone was scratching the

inside of his finger.

And like, for, there was, like, a good two years where he's like, you know.

I could just have another accident and then my finger wouldn't hurt anymore.

And we're like, dad, please don't go chop your fucking finger off in an industrial accident on purpose.

Yeah.

And he was like, Yeah, it's really annoying.

When it actually becomes reasonable to consider removing it entirely.

Well, it's a finger, right?

Like,

it's not like your leg or your spine.

Yeah.

No.

I remember.

I forgot.

There was some time ago when I kind of was like,

remember

every once in a while when you're feeling okay and just go, oh shit, I'm not sick or like injured right now.

Have those moments where you go, damn, right, okay, cool, it's cool.

This rules, actually.

Yeah, just remind yourself out of the blue that it's cool that

everything's alright.

Yeah, because this is a fucking bad one.

And I was like, okay, can I,

you know, just sit and record or something?

No, no, definitely not.

I can't focus or do anything particular.

I can basically just rotate between a couple different positions of like sitting and then

inversion table and then kneeling and then like, you know, whatever.

Trying to find that one twist

that didn't stab.

Exactly.

Try to find the one angle.

Yeah.

So, you know, I was like, okay, how fast can I go see a physio?

And I was able to.

Apparently really fast.

Yeah, it wasn't a regular one, but it was one that I was able to see a day or two later.

And

from doing some tests and stuff it's like okay I was originally concerned that

you know we were talking about like a herniated disc or something like that nerve related or so

and fortunately that's not the case it's acute lumbago which is basically the muscle around the spine is weakened and because this is already because this is already a weak point it's like basically just like yeah you have a you have a fucking X spot you know, and you gotta strengthen it.

Don't touch that part.

So

that is a super duper real thing that is like, okay,

the good news is that like instead of taking months, it can take weeks

because muscle correction is faster than nerve or spinal, you know,

shit.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, shit.

Well, when you hurt your back last time and it was your disc, like, the podcast was out for weeks and weeks.

It took a really long time.

You were just out.

It took a very long time.

It took a very long time.

I think,

yeah, so, but fortunately, in this case, it is a,

you know, it should be quicker than that.

So that was kind of the good news to it.

It was like, all right, it's mainly just muscle.

And I have been, you know, I got some exercises to do.

And yeah, between that and the drugs, it's like, all right, cool.

That'll tide me over.

And, you know, as I mentioned, I feel like the drugs in particular do good enough to reduce that number to a low enough number that I can function and feel.

So you're sitting there and you're like, eh, but you're not like, yeah, yeah, no.

And I can feel kind of normal for a few hours.

And I would say too as well, because last time I didn't know what the fuck I was doing and it took a long time to get everything ready.

This time around, because I had everything ready,

I got to a stabler place much quicker.

you know, it's been three days, and it's like, it feels like a lot better than it did

compared to last time by this point.

So,

um,

yeah, uh, uh, uh, so, you know,

there's always that kind of thought to there's times where I'm like, okay, well, like, maybe I can be productive with the time.

It's like, you can't fucking focus on anything.

Rest and recuperation is productive.

Yeah, yeah.

You literally can't.

I'm like, there's

whatever, whatever other things I was thinking of that were around, or I'm just like, I can't do any of that.

I can pass the time by finding something really nice, slow-paced, and,

you know, perhaps even turn-based

to ignore for hours and come back to.

And you'd think I would say Balatro.

I thought you were going to say Balatro, but then you said find.

Yes.

So it's not Balatro.

It is not Balatro.

However, I've spent pretty much the last couple days just poking away at a game, and it is a phenomenal game that I played on stream this week.

It's called Shogun Showdown.

It's really fucking good.

Time to punch it in.

Yeah.

I wanted to take a look.

I wanted to play some fighting games.

I wanted to take a look at Metaphor.

I wanted to poke at some of the other things.

But I legit, like, times like now, I can't focus on anything story-related or action-related or response-time-related.

I need the most basic, turn-based nothing to just

something that you can click on and then go, oh, fuck!

Exactly.

All right, I'm okay.

I'm okay.

Exactly.

And get back to it with no interruption.

So playing a fighting game or playing metaphor sound like the worst possible, most unappealing things to me when I'm feeling like this right now.

Just so anybody understands that.

Literally give me an an analog fucking deck of cards like that i i can you know so anyway um shao uh shaolin showdown uh shogun showdown uh is a turn-based rogue light

i think that's the correct term yeah you know what who gives a shit um nerds nerds care but it's basically you're i i played it on stream a little bit earlier in the week too uh last time um you hop around and every action you do takes a turn and you queue up up to three actions and you find a bunch of enemies that are about to do their actions to you and hey guess what into the breach style you know

perfect sequence puzzling etc incredibly fun so fun really really cool

the the you know

like ancient Japan style setup going on and then you you you realize that it is a it is a game

that is secretly in not secretly but like you start seeing characters like Hideyoshi

Eyasu and things like that.

Hey, wait a second.

We don't know those guys.

They're like, ah, Nobu Nutters Rise Up.

It's a Nobunaga game.

And

I don't like that term.

Yeah, well,

there it is.

But for the most part, it's really satisfying when you kind of learn to put these moves together where you're like, okay, I have a character who you can pick, there's like a samurai, an injure, like these different classes.

One that you unlock that's a really good example of like what would sell me on this is like the judoka right or jujitsuka rather, which is a character that like you have like okay, you have like five tiles that you're kind of hopping back and forth on and enemies are about to plan their next attack and slam at you shoot at you come at you and do whatever and what this character can do is grab you and flip you around and flip enemies around and reposition

to attack each other and make people point in the wrong direction and then like shove them away and make them collide into each other.

Yeah, I love that guy into the breach.

Exactly, right?

Yeah.

So repositioning the enemies as a means of defense, you know, is always super fun.

And then while you're doing this type of stuff with the game, you have other characters that can like pass through or, you know, slide around and stuff.

You're also randomly picking up abilities and weapons and such that can attack in different directions, different amounts of tiles.

And then you can upgrade them for awesome passive things.

So you can have like

a

let's say you have a ball and chain where like it hits three tiles in front of you and if it connects with something it bounces back behind you by one tile and hits anything behind you.

You can apply like a double attack to that to make it happen twice and then it poisons anything it hits too and you know and you can basically balance the amount of upgrades that you put on these weapons while also affecting how many turns it takes for them to cool down and use them again.

So you basically get this really precise setup going.

And it gets really deep and it feels really advanced too as well because later on you're able to do things like

play a card that

teleports you to the

mirrors your position on the map.

So you have to like do some mental calculation to be like, I will appear exactly here, then I will grab

this person and like toss them behind me and then throw a kunai in front of me, right?

And like you'll put that all into sequence and make it so that one chain reaction leads to another to another, so that you're hitting an enemy into the kunai that you threw while teleporting.

And you know, and you're putting together all the trajectory, and it's really, really satisfying and fun when it works out.

You know, Wooly, it's funny because, like, I went to the Steam page and I'm watching it, and I'm like, this is 2D

Shogun into the breach.

No shit, you love this thing and then i scroll down it goes what overwhelmingly positive always a good sign then it sees uh one friend of yours already owns this game being you woolly and then above it it says it's like other shit you've played like ballatro okay and midnight suns

and I'm just like yeah it is kind of a lot like Midnight Suns actually you should probably give that game a shot is it yeah okay

yeah and actually, like,

Midnight Suns is the same thing, just on, like, a 3D grid.

Okay.

Is it also listing similar to XCOM at all?

Yes.

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So, I mean, what I will say is that, like, anything that gives perfect information from the enemy

becomes a puzzle game and becomes

way more fun to me.

Like, or when the the behavior is something that you know what it's going to be and you have to efficiently solve by moving and weaving and such.

Fights in Tight Spaces, another game that I loved, and all these things.

Not all of them are the same level of quality.

And I know that, like, yeah, Fights in Tight Spaces didn't land with everybody.

Into the Breach certainly was one of the best examples of it.

This one, really,

really good, honestly.

Great sense of progression.

Every time you do a run,

you go through a day and like you, by going through the day and like doing it, let's say you do it like without getting hit, let's say you do it like fast enough or in minimal amounts of turns, you unlock tons of stuff each run, you know, and you get enough permanent upgrades to take back to unlock a bunch of different weapon types and passives and

things that diversify your runs.

So like very quickly, you're able to like, you start with one character, one run type, and like within uh

five or six different runs you're unlocking tons of different options and ways to play the game you know so um yeah if you're at all into like this this type of genre you know turn-based like tactical fighting and um you know and in this case it's like samurai themed and got these little cute characters jumping around and stuff um yeah highly highly recommended So, Wooly, I did not talk about this a week or two ago, or maybe I did.

Did I ever talk about a game called Tactical Breach Wizards?

No.

Okay.

So, Tactical Breach Wizards is also overwhelmingly positive on Steam and is literally another one of the types of games that you described.

Okay.

Okay.

It is set in a setting in which you are playing what is essentially like breach SWAT operatives, but they are wizards.

Okay.

So you are going into breach rooms, and then your main character can see one second into the future.

So you plan out your movement, such as knock this guy out the window or zap this dude or place a bomb, and then you click the button and it will show you how those events are going to play out because enemies have extremely strict rules, such as always attack nearest enemy,

always move towards line of sight, et cetera.

And it is...

It is that.

It is absolutely that, but with a different aesthetic and like a really cool hook.

You You should definitely check out Tactical Breach Wizards.

It's fantastic.

Cool.

That sounds fun.

Yeah, because

there are things that they scratch the same itch as like Slay the Spire,

for example.

But something, but like as much and as much fun as Slay the Spire is, I love I love when you have like positioning and movement involved as well.

Yeah.

Not just playing the cards, you know?

I've genuinely feel like ever since you've described Enter the Breach as perfect information, this is what my brain calls this genre.

Yeah.

Like across all different actual sub-genres, it's the perfect information genre.

Well, because the moment you don't, the moment you're just like the AI has a pattern, but you don't know what it's going to be,

that just changes the entire way you play the game.

It changes everything.

You're not trying to do a perfect run anymore.

You're trying to just minimize,

you know,

bad decisions and outcomes and position yourself in a way where if they do this, you're ready for that, or if they do the X, you're ready for Y.

And you approach games very, very differently, predicting and guessing versus going like, no, you know, that's going to go that way.

That's why you have to counter it this way.

It reminds me of the way that people talk about not XCOM,

Fire Emblem.

And that there's the way that I play Fire Emblem and probably the way you play Fire Emblem and the way that people who have played 10 Fire Emblems play Fire Emblem, in which to them, they actually know the intrinsic mentality of every type of unit, and they know that if an archer will always move six fucking paces to this, and they're playing a completely different fucking game than you or I are.

Yeah, when the rules are, you can learn them, but they're not immediately obvious.

Yeah, 100%.

They're not told, they're just there.

And of course, this makes what makes it really interesting is like bosses have more complex patterns, or, you know, they can stack things in a way that you usually um

can't uh uh uh most normal enemies can't and you'll have these moments where you'll see a boss will stack three cards right three actions and one will be mirror your position on the on the map then the next one will be dash backwards until you con uh uh uh connect with an enemy and then appear on the other side of them and then it'll be uh do an uppercut you know and so you have to like look at you have to take a second and go all right he's going to flip positions with me then come flying at me then go through me and punch me back this way meaning i'm gonna hit this guy so i need to flip this way and you know and like put the right shield in the right place and and and and um like every time you like hop a tile or flip around or select an action that all takes a turn you know so the act oh selecting selecting an action takes a turn yeah

right preparing an action takes a turn so you have to really, yeah, you have to be very, very ready and do a lot of

calculation

before you even

preview what you're about to do.

And yes, when you kind of, it does, turn-based Katana Zero almost feels like a really

great way to describe it too.

That's not fair.

You're doing really rad Katana Zero.

It's not fair.

You are doing fair.

That's high praise to throw something.

I mean, I like I found, like, you know what you find, you play these games too, and when you get like a busted build,

you just go like, fuck, I'm never getting this.

Yeah, no, you were like, I think I fucked this shit up.

I think I fucked it.

Yep.

So

I found one of those that kind of locked me in, which was you unlock Kunai.

And what Kunai does is

most weapons, if you power them up, you put the number from like, let's say, three damage to four, and then it'll just do

that much more, and that'll be it.

With Kunai, the number increasing means you throw more out right and so instead of being like one hit that does four damage you'll throw four kunai out and if something dies in two then the next two kunai are going to whatever was behind it you know so you just

so i'm like oh fuck let's let's take that let's stack that with curse which doubles the damage let's make it so that if i only select one action i get an extra amount of damage on it so therefore now i'm doing three per shot and let's put this number to like eight shots if possible and then teleport to one side of the map and then just shoot everything in a line and clear the entire row and then finally if I kill three things it resets the cooldown immediately

so you're like all right I just I just busted the whole thing open and it was I'm like sick cleared a build kill cleared around with that and now you know that's you know that's one strat that's like that's like high card meta that's so that's It's one type of build you can go back to, you know?

So yeah, little fun little things like that and seeing how you get a new weapon and how to think about little strats like that and break it open are tons of fun.

Showgun Showdown.

Big praise.

That sounds great.

And then yeah,

you know, beyond that, I played a little bit of another game called

This was in the recording in the week prior.

I Am Your Beast.

Yeah.

I am your beast.

Fucking rules.

Pretty cool.

So, what was the game that that team made before?

El Paso Elsewhere.

Right.

So,

actually, so this, I actually,

Sir Meow was like, hey, I got a friend that made this game.

Check it out.

Yeah, that's what happened with me.

Yeah.

So, took a look, and absolutely super sick.

I want to say super hot

and

cyber,

not cyber ghostrunner style vibe i would i would describe these games as uh existing genre plus dacovneying

okay

like the main character is david decovneying at you the whole time oh okay his his monologuing yes okay sure sure

um reluctant solid snake getting pulled back in for one more job

it's great and then john wicking as well is the action And then, you know, it's also the

type of game where you clear it,

you take out everybody, kill everyone as fast as possible, and then do it again, do it faster, do it better.

Now do the challenge.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like, you know, knock somebody out, grab the gun in midair, super hot, but kill the entire level with beasts.

John wick your way through this.

And then every time he does, there's like a smug piece of like monologue and

dialogue, you know, that you go through from from level to level very very fun very very cool setup um definitely it's more narratively strong than like gameplay there's a little bit of jank in kind of some of the shooting and a little bit of the find that it's like

like it's so fast that i have difficulty controlling it

like it's it they want it real fast and loose were you mouse and keyboarding i was i did both i actually found it easier on a gamepad okay

You definitely fly through it.

And yeah, there's no super hot style stop time to think type moments.

But

yeah,

but no,

it still works really well.

But it definitely also feels that the enemies are

like they're not

behaving like just

they're mooks, dude.

They're fucking dumbass.

Yeah, it's Musso.

They're sliding little meat, you know,

combo dummies to be styled on.

But very cool, and like narratively, I'm interested to find out where that's going and what the setup is.

But it seems to be taking place in the

northwest, right?

You're in the pine tree woods, and you're...

Man, everything's in my neck of the woods nowadays.

I move out here, and every goddamn video game is like 100 miles from a house.

It's nice out here.

Yeah, and it's the living in a cabin, retired super soldier fantasy.

but now they need you for one more job, and you're like, leave me alone.

I do love that it's like, you told me one more job like 10 more jobs ago.

And people are going to keep dying until you leave me alone.

So, you know,

that's the bit.

Strong title for a game two.

I am Your Beast is pretty cool.

Oh, it's great.

Love that.

De facto recommendation by this podcast on the name alone.

Great voice acting as well.

El Paso Elsewhere, I also had.

El Paso Elsewhere is.

Hey,

did you enjoy the first two Max Ping games but wanted more weird

nonsense monologuing?

Here you go.

Again, the only bit I'll say is that when I think about Ghost Runner, when I think about Ultra Kill

and

Super Hot and other first-person styling fucking games,

the enemies are not as just goofy meatwad.

They kind of do a bit more.

I think El Paso Elsewhere was a little stronger, to be honest, because that genre lends itself better to just meathead dumbass enemies.

Okay.

Yeah, good music, too.

Oh, amazing music in Shogun Shodown, by the way.

Really, really catchy.

And then one other game that's not out yet, but there's a demo available just as a proof of concept.

And it's a concept that I certainly wanted some proof on.

Take

a tactical, you know,

isometric grid.

Put a robot on that shit.

So, you know, imagine you're front mission style, like, you know, grid robot.

And

your action is simultaneous to another robot, and you're creating

yummy hustle style turn-faced movement and fighting.

It's called mecha simil tactics, which is

everything that you need to know is in the war is in the title right there.

Yeah, you and your opponent move at the same time, and you choose between

slashing, stabbing, parrying, dodging, grabbing, beaming.

Imagine anything that Jehuti could do in Zone of the Enders type of thing.

You can charge up a giant ball and toss it.

You can teleport zero shift, you know, you can pepper with missiles.

And

all of it is,

you'll be happy to know that that when the round is done, it plays out smoothly.

Oh, fucking thank God.

God damn it.

And you get to watch the whole fight unfold in real time after it's done.

And it looks great.

That's great.

Yeah.

So right now, again, alpha.

So

you've got the one character and you've got the one robot that you can kind of change the colors on.

You can just jump online and kind of, you know, do matches with like 1v1 or like groups or so.

But like just deciding and playing around people's other decisions and all that shit that I loved about Yomi Hustle

Super present here as well you know grabbing like doing a jab grabbing someone tossing them teleporting behind them to try to continue the combo but I teleported too close so then they just we both get knocked over onto the ground you know or

you're dashing in at me I'm shooting missiles

I'm covering a couple spaces so then you have to like dodge to the side dodge to the side to get in close the distance and you know all that real fun stuff and you do it all um and what worked too as well on the uh the video that's going to come out on on woolly vs is we played around with like five people all in one room just simultaneously fighting and it and it works oh that's great so uh yeah yeah imagine a a Ryomi hustle with mechs and an isometric view and you can do

as more people you can do play like multiplayer free-for-all and stuff really really cool mecha simil tactics is the name of that game

Yeah,

that's what's the stream schedule look like for Woolly Versus this week?

Nothing to announce until later dates.

That sounds wise.

Yeah, because as much as we can do a short thing like this, I cannot do a full streaming day.

Furthermore, this chair is a lot better to sit on than that one.

Oh, yeah, dude.

For real.

So I will let y'all know.

But, you know, we'll see.

What's going on beyond that, though?

I don't know if you heard, but over here in Eastern Canada, there is a daylight savings survey.

And you can go and vote on your

preferred daylight savings outcome because they're thinking of getting

rid of it if enough people want to get rid of it.

And you can choose, if we do get rid of it, which calendar to stick with, minus four or minus five.

So we had that in VC apparently, and it was overwhelmingly get rid of that shit.

And then they were like, okay, we're gonna get rid of that shit, but the US government is also doing a thing to get rid of that shit.

And so that'll go through this year.

And then when they go through, we'll get rid of that because you don't want to fuck up like, you know,

you know.

And then even though everyone in the US hates it also, it just didn't go through at all.

So it just fucking fucking didn't happen.

Damn.

Okay.

And it just got cock blocked.

So what's weird is that, like, not only is it like yes or no, but it's like, if yes, do you want a permanently later sunset or permanently earlier?

I feel like the federal government should handle that so that it doesn't get super weird traveling from Quebec to Ontario or Alberta.

And imagine being in the same time zone, but the moment you cross a border, it changes.

That would get

weird.

Fuck it.

No more time zones anymore.

Sundown in your own town is whatever the fuck time it is.

I'd rather if your town didn't sundown, to be perfectly honest.

Ah, you.

Yeah, but no,

as somebody who I actually,

I like nighttime.

I'm a nocturnal person.

I do my best work and thinking and chilling and whatnot when it's nighttime.

You're almost exclusively alive during the nighttime hours.

Yeah.

But I understand that most people will enjoy and benefit more from more daylight.

So based on that, you know who prefers daylight hours?

Punch Bomb does.

Babies!

Babies do too.

Interesting.

That decision.

Interesting.

Out of our hands.

I see.

Fucking goo goo gaga, time to wake up.

Well,

I'm going to, you know, Punch Bomb is like daylight.

She thrives during sunlight.

And I'm like, okay, most people do as well.

Normal human beings enjoy.

Normal humans.

Normal humans enjoy having a nice long day and having a lot of brightness and sunshine.

So I'm going to vote in favor of that, even though I'm like, eh, more night wouldn't be that bad.

Like, I personally, I don't mind at all.

But I can adjust.

If you make the night later start later, then I'll just stay up later and it'll just keep moving forward.

I'll find a way to crawl into the shadows and,

you know.

Yeah.

but you know what you know what I did I just suffered from horrible sleep deprivation and then drank so much caffeine I almost went blind and it fixed it right up like that okay okay there you go that's one way

but yeah you know I will say this that if you do live in

if you do live in Quebec and you're you can hear this then make sure to go to that survey and and

fill it out and and vote on which daylight savings outcome you would like to happen.

I think everyone would prefer literally any change from the status quo whatsoever on daylight savings.

Because it feels like, I don't care which one you fuckers pick.

Just make me stop changing.

Willie, I got so fucking confused.

It was Sunday.

It was Sunday.

And me and Paige were looking at our toaster, and our toaster said seven o'clock, but all our other devices said six o'clock.

And we're like, did daylight savings just happen?

What happened?

And I went on fucking Blue Sky.

I was like, did it happen?

And everyone's like, it happened last night, dumbass.

And I'm like, I didn't even know.

I didn't even know.

I still like,

I like, you know, gaining an hour.

I hate losing it.

So it's, it's, but it's always a surprise.

And it's always just like, what, what, when, how, what.

Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, we'll see.

They're going to decide by December 1st, I think, is the final date on that.

Anyway, whatever.

That's that.

That's what's up.

That's what's up.

I am chilling until further notice.

That's great, dude.

Just chill the fuck out and relax.

You deserve it.

Did you notice that once we started like this,

that breaks and time off were like, I fucked my leg up, or I'm sick

of instead of, hey, why don't we plan a thing?

We'll do it.

It's like, I can't work.

I can't.

Yeah.

Physical injury.

Like, you know, it's, it's.

Look, I remember when I, when esports teams were like, hey, we have a regimen where you have to get up in the morning and run and exercise and do all this shit.

And it's like, yeah.

Yeah, I remember that.

You know what?

That makes perfect fucking sense that you would be treated the same as any other athlete because you're sitting on a fucking chair.

You know?

Yeah, man.

You said in Terry.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

How about C.

Ah, what's up with me?

All right.

So

today is a big historic day.

November 5th is, as we all know, Elmo the cat's 16th birthday.

Happy birthday, Elmo.

Elmo is old as shit,

and he looks like...

Trash, but I love him and I brush him and he smells and he's the best.

I'm wondering, he's in that time period of a cat.

Don't know if he's like senile or stupid.

You know, like, isn't the answer just yes?

Yeah, the answer might be yes.

The answer might be yes.

It might be yes.

In other news,

it took a little bit,

but

Zangief is home

in his box that he will be living in now.

I originally intended to put him there on a little table over my shoulder

and realized that that would be a massive fucking downer forever.

And so now he hangs out in the living room facing the T V.

He's got a little picture in front of him and he's got his tire.

So that's.

What's his tire?

His is his favorite toy it was a rubber tire okay like like about this big as a kong tire

um so that's that glad he's hope move moving on

uh as for uh culture

this week

um

paige and i ran the gamut of quality on the show this week we played uh the so super massive they made until dawn they made the quarry they made those other games.

And those varied in quality a little bit, huh?

Well, we played The Casting of Frank Stone, a game that we thought would be really cool because it is about Dead by Daylight and it's about the

create, like, you know, the backstory of what's going on in the Dead by Daylight universe, and maybe the creation of a new killer.

And

I'm thinking that maybe

it was a bad sign

that this narrative

experience about the creation of a new Dead by Daylight killer might not have been the best considering that killer was never added to Dead by Daylight.

Okay, hold on.

So, Supermassive took on an original game set in the Dead by Daylight world

with the original Dead by Daylight monsters.

No,

just Frank Stone

as a means to set up a new character that's supposed to maybe that's why, but it's it takes place in the Dead by Daylight universe, and the only monster is Frank Stone.

And would you believe it?

We played it for three and a half hours and

didn't see him,

and nothing happened,

and

uh

nothing occurred,

nothing occurred for 150% of the runtime of Jurassic Park.

Literally,

actually nothing.

We were over half the game's runtime.

Sometimes nothing occurring can be interesting if characters are interesting.

I mean, nothing.

Nothing.

I mean, actually nothing.

Wow.

Like, there are people in the chat that can vouch for me when I say actually nothing.

I mean, actually, nothing occurs for over three and a half hours.

And then

we gave up on it, and I was like, I'm going to watch a guy's YouTube video where he flies through it.

And then I found out it would have been like another hour of nothing

before something happened.

Okay.

So

you are now in position to tell me, what is the batting average on Supermassive at this point?

Bad.

Bad.

All right.

Bad.

Not counting.

counting.

Okay.

Let me see here.

Because I see there's a bunch of little big planet and kill zone stuff.

But in terms of the until dawn post.

Until dawn, thumbs up.

Okay.

Hidden.

Incredible.

One of the best.

Until dawn remake.

Bad.

Don't look at it.

Just play the old one.

Okay.

Hidden agenda.

Mid.

The impatient.

Don't even know what that is.

Okay.

The Dark Pictures Anthology.

Which one?

Yeah, so I guess it matters.

Right.

Man of Medan.

Man of Medan.

Little Hope.

Terrible.

Terrible.

House of Ashes.

Great!

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, weird.

Weird.

Devil in Me?

Bad.

And then Frank Stone.

No, no, then there's The Quarry.

Which which is, which I would call north of mid.

Okay.

I would call, like, ah, it's mid.

And now Frank Stone just abjectly horrible.

So

trending towards mid with some real bad dips, but and one really good one in there: House of Ashes is really great.

Better than, um, better than um original um

until dawn.

Until dawn?

Yeah.

No, Absolutely not!

No way!

Why does this mirror telltale so well?

Well, all of them were written by different people.

And I believe they were all developed under different circumstances with different budgets and different leads.

Man, okay.

Because I'm just like, yeah, we're still talking about Walking Dead season one.

Wolf Among Us and Batman, you know, were fun,

and then there's the others.

We were talking about this when we were doing Frank Stone, and I'm like, I think that the narrative, choose your own adventure genre has way more misses than hits, like, way more

because and we were sitting there like that first season of Walking Dead, and I, and Wooly told me that Batman one was really good.

Borderlands, Borderlands,

Borderlands, yep.

Um, and then Until Dawn, and maybe The Quarry, quarry, depending on your taste, and House of Ashes, and like that's it

for like the whole fucking catalog.

You know,

yeah.

And like, I don't know anyone that can speak to

what's going on with

fucking the other one there.

Don't nod.

Yeah.

But, like,

I had, I have room in my heart for some hella teen adventures in

season one, Life is Strange.

And I don't know that any of the subsequent entries meant anything.

I did not see anyone care about the later ones like they did the first one.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, I have not heard anything good about anyone.

That's like on the outside.

And the first one is divisive enough because there's a bunch of people that are also like, man, fuck that shit anyways on the strength.

It really feels like a genre that people like nail, like coming, like they come out swinging and they're like, Yeah, we got these ideas, and they're great, and then they're like, Well, that was our idea, we're done now.

Well, you know, at the same time, I guess because it's such a narrative experience, it really is all in the directing and writing.

It's like films and movies and in books, and you know, like it's who's in charge of this if it's a different person every time, then yeah, that'll be the most determining factor, I suppose.

So, hey, you want to hear the most fun part about casting a Frank Stone?

The most fun part.

So, Frank Stone, it was,

what do you call it?

It was three and a half hours of nothing.

And on top of that,

it is a six-hour game.

And on top of that, it's full price.

It's full price.

They all are, right?

Because they're like.

No.

Oh, the anthology ones are smaller and shorter.

Yeah.

Okay.

The anthology ones came out out like the whole thing was like a season pass.

Right, okay.

Yeah, no, casting Frank Stone is, oh, my mistake.

It's $40 US.

It's not full price.

It's just horribly overpriced.

I was looking at it in Canada dollars.

I mean, I feel like anytime a game is attempting photorealism,

you're going to get it leaning in that direction.

So, in the context of us going like, God damn, Frank Stone was a a pile of shit.

We decided to check out a different game.

Instead of finishing it, we instead streamed a different game called, you know what?

Hold on a second.

Oh, you called an Audible.

Okay.

We played a game called Mouthwashing.

Ah,

yeah.

A game called Mouthwashing, which is like $10,

is nearly explicitly, nearly perfectly two and a half hours long.

It is a cinematic, narrative, visual, novel, first-person adventure kind of game.

Um, and I will

put the chat for those of you at home that listen to the audio, I just put chat in emote mode.

Uh, if you have not heard about mouthwashing and you like narrative experiences

and horror,

um,

I would tell you to go by and play mouthwashing.

And if you can do this, don't even look at the Steam page for mouthwashing.

Just shut up.

Don't talk to anyone.

Don't look at anything.

And go play mouthwashing right now.

Woolly, to you, as somebody who does some streaming on occasion, I would highly recommend that you, when you are well, throw a single stream of mouthwashing on there because you can blow through that no problem in 2.5 hours.

And that is an A plus experience.

Okay.

You know, the funny part is what you just said and how you recommended that.

I got that energy because I saw you streaming it and I saw a bunch of other people also playing it on

right.

And I was like, huh.

And then I was like, what is this?

What a weird name.

And then I went to

the account and I looked and I saw like about eight seconds of the trailer and some really wild, interesting transitions of horror transitions happened.

And I went, actually, I'm done.

I saw one really good transition occur and I said, I'm interested and I'm not going to look at the rest.

Yes.

That is

my discussion on the content of mouthwashing is that you should go play mouthwashing.

If you can hear the sound of my voice, you should go play mouthwashing.

And it was released in time for Halloween, was it?

Yes.

Okay.

It was.

Cool.

Cool.

Highly recommended.

Nice.

That reminds me,

something

fun.

Well, or rather,

I'm sure

the Halloween vibes are...

you know, different everywhere and for different people.

I've always had these stories about like, you know, watching as, you know, from church house, you can't go celebrate the devil's night.

You can't go celebrate it.

No.

And so, as a result, it's kind of always been not the most important holiday to me because it was just one thing.

It just meant, like, oh, dress-up parties in college.

And then that was kind of the only time it really mattered.

But something cool that

I've noticed and kind of just

saw was that, like, there's some areas of

the city where instead of doing the

street as like where people go and trick-or-treat and stuff, they'll make like an alleyway into like a lit up kind of almost like imagine like a Christmas hallway, but it's a Halloween lit up hallway.

Oh, that's cool.

And everyone

is hanging out in the alleyway of the backyards.

That sounds like a great place to do drugs.

So it's actually where everyone is,

all the kids are running around and having fun, and it's lit, and

it's a festival street thing happening in the alleyways.

It's really cool.

And it's the first time I've ever seen anything like that.

And it's incredibly safe and well set up.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

And some people even have little things for kids to crawl through with a giant pumpkin and stuff.

And it's real, real fun stuff.

So like big A-plus on alleyway Halloween setups.

Dope shit.

Cool.

I would care a lot more if I was

if I had a past, because I'm thinking about it.

I'm like, oh, look, there's parents taking their kids out and going and doing this thing.

I'm like, right.

Of course, you'd have this tradition and care about it more if you had these positive memories of that, as opposed to staring out the window at kids walking around doing that and being like, Yeah.

Well, God says no.

Great Halloween memories.

Now, listen, it's a little late this year for this warning, but if you had no children, if you are a child or you have children, be careful because every year people dastardly people sneak licorice into the candy bowls and you need to be careful of that fucking shit poison did you ending up in children's hands did you know that the original case was there was one parent who snuck licorice into their own kids bags and yeah i know and that's that's how the hysteria started yeah i do know that actually yeah it's like hey this is candy wait this tastes like shit i guess candy's bad warning Tricked him.

All right.

Let's see.

Let's keep it going.

We got to keep it brisk.

I also played the

Horizon remaster

on PC.

It has a couple little tiny issues.

Were you?

I'm allowed.

Whatever.

No, after the FTS.

Just right over my head.

Right over.

Did you prove that you owned it on PlayStation first?

So here's the funny thing.

I turned turned it on and it said, thanks for being part of the PlayStation family.

Do you want to sign in and we'll give you another thing?

And I'm like, oh, wait a second.

When you log in on like Helldivers or Tsushima or whatever, it links your fucking Steam account.

Like you don't even need to do that again.

They just want it linked at all.

My Steam account was created by PSN way back in the day.

Yeah, so you would never be asked to do it.

Yeah.

I didn't actually sign up from Steam independently.

It was just, it was an auto-generated thing.

Still stupid as shit.

Still dumb as fuck.

Oh, yeah, the Horizon Master looks really nice.

And in playing it, I'm like, wow, I'm having a really good time playing Horizon Zero Dawn.

It is a shame that these games get fucking just booted out of your fucking mind.

Every single fucking time.

This time, it came out alongside the fact that I don't give a shit about the new Dragon Age.

So it did not get booted out of my brain when it came out.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, these are really pretty good.

Here, let me just do something actually.

Let me, let me, let me.

Now it's my turn to silence the people.

You've played it, but have you beaten the other one originally?

I have not.

Okay.

Do you know anything about

the setting?

And.

I do.

Is the twist good?

Yeah, that's all right.

Okay.

Because I just.

I'm just.

the twist, the twist is decent,

but the twist,

the level of spite in the twist actually makes it taste nice.

Okay.

Because I guess for all the discussion there is about Horizon, I feel like, you know, we talk about like its release and what it's next to and then the game and then alloy and all this stuff.

But I kind of always have this thing where I'm like, the game is released with this setting that is so, it's a mystery, and it's these fucking robot animals, and we don't know anything about what are watching.

It's a very interesting setting to inhabit.

Yeah, and so, and I'm just like,

I feel like it's been years since anything discussion-related has come up about, like, what is this world and why is it like this?

Yeah.

So, I'm just like, is that secret something compelling?

You know, like,

it's probably a little bit what anyone would expect.

Okay.

But

the,

I'm gonna call it the sub-twist or the personal angle angle to the narrative has a real good spite to it

that gives it a little kick.

Okay.

And you putting this into emote mode is great because if you didn't, the chat would be full of fuck

under, like blank.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Gotcha.

All right.

End of discussion.

You know, I'm sure I'll discover some at some point, but I just, no one ever discusses that part.

So it's just like, there's a huge mystery here.

What's the deal?

Kind of, there's only one, there's only one real discussion, which is, oh, what was it?

And then like, oh, fuck

that.

Okay.

Got it.

Got it.

All right, cool.

End of

Horizon spoiler discussion.

All right.

So that's nice.

And it runs real well, but it does have a little bit of a memory leak, I think.

But they're patching it.

So it's probably going to do well.

Like, performance wise

you know what's not doing well performance wise did you hop on that monster hunter wilds beta over the weekend no

holy shit that game runs like garbage holy fuck

okay all i saw was Max tweeting about how the game has no hit stop and that makes it feel less fun and less good when you hit things.

So there are two discussions to be had here.

There's the discussion that a lot of people are going to skip because they're insane people like Max or myself who are running high-end computers with 4090s in them.

And so, it doesn't matter what the fuck the game runs like, right?

However, everyone else playing the beta,

if you were playing it on console, it runs exactly like you would expect a Monster Hunter game to run, which is kind of bad, but fine.

Right?

So 40 to 60, maybe,

you know, kind of thing.

If you were playing it on the personal computer, well, the system requirements are completely ridiculous.

It

asks that you use something called frame generation to bump up the frame rate, which is ridiculous because that adds a lot of input lag.

People were running into catastrophic bugs.

So there were lots of crashes, but the second one, and here's my favorite one.

The second one is

the game was not attributing RAM correctly to your video card.

So it was loading in every single model as the furthest away LOD version of the model.

So we're talking characters or monsters

that are like

five triangles.

Oh, no.

Is this running on Reach for the Moon?

Yes.

Yeah, okay.

I will probably try and find a fucking photo or some video to show you so you really get a good feel of what I'm talking about here.

Incredibly poorly.

Just

even on my side,

poorly not part of the Monster Hunter legacy.

So, yes and no.

Yes and no.

So depending, world ran like shit.

Rise and Sunbreak ran incredible.

It looks like Wilds is going to run like shit.

Like, bad enough that

I may just grab it on

the console because

it runs like shit.

Hopefully,

it was a beta.

So hopefully it's a little bit better.

Okay.

So.

But just crazy god-awful.

I have to say that lack of hitstop, while it might seem minor,

is the kind of thing that is partially responsible for why I don't like MMOs.

So, to me,

impact and hitstop are huge and mean a lot.

And when I see a video side by side of like swinging at a thing and the thing doesn't react or care at all that you've hit it, oh,

oh, does that make me not feel like the

you know, it just, mm.

So, like, it's a very specific complaint, but I get it, man.

Especially if you used to have it.

When I think there was a,

I think there was a

fucking

world beta or demo at some point that had the exact same hit stop problems.

Okay.

And every single person went, you need to tone that shit back the fuck up.

We need chunky hits.

Yeah.

And then they did that back.

So I would assume they'll listen to people about that kind of thing again.

I'm not too worried about it.

I am now sending you a video of what Monster Hunter Wilds look like on some people's fucking computer.

Okay.

I would describe the technical state of this beta as disastrous.

Didn't I only play two sessions of world or something?

I beat the.

Oof, that looks.

Yeah, that looks pretty bad.

Oh, no.

Wow.

Okay.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

All right.

Let me stick this one in the show notes.

Okay.

Yeah, crazy.

So.

I beat the world

story mode.

Main story.

Main story mode.

So

aside from its

disastrous technical state, which the devs have said is an old version of the game.

It's in a better state now, yada yada.

But also,

it's still very worrying for a release that's in a couple of months.

Hopefully, they really work on optimization quite a bit.

Aside from that, what's actually in the Monster Hunter Whale Wilds beta is crazy.

It's

so good.

It is so hot.

It is shit hot.

The trajectory towards character action game but monsters continues.

So, right off the bat,

your Palico talks human English words.

Second of all, your hunter talks human English words.

They used to your hunter is a character.

The palico's subtitles were always English, though, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

But they would just make noises.

But now they speak.

And your character speaks.

Your hunter also

is a character.

They are not a completely blank slate anymore.

They are a speaking, acting character.

You have little dialogue trees when you talk to NPCs and ask them questions.

They act in cutscenes.

And a particular note to me, in the game's opening cutscene, your monster hunter hit a monster with a weapon,

which is the first time ever.

They always roll around and like you know ignore it.

They smacked a fucking monster with a with a greatsword.

And I'm like, thank you.

They also have the so you play, did you play Rise at all

once?

Yes, I did.

So they had the palamutes there where you would ride around on the little doggy, right?

Those are cool.

So now they have sacreds, which are not chocobos.

They're blue.

They're definitely not a chocobo.

I saw

that you get a bird mount you hop on, and the bird mount is there.

You hop on the bird mount, and it will just chase whatever fucking monster you're after automatically.

And as you are on the bird mount, you can use your slinger to grab any material you see in your vicinity.

It is essentially your auto-driving car.

Okay, so you're not to fight on it.

It is transit.

Right, okay.

Worlds introduced the flies, the tracking flies?

Yes.

Right.

Which was horrible.

Okay.

And so this is kind of like another

streamlining that process.

Streamline and just make it about the fight.

Okay.

People asking, can you mainly control it?

Yes.

The biggest deal, though, for the bird is that the bird is part of a larger structural change.

You're not going to be going back to base camp and doing all of your shit in base camp and then

going on an expedition to the stage.

Now, the base camp is inside the stage.

So,

your massive base camp that has the blacksmith, that has your camp, that has all your items and your item box and all that shit.

It's

out in the stage itself.

And

when you are going to get quests, the way that you get monster quests is by hopping on your bird and running around and seeing a monster.

And when you see a monster, it goes, here's a capture quest or an attack quest for this monster.

Your handler,

the girl with the glasses,

Alma, she just follows you.

She looks cool.

Around.

Yeah, she looks really cool, but she follows you.

So when you are done fighting a monster and you want to start a new quest, she is literally standing right next to you.

Oh, wow.

So you can go, I would like to start a new quest.

In the world, okay.

Yeah, and so the basic thing is that you are just in the stage for extremely long periods of time.

When you start a new quest and you'd be like, well, where do I get my supply items?

You know, the free items you would get at a quest,

they're in the sacreds bag.

So they just spawn in on the bird.

So I feel like World

started that idea a bit with like some of like there's that later map where it was like three different areas all connected in one and you could kind of like kill a hunt count something and then just run around and begin another one.

Yeah, that was called

expeditions.

Expeditions, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, this is just like a very large expansion of that.

But the biggest,

most importantest part of the bird is that the bird keeps a second weapon in their pack.

So if you hop on the bird and hit right on the d-pad, you will switch to your other weapon.

Oh, wow.

Two styles.

Okay.

So

you are to always be assumed to have two on you.

Nice.

Which is a big fucking change.

It's a middle of a fucking change.

Yeah.

Okay.

This isn't working.

I'm going to switch to this.

Do you, like, if you've made any buffs or things that are particular,

do you lose those?

They would stay.

They'd stay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So when you talk about how it leans harder into the

action aspect,

basically I'm like, so does that mean that Insect Glaive is now more attack on Titaning?

Yes.

Okay.

It does mean that.

Okay.

So there's a couple of new mechanics that are going on that I'm not going to remember the correct names for because they're never fucking mentioned in the thing.

The only reason I remember the names of these things is because I saw like a single Reddit post on them.

But

everybody gets new mechanics.

So I typically just play Greatsword, right?

If you block an enemy's strikes enough times, there are certain strikes with all of the blocking weapons that you will clash and engage with a struggle with the monster.

So you will use your shield or your sword and be like, and knock it over

for a flinch.

You also have for the evasion ones like Insect Glaive and Dual Blades, you have perfect dodges, like you have frame perfect dodges where you will glow blue like you're doing a fucking alpha super

and your moveset will change when that happens.

You also have something called an offset slash or strike where if you do certain moves and you time it correctly with the enemy's assault, you will blow through them and knock them on their ass.

Like

enemies that have that on

enemies that have that big

overhand

strike?

Okay.

So Greatsword has a diagonal up swing.

Yes, yes.

If you clash those, you will win the clash, knock the enemy over in a big, huge strike, and then your character will auto-dash and run at them to do a new move.

Okay, okay.

So basically,

I'm thinking of when you charge up a Greatsword horizontal swing and you time it with a monster charging at you.

Yeah, now there's a specific mechanic for blowing through them.

Right, okay.

And it has to be the right move against the right move.

Okay.

On top of that, there's something called focus mode, which I didn't really understand.

So you remember you could do breaks, like you could break a horn, you could break teeth, you could break arms, right?

So that's been changed.

to something called wounds and so you will you will build up little slashes and areas of like

long-term damage all over the monster.

And when you hit left trigger, you gain like a full aiming reticle

that your attacks will always hit the center of that reticle.

So if you want to always pop it in the face, you can force your attacks to aim it for the face.

And once that area starts to glow red, you hit R1 to do a special wound break attack, which will

damage that part further and always flinch.

Okay.

So So if you're trying to target tail, you can do so more accurately.

Yeah.

You can bash on the tail and then you say, oh, the tail is red.

And then you do a wound break on it and it'll do more damage to the structure as well as flinch it guaranteed.

Nice.

Okay.

And this system all combines with a bunch of other ones.

So like,

for example, did you ever use the insect glaive for long?

Just the training.

Just a training.

So insect Glaive had like this problem in that you had this downtime where you're like, I throw my bug out, I have red, and now my attacks are better.

I throw my bug out, now I have white energy, so now my legs are better.

I throw my bug out, I got orange, and so now my stamina is better.

And but when you have all three,

you turn into a better version of the insect glaive, right?

But there was always that downtime that rotated every minute where you're like, oh, I'm almost out of insect juice.

Better start pinging them, but then the enemy can move and it's a little annoying.

The wound break move for Insect Glaive is you slash the enemy, jump back, and throw the bug so hard it gets all three

Insect Glaive juices and brings it back to you immediately.

Wow.

Okay.

Nice.

So style-specific or weapon-specific

buffs or benefits.

Yeah, so the Great Sword one, like you'll slash the wound and then you'll drag the sword the entire length of the monster.

Cool.

When you're describing the

shield clash moments there,

defensive clash, so like, would that replace, so a charge blade, for example, when you put it into shield mode and you lock down and do the super block,

would that replace that perfect card?

No, what's happening is when you are doing those blocks, you were building up an invisible meter, like the mount meter.

So you know when like jumping attacks would cause like an invisible mounting meter to build up?

Yes, okay.

Like this, but it's a clash meter.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

So I could go on and on about all the different weapons and all the things they have, but just a quick couple.

If you perfectly time a lance hit, they auto-hit back with the shield, and then there's a counter.

The greatsword can now use focus mode to turn any greatsword attack 180 degrees from where they started, just in the middle of the swing.

The bow no longer uses ammunition and instead has you marking enemies to shoot homing missiles at them.

Just all sorts of zany shit.

Some of it's like directly from Dragon's Dogma.

Would these mechanic expansions go hand in hand with difficulty increasing?

Probably.

Usually it does.

Okay.

Like the charge blade is now so complex that I loaded it up and I couldn't figure it out.

Because

it has charging the shield,

it has charging the sword, sword.

And now it also has charging the axe separately.

The axe has its own bit.

Nice.

And the only way to charge the axe is to do a wound break attack.

And the wound break attack is you fucking jam the charge blade into the monster's weak spot and the fucking buzz saw goes off.

And does this all build to a charged, amplified, super god, super fucking

discharge

yes it does that thing is so fucking sick

so yeah the game itself seems like it's oh man this definitely like I prefer the heavier monster hunter games than the hyper ones

I prefer

for you and worlds to generations and rise

but

I just hope it runs a little better because it's fucking bad though if if you're if you're playing on a high-end PC and you can play it and your friends are on console, this version does have cross-play.

So you'll be able to play with whoever, whenever.

Betas have changed significantly to final in the past.

That's true, but Dragon's Dogma, which is an open world game that came out on the same engine, did run like complete garbage.

So

how's the food porn?

Oh, you're cooking your own food now.

And

every ingredient that you add onto your own food changes the animation.

Oh.

So like you're cooking like a slab of food, like a slab of meat.

And if you're like, I'm going to run, I'm going to throw mushrooms on that shit.

Well, then there's mushrooms in there.

Okay.

No more miascular chef.

There might be.

'Cause I the the open beta didn't show the home base.

It only showed the away base.

But it's also not playing

meat.mp4.

No, it is not playing meet.mp4.

Okay.

But yeah, no, it looks, seems, feels incredible, amazing.

But I would very much like to see them come out and be like, look, the game runs better now.

I like it.

Did you appreciate it?

Did you do any mixing and matching of gender armor?

I didn't, but I went into the system and they had a bunch of armors

available.

And yeah, no, it works exactly as you would expect.

And they're not gendered anymore.

They're just like, do you want the one that's bulkier or the one that's slimmer?

It's per piece.

It works really great.

The fashion that game's going to be great.

Monster fashion has never been thriving.

Been easier.

More than now.

Okay, cool.

That's kind of it for Pat.

If you want to go down to twitch.tv/slash PatStaresAt this week on Twitch,

tomorrow I'm going to be finishing that one dungeon in Metaphor.

And then after that, I'll be doing a sponsored stream with

some UFO50 afterwards, and then Alan Wake, and then more Metaphor.

Yeah.

Oh, you know what?

I should mention in Monster Hunter,

one of the larger monsters called Ray Dow.

It is, you know how monsters in that game are always based off a concept?

Okay.

They're always always based off like this one's an airplane.

This one's a Jeep or, you know, whatever.

This one's a railgun.

A B-52 bomber.

Yeah, this one is a railgun.

Okay.

And it pinches two horns on its head to fire off a bolt of electricity.

And it has the regular shot, which is very scary.

And then it has the really ridiculously long charged-up shot that turns the screen white.

But because you're in the desert, if it misses you and hits the sand, it will glass the sand so hard that you can use them as platforms to do jumping attacks.

That's pretty fun.

Nice.

Okay.

Okay.

Cool.

I also forgot to talk.

I did DD session zero last week.

And I have to come away from it.

Like, what was I worried about?

It's DD dorks.

I'm a dork.

I talk to dorks all day.

This is true?

It went well.

Okay.

uh but more importantly I was worried that uh because of my prior history that I was going to be the character that wants to

break off from the narrative and cause problems and everybody get mad

and then that worry just evaporated because the guy sitting to my left was like when do I get to kill something

and I was like

Some people might be annoyed by that, but I am hit with a huge sense of relief that I can rely on this guy to be causing encounter issues rather than myself.

So

true neutral is what you are then?

I guess so.

I see.

Anyway, a proper DM can account for all kinds, right?

We'll see.

We'll see how many times my paladin friend is magically restrained from interacting in certain encounters.

Sure, sure.

What do we got for news this week?

Teleporting spell brings you back to the party.

Oh, look,

your side quest has suddenly ended.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Before that, let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

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Yeah,

give me two.

I should mention, by the way, before we leave, that Paige got a plant, a big plant, it's hanging out in the kitchen, and it's alive.

It's been alive for months.

Hey,

there you go.

Good, good.

That is all.

That is the update.

You know,

you gotta keep an eye on those things, right?

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Oh, no, it's dying.

Oh,

it's definitely got leaves falling off.

But it is currently alive.

Okay, okay, okay.

Because, like, the state of the plant can be used as blackmail material.

No.

Anyway,

let's take a quick second.

Let me just use the bathroom and

drink

our B.

Okay.

Hey, before we start, I have a piece of news.

Hey, did you know that if you want to transfer your Steam save file of vampire survivors to your phone, you literally just need to rename it from save file.save to save file unity.save and put it in your vampire survival folder?

It's true.

That's it.

On an Android.

Yep.

Just literally fucking rename it and drag it over.

That's it.

That probably doesn't work on an iPhone.

It doesn't.

Unless it's jailbroken.

Interesting.

Okay.

Cool.

It's kind of like a Balatro situation, though, where I'm like, I don't mind getting a second one going.

So here's the thing.

I started to do that, and then someone told me about the save file.

I'm like, oh, okay, I'll transfer it over.

And then when I was about to start like doing the Amogus or

Contra DLC first, at some point, Vampire Survivors lets you just be like, you know what?

Turn off every single item in the base game.

Turn off every item in any DLC you want.

So do you want to start the Ode to Castlevania with literally just Ode to Castlevania?

Just turn all that shit off.

You can't pretend it's not a sequel if you can turn off the old game and just play new content exclusively.

I will say, I was not happy.

I was not happy that my Google news alerts spoiled me on Ode to Castlevania.

I also got spoiled.

You also got that spoiled, huh?

I also got spoiled.

Because it talked about voice acting, and I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

This is Vampire Survivors.

Well, yeah.

So

it's, although, like, the fact that there's spoilers in Vampire Survivors is crazy.

There's fucking spoilers, man!

In our goddamn cookie clicker.

All right.

So, yeah, just

a couple, couple quick stories, I suppose.

The big one:

Queen Dizzy has arrived in Guilty Gear Strive, and with that, there appears to be a page out of the Dragon Ball Fighters book.

The recent patch in Strive is fucking bonkers.

I would say that this is a very brave balance patch.

The Kusoga patch meta is real now.

It feels like.

This is too far.

It feels like we're kind of doing the like, all right, let's fuck it up and get everybody talking a bit.

Because Guilty Year Strive has basically reinvented a bunch of characters and drastically changed how the game and how people work.

Well, I didn't know that Kai needed a full-screen infinite, but here we are.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so there's that little video that you can watch, which is the

Welcome to the Circus or whatever video.

But, like, essentially, so Kai in Dragon Install now, when he does the supercharged fireball, that's an infinite.

That needs to go.

That's just bad.

Can I just raise my hand here and shame some people in the chat?

I'm seeing Kusoga Gear or Guilty Kusoga, which is like, no, it's Kai Kusoge.

Come on.

Come on.

That'll do.

That'll do.

But, but

as a whole, Kusogir is modus now.

Because, so for starters, for starters, Dizzy is in the game,

and they've showed off her stuff where it's like, oh, yeah, that's Dizzy.

She's got Necro.

She's got Undine.

The wings are there.

She can shoot out

the ice and the fire and all those little things.

You know, we used to talk a lot together and the names of her moves, all that stuff you remember.

And then she does this move called Wings of Light.

Which Saejam says isn't even that good.

Okay, so

here's the thing.

It depends.

Are you good?

Because if you're...

There's real and there's not real.

Moves can be considered real or not real.

One might argue that if you stand there and don't touch the character for 10 seconds, you deserve to get hit, right?

It's a very fast game.

But also, people that are very good can set up situations that make it hard to avoid.

Wings of Light.

Two wings appear behind Dizzy.

And if she doesn't get touched, if she doesn't get hit for 10 seconds, she can block, but she can't.

And she can attack, but she can't get hit.

If she doesn't get hit for 10 seconds,

there's an area around Dizzy where if she gets close to you, it just sucks your life away if she's standing there.

It just does unavoidable, unblockable, ridiculous damage.

And it's not, your character is not getting hit.

They're just standing there, and their life is getting

vacuumed away.

Yeah, so you just die.

It's completely.

And it goes down at the speed of like Nago Ryuki's blood rage

life drain.

It's really fast and scary.

So I joke, but in the video where Sajam talks about it, he did say something that I very wholeheartedly agree with: is that this is a win-more move.

Yeah, sure.

If you're good enough to keep them off you for the full 10 seconds, you probably were gonna win, and now you're gonna win real, real hard.

Yeah, it uh, it costs her full tension, so it takes her full super bar.

Um, she can look whenever you do it, it drains the whole thing down, right?

And the more super meter she has, the more life you're gonna lose at full damage.

I think it takes about 66% of your of your life bar.

And um, yeah,

don't fall asleep for 10 seconds and don't get put on the wall and forced to hold

this insane mix, right?

But the thing is, is that you're like, that's a lot.

That's crazy.

What's going on with the rest of the cast?

Stupid shit.

And it just turns out they said, fuck it.

What if we reinvented everything from the ground up?

Potemkin players are absolutely on Sudoku watch, right?

Big,

big,

big rough day because Potemkin, we saw him get the armored Potemkin Buster, which is his big command grab that does

insane damage.

A million life, yeah.

He can now do that while you're trying to hit him, and he'll grab right through it.

And a bunch of

other things have gotten much stronger for him, too.

But why?

What did he lose?

He lost the ability to do his Kara buttons, which is

basically by quickly tapping light kick,

between kick, right?

Like, just I think,

he would slide forward a little bit before doing any of his other special moves.

And that little bit of extra range made a huge difference to all of his moves.

Hey, I'm going to say something real controversial.

Now, I don't play a lot of Guilty Gear Strive, but when I did do it, I played Potemkin.

And I tend to play Potemkin in Guilty Gear games, and I play grapplers in games in general.

Kara throw on your main throw sucks shit to actually do.

Like, it's great as an offensive move, and like, it's an objectively strong option,

but it fucking sucks to play.

It's annoying.

A lot of people.

I don't like it.

A lot of people talked about how the biggest problem with losing this is that the muscle memory they've developed over the last couple of years is now gone for combos and stuff, right?

Well good.

It goes back to what it should have been in the first place.

So for anybody who's like, just to

describe what the fuck the difference is between what this word

cowra means or doesn't, when you go dual one, let's rock, right?

When the round starts, if Potemkin just does his big command grab to you, it'll miss.

It'll miss.

But if he presses 6K, that's what it is.

If he presses forward and kick really quickly and then does the command grab.

Slide just close enough to grab.

It'll grab you.

So like the moment the fight starts, he can grab you immediately by pressing forward kick

really quickly before doing the command grab, right?

And that's...

I'm seeing some folks say that like this is a skill issue.

It's actually not because his Kara cancel was super easy.

It was really, really easy.

It was very lenient.

It was so lenient that I feel like it was like intentional that this was the case.

And that's why his forward kick was like it would slide him forward so far.

I don't like it.

It doesn't feel as satisfying.

I want to churn butter and slap the fucking button and have them die.

I don't think it was intentional.

And the reason why is because

when you're talking about just his big Potemkin buster, that's one thing.

But it affects all of his other specials.

And a major one was Mega Fist, right?

So Potemkin has a move where he hops and then shoves his fist down.

And he can go forward and backward.

Forward or backward.

And forward or backward are a little bit different from each other, right?

Like the speed that they come out at and how quickly they recover is different.

Yeah, but because of his Kara stuff, he actually had six different versions of that move.

It was crazy.

You could do the backwards moving one, but actually make it move forward a little bit and make it work.

Which was great.

That was,

yeah, and that was not intended.

They did not want him to have like all these crazy versions.

And some of the versions allowed you to do longer combos than he originally was expected to be able to do.

I'm of the opinion that we should remove Karas and instead just give the new throw range to Potemkin anyway.

I think Potemkin should be able to grab you from three or maybe four character lengths away because his arms are really big.

Well,

they eventually basically were the idea of he needs it was more or less baked in over time because um, yeah, apparently it's like mentioned in the tutorial and then a lot of like the fact that he was still not dominating competitively or whatever, regardless.

All that aside, like, they've made it so that now it turns out that the new version of this character is terrifying and can absolutely destroy you with all the better moves he has.

Great.

You just don't have to do that specific Kara thing anymore.

Fantastic.

That's a win.

You just got to learn a different version of the character.

I think if grapplers are bottom tier, that their throws be increased in damage and range until they land in the top 10.

That's how I think you should balance fighting games.

Okay, what do you want his weakness to be?

I don't care.

Shut up.

We can deal with that when we're not a problem at tournaments.

No problem.

All right.

Okay, so

what if when he lands his command grab, his life goes to one?

He drops to zero.

sure sure so great fine so naguryuki my my big samurai boy uh in the meantime got some wild changes that changed him drastically as well uh the biggest simplest ones are his um

his heavy slashes so all the big full screen samurai slices that he does he used to be able to like combo

into those moves.

He used to be able to do it and cancel it into special moves and stuff like that.

Now you can't do that anymore.

It's just one big hit and that's all you get.

So he's like a samurai showdown character.

But if his blood meter is right at the tip, tip, tip and he hits you with one of those, it does like a third of your life.

Great.

Fair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then the other thing they did is

they basically made it so that

when you forcefully make yourself

fill up his blood meter and he pops it and goes crazy,

your ability to continue continue the combo afterwards exists.

So you can

force the blood pop and do these crazy plays where essentially

you're trying to guarantee the kill or you die because

your life starts draining and then you do his old.

He had a big special super that's like the home run swing batter up, you know, and it does a ton of damage.

Now when you do that super, your life drops to zero.

It drops to

one, basically.

And you either kill with it or you're fucking done

fair fair so the character's archetype when you pick them on the character select screen is one shot and this is what it means is essentially you land a hit and you better cash out or you die and that's all this character is about fair

um

absolute madness yeah heaven or hell you know i like this

i like this era of like fighting game patches come out and you're like i don't even know what the game is anymore it's like a brand new game like the old game never even happened It's crazy.

You see, you know what?

All the big boys are really getting the most

touched here because those are the two, right?

And then Gold Lewis, fucking

gold Dick Lewinson himself.

Now he has those behemoth typhoons, which if you remember, he swings the coffin.

On this behemoth typhoon.

For this behemoth typhoon.

So they were very good, very strong, and he could pressure you really, really aggressively with them.

Now,

what he can do is, before he just had a little security meter at the bottom, and it made some of his moves better over time.

He can now spend that to cancel one coffin swing into another.

And

he gets to do, I think he spends, he can do up to four of them.

And so what you see now are these combos where he's helicoptering around the screen.

Like, combined with the ice on the ground from Dizzy, he can slide and just do full behemoth behemoth behemoth behemoth behemoth into down with the system and you're dead and you're like

it's crazy it's so nuts and you've never seen it's fair is what it is he's basically fucking uh uh uh Chaoyun fatting his way around the screen like big man is now nimble and fast and terrifying um behemoth on ice yes is

what we get to see uh it's crazy It's crazy that they gave him that.

He didn't need it, but here we are.

He has it anyway.

You know, and then other wacky stuff.

They gave Chip a zipline that he can just jump on top of and run around like a clown now.

Wait, what?

Really?

Like, he needs...

Oh my god.

Literally, in the middle of the fighting game, he creates a zipline and he can jump on it.

And then run on it upside down or right side up.

Like, yeah.

You know, it's nuts, man.

It's absolutely nuts.

They just, they went crazy on the game.

A bunch of cool stuff like that and crazy things.

And damage is also extremely high.

So there's a lot of combos you're seeing that do almost pretty much like touch of death combos are now much more like common in a way.

Okay.

And

you're seeing, and the thing is, you're seeing all these kind of really crazy videos and stuff.

Everything that's that's nuts so far,

there are escapes to them.

You have to know where the gaps are, where the holes are, how to avoid it, you know, but essentially, you can just die way easier than you ever could.

And a lot of the cast can everyone's jealous of TNF, man.

Hey,

I'm always in favor of wilding out, you know, in these fighting games.

Great.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think these types of patches should drop before major tournaments.

And I mean like morning of.

That's what I fucking think.

I think people should be fucking forced to figure it out on the fly.

The idea that picking Nago Ryuki is now just going, yo, rock, paper, scissors, flip a coin, let's play, is insane to me.

Like, it's just like

he, you know, depending on where you're at on the screen and what you do, in most cases, as long, like, if you have a burst, you can stop me from doing my big touch of death combo.

But if you don't, and I, I'm nice with it, and I'm perfect, and I land everything right, you're going to die.

And if I fuck up, then I should die as well.

You should not allow me to come back from that.

And then that's the whole thing.

You're not going to hurt me.

I'll hurt myself.

Thank you very much.

Anyway, Guilty Gear is going crazy.

It's crazy.

And this is the first of the new characters because after this comes Venom, and then

what's her name?

Unika from the anime.

And then last is going to be Edge Runners.

Lucy.

Right, Lucy.

Lucy Edgerunners.

And then,

yeah, just the only other

thing I saw,

Kojima has big,

big thoughts on Joker 2.

Usually his tweets, you can tell by how long the text is as whether or not he liked the movie.

And it seems like he liked it enough to discuss that he thinks over the next 10 to 20 years, the reputation of Folly Adu will change.

I don't know, Kojumbo.

That movie seems universally reviled.

I really want to go and find out now.

Because Tarantino also loves it.

I saw.

Oh, that means nothing.

I'm curious.

I'm curious.

That means less than shit.

I want to know what you see here.

You know, what are you looking at exactly?

He loves it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the fact that Kojima

said he liked it, like made news articles,

which is quite funny.

Nintendo announced Nintendo Music.

What the fuck are they doing?

Just put that shit on Spotify, you fucking dinosaurs.

No, because if we make our own music app, then this gives us the leeway to take down Gilva Sunner, to take down the Metroid music database,

to take down other channels that have been hosting this music for a long time.

To be fair to Nintendo,

you would be like, who would run an app on their phone to just play Nintendo music?

But for Nintendo, there is a specific subgenre of freak that believes that Nintendo is all video games and thus the only soundtrack you would ever

need to listen to.

That person does exist.

Now that I have the Nintendo thing on my phone, that's all I need to listen to.

I have

there's a member in my extended family that is one of those folks that is absolutely super thrilled.

They come off like culty, don't they?

Well, it's more just like I was really, I was a Nintendo kid hard growing up because I had every reason to be, right?

But I, well, yeah, dude, you grew up in the fucking 90s, man.

Nintendo was like

90% of all the good shit.

It was all the good shit.

It was all the good shit.

It was just, yeah.

You know, now when the options are available, you're like, okay, well, because like Sega kids were lying to themselves

and they were classes.

Not the ones that played sports games.

No, no, no.

If you played sports games.

Which was every kid that had a Genesis because man.

I said it once and I'll say it again.

Genesis won in the hood.

Oh, man.

Make no mistake.

Night and day on those sports games.

But that aside.

What the fuck are we talking about?

Of course you're a Nintendo.

Those X-Men games are pretty great.

We're all Nintendo kids.

Like, there's so much good shit.

But yeah, there came a point where it's like, oh, well, there's good shit elsewhere too.

So we just got to be real about this.

You know?

Yeah, hanging on at this point is just goofy.

It's the video game equivalent of a Disney kid.

Sorry, Disney adult.

But shoving up this

shoving the

soundtracks up on Spotify is what it's fine for every other game company.

Like Capcom has been doing that.

But we're Nintendo.

Yeah.

So yeah, there you go.

Anyway,

usually

whenever they do something like this, it follows with a DMCA takedown of a major YouTube channel as well.

So we know what the deal is in the end.

Don't be surprised if that pops up.

And

yeah, don't expect any news from BioWare on N7

Day.

They're going to be quieter after

Vailguard.

I really got to say,

any company that does a fucking themed day for their community, like N7 Day, is just like opening themselves up for like a decade of people being super annoyed.

What's gonna be this year on N7 Day?

Is it nothing again?

I think, though,

if you drop a game that, if you, like, so Velga, some people are enjoying it.

If you drop a game that people aren't disappointed in, then you can buy some silent time.

Yeah.

You know, you can,

you can, you can lay in the cut a little bit and chill.

Not that I'm excited to see a big Return to Shepard trailer necessarily.

I could not be less interested in Return to Shepard specifically.

If they showed off Mass Effect and they showed off anything

that's not Shepard, like literally anything, I would be more excited than if they're like, Commander Shepard is back.

It's just the problem.

I completely agree because I hate retreading old stupid ground that you don't need to retread.

But the last new ground that they treaded also sucked.

So you're like, oh no, you already tried the new thing and you did it badly.

And you also didn't do enough.

Let me play a goddamn alien, please.

Just let me play a fucking Turiya.

So please.

Anyway,

we shall see.

But yeah.

I guess

news in the next year for whatever that Mass Effect thing is going to be.

But

sure.

Well, Valgard seems to be doing relatively well.

Yes.

So BioWare's sword of Damocles has been risen a few feet.

Dragon Age is no longer

a

dead franchise?

Is that the term?

Would you say?

I don't know.

That's a weird fucking franchise because it felt like it was always really successful, but also dead.

Like it just existed in a quantum state.

Well, I mean, if it's being, if people are enjoying it and if it's like not immediately a wash, then that beats the last

attempts and entries, right?

The general feeling that I'm getting from people like Gene and like KZ is that this is a cool beat-em-up

with a long story.

This is not

a BioWare RPG, and that,

in fact, those days may be gone.

Okay,

it's all going to be full action from this point forward.

Yeah, so if you want to play BioWare RPGs, go

play Larry and games, I I guess.

I think Baldur's is just going to forever be that unfair comparison point at the end of every discussion.

It's like, yeah, you can't, like, even when it comes, like, even things where it's just-I don't know how unfair that is.

But for everything,

for

the characters, for the story, for the world, for the options, for support, for support, support after launch.

For writing, you know, I mean, the bits where it's just like the only thing I've bits of like where it's like, your heart's in the right place with your writing here, but if you don't sound like a human being, it's going to be weird.

Baldur's Gate.

I would say that

what appears to be happening is that Dragon Age

Vailguard is a super smooth, slick, well-produced,

polished to a mirror shine.

Apparently, it runs incredibly well and has almost no bugs.

Like, it is fucking super smooth

game.

And metaphor is that game that everyone I know who is playing it is like, yeah, this part's a little annoying or unlocking this is a little fucky, but oh shit, metaphor, though, ah,

like it just has that fucking that spark.

Yeah, I guess it's just because I feel like

I forgot, like, you know,

I feel like years of unfair comparisons to things

in podcast discussions has just led me to be like, and from now on, everything could be like, yeah, well, Baldur's Gate 3.

Yeah, it's this weird thing of like, DNF came out and DNF's pretty good.

But is DNF as good as Street Fighter 2 was in 1991?

Like, what the f?

Like, Overwatch is pretty all right, but is it making the impact that StarCraft did in 98?

Like, that's fucking not fair, except that was made by the same company, so it's actually super fair completely.

And like, when you're comparing Baldur's Gate 3 to Dragon Age, it is actually fair because the games had the same length of dev time,

and BioWare used to make the Baldur's Gate games.

They could have kept making Dragon Age games in the old way, and they could have just made Baldur's Gate 3.

They could have done it if they wanted.

But was the previous Baldur's Gate entry something that put the franchise on life support?

No.

Then

you were in good grace.

Inquisition actually did really well, despite its issues.

Okay.

It did really well.

Okay.

The really only blight is the Dragon Age 2 Revenge of Shit Mountain.

Which is the real subtitle for that game.

I don't know if a lot of people know that.

Wow, that's news.

That's crazy.

Yeah, it is.

No, but that's it.

It's a different feeling if this long period of of time happens.

But the last thing that was released here was good.

And the last thing here was just like, fuck this.

I don't care anymore.

You know?

So.

Anyway, all right.

Larian's on an upward trajectory, and they've been on a really straight, like,

the line just is climbing.

Like, div one to div two to Baldur's Gate.

So, like, the expectations for whatever Larian makes next is going to be absurd.

It's probably going to be Divinity 3.

That's probably what they're going to make.

I mean,

they've bought enough goodwill to fucking

spend this equal amount of time doing something

like else,

dude.

Like, Wooly, I don't know if you played the early access version of Baldur's Gate 3, but when I played the final release, I'm like, did you guys throw away the entire old tutorial?

Like, holy shit.

You know,

the escaping from the ship used to be like a 20-room mini dungeon?

Like, it was a fucking chapter of the game.

Wow, okay.

And then there was like, yeah, it's not working.

Toss it.

Damn.

Two rooms.

Fucking ridiculous.

All right.

Anyway.

That'll do.

Also, we talked about

the new...

the new Christian, the new Catholic mascot, Luce,

last time.

I was wrong.

People are

the memes.

The memes have fucking turned it.

I have to say.

I gotta admit, when I see her with the two sticks doing the Alexander Anderson.

I got God in anime on my side.

The Helsink pose.

Yeah, that's good.

She's chilling with fucking.

Yeah, I'm like, all right.

All right, Catholic Church.

All right.

You got yourself God in anime.

Exactly.

You know, Catholic Church should have a goddamn regular anime.

That would be good for them, I think.

Just like produce a whole damn Lucha anime.

Just do it.

I mean,

I would say that with this Pope, they're closer than ever.

That's true.

All right, we'll take a quick letter over here.

Castle.

When's the Pope going to get his Vtuber?

Oh,

oh, that's actually what we're...

Yes.

Yeah, the Lucha into a Vtuber on Twitch, and then

guesting with the Pope, doing a special sermon.

And then they're going to be like, yo, the views are through the roof.

Everyone's popping off.

They love it.

We need need to get that collab going.

And then

we get our Pope V2.

There's rumors that Gura may be retiring, but is she moving on to better and higher callings?

Oh, graduation, huh?

Yeah.

Graduating into the light of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Wow.

Damn.

Okay.

Okay.

Here we go.

You know, I mean, I don't know if you saw that clip of, I don't know who it was, but uh,

it's like someone this Japanese girl was like,

I was so into Ava that I wanted to read the reference material, so I read the whole Bible.

That's not

because I, you, I read the whole Bible to learn the lore.

That's shit all to do with it.

It has nothing to do with it.

You know, sometimes you want to check out the source material.

I'm like, God damn.

Man, auto-punked like a whole generation of people would fuck.

Like, they're aliens.

The angels, they're fucking space aliens, guys.

They're not ain't.

Oh, fuck it.

CastleSuperbeastavail at gmail.com if you want to send a letter.

And yeah, I'll just grab one here from Shygar, who says,

excuse me.

Yeah, Shygar says, hey, Pat and Woolley.

I've been fans of you guys since high school, over 10 years, but I've been fans of Mega64 even longer, since 2005, to be honest.

Recently, they announced that they're out of funding and weeks away from shutting down.

Please give them a shout out and direct people to their Twitch stream and YouTube channel.

No doubt they're fans too and definitely need any help they can get.

Thank you so much.

Yeah,

Mega 64 rules.

I don't know what's going on, but fuck you.

I know what's going on.

They do charity fundraisers and they got slammed by like tens of thousands of dollars of fraudulent chargebacks.

Oh, which just put their shit in the ground.

That fucking sucks from donation chargeback cancellations that go through and then undone.

Okay.

Fuck.

Okay.

Well, Mega 64 is awesome, and

I will

blindly be like, yeah, hey, whatever.

Absolutely.

They deserve so much more because they were killing it before YouTube was a thing.

And as a result, sharing QuickTime media videos and clicking on fucking website embeds doesn't lead to the same though.

I think they're doing all right now because I saw them hanging out with Genius Kojumbo literally this morning.

Well, that's what I was like.

I'm like, is Rocco hanging out with Kojima because they're in trouble?

Is Ludens going to save Mega 64?

Yeah, probably.

Because that'd be fucking sick.

Okay.

Yeah, that'd be nice.

Man, imagine you're playing Death Stranding 2 and you go up to a fucking

bunker and Rocco just shows up on the fucking

hologram.

Yeah.

You know what?

God bless.

That's what I hope is going on right there.

I hope that the crew gets their way into Death Death Stranding to that'd be nice.

They could do the pizza quest.

You can second setup of the pizza quest.

You know, or just a quest that's just called Why No White Panther?

There you go.

Yeah, there it is.

There it is.

Then you, as you get there,

just goes, oh, yeah, okay.

No, what?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

I thought.

I thought.

I don't know.

You're right.

That's good.

I got to say, there's something really overtly hilarious about not just why no White Panther, but as far forward in Death Stranding 2's universe, there's a guy still going, so why wasn't there a White Panther?

Bro, it's been like 55 fucking years.

Calm down.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm going to call it there.

All right, great.

My body's done.

My body says the podcast ends now.

Fantastic.

Everybody, you be safe out there and have have a good week.

Goodbye.