CSB 289: Jonkleropolis: The Brood War Test

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the Castle Super Beast podcast.

I am, if you're listening to this live,

I am.

I am using a.

I'm Woolly.

Yes.

I'm Pat.

Hi.

Hi.

Waka, Waka.

I've put on a NoiseGate filter that's different for the live listeners.

So if this sounds a little bit different, it's because I'm trying to improve the overall

peak problem

output.

So,

are you using compressor or just limiter?

It's a noise gate.

Are you using the gate?

Okay.

Yeah, that's on right now.

And I'm still quieter than you, huh?

Interesting.

Okay.

Well, I mean, that's just life.

Okay.

I'll drag you down a little bit to compensate.

Oh, no.

That's the best I can do.

Oh.

Because I'm already pretty much maxed there.

But

yeah,

that's kind of what I'm hearing.

If you're listening to this, of course, in post, where I've had a chance to make sure that everything sounds okay, then you don't worry about it.

It should be fine.

It's just the live listeners that are going to be hearing this.

Yeah, you guys are the test subjects.

Live people.

It's just a different beast.

You have one mix going out one way, and then the other is a recording that gets mixed separately.

So I like to use

a compressor

and a limiter.

I don't use the gate because I felt it cut off a lot.

So I just use the compressor at default settings and then I use a limiter to just cut it so that I can't go past the middle of the red line in OBS.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Looks like it is too aggressive.

Oh, no.

That's okay.

That's okay.

We'll just go back to normal.

Don't worry about it.

All right.

This is something to do on a on a on like a a fucking stream at 2 a.m yeah

i did that last week i did a street fighter stream at like midnight pacific and it was just called test and i was just like hey i'm gonna play street fighter and we're gonna make sure the the thing doesn't crash and then it did so i fixed it yeah and and you know in a lot of cases i'm i'm doing it just screaming to myself sitting here you know on on both setups and that's always fine but then there's always a moment of like i guess my fake laughter is is not as real as my real laughter.

Your real laughter is like you have, you have a you have a chuckle, and what you just did is I would consider that like a like a like almost giggle-like chuckle.

But you, when you hyena out, you are an order of magnitude louder than your usual volume.

And I have attempted to fake that hyenaing for the sake of

it's yeah, like that's the problem.

It's like I can't fake that laugh where I just don't make any noise and then try not to vomit.

Like that's that's got to to come from in here.

Yeah, that save that for a second, actually.

We'll get there.

This has been a pretty fucking eventful week.

It's going to get more eventful in like

now.

Yeah.

There's a lot.

There's a lot going on.

All right.

So,

so you saw Joker 2.

I didn't.

In fact,

I did not have a chance to keep up with any of the current internet meme

speed culture because I broke away at a wedding.

And so I had to, you know, attend to family business.

I want to see Megalopolis so fucking bad.

I do too.

I do too.

I want to see just the top tierist

A plus actors just schlopping it.

And I, no, I plan, I want to go in brain empty and like hands open.

You remember this?

I told you about the accepting position?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I am prepared to witness and accept your art.

I want to go in with that for both of those things and see what the

John Claropoulos

feels like.

It's a good time for bad movies.

Yeah, no, and, you know, it's...

It's a like the first one was fucking solid and that did its job and was,

you know, it hit.

And then I guess, I don't know, what I'm hearing about this is that, like, the musical aspects and the overall flow of things is just, like,

almost, but not quite, is the feeling that it keeps me.

So, as somebody who hasn't seen the movie, so obviously take that with a grain of salt, I'm basically going off of the temperature.

Because I'm in

the chonkler fiesta.

So, there's a couple things to know.

One is that it was a hidden musical, which as we all know music not hidden audiences love audiences love hidden musicals not very hidden um the second thing is that people are like is it because it's a musical or like apparently it is just a completely slapdash fucking piece of shit from top to bottom okay

um and this morning yeah paige was like check this out and what she found was uh footage of joachim phoenix and and Gaga at the premiere.

Is it Joachim?

Joachim, yeah.

Joachim Phoenix, Joker Man and Gaga at the premiere, like speaking, like sitting next to each other and big, big, big smiles and talking to each other after the premiere.

And people

have read their lips to figure out what they're talking about.

Oh, those are happening around the internet these days, yeah.

To which Joachim goes, what the fuck was that?

That was a fucking piece of shit.

And Gaga goes, no, no, no, it's, it's great, It's good.

It's good.

And he's like, That was fucking terrible.

Yeah.

I've seen videos of like lip reading things popping up nowadays.

There's channels dedicated to it.

You know, so you got NBA players looking at LeBron James Kidd going, like, yeah, I don't think he's good enough to be in the NBA.

And the people next to him are being like, really?

And they're like, yeah, I don't know.

He's just, he's not, he's not there yet.

You know, he was too soon.

And people are like, we let, we read the lips, we translated it.

And you, you, you listen to it in your head while you're reading it.

You're like, oh my God, that's exactly what if you can be seen, you're not being secret.

So apparently it's just a massive, absolute piece of fucking shit.

And it is doing worse than Morbius.

So, yeah, that's the detail, right?

Is

it made

opening box office weekend was 39 million, which was low for expectations because the original Joker, no, 37 rather.

The original Joker made 39 on the Friday alone.

And

the Flash made 55 million.

The Marvels made 46, and Morbius made 39.

So it's going under Morbius.

Yeah.

It's sub-Morb.

I'm still going to go in, especially having

I'm going in hands open, eyes open, brain open, because I did like the first one, and

I'm taking it as is.

And furthermore, as far as Megalopolis is concerned, I am chomping at the, or champing at the bit to see an old man's fever dream that's like, I don't give a fuck, I'm on my way out, and I wanted to make an insane drug trip movie for 20 years plus now, and

they're finally letting me get away with it.

I have a factoid about Megalopolis that speaks to Coppola's insane hubris.

So in the film, there is a smash cut of like world events.

You know, things have been happening It's going fast.

Okay.

One of those

is

9-11.

Okay.

And people thought that it was like CG or whatever.

No, it is

unreleased, never before seen footage of 9-11 because the crew was working in New York on the ground in 2001

and they just happened to shoot it.

That's how long this movie has been in development.

And they held that footage in.

And they're like, well, yeah, it's part of the B-roll for the World Events thing.

What the fuck, man?

Wow.

Wow.

Okay.

All right.

That's what Megalopolis.

I was unfamiliar with Megalopolis' game.

I see.

Megalopolis is just the absolute height of filmmaking excess.

Got it.

Got it.

Yeah.

All right.

It it feels like we we're we're we are just a little bit away from the the video essay on like every frame of painting or something like that which is incredible you should watch that about how megalopolis is

the modern era's caligula

the movie that almost bankrupted the studio system yeah yeah because

Coppola went to the studio and was like, I want to make this.

And every studio in the world was like, fuck off.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to start an extremely lucrative wine business to bankroll this and still go into personal debt making this movie.

Cause it's not perfect.

So it feels as if, so there's that, but there's also

eyes wide shut, right?

Which is your Ridley Scott version of things where you're like, the self-indulgent, late in my career, I don't give a shit.

I'm just going to do what I want.

fuck off movie, you know?

And

I'm super down for that.

Like, I want to see the old man's fever dream.

I appreciate, even without seeing it, I appreciate something like Megalopolis more

than James Cameron going, it's totally my vision, and just doing six avatar movies back to back.

Yeah, that, anyway, the avatar, the avatar thing is wild.

And I mean, maybe by the end of part five,

there will be some sort of reveal that explains why he is so committed to this being the remainder of his life's work.

But

either way,

I'm down for this idea of like the Barbenheimer style double features that were not double features,

but they come in pairs.

That's fun.

People walking out of both and chatting in the foyer going oh

oh my god just actively spoiling it for everybody in line oh my god and everyone in line is like no tell us more this is awesome have you ever walked into a movie in which somebody was walking out going wow what a piece of fucking shit uh no but i've been on the other side of that when you did that

more than once

i don't i don't even remember what it was but we walked out and we were just like wow that was fucking terrible yeah yeah we we walked past the line

i remember you loudly going what an absolute piece of dog shit hitting the escalator going down you know yeah that was that was you oh i wish i could remember what movie that was

oh

in any case oh that's good i mean could have was it was it terminator salvation i don't know

oh uh maybe could have been i didn't i didn't uh maybe i don't think so i think it was probably worse than that it was something um

but yeah no this uh

this is a good one well I'll get back to those later um a lot of shit happening so big big

many things big how do you want to start this where do you want to go okay start hey you went to a wedding was that fun it was a lot of fun it was really cool always uh a uh a nice time to to go and you know get a little fancy hit the dance floor do my thing congratulations to the nuptials yes uh brother-in-law and such um

clap clap had a very good time um The main thing I would get into is just what I played on the road and

during the week.

Spent a bunch of time with UFO50.

Oh, good old Ufo.

Ufo50.

That's my plug for the week.

I would like to blame Joel for ruining my pronunciation of Ufo.

That'd be Joel over at Vinesauce, Mr.

Varg Skullathor.

He was playing that signal horror game with the aliens, and he kept saying Ufo porno over and over and over and over and over.

Nice.

And I can't say it right anymore.

So, yeah, the UFO 50 is a game by the guy that made Spelunky, and it's a collection of 50 games in one cartridge.

What do you mean, 50 games?

It's kind of like the old 250-in-1 Nintendo cartridge from back in the day.

Super legit.

Yeah, full of all those ROM hacks, right?

And so immediately i just got mind-blasted and then lightly told the story of the time when there was supposed to be a best friends game that was multiple games together you know and that whole thing that didn't that did not happen no but it sure was a fun idea certainly and so there were there were like three or four like really fun ideas that the instant it started to find somebody to actually do it it was like oh wait this is hard it's pretty hard yeah but that one that one actually got to the point of like talking to developers and people like we sat down and had meetings about it.

But it's hard though.

It is pretty hard.

But nonetheless,

that was the concept that was that was kind of similar.

So when I see this existing now, it's kind of like, oh man, there's that same idea.

And like every little thing about different genres and stuff coming together, they hit to some of the same beats, right?

So

of the 50 games you're playing, you're playing them in

console, secret being discovered, and you're playing

the games in chronological order.

And sometimes, a game that you play early on in the generation, you see a sequel to it later on in that list.

What a cool idea!

Yeah, it's like, I mean, what a brilliant, brilliant plan that like totally

did not cause any damage upon seeing every one of those little bits and pieces that were like, oh my god, we were doing the same thing years ago.

So, let me ask you, and this is, I think, this is the most important thing about Ufo 50.

So

these are pretending to run the gamut from what era to what era?

1988 to

mid-90s.

To the Super Nintendo.

Ness to Super Nintendo.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think that's what they're doing.

Here's question two.

When these are, let's say, NES games, are these the

appropriate

is it all 90s?

Not at all.

82 to 89.

I'm sorry, I got the years.

Okay, so extremely early,

like not probably Atari Christ,

to late Ness then.

But is it running?

I don't know about this.

Are these real games?

Are these micro games?

They are real games.

That's fucking crazy.

That's the part that hits, right?

They're real games and they take time.

That is fucking crazy.

Now, they're real in the sense that they have the mechanical depth in a lot of cases.

There's multiple levels and things you unlock and so on.

They're not like

10 or 8 hour efforts, you know what I mean?

Well, no, because Ness games weren't.

No, but in terms of like a one or two hour effort, absolutely.

Some of them are smaller than others, but it still was like everything that I experienced was like these were all pretty real and at bare minimum were like

a small NES game, you know?

I have to say,

this Steam page is legitimately incredible because

this trailer is amazing.

Yeah, so

okay, so someone's saying there's a 20-hour RPG in there.

I can only talk to the games I've played, and I have not played all 50 yet.

And completion-wise, even fewer than that.

I got to cover this.

I'm covering this.

But the point remains is that, like, it is a grab bag.

There's a strategy RPG in there!

Yeah, yeah.

It is a grab bag of different games and genres that spread the gamut.

And they're all absolutely reminiscent of old NES games and old NES game styles.

Oh, man, one of those is like Luftrousers.

But then there's stuff that is just like brand new and original, right?

So

for example, the first game I played, Cyber Owls, which is actually the end of the timeline, is straight up a I play it and I'm like, oh, here is a Ninja Turtle style beat-em-up, you know?

Where

you're scrolling and then it's pretty hard and then you get your, you lose, and then your character, mascot, gets captured, and you have to go rescue them with one of the other characters.

When you do that, the genre changes to a puzzle, top view, rescue mode thing, you know, almost like when Bionic Commando camera changes for the rescue missions, right?

Where you go from side to top view.

And then if you don't do a rescue mission, each of these four characters has a different gameplay style entirely, where like

one is Contra style, one is like wild guns style, shooting into the background.

And this is all just one game, you know?

And that game has like music and some voice clips and stuff going on because it's like, you know, where the the the the console ends at versus the first game

Which is called Barbuta, which is silent, slow, moves at like Prince of Persia PC speeds, and you just slowly walk around this giant, quiet environment, falling through, you know, the ceiling and dealing with threats as they come with your very

limited sword attack.

In development,

uh, no idea, but there's a pretty long credits list and a whole bunch of people.

I need to, well, Yeah, apparently every game is made by different people, or nearly every game.

I mean, when you boot it up, the credits that play are almost like you're opening a crack and you're listening to the like the crack music play, you know, with chiptunes.

The Wikipedia article for this game fucking rules so hard.

There's like fictional year of release on this thing.

Night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow, a bunch of these are co-op.

A bunch of these are verses.

What the fuck?

Multiple games are multiplayer.

yeah um so yeah you get your key gene music and then you start the game up and you start playing um i spent uh way longer than expected to on like uh the next game i picked avianos which is just dinosaur strategy turn-based rpg um turn-based strategy rather but on a nest style grid you know where like you have to pray to different gods to get different resources and then move and hold four bases and a lot of it is because the you're just discovering these games on this cartridge, the rules are not really that explained.

You kind of get a basic paragraph explanation if you look at the info for the game, but otherwise you're kind of

warrior wearing it a little bit, you know?

You're kind of going like, okay, I don't know what that icon is, but I guess I'll find out.

And then you select it, and then it's like, oh, it's a seed.

Okay.

And a seed is a resource to turn into a type of unit.

And you just learn all these games on the fly, you know?

Yo, this is crazy.

There's a game that's just like, this could have been a huge hit popular NES game if it were its own thing.

This, there's a, like, it could have been an arcade phenomenon.

It's called camouflage.

And it's like, imagine Frogger View.

You're butchering a little chameleon walking around an environment.

And you have to, you're only, it's a one-button game to blend into the texture you're on.

And whenever you're not on the right texture, you stand out and you're visible.

And if you're in the path of line of sight of the enemy, they come and kill you right away.

So you have to learn to traverse and use your camouflage.

And that's it.

You know, it's just navigate and button.

And I'm like, that would have been a fucking quarter muncher arcade machine back in the day.

You know?

Bushido Ball is fucking samurai-themed wind jammers.

Oh my god.

You know,

there's a

River City Ransom game called Fist Hell and all these little things that are there.

And then there's stuff that's just genuinely out there and really uniquely interesting.

Like a game called Mooncat,

where

the first thing you notice with Mooncat is the entire left half of your controller all does the same thing.

And it's move your character to the left.

And then the entire right half of the controller moves your character to the right.

Okay.

And that's it.

That's it.

And then you've got to go through this like Nest style platformer,

but

then you have to figure out what to do with these two buttons.

And you start to kind of go like, oh, how do I jump?

And it's like, oh, while you're walking one way, press the other way.

And then you leap forward in the direction that you're holding while press.

And then you realize you have a whole bunch of movement tech, all with just two buttons.

And how you alternate, how you press them, and when and what you do.

So it's all tech that you're figuring out on the fly in a super basic platformer.

Very Very interesting.

In terms of discovery,

one of the most

unique ones was

Mortal 1 and Mortal 2.

So Mortal

Mortal

is

a game where you basically you're platforming across a bunch of monsters, pits, destruction, etc.

But you take control of your guy and you can do one of three things.

Turn to stone, shoot yourself as a missile, or blow up.

All three of them kill you.

But if you deal with the problem, then the guy, your next guy behind you, can get past that point.

So you basically have 20 lives, spend them wisely to progress.

Oh, man, that's crazy.

While you lemmings your way, you know, through the level.

You kind of get used to that, and then

uh,

Mortal 2 comes along and goes, Okay, now that you get the concept here, let's up that so that you have 99 units to pick from, and they're all different classes you can choose, and each class does a different specialty and sacrifices itself for a different purpose, and make your way through this giant legend of Kage stage,

you know.

And it's like taking the whole like self-sacrifice concept, but like applying it to like a whole other thing.

So interesting, you know?

Um,

yeah, uh, UFO 50 is real, real fun.

And um, I can go on, there's a whole lot of them that are worth it, but like I'll say, like, one other one that was just that's just great is like Quibble Race, which is you're an alien, you're on an alien planet, and you're watching aliens do like alien horse racing.

And

you're basically and your options are uh go take out a loan

um which of course you got to pay back if you know at interest yeah of course of course um you can go see uh a fixer and that fixer has a bunch of options such as uh you know um hey take a bat to one of these quibbles fucking slow that fucker down right or get some stim juice going in one of these quibbles and have it go faster or you know, like literally like like a poison, like you can just absolute scum shit your way through a horse racing game.

And

there's an AI that'll do some intel and be like, oh, this is the fastest horse in the race right now.

You know, the fastest quibble.

And you go in and you do what you got to do.

Then you place your bets.

And like, you know, the newscaster's like, oh, you know,

it looks like looks like this quibble today is looking pretty jacked and pretty huge.

Must be a new diet.

Anyway, and then you watch the race as like sometimes the quibble that you might have selected uh the bat on just doesn't make it to the finish just fucking dies

you know and everyone you're racing against that's weird you're all just piece of shit aliens and you're going into debt and you're fucking you know you're you're breeding them and you're it's just it is a horrendous absolute crime planet um taking place and like the in the it's background characters from futurama you know having a race, or like background monster alien fuckers from

FAC 2000, you know, like that style.

And it's, it's just absolute scumshit alien gambling.

It's great.

So, yeah, no, UFO 50, super worth it, super fun, and it goes way harder than it needs to.

And you can see in some of the games where the spelunky kind of vibe is,

you know, just from the speed and the way it moves and the pixels and stuff, but like just a fun project that, yeah, you know, hey, look at that.

Looks like it wasn't such a bad idea after all.

You know?

Check it out.

Man, I'm going to check it out.

If only there wasn't all this other stuff right now.

Yeah.

The

shout out to the sudden switch of the Shadow of the Earth Reed DLC to a survival horror section.

That was awesome.

Oh.

The Forsaken Graveyard.

Endure.

Endure.

There you go.

So that was a real interesting little switch up and I really appreciated how,

yeah,

we changed things up a little bit.

The game is leaning into the base game's fear of the frenzied flame and just creates a whole section dedicated to that.

It does a great thing of like, fire is gross, dude.

It's creepy.

It's icky.

The

bad.

The abyssal woods, you know, where you're basically just like, okay, so these things aren't humming their song, but they might as well be humming their song.

They're midnight lanterns, sorry, winter lanterns.

Yeah.

That are parryable, right?

And

then, you know, and then like Reggie actually pointed out, he's like, huh, so is that fucker using a transforming weapon?

You know, and it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, he is.

Midra's Mance and Midra the Lord of the Frenzied Flame are my favorite fucking boss fight in the game so far.

They're great.

They're excellent.

Incredible.

Music, the setup, the move set, the overall, the flow of it, you know.

I went in and kind of was like, okay,

after a couple of attempts, you know, it's because I was was trying to do like the parry stuff because I saw the tip about it earlier.

I kind of was like, you know what?

I'm getting Moog vibes here, and I need to fight this the way I fought Moog.

So I put the fists and skates on and we just, we just danced, you know?

And

I, I mean, there's an actual beat drop on that boss.

Like, you can hear where the DJ starts and then stops the beat while it's playing.

Um, yeah.

Um, of the DLC, my favorite boss fight so far so there's there's uh still some bangers you haven't gone into yet um but there was something that that when i got to mid uh

is it midra or mithra it's midra

so when i got to midra

i remember there was like this thing before the dlc came out which is always the speculatory thing that is always like super wrong and it was people going like are we gonna find out more

about the outer gods?

Yeah.

Right?

There's the, there's the greater will, but then there's also the flame,

there's the rot, et cetera.

And I did not expect

for

the answer to that question being yes.

And also, you're going to essentially fight a couple of the avatars of those outer gods.

Like, Midra is what you become in the ending if you go Frenzied Flame.

Yeah, it's not the Three Fingers itself, right?

But it certainly is the master of the Frenzied Flame.

Yeah, the Lord, rather.

It's as close as you could get, right?

Yeah.

And it's like the Mother of Fingers.

Like, there it is.

Okay.

There's the problem right there.

Yeah, so I don't know about that yet.

Oh, I was told that you dealt with that.

No, no, no, no.

I don't think so.

Oh, my mistake.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

But yeah, no, it was awesome and uh

i

i know that like

yeah there is there it's that exact fight is the kind that stays with me the one where you get um a nice pattern of stuff initially that's all pretty threatening but you know you can learn how to move and navigate to close the distance and then like a couple of insane explosions and shit that gets dropped into the second form, but like a bunch of situations where he can like dash up to you and do a combo, dash up to you and do a stinger, or dash up to you and fake, you know?

And it's like, oh, you hit me with the mix.

Like, I love that feeling of like, and nothing.

Oh, no,

is always really, really fun.

So, um,

yeah, yeah, that, that's, that's a, that's a fucking strong contender, man.

So, like, Midra, Midra's one of the easier bosses, and I think it's genuinely to his, like,

credit because because he feels fairer than a lot of the other ones.

Like, especially now, like the one of the dude on his horse you talked about last week, Boar and Gaius.

Yeah, that dude felt wildly unfair to a lot of people because he'd be rushing you and slamming you into the door.

Whereas Midra feels like he kind of feels like he walked out of Dark Souls.

Well, it just, I, we all, I love the duel fight.

I love the feeling of the duel, you know?

Um, or the insane spectacle.

Like, make note, like, the dragons, right?

The grand fucking ancient dragons in both base and this game are incredible as well, right?

Placidu Sax and Bale, right?

But

like Moog and Millennia, certainly, especially like Phase 1, you know, I'd say.

And now this are just like, those are my fucking contenders on the list.

His area is pretty cool too as well, because I liked that, because when I opened, pushed open those gates and I walked in, my brain expected a cavern texture, and then I saw these new, unique books all strewn about, and I was like, oh, thank God, it's a unique dungeon set.

Yeah.

You know?

So,

yeah, that was a great part.

I had a lot of fun with the little survival horror corner.

I do like how it's like, Torrent's out of here.

Torrent doesn't want none of this.

Torrent wants it.

Torrent's done.

And it kind of makes it like you re-look at the size of that map and go, huh, I got to fucking do this on foot.

You know, suddenly this thing that you could have ridden across in five, ten minutes

and scraped out is going to take way longer than that.

There's a part to that where it feels like they had this moment and that they're like, nobody used the hiding and grass mechanic from the main game.

So we're going to make them do it here.

So I was talking about it as I was doing it, but it's just, it's like.

The classic, you don't know what this game considers stealth, right?

Is it line of sight?

Is it sound?

Is it walk speed?

Is it daytime?

Is it nighttime?

Is it behind certain objects?

Or is it overall vicinity to the threat?

Like, every game plays with five or six different rules, and you can never know what's going to cause a trigger until you just do it.

And like,

if you, if you crawl and stay in the grass and out of sight and adhere to all of those things, you know, essentially you'll probably be fine.

But that role-playing aspect of it almost never comes into play unless it's a game that's like, you know, I guess like Dishonored a Thief or something, where it's like, no, I remember it's all of the above, right?

Sneaking around like to like the first two guards at the checkpoint at the very beginning of the game and then never again because it's not useful.

Yeah.

I want to say Assassin's Creed

like

two part three

was where I was sneaking around and then I had a moment where I was like, I stood up and just kind of walked slowly, and the guard standing there didn't give a fuck.

And it was daytime, and I was like, Oh, it doesn't care about

five of the things that I've got.

It's like nearly exclusively proximity and line of sight.

Yeah,

it didn't care about two of the

three things I was trying to do.

And I was like, I'm slowing down my three attempts for nothing because I'm assuming the game is smarter than it is, you know.

So, anyway, um,

when I say two part three, I'm everybody knows what I mean, right?

Yeah, he means revelations.

Yeah, there you go.

So, there.

There's two Brotherhood Revelations.

So that's, yeah, so shout out to that and the idea that, you know, Fromsoft could like, because even though Bloodborne is like, you know, nice and horror and dark,

it's not necessarily a survival horror themed thing.

You know, no, it's just, it's very, it's just very like, it's spooky.

That's it, yeah.

But, you know, Fromsoft could could get scary and limit your options.

I think they should do that exactly as much as they did here, which is one sequence

um

yeah and then i did have the ring that like i'm like okay let me hide my footsteps and like turns out that yep there you go that'll help no that's very helpful you know um

it's cool anyways um

Wooly versus on Twitch and on YouTube.

Yeah, we were not able to do some Phoenix right this week, but or last week, but we're going to pick that back up this week.

And I have an upcoming Metaphor video that will not be streamed, but it will be released to the channel, which is.

That's crazy.

I also have one of those.

Which is Wooly vs.

on YouTube as well.

Man, Atlas really wants you to know about Metaphor.

Yeah.

Like a lot.

A lot.

Like a lot.

They really do.

They really, really do.

So stay tuned to the channel for that.

And I'll be posting the schedule on my Twitter.

All right.

Big, exciting things.

What's going on?

All right.

Well, before I even get off that, I want to say, did you see that Metaphor put out their streaming guidelines?

Mm-mm.

So their streaming guidelines are reasonable, finally.

Hey.

They also don't apply if you're not streaming, correct?

Oh, no, they apply if you're streaming.

If you're not streaming.

If you're not streaming?

If you are recording in post, then the streaming guidelines shouldn't apply.

Oh, of course not.

Yeah, okay.

No, but the streaming guidelines are out and

leave it to Atlas to have like one or two things in it that are just kind of weird.

So it's like, hey, please mark your stream or mark your

video if it's got spoilers.

Okay, that's pretty reasonable.

Hey, please don't put up videos of just the music or just the cutscenes.

Okay, that seems fairly reasonable.

Please,

please

put Sega copyright and Atlas copyright into the title or video description of every piece of content you make for this.

And I'm like, really?

Okay.

Okay.

I had to learn how to do the copyright symbol.

And don't slander anyone.

Don't slander any individual or organization during your content of metaphor, Refantasio.

Well, fictional races are allowed.

Maybe real only then.

Real slander.

No slander.

No slander.

Which like, I don't know if they, I don't know if they wrote that correctly because like slander is like a legal term.

So it's like don't get caught in court being convicted of slander.

Or libel

for that matter.

It's a video libel or is it slander?

I want to say it can be both.

Right?

It can be both.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, you got to put the copyrights.

Now, now, does it have to be the emote of the copyright symbol?

Or can it be?

Yeah.

Well, they also say, hey,

if you can't do that, you can do open bracket, C, close bracket.

There is an alt symbol, right?

An ASCII symbol that you can do.

Yeah, no, I have a copy pasted in a little notepad over on my desktop.

Okay.

Weird.

All right.

So what happened this week?

So I played and I beat the metaphor demo, demo,

which is like nine hours long

and ridiculous.

Just

fucking

ridiculous.

That's a lot.

In persona terms, it is the entirety of the tutorial start section.

You know, like, oh, we got to figure out how to get to Kamashita's castle.

You know, got my personas, shit like that.

It is also includes a moment in which they give you access to a couple of the daily life days where, hey, are you going to talk to this dude and learn about the history of the tribes?

Are you going to go cook some food?

Or are you going to run the dungeon, that kind of thing?

Which is funny because it includes an optional dungeon that you have to unlock.

Right.

And it also includes half of a main story dungeon.

So like, let's say half of Yu-Gi-Oh's Castle basically.

But you know what, man?

I get it because it's like this is a thing that doesn't have the word Shin, Megami, Tensei, or Persona in it.

That's right.

It doesn't.

And that's why whenever you make a video or a stream about it, they have in big ass bold on that document they send you.

It says, please tell people it's from the people who made Persona 3, 4, and 5.

Please tell them that it's from the people who made Persona 3, 4, and 5.

Did you know it's made by the people who made Persona 3, 4, and 5?

Think about how easy it is to fast forward to a world where it's like, oh, yeah, that thing came out.

It was really good, but no one played it because no one knew what it was, right?

And that happens every day.

Yeah, so

this is the effort to counterbalance that in action.

We are watching the attempt to be like, no, market, everybody know about this thing.

We put a lot of effort and it's, you know, should be considered another persona game, even though it's not a persona game.

And that's why when you watch the trailer that is at the end of the demo and is not

put out by their social media.

It's only at the end of the demo.

They show off the devil summoner class fucking summoning Jack Frost

to attack your enemies.

Yeah.

And you're like,

ah, you know, sees it.

A demo that long certainly implies like, if it's a demo that long, but the grand total time is going to be like P5 Royale length, you know, that you're like, oh yeah, that is a sliver of nothing compared to the full size.

Also, the demo does do something like really bananas.

So it takes, you can only go to the optional dungeon on the second day, and then turning in that quest takes a full afternoon.

So you can't do the optional dungeon and get its reward and the first half of the story dungeon within the demo.

You have to pick.

Oh,

interesting.

And then the demo is super chill

about the end of the demo, which is a very strange thing to say, where right when you talk to the, or go and do the last thing, whatever's going to stop the demo in its tracks, a little splash screen comes up with a nice man that goes, hey, man, thanks for playing.

We really appreciate it.

Hey, so the demo is going to end if you click this button.

So go ahead and back out and save your game if you want to carry your save file forward.

Ah, nice little warning for you.

That's nice.

Right.

And you're like, oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Because then you carry that progress.

That's good.

The optional dungeon is really funny because it's so ridiculously overpowered for

the time that you are playing the game.

Like

the optional dungeon's boss is level 22, and you are rolling in there at like level 9 or 10.

But we know that some freaks out there are going to fucking.

Yeah, there we go.

Patrick.

Yeah, like a freak like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So

the boss of that optional dungeon shows off

just how crazy their battle system is

because

I switched around the whole party to a wide variety of different classes to try and figure out the trick to beating the boss at a really low level.

And you're locked into whatever you pick before the fight starts the whole time.

Yeah, right.

But there's a save point right in front.

So you can just mix and match and be like, no,

I want two mages and a warrior.

No, I want two knights and a warrior.

No, I want three warriors.

And you can just mess around to your heart's content.

And I eventually figured it out, but the stats were so rough that there was a bit of a luck element with critting and the press turn system, which is great because

if the fight that you know you can do turns real rotten due to a bad roll, just click in that left stick and we're just going to start the whole fight over in one second.

Oh, really?

Every single fight, you can just restart at any point by clicking in the left stick.

And like that made all the difference.

I fought that boss maybe like 25 times in an hour because I was just able to go like, no, that, that, that, that was unlucky.

That was unlucky.

That was unlucky.

and then i realized this isn't gonna work i'll die reload my save okay but like even with before death if you see it's going downhill fuck it

let's

oh that was that was like the boss did rampage and got like three crits and now they get three extra turns oh i'll never survive this fucking shit let's just just restart it let's just go let's go again that's a really nice quality of life feature Wow.

Okay.

So that's out this week.

That demo.

I had people in my chat later on like, hey, man, I don't know if I should buy a metaphor.

What do I do?

Just like, but the demo's longer than Resident Evil 3 Remake.

And

you'll know.

You'll know if you like it or not.

And we also confirmed that like...

Starting with episode I guess, they're going to be just doing add-on content from now on, not rebooting.

The DLCs, yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Then Then DBZ came out and I didn't play it because I'm stacked, but sparking is out.

Yes, and I see there are spoilers that have to be hit.

Like, there are things to be spoiled.

And a streamer started spoiling them.

And then as that streamer got blown up, the official

Bamco

PR department was just posting cooler GIFs

while quoting the guy's name or some shit.

And I was like,

it's for the what if mode.

It's for the what if mode.

Okay, cuz I'm like, why, how can a Dragon Ball game have spoilers, you know?

And sure enough, I've just been seeing that marked a lot.

So I'm like, I guess there's some new shit to discover.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, they have a bunch of what-if scenarios.

Okay.

Uh,

that I, I don't know any of them, but you know, I'd like

people that they're apparently very cool scenarios.

Okay.

Um,

and then,

you know, before we get to Silent Hill,

there's been,

I'll talk about something that's personally going on in my life.

So, Wooly, you actually recommended a while ago to Paige

back when she had gestational diabetes,

hit up with Metamucil.

Yeah.

Right?

Metamucil,

and that actually was like enormously effective.

It was crazy

how much that helped the sugar.

Oh, did we now cut back?

No, no.

She was religious about that.

It was crazy.

It was

absolutely.

It went from her being a little high and maybe like, oh, we got to do something to normal every single day.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Like, like, like legitimately, like maybe the best piece of advice I've ever heard in my entire life

because it helped the health of my wife and little baby man.

Dude, like, I'm putting, I've been putting just a scoop scoop of that in my more morning shakes.

And like, after the dietitian broke it all down and was like, Yep, this is really solid for everything you're looking to do.

Like, it like the besides the lowering your blood sugar stuff, it has like multiple just great benefits.

And it's like, oh shit, okay, this is why the old people take the metamucil and put the thing in the, you know, and it's like, yeah, so someone in the chat asks, what's metamucil?

It's basically just fiber.

Yeah, you're putting fiber

in your thing.

So

the other night

I

said, hey, hey, Paige, check this out.

And then I leaned a little bit to the side and twisted.

And

I just blew that whole room up like I've never done so before.

Like never before.

Like we had to evacuate the front half of the house.

Just terrible.

Like

terrible.

What's that?

Like a Will Smith fart.

I don't know what that means.

Oh, Will Smith is Will Smith has been called a notorious farter on the set.

And one time when they were filming Rent Men in Black, and they had to seal them inside the car that was doing all the stunts, they couldn't get out.

And he let one rock, and Tommy Lee Jones was stuck in there with it.

And he was just, and like they had to stop filming, and he was just apologizing profusely.

And Tommy Lee's like, it's okay.

Well, it's okay.

It's no problem.

But they had to evacuate the set for three hours because of how bad the bomb was.

That's great.

Yeah.

So Paige is saying in the chat that it was pretty bad for an hour, like our whole living room.

And so I, and so I was like, yeah, no,

I did it.

I was correct to say, yo, check this out.

As a result

of this event,

I have now been placed on mandatory metamusil consumption.

Clean you out.

The foot has come down from the wife.

You are now the fart queen meta.

It's me.

It's me.

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Okay.

Apparently, my insides are rotten, according to the wife.

Well, if somebody hadn't made multiple days worth of chili, maybe wouldn't have been in this situation.

We are discussing the benefits of a high-fiber diet and Metamusil on this video game bodies.

Oh, yeah, we should.

How old are we?

What's going on?

Oh, it's good for you.

It's good for you.

God damn it.

Every time I post a picture and like some of the greys are showing, people are like, oh, shit.

Damn, grays are coming in.

Yeah, no old.

And now we are actively discussing, yo, that metamucil, though, right?

How about that high-fiber diet?

Yeah.

I think my favorite part of this scenario is that this has been an ongoing battle for multiple months

in which Paige will be like, fucking go outside.

Oh my god.

But then I'll go outside and I'll like just

wrap it up real bad in our front yard.

And Paige will be like, oh my god, get in here.

The neighbors can probably hear you.

And then I'm like, okay, so I guess I'll go to the bathroom.

And then I'm on my way to the bathroom.

She's like, where are you going?

I'm like, I'm going to the bathroom to fart because you don't want me to do it outside.

And she's like, oh, you're being so dramatic.

I'm like, well, where?

And so I'm now being chemically induced to

remove gas.

Yeah, I look, habitually, you know, despite growing up with friends and family and cousins that like to fucking weaponize.

Yeah, weaponize.

They like to weaponize their shit, you know,

including one friend I remember who would, he played basketball really well, and he would be able to be able to jump and 360 and get right up to your face while spinning.

Oh, that's ridiculous.

Like, like a full-on, like, whoop, and like, just direct fire, like pink eye threat as he spins and runs away before you even know what happened.

Um, wild shit, right?

He used to rock one of those.

Uh, but nonetheless, uh, I know that, like, I don't play those games because, quite frankly, yeah, my hand's on the button, and I will turn my key and end the fight.

Like, I don't start it.

I never start it.

But if you, if we're gonna play games of nuclear deterrence, I will cause World War II.

Yeah, so, like, my poor wife was, like, like, near tears tears going like, oh my God, I have to leave.

And I'm like, I'm sorry.

I'm just so good at something

that you're in awe.

It didn't go over the way I wanted it to.

Yeah, so that's what's going on.

All right.

All right.

That's what's going on over here.

I'm probably going to lose weight because like every time I drink like a gigantic glass of Metamucil right before eating, I'm not hungry anymore.

It's also a, it's a, it's a filler and slight appetite suppressant.

It's not mainly for that, but one of the side effects is that, yeah, you feel pretty good.

Yeah, I'm drinking like a half liter of water before eating anything.

Yeah, so

the shakes I would take, for example,

the OptiFast stuff I would take would be like,

I remember this specifically, like, if you feel still kind of hungry afterwards, put a little bit of mislevel in there, you'll feel a lot fuller.

And then again, the benefits are great.

So, good shit.

There you go.

Literally, literally good shit.

So

we'll find out what's going on

in the near future.

I'll keep all of you updated on my fiber stories.

We await with the most baited breath.

Oh, yes.

So baited this breath.

Before we get to Silent Hill, I also have now watched most of Mr.

McMahon.

Ah.

And

I have some thoughts about it.

There are four parts, something like that?

There are six.

I'm halfway through part five.

Okay.

I heard they don't even get to any of the shit until the final episode.

That is not true.

Okay.

Someone that is definitely,

definitely not true.

So you run into a weird problem.

So these are six 55-minute episodes that cover Vince McMahon Jr.

from 11 years old on.

And

that's a lot of fucking time and stuff.

Like they're going over

him

consolidating and going through the territories era.

They're going through the steroid shit.

They're going through

the bodybuilder era.

That's like a footnote, the bodybuilder thing.

They go through Monday Night Wars.

They go through

Attitude, et cetera, right?

But there's only so, like, as somebody who used to be way into wrestling and still will definitely listen to like a shoot session or shoot podcast,

it's astonishing that when you're looking at this, like this is for a general audience that maybe has never followed wrestling closely at all.

It is astonishing how much longer it would have to be for like me and you to be satisfied.

Because

it would have to be like three times as as long because there is just

so

much shit in it.

There's just like there's so much going on with that fucking company over the years.

But like, we're looking for the bottom of the iceberg, right?

Yeah.

So, like,

this is this is the tip of the iceberg, but it also does have a little bit underneath the surface.

So, people who say

that it is a puff piece

did not watch the same thing that I did because

the do you remember that statement Vince put out that said these producers use their fancy tricks to make me look guilty?

Bro, he wasn't kidding.

They

smash cut the fucking law.

Like, so the, the, the, the, the very first episode starts talking, like, it has a, as like a section that's about 10 minutes.

It's basically like, we'll get into this later about the lawsuit and about the sex trafficking.

Okay, just to let you know that, hey, we're going to be

a little bit shit.

And because, like, part of the documentary is that almost everything was recorded before that happened.

So these people are talking to a camera with the assumption that that shit is secret.

And one of the very first things they zoom in on Vince is like, oh man.

You know, there's some crazy stories.

I can't tell you those.

They're too dark.

But, you know, I'll try and tell you just enough stories to keep it interesting.

But yeah, there's a real dark side to this business.

Just zooming in on him going, ah, there's crazy stuff nobody knows about.

Aptly named because the dark side of wrestling also exists now.

There is a very small point in which they bring up Jimmy Snooka and

Tony Atlas describing how

he suspects Vince made that murder go away.

They actually touch on that.

It's not like a whole section, but it's like a little like, yeah, no, Vince would just make problems go away.

But in particular,

the one that is probably like the most outrageous, and it's like, I can't believe this motherfucker is so stupid.

Where this is in the third episode, where they're talking about

the rape lawsuit

where he was sued for sexual assault.

And

he's talking about how, of course, that never happened.

It was totally consensual.

And then there's a pause.

And this is an unedited clip.

And he goes, but anyway, statute of limitations is up.

So who, so whatever.

And like, that is,

that looks really guilty, bro.

And then the scene cuts to.

In a vacation of statutes of limitations in New York State in 2023, Vince McMahon paid this lady millions of dollars in an out-of-court settlement.

And it's like, yeah,

don't say you're not a rapist because of a legal technicality, Vince, into a camera.

Don't do that.

That's, you fucking idiot.

So I guess the part that, I mean, I guess most, everyone is curious about is like, when directly confronted with that shit, like what type of deflection or is it just it never

is a lot of deflection.

There is a crazy amount of deflection constantly.

Yeah, okay.

In particular,

when the documentary is going over the creation of the Vince McMahon character, Vince describes how the Vince McMahon character is a total fabrication and is not like him at all.

And

it's just, you know, the fantasy of like the bad guy that he might have been when he was younger.

Yeah.

And then they cut to a shot of Triple H, Stephanie,

Shane,

Paul Heyman, and like three or four other people that just go, oh, they're exactly the same person.

They're 100% the same person.

There's no difference at all.

Hulk Hogan goes, he's exactly the same guy, brother.

And it's like, just like they're interviewing him about like Ted Turner buying his talent and he's describing it as how it's not fair.

And then the interview goers, but isn't that what you did to the territories?

Didn't you buy out all the talent?

goes well that's different because

uh i was just trying to make my show better i wasn't trying to hurt the other shows it's different

it's like you're such completely full of fucking shit vince um

he looks like an insane evil person well yeah yeah but i guess it's there's a part of it which he is we all we've all known it

I guess I'm just like, as curious as I am about this whole history of stuff that, yeah, we followed for such such a long time, there's that kind of thing where I'm like, okay, well, now that we know legally what he's capable of, is anything above that even remotely surprising?

You know, you just go, oh, well, then it's all on the table, right?

Like, that's it.

We're just, there's nothing else to really say here.

It's like, it's all on the table.

I think, you know, I think there is,

there's something.

kind of meta magical about watching McMahon do these interviews and then having them cut with like Hogan and Shane and Steph's interviews.

And it's like you have people saying

and accusing him of the most outrageous shit.

And this is like his daughter or his like son-in-law or business partner that currently still works with him.

And then it'll cut to him going, oh, yeah, that happened.

Well, it was for the business.

I had to do it.

Yeah, so what?

And like, he's getting caught in like double talk that is exposing him to be like a psychopathic, possible murderer, rapist.

But his personal charisma is so overwhelming when he is talking like a normal guy that even I am sitting there and I'm sitting there and I'm realizing that it is starting to fade in between the pops of guiltiness.

Like the guy is a professional at appearing like reasonable and smart and

and talented it's it's it's crazy it's it's genuinely kind of nuts well yeah and and well i am i again it's it's it's not but it i just i'm like

i

i don't know how

the he made bodies disappear right yes like

he so very likely

made at least one girlfriend disappear like yeah you know and then and then the super and the supervised supervised nooka like case as well like so like literally just whatever comes above that it's like of course he's capable of that that's not even remotely a wild surprise I guess the part though is just like when you're also kind of like the

um

everyone is you know dependent on you fiscally and you know for every possible thing then like you have a fortress around you of protection and there's only so much that can get through.

But like

there's always these moments of like the stories and things where you're kind of like, like, yeah, all the weird shit with like him pitching

the storylines about Stephanie and everything, which

the fucking weird insight.

They interview Steph about that and the interviewer's like, is that weird that it was your dad telling you to do that shit?

And she kind of like freezes.

She's like, yeah, it was a little weird, but you know, it was for the business.

And then

the more they talk, the more cult shit it gets.

And that's kind of where it's like, okay, so there's that little, there's that disconnect where you're like, okay, but it's good business, though, right?

It's good business.

It's that that's where you can take the personal weird shit, put it aside, and go, okay, yeah, no, I can just mentally disconnect and put it all on that.

I get that.

I can see how that would be a possibility.

Fucking nuts.

Okay.

Well, it's crazy how much shit people that are like directly next to him and currently still work with him or did at the time of this are will are willing to talk about him like his kids and like and and uh paul which is triple h about how he's like insane and unreasonable and all this shit um

and there there are some like i mean i've been following this pretty closely um

there's there's some of this that i did not know about i did not know about the storyline about Vince in their personal life getting furious at Stephanie for not allowing him to pay-per-view her and Paul's wedding.

So, in real life, Paul Levesque, Triple H, is driving around with Vince and Stephanie, and they're looking for wedding locations.

And he's like, oh, what if we did a pay-per-view?

And both of them are like, fucking no, Vince.

Are you in?

No, absolutely not.

And then he starts to go, oh, you're so selfish.

You're so selfish.

It'd be so good for the business.

And

then later, do you remember the street fight between Steph and Vince?

Like, there was a match where they had a street fight, no holds barred.

Okay.

Vince scheduled that for six days before her wedding.

As a fuck you?

As like as it appears to be as a fuck you.

And

that match got all weirdly interpersonal dramatic where Linda goes, if she has a black eye or a rolled ankle, we're getting divorced.

You can't beat up your daughter before the wedding.

And like, dude's so crazy.

If you're a sociopath, you can.

Yeah.

This is a story that they are just openly telling and going, ah, Vince is crazy.

Like, they feel comfortable telling this narrative.

If you're a sociopath, you can do anything.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it is, it is interesting, though, how, like,

you know,

the energy around that and, like, even around, like, the, the current

P.

Diddy stuff and everything is like, it's always just been an open secret for a while, but it just kind of is like, okay, there's some catalyzing event that then leads to a major news story, which then leads to a public, like, awareness that would, like, it hits it breaches, right?

Everyone kind of knew already knew if you followed wrestling, you knew about all this crazy shit.

If you knew about Puff Daddy weird shit, you always kind of heard about it, but it doesn't breach, I guess, the wide mainstream.

And then eventually, when that happens, then it's like, oh, now the legal stuff starts to happen as a result.

You know, it's weird how it happens in that order.

It is going through this, the

overwhelming feeling I get is that it is crazy how nothing sticks to this dude.

Like,

everything,

like, no, but like, even in situations in which money didn't matter, like when the federal government went after him for the steroid shit and gave Hogan immunity to testify, and then Hogan sunk the case, even though he was working at WCW at the time.

Like, he's Vince is just like Teflon.

It's crazy.

It took like the most vile sex trafficking case anyone's ever heard of to get him out of there.

I hear you, but money, though.

Like, yes, but also, have you considered money?

Yeah, and that's when they cut to some newspaper reporters going like, oh, yeah, no, he definitely tampered with witnesses on that.

He definitely bribed people.

Yeah.

Etc.

No, and then the moment, the moment that the people attached to the money no longer have to get anything from you or are able to, you know, distance themselves and create force fields and fortresses of, you know, that make sure that you can't affect or fuck up the bag anymore.

Well, then you're cooked.

You know,

there's a really like sad moment.

So I didn't know about the Ring Boy pedophile scandal

in the 80s with two of the executives and Pat Patterson.

I don't know about that.

Yeah, so that one I did not know about in which basically some old dudes were abusing the guy, the teenagers that set up the rings.

Okay.

And then

those guys left the company, including Pat Patterson.

And as they did that, as they did so, Vince was very adamant.

Like, one of those guys was innocent.

One of those guys was innocent.

And then Pat Patterson's back on the roster three months later, like nothing ever happened.

And like I was starting to go like, oh, you know what?

Oh, it's a good thing that Pat Patterson from Montreal was innocent.

And then they cut to fucking Tony Atlas, who's like, yeah, I never liked Pat because he's always grabbed my pecker in the locker room.

And the interviewer was like, who did you do anything?

He's like, do what?

He's like, tell someone?

He's like, tell who?

Pat's the number two guy in the company.

Who am I going to tell?

Tell?

Vince?

And get fired?

Why would I?

Jesus Christ, man.

Yeah.

Yep.

And now I'm thinking back that Pat Patterson, like being a fixture of that shit late into the attitude era.

That's nuts, dude.

I never heard about that one.

Wow, yeah, so even people like us who have been like scooping up dirty shoot bullshit for decades, there's still more.

It's crazy, it's crazy.

It's the most carny shit that's ever been.

Yeah.

Ever.

Once again, again, though, like

money, but money, you know.

Um, hey, remember when the fucking Epstein Black book list of names, like, was a thing, and then all of a sudden it wasn't a thing, right?

Book go, anyway, you know, lost it, you know, like, oh, the lady that found it said, and then she turned it over.

There's a whole, there's a whole thing about that.

Like, it's just, yeah, no, that's crazy, yeah.

Um,

and then, and, and, and what's awesome is that if you have a giant list of, of, of people and

you like if you if you if some of the shit that's mentioned or some of the names are mentioned are discredited, then they can all be discredited, right?

Like there's no reason to take any of that shit seriously.

I think one of the bigger takeaways genuinely that I was I kind of knew in my heart and little details there there and there, which was going into absolute

exhaustive detail about what an absolute piece of fucking shit traitor scumbag Terry Balia, aka Hulk Hogan is.

Oh, what happened?

He's walking out of WWF.

He's like, hey, Vince, I'm going to go do movies.

Besides

problems with his daughter's preference.

Yeah, but besides all that stuff, he's like, listen, Vince, I'm going to go do movies.

And I love you, buddy.

And we're never, you know, don't worry.

You know what I'll never do?

I will never, ever work against you for the competition.

And then, like, three months later, is the fucking NWR storyline.

It's like, holy fucking.

Oh, yeah, brother.

He also stopped wrestlers from getting a union.

He snitched out

Jesse Ventura when Jesse Ventura was trying to start a union.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And it's like, man, what a fucking piece of fucking shit.

Oh, my God.

What's he up to these days?

Doing cool stuff?

He's doing cool stuff these days, I hear.

I got to take a quick break.

I got to go drug a cat.

So

I will be back in a second.

Sorry about that.

I have a very old cat that is very strong and needs a blood test because he's old.

So the only way to get him to calm down is to blast his ass with Gabapentin

and turn him into

just a puddle.

Does that make him really good at sniping?

Gabapentin?

No, you're thinking of Pentaziman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that cat is currently like wobbling all over the place.

Just high as shit.

Good for him.

Good for him.

So.

Silent Hill 2 remake came out by

Blooper Team and

affectionately being called the Bloober make.

Oh, that's weird.

I like it.

Do you like it?

I like blooper make.

It sounds like we bloobin.

That's fine.

That's fun.

It's a fun order.

So

last week, I talked about how the goal is I'm going to try and be fair

because I had very low hopes.

Just real bottom of the barrel.

And

it came out, and I grabbed a copy.

And one of the first questions I got when I was loading it up was, had I gone through the re the Silent Hill 2 Enhanced Edition very recently to get myself very fresh

and so I would really know, you know, be able to compare all of it.

And I say no because

I feel like that would set me up for like the most nitpicky possible,

like miserable experience conceivable in which I would be hyper-aware of it's different, ah, and thus lead to me going, it's different and therefore it's bad,

kind of thing.

So, I feel I should go off of like

my

couple-year-old memories of playing it multiple times in a row.

Now, the story so far, at least as far as discussions with you on the podcast, has been, um,

is that the

team making it made made bad

prior to the game?

Like multiple bad games.

And that

the initial look at the footage and some of the stuff people were looking at seemed like

some of the character designs and such were changing in ways that didn't reflect the reasons for the characters to look the way they did according to the original.

And

overall, the feeling was that this was not going to be like a Resident Evil 2 style remake where it actively changes and improves a lot of the game while making

it like,

well, making it like what you remember, but better.

Yeah.

So

also every single piece of marketing or information they put out made it look really bad.

And then we had that situation where like Konami put out this combat trailer, and then the head of Bloober was like, that trailer's made out of old footage, doesn't look like that.

We didn't cut that trailer.

And then I caught word on the street of people getting their hands on it and were really impressed.

So reviews started to come out, and reviews were extremely, extremely positive.

And

there was a thread on the subreddit, and I went in there and I said, that's cool.

And at the very least, it means that a lot of people who pick this up are going to be happy.

But the only person's opinion that I'm going to really care about on this thing is mine because I'm crazy.

And then I later addended to that.

Like, I would like to hear what Gene and Susie would have to say because they're similarly crazy.

But it gave me hope that at the very least, I would like to

walk in and be like, there's a good game here, it's just not good enough.

Or there's an okay game in here, but it's missing it.

It's missing the point.

and then i started to play it and before we go any further um every version of the game runs like shit

so right off the bat let's just like every single version of the game runs like trash from launch till now um yeah so

um all the console versions have unstable frame rates in all modes

so like if you play if you play like graphics mode and supposed to be locked to

30 FPS, it drops frames.

If you play in performance mode and supposed to be 60 FPS, it drops tons of frames.

When you play it on PC, the frame rate's actually super good,

but it stutters and it stutters bad.

Like, it like moving through like a hospital or the apartment area, and you turn a corner and it goes

like it, it is, it is one of the worst worst Unreal Engine 5 stutter things.

Can you turn off

things off?

I found that if you turn stuff significantly down, have a strong PC, and turn off hardware.

What's it called?

Hardware?

What's in?

It's in display.

It's a Windows setting.

Acceleration.

No, it's called

hardware.

Accelerated GPU scheduling.

scheduling and turn that off.

It very much

yeah, it very much

like smooths it out,

but you can't stream the game with hardware accelerated GPU scheduling off.

OBS goes crazy.

So, yeah, no, it definitely has some like very serious technical issues.

I hope those are patched up.

I hope those are improved because

it's a serious black eye on what is otherwise

pretty excellent.

Okay.

So, one of the issues of

them showing off the cutscene direction

with

the way they would show the trailers is that you would be watching their new cutscenes in a vacuum and you would then compare them to the original cutscenes which are famous super famous at this point for their super weird delivery um

and

um

in its own context

the new direction for these cutscenes there's a couple that miss a couple beats that seem like they really matter but overall, they seem like much more realistic portrayals of the same weirdos.

The dialogue, I believe, is like nearly

exactly the same.

There might be an addition here or subtraction there on specific scenes.

But it is,

you definitely get the same vibes that there's something wrong with Angela, that she's extraordinarily

paranoid.

She's not reacting correctly to the situation around her.

James is

definitely suffering from a completely flat affect and a lack of care for his immediate surrounding, and he's still very weird.

But it's a more naturalistic, like actor's portrayal of that same material.

As a result, it is

much less idiosyncratic.

Like,

the original's dialogue is crazy specific and unique because they had, in some cases, non-actors or amateur actors playing these characters as themselves, and it was like breaking new ground.

Being directed syllable by syllable.

Right.

As guy

note.

So

it is definitely like it is, it is definitely like a more grounded portrayal of the same material.

I am always going to prefer the old super zany fucking weirdness, but it almost kind of feels like the way film has gotten a little more serious.

Right, right.

It's a flavor preference towards that weird old style as opposed to it no longer makes the scene work.

I would say it's to taste.

Um,

there are some changes here and there.

Maria comes off as wildly more manipulative,

like intentionally manipulative than than in the original where she seemed a little more innocent until the turn.

There's some remixing of areas.

So there's a really good example in that you don't take the same path through the bowling alley to get to the strip club anymore.

Okay.

So the sequence of

Eddie, how could you sit there and eat pizza is no longer there?

However, the pizza is still there and you can't examine it.

And James will go, who the fuck could just sit here and eat pizza with all this stuff going around?

Okay, so that weird, like, everybody meets up scene.

It's still there.

It's just a slightly, slightly different location.

Okay.

So, so, overall, then,

um,

would you say that, well, I feel like now that I've so I'm coming at this the freshest eyes on the outside, and you know, I have not seen the new freshness, you haven't had decades to soak in this.

Nothing, nothing, and uh, you know, I haven't, like, not even the bad ports or any of that stuff.

So

the

way that Silent Hill 1 starts out being weird with its cutscenes and story and dialogue and such carries over to two.

And now you can feel Silent Hill storytelling in other things, right?

It's missing here.

But so far, it's not weakening any of...

No, no, it's still very strange.

It's not just as loud.

Okay.

And do you think that makes it so that if you could pretend to be a new viewer who's experiencing this all for the first time.

Oh, I think it would come off very impressively.

Okay.

It's just ⁇ it's a current.

It's very subdued.

But it's a current, but still

discomforting vibe.

Yeah.

They've added...

They've added some details to the characters in, you know, so they'll have a cutscene that's like more or less exactly the same.

But they will add something to it.

And so far,

a couple of those have really hit the mark.

There is one detail.

So when you talk to Eddie and he's barfing his shit out, right?

That cutscene's like 99% the same.

Except for the fact that Eddie and only Eddie's breath is misting up in the cold.

Ah, okay.

Okay.

In fact, Eddie's breath is always misting up in the cold in every scene you talk to him.

Interesting.

And no one else is.

And it's like,

okay.

All right.

Now,

let me be woolly.

All right, Woolly.

Woolly it at me.

Can you play footsies?

So

to those of you who are not familiar with survival horror or maybe have played survival horror games in in the past and have been worried about running out of ammunition,

let me tell you, my save game is currently inside the Nightmare Hospital.

I am walking around with 220 handgun rounds,

and 29 health drinks, and seven full heel syringes.

Okay,

and the reason for that is because you can play footsies.

Okay, um, the the The

stick and the pipe

have been

put into, I would say, like homecoming light

combat in which you have your swings and you have a dodge.

And your dodge is perfect and will cancel anything.

So

you have a three-hit combo.

And

is it the backstep?

Like the backstep?

You can go in any direction.

Okay, okay.

And the direction doesn't matter.

Like, you're totally invincible during it.

So, you're smacking on the lying figure or the mannequins, and they can dodge out of anything and try and counter-attack you, at which you have to also dodge them.

The nurses have a delay combo, okay, and a three-hit combo.

Okay,

and nurses can grab your pipe to stop you during mid-combo.

So, because RE2 remake increased your

mobility and such to be more mercenaries, like the zombies had to be increased in their lethality and their behavior

to match.

I don't know that.

So, yeah, in this case, same thing, behavior is now keeping up with the fact that you can do more.

I can't speak to all the enemies because I haven't encountered all of them, but I can talk about the three most common, which are

the lying figure, the mannequin, and the nurse.

So,

lying figures can sometimes, when you go to stomp them out, can sometimes spray their goo all over as a death move and damage you.

The mannequins run away from you and pin themselves to walls straight up and hide to sneak attack you.

They also have a command grab.

Okay.

And the nurses have delay combos, multi-hit combos, and parries.

Okay.

Does the lean towards action,

I guess,

do anything?

Oh, there's also scarabs, but they're bugs.

You just stomp.

It's not actually so much a lean towards action.

Because if you want to just delete an enemy, just pull out your gun.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

And enemies do not take much damage.

They take like four bullets.

Okay.

Like it's their they go down.

But I actually really like the melee combat and spent a lot of time doing it.

Like a lot.

Like I

spent

all the way until the end of the normal hospital not firing my gun unless there was more than one enemy.

And now you're stocked the fuck up.

And now I am now I am drowning.

Drowning.

There is an achievement for beating the game without

any

fire.

Without firing a gun.

Interesting.

Okay.

So, yeah, so RE2 remake has been the vector of comparison for a lot of this, but there's actually another one I'm thinking of.

Dead Space just got remade as well.

So Dead Space got remade.

Dead Space

is way more strict.

So Dead Space is like, it's not one-to-one.

But they didn't change any behaviors, right?

It was very close.

Yeah, okay.

It was very, very close.

Like, there were huge proportions of

areas in Dead Space One that were just like,

they pretty them up.

There were some bad areas that they cleaned up a little bit in Dead Space One, but yeah, it was very strict.

So I bring it up so that we can create

a scale of Dead Space to RE2.

So it's really interesting when you saw the interview with Bloober that they were were like we wanted we wanted to keep it very very strict and the original devs that we spoke to wanted us to change it more

that's funny because they changed a lot

a lot

this game is twice as big as the original

to scale yes new rules

it is it no in in every way it is it is twice as large okay So

the first day that I streamed it, I streamed for eight hours.

It took me like four and a half hours to get to the apartments.

And then the apartments, you know how there's the Woodside side of the apartments?

Yeah.

And then the Blue Creek apartments.

You know how the Blue Creek apartments was like pretty short?

Yeah, yeah.

The Blue Creek Apartments is longer than the Woodside Apartments now.

It is a massive three-story

nightmare section.

Okay, so this is also a modern game in length, too, as well.

Yeah, okay.

So, so that interview, it's interesting because, you know, from the outside perspective, certainly, where you're like, oh,

they want that changed or such, and you kind of would think, why?

And I'm almost remembering when Capcom was like, hey,

change Dante and

change DMC as much as you possibly can.

We don't want it to resemble the original at all, right?

So

I have a lot to talk about that at the very end of my section on Sciental 2.

Okay, because I I have when I can tell people to pop their headphones or

what have you.

Well,

I would say that like, yeah, part of that that I'm sure will come up is that the original director spoke about his feelings about the remake, you know?

So, yeah, but so

people are talking.

I just saw someone just now go, well, why didn't they remake one first?

The answer is because two is more popular.

But the second answer is that

they are not going to remake Silent Hill 1 because a lot of Silent Hill 1 is in this game.

So

you remember in the original Silent Hill 2, the primary aesthetic of Nightmare was grime and decay and drapes.

Right?

Things were flooded and ruined.

Things were old, etc.

Normal areas have that going on a lot more often now, now, but when we get into proper nightmare areas in Silent Hill 2 Remake, we have full-on chain link, rusted, night, like proper Silent Hill 1 and 3 nightmare otherworld sections

that 2 really never had.

Like just really piling it on with with the grossness and the hell.

Yeah, I guess I played them so close together.

Well,

in my brain, I'm thinking of the rusty chain metal, all that environment.

So that's actually only one in three.

That's only one in three.

That's only Harry's world.

Yeah, two is grime and drapes.

Okay, okay.

And they've integrated a lot of Silent Hill 1's aesthetic into the expansion of existing areas.

Again, I think Pyramid Head is like reason enough for them to be like, no, we're making the one with the fucking,

we're doing the one with the guy.

I think Pyramid Head was like the thing that would have been maybe the easiest to fuck up by far.

And the scene in which you meet Pyramid Head is a, it's the only scene that I've, I've done so far that I'm like, this is a substantial improvement to the original scene.

If you remember hiding in the closet while he's trying to jam the mannequins down the garbage disposal,

and

James shoots him and he goes, oh, oh, oh, and then hears a noise and wanders off.

In the remake, when he stares at James through the closet door, James shoots him three, four times and the bullets bounce

effortlessly off of PH's head and PH is stone still and doesn't move at all

and then decides to leave.

Okay, okay, It's not and it makes him much scarier and much more imposing because he is he is legitimately completely invincible and they show that off a lot better.

Okay.

Well, let's wait until you sneak, grab the sword, and then are able to do a guts style grundbeld overhead smash.

We'll see.

So yeah,

there's a lot of remixes of existing puzzles.

Like Neely's Bar has a puzzle in regards to it's a whole,

it was gone now.

The coin puzzle from the apartments with the man and the snake and all that.

It's back, but it's a different context.

And

I actually think the new coin puzzle is like one of the best things in the remake.

It's really smart and it has a weird new solution that I didn't understand at the first time.

And so far, so good.

Like that's that's like I've been titling my streams that because that's what everyone was coming coming in and asked like dude is it is it good?

I was like so far aside from the technical aspect

so good

The the overworld areas have been expanded and they're fun to explore the nightmare sections are longer The game feels better to play.

It is gorgeous You're still doing a lot of the same puzzles, but they're under new contexts.

So like there's still the hair and needle puzzle still with the drain still exists, but the solution is different.

Are you the first of the pantheon of super fans to break the silence?

I believe I might be.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

Because you guys are sitting around the table in space.

There is.

We have not been conferring.

Okay.

But just so you know, from the outside, I still have a lot of people.

We are looking at

group chat with Susie and Gene.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I'm not familiar, but apparently there's a guy named Voidberger or a lady named Voidberger who is crazy about it.

I'm not familiar, but I keep seeing their name pop up.

Hey, what's up, Gene?

So

it's great so far.

I fully,

they could drop the ball horribly, horribly at the end.

That's totally a reasonable possibility.

I know Gene's beat it and he's in the chat, so he could just literally say, did they horribly drop the ball at the end or not?

But so far, so good.

Full playable UFO dog ending sequence that goes on for 10 hours more.

Well, that would be great, actually.

I would love that.

There is, now there's the part where

I think

I know.

what Blooper team meant when they said that the original staff wanted to change more.

Yes.

And they decided not to.

And

I think

that they did just enough

of what they wanted to change, but

have so far not gone what I would consider too far.

So

there are

there is a new type of collectible in the game.

And

I will talk about the two first that you encounter.

And then I will leave it in case I don't want to spoil it for anybody that's not watching my stream.

So, you remember where you fought the lying figure?

You went into like an underground, like under underneath a overpass, and it was like blocked off with wooden boards and shit.

And it was like a very specific thing.

That's not where you fight the lying figure now.

You fight the lying figure in a different part of town and like an abandoned house, right?

But

you do, in fact, encounter that original location that is nearly identical.

Like, I think even the boards are all in the same places.

Are we currently dying?

Or like, what's I'm seeing some stutter.

Oh, no, we're good.

So

when you walk up to it, there's an interactable prompt on it.

And when you click on it, it makes a silent hole to original sound effect and pushes you into a fixed camera angle,

which is the only time in the entire game you get a fixed camera angle.

I then went to

the side street that you go down, and there's like a truck on the left, like a white truck, and then there's a save point on the right.

And then that's how you get to the little underpass that you put the lying figure on.

Well, the fence is now sealed up and it says

road closed due to accident.

And when you go up to it, you click on it and it again makes a little jingle and gives you a different camera angle into into a fixed pre-re, you know, fixed camera perspective.

Those things are all over.

Those types of moments wherever something has changed

and is no longer the same way that it is in the remake,

you almost invariably find

the original version of that location or place

as a little Easter egg where you can click on it and it'll go

like trying to play this the way you remembered, you would encounter that barrier or that thing in your way, and then you would get that little special moment.

So, for example, the coin puzzle is new, right?

The old man and the snake coin puzzle.

It's a brand new puzzle and it doesn't, it's not in the same place,

right?

But you can find the old coin puzzle smashed to bits

in the correct place.

The trash compact, the throw the juice down the garbage chute

puzzle

is the same puzzle, but when you find the garbage chute on the outside of the the building, it's actually been active, it's been sealed off and can't be used.

And it's a different garbage chute on the inside of the building.

And it is like a bunch of like really, really nice Easter eggs about,

hey, it was this was the old.

You remember?

Do you remember that this where it was in Silent Hill 2?

Well, this is different, but hey, it's still there.

There are a lot of those all over the place

about

pieces of the old game that are

still physically present in the new game.

And

I wore

an Evangelion shirt on my first stream under the suspicion

that they may be doing the thing.

Well, now, hold on.

Did any time ghosts try to push you out of the way?

No.

Okay.

And in fact, they have...

It seems that they are not going to do that.

Well,

but

there is enough there

that if you want to interpret it that way, you can.

Okay, so instead of full rebuild theory, what if it's simply some nostalgic moments that when you collect them all lead to like a fun little bonus thing?

No, they're just a collectible.

There's no reward.

Yeah, okay.

There is a line of dialogue that does actually support what I'm talking about that is like,

oh.

But

I don't think the story is actually going to acknowledge it.

I think it's going to live in Easter egg world,

which I think it would be terrible if they had made that a core plot of the game.

I'd say so.

I mean, I don't know which one of these fucking endings you want to throw that concept into, but I think I hate all of them.

Yeah.

You know, so yeah, no.

It's funny because it's not fair because FF7

got there first.

Well, Ava.

No, but you know, in video games.

Sure, yeah.

Right.

If this was new and it was the only one that had tried it, people would probably be more open to it.

But

I don't think

that

I don't think they're going to fully go for it.

I think they're just going to open it up for super fans to argue about and try and, you know, have fun with.

I would also argue that the rebuild concept is not novel anymore, right?

That's kind of the problem.

Yeah, you, you, I mean, it's not that it can't be done well.

Anything can be done well, but it certainly is not going to have the, like, that holy shit impact of like the first time we encountered this stuff.

And I would even say like the first time I remember when it was just even like a vague little distant thing was

the Star Trek movies where I was like, oh, that's clever, you know, but it's a little thing.

You can ignore it, but it's there, and it's a clever little bit.

But yeah, all of this, I think, I would hope if anyone wanted to

take a crack at

a rebuild concept, that you'd have to do something really different from all the stuff, the media we just mentioned, you know?

I think the problem is that the rebuild concept kind of ran its course by the end of the rebuild films.

Because

despite the fact that that was one movie series,

it took like 10 years.

And again, even when you don't find it a surprise, you can still do things that are interesting.

Like, I mean, I talked about Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, right?

Like,

there's ways to go about it, but

it just is now a thing that we go, oh, that's a new way that remakes can exist.

And you don't kind of have

that much of a special feeling as you did the first time you kind of encountered these things.

Yeah, it seems that I've encountered probably as blunt as it's going to be.

But

I'm digging it as long as it stays

over here

and doesn't take the focus away.

Now, the most important thing in the game

will not be heard until the ending is reached.

So

this overall impression is not complete until we hear the letter.

Oh, yeah.

But

I seriously doubt

anyone could ever top or match the original reading.

But I do hear that like James's barks and screams and noises gutturally.

He sounds like shit are

pretty good.

He sounds like shit

brackets complimentary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I hear him.

His voice cracks on some of his attack yells.

Awesome.

That's great.

Like, so in the old games, they would say, well, your character isn't really a cool guy or an action man.

So we're going to make it control like shit.

And instead, what they've done here is that he controls like a video game character.

And like you can play him normally.

But like he sounds wretched and his animations are wild.

And he is like,

it sounds like he is barely managing through.

Yeah, actually, I did hear a,

you know kind of like yeah

exert

kind of sound like when he when he is like stomping on an enemy to take them out he is like screaming

good good good like okay um

it's very intense

And yeah, so far, so good.

The only type of opinion that I'm currently looking for, because I need somebody who's beaten it and isn't listening to this conversation, which is if you are totally ignorant and you played this game without social media,

are some of the new additions in the background too on the nose?

I can't tell.

I don't think so, but I can't tell.

Yeah.

I know too much.

On the nose is fucking risky, man.

I always tell the story about my friend watching Old Boy in English and hating it because the English just puts it too on the nose and lets you get there way sooner.

It's important to make sure you don't go too fast, you know?

So a really good example, a really good example of people who don't understand what I'm talking about,

like genuinely don't understand the point that I just made is, and why I limit this to people who don't know already, is that the pause screen has something going on in it in Silent Hill 2.

However, it is impossible,

impossible to intuit the Easter egg going on with the pause screen unless you have beaten the game already.

Absolutely, completely impossible.

You would never be able to figure it out.

And so when someone goes, well, the pause screen's two on the nose,

it's like, but that's because you already know

that you know what you're looking for.

Yeah.

Okay.

Interesting.

Cool.

Well, that's great.

It is.

It's kind of great.

I really,

really hope they patch this to run better.

It is, it is.

So it kind of running like shit was like a hilarious piece of trivia when this game was a pile of shit that sucked and who cared and we're all just gonna get through it and laugh about it.

Um,

but now that it's like oh shit, they're actually like really cooking here and like this is kind of great.

Um, it's actually now a massive, massive bummer that it runs bad,

like like it's a massive fucking bummer.

But this represents

this represents, yeah, the first chance for people to like learn about and actually experience this series in years.

One last thing to talk about.

So,

everybody has different things that bother them.

Everybody has

parts of the world that are intolerable to their psyche.

And we're talking about Silent Hill, a horror game.

But I've played a hundred horror games.

I played 200.

I probably played a thousand.

There are two health items in Silent Hill 2 Remake.

In the original, it was health drink, it was medical kit, and then and pool.

Now, there's only two: health drink for like one heal, and then syringe

for full heal.

I've heard.

So I've used stem packs in other games.

I've you

I did the eye sequence in Dead Space 2 and whatever.

Silent Hill 2 Remake

gives you

the syringe health item

and James pulls it out of an old med kit,

and it is actively filthy.

It is covered in grime from plunger to tip.

It's rusted,

and the labeling is worn down, and it is filled with brown mystery liquid.

It is

every single thing that activates my fight fight or flight in terms of being stabbed with a syringe.

And

I had to take a little deep set of deep breaths just when I saw it.

Then

when you take enough damage, the red vignette actually gets deep enough that you see there's a

like a health plus sign in the corner, and that shows you that you're about to die.

You hold down the triangle button to use the syringe.

syringe

and James just

yanks it and just plunges it straight through his jacket and his shirt.

Like without like.

And

I like.

I saw.

You saw it.

You said that.

So it's that

like it's coming up burp

where your body is deciding to expel non-existent poison.

So something that's really important here is that

I think that something that elicits a really uncomfortable feeling in a game that's about feeling uncomfortable can be seen as an act of

case.

However, there is a threshold where that's not a pleasurable thing.

That's actively making it hard to go through.

It is, it is like

so, like, most people don't react to dirty syringes syringes the way I do

nobody likes a dirty syringe obviously

this is like pushing it to the limit yeah this is this is like the worst thing I have ever seen about this literally in any media ever people were like talking about this on the subreddit and posting like that scene from Saw the needles in Saw are clean.

Yeah.

Like, like, no.

That's horrible.

So the moment I saw the way you reacted to that, I could tell immediately that I'm like, oh, a lot of the audience is not going to understand that this is actually going past the threshold of enjoyable.

I think a lot of people are going to think that it's like, oh, wow, it's gross because, yeah, it is supposed to be gross.

But it's like

there's a, there's a, there's a line that you, yeah.

So I could tell that.

It's way over.

It's way over.

I get it.

But it's a really powerful health item.

So,

I don't know if you saw this.

I've discovered a solution.

The solution is, is when I have to use a full heel syringe, I grab the controller

and I run a little bit away and then I hold it with my right hand and hold triangle to do the heel and literally put my hand over my eyes

until I hear the plunge sound effect.

And I'm in battle when I'm in fights when this is happening.

And

I have to do it.

I will barf on my fucking keyboard if I watch that.

Yeah, no, it's again,

it's not something that I think over the course of our career comes up often, but it's just like sometimes there's no bit, quite frankly.

Sometimes there's just no bit.

I get it.

And I think that

some people don't get that and i think some people that perhaps don't have anything in their life that is like that can't relate to what oh i can already see a couple people in this chat right now going oh what a pussy yeah but i don't you don't i don't wish that i don't wish that upon you because you don't know the feeling of a triviality going past your psyche into your stomach i you like i i i don't wish that upon you and if you're lucky enough to live a life where you don't encounter or experience that in any way shape or or form that's great but if

we can get an arachnophobia mod for skyrim can we get a med kit mod for the pc version of silent hill 2 remake probably

probably i mean shit and in um

in the um what's that game called uh for the company um

anyway whatever

no no no the game where you um you help each other for the company or whatever anyway there's a yeah an arachnophone oh a lethal company lethal company you yeah there's a thing that turns all giant spiders into the word spider oh that's great and it's um um satisfactory

uh in satisfactory uh if you turn on arachnophobia mode they turn the spiders into literal jpegs of a guy's cat

okay right right uh which is also kind of weird by itself because it's a bunch of like cat jpegs coming at you yeah it's still strange yeah um and and like i want to be super clear here because like yeah no it's not needles

it's

filthy mystery needles that is is the is the i don't think the big nightmare but i don't think even further definition matters there most importantly especially to people that are like whatever i don't get it it's all bit is that it's involuntary yeah it's involuntary you don't have control over that and like i blame martin short for this

this is martin short's fault fault because of inner space.

Okay.

Haven't seen that.

Martin Short is just going about his life and a scientist just stabs him in the ass on an escalator with a mystery syringe.

And I saw that when I was a kid.

And then

I was taken with the realization.

That anyone around me could stab me with a syringe and I wouldn't be able to stop them.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

There's always a catalyst thought, I suppose, or moment.

Yeah.

All right.

Like, I could be walking down the street with the baby in the stroller and

a guy could run out of his house and just stab me with a syringe before I knew what was happening.

I think about that shit all the time.

And with

that shit.

It sketches.

All the time.

But like, yeah, that thing.

So So it's a choice that you can almost like step back and objectively see how it's like, ooh, that would be good for making people feel freaked out by that concept.

But in this case, just the most on the nose it could possibly be to the point where maybe someone at Bluber was listening to you a stream or two.

Oh, I.

The idea that that is actually there specifically to make me barf is really flattering.

If that showed up in a David Cage game, I'd think twice.

David Cage doesn't know about us.

Oh,

I don't know, man.

I bet you if I walk into Quantic Dream Montreal, I feel like something might happen.

Get this motherfucker out of here.

I think something might happen.

Okay, so I actually have

a question.

Ask away.

Would you say so far that if this level of fidelity and change and

everything else you've seen was carried over to Konami's other recent efforts, Metal Gear Delta.

That would be sufficient and good,

yeah.

But

it's not,

and you can already tell that it's not because

I watched the recent MGS Delta trailer and I was like, what is going on with these animations?

I can't figure out what the fuck is going on.

And Delta is like the same game with like new graphics like stapled onto the existing game.

Delta is either exactly what you want or completely pointless, depending on your perspective.

I thought it was going to be a remake of three in the five engine.

It is,

but they're taking the game and then they're putting it into the five engine engine and throwing new models onto it.

Like it is like you see the cutscenes and they are actually being model flipped and using the same voice files.

Which now, because it's outside of its context, it looks a little weird because the animations are a little old.

The animations are older than the models that they're inhabiting.

So it looks a little older.

So it's using the animation data of the original game

in the Fox engine.

It's unreal, apparently.

Okay.

Okay.

Man, I hope they fix that stutter in Silent Hill.

But so my opinion of Bloober team has obviously improved.

I did not know that Bluber made Observer.

Observer is pretty good.

I think Observer is the only good game they've made before this.

I think the layers of fear games are bad, and the medium is terrible.

And

they have

been upgraded to

they can really do something good

as long as somebody else designs the whole game for them.

And they follow a guideline?

Okay.

Yeah.

So

they're really, really good at coloring in the lines.

So

let me just accent what you were saying about the original team's willingness to see

changes with a part of the news here, which was Masashi Subayama, the director of Silent Hill 2,

had a

thread on Twitter where he talks about it, what he thinks of the remake.

And he mentions, games and technology are constantly evolving, resulting in significant differences in constraints and levels of expression.

This is a common issue with media arts in general, but it's not easy to maintain and appreciate the environment of the time.

I think the value of the remake is that a new generation can play it.

As a creator, I'm very happy about it.

It's been 23 years.

Even if you don't know the original, you can just enjoy the remake as it is.

Whether it's good or bad doesn't affect the original.

The differences between the original and the remake, like 4K, Photorealism, the bonus headgear, etc., are all mediocre.

Who is this promotion going to appeal to?

It seems like they're not doing enough to convey the appeal of the work to the generation that doesn't know Silent Hill.

The thing, yeah,

they are coasting on the old game's reputation.

The thing to note is the change in camera perspective.

The change in playable camera has a significant impact on many aspects, combat level design, art creation, etc.

While the impact of the story may relatively be small,

may be relatively small, it brings change to the playfeel of the game.

To be honest, I'm not satisfied with the playable camera from 23 years ago.

Depth and angle were limited by the processing load.

It was a contentious process of hard work that was not rewarded, but that was the limit.

The over-the-shoulder view definitely adds to the sense of realism.

In other words, it makes me want to try playing the even more immersive remake of Silent Hill 2.

So,

even there, I mean, aside from the like, I wish I never fucking designed Pyramid Head

bit of history, the director here was kind of like, yeah, you know, the camera itself was a limitation.

Yeah, of course it was.

It was 2001.

So

I can see that, like, if there's parts of

things where they kind of went, like, yeah, I wasn't too satisfied with this, then the idea of like remaking it, especially for a new audience a bit later, there'd be a willingness to be like, nah, man, go ahead, do something else, you know,

improve on that if possible.

Like,

I think

that the original is always going to be

vitally important,

particularly for its time.

but as long as this game continues at the level of quality that I have been experiencing and they fix its performance a little bit, it will likely be the case that when someone asks, hey, I would like to get into Silent Hill, should I track down a PS2 and

or figure out how to use the Abandonware version of the PC game or just buy this new one on my console?

The the easiest answer is now completely viable.

Well, and in this, we can, I mean, something that should be always the case is the original should always be made available once a remake drops of any.

So, this is actually really a weird thing because it is

you could, if you so desired, go how to play Silent Hill 2

and figure it out from there,

it would not be hard.

But that's not the same.

No.

Officially, there should be a thing that comes out with the thing that's like,

and here you go, right?

Yeah,

just

anyone that you want to appeal to, or for any reason, for whatever the case is,

go hand in hand with a nice port of something to to at least be like, and then there's this, and this is now also immune to time.

Yeah.

Fucking syndicate.

Anyway.

The old, the old,

the old bullfrog game.

Is that gone?

No, but like the 2012 thing, like, wasn't there, like, when they, when they re-released it, there was like,

there was, like, a pack-in

that was, like

what was what was it?

I feel like I thought there was like a pack-in with the

new one that was like you that you

that was of the old game or something, but you couldn't get it outside of that otherwise.

Or,

yeah, anyway, I don't

remember.

But yeah, please, Bloomberg team, hit us up with some optimizations because

come on,

or somebody smarter than them get special K on the case or what have you because it's really bad.

The stuttering is like literally every minute.

Oh, that was Alice.

Okay, okay, right.

Um, yeah, well, I mean, shit, this is gonna come back up in the current news because there's some other shit that involved in this we're gonna get into.

Um,

okay,

uh, but yeah, um,

so far, so good

on the Silent Hell 2 remake.

I am

very happy to be wrong.

It feels good.

And I would like to point out that there are weirdos trying to like edit the fucking Wikipedia to remove review scores.

And it's like,

you guys are just mad that you were mistaken.

I saw someone in my chat.

um yesterday said um

dude this sucks

They were very blunt and they're like, I wanted it to be terrible so I could be mad and enjoy being mad about it.

And they're brave to say that.

Most people would not have the courage to admit that they would rather something be awful so they could just enjoy being pissed off.

But they're also kind of wrong because the real enjoyment is not being mad about it.

The real enjoyment is like,

I saw it.

I knew.

I could tell.

I could tell right away because I'm so smart.

I saw what you guys didn't know how bad it was going to be, but I knew, I knew it was going to suck.

Oh, trust that this podcast would get months, if not years, of content

out of this game being an absolute trainer wreck.

Oh, my God, tons.

Instead, what do I say?

We're going to talk about it today, and then we're going to talk about it next week.

And then every time it comes up, I'll go, yeah, it's really good.

And guess what?

Yeah.

That's honest.

So that's.

And that's better for everybody.

Hey, I want to respond to.

I want to respond to a shit post that's actually way funnier than the author knows.

In the chat, someone says, Silent Hill 2 Remake is woke.

They deleted the Comic Sans poster of the Silent Hill Ranch.

So first of all, that's hilarious.

Second of all, actually they didn't.

The Comic Sans Silent Hill Ranch sign can be found within the ranch barn if you know clip Through the Wall.

It's there.

It's still there,

which is really funny.

Well, hey, I'll say this.

You can still direct as much ire as you need to towards

the short message?

I sure can.

And there's two more Silent Hill projects on the way.

So now it's one and one, right?

The score's one, one now.

Yeah, I think Silent Hill has like the most coin flip quality of anything ever.

Like, there are very few games in that series that are fine.

They're either like pretty good to excellent or they're pretty bad to horrible.

No in between

let's see how these

the rest of this uh compilation of ff7

yeah let's see how the rest of this all shakes out i am so town

yeah that's that's pretty much it for me this week um

you can check out me over at twitch.tv slash patstaresat this week i'm going to be playing more asylum hill 2 um and i gotta i gotta switch switch some of my schedule days around because I was supposed to play a very long stream last night and then encountered a very cataclysmic technical error that actually didn't have anything to do with Silent Hill.

But on

Friday, maybe Thursday, it's

Metaphor Refantasio.

Oh my God.

The best game that will ever come out.

Thank you, Atlas,

for all of your friendship.

Make sure everybody knows.

Did you know it's out October 11th on the Xbox?

Yes.

Okay.

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Okay, so we covered the

hey, before we move on, I had this idea when you were reading that that, like, don't let don't let your parents find out what dank shit you're into, and it's like them kicking down the door and on your computer is like League of Legends.

No!

Don't look!

Don't look!

I'm feeding mid!

Shameful.

Disgusting.

All right, what's up?

My son plays a Kali.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I don't know what that means, but I threw it out there hoping it would mean something.

Oh, it means something.

Oh, good.

All right, cool.

Yeah, so, all right, a lot has happened, and we're going to try to cover what we can with the timeframe.

But a big chunk of interesting stuff has popped up because the Blizzard book Play Nice by Jason Schreier has come out, and with it has come a plethora of stories and development news and things that have not seen the light of day.

Now, remember, everyone, just because Jason Schreier is an alleged press rat sneak fuck and name-searching big baby bitch boy does not mean he can't write good as reporter stuff.

What happened with that again?

Oh,

he was talking.

It was actually about Blizzard, where he was like, yeah, I've known about tons of crazy stuff about Blizzard for years, but I never talked about it because, well, you know, and everybody on the internet was like, you sound like a bitch.

And even though you weren't actually using his at, you were just saying like JS or whatever, he was just name searching himself and blocking everyone for like forever,

including myself.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I remember talking to other people being like, did you use his at ever?

Like, no.

That means he's like sitting there going, Jason Schreier.

No, no, I'm so mad.

Was there something about like a story that was withheld that could have helped some employees and some yeah, that that was it.

That was like he had tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of inside shit on Blizzard.

And he just said, Well, I was never able to confirm some of it.

And it's like, even though some of it would have confirmed the rest of it.

Okay.

Like basically when the big Blizzard thing broke a couple years ago, he came out and said, Yeah, I knew all that shit.

And it's like, well, you knew all that shit.

Why Why didn't you do anything?

And I guess it was because you wanted to write a book

which had these things in it.

Yeah.

So there was apparently a series that was going to be developed for Netflix.

They were working on

multiple shows.

They're working on a Netflix Warcraft show, an Overwatch show, and a Diablo show.

But

sometime after that, plans were canceled because Netflix apparently poached the former Blizzard CFO, Spencer Newman, and that led to a lawsuit between the two companies.

So

all deals were off.

It's kind of wild how Blizzard just can't get narrative content out.

I mean, it is.

Just can't.

I could see something like that doing well for them

because I'm sure Castlevania turned a lot of heads, right?

Shows like that, and then Witcher and stuff, like you kind of look and go, oh, we've got a big franchise that needs

a bunch of big franchises they could have done that with.

Desperately needs some narrative.

And yeah, I think as well,

part of this, there's a huge list here of like games that have been canceled throughout Blizzard's history, excuse me, which are many.

A lot.

Like many.

Like

a lot.

Yeah.

So

some of them, Deadizen was a dungeon crawler from way back in the day that got canceled.

Not much is known about it.

There was a game called Bloodlines, which was a space vampire game.

Didn't resonate enough with staff to justify its existence, so it got cancelled.

Pax Imperia 2 and Crixa.

I don't know what that is.

These are

from way back in the day, sequel to the Empire Building Real-time strategy game, Pax Imperia,

Eminent Dominant.

It sounded like internally there was a lot of projects that were like got started, but just never really

took on with the rest of the staff.

There was

Shattered Nations was a turn-based strategy game that was supposed to be inspired by Civilization, but it was canceled because

Alan Adham, the founder, didn't want to make a turn-based video game.

Thought that Blizzard should not make anything turn-based.

There was a Star Wars RTS project

that was in early discussions at some point, but before they could make a prototype, he came back and said they weren't doing one after all.

And then

LucasArts president at the time said that he didn't recall any discussions about a project like that existing.

And then, of course, this hypothetically turned into

StarCraft.

So it it seems as if there was a thought about this project that would have been reaching out to LucasArts, but then I guess they didn't actually reach out and then just made it an internal thing instead.

Warcraft Adventures.

Well, that would change things, wouldn't it?

A lot.

Yep.

Warcraft Adventures.

That's a pretty famous one at this point.

I remember screenshots of that in EGM magazine.

And the full game is leaked online, so you can go play it.

It was like full, like animated and such.

But

it was,

yeah, yeah, it was fully hand-animated and

pretty much completed, but they never released it because

they felt that the art style seemed amateur-ish and the puzzles weren't really clicking.

And then they mentioned that Al Lo, the creator of Leader Jesuit Larry, played the game in a trade show and basically said, if you guys can't make this work, then who can?

And, you know, listen, man,

Blizzard believes in quality, and if they can't release just the best games ever, it's better to cancel them.

And that mentality is going to stick with them forever.

So that was the reason why they decided to hang up Warcraft Adventures.

If one game was released that was ever widely perceived as subpar, it would destroy the company's reputation.

They need to have every game be A

best ever.

Yeah.

There was a project that was being headed up by Mike O'Brien, the guy who created Battlenet, and it was Warcraft Legends, which was a 3D spin-off where players didn't have to worry about making bases, and it would stead be an over-the-shoulder perspective

role-playing strategy game.

Then it got announced, it got rebranded from Warcraft Legends to Warcraft 3,

but that led to internal staff fights because some people didn't want to make Warcraft 3 as not an RTS and to change it.

They didn't want to see it change into something entirely different.

And so there was too many fights between people at the project, and eventually

he left and then founded ArenaNet, which went on to make Guild Wars.

Interesting because Warcraft 3, you know, went on to focus heavily on hero

characters while still being the RTS, of course, but it sounds like initially there was a heavier focus on something that was before MOBAs existed, leaning in that direction.

Diablo for the Game Boy got canceled.

There was a game called Star Blow,

which was

a game called Star Blow.

Get the fuck out of here.

Project X

became Star Blow, which, as the title suggests, is a sci-fi take on Diablo.

Oh, it would have been like B-L-O?

Star Blow was sci-fi Diablo.

Oh, my God.

Hop in a spaceship and travel between planets, collecting new guns and battling aliens as you traverse the stars.

You know,

I feel like astonished because we were making fun of Blizzard for like, everything has to be a banger, right?

And it's like, I wonder how it feels.

So Jay Wilson was the director from Diablo 3, and Jay Wilson was the guy who was in charge of itemization, levels, the way items worked, and the auction house in that game.

So, if you could lay that at anybody's feet, it would definitely be Jay Wilson.

I wonder how it feels to have broken

an undefeated golden streak.

Like, it was literally him personally and the decisions he made.

Crazy.

At the same time Starblow was being worked on,

Diablo 3's original version was supposed to be an MMO inspired by Ultima Online.

Okay.

I believe that.

That version of the game obviously never came to fruition.

There was also Nomad, which was

a post-apocalyptic game inspired by a Necromunda.

So, you know,

not baby's first peek over at what

Warhammer's doing over there.

What you got going on over there?

What do you guys got?

You got shoulder pants.

What you fucking.

Hey, yo, show me your homework.

God.

Yeah, they were working.

There was a point where Marvel and Lord of the Rings

were in talks

to work on, to have them work on an MMO as well.

And that just fell apart and they took it elsewhere.

StarCraft Ghost, of course, there's as many details as you want on this because it's been such a puzzle.

Man, that game had two completely different versions.

Yep, yep.

Originally, they could not decide between whether it was going to be more stealth or more action.

And the teams were kind of like at odds with each other on what what it should play like.

And then it even got restarted from scratch.

And then the second version that was made from scratch was still being developed late into the end of the console generation in 2006.

And so by the time it was like, either we port this to the next gen

or we scrap it, they were like, well, fuck this, we scrap it.

Yeah,

there was another, there's a couple spin-offs there.

There was talk about them doing

a

Minecraft

doing, what was the pitch was do for Minecraft what World of Warcraft did for EverQuest.

So they had a project called Avalon that was going to be kind of like, yeah, I suppose like Minecraft survival construction oriented.

You have listed out

twice as many, maybe three times as many canceled games as shipped games.

Oh, yeah.

What the fuck were they doing over there?

I mean, it sounds like.

This is ridiculous, right?

That's not normal.

Well, it sounds like when you have the golden CV, as you described, there's a lot of ideas about what should come next and how and why.

And

everyone not wanting to fuck that up led to much hand-wringing

over just about everything.

Because, yeah, that's like,

I mean, this list just goes on, you know?

And at each point, anytime there were things that were like, oh, here's a current thing happening in games.

Like, Minecraft just now was a thing happening in games.

Yeah, well, we're the fucking blizzard.

We can fucking Minecraft these things.

Here's how we can take.

Yeah, right.

What if we took our crack at it, right?

There was a project called Hades, which was

they were working on when Arkham series was popping off and and they were trying to make something that was based on the idea of the arkham combat system

um eventually they scrapped that because it was going to be

related to diablo 4 and then they yeah like that shut down um

there was a trading card game that um

they were

that they basically had some serious flaws with and it was there was some major major problems and when they went to make a digital version of it the problems with your physical card game became even more pronounced.

So they threw that out entirely and took some pieces and put it together to make Hearthstone.

You know,

I mean, yeah,

the creation of Dota, right, is, I think, that there's, that's more or less public, but

the thing they didn't have anything to do with at all.

So they wanted to make a sequel in-house to Dota.

And when they reached out to IceFrog, the Dota designer, he wanted a list of things, including full creative control, which they didn't want to give.

So that project fell apart.

And of course, he went on to make Dota 2 with Valve.

And that is one of the bits.

The rest is history.

We talk about drop balls, like Microsoft drops a lot of balls.

That is like a game industry changing blunder.

Because that down this list,

you get down to Hots, where like, yeah, like they, you know, that was the attempt well after the fact when the genre was fucking well established.

You know what sucks?

Hots and Legends of Rune Terra are my favorites of their two respective genres, and they're dead.

Huh?

Like, the ones that I really loved are the ones that died.

More than you, would you say you like Hots more than Deadlock, even?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, you know, MOBAs popped, but they had a chance before Riot established League and all that to...

You remember they sued Valve over Dota 2?

And the decision that came down was like, you had decades

to snap this up and get the name.

And you just didn't.

I mean,

you have to think that, like, while that type of lawsuit is happening,

games workshop is like should we light them on fire now or yesterday like should we just go burn their offices to the ground you know um

yeah heroes of the storm which you know uh uh didn't become as popular

actually man no games workshop is saying we will never turn down a possible hit ever again

ever

you want to make a warhammer game

you can fucking pay us 25 and you can make a warhammer license is yours um yeah so heroes of the storm you know um never hit as hard as dodar or league originally that was um a game called blizzard all-stars that was made within starcraft 2's map editor um terrible name and it was supposed to be released around the same time of heart of the swarm which explains the hots acronym a little bit oh that's stupid, though.

That's confusing.

Yeah, because then you get hots and hots.

That's dumb.

We've, you know, the

World of StarCraft rumors have always been a thing.

And,

yeah, they, but apparently, the definitive word is that World of StarCraft from the jump,

they felt it never, the lore would have a, it was a struggle to get the lore to fit into an MMO setting.

So right away they decided to go with a completely different setting, and that's where Titan was born.

So like there was never an attempt to like make a...

I think that's actually correct because World of like StarCraft's factions are like kill on site for all of them.

You'd have to basically be hanging out with only your crew in

human because like you can't roll as a hydralisk and do fucking quests.

Or your different races would be stuck hanging out with only each other and then like warring with each other as a part of it.

Well, the flow would not be a regular MMO flow, right?

No, it'd be a weird thing.

You can't have a fucking zealot and a Zergling walking around the shop.

Chilling.

You know, yeah.

So then, yes, Titan is the original superhero game they were going to make, and they couldn't decide whether it was going to be just focused on the action superhero parts or the daytime, boring life Animal Crossing parts where you got to

have a secret identity, and all of that eventually gave way to Overwatch and so on.

There was talk about an Overwatch MMO and

yeah, but then they'd have to give Overwatch a story so they canceled it.

So the ambitious plans for

the whole thing, yeah, the ambitious plans for Overwatch ended up not shaking out in that way at all.

They wanted to, around the time when Pokemon Go was popping off, they wanted to make their own Blizzard Pokemon Go style game.

You're not Pokemon, man.

Well, no, but in Warcraft, and it was going to be a project called Orbis.

Eventually, it was canceled.

I've got to go outside to get my Orbis on.

Orbies.

So, yeah, Feature Creep, The Pandemic, Unengaging Combat, and Developer Attrition all led to the cancellation of that project.

There are some.

Developer attrition can be underscored with a little pair of brackets that reads sex criminal.

I mean,

there are

where was anyway, there was definitely

some of there was a project I remember reading about here that was like, yeah, that dude got let go and that project ended.

But

a couple others, Orion, Odyssey,

Aries was an attempt to make a StarCraft shooter heavily inspired.

You are saying

so many fucking names.

Battlefield-style StarCraft shooter game called Aries.

It was not liked by

the execs.

People were not digging it.

I have to say, hearing this massive, massive list of games, it is now super pathetic that all Blizzard has put out is Overwatch and Diablo and StarCraft sequels.

Like,

all of these things you said were like they couldn't decide on this, they couldn't decide on that, they couldn't make it work internally.

So, at the end of the day, they just made another one of the things they already had that were made by people 15 fucking years prior.

Every single one of these was just like there was no consensus on on the whole on the projects moving forward.

And at some point they go, what about another StarCraft?

And people went, I think I can do another StarCraft.

Yeah, Warcraft 3 Reforged was supposed to be a way more ambitious project that would have.

Yeah, yeah, you fucking think.

Redesigned a lot of things to bring them in line with World of Warcraft.

Obviously, lack of funding and such led to what happened.

Yeah.

it just really does just kind of keep going.

Those are most of the notable ones.

You know what?

I will say one thing:

Blizzard had the decency to cancel all of those.

They didn't take their MMO money and go, hey, motherfuckers, do you want to play Foam Stars?

There's.

And then when everyone in the whole world went, no,

they went,

it's free to play.

Also, when God of War was popping off,

they decided to

take a crack at a God of War style game in the Warcraft universe called Andromeda.

Okay.

And yes, that's when Alex Afrasaibi was let go for his misconduct and treatment of employees, and that's when the project was canceled.

Now listen,

Riot Games is made up of a lot of people who formerly worked at Blizzard.

I think that's really obvious when you look at or play any of their games, including much of their behavior.

However,

while individual pieces may not have been the best, boy has Riot been way more successful in going,

here's a new thing that's not the main thing.

So it seems.

Yeah.

Those games have come out and have been universally at least

fine.

Like, like, Arcane was hot, and that RPG, The Sunken King, was actually pretty good.

The whole, et cetera.

And the whole free part certainly helps a lot.

It does.

It does help a lot.

Free things are free.

Yeah.

But yeah, that is your big

peek behind the curtain over the years at what has been not happening at Blizzard

that is absolutely spells out fucking crazy but also is it not the most like oh yeah that makes sense now

thinking about what all the things that don't happen you know the years and years of silence on things and it just like yeah yeah it's like hey every this game takes so long to come out it's like well we had to cancel six other games in the meantime we weren't actually working on it every single thing that happens including coming out and going, you own phones, don't you?

Like every one of these moments was after fighting tooth and nail for each of these projects,

you know, to exist

from a bunch of people, a bunch of

I have to say that

internally.

The idea that Diablo 3 was going to be an MMO or pseudo-MMO

makes the auction house make way

more sense as an integrated component.

And

then they, but then they turned it back into a loot game and then kept it.

Because so much of what an MMO is, is things like that, is the

guys were really confident in the auction house

in an MMO, you could have just put it in a World of Warcraft.

Oh, you're not going to do that?

Why would you not do that?

Is it because it's a bad idea?

I mean, the other thing here is when you kind of go through the through line of these, notice how a lot of the things were like, hey, so when this was popping off, they went, what if we did the Warcraft version of that?

And it's like,

hey, you know why you were really popular, Blizzard?

Because you said, hey, why don't we make a really, really, actually, really good real-time strategy game when other people were making really bad real-time strategy games

at the end of the day?

Oh, crazy.

No, and I mean, at the end of the day, like, as much as StarCraft is fucking, you know, 40K's homework being copied, copied,

the game they made was a very fun game that stood out for a reason, right?

StarCraft 1 is so incredible.

It's so incredible.

And there were those moments where when the winds were shifting towards other types of genres that were derivative of RTS, they could have manned that ship.

But, you know, this will go down in history as one of those

fucking Pokemon

Skylangers moments, you know?

They're kind of a one-trick pony.

I would say that like the space they occupy, which was StarCraft and then WoW and then Overwatch, are different things from each other.

They are, absolutely.

But

we now know that they tried to have that pony do 100 other different tricks and

threw their work in the trash.

Like, you know how you like start editing a video or I'll start something and i'll be like oh this isn't any good and you just throw it away and you start over and it's like an hour gone

you you don't do that with like a fucking six-month project that's just

you don't do it what 15 times in a row

you you read so many names

it feels like

Nintendo trying to output the amount of stuff Nintendo outputs without getting other developers involved.

And then you just cancel all of them.

Yeah.

It feels as if like Nintendo Internal trying to make every single one of these IP things we see.

Not as good as a Nintendo game.

Nothing comes out.

Yeah.

Like it sounds like they're trying to iterate and try new things.

And then at the end of the day, someone stands up and goes, Is this as good as Brood War?

And they go, No.

They go, Well, cancel it.

Look.

The bottom metric, the final test.

Go play the game for an hour.

Now here, load up Brood War.

It's like, this is like the least fair possible metric that could ever exist.

And then after an hour, switch back to the first, to the working game.

And you're like, I don't want to.

All right, game canceled.

God damn it.

Because

that was their stated idea, which is it has to be a certain level of quality to ship.

Damn.

Damn.

I could, dude.

Dude, they never put out another game as good as Brood War.

I feel it.

I fucking feel it.

Oh, shit.

Well, anyway,

that's a big one.

That's a big one.

So, yes, history of some terrible decisions.

Now,

speaking of terrible decisions,

hey,

Tekken has made some terrible decisions.

So I thought I misunderstood and misread this.

The mistake they made

was reaching out for Colonel Sanders instead of the Burger King.

You know what?

That is a pretty big mistake.

KFC denied

Harada's appeal to have Colonel Sanders be a playable character as a guest in Tekken.

I really want to think that this is super funny because it's not that they ghosted them or ignored them.

They denied it.

Yes,

with

a bad look was what he said.

They gave a bad look.

And this was before

the Colonel showed up in the dating sim

and all that shit that they did after the fact.

So they were clearly not against the idea of him.

Burger King would have fucking done it.

But they didn't want him fighting.

And you fucking know the king would have been there.

100%.

The problem is that KFC in Japan is way bigger than Burger King in Japan.

Sure.

It hits way harder with the Japanese audience.

The colonel, and the thing is that in America, they have like the colonel being like this goofy mascot character on the commercials and stuff.

I'm sure the american branch would have would have leaned into that um but one way or another like that moment in history was denied and like fuck negan

that would have been

that would have been incredible that would have been amazing genuinely amazing but that's why like waffle house will never happen yeah you know because of this exact moment of like you don't understand we all kind of love this and then it's like no but then you have to like say that our franchise is endorsing the violence of this series or whatever the case is.

And it's like, it's not.

Come on, you know, and plus, I don't think Waffle House wants to lean into the idea that, like, hey, our locations are violent, you know.

So that's where I say, like, yeah, make it Grapple House, make it Alex's house of pancakes, you know, whatever the fuck you need to do.

But of course, that was a misdirect because,

no, for real, though.

Heihachi Heihachi gets added to the roster and Tek N8's reputation goes off a cliff.

Something like that.

You wanna...

So I just wanna finish what I was saying before.

I thought I misread this story until I had it re-explained to me and it was exactly how I had originally interpreted it and I couldn't believe it.

I genuinely couldn't believe it.

So,

quite simply, when Heihachi came out for the game, he was released and part of

the season pass as well was with Lydia, and Lydia came with her stage.

And Heihachi released, and his stage was not a part of the Season Pass, and it was being sold for $5.

And that led to a lot of people understandably being very upset because they were like, what the fuck did I buy the pass for if you were going to not include something that

you just included for the previous character and there's a piece of content that I thought I would be covered for.

So this led to a massive review bombing of Tech N8 on Steam

where the negatives like they were as there was a spike down earlier.

What was it that happened the first time?

I forget.

Something led to like a negative bomb earlier.

But this one has been humongous.

And

the

yeah, everyone has basically just been like, you did not communicate to people that bought the season pass, the playable one-year pass,

when with that, you know, or if your ultimate edition or whatever you see you shipped that you spent money on, that there would be a piece of a stage that would come out that would not be included in that, right?

So Harada, who you know has been talking on Twitter and stuff, he then came out and had a very

frank

statement,

which was then subsequently deleted because I can imagine Bamco business internal being like, yo, stop

putting oil on the fire or whatever the case is.

Please stop.

Please shut the fuck up.

But essentially, he came out and

described in a very long statement that there is the production side of the business and then there's the development side of the business.

And

him and his team focus on development, but the production side decisions were the ones that chose

to charge for the stage.

And

he plans to reorganize his role within the business side so that community expectations can be met in the future and so that people don't get confused about this whole thing.

And basically was like, yeah, this was the business side decision.

He basically threw the business side of the

team under the bus and said like, yeah, this was all their fault.

And I get, I can imagine that being a case where it's like, you know, yo, dude, shut the fuck up.

You don't get, yeah, it's like, don't fucking, we're supposed to have a united front.

Don't point fingers internally at

your coworkers or whatever the case is.

But then he had to delete that message or whatever.

So

yeah, that is an interesting thing to have come out and explain the situation, even if briefly, you know, of course, they screen capped it and got that in there.

But oh man, if it, oh, yeah, yo, I deleted it, no one can see it, guys.

It's good.

But no, the ratings.

I did post my dick and balls online.

It's fine.

I got it.

I got to it within five minutes.

But yes, it's gone to mostly negative

in the reviews.

And yeah, that's just a really stupid, stupid thing.

If

whoever makes that decision to sell what is already.

Oh, you know what?

Well, I'll put it this way to me i feel that the whole like pot frog temperature analogy has been so such a prevalent thing for us over the years and you're you know we talked about how like we just get so used to being fucked over a little bit oh absolutely kind of just like all right just don't make it egregious right and it's normalized that all these things are the case and you're getting your ultimate editions that cost a hundred and something odd dollars or whatever so

When something happens where there's still a moment where people go, yo, what the fuck?

Like you still can feel it?

I'm like, ooh, ooh, ooh, the frog still has nerve endings.

Ooh, ooh, you really?

Ooh, I'm, ooh, ow.

You know,

the frog can still feel heat inside the pot.

And I'm happy because

we're due to be numb any year now.

Yeah.

That's the story so far.

No real

changes to anything with that.

I've seen, you know, some, there's been threads, some other developers have talked about the cost of developing stages and how things have gotten more expensive and you have to supplement and find different ways to monetize

to get, you know, over every so many months and stuff.

And like, yeah, all of these things are the reality of,

you know, the cost of game development changing.

We've addressed these things, I feel, in many stories over the years that have then led to

poor performances, layoffs, yada, yada.

But

on top of all this is a don't make the people that bought the thing that was expensive feel like they got lied to about what they'd be getting.

getting.

Absolutely.

It would just really

terrible if you spent a bunch of money on something and found out that the people behind it lied to you, and then that somehow screwed you over.

That would be astonishing and terrible if Tekken were to do that.

Yes.

Oh, are you not?

I dropped the baton.

Oh, oh, oh, do you not even know about the story I've been referring to?

What are you setting up?

Have you been following what's been going down at Thiger Uppercut in Thailand?

Oh, yes, yes.

There's a player

that was banned that's from China.

Yeah.

And that China was not one of the registered

countries that was allowed to participate.

Yeah, so Thiger Uppercut is part of the Tekken World Tour, which means it gets seating points for the Tekken World Tournament.

I think it's just Tiger Uppercut because Thai.

I mean, it says...

Oh, I guess that makes it.

Yeah, Thailand.

Okay, so Tiger Uppercut.

Anyway,

and

this Chinese player, XCC,

registered,

flew out,

showed up.

and crushed it all the way up to top eight and eliminated a ton of strong players.

And then

as soon as he hit top eight,

organizers come out and go, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You're Chinese.

You can't play.

You're kicked out.

You're disqualified.

Which blows the fucking tournament integrity up because now there's a fucking buy in top eight.

The World Tour tweets out

that this player was disqualified

from participating from whatever, from a country that was not supposed to be able to register.

Bad country.

From bad country, no.

And

what I saw was

Harada replied to that, where someone said, yo, fix this, do something.

And he went on it.

Or, okay.

Yeah, I have the tweet here.

Harada said, Sometimes, no matter how clearly we explain it, they don't understand.

Fundamentally, I want them to understand the universal philosophy that we game devs want as many people as possible to play our games.

I hope you guys understand that I too am sick and tired of getting getting involved in political relationships between countries that have nothing to do with games.

I think there's two parts to this that are super crazy.

The first is like, why is China banned from playing Tekken?

I don't know.

Like, Bamco put out some nonsense statement about some kind of United States sanctions fucking whatever that

reeks of bullshit.

But the second one, and much more importantly,

how the fuck does somebody from a banned country get to the event all the way to top eight before someone goes, oh, wait a second?

We can't even let them.

Oh, shit.

Like.

Yeah, I don't know, man.

Dude just wants the Korean backdash.

Just let him.

Like, that's crazy, dude.

I don't know.

The results of that tournament are illegitimate.

People that could have gotten that dude's top eight spot got eliminated.

People that won may not have won against people that guy eliminated in top eight.

And the last time one of these things happened where it was at like the Canada Cup event, and there was a fucking cheating idiot that entered twice using his girlfriend's name.

You fuck up the bracket, obviously, and ruined the entire tournament due to, again, being a cheating asshole.

But here, where it's like, actually, you just showed up and played.

And, like,

whatever the case is, once it was underway and like

it's currently rocking, you have to kind of take that.

It's too late.

If you're going to...

Oh, my God.

Like, the story could have been for some reason, this player that showed up and registered was not allowed to participate at all.

But instead, it was like, no, it went as far as it did.

Yeah.

Okay, so there's three versions of this, right?

The first version is that,

sorry, there are four.

One is he, he signs up and he gets his tickets ready.

And then someone contacts him and says, hey, man, you won't be able to compete because of this national thing.

And then he's like, ah, fucked on the plane tickets.

But it's like, at least he didn't travel out there, right?

Number two is he shows up and they're like, oh, sorry, dude, you can't play.

That's obviously worse.

Number three is what happened in which he makes it to top eight.

And number four is he gets higher than top eight.

At the point that he was physically at the venue without anyone realizing that he shouldn't have been there,

it's too late to not let him into the tournament.

Instead, what they should have done is said, listen, you can win, but you can't get seeding points for the tournament that you're actually not allowed to play.

So,

yes, but then that means conceding to whatever stupid rules that shouldn't be there, I guess, to begin with.

Which my hopes is that it sounds like Harrada is trying to get it.

You concede to those rules when you sign up.

I suppose so, whatever bullshit they might be.

Yeah.

And so it should have created the really funny situation where the winner of the tournament doesn't get to go to the world stage.

The second place guy gets to go.

Which is absurd and insane, but my preferred outcome would be that like this stupid rule gets fucking thrown out.

Oh, yeah.

No, this, this, like, for in context of like making the Tekken World Tour look incredibly stupid, this is a massive success.

It's called the World Tour.

China has like a seventh of the world's population in it.

That's fucking stupid.

And

but now we have to consider: what about the secret Chinese?

where's Tachibana when you need him?

I say to you,

cool-ass Chinese fighting game players, if you're really, really good at Tekken and you want to make Namco look really stupid,

there's a path forward for this.

They're not going to check your passport when you sign in on the bracket.

So if we can get a secret Chinese to win Tekken and then fucking blow up that shit, that'd be great.

I'm not Chinese, I'm from Taiwan.

Seriously, this is fucking embarrassing.

This is so fucking stupid.

That's a dumb.

So, so, so.

Embarrassing, stupid, etc.

Those are all words.

They are.

I like them.

But none of those words are illegal.

That's true.

However...

What if I were to say that the Star Citizen developer, Cloud Imperium Games, has imposed a seven-day work week

on its staff ahead of a citizen con.

You know,

um

that sounds about right.

Hmm.

How much money over how many years?

A lot.

Like a crazy amount.

Of money or years?

Both.

Ah, okay, cool.

Both.

Let's type in the word star citizen money.

I think I saw 700

over 12.

Over 700 million.

Yep, 700 over 12.

We're cruising towards a billion-dollar game.

Uh-huh.

So everyone at the company is mandatory.

Star Citizen Con is a word I've used in the past, but it wasn't in reference to a convention.

Yeah, you like the thing here.

Yes, so

an email was sent out to everybody saying that

double down over the next 18 days to make sure that once again we create an amazing experience for our community.

Finalizing the patch 3.24.2 for Star Citizen demo showcase of chapter one.

For the next two weekends, we will be mandating extra time for all those working on deliverables for sitcon.

All staff

will have to be in office for uh the date that was a typically work-at-home day um they would have to be in office on the uh yep saturdays and sundays

uh leading up to the the convention

and uh they'll be provided with breakfast lunch and uh they'd be received they'd receive time off in lieu which can be stored and used uh at a later date,

yada, yada, et cetera.

There's also a condition.

They're in California?

Fucking good luck with that.

So

England was what I

have a California notice of collection on their fucking

page.

Oh, they're in England?

Yes.

Still good luck with that.

And

UK employees need to be mindful of the hours they work and are asked to have 11 hours outside of the work in between each of the 24 hour periods.

You can't do this.

So, this is where I was like,

what's going on?

And it's like, yeah, so there's the EU Working Time Directive, which applies across all of the EU.

And even though the UK split up from the EU, the working time regulations remained.

And they basically state that you can have a maximum work week of 48 hours, including overtime.

If a break in the workday is longer than six hours,

no, 11 hours continuous rest for every 24-hour period, or

minimum 24-hour rest every seven days, or minimum 48-hour rest every 14 days.

Oh, there's a Montreal studio.

So, yeah.

I assume they have their department that would check these things, but on the surface, this sounds incredibly super illegal.

You can't mandate permanent overtime.

And it sounds.

you just literally can't.

And it sounds like asking your employees to work every day forever or every day non-stop

for weeks leading up to, you know, whatever the end of your crunch thing is,

is not allowed.

Listen, though, listen, listen, okay, listen.

What they're going to do is they're going to go, guys,

big governments keeping us down, not letting us work on the game.

They're going to fine us.

And you know what that means?

It means we need more money.

So, like, there's almost like the story is almost like pointless because it's like, yeah,

company put out an email telling all, instructing all employees to go out and steal a billion dollars and turn it in overnight.

Like, it just, like, it doesn't, you can't do that.

Like, it just doesn't make anyway.

So, yeah, I guess this is part one of this story.

And I assume part two is the labor lawsuit.

Subsequent updates that will follow after this one.

But there you go.

The first bullet point on this long list is that

the game that has,

yes, been $700 million over 12 years is asking their employees to literally work without cease seven days a week.

So.

Can't do it.

And I'm being hyperbolic because there's

the 11-hour period in which they are allowed to stop before they get up and continue.

Yeah, you'd think with how hard they're working on this game, it'd be done by now.

I mean, this much crunch

got to be getting something done.

Also, or not,

that con is in 18 days.

Dude, the amount, the work that's going to come back from these people on days like 9, 10, and 11 is going to be worthless.

Oh, man.

Just worthless.

Never mind the data on like what Crunch does or me telling that story about the guy I worked with crying at his desk again.

Like, yeah, it just, you know, people do their best work when they're up all fucking day and night.

Play hungry, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Man,

the best work is done by dudes crying at their desk wanting to know if their baby's walking

development babies, man.

Like, yeah,

I could get a text message right now, and it's like

he's gonna do it.

He's gonna walk, right?

And if that happens, I'm just gonna sprint away,

right?

But, like, imagine, imagine getting like

you, bitch.

Sorry, I just, oh,

hello,

you were saying that, and then your face made a face that looked like it was occurring.

I just got a Discord message that was like, hey, you guys almost done the baby's walking.

And then went, haha, just kidding, no, he's not.

You can't troll me like this, woman!

That is fucked up, Paige.

That is fucked up.

That is not okay.

You can't go into the super not okay.

Just go LOL smiley face.

That is super not.

That's fucked.

Oh, no.

Oh, wow.

Oh, she's evil.

Oh, I love you, sweetheart.

Oh.

That's some bullshit.

Now, now you know what's going to happen, right?

Hey, Pat, get over here.

The baby's walking and yeah, yeah.

Uh-huh.

Got me.

Got me.

You last time.

You love it.

Uh-huh.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my fucking stomach just shot up into my fucking chest.

That is more bullshit than deleting the add to cart button from the Steam store page for Horizon Zero Dawn.

Hey, Wooly,

I have a tag team piece of news for this.

Let's go.

So the Horizon Zero Dawn remaster is coming out,

and they really want you to buy the remaster.

So they've disabled the ability for you to buy the original

on PC.

And the version on PS4 is now like double the price because it has like a they just doubled the price.

Well, you can buy it on PC, but you have to link up your Sony account.

No, you have to, you cannot buy the original version of Horizon Zero Dawn anymore.

You'll only be able to buy the remaster going forward.

There's a thing where if you, okay, well, apparently there's a change that forces you to link up your PSN account like Helldivers.

Oh, yeah, for the remaster.

For the remaster.

Yeah.

So they really, really, really want you to do that.

And then

on the PlayStation 4, because they're going to have like an upgrade version,

the price of the game is like double now.

They just doubled it overnight.

when the remaster got announced.

And it's like, they feel really strongly about this remaster.

They feel like it's going to be a real, you know, Horizon Zero Dawn's a good game and people love it and sold lots of copies and this remaster is going to do really well.

And it is unfortunate that Dragon Age Vailguard is coming out on the same day.

That is unfortunate.

But it's not like there is an even more critically acclaimed open world game in the same genre.

coming out days prior that will completely evaporate it in public consciousness.

Like, I don't know, know, Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare.

Thank God they decided to never put, oh, that's coming out.

That's coming out.

Red Dead 1 and Undead Nightmare are now dropping a day or two before the Horizon Zero Dawn Remaster.

Exactly two weeks.

On PC.

Yeah.

And I was just thinking, like, you know, I never did get around to Red Dead.

I was kind of curious about that.

It's incredible.

Red Dead 1 is like my favorite game that Rockstar has ever made.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I definitely have heard the acclaim.

And

yeah, they're they're porting it to PC along with Undead Nightmare in about two weeks.

And that's pretty sick because I believe the last place you could get it was PS4.

Yeah, it was, yeah.

Over 10 years ago.

I don't know if you see this in your chat sometimes, Wooly, but when something bad happens, every now and then I look over and somebody just yells out all caps curse of Raw.

Not that.

Yo,

this feels

like other developers are like fucking with them on purpose.

Let's gang up around Horizon.

Like this particular one feels like, when can we release?

Oh, is there a horizon?

The slab.

Return the slab.

Yeah, I mean,

prior to that announcement, what were people pointing to?

What was the other thing that was coming out?

Was it just Metaphor?

No, it's so Metaphor is out on October 11th.

It was something

and a Dragon Age Vailguard, Vailguard, Vailguard, the first good Bioware game in 25 years.

There we go.

Vailgar Vailguard was what we were talking about.

And it's like, okay, well, and I, and to which I went, like, oh, is there excitement?

Is that going to be good?

And we think I fucking red dad's drop.

Like, yeah.

And, like, hey, listen, if you just want,

if you also want the other thing is that

Alan Wake 2's Lake House DLC is also coming up that week.

But, you know, classic, classic move right there, right?

So, yeah.

Okay, so here's the thing, though, and this, I think we kind of have to, you got to know,

especially going forward, every time Sony's going to release a PC version of anything, there's like eight asterisks next to it.

Because

it is the most promotional only

for getting attention on the sequel at current release thing ever.

Absolutely.

They always come out staggered in a certain way.

And boy, is this not a real port that is to be treated like a product you should buy, but it is to be treated as a demo or an ad.

Call of Duty comes out on October 25th.

Fucking sick.

That's great.

Well, look, man.

Dude, I can't wait for the announcement of the release date of Horizon

3

so we can plan our schedules around whatever else is going to fucking shadow drop and be super hot that week.

I suspect that Vailguard,

Call of Duty, and Red Dead Redemption.

Red Dead

will be available to purchase in over 170 countries.

That's probably true.

But forcing a PSN sign-up means that you cannot, even if you follow the instructions, get your hands on Horizon Zerodon Remastered.

With the you know, someone in the chat just made this joke, but it is actually feasible

that the new Horizon comes out alongside the Switch 2 again.

Oh, I thought you were going to say Silk Song.

Just

like space laser drop on your fucking game release.

Could you fucking imagine?

The New Horizons game.

Silk song.

Oh, my God.

That

die.

Oh, my God.

That would be so fucking funny.

Anyway.

And speaking of fucking up your

follow-ups,

we were just talking about how fucking sick Uzumaki looks.

We sure were.

Oh, man.

That first episode, so cool.

So the second episode dropped, and immediately so did the quality.

Like a like

not like how much?

Like a little bit?

Like it's not quite as good?

Like Berserk 2016.

Wow, that's crazy.

Like animation like being

slid around the frame.

Like characters running are being scaled up in size without respect for where they're actually standing.

A punch that has the punch and the guy getting hit react at different times as if they're like faking it.

It's rough.

And people were like, what the fuck happened?

The trailer showed off all the best things from the first episode that looked incredible.

And

with that,

the executive producer

who works at Toonami, Jason DeMarco, came out and had a thread describing what happened and much more.

There's some wild fucking statements in that thread.

And much like the Harada story just now,

that had to be deleted as well.

Yeah, but not before we got a hold of it.

So,

yeah, he straight up and came out and said, we were screwed over.

And they,

like,

there we go.

It's fine.

We knew this would happen.

I can't talk about what went down, but we were screwed over.

And the options were A, not finish it and air nothing at all.

Call it a loss.

B, finish just episode one and leave it incomplete.

Or C, run all four, warts and all.

Out of respect for the hard work, we chose C.

After waiting so long, it makes sense that people would be mad.

Unfortunately, I can't tell them who to blame it on, but someone is definitely at fault here.

We all just had to do our best when things imploded.

Maybe others would have made different choices.

We did the best we could with what we had, but again, a lot of people worked very hard on the show, and I didn't think the actions of just one or two people should be the reason it never saw the light of day.

Maybe that's the wrong choice.

I truly don't know.

But those people have a right to be annoyed and disappointed.

I'm glad you're digging it.

It is insane for him to come out and be like, there's someone to blame.

Directly.

There's blame.

There's blame.

100%.

This is someone's fault.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah,

I hear that perspective.

For me, I'm the kind of person that goes, drop the first episode, let it be a classic, and then let, and then leave it alone and let it disappear.

And if people have to wonder what the other thing is.

Oh, yeah, they should have just done the one episode.

If people have to wonder what the fuck happened, then let that episode speak for itself and maybe one day garner the fever pitch to do it correctly, you know,

after the reception is what it is.

Because there's things like that where maybe some idiot that's fucking up the production will not have as much sway if there is a massive positive feedback that they get from dropping that one episode.

It's

wild how, like, so individual contributions in group work, individual contributions can be exemplary and

amazing.

But you'll never know just how bad it can get until one person shows off that the right person can tank the whole thing.

Yep.

Just

like, I couldn't believe one producer or one animator or whatever ruined the whole thing.

Wow.

Crazy.

And the worst outcome now

is fulfilled in that instead of having something that might

take time and changes of

direction, but eventually happen and

leaving people with a desire for more, you instead get to peter out.

and make everybody extremely unexcited about it.

And then now the thing's legacy is ruined.

Well, the Usamaki curse continues, or rather, the Ito curse continues.

The Ito curse.

Which is

very appropriate.

Man.

It is wild that the only long-term thing based on Junji Ito's work that has been successful

is unofficial World of Horror.

Unofficially.

Like, World of Horror is the best Junji Ito thing that has ever come out after his manga.

And it's a fan homage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a fangame.

Yeah, man.

I think this is one of those cases where being too close to the project means it's too hard to let go.

But like the people to blame aside, it's

the strike against something being it turned to shit is so much worse than whatever happened to it.

Where did did it go we should get more of that you know it's just a very different feeling um

that sucks because fuck me that that first thing looked so good you know it looked incredibly faithful um

yeah man uh i'm i'm sure this will also not be the last we hear of this uh if somebody that is the executive producer on the project is speaking this candidly but still trying to protect their job i imagine there are people who give less of a fuck somewhere down that hierarchy that will probably say more

when we see

the project, the fourth episode air.

Yeah,

fucking can have nice things, man.

Right in time for Halloween, right?

Though, to be fair, like the game industry and the entertainment industry is big enough, like,

I mean, metaphors out this week on October 11th that's a good thing

we can have nice things we can have nice things like the new game metaphor refantasio it's almost like persona you know it's it's very similar to persona but better but it's a new franchise but it's from the it's from the the creative minds of persona is you know my favorite thing about this this fucking bit of over advertising something outside of the ad window is that the reviews came out and apparently the game is just like ridiculously incredible.

So, like, what we're saying is accurate, but we're saying it in like a fun tone that makes us sound like shitheads.

I thought you were going to say, you know what, my favorite thing about Metaphor Refantasio is.

Oh, yeah, no, it's

the music.

It's the music, definitely.

The class system is very versatile.

It's very good.

You'll be using archetypes.

They're not persona or devils.

Incredible.

Okay, so this has been a top-to-bottom docket of shit.

It's the what have we been playing part?

Awesome.

The news section, complete dog shit.

But we can squeeze out of here with at least one or two nice things.

So one,

Red Dead and Undead Nightmare coming to PC this month.

Yeah.

Hilarious, targeted, mean.

Two,

check out this game called Knockoff, Battle for Imagination.

It is a fighting game, and it is a Kickstarter that's going to be dropping.

In 50 days.

And

the idea is that every character is a knockoff of a toy that you had when you were a kid.

There's some

Mazinger-looking robots in there.

Holy shit, that's just fucking me, man.

There is a Skeletor, there's a Ninja Turtle-looking thing.

There's a whole lot going on in there.

Is that a battle toad?

Everything.

And I would say, most importantly, is that the way the game looks in the way.

It's not just the toys.

The gameplay itself looks like

toys fighting in your toy box or in your backyard.

You know, this is going to be a very weird reference.

Oh, my God, that's a street shark.

It looks like Patrick Bovain's

action figure animations.

Right, right.

That is one.

There's also the guy who animates the Japanese account that animates like Kirby with Sephiroth and stuff on Twitter.

Yeah.

There's a cool little thing here.

And

it seems like the moves they're doing in the little trailer as well are the types of moves you would do.

Like, oh, and then a big boom and then a beam and then the

Well, I'm looking at these moves, and the movesets also kind of look like knockoffs.

Yeah.

Which is kind of great.

And there's there, and like, I, there's Mugan-style rhythm and air combos happening in gameplay.

So, um,

looks pretty fucking cool.

The way this animates is really cool.

Yeah, it's toys moving.

And, of course, the acronym is KO.

So, yeah.

Check out knockoff.

See what you think.

I mean, the Kickstarter's not up yet, but I think that looks rad.

I'm curious to see more.

That looks super cool.

Other nice things, Alien Isolation 2 confirmed.

Wow.

On the 10-year anniversary of the first game's release, Creative Assembly confirmed a sequel in development.

Doesn't like a lot of that.

Didn't a lot of that team get laid off?

The people who made Alien Isolation?

I feel like they did.

I mean, 10 years ago, yeah, that's not going to be

the same for sure.

Um

though it is kinda funny because like in seeing the acronym for it just scrolling past AI and it's like ooh,

like oh

see that game actually used AI like actually

like that alien was smart.

This is also pretty cool considering Romulus uh pla with the little nods I was talking about.

'Cause um

you know, there could be things that that play with that and uh I look forward to seeing how the Black Goop is introduced

into this game.

People loved Alien Isolation.

I never gave it the time of day because I can't kill the alien.

And to me, I was very done with what I called panic horror at that time.

But it is beloved.

I played a few.

Yeah, I played it.

Of what I played of it, it was extremely good.

Yep.

I didn't beat it, but

I played a few hours, and I thought it was very good.

I was a big fan of the exhaustive detail to like

just the shitty state of technology in the alien universe.

Yeah, well, the ability to feel like you're walking through the old Nostromo-style

tech, you know, and visuals and stuff from the actual setting.

Like that, that, that's, that's always fun is like a feeling of capturing those same keyboards with nonsense buttons and layouts and screens and, you know, things like that.

That's just always fun.

It was cool.

Cassette futurism.

That's it.

Um,

so yeah, that oh my god, did I

in six days ago when this got announced?

IGN put up a video called In Defense of Alien Isolation,

in which they talk about how they gave it a really shitty review back in the day.

That should be called In Defense of Our Alien Isolation Review.

In Defense of God Hand.

In Defense of God.

Oh, you got there first.

Yes.

Yeah, there you go.

I knew I had like two sentences before you rushed there.

In defense of 8.8.

You know, it's funny.

Alien games have like a history of being reviewed very badly for stupid reasons.

You know, there was a PlayStation 1 game called Alien Resurrection.

Matt and I played it on the shitstorm, or maybe it was just a one-off a million years ago.

Yeah, I remember.

It got terrible reviews.

It got terrible reviews for its impenetrable and ununderstandable control scheme when it was actually the first game to use the dual analog stick control scheme that every first-person game uses for decades.

I just remember how Colonial Marines almost got us arrested.

Yeah, well, that was a different thing.

Anyway,

I'll never forget that feeling.

Hey, what are you guys doing over there?

And there's like 10 cops.

You remember that big bald cop that looked like he was disappointed?

Do you remember him?

I don't remember any of the specifics of the police officer.

Oh, there was one gigantic aggro-bald guy who was just like vibrating with excitement.

Yeah,

I was kind of checked out a little bit.

Yeah, that

I overheard them check you out more and then shrug and go, you know how it is.

So, you know

that.

But hey, we got the bit.

Did I ever tell you what happened after you guys left?

Probably, but I don't remember.

I walked back into my apartment building, which is where this took place.

And my landlady was like, hey, are you okay?

I just heard the cops were out there because there's some weirdos sneaking around the building.

Awesome.

Great.

And I was like, oh, that was me.

And she was like, what?

Yeah.

Yeah, for anyone who doesn't know, we shot a bit for the Alien Colonial Marines video where we were pretending to be Colonial Marines with a couple of toy guns.

Which we had spray-painted black, which in hindsight was maybe one of the stupidest decisions we've ever made in our lives.

Perhaps not.

The smartest.

But yeah, we were just creeping around a dumpster in the garbage area near Pat's apartment.

And one of my neighbors called the cops because there were some suspicious men with guns hanging around my building.

And that was that.

They showed up fast.

They did.

They did.

Just a bunch of adult college-aged men playing in a park with toys.

Yeah.

Well,

anyway.

And then, and then rounding out our news.

Hey, it looks like Ubisoft value has dropped significantly enough that the

Guimo family and Tencent are considering buying it out.

Yo, that's a bad deal.

They currently own collectively about 25% of the holdings.

Wait, didn't Tencent just like

cut a bunch of shit?

Didn't we talk about that like a week or two ago?

Hmm.

Didn't Tencent just cut like a bunch of games?

I feel like that happened.

Let's see.

Oh, the Legends of Mana devs.

Ah, yes, yes, yes, Legends of Mana.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So they'll buy Ubisoft and grab Assassin's Creed.

I mean, the thought is Neddy's?

Oh, my mistake.

Oh, okay.

So the thought is that I'm sure that the Ubi grab bag of IPs, you know, if you can get them at any kind of discount price.

Assassin's Creed still has some value, though it's nothing like what it was.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, you're also grabbing Tom Clancy.

You know,

Pop is a part of that, whatever.

But, like,

Tom Clancy's Prince of Persia?

I would play that.

I would play that.

That'd be a very different game.

That'd be wild.

No, but Siege has

its place.

Oh, yeah, it does.

Yeah.

You know,

Watch Dogs.

Did you forget about that?

No, Watchdogs.

No, I didn't think about it.

Okay.

They had three bites at that apple, and all three were busted.

It wasn't a piece of Eden.

Dude, that would have been way better.

If like at the end, you're like, what's your big hacking technology?

And holds up like a fucking golden apple.

And you're like, oh,

man.

Oh, dude, I was so in.

Yeah, everybody was.

Everyone was so in.

I was so in.

Fuck.

Let's take some letters.

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

uh are you excited for metaphor write us in it's out octopus

yep 343 is now halo studios they're renamed and working on halo stuff that is true um tom says hey guys uh Everyone knows to blow on cartridges to get them to work again.

What are your favorite folk remedies for getting scratched CDs to read right?

Me and my friends always used to use rubbing toothpaste and a clean t-shirt.

Nobody can put a label on what you guys do, but you're the best at it.

Oh, well, thank you.

That's very kind of you.

So, the toothpaste trick did actually work sometimes.

Yeah, I remember there was a disc doctor that would be advertised at every single GameStop fucking

TV cash cashier thing.

I don't know that that ever worked, but I do.

I have used a disc doctor, and as long as the

cut is

it hasn't hit the data,

the disc doctor could save it.

Interesting.

I do know that the toothpaste trick, I can confirm, I know that works because, yeah, it would fill in a particularly bad scratch and essentially make the game, instead of stopping and skipping on it, it would just kind of go past it.

And sometimes that would work.

Sometimes, yeah.

You'd have to like flatten it out after it was inside the thing.

So blowing on cartridges was interesting because like that would stop working at a point.

and then i eventually learned you have to switch to a cover the bottom of the cartridge with your shirt and breathe

like condensation breath on it and then that would start working a huge amount of these are placebo also

made a difference somehow um and then i got particularly good i remember at like sliding in the nest cartridge diagonally like yeah you know the size yeah

um

and lining up the contact points it was also a thing like the feeling of getting it down evenly on both sides.

In the modern context, these things don't exist as much these days.

Because it's just digital, and you're in a forum trying to figure out what Microsoft redistributable you're trying to download.

But I will say that when your phone's charger plug is no longer working properly, unless you hold the phone at a particular angle,

I'm a fucking beast at locking that angle in and like wrapping the cord in such a way that it stays at that angle.

I've become fucking good at that.

Yeah, there's not that many of these types of things anymore.

We are gone from the era in which, what's it called?

It's called percussive maintenance would fix all your technological ills.

If you're unfamiliar with percussive maintenance, it was very popular in the 80s and early 90s.

TV is getting a little wonky.

Just punch it.

It'll probably work better, actually.

I'm not even fucking joking.

It was legitimately effective for all

80s technology.

Slap that sub-bitch.

I mean, that's where the whole hitting it thing came from, ultimately.

Yeah.

Zeeker says,

Dear meat and potatoes, recently went to Chicago and tried Pequot's pizza at your indirect recommendation.

While it was okay, the sauce was too loose and tangy for my liking.

Made me realize how hard hard it is to recommend pizza and how different people's preferences for it are.

What foods do you think are hard to recommend because of how much the preference varies?

All foods.

I would say

Mexican is very hard to recommend because some people want the tangier

flavors.

I'm being informed that Pequod's rules from the wife.

It's great.

It's great.

It's incredible.

That's the deep dish place I talked about last time

when I went to Chicago.

Yeah, Mexican's hard because some people want the tangy red more.

Some people want it to be cheesier.

Some people like more sour cream or guac kind of flavors to it.

Some people like the kind of lemony aspects of the lime.

Like people want different things out of Mexican because Mexican has different thing profiles to it.

And I've been

taken by people to places that are like, yo, this is the best Mexican place, where I've been like, yeah, nah.

You know, so

I like me a good Mexican food, but there's a problem.

The problem is, is that there's only one thing that I want with my Mexican food, and that is no cilantro.

Because I have the genetic mutation that makes cilantro taste like, like, soap.

Yeah.

And it tastes very strongly of soap.

It's very intense.

And so I'll order no cilantro, please.

And then Paige will have like a bite of mine or somebody else in the past has had like a bite of mine and be like, yo, yours your shit tastes so weak and shitty because of no cilantro and I'm like but it but otherwise it would taste like I'm eating a bar of fucking soap it's literally genetic yeah

again I've tasted both I've tasted cilantro and I can I can also put my brain into the place where I'm like, oh, I can see how that's soapy.

Well, it's just that the flavor is like magnified by like a hundred times that specific part of the profile.

Yeah.

No, but the Mexican I prefer is like, I like the cheesy, sour creamy kind of Mexican, and I like when you have like some super well-seasoned chicken instead of just like the tangy, tangy red, tangy, you know.

Hey, listen, man.

So if you've got a type of food and you want to put cheese on it, I'm white.

I like cheese.

I've eaten a

fucking roll of breed like an apple, like a freak.

You ever have a noire bleu from Burger de Ville?

No, I have not.

Melted blue cheese.

Ah, man.

Incredible.

Blue cheese is just a great happy accident.

Did this go bad?

Yeah.

Ah, fuck it.

I'll try it anyway.

On a burger?

On a nice, real succulent fucking.

Incredible.

All right.

And

here, let's take one last one here.

Blair says, hello, Salt Lords, Scrub Lords, Shitlords, etc.

Thank you.

Super tiny font for some strange reason.

Been playing games forever, and in particular, long-running continuous franchises.

There's always been a really cool thing from a developer audience perspective.

I find it interesting that seeing

Okay, hold on.

We're going to fast forward a lot of this.

The core is, have you seen characters blow up as big as, say, like Jury has,

and what factors lead to its success?

So

a specific example of,

yeah, basically just talking about audience engagement with specific elements and how they can change according to what the developers planned, unexpected,

seeing a character break out

from

the plans for them and become more popular in the history of the franchise, etc., and then describing who Jury is and why and so on.

So, have you seen this kind of breakout of character, and what factors do you think contribute to the levels of success?

Yeah, the number one reason is people looking at a character and a huge proportion of the audience going, oh my God, I love that for creepy sex reasons.

Yeah, you see.

So, Jury, Jury's got her feet and her grippers out all over, and they're all sweaty and stinky, and all that shit.

And there's a population of people that are just nutting just hearing me describe that.

You get a nice, nice, clean, like, side fetish on folks, and you blow it up.

Also, she's like bitchy and evil, whereas, like, like Manat was also popular for the feet thing, but she's like kind of nice and like not the same vibe.

So Jury was ready to like kick you and stop you.

Yeah, but then you got like, hey, you into that new Resident Evil game?

I don't know.

What if it had a 10-foot-tall lady in it?

Right.

Yeah.

No, I definitely, yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, Lady D, right, that broke through

exit velocity.

Obviously, Bridget broke out of Terminal Velocity for Guilty Gear.

Brits is a fucking rocket ship.

Right.

Again, I think that you look at the merch and it's like there are like 20

figures and like 17 of them are Bridget.

Like that thing's, Bridget is printing money.

You got,

I would say for me, from stuff from the, like, I feel as if without even paying a ton of attention to League of Legends KDA

was humongous

and like that particular those characters were already popular yes but those partic that particular music video and I guess those outfits or so were like just

bigger than

by itself 2b

like fucking blew up

obviously I mean look at the outfit and so on

diva

diva as a character blew up bigger than Overwatch

Mercy by some extension, but I think.

And don't forget, it goes both ways.

That ghoul from Fallout is pretty popular, I hear.

I wonder why he's so popular.

It's not the same level or metric, but I kind of feel like Kerrigan was popular in a mainstream way.

How did that summon her?

How did that was like

was Kerrigan that popular?

I don't even remember.

I feel like people that like didn't really know

much about stuff that kind of knew about StarCraft and stuff a bit.

I knew some people that were like that knew about Kerrigan.

I will say, I think everyone was like super pissed when she became human again.

Because that's fucking lame.

Oh, is that what happened in the story?

In Heart of the Storm, she goes back to being like a normal person and she's not evil anymore.

Wow.

Oh, shit.

I didn't.

That fucking sucks.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

You know, those are the ones.

Those are the ones.

And then there's stuff where I'm just like, I don't know if this is just my particular algorithm or not.

I mean, it depends.

It might be your circle.

I have never seen or read

Doro Hedoro, but I do know

I know who Noi is.

Yeah, no, that's your circle.

That's the people you follow on social media.

That just might be my algorithm.

Yeah,

I think that's you.

Yeah.

So.

All right.