CSB340: The Videogame Industry Soulcrash

What the

what the fuck did you do?

What the

what the fuck is that?

What is going on?

What is happening?

Oh no,

let me full screen this.

What is that?

No signal, dude.

That's like the Avermedia fucking thing.

Okay.

Well,

for some reason.

Yeah, there we go.

We're fine.

The USB

didn't want a thing.

That's right.

Hi.

Hey, Wolves.

How are you doing, man?

Oh, boy.

Yeah, good, good, good.

You know,

this is a wildly huge week we have to talk about this week.

Indeed, indeed.

You know, had a big old, big old baby delay morning.

Wow.

She did it again.

Oh, stuff's happening.

Oh, you don't know what you're doing.

Ah, I love it.

Oh, shit.

Okay.

All right.

One of these wires.

Let me do it.

Let me do it too.

I'm going to do it too.

Hold on.

Well, hold on.

No.

One of these wires.

All right.

Well, I can do that.

So, yeah.

Oh, no, no, no.

Put me back.

Put me back.

Okay, hold on.

One of these wires is crossed.

Something's happening that's not supposed to happen right now.

Put me back.

You're back.

Okay, I'm back.

Oh, oh, okay.

Oh!

yeah.

Oh, I'm doing it on purpose, though.

Huh.

I can no signal myself on purpose.

Well, I mean, this is the natural evolution of the show, right?

So, uh, okay, what is actually I fucking love doing shit live now.

I fucking love it.

I used to, I used to be so fucking stressed out and just like, ah, no, it's breaking.

And now, when things break and I just get no sound, I'm like, yeah, fuck it.

Well, that used to be.

We're doing mime shows now.

Well, the benefit of establishing a brand on absolute dog shit quality is that we get to embrace this.

So it would seem that the camera is just, I guess, shutting off.

This is fucky wookie-ing.

Yeah.

Now, what's making you do that?

Do you have like a really good picture of yourself?

I have a good one.

Maybe an animated GIF.

Not within two seconds.

Oh, there we go.

You're back.

Yeah, but is it going to shut off again, I guess?

Oh, who knows, man?

Who knows?

Okay.

I'm going to guess it might, right?

I'm going to guess it might.

If it's on bat.

yeah there we go okay uh let me see what's going on with the camera is that like a battery issue or something i don't know we'll take a little second we'll take a little second all right put this part in though this is fun all right brb brb

all right i think we're good

uh i think it was a loose wire i'm being all weird all right let's let's let's try it hello hey what's going on ah there's a big podcast this week Walk a walk.

Would you like to discuss the insidification of the video game industry even further beyond the limits of what we thought was possible?

Discuss in one day?

Yeah.

Yeah, I would love to do that.

Okay, because you know,

over here at Castle Super Beast, we speak truth to power.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

That's us.

All right.

Good stuff.

It's

we all know how it's going to go, and we've known, and we've been talking about how fucked shit is, and how shit is, in fact, fucked.

Yeah, so we talked a little bit about this a while ago, and I believe I remember saying that you and I had been mentioning how, like, when's the next video game crash?

And we're like, the video game crash has been happening for years.

It's just slow.

It's just been really slow.

It's just slow.

Yeah, that's it.

And, you know, and there's the part of it where there's the like, there's the soul crash, and then there's the market crash.

Yeah.

And the soul crash takes place before the market crash.

Much before.

Much before.

We're going to.

This week is the soul crash.

Yeah.

Oh,

I mean, my soul crash was last year, but last year, you know, but this continues, absolutely.

And

yes, I think as a whole, as a large-scale sweeping effect, multiple people will be experiencing the soul crash.

You got to just bunker down and go, What are the numbers?

What's the percentage?

Do you care more about the percentage, or do you care more about the billions?

You know, well, Wooly, what are you talking about?

What could you be referring to that could be so dramatic?

I'm talking about

how far I got in Silk Song.

Yeah, how far did you get in Silk Song?

So

I'm now knee-deep into Act 2.

Yep.

And I think...

You're about halfway through the game.

Yeah.

Halfway through the game.

So

now it's getting weird because there's parts where I can say like, oh, I can say that I am

at this point where I've defeated the Clockwork Dancers, right?

Sure.

But that doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't mean shit.

Because I also realized that,

oh, for a long time, I kind of didn't clear or go through

fucking Sinner's Rise or whatever it was called.

Yeah, surely there can't be six zones attached to that one path.

You know,

to which it turns out, oh, that'd be absurd.

I had been ignoring that part for way too long and went back through that and was like, oh, fuck.

Oh, shit.

Okay, hold on.

There's a lot going on here.

So I've, I've, you know, my Citadel exploration is, you know,

one part of things, but then there's this whole other fucking Eastern map thing that's going on.

And then you're like, oh, I've assuredly explored most of the Citadel.

Oh, never mind.

Yeah.

Okay.

Never mind.

So here's what I will say.

After The Last Judge,

which is like a proper DLC level, like,

get the pattern and do this perfectly fight.

Learn it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Learn it.

Fucking learn it, right?

And yeah, you can use your tools to melt a bunch of this, but

you're going to have to just recognize the animations.

Your ability to recognize startup is just crucial, and as it's always has been in Hollow Knight.

After that, it was interesting to kind of see, like, it's not that the game lets up on you, but like, it takes a while before you naturally encounter another boss, right?

And when you do, well, for me, it was the clockwork dancers.

And to me, that was a joke by comparison.

It is.

Right?

Absolutely.

Well, because

when you beat The Last Judge, the game doesn't throw combat trials at you.

It throws platforming trials at you.

It does.

It does.

It's like, no, okay, so you can fight.

All right.

Next up, let's see you deal with some sawblades.

Yeah, let's see you deal with a Metroid vertical.

like climb except that the enemies here are evasive and annoying you know?

And if you're patient, they're fine.

But it's just, you're just in a hurry and you're like, god damn it, can you stop dodging me as soon as I dash up to you, you know?

No.

And I will say one thing that I was like, ah, that was

a little unclear moment was

the weight teeter-totter platforming.

There's these little teeter-totters in the Citadel.

You don't think you can hit them physically.

You think you land on them to make them shift, but you actually need to hit them in order to not get stuck.

And that was a little bit of a like, I don't, that was that, that,

a little bit outside the rules of what we've been doing in this game so far.

I didn't think you'd have to physically slash the scales to make them move.

So I kind of got stuck wandering back and forth a little bit over there.

And then, yeah, you know, get to all these areas of this, you know, Anoralondo,

if you would.

I mean, it is a giant, empty, like, church-themed

castle, right?

So, I mean, fuck, that theme is there.

Cool enemies to fight and stuff.

But

the, yeah, the clockwork dancers,

that was like second try, you know?

I was like, huh.

Oh, yeah, they're very easy.

I left them till super late.

Okay.

Because I recognized.

So I walked into the room and I fought them like two times, and I was like,

this is, and I, the, design of the room made me leave because the room's centralized location and its like visual similarity to the Symphony of the Night Clock Tower room made me go

this is probably important yeah so I like cleaned out everything I could before going back there and then I really stomped their asses yeah um in fact and you know it's it's centered on both sides and then the icon is pointing at it as the objective so you're like right this is a probable important thing and upon doing so you you can see, yeah, hey, the game's like, yeah, good.

Now we need you to do big objectives, you know?

So

going backwards and kind of making my way through.

And also,

God, it sucks, but I'm like, there was a couple of things where I'm like, I didn't have the bead markers to remember

where I saw some interesting things.

But now I'm like, what was that room that had some jail cells in it that I ran into early in the game?

And now I don't know what fucking section it was in.

And you didn't, I didn't have the beads to put a marker down, and I'm like, ah, that's a bad feeling.

Because I would have put a marker down if I could afford it at the time, but I didn't and couldn't.

And now I'm just like, am I going to have to start pausing the game and taking screenshots on my cell phone to remember things?

Just re-explore everywhere.

Yeah.

I think that part of the game's economy is based around the idea that you'd get a new ability and go, I am now going to backtrack to every room I have been in the entire game.

Which, I mean, for me and like Metroidvania's things, I kind of am like, I'm trying to remember the big, obvious, like, you know, yellow doors that I ran by.

But, like, and then you're, oh, then there's always going to be that part of the map where you look at it and go, oh, this room looks like it's not completely explored.

And those

rooms

has like a weird gap in the map next to it, and it's really square in this corner.

And you're like,

yeah.

But no, I, and I, I, I've,

or when I find myself, I'm like, hey, I got to go get some

chips to refill my tools because this boss fight's taken up all my tools or whatever the case is, you know.

Which, yeah, I have found myself like getting a bit like

annoyed at

the chip collection

that is sometimes necessary.

But I went through the second area I was mentioning there and

then I hit the mist

and I was like okay I see what we're doing here

and then I got through the mist and as soon as I saw like what was going on and

you know I noticed the the

randomized nature of it I kind of I kind of looked and went listen I'm this is just

I'm a dad.

I got a limited amount of time.

I want want the solution.

What is it?

You would have figured it out in five, ten minutes.

No, I don't think I would have.

The musical elements.

Do you think that you are substantially less intelligent than me?

I don't know.

I mean, you know a lot of shit.

I don't think you are less intelligent than me.

I think you were about the same.

And I figured it out in about 10 minutes.

Okay.

I ran through it and

I got to a point where I was like, I can fight these ghosts forever.

Oh, yeah, totally.

They're not.

That's not an issue.

It's more just like I'm running in circles and I'm looking at my watch going, nah, I can't do this.

I got to feed the baby in 45 minutes.

Like, fuck this.

You got to think lateral, man.

I kind of just want, I don't care.

I, I, I just, I, I, I get what you're doing.

I appreciate it, but I don't have time, you know.

Um, a a

brain's really big, buddy.

You can do it.

So, you know, um, anyways, uh, after looking that up, uh,

got through and uh hit some of that fucking um

uh

blight town

you know more yeah hit some of that more blight town it hit hit love some of that lovely blight town um but

uh there was a really really cool

phantom boss fight at the end of that and i you got the really really cool thing i have to say i

very much appreciate that they take the time to make fights like that where

the boss is not that hard because they're like you

but it's just cool right the human enemies like like kind of like fighting a hornet as hollow knight the first time fighting lace is not that hard fighting

phantom is not that that hard but it's so cool it's very cool and it feels good to like zip around the room and like you know would you like counter them them in the air and stuff like ludo narrative harmony let's go

so were you able to climb past Phantom were you able to climb up all the way into the guts

of the Citadel yep

Okay, so that's why it's called sinner's road because it lets you get through the back without going through the door and being judged.

Oh

That's good.

That's that's crazy

to get into the Citadel.

Into the main game.

And you don't deal with the judge.

That's great.

You don't have to deal with ringing the bells to open the door either.

You take the sinner's path.

Yeah.

Nicely done.

Nicely done.

Okay.

Because they both lead to the same primary underzone.

So once you get to Belmore, you can just head up from Graymar into that path and ignore all the critical.

absolutely interesting well it's not taking it easy on you I mean no it's definitely not nothing in that game is taking it yeah that path that game so you remember deep nest right yeah

so bile water is this game's deep nest yeah right um and much like

deep nest in hollow night for me i fell

into bile water okay okay from above and was like i don't have a map help fuck uh uh, help.

Yeah.

Like, you know, when you, you fall into a zone and, like, you're, you're like

100 character lengths off of

the next zone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're not getting.

No,

there's a absolute fun.

And of course, the paranoia of walking through that game with like, you know, you're one pip away from death and you're like, I got to be really precise with everything I do from now on.

And that is why you cash in your fucking rosaries for strings

and necklaces of beads.

Yes, I did.

And you can remove that fucking shit from your brain entirely.

And I'm so happy I did that.

I fucking paid a premium to get all those rosaries strung up.

And then eventually,

when I met our architect friend,

the

was it the 12th engineer or the 12th architect?

Anyway.

The architect, yeah.

The architect, yeah.

it was like awesome i got the cash let's go um

now that's another one of those things where it's like here's three things you can buy that all sounds pretty interesting you have one uh or to make one of these things which one are you going with and

uh

I have that feeling that this is a crossroads of like, oh, if you spend your tools incorrectly, if you spend your resources incorrectly, there's enough.

But it might take some time to to go back and get the other one.

It will definitely take some time.

That's what I'm thinking about.

So, I'm like, what do you want right away?

And I'm like, give me the one that says I can dodge better, please.

And

I think that was the correct choice.

It seems like if that, if it helps you dodge better, then absolutely.

All of them are good.

Like, literally, all of them are good.

Okay.

The Backdash one is really good for mobility.

The

saw

you can combine with the fucking tax tax to just annihilate anything that has to live on the ground.

The double jump one that makes that does a slash around your character.

If you reverse direction and slash while it's happening, you double the hits, and speedrunners are using it to fuck up the game by doing like triple hits on jumps.

What?

There's a lot of good stuff that everything that guy says is pretty good.

Okay.

Well, and then, of course, the key.

Yes.

So now, for for the first time in hours, I'm sitting here deciding,

do I want to fucking GigaDrill break my way through?

Just start scraping up everything.

Well, I already

set was interesting enough on the Crest of the Architect to...

I spent my memory locks on it, right?

I thought it was interesting enough to spend.

So it's very strong.

I committed to those slots, and I'm going to walk around and see how it goes, because I don't mind the

down angle.

It's kind of like the hunter's dive kick, you know, the down slash.

But you can charge it, and you can control it a little better.

So I'm like, all right, that's it's not as good as the Reaper, but you know what?

Let's let's see if we can get used to this a little bit, you know.

And then rebuilding your tool, remaking your tools

sounds like a lot of fun.

It's um

if you're willing to blow the resources,

you can just decide that you don't want to fight in Counter.

Oh, it's a Mega Man game now.

Yeah, I got that.

I got that.

Well, if you get, you get the three good tools, like Tax is one, right?

Curve Claw is another.

There's a couple you haven't met yet.

Like the Sawblade actually would be a good one.

And you're just like, nah, I don't want to fucking fight this arena fight.

I don't want to fucking fight this boss.

I am going to throw down an infinite amount of shit so that on every face change, they walk into it in their own face change cutscene and die.

Random bullshit go.

Absolutely.

Spend your ammo and you're done.

Yeah.

And now that I have the,

to get to that point, you have to get the

harpoon.

Then it's like, oh, well, now we have a pretty good means of like

getting, you know,

harpoon is the best button in the game.

Because it costs one pip of silk and refunds one pip of silk if you hit the enemy.

Amazing.

Which means if you're using it to close distance, distance, it's free.

Love that.

And then, of course,

the parry, which yields an exceptionally strong reward for

fairly

simple timing.

Really loose.

Simple ass timing.

Giving me such a good reward is kind of nice.

Counter slashes will like track flying enemies.

Everything on screen, it seems.

Yeah, I'm a bit shocked at how powerful that is.

At the end of the game,

for most of the end, like the final stretch, I used the parry with like a charm that made Silk's skills better.

Okay.

And would just like parry one thing and like the whole fucking room would just explode.

Yeah,

I'm honestly like,

it's too strong.

It's not the strongest.

Okay.

Because I feel

it is it is the second strongest.

I feel like I have not.

I have not earned the reward I get for simple tracking on a boss that's just like,

you know?

Anyway, Savage Beast Fly can go fuck itself.

That second fight is out of control.

That is out of control.

That is completely insane.

That's bad shit.

Isn't that like

so?

And then the fucking sequence after it?

I mean, dude, I'm telling you, Savage Beast Fly 2, hardest thing in the whole game.

I can't believe they thought that was was okay.

And you do all that and you're like, hey, you know what you need?

You need a fourth of a heart container.

Man.

Yeah, so

that was a proper deterrent.

I actually went, you know what, video game?

I am deterred.

You have successfully deterred me.

I described to you saying, what do you even fucking want from me?

When I discovered that the ads would keep coming in forever.

Yeah.

It's when I'm like,

what do you want?

What do you mean to fucking do here?

And it's like, that part where you're like, oh, well, after the whole platform gets destroyed, there's going to be something, surely, right?

And the game's like,

Anakin staring at fucking Padme.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

If you say so, man.

What platform?

It literally destroyed everything.

And I'm like,

so

I guess I'll die.

Dude.

Yeah.

So

anyway, that's an interesting one.

Yeah, and like some of those patterns are, it's weirdly about like not taking every shot that you can get, you know?

No, no, because like you like, you like the final boss is like a really good example of like, dude, you could run in there and get hit them, but then you're going to be in a bad position.

And you will not be able to escape whatever the fucking boss wants to do to you.

Yeah.

I'm seeing some people say pogo and I'm like, actually, pogoing the beast fly is a terrible idea in a lot of instances because of the fact that it 180s and will catch you in the air sometimes when your trajectory, even if you dash out of the way, is not going to be altered in time, right?

It's more reliable to not pogo and to go for ground hits, I've noticed.

I used mostly ground hits when it did the down stomp.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Those are, that's the way, you know,

but there's a couple of moments like you just, it's basically, if you want to rely on the luck of the boss pattern not stopping you, then you can go for pogos.

And there's a couple of instances like this, right, where bosses are like, you can get a hit in here, but you don't know what it's going to do next.

And sometimes the behavior will mean you're going to take a hit and get fucked over.

Last Judge is similar, right?

Where...

One of the...

One of the tricks

that I can help you with is that you can use the harpoon to go in and use the dash to go out because the dash does have like 10 frames of invincibility on it.

So I was, I had neither of those tools when I was fighting the Beast Fly 2.

Like I had neither of those tools.

I had, I went,

that was like the beginning of all this stuff before I did all of that.

So I didn't even have the tax yet.

I was fighting it with like

Shuriken,

the fucking the air spikes, you know, the air trap.

And yeah, the hunter's, you know, the hunter's weapon, right?

So there was no mobility that I had at that point.

Um,

pretty, pretty much as soon as it was available, right?

Um, also,

yeah, uh, what the fuck at that area in the beginning that is like,

wow, okay, so so you're describing, I, I, we, last week, there were a bunch of comments underneath the YouTube clip, like, what the fuck area is Pat talking about?

I'm talking about an area that is hidden away in the very first zone of the game that provides the single largest amount of power you get in the entire game by an order of magnitude.

It is.

Also, lore-wise, it's extremely interesting.

Also, there are

four secrets in there.

It's

baffling.

There are four secret areas in that map, in that tiny space.

Yeah, it is a baffling thing to discover and potentially have

be missable.

I will say that like that theme of things, like you hit the far east and then like you're kind of you're going to hit, you got to run into that at some point, right?

Your curiosity will lead you.

But

wow, is that a strange optional thing that should not be optional?

Yeah.

So if it makes you feel any better, if you get far enough into the game, it stops being optional.

Interesting, okay,

okay.

But, uh, by far enough into the game, I mean really far into the game, interesting, okay, okay.

Also, I, you know, the uh, Team Sherry knows what type of NPCs and chums you like to meet along the way in these types of games, and there's a good cast, there's a good cast of little bugs that you meet up with, you know, know.

All, yeah, and all very souls-like, you know, you got the naive ones that are fun and jovial.

You got the heroic ones with the big mustaches that are tough.

You know what I absolutely love?

I was scrolling on my TikTok, and somebody pointed out that Sherma beats you to the Citadel.

Like, they get there first?

Not in my case.

Wait, not in my case.

Oh, yeah?

Because you meet her at the bench outside,

and then you open the way.

Oh, is that how that works?

Yeah.

But then later,

you go in and you take a dip, and it's like, oh, hey, what's up?

You know?

But at least for me, I saw...

You got that cutscene?

I didn't get that one.

Okay.

Excuse me, him.

I met Sherma at the bench before the last judge.

Oh, really?

Yes.

And then there was

the meeting inside.

There's a crazy amount of NPC interactions that don't lead to quests, but you can miss.

Yes.

So going back to

whatever,

first town.

Bone bottom.

Bone bottom.

There's a bunch of pilgrims and people that you meet there and stuff, or people that are hanging out in the bar that you can talk to that are just there once and then they're gone, you know?

And even some pilgrims where I'm just like, oh, you're the first pilgrim that's really nice and kind of like, I'm hesitant to go.

I'm a little scared.

We can hang out together.

You're like, oh, you're cute.

That's fun.

And then to come along and meet like this deep, like, sinners

must perish and this, this kind of like, I'm like, ah, you suck.

You know, that's, you're, you're one of them.

And then you're meeting all these different types or so.

Um,

and, and, uh,

you know, there are those there are those dudes hiding out in the

fucking muckety muck cabin where you gotta do it.

Oh, yeah, those fucking freaks.

Yeah, yeah, where you gotta feed them the guts or whatever.

The garbage.

Yeah.

And they drop a single piece of like lore information that's super interesting.

Where they're just like, yeah, I don't know why it didn't affect us.

It seems to be like the more faithful you are, the more likely you are going to get strung up.

You know, there seems to be a connection there.

You're like, ha,

interesting.

Interesting from you fucking dumpster diving

like Bobo's back here, feasting on guts, dropping some important lore information.

You know?

So that was cool.

Shout outs to those enemies as well that like climb surfaces.

Those little dogs that are like, oh, you're up there?

I'm coming to get you.

The cockroaches?

Yeah, they're god-awful.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, you take too many hits.

What the fuck?

And they have a a grab attack instead of a fucking bite.

Yep, and they take extra damage off of that too.

And they lunge and you're like, man,

like, the only thing I have to stand on top and like knock you back down four or five times before you're fucking dead.

So like they make them properly like a threat, you know?

So, hey, man, you've made it through a bunch of the Citadel and you're exploring out in Bilewater.

You're totally about

halfway done.

Have away through it.

About halfway done.

Yeah.

Do you really see what I fucking meant?

Like, no matter how far you go, you always feel like you're halfway through because you walk through like a single door and it goes zone, zone, zone, zone.

There's there's two moments around where you're at where the game was like, here's three more,

and then a different one where it's like, here's five more.

So

how did you fucking, but I'll tell you what my brain did.

I jumped on an elevator and then I looked at the map and then I was like,

out fucking there.

And I was like, oh, okay, well then, yeah, fine.

I will accept.

Hey, guess what?

You're fucking super wrong.

Oh.

You're fucking super wrong.

You took me up to a goddamn mothership.

And now I'm assuming that the space in between will be filled out.

Well, we'll see.

Maybe.

Maybe.

I'm having a good time with that.

Lots of fun.

Super good.

And

okay, another thing I don't like is when I put down my reminder tokens on my map, I hate that they're so big that they block out the room.

Dude, I was putting them down and then I would have to like move them over to be part of the room, but not on the space.

Exactly.

They'll like block the icon for like a bench.

That sucks.

I hate that.

Don't do that, please.

You know?

Yeah.

And

this is not even counting the areas where you're like, oh, you don't have the fucking various suit.

You can't take this climate.

You know?

Bro,

I got, there was a, there was a point where I was putting down, I was like, oh, I don't know what's here.

And I'd put down a marker and I'm like, well, I have no fucking maps.

I'll just put it directly on a hornet's icon, I guess, and just hope it lines up with the fucking geography later.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

There's a...

I did that when I was looking for the map in fucking Blighttown, and you're out in the nothing.

And I'm like, okay, well, I can see the ring, so I know my friend is nearby.

So I'm going to get into.

You get that fucking map fucking really late.

You get that map right there.

I'm looking at that thing, and I'm like, I guess I just keep going.

And eventually I learn, nope, okay, I guess not then.

Fuck me.

Oh, yeah.

And shout outs to Hypogean Jail.

Oh, you did that, huh?

Yeah, that's a nice sequence.

That's a nice sequence.

That's a nice sequence.

There are

a

of weird hidden interactions with that area.

You can kill the enemies that bring you there and just not go.

And then there is a hidden interaction with one of the quests that prevents you from going as well.

Huh.

I think experiencing it like this way is probably best.

Oh, absolutely awesome.

Yeah.

But the goofy hidden quest interaction is also very cool.

Okay.

And so the way my brain also works is I go, oh, hey, look, it's a move set.

Huh, I wonder if this was only made for this one segment and nothing else ever.

Absolutely.

Really?

You're not even going to recycle the ability to completely bespoke.

That's wild.

That's such a, that's a free crest.

Just make it good.

Nope.

What?

Oh my God.

I immediately clocked that as like, oh, that's going to be a sick-ass crest when I put some damage on that.

Wow.

Weird.

It's weird to do that.

Okay, cool.

That's fine, I guess.

Every quest uses the nail.

Hmm.

Sorry, the needle.

The needle, my mistake.

Well, opportunity lost, I suppose.

I mean, shit.

Nah,

there's a bunch of crests and they're pretty good.

Because you already did a melee move set.

Just make it do damage and I'm in, you know?

Well, I mean, that's what the beast is for.

If you want a punching thing, then you have beast.

I hate that I'm going to say this, but fuck the beast, man.

Yeah, I know, it's terrible.

It's awful.

I hate it.

Anyways, Skong is...

That's that last crest, though.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, I spent all my memory locks, so I'm going to have to replenish myself.

So there's 18 that you can get right now.

Yeah.

And then the final crest uses needs two.

Okay.

And luckily enough, there's two that you can only get after being able to get the final crest.

Oh, um,

okay.

Good to know.

On that note, actually, there's a detail here.

I don't care if you spoil it for me.

Go for it.

Sorry, chat.

Sorry, viewers at home.

What determines when I should go back and visit the first area in the game?

Would you believe it took me like the whole fucking game to figure that out?

It's a time waster.

And I don't care about not knowing because if I go back and there's a waste of time, then that sucks.

So if you know what it is,

the whole game to figure that out.

What is it?

What is it?

Two things.

It is number of crests plus lockets used.

Not owned.

Lockets

used.

Fuck.

Okay.

I thought it might have been like owned, and I went back and it was nothing.

No, it is used.

Okay.

Yeah.

And crests overall.

Yes.

Okay.

And.

So someone in the chat points it out.

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but six crests and 15 lockets used will max you out.

Okay.

So is the idea basically that once you think that's true?

I think you need...

I think you need all.

So is the idea that essentially

opening up a weapon means it's time to go visit?

If you get a crest

and you go visit.

If you use some memory locks, go visit.

Okay.

There's a very discrete number of upgrades.

There's not that many.

You already have

two of them.

I have two.

Right.

They are both.

The two next ones are along those lines.

Okay.

And then the final upgrade is something very different.

Yeah, because I got...

That first one got me very excited, and I was like, oh, give me that, but not for this.

No, no, the next one will be that again

for that.

Okay.

Which makes it really good.

Yeah, but I don't like that.

Well, then

you'll really like the other two.

Okay.

You know, don't, don't.

It's very worth it.

Don't lock me in.

I remember when I locked the final upgrade there, and I was like, oh, this doesn't sell.

Oh, it's really worth it a lot.

Okay.

Yeah,

you know, if I like a crest or if I don't like a crest, I don't want to think about it, you know?

Even if there's something crazy on it.

Okay, Skagan.

Dude, when you get there, I will just

tell me when you're there, and I will just DM you where to get the last crest right away because you will want it.

After the next two?

After, no, after,

quote,

I will say this in my own quotation.

When you are there,

tell me and then I will tell you where to get the last crest right away.

Oh, I love that.

That's you know, yes, yes, yes, okay.

Man, video games are fucking awesome when they're not being terrible.

That's so cool.

That's like where you're like, oh, don't worry about it when you're there.

Yeah, okay, cool.

That's good.

I like that.

That's exciting.

It's just the video game art forms version of I'll make a distraction and then I'll hit you with the signal.

What's the signal?

Oh, don't worry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You'll know.

Yeah, you'll know.

Okay, so yeah,

I will continue along that, that path, um, seeing if I'm gonna drill it up for now.

Um, something cool, too, about like walking backwards, like

there's something just fucking sick about that backwards animation.

That's great, scuttle, scuttle.

Well, it also, like, really shows off that, like, Hornet's like a creepy little freak.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, don't get it twisted.

Don't forget, this is a weird little bug creature, you know,

um,

just because they're standing upright and sounding cool.

Alright, so that's enough about Silk Song.

Okay, here's what I'm going to see if what's the best way to talk around this.

I went,

me and Punch Mom, we watched Weapons.

Oh, yeah.

Have you heard about weapons?

That's the one made by the whitest kids you know, Ryder.

How many hot dogs you eat in one day.

Also, the barbarian,

I believe, right?

So, um,

yes, this is a, and I was told to go watch this movie cold with no trailers, no information, no nothing, just go check it out.

Um, and I did,

so it's a very spoilable movie.

Um, it's gonna be a little bit difficult, so I'm gonna talk around the major elements here.

All I've heard about weapons is that it would make me vomit horribly, specifically Pat.

True, uh, and that, um, you can't talk about it without ruining the movie.

Yeah,

there's some absolutely, there's some horrible targeted violence for you.

And so without talking about the content of it, I'll say, I'll talk about my feelings about what I watched.

I felt like it was really well directed.

It's and here's the thing, too, is I'm kind of like,

I,

there's horror movies that kind of like tickle my fancy, that kind of do things that are a little bit unexpected or so.

And then there's stuff that's kind of like,

yeah, not really my vibe.

There's a lot, I would say that, um, a big part of, you know, me not getting into survival horror genre games and stuff was also me just not getting into like schlock horror too much as a kid as well, you know?

Um, it's, it's not my home genre, but I do have an appreciation for like the really good stuff and especially stuff that like gives you shit that you that stays with you that you keep thinking about, you know?

So for example, I recently experienced a lot of Jinji Ito on Versus Wolves.

I've gotten to appreciate some short stories where you're kind of just going like, oh, what about this crazy idea?

Is there anything else to the idea?

Nah, but what if though?

Campfire stories, you know?

So

this is a,

yeah, this is kind of like that.

right this is a campfire story kind of extrapolated into a film and

um

it reminds me.

So,

one thing, yeah, how I feel about it without talking about the content too much is one, I thought it was really well directed because

it's told in an interesting narrative way, which is not typical of horror movies, I feel.

Like, it's told in a way that is

you kind of piece together moments from seeing different angles of the story, you know.

It's non-linear narrative, which is great.

I also think there's something that has been happening where

the

horror movies of like the 70s and 80s, you know, I would say influenced our age, our generation, who are now making films and have been for a long time making films that are like, you know, homaging and or full of all the

stuff that, you know, gets the heart race.

It's a kind way to say that.

Sure.

But because like I, for me, it's always been like, everybody's trying to remake aliens, and then the rest of them are trying to remake Lord of the Rings.

I know what you mean.

The problem is, I don't want to talk a shit about a genre I've only experienced a bit of and that I don't dive deep into because I can understand the idea that, like, hey, Willie, you might not have experienced enough of this to fully grasp it.

So, I'm speaking from a distance here, looking down, right?

Um, but one thing I've noticed is that uh, horror seems to be filled with a lot of movies that are self-ref not self-referential, they're genre referential, where essentially the person making it will be like, I have a really funny punchline of an ending in mind, and I'm going to build an entire story around that.

Absolutely.

That's taken dead serious, you know.

The substance is a great film where I would say, like,

there's a lot to think about, and there's a lot going on with it.

And then there's a ridiculous

finale when you hit credits on that.

That is like, and here's the reason why we even wanted to make this to begin with, right?

Yeah, this is the scene that, uh, this is the scene the movie started with, yeah, and then we tried to figure out a movie that would justify that would justify this scene exactly.

So, this is that again, and I'm watching it going, oh, okay, the whole thing was for this, right?

This is all it was.

Uh, the menu is also a little bit like that, but it has a bit more direct, like, are you a food snob?

Then this is targeted at you.

But in this case, um, yeah, what the subject matter of this film is like it's it's based around this one idea, right?

Um,

now

the

that was enjoyable and the direction and that and that kind of like build up to what you're finally getting to is is is very fun and solid there are some problems i had with it as well and these are just kind of like

movie logic issues you know of sorts um have you seen the poster for it by any chance for weapons yeah it's hold on uh i didn't see the trailer but i saw the poster for it it's it's it's kids.

Okay, well, okay, they're running.

All right, all right, okay, right.

Naruto running.

I see that.

And that's the problem.

You can never unsee the kids narrow running every time there's naruto running in the movie, of which there is some.

There is not a little amount.

There is a copious amount of naruto running.

And there's no way you can't see it as anything else, because that's what it is.

Into Area 51.

And that sucks.

That's super goofy, right?

The narrative run is never going to, my brain will not interpret it seriously, even though it is asking me to.

And I had a hard time with that, right?

That's really funny, dude.

That's really fucking funny.

It's very funny.

The other thing is

something that I hate and don't enjoy about the genre that bothers me is when things do the opposite of what I feel like.

It's like I love Alien.

I love how it's, you know, slow and it paces itself out and it uses the darkness and all the stuff like with Jaws where you're kind of like the threat is off-camera in the recesses of your mind and so on.

And what you discover, the rules as you go on are kind of confusing.

It's perfect, right?

The thing as well, where the logic is predominant.

I hate a cheap jump scare.

It feels, especially when it feels unearned.

I hate when it's like the genre of the movie is horror, therefore the neighbor is going to tap the main character on the shoulder and go, hey there, neighbor, and go, oh my God, if it was any other genre.

like a creeping dread.

I hate anything that's just like that jump scare for nothing.

I love a creeping threat, right?

Exactly.

And so this does some of those cheap jump scares that I'm just like, ah, that sucks.

I hate when you're cheapening this, you know,

aspect of how

the story is playing out.

You don't need to rely on these if what you have is solid enough.

It does a couple cheap jump scares, right?

That bugs me.

I don't like it.

Whatever.

If some folks are like, I want to throw my popcorn when I go see the movie, I get it.

But for me,

it's a negative.

And then the last, and also there's a couple of red herrings that are like,

there's a dream red herring of what the thread is and stuff that just doesn't mean anything.

That's kind of like a, what if we had a cool concept image shot, but it doesn't actually have any semblance of anything.

I don't know.

It's, you know, maybe there's a reading of this that someone can interpret that has a better thing, but there's a dream sequence that leads to a really really interesting-looking Kojima-esque shot.

But that Kojima-esque shot, upon revelations of what the whole movie is and what it's about, has nothing to do with anything.

It's just kind of like it was just Kojima going

there's a there's a hidden inference that you're not you're not grasping, but I, it does re right now.

It does feel like Genius Kajumbo, and that's all there was to it, right?

Um, and then this is the core, this is the hard part to let go here.

While I really did enjoy it, um, there was, but there's those plaus.

The main threat, the antagonistic force,

the thing that it is

sucks to me.

I hate it.

I don't like the pattern,

the thing that they picked to make the antagonist.

I just didn't find it that compelling, scary, or interesting.

Or I hated what they picked.

And not in a way that's like, oh, I love to hate it.

I was like, oh, that was lame.

I hate that this isn't as simple as you you going, I bet I could beat up a 12-year-old.

No, no, not at all, not at all.

In fact, that would have been because I'm just going off the poster.

That's all I know.

Yeah.

No, no, you don't know what the threat is, you know, and the revelation of what it is to me was like, oh, that's lame.

You know?

All right.

That's all I can really say.

I've had that feeling before, and it's a massive fucking bummer.

It's a, it's just like, oh.

Yeah, like,

like, I I don't I'm trying to think of like I don't know what what what sort of like if you kind of came across you know not the original source material but like a thing where like a Frankenstein monster was like the threat and it was really just like a Halloween Frankenstein monster like you're like wait for real like this that's not reminds me that's not this is gonna be a a strange poll.

This reminds me of when Supernatural crossed over with Scooby-Doo.

Oh, did they?

Yeah.

Yeah, and in Supernatural, the Supernatural guys, the brothers, have to explain to like Fred that like ghosts and demons are real.

And Fred completely loses his fucking shit because he's like, what?

We've been chasing after like

corrupt businessmen and land developers and we thought they were ghosts.

Are you fucking like ghosts are real?

Are you serious?

And then I think too that like because of how the aforementioned like lands and because of that bugged me,

there was a part of the movie that I felt was like a really interesting element is like

essentially there's a part of this where because of course it involves kids and part of this is like how kids that are in horrible situations cope, right?

Kids that are in like abusive situations that are apparently they watch a lot of Naruto.

Yeah, well there's a really interesting part about like you can follow up on this element of like how a child learns to cope with a horrible situation they're in, you know?

And they could have explored that more and they didn't

pull on that thread enough, you know, and instead you kind of had the, again, the Frankenstein problem that I just mentioned, you know?

Well, I am like, I'm like legit so brain rotted now.

I am like, my vocal mannerisms have taken damage from the era that we live in.

Because, as you described accurately using proper language, the way that like abused or traumatized children cope, my brain was going, aha, Cope,

copium, you fucking dummy.

Yeah.

My brain goes to like a bunch of orphans with like a big sign that says cope.

And

huffing the copium gas.

Yes.

I'm fucked.

I'm massively fucked.

It's bad.

So anyway, all that to say that, like, yeah, it unfortunately doesn't like hit like some of those others that I've recently like loved.

A lot of the Peele movies and

the substance I mentioned again is like you have a subject matter and you pull on the threads, you explore it, and then you have a bombastic, hilarious, oh my God, this is ridiculous finale.

And here you kind of lost that in the way you picked a thing and a theme that unfortunately just didn't, you know, but there's a really, there's a great payoff, but it just, yeah, for all the reasons above, it like, I kind of was like, yeah, it's, it's, it's all right, but, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't quite land.

And I know that for others, people have highly recommended it.

And I know some people fucking

loved it.

People talk up this movie very big.

I, and, you know, I,

yeah, it's, it's just not quite hit.

It's very big.

You know, that way.

But it is, it is worth seeing for the crazy shit that's going on in it, you know.

It is worth seeing.

But so horror movies are an unfortunate genre in that they have the highest threshold for trash.

They're the cheapest to make and they have the widest range of any genre.

So they have the most the horror has the worst trash to quality ratio, right?

And

a huge,

you're very right, a huge proportion of horror is written backwards.

I want here's the here's my fucking ending where we burn down the house with Michael Myers in it or fucking whatever, right?

And then they work backwards, right?

Which lends to a disastrous reality in the YouTube era, which is like, do I want to see the haunting of

Hannah Smith or whatever her fucking name is?

No.

Do I want to see the cool part of the end where she turns into a monster?

Yes.

Yeah.

Right, exactly.

Do you want to hold on a second?

Let me just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

Yeah.

Right.

Do I care enough to watch Smile?

No.

Do I want to see what the monster looks like in Smile?

Yes.

Exactly.

Right.

Do you want to watch the Winnie the Pooh horror movie?

No.

But you just want to see the trailer?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Am I going to log in and see Kill Count and see that very happy man go down the kill count?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to go.

In fact, I'm going to say every one of those like, hey, this is now in the public domain horror movies are all that.

You don't want the movie, you just want the trailer, you know?

And the people making it are also putting in that much effort because it was like that Winnie the Pooh mask was apparently like off of fucking Etsy or some shit.

Like it was sick.

You know, yeah.

Anyways, anyways, so that's that's how I felt about weapons.

There's your little spoiler for your review there.

Yes,

we will talk about 2xKO in a little bit, but

yes, been playing and enjoying.

Which we will now take a break from because it'll be offline for the weekend yeah apparently starting on the third i think they're gonna go down early to exactly to take i saw i saw a really fantastic comment on um

on the 2x ko subreddit which was like these guys are absolutely out of their mind why they keep having maintenance over the weekend and then the game comes back up on like a fucking tuesday what what the actual shit and like the reason why that is is because if you put up the new patch on a friday and the guys go home for the weekend

and it breaks they have to fucking come in.

So they put it out on a Monday or a Tuesday or a Wednesday so that if it fucking breaks, they're at work to fix it.

That's the reason.

I've done some weekend shift emergency, you know, network testing.

Never a good time,

always high stress.

But yes, live environment testing is very particular.

But, anyways, all that aside,

yeah, I guess.

So, a quick announcement:

I will be jumping back on stream

for a special stream

tomorrow.

Oh, okay.

Yes.

Welcome back.

I will be jumping back on stream for a special stream tomorrow.

Back to the minds, my friend.

Yes.

A sponsored stream for Ghost of Yotay.

Oh, cool.

is going down.

So

tune in

where you'll be able to catch us taking a look at that game

over on twitch.tv slash Woollyversus.

Wait, is that fucking game out?

Not yet, but it's going to be.

Is it out tomorrow?

I don't think so, but I think the day after that.

Oh my God, dude, that one completely snuck up on me.

That's ridiculous.

It's about to drop.

I can't keep up.

It's about to drop.

So,

yes, ghost day, if you will, exactly.

You can catch that.

We will be streaming on Twitch

and

on YouTube.

Oh, you're going to be multi-streaming.

I will be multi-streaming.

What are you going to be using to multi-stream?

I'm curious.

Testing out options right now, actually.

There are some good sides and bad sides to the different options.

I'll probably hit you up for advice on how that went.

Yep.

There's a couple ways that, you know, like

I'm pairing it down to Restream or SE Live, essentially.

I hate the fact that it's nice that Restream keeps it simple, but I hate the fact that you can't do the music thing with that

versus SE Live lets you isolate tracks and send them in different directions, which is really, really useful for the music thing.

So I'm probably going to check that out a little bit more.

But yes, there will be other things to announce about the channel

in the near future.

But for now, here's one of them.

We will be multi-streaming.

So you can catch that on either channel, Twitch or YouTube, and possibly other locations going to figure things out.

So

that's happening tomorrow at 3 p.m.

Tune in for a ghost of Yotay.

That's

Eastern time.

Tune in for a Ghost of Yotay

hashtag sponsored stream.

And then after that, it'll be back into the darkness for a little bit, back into the baby minds.

But I will return after that with some new discoveries.

And

I'll let y'all know.

Oh, yeah, it's got to be clean.

It's got to be clean.

So we're going to be PG.

Yeah,

I got a...

It's going to be

an experience where

children can watch, right?

Got to be able to let my baby watch that.

Oh, you have to be no swears during your Yote sponsored thing?

It's got to be clean.

But what about

the fucking game itself?

What about the murder and slashing?

Swears.

Well, you know.

For your rated M video game.

You can't show titties, but you can cover the nipples with blood and guts.

I don't know if that's true.

So.

Alright.

Tune in tomorrow for that.

What's up?

Oh, I am not.

Usually I would, but I am not streaming tomorrow or the day day after.

I'll be streaming back on the fourth and fifth because I just did 30 fucking five days in a row.

Yeah, you did.

Congrats on the sub effect.

Finished that up.

Finishing it up with a Banjo-Kazooie death stream, which is that I beat Banjo-Kazooie

and emulated on the N64 on the Switch 2 in a single sitting.

Hey, congratulations on concentrating about...

Three years worth of memes and content generation into 30 days.

That was incredible.

Yeah, no, I looked at the timer and it was like, I did 148 hours in the month.

So that was a bit.

Incredible.

Plus the podcast days.

So probably like 160.

You have yielded memes that in such a concentrated form.

Some good memes.

Good memes.

Yeah.

So

thank you to everybody who subscribed, donated, and watched the sub-a-thon.

Very appreciated.

So I played Banjo-Kazooie yesterday.

And Banjo-Kazooie was a game that I always

seen from afar or seen somebody else play from like a fair distance.

And I basically reacted with like a seething,

blind babies tantrum,

which was, I hate that fucking shit that shits for idiots, that's just for babies.

So I felt it was like a very excellent goal to aim for, which it was then hit.

And so I went and sat down at noon yesterday, and I finished around one-ish

in the morning.

And

I feel that,

if not objective, my subjective opinions definitely maintained.

I was absolutely fucking miserable.

Interesting.

For 12 and a half hours.

Okay.

And this is one of the worst experiences I have.

ever had playing a game in my life.

So, and you've also played the things that have come after, right?

The genre that's spawned.

I've played the games that Banjo-Kazooie inspired and really liked that.

Pat and Time, ukulele.

I did not play ukulele.

Okay.

I mean,

well, you know, I put Donkey Kong 64 on that list, but yeah.

I just played Bonanza,

which is just fairly well inspired by Banjo-Kazooie.

But the original still

is in your, stuck in your craw.

Yeah, so there's a couple things that, so I had plenty of time to examine my feels on this, right?

As to like, what was actually making me go so nuts and like go, like, because I became like irritable and shitty and snappy like right away, like within 20 minutes.

The past just coming back full.

Just immediately just like, what?

What?

What?

Is there a memory attached?

Is there a lost?

No, it's the audio.

Go ahead.

It's

very.

No, no.

So it's not that.

So

I...

So

Paige, when she has a glass of wine, she wants a wine that's like sweet, but not too sweet.

She always describes it as not cloying, just a little sweet, right?

Banjo-Kazooie is

cloyingly, absurdly.

whimsically sweet.

It is googly eyes on literally every object in the environment.

The rare staple.

Everything is a tuba.

Everything is a

low horn.

Every sound effect is a honk.

Right.

That kind of thing, right?

It's like Banjo-Kazooie sounds like an entire soundtrack made out of the clowns farting in the basement music from Resident Evil Director's Cut.

But that's bad horn music.

That's bad tubas.

That's

like that.

This is this is good tubas and whimsy and and and vibes.

It's island hopping fun and climbing it is it is it it like the

the way that I described it was like the constant use of like the

horns felt like the game was like mocking me for playing it like that was the emotional content that I got off of that.

And

the whimsy?

Yeah, okay, okay.

On top of that, first of all, let's actually address that because people were like, Pat just hates whimsy.

Pat just hates fun things.

But I know I'm a silly person

in general.

I have this silly, whimsical, freak dog with busted legs that I go

and kiss all over all the time, right?

My issue is not whimsy.

Also, I fucking love.

I love I love hat and time.

And I really, really, really enjoy a lot of like the tonality of like kingdom hearts and so like i kept i focused on that when i said kingdom hearts i'm like why does goofy not activate me

but banjo and tui do

right as i banjo and kazooie do

right like because goofy and like ore swirl and like all that shit yeah like it's absolutely extremely similar right i someone in the chat is telling me that i hate kingdom hearts they're an idiot they don't know what they're talking about.

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are fantastic.

So it's the music.

It's the soundscape.

So

I don't think the music is good at all.

I think there's like one or two good tracks in the spooky level in the middle of the game, the Mad,

the Ghost Mansion, the one that looks like Luigi's Mansion.

Okay.

Right?

I mean, Crank Kirkhope.

Rare.

Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay.

okay.

Um,

I think the music is awful.

I think I think this the low tuba, like constant fart music

just sounds like garbage, but that's fine.

It's the soundscape, it's that every single movement, footstep, item, character,

musical element, everything

is constantly making clown noises.

The game is so

loud

all the time,

and every single one of those noises is personally like annoying to me.

So, like

the move where

I forget what it's called, something, something trot, but the move where like a kazooie puts her feet down

and you run around and you're way faster than kazooie.

Every single footstep is like a clown shoot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Every footstep was like, oh, it's fucking so annoying.

So, like,

the whole game,

every sound effect in the game made me like wince with annoyance.

Okay.

So, which is like, there's no getting better.

I actually just started to get more tired.

So, I would actually just, like, I started out like, like, like screaming, crashing out over how, like, overstimulated and infuriated I was

at like once a level.

Okay.

And then

and then at a certain point, I just got too tired.

It's it's like the clown equivalent of like a guy eating one inch from your ear with an open mouth.

Just constant.

Okay.

Constant, constant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like constant.

It never stopped.

So I guess, so this is interesting because the soundscape you're describing just did not annoy me at all.

And there are other games with a very strong soundscape, as you described, that I, part of the reason why I love those games is because of them, right?

Yoshi games and Kirby games, I also love because of exactly that.

There's a sound to everything that is very cozy and enjoyable.

But I've experienced...

Okay.

Like, I love Kirby music.

I think Kirby music is fantastic.

And I'm also playing Lisa, which also has farting clown music.

But the farting clown music is built into a track for a random battle, and then after the random battle, goes back to ambient fucking desert

music.

It is.

So I, again, like I said, this specific instance doesn't bother me, but I can't think of a time where a soundscape, so to speak, annoyed me like aggressively.

I remember specifically, here's the pull.

Fucking

Mingyo Bert

from King of Fighters Maximum Impact 2 is a character who every footstep she takes has a boop boop boop boop kind of sound effect to it like a little you know whatever cartoony like little whimsical no you know what you know what it is

you know when you're fighting I guess in English in Persona 4 Arena my armor every time you every single time you hit Igis she goes my armor right Now, imagine that sound clip made you like really, really, really annoyed.

And that was every sound effect in the entire thing.

But you see, My Armor didn't bother me.

I thought it was silly, but I thought it was just like a goofy dub where

in Japanese, we don't speak it, therefore it just sounds kind of normal, or you can dismiss it if you hear someone go like,

you know, or whatever.

But

in the case of Ming Yong Burt, every step she took on the ground while you fought against her or played as her was annoying to me.

I could not stand her entire thing.

So I can't stand fighting Athena and King of Fighters.

Cycle Ball, Psycho Shield, and Psycho Sound.

It's so annoying.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

So

I can get there.

So that's part one, right?

So

people have, I've been talking about this for, you know, I was talking about this a lot yesterday, but people mentioned like

the type of boop boop boop sound effects that like people in Okami used to speak is like annoying to them, so they turn those together.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like a wide variety of things, right?

But you're just how Banjo-Kazooie characters talk, by the way.

Yeah, it's usually not like every single part of the game's entire soundtrack.

Okay, so that explains why I like every time I would see Banjo-Kazooie, I would just get mad.

Okay, like I would just, I like, like, every time I would see Banjo-Kazooie, I would therefore hear Banjo-Kazooie, and I would have like an internal, like, okay, emotional reaction that is like, oh, that's the thing that makes me feel really bad inside.

It's, it's actually fairly similar.

I cannot, I have to date never met a single person that understands what I'm talking about when I talk about Frank Sinatra.

Now, I don't even want to get into this.

We're not going to get into it.

But the point is, is that every time I hear Frank Sinatra, I start to become like irrationally upset because I start to get like anxiety and tension and it makes me want to fight someone.

Like it's immediate.

It's like I'm hearing like a fucking brown note.

It's nuts.

And it's not the songs, right?

It's like, cause I'll listen to like covers of fly me to the moon or send me in the sending the clowns or whatever.

It's literally just his voice.

And then I've seen him in his speaking voice and his speaking voice also does that to me.

Yeah.

Like something about like the cadence or timbre or something in his fucking voice it makes me go nuts okay i will meet you there i will meet i will see where i see where you are and i will meet you there because while i think that's crazy because i think frank's not just totally fine although crooning is not there's a there's a crooning in general can be a lower effort way of singing or whatever it's not about that i feel the exact same way about bob dylan i think bob dylan is a terrible vocalist who is popular for no fucking reason.

And every time I hear his voice, it drives me crazy.

It sucks.

i hate everything about bob dylan he's the worst and he makes me irrationally upset especially because of how big it is like it it's fucking crazy how bad he is at singing but it doesn't matter there's a giant career behind it regardless

really all of it for years

so that's

as a whole career

fuck off so that's that's the start of banjo which is like this is a really difficult thing to move past because it's like the whole soundscape.

There's a level, I'm going to have to look it up.

There's a level in the middle of the game.

Banjo

Kazooie

Mansion level.

There's a level in the middle of the game.

It's called Mad Monster Mansion.

Okay.

Right?

Mad Monster Mansion was a very strange situation because I loaded into Mad Monster Mansion, which is, by the way, Hat and Time takes a lot from Mad Monster Mansion.

Like that whole spooky area

in Hat and Time is basically Mad Monster Mansion from Kanjokaoie.

Okay.

So I came into there and I immediately was like, wow, this music is really good.

And this level is really good.

And when I was playing Mad Monster Mansion, I was like, wow, this game's really excellent for this one level only.

And it turns out it's the only level in the game that doesn't have the horns that they use on that sound font.

Because they changed it for the theme.

And it's all spooky Luigi's Mansion style music.

Yeah, okay.

And I was like, oh my god, it's like, I'm literally being fucking triggered by the sound font in this fucking game.

Did you ever play Star Fox Adventures at all?

I did not.

No, okay.

Because that's another game that kind of hits into this.

It has this kind of whimsy and all the stuff that we're talking about thematically going on with it.

But because it's based on Star Fox, there's Star Foxy sounds and music and whatever in the middle of your goofy characters and world and so on.

But if they just picked a different, yeah, a different like sound font or like MIDI set or whatever the case is.

When I heard Banjo-Kazooie's music in Smash Brothers, I was like, oh, that sounds like a good track.

Huh.

Interesting.

And so,

and the platforming and level and gameplay and none of that.

No, no, now we're going to get to the rest of it.

So also,

I've described myself as somebody who's really specific about how I want my characters to control.

I like my characters to...

So me and Paige played Resident Evil 2 Classic the night before.

Both games came out in 1998.

Both games have terrible controls.

The difference is I love one and hate the other.

And the reason why that is, is because Resident Evil controls insanely, insanely stiff,

but it always does what you tell it.

Banjo-Konzui controls super, super loose.

and has momentum on it and does not always do what you tell it.

All your motions have wide swings.

All your running has like inertia coming to a stop.

Everything's really slippery.

I hate slippery controls.

Okay.

I fucking hate it.

I kept saying, this bear's so fucking loose

the whole time.

Okay, no, no, that's fair.

That's fair.

The platforming requires precision and getting the hang of 3D platforming back then, especially,

there was a whole new world.

And there are moments like that.

Right.

And I was like, oh, this must have come out before Mario 64.

Then I was like, no, it couldn't have.

That was a launch game.

You know, no.

Two years later.

Yeah.

Then what's your excuse?

Because Mario 64 controls like a dream.

Well, I mean, that's Nintendo's full power.

Right.

And then I'm like, oh, it's because Mario 64 controls tight and Banjo controls loose.

Right?

Like,

and that's like, not aesthetic, but that's like personal preference.

Like, some people like looser controls, but like slippier, floatier controls.

But I hate that.

I want my jumps to be short and tight and have like really well-defined momentum.

Banjo is floaty as shit.

And the thing is, dude, like 3D platforming, like,

also, again, there was a lot of weird,

we don't know exactly how to do this.

We're still figuring it out games that came out around or before

Mario 64.

I don't know how you feel about it, but like, I think Mega Man Legends is a weird, is an incredible standout example of like, this is a baffling game to feel on the controller.

I love everything about it and you get used to it.

And

you get used to it, but it's not good.

Right?

Running, like, like using the shoulders to run around corners and turning in this weird way.

It's built to accommodate the controls they gave it, so it's never a problem, but it is weird.

But the game needs to be played on a grid, right?

Right.

So like I, like, people were asking me, like, what platformers am I used to?

That this is what I'm comparing them to.

I'm used to 2D platformers, but I'm also used to, like, my nearest analogs are like Jack and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank,

and

Crash Bandicoot, which all have like super tight, non-momentum, no inertia controls.

And

like, so, so for, for fucking, like, for Banjo-Kazooie, every level in the game felt like an ice level.

Yeah, okay.

I totally understand that.

And then I got to the the ice level.

And then

I felt like I was playing with light latency.

Right, right, right, right.

But all of that, all of that pales,

pales

in comparison to the thing that actually made me super upset the most.

And people are going to immediately go, well, they changed that in the rare replay version.

I don't want to hear that from you unless you played the rare replay version first.

Because the version that everyone I've ever spoken to who's played Banjo-Kazooie played the N64 version first.

It's a collect-a-thon game.

In order to beat it, you need to get 94 of 100 jiggies, which are the equivalent of stars or more.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you need to get 810 of 900 notes.

No, requiring 95%

completion to beat your game is fucking nuts.

That's fucking crazy.

And this really surfaced itself because I'm like, oh, I'm going to beat the whole game in one sitting.

And then I'm looking at it and I'm like, what the fuck?

I basically need to 100% the fucking game to do it.

That's insane.

There's no way worse than that.

Way, way worse than that.

Is that notes are the equivalent of coins in Mario.

There's 100 notes per stage.

They're all over the place.

And you need 810 of 900 to access the final area, right?

So what is that?

Like 89%?

That's fucking 810 divided by 900 is equal to 90%.

You need 90% of all the notes in the game, right?

So you run around the stage and you collect the notes.

And if you die, it uncollects every note in the stage and says, that was your note score for this attempt.

Try it again.

And if you leave the stage, it uncollects every note the next time you go in and you lose them.

Yeah, and

it is absolutely insane.

It is at like I played through those levels and I'm like, I don't see like Rusty Bucket Bay is pretty tough, but it doesn't seem as absurd as I heard until I realized that you have to get all the jiggies in like a certain order so that you can get all the hard parts of the stage out of the way first because you have to get 90% of the notes in every stage to beat the game.

But if you die at any point, it will fucking

fucking get your fucking notes.

No, it's unbelievable.

No, there's no excusing the Botham Dads and Collectathon type shit.

That just sucks.

Yeah,

I can't even mount the defense on that one.

You know, strong memories and nostalgia aside.

The bars you have to clear can get really annoying.

And I was just rewinding like fucking crazy because...

So I technically beat Banjo-Kazooie with no deaths by technicality

because it's like this is a really like a combination of like floaty controls and lose your progress on every single fucking death feels more vindictive and sadistic than like most of the Super Nintendo and Genesis games that I played.

See, while I understand the perspective of just fucking do it, though, that's what it is, too bad.

The thing with

that's my point.

That's my point.

My thing is, collecting shit in a really uninteresting way sucks in games, and I hate it.

Therefore, I'm not going to be like, nah, that's just how it was here when I think it's lame to go collect shit meaninglessly, right?

There's like, yeah, I totally get it.

So, like, I get it.

I got, I got through the game.

I got every single jiggy in the game up until the last level, and I walked into the last level needing like 15 notes, right?

Because I just got everything everywhere.

And I went in and I'm like, wow, this last level, I will say it's called Click Lock Forest, is

mechanically interesting, is thematically awesome, is absolutely fascinating.

It is absolutely nuts because in a game with nine levels, the ninth level is actually four levels.

And still,

still has the rule of if you die at any point, your fucking note shit starts over.

There is one level in the game that is a full 50% of the game

and asks that you do the entire fucking thing without dying in one try.

Shoutouts to Wiley's Castle.

It is absolutely fucking miserable.

It is way harder than Silk Song.

Like way harder.

And my reward for that

was a fake out credit sequence that lasted eight and a half minutes as a joke.

And I was like, what?

Why?

Like, way, way longer than it would be funny.

And then a real credit sequence that lasted like 10 minutes and was miserable because it wasn't even credits.

It was actually just a name of every NPC in the game.

And then I was told by the Ikambokum guy, hey, dumb shit.

You didn't get 100 jiggies.

No secret preview of the next game for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To which I then was informed that the secret preview of the next game was a cut feature that never made it into the next game.

So it's actually just bullshit.

Oh my God, what was the

cart swapping gimmick?

Okay,

that's ringing a bell about something that was previewed and then never existed.

Yeah.

There's also like visible cut content and secret items through walls you can't get to.

Man,

so I think you're looking, is a this is a game that was right on the transition from you know the fourth generation where like longevity and gameplay, uh, um

whatchamacallit um replayability was just based sheerly on brute force and and difficulty, you know, an old Mega Man game, like I said, and newer games where it's like, okay, you got there, you see your ending, yeah, you're fine.

Here's extras if you want to go collect these stars, but you know, you don't have to.

Um, like when we started the screen, paige was with me and she kept saying that like it filled her heart with whimsy as a child and i'm like are you guys and like a lot of people in chat were saying that and i just kept asking over and over and over is that code for turned you into a furry

and i just kept getting like increasingly evasive answers

i think realistically um a lot of folks are kind of just probably going like yeah i didn't actually beat it as a kid i just played a bunch of this nintendo platformer with a fun bear and bird and did some cool stuff.

And it was, it was, it was a fun little rare adventure game, but, you know.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Whoa.

Hey, put those back, please.

Hey.

Oh, is that an attack?

That's an attack.

That was an attempt to scare me.

Oh, the light just went out.

And I'm focusing up.

I'm focusing up.

Okay, Kanjo.

Please lock it in.

All right.

Yeah.

Please, wife, put that back.

Thank you.

I think it was.

I love you.

I think it's one of those things where it's just like, yeah, you know, we just got some good N64 memories from one of those games.

And, you know, the actual, did you get through all of this and collect it all and looking at it with the modern lens, I'm sure there's flaws there, especially

not even Tui.

You're talking about the first game, right?

Yeah, I'm trying to be objective here, right?

I really want to be objective.

Like, does the game looks gorgeous?

Like, for its era.

Like, it looks fantastic, and the levels are huge and super vibrant, and the character models are really detailed.

I think having a collect, I think having a game that's a collect-a-thon that has a draw distance of like 15 character lengths so that you can't see fucking jiggies from far away is absolutely nuts.

I don't know what the solution to that was, but I think they shouldn't have done that.

That seems fucking crazy because there are some jiggies that are just like right there in plain view, but I can't fucking see them because they're not close enough.

That sucks.

That sucks.

So,

another thing,

because what you're saying here is true.

Another thing that I think, if I'm being real and I'm examining the mirror inside, I think you're also kind of hearing

lingering residue of the N64 Defense Force kid inside of me, where it was like,

I was also out there defending Jet Force Gemini.

You know, it's bad.

There are people in my chat who really like Jet, really like Banjo Kazooie that were like, by the way, every complaint you have with Banjo is like times times a million in Jet Force, and they went way too far.

Yeah, and like, there was a time when like defending this N64 game and this catalog was part of your identity against Sega PlayStation Kids, you know, and like I remember, and I was, I was absolutely on that side being like, yeah, well, you'll never play GoldenEye, so too fucking bad, you know?

But you did.

You always play GoldenEye because you'd play multiplayer at your friend's house.

Well, exactly, right?

And so on.

And so that's how it always ended up working out.

But there's that lingering bit inside of defensiveness of just like, no, it's cool.

Shut up, though, right?

That's still a little bit there with these

some of these weird buck bumble-ass N64 adventures, you know?

I think that the whole exercise is actually really, really insanely confusing.

And it really, it boils down to a lot about like very, like my own personal nitpicks and how strongly I feel about them.

Because I got to the sixth level of the game and was like, wow, this level rules.

Yeah, I'm having a great time.

This music's great.

And then as soon as I left that level, back to like abject anxious misery for five more hours.

Because this is, yeah, I mean, like, there's just some stuff.

Like, if you came after win back, I'd have to come up.

I'd step up and have to fight you, you know?

Like, it's one of those things.

There's just, there's some shit that lands there.

But at the same time, I'm thinking of my friend who would actually take a swing at you if you talked shit about Siphon filter.

People used to be insane.

And I'm like...

absolutely insane.

I'm like, fucking, like, what's your, what's the deal with you and siphon filter?

And it's just like, it's the best.

Okay, well, I don't know or care.

I don't know.

I've never played it.

I don't, I don't know.

But siphon filter is pretty good, but I don't think it's good enough to start a fucking fight over.

I mean, swinging at you, you know?

Gabe Logan is all right.

Don't talk shit about siphon filter.

That's how he said it.

He said siphon filter.

Oh, damn.

Anyway, I know I beat it.

And I was informed that Banjo Tooie does not do that weird shit with losing notes on death.

And that they give you a ledge grab in Banjo Tooie because there's like a million platforms in Banjo-Kazooie that like you can just barely hit, but no, it's not good enough.

I'm like, wow, that sounds way better.

That sounds like they are aware

of the problems that Tiny Pat would have had much back in the past.

But apparently, Tewi has like other problems with being too big and stuff like that.

It is weird that these games came before Donkey Kong 64, which is its own slate of issues.

But

overall, the genre of rare-esque platformer

is a cool one that that's why, yeah, games like Ukulele and Hatton Time came and people still harken back to that and the era of just putting a bunch of goofy eyes, googly eyes on random objects.

It's a I guess, I guess, oh my God, stop talking.

My chat's been infected with the word asswomb.

And, like, like, people just, every time I see it, I'm like, ugh, ugh.

Is that like a bussy?

Yeah, it's like a bussy.

Okay, yeah.

It's like the boom.

Okay, okay.

Anyway,

so now I've infected all of you.

I feel like

this is going I know food analogies are the worst, but so I live with somebody, my darling wife, who loves pickles.

Like she would, she would eat a whole jar of pickles and drink brine, right?

She loves pickles, right?

If I were to have to eat a pickle, I would throw up on the floor.

Like, I think they're the most disgusting thing in the world.

And I live in a world in which people were like, dude.

I can't, I'm so happy I could cry that that jar of pickles got into Smash Bros.

And I'm just like, I don't fuck it.

I couldn't get it.

And then my solution to that was I will spend an entire day eating pickles.

And I came away going, wow, I hate pickles more than I ever could have imagined.

With modern, with modern context.

No understanding at all.

I only felt more strongly about my original feelings.

Was Paige super into like, did she grow up with like Polish delis or like smoked meat places around?

Nah.

Though smoked meat's unique to Montreal, man.

Okay, because cuz mustard and pickles are like a feature like salt man vinegary flavor.

Yeah, but just crazy for salt, but you get a whole you get a pickle and you get a whole lot of mustard with like a smoked meat sandwich.

I'm just like, oh, is that like a part of you know, anyway, all right.

Um

yeah, it is it is it is that it is that I think

you know

I think the fact that you were able to pair it down to this soundscape just grates at you is is a that's a that's a particular accurate flavor and like there's no escape because people like turn it off.

I'm not gonna fucking turn this fucking sound off on a 12 and a half hour LP.

You know, like that's fucking insane.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Paige says she grew up with an incredible deli nearby.

There you go.

There you go.

There you go.

There you go.

Smother that shit and mustard is the direct quote.

So, yeah, no, it's, it's like, it's one of those things.

So a lot of people's personalities are very different, obviously, right?

We're all different people.

We all have different places.

I'm the type of person that I have, I used to be really, really picky about everything, right?

I was extremely picky about food, it's all that stuff.

But then it turned out it's like I wasn't exposed to enough food, right?

So now I have a much broader palate, right?

But there are things that I can look at and go, food or film or music or whatever, and I can see it from a really far distance away.

And go, yeah, I don't think I would like that.

And you get into that situation where your friends or your loved ones are like, oh, you should try it.

You should try it.

And what do you do?

You try it.

And you're like, man,

I was fucking super right.

I don't like that.

No, no, you got to get used to it.

Okay.

Oh, wow.

I hate this now so much that I resent you for asking me to keep trying it.

Yeah.

I, I, as you know, I love the new experience.

I love the novel.

I'll always be willing to adventure on the menu

just to know and mark it down and go, I know how I feel about this, you know.

But

yeah, I'm just trying to think of like reasons like that that I've like hated a game where I'm like, just something that's just intrinsic and inescapable.

That is

there's only one person I know in my whole life that has anything close to it, and it is actually my wife, Beach Saliva.

Super giant games, being Bastion and Hades specifically, something about those soundtracks make her unable to think.

If I play Hades with the sound on, she's like, I literally can't even think.

You have to turn it off.

Because she's enjoying the music?

No, no.

No.

No, it scrambles her thoughts like a neuralizer.

Whoa.

Even with the vocals and stuff?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Oh, interesting.

I wonder why.

It's like you ever see people

when you speak their own words back to them as soon as they say them and how it just turns your fucking head off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what it is.

And then we were talking about banjo, and she's like, I love that music so much.

I'm like, is that the music that's playing in your head day to day?

And she's like, absolutely.

That's the soundtrack of my wife's life.

It's something similar to the Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack.

And it makes sense because then I watched her fall down and have like a bunch of batteries fall everywhere.

okay

when i think of banjo music my brain starts playing a track but it's actually playing goron music it's actually it's actually playing like like the which is really like one step over you know running around in in the goron village but yeah okay

but yeah so that that was my that was my experience with banjo-kazooie uh i'm definitely not putting banjo to ee on any goal ever ever no i'm not doing that shit nu-uh no oh no way no thanks Also, I will say, dude, aside from all that, I think googly eyes on every asset you could make as an item or enemy is shit.

I think it's fucking boring and lame and stupid.

But I will give ukulele's googly eyes that attach to things and make them come alive enemy a fucking thumbs up because that's really funny.

Yeah, you know, at the time, it was, it was, it was fine.

It was cool.

No, I disagree because I, I would have said the same thing at the time.

I just wouldn't have been as eloquent about it because I was a child.

You ever see, did you see that little that that

meme or whatever of like someone playing Mario 64 and they're just walking in the first area into the castle in a straight line and then across the bridge and it just goes, this game sucks.

And then the next one is someone jumping, flipping, landing on the corner of the bridge, flipping and then running into the main door.

And it's like, this game fucking rules.

Yeah, like I'm just, I'm just reminded of that with some of these old games where, like, part of it is just running in circles with the bird and going, yeah, and just there's a little bit of like playing in the sandbox.

I'm a happy, funny bird and bear.

Woo!

Basically, and like, instead, like, Paige came into the

office to bring me some food, and she opens the door and hears me going, I could put a gun in Banjo's mouth and kill him and feel nothing.

Also, hey, for real, though, like, like, this is the most biased shit ever.

Banjo can suck a shit.

Kazooie gets everything done in that game.

Kazooie's great.

Like, that game should be, instead of being Banjo-Kazooie, it should be

Banjo's fucking dead.

Play as Kazooie.

Yeah, you're a pinky in the brain.

You know,

it's not even close.

It's fucking crazy how not even close.

Kazooie's great.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay.

Kazooie's all right.

Also, the game over where Gruntilda gets super hot.

Oh, that should have been the ending of the game.

Right, right, right, right.

Like,

you shouldn't make a game in which the game over is like a better than the actual progression.

God,

I feel like I've seen that a million times at the McDonald's Playplace kiosk as well.

Because I didn't, that was one of those games I didn't have as a kid, too.

And so I just play it like there or on rental or, you know, at other people's houses.

all right fair enough uh what else also there's a weird amount of quests where you shit in someone's mouth in that game

like weird

you just like because when you fire the eggs back you just yeah you just lay an egg

noise and he goes uh i mean you know every yoshi game is really scatological if you want to put it in that terminology you know then

i don't know it's weird you're just hey i gotta take a quick break when we get back.

I have better things to talk about.

BRB.

Actually, but then after that, worse.

Much worse.

Quick word from our sponsors.

Oh, my God.

That was such a fast comeback.

Oh, my God.

Oh, I wasn't ready.

Okay.

I love sponsors.

Better get fucking ready

for this to ching.

I'm so tired.

Get ready for this.

I'm so tired, bro.

Yeah.

Folks, this week the podcast is sponsored by Shopify and Cha-Ching.

That's the sound of a sale that you make when you're using Shopify

because that's the best way to get your online business started.

That's the best way to get your

sales and to figure out how to make a thing that you want to sell to people on the internet.

Shopify has your back.

They've got you covered.

It was very simple.

You know, in the process of figuring out how to get t-shirts out to y'all back in the day when we were just doing a podcast and recording YouTube content

getting online and trying to ship things internationally has a lot of steps to it that are very confusing figuring out how to integrate that into your channel into your website into your different social media platforms has also got a lot

to it.

Shopify is ready to help you behind the scenes with all of that.

They can help you with a design studio to set set up.

You've got a ton of templates to choose from so that you can make an online store to match your brand style.

You can get an award-winning support team.

You can get your

world-class expertise in managing inventory as well.

If you've got to figure out how to internationally ship something and process a return or more, Shopify has you covered.

Basically, you know,

the old days of setting up a mom-and-pop shop and sitting behind a little desk with a jar were,

it used to be a lot similar.

I mean, you can still do that, but it's very different.

It is, it is.

And if somebody

on the other side of the planet wants to order something from you or wants to exchange something, you need to be able to handle that.

So, Shopify is the perfect place to set that all up.

Turn your big business idea into money with your Shopify

store.

You can sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash superbeast.

One more time, that's shopify.com slash superbeast.

S-H-O-P-I-F-Y dot com slash superbeast.

Thank you, Shopify.

Thanks, Shopify.

And the podcast this week is sponsored by Factor.

Hey, Factor.

It is officially back to school season.

It is back to the routine, Shorter days.

I went to my local

convenience store and there's a line of kids right out the door being forced to wait.

Oh man, I heard them.

That time of year.

I can hear them outside.

I can hear them.

And they're just like, yep, that's about right.

So with that routine, with that shorter day, finding time to cook, brutal.

Finding the ability to eat healthy, brutal.

Finding the ability to,

you know, stay on top of any goals you might have.

It's just, it feels like it takes a back seat, and that sucks.

But Factor can get you chef-prepared, dietitian-approved meals so you can stay on track and you can actually enjoy it because it tastes great and it takes very little time to prepare.

And they can have it shipped right to your door.

So you're getting a wide variety of meals, options to pick from, including premium seafood choices, salmon, and shrimp at no extra cost.

You can find your

wellness goals easier to support with a lot of diet options as well.

If you're going for protein, good for you, fats, Mediterranean options, GLP1-friendly meals as well.

Those are all available.

And there's global flavors as well, Asian-inspired meals, bold flavors from China, Thailand, and more.

So

for better nutrition, 97% of customers say that Factor helped them live a healthier life.

So that's it.

Take care of yourself by getting in there with one of these delicious and easy to prepare meals.

In particular, I am

fond of just not having to waste too much time preparing my meals after I finish like a long recording, like a day like today.

It's nice to just be able to just take care of that nice and easy.

So yeah, eat smart at factormeals.com slash castle50 off.

And if you use the code Castle50Off, you'll get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year.

That's code CASTEL50OF at factormeals.com, and you're going to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for a year.

Get delicious, ready-to-eat meals delivered with Factor.

Offer only valid for a new Factor customer with the code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase.

Thank you, Factor.

Thanks, Factor.

All right.

And

over here,

we are also this week sponsored by Rocket Money.

And that is the extremely useful app that you can get to help you manage your finances, keep track of unwanted subscriptions, and help you unsubscribe from confusing services.

You can't always rely on this podcast to let you know what subscription services have wildly increased in price.

That's it.

Sometimes they do it and you don't even notice.

I mean, look, we try to let you know out there.

You know, we try to keep an eye on things, but quite frankly,

can't always do it.

It's gotten pretty busy.

It's gotten hard out there.

Not to mention,

there are tons of services that you sign up for and forget about very quickly, very easily.

You know, there are things where you like, you want to try it for a second, and then a month later, you're like, ah, crap, I'm auto-renewed.

I didn't even notice that that happened.

You're trying to get your budget in order.

You're trying to get your money under control.

And it sucks when that sneaks up on you and you're getting these auto-charged things.

Not to mention, of course, when you go to unsubscribe sometimes, it makes you jump through hoops, go to a website to get an email, to sign up for a time-limited thing in an app with a button, with a thing, and the da-da-da-da-da, because

it gets very confusing and difficult.

So Rocket Money can help you unsubscribe from

any confusing to unsubscribe from services.

It can help you keep track of the services that you are subscribed to.

And if the price goes up, you can get an alert about that as well.

It can be very stressful to manage all that these days and cutting costs can feel overwhelming, but this can help you, you know, relieve some of that stress and keep your finances in check.

So yeah, Rocket Money is a personal finance app that'll help you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions.

It'll monitor spending and help you lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

5 million members of Rocket Money have saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all the app's premium features.

So that's pretty handy.

You can cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

Download the Rocket Money app and enter the show name Castle Super Beast in the survey so they know we sent you.

Don't wait.

Download the Rocket Money app today and tell them you heard about them from our show.

I was quite impressed with how quickly I was able to pop that in on PayPal, see it go like, oh yeah, do you remember signing up for this?

And I was like, I don't know what that is.

That thing changed names on me.

Yeah, I literally can't even recognize the title.

The name of the company changed.

That's crazy, right?

And so I was able to just point that out and take care of it.

So thank you, Rocket Money.

All right.

So.

Better things.

Better things.

So, me and Paige played Resident Evil 2 the other day, the classic 1998 horror game, with the twist that Paige was playing it with the controller in her hand, and I

was

using this blindfold I got off of Amazon, which I only realized was a sex blindfold when I relied in mail.

It was about the same.

I was like, okay, I'm like, you're overexplaining where you got the blindfold a lot right now.

Why are you because I saw that the blindfold had like a nose?

Because the moment

The moment you held up that satin blindfold, I was like, oh, oh, this convenient blindfold, huh?

Oh, dude.

Oh, man.

I don't really see that.

Well, all right.

On top of that, on top of that, I had never even put I had now not put it on here, so I didn't see how strongly it reflected light off the fucking.

Yeah, oh, that's a soft satiny material, you know?

Well, it was very nice.

Yeah, that, yeah, okay.

So, you know, that that that over-explanation aside.

So, yeah, we played that.

That was a fascinating trip down nostalgia.

Hey, I heard you fucking crushed it and created some great content there.

So,

one of the, so the, the idea was, so by the way, Kaiser Mario, a guy in my chat, was the one who said it like two months ago.

I was like, man, I've always wanted to see a stream where Pat tries to guide Paige through RE2 blindfolded.

And I'm like, oh, that's such a better idea than I would have ever come up with.

Oh, my God.

So I immediately started putting it into a planned future down the road.

So I used to say that I was totally obsessed with Resident Evil 2 and I would play it in my head whenever I got bored.

And people would usually interpret that to

reliving memories of playing the game or, you know, thinking back to various things.

But when Paige was behind the controls and trying to learn down tank controls, and RE2 throws you into a room with enemies when you hit start, right?

I'm like, okay, pause the game.

All right, first of all, your handgun has 13 bullets.

What you're going to do is you're going to run forward, but there's going to be two guys directly in front of you.

So what you're going to want to do is turn to the right 90 degrees, run up onto the sidewalk, turn left to the 90 degrees, run forward, then run past the newspaper, the newspaper stand.

Then you're going to take a left, then you're going to go down.

When you go down left on the corridor, there's going to be a guy hugging the left side of the wall.

That's Claire's.

But then you're going to be, there's going to be a guy hugging the right side of the wall on Claire's right.

So you're going to want to do a little S until you hit the thing.

That kind of thing.

Hell yeah.

And so like,

so the reason why this works particularly well of blind leading the blind is that Paige, even with her glasses, does not have particularly good eyesight.

Right.

So we would run into scenarios which were

I could hear the room she was in and ballpark her position.

Like in particular, there was like a moment when she's like on the second floor of like the RPD in the big lobby and she goes up a ladder and I go, all you have to do is not go through the double doors.

And then I hear her run, and I go, Are you standing in front of the fucking double doors right now?

And she's like, No.

And then I hear her character turn around

and like, ah,

we talked about it down

to remembering door colors,

item amounts, item placements, et cetera.

And the back and forth between somebody who is not used to tank controls, right?

But essentially has like a really strong blind strategy guide.

In particular, there was a moment though that I got a puzzle solution wrong from my memory.

And then as soon as that happened, I just went fuck and totally froze because it was a visual puzzle solution.

And I just went, well, time for you to fucking figure it out on your own, I guess, because I don't remember.

I got it wrong.

Whoops.

Damn.

Okay.

So I remember years ago, we talked about this.

Either it might have been on Friendcast or like years before when we were in person.

But I remember, yeah, you talking about playing Ari in your head and like just like running through it.

I'll go.

While at work, right?

I'm going to start working on the fucking under two-hour speedrun record.

Come on.

Let's go.

And I remember because I was like, yeah, the version of that that I think of is like, I lab in my head.

You know,

when there's a particular game that has like a lot of interactions and there's different potential routes,

I run through potential things in my head for like touch.

Because

you're having to like mentally track like character weight and combo decay.

So no, not so much.

So an example, I did this recently, right?

So I was brain labbing to XKO a little bit where in the corner, I'm like, okay, at the end of this combo, I can do a knock to the ground, call it an assist that relaunches, and then I can end with another super, or I can go for a reset, and if they tech forward, they escape, but if they tech backwards, I can jump and air throw them.

And, you know, and I was kind of going, like, okay, but what if they hold down and they never tech?

You know, and so I'm just thinking, you know, you kind of go through these, like, what if I do this?

Could this work?

Could that work?

And so, and sometimes me and Reggie would just sit in the airport and go, Oh, what about that?

You know, and then you go back home and then you try out these things.

You go like question, question, question, question, question, and then you go try and see if it actually works, right?

But running through the um

the full RE experience, like, is this the game that you have this downs the most with?

Yeah, no, this is the one.

Okay.

This is the one.

And since we hit our sub-goals, the other game that we're going to be doing this with is Shadow of the Colossus after we're done with Resident Equal 2.

Okay, well.

Hold on.

This is the this is the so re 2 is a game that I know fantastically well.

Yeah, but more than that

Shadow of the Colossus is the other side of the coin.

Paige has never, I can't believe this.

She has never seen Shadow of the Colossus.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

That would have

been not even.

Hold on.

To the point where

when I said I was like, oh, I'll, you know, I got to think about the Colossi before we do that.

She looked at me and for real, what, there's more than one?

And I'm like, okay, no, this is the level.

Whoa.

This is the level of like, mm.

Right?

That's incredibly surprising because, Paige, like just through osmosis, this game had a big impact on the industry.

Yeah, but if you passed it, if you passed that era, it just went into the classics era.

That's interesting.

So, that one is a game I know pretty well, yeah, but it's somebody who doesn't know

and you know what, nothing, but that's okay because it's also a game that, like, it's it's made for humans, yes, and there's the challenge is

you know,

not getting there, it's solving it, right?

Wooly.

Look me in my eye.

Look right at the camera.

The problem will be getting there.

Okay.

But there's a button.

There's a button.

There's a button that tells you how to get there.

Wooly.

Have you had to meet Paige somewhere

and you see her walk into the new space to go look around?

There's no map.

Enthusiastic, happy, but lost.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting.

That'll be interesting.

So that was fun.

We're going to continue to do that.

I had some predictions.

Oh, hey, hey.

Hey, come on.

Don't turn the lights out on me.

You know what?

This is all right.

I appreciate this new form of warfare.

So that was a sub-goal.

We actually had to have Paige stop fucking with the lights because I almost pissed my pants playing Alan Wake.

I was playing Alan Wake at like 12.30 at night streaming it in a spooky, scary area, and she did that to me a couple times.

I legit almost pissed my pants.

Oh my God, we need to put a stop on this.

I'm going to die of a heart attack.

But one of the sub-a-thon goals was release her for her from her torment.

She is back to fucking with the lights again.

I feel stronger about it now.

That's good.

That's powerful.

I like that.

But it was one of those things where it's like, I know R2 fairly well, and I know people interacting with tank controls fairly well.

And it was like, the hardest room in the game is going to be the first 30 seconds.

Like, because RE2 drops you into a room with enemies and says, learn tank controls.

I was correct.

I was correct.

The first 10 minutes of the game took us two hours.

The remaining stream was a brisk, clean pace.

How do you think this would go with Silent Hill 2?

Bad.

Really bad.

Getting lost.

Really bad.

Getting lost is part of that game.

So, no, no, not just that.

Silent Hill has a huge amount of space.

Resident Evil 1, 2, 3 have really

small areas.

Like, the pre-rendered background actually obfuscates how small the areas in those games are.

They're hallways.

They're L-shaped hallways or a square or a T-room.

Like, they are really fucking fucking small.

And as a result, you can go like, oh, I know where it is.

But also, Silent Hill has a map.

It does.

But I'm also thinking of the, like, like Resident Evil being indoors

versus like the outdoor parts of Silent Hill where you're just like, where the fuck am I going?

I would never trust

my wife to navigate us through

the fog in general.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

In like at all.

All right.

Let alone in a spooky horror town.

Speaking of a Silent Hill spooky horror town, I beat the new game Silent Hill F over the last week.

So, Silent Hill F stands for Silent Hill for Women

for girls.

Yeah.

Bring it back.

Silent Hill F is about women.

It is

for real.

It's about

it is.

I don't like mans no more.

It is really fantastic.

It is extraordinarily well written.

It is really weird.

And by weird, I mean, obviously, it's a horror game.

There's a bunch of stupid, goofy shit that happens in it, right?

But, like, it would have been so easy to have a Silent Hill game take place in Japan.

And, oh, no, I'm feeling I'm going to pass out.

And then, what do you hear?

Air raid sirens, and then everything starts turning into barbed wire and chain and guts.

There is, I'm on New Game Plus now, and I'm streaming New Game Plus because New Game Plus in this game works like near, where there are endings you can only get on New Game Plus.

Oh, and

the cutscenes and enemy placement in the game changes on New Game Plus.

Is there a true ending that only comes on replay, or is it like there's the true ending that you can only get on New Game Plus.

Ah,

plus.

Okay,

okay, okay.

The only only way you can get a true ending is your third time beating the game.

Okay.

I have a very important and obvious question.

Does she...

Can you...

Does...

Do you eventually,

you know?

You should beat the game and start a new side quest that is only there on New Game Plus.

Because I know how I beat Silent Hill 3, and I'm like, if this blonde fucking idiot does take place in a rural Japanese town, it sure does, doesn't it?

You know, and I'm like, if this dumb girl can fucking figure it out and slay gods,

then I better be seeing,

I better see judgment not to be able to do that.

Not quite, not quite, but you know, that becomes the new game plus goal.

Let's go.

Okay.

And that is tying into the endings.

So I'm not 100% sure how, but get that is important.

Cool.

Hinako

is so strong.

She might be like, she's like up there with like

fucking Isaac from Dead Space in terms of like personal resilience.

Jesus Christ.

Okay.

She's so strong.

Okay.

Like.

I noticed.

She has a dash that moves farther and faster than Bloodborne's.

I remember a time when the discussion around Silent Hill was always that the protagonist should be struggling because it should be about surviving the horror and barely keeping up.

And I'm going to assume that a number of dog shit games later, fuck it, just make it fun to play,

just kind of broke through.

Okay, so I'm going to.

Because what you're describing with her being really good at fighting sounds like something that Silent Hill fans from the past would loathe.

Okay, I'm gonna loop back around to that.

Okay,

so Silent Hill F is extraordinarily well written.

It takes place in the 1960s, where you play a teenage girl who seems to be going through some kind of family problem and then falls into the typical Silent Hill scenario of fog plus monsters plus where are my friends?

What's going on?

The game does an extremely good job

of

making it so that I beat the game and I'm not 100% on what events actually happened.

Oh,

I can't quite figure out which events occurred as depicted, which events occurred as depicted with different contexts, which events didn't happen at all, but characters thought they happened,

right?

That kind of thing, which

events are

um

uh definitively metaphorical right like just emotional metaphor which things are magic which things are perceived magic right like okay and it's but this is very unclear does this have a positive effect on the narrative Yes, because on New Game Plus, that has become slightly clearer.

Okay.

Okay.

And on New Game Plus Plus, it will be clearer still.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

New Game Plus, it's very strange that I talk about New Game Plus before I talk about the combat, but I will circle around.

New Game Plus

adds new encounters.

It changes ambient dialogue.

It changes cutscenes.

It allows for the unlocking of new endings.

It is a second run.

It is very much a near-automata style, like, no, keep going.

In particular,

there's new notes, which are like a good example: is finding someone's diary, right?

And here's what they wrote in their diary.

And then in New Game Plus, you might find that diary, but it's the extra pages at the end that are the really shitty things that they really felt.

Right?

Then, as to her combat prowess, Hinako used to be on the track team.

Good to know.

And that is the explanation for her ridiculous physical prowess.

Okay.

She has a blood-borne dodge.

She has a witch-time

blood-borne dodge.

If you dodge at the last second, it refills your stamina to full and gives you a slowdown.

Wow.

Like full-on flash step.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

She also has the ability to attack enemies.

Like enemies will have a slight flash before they attack with certain attacks.

If you do a heavy attack before that, you will run up and she will just bash them and counter through their move.

Esen.

So Hinako is strong.

Hinako is capable.

And Hinako gets way,

way,

way stronger.

By the end of the game, you get really good at the combat.

Like you are just trouncing on enemies.

Like you are styling all over them.

And they throw some massive gauntlets of enemies at you.

Right?

And

one of the themes that I've started to take away from it is that I was discussing with people is that

the back half of the game has a really large amount of combat.

It has like an astonishing amount of combat.

Unavoidable combat?

Yeah, absolutely unavoidable combat.

Like it will lock you into a fucking room and force you to fight.

Okay.

Like a Devil May Cry game or a Souls game.

And

it gets to be a lot.

And it's kind of a downer.

And I was playing on hard mode, which is actually genuinely very difficult.

And

I am of the opinion that this sloganing of the back 20% of the game is

important

because Hinako is really strong, but through the elements of the game, she gets stronger.

But she gets really tired of having to fight all the time everywhere she goes.

everywhere every time i had to go do an objective i had to fight about it

but by the end of the game i'm like i really just want this over with but i have to fight about it and the character is getting more and more and more fed up like legitimately visibly frustrated with the amount of combat that they are having to go through okay and i believe that is a metaphor for women.

Okay.

And that's the type of thing like we have a game where they're willing to like play with, is the game fun to play in order to make the point they are trying to make.

Okay.

I thought you were setting up or implying a thing where the first time through, you're kind of avoiding the conflicts, and then the second time through, you get stronger and can then defeat things.

So I avoided conflict in the beginning, and then I got better at it, and then they force you to get better at it.

And now that I'm going through New Game Plus, I am sailing through encounters that that I avoided the first time because I am stronger.

But I believe there is a metaphorical grounding that Hinako is also supposed to be stronger on her New Game Plus, which may or may not actually be happening.

Okay.

So basically.

There's a lot going on in this game.

This game has great writing.

So when

so, women out there, what you're saying is when your boss is being misogynist and shitty, you need to wait for the white flash and Isen him.

And that's the way to,

you know, break through and find your

promotion.

I'll give you a very direct example, right?

There's an enemy in the game.

So none of the enemies are named,

right?

But there are, there's maybe six, seven normal types of enemies, right?

One of which is, are you familiar with a gaki?

It's a long-looking demon that has like an engorged belly that's G-A-K-I.

Okay.

Right.

It's a you people who played SMT probably.

Right.

So gakis are extremely large, right?

In this game.

They're extremely big.

And

they are the and they they are they look like men, but like, you know, just with the big belly out.

And they are the most aggressive enemy to chase you.

They will chase you by far the farthest of any enemy type.

And they crouch and drool and snarl.

And their default attack is like an up swipe that looks like they're trying to flip up her skirt.

Okay.

And their grab attack is where they lick all over her face and then they become throbbing and red.

And it becomes very, very obvious that these are just men.

These are just how Hinoko views adult men.

Okay.

Like, the game is for women.

Well, I was going to say, the, like, it's interesting because, like, I didn't think of like that demon name, that's also the word people say when they call someone like a brat, like a gaki, like, that's like a small little annoying shit.

No, but um,

so, so,

like,

at any point in this game,

no, I guess it's

really, really good at countering men by the end of that game.

Do you have to get on a train at any point and fight off demons?

You don't have to get on a train.

Fight off demons on a train.

No, okay.

All right.

This is the past and it's a little too modern, perhaps, but yeah.

On top of that, it does a lot of really, really, really interesting stuff.

The other world in this game, instead of barbed wire and nightmare shit, is

it's traditional Japanese architecture.

It's temples and shrines.

It's old-style mansions.

And in that area, you find this person very early.

You find a extremely handsome older man wearing a fox mask.

You talked about it.

Yeah.

You talked about the fox music.

And he is

super handsome,

super helpful.

super sketch.

And then the game goes, that dude's fucking sketch.

And the things that they do with that character are fascinating.

Just fascinating.

Because I beat the game and I don't know if he was good or bad or fake or real.

Oh.

Oh, you can't.

Are you saying that you can't tell if this guy is actually

a good person or not?

You can't tell.

You can't tell.

You can't read the motivations of the sketchy dude who might be you.

He might be a good person, but he might also be a piece of shit.

He might be.

It's not clear.

It's not clear.

So I'll have to go deeper into it.

How about that?

That's interesting.

The fact that he's literally, actually, morally gray and physically colored gray is hilarious.

That's great.

That's really good.

It's fascinating.

Also, there's like me and me and chat where we hit like this perfect synergy where people were like picking up on details that I wasn't picking up on.

And I was like,

in between streams, I started to go into like news articles from the 1960s in Japan about what kind of things were going on societally there because that factors into the game story.

It's incredible.

It is, it is, it's better than four.

And I don't know where to personally put it between one, two, and three, but it's, it's in there.

It's, it's excellent.

I said this with the remake before, but I'll say it again here.

It's It's baffling to think we're in a world where Konami is now making Silent Hill games that people are enjoying again.

Yeah.

I didn't see that coming.

It is excellent, and I will continue to stream the new Game Plus parts to the parts that are new.

I'm going to do some save game shenanigans in order to cut down on repeats.

It is absolutely excellent.

Okay, not Konami's

very strongly.

Not the Konami development team.

Was this Bloober or like

no, this is an internal team of Konami with Ryukishi 07, the guy who wrote Higurashi and Umi.

Umineko.

Right, right, right.

Okay.

Yeah, well, well, the point more so being that the Konami that was pachinko mining it

bothered to turn its attention back to the market.

Now, I will say one thing:

there's an element to this game that I've seen two people just say, which is they are frustrated that Silent Hill F has nothing to do with Silent Silent Hill.

That is not true.

You are not paying close enough attention.

There is an absolutely 100%

definitive link to Silent Hill 1 in this game, despite the fact that it predates Silent Hill 1.

Shouldn't that...

Let's say there was no link.

Wouldn't that be okay?

It would absolutely be okay.

Wouldn't that be more than fine?

You know what they don't do?

They don't use any Silent Hill classic iconography at all.

They do use some Silent Hill music.

One of the themes that plays in the

early game is a Japanese classic remix of the Silent Hill 1 theme.

Shami-sen versions of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is very, very interesting.

They are

extremely, extremely subtle and careful to not just use the old thing because I know old thing yada yada.

Yeah, okay, right.

Good, good, good.

There's even a

character's name

that I could not pull out of the game, but I was able to pull out of my own research because it's visually referenced in the game.

Then I had to go find old newspapers and find out what that thing was called colloquially, and it turns out it was the name of a Silent Hill character.

Oh,

like it is, it is very, very, very, very, very underneath.

Okay.

So the recipe then is and continues to be: hey, we know we have properties that people care about.

Let's find people that are talented to take care of it and just let them go.

Yeah.

Be it Kojima, even if that fails, and now Umineko dude, and, or, well, I guess Bluber, right?

With

remake.

Okay, cool.

Interesting.

You're, You're new game plusing.

I am new game plussing, and then I will be new game plus plusing.

Also, when you beat the game, it says, hey, you beat the game.

Here's the other endings.

Do you want to get those other endings?

Here's the conditions.

Ah, nice.

Okay.

Do this.

Don't do this.

Do this.

Don't do this.

Cool.

Cool.

Nice.

Really good game.

Very good game.

That's all I have to say about it.

I can't.

There's nothing else I can say about it without

spoiling something.

Are we clear to jump in to

the news?

All right.

So

let us begin as we discuss the insidification.

Western Game Biz is essentially crashed as of today.

Once again, I reiterate the difference between the market crash and the soul crash.

Right?

They're in the skid.

They're trying to turn out of it, but that truck is coming and I see it.

Yeah.

Because

the thing when you buy out a company like Electronic Arts is that you're hitting a whole lot of people that do give a shit about this buyout, but you're also so broad that you're hitting a whole bunch of people that give no fucks about the details of who, what, or why, you know?

And you also run into,

it's really, I mean,

it comes up a lot, but it's just, it's the most basic level discussion every time someone goes like, hey,

you know, you support countries doing shitty things or whatever.

And it's like,

the difference is the direct person that did the thing being directly involved in the purchase as opposed to.

I don't want to get into a version of this conversation where we describe how many companies Nestling is.

Of course, exactly.

No, but it's just anytime it's a bad faith argument where somebody brings it up or whatever, it's like if there's a person who happens to live in a country that's doing business in this way, running a tournament, buying a thing or whatever, that's totally fine.

That's a random person that lives in a country versus the government of the country themselves that does the thing.

So, what are you talking about, exactly?

I'm talking about the fact that EA has been

set up to have a $55 billion buyout deal.

The buyers include the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the PIF,

and a private equity firm run by Jared Kushner.

So everybody's focusing on, or a lot of people are focusing on the Saudi involvement, which I believe to be like more sportswashing, like similar to FGC.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That sucks.

But let's...

Let's throw all that shit away.

Let's throw away who bought it away.

That's not even important to this discussion.

What's important is that they bought it with something called a leveraged buyout, which means they didn't have $55 billion to buy EA.

So, yeah, so there's different elements to it, right?

That to me is like the third step in the story, so to speak.

The first one being that, like, yep, the

Saudi Arabian purchases, the sports watching, we've seen that.

It's starting to move.

Obviously, we've talked about it in determining.

It's Madden, FIFA, et cetera.

Yeah, well, no, but I'm saying we talked about it with the PIF fund, which, you know,

SNK was, you know, one of the ones with a big buyout, but they also invested heavily in a bunch of companies, Nexon, Capcom, Nintendo,

EA before this, et cetera.

All of that.

Those percentages were increasing slowly over time.

They were not being disclosed.

And then

this also introduces Jared Kushner,

who is got his side of it as well.

They're

combining to form

a major part of

the buyout.

Jared Kushner's firm,

well, rather, like, there's a, for anyone who doesn't know, I mean, you can go back not too long.

There's a lot of economics nerd shit to talk about on this.

There sure is.

The takeaways where I'm just me going like, oh, that guy who

was involved directly with the, apparently, according to reports and whistleblowers, it was involved directly with the Khashoggi murder stuff.

Was giving the okay for his arrest, apparently, according according to whistleblowers and reports and also was um giving um counseling on how to handle it from a pr perspective directly to uh mbs yeah rich people murder people so that that all goes down sure um

and then the

then point is is that leveraged buying 20 billion of the 55 is debt financing so that's weird so they didn't have 55 billion right they actually only had 35 so where'd the extra 20 come from from, Wooly?

From JP Morgan Chase.

Oh, why?

Who'd they, who's on the hook for that?

That's the bank.

And

so who has to pay that back?

Oh, is it the private equity firm?

Oh, no, that's the company directly.

That's that's oh, okay.

So

so Woolly, I want to hire you to mow my lawn,

but I'm going to give you 50 bucks.

But I

had to borrow 20 of those dollars from Jim.

And when Jim asks me for my money, I tell him to go break your legs.

Well,

so unless you can come up with 20 extra dollars.

So apparently, 18 billion of the 20 billion will be is expected to be paid back because it's a cash deal.

It's expected to be paid back immediately.

And then the rest will be, again, on the hooks.

So it's debt financing.

There's an aspect of this where they're buying it and they're going to have a lot of cost saving to do.

Doesn't

yearly profit margin not even cover the interest on this debt?

Well, you know, that's the thing, right?

Again, there's all these different parts of it.

So yeah, it turns out that there's a humongous amount of cutting that one can expect, things to get aggressive.

But according to folks involved with the deal,

the thought is that their operating costs as a company are going to go down because

because a big part of what's gonna happen in the coming years is the debt load will be ink will be handled by AI they're going to be able to boost profits in the coming years as AI becomes a bigger part of EA's operating costs so you're telling me they're gonna double their profits by getting rid of so much staff that it covers up the shorts fall and they're gonna have all that staff replaced by robots dude they're gonna save so much money It's crazy.

They're going to save so much money.

So, yeah, 20 billion of that 55, you know,

that debt, then

that ability to pay it back.

Expect to see a massive amount of staff fired for that.

Expect to see a bunch of

expect any projects that you're hoping to hear more about that are beloved things that are just

currently cooking, expect a bunch of those to just get tossed, I'm sure.

Anything that's not Surefire gangbusters billions.

A penny saved is a dollar earned or whatever the fuck.

An LLM.

It is a penny saved, penny earned, but these stupid motherfuckers actually think a penny saved is a dollar earned.

And

a water bucket wasted is an AI question unanswered, you know?

So,

yeah.

Let's ignore the fact that MIT said that AI is actually worse at doing all these kinds of jobs than any person.

Yeah, sure.

You know, we can also.

It's actually a net loss by like about 10%.

You can also ignore the fact that J.P.

Morgan Chase Bank is the bank that is the Epstein fucking related bank.

There's a ton of, yeah, there's literally people on that board and see executives that are actually in the emails that fucking have the sketchiest, most super disgusting

relationship.

This is what happened to Bread Lobster.

Bread Lobster got eaten up by private equity and then destroyed.

Because you buy the company and then you saddle the company with all of your debt, tear it up, and then leave and go, oh, look, they have the debt.

It's all them.

It's all they have.

They're on the hook.

I'm out of here.

See you shitheads.

Well, again, I was going to say, like, if the faith in AI leads to absolute

waste and nuclear fallout for the investment here, it couldn't happen to a shittier bank, I could say at the very least, seeing as, once again, that is the bank bank that bankrolled Epstein.

So good for them if they fucking rot in the process.

But

unfortunately, what this obviously means is we're going to be looking at this massive sports washing story across the industry as one that is going to accelerate its imminent collapse.

I want to bring up again what Jiyuna said about the FGC side of things, which was, hey, eventually when all this money changes hands and they stop caring and they don't want to play with their toys anymore and it's fucking the toy store.

He's just going to drop it.

Right.

When they destroy everything in the process, then just be ready for what happens afterwards.

Now, with that community, it's like, hey, support your locals, go to these places and make these things happen, ignore them, et cetera.

What the fuck is the equivalent of support your locals with EA?

They're going to run.

So, what you're going to see is everything that's not

Battlefield, Madden, FIFA, and maybe

the next Mass Effect game is canceled.

Yeah.

Everything's canceled.

It's got to see prices increase on those massively.

They're going to really turn up the mini buys and the gambling.

Oh, Apex as well and Sims, my mistake.

You know, the big boys.

AI-generated

FC 20, you know, and I generated soccer games.

And they're going to slow bleed them by every single year.

They're going to be like, well, you have to hit this target.

And the only way you can hit that target is by cutting staff, which means their shit's just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse every single year.

The other part of this that's fucking fascinating and

is telling of what this,

you know, this is all again, sports watching buyout.

We're going to, the whole point of

this kind of like confrontational thing is essentially, you know, if we can buy out golf, if we can buy out wrestling, we can buy out the entirety of video games.

And we are watching that process occur.

It's what's interesting is the switch over to it being private as well.

So no investors, no outside, you know, no market here.

This is just taking it off the market entirely.

No more

investor meetings and/or people buying shares in the company.

They are 100% holding the entire thing, you know?

So shareholders are evil and stupid, but imagine if instead of a diverse group of evil and stupid people, it was actually like

four or five evil

people.

The fucking the absolute core of it?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

You just got the worst of them and just gave them total control.

Just speedrun it.

Speedrun the entire process.

No, it really is the kind of thing where it's like every name, like every name involved with the deal is just like, oh, this is just the worst.

Like all three, like

fucking, you know, yeah, it's, it's, you couldn't, you couldn't hand it off to a more depressing triforce of evil shit.

And it's really interesting to me to see what happens with Battlefield because Battlefield is made by Dice out in Sweden.

The DICE group is the only developers in EA that have a fucking union because they're out in Sweden where you have to have a union for everything,

which insulates them from a very significant degree of this stuff.

So it will probably be Battlefield will be insulated until Battlefield is over.

Until Battlefield is just over because they can't reach any agreements with Dice's Union.

Yeah.

So, you know, how unions have been getting momentum.

You know how that's been picking up steam a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

I think Blizzard unionizing

right before or during the Activision Blizzard acquisition was a really smart move.

Very smart move.

There's no reason to assume that, like, of course, we know, again,

trusting in the AI part of this is the hilarious punchline at the end of it all.

Oh, yeah, because like we're going to, let's throw the ethics of AI away is that it's not going to save them money.

It's going to cost them time.

The thing is, is just the idea that

through interest, because everywhere that they've invested a little bit and bought a little bit, the idea is to slowly buy more.

You can fully expect to see this continue, and you can expect to see way more companies uh seeing way more of their shares going to the pif and uh you can basically watch as the entirety of this industry slowly gets bought out um

well not the whole industry I can think of at least one company that would rather die in the ground than sell their shit entirely to Saudi Arabia, and that'd be Nintendo.

Yeah, sure.

But those guys seem like like they would rather burn the building down than sell the company to anything that wasn't Japanese.

But they have no issues selling them stocks in the meantime and having them hold on to a percentage.

Oh, yeah.

It's not a controlling percentage.

It's not a controlling percentage, right?

But that's what's happening with each of these, right?

I literally have the fucking list.

That's the trick.

You can take any money from anybody as long as they don't have a controlling percentage.

That's what's happening with Ubisoft.

Or, or in the SNK case, where it was like you buy a controlling percentage from a different company in Hong Kong that was not even that SNK directly.

You can just buy out the controlling percentage.

But so, like, Ubisoft is a really good example because that's coming up this week.

Do you know what the finalization of what's been going on with fucking Ubisoft this week?

They fucking fucking finished selling

Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six,

all the different parts, Rainbow and Splinter Cell to themselves in a shell company that is 100% owned by the fucking Geo,

what's it?

Germo family.

So that when the fucking Ubisoft gets bought out by Tencent, they can just go, oh, fuck.

Well, Vanguard owns it.

We're all quitting and going to work for Vanguard.

I guess they own all the IPs.

Sorry.

Cutting out the IPs is fucking nasty work, man.

That is, you know.

Yeah.

but anyway, shuffling it around.

I don't even own it.

You don't

own me.

It's it's it's it's in my baby cousin's name, actually.

This business is,

you know, yeah, yeah.

Um, so no, anyways, just what all that to say is that um, there are percentages slowly increasing uh across the industry that are that have been happening in the background, and they don't publicly report on the increase.

Every once in a while, you get an update, but um, this is not the end of this, certainly, expect it to continue,

But

I don't know what the landscape looks like for people working at these jobs.

It's bad.

It looks bad.

I don't know.

It's really bad.

It's bad.

Yes.

Yes, obviously.

It's poor.

Yes, obviously.

It's quite poor, obviously.

Yes.

What I'm getting at is that the idea of like these houses collapsing and people running out of them and holding their resumes and seeing what they can find around elsewhere as they run into another one that then gets taken over.

And then you're like, well, what the fuck?

Like that's going to get worse and worse and shittier and shittier.

Not everybody is going to drop into a team and make some indies.

Oh, no, you're going to lose tons and tons and tons of institutional knowledge.

So this is, and this is all just, again, if you are somebody who looks at this and goes, yeah, I don't care about who's buying it or how that involves me or whatever the implications are

you will

if you absolutely

if you don't you won't know that these are related because you didn't pay attention but you absolutely will if you don't feel the soul crash then you will feel the market crash it's it's very very you see the 295 dollar version of mass effect 4 that doesn't include the fucking javic is back to life dlc you're gonna be like what the fuck why is it so expensive i don't get get it.

It's like, well, because you didn't pay attention.

Yeah.

How much

is it going to cost to get

Cristiano Ronaldo and FC27,

you know, to get the card, the burner card for him, or whatever the case is.

Now, I know what you're thinking, Willie.

I know what you're thinking.

What am I thinking?

What you're thinking is, you know, it sucks that EA is going to make their games cost like a lot more, but

luckily for me,

I'm a subscriber of Xbox Game Pass, which is the cheapest and most effective way to play all my games all year.

And nothing can change that.

I was actually going a different direction, but yeah, sure.

No, no, no, no, that's fine.

That's fine.

That's fine.

I mean,

before even that,

didn't Xbox also get taken off the shelves at like

Costco?

Like, didn't they just say we're done?

Did you cover that, dude?

Yeah, Costco took Xbox off the shelves, and I went and read the specific wording because it made me laugh really hard.

It wasn't, we regret to say that we cannot find a way to keep Xbox on the shelves, it was we're not carrying Xbox products on our shelves anymore.

Yeah, so that that was that was the bit, but um, no, uh, if we can, we can sort of over here.

Um, the Game Pass price increases 50%,

and the website to cancel your subscription crashes due to a traffic spike.

So it is now $360 a year to play Game Pass,

which Game Pass's primary user base is guys who play two games a year being Call of Duty and that.

The entire premise of being like, we're going to save money, actually.

Yeah.

No, that's good stuff.

That's before tax, by the way.

That's before tax.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Combine, just, you know, we always, stories are always delivered piecemeal, but if you were to just combine this with a bunch of the stuff with Microsoft's AI stories from recently and the layoffs and all the shit we've been talking about and reporting on,

and then the de-shelfing of them from Costco, things are looking great for Xbox right now.

Looking really good.

Solid, solid bit.

Looking really good.

Yeah, the idea of a cancellation website crashing, meaning people are unable to get out fast enough because it's too fucking jam-packed, is absolutely wild.

Uh,

so

uh, that's something.

Um, but uh, no, actually, where I was going to go was because, again, you know, you can't have

any light at the end of the tunnel here.

As we were talking about the fact that they're hoping AI is going to reduce the costs of this

$20 billion debt

to its leveraging.

It's going to reduce it so much.

It's going to reduce it to zero when they fucking default.

Well,

you know, I'll tell you what.

Japan's got their feelings on the matter.

What's that?

Well,

according to a recent survey, over half of Japanese game companies are using AI

and are

generatively at that.

Sick.

Great.

Super.

So I bet that's the same everywhere, honestly.

Yeah, so

there was a large survey conducted

by the

CISA Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association.

And yeah, they reported that 51% of companies are using AI in some capacity.

Some usage includes visual game assets, story and text generation, and programming assistance.

So it's

some creative work and some like

other.

And

the generative aspects of this, of course, are what you hope they avoid, but in this case, they're kind of more or less embracing it.

But Nintendo has said that they're staring clear from it for the time being.

I wish Nintendo wasn't so fucking evil on a lot of stuff because they're the only company that's not evil on some stuff.

Other stuff, right?

Yes.

The way they treat

so shitty about price and ownership and copyright,

but they're so fucking based about creators making what they want to make.

And about work.

It sucks.

And about

work-life balance and time off and

benefits for employees and treating like...

It's almost like we live in a complicated world.

I hate that.

You know what?

A society, even, Pat.

Ah, fuck.

Right?

So that's why, from week to week, one week we're fucking shitting on and making fun of Nintendo, and then the next week we're like, good for them.

Good shit.

Being like, we're not touching this AI stuff, right?

Yes, that's what it is.

It's like parenting, man.

It's super fucking.

You wag your finger

when they do a no-no, and you give them praise when they do good.

Well, they've come out to say that they are, for the time being, steering clear of generative AI, mainly to avoid copyright concerns.

Well, they're currently fighting a bunch of fucking copyright battles right now.

Well, as a fiercely litigious fucking company, right, at least they're being internally consistent.

At least they're being internally consistent.

Could you imagine a marathon-like fucking texture showing up in Donkey Kong in the middle of this PAL world shit?

I like to think that Yamauchi's ghost is just fucking

just scooting around,

scaring people.

Well,

maybe.

you know we used to make playing cards they were real cards

just just haunting the new the new president devon pritchard

as as bowser steps down it's like yeah i'm leaving because this office is haunted this this this ghost with shades that's a good reason

i'd leave yeah if i found a fucking haunted fucking office i wouldn't work there that's fucking bullshit yeah so side note president bowser stepping down oh that's fine he didn't do anything yeah um didn't do anything in his tenure.

So the thing with this, this, the, the whole

survey, though, as well, is

I think, yeah, the Larian CEO, Vinke,

was kind of describing that, like,

what's.

Oh, sick!

We got brand new good news that's actually shit news.

Okay.

Cult Games has issued a statement clarifying the use of generative AI in Hotel Barcelona, the upcoming Slasher Roguelite from White Owl, Suda 51, and Sweary.

Yeah.

The team acknowledges that it failed to disclose the AI-generated content available in the new game plus tapes.

It confirmed that a patch is in the works

to replace all such content human-made work.

Here we go.

Here we go.

Yeah.

Guys, guys, you can't, it doesn't.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter in the sense that

we're entering a realm where it won't be easy to tell anymore, right?

And you can't rely on like, well, they're cool.

They wouldn't.

Fucking, there was a code mystics thing that just popped up where like some of their achievements, there's an arcade machine that looks like super generated.

And they said, no, we didn't.

Here's the PSD to prove that, you know,

these are these assets weren't made that way.

But when you look at them, it's like, no, but that really, really, really looks like it was generated, though.

It's a gibberish arcade console.

This is awesome.

Isn't this just great?

Like, I know you're saying no, but look at it.

Use your eyeballs and look at it.

That doesn't, people don't.

Did you say eyeballs?

Like a New Yorker?

So the, the, so Larian, CEO, was basically saying, uh, my stance on AI is really straightforward.

It's a tool we use to help make things, uh, make things go faster.

We have so much work.

We're happy to take assistance from anything.

I don't think it'll ever replace the creative side of things, however, and described how

they solved a bottleneck by hiring 15 new artists instead of using AI, right?

It's really a good sign for whatever industry that you're in

that the solution to ever-rising costs is a golden goose

oh like guys i listen i know the farm's about to go under but check this out i got some fucking magic beans

yeah

the the part of this that you know the part of this that that is already flown the coop and is done is

the part that is,

again, for programming, for whatever rote mechanical purposes, et cetera.

The creative aspect is where you'd hope

a lot of these companies would draw the line, and not all of them are doing so.

And it's probably on a project-to-project basis, especially if you're in a situation where bottom lines need to catch up, such as everything we just talked about with EA, right?

This shit sucks.

It's also creating like a sliding scale of video game morality that I think sucks.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I need to take another break to pee, right?

Because I drank too much of this Red Bull.

But like, I want to talk about Timo after this.

And like, Riot is fucking evil.

They're so evil.

But, like, they're less evil than like EA and Ubisoft.

So I'm like,

unconsciously softening.

Well, because I think Timo's cool.

Well, because you're, but the thing is, in many cases, you're rooting for the developer that is under the shadow of Sauron.

I think the Cairns are probably okay.

Yeah.

I haven't hung out with them.

You have.

No.

Fine.

Good, good, good blokes.

Good blokes.

You know?

Sean and Cockables, good dude.

Two XKO folks, all chill.

Like them.

Love that.

They're great people.

The thing is, just the company that is making the game that you like is under the shadow of something horrendous.

Hey, Titanfall, what the fuck is that now?

I don't know.

I spoke to a guy like five years ago, and he was like,

got some really exciting Titanfall stuff coming up.

And I was like, really?

And I'm like, how do you know?

He's like.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm like, cool.

And then I've never seen that guy again.

Yeah.

Well, and I've never seen, I've spoken him again.

And we know that multiple fucking things got canceled.

Nah, because here comes the turbulent wind, man.

It ain't making its way out of the turbulent wind.

Anyway,

you want to hit that?

I got a piss.

Yeah, I'll pee in here.

Go hit that piss.

Go hit that piss.

Yeah, I'm going to do it.

Oh, wait, before we go, before we go.

So, like, when we were doing the, when we were doing the blindfolded RE2 thing,

I got up to pee, but I didn't take the blindfold off.

And so, Paige got really mad because she thought I was going to try and piss in the toilet with the blindfold off.

So, there's a there's this a really great clip of me getting up and like stumbling away as she's just screaming, Don't piss, don't piss.

All right,

so

today's world of quote-unquote con artists

by

Hirohiko Araki.

Oh, yeah?

Speaking about societal evils, I think that as AI continues to spread throughout society, we're going to see increasingly shady, an increasingly shady world filled with scammers exploiting it.

It recently came across, I recently came across a drawing and I thought, is this something I drew?

Isn't it?

I was shocked to find out it was actually created by AI.

When I draw manga, I add subtle personal elements to make the work uniquely mine.

But this AI-generated piece even mimicked details like the way I draw eyelashes, so precisely it was almost impossible to tell it apart from my work.

If it were based on my recent drawings, I'd know right away.

No, I didn't draw this.

On the other hand, I honestly wouldn't be able to tell the difference if it were done of my art 10 years ago, when my memory of it would be a little hazy.

The more AI advances, the more this kind of thing will happen.

Art reflects the times, and manga is one example of that.

Seeing this world of con artists appear in manga could very well mean that we're headed for a future world dominated by fraudsters.

This type of evil in today's age will undoubtedly end up impacting manga down the line.

Copyright infringement by AI is also a villain that we manga artists must face.

The extreme scenario is that AI-generated fakes might start being accepted as the real thing.

Even as we try to protect our work, these counterfeits are becoming so accurate and sophisticated sophisticated that it's no longer a fight an individual can win.

Having some laws,

some kind of laws, would probably be the only way to regulate this.

However, because we're dealing with a world of con artists, there's also a very real possibility that the laws favoring them will appear before we know it.

Yeah.

Well, at least Erici is

on the up and up.

That feels nice.

He goes on to say, personally, I entrust my copyright management to Shueisha, which, eh,

but some manga artists are lax in managing their copyrights, leading to others using their artwork without permission or even leaking the original drawings.

When I see that, I worry they might face serious trouble down the line if they don't take it more seriously.

This is from last year.

This is really like the only time I want to say this, but like I grew up and as a teenager was told that me listening to a song an unauthorized way would be the downfall of society, that I would go to prison for the rest of my life, only to grow up and hear that the same people who told me that are like, yeah, I just stole every single song that's ever existed and I chopped it up.

Fuck you.

Fuck you, you little bitch.

Like, such

fucking bullshit.

Such fucking complete garbage.

You know, you can just infinitely dive down this shitty hole.

And,

you know, for every one of these moments where somebody pulls out a magnifying glass and goes, hey, this piece of fucking

Kimberly Street Fighter VI art is generated.

Fuck off with that.

And then they catch it.

You know, there will be suddenly dozens that won't be caught, obviously.

This is just, there's no way to avoid it.

It's just going to be the state of things.

The AI industry is headed towards a cataclysmic worldwide economic crash.

So we'll trade this artistic and ethical nightmare for a very real economic one within our lifetime.

But it might be slow and terrible for a very long time.

Yeah.

And you're also dealing with the worst part of this, which is various lines that different people give a fuck or don't give a fuck about crossing.

So, you know, now you have that part of it.

Somebody in the chat said that I said that last year.

Dude, it took like a decade for the housing market to crash.

Like,

like, you can see, like, if you're in it, you can see it coming from really fucking far away.

Um,

you, but that doesn't mean you can avoid it.

Yeah, I guess the, you know,

I don't know.

Like,

I think we've gotten pretty good at just watching shit be shit for a long time that eventually you can just compartmentalize that, you know?

And,

you know,

whatever it is, as dumb and as annoying and as bad as it gets, there's a point where you just kind of go, all right, what's happening

on my front porch?

What's happening out here in real life?

Like, let me just.

Part of the issue with our current dystopian era is that humans were not meant to be connected into world fucking events at all.

You were meant to be connected into the events of one kilometer around your body tops.

And I think it's 1,000 faces memorized.

Used 50.

Right?

Okay.

Something like that back in the day.

Yeah.

It's like the before you start fading off into

stranger territory where you can't remember.

But yeah, no, that's it.

That's all.

And so imagine then, if you would, a strategy of flooding the zone with exhausting,

like non-stop everyday scrolling by the worst shit ever.

Yeah.

So

here comes Timo.

Here comes Timo.

Wow, Timo looks really good.

Wow.

Yay, Timo.

I clap.

I clap for Timo.

So the T-Mo trailer dropped for 2xKO, and some of the funny shit noticed was one, I saw a chat box pop up, and I'm like, we were literally talking.

I literally said that last week.

That's crazy.

So that trailer is genuinely incredible.

It is the shit posts.

Yes.

Trailer.

Yes.

Coup de grace.

And it turns out that Marlon Pie, who also also created Yasuo, created Timo.

And every time they asked for updates on how Timo's going, Marlon Pai would make a shit post video and edit it like that and send that to the team for updates on how Timo has been.

Yeah, let's do this as the full reveal trailer.

Also, so I'm familiar with Timo to a degree, both in League and Rune Terra.

Woolly, you're less familiar with Timo, but I have described him to you as an

enraging, toxic piece of shit with a happy little smile.

And here comes the fighting game variation of Timo, the most toxic fucking cancer fucking fighting game character I have ever seen in my life.

And every single thing he does is built to cause rage and annoyance.

And his attitude is so pure.

And his chip.

Bubbly.

He's so sincere.

right as a scout um yeah i mean where do you the things you see in this trailer are all like they understood

they understood the assignment and they delivered.

So, one, his entire system of uh, he's got fucking blow darts that are not a projectile, that is a special move, it's just a normal, his lights.

His jab is a three-hit projectile, yeah.

He just spits the shit at you from a distance, so they show you him running away and shooting blow darts and just running away and shooting blow darts.

Um, he's got his mushrooms, which he kicks at you

and shovels at you, and they bounce on each other, and then they poison you.

And

if you're not careful, even if you're blocking or whatever, you're standing in the poison, you're getting poison damage nonetheless.

He's got a slingshot that he fires the little rocks at various distances, but they can also bounce off the tops of the mushrooms.

The mushrooms to change their trajectory, but it can also catch on fire and light the patch of grass on fire that he left behind to teleport in.

But if he sits in the patch of grass, he turns invisible And remains invisible.

I mean 100%

completely invisible.

If he just crouches for a couple seconds, he turns completely invisible as well.

Not to mention when the grass is on fire, that it can updraft his parachute so he can ride and float in the air as he spits his little fucking shit at you.

There's a moment in the trailer that is so disgusting, and it's like the highlight, which is he puts the grass down and lights it on fire.

Then he calls an assist.

So Alawi is being pulled into the fire and is blocking it backwards because invisible Timo is crossing her up, and then he's jumping and crossing her up again while invisible.

And in the upper right corner of the screen, somebody's going, My grandma could have blocked that mix up.

It's like, no, man.

Oh, God.

I will block this whack ass mix up.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's all of that.

and it only came it wasn't in the trailer initially, but then it became clear when the

some of the people that got to play him reported on it and then there was the gameplay video with Marlon Plai explaining the badge system where essentially all of those special moves, all of those moves he has, if you spam them enough, they get powered up and become stronger.

So the player is encouraged to spam the move aggressively and hit the opponent with them as much as they can, and they get permanently buffed for the rest of the match.

So it's like Manon style with the medals.

Manon and Hakan, it looks like, it's

disgusting.

So if I blowdart at you and I blowdart you enough, then my blowdart gets better.

If I pelt you with rocks and it hits you enough, my rocks get better, et cetera, et cetera.

So like I get rewarded for being a little shit.

Also, he's small, really small.

He is by far the smallest character.

That being said, the little tuft of hair on his hat is part of his hitbox.

So he's just small enough to be annoying, but he's just tall enough to have everybody's jabs hit him.

Yes.

And, you know, not cause all sorts of goofy nonsense for the actual way the game works.

So we have learned our lessons, and fighting games in the past have not given a fuck about character height and just went, here's Pollo the chicken in Mace the Dark Age, here's Servebot in Marvel 2, or here's Yoda in Soul Calibur.

And when your character can jab and it just whiffs the short character,

it sucks.

You can't play.

It's not about like character-specific things anymore.

It's like, no, no, no, this just sucks.

The things that you're learning to do in this game are like suddenly don't apply to this one edge case because you just can't.

That's why they show a Braum, who's the tallest character in the game.

His jab is getting blocked by Timo standing.

Yes.

So they basically explained that like the whole game is balanced around teemo crouching it that height needs to be enough for all moves to generally work as they should you know um you can be small you can be tall and what that should do is make it so that you could get hit easier or harder from like jump-ins or things like that or so you know big bodies and small bodies so you need grounded combos to functionally work the way they're supposed to exactly exactly so yeah you can't have just

buttons whiffing entirely like that you know um but no he looks proper annoying and you can put all the shit together and combine them into a kit that just looks, yeah, like, and the interesting thing when you're watching it is that nothing is doing a ridiculous amount of damage, everything is doing little, little bits of damage because he's just kind of flicking you a little bit.

He's running over, he's jumping, he's popping off, and he's just like he has combos that are for real, but like, no, most of his kit is like, stay out, no, stay out, leave me alone, stay out, and then you tag into some other shit, and you annoy, and you annoy, and you annoy.

You know, it's time for you to start making some mistakes.

His super assist is like he flies across the screen, just bombing mushrooms all the way across.

I think the one that really summed it up is they showed off that his assist where he shoots the blow dart twice.

The blow darts are staggered so that you can use a character like Vi to dash through and

get something up.

Weird, awkward mix-ups.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If there's a multi-hitting, like beam assist or something like that, you have time to do shenanigans.

Can't wait to put that little fucker

into the next

also.

Like the cut of the trailer, like he has a parry and he gets like the red, like angry dog eyes and like, like, has a fucking Japanese.

I think that was editing.

I think that the

tone of this trailer is absurd.

But the parry animation being the absolute like Street Fighter Parry is real.

Absolutely.

It's so silly.

And again, if you're thinking of this is a Marlon Pie Designs character from the Yasuo

school, it's like he can and should effectively be able to keep and annoy and do incredible things with all of his kit once you're using it all together.

But yeah, the ability to turn actually invisible is like that's a real actual nightmarish problem.

Like, I don't think he's actually invisible, and he also has like a zeros

spin attack in the air with the cross, the spin move that hits on both sides of his body.

Yeah, so jump straight up or jump to the right and hit air and have them fucking flip a coin to see if they hit you.

You know, like it's ridiculous.

I'm curious to see if he's going to have lower health than, you know, than the average.

I'm curious to see, essentially, is it going to be a situation where you're getting zoned out, but you have a lot of chances to get in there?

It's really impressive how they took every single button from League and turned it into something meaningful in his kit.

The one that I was really unclear about is the one he has his, I think it's his cue, is blinding dart, where he blinds the opponent.

I'm like, how the fuck are they going to put that into a fighting game?

Oh, it's his level three.

It's his fucking level three.

The blinding dart is his level three, so you don't have to actually deal with blinding mechanics.

It's just an excuse for him to do tons of moves on you while the character's going, oh,

so in league, he turns invisible, but like in league, he turns invisible in the bushes or if he's not moving.

Okay, but like just like here.

Yeah.

But what does it mean?

What is but does blinding make it invisible to the person who gets hit specifically?

No, blinding fucks up their auto attacks and makes it so they can't hit their auto attacks.

Oh, okay.

Insane, which is crazy in that game.

Yeah, I mean,

you know,

the Valentine needles in Skullgirls attempted to fuck with your controls.

Yeah, and then he blow darts he mushrooms, right?

He has all those.

He doesn't do all those other tools, right?

Like the camping stuff.

No, no.

That's

his kit is

blinding dart, the dash, which is what his Blanca ball is.

That's the Bandle Dash.

Yeah.

The dart, the dash, the invisibility, and his alt is the mushroom.

Okay.

And his alt is the mushroom where you just plant them all over and make it an annoying shitstack.

The difference is that I think his mushrooms go invisible as well in

and his kit in

his kit in Rune Terra is that he places mushrooms on your cards, right?

So when you pull the card out, you're like, oh, fuck, there's a fucking mushroom on here.

But you can't make invisible fucking mushrooms in the fucking fighting game.

That's ridiculous.

So instead, they make it so that he can throw the fucking things at you.

Yeah, so my understanding understanding of

the way he was described in League in particular is that when you have a Teemo on your team or fighting against you, they're annoying both ways.

Well, they're not going to win.

They're going to lose, but they're going to be the most annoying thing in the process, right?

Like they're just fucking around, disappearing, going, doing other shit, not actually playing to win the match, but

it'll absolutely grind your gears.

Temo doesn't seem to exist to

kill a lot of enemies or win team fights.

Timo exists to slow down the guy in the top lane so much that they can never snowball at all.

Okay.

Okay.

Because I'm thinking of like Nako Ark in Melty Blood as like an absolute troll character who's full of goofy memes, but

the kit she has, while she's an annoying troll character, like the kit is not 100% squarely focused on annoying you, right?

Like it, it's, it's, she's, she's a character and has goofy effects and goofy stuff going on, but this is a full-on, like, no, I am just meant to do little bits of damage and you're going to chase me, and that's all there is to it.

This whole match is me, me playing keepaway, and they're showing that off in the trailer, you know?

Full, full, like, oh, I'm going to set up.

Oh, you pushed me out of my setup.

Well, I can teleport back to my setup.

Like, yeah, so would you say, like, do this so far, does every character like pretty much just run the exact same way in the base game?

I think that there are some winners and losers.

I think Yasuo and Timo are like exemplars of how they should be designing characters.

I heard a Laoi is really accurate, too.

And the fact that they're built...

Like, there's things that Yasuo can do with wind wall and projectile invulnerability that are not fair in League, that are like explicitly not fair, but it's like, well, it's part of his kit and it's like his character fantasy that apply to the wind wall in 2xko.

Well, because that's how Yaso is.

Okay.

League of Legends.

And Timo's like that.

But I look at Braum and Braum is like a fucking failure.

Like total shit failure.

And I think Vi, I don't know how you would jungle up Vi, because Vi's whole kit is about jungling.

And it's like, that's not really a fucking thing in a fighting game.

Well, she's boxing and getting in, I guess.

I feel like Wind Wall, which I feel is like, yeah, situationally or matchup useful, depends.

For a T-Mo match, it's going to be incredible.

Depends if the mushroom interacts with Windwall.

I'm assuming it's the opposite because it's a projectile, maybe, you know, I don't know.

But so far, it feels like, yeah, people have been basically pointing out that

they're doing a pretty good job translating them and keeping it.

Yeah, allowing Blitz.

Honestly, everybody but Braum.

Everybody but Braum.

Okay.

Like, because like, I played, I played a lot more Darius than anybody else on that cast because Darius is very easy to play in league.

And Darius's

feel of bullying someone

feels like what it plays like in the fighting game.

So someone I saw replied to the talk about the Garen skin stuff.

And they were kind of saying that like...

Even the fact that Darius pulls you in and keeps you in and like and threatens you by bullying you in that way is the opposite because Garen's moves would be about keeping you out and like shoving you out.

And creates a death roll around you.

Right.

So there's an opposite philosophy to the moves as well, you know?

So, yeah.

Garen sucks.

Full on, full-on troll bits there.

Also, I feel really strongly, I go back to my own smart post from two and a half months ago, that the 2xKO roster sucks, but if I can play Timo and Blitz day one, it's a good game.

There you go.

Fuck

And in that same breakdown gameplay video, too, as well, they also said, so you guys are out there saying you wanted some weirdo characters.

Well, here they come, right?

Like they're straight up in multiple places talking about the freak picks coming.

Cool to that.

The next character is going to be more normal.

It's going to be Zed.

I prefer anybody but Zed, but it's probably going to be Zed.

I'm curious.

Like, I have to admit that Zed would be a fun character in a tag game because Zed's got Morgan duplicates.

So, Zed would have the ability to have three fucking characters on the screen at once to cross you up.

I just want to know what Thresh in this art style is going to look like.

That feels like it could be awesome.

Yeah, I'm hoping for a like

Hades from the Hercules Disney movie kind of effects on some of that shit, you know?

Like, like cool stylish cartooning of the glow and the fog and the fire.

Yeah.

Anyway, speaking of looking great, fucking Crimson Viper, though.

Yeah.

Come on.

I like, just like with the Elena trailer, I'm looking and I'm like, oh, yo, she looks sick.

And then the classic costume popped up.

I'm like, fuck me.

Amazing job on the classic.

Like,

they're really making those classic costumes incredible with these last couple characters.

Elena Classic was fucking perfect, and this classic Viper looks so good.

And yeah, anyone who thought that she's going to get, you know,

sixified,

nah,

nah.

She has all of her silly nonsense.

Yeah.

And another thing.

Which is weird because she felt like she was a character from a different game in four.

Yeah.

The SNK design cues, but then a completely different set of mixes going on.

And, you know, what they're calling it, they're calling it Slime Fighter VI, right?

Because

you turn into green slime and you slide at the character as you drive rush towards them.

Her drive rush sucks, actually, so she's not about that.

She's doing

she's doing what I kind of was hoping to see was like, and I remember back in Street Fighter V, I wanted to see someone with a one-bar V-trigger, right?

I want to see people using the system in unique ways that are like unlike the rest of the cast.

and finally she gets to be that so she can do a bunch of extensions off of special moves using one bar of drive that's and not ex moves either that's really cool all that crazy jump cancel shit super jumping that she used to be able to do she can do but you got to spend a little bit of drive to get it and if you do it's really good but now you got to manage it you know um

And then if you use her level one super, you get to do it for free for a little while.

All the execution shit that was necessary, you know, you still going to need to be able to do that.

The cancels on everything is there.

Extra follow-ups after her seismos.

It's nice that they're going to, is Alex the third one?

Yes.

And then, no, Ingrid, Ingrid.

No, no, no, he was last.

Ingrid was next, actually.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Because I was about to say it'd be nice if they put out Alex right afterwards for a character that is low execution requirements.

The actual tutorial thing, uh the the the the video when they're describing her moveset it's like oh is is the execution a problem well practice up no one said it would be easy it's like yeah if you don't want to if you don't want to execute you're gonna

go fucking play 2xko thank you

did they say that um did they say that alex was next because uh i don't know in the artwork

He was in the fourth slot, but maybe I'm wrong.

Perhaps.

I don't know.

I'm going off of the order I remember seeing the four of them in.

But in any case,

yeah, she's looking pretty cool.

Also,

if you're paying attention to World Warrior, World Warrior mode, World Tour mode, rather,

her NPC was in the game all along.

She was a CERN scientist, like

whatever her name was in the because in her winpose, she says, oh, that name was a cover.

And you see her burning a passport.

And the passport burning is a photo of the NPC she was in.

Oh, that's cute.

In World Tour mode.

That's cute.

I like that.

Grace.

Grace, the CERN scientist.

Yeah.

So wait, was there one scientist that had like a really

overly detailed model?

No, she looked like NPC face because she wait, she can do that?

That's crazy.

The spy ability to lower your poly count.

Oh, my God.

That's incredible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I can't do that.

Oh, man.

Go undercover as a bronze Yakuza girl.

You know, dude, I can't wait to watch the Alex Raphael trailer at the Capcom Cup.

I can't wait.

Are you going to watch it?

Well, you know me.

I like to wait a little bit and catch that shit afterwards.

Oh, you like to catch the VODs?

Yeah, okay.

When they're not going to cost me $40,

dude, are you fucking kidding me?

Oh, man.

I'd pay $40 if I walked by the arena in person.

Okay.

Okay.

So

Street Fighter VI

World Finals at Capcom Cup, they've announced is going to be a pay-per-view event, and it's going to cost you $40 fucking dollars to watch some Street Fighter VI.

Now,

if you're wondering what the fuck is happening and why,

there's a bit of a precedent you can watch where they were testing this out because Street Fighter League, the team-based official Capcom thing, was happening and was a pay-per-view event in Japan for some time now, and they were able to successfully

make that work.

It turns out that the development team and then the marketing team are like two completely separate companies that basically,

whatever communications they have with each other,

there's just word that, like, no, no, the people that handle this part of it, the esports part of it, are fully esports brained.

And

the reason why they think this terrible, absolutely dumbass, stupid momentum killing idea is a good idea, the reason why they even are going for this at all, is because it turns out that Street Fighter VI being a very good fighting game and being a huge hit online, especially with the VTuber crowd and with a lot of

Japanese influencers, it has become a major, major online force on Japanese

like YouTube and shit.

And they have had their

views are like in the millions, right?

You can go over and watch stuff of like Tokedo and a bunch of other like

players are doing incredibly well over in Japan specifically on Street Fighter VI content.

And so whenever they did paid stuff like this, it works in Japan.

There's enough people casually interested and it's doing enough numbers in Japan for them to be like, yeah, fuck it.

We're going to make you, we're going to charge you and it'll be worth it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, it's the dumbest fucking move you could pull off.

And

obviously, the...

I love paying $40 to watch the ad for your video game that I already own.

So

you think about the Capcom Cup recently, and the two things that come to mind are one, you can stare at the timer is what you're allowed to share.

Two, the ad break is coming.

Guess what?

There's another ad break.

There's half an hours of ads between matches.

And three, the fucking JP theme.

That's all you're hearing for

$40 fucking dollars, right?

It's so stupid and it's tone deaf, but they don't care because in Japan, it works and they're making that gamble and they think it's fine.

All right.

So it's it's what they've done is they've brought Street Fighter so much closer to real sports where my interaction with a sport that I might be interested in is asking someone who did watch it the day after, hey, who won?

And they go, this guy.

And they go, cool.

And then I just never interact with it at all.

Oh, I mean, and for sure, get ready for those lending links like every fucking UFC event or whatever to pop up.

Oh, yeah, the lowest lowest quality version of the thing to ever see.

Yeah, filtering through Russian

commercials and shit.

Absolutely.

You know what I can say, though?

There's probably going to be a guy who's like, I am playing Street Fighter VI

and fake, you know that guy who faked

by pretending to play it.

And they're going to get taken down because they're going to be on top of that shit.

But are they going to get taken down in two hours?

So the thing is, and this is where I'm getting really annoyed in terms of just like, if you fucking gave it a, if you cooked, if you, if you took the opportunity to cook, right?

Because here's the thing.

The game is doing quite well.

It's doing, everyone's enjoying it.

They're having a good time with it.

But they are doing this thing where they're keeping up that million-dollar prize, right?

They're keeping it up.

And so over the time, over the years, you know, the game needs to, I guess, continue to generate a certain amount if you're going to be handing that out to people.

And

there is a, it's, it's a theory at this point, but

Uma was a player who won who came out of nowhere who basically is just a huge Vtuber fan and doesn't give a shit about the game or about being a champ or showing up at other events or anything.

So he showed up out of nowhere, won, took the prize money and never fucking played again, right?

And

so folks are kind of so there's an idea that like uh-oh, this is a huge bad thing for marketing.

This is a humongous like we if we can't because you just threw the million dollars away.

You didn't even get a guy that could monetize and exactly you didn't like he just showed up said thank you and fucking left you know that's great dude and he just and then apparently used the money to like create his own vtuber rig or something like that like like i don't know but it's but but just like there's there's all those stories so it's like um

what we see here is

a fucking humongous shitty stupid missed opportunity because a couple days later the footage is going to be online and you'll be able to to whatever to watch it uh like i think they said after you already know who four or five days later, or whatever the case is, right?

I'm so glad we're all the way back to, hey, don't tell me who won the hockey game or the basketball game last night.

My dad taped it overnight.

Don't fucking tell me.

I'm going to watch it when I got home.

Don't tell me who won.

Oh, fuck, you fucking piece of shit.

No, we're going to fight now.

So we're going to fucking fist fight.

Okay, but here's what's so what's stupid is the fact that in the past, you already had in Street Fighter V the Capcom Cup color and content packs that would come out where it was like, if you want to put money towards this event, then you can buy some unique colors that are going to be Capcom colored characters.

Here's a unique stage, Ring of Pride, Ring of Honor, etc.

And

everything.

And then you're basically, you're buying a content pack that's made to support the Capcom Cup.

You can just do that.

That's already existed.

This is taken from Dota.

It might be League, but I think it's Dota.

Yeah.

Where

the big national or whatever it was, you would essentially buy a Super Battle Pass that gave you tons of cool shit and buying it would just donate directly into the prize fund.

It's so stupid because people are crying out for colors, costumes, and content in Street Fighter VI now.

That would be an amazing thing to offer them is something to go hand in hand with supporting Capcom Cup.

And you give people what they want, right?

Further fucking more.

Dude, Capcom Cup is happening.

Okay, so you're not streaming it on whatever thing platforms?

Cool.

Hey, where is it streaming?

Oh, it's in the Battle Hub, Pat.

Log on, get your character into the Battle Hub.

No, it's not.

But I'm saying, could you imagine if they were like, get to the Battle Hub if you want to watch the thing?

If you don't own the game, you can just watch the thing.

It's right there.

You could just make people log in and have a huge spike in people playing the game if they have it.

A lot of people are playing Street Fighter.

Maybe I should play Street Fighter.

Wouldn't that be an incredible idea?

Doesn't Fortnite do that with the concerts?

Of course they do.

If you could just log in and watch the fucking thing with other people in an environment

where everyone has their avatar and you can cheer and shout and put on costumes and meme it up and have a big online thing.

I wouldn't think that Timo would be like this bright, shining moment of joy in this week's podcast.

Like letting people people watch in the game is right there.

You already have the infrastructure for it and you want a reason to convince people to load in to the battle hub.

It's so stupid that they don't do this and instead they're like, nah, we're going to fucking charge you for the matches.

I'm not an economist and I'm not a businessman or whatever, but it feels to me

after watching esports exist for 30 years

that no one in the corporate side of esports has literally known how to make even a single dollar.

It's fucking batshit, dude.

And like the joke of esports, sports, sports, sports, sports, you know, showing up and taking over.

And, you know, oh, fighting games is not esports.

Oh, fighting game is esports.

Oh, no, we can't avoid it.

It's like, yeah, here it is.

We're making the exact same stupid mistakes and learning nothing from the process, you know.

But hey, it works in Japan, so it's fine to destroy it everywhere else worldwide.

You know,

we'll laugh at them in a couple of weeks

when they do the dumb and we get a statement that's like, we don't know what happened.

You could have just sold colors and had a battle hub event, man.

You could have made this such a big, specific hype thing.

And I can't believe nobody thought of that.

Anyways, well.

Let's see if the person who wins Capcom Cup will be able to do so while holding a baby.

So that lady who won her Mortal Kombat tournament while holding her five-day-old newborn,

first of all, incredible.

I mean, wow, what an accomplishment.

That's a crazy thing.

There's, yeah, no, there's, right, for the local accomplishment, that's crazy shit.

And everyone sent it my way.

And I was like, damn, that's hardcore.

Wow, that's not crazy.

What a talent.

That's crazy.

Your baby didn't leave the bounds of this house for like 60 days

except to get shots.

Well, I just, just,

you know, the, the,

hey, maybe the tournament

immune system buff

is going to work in

their favor, hopefully.

It was many, many, many months before my boy went to a grocery store.

And grocery stores have regular human beings in them.

Fighting game tournaments

and Mortal Kombat tournaments at that

have

fighting game players and Mortal Kombat players at them.

Gross.

So it's just, I saw that story and I was like, that's fucking nuts.

That's crazy.

Wait, how old?

And

anyway, if it was like five months or so, that'd be one thing.

But unfortunately, five days old means not old enough to have gotten their shots.

So the immunity is.

So, you know,

that's a little dicey.

But, you know, I mean, you know, do your thing.

Do your thing.

Crazy story.

Very impressive.

But

also, C-section at that, too.

Like, that's.

Oh, wow.

She's tough as shit.

Super tough.

That's crazy.

That's really crazy.

That's super crazy.

Incredible.

She could also be just

resting up.

What a beast.

Just, yeah, a little early.

A little early for that.

But, you know.

I take days off if I break one of my toes.

I dropped the keyboard on my toe once.

I think I broke it.

I'm not sure.

Anyway, only other thing was

the

little side, little project out there that's

trying to get some funding, wasn't able to do so, so now showing it off to the public in the hopes that they can get some momentum behind them.

There's a little

animator known as Gendi Tartakovsky

is

working on his next project.

That's that cool thing with the gigantic knight.

The black knight.

Yeah.

And I guess, you know, now that the ground swell from fixed is hitting fever pitch, there's a big black knight in a big CG, sort of cool, well-animated Gendy ass proportion.

Does it have?

Zero.

Well, then no money.

No money for you.

Yeah.

So,

you know,

it's a knight piloting a mecha knight fighting off ninjas, and it looks pretty cool.

So

he's like, hey, I'm trying to get this green lit, and it's not working, so I'm trying a new strategy.

Basically,

I'm going to leak the

little pilot

idea that they put out, and they're hoping for this test to get enough ground swell.

I still haven't seen it,

but it it goes to it goes to say that

remember that no one in any business knows what they're doing Sony

like financed and then provided all the materials and development for K-pop demon hunters looked at it and said man this thing sucks just sell it to Netflix for for whatever yeah

like nobody knows how to make any fucking money at all anywhere

Also, I think the,

unfortunately, his last mecha thing, which was Symbionic Titan, I think was also one of the Gandhi projects that didn't really blow up as hard as the others did.

So

there's also some anti-mecha bias out there.

You got to fight.

We learned about a bunch of that with

fucking Pacific Rim and,

you know, Totoro-san.

So

everyone loved it.

Everyone loved Symbiotic Titan, but uh, it was never

popping off, you know.

Anyways,

uh,

let's take some letters.

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

That's castle superbeastmail at gmail.com.

Oh, also, I forgot to talk about Hades too.

Uh, it's incredible.

A 10 out of 10 game, amazing.

I can't stop playing it, but I can only play it at night because that is a baby annihilating game.

That will fuck up that kid's dopamine

when you get the Hades fucking buffs.

There is an by the way, I don't know if you saw it.

There's an insane thread on the subreddit, which is like, hey, how about, do you think that Warframe would be a good game for Woolly to play while he's chilling with the baby?

And every single post in there, including mine, is, have you lost your fucking mind?

Jesus Christ.

Have you lost your fucking mind?

Might as well just

clockwork orange vampire survivors into her eyes.

Also,

I didn't see that discussion, but that's sitting well behind fucking Death Stranding 2 and Lies of P and Oh, it's sitting behind many, many things.

Fucking

Deltarune came out.

Like, nah, man.

Oh, I also have a minor announcement that

we didn't cover it in the news.

But Walton the Ghoul Goggins will be appearing in Fallout 76

in the next expansion.

That game's still running?

Sure is.

Walton Goggins is going to be there as the ghoul to give you quests.

Wow.

Ask me how I know.

No, don't.

Yeah.

That'll surely.

Oh my God.

Paige is getting in there, isn't she?

She's no fault.

76 is only $13 right now.

She's booting up an account as we speak, isn't she?

Maybe not right now, but we'll see what happens when I go home.

All right.

We got one coming in over here.

Listen.

Yeah, what, Paige?

Hey, Willie, you know how I'm good at like annoying people?

You know how that's like a thing?

I discovered a way to annoy people that is absolutely unbelievable that everyone can use.

And I'm giving it all to you.

I was being like an idiot in Discord like five, six years ago.

And my friend, my friend Joy was like, What the fuck is wrong with you?

And I was like, Hey, man, hey, hold on, hold on, hold on, listen.

And I just didn't say anything,

and when he started to get upset again, I was like, No, no, no, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, listen, listen, listen.

Just fucking nothing, just nothing.

I don't know if physical copies of Fallout 76 exist, but like, I feel like you could just get that and just put the cowboy hat on it and just

hand that over and just paige.

Just do what you will.

You know, here you go.

Just cut out the middle, man.

Oh, wait, hold on.

Hold on, hold on.

I got it.

The first interaction we've had, or whatever the fuck.

Here we go.

Oh, look at that.

Look what just happened.

Oh, no.

She's doing it to you.

Oh, my God.

Oh, that's a problem.

Oh, your lights.

Oh, no.

All right.

We got one over here.

Dear Lord Father Woolly Woolley and Grand Pat Nark.

So,

what is the type of most minor visual element that gets you excited regardless of context?

For example, birds for scale, bread eating animation, etc.

Personally, I love bullets and projectiles when they're visibly repelled or turned away by armor

or playing.

Thanks.

I've hit this one before,

but I have a real simple neuron that gets activated anytime I see parallax scrolling and shaky cam

the anime style

when I see that in 3D or 2D that the kind of mimics and I'm specifically thinking of Fullmetal Alchemist rewrite intro

the beginning where they're scrolling and and Hohenheim is in the distance and you're seeing the grass in the foreground going really fast and it's kind of

it's this thing you know I love that effect

why am I Michael Bay you know Michael Bay's entire career is built off of not understanding why he enjoys the scenes from Westside Story.

What?

So, Westside Story is Michael Bay's favorite movie.

And when he talks about Westside Story, he talks about his favorite scene

is,

I forget what the song is, but they're doing a song and number, but they have a lot of people running towards the camera and people running around behind them because there's a lot of parallax.

And so when Michael Bay wants to make a scene exciting, he puts just 10 levels of fucking parallax in his side.

And

that's how he came up with the low angle speed.

Oh my God.

Because it increases the parallax behind the character times a thousand percent.

Okay, okay, yes.

No, not at random.

I'm specifically in moments where it gives, creates a sense of speed on the,

you know, a surrounding shot or a traveling shot.

It looks fucking sick.

Yeah.

And then also when you when you deliberately make things look like it's shaky cam, you know, that's a nice little effect too.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head as a visual effect that just makes me go, oh, I genuinely can't.

Like for me, I maybe, maybe, maybe people who watch my stuff would actually know better than me.

But like, I feel like it's like, I all know it when I see it kind of thing.

Another one that I'm thinking of is like brand new soundscapes I've never heard before

when sound design is like

gets creative and does new shit.

So I've had enough of new soundscapes.

Sure, I know.

But

when Attack of the Clones came out and they dropped those space bombs in episode two and they went

and I was like, I don't know what that is, but that sound is sick.

I love that.

I love when sound engineers go all out creating a brand new thing.

Fucking cool.

Okay, well, I don't,

I'm stealing one from the chat because it's something that I love.

But I love when there's an action shot and then the person turns into like a really shitty dummy.

Like a really bad dummy.

Yes, sure.

And they fall down and it looks like garbage.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

And let's take another quick one here.

Shout outs to a Redditor.

Hey there, dreaded and red-headed.

Oh, that's good.

That's one of the best in a while, actually.

Just wanted to give a shout-out to the Redditor Marlo Curry on the subreddit, Sorcerer Supreme, for the consistent and tireless work of providing in-depth context to pretty much any joke or reference that gets made.

Anything that comes across gets short but sweet descriptions, links to the source, and it's amazing that they've been able to compile it.

Extremely polite when asking about additional context they don't have yet.

For a community with such a long and detailed history, Marlo's doing a great job, and they should be recognized for it.

Yeah, I did see posts of like, oh, here's context for this in-joke, by the way.

And it kind of like, it's weird, but it's been so long that it's like, oh, yeah, this is necessary because a lot of people are wandering in here, not knowing what the fuck the old channel was, much less us.

It's been a really long time.

And it's been a really long time.

And I did see that, like, that

out-of-the-loop post where someone was like, What the fuck is up with this two best friends play subreddit?

Actually, though, like, why are they so ubiquitous when searching for things online?

It's like Latin.

It's a dead place that's useful for describing other things.

Ooh.

Ooh, I like that.

I've never heard that descriptor before.

Me either.

I just said it just now.

That just

jumped into my brain unbidden.

That's great.

That's fucking cool.

Sick.

Yeah.

It just keeps showing up whether you like to or not, which means people are like, I don't know what this place is about, but I'm here for whatever game news they're talking about.

Yeah.

So like if somebody draws a fucking picture of you in a cool pose, but you have like one really beefy, muscular white leg, you're going to go, what the hell is that?

Yes.

And the answer is going to be, we used to lie.

That's the content.

Sure.

We just used to lie about things like that.

It was funny.

We thought it was funny.

Yeah.

Well, so once upon a time,

a reference point was the Zaibatsupedia, but that's been a minute now, right?

Like there was that as a point for explaining a lot of the jokes that folks weren't getting.

But I think even that's outlived its reference.

So now it's kind of just lost to the winds.

So yeah, shout outs to anybody who takes the time, like Marlow does, to give some context for some of that shit.

Because it's indecipherable as a language to others at a certain point when you're making a joke 15 layers deep talking about Andre.

You know what, dude?

You know what?

I don't really miss him.

Yeah, there you go.

Exactly.

Exactly.

All right.

Before we go, I have one piece of housekeeping to do.

I've put up a poll on my Blue Sky.

I believe there's a subreddit thread about it, but I'll double check on that.

I would advise you to go vote in it over the next couple of days.

It will determine what color I'm going to be dying my hair for the next month.

We're not finished yet.

It's not over yet.

I'm going to look like a stupid asshole until like Christmas.

Okay.

I have a lot.

Okay.

Okay.

I've done much sowing.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Much reaping to go.

You have enjoyed the mutton chops in an unexpected boost.

Yeah, it's not going to go the same with

most of it.

Beard and top, all of it?

The whole thing.

The whole thing.

No combo colors.

Okay.

But yeah, well, because I'm bald.

If I was not bald,

we would just go the top, right?

But I am.

You have enough hair to just go with just the hair.

Well, here's what I'm going to say.

Whatever you go with, I can recommend a brand that means you don't have to keep topping it up every couple days.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

We're going to go to a fucking professional.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Great.

We're going to go to a professional that gets to live for 30 days.

Okay.

And when the 30 days is up, it's gone.

Because if you go to the fucking pharmacy and get some manic panic, like, fuck that.

No, no.

Okay.

So this is something, this is something interesting because usually what happens is, is that, like, when I, you know, like, I'm a white person.

But to people listening to audio one, I'm a white person.

Whoa.

It's true.

And Wooly's a black person.

Wow.

And usually, usually usually the thing is like, you know, I wouldn't know anything about black hair, which I pretty much don't, right?

Red hair, however, is fucking shit to dye.

It does not dye like other white people's hair.

It's god-awful.

So I'm going to have to bleach first.

Yes.

You're going to bleach.

And here's the thing.

Depending on the color, you might need to bleach more yellow-tinted or more blue-tinted.

There's different tints of bleach to it.

So we're not, there's no, there's no Walmart bag logo getting stomped into my bald on this.

Yes, okay.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, I'm like this, I'm going to a fucking professional

who knows what they're doing.

Also, so I don't hurt myself.

Bleach is, yes, you can, with hydrogen peroxide and incorrect mixes, you can make yourself some accidental muscle gas and mark yourself off.

Then the top of the head.

True.

How do you face this is sensitive?

After a month expires, how are you backing out of this?

Are you going to be like, re-dye me red?

Is that going to be the move?

What's the backdown?

So

I'm going to assume that means you didn't read the list of goals that I put out because there's the follow-up goal after

in which I'm going to go full chrome with pencil mustache.

Okay, okay.

Full

Vincent Price.

The reset.

Okay, okay.

The reset comes next.

Oh, that's a shame because chops is fucking kicking, but like...

Woolly.

After my pencil mustache era, the chops will just come back.

Back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There you go.

Unexpected fucking change.

Just like that.

This is one of those things.

This is one of those things that it's like, for some people, this would be like a year-long nightmare.

But for me,

wait, why is Paige going, wait, what?

Why is my wife, who thought I'm going totally bald?

Yes, I am going totally bald, Paige.

Hey, a complete chrome dome.

Hey, did you not read it either?

Oh my God.

Did my partner in crime not actually read the fucking thing?

That thing's been up for 35 days.

35 days.

Let me scroll down.

Yeah.

After clown chopped.

Oh, no.

Vincent Price egghead bald plus mustache.

Listen.

Literally, Vincent Price's egghead from 1960s Batman.

The darkness cannot distract from.

How did you not, did you not?

We made that list together.

That's crazy.

I was going to say that.

This is why Resident Evil 2 Blind was tough, you see.

Listening, it's tough.

I get it because once upon a time, I cosplay.

Crashing out.

Oh, no.

Oh, my life is stupid.

My life is stupid.

Everything in my life is stupid.

Oh.

She forgot.

Bro.

Once upon a time, I decided decided to cosplay Xavier Stone from Guitar Hero 1, and

I dyed my dreads green and yellow.

And the rest is history.

Yeah, and then you kept it for quite a while.

And the rest is history, you know?

So, I get it.

All right.

Yeah, I know.

This is going to be a speed bump in the history tale of my life, sir.

But what if I don't think I'm going to be fully jokerized this time next year?

But what if you like the color?

Okay, what if everybody compliments you on it?

Hey, hey, Pat, hey, Pat.

Hey, Pat, hey, Pat.

Remember when you got that prank tattoo that says insert here over your asshole?

What if you really liked it so much?

You just

keep it.

Listen, you shut up.

Listen, guys.

Hey, everybody.

We have successfully complimented the mutton chops into existing.

Okay?

Okay.

Oh, you missed one of the lights, Paige.

All right.

Just keep that in mind.

No, that's not what happened.

Those chops look fucking sick, dude.

They look so good.

First of all, thank you.

Thank you a lot.

Thank you, Paige.

You're still missing this light over here.

Thank you a lot.

That's very kind of you.

Very appreciate it.

Your compliment means nothing.

Their compliment means nothing.

The only compliment that mattered about these chops is from the lady who lives in my house.

That was the compliment that makes the chops stay.

Specifically, the phrase, you're keeping the chops.

Point command.

And I was like, okay.

I mean,

things can be arranged.

All right.

All right.

That'll do.

Have a good day, everybody.