Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 + AA Games

This is a head gun podcast.

Oh man, I'm really excited to start this week's episode.

I really enjoyed the game we're going to talk about.

I am so into Claire Obscure.

I love this game.

I'm very, very excited to dig in in depth.

Do you know where Matt is?

Like why he's late?

I don't.

He's usually, you know, he's on here.

He should be here.

Yeah.

Oh, Sakra Blue.

Sorry, I'm late, everybody.

Notice anything different about Moi?

Yeah, actually, your wardrobe looks a little different than usual.

Are you changing up your look?

Just a simple striped shirt.

Yeah, I noticed you got the striped shirt with a little red handkerchief in the pocket.

Yeah, a little red handkerchief.

I might tie it around my neck later.

You know, I'm also wearing a matching, I think, beret.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, did you mean beret, or is that a you have a bret and a beret?

No, I mean, yeah, uh, a beret.

Yeah, I got a sound.

Okay, got it.

Yeah, no, it's a, uh, haven't really said a lot of the words.

The words.

I'm French now.

I was just gonna ask, are you French now?

Is that what's going on?

French now?

Yeah, I'm French now.

I've decided that I'm gonna be French.

Normally, I would expect

that to come sort of packaged with an accent.

It seems you're a very aggressive American-sounding French person.

You know, I just kind of feel like we're not supposed to do accents anymore.

Oh.

So I'm not going to do that one.

Oh, okay.

Okay, sure.

Sure.

I don't know that anybody, I mean, it's not racist to do a French accent.

I just can't be sure.

Okay.

You didn't hear how I was doing it.

Whoa, no, I do not, I don't want to hear.

If there's any question, I don't want it on the show.

Sorry, I just noticed

this Yeti

mug you brought in here.

Is there a layer of Gouyere over the top of it?

Yeah.

You have fucking French onion soup in this this summer?

I got some hot soup.

I just call it onion soup.

Oh, right.

Of course, naturally.

It's normal to eat.

So it is.

There is some French onion soup in there.

The Yeti keeps it hot.

Yeah.

The Yeti.

I also noticed that you brought in an order of McDonald's, but you've crossed out the word French on the fries?

Yeah, that one's not that crazy because a lot of people do just call them fries.

I guess that's true.

A lot of people just call them fries.

Yeah.

That's true.

And omit the French.

Matt, I got to ask, what the fuck is going on?

What do you think?

I just thought he would say, I just kind of, you know, the game.

Because the game is from a French developer and is very French in terms of tone and aesthetic.

And you love the game, so.

And I love the game, so I just kind of was like, I kind of wanted to

see what that's like.

And I decided to try it on for size.

And it's pretty good.

I feel like this is a great way to dress.

I love cigarettes now.

Oh.

Yeah, I was just noticing there's kind of like a nicotine cloud that followed you into the studio.

And what I thought was a ranch cough.

What I thought was a water bottle is just a wine bottle that you brought in.

Just a wine bottle, yeah.

I got it from Nick's car.

What?

What?

Stop digging around in my car.

I also, I learned a new trick.

Check this out.

Yeah.

Okay, it looks like you're kind of caught in a glass box here.

Wait, you're doing the French art of mime.

Oh, wait, he's choking.

He's choking to death.

I can't breathe.

There's no air in the box.

Okay, well, this is a solvable problem.

Here, let me just open this door for you.

Nick, you know how to open the glass box, the invisible box.

Are you French too?

You know what they say?

If you can't beat them, join them.

Ooe.

This is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen.

I don't want it on the show.

I don't want this to be the way we start the show.

We turn Pictos into Lumina and are French as we discuss surprise hit JRPG, Claire Obscure, Expedition 33, and our favorite AA games this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heatheran Campbell, along with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Abadaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are talking about Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

Is that how you say it?

Well, yes.

That is the title of the...

We, we.

Oh, Trayby in.

Poly Vous Francais.

France is back.

I'm all in on.

After this game, I'm all in on the French.

Yeah, the French.

God bless them.

The French?

We give them them a raw deal over the centuries.

They're all right.

Stand down and stand by.

We salute you.

Sorry, we made so much fun about all the stupid shit you guys do

and how you are.

I love France.

I love it.

Have you ever been?

It seems great.

And I know, and I, look, I know it has a reputation from Americans that they seem to be rude, but have we considered that they hate us?

They hate us and everything we do sucks shit.

And we're bad.

We're going to be talking about Claire Obscure Expedition 33 and AA games at large in the meat of today's episode.

The fucking the Empire people being like, man, people at Naboo suck.

They are so rude.

We go marching in in our fucking stormtrooper outfits.

Yeah, we're going around.

We're going over there all loud.

Hey, I want to acknowledge someone else in the studio.

Of course, our producer Rochelle Chen Ranch, who just celebrated a birthday.

Happy birthday, everybody.

Happy Ranch.

HBDR.

Happy birthday, Ranch.

Thank you.

HBDR.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

And speaking of things to say.

You know, the Switch 2 is coming out next month as part of the Switch 2's release.

Release of this episode as the rest of the it will be one month away one month away as part of the whole switch 2 pre-release hullabaloo the three of us the triforce of friendship had a friendly bet which was when will the switch 2 release and whoever comes closest gets to pick a game that we are going to cover on the podcast heather won and as such picked the game mother 3 and we can announce we're going to be doing a we play you play to pay that off on mother 3 on June 2nd.

That's right.

So basically the first, pretty much a month away, the first Monday in June,

in advance of the Switch 2 release.

We're going to pay off the Switch 2 release date bet and do a full deep dive into Mother 3.

Now, the way that you, the audience, can play this is via fan translation.

It is widely available online.

There are, of course,

sort of gray market carts that have been flashed with Mother 3.

If you want to have a tangible cart and play it on a Game Boy Advance,

but yeah, it was never officially released in the West, but was very lovingly translated.

And that's the cartridge copies that the boys have and myself as well.

And if anyone from Nintendo is listening,

I'm lying.

None of that happens.

This is parody variation.

We're just making it up.

We're just making it up fun.

If you listen to the show, you know that we're just a bunch of dumb idiots who've never actually played any video game.

That's true.

And also,

just give us a Switch 2.

Wouldn't mind having a Switch 2 for free.

Nintendo, if you're listening, we won't play Mother 3 if you give us a Switch 2.

These are our demands.

Listen here and listen good.

If you ever want to see Toad again, what?

Oh, so we have Toad and we won't release Toad.

Wow, you've crossed a line.

I guess we're just all in now.

I guess we're all in.

We have Toad.

It's like prisoners who are just like, oh, Jesus Christ.

Well, okay.

Also, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, we're just having fun.

We're just having a little fun.

I had a little bit too much Coke Zero before we started.

I'll tell you.

Toad's in a, standing in a puddle in a basement.

It's no big deal.

It's just no big deal.

It's just fine.

Just don't even think about it that much.

Don't think about what kind of liquid that puddle is.

Hey, look, we're having fun here.

Mass caffeinated.

We're ready to go.

Jacked up.

We're ready to go here on the podcast.

And the question we like to ask

on the first part of every episode is about video games we're playing now.

The question is, what are you playing?

I asked me the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm going to ask my friends what they're playing, and I think I know the answer.

As Resident Evil Merchant, you usually don't come in as confident that you know what we're going to be covering in this segment.

But

you seem pretty cocky here.

There was a leak.

Oh, there was a leak?

Yeah, there's a leak.

You guys gotta, you get your iCloud and your Gmails on lockdown because

one of the four of you, I guessed a password.

Oh, so it wasn't a leak.

It was that you

guessed the password.

You breached security.

Yeah, I breached with a little

human hacking.

A little social engineering.

Yeah, I figured it out.

Wow.

I got a question for you.

Why'd you do that?

Yeah, why did you do do that?

That's not nice.

We would have just given you the information you were looking for.

Yeah, but I was worried about you.

Oh.

That doesn't really excuse the behavior, but I guess that's understandable.

I needed to check.

I needed to make, I hadn't seen you in for such a long time.

See you every week?

Yeah, it's every single week.

You know how long that is?

Seven days.

Unless you have a different sense of time.

I don't know.

Imagine if you hadn't heard from Nick for six days.

Wow, music to my ears.

Hey, wait a minute.

A thrill to always be hearing from my friends.

It's a blessing.

And imagine if you texted him for six days and he didn't reply.

I'd be pretty alarmed.

Yeah.

So I hacked an email.

Okay, so it's now, it's my email that you hacked in.

Yeah, it was.

Okay, so specifically.

I texted him all week and he didn't text back.

I'm not getting these texts.

I don't know what number you have, but I'm not getting them.

You got the number you gave me.

Oh, right.

I gave you a fake number.

Right.

So that's partly on me.

I gave you the number of a Sabaro franchise.

I've never seen an email so clean.

There was only one email and I was watching it.

It was read and then deleted.

Yeah,

I keep it at inbox zero.

I'm archiving everything.

It's pretty clean in there.

Yeah.

Let's see.

What do I have in my inbox right now?

Let me pull up my inbox real quick.

I have one, two, three, four, five emails in my inbox.

Yeah, so

I'm pretty on top of things.

So

you're maybe like, this was standard operating procedure for me.

You maybe caught me on a normal day.

I have three.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

But

I keep it lean as well, unread if I need to get to it, and I'm not going to get to it right now.

Yeah.

Mine's maxed out.

Wow.

So you cannot receive any more emails.

They bounce.

They bounce.

Return to sender.

Yeah.

Google has a case file.

Like, I don't have time to interrogate that.

Well, I wish you hadn't violated my privacy by hacking into my email.

Well, I'm glad you're in.

I'm glad it gave you peace of mind.

Please just don't do that.

But also, I'm telling you my past.

You're doing Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

That's right.

We are discussing that, Resident Evil merch.

And that's what you've been playing.

That's right.

Hey, and I guess this can just kind of turn into a group discussion here because we've all been playing the game of the moment, the game that is in the Zeitgeist Clare Obscure Expedition 33, which was developed and published by French company Sandfall Interactive, a studio founded by Guillaume Broche, associate producer and narrative lead, formerly at Ubisoft.

Now went on to establish this

independent company.

And

what they've crafted is quite a fucking video game.

Man, I am loving this thing.

It's, it's, it's, it's,

I feel like I have to address something.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's been some chatter.

Last week, we talked about blueprints.

We did have blue.

We did we play you play of blueprints last week.

Uh, contra the general consensus from the gaming press, we were pretty lukewarm on it.

And everybody reacted to that normally.

But so then

the thing I want to address is, if I saw a few people,

and by a few people, I mean not truly not that many.

Okay.

Probably,

generously, a handful of people.

All right.

So one choice is to not publicly acknowledge them, but go on.

One choice.

A handful of folks.

Wait, wait, wait.

You saw.

Oh, okay.

I think I understand what you're saying.

A handful of folks started spreading this rumor.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Then they kept saying stuff like, kind of bummed out that Matt bounced off of Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

It's really good.

I think he'd really like it.

Oh, man.

Sucks that Matt tried it out and didn't decide to keep playing it.

I didn't fucking say that.

I didn't say.

Where did that come from?

Did you mention it last week's video?

I mentioned that I had played it the day it came out, but they had decided to go forth and play Kingdom Hearts 3.

Yeah.

Guys,

do you even listen to the fucking show?

The answer is no.

I can speak on behalf of podcast listeners who comment on episodes.

No, we do not listen to podcasts.

And then we just post.

I'm not an antagonist towards our listeners.

I am.

I don't like you.

Well, no, and then that's parody, of course, because we're just,

I wish they didn't say stuff like that.

But look, this is the other thing.

Then they tried to, and I know that this was in good fun.

I know that this was in good fun.

Yeah.

For some reason, Discord was showing that I was playing it on my Xbox.

My Xbox was like linked to my Discord, which then I promptly removed.

Yeah.

No, you got to turn all that shit off.

I turned that off.

I didn't know.

Wait.

Now I can play games in privacy.

On Discord, they can tell what you're playing.

There's a lot of default settings, default privacy settings, you just got to police on basically every app because a lot of them, you know, cross-pollinate and talk to each other.

And if you don't, you aren't turning these things off, then yes, a lot of your, what you're playing, what your activity is will be made up.

So they saw that I was playing it and they were like, look, we convinced Matt to get back in there.

I was like, no, you didn't.

No, you didn't.

I know that that wasn't good fun, but no, you did not.

I've been playing it since it came out.

I just, you know, needed something more in-depth to talk about.

I spent more time last week with Kingdom Hearts 3.

And yeah, maybe this wasn't worth bringing up at all, but I will say, none of you, none of you ever convinced me to do anything, and you never will.

I really like our listeners, and I'm really grateful that they are involved enough in the podcast to talk about the the show at all.

It is very nice.

It's a good community otherwise.

I love television shows.

I'm not on a Discord for television shows.

No.

Like, I would not talk to other people about television shows, but I love them very much.

So I'm grateful for the community.

I mix it up a little bit in the Avatar Way of Water Discord, but we don't need to get into that.

Did you really, really?

Yes.

You?

That's a good community.

Here's my impression of Nick in the Discord.

In that Discord.

I really like the movie.

Yeah.

I also,

I do watch TV, and I'm not in any Discords for TV shows, but I certainly wouldn't join one and tell them what I don't like about the TV show.

That's none of my business.

That's none of their business.

I will say, Nick, you'll be proud to know that, again, on a certain game that shall not be named until the strike is over,

they did release Jake Sully and

the lady.

Natiri.

Natiri skins.

And if I were to be playing that game that shall not be named, I would have been non-stop mating Jake Sully the entire season.

The whole thing, my Jake, the whole thing with those is

I like,

I get why they have to scale everything.

But the whole thing of being a Navi is being big.

Like being big is shit.

And you can't be fucking big and be in that game you're not going to talk about because everyone's got to have the same hitboxes.

So it's like I'm walking around and whether I'm the towering Neytiri from Avatar, or whether I'm the diminutive Levi from Attack on Titan, I'm the same fucking height.

It doesn't make any fucking sense.

Well, but it does weirdly work if you look at them on their own.

Like, he looks really tall, and I've had lengthy discussions with my fellow squad mates about how they achieved him looking tall when he's the same size as everybody else.

else because it's there's something they've done that make him look tall.

My mom and my brother were just in Disney World, both avatar skeptics.

Yeah.

Not really that interested in the movies.

They went to the Animal Kingdom where they have the

Pandora area, and it knocked their fucking socks off.

I've never been, but I've heard it's awesome.

Yeah, they were like, I gotta go.

Let's go.

Yeah, let's go.

Yeah, let's go.

That's the three.

That's who would go, the three of us, Henry Anchor.

Well, that's what I spent my Nintendo points on: was sweepstakes to get four-flight or four tickets in Orlando.

Yeah.

All right.

You know what?

Nintendo, if you're listening, I'll accept that in exchange for not playing Mother 3.

Wow.

That's right.

These are our demands.

These are our demands.

ED is more common than you think and simpler to treat than ever.

Through HIMS, you can connect online with a licensed provider to access personalized treatment options discreetly on your terms.

Through HIMS, you can access personalized prescription treatment options for ED like hard mints and SexRX Plus climax control if prescribed.

HIMS offers access to ED treatment options ranging from hard mints to trusted generics that cost 95% less than the brand names if prescribed.

Now that's quite a savings.

You shouldn't have to go out of your way to feel like yourself.

HIMS brings expert care straight to you with 100% online access to personalized treatments that put your goals first.

This isn't a one-size-fits-all care that forgets you in the waiting room.

It's your health and goals put first with real medical providers making sure you get what you need to get results.

Think of HIMS as your digital front door that gets you back to your old self with simple 100% online access to trusted treatments for ED and more, all in one place.

To get simple access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss, and more, visit him.com slash get played.

That's him.com slash get played for your free online visit.

HIMS.com slash get played.

Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan.

Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality.

Prescription required.

See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information.

Do you struggle with procrastisaving?

You know, when you put off doing something that could save you a ton?

I used to be a huge procrastisaver until I heard about Mint Mobile's best deal of the year that's ending soon, 50% off unlimited premium wireless for new customers.

Let me tell you how I procrastinate.

I would reuse toilet paper.

Stop overspending with big wireless and cut your wireless bill to $15 a month when you switch.

All Mint mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation.

largest 5G network.

You can use your current phone and phone number on any Mint Mobile plan and bring along all your existing contacts.

Don't miss out on three months of unlimited premium wireless from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month.

But hurry because this deal ends September 22nd.

Look, cell phones are cell phones.

What are we talking about?

Your wireless carrier isn't, it's all the same, man.

Am I allowed to say during an ad?

Well, I just did.

And I told you I would reuse toilet paper to save money.

Think about how much you could be saving with Mint Mobile.

Quit stalling and start saving when you make the switch.

Shop plans at mintmobile.com/slash get played.

That's

slash get played.

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.

Limited time, new customer offer for first three months only.

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mint Mobile for details.

Guys, I did not start Claire Obscure until we assigned it for the show.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, we should say by assigned away, I think we're just kind of like, hey, this is a thing we could talk about.

And like Matt and I were playing it anyway.

So you're like, yeah, I'll play it too.

Yeah, that's right.

That's a good thing to point out.

I was already playing it.

Yeah.

But that's also not how, that's not how this podcast works.

Physically, no.

You guys say, why don't we cover this?

And then I grumblingly

pull it up and start playing.

Look, as the busiest one, is it hard to slot a game in your life?

As an aside, I texted you guys this week.

I had a nightmare about Blueprints.

blueprints a nightmare i i had a dream that i was starting a run

uh

getting the the star update for the day and then ending the run and i was just doing it over and over and over again until i had like 150 stars yeah so that i could just build the observatory and get tons of keys and and gems um

i woke up furious

i was like how dare this game be in my dream space which is the only chance i would have to, say, fly or jump far or be in a field.

Like,

kind of a bummer to see a two-dimensional screen in your dreams.

I asked my wife a question this morning because I was having a dream and I was still just waking up.

And she was like, what are you talking about?

And I was asking her a question about something that happened in my dream.

And the question was, I'll reveal it here.

It was extremely cute.

What was on Bonnie, my cat?

What was on Bonnie's t-shirt?

That's cute.

That's pretty good.

She's wearing a little t-shirt in the dream, and I wanted to see what the shirt is.

Pretty good.

Pretty good.

So, anyway, I picked up Claire Obscure.

Yes.

Expedition 33.

Do we think that Claire Obscure is going to be a franchise where it's Claire Obscure

Nether Fight of the Realisis or whatever the fuck the next one will be?

I also don't know where the story is going because Expedition 33 is like, that's key to the narrative.

That's what you're on.

And I don't know if that's going to, we're going to have further expeditions or if that whole arc will be resolved by the end of the game.

We'll see where that ends up taking us.

Does Claire Obscure come in as a words that you've heard so far in your playthrough?

It's a more of a descriptive sort of,

it's more of a conceptual thing referring to the aesthetic.

It's a

it's yeah, it references a chiara obscuro, which is like dramatic light and shadow, and you do see that reflected in the art direction.

Sure.

But yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's one of those things of just like,

look, it's, it's, it's so many video games have unnecessary subtitles.

You could probably say that in a vacuum, Claire Obscure Expedition 33 is maybe kind of an Ungapachka title.

They probably could just call it Claire Obscure.

But that said, what a fucking video game.

I think it's so great that I don't like, like, I'm, that this game is succeeding despite having kind of a mouthful of a title just speaks to its quality.

This is an Unreal Engine 5 game that is on PC PS5 and Xbox and is day one on Game Pass.

Something I will say is like,

from what I've heard, this company was about 33 people.

Like it's a pretty small team that was able to put this game together.

And maybe that speaks to the tools that are available in Unreal Engine 5.

I haven't messed around with Unreal Engine 5.

I've messed around some with Unity just to see what the environment is like.

I kind of just want to download UE5 and see what it's like to...

to build something in it because it, you know, like another game that came out earlier this year, Wanderstop, is another game that was an Unreal Engine 5 game that has pretty impressive art direction.

It feels like a, you know, like a, like the quality of graphical fidelity feels like a last-gen platformer.

Like it's like, this is pretty impressive.

It also came from a pretty small team.

And I wonder how much of that is just.

baked into the tool set and baked into the engine that's the that that that ue5 is anyway this is a jrpg style game i say jrpg style because obviously it's not japanese in origin it is from a from a french firm where you lead a party of adventurers in a dark fantasy world dominated by the villainous Paintress, who each year wipes out everyone of a certain age.

That age has been steadily declining.

And now you are part of the titular Expedition 33.

So you are in your final year of life before the Paintress commits a, you know,

just wipes everyone off the map.

And

what you're doing is this sort of crusade to see if you can kind of end this cycle of demolition.

I love this game.

I, I feel like I need to make one of those YouTube videos that's like, you know, like, Claire Obscure has no business being this good.

You know what I mean?

They all have like this, by algorithmic necessity, they have a title like that.

Like, yeah, and yeah, and a face like that.

Like, oh,

oh,

what the fuck?

This game's so fucking good.

Someone's in physical pain from how much they're enjoying this game.

Oh,

but also, also, the whites of your eyes have been Photoshopped to purify the brightness.

I was following this guy who was just like a, like, he was just a,

this dude was in my, my, I subscribed to his channel on YouTube, and he was just like a doctor, like an MD who was talking about like, you know, nutrition.

And he just is very even-tempered in his, in his disposition, just like, you know, when you want your plate to be mostly greens, if you, if you kind of divide it, you'll have one half that's greens and one half that is fats and proteins.

And then he became more popular on YouTube.

And then he just started doing those thumbnails, I think just because he had to.

And so it's this guy who's like, his delivery is all like this, but then it'll be like, sweet potatoes, secret to eternal life.

And be like, oh,

and this poor man.

That's why Diet Coke's bad.

Guy went to medical school and this is how he has to degrade himself.

Anyway,

this game, it's another of those things.

We talk about it.

I'm going to probably talk about it too much, but like every time, every year there are games that just come out of nowhere that's on nobody's radar really i love it but i also feel like this was on a radar do you think this was on a radar i feel like we mentioned this at some point last year as like a game that was interesting to look forward to interesting could have been i i if if so i i don't recall it to me i like it's mentally in the same sort of bucket of last year's bellachro and animal well and metaphor refantasio that were games that were like like oh wow okay look at look at this thing just kind of coming out and making this immense impact and everything obviously we already talked about blue prince which inarguably still had an impact on the gaming zeitgeist

But this is this for me is night and day in terms of my reaction to it versus blue prince Whereas blue prince I was just kind of like okay I see the artistry here.

We don't need to to re to rehash it But I was like I see the artistry here, but like I'm kind of just getting worn down through the process of playing it versus this one I find like I'm immediately so engaged so hooked and I just think it's so playable and aesthetically appealing.

Do you know why it's playable?

Why is that?

I know the secret.

Yeah, go for it.

It's because you can fucking move fast.

And you can move really fast.

You can presume.

There are three speeds of locomotion in this game.

There is walking.

There is jogging like a regular person.

And then there is full-blown dash without a dash meter.

There's nothing that you exhaust by moving fast.

And for me, discovering that, I was like, oh, thank God.

Yeah.

Thank God.

Like these, these

fields where you're battling all of these creatures are large fields.

And when you can see where you have to go, I shouldn't be punished with the time it takes to get there.

And this game rewards us with a speedy zip around locomotion.

Yeah,

the sprint you can do, you can really, really book it.

Oh, there's another game that I was.

You know, it was a,

it was another JRPG, and I can't pull the name right now that had a similar thing.

It was like, man, the walk cycle cycle is just so fast.

And it's just so, it's a great quality of life thing.

Just like, yeah, there's a lot of just negative space here that just exists to make the environment feel like a big environment, a real environment, a lived in environment.

But if I can move through it quickly, I don't feel like I'm kind of getting bored.

And in town,

I walk.

Because I don't want to miss anything.

It's a dense area.

There's a lot of stuff going on.

I want to look at faces.

I want to look at art direction.

But when I'm out on the fucking field, let me go as fast as Sonic.

The thing that's awesome.

So I think I've probably put the most time into this game so far.

It's awesome because you took like a huge break.

I filmed my Kingdom immediately.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been playing it pretty steadily

through this past week and over the weekend.

And I even downloaded.

Look, I downloaded an app.

Sea of Stars was the game I was trying to remember.

Just keep going.

I downloaded an app for my Steam Deck so that I can remote play my Xbox while my wife is watching the TV and I can still play my game.

The app is called XB Play.

It was $7 in Steam and I didn't have to do anything crazy.

And I love this fucking app.

Yeah.

It rocks.

It's just made.

I mean, I wish I could.

I heard it doesn't run great on Steam Deck, the game.

Otherwise, I would have bought it on Steam.

So I was like, oh, it's on Game Pass.

I'll, you know, I'll just remote play to my

Steam Deck.

And it's a flawless experience.

It's been really, really great.

But I've been also playing it on the TV.

And the thing that I just really love about it is that I feel like there is a shared language in a lot of

JRPG design.

And I feel like within the first couple of hours of this game, I've seen

a handful of things that I've just never seen in a game before, I feel like.

Have you guys gotten to

the water area?

I have not gotten that far.

There's a part of the map that's early, it's early on enough where one of the other sections of the map that

you essentially already have is this like water area.

And you go into like this cave, but it's like you're underwater, but you're like walking around still.

And I was just like, this is gorgeous.

This is, this is amazing.

I love this.

That's cool.

I just, I'm, I'm really, really loving the game.

Yeah, you know, I think the thing is, and we're going to be talking about AA games, and I think a lot of people have described this as a double A game, which I think is fair.

The art direction is really nice.

The models are, you know, they're not going for photorealism as

they shouldn't be.

I mean, there's some stylization here, but the models are less detailed than a triple-A game, but I don't need to see like veins and pores on a character's faces.

You know, that's the stuff that you're losing, but

you're still getting like...

personality and and and and uh characterization through their the way they're realized visually also the

we've hit a place now where this is a double a game right

This is

a magnitude of gorgeousness that two generations ago, if this was a PS3 game, it would be like the triple A game of the PS3 generation.

Yeah, certainly trying to like trump something like

the crown jewel of the PS3 era probably would have been like a naughty dog game, right?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I mean, it like it's not as

breathtaking as The Last of Us, but nobody in their right mind would have seen this as a PS3 game and been like, this is a AA game.

You would have been like, wow, this is spectacular.

And I think that we are chasing something

in realism, in AAA games, that maybe we don't need to be chasing.

Like, I'm not sure who it's rewarding.

Yeah, I think good art direction is just...

Overall, to me, more interesting than like realistic

art direction.

100%.

We should describe actually playing this some bitch.

So, the combat is so fun and so satisfying.

You talk about things that you've never seen before.

I will say that we've had turn-based combat with time button presses since the 16-bit era.

That's a thing that's been a staple of the genre that we tried a bunch of different ways.

But this feels like such an evolution of that.

Basically, you have timed button presses that you can do, use to do additional damage for your attacks, which is one element of it.

But

the main thing is how you use it for defense.

And you basically have one button that you can use to

dodge enemy attacks, and another you can use to parry and sometimes counter enemy attacks.

There's some really, and it's very satisfying.

Like when you, when you dodge something effectively, when you figure out the timing of it, it's really satisfying.

When you get a perfect dodge, it's great.

And there's an elegant sort of tutorialization in terms of how a perfect dodge lines up with the timing for a parry.

So dodges are easier.

There's a larger window.

Parries, there's a tighter window.

But a perfect dodge is the same window as a parry.

So if you are consistently getting perfect dodges for an attack, then

you can take the risk to be like, I'm just going to parry this thing.

And when you parry it, you get some action points back that you can use to do some of your special abilities.

There's also things like if there will be there will be certain attacks that will attack your entire party and if you parry those with all of your party members consistently you can do like a more innate counterattack all of these these things sort of add up in a way where it never feels like you're just pressing buttons through a menu.

It always feels like you're engaged through every second of each combat encounter.

It also forces you to watch the animation on the enemies because it's like generally on a on a JRPG, there's all of this loving attention put into the animation in the battle sequences of the attacks of

your monsters, your enemies on screen.

But you don't have to pay attention to those things.

Yeah, they're non-interactive.

Like you can kind of be staring at the fucking menu the entire time.

Yes.

This forces you to be like, oh, wow, this monster, before he attacks, he conjures his weapons into his hands.

He pulls them back.

Like,

if, if you can,

if you, if you can forecast what it is that the monster is going to do when it attacks you on the first strike, not only is that extremely good luck, but it's awesome feeling.

Yes.

It's great.

It's great.

I also can't remember what it is.

They call the, what are the monsters called?

Nevros?

What are they called?

I can't remember.

I can't remember.

They got some made-up word for it.

Miriams?

To quote the great Steve Martin.

Those French got a different word for everything.

Guys, fall is here.

The beers are colder.

The football's back.

And the fits are getting layered.

But if you're still rocking old beat-up boxers under those flannels and jeans, we gotta talk.

it's time to upgrade to me undies these things are ridiculously soft like don't want to take them off soft if you catch my drift they're made with micromodal fabric that feels like a cloud but they still breathe when things heat up and just in time for spooky season me undies limited edition halloween line features festive prints including glow-in-the-dark underwear so you can bring the spooky vibes underneath it all because that's what you want Your underwear to be scary.

Me Undies has a cut for every butt with over 20 styles in 100 different colors and prints.

Me Undies signature super soft micromodal fabric is breathable, stretchy, and unbelievably cozy, perfect for crisp mornings, chilly nights, and everything in between.

Whether you're layering up for a hike or lounging in flannel all day, Me Undies moves with you and keeps you comfy.

Want even more seasonal comfort?

Try the Breathe Line, designed for moisture wicking and anti-odor tech to keep you fresh throughout fall workouts or just a long day of pumpkin picking.

I love it.

They use sustainably sourced materials and work with partners that care for their workers.

Not happy with your first pair of undies?

It's on me undies.

With more than 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five-star reviews, me undies are an essential summer must-have for every drawer.

I've talked about the undies, okay?

I've talked about me undies.

And folks,

the me stands for me, mine, me, I, Matt.

I got the undies.

And I loves them.

Because guess what?

The old undies, I gone back to them one time in a moment of weakness, right?

Laundry Day, all my meundies are in the freaking wash.

And I put on an old pair of undies, and I'm just like, ow, ow, ah, I can't breathe.

Ah, it hurts.

Oh no, it stinks.

But with the me undies on, those are not my problem anymore.

Right now, as a listener to my show, you can get cozy and spooky for less with deals up to 50% off at meundies.com slash get played and enter promo code get played.

That's meundies.com slash get played.

Promo code get played for up to 50% off.

Meundies, that's comfort made for all.

This is an absolutely true story.

One time I was in Japan and I had my cell phone with me, but I was

following somebody around in the city and having a good time.

And then they locked me on a roof of a skyscraper because they were a crazy person.

That's a true story.

And my cell phone didn't have wireless access.

So this next ad is specifically something that I could have used in the past.

Because if I'd had Wi-Fi, I could have called somebody.

But instead, I had no cell phone service trapped on a roof in Tokyo.

If you've ever been lost abroad or badly needed an internet connection with no Wi-Fi spot in sight, you'll understand what a difference a local SIM card can make.

And eSIM provides an internet connection wherever you travel and saves you money on roaming fees.

That's where Saley comes in.

Saley is a new eSIM service app brought to you by the creators of NordVPN.

Here you can choose from several affordable e-SIM plans in over 190 countries and eight regions.

With a Saley eSIM, you'll always have a connection when needed.

Download Saley once and you won't have to install a new e-SIM for each country.

You can avoid scammers selling fake SIM cards outside of train stations and airports.

No more wandering around looking for a public Wi-Fi spot.

With a Saley, you're always connected.

They provide 24-7 support, and you get a full refund if your device isn't e-SIM compatible.

Download the Saley app in your app store.

Use code GET Played at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase, or go to saley.com/slash get played.

That's s-a-i-l-y.com/slash get played.

I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

It's the difference, Heather, between like, you know, like a Final Fantasy summon is a classic thing of like, hey, once I see this the first time, great, but then it reaches a certain point of like, I don't, I don't need to see the Knights of the Round all show up again.

And yeah, a lot of times combat, you know, if you're, if you're just watching some big attack, then you, you don't have anything to do as the player.

Or the same thing as like Mortal Kombat for Fatality.

It's like, it's like, once I learned how to execute this, hey, this is pretty cool that I can pull this off, but it reached a certain point of like, I don't need to see this every time versus it's more like playing a fighting game or something.

You're playing a rhythm game where you just kind of like perpetually engage with it.

And it's so much so that like, even in JRPGs are I like there are ones where it's like, man, if I, if I can turn down the, the combat encounter ratio, you know, or if I can just avoid combat entirely, I will do it.

I don't find myself avoiding combat.

I find myself pursuing combat because it's both a way to grind to improve your characters.

And then also it is just so each individual combat is just very, very fun to play.

I will attack a monster, and if I can't get perfect periods all the way through it, I'll go back to the save flag, save

so that they respawn, and I won't progress until I can perfect each monster as I'm going.

That's a very Heather way to play this game.

But what you just mentioned, so the flags that you have, the little camp stations, and also you can camp in this game in the overworld just don't think.

Man, I love camping.

It's fun to camp.

I do like, I love camping.

There's a mechanic that I haven't quite.

There's like a little record player or I guess it's not a record player.

It is a record player, but

what were you like?

You were trying to look for a phonograph?

Yeah, I think it was like more of a phonograph because it seems old to me.

Yeah, it's a phonograph.

But you need a record for it.

And I haven't found one yet.

And I can't wait to find one.

So anyway,

you go to one of these points.

Effectively, it's like a campfire in a souls game.

It is a place where you can rest, you can restore your charges, which this is another thing I really like about this game's design.

The thing you end up with when you're playing any RPG, you end up with this inventory just crammed with consumables and you're stockpiling them and you don't know exactly when to use them.

And, you know, whatever, at some point, I've got 99 high potions in my inventory and I don't know when to deploy them.

Or, you know, like you end up at least a hoarding.

Here, it's more of a soul system.

It's more like a flask where you've got like a limited number of charges you can use to restore your party's health or revive party members or heal everyone outside of combat.

Those restore when you get to one of these campsites and it also respawns the monsters in an area.

So, again, it's another way if you want to grind a little bit, you have that opportunity.

Can I talk a little bit about a ludo-narrative dissonance

stuff happening in the game, though?

So, you have a character who's just witnessed the death of somebody he loves,

and that's in the cold open.

I don't think that's a spoiler.

That's like your first like 30 minutes of the game.

Yeah, um, that would fuck me up, by the way.

Yeah.

I'm going to handle it in stride.

You think so?

Watching your ex turn to ash and rose petals in front of you.

You think you'd be all right with that?

Me a fucking nightmare.

And then shortly after that, I guess I don't even know where spoiler country in our in a light.

We're still talking very early game.

So

you see

so many people get murked.

Like so many fucking people.

And then you're finding piles of bodies.

Yeah.

While this this is happening, your character is like visibly anguished.

In cutscenes, he's like, I want to fucking kill myself.

Yeah.

But then when you find a consumable on the map, he goes, wow, I could use this.

It's like,

I wish that that had become, that, that was scaled in a little bit more gradually, because it's funny to, to have a guy looking at corpses and then pick up what I think is money and be like, and be like, wow, excellent.

Yeah, no, there's a there, there's a bit of that where there's like, um,

you know,

like

there's not that many alt lines for that, too.

So, like, the more people you have in your party, it's just kind of like vacillating between who's saying, you know, oh, great, that's going to be useful, type of thing.

There's also in the

settings menu when you're starting the game, and also when you're, like, you could pause and see this menu at any time, you can turn off,

you can customize how your character looks, basically, but not that much, but like you can give them a different haircut or a hat.

Yeah, you find some of these things.

And I did, I will say that I was enjoying this game.

I'm playing on Game Pass, but I enjoyed this game enough where I was like, I'm just going to buy the deluxe edition upgrades to have a bunch more of those.

Oh, nice.

I should do that as well because I am really enjoying it and

will continue to play it because I have been playing it.

Wait, I thought you bounced off of it.

No, no, no, no, no.

Contrary to popular belief, I did not bounce off of this thing.

Okay.

The discord got you playing again that's nice of them

i'm gonna kill

um it's all in good fun discorders i uh appreciate you guys um we love to get scored here's what here's what i was gonna say in the menu there's a thing where you can turn off your character customization in cutscenes so it doesn't break the like illusion of what it is and i think that's funny but i've left it on because like to look your to your point it's a it's a very bleak story so far and everybody's having a miserable time but I found a mime outfit for my character yeah and he has a baguette strapped to his fucking back

and it's extremely funny but the note in the description of the option menu is like it turns this off for outfits that don't look right parentheses but it is fun and like yeah it is it is fun you're right it's really good because yeah it's like it kind of just really cuts the um the tension quite a bit when your guy is like

uh like talking about wanting to kill himself.

He's wearing sunglasses, a beret, a striped shirt, and has a baguette on his back.

The Souls comparisons are also like in terms of how the weapons scale to your stats.

I mean,

again,

I like that system.

I like how it works in Souls games.

And I think that it's fun here when you're leveling up in a traditional sort of sense and you can kind of figure out, okay, I'm going to target agility or whatever stat to try to improve my weapons damage but also like I like the pick dose is another element that goes into it which is the

it's essentially like like I did what exactly is it's kind of accessories that you're kind of equipping on each character and they give you like addition they enhance existing abilities or give you additional abilities or give you additional damage

They're basically like what I like is that you're finding a bunch of them and then you can reach a certain point where you can upgrade them where you're getting the ability without even equipping it.

Right.

Or you can have it be shared amongst different party members.

And I, I, again, I just like that, that, that, those are leveling up.

Your, your weapons are leveling up, your characters are leveling up.

There's all these things that you're steadily approving, so, and uh, like improving so each combat feels consequential.

I, I, like, don't understand

pictos.

Like, you just explained it really well, but I find them all the time.

I just need to really like hunker down and like figure out like, this is my thing I always have a hard time with in games like this.

Because

I love love games like this.

I like crafting

a build like for like a character or whatever, but I often am like, am I even doing the right

stuff?

I often will be like, because there's so much things you have to read, or I'm like, I just want to get in there and I want to play.

So I don't be like adding stuff.

And I'm like, I'm just adding, I know I'm just adding the wrong stuff.

I got to be a little more careful and precise.

Yeah, but also I

at least playing this game, I'm playing on the standard difficulty.

It doesn't feel like this is a game that necessitates min-maxing.

Maybe it reaches a point where you have to do that, but I kind of am just sort of like figuring it out.

I was like, okay, it's this, this Picto gives some sort of additional ability.

If you stack burn on an enemy, burn is like a status effect.

This character has some spells that cast burn.

That feels like a natural fit.

I don't know.

We'll see how this goes.

I'm just kind of riffing here.

And it's the same sort of thing with like...

You don't need to get through every encounter by perfect parrying.

Like, it's like, like, that's not like a necessity.

You can just kind of dodge your way through it.

You know, it's like, it's, you're going to be okay.

You have to do it.

It feels great.

It does feel great to hate a perfect parry.

I really like the counter because then you get a counter and it's just like super duper satisfying.

It's really rewarding.

This is also, this game also checks a specific box for me where all the enemies are fucking freaks.

Yeah, I love all the freak enemies.

They're all just like freaky and weird and it's very, very fun.

Like the mime ones that I was talking about earlier, they look like mimes, but they're like big, sort of like wooden puppets puppets with like big heads, and they're kind of scary.

And they're very, those mime ones are, I think, optional and they're like, they're very, very challenging.

And the enemies move fast.

They move fast.

If you aggro them, they'll chase you all over the place.

Yes, very frightening.

I do like that the game is sort of

versus like something like Assassin's Creed or whatever, where it's like very open.

The game is more focused and tunnels you to where you sort of like need to go.

It's really linear,

but that's the thing I like about it.

I like a linear game.

I don't need this vast open world.

I haven't been lost one time, I'll tell you that.

That's been great.

And there's no like HUD, right?

Of like, you know, I guess there's a little compass or whatever, but there's not like a like, oh, go, you know, there's not like a, what is that, you know, an icon on a map somewhere that's like this.

No, there's not, there's not like a, there's not like a mini map.

You're just sort of like, but, but it's pretty clear where to go.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of the, I had someone describe describe this to me once where it's just like these environments are essentially

in a linear 3D game like this, you're essentially running just down half pipes, right?

Like, it's just like not the not going from side to side, but it's just like one half pipe that like extends into infinity.

Man, if this game had half pipes, it'd be like, hell yeah, dog.

You're kicking rocks.

And there's changes in elevation and such, obviously, and they find ways to vary that, but it's pretty straightforward in terms of progressing.

I will say that one of the downsides of this very ambitious AA game is that the environments that you've just described as half pipes do lend themselves to getting broken very quickly.

Like within the first hour and a half, I got stuck in an environment and had to reset.

Oh, wow, I haven't had that happen yet.

Well, I'm also trying to jam my way past trees that look unscalable because I'm like, maybe you have to jump at this the right way in order to get something behind it.

I had one sort of thing like that where it was after

winning a fight,

I got stuck sort of in like a first-person

mode, and I don't know how or why, and I had to just like reset it.

But it was,

it was not a problem.

The loot that I got was still there, so it was like, uh,

it was still great.

And also, this game auto-saves a ton.

Yeah, like I had a, a, a moment where I accidentally stumbled, I, like, I didn't, I just didn't realize there was about to be a, uh, I was going to step on a trigger and it was going to start at a cinematic that was going to lead to a boss fight.

And I just like hadn't healed anything.

And I'd taken some damage.

And, and I was like, oh man, I'm sucking this thing.

I guess here we go.

I guess if I, I, I, if I don't fuck up one time, I'll probably, I'll be okay in this combat.

And, and I got a party wipe, but and I was like, ah, shit, I'm going to have to do, start up the old campsite.

I was like, oh no, it started the last time I picked something up.

So I was like, I lost like less than five minutes of progress.

I was like, oh, that's really, that's nice that the game is being charitable.

Yeah.

And like, like still challenging, but like it's not making me redo a bunch of shit.

Very forgiving stuff.

Very forgiving, yeah.

The music is the Lorian Testard is the composer, and it's, it's lush and it's beautiful.

Yeah.

When the singing pops up, great.

I love great singing.

Are they singing in French or Japanese?

What are they singing in?

They must be singing in French.

It doesn't sound like French to me.

It sounds, I don't know.

And too bad we can't listen to it on this podcast because we don't want to get flagged for copyright infringement.

No, no, because there's already too much heat on us.

Nintendo's listening.

We can't have

this French studio on our ass, too.

I don't know really anything about our art history, but I read that it's like an Art Nouveau aesthetic, which is like a 19th-century French movement.

It's very appealing, but it's also got that kind of married with steampunk-y sort of character designs and

environments.

And I don't know.

I think it's all really cool looking, sounds great.

Art Nouveau was a form of

decorative art that happened in the 1920s.

It was in parallel to

Art Deco here in the United States.

Art Nouveau is typified by a sort of like floral motifs,

stained glass,

like

bronze, that sort of thing.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, I should have just asked you.

Today I say socre blue.

I learned that from my dad this week.

Wow.

Because he was like talking to me about light fixtures.

My father is,

how do I say this without it being, hmm?

It doesn't matter.

He's a smart guy.

Yeah, he's a very smart guy, but he will also talk about something like a number for a long time.

Oh, sure.

And so, yeah.

And so he will talk about.

You should have said, like me.

Like you?

Yeah.

He's a bit of a wiggle.

My dad's a bit of a wigger.

Yeah, nobody wins.

Yeah.

But he talks about,

he was talking to me about lamps for 45 minutes this week and telling me about the difference between Arnavo and Ardeco.

That's great.

Yeah.

Can I say another thing, which is that...

What if we were like, no, it's a podcast?

I don't know.

Say words.

I feel like I've been talking a lot.

No, you've been doing great.

Yeah, you're doing a good job.

I like playing a JRPG where the characters are adults approaching middle age.

Is it kind of nice where it's just like, like basically every JRPG I've ever played, the characters are literally 17 years old.

Yeah.

It's like, isn't it kind of nice to play like a 33-year-old?

I was kind of concerned.

I'm just playing an adult.

How about that?

I was concerned for myself because based on what's going on in the story,

I got wiped in the last expedition.

Just like in the previous one.

We won't be starting expeditions in this country pretty soon.

I'm cooked.

But

I like.

That sort of then brings me to this other point that I was going to make that now.

I can safely make.

Yeah.

These are some of the hottest characters I've ever seen.

They're very hot, very attractive characters.

One of the characters you get pretty early on, one of the party members

can kind of fly when she's doing her sprint.

Yes.

Anyone else?

She doesn't like wearing shoes.

She let the dogs out.

I like that you can switch between who you're looking at as a party member by just pressing the fucking controller.

That is amazing to me.

It is cool.

Because it does it just on the fly.

There's not a second of loading.

It's just you just cycle through your party character.

You're not even all the party, just like whoever you have in the group.

So you can be your avatar on screen can be anybody you choose it to be, and it doesn't affect the story or the playing.

No, and they all, yeah, they all move differently.

Some of them aren't wearing shoes.

Yeah.

And

that's fine.

It's fine.

I didn't say it wasn't fine.

No, no, no.

We're just like saying that, like, it's okay.

And the thing about it,

I like that there are so many characters, but it is also just so like the voice acting is so great.

I do want to point out there is the main, well, not the main character, but the guy you start with, Gustav.

Gustav.

And a lot of people say he looks like Robert Pattinson, and he kind of does.

He does look like Robert Pattenson.

He looks so much like him that it's crazy that it's not him.

I think that this game takes a lot of

inspiration from Final Fantasy 15 in the costuming and the look of the characters.

He looks like a cross between

Robert Pattinson and Old Noctis.

You play as Old Noctis at one point in Final Fantasy XV.

Nice.

I know that Charlie Cox's Daredevil is his voice in the game.

It's a great performance, a lot of great performances.

Jennifer English, who is Shadowheart, is a character in the game.

Yeah, I'll star

Cassa Voiceover artist.

Yeah,

it's top to bottom.

I'm loving it.

It rocks.

Yeah, it's pretty great.

It's pretty great.

You guys haven't gotten to the...

You guys are not where I'm at.

Yeah.

I'm not.

I'm still in Act One.

I'm like toward the end of Act One, I believe.

Okay.

I've unlocked a big guy.

There's a big guy that you need to get.

He helps traverse the world map.

Also, I love the world map.

Oh, the world map is great.

The world map is fucking awesome.

It's like tilt-shifted.

Yes.

Yes.

So there's a very shallow depth of field when you're looking at the world map, which conveys that you are not the correct size on the world map in this sort of like 16-bit era JRPG or

32-bit era JRPG tropes.

Yes.

Where it's not the actual landscape that you're crossing, but you're sort of like a stylized version of the landscape and a stylized version of yourself.

Fucking loved it.

Are they called gestrals?

Gestrel sounds right.

Gestrels.

Gestral novrium.

I think it's an N.

But gestrels might be a N.

There's a character type in the game called gestrals.

We love the world map.

There's a guy that you can unlock that is his name is Eski.

Okay.

And he's like a big guy.

He's like a big tick looking, like almost oogie-boogie-looking like guy.

Now, here's the thing I know about you, Matt.

I know you love a little guy.

But you got nothing against a big guy.

The big guys are good, too.

Hey, look, I'll take them as they come, big or small.

i i'm here i'm a fan i'm a fan if you just don't want a regular guy no no get those regular guys out of here uh but he's a big guy and he's got a big kind of dumb voice oh no he's really fun he's a really good i i i and you get on you can get on him

to um traverse the world map yeah and there's breakables on the world map and you can like smash stuff yeah so i yeah i haven't encountered that i'm looking forward to to riding this big guy around you gotta get you gotta you'll get him is a human being No, no, no, no.

I was like, you ride a human man?

No, he's like a

thing.

I think he's a gestural.

Because I think the ones that are sort of look more like

they have like brush heads and stuff.

I think those are gesturals.

Yeah,

there's different types of these.

That's the thing that the little kids in the opening area are.

He's a big one.

Oh, he's a big one.

Yeah.

He's a, he's.

And let me tell you something.

He's

big and he's a big guy.

I'm enjoying this game enough.

So I did,

I've talked a bit in the past about my specific monitor situation, which is a really hyper-specific use case.

And a lot of times games like this don't really support it.

I've got this absurdly ultra-wide monitor that's 5120 by 1440 resolution.

This game does support it, but it doesn't play great in it because all the UX elements are at the far edges of the screen.

So it's like, it's a little bit awkward.

And then also the framing of some of the cinematics is like, I can just tell this is off because

you were staging this for 16 by 9.

And again, this isn't your fault.

There's no way you can account for this.

Why would you QA for

this type of resolution that 0.1% of the user base has?

So

I hook my PC up to my TV.

I got a big long HDMI table.

I'm playing this as a couch game.

And I'm glad I did it because it feels, I mean, it feels appropriate for that.

It

feels like a couch RPG.

I'm playing on PS5 Pro.

Yeah.

And it says enhanced for PS5 Pro.

Generally, that means that both the quality and performance buttons can be pushed simultaneously because you get like

high, super high frame rate and super high graphics.

It doesn't look any

different than the PS5 version to my eyes

at all because I have a PS5 in one side of the house and a PS5 Pro on the other side of the house.

And

yeah,

it looks identical.

This game is good enough where I'm

because I'm going to be on the road for work later this month, and

I'm just asking myself, do I get a Steam Deck so I can play this on the road?

I might have to do it, which sounds like a stupid thing to do when the Switch 2 is almost out, to buy another handheld, but I'm just like,

and I'm just also like,

probably there will be a Switch 2 port at some point, right?

It feels like this game is

popular enough.

It's popularity, and it doesn't seem like it's that.

I mean, it looks gorgeous, but it can't be that resource-intensive.

I bet you it could run on the the Switch 2, no problem.

Yeah, I wonder.

Do you have a PS5?

Yeah, I do.

Do you want to borrow my portal?

Well, I don't need to borrow your portal.

Well, I'm not using it right now, and then you could use it on the road to play this game.

I don't have to be on Wi-Fi?

Yeah.

That's kind of the whole thing.

It's incredibly

hard to find.

I don't mean to dismiss of your incredibly kind offer.

That's really nice, but yeah, I don't think I can.

You just can't help it when he's talking about the portal.

He hates the damn thing.

I didn't realize you were talking about being on on an airplane because I thought you didn't fly anywhere.

I thought you took trains.

No, I have no choice.

I have to go to the East Coast.

So,

yeah.

Look forward to my obituary.

Jesus Christ.

I'll be fine.

That sounds like you're planning on.

Sure, my children.

Are you going to D.C.?

Yeah, I am, actually.

It's all right.

I'm sure I won't.

immolate midair or the plane won't land upside down or something.

I'm sure it'll be great.

Seems like flying is better than ever.

Don't watch.

Don't watch

First Reform on the plane with that haircut.

Love this game.

I'm really, really glad that this was.

I mean, I just, just, I admire the creativity and the gumption to make a game like this.

And I'm so glad that people are responding to it.

And I'm really glad it exists.

And game of the year so far for me.

I kind of think so, too.

It's fucking, i it's just so fun

and that's the i think that's kind of the main obviously these are two different games between last week's game and this week's game this game's really fun i would say like this is like a fun video game to play and it's you know different strikes are different folks of course i know that like yeah sure it's just this one is like fun what what what's come out this year i can't even think of games that assassin's creed yeah i mean like like look we could we could go through the list but it's very very early in 2025 as we know the video game release calendar is tends to be,

you know, backloaded.

It tends to go towards the holiday season.

It's still skewed like the toy industry.

But yeah, Assassin's Creed Shadow is a big release of this year.

We mentioned Blue Prince.

I mentioned Wanderstop earlier.

uh you know the drive forever was a game that an indie pick game that i played that i was enjoying there there have been a few releases but there's not been a a giant you know cavalcade yet how weird is it that we live in a time when systems have been out for as long as they have and they are getting more expensive?

Yeah, isn't that crazy?

It sucks.

It fucking sucks.

As of today's record, Microsoft announced that they were going to increase the price of the X and the S by a hundred bucks each, and they also were going to increase the price of their games.

That has never happened.

No, like, I know that that is not the first time this generation that that has happened, that a system has become more expensive, but it is wild to be like, it used to be that, like, oh, you, you get the Nintendo when it first comes out, and it's going to be like $400.

And then like a couple of years later, it's $250.

I mean, it might go up.

I mean, the Switch might go up this year.

Yeah.

Wouldn't be shocked.

It's going to be crazy.

You never get rewarded by buying a thing on day one.

And this generation, you're being rewarded for buying it on day one.

Yes.

Also, I'm personally thinking about like.

How much shit could I put in my bag when I go to Japan the next time?

I know.

I thought you were going to say when I flee the country.

No.

Heather doesn't run.

I hate with this.

This is a big one.

I cower.

I'm looking at that.

I mean, obviously, I got myself playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth because the PC port came out.

But Heather, big one for you.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which I know you put a bunch of time into earlier this year is another release.

Civilization of VIII, I still haven't played because I've...

Because of all the negative fan response, but I'll mess around with it at some point.

Like a Dragon Pirate Ikus in Hawaii.

There have been some games.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is another double A game, which I feel like could queue up maybe a larger conversation we've been thinking about having.

And I'll be honest, here's what I realized about myself this week when we were, I asked, what was a double-A game?

And you were like, this is a double-a game.

This is a double A game.

This is a double A game.

And I was like,

do I like double A games more than AAA games?

It's, it's possible.

A lot of your favorite games seem to be double-A games.

I mean, I do like a triple A game.

I like The Last of Us parts one and two.

Assassin's Creed, I believe, are

AAA games.

Yeah.

Like, I like a big budget, big release.

Final Fantasy games, those are AA.

But then I, like, actually look at my library and I see games like Katamari Damasi and I see like Disco Elysium and I see like the huge majority of the games that are actually in my collection are not triple-A games.

Well, let's talk about it.

So we're talking AA games this week.

AA games, basically bigger in scope and budget than indie games, but not as expensive, ambitious, and polished, if you want to use that word, as AAA games.

The term really came into usage in the 2010s as budget for games by Take-Two and EA and Ubisoft and the like bloated into the nine figures.

Team sizes became, you know, thousands of people across a bunch of different studios in different countries.

And I was trying to find the first usage of the term AA, and I did not succeed.

But I did find a Euro Gamer article from 2012 by Christian Donlin entitled, Will Games Woes Kill Off Double A Titles, talking about the struggling UK chain of video game stores, game.

They're just called game there, I guess.

I mean, that's a good name for a store.

That's a good name for a story.

Every store should just be called what is sold there.

Yeah, food for groceries.

I'd shop at food.

I'll read a little from this article.

Quote, what's really sad, I think, is that AA games, the very games that are in real trouble right now, are actually most like the games I grew up playing in the first place.

Double Dragon, which was a big deal in my school playground, feels like a classic AA fair, for example, and the double-A's I love, I love because they actually seem more honestly old school than a lot of the other stuff out there.

They have to be, I guess.

They have to drown you in UI clutter, combos, finishers, wall springs, and collectibles because they don't have the money to throw on the set pieces and turn themselves into something a little weirder and more slickly roller coastery like Uncharted, and they don't have the financial setup to take risks like the Indies can.

Thankfully,

this doom saying did not come to pass, and it actually seems like we're in something of a double A renaissance, thanks in part to Steam and Game Pass.

I feel like we're seeing a lot of double A games coming out these days, and at least more of appreciation for these sorts of games.

I got to take issue with Double Dragon not being a AAA game for its time.

I mean,

this is the whole thing about AA games, is because I honestly don't even know if the AA label makes sense for anything in the 2D era, maybe even in the 32-bit era, because there just was not the same, like, it's like you would not not have, hey, we're going to make Super Mario Bros.

3.

We need to get a team of a thousand people to make this game.

There was not the same level of staffing required to make something like that.

Like, it's just, it's just games where even the more ambitious designs were not ones that demanded team size that we see these days or budgets that we see these days because of the hardware limitations.

And so, I, you know, I, I think it's, it's really a term that makes more sense in our, in our modern framework.

Wasn't Final Fantasy VII the most expensive game ever made upon its release?

That sounds right, but I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know either.

Yeah.

And this isn't a journalism podcast.

Yes.

It's a fuckaround podcast.

We're just goofing off.

We're just goofing off.

We're just three idiots.

Here's the thing.

I was trying to.

Yes, duh duh, and the like.

Oh no, my hand's stuck in a pickle jar.

I was trying to think of double-A games.

Oh, it looks tasty.

Who put this pickle in here?

I was thinking back on AA games and like, when was the first time I kind of felt a sense of it?

And for me, I think it was the first Sirius Sam game.

This FBS franchise, they made a few of them, but the first one was like, it was coming in an era when we kind of had a bunch of different,

you know, Quake likes and Doom likes, a bunch of different FPS games that were all trying to go for like, like, hey, hey, we're gonna have the most realistic version and the most, the highest level of graphical

fidelity.

We are going to go for.

We're trying to one-up Quake with Unreal.

We're trying to unreal the game

before the engine.

Like, we're trying to just see how far we can push things.

And Sirius Sam was just like, hey, this game just exists to be a fun game where you shoot things.

And there's a bad guy that is

a headless guy running at you holding two bombs.

And that's fun, isn't it?

That's pretty funny.

It's like I was like, oh, yeah, this is just embracing what we're doing in the first place, which is just like, I don't know, having some sort of, some sort of silly thing to mess around with.

I feel like the first time I became aware of what would become the AA game is the Nintendo 64 era, because it felt like the only time that anybody was capable of actually producing a great game for that system was first-party Nintendo games or Rare Soft, right?

When they make like GoldenEye,

Rare Games, Benjo Kazooie.

Yeah, and the rest of the games on that system were so

oftentimes

medium, like real medium titles, right?

And like even Turok the Dinosaur Hunter, it was like,

this is not great.

It's not terrible, but it's not great.

And it doesn't showcase the power of this system as well as Super Mario 64.

So much of this is like a taxonomical exercise because you're saying that it's like, oh yeah, Turok kind of feels like it was a double-A game.

That actually feels right.

But it's also like, I don't know, we don't have a strict definition of what that is.

I don't, I have no idea what Toorok's budget was and what it was relative to other games of the era, but I think back on playing that game and I think on how, yeah, it stacks up relative to these other games that are like aspiring to be the best game on the system, aspiring to be critically acclaimed, and aspiring to be commercially successful.

And that game was just kind of like, I don't know, you run around shooting dinosaurs.

That's fun, right?

You know?

Yeah, that's.

But like, part of it is like, what is this game trying to do?

Right.

And

I'm sort of thinking about like,

I'm thinking about this term in the, in the modern context, but I'm trying to think about like what games in my past would have been considered AA games.

And I'm just thinking any game that was based on a movie could have been potentially been a double A game.

Would you, as somebody who worked in that, would you say that those budgets were

comparable to stuff that wasn't like a licensed game?

So

I worked on the their they're rebooting Fantastic Four yet again.

I worked on two Fantastic Four licensed games.

I worked on a Shrek license game, and I worked on a Pirates of the Caribbean licensed game.

Wait, which Shrek game did you work on?

Shrek.

Just like Shrek?

Yeah, it was just a Shrek game.

Because

the Shrek 2 game is pretty good.

Yeah,

that's the one I worked on.

The Shrek 2 game is good.

I'll give up to the Shrek game.

Some of these games end up working, but the thing is, I think, and it's interesting that you bring this up because a couple of mine were going to be IP comic book-y games that I think are kind of like walk the line of, are these quiet, like, I think these are double-A games, but you can make an argument otherwise.

But, like, the Rocksteady games are really when we start to feel like, oh, they're going to try to make these licensed games feel like AAA games, right?

It's like prior to that, what was going on with the Fantastic Four games, which I can speak to most because those are the games I worked on for years, as opposed to popping in for a few months on some of these other projects.

Those games were not budgeted like, you know,

not budgeted like a game that was going to exist just to be a game.

They were budgeted like we can budget, we can spend a little bit money on production because we can have a little bit of a smaller team size because we're spending our money on the license and we're spending our money on getting the actors from the movie to do voiceover in the game.

Like that's where we're going to allocate our resources.

So as such, you were a little bit, it's partly why these games a lot of times didn't end up succeeding because it's like, man, they're unrealistic expectations for what they want.

We don't have the time or the technology to deliver this.

And so we're going to do our best to try to make this thing work.

But ultimately, all they care about is that this game is ready at the same time that the toys are on shelves.

Right.

Because it's, again, it's just part of the marketing campaign for the movie.

And all their sales, they expect to come from, it's a tie-in to the IP, not from the quality of the game itself.

Like they honestly don't even care about that.

I'm talking about the publishers, not the developers who are working on it.

Because I'm thinking about the other games that I would play, and would imagine, I would imagine, I mean, there's no way I couldn't, I mean, I guess I could look this up.

We could have looked this up, but we're not journalists.

The budget for something like Jack 2 is in the team size for something like Jack 2 is probably smaller than the team size and budget for the first God of War, even though they came out around the same time.

Yeah, I have no idea.

It's like

a...

Budgets are like a really yeah, that's not a thing.

They're necessarily going to be...

It's not like movie budgets where you can just kind of find these numbers posted.

A lot of times it's completely hidden.

It's only guesstimated.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, like, like this is, this, uh, one of the artists I work with on

the fan, on one of the Fantastic Four games was an animator on, uh, I'm sorry, wasn't, he was an animator on the Fantastic Four games, um, and he worked on Aquaman.

I don't know if you remember the Aquaman game, the first Aquaman game.

This was like an infamous, like one of the worst games ever made.

Like Superman 64.

Yeah, it it was like that level of superhero game, just like absolute fucking debacle, less of a reputation than Superman 64 because a bunch of people bought Superman 64, but this game was similarly just broken and unplayable.

And I finally just talked to him once.

I was like, hey, man, what happened with that?

And he's like, well, it was like, it was a little tough because, you know, like, I was the only person on my team.

I was like, oh, wow, you were the only animator on this game?

He's like, no, I was the only artist on the game.

Yeah, that team size was three.

It was three people trying to make a 3D game in the playstation 2 xbox era and it's like and he's like we had one programmer uh we had me doing all of the art and animation and then we had one designer and the designer refused to work so it's like oh my god

that's gonna really uh hinder things with a team that's so but you end up with something like this like it's a miracle that they shipped anything yes but like of course that wasn't going to work and then of the the the licensee you know the license holder or the whoever they like they probably just don't even care because they're not even looking.

They don't even, like, I also worked on the, and I don't want to just go down this road and just talk about me working on bad license games, but the, I worked on the Sopranos game, Sopranos Road to Respect.

I didn't actually work very long on that game.

I'm not saying it to defer any responsibility.

It's just like I was only on that for a few months before I got moved on to the Pirates of the Caribbean game.

What we realized working with HBO on that game, it originally had sort of a design that was going to be more akin to a telltale game.

And so that was going to be like, hey, I think this could actually be interesting.

We could kind of approximate

what we like about the show, which is that it's driven by conversations.

It's driven by, you know, what you know about the other characters and how they react to each other.

It's driven by lies and inferences.

And we sort of had that.

And then they were just sort of like, eh, just make it Grand Theft Auto, but with the Sopranos.

So they like completely threw

all those ideas out the window and were like, okay, let's just try to make this a beat-em-up with the Sopranos license.

And we'll get the voice actors.

Like, okay.

But then at a certain point, they brought in one, an outside writer to help write the game script.

And that outside writer was his other project at the time was writing the Sopranos Cookbook.

I was like, so this guy, like, they just don't, they think these things are the same.

They think the Sopranos cookbook and the Sopranos video game are in the exact same level.

Like, they don't care.

These are just two tie-in products for their IP.

What did that guy do too?

And he was like, here's my new character, Spaghetti.

Has anyone tried anything from that cookbook?

I bet the cookbook sounds

pretty good.

Grandma's lasagna.

It's all video game tips.

And you're like, wait, I did.

Wait, just

wrote the strategy guide.

No, I mean, like, but I think that sometimes happens with licensed games.

We went on a long tangent there.

Yeah.

But, like, double-A games can sometimes be licensed games.

Another game that I was thinking of that was a comic book game of this era was the Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction, which to me, and like, that's one reason I'm excited for Donkey Kong Bonanza is because it looks like that game where it's just like, you're just the Hulk running around breaking stuff.

It's pretty fun.

I'm in my fucking limp biscuit era.

I want to break stuff, baby.

Let's do it.

But it also feels like it's like, you know, that game was, that's what that game was.

You could run up a building and you can bust through a wall and you can beat the shit out of somebody.

There was another game, too, like, um, obviously like the Spider-Man movie ones, but there was a, there was an ultimate Spider-Man video game that was based more on the

comics, right?

Well, the MTV, like, um, animated series,

which was fucking awesome.

It was really, really good.

And it had a sort of cell-shaded, like, look.

And I sort of, I think of that that as like a as a double-A game but anybody this this is us assigning this new term to games of the past where I do agree with you Nick that it probably didn't become more of a thing until like like the 360 ps3 era well yeah that sort of comes into use in the 2010s but I do think there are games and I think Heather was saying this earlier I think there are games that are a little bit earlier that that still kind of fit into these categories these these categories you know what I mean yeah

You mentioned one game, Heather, and I have seen this game called a double-A game.

And I guess it's like, I guess I can't really argue with it, but obviously the

re-release version

that was fully voiced

had a

lot more polish to it.

But the original version, just a handful of characters were voiced.

A lot more of it was just driven by text.

But

a game that's on all of our top, you know, I think all-time top 10 lists, Disco Elysium, a game that we all love.

But like, yeah, I guess it is just a double A game.

Like it's, it doesn't have a bunch of like sleek animated cutscenes.

Like everything is happening from the same isometric perspective.

Yeah.

There are a limited number of animations that are used.

I love the art direction.

I think it's really good, but it's pretty spare.

It also, that game, I think, is a testament to how much work, how much heavy lifting writing can do in a video game

when there isn't much else happening.

Because like a lot of the time, you're just listening to the most incredible prose ever spoken in a fucking video game.

And that's carrying you through these stagnant.

Like if you told me that my favorite game of all time, maybe my favorite game of all time was going to be a static screen most of the time while I was taking information in or looking at a menu, I'd be like, that does not sound like me, but it's, it's the writing of that game.

It makes it seem like a triple a game that is stuffed inside of a double a game games that i was thinking about are like katamari damasi uh i think you could argue that shadow of the colossus is a double a game that's an interesting one i wonder

i think maybe i mean like like because team eco that's their other game i mean maybe eco more so than their their first game and then maybe they have a little bit more of the budget to make shadow of the colossus which is a little bit more ambitious but it is also like it's you know it's pretty limited it's like a 10 10-hour experience, you know?

And it's also, it was not like

Shadow of the Colossus didn't have an enormous advertising budget.

It didn't, it wasn't like a game that everybody in the PlayStation era was looking forward to.

And a lot of people skipped it because it didn't have like that giant push from Sony, even though it ends up becoming a classic and influencing a ton of other games.

But Shadow of the Colossus was like, hey, have you heard of this game?

Yeah.

And I feel like that's also a defining characteristic of these games is when it's, it's not something that is pumped into every square inch of your browser when you are looking at kotaku.com.

It is something that you have to find out about later, not unlike

Expedition 33, where it's like, maybe we mentioned it last year and it was like, oh, this kind of looks interesting.

There's like a French JRPG, but beyond that, it's not, it's not on bus stops.

Right.

I, it's, it's interesting that word of mouth in this era of like social media just seems to spread so much more rapidly.

Because I think like, you know, I was seeing that Claire Obscure is already like passing like 500K units, maybe a million units by the time.

It's done enormously well, but it's like also, yes, you're right.

That is coming through just a groundswell of enthusiasm for this game, but that's just easier and more rapid to circulate.

One of the games that I talk about on this podcast as something that I would love us all to play, God Hand, that's a double A game.

Sure.

Fucking, I think another thing, another facet of these games is because they are in this middle budget area they have enough of a polish to present you with systems that are uh

finalized but they don't have the um the risk ratio that forbids them from being a little weird Yeah, that's part of what I what I like about it.

I mean, that's part of what's funny.

I mean, again, Sirius Sam, that was the whole thing.

It's this game's just like kind of fucking weird and specific.

But also, I think part of that is just like they also have the freedom to be a little dumb.

Yeah.

Which is, which is, I think, the case with a lot of these.

Stellar Blade's a double-A game.

Hmm.

Hmm.

You can speak to that, Matt.

You've put a hundred hours into that.

I just thought of a joke that I don't know if I want to say.

Okay, well.

I think it's more of a double D game.

Matt's microphone stopped working for a second.

Anyone hear that?

Didn't you hear what he said?

I said it's more of a double D game.

You know what I was thinking of was Darksiders 2.

And that's the only of the Darksiders games I played.

I think it might have just shown up for free on, I don't remember what it was, what it would have been at the time because that was like an Xbox 360 game, right?

Killer 7,

No More Heroes.

There was like a whole era of games where I feel like the only games that I was playing were AA games.

Darksiders 2 is great.

It's fun.

It's also really fucking stupid.

You're just death.

You ride around on a horse.

Your horse is called like plague or something.

It's just like it's not subtle at all.

You just run hacking and slashing.

That's pretty much all it is.

I've never played a single turn around and fight things.

I should mess around with that.

Yeah, the most recent one.

I didn't play the most recent.

Was the most recent one?

Three or four?

I don't remember.

And then there are triple-A games that feel like double-A games, like Cyberpunk 2077 on pawn release.

Yeah.

Or, you know what?

Final Fantasy Stranger in Paradise.

I think that's a double A game.

Yeah, that's a short short.

That's That's a double A game.

That's a double A game.

It looks, feels,

and is one.

Yeah.

Like, don't you want to fight chaos?

I don't care.

Who the fuck are you?

Fuck Chaos.

Chaos.

Well, so that's another thing that you'll see is that a game that has a big license and, but, but it's not like, it's like a little guidan or it's like not a mainline entry will sometimes meet the

criteria.

Yeah, Crystal Chronicles, but I was thinking of like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is one, or

the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance slash the Champions of Norrath, which was the EverQuest when they rebranded it for EverQuest.

Those are just like top-down

isometric hack and slash games.

They're just dungeon crawlers, but they were super fun.

And it's just like, again, this game just exists to be a video game.

You're just running around as a, you know, as a dwarf with an axe, just like chopping up gelatinous cubes or whatever the fuck and collecting loot.

But it's a very fun, it's a very fun gameplay cycle.

And I like that there isn't a moment where we have this, you know, big, richly animated cutscene that's going to take, you know, four minutes of real time to watch.

Fortnite is a weird version of this because it, I think, started as a double A game and then became a triple A game.

Because like the early, if you look at the early assets, the animation, the lack of an ability to run, the lack of modes, like it was, it was a pretty stripped down experience.

Could you imagine if you started playing it when you couldn't run?

You would never want to play it.

I would never have played it.

But like the like the locomotion in the early builds of that game are super slow.

And it's it's also like flat shaded.

Like you can't drive a car in it.

You can't like you the houses like everything about it is very double A and it has over time through sucking money out of everybody's pockets has become a massive partially owned by Disney triple-A game.

Yeah, I mean, you could certainly speak with more authority on that specifically.

Like, I don't really know how to classify

a live service game because a lot of these are like, they kind of start smaller and they iterate and they become these big, sprawling, you know, much more ambitious designs.

And yeah, maybe that, maybe that is it.

Maybe they start as double A and turn into AAA.

One thing I was thinking, I was just looking for other people's assessments of what qualifies as a double-A game.

And this was one that was interesting just because we recently did an episode on these games with Mike Drucker.

But

I was reading someone saying the two-point games are kind of AA games.

I was like, I can kind of see that.

You know, two-point museum, two-point hospital,

which we discussed on here, two-point campus.

It's like, yeah, I mean, this is, but

there's also an element of like,

it kind of feels like an indie game too, you know, and that's where these definitions get nebulous.

And there's also like, how helpful is that?

Because also a lot of times I think when we're talking about a double A game, what we really mean is a game that fits into one of the categories of AAA games.

And a lot of times those are character action games or open world RPGs, but just has a more limited design.

When you told me that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was a double A game, it blew my mind.

I saw some people classify the Kingdom Come games as A games, and I think that might just, again, be because of it's coming from an independent studio

and it's a, you know, it's a smaller team size.

But I know that the level of detail in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which I haven't played, is, you know, it seems pretty impressive from the club side of saying.

Yeah, a definition of double-A that I saw

is

that

people were classifying it in this way was like triple-A and looks only, kind of, where, like, you could sort of get away with, like, like, like Claire Obscure looks like a triple-A game, plays like a triple-A game, but it's a

sort of mid-budget, a mid-price point.

Probably a smaller team made this thing.

But something like Kingdom Come Deliverance looks like a AAA game because of how,

you know,

what's the word I'm looking for?

Big it is.

How big it is.

Yeah, how vast its scope is.

That's the word I was looking for.

Big.

I couldn't think of the word big.

Oh, my pickles of my Serwa dad.

My shoes in the Myler shoes in the jar.

Some games for me that come to mind are more from recent recent years, though.

Sifu is a great

AA game.

I didn't play Sifu, but I heard

it was all received.

Sifu fucking rules.

It is so great.

I haven't finished it.

I would like to get back to it at some point.

That studio has another game coming out that is nothing like Sifu at all.

It's a soccer game, and it's just soccer.

Like, I'm interested.

It's called, I can't remember what it's called.

It's called like Rebound or something.

Plain soccer.

It looks cool.

cool, it's sort of like an action soccer game, yeah.

Um, hi-fi rush, uh, oh, right, Tango Game Works did their other, they have other big evil within, I think, is their other big games, which are triple-A games, um, and then they do um hi-fi rush, which is the sort of rhythm action game.

Uh, yeah, you mentioning hi-fi rush made me think of neon white, but I was like, I guess neon white is more of just like an indie game, but it does kind of have that sort of feel of a double A game, yeah.

I agree.

was mirror's edge a double a or a triple a game wow great question

because that was a game that had a lot of hype but then kind of landed softly but it was yeah and and it undersold but it was a really cool design the idea of and man there no one's really i actually neon white is probably the closest it's come to feeling like like mirror's edge even though that game does have some uh some you know some weaponry it's it's like just the idea of basing a game around first person platforming yeah is

and and also just like, again, a sense of speed in first person.

Like, that was a really cool design.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe that might be a double A game.

When I was thinking through this, my big swing on what is a double A game, and I wonder how this will land in the room,

was the first Demon Souls for PS3 kind of a double A game?

You sign up on Bachelor of Game.

No, I'm not sure.

I kind of just like you like the game, and it's pretty limited in terms of what it's trying to do.

It is, yeah, but it's an enormously successful design, and then they're able to parlay that into the Dark Souls series, which is much more ambitious.

So, the world might be mended.

What about these types of games?

Because there are games that are like Uncharted, and

the Sony

Spider-Man games are hugely triple-A, but then they have other games.

They have like the Lost Legacy comes out, and it's like, would we say that's a double-A game?

I don't know, because they're still just like, this is these are first-party games with enormous budgets for their.

I think they're still, they still kind of fit in the triple-A, but I don't fucking know.

I can think of a AA game that was packaged inside of a triple-A game,

which is factions for The Last of Us.

So you've got like your main triple-A experience, and then you have kind of a well-thought-out, but not exceedingly deep online mode where you can like battle other people, which is not the focus of the game and wasn't even repackaged upon re-releases.

You can't play factions unless you play the original game.

So that feels like a double A game that's inside a triple-A game.

Have you messed around with No Return?

No.

I messed around with it pretty recently.

It sort of undercuts the entire message of the game.

Oh, yeah.

It's like an endless killing mode, basically.

But it fucking rocks.

It's really good.

But it probably wouldn't scratch the.

It's a roguelike.

It wouldn't scratch the

factions.

It's because you're not playing against another human being.

Yeah.

It's what I need.

Yes.

How to get my blood boiling.

I don't know if this applies to Psychonauts 2, but I feel like Psychonauts 1 was kind of a AA game.

Like it just, I don't know.

It feels like that had that same sort of,

you know,

it wasn't a

great game.

It wasn't like the kind of a release with a sort of fanfare of like a

first-party mascot platformer of the era.

Right.

I um I think that the majority of my game collection is double-A games because when a AAA game comes out, everybody plays it.

Everybody basically likes it if it's your kind of game, right?

But when you find a AA game that you really connect with, it becomes something very special to you and a little bit more of a,

I don't know, like a smaller audience that you can communicate with about that game online.

Like there are plenty of people who have enjoyed Katamari Damasi.

Sure, great.

But is it going to be the game that people list first when they're thinking about the PlayStation 2?

Probably not.

And so you're already self-selecting the games that you connect with and the audience that you connect with.

Whereas if you say to somebody, oh, I really liked Call of Duty Modern Warfare, like that's going to be a much larger net that you cast.

Right?

Yeah.

So

it feels more specialized.

It feels more personal.

And it feels more, I don't know, kind of like a secret that you have, even though these are huge multi-million selling games.

I think I got something.

All right.

Red Dead Revolver, double A.

Red Dead Redemption, triple A.

So sometimes we have the proof of concept that leads to a,

you know, or the glorified tech demo that leads to the actual, you know, product in the next iteration.

Bully, double A.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah, that's okay.

So that's that, that's a, that's a good, that's interesting because, yeah, the rock star obviously was making at the same time uh you know the Grand Theft Auto franchise, but yeah, they have a little they're like, oh, let's make this bully game.

Let's see what's going on here.

And I think I feel like the same thing, I like, I wonder how to classify the Yakuza franchise slash like a dragon franchise, but it does kind of feel like when they make a game like came out earlier this year, you know, like a dragon pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is like that feels like they're taking, that's not a mainline entry, but they're kind of doing like a little bit more of a double A.

They're reusing some of the existing content,

some of the existing mini games and putting them into different contexts.

That feels like they're kind of doing like a double A riff on this existing franchise, which happens sometimes.

That Prince of Persia Lost Crown sort of is double A to me.

Only in that.

Also, it's like it was a smaller studio that Ubisoft had and then they were like, this game didn't.

It sold pretty well.

But then they shut the whole thing down.

I can think of a game that started as AAA and became AA.

Oh.

Which is the Sonic franchise.

Sonic's double-A?

Sonic Frontiers is.

Yeah, that's a double- that feels like a double A game.

It's a double A game.

I'm just playing it, but like it rocks.

Yeah, it fucking rules.

But like your initial Sonic games, I mean, not that 16-bit, because we've already said that the criteria for these AAA games is not that they really, really apply to the 16-bit era, but your first Sonic games, and certainly Sonic Adventure, it was everything that they had, like throwing everything at that game.

And by the time you get to Frontiers, after you've had Sonic turn into a werewolf and you've had Shadow holding a gun,

like that, then

it's a double A game.

Sonic kissing a human lady.

That was maybe their last attempt at making it a triple-A game.

I also think that there are AA games that are inside of franchises for AAA games.

So there's like Final Fantasy Dirge of Cerberus,

which is like a double A Final Fantasy VII spin-off.

Or

Crisis Core or fucking...

First Soldier was a double A online experience.

Yeah.

There's no, I mean...

I was just thinking about the bouncer, which I guess is a...

Was it a double A game?

I'm thinking about the Bouncer.

Oh, my God.

The Bouncer.

What about something like Gun?

Yes, A.

I never played Gun, but I remember Gun.

I mean, it feels like it.

I don't fucking know.

Or what was that game that was...

Oh, it's just Roman numerals 13.

They just like remastered it in the last couple of years or something.

I think that's just a section of Kingdom Hearts that you like.

Oh, wait.

wait.

I'm thinking of Organization 13.

A couple more I wrote down here.

I don't know if this really qualifies, but I mentioned the Rocksteady games and I mentioned obviously Arkham City, Arkham Knight.

Those are like triple-A games.

But I remember playing the original Arkham Asylum, which is just so...

And I mean, I'll be honest,

I think my favorite of that franchise.

I just have such a soft spot for that game and just how great the combat felt at the time and what a novelty it was

to be Batman just like fucking guys up.

But it's like that game is so confined, you know,

it's so limited, and it's just like, I don't know, this kind of has a double A feel to it.

Yeah, not to make my list too heavy on superhero games, but my other big, big swing

I was gonna throw out here.

I know it's absurd to say because this is one of the greatest games ever made, and it came from Valve, but doesn't Portal 1 kind of feel like a double A game, or does that feel more like an indie game?

I mean, it it feels like a double A game.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have a lot of it.

It's so singular, it's kind of hard to classify, but

I mean, it's not, it's not an indie game in the traditional sense.

Yeah, so I would say that it has to be a double A game because it certainly wasn't a triple A title.

Like, it wasn't like, have you heard Portal is coming?

It was kind of like, hey, here's this, check out this thing that I've made.

You know, it was fun.

We got some, you know, got some students from DigiPen and kind of made a, they let them make a new version of their game, their design.

It's kind of a just like a major flex.

Like, yeah, yeah, here's just, here's just this little game that's one of the greatest games ever made.

Here's a

it's like a five-hour experience.

Ranch, did you finish your portal playthrough?

I did.

I did it in one sitting.

What's your overall assessment of that game?

I really loved it.

Are you going to play Portal 2 or did you play Portal 2?

I have not played it yet.

Okay.

It is on my list.

Okay, well, there you go.

Let us know when you get to it.

Portal 1, AA.

Portal 2, triple A.

Yeah, I think that escalation often seems to happen.

I could just do that for an hour.

Give me two games.

You have.

I think that's what we have.

This one, but then this one.

I'm not saying that it is the budget of a double A game, but I'm saying within the context of the larger franchise, is Super Mario Sunshine the AA Super Mario game to the rest of the franchise's triple-A's.

Interesting.

I don't know because I still feel like they were trying to,

they wanted that one to basically be, you know, on the same level of

64 and Galaxy, whatever.

It was just kind of a misfire.

But what I think I maybe would land is I feel like maybe Super Mario Wonder is more like that because it's just like, again, it's a kind of a,

I don't know.

It's so refined.

It's so polished.

It's kind of hard to call it anything about triple-A.

It's so fucking good.

It's so fucking good, but it also is just like it's it's not as ambitious as like a Super Mario, obviously, you know?

I don't know.

Probably anything first-party Nintendo should probably be.

It's weird that they make like one big Mario game per generation.

I was just thinking that same thing right now.

It's like it's kind of, I mean, obviously, look, Mario's huge.

We all know Mario.

Yeah.

I think there's not, there's just not that, there's not that many 3D Mario games when you really stop and think about it for how popular a character is.

There's 64, Sunshine,

Galaxy 1 and 2.

I'm sure I'm missing one.

No, I'm not 3D.

3D Land and 3D World.

3D Land and 3D World.

And that's kind of.

An Odyssey.

Oh,

an Odyssey.

I forgot.

Seven.

I guess it's.

Are we missing any?

It's a lot.

The paper Mario games are like a different thing.

Yeah, yeah.

No, as far as mainline 3D entries, I guess that is it.

It's only seven.

Yeah.

And you could argue that even though it is an extraordinary game, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is kind of like a DLC.

It's like a huge expansion on the first one, but it is more of those kinds of levels.

It was so fucking weird to have a Nintendo GameCube and then Super Mario Sunshine comes out and you're like, hey, man, you play New Mario?

It sucks.

Like if there was a new Mario game, it was bad.

I don't know what to do with myself.

I've sat here on this very show

and I've said, Super Mario Sunshine is bad.

And then from both of you have told me, no, it's not.

Don't say that.

Wait, I've said that?

I think.

I don't think I've ever been like, Super Mario Sunshine is great.

Maybe if there's a clip of me saying it, you know what I'm saying?

You know what I'm remembering?

What's that?

It's that I don't like Super Mario 64 that much.

Yeah, no, that's a fucking good game.

I only played the DS one.

I did like it on the DS, but I've never played the original one.

It's great.

It's great.

It is a little clumsy to play these days, but it's still just an incredible display.

When I get my fucking game room set up, dude, you're going to come over and you're going to play it as meant to be played, and I think you're going to find it beautiful.

Okay.

You're going to watch Mario fall into the lava.

He's going to burn his butt and go,

that's really funny.

More characters in video games should be able to burn their little butts.

These are so weird.

It should happen.

It's like I'm on the same page with you and I'm like communicating and then suddenly you become totally different creatures.

You don't think it's funny when he burns his little butt?

That's very funny.

I think it's not.

No, I guess I don't.

Ranch, you like it when Mario burns his little butt?

Yeah.

It'd be great if that was

in like a God of War.

Now I'm thinking of a YouTube video

thumbnail.

I just burned my butt for 10 hours.

I remember, like, we did a Mario Sunshine episode, and I didn't beat Mario Sunshine back in the day, and I finally beat Super Mario Sunshine when we covered it here, and it still ultimately just doesn't really work as a game.

I don't know why we went on this tangent exactly, but it's like it's...

I said, because

is Sunshine the AA of a triple-A franchise?

And I think it's like the worst of them.

But it's still, I don't know if it quite qualifies just because it certainly had aspirations to be like a AAA game, you know?

Yeah.

And also triple-A game doesn't mean good.

So I guess we should clarify that.

It was trying very hard to be that sort of game.

It didn't ultimately work.

Right, because however you want to classify it.

That Sony game that was like out for like a week was like a huge triple-A game.

Yeah, Concorde was like a massive triple-A game.

Yeah, and I think that's like, you know, however all the Assassin's Creeds have been received, they've all been AAA games.

They've all, you know, had that level of.

that scale of budget applied to them.

Is Helldivers 2 AA?

I was thinking about this.

And again, I just don't know quite how to classify live service games.

Yeah.

I'm thinking of these mostly when I'm thinking of these, I'm thinking of single-player experiences, but it certainly has that feel.

It certainly has that vibe.

I mean, it has that aesthetic.

And it's a great game, great sounding game, but it's like, it kind of has that sense of fun of a double A game.

It's just like so gloriously dumb.

It rocks.

It's really, really fun.

Super Earth is like the best joke in a game last year.

I've been thinking, it might be the best joke in a game in the last like 10 years.

Jokes in games are not fucking funny.

How dare you?

I'm trying to think of the last time I played a game and I laughed out loud.

I know it was recently.

I'm laughing all the time.

This guy's always chuckling.

I think a lot of games have really, have really good writing.

Yeah, there was something we played recently that I was like, that was so funny.

I can't remember now what it was.

It's gone.

It's gone.

I don't know.

I mean, like, I think that says, I like what you were saying, Heather.

It's just like, I maybe just generally like these games more than I like AAA games.

Because the thing about AAA games, like, I know what I'm in for.

I know I'm not going to, basically, the first 90 minutes, I'm not going to play this game for one second.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'll maybe have a minute where I get to run around, a little tutorial combat section, but the rest of this is going to just be like lore dumps and lengthy cutscenes.

And it's just like, it's kind of tedious to get into these games.

Yeah.

And then I'm committed to a 120-hour experience.

And I'm just like, all right.

Is Death Stranding an indie game?

I was just about to say this affectionately.

I can't wait to be playing Death Stranding and then get to a part where I have to watch an entire movie before I can play it again.

Look, can't wait.

Look, this is the, I feel like when Henry Hill is beating the shit out of Karen's boss and Goodfellas, Hideo Kajima can do whatever the fuck he wants.

I don't care.

He has different rules.

Absolutely.

No, yeah.

If you can do it at the level that he does it at, then yeah, go for it.

But if you can't compete on the same level as him, don't enter the slam thump conference.

But no, but also there's like,

it's not even that because I think a lot of times this is, this is more coming top down from like, you know,

publishers or it's just like, hey, this is the expectation of the marketplace that this is a thing that's going to be front-loaded with a lot of cinematics or they're just going to have a

ton of cinematics throughout of it, throughout the run of it.

It is going to be sequences of gameplay where you earn a movie, you get to watch.

And

I just kind of feel like that's, we're all kind of tired of that.

We're all kind of tired of a thing we always talk about, but like a mini map that's dotted with a bunch of different punctuation marks and endless series of side quests that all feel very samey, all the collectibles.

I mean, like a lot of these games, a lot of these, these open world,

you know, 3D character action games or RPGs, just, they all feel very samey.

And it's nice to have

a breath of fresh air like a Claire Obscure that is just like, hey, this is a narrower focus.

This is a much more linear experience.

This has a clear point of view behind it.

We have drilled down on what makes these games fun and compelling.

And you just get to enjoy that for its own sake.

Yeah, I am very tired of the open world.

Every game is like an open world thing now.

Yeah.

And I say that, and I know that I'm going to play like three more, maybe more this year.

Hey, shall we do a segment?

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

All right, I've got some dudes from video games, and we'll see if our producer Ranch knows who they are.

It's another edition of Dude Ranch.

And hey, in honor of Ranch's birthday, these are all dudes from games that are celebrating a birthday.

These are all games that turned 20 years old this year.

Wow.

So I'll be saying dudes from games released in 2005.

This is good.

It's good.

All right.

And let me keep score here as we're going.

And these are all older than Ranch, right?

Then?

If it's from 2005?

Hey, I think Ranch is celebrating her 19th birthday.

Okay, so first up, this one should be a gimme.

Does Ranch know Leon Kennedy?

I'm going to say yes.

I'm going to say yes.

Two yeses.

Ranch, who is Leon Kennedy?

Leon Kennedy.

It's from Resident Evil.

There you go.

That's right.

Resident Evil 4 specifically.

All right, you both get a point here.

Next up,

Kratos.

He'd be a funny guy for Ranch to know, I think.

I'm going to say yes.

I'm going to say yes.

Two yeses.

Ranch, who is Kratos?

I know what he looks like.

He's bald.

Okay.

And he's from

a Viking game.

I'm going to give it to you.

Wait, what?

God of Horror.

Yeah, you got it.

She got it.

She got it.

It's God of War a Viking game.

There is a version of it that is.

All right, next up.

The original, though, the one that came out in 2005, God of War, that was the first game, and that was more in Greek mythology.

All right, next up.

The Prince of Persia.

Why is it so funny?

Is it because we're considering if she doesn't know them?

It'd be kind of, I mean,

I'm going to say no.

I'm going to say no, also.

All right, two no's.

Ranch, who is the Prince of Persia?

Is he from a Disney game?

I think you both get it.

No, he's from.

Yes, because of the movie.

He's from the

Prince of Persia franchise.

And that specific game was Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones came out in 2005.

And so this is a good point.

You both got a point.

You both died at three.

This list is an attack on me because usually the information that these games are 20 years old rips you guys to your core.

What I'm dealing with right now is these are my games.

All right, next up, Wanderer or Wanda.

Oh, I don't even think I know who that is.

You do know who this is.

No, no, I do.

I do.

I do.

No, she doesn't know.

No, she doesn't know.

She doesn't know.

Who knows?

Ranch, who is Wander/slash Wanda?

I don't even have a guess.

You both get a point.

Wander is from Shadow of the Colossus.

That's right.

Yes.

20 years old.

Have you ever seen the Adam Sandler Don Cheadle film Rain Over Me about grieving his family's loss in 9-11?

No.

Shadow of the Colossus is featured in that game.

Heavily.

Heavily.

Do we know if the movie was the movie and then they were like, he needs to be playing a video game and it just so happened to be Shadow of the Classes?

We talked about that on the episode.

Is the whole thing was it came from the editor, like one of the editors, one of the people working in post-production, uh, you know, we that like it talked at length about how, like, yeah, they need a video game, and he had the suggestion of, like, hey, this is thematically about grieving loss and about, you know, trying to

reclaim something

a love you cannot have anymore.

And, like, this feels like it could kind of tie in.

And enormous things collapsing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so it all, it all, uh, it all works out.

It's a smart decision.

Yeah.

All right, next up: Sly Cooper.

Does Ranch know who Sly Cooper is?

No.

Heather says no, hard no.

I think I'm going to say yes on this one.

So this is where it will diverge.

Ranch, who is Sly Cooper?

Sly Cooper is a character in the Sonic games.

All right, Heather gets a point.

Matt doesn't get a point.

Ranch, what the fuck?

Sorry.

Sly 3, Honor Among Thieves, 20 years old this year, Matt.

The third one.

That's alarming information.

Sly Cooper is star of Sly Cooper.

He's just a Sly Cooper franchise and the Thievious Raccooness,

a raccoon.

He's a burglar.

And he's kind of hot.

What?

What?

Yeah, I think he is.

Maybe he is kind of hot.

He's kind of hot in the same way that the animated Robin Hood is hot.

I don't, you know, I've never really thought of

Sly Cooper with any sort of.

He's got Riz.

Yeah,

with any sort of like lustful desires, but he is a good-looking guy.

I guess Animated Robin Hood is hot.

Everybody thinks that Animated Robin Hood is hot.

Yeah, he's fucking hot as shit.

Oh, he looks good.

Yeah, Sly Cooper.

You know what?

Sly Cooper's pretty hot.

Look at him.

That's a handsome.

And he's kind of jacked.

Chuck.

No.

No.

I'm with Heather.

Okay.

He's looking good.

All right, next up.

I still like to be so wrong.

Joanna Dark.

Nope.

Heather says no.

This is a, this is, yeah, this is a no.

Two no's.

Ranch, who is Joanna Dark?

Joanna Dark is from Dust Stranding.

No, Joanna Dark is from.

It does kind of sound like a Kojima name.

No, from Perfect Dark Zero, which turns 20 years old.

You both get a point.

I want to do a quick shout out here on the podcast to somebody who doesn't listen to the podcast.

The guy that I used to play Perfect Dark with when it came out, like my number one buddy, who we would play and play and play, he lived above me, got nominated for a Tony today.

Oh, wow!

That's amazing!

That's pretty fucking cool.

That's awesome!

Wow, congrats!

Yeah, shout out to Marco Paguilla for the orchestrations of Buena Vista Social Club.

Wow, it's pretty fucking cool.

Shall I do the next name?

You really want to, so let's do it.

Dry bones,

god damn it.

No, I'm gonna say yes.

No,

Heather says no, Matt says yes.

There is a split here.

here ranch who's dry bones

dry bones is one of the little guys in mario kart

wow yes you matt gets a point it is all knotted up uh yes you are correct

dry bones made his debut the the skeletal uh koopa made his debut in mario kart ds which is 20 years old i love dry bones Yeah, dry bones is my guy.

What makes it funny is the

seriousness with which Nick is saying the names.

That's what's funny.

But also, there's like a sort of like dry bones.

We're so familiar with the names.

Yeah.

So the idea that somebody could not know like who dry bones is is funny to us because we're so innately familiar with who they are.

It's like a movie.

You're doing a movie podcast and you're asking if the producer knows who Indiana Jones is.

Have you ever heard of the movie Jaw?

But I think another aspect which our audio listeners can't perceive is that every time I say one of these names, Ranch is covering her face with both hands.

All right, final, final one.

And this could be the decision.

This will determine it.

John Madden.

Nick, I have to say it.

Yeah.

You're a fool for this one.

Oh, no.

I'm going to say no.

Heather says no.

I'm going to say yes because one of us has to win.

Wow.

Ranch, who is John Madden?

John Madden

is

the guy from Madden 2K.

Madden 2K.

You know what?

I think you both win.

I was really hoping that Ranch wasn't going to say one of the guys from Good Charlotte.

Quick bonus question for the two of you.

Which Madden game is it the 20th anniversary of?

Bit of a trick question.

05.

I'm going to say.

Oh, it's 04.

Wait, no, it's...

It can't be 06.

You guessed three times before Heather guessed once.

I'm going to say it was a reboot that was just called Madden.

That's a good guess, but no, it was actually Madden 06 because sports games are always the next year of,

they're like car years.

They're always the next chronological year when they're released.

Hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore underscore sard.

Ranch, you back up streaming yet?

Just got my PC back.

Hey, nice.

I will be.

Awesome.

What are you planning on streaming?

I got to finish Resident Evil 7.

Do everything.

Everything go okay with the PC.

I had to get my motherboard fixed and my CPU fixed and then a cooler replace.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Well, hopefully, you weren't out of there for there, wasn't too much damage financially.

But glad you're back up and running again.

Yard underscore underscore sard to check out Ranch's stream.

Our music is by Ben Prenti, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, get played merch is available at kinshipgoods.com.

You can find the link in the show description.

Also, check out Get Animate, our sister show over on Patreon.

Matt, what's up this week?

Oh, well, this week, we're venturing into into unknown territory, aren't we?

Because it's animehem, and all month long on the get anime feed, we're going to be watching a random anime that the listeners have suggested.

And we're going to use the ranch number generator to decide which random anime we will be watching that week.

It's going to be fucking chaos.

I've heard that there are more than a thousand entries.

Wow.

We'll see what gets picked.

We are going in blind with a randomly selected first episode of

a random anime series, and we will see how that all plays out over at patreon.com/slash get played.

And you know what?

Something got played this week.

Double-A games.

You can't say that like that.

Yeah, it was fine.

Like, you could have said it like a normal man.

Oh, the pickle fell out of my shoe.

I like this pickle guy.

He's just like me for real.

That was a head gum podcast.