We Play, You Play: Astro Bot

This is a head gun podcast.

Oh wow!

Oh my god, I think

is that possible?

I think that tree is rapping.

He's like singing a song.

Yeah!

Got some bark and you got some leaves, so go ahead and stay with me.

Oh, right!

I might love this.

Unfortunately, I do have to put a mole parking lot here.

So, I'll be your friend.

Alright, well,

I don't know how long he's gonna keep rapping, so I guess I just gotta start this.

And here we go.

Alright, just gotta make another perpendicular cut.

And there we go.

You have been on me and free sleep.

We gotta quit.

We gotta put like eight rows of

parking here for that JC Penny.

Sorry, buddy.

I'm so sorry.

Well, that's his story, don't you know?

I guess that tree just had to go.

We rescue robot Kratos and sail through the galaxy on the back of a dual sense as we play you play joyous PS5 Platformer Astrobot 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, Nick Weiger.

That's me, fellow host, Nick Weiger, along with my fellow host, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where this week we are talking about our We Play You Play for the month of September.

It's Astro Bot.

I am Astro Bot.

I am astrobot.

I've had that shit stuck in my head for like fucking a month.

Yeah.

It's really, the music's really good.

We should have pulled some music to play in this episode.

I mean, we still can.

That's how we can do it.

We can do it in post.

We can talk about a tree song.

Fucking tree song.

I'm a rapping tree, and I'm here to say it.

The lyrics are way better than that.

Barely.

God, I love it.

You help me.

It's like that shit.

He has a part where he's like, jump inside my mouth.

Jump inside my mouth.

You make the, I mean, god damn it.

There's so much to fucking talk about in this game.

You can make, you can get it.

You get an achievement for blasting the tree in the face with water while he's singing and you don't hear any of the words.

You're just like, whoa, whoa, my God.

Wait, that's an achievement?

Yeah, it's so fun.

So I didn't realize that.

That's so funny.

I got that achievement because I would do it like just organically.

We should talk about it when we talked about it.

We're so excited to talk about Astrobot.

A lot of Astro.

This is a WePlay, you play that we decided to do

because this game came out and I think just sort of exceeded everyone's expectations.

And we'll get into that.

I am Astrobot.

I am Astro.

God bless Astrobot.

And God bless everyone who worked on this game.

We're going to talk about that in a little bit.

And God bless the United States of America.

Thank you, Matt.

Finally.

let's get into it

fuck is up with everything that's going on everything everything is so crazy i'm sick of it you two you you came here for a video game podcast but we're going hard politics this week yeah

yeah these guys over on this side these other guys over on this side i was gonna say nick the guys on the other side too are doing it too and i'm here in the middle like what's going on with all this yeah well yeah actually breaking news this is a centrist podcast we're radical centrists here

I am Kamala.

This is the thing.

This is part of why.

I am done.

No, no, no.

Endorses Kamala and Aeris.

I'm glad that this is a completely apolitical property that you just get to just sort of immerse yourself in and

have joy, like just experience joy for a little bit and forget about everything else that's going on.

It's fucking time.

It's just having a good time.

I'm so happy that a game tried to make us happy for a change.

Yeah, video game-ass video game that's just pure fun i will say i was reading there was a recent patch

there was a recent patch for astrobot and i was reading the the notes for what it was astrobot has the woke mind virus oh boy i mean we could also we could also talk about this kotaku article which is that pisses me off

read the headline astrobot's soulless devotion to the sony brand is a real problem by cole croneman to say a game like this has no soul is absolutely baffling to me.

I haven't read the piece past the headline, but I'll say what I think.

No, I mean, that seems like a good, you know, a good, like, hey, attention grabber headline.

Maybe there's more to it to that in the full piece.

But

I will say that I did not find this to be empty nostalgia fan service.

There's a lot of soulless,

you know, like

patronizing

nostalgia bait out there.

And this felt like it was absolutely not that.

This felt like actually kind of like the purer version of it.

But we'll get to that one.

We'll get to that.

We got so much to talk about with Astrobot.

We can't just be talking about Astrobot before we get to the Astrobot part.

Yeah.

And also, we have all this news to talk about.

Are we going to talk about news?

We're not really a news podcast.

The news.

Oh, the news generally?

No.

There was a car accident on the 405.

Yeah, expect traffic on the 405.

Should we talk about...

What should we talk about?

What we should talk about is other video games we're playing right now before we get an Astrobot?

The question I will ask everyone is, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

I is me the Resident Evil Merchant and I was driving with a

better

Okay,

this has to be addressed.

This is you're in you're in bad shape Resident Evil Merchant.

That was awful.

That was so bad.

It was incomprehensible.

And I know that we also concerning.

We were doing like four and a half minutes of bullshit up top, but then you come in here like that and add like a shit-sized cherry on top of a bad Sunday.

I was just, I was trying to, I was trying to play the vibe.

I was trying to play the vibe.

You guys were like sitting around, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll play it fast and loose.

So I played it fast and loose.

You look sick.

That felt, listening to that, felt like watching surveillance video of like an oil tanker driving into a 7-Eleven.

I was genuinely upset.

Yeah.

I am a little under the weather.

Okay.

You shouldn't be here.

No, no, I'm fine.

You don't have Laplaga, do you?

If you have Laplaga, stay away from me.

I don't have La Blaga.

I don't have La Blaga.

I will say,

don't eat the fish

in Echo Park Lake.

I feel like this was a lesson you learned previously.

And are like, did not

have had to relearn.

This is a lake in a public park that's not well maintained.

It's not particularly sanitary.

I think a lot of carbon.

Particularly colored ones are bad for you.

For some reason, I would be like, those are the ones I'm not eating first.

The bright ones?

No,

I made a

salad bar, but only fish.

And

this is trying to like you, you go to the salad bar, like in a Ponderosa,

and you

have like five or six

fish out, and you take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you make a nice blade for yourself.

Yeah, kind of describing like a raw bar, like a bunch of, you know, sashimi that's left out.

None of the fish in Echo Park Lake are good for you.

They're all

bad.

Bad for you, so I'm a little under the weather, and I tried to blade off smooth and casual.

Look, I like the idea of foraging.

I like the idea of like, hey, we're going to waste, not, want, not if we can find something.

Do you know it's legal to you can get any fruit that overhangs on any fence in Los Angeles?

I am aware of that.

And you can scavenge that and eat it.

Yeah.

It's like a real-life video game.

That's a good, that's a, that's a kind of a good, you know,

the thing in terms of, again, just like not, not wasting, not, not creating excess trash, but like, also just be careful out there.

I will say,

having reached up and grabbed a fruit from a tree that was overhanging, every time that I've done that, it's easily been the worst bite of fruit I've ever had.

There's some low-quality fruit that's just available.

Yeah, yeah.

The avocados that I've pulled from a tree in Los Angeles have bones in them.

Are you sure this is not like the pit?

What?

That's not.

Avocados have like a pit inside of them.

That's not bone.

That's not their skeleton.

No.

No.

I mean, I guess it's akin to it.

I guess so, but I guess does the avocado...

Does the pit of the avocado...

Huh.

I would not call it the bone.

No, I wouldn't.

I wouldn't call it the bone the bone.

I mean, that means.

But similar to a bone, you should not eat it.

You should eat around it.

Yeah, there's a whole commercial about this guy, this crazy guy, this KFC guy.

And he's freaking out.

He ate the avocado bone.

He ate the bones from the chicken.

He thought he ate the bones from the chicken.

You do not want to eat it.

I mean, this was like 15 years ago, but yes, this was a commercial that really wasn't.

I don't remember when it was.

It did have a lot of time.

It's not a recent campaign.

I didn't see it.

I didn't see it.

Yeah, why would you have?

But, you know,

you usually might have aired before your game came out.

That's not, no, no, that's not true.

If it was a 15 years ago, I was like, I'm guesstimating 15 years.

I don't know when the I ate the bones spawned.

I ate the bones.

Let's see.

Don't

ask at the grocery store if they have boneless avocado because I'm now aware of why they were upset at me.

Okay, 2013.

I wasn't off by much, but it was a little bit more recent than I thought.

Yeah, I still haven't seen that gamer.

I'm looking forward to the notes app apology, apology, Nick.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

Hey, wait, let me ask you the question of the week.

What have you been playing?

Mana, Bodaka,

where I've been.

Okay, thank you so much, Resident Evil 4 Merchant.

Look, previous weeks, I've been playing Astrobot, right?

Yep.

I've been playing that.

And I had to, I had to stop a game that I've jumped back into.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, I'm so excited.

I think.

Star Wars Outlaws, baby.

That's what I'm doing tonight.

Hell yeah.

Let me just tell you something about this game.

Let me hear it.

I talked in the past.

We've talked in the past.

Yep.

About how the game is good.

Yeah, it's a good game.

And folks, I'm here to tell you, I still really, really like it.

It's great.

I'm really enjoying it.

I've the thing about games like this and games of this size and scope is that there's you can be pulled in a bunch of different directions pretty immediately.

Like I have in my journal,

in your journal, it logs like...

your main quest and like all the other different types of side quests, but it like it jumps or it

it um sorts the types of side quests you know it might be a syndicate quest or like uh an emergent quest that you can find like out in the world or whatever or uh some sort of uh other like type of side quests it puts them all together i feel like i have like 13 of those just like in my journal and i'm i'm overwhelmed by that by the amount of things that i really had to do and i uh

haven't left the first planet.

Yeah.

I'm on the first planet still.

i just how many hours have you spent uh on the first planet um i mean i could look in my playstation x right now i i think that that's the pleasure of a ubisoft game i know that people complain about it but i love just you drop in you do like a little bit little quest a little side quest and then you you you pop back out of the game and oh read a book um this is actually pretty bad um

I've played this game for 22 hours.

Holy shit.

That feels like you should, I have not played this game.

That feels like you should have left the first planet.

It really feels like I should as well.

But there's just so much going on.

And, you know, some of the sequences, I will say,

and maybe we talk about this in a future episode.

There are some stealth sequences that are instant fail.

Yes.

I never loved that.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not a fan of that.

Where if you get seen.

And so like sometimes you have to really figure out and like finesse how you're going to get through a certain area.

But that's not, but that's, that's the sort of, that's like an annoyance, but not like a deal breaker for you.

Absolutely.

Correct.

Yeah.

It does have a funny thing, though, that appears on screen, right, Matt?

Yeah, it just, like, I can't even remember what the language of it is, but I think it says like caught.

Yeah.

Like in like big letters.

And it takes up.

Not just some of the screen, not like the Grand Theft Auto wasted.

It's the whole screen.

Yeah.

You're immediately, you're like, I fucked up so bad.

And K Ves is like, all right, all right.

You're an outlaw.

That's the worst case scenario.

Yeah, you do not want to be caught.

I just wish there was, here's what I wish.

I wish that in a stealth base, because you know I hate stealth.

I wish that there was a

nearly impossible threshold that you could cross if you did get seen, that you had the opportunity to just try and blast your way out of that room and reset conflict, or that you could, against all odds, try and take on the entire base.

Yeah, that would be really, really cool.

And just like an interesting, then, you know, that could also add to your,

like, how the syndicates think of you, these different crime bosses that you're either working for or against or double crossing.

I have been allegiant to

the Crimson Dawn at this point.

Yeah, the best outfits.

Yeah, the best outfits.

But I've also, I recently just double-crossed them in a, in a move that I'm not sure how it will play out yet.

But something that I've also, I just met this cool new character that's like a story character that is like a he's like a droid.

Oh, I haven't gotten there.

I have not put in 22 hours in this game yet.

Well,

I'm about to leave the first planet.

Okay.

And there's this droid character who's on the cover of the game.

And I was excited to meet him because he looks fucking awesome.

A droid with a.

A droid with a fucking holster for a gun.

Nice.

He presumably could shoot

out of himself if he wanted to.

Yeah.

This guy's got a gun.

He is a gun.

He could be a gun, but he has a holder for a gun.

I love it.

I love it.

Really, really cool.

I'm really enjoying it still.

I think,

you know, we've talked about this already, and I think that

people have come to this conclusion.

Rushing through this game is probably a nightmare.

But experiencing it

is a completely just different, like, i don't know taking your time and inhabiting the world yeah it adds so much to the flavor of the game because i can maybe see like playing trying to play the main story and being like all right whatever who fucking who cares really yeah uh but

driving around on your speeder and then encountering stormtroopers trying to uh

take back stolen goods And then you get to side with the people who are trying to get the goods and then get the goods for yourself or whatever Rocks.

It's fantastic.

I really, really love it.

Well, back to what you were saying about the way that encounters,

there's a fail state on these

stealth encounters.

Yeah.

What I liked about Valhalla,

the Viking Assassin's Creed game,

was that it encouraged stealth.

But because you were a Viking, if you fucked up, you could just try and take on an entire fort by yourself.

Yeah, Ghost of Tsushima, similar approach.

And I like that.

I like when you can, like, maybe sneak up on like five guys,

but then once you've snuck up on these five guys and out and downed them, if you set off an alarm that you have, like, I like trying to create the possibility of success.

Because often, even in

Ghost of Tsushima, there were a couple of times where I'd try and take on an entire fort and I'd die, but it was so much fun.

Yeah, I guess the difference there is

somebody like Jin in

Ghost of Tsushima or

the character from

Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

They are sort of like super like powerful.

Like they are strong characters and they have a skill set where like fighting is like their main thing.

But like K Vest is just like a lady.

Right.

It's just like a human.

Like they're all human beings, of course, but she's just like a, I just, I kind of just steal stuff.

I feel like Han Solo is also a human.

Yeah, I think that, look, this is, this is where it comes down to, like, the, the, is, is this a, how much of the player character's experience is the player's experience, how much do I get to just play the game the way I want it versus the way that this, on this track, the developers have set up for me.

I suspect, just from what I've heard about Star Wars Outlaws, I've not played at all, but from heard about just how, how over-scoped this

game became,

I kind of feel like that that was a compromise they decided internally.

Like they would have liked to have had a, look, the Metal Gear Solid games have this.

The Last of Us games have this.

All sorts of games that are stealth-based that have big action set pieces.

These things coexist, and you can fail your stealth, but continue even against impossible odds to just face off against everybody.

My guess is, based off of no actual knowledge, that they wanted to have something more fully realized like that, but then it was just outside of the uh their limitations.

You know, if it's if I feel like games and triple-A game development have become so like

bug adverse, and I feel like there was a time when if you were entering in a combat zone and like enemies were getting like stuck on corners and shit, then it was okay.

And now that has become so unacceptable, so uh, unpalatable that a player can't like, I wonder if this fail state in the stealth sequences was because they couldn't dedicate all the resources to having all of these stormtroopers have independent AI or whatever the fuck it was, right?

And that it might be that the player runs into an area and like the stormtroopers are just kind of running around back and forth and like don't know what they're doing.

But I think that stormtroopers, that's forgivable because they're dumb idiots in this, in the world they can't ever even shoot anybody good it could also but i mean like i again i i they should not comment too extensively on this because i have not played it but i i like it also could be a thing of debate based on how the missions are designed that perhaps you can sequence break if you just like you know

if you uh go out of stealth and you're able to do things outside of the way things are ordered quest wise or you can like like you might get into someplace that you're not supposed to get into like there's all sorts of possibilities for way ways things could complicate um if they have a pretty narrow design in terms of how this scenario is supposed to play out.

So I think there are reasons they could have landed on this besides like, you know, they're worried about things.

Because also this is not like a bug-free game from everything I've heard, right?

This is fairly four times

since I've been playing it.

And in, I will say, very frustrating scenarios, too, where I've had to start a mission completely over and stuff like that.

But all that to say is I love Star Wars and I love this, and that's what I'm playing.

That feels like, it does feel like your experience, a lot of that comes from, and I think this is the thing you talked about before, just like having like a Star Wars fandom and wanting to live in this Star Wars world.

It feels like that, this seems to be working on that level for some people.

Heather, what are you playing?

Well, I don't know where the strike is, but I want to talk about an experience I had in Fortnite.

I mean, one thing I can mention is this, just got a notification before we started recording that they are striking League of Legends specifically

because the production company behind League of Legends, behind the voiceover, attempted to circumvent.

You can read some of this copy here.

The decision to strike League of Legends comes at the heels of the union filing an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against Formosa Interactive, signatory for League of Legends.

The complaint comes after Formosa tried to cancel one of its struck video games shortly after the start of SAGAFTRA's video game strike.

They secretly transferred the game to a shell company and set out casting notices for non-union talent only.

So it's just a really shitty way to try to circumvent the strike by saying, like, oh, this actually, this game doesn't exist anymore.

Actually, the shell company is producing a different project that we're going to cast non-union actors for.

But that's the

one consequential update I've seen.

Oh, well, I didn't, I guess then I won't talk about Fortnite still in solidarity with the strike.

But when the strike ends, I did have a funny thing happen to me in Fortnite.

I've been inching forward on Chrono Trigger.

I love this.

I had.

Are we play you play for last month?

Yeah, yeah.

I brought my analog pocket with me to a set of appointments where I had a lot of downtime in between those appointments and I couldn't travel all the way back across town.

So I had that like...

that sort of ghost few hours and sat in my car and played a little bit more chrono trigger and that was extremely satisfying.

Very beautiful game.

I'm happy to be continuing forward and maybe this time I will beat it.

I have been hungry to play

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance again.

Heather.

It could happen.

Why not?

I'm sort of like your friend that's like, don't go back to that bad partner.

Like, don't do that.

Like, that's insane.

I kind of want you to just put that to bed.

It's just never going to happen.

I'm your friend is saying, go for it, girl.

You're being such a Miranda.

I can't be an 80-year-old lady someday and look back on my life and be like, I never beat Tactics Advance.

But I, I,

anyway, it's in.

The problem is it's sitting in the back of my analog pocket.

Chrono Trigger is in the emulator.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

But the game that snapped in

is Tactics Advance.

It's right there.

So it does call to me like

a siren on the rocks.

You're going to take that sunbitch out of there, right?

Nope.

Okay.

No,

you can't take it out.

I'm not allowed to put another game in until I finish it.

That's what I've decided.

Wow.

But that also means I'm just going to bootload everything.

Yeah.

My way around this is that I'll just add everything to the SD card in there.

So it's a minor update.

I'm just pushing forward a little bit on Chrono Trigger.

Nick, what do you plan?

I got maybe a more, less than minor update.

Some would say a major update.

Okay.

Oh, boy, I said that really bad.

Hey, Ranch, can I take that again?

Hey, I can do better than a minor update because I have a major update.

Yeah, let's use that one, Ranch.

The second one I think was better.

So you think the second one was better?

Yeah.

It was still, I'll say, a confusing sentence.

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That's comfort made for all.

Maybe I'm having trouble finding the right words to articulate that.

I finished Elden Ring Shadow of the Urge.

Something very consequential I just did in my gameplay experience.

I will say the sword lance, a weapon, it was doing a lot of work for me.

It does piercing damage.

Did you mess around with that sword lance?

Was that the what?

You fucking poker.

It pokes the shit out of it.

Yeah, dog.

Yeah, hell yeah.

That's good shit.

Yeah, it's great.

So, yeah, I put Frost on that for a bit, and then I put Bleed on that later.

It's, you know, I'm playing a strength build, so I I like having like a big old two-handed thing to wield.

But it was nice because a lot of enemies, especially as this game progresses, have vulnerabilities to piercing.

Specifically, Bale the Dread,

which is the huge dragon that you fight.

And I thought this was such a fun fight.

It was super satisfying to beat.

There's a dragon that you actually fight before this as an appetizer where...

Because you're like in this whole fucking dragon biome.

You're just going through.

There's just dragons everywhere.

Yeah, there's a lot of dragons.

There's so many dragons, but you fight this one dragon.

He's like the precursor, but he's like boss hard, and but he's just like the mini boss that sets you up for Bale the Dread.

That guy was like, and I'm so dumb that it took me like multiple losses to figure out because there's like a pool of water and he deals electricity damage.

That if you stand in the pool of water, you take a lot more electricity damage because it's like, just the electricity is pulsing through the water, the body of water.

And I'm just there like, oh, this area effect is really big on this attack.

Like once I started standing outside of the puddle, I suddenly was much more successful.

But that was fun.

Then, Bale the Dragon is actually good.

He has a stump leg, and he's also vulnerable to piercing, but his stump leg, like, he's just like so massive.

He's like the biggest, oldest dragon.

Yeah.

And he's built up so much.

And then that the fight kind of lives up to it.

But I do like that if you target his leg specifically, like his little stump, you can do more damage to him.

So Egon, spelled Igon, I-G-O-N, but

he says his name is Egon, the NPC,

is the guy who is telling you about Bale the whole time.

And he took me a little bit while,

a little while to discover.

I actually took a circuitous route, and I found him later in progression than I think most people do.

Once I found him, I loved him.

He's my guy.

And his battle-specific dialogue for the Bale fight is so good.

I transcribed some of it, but like, you know, naturally, he starts off with a curse you, Bale.

But it heightens to a point.

And he's yelling all this.

He's yelling all this top intensity as you're running around, like dodging all these huge attacks from this gigantic dragon in this contained arena.

He's just yelling, Solid of scale, you might be, foul dragon, but I will riddle with holes your rotten hide with a hail of harpoons, with every last drop of my being.

Just like fucking screaming.

He was like, let's go, dude.

I'm just a fucking dragon.

It's so rad.

It's so intense.

And then, you know, naturally, you beat the dragon and then he dies.

and it's all,

but, but he dies with closure.

It's, it's great.

Matt, you told me to seek out Metter Mother of Fingers,

Matir, which has a really cool quest design because you're sent all over the place.

You have these like maps, these like really cryptic maps that send you to different areas where you're like, oh shit, there's this whole huge, you know, fingers area that I didn't find previously.

And,

you know, and you go through these with these really like, like, like, just disturbing, unsettling environments.

And then it's one of those things, and I love this trope.

It leads you right back to where you started.

Yes.

And like, the final map is like you're exactly where you are.

And just right below the starting point is where you go down and you fight this nasty-looking motherfucker.

This is one of the ugliest souls bosses I've ever seen.

Disgusting.

Just a fucking true freak.

All fingers.

I was going to say, oops, all thumbs.

It's worse than that.

It is all thumbs, yeah.

It's

really nasty.

Abomination.

With like a, like, seems some sort of like gaping womb too that opens up like this big orifice with the button it's like fucking disgusting it's awful and

you do get to kill it with fire because it's vulnerable to fire which is very fitting yeah it was a really that quest is really really great really that fight is super super fun that fight is fun um i i didn't love that a couple of complaints i i do you know i overall i absolutely adored this experience but the abyssal woods i don't know if you went to that section matt but this is like the this you have some we were talking about forced stealth earlier this is some forced stealth 101 with effectively auto fails because these enemies will just like kill you if you catch them.

And I just found this section like a little bit bland.

I wasn't as into that.

And then the final boss fight

is just kind of an annoying fight.

And you know, I'm reminded of the cliche.

It's easy to make a hard AI.

It's hard to make a fun AI.

This is one of those ones where like, I don't mind that it's hard.

I'm even okay with it being unfair.

In fact, a lot of really fun boss fights are unfair.

You're up against the odds.

You know, you have to overcome a cheater.

But he has just such an unrelenting string of attacks, and you don't have any windows to punish.

You know what I mean?

And so it's just like he'll have like a five or six hit combo and then you can maybe get one light attack in and all of a sudden he like basically effectively teleports the other side of the map and is lobbing projectiles at you.

And it's just like, oh man, I wish I had a little bit.

I just wish there was a little bit more of give and take here.

You know what I mean?

It almost felt like they just heightened to this point where it it stops even being all that satisfying to play.

I did end up killing him.

Again, the sword lance did a lot of work there.

I did have to use my mimic tier for this fight.

But all that said,

first off, FromSoft needs to give you a longer window with God killed on screen because I didn't have time for a screenshot.

It is disappearing so fast.

I killed a God.

Let me take a fucking pick.

It should be my group chat.

It should be...

It should stay there until you like press like X or something.

Yeah, because whatever your reward is, is just up on screen and that's fixed until a button press.

So it should be the same sort of thing with God killed.

Did you, did, Nick, before we move past the Radon fight,

did you watch, did I share the clip with you or just with Matt of the person who figured out how to kill Radon with poison?

I don't think you said that to me.

So there is a technique that somebody discovered where you enter the

arena as disguised as like a pot because you can like cast a spell on yourself to disguise yourself as a pot.

You can sneak all the way around to the back of the arena, hit Radon with like a poison arrow and just wait as a pot.

And he'll like walk around dying of poison, not able to find you, which is awesome.

Yeah.

Because it's like they could have made it that he just immediately can see through that disguise.

But instead...

Like all of the idiots in the, in the, in the realm of Elden Ring, in the lands between,

he is unable to tell that there is a strange pot in his arena and he is dying of poison.

And I love watching that clip was so charming to me.

Yeah, that's fun.

I mean, it's fun that those sort of like, you know, the, the, the cheesier strats are still allowed and that, that, that, you know, that's, that's one way to solve it.

Um, I yeah, I will say that just sort of battling more or less straight up was not the, was not the most satisfying.

And then you have this.

He gives you fewer runes, fewer runes than meta, which is insane, that the fingers, uh the mother of fingers.

And then the ending is so slight.

It's like four sentences of VO.

And it's one of those things, if you think of the overall experience of like that final area, and there's some stuff that happens with the NPCs.

There's a huge, you know,

a thing, kind of showdown slash, there's some closure on some NPC quest lines.

Accidentally killed one of them, but one of them saw their way through all the way to the end game and they were part of the final fight, which was really fun.

Like all that stuff is satisfying if you think of that all as part of the ending, but the actual ending cinematic as a reward for beating one of the toughest of all soul bosses, souls bosses by all accounts is so, it's just, it's just laughable.

It's like really kind of like, it's over.

Yeah.

And then I watched, I looked it up on YouTube because I was like, is that really it?

And then I looked at the comments and like someone was like, I came here to make sure that that was the actual ending.

You were doing the exact same thing I did.

All told,

Main game plus DLC is one of my favorite games ever.

I'm so glad I played through all of it.

I'm so glad I played through the DLC.

My feeling is I want to replay it immediately.

I probably won't.

I mean, but I want to.

I mean, maybe I could replay this.

I could, I'm kind of still want to replay Baldur's Gate 3 with a new patch 7.

I thought about going back to Demon Souls Remake, which I got at PS5 launch, never really dug into.

I don't know what to do with myself, but I'm so glad I had this experience.

And

I will say,

the same discussion I had with Friends of the Pod, like Jordan Morris,

we talked about the endgame and had the same sort of thing of just like,

as much as you complain about it, it is such a minor negative for an overall just like spectacular, unparalleled experience.

You know what I mean?

I think that the

saturation point was hit by from soft games.

And I feel like Souls games are now so in the zeitgeist.

Like there was like a slow build, you know, from Demon Souls through Dark Souls through Bloodborne through Sekuro.

Like all of these games are pushing forward until Elden Ring finally pops for everyone.

I think the hype cycle on their next Souls game is going to be among the most intense hype cycles of all time.

I think everybody who has a game system is going to be day one on whatever the fucking next Elden Ring is.

Yeah, I mean, because to your point, I mean, like, look, among enthusiasts,

Darks of the Souls games, obviously, very well regarded.

Dark Souls, Dark Souls 3, these were games that won in Game of the Year.

Sekiro, I believe, won Game of the Year from some publications.

But they did not have the mainstream sort of success of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring is the breakthrough.

So yeah, whatever is coming next is going to be GTA level hype.

And I love it.

It's great.

I love that a fucking weirdo-like Hidataki Miyazaka is able to make his vision and then have it reach a critical mass where everyone loves it.

It's so great.

Demon Souls was one of the final games I reviewed as a games journalist.

I remember this for the PS3.

And I was like, this is, this is fucking amazing, guys.

And it felt like I was shouting into an auditorium where everybody was facing in the other direction.

And there were like a couple people, like Jordan Morris, who turned around and were like, oh, really?

It's a good game?

Okay, I'll try it.

But generally speaking,

it felt like there was an intense and very small fandom for that original game.

And it is so gratifying to see that, like when, when, when you're on Twitter.

When Elden Ring came out and everybody is talking about Elden Ring was just so fucking awesome.

Yeah, it's great.

And I love it.

And it's deserved.

It's an awesome game.

It's not just type for hype's sake.

It's, it's really an incredible experience.

It's just, it's

talking about games as art, but this is like, it feels like a work of art.

It's just an incredible, incredible bit of craftsmanship.

My dream is that before the next Elden Ring game comes out, that Elon Musk is forced to sell Twitter/slash X at an enormous loss.

It is taken over by a different

and probably equally problematic CEO, but just a little bit less public about it.

People start coming back to the platform, and then there is a centralized space for everybody to talk about how excited they are for that Fromsoft game.

Don't people come back to Twitter?

Yeah.

That's your dream.

Yeah, what's wrong with that?

This was a sewer.

Fuck you.

I'm glad I'm talking about it.

I fucking loved Twitter.

I loved Twitter.

I do miss it.

But I also,

I was going to say, I feel less bad than I used to, and that's not true.

Oh, man, Twitter was the best.

At the height, Twitter was the best.

It was the best.

I loved seeing a banger tweet from Nick Weiger pop up on my feet.

Oof.

Those are the days.

Sorely missed, sir.

Sorely missed.

My message for Twitter is: rest in peace, idiot.

Sorry, I said rest in peace.

I meant rest in piss.

Idiot's really good.

I called somebody a moron today.

It's fun.

Moron is so, it's such a good word that I feel like has fallen out of like the insult zeitgeist, but I think it's because it sounds very mean.

Moron sounds meaner than idiot, I think.

Yeah, I think they'll bring back the old insult.

Yeah.

Maybe some of them.

Not all of them, of course.

Moron.

Rube.

Rube's fun.

Rube is fun.

I like cockroach.

Cockroach is good.

Fucking cockroach.

Because it's like you're kind of nasty.

Yeah, nasty.

I also, I, I personally, in my life, call people a corncob.

Yeah.

Like, I'll be like, that person is such a fucking corncob.

That's really, really, that's kind of, that, that's kind of a Twitter thing as well.

Corncob?

Yeah, corncob.

Yeah.

It's a drill tweet.

Oh, that's.

Yes.

Yeah.

You are right.

It is a drill tweet.

But this was something that my high school, I've talked about this on the show, haven't I?

My high school history teacher.

Your high school no longer exists.

My high school school no longer exists.

Fuck my, it's gone.

But my high school history teacher used to replace swear words with cob or corncob.

So he could still swear in class and be like, what, the cob?

But it was very addictive and became like part of my vocabulary is to call people corncob.

This cob was slobbing on my corncob.

Jesus.

My God.

I do, you know,

my wife's father is English, and he calls people knobs all the time.

I don't know.

That's pretty good, but it's like kind of gross.

Anything that like an ob sound sounds like you're describing somebody who's dumb.

Oh, my mom called somebody a slob the other day, and I laughed forever.

Slobs are really good.

It's just so funny.

Slob, knob, corn cob.

Yeah.

All works.

Gob.

Yeah.

Yeah, you gob.

Fuck, man.

Let's talk about Astro Bot.

It's our we play, you play for this new Sony platformer.

I may have already said it.

My two-word review of this game is pure joy.

It's just so fun.

Do I say this now?

Say it.

This is,

by my measure, as somebody who loves this type of shit, cute mascot platformer.

I think this is one of the best of these of all time and is possibly one of the greatest video games I've ever played in my life.

Wow.

I love that for you.

I think it is,

and I've been thinking about this for a bit this last month.

Yeah.

I think it's the best non-Mario platformer.

Yeah, I think that's where, well,

I would add another contend, you know,

condition to that, which is I think it's the best non-Mario 3D platform.

Yes.

I think 2D platformers, there's a lot of great indie ones.

There's, yeah, there's a lot of, there's great Sega platformers.

Yeah.

There's a lot, but I think I was just thinking through it.

I was just like, what is the list?

Where does this rank?

How many Marios are better than it?

You know, it might be a top five 3D platformer ever.

It's a really, really incredible, fully realized experience.

Yeah,

I would put, I know we all differ on Mario 64.

Yeah.

I'd put Mario 64.

I would for sure.

I'd put Galaxy, Galaxy 2, Odyssey, and 3D World in front of it, and then Astro Box.

Yeah, I think think that's a completely fair ranking.

And it's not even like, that's like, that's like an incredible company.

Yeah.

Those are five of the greatest plat those are the five greatest platformers of all time.

And Astrobots first game is easily number six on that.

Yeah, I haven't messed around with Galaxy too much, and I have never played Galaxy 2.

I think I probably like 64

less than the two of you, although, and I do like it.

3D World is in my top 10 games.

Great game.

Period.

Um,

this, yeah, I don't know.

And I've only played through Odyssey once, and I wasn't really compelled to do like the dark side of the moon stuff.

Like, really, I kind of, well, once I rolled credits on it, I was like, I think I'm done, I'm done with this.

Uh, but with this, I had um

uh I became obsessed with it.

Uh, Tim Asobe is the developer of Astro bot.

Uh, Tim Asobe previously is a Japan-based studio, and they are about

a 60-person development team, a 65,

I see a one-list.

Previously, in the Astrobot series, they did Astrobot Rescue Mission, which is

a PlayStation VR game, then Astro's Playroom, which is the pack-in for PlayStation 5, which everyone was like, oh, this is just a short little thing, but this is an absolute delight.

And this is a proper, you know, mainline

main platform Astrobot game, just a straight-up mascot platformer.

And

the director, Nicolas Doucette,

or Douce is apparently, you know, like

a French national who lives in Japan and heads up this Japan-based studio that has a mix of Japanese and

expat team members.

It is a

really,

really...

cool and focused experience.

Like, it's just like, it's the levels are all pretty linear.

They are all kind of using the Goomba's show,

Goomba's shoe approach to level design to go back to another Mario game, Super Mario Bros.

3, where there's like one gimmick that is kind of based around each level and then it's explored to its limits and then dispensed.

Sometimes it's brought back for a boss fight or it's brought back for another level.

That's kind of like a second beat of that, but it is just very much like based around, like, hey, here's one central mechanic that you're going to get, and we're just going to play around with it in a bunch of different ways.

It's also,

as that Kotaku article hinted at, it is steeped in nostalgia.

Yes.

But it is not,

I would argue that it is

not

like slovenly

deifying these old properties.

It is a

game where you collect old PlayStation and Sony mascots and return them to a home planet.

So

you only need to collect a certain number of them in order to finish the game.

But the more that you like run into these guys, and it's a deep roster, like one of the bots that you rescue is Jumping Flash, which was a PlayStation 1 platformer that barely anybody fucking played.

Yeah, maybe a launch title.

Super early.

It was so pleasant to see Jumping Flash.

Yeah, I was like, you see like Mr.

Domino, you know, like there are some deep cuts, but then this is, that was also a thing of just like, I did not realize how much I loved loved Spyro.

Because when I got Spyro, I said aloud, Spyro, like a 40-year-old man, like fucking excited about a cartoon dragon.

But yeah, so, so you're like a little robot.

You're collecting a bunch of, you're rescuing a bunch of robot clones of yourself, and some of those are dressed up as...

as characters from other Sony properties or third-party properties that were, you know, second-party and third-party properties that are most known for their association with Sony.

Because in

the story of this game, you are flying through the universe on a PlayStation 5, which crashes on a planet after being attacked by an alien.

Yeah.

Just a classic alien, too.

I just love

a classic green multi-eyed alien.

I do love that for how creative everything else is.

They're like, oh, fucking, who cares?

You're a fucking clip art alien.

You can throw them in there.

Like, if you asked a kid to draw an alien, it's like, yeah, it kind of looks like this, I guess.

The PlayStation crashes.

It loses all its parts.

The alien has taken these parts and like thrown them into different sort of galaxies.

And as Astrobot, you have to collect all of your friends who were traveling in the PlayStation with you, and you travel to these

sort of nebulae, nebulae,

on the back of your PlayStation controller, the PS5 controller, which transforms into a ship and brings you to these planets where you have your little adventures.

Um, the original Astrobots playroom, not playroom, Yeah, it was just called Astro's Playroom, I'm pretty sure.

No, no, the one that was the package.

Oh, Astrobots.

No, that was it.

That was Playroom?

I don't remember.

Well, Astrobot, this is actually confusing.

Astrobot Rescue Mission was the

VR one, and I believe it was Astro's Playroom.

Astro's Playroom.

But Astro appears in...

in the thing that is just called, I believe, Playroom, which is like a PS4 like hub area

type of thing.

And then is spawn.

Then his first appearance in an actual game is Rescue Mission.

And yeah, and then Astro's Playroom.

Is that the one where people were just filming themselves like jacking off?

I think so.

So Astro's Playroom.

Yeah, fucking anybody around that.

Astro's Playroom is there to sort of demonstrate the strengths of the Dual Sense controller.

Yeah.

And this game also.

really, really, really showcases how incredible the controller is.

And if anything, condemns other games for not taking full advantage of what the controller can do.

I will say, as a, as a, typically, I play in headphones when I play, when I play PlayStation games,

so much sound and joy is coming out of the controller that I felt like I was missing a lot of

pleasure when I would play in headphones and would have to take the headphones off because there's an interplay between the controller and your speakers where like when you're shuffling through debris, you'll hear Astrobots' feet in the debris coming from the controller.

But if you're wearing the headphones, that sound is cut off and you don't get to experience that.

Yeah.

I think from a force feedback/slash tactility sort of sense, like it's like the best use of the dual sense and maybe the best like kind of use of these sorts of, you know, like

that kind of user feedback that I've gotten from a controller, period.

The things that I don't love are,

and this goes back to the PlayStation 3.6 axis, is like it, there's still this commitment to using motion control for certain things.

I mean, like, in terms of tilting the controller, yeah, and like, there's some of that that's used for aiming, there's some of that that's used for,

you know, like flying, yeah, like flying or climbing, and and and and I just like, I like, man, I wish I could toggle this off.

Maybe you can.

I just played the game as it was, but I was like, I wish you could toggle this off and map this onto analog sticks.

And the same thing with this thing, Mario Games too, is like, I don't want to ever blow in my fucking microphone.

Like, don't make me blow to blow like a dandelion.

Like, I just don't want to be dealing with this shit.

These are just that's where you draw the line.

These are minor quibbles,

these are minor quibbles, but like, that's that's the stuff I don't like.

But everything else about the controller, I absolutely love.

I will, well, but, but, I, I, I feel like you're saying, I feel like you're saying it, though, like, as if that happens a ton of times in the game.

You've, you only blow on the controller like four times.

Yeah, it doesn't happen a ton, but I'm just saying, like, that, the, the, that, that to me is of a piece with the, uh, you know, the, the, the tilt control.

Like, it feels like gimmickery as opposed to you know the the the interactivity uh again that sort of like tactile feeling i get from everything else that's that's that's more you know thumb-based i forgot that you even do that like that it's such it's a relatively mighty thing yeah but you can you can turn off the motion control thing and i um as soon as i found that out did it immediately yeah because i don't i don't like i don't like doing i don't like like looking like i'm playing a video game in a movie like where people are just like doing all that crazy stuff it's also just really imprecise yeah it doesn't feel good uh but with the with the analog sticks that's what it replaces it with you just then have control over that part with your analog sticks and it's just uh better and uh

it just it just feels it feels more natural like to be doing to be doing that i really loved it so i'm a dip shit i should look at the menus um go on i loved the menus

but then but then if you turn off the motion controls you also lose the sort of joyous feedback you get when controlling the robot arms that are motion motion controlled.

Well, that, okay, but that's that's like the mini games that you get when you get a part, right?

And then you get to use the robot arms to assemble it.

Yeah, that part's kind of fun.

I don't mind that.

I do like that.

I did.

If that was the only use of it, then I'd be, I'd have no complaints.

Yeah.

I turned it off about like halfway through the game because there are some.

Some of the levels start, all the levels start where you're flying on the dual sense controller to land

like at the starting area of the level.

But the game starts as you're flying, if that makes sense.

And like there will be like collectible things that you need to get on your path.

Like sometimes

it'll be like a puzzle piece before the level starts and I'll see it and I'll have to be like, oh fuck, I got to go back.

I missed it.

And then just controlling it with the

motion control just never felt that good to me.

So I just had to turn it off if I was going to

get everything that I wanted in this game.

Can I say a thing that I love about Astrobot that's really personally important to me?

So one of my favorite things to do in a video game is to try and get to places I'm clearly not supposed to be.

And

often like getting up on a ledge that I'm just like, is there anything up there?

Like I've been trained since I was a child that if you can see it, you should be able to interact with it.

And there might be something hidden there.

There were times where I would do something where I was certain, certain that you were not supposed to be where I was.

And when I would arrive at the thing, like

being perched atop a tower where I have been like shimmying across like eight pixel deep ledges to try and get on top of something to see what I can see up there, almost always a little coin would appear.

And it was just a tiny reward to say, hey, there's nothing up here, but you did get here.

And it's not bad.

Like, congratulations.

Here's a single fucking coin.

Yeah, it's it seems to reward that.

And it's also like the way that it's structured is

you know, you have a certain number of bots that are that you can rescue throughout, and then three puzzle pieces.

And then some of them have hidden galaxies.

And a lot of those, a lot of these, uh, some of the bots themselves, but but you know, the puzzle pieces and the galaxies in particular, like require like some digging because you have to go off of the main path to find where everything is.

And I feel all that is really well handled.

Sometimes it's like oftentimes based around whatever the gimmick of the level is, or there's just like a fork in the road.

And you're just like, oh, if I go this way instead, there's a whole other area.

There's also

in some of the levels where you are, say, climbing up the interior of a pyramid or something, and you have the visible level accessible to you from no matter how high up in the level you get.

If you choose to jump all the way back to the beginning of the level, like fall and land on something like, if you're like, fuck, I I didn't find this fucking puzzle piece or whatever.

One, it doesn't kill you, which is extremely rewarding.

Yeah, there's any fall damage.

And two,

often, if you choose to backtrack that much, the game rewards you by creating birds with ropes on them that will fly you back to any other part of the level that you've already accessed.

That's such a nice quality of life

system.

It is

the

other thing that I really love about Astrobot:

the music music doesn't stop if you die.

Right.

No, it just kind of keeps going.

So you don't get, you get this sense of like propulsive continuity of like, fuck, I failed that jump, but it's not like you have to wait this like

emotionally silent beat to start the moment again.

You hear the music keep going, you see Astrobot's face on the screen, and then you're back in that encounter.

And that's great.

And there's effectively no load times.

And all this and these quick restarts and like,

there's a number of precision platformers that do this sort of thing, that kind of just have the rhythm of the music going.

And they have these quick restarts, these quick resets, and you're expected to die a bunch.

I don't know, this is not a particularly hard game, but it is a one-hit death game.

To not die in this game is a no-hit run.

If you take any sort of damage or

miss time a jump or whatever, it's just instant death.

There's a few boss fights where you get a little bit of a of leeway with it get a couple of extra health points but for the most part it's one hit one one hit you're dead you have to restart from the checkpoint which is very very which are very very generous as well but it's all seems to be based off of just like not punishing the player but just like letting you just get back into the flow of things as quickly as possible yeah keeping that energy going the game yeah like you said is It's an easy game.

Like it's a lot of it is easy, but it's not without challenge either.

Like there's like some levels that are special that are outside of the main worlds that are that you can find that are like, not just like the special secret levels or whatever, but like

there are planets that are themed.

Each area has like a, it's themed like one of the face buttons.

Yeah, so you'll find like a like, you know, like a square triangle series of levels, and those will have their own like specific challenges.

And those will be like, you know, it's, it's whatever, wonder head levels like this, just like super hard optional levels that you could do.

And they're like kind of gauntlets.

I found those very, very fun.

I love those challenging ones.

I love that they're off the main path.

I think that's the way platformers have figured out how to make these family-friendly games have some stuff

for mom or dad or childless adults.

And I like that that content exists.

I was also going to say that along those lines,

there's the like the retro rampage levels, which are just like sort of like fight sequences.

But those are really interesting because it's like a retro aesthetic.

These are also like hidden levels, but it's like, it's like an invented retro aesthetic.

It doesn't actually look like PlayStation 1 games.

It looks like more like Minecraft or something.

It's more like a voxel treatment.

I think it's a reference.

I think it is a reference to Dot Heroes, which was a PlayStation 3 game.

Oh, interesting.

At least that's what I read it as.

While you guys are looking up 3D Dot Heroes.

Heather is...

spot on with this, I believe.

Yeah,

I think that's what it's a reference to, is a different PlayStation game.

While you guys are talking about that.

Yeah, this looks, again, it kind of has a Minecraft look to it.

This could very well be the reference.

I loved the sound of breaking those little bricks.

Yeah.

I loved it.

It's good.

It's good sound design.

I want to know what was the most frustrating part of the game for you guys.

I have a complaint, which is that there's something about the

falsified telephoto lens that is your natural camera that makes depth a little misleading for me in this game.

Like, I've never fallen short of jumps in Mario games because I always know

where Mario is going to land, if that makes sense, because the camera has been so consistently at a specific focal depth or

like, you know how, like, if you take a photo with a telephoto lens, the background is crushed all the way up against the back of the subject?

I do know that, yeah.

And then if you have like a wide-angle lens, it's farther away.

There's something about the balance of this fake camera that made me short jump often.

Yeah.

And I would have to tilt

the virtual camera all the way up so that I could then see the shadow underneath Astrobot so that I could time my jumps onto.

And these weren't like platforms that were dangerous.

These were just like platforms.

I was shadow watching a lot, I will say.

I feel like that was just, and there were some jumps that I thought I'd made that

I missed.

Yeah, I don't know if I, if I linked it specifically to,

you know, the, the, uh, the field of view or the focal depth of the, the lens or anything.

But yeah, it could have been, it could have been a factor like that.

I guess if, I don't have a, I don't know if I have a complaint, but some of the stuff that, like some of the abilities that you get or like the, the items that give you a certain ability for the level.

And

I guess my complaint there is that I wish there was more of that like throughout.

Like

there's plenty of it, I guess, But I guess some of the ones that I'm thinking of that I liked the best, I didn't get to do that much.

Like, I liked being tiny.

I liked shit.

Being tiny was fun.

I don't think there's a tiny, because there's some, like, the stopwatch you get.

The stopwatch to slow time, which I think is one of the best mechanics.

It's so fun.

It's so awesome.

There's stuff that's that's moving super duper fast.

There's a casino level and there's a haunted house level that boasts to explore these to it to its fullest extent.

So it'll be like, you know, like they're throwing a shitload of knives at you, and you have to slow time to be able to traverse these knives.

Or like poker chips or cards are kind of being thrown, flung flung at an impossibly fast speed.

But if you slow time, you can use those as platforms to jump over.

And the aesthetic of that is that he pulls down a PlayStation VR helmet.

Yeah.

And that's how he slows down time.

And then he pops it up when he wants time to go normal.

It's really cool.

It feels fantastic.

It's super satisfying.

You feel smart when you discover things that the game is trying to get you to discover, which is like, you know, an incredible

give and take instruction,

you know, experience of game design.

It's really satisfying when that works.

Um,

the tiny level, I don't think you revisit, I think you just get at the one level, right?

You just get the one time, but I really fun.

I really shrinking down, it's funny.

Like, how have I never seen this in a game before?

And then, and then there's all like the chicken backpack.

When we got that again, I was like, I feel like I kind of already did that.

Like, that was one where I was like, I don't know if we need a redux of the chicken back.

Yeah, you get the chicken backpack a lot, and you get the,

you don't get the hand.

There was one that I didn't get.

Um,

the frog fist?

No, I got this one.

There was one at the end of like, I mean,

I don't really want to get it too far into ending stuff.

I'll say they're, they present you with one at some point that I was like, when the fuck did this happen?

I didn't even get this one.

Oh, no, so I know what you're talking about.

Cause so in the credit, it's playable credits.

Yes.

And the playable credits does have, I assume these were things that were included at a certain point and got cut, and they just included them as Easter eggs within the credit sequence.

That's that's that's what I'm guessing has happened.

There's a level where one of the ones where you do do get it is it's in there.

Okay.

I was shocked.

I was shocked.

I can't wait.

I can't wait.

It's really, really good.

Yeah, I guess we could say that

Heather and I both have about the same number of bots.

I have like 210 bots out of the 300 possible.

Matt, you platinum this game.

I platinum this game.

I finished the game.

I beat the final bots.

I rolled credits.

But I do not have all of the bots.

So I'm going to go back and gold flag some of the radio.

I have gold flagged everything up to where I am.

So I'm on, I believe, the second to last

area,

several planets in with more than 200 bots now.

But I can't leave a level if the flag is blue.

So I've gold flagged everything behind me.

That's the thing I've had to get over with these games.

And I'm just like, you know what?

I'm just going to progress and if I like it enough at the end of the experience, I'll go back and get all that stuff.

Not that your approach is invalid.

I'm talking about how I play it.

I I was doing that with, I've done that with like Mario games because sometimes the secret stuff that they want you to find in a Mario game does feel impossible.

Yeah, Mario games are different.

The challenge threshold in a Mario game is so much higher than Astrobot that I would get discouraged.

Yes.

If I was trying to like 100% a level in Mario.

Whereas this, I'm like, ah, it just must be a corner.

I didn't look around.

There's got to be somewhere.

It's usually that.

It's like, oh, I missed.

Well, because it's usually something you just didn't find.

And you also can, like, if you listen really carefully, you can kind of hear the little bots like calling for help.

And then

Astro Bot will also shout at them.

Yes.

Like, it's pretty great.

And there's also a thing that if you play through a level, and this is optional, but if you play through a level and you revisit it, there will be a bird you can purchase at the start who will kind of follow you like a familiar and will just sort of gently direct you, like kind of call out/slash pursue in the area, the direction of secrets that you've maybe missed.

So that's another thing you can mess around with.

But which I think is also well implemented.

In other games, like in a Mario game or something like that, where, like, say, for example,

in Super Mario World or something,

they had those like Yoshi coins, the three Yoshi coins that you get per level or whatever.

Is that what that is?

Yeah, big Yoshi coins.

The dragon coins, yeah, Super Mario World.

I think it's five of them per level.

So you

get to one, and then, you know, it's like, it fills in like the third space or whatever.

And you're like, what the fuck?

I missed two of these on the way here.

That sucks.

I hate that.

With this, when I would find like the second puzzle piece, I wouldn't be upset or discouraged.

I'd be like, huh,

guess I missed one.

And I had to, and then it'd be like, oh no, I have to start this level again and then, and then find it.

And it was just like on a tree that I didn't hit or something.

There was one level where I, because

generally speaking, because the bots are not that hard to find,

you will,

you'll get the bots sort of in order of progression through the level and they appear in your menu screen or in the like the status screen is like, oh, first bot found, second bot found, third bot found.

There was a level where I got, I missed a bot and I was like, how the fuck did I miss it?

Where, where could it possibly be in this level?

And I went all the way back and went back again and back again.

And I was like, I can't find this fucking bot that I missed.

And I went forward just a little bit and I had just gone the wrong direction originally and immediately found that other bot like right, which was, you were just supposed to hop a certain way first and I had gone the opposite way.

Right.

I did crash this game by going too fast through a level and it felt really satisfying to me.

Anyone who else crashed this game?

Crash.

He's in it.

He's in it.

He's in.

He's in damage.

There's, yeah,

in terms of the bots, it's like ones that you find.

Like, I really like finding like, oh, but this level is all Castlevania character.

Yeah.

That's fun.

And then the way that they have like a really cute, like the copy is very cute in terms of it doesn't say specifically like this is Alu card.

It'll be like Dracula's son, you know, or something like that.

And it'll have a little bit little caption that talks about like, you know, hints at who they are pretty clearly.

Yeah.

With that, there's, there's a Samporter bridges that you can find, which is great.

And then there's a gotcha mechanic.

So the hub world where all your bots live after you rescue them and also where you open up the additional galaxies

through various, you know, like using those bots to open up things uh, Pikmin style to turn into little swarms, um, and then some platforming challenges.

There's also like, you know, you can, you can customize things and there's a gotcha, which was present in Astro's playroom.

Uh, but the gotcha mechanic here is great because it doesn't give you duplicates.

There's some garbage that you will get, but it, but it, it's not like a thing of like, oh, I'm getting another one of these.

But then you also will get little bits of things that will add to the tableau of the bots.

Yeah.

So like the, like there's, you know, I got Sam Porter Bridges and then I'm back there and he's in his little bridges costume.

And then I got like, just like a huge stack of boxes that he can carry around on his back.

So it's like, that's really fun.

That's really good.

I like that Pyramid Head is a bot.

Yes.

Yeah.

And his unlockable is his sword that he drags around.

That's right.

And so once you unlock it, there's just a like in a world of joy, still the most horrifying possible design is a little triangle-headed bot dragging his sword through the sand.

I also like that all of the dark, like the evil themed bots are all congregated in the shadow of the PlayStation 5.

I noticed that as well and I love that.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

It's like it's like that and then like the things that you were talking about with the

birds that are that are set up to ease navigation if you're

backtracking in a level.

Like that's just stuff that comes from

you know like focus and iteration and lots of play testing and attention to detail.

And that's afforded it because it's like this game is doing one thing extremely well.

Like

it's just focused and

it's not trying to be every game to all people.

It's trying to be like just an awesome 3D platformer.

It also comes at a time when there was a monumental Sony flop

within the release window of Astrobot.

Like there is a the budget was revealed to be $400 million for Concorde and it was pulled from shelves like two weeks after it was launched and killed and then simultaneous to that you have this tiny focused experience with a charming mascot character from a smaller team and it's doing gangbusters and i think that that might be something that the industry should like lean into a little bit more is like

i don't know like like i fucking wish but we'll see well platforming these sort of smaller projects like video games didn't used to have to be, like, let fucking Grand Theft Auto come out once every 15 years and give us like games that are a little bit more focused.

Yeah, I mean, like,

I love what you're saying.

I totally agree with you.

Give more A games, more double A games.

We don't need like everything has to be, you know, this gigantic 60 to 100 hour experience with these amazing production values that are incredibly labor-intensive to and expensive to make.

I would love to have more games like this.

I fear that what's happened with all media is that everything's become just like, let's make the biggest, most,

you know,

elaborate, most, you know, a thing that has the biggest reach with the biggest budget.

And everyone's trying to hit home runs.

And I don't know, a game like this is just,

it'd be great if the, if that, that, the publishers created more games like this.

I'm just repeating what you're saying.

The, the other thing I was going to say is,

so you're progressing through this.

One thing I really like about this game structurally is that each of the galaxies has a boss level.

Each of the Nebula has a boss level.

But that's not the final part level.

That's the penultimate level that leads into a reward level that's just pure like fan service power fantasy.

So talk about the first one.

The first one is, which I was so delighted to discover because I played Ape Escape on PlayStation.

I loved this.

I love the game Ape Escape, and I was just, you know, it's a game that they tried to keep going for a little bit, and it's kind of a dormant franchise.

But you just get to be, like, you just get a specific piece of gear

from that property.

And in this case, it's a net.

And then you just get to go around, and you also get the, like, the little radar that you have from that game.

And then you just get to go around catching monkeys.

And that's how those are the bots that you catch for this level are all the monkeys.

You also get,

there are a couple, there are a few levels that are basically like Astrobots' version of the mechanics of that game.

There's a God of War levels.

That's what this level is.

Namescape is.

Yeah, there's a God of War level where you get the axe and you kind of get to be Kratos in a Ragnarok level.

There's a Nathan Drake level where you get guns and you're firing all of these like wivel balls

at enemies and you get kind of a little puzzle, a little adventure style.

Yeah.

I guess we'll maybe say we're like a little bit into spoiler country because part of the joy.

No, I think we're, I think this is fine.

The game's been out for long enough.

We're a little bit into spoiler country just because part of the joy of this is like discovering it as you go through.

And I, again, I was just, I'm just smiling when this is happening when the with the when the uncharted thing has, I was like, I can't believe we're doing this.

Um, and then the one that I was just like completely blindsided by and was not expecting is Loco Roko, a game I have not thought about since it came out.

I haven't gotten a Loco Roku yet.

You didn't, I don't feel spoiled by it.

I'm excited that Loco Roko is it's really it's really cool.

It's a great implementation of it.

It feels so good to play it.

I can't wait.

I can't wait.

Also, it's nice that this game is, I think, reminding people of Sony's triumphs in the past because

it hasn't been a company that has always

rewarded fandom and things like Parappa the Rappa coming back and Umjamer Lamy

and getting to like

tip their hat in this game.

I wonder if there's the possibility that that will encourage

like either re-releases of those older games, like remaster, like it would not, I don't think it would be hard to remaster Parappa the Rapper.

Like just

you know, like just re-release that game.

There is some well, yeah, is that out on anything?

Can you get that on?

I don't know if this is out, but like.

I mean, as of today, there was a, as of today's recording anyway, there was a state of play where they announced a remaster of two Legacy of Kane games, and then the original Legacy of Kane is now on PlayStation Plus Classic or whatever.

They just recently added Mr.

Mosquito to that service, and Mr.

Mosquito was in Astrobot also.

So I do think that they are

looking at that and looking at that type of stuff and

maybe trying to bring it back either through this

streaming backwards compatibility or however they can get it on consoles.

Yeah, there was a Perap of the Rapper remaster that came out from PlayStation 4.

I think you can't play in PlayStation 5.

Okay, well, then I'm not the fan that I thought I was.

No, I think it's one of those things where it's hard to track some of these because there's so many of these games, and sometimes they'll come out with a remaster that's almost like does not get a little pump and circumstance.

It's just sort of like dropped.

Maybe there is something to the way Nintendo does this because, like, the fact that you can't play Chrono Trigger on the Switch maybe is

a way to protect Chrono Trigger from being re-released and lost.

Like that it would just be swallowed by all of these other games.

I mean, I don't want to give Nintendo that much credit for that.

I feel like

they're just trying to monetize their back catalog as, you know, aggressively as possible.

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

Which I don't, I don't, actually don't even know what rights they have to Chrono Trigger exactly.

We don't, we don't do bottom lines on this podcast, but I would like to say that the bottom line on this, on this game is that it is fun, it is good, It is charming.

And I don't understand why people are mad about its existence.

First off, I think we should start doing bottom lines.

That was great.

Let's do some bottom lines.

I wanted to do this.

Yeah.

This game is good, and that's the bottom line.

See, that was fun.

Because Stone Cold said so.

It's not a good impression, but it is, it's fun to say.

Yeah, it's always fun to say that sort of thing.

The other thing I was going to say, how many people are mad about that?

Is it just that one article?

No, there's like a

not a sizable, but there is a vocal component on Twitter slash X

of people that I think are genuinely bummed out by the game.

Because of the fan service?

Because of the fan service and also because

of it being, like I've seen a lot of like stop playing baby games.

Well, that's a thing that always exists among people.

Like there's, there's a lot of like, you know,

the more edgelord sector of gaming fandom that just looks down upon like E4 Everyone games generally.

This guy.

I don't know if that's specific to this game.

If this is a baby game, this is one of the best baby games ever.

If it is a baby game, I say, Googoo Gaga, dype me up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because this is.

I want my Baba.

Because I look, no,

I fold it.

You're a breast.

Look.

What?

Jesus Christ.

Call it a corncob.

The, the,

I, I, look, I like to play games.

I like to play games with grown-ups, but I like to play games for kids.

And I dress like a toddler, and sometimes I game like one.

It's okay.

Like, it's an okay thing to do as an adult.

Well, you're also, you're,

in the same weekend, you beat Shadow of the Erd Tree and Astrobot.

And that's true.

And I don't, I feel like people are.

gatekeeping themselves from experiences by by being upset about the way the aesthetic.

They're all games.

They're all video games it's not like any of them are truly adult you're still holding what is essentially like an electronic dildo in your hand to like control a cartoon on a fucking screen no it's it's big time dork shit it's just like we should go back to what when we were kids and and gamers were bullied like that's almost like where we need to where we need to go to as a return to as a culture because like yeah you're you're doing the dumbest fucking lamest thing and it's so weird to be gatekeeping or or have any sort of like machismo about it but i was going to say is like i agree with you The main thing you're saying, which is like, you're robbing yourself of this experience.

It's like people who are like, I don't watch animation.

I don't watch cartoons.

There are people like that.

They're adults who only watch live action.

And I'm like, but you're robbing yourself of so many rich, amazing experiences.

There's so much stuff you could enjoy if you opened your mind a little bit.

I can only imagine that that is an echo of somebody's parents who said, or bully at school who said, oh, you're still watching this.

You're a fucking baby.

Right.

You know, stop watching these fucking cartoons, whether that was, you know, a peer peer or a parent.

And it's a, it's a shame that people are damaged by the society we live in.

I want to play the tree song on the podcast.

Yeah, let's play it.

Ranch is going to play the tree song from this game.

For people who haven't played this game, this is a level where you, you, very early on, there's a giant seed, right?

There's some sort of like a little or like a little sapling, and then you get access to a water hose, and then you just blast the shit out of it, and it grows into a massive tree.

And then the tree has a face on it, and the tree starts singing.

And you play the level, then becomes the inside of the tree.

So you jump into the tree, and then you're playing the interior of the tree.

That's where that's how it expands.

And then the song is going throughout, and it is kind of commenting on the action as we go.

Rochelle, I assume you've not heard this song.

I have not.

Okay, so let us know your reactions after we play all of this.

I ain't no weeds, and there is no doubt.

But I'm an appetite, I'm a battery.

This is my appetite, the fine greenery.

I'm a pack tree, and I'm an apple tree.

And I thank y'all for feeding me.

Now jump up into my mouth.

Jump up into my mouth.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

There he is.

Jump up into my

mouth.

Yeah, extremely good.

I just like, the idea of like a tree rapping at you,

jump into my mouth and I'm playing this thing at home and I'm like I'm having the time of my life.

Yeah

There was not a second of this where I was not having fun at all.

It's like having so much fun.

It was just so great.

I was smiling the whole time laughing excited to see little versions of characters that I recognized and even the ones that I didn't recognize I was excited to see.

Yeah.

There's just so much

like just joy pumped into this thing.

It's hard to imagine being cynical about it at all.

Like, I just, like, can't really fathom it, if I'm being honest.

Ranch, you hadn't not heard that song before.

Do you have any reactions?

The song alone makes me want to play the game.

The score, that song, and the score in general is by Kenneth C.M.

Young,

who was the, and Matt, I know you play you like the little big planet games.

He was, he's the composer for the little big planets as well, uh, but based based in Scotland, I think speaking to sort of the international pedigree of this team.

So interesting you bring this up because

playing this game, Astrobot,

imagine people would be like, what game were they even talking about?

So playing Astrobot

made me remember my time playing Sackboy's Big Adventure, which is the...

the Little Big Planet platformer

that was on PS5 that launched with PS5, I believe, or came out close to launch.

And I remember singing that game's praises and being like, this game does

this mascot

platforming very well.

And it is, you know, he's Sackboy.

Yeah.

But interesting that Astrobot comes and eats his fucking lunch.

Sackboy is Big Adventure is still an incredible game, and I think people should play it.

It's fantastic.

I never finished it,

but it is, it's amazing this game is

it's so good the the the game the thing that this game has over it that can't be said about sackboy is um

astrobot doesn't play uptown funk the actual song for several levels

i wonder if um

if Astrobot is going to be

is going to continue on to the PlayStation 6 because his his aesthetic the aesthetic of his world is so tethered to the modern PlayStation aesthetic like he looks like the PlayStation and the PSVR it's true and uh I mean at some point that will also become nostalgic on its own like if he was gray-skinned like the original uh PlayStation then you'd be like oh he's he looks like he looks like the original PlayStation and if he had come out at that time you'd be like playing on as him now you'd have like that feeling of nostalgia tied to his very character design.

I wonder.

I really hope.

I hope that this is the beginning of a long set of Astrobot games.

I feel like Astrobot is going to become like the new central mascot.

Look, there's a bunch of mascots from

past mascot platformers that are in this.

We mentioned Crash Bandicoot.

We mentioned Spyro.

Sly Cooper is in this one.

I've seen Sly Cooper.

I got the platinum dressed as Sly Cooper.

You can get costumes

in the gotcha machine too.

Not every costume, which would be really cool, I think.

You should be able to get everybody.

I wish you could play as Pyramid Head.

You should be able to walk around as Pyramid Head, but I did.

As soon as I got the Sly Cooper costume, I had no choice.

My favorite, one of the things we haven't touched on is that once you get these little tableaus for the little bots, so you basically get their accessory.

You get Sam Porterbridge's stack of boxes.

You get a little library vignette for one of the Resident Evil guys.

When you then go up to those bots and you tap them or punch them or whatever it is that Astro is doing, you get like a mini scene of what they do with their accessory.

Like you see them use their power or whatever.

When you tap Pyramid Head, he drops his giant knife.

and can't find it because he can't see and then very carefully pulls up his triangle head so that he can peer out from underneath it so that he can find his knife and then drag it around.

That's adorable.

Like,

that was the highlight of my

to finish my thought from earlier.

There's all these other mascots from past mascot platformers.

I was expecting like a, to, to see a Tomba or a, uh, you know, like a, uh, a Klonoa in there or something.

But, but, you know, like, I think Astrobot has just become the face of

PlayStation platforming, right?

Like, that's just like, he's just like the new mascot.

for him.

Can we talk about how insane it is that there's no Final Fantasy characters in this?

That has to be a Square Enix decision.

Yes, for sure, but it's also like Cloud was representative of the PlayStation.

It is wild to me that there isn't a Final Fantasy section of Astrobot Island.

Yeah, because Cloud is in Smash Brothers.

Yeah, I wonder what just maybe just a licensing issue there.

You will be happy to know that there is a Klonoa

in the game.

Did I not get Klonoa?

You didn't get Klonoa.

Fuck.

I gotta go back.

He sounds like you need 100 more bots.

There were some shocking ones.

There is no Tomba, as far as I remember.

I wish there would have been like...

Is there a Tony Hawk?

Did I miss a Tony Hawk?

There's like a skateboard character, but I think it's just like a generic.

Yeah, because they have some generic sports characters in that.

It would have been nice if there was a Tony Hawk.

Yeah, go on.

I also...

Said out loud to my television, wow!

When Aibo appeared.

Aibo is

a Sony dog that I've wanted my whole life.

It is a robot dog that can barely do anything.

It came out in the 1990s and then was updated again in the 2000s.

And both, both versions of the Aibo are in this game.

And I was like,

first off, as soon as Aibo was in the game, I was like, is there a chance I'm going to see?

I want to see a

UMD disc.

I want to see like the actual disc.

I want to see a fucking mini disc player.

I'd like suddenly it became a Sony game instead of just a PlayStation game.

But unfortunately there was not like it didn't go that far beyond the Aibo.

And it made me be like, and then I was like,

did the Aibo interact with the PlayStation?

No, the Aibo is just a fucking robot dog that they released.

Do you know that they're still selling them?

Like Sony is selling them directly?

Oh, no, I know.

And when I went to Tokyo, I went to the fucking shop and played with an ibo because they have at the sony headquarters shop in tokyo they have an area where the ibo are walking around and every time i see one i'm like this sucks i don't want this for real

but i really really really want it for fake

it's it's they cost almost three thousand dollars so expensive it is also one of the few like actual pieces of like autonomous robotics that you can get for your house Well, yeah,

the main splash on the

AIBO website is it says powered by AI, which is horrific.

There is a documentary, a short form documentary that I think was released by Vice of all places about how the first generation eyebows are running out of the ability to be fixed and that the fandom for them was so intense that when like you when your eyebow starts to fail, like you source the parts from other people whose eyebows have, like, maybe stopped working or, or, or you get like a, a, a second-hand manufacturer to be able to get the gears so that the legs can work.

But at some point, your eyeball can't work anymore.

And people were giving them funerals and burying them.

Wow.

Because the eyeball fandom is so intense.

And that seems like my shit.

It seems so much like my jam.

It's like a scene in Pluto.

Like, there's like the robot dog you can't fix.

Yeah.

Get this thing a grave.

It's very grim.

Going back to what you're saying, let's say that PlayStation 6 has a completely divergent aesthetic from the PlayStation 5 and Astrobot is still, you know, kind of the, they want to still build a huge mascot platform around him.

I think that the design of the character allows them to just fit whatever the aesthetic of the console is if they want to match that.

I think they could do that.

You mean like he could power up?

I think they could say like, yeah, you know what?

This console is a, for whatever reason, Sony gave this a chrome look.

We're going to give him, we're going to have a chrome astrobot for this game i think they could do that i think also he also is an established look that people will just like separate from the hardware at a certain point and be fine with i hope in the next astrobot game whatever it is there's a whole uh like level like a whole section of levels that is just tiny mode i want to go i want yeah a little more tiny mode i want the tiny mode i want that to be in a mario game because like there's just there's stuff in this game we should say there's stuff in this game that like is i feel like directly curbed from uh mario's homework yeah sure

there's an look there's an awesome level that i love that is just like this is a level i've played before but this is a really awesome version of it where there's it's it's called like luna something yeah and it's it's there's a day world and there's a night world the scoring there is awesome it's this jazzy track that that changes when you flick a switch uh but yeah when it goes from day world to night girl night world the the geometry of the level changes and you can maneuver different places and you use those switches back and forth like that's like it's something i've played before but it's so well implemented i was just having a blast.

And the aesthetics are so marvelous.

But like, I would like, yeah, just more tiny area.

And I did love the stop time mechanic, but just as a Prince of Persia fan, like, just being able to do stuff like that is so fun.

They could have, this is the thing, is like, you could build a whole game around that mechanic.

But here it's just like a thing that's used in two levels.

Just speaking again about the focus of this, we haven't touched on this, but I do want to talk about the control from one other's standpoint, which is that this game uses both analog sticks and i believe four buttons two face buttons and two uh two shoulder buttons right that's it i mean like it's not like like and and you know games have gotten to the point where now i've like oh i've got we talked about ghost of tsushima earlier it's like like i've got like i'm like holding triangle and like you know bringing up a wheel and then you know using two shoulder buttons at once because there's just so many mechanics there's so many control possibilities for an individual character sometimes that's unavoidable given the nature of the game But I love that this is just so simple, simple that it's just like, you know what?

Yeah, you can attack, you can jump, and then you can do special abilities with the shoulder buttons, and that's all you need.

I love the sound of a lot of this stuff, too.

Like the wonderful sound design.

The those like punching hands, or like the ones that you use to grab onto.

Yep.

They go like they

like they have like a

monkey fist, you're grabbing bananas.

Really, really good.

Great.

And

just like the stuff, the unique

traversal of like using the monkey hands to like, yeah, climb.

And like, you have sort of have like a monkey climb for that.

It's super, super fun.

Mario, put the tiny, put tiny in the game.

Please, Mario.

Please.

There was a, was the Super Mario Bros.

3 level that was like, there's the, it's both, you get tiny for parts of it, right?

What the hell is that level?

Yeah, the tiny on command is like kind of the, the...

big astro bot thing, I think.

Like to be able to turn it on and off is really I love getting tiny.

The transition between the

being regular sized and being tiny also was fantastic.

Yes.

Because like there's suddenly an enormous amount of detail in the tiny world, but there's no transition.

There's no like visible shift in fidelity of what you're looking at.

It just seems like now that you're tiny, you can see that stuff.

Yeah, now I can climb this bookshelf that's like right in front of me.

Yeah, it's it's uh

it's such a delightful game.

There's so much to talk about in terms of like how great it is.

I'm kind of just like rambling here, and I'm not doing a great job, but it's like hard to like,

it becomes hard to articulate when you just like every aspect of something for the most part.

It's just like it's hard to touch on everything.

It's a really marvelous game.

The game, for lack of a better word, is good.

I hope in the next one, I hope in the next one that the Aibo,

as I was saying, I wanted to see a UMD.

I wanted to see a mini-disc player.

I really hope that there is a level, doesn't have to be the whole game, that is just a glorious like romp through Hallmark Sony electronics.

Like, I want to be able to be Astrobot tiny inside of the first Walkman.

I want to, you know, like, like, there are things that Sony has pioneered that as long as we are like singing the praises of a multinational conglomerate company, like at least let us have like, oh, wow,

Astrobot's head became a Sony PVM for a little bit.

Like, why not?

Give it to me.

Oh, wow.

It's my super hot Vio laptop.

Always makes me think of the onion headline of Sony releases new piece, new stupid piece of shit that doesn't work.

That's so good.

I mean, yeah, I think I'm right there with you, Nick.

I don't have anything new or interesting to say about it, but I just, I loved this game so, so much.

I'm so glad we did an episode about it.

What an absolute hoot.

Any other thoughts on this?

All games should be fun.

Yeah.

Like, just full stop.

They should all just be fun.

They don't have to be like this fun, but they should all have, like, I don't know.

Maybe Island Lake 2 doesn't have to have like joy in it or something like that.

But like, I think at the base level, a game should be fun.

And like, that's it.

To take what you're saying and put it another way, it's okay for a game to just be fun.

Yeah.

Because there's no like driving narrative throughout this.

There's no like cutscenes.

Oh, John, the alien did stop this PlayStation 5 from flying through through space, Nick.

All right, fair point taken.

But like it's not like there's like a bunch of like cinematics in this.

There's just enough.

It's skeletal.

It's just enough to

string all these set pieces together.

And that's all it needs.

Hey, that brings us to the you play of our WePlay You Play.

It's your review crew, the Riyu crew.

All right, these are all sourced from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

Get on in there and be cool.

Chop it up.

Chop it up,

but be cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Be cool, but chop it up.

Chop it up.

Maybe some issues in the world we don't need to get into.

And then some

issues from the world in the past we don't have to relate to either.

Totally fine.

But yeah, talk about Astrobot.

A lot of fun.

Talk about Astrobot and just be cool.

This first one.

I feel like we got to shout this one out.

This one's from one of our mods, Drop King.

What's up, Drop King?

I dropped King.

Drop King writes, a gorgeous game that looks great and feels amazing to play wish more games really utilify utilized the dual sense controller like this does i absolutely agree i second it i second it i do i do think one of the one of the other best implementations of the dual sense that i've ever played was after having played hitman one and two on my plea on my ps4 when hitman when hitman uh five came out or if hitman three came out on the ps5 And the first time I used one of the trigger buttons to shoot a gun and it pulled in like a real gun trigger, it scared me i didn't like it uh but yeah it felt like it felt good i i i you know like there it's not that like there's like a huge

number of of high profile sony first-party exclusives but i wish at least those use the use the dual sense as well like it would be nice if like hey i i really i really enjoyed the or enjoy the god of war games but i i feel like like man it would be nice if those had the same sense of again tactility that you get in this um I only played the first Horizon, so I can't speak to what Forbidden West did.

But the

thing I want to talk about just graphically that we haven't touched on, incredible frame rate.

And this is another thing that like, you know, like there's so much on like, hey, we want to make sure everything has like the highest level of detail.

But like, to me, frame rate is king.

And this having such a silky, smooth, like 60 FPS consistent frame rate is part of what makes it play like an absolute dream.

I love that they prioritize that.

I also want to just shout out Sony for

cloud saves being so flawless.

Yeah.

Because I have two PS5s and sometimes I can play on one and sometimes I have to play on the other.

And just being able to drop in on Astrobot and

know every time that my saves have transferred over, really nice.

Is the other PS5, Mary's PS5?

I mean, yeah, essentially.

It's cool that she lets you play on her PS5.

Yeah.

Mary's so nice.

Yeah, Mary rocks.

Okay.

This next one's from J Proof 15.

I wonder what she thinks of the tree song.

Oh, yeah.

Play the tree song for Mary.

Okay.

Why are you guys both rocking back and forth at the same pace?

We were having fun.

I just think Mary would probably think the song is good.

Yeah.

This next one's from JProof81, and J Proof writes, this is what Balin Wonderworld wished it could be.

Oh,

God, man, yeah.

A good comparison because

the yin and yang, the complete opposite.

For how good Astrobot is,

Balin Wonderworld is that bad.

That's dark Astrobot.

For as good as Astrobot is, Balin Wonderland, Wonder World?

Wonder World, I think.

Wonder.

Balin put a man in jail.

Yeah, he is in jail for that, not for his embezzling crimes.

It's like when they took down Al Capone for tax evasion.

Like we can lock up Yuji knock a technicality.

OJ for stealing his own stuff.

This next one's from

this next one's from Boop.

Hi Boop.

And Boop writes, I actually cried a little as I played through the closing credit sequence.

Pure platformer joy from start to finish.

I love that.

Yeah, it's wonderful.

And this next one's from Homak.

Homak writes.

Hi, Homak.

Astrobot is the best 3D platformer we've played since Mario Galaxy.

I'm excited it's a good game, but

even more than that, I'm excited by the healthy competition it's going to give the best Mario game.

10 out of 10 masterpiece.

I mean, I love going this hard for it.

I'm just trying to think, like,

do I, I think I like Odyssey more.

And I do feel like Cappy accomplishes a lot of what you're getting from the, you know,

the gimmicks that you get, the power-ups that you get in this game.

I feel like it's the same sort of thing, but I don't know.

Maybe it, but I haven't replayed Odyssey since playing this.

I wonder if I would hold on.

I'm not visiting Odyssey, honestly.

Um,

I have such affection for 3D.

I'm sorry, sorry, D'Amigo.

I have such affection for 3D World as a thing.

I don't think this would displace 3D World.

That's the thing.

I love 3D World.

I like it way more than I like Odyssey, and I loved Odyssey.

Yeah.

But I do, I forgot that I love Cappy.

Cappy is wonderful.

As a guy that wears hats, Caffy's really cool.

Can you imagine if my hat was making me do all that crazy stuff?

And explain some things.

Matt came in one time and he was a fucking dinosaur.

I think the sound of Mario's feet in sand is almost on its own better than Astro.

I'm comfortable being like, I don't have to elevate this game above Mario 3D platformers, but Fuck, it was their first try.

Yeah, it's also like a,

I also don't think it being me not liking as much as, say, 3D World means it's not a 10 out of 10.

It's not like a 10 out of 10 experience.

It's incredible.

It's really, really great.

And you know what?

Mario and Astrobot, just based on how I think about them and what they, and how, you know, what I think their values are, they wouldn't be comparing themselves to each other.

Yeah, they'd be friends.

They'd be friends.

Yeah.

Probably even kiss.

What?

I'd probably make them kiss.

Make them.

Do you have a basement?

No, not yet.

This next one's from C Moni.

And Simoni writes.

I see Moni.

I see Moni.

Incredibly creative, colorful, and fun game that utilizes every part of the PS5's controller.

I cannot recommend this game enough.

Oh, this next one, you might guys, you might think this one's interesting.

They're all been interesting so far, but this one is actually pretty something.

All right.

Zeeg's rights.

Astrobot, more like ass, tro, but 10 out of 10.

And I can't disagree with that.

Wait, what was it that I was supposed supposed to ass

like ass ASS?

No, I.

But you said that up like

but

you said that up like there was something to think about.

Yeah, I'm getting the word play, but I guess I'm not quite understanding that as a logical leap to the 10 out of 10.

It makes you think.

Yeah.

Of what?

I mean, I like the comment.

I endorse the comment.

I don't know what it's supposed to make me think of.

I don't know what you're.

I'm lost.

Kind of makes you think is all.

This next one

is from Kilobyte.

A Kilobyte writes.

Pro.

Best PS5 game to use every part of the controller since Astro's Playroom.

Con.

Not free like Goat, Astrobot's Playroom.

I mean, that's totally fair.

It was just like an incredible pack-in experience.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this is...

It's funny to think of a game as free when you have to buy a system to play it.

The game actually costs $599.

I wonder if Astrobot will come to PC, because they've been porting a lot of

PS5 games to PC, most of the PS5 games, but there are some that have not made their way over.

And Demon Souls Remake is one of them.

And Astrobot, I could see them being

maybe a little precious with.

I don't know, maybe because it's so tied to the franchise and its history, or maybe because it's so tied to the dual sense.

They, I mean, you know, he keeps coming up, and I just said that I wouldn't compare them.

Sony

has never really had

a mascot to rival Mario at this level.

Sure.

Right.

Like, you know, Crash is like his own guy.

Like, they're always doing that.

We love Ratchet and Clay.

We love Ratchet.

We love Sly Cooper.

We love Jack and Dax.

Yeah, sure.

We love those guys, but they're not on the same level.

They're not the same thing at all.

With Astrobot, they effectively have their Mario.

They might have a guy.

They have, this is, they have a lot of people.

You're coming.

You're saying they have a guy.

They have a guy.

And it's been a long time.

They've got a guy.

Since anybody's had a guy.

Like,

the last system to get a guy was Halo.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Like, Master Chief was suddenly Xbox's guy.

Yeah, they had a guy.

But, like, I mean, PlayStation has, you know, it has Nathan Drake.

It has.

It has all those things.

It has...

Kratos.

Kratos.

It has 300 fucking.

Yeah, but like those aren't the guy.

The guy.

There's another guy.

Astrobot.

is Astrobot's their fucking guy.

He might be the guy.

He might be the guy.

He's the guy.

and like i don't know you like i'll tell you what if i see astro bot somewhere else i'm gonna be so fucking happy to see him i love him he i think he's my best friend

he's great and i think he's like the fact that like they finally have a character that is as good as mario yeah like previously mario's rival was sonic and that's kind of stopped like being true because he can't keep up it never as fast as he can't keep up it never was true after

the Genesis.

But now Sony has a guy, and that's very exciting.

But it is funny to think of Nintendo at and Nintendo headquarters being like, okay, we really got to put a lot in Odyssey because Sonic is gaining on us.

He's going to get us.

And this finally, this last one is from

T-Mac.

And T-Mac right now.

I T-Mac.

I love the nostalgic feeling this gave me while feeling so fresh.

You can tell how much love the creators poured into it and how much respect they had for the IPs of the series represented.

It was great seeing how unique and specific each bot's interactions were at base while keeping it simple too.

Masterful.

I think it's really well said.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's the delight of the full experience.

What a fucking video game.

Yeah.

Incredible video game.

Really, really, really fantastic.

Yeah.

Definitely, definitely one of my favorites of the year.

I mean, I don't see how it doesn't end up in my top five, top 10 list at the end of the year.

It's been a pretty decent year for video games.

I have a hard time thinking of something that's going to

top it for Game of the Year for me.

I love that.

I think it's like a

straight shot to the top for me.

Really?

More than Final Fantasy?

I forgot about that.

Is Chrono Trigger in contention for Game of the Year?

Because I think Astrobots fucked.

Fantastic game.

That's this week's Get Play.

And our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch.

Ranch.

Yard underscore underscore sard.

Ranch, you going to play this game?

Yeah.

Okay, you're going to go.

All right, let a report back.

We'll have you chime in in the future.

What are you playing?

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog plus ad-free main feed episodes.

And you know what else is over at our Patreon?

Our Patreon exclusive show, Get Animated.

Matt, what are we watching this week?

Well, folks, you voted and we listened.

We stopped watching Violet Evergarden stuff for now.

And we're on week two of Terminator Zero, okay?

And guess what?

The show's fucking good.

I am enjoying Terminator Zero.

Yeah, me too, man.

A lot of fun.

Cha-chan, chun, cha-chan.

I liked Violet Evergarden too.

There's only a couple of movies left, so you know, we can go back to them.

I can't believe we're going to watch those movies.

Patreon.com slash get played for all of that.

Nick, you got played.

Wow.

Just like that.

Just like that.

Fucking hat is talking for.

Oh, yo, yeah.

Cappy, stop.

Cappy, off your head.

That was a hit gun podcast.