Cloud Gaming

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Hey, I just, I thought before we started recording, we'd just kind of discuss a game plan.

So we're talking about cloud gaming today.

Okay, great.

I just want to make sure I'm not overlapping with anyone else, but I figured I'd talk about,

you know, Likitu and kind of like how he's been like both a villain, you know, an antagonist for Mario and Super Mario Brothers, but then he's like kind of helping Mario out in Super Mario 64 by operating the camera and rescuing him in Super Mario Kart.

So it's just kind of like the shifting.

Yeah.

That's not,

that's not what we're, you fucked up.

Yeah, we're talking about cloud gaming, you idiot

how how

how could you hear cloud gaming and leap all the way to a

a cloud in a game?

Oh I thought I thought because he flies her own little cloud.

Yeah, you thought but you thought wrong you dip shit.

It's not cloud gaming.

Okay

I'm on the phone with your parents and they are disappointed in you.

Yeah.

Oh and they didn't even know about this part.

They're gonna they're gonna

feel data

act.

But while we're here going over notes, I have some notes in front of me as well.

I'm going to be coming in and talking about Final Fantasy VII and Cloud Strife and how he

was a soldier,

a Shinra soldier, and

he has friends.

Barrett.

Stop.

You believe unfucking.

Fucking stop.

Fucking idiot.

You just fucking yelled at me when you're going to be even fucking dumber.

Say the stupidest fucking shit I've ever heard in my goddamn life.

What?

It's Cloud.

His name is Cloud.

That's your name.

You know what we're talking about, you fucking idiot.

Cloud gaming.

Cloud gaming.

Cloud gaming.

We're talking about

cloud games.

Not cloud in a game.

Not cloud in a game.

I get it.

Cloud games.

No, I get it.

Yeah.

You just jumped into a pile of shit with both feet.

Yeah.

And then you rolled around in leaves and you went to the mall.

I'll tell you what we're talking about.

We're talking about cloud, the 2005 puzzle video game from the makers of Flow, flower and journey cloud we're talking about cloud the game it's a game a game where you play as like a boy who flies in the sky and like interacts with clouds cloud the game

the game is called cloud heather

you're somehow the stupidest of all i can't fucking believe how cartoonishly dumb you are is that true Yeah, it's like you got your fucking both hands stuck in a pickle jar right now.

That's what's going on.

You know what I would do if I had both hands stuck in a pickle jar?

The same thing I'm doing right now, shitting my pants and talking to you guys.

We battle enemies and also battle spotty Wi-Fi as we discuss all things cloud gaming 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.

Hey, it's me, Nick Weiger.

I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game game podcast.

Where, I don't know, if it's your first episode, here's a little onboarding.

We used to be a podcast where we would

masochistically expose ourselves to the worst video games of all time, but that was a long time ago.

Now we're just a podcast where three friends talk about the latest and greatest or not greatest or literally anything we want to talk about in video games with a with a strong undercurrent of Fortnite.

And that's the show.

If it's under the umbrella of video games, we're talking about it.

If it's like a movie, video game song or something, we might.

Yeah.

I don't know.

We haven't done video game food, really.

We could do that, but that's sort of maybe stepping on the toes of some other.

If I may.

We have an outstanding invitation.

Yes.

Which is having you two over while I cook from one of the many video game cookbooks that I own.

The official licensed Street Fighter cookbook,

God of War cookbook, or the unlicensed Legend of Zelda cookbook.

So maybe time, maybe sometime this spring, you know, I have you guys over for

some video game cooking.

I just, I'm down.

I'm down for that.

It's a lovely invitation.

I do have one precondition, which is that we don't play the Virtual Boy again.

Yeah, yeah.

I would like to

just eat the food if that's okay.

Yeah, if you could keep the Virtual Boy like just in a box in your garage.

maybe you could have it set up and we could shoot it but um

it seems like an opportunity though to maybe uh play the apple vision pro

um sure

so maybe maybe mess around with that if you make us compare contrast though i am gonna be mad

yeah all right try this now try this yeah

which one makes you feel sick yeah does the apple vision pro require me uh resting my chin on a stack of books yeah if not

and i'm probably going to like that one more.

The Apple Vision Pro makes, I think it's going to make my face feel hot.

Yeah.

But I am interested in checking it out.

I heard a cool demo about it.

And by the time this episode comes out, I will have pre-ordered my Apple Vision Pro and I'm really excited about it.

I am going to sell a computer in order to afford it.

That's a good call.

But hey, no, but because it works as a monitor.

Oh, yes.

So I can sell a computer and still write with it.

I am strapping myself.

I'm like fully committing to a VR future, like a VR AR future for this.

Yeah.

But

I can sell my laptop and then use it as a secondary monitor right wherever I am.

I did hear about a demo and I'm really excited to share it with you guys.

They're remaking or they're making special documentaries under the Apple TV Plus

like umbrella.

So like prehistoric, uh, prehistoric world or whatever the fuck it's called, the one with the dinosaurs,

Prehistoric planet.

You watch it in Apple Vision Pro and the fucking dinosaurs walk out of the screen and like walk around you.

Wow.

Or like,

there's like bugs and stuff that, because it's like, can tell where your hands are, the bugs will come and like land on your hand.

But see, that's the stuff that I'm like, I'm convinced that then if you die in there, you die for real.

Like, they shouldn't be able to, I shouldn't be able to touch the bugs.

Yeah, some of the stuff is like a little bit unsettling.

And I also just just go going back to what you're saying about writing with this thing, because I have an Oculus and I am sure the Apple Vision Pro is much, you know, I don't know what the resolution is.

Higher Fidelity.

I'm sure it's Higher Fidelity, but I cannot imagine like reading a PDF with my Oculus headset.

Like that feels like that's just going to make me as dizzy as being on a merry-go-round, you know?

And like, I just, so the idea of like using that for...

How big are you making the PDF in your vision?

Because you control the size.

It sounds to me like you've made it like 300 feet across and and 20 stories tall.

Yeah, Nick has to run to get to the end of every word.

It's got to be oversized.

That's the whole point.

Yeah.

Look like an image.

I swear to God, if I have you guys over and I cook some video game meals and I'm like, hey, try out the Apple Vision Pro, and you immediately start auto-jacking, I will be,

I guess I'll just be like, nah, that makes sense.

I didn't even buy the Auto Jack upgrade.

Yeah.

Where'd that come from?

Nick had it pre-installed in his OS.

Part of my cyberware.

Yeah.

Hey, speaking of the podcast and kind of things that, you know, like

formats and logistical concerns, we haven't talked about what we are doing with our We Play You Play, which is,

for anyone new to this, every month we have been playing through one game and dedicating an entire episode, the final episode of each month, to discussing that game at length.

I think what we're doing, we have not set this in stone, but I think what we're going to do is to make that more sustainable and also to make sure that the games that we,

you know,

give this sort of designation get the attention that they deserve, especially a meteor longer game.

It's better if we really invest some time in it.

I think we're going to go to bi-monthly with that format.

So we're not going to do one this month.

I think our next one will be at the end of February.

That feels like the plan, yes?

Yeah, that's the assumption I was operating under as well.

Yeah.

just the the podcast goal is to move further and further away from playing video games yeah it's we're just gonna talk about the ones we like right because people like that we're gonna talk about them but look we'll still talk about a game at length i think there will be times when we'll maybe not have you know

devoted 50 hours to playing a game in a month, but we could still always talk.

We could always, we always talk about it.

Yeah, we can always do an episode about a game and we can always talk about things that we're playing, you know, currently.

Yes.

But, you know, also we should talk about how last week we did our own personal top 10 games of all time.

Yes.

And we committed to those on the podcast.

And we asked our listeners to chime in with theirs in our Discord server.

And a lot of people did.

I mean, I read, I felt like I was reading through dozens of top 10 lists.

Yeah.

And like I said in the Discord.

It was like, I think it was more than 100 top 10 lists.

It was great.

I mean, to be pedantic, that could still be dozens.

Did you enjoy that?

Like, why would you say that?

I did enjoy it a little bit.

Did you, you, you, like, if it was like 144?

Yeah.

That's 12

dozens.

Still qualifies.

Sure, dude.

Whatever.

Whatever you want, man.

But anyway, I was going to say,

I read through over 100 top 10 lists in the Discord server.

Just say tens?

I read through tens.

I read through several.

Ones of several.

Yeah.

On the on the Discord.

And

I was just like, oh yeah, that game.

Oh, yeah, that game.

Like, like, repeatedly, like, someone had a few people had Turtles in Time

on their top 10 list.

And I was like, that I didn't say on the podcast.

But when I whittled it down to my, or when I just made a list of like 73 or 76, I don't remember how many was like games that I could think of that could potentially qualify, that was on that list.

And so to see people who had like committed to putting in their top 10, I was like, oh, that rocks.

I love that.

A couple of days after recording the episode, I think maybe listening back to it.

Yeah.

I had, I felt a like wave of regret.

I think it's inevitable.

I definitely was like,

I could have done that.

I should have done that.

I forgot that game.

I could have given more attention to this game.

Because I somehow forgot about the game inside completely.

Great game.

And I think that would be in the top 10.

If you, but like, probably in that 10th spot.

Like, that's the thing.

So like, it could have been anything in that 10th spot, really.

But, um, but so many people did share their their um their top 10s on the discord and one of our listeners and discord user named majawa on our discord compiled all the data and uh compiled all that data and made a ranked list of all the games mentioned in everyone's top tens and i thought that was so interesting and so cool and i would like to share the top 10 games ranked according to the discord and this is based on how many times each one was number one uh or you know where how many times they were ranked or what or you know i I don't know actually how he did the data, but it seemed like it was really complicated, and he seemed like a really smart.

Some numbers were crunched.

Numbers were crunched, and all I did was look at it and copy and paste.

So here we go.

This is number 10: Tears of the Kingdom.

9.

Breath of the Wild.

Sure.

8.

Elden Ring.

No surprise there.

7.

Persona 5.

Love that.

6.

Red Dead Redemption 2.

Wow.

And now I believe these are tied for fourth.

Okay.

Ocarina of Time and Baldur's Gate 3.

Wow.

Three, Hades.

Two, Chrono Trigger.

And number one with the most votes.

Disco Elysium.

I would say our listenership has impeccable taste.

Yes, really good list.

Some really great games.

And this doesn't reflect the months after we did the Disco Elysium episode where people would say, all I talk about is Disco Elysium.

Interesting.

Seems like,

seems like, actually,

people really like that game.

Yeah, weird.

Huh.

I like the idea that Ocarina of Time and Elden Ring are kind of the same game.

Yeah.

Because they're both placed exactly the same on the list, but also like actually it's Baldur's Gate 3 and Ocarina of Time in the same spot.

Oh, never mind then.

But Elden Ring is also on the list.

So it's like I think

I misheard.

I misheard.

And now

I'm just, you know what?

Be pedantic with me.

Just fucking throw me in a well.

Well, the other thing I was going to say is...

The you know, to your point, like, that's the thing.

And I play, I had the, you know, OG Legend of Zelda, the Famicom NES Legend of Zelda on my personal list.

that game kind of just is, people made this point when Breath of the Wild came out, but that game just is Breath of the Wild.

That is just Elden Ring.

It's just the prototype 2D top-down version of it.

It's the same sort of principle.

The idea that there's this big vast world that you can kind of explore

at your leisure, but certain parts of it are...

You have to achieve certain things to access certain parts of it.

And you can get to places where you're completely overwhelmed and the enemies are overpowering you very early on, if you like.

So, you know,

that approach has existed in gaming for a long time.

But yeah, I think that's a great list.

I think also that at least our active Discord users seem to have a lot of fondness for RPGs.

A lot of our RPGs are heavily represented in that list.

Big time.

Big time.

And

thanks, Majawa, for

compiling that data.

Very interesting.

I love data.

Y'all love data?

I love data.

I love metrics.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Metrics are really interesting, too.

I like to look at a graph.

Big, big graph fan.

I love graphs.

What is upgrading your character over the course of a campaign beyond making some numbers go up?

Ooh.

It's basically data.

It is.

In many ways, it is actually, because

it is, it's just data.

You're evaluating.

the data such as the amount of health that my character has, the amount of damage it can do versus other data sets like, you know, what resistances an enemy has and what attacks they're capable of, and what reward you will get for defeating them, and how that will affect your character's inherent stats.

All that is, it's just data.

It's all just data, and it's and you know what's interesting too.

It takes data to make the data as well.

Like, it takes data to make it a data.

That's an interesting point.

You have to, it's like a different type of data.

Yeah, you use data to make something where you can simulate data.

Heather, what do you think about that?

I feel like you guys are doing something and I don't understand what it is.

Like you're just saying the word data over and over again, but I don't know what that, like, what is that?

Is that like a thing that you're doing?

Yeah, I'd say it's a thing we're doing.

Okay, great.

Could we say what it is?

I don't think so.

But

I think

we'll look back on it someday and

consider it data.

I want to say thank you to the Discord.

And yeah, there's no edit there.

I just immediately hard shifted.

I want to say thank you to the Discord because they gave the Battle Bus, as I said at the top, there's a strong undercurrent of Fortnite in this podcast.

It's because I play Fortnite every day.

Love the game.

And

the Discord Battle Bus, which is our subgroup on the Discord who plays Fortnite as a community.

Not only did we recently do a private server event where it was only get played listeners, and that was so much fun.

It is a blast to be able to hear the entire island all at the same time on the same channel.

Like, that's not an opportunity that you get in a normal Fortnite game.

But also, they sent me a get-well gift, and

it is a bunch of Fortnite goods.

And it made me really emotional.

And I just want to really say thank you to whoever it was that organized that.

It was really kind.

matt matt opadaka finally uh brought it over to my house and um there's some sweatshirts there's a nerf there's a pair of nerf fortnight guns which

i guess i'm just gonna like

uh like carry

around my house

i think i think california is an open carry for nerf only actually so i think you're fine i think you're okay i think you can take that most places um and there's a there's a couple of um

oh what do you call those guys those little guys the big heads and and the big, and the big eyes.

Funko pops.

Funko pops.

That's it.

There's a couple of Funko Pops.

And anyway, it was really, really kind.

And I just wanted to say thank you here on the podcast, which I don't even know if you guys listen to anymore.

Like, you might just have found Fortnite and you're done.

You might just be.

That's okay.

That might be your primary community.

But yeah, it's really great.

And I also want to say thanks to Matt Opodaka for getting me a Ditto Trubbish.

Hey, no, I can't take credit.

I truly can't take credit for that.

Somebody did send that in

months and months ago, maybe upwards of one year ago, somebody sent that.

And I've just held on to it because I hadn't seen you in a while.

I had nothing to do with it.

I would love to take credit for it, but I

was a gift from a listener, and I don't even know.

We talked, yeah.

I wish I had the note.

I bet you I have the note somewhere in my garage.

It was sitting in a box in my garage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I read it on the air.

I read it on.

We talked about it on the show.

Yes.

At some point.

My memory's shot, so I don't remember this.

And I'm saying thank you as if it's a brand new thing that happened to me.

It's brand new to you in that I

now you have it.

You didn't get to have it when I opened it in studio because you were on Zoom when we were in the old studio.

It's specifically a Ditto trubbish.

Yes.

Yeah, it's a Ditto Trubbish that's reversible.

So you can be a Ditto or a Trubbish.

Wow.

Pretty fun.

That's a lot of fun.

Super fun.

And then I got this third item that I'm apparently not supposed to shout out,

but it's really cool.

Yeah.

And that's it.

So like a mysterious cube that everyone's searching for?

No.

I think you can say what it is.

I can't get the artifact.

I can say what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I got a KV-8A D10 Sony Black Triniton CRT from a listener.

And I love CRTs.

So this was, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny little Sony.

So like now I have the option of of having two different uh game systems hooked up simultaneously in my uh in my hole where i live wow uh yeah it's been a while um but i'm really excited because i love i love a triniton trinitron i love a sony i love a crt this was really great thank you so much so much

crt

yeah it's amazing yeah um and for new listeners uh heather calls her garage her hole uh i just figured i'd clear that up.

Those are separate locations, man.

What?

There's the garage.

Yeah.

Yes.

And then there's my hole.

The hole is

your

like your stash.

Yet house is your retro gaming collection.

Your goods.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Different places.

Both physical and abstract.

Yes.

Yes.

Also, when I did go to...

When I dropped that stuff off at Heather's yesterday, I got to go in the garage and Heather turned on the lights with the voice command.

And as soon as I went home, I started looking up smart home stuff.

I was like, I have to do this.

I was like, this is, I'm living in the fucking dark ages.

This is bullshit.

If I'm going to do that, I just want the full minority report where I just say, I'm home.

And then the lights come on and classical music starts playing.

But you can do that.

Wooden red ball comes out and you're a murderer.

You can not only can do that.

I read hologram with my dead son.

Nick, you can do that with existing technology and its proximity base.

So you don't even have to say anything.

So you can set it up so that when you enter,

it's already, it turns on the lights based on the time of day.

Like you can do all that shit now.

I want to say I'm home.

Okay, you can say that.

You want to say it, though, like Ricky Ricardo, kind of.

Well, I don't know if I do that for you.

No, you want to say it, and you want to do the voice exactly.

You totally would not do that.

He said, I'm going full Ricardo.

Anyway, thanks thanks again to everyone who chimed in with their

with their with their best of lists.

And thanks to Majawa for however you say your username.

Thank you for perhaps it's a Majora's Mask reference, another game I could wade putting on my own list.

But thank you for compiling all that because

that was really fun to read.

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Guys, I'm excited to talk about

what we're going to talk about this week, but

I'm doing this.

Is this crazy of me?

No, this is great.

I love that.

I think we should spend a little time talking about games we're playing right now.

So, I'll ask the question: Guys, what are we playing?

What are we playing?

Hi, I'm the Resident Evil Merchant, and I'm here to ask you one question:

What are you playing?

Are you teeing that up to anyone in particular?

Yeah, are you?

How's it?

And also, how's it going?

Yeah, are you all right?

I'm fine.

Uh, did you hear that Resident Evil 10 or Resident Evil 4 made it into my 10th spot on my own?

I did hear that.

I did hear that.

I want to say thank you very much, Matt, for putting it

in your

Mind Palace.

No, you got it.

Yeah.

I think I was the only one on the show that put it there.

Yeah, and

you specified the remaster, right?

That was the Resident Evil 4 version you liked.

Why would you do that?

Well, here's the thing.

Why would you do that?

I put the property.

I put the Resident Evil 4 as a property.

It could be any version.

I probably probably would reach for the remaster because it plays cleaner and I just have the newer hardware.

I'm not going to dig out my PS2 to play the general

GameCube, but I'll let it slide.

Yeah, I played it on.

There was a PS2 version.

Yeah, I played it on the P2.

Yeah, there was a version.

But the game proper lives in our hearts and our hearts are a square.

They're a cube.

GameCube.

Nick, what are you playing?

Wow.

Thanks for asking, Resident Evil Merchant.

I have been continuing my campaign, my replay of Baldur's Gate 3.

Wow.

I'm playing on Tactician, which is hard difficulty, and I'm 40 hours in.

And I thought I would spend a little bit of time just talking about difficulty because this is a game that I think a lot of people have said, like, it's so hard.

It's so difficult, which I think is fair.

But we were talking graphs earlier.

I think the issue with Baldur's Gate 3.

Especially if you are new to DD ⁇ D or you are new to, honestly, if you're new to 5th edition rules or just Larian games, because they have their own kind of bespoke UX, which is its own challenge.

The thing, if you're graphing out this game with complexity on one axis and difficulty on the other access, this one is all the way to the far end of complex.

But I think in terms of how difficult it actually is once you understand the systems and how they integrate with each other, I think it's kind of in the middle.

Like, I think it's like an extremely complicated complicated game that seems punishingly difficult because of its complexity.

Like, it's like, you know, like

the counterexample would be something like Super Meat Boy, which is super duper simple.

You run and jump, but it's very difficult.

It makes that, it makes those simple mechanics, it puts them in an extremely

difficult context.

But I think Baldur's Gate 3 feels fair if you

understand how everything works, which for me took me probably, you you know, 30 to 50 hours through my initial playthrough, and I was still discovering things towards the end of that.

But the other thing is it has kind of an inverse difficulty curve.

And this I'm particularly feeling on my second playthrough, because part of what makes it overwhelming is the myriad systems, and I mentioned the opaque UX.

Like all that stuff happening in the early on, you're just kind of like, well,

this game doesn't have like a lot of tutorials.

I don't really know what's happening.

It doesn't really really teach me things.

And the way that a lot of games over-teach very simple things, this game basically doesn't teach a lot of pretty complicated things.

So there's that element where you're like learning how to actually play this game, you know, mechanically, but also.

Just the way the D and D systems work, your party members all get, any player character all get a huge power spike at level five.

Notably, martial classes like your fighters, your paladins, your monks of the world all get an extra attack at level five.

Your spellcasters get much more powerful spells.

And, you know, a spell like Fireball, which is just such a workhorse and such a, just a direct damage dealer, but also a spell like Haste, which is just completely OP and is perhaps the most valuable use of your...

spellcaster's concentration resource, which is its own complexity that the game doesn't do a great job of introducing.

But like, you know, because of that, because your characters are kind of weak and brittle, and because enemies deal such heavy damage, particularly on tactician difficulty in the early game, it feels like just kind of like, fuck,

this is so challenging, but really it's just getting through, getting over that initial hump.

One thing I really like about the tactician difficulty is the AI doesn't just,

like, the AI gets more complicated.

It doesn't just buff enemy hit points and damage, although it does do that.

but it also gives them additional attacks and attributes.

You know, they have ranged attacks they didn't use previously, or they have additional resistances, or they're using, you know, charm spells or sleep spells or other, you know,

crowd control spells that they didn't use previously.

They seem more fixated on your ranged characters and your spellcasting characters and kind of playing like mage breakers, which is like very,

just makes kind of

the lanceboard, if you will, a little bit more interesting.

And I'll also, so all that, all that said, I'm having a lot of fun playing through it as I, as I I went through the Under Dark, which is a section that kind of comprises the back end of Act 1.

I found those combat encounters like challenging, but not like unwieldy or unmanageable.

Like I was just kind of like, you know, like, okay, every move kind of counts, and I have to be careful about what I'm doing here.

And I may end up with a downed character, but, you know, like...

like i i i found it manageable and a big part of it is just like learning how to play this game i also just want to note that like i'm I, you know, there are a lot of exploits you can use in this game, which, whatever, if you want to play like that, go, go for it.

I'm not doing that.

I'm not like filling my inventory with explosive barrels and then dropping them all in front of where I know an enemy encounter is going to take place and then blasting with a fire arrow.

Like, I'm not doing stuff like that.

I'm playing the game.

I would think more straight up.

But, you know, that stuff, again, does exist.

But yeah, I don't know.

I think it's a difficult but fair game.

I want to talk about a couple other things real quick as I ramble through this.

But again, playing the second second playthrough, this game, Baldur's Gate 3, that I put as number one on my top games of all time list, which we did last week, Recency Bias Ahoy, but I'm loving it more on the second playthrough.

I'm playing as a paladin, and as a paladin, you have to worry about being an oathbreaker, which is a DD thing.

But there are all sorts of scenarios where I'm like, well, shit, I said I was going to do this thing.

I kind of made this vow to this character.

And even if

it's a better opportunity for me to handle this quest this way, I don't think I can do that without becoming an oath breaker, which is not what I want to do for my player character.

So like, it's just, it's just another thing to balance.

And I think the game

overall handles that aspect really well.

The acting, you know, whatever.

People have talked about this at like Neil Nubon's performance as Astarion won a game award.

Obviously, it's incredible.

The way his third act character quest resolves just gives him this remarkable showpiece.

And it's just so like,

it's just an incredible bit of humanity for this vampiric character and the torment that he suffered.

And, and, and I just, I think it's just, it's such a great resolution to it.

Uh, but it's, he's, he's obviously so great.

Uh, but also Devorah Wilde is Lazelle, who, to me, it became my favorite party member.

Uh, character just has this remarkably well-written art, and it's just so well-characterized in the performance.

Um,

at least on a good playthrough.

But also Stephen Hogan, who's a prolific character actor and voice actor, uh, who portrays Volo, who's a famed character from D ⁇ D lore and is like the this huckster kind of professional bullshit artist who writes all of these like, you know, just like fake histories of

the realm and, you know, kind of tags along with your party and shows up at your camp at various times.

It's just, it's just such a such a funny performance.

One other thing, which is, so there's, they've added honor mode, which is like their hardcore mode.

You get one save and if you you die, you're done.

That's it.

So they've added this.

I found myself watching a lot of honor mode fail videos where people are like, their run is ending.

And it's part of the reason why I would not do an honor honor mode run myself right now is because the game is still pretty buggy.

So it's things like, you know,

they're 80, they're, I know where they are in the game.

They're 80 hours into the game.

And

the whole party moves onto an elevator and then the elevator just moves without them and they all fall into nothing.

And it's just game over.

Like that's it.

So like it's it is it is very like satisfying to watch some of those and people seem to be good sports about it.

But yeah, I think

tackle that mode at your peril.

But yeah, an incredible game.

I gotta get back.

I gotta get my hands back in there.

I feel like I just need to wrap it up because I've thought about it.

You're in Act 3.

I'm in Act 3.

You should wrap it up.

Act 3 is, you know, no slouch.

It's a big boy.

There's a lot of content in Act 3 and it's also like the jankiest section of the game.

But

I was talking about there's some character quests.

Your party member quests resolve in really interesting ways.

I think the overall narrative resolution, you know, it narrows a little bit in terms of necessity, but there are a bunch of different, in terms of narrative necessity, but there are a bunch of different paths you can take.

I think it's absolutely worth seeing through the video.

I kind of have like a spoilery

about, it's not like about story, kind of.

It's kind of about like an interaction that you can have.

Okay, ask the question and I will decide if I want to give you an answer on or off pod.

Did you fuck the mind flare?

I have an answer.

I'm going to give it to you on pod, but we can maybe bleep it.

Okay.

I did.

Well, why would we bleep it?

And everyone was mad at me.

So I have to just tell you, it followed me through the end game.

People were like, I can't believe you did that.

I have to tell you, I've been so frustrated because I've been pursuing a relationship with Shadowheart, right?

And we're at a spot right now where we are,

we are in love.

But she can't do it.

She can't do anything about that yet because she is

pursuing.

She's a disciple of Shar.

She's like, I got to take care of my own professional shit before I can.

Her religion is sort of preventing us from doing the deed, which is absolutely fine.

That said, there have been opportunities

for my Tav.

Yeah.

Who is a

wood elf?

I can't even remember what.

I was also a half.

I was a half wood elf.

I was a bard my first playthrough.

My current playthrough.

I'm a Tiefling Paladin.

Oh, yeah.

A Wood Elf Barbarian is what I was.

And so,

you know, I get propositioned by the Mind Flayer.

I get propositioned by that hot devil lady.

Oh, yeah, crazy devil lady.

What's her name, Mizora?

Yeah, Mizora.

And then I stumble into this brothel.

Yeah.

Dude, walk out to the terminal.

You're serious?

You're a red-blooded wolf.

What elf?

You have, you know, you have needs.

Your desires can be satisfied.

Was I getting the third degree from everybody in the party?

Yes.

Did I go to camp, leave everybody there, and then go back?

Yes.

Shadowheart, I gotta say, very understanding and compassionate

partner.

It feels like the

part of the,

you know,

why I think some people think of the Shadow Heart as, first off, she's such like an important, you know, NPC, but also I think people think of her as like kind of the default/slash canon romance option is because she's written to be permissive of your character exploring other things,

which seems to be kind of like the, to me, my interpretation is the developers kind of saying like, yeah, we know if you do one playthrough, you might want to try these different, see what happens if you do this, see what happens if you do this.

We don't want to necessarily punish you for that.

And now having this conversation,

we for sure need to just do a full Baldur's Gate 3 chat.

Yeah, because

we're

semi-in spoiler country right now, but yes.

So I'll stop there and say what I've been playing and then Heather.

Great.

Oh, this Heather, you want to jump in and say what?

Well, I just wanted to say I haven't had the opportunity to sleep with anyone in Baldur's Gate because literally everybody in the entire world of Baldur's Gate is mad at me.

Yeah.

Like mad at me.

And again,

I'm slogging through a game that is

only demonstrative of the butterfly effect of I went in a room and I looked in a box and I have had to kill everybody I've come across since.

And it is a nightmare.

Yeah.

I would go so far as to say

it's unenjoyable.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, you kind of just want to relax.

You kind of want to just meet somebody that's like kind of funny and then like kind of hang out with them a little bit.

Everybody, everybody.

On both, if I go into an area that's both sides are in conflict.

I, and I talk to one side, they're like, there she is, fucking execute her.

And I'm like, oh, okay, I don't know what I did to these people.

And And I go to the other side and I'm like, hey, can I like you, you've set fire to this thing.

And they're like,

you killed so-and-so.

Die.

So like, there's nowhere for me to go.

I'm truly a lone wolf in the world of Baldur's Gate.

Also, multiple people have left my party.

Left.

Yeah.

Left.

Left.

Yes, left.

I was reading about how this happens, like what might lead someone to leave your party in act one.

And it seems to be like, yeah, if you commit genocide, these two party members will leave.

They don't like that.

But I'm not, it was, there was no point at which I was like, I'm going to murder everybody.

Right.

It was, I'm under attack.

Like there was no point.

And literally the attacks all started from, I wanted to look in a box.

Like, that's it.

That's all I did.

I looked in a box in a fucking room at like early, early game where there's like a paralyzed woman in a building.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah.

And she's like, don't go through this stuff.

And I'm like, well, I want to just look,

which is what I would have said if there was a dungeon master.

So I like open the box and then she starts screaming.

And then like people come in and I'm like, oh my God, what just like they attack me and then I got to kill them.

And then the other people see and it's just been like an avalanche since then, like a miserable avalanche where

major character I encounter is upset at me from the go.

Yeah.

From the drop.

I mean, I would just say like, you know, walk into a Wells Fargo and be like, I'm just going to look in the vault for a little bit and see how that goes for you.

It's like, yeah, it's like I'm playing Grand Prix.

I don't think people at the coffee bean next door would be upset, though.

You know what I mean?

But if you're playing a thief.

Like if you're if you're role playing a thief, like if the thief is going to be like, well, is there anything of value in here?

And that's all I wanted to know.

Just is there anything of value in in this box there wasn't by the way i think it was like grain like it was nothing you can you can approach that that any number of ways but that's one where also and this happens throughout the game that i like is that you can just like heal the person who's you could just heal the person who's uh has paralysis and then that lets that gives you access to that room that's just like another way you can approach it But yeah, it's, it's, I think you just probably want to want to roll a new character at this point, especially hearing from last week that you killed Carlak, who I think is an NPC that you would really like the way the character is written.

I didn't kill Carlak.

Carlak attacked me on site.

Carlak attacked me on site, who I didn't even know was an NP or a party character.

Two party members have left the fucking group.

I found like a hole in the ground that led to like bandit tunnels, walked into the bandit tunnels, don't know what I did to them.

They immediately were like, and this wasn't because I was in there.

They were like, it's you.

You opened the chest.

A different chest.

Oh, yeah.

I know exactly.

I know this, this as well.

That's a fun.

I had that same thing happen where I'd, I'd,

my first playthrough,

yes, I'd, I'd, I'd open the chest because I just like came across it.

Some gnolls are attacking.

Um, some, uh, you know, yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like I got the chest and I naturally opened it.

And then I went, I found the hideout, which is underneath the Joaquim's rest, I think it's called.

Joaquim's Rest.

And the

that and that hideout,

they were like, did you find like, I was, I already found the chest and I opened it and they're like, you, you, you fool, you've killed us all.

And then they just attack you and it became this huge combat.

Um, on my second playthrough, I, I, like, found, I found the hideout first and then got the quest to retrieve the chest intact.

And so I did that and got like a, you know, some, some nice payout from it.

So yeah, it's a, there's a bunch of different ways to play it.

That one doesn't necessarily turn everyone in the world hostile on you, though.

Everybody in the world is hostile to me.

Everybody.

I think you got to

re-roll this bad boy.

No, I'm playing.

I'm going to see if I can play all the way through.

I'm sure you can.

Well, gosh,

I have to wrap it up because

I loved what I was doing.

I feel like that game also taught me some bad habits.

And now, like, when I'm playing games, I'm like mad and like, or like a little resentful that I can't save scum the way that I like.

Cause like you can very granularly save scum in Baldur's Gate 3.

And you can in other games, but not to the degree, especially like more

older games.

It's a little harder to do.

It depends on the game, it depends on the platform.

I mean, a lot of old school PC games, I mean, like, you know, you can, you can absolutely save scum your way through the whole thing.

I'm stuck at a part right now that it's absolutely my fault in the game that I'm playing.

I'm playing.

For the first time ever.

Well, not for the first time ever, but for the first time with any real seriousness.

Final Fantasy VII.

Wow.

Because I know that

Rebirth is

coming out on the leap day this year.

Hey, we get a leap day.

Isn't that nice?

How about that?

Get it once.

That's nice.

What is it?

Every four years?

Yeah,

anytime we're electing a president, leap day.

Oh, great.

Do it on the opposite.

Switch that up.

I don't need...

An extra day in the year where it's the worst year.

We got to worry about leap day.

We got to worry about the Olympics.

We got to worry about a president.

Come on.

Set them all at different.

That's too much of it for a year.

But anyway,

I'm playing Final Fantasy VII, and to my surprise, I had never made it out of the tutorial area, really,

which I would consider the Midgar part.

Sure.

Kind of the first, the

first half or the first act, or the first part of the first act.

Yes.

So once we left Midgar for the first time,

I was like,

there's more to it than this.

There's so much in this fucking game.

It's

just can we stop down on that real quick, which is that for me, the moment, because I played this game on PlayStation 1, you know, the year it came out.

And the moment when you step out of Midgar, which you spend like, whatever, the first five to 10 hours in.

Yeah, it's like five hours.

It's a substantial chunk of gameplay.

And then you step out.

And then you get the world map and the theme hits, the main theme hits for the first time.

Yeah.

For me, it's like such a memorable gaming moment.

I don't know if it hit you the same way, Heather.

I, so, um,

I, I didn't,

I don't think I got to out in the regular world with Final Fantasy VII.

My first real, like, oh, this game has its, it's hooks in me was Final Fantasy VIII.

Um, seven was like, okay.

But eight, I was like, holy shit, this is awesome.

And you get access to the world map very very early in that game.

And I didn't even know.

I don't think I knew that there was a world map in Final Fantasy 7,

which I, you know, got.

And then I was like, this is, this is nice.

Okay.

And then

also, it's good to, it's, it's important to note, Final Fantasy games now come out like once every six years.

Yes.

Final Fantasy VII was 97.

Final Fantasy VIII was 99.

Final Fantasy 9 was 2000.

And Final Fantasy X was 2001.

So if you didn't like a Final Fantasy game back in the day, another one was around the corner.

Now, you have to be like pot committed to the lifestyle of Final, like Final Fantasy XV has to fill out years of my life in order to like be 16 was the most recent one.

You could say

no,

I chose my words correctly.

I chose them correctly.

Anyway, I'm really glad that you're that you, I have a save for Final Fantasy VII on my PlayStation, which is right before the final fight, and I am not powered up enough to kill the final boss.

And I don't, I think it's per it's permanently ruined because I think I'm in a save area where there are no more random encounters that you can trigger.

So this is sort of the issue that I'm having.

I'm in the Temple of the Ancients.

I've sort of blasted through this thing because I did find out that this game does have some of the modern conveniences that are in the

pixel remasters where you can you can turn off random encounters you can uh um

basically always have a full uh limit meter and things like that um

but

in in other final fantasy games where i've done exactly that

i'll i'll make more stops at like stores and like buy items and stuff

i didn't do that for this and i'm at the the boss at the temple in the temple of the ancients and i keep getting turned into a frog and i don't have

what is it maiden's kiss or whatever

that sounds right potion to turn me not frog and i keep getting smoked and i don't think i can leave the temple of the ancients i might be able to um

i'll have to by the time this comes out hopefully i'll have

Gone past this point.

So just that's I'm saying that just so that everybody doesn't tag me and be like, This is what you have to do.

I'm figuring it out.

Okay.

I'm going to go home and do this literally when we're done.

But

I'm stuck there.

But I will say I'm really, really enjoying the game.

I didn't, I truly just didn't know

what it was really.

Like, I've obviously am familiar with Sephiroth.

I'm

familiar with Cloud and the rest.

Tifa.

Who else is there?

Aerith.

Aerith.

Barret.

sure i didn't know red 13 oh yeah i didn't really know red 13 and i didn't know uh kate sith oh yeah and let me tell you i'm not really happy with kate sith right now wow oh um because you're a big cat lad and the other cat lad to two prominent cat party members got double crossed by my new friend kate sith oh boy maybe the word sith should have been a clue and

Wow.

Anyway, all this to say, I'm enjoying it.

I was going to just go ahead and jump into seven remake, but then I was like, I feel like I'm doing myself a disservice.

I feel like I should

eat my vegetables before I have meat.

But I also like vegetables.

The idea of somebody in the year 2024 saying

that Final Fantasy VII is vegetables is pretty incredible.

We've come so far.

It's obviously a great game in like it's many games stand on its shoulders, right?

It's like it's like a, it's, it's, it's totemic it's like it's it's iconic it's a it's a huge game but i think in the year 2024 it's it's not as fun to play as maybe a final fantasy 15 or something right like it's a little slower it's like the turn base part of it is like is tough and like it looks bad but now and i i will say i was flying around on the fucking uh that airplane that you get

and i was like i think i'm gonna be sick like it was making me ill like it was making me nauseous to when I was looking for the Temple of the Ancients.

Yeah, the way it kind of, the airship kind of scrolls all over the globe.

It's, I, I get what you're saying.

It could maybe be a little dizzying, perhaps, but on a, on a higher resolution, on a modern resolution, it may be ill.

And I'm playing it on Switch too, by the way, which is

great.

I'm glad you're getting into it.

Yeah, and hopefully

roll credits on that and then go straight into Remake so then it can go straight into rebirth.

If there's time, maybe I'll do Crysis Core as well.

But

I'm trying to

be as Final Fantasy VII as I can.

That's me.

I love it.

I really love this.

This makes me really happy.

Thank you.

I'm having fun.

So, how many Final Fantasies does this make for you now?

Obviously, 16 we've talked about, but you started playing the Pixel Remasters back from one, and I know you played one back in the day.

Yeah, I played one and two back in the day.

I started with the Pixel Remasters at three, even though I played three on the

DS.

Right, three.

That was like kind of like a remake, remastered.

So it's different to the picture.

And maybe one of my favorite DS games.

I loved it.

I started with four, didn't finish four.

I think I got about 10 hours into four or something.

Need to go back.

Stopped completely.

Jumped straight into 16.

And that's basically it.

And then Kingdom Hearts games, I've seen a fair amount of Final Fantasy IX played, watching my uncle play Final Fantasy IX because I'm familiar with

those characters I think six on among the Super Nintendo generation is worth playing through um four you know you probably get a sense of I love Ford and but you know I don't know if you necessarily need to go back to that I think five is worth messing around with a little bit just for the job system um but it's it's kind of cool but it has like a less interesting narrative than a little bit thinner uh but yeah that i i i love that you're you're on this mission to play through them i also i back in the day i played through like half of 10

like on the playstation 2 i played through like half of it, but I never finished it.

But I'd like to do them all.

I probably won't get to the MMOs.

10 really does feel a bit like the Final Fantasy.

Like, if you were going to

give the era a tone, 10 feels like it ended

like an era of a certain kind of tone.

Because 11 was a departure, 12 was a departure, 13 was a departure, 14 obviously, 15.

They're all very, very different, I think, from a sort of,

I, again, it's a tone that, that kind of follows from

there's like the one through six tone, and then there's the seven through 10 tone.

And now I don't think there's a consistent tone to a Final Fantasy game.

I think that's a great point and well said.

And I think also in terms of combat systems and just sort of gameplay in general, things like the sphere grid and the way that Final Fantasy X's combat worked kind of felt like, oh, this is the final iteration of this sort of, you know,

this kind of classic Final Fantasy gameplay.

And everything since has kind of had some, it's its own little spin on it.

Heather, what have you been playing?

Well,

I'm going to be, I'm going to save what I've been playing for our like topic du jour

because I feel like that's that's why I've been playing what I've been playing.

But

I will say that, you know, the analog pocket updated's

what would you call them?

Filters.

So they now apply to all of the retro cores that you can sideload into the system and you can make classic games look like they're being played on a Trinitron.

And that is the only thing standing in between me and enjoying like classic games like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI on my analog pocket.

So I'm enjoying that.

But then

as mentioned, we had a big Fortnite event on the Discord.

So I've been playing a lot of Fortnite, both in

part because of the Discord and then on the side with my own squad.

The game right now is

it's

Somebody asked me on Twitter, and I think also in the Discord, how I'm enjoying this season.

And I have to say, last season was Fortnite OG, where they stripped out everything and brought it all the way back down to its roots.

And there wasn't a lot of cover, and it was just like a very, very procedural, gritty, like you had to have great position in order to

progress through the game.

The game now is just a game for snipers.

And I am a sniper.

That's like, if I was going to say I have a class in the game, it's sniper is my class and has always been my class.

And I'm going to say some, um,

something a little,

uh,

I think the snipers are overpowered in this season.

And I, and I've been looking at online discourse about the game on Reddit or wherever.

And I think that's the general consensus is that the snipers are overpowered in this season.

And I think it is taking it is it's removing a little bit of the

feeling of adrenaline and victory when you do get a good sniper shot off, but it's also making the game unfair for a lot of more close-range battles.

Like you can land a couple lucky sniper shots because the

aim down sight is so fast on a sniper

and the and the bullet lag is so so it's so

dramatically reduced from previous seasons that it it feels a little feels a little OP.

I'm not going to put down the gun, obviously, but I'm hoping that the next update to the game introduces some what?

What's that?

No, just I'm not going to put down the gun is a funny thing to say.

But yeah, and

I don't know.

I'm doing on a personal journey, I've decided to start playing ranked Fortnite.

And I don't play ranked Fortnite in squads.

I only play ranked Fortnite in solos.

And I'm enjoying that journey.

I think I'm Platinum 3 now, which is nice.

Not anywhere near the top, but certainly not anywhere near the bottom because I just started.

I'm also enjoying Fortnite Rocket Racing, which is the new built-in racing game in Fortnite.

There's too much fucking Fortnite.

I know Rochelle plays Fortnite as well.

Because I didn't realize that we moved on from the OG Fortnite season.

Rochelle, are you playing the current season and what are your feelings?

I am playing it, and I'm so happy that OG Fortnite is gone.

Yeah, OG Fortnite sucks.

Do you like the, do you feel like it's like the sniper meta?

Like, do you, do you like playing like that?

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, you can, there's like mod benches now, so you can get like a four-time scope on your sniper rifle.

Whoa.

And yeah, it just, it's the way to win.

What skin are you using currently?

Eminem.

That's so funny.

I dipped my toes back in it when they added the new stuff and I checked out Lego Fortnite.

Honestly, not to be saying all these different things should require its own episode, but I think we could revisit it just with some of the stuff that they've added because the rocket racing rules, it's really fun.

Lego Fortnite is really awesome.

And

Fortnite Festival is the like harmonics rock band in Fortnite game.

And it's great.

exactly like rock band, but with no plastic instruments yet.

I'm hearing that there'll be,

there's a plan for that at some point, but I've just been like

playing as Ash from the Evil Dead, just like playing like Billie Eilish songs in

Fortnite Festival.

And I was like, this is great.

This is really fun.

I loved that.

I can play that all day.

I'm down to talk Fortnite some more.

I haven't revisited in a while, but I have talked to over the holidays, spent time with both of my nephews, both of whom play Fortnite, it seems like every night.

Wow.

And kind of got the, you know, the whatever

that generation's perspective on it.

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All right, let's talk about cloud gaming, which is a topic that's unfortunately in the news as of this record via a games industry.biz piece.

This is actually our buddy Stephen Ray Morris, a listener of the pod,

a great podcaster and podcast producer in his own right, brought this to my attention.

But the headline I will read, the new Ubisoft Plus and getting gamers comfortable with not owning their games.

This is an interview with Philippe Tremblay, who's a Ubisoft executive.

I'll just read a little bit of this quote.

One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games.

That's the consumer shift that needs to happen.

They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection.

I mean, I'm sure we got comfortable with that, but that just was the choice that was presented, the non-choice that was presented to us.

There's a transformation that's been a bit slower to happen in games.

So it's about feeling comfortable with not owning your game.

You know, I wrote some bullet points, but I'll just read one bullet point I wrote is just, I hate this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cause I think

that's like, that's bullshit.

It's, it sucks and it's stupid.

Yeah.

I've fully gone back to

physical, I've gone back to physical media in a big way in the last in 2023, continuing on into 2024.

I haven't bought a digital game in some time.

Well, it's bad because I live in an apartment, so I'm running out of space, but I've gone back physical completely.

And

the only way that I like, I don't agree with that at all, but

the Xbox Game Pass

like service is that.

And I'm comfortable with that because I didn't buy the game.

I'm paying for the service to play the game, to lease the game for them for the time that I have Xbox Game Pass.

But if I own, if I purchase a game, if I spend money on a singular title,

that should be mine.

That should be, you should own that.

Yeah, I mean,

I think this is more just like talking about even removing the optionality of being able to purchase something.

And it's like, that's kind of a bummer.

I mean, that is a bummer.

But, you know, we've seen this happen with movies and TV where there's just a lot of lost media out there.

And yeah, of course, that's always been the case to some degree, but it's like these things, some things have never been given physical releases and then they're just pulled from streaming services and there's no way to buy them digitally.

So there's just no way legally to consume them.

Now, the part of the state of gaming with all of its with its myriad platforms and you know,

a bunch of stuff that you just can't play anymore on original hardware with any sort of ease, a lot of stuff already is lost.

But as platforms have kind of like, as there has been a little bit of convergence and a little bit more platform neutrality and a little bit more of stuff being released on everything on PC and Xbox and PlayStation and Switch, it would become a bummer if some of that stuff starts getting pulled just by a publisher's whim.

Yeah,

it's just so bad because you see that stuff too happy.

You see it happen a lot in the

TV and movie space in particular.

You see just stuff just completely disappear.

Sony just reversed.

They were going to,

I think they reversed it.

If you bought stuff digitally on their like PlayStation store, that was like a TV show or movie, they were like, this service is going away.

But it was with a select, it was one of those weird things where it was with a select library that they'd licensed from like some particular studios.

I think it was Discovery.

Yeah, it was Discovery.

Okay, so it was with Discovery specifically.

So it included a lot of like, and I don't know who's buying, you know, a season of Ice Road Truckers on the PlayStation platform.

But if you did buy that, you should have it.

Yes.

It should not be a thing that kind of goes away.

And I think just like there was enough outcry where they reversed that.

I had to have a big conversation one time with

my mom because the

she bought,

she bought, she paid money

to have, to own, I'm using air quotes, the live-action Mulan movie on Disney Plus when that was an option.

She's like, oh, good.

I own this.

So now we can just watch this whenever.

Yeah.

And I had to be like, you know that it's just going to be on, it's going to meet to Disney Plus in like two months.

And it's also going to be there.

So

you, all you did was bought an early ticket for it, basically.

You can't take that off of Disney Plus and use it and watch it somewhere else in a different platform.

Yeah.

And she was like, no, I own this.

I was like, okay, cancel your Disney Plus subscription and see what they do with that.

You're not going to get this movie.

It was a huge thing.

And she was just like, no, no, no.

I only got into it with her because I was like, you have to stop doing this.

And also, what are you doing?

What are we doing here?

You can't, you can't.

So if you own a copy of the movie Amelie

on Apple, like

a major, like, it's not like, oh, I, I bought Amelie on Roku Plus in 2008.

Like, if you buy the movie Amelie on

the Apple Store, on like iTunes or whatever, they no longer have access to Amelie.

So it shows up in your library, but you can only watch it up to the point where you last watched it.

And for me, that's about 75% of the way through the film.

So like, I can never watch Amelie ever again, even though I purchased Amelie

whenever the fuck I purchased it.

And I think that that is,

that's why not owning the thing is dangerous because there are tangible real world examples of purchasing the thing, which is technically leasing the thing, and then not having access to it in the future.

Like

I will,

I know that Final Fantasy First Soldier was a live services game.

And there wasn't exactly a one-player mode, but that doesn't change the fact that it represented a huge chunk of my playing experience a year and a half ago, I think.

And I can never, ever, ever, ever, ever play it again, which is fucking crazy.

Like, yeah, you have to hope for like a fan server going up or something.

I really think that the difference between

the and maybe this is explains some of the reluctance of gamers to shift to this rent and lease model is that we spend an enormous amount of time with the media that we are engaging with in video games.

It's not a two-hour film.

Like,

it's more akin to a book because you spend an enormous time reading a book.

And the idea that you could buy a book, read a book, have an incredible emotional experience with that book, and then someday it would just disappear from your shelf, and you wouldn't be able to go to a library or purchase it or have access to that book ever again.

Like,

Final Fantasy VI is like a 70-hour game.

Like,

to only give you access to that in a short period of your life and then never again, that's why, I think that's why gamers are like, no, fuck this.

I'm not going to spend all this time with these characters and love this world and then someday you can revoke my permission to use it.

That's nuts.

Yeah, and I think it's, you know, there's an important

distinguishing, you know, kind of line of demarcation to have between

online games,

service games, and MMOs, things like League of Legends or Fortnite, which are free to play, but supported by purchases or season passes, or an MMO like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, where there's a subscription fee, these kind of ongoing experiences versus a single-player experience that at a certain point,

yeah, games get patched and updated as in the initial releases.

Some of them get supported for years, but at a certain point, it is in a finished state.

And you should be able to just play that thing indefinitely.

You should have permanent permission to be able to do that.

But I think we're reaching a point where

even if you buy a physical copy of a game, as I've bought all of my PS5 games physically, it's like you're getting a disc with a copy of the game that needs to be updated.

And at a certain point in the future, they are going to, you know, stop supporting that.

And you're just not going to have a playable disc with, with, you know, you're not going to have a version of the game that you can play offline.

So it's interesting though, it's kind of like you want to have some safeguards against that, but also it just all the pressures seem to be pushing towards this eventual sort of thing where, hey, it's just going to keep getting worse and we're not going to have any sort of choice and whatever.

We'll be leasing all our furniture someday.

You just won't own anything.

They're just going to figure that out too.

But all that said, Heather, you talked about a game that you wanted to discuss in the cloud gaming gaming aspect portion of the show.

What is that game and what can you tell us about it?

Well,

it's a game and system.

So I got the PlayStation Portal in part because as I finish up my treatment here

for

this recurrence of cancer that I had,

there are weeks where I'm pretty much bedridden.

And

I

initially dunked on the PlayStation Portal last year being like, what the fuck?

Who cares?

This is stupid.

Yeah.

And now I am so grateful that it exists.

Um, because I, I really, really, it's, it's a surprisingly great machine.

And also, here's a, here's a little, a little side bit, a little side bit.

Uh,

not too long ago, video game systems had music that played uh, like,

you know, the Wii channel that that has just the song that's playing.

There's like a lot of musical cues in

older game systems and in operating systems.

And the

Vita had a sort of music that played the entire time.

I think the PSP did too.

The PlayStation Portal has a song.

And I fucking love it.

Like I love that it exists.

I'm like, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember when booting up a game system.

like gave you some music or like at least a musical cue to like begin and the PlayStation 5 doesn't do that.

Like it's just like on or off.

Beep.

What?

It goes like beep.

Yeah, it is just kind of a beep.

Beep.

Kind of a retro beep.

And

I feel like when I have the opportunity to play video games,

you know, I have my fucking game system set up in my garage, as was mentioned earlier

in the show.

So I have to leave my house.

And if I'm going to go to my garage to play a video game and I'm already there, it's going to be Fortnite because I've already, you know, I've committed to leaving,

to leaving my wife in another building to go play video games.

So let's just, you know, like fully sink into the sludge, like become a bog person.

But if I'm playing in a house with the PlayStation portal, one,

Fortnite is not a game you can play on the portal because the lag is too bad.

Like you can't play, you can play,

you can't play an online game against other people that is so dependent on your ping on the portal with any hope for success, which means that my PlayStation 5 library has opened up to me and all these games that I have sidelined in the past two years while I've become addicted to Fortnite are now reavailable to me.

So I've been playing God of War.

Fuck yes.

Wow.

God of War Ragnarok.

And it is so pleasurable to play it on the portal.

Offline, Matt Opadaka said, I don't even turn on my TV anymore.

Yeah, that's right.

So

I watch the TV, but if I'm playing a game, you know, I watch like TV.

Yeah.

God of War is not a cloud game, but it's a, it's delivered to me via remote play and cloud gaming.

And I'm stunned at how good it looks on the portal.

Because like also, there's like a

a sort of mental preparation that you have when you turn on your PS5 and you're sitting in front of a TV.

You expect it to have a certain fidelity, but you don't expect that when you're staring at a handheld gaming system.

Right.

You've, it's only through remote play on the PS4 were you ever able to experience like modern graphics on a portable system.

I think also,

at least in my experience, the PS5

portal setup is smoother than the Steam Deck.

And I don't know if they're graphically comparable.

If a Steam Deck is a portable PlayStation 5, but man, it just looks so fucking good.

And I am so grateful that it exists, especially right now.

So that's what I've been playing is more Ragnarok.

So you talked about lag with online games.

And this is a question for both of you because you both spend a lot of time using the portal, but like, you're not feeling that over your Wi-Fi as you're streaming these games from your PS5s.

No, and I think it's for single-player games.

It's going to depend.

That's going to depend on the quality of your, of, you know, of the Wi-Fi in your home, your proximity, and then also like

just, I, I, I would guess, well, first of all, you can't even really use it at like cafes and like some hotels because if there's like a, you have to agree to like terms and services type thing on some Wi-Fi's, which are, which often is the case in a public Wi-Fi situation,

it doesn't allow, it doesn't let you do that on the portal because it doesn't have a brow, it doesn't have a browser, but there is a browser somewhere in there.

It just doesn't come up for that for some reason.

But

I have no problem.

I played all of Alan Wake 1 on it.

I played some of Control and some of Alan Wake 2 on it.

And

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 on it.

If it plays great, I've had no lag,

anything like that.

Yeah,

there, there is a tiny bit of lag, but it is,

once you adjust to it, it just feels like the game.

Like, it's not like a variable lag.

It's like a, sort of like a

permanent feeling to the game that,

like, in a game like God of War, I don't think I would be able to do any of like the high-end combat challenges with it.

But like for like, you know, going around the world, totally fine.

A game like balder's gate 3 there's not going to be any conceptual lag that you experience like it's going because the game is all turn-based like it's not you won't feel it sure so

i don't know i i i i really like it and i was shocked at how much i liked it and i was also shocked at how how

uh

how kind it is to use Like it feels like they really put playability above the visual aesthetic of the machine itself, which is not typically Sony's forte.

Like, Sony will be like, fuck yeah, we made a perfect rectangle of black glass.

The buttons, you have to hold both of your arms above your head in order to like press the buttons.

But it's an incredible looking device.

And that's not the case with the portal.

The portal looks like a weird little boy.

Like it is a strange

tablet with like a broken PS5 controller snapped to each side of it.

But when you're actually using the device, it's like, oh, this is ergonomically pleasant and it's a good,

I can't believe I like it.

I really like it.

It's really great.

I wish it had the option

for cloud stuff because a whole part of the PlayStation Plus service, depending on what tier you have, you have access to their classics catalog, which are cloud-based.

So like games from the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era, PlayStation 1 are all cloud-based.

And

they don't let you do that, but it's a Wi-Fi device.

You should be able to just then log in that way or whatever and play things from the cloud.

But it won't let you.

But, but this is like the whole issue with cloud gaming in general: is that like it, uh, it cedes more control to publishers and media companies in terms of what you are and aren't allowed to do with your hardware that you've bought and with your games that you should have um some ownership of uh i you mentioned baldersgate 3 heather and i should i i feel like i it's worth noting in the context of this discussion that this consensus 2023 game of the year uh this you know multi-million selling um you know grossing you know 500 million dollars on steam alone uh game is fully offline, which is the thing you've talked about.

Yes.

And

it's the kind of of thing where

big, big, it's Larry and technically like a kind of an indie publisher, I guess.

But like, it's, it's, it's, it's the, the, everyone's gonna, all the, the publishers rushing to imitate this are going to take the wrong lessons.

And no one is going to be like, well, we should make our game offline as well.

Cause it seems to be there's some consumer resistance to DRM and some eagerness to, you know, like people will buy something if it's if it's good enough and not pirate it, even if there's uh even if it's playable on offline fully.

They're not going to do that.

like they're completely not going to emulate that care that aspect of it but it is interesting that you know that that in the context of this discussion in the context of this trend um that that happens to be the case uh with bg3 um i i think if i'm thinking about this

try trying to think of a the positives of of this trend And Matt, you already touched on one, which is it is a tremendous value for consumers in the same way that Netflix is a great value for consumers.

Like it's just you're getting a lot more content for one flat rate.

Spotify, an incredible value for consumers.

Obviously, this has led to labor being screwed.

But if you're just thinking of it from the perspective of not the people who make this stuff, but the people who consume it, yeah, it is, you are getting more stuff for cheaper.

So I guess that's a positive.

I do think there's some pluses to indie games having a wider audience through these distribution models.

Like, you know, something like when Netflix released Into the Breach on their gaming platform, that kind of breathed new life into this game.

Um, and hopefully, create that created a nice payday for the developers, I assume.

So, you know, those sorts of things I think are helpful.

I think not having to upgrade hardware as frequently is another thing, you know.

Uh, but I think they'll find a way to for us to keep buying new, whatever, new PlayStation portals or whatever the fuck they want to sell.

A friend of mine, speaking of not having to upgrade hardware, yeah, a friend of mine was very into Destiny 2 for a long time, and you can play Destiny 2 via the cloud.

And I was like, well, how do you play it?

What do you like?

What systems do you have?

And he was like, oh,

I don't have one.

I played on Amazon Luna.

And I was like, you, wow.

I was the only person I've ever met

that played, that one, had Amazon Luna

and played only Destiny 2 on it.

It was the only game they played.

They loved playing Destiny 2 on Amazon Luna, of all things.

I think that there is a lot of

privilege at play by saying, you know, we should be able to own our games because games are fucking expensive and systems are fucking expensive.

And there's a lot of people out there who, you know, are barricaded

from

video gaming because of the

initial price point.

And I do think that it is

important to cite

their access to games.

But like Nick said, it almost always comes at the expense of the people making the content.

Like it almost always is like labor gets fucked when you are leasing content to consumers because it's known

that

all of these streaming companies were the ones pressuring say the Writers Guild to accept a shitty deal this summer when the Writers Guild went on strike because they were like, we don't want to concede to the demands of the people making the material.

We only want to put market pressure on people to

stream their content and never own it again.

I don't know.

I feel like there should be

like,

I wish that there were The problem is whenever it comes to like ownership or leasing or any of this shit, like you've got

all of the rental pressure on housing in the United States is

the only way that

certain

subsets of the American population can live in a house is to rent, right?

But then as soon as you have that population inside of a house, you raise the rent and squeeze them.

until they can no longer afford the very place that they're able to live.

And in the same way, like fucking Disney Plus has increased in price like three times in the last two years.

So I don't know.

It's, it's a shitty thing.

I wish, I wish we, I wish the internet didn't exist sometimes, but then neither would our show.

So I don't know.

That's true.

Yeah, maybe still for the best.

We should wrap up this discussion just because we would just because of our schedule today.

But any other thoughts on this?

Any other thoughts on

cloud gaming?

The only time I ever thought it was good was when I was playing Yakuza Zero at the beach, like on my backbone.

I was like, this is insane that this is an option.

Yes.

And, you know,

what a value.

Like, it was just amazing.

But, you know,

I don't think

I'm skeptical of it.

I'm skeptical of cloud stuff just in general because it's, you know,

the day the internet goes down for whatever reason,

it's all gone, all of it.

But you know, every I'll every time that I move and I don't have internet for a day for some reason, because like this hasn't happened to me since the last couple of times I've moved, but when I've moved in the past and didn't plan ahead and didn't have internet for like two days, the one thing that always helped me out was my DVDs and like my Lord of the Rings DVD specifically.

I'm like, oh, I have to kill a lot of time because I don't have Netflix.

Yeah.

I'm just going to watch all of Lord of the Rings.

So I physical media, get back into it.

I think it's a great idea just for everything.

Books,

movies, games, music, do what you got to do, but make sure you actually have your stuff.

All right, let's shall we do a segment?

Let's do it.

Let's do a segment.

I have some games.

I have a list of games right here, and Nick and Heather have to tell me exactly how big they are.

This is the size is right.

So this is,

and I'm, I probably do it, I may be confused about what bigness is here.

Are we talking about the length of the campaign?

Are we talking about the size of it on disc?

We're talking about, yeah, file size.

Okay.

File size?

What a strange segment.

Okay, here we go.

We did it once and everybody liked it.

And because we've made our list of games, our top 10 games last week, Some of these games are on those lists.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So these are games we're all pretty familiar with.

So let's see if you guys can tell me the file size for The Last of Us on PlayStation 3.

Okay.

And is this because it's called the size is right?

I assume this is price is right rules where it's it's closest without going over.

That's right.

Okay.

Ah

hmm.

I don't want to go over.

Yeah, go for it.

23.5 gigabytes.

Okay, 23.5 gigabytes on the board.

I'll say 12.1 gigs.

12.1 gigs.

Okay.

Nick took the way under.

Heather is closest.

The answer is 30 gigabytes.

30 gigabytes for The Last of Us on PlayStation 3.

Isn't that something?

That's wild.

I thought there was a chance that

it was one of those things that's smaller than you think just because of last-gen assets.

But yeah, it is a very detail-rich game.

Now, is that from the PS3 version?

That's right.

Wow.

What is the capacity of

a

Blu-ray?

I don't know, actually.

It's kind of interesting to think about.

It's got to be close to the capacity.

Yeah.

I would think it was pushing it.

Yeah.

For sure.

Okay.

How about this next one?

All right.

This next one,

Kingdom Hearts 2.

One of the ones near and dear to me.

All right.

So this game was on a DVD.

Hmm.

So that was like, what, what was the DVD capacity?

6.4 gigs, something like that?

I'm going to guess 650 megabytes.

Good guess.

I think it had some, you know, some voice and some rendered cinematics there that pushed it a little bit higher.

But

I won't just go one dollar more.

I'm going to guess,

I'm going to guess 3.0 gigs even.

And Heather, what did you say?

650 megabytes.

Nick, I'm sorry to say that you went over.

Damn.

And Heather is closest yet again.

828 megabytes.

Wow, okay.

Under a gig.

That's two two points for Heather.

None for Nick, but still anyone's game.

How about this?

A game we all love.

Disco Elysium.

Assume we're doing Final Cut.

Yeah, still the added voiceover.

Yeah.

Okay.

I feel like this one is,

I'm going to say 11 gigs.

11 gigs on the board?

I feel like it's bigger than that.

I'm going to say

9 gigs.

9 gigs.

Unfortunately, two under Heather.

The answer, 16.167 gigabytes.

Wow, okay.

Wow.

It's on the board.

All right.

I'm going to smoke a cigarette and do crank celebration.

No, no.

Okay.

How about this right here?

Cuphead.

What is the file size for Cuphead?

Hmm.

Not a slight game, but

not

too crazy.

Yeah, gorgeous art.

You know, like a great score.

So, you know, but that's those, those aren't the music files aren't necessarily the thing that's going to bloat your disc size all that much.

Um,

but it's also

this is tough.

I think this one could be like sneaky small, like a little bit smaller than you think.

I'm gonna say four gigs.

Okay, four gigs on the board.

Heather, what do you think?

I'm gonna say,

I'm gonna say

something insane.

I'm gonna say one gig.

Heather is the closest without going over.

Wow.

It's 1.9 gigabytes.

Wow, okay.

So it's

a reasonably small game by modern standards.

Yeah, pretty small.

Wow.

Here's a not small game.

Okay.

Baldur's Gate 3.

I should know this one.

I definitely had a clear hard drive space to download it.

And I think, and I think it's gotten bigger from the, you know, all the updates that it's gotten.

But I don't know what it's at currently.

Heather's got a guess.

I can go first if you want to.

Yeah, go for it.

160 gigs.

160 on the board uh let's see

i mean i've got i've got a 500 gig solid state drive in my pc and i don't think it's occupying

you know

what like 40 of it i don't i don't think it's that much i don't think it's that big but it is big I'm just going to cut that guess in half and say 80 gigs.

Heather went over the answer for general new system requirements for this game.

If you're installing on PC, 150 gigs.

Wow.

I almost said 150.

150 gigs.

On PlayStation 5, it varies, but it's still over 100.

Big chunky guy.

Big chunky guy.

It's a huge game.

So now...

Look what daddy did.

Oh, God.

The big, chunky guy.

Where did we just talk about that?

On the podcast.

Okay.

I forgot.

I was like, I hated hearing the podcast we recorded.

Okay, last one.

What's the score right now?

It is two.

You have two.

Heather has three.

Okay.

So we can either tie it up or Heather could

roll ahead here.

Or we both go over.

Or we both go over and then Heather's the winner.

Okay, got.

There are three outcomes.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

What is the file size of Sonic the Hedgehog 2?

What was the capacity of a Genesis cartridge?

Because it was one of those things where it was in megabits, not megabytes, right?

So like, this is like,

this is one of those games where it seems to be shockingly small.

I'm going to guess

128K.

Oh, my God.

I'm going to guess one megabyte.

128K?

One megabyte?

The answer.

50.

50 MB

for Sonic the Hedgehog.

Wait, but is that, but that's that's megabits, megabits, right?

Nothing.

It must be megabits.

According to my research.

So what does megabits translate to in terms of K?

Okay, he's trying to get K in here.

Or in terms of megabytes.

Because

Heather's definitely going to be over if it's megabits, right?

But see, then this is the thing.

I'm seeing here 55.38 MB.

No way.

That's huge.

But it's not specifying what version is the thing.

There's so many versions of it.

It could be

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the DS or something, you know?

Okay.

Which uses the block system.

Well, this calculator I have, what was your guess, Heather?

One megabyte.

Okay, so I think you actually do get this because one megabit is an eighth of a megabyte.

So that's about six megabytes.

total if we're if we're talking about 50 megabits.

Wow.

So Heather takes it, and Heather's our winner.

Congrats, Heather.

Of the price.

Oops.

I mean, the size is right.

Yeah, let's not get sued.

No, no.

The size is right.

That's it.

That's it.

We can't do that.

Right.

Don't.

Can I get like an eighth of a second of a fail horn for losing?

Broom, bro.

That's this week's Get Played.

Our producer is Michelle Chen.

You can check out her on social media, yard underscore underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by duckbrigade design duckbrigade dot com and check out our paywall uh on our patreon uh patreon.com slash get played we have our full back catalog of played episodes available there everything before our affiliation with head gum as well as our show get animated where we are continuing our watch of pluto yeah that's right and i think this week we are

uh talking about episode five of Pluto.

Is that right?

I think it's four.

Ah, four.

Fuck.

Fuck.

All right.

Well, we're talking about episode four of Pluto on

our Get Anime sister podcast.

It's available at patreon.com slash get played.

It's where you can listen to that.

It's a, I don't know, it's a fun show.

It's neat to hear us talk about anime.

We have a good time.

I sure like talking about anime, and I sure like talking about the show with the two of you.

Yeah.

And some of the listeners of Get Anime don't even watch the shows.

They just come to listen to us talk about them.

And that's nice, and we love that.

Yeah.

And guys, hmm, I think the cloud got played.

What do you think about that?

Yeah, the cloud got played, which eventually means we will get played.

That was a hit gum podcast.