Pokémon Sleep

Hey dudes.

So I know we're talking about Pokemon Sleep this week.

We've all been playing it.

I don't know if I'm going to say this on the pod, but I'll just tell you before we start recording.

Oh, okay.

I figured out how to get to the end game.

I figured how to beat this thing.

To beat Pokemon Sleep?

Yeah, I think it's just

track it.

It's not like a...

No, there's an ending.

You can beat it.

You can roll credits on this one.

You can roll credits on Pokemon Sleep?

Yeah.

Because I thought it was just going to be like an ongoing Pokemon Go style app where it's like you log in every day, you play a little bit more.

But

okay, yeah, sure, dude.

Tell us about.

You got to sleep forever if you catch my drift.

You beat Pokemon Sleep when you die.

What?

Wait, first off,

how do you know know this?

How did you figure it out?

Yeah.

Okay, so I don't know if you all have heard of flatlining.

Oh, no.

That's where you intentionally stop your heart for a moment before getting Zap back to life in that like 1980s and then remade movie Flatliners?

Yeah, I was in a couple documentaries.

So I was doing a, like, I was flatlining, right?

And I had my Pokemon sleep going.

And I just started to see the, like, the beginnings.

What do you mean were flatlining?

You know, I just had my rig.

I was stopping my heart intentionally with electricity, and uh, I had a little timer to sort of resuscitate myself after just a few minutes before my brain shut down.

But as I was doing that, you know, like everything goes to white, I was getting that DMT hit.

Uh, I was seeing a bunch of you know, childhood memories and stuff just flooding back.

And then I started to just see an ending cinematic that's like, congratulations.

And my Snorlax is there, and all my sleeping Pokemon friends, and they're all sleeping.

They're like waving in their sleep.

And it starts to play for just a second.

I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to get some closure on this thing.

And then, you know, I came pop back to life.

So, anyway,

what I'm saying is, like, to see the full movie, you just got to die for good.

I don't.

I don't know.

Are you in?

No, I'm not.

Are we in?

I'm not in.

I don't.

Okay.

First off, I don't know how to.

Because I'm in.

No, what do you mean you're no?

No.

Wait, Nick, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

Don't go to that machine.

Nick, don't go to that machine.

Don't do it right here.

No, don't play right now.

Don't do it.

Don't do it, Nick.

Look, I'll just flatline a little bit, then we'll do the episode.

No, flatline a little bit.

Maybe I'll see the ending.

Don't do it.

Oh my god.

I'm gonna see the ending.

Oh my god.

Wait, this looks like a rig he uses to jerk jerk off.

So some people define flatline differences.

We collect photographs of slumbering geodudes and cook our Snorlax bean burger curry as we discuss sleep gamification mobile app Pokemon Sleep this week on Get Played.

I've been thinking about trying a different voice for this, more akin to an NPR

Nick Weiger adjacent voice.

Okay, sure.

So let's try this.

Huh?

I said, I think that's fine, and I also think you should keep this explanation in.

Okay.

All right, great.

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.

Oh, hi there.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Abodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Can't you cry?

It's like two NBR hosts and a shock jock.

That'd be a fun dynamic.

No one's tried that game podcasting.

It'd be funny.

Hi, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

And welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we're talking about Pokemon Sleep.

Wow.

Which was an adventure.

I got it.

Yeah, guess who suggested this game?

Look,

did I buy a peripheral?

Is this a way to sort of justify that purchase?

Perhaps.

I have the original.

Well, we'll get into all this.

Yes.

So, and also every sentence I talk about with games starts with me being like, so I have the original

blister pack for the keychain accessory for Final Fantasy online.

Now you're doing a third voice.

This is who is this character?

That's that's me naturally.

That's true, Heather.

That's true, Heather.

Every sentence more afraid.

So, do you okay?

Before we, there's so many cool things to talk about in this life, but talking about peripherals,

by specifically.

Yeah, there are.

Although I got to get my boy out of jail.

Looks like he's going to get

a bit.

That could be anybody.

I'm talking about the big DT.

He was indicted on another set of false charges.

I forgot.

Yeah, you moved to Europe and everything sort of just changed a little bit for you.

Yeah.

No,

before I forget, so speaking of strange peripherals that you buy for a game.

Peripherals?

Peripherals?

Peripherals?

That you buy for a peripheral.

That's a weird word.

One of my favorite strange peripherals I purchased was the official Final Fantasy 11

clock,

which was synchronized to Earth and Vanadiel time,

the online clock.

which had its own moon phases and like months.

And there were specific bonuses that you would get, say, in fishing,

if you knew what moon phase and like time of day you were fishing.

So it was a clock that had normal time and then indecipherable time.

Like if you came over to my apartment, you'd be like, what the fuck is this clock?

I recognize some of the numbers.

And then it had, you could set alarms for moon phases and times in Vanadiel.

So you you could set, like, it would be like, oh, fuck, the alarm's going off.

I got to go fish.

Wow.

It was

one of my strangest.

How are you guys doing?

I mean, I don't know how to follow that.

I've never owned a special clock, Heather, okay?

You win.

You have a regular clock.

Sorry.

I don't know if I can find it.

I wonder where it is.

Actually, I did have the Taco Bell.

I had the Taco Bell tie-in watch for the movie Congo.

So I did have, that was a a cool watch I had.

I had the Simpsons watches from Burger King.

I had okay, yeah, yeah.

So there you go.

Someday I'm going to have that Final Fantasy Seiko watch.

It's going to be great.

Yeah.

This watch is cool.

I feel like as time goes on, time,

it becomes more attainable.

I feel like we checked in on it.

That feels like something we checked in on early in the show's run.

And we're like, it's $1,000.

That's insane.

And now it's like, you can get it for like $250.

Like, you can, you can get it.

Wait, we, we checked in on that early in the show's.

I feel like it's something we've like talked about a bit.

Because I love this watch.

The last time you definitely talked about it, it wasn't the first time I had heard about it.

I, that sounds correct.

God, I want that watch.

It's so pretty.

But you're wrong about it going down in price.

I think it's going up in price.

Oh,

sheesh.

I was going to say we should just get it and lure Heather back to the U.S.

with it.

I did see a cool cool watch here in Amsterdam.

They got watches there?

They do.

They do.

At the Von Goch Museum,

they had a

watch that was shaped the way that Van Gogh painted the watch.

So it's all like warped and kind of floppy looking.

And you could, but not.

too distress it wasn't like a Dali like melting clot that's what I was thinking but just slightly oblong and like a little weird at the bottom.

And the numbers were hand-painted on the face.

Anyway, these painters, can I just say something real quick?

They're like, they're twisted.

They're sick.

Paint it normal.

Well, you know, there are some,

it was like that, that came like later, I feel like in art history.

Like for a long time, people were trying to do their best to depict reality.

And then the photograph comes around and they're like, well, now what are we going to do?

This is

a dead art.

What am I going to do?

Meaning?

I can't paint like a photograph.

And they're like, well, let's come up with some weird shit.

This is not a pipe.

How about that?

I want to paint a pipe and say it's not a pipe.

Is your mind fucking blown?

Does everybody have a favorite painting?

Yeah, I'm sure we do.

This is not a pipe painting.

I really love Blue Boy.

That's a great painting.

Oh, yeah.

Huntington Library.

But I think I'm partly biased because I've seen it in person multiple times.

Look at that fucking thing.

How does someone do that?

I took my mom to go see Blue Boy.

I had never seen him before, and I saw it.

And I go to the Huntington quite a bit, actually.

And

I was just like, look at this guy.

Isn't this nuts?

And she was like, that's all right.

I like this painting by William Adolphay.

I think it's Beaugerau

called A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Love.

I like this painting.

It's at the Getty in los angeles you guys could probably look it up a young girl defending herself against love oh yeah it's got like a little a little like um

a little cupid kid with like a oh yeah this is a bow or an arrow

and she's trying to uh-huh i was just gonna say this is an unutilized meme format but keep going

All the best paintings can be memes easily.

Yeah, so to continue your description, Tether, I'm sorry to cut you off.

No, it's just, it's a it's a little cherub trying to stab a woman

with his arrow so that she would fall in love with somebody and she's kind of pushing it away playfully, but not too playfully.

Her titties are out because, you know, it's a painting type.

Yeah, first thing I plucked.

One of my favorite things about the Getty

collection online is that they also show you the back of the painting.

That is really cool.

So you can see the frame that it's in, I guess.

I don't know.

Back there, yeah.

It is pretty fucked up back there.

But that's one of my favorite paintings.

I love that painting.

It is more contemporary, but there's just something about it that I really love.

It's by David Hockney.

Okay.

And it's called A Lawn Being Sprinkled.

And it's just

a lawn with sprinklers going, and that's all it is.

But I just, I love it.

I don't know why.

I love it.

That is a cool painting.

Oh, that is a cool painting.

There's something about it that just like, I just like, I love it.

It's my, it's like, it's just my favorite.

It's, you know what, what's cool?

Because I'm looking at this.

I'm really briefly skimming the history here, but this is, uh, this is a,

created in 1967.

Yeah.

But it kind of looks like like very early computer art.

You know what I mean?

It's this, this kind of spare

geometrical sort of presentation.

It looks like something that you would do in like a predecessor to to Photoshop.

That's really cool.

Yeah, it's a really cool painting.

Just look at us.

Just look at, just, yeah, we're all just a bunch of art freaks.

You know, like, it sounds like we don't really know a lot of stuff because we're talking about video games all the time, but we're actually really cultured and we know about art.

So, yeah, I bet you didn't know that.

Blue Boys by the English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough.

Just wanted to throw that name up.

Man, look at us.

I've never, this is what happens when we do an NPR voice at the top of the show.

We have talking about art.

Yeah, yeah.

What else do we talk about at NPR?

Lawyers.

Lawyers.

Lawyers.

Lawyers.

Well, I feel like

we've talked about Suzuka.

I mean, in the past, that sort of like fits too, I think.

I think that's

Super Zone brand form.

Yeah, that's like, look, we're like,

listeners, you're getting a tote bag.

People would fucking flip for a tote bag.

I'll see what I can do about it.

But no, we're going to talk about a different sort of art, as we usually do, the art of gaming.

Yes,

the new emerging dominant art form, video games.

I think if museums had video games in it instead, they'd be cooler.

Yeah, it should be arcades.

Yeah.

Take out Blue Boy and put in fucking Adams Family pinball.

Huntington Library would.

Attendance would shoot up.

If I had my,

and I'm not going to get into the history of the Huntington Library.

Look it up if you like.

If I had my own version of that, it would just be like, this is his PlayStation 2 room.

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So, we are going to talk about games and we should talk about what we're playing now.

But before we do that, I kind of think we should try to figure out what we're going to be talking about at the end of the month.

Oh, yes.

As we do this on the show sometimes, where we kind of figure we kind of figure out live what we're going to talk about for we play, you play.

That's our that's our one episode that we dedicate to talking about playing through one game or playing, you know,

what's that?

I thought we were going to do your fishing game that you loved.

Well, we didn't talk.

We didn't set it.

We didn't lock it in.

We just floated some options.

No one was like, hey, we're going to do this.

Well, then, great.

Would that be helpful if I just started to do that?

If I just started to be like, hey, this is what we're doing.

And didn't make it a question.

I would love that.

But I'm just going to say, I mean, that's the thing you realize when you're

a little bit more of an adult is just how much of like, oh, people just want someone to make a decision.

And they don't want it to be them.

Absolutely.

That's like people who are characterized as leaders really are just decisive, good or bad.

They're just like, well, that person decided what we're going to have for lunch.

So I'll just follow their lead.

Okay, so here's a few things.

Nick, you're going to eat a hot dog for lunch.

Man,

way ahead of you.

So it is morning.

Yeah, see

a pack of empty hot dogs.

So, okay, that fishing game you like, Heather, I believe you were talking about Dave the Diver, which is a game I've been playing.

I think it would be fun to do an episode about it.

That's one option.

We also could do another fishing game that people like that is very zeitgeist-y right now, is Dredge.

Uh, Dredge is like kind of a horror fishing game, which I like I've heard is really good.

Uh, and um, it's just kind of like an interesting premise, and it's got like a lot of lore, which might give us something to talk about.

And it's available on more platforms, it looks like.

Yeah, it's a little bit more, I think, I I think it's on Switch.

What's it available on?

It's on every

five, yeah.

Yeah, Switch, PC, PlayStation, Xbox.

So that's, I think, a pretty good option, too.

The big boy we could talk about,

and I don't think we're going to commit to this, but the big boy we could talk about is Baldur's Gate 3, which is out today as of this recording.

Now, that's a big honking RPG.

And we just did a big honkin' RPG.

And I think this is the big most honkinist RPG of the year, it sounds like they don't they don't get much more honkin than than Baldur's Gate as a franchise.

What is Baldur's Gate on?

It's just on PC right now.

I think it comes out of early access today as of this record.

Well then that is not an option for me as I don't have a gaming PC here in Amsterdam.

And you don't have your

Steam Deck?

Steam Deck?

No, I do not.

I had to pack light.

All right, so we can rule out Baldur's Gate 3.

Let's see.

What else we have?

There was something else I was thinking of.

What if we played Armored Core for 48 hours straight when it comes out, and then we just cover that?

Wait, what's the release date for Armored Core 6?

It comes out August 25th.

Oh, yeah, we would not be able to do that because we're recording

that day, right?

I think so, yeah.

Okay, yeah, so we can't, we can't do Armorecore 6.

So I think maybe

I think Dave the Diver, Dredge, Dredge is maybe looking like the favorite favorite right now because it's

like saying, yeah, yeah, or no, no.

Another, I'm just going to throw out a couple more.

One is

Celeste, which is a game I've played and love.

And that just came to Game Pass.

That's been out for a few years, but it's an awesome, awesome platformer.

It's challenging.

It's got a great story.

I think that would be that's one good option.

And then the other one is a game that we talked, that we touched on in the podcast, but that we never actually got to.

But we did the original back in our old format, Coffee Talk Episode 2.

So we can do Coffee Talk 2.

I'm probably leaning Dredge, but I think there's some good options there.

Well,

I'll also recommend yet again

Killer 7,

which I think is out on Switch.

Let's see.

Yeah, what can I play Killer 7 on?

Uh,

oh no,

Killer 7 was not brought to Switch, but it is on,

I mean, it is on Steam, so it's on Steam, but then Heather can't play again.

Hmm.

We gotta do it.

We're always pushing for Killer 7.

Wait, wait, when can we, what else can we, don't you didn't bring your fucking GameCube or some shit?

What do you, do you,

Do you have no options?

I have Switch, PS5, and Mac.

That's a lot of options.

That's pretty good.

Well, that's why that's like Dredge is probably the safest right now, but then Dave the Diver is also an option because it's available on Steam Mac OS.

What I like about Killer 7, though, is it's retro.

And I think one thing

we kind of stopped doing with the WePlay UPlay that we used to do more is play like an older game.

And playing a game from 2005 or whatever is just like

that's cool.

That's a that's a cool use, I think, of the format.

Well, it doesn't just have to be whatever the new release is.

Heather's gonna be back.

This could like, I probably cut this part, but Heather's gonna be back in September, right?

What if we do Killer 7 in September?

Because we don't have like, there's not a big release, I think, in September.

Yeah, except fucking Starfield

and Armored Core.

Oh, Armored Eagle.

Yeah, right.

I just like armored core.

I don't think about Starfield because I can't.

I can't think about it.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do with that.

I also might still be like, there's another world, I think, where we cover Baldur's Gate 3 in September.

Yes.

That's just a big meaty boy.

But yeah, okay.

Okay.

I kind of like fishing.

I like fishing as an idea.

And I know this is maybe like,

I don't want to be the guy that's making a decision, but it sounds like we have a lot of options and somebody needs to pick, right?

So

why don't we say Dredge?

Dredge.

Well, Dredge is great.

Dredge is on everything, and

it came out this year, and people really like it.

And I think it'll give us a lot to talk about.

Let's do, well, so, okay, so I can say definitively, this month's we play, you play is Dredge.

We will do a Killer 7 episode discussing Dredge

on that.

We'll release on Monday, August 28th.

I do think we should slot in a Killer 7 episode, though.

Okay.

If it's just

not just a,

even if it's a game and tell.

Well, I haven't played it.

You've never played it?

I've played like the first

hour of it.

Come on.

Hold on.

I've played it for the first hour and I was like, oh, someday I'm going to put a lot of time into this.

Like, this is a fucking game.

And then never got back to it.

So this podcast is the perfect opportunity for me to play Killer 7.

That makes total sense.

I think think we could say we could, why don't we do it in, you know, we'll do it this year.

We'll do it.

If September doesn't make sense, we'll slot it in for October or November.

We'll have Killer 7 in the docket.

That's that's huge.

That's huge.

Killer 7's on the menu.

I don't know what that is.

I think you were talking about meets back on the menu.

You just got lunch on the brain.

I think that's what you're referencing.

Give me some hot dogs, dude.

So we're playing Dredge.

We're going to do Dredge.

Dredge.

Get it on your platform of choice.

It should be on everything.

And

we're going to talk about that in a few weeks.

All right.

Should we also read Old Man and the Sea simultaneously?

Honestly?

Maybe.

From what I know, it's a little bit more Lovecraftian.

Like it's got

some distinct horror elements.

But yeah, we should read Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

Because we don't read all the video games.

We talk about all kinds of art now.

That's the show.

All right, let's go.

Let's get her on Get Play.

Old Man in the Sea was first published in 1952.

At a slim 127 pages, it barely qualifies as a novella, yet its impact is far greater than its page length.

Fucking drag his ass.

Amy Wayne write a couple more pages, you bitch, you lazy bitch.

Hey, guys, should we start the show?

Yeah, let's get into the show.

It's time to talk about about some video games we're playing right now.

It's what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Okay, I was just wondering.

What are you playing?

Yeah, I was wondering if he was going to show up.

I guess he didn't show up.

He's busy.

Also in jail.

So,

who wants to start?

Matt, you start?

Heather, you start.

Jesus.

I realized I need to make a decision, and then you made one.

So I have continued down the Final Fantasy 16 journey.

Oh.

i put in another 10 hours i think over the last uh week um

i am now at a chapter for those of you who've played all the way through called the last king

um

my

complaints about the game still stand

but

not not unlike a book that you've spent a lot of time reading and you you're like well i don't want to put down the book right even though i'm not enjoying myself

I am going to finish it.

I'm going to go to the 16 of Old Man in the Sea.

I might as well see this through to the end.

I,

so

there is

a thing you unlock in the game, which are like combat challenges, where you're only allowed one icon and you have to defeat these guys in under a certain amount of time.

And

I know I like it's eye-rolly for me to be like, the combat's too easy.

But

at no point during any of these challenges, did I was I ever chat, like, there's no, I beat each one of them without having to strategize anything.

Like, and

typically you get time bonuses when you pull off certain combos.

And I was like, I don't want to fucking read these combos.

But

the natural play style of the combat allows you to add time.

So you'd finish these challenges with more time than you started, like five minutes instead of three.

Um,

I really want this game to be good.

I really want it to be good.

It's so weird that it's not good.

It bums me out, makes me sad.

Anyway, I'm at the last king.

I don't know how far I have left to go.

I was thinking gently about platinuming this game because it is pretty easy.

But then I saw that one of the trophies you need in order to platinum it is to beat it twice.

Yeah.

And I was like, fuck that.

Like, if you're not going to give me the Final Fantasy mode, don't force me to sit through all of these fucking cutscenes again.

And some of the trophies are

ultra-specific that, like, I got quite a few of them.

Like, I couldn't obviously like just like a complete accident.

It's like, hit somebody five times doing this particular thing.

It's like, well, I would like never attempt to do that.

Like, I would just like, it just would, it just happened on its own.

Uh, I would, I don't think I would go, I have the patience to go through and get a trophy in a specific way.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yep.

So, anyway, I, I, I, I played, um,

I played

Final Fantasy 16.

Um, and that's what I've been playing.

But I also want to take this moment

to announce on the podcast

the get-played get-together in Amsterdam would be at Blast Galaxy on August 12th.

Oh, I should have done the World Warrior thing.

I'll put it in.

Okay, great.

So,

what are you going to put it right here?

Yeah.

Amsterdam!

Okay, great.

So, August 12th, 2 p.m., Blast Galaxy in Amsterdam.

It's an arcade and bar.

And the first 10 people to show up will get in free.

After that, you got to pay your $15 to get in.

But all the video games are free to play after $15.

It's one of those models.

It sounds like a cool place.

How do you get in for free?

Do you say, like, I'm here for the get-played get-together?

Yeah.

Well, I bought 10 people tickets.

Oh, that's nice.

So just if they see you.

Well, yeah, I'll be at the.

You'll be at the gate.

I'll be at the gate.

Do you work or whatever?

Or I'll tell, do I work?

I do have a job.

Okay, got it.

Now, this is making sense.

So, you'll be at the door checking people's IDs and stuff.

And, you know, I'll be in it.

I'll be in like a little apron that'll look really official and like a stripey shirt.

Or, I don't, I don't know.

I've never been to this place.

I know it's free to play,

but will you have one of those things on your belt that has like the quarter like dispensers on it?

And you can like, those things are cool.

Yeah, except I'm going to fill it.

I'm going to fill it with Pringles.

They're just going to crunch.

There's going to be a bunch of crumbs in your hand afterward.

So, yeah.

That's

that.

And maybe, just maybe,

you'll see Nick there too.

Is that true?

TBD.

No, it's not.

Wait, what?

Imagine Nick in a different country.

No.

I'm not going to get across the fucking ocean for this.

If a sort of Pangea happened by the time this happened, where that connected Europe to the United States in some way without an ocean, Nick's there.

Yeah, I'm open to

a rail journey across Pangea.

That actually sounds awesome.

On a bullet train across a supercontinent.

Maybe you'll see Brad Pitt.

My dreams.

Matt, what have you been playing?

Okay.

I'm still playing Final Fantasy IV.

And I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

I just got to the Twins.

Wow.

So it's still cool.

Coronan Purim, right?

Yeah, that's right.

I feel like it's still pretty early.

I'm about five hours in, I think.

But I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

And

I'm pretty laser focused.

I was talking to you guys about this, I think, off

pod.

If I sort of just ignore all the other releases that are coming out

until October, I think I can get through quite a few of these.

Right.

If I just really set my mind to it.

But as it stands, I don't know how possible that is.

But we'll see.

But I

but I am enjoying them.

And I don't plan to stop.

But I was, and I was in the desert this last weekend

avoiding death.

And because, you know, it was

into triple digits and it was, it was, it was, it was pretty hot.

I think the hottest it got was 117 degrees.

But I was in a place with Central AC and that was nice.

But I was in a...

Since we've established that we have listeners across the world,

that's 48 degrees Celsius.

That's a hot temperature.

Yeah, pretty hot.

Hot.

Pretty hot.

Santana and Rob Thomas, they'd have something to say about that.

Man, it's a hot one.

Got it.

That's all they'd have to say about it.

That's like the only thing they say.

The rest of the song is about being smooth.

I was in the desert with a bunch of my friends from high school, and we were just like having a get-together and having a nice weekend together.

And my girlfriend was there, and it was great.

It was a lot of fun.

I took

something that we used to do together in high school with me.

My entire rock band setup that I've had

since

then.

And

we had a fucking blast.

It's still so good.

It's such a fun thing to do in a group.

I wish

I had purchased

a newer model when Rock Band 4 came out.

Because

my setup is

working,

but it is.

It's just janky.

It's just a little janky from it being

15 years old or something.

Like it's it's old.

Uh, so uh not 15 years, 15?

Yeah, I think so, just about.

Um,

but it is,

we had a lot of fun.

I took rock band two, three, and the Beatles with me, and my PS3.

And I was texted, I texted in the group.

My guitar wasn't working that much.

It was working, the fret buttons were working fine, but the whammy bar was damaged.

And I like watched a YouTube video on like how to open the back of it.

There's 16 screws on the back of the guitar.

That's a lot of screws.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're all like, they're long.

They're like just in there.

Like it's, uh, they really get them in there.

So that, that honestly took longer than the repair itself, screwing and unscrewing the

screws.

But there was the whammy bar part has a spring in it that was damaged just from overuse and several moves.

And so I took that out and was like, oh, I got to replace this with something.

I don't have an extra screw lying around.

What am I going to do?

What am I going to find that has that sort of like that elasticity, that give and take?

And I had a rubber band nearby.

And I was like, I'll just use this rubber band.

And I swapped it out for a rubber band.

And I had to like tie it up a little bit so that it would be the right sort of,

you know, elasticity and length.

And it works great.

It worked just fine.

Wow.

And worked all weekend.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

So that's me.

I played some rock band for the first time in a long time.

And my girlfriend had never played it before and was immediately great at it.

It was doing great.

I didn't have to explain much at all.

She's like, I get it.

The colors are coming.

And I hit the color when it hits.

I get it.

It was cool as hell.

Yeah, it was really cool.

What about you, Nick?

Nick?

Thank you for asking.

So

I've been kind of a light gaming week,

finishing up the case of the gold on Idol DLC, which I talked about last time, and I don't feel like I need to talk about again because I don't really have any new thoughts outside of if you like this sort of game, if you like anything that involves puzzles and narrative, and you have not checked out the case of the golden idol, strongly recommended.

And if you did play the base game, but you haven't yet played the DLC, the DLC is more of what you love about it.

Definitely check out the DLC.

But I've mostly been clear in the decks, gaming-wise, to create space for a game we already mentioned.

Baldur's Gate 3, which is out of early access as of today's record.

Actually checked.

I wonder if it's up yet.

I actually checked.

It was still labeled as early access.

No, look like it's it looks like

this morning before we started, but it looks like it's it's finally out of early access now.

So official release today,

August 3rd, on PC anyway.

And I think it's coming to other platforms next month.

So this is developed by Larian Studios.

Larian made the, you know, the Divinity franchise, Divinity Original Sin 2, a game I've stopped and started a few times.

It's just extremely, these dense,

layered, story-heavy RPGs.

So I'm interested in their taking the Baldur's Gate franchise because it is a franchise I really like.

And it is one of those things that kind of hit me at a point

in my life where it kind of like affected my tastes in gaming.

You know, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, when those came out, these,

you know, the games that put BioWare on the map, and

they just sort of were like RPGs.

And I played a lot of PC RPGs at that point, but not ones that had just like so much story, so much dialogue,

so much at least perceived player agency in terms of like how you could build your character,

an incredible,

like just one of my favorite character creation

systems ever.

And then just like, you know,

the way you could sort of role play your character throughout.

And also just like really,

really well-written dialogue.

And so from the Baldur's Gate games came

Icewind Dale, which was like more combat heavy.

And then Planescape Torment, one of my favorite games of all time, which was more story-heavy and kind of backgrounded the combat.

And

that

in and of itself was like a big thing in terms of, Okay, I see what I like about these sorts of games.

And what I like about this is just, you know, you get to like role play your character.

And I like that you get to like figure out who this character is in this.

You're along,

you're on kind of this conveyor belt of narrative, but you get to decide what direction you're going to take things.

And, you know, and then I think like probably the...

best version of that is a game we've talked about at length on this podcast, a game that was influenced by a Planescape Torment, Disco Elysium, where you see, like, you know, again, the narrative's kind of going where it's going regardless, but how you roleplay your character.

You have so many just distinct and completely different options.

So that was very much the case with, but anyway, this is a rambling way of saying that I'm excited for Baldur's Gate 3 to see what Larian does with this existing property.

I honestly didn't read much about how it got wrested away from BioWare exactly.

So

I should figure out some.

I'll look into the background of that a little bit.

But I don't know.

That's kind of what I'm going to be playing, hopefully.

And so

I was just kind of clearing the decks for it.

Yeah,

I really want to play Baldur's Gate 3,

but there's just so much going on.

There's so much going on.

And I'm honestly like, I've got other stuff going on in my life that kind of, in a lot of ways, might preclude me.

playing, committing to a 100-hour RPG right now, except that I really want to see what they do with it.

Yeah.

And again, I just have like a history with the also Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, like those games, those were the action RPGs were like, I have a lot of fondness for those too.

So

I just kind of want to see what,

where they go with it.

And also, I think because it's been an early access for so long,

I'm kind of anticipating it being a pretty polished project, product on release date.

Yeah.

But yeah, okay, it's weird.

It's horny too.

Oh, it's overtly horny.

The original games were horny.

They just didn't have as, they didn't, you you know, didn't depict stuff graphically the way this game seems to be doing.

Matt, like what you're saying,

I think this is going to be this is going to be an interesting game because if it's successful, it will be like a Witcher 3 or a Grand Theft Auto 3, like a third entry in a franchise that kind of has a little bit more mainstream success.

And

I like,

again, I'll just be interested to see what the reception is.

This is an absolutely true story.

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

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

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

That's a true story.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

So let's talk about this game.

Let's talk about Pokemon Sleep.

That's the game that we've decided.

What?

Kind of doing a classic cartoon.

Sorry, guys.

I just, I fell asleep a little bit.

Yeah.

Pokemon Sleep was first announced way back in 2019.

And it was during a press conference.

And I was so fucking hype.

I was like, oh my God.

Oh, my God.

A video game that you play by sleeping.

A Pokemon game that you, I'm a big metrics person.

I love checking all of my metrics.

I wear my Apple Watch.

religiously.

I upgraded to the new one because it had a temperature sensor and I was like, oh, I need that.

I need to know what my temperature is all the time.

But this game was not,

did not come out in 2020 as was expected.

And instead

was pushed all the way to July 17th, 2023

in

a bunch of territories.

And then July 20th, 2023 in Japan and the United States.

Which is really when it came on my radar.

I didn't know this thing was

happening happening until Matt was like, hey, Pokemon sleep is out.

And I was like, okay.

Really?

Yeah.

Not unlike had I was not, I was not, I had not clocked this at all.

I had been following the,

well, not following the development, but I remember when they announced it and was like, what is that?

I'll check it out when it's out.

And then

just been wondering and wondering when it would be coming out until it finally did.

And I was like, oh, here we go.

Great.

I remember it was maybe

not the last,

it was right around when Pokemon

Scarlet and Violet was coming out.

They had like a Pokemon Direct or something, and they announced the

peripheral, the Pokemon Go Plus Plus,

which is,

it functions as an auto-catcher.

for Pokemon Go

and it spins

Pokemon PokeStops in the game as well for you.

If you have the app, if you have it synced and you're doing it, and I've been doing that a little bit too, just like as I'm out and about.

And so I have this thing.

I ordered it because I was like, oh, that just be like a funny thing to have.

When I saw that they were taking pre-orders for it like last year or something, or even earlier this year, I was like, I'll get that.

So when it comes out, I'll be ready for Pokemon Sleep if it ever comes out.

And if it doesn't, I'll just have this thing that's kind of funny.

But I got this.

And so I had it a few days before the app came out.

And

I was using it to track my sleep because there was a quest in Pokemon Go that you can get a Snorlax with a sleeping hat on if you

finished the quest.

And I somehow got two of them.

I don't know if that's like allowed, but I somehow got two.

But

this thing vibrates so goddamn loud.

And like violently like if it's just sitting on a table or something or like if if it's in your pocket while you're driving, it's just like

it's like gen 1 phone vibration.

And it's, it's, yeah, I remember that.

I used to keep, when I kept a flip phone in my pocket, yeah, I would get like when my phone was out of my pocket, I would just get like a muscle spasm in my quadricep from like where the buzzing used to be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh, but this is the, this is the thing right here.

I have it right here in my hands.

It's just, it's small, flat, kind of.

It's not too substantial.

I was kind of like a slider, about the size of a slider.

Well, Nick, Nick's so hungry.

Looks like a cookie, yeah, maybe like a cookie-like a cookie with like kind of a meat patty in the middle.

What the heck?

This guy's, he's starving.

Uh, but I, this, I, so I have it, and my biggest complaints about it are: it vibrates too loud, you can't turn the vibration off.

If you have it on like sound mode, it makes noise.

There's like a little Pikachu in there.

He makes little Pikachu noises, which is cute.

But that is cute.

It looks like it's going to.

It looks like when it vibrates, it tells you your table's ready at Ruby TV.

It kind of is like that.

Also, like the center thing has a light in it, so it does sort of light up too.

But it feels, I wish the build was a little nicer.

Like, it feels a little cheap for what it is.

Like, it's a little

like clickety-clackety, kind of, it feels like.

It doesn't doesn't feel like it's very sturdy.

Isn't that kind of a general note for the Pokemon company?

Like I feel like everything that comes out Pokemon is like, I wish this was like a little less shitty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish this was just like a little bit like more polished.

It's

it's certainly like the form factor is fine.

If it was a little smaller, I wouldn't be mad.

But also like, I do, you don't want to lose this in your bed.

Because this is the thing about the app that we'll get into.

But you do need to sleep with this in your bed somehow for it to track your sleep.

Did you play the game both with your phone and

compare how it performed to the Pokemon Go Plus?

So I didn't do that, but I did one night sleep with my Apple Watch on

to compare.

the accuracy of the sleep tracking.

And

it was pretty close.

It wasn't exact, it wasn't one-to-one, but it was, it was pretty, it was pretty accurate.

For those of you at home who haven't played Pokemon Sleep, here's what the basic game is: it is a sleep tracker that, unless you buy an accessory, you open up an app on your phone, and then you place, you, you place the phone face down on your bed, charging, which

I think is dangerous.

Fighter departments have asked us not to do.

Yes.

The phone tracks your sleep using both the microphone and the accelerometer in your phone.

And then based on how much you sleep, you power up a Snorlax in the game, in the app.

And the Snorlax and his sleeping power then attract other Pokémon to sleep nearby.

And you can document those Pokémon's sleep habits while also continuing to raise and level up your Snorlax.

There are also

other features in the game.

For example, you have to cook a meal for your Snorlax three times a day.

You get these ingredients by having these helper Pokémon who were attracted to Snorlax

sort of gather

ingredients and berries all day long, and then you combine those ingredients into the kind of dish that Snorlax wants to eat, and then feed Snorlax.

There are also missions and quests like unlock five more Pokemon, level up your Pokemon five times, just like this.

Sort of, it's gamification of gamification of your sleep.

Like you're already gamifying your sleep.

And that's the base, it's a lot of tapping the phone and a lot of

a lot.

It's kind of also vague.

Like there's not a hand-holding tutorial at the beginning of this game.

It sort of drops you in and is like, all right, put your phone down, put your phone down on its face and then go to bed.

Well, and so I, so I never got to do it that way.

I did, because like immediately once I had the

peripheral, once the app came out, it was like, if you have this, you can pair it to the app.

And so I've just been using it straightforward from there.

So like, Nick was asking initial setup questions.

We have sort of like different versions of the same game where, like, got it.

I have, um,

like, you, I think on the main menu, like on the main screen in the game, it would say, like, go to sleep or whatever, like, or track sleep.

I have a little icon that says Pokemon Go Plus, and I can connect to it and set like alarms and things like that with it, uh, which I don't use.

But I do, um,

I've checked it every single day, three times a day since I got it.

I did too for the purposes of this podcast.

Yeah, me too.

And I,

a few things I'd like to report.

One,

gamifying my sleep made me so fucking anxious on the first day

because I think of games as combat.

So I was like, I have to sleep maximum in order to play this game, which then ruined my sleep.

And also I was like, is it, is it working?

Is it tracking?

Like, I've slept one of the worst nights of sleep

of

my last few years was this

first night of Pokemon sleep.

So the second night I was like, I already sleep with my Apple Watch on.

Matt said that you can upload your sleep later.

So I put the phone away and I used my Apple Watch.

The problem is

the game is not designed to just accept sleep data.

It is not, if you're using an Apple phone, like an iPhone, as if there's another Apple phone,

it does not synchronize with your health data, either receiving health data nor providing health data to your health app.

So even though my watch is tracking my sleep and it has basically the same readout as Pokemon sleep, you can't transfer that data.

So you have to enter it manually.

And if you do that, you don't receive bonuses.

You don't get the Pokemon unlocked.

You don't get sleep styles because the Pokemon sleep styles are based on your sleep style.

If you're a deep sleeper, you attract deep sleeping Pokemon.

If you are a shallow sleeper, you

unlock dozing Pokemon.

But yeah, I was so fucking anxious when I was playing this game.

I had the exact same experience.

Night one, I had a miserable night's sleep.

One of the worst night's sleep of this whole year.

And I'm someone who has had a lot of sleep problems.

I've been battling insomnia since I was 12 years old.

And it is a thing that has really affected my professional and personal life in a lot of ways.

It's been an ongoing struggle.

I read a book this year called Hello Sleep by Jade Wu.

It's the best book I've read on the subject.

It's one of these new...

Like, you know,

it's one of those wellness books that I feel like it really drills down the science of things,

but then it also gives you some actionable steps you can take to improve your own situation.

And one of the things that book is very, is pretty stringent about is opposing any sort of sleep tracking.

It's basically, first of all, they're saying like the technology doesn't work.

Like it's just like a lot of it is just smoke and mirrors.

A lot of it is complete bullshit.

Any sort of Fitbit, Apple Watch, you know, phone face down in your pillow situation.

It's just going to, it's just pseudoscience.

You're not actually getting true data that you might get from a sleep lab that could actually, you know, affect things.

But the other thing is what you were saying, Heather, is like, it actually leads to anxiety.

And if you're anxious, you're not going to get more sleep because you're worried like, oh, fuck, I didn't sleep well.

I did a bad job at sleeping.

And all of a sudden, sleep becomes this.

uh task that you're trying to optimize instead of like a normal body function you know what i mean it's just like like like a normal part of being alive so yeah it put too much on too much stress on me for sleeping and the per the first night was really bad.

The second night was also bad.

After that, I think just like general fatigue set me into more of a normal sleep pattern.

But I really,

I think I hated this experience.

I really did not like Pokemon sleep at all.

Here's the other thing about Pokemon Sleep, and you talked about this, Heather, is...

For a thing that is meant to gamify sleep tracking, there is a shocking amount of time you have to spend playing this game while you're awake.

Yeah.

Like, I was just like, all the time I would have been doing like, you know, like something

like, I don't know.

I had to like, I might have been doing like a language app or like fucking reading something.

Instead, I was like on Pokémon Sleep trying to make sure I could cook a fucking meal for my Snorlax.

I was like, oh, I'm out of ingredients.

I got to go to the store to get more ingredient tickets.

You know what I mean?

It's just like, it's one of the, it's the problem of mobile game design is because they're designed, they're all like these free-to-play games that they want to incentivize you to spend real money.

They're all just like trying to

get you in the app as much as possible, as frequently as possible, and to exhaust resources that you need to spend real money to replenish.

It's the same fucking format as all these exploitative games.

And as such, I just like, I found that part of it really, really annoying.

I liked the music.

Music's nice and gentle.

It's great.

You know what?

Can I talk about one specific, one really hyper-specific thing?

Yeah.

This is supposed to be a sleep tracker primarily, right?

Like that's the idea.

It's Pokemon sleep.

This is the thing that helps you sleep.

This is like for a thing that's a sleep tracker.

Again, yes, you have to spend a lot of time awake, but playing it while awake.

But also.

If I, if I'm going to bed, I don't need like an update on what my Snorlax is up to and that he leveled up.

And then now I have to like find candies or something for him right now.

It's like, okay, no, it's time to go to bed.

I need one button that I can press is like sleep now.

And then that just takes me straight to the sleep screen.

Yeah.

And I can put my phone face down.

Cause otherwise now I'm in bed and now I've got like fucking tasks to do.

I've got like activities and like that's waking me up looking at my fucking bright screen in the dark yeah while i'm while right now i'm just trying to wind down and shut my eyes well and then that that's where this little thing comes in handy because right i don't have to open the app at all to go to sleep right like i just press i hold down on this button and put it i will let me just take you on the journey i've been with this thing first of all please because as you see like i have a strap affixed to it and i first the first couple nights I was like what do I how do I sleep with this in my bed like I don't I don't want to like accidentally push the button or something because I'm like I um when I was using it for Pokemon Go I had it off to the side like on my uh like nightstand and it only gave me like four hours because it's not actually tracking it can't track you from that far away um

and it's like oh you got four hours and I'm like I didn't get four hours I slept a normal amount uh a good amount uh so I was taking that kind of personally But yeah, you're waking up and you're fucking mad at your phone.

Yeah, it's like my phone's a liar.

I slept for seven hours.

This phone doesn't know me.

But once I figured out, oh, you do have to sleep with it in your bed, I was like, okay, I'll just like strap it to my wrist.

And I'm like sort of like a hands under pillow kind of sleeper to begin with.

And it'll just kind of be fine out of there.

But that way, it's if it's strapped to my wrist, it's not going anywhere.

Right.

Untrue.

Absolutely untrue.

I woke up one morning and my girlfriend said, you smacked me with that thing in the middle of the night.

Oh my God.

Like I just like whipped it at her like when I moved around or something because I wasn't holding it.

It was just strapped to my wrist and I just like beamed her with it.

And so she was like, you can't do that anymore.

I was like, okay, you're right.

But

I was like, but then, oh, shoot, what do I do?

I need to sleep with this in my bed somehow.

And I'm a two-pillow sleeper too.

So I was like, I'll just put it inside the second pillow.

And that works fine.

That's, that's, that's been tracking it fine.

i accidentally pressed the button to turn it off one time so it didn't track my sleep and that made me actually really upset um to the point where i'm thinking of if i keep doing this i might get a case for it that encloses around it so i can't press the button which is an extra step which i don't need to be doing i shouldn't have to do that but uh

i will say too

I got the,

there's like a free trial of this like premium pass that they have in the game.

Cause like there's there's there's multiple currencies in the game you can get there are there are way too many currencies that by the way Matt, thank you.

I'll interject real quick.

Thank you for bringing that up because you just reminded me I need to cancel that right now.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

I canceled mine.

I canceled mine immediately.

I always do this with any free trial.

I get the free trial and then I cancel it the second I sign up for it so that I don't have to remember to turn it off.

Did you still get the bonuses though?

You do.

You can use it until

it's until the trial ends or whatever.

Okay,

because

mine, when I went to do it, it said instead of like cancel subscription, it said end-free trial.

And I was worried, like, oh, is that going to mean I'm going to lose all my bones?

I thought the same thing too, but I was like, well, if I don't get it, I don't care.

I'll just do it.

Like, I don't care if I lose it or whatever.

And it was like, oh, you can still use it.

I think they purposely might have changed the language around that kind of thing to trick you into keeping it so that you don't,

you know, cancel anything.

i'm a fucking sucker that's what you're yeah yeah and you're a rube

but um

i i don't know like i don't like games on my phone at all but

i've found the experience of playing this game pleasurable in a in a way that i don't quite understand um I like to see the Pokemon sleeping.

I think it's cute.

It's really cute.

That's really cute.

I like that.

I like, I don't know.

I missed out on changing locations the first time, after the first week, and I was mad.

So I was at the same location for

an additional week, but now I'm at the beach.

Now my Snorlax is, now a Snorlax is sleeping on the beach, and that's kind of fun.

And I thought it would be different Pokemon at the beach.

There's not different Pokemon here.

It's like the same guys, unfortunately.

You're supposed to get more water types on the beach.

I just unlocked the beach this morning.

You're supposed to get more water types.

I don't have any.

I haven't seen not a single water type.

I guess I have a psyduck in my party.

But yeah, I don't know.

Like, there's so many different things.

Oh, I was thinking about the currencies, right?

So there's a lot of currencies.

There's,

you get these like sleep points that you can spend in the store.

And you get, you know, some of those every night or something.

And

now that I'm in the regular exchange program and not the premium exchange, the premium exchange, you can get them at like a discount for what you have.

But now that that's locked, I'm seeing

all the items in the regular store are sort of more expensive than what they are in the premium store.

But then in the general store, you can spend diamonds and you get diamonds

by unlocking certain things or like completing different tasks and things like that or

logging different berries or encounters with Pokemon and stuff.

I have right now, my Snorlax likes to have these certain types of berries.

So I've been switching out my parties

to acquire those specific types of berries specifically so that my Snorlax can

grow faster.

Because he eats, when you give him the berries that he wants,

he grows more, I guess.

Yes, yeah, but that changes because here's the other thing.

Yeah.

You get a different Snorlax every week.

Yeah.

Which I kind of was like, but I want my Snorlax.

Yeah.

I don't want to keep swapping Snorlaxes.

Oh, another benefit of this little device of the Pokemon Go Plus Plus.

Yeah.

Everybody, every Pokemon party has, I think, five party members, right?

Yeah, it's five.

And you get a starter Pikachu to sort of help you through it.

With this Pokemon Go Plus Plus, I have an additional helper.

I have a Pikachu with a sleeping cap.

and he gets

little berries and ingredients for me as well.

So, I have a party of six instead of a party of five, which is pretty cool.

But you can't swap him out for other ones.

You can swap out anybody at any time for anyone.

But,

yeah, I don't know.

I do sort of like it.

I think it's a little, it's bad that

the best version of it has a,

I guess $50 paywall right for the for the device because like the device is

you don't want I don't think you should have to sleep with something in your bed as an adult

like it's like it's hard like it's like that's like I hit my girlfriend with it and I didn't want to it was a complete accident um

well and also like I think that just speaks to again it's just like why is this thing a

plastic ball that you have to a disc that you have to set down somewhere it's like why isn't it soft shouldn't this be like yeah why is it why why isn't it soft oh well and also i was just gonna say like why isn't it like a fitbit if we're gonna say like hey this is gonna be a sleep track why isn't this something you wear on your wrist well because i know that like the pokemon company i actually don't know who designed this it's for pokemon go and pokemon sleep though both games are made by different developers uh

start button does pokemon sleep and i think it's actually select select button not that it matters that much select button does sleep and and is it niantic or niantic I forget how to say it.

Hey, guys,

I think this election, I'm gonna Pokemon sleep to the polls.

Thank you, Matt.

But yeah, it should be soft or something.

If it was like a plush or something, even that I would, that'd be better.

Or if it was like a

like, like they were saying, like a wrist thing, because

there was a pedometer that came.

You guys are really laughing still.

I'm just kidding.

I'll do my civic duty and vote.

What happened?

What did you do?

I'm sorry.

I missed it.

Did you just grunt?

No, it was

a combination of, first off, I liked the joke.

and then Heather was so upset by it that she sighed audibly, which I'm not sure if you heard it.

I didn't hear it because I was going on and on.

Even more.

And then she started laughing.

And then we got caught in the loop.

What I was going to say was, Pokemon Gold, or Heart Gold, and Soul Silver for the DS came with a pedometer.

That I think we talked about in the show in the past.

We did.

It's Of the pedometers you can get, one of the more accurate one, like, say, it's somehow so good.

And so I would want this to be similar.

Also, that one is a better size.

It's a little, it's like half the size of this.

It's a little smaller.

But I don't, yeah, I don't know why.

I don't know why it's not soft or something.

It should just be less obtrusive.

I shouldn't be able to whip it in the night.

There's so many choices from the Pokemon company that you're like,

why are you doing this, guys?

What are you, why are you doing this?

Because

if they put out

a good product,

not the best,

but like not broken in some visible way, whether it be sleeping with a hard disc on your on your bed or your hot phone face down or uh the the pokemon the most recent pokemon game being as buggy and as sort of

lackluster as it was yeah like if if they just if and especially when you compare that experience with the original pokemon experience where you were like holy shit there's 150 of these guys

Like I can I can go around and find all these guys in a Game Boy game.

Yeah.

Or in the in the next one where it was like, holy shit, the entire original game and this game are all on the same cartridge.

Like they were maximizing their reward to you, the player.

And with the most recent Pokemon stuff, you're like,

what do you do?

Like, they just.

I was, I was pretty.

I was a pretty robust Pokemon Go player.

Yes.

And then they removed the remote raid passes that would allow you to participate in raids that you weren't physically at.

And that to me was

like, I was like, why would you punish the people who want to play this game?

Like, yes.

Why would you do that to us?

That I think.

Oh, sorry, finish your thought.

I will not be continuing on my Pokemon sleep journey.

Because unlike the sort of masochism of continuing Final Fantasy 16,

for me, there was no, there, like, there are moments in Final Fantasy 16 where I'm like, okay, that was, that was kind of nice.

I got one-shotted by a guy, and I was like, in Final Fantasy 16, I was like, oh, finally, I've died.

That's great.

Finally, I've died.

Well, that's part of my serotonin hit in a game is the struggle against death.

Right?

Like, if I can

100%.

If I can conquer death, Then I get a serotonin bump and then I feel good.

I am because like every

and that's why Fortnite is so addictive to me.

It's because every encounter you have with a stranger is

a fight against death, but in Pokemon sleep not that you die in Pokemon games, but in Pokemon sleep, you don't

it's not good.

It stressed me out and it and and

because it stresses me the human being out, it lowers my defenses against actual death

yeah like

if i'm tired yeah from pokemon sleep i'm more likely to die in real life so if i die in this game i die in real life what were you gonna say nick

oh well i just you you were talking one of one of your points you were making earlier is just about how you know you would think that that that

they would want to make something that they like they want to make a pokemon product for their fans for their active users that they would be like engaged with and enjoy and it just made me think of like the Pokemon sleep experience and I and how it it related to my Pokemon Go experience which I did overall enjoy but it is a very frustrating product and if you look at the I just brought it up but you know periodically I'll browse the Pokemon Go subreddit just to see how people are are reacting to it and it's always just like people complaining it's always just everyone's upset and we know fandoms complain fandoms love to complain but it feels like the Pokémon Go's fan base is particularly tormented.

It's all threads: like, whose decision was it to add this?

Who the fuck verified this route?

You know, I have no idea what I was getting in this quest.

It's everyone's like that.

And I looked at the Pokémon Sleep subreddit, which I hadn't yet.

It's the same sort of thing.

Everyone's just like, the berry nerf feels terrible.

Snorlax's favorite berries are not always random.

We need more transparency about gameplay changes.

Here's one.

Do you think the game promotes oversleeping?

Because here's this person.

That's a fucking boss.

That's somebody who's like, boss, that's a CEO pose.

That sucks.

Get the shit out of there.

I think everyone's getting too much sleep.

Fuck off.

Well,

here's what I'll say

the post is arguing is like this person is hitting

eight eight to eight and a half hours of sleep.

They're hitting 100 in the sleep rating because you get a sleep rating, which again, another source of anxiety.

Oh, fuck.

I got a 76 sleep rating.

What the fuck did I do?

I did see that Heather of the three of us, because you can also share your

data with friends.

Heather slept the best of us of the three today.

But also, my

best at this game, too.

My app crashed two nights ago.

Oh, God.

And

I woke up and my phone had completely rebooted.

So I only got a sleep score of four out of 100.

And I was like getting like 90, 95, 98.

And

you can't, so then I was like, well, I'll just,

I'll input my actual sleep data, like my, my sleep time from my Apple Watch.

But it kept saying for no reason at all, you are, uh,

you cannot enter this data because it overlaps with a pre-existing sleep that you were tracking, which like it, there was no,

it was an extremely frustrating minor annoyance to not be able to get my score back to where it should be which also threw off my entire metrics for the game for the week like it took my average sleep time from seven hours and 45 minutes down to four hours for the week and i was like fuck Fuck you.

I should be able to delete.

This

is my night of sleep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just a bunch of annoyances like that.

I had a similar thing where, like, I was like, I felt, I went to bed, I fell asleep, I was awake for like an hour, I was asleep for like an hour or two, and then I woke up, and then it was like awake for like two or three hours.

And then when I went back to bed, it was like a, it was like, you've already logged an activity.

You could, like, I like, not enough time had passed since my last sleep that I could log another sleep, and I was like, but this, that was like me, that was like a fake sleep, and now I'm going to go to real sleep because my body is just working that way.

Uh, to finish my, what I was saying about the oversleeping post,

this person's hitting 100, which, which part of what happens when you sleep is that your Pokemon get their energy back, but still getting 100 scores, their Pokemon aren't really resetting to full energy.

And that's because, again, the way this game is monetized, they are trying to sell you incenses.

And if you use a rest incense while you're sleeping, or you give special candies to your Pokemon, that will boost their energy.

But anyway, even if you're playing this game perfectly, playing it perfectly in terms of getting the right amount of sleep for the right amount of hours, you're still not getting your Pokémon fully recharged.

You still are supposed to spend currency to try to boost them.

It just kind of fucking just everything about this.

It's another one of those things with mobile games that just feels so craven.

Also,

getting

as an adult, in order to get 100%, you have to sleep eight and a half hours,

which is fucking ridiculous.

That's a lot if you have a job and kids, and et cetera.

There's plenty of

sleep studies also that show a correlation between seven and a half hours of sleep and longevity.

And if you are going to encourage healthy habits in your player base, then you should also be using science to establish those healthy habits.

And I have never seen anybody be like, eight and a half hours of sleep is what you're supposed to be getting as an adult.

I've seen studies from the National Institute of Health, which say people who sleep for seven hours a night live the longest.

They're 12, they're, if you sleep eight hours, you're 12% more likely to die than if you sleep seven and a half or seven hours.

So, like,

I don't know, man.

It's

there's a lot to be frustrated about with this game.

Yeah.

Doesn't the, isn't the eight hours of sleep one of those things that like it comes down to, you know,

that's another thing that's just like derived from capitalism, right like wasn't there a time where they're like eight hours to sleep eight hours to work eight hours to do what you will like it was like dividing the day into thirds uh so that a third of it could be claimed by your employer i i forget where that came from i routinely get about like six and a half hours of sleep is pretty normal for me uh and well here's the thing i don't feel good like

i don't feel great all the time uh but that's like usually like enough if i can get more i get more but i don't

try to

like maximize my sleep in any sort of way.

I will say that this did cause me a little bit of stress in some nights because I would wake up feeling that I had pushed the button and was like, oh, shoot, now I got to fuss with this to put it back on or something.

Or, you know, I don't think the start of my week I got a good amount of sleep.

But last night I felt like

I don't track it that.

not used to tracking it.

So, like, I thought the data, even if it's imperfect, was like interesting.

At least, I was like, oh, like, that's, I guess I do sort of move around a lot in the night.

So, maybe I'm not fully asleep at all times or whatever.

Um, because I am a pretty light sleeper, like, it doesn't take much to wake me up.

Um,

but I don't know, I might keep playing it.

I, I, I, I, I like to see, I, I like to see them.

I like,

I,

And that's enough.

And I haven't, if it gets to the point where it's like, because I don't have the premium pass anymore, that it becomes challenging to me somehow, I'm out because I'm not going to buy, I won't buy anything in this game.

I just won't spend actual money.

I won't.

But so if it gets to a point where it seems like I have to do something like that,

Pokemon

dead.

Delete.

Nice try.

But as it stands stands right now, it's been sort of like a fun little thing to me to add to the routine.

And

it's only like one more extra thing I have to do before I go to sleep because I don't have to look at the screen.

Once I'm phoned down, I'm phoned down.

But they really shouldn't make it so that you have to put your phone in your bed.

That's really bad.

That is annoying.

That's my least favorite part of it.

I don't, I usually, my, my phone, this is the first time my phone has like been in my bedroom in like, you know, a couple of years.

Yeah.

Uh, so it's you have a phone that's also a vampire, right?

You have to invite it in.

Sleeps in a coffin

during the day.

I think that I would have been more likely to continue using the app if you could use your Apple Watch.

Yeah.

If you could sync it that way, that'd be good.

If you could just sync it,

I think I would have probably stayed on board a little bit longer, but I, I've deleted the app as of today.

Wow.

So that I, because I was like, I don't, I, like Nick, I don't sleep with my phone in my bedroom.

Um, if there's an emergency, I have my watch.

But like, I, I purposefully have been leaving my phone outside of the bedroom so that the only thing that I can like put into my brain is a book, like something not, you know,

activating.

Yes.

Uh, in order to get a good night of sleep.

Cause I, like Nick, I also have had a, a lifetime of

difficulty sleeping.

And

the medication I'm on also is

one of the side effects is insomnia.

So it's been like a focused, driven,

like treating sleep as combat,

like perfecting my

loadout before I head to battle is really important to me.

Can I just say, as your guys' friend,

I'm sorry I made you guys do something that made your life worse for a little bit of podcast.

That's podcasting, baby.

Yeah.

I do want to sweet.

Man, that's really sweet.

I don't care.

No, nothing.

No, no, no.

No, you don't feel bad at all.

Yeah, no, I'm glad we did this.

Yeah.

All good.

All good.

It was, it, I wouldn't have done this.

Well, no, I totally would have done this for one night.

And then I would have been like, I feel like I'm going to go crazy.

So I'll stop.

But it was, I love doing stuff for this show.

And hey,

making our lives worse was the, was the genesis of this show to begin with.

That's true.

That's true.

That's a great point.

So

I have two more things to add before we wrap it up because I know we're getting towards the end here.

But the first thing is when you're so each Pokemon, each day you get a new sleep style or, you know, sometimes an existing one of a Pokemon.

Either new Pokemon shows up or, you know, one of your guys is just like there, just

taking a snooze.

So I got a Cubone today nice uh and and the cubone is a slumbering type pokemon uh and he was doing uh weepy sleep so like you know whatever it'll be like a

geodude will be like face covering sleep yeah and here's the caption for weepy sleep or our pseudo-woodo uh would be like you know tree sleep whatever he's sleeping like a tree uh weepy sleep it's been found crying in its sleep Perhaps the tears come because it's dreaming of its deceased mother.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that's.

I know that's part of the lore, but that is a bleak thing.

Yeah, it's such a bummer.

It's like such a bummer, and also such a

funny thing that they continue to just hit every time Cubone's in a Pokemon game.

Like, oh, he's like this because he's wearing his mom's skull.

Like, what?

And he's dreaming about it.

The other thing I wanted to note is that this is a Heather Ann Campbell tweet from May 28th, 2019.

Finally, with Pokemon Sleep, Sleep, I can gamify my nightmares.

So this has been on your radar for a while.

And it kind of did do that.

It did, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, guys,

I'm sorry,

but

I think it was good we did it.

I think it was, you know, it's like, it came out.

It's like

something that a video game podcast would cover.

And now we don't have to do it anymore.

We're done with it 100%.

I'm glad.

I will

keep doing it.

I'm not going to delete this for a while.

I

because I because I because I bought a thing, right?

Like, I did buy the peripheral, so I do feel like I probably will stick with it until I decide that I no longer want to do this or, you know, some other nighttime injury befalls my loved one.

But

give us updates on how it goes.

I will.

I will.

Should we do a segment?

Oh, yeah, let's do a segment.

Okay.

First, I want to give credit to Gator Sachs 2010 in our Discord for suggesting this.

They wrote this on the Discord, and I thought it would sound like a fun idea, so I'm giving it a spin here.

Can Heather and Nick guess the game based on a brief clip of a boss theme?

It's time for who's the boss.

Ooh.

So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna Angela,

Mona

Fucking sitcom that no one under 40 remembers.

I remember it.

That's why I call it that.

But I did sort of, I don't know what it's about, but I know the name and I know Tony Danza.

Tony Danza, he lives with Angela and Mona and he's always saying their names.

That's the show.

So what I'm going to do.

And you're wondering who's the boss in this household.

And nobody actually knows, right?

That's the thing.

Yeah.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to play a brief clip of a boss theme, and you have to tell me what game it's from.

Bonus point, if you can tell me who the boss is.

See, this is going to be, I'm already predicting this is going to be too hard, but well, I'm excited.

Here's the thing about the games that I make.

They could be too hard, or they could be too easy.

That's why you have an opportunity to get two points here.

Okay.

Okay.

So why don't we play the

first one here?

This might be, who knows what this will be?

Let's see.

Oh, this is so familiar.

Heather.

Heather.

Super Mario 3.

Heather has a point.

That was from Super Mario Brothers 3.

Can you tell me

the boss for an additional point?

Yes, she can tell you the boss.

It's one of the.

I don't.

If you had to take a little guess, I'm going to guess Bowser.

Heather's right.

Two points on the board for Heather.

Wow.

Okay.

Let's do the next one.

I have, by the way, I have beaten Super Mario Bros.

3.

I beat that on NES back in the day as a kid.

And that is a boss fight that's, I feel like, typically anticlimactic for a Super Mario Bros.

game.

You just kind of kind of avoid Bowser as he stomps through the bricks, right?

That's the, that's the.

That's kind of like all of them.

I feel like not until they get like

not until like 3D Mario do like Bowser fights become like kind of interesting.

But even Super Mario 64, those I feel like the Bowser fights are fucking easy.

Yeah, you always grab his tail.

You can't get a break, grab his tail, and spin.

It's fun, but it's.

Make him look like an idiot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's go on to the next one.

Odyssey had a great final act.

Oh, yes.

With Bowser.

That was awesome.

Here you go.

This is

the next boss theme.

The sounds vary from soft.

But maybe I'm being led in a different direction.

Heather.

Heather?

Millennia.

Goddess of Rot.

That is incorrect.

Fuck.

But I...

But...

Because remember, we're guessing the game first.

Oh, shit.

Well.

I mean,

Elden Ring.

Okay, Heather gets one.

But then Millennia.

The boss is incorrect.

I'll play a little bit more.

I'm just going to guess Godric.

Is it Godric?

Ah, that is incorrect.

It is Marget the Fell Omen.

Oh, it's the first big gatekeeping boss.

Marget the Fell Omen.

Definitely a track I heard a bunch of times.

Yeah, I heard it 50 times, probably.

Let's go on to the next one right here.

Here we go.

Heather.

Heather.

God of War.

Oh, yeah.

That is incorrect.

Oh,

What that sounded like when we- Okay, we can play some more of it.

Okay, so that that chord there is sounding very Final Fantasy.

I did think it was God of War, that first melody there.

I'm going to guess.

Would you do something this recent, though?

I'll guess Final Fantasy 16.

That is incorrect.

No, it's not.

Definitely not from that.

It's definitely not.

Is it a Final Fantasy?

It's not a Final Fantasy game.

What's the game?

It is from Breath of the Wild.

Oh, that's from Breath of the Wild.

Wow.

And it is Calamity Ganon's music.

Oh, there you go.

That's what it is.

A banger.

An absolute banger.

But here, let's move.

Another track I've heard a bunch.

Let's move on to this one.

I don't know.

Maybe you maybe you've heard this one a lot, too.

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

I know what this is.

I'm gonna let it go for a little bit.

Weiger.

Nick,

I was hoping it'll get to the part.

Here, just let it fly out, because it's gonna get to a good part.

Uh, this is uh, this is Chrono Trigger.

Nick, that's incorrect.

Okay,

shit.

Heather.

Final Fantasy VI.

Heather gets a point.

Fuck.

I thought we were about to kick into the World Revolution part and Chrono Trevor.

Do you want to tell me who the boss was?

No, I don't have any idea.

It's been too long.

I think it might be the first.

It might be the first boss that you fight, but I don't know who that was.

It's like

an ice person.

That's incorrect.

Nick, do you want to take a guess?

I'll guess Kefka.

Nick gets a point.

Nick, finally, I'm on the bottom.

He's on the boss board.

Is this the one?

Now, is this the final boss fight?

The final boss fight in the game.

Okay, got it.

So,

a great tune.

Yeah.

So, I at least had.

All right, I'm fucking, I'm getting shithoused here, but at least I at least had it as Super Nintendo artists.

I'm going to be seeing that man perform live.

Yeah, Kefa.

No, nobody's going to be able to do that.

I can't believe you'd go support Kefka.

I'm going to a Norwegian video game conference called called Retro Mesa

in Sandefjord in Norway

on, I think, August 19th.

He's playing live.

Like, he's playing.

Wow.

Which is pretty fucking hype.

And then I'm also seeing David Wise, who's the

Donkey Kong Country composer that we love.

So

that's this.

Somebody on Twitter likened it to

as if you booked Nobuo Ametsu to your local pub because it's such a small

that's cool.

Yeah, super excited.

All right, let's get back to the game.

It's still anybody's game.

Nick just got one point, but like, there's a couple.

I have two more.

You could still pull out ahead.

Here's the next one.

All right.

Weiger, Nick.

I mean, this is Metal Gear Solid 3.

Okay, who's the...

Do you want to say who it's against?

Uh...

Who it which of the which of the many

Metal Gear Solid 3 bosses is this one play during?

Is it is it the end?

That is incorrect.

Damn it.

Fuck, this fucking song is such a boss.

It's really good.

So god damn.

So good.

Nobody has a guess about who the boss is?

Oh, in Metal Gear Solid 3?

Yeah.

I've only played it that once.

The one with the eye patch.

That's also the end.

Oh, okay.

But that could be anybody also.

It's...

I tricked you.

It's...

How did you?

It's the boss.

The boss.

You son of a bitch.

Nice.

I should have just guessed that.

Okay, one more.

Here we go.

Jesus Christ.

Heather.

Heather.

Silent Hill 2?

That is correct.

Pyramid Head.

Yes?

What?

It's actually two pyramid heads, but I'll let you have it.

Oh, okay.

It's the song that plays with

the win anyway.

And Heather's our winner for the very first who's the boss.

Thanks, Gator Sacks 2010.

I found that difficult.

I found that difficult.

It was pretty hard.

It was a pretty easy game for me.

I don't know about you guys.

By the way, I put the Chrono Trigger last boss theme, World Revolution, when you're fighting Lavos.

I put that in the chat.

So I just.

I know it's a little bit more major key than the Final Fantasy VI, but it's similar.

I got it confused because of the same sort of like

ramp-up, but then let's just play a little bit because there's a part where it fucking hits.

Nick is smiling and bopping up and down in his chair, and he looks like he's the happiest he's been.

I'll record.

Here we go.

Oh,

That's extremely good shit.

Yeah.

That's the track to play when you want to feel like you can do anything.

Right before you go to sleep.

I think I remember boss fights

because it's the only time I'm actually excited in a game.

Yeah.

Like I'm waiting for the big fights.

So

I'm like, oh, these are great.

This is the best part of a game.

Is there a game that's only boss fights?

I guess that's Shadow of the Colossus.

Yeah.

Elden Ring is kind of...

I mean, any FromSoft game is all boss fights, really, because you could die at any time.

Punch Out?

It's kind of all boss fights.

Yep, yep.

All right.

Just hearing the Metal Gear Solid 3

theme, I can't wait to play it again.

I can't wait.

I love it.

Wait, hey, is that Remaster coming out this year?

I don't think the remaster or the remake's coming out, but the the collection uh is coming out, and I will buy it on switch and I'll play it on Twitch.

I'll, I will play, I will play that game again this year.

Well, there we go.

Hey, that's this week's Get Play at our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Era Alex G on Twitter and Instagram.

Also, we got Get Animate behind the paywall, and Heather, we're continuing our coverage of the melancholy of Harui Suzumiya.

Yeah, so the boys are on a journey, and what's that journey?

It's the season two journey of the melancholy of Harahe Suzumiya, where we are currently about to uh cover episodes 15 and 16.

Is that correct?

That's right,

of um

of the melancholy of Harahe Suzumiya.

Uh, and yeah, you can watch along or you can listen to them get demoralized.

You don't have to watch the show, you can just you can just listen to the boys get demoralized on patreon.com slash get played for all your get animated content.

The demoralization has been relatively recent because overall I really enjoy the show.

It's just it has an interesting arc right now.

Great.

There we go.

And guys?

And then what?

I'm just.

I'm just, you know, I'm just a little tired.

I think I might.

I might go back to Pokemon Sleep.

Okay.

Well, Matt's enjoying a gentle night's sleep.

Seems as if this week he got played.

Oh, guys, I had the craziest nightmare.

What happened?

We were recording a podcast.

No, that's been the last few years.