We Play, You Play: Resident Evil 4 with Cody Ziglar

All right, Zig, thanks for being here with us.

Yeah, thanks so much.

Obviously, Heather's not here.

So it's, you know, we just wanted just a layup, you know, an easy hang with a good friend.

Yeah, and we also, like, we, and I know you know the show, but like, we do this little intro.

We thought, like, you know, like, I was just thinking about what we could do for the intro.

Um, but I was kind of thinking, like, maybe, like, there's a bear trap in the studio and someone.

You're okay.

You're looking a little flushed there.

Yeah, I'm doing fine.

Uh, uh, but uh, if there was like, you know, like one of us stepped in a bear trap, we're like, oh, where'd this bear trap come from?

Is he okay?

He's really pale.

Hey, hey, Nick.

Yeah.

I don't want to

freak you out or anything.

Your eyes are glowing yellow.

And you can see the veins in your face.

Guys, I'm maybe feeling a little under the weather, but I'm COVID negative.

I tested, so I'm probably fine.

And this is going to be shocking to hear and maybe hard to explain as well.

Uh-huh.

You're currently speaking Spanish.

Yeah.

I don't want to.

We hear you in English because we understand Spanish.

That's just like how that works.

Wait a minute.

So like you're speaking Spanish right now.

So glory to las plagas.

You guys are hearing that in Spanish?

Exactly.

And it's almost like a chant situation going on.

I don't know if you did you see those dudes outside with like the pitchforks when we were coming in the series?

I saw a guy with a pitchfork.

I saw a guy with

a hatchet.

I saw an old lady carrying a stick of dynamite.

I just knew.

You see that tall dude with like the fucking cow skull and like a red robe?

I just, you know, I did see those guys, and it's just hard to know who's part of the whack pack here at Sirius XM and who's just like a guy.

But it's, you know, it was those guys are here for sure.

Wow.

So

I guess I have La Plaga.

That's great.

That's just what I need right now.

Again, you guys are hearing this in Spanish, so I don't know how much you're comprehending, but

we get all of that.

Okay.

And I took Spanish for two years.

Yeah.

Yes.

I understand it.

I and speak it.

Here's, it sucks that.

It sucks that we have to suplex him.

Well, I'm going to have to suplex you.

Yeah.

Well, don't suplex.

Don't suplex me.

I'm going to fucking bend you in half, bitch.

Take you to a fucking suplex town, bitch.

Don't suplex me.

Just have a little, I have a disease.

I can't control that.

No, this is, and I hate to get political.

Uh-huh.

This is what Fauci should have been doing.

He should have been recommending that we just pick these sick fucks up,

bang them on their

Show them what for.

I've been saying online for so long, we need to fucking kneecap these old women in the knees and then shank them right in the throat and then do suplex them into their friends.

Hey, speaking of friends, I'm just going to let some guests in here real quick.

No, I don't have no money.

No, no!

We escort the president's daughter and shotgun blast El Gigante as we play you play the Resident Evil 4 4 remaster 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 Nick Weiger, along with Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone.

Oh, try that on for a size.

How do you like that?

How do you like that?

Yeah.

Just two hosts here.

That's right.

Yeah.

Because Heather Ann Campbell is out this week and next.

She's on her honeymoon.

Congratulations.

Yes.

To Heather and to Mary and to the Institution of Marriage.

Yeah,

another W for the Institution of Marriage.

We'd love to see it.

We have,

Matt, we have a fantastic guest host here.

Yes.

Because, you know, you and I were like, where are we going to find someone?

We're already fucking scared.

What are we going to do?

Where are we going to find someone who loves video games?

Yeah.

Loves anime.

Yes.

has written for Rick and Morty.

Yeah.

Because what are we going to do?

We're in a lawsuit.

We don't know anybody like that.

And yeah, this was just obviously, we knew who we had to call, baby.

Thankfully, this fell into our laps.

A writer and comedian for Rick and Morty, She-Hulk Attorney at Law, Miles Morales, Spider-Man, and Futurama.

Returning to the show, Cody Ziggler is here.

What's up, Cody?

Hello, bingo boingo, baby.

Oh, bingo boingo, baby.

Zig's in the house.

Zingo boingo.

Those alliterations, that's what sells.

That's what they brought to the Rick and Morty table.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I remember the episode where they're both saying bingo boingo.

Can they go to bingo bongo world?

Yeah.

And that's it.

Yeah, that's it.

It's

more of a conceptual episode.

Yeah.

But the emotions are there.

The structure is tight.

Yeah.

Well, the story circle.

Yeah.

You got to have the story circle.

That's what it's all about.

Zig, you just returned from where Heather is right now, Japan.

That's true.

Yes.

It is

the most fun I've ever had anytime ever.

Wow.

It was so, I mean, I was explaining to you guys off mic.

Yeah.

So for those who don't know, Los Angeles, people think of it just like a city, which it is, because it's all about the people here.

But it's not like, it's not like there's like, oh, well, I'm in Los Angeles.

You're like, no, you're in Hollywood.

You're in Silver.

Like, it's a bunch of smaller neighborhoods that make up the greater city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.

And that is sort of the same thing with Tokyo.

So there's like 29, there's like 23 or 30 wards or whatever.

Basically, thinking there's like boroughs like New York, like five boroughs.

Sure.

But everyone is

Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and of course, Staten Island.

Oh, yeah.

You're a real New Yorker now.

Hey, you know, I am.

You're walking here.

It's that.

It's like that, but every discovery.

He was was america's mayor you gotta admit the city got cleaned up you gotta admit

maybe you should break a few more windows is all i'm saying

the thing about tokyo though is that like every like little neighbor tokyo is like made up of little neighborhoods but every neighborhood is like the size of manhattan so it's like this district this district i was in shinjuku which is like the red light district so it's like imagine manhattan but nothing but bars and like cool 24-hour arcades and like and like nightclubs and but then I wanted to go to like, what you guys would probably appreciate, which is like the video game anime, like

pop culture district called Akibara.

So imagine like you have the subway that's just like

high-rise after high-rise after high-rise with like anime waifus or like Super Mario.

It's whatever you could want.

It's there.

It's a fantastic place.

It just sucks to hear stuff like that because like we could just live like that here too.

Yeah.

We could.

We could have

easy and cheap public transportation.

Yeah.

Go to another neighborhood.

It was great.

I highly recommend it.

The highlight was definitely, well, there are two highlights.

One was riding the bullet train

and listening to

Miyazaki's soundtrack.

So, like, that was a great build.

But also, we went to the anime, the

Gundam factory, which is like, they have a real life-size, like, I think 19-meter, because they don't use freedom units, 19-meter high, real life, real life

animatronic Gundam.

And they have like a home museum dedicated to how it works, like it actually walks.

It's like, I believe it's the host of Guinness Book of World Records, like the largest actual animatronic built.

Wow.

Wow.

Go upside.

You can go up and see it.

It's fantastic.

It was really, really cool.

I'm horrified to learn that it works.

Yes.

That's frightening.

But they also,

if you go online and watch any of the videos, they speed it up pretty good because it really is like.

slowly moving out.

But it is cool seeing

a giant basic like rock'em sock'em robot walk and talk in front of you.

It's really, really, really, really cool.

Wow.

I highly recommend anyone that's into that type of stuff go.

And even if you're not into like the pop culture at all, like just experiencing the culture of like, you know, it's a really good city that sort of incorporates a good mix of like metropolitan stuff, but then like nature, like a lot of parks, a lot of like gardens.

All of it is dirt cheap, very walkable.

Like it was one of the best trips I've had in a very, very long time.

I think everyone on this podcast would very much enjoy that going there.

Yeah.

You had me at Bullet Train, honestly.

Yeah, because you love guns.

Well, yeah.

The Bullet was the most appealing part in the

Wait.

I do want to ask about the train, though, because that's the thing.

Like, you know, I take the, I read the Choo Choo here in Los Angeles.

We have a decent public transit system, but it's obviously nothing like a lot of, you know, overseas territories.

What would, like, what was that experience like, and how does it compare?

Like, also, I'm curious about like any of the intra-city rail.

Yeah, it's really cool.

You know, when I think of like trans public transportation in America, I'm sure most people say the same thing.

It's usually like East Coast.

Like, I feel like New York is probably the one that has it down the best.

Right.

You know, as far as like you can get, you know, just about anywhere within the tri-state or in the area.

Yeah.

Within the five boroughs of the world.

The five boroughs.

Yeah.

But with with

Japan specifically,

specifically, I mean like Tokyo is

mainly where we're staying.

It was like, I don't speak the language, but we were, I was able to crack the system in like two and a half days.

Wow.

So like, without getting to the whole minutiae of it, when if you're a foreigner going over there and visit, you can get a thing called a JR pass, which is just like, here's like 200 bucks.

This is basically a ticket that can get you on the bullet trains or certain like metro lines for 14 days.

And you pay one sum.

You can go take unlimited rides.

And then you have like sort of like what their version is, like a metro card called like a Suka card or a Pasmo.

But I put like.

I don't know, maybe 100 bucks U.S.

on it.

And I was there for two weeks and I still had 50 bucks American left on it.

And I took no taxis.

I got everywhere.

You can get anywhere in about 30 or 40 minutes.

Like, I went from Tokyo to Osaka, which is like 250 miles away.

And like, bullet train was there in two and a half hours.

Like, it was, it was beautiful.

Like, my big, like, dumb American, ugly American takeaway was, like, I love public transportation.

Like, I've been transportation pilled.

Yeah.

And I've been really making an effort to just like walk places now.

Like, I walk to my grocery store now, like, walk to my post office because there, like, I mean, we were lucky that everything was flat.

So it wasn't like you were struggling.

But, like, you know, I was walking like 16,000 steps a day, like seven, eight miles, and it didn't feel crazy because, like, you're experiencing things, like, you're doing two or three big events a day, but you're seeing, like, you know, in one, one, like, two hours, you can go to like an aquarium, you can go to like a beautiful like Emperor's Palace garden that they made, and then you can go get some, like, go to like an arcade and play Street Fighter and get fucking worked over by some 12-year-old kid.

And it was like all this stuff going.

It's like, I truly have been made much more of an effort to to like

lean into like public transportation when I can, but also just like walking around because I'm lucky that I live in a part of the city that is pretty walkable.

Like hit, I'm between like

multiple grocery stores, multiple drugstores, and like everything that I sort of need.

Like, and I'm lucky in that regard.

Some people live in like a walkable sort of, I guess, whatever that equipment of like a food desert is for like walkability.

So like I've really come back and taken that away and it's been fantastic.

Like I truly gained so much from that trip, not only from nerd shit, but also like, oh, it's, uh, you can have this type of stuff in a city.

Like, you can enjoy a city without having to be relying on a car.

And, you know, I love, you know, I love my car.

I love cars in general.

But, like, I do enjoy, like, here's $5.

I can take a bus and like not pump out like a fucking ton of carbon dioxide for now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also, like, I, I personally don't like driving.

Like, it gives me anxiety.

I try to drive as little as possible, but I do live in a decently walkable area.

That's good.

Like, a Mario Kart, right?

You're always afraid of hitting like banana pills.

Yeah.

Like, if I have three red shells like circling me, like, i feel a little bit more secure but i don't always have that so you know and it only gets you so far too you know exactly and sometimes someone will hit me with like squid ink and then i gotta see what the hell's going on there uh but i like it i i take the i have my frustrations with la's public transit even though it's gotten better but you know i try to get as much as possible and and try to walk as much as possible but there there is just the reality of it like it extends your trip by so much yeah and so public transportation yeah it takes public transit in la but it's like the opposite in in you know a more functional state.

Yeah.

Again, all of this is sort of based around, I really have two points

of experience with just like New York and Tokyo now.

But like, you know,

you know, Google Maps is going to save your life if you're there because it has everything down to a T.

Like, you know, the Fukutoshin line, Platform 2, these are the times that come.

They're always literally on time.

Like, there was not a point where it's like, you know, fucking L train in New York.

It's 15 minutes behind.

Like, it was there like that every single time.

So like, it just made things so much easier.

But also, like, it says driving was usually like 40 minutes, train 35.

Like, it's just, it's such a detriment to like drive there unless you have to.

But also, like, I understand the realities.

Like, I'm from North Carolina, a very small rural town.

Like, so if you're not in a

place where like you had that sort of infrastructure, like, yeah, it makes sense why you would drive because the nearest, for us, like the nearest grocery store was like.

a 20 minute drive away.

It's your only option in a lot of the country.

There aren't sidewalks.

There's, you know,

instead of walkable, you know, streets, there's the, what the, the, the portmanteau I've heard is strodes.

There's these hybrid street and roads where it's just like, they're just for automobile traffic, basically.

And you're like walking on the shoulder.

Yeah, you know what's so funny?

So from my, my hometown is a place called Walnut Cove, North Carolina, and there was a bunch of strodes, very, very rural place, but they did this thing like two years ago where they just...

I guess the mayor of the town just decided to put in a sidewalk on one side of the street.

And it went from being no one out to like seeing people taking jogs and strolls.

And it's just like maybe a mile worth of sidewalk but like even putting that in you're like oh wow like yes people are going to actively use this yeah like my i would like walk to like the grocery store and like i would go for like my runs on this like one literally just like left side of the road sidewalk but like it just added so much to like the town and you feel like oh it's lived in because you can be a part of the community uh so like i definitely um i've definitely come back and that's going to be like a little banner that i guess i'm going to be be

uh yelling about for the next little bit but uh i have been um definitely kick-started to enjoy public transit more, but I do wish that I lived in a place where it was more encouraged and incentivized because it is, you know, like it was, it took me 10 minutes to get here in my car.

Right.

Cause public transportation would do like 35 and like it's not convenient to walk to.

Like I would have to have walked, you know, I'm a physically, I'm physically active, so it would have been easier for me.

But like if you're like.

wheelchair bound or like maybe you're older or maybe you just have a busy day, like walking a mile to like a bus stop isn't maybe the method for everyone or isn't a solution for everyone.

There isn't an option for everyone.

I took the the bus here today, and it is like it doubles the length of my trip.

Like, I basically have to give myself to make sure that I'm on time, which I barely was today.

I have to like give my like allocate an hour, which is a little frustrating.

But then, also, like, and this is unrelated to anything, but today, like, I was at a bus stop and I didn't realize it had a little signposted that it was closed.

Yeah,

and the bus stop driver stopped, and like, she was very nice, but she was also like, you know, that one's closed, you're not supposed to stand there.

And so, I was just in trouble, which as an adult is like the worst shit.

Oh, yeah.

I thought in trouble you were like the uncoolest thing.

Yeah,

I was waiting.

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I could talk about the train all day.

I could talk about public transit all day, but I want to return to what you're talking about with Tokyo neighborhoods because my point of reference for those is the fictionalized versions in, and they have different names in the Yakuza franchise, but also in Persona 5 Royal specifically, which I was talking with our mutual friend Iffy about.

And like the

like,

the names of some of these neighborhoods, I just have so strongly associated with gameplay spaces in the Sona game.

It's funny you mentioned that because there was a point where we're in Shinjuku, which I have not played the Yakuza series, but I think it takes place in sort of like a fictionalized version of that area.

It's got a different name, yeah.

But there was a point where if it was like, oh, I know this area because I played it in Yakuza 3, and I was like, oh, right, okay.

It's like, yeah, that ramen shop is like that, that facimile is in the video game.

So like a lot of the point of contact was that, but like, it was funny because

I went there for fun, but also for like sort of like research like my own stuff.

And like, you guys have seen Evangelion, like, you guys talk about about it on get everything but like when you're there was a point when i was like leaving tokyo and like a lot of um there's sort of like this visual through line and and and evangelian where like you see the angels coming in from like the those like weirdly shaped hills with like the rice pit and stuff and like riding the train out i was like oh this is this is where this is like this is like you know 20 miles outside of out of tokyo proper it's like now i know what this point of reference is when like they're doing these creative things or like i just saw the uh movie um suzume the other day oh yeah i saw that too yeah beautiful film and there's a portion where like they like the there's this this sort of like road trip element where like the lead character is going further and further away and there's a point where they're like in Tokyo proper.

And like seeing like the way that they had these like

yellow sort of like

bumped lines in the on the sidewalks there for people that are visually impaired or like have walking sinks and stuff.

Like seeing that, it's like, oh yeah, like this is like, I know that we're in Tokyo because that's what Tokyo had.

Like they had this particular type of infrastructure.

So like it definitely gave a deeper appreciation for all that stuff.

But then also, you know, I get to fucking play Tekken 8 at 2 o'clock in the morning you know after eating ramen all night it's a really really really really beautiful city what what was the uh what was the gaming scene like specifically because you talked about playing at arcades there it was uh it was it was so evo was also going on at the same time which i didn't know to either because i'm not i just i i don't need that and type of embarrassment publicly but uh so there is this place um called um

panic game or something like that or game panic or something game panic and it was like um

maybe like a three or four story arcade like bottom level was like gotchas, which was like, you know, the put the coins in and like the

crane machines.

Second floor was like arcade stuff.

A lot of, it was actually surprised it was more like rhythm-based stuff.

It's like a lot of like,

obviously,

a lot of like 40, 50-year-old salary men had obviously just gotten off work and they're playing like they're fucking shredding on like their version of Guitar Hero or like a dude doing like fucking Neil Pert drum solos.

And like off in the corner, which is, I thought was kind of bizarre, was just like all the fighting games.

Like Tekken,

I think there's a couple of street fighter stuff there is some like Gundam like arcade type games what I you know my interpretation of street of the gaming community from like the Western perspective is just like oh street fighter is like the game that everyone plays there but like I was very surprised there was very little like Capcom representation there which is you know that was like my point of view but like or that was like my point of entry but like there are so many

places where you could sort of scratch that itch.

So if you wanted to go play like, you know, if you wanted to play like, you know, more traditional 2D fighter type games, like there's those like six-story buildings that you could go to to play that.

Um, there was a one station that didn't get to go to, I think it was called like Taikyo station, like that, but they had like maybe those old arcade games like Afterburner, where like you would sit like outside cockpit, it was like that, but for like Gundam games, so like they would just have like capsules where you could sit in and play that competitively and get worked over by again a 12-year-old on the other side of the country that has been playing every single day.

It was uh, it was, it was, uh, really cool.

And I wish that we had that version of that here.

Like, right.

Whether it's like, you know, the Korean like cafe, like computer arc, or uh, uh, laptop cafes or whatever, where they play like StarCraft and stuff.

Like, I, maybe there is that, but, like, I really wish there was more like public spaces for those type of like environments here, like gaming environments.

Like, I'm sure, Nick, you've, you've worked in game development and stuff, but like, I've, um, like, I've been to a couple of game studios, like, you know, Riot Games, and like, they have, like, a part whole building in their section on their campus just dedicated to like video games.

So, like, right.

There's like the cafe element.

There's, like, you know, life-size Mario Kart.

There's like an old like sort of retro 90s arcade with like, you know, the bowling alley, like carpeting on the floor and like every different, every greatest hits of like 2D fighting games you can think of.

And then they have like a traditional like console room, which is like every single console from every single generation.

And like, I wish there was more of that here because I think

maybe a lot of people's perspective on video games is like solitary.

Like, oh, you go in your room, you play, like maybe you'll play online.

But like, I think for us growing up, a lot of it was like the 2D, I think they call it like couch or two-person, like couch co-op is what they call it now.

But like the idea of like playing with another physical person in the room and like having that communication is like so fun for me.

I sort of had come back around where like, I used to love playing fucking Halo 2 online so much.

It was so fun.

But now I'm like.

I have one of my best friends moved below me in my apartment.

I think sometimes we'll come up and play like, you know, Street Fighter.

Remember what was Capcom 3 and like playing it in person or like I have an arcade machine in my place, but playing like an arcade machine shoulder to shoulder with a friend.

Like I miss that feeling so much.

And like I hope that we get to a place where we can have those sort of like public exit public places where people can play video games and public games because it's such a unique feeling.

And I think it's sort of been lost over the past couple of years as games have become more solitary.

We talked about this on the podcast maybe last week, a couple of weeks ago, where someone had a question about just reviving the arcade in the U.S.

And

obviously, the barcades exist.

There's the Dave and Busters, but it is like it's a different sort of experience.

And I feel like at Dave and Busters, a lot of times it's like either those elaborate, sort of more you know, sit-down games, or it's like a, you know, a

40-inch, you know, LED screen that's that's just like a version of a mobile game.

Yeah, yeah, it's less exciting.

Yeah, I went to a, I had a friend that had a wedding at like a bowling alley a couple months ago, and like me and a buddy, we saw like a an injustice fighting game.

Like, oh my god, they have like an actual arcade injustice game here.

And we went in there and it was just like, it was just, they had obviously taken a mobile app and blown it up to like 40 inches.

And you're like, oh, it's, I have three buttons, it's just card-based.

It's not really fun.

It's not interactive.

I like, I, I, I, I, I, I want a revival of like, um, of those type of institutions that I guess that also aren't tied to like have to be 21 and older to get here.

Right.

Yes.

That's it.

There's no like middle ground.

It's either like, you have to be, it's either like you're going to get fucked up and drink here or like you're like stuck at like a 12-year-old's birthday party with a bunch of other angry, angry, bitter parents.

You know,

I had a because you were talking about the hot seat multiplayer or or just like you know like like a couch co-op you know in-person multiplayer and like i'm i'm old enough where my era of of college and then the immediate aftermath where you know still living with with roommates yeah uh was

it was like was like roughly the era that we're covering with today's game yeah yeah um but like you know the the gamecube era the dreamcast eras yeah xbox had them had them all uh in our apartment and

i like yeah like playing like soul calibur or playing Smash Melee, or one of my favorite gaming experiences ever, and I've talked about it at length of this podcast a number of times, but I'll just say it again, is just playing through the entire Halo 1 campaign co-op with my friend, with my roommate.

And we were just like sitting next to each other.

Like, it's just, it's, it's a bummer that some of that stuff went away.

There was a little bit of a resuscitation with the Wii.

And then when the Wii came back, I felt like, oh, people are getting together.

And then also like the Guitar Hero rock band era, I felt like, again, oh, people are getting together in the same spaces.

And

yeah, I don't know.

Maybe post-COVID there will be an era where there will be a revival of that because it is such a fun thing.

I mean, Matt, you've no doubt had some great experiences.

I just very recently was at my friend's house and we played Wii Sports Bowling on the Wii.

Yeah.

And it was like one of the best nights I've had in fucking months.

It was so fun.

It was so, we were just like, because we all got to a point where also we were having some drinks.

So we were like.

Just really like gassed up and like just really like cheering each other on just like four dudes just like really just broing out and it got to a point where we all got like two strikes in a row, just like in a row, and we were just going crazy.

It was so fun.

You know, that meme of like the it says like it has like the little recessed monkey that says neuron activated.

Like, that is very much the feeling when it's like

I have like a, I have like a five-in-one like Marvel versus Capcom thing at my apartment, like one of those, like, you know, it's obviously like a Raspberry Pi that they just one up, yeah.

Yeah, we have one up, yeah.

But uh, I have a buddy that comes over, and like the first time, or uh, I remember the first time I had, like, my, a girl I I was in came over and the first time she did like a hyper combo.

Yeah.

We got so fucking hype.

Yes.

Just because she shot like a

whatever Kin's fire dragon punch was like that, like that energy cannot be captured over the line.

Like meeting in person, like two sweaty adults being so hype over like someone pushing like down right up in the correct direction is like it's such a unique experience.

It's the best.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, look, we should get to another question.

for you Zig and for Matt and for me, which is, what are you playing?

Oh,

what are you?

What are we playing?

What are we playing?

Uh, Matt, you want to start?

Yeah, mine's short because I have, I've really sunk a lot of time into this game, the game that we're covering today.

Um, so I haven't been playing too much, but right now, I have a week.

I have, well, as of this coming out, I have like four days

before the next game that I'm going to play is coming out, which is a Jedi Survivor.

Um, uh, the sequel to Jedi Fallen Order.

I need to wrap some stuff up up because

I have not done a great job this year of finishing games.

I've been bouncing between a lot of things.

And you are the finisher.

I'm the reputation.

That's right.

Yeah, I'm the coffee's for closers.

And

let me just say, I don't go a day without my job.

Man, Heather would have hated that so much.

I was just thinking the same thing.

I was just thinking, we're getting away with so much bullshit, and it's not fair.

The show is actively words because Heather's not here and we're just saying whatever we want and

keeping you in check.

Yeah, we all love the smell of our own shit.

We're doing crazy.

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.

I've only finished two games this year, Kirby and something else.

I can't remember what the other game was.

But something we played for the show?

Metroid Prime, maybe?

I haven't finished Metroid Prime, but I'm I'm on the final stretch of that.

Yeah.

I actually could look it up right here.

Oh, it was Limbo again.

It was Limbo.

I hadn't finished Limbo.

Do you ever keep a list of stuff that you guys have been watching or taking in?

Because I've been starting doing that this year.

Yes.

I started doing this like two years ago.

I started listing all of the movies, books, and games I finish in a given year.

Yeah, I have a list of games I finished

starting in the pandemic, thinking that it was going to be over within a certain amount of time, and it's actively still going.

But so i still have that list but

i i picked i picked um

pokemon fire red back up on my analog pocket and zig you don't have an analog pocket right no no i have um i have a version of that it's not the same thing but um you have a handheld emulator yeah yeah yeah yeah uh this analog pocket is like i think about it a lot and i often i've gotten to a spot now where i'm like i should just have this on me at all times yeah keep that thing on you i gotta keep that thing on me yeah

and because it's just, it's so fun.

It's just the form factor is great.

Whenever I take it places where I'm with other people playing games, like friends of mine or whatever, or like my family, they're always like very interested in it.

Is it like a Game Boy?

What's the shape of a Game Boy?

It's the shape of a Game Boy, like a regular Game Boy.

So it's not like advanced, like the traditional Game Boy.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it's just like, it's just, it's just such a sleek package.

I really love it.

But I picked Pokemon Fire Red back up.

And I'm having this problem, which I don't know.

Zig, you've played a lot of Pokemon, I think, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick, you have played some.

I played some, a little bit.

I'm having this problem right now in my team where one guy is fucking doing all the work.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Blastoise is going, killing everybody.

And then the rest of my team is like level 11.

He's like level 40.

Yeah.

I'm running into it.

So I'm having a balance issue because I'm getting to further in the game where Blastoise isn't going to be cutting it for much longer.

I'm going to need to beef up some of these other guys, but I'm also not in a position where I want to be grinding.

So what that does is that sort of halts the amount of fun that i'm having yeah which then makes me bounce to something else and i'm so i'm i'm i want to finish that i want to just clean house which one is this again it's fire red the for the it's the remake of the for the game boy advance yeah um

but that's like my nighttime game and i i've been bouncing between that at night i bought

Divinity Original Sin 2

for the Steam Deck.

And it was, it's, because it's, people say it's, it's great on, on, on Steam Deck.

And I really want to start that, but that's not a nighttime thing to me.

It seems like that's like, it's, it's pretty involved.

I'm going to have to get in there in the waking hours.

I've started and abandoned that game after like 10 hours twice.

It is, yeah.

Like, I'm playing.

It's like, okay, this is really good.

It's really engrossing.

I don't know if I can commit to this.

It seems like a lot.

It seems like a chalker.

Yeah.

But like,

that just speaks to like how

i'm i'm just bouncing between so many things i need something to occupy those other times and i know it's going to be uh tears of the kingdom when tears of the kingdom comes out that's going to be like my forever game the way in which i'm going to build like a little robot go-kart and just ride around and run over those lizard dudes yeah like it's going to be it's going to be beautiful i can't play that game stand a chance yeah they don't even see it coming i just want to attach an eyeball to an arrow

Yes, I heard about that mechanic today and I was like, this is, what are they doing?

Yeah.

So I'm looking, there's games on the pipeline that i'm going to be playing quite a bit but i have like a week right now between big releases where i'm going to try to just clean house a little bit i think that's where i'm at right now but uh nick do you want to go first or should we ask zig let's ask zig zig what are you playing you know i um i uh i've sort of i feel like i always answer these same two games every time you guys ask me because these are like i use them as like sort of like palette cleansers like oh i have 30 minutes 40 minutes let me get like a round in with this so like always gun damn battle operations 2 and then alien fire team elite but besides those like sort of like you you know, palette cleanser games, I um, I have been playing, um,

or I just beat Callisto Protocol, okay.

Um, which is a game that, like, I enjoy like the actual, like, visuals.

Like, it's a beautiful game, looks fantastic, great performances, but like, when it comes to like the actual gameplay and story, I'm like, I'm not, it's the only game where after dying, like, for like the 14th time, I just switched it to easy because like, I just wanted to get it done.

Sure.

And like, I wasn't having that much fun,

but I haven't played like a horror game in such a long time that I wanted to give it a shot, you know, and try like a new, because I really enjoyed Dead Space when it first came out, but I didn't have the best time playing it.

But like, um, I just wanted to give it a shot.

But besides that, I also, Matt knows this, I rebeat, um, I replayed the Last of Us.

Oh, wow.

The first, the first remake, and I played through the second one recently.

Again, beautiful games, um, uh but devastating on a whole yeah um and we'll get into it more when we start talking about today's game but like i think what i've appreciated so much about the resident evil 4 remake is that i sort of mentioned this before we started recording is that like it feels like a video game where like you're shooting people you're kneecapping like old ladies and then suplexing them through like a bug

and they have fun like glitches with it or fun like sort of like troll things where they sort of take them out of games now through game testing but like when like you go to like the top of a ladder like a guy comes up and you just like pop him in the head and he falls back down.

Like, I did that for like 30 minutes last night, and it was the most fun I've ever had playing a video game in history.

Like, I've had so much fun getting back to like those type of like fun, silly video games.

So, like, I have sort of played these big emotional roller coasters like that and like the new God of War.

So, I'm trying to transition back into more like silly, fun games where I feel like the arcadeness of it all.

So, like, those are like my three three that I'm sort of playing now.

But, like, I, if you guys have recommendations for games that sort of capture the feel of like Resident Evil 4, like the sort of fun arcade games, like please lay them on me.

Like I, that's the, that's the, the dragon I want to be chasing now.

Uh, we'll we'll talk about RE4 in just a second, but yes, the same sort of feeling of just like, oh, there's just pure fun here.

Yeah, yeah.

And I really, I mean, are you a from soft guy at all?

I've, I tried Sekaro and I got beat by the first giant guy that you fought.

So I just said, fuck it off.

But then I started playing Elden Ring, and that was the first one I like actually beat.

Like, you know, know,

you guys have talked about it to death, but my experience of Elden Ring is that, you know, like Breath of the Wild, they just literally toss you into a continent that you can go anywhere that you want to.

So I literally spent the first 20 years of that game.

I was just like walking around fighting things.

I didn't fight the first boss until like 25 hours in.

So I was like level like 20.

So I walked over them.

And like, I, I had been so over-leveled for most of the game because I had been playing for 20 years at that point that I, it wasn't as difficult, I think, as it probably would have been if I just did the traditional pass.

Like, I had a lot of fun with that game.

Like, I think it had some really interesting lore and like the monster design is so interesting.

And I could get into like difficult games more.

I think if the

gameplay suited what I want, which is like open world, you can like run away from the scary guy if you want to, and then do whatever you want.

Besides that, I think about that time when we were all playing Elden Ring, like we as like society.

Yeah, yeah.

And

I was like, that game made me a different man.

Like, I was just like, this is like, it became my my personality in such a way that, like, that just doesn't happen.

It was such a phenomenon.

Yeah, when you roll credits on that game after getting God Slayed, like, there's no, none of the game has captured the feeling like, yeah, I did fucking call it.

My girlfriend on her phone has pictures of me like fucking like cheersing myself in our living room at like 9.30 in the morning when I had to wake up and I was like, I'm just going to beat this guy right now.

I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

I talked about recently on the podcast that I finished Sekiro, which was like a mission of mine.

And, you know, I set aside time for it and I just kind of kept going at it and getting reps.

I absolutely loved it.

It's a true masterpiece.

Like you, it took me some time to like get over the

hump and like get past the very steep difficulty curve.

But once I got it, like to me, I had the same sort of feeling playing Sekiro once I really learned the mechanics of the pairing system as I do playing Resident Evil 4.

I can get into a flow state.

It's so fun to take out all these enemies.

It's so rewarding to like take out a big boss uh i you you talked about or you were both talking about finishing elden ring which i never i did not do i didn't finish it real quick pretty far i mean like i but i i i'm thinking that maybe what i should do with the little bit of time i have before tears of the kingdom comes out is i should try to go back and finish elden ring that's a great idea i think i'm gonna try to do that that's gonna be my personal goal but as far as what i'm playing now

I will I will say that first off that coffee talk episode two hibiscus and butterfly came out today.

It's on game plat game pass.

I love the first coffee talk.

I played the hell out of it.

I'm going to be playing some more of that.

So that's one thing I'm definitely looking forward to.

And then there was also a game I streamed.

If we want to maybe talk a little Stream Daddy,

Stream,

Stream Daddy,

Daddy.

Shout out to Jordan again for making that cue.

Really, like, like right now, maybe one of my biggest incentives to continue to stream is just that we get to play that again.

Yeah.

And, like, Jordan, like in her, I'm just following orders era, like, just making this.

And like, just like knocking it out of the park, too.

And here's the thing.

People love it.

People love it.

People love it.

I gave no notes.

That was great.

I played a little bit of Loop Hero, which was a game that came came out in 2021.

When did that come out, Matt?

Do you remember?

Loop Hero.

It's on my radar.

It's in my, I think I have it, and I just have not played it.

2021, that's correct.

I was on Game Pass now, and it's one of those games that, like, I remember in the Roundups, they were saying, like, hey, this is a, check this one out.

This is really cool.

And I just never got around to it.

But I got it.

I got around to it a little bit on a recent stream on twitch.tv slash get played pod.

And it is basically like, you know, it's kind of an auto-battler.

You have your, the, the character that you're, you know, monitoring, not really directly controlling, is walking in a loop through a dungeon.

And as he defeats monsters in these sort of like, you know, the pseudo-turn-based JRPG combat scenarios, you acquire loot, and then you can equip that loot and improve your character.

And then you decide when you're going to end a run.

And then you also have this little town management aspect that you get to.

you know, upgrade your home base, which gives you more rewards when you're going through these, these loops of these dungeons.

It's really

cool aesthetically.

Like it's got this great pixel art look.

The character portraits are

really well rendered.

It's got great music.

I should have pulled up a music queue, but

I was just like, it was one of those things where I was just like, oh, I'll just never get around to playing this.

And then the value of Game Pass is it just being there.

I just get to mess around with it for a few hours on stream and a few hours offline and had an absolute blast.

And I think it's, I think if you're just looking for a chill game,

which I'm always seeking out, I'm always seeking out like a kind of game that I don't have to,

you kind of have to micromanage it, but it's not like I have to directly control a bunch of stuff.

Yeah.

And so I think it absolutely works from that standpoint.

So yeah, I'm going to play some more of it, but

I really, really,

really thought it was a hoop.

Speaking of chill games, have either of you played Grizz, G-R-I-S?

No, that's one of the ones on my radar, but I never actually played it.

It's a beautiful game.

I haven't beat it, but for like, just like aesthetically, like it's all watercolors.

It's the most beautiful looking game i've ever played yeah um i think you might really really enjoy it stream daddy might approve

both both games uh published by devolver digital oh oh yeah

a lot of a lot of great india content comes out of them oh yeah let's uh let's talk about this week's game it's time for our we play you play resident evil 4 in parentheses 2023 because this is not titled like resident evil 4 remake or resident evil 4 remastered this is just like the most recent resident evil remakes it's just the title of the original game uh developed and published by Capcom, obviously, and directed.

The remake was by Yasuhiro, Anpo, and Kazunori Kadoy.

Zig, I want to talk about your Resident Evil

franchise fandom and your relationship to this game in particular.

So

I think we're right around the same age.

My first Resident Evil was...

Resident Evil 1 director's cut for PlayStation 1.

I didn't finish it, but I played it.

And it sounds so crazy now, but back then it was the scariest fucking thing on the planet.

The dogs bursting through the windows and like the first time you see the zombie like turn its head around is terrifying.

But the first Resident Evil game I actually completed was Resident Evil 3 Nemesis.

Like I had that for the PS1.

I played it through.

I loved it.

I beat it multiple times.

I did even like they had like think they had like mercenary mini games or whatever.

I did that.

And then I did Veronica code Veronica for the Dreamcast.

And then sort of I took a break for a while.

And then when Resident Evil 4, the original came out in like 2005 or something like that.

Yes.

I remember everyone was like, this is a complete break from format.

No more tank controls.

It's like a proper

third-person

action game.

And everyone's like, we don't know if it's going to work or not.

But playing it was like some of the most fun I've ever had playing a game.

It's one of the, it's one of those few games I remember going back and beating multiple times because they had so many fun sort of like loopholes in the game that you don't know unless you like beat it like rescuing like the dog at the beginning of the game or like they If you've played the game, you've noticed that like the merchant just sells an RPG.

Yes.

But if you buy the RPG, it one-shots literally any boss.

So like I remember buying it for the first time, like keep it in my back pocket and like you fight the last boss.

You can just like shoot him once and like end the game with like one shot.

I love all that sort of like fun goofiness like gameplay that they put into the game like video games.

So like I've been a big fan ever since then.

And then that sort of dropped off because

I think Resident Evil like five and six were sort of in the same vein, but I remember, I don't think they like landed as as well as Resident Evil 4.

And then the Resident Evil 7 and like the sort of first person ones were like, they seemed more scared, like more horror focused.

And I was looking looking, really craving like that specific Resident Evil 4 type of like action.

They got a nice balance between the action.

There was horror elements into it.

And also, they got rid of like the umbrella of it all for like a bit, which I enjoyed that idea of like the cosmic horror element, like these creatures from the, from the depths coming up and doing like the thing.

Right.

Um, so like getting asked to play this, it was the first Resident Evil I've seen in a while where like I actively like

I think it came out right before I left for Japan.

I put it in my queue on the PS5.

And when I came back, I started playing it immediately.

Like

I love this game so, so much that it makes me want to go back and replay the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes that they just did.

You and I have a very similar relationship to this franchise, which is that I took a long break.

Did you play 7 and 8?

Did you play Village and...

No, the last one I played was 4.

Yeah, so I'm basically in the exact same scenario.

And Matt, I want you to weigh in as well.

But I like...

Resident Evil along with Final Fantasy 7, seeing those at a friend's house were what motivated me to get a PlayStation 1, my first non-Nintendo console.

And I, you know, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 were all like, like, games I played and really loved on PlayStation 1, although I was kind of fatigued by that point.

Resident Evil Code Veronica, I was very hyped for for the Dreamcast.

And then Resident Evil 4 was like, yeah, this is really my last point.

For me, the GameCube version was really like my last...

your real anchor point for the franchise.

Five and six similarly checked out of.

And then I'd heard such great things about 7-8 and 8 and never got around to them.

Same thing with the remakes.

Everyone says the Resident Evil 2 remake that came out is like the peak of the franchise.

I still haven't played any of them.

But playing this has been like, man, I love Resident Evil.

I need to get back into these games.

Yeah, I'm back on being a horrorhead.

Yeah, I,

my experience, I've only played Resident Evil 4.

That's the only Resident Evil game that I've had.

On the GameCube?

No, I got it on PlayStation 2.

Oh, that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

Because, and I was reading about this.

Obviously, it was released on GameCube, but then Capcom figured out that it's not, it wasn't under an exclusivity thing.

They're like, oh, we'll just put it on everything then.

And then it's literally on everything.

I've purchased it multiple times.

I have it on Switch,

and I have the VR version, which I tried for a little bit and simply could not.

I would never do that.

It was fucked.

It's fucked.

And also, like, it looks bad because it's like the, you know, original.

If it looked like this, it maybe you would be a little more powerful.

It seems like the game just was not built for VR.

I feel like you could cheese that game so hard.

Oh, yeah.

In VR.

Well, I actually don't know because

I can't.

Oh, yeah.

I can't fucking do it.

Once you see the chainsaw guy in the beginning, you're like, I'm done with this.

But so I have not played any other Resident Evils ever.

I beat the original.

I beat

Resident Evil 4 on PlayStation 2.

And

I was never a scary games guy.

It's well documented that I'm a coward.

I speak of it often.

But for some reason, I think, because when it came out in 2005, I would have been

14 going on 15 years old.

And that was when I was in my Electronic Gaming Monthly

bag and my G4, watching X-Play and Attack of the Show.

Yeah.

Like stuff.

And then everybody was like Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil.

Yes.

So it was just like a, it was

not unlike Elden Ring.

It was sort of like a phenomenon where I was like, I should play this game that everybody's talking about.

And I fell in love with it.

It was hard, but it was very scary.

It was very scary for me.

I had never played a horror game before.

And

now that I've played other ones,

like Silent Hill 2, like we did on the show, and there's been a couple other ones that I've just played like for fun, like even like just like The Last of Us.

The

Resident Evil 4, obviously, I'm not saying anything new here.

It's just an all-time classic game.

It's just like, it's as close to a perfect video game as you can get.

It's unbelievable.

It's such a fucking video game.

Yeah, gone.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but as you were saying, it reminded me of what I enjoyed so much about the Metal Gear series, which is like,

there's

such a fine, perfect balance between

grounded drama.

This is a fuck, you're fucking sneaking into Shadow Moses baby.

And also, there are going to be some monkeys there.

And there's a guy that has chronic crippling diarrhea.

It's such a balance between serious and stupid and like fun gameplay.

And it strikes a balance perfectly.

Like, the first time you see the chainsaw guy, it fucking terrifies you the first time like a little las plagas fucking sickle thing pops out of a guy's head is terrifying but then like you're like driving a jet ski and then like fucking suplexing old spanish women like it's it's such a crazy video game yeah i that it's one of those things where to your point about like the kind of like this the the atmosphere of it and just kind of the lunacy of what's happening is it's like

Video games are so interesting because if it didn't have the gameplay element, like if you were just like watching like a bunch bunch of the cutscenes like strung together in a way that made narrative sense, you'd be like, what is this?

This is nonsense.

There's a fish key you got to find.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And also like some, so much of the dialogue is so corny.

I know they revised some of it.

And it's like, just like feels like a B movie versus if you take all the cinematics of like The Last of Us and you string those together, it's like, it feels like what it turned into, which is Prestige TV.

Yeah.

But it, but, like, but you add the game.

gameplay to this and the gameplay is so fucking good that this is just like it this is a 10 out of 10 masterpiece.

Yeah, I just

because like you'll, you'll like, there's like a cart, like a minecart racing section where like you like have to go, we're going off the rails, you got to tilt left and like you're shooting.

Like for some reason, they send out, I don't know why, but they send out the chainsaw guy where he can't physically reach you next to like a minecart.

Like it turned into fool loony tunes, and then it goes into like you're like knife fighting an ex-commando guy that taught you like it.

They hit so many random beats that should not make any cohesive sense, but they all land perfectly within the game.

That minecart

section, which they've revised a little bit, and then like Luis is with you, who wasn't with you in the original game for that part.

And like they've expanded it, it's so manic, it's so frantic.

It's like not really all that challenging, so you just kind of get to enjoy the spectacle of it, which was the thing that Rach and Clank Future did really well.

It's just like having these segments where it's just, you're just flying through something and there's just a barrage of stuff coming at you.

I don't know.

It was like

it just, it made me, I mean, it's, it's, it's an obvious comparison, but it made me think of like the sheer joy of like those Donkey Kong country,

like minecart levels.

And it's just like, oh man, this is just so fun.

I'm just having like the time of my life.

I mean, like, imagine that section in The Last of Us.

You'd be like, there's no talks going on.

You fucking suck.

Ellie.

Yeah.

No time for comic books, Ellie.

We got to get on this minecart.

We're going to tip over, Ellie.

It'd be so shitty in a different game, but because it's in this game, that's crazy.

Yeah, it rocks.

Does that guy with a pig mask have a crossbow?

What the fuck is going on?

And

there's like, there's there's so many things in this game, too, that, like, obviously it's a horror game.

It's a horror franchise.

There's like scary shit in it.

But on the flip side of that, there's stuff in it that's so fucking funny.

It's so funny.

Well, okay, so you talked about the dog earlier.

You rescue a dog, and then he goes and he helps you in a boss fight.

But there's a line that he has, that Leon has, which has been, has been memed a bunch, but he's just like, like, hey, it's that dog.

It's like,

he recognizes a dog he met.

And also, also, the dog is like, I better help this guy.

But also, that delivery and that perilous of a like, he's got this gigantic, like, you know, 40-foot-tall monster attacking him

with a gigantic hammer.

And then a dog shows up.

He's like, how about that?

I know who's what.

This game, so a little bit of the history of the original RE4.

You know, we kind of talked about it a little bit, but

it had a six-year development cycle.

They started developing it in 1999, apparently.

Huge changes to the franchise with the over-the-shoulder camera, the camera relative character control.

And Hideki Kamiya, who was the original director of Resident Evil 4, he left the project, went on to make Devil May Cry and a bunch of other stuff.

So it cycles through a couple of other directors and then goes back to Shinji Mikami, who directed the original Resident Evil and then also the Resident Evil 1 remake that was on GameCube.

And he reworks, like he basically has all the

gameplay innovations that make this game what it is.

Which to me, I'm always like, I'm just kind of amazed that it worked out that way.

Because you you think about like, okay, we're going to go back to the original director who created this series and like just put it in his hands.

And then for him to have like kind of like the vision to be like, what we had before isn't working in today's, you know,

video game industry.

And so I'm just going to like, like, figure out some new things.

It plays completely different, controls, completely different from the first few Resident Evils, but it's like, it's just so good that the fans like all connected with it.

And I think this, the, the changes they've made from the original for this remake are really good.

You know, the only one I don't love is auto sorting your case because I think there's such like a like a like a game element in this of like the game within the game of like trying to figure out how to micromanage your inventory, which I really like.

They did that in Diablo as well.

Like they made like just sort of like a an auto sort and it just like makes it a little less fun.

I kind of like that.

But you can still like even in the auto sort, like if you're trying to buy something, it'll still auto sort to like where you don't have room, but like you can see how it could fit.

So you do have to like cheese it a little bit.

But like, I guess also, speaking of the changes, I hadn't played the original in so long.

Yes.

This was basically a completely new game to me.

Like, I like forgot so much of it.

And like, I remembered some of the, like, I remembered like Ramon and things like that.

Ramon's so funny.

But, um, and I remembered like,

I guess

I didn't remember there being bugs.

Yeah, me either.

Bugs was like new to me, but I'm sure they're there.

There were, but there were, so there were bugs, but like the the bugs crawling into you know the villagers and like taking over them that that's a new element and they were also represented a different way.

I think they were just like invisible

instead of like, you know, kind of camouflaging into the environment.

Yeah.

But I mean, I

one of my favorite additions was the like the weapon wheel.

I love a good weapon wheel.

Oh, sure.

Like just being able to like quick select something is and it's also so satisfying.

The one thing that I was saying this on, I might have said it on Discord.

I wish when you are picking up elements for crafting,

you know how, like, in The Last of Us, it makes that like

sound like you have enough stuff to craft something.

Yeah, I wish there was an indication of something like that because I'd be picking stuff up.

I'm like, oh, surely I have enough gunpowder.

And it's like, oh, no, I don't have resources small.

I don't have that.

Yeah, my, I mean, it's such a dumb nip, you know, but Maya was like, well, large, that can be broken down into small, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I can make double with large, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it is, I think, it's just such a video game-ass thing to be like, like, there are large and small resources.

Oh, I need some small resources.

But it's, I mean,

I

got this at launch, and I think I rolled credits on it last night.

I'm on chapter 14.

You're on chapter 14.

Where are you?

I'm at chapter, I just started 13.

Okay, so we're pretty far.

We're towards the end.

Yeah, there's 16 total.

16 channels.

I just got the infrared scope.

Okay.

Oh.

That fucking scope.

Yeah.

Great scope.

I kind of, with my weapons, I kind of kept it pretty basic.

There was opportunities to upgrade to a different rifle or like an automatic rifle that I just simply would not change my

single shot rifle.

So I,

so I, I'm a big explorer.

Like I always like to go down like, I just like look ring, look around things.

So like I've somehow,

apparently there's just like a AR-15 that you just get in the game.

Oh, yeah.

So So I got the AR-15 and I have like their like

semi-automatic rifle.

So my, my loadout is like, I have the top, like the upper directional is like rifles.

So I got, I keep that thing on me.

I got the AR-15.

It doesn't stand for, it doesn't stand for armor light.

Then I have, I think it's called like the Killer 7, which is just like, it's like the fucking Cobra gun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then like my, I did the DLC.

So I have.

Whatever the pistol is that has like a sort of extended clip.

I got that.

And then I keep the, I got the, uh, the street sweeper like automatic shotgun.

Nice.

And I keep those grenades on me at all times.

Yeah,

the gun I, the pistol I primarily use, I think is the Red 15.

The Red 9.

Red 9.

That was like Ruke, the one that...

It sort of has a stronger aim assist.

It sort of will lock on to a target if you're.

Well, you can get an upgraded shoulder mount that makes the aiming a little bit better, but it has a pretty, you know,

it's just so powerful.

It just packs so much of a punch.

And it's also just like, you know, the fun of this game is you have these encounters.

Some of them maybe go on a little too long, but generally just fighting like a regular enemy is just so satisfying in this game.

Yeah.

You know, one of them, the, someone's sort of creeping up towards you with a pitchfork and then you shoot them in the knees a couple of times and then you sprint up to him and like, you know, knock him to the ground and then stab him with a knife or fucking hit him with a suplex.

You want to talk about perfect gameplay loop?

Yeah.

It's like whenever like, I don't think they had stealth in the original, right?

No, they did.

The stealth kills was a new addition, which I kind of like.

Yeah, I have enjoyed that, but this has been one of the few games where, like, I have the option for stealth that I usually go loud.

Where, like, when like, right, there was this one section where you're like, you're going up like a clock tower, and like, there was this like old lady running at me with a pitchfork.

And like, if you pulled a lever, it'll just drop like a looney tune spike ball.

So, like, I ducked around her and like just dropped the spike ball and like watched them all get crushed.

Yeah.

But there's this thing they do where, like, they're running downhill and they have like, you know, some figures going.

So if you just kneecap them, they'll just tumble down the stairs.

And like, that has brought me such joy in that video game, like shooting old ladies in the leg as they like tumble down the stairs or like watching like guys climb up a ladder slowly and then like shooting them in the shoulder and watching them fall down and like hit three other guys below them like that's like the perfect gameplay loop for me yeah once i figured out like earlier early on when i started Once I like figured out that you can just knock them down by shooting them in the leg, I was doing that to every single person.

It's really fun.

And it's great that that is, that it's not just like, because so many games with guns, it's just like headshots are all that matter.

Everything else is a waste of ammo.

And here, there's just like, you know, you could shoot someone.

Someone's got like a, you know, like a burning torch they're going to throw at you.

You can shoot it out of their hand and it lights them on fire.

That's super satisfying.

So funny.

Or like a stick of dynamite that you could shoot influencing.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's funny.

And also just shooting someone in the head has its own satisfaction because that usually staggers someone and then you can hit them with a roundhouse kick.

Which is some people sir.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you can parry.

The parrying is

another new element.

And it's like, and that I think is really fun.

I wish the knife didn't break.

I find that a little bit annoying, but I understand why they did it just as a cash sink.

But it's, I think all the knife revisions are really fun.

And the one thing I'd heard is that, like, yeah, upgrade your knife all the way the first thing.

And I did that and I found it so satisfying.

Yeah, the parrying, I think, is great.

Especially a guy's coming out with you a chainsaw and then you parry it.

And it's one of those like you must hit that parry or else you'll get a death animation.

It's so satisfying to have like Leon like, you know, just holding his knife and holding back.

the whirring blade of a chainsaw.

So I don't know if you guys, what level of difficulty you guys played on.

I had to.

I had the default.

I had to play it on the easiest one because I just like could not fathom

being like overwhelmed by enemies or anything.

This is one of the few games where I do feel like, man, there's a lot.

They keep coming.

Like, how many more of your colleagues had to see me murk for them to keep sending bodies at me?

There's so many ways.

There was a certain point where like, you know, I was like, someone threw an axe.

I parried it.

I dude, like, a pitchfork came out of nowhere.

I parried that and like fucking suplex him into his best friend.

And then like out out of nowhere, like, these like blind guys with like fucking Wolverine claws, like, burst out of the wall and come at me.

Like, there are this is one of the few games where, like, I think it's a

sort of strike the perfect balance between, like, there are too many fucking guys.

I have just enough ammo to get through this.

And this is like normal difficulty.

So, like, doing this on like professional, whatever, like, the higher up is, like, it seems so

unfun for me at this particular point in life.

In my life, had you guys encountered,

I think, the scariest

enemies in the game, the Regenerators.

Oh, yeah.

I just got to them.

I fucking hate them.

They become manageable at a certain point when you get this.

You get a scope.

Yeah.

A thermal scope.

Yeah.

A thermal scope so you can see their beating hearts inside of them and then destroy those one by one because they have three hearts and sometimes one of those will migrate up to their head.

Yes.

And they become, yeah, they become iron maidens when they

get the one in their head.

But those guys are so scary because if before you have that you can't kill them yeah and if you try to shoot them you shoot them in the legs to try to run away from them they just slither around on the ground it's so nasty you can you can i believe dismember them yeah i think i did that like i like i i knock them and you can also can parry some of their attacks which is really satisfying because you know you can uh do you use the knife to hit one of their wailing limbs but it's just like yeah that there's no way to kill them unless you take out each of their individual hearts you can't even use explosives yeah Which I don't know.

I like it.

I like how tense that is.

I also, Zig, something you were just talking about, like, I love scarcity as a mechanic.

Like, I love that you just don't have enough ammo all the time.

There was a point in one encounter where I just basically ran out of almost everything.

And it was like, I just had my knife and like a few throwables.

And it was just like, it was tense and scary.

And I prevailed.

And it was just like, this is so fucking fun.

And I kind of wish there were more.

I do, because I like Matt, I'm a bit of a coward.

And I don't love like horror games, which is partly why I went away from the Resident Evil franchise, but I love not having enough shit.

You know what I mean?

And so like, I wish there were more games like this.

Honestly, I'll take a recommendation from a listener if anyone has an idea for a game that has this feeling of just like you don't have enough resources, but it doesn't have the horror element.

This is one of the few games that I've played where I feel like I actually have a use for flashbang grenades.

Yes.

Oh, they're so good.

There was a section where I had like five bullets left in my handgun and then like two flashbang grenades.

So like I threw the grenade and like it stuns everyone and then you could just like fucking stab them in the head and take them all out but like this is one of the few games where like that was fun we're like oh i have like the only have my knife like you can you feel like you can get through things with that yeah

i i i i think this is i think that if you beat the game you get on a certain level where you get like infinite ammo so i if i cheat for infinite ammo so like this is one of those games where like i want to beat it through like this and then go back and play it with that sort of cheating involved and then just like spray through everyone.

I wanted to roll, I rolled credits and I wanted to start a new game immediately when I was done.

This game is like so, and I know that they're going to be adding DLC.

I didn't get to mess around with the mercenaries mode much, but I know that like you can unlock the best game or the best gun in the game by doing that before you start the game, which I think is pretty cool.

And I think that they were going to add, because in the PlayStation 2 version, there's a section that you can play as Ada Wong.

I think they're going to add that to

this package at some point.

But I just, with this, it's like it hasn't left my PS5 yet.

I don't know if it will.

It's so great.

I got past a point where it was still scary to me.

Like, I, like, because obviously I finished it.

It becomes not scary once you get further along and you just have more weapons.

Right.

Um,

oh, I remember what I wanted to talk about.

We got to talk about Ashley.

Yes.

Leon.

Because, yeah, in the original, Ashley is sort of like, uh, is a meme now.

People sort of, she was like the

like the, what do you call it?

Damsel in distress.

Yeah,

yeah.

You know, the people found her annoying.

The birth of the escort mission, kind of, right?

Where it's like, yeah, and, and, and, and honestly, like, the escort feeling, the escort part of that mission feeling like all-encompassing.

It's like, I have to micromanage her health.

I have to be, really be conscious of what she's doing at all times.

She gets in my way.

Here, it's kind of been simplified a little bit.

Yes.

She can still get into it.

She's still kind of annoying.

When like she gets captured.

She's like, help me.

And then like you accidentally shoot her because like the amount of most of her deaths have been because I've had the submachine gun and she's been carried off and I accidentally hit her.

Right.

Or like she's been dropped and like, I guess it penetrates through the guy into her that it was like, it was just frustrating enough to be like.

Ellie, at least Ellie got out of the way of Joel and vice versa.

Well, yeah, I think that that is the thing of like, I wonder if there was, whatever.

I'm not going to backseat,

you know, drive this development cycle, but I do wonder if if there was a version.

Which you famously loved to do.

Well, I love to do.

I love to tell developers that are much more talented than me.

Yeah, to crunch more.

But like, but

I wonder if there was a version where, yeah, she was a little bit less helpless.

Maybe you remove the incapacitation thing altogether and just, you know, I don't know.

It is kind of, you can hide her in lockers in limited situations, which is very good.

There is one section when the first time you fight like the two chainsaw sisters, and like I fought them once.

I don't think I got killed, but she actually got killed.

And then I realized that you can just like stick her in the locker upstairs where no one can touch her.

And then you make short work of it.

But like, I love, again, I love those type of cheesy things that they leave in games where you know gamers are going to abuse absolutely 1,000%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like the section where you get to play as her.

Yeah.

I don't remember that fun.

I don't remember if that's in the original.

It is.

And they reworked it a little bit.

The lantern is

different.

And then the

knights,

those are like a, there's like a different enemy in there.

So like it's a little bit more active It's a it's yeah, I think that's that's a pretty fun little because like sections like that where you play as like the not playable character or like the the non combat character like in like in the Spider-Man game when you play as Mary Jane I'm always like well this is like a slowdown.

Yeah, it's like a this is a stealth mission.

Yeah, but I love that lantern.

Yeah, lantern's fun.

Good lantern.

I wish I had the lantern in I wish Leon could have the lantern.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Like I um I mentioned this before we started recording, but like speaking of memes, like have you guys seen the um the Ashley mice memes?

I have not seen this.

Was someone just uh they just started to draw Ashley as like a mouse.

So it's a lot of her like asking Leon for special cheeses.

And like I couldn't get that out of my mind.

There's one section in particular where she's like on a ledge and she will just keep saying Leon until you answer her.

And like, I kept picturing that, but she has like a little mouse head and like little cheese next to her.

And I could not get that out of my mind.

That's cute.

This one right here, I'll hold it up so Nick can see it.

It says, I crave cheese, Leon.

And then the merchant says, I got some rare cheese on sale, stranger.

Adorable.

Help me, Leon.

It's like, it's, it's, it's absolute nonsense.

But it's very truly like, it truly is like the encapsulation.

It's like, if you showed this to like a Victorian child, they would die.

I knocked down how to process this.

The meme I saw that I think got recirculated a lot when the

or recirculated a lot when the game launched is just a Leon S.

Kennedy talking to Biden about his daughter.

That's the other thing that

it's such a funny plot of this game is that like

Leon

in the aftermath of the incident at Raccoon City

is now like a special forces operative working for the president to get his daughter back.

Well, he was famously like it was like literally his first day on the job at the Raccoon Police Department.

He had the worst day, first day possible.

Did some bad job.

He's now hired by the president to get his daughter.

Yeah, I think the Ashley reworks are pretty good.

I think the.

I hate that you can't look up her skirt.

That's so stupid.

Why did they change that?

It's not just La Plaga.

It's the woke mind virus, too.

Woke go broke.

I also like, this is the thing, and this is just a Resident Evil convention.

And I don't know if it's in the more modern ones, but I love the dumb little puzzles.

And I say that with so much affection.

It's just dumb to have a little like, you know, pictograph you have to put in the right order in the middle of a church to unlock a door.

None of them are headsets.

None of them are hard.

They're all like very straightforward, but they're so fun.

There's a puzzle that you have to do to progress to get through a door that's just like lining up dots.

And it's like, this is so fucking stupid.

My favorite one of those is

you have to like get like a serpent's head to put a statue of it but like to get to the serpent's head you have to like go to a dining hall and like look at a portrait and then match that portrait for you and for ashley and then like ring the bell at the same time and like my thought process was like what medieval like security guy was like all right i got an idea we're going to get two portraits love put them on the wall and match them to get through the secret drifting head or whatever uh oh i was texting you about this too zig because like the the villagers in this game obviously they speak Spanish and they have

a sort of a rotating list of like phrases that they say.

I guess I speak very limited Spanish, so like stuff like that I get, but I hadn't, I didn't know what Forrestero was.

And they're just yelling like for Estero!

And I looked it up and it's just stranger.

And I was like, if I was somewhere and they were just yelling stranger at me, I'd kill myself.

They're like, this is not going to end well for me.

Yeah, I was taking this.

I was using this game as an excuse because I think it came out right when I was about to graduate high school.

Like, mom, dad, this is totally educational.

They speak Spanish.

I'm taking Spanish.

Like, please, I got this.

But like, but they say like maybe five or six phrases that they look like they just looked up like intro to Spanish.

Yeah.

Don de estab.

Yeah.

Muerto.

Yeah, muerto.

Glores a las plagas.

It's, um, I will, I will say, this game ages so much better because it's set in Spain and not like South America.

Yeah.

A lot worse.

Yeah, yeah.

The one where you like go to Africa and shoot.

Yeah.

I remember like, yeah, that game's, that's not getting a remake.

No, it's going to be hard to like justify that one.

Yeah.

Also, like, that one was like PS3, right?

Like, yeah, it would make sense for them to like remake PS3 games because it's like, it doesn't, you can't play it on anything, but it's also like so recent.

Like, they're not going to, they're going to get to a point where they're not going to have any more games to remake.

You know what I mean?

I wonder, because they've already remade Resident Evil twice, like the original, Resident Evil 1.

They've remade it twice.

And like they obviously, I thought they were going to stop at three.

I thought they were going to just stop the PlayStation ones, but then they were like, ah, let's remake four, which I also was like, I feel like you can just kind of play the HD version, you know, on Steam, and it kind of holds up.

But I'm really glad they did this remake.

I would not be surprised if they remade the entire series and then just started it.

I wouldn't mind if they just made up.

a new sequel to Resident Evil 4 with Leon.

Like just like expand on his story a little bit.

Like I know he probably comes back in later ones, but I just love, I love Leon.

I love Leon so much.

He's like Denji from Chainsaw Man level dumb.

Yeah, he's a fucking idiot.

That's fucking weird.

Bingo.

You're that dog.

It's so good.

Hey, it's that dog.

I remember there's one he had last night when he gets like the second, but he's like, great, I don't have to swim.

There's a, yeah, there's,

I think,

with Ramon, when he's talking, like, he's taunting you at a certain point.

and then like Leona has a retort that's just like, tell someone who gives a shit.

Pluts him in the back of the head like a little nerd.

If they do, I mean, I could call it, if they just, I just want to see a remake of Code Vervonica.

Like, that's the last one that I actually need to see because I love that game so much.

But, like, it was, that was the one that was most painfully obvious that it was like the tank controls were sort of inhibiting it because it turns into like sort of an action, straight-up action game in like the second or third act of that game.

I would really like to see like this given the remake treatment.

I have a feeling that's coming because I feel like this is this is going to be a or maybe already has in terms of sales haven't looked as a big success for them.

I would think it would have to be.

It's just such a beloved game and it's such a lovingly done remake.

And I'll also say that

there is part of me that like I like that they reworked a lot of this game and

they got rid of some of like certainly the QTEs being gone is a great modern

concession to modern gaming.

There are parts of me where it's like, hmm, do I like this approach or do I like the Metroid Prime Remastered approach, which is what we covered last month, Matt, which is basically like, that's just the same game,

but just with modern controls.

But it doesn't have a lot of the quality of life stuff that this game does.

There are no auto-saves.

There are no checkpoints.

It's all manual.

It took me a while to get over that because

we're so used to the typewriter or ribbon system.

But then I was like, oh, wait, I don't actually have to save because the game auto-saves.

Yeah.

It's just a holdover from the old one.

Do you still use the typewriter though?

But I can't stop myself from using the typewriter.

Yeah, I'm so ingrained.

Like, I have to save, even though I've never once paid a price for not using a typewriter.

I was using the auto.

I was saving every time.

And I, I, I hardly, there was things in the game that I didn't do.

Like, I, I, I, too late decided to start doing a lot of the side quests.

Like, I, when I finished, I completed the game with a B and I did a lot of the stuff.

Like, I got a lot of the extra stuff.

Um,

there's these little statues that you can shoot in the game that are little tiny, like, Ramon Salazars

that I started shooting too late.

I got like 14 of the, like, the 19 of them or whatever.

I found my first one last night in chapter 12.

I was like, is it like one of like 20 or whatever?

Like, I didn't even know these things existed in this game.

Yeah, and I would do all the like requests and like shoot the rats or whatever.

Um, I'm fucking hunting vipers.

Like, uh, I did so much.

Like I was like, I

completed the game with 24 hours logged.

And it was still like, I could keep playing this.

Yeah.

I did feel like I was sprinting through this a little bit just to try to get enough hours logged for this episode because I started playing it late.

And I do wish I had more time with televisions, which I think are pretty fun.

Yeah.

I kind of like those little games.

I'm fully going to replay this game.

Yeah, I think me too.

I beat it.

It's yeah, because it's just such a blast.

The only other thing I wanted to say, which was something that you referenced earlier, Zig, which was regarding the flash grenades, which are so valuable in this game, but it's just like it's such a cool thing how they insta-kill the plagas when the you know, when

the plaga emerges from uh, you know, from someone's head and

it like like insta-killing them and then also staggering the other enemies there becomes so valuable and it's just such a satisfying thing to just take out one of these powerful enemies and then just be able to roundhouse kick everyone else who's still standing.

It's a blast.

I I was thinking about when ashley becomes um like incapacitated and then they pick her up

i like that like the that's like as far as their plan goes they're like okay i picked her up and slowly i'm gonna just slowly walk away now this is it

yeah you can just walk up behind him and merc him with your knee yeah like what are you doing dude put her down

everything feels good there's some great set pieces great bosses i mean i i don't know it's just

this is so much fun it's just a fun game it is a capital v video game but it's such a video game ass video game And

to going back to something we said earlier, it never makes you

have to account for your crimes or feel bad about yourself or grapple with just the fact that, wait, I have murdered a bunch of people.

Yeah.

And

it's cheesy enough where it rocks.

Yes, 100%.

It's such a delicate thing.

Leon could go the full Duke Nukem and be like a shithead that sucks.

Yeah.

But Leon is like a shithead that like you love.

Like he's like so funny and he says shit like like when he

bingo.

Yeah, when they're leaving, he's like, where are they going?

Bingo.

But like when he's, when you're talking to Ramon and he's about to do his like villain monologue, he straight up is just like, you talk to him like a fucking shoe shooter.

You know what a really great.

He's not clever.

No.

He's like, you know what a really great comp to this is like, have you guys ever played the Earth Defense Force games?

No.

They're fantastic games.

Like this is the highest, I mean, this is, it's obviously like a night and day situation, but like, they're very cheap games, like, most literally and like development-wise, but like, they're so much fun.

It's like they drop you into like a sandbox, and they have like aliens and giant robots.

And, like, the voice acting is terrible.

The graphics aren't fantastic, but the gameplay is so fun that I think it'd be a good complement to this.

Like, this is obviously like a triple-A version of that, but, like, if you've enjoyed the sort of gameplay loop of Resident Evil 4 and like the tone and the vibe, I highly recommend checking out any of the Earth Defense Force games.

I think they're either cheap or you can stream them on the PS5 store or whatever.

They're really, really fun games.

And

definitely

also Capital V video game.

Highly recommend those games.

Are these mecha games?

I vaguely remember these.

So you can like, you can pilot tanks, you can pilot helicopters, you can pilot mechs.

Like it's true, like, if you, it's like, hey, do you want to fight Godzilla?

Or do you want to play like an Evangelion type game where you're fighting giant monsters?

Like, this is definitely the game, and they throw hundreds of hundreds of minimates on screen.

It's a really, really fun series.

Uh, well, hey, a whole bunch of thoughts we just shared about Resident Evil 4 remake.

I gotta share one thing real quick.

There's a because I rolled credits on this thing,

and there's a song in the credits that's new to the game,

and it both sucks and rules.

It is so funny.

I have to play it right now.

It's called The Bullet or the Blade.

I'm not sure when it kicks in.

Loving this so far.

Yeah.

I remember those lost in the dark.

The bullet or the blade that kept us.

Yes.

But I've been moving on.

Can't be still for long.

Unironically rolls.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speedboat in the water, camera pulling out slowly, get exposed.

You just saved the president's daughter from an island that blew up.

The bullet and the blade sounds like the name of like a gastro plug.

Gastro pub.

Serves like a $21 slider.

I,

when this started playing, when I finished last night my jaw dropped yeah that's great it's somehow the craziest thing in a game that's insane reminds me of the the final track for the symphony of the night the credits it's just like so like epic and over the top uh yeah any other thoughts on this game just an absolute all-timer i'm glad they remade it i'm glad we did it for the show uh it's uh i just an excuse to play such a great yeah great game i loved it and i have no notes it's one of the most fun video games experience i've had in a while.

Yes.

I think if you're looking for a game, maybe like you're a younger person just getting into video games that really capture, like for me, like the highlight of like early aughts video gaming, Resident Evil 4 Remake is the one to go to.

It's so much fun.

It checks every box.

And also, as you just heard, it doesn't take its toes too seriously.

Yeah.

I think also,

and just to address anyone who hasn't played this game before,

I think this is like, even if you haven't played a Resident Evil, this is like a great just jumping on point because it's super fun.

It feels, you know, looks and feels like a modern game, absent a few quirks.

And, you know, like a lot of things they've tweaked, like that you can move when you shoot now is like so huge and makes it so much more playable.

So definitely

if you're new to this franchise or new to this particular game, I would 100% recommend it.

And I think this is coming from me,

a coward.

It's doable.

It's not that scary.

It's scary and more action than horror.

Yeah, it's 100% more action.

It's scarier in the beginning because resources are scarce and you only have the one gun.

But once you start getting like

more powerful weapons and throwables and stuff, it becomes

your Laplaga.

What is it?

Like, here, you thought the one grenade was too good.

Here's an even bigger grenade for you to throw your grenade.

Well, hey, it's time for the you play part of our we play, you play.

It's your review crew, the reu crew.

Hadooken.

Can I just say something before we start?

And this is like, obviously, it's great having you here, Sig, and we're having a really good time.

I miss Heather.

Yeah, I feel like she would have shut that down so fast.

Well, she does it.

She does the Hadouken.

I just miss her.

Yeah.

I wish she's having a good time.

Of course, we miss Heather.

We all miss Heather.

She'll be back.

I get it.

It's not.

I'm right here, but I get it.

No, it's not like it's like I miss.

Yeah, that sounds like a slight directly towards our guest.

Yeah, we just did fucking magic for the past 90 minutes, but it's it's okay.

I get it.

Zeke knows I fucking hate his guns.

And this is pure gold, baby.

I know it.

Don't you know it?

By the way, the lighting in this game is so good.

That's what I'm thinking.

If you have it side-by-side with the original, that's the main thing.

The dungeon, like the mine, the mine section, like the water reflecting off the off the ground, or even when you first get to the military base, it's like raining outside.

You can see, like, you actually can see the enemies by where the shadows are.

Like, all that stuff is fucking beautiful.

The lighting in the original is so flat by comparison.

And just here, it's just, it's so, it's so dynamic.

Color brown and gray.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I can't remember if I said this on the show or if I said it off, um, off mic.

Uh,

I was playing it, and I played some of it on stream.

I think I did say this on the show.

Um, I was playing a lot with headphones on, like, just like at night to like not disturb, uh, not disturb my girlfriend.

Yeah.

And

just hearing things before you could see it is so scary to me, like just in any like type of like horror game.

But I would often, it would be,

I would, it'd be a, uh, it would defeat the purpose of wearing the headphones because I would just be shouting, where?

I'd be so scared.

I was like, I don't see them.

Where are they?

But anyway,

here's some of our listeners' thoughts from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played.

This one's from the Randomist.

Hi, Randomist.

Hi, Randomist.

Along with RE2 remake, one of the few games that drew me in and kept me entertained enough to finish it within days of release.

Planning a new game plus playthrough when I eventually have a night away from the Get Played Battle Bus.

We got a Battle Business Bing Bus?

What is that?

Yeah, yeah.

I'll have our listeners get together in a bus and just fuck around.

We can't call it the Bang Bus because of copyright reasons, but yeah, functionally the same thing.

Yeah.

Things have changed since the last day of the show.

That show's a lot hornier.

Yeah.

There's a lot more fucking on here.

When the opposite direction is Resident Evil 4 remake, kind of de-horny the original version.

Yeah, exactly.

It's got hornier.

Yeah.

There's cameras under our seats that you can see up.

I will say,

I will say,

this does very much make me want to play the Resident Evil 2 remake, which I've heard everyone raise.

I downloaded it on Steam Deck.

It's so much scarier than this one, it seems like.

I did the demo because they gave you like, you have 20 minutes to just play the game, and I was having fun, but not having fun playing the game.

I've seen Mr.

X, I think it's what his name is.

I'm not, I can't fucking do that.

Have you seen the mods of that where they'll play DMX's X is going to give it to you when everybody shows up?

I've seen that.

Yeah.

That maybe would make me be able to do it.

But yeah, too scary.

But I do want to give it a try.

This next one's from Zapman 2003.

Hi, Zapman.

Zap,

Zip, Zap, Zop.

We're like,

that's for all you improv heads out there.

We know there are a lot of you.

Yeah, you're all in 101.

I'm loving playing RE4 remake for the first time, but I find the number of complex puzzles so surprising.

Who made this door that only opens when three heads are attached to a statue?

Who engineered and architected it?

It is an interesting, it is a funny thought because you don't think about that when you're playing a video game, right?

Yeah, but it's like when you expand that logic to all video games, you're like, okay, who put this fucking floating block here for me?

Yes.

Well, okay, so, so, like, you know, The Last of Us, just as just as a point of reference, we've all played, and like, as a very grounded version of this game, like, like, the puzzles will be like, hey, I have to take a ladder and then extend it across this gap to crawl across.

You know what I mean?

It's like, like, or I have to, there's a generator that I have to find fuel for and restart.

It all has some sort of basis in reality.

Here that's completely abandoned.

Yeah.

But I think that's just, first off, that's just a convention of the series.

And also, I think that totally, it makes sense.

Like, again, a merchant just appears when you get through a stream.

Oh, yeah.

Also, like.

Oh, we have barely talked about the merchant.

That's right.

My favorite part about the merchant has always been like, what's this?

What's this like small two by two crack that I have to get through?

And he has set up a typewriter.

He has Kindles.

He's like, Yeah.

I told this before we started recording, but I love his asides.

Like, he'll just be like, there'll be like, you know, a beat of silence.

He'd be like, my back hurts.

Stranger

getting over, didn't it?

Like, like,

fun, done, rhymes with fun.

Yeah.

Money's better spit than dead.

Yeah, yeah.

He has, he has.

Rubies are rubbish.

I take it all.

And he has his own like infinite pool of resources.

So if you bring to him like a crown set with jewels, he'll like give you, you know, like 100,000 pesettas for it that you can use to trade in for a

machine gun.

Here's a dead snake.

All right, Stranger, 5,000

pesetas for it.

Yeah, it's competitive pricing.

The thing where it's just like, because in the original, yeah, I think the shooting gallery was a little bit more like, okay, we're trying to have it make logical sense as to where it's here.

And in this one, it's just like, there's just an elevator to an underground arena.

And there are pirates?

There are pirates.

And it's his.

Got him set up all over the country.

Yeah.

He's like, oh, I'll set this up here.

This is perfect.

Yeah.

Incredible.

And obviously, you know, the

Zig, I don't know if you noticed, the Resident Evil 4 merchant is a presence on our show.

He's been on our show.

I hate to give it up, and I know that he's not here to defend himself.

The new performance is good.

It's still good.

Yeah.

It's really good.

I was ready to be skeptical, but it's good.

It's great.

I love it.

I hope he doesn't hear that.

And I'm sure you'll.

Why would he ever listen to this?

This next one's from the Wub.

Hi, the wub.

What's up, the wub?

I just want to say that Resident Evil 4 is one of only two games that I happily bought three different times.

Once for PlayStation 2, once for the Wii.

Excellent controller for that game.

And now on PC.

The other game that I bought three times was SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom.

Diversity.

We love it.

I love it.

Yeah, that's the great thing about video games.

We talked about this when Elden Ring and Kirby had come out pretty close together.

Video games can be anything.

Shinji Mikami himself,

before

he created Resident Evil or directed Resident Evil, he was working on licensed Disney games at Capcom.

So he has credits on who framed Roger Rabbit for Game Boy and then Aladdin and Goof Troop for Super Nintendo.

I love a diverse portfolio.

Let me just say.

This next one's from Jekyll777.

As a person who went into credit card debt just to buy a GameCube just to play Resident Evil 4 when it first came out and has bought every iteration of it.

I do have to say this is how to properly remake a game.

The overall story was true to the original, but there were just enough changes to keep it fresh and feeling new.

I also like that I no longer have to take drugs to not feel sick while playing Resident Evil 4 port on Oculus just to be able to move and shoot at the same time anymore.

Yeah, that was the big stopping point for me.

It wasn't that I was afraid to play the game.

It was that it was legitimately making me sick.

100%.

Yeah.

VR is

VR is rough stuff.

That happened with Blair Witch, too.

It's just like we all just got so motion sick trying to play this.

Yeah, like I remember I had to lay down flat for like an hour after I played a little bit of Blair Witch.

And I played a lot of that game.

Very unfortunate.

This next one's from Alex F.

I hi, Alex.

I have played both versions.

I was really scared the whole time for both games.

I appreciated that Ashley wasn't as difficult to manage in the remake.

I also liked selling the keys.

I also liked selling the keys I was done with.

The merchant had good jokes, like gun rhymes with fun.

I forgot about that one.

Yeah, he's really good.

Yeah, uh, he just said, and the thing is, he says it a lot, yeah, and you don't hate it.

It never gets old.

He's, you know, how like old guys will like go to like a grocery store or whatever, and like it won't scan.

It'll be like, I guess it's free.

He's like, that guy.

And you're like, I love this.

Well, like, in like 99% of media, someone's saying gun rhymes with fun.

You'd be like, oh, come here.

God fucking break.

And then in here, you're like, this rocks.

If Duke Nukem said it, it would suck.

It would suck.

Yeah.

It'd be horrible.

Gun rhymes with fun.

Baby.

I shot my dick off.

Can I just say, real quick, like being able to sell the resources you're done with to the merchant for just a little bit of extra income,

that is a satisfying way to discard useless items.

So I do think that's a good observation.

Yeah.

Because yeah, there's like, I would even like accidentally craft bolts and be like, I'm not really using the bolts.

I'm just going to sell this.

Like, I don't need this.

And I'd buy guns and then be like, oh,

I don't need this.

Once I get to the point where, like, I know there's going to be an upgrade, like, I would, like, all right, I'd seen enough to like take out a guy in like two shots and sell the gun again.

Well, also, like, and you talked about some of the machine guns earlier that they just like, some of those just burn through ammo, so they're not as useful.

The bolt thrower I mess around with a little bit.

I thought it was pretty, like, it's fun to attach a mine.

Yeah, mine.

Like, that was pretty satisfying, but it just wasn't a weapon I gravitated towards.

But you have the flexibility to, as a player, to choose what you like.

Yeah, that's the thing that I really responded to.

It's like, oh, like, if you just have like ones you prefer and you just max them out, you can just really do anything.

Yeah, and once you get to the attachment where like you craft like 15% more ammo, like, then it becomes like, all right, I can see a world in which the machine gun is viable.

Sure, absolutely.

And they gave, they were even like, I was reading a guide and they were like, attach the bio scope to this machine gun that you found.

And I was like, well, why would I do that?

Yeah.

I hate the machine gun.

I'm just going to switch back and forth between scopes on this one rifle that I like and get a precision shot on these viruses in there in the in the uh regenerators hearts i'm not trying to spray them i'm trying to take them down quick yeah uh and i had the like reload like and uh like rate of fire like maxed out on that rifle so that rifle was everything to me

i was like the freaking rifle man yeah

uh

this last one is from

Chemiconical.

I think that's how you say that.

Chemiconical.

Chemiconical.

So chemiconical.

How do you feel about them making the tone noticeably less campy and a bit more self-serious for the remake?

I really enjoyed the level of campy in Resident Evil Village, and it feels like they tried to bring the remake up to that level from where the original was back in 2005.

I don't think this game is not campy.

It doesn't feel less campy.

I mean, like, it feels campy to the degree that I remember it.

Yeah.

So, which I think is like the, you know, I think if they just directly just took the script and

just reenacted it, I feel like it would feel a little bit dated and like, you know, again, like kind of sexist at parts.

So I think they made the right call with some of these revisions.

Yeah.

And like, I think making like even like the couple of the character design things, like making like Ramon not a kid or like whatever.

It was like, I don't know.

That stuff was good.

They still

desexualized Ada Wong a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They gave her a little bit more modest of an outfit.

I didn't see anybody mad about that.

Yeah.

Or say anything weird.

yeah you know what because i uh i was i i had seen a little bit of that before then i played the games like this is this is this makes all sense to me i don't know yeah i got no notes it was i i think i mean

we've given this game like so much praise it's

it's quite simply one of the best video games i've ever played

a damn who and that was that was the reu crew thanks for sending those in uh follow follow along on discord everybody discord.gg slash get played.

And, you know, we love our Discord.

We love chopping us in there.

And hey, that's this week's Get Played.

Links to our social media, including the Discord, are in the episode description.

Shout out to our engineer, Jordan Duffy, Jordan K.

Duffy on Instagram.

Also, check out Get Animated.

We're wrapping up Lou Locke.

We're not quite sure what we're going to cover yet when Heather gets back, but we also have talked about Evangelion,

Lycuris Recoil, Chainsaw Man, and more in our archive.

There's a year of content now if you join us.

Yeah, that's pretty true.

Over on StitcherPremium or at patreon.com/slash get played.

Cody Ziegler, it's what an absolute delight to have you in studio.

It's always a fucking bless.

So fun guy.

Love just to talk about video games, especially good ones.

Do you have anything you'd like to plug at this time?

Check out Miles Morales Spider-Man.

I'm writing that.

Issue five just came out.

So the first ARC is done.

Please read that.

I think it's a lot of fun.

People seem to be enjoying it.

Other than that,

I have no ties to this, but check out Earth Defense Force.

It's such a fun video game.

I want more people to play it so that it gets more sequels.

Hell yeah.

I got a plug.

I got a rare plug.

I never plug anything on this shit.

Wow.

Nick and I both wrote something, wrote things separately for the Comedy Bang Bang book.

It's on shelves tomorrow as of this release on

April 25th.

So you can get it in stores anywhere.

You buy books.

Check it out.

I'll say very sincerely, it's very cool to be in that book.

It's a cool book.

There's a lot of, it's also like, have you gotten your hands on it?

It's a hefty boy.

It's a thickie.

It's a thickie.

It's a nice presentation.

And yeah, I I wrote a piece with

our friend Caroline Anderson that's in the book.

So check that out.

Oh, Publish Pals over here.

Yeah, that's right.

We're Publish Pals.

Yeah.

We're the book buddies.

All right.

Well, I feel like today nobody got played.

No.

And I'm not trying to say this because I know he's had just a blast with Zig, and people are going to be like, that was a really good episode.

And it has nothing to do with Zig.

I miss Heather so much.

Zig, you just got played.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, wow.

Okay.

Thanks, guys.