Games of 2025 Part 2

This is a head gun podcast.

Guys, guys, guys, I don't know if you heard the news, but Grand Theft Auto VI was just delayed.

Oh, no.

It's not coming out this fall.

We have a massive hole for releases for video games in the second half of this year.

Well, this is an incredible opportunity for us

as a games publisher.

Like, we just have this is the count of the slate is cleared.

We'll have no competition.

We just got to churn out some games fast.

When we previously thought it was coming out this year, we were like, we better step back and let that thing do what it's going to do.

Because if we put out a game when that game's coming out, we're cooked.

But now that we have a chance to get it, we split off so many people.

But with the skeleton crew we have remaining, we can work them to the bone and make sure we have some games for this fall and winter.

Speaking of bone, that's actually going to be my first game pitch.

It's Cook the Bones.

It's a cooking simulator uh and it's uh it's you've got a bunch of crazy ingredients and you got to make meals out of it uh cook the bones uh

switch switch one switch one release uh not coming up

uh that that's the first thing off the top of my head what do you guys got what do you guys got yeah i i thought we'd defer defer this could be multi-platform we'll put this on everything we'll put this on steam we'll put this on xbox we'll put this on a ps5 we'll put this on switch 2 um a real easy concept it's uh uh hey you've been shitting And the way the game works is that you walk up to people, NPCs, and you're like, hey, you've been shitting.

And if they have taken a shit within the last hour and they say yes,

you get an apple pie.

Sounds good.

That's really good.

That's really, really good.

I'm putting it on the board.

I'm putting it on the board.

Okay, okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I got something.

I got something.

Yeah.

Chair racing.

Okay.

It's a cart racer where your chair, where your the cars are chairs, the different chairs, but the chairs have wheels on them.

So they go really fast like a car does, but they're chairs still, and they can only seat the one, the one person sitting on the chair.

And then, so they, there's, it's a chair, and it's going on the regular road.

Everything else is normal, but the cars are chairs.

I've shipped it.

Honestly, it's fucking great.

Sounds great.

Sounds fucking great.

Thank God.

Anchor Christmas.

Okay, okay.

I've got a dating sim called My Prince is a Cheese.

It's

oh, it's like a

ancient kingdom, and

you can date all the different people in the court at the castle.

But everybody is really suspicious that the prince is just a slice of cheese that has been left on the throne.

And so there's kind of a mystery element.

My Prince is a cheese coming straight to Wii U and the Switch 1.

Hey, you know what?

I think we should mine some public domain IP.

You know, Cinderella is out there.

People know it because of the Disney franchise, but Disney doesn't own Cinderella.

Anyone can make a Cinderella.

I think we should make a new Cinderella game.

I think we should lean to the dating sim side.

Yeah.

And as part of courting Cinderella as Prince Charming, at a certain point, once you have developed enough of a bond, you can turn to the princess and say, Hey, you been shit?

And if she's taken a shit in the past hour or so, that increases your level.

But if she is not, she's embarrassed by the accusation and it docks you some points.

I actually think we should go in a different direction with Cinderella.

We saw this work with Lies with P.

I think we should go into a sort of gothic horror, action-adventure,

souls-like game where you play Cinderella, Cinderella Glass Requiem, we'll call it.

Great, okay, great.

Fuck, that's good.

Okay, I've got a racing game idea.

Okay, it's called Indy 500, I'm the Road, and it's uh, it's uh, instead of playing as the cars, you control the road.

So, you know how, like, when you're playing a racing game, the road, like, all you're like, the car is pretty stationary on the screen.

It's like, it's like centered on the screen because you're playing the car.

But in this, you're playing the road.

Yeah.

So, the cars are going going by real fast and you're trying to drive underneath them as the road okay fuck that's really good if we can put my chair as a dlc chair chair there it is there it is there it is

i've also got an idea for a race game uh what's the best race and we'll let the user try to figure out what the best race or ethicity is

you're fired and there is a right answer

you're fired you're fired oh that's the line that that's the line that's where i can't go that's the taboo you're fired okay well fine i guess i am fired and you know what know what i got something to tell all of you everyone in this conference room i've been shitting i've been shitting this whole time i just hope you know he's about to leave and make a billion dollars

we go bonanza and disbelieve ambiguous release dates as we discuss the remaining upcoming games of 2025 this week on get played

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

It's time to get

played.

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

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

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where Nick began the show by extending both of his legs straight out in front of him and doing some kind of like stress test.

Is that an issue?

No, I just didn't know what you were doing.

No, no, just getting to try to get the energy up a little bit.

I had another pod earlier, so I'm like, I'll just start a, you know,

he's flexing.

It's so they're not stretching out that I'm just kind of like, I'm out there.

You know what I mean?

Like, the physicality is like manifesting what I want my

localization to be.

Yeah, I'm at the couch.

I'm like, I'm out there.

Yeah, I'm a separate man from the couch.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

But it was clearly distracting, so I'll try to rein it in.

I can do it.

I just didn't know what the fuck you were doing.

Do you need a fucking couch instead, please?

It's weird to start speaking and have somebody near you basically go into like some kind of default polygon pose.

I think

this doing the show this long,

I saw it and it didn't, it didn't phase me.

You just sailed around.

I just took it in stride.

I was like, why you're just doing something?

That's that's fine.

Yeah.

I mean, it's always fine.

There's no judgment.

I just didn't know what was happening.

I hated it, but I was okay with it.

Here's how you would describe it.

He became the letter C.

That's what happened.

Yeah.

You know, arms straight, legs straight as we began the show.

Part of the way to becoming the letter O.

Yeah.

Which he has done.

Oh, no.

How alarming would it be in the real world if you came across someone T-posing?

I'd be so fucking scared.

I'd scared you out.

In the same way that, you know, the viral marketing for the smile movies?

Yeah, just people smile, like sitting behind a home plate, just smiling.

It's a fucking nightmare.

It was really smart, though.

It really, I mean, it's great.

We're talking about it.

That's the thing.

You get to be, we're talking about it, guy.

We're talking about it.

Hey, we're talking about it.

We're talking about it.

There's a video game about somebody stuck in a t-pose.

Oh, yes.

It's by the guy who created Katamari Damasi.

I forget the name of it, but I think it might just be called like Life is a T or something.

Yeah.

And apparently it's a really sweet, lovely children's game.

Wow.

It's kind of like

a light afternoon show.

Maybe I'll mess around with it.

I think I might.

I love that guy.

I have his art on my wall.

Yeah.

He had

an art gallery exhibition here in Los Angeles where he was selling his own original art.

And my wife and I bought two pieces.

Wow.

One that shows

a guy with a tiny apple on his head.

And the title is No Ideas.

And then

another one where a guy has a huge apple on his head and it says big idea.

That's really good.

That's really, really good.

I had to look up his name, which I've known before, Bakeda Takahashi.

Is that the

creator?

And

I guess also the artist behind it.

Watom, we covered on the podcast.

Yep.

Which is the genesis of your former catchphrase?

Welcome back bucket.

Welcome back bucket.

That's right.

I always love when you bust out a welcome back bucket.

It was good times.

Yeah, a lot of fun.

It was good times.

Man, and then we did the.

One catchphrase stuck.

Yours.

Yes, yeah.

Well, I mean, come on.

It was, that was, that was going to stick.

Okay.

Guys, it's been a fun week in games.

But some sad news

has happened to

the industry.

I guess the highlight of which is that Microsoft terminated what I will call the Perfect Dark team.

Perfect Dark was an extraordinarily important video game for me when I was young.

Yeah.

And I used to, I think I've told this story on the show before.

I used to play rounds and rounds and rounds of Perfect Dark with Marco Paguilla, who was a musician I knew.

And Marco just won the Tony for Buena Vista Social Club.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Isn't that wild?

Yeah.

It's just neat to see somebody you know, like,

who's like, you know,

I'm a musician.

I'm going off into the world.

And then years later, it's like, holy shit, he really did it.

Yeah, that's really, really cool.

But he can say the, but he can say he used to play Perfect Dark with you, and that's pretty cool.

I doubt he says that.

He didn't say that to anybody.

I used to play Perfect Dark.

I used to play Perfect Dark with this dog shit lesbian.

Like, you're bad at it?

I even got rant on that one.

We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild, which was a rare game that was in development,

as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio.

As part of this, we're closing one of our studios, the initiative, which is where the Perfect Dark development was primarily located.

It's just such a...

I just always hate the kind of shit they say because they land here.

It's like, we did not make these choices lightly as each project and team represents years of effort, imagination, and commitment.

Like, it's just like, we seriously considered whether or not this would like slightly increase our profit margin.

You know what I mean?

It's like always like it's so it's like like as if that makes things any better that you're uh laying off all these talented workers and then this game that has been promised since it was like 2020 when we first got the reveal, like is now never going to see the light of day.

One of the people who was working at that company, I believe, uh, has been in the industry so long that they worked on the Super Nintendo Star Wars games.

Wow.

That's wild.

That is a legacy

of talent that has been let go.

Yeah, when I worked on the the

when I worked when I worked in the video game industry in the early 2000s, the mid-aughts, I guess you'd call it, there were some older developers who had worked on Command and Conquer in the

Totemica PC game series from like the 90s.

And it's just like, oh, that's kind of amazing that a career can be that long.

And we are kind of at the point where a developer's career could encompass basically the history of gaming as we know it.

Like if you started working at some place in the 80s, we certainly saw the Super Mario Wonder where some of

the development team members who were working on that, the, you know, working for Nintendo in the 80s were still there in the 2020s.

And

that was part of why that game had such a unique charm.

But yeah,

that's such a fucking bummer.

Yeah.

Do you think we'll ever,

I know the answer is no.

Will there ever be a company that will try, just try

laying off the CEO instead and then seeing if that fucking fixes anything?

That might might solve the same problem, and it's one guy instead of hundreds to thousands of people.

Yeah.

I think you want to live in a different world than the real world.

Maybe, oh, yeah, maybe my world's just so crazy.

Oh, my God.

Like, would we fire Nick to make our lives better?

Yes.

The CEO of the podcast?

No, the show would not function without Nick.

Absolutely.

CEO of the podcast.

What are we talking about?

Are we kidding?

Who would be if not you?

Yeah.

I think it's you.

No,

no fucking way.

We know it's not Matt.

No, it's not.

Hey, wait a second.

I make a lot of really important decisions around here.

Actually, it might be Matt because Matt is Matt has a is you started the show with a producer role.

Yeah, he's now occupied by Rochelle Chan Ranch, of course.

He's the CEO and Ranch is the CF, but we're just the idiots.

But so, actually,

what do we know CEOs do?

Nothing.

Ranch and I do too much.

That's true.

That's true.

That's true.

So it might be me.

No, no,

we all need to be here for this to work.

Yeah.

Wow, you're right.

And someday it will work.

Yeah, one day we'll get it right.

There is a universe where we're doing the show perfectly every single week.

That's true.

Perfect dark, perfect pod.

Oh, boy, that's the dream.

Being laid off from Edgo.

We really tried to make this work, but we just needed 10 more celebrities.

that's twice of a ranch in the show

remember my so-called life someone wants to do my so-called pod who's on the show we're bringing them in so you guys got to go it just i i feel like

i'm not saying anything new here i i feel like the way i see these big companies and just not even video game companies just like big companies in general way see the way that they operate i obviously don't have a fundamental understanding

They must see something that I don't because in the business that I'm in, where I've seen this happen before, where they'll lay off hundreds of people,

hundreds of staff from a company and then give celebrities with podcasts hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, yeah.

I'm just like, what, what, what, do you know something that I don't that that makes more sense?

Like, I just don't, I don't get it.

I explain how, and I actually don't think it makes sense.

I think it's just like, no, we just, the goal of our current economy is to transfer wealth upward.

Yeah.

And so we're just going to try to do that at every opportunity.

I need to get upward.

I know.

Yeah.

It'd be really nice.

If you know what, if somebody wanted to do that to us instead, I'd be that's when I'm okay with it, actually.

That's fine.

If Edgar wants to come to us and say, you guys should have a mobile phone company, I'm 100% here.

Instead, we read ads that are morally questionable.

So I could have electricity in my apartment.

Let me tell you, folks, about our friends at Raytheon.

Now, this bladed drone is so deadly,

but it doesn't blow up the car so it damages other vehicles.

It just kills the inhabitants of a single vehicle.

Cut to us reading a smartless mobile ad.

No way.

That's the one we won't do.

We won't do it.

I'm not lining the pockets of those three guys.

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Hey, we, you know, and on a more positive note, we have a wonderful fan community that sometimes will send gifts to us here at Hadcom.

We're always happy to receive them.

And

we got a nice one we wanted to acknowledge real quick.

Yeah, let's see.

We got

a little letter here that says, So times are tough, and I recently had to take a job as a porter.

Love the pod and was pleasantly surprised to get this deliveried all to all of you today.

Not sure what it is, but the guy was odd and smelled like marinara.

Okay, enjoy.

Your friend and fan, Adam Catino.

Wow, wow.

It is a box

that has the Death Stranding logo on it.

We know that that's what we like.

We do like that.

Shout out to Adam, lovely human being, very active in our Discord.

And opening it up, And we've got, oh, two pieces of paper here.

Ooh, I like the inside of the box.

I think I know what this is.

The inside of the box is really nice.

Yeah.

Don't give it to Nick.

He'll destroy it trying to open it.

I've seen this guy with a box before.

Dearest get players, congratulations on 300 plus episodes.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the four of you devoting a combined 20 years into this labor of love than with a box of socks for you to share, plus one extra pair for you to compete over.

I hope you are enjoying your return to Porter Life.

And when the time is right, I know you'll choose the right side.

Peter Englert.

There's another one.

It's a quiz.

What percentage of Steam users have attained the child minder achievement, which is to reach maximum connection level with BB?

Unfold for answer.

Anyone got a guess?

Well, I'll just say right now, I didn't do this.

So there's no, so I don't, I'm not one of this percentage.

I'll guess 12.5%.

All right, the answer is 14.5%.

Wow.

Fun fact, it's 27.12% on PSN.

And we got these lovely.

Wait, so the first one was a Steam stat.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Steamstat

hate their babies.

PSN, 30%, love the baby.

You know what that kind of does track with PC gamers a little bit?

Yeah.

I say this as a PC gamer.

I'm not doing this with this fucking baby.

I don't know social stuff.

I wonder if there's a correlation between the controller.

Because

it's nice to play with BB

by rocking the controller up and down.

That's a nice little bit of interaction.

Yeah, very generous read, Heather.

No, the dual sense not being fully supported on the PS5.

All right, so we've got socks and they're nice.

They're nice Porter socks.

Yeah, when I saw the box, I thought I knew what this was because I saw this on the Kojima website.

These are rad.

Yep.

Wow.

These are great.

Wow.

These are fantastic.

Look at those.

God, I can't wait to ruin these later.

What are you going to fucking do to them?

Sorry.

What the shit, dude?

No, we're going to keep it in.

It's ever going to hear that the first thought you had was jerking off into a fucking sand.

Nice try, Nick.

They're not going to support the weight of your fucking neck.

These are all lovely.

These are really lovely.

We're going to divvy these up.

Don't you just love a fun pair of socks?

I love them.

I also really like the box.

Wait, look how cool the box is.

It's got like all the little logos.

I love that.

Yeah, I love that little box.

Maybe I can figure out a thing to put in this box.

Thanks, Adam.

Thanks for sending those.

Thanks so much, Adam.

You know, this might be mini-disc sized.

You got to take that.

That

might be mini-disc sized.

You got to really do it.

That would be really nice.

I already, if you, if that doesn't fit, I have a suggestion.

Okay.

Different cigarettes.

Oh, okay.

Give me your sock box.

Great.

Thank you so much, Adam.

That was really, really kind of you.

We do get gifts and often

we open them off pod

just because we get them

when we're not recording.

But it was nice to come in and get this.

If you just blanket thank you to anyone who has sent a gift.

Yeah.

And we're very grateful and we treasure them.

We do like the gifts.

Can I just say one thing?

Oh my God, what?

A few times people have sent me some version of a no-spill cup.

Now look,

you want to send me a Yeti, I'm going to use it, but the Amazon Basics

Child's Cup, maybe I don't need to sit.

I don't need more of those.

And they don't

work.

They don't work.

And I'm not going to use it.

But thank you.

It's very funny.

I think there is a solution.

I think there is like a like, like I was saying, either the hat with the two little cup holders.

The foam dome.

The foam dome could work for you, or you could become a camelback guy.

And then just like have like a camelback.

Oh, it is very death-standing to be like a camelback guy, but I also feel like that's a different kind of guy.

And it's water only, really.

You can't do like fun drinks.

What are you talking about?

You could put cola in a camel bag.

Oh, you should be the cola camelback guy

so it comes out all fizzy because you're just shaking around in your back.

He sits enough that he'd have to wear it on his front

to have like a liquid stomach that then went into his actual stomach,

camel front,

just be walking around looking like a pregnant zangy.

What if you could put a soda in a in like a camel back which soda are you going with well here's the thing i love coke zero yeah but i think it would go with a clear sod well because you know the straw so you don't have to worry about tea staining but i i just worry about drinking that much of a of a of a you know like a darker soda yeah i i think i probably i might go with like a sprite zero

i had a sprite zero recently and i didn't

i didn't love it only because regular sprite is so good you know what might be fun is a gatorade honestly oh get like a Gatorade, you know, like a Fierce Strawberry Zero or something like that.

Yeah.

I recently had

a little red Gatorade.

Yeah.

It fucking brought me back to life.

It was incredible.

I am really into the Gator Lights, if you can find them.

Oh, yeah.

Specifically, the Gator Light Zero.

It's like their Pedia Light, you know, simulacrum.

And those are limited in terms of

what varietals they come in.

But yeah, sometimes you'll go with the right flavor and those are really hitting.

Yeah, they're not going to do like the cucumber lime, yeah.

You won't get that necessarily, but they're also like a really fun, they're kind of like a Fiji water bottle, like a square hefty bottle.

Yeah, my favorite Gatorade flavor is Mango Extremo.

Okay, so like spicy mango, no, it's just like

I only I've only ever found it like in stores in sort of like quote-unquote, like Hispanic areas.

I've never seen it at like a Vaughn's.

Yeah, I feel like I've never encountered that flavor, but I will look for it in the wild.

It fucking rocks.

Wow.

It is so good.

I love it.

I'd love Gatorade.

Ranch, you ever have a Gatorade?

Yeah, it's one of my favorite drinks.

Wait, is it really?

Oh, just the lime cucumber.

That's a big one.

I'm not a huge Gatorade person.

The bottle looks like a penis.

It's direct, it directly looks like a penis.

I've said it before.

I just have to get in front of this.

I love Gatorade.

No, I can see it.

You know, know, like a really like meaty, girthy shaft with like a taper at the top of the top, yeah, and flat,

just completely flat end.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's the color of the piss inside your body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's clear so you can see the color of the paper.

I'm just, I like, I just,

I don't crave or not crave Gatorade.

It's

extremely neutral on it.

It's very situational for me, but I, but there are times when I, when I absolutely, it's, it's what I want the most.

Propel, get the fuck out of of here.

Yeah, no, we don't need that.

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Hey, let's talk about some video games that we've been playing lately.

The question for the room is, what are you playing?

What are you playing?

It's me, the resident evil merchant, and I'm here to ask my friends what they're playing.

And I want to know what you're playing.

Playing.

That was a great little ditty.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I were kind of nervously practicing something under your breath before we got started.

Yeah.

I was just working on that.

Oh, that's a speech I'm working on.

Oh, so that wasn't.

No, no, no, no.

Okay.

Unrelated.

Okay, so that's something we can look forward to in the future.

Yeah, I got it.

I'm doing a TED talk.

Oh, that's fun.

What is the subject?

Well, it's how long it's too long to eat something.

That's actually pretty interesting.

That is interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah,

everybody has a different eating pace at the table.

And some people are like, you eat too fast and you make everybody uncomfortable.

But if you eat too slow, you same thing.

So it's how long can a person eat?

Yeah.

And it would be the right time.

It is interesting that there are people that sort of do pay attention to this.

If you go in like a group setting and you're sitting down at a restaurant, people, for some reason, feel very comfortable telling you either you either eat fast or slow yeah what is wrong with that why are you why

pay attention you eat make mind your own business

it's true yeah yeah so anyway that's

that's i'm i'm working on a ted talk

about it i'm really interested to watch now is this a proper ted talk or is this one of those tedx talks that's kind of like you know and you're not talking to i just i want to get this out of the way you're not talking to the bear ted are you no no i'm not talking to bear ted okay i just had to check uh i did good question i'm not aware of the difference between ted and tedx

uh it's it's it's ted x i think is is to

ted talk

as

hot one as hot ones versus

is to hot ones i don't follow

I don't know any of those references.

Whereas Hot Ones versus is still technically the same thing.

It's kind of a sub-label.

It's kind of it's yeah.

Yeah, and it kind of is not as good because, I mean, look, you need, yeah, you need Sean Evans there.

Let the audience decide.

I don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Anyway,

I wish you break a leg, I should say, regardless.

Thank you.

You, you too.

Yep.

What are you playing?

You know, I actually think that my friends Matt and Heather should start here because I know you've been spending a lot of time with Death Stranding, too.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Let's fucking go.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's fucking go.

Thank you, Sam.

Hey, I'm Sam too.

What a treat.

What a fucking treat this game is.

You know, I'm busier than I'd like to be.

The last time a stranding game came out, it happened to be in a pocket of time where I was a little less preoccupied.

And there was also a point in that journey where I was recovering from a knee surgery.

That's right.

So it was really, really pleasurable to drop 10 hours at a time in a stranding two two or a stranding one.

I haven't had that luxury on stranding two.

I think Matt and I are kind of in the same area-ish.

Yeah.

What chapter are you on?

I'm four.

Okay, I've surpassed you.

Okay, he has surpassed me.

Yeah.

Not too deep into the story yet.

Still don't know, you know, the antagonist has arrived.

You're introducing some new characters.

The thing I want to talk about is

sequence breaking, which is one of my favorite things to do in a video game.

And in stranding, I haven't had a lot of time where I've been punished for doing something.

I think I spoke about that maybe last week.

I have arrived at two places on the map where I'm not allowed to do anything.

One is, you know, you get a monorail, right?

And I'm like, well, if I'm fucking, if I got a monorail, I got to keep building the monorail.

What's it called?

Monorail.

Where's it go?

Monorail.

They say it's Springfield's only choice.

Throw up your hands and raid your voice.

Monorail.

Monorail.

Monorail.

What an enduring piece of television and comedy.

It's perfect.

Because, like, as soon as I saw the monorail, I did say, what's that word?

I was so excited.

Also, as sort of just like a puzzle piece that fits together, Conan O'Brien, writer of that sequence, is in the first game.

That's right.

The Wandering MC.

Yeah, so you got a little monorail, a little loop.

Yeah,

I think he's in the second one.

Oh, is he really?

Wow.

They get on great, these two.

Conan and Kojima.

I feel like Wandering MC is where you get the Otter suit in the first game.

As I was right, I never found much utility for the Otter suit, but it was kind of fun.

No, but the interactions you have

with the man are very funny.

I have found where you get the Otter suit in the second game, and it came from

an area that I wasn't supposed to be in.

Interesting.

But yeah, so I extend a monorail all the way as far as it goes and you can't do anything in those areas.

Kind of a bummer.

I'm like,

fuck you.

If I was living in the middle of nowhere and somebody paved a highway all the way up to my door, I'd come out and say hi.

The second thing is, there's an island out in the tar.

And

maybe you're supposed to get an object later to be able to get to this island

when you're supposed to get there.

Maybe there's a boat you unlock.

I don't know.

Maybe there's floating tires.

What I decided to do was take one of the floating

carriers present in the first game, Nick.

Yes.

Trek it all the way up a mountain nearby and then hop on it at the top of the mountain and race as fast as I could down the mountain and scoot out over the water.

So I do that and I arrive about halfway between where I am and the island.

And I'm like, okay, so I hop off the

carrier and start tredging my way to the rest of the island.

Sam saying, oh no, uh-oh, I'm sinking.

I'm sinking fast.

And I'm like, fuck, I'm going to fucking die in this tar.

But right before I'm going to drop dead,

I arrive on the island.

Wow.

And

a scan gives me a package on the island, like a random package to deliver to the person on the island.

And I was like, perfect.

I can unlock the island.

I unlock the island.

The guy's there.

And he's like, hey, no, I don't get a lot of visitors out here.

Why don't

he gives me the otter helmet?

And I'm like, oh, fuck, this is great.

It's going to help me get back because it helps you swim.

Yeah.

So I'm like, thank you so much.

I have nothing else to deliver.

Put on the otter helmet, head back into the tar and drop dead.

And it's like, okay.

And I had not planned anything.

So I had an important delivery on my back.

So I load the, I load the, uh, the game again.

Yeah.

Cause I'm like, well, I can't, I don't want to fuck up my entire game because I was stupid.

Yes.

So what I eventually do is I step into the water and there are places where you step into the water where you don't start sinking.

And I very, very slowly just stepped forward step by step.

And anytime he'd go, uh-oh, I'm sinking, I'd step backwards.

And I discovered that there's essentially an invisible sandbar underneath the tar that you can walk all the way back across this entire body of water to get back to shore.

And I survived, and it felt as good as a delivery.

That's awesome.

That was my

experience this week in Stranding 2.

Matt, how's your experience been?

Uh,

oh, I've, well,

I've developed an illness,

and I believe it's called Death Stranding 2 Madness.

Yep.

All of my free time

has been.

So, okay.

I'm in chapter six.

Holy shit.

And

that was not from

going straight toward story stuff.

I went back.

to the first area.

Yep.

And was like, I'm going to five-star all of the delivery places here.

Love it.

And you get pretty consequential upgrades doing this.

You get really like you get a lot of weapon upgrades that I'm sort of like, if you don't get those here,

can you even get them later?

Like, who knows?

But I five-starred all of those.

And then deliveries kept coming.

So I was like, I can't, I don't know how many of these there are.

I did what I wanted to do.

I got a bunch of stuff.

I'm just going to now go back to

the other area to then progress the story a little further,

which I have done now and have done this.

But doing the deliveries,

because

I mean, I liked doing it in the first game,

but I didn't have this like, I have to five-star all the things the first time

during

my first foray with Death Stranding.

And now I'm sort of like, I think I have to do it a lot.

and so I well first of all I've clocked at about let's see I took a screenshot of my stats here so far so I thought it told me the time I know that the time is like 32 hours holy shit I've clocked 32 hours in this game my porter grade is 159 wow

and

I have 51 legends of leve legends evaluations love to hear it um which is you get from doing standard orders at at the different places I've met one of the new characters in the game.

I met a lot of the new characters in the game, actually.

I love Dollman.

Dollman's great.

There was a piece of dialogue in the game that is, I think, missable that then I texted Heather about.

And then we had a conversation about it.

Yes.

And I think we can talk about it.

You think so?

I think we can talk about it.

So, Tar Man, who is George Miller.

Yes.

Director George Miller.

It's his likeness.

It's his likeness.

He gives you a book.

Yes.

And one of the books that he gives you.

He gives you a couple books.

He gives you a couple books, but one of the ones is

Moby Dick.

And

you can go to your cabin and read the book.

And Dahlman sort of narrates Norman Reedis reading the book.

And he starts...

Well, first of all, there are two things that happen.

You open Moby Dick, there's a photo in the book.

And you have the option of taking it to Tarman immediately or saving it for later.

I did it immediately.

I did it immediately.

And so you get a cutscene.

Significant cutscene.

That is like

you could miss it.

Like it's not mandatory for you to do this at all.

It is, it is a big, chunky bit of emotional backstory.

Yes.

Yeah.

And so you get that.

Then you go back.

I was like, I want to read the, I want to read the book.

I want to see what's going on.

Who knows what's going on?

You read it a couple, you can read it a couple of times in different prompts.

Like Dollman says kind of a couple different things.

There's like, I think maybe three

things that he could say.

And then it's every time you pick it up after that, it's just Sam looks at the book, puts it down, and that's it.

And in the first time I gasped in this game, well, I gasped a few times, but in the first time I gasped reading this book in this game, Dollman refers to something in the text of Moby Dick as a phantom pain.

And I said, This motherfucker, this guy's a this guy.

What is he doing?

What is he doing?

And but then

like, he talks about how Captain Ahab loses a limb.

Yes.

And that, and we all know that the origin of the phrase, the phantom, like a phantom pain, is usually from when you lose a limb.

Yes.

Like you have phantom pain in that limb.

So when it happens, you can kind of excuse it as like a wink on a wink.

Yes.

You know, him talking about Ahab missing a limb, having a phantom pain.

You're like, oh, of course you would take that opportunity to use the phrase.

But Matt, continue.

Well, you had the good observation.

Well, so, so, and I was like, that's really good.

So

the, you know, Dahlman continues, dollman continues to talk about Moby Dick with you.

And he says, hey, Sam, you know, the ship that they're on, the ship that they're hunting, the white whale, the monster that took something that Ahab can't stop missing.

Yeah.

His phantom pain.

This ship is full of people from all over the world.

It's a very unique ship.

It's kind of like Kojima Productions.

And Sam looks at him and he's like, I can tell from your face that you have never heard of Kojima Productions.

Well, it's just like this ship.

So you've suddenly been told that

Kojima Productions is the ship that Ahab is on.

Ahab, who is obsessed with healing this phantom pain in his body by attacking the monster that took it from him.

This motherfucker has just said that Moby Dick is about him and Konami.

Wow.

Yes.

And I was like, God damn, this is awesome.

And I sort of have a broader theory about this as well that I feel like is then spoilery based on one of the other characters that is introduced in this game.

Oh.

That Lynn will have to talk about later.

Oh, God.

We're going to do five episodes about Death Stranding, too.

This is effectively one right now.

Yes, exactly.

But

I love it so much.

And, you know, I've been making a lot of deliveries.

I've been fucking

driving around.

And I know the game's a walking game.

You're supposed to be walking around.

Let me tell you something.

The driving's good.

Driving's good in the game.

I drove a big truck up a mountain, which was very hard to do, but it was extremely funny.

And you took a picture of it, and it's awesome.

Yeah, it's like it looked like a car commercial.

Like, what's a fucking truck doing at the tip of a mountain?

It was extremely hard.

and the game so the game pretty much doesn't want you to do this

you can do it and it's fine but it's very very difficult right um i have a car souped up with six batteries on it so i'm just like just driving around but now i got some new i i got some new car stuff now so i think the the car

the truck is gonna then lose some battery because i'm gonna need to add components that i just got which i'm very excited about um

We talked also about

how when we made our top 10 games yes of all time that there was some conversation on and off the pod about how death stranding didn't make uh our top 10s yeah and i think that it playing stranding 2 and immediately having this game rocket to the top of any list that i have in my head i think part of the problem is that what you are experiencing is so ephemeral that it doesn't you it's like a dream that you've had where when you're in it it's so awesome and it is so satisfying.

But as soon as you step away from the game, which honestly is similar to whenever you travel to Japan.

When you're in Japan, you're like, this is the greatest place on earth.

Why wouldn't I live here?

And then the longer you spend not in the country, the more you lose that sort of ephemeral sense of place,

space, and like the environment, the feeling of the environment.

In the same way, Death Stranding is a game about your relationship to an environment.

It's a vibes game.

It's got great music drops of songs that you've never heard that are then so important to you that they become permanent parts of your life and your playlists.

Like I've listened to Low Roar for years because of Death Stranding 1.

But when you think about the game and you're not playing it, you're like, but was it really good?

Yeah.

Because you lost

that need to build, like,

it's so satisfying to build a highway.

And to describe that to somebody who doesn't play the game sounds like you're the dumbest person who's ever played yeah when I place a bridge somewhere that I just know is a good spot for a bridge I'm like this is this is the fucking game this is this is this is it baby right I wanted to I put a ladder someplace that I was like this is the best place I've ever put a ladder and so many people are gonna benefit from this ladder yeah so then I went and made a highway of icons with the forward arrow

to bring people to where the ladder was that would give them an enormous shortcut.

Yeah.

And I logged off on the game, and the next time I logged on, I got 30,000 likes.

Holy shit.

I was like, that's fucking great.

30,000.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

I've got like, I don't know, 80,000 likes.

Jesus, yeah.

Wow.

I was saying to you that I think so far and just not, I'm, you know,

I'm not, I'm not very deep into the story.

Yeah.

Still.

I do feel like after chapter three, the story starts to pick up.

Like it really, like things, you know, start going

in a certain direction.

But because Death Stranding 1

prior to Death Stranding 2 was a very singular experience, right?

There's not another game really like that.

A word that I certainly myself, but in general, is overused is singular, but it really does apply to Death Stranding.

There was nothing else like it when it came out.

So

now that

Death Stranding 2 is out, there are two of these.

And this one has

iterated on the first one and improved a lot of the things in the first one.

Where for me, this game now is.

I could see it being on the list and Death Stranding 1 not being there, right?

Like,

because of what it's doing and how it's fixed, fixed, quote-unquote, fixed,

the things from Death Stranding 1 that were maybe a little irksome or

uh, you know, tedious.

Um, but I think this game so far is as good as Rebirth is in terms of it being a direct follow-up to a previous thing.

Yeah.

Where like Rebirth obviously is like, there's so much more going on.

It's like it's a completely like different thing, but it took what was great about remake and then just like, what if it was just more and more fun too?

And similarly, like, I think this is a good comparison as someone who finished both the Remake and Death Stranding 1 and is

still pretty early on to both Rebirth with Jai Abandoned and Death Stranding 2, which I have ongoing.

Did you at least make it to the Gungaga region?

Look, we'll talk off the hot.

But I think this is a good comparison because it's also like you're playing Remake for the first time.

And I played Final Rise D7 back in the day in PlayStation as a kid.

And I'm just trying to wrap my head around Remake because it's such a weird approach to

second version of a game.

You know what I mean?

Like, like, it's, it's, it's so, it's like real.

It's the just the combat system is so

bizarre, but also like works really well.

And then you get into rebirth and it's like really feels like it's clicking.

So yeah, I think that's a good comparison.

Yeah, because like you could just like the thing that's great is that there's so much to do in both games, Rebirth and in Death Stranding 2.

There's so much that you can do.

You can do so many different things in any time,

but you could also just do the story and have a perfectly balanced and fun experience yeah which is which is great i love video games i love video games it's if you if you that that's just like the

the dream for me is a game you could just mainline you don't have to grind you could just mainline but all the optional stuff is so engaging that you choose to do it yeah like and you just want you just get to spend more time in this this virtual world that's been created.

That's just like, that's just, that's so satisfying.

I think in the 32 hours I've clocked so far, four of them have been story.

Like,

the rest of it has been, I have to make these deliveries.

Oh, a package.

I better pick that up.

Right.

And then just like doing bulk deliveries, which is not ideal.

I was reading some stuff about you got to, to really maximize the number of likes and like points you're getting on these deliveries, you got to do them one at a time.

Oh, interesting.

Not for me.

I'm going to play my way.

Yeah, it's the thing.

You can do it however you want.

I'm going to, I'm going to take that fucking not in a surfboard and surf halfway out to that island.

You got to get in one of these big trucks.

I've been playing on, I've been driving around a big truck.

I've got a big truck.

You got to get in the big truck.

Oh, yeah.

We talked about how we made ours the Evangelion

Eva 01 color scheme.

Did that independently.

I want to show you

because I have a game capture

from

where I was stuck on this island.

So here's the island I was on.

Yeah.

And then if you zoom out, that's how far.

That's actually really, that's further away than I realized.

That's how far I had to go

get back.

A lot of maps you're showing there.

Yeah.

But you can also see me, that track.

That's so funny.

That's me surfing

all the way there on the carrier.

Wow.

From the top of the mountain.

I've been taking a lot of photos in photo mode, but I had to take this screenshot because I noticed that my Sam's little bladder was pretty full and he had to go pee-pee.

Oh, sure.

And I had just taken out some

brigands at a base and I was like, I'm going to fucking piss on this guy.

Oh, wow.

The gravest insult.

Yeah.

But the game won't let you do it.

The game won't let you do it.

Sam said, you're going to whip it out with them just looking right at you?

Yeah.

Like, fuck you are.

I accidentally did that to a porter.

Like, I was like, oh, I haven't peed once in this game.

I should probably do it.

I don't know what benefits or negatives there are, like detriments there are.

And I tried to do it and he's like, said that to me.

And I was like, what?

And then I look out and there's like two porters like off in the distance.

Just shaking their heads.

That guy's going to piss.

What a video game.

It's an extraordinary video game.

I have a slightly different take on.

on it, how it re-ranks Stranding One for me.

And it's that I think it puts Stranding One on my top 10

because it made me appreciate how much of the world and how much of the vibe had just become like invisible to me and integrated into things that I love.

Like, I have the fucking Death Stranding windows in my, in my windowless garage.

And now the window is in the, yeah, the window's like in the game.

Yeah, it is.

I hope they updated.

I hope there's stuff from Stranding 2 on the windows.

Nick, we've talked about Stranding.

What are you playing?

Heather, thank you so much for asking.

A new game appeared on game pass new to me rather it was released in 2023 but game pass is what put it in front of my face and i i looked it up because i was like it's it's from the description it seemed like something that would hook me uh it was developed and published by egg hatcher which is a chinese indie developer i believe it's a two-person team and the game is called volcano princess i'll just read the copy that they have in game pass Prepare the next monarch by finding her hobbies, training her for battle, and befriending the citizens she'll one day protect.

Dive into an all-new parenting simulator RPG adventure where every decision you make will not only affect the future of your daughter, but that of an entire empire.

So, this is a parenting sim, but specifically coded as a father of daughters sim,

because

it's a girl dad game?

It's a girl dad game.

You, the, you know, it starts off, and then there's a, the, there's a little cinematic, and then there's a time with you and you, the player character.

You name the player character and your daughter

in creation.

And then you also put in things like, you know, blood type and,

you know, a handful of other birthdays, et cetera.

I made my daughter's birthday January 6th, which I thought was funny.

Anyway.

Anyway, the.

You should have made it nine months from January 6th.

September 6th.

So you have a little cutscene with you, the player character, the dad, and the mom, and then there's a time jump, and

the daughter is six, and the mom has passed away.

You're visiting her grave, and so you're a single dad.

You're a single girl dad raising

this girl in this crazy world.

It's got this really

charming aesthetic.

The thing is.

There are a lot of localization issues, and it's a game where you can overlook some of those, but this is a game that's mostly text-driven.

Like there is so much dialogue with other characters.

There's so much text in menus.

There's so many descriptions of different activities you can do with your daughter and different abilities she can learn.

And so it is a pretty, it first was the sort of thing when I see like, oh, it says, your daughter decided.

And it's with a T instead of a D, you know, to do blank.

I was like, okay, well, that's a sort of minor thing I can overlook.

But then as it progresses, there were just more and more of those where, like, I'm really having to parse sentences to try and make out what they, you know, what they mean.

And, you know, again, a small team.

I don't know who's doing the localization.

Hopefully, this game being a little bit more visible and giving them a little more revenue, or maybe a major publisher will partner with them to, you know, have it be a better, a proper localization in English.

I'm not sure how the localization is in other languages, but I imagine it has similar issues.

Also, the UX is just like a little clunky.

It's like

you can play it with a controller, but I don't think it really works.

I think you really need a mouse and it's even saying with the controller that like you should that it's it keeps encouraging you to go into virtual mouse mode where you're basically just using the analog stick as a as a cursor.

So I was just I was just playing that some bitch with my mouse and it was actually working fine.

There's a bunch of so there's a lot of it is just like time management.

And this is the aspect of the game that I really like because Citizen Sleeper is a game I talked about that I was had a lot of enthusiasm for.

It's basically a game where you're just managing your time.

Certainly, the Atlas RPGs, I think we've talked about extensively on the podcast.

So much of that is just managing your time, figuring out what am I going to do?

Because there's a limited number of days.

There's a ticker that's in the corner the whole time, which is like months until your daughter reaches adulthood, which is like

it's kind of crazy to think about parenting in such discreet, you know, mathematical terms.

So

it's like, oh, oh, am I going to take my daughter to the riverfront and let her practice drawing, which will improve her imagination?

Or am I going to have her plant vegetables, which will improve her skill at

domestic tasks?

Or am I going to go have her

study

in a room?

I'm going to have her play with blocks or play a game with her to improve her intellect and or improve her

emotional skills.

There's all sorts of these decisions that are made that are really fun.

I was trying to guide my daughter towards being a

worldly, someone who's focusing on intellect and emotion, someone who's maybe going to be a creative type.

Then there's a time jump, and your daughter is six.

You go through like a year's worth of months.

Then all of a sudden, your daughter is

Matt.

I think she's actually 13, but it is that sort of, it is that sort of jump.

And she's 12 or 13.

So she's at that age, different character model,

different activities you can do.

There is a really nice moment that I actually like thought was very effective, which is you have when your daughter is very young, you can chat with her and then you progress to a certain point and then you can talk with her because it's like, oh, she has a little bit more personality, a little bit more, you know,

self-identity.

And I was like, oh, that's a nice little choice.

But

she's 12

and a night arrives and says, your daughter wants to go to night school.

with a K.

And I had a moment, honestly, where I'm like,

well, if it's what she wants to do, you know,

we'll get her some archery lessons.

I'll take her over the river.

She can improve her strength by doing the robot, you know.

And I just shifted full on into like, let's support her getting like better at combat skills.

Yeah.

The thing is, then the game has some combat elements, which I don't think you can opt out of.

And I just find a little bit less interesting.

It's also like, again, where the UX kind of gets in the way, like it's just a little bit clunky, a little bit hard to figure out.

There's also like a hard fail at your first combat, which is not signposted at all as what it's going to be.

So it just feels like you're doing things completely wrong.

And it's the kind of thing where I just like looked at some community forms to see if other people are having the same response and they were.

It's just like, it's very, it's just, it's just kind of a little bit of a bewildering experience.

There's also some mini games that I mentioned that are like not super satisfying.

There's a debate game that I couldn't quite figure out exactly how it works and it's not well explained to you.

There was one point where it's just like, it was just like straight up an arithmetic quiz, which is like, I need some more layers of abstraction i can't just be solving for nine times three equals blank you know what i mean it's like yeah me neither because it's too easy

difficulty or not i mean you're on the clock but it's just like i just don't want to be doing straight up uh straight up math problems here um But I, I do think a lot of it is like, you do, it is like good storytelling.

And, and the world has so many NPCs and continues to grow.

And there's so many choices.

There's so much optionality.

You really do get analysis, paralysis in terms of how you want to manage your daughter's time.

And

it is written in a way, in a very effective way, where despite the localization issues, you do start to feel a bond to

this other character.

And so on that level, it really works.

I'm not sure how much more I'm going to stick with it just because there are just so many stumbling blocks.

For instance, in the aforementioned arithmetic mini-game,

for whatever reason, the input is

left-click to change options.

So it's like a multiple choice choice test.

Left click to change options, right?

Click to confirm.

It's like, this is such a confounding way to input this.

You know, like, why am I not just moving my cursor to the answer I think is correct or hitting something on the keyboard or whatever the fuck?

The other thing is

there are some weird that I think just maybe just different cultural, you know,

bits of conflict or whatever.

Like your daughter starts getting letters from suitors and you can respond to some of those.

And again, again, I guess we're kind of in a vaguely medieval pastiche, so that would be a reality.

Characters do, you know, people would get married at younger ages and

there was all that sort of stuff that was happening for political convenience.

It is from what I've read, and it is in-game.

It does seem to be like pretty,

you know, it does seem to be like you can

open in terms of gender, in terms of relationships.

Like there's a point where it's like, oh,

if you do this at the night, all the, all the, all the aspiring knights are vying to complete this task because they'll get the princess's hand in marriage.

And then your, your, your daughter is like, well, I, maybe I'll marry the princess.

And the game doesn't seem to be, like, it seems like that's a thing you can actually do.

So that's kind of nice.

Um, there is a thing in this game, which is a stat called darkness, which is just

if you do things that might influence your daughter in a negative way, or she does, she makes choices of of her own her darkness goes up so for instance an example is your daughter may be having like some sort of tantrum some sort of emotional problem and it will take a substantial chunk of your limited time that you could be using for her studies uh for her her sword uh her sword fight fighting lessons um or her you know her voca uh uh

oration lessons or whatever the fuck and but you'll need to take that time to converse with her and like listen to her and understand her problem and reassure her but you can instead choose to ignore her, which just saves all that time, but then just shoots her darkness level up.

And then also, there is a bathhouse in the game, and you can get a

daughter, your daughter can get jobs, part-time jobs.

And so she can work as a bookkeeper at the bathhouse.

She can work as a cleaner at the bathhouse and make a little bit of money.

Or she can work more money by working as a bathhouse attendants, which again, a very strange thing to be sending your 12, 13-year-old daughter to work as a bathhouse attendant.

And when she works a shift there, that increases her darkness.

It's like, Jesus Christ.

Oh, no.

And what, and again, part of one thing that may be a little bit of a roadblock for me in this game is just like, I'm sure to min-max this, part of what you want to do is accumulate some darkness in the certain, like, in terms of playing it more efficient, efficiently, you know, in terms of managing your time correctly.

But I was just like, I just, I just don't want to get into this situation.

I don't want to be ignoring my daughter when she's sad.

I don't want to be dispatching her to work,

like rubbing guys down in a bathroom.

So crazy.

So fucking weird.

Yeah.

But

it is a pretty cool design.

You just have to overlook a lot.

You have to really get past, especially those stumbling blocks with UX and localization.

But I did enjoy my time with Volcano Princess, and it's on Game Pass.

Wow.

Yeah.

Lovely.

Shall we talk about the games of 2025, part two?

That's right.

I think we should get into those.

We took a first crack at this in January.

Now we're going to look at the back end of this year.

So, I mean, it's been a pretty good year for games so far, I will say.

I'd say so.

I also think, like, look, predictably, Death Stranding 2 is for all of us, and we were all pretty excited about it.

I don't think anyone anticipated it to be so rapturously

received by the gaming press and by everyone, you know, gamers at large, that this for this to achieve universal acclaim, who thought it might be like, hey, a better version or on the same level of this kind of really interesting but kind of niche experience that was Death Stranding 1.

Despite its commercial success, it still was kind of like, I thought it could still just be another quirky one of these, but that's become like this, this huge mainstream game.

But certainly Claire Obscure is like in terms of just like a game that came out of nowhere that I'm sure we didn't even mention when we did our original version of this and has been one of the games of the year.

And And Blue Prince, which was on our radar, but another game that I'm less enthused about, but is also a game that's absorbed a lot of mind share this year.

Yeah, and the Switch 2 has come out.

Switch 2, yeah.

So

big stuff.

A lot has happened.

A lot's happened.

Do we just, well, how do we do this?

Do we just get into it?

Well, I just want to open up the conversation by saying there aren't a ton of games that I'm looking forward to in the next six months.

One of them does come out this month, though, and that's Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Yeah.

I can't fucking wait for Donkey Kong Bonanza.

I'm fucking pumped.

Occupies all like so many of my thoughts.

I think that, you know, I'm not sure that I'm going to complete that game because I have limited time and stranding is so important to me.

Yeah.

But I am really happy and excited that there's going to be a new Nintendo platformer because they are always a good feeling.

Yeah.

You know, it's going to be a happy time.

I have a plan for the day.

Bananas?

I'm going to eat a hundred bananas.

No, some friends of mine and I, sometimes when there's a a new Nintendo release, we go pick it up at our local store.

Fun.

But before that, we all go get breakfast burritos too.

So we go get breakfast burrito.

We have a nice little chat.

Yeah.

Then we go, okay, now it's time to go to the second location, go get our game.

And then we go get our game, and then we disperse and go home and play it separately.

That sounds like a really good time.

It sounds like a fun ritual.

Yeah.

Is it always the same breakfast burrito plays?

Yes.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you we're after.

I'm very excited.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, when I looked over the list of the big releases for the next six months, I was a little bit like,

huh, there's not a lot for me left in this year.

Silent Hill F, sure,

I'm curious about a new Silent Hill game.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the Metal Gear reboot because I feel like

he's so straightforwardly said what a betrayal this is that I feel a little shitty

being curious about it.

So I don't know that I'm going to play it.

I feel like maybe I would rather go play the original again.

There's not, yeah, there's not a ton on my radar for the, for the next six months.

I did make a list, though, of the most video game sounding video games of the next six months.

Would you guys like to hear it?

Yeah, sure.

All right.

If I was going to make a list of the games that sound the most like video games, and perhaps I should be excited about them because they sound the most like video games, this would be my list.

Eric's Holm, colon, the stolen dream.

Kunitsugami, colon, path of the goddess.

Moonlighter 2, colon, the endless vault.

Daemon Makina, colon, Titanic Scion.

Yes.

And Eden's Zero all sound like video games to me.

They really do.

It's crazy how much the word salad subtitle is a staple of video game.

I mean, like even the

new naughty dock game that Neil Druckman is returning to the studio to work on is like, what is that called?

Intergalactic the heretic prophet?

Yeah, it's just all nonsense.

It just sounds like nothing.

You could have me.

Look, I'm going to play it.

I'll play it.

Yeah.

You could have something if it was just intergalactic.

It's very generic.

Sure.

But you could sort of make that a thing.

Yeah.

The heretic prophet is nonsense.

Well, how about this one?

No sleep for koname date from AI colon the Somnium files.

You know, that I'm into.

Yeah, that sounds cool.

You pushed it just far enough where I'm intrigued.

You know, I never got into...

What's that?

What happened to Pong?

Pong is a great title.

You know exactly what's going on.

Do we ever do a title episode where we just talk about titles aside from like game content aside?

What are the best titles?

We could do it.

That sounds fun.

That's a big, like, I mean, zombies ate my neighbors at all times.

Zombies ate me Donkey Kong Country.

Pretty good title, yeah.

But what does Donkey Kong mean outside of

Donkey Kong?

You need the context of King Kong to understand that it means kind of like on that Living Kong or Silly Kong.

It's a little hard for sure.

We're seeing we're doing the episode.

It's true.

We got to hold on to that.

That's a different episode.

That's a different thing.

Silent Hill is a great title.

It really is.

Silent Hill is a great title.

You know, it's a better title.

What's that?

Silent Hill 2.

I mean, better game.

I don't know if it's a better title.

Chicago 2.

It's interesting because sometimes you like a title, we're just doing the episode.

We can't do it.

We can't do it.

It's a different thing.

We're not doing this.

It's a good idea.

It is a good idea.

It's a good idea.

It is.

We want to immediately do it.

We want to do it.

We can't do that.

It's for a different episode.

But it was just like, also, it's like...

A game like Tetris, it's like, it's kind of a good title, even though Tetris doesn't seem to mean anything on its own.

But then I'm like, do I think it's a good title?

Because I know what Tetris is from the context of having played the game.

I just picked up that Tetris Connected again.

Man, that's a fucking great Tetris.

Playing it on my Switch 2.

I love every version of Tetris.

I still have so much fondness for the NES, which is what they play competitively, but that was the one I played the most as a kid.

I have a few games in July.

July is kind of a packed month for me, if I'm being honest.

So Donkey Kong Wonanza, we all touched on, but I just can't wait to be that big bastard running around smashing shit.

Looks fun as fuck.

We're not on the eve, but we're getting very, very close to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4.

Yes.

And I'm having a crisis, actually, because I don't know what platform I want to get this on.

What are your options?

Well, it's free on Game Pass.

Okay.

But I've historically only ever really played Tony Hawk games on PlayStation.

Despite being the Xbox kid.

Despite being the Xbox kid.

Yeah.

I did try the demo on Game Pass, and it feels good.

It's feeling good.

so I'm very excited about it.

But it's coming to Switch 2.

And I'm sort of kind of thinking,

could I, if I want

the high-powered version, be playing that on my Series X

on Game Pass, and then to take it around wherever I want, get it on Switch 2.

Nobody knows what the specs are for the Switch 2 version or if it even runs well.

So I'm sort of like waiting until I can hear about it.

But I have, because I have, I double dipped on Tony Hawks Pro Skater one and two remake on Switch on sale.

Like I got it for like 15 bucks.

And I was like, I'll take, that's like, I love the game on 15 bucks on Switch, how bad could it be?

And it play, I feel like it plays great.

It feels good.

It looks a little less good.

Yeah.

Right.

But

I'm thinking about I might get it on Switch 2

at launch.

Do it.

If they're all like reviewed and roughly that like all the ports are of equal quality, then that might make sense for you.

Yeah, it's also the device that looks the most like a skateboard.

Yeah,

I might try to do a kickflip on it.

I think the reason that the year is pretty empty is that

until recently, it was the year of Grand Theft Auto VI.

No, that's a great point.

They were clearing the decks because they were worried about, you know, that that just eating everyone's lunch.

And I also think that because 6 has been pushed and Stranding 2 has been met met with such

worldwide critical acclaim, there's a possibility Stranding 2 will be game of the year.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I think it's in pole position right now.

I think it's that or Claire Obscure.

I think it's one of those two.

By the way, speaking of nonsense subtitles, Claire Obscure colon Expedition 33.

Yeah, I know what it means because they play the game, but also it's like, maybe you don't need the Expedition 33.

I think everybody should do their best.

I think Expedition 33 on its own is a good title.

Maybe one or the other, yes.

I think everybody in gaming and in film should do their best to eliminate colons from the titles of their things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like,

I don't know.

I know the Death Stranding 2 colon on the beach is technically the title.

Yes.

But does it need the colon?

I don't think so.

Could it just be called Death Stranding on the Beach?

Yeah.

I mean, I guess

maybe by the end of the game, we'll learn that there was a grammatical necessity for the colon.

Could be.

Could be.

I wouldn't put it past him to make it important for some reason.

Death Stranding itself was such a mocked title when it was announced because there's always,

do they mean death standing?

Do they mean, like, is that, is that the right, like, stranding?

It felt like very awkward.

But then, of course, now it makes complete sense and it sounds right.

It doesn't make complete sense.

It's, it's, it's, it's referenced within the game.

Yes, yeah.

Uh, there was a, you know, a cataclysmic event called the Death Stranding, and that's why it's titled this.

And the things that were from the world of the beyond have become stranded in ours.

Yes.

So it is a death stranding.

Yes.

And you also have strands that connect with other people.

And your name is Sam Porter Bridges.

And you work for Bridges as a porter.

Yes.

I love this.

It's good shit.

It's really good.

Of the word salad, the best, the best, most leafiest greens.

I love it.

Second best to Kingdom Hearts 368, Poland 2 slash, whatever the fuck that was.

I think for my money, the inscrutable king

is all the Kojima stuff for me.

I love Kingdom Hearts, but I like it.

Kojima does it better than anybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you got to give it up.

Are we going month by month here, or are we just jumping all over the place?

I think so, because I have a couple more in July.

I don't know how excited I am about this game, but I am interested.

Well, they hit me with it.

Shadow Labyrinth.

Oh, interesting.

The Pac-Man Metroidvania.

Yeah, I wonder.

I wonder how that is.

I mean, like, that'll be a big one where just I'll see what the community thinks when it comes out.

Because

it's one I've been just

observing from a distance and keeping my eye on.

Yeah.

It doesn't look particularly good.

No, I mean, but it might be.

Like, it's, I'm, I'm, any, any roguelike, any roguelike, I'm always just like kind of intrigued by any Metroid.

But it's more of Metroidvania, right?

Any Metroidvania, though, another, like, that, another genre that, like, I'm always, uh, always kind of intrigued by every take on it, even if I don't play all of them and I don't get my not they don't all get my hooks, their hooks in me.

But I will definitely keep an eye on that one.

Yeah, I'm interested in that and in Ninja Gaiden Rage Bound, the pixel art

Ninja Gaiden that's coming out soon.

Yeah, I mean, I hope that one plays well and succeeds.

Yeah, I like that franchise, but I also just like more of those kind of games being made.

It was the, and I know it was part of the problem, but the Prince of Persia 2D game, 3D 2D game that came out, and then, you know, again, they did depressingly another studio that was shuttered.

But it was that was a game that i i was like it's cool that they're doing this with the prince of persia yeah property uh yeah if we're talking we're talking july the the other one that caught my eye is a standalone adventure expansion to robo robo cop rogue city i guess a semi-sequel uh slash dlc you can play on your own rogue city unfinished business I just heard a lot of things over time of like how RoboCop was like a really good like

B game or double A game, however you want to classify it.

It was fun, yeah.

And I love RoboCop in general.

I mean, the

RoboCop one is they had you at cop, right?

Lose the Robo, it's cleaner.

Movie's called Cop.

This is my shit.

God, if you just made a movie called Cop,

how big of a hit would it be in this dumbass country?

We're going to go see cop.

Yeah, it's the number one movie on planet Earth.

Our whole church is buying out a theater to go see cop.

Well, there was this, Stallone made Cop Land.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, Cop Land, good movie.

People were actually upset about that because it did not deliver on what they thought the premise was.

John Hammond at a gate being like, welcome to Cop Land.

A bunch of cops running around eating grass.

But I didn't mess around with RoboCop Rogue City, and this one looks like, ah, maybe I'll, maybe if reviews are good, maybe I'll put some time into this.

Yeah,

I could check that out.

I've been interested in Rogue City.

I do think it would be kind of fun for all of us to be like, we love Rogue City.

That could be kind of fun.

I'll try it.

Yeah, it could be cool.

Jumping in, did you have anything else in July, anyone?

I mean, no.

Mario Party, Jamboree, Bowser TV.

I don't need another Mario Party.

It's like, well, it's the expanded version of the one that came out for Switch with new Switch 2 stuff.

I just, like, those are games where someone maybe invites me on their Twitch stream is the only context I'm going to play a Mario party.

Yeah, I just, I just, I'm, I'm just kind of past that.

Uh,

hey, people love the Mario parties.

God bless you.

Yeah, it's just, it's just not a thing I make time for in my life anymore.

I feel like this group that I go with,

somebody's going to get it, and

I'll play it at their house.

You know what?

I'm definitely going to play on my Switch 2 coming in August, Kirby and the Forgotten Land.

Let's fucking Nintendo Switch 2 Edition plus Star-Crossed World, which is like a whole nother biome, an extended DLC.

Yeah,

I'm really, really excited about that.

I loved the Forgotten Land so much.

I loved Mouthful Mode, Kirby.

I love swallowing cars.

I was going to say, which one is your favorite?

I like being in the car, I think.

The car is very fun.

Yeah.

But just, I'd have to think back through everything in that game.

I finished that game.

I did some of the post-game content.

It's just so charming.

It's what Heather was saying about Bonanza earlier, like just like Nintendo Platformers are just, they feel like a hug.

Yeah, they're really, really great.

That one's really good.

I'm interested in, in look i've never played a shinobi but there's a there's a

a new shinobi coming out too and i think i'm gonna make a big declaration yeah this new this new ninja gaiden this new shinobi ninjas are back i mean let's not forget assassin's creed shadows and of course the upcoming ghost of yote which we'll talk about that's right ninjas are back

ninjas are back it's pretty cool I feel like ninjas used to be everywhere, and now they're back.

Yeah.

The 80s was a big time for ninjas.

Yeah.

80s was a big time for for uni or unironic ninjas they kind of went away then we had like a i feel like an early 2000s like

you know internet irony ninja pirate you know cowboy whatever the fuck like that was like a big thing and then then that kind of people got that got oversaturated but now it feels like unirotic ninjas are back which i mean too i'm i'm i'm stoked for all the the ninja content that's coming my way yeah um i did play shinobi back and revenge of shinobi specifically on Sega Genesis slash Mega Drive, which Heather, I'm not sure if that was a game you played as a kid, but that was a game I played on my friend's console.

We were a Nintendo family, but I always thought it was like such a cool game.

And

it's also one of those things where I have a specific attachment to Shinobi because, you know, when you're a kid and there's just like another kid who's just like a liar, like he just like makes shit up.

Yeah.

He's just like fucking lying for no reason.

Like some liar kid was like, like, was like, yeah, shinobi's going to come to Nintendo.

I just like, I just heard heard it.

I was like, what?

Really?

Yeah.

Just me, just my dumb ass, just believing this kid's saying some bullshit.

But then that kid first-party Sega game is not going to come to a Nintendo platform.

Like, why even lie about that?

Maybe he was talking about this.

Wow.

Because this is what he meant.

Because this is on all platforms.

Told you.

He calls you,

fucking kicks your ass.

I heard you were talking shit.

Called me a liar.

Well, guess what, bitch?

Gives you an atomic wedgie.

uh are we still talking august yeah um i'm excited about super robot wars why in august uh super robot wars is a uh tactical rpg where uh you take

uh big big mechs from all different anime and they're in a they're in a like a fighting they're fighting one another so you'll have like Gundam, but you'll also have Evangelians.

You'll also have, it's all real proper licensed mechs.

Wow.

Wow.

And it's a tactical RPG.

I've played one Super Robot Wars and had a very pleasant time doing it.

It might just be a nice

breakfast game.

Yeah.

You know, like a game where you drop in, you aren't like, this is going to be the only thing I play right now, but

you spend a little time after a cup of coffee playing a little bit of Super Robot Wars.

Why?

Do you think they'll have Gurren Lagan in there?

Not big enough with the other ones?

You know, they could.

I think maybe Gurren Lagan has been in a Super Robot Wars.

Wow.

I'm not sure.

I'm going to have to check it out.

It's a Bandai.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I can't answer that question.

And, you know, while we're here in August, and I know it came up already, I think I am going to check out Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater Delta.

I just have to see.

Yeah, where does the Delta con?

Is the Delta before the Snake Eater or is it after the Snake Eater?

It's actually, it's before.

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater.

Yeah.

It's just my favorite.

It's like, I mean, Kingdom Hearts 2 is my favorite game.

Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater is probably this, like, well, I think it's three on the list.

If Pokemon Gold is number two, yeah, so it's like, it's my third favorite game.

I got to see what's going on.

Phenomenal game when we did an episode about it.

I mean, it's just like we all just raved about the experience.

And

I hope

I want the remake to be good.

Yeah.

I'm worried it might suck.

It bums me out that Kojima does not seem pleased by it.

Yes.

I guess I'm.

As my new friend, I hate to go against him in this way, actually.

To me, it's just like one to keep an eye on, but I'm not sure if I'm going to buy it right at launch.

Yeah.

I think that's fair.

I think that's a safe place to be.

I'm going to be, if I don't get it at launch, I'll be at least just, I'll be checking it.

I'll be observing what the people are saying.

Did they do it?

I want, but they brought back the Ape Escape mode.

That's fun.

And then I think on other platforms, it's something else.

I think on Xbox, it's Mega Man or something.

Okay.

Matt.

Yeah.

Gerd Lagon is in Super Robot Wars X.

Great.

So now this is actually my most anticipated game of the rest of this year.

This is huge.

I don't know if it's in Y, but it is in.

It's in X.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, going

forward to, and since we're just talking about tactical RPGs,

I think that naturally segues into September's Final Fantasy Tactics, the Ivilis Chronicles, the extended remake of the original.

Now, here's the thing: here it is.

This is a remake of the PlayStation game that came out in 1997, but it does not have the additional content that is in the, what fans consider to be the definitive version, the PSP game, which I'd never played.

I played the original on PlayStation 1.

I never played the

Game Boy Advance game that is your

Heather, your white whale.

That's my, yeah, that's my white whale.

Your Phantom Pain.

That's the one that took my leg.

But I know the fan reaction, the community reaction when they said that, like, no, this is going to be focused on what's in the original game.

It's not going to be that expanded

stuff from that Final Recent Tactics PSP game.

Did you play that one, Heather?

Not only did I play it, I still own it on UMD.

Wow.

Trying to be quiet in a library,

playing with headphones.

Yeah.

Everyone's scared.

The PSP game that they had to look up the subtitle, Final Fantasy Tactics, The War of the Lions.

And the War of the Lions is, you know,

it came out with the PSP.

It came out 10 years after the original game.

But it does not have, that stuff has not been retained in this new remake that's coming.

And

I don't know.

It doesn't bum me necessarily because it bumped me necessarily just because I don't have the familiarity with the PSP version, but it does seem like kind of an odd decision to do like an, you know, essentially an HD2D remake and amid all that stuff.

Yeah, I've not ever played a Final Fantasy Tactics.

I was interested in this one, but knowing that there's a better version that they're not remaking sort of makes me want to dust off the Vita and

play War of the Lions on my Vita.

I absolutely think you should do that.

Yeah.

Because the Vita screen is gorgeous.

The Vita screen is...

Nick, have you seen a Vita screen before?

Have you looked at how it's an OLED screen from like, what, 20 years ago now?

And the Switch 2 doesn't have an OLED screen?

Gosh, is the Vita 20 years?

No, no.

No, it's not quite.

You scared me.

I think the PSP is 21 years old.

200, right?

Yeah.

Vita, gorgeous piece of hardware.

That's so pretty.

Really nice.

Really, really nice.

I just want them to announce.

Do it again.

Just announce a handheld, like a real handheld Sony.

Do it.

Give it to me.

I want a separate library

of exclusive weird games.

I'm down.

You know what?

I'm down if the PlayStation 6 takes on the

Switch form factor and concept.

Sure, why not?

Like give us, give us a fucking

like an $800 Sony season.

Yes.

And make sure it gets really hot.

Yeah.

I'd like to shout out two other games in September if we're in danger of moving on.

Sure.

You know, I already mentioned Silent Hill F, of course.

But

the other game I am lightly interested in, Terminator 2D, No Fate.

Oh, yes.

Which feels like classic Contra.

If you watch the gameplay, it's like big bullets on screen and you're moving sideways.

Yeah.

And like, look,

I don't know.

Maybe I'll try it.

If a game like that has a great score, that might just be enough to push me over the edge.

You mean beyond?

I mean, they have to put that in.

They got to put it in.

I hope that.

They have to put you in doing it.

That does seem cool.

Yeah, I like that there has been this sort of...

I don't even really know it.

There's been like a wave of this type of thing happening because there was a, there was like sometime in the last couple of years, there was a 2D Evil Dead slash like Halloween packaged game or something.

And now there's this Terminator one coming out.

I don't know.

That's cool.

I, I, I, for the last season of Fortnite, yeah, have been maining Sarah Connor as my skin, uh, specifically the outfit that she wears when she goes to murder Miles Dyson in front of his family, because I think it's the funniest skin you can possibly wear in

Fortnite.

Because it's also, it's not like you can be like, oh, it's Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

He's just a bad guy all the time.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah.

But to have one of the outfit options be, I'm going to go kill a man in front of his family.

Yes.

Yeah.

Until his son begs me not to.

It's a great, like, a great skin.

One of Fortnite.

Iconic looks.

It is an iconic look.

Anyway, I like Terminator.

We watched Terminator on the anime show, our sister show, get animated.

That's right.

Oh, yeah.

And, you know, I'll play a Terminator game.

The Terminator anime started, and I thought, like, oh my God, did they do it?

And then

it kind of dissipated.

I think it's tough because Terminator 2 just casts such a

lot of shadow.

You know, it's just so good.

Terminator 1 is great, but Terminator 2 is one of the best ever.

Yeah, it's insane.

Yeah.

If we're going into October, the big one there, the big boy.

Wait, no, I'm scared.

Those are spooky noises.

It's a door opening.

Oh, I thought that was just you making that noise.

Yeah, he's like, this is my new character, Weird Man.

No, but you're doing like a spooky door.

Sometimes, yeah, Halloween doors make too much noise.

They really do, yeah.

Yep.

So you were saying.

Just keep doing it.

Gaga Ghost of Yote, the follow-up to Ghost of Tsushima, a game I 100%ed during the pandemic and absolutely loved.

And while I was playing Assassin's Creed Shadows, a game I fell off of, but I initially enjoyed.

Yes.

I did kind of have the feeling of, is this, is what, is my

enthusiasm for this game initially before the Ubisoft of it all kind of like it makes me bounce off of it, as those games tend to do, because I know Ghost of Yote is coming.

And is that part of what's going on?

And I hope that this game just iterates upon the first one,

you know, in the same way that Death Stranding 2 did upon Death Stranding 1.

But I loved Ghost of Tsushima, and I'm very, very excited to play the follow-up.

Yeah, I'm super stoked.

Everything I've seen thus far, which is not much,

looks promising, looks cool.

And yeah, I agree.

Like, look, I said earlier, ninjas are back.

Ninjas are back.

And this is different.

This is not exactly that.

But I'm just excited to be riding around on a horse, doing crazy stuff, sneaking, being sneaky.

I hope I get to have more interactions with an uncle.

Because as we know, Ghost of Tsushima, one of the rare works of fiction that explores the uncle-nephew relationship.

Yes.

Not since

the band LMFAO has there been a stronger uncle-nephew.

And that, of course, than Scrooge McDuck and Huey Dewin Louie.

That's a big one.

I think those are the big three.

Those are the three.

That's the triforce of uncle-nephew.

The Fresh Prince and Uncle Phil.

That's a big one.

That's a big one.

Yeah, let's put that up there.

And gosh, I think that's probably it.

That might be the full list.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do people know Uncle?

The man from Uncle Phil.

Probably.

Yeah, he had a nephew for sure.

Do people know the LMFAO thing?

That the one guy is the other guy's uncle?

Red Fu and oh man.

I wish I knew the other one's name.

I wish I knew.

Rich, you know that about

LMFAO?

I think I heard it on this podcast.

It's just fascinating to me that they're just like, we're like an uncle-nephew duo, and we like to party and sing songs about partying.

Sky Blue.

Sky Blue and Red Fu.

Imagine if, and look, they're roughly the same age.

It's one of those things.

And I know that can happen with,

you know.

That can happen with uncles.

Yeah, that can happen, but Red Fu is Sky Blue's uncle.

Just imagine.

I'm just trying to think of my uncle being like, hey, man, you want to go rap?

You want to go maybe?

Do you like some party anthems?

yeah do you want to like i don't know party rock

yeah all right my phone why the fuck not and then conversely do you want to do another song called sorry for party rock

and then it works and you and your uncle are like Used to play video games together when you're a kid.

You just like smoke weed and like

bang chicks

and it makes songs about it.

And then our songs will be played in stadiums till the end of time.

We'll be rich beyond any measure.

Me and you, nephew, my nephew,

my sibling's son.

We don't know if it's by marriage or by

that.

You know what?

It does change it a little bit.

If it's by marriage, it's funnier.

Because there's no reason that these people should even be talking.

It's also like that everyone, I feel like, who knows party rock knows Red Fu, but like Sky Blue is somehow a much harder poll.

Yes, yeah.

Sky Blue is tough to remember for some reason.

No disrespect, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah, no disrespect.

There are a couple of games that I'm looking forward to in October.

In fact, I think October might be my most stacked month of the year.

Yeah.

I mean, like, also in terms of actual announced release dates, because after that, we get into a lot of ambiguous 2025 holidays.

Right.

In large part because of the behemoth that left the room.

Behemoth?

Of Grand Theft Auto Series.

All right.

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

I was like, is Behemoth an alternate pronunciation?

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

Behemoth.

So we've got,

I'm going to shout this one out first because I wrote an episode for

the Amazon TV show Secret Level based on the Outer Worlds 1 and played a significant portion of Outer Worlds 1 as a result of doing the research and

trying to get invested in the world.

And it got its hooks in me.

You know, it's kind of got that like

fallout

libertarianism gone amok.

Like,

you know, every planet is so capitalist.

And like, it has that

tone to it, that sort of winky tone.

And

I don't know, I enjoyed it.

And maybe that deep into the end of the year, I'm going to want another chunky sort of action RPG.

But

can you just comment on this one?

Because that one was on my list too, Out of Worlds.

Oh, okay, great.

I played Outer Worlds one.

I did really like it.

I thought the level at the quality of writing was very high.

And

it does have like a cheeky sort of sensibility.

I think it's like, it's, you know,

Fallout is funny, but this was, it's leaning more into comedy and really leaning more into

just the idea of basically.

What if Amazon.com and its competitors are just like the most powerful, you know, entities in some sort of future society?

What if?

You so crazy.

So weird, wild, speculative sci-fi fiction.

No, it's, it's a.

It's Snow Crash Adjacent.

Yeah, it's very, it's very much like Snowcrash.

But the thing I will say about Outer Worlds 1 is it does feel a little bit like the demo for Outer Worlds 1.

It's kind of...

You know, the scope is maybe a little bit limited.

There are some really cool quests, but it does feel perhaps a little bit less cohesive.

And I feel like Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian, who's a developer who, you know, you mentioned Fallout, and they, of course, are responsible for New Vegas, is

there's so many talented people at Obsidian, and I'm hoping with a little bit more time and with a little bit more resources now with Microsoft behind them.

who, as we've learned, can only be a positive influence,

that Outer Worlds 2 will really, really come together.

So I am definitely excited for this game.

I also want to shout out another RPG coming out that month, which is Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2.

Okay, this is on my list, but I have this list as I don't think it's coming out this year.

I don't think it's coming out this year either.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines came out, what, 20 years ago?

Yes, I worked with some, when I worked in video game development, which I'm mentioning the second time today,

I worked on

it.

I worked with some people who worked on Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 1.

That's interesting.

And it was interesting to hear about 21 years ago.

Yeah, it was interesting to hear about that development process and how they had, you know, less resources than they would have liked.

And that game came out and was kind of buggy, but they also just seemed to have a lot of creative freedom and a lot of internal support for what they were doing.

I used to play tabletop Vampire the Masquerade and really like the systems, really like all the lore.

And I didn't dip into Bloodlines One because it was so notoriously buggy.

And I was like, I don't really want to spend my, at that point, extremely hard-earned money

playing a game that was reviewed as technically diminished.

So now that I have a tiny bit more disposable income, I'm like, man, maybe I'll give Bloodlines 2

a shot and play some of my old vampire characters.

That might be fun.

That does sound cool.

I've never messed with either tabletop or video game Vampire the Masquerade at all.

So I could be, I could, I could get into this one.

Matt, can I tell you a crazy story about how I used to play Vampire the Masquerade in Chicago?

I'd love nothing more.

Vampire the Masquerade had a scene in Chicago that was a live-action role-playing version of Vampire the Masquerade.

Okay.

And I only attended a few times,

but it was in a warehouse downtown that somebody had purchased or rented.

Yeah.

And each floor was broken off, this huge, huge fucking warehouse was broken off into individual sections like sort of like theatrically staged.

So like on one floor, you would have like a bar,

but you would also have like a library area, or you would also have like what felt like, you know, today would be a cell phone store.

And the building was so many floors that one of them was underground and had access to the old Chicago sewer system, which was cleaned out because it was not like currently functioning.

And you would go and play live-action Vampire the Masquerade in costumes.

And if there was combat that happened on any floor, all the combat was solved with

weighted games of Rochambeau because you couldn't do dice while doing live-action stuff, right?

But you could do like, oh, you have

seven throws, and this person is two throws, is how you would weight the stuff.

But in order to make it into a real-time/slash turn-based combat system, there were all of these handlers on the floors, and they would have walkie-talkies.

And they would be like, Okay,

pause on the floor.

If any of you have alacrity level seven or your

senses of blah, blah, blah, raise your hand.

And so you would raise your hand and they'd come over and they'd whisper in your ear, you are aware that combat is taking place.

And so your character had the option because you're vampires to move to the floor where the combat was happening in case somebody was in your group or your coven or whatever and was engaged in combat.

Uh, because if you were a vampire in Chicago, you would technically be able to like fly across the city or whatever.

Right.

So, you would have like all of this, like get on public transit as well.

They can travel kind of anyway.

Yeah.

It was like a fucking wild, immense production

and was handled extremely well and was a very pleasurable experience.

I, I wonder how, like, how much are you going in for for to do one of these runs?

I think you would pay like $25 or something.

Wow.

How much of your time?

It's like probably hours and hours.

Hours and hours of your time.

And if there's like, I don't know, I bet there were like 300 people there.

Yeah.

Right.

So 300 times 25 and you pay all the people on the different floors and there's nothing else.

Like there's no,

you know, the bar was paid.

So you had to like, if you were buying a drink or Coke or whatever, you'd have to pay money for it.

Yeah, so like, I don't know, it was a, it was a pretty cool thing that people were doing.

That sounds amazing.

I do love stuff like that because, like, I like hearing stuff like that exists, like that LARPing, like, because it's all just driven by enthusiasm.

Yeah, and that to me, I think, is,

uh, I think there was a time and maybe still now where like, people think like enthusiasm is like corny kind of and like it can it can bleed into being a little corny but like, I just think it's cool that like people want to get together and do the same thing with each other, right?

Yeah, and and it's also playing a game, yes, like human beings like we have like fucking chips of bone from like

five million years ago, and it's like, oh, we've always been game players, yeah, I love, I love that from sapiens to ludens,

god damn.

Uh, anyway, so uh, I'm what you just described sounds like some shit that Ranch would tell us she did over the weekend.

You did that.

That's just a Tuesday for me.

Yeah.

She'd be like, oh, yeah, I did that too.

And I'd be like, wow, that's great.

She'd be like, mine had real vampires in it.

We both knew.

So, yeah,

lightly excited for Bloodlines 2.

Also hyped for Dragon Quest 1 and 2 HD 2D remake.

Yes, I hope that that comes together.

I mean, like, you know, hey, look, I played Dragon Quest, localized as Dragon Warrior on my NES.

I maybe said in the podcast before, one of like maybe six games my dad actually has played in his life.

Like, he played, and my dad finished Dragon Warrior for NES.

He was so engrossed by it.

But

it's it's that and Final Fantasy I were what got me into JRPGs, which, hey, that as far as an entry point, you know, those are probably the two.

I mean, what kind of fucking observation is this?

Final Fantasy I and Dragon Quest I were two of the

two most important JRPGs.

The games that are still in that genre and being produced today.

Yes, yeah.

So, like, I think the original is a very important game to me, and I hope the HD2D remake lets me relive that.

People seem to like

Dragon Quest 3 HD.

Yes, so I hope it's in

the same tier.

I got a big one and a small one.

I'm going to start with the small one for October.

Mina the Hollower.

Okay.

Mina the Hollower is the team that

did the team behind Shovel Knight.

And it's an

isometric little action game, sort of like the Game Boy Advance, not the Game Boy Advance, the Game Boy Color Zelda games.

And

you play as like a little mouse.

She's an inventor.

I'll just read you the synopsis here.

The game revolves around Mina, a skilled inventor and hollower who travels the

Tenboroughs Isle to discover why her spark generators, which she invented to power the island, have gone out.

And it takes place in a 1700s gothic horror-inspired world.

And there's a bunch of tiny little animals, anthropomorphic animals.

And that seems, look, that's like, that's my whole thing.

Hasn't been on my radar, but that sounded that you got me intrigued.

Look, it's like this little cute little art.

Like, that looks great.

Yeah, it looks fun.

That looks like a lot of fun.

So I'm checking that out for sure.

Lovely.

When that comes out.

And then the big one.

Uh-oh.

Pokemon Legends ZA, of course.

I've already pre-ordered it.

And I'm going to get a mystery plush.

And whatever plush comes is the starter that I'm going to pick.

Oh, I love it.

So that's pretty exciting for me.

And I'm encouraged by the performance of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet on the Switch 2, just from the Switch 1

version of the game.

That's the only one that exists.

Runs better on Switch 2.

So I'm hopeful that the Switch 2 version of Pokemon ZA

is going to be looking real nice and performing nice.

You know, as somebody still deeply addicted to Pokemon the card game Pocket,

part of me wonders if I might...

I might dip in a ZA.

I would love, the more the merrier.

I would love to be able to battle with and trade with you got a trubbish sticker right there I got a trubbish sticker right here in hand and I love my boy that's right

and I wonder if there'll be a card event within the game to tie in with the new Pokemon coming out could be that could be interesting could be

but that's kind of yeah that's kind of it for me for for October and then the rest of the ones are sort of TBD 2025.

I'll give a quick shout out to a game I expected you to to mention Matt especially because ninjas are back

yeah I know you played ninja guide and 2 Black, which was a surprise announcement.

They also announced at the same time Ninja Gaiden 4, which is coming out, I believe it has an October 21st release date as penciled in.

Yeah, October 21st.

And I am

Tim Ninja, Platinum Games, Collab.

I just, those, those games, the...

Yeah, I played 2D games back in the game.

The 3D games, very, very, very fun and challenging.

And I just, I hope this is a modern version of that.

It's like more of an action-combat game as opposed to, you know, the sort of like 3d character action thing.

I'm sorry, rather,

as part of something that's like a little bit more expansive.

I hope it is a little bit more limited and action-focused in scope.

I should get back to Ninja Gaiden 2 Black because it's so fucking good and it looks great.

And the new one, Ninja Gaiden 4, looks fucking fantastic.

It looks really, really fun.

It looks like it has more of a...

a futuristic slant too, which is kind of interesting.

The rest of the year has a few games and I'm just going to speed through these because Vampire the Masquerades Bloodlines 2,

as Heather mentioned, I kind of feel like

that's going to be pushed into 2026, but that may be just me thinking about the original game and

the state it shipped in and then just wanting to make sure that

everything is buttoned up before it's officially released.

And it's been postponed.

But I do think Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, which right now just has a 2025 release date, will be released this year.

I do think that is going to happen around the holidays.

I think so too.

I also think Hades 2, especially after messing around with the version that came on their the most recent update, I forget what it was called, but it was such a major update.

They gave it some sort of, some sort of name.

I think it's going to officially merge from early access, and that could be

another challenger for the game of the year.

Slay the Spire 2.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, look, look, going to be very much my shit.

Could ruin my life.

I do think that will come out this year.

Wolf Among Us 2, I'm also just like a little bit, that's another one where it's just like the release date has been so ambiguous, and I figure I want to get that game right.

And I love Wolf Among Us 1.

It's such an awesome game that I'm excited for the sequel.

But I think it's going to come out in 2026, and I hope they take all the time they need.

Some ones that I'm looking forward to, everybody's golf hotshots.

Okay.

I really liked Hotshots Golf on the PlayStation 2, specifically Hotshots Golf 4, F-O-R-E.

Yeah.

And I'm not even like a golf guy, but I've kind of it's been coming up a little bit more in my life, yeah.

And like, some friends are starting to like get into it.

I was like, should I become like a golf guy?

I love golf.

Do we golf?

Let's golf.

Let's go.

Everybody, hey, everybody's golf.

Hey, if you love golf, I have an anime for you.

Oh, yeah.

Help.

I woke up as a golf ball

and I've lived 1,000 years.

And my dad is a washing machine.

Over-leveled golf ball life.

Help, I'm a level 99 golf ball.

This is TVMA.

Yeah.

Jesus

fucked this.

The golf ball has a visible dick.

So I'm interested in that.

Look, I'm playing Hollow Knight right now.

Hollow Knight Silk Song coming out this year.

It's been promised forever.

I don't think it's coming out this year.

You don't think so?

It's been, I mean, that's a game that just like, I feel like that's been teased for

five years now.

I feel like they keep talking about Silk Song.

I feel like that's just a.

I feel like they like have said, like, I mean, here's the thing.

You could just say something.

Sure.

But I feel like I've heard like definitively that it's coming out in 2025.

And I'd love to, I look.

Would I love a delay?

Because am I confident that I'm going to finish it this year?

Who could say?

Well, I'd like to, I'd like to finish it before

Silk silksong comes out um i'm but i'm interested in that and marvel cosmic invasion the 2d

um like side-scrolling marvel beat-em-up that they they showed at a some event uh one of you know one of the year's events looks cool looks like it looks like it could be a cool game and then There's this sort of like cyberpunky game that I've had on my radar for like four years that's supposedly coming out this year, but it's been delayed like twice called Replaced.

Okay.

And And I just, I just wanted to shout it out because I think it looks really cool,

but I just don't, I don't know if it's coming out this year.

But I would like it to because I want to play it.

I've had it on my wish list for, I think, yeah, like four years.

Just still, even with what you were saying, Heather, just like

things are being delayed or held back because they were worried about Grand Theft Auto VI, which of course now isn't coming out this year.

It's too much fucking shit.

I gotta stop.

I just, I gotta stop doing other stuff.

There's too much shit.

I'm gonna

play these fucking games.

That's why I sort of have other things I gotta do.

I sort of had given up.

Like, there's no, no more books.

I'm not doing any of that.

Like, games and, like, movies and, like, maybe, like, a new, like, sauce.

Yeah.

Volunteering, that's out.

That's out.

Voting, that's out.

Voting's out.

Well, they won't let us.

But,

like, they took that.

Gosh, being neighborly.

Yeah.

Forget that.

No time for that shit.

No, no way.

Yeah, we got to hole up in our uh below-ground shelters and get deliveries

you know for some reason the the the

the little the shelters in the first game seemed sadder to me for some reason they did but in this one i'm sort of like it seems kind of nice yeah i think i could fuck with having a shelter like this that's kind of far away from everybody

i i think that's also just like a nod to everything is improving You know, it's kind of the state you're in and Death Stranding too, is like things are in the process of being rebuilt.

New infrastructure is coming online.

Yeah, it is.

I'm with you.

There's like a coziness to it where it was more sterile in the first game.

Yeah, like your shower and toilets, not in your bedroom.

Right.

That's like a big upgrade.

I do miss the advertising, though.

Yeah, I do too.

I want to hear about Norman Reedis' motorcycle show.

Well, I'm dropping a deuce.

And then that like big mascot that they put in there, too.

I was like, who is that?

I have no information about what that is.

I'll never investigate it either.

I'll just be like confused by that for the rest of my life.

As I'm taking my final breaths, I'll be like, what the fuck was that?

Who is that guy?

Shall we do a segment?

Let's do it.

Let's do a segment.

Hey, I got a new segment.

With all the casting announcements of the new Street Fighter movie, we thought we could wish cast another video game IP.

and a new segment we're calling Segma Dreamcast.

Segma being short for Segment.

So this is Segma Dreamcast.

Street Fighter, of course.

Yeah, I like that you just immediately were like, I have to get ahead of this and I have to explain what Segma is.

If I call it Segment Dreamcast, it doesn't sound enough like Sega.

Well, what if you just said Segment Dreamcast?

Oh, fuck, that's good.

That's pretty good.

What just an alt.

Segma.

Oh, God.

I do have to say, Segma sounds bad.

Yeah,

it sounds disgusting.

So I thought, Street Fighter, big Capcom IP.

Why don't we pivot to another Capcom IP that is yet to be adapted into a live-action feature film?

We're doing Mega Man, aka Rockman.

This is actually good because I do think, I think I've said this on the show yeah

they're not doing enough with mega man mega man should have the visibility that sonic has yes where like there should be tv shows there should be movies of mega man

and at the very least new mega man games as well um so this is actually very exciting um

gosh who who who would you even who could even portray the blue bomber himself so um i have a bit of a disclosure here which is that i don't know a lot of actors.

I'm not good with actors.

I don't know them.

So, I'll do my best to participate in this segment, but um,

but I might be a little short.

Uh, my list might be a little short.

Okay, RC, if you got any pitches on based on likeness, feel free to chime in as well.

Y'all are just going, yeah, vibe alone.

I will, I do actually have a pitch for Mega Man.

That's the longest list of child actors I've ever seen, Nick.

Handwritten,

why is it handwritten?

I don't know Mega Man's canonical age, but he reads as young to me, right?

Like he feels like a boy.

He feels like Astro Boy.

And there's a film that came out this year, which I loved and

is really effective and is centered on a child actor.

The film is 28 years later.

Oh.

And the actor is

Alfie Williams.

And this is, I think, this movie is Alfie Williams' third credit.

So he is very much at the start of his career.

But I just feel like he's got so much charisma and he just displays such an incredible emotional range.

And 28 years later, I think he'd be a good Mega Man.

That's a good, that's really good, Nick.

Who's laughing at the handwritten list now?

I didn't handwrite it because I came to fucking play.

All right.

I came to win.

That's a really good pitch.

And certainly,

I would imagine that Mega Man does skew a little bit younger in age.

So they're going to want somebody young so they could have him for a few pictures.

How old is this guy?

How old is Mega Man?

How old is Mega Man?

I'm going to look it up.

31.

His name is not Mega Boy, is it?

It's Mega Man.

I had a pitch for who Mega Man would be.

Or have we already settled on?

No, no, no, please.

We can pay.

We don't have to make an official decision.

We just

mine was from the series Adolescence on Netflix.

Yeah.

The young man Owen Cooper.

Because I like when

an anime protagonist has a little bit of darkness and they've got to keep that darkness at bay in order to like succeed.

Now, I don't know if you guys saw Adolescence.

It is an extremely disturbing piece of media,

but also extraordinarily acted.

And it's only because of the acting that it is truly disturbing.

Like, otherwise, it would have been like something that people would have just passed over.

But as

a threatening presence,

Owen Cooper is excellent, but he can also play sweet.

Wow.

So, you know,

I like the idea of Mega Man being like, well, you know, I've got to, I've got to go out there and fight.

And then he sees somebody die and he's like, no.

And you're like, oh, shit.

Yeah.

Mega Man's about to go off.

That is really good.

Also, these two boys kind of look the same.

They kind of look the same.

They both look extremely English.

And look, I think these are great pitches, but we have to remember, this is Hollywood, baby.

That's a good point.

This is Hollywood, and we want to get this thing made.

And I just know that whatever...

Whoever's desk this is going across ain't casting some little English kid.

They're going to want a movie star to be Mega Man.

And they're going to go on the younger side of things, but they're going to go for a household name for this.

And you know, they're going Tom Holland, a different English boy.

Tom Holland's a pretty good pitch.

Tom Holland is Mega Man.

Could be.

It's not.

Tom Holland could be Mega Man.

He's been in Uncharted.

He's been in Uncharted.

You could see him in the blue suit is the thing.

Yeah.

He's used to wearing a suit.

And I know it's like, it's, you know, he's obviously Spider-Man, so there's a lot of baggage with that.

But he is a man.

He is a man.

So if you want to go man, lean to the man side of Mega Man.

Yes.

It's not, I don't think it's like, it's, it's, it's a basic pitch.

It's a, it's a studio safe pitch.

Right.

But it's not a bad one.

Can I make one more pitch?

Yeah.

Make a Jack Black.

Yeah, I mean, no,

I think we could, I think we could get Jack Black in here and we can get him in later.

Okay, great, great.

I just want to say before we move off, Owen Cooper, that his most recent promo photos,

he looks like Mega Man.

He's got the same haircut.

Yeah, he does.

A little tuft in the middle.

Yeah.

Makes him look like Mega Man.

All right, let's move on.

Imagine Jack Black with his arm cannon.

I was going to say.

It'd be very funny.

All right, we got Roll.

Roll is Mega Man's sister.

Now, I'm not sure if Roll would factor into the Mega Man first Mega Man film, but I feel like there's a chance that she might.

I got one.

Yeah.

And this is going, so I'm sort of casting the movie as starring Tom Holland.

Okay.

So you don't necessarily always have to then, you know, keep in with your casting, but this is what I think.

If they're going for Tom Holland for Mega Man, they're going to also go for an equally big star for Roll.

Okay.

But they're going to think outside the box.

They're not going with necessarily somebody who's known as an actor first.

They've done acting, but they're not an actor first.

Okay.

Ladies and gentlemen, as role in the Mega Man movie, Sabrina Carpenter.

Wow.

That would have

been,

I think if they were going to make it a meaty character,

that would make some sense.

Jesus, Matt, have you just cracked it wide open?

I kind of look.

Unfortunately, I think like a suit, baby.

I just think it's not a bad idea if they're going to go with this age range, I think.

And she's popular.

I'm kind of thinking,

I'm just, I'm drawing on

bad ideas I've heard in my life.

Do I hate the game we're playing right now, or do I love it?

It's really fun.

I'm having a great time.

Sabrina Carpenter could be good.

If they want to make it a big, if they want to give her a lot to do, certainly.

Yeah, you know, the other.

Maybe she write the song for the movie.

Mega Man song.

I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

The other actor I'm thinking of is,

you know, and there's been some studio films, a former child actor.

But I feel like Kiernan Shipka also is kind of like in that role wheelhouse if you're going to skew to an actor in their 20s.

That's really good.

And has been doing great work recently.

I mean, the last thing I think I saw her in was Red One.

Oh, well, she was.

Oh, and she was in Twister briefly, Twisters briefly,

I mean, very good actor, and in Longlegs, she was great as well.

Oh, she was good in Long Legs, yeah.

And now, here's the thing: the, the, the thing, I don't actually, I was trying to think of like, hey, if it's going to be a kid, who would it be?

Yeah, but I'm having trouble pulling like child actresses,

yeah, that's okay.

Um, I, you know what?

Because, like, Kiernan Chipika could be Mega Man's older sister, is the thing, yeah, too.

Doesn't necessarily, they don't have to be yeah, Roll doesn't have to be younger

let's immediately start compromising the vision of the game that's what i wonder like like what's because the other thing you don't want to alienate the fan base you know the the the movies of the movies here that haven't worked have been

uh you know ones where they just kind of like completely defy the source material or or change it arbitrarily you could do i mean

like

Maybe there's a new kid.

Like if I'm the suit, you know what?

If I'm the suit, I'd be like, what about Millie bobby brown millie bobby brown is a very savvy she's uh she's she's got she's got that stranger things in her she's she's in godzilla you know like yeah what about millie well millie on the board mbb's not a bad call i'm i'm actually i think i have it cracked i think this is one

you put out an open casting call and the actual role is going to be TBD Mystery Kid.

So I put like a question mark and TBD mystery kid because they cast an unknown in that unknown.

And people are like, where did this kid come from?

This kid is this kid is good.

And it's like seeing that kid in other things.

But it's also like,

it's not a thankless role either.

No, no, no.

It's like a real kid's going to have to really be a good actor.

Like the Harry Potter kids.

Like those kids were nobody.

No, it's like, I think this is, I think that's what it's going to be.

I think it's going to be new kid.

Yeah.

So I'm going to say role.

New kid.

New kid.

New kid.

New kid just dropped.

New kid is rolled.

Yeah.

okay i love that new kid uh and then just one more option i think

make a jack black

jack black can't play i mean here's the thing he can play all the characters but we don't have to cast jack black as all the characters yeah but we could he's well yeah well he's here's the thing he's a fucking star i do think he might be the right uh actor for the next role i think so too all right so next up Dr.

Light.

It's really good.

It'd be a good Jack Black.

If it's Jack Jack Black, it's really good.

No, it's Jack Black.

Yeah, Jack.

All right, we're done.

Let's move on.

Jack Black has got to be in all these movies.

Any video game adaptation has got to have a Jack Black.

And he's Dr.

Light in the Mega Man movie.

Is Dr.

Light.

And that's what they'll say

on the poster.

That is.

So Ranch has just put Jack Black's picture over the Dr.

Light image, and it lines up.

Yeah.

Like his beard is the same.

It's fucking weird.

Yeah, that's insane.

Next time I see him walking around my neighborhood, I'm going to tell him you have to be Dr.

Light.

Let's go to the film's antagonist, Dr.

Wiley.

This could also be Jack Wiley.

No, you know,

it worked well in the third Sonic.

It's true.

I think, I actually think

Third Sonic is where you pull the inspiration for this.

I think Dr.

Wiley is Jim Carrey.

You think you'd get James Carrey in here?

I think it's just he's making a Jim Carrey face.

Yeah.

You know, there'd be like winky press where he'd be like, I guess I just play doctors in video game movies now.

Is it too bad?

Here's the thing.

Is it too similar to what he's doing in, because he's playing so big and and broad.

Yeah.

That I like, I wonder if he's, if it would be just like too, too much like just remind us of Sonic.

Okay, well, the pictures that Ranch is sourcing for this are very funny.

Yeah.

But I mean, it would be good.

Yeah, like, I wouldn't, it's not going to deter me from seeing it if Jim Carrey is Dr.

Wiley.

I think.

Fuck, I thought of a good, another good Dr.

Light, but we don't have to go back.

John Goodman?

No.

Stephen McKinley Henderson.

He's a He's a Thufer Hawit and Dune.

He's one of those that guy actors who you've seen as a character actor in a million things.

Yeah.

But he has

such gravity and such presence that you could totally see him pulling off like the kindly sort of Dr.

Light sort of.

Well,

if he's Dr.

Light, then you have Jack Black as Dr.

Wiley.

Then Jack Black is not available for Dr.

Wiley.

Yeah.

I can also see, gosh, like, I feel like you get somebody in there that wants to stretch a little bit.

yeah sure and like you get like

if we're if i'm casting the movie and it's tom holland i didn't have a populist uh pick for doctor uh or dr light i guess we went with jack black i suppose uh but dr wiley you get somebody who doesn't necessarily do this you do like i think you might go momoa he could be so broad

He plays very, he's like very goofy.

What about like a deeply tortured Paul Giamatti?

Fuck, Giamatti.

Giamatti's great.

I think Giamatti's it.

I think cracked it.

Put my hands up.

I have to say this one.

Okay.

Willem Dafoe.

Dafoe would be great too.

Dafoe would be pretty good.

I think that's the right ballpark.

Playing it as a genuine heavy as opposed to like the goofball energy that Carrie brings to Robotnik.

Dafoe with his distractingly long penis.

Well, that won't come up in this PG children's movie.

But you sort of know about it.

You just know about it.

It's like the baggage you have with him as an actor.

Well, that's just like something for mom and dad.

There's a there's this um statistic that I read, and I think that one of those like internet web comics about how every day, if if you, if when you're zero, you don't, you haven't learned anything, and by the time you're 30, you've learned like 100% of the things.

Yeah.

Then every day there are 10,000 people by statistically who are learning about something for the first time, right?

Somebody listening to this podcast is like, wait, what?

They are today's 10,000.

Yes.

And it's Willem Dafoe has an enormous penis,

a penis so problematic that it fell out of his costume

during the last temptation of Christ.

A penis so large that they had to get a different person to play his penis in the beginning of Antichrist.

That's right.

Because his penis was so big that they were like, nobody will believe this.

This can't be true.

Dafoe as Wiley is good.

I can really see it.

He's got the sort of long face to go with it.

Yep.

And Dr.

Wiley has kind of a green goblin mask as a face currently.

Yeah, it's true.

Who's next?

All right, let's skip ahead.

Let's go to the end.

And the last one we have is

Proto-Man.

And I vision Proto-Man in the Mega Man movie, in the first Mega Man movie, as like the mid-credits or post-credits tease.

Like, holy shit, it's Proto-Man.

Proto-Man's here.

So, like, someone who can make a splash,

but also someone who could be a big element in the second movie.

Give it to Michael B.

Jordan.

That's fun.

Is he too big now?

To be proto-man?

Imagine how if, okay, like, hold on a second.

Let's say that, that we cast one of those little British kids

as like Mega Man, and then the mid-credits fucking Michael B.

Jordan shows up as proto-man.

You'd be like, oh my God.

What is the next movie going to be?

Yeah.

That adult is going to kill that child.

Because you can't put like new kid in here.

It's got to be something that.

Wait, I thought Proto-Man was his ally.

He is.

Oh, okay, great.

Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can't.

Oh, yeah.

So

you have to stunt cat.

Proto-Man's got like that sort of weird, like, is he.

You know what?

It's kind of a Shadow the Hedgehog.

It's like, is he on his side or not?

Ultimately, he is, but there's times where he's like, he's kind of a rival as much as

someone who's working with him.

You go.

I mean, gosh, there's so many.

Do you go Glenn Powell?

Does Glenn Powell sign on to be a mid-credits tease?

What are you going to mean?

Glenn Powell is proto-man?

I don't know.

I'm just spitballing here.

I'm tired now.

I'm looking at him.

It doesn't work.

It's not as good as Tom Holland as Mega Man, certainly.

You know what I think you could do is like if Tom Holland could be the guy who ends up as, if he's not Mega Man, maybe he ends up as Proto-Man.

Maybe that's the reveal.

That could be cool.

Oh, okay.

There you go.

Let's get an enemy.

I want one of the, the, the the the bad man let's do one robot master i mean we got dr wily cast but like let's say we got what we got one robot master uh we got uh we got a lek man we got fireman we got bomb man we got ice man we got guts man

um we got cut man uh who do we want to go with guts man is a big guy cut man's kind of fun because he's like a little guy with like some scissors on his head yeah that's kind of fun you kind of want somebody maybe he's like

That's a that's a stunt cast where he's he's Mega Man makes short work of cut man like pretty easily in the movie.

Well, I mean, if you are going through the standard path, he is the first one you go after with your Mega Buster to accumulate

his weapon that you subsequently use to take down the next bosses in sequence to control Masters Express.

You get an actor who's going to have a lot of fun, but you're only going to have for like a day, right?

Yeah.

I have a pitch, Chuck Tingle.

Chuck Tingle as Cut Man?

No.

One little cameo.

For who?

For me.

he wears the he wears a mask he hides his identity yeah he's he knows how to be act in a suit i i would like to pitch somebody else who's who's often acting inside of a mask yeah um

because you would it what it would set up is kind of like in those 90s move 90s movies where you would have like a major actor and that they would die like almost immediately or like the other guys you know yes um

what if cutman was adam driver

so you're like oh shit, this is going to be a big fight.

And then Mega Man just cuts through him immediately.

Because, yeah, Driver has

the gravitas to read as a heavy for sure.

Yeah, you'd be like, oh, no, the first one is that guy?

Yeah.

And then Mega Man dispenses with him, disposes of him very quickly.

And then you're like, oh, oh, Mega Man might be good.

I have a radical pitch as well.

Yeah.

I think Driver might be a good Dr.

Wiley.

Kind of fun.

A A little bit younger, but it's kind of a fun way to go.

Like, I think

he could do it.

I think he could do it.

Our Dr.

Wiley page is awesome.

The Dr.

Wiley page is in a studio exec's office right now.

100%.

My Steve McGilli-Anderson pitch, by the way, was for Dr.

Light.

Okay, not Dr.

Wiley.

He's too gentle to be that easy.

He's too gentle.

I would love to see it.

Yeah.

I mean, he could pull it off.

Yeah, he's in a range.

look his shirt lines up kind of works what the fuck

i was ranching doing this

okay actually my casting choices uh ranch as cutman

uh all right i think we solved it we did it great i can't wait to see this movie yeah well one more cut man pitch kid cuddy it's right there kid cuddy okay

Honestly,

he would be pretty good.

He would have a lot of fun with it.

He was great in trap.

A good actor.

He's good.

Yeah, he can play big.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Kid Cuddy is Cutman.

Then they can just have a lot of fun with that in the press tour.

James Kid Cuddy, you're playing Cutman.

I can see the man.

If this was

15 years ago and this movie was coming out in the funnier die era, it's Cuddy, not Cudty.

That's the video.

I have.

it for $150.

I have a

diet, Dr.

Pepper.

I have a pitch for Cutman.

Yeah,

you know how sometimes you'll hear the

casting announcement for like Street Fighter the movie or whatever, and you'll be like,

What?

Yeah, you know, you'll you kind of like are like, That I don't even know how that works.

So, my pitch for Cutman is Jeremy Allen White from the Bear.

Yeah, because that makes about as much sense as him playing like Zorba the Hut Sun or whatever the fuck.

Great, I love it.

And if you look at his muscles, he is a cut man.

Wow.

Wow.

That's our show.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen Ranch.

Yard underscore underscore sard.

I could have been the lowest of the low.

Rochelle, are you back to streaming?

Yeah.

Awesome.

Still on Silent Hill, too.

How's it going?

It's fun.

I really like it.

Twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore sard to watch along.

Your music is by BenPrunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

Get Played Merch, kinshipgoods.com.

Link in the show description.

Also, check out Get Animated, our sister show on Patreon.

Matt, what's this week?

This week, we're watching Dandadan the Evil Eye, the film that was in theaters.

That is the first three episodes of the newest season of Dandadan, which is, I think, out now.

Very fun show.

Really enjoyed the first season.

Very fun to talk about the movie and looking forward to the second season proper.

Let's go, Dan-ta-Dan.

Dan-ta-da, dan-ta-dan.

Dan-ta-dan, dan-ta-dan, dan-ta-dan.

And

you know who got played?

All the games that are coming out.

But that's future.

It's like that's future in the future.

It doesn't really make sense to be using past tense and say they got played because they're going to get, I guess they're going to get played.

I'm Sam.

I got played too.

That was a hit gun podcast.