75: Expedition 33 and The Mt. Dew Conspiracy

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Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

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It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

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Let it begin.

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It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast, without a doubt.

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Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to get out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So, give them a follow, number one, geek podcast without a doubt.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Geekenders.

I look like I'm

crying, fake crying.

That's because you were rubbing your eyes.

No, no, you were real crying.

I was really crying because I'm an actor.

And I brought that energy into the show today, unfortunately.

The negative, sad energy of a good cry?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What about the positive

reflections?

The release of a good cry, you know?

So true.

So true.

I'm known for my very good cries.

I love having them.

You love a good cry?

No.

If you felt like, God, I really just need to cry, I think I'd feel a lot better.

What would you do?

Like, is there something that you would watch,

or no?

What's something that makes you feel emoche?

I think I fall completely in line of men's stereotypes when it comes to emotions and media.

So, like, you know, it's really hard to unlock that.

Like, there's some things where it's very clear that it's sad, especially when I'm with people in a room and they're like,

oh my God, right?

But for the most part,

I don't, I'm like, wow, that was, that was so sad.

Like, that's where I'm at.

There's a few times, though.

Wow.

Again, going to the idea of, you know, just guy memes, there's moments where you get hit with like,

hell yeah.

And that is all a great, I think every, every man who ever existed.

Yeah.

Every man who has ever existed in the history of mandum,

Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, they hear that horn.

Every dude's like,

these mother.

That's right, boys.

That's right.

Every single one.

There is not a guy out there who has not been hit with like an like,

that's it.

Those are my boys.

They rolled up deep.

Yeah, every time.

Like, that kind of stuff always happens.

Yeah.

I'll be like, oh.

Yeah, I think very few times I've like really

really balled my eyes out.

Most of the time I'm like, you know, the water on the, I'm like, it's cool.

Like a great example is you can watch me play Final Fantasy XIV and Walker.

The whole last like two hours of that game is the saddest thing that ever existed.

And the entire time I'm like.

That's really sad, guys.

You know, I'm clearly fighting back the two.

I'm like.

There's one part where an emotional scene happens and immediately they expect you to read afterwards.

It's so funny because I was like, you sons of bitches.

How dare they?

I can't read this line right now.

That's most of the time that's me.

It's I'll get like,

oh, God.

You get choked up.

Yes, frequently.

Yeah.

The one time I genuinely remember really crying in college when my dog died.

That, oh, I was done.

I was done.

That was the first.

My dog died died when i was in college too and my mom had to call me and tell me

yeah that was rough that was rough i will say that uh

it definitely was it was like this sounds like a reddit post but absolutely i was dating a girl at the time and she saw me like break down over my dog and literally was just like i don't know how to feel about you now That genuinely happened.

Yeah.

That was, it was, it was a weird, it was a weird moment.

That does sound like a, like a Reddit post.

Yeah, but I know

I don't know how to feel.

It does happen.

Yeah, well, it's fine.

She was a mess.

And I'm doing great.

So like, I don't get it.

Yeah, it sounds like she sucked.

So whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it definitely was like, that's when I was like, oh no, you're a bad person.

Cause I was.

feeling it.

But that's the only time I've really like, again, that also sounds like a guide meme.

It's like, you know, all like the world could be ending, but the dog's dead.

You're like, oh, God,

but like, I don't know.

For some reason, I think all of my emotional moments are hinged on like

the goodness of a best friend.

Does that make any sense?

Like, just someone's going up deep for you, like, I got you, bro.

I'm like,

yeah,

you got it, Sam.

Ice Gamji, you son of a bitch.

Yeah.

Also, Sam carrying Frodo.

That scene, that always gets me.

I'm like, oh, this man.

He's so good.

He deserves Rosie, dude.

He deserves Rosie.

He deserves to go.

He's a mountain for that girl.

He couldn't ask her out, but now we can.

Because he's got the courage because he carried his boy up a mountain, dude.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

If I watch a commercial wrong, I might cry about it.

So I can't relate, unfortunately.

I think it's it's hilarious when people cry at things that I don't think are sad.

Yeah.

And I, and it's not like I'm laughing at you.

I'm laughing at how it just catches me off guard.

Like, there'll be times when I'm with people and they'll just like start crying.

And I'm like,

what is going on here?

And it isn't that I'm like, you're so weird for crying.

I'm like, I want to know what got you.

And every time it's always sense memory.

It's never the scene got me.

It's,

I saw this thing and it made me think about X and now I'm got and now I'm crying.

That's usually most people when I talk to them, that's how they start doing that.

Like, oh,

he just wants to be hugged.

Have you ever just wanted to be hugged?

And you're like,

what?

So can I give you an insight into like a weird hormonal thing that happens when you're pregnant?

Go on.

So something that happened to me all the time and every time I would panic internally, but have no control over it whatsoever is

I would start laughing.

And if I laughed too hard, I would start sobbing instead.

Amazing.

I love this.

And I hate it.

Just because

I have no idea.

It was like a, it was a weird like mental hormonal thing that would happen where I'd laugh so hard.

I'd be having such a nice time and then suddenly be sobbing.

And I could feel the switch happening and I'd start panicking like I cannot start crying because I knew that from the perspective of whoever I was with, it would be so concerning.

I almost.

And I hate to try to explain.

Like, I'm not crying for any reason.

I'm literally, I laughed so hard that I hit this weird, like peak emotional point where I transitioned into a totally different one.

I think I remember this because you were pregnant at the office.

Yes, I was.

So like,

I think I

remember one of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is amazing.

It's so hard to explain to somebody like,

I'm not upset.

I'm not crying for any reason, but I cannot stop sopping.

So I need to just give

it.

Yeah.

So that's cool.

That's like a really cool thing that happens.

So, out of all of the like, it made me think of it because you were saying, I'm just always curious, like, why someone's crying suddenly.

And sometimes I don't think there's an answer.

Honestly, I'm fine with it.

I like people that are in touch with their emotions.

So, like, it's chill.

Cry your heart out.

However, I will always be like, hold on, what just got you?

What set you off?

Because I don't, I didn't, that didn't happen to me.

And I'm really curious what you're, you know, it's always very fun to just ask yeah I also am a big fan of the

accidentally catching someone crying like if if we're having a conversation and you're crying about something but I don't know because all I hear is you talking to me and then you go I'm like are you crying and you're like no

And I'll be like, wait, hold on, what?

Why?

What happened?

I love that kind of stuff.

I love a good, like, are you crying right now?

What do you mean?

What occurred?

Yeah.

Big fan of that i try to do that with my kid and she does not appreciate

if she's suddenly really upset about a thing and i'm like whoa what just happened where do how did we get here i think because she is in the moment she's like shut the fuck up give me a second you know

so

yeah

I was watching a,

I guess I didn't think about this with kids, but I was watching some guy's either TikTok or YouTube short or something, where he was talking about his three-year-old.

And now his three-year-old will do like the most insane things, like say,

Daddy, look at me.

I completed this puzzle.

And he'd be like, wow, good job, buddy.

He goes, shut up.

He's like,

what do I,

what do I say to my kid?

Like, what do I do to my kid?

I tried to be a good dad.

He just told me to shut up.

It's so hard to figure out what's going on up there.

Some kids like don't want to be perceived at all.

Like, they don't want you to acknowledge the bad or the good because it, like,

it changed how it changes how they're experiencing it, you know?

Sure, sure, sure.

So, sometimes they want you to be there, but they don't want you to comment on it at all.

It's rough.

I mean, yeah, I get that.

I absolutely, I guess it would be the same thing as I like when mom or dad shows up to my softball game,

but I don't want them to be the parents of the crowd, like, you can do it, baby.

Like, I don't want that.

Yeah.

I understand.

Yeah.

I want the

support.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't need you.

I don't need commentary.

Thanks for showing up.

Love you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I get that.

I've been trying to,

instead of saying,

this is going to sound very like TikTok parent, but instead of saying like,

oh my gosh, I'm really proud of you.

I've tried to start saying, wow, you worked really hard on that.

Are you proud of yourself?

Which is hilarious because I think

we perceive, are you proud of yourself as being sarcastic?

Yes.

I was just thinking that.

I was like, as a kid, I would be like, what do you see?

I bet you're proud of yourself, right?

But like trying to like recontextualize that.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, because I've, as an adult, I feel I sometimes have a hard time

like telling the value of something without somebody else in my life being like, wow, that turned out really good.

You know,

so

I keep trying to be like, well, what do you, what do you think?

Are you happy with it?

Like, are you, are you proud of it?

You know?

But yeah, sometimes when I say stuff out loud, I'm like, did that sound sarcastic?

She doesn't think it's sarcastic.

I think it's sarcastic.

But that's because of

because of the paste, you know?

Yeah, I think most people, when they say, are you proud of yourself?

They mean it in a negative connotation, like, look what you did.

Look what you did.

I hope that you're happy with this thing you've done.

I like to imagine in 20 years when some,

you know, 70-year-old, I assume, millennial will say to your kid, are you proud of yourself?

And she'll be like, yeah, I do great.

Very, actually.

I put a lot of work into that.

Yes, I'm quite proud.

Throw them for the loop.

They'll be like,

what?

My power gone.

Yeah.

Also, it hit me when I said 70 millennial.

And I was like, oh, God, no, that's like, no, that's 30 years.

That'd be 30.

That's a while.

We've got a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be 30.

Yeah, that'd be 30.

I think.

Gen X

would be

20.

15, something like that.

Look, I'm trying to map the numbers of who's 70.

But if you're a millennial,

in 30 years, you'll start to hit that.

The first millennials will be 70, I believe.

Ish.

Oh, my gosh.

We're working on it, dude.

We're getting there.

Yeah.

Let's go.

I'll be happy to have another 30.

I'll be excited.

Yeah.

Those will be the best years of my life, I'm sure.

Socially,

they say that you do this, right?

That like you hit a social peak and then you're just like, you know, vibing being an adult or whatever.

And then slowly you have less and less adult responsibilities, but you're still ancient.

And then you can do this again.

Yep.

What I'm saying is when we're like 70 or 80 years old, I hope that we're still like

going to to dumb movies and, you know, all that, all that sort of good shit.

I saw a video of an old man and his wife, and he had like a tube and was blowing it in her face, and she was like, stop it, stop it.

That's what I crave.

I never, I want to be that old and still a nuisance.

You know?

I don't want to be the old who's like,

Yes, I'll watch news for 15 hours a day.

I want to be the old that has a weird like straw and I'm like

blowing in people's faces the entire time.

Yeah,

I'm like, to turn you into a prankster.

Yeah, I don't want to retire, though.

Uh,

you know, no, I'll just turn it back.

I don't want to like,

oh, I'm still, I want to be a streamer, but I want to be the kind of streamer that like people tune in to see, like, what's this old man playing today?

It's like, today,

playing a game called GoldenEye for Nintendo 64.

Back in the the day, this was the shit.

You kids these days, you don't even know.

Hold on, listen to this theme song.

I'll be like, dash.

Oh my God, the pause menu.

The pause menu slap.

It slap.

Right?

And they'll be like, okay, grandpa.

Calm down.

I'm going to be really curious to see how your accent shifts into that over time.

Yeah, that's because all my teeth came out.

Oh, that's because your teeth is gone.

My teeth is gone.

I replaced them with

candy.

Chiclets.

The future is rough out here.

It's rough in the post-apocalypse.

I'm surprised that they're still streaming after the corporate wars.

It's crazy.

I love the lore that's developing here.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Of course, of course.

Sadly, most of us will die in the front lines of the corporate wars, but the shares will go up, stocks will improve, and your children's children will be able to afford chiclet teeth.

And that's all you need to know.

That's all you need to know.

The future's looking bright.

The future's looking so good, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

Everyone's teeth will be as white as chiclets because they will be chiclets.

The good news is your breath will be fresh.

Because you're always chewing on your teeth.

Every day you just put new ones in.

And then you're like, I need need some gum.

You pop one out and you chew on it, but not too hard because you'll break your chickle teeth.

Oh, so true, all right.

And then you'll be chewing too much gum, and no one wants too much gum because that's going to stick to all your chiclet teeth.

I mean, probably eventually your gummies do like what happens to cats.

Like, I have a my cat, Sherlock, has had no teeth for a really long time, and now his gums are like as hard as rocks.

Yo, so probably eventually you could just chew stuff with gums, you know.

Do you think, do you think, boy, this suddenly became a science question that I don't know you have an answer to.

Yeah.

Do you think that the reason why is because the gums, you know, hang down over the teeth, right?

But if you have no teeth, then the gum sort of would retract up to where the bone is.

Oh, because like having a bunch of gum, you know, gums does nothing.

So the flesh would like,

and then maybe that's why it's harder?

Because I don't know that the gums harden,

but maybe they do.

I don't know.

Speaking of gums,

chickney teeth.

It's so dumb.

It's so dumb.

Oh, goodness gracious.

It has bone loss.

Yeah, okay, but like,

wouldn't I don't know.

I don't know.

Gums are skin.

Skin can harden.

As someone who has skin hardening disease, it gets real hard.

Damn.

Okay.

There you go.

God, you know what?

The gummy skin gets hard.

Yeah.

It's 8.37 a.m., and I'm going to let you know the joke I want to say is not appropriate for 8.37.

We're talking about skin getting hard.

Skin getting hard.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It writes itself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We all know what I was going to say.

We all know what I wanted to say there.

Yeah,

plop the joke in yourself, dear listener.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have been.

My mom could be watching.

I don't want to.

Come on.

I've been studying for one of my immigration tests.

Oh, boy.

And I got to tell you.

So you have to learn British history?

I do.

I have to learn a lot about English history.

I have to learn a lot about athletes and actors, and basically anyone, anyone culturally that

the United Kingdom thinks is important.

I've had to learn things about like

who is the patron saint of each of the countries of the United Kingdom and what is their state flower or country flower or you know, just stuff like that.

It's it's such a wide variety of stuff.

yeah.

So, I'm currently

trying to learn it.

Do you have to memorize anything?

Like, I know in the United States, there's a lot to memorize, you have to memorize, like, it's not like list the 50 states, there's nothing like that.

I don't think there's an equivalent there, but it is, it, there are like on the practice exams, there are like tricky ones.

Like,

in what year

could

women 30 and over

vote?

And the reason that it's tricky is because there's three different, they slowly trickled out ages of women that could vote.

So there's three different dates corresponding to three different ages of women being able to vote in the United Kingdom.

And so you're like, oh my God,

which one was

30?

Which one was 30?

And my favorite one that I found out is that the year when dudes that were just like related to a lord or somebody, the year when those dudes couldn't just walk in and start making choices for everybody.

When do you think that was?

Probably like 1981.

1999

was when they stopped letting

just like Duke's sons walk in and be like, I think.

That sounds right.

I mean,

they still controlled Hong Kong until 1999, right?

Like that was, you know, they still, they still ran Hong Kong.

So

I get it.

I'm, it's, it's, uh, I was just thinking about this while you were talking about women voting, where it's like, yeah,

it's 2025.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that, like, you know, America, well, I don't know if that's the case now,

but for the most part, people are in the impression that like a lot of Americans are very, you know, like progressive in their ideas of voting and that kind of.

That's like 100 years old.

Like, that's, that's, you know, that's a, that's a grandmother's, great-grandmother's worth of existence right that uh you even you even have a vote so it's just wild to me yeah i i always think about the the uh

the images of like

when they integrated schools and there are those kids like screaming and throwing stuff and it's like yeah no those people are still alive yeah that shit that didn't just

that long ago yeah like just because it's black and white doesn't mean it was 1826 that Yeah.

Literally, those dudes are still alive and living.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's wild.

I always think about that because everyone's like, the world's so confusing.

And it's like, well, it's been that way for a while, guys.

Yeah.

It makes me wonder,

test-wise, sorry.

It's made me wonder because

I have to learn specifics about

differences in how court is run between Scotland and England and Wales.

Whigs.

Right?

It's the Whigs.

The Whigs are the wig sizes.

Yeah.

Wig colors.

Yeah.

But like there are these little things about like each country where I have to know the difference.

And it made me wonder, like, God, when people go in to do these, like the equivalent of this test for American citizenship, are they having to remember intricacies about each state?

God, I hope not.

I don't know if it's about each state, but I know that nationally, there's a lot of like

I think you have to memorize the pledge.

You probably have to know either the Star-Spangled Banner or my country tis of the like that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

You probably have to know state capitals.

You would have to know, you know, be able to at least point out things on a map.

You also have to know the Constitution.

And the Declaration of Independence.

Like,

basically, American citizenship is like, imagine every trope of America.

That's it.

Like, the things Americans think about when they think about America, that's it.

Except most people

attempting to become American citizens, they straight up just like,

by the end, no more than I would say 99% of actual born American citizens.

So last night, I had...

Two lovely friends, Dave and Benji, were in a voice chat with me and a couple of other people while I was doing some practice tests.

And they were saying the exact same thing.

Like, if you actually are able to crush this test and you know all of this stuff, you know more than most

British citizens.

Like

the sort of stuff that they make you memorize.

Yeah, it's so wild.

But

I mean, you would think normal education would do that.

But

again, I think it's the difference between

high school and college compared to being a citizen and then being someone who wants to become a citizen, where, you know, in high school, there are classes you must take because you must take them.

Yeah.

In college, the vast majority of classes you're taking, you're taking because you want to be in that class and you care more.

And so you do better because it's important to you.

And I think that's the same case with, you know, people who are immigrating into a country.

They want to be there, clearly.

So they're going to work harder than compared to like

a born citizen who's just, you know, they have it.

Right.

You know, in high school, everyone takes for granted the fact that most high schools are actively trying to push you out.

So you just got to

slide by and you'll be fine.

And I think that's the difference, really.

I also found out, fun fact, if at some point I decide to become a citizen of the United Kingdom,

part of becoming a citizen is you have to swear fealty to the crown.

Queen or king?

Yeah.

You know what?

It's

so funny.

It was on one of the practice tests.

It was like, do you, must you do this in order to be a citizen?

I was like, surely not.

You do.

I must stress to you,

part of me really wants to like

apply for the citizenship.

And on the day, dress in an American flag suit and kneel down and be like,

no.

And like, walk out.

You have to be here 10 years in order to apply for that now.

So, oh, I do it.

So, if you want to come over for a 10-year bid,

we've got red.

I'd do 10 years, and then at the end, it'd be like,

no.

And then in the background, Eagles with

America.

Yeah, yeah.

I'd walk out of there proudly.

It'd be great.

Like, you wasted 10 years of your life for this.

It's worth it.

Declaring independence.

Yeah.

I walk down the Thames, start tossing in tea bags.

I'm like, we're done.

Let's go home.

Finally, Jesse, the children miss you.

I started a whole life.

I have a wife and family.

I've got a job.

And I'm like, peace, assholes.

And I just leave.

Come back to the States.

Like, those guys, I don't even care about any of them.

Yeah.

It was all about the bit.

And then, yeah.

And then you can write a book called It Was All for the Bit, My 10 Years in England.

Yeah.

I have to write the book because I owe all the child support.

So much child support.

Most

about the family.

It's going to get critically panned because so much of the book is gonna be about your interpersonal life with your wife and children that you left behind.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah.

I try to play it off like it was nothing.

Like, I found this idiot family.

Yeah, but you keep derailing for like a hundred pages about something your wife did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everyone's like, no,

she could not stay on track.

God, she would always just like leave her dishes in the sink.

And I'll be honest, that's when I knew I was in for the bit.

Yeah.

Anyway, wish me luck.

You don't need luck.

You're going to nail this.

Thanks, buddy.

You got this.

Fingy.

If there's anyone I know who will study harder than she probably should, it'll be you.

And I already know this because you literally got in a chat with a bunch of people and had them like talk you through it.

It was so helpful.

I wouldn't have done that.

To have two England boys be like, well,

I think this is how our government works.

And I was like, nice.

Go on.

My favorite part was it was very obvious that a lot of this stuff was learned in like the equivalent of high school, right?

Because so often there would be a question and one of them would go, I don't think I know this.

And then there would be a pause and I'd go, wait, no,

there was a mnemonic device that we used to use in school for this, for the tests.

Yeah.

I was like, there always is.

There always is.

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's, that's great.

I would honestly like to take the test just to take it to see how much I know.

Bro, I will send you, I'll send you a mock exam because

I would love to take it.

Yeah.

I would be really, since you're a history boy, I'd be very curious to see how much of it you could nail.

I also just want to know what they think is important to know to be a citizen of the

UK.

Some of the questions on the mock exams are, what is the significance of February 14th?

I would immediately think trick question.

The answer is,

it's Valentine's Day.

I would have been like, oh, it's Lord

Upper West Hammington's birthday.

One of the questions on one of the mock exams was,

What are the two animals most beloved as pets in England?

Cats and dogs?

Yeah.

Congratulations.

You know what?

Like, these are some of the questions of like.

Oh,

I think the reason why is

we, so there's like,

we're from a crazy family I like to call England babies.

Yeah.

Think of it like the Muppet Bibbies theme, but it's England babies.

Yeah.

Where there's England.

There's the mommy.

Sure.

And she had three crazy kids.

There's Canada.

Yep.

That's kind of the nerdy kid.

Kind of like the, you know, like, I just want to stay out of trouble.

Then there's America.

That's the asshole kid.

That kid.

That kid just full of himself.

Just up his own butt.

And then

there's Australia.

And that's the youngest child who literally just,

even though I guess technically not the youngest, that's the youngest child who literally has no supervision, does whatever they want to do, burnt down, I think, the tree house last year.

Yeah, that kid's crazy.

That kid was put in the closet too many times.

That kid's out of control, right?

And

those are the three children.

And

I think because we're so close to them

and, you know, like cultural norms, that when we hear what is the 14th, we think Valentine's Day, surely.

But I, that's such a like Western view.

Like, when you say, what are your the big animals, cats and dogs?

I can imagine that there's other places around the world where that would not be the case.

Sure.

And so this is trying to get people from those places in the world to like, but yeah, when we say it, we're just like,

what?

What kind of question is this?

Yeah, that's absolutely fair.

I'm looking at it from a very Western and specifically American point of view.

Of like, aren't some of these like

oddly obvious?

But they wouldn't be, depending on where you're from culturally, I guess.

Yeah, I definitely think that it's

very interesting.

Yeah, again, I want to see what's on this test because I'd be very curious to see, you know, again, what they think is the most important things to know to be a citizen.

Yeah.

And then honestly, I'd like to compare it to the American one because I imagine the American American one is as silly as I think it would be.

You know, like, uh...

Yeah, I don't know, dude.

Like, in my mind on the American test, it's like,

this is the American flag.

Do these colors run?

You know, like, that kind of question.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that I still don't fully understand that I feel like I need to just like

actually

read about like the difference between the Commonwealth and the dependents

that there are like there are all of these places that are associated with the United Kingdom in some way.

Yeah.

Like the Commonwealth games, right?

Like, yeah.

Sure.

No, I was about to say you just, what I just said, you were like, I don't know what you mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

so yeah, that's that sort of stuff I need to figure out.

But

okay.

I'm just hoping I luck out and they ask me a bunch of theater questions.

That would be great.

Because they've got a bunch of those on there.

What is what is the is it like, what's the longest running show in the West End?

Is that a good show?

No, it'll be like, which of these plays was written by William Shakespeare?

You know,

it's that sort of stuff.

The real thing, the real test would be, all of them are William Shakespeare plays, but the answer is

William Shakespeare was a name that we don't really know who to associate with as the author.

Like, that would be the baller answer.

Like, who was William Shakespeare?

Oh,

one of the things that they really like to do with

Churchill,

they like to do like, which of these quotes was said by Churchill?

And of course, the answer is all of them.

And they're all just like, it's just like a bunch of people.

Hell yeah.

That's a good one.

That's a functional quotes.

Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

And that is the same vibe as I remember when I took my LA driving test, there was a question that was like,

you're driving down the road.

And you see a stop sign ahead of you, but a kid runs out into the street.

What do you do?

And I'm like, well, obviously you would stop, right?

Because the stop sign.

And they were like, wrong.

The kid ran out before the stop sign.

And I'm like, okay.

Run over the kid.

What do you want me to do?

Run over the kid?

And they're like,

the kid ran out before the stop sign.

So what are you going to do?

I was like, well, still stop.

But I think they assumed that I meant stop at the stop sign, which meant run the kid over.

I was like, no, I would stop.

I was like, what the hell kind of question is this?

And they were like,

we're going to mark that one as wrong.

I'm like,

what do you mean?

I was so confused.

It's the one I got wrong.

And I still to this day don't understand what the right answer would have been.

I hate that.

Sometimes it's just tricky language, isn't it?

Yeah, it's just language.

I'm like, what do you

still, you would stop in both situations.

I don't know what they wanted me to say.

The only thing I think of is speed up.

Like, maybe drive faster so you pass the kid before the kid gets a curve.

Like, it's a math equation.

You got to get past the kid.

Like, what the hell?

Oh, my God.

I don't know.

I don't know what the answer was.

You're supposed to honk and

put your middle finger out the window.

Be like, get out of the road.

And then you stop at the stop sign.

Now, that sounds like an LA answer.

That sounds exactly like what somebody in LA would do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The amount of times random dudes have just yelled at me, and I'm like, dude, I'm stuck in traffic.

What do you want from me?

What do you, what, what do you, what you want me to move so you can get in, dude?

I can't move.

It's like, go, go, go, go.

Like,

like, all right, I don't care.

Yeah.

What you've been doing this week?

Rubs hands together.

Yeah.

I have been playing

Black Reliquary

finally, which is a Darkest Dungeon mod.

I feel like just calling it a mod really doesn't give the full scope.

It's like a complete overhaul of the game.

It still looks and feels and plays like Darkest Dungeon, but the setting is different.

Everything that's going on in like your hub world, you're on like a Zeppelin.

And so everything that's happening on the ship and all of the different areas you go to for upgrades and all of that, they're different characters.

The upgrades work different.

And they have overhauled the mechanics a bit in order to

have some different stuff incorporated.

But

I knew a few different people that played this when it first came out.

And they were like, it's amazing, but it is so hard.

Like, it's insanely difficult.

So, I hadn't played it because

I was worried I was going to have a bad time, basically, because Darkest Dungeon is one of those games where, like, I love it.

It's one of my favorite games, probably.

But when you're getting hosed by the RNG a bunch, you stop having a good time pretty quick, right?

Yep.

So I finally was like, you know what?

I'm going to try Black Reliquary.

And it's so good.

It's really, really cool.

It incorporates like all of this new stuff into how you play it.

Really simple stuff.

Like, there's a prep round at the start of every combat now.

So, when you go into combat, you can attack, but with like a huge accuracy dip, the difference between like a 90% chance to hit and a 30% chance to hit, right?

You're encouraged to do more like buffing, debuffing, healing, whatever.

And so, like, different characters will have their abilities adjusted to say what the ability originally said, but then it'll have extra elements to the description having to do with the prep round.

So say a heel that heals an extra 25% if you're healing in the prep round, you know, stuff like that.

It's great.

The art style is fantastic.

The person, I don't know their name, but the person that they got to be the narrator of this mod is fantastic.

Like the vibes feel so completely like Darkest Dungeon.

They just absolutely nailed it.

It's a complete labor of love.

So far, I'm on week 20 and I've had two people die.

So I'm a little sad.

I can't tell if that's good or bad.

Is that

it's not bad, honestly.

You know,

when I'm playing Darkest Dungeon, I try to keep people alive as much as possible.

I feel like I've done a pretty good job considering the difficulty spike of this,

but I'm still sad.

I'm still sad.

I lost two people, but it's great.

It's it's so fun.

I just really take my time.

I've never not believed you more.

What do you mean?

I'm literally like, you just did.

It's so great.

I'm having a lot of fun.

It is great, though.

It is great.

It's just stressful.

That's the game, dude.

Sure, sure, sure.

It's just stressful.

It's so great.

I'm just

really enjoying it.

Dude,

I went into this area and I saw like a weird shiny bell and it was like, the bell longs for the sacred flame.

And I was like, neat, I'll put a torch on it.

And then I got transported to a celestial dimension and had to fight a giant tooth monster.

And

I was very scared.

It's like, god damn it.

I had this planned out so well.

I was ready to leave.

And now there's a tooth man.

Well, you're the one who said, oh, that I should definitely put fire on that thing that is warning me.

What if it just gave me a jemmy or something?

I didn't know it was going to take me to the celestial realm.

I didn't know it was going to happen.

I didn't know it was going to happen.

Now you knew.

Now you learned a lesson.

Yeah.

I got a really good item out of it, so it's fine.

I just got jump scared.

So it's great.

If you play...

If you've played Darkest Dungeon, it's great.

If you've played Darkest Dungeon.

I'm having a great time.

It's so much fun.

And you really liked it and you'd like to play something totally new that adds some new mechanics and ups the difficulty a little bit.

You should try Black Reliquary.

You literally, you don't have to go into the workshop to find it.

You literally can go onto Steam and type in Black Reliquary and it's like a separate, it pops up just on its own.

That's how big of a mod it is.

So

the mod itself is free, but when you buy it, there's a cost because you're also buying darkest dungeon darkest dungeon yeah because it relies on darkest dungeon to run so i don't i honestly don't know how you're meant to

get it for free and integrate it with darkest dungeon if you already have darkest dungeon i'm not totally sure how to do that i just bit the bullet and bought it because i already loved darkest dungeon and i knew i was probably gonna like this so i didn't okay you know

yeah i would imagine it's it operates like a DLC where you click it on Steam and then it just downloads.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

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

That's like if you and I went to Italy to go see the Pope.

And they're like, have you seen the Pope?

Don't bring the Pope up again.

We can't do this again.

I don't know.

I don't, I don't know.

Yeah.

We can't do it.

Don't bring up the Pope.

Doctor, what do you have against Pope?

Not again.

Pope Bob.

What do you have against Pope?

We Pope Bobbed so hard last week.

Yeah, but what if we

like, you ever thought about becoming a minion?

Like, what if we became the Pope's minions?

We dress in yellow and we like follow him around.

It's like, papa gaina.

Banana.

Yeah.

Mi bella, right?

And we'll just like talk and gibberish, but we'll be the pope's minions.

That would honestly be so fun.

It would be great.

It'd be great.

People are already so mad about this Pope.

Imagine if he had whole ass DreamWorks minions following him around.

Minions, so many minions.

All about

six.

Yeah.

Oh.

Baba Groosh, Baba Guena, Banana, Papaya.

Yeah, that's us.

Yeah.

Follow them around.

I love that.

You're like, we'd have to learn a little bit of Italian so that, so that our sure our version of the minion language was like Italian gibberish.

You know?

Baio, bao, puscetti.

Yeah.

We can do it.

Yeah.

I have faith.

That's all you need for the Pope.

Good night, everybody.

That's

lessons learned.

We did it.

Other than

Black Reliquary, Summer and I played House of Ashes.

Did you ever play House of Ashes?

I don't.

The name sounds familiar, but I don't know.

You both played.

I'm wondering if you've played it with Scary Game Squad.

It sounds familiar.

We might have played a demo.

Let me see.

It's the co-op.

It's by the Until Dawn people.

It's the co-op.

Oh, yes, we 100% did.

I actually, this is my favorite Until Dawn game.

Or Dark Pictures game.

this is my favorite one so we're gonna play it again and restart because oh did you guys die miserably spoilers i guess if you haven't watched us play it yet but i might have death bonused a little too hard

we hit a point we had a point like maybe an hour and a half into the game where

where it obviously is supposed to swap to another perspective but there was was no one to go to because they were all dead.

Sarah's, this reminds me.

This is so funny.

Not this one, but the man of Madan, the one they released.

We got to play it early, and they wanted us to play Scary Game Squad co-op.

And I'm not going to place blame on anyone.

But one of the main characters, literal Sean Ashmore in our playthrough, died trying to get on a boat immediately.

And like the first chapter, dead.

And there are moments when it's so very clear that he's the main character.

Yeah.

And we cut back to nothing.

Like the game, there was no plot after that point.

There was zero.

We were like, what is the story?

Half the things happened.

Don't make sense.

Oh, yeah.

Big mistake on our part to let that guy die.

Ruined the entire experience.

It was very clear.

Everyone in the room was like upset that the guy was dead.

We all wanted to restart because we were like, This barely a game now.

There's a character in House of Ashes that you can potentially have a scene where you are like desperately trying to keep this guy alive.

And we managed to keep him alive.

We were like, all right.

There was somebody in chat who was like, oh my gosh, I rarely see people keep this guy alive.

We were like, okay, we're on it now.

Okay.

A bunch of people died back there, but

we're locked in now, right?

Very next scene with that guy, I fucked up a QTE one time and he got folded into a pancake and died.

There is a scene in that game.

I don't want to spoil spoil it.

Oh, my God.

It's one of those scenes where it's like

you very clearly should have won, but the game is like F you and it sends all the vampire monster things after you.

Yeah.

It's like a five and a half minute Keep Yourself Alive scene.

It sucks ass.

It's so unfun.

I was like, why is this in this game?

I, yeah, I don't remember if we succeeded in that.

Like, it's rough.

Yeah.

But, um, I would be so curious to watch you guys.

So wait.

So the way that you guys played it, you were couch co-op, right?

So you were just like passing.

Only Man of Medan.

After that, we realized never again.

Giving the controller to one person is and having them learn to play over time is so much better than handing it off to different people and everyone jumping in at different points because

If you're playing, like if you and I are playing a game, and I hand you the controller and then you die,

I'd be like,

Okay, well, I guess I'll take the controller back.

I guess you're just gonna watch anyway now because your character's dead.

So

cool, I guess I'll play.

Somebody just figured it was easier just to everyone play

or not play and just pick one person.

But but I guess my question is more: you saw every scene, though, because you guys were all together while playing it.

What do you mean?

We saw every scene.

Summer and I played it online co-op,

which is buck wild because you watch completely different scenes at the same time.

Interesting.

So I have not seen any of the scenes that Summer played through.

And Summer has not seen any of the scenes that I play through.

We have only seen playing through the same.

Yes.

How does it work?

So they'll have scenes that happen in parallel and then they join you back up.

So that's how the online co-op works.

If you're couch co-op, you just go through each scene in a row.

But if you're online.

Yeah.

If you're online, you're just both playing at the same time.

So we would have scenes where like I was on, you know, at the beginning of the game, I was on a military base, like yucking it up with a bunch of fucking marine dudes.

And meanwhile, Summer was in a scene making out with a guy and talking about her husband that she's cheating on.

And I was like, what are these scenes?

What is happening?

They were happening in parallel, and then they would bring us together and be like, Oh, and now we're in the same scene, and then we'd split up again and then be back in the same scene.

And I kept thinking to myself, Like, I love that.

I think that's so funny that we have no idea what the other person's doing because sometimes, clearly, one of us is having a terrible time, and the other person's just like having a chill conversation.

But I'm sure it's such a different

game experience

to see all of the scenes in a row instead, you know?

Yeah.

It makes better for Couch Co-op, that's for sure.

Sure.

But

if anything, it's just reminding me of when you and I played Dead Space 3.

Yes.

I still to this day think about that hallway where I was under attack by like

50 monsters and you're just standing there.

And I was like, why shoot?

You're like, I don't see anything to shoot.

There's a bunch of

nutcrackers around.

Yeah, not crackers.

That's what it was.

And I was like, they're everywhere.

Oh, you're killing me.

And you were like, just doing a little dance.

It's good, good times.

Literally, I was like, oh my gosh, this dude cannot stop talking about his failed marriage.

Like, shut up, dude.

We get it.

And meanwhile, Summer was like, I need you to stop fucking talking because

I'm fighting for my life over here.

I'm fighting off a vampire.

I was just in like a chill, like walk around and find stuff convo

while the other person is in like QTE hell.

It's like surely this feels there's a disjointedness here.

I realize now I just saw in chat I'm in a river of blood and I absolutely know the scene.

I vividly remember that scene, which is even funnier.

Like I just know exactly where Summer would have been at that moment.

Because she was playing in this game, you play as a save the cheerleader, save the world girl.

No, no, no.

Not save Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.

Is she a different one?

Bad Bitch from High School Musical.

Sharpe.

Right, right, right.

Yeah, I'm trying to.

They're all start to blend together after a while.

I'll be honest.

That was until dawn.

Right.

Right, right, right, right, right.

But yeah, the pre-fame Remy Mallet.

Yes, also true.

But yeah, subject matter-wise, House of Ashes, I went into it totally blind.

I was not expecting it to be as heavy

and have as flawed of characters.

Like, I think the Dark Pictures games always have very flawed characters on purpose.

Sure.

And I appreciate that.

There's never a character where you're like, I love this person.

They're great.

Right.

Everybody's always got something like fucked up about that.

But yeah, I was like, damn, we're really,

we're really in a in a setting that leans into like people talking about their prejudices, to put it lightly, you know?

Sure.

Shout out to my boy Salim.

Shout out to Salim.

He's a guy right there.

Who I met for about five minutes because Summer was in every Salim scene and I never saw any of them.

My boy.

Salim out there.

Probably the one guy who's like, I just want to get home.

This sucks.

You're like, I'll get John Salim.

I promise you, dude.

We decided that we're going to swap perspectives next time so that I can see what it was that Summer was doing last time that we played.

But now everybody's like, Dodger, I swear to God, if you get Salim killed, never forgive you.

And I'm like,

no promises, game.

The game's super fun.

I think

the interesting thing is

when you play a lot of them, you start to see the weave of the timelines and how one of the biggest problems that you know

the entire dark pictures franchise has is

the choices eventually like in the beginning the first like hour whatever it seems flawless the way it flows by the end you can get some really ridiculous scenes where you're like what does that even mean and it's very clear that it meant something but you parameter wise screwed up something where they gave you the scene but it has no context for you yes Yeah.

It happens all the time.

And that's, it's like one of the biggest drawbacks of those types of games.

It's crazy to me that

I didn't have any of that.

I've had it in a few other ones that Quantic Dream made, but I didn't have any of that in Detroit.

When I played Detroit, I must have had the best run in the history of playthroughs.

I was just thinking about Detroit being human the other day.

I want to replay that game.

It's super fun.

I managed to do like the run where everyone lives and it's the best ending that.

And I got some of the coolest scenes I've ever gotten in a game.

And I was like, wow, this was amazing.

I don't think I had even one Jank scene.

And then I immediately watched other people play and was like,

did I, was I perfect?

Did I do what they wanted the player to do?

Because

I very clearly experienced none of the weird, you know, like half the characters are dead, but we need to put a scene here.

I didn't have any of that.

Yeah.

I have no clue.

It's been so long.

I actually can't remember if I had a bunch of weird scenes.

But if I recall correctly, I did pretty well at keeping everyone alive too.

So maybe, maybe that's why maybe it all falls apart if like the game has to be like, well, I'm supposed to rend this scene, but that person's dead.

So

I forgot.

So I recently pulled out my PlayStation 4.

And I forgot, one, that I had the Tifa wallpaper, still due due to this day.

Love that wallpaper, where her hair covers up 90% of the screen.

So it's like, why does this exist?

This is the most insane wallpaper that exists.

But

there was that.

So that immediately was like, oh, flashback to the old PlayStation 4 days.

But then I saw I had Detroit.

And I noticed that they released an updated Detroit.

But I was like, oh, I wonder what's going on with my old file.

I forgot, Dukes, that when you start Detroit Become Human,

a woman appears and she talks to you and she's like, oh, hello.

So this lady, she was like, it's been a while since I've seen you.

It's nice to see your face again.

And I was like,

I'm about to have an unhealthy relationship with this robot lady.

I was like,

the lady in the garden or whatever?

No, the lady in the menu woman.

When you load up the game, there's like a receptionist android.

When you first start, she's like, God, I don't remember that either.

she's like it's so nice to see you and she'll talk to you for a little bit and you can do a a test where she'll you can like talk to her about like what you think about ai and she'll feed that in to when she talks to you in the future it's very cool it's like a fun concept but i did not remember it so when the game loaded up she was like oh hey it's been a while since i've seen you and i was like whoa oh my goodness yeah yeah yeah it made me realize that i definitely you know, how in, I'm not sure if they did it in the later seasons, but in the first season of West World, where they have like the android lady greet you and welcome you and have you pick out hats and shit, I would have fallen in love with her immediately.

Like, I couldn't have made it to the park.

They're like, you can get to the park and you can have like Android adventures.

I would have been like,

marry me, Android boy.

Like, that's how simple I am.

She was just like, try on some clothes.

Look nice.

And I would have been like,

I think I love you.

what are you doing later

yeah yeah

same thing here this woman was just like oh hey it's been a while and I was like

are we getting married yeah the robot uprising is gonna go well for you I think

honestly I'm I for one welcome our robot overlords

I would cipher the hell out of all of you in a heartbeat.

I have no question there at all.

Don't trust me with your rebellion against the robots.

I'd sell you all out immediately.

Dang, dude.

I'd be like, jack me into the Matrix, make me, you know, a celebrity.

I'll eat my steak like Cypher.

But like, I know.

It's just sending neurons to my, like, I wouldn't care.

I'd be like, oh, yeah.

I'd sell you all out.

Well, that's good to know.

So once

the transition starts, once we start to see the signs, I will immediately distance myself from you.

Yeah, I'm the guy who tells chat GPT, thank you.

I'm one of those guys.

Like, thank you.

Well, you have to.

You're doing boards work.

We have to get into

the swing of saying thanks to Alexa, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, no.

I don't think Alexa.

She's a bitch.

Whoa, damn.

You hear that?

You hear that, Alexa?

You hear that, Alexa?

What about my girl, Siri?

Siri, folks.

Alexa's a bitch, dude.

However, Google Home,

I don't trust it.

It hurts doing my eyes.

That hurt.

Just wondering how long you could keep that going.

You know what?

Not long enough, apparently.

What did you play this week?

Or what did you get up to?

Well, first off, I got to release a fun video.

The reason I was away because I went to Remedy.

I got to play Firebreak.

That was super fun.

I can all talk about it, so that's good.

Imagine, if you will, Left 4 Dead, but it takes place in the oldest house from control.

And you and two friends play as two

average Joes working in the oldest house, and you have to go and do various tasks in order to keep everything running because the oldest house is still in lockdown.

And if you're saying to yourself, boy, oh boy, I don't know what any of that means, it's control.

And I think this game is supposed to be like babies first, even though that's kind of reductive.

But like, you know, it's dipping a toe into the world

of control and i think it's probably a fun way to get your friends involved in remedy games but at its core it is not a story heavy game it is not a game where you're gonna be like deep diving lore there's a lot of lore to pick up but the lore you pick up just gives you points to buy things in game so you know okay essentially you play you know you you have different guns like a pistol and a shotgun and a machine gun and a you know assault rifle and different things and then you have armor you can put on but the basic gist is there are three

packs you can pick up one is sort of like a tool kit that does electric damage to things one is a jump kit that lets you do like cool things with the environment and one is literally just a water gun and of course i want to play the water gun because water in this game is somehow very useful So decantamination showers clean you and that that heals you.

And so with the water gun, you can kind of heal your friends.

But more importantly, you can just soak enemies and then the electric guy can electrocute them or you can freeze them or you can do different things to the enemies that you get soaking wet.

Then you can upgrade those things.

So my water gun eventually had like a big ball of water like I was Mega Man power shotting.

Then I had a crank and I was shooting it water like a machine gun.

And then,

and when I was shooting water like a machine gun, the water hits guys and you can knock bad guys off bridges and stuff, and that was super fun.

And then finally, there's a teapot.

And if you're if you experience the world of control, you know, there's objects of power, different things that do different magical stuff.

And this teapot apparently just heats things up.

It's like the teapot is already hot.

So when you put it on stuff, it makes things scolding hot.

And so your water gun now shoots fire, like lava.

And so you can shoot lava everywhere.

There's a

humidifier you can put down.

And if you shoot with with water, it sprays water and heals you.

But if you shoot it with the fire, it becomes a lava thing and like burns the area.

And so that's pretty cool.

So the house is like the hub,

and then you go on mission.

So the oldest house is:

if you haven't played control, the oldest house is where the Federal Bureau of Control is.

Imagine.

When you think of SCP, where they store stuff, that's the oldest house.

It's this beyond time and space building.

On the outside, it looks like a normal building, but on the inside, it's infinite.

There's corridors that move and change.

There's an underground subterranean cavern of this weird black rock material.

There's creatures down there.

There's also a whole thing that looks like pillars that look like Casmodun,

but like one of them has

weird symbols on it that look kind of Nordic.

There's like all sorts of weird shit going.

Like, you know, it's just a weird place.

But the way it works in the oldest house is it's so big and so massive that after the events of control when you defeat the bad guys there's still a presence there in the building and so this is it's under lockdown so it doesn't get out and everyone's trying to stop it so you're basically in a building that's locked down and you have to move from sector to sector to clear out or repair what's going on so a great example is one of the levels is All the furnaces in the oldest house are overheating.

You need to go and make sure the fans work or else everyone there is going to slowly burn to death in the oldest house.

So you got to send a team down and now you're running around trying to repair all the fans.

At the same time, you're being attacked by different monsters, that kind of thing.

And each level has stages and it escalates and escalates and escalates.

Kind of like Left 4 Dead.

Like Left 4 Dead.

Okay.

Yeah.

And another one, Paper Chase.

So in control, there's a funny little bit where there are these sticky notes and the sticky notes replicate.

And so you'll come across rooms covered in sticky notes.

And so in this one, Paper Chase, the sticky notes are out of control in this one part of the office.

You have to go there, destroy all the sticky notes.

But as it escalates and escalates and escalates, the last boss is a giant sticky note monster.

And you have to electrocute it and soak it so all the paper catches on fire.

It's very fun, very silly.

While you're doing that, you are also leveling skills.

So there's three rows.

And what we played, I guess it was an early build, so they're going to change the way it looks, but it's going to be the same thing.

Basically, three rows.

Row one is, you know, you have a whole list of skills you can buy and choose from, and then you can put that in row one, and that's you personally, right?

Row two is the upgraded version of that.

So if it's like pick up items fast, there's pickup items faster.

And then the last row is really improved, and you have an aura that gives it to everyone else on your team.

Okay.

So you can work together to sort of like make builds.

And that's kind of the vibe is you need to work together to,

you know, solve all these different things.

Like one of the levels is you're in the black rock mines and there are these weird astral leeches and you have to shoot them in order to get radioactive pearls that you then move to a containment unit that you have to sort of escort along a track in the mines while also being attacked by things so it's like that kind of you're doing those kinds of missions so

weapons wise

do you like all these upgrades that you're talking about do you do them and keep them from mission to mission or is it like

each mission you

know?

So you're doing it on a menu outside.

So you do the mission and let's say you run the mission and you

complete it and then you get a bunch of extra, you know, artifacts or whatever.

When you bring those back to the menu, you have requisitions you can get and the requisitions are armor that progressively looks more and more like it actually belongs in the game, right?

Because like the FBC is a federal, you know, they've got like suits of armor and stuff.

But when you begin, you're just scrapping crap on you you to go down and do this so eventually you get like cool gear and better guns and then you can spend those points in either the requisitions or to upgrade your abilities that kind of stuff you can even get sprays i'm not sure why there are sprays in this game but i feel like it's uh everyone's doing it kind of thing so you can get sprays okay and you just can buy stuff now i also saw in the press release they were saying that there's going to be classified requisitions which are like literally you can just buy them um but it's all cosmetic I guess.

But still, that's a thing, which I'm sure people will be like, microtransactions.

You know, it is what it is.

The one thing I think that really impressed me was how

they take the things from the game and throw it in as like little extra things.

So a great example is in control, there's a rubber duck.

And when you try to follow the rubber duck, it just keeps warping around and vanishing.

In this, you can find the rubber duck, except in this one, the rubber duck attaches to a person, and every enemy on the stage runs to that person at that point.

And so you want to kill that duck.

Okay.

But on the flip side, there's a globe, I guess.

And that globe allows you to have low gravity.

And so that allows you to jump around like a crazy person.

And I was like, nice.

That's cool.

So some of them are super fun and some of them are pain in the ass.

And I think that's

the, you know, you can try between the two of them, which one you would like more to, you know, because maybe if you don't kill it, you get a bonus of some sort.

But if you do kill it, maybe you get the, you know, the points to then go and buy stuff.

There's all sorts of things to do.

And the harder you make it, the more weird control-esque things show up in the game.

It's one of those things where I enjoyed it.

I had a blast.

I am heavily biased, though, because I love control.

Yeah.

I don't have a clue what the draw for non-control fans would be.

It's other than Left 4 Dead.

I see what you mean.

It's, it's hard in that sort of situation to be like, I don't know.

I can only tell you my opinion as somebody who's already tainted.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I generally don't know what people will think, but I'm going to play it and I'll have fun.

But I definitely am like, okay.

you know I don't know what's gonna drag people away from the games they're they're playing right now in order to play a new like there's a lot of games like this unless it becomes a big streamer thing sure

potentially but I honestly don't know I do know that it's day one Game Pass day one

PlayStation Plus oh so you can definitely get it on those things So that'll be that'll get a lot of people to play I think but yeah for sure I had fun and I'm definitely gonna have fun with it.

I have no clue if the rest of the world thinks this fun because it also doesn't, like control, Alan Wake, they're creepy.

They have like creepy shit going on in them.

This isn't that.

There's no, like there's some cool, very cool, again.

Remedy does really good environmental work.

There's some really cool environments with like dudes floating in the air and the lights flicker and it's like a lot of cool stuff.

But it's not in the same vein as Control or Alan Wake, which again have been the last eight years of their work.

And so it doesn't feel like that at all.

It's a different beast.

It feels, you know, like, yeah, Left 4 Dead could be scary sometimes when you hear like a witch in the corner crying or whatever.

But for the most part, you're just blasting dude.

For the most part, it's head empty shooter.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would say definitely worth checking out.

I'll be playing it if you want to check it out with me.

It'll be, it'll be fun.

And it's, again, I feel like it's a solid, there's so many cool visuals and so many things happening.

You'll be like,

what is that about?

And I'm going to play control.

I think that's a lot of the game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I did that.

If there's a video up in the channel, if anyone wants to watch it, it's there.

It's a breakdown.

And then I played a ludicrous amount of Expedition 33.

I finally hit a point of the game where I absolutely, you know, so you know how this is very you and I conversation.

But many people will understand this.

this.

A lot of people have been saying Expedition 33 is like game of the year.

It's so good.

There's so many things going on in this game.

Like, oh my God.

And it's good.

Like, admittedly, I'm like, yeah, no, it's definitely, it's definitely going to be

nominated for game of the year.

But very much like when you play Final Fantasy 14 and you have that transition from the end of the base game into Heaven's Ward and suddenly it's like, oh, no, we're in a game game now.

Like we're actually telling a story.

Yes.

Same thing happens about halfway through.

There's actually major points in the game where they like,

here's a twist.

Here's another twist.

And they keep landing them.

And I was saying to chat, because I was like predicting things, and I would say my predictions were like

94% correct the entire time.

Even things I was throwing out, I was like, I can't believe that just happened.

And that's not, I was saying it while I was streaming.

That's not a Jesse Cox predictor of, you know, he can like see the future.

I'm like, no, I just write things and I know how plotting works and I can see the writing on the wall of where they're going, like why they're dropping this information.

Yeah.

And I just know that that is like, oh, that's a sign of a really good writer.

And so everything they're doing is really well done and telegraphed way in advance where I was like,

this is good.

This is,

This is very, very good.

Yeah.

And so,

yeah, I hit the point where they do a major, major twist.

I'm not going to spoil it, but I was like,

that was fun.

I get why people are saying this is Game of Gear.

Like,

I understand now.

No.

It's cool.

There's nothing better than a big twist that feels satisfying.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I definitely had like, uh, oh, this is, I know who this person is.

I know what this is.

I understand this.

Early on, I called the character that when the reveal happened, I was like, the smuggest asshole who probably ever lived.

I was like, yes, yes.

I like it.

I like it a lot.

It definitely is a,

it's a very, very, very good game.

I don't want to say game of the year because it is May,

but it's very, very, very good.

I have no idea what the rest of the year is going to give us, but

pretty impressive.

Contender.

Very, very exciting.

Contender.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you feel like

last time that we talked about this, I was asking you if you could tell how far into the game you are?

Do you have an idea now?

I'm on the end.

So I literally hit the

you could go here and fight the last boss

or

finally explore all these other places you couldn't get to before.

That's where I'm at.

So I'm definitely towards the end.

I could probably end it if I wanted to, but

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to go do all the things that it said that I could do.

So I'm going to go do those.

Yeah,

it's very, very well done.

I am right now, honestly, hold on, let's see if we can find this.

I'm very thankful for the fact that

on Wikipedia, this is actually very smart and it makes life so much easier.

On Wikipedia, they have 2025 video games.

They've done this for every single year

where they will, you know, they'll do the major awards.

They'll, you know, go through the critically acclaimed titles, that kind of stuff.

But until the awards and stuff happen, they just list the top-rated games.

And right now, I completely agree with their three top games of 2025.

What are they?

Expedition 33,

Blue Prince, Split Fiction.

Completely agree.

I agree with all three of those.

I think

those are all the 90 and above average scores.

Right.

And I completely agree.

Yeah, and it's Expedition 33 is the highest of the year so far with a 93.

Out of those three,

because

my

immediate thought hearing Blueprints in that top three is,

well, I know for a fact that Blueprints is not going to be like

the sort of game that most people get very far in, even if it's a good experience.

Out of those three, which do you think is the most like accessible as a full package of a game?

Oh, Split Fiction.

Easy.

I assumed that you say, I was just curious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Split fiction.

If I were to guess what the game of the year would be based on just media and like journalist answers, Split fiction would win.

Like game of the year.

I just believe that.

Because it is accessible.

It's very well done.

The last two hours might be some of the most fun two hours I've had in a game in a while.

It's like genuinely really well made.

And I think because it's so easily accessible, you can say this is the winner.

Personally, I feel like...

Expedition 33 so far

is my game of the year.

But again, like I said, it's May, so I don't know.

If anything, Expedition 33 will win a lot of voice awards.

It'll get a lot of acting awards, and honestly, well-deserved.

The acting in the game is tremendous.

It's very well done.

And then,

you know, Blue Prince will probably win indie awards like crazy.

Blue Prince is a weird game because it is absolutely phenomenal, yet one of those games where the longer you play, the more you're like,

nah.

Yeah.

It's crazy to me.

That's what I meant.

That's why I asked that question, because I was like, out of those three,

I can imagine finishing Split Fiction, maybe finishing Expedition 33 with enough time, but I don't see myself ever doing everything in Blueprints, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

And that's a lot of, I've been reading a lot of Blueprints conversation on Reddit.

And the vast majority of the conversation right now is, I love this game.

I'm over it.

Yeah.

Which is an interesting way to think about a game because I think it almost gives you too much content.

We're like, there's a moment, and I think I hit that moment, but there's a moment where you've solved all the things you think you can solve.

And there's still more to do.

And I love that as a concept, but in reality, it's just so much to do.

And it isn't like like at the end, when you solve this puzzle, your in-game girlfriend gives you plus 20 sex points.

Like, that's not even a thing that happens.

There's no real,

there's no reason why you're doing anything other than I just need to know more.

Right.

But once you solve enough of the story where you're like, well, I think I know enough, then even if they're like, but there's another plot twist, if I have to spend another 15 hours trying to get that.

Doing the same thing over and over again, you're going to be like,

I'm all right.

I'm not even mad about that, though.

I'm not either.

I love the game.

And I think that's why it sounds like most of the conversations about it are, I'm over it, but that's not a bad thing, right?

That doesn't mean the game's bad.

It's a really unique, lovely game.

I had such a good time with it, but everybody's going to have a different point at which they're like, and now I'm good, I think.

And

it's okay to not find out everything.

And let's be real.

If at a certain point you want to find out everything, I bet your ass, if it doesn't exist yet, there are mods that are going to be like, pick whatever room you want.

Do the puzzles.

You know?

Honestly, I wonder if there will be a min-max mod that's like determining, all right, you got three rooms.

Here's the best one to pick.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like, I wonder if that will exist where they kind of guide you through.

There's got to be something like that eventually.

That'd be interesting.

I don't know if it would ruin the experience of the discovery because a lot of the fun part is getting a a room you didn't think was going to be useful for you and then finding out, oh my god, this is actually the one room I needed.

Yes, I completely agree.

And that's why I would never use a mod like that unless I reached the point that I'm at right now where it's like, well,

I don't, I don't know that I necessarily see myself going back to that game.

If I had something that was like, just get the rooms that you need and complete the puzzles that you know you have to complete right now, that's different, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm really, man, I, I, I,

I'm trying to think,

do we,

the last game awards was early December.

And after that, Indiana Jones came out, or it came out just, like, I don't know if Indiana Jones would count as part of this year's awards because here's the thing.

I'm hyper-biased.

That game fucking rocks.

I know.

There's one level I could do without.

I don't want to ever go underwater again and fight snakes.

F that noise.

However,

that game rocked.

And as an Indiana Jones fan, it made me feel like Indiana Jones for the first time in decades.

It genuinely felt like, oh my God, this is Indiana Jones.

Like what I grew up with as a kid, this is it.

Loved it.

I would be fine if that was on the list of

game of the year because that game.

Rocked.

Machine games,

I love them.

When they make great single player, we will not talk about the last Wolfenstein game.

Okay.

Not a fan.

The first two hours were great.

And then after that, it became some sort of weird daily quest in your single player game nonsense.

That was trash.

But yeah, when they make single-player stuff, they do great.

They're very good at it.

So I hope we get more of that.

I think they're working on another one.

I was going to say, I think

I feel like a past episode, you looked up whether or not they were working on a new one, and the answer was yes.

Yes.

So I hope, fingers crossed, it's Fate of Atlantis.

If we could just remake Fate of Atlantis, but with the Great Circle engine,

oh my God, I'd be so happy.

I would be so happy.

Give this man what he wants.

That's a great question.

Give this man what he wants.

It would be so good.

It would be so good.

At least by the time he's 70, and then he can be the old man streamer playing the new Fate of Atlantis.

Back in my day, this was pixels.

Now it's people.

Yeah, agree.

That'd be beautiful.

I would love that.

That's pretty much what I did this week is just that stuff.

You know, I

have a lot that I wanted to play, but I also got confused because apparently there's

I was looking at Scary Game Squad of what games, I was like, what game should we play for Scary Game Squad?

I would love to play Scary Game squad games

There's about 15 different games named midnight something

like midnight walk midnight night midnight and there's one game I was trying to find I couldn't find it.

I was like all right.

What the hell is the name of this game?

I know exactly which game you're talking about couldn't find it

the one that's the VR one right or the one that is the one that's like claymation-y can be VR?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Midnight

Walk,

yeah, yeah, yeah, there's Midnight Walk, but then there's another one that's like

Midnight Something, and it's like a side-scrolling pixel point-and-click horror game.

And I was like, oh, that could be fun.

And I realized there's just a lot of games with Midnight in them.

Yeah.

There were South of Midnight.

Like just a bunch of, I was like, okay.

Oh my God, which brings me, Dodger.

Yeah.

I want to talk to you about this because it's so funny.

It might be the funniest thing.

I'm here.

I'm going to bring up Midnight, and this just goes to my ADD brain.

Here you go.

There's a guy

who, if you were to see his Instagram, you would say, Oh, I know this guy.

His whole Instagram feed is either A

podcast about him telling you how to make money, okay, or B, podcasts about him doing conspiracy theories.

Okay, that's his entire Instagram persona.

Yeah, and he just looks like a dude, bro.

His whole thing is about like how to like get good crypto buys, that kind of stuff.

Okay.

and one of the things that he does,

I don't know how he came up with this or where he came up with this, but he's talking to a guy, assume his podcast partner, I don't know, about the greatest conspiracy theory ever.

And I just want to hit you with this because I don't think you're prepared.

Okay,

9-11.

Yeah.

Before 9-11,

Mountain Dew released Mountain Dew Code Red.

And he said that

9-11 was a code red for America.

Everyone knows, according to him, that that moment they were calling a code red.

Now,

I don't know that's true.

I was alive then.

I don't remember that happening, but he says that's what happened.

They said it was a code red in the government.

So then

move forward a little bit, and we get Mountain Dew

Maui Blast.

I think is what it is.

Maui something, surge, something like that.

And he said

that came out right before the Maui fires.

What's that about?

The next one was Mountain Dew.

I think it was like Mountain Dew Black or something like that.

And he was like,

right after that, we had the CrowdStrike internet blackout.

Interesting.

That we like it all went down.

So then the next one is he's like,

Mountain Dew, the red, the red, like, red, white, and blue Mountain Dew.

Yeah.

Came out right before the Francis Scott Key Bridge was hit by a boat and collapsed.

What?

And he's like, don't you understand?

And so then he said, the newest one, this is incredible.

He's like, the newest one is, I think, called

Baja Midnight or Midnight Baja, something like that.

And he's like, now in your mind, you think, all right, 2025, midnight Baja, maybe something at the border.

Maybe something like, no, no, no.

This man said, midnight is the witching hour.

So something paranormal is going to happen.

I'm like, what?

He's like, it's going to change the world forever.

It's going to change the world.

So

he's saying the flavors come out, and then right after the flavors come out, something terrible happens.

So he's saying there's a new flavor coming out called midnight Baja Something,

which means that

during the witching hour, something terrible is going to happen and we all need to be ready for it.

Well, and you might say, that seems insane.

Why would anyone say this?

I would never say that.

I would never do that.

However,

the guy he's talking to is like, well, I think we all know at this point, the CIA is working with PepsiCo, and PepsiCo owns Mountain Dew.

And I'm like, wait, what?

And he's like, yeah, PepsiCo, since the 70s, has worked with the CIA.

So all this is is CIA ops.

We're getting psyoped by the CIA through Mountain Dew.

And I'm like,

what?

And

this is the space that I have a whole other podcast in.

I must stress.

This is where I operate.

It's people like this who are like, just go listen to Chaluminati, everybody.

I can't.

What's even crazier is then you, um,

my, my other favorite video that exists online is the short where words: the woman at like

some sort of religious conference, and she has a can of mountain of monster energy.

Have you seen this video?

It's my favorite one.

I don't think so.

She's like, she's like, look at the monster energy.

These three lines, what they look like, three sixes, six, six, six.

Mark of the beast.

This is a beast-sized can of monster, the monster, Satan.

And I was like, yo, this is awesome.

I love this.

It's my favorite.

I love her.

She's so like, it's real, guys.

It's real.

It's like, okay.

All right.

Oh, those are my favorite.

I love a good,

I'm going to take something completely normal and make it a conspiracy.

Those are my favorite.

It's like, what, what?

Happened to tip you off to this.

I would love to know the process that got you.

So, like, I read between a few too many lines, maybe.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

My favorite part is she's like, this can says BFC.

What do you think that says?

Big effing can.

Why would a can say that?

Is this something she says?

So many people in chat are saying, bottoms up and the devil laughs.

Does she say that?

Dukes, I have to send you this video.

It is one of my favorite conspiracy videos

ever.

Oh, it's so, it's so funny.

Yeah, I love, I love those.

I love a good conspiracy that isn't, you know, going to hurt anyone, but is absolutely bonkers.

Like, just, how did you get here?

Like, the only people that are

getting hurt are the people that make monster energy.

And, like, who gives a shit?

Yeah, I don't give a shit about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, it's so funny.

Oh, my God.

Anyway, I don't know how she got there.

She encouraged a bunch of people to stop drinking energy drinks because they thought the devil was in there.

And God bless.

Because

their bodies are happier.

Yeah.

Devil ain't a nice, refreshing glass of water.

All my hydro homies know that.

That's so true.

No.

Devil can't get it.

I can manage to work the hydro homies into every single episode.

I'll always work the hydro homies in.

That's my favorite subreddit.

That's the best one.

It's the most wholesome thing you'll ever see.

It's just dudes being like, drink your water, bro.

And like a guy posting his water bottle will be like, yo, I bought this today, filled it up with nice, crisp, cold water.

It's like, hell yeah, dude.

Hell yeah, brother.

I love it.

It's very cute.

I've got an itty-bitty bit left of water in my hand.

All I have is the thing that got the gas station today.

It's in a can.

Whatever that is, aluminum.

An aluminum.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a thing we're doing now, I guess, is to save the environment.

No more plastic water bottles in LA, it's metal this time.

Yeah, I think you'd be very proud of me.

I all right.

Well, first off, don't I wouldn't go that far.

I think you might.

Okay, all right.

I

the first part of this, I need you to just like blow by, okay?

All right, blowing.

I saved

30 cans

with the intention

of flattening them out and making them into

the siding for a thing that I'm building to have to hold our firewood.

I was going to flat, we had so many cans from all the dog food and shit.

So I was like, I'm going to use them.

I'm going to flatten them out and turn them into siding.

And then I had a moment of clarity where I said, when the fuck am I going to do that?

And then I recycled them.

You know what?

I am proud of you.

I am genuinely proud.

I fought the horner and I won.

Yep, you really did.

I love that.

Yeah, yeah, I am.

Yeah.

No, that's a, I definitely have a few of those, but it's mostly computer cords.

I have a whole bin literally right over here of cords that go to nothing.

But just in case, brother.

And so every once in a while, I have to go through and toss them because I'm like, I have not had one of those like old school square USB plugs in 10 years.

Why the hell do I still have this?

Yeah.

We have, I think, three boxes with just random, like old electronics, old cords.

And I always think to myself, one of these days, I got to pop on a podcast

and just go through all these cords.

And if, if I haven't used it in like, a year or two, get rid of it.

I can always get a new one if I spontaneously need it for some reason.

I mean, like, I get the idea of having different cords and saving cords just in case, but technology changes so quickly.

Half the time the cords are totally useless.

This isn't like the 1980s where you had a plug and that plug lasted until 2005.

This is like

every time you turn around, I have so many USB-3 cords.

When all I need now is USB-C.

Yeah.

USB-3 is the only thing for me.

I need C.

Yes.

Yeah.

I have a bunch of like those really thick bundles of cables that come with computer towers when you're going to build a tower.

And for some reason, I just kept them.

And I'm like, why?

They're just,

I'm not going to use these for anything.

I just keep them because I'm like, but let if, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah,

I'm the same.

I have a little bundle of all of those cables just in case.

Just in case.

Now, why?

What if?

Would I ever use them?

I don't know.

They're cables I didn't use in the construction of the PC anyway.

Yeah.

So why would I use them anyway now?

But what if I get a Rams and I need it for the Rams or something, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will say the funniest example of this, there's this dad and son duo on TikTok and I think, you know, Instagram and stuff.

It's the dude who has like the glasses.

Like the son is like, you know, kind of buff dude, but the dad, you you know, he has the belly and the glasses and he wears the dude, like the dad shorts.

And they do a bunch of like son becomes dad meme videos.

I'm sure most people know these guys.

But the best one they did is the son's trying to fix a bed.

And there's like,

there's, you know, the bed, it's like lopsided.

It might have been a bed or maybe a table.

It doesn't matter.

But the dad's like,

it's time.

I've been saving this.

And he runs to his, you know, his.

I've seen this video.

Yeah.

He gets the one piece of wood he's been saving for years and puts it on and they're like everyone's high fiving

That's how I think most of us feel in that like we want that moment of like I saved for this Mm-hmm.

It's a very fun thing.

It's a thing and there's payoff, but the pay that payoff happens like one in a thousand things, you know?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

I mean

You could, on the other hand, be like my dad, who for Christmas last year, did he give me any uh

fun crazy gifts no he gave me all the stuff that he hoarded

hit me with the well I better give it to you before I die and now I have bins of my dad's stuff over here I got old books and not just old books I'm talking like

a literal like chairman Mao Communist Manifesto, a book of coins, a like just random shit.

He gave me fossils that we found when I was like a baby, baby, like a kid.

Yeah.

And he's like, here, you found this when you were young.

I was like, huh?

He gave me a giant poster that is of

like a Rainier beer man.

It's like Humpty Dumpty, but he's got Mount Rainier for a head and it's a beer thing.

And I'm like, what am I going to do with this?

It's hanging in my apartment now.

Like, this is, he gave me some, I have my dad's old eight-track player now.

Yep.

With all of his like, just, yes, Chairman Mao's little red book.

I have.

the man was like, here, take this.

I have one book that's like, he looked around.

He looked around your home, said, what a nice minimalist home my son has.

I can't wait to ruin it.

He really did just give you a bunch of stuff.

Like,

so much stuff.

And a lot of it's really cool.

It's some of it's very old and very awesome.

And I have like old war medals now and shit, like just crazy stuff.

With that said,

I don't know what the hell.

What am I?

Where am I going to put it?

Like, it's literally in bins right over here in the office because I don't know what to do with it.

Yeah.

But I will say,

there's some interesting stuff in there.

I don't know what was going on in the, I assume, early 90s, late 80s, but in the whole like metals and pins thing that my dad has, which again, it's a bunch of various things that I am pretty sure are from both him and my grandfather because they were in uh the korean war in vietnam so i imagine it's a mix of the two

but also in there is like a pride pin and like a like a pin for like a presidential candidate who i've never heard of before like just crazy shit i'm like huh okay

interesting like all right yeah

And I know, I've never, I've never seen it before.

It must be from years and years of just hoarding pins.

I guess that's what a lot of, a lot of people who collect pins, that's your future.

That's going to be us one day, gang.

Handing pins to your kids in a

like

plastic bag you got from the grocery store.

Yep.

Yep.

So

I have that now.

And I'm like, what do I do with this?

I have

exactly one thing that I hope.

I get to have when my dad is looking to give everything away.

Uh-huh.

I would love to have a bunch of his records.

He has the craziest collection of weird records in his house.

And I know my brother will want some because my brother's the actual musician in the family.

Whatever.

He gets first dips.

It's fine.

But like, I want some of the really weird ones

because some of these you pick up and you're like, what the fuck?

I have no idea what's on this and I can't even conceptualize what's on this.

You know, I want those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh,

one of my favorite parts of going to Mr.

Alex Fossiani's house is that he has a record collection.

It's not what you would think, and like me, I'm your uh

millennial record guy.

Yeah, I have like

the

you know, the Boston album that's like the one of the best, you know, like I got that, I got a bunch of video game albums, I have albums of like uh synth pop, you know, like douchey shit.

I'm that guy, yeah.

Alex is the guy who's like,

this is an album from 1952.

It's all

Hawaiian surfer music.

You're like, what?

He's like, yeah.

So every song starts,

you need it.

Like, that's the entire thing.

And on it, there's like a hula girl, but it's very clearly shot on like a soundstage somewhere.

That kind of a, and he has all of those.

He's like, yeah, this is a, this is an entire album of

music from

some guy to get your plants to grow.

So it's, that's his thing, is it's just a bunch of music for plants.

So that's, that's what he has.

What's the, God, in, in downtown L.A., what's that music store, that gigantic music store that's next to the cinema?

In downtown L.A.

Like in the Hollywood area.

Yeah.

There's a, there's like a huge music store.

You don't,

listeners at home, you don't need another name.

It's fine.

There's like a two-story

I know what you're talking about.

Amoeba.

Tower records.

Huh?

Amoeba?

Did they close down?

I don't know.

Did they?

I don't know.

I think it's a lot of them closed.

It's not Tower Records.

Tower Records closed the hell down.

If that's still open.

Yeah,

it's like a two-story place.

They have tons of just like crazy CDs, records, like anything, anything that you would want to play music on, right?

Nope, it's still open for sure.

Nice.

My lovely friend, Danny Oreozima, who has done a bunch of my art stuff in the past,

one of the dans, he would come into LA and we would go there.

And he loved to just, and this feels like probably something that Faciani does too.

He loved to just go, pick up a couple of CDs that had bonkers covers and just buy them.

Sure.

And then

on the way to wherever we were going next, he'd pop in one of the CDs and be like, let's find out what this shit is, you know?

And it was so fun.

Yeah, that's great.

I'm like a big, I know what I like.

Yeah.

And I know, like, when I think of a record in my mind, I don't have the patience.

So a lot of music now, especially, I know when I was coming up in the 90s and you had CDs where it's like

four songs out of 12 were actually good

and you would just skip to those four.

I feel like with a record, because it's literally press play and you're not skipping anything, it's got, for me to buy it, it has to be like, this is flawless all the way through from start to finish.

Everything is a banger.

I need that.

So my records are very limited.

I only have so many because if I put one on, I'm like, okay, I need this to be good.

Or it needs to be funky enough.

That it doesn't matter if I care about the song or not.

Like a great example of that is I'm not a fan of all their songs, but I really like them as a band.

Chromio as a band, I love.

I love those two.

They're awesome.

Their music is great.

Some songs are hyper-catchy and some songs are like, all right, that was all right.

I love their albums because it's just like, hit that funk immediately.

Let's go.

It's a blast start to finish.

So

that's what I need.

I need those.

I'm putting this on because I'm about to go clean.

Right.

And I need the vibes to be correct start to finish.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like I love, I love, yeah.

So like I have, I have my old school 60s, 70s, 80s albums that are perfect.

Like I was saying earlier, Boston, which is a really great one.

But then I also have like my, the Midnight Chromeo, Tatsuro Yamashita.

Like the ones that are like, this is clearly just for a mood.

Yeah.

Like, I can't even understand the lyrics of, you know, like 1980s city pop, but it doesn't matter because I'm in it for the mood.

And that's what, that's that's what I want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Makes sense to me.

I'm realizing we have truly yapped today.

So much yapping.

I know.

I'm proud.

I love.

I love a yap with you.

Thank you.

I feel like I should be asking, do we have any news today?

Of course we do.

Oh my goodness.

Well.

We are just now starting to get some information about the Nintendo Switch 2.

What's coming down the pipeline?

we are seeing first off red dead redemption 2 is reportedly coming to switch take two commits to nintendo and i can see how that would make sense considering we're getting cyberpunk and we're getting a bunch of other games that i think operate on equally the same capacity as red dead 2 would want so that's pretty cool i can imagine many people taking their switch with them and bringing on their little cowboy adventure and and having that.

I would love to see how that plays on portable.

I have no clue.

But also, we're getting some more Switch games with Switch 2.

So there's 12 more updates that we're getting.

Essentially, these are going to be various games that will come with the Switch 2, but you can still get on Twitch, but they'll be like upgraded.

So, right away, Arms.

Remember, Arms?

That's the whole thing we're getting now for Switch 2.

Oh, okay.

Brain Academy, Brain versus Brain, Captain Toad Treasure Tracker,

Game Builder Garage,

Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe, Pokemon Scarlet, Pokemon Violet, Super Mario World 3D, and Bowser's Fury, Super Mario Odyssey, Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, and Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening are going to be

on optimized for Switch 2.

Okay.

Yep.

Then, in the news of, well, of course, this is Kojima.

Hideo Kojima says that he left a USB stick of game ideas for after he dies.

Now, I don't think this man is going to die anytime soon.

However, it does seem like a Kojima thing to be like

in the event of my death.

When I'm, yeah, in the event of my death, here's what you should make.

Don't get any of your own ideas.

Just make these.

Yeah.

This will keep Kojima productions going.

Just do this.

If anything.

I think Kojima should be like, um, you know how sometimes in order to keep

the money and the well, like

in Japan, dudes will adopt sons to like take over after they die.

Yeah.

Kojima should adopt him.

He needs to find a little weirdo.

Yeah, like a little weirdo.

Exactly.

He needs a little weirdo.

He needs to be a little weirdo and be like, you get me.

And then part of his mind.

He's going to you now.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

We need that.

We need like...

Instead of Death Stranding 2, we need Kojima 2.

Yes.

And yeah, I would love that.

I would love if he like takes on an apprentice.

That'd be fantastic.

Apprentice Kojima would be fantastic.

Here's what I want.

I want him to fake his death

and then

have them announce that

Kojima had named a successor.

And when the successor is introduced, it's just Kojima again.

But no one ever acknowledges it.

It's just the same guy.

I would love that.

I would love that.

Also, I'd love it if that's how we discover Kojima's a vampire.

He's lived forever and he keeps saying, oh, I'll bring out my new apprentice.

And it's just

my apprentice now.

Yeah.

And they'll be like, Kojima wanted me to give this to you.

He's dead now.

I have had plastic surgery to look closer to him.

So I am Kojima five.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Speaking of Kojima,

Destiny 2 is getting a 12-city worldwide tour to show off the game.

Boy, I would love.

It's so funny.

It starts in LA, June 8th, and ends in November in Italy.

It's coming to Sydney, Australia, June 14th, June 26th, Japan.

June 28th, Paris, France.

June 30th, London, UK.

Then the 4th, it's in July, it's in Seoul, South Korea.

Then it's in Taiwan, and then Hong Kong, and then China, and Saudi Arabia, and Sao Paulo.

And then it ends in Italy.

Hilariously, June 8th is during Games Fest.

I'll be at Games Fest.

I would love to see this.

A no invite from Kojiba.

I, yeah, I'm so curious what that would actually be.

Like, is it just to play the game?

What, what is the.

Couldn't tell you.

Couldn't tell you.

But apparently it takes place right on the Saturday of Games Fest.

So

surely there's something going on.

But usually when you go to Games Fest, you'll, you'll, there is clearly a hierarchy of industry people.

And it's always funny to me because when you go to Games Fest, it's all industry.

There isn't just like anyone outside.

So it's all industry.

And there's like YouTubers,

journalists,

celebrities,

the money people.

And there are certain, when you go there, it's imagine a street that's blocked off.

The whole street's blocked off.

It's in the middle of downtown LA.

And all the buildings are where you go in to play different games.

And some people rent a full building and they style it and they make it cool.

Like when I saw Armor Corps, when you you walked in the building, it made you feel like you were like in a hangar.

That was really cool.

So cool.

And then some of the other ones, you know, are just big areas with a bunch of games sitting around.

But there are also some where you clearly have to know a person to get in.

There, they'll be like nondescript.

Everything be blacked out.

There'll be maybe a company logo, and that's it.

And they, unless you are like

John money bags or in some way in the industry in a way that like they need your ass there.

Yeah.

So I'll walk by and be like, what is going on in there?

I gotta know.

I want to be in the room.

Yeah.

So I'm sure that's gonna be what it is.

But they might be just having a party.

I don't know.

I don't really know what the hell it's gonna be.

So anyway, that's happening.

Hey,

there's some turmoil in the world of Epic and Apple.

Apparently, Apple still hasn't approved Fortnite iOS's submission.

And I guess

Epic is is saying they're obstructing the process.

Nope.

So Tim Sweeney says Apple is still yet to approve the addition of Fortnite into the iOS App Store.

And he says they're obstructing the process.

And

yeah, that battle still continues.

The battle between Epic and Apple, just they do not like each other at all.

Yet clearly they both need each other.

So here we are.

Here we are.

Then

Ubisoft, speaking of, here we are.

Ubisoft delays its major games.

It says it's working on a Prince of Persia again, but

yeah, everything's being delayed right now.

The decision has already been beneficial in the quality of Assassin's Creed Shadows as a consequence.

Fiscal year 2026, 2027 and fiscal year 2027, 2028 will see significant growth versus the previous year.

So that's all they care about.

Again, they are no longer really a video game company.

They're a shareholder company.

And so most of what they're doing is about that.

And so they're pushing stuff back.

And I assume hopefully the lesson learned is make good games, but we know that's not the case.

Then Square Enix is doing kind of the same.

Square Enix says, hey, we are going to cut back on making a bunch of stuff.

And we're going for, follow me here.

This is going to sound crazy.

Quality over quantity.

Whoa.

Whoa.

I know.

I'm shocked too.

I'm shocked.

So that's coming down the pipeline.

We'll see.

I'm very curious as a person who loves watching MMO content, one of my favorite things happening right now is the complete flip.

So if you remember two years ago, Warcraft is dead.

Final Fantasy 14 is the thing to play.

Now it's Final Fantasy 14's dead.

Warcraft's the thing to play.

And my favorite thing in the world, I love this.

And you know what?

I'm going to call him out because...

I love this man and respect him completely, but I understand the grind and it's really funny.

I took a screenshot of it because it made me laugh so hard.

Currently, the situation is there's housing in Final Fantasy.

Sorry, in

Wow, there's housing in it now.

Yes.

And everyone.

For the first time ever.

For the first time ever.

Everyone's very excited.

And the housing has like you can put like 10,000 things in your house or something crazy like that.

When in Final Fantasy 14, you only put like 400 in the biggest house.

So everyone's like, oh, they finally did it.

This is amazing.

And absolutely, I agree.

Awesome.

Good work.

Warcraft.

I'm all about competition.

Hopefully, Final Fantasy 14 will step it up.

But the funniest part is watching people who exist in the space try to navigate all the way that the hype goes.

Yeah.

So I'm going to call out my boy Preach.

I love Preach.

I will continue to love Preacher.

But I genuinely, this made me laugh so hard.

Two days ago, thumbnail, why I haven't been playing.

Preach rambles about WoW for 28 minutes.

Right, just a video about like, I'm not playing WoW.

I don't like WoW.

Followed by

10 hours ago, Blizzard won.

I got to try WoW's player housing.

It's better than we imagined.

And I just think that's so funny that that's like, that's the space.

It's like, it's like, I hate this thing.

It's not good.

Oh, something hype is happening.

It's the best thing ever.

It's always been that way.

And it's not a digit preach.

Literally, everyone across the board does this.

It's so funny to me.

I just saw that and was like,

you guy.

And that's,

it's just what it is, it's how it's always worked, but you're right.

The

competition can only be good, honestly.

Yeah, I mean, like the things that I've seen with the wild, like this isn't even a dig on the wild housing, it's awesome.

It's like I don't want to say, like, oh, it's a Final Fantasy 14 player, the player personally played Wow, like it's good.

Like, no way, it's good, it's very well done.

They actually really listened to people and nailed it, and that's I'm here for that.

Like, that's cool as hell.

Yeah, it's, it's definitely a thing that I think fans wanted.

They finally provided.

And now they did it in a way that I hope, you know, if Final Fantasy 14 give you a giant island by itself, surely they can improve the housing system.

But that's just, you know, me talking.

Then,

interestingly enough, we have a bunch of games coming out.

Oh, oh, oh.

I will say.

Yes.

Really quickly.

Yes.

Behind me, this pile right here.

It's blurry.

so thank God you can't see any of it.

But it's a whole stack.

These are all unopened cases.

This is a binder.

These are stacks of Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy cards.

I

made a mistake, dudes.

I pre-ordered a bunch of them, but then they just sent me some.

Oh my gosh.

And I'm not allowed to show anything until the 30th when they reveal all the cards.

Right.

But some of these cards are so awesome.

They're genuinely, like looking through them.

I was having flashbacks of like, I remember this scene from the game.

It's great.

There's so many good cards.

But with that said,

this one news story is just

Final Fantasy VII Remake Director can't share why Sephiroth looks different in new trading cards sparking part three speculation.

I don't know if that's just him being like, oh, I don't know.

But his design in the card art.

The one-wing angel card that we were talking about.

Yes.

Yeah.

There's also a reason the design for Safer Sephiroth is different from the original game, but unfortunately, can't share more about that.

So that's super interesting.

I don't know what that means.

Very curious.

For everyone in chat asking, we filmed a Patreon video of me unpacking a bunch of these, but I'm going to save all of these here for stream because,

you know.

Noise.

That'd be fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a whole thing.

I don't know what that means exactly.

It could just be, you know, building hype for the sake of hype, but that's pretty cool.

The cards slap.

There's so many good ones.

My favorite card so far is from Final Fantasy 15.

And I'll let your mind run wild because it is not boys, that's for sure.

And it's not a character.

It is one of the craziest cards I've ever to believe it's a Magic the Gathering card is one of the funniest things I've ever seen my entire life.

It's so, I can't believe it exists.

So, that's

no, it's crazier than a car.

Okay,

like, I just can't believe it.

I can't believe it exists.

It's so funny.

And then, we also have some releases just for the sake of pounding these out really quick.

Today, the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 is out.

That's Plasma Sword, Powerstone 1 and 2, SNK 2000 Pro, Street Fighter Alpha 3,

Upper, I think is that one.

SNK 2 and Capcom Fighting Evolution are all out today with that collection.

Then on the 20th, Ninja Turtles Splintered Fate, the new like beat-em-up intro game looks awesome.

I really want to play it.

It looks really cool.

Graphically,

coming out for

what?

Ninja Turtles Splintered Fate.

I think you can get it on PC, too.

It's already out.

Yeah.

It's out.

I've played this quite a bit.

It's been on Steam since November of last year.

Right.

This, I think, is some consoles.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

It's fun, by the way.

It's good.

It's very good.

I haven't played it yet.

The 21st, deliver at all costs, the incredibly

wacky driving game where you have to deliver at all costs.

And so you're running through houses.

You're doing...

Looks great.

Looks so funny.

Play the demo if you can, guys.

The demo is so funny.

Then on the 22nd, next Thursday, worshipers of Cthulhu.

This one looks fun.

You lead a cult of Cthulhu and you decide what eldritch rituals to perform.

You basically city build, but you are operating in a world of insanity and madness, and you're unleashing horrors.

It looks very much like combining some of my favorite genres into one.

Big fan of this.

Could be great.

Excited.

Nice.

And then on the 23rd,

we're getting an Animusha 2 Samurai's Destiny that looks super fun.

It's basically just Animusha again.

You know?

Yeah.

I'm very excited to...

Those games,

the one that had, what the hell was Renault, Jean-Renault, whatever the hell his name was.

Yeah, I want them to remaster that.

That's the one I want.

I think that was Onimusha 3,

where they were like, yeah, let's put a bunch of famous actors in this.

Famous at the time.

And so, yeah,

I want to see that one.

That was crazy as well.

So, yeah, we're getting a remaster.

Onimusha.

Big fan.

All right.

That is it for the news.

Hot dog.

Yeehaw.

Yeehaw.

What are you up to this week?

What are you doing, you fancy boy?

This week's my birthday.

Birthday Sunday, so I'm spending time with the family.

We're going to go see the Dodgers.

So that'll be a whole thing.

And yeah, and then

I have

a video coming out Monday that may or may not be you, me, Octo, and our good pal Frankie playing Monster Con.

So that'll be out on Monday.

And then I know a couple people were asking if we played that, and we did.

Oh, we did.

Oh, we played.

It just took forever to put together.

Yeah.

And then

I got to play Anno 117 Pax Romana.

And And later this week, hopefully I'll have a video for y'all about my time playing that.

I had a blast.

I learned a lot about

being an Imperial Governor.

It's not as easy as you would think.

So that is coming as well.

And then, yeah, I'll probably play

more Expedition 33, honestly.

I just want to beat it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think Sam hit that point, too, where it was like, I need to just mainline this game so I could finish it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's, that's what I'm, that's what I'm doing.

But that's kind of the vibe.

Nice.

I'm going to be continuing with Black Reliquary.

I'm taking a couple days off at the start of this next week because I've got my test, my immigration test.

So after that's done and I can breathe a sigh of relief or cry into a pillow, whichever one, I'll be back.

And yeah, doing some Black Reliquary.

There are a couple of things that have come out, I feel like, that like Midnight Walk that everybody says is so good and i haven't looked at yet trying to set up a couple of collabs maybe for next week and uh and restarting house of ashes and crushing it this time and not killing everybody maybe

so we'll see maybe

maybe

also as a constant reminder crendor keeps messing us in chat being like we should play a thing so

Just saying.

We should play a thing.

Just saying.

It has to be something cursed, though.

That's the hard part well there's this one mother machine we could play that that could be super cursed that sounds cursed yeah you play the little guys for mother machine oh okay yeah i could i could help the mother machine maybe yeah we have little cursed monsters perfect

just put it out there wonderful well happy early birthday jessup thank you Thank you, everybody, for watching.

We do this every Friday.

If you'd like to watch again in the future, you can find us here on Friday.

And then it goes up on youtube.com/slash jessecox.

That's where all of the VODs for all of the episodes are.

But have a fantastic weekend.

Have an amazing week.

And we will see you next time.

Goodbye.

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