49: The Geekenders: Why are Some Video Game Ads SO Weird??

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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.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

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

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast, without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So, take a second, grab a drink, and vibe while we catch you up in just a matter of time.

On gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now, follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

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 Geek Enders.

Figured I'd do a little shake.

Hello.

Welcome to Geek Enders.

Welcome to Girls.

It's the Geekenders Time to Geek Out.

That's my remix.

Did you like it?

it's the geekender's time to geek out it's the geek it's the we it's i don't know what i did anymore it was it was pure

muse-filled artistry emotion right right right right right right and i don't know what i did so

i mean but you were here for it so i'm sure you can tell me how amazing it was

So, you know what?

So amazing.

Good.

One of the most amazing things you've ever done.

On a scale of things you've ever done.

Yeah.

Maybe the best.

Maybe the best thing you've ever done.

What?

My opus?

Today?

Yeah, right now.

Yeah.

Now, I'm not sure whether that says anything about the quality of your work thus far.

Or

if it's, you know,

I just think it happened to be the best work you've ever done.

It certainly was the best thing you've ever done.

Right.

In comparison to a lot of deeply mediocre things.

Compared to a decade plus of work, really truly truly the best thing you've ever done.

Nothing has been as impressive as that.

Yeah, all those years really wasted.

Now, the best thing I've ever done.

Yeah, yeah.

Impressive.

Thank you.

How are you?

How's life?

Great.

You know,

it's life be life-in.

Life do be lifing.

Life do be life-in.

I will say that somehow, some way,

I keep showing up on the HoloLive Reddit.

And I want to let everyone know I'm honored.

Thanks for being really nice to me.

A clip from our, from either last week or the week before from Geekenders, went on there, and everyone was like, oh my gosh, it's Jesse and Dodger.

It was very sweet.

Yes.

I must stress, it's really funny to me that we've been doing this so long.

There are people who are like, God, I remember watching them years ago when I was 12.

love you baby yep yeah yeah yeah if anything i'm i'm happy we get to do it this long it's been a it's been a wild trip what an honor to still be relevant at all that's still that's very sweet yeah i'll take i'll take that form of relevancy for sure

to yeah to be posted sight unseen onto a hololive subreddit And have a bunch of people know who we are.

We made it, dude.

We've done it.

We certainly did.

We certainly made it.

Yep.

Yeah, I keep getting posted over there because I'm discovering Hololive and everyone wants to share Hololive with me.

Except

I'm only really experiencing Hololive through Holo Cure.

Right.

I don't have any actual knowledge of Hololive, but I keep asking questions every time I play a new character.

And people are like, oh, yeah, no, Jesse, you like that one.

You like this one.

Like, why do you think that?

Dodger, do I put out a vibe?

Because every time someone's like, oh, you'd like that character, I'm like, oh, why?

Every time, it's because some type of porn.

Every time.

Every, I'm like, why would I like that character?

And they're like, oh, that character does sexy ASMR.

I'm like,

I don't think I'm.

That's why you think I enjoy them?

I don't think I need to explain to you why people say that to you.

I would like an explanation, though.

Would you?

That anytime there's like a cute something-something in a thing, you go,

I'd like to take her out out if you know what I'm saying.

Typically, also in that exact tone.

What sucks is that your version of me, I think, is a better version of me.

Like, your version is cute and funny.

My version is like a creep.

My version is like, I'd like to take her out if you know what I'm saying.

No, Jesse, no one knows what you're saying.

That's insane sounding.

It's hard to tell what you're saying with so much gravel in your mouth.

Yeah.

That's right, baby.

It's hot.

That's what they tell me.

So my hot tush.

You know what?

You're not wrong.

We did spend the entirety of this free stream talking about.

Your patute.

My very fine Derier.

Yeah, okay.

Checkmate.

All right.

You got me.

I

decided to dive into Hollow Cure because you spent the last couple of weeks talking about it so i started playing it also for anyone who is joining now to let you know my baseline i also know nothing about holo live except one of the first

um characters that you can start with watson i remember seeing on

the website formerly known as twitter I remember seeing that she was like soft graduating or whatever, like like gonna kind of stop being a vtuber maybe i don't i don't know exactly what the like finer details but i was like i know this person this is the sherlock holmesy girl

so i

really quickly i just want to say i i know we talked about this when we did our v2 episode but yes the phrase graduating

almost has like a

Remember that, remember that like short story, the lottery,

where like the town or whatever, they draw a lottery and everyone's really excited about the lottery.

But whoever won the lottery, they just killed.

You know, you know, that one?

I really know that short story.

I really wanted to jump in and be like, Hunger Games, but I knew you'd be mad.

It has that vibe.

It's like, we get to graduate.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's scary.

I don't like that.

So, so for me,

it is.

I'm just saying how it sounds.

So, there's a conversation that happens sometimes with sports anime.

I promise, I promise it'll link back around, okay?

There's a conversation that happens sometimes with sports anime because so many sports anime take place in like middle school, high school, whatever.

And when the character graduates, they can no longer be on the team, right?

And everybody treats graduating, them graduating away from the team as like that character dying, basically.

So I keep thinking of it that way.

I don't think of it in quite such a dystopian way.

It's more just like they are removing themselves from this world that they have been operating in.

Oh, absolutely.

I totally get it.

I understand completely.

I know that sometimes you just don't want to do it anymore or life comes along or whatever.

I get it.

But the like,

they're graduating has a vibe to it that just gets me every time.

It's the exact same thing as when Twitch, for example, does like bleed purple.

I'm like, what if I don't want to bleed at all?

Like, that seems, that's a lot of commitment on my part.

Like, I don't,

I don't know.

You know, just like sometimes weird vibes.

For sure.

Yeah.

And I, and I don't know if the term also

has been like translated to graduate.

I don't know.

I also don't know like where that term came from and if we like took it.

I think it's, I don't, obviously, I can't 100% say that this is certain, but I feel like it's a

K-pop or J-pop kind of thing where it's like the girl gets too old for the band and then like

shaking your head like that.

Peaces out, you know, like, I'm out of here.

I'm going to go.

And then does the peace out fate meme?

Yeah, I'm going to go live my life and not be on the culture.

This is an idol culture thing.

People are saying you nailed that.

It feels like it.

And

again,

I don't know what's translated to American.

I don't know.

I'm about to say American idol culture, which is not the right thing.

But like boy band culture in America.

We do have American idol culture.

It's just not at all what

totally different.

Mostly signing cow.

But I feel like

here it's a little bit different.

Everything I've seen about literally any boy band or like girl band in, you know, Korea, Japan, or whatever.

Their lives sound terrible.

Every time I've read anything, I'm like, God, it sounds insufferable like you can't be seen with people like if there's if you're a girl band no boys allowed if you're like uh it's all illusion to sell records 100 it sounds intolerable it's very yeah

yes

yeah

but anyway holocure is really fun

it is

it is a very fun game Apparently it's free too.

That's the shocking part.

It's free.

There's going to be an update that adds a bunch more people.

And

I don't think that you mentioned this.

Maybe you did.

Did you mention that there's like a whole side part of the game that isn't vampire survivors that's just like hanging out at a house fishing?

So everyone keeps asking me to play that and I don't want to.

I know it's right there.

I see the hollow house that everyone's like, go there, do that.

And I'm like,

or I could kill a bunch of guys and be a little badass.

It gives you passive income to do gotcha

to get more characters.

Go on.

You can eventually like hire, if I recall correctly, you can eventually like hire fans to do like chores.

And like when you're there, I know.

And when you're in there,

all of the girls that you've gotcha, they like fish and whatever for you.

You can grab fish and then just sell the fish.

You just get a bunch of money and then you can use it in the gotcha

I I mean obviously I have to check this out now, but the concept of you can hire fans to do chores is hilarious one of my like that's very funny

I'm pretty sure that's the model of several gaming studios I know.

Like, yeah, we'll just hire fans on the cheap and let them do all the work.

Oh, no.

Oh, God.

I'm not looking at any names, but it's very chilly around here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's so funny.

Yeah.

So,

but you're right.

That game is very cute.

I like everybody's abilities.

I have, I think, like 10.

of them, maybe.

I keep getting duplicates, which pisses me off.

I'm trying to finish off my collection.

That's gotcha.

That's the gotcha life.

So, what are you doing?

Yeah, I'm trying to finish off my collection, and

I'm perpetually stuck at the fact that I have about 12

upgrades of the little detective girl,

and everything else is a mess.

Like, it's trying to, there's, I was trying to get this one that looked like a little demon kid.

I don't know her deal, but it kept giving me some girl who's like a

like a dancer or something.

I was like, I don't want that dancer, I want the little demon, and it was like

every time you get a duplicate, you get like a pity currency to just like buy characters, and I think it buffs the duplicate, yeah.

But but what I'm saying is, if there's a specific character that you want and you just keep doing the gotcha in that one, like what do they call them, banners, in that one, like section of dudes,

you'll be able to buy it eventually, right?

You say that,

but I don't know that I recognize that currency.

Maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

Here's the thing.

I'm also not paying a lot of attention.

I'm relying on chat to tell me what I'm doing.

Most of the time, I'm like, I'm going to make this little girl who throws bones at people.

Oh, I played a girl who throws nuts.

All of her abilities are nut-based.

And so I'm blasting nut on all these enemies.

And they keep trying to attack me.

And I'm like, eat my nut.

And I throw nuts at them.

But then you do it in a spread.

And it's a spread of nuts, and then everyone's getting blasted by your nuts.

And it's like, right,

here's the thing: she's very powerful, however, the spread attack is not as good.

There's this one girl she throws dice, and the dice, those dice are busted.

Yeah, dice girl, busted.

She's throwing out dice, and it's like based on the damage is based on the roll you get.

But eventually, you're throwing out like 15 die.

And so you're like a guy playing Warhammer where it's like, okay, I need

six fours, and you're like, 800 fours, go.

It's great.

That's your hair falling out.

I'm so sorry.

There it goes.

Sleeve.

There it goes.

Yeah.

Well, that's how it happens.

That's how it happens.

Age, it'll get you.

Soon you're shedding from your sleeve.

Oh my God.

What's the next stage?

Hair growing in places that it shouldn't.

So you lose it in places you should have it, then it grows in places it shouldn't.

It's a slow swapy-doo.

Yeah, soon you're just going to be like

hairy knuckles.

Bunch of hair on my nose and knuckles.

Yep.

Hair gone everywhere else.

Yep.

That implies that everywhere but my nose and knuckles is currently hairy.

It's going to be hairless.

I spend a lot of time shaving, guys.

Hairy knuckles.

Just the hairiest knuckles.

And I'll strip right down your nose.

The worst part is there's definitely going to be exactly one guy out there who's really pissed.

Like, how dare you?

My nose hair has been an issue my entire life.

Just here?

The landing strip?

Right here.

Yeah.

And I'm sorry for that, man.

I'm sorry that's your curse.

But, like, also, it's unique.

It is.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

That's pretty cool.

If you just got a little strip here.

Oh, my gosh.

If you had the, if you had a Unibrow and then the.

I don't know, you could come up with a good name then.

And it can't be Mr.

T.

That's too obvious.

But there's got to be, there's got to be a good name for this,

right?

The T-Zone.

Although that makes it sound like you're oily.

I don't know.

We'll workshop it.

I thought you had something.

You got like a, so you have like a this and then a T there, huh?

Because it makes a T on your face.

Yeah, but it's made of hair.

That's not cool.

Why not?

What are you trying to say?

I'm saying that

if you have an eyebrow slash nosebrow of hair, it's not cool.

It's not cool.

It's just not.

But could you...

Is there a name you could call yourself?

That's not cool.

That makes it cool.

If you had a cool name,

is there a name you could call yourself that would make the T-zone cool?

The hairy T-Zone.

The

hairy tea.

No, no, there's nothing you can call yourself.

No.

Shave that.

Trim it.

Get it out of there.

T-Rex.

Teapot.

Teapot is so good.

Strongly disagree.

Strongly disagree.

I do not think that's good at all.

Teapot.

You want me to call you teapot?

Like, sup, teapot?

That's cute.

I don't know that if you were rocking the hairy tea that you'd want to have a cute name.

I don't know.

It depends on the vibe of the person, right?

I don't know.

You know what sucks?

Is knowing how nicknames go?

Yeah.

I can see the trajectory of that.

First we call you teapot.

Then, because you're teapot, we want to call you something cool because teapot sucks.

So we're like, okay, we can call you like Mrs.

Potts.

We can call you, like, we'll come up with names.

But then eventually, no no matter what, we're just gonna call you Chip from that point on.

And then people are gonna ask us why we have to call you Chip.

And it's gonna be like, well, because

yeah, yeah, it's definitely gonna end up as chip, right?

Yeah,

that's what it's gonna be.

So it tackles, what the fuck are you guys talking about?

Hollow cure, obviously.

Read the topics.

Almost like they weren't paying attention.

Hey, this is kind of a jumping off.

I played a game that is also like a rehashing of a very popular game, but done very well.

May I talk about it?

I'll allow it.

Okay.

The new,

well, new-ish Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game,

Splintered in Time, a Splinter in Time.

You nailed it.

So far, you've done really great.

Hold on, let me double-check the title.

Oh, no, I closed Steam.

You know what?

Splintered in Time.

A Splintered Time?

Hold on.

Splintered Fate.

You were way off.

God, I was so off.

Jesus.

Okay.

Yeah, so this is a mobile port, but it's so good.

It just came out on PC, and it is Hades.

It's Hades, but with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

What?

It's old school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And instead of having multiple weapons, you have the brothers, right?

There's co-op, which I haven't tried yet, but each brother has their own normal attack, special attack, and then starting tool.

And it has all of these Hades markers that

make it so, so fun.

There's like different areas that have like the mini boss and then the main boss.

There's a bunch of upgrades you can do back in the sewers when you fail.

And the whole story is Master Splinter has been taken by Shredder and is being held in this weird like alternate plane.

And so the brothers are trying to get him back, basically.

If you really loved the part of Hades where it's like every time you like

come back to a boss, they have new things to say.

Or if you show up with like certain trinkets, they have like special special dialogue.

That's in there.

There's a bunch of like, you know, side characters like April and Casey and Angel and all of these other characters.

And they'll show up occasionally and have like things to say to you while you're on a run or they'll show up in the sewers.

It's really fun.

I love the dial.

It's fully voice acted.

Side note.

The voice acting is great.

The way that the dialogue is written between the brothers is amazing.

I love it.

So it makes me laugh every time they talk to each other.

It's good.

It's a really good game.

And I was a little hesitant when I found out that it was a mobile port, but it's like, it has no business being as good as it is.

It's like a really, really fun game.

They really knocked it out of the park.

All of them are really fun to play.

I don't care which turtle I'm playing as.

They're all so fun.

They're all really snappy and they have like different like stats that are kind of tailored more towards them, but you can build them out differently.

The sort of like boon system that's in Hades exists in this.

There's a kind of like turtle powers, you know,

that you can get as you're playing, but also

at the end of each boss, you can get a inspiration.

So, kind of like a boon, an inspiration from one of the other brothers.

So, say that I'm playing as Raph after one of the big bosses, I might get an option for like one of Leonardo's abilities or one of Michelangelo's abilities.

And then you can start being like, well, all of Michelangelo's stuff is like multi-attack based.

Like maybe I want to start building into multi-attack with Raphael, right?

And

it makes it really fun.

You wind up like having some of these builds where you're just melting stuff and you feel so cool.

I haven't made it all the way through yet.

I think I've made it to the last area, but I haven't reached like the boss boss of the last area, who I assume is Shredder.

But it's so fun.

It's so fun.

I highly recommend.

If you like Hades, it's Hades.

It's Hades, but Turtles.

It's great.

I'm super curious because I did not know this game was out.

When you started talking, my assumption was you were about to talk about the Shredder's Revenge game that came out that has the DLC that came out two months ago now.

Yeah, apparently, like two different TD Ninja Turtles games came out around the same time.

I haven't played the Shredder one, I've only played this one, so I don't know how

I'm very interested in this.

This looks very cool.

Plus, also, even though I know it's based off the Nickelodeon version, all the art assets look very much to how I remember the turtles as a kid.

So, like, I'm very all right with that.

It looks super interesting.

I'm also now

looking at this

Ninja Turtle Shredder's Revenge Radical Reptiles.

Sometimes the turtles hit you just right.

You're like, yeah.

Right?

I've been in a good nostalgia place playing it.

Like, oh, this is so fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's very cool.

Yeah.

This is interesting.

Yeah.

I did not know this was even out or a game that existed, to be honest.

Very cool.

Yeah.

Look at you doing the things.

I did the things.

What else did you play?

Oh, I'm on my, I'm in like

full rpg mode okay it's bad it's like

right now i am playing metaphor romancing saga 2 and dragon age all at the same time oh my god

yeah it's it's it's a whole thing it is it is a lot which one is commanding more of your attention currently I mean, Dragon Age, because I'm trying to finish it.

My hope is that it's shorter than Metaphor.

Metaphor is just a long game.

Yeah.

How long is Dragon Age supposed to be?

I don't know, but I feel like I've got to be getting close to some kind of either later half of the game or something like that because I'm running out of new areas to find.

And most of what I'm doing now is like,

man, it's really going down.

You better go deal with that.

I'm like, okay.

Right.

So again, playing on Easy was the best choice I've ever done for that game.

Yeah.

Absolutely just like I fought a boss that was clearly supposed to be an endgame like mega boss the other day.

And while it was like

challenging, you had to roll around through stuff, I was happy that I didn't have to spend hours trying to beat that guy.

I was like, oh, I beat him in one try.

Awesome.

Moving on.

Fantastic.

Oh, boy.

Next.

And the one thing I've seen, at least from people who tried to play on harder, is that the game isn't necessarily

difficult on hard?

It's more like everything is a spongy

monster guy that takes forever to kill, which to me doesn't sound a lot of fun.

So I'm absolutely okay with murdering like

swaths of enemies.

They come at you and I just like gun them down.

Absolutely fine.

Do not care.

God,

it's...

Oh, Dukes, it's so funny.

I posted on Twitter, like,

man, you know what?

I think I'm just when it comes to RPGs on stream, I think I'm just gonna play on easy from now on.

I'm clearly playing just for the story.

I don't give a damn about like mechanics when I'm doing it for stream.

It's not for me.

And literally, I'm very specifically talking about RPGs, like just

story-based games.

The amount of people that read that as, if you play on anything but easy, you are stupid.

Or that I have given up on all games and I'm just going to do it.

People are like, just watch a movie, guy.

Just like,

maybe I want to be like the amount of people that came out of the board would be like, you suck for this opinion.

I was like, bro.

Okay, cool.

It's

a reading literacy conversation.

It's like,

I clearly wasn't talking about you.

Why are you making this about you?

I don't understand.

Every time.

Well, because people love making stuff about them so they can

like

get you.

Like, okay, cool.

It's so dumb anyway i stand by it i've never been happier it's been one of the best playing experiences i've ever had i think that absolutely makes sense especially if you're making content with it because unless unless you're you're trying to unless the content is the struggle right like

you're going to be able to like get through and actually enjoy and have a nice pace with the game and not get stalled for hours on something.

It is so much fun to just zip through stuff and get to the next story beat i absolutely want oh my favorite comment i saw was some guy said like this is what final fantasy 14 does to your brain i was like whoa

i was like that you went like for the jugular on that like okay dude

yeah i uh absolutely am

Totally fine with going easy mode on this.

There's nothing out of Dragon Age that I would get that would make the experience better if I played in a harder difficulty.

It just wouldn't.

However, Romancing Saga, on the other hand, I would say only play that on hard.

You can play it on easy, but it's a different experience.

So basically,

the way Romancing Saga 2 works is, and they, so, and if you haven't seen, recently they released a

remake of it.

It's the same team that made Visions of Mana, so it has like an anime vibe to it.

Okay.

But premise-wise, Romancing Saga 2 at least, is not necessarily about your character, but about the kingdom as a whole.

So when you start the game, you start as one leader, and then that leader will die, and then a new leader will come along, and then that leader will die, and then a new leader will come along.

And so the story is one that takes place over generations.

And so I'm, at this point, I'm like four kings deep, and it's 270 years after I started.

And the way it works is there's these ancient heroes and they've come back, but they're now monsters and you have to fight them.

Except you are not powerful enough to fight them.

They can literally suck your soul and instantly kill you.

So you have to build up your forces, build up your kingdom.

You have to go around and do different

things around the world.

So for example, you'll be given two tasks.

And one will be, hey, there are pirates on the coast and we got to deal with them if we're going to open up shipping lanes.

And another one will be, hey, hey there's these monks to the south and they're dealing with a dragon we need you to go help them and then when you pick one of those it will kind of at least for the time block you off from the other one so if i pick the monks i'll go to the monks the monks will be like hey man we got this dragon to deal with but here's the deal we need to kill the dragon so the townspeople still respect us if you kill the dragon they're gonna hate us it's like Okay, so you go into the cave, you clear all the monsters for the monks, and then the cave will be like, here's your option.

You can go kill the dragon by yourself, or you can go back, tell the monks, and then go get the monks to kill the dragon.

And you have a choice now.

And if you go get the monks to go kill the dragon, you will now unlock the monks.

And there'll be a group that you can get to join you in the next phase of the game.

But if you kill the dragon by yourself, you get a bunch of cool loot.

So you can now choose how you want to do it.

And then after you beat that, it'll go like 101 years later.

And then you'll pick a new leader from everything you've unlocked you'll pick a new leader and then you start over like you have your kingdom and anything that's changed over time so for example i built a garden in my my capital and this garden by the time 100 years went by this little tiny sapling is now this beautiful tree and there's like secret treasures and stuff you can unlock in there you can build blacksmiths and you can build all these different things in your capital that over time become better and better as you put more money into it you can build a university university, and that university will unlock weird quizzes you can take that will give you different things.

There's all sorts of stuff you can do, but really you're playing as the town, as your empire, and you're trying to build it and thrive.

And then eventually, the last character you get is the character you created at the beginning of the game.

And so that's like your hero.

And that's the person who's going to win and defeat the villain at the end.

But the thing is, playing on a difficult level, right?

If you play easy, what will end up happening is you'll go through the motions of doing all the quests and stuff, which is fine.

The game doesn't have an XP system per se.

Basically, if you and I are fighting a monster, Dodger, and you start using fireballs and I start using a sword, when combat ends, your fireball ability will increase, my sword ability will increase.

That's it.

If I get hit, my life increases.

I get a little life.

But there is no XP bar.

We're literally just whatever you use, whatever you do, you benefit from that.

So that's kind of...

And then when time goes on we inherit the abilities of the people who use them so if you use a bunch of fireballs and i use a bunch of sword we can make a character in the future who has awesome fireball and sword abilities like that kind of thing okay so you're just investing in the future of your kingdom by using different things and then you can combine things so you can make like a water air attack like that like there's all sorts of different things you can do

so is there sorry if i missed this part is there is there a goal or is it just building on, building on, building on, building?

So the way it works is you are, like I was saying, there's this group.

So

short version of the intro to the game.

Okay.

You find out that there are seven heroes from long ago that saved the world from termites.

Literally, basically the Zerg.

They look like the Zerg.

They're like little Zergling guys.

Okay.

And they saved the world from these creatures, but in the process, were corrupted in some way and vanished.

Thousand years later, they're back and they're terrible monsters, and they're slowly taking over the world.

And your kingdom is sort of in the far north, and you are trying to basically liberate your empire and fortify it against these forces, and then defeat the bad guys.

That's that's the plan.

The thing is, because the

seven heroes are basically immortal, you can defeat them and stop them for a little bit, but you haven't fully defeated them.

And so while your people die off over time

they

exist forever and kind of like are on the borders trying to like get in right and so

you

are not just creating the character that you're playing and going around and and stopping them you're also fortifying so the next generation has an easier job of doing it and then you keep doing that over and over and over and over again the thing is the thing that's interesting about so if you play an easy this is what i was trying to get at if you play an easy time will kill you which is basically you will be on easy mode and you'll be doing the missions and and then eventually you'll complete one of the missions and it will just be like

15 years has passed or something like that right like it'll just do that okay

if you play on hard mode it's objectively difficult But your characters can die in combat.

And if your king dies in combat or queen die in combat, it hits you with a

five years later and you make a new character so it isn't like you know if you lose your lp in combat your character's dead gone so you get a whole new and i think that's much more engaging and more fun

to

be like oh my character died i guess i gotta make a different one now and try it again

more so than

Just winning, winning, winning, and then time killing you.

I like the idea of making it a little more challenging.

Like, I got to keep this guy alive or else I'm starting fresh.

And I think that's the difference.

I'm not going to tell you how to play.

Obviously, I'm the guy playing Dragon Age on Easy.

But I think for this game, bumping the difficulty is a little more fun because it adds to a better crafted story.

Because when you have the seven, you can literally one-shot your characters, that shouldn't be the only time that you're in fear.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So it's a very interesting game.

It is.

I saw a lot of people in chat being like, oh, it's like Final Fantasy II.

It literally is the saga games literally came from the the Final Fantasy II team.

The order of operations was Final Fantasy II to

the Saga games that were on Game Boy that were released in the U.S.

as Final Fantasy Legends and then Romancing Saga.

So, like, it's the exact, it's the through line.

It is absolutely the Final Fantasy II team.

And so, uh,

it's a blast.

It's super fun.

The best part is, and this is why I've been playing a lot lately.

I can go home and,

you know, I'm trying to be very good about not just like

plopping down in front of the TV, like trying to like listen to music or read or do things.

Right.

However, this game has me to the point where I'll go home and I'll put in like an hour or two, a night.

Like it'll be like, hey, we need you to go to this area and solve a dispute about who is going to inherit this kingdom.

So I'll go to the area.

I'll do the mission.

I'll complete the story and be like,

All right.

Save.

That's it for today.

And it's, it's great because because it's not character based i don't have to stress about like the overarching story the story is very simple it is purely mechanical in in terms of fun like uh it'll be like hey you've unlocked another level of your blacksmith and i'll go to the blacksmith and the the blacksmith's like all right this is what i need in order to build this thing for you i'm like on it girl and um

Because the game is so big, they have this guy, Mr.

S, who's like a little tiny one-eyed yellow demon guy.

I don't know who the hell is playing purple people eater.

Pretty much.

And when you find him, there's a big, uh, like one of those big stamp things where if you find him enough times, it stamps this little journey he has.

Okay.

And each time you get five, you unlock something else.

And it's everything from telling you how many treasures are in an area to letting you know that you can escape from, like, you can unlock an escape from combat thing that doesn't hurt you.

Things like that.

And so it makes the game easier over time.

And right now,

I'm just like, a great example is last night, straight up just went and

messed around looking for treasures in a dungeon that I had five of seven.

I was like, where's those other two?

And eventually you can unlock a thing that'll show you in the dungeon where the treasure is, but that's like way down the line.

It's like, I want that treasure now.

Because the problem is you'll be, you'll be hit by like someone will be like, sir, in order to unlock this new area, we need to build a bridge.

It will cost 1 million crowns.

Like, okay, well, I got 400,000 crowns.

Where the hell am I going to get that money?

And you can wait and eventually your interest will accrue and you'll get it.

Or you can go around looking for money and open a...

When I first started playing, I couldn't believe the first chest I opened was like, 500,000 crowns.

It's like, they did not just give me 500,000 bucks to start.

But really, that's nothing because you're playing as a kingdom, not a person.

Right.

That makes sense.

And so, yeah, and there'll be things like, there's this one quest I found.

It's like, we need to go open a trade route to this faraway land.

I'm like, awesome.

And like, however, we need a leader who's more experienced in seafaring.

Screw me.

I spent all my time saving those monks and I didn't go to the sea captain.

Now my king doesn't know a damn thing about the ocean.

So I have to wait till next time to like build up a king that knows that kind of thing.

Right, right.

Gotcha.

Very interesting.

And there's no classes per se.

It's based on what spells or weapons.

So like each character can have two weapons and those two weapons can be anything.

And each enemy has weaknesses.

And you want to put as many weapons and as many spells on all your characters as you can so you can figure out what the hell the weaknesses are because sometimes they're going to be completely immune to shit and sometimes they're going to be very weak to things.

So you want to have a whole, it's like a pretty intricate game and I'm having a blast with it.

It is.

That sounds really difficult.

It is.

And that's the difference.

It's like Dragon Age, I'm literally there for the story and jump kicking monsters off of cliffs.

Other than that, I'm not there to like master the combat system.

I do not care.

I just want to know the story.

Right.

Romancing Saga, I very clearly am there for the experience of the game because there's hardly a story.

Right.

And that's the difference.

And that's what I was trying to say.

But there's no room for, you know.

Where would you say you are on that scale?

with metaphor

um metaphor is like both it's right down the middle metaphor might be one of the most engaging games i've i've ever played genuinely might be one of the best games i've played in years i cannot stress it enough um it's a game i want to take my time with and enjoy uh the combat's great the story is awesome but also just the

the game itself takes chances and like

I cannot stress this enough.

Literal artwork is being interpreted into the game to create the world that they've made.

And it's like on a level that not many people are doing, that not people would risk.

Like the fact that

there's literally the boss, a boss with the head of a man with a weird thing on his, a platform where people dance around it playing a heart organ that shoots poop at you.

While the man's, the face man's body is an egg with tree feet and his butt bursts open and little gremlins pop out.

It all means something.

Like some kind of, I don't know, metaphor.

And it's brilliant.

And they

have to create.

The audacity they have to create this is,

I bless them for this.

Not many game studios would be like, let's get fucking weird.

If you want to know exactly what it looks like, look up the Hieronymus Bosch painting Garden of Good and Evil.

The last panel, that dude's in it.

It's the exact same guy.

It's

phenomenal.

Like, it truly is a game that's like, we want you to think while you play this.

I'm like, yeah, I will.

Those are my favorites.

I'm not surprised that Atlas as a company would be like, we could do something fucking weird here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is.

They were already doing weird stuff.

So it wasn't, you know, they just decided to go a little weirder.

Yeah, well, I mean, the difference I think is from Persona games is persona games, because it's all in the mind, there's more like a psychology behind the creatures you're fighting.

Everything from like the dick monster to the like, you know, the dude who has like uh weird eggs,

like everything has a meaning.

And that's the case here as well.

It's the exact same vibe.

It is the persona team.

But because it's done from the perspective of humanity, right?

So you have like

they took a Renaissance artist, not one that people know a lot about they took a renaissance artist that wasn't doing michelangelo leonardo you know the ninja turtle shit they picked one guy who was doing weird things and they were like we're going to use his art because he was looking not at humanity as the renaissance looked at it but he was looking at it from like a psychology perspective and was focusing on the fears and the desires of humanity in his artwork.

And so all of his art, take the time, Haranos Bosch, look it up.

All of his art art is crazy like bonkers and

it feels weird and looks weird because it is weird and it makes you a little uncomfortable when you look at it and they just took that and were like put in the game and this is a representation of humanity go

once once we're at that baseline i'm in i want to know what's going on it reminds me of of the stuff they tried to do in the new alan wake dlc that's very very clearly on the nose about AI

and AI generation of art.

And what is art?

And how does art work?

I love, I love when people do stuff like this.

And it isn't just like,

you're an assassin for the government.

Now kill.

I like when games get weird and make you like think.

I don't know.

It's my favorite kind of art is when it's like, use your brain, idiot.

I'm like, yeah.

I will.

I love that stuff.

so i'm i'm deep diving three rpgs yeah you're not the healthiest

yeah yeah yeah i'm stuck at it i can't get out you know what cracks me up is legitimately i i think that this is very charming is that every time you're really into an rpg you're like and this is the only one i'm gonna play i'm not i'm gonna I'm not gonna play any more long games right now.

I'm just gonna play this one.

And then another one comes out and then you're like, well, two wouldn't hurt.

Well, these all three came out in the course of one month.

And all three are ones that I've been looking forward to and wanted to play.

And so, you know, again, I stand by my choice.

Easy mode Dragon Age, the best choice I've ever made.

It is making everything else so much better to be like, yeah, I played a bunch of Dragon Age and got through so much shit today.

Yeah.

It's pretty good.

I haven't played anything with like a really exciting story.

The only other thing that I played this week really was sulfur.

I don't know if you've seen sulfur at all.

No.

It's a very weird game.

It's a first-person, like kind of procedural dungeon crawler.

Sulfur.

Sulfur.

Yeah.

The concept of it at the start of the game, you are in a car driving after a witch, and then you crash your car.

get out of the car and you have like this weird pendant around your neck that basically tells you, like, you have to follow the witch.

The story being that you are a priest, and your church was set on fire by this witch.

And so, you chase the witch, and she goes into a weird portal, and you're like, Well, I guess I'm going in the portal.

You go in the portal, and it takes you to an alternate plane called sulfur that is like kind of purgatory.

Like, it's not

everyone that's in in it is dead um but they can't move on they're like stuck so your like hub is your church your church exists in sulfur as well as all of the people that used to attend your church and you come to find out that like Your church was well known for being like open doors to anyone, no matter what their background was, no matter what sort of life they've led, right?

Like anybody could could be there.

And so

you've got a bunch of like rough around the edges people

that were church goers.

And this witch came and ripped it from you, basically.

And so all of the like stuck spirits of

these lovely weirdos that were part of your church help you to get as far as you can chasing the witch.

It's so the weirdest and I think most fun part of of this game is that

there's a cooking system inside of the game.

So I know, I know.

So as you're playing, so you go in, you have like a starting gun and a sword, essentially.

You find different guns.

You always have the sword, but you find different guns as you play and you can upgrade them.

You can find like religious oils and weird things.

So you can like enchant them and you can also just like add add normal embellishments, like you know, snipe scopes and things like that.

Sure.

But

everything that you break and everything that you kill has a possibility to drop food.

And there are,

I don't even know, I definitely haven't seen all of the food that gets dropped, but there's so many things that can get dropped and found.

And then you'll find every now and then you'll find cauldrons, and you can combine food

in cauldrons and most of it makes just like like if things will combine it'll just make better food that will give you more health some of them give you buffs but it's kind of rare some of them become items or like poisons like like grenades like things that you can throw at enemies right sure

And so like a huge part of this game winds up not specifically being like fighting these like weird goblins and things but but actually gathering as much food as you can and trying to figure out what combinations of food you can do in order to like keep yourself alive

it's so weird yeah it's it's it's rogue-ish it's it's very rare

yeah there's no there's no like upgrades that follow you in so i wouldn't say it's a rogue light um it doesn't have like you have your hub world, but the hub world is mostly like

you get a little bit of money back based on how much money you had when you died.

But aside from that, you drop everything.

You can leave things.

You occasionally are able to come back to the church without dying.

If you've charged the amulet through, like a, you know, depending on what you've done in the dungeons, essentially.

Sure.

And if you've got a bunch of stuff, you can leave stuff for

yourself in case you die.

But aside from that,

there's no like

upgrade system or anything like that that I've that I've found so far in the game.

You've just got like a bunch of little weirdos.

One lady repairs things.

She'll repair guns and she sells ammo.

There's a guy that just sells basically anything.

Sometimes he's got clothes, like armor or,

you know, just whatever.

And then there's a guy who sells these like enchantment oils, and he also is at the church.

I must stress to you, yeah,

looking at this game, never heard of it before, looking at it now, it looks like it just came out.

Everything you said to me sounded awesome.

I was super in.

I went to the Steam page, and

obviously, this is preference.

The art style

looks more like Frog Detective than an FPS game where you blast monsters and stuff.

Like, it does not look like how I thought it was going to look.

And I do not like it.

I do not like the visuals.

It looks like I'm playing Frog Detective.

Yeah.

You were like, you're fighting demons.

You're going to church.

You're doing it.

I was like, cool, cool, cool.

I can't wait to see what kind of awesome art style it has.

And it literally is Frog Detective.

It's not a cool art style.

No.

I was like, oh.

So I had the opposite situation where I was watching friend of the show, Boone.

Boone was playing it and has been playing it for a bit now and was like, oh my God, Dodger, you've got to play this game.

And I was watching him play and going,

doesn't look very exciting to me.

It doesn't look very fun.

It's just him running around shooting goblins occasionally, right?

But playing it, it is very fun.

It is a really fun game.

I totally get it.

But yeah, I had the opposite flipped situation of like seeing it, being like, that doesn't look very fun, but I'll try it.

A friend told me to try it.

I'll try it.

Same reason I tried Holocure.

And it wound up being fun.

And so did Holocure.

So you sold me on the idea of it.

I just went to go look and was like,

I searched because I thought I found the wrong game.

I was like, this can't be it.

This looks, what do you, what the hell is this?

No.

No.

That's what it is.

It is an early access i will i will say that so i don't know how much about it is gonna change but certainly not the style of it if you hate the style of it i i think it's that's to say

interesting interesting yeah it sounds fun yeah

but i can't i keep looking at it it's really funny it it honest to god has the exact same Art Styles frog detective, which, by the way, I love frog detective.

It's just crazy to me that what you described to me is what I'm looking at.

I'm like, no,

no,

that can't be right.

I'm like, damn, I'm really excited to play Preacher, but a video game.

Except not, except it website.

Yeah, except it's like, I'm expecting goofy music in the background.

Like, whoop, whoop, wop, wop, wop, blop, blop, blah, blah, blah.

The music's actually killer.

The music in this game is killer.

It's really good.

Yeah, I uh, man,

I've been so caught up in RPGs, I feel dumb dumb because I have like

a lot of games I want to play.

Like, just a ludicrous amount, and I haven't had any time.

I just keep, I'm looking at my desktop, and it's like gross.

The amount of things I've downloaded ready, I'm like, I'm gonna play this, I'm gonna play this, I'm gonna play this.

What I'm simply out of everything that you're seeing right now, what are you most excited to play?

I mean, right now,

man.

This is a fantastic question.

There's a game that I want to.

If you just

got sucked into a portal where time was stopped and you were able to just finish all of the games tonight, and tomorrow you had a clean slate and you were like, I can play whatever I want.

I finished my RPGs.

I could play anything.

What would be the first thing you would play?

Well, I mean, I have a literal order on my desktop of things I want to play.

There's a demo for a game called oneway.exe, which I think is going to be a really weird fourth wall-breaking horror game.

Okay.

There's a game called Mirthwood, which at least from what I've seen.

Yeah, at least from what I've seen, it looks super fun that I want to play.

There's a game called The King is Watching.

I think that'd be super interesting to take a look at.

Obviously, I want to check out Empire of Ants.

That is a game that's like RTS, but ants.

Yes.

I'm like, that seems fun.

I want to check out.

Obviously, I want more time to play through Tiny Glade.

I love Tiny Glade.

That game is so cute.

And I just want to shut my brain down and play that.

I would like to finish Beyond Galaxy Land.

That would be great to do.

I want to...

I still have...

Oh my God.

I still have

Frostpunk 2.

I'd like to play more of.

I want to play that game.

I still haven't.

That Scarlet Deer in game that you played.

It's sitting on my desktop.

I haven't touched it.

It's not out yet, is it?

It's the demo for it.

I haven't touched the demo.

yeah yes my brain just died and i don't want to give it the wrong name but the new roller coaster planet coaster 2 came out planet coaster yeah i want to play planet coaster yeah i mean so much stuff like just i know there's a new stalker i think coming so that's a whole thing

a lot of games a lot of games not a lot of time

yeah

death of the reprobate is one that that I'd like to check out.

Death of the Reprobate?

Look that game up.

You want a game that's like

an interesting historical art style game.

What the sh,

okay.

Go on.

What is this game?

It's a point-and-click game that has like old-timey historical art as like the style.

That's very cute.

I see this.

I'm really like this wacky.

Yeah.

Interesting.

See?

Okay.

Again, another game I would never know about.

It is out now and

right up my alley.

It says, just clicked on it.

It says it's similar to Oxen Free and Killer Frequency.

I don't know how, but.

What?

I don't know, dude.

The thing, the two things you just said are the most up my alley shit anyone has ever said.

You're telling me a game that has a weird artwork style that looks like old-time paintings

has the exact same vibe as killer frequency.

And what was the other one?

Oxenfree.

Ox?

Two of your babies.

Two games I absolutely love.

I shall play this.

There you go.

It is mine.

I shall play this.

Yeah, damn.

Okay, sure.

Talk me into it.

Yeah.

The dark comedy point and click

with Renaissance painting art as the style.

Understood.

The problem is, is now I'm expecting like some weird shit to happen.

Oh, wonderful.

It's like Mona Lisa, but then she just starts talking to you.

But like in the same way, like Doki Doki Literature Club,

she's like, only Mona.

In the trailer, they zoomed in on a Cupid

and...

He called somebody a motherfucker.

So, yeah, I think it's weird.

I think it's a weird game.

I feel like most cherubs are like that, though.

Cherubs in general.

Yeah, as I've stressed, the best thing you can do if you ever go to an art museum is go find all the art with cherubs in them.

Because I'm telling you, they're all little horny bastards.

Every single one.

Every time you find a cherub, they're like,

are those titties?

Every time.

It's hilarious.

Take the time.

Go, go, go to an art gallery.

You'll be impressed.

My little cherubs.

Oh, goodness.

what a what a what a time what a time for games what a what a time yeah

i uh is there anything else that you've played recently that you're like in love with

not really i'm on the hunt i'm on the hunt for a mobile game

i really i really want something

that's fun to play on my phone But most things, most things that I've downloaded recently, I've uninstalled

the next day.

I get that.

I'm not a big mobile game player.

I know you're not.

And when I have downloaded them,

what I wanted was never what they gave me.

Like, a great example is they released a near mobile game.

And in my mind, I'm like, hell yes.

Yokutaro says this is going to be canonical.

And I played the first like two hours of it.

And you play as like an actual story.

And there's like a weird ghost mom thing.

And it's very strange, it's very near, and then immediately after the intro, it's like it's a gotcha game, and you're like, Oh, cool.

Like, no!

I've started playing a gotcha game, but it's very fun,

it's very fun.

Uh, so far, I have not run into a wall whatsoever that has made me want to spend money, so

AFK Journey.

It's very cute.

Octo sold me a little bit on AFK Journey.

I honestly, also, i'm not gonna lie i uh

if afk jenny wants to hit me up for a brand deal i'll do that shit um

i said the same thing yeah uh octo sold me on and the reason why isn't because it's good which by the way ignore that for brando purposes did he show you the the animal girls doing big kicks with their booties out yes

i was like you know what i think i'm gonna shout out to octo he's a real one yep he's a g um here's the problem i feel that way with a lot of mobile games now.

Well, see an ad and it's like big booty destroyers.

And I'm like,

go on.

Yes.

And then I'll look at the gameplay and I'm like,

this is like, I could just Google something better than this.

This isn't that.

This is.

I want a really good game that lets me destroy boobies.

Yeah.

Like, why doesn't that?

Why?

It feels like they don't know how to.

I wish I was a billionaire.

I would give the world what it needs.

I would give the world the single greatest mobile game ever.

I'd be like, yeah, we got booty shake physics, but also good gameplay.

But also a really stellar game.

Yeah, but also it's a great game.

Yeah.

I don't.

So here's my, here's, here's my current like

mobile game type that I am looking for a good version of and have yet to find it.

I feel like I'm on a crazy trek.

Okay.

Any of you who play a lot of mobile games, you've probably gotten ads for those goddamn screw games

where it's like

screw games.

So it'll be like a really intricate, crazy thing that's held together by a million screws, and you have to tap the screws in the right order to unscrew the whole thing.

It's very mindless.

I love them.

The issue is they all suck ass when it comes to ads.

That's all.

Every single one of them

sucks ass.

They suck so bad.

They're throwing like eight ads at me to just get through one level and it pisses me off.

And the second they do that, I delete it.

I fucking delete it and I download a different one.

And I have yet to find one that doesn't suck ass.

But the game type of it is so satisfying.

Like it's such a good game type, but no no one's making a version of that that doesn't make you want to scream.

So, I mean, if I was a billionaire, I'd make the screw game that we all deserve.

Right, right.

All right, but I, as an equal

bajillionaire, right, an equal option, say that we should make that, but like, with hot girls, anime girls, that'll sell.

I said, ooh, yes.

Okay.

You know, like, those old, like, mahjong games that showed up on Steam where it was like the more combinations you make, the more clothes fall off of the person.

Right, right, obviously.

We can do that.

Okay, here we go.

Here we go.

This is a free idea, chat.

So you have a hot person, okay, and they've got a bunch of clothes on, and you have to unscrew the clothes in the right order to make the clothes fall off.

All of our ads, see, I've seen enough, what are the, Nikkei, Nike, whatever the hell that

game is.

I've seen enough of those ads to know all we got to do is have like some jiggle physics on our character in the ad, and then it says, get screwed.

We are, we are so good at this.

We are the best.

Buttons.

Oh, my God.

They should be buttons.

You tap the buttons, the buttons pop off.

Oh, my God.

I just.

We should start a game publishing company.

We really should.

We should get on this.

This sounds like a great idea.

If you want to invest in our new project called

Get Screwed.

Called Button

Or, or, yeah.

We got it.

That'd be great.

All right.

I'll call it Kickstarter tomorrow.

Yeah.

Or we call it butt-on.

It's just, it's like, you know, butts.

Yeah.

I like it.

Yeah.

Very good.

This is, we're very good.

Very good.

Very good.

Clever.

Say the best.

Yeah.

Dude, here we go.

Yep.

Yep.

Pretty, pretty good.

Hasn't Jesse literally made a video game before?

What?

Doesn't sound like something I would do.

What?

Doesn't sound like anything I would do.

That's very nice.

Yeah.

I'm not a big...

Like, I want to

play mobile games.

I like the idea.

I like the idea of having it on my phone phone and doing a thing, but I always, every time,

end up being like,

I don't play this anymore.

I guess I'll get rid of it.

Even, and it's just been like way for years, so I just stopped.

I mean, I haven't had a game on my phone for years now.

I've given up the sunk cost aspect of

games on my phone now, which has helped a lot.

I think.

In the past, it would be like, well, I can't delete this because I've, you know, played for so many hours in it, right?

Like these goddamn merge games.

Like, I've merged to make this incredible thing on my island, but I don't play it anymore.

So it's fine.

I had a good time with it.

I'm just going to delete it.

It's whatever.

But I do think a lot of times the reason that people keep games, even when they don't play them anymore, is like, but I've spent so much time on that thing.

You know,

I've reached XYZ level.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I, I um

I

am tempted.

I'm tempted, but it's only because of boobs.

Let's be real.

I otherwise, I would not be interested.

Like, they keep showing commercials for mobile games, and they're always just like hot characters.

I'm like, should I check this game out?

But at least I know what my problem is.

It's not the game.

It has nothing to do with the game.

And it has everything to do with the fact that they're like, guys,

do you enjoy bodies?

I'm like, I do.

That's crazy.

That's one of my favorite things.

Is that a hot person?

I love that.

I love that person.

Yeah.

Dude, the ads, the game ads that I've been getting lately are buck wild.

And I don't know.

I don't know if I'm getting like

demographic targeted, but I hate it.

There's like a, there's a type of game that shout out to anybody else who gets these ads because I hate them.

The ad is basically like, here's a girl that is super dirty and weird looking.

And here's her really toxic husband.

And then the husband goes, you used to be pretty.

What happened?

And then a buttons will show up.

And one of them will say, stay with him.

And the other one will say, leave him.

And then a weird little hand will hover over them and hit leave them.

And then suddenly she's in the salon and you're like oh the game is about

it's a it's an extreme makeover game right these ads bro there are so many versions of that same thing and every time they pop up i'm like i hate this and then the other one that keeps popping up for me

and i think it's because i I went through a phase really recently where I was watching a bunch of pimple popping stuff.

The other one that keeps popping up for me is like,

there are there are these games that are literally like here's here's a a person's face and it's disgusting

like pop all the pimples get rid of all the cysts like and the ads for those i literally have to turn my phone over because they're so disgusting like they're they're

so nasty and i'm like this isn't what i wanted I didn't want this.

I just wanted to watch a fun little whitehead pop out of somebody's face.

All that sounds so gross.

Like the grossest.

It's all gross.

It's all nasty.

And you brought this on yourself by looking up pimple popping videos, you monster.

Because watching a pimple pop is different from

the nastiness.

It's different from the nastiness.

No, that's just nasty.

That's just nasty.

Dude, it's so

nasty.

I thought you were going to say the commercials.

These are the ones that I get all the time.

Yeah, hit me with the microphone.

I feel like they're definitely male-targeted.

Because, you know, there's that, like...

There's a vibe to these.

It's the one where it's, and I'm sure everyone's seen this because they keep using the same character where it's the, uh, it's like

the like dark-haired warrior guy and it's like it looks like flash animation and he's like walking along and he's like has a sword and then like there's a sexy lady and then he gets eaten by a sexy lady and he gets eaten by the sexy lady and he gets like pooped out into a world where he has to collect points in order to right

so there's that that guy but now there's a whole series of it where it's him as the king and he's like bestowing power on people and so like someone will crawl up to him and go like bing and he'll lose power and they'll gain power and they'll be like, Thank you, king, and they'll walk away.

Except they always now have a like down in her luck, destitute woman comes up to the king and he bestows his power, but she drains all the power.

And then when he goes to her, like, please help me.

She's like, no, and kicks him into the pit again.

And he has to, and I'm like, there's a subtext to all of these that are like, guys, don't trust women.

They'll suck your power.

And then you have to start over.

Like, that's all it is constantly.

And I'm like, this is a weird vibe.

This is a strange like it's a strange vibe happening right now it's very strange it's very weird yeah

or the ones

it's weird because i know people who have done this

but i'm not gonna call any of them out get yours get yours gang but the ones where it's very clearly someone not playing the game in the corner And they're like up in the corner and they're like, whoa, I got to get this,

you know, plus 25 soldiers.

because if I don't, I won't make it to the next round.

Whoa, that's pretty, right?

And then the gameplays go

just

one of the craziest things.

What's so funny about it is that Jack Black made that goof when he first started making YouTube videos and he wasn't even playing.

It was just him and a green screen in the corner being like, whoa, that's crazy.

It's a thing that is all over TikTok.

I see it all the time now.

Absolutely crazy.

I don't...

With that said,

if people paid me enough, I'd probably do one of those.

Like, whoa, this is my favorite mobile game.

I can't believe it's.

Look, I'd do it.

If it was enough money, shit, I'm no fool.

Hold on, hold on, ready?

Um, are you telling me that you're not being paid for your game time?

You should download.

Yeah, yeah.

I refuse to shout it out.

Man,

And the weird thing is, this is the exact same vibe.

They're all designed to lure people to play the game.

I get it.

But they're not the game.

And no games are the, like, they're making fake games to get you to play a different game.

And it is the exact same vibe.

No lessons were learned.

10 years ago, when there was like Ebony ads, it was like, my lord.

Like, come save me, my lord.

And it's like, that's not what Ebony is.

Ebony's not that.

You build a city in that game.

Right.

Who's saving?

Sam and I were just talking about how often, and I don't remember this being a thing before, but maybe it was.

It feels egregious now, though, how often the game that's in the ad is not the game.

Right.

There's a cat game that I downloaded

where you're a little cat businessman and you invest in companies.

Okay.

In the ad

It's that weird thing where you're like picking up cash, walk to a counter, give cash,

like it's, and I was like, yeah, okay.

And I downloaded it and it was a perfectly fine, fun game, but it was not that game.

It wasn't that game at all.

It's like, and I don't,

I don't know what makes them think like, this is a good idea.

I'm obsessed with a lot.

I'm obsessed with the one that's like zombie survivors or whatever it is, where it's just like a dude with a gun, first person shooting, mowing down thousands of zombies.

But then you look at the actual game plan and you're like, that's not.

What?

Why do they keep making these ads?

Who downloads this?

Like, do they get anyone to stay?

If you download this thing, you're going to get one thing and it's something different.

Who's playing this?

How do they get away with this?

Yeah.

I also,

the other thing, with these screw games.

Okay, sorry to bring us right back here, but it's applicable.

Okay.

So I've downloaded so many of these screw games now that I've realized a lot of them, I think, are just made by the same people because they have the exact same UI,

but they're called a different thing.

And I'm like, what is happening?

What is going on?

I pisses me off.

I saw someone say that

Nike, Nike, whatever the hell that game is.

Nike, yeah.

Someone in chat was like, it has a really good story, though, Jesse.

If your game is a booby game, I absolutely do not care about the story.

I'm letting you know right now.

I'm not there to learn about these characters' lives.

I absolutely don't care.

Hold on, though.

Hold on, though.

You did say that if you had a Billy Dollars.

you would make a booby game that was actually also a good game.

Here's the thing.

So you have that interest

people, people equate

like if you're going to make a game and their whole point is sexuality in the game.

Yes.

There's a point where you've officially bogged people down with not sexuality.

Like I absolutely must stress to people, just because you're making a horned up game don't mean you need to include things like here's the character's backstory and eight missions about this like no no no no no no no no no no no no everyone we need to just go back to the basics and learn from overwatch

overwatch

obviously years have gone by and they fleshed out stuff more when that game first came out you didn't know shit about them characters and you fell in love to the point where people were downloading so much overwatch porn and all i'm saying is it had nothing to do with the backstory of those characters The backstory was in them as designed.

It was designed into them.

It was, they had a few voice lines, but it wasn't like here's a whole level where we get into the backstory of who sombra is that wasn't there right it had nothing to do with that people

absolutely mistake like

i've done enough game dev now i can absolutely say people have done a terrible job mistaking uh what people want in a game versus what a game should be and and and a lot of time people think oh i'm gonna make a dirty game and i'm gonna give you a bunch of backstory your audience don't care i'd rather you spend more time making the either the gameplay look more jiggly or you give people what they want.

Bro, the backstory.

My favorite reviews on horny games is

that there isn't enough, there isn't enough nudity.

And so when people are like, this is not the game I signed up for, and they're like complaining that there's gameplay.

I think it's a hard balance, right?

To be like, this is actually a really addictive, fun game.

And there's boobies.

Games like the original Honey Pop, I think, like really nailed that, right?

But it's hard.

It's hard to nail that.

Yeah, for the point, Honey Pop 2 was like, we're going to create this intricate story and how you can have two girls at once.

They tried to throw a menage on us and it was boring.

Yeah.

Bro.

How do you fumble it?

Exactly.

And the reason why is because you had to go through so many layers of bullshit to get what you were there to play, which was, I'm going to match three and hopefully knock this woman's clothes off but i like it sucks i have to do a bunch of other bullshit to get there and it is at like if you're gonna make a game sell the game not a like don't keep throwing stuff in because you think that's what people want like it's not i promise you again I do think, because we've discussed this lightly before in the past, I do think that part of the problem sometimes is we crowdfunded this and they get a ton of extra money and they're like, I don't know what to do with all this money.

I guess add mechanics.

And then people are like, no, boo.

Every, every time that I've ever seen a game that like, there's two ways to do this.

One, because trust me, there are a lot of dirty games on Steam now.

And if you read the reviews, most of them are either one,

I came for boobs.

There's, it's not in this game.

I want to see a sex scene.

That doesn't exist.

They say it will be there eventually.

Like, this sucks.

I don't like this.

Or

this isn't a game.

This is just click the next thing and then you see like some

weird dirty bits.

Both of those suck.

Both of those are terrible.

There is an absolute middle ground where it's like, here's something fun you can do.

And your reward for doing this fun thing is you get like a little butt.

It is very, it's not that complicated, but people make it complicated.

I think you're totally right.

Is they keep adding things to it because they think, oh, this needs to be a real game.

A real game is determined on who is playing it and making it.

Like, there is no, this is a real game.

And if your game is at the beginning, you're saying this is a dirty game, make it that.

Don't fill it with a bunch of other crap that's going to get in the way of what people came there to play.

And they keep doing it.

They absolutely keep doing it, where they keep adding things.

And you're like, all right, this kind of sucks.

I don't want to play this.

I also...

And not to make yet another caveat, but I think there's also a difference between this is like a really good visual novel or a really good game that happens to have sex scenes, nudity, whatever in it.

Sure.

Versus we are marketing this as a hentai game.

This is a hentai game.

And then you're like, but there's so much to do before I see a boob.

I feel like though it's it's the expectation established through how it's promoted.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

It's all about what you're saying to people.

I mean, and that's the reason why this conversation spawned from the mobile game conversation is the expectation of what you're setting up for people and what they're going to play.

Mobile games, the reason I don't like them is because the expectation is I'm going to play something different.

And every time I am let down, every time I play the game, I'm like, this sucks.

What am I doing?

And so I just stopped getting them.

And it's the same thing with these, with, if you're going to make a game, like I would never say, Witcher 3 is an erotic game.

Witcher 3 is a game where you're the freaking Witcher and you murder monsters and get cool armor and stuff and every once in a while you bang a witch

that's the difference i'm not there for the banging the witch i'm there to be geralt and murder monsters it's like

yeah yeah and if now if they had come out and said this game is called the bitcher three

that's bad that sucks and um

you're like going around banging i'd be upset if half the time i was like in an open world hunting monsters i'd be like this isn't what i signed up for exact same vibe.

Like, you just give people what they want.

And I think the problem is a lot of people don't do that.

They don't know what they're making.

And when they're done with it, you're like,

okay.

I mean,

congrats, you made a thing, but

I am worried that despite how much we've talked about this, that

at the end of the day,

a lot of people are going to think that we're saying you literally can't make a boobalicious, sexy game and have good writing or good mechanics or blah blah blah you can it's not what we're saying it's it's again it has to do with how it's promoted what are you telling me this game is and is it is it being

is it being misrepresented are you selling it on the sex when it's actually

when that's like a small part of the game yes if you're gonna make like a really intricate detailed visual novel with a bunch of romance things in it

that's fine

Just don't make all your advertisements like we bang and there's going to be a bunch of hotties in here.

Like, that's, yeah.

Make it about the fact you've created this, this beautiful visual novel with a bunch of stuff in it that you can do and you can experience, you know, like the love between two forlorn downtown abbey widows or whatever the hell, whatever the hell your story's going to be.

I know you would.

I blow it.

Yeah.

And again,

for those of you who are like, but I don't understand how we got here, we went mobile game ads lying to

your dirty games lying.

That's it.

It's just, don't

sell us your game.

Don't try to like trick us.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to like it.

What have we got for news today, Jesso?

Oh, oh, dear.

Well,

some good news, some bad news, some weird news, some sad news.

First off,

we're getting

potentially a Godzilla minus two I don't know what's gonna happen so Godzilla minus one's uh

basically getting a follow-up same director same everything

and um I don't know if it's gonna be a direct sequel or just another Godzilla movie but it's a Godzilla movie and if you've seen minus one you know it is absolutely one of the coolest movies.

Very, very cool.

And so I'm hoping, I don't think we need a direct sequel, but if he wants to do another take on Godzilla, but like historically, I'm here for that.

Cool.

Yeah.

That would be very cool.

Plus with a bigger budget.

Although, again, every time people mention

bidger budgets, I always think about how budgets confine and limit people.

And sometimes that's more successful.

Does that make any sense?

Yeah.

Like if you know what you're working with, like Godzilla minus one didn't have a big budget, but nailed it.

It's very good.

And I sometimes wonder if there's like a world in which things get a little too, um,

like,

eff it.

We're going to marvel this thing and then it becomes a mess.

So I don't know.

Um, very excited to see where that leads.

I think that's very interesting.

Again, if you haven't seen that movie, it's really good.

It's really good.

Get on that.

Watch it.

It's very good.

Also, we got a little Nintendo Switch news.

Whatever the hell this successor is going to be, this Nintendo

Switch 2, the Switch Or, the U Switch.

I have no idea what it's going to be.

They said we'll learn more at a later date.

But what we have learned is that it will be backwards compatible,

which

I assume is just for Switch.

I don't know how far back we're going with this.

It looks like it will be compatible with Switch games.

Okay, is what it looks like.

Right.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that's, you know what?

Fine by me.

Any backwards compatibility at all is so nice nowadays, to be honest.

Zero complaints there.

I'm still a little, you know, miffed about the rest of the Nintendo catalog.

They keep trying to hide it behind stuff or take it away.

I don't understand why, but

I'll take this.

That's fine.

Also,

hey, I want to hear a heart.

heartwarming story that makes me feel good.

Honestly, this makes me feel good.

Sure, yeah.

Because you're goofing.

Yeah.

Oh, no, this is definitely a goof.

oh playstation 5 pro

it's out in the wild i've seen some people pick it up but for the most part everything i've seen this is a jesse cox pro tip for you by the way

if you have a playstation 5

i don't know why you need to get a pro in fact i don't think you should get a pro if you've never had a playstation 5 pick up the pro it's the smartest choice to go however

Having a PlayStation 5 and seeing the difference, I think it's negligible.

And I think there's no reason to get a pro at all.

At all.

And I feel like most people are with me on this because

PS5,

the Pro has no shortages right now.

You can kind of find it anywhere.

And

to my immense joy,

Scalpers who grabbed a bunch of PS5s, PS5 Pro,

no one's buying them.

So now they're selling them for a loss.

And I must stress to you.

I love that.

That's my feel-good story of the day.

That's great yeah absolutely

yeah so that's what we're seeing a lot of that is people can buy the pro kind of anywhere and the scalpers are getting absolutely destroyed online so it's about damn time as someone who buys a lot of concert tickets in the LA area absolutely F scalpers I hope

only the worst for them

oh my goodness yeah So that's my good news there.

Okay.

Also, apparently this came out.

I did not know this at all.

But apparently there is an online social deduction game version of Death Note.

Yes.

Death Note Killer Within.

I kind of want to play it.

Mm-hmm.

You want to play it together?

Sure?

I didn't even know this was real.

Yeah.

But it's a Pandynamco joint, and it's just

a whole thing.

Yeah, some people were talking about how weird the art style is.

The little characters are based on something in the manga slash anime.

So it's not the

like little people and how they look, it's not just coming out of nowhere.

But yeah, I'm really curious how that plays and what it's like to play.

So if you want to play it together, I would love to.

Yeah, it's super interesting.

I just couldn't believe it was real.

Then the biggest story this week, the one that absolutely all have been thinking about, because we did on this show and many other shows that we've done in the past, had conversations about this.

and i absolutely just

netflix

what the hell are they doing

yeah as we know netflix games became a thing right and for the longest time netflix a place where you had to go to see all your damn movies or whatever they didn't put the games there they put it on a mobile app and hid it away Only recently have they started to put games on the actual Netflix program that you would have on your TV.

Again,

it makes no sense to me why they were like, let's not do that.

Whatever.

So I complained about it, and then eventually they did.

I'm going to take full credit for them finally doing it.

But I'm not going to take credit for the fact that the company straight up just closed down its AAA game studio.

The game studio where...

After hiring an Overwatch producer, a team from God of War, a team from Halo, they were like, we're going to make the greatest multi-platform game ever made.

And yeah, they published things like Oxen Free 2 and Cozy Grove.

They like published games where they were going to make a game.

Right.

And then they just shut it all down.

And to make it even worse, to make it even crazier, they then released either the next day or the day after, hey, we're going to really focus on AI game making.

No.

So that's cool.

And then...

Of the 24 interactive gaming experiences they put on Netflix, they're removing all but four.

They're just taking them down permanently.

The only things they're leaving are things that are not games.

Exactly.

The only thing they're leaving are things that are not games.

So one of, so for example, Bandersnatch will still be there.

Right.

Bandersnatch.

And I get why.

It's like a choose your own adventure.

Netflix.

Yeah, there's like a star power to it, but it's not an FMV game.

It is barely a choose your own adventure game.

It is like eight choices total for the entire experience.

And they're leaving that there and again star power i get it i understand however very weird choice to remove all the different things that they created but okay

and then this i just this story i feel like just needs to be read to you in the

it's just so funny okay hit me last week a pc game launched from ubisoft Where it's called Champions Tactics Gramoria Chronicles.

And it's a Web 3 turn-based combat game that essentially is using NFTs, right?

Obviously, I hate everything about what I just said.

Right.

Apparently, you can purchase things with in-game or cryptocurrency,

that kind of nonsense.

It absolutely sucks.

Do not like this.

Ubisoft, do better.

Be better.

So on the game, this actually is very funny.

I'm just going to read this verbatim because it's awesome.

Again, this article comes from Video Games Chronicle.

So people are pissed.

They're taken to the internet to complain about this game.

Not for the reason you think.

The reason is because one of the users, whose name is usually either Schiller11 or Paulstar11, appears to be automatically winning every online battle.

On the game's Discord server, players were complaining that when they start a competitive game online and they're matched against this player every single time,

he automatically wins and they lose every single time.

One player pointed out that Paulstar Paulstar 11's account was top of the rankings with over 56,000 matches played.

It's not yet clear how the player has been able to connect to so many games concerning the game just came out.

It's absurd that the company in late 2024 is having an unplayable game for days because one guy decided to ruin the game.

Last time I saw Paulstar 1-1-1, or whatever the hell his name is, on the ranking at 56,000 matches, there are 10 of us on here complaining.

Now picture the thousands of other players who meet this guy and can't play because it's unwinnable.

i don't know how he's doing this this dude is just winning the games he doesn't have to play

oh my gosh and and humisoft is like we'll look into this matter and we'll that

once again

i don't know what they're thinking i don't know what kind of nonsense like goon sold them on the idea of this but

it's terrible It's terrible.

And they're getting their comeuppance.

And I'm fine with that.

Stop it.

Stop investing in the sky.

The NFT game doesn't work.

Someone's scamming our NFT game.

Somebody's scamming the NFT game we made.

No, man.

Yeah, our scam game.

Someone's scamming it?

And no one wants to play our scam game?

This is crazy.

Good.

Good, I say.

Incredible.

And then releases this week.

We have, obviously, the weirdly titled Mario and Luigi Brothership.

I do not and will never understand the phrase brothership, but.

No.

Whatever.

Also, Planet Coaster 2, we finally got that.

Very excited.

Metal Slug Tactics.

If you like Metal Slug and you like tactics games,

very cool.

Check it out.

And then for the Metro fans, Metro Awakening VR.

Extremely curious about this because I want to know if they had the audacity.

The Metro Balls.

If you ever played Metro, they're going to always end up at a point where it's like, I'm going to go to the strip club.

And then like a pixel lady dances for you.

Yes.

Is it in VR?

Because that would be hilarious.

I must know.

Did you have the balls to put it in VR?

I got to know.

Find out, man.

Yep.

And

that is it for us today.

In the world of the news.

Hot dog.

Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, wait.

There's one more news story.

It's very important.

Those who are curious, Dodge and I started playing Life is Strange, double exposure.

Videos will be out soon.

You can stop messaging us.

You can stop messaging us.

Yes.

We decided not to stream it.

We just recorded it.

It's going on Jesse's YouTube.

Yep.

It'll be there.

Calm down.

It'll be on Cox Club.

It's happening.

It's all good.

Yes.

Hang in there.

What else is going on with you, Jessup?

What else is going on this week?

Well, speaking of leaving me alone.

Yeah.

Myself and the Scary Game Squad boys, literally, after we're done here, are going to start filming Man of the Adventure 2.

We played some last week.

We're deep in it.

I love this game.

It's very...

It's like...

Not nearly as scary as it is disturbing and weird, and I love it.

It's so good.

A man of the adventurer.

We're going to play the second one.

It's happening.

I'll probably release the whole game as one video so I don't have to do multiple uploads.

It's just going to be one one big honk and chonker of a video.

Yeah.

And then,

yeah, work is beginning on a few bigger videos on my end.

So that'll be things that probably will happen in December.

So

nice.

You'll figure it out then.

Yeah.

And for the nerd to me is saying

the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion is coming.

Or DLC patch content.

Yep.

Yep.

It's coming on Tuesday.

So I'll probably check that out as well.

That's it for me.

Noise.

I got no plans.

I got no plans.

I'm just here.

I'm just here doing my thing, Dabs.

No, I don't know.

I've just been playing sulfur and Teenage Maintenance Turtles.

So probably hop into something new next week.

I don't know what, though.

We'll see.

Nothing, nothing exciting on my end.

I found a list.

I'll have to share it with people when I can remember where the hell I put it.

I found a list of

games that break the fourth wall, and I kind of want to play through all of them.

That's my jam.

Yeah, I love that stuff.

So I found a list and I'm going to just start.

I think I'll do, maybe towards the end of the year, I'll just do like a week where I'm like, we're going to play through these games that break the fourth wall.

Let's go.

I love it.

Yeah.

I think that sounds like a great idea.

Me, me too.

Me too, me too.

How long is this list?

Long?

Uh, it's long.

Oh, it's long.

It's like ludicrously long.

It's a big list.

I think it's every single one that's on Steam.

I think.

Oh,

okay.

So, yeah, but that's fine by me.

Most of them I probably won't play just because they're probably jank, weird games.

And I'm like, Steam's stream's not going to like this.

Right.

But there are going to be a few in there that'll be winners.

So I'll play those.

Yeah.

Chef's kiss.

All right.

Well, hey, gang.

If you enjoyed Geek Enders this week, did you know you can watch all of the past Geekenders on youtube.com/slash jessecox?

And we're also on the podcasties.

So if you like just listening to our voices and don't really enjoy watching our faces, um,

then you can find us audio only in lots and lots of places.

Uh, but we will be back next week.

So have a fantastic weekend and a fantastic week.

And uh, and we'll see you next time.

So long.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

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Mega Rand, Jesse and Dodger.

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Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

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