Giant Bombcast 965: Good Sliding

Thank you. Hey everybody, it's Tuesday!

Welcome to the Giant Bombcast on GiantBomb.com. It's me, your host today, Mike Minotti. And look at all of these fun guys I have, including an incredibly engaged, incredibly present... Don't talk to him about cashews. Don't talk to him about almonds and pecans because he'll go on and on because.

He loves them.

And definitely don't talk to him about, no, not November. It's Jeff Grubb, co-captain of the ship.

Let's go, buddy. Jesus Christ. I like the idea that you think I'm any more or less engaged when I'm not playing a video game during the show. I'm just trying to beat the first boss of Queen's Domain before I talk about it on this show. And I was about to do it. He's on his knee. I have failed to protect the shrine who, okay, I beat him.

Everybody, before we fade it up, Jeff's like, I'm meant to be this boss, and we all just had such an indignant aura.

Absolutely not.

60 seconds, come on.

But you know who never waits, because he's always in a hurry. He's always zipping along to the next exciting thing.

That's right, everybody.

It is Sean, Turbo Sean McDowell.

My life is boxes. Boxes, as far as the eye can see.

They're everywhere.

I'm living out of them. I'm so excited for you, Sean.

I'm living in them.

There you go.

Thank you, Chuck. Yeah, it's... I've been, like, you know, sort of meandering, packing the past couple weeks of, like, you know, you do laundry, and you're like, yeah, I don't need these clothes the next couple weeks. Toss them in the box. Last couple evenings, I've been, like, seriously doubling down, and I don't have much stuff, so, like, it'll just take a couple more evenings, but as you can see, I just... I just abandoned one of these boxes halfway through last night. I'm like, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

Speaking of boxes, don't you dare try to box this person in by telling him the better version of that game is on the PS1. He ain't going to live in your PS1 box with the Sega Saturn. He is our Sega Saturn savant, Chuck Zimmerheld.

How's it going?

Chuck, I'm doing very well. I think I'm going to lose to you in Fantasy Critic, speaking of my team name in Fantasy Critic. But I'm still Team Sega. I'm Team Sega or die. Before that, it was Team Xbox.

And why are you dead?

Why am I not dead? You know, they're still they're thriving and living. I believe I believe we're in the era of a Sega Dreamcast comeback. But as a handheld console, write the check.

I did reach out to someone who's making a Genesis handheld on your behalf. So we'll see what happens. You mean the Nomad? I mean, we did write the new Nomad.

I got mega horny for that when I saw it. Because I want to put my mega EverDrive in the back of that thing. And then just gaming will be at my fingertips.

I am very excited because I am in a pretty good position on our fantasy critic.

What was the big move?

The big move was the counterpick of the Duskbloods, which did officially... You did that on day one.

You did that right away. That was your first counterpick way back in January. Right, right.

Which I think was a combination of me being like, I don't know if it's coming out this year. And also, I don't really like the idea of it personally, which the former ended up being much more important.

So.

I'm looking okay there. Maybe we'll do a full-on check-in soon. But yeah, yeah, I might have that one. I might have that one. But boy, aside from that, everybody, it is November. It's voting day. I hope everybody is going out to vote. I know I'm doing that right after this show.

I voted like a motherfucker. We got out the house at 7.30 a.m.

Wow.

Look at you. Look at you. Kind of rough.

Yeah. What's the vibe that early.

At the polls?

Cordial, polite, quiet... We had to go to two different polling locations because our city elections are in a different building than the state elections.

Yeah.

I thought that was strange. So we went to a library and a rec center today before nine o'clock this morning.

It's always kind of fun. The random places that become the, the, the voting centers. I've been going to a, I think a Methodist church for a while now.

Yeah. Did you, so you voted today, Mike? Right after this, I'm doing this.

He's not a patriot yet.

No. No, no. Okay.

All right.

I knew it. Yeah. It's frustrating because in Ohio, they did a fun thing to suppress the vote where they're like, oh, early voting can only happen at these certain places. So all the close by voting things that you're used to are closed. You have to drive far away, do early voting. That's what I had to do. And apparently the lines on the last day of early voting, which was not Monday, which you think it would be, you know, why wouldn't it also be open Monday? It was a Sunday. Apparently the lines were like three hours long. So. Could be messy out there, but there'll be a lot more polling stations open in Ohio, at least. So good luck, everybody.

All right.

Well, hey, before we go too much further here, I do want to remind everybody, thank everybody who is a member, actually, of Giant Bomb Premium. We do appreciate everyone signing up for that at giantbomb.com slash join, who joined either the premium tier or the newer premium 64 tier. If you did, you got to enjoy a brand new episode of metal gear scanlan right that just went up um a bit ago new nine lives coming out soon i will have me record something for that uh i gotta sing a song so i'm curious to see what that is all about over there um.

I think in nine lives if you still if you haven't watched if you have premium and you haven't seen it you're making a huge error i'm biased on this topic but i think we're about to have my two favorite episodes in a row Straight up.

Okay. Yeah.

I agree.

For sure.

Yes.

Yeah, of course, there's past shows on there, like Catcher's Man, Sewer Shark, This is the Run, Mamie Tobodachi, Porter Pals, all sorts of fun stuff that you can see, including, like, even some older premium shows, everybody. So, we appreciate everybody's support over on there. But, yeah, gosh, November, I mean, I think all four of us are.

Going to be at the Extra Life thing we're doing this weekend, right, by the way? Yeah.

Yeah.

All four of us are heading to Minneapolis soon. We're going to hang out with Dan and his sister Kayla. We're going to do our big extra live stream this weekend, mostly on Saturday. The big plan, like the headline event, maybe the whole thing is we're going to be playing Resident Evil 6 co-op.

Can I be swapping around?

Can you explain that to me, by the way? So, obviously, my first Resident Evil game was Requiem, and I'm playing through Resident Evil 1 on the Sega Saturn now. I... don't know anything about this game or why all of us would be playing it in the same day.

So the way Resident Evil 6 works is that it is like, it's mostly these three, I think there's like a fourth campaign, but there's these three main campaigns and they're all co-op campaigns. They're all pretty media in and of themselves. They all have a bit of a different flair. Like the one with Leon feels a little bit more classics around horror. The one with Chris is very like more like Resident Evil 5. Hoorah, military, take the stuff out.

Then there's some third weird one with Wesker's son or something. I don't know. But the game is considered not to be the weakest Resident Evil pretty unanimously. It's very bloated. It's kind of weird, messy. I haven't played too much of it myself, so I don't know exactly why. But that's generally the consensus from everybody. So it's this weird Resident Evil game with these weird co-op campaigns and this kind of weird reputation.

My plan order is all kinds of fucked up, isn't it?

I'm going.

Yeah, I didn't.

I know.

Hey, you're, you're a bit of a newcomer to the series.

That's interesting. That explains. Yeah.

Well, we'll talk about here in a little bit, but yeah, six is going to be a very interesting experience for you then.

I think, I mean, my, when I went through the series, it was kind of all over the place as well though. And it doesn't really matter for resident evil.

I think the, I mean, the order you play these things, uh, I don't know.

I'm hearing people say the story doesn't matter. Like, nobody cares about the story. You're stupid if you like the story.

I heard someone say. The plot of Resident Evil, it's, come on, it's nonsense.

It's just, it's justifications for cool things happen, which I think is the right move.

I think they're right for it. No, that's exactly, and I think that's what Capcom thinks of it. Even when they're talking about, the reason we're talking about this, I didn't include in the news, so we'll talk about it here. Capcom's like, oh, we're looking to like restart the story or wrap up the Resident Evil story in the next 10 years or so, in the next handful of games.

And I'm like, what story? What story? And it's like, the Capcom go, oh yeah, no, that's not really what we mean. What we mean is like every so often we need to reset what Resident Evil is. And so we will wrap things up in such a way that we can start anew and do like a soft reboot again, like we've done before. I think that's how they view it.

I don't get it, but, like, so many games already feel like soft reboots. Like, each game feels like a soft reboot in a lot of ways. So, I guess I just, like, what would they do at the end of this arbitrary deadline to feel like such a big shift? Like, is it another Resident Evil 7 situation? Is that what we're talking about?

I don't know.

Look, they make good games. Are 7 and 8, like, what's the connecting tissue to the larger franchise than 7 and 8?

They're a duology, and then outside of that... Chris shows up. Chris shows up, and then 8 kind of has some, like, surprise umbrella connections i would say.

Yeah they they always lead it back to umbrella and everything and that's that's what the connecting plot is of resident evil is umbrella and all of their science experiments resident evil could be anything else i know this series is called Biohazard in Japan, so they'll probably never stray too far from bio mutations and everything like that. But this series could just be anything else. Any other horror thing other than Umbrella's machinations. That's what they're getting at.

I know what they must do. They must go to space. I mean... Death in space.

In Revelations 2, maybe, did they go to space? Yeah.

I mean, it's wild that Fast and Furious went to space before Resident Evil did. Now, granted, there's dead space. I think one of the dino crises is in space.

Yes, I think that's right. Yeah, there's a.

Dino crisis in space, so that happened. I had a really late thought last night, like 3.30 a.m. I was like, man, it's so weird that There's a game called Resident Evil Village, and the most famous village in Resident Evil isn't even in that game.

No.

Yeah, that's Resident Evil Force Village. Yep.

Yeah.

Then someone else was like, the most famous biohazard in Resident Evil isn't in Resident Evil 7 Biohazard.

I'm like, fuck. They're all called Biohazard in Japan, though. What is it called in Japan? What's 7 called in Japan?

It's called Biohazard 7 Resident Evil, which actually makes more sense, because that house, that's a pretty evil resident.

Yes, it's a residence filled with evil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am into that.

What's Requiem called in Japan?

I think it's Biohazard Requiem, I guess.

Yeah, I think they keep the subtitles.

Yeah, they just pulled that cute little thing with 7.

Yeah, yeah.

Boy, I am very excited for Veronica next year, because that Resident That Resident Evil 4 team, then they did the Resident Evil 2 remake as well. I still think that's just one of the all-time greats that did well. We did our top 100 games list, which, by the way, came out between the Bombcast. If you only listen to the Bombcast, we had a fun time kind of mimicking kind of funny's system for coming up with a list of 100 games.

We did that. It was a great time. Go see where Tetris ended up. To quote.

To quote Roger from Kind of Funny, he said, y'all kind of mogged us, not gonna lie.

That made me feel good.

From the source.

That was pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

That made me feel good.

I had several Tetris games on my list. How did none of you guys do like Tetris Effect or something?

I know.

I had Tetris, just Tetris on mine. That's the problem.

It was the Pokemon problem, right? Where like a lot of us have a Pokemon game on our list, but it's not the same Pokemon game.

Yep. I had all the Pokemon.

Uh hey how's halloween everybody uh anybody had to do anything especially fun this weekend.

Uh we went trick-or-treating yeah with trick-or-treating and pizza which apparently everyone with kids uh did the exact same thing because trick-or-treating was on a saturday so it was this this universal move of everyone pre-ordering a pizza to be delivered when you got home and then going trick-or-treating and i'll tell you what that it was great everyone should do that that was a fantastic way to spend the night uh had a lot of fun we watched um Uh, uh, we watched Nightmare Before Christmas and then we watched Over the Garden Wall again. So just a fantastic night.

Nightmare Before Christmas is best right after Halloween because like the movie starts after Halloween, right?

It's a gateway.

Yeah.

And these are getting into Christmas.

Uh, yeah, we had a really nice trick or treat here because the weather was like nice and cool. It was a Saturday. So just everybody was out. There were adults and golf carts just handing out shots. I was just doing.

Fireballs while I was walking around. It was great. Yeah.

It was, uh, It was a really, really, really nice trick or treat situation.

Can I? Yeah, I want to work out something and maybe you guys can help me. I am experiencing hostility toward the concept of trunk or treat. I'm experiencing active hostility.

I'm noticing that, too. I've heard some people say that it's that it's it's rude. Now, the one the one the one I blamed it or at least it was blamed to me. And I agree with somebody because I noticed when I was going out with my nephews and nieces. That an hour into trick-or-treating, a good chunk of them got kind of whiny and wanted to go home. And this shocked me. I was like, guys, they used to have to drag us back home. And people were like, they're used to trunk-or-treat where they have to walk two feet to get all the candy they want. And they probably still have all that candy at home anyway. So they don't really care about, like, trick-or-treating is pretty cool.

But it's not as efficient.

It's just.

And, you know, everyone views their own coming-of-age shit as, like, very important and informative and, like, a cornerstone. But there's this element of, like, walking around in your own neighborhood and seeing the whack, jacked-up shit some guy has, like, constructed on his lawn. His name is Jeff Grubb. He's put an 18-foot skeleton on his front lawn. And having your kids go see that, getting to, like, look at everybody's costumes that you're passing by. And I get you get some of that in a trunk-or-tree situation. But it just feels like... You're missing something core, you know?

Is trick-or-treat happening to the exclusion of regular trick-or-treating in some of these areas? Is that what we're saying?

It's usually an additional event. I bet some people may be like, we'll just do this and we're not going to bother. But I think it's typically additional.

I think it's leaning towards a replacement because I know my friend took his kids just trunk-or-treating because it's just more convenient for them. They kind of wrap it.

Up and whatnot. Yes, if people want to make that choice because it's more convenient, especially if you're in a neighborhood where it's going to be spotty if people do it. The idea of trunk-or-treat is... It's saying you don't have to worry about the house has its lights on by accident. You go up to the door and ring the doorbell and now you're bothering someone. That could be a little awkward.

I get it.

But I feel like we've made strides in normal trick-or-treating too. Because like, at least in my mind, almost nobody is like actually waiting behind the door. Like everybody kind of is like on their porch or even just like out by the street.

And they have a station. And if they're not, we just walk past. Like it's not that big a deal. We're down with it.

It's a community effort thing, you know, like if everyone's putting up decorations or making an event of it, then it's fun to go trick or treating and like, you know, see your neighbors who you probably like and like check out what they set up that year and see what everyone's costumes are. And you get compliment, the kids get compliment on the costumes and everything. But some neighborhoods are not like that. I'll say my current neighborhood wouldn't go trick or treating here, wouldn't bring a kid trick or treating.

So that's where like the trunk or treat, you know, is a little more viable, right?

Yeah. We did go trunk or treating as well last week. I don't think I mentioned the fact that one among the candy, they also got a lot of political literature because there was a lot, a lot of the political candidates, local and slightly less than local candidates. were there handing out candy and then also just straight up without asking, putting the pamphlets in the bag.

Those people should go to jail.

I was just like, I knew one of them and I was like, I actually steered the kids away from him because I'm like, I'm not even going to get, I don't even want your candy. But yes, it was. very very annoying to me very frustrating i am like had i known that we just would not have gone uh but but you know the kids like they're thrown by the school it's not like this is not some weird one it's like a public event by the school so why is this happening i.

Wonder if like it's like that's something where you say something it's cool it's a little weird don't you.

Think yes i mean i i would i couldn't not say something i would.

School's got bigger fish to fry though um.

Uh yeah i was hoping you would segue right into this yes.

So yesterday morning, my kids bus, which they don't ride in the morning. I take them to school. They ride at home. But the kids bus, Emmy's bus, the bus driver quit on the way to school with the bus full of children. Park the car, park the bus on the side of the road, got out. I guess waited for, maybe they waited or maybe they walked off the bus driver themselves, but another replacement driver had to arrive, get on the bus and finish dropping, dropping off everyone at school.

And I was just like, most of the, okay, glad Emmy wasn't on there. But I bet some parents are going to go fucking nuclear about this. And Oh yes, they are. It's getting, it's getting real hot, real fast. And I'm like, I'm almost like, punish the bus driver, whatever. Who hired the bus driver? That's the first that I kind of actually want to answer this question. How does someone like that get this job? And that's, ooh, scary stuff.

What are they mad about? Kids were being loud. You're a bus driver. I know it sucks.

Boy, I am curious if they waited for the replacement or not, because then it's child endangerment, right?

You can't just leave a bus full of kids. They left, right?

They didn't stay.

Oh, my God.

Bus driver just like went for a walk.

Like what?

What the hell did they do?

Yeah.

Like story confirmed.

True.

Kids left alone on bus. Let's see here.

Bailey did. I respond to you with a good point. Is it possible the kids had a bad vibe? I do think that is exactly what the bus driver basically said.

Yeah.

Justifying abandoning an entire group of children for a few loud kids makes it obvious whose kids were the culprit. Jesus, this Facebook post. The way you all speak about children is disgusting. How do you expect the bad apples to get better? I'm like, yeah, it's going off in the Facebook group.

We're getting into nature versus nurture. Wonderful.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, God.

Like, T-minus to racism, maybe?

I don't know. Like, what's going on here?

Jeez.

Yeah, it's Ohio. So it's like that was a long time or the T minus on that.

You guys have been having all sorts of fun because your train problem has like popped up in the news, too, that you talked about before.

And that's that has happened three times in the last two weeks. And the group that is supposed to like track this stuff, not doing a great job. I'm like, I'll make that turn. and see the bus, and just go, fuck, it stopped right in front of me, like, I thought it was going to keep going, and it stopped, and I had to, I forgot the kids' backpacks, so I had to go drop those off, and I went to go check, and it was moving again, I'm like, great, great, I'll just pull up now, and I'm sure it'll pass, it moved, and then stopped again, right in front of the street, and I think blocked it for the rest of the day, so, a lot of fun over here.

Geez. Geez.

Oh, man.

I was not much of a I think I was very young. I did the bus and then pretty soon I was getting dropped off more often than at.

A certain point was just bus all the way. Both to and fro. Yeah, I was bus.

Yeah.

I was weird.

I didn't get my license myself, so first my older brother was taking me to high school. Then when he graduated, my younger brother was taking me to high school. I just didn't have very much shame about that.

You got your driver's license super late, right?

Like 19, yeah.

19, so pretty late.

Technically, I don't really have one.

I'm a sovereign citizen.

I'm not driving in a commercial capacity.

That's what they say. and then man get arrested send me more of these videos i love that shit it's so.

Satisfying it's kind of fun watching people be you know now the other side is like a cabin all that night so i get dangerously close to you know sympathize with the police which probably isn't great sure.

But it's like man uh these are the exact people i want to get busted yeah yeah i.

Like the i like the videos of um a driver belligerently being correct about their rights in a traffic stop.

Yes.

That's super pissy. I love those. I'm like, very satisfying. The algorithm knows how to get me. I'm like, yeah, I'll watch this 20 minute video.

Of this take down. Sure.

It does become a problem because I will always watch.

God.

I just think maybe I should just watch cops, but that was probably also terrible for me and not great. Um, All right, well, I think that's enough of this idle chit-chat. We got a lot of video games to talk about. Play the, play the, there it is.

Ah!

Video games!

Dude, I love video games.

Ah! Video games! Louder.

Ah!

The noise came off. Discord didn't catch you, so that's great. Look at that.

We fixed all of our problems that we've ever had. Jeff Grubb, I have heard about this field of kings, a king's field, if you will. But now word has reached me of a queen's domain. What is going on here?

What's this about? A domain for queens now. It's great out there. This is a representation in media, and I think it's wonderful. It is a king's field mixed with Metroid Prime is how people have been describing it. And I started it and I'm level five now. It's still pretty early. So this is kind of when I was just getting a taste of Castlevania, very similar to that. Like, oh, I've played the first few hours kind of getting my my sea legs under me trying to figure out how this game plays. I tell you what, I've had a thought, recurring thought a bunch of times. Sean would hate this game.

The big reason for that is the combat is very stiff. It is deliberately stiff where. you have two moves that you could do during combat. It is a swing the sword, or you have like a thrust with the sword. And each weapon, there's different weapons, has these two options where it's basically just a swing. And then the secondary thing where for the spear, for example, instead of thrusting forward, you attack and it pushes you back, which is, Great, because there's not a lot of defensive options. There's no, at least so far, I haven't found a shield, no dodge, no parry. It is very much like old Castlevania games.

Poke and get out of the way. And I've started to get into the flow of that. Uh, although every time I have to change weapons, cause I just got a more powerful sword. I'm like, Oh, I was getting used to using the spear and using that defensively. So I was like backing up out of, uh, after every attack.

So I would go in, do some damage, back off, wait for them to attack and then kind of repeat that cycle. Now I have to think about it a little bit differently. The sword's way better. I want to use it, but now I have to like figure out how to, to actually use it. The other side of the game is that, um, It is very much a it feels like Metroid Prime. It does in terms of the kinds of enemies that you're fighting and the lush green environment that you're in at first. And being able to see all these other areas where it's like, hey, am I going to be able to go to there? Yeah, you're going to unlock pathways to get there and kind of wrap back around. And that's happened a little bit early on. And I could tell it's like this very

interconnected world. And then I got to the first boss, which was a big skeleton, big fan of that. And I was kind of like, okay, what is this going to feel like? And that feels like, yes, a Castlevania, a 3D Castlevania FromSoft style boss. Very difficult, does a lot of damage. You can't get greedy. You're going to go in there, do the damage you can, back off, try to recognize the patterns. And I've kind of like already getting way into it. It's really well done. It is an RPG. So as I am doing damage, I'm getting experience points. I've leveled up to level five. The weapons themselves... can be leveled up, which has been nice.

It's like, okay, I'll just kind of min-max into the spear for a while until I'm more powerful and can take stuff on. And then every encounter with a minor enemy is really dangerous. You have to be very careful. So it's going to scratch itches for a lot of people who are craving something along the lines of Kingsfield.

Although I don't think it's exactly like Kingsfield in every way. It is mixing in some of these other aspects that for me, it kind of just makes it into... a really compelling game early on.

Have you played Kingsfield?

I've put a couple on Steam Deck and started them, so no, not really.

Those games, they are so hard at the start, and you're in the situation where you just need to game the enemies, right? You're strafing circles around them and poking them and just getting your shots while you can. And you can definitely grind out that experience in those levels and make the game easier for you. And you can see that DNA like goes right through from soft Southern games. Right.

So I'm 100%.

Yeah. It doesn't surprise me like that first area. It might end up being the hardest area in the game.

Right.

I don't know.

I haven't played Queens yet, but it's on my list.

I've, I've been very Kingsfield curious for a while and just hasn't, haven't gone there yet. But looking at this, just hearing the way you talk about growth, this sounds like something.

I would like a lot. I think I would be into this.

What's cool is like aesthetically, graphically, like it has, the vibes of like an old PS one or maybe PS two first person.

Yeah.

But like, it's not quite as crusty. Like it's, you know, it's more detailed than that. It's a, you can turn off the old resolution. I think they call it a retro resolution and make it a little bit crisper. If you want, I've been playing with the, with all those effects turned on with that.

Does it do wobbly textures?

No wobbling is from what I feel like.

It's, It's kind of like invoking PS1, but it's more in the late 90s PC style.

Yes, exactly. They're mixing some of that stuff in. Yeah, I don't see any wobbly textures so far, but it definitely suggests the idea of wobbly textures. Yeah, I think the aesthetics do a lot to actually make you feel enveloped in its world. It is very... you know, dithered to a certain extent. And then your mind connects those dots and makes it feel even more alive. And then, you know, the special effects, the sound effects, the music all kind of does that as well. I guess to give like another example of what kind of game it is, there's been two human characters I could talk to. They were like part of this army that I think I'm a part of, maybe the Queen's army, who could say, who reads stories. And they, We're like, OK, yeah, man,

there's a key somewhere. Help me find it. And I kind of go past them, found an entrance into one of these dungeons, an early dungeon. I go through the dungeon and any time I could have left, it's all one connected world. But as I got through the other side of the dungeon, I come back around and now those guys are dead and the camp is overrun by those minor enemies. And it's like, Oh, okay. Yeah. So it's like, it is going to, the world state is going to progress as I play it. And there's going to be consequences, uh, not to necessarily to my actions, but just to these people living in this space. And that also made it feel quite a bit more alive as well. So it's got, you know, retro throwbacks, but

it has a lot of modern elements in there. And then so far it's just been a pretty good game ass video game.

Hmm.

Um, Yeah.

And what I'm seeing is neat here.

Like, so there's like a bundle of this game with, with blueprints on steam, the prince and queen bundle. It's like, since I already, since I already own blueprints, like it's, I could get the scheme for 24% off. So it's like, it would be like $ 15 if I bought this thing.

Indies are doing that a lot nowadays. I've noticed where you'll have like kind of odd pairings, but it's like, I guess these are in the same genre or like you'd do a cute little pun there, but it's cool to see like Indies lifting each other up in that way. I think, I think that's really good for everybody.

You know also um should point out their publishers future friends games um they also just signed daniel mullins for pony island 2 oh cool i like seeing that that group of uh games like that publisher is doing a really good job with their curation like what they're picking out and funding.

Awesome it after i after i did beat that first boss um it's it's so early i it's just not even really a spoiler i'm just gonna you get a stone rubber duck I saw that in the trailer. Yes, exactly. You take that to the save point, and then that takes you into a... a shop in like another realm or something like that. And there's a person there with buttons or pennies for eyes, and then they'll sell you stuff.

And I was getting currency. I'm like, okay, now I could see that there's going to be sort of a grinding to get this currency. And then I, Oh, there's a cool mace and you know, me, I'm mace coated now. So I'm like, I'm going to save up and get that. So, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm, this is what I'm going to be playing. I'm going to be playing on the steam deck after I beat Castlevania and it's been great on there. And I'm going to keep doing that.

Uh, What itches is scratching for people, right? Like, there's games, and I've seen chat talk about this, but uh, dread delusion, uh, lunacy. I was asking you about your, you forgot you played lunacy. Uh, and then Queens. I mean, this is like scratching something very particular that I don't, I don't think we're getting like, we're not getting from big, big releases. These games are like hard to do AAA because they get really expensive, really fast, right?

Yeah.

Uh, well that's, that's why Indy is so cool right now is because really skilled Indy developers are using modern, tools that are making games more efficient to make and using them to just make games that used to take you know a team to make and back in the day back in like the 90s and whatnot that would still be a team of like you know maybe like 10 to 20 like small by modern standards but um and then like the really big teams would be what like 50 maybe but now you can make that so that like yeah an individual can make a game that a team of like 10 maybe would make or Like a team of a dozen or so can make that like 50 person game. That's really cool to see. I think that's how we're seeing that stuff sort of trickle down.

Just like how modern AA is kind of old school AAA we see with stuff like Expedition 33 and whatnot. I think it's just all like, you know, slowly moving down the stack. And that's really cool.

Yeah, I think it's like if you were to scope out a game the exact same size of Metroid Prime right now, it'd be hard for a big team to do that. Because they're like, it needs to be bigger to justify the cost it will take this big team to make.

Something like that. As we saw with Metroid Prime.

Yes, exactly. So it's like they tried to blow it up in all these ways. And sometimes that doesn't it doesn't work. Oftentimes it doesn't work. And so indie developers can like ease themselves into that. And then as they go along for even for indie developers, what ends up happening is like, oh, I'm in love with making this game.

I want it to be perfect. And then they spend the next 10 years working on it and make it insanely large themselves. They sort of ease themselves into that. And, you know, that often happens with like, you know, Hollow Knight Silksong definitely felt like one of those where it's like, It started as one thing, and then they just kept making it bigger and bigger and bigger until they had a 30-hour game that was massive at the end.

Going from a game pretending to be an old game to an actual old game, Chuck, you've been playing Resident Evil 1 on the Sega Saturn. How has that spooky adventure been going?

Yeah, I'm taking my Sega console war alignment very seriously. I think they're going to win it any day now. Yeah, I don't know. Like whenever I'm reaching for an older game to play right now, I look and see if there's a Sega Saturn version of it. I've got the optical drive emulator. I got the satiator. I have a SCART cable running into my retro tink. which I got because you guys bullied me when we did the 32X stream.

It was upsetting. It looked like ass. You were so happy. Yeah, it was real bad. It's much better, right?

It's like, oh, I got glasses now. Hell yeah.

So yeah, I'm playing it at 1440p, upscaled with like a really good CRT filter. I've never played Resident Evil 1 before. And yeah, games are really hitting for me. It's kind of like, ah, fuck, I should have played this a long time ago because it's exactly my type of shit.

It's so good.

Yeah, I'm doing that on Mondays and Wednesdays on my personal streams. So I can only like, I can get like three hours together each session to like really play. And at the end of the three hours, I'm like, God damn it. I'd really like to play for like another hour or two after that. And I want to be playing on the days where I'm not streaming, but I'm saving it for those streams. So I like that after I'm done with those streams, I'm like hankering for more of it. Even though I'm playing games like Well Dweller and Castlevania, I'm like, I really want to get back to Resident Evil. I just got, so I went to the garden, went to the dormitory, killed the big plant monster, and now I'm back in the house again.

And this is a really old game, so I think I'm allowed to just talk about it. I just got to the part where the hunters are swarming the house. And I don't know any of this stuff is going to happen. Every time something happens in this game at this point, outside of like the lobby, that's the most I knew about this game. Everything afterward has been a complete and utter surprise to me. So I'm getting like fucked over by two hunters appearing in the same hallway when I'm trying to run to the save room. It's like, Oh cool. You know, lost 30, 40 minutes of progress just now because I didn't get to the save room on time. There's some like, there's some fuck you level design there, but it does not take away from just

somehow they just constructed like this perfectly. Uh, like, They just nailed the survival horror flavor here, even though the voice acting is shit and some of the level design is fuck you.

It's all charming.

Whenever you die like that, you still kind of become a bit more of a master of the layout of this mansion and of this world.

And you just become so familiar with it.

It's been said before so many times, but the mansion is one of the main characters of the game, right? And it's like you're growing familiarity with that.

That helps you. become better so.

Something that seems like so punishing like the limited number of saves because it's really interesting system you're thinking about that you're thinking about the item management it's all that stuff that should be annoying right like i can't carry like this key with me right now uh i'm at the door that needs that key now i have to run back to the save room and get it it's annoying but it's also kind of cool and it is kind of tense.

You start um you start thinking like the game in that that really like pulls it together to where I'm about to leave the save room. My inventory is full. That's a fucking mistake. Don't do that. So I go back to the box. I throw some stuff in there. I don't think I need right now. I try to like predict what's coming up and then that pays off later.

And also just like deciding what kind of weapons I'm going to bring for like what I think I'm going to be up against. If I'm just like backtracking into the mansion, I've already been in. It's like, I'll take stuff to take care of like the zombies and stuff. I don't need, you're doing, you're doing right. Yeah. I'm playing through.

Yeah.

Which everyone showed the first time because Chris is much harder just because he has, Two less inventory slots. He also has the flamethrower instead of the grenade launcher, which is just much worse of a weapon.

Interesting. So Jill was a lot friendlier. Why'd they do that? Why'd they do that? Why'd they make Chris? I guess Chris is kind of hard mode, I think. Why did they ship the game with two?

Yeah, okay. There's just a hard mode option, basically.

I think it's basically.

No, they don't tell you that.

So a lot of people are like, I want to play as the guy.

It's a lot harder. Um, but yeah, I think that's basically what the thinking is. I've never beaten a Chris playthrough yet. Cause even when I go back to the game, I kind of like, I'll just play as Joe again.

I think when I was obsessed with it on GameCube, I already remake. I think I played it through as Chris or at least most of it. And I had a good time, but it is definitely hard mode.

Yeah.

Are you going to, you think you'll, you'll do the remake right after this?

You want to jump? You should do the remake is also really good. And they're like actually awesome back to back.

I have important retro video game science to do on my personal streams. I'm playing through all of the games on that very important video games list I put on the website.

Yeah, but.

So I'm making my, that's why I played like, you know, Deus Ex and Half-Life and I'm doing Resident Evil.

I'll just go put RE remake on the list. Honestly, RE remake should be on that list. That's kind of one of the first, like, that's kind of the first 10 out.

Of 10 remake ever.

What title will you try to make up to get this game on the list? Go ahead.

What title?

I think it was the first 10 out of 10 remake.

The first 10 out of 10 remake.

It's the example of what a remake should be. Like, is that the standard?

Genuinely? Before that, we had like Super Mario All-Stars, which is kind of booty. Right.

Yeah.

And like Ninja Gaiden Trilogy on the Genesis. This was the one that's like, it's not just about making the graphics better. We're kind of almost making a new game here. It's going to stand apart. They had another shot at making the game, and they're like, what if we just take everything that was good, make the graphics prettier, and also just do it better in many ways. Metal Gear Solid tried basically the same thing. Here's our remake of this PS1 game on GameCube, and it's not as good.

He was like, no, give me more flips and shit, and a lot of people don't like it as a result. That first was the only... It's kind of crazy how they kind of just hit out of the park on the first try. And then, Chuck, do you plan on playing two, though, is my big question. It's also really good. It's so hard to justify with the time.

I know.

I mean, which is different when we get into January, right? After Game of the Year. But it's really hard to play anything other than what's on my list that I want to get done before Game of the Year. and then what's on this like old list i'm doing a personal stream like as a as a personal stream game i really think you should at least hit two even if you don't do anything else you don't do a remake because two is they you think that they like just really nail it on the first try with the first one because everything that on paper could be annoying actually plays into the survival horror it's all mechanics it's not actual like mistakes or annoyances like no the limited inventory yeah it makes you think about what you're gonna

bring into battle like the The saving, it makes you think about, like, oh, I need to stop and save and, like, use one of my ink ribbons and everything like that. 2 just, again, amplifies everything. Like, they just did everything better. And I think, like, Resident Evil 2, like, honestly, up until 4 remake was my favorite Resident Evil. Was that original version of RE2. Because I think they just, like, took everything and made it even more enjoyable. Like, even the split characters, like, instead of having... just like a regular character in kind of a hard mode character. The fact that they made two campaigns that tell different sides of the same story, you know, like, you know, so little, I won't say more than that, but just like they are,

Claire and Leon are just like giving you two completely different perspectives. And I think that was a really clever thing to do is something that they implemented in the first game. RE2 is full of stuff like that. And I think it's just, that is a foundational video game right there. So Resident Evil 2 is like, Leon, the PlayStation, Raccoon City, when everything kind of breaks out in the city, right?

The most I know about this game is from Requiem during Leon's set.

Talking about it.

Right, right.

So interesting.

It'll be weird.

I played OG2 just this year, and it was still... amazing it's definitely one of my and the remake too also very good there's a lot of good Resident Evil games it turns out it really is one of those series that is and a lot of people do this it's super fun to just do a playthrough of the whole thing you don't just do the remakes you do the old ones because they still are really interesting and really fun.

I see people asking about the list I'm talking about. If you go to giantbomb.com slash OGU, Old Games University is what I had it. That was like the initial placeholder name. You can go there and track all the ones that you've played on the list. I think there's like 200 some. Trying to like give it like 20 years in the past is like the cutoff. So I just added Dwarf Fortress to it in August, I think.

So yeah, you can go track there.

That's 20 years. Roblox is 20 years old. Are you going to add that? No, Jeff.

No, I won't.

All right.

So there's a good Resident Evil check in on Resident Evil. That's a series that just keeps soaring. You know what else is soaring? Me and my adventures in Ace Combat 8 Wings of Thief. You know, since it's been a few things last couple of weeks, this is one that I was really excited to get back to after kind of just starting it, doing a couple of missions. So spent A lot more time with this one this week, and it is awesome. I'm having such a fun time.

I don't have that much Ace Combat experience. Played a little bit of 7 when it came out. Liked it, just didn't spend that much time with it. This one, diving all the way in, it's so fun. The variety is really surprising to me. You think, okay, how different can each mission be? You fly around, you shoot planes, maybe you bomb some stuff on the ground, right? they do a lot of neat stuff. There's this one mission where you're kind of flying through this cloud coverage over the ocean, and it's basically a satellite that shoots giant missiles at people. But there's these blips hidden in the clouds that kind of shoot lasers that direct those missiles.

So once they shoot their lasers, you have to go and find the blip then and take it out before the missile can launch. So it's this kind of fun hide-and-seek game. There was this other one where I was actually trying to escape from somewhere, and I was in a plane that I captured, and it didn't have any guns.

It was just kind of this stealth thing where I could see like all of the areas where like there's radar coverage there's kind of basically this narrow band that i'm flying to and if i like if for some reason i do touch the radar it's like an instant fail missiles are launched at me and most of the time they'll get me but sometimes i get like oh there's a ridge here maybe if i get really close to this i'll be able to skirt by so then that just just constantly doing fun switch up there's like a a bunch of uh ships that And three of them were like the enemy spy ones. And I had to like look at their insignias to see which ones were the spy ones. It was kind of a where's Waldo situation there. Even just the progression of, you know,

there's a tree where you're unlocking new planes and either unlocking them or constantly working towards a new plane. Always very exciting.

Is this a Hotas game? Like, do you use, like, a.

It could be, yeah.

You can, but I've just been using my Steam controller and it feels really good. To be clear, Mike always just uses a controller, though, right?

Like, you don't really... You're not a Hotas guy.

Yeah, I mean, I have a Hotas in there and I'm, like, somewhere and I'm like, eh, this feels good.

I feel like it's a very different experience with something like that. I've been watching someone play Hotas and it just... Even looking at the game, it looks different, rather than if you do the arcade controls with the controller, is what I've been doing. I'm like, okay, this is a little more Star Fox, shall we say, but still having that more simulation slant to things. I think that is very fun, especially because you can do things like the intentional air stall to do a dangerous break, where like, oh no, you need to pull up immediately, but... Boy, is it cool to do tricks like that on the fly.

I don't have the experience, but I feel like that would be a little bit more difficult with the Hotas.

It's definitely going to be more difficult. Yeah, this is an arcade game first, for sure.

Yeah, okay. Because this started on, was it PlayStation?

Yes, I believe. Yeah, yeah. Arcade or air combat?

Yeah. My flying game experience is primarily Microsoft Flight Simulator, multiple versions of that.

Oh, sure.

I played a lot of Elite Dangerous with Hotas.

Oh, sure. Those are specifically made for Hotas, yes.

It would be nice to just do a controller and play something more arcade.

Again, like arcade, don't think Rogue Squadron or something, right? You're still doing the actual pitching and whatnot, right? This game just makes the close calls feel So good.

Like, when I realize, oh, I'm getting a little close to the air. I gotta pull up.

Am I gonna make it?

Then you do.

There's this one mission where basically a bunch of missiles were heading towards an island base I was protecting, right? So I had to take out the missiles.

They have planes. It's like.

I know it's kind of at the end of that. One got through me. I didn't realize it. And it's on its way to the base. So I start flying back. And I can see on the radar, it is getting so close to this base.

I'm flying in.

Like, I'm not just using, like, my actual visuals. I could just see it, like, split technically from hitting the base. And then I launch my missile. It hits at the last moment. Blows up right above it. Like, boy, what a feeling. Hard to replicate that somehow.

Just felt.

so freaking good just that split second oh he just made it what a relief yeah.

The series has always been good experiences like that um mike i'm curious like hours wise roughly uh do you know how far into the.

Game you are i'm about nine hours in right now okay yeah.

Gotcha yeah i i only got like a few hours in i just played a little bit before things started coming fast like left and right that we had to start playing but i do want to circle back to it because i was having fun How is the story hitting for you right now? Like a little bit further in.

It's interesting because I definitely I like it overall. It I kind of enjoy the more sort of like, I don't know, big picture geopolitical like stuff.

Some of the.

No, I like the parts of it that are really weird, like the ghost that talks to you, right? Like a ghost, and he talks to you constantly.

He's a poet.

In a way, it's real stupid, but I like.

How stupid it is.

He kind of sucks. I'll just say it. He kind of sucks, man.

He kind of sucks.

He sucks in a way that I think is funny. There's some weirdness with just the delivery that I think might be translation stuff.

I don't know.

It could be kind of soap opera-y and maybe a little melodramatic.

Can you give me an example? Ghost poet?

Well, it's just so.

You were in the plane with the pilot, and this pilot dies, and then his ghost becomes a voice in your head.

He's just very poetic. Every time he talks, it's just.

Like, I remember looking out at the sky myself.

I think every soldier longs for the ground, though.

And Mike's not exaggerating. That's like the delivery and everything.

Like Matthew McConaughey in a Cadillac commercial. Yeah, everything is very much like that. All right, all right, all right. Right.

So it's like, yeah, I think I like the story. It's definitely kind of melodramatic, weird sometimes.

That's what Ace Combat is. I feel always striven, strived, strove for is it's very much trying to be Gundam. It's always been trying to be Gundam of like the large scale politics and everything like that.

But then also check it out.

There's mechs fighting. That's the same similar thing here of like, We are going to explain to you how this one country is trying to take over a little bit of area from this country. And they're fighting a war over it. And then there's a larger scale war happening. But also airplanes fighting each other and shooting and everything. I will say that I was enjoying the character moments in this game more than me. The story itself. Because one of your crew is a professor. And then one of your crew is a young prodigy. Maybe a college student or something like that. And, like, you're having a conversation, and if you, like, move the camera a little bit to the left, it's like, oh, the professor is, like, helping

her on her schoolwork because, like, she's not going to school right now while she's a fighter pilot. And, like, there's cute interactions like that, like, moments like that that I think are really good. And even if the story wasn't hooking me, those moments absolutely were.

Right.

And, like, the story, you know, it does its job of, like, oh, we're doing this, and then it turns out this happened, right? It gives the necessary kind of plot changes and devices and twists that make this stuff interesting. And, you know, I basically just want a good enough justification for why I'm going out on all of these missions and weird things are going to happen and why giant missiles are firing.

So it's been really pretty.

The music, by the way, probably my favorite soundtrack of the year. Really good music.

Really good. Oh, gosh. It just got.

Clouds have never looked better in a video game, man. Just so frigging pretty, this one.

Right. Now that I have Castlevania out of the way, I'm starting up a couple other games. Obviously, Pragmata is still number one, but this is the other one for sure. Yeah, you need to try this. I think you might like this one. We said Hotas 50 times, and I think the first time I heard Hotas, it was a long time ago, but I do think it was on the Bombcast.

I'm like, what is Hotas? Yeah, hands-on throttle and stick is what it stands for. It's the flight controller thing. It's flight controllers, yes. And it comes with the throttle as well, so those two things, yes. Very cool.

Um, so yeah, flying in Ace Combat 8 feels great. You know, I can't fly there.

Before you do a fun transition, I do want to say, on the game tracker, which everyone should be using, if you go to giantbomb.com, it's free for everybody. Uh, this game is like number seven on the entire tracker in terms of like score. Like people have it at 4.69 out of five.

Jeez.

Okay.

That's high. But I feel like this will never sniff game of the year. You know what I mean? Which is a bummer.

Yeah.

It's too niche, isn't it?

It's a bit of a niche thing, but maybe i think sniffing it in terms of hey maybe this could maybe get nominated um it's gonna be.

Yeah it'll be it'll be for specific people like i can guarantee john lim and this is gonna be his number one like seven was however many years ago it sticks with some people you know like everybody like has their niche thing that they like more than anybody else and if they're willing to like you know, give into that, then yeah, it'll be their number one because it is just that good.

It could be on our top 10 list.

It could absolutely be on our top 10. Will it be number one? We'll see about that, but I absolutely think it has a chance of being on the list.

I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, but I appreciate these games that kind of stick to like Genres, especially genres that we don't get a lot of representation out of anymore.

It just feels good to fly.

A feeling that a penguin would never know, unfortunately. Chuck, you can tell us all about the woes and trials of penguins because you've been playing Penguin Colony.

Penguin Colony, a game that has very little to do with penguins.

Oh, shit.

So this is from the same developers as Umurangi Generation, which I haven't played, but I think... I think I understand that game is like you're it's like photography. You're like going around a city and then it kind of peels back the layers and ends up being more about, you know, like colonizers and indigenous peoples and stuff like that. Neftali, what's his name? The one of the main guys that works on those projects. But yeah, Penguin Colony is from the same developer. It's you start as a penguin. You're playing a penguin in Antarctica, but it very quickly you get Lenville Brown, who was the narrator of Disco Elysium.

He is amazing. One of the best current voice actors, in my opinion. He starts narrating from H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which is about an expedition into Antarctica to dig up things and try to claim some Lovecraftian eldritch power, right? So this game is using you being a penguin as a framing device to put yourself on the periphery of these Nazi's getting into Antarctica and messing with powers that they don't understand and having Lenville Brown narrate this, you're going around and picking it. The game is so odd. It doesn't explain very much to you.

You're going around and for some reason, this penguin, you're picking up words. It's like little glowy dots on the Antarctic landscape. You'll go learn a word like colonizer and then you pick up another word and it'll be like hamburger. And you're like, what the hell's going on? Why is this penguin learning these words?

Yeah. What a great question.

You can swap into different types of penguins. And if you open the menu, it'll tell you what the different species are and like what they're good at. Some of them are better at sliding. Some are better at like rock hoppers are better at jumping. You can be a baby. I can, I'm going to say it again. You can turn into a baby emperor penguin. So you can like slide through these little holes that take you to different areas. Uh, really fun. And you are just observing, uh, these Nazis trying to get into like this Antarctic dig site and getting fucked up and destroyed. I don't want to like spoil. Actually, I'm going to spoil a little bit. Spoilers, spoilers for Penguin Colony. If you're going to play this, it's so short.

It's like two to three hours. Spoilers, spoilers.

Okay.

Done my due diligence. You, the farther you go in, you start seeing Shuggoths and these alien, ancient alien entities. And one of these things is just like, Running around this cavernous map and picking up Nazis and draining their blood out and just flinging them around. And this crazy music's going. We have a quick look on the site.

I did that with Mary Kish. And I didn't tell her. I explained almost nothing about this game. I was like, it's Penguin Colony.

You're a penguin.

And then we got into that and Nazis were getting murked. And she's like, oh my god. It was so good. But it just gets weirder and weirder and goes places.

And.

It was a game that made me want to do research. I was like, there are some really intentional choices here I want to understand. So at the Mountains of Madness, I think it's about a university expedition into Antarctica, not necessarily Nazis. But there was a historical expedition by the Nazis into Antarctica looking for God knows what. So the developers, the writers took those, melded those ideas together. Additionally, so this is a New Zealander, um, indigenous person, like developer development team. There is a legend where an explorer, the indigenous explorer, like got so far South of New Zealand that, uh, they didn't have a word for it, but the way it was like, uh, this explorer described what he saw

as like floating foam or something. And that is taken to mean, uh, ice. Like this explorer got so far south that they started seeing like the ice you might see associated with like the Antarctic Ocean and stuff. So they're having these in the game. They're pulling the Nazi stuff. They're pulling the Mountains of Madness. They have this other framing device of these indigenous people from New Zealand coming as guardians of this secret to stop people from getting to it, to stop the Nazis. So they're also coming to it. And again, you're a penguin. You're just seeing all this shit happen. You're just like on the periphery.

it's just like a really brilliant, well-researched blend of topics. And I think it's, um, it's just, it's a short ride and I think it's like very worth your time. Also, do you want to shout out that at the end of this game, there's sort of like a, uh, big quote drop at the end. And yeah, you might've seen this on social media, right? Where, uh, they decry the, um, the genocide in Palestine. Right. And then it says, uh, the games industry will be judged by the games that it makes uh while that's going on i was like holy shit like what a fucking statement it's such a call out uh in support of the the bds uh boycotts and stuff so this game is not going to be listed on you know like the xbox store or

microsoft store so yeah really strong and then uh shortly after seeing people like maddie thorson pull celeste from those storefronts too i'm like that's yeah it doesn't feel coincidental to me it Just love seeing that kind of movement from indie games. Yeah, just a really affecting experience playing through that game. Like I said, it's short. At the end, you get like a cool map that shows like all the things you found and collected. It creates like a little constellation path. And the game encourages you to compare what you got done, what you experienced with someone else's map.

Because you're not going to see the same things with the same visions. It's really cool.

Yeah, this is one where it's like when I hear it's like three hours long, I'm like, oh, I should just play it because everyone who plays it seems to have been affected by it. So I'll throw this one on the Steam Deck as well.

Yeah, the style wasn't really my thing. I did play it for a little bit, but I very much got the vibe that it's kind of like Journey, but dealing with all the subject matters that Chuck was mentioning there. And so I think it's a more interesting sort of environmental storytelling, but you're a penguin sliding along. So I think if nothing else, it's a really, really cool idea and a concept. The concept and writing are way stronger than the gameplay, right? Yeah, exactly. Although the gameplay, honestly, I say this to you, Chuck, good sliding. It is kind of just a good game to feel. You could do sort of like a Tony Hawk style tricks, like you hold a button down and release it and flip the penguin up and spin and stuff. This horror story

was happening in my ear. I'm like, yeah, this is an interesting experience. I'm not sure I like it particularly, but it is a really cool idea.

It has like PS2 control jank, is how I would describe it.

A little bit, yeah.

You can clip through some of the environments sometimes. That's what stops it from being an immaculate, perfect gaming experience as a video game, but as a story being told in this medium, it's perfect that way.

It seems like that's what they were focused on. Absolutely.

I just like penguins, so that alone, I'm kind of interested. Just seeing this penguin sliding around, that's fun. That game sounds really good. Sounds like a good time. I do like to do some sliding. Boy, this transition is hard.

I'm not going to lie. Valheim, Chuck!

What's that?

The games industry will be judged positively for this next game. I'm sorry.

I was doing something.

In Penguin Colony, you venture into the deep south, but Chuck, you've been venturing into the deep north, the new biome in Valheim 1.0. There you go. There's a transition for you. Yeah, so I've also been playing Valheim. Dude, I don't know. It just might be one of my forever games that I go back to and play periodically with my friends.

I have seven friends I'm playing with on a self-hosted server, and we're just no-lifing the shit. Two days ago, I had to say, like, hey, guys, I'm really sorry. I have to, like, let me know when we're going to do, like, the bosses and the big milestone shit because I have to focus on getting some other games played before I get a year because I'm, like, at 430-some hours. In that game right now. This is our third full playthrough of the game. I showed off some of our house.

That we had built. On UPF. I think it was the very last part of UPF. Last week. Just what an incredible. I reviewed this for the website too. I just felt so fucking compelled. Because it's such a good survival crafting game. It's one of the best. I can say that with full confidence. I think in my review I said. It's the best one since Minecraft. And I stand by that. It just does such an amazing job at taking all these systems and layering them over each other to make a really like seamless Moorish experience. The food you make, the decor you pick for your house, how you've constructed your house and defenses, how you are managing all your storage and setting up your crafting tables, the way you arrange furniture matters because you build a

crafting workbench or forge, then you get forge improvements they have to place in the physical space so that the upgrades connect to it. interact. The game is just really good at that. Um, making things make sense. It's not just like, uh, while you can like really focus on the aesthetics of base building and stuff, it, it makes them really meaningful. And that's fantastic. The combat, um, weirdly is like kind of dark souls. He it's lots of rolling and parrying. If you're really good at parrying.

Okay.

Yeah.

Perry slap. If you're good at parrying, it's going to, this game will reward you because you can, You can have these like trolls coming at you that are, you know, three stories tall. They'll swing a tree branch at you. You have like a little bronze buckler. You can parry that motherfucker. And it's the most satisfying feeling in the world. Also, this game does something with parrying that every game should do, which is if something throws a rock at you or shoots you with an arrow or a fireball, if you parry those projectiles, it stuns those enemies that are even like 30 feet away from you. It's very satisfying. I don't know why. Like, I'm like, it doesn't make any sense, of course.

I do love that, yeah.

It makes no sense, but it feels so good. And it's like an opportunity where, okay, range attack, parry it, then I can sprint up and beat this guy's ass. Feels really, really good. Anecdotes. Go ahead.

Oh, yeah. I was going to ask kind of a broad question. Like, does this game have an ending now that it's gone 1.0?

It does.

And have you guys seen that, or are you working your way up to it? Like, is that even something you guys care about?

Yeah, so I can... Just so people that haven't played this or gotten into it at all, you can like go kind of shallow into it and not go super far and kind of enjoy the first biomes or go real deep. We're real deep, right? Um, the bios go like meadows to forest, to swamp, to mountain, to planes, to basically hell. It's called the Ashlands. It's like lava and stuff. And then the newest biome is deep north.

So we have to progress through all of those in each biome. You have to beat a boss. That's something we're all doing as a group. We schedule time to go beat the boss together. So there is one last boss. We had to like do... Exploration is like a key thing in this game. You need to explore in order to find where the boss is. You can't just go to the boss. And then after you find the boss, there will be a requirement for how you summon that boss to kill it. And we aren't looking up anything.

We don't look at the wiki for spoilers or anything. So we go up to this altar to summon a boss and it says you need to... It'll speak in some kind of riddle like, present three of these blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, okay, we think that's where this is. So then we go to these three locations, go get the thing. So we haven't done the very last one yet.

And here's a mild spoiler for the game. We, I was like exploring this continent, like this big, big, big Island by myself. Cause that's what I do in that game as a wizard. I just go blow shit up and explore. And I found this just massive gate, like huge, like arc to triumph kind of thing. just massive. And I'm like, okay, yep. Think I found the final fucking boss. Um, and then I looked at the requirements. It's like, okay, we have to go invade these three different keeps that are like, uh, inhabited by giants and kill them and then bring something back to this altar. So we had, well, that's where we're at. We're at the very last thing we have not gone through the gate, but it's like a portal to another place. We have no idea what's

on their side. Haven't looked it up. It's very thrilling, but yeah, we're going to schedule that probably next week.

Hmm.

And then you also mentioned, like, it's the labor chores are sort of built into it. Like, when you sit down to, like, play, is it, like, well-balanced between, all right, I'm doing chores and I'm going on big, like, battle quests or whatever? Like, how does that break down?

Yeah, it's funny because it's like you're going on a road trip. Okay, everybody, we need to go back to the house and sleep because you all have to go sleep at the same time. And then when you sleep, you're going to get your rest level, which improves your stamina regeneration. okay, everybody, make sure you get all the meals prepared that you're going to need to bring with you.

That'll give you your health and stamina buffs. All right, guys, we're going into the winter. So make sure you have a frost resistance or this boss will have this. We're all making mead, making food. Our bedrooms need to be well decorated. So we can get good rest levels. And then we all together go through the portal and range out and we might get fucking obliterated.

Right.

And we have to run back naked to go get our stuff. And it, it just, it weaves those things together.

So, so well, it's really right. That's what it sounds like.

Okay.

Very cool.

Cool.

All right.

Well, uh, it sounds like that you have been hit by the online game curse, having a good time with your buddies. You're never going to leave the world of Valheim. Uh, speaking of curses game of the week, everybody, let me say again, game of the week is Castlevania Belmont's curse. I think, uh, grub and Sean, you've talked about enjoying this one much before. And Chuck, now you've been digging into it as well after, after just recently playing through a symphony of the night.

Right.

So I guess we are curious to hear how you, if you were fine, because I think you're on that quick look with me and Dan and Dan, I definitely been on the more skeptical side of this one. But how are you finding it now?

Yeah.

And I think, On that quick look, I think I told you guys recently, the way he was engaging with some of the game systems, I was like, oh, I wonder if he's missing something here that might make it click. So I got to that point of the game and tried to push through. I don't look. The first part of the game, Paris, I don't like that part. I think I told you that. I don't care for that part.

But once you get into the fucking castle, it's like, oh, these developers love Castlevania. And it is coming through and coming across. And I started, like, really noticing the intricacies of the enemy design and the level design. And I'm like, they are just, like, hearkening back to some of the, like, really classic elements. Even in the soundtrack, of course. In the boss design. There's just so many riffs and references, but it's completely fresh. It feels really, really good. I'm curious how you guys are feeling about the controls. and how they translate and help you do exactly what you want to do in the game. Cause that might be my one point.

Okay.

I'm a little curious what you mean, but I will say remapped, uh, two things I swapped. Uh, what would that be? Dodge and whip. So now Dodge is on R2 and the whip is on B.

Um, okay.

I could see that because I, I definitely want, cause now I have Perry and Dodge on, uh, triggers, which I couldn't say pre-release, but, uh, I have it so it lines up with Phantom Blade Zero, which I was also.

Playing at the time.

I was like, well, this makes it easier to go between these two games. But also that's how I like things in general.

A lot of Castlevania games have had the dodge on the shoulders before, right? So that makes sense.

I mean, so I'm actually playing a little bit of Symphony right now. And I mean, the back step is on triangle. So, you know. But is that different than what you meant, Chuck? What were we asking specifically? So much of the game is using the whip. or traversal right grabbing those like purple holds or the yellow ones to do the swing or you're just doing that all the time in the game or even using the whip to grapple an enemy and launch an attack i am i'm having so and maybe this is probably just skill issue i'm having issues with just direction inputs in a way that i you know i just did sympathy of the night again i don't know how many times i've played through that and i did a maria playthrough i'm

having so many more issues with just directional inputs especially like getting a diagonal Or I think I'm going to be able to grab something and it just doesn't go that way.

It's happened to me.

Enough times where I was a little annoyed by that. But you do have to get the directions right. It is not just automatic. You have to actually be pointing at the thing. And so it is a little bit of like, oh, this is a skill to be learned. And then I think maybe I was a little bit more frustrated even by... expecting my character to be able to like slide vertically straight down against the wall and then, and then jump off of that. And then a lot of times that doesn't work. You have to like carry momentum into the wall. Not every time it's a little, it was just a little bit off for me, but I got so used to it by the end that I was like, okay, I know what I'm supposed to do here. I know what the game expects of me

in these situations. Okay.

Are you using, are you Chuck? Are you using D pad or analog stick?

I'm that's the annoying part. I keep going between both because depending on the situation, So what Grubb was just describing, like falling down, if I want to, if I'm falling down like a... I think I immediately see the problem, but yeah. Yeah. If I'm using the joystick and I'm trying to just like drop down through a shaft instead of like wall grab it, if I'm using the joystick, if I'm a little bit to the left, I'm going to grip onto the wall and that'll piss me off.

So that's why I would want to use a D-pad, which is like pure down input. I don't need to worry about if I'm off a little bit. That's the kind of like difficulty I'm having with the game. it's not stopping me from having a really, really, really good time with it. Um, especially cause my combat style right now is like grapple attack spam, like just grapple slash grapple slash. No, just do that constantly.

Oh yeah.

I just, I fought the, the miser boss and that I just, just ate, ate him up just like destroying him with those grapple slashes and everything. But yeah, that's, Yeah, I don't know. If you have good advice for me, I'm on an Xbox controller.

I have advice that you're not going to want to hear. Take it from a fighting game player. No, the Xbox Series controller has an excellent D-pad for cardinal directions. Dinos are ass. They are so, so bad on that controller. So yeah, like i i was playing as a d-pad game the whole way but i was playing on 8-bit dough controller where they have like slightly more lenient diagonals so i i was getting the thing and like rob has kind of backed this up already but yeah you you do need to be precise with your inputs uh but it definitely lends itself to I wonder if like maybe a PlayStation controller would also work a little bit better with the membrane D-pad. But yeah, it was, it felt a lot, felt a lot better on 8BitDo.

You know, I thought it would never happen for me, but I am at a point where I am okay playing 2D games with the analog stick now, just because so many have kind of trained me to like, like the Ori games.

Some are made for it.

Some need you to, yeah, like Metroid Dread.

Yeah, so like I'm at a point like, well, I kind of forced myself to winter for those games and now I'm mostly just okay having to do, especially with anything like this. Whereas, like, I am going to really need to aim at things in the air, and I can't just get by on the eight directions.

Yeah. And again, it's made for it. I'm playing with a stick, and that's a lot of these 2D games now, yeah.

I've primarily moved to using the stick. Before we move too far away from what Chuck was saying, though, about Paris specifically, I think that's an example of where me as someone not you know, new to Castlevania, we'll say, you know, like dabbled in it. The Eagovania is being new to that. I didn't really have expectations going in.

And so for me, I kind of just, we got to Paris and I'm like, okay, yeah, this is the intro. I don't know how long the intro is going to be, but this is clearly the introductory area. And it's longer than you think it's going to be, but it is ultimately a small slice of the game. It's like one fifth, I would say of like probably an average playthrough. And then like the rest of it is the castle and, related areas and so for me like yeah i think you were right chuck of just like categorically paris is the worst part of the game sure but i think like how good or bad someone feels about it is going to vary because for me i i just thought it was fun and i didn't really have a problem with it but the castle is just so much better

and it is if nothing else way more castlevania yes extremely yeah i i did want to talk about the gameplay a little bit more and I don't know if we're going to do full spoilers on Chuck. You may have some things you want to say.

I'll say the last third of the conversation. We can like do big spoiler flashing lights kind of thing.

Okay.

I'll say this is like a minor spoiler. I don't, I don't really think anyone would see it as such, but last week on the show, grub asked me if I knew, Hey, do you know if you can breath of the wild Dracula? And I was like, I don't think so. Cause like I need stuff to like get to him. So that doesn't seem like something you could do.

But you kind of can. That's the interesting thing about this game is that you reach a point of no return where they're like, well, you have all the required stuff to reach him. Are you sure you want to do this?

Yeah.

To that i was like hell yeah i do in part because i was streaming it and made for a really fun moment of like everyone's like you're not ready for this boss i'm like bet we'll see about that assholes and so i did slam my head against like the penultimate boss for a solid i looked at the vod like 30 something minutes but then i beat him and i move on to dracula and then i'm like Oh, this is tough, tough if you don't have those upgrades.

They planned for it. You didn't just do the bad ending. You actually... I did the bad ending, but then I was like, oh, but I do have the required thing to actually get to him. And so I did that and I did it with like, yeah, only like half of the tarot cards. Like, so basically like half the abilities in the game. I don't even know what's left.

I don't know what would have made it easier. But man, having just a really tough but satisfying fight. It was it was no bullshit like the final fight and the one before it. Nothing is like not doable. I mean, hell, I did it. So that's proof. But like everything is telegraphed. Everything is learn the patterns. And that's the type of shit that I love in character action games. I love it in fighting games, like in large part playing as other people, like learning, okay, what are you going to do next? What do you think is the right move?

That's why I like playing fighting games. All of that stuff is in Belmont's curse of, and in these last two boss fights of, hey.

You can learn this. It might be tough.

And like, maybe like you want to go get other stuff, if nothing else for like accessibility and, Although there is a good accessibility menu where you can tweak that stuff. But like, we'll make this easier on you if you want to. But if you want that really difficult action experience, it's also here. And that's like sort of their flavor, their twist on this approach to Castlevania. And I really enjoyed it. I thought it was an awesome ending to the game. And now I'm curious to, like, go back and, yeah, 100% it and see, well, now what's the true ending? Because, like, it's a little bit of a cliffhanger ending if you get a normal ending. So I'm really curious to see how things change if you actually do sort of do

the intended route.

So this is very vague, so I can ask you this. So you didn't ring the bells before?

Yeah, I don't know what you guys are talking about when you say that. Yo, that's cool!

Right?

That's cool!

And, like, do you fuck with mirrors?

I know the thing that I mentioned of the Donkey Kong barrels. That's all I know. That's all I know.

Okay. Hell yes. That was actually, that's so cool. There's so much more.

There's like 20% of the game.

And there's like areas you haven't been to.

Oh, I know.

Holy shit.

That's really cool. Okay. Before we get into some of that stuff, what weapons did you guys end up settling on? Because there's four upgrades for each kind of weapon. And by the end, Vampire Killer is so fucking awesome.

It's so good.

Yeah.

One of the best weapons I've ever used in a game. I just... Wait, Sean, did you.

Get that at least?

Yes.

Well, it's required. It's a story.

It's a story, yeah.

Yeah.

It's like they really did... They knew the assignment there was to make the whip actually just whip. And all the other ones are great, too, because it's like when you do get the dual blades and it's just the red and the blue sparkles flying off of everything.

The legendary one looks fucking sick.

It looks so fucking awesome. Oh, yeah. I want it. And it's like a lot of fun to unlock.

Was that the one that was under the thing? I'm not going to remember where it was.

Maybe, yeah.

There's like a really hard erudite puzzle to solve to get those.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, so that's the other thing about this game. It's like the puzzles are fantastic. It is a little bit Outer Worlds. It's a little bit you are tracking these things and the game is not going to do the Nintendo style thing of hey, the thing that's important here is bold and in red.

Sometimes it'll be all caps. Sometimes, not always. The game is expecting you to be keeping up with everything. And once I sort of clocked that, I was like, okay, I can do that because I'm curious about this game. I'm interested enough to pay attention. And it was like, once I started paying attention, it's like, oh, this thing I noticed before, there's more down here. There's more going on.

And following the tarot cards through to their conclusion, like that stuff starts off okay. It gets better and better and better as you go. To the point where when you are completing the tarot collection, it feels really rewarding. You've gone through a lot of these really smart puzzles. And yeah, I've just been mega into that stuff.

I'm really curious if I'm going to click with any of the clue stuff. Because again, I have the other half of the deck to do still. I'm really curious if that stuff will click with me. Because I've said so many times that my favorite guiding system in a game is something that Metroid solved a long time ago of.

zoom out the map put a waypoint and tell you it doesn't do this yeah and i i was missing that and like the the fact that like and you know i was streaming the game so like people would solely nudge me i'm like hey check your tarot i'm like oh right i have to i have to go check my clues and like see it where it didn't mention okay yeah i know it's in this thing oh but i didn't look at the other clue that said it's kind of in this specific area or you should do this specific thing And so that's more of a me thing.

Yeah, but if you are playing this like a Metroidvania, if you're playing this like, oh, there is a part of the map that is the squiggly lines. I'm going to go see if I can figure out a way to get over there. If you start like pairing that stuff occasionally up with some of these clues, you're going to get there. That's what I did. And that worked for me.

I mean, yeah, like most of the time, most of the time, if I got stuck, there's a couple really like. There's a couple of puzzles where I'm like, it feels like they didn't think about me approaching this puzzle in quite the way that I did. And so I was like, I'm confused. I thought this puzzle could be solved this way.

It's like, oh, you can, but it's from the other side.

I'm like, oh, well, all right. Sure.

I see the logic there, but it's like you didn't account for me doing it in the exact order that I did or something like that. There's a couple of puzzles like that where I'm like, that's that's a little annoying.

I think that does lean into it. what area, like what puzzle are you specifically?

I'll say like the rock crusher. If you do it in the wrong order, it doesn't work. I'm like, I, I can, I see what the answer is. It's like the ace attorney problem where like, you know, what piece of evidence do I present to like get the case to move further? I know what the answer is. I just don't know what piece of evidence I need to present.

I had a moment of that with the rock crusher where I'm like, I know what I need to do. I just don't see like why the order I'm doing it in is wrong. And I'm like, Oh, just approach it from the other side.

The order is correct. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's, I think that I tag you grab. And I said, I just finished that specific puzzle. And I was like, this level design is brilliant because I was like throwing myself. I'm like, why can't I was like, this is kind of impossible to do it this way.

I'm going.

And I was thinking about it. I was going counterclockwise trying to go up. And it's in the clock tower area trying to like go up and solve this puzzle. Again, we're spoiling, spoiling, spoiling, spoiling. So this is a very minor spoiler. I was trying to do that. And then I realized like, oh, if I go clockwise through that whole area instead, after I do like the bottom. then i could like line it up so i can get that rock crushing to go all the way down and open up that next area and i that made me sit back and go yeah this is a this is a fucking castlevania game now like it was just really i loved the environmental puzzle of that i thought that was really well done.

There is some like hints, general hints I would give that I actually got when I was like, some of these puzzles are confusing me. It's like anytime there is a space for Rose to sit in a chair and she can consider something and then the game sort of like does the vignette and zooms in, the game's trying to tell you something. And then, yeah, it can be a little bit subtle sometimes, but it's also like, Everything that they're doing in those rooms that are trying to tell you something is probably saying something really loud in some ways, and it's all done on purpose. So that's why playing on the Switch is such a rough thing, because you need all the details in the background in a lot of these situations to solve some of these problems.

So yeah, just consider that stuff. And then also, I looked up a couple of things here or there, and the stuff I didn't look up, I definitely felt very satisfied and happy with. But I was getting near the end. I'm like, I want to find these last couple of things. And so looking up those last few things did nothing to ruin the experience. It was still a really good time.

Okay. I do think, though, that they do just enough of... And then, like, Metroid Red did this as well. So, like, this is established at this point. But just, yeah, just highlight when I'm done with an area. Just, like, show, like, oh, no, you have everything here.

It does.

You don't have everything here. No, I'm saying it does that.

It does, right.

It does that.

It turns to gold, right? People should know that. That's another.

If an area turns gold, you have everything there. That's all I need. I don't need more than that.

Like, yeah, sure. I'll just.

And because they segment the map, like, the individual areas themselves are segmented in sort of, like, sort of rooms, but maybe a little bit extended past a room. And so it'll tell you, yeah, you have everything in this room. That's all I want. That's all I need. If you give me that, I will not look anything up because I'm like, I clearly just need to keep searching. I need to keep trying things. And that to me is, if not the Metroidvania experience, at least the Metroid experience that I love so much. And so that's why... outside of a little puzzle funkiness, or maybe, again, maybe it's just a me thing, I never have felt like I'm having a bad time with the structure of anything, which is sometimes something that irks me about other games that

attempt this style.

Yep. Very good game. It flew up my game of the year list, for sure.

Yeah, it's one of the finest 2D action games I've ever played.

Yeah.

I think the combat... is at its best in the boss fights for me personally i think room to room fighting like the normal enemies is when i'm more annoyed by it i.

Think uh when i was um taking on gauntlets of enemies or the rooms that uh shut like shutter themselves until you defeat all the enemies i was getting into a pretty good flow with that where it's like i am throwing in the parries as as needed and figuring out when to dodge and creating space and kind of using all my abilities to uh to make sure that I'm doing damage while also being as survivable as possible.

So I don't know. I was into the room-to-room combat for the most part.

Yeah, I'll say that I feel the exact opposite, and that's why I think this game hit with me in a way that other Castlevanias haven't, is because every room for me, even the monster closets that I know some people get annoyed that they pull that trick quite a bit.

Yeah, I don't love it.

I get it. But for me, it's a challenge. For me, it's just like, all right, let's see if I can never touch the ground during this one. I'll be sick. And then, so for me, it's just a matter of if they just had the devil may cry meter up there, I'm just like going up from like, you know, C to B to A to S. Hell, they can even add that in, you know, like a score attack mode or something. That's all it requires from me to just be like, this is what I want action to be in 2D. Because sure, you can, like, even if you choose a different weapon, like you choose a sword and shield or the heavy sword, Like you can have a slower pace, more methodical combat if you want, or you can just be lightning fast, blazing through these enemies, whipping

between them all, watching the screen fill with effects while you're doing all that and like popping magic and stuff like that. So the combat is what like solidified for me. So I, the boss fights are where it shines the most. I guess that's the difference between us because like the floor for me was so high that like the boss fights are phenomenal. And then the moment to moment, I think it's still good. I, uh, I was going to, so audience and listeners or whatever, if you like the kind of game where like Sean was saying, you grapple something, hit them, grapple again, you're staying in the air for like a minute at a time. Like I was grappling, hitting them, recharging my mana, using a spell in the air, grappling, hitting.

If you just don't want to touch the ground and just fuck around like that. Oh my God. This game has that sauce. It's really, really fun.

I'm using the, um, WS about weapons a while ago. I'm using Valmon Way, which I think... I can't remember in Symphony of the Night. Is that one called Chrysogrim? Where, like, when you attack, it, like, has... It looks like a bunch of swords are attacking all at once. So it looks, like, extra fucked up when I'm just grapple-slashing over and over again.

It's really, really fun.

Yeah. For me, like, yeah, getting the dual blades to, like, work with its, like, delay... Not... It said the reads is saying like hit when the attack does damage or whatever, but it gives you a little sparkle of like when you're supposed to hit it and it feels a little bit delayed and getting into that flow of just like doing the thousand stabs and then a big spinning jump attack at the end of the combo felt incredible.

The heavy, like the great sword spinning attack after a grapple is really, really good too.

Yes.

I'm excited to get that legendary weapon.

Yeah. That one's a lot of fun. That's really good. It was fun to get that one as well. You're going to get it soon.

Yeah, I know. I know who's going to give it to me. And I have an idea of what the weapon will be, too, because it's it's a little on the nose. But I'm like, yeah, I think I know.

So I I did really want to know. I can see you're trying to get in there, Mike. I don't know if this guides you at all. I'm curious if if you end up not liking this, you know, can't like everything. That's whatever. I'm curious if anything we've said about this, like maybe sways you in one way or another, or if maybe even the stuff we're talking about is like, Oh, I don't want that in Castlevania. That's why I don't like it.

Um, I mean, no, no. I mean, everything sounds fun. Like I definitely am planning to try the game again.

Like I'm, I'm a little annoyed still that like, I'm probably gonna have to like buy this on steam and restart it to try it again.

Now.

Cause I do think they should just put out a switch to version.

Yeah.

That's like, part of me is like, i would just wait for that because it should happen at some point but then like i'm gonna miss game of the year and i don't really want to be the guy who's like well i didn't like it when you're all talking about how good it is and you want to put it higher on the list uh but you know that's where i am i i'm gonna try it again i will do.

We have an idea of the critics split on those reviewed for switch versus steam oh i'm very curious about.

That metacritic would have that split yeah they have the platform split but um Let's see.

Castlevania. Fail.

Means.

Here's.

Uh.

God. What?

The search function. Switches at 79. Okay.

It is.

It is notably lower. But not like. Insanely lower. Yeah.

That's really good these days. That's. That is lower. It definitely seems. I know like.

I think some people have a problem with the PS5 version.

Input. Latency. Things like that. So.

Uh. There's been some issues with the ports I suppose.

But yeah. I will get to it.

I tried. So when I was like, I want this to be a couch game. So like I set up, I have a laptop with Linux on it, set that up in my living room, hooked up to my TV, had some problems with audio, got that figured out because it's Linux. But then when I was playing, so that's like running inside Proton compatibility layer, right? I felt input latency.

I was like, God damn it. Like I could just, I could sense a little bit. It just felt kind of muddy. And when I went back and.

Played on Steam Deck, I bet it's not an issue there, but I should try it native on PC.

Yeah, it's probably something else in your chain then because, yeah.

I had just spent like 45 minutes figuring out the audio thing. And I was like, I just don't want to do this anymore. So I sat down and played it here and I was having a blast. Okay.

Do we want to do like even like a tiny little bit of spoilers? I feel like anything I would say would spoil Sean. So maybe we should.

It's kind of what Sean wants.

Yeah.

I would say, I mean, you guys have talked about this a lot. I think you guys can all often be getting more spoiler-y than this.

Like, you know, seriously.

We're probably at a good point. We're probably at a good point. Maybe, like, if we walk into actual spoilers, we could do that, like, during Game of the Year or something.

Game of the Year, yeah.

Like, after I finish saying everything.

Just let me know when we get the Sage Tarot card, Sean. I'll be interested in that.

Gotcha.

Very important. All right. Yeah. All right. Good stuff.

We're going to take a little bricky break, as Jan would say. We're going to come back. We got some news from Grubb. We'll touch on all of that. And before we get to these emails and super chats, stick around, everybody. Plenty of more bomb casting to go around.

Ah, yeah. Jeff Grubb has the news.

Don't get mad if you don't like it.

It's clearly not his fault.

News sometimes uh all right oh yeah are you gonna go good you have more to say go ahead yeah and more to bring you in with uh do a good job buddy with the news i believe in you all right let me close this uh mega megan the stallion castlevania cosplay and get.

Back over to the news who was she who was she drota it's it's a hell of a thing what yeah uh uh it's a zelda week everybody zelda is out this week what the fuck is happening we're gonna be in extra life and i'm gonna be sneaking in zelda here and there yeah Oh, man, I am excited, though, because tomorrow night you can go and get this thing.

It's going to be out late tomorrow into Thursday morning. Really excited to hear how people enjoyed, like, the midnight launches and all that stuff. There's a few more tidbits about the game, mostly about, you know, why they did it this way. And by this way, they had EPD3 go ahead and do the work on this. This is not, you know, if there's externalized staff, I'm sure there is.

That's just the Zelda team, right? It is the Zelda team, like the big boy, hey, we're making the next Zelda team. Aonuma produced it, but he also kind of stepped back. He's like, hey, young people on the staff, I want you to take this on and sort of remake it in the way you think it should be remade. And he said to a certain degree. He's surprised how much they kept and then turned out, but it turned out he was very happy with that because one of the main motivating factors behind this is something we talk about with remakes all the time. It's a way to skill up people who are working on staff. But in this specific case, he's saying that it's a way to, to skill them up on, uh, specifically Ocarina of Time, because

so many of them, of the people working at EPD3 on Zelda games, were born after that game came out. And he's like, part of me feels like we might lose some of the magic that people still feel Ocarina of Time has. So we want one of them to go back, sort of get inside and figure out what made it tick and come back with a remake. And that's what they delivered here. And I'm like, oh, I love that because I do think that the series is at a point where you know, Ocarina of Time loomed so large over Zelda games for so long, and every game was Ocarina of Time with a twist, and then they broke that spell a little bit with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and now it's like, okay, sort of bring the pendulum back a little bit. Obviously,

you've learned a lot from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but you know what those games could use? Oh, just a tiny bit more Ocarina of Time. That would make those games probably even better. So I'm hoping that's what they're setting up for here. To me, that's what it sounds like. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I heard this or saw this quote circling around this morning, and I thought, yeah, that's really smart. He's giving them his own OGU. Like, hey, this is important, you little twerps. Like, this is important to what Zelda is. Like, whether We go in a different direction like the Breath of the Wild style and everything. Whether we go in a new direction, Ocarina of Time is foundational to what this series turned into. So you should know. And what better way than to finally get around to making that remake.

I think this is just a very good plan overall.

It's interesting that it is the Zelda team making this. Because I think when we first saw it, it was like, who's doing this?

Is it like?

So, no, it is just them. Do you think, like, it is, like, that, you know, there's a lot of younger people on there. Do you think there's also a part of the Zelda team that is already working on the next big main Zelda also?

Very good question. Right. So, that is leading a lot of people to worry, like, oh, are we not getting another Zelda for four to five years? And I think, no, this does not indicate that, I think. I think that they would almost certainly have another team cracking away at the next Zelda and... Sure. Now, a lot of people who are working on this can now move over and begin working on that game in earnest. But I don't think that means, oh, it's like moving out of pre-production or something like that is probably just chugging along. And and they were doing these two things side by side. So, yeah, maybe this means that we're not going to get like, you know, the next Zelda next year, but we might get it. We could still get a trailer for it

next year. And I think we probably will. Like, I guess I don't know. What do you guys think? Like, what year do we get the trailer? What year do we get the game? We've got a trailer next year.

It'd be one of those really early ones.

I wouldn't. Yeah. I'm not expecting it to. I mean, I got 2029. Very still.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

I guess it depends on what kind of game it is.

I forget.

I know Alnuma's talked about the future of Zelda and like whether or not they would do a third game of that style. I forget what he said, though.

Yeah, I mean, I think he kind of said that, you know, I think there was a more recent comment where he's talking about that. And he's like, you know, if we do something that is like a direct sequel to that or something new. So it kind of sounded like he was leaving things up in the air.

OK, gotcha, gotcha.

It's also hard to imagine that they don't just kind of remake Majora's Mask while they're at this, right? He makes all these assets. You have the team familiar with this style. a game, like, maybe not right after, I guess, because, yeah, you do move, maybe you move this team over to help with that next week, because that would have first.

I'm curious about that, because, you know, on the N64, it was remixed assets, but, like, everything is going to be so bespoke for the graphics this time that I'd imagine they couldn't quite pull the same trick. And also, let's be real, even if, like, you know, I love Majora's Mask, it does not hit in the same way that Ocarina of Time in, like, big letters does, right?

Yeah, you're right.

Although, like, Majora's Mask, like, I don't know, it seems like its stock is always a little bit on the rise more and more each time I look at it. Where I remember it was very much a straight-up The Black Sheep, and now it often comes up as people's.

Favorite, right?

I do genuinely think that, like, YouTube essays and, like, that era has done a lot for it of people, like, reevaluating and saying, a lot of people, like, Frankly, including myself, like it more than Ocarina because it's like it's the weird Zelda. Like, oh, they were they did so many different things. And it's like that that restriction they were under in making it caused them to just try weird different things that sometimes didn't always hit. But it made for a very interesting video game. So, yeah, I do think it's on the rise.

Yeah.

I also assume this game is just going to sell so, so, so well that it's like, well, even if the Majora's Mask one sells 75 percent of what what Ocarina of Time did, that's going to be.

A gigantic problem.

It's new Zelda in a post breath of wild world. So it'll probably do all right.

Exactly.

And they, they want to have a Zelda game every year. So to me, that says that you get around to Majora's mask eventually. And I do like, yes, all this work is not going to go one to one. They have a lot of the character models reused in between both games. So it's like, that would still go a long way toward making it, you know, more efficient to get that game out. Right. So, yeah, I think we, we probably see it at some point. I look, um, 3d Mario is like the next big thing from Nintendo, like the big, big, big thing. And I do think that easily could be next year at this point. Um, and then, yeah, I think it could be done. It's not no guarantee, but it could easily be next year.

Like it could be like a holiday next year.

I feel like people like are still almost in denial. They're like theory crafting, but aren't we just like in confirmation? Like, no, that team did Bonanza. Like that was just that team. And so I, I don't think it was confirmed. I think a lot of the credits like it. Yeah. Like this is this is that team dog. And so I think looking at that way, it might be a bit soon.

They could have split. They could have like had.

Right.

Because because the director, the director and producer are not the director and producer of the last Mario.

Sure.

So it's like, what are those guys working on? So I think it's like I think it's up in the air is kind of where.

I'm at with that.

Right.

Is Nintendo so different that they're not doing what other big studios do, which is like as soon as Mario Odyssey was done, they started pre-production for the next 3D Mario is my assumption. Even if you don't have all of your team on that pre-production. But that's what I'm saying. So like, was another team like doing the pre-production for the next Mario while a team was on Bonanza full time?

Maybe not that fast. Right. I mean, there is always, it is always worth mentioning that, uh, super Mario 3d world Bowser's fury happened after Odyssey as well. And that seemed like a prototype that kind of got really far along and got so far along as like, Oh, that was going to be the next Mario game. And they're like, well, we're not exactly super happy with it, uh, in terms of the structure right now. So let's polish it off and put it out off, put it out as this bonus thing for this other game. And we'll use the learning lessons from that, uh, for the next Mario game when we, when we get around to that. And then we're still waiting now. Um, So obviously they did a lot of work on Mario prototyping ideas, which I think

is happening all the time, no matter what games get released. So yeah, that stuff is happening.

And I mean, we're going to get over two years away from the launch of this console before you put your most popular franchise out, right?

No, no.

Their most popular franchise was their day one.

Wait, what game? Mario Kart.

All right it didn't hit but it was there yeah yeah it.

Just that feels crazy to me that they wouldn't have planned for it in like the first year of this console.

I think i think they just took a different approach and like they just wanted to do something really different and bizarre and so that's how we got bonanza and then but like rub said yeah like if the next mario game does not look something like bowser's fury that would be extremely surprising it's just a question of how quick the turnaround is and the zelda games that's an anomaly they usually don't take that long on something like a breath of wilder tears of the kingdom usually the game itself is like made and you know i'm off the cuff here but it's like yeah like three to four years like the even with modern production cycles nintendo tends to be pretty quick about things so i would not be surprised yeah if it is even as soon

as next year.

Right Can I ask a non-Nintendo Mark question here? When you say you expect it to look like Bowser's Fury, what does that mean?

Play.

Oh, in terms of the open world stuff. Just like the fact that that was the spent years prototyping that concept. Yeah, yeah.

If you don't know anything, I guess that's totally valid. Yeah, like it is open world. You're going like from island to island and then like the island is vertical.

Sort of.

So it feels like its own self-contained area with a lot of secrets. And it would be surprising if they didn't do something like that for Mario and sort of bring. Cause that's permeated through a lot of Nintendo now, you know, like Donkey Kong Bonanza is like open world ish in a way. And the fact that like Donkey Kong can just go everywhere and just tunnel down, tunnel up even.

And I, I think that that's going to be in all their games, including Mario. I think I'd prefer that.

Yeah.

It's cool.

Uh, so yeah, I mean, look, it is still a Zelda's anniversary year and that's going to be continuing on through the release of the movie. Uh, and the movies like home video release and all that stuff. And Nintendo will continue to hit that in various ways. This year's Zelda is Ocarina of Time. They want to have one, one per year. So, you know, next year's is probably not going to be the next major Zelda, but I could see them releasing something smaller. And then they set up Zelda, the next major Zelda coming in, you know, 2029 or something like that. It feels like that isn't, you know, too impossible or implausible at this point. All right.

That movie's coming out in like five or six months.

They got to release a trailer pretty soon here.

It's got to be right.

Is it going to be really bad?

I don't know. I have no idea.

I have no idea.

I mean, it easily could. Yeah, it easily could. But it also could be good. Who knows? Persona remake footage surfaced. Maybe. I guess maybe should be out of that. Yeah. Nearly two minutes shows exploration, combat, and illustrated events. Kind of like setting things up. It seems like an internal reel.

Yeah.

Features or Persona 2's Tatsuya appears in battle at some point. There's some unreal debug text and animation similar to when Persona 4 Revival was shown. I think a lot of people are like, look, so that means very similar to what happened with that. And that turned out to be real after everyone doubted it. And it is worth noting. So, well, yeah.

So if you were creating something fake, you would know to do all that stuff now to convince people. But there's no obvious indicator that it's fake either. I'll say it almost doesn't matter. They should do this, right? Persona 1 and the 2s, they should just get remade. They should.

I mean, even though there have been some ports before, they're largely inaccessible to a large part of the Persona fandom, for sure. And it's really three games, because Persona 2 is two different games for a long time. We only really had the one over here. And looking at this, I'm like, boy, it both looks real and fake, right?

Maybe it's because it's an early real footage thing. Like, Because you look at the combat like that looks real. It also looks real in a way of somebody just, I don't know, modding Persona 3 reload gameplay. I would say the story stuff is a little weirder because it is just almost like this animated like comic book style thing.

Right.

Instead of like a real full on cut scene that the other remakes have got. But, you know, maybe these aren't quite as much production value there.

Well, that's also definitely just a placeholder, though.

You think it's just a placeholder?

Yeah, I've seen placeholder stuff that devs do, and that's 100% the type of thing that you would do.

And I think the leaked Persona 4 stuff had something similar in it or something like that, people are saying. I don't track this stuff as closely as some.

Oh yeah, like Persona is like one of the leakiest franchises out there where people just want to get like even the potato or low-encode footage out there. They want to get something out there because they know the fans will eat it up. And the games just leak constantly like crazy. One after another, we always get pre-release footage from somewhere. So that's what makes me think that it is real. Nowadays, you know, we are in the age of unfortunately, you never know what you're looking at, if it's real or not. Sometimes it is just a really good fake, but because of that history i lean towards real and i hope it is because i think it looks really cool i like that they have because persona as we know it the style like the house style

started with three and so one and two have always felt like left behind like they don't want to like modernize those or like even just bring them up to the same sort of right over animated style and i think the footage here shows something that's sort of like very jojo's very like creepy and weird but also cool like it's it's dark but in a really engaging and highly animated way so even if it is just a concept i hope that's what they go for because i think that they could still bring in some of those you know the darker vibes and darker subject matter while still having it be a little more high energy i think that's what persona's been good at like we saw with three reload of handling very dark subjects but in

a way that is like high energy so i'd I think it looks cool.

I wonder if some of the sickos are going to be disappointed or upset at all about them. Because 1 and 2 had their own combat, right? Where it was a grid and there was some placement stuff that mattered. This looks just like, hey, it's Persona 3 reload combat, which I like more, to be honest. I don't really mind that. And I imagine most people are going to be fine with it. But I wonder if some people are going to resent that.

Absolutely. But then there's, you know, the point is to sell these games to the people who started playing with Persona 3. Right, right. And that is a much bigger market to address. So you kind of, I see why they would do it. It seems like it would be the right move.

Yeah, because that style is what also sells and has made these games, like, more successful. I mean, look at something like Metaphor, where I really do think the reason people like Metaphor is because, oh, it's high fantasy Persona. It's still that style.

It's still.

energetic and really well over animated and that's what people want and they just look at it like look at how cool this game looks look at like all the ui and everything like that so i think that is important to the identity of the entire franchise na spinoffs well in the.

Meantime i got my big persona 6 poster behind.

Me as you guys can see obviously i'll get it i'm looking at the uh i'm looking at the leak now i i'm very inclined to say this is real it's got There's just too much sauce put into the UX.

I think it would have been well and truly debunked by now if it was fake. It's been a couple days. People get pretty good at that. They just have a slate. They're going to be ready to go. If the four remake, then six, and then these.

They've been just firing them out left and right. It seems like they have a cadence.

I'm sure six is going to have its own sweetest spinoff just like four did and just like five did.

Sean, did you play one and two?

No, and that's the thing. They are just so different. And I fired up one at one point. I'm like, ooh, first-person dungeon crawling and stuff? This is very much like that old-school Atlus attempting to bring PC RPGs that were... Like a blobber-type dungeon crawling? Do you take a step forward at a time? yeah yeah um i i believe it was a long time ago at this.

Point yeah it is like it's first person fantasy star one style yeah yeah it's just like the stuff that was popular like on pcs in japan at the time they were trying to like bring to ps1 and to console.

And stuff like that yeah yeah and so and just like the series took a hard turn with three.

Was the formula of being in a high school doing like day-to-day stuff like and then at night doing dungeons was that always in the like In the game's recipe, like from one? Okay, cool.

Well, for Persona specifically. But yeah, because the whole Megami Tensei comes from... It's actually like a novel series. And so it's all about sort of... another world and what if like you you live your daily life but then there's a different world and it's been it's been in the more like yeah yeah uh digital devil stuff and everything like that where yeah it's it's all been about exploring just like a different world than our own than that like overlaps ours and it's like.

What if fantasy could affect reality.

And something crazy like that that's always so much sense the greater story of that game that's the.

Funniest thing what are we gonna i.

Played persona 3 4 and 5 didn't finish 3 but i would still love to sink my teeth into a one remake.

Did you play reload or just the original reload okay okay gotcha i went to the beach i got to the beach part of that.

Game oh i i can't i can't talk about the beach it's fine I can't talk about Persona without thinking about, like, it messes me up. I know, like, Persona fans are used to this, but no, not Hitler. I mean, yes, obviously Hitler, but no, the fact that Persona 3, a game that still feels relatively modern to me, is a PS2 game, and then Persona 5 is a PS3 game.

I mean, Persona 4 is a PS2 game.

Yeah. Persona 4 is a PS2 game, man.

2008, we got that one, yeah. That shit fucks me up.

That's so weird to me. You know what?

I'll close things by saying that's also why I still think, like, I've mentioned this before. I'm not sure we need a revival specifically. I still think like the modern updates to Persona 4 Golden like put that game in a really good place. But that's also why I want stuff like this to get remade. It's why I want like Resident Evil, you know, like Veronica is going to be sick as hell and they should redo Zero as well. Take games that are either just like really crusty or, ooh, we kind of messed that one up the first time around.

Like either or, take those games and remake those because those are ones that need it.

Or so puzzling.

Yeah.

I just don't get why. Especially a brand new voice cast. What are we doing?

I'm excited.

I thought the new voice cast sounded really good. I just beat Golden last year.

It's been like 20 years.

I played it on Steam Deck.

It's been a long time. It's a compliment.

Golden holds up so well. That's what I'm saying.

They can't afford us anymore. I'm still going to buy and play it. Outer Scrolls Elder Scrolls Sentinel. Yeah, Grub's retreating.

We need to stop talking about this.

Yeah, you gotta do something here. Get the mace out. Elder Scrolls Sentinel is the official name. The game's a ways off still. They say here, let's see, in a separate tweet, Bethesda stated, it'll be some time before we're ready to share more. Palando's showing up, I think, a little bit.

I'm ready. Now you're ready to talk about it.

Schreier, I think maybe some other people were like saying, look, this game is still a ways off. Yes, 2028, probably 2029 is the release target. So this game was announced in 2018?

2018, which at the time was kind of like, because people were upsetting spaghetti about Fallout 76. And also they announced Starfall at the same time. So I think they're kind of getting ahead of like.

Well, where is Elder Scrolls 6?

They're like, we are making that.

Like, kind of, right? Sort of.

I mean, I wish I remember what it was. I need to apologize.

I remember they turned to me like, that's a 2026 game. And I said, That's ridiculous.

Egg on your face.

And look at me now.

So what was the reason they hit the panic button back then to show that?

It was 76 reactions. And then also because they announced Starfield at the same time. So, you know, they knew everyone's going to be like, well, where the.

Hell is Elder Scrolls?

Yeah, it's because they didn't want people thinking, oh, we're just doing multiplayer like everybody else is. They were like, no, no, no, don't worry. The single player.

We're still making these other ones as well. yeah exactly yes and it was so it was just an answer to questions that they knew people were going to ask and the answer is of course we're making elder scrolls and then they didn't start working on elder scrolls until like two years ago um so yeah sentinel this means it's going to take place in uh chuck take it away.

Come on i beg be proud come on uh okay it's what's the no no no mike don't help him what's the province.

Uh the province is a red guard town hammer fell Hammerfell, right.

The sub-region that this kingdom is in is the Alakir Desert.

Yeah, Alakir Desert. Is that like Arabian Nights stuff?

I would say it's more North Africa.

Okay.

So not Gulf, I would say North Africa. Especially with Sentinel being this kingdom city that's more like a bustling trade hub of commerce, I would say high fantasy Morocco is where I would lean on that. How does that hit you?

It's, it's, uh, I think this sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship. That's right. That's a Casablanca.

Yes.

Which is in North Africa.

I'm very excited for this. I'm going to look at the camera right now and say, if you're not, if you're, if you're an Eldritch Fools fan and you're not excited for this, you're a fuddy duddy and you're a fraud and a fake.

Are they out there?

Cause this is, I'm excited about this. Uh, subreddit was very angry about this for some reason.

It's the 2018 thing.

It's like that teaser and then, doing another teaser and not showing any gameplay.

They're just mad that, like, there's not more to see, right?

Because, like, I don't know.

It's not a case of, like, they have, like, a place that really won this game. Because the one thing we, honestly, like, back when they showed that first teaser and we just saw mountains, I think most people were like, well, this is either Hammerfell or High Rock, right?

It's one of those two.

Which, it could be both.

Because they're across the water from each other. And Daggerfall was both, right? Outer Scrolls 2. It's Sentinel. The capital of this place is basically just like across.

A little gulf from Dagger.

I imagine we go to Daggerfall, or if not, saving it for the expansion.

And High Rock is the land of the Bretons, which have draconic ancestry, which makes them better at magic.

Wee. It's fucking nerd shit. Look at that.

It's so good. What they need to do, I just want to, here's what I want.

Do it.

I want a really full, detailed, well-realized world. Give us five minutes of an intro, Todd, to this world, then let us go. Yeah, let me free. Let me there on a boat, and then let me go. Don't shove the story.

I bet the intro is longer than ever, is what I think happened.

Because that hamstring four, that hamstring Skyrim, Skyrim succeeds despite it, because Alduin, because dragons are fucking cool. But it's what got in the way of four. And, you know, Starfield has its own fucking set of problems.

Starfield thing was like, I remember them specifically talking about it before the release. They're like, there's going to be multiple walking out of the cave moments. And it's like the first time you get your ship is going to. And it's like, it's like all of that.

Fire whoever said that as a positive. Because it was. You're not. Yeah, I'm very excited for this setting. I did before we started today. I was like, I want to talk about Red Guards. Red guards are a kinetically like black, like race in a video game, which is, that's really weird.

That's like kind of there from the beginning.

Yeah. Uh, there's a, there's a game called elder schools, adventures, red guard, where it's like, uh, I think it's like more nautical. I haven't played it. I want to, but I think that's like really notable in the game in 2026, uh, where they're kind of like leading with that. I'm very excited. Um, I have a group chat where I'm like the, I'm the token white guy. I was like, I'm going to informally poll my friends about this. I was like, do you know what a Redguard is? Do you care about Elder Scrolls? It turns out, yes, they did. And they do know. And they were really excited about a potential high fantasy Afrofuturism is what my friend said. A friend that's smarter than me. And I was like, that does

sound really fucking cool. So yeah, hopeful. Hopeful for something neat in that direction for sure.

I like Elder Scrolls a lot. I think they'll kind of get back to the to the core stuff that makes their games fun here. It's going to be hard to compete in a post GTA six world. Cause everyone's going to feel like they're going to have to make their games bigger than ever. I think they need every, every developer that is in a situation where they're making a big living open world, that it has to have a lot of detail needs to just ignore GTA six.

You're just not going to be able to do that. So we'll see, we'll see how they're affected by all that. Uh, There was some weird stuff. Xbox has ousted... ousted a COO has responded to some rumors that are swirling around about her departure. If you all remember, she got promoted to COO after working on Minecraft. She's been at Microsoft for 21 years. Helen Chang.

She.

was basically brought in to be like, oh, hey, you know, Minecraft had a very successful movie. Can you do that for all of the Xbox stuff? And that was the idea behind her role as COO of Xbox. Well, like a matter of weeks after that happening, she left the company and then there were occasional or, you know, a couple of rumors, mostly just like one sourced report from Eurogamer that they said they were unable to like verify themselves.

So kind of like why put it out there? But That said she was fired due to policy violation. Well, now she's responded to that and said, yeah, the origin of the story about her getting fired for policy violations is not accurate, is how she phrased it. And then she had a whole list of things that she wasn't fired for, including like, I didn't talk to the media.

I didn't embezzle. It's like, oh, okay. Where's anyone saying you embezzled?

It's just like, guess who?

But like, why were you fired? Kinda. And then she's like, you know, I'm not going to say what happened, but I didn't think my story at Microsoft would end this way. Okay. A lot more questions here. Now, this is on LinkedIn and all of the replies are from like former Xbox people being like, yeah, it's like literally the word clown show was used to describe the current leadership of Xbox.

That was by Shannon Loftus who worked at Xbox for a very long time was a producer was on team Xbox and just like, like, yeah, we're on team Helen here. Fuck them. Basically it's buck wild in there.

And then when, when I saw Sherman announced, The CEO's like departure is very short, very current.

Right.

We were like, well, something happened here.

Right.

This is not good terms. Whatever's going on there.

Huh.

So, yeah. And, you know, if there was a leak from Microsoft saying that she was fired for policy violations and even if she was or she wasn't either way. that's a situation where you're sharing personnel information and that can open you up to lawsuits. And the fact that Xbox hasn't done anything sort of squash this or deal with it is going to maybe open them up to legal challenges from, from Helen Chang, which is seems like she is maybe hinting at, I don't know. She hasn't explicitly said anything like that, but basically this whole statement feels like a preamble to, to something along those lines.

But we still don't, Don't know what happened here other than, like, I guess Jess Corden tried to get some more details, and other people that worked with her just said she was conscientious about the rules. So whatever that means. What's that mean? Yeah, I don't know. But, I mean, I think when we get this vibe that it's a mess over there, and it's like, yeah, that vibe is, or that, like, feeling isn't based on nonsense. It's like, obviously, that's kind of what it looks like when we glance at it.

for it to sort of break containment like this and be like, oh yeah, all those concerns you have about what's going on over at Xbox, is it a clown show? to be confirmed in such black and white. It's like, okay, yeah, that sounds about right, but what happens next?

Jeff, Jeff, would a bunch of clowns release an Xbox inside of a stuffed alligator?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We'll get to that later.

Oh, sorry. Hold on to that thought. I don't know what you're talking about. Hold on to that thought.

Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. What's the next news story, Jeff?

You're going to regret your words and deeds. Oh my God. Okay, could a depressed person do this? The Goshi Studio closes... Meanwhile, Romero gets a smaller second chance. So NetEase had been trying to get out of the Negoshi business for a while here. That was one of the people responsible for Yakuza, the Yakuza creator, left in 2021, started a new studio, was going to make Gengar. Dragon with Don Lee, a big beef, like beefy movie star, a great, great star.

It would be awesome to be in a game. We saw that at like, was it the Game Awards? Not long after we saw the first trailer for that game, reporting came out. The Netties is like, well, we're not giving you any more money. We don't care about this. We're done. If you want to like Go independent and fund things yourself. You can, but we are cutting ourselves off here. And it seems like that has come to the conclusion based on an announcement that has to happen legally, I think, that showed up in the newspaper that NetEase did actually eventually cut off all funding and is now basically dissolving the studio. What is going to happen to that game? Other than like, well, the company's gone, the studio's gone, obviously nothing's going to happen with it. If

that's not the answer, we don't know. So I think we have to assume very likely we just will never get Gang of Dragon, which looked like a very much like a Yakuza or maybe a Sleeping Dogs or something like that. All right. On the other hand here, Romero was talking to people and saying, hey, we got a little bit of funding from a new publisher after our big game that we were working with Microsoft on got canceled.

With that game, we had a staff of 110 people, including several department leads. For this new project, because we're taking a lot of the work we did and applying it to a new project, and it has to be new because we were only able to hire back 10 of those leads, and now the studio is about 15 to 16 people. So they are going to keep making a game, but it is not the big game that they were working on before. It's going to be something much more scaled down. So a small victory here, but another one where it's like, oh, a lot of damage was done, and this is the best they can do.

Does that 110 number shock anyone else that Romero's studio was that big? I mean, at this point, no.

I mean, if you're working on a big contract game for Xbox for a while there, no, that sounds about right. I guess my question, like, what were they making?

And because, like, I assume what they're going to make now is a boomer shooter, right?

Make a relatively big boomer shooter. Straightforward one.

I think I saw screenshots for this, actually, wasn't it?

Maybe the old thing. I don't know. Yeah.

For us, like, maybe it was a boomer shooter with a budget or something like that, you know, which it just itself.

Could have been interesting. But yeah, I don't know. I think that's a shame.

The, you know, uh, negotiate studio thing. Also, I mean, gosh, that person has been involved in all these great franchises and then to 2021 to try to get this thing going. Uh, and then it just kind of have it lead to nothing.

Right.

What a frustrating five years that was, although it's not that there is an element of that budget got big and they just kept asking for more money.

Yeah. So I don't know. Net ease was, was tired of it, I suppose. Yeah. So I don't know, you know, these things are complicated. And they're big.

It turns out it's difficult, even with NetEase money, to just go and make a Yakuza again.

Yep.

Yeah, I think NetEase lost their taste for that really quickly. But also, yeah, it did sound like Toshiro Noguchi's team and his studio was asking for a lot of money along the way. But I think that's kind of what was necessary to get that studio off the ground at the same time. But maybe it wasn't managed well. In the last week, Dustbloods was delayed. That was a 2026 release for the Switch 2. Exclusively, it is now coming out in 2027. We don't know anything beyond that vague time frame.

Shouts out to Mike Minotti.

Yeah, take your victory lap, Mike. What do you think? When do we get this thing? And also Sean, who probably also called it.

Way before Mike.

Listen Mike did it back in January maybe you did it before that I don't know oh.

He did it in January what did he say in January.

About it he counterpicked it in the league as not coming we do fantasy critic yeah fantasy critic I.

Mean I think it's a smart thing to do it's always hard to get a sense of what people actually think about a game after a big test like that because you're going to hear a lot of both sides and I don't know what they were hearing internally But it seems like there's stuff they could do to maybe make that game just a little bit more legible.

Because it's complicated. It's this complicated PvP VE thing.

Just even saying that, it's like something's going to come up. You do kind of feel like you're running around a lot, figuring out what you're going to do while you're doing that. They're not going to be able to change what that game is. It's not going to suddenly become Bloodborne 2 or anything like that. but they get polished out a bit.

And it's like, when does it come out? Because how much longer do they want to be working on this? Because, you know, this is the Miyazaki team game, right? Or at least Miyazaki is like, that team's going to need to start working on Outer Scrolls, or Outer Ring 2, or whatever it's going to be.

Not Outer Scrolls, sorry. Dude, I wish.

Yeah, they're going to just swap teams for a bit there for fun.

So, I imagine still the first half of the year, but it's one of those things, I guess this could snowball, right? This could be a long go.

I guess it could be holiday 2027 before you know it i don't think so but that could happen.

Yeah i i did play that network test and i don't know it felt to me like a game they were ready to put out there and just yeah between you know some of the connection issues people are having but also yeah all the reactions to it people are like i don't know about this one a lot of them yeah It definitely felt to me, you know, like even people who I would expect it to like it being not that into it. And then they immediately like, you know, weren't talking about release Windows or days. Yeah, I was like that. That was the sign to me, at least that. Oh, yeah, this this is going to be pushed because they got to retool some stuff, man.

Who knows what it'll look like in the end, too. I'd imagine you'd assume not too much different, but maybe right. Make some sweeping changes.

Like what can you do? The legibility, the onboarding, the signposting, I bet it's that kind of stuff for the most part.

The performance seemed okay, and I guess you can get that stuff even better with more time, but it's a Switch 2 game from.

FromSoft, right? What exactly are we going to get? The technical wizards at FromSoft, yes, exactly. There's a whole lot of people.

Kind of like me who are just ultimately going to be like, I don't really like the PvP and FromSoftware games, so kind of basing a game largely around that with some pve elements but pve elements where some guy may come and gank you at any moment right so yeah yeah just fundamentally i don't think it's going to be something i was just sitting in so i get.

You enjoy city trial as chat points out it's the same thing it.

Is city trial honestly right but like city trial was a mode and there is yeah writers you know I just thought that's the thing, you know, like playing it, it did kind of feel like the tact on multiplayer mode to a Bloodborne 2, right?

Right.

Yes.

I feel like that. Yeah. It's like kind of what people wanted here.

Remind me, where did the Minatis land on Night Ring? Because weren't you guys playing that together for.

A little bit? We're okay on it. Some people really like that. And I'm definitely not that high.

I'm high on it. Okay. Yeah.

Like, I get why people like that one. I prefer Lorde. Of course. Naturally.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's one of the better Lord Likes for sure, but it doesn't match the original.

Anthropix Clawed AI blocks video game cloning and reverse engineering. Anthropix Clawed AI models are reportedly blocking users from performing reverse engineering tasks, including harmless uses like system conversions, running the reverse engineering anything tool, analyzing crash dumps, and conducting security reviews. This behavior is believed to stem from new safeguards designed to stop the creation of AI-cloned video games and unauthorized recreations of existing titles. Leaked rules suggest Claude has explicitly instructed not to build recreations of specific games.

While these security restrictions exist, overlap with Anthropix recently launched cyber verification program under glass wing, whatever, uh, the surge in, uh, in, uh, user refusals has only become prominent recently. The restrictions are likely intended to protect the company from legal liability regarding software reverse engineering. Yeah, this is, uh, it was all happening all at once, very fast, all kinds of reverse engineering projects, all kinds of, um, Games being cloned. It was coming to a head both on Steam. It was coming to a head on in the decomp scene, the static recompilations and stuff like that. And really, it seems like, oh, looking at the clock, Zelda is about to come out.

Grand Theft Auto six is about to come out. And Anthropic maybe doesn't want to be tied into the headlines with that stuff. But we'll see.

This is the funniest fucking thing to happen after Asha Sharma is like, this is the next big thing. And we've made Xbox labs as a result of it.

Holy crap. They're doing their own. Yeah.

Um, so Claude, right? Anthropic.

It's one company.

The other huge players in this are, you know, X and Grock. You've got open AI. Microsoft has their own shit. Google has Gemini. Um, Apple wants to be in this, but they're not, they're not in the shitty club yet.

Not yet.

They're trying to acquire this. You have like, there's like two levers of control that would actually be effective because this is an ineffective control because it's one company doing a marketing thing.

If we're being honest, um, well covering their ass a little bit. Yeah.

Cover your ass in marketing. Same thing, right? Um, if you don't have international agreement and enforcement, um, this it's this this cat is so far out of the bag it's fucking ridiculous you don't have like international agreement like China is using models made in the U S to train their own models cheaper. And then they're, you know, selling those cloud services, using those models cheaper than the U S companies are. And it's like this back and forth, shitty arms race there. It's like, cool. Anthropic blocked you. Great.

Move to one of the other 20 software as a service companies that are selling the shit. We're fucked. It sucks to say, and it's not just games. This is not just a games issue. It's someone reverse engineering how your website or your accounting software or your banking software works. They're running this reverse engineering against all of this shit, and not just to recreate it. In the case of games, it's like people just making their own shitty knockoff games, but reverse engineering how everything works is a terrible problem.

And the lever you have is like international cooperation, so good fucking luck. We're so done. Or the environmental option. When I say environmental, I mean this becoming so expensive that it's not feasible for this to continue, right? That's like another thing. But I also don't see that as happening in the future. So it's like if we don't have worldwide cooperation to like stomp on this shit and make it illegal, we're just completely boned. I don't know if you guys saw the itch.io... blue sky account was showing how like over, I don't know if it was over the past like month or six months or whatever, that game submissions had doubled, doubled.

And then, and then they pointed out, uh, that downloads and purchases have not doubled.

Right.

So it's not like, you know, demand is being met with the supplier or something like that. So it's like, to me, it's, I almost included that story, but my, my stance on that continues to be, I want all of these services just to treat the, treat it the same way. Uh, steam treats porn. Just give me a toggle and, I want it all gone from my server.

I just want to not see any of it. And then if there is anything that breaks through for whatever reason, I would, I struggle to imagine what that would be. I can go seek it out myself at that point, but I kind of just want a clean version of these services that behaves just like they did before all of this stuff was happening. But yeah, it's, it's just going to be a mess. It's like, it doesn't stop there.

Yeah.

You know, this is Yuval Noah Harari, who's an author and I know he has a lot of his, a lot of problems, but he did bring up an interesting concept of people are going to unleash AI in such a way that they are, it is going to build bureaucracies and financial systems on top of our ability to understand them. And we are going to be in a situation where we are in systems serving these things and we don't understand them in the exact same way that like wheat and And cows serve us and our financial systems.

And we are on our way to becoming cattle. I know that's like an extreme way of putting it. But that is the actual long-term threat of what the AI poses unless we do have regulation in to try to control how it can manipulate anything involving financial markets and software and businesses. And we are so far behind the eight ball on that stuff that we're still kind of like, oh, should we be selling games that have this stuff? It's like we need to like stop and take a breather and figure everything out before like anything else goes forward or else we're going to get so far behind that.

Like it will be you will not be able to untangle the web it has created.

I think we're going to get over the next like, sorry, 10 to 15 years we're going to get. uh we're gonna have movements to be disconnected and i don't mean like not be digital be digital but on islands instead of yes connected connected you know what i mean like if you want to do your online banking like i i i feel like there's a future where you do that in a way more secure environment over some not a vpn but over something like the way we have i don't know if you guys none of you guys have worked in like a corporate office but the way you have to get on like a work vpn in order to access certain systems.

It's like, are you ready to lay their own cables? Like they're going to lay their own internet cables. Yeah.

To do that for your online banking.

Yeah.

Close the networks.

Yeah.

That's a good way to put it.

Thank you.

Mechanize. Yeah.

That was a great conversation. I'm glad you guys had it on that half of the screen while on this half, the god rays are hanging mike and making the nerdiest priest you've ever seen i love it yeah.

Don't worry i won't sing something from the lion king right now uh all right uh last story here is i did not add this it says what is this jeff let me just click on this link here it's from wario 64 on blue sky And now I'm looking at an Xbox inside of a stuffed alligator. What the fuck is this? Uh, the X bites, uh, a playable Xbox series X swallowed hole by an alligator available to win by sweepstakes. Are they okay?

I want to see the top of it. Does it have all the holes for ventilation? I bet that looks horrible.

I mean, they could probably build it into like the cracks of the scales or whatever. Right. Oh my God. There's like a, bump on its back with the xbox logo man making.

Xbox fun again what's the problem i know.

Right god i'm such a fuddy-duddy.

In 10 years when um we're all like you're you guys are in a nursing home and you're still doing this podcast so you could do neo neo grub guesser you could do this just cover up its midsection and the logo and the controller and then just be.

Like what is this what is this yeah we can do that next year i'll forget by.

Then yeah Chad, I'll be real.

I'm not showing this on screen because I think it's in really poor taste. But the link is there in chat if you want.

It's awful.

This is dumb. All right. Well, that does it for the news headlines. I'm handing the show back over to Mike Minotti. All right. Thank you so much.

We have a bunch of emails that I did not just scrounge up while you guys were talking.

I was supposed to do that. I think I got it. Don't worry. They're there now. We're ready to talk about email. So we're going to do that right after this break. Be right back. Emails! Emails! Emails!

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Bombcast at GiantBomb.com is where you can send your emails, any questions or any thoughts. We pick a bunch of them here. We read them out loud on this here show, including this one from Tony in Sydney, Australia.

It says, Hi, Bombers. What movie do you sometimes feel like everyone else has seen or references, but you just.

Never bother to see? I personally haven't watched 8 Mile. I feel like everyone else did. You'll see the Giant Bomb content. I feel ashamed that I have never watched MacGruber.

What about you guys? P.S.

I got my new Giant Bomb big mug and I love it.

Thanks, everyone.

It looks good next to my other smaller Giant Bomb mug.

You are welcome.

I don't feel ashamed, but I have not seen MacGruber.

Oh, man.

It's not going to demonstrably improve your life.

Did you see MacGruber 2 with us or did you just go to bed?

Nope.

Went to bed immediately.

That makes some sense.

I'm still keeping my bit going of being mad at Dan for being able to edit his name into the credits, which I am saying shows off his editing prowess. I'm going to keep that bit going because he gets really bothered by it.

Oh, yeah.

I still have never seen The Shining. Oh, wow. I've seen so much of it through culture at this point. I know everything about it, but I need to actually see that.

I should probably have seen a lot of Shining.

Simpsons, obviously, The Shining. The Shining.

The Shining's extra funny after you see The Shining, I have to say.

I bet, yeah. It took me a while before I saw The Shining. I was like, oh, this is really good. Turns out, really good movie. I'm sure I have a bunch. Godfather always comes to mind first. I've never seen the Godfather.

I've never seen the Godfather.

And I'm like, so Italian, right? I don't know.

I sometimes resent mobster stuff. A lot of times when I do see it, I finally saw Goodfellas. I was like, oh, it's really good, huh?

Turns out. Goodfellas is like a league of its own. Obviously, Godfather is as well. But Goodfellas is such a watchable movie that, of course, even if you have some baggage with that, you're still going to love that movie.

I get in my head sometimes with movies, like, when I actually watch them, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is really good. Of course I like dramatic, serious movies. But before I see them, I'm like, why don't I watch all these people being mean for two hours?

It's like, it's stupid, right? You ever watch Uncut Gems? No, I don't know if I can handle Uncut Gems. That one might be rough for Mikey, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mine, recently, I finally watched Friday the 13th.

Finally. Oh, okay. Oh, wow.

Very first one and i was watching it and having so much deja vu because wow that uh friday the 13th like asymmetrical multiplayer game really nailed it actually like even the title cards are the exact same like fuzzy white i was like holy shit so yeah i feel like i had seen the movie but i hadn't you know yeah that's.

Moses thing and grubb mentioned it's kind of a weird thing because i have so many of those just you know due to age where it's like by the time like I was starting to grow up it became a thing to just constantly reference stuff on sitcoms and like through stuff like Simpsons and Family Guy that there's tons of movies that I've never seen that I just like I feel like I know the entire story by looking at these references so it's a bit of a weird thing to have the motivation to go back and watch those I should I want to sit down and watch some movies at some point though maybe I'll do some of that during the break pick something that I haven't seen before.

Uh, next one here is from Zay from PA. He says, that sounds like, uh, Hey, Bombcast. There is an amazing, passionate community out there creating full Pokemon games with their own side quests and stories like Pokemon Lazarus and Pokemon Odyssey. There are also people out there who are creating versions of the games that are compatible with the 3DS hardware to its fullest. Someone took Pokemon Emerald and made it dual screens, widescreen, and also voxel optional, which is so cool.

I just got Super Metroid with a map and a lower screen, as well as button remapping and widescreen support. I think this is called decomp, but I'm just a stupid dude, so I'm probably wrong. What's another great game that would benefit from reworking it to become two screens?

Thanks, guys.

I know I saw my brother playing, like, Legend of Zelda Minish Cap on his Anthor and had, like, the bottom screen showing the inventory and a map and things like that, which I thought was pretty cool.

I can imagine.

Actually, I got Dark Souls also being pretty cool if like maybe just constantly had some of the inventory stuff down there at all times. Maybe a map is too much for that game. Yeah, but maybe Outer Ring even makes more sense.

Yeah.

Technically, this is not answering my email a little bit. This is not decomp. This is the result of a decomp, right?

Yes.

If someone was able to dump and decompile all the code, then they could write mods and then recompile it into a new version.

They don't. This is all vibe coded. Every single one of these mods is slop.

Oh, you think so?

No.

Not Lazarus, for example.

No, no, no.

Not the actual games, but any of the things that would be like the dual screen mod and all these things that people are installing willy nilly on their devices that they're logged into.

No.

With accounts that might be important, don't do that. Don't run vibe code software on something that might be important.

Maybe I'm not thinking of Pokemon Lazarus. What's the edgelord one, Sean?

Oh, Unbound.

Unbound.

Everyone should play Pokemon Unbound. Fan games are very cool, and I really appreciate that people are doing more and more of those. But be careful with some of those mods. The dual screen stuff and everything just modifies existing code base.

Jeff Grubb, what game do you wish had a second screen that doesn't?

When you were talking about the Zelda ones that weren't previous one, I was definitely thinking about those. I don't know. I guess Civ. I don't know. Keep track of all my buckets that I'm filling up as I'm doing stuff in Civilization. I think I would play a lot of games dual screen. If a lot of games had like dual screen monitor support and I could keep all of the menus on the other screen, I would do that for just about every game. I think that would be great.

Next up here from Kyle in Japan says, hi, gang. I'm currently in Japan at Universal Studios, and we need to get Mike out here. Staff asked where I was from and applauded when I said Scotland. Everyone claps in ways when you get on and off rides.

And everyone clapped.

I have never felt more like the center of the universe than in Japan. A certain Mitch Tolkota would have a field day with the way people cheer and support little actions.

That does sound wonderful.

It's the whitest email that's ever been read.

I would be so happy.

Affirmations.

Yay. Yay. People like me.

I have a friend who's over in Universal Japan right now as well, and they do say nice things, so.

Someday, so they have getting over there.

But yes, I am the sicko who wants to go to Japan and thinks largely about the theme parks over there.

Well, yeah.

Jordan says there's just something about Castlevania 64, you know?

Giant Bombcast 965: Good Sliding

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