¶ Entertainment Special Reviews Lake and Mantis
You might have a chance if we redo it all .
If I had shelved its eidetic memory .
Okay , you good there . Okay , okay , pretty buttons . They're colorful .
Welcome to an entertainment special where we talk about Elden Ring .
What first ?
Punishments , the two most anticipated ones you've been waiting for . I will start off with Lake , or as I like to call Mailman . I will start off with Lake , or as I like to call Mailman . This game apparently has great reviews .
That I would say , where people are just like oh , this game is really interesting , I'm really enjoying it and I'm like you know there's other games , right .
Maybe if this is the only game you were ever introduced to in your life . So I found this game because my wife is obsessed with these feel-good games where you don't do anything important , you just kind of mundanely do satisfactory stuff and just go through someone's BS life . So one game she got was unpacking .
It's like this moving simulator where you're just trying to find where to put all your books and stuff .
You just play Tetris House Edition .
Yeah , and she was obsessed with that . She beat it like 100% in like three days . She loves doing that kind of thing and so I was like , okay , this is an under game . It's sort of mundane and stupid like that , so maybe she'll enjoy this . She didn't like it .
I did not enjoy it . You play as a woman called Meredith Weiss , who apparently is an MIT grad , and this is taking place in like 1986 .
Yeah , it's supposed to be based off of somebody's real life .
Yeah , where she takes two weeks off to cover for her dad who's a mailman in this picturesque lake town in Oregon and deliver mail every day . How was that Horrible ? It got to the point like I'm running stop signs , I'd go through traffic lights , I'd block traffic . I was trying to run pedestrians down . Nothing happened . No , it just it stops like 40 .
It's got like auto brake . I tried running the truck into a lake and it was like no , they're like you're going to do this the right way .
So purgatory , it wouldn't let you die .
It wouldn't .
What is the objective of the game ?
Just deliver back deliver mail and talk to these stupid townspeople and have these dumb conversations .
I'll give you the like the other crappy problems about that .
He got like the cat woman Okay , some creepy cat lady and like her , one of her cats is sick . You take the cat in the mail truck and drive her you know the stupid cat to some fisherman guy who's a jerk , yeah , and he's like I'll take care of it .
He was like , okay , and then I went and delivered some more packages and then I went home and what happens when you go home ? you just go to bed , start the next , you have an option like watch a movie , watch tv , read a book and then there there's phone calls from work .
Play a game called Lake . It's the stupidest .
It hurt me to play . I had to go play Call of Duty Was that it , I heard it . I bleeped out myself .
I think you're being a little loose .
I didn't enunciate the entire word .
I say it's Mitch's call . No , it's not Mitch's call .
I heard the F and the E .
I'm just saying If you tell him to do it . No , no , no , you can stop looking at it . I'm not doing it . So you lived through this life .
You live by Tom's rules , evidently Live through this life .
I made it a week in this stupid town delivering mail . And then my mind was just wandering and that's when I got into a murderous bloodlust with the mail truck and tried to hurt civilians and go GTA and the game was like no stop it . It's not that kind of game and the music is very soothing , which was annoying .
I've got a solution real quick . I'm not going to edit this , but if anybody says anything to you , then he does it on the next episode .
Done , yeah , so Mitch's social media , which is what Mitch .
We'll just say , you know , if somebody says anything to you .
What's your social media real quick ?
Entertainthispodcastcom .
Yeah , which will take you to our Facebook page , our Patreon , our Instagram , our Twitter .
If you want to hear Tom for quote unquote , not cussing by dropping the quote unquote , not F bomb earlier , die from 6 million Scoville hot sauce that we have right beside him . Write to us at entertainpodcastcom and he will do it next episode . That dims the rules Actually .
Yeah , it Next episode . That dims the rules Actually . Yeah , it's 15 million to go . Oh okay , oh well .
You're just splitting hairs at that point , I think after a million .
There's really not much more I can say about the game .
So it was bad ? Huh , it was just bad . Was it the worst video game you ?
ever played To me it was torture . I give it a two yes Out of ten , yes Out of 10 . Moving on to the TV show Mantis . What is this show about ? It's about a paraplegic scientist who develops a cool exosuit and a car that flies , that he hangs from a rope and he fights crime . What ? Yes , so this is the best scene .
I saw it was in the 90s when X-Files was like still fairly new , yeah they did two seasons , wow , and these are 45 minute episodes .
¶ Mantis
There's one scene where all these people are stuck in traffic and these rousty gang guys , rousty gang dudes come barreling out of nowhere with a pickup truck of wooden crates and just start throwing them everywhere and people are honking .
And then a bunch of dudes on rollerblades who have helmets and pads come run up to people's cars with knives and are robbing them . If your window was up , you were safe . So they're grabbing all these persons and walls and throwing them in the back of the truck and the mantis dudes are in a car behind him and it morphs into the mantis mobile .
The mantis mobile . It takes off into the sky like a bomb bay door opens and he drops out . He's got like all this cool leather on in his helmet and he's hanging from a rope and he's just flying across the intersection , shooting him with darts that pretty much paralyze people .
Here's your picture of what it looks like yeah it , it looks like Ant-Man Basically .
Yeah , okay , interesting . So it's like a Power Ranger stupid . It's like Scorpion , right ? Is it from the same people ? I ?
don't know .
I don't know this show is just not good . I mean , maybe this was cool in the 90s . How many episodes did you watch ? I watched three . Oh , wow , so I got through , like the plot , like how he becomes paralyzed , becoming mantis , which is like . It's like an anagram like mobile , automated neutralizing , tanking , something suit okay , it was shoehorn some .
You know it had some cool anagram for it .
it but during a riot in the city , because there's a lot of crime in the city and there's a riot team to control it by the police . What's the name of the ?
city . Sam Raimi actually helped with the story .
Did he really ? Yeah , I think it's called Ocean City , okay .
Eric Lewinville was the director , and the writers were Sam Hamm and Sam Raimi .
Oh , and Sam Raimi . Oh , wow , what's ? Who plays Carl Lumley ?
Yeah , Carl Lumley is Dr Miles Hawkins .
Who's he from ?
He was in other stuff . He was familiar . I can't remember off the top of my head when I looked it up .
Let's see he was in Men of Honor .
Oh , okay , what was like the one of the dumber , gimmicky fight scenes that took the cake right then . And there Is this like pilot .
This is the first episode where I was like you're kidding . I was like these are bad guys . I was like they're on roller skates and they're wearing helmets and pads . Their parents were like , if you're going to go out and break the law , you better be safe .
And the Falcon and Winter Soldier . He's actually the old man that was the super soldier .
Oh really , that's funny .
Oh yeah , so what would you give that time ?
Uh , I give it like a five out of 10 . Wow , cause I'm guessing like back then this show was probably cool , cause it probably wasn't .
I never heard of it . I saw it and immediately changed the channel .
I mean I give it like you know . It went for two seasons , wow , which is impressive compared to most of the stuff we reviewed what was the ?
what was the name of ? Like the arch nemesis , do they have any bad guy names ?
not that I came across , okay , or anybody , that was really just memorable and like they try to be like oh it's this guy , it's this guy who might be the mantis because , like one of the like the pathology people , she's a doctor and they don't like her , but she thinks it's this other dude because he's like a gymnast major okay , like he went to college on a
gymnastic scholarship , so he's got all the cool moves and they think it's him well , and not the paralyzed guy in the wheelchair so what he's saying is he saw the first 30 minutes , the first episode ?
no , but he shoots these stupid mantis , darts the sequence in the beginning was hilarious , where they rob a bank .
They used an inordinate amount of C4 to blow up the vault door . Oh yeah , like the size of this roadcaster of C4 .
That's a lot of C4 .
Which is that'll blow up a vault door for sure That'll blow up a vault door in the front of the building . It's just like an explosion . Some windows go and all these bank robber guys running . They're all wearing leather .
Yeah , you know , it's like they were all type guys like we're leather , we're dark clothes , and one of them standing there and the guy's like what are you doing ? He's like waving his hand in front of his face and he sees like the dart in his neck and like they all turn and look and he's like in like the doorway .
You know the smoke and the ominousness and then the cuss to the police showing up and they're just like . You know , let me see your hands and they're just like like waving their hands . They're all just like with guns , knives , like one guy's , like you know , you know , shocked in fear .
So he just stuns him and then runs away . Yeah , he just leaves him for the cops to deal with . Batman should take a page out of that book or something .
Yeah , he just shoots these like mantis darts , like little batarangs out of his wrist . What's his backstory Like ? Why is he ? He was very much an active person in the political community as far as ties racially between the city's police and the citizens and the gang problems of the 100 and Kers .
It's a show ahead of its time . Yes , it's a show ahead of its time .
And during a riot he went to save a child from getting attacked and a police sniper shot him in the spine . Oh wow , and that's what paralyzed him .
Oh yeah .
Where he changed his views , because police yeah , police .
snipers shoot people in riots .
yes , with sniper rifles with sniper rifles in the back wow so he develops the suit and fights crime and he can't walk without the suit . No , he needs his suit to move . He's like Rhodey , I mean . Yeah , I mean he's paralyzed from the waist down . He still has functions of his arms , Okay . And he's like a well-regarded scientist .
I mean he has a great cover because nobody would expect he's the dude doing all that Right ?
yeah , Nobody would expect the
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crippled guy .
Okay , well , there you go and then , like he has , his lair . What was it called the Mantis Lair ?
No , it's not called the Mantis Lair , it's called like the cocoon or something .
Of course it is , it's like some bug name .
It's dopey . It's like underwater , it's like a submarine .
Five out of ten for Mantis from Tom .
Good job , tom . It does have a 5.7 on IMDb somehow , yeah .
I'm sure there's a niche crowd that would appreciate it . It was better than Black .
Scorpion . Yeah , it was better than Black Scorpion , so okay .
Go ahead and announce your trivia . For next week , my trivia is going to be Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic .
One and two . Me and Mitch have some research to do , and you know what we're going to do it , tom ,
¶ (Cont.) Mantis
we're going to research these games and games . I'm gonna make the questions very hard . Okay , I'm gonna have to research . I've never played them , so , uh , all right , let's go and kick this off . Elden ring we played it , we've all played it , and , uh , I came into it very skeptical I've never played any of the dark souls .
I played the first dark souls I played dark souls 2 um about a year ago . I downloaded it and I just was angry the whole time . I was just frustrated and I was like I guess I'm not one of those try-hard gamers that's going to enjoy this live-die-repeat kind of mentality of playing through . But you got Elden Ring .
It is co-op and has a multiplayer facet and I was so burnt out on Warzone I was like I'll try it and I gotta say this is the best game I've played in a long time .
it is a good game . Yeah , I had to agree . It's probably the best thing I've played in a long time , and the reason why is because it's complete yes , yes , there's no , I haven't
¶ Elden Ring Co-Op Multiplayer Review
run into bugs I haven't run into really any glitches .
The bar is very low , but despite that it's still like an amazing game .
It's very playable .
You know there's very . I guess the older I get , the less I get excited about games . You know , maybe it's because I'm older and maybe I just I care more about old people , things like story and you know , whatever , and but I was actually excited , like I'm excited to play this game tonight when we get a chance .
I'm looking forward to it instead of just like guess we'll play warzone , you know , so uh , back to the time and mitch show yeah , so I'm , I'm deeply enjoying it . I like that . Uh , you know you can create your own character and , um , like honestly , the classes are kind of pointless , and I mean they're there for the classes are kind of pointless .
They're there for probably the first 10 hours of the game to help you , Depending on what you want to focus your character on . It's basically just a help in that direction when you choose your classes .
Right . Then after that , whatever works for you , you can just keep doing it . It's not really exploiting it , but it's taking advantage of that , and until you , uh , get better and better and better . So I picked the hardest class possible , bandit , which is apparently like a no-no if you're a newbie to the the game .
But I've gotten really good at bandit and I mean , I'm still dying all the time .
But yeah , I realized like the damage output your character has versus mine , even though you're a lot of levels ahead of me . I'd watch Hayden do damage and then I'd run up and take one swing and do quadruple it and I'm like , oh , yeah , my character is high risk , high reward , so the game is very complicated .
It's one of the most complicated games I've ever played . It is insanely complicated and they don't tell you anything . Right , and a lot of people hate that . There's a lot of journalists out there that have been reading reviews for this game hate the game because it doesn't have a go-here-do-this mentality .
Yeah , it's very reminiscent of , in my opinion , of old text-based adventure games . Go figure it out , yeah you have no idea what the hell's going on . You're just going to try different things like quest log .
No marker , it's just but I I gotta say , though , when you successfully finally figure something out and it works , it is one of the most satisfying experiences . Yeah , I just there's very few games that have been able to do that in this decade for me well , was it like the first boss ?
only like how many people had beaten it . Like 50% of the people that own the game had beaten the first boss , godric .
Oh really .
Yeah , something like that . Only 50% of people have beaten him .
So we're already above the curve , so to speak .
Just the fact that the three of us tried to me you and Evan tried to beat him the other night and we couldn't do it . But beat him the other night and we couldn't do it . But then the other day , our last night , me and Evan both played , we we ended up beating him and it was just so rewarding I was like I did it .
I mean , everybody died and I was about to die , but I got the last hit on just in time .
So it comes down to the wise like me and Evan beating Margaret . Yeah , margaret .
Um , it's a . It can be as difficult as you . It's already going to be difficult , yeah .
This is made by people who did Dark Souls .
Yeah , but it can be even more difficult if you wanted to be . There's people out there that are currently trying to do a level one , perfect game , so they don't take any damage . The entirety of the game , yeah , and they never level up .
What's it like , living like that ?
They got Hellraiser basements and stuff like that and just enjoy pain .
I feel my class is difficult enough because I don't have anything for range . Everything I have is just big swords .
Yeah , I have to get close for everything Because he plays what Samurai .
Yeah .
And I'm a Vagabond .
Well , I started out as Samurai and now I just have two great swords . Two great swords . I swing two swords that are the size of my arms .
Yeah , there's all these videos online about class building and how to make your samurai class better . I'm just like that's not how the game works . You pick a default class and then you just play .
Do what you want . Yeah , figure out what you want to do so .
the only knock I have against it now is there's a little bit of networking issues when it comes to trying to co-op with people . At one point I didn't like it at all . At one point it was unplayable .
Well , it wasn't .
To do multiplayer like .
PC like they couldn't do it , and console . It had to be patched .
They patched it pretty quick . They patched it very quickly .
Last night , when I was telling Evan about it we were playing he put down his marker . I activated the thing and he immediately popped up and I could see his character and his rune standing there .
Oh , wow , so I mean it was almost instant .
Yeah , but like at first , I didn't like it at all because it's so ingrained in the plot , like you have to go through the story . Get this device that makes it so you can summon players and then you know , you have to learn how to make the potion Right .
And also you can see their markers Right and summon them .
And it was almost like you know , come on , I just want to play with my friends . But I I have learned to appreciate , especially like you can't just co-op the entire game . You have to like .
If your friends die , you have to summon them back , and if you uh , get to a boss and you complete that boss , your friends go away , and then if you want to keep going , you have to summon them back . And I I like that aspect .
Now , um , and you know , it's very rarely that game will change my perspective , and this is one of them where I'm like okay , uh , I see what they're doing . They're trying to encourage me to also play by myself and learn a little bit too .
So not to mention , you know , you're not going to just be the one guy that benefits from all the story progression and then not go back and help your friends .
Yeah , because any of the story that you do when you join someone else doesn't count as yours . I mean , you get rewards and stuff , but it doesn't progress your actual story .
So like a lot of it is like you'll be playing and like you know I'll be the lead person . We'll come across something , fight our way through it , get to the end , find grace markers or whatever . And then you know it's like all right , we're good .
Then everybody will leave and then we of people are hating the game because there's no explanation for what to do . There's kind of a map indicator , but it's more of like a suggestion Like this is where you go to fight the next boss . But it's dumb to follow that thing right from the get because you're going to get just annihilated .
Yeah , because the first thing you come across when you leave the gate or whatever you know the cave , is the giant dude on the horse . Yeah , the tree guardian .
Yeah , you don't want to fight that guy right after .
No , you're not going to win , I'll tell you that so you know it teaches you early on play as you need to Don't necessarily progress the direction that you should be going , that you think that you should be going following these map indicators and the map is very because we complained an episode or two ago about open-world games and we talked about like we
thought that they had all hit a shelf where it's the ceiling of open-world games is too many things going on in your map . You got too many directions that you're being pulled to . You're just exhausted with all these uh , quests and stuff like that .
There are no quests in this game yeah , I mean there's stuff you can go and do whatever you want to do or find whatever you want to find , but there's no like you have to go do this right it's just some random guy that you happen upon .
He's just like oh , there's a fortress over there , wouldn't it be cool if I got this from that fortress ? And you're just like , okay , and you can just run away yeah you can do it if you want to there's no .
You can actually tell them no . Yeah , yeah , yeah .
And dialogues and , like I , I totally underestimated , uh , how much you are in control of how you interact with npcs because , yeah , I came out of the , the entrance cave took a swing at the . Yeah , there's this guy , it's like hello traveler and I was like , ah , screw you . And I punched him and we started fighting and he killed me .
But then I came back and he was gone and now I can't invade other players and do that pvp thing , because that guy won't talk to me anymore you have to find him and kill him to get this stuff now , do I ? Do . Oh , wow , uh , that , wow , that's going to be a while .
He shows up in a couple of different places I saw like research some stuff . But yeah , now you've got to find him and kill him to get that stuff . Well , where before ? He would just give it to you if you talked to him .
Whoops . Good job , aiden . I just was experimenting and then now I know there are Consequences to your actions .
From something that I saw and read you can attack all the NPCs .
There is like a safe area round table . Yeah , except for there .
But everywhere else , like in the real world , you can attack all the NPCs and either you can beat them and get their stuff or if they beat you you lose whatever . But I also found out I think it was with you that if you can attack all the little merchants , if you kill the merchants , all their stuff you can buy at the round table hold .
Yeah , so it's actually beneficial to kill all the merchants you know and harvest their like , their loot , their sales , if you can , and absorb their conglomerates .
Yeah .
Supposedly they're really hard , like they breathe fire and stuff like that . Supposedly they're really hard , they breathe fire and stuff like that .
Yeah , and there's a guy that hunts you for hunting the merchants and stuff too . Oh yeah , I don't know . I have enough problems in this game , I don't need that either .
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Another thing that I think is fascinating about this game is it reminds me of olden days of yore , where there was no internet and people were playing Zelda . They're like , oh you know , if you talk to this one guy and you get this one thing , you turn it in and there's like rumor mill of of how to play the game .
Yeah , this is very much like that , because there's no direction and nobody knows how to play and we're discovering stuff . Yeah , that probably people who have discovered it very rarely do , like if you attack this one zombie on a cliffside , a giant bear pops up .
That happened to me bear spawns it beats the crap out of you and your friends and they move super fast .
I found out that . I don't know where it is , but there's something that if you get before you fight Margit , it like seals him to the ground . You can
¶ (Cont.) Elden Ring Co-Op Multiplayer Review
activate it and it just basically knocks him to the ground where you can run up and hit him a couple of times . No I think it's called Margit's Seal or something like that .
Huh .
And it basically just you activate , it knocks them to the ground and you can go up and punch them a bunch of times and then back out .
That would be convenient . Yeah , there's like spells and Ashes of War , which are like weapon spells .
Give you , like , special abilities for your weapon .
Yeah , so many weird weapons and arm . Uh , the game is very much equipment based .
So I I'm trying to create a light build only because dodging is the only . Yeah , it's a living yeah , so most of the time , and if sometimes it doesn't matter if you have too much crap on you dodge slower yeah , and so when you got a heavy load , yeah , they call them fat rolls .
Where your character ?
just does a little somersault .
Whereas my character ? I keep it as a light build and he just zips around you know , dodging everything .
But the problem is I have to put a whole bunch of points into equipment or endurance so I can keep putting on more equipment , because if I get hit I'm just like dead I came across the second boss , so I can keep putting on more equipment , because , if I get hit , I'm just like dead , yeah , so .
I came across the second boss . I found him Named General Radon . Oh yeah , yeah , he'd come in with one hit Did he , he did . I activated this rune thing where I could join somebody else's just like free game if they summon you . So basically I didn't lose anything by fighting him , I joined him and I went in and this guy died .
So I was like , well , I'm just going to try and hit him and see what I can do . And he turned around and slashed me one time and killed me .
Ha yeah , I hear Pretty much . Go on get .
Yeah , that didn't work out too well .
Yeah , I , uh , I want to say this is a 10 for me , a 10 out of 10 . Okay , I think that . I think it's .
It's something I didn't expect to like .
Yeah , I didn't expect to like it . I like games that change your perspective . Like I said in the past , I don't like games
¶ Elden Ring Gameplay Review
where I have to work and I'm struggling to beat them and get the next piece of loot or whatever and Destiny can feel like that sometimes where you're just like , oh , how do I grind this thing out ? You have no idea what you're getting .
Well , and in Destiny there's sometimes where , like you said , you don't know what you're getting . You can fight this guy over and over and you're just hoping that the one item drops when . In this one , I mean , you know what you're going to get , you just got to beat them . For the most part , yes and no .
I don't think so . Like sometimes you'll happen upon a weird boss out in the middle of nowhere . Like you'll be walking in a swamp area and a giant crab will pop out of the ground . You're like I'm going to kill this guy Maybe he's got some great loot , because I've never seen this thing before . And you're like what do I do with that ?
Yeah , but I'm saying like there's certain chests that you know have a certain weapon . All you got to do is just make it to it .
Right .
You know you got to survive to get to it .
Yeah , and the player that's probably one of the smartest things for this game is leaving so much mystery and stuff unresolved where there's no instruction manual , there's no uh like map markers and crap like that that tell you there's treasure over here , and there's no quest giver that says if you want this blade , go over there and kill that guy no it's .
It's just so unexplained .
So the players are the ones that are deriving the wikis and they're generating their own marketing for this game well , that's what I go through , like our tiktok , every now , and I'll be flipping through and I'll see somebody's like here here's how you got to find this .
Now you got to go here here , beat this guy , steady your left and go through this Right , Okay . And then you find it .
Yeah yeah , it's very involved . And the balls of this company too , I mean , like to make a game so hard and put in so much money , like they got George RR Martin to do the writing and they got all this .
It explains why I keep dying .
They got all this like investments . And they go against the grain with no manual , no marketing to how to do this and whatnot .
It's just all player driven .
Other than like a trailer or two , there wasn't really any marketing for it yeah , it's just what people talked about and they launched it and it's it's doing phenomenal and its sales are great yeah uh , like you said , I think there's 10 million copies sold on pc and I think there's 10 million on steam so who knows how many outside it ?
was like over 5 million on pc well , two of the biggest things I like about it is that basically you can go and explore anywhere like you don't . Even if you can't fight these creatures , if you can run past them and get past them , you can keep going and explore and find little save , like spots of grace kind of things to save .
And then the second thing is like you have your big bosses that you just have to fight , like a godric and radon and all them .
But then all the smaller bosses , like the little cave boss or whatever there's ways to exploit certain ones , like uh , there's a guy I beat today that he's on this black horse with this giant black mace and he chases you down and at night . Well , if you run through all this poison stuff , he'll follow you and it just poisons him and kills him .
I didn't know about that .
That was the dude . We , we , guy .
Yeah , he was a . Basically he's like a great enemy or whatever .
Yeah .
And he just chased me up this hill and I got poisoned but I saved up like a poison cure . So I just ran to the top through all the poison , cured myself and he died chasing me . What did you get for killing him ? Helps you zip around .
Oh okay , cool , yeah , like stuff like that , just like having a conversation with people and then like learning something .
It's like well , how'd you kill him ? Well , I did this .
Oh , but it's stuff like that , like there's one where this guy showed that if you run to a certain spot , jump onto the ledge of the bridge , the guy will chase you right off the edge of the bridge . You kill him and you get his stuff . No way , it's just little tricks and stuff to beat people . Pretty cool , yeah , that's , uh , that's phenomenal .
There's there's the dragon , where he stays asleep if you just beat him . But you wouldn't know to hit him unless somebody told you or you accidentally did it yeah but it's just this big sleeping dragon . It looks like part of the landscape and he'll roar , but he doesn't move and doesn't attack you .
You can just go and beat him until he dies and you you get 78,000 runes . What ?
Yeah , how did so ? You have to sneak up to him .
You don't have to sneak up . Well , you kind of do . There's like five other small dragons around him , so you got to sneak past them and get behind him , and then you can just sit there and beat on his tail until he dies .
And he just dies in his sleep . Yeah , what ?
And you , I've done it , and I've done it with Evan . All right , we're doing that tonight .
Yeah , but to give some numbers , elden Ring is sitting at number four on the most played Xbox games chart .
Wow .
Elden Ring also hit a new all-time peak of 952,000 players on Steam this past Saturday . That's a lot , and this was .
That's only one platform .
That's just one platform , so and like the . Including PlayStation , Xbox .
I like that it does have . I mean , the online capabilities are useful , but they're not dependent .
Right .
So like you'll have little messages that people will scrawl onto the ground , which are mostly useless . It's usually people just tricking you into dying in stupid ways .
And every once in a while you get some interesting advice out of it , and then you'll have you'll see ghosts of other players that are in that area fighting and they're doing on their own server , doing their own thing .
You're going to hear the screams , yeah .
But then my favorite is the bloodstains where you can touch it and you'll see how people died . And you'll go into a room and the floor will just be littered with blood and you're like nope , I'm not going in there .
Bad things happened here .
It's pretty cool . It's very original . Another thing that people are dinging it for is that you can't pause it because it's online .
It's like you're in a real world .
When you're in a safe area and you know you're safe , it's like yeah , if you're at a grace point and they're like like I don't want to leave , there's bad guys out there , I can see them . Hey man , that's pretty cool armor I was talking .
I was talking with somebody on Facebook . They were asking a question like what's the you know , the worst boss or most annoying boss you've come across ? And Because I'm solely like sword and no range , my biggest enemy is all flying things are the bane of my existence .
Because I can't hit them , the stupid little dragonflies and stuff the dragonflies , the bats , because the only way I can hit them is when they hit me . If I time it just right , I can hit them back .
Yeah yeah , it's a very punishing game , so every time I this is , they call it the Dark Souls pacing when you're like , okay , I got this game , I got it figured out , and you just like run through it and it means kill them all , and then you get to a new enemy . And you're like what's that ?
Every time you think you're ahead of the curve , you just get the game's reality checks you .
But I do like this . It's like a progression of learning how to deal with stuff . This guy swings five times . You've got to roll to avoid him and then you hit him and you can beat him .
Rolling into the swing versus out ?
Yes , you do feel like a ninja once you get it figured out .
I got me the jellyfish summon . A tank it just takes bullets and it can sit there and shoot at stuff from a distance . I was hiding behind it , letting it shoot this whole bridge full of enemies . It was pretty nice .
Yeah , it's a fun game . Like I said , I'm excited to play it . I'm excited to see where it goes and I'm interested to see what they're going to do with it in the future , if they're going to keep adding content to it because it's huge .
They said they are planning on a DLC , but I don't know what they would add to it and stuff like that . I can't imagine .
More difficult bosses Probably .
But I can't imagine us like 100%ing this game for a long time .
Well , they also said that , granted , you have your main bosses for the story , but there's a total of 75 bosses when you include the caves and all those kind of things .
Well , yeah ,
¶ Excitement for Challenging Game
so like there's an overworld , and you know we just discovered , there's an overworld and you know we just discovered there's an underworld , which is a whole cave system that's ginormous , just as big as the overworld . You'll never be done exploring that thing , and I think , too , the game prides itself on hiding secrets from you .
So like you think that , like you have to do very intricate stuff , like talk to NPCs and do like some weird quests for them or whatever , if you want to , and then if you discover something , it could be a door that leads you to a whole city that you didn't even know was there well then , like they have caves that you don't know they're there , like it'll
be a little like a rock wall and unless you hit the cave wall then it'll disappear and you can walk through .
But basically it's just a hidden entrance . Then , unless somebody put like a little marker down that says you know , strike here . You wouldn't know it's there .
Yeah , best game I've played in a long time . You know , I wish you could have four players play together in co-op . I understand why I can't . Because like too many . Yeah , because you would just run through bosses like nothing .
And but already with three players , I sit back and let evan just nuke , like yeah , get him , yeah , yeah yeah , that's good till he dies .
And then you're just stuck there with the boss and you're like uh-oh , he did it so like my guy's , not even a magic user , and when we fought godric I was like well , let me put my magic stuff on yeah so I was just trying to do whatever I could from a distance oh man , it's so much fun though yeah , I really enjoyed it . I didn't .
I didn't expect to like it , and even even dying a bunch of times , it's still fun because you , you don't lose anything but the runes and right as long as you don't die again , you can go pick those up , right ? if you die again , then they're gone , yeah , but I mean , you're not losing anything .
There's no like people can't just buy runes with real money .
Right , and you know , upgrade their character and stuff . You have to earn them with pain and tears .
Yes , and blood and that's fair . And runes are important because you need them to level up , and leveling up is what you know how you get better at a game .
Well , to level up and to buy things , yep , everything .
So you know , just alright , screw that area .
I'm going to go to this direction and see if I can find something and see what happens over here .
Today I was playing . I lost like 2,000 something runes .
I was like it's not worth going back . I'm just going to die again . I could just cheese some guards .
The game is so clever , it's just like you know . This is an interesting hallway , never mind the blood everywhere . Hallway , never mind the blood everywhere . Let's see what's down this way , what's ?
that a fire-breathing cat with a sword yeah .
Then it kills you .
You're like I should have known . I should have picked up on those clues .
But I feel like it does a good job of giving you , for the most part , save spots like little sites of grace before you get into big stuff .
When you find one , that's when you start looking around like all right , where is he ?
Or anytime you find a big open area , you start looking for what's around .
Looking up it's like is he going to drop out of the sky ?
Yeah , like when you're right into that first swamp , right to the right when you come out and a dragon flies out of the sky and lands in front of you .
The pacing is so well done for the game , you know , because , like the first , enemy besides the boss that nukes you in the beginning of the game just to laugh at you . And then you come across the soldier that you're supposed to beat and it's just like a dude in a loincloth with a paper straw you know , he's just some weak guy .
You die to him two or three times . When you finally beat him , you're like , yeah , I'm good , yeah , I got this , I got it figured out . When you fight a whole crowd of them , yeah , and you do die that way a bunch of times and when you finally beat that crowd you know they're , they're nothing now .
And and then you you go fight a boss and just he swipes the floor with you and you to feel good about yourself , you go take it out and those soldiers and stuff and they're just like oh no , he's back . So yeah , there's definitely like a nice pacing progression system so I . I just I did not think I'd like this game as much as I did .
I'm really , really enjoying it .
Yeah .
So yeah , I mean we're , I don't know . If you're interested in playing with us , reach out on Mitch on social media . We play on Xbox .
Yeah , it's not cross-play , so it would have to be Xbox players .
Yeah until we figure out a way to do cross-play with it , which would be kind of difficult , I think .
Yeah .
Yeah , so but yeah , if you're interested , just reach out to us . Or if you've got any interesting insights into the game , some tips , suggestions . We're new to the Souls franchise but we enjoy it .
You know , and I like it when I beat something and I watch a video on youtube and some guys complain about how , how hard it is and you're like I did it .
Yeah , get good , it only took us 13 , you know 33 tries but get good loser . So I I've caught the bug , I'm enjoying it , so I uh , I don't know . Is there anything else about the game that we want to talk about , or should we just go ?
ahead , invaders . I hate you all . Oh , oh yeah .
Well , I've only been invaded once . I've been invaded like five times . The way it works is you have to have friends with you when you're invaded , right ? You can't be invaded by yourself , right ?
No , I've been invaded by myself . You can duel by yourself . You have to fight them to learn .
No , these are real players .
No , they show up red too , these guys .
Yeah .
Yeah , these AI things will show up red too . It's a story part of the game . There's like two or three that I've come across that are AI , but then your other players will show up red .
But they only show up when you're teamed up with other friends . Yeah , up with other friends , yeah . So if you've been killed by an invader , it's , it's , it's the computer , that's the game teaching you something , right ?
you suck yeah , pretty much . But yeah , when we went to fight godric last night , me and evan both spawned in as soon as I summoned him I was like why can't we go ?
Anywhere , and then invader , it wouldn't let us go through the wall , because the invader was there , we just didn't know it until he come around the corner he killed y'all yeah , he killed evan and then I just tried to run from him because I didn't have anything to attack him .
But I found out , when you invade the , the soldiers and all that stuff the enemy soldiers they won't attack the invader , they only attack you yeah because I was trying to lead them into the people yeah , and they .
It didn't work out very well oh , you're just kiting all these people behind you yeah , one of them was a giant oh man . Well , the one time we got it I remember we were getting ready for a boss fight it said you're being invaded and I was like there he is . All three of us just nuked this guy .
He was just trying to drink potions and we just killed him so fast Because he did that right after we had equipped all the best stuff we could find , just so we could go try this boss . He was like , oh , come here .
It was funny too . He bowed like this is going to be an honorable fight . I was just like stab , stab , stab , stab and his stupid bowing animation wouldn't stop .
Yeah , when I was playing with Evan , there was one of the guys come up and he kept doing the rock like come on , and I was like uh-uh , I stood where I was at with my swords . He eventually came over there and he jumped , and because he jumped and missed .
I took those two big Game of Thrones-looking swords and just swiped him three times and he died . Nice , it was nice , yeah , yeah , having lots of fun . So reach out to us if you want to be a part of that experience and share some of your videos . We'd like to see what people are doing . Yeah , okay . Well , that was fun .
Yeah , that's it for this special , so we're looking forward to next week's episode with Tom's riveting trivia Of Knights of the Old Republic . Yes , so goodbye .
Now we're going to go home and play Elden Ring .
Yep . Goodbye from Mitch .
Bye Mitch .
Goodbye from Tom , bye Tom , goodbye from me and goodbye , we'll see you next time .