2026 is going to be an absolute huge year for videogames | Friends Per Second #86

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I just woke up feeling hollow inside. Just grab one of the new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches, like Bright-Eyed Berry or Up and Apple, filled with 12 grams of protein and tons of deliciousness. Crust, what are you eating? It's just granola. Not even yogurt. No crust, no fuss. Uncrust your mornings. All right. First of all, casting... Kratos. Absolute STU. Yes. Couldn't have done any better. Yes. Ryan Hurst, right?

unfamiliar with his game other than he was Thor. Sons of Anarchy. He looks the part, right? No offense, he looks like he was in Sons of Anarchy. He might take it as a compliment. I don't know. Anyway, he looks great. He has a beard. He's familiar with the source material, right? I'm like, yeah. Okay, cool. Absolutely. For sure. Let's go. Jake, you don't seem convinced. I don't know if I want this show. Like, who cares?

That sounds harsh, but I feel like God of War 2018 landed so well for a lot of people because they were familiar with the old games. And to see the character back and retired and like... That kind of old man Logan thing was cool because you had the prior history of the old stuff. Now they're making a show about some old warrior guy that nobody knows about. It's like, who cares? Why is he old and sad? Like, I don't.

They can do it, but I'm not interested in a rehash. Why is he old and sad? That works for a lot of things. First of all, we don't know, is the script going to be based upon the... 2018 game. Like, do we know that? I don't know, but I assume, I assume like they, that was the pitch because they were like, oh my God, it's cinematic. We got to do this. They're probably not going to do the old God of War. He's just like.

like banging like harpies and shit. You know what I mean? Like that's probably not going to be the focus, but it was cool. Like pretty cool. So I guess. I think that like The Last of Us is a good example of this where just because we played The Last of Us, like there's heaps of people that didn't and they got to experience that story and they were like, whoa, this is incredible. Oh my God, I love it. And then they saw season two and they were like, yo, what the fuck?

I think that I do think there's value in it for people who don't play video games a lot of people don't and they get to see these stories and these characters and maybe that leads them to play the video game But even if it doesn't, they just get to experience a really cool story for the first time and meet those characters for the first time. And I think...

There is value in that. Furthermore, there's also value in like stuff like the Fallout TV show, which is just a completely different story or it's like it's mixing different storylines from game and like remixing shit and whatever else, you know? Yeah. It makes sense that they're doing it. And I'm not like super pumped about it personally.

but i think it's cool though like i'm like yeah i'll be happy to be like prove proven wrong like i'm down for it i just um i think i can't divorce myself from me going into 2018. and appreciating it because of like prior knowledge of the character. But I mean, I guess it's a good story on its own. So, yeah. I mean, the thing is, is that the guy making it is Ronald D. Moore, who is responsible for the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

That's that one that everyone likes, right? That's the very one. Yeah, okay. So the other casting was, well, they showed a picture of Sophie Turner as Lara Croft. Spectacular.

oh my god i thought she looked incredible oh she looks i was not into the glasses yeah i was not into the casting but uh when they revealed the image i was like oh they're like leaning into like they're leaning into it they're they're not like afraid of what tomb raider is i guess it looks like lara craft she looks kind of 90s and cheesy yeah true i agree like no woman looks like that nobody dresses like that but it's cool like yeah

I think the problem is, and I, like, I think she looks the part. I agree. But just, like, I don't think she's, like, I would happily be proven wrong here. But, like, I don't think she's just. I don't think she's very good in general. Do you know what I mean? Like, I saw her in Game of Thrones. She kind of had a certain role to play fine. But then I saw her in Dark Phoenix or whatever it was. Oh, yeah.

oh man, this is very terrible. Oh no, no, no. I was going to say, I don't think it's fair to hold Dark Phoenix up against anyone. I don't think anyone's... But I think she was kind of one of the main reasons that it was so bad. Do you know what I mean? She was terrible in it, right? That was a movie that nobody wanted to be there.

Jennifer Lawrence was like please kill me in the beginning and they did I just think you need to have like huge amounts of charisma to be Lara Croft and I haven't seen her play a role where she has that level of charisma so I'd love to see her pull it off

But this part, I'm just like, I think she looks the part, but I'm still not convinced. We'll see. Because, I mean, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was involved and now isn't, right? Like, they kind of left that project. No, I think she's still... I don't know. She's still executive producing or something, but I thought she was writing it. Yeah, I think that's still the case. What is that, Peggy? Is that Peggy you're talking about? Captain America's girlfriend?

No. No, I'm talking about Fleabag. Oh, that one. No, she was the lady in the last Indiana Jones who was like, not great. Are you talking about The Last Crusade? The last Indiana Jones? Oh, good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a lot of fun. No, the James Mangold one. No, I've never heard of that. Sorry, I think you're mistaken. You're thinking of The Great Circle, the hit video game. I am actually thinking of The Great Circle. That's right. Correct.

I don't know. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is listed as the showrunner. Jason Isaacs is in it. There's a lot of people in it. So what is it about? Is she going to have to talk to people? Just do flips. Just shoot dinosaurs. I mean, hey. Year of Croft, you know? Yeah, and it's such an interesting thing, like, you know, a big shift away. from like what they had kind of been building Lara even recently with like the the Netflix cartoon was based on that that reboot Lara too.

And now it's like whiplash because it's like, oh, all right, we're doing old, old cool Tomb Raider. Nice. Do you remember how I was talking about like... We've gone cyclical. We've gone from being camp to being gritty and serious. And now we're back. to camp yeah and i am okay with that personally dumb put cyclops in his little underwear like do it i don't i don't care it's great yeah

Great. I want Cyclops in his underwear. You know what I mean? The little yellow. Oh, I know, dude. I've got the action. I still watch 97, man. It's unbelievable. Yeah, I rewatched it over the break. I can't believe it. It's incredible. It's crazy. it's crazy um welcome welcome everyone friends for second we're back easing into 2020 podcast about video games easing in yeah this episode's gonna be vibes and

Stuff we're excited about. Learning how to be friends again. We got to practice that. We spoke like every day. Actually, no, we had a little break in the middle when everyone was. Each of us kind of had ghosting time where like Ralph was like gone, like MIA for like a week. Then at one point I was MIA for a week. I was MIA because I got sick and I've been.

reading of well I always do at the end of the year I feel like every because all of my adrenaline has gone my body just goes ah now it's time to be ill but at least for me I didn't get ill until New Year's Day so I had a good few days left to just you know that's so funny that happens to me too that's crazy it's very inconvenient to get sick around the holidays it's like that thing where you travel and then you get sick after because your body's like okay that's over now i can get sick yeah

It's kind of like, yeah. So if anything, Body's being quite nice about it. But I wish, I wish that I'd got sick on, you know, like Sunday the 4th instead of... The first, because then I could have had it. Did you get any cool Christmas presents? Question mark. Yeah. Okay, go on. Anything you can share on the podcast, Jake? Yeah, hang on. Hang on a second. I got... Just keep... There we go. All right, Lucy. Okay, keep trying. We...

We didn't really do gifts. My friend got me a cool nine inch nails mug and some other stuff that I really like and a nice candle. But we kind of decided not to do gifts. We did a big fancy dinner. just before the holidays. And so that was our gift to each other. Jake has something. I have a cool. I'm always a sucker for the old Kenner.

star wars figures so this is uh this is the princess leia collection specifically excellent uh it's the award ceremony princess leia and luke skywalker from a new hope very nice is that uh is that medal there is that for chewbacca or is that for someone else That's for Luke. Okay, that's for Luke. Fair enough. I should have had three in the box then. Yeah. I got a tennis racket. What did you get? Nice. Yonex E-Zone. Yonex, if you're listening.

Let me know, man. I mean, I'm here, you know, this episode brought to you by Yonix. Let's go. Yonix? Yonix, they make, you know, tennis rackets and shit. Yeah, that's just kind of unfortunate. Why? Yonix the Hedgehog? Sounds like Yoni. Yoni. Yonix the Hedgehog does work, actually. Did you hear they're making multiple Echo the Dolphin games? Did you hear about this? Yeah, what is going on with that? Okay, first of all, the fact that there's one Echo the Dolphin game...

maybe that's too many in 2025. As much as I love it, don't get me wrong, I'm extremely excited about this. But even I was like, okay, I don't know how many Echo the Dolphin games you're going to sell in 2026 or whatever, right? Here there's multiple games. I'm like... I don't know, man. I don't think the world is ready for that much Echo the Dolphin. We conned an investor into that. That's crazy. Yeah, totally. So if Echo the Dolphin can get multiple games in 2026, can we get like Seaman?

Like an HD remake of C-Man. Come on. Dude, you know C-Man's going to be AI. He's 100% AI. C-Man's going to be 100% AI. C-Man's going to be Hocken Blockchain on the corner. The only other thing I, this is going to sound crazy, but I built a PC. okay but i built it like i had bought all the parts like right before like i'm talking right before everything collapsed so it was kind of it was kind of nice um yeah so i got a got a living room set up

That's been nice. Oh, so you got it in the living room now? It's pretty dire what's going on in that market. Like, I don't know. I haven't really looked at prices specifically. I've only seen like chatter about it and I've seen like screenshots of like, hey, this is how much a GPU costs in my thing. And it's just like... It's bad, man. It's, it's real bad. So, um, yeah.

What else is going on? Like I said, this is a more vibes-based episode, so do you want to talk about what we did after our last episode? Yeah. Of the year? Did you play anything over the holidays? Because... Jake and I were talking about this before you logged on, Ralph, and turns out neither of us did. Not a ton. I didn't touch shit. I touched, like, Elton. Because a friend of mine was staying with me a bunch over the holidays.

And we just spent our time chatting, cooking. We watched, oh God, our Christmas day. First of all. I made a perfect Beef Wellington on my first go. Yeah, that's pretty good. Beef Welly on the first try. That's impressive. Perfect. But... We'd stayed over at the Greg and Jen Miller's the night before. And so we got to mine by like 11. Cracked open the wine immediately. Absolutely hammered by four, which is when we ate. And then we watched Wicked and Phantom of the Opera.

And sang the whole two films. Wait, did you watch Wicked part one and part two? No, just part one. We haven't seen part two. Neither of us have seen part two. That was the first time I saw part one. Really enjoyed it. And yeah, Phantom of the Opera is a really unfortunate one. So we were much drunker than our other friend who was there. who I feel like now we might have to apologize to because we just sang at him for five hours. I would get awkward, I think. I think a little bit.

He sang a little bit too, but it's fine. He was probably just trying to make you guys... Because he was hostage. Yeah, I was going to say, he kind of had to go along with it. He was in the middle. And we got to that, like, you know, when you're a little rowdy, kind of drunk, and you're like, let's get another one. Let's make martinis. You know, we were very excitable. And so our Christmas was kind of that. And then my friend was wanting to get back into Elden Ring.

So she downloaded Elden Ring on my PlayStation and I was like, well, I want to play Elden Ring too. So I downloaded it on my, bless you Jake, on my Rog Ally X. And we were just playing some Elden Ring. That was it. Wow.

how much did you play like an hour of it or did you like no i did another playthrough and i'm like played a few hours i did play some demos from uh steam's detective first this week is that over by the way did i miss that think it's good detective fest it's just basically like highlighting all of those detective sort of games like you know the sherlock home games and and ace attorney and you know like

Why are you not featured curator on that? Like it's like presented by Lucy James. I need to, I should, I should set up my steam curator. That's like all you. How do you do that? I mean, Ralph, did you just look at the camera and wink? Because you are the first fucking person I see on every Stephen Curry. Well, I'm the only one who takes that shit seriously. I swear to God, man. Like, I have like 50, like...

55,000 followers on Steam Curator. And I think it's really great because when people are searching for games, like when I search for a game, like I will see my own shit pop up there and I'm like, oh, cool. That's how people are seeing it and whatever. And it makes a lot of sense to me because obviously like a lot of...

my audience are PC gamers and, you know, they can kind of just see my stuff there. It also lets me link through to my videos as well, which is really helpful. So they can just like kind of click on it right there. So I love it. I wish Steam would do more with it.

But clearly they're just not really interested. They've got other things going on, like building the steam frame and the steam tube. Steam frame, steam machine. Controller, which I really want. I really want that controller so bad. I do, too. I was so excited for it. I bought another one in preparation for it. I bought the eight eight bit do works really well with the dock. It has like its own little. Yeah.

It's very good. I got that one. I've been using an 8-bit do, 8-bit do at work a lot. It's just a nice control. Oh, so until the 19th, you go for detective first. Okay, cool.

oh it's the 8-bit do 8-bit do ultimate 2 wireless controller yeah yeah really good um yeah cool so you didn't play any video games at all jay you just like went around a little bit just like just no games or movies okay so i have like my bottom of the barrel stuff i did for like end of the year stuff for work uh i played quite a bit of the avatar frontiers of pandora from the ashes dlc expansion tell me tell me

Tell me, Juxley. The way they say it, I love how, I don't even know, Juxley or some shit. Juxley. It's good. It's good. So Ubisoft made a good Avatar game when it first came. front frontiers of pandora came out it was good it's far cry but it's far cry in the world of pandora and it was like fun and if you give enough shit about avatar like it was cool um and now man they only make good games The new expansion...

is inspired by the new movie with like the fire clan and stuff like that. So they add a section to the map, but also the map is changed because these the fire clan people came in and like burned everything down. so it's cool to see the map transform but also it comes off the heels of an update from a couple weeks prior that added third person mode yeah which is just cool to mess around with i know that's like what a lot of people wanted it still kind of feels like

a first person game with a third person mode. So it's like not it's not perfect, but it's cool to be a big blue guy and like kick kick little men in the face in third person. Like it's cool. this is why you need a steam curate yeah transcribe that put that like word for word it looks like it looks like a trump transcript or it's just like you know yeah like it's like like just saying

You can't get me out of there. The other thing was, what was it? Oh, I just yesterday I jumped into Hytale. Oh, okay. Oh, the Minecraft. Yeah, it's just out of this weird fascination because I remember when it was first a thing. Minecraft people and younger Minecraft folks talked about it like it was this incredible holy grail thing that was coming. There was a lot of hype around it. And then it just kind of dissipated, but it was still a thing. So Riot...

bought into it, then they bought it and then they shit can it summer of last year and then the original creator of it. And I guess like the reformed group, because it was like modders essentially that were working on it. They got the rights back to it and they very quickly got it out the door to early access in a really short time frame. And it's still very early access, but it is cool. It kind of feels like. Maximalist Minecraft. In what way?

there's like a billion more building options and crafting options. And it's instead of Minecraft where it's like, you could build a chair, you could build this. It's like, you could build a chair with crystals on it. You could build, you could do different types of windows. You get, if you chop down a tree.

There's like nine different types of trees and 100 different types of biomes that you have different levels of different wood qualities and stuff like that. There's light RPG elements. There's like genuine combat. It's still iffy, but.

yeah it it's definitely like good bones it's just like very not content complete like you're coming across dungeons that are work in progress and like closed off it's a bummer that riot didn't go down that path and like keep supporting it i mean obviously there was development issues because if it's like i don't know they handed it back to this team and if it's still like

in this shape like 10 years in development then clearly like right we're like yo we've given you some runway that's enough you know like fair enough but it's still it's a bit of a bummer because yeah like it seems really cool people really love it like we have a member of our team maddie who's like

It was obsessed with Hytale. She loves it. So I don't know. It'd be nice if it was being supported more, but the early access sales have funded like two years of development. Yeah. I think it was like. 400,000 concurrent players or some shit? Was it something like that? I saw the two and a half mil number. It popped off massively. It's cool too. It definitely...

Yeah, like I wish it was more content complete, but when it has the Bethesda game moment, like you spawn in a temple and then you pop open the temple doors and then there's the world in front of you. And it has that kind of like, whoa, because it's very like the bushes are swaying in the breeze. There's birds flying by. The skybox looks incredible. There's like ambient lighting and all these cool effects.

it just it just looks really good the animations are really good and i think it's it's just like what if you were a little minecraft guy but you could sprint crouch slide crouch and sneak jump, vault up, mantle up ledges like that. It sounds so small, but like for that type of game to have that, it's pretty cool. So I think it could be something.

It's cute. I don't know if like it's for kids or if it's for like Minecraft fans, but like it has all the stuff in place like, you know, you can make servers, there's multiplayer stuff. They're just going to have a whole, you know, there's the whole separate creative.

build mode, there's a whole section dedicated to just mini games, which was kind of like a thing that they did back in the day with like the Minecraft servers. That's that's not built out yet, but that's like there in the menus. So it could be cool. What was your guys' exposure to Minecraft? Oh, I missed it. I was too old. Oh, really? Okay. I was dating someone at the time who he and his roommates, they all studied physics and so they loved it and they were in their early downloading.

uh alphas and boxes and whatever the the old way and then my first exposure to it proper was when rooster teeth did let's play when it eventually came to xbox and that's when i jumped in is when it was available on xbox because it was like what for 800 microsoft points remember microsoft and that's when i would play but then i think once that died down a little bit i remember moving on and any other time i'd be back in minecraft would be usually

if there was a child in the family and they had it on their ipad and they'd be like look what it's crazy how much it transformed because it was kind of like that indie cool thing it was like you paid a website 20 30 bucks you got access to a file you'd follow the developers like waiting for like updates you'd watch the game go from like nothing to something um i had a um a dual booted i had a macbook

shitty macbook that was running i dual booted and i got windows running on it like one of those white macbooks back in the day yeah yeah yeah um oh wow okay mine Mine was like, what, 2012 when I did that? And I did it for Guild Wars. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I was playing it on, I was trying to on one of those. Yeah. So I was hooked big time with it. It was like one of those games that...

It was the type of game I didn't expect it to, but it was one of the games where it's like you're playing it for so long and then you look outside and the sun, the sun went down and you're like, oh shit. And then you keep playing and the sun's coming up and you're like, oh, man, this is one of those games. I didn't expect it for a game like that. And it.

Ended up like I was like melting that MacBook and I was also playing it in college because I was like in my 20s. I was in my early 20s and I was sitting in the back of these classes with this MacBook screaming. like the professor's doing like a lecture and like i'm just on my computer taking notes and my macbook is just like i was hooked on minecraft and it was like

It definitely did not help my college career. That's for sure. I mean, my college career was World of Warcraft. It was the same thing. It was disastrous. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Well, I played. Were you gaming? He's always gaming. I played Silksong. Oh. Yeah. Here it is. How was it? Okay, so I'm in Act 3 now. Nice. Impressive. So I'm like 60 hours in, by the way, just to be clear. Where are you playing it?

A mix of things. Because I was traveling, I actually played a lot of it on my Steam Deck and my ROG Ally X. And I was using the glasses, you know, like those XR glasses. Yeah. Which are just incredible. the x-reel i saw them i saw someone use them in the wild yesterday never seen that before uh except for jake when we were flying back from finland

But this guy was like, I assume coding or something. And he was on the bus and he was wearing it and he was just plugged in. And the laptop was fully almost closed and he was just typing away. And it was like, ah, this is the future now. I mean, this is the thing. I mean, Xreal put out a fantastic product. There's another one, Virtue, that put out a fantastic product. I feel like eventually, though, Apple's going to put out a product like this. And they're just going to, when that happens.

everyone will be wearing this shit like it's you don't understand like I actually don't like when I watch TV like I also should say hashtag sponsored because you know like these companies have sponsored me in the past but they haven't sponsored me to keep using the product afterwards right and i don't like i just in bed that's all i do i just like when i watch tv in bed i used to watch on ipad now i watch in this year when i'm on the plane like i just literally spent you know 10 hours

It's a game changer for planes. Dude, it's like the idea of having to do this for 10 hours. Oh my God. So you just literally sit there and you just have the steam deck in your lap or whatever. And you look straight ahead and you kind of sit back in your chair like this and you are playing on a massive screen.

It's so fucking good, man. I played like 20% of Expedition 33 through that. Yeah, yeah. It was fine. Anyway, point is, I was playing on a variety of devices. And Silk Song is... extraordinary like it's so incredible like I really wasn't quite ready for just how good it is through like acts one and two you know I think act three sucks balls I think it sucks big time

I'm not having fun with it at all. Is it run back stuff? What is it? No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. What's the difference? What's the difference? As someone who's never touched. This is it. I guess we'll say like some light spoilers. I don't know how much people care about.

spoilers I'm not gonna I don't know it's hard it's not a story they're not story spoilers it's just like gameplay spoilers whatever else so if you really don't want to hear about this I guess just like skip ahead of the silk song section there'll be some chapters below whatever but um

like season sorry acts one and two are just like flawless i think like there is there's been discourse about like the runback stuff and i think it's actually really overblown i don't think the runbacks are that bad in act one and two

In fact, I don't think they're really that bad throughout most of the game. There's only one runback that I can think of where I'm like, eh, you've kind of taken the piss here a little bit. People who have played will know the Last Judge run back to Blasted Lands or whatever else. But anyway.

Act 3, though, it just... There's no new zones. You're just fighting a lot of the same enemies you've already fought, only now they have more health and some bullshit attacks. The bosses are like... I'm fighting this boss at the moment. Her name's Kamalita, and she's... fucked man and like not in a fun way not in a way that's like yeah yeah and like again I've played this game I have no difficulty like it's been challenging but I've never felt like ah this is annoying but you know

Her, I'm just like, ah, this is not, I'm not having fun. There's a lot of gauntlets that we just, every time you've died of her, by the way, you kind of need to do a gauntlet before then where some like enemy spawn.

And this is a general theme in Act 3 where they just throw so many of these gauntlets at you all the time. There's one boss encounter that's literally just like three of these gauntlets in a row where you're just fighting all these waves of enemies that come through. And if you fail at like...

the last wave of enemies on the third you know gauntlet run you've got to go right back to the start and do it all over again so i don't know i just feel like i think axe one and two are just like it's such an extraordinary game i you know one of the one of the boss encounters made me like emotional because like there's this boss called like Cogwork Dancers and you know you can they like dancing in sync with one another and when you kill them

When you kill one, the other one keeps dancing as though it's partners meant to be there and they're not. And it's kind of hard. And there's a full story behind it as well with the way that works. And it's a very, it's beautifully told. Anyway, incredible game. But then Axe Ray hits and I'm just like.

having way less fun and i'm like i'm frustrated with the kind of difficulty it's throwing at me and i'm also tired because i feel like well i put in a lot of work and i've accomplished so much and collected so many things I'm like, I'm kind of ready to be done with this, but you're telling me that there's all this extra shit and a lot of it is kind of just asking me to kill enemies I've already killed and then kill them in gauntlets where I just can't fuck up and I just need to keep doing it.

And, you know, the boss difficulty is just like ramped to very, very, very challenging levels. So I don't know. I think it's easily a strong recommend for sure. But I think Act 3 has really made me enjoy it less. And I almost feel like I'm going to do the rest of Act 3 for sure. But right now I feel like telling someone like, hey, you should probably just play Act 1 and 2 and then like... that's it you've seen the best this game has to offer and at that point if you really want that

ultimate difficulty challenge and you're ready for that level of punishment you can do it just to prove to yourself that you can do it but i'm not seeing or experiencing new things while i'm doing that and it's not as good as a result you know um But Acts 1 and 2, man, it's staggering how good it is. It's staggering how good this game is, how much there is, how beautiful it is. The music and the number of enemies and the stories and secrets.

It's just an incredible video game. Like it's humbling how good this video game is. And yeah, just playing through it has been such a joy in little bits as well. Like over my holidays, like, you know, I'll do like an hour here and then I'll do a big session here on the plane, like a big, big sessions and whatever else. But yeah, man, incredible. So you guys didn't play.

You didn't play at all those? Well, I played a bunch of stuff in Detective Fest. That was in like Silk Song, sorry. But the thing is, is that, oh, no, no, no, I didn't even play. I played a bit of Hollow Knight. I didn't, I didn't.

It just didn't vibe with me back then. I can't remember if I said it here or not, but I think me as a gamer back when, was that 2017 it came out? I think I was not as confident in my gaming prowess as I am now. And I think... I may be more literate to the type of game design that Hollow Knight asks of you, whereas, yeah, now I feel like I could approach it, no problem. But the problem is now is my job is focusing pretty much solely on the now and next. Do I have the luxury?

biggest first world problem is there's also seven years of expectations of being told by multiple people that this game ever made. So I feel I want to go to Hollow Knight to experience it. But there's a lot of sort of baggage. And also right now, the reason I can't talk about much new stuff outside of the things from Detective Fest that I played is because stuff is coming out now, but it's all embargoed until after this episode.

next episode got a lot to talk about yes a lot to talk about um but this episode yeah i can i can yes it seems i'm happy i am happy for the hollow knight i'm joyous you didn't play how much did you play jake I had played, I think, like the first two, three hours. I talked about my first impressions on the podcast. Yeah, it seems great. I bounced off it. I hit like a little bit of a difficulty wall and I kind of just like moved on to something else. Yeah.

That happened with the first Hollow Knight, but I got through a significant portion of it. I really like the first Hollow Knight. Yeah. And yeah, I think for me, the thing with these games is really the the art of it. It's beautiful to look. the background arts, the designs of all the weird little bugs, the weird little ways they communicate, the musical undertones to all of it. It's it's just like really creative and.

I love that I don't because I haven't gotten into it enough, but like I love people that are like this game like made me like.

divorce my wife or like this game changed my life i like i took up buddhism after i played this game like people say crazy stuff about it like and it's cool it's great like i think it is it is one of those sorts of games i think because it's so it's as as wide as it is deep i think that any part of it you want to look at there is just such thought and like complexity and sophistication under all of it you know even a simple thing

like a single tool and the way it allows you to kind of like move backwards quickly is still subtly impactful if you understand exactly how that's working and how it functions in combat and what that means. But there's just... There's just so much. And the fact that it's all strung together the way that it is and the story that it has and the visuals that it's got.

and the level design like it's it's as accomplished a game in terms of like its combat as it is in its platforming some of the platforming challenges are so wild they will just like

oh my God, like Celeste level kind of challenges where you're just like, are you fucking kidding me right now? Do you really want me to do that? And then you do it. And I think that's one of the best feelings about it because I remember feeling like the difficulty that you sort of spoke about where I'm just like, okay.

there's no way they can make it harder than this right and that turns out that that's like a two out of ten in terms of difficulty right and they just keep rationing you up and up and up and you just keep getting better and better and eventually like you can do it it just

And then you look back on those other challenges that you had before and you're like, bro, what the fuck was I complaining about? That was nothing, you know, because it's just given you so many tools and so much expertise and so much knowledge that you can just do some crazy, incredible things that surprise yourself.

based on your mastery of the game. And that is a really great place to be. And I think the reason I'm not enjoying Act 3 is because it doesn't feel like that same curve now. The curve from like, you know, 2 to 8. has been so smart and gradual and so satisfying. But now that I'm on that 9 to 10 bit, it feels shit. You know what I mean? Like a pacing change. Yeah, because I'm not learning new skills now. I'm just dealing with bosses that are just being faster.

covering like nine tenths of the screen with bullshit so that I need to position Hornet in like one little tiny corner of the screen that's not exploding. You know what I mean? And, and yeah, look, I know get good or whatever else. And yeah, that's true. Like there's people who can do this shit. No problem.

Like for your average person, like only 20% of people who have bought Holonite or booted it up, I should say, have actually finished the true ending, right? At the end of Act 3. 20%, you know? You compare that to Elden Ring, which has roughly 40% completion. Like, is that good? I don't think that's good. I don't think the goal should be a game where only 20% of your player base is finishing. And I think you've probably got something wrong there, you know? And...

That's what I'm experiencing. Having said that, I haven't finished Act 3. Maybe I feel very differently when I've done the whole thing. Yeah. Like I said, right now, I'm not vibing with Act 3. Are you considering making a video? Yeah, I think I will. Actually, it's challenging because I feel like, you know, Jakey's video.

It's like covered it so well in such an interesting way. And then I think even like Yahtzee was like his video where he kind of quit the game at a really notable point where a lot of people quit the game. I think that really covers some of what I'm. talking about but i think pushing forward into act three i have my own thoughts about its difficulty and some of its other design decisions like tools and the tools economy and how that kind of sucks and like some of its approaches to like

you know, secrets and what have you. I don't know. I have my own thoughts, but I would say this. I don't think my thoughts are like particularly, are massively different from other people's. But I feel that... The game has meant a lot to me. I think it's, I don't know if it's the best Metroidvania I've played. I mean, probably. Certainly Act 1 and 2, I think it's the best Metroidvania I've played. And playing it so soon after Metroid Prime 4, you're just like, oh, okay.

Now we're talking like this is how it should be. And obviously totally different genres in inverted commas. But like everything that was so disappointing and boring about Metroid Prime 4 was just like, you know. You didn't love collecting them? I still can't believe that they made me do that. Crystals, I'm sorry. Oh my God. I heard you boys talk about it. I was like, I'm not doing this. It just really showed me like, yeah, Metroidvanias.

when you do them right there's just something about them man you know and um and i think holla night's hook song is acts one and two i think the best metroidvania i've ever played um and i want to do another playthrough on that basis

probably won't play through all of acts three. I probably just play through acts one and two, but I would just love to experience it again with the knowledge that I have this time. I'm just like, you know, so yeah. Yeah. Nice. Good. That's it. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't really have anything else I played. This episode is brought to you by

Raycons. Now, you obviously would be aware of Raycons Everyday Earbuds. They're all over the internet and have been for a long time. Now, this is one of their newer products. This is their... What do you even call this one? Is it the Open? It's the... uh essential open that's right yeah cool so um basically the difference with these ones is that they don't actually go into your ear they just sit over the top of your ear like so right

And that basically means that it's like kind of much easier to hear everything going on around you. It means that you don't always have a piece of plastic stuck in your ear 24-7 like most of us always do these days.

It makes them really good for exercise, which is actually what I use them for. Because when I'm like walking, running, playing tennis, whatever, and I get all sweaty, I don't like having earbuds in when that's happening. So they're just like really comfortable for that reason. And they just kind of sit there.

Yeah, I mean, obviously you can still hear the music and what's going on or podcasts, whatever you listen to, but you can also hear other stuff going on around you. And again, that matters to me when I'm out and about running because I'm like crossing the street or some shit. Like I still like to be able to hear traffic and whatever else.

I have had a really good time with these. I've been using them for, I think they launched them a couple of months ago now. I don't even remember how long. But I've been using them consistently since they're part of my routine when it comes to exercise. They're very lightweight. Battery life is excellent.

comfort's good but i just kind of just leave them on a lot of the time when i'm out and i just i never feel like i need to take them off whenever i'm wearing earbuds i kind of want to get them out as soon as i'm not using them whereas with these i'm like yeah cool i'll just leave them in and they like leave them on i should say And they feel great. So I don't know, like how have you guys found them over the last of a while?

Same. They literally became part of my life. I didn't expect them to because like, you know, the regular Raycon earbuds are packed with features. They have everything like I thought I needed. But because these are so lightweight. It's been a no brainer. I also recommended them to a friend who doesn't work well with regular earbuds like it throws off his equilibrium or whatever. And so I hooked him up with a pair of these.

And it was like a game changer for him because of the way they just rest over your ear. It's like a win win. Plus to like, it's still got like a nice little handy dandy. charging carry in case it's nice and small and sleek it's got usbc so it's still got all the features

Yep. 36 hours of charge on the case, eight hours in the earbuds, multi-point connectivity. So I can go from like phone to laptop really easily. It's those things that... would have been insane even like five years ago and now it's just at a good price that is at a really great price and hey if you want an even better price

Thank you again to Raycon for sponsoring this episode. You can head over to buyraycon.com slash friends open to get 20% off site-wide. That's buyraycon.com slash friends open, 20% off site-wide. Thank you again to Raycon. Hey, Lucy, what you been eating? Or more importantly, what you been cooking? Oh, I have been cooking a lot. Again, I've been reading, cooking a lot over the holiday break. And luckily, thanks to the sponsor of this episode, HelloFresh.

been helping me do it. So HelloFresh every week delivers incredible ingredients to your door with recipe cards. And it is so good. So I made a cod. with um like a nice rice i had a steak with green beans a little parmesan sauce and some crushed roast potatoes were really good and then My mouth was watering just thinking about it. And then I had a really good pork with parsnips and pasta.

really good dishes and genuinely I wasn't thinking about it because I made them and then I had some of them for the next day. I used to be very intimidated by cooking and I've been using HelloFresh for years and it just taught me over time. not only that I can do it, but like new skills presented to me in a really approachable way. And at the end of the day, I'm making something that I am proud of, but there's also delicious. And it takes away that like...

Like you go into the supermarket, you're like, I don't know what to make. I'm just going to panic buy. Like there are over a hundred recipes to pick from every week. Yes, that's a lot. But at the same time, it's like every single one of them is like, I can make that. That sounds really good. I'm just going to select it. And then tell you how to make it.

That's crazy. And like I see they have like high protein recipes. It's sustainably sourced stuff. So like you're eating like high quality ingredients. Steak and seafood at no extra cost. That's someone who like. I will say that seafood would be the thing that used to intimidate me cooking it the most. I like pan fried and seared some cod the other day, breading things, like all that kind of stuff would be like that's too much for me in the past is now just...

second nature and yeah no added cost for seafood and steak and there are three times as many seafood options as before so there's plenty of options to pick from um also just let's be real it's Another mental task to do is like, you just want to like, I don't know. have stuff figured out and hello fresh really helps me with that and it's an underrated thing too with these is people don't realize is like the waste you know when you go grocery shopping and you you end up buying

too many onions, and then you don't get to using that extra onion. You know, the fact that HelloFresh sends you exactly what you need for that recipe really takes a lot of the stress out. I love it. It does. And hey, if you go to hellofresh.com slash FPS 10 FM. You get 10 free meals plus, this is insane, a free Zwilling knife, which is $144.99 value. Good knife. Knives, super important.

You have to have them sharp, not just to cut things, but hey, more accidents happen when a knife is blunt. If you get a swelling knife, that is some good stuff. So this offer is valid while supplies last. And the free meals are applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. varies by plan thank you so much again to hello fresh for sponsoring this episode and for feeding me my latest haul titanic 4k Ah, bro. Titani. The Country for Old Men. Nice. Warriors. Okay.

kingdom of heaven baby king of heaven oh the uh director's cut yeah yeah i'm gonna go for that play be fucking you know that's awesome that's awesome I need that. I also got the steelbook for Blade Runner. Even though I already had Blade Runner, I now have the steelbook. It's that kind of movie, man. It deserves that level of respect, I think. It does. I mean I have it tattooed on my body. Now I know why you're moving.

You need room for your physical media. Yeah, right. Well, I actually just bought like a whole shipment as well. Like it's, it's become really important to me to be, before it was like, ah, this is a nice little thing where I'm just doing on the side. Now, as I'm like watching more movies.

I'm like going, okay, where can I stream this movie? And most of the time, the movies that I want to watch are like only available on fucking YouTube and you have to buy them on YouTube or some shit or rent them on some garbage. that so it's important to me to like build this library also because and i saw this headline the other day like this is the first decade that we haven't had a new physical media um platform or like format

Because it was like we had VHS to DVD, DVD to Blu-ray, Blu-ray to 4K, and that represents the last 30 years, right? And this is the new decade. For a beta match. Yeah, that's right, Rip. But, yeah, this is it. And it's also, but I think it's because, like, I don't know how much better you could make it. You know, like if you pump it to 8K, is it getting cleaner? I don't think so, man. Like that's it. I think 4K is kind of like the event horizon. We're there.

And so now I feel very good about like building a library, knowing like, cool, all right, this is probably going to be it, you know? Yeah, I feel the same way. Are we recording? Yeah, we're recording. We're back. We're back when I started showing on Titanic. Okay, good. I was just joking. Okay, but also seeing Titanic, and I haven't watched it again recently, so I don't know how I'm going to feel, but like it makes me sad to think that this man made this movie.

And then he spent the next fucking 20 years making what is essentially an interactive video game cutscene. Yeah, I know. Sorry, not interactive video game cutscene. It's kind of like a, it's like, well, I'm happy, he's happy type thing.

I'm not, though. I'm not happy. I don't care about James Cameron's happy. Just give us what we want. I have been reading a lot. That's why I haven't been playing many games. Speaking of James Cameron, he... has optioned a book that i read over the years that i became what is it no the devils by joe abercrombie so shout out to matt use a question he asked he said like

Sorry, my cats are being fed. That's what that was. He read The Painted Cup that I recommended because I was reading it last year. And he asked for other books that were like strong characters, world building and bit of genre crossover. The Devils by Joe Abercrombie is fucking spectacular. And you need all to read it? Like, it is okay. Can you give us the back of the books?

Or no, it's not the back of the book. It's the sleeve on the inside that describes the book, right? Oh, because this is hardcover. It is, what if The Expendables was run by a monk? and all of the expendables are um aberrations and monsters that the church has been trying to hide and it is so violent there's like a bunch of it does like chapters in pov and there's the way that they think and feel different like i have never read a book where

I knew exactly who that character was within a paragraph. He is so good at writing that I... devoured it and like everyone I posted on my Instagram story and everyone was like you have to go back and read the lore trilogy so I've read a few books in between and that's I think next weekend I'm gonna go and get and get that from my local bookstore because like Ralph

who's been getting in physical media or movies, I've been really into having physical media books. I had a Kindle, used a Kindle for years, but I have greater enjoyment of holding something in my hand. And then at the end, it was someone from EA, like when I was doing the Star Wars celebration last year, we talked about books and she just said something that was so good. And it was...

I love reading physical books because then I put it on my bookshelf and that's my trophy. I was like, yeah, I love that. And so now Thanksgiving, I built in a bookcase and I've been just putting more in there. So anyway, The Devil's by Joe Abercrombie. The pitch sounds like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but 10 times cooler and like creepier. That's awesome. And what James Cameron's optioned that. Yeah, he's.

On the back of the book, he's the guy who's like, I love this. This is insane. I read it all the time in my submarine. He is allegedly writing the script with Joe Abercrombie. for the movie that he's going to do, unfortunately, after, what, 10 more Avatar movies? No, that might not happen now. Maybe his atomic... I think he's... I think he's stepping off. I think he's entertaining the idea that there's no more Avatar movies. Is there going to be one more and then he's done?

Or is it like there may be not even one more? The idea was that there was like a couple more, but he had said recently, like depending on how this one goes, it's going to, you know. whether or not he's going to keep going or stop. And he even said that if he stops now, he's going to just hold a press conference and reveal the plans for the rest of them that are never going to get made. Right. Okay. I'm like, all right, dude. I kind of love that.

just like I look well you know what I don't want to keep you all waiting I don't want to let's all get together I'm just gonna tell you what's gonna happen but I'm not gonna make this because I watched Avatar 1 again recently and I was like yeah This isn't good. Okay. Because like when we watched it, we watched it in a cinema on like a big screen. Everyone's doing, everyone's doing what were you doing in 2016? We're all high on Obama. Dude. 100%. And then.

And as an experience in the cinema, it was extraordinary. No one will understand it who didn't have that experience. It was a trip. Yeah, it was pretty cool, I guess. Yeah, it was a sci-fi movie.

yeah the blue aliens and yeah absolutely but like when we were there it was just crazy what it was like it's like a technological feat but then you know watching it back again i'm just like oh there's not much to this is there you know like it's pretty threadbare it's kind of just a bit of a i don't know would this get me kicked off like That gets you cancelled on not YouTube. Content restricted from pornography. Stop appropriating the culture. Stop appropriating the culture.

So I don't know, man. For audio listeners, I'm sorry. I touched two strands of my hair together.

like they that's right they fuck i know they fuck it's how they communicate that's how they communicate they kind of like mind fuck like they can you know they see they derive pleasure from mind connection mind and body connection tell you a funny story this is totally off this is totally off topic by the way but you know we're talking about echo the dolphin right okay where's this going this got nothing to do with video games by the way we're just talking

so i was like i was like i was reading reddit or whatever and two people talking about dolphins and how they're inspired like echo the dolphins inspired by this like researcher who would like take an LSD and oh I know exactly where this is going and I saw this link to this story about like oh yeah it's like and also he was connected to that story of that like that dolphin that fell in love with a woman and then killed itself. What the fuck is that? Do you know the...

Do you know the background of that study? Well, I read that now. Now that I've read it. Yeah. Like long story short, this woman like moved into a room, like a purpose built room with this dolphin and then like lived with it for like six months or some shit. just being with it constantly. And eventually she would like.

She would jerk off the dolphin to help him relieve his sexual tension because he couldn't be with female dolphins. And then the experiment ended or whatever, and then he had to be taken away. And then apparently he just sank himself to the bottom of the water and just didn't breathe again and committed suicide. And I was just like, oh my God, I cannot believe that that was a real story that I just read. It was a write-up in The Guardian, by the way. That's real?

That's a real story. This is not made up. It's a real thing. Fuck your books. That's a story. That's a story right there. Oh my God. Make a movie of that from the dolphin's perspective. Like the dolphin narrates it. No, no. I think if it's the same one I'm thinking of. It's because they thought dolphins were the closest animal to be able to learn human language. So that's why she was living with it.

was to and she was like they were making progress because they were you use that like blowhole or whatever to um to like to make as human sounds but go back she was jerking it off so like when did when did the ethics like go out the window with her scientific

I mean, it was the seventies. There was a lot of LSD booker flown around back then, you know, it was a different time. So, uh, it was, yeah. I remember we'd learned about that one. I, when I was doing psychology language. Don't jerk off. Okay. Yeah, it's unbelievably messed up.

I don't know, man. He seemed like he was having a good time until the party stopped. He was like, I'm just going to kill myself now. What do you mean? No more free hand jobs. I'm out, man. I'm done. I'm going to just hold my...

breath until I die shouldn't laugh it's terrible it's so sad it's actually a terrible tragic story but it's also funny unfortunately but it's also just like Who approved all that? Like all that shit. Oh my God. So James Cameron's optioned that as well. So James Cameron wants to make the movie of the devils. He'll make that movie, I reckon. He's making the dolphin movie. He's going to make it 100%. Call it Echoes of the Dolphin.

You're welcome. No, it was called Free Willy was a whale. It was. Anyway, should we get back to talking about video games? We reckon. I'm sure we've lost a lot of viewers and listeners at this point. If you're still with us, thank you very much. We appreciate you. We promise we do talk about video games on occasion. So yeah, we're back to doing that now. Lucy, tell us about Detective... Fist and the demos you have played. Steam Detective Fist.

Sleuth, sleuth first. So yeah, Steam has a little sale, little categories for everything. I really enjoy detective games. And so kicking off the year with detective first is great for me. So I played a few demos. And there are some games that there's a really good sale. So things like Black Manor, Blueprints, Golden Idol, all that jazz is on sale. All like genuinely considered great games and pretty recent.

Root Trees I think is on sale too. And so I played one called Obsidian Moon. Okay. Obsidian Moon. So it is the... noir detective he came back from the second world war he's messing up he's an alcoholic but he's been given one last shot at the precinct he's on homicide and the actual the actual gameplay itself is looking down on a desk and so you just have the case files and so you open the case file and a guy gets beaten up or like someone gets murdered or something

And then what you have is it takes a certain amount of time to investigate the scene. And that's represented by kind of a Sims. sort of like there's a clock on the side and so if uh investigating the body takes three seconds then you press go and there's one two three and then from there the file spits out more files and so it's a cool concept

Especially if you like that kind of tactile feeling of moving pieces of paper around. Yeah, it looks like papers, please. Sorry, what's the name of it again? What is it? It's called Obsidian Moon. Is it out yet? Is it out yet or not? This is the demo. So the game's not out yet? Full game's not out yet, but I really enjoyed it. So this is the demo that I played. And at the end of each day...

because obviously a certain amount of hours in a day, you have to pay your bills. And if you don't pay your bills, your mental, your mind takes a hit. And there is some Lovecraftian elements.

Which is where this kind of comes in. So first couple chapters are available in the demo. Really enjoyed it. I will say, I think the name is going to move, is going to work against it. Because even though I... played it for like 45 minutes i'm still kind of reaching for that name it doesn't you've literally told me twice i've already forgotten it obsidian obsidian moon and i'm actually looking down like the list of like

popular demos and it's nowhere near the top how did you hear about this uh okay right and it's part of the detective thing i guess right But, and then the other thing that I think needs, and obviously this is just a demo, some of the UI is a little clunky and doesn't necessarily move around or like it just takes up too much space and I'm trying to like dig through.

case files and i think if i've already you know tailed someone or had them under surveillance or you know if i've already done something and spent the time on it mark it please that i've already done it because otherwise i kept doing the same things over to go oh man yeah that's good so there's one cool Death at Fleming Manor. If you like Golden Idol, here is a Golden Idol like. Except you play as a coroner.

So it's like your first day working on the job at a new place and you're presented with a scene, a dead body, another person almost dead. It's up to you. by golden idling your way through like literally it's like it's click on the highlighted words and the environment um that kind of stuff um

And I would say kind of very reminiscent. I think actually on the Steam page, it calls out Golden Idol as a big inspiration. So I don't feel like I'm too off base here. And it's up to you to kind of figure out the cause of death and then basically solve the crime. So the first chapter, which is in the demo, is...

hey, this car crashed and there's two people inside it, but is everything as it seems? Who are these? You have to identify them, their cause of death. And it even has a little textbook. So you're not just saying, hey, he hit his head. It's... It's a cervical fracture on the lumbar. So there's kind of that element to it. I enjoyed that. And the third one, Desktop Explorer. So Desktop Explorer has been around for a while. I think I played this.

pretty much exact demo three years ago. But now it's being picked up by Outer Sloth. Oh, yeah. So they are publishing it. And Desktop Explorer is, if you have a Windows 95 or 90... eight-era PC. You are interfacing with a desktop with a bunch of locked files on it that was gifted to you from your grandpa. No, your uncle.

who sadly was losing his memories. And there's a core mystery at the side of it. And what you have to do is you have to basically use, you're not connected to the internet, you have to use what is on the PC.

inspecting files, properties, resizing images to get clues, finding using like Microsoft Paint or, you know, legally distinct Microsoft Paint. And it is, if you grew up using those operating systems, it is... Only our generation know how to do, by the way. We are the last generation that knows how to work with a computer.

There's a hint system and the hint is basically like Clippy. Not real Clippy, obviously, but again, a legally distinct Clippy. And even those, I feel like if you did not grow up with those operating systems or can use a desktop. You are a shit out of luck. But I think it's a really cool start to the game. I want to get to the bottom of that mystery. Looks great.

But yeah, it's been a while with that kind of like same demo. I assume they've polished it and maybe changed a few things, but I remember playing it a few years ago. So I'm stoked that it's finally coming out. It's coming out this year. And then there's a bunch of stuff that I'm playing right now that I can't talk about. Next time.

me too actually it's a bit like that right now because the year started so like we're getting codes for shit and we're going to preview events and whatever else and yeah we can't so stuff's happening we can talk about it soon stuff is happening the year is beginning that's right but you know what's cool though this February not

crazy packed like the last like four years worth of february's yeah we've got our asses beat with a lot of crazy games in february oh man 100 but this year is like pretty chill for that on that front normal Maybe that's a good segue, talk about what we're looking forward to this year. Yeah, I think that was good. Yeah, thanks. We've got obviously Resident Evil. I actually haven't watched the showcase yet. Tell me, how did it go? The combat looks insane.

Is it just Resident Evil 4 again? It's Resident Evil 4, but now what if you could kick guys up against a wall and then they're stunned on the wall and then you can do another finisher while they're like stunned on the wall. I like that. There's... There's a Porsche. There's a Porsche. It's awesome. It's so cool. His tomahawk axe, there's a sharpening mechanic to it. Okay.

Yeah, they're bringing the ink ribbon stuff. The difficulty mode, you can do the harder mode with the limited ink ribbons. Really? Interesting. That's going to only specifically be for Grace. Not for Leon's. Huh? But yeah, they also kind of tease a little bit more story stuff. Not a lot, but there's a lot of speculation. I don't want to like, you know.

guess too hard into that but like i have my theories but yeah the leon combat just looks insane you can also pick up dropped enemy weapons as like limited use weapons they also revealed that the zombies have a little bit of humanity left in them Right. So they're kind of like you're going around like this, like hotel, this haunted hotel. And like you can come across an enemy that's like still still like it's like a maid still washing a window. But she's like a zombie. So she's like.

And then you can fucking kill her. Also, they announced that there are amiibos coming, but they didn't show what they are. And I have questions. Desperate to see them. What are they going to do? Do you think it's going to be Leon and Grace? I mean, it has to be, right? Leon Amiibo.

I mean, it has to be 100% neon. Yeah, and they're not going to do neon without doing grey, so absolutely. And there'll be like a zombie or something, and then like, I don't know, one of the ink ribbons or something. I'll tell you what it's going to be. This is it. It's going to be you buy the ink ribbon amiibo. And it lets you endlessly save endless supply of ink ribbons.

That is the kind of bullshit that Capcom is actually in on. By the way, when they do their microtransactions, they add like weird little shit that you're just kind of like, why is that in the game, Capcom? And it's like, they're into that. Trust me. Watch this space. Do you think it would work with the new Animal Crossing update? Because you can have Zelda characters on your island now, so can you have Leon just come and fucking roundhouse kick?

resetting or something. Why not? Absolutely, that's going to happen. Put him in Smash. You put him in Smash, yeah. Okay, yep. Cool. Resident Evil, I'm looking forward to that one. That's pretty soon Resident Evil as well. Yeah. 27. 27 to Feb. I mean, there's also, I mean, February is still pretty busy. You got Dragon Quest 7, Nioh 3, Mugenics. Mugenics is one that I'm actually very interested in checking out. I really would like to have a good look at that one because I never played much Isaac.

And I'm kind of viewing this as my chance to like get on that train early for like his next thing. Do you know what I mean? Like it's too late for me with Isaac, you know, like, yeah, it's not happening. But, but maybe, maybe this next thing would be the one where I'll be like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm keeping up. I'm playing. I know what, I know what it is.

Re-animal for me is big for February. Oh, yeah. What'd you say, sorry? Re-animal. Re-animal. Oh, absolutely. 100%. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. I would like to put a game on people's radar. that's coming out in January, actually. It's called Can. Oh, yeah, The Climbing Game. The Climbing Game. I think that should be on people's.

radars why why do you say it like that i don't know why no i karen has been one that's been kind of it's been at summer game fest and whatever for the past couple of years i think just from the outside looking in it just looks like a really beautiful message and a good story about perseverance and climbing good climbing good good climbs yeah because it's from the the people who made fury

And then they made that other one. Sorry? The Game Bakers. Yeah, they made Fury and they made another one after that, which is like, oh, Haven. That's right, of course. Anyway, they make really fantastic games. And this one, I played the demo of it a while back at Gamescom. And yeah, climbing mechanics are fantastic. Art style is beautiful. Just the whole package looks really, really great. And the team behind it, they know what they're doing.

So I personally am very excited for that one. That is around the 30th of January, I want to say. Yeah, January 29th. Ooh, I didn't know. So I clicked on it. I didn't realize Martin Stig Anderson, who did Limbo and Inside and the composer of Cocoon. I didn't even know he did that. That's fantastic. That's a nice bonus. That's great.

Of course, we'd be remiss not to mention the highlight of January. Wait, hang on. I need to see if I can guess what he's doing. It's Code Vein 2. It's definitely Code Vein 2, right? It's the big game that's coming out in January. It's the big game that everyone's talking about that's coming out in January. Oh, I know. It's High God. Thank you very much. It's funny that you had to think about it and like go, huh, huh.

I feel very concerned for these developers. Their game comes out in 10 days and we haven't heard anything about it. I don't know, man. That's rough. That's rough. I wonder if it actually will come out in 10 days. Are they secretly delaying it or something behind the scenes? To be this radio silent? I think it's coming out. Some radio silence is okay, but after a while you're like, oh, well, like nothing? Like nothing? Literally nothing? Like that's crazy, you know? So...

I don't know. I think everyone's obviously really down on it and they're like, we don't need another one of these games. I'm always open to another one of these games because I think it's... people looked at arc raiders they're like oh we don't need any more of that multiplayer whatever you know and then like arc raiders happened so it's possible it's possible this is fantastic i'm not writing it off but it's also

hard to be excited about yeah just just just to like from even like we talked about it last podcast yeah maybe there's something cool to riding on a horse and shooting a guy with a gun that's like the only mechanic that i'm like oh maybe there's something there like work for red dead you know yeah you know it could be the same yeah

Well, who knows? The thing is, too, with the whole like developed and secret and coming out as just like the shadow drop, a lot of people have kind of pointed out that it's like, well, it hasn't had. And that means it hasn't had any real public.

testing or stress testing or anything like that right and that's that's a fair assumption right like i don't think that's like out of out of pocket no absolutely not i just think if you're launching into 1.0 without any public beta tests yeah for a multiplayer game like this

i i don't know man like i just yeah i don't know at all how that goes i i really wonder as well how many people are going to turn up on day one given the fact that there's just no promotion behind this at all content creators I just don't know. I don't know. I wonder if, I don't know where I read it, but like it was like this theory that like they actually were planning on shadow dropping it.

during the Game Awards, which if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. Because if Jeff's one more thing was, here's a cool game made from people that make cool games in the past, and they've been working on it in secret, and by the way, you can play it right now, then...

That's a cool-ish one more thing, right? And you're like, okay, cool. We get a fun new free-to-play game to play right now. Thanks, Jeff. But for it to be like, hey, it's coming out in six weeks if you can still remember it. by then like that's a different thing you know so i wonder if like that's actually what's happened and man that would be such a that would be so disappointing for them like to have missed that that milestone and not hit that that would have hurt so yeah yeah all right

That's that. I'm intrigued. Hi, guys. I mean, Kiwami. Yakuza Kiwami 3 and was it Dark Tides? Is that extra content? Dark Tides. Dark Tides. Extra content. What's Dark Tides? It's like an add-on to Kiwami 3. Oh, really? Oh, right, right, right. But where you play as... Mine. Fair enough. And so, yeah, Yakuza Freak. I'm excited for that. Do you know what? That's also February. Do you know what I'm ashamed to admit that I'm excited for? Wait. It could be anything. I'm trying to look at something.

Pokemon. No, there's no way I would ever be excited about a Pokemon game. Don't be fucking ridiculous. I'm extremely excited for High on Life 2, actually. Okay, the first one was actually pretty all right. I liked the first one. It was really short and sweet and like I'm into that humour and obviously it gets boring and not funny after a while.

But it was just enough for me for long enough that I was like, yeah, cool. I'm glad I'm playing this. I'm glad this is working for me, you know? I've got Tim Robinson as a gun. Is it? Yeah. Yeah, Tim Robertson's in season in the first game. I didn't even know that because I don't think I was aware of Tim Robertson back then.

Oh, yeah. I deliberately played until I got the Tim Robinson gun. I was like, okay, great. Yeah, I didn't expect them to make a second one, but it's cool if they are. Yeah. Well, yeah, especially after the... All the shit with you, man. With your mate. Um, Romeo is a dead man. I've never, okay. I'm just going to put my line in the fucking sand right now.

Never seen a single episode. Really? Okay. Never in my life. Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. You're all jumping on the counters of McDonald's screaming about your fucking sauce. Where was I? Studying the blade. Chadley. Todd, Lucy, James, we're stuffing the blade. Speaking of the blade, Romeo is a dead man. Yeah. Suda game, right? Yep. New Suda. Crazy and fun and much love to it. Blade of Greed for my weird PC stealth Eurojank fans.

I've also wishlisted that that demo dropped. Yeah, I gotta see. I didn't like the last one, but I like the first one, even though technically the second one had a lot of better elements to it. I'll give it a shot. I didn't even know there was a second one. I'm not gonna lie. I was in OG sticks. I remember when that one first came out. This is what the Golem game should have been.

I think that's what they were thinking. I think honestly they were like, this is just like Styx as they were making it. Yeah. 19th of March, aka my birthday, is Crimson Desert, which looks like the most batshit insane name ever made. And I... and also and also mouse pi yes correct you're gonna have a big day from aussie dev actually that's right yeah that looks incredible it's got like real band like a real jazz band making the music uh it's got hand-drawn animation but crimson desert

I still am really excited to see them because a lot of people are excited for it. And it is maximalist design. Like it is insane. Like kitchen sink. Like here's all these insane gameplay. Like Ralph, when we played it, I think we previewed it somewhere. We're both aligned where we're like, holy shit, that is a lot of shit. There's a lot of video game. Yeah. So Max, I think I said this before, like Max Blumenthal, who I work with.

He's kind of, his online handle is Rin Harasaki. He is a, like a, he's very fucking good at games. He is the guy who does all of GameSpots.

things he didn't know about breath of the wild he does like challenge runs he's really yes he had a great time with crimson desert because he was like this is this is where i thrive give me these buttons give me you can do crazy stuff yeah yeah and I was just I took one look at it and I was like I was just playing I was like you made me wish I had three hands

you need you need more like me because i'm playing it i'm like where's the emotion where's the characters why don't i care about this guy what's the art what's the art uh but it's gonna be interesting one to check out uh also was gonna be in march but now been delayed until May is 007 First Lights. That's right. I'm one of my most. I am very skeptical about Lenny Kravitz and I remain as such.

Keep an open mind. People in the comments last time we were talking about it said he's very good at acting. Fair enough. Fair enough. Very excited for Peter Molyneux's next and allegedly final game, Masters of Albion. Dude. The newer trailer that they showed, I'm intrigued. It looks like it could be all made up. It looks like it might be a phone game, but also it could be Dungeon Keeper Outside and good. We don't know.

We don't know. We don't know, Jake. I'm going to give it a shot. I'll be there day one. I'm still showing up. That's on the 22nd. When is it? Oh, April 22nd. I will be playing...

I'll be hopefully playing Pragmata. Well, that's it. That's on the 24th of April, but you probably have a review code for Pragmata by then. So, yeah. I hope so. And then on the 30th of April is actually going to be Saros. So that's like kind of a pretty packed end of April, which is fun. That's a good April. Yeah, a lot.

Oh, you've got Diablo 4 in there as well. Yeah, that's big for you, right? You're going to jump in? Yep. Honestly, playing Diablo, I've talked about it in the last episode because I was playing it before holidays or whatever, but man, it was so much fun. It really is embracing its... niche as being like the accessible ARPG to like Path of Exile's extremely demanding grindy ARPG you know and I just think now that it's embracing that niche

It's fun, man. It's super fun. It's super mindless. Like you are just exploding entire screens of enemies by just like walking past them. And like that gets boring, but it doesn't get boring for like 40 hours, right? If you're doing it right. And that's fine. You just play that 40 hours in a season and then you move on with your life. Like, that's enough, you know? Yeah. So I am actually quite lucky. Who is the lord of hatred in the lore? The...

I always forget their phone. I don't pay any attention. Is it? They name him all the fucking time. I always forget. I don't know, man. Mephisto. Is it Mephisto? Yeah, Mephisto. One of the three prime eagles. Yeah, it's Mephisto. That's right. Exactly. Again, I never care about the law. Is Diablo a guy in Diablo? He is, right? Yeah, Diablo is a guy. Yeah, he's the...

He sounds like he should be the lord of hatred. He's kind of just the lord of all the bad things, really. The lord of everything bad. He's got a little bit of everything, you know. So, yeah, that's anything else. Obviously, there's GTA. Mixtape. Oh, absolutely. Mixtape. No, you're right. Mixtape. But do they have a new date? They delayed it. They haven't got a new date yet, do they? I don't know if they have a new date. I thought that was like nearly out. It was, and then it got bumped.

It got bombed. Let me have a look. Mixtape, by the way, anyone who's gotten on their radar, you absolutely should, especially our demographic. Let's put it that way. It's really a feeling. It's 23.6. If you like John Hughes movies. music, that feeling of the artful escape. Yes. Okay, then I'm in.

all right i didn't really like i was like the trailer i was like okay no no no dude you don't understand it's incredible i just look like life is strange i was like okay shut the fuck up don't even okay all right cool It was the best demo I played at Summer Games. I did not have an appointment for it. I was walking down that big concourse in the middle. Ralph just looks at me and just goes...

go play mixtape right now. And like, basically frog marched me to the Anastasia booth and they snuck us in and I played it with Ben Starr. And we were just like, Yeah, 100%. I'm in because the Artful Escape was like in my top 10 games of the year when it came out. I freaking love that. So, yeah. Cool. Mixtape is one of my favorites.

Phantom Blade Zero. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that looks cool as shit. That's coming in September. It's a fun action combat game. I've been playing that multiple times during its development, like in different stages.

kind of at the start where it's a bit sloppy and then like it's tightening up over time and the most recent demo i played last year was like oh shit okay this is feeling good now this is like where it needs to be and boss design was really cool and i was very into it it was it's not a souls like it's an action game it's much closer to like ninja gaiden than it is like souls likes um but just really cool and

I reckon it's going to do super well. That's my prediction. Really creative weapon. I mean, they have a lot of faith in that game. Like you said, they've been showing it off and they've been confident at every turn, but like the... where was it gamescom they had a bigger build of it and it was yeah it was just really yep it's a fun time there's um little game gta 6 you might have heard of it it's coming out this year as well in like november now or some shit if we're lucky

Do we think it's coming out in November? I don't know, man. November 19th. November 5th is a little deep into holiday season for a game like that. Look, I don't even think it... Cause five was what September and then everything was like a month later for online. I don't even think it matters. Like, like it's still going to sell 200 million copies over the next 20 years. Do you know what I mean? Like it doesn't matter. Like it's, you know what I mean?

Personally, I'm just still really focused on the industrial dispute that's going on. I don't know if you guys saw that. Did you see the People Make Games video?

talking about i haven't watched it yet and it's some serious bullshit like what you know rockstar's doing and the spurious reasons that they provided for sacking those 34 people and you know like one person just like said one innocuous thing in a discord one time and now they've lost their job and like it's it's fucking disgusting like it's yeah i really encourage everyone to go and read the people like watch that people make games report

I don't think Rockstar should be allowed to get away with this. You know, if you wanted to, yeah, I don't know, man. I just, it just seems incredibly wrong. So yeah, do pay attention to it. I don't think we should at all gloss over it because yeah, it sucks. It sucks big time. Yeah. So yeah. Other than that, well, Fables this year as well, right? It's got to be. Fables this year. I mean, we'll find out next week at the park, right? Oh, and a Forza too.

Yeah, Forza Japan. I'm actually, yeah. That's a good place for it. I agree. I'm... excited for that i like it yeah it's it's a good little it's a good little i wasn't really into it until i played the most recent one and i was like oh okay i see the appeal i'm into this now um

Anything else? There's a few other things. Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff that isn't dated. I have Valor Mortis. I'm sorry I just talked over you again. The delay is a little bit... I've noticed this call has been... My bad. No, I'm just extra rude. You're from Long Island. I was going to say, keep this in. If we ever talk over each other, it's because the internet is still not caught up to.

where it should be in terms of video calls. I'm far away. I'm very far away. You're so far away. Marvel's Wolverine doesn't have a date yet. Out of words, that cool epic game that should be this year that doesn't have a date yet. Toxic Commando, I believe, doesn't have a date yet. The Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War is very high on my list. Marvel 1943 Rise of Hydra is still apparently a game that exists. It was supposed to come out last year.

And it's been radio. It got moved in and it's radio silence. So I'm curious about that on toast. The next game from Frictional Games. Oh, yeah. The people behind Soma most recently. That looks cool as hell. Yeah, there's still a lot of floating stuff, acts of blood over the hill, smaller games I'm interested in. Yeah, there's one.

That came across my desk the other day. That's a new phrase. You're doing like the Wolf of Wall Street. Like John, this new stock that came across my desk. It just came across my desk. Well, you guys have seen a picture of my desk that I actually have. I paid $50 on Facebook Marketplace for a giant banker's desk. So if anyone can say... Across my desk. Come across my desk. This is you, yeah. 1348xVoto. Never heard of this.

Which is, I got an email about it. It's like you play across medieval Italy as a young knight errant who sets off on a brutal quest to find and save her closest one. who is played by Jennifer English. Oh, what the fuck? This looks cool. Albie Baldwin is the main character. And then, yeah, you find and save her closest one, Bianca. This is... Their first game, it looks like. But it's from the publisher that did Forgotten City. So that's cool. I'm going to assume that's an Unreal game.

I assume all of them are unreal. I was going to say, I assume it's all unreal. Wait, did you guys get this rumor that we're getting like a Witcher 3 expansion? Oh, yeah. That sounds so good. I love that. why not i mean yeah yeah i'll take any opportunity i haven't done a playthrough in so long and i would absolutely just do another playthrough if if it was true like just not even not even yeah

No question. Mine was 2020. Yeah. 2020. I did all of it with all of the, all the DLC, summer of 2020. Fantastic. My first thought when I heard this rumor was poor Joseph Anderson. This guy was like, he was probably just about to click upload on the next bit. He's like, I'm going to be done with this shit. It's all finished, baby. This chapter of my life is over. And then CD Projekt Red's like, uh-uh-uh. I don't think so.

No, I mean, like, I'm just like looking through my wishlist for stuff that's cool. I mean, like, there's a bunch of stuff that I wishlisted from Detective Fest, from various, you know, Day of the Devs. There's stuff like Zero Parades, which is the new Zaom game.

Oh, yeah. That could be cool. Spy instead. What's the game? Oh, Elflock is this year. Elflock? Elflock? Where... you are it's like a third person you're kind of you're you're playing as essentially as like a like a princess but you sort of have to learn etiquette and basically navigate how to get through the court all that kind of shit and so uh very decision-based again medieval i feel like i'm i'm i'm in you found me in a very medieval lady simulator yes um but no it looks it looks very

cool so the game being made by that new studio liquid swords the guy one of the guys who worked on the Mad Max game the avalanche game it's the one where you're like a guy and you punch people and you drive a car That's right up my alley. I forgot what it's called, though. It's got like a weird name. Samson? Yeah, that's it. Oh, Samson.

tindalston story i think they should just call it samson but yeah a consequence heavy noir action game focuses on the eponymous samson mccray yeah it's like beard guy yeah it's like first draft sam fisher from splinter cell conviction yeah That's a very specific reference. Very much excited for April 2026 where I Am Jesus Christ finally releases. Have you seen this one? Yeah.

It's like an on-air engine game where you play Jesus Christ walking around. Why not? Why not? Oh, Control. Control Resident. That's 2026 at some point. I've heard of that. So this is already, I think, open up to be a pretty decent year. And we don't even know some of the big hitters. They won't announce them until Summer Games or whatever. Your holiday lineup, we don't know your holiday lineup. We know there's going to be a Call of Duty game.

and that's about it you know so i don't know man do you think we're gonna get the um assassin's creed 4 remake because oh it feels like it's soon it's very imminent It feels super imminent. Yeah.

I feel like it's going to be such a whiplash for my audience, I think, because I spent like so many videos being like new. Shitting on Ubisoft. Assassin's Creed sucks. Assassin's Creed sucks. Yeah, I do that too. I'm going to be like, Assassin's Creed is the best book I could see in the whole world, man. Oh my God, it's so good.

such a good game man i'm ready i'll just go back i don't care i i watched like a cut scene of it because i was like comparing the writing and like whatever else when i was reviewing shadows and i watched a cut scene of um black flag and i'm like god this is good this is well written this is well acted this is fucking good stuff man i was like ubisoft used to be able to write stories and write characters how about that

God, I'm so excited for that. That's like top five for me this year, if it's real, which everyone assumes that it is. Is Duskbloods this year? I don't think they've announced a window, have they? I don't know. According to my primary source, which is Wikipedia. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, it's scheduled to release in 2026. Fair enough. What was the other one?

um not dust floods blood of dawn walker yeah really excited about that did you see uh was it uh oh shit sorry keep going oh and grave seasons i'm excited for which is uh I don't like cozy games as a term. It's a farming simulator type thing, but you're, you know, like solving. industries and shit. Sounds like a cozy game with mystery stuff. Murders, murders. Cozy game plus murders actually sounds like a pretty winning formula. Like I can totally see that popping up. Right?

So it's like basically all of those British crime series that like your nan watches or whatever. The bill. The bill or whatever. It's like it's got this cozy vibe, but people are dying, you know? Midsummer Murders. Midsummer Murders, yep, yep.

It's a narrative farming sim with a terrifying twist. Someone in the town is a supernatural serial killer. Farm romance and investigate your way through the unsettling town of Asher Ridge. That's going to go huge. I can see it. It's 10 million copies right there from that little bio. 100%. Oh, yeah, the thing I trailed off on, I forgot the name of. It's called Dead House Sonata. This is a new game from Dennis Dyack. Remember that eternal darkness?

Oh, yeah. So it's like a vampire narrative action RPG thing. It's coming to early access this year. And I'm very curious. Hmm.

oh sure might have a little bit of an old school feel to it it looks a little old school it looks a little early access but that was like just announced or like revealed a couple days ago so yeah yes yes yes yes because i was gonna send it your way ralph but i wasn't sure if that was the uh the vibe because he worked on legacy of kane well because he worked on blood i have heard about this now yes i have heard about this yes yes yes for sure yeah i always also leave uh

my most anticipated list and like these types of lists, I leave a big gap for that thing that just comes out of nowhere and surprises us. I live for those. That random thing in the middle of the year, whether it's a vampire, survivors, a Pokemon Go. just some pal world, like just something nobody sees coming. Yeah. I'm really excited to see what that is this year. Maybe it'll just be the division one remastered.

i'll be going back to my weekly vendor resets baby that's where every saturday going around there start making start another channel and just start like posting just division uploads again like build videos for division you know just yeah old times that's it take me back baby great game division one man incredible game unbelievable game that was like the last live service game i like genuinely really got into

Yeah. Well, I mean, I lived with Greg Miller after, I mean, I played a lot of Division I because I was still in the UK, but when Division II came out, Greg was obsessed with it and he was constantly on at me. to get into the division and i enjoyed it a bunch but i never got as deep into like you got garris vicarian like literally being your little yeah your little hud voice that's the that's the appeal right there that was 2016.

I believe. That was 2016, correct? Yeah. For Division 2? No, for Division 1. The trend right now is doing like the post-2016 to 2026. Yeah. I did mine today, which was because I loved Jake's one where it was just like him with Todd Howard and stuff. And I was like, who did I meet in 2016? And there's a picture of me at Gamescom. So Hideki Kamiya, who is the director of one of my favorite games of all time.

akami was he bayonetta resident evil the list goes on dmc he's uh he's very infamous for blocking people on twitter and he made a stamp of his face that just said, you are blocked. And so I got to meet him and I said, could you please block me? And I thought he was just going to stamp the piece of paper that I had and he actually blocked my hand. um and so then uh i don't think it's there anymore but i

posted it on Twitter and he quote tweeted it with, I would never block my waifu. That's not okay, my man.

and i was on a know your meme page for a while with that and i was like oh wow but yeah he was very nice um and then you know rip scale bound don't get me started i still really wanted to play that yeah anyway yeah there's a lot for this year there's a star wars racing game oh man i'm so excited i can't wait no that's um yeah i wonder i'm interested in xboxes i mean nintendo i i think is a big

black box we have no idea what's coming from them yeah like we like we're due for a mario game i guess because we haven't had one you know and so now it's like well it's reasonable to expect that they might announce one uh you know obviously zelda i don't know that we're going to be due for a zelda game anytime soon teaser the kingdom feels pretty recent so that's probably a while's off um you know obviously we're not getting unless they do something like an echoes of wisdom

They could. I mean, yes. And yeah, but I mean like the really big stuff that just gets people like buying, buying a console. I wonder what that is from Nintendo. What does a new Mario game look like for 2026? Yeah. I don't know, man. It's a good question. Chris Pratt's voicing him though. That's whatever it is. Chris Pratt, Mario game.

So I don't know. Nintendo's a black box. I think Microsoft is just like there's so much of it. Like you've got all your Blizzard stuff and you've got your COD and you've got your Forza and Fable and Tomb Raider. oh yeah that's right a tomb raider coming up because they announced two of them and then one of them is this year one of them's next year yep yep fate of atlantis quest for atlantis yeah yeah

So I don't know. There's a huge match to look forward to. It's going to be a very busy year as they all are. And yeah, I think video games are doing okay. Even though, interesting figure capping out at the end of last year is that like the top... five most played games for last year on consoles were the same games as the previous year, which was like COD, Minecraft.

GTA, Roblox, Fortnite, right? So the same five games for the last two years. And also console sales in like November of last year reached like a 20 year low or some shit. Like they were really diabolically bad. So that's not a great sign, but I don't know. I just feel like there weren't really that many big system sellers out at the end of last year. Like, you know, Metro Prime 4, unfortunately, is not a reason to buy a Switch 2. You know, it's just not. And Xbox is...

No one buys them now. And PS5s is like, well, what did you have at the end of the year? Ghost of Yote? Sort of, but that had come out a little bit earlier. Nothing much else, you know? So, yeah. See how that all shifts. Yeah, especially because there's also so many games that are waiting in the wings that we haven't heard a lot about that might be like New Gears of War, the Max Payne remakes, Clockwork Revolution.

You know, a Call of Duty needs to be announced. Like there's a lot of stuff still yet to be yet to be revealed for 2026. The last year of video games. kind of what it feels like we all have a job that's it grand theft auto 6 comes out and then it's like what happens after that

I have no idea. Well, the countdown clock resets and we start looking ahead to GCSE. I mean, you joke, but there's going to be YouTube channels that immediately start with that shit. A hundred percent. Someone's got to get in on that SEO early. It could be us. This episode could be called GTA 7? That sounds like a Game Ranks video. That's one of my videos. That's my Friday show. Thank you. That's my Friday show.

I reckon we should do a commercial break. Let's come back and do some show and tell and get out of here. What do you reckon? We'll be right back with more talking. Hey, next up, this podcast is sponsored by Turtle Beach and their new headset, the Stealth 700. I got a pair here. Lucy is rocking them. Look, it's the winter. Things are crazy. Maybe if you're like me, you're in a winter wonderland right now. But with these headsets.

You got an edge. You don't have to worry about anything going on in the outside world. I've been gaming on these bad boys with snow coming down outside and I can hear everything perfectly. Just a solid. gaming headset, really specifically for me, the kind of sleek metal design here, like in like a nice flat finish. Turtle Beach is really like leveled up.

uh their design and and comfort factor so for me comfort is a huge thing with headphones and this has been great yeah i mean i think the thing for me is like not only setting up and i'm always kind of nervous about bluetooth because stuff just like doesn't seem to want to work for me however there is a dual wireless transmitter system so i put one in my playstation one in my pc and i could just i was just

it worked. And that is huge for me. I just want something that's an easy setup, easy for me to do. I don't have to think about it. And I can just seamlessly switch between the two depending on what I'm doing. And so for that. really enjoying the stuff that's that's such a big thing because like sometimes you get a gaming headset and it can be like really finicky really cumbersome if you like to switch between devices but i'm glad that turtle beach really sorted that out not only that uh like the

detail like hearing footsteps hearing like you know foliage in games and stuff like that that's been a big thing for me i'm not a big multiplayer guy but some some people like to get a competitive edge with what you hear but for me playing single player games uh the detail

has been really great but the big thing is the battery life these things are insane if something like i didn't i thought what's what's a good headset battery life i'm used to kind of like a 15 to 20 maybe this bad boy has 80 that is so much gaming to be done like it's fantastic yes the stealth 700 headset 80 hours of battery life it is crazy so uh the stealth 700 you know turtle beach makes gaming headsets they also make other stuff if you want to check it out

So if you have any of your holiday money still left and burning a hole in your pocket and you want to upgrade your headset, head over to TurtleBeach.com and use code FPS for 10% off your entire order. And like Jake said, there is plenty of stuff on there to choose from. So turtlebeach.com, use code FPS for 10% off. Thank you again to Turtle Beach for sponsoring this episode.

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All right, let's do a little bit of show and tell, something we'll be doing that's not up in a video game. I already mentioned The Devils earlier, so I'll go to you guys. I do have a couple more books what I've been reading. I've got a book. I can do an update on my Mistborn journey. Oh, yeah. I like this. Okay, so now I'm like properly into Mistborn. Before I was just doing the setup or whatever, I'm like maybe just over halfway through the first book, right? Right. I love it.

It's awesome. It's basically like a video game. And in fact, because I saw that actually Brandon Sanderson is pitching the book as like... two video game publishers is like, we should make a game out of this. And he's like trying to, and if you read it, it's absolutely like that. Like it's got basically got this magic system, which is essentially like.

Dishonored-esque. If you had Arcane make this game, it would just be incredible. So I like it a lot. I'm really into it. I love the world building. I think... Yeah, the dialogue side of it is not great. So that part of the characters all seem a bit sort of like comical in a way that they probably shouldn't be.

um but the world is very cool and the premise is cool and the magic system rules like it's just so fun to like read the fights that are happening and the way they use this magic in this way and uh it's it's very cool so i

hardly recommend it i'm still like chugging through it as i said over halfway now but apparently i didn't know this i thought it was a trilogy but it turns out there's like 20 books in this saga or whatever it's called like the fuck i can't even remember what it's called now but um

yeah it's big it's very very big so people are people are serious about it but i do hope it gets adapted to different things because it would be an absolutely kick-ass video game like it's just made to be adapted for sure yeah that's me i've watched a lot of movies uh it's kind of like what i do at the end of the year i catch up on stuff um are you logging oh i am logging them yeah i'm just gonna i have i have yet to watch a movie in 2020

Sick, so I haven't been on Letterboxd. My social media platform of choice. The new Knives Out, Wake Up Dead Man. I thought it was pretty cool. I actually thought it was better as just this interesting Josh O'Connor Catholic adventure. And then Benoit Blanc shows up and he's like a little silly guy. I like the first half better, but it was cool. F1, I didn't really jive with. I watched that on the plane.

And by which I mean I watched someone else's screen in front of me while they watched it. And I feel like I saw the whole movie and everything that was happening. I was like, okay, I know what this is. It reminded me of an episode of like Suits. where like everything's just really pretty all the time you know and clean looking yeah and there's just the plot is rather incidental to what is being framed is that kind of cool because it was like it was like holy shit f1 is so sleek and expensive and

Yes, but I will say so Joe Kaczynski directed it. So the races were incredible. The races were great. The sound was unbelievable. The story just did absolutely nothing for me. yeah it looks so boring like brad pitt shows up learns nothing in the end ends up still being the coolest and he's like see you guys later and then the movie ends and it's like all right like i get it man he just like walks off into the crowd at the end of the movie and yeah

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was fine. I watched the entire Ken Burns American Revolution documentary. uh it was like really long isn't that like really long 20 hours or some shit it wasn't that long i think it was like 12. okay okay and it's just all pan and scan Zooming and it was fascinating. It was really good. I don't know if it was his best one, but it was it was really good. Roof Man with Channing Tatum is a great movie.

It's based on a true story. It's based on a true story about a guy who does crime by busting into like he he climbs on top of like a McDonald's or like a mall. and would break in through the roof. Oh, yes. And then at one point, so it takes place in the 90s, he busts into a Toys R Us. So he breaks out of jail, and he does one last robbery.

And he busts into a Toys R Us, but then he has to hide out in the Toys R Us and live there at night. It's one of my favorite subgenres of movies that I've made up where it's like... insane guy gets away with crazy shit in america like the wolf of wall street catch me if you can exactly this is like that okay um Ocean's Eleven? Yeah, it was like that. But it was based on a true story, apparently. Saw Tron Aries. Bad Tron fan. Didn't watch it in a movie theater. It was...

A movie for sure. It was it was a Nine Inch Nails visual. Yeah, but a lot of the Nine Inch Nails and like a lot like there were a couple of tracks in that where I was like, this is just the social network. They just did the same thing. No disrespect to them. I know. Sorry, Lucy. No, I mean, I can see. Some of the songs were incredible. However, as alive as you need me to be. Yes.

yeah i think the movie also had really good tron ideas in terms of like visuals and like you know new ways these little tron computer characters are going to do things but ultimately just didn't really have any sauce or like emotion behind it begonia i fucking really loved i thought begonia was great you should know nothing going in i thought it was cool don't even watch yeah you're either gonna love it or be like that was why did what the hell was that why did i watch that

I loved it. If you like Yorgos movies, it's one of them. And that's where I'll... Oh, One Battle After Another I thought was pretty good. A lot of people were talking... Say it again?

overrated question mark so a lot of people did say it was like it is cinema it's the best thing i've ever seen and it like no it wasn't but it was a good time i think leo did really good physical comedy again um he kind of just fucks up the whole movie and sucks and then it ends like which is kind of funny um uh benicio del toro was great uh and sean penn was unbelievable as this like insane villain

Just a weird movie. And yeah, good time. Cool. So that was me. Big movie guy. Nice. I mean, I've been big book, big book. So my big book girl. So my. not a not a new year's resolution but i've been i'm trying to make lots of little changes that add up rather than actually do anything you know big because i feel like if you fall off then it doesn't really become a habit so but one of the things i've been trying to do is i've been trying to read every day

which I have been doing. It's good. My little app. Oh, okay. Wow. Book app. Letterbook. It's called Margins. So I have Letterboxd and I have... uh no so i have goodreads i have storygraph and i have margins and i'm basically trying them out for the months to see what i like storygraph gives you really good recommendation really good

statistics margins i think visually is very nice also there's a thing that when you're reading it blocks all of the things on your phone nice and so i read i read like physical stuff anyway you know it's just kind of nice to not have the distraction and then goodreads

plugged into obviously kindle if that's your preferred however it is amazon but it has like that's where the recommendation stuff comes in but i mean i'm enjoying kind of all them for different reasons so in january this year alone i've read 1340 pages and i'm averaging 89 a day Nice. So I'm speeding. The Devils, huge recommend. Thank you. Huge, huge recommend. Then, unfortunately, I read two that I did not like.

and now my fourth book of the year i am enjoying a lot so i will kind of ramp up to that so first i read um this is how you lose the time war which is a book about two like red and blue are the characters names and they are diving and dipping all across time and they're leaving each other notes and they fall in love. I think I've just come to realize that that kind of writing, it's quite...

A polite way to be like a little bit up its own ass, sniffing its own farts. And I just, it just, it just didn't work for me at all. And it was like mostly quite a short book and I got through it in two sittings, but it just like. It had some cool sci-fi concepts, but I just, I don't know. It just did not gel with me at all. And then I read, speaking of cool sci-fi concepts, I read Project Hail Mary because everyone was saying that the trailer spoiled.

The twist or something from the book. And I was like, well, I don't want to get spoiled. This is the Martian guy. You mean the former Blizzard employee and Martian. You used to make a Blizzard, the person who wrote this? Andy Weir, he sure did. So the whole concept is Earth is dying. Final crew, three people get sent up to space, but one person is the only one who survives and he has amnesia.

And it's up to him to save the world. Partridge Hail Mary. And I will say that I think, again, I didn't like it. And I think it's because I'm understanding more about my reading. habits and what i like there was something about that character where he spoke a little like it was youtube in 2008 to 10. At one point he was like, I'm going to do some hard sciencing. And he didn't swear. And it was very much, it felt like that.

2008 had YouTube had a lot of swearing and a lot of other stuff going on as well. No, I know, but it kind of felt like... No, more like that internet speak from them. Epic source. And I'm not saying that the book was that, but it was like, you know, it had... tinges of it that just kind of made me feel like it and someone said it felt like ready player one and then all i had in my head the whole time was ready player sun more like because the sun's dying The thing that got me about it is that...

He clearly loves and understands science, and I really commend him for making a breezy read that is approachable. And instead of making science like this... impenetrable scary thing he does a lot to make it cool and necessary and I really commend him for that but I think the way that he did it in the fact that the character had amnesia

but still remembered core concepts, it felt like he was overly explaining to the audience the whole time, which kind of also made me worry about, like, some of the concepts he- Hey! So is my cat. some of the concepts he was playing was were explaining was so basic that i was like worried about the education systems worldwide which mitochondria is the powerhouse jake jake

That is literally a line in the book. Wow. Not ironically? Unironically. There's other stuff. No, I think it was ironic. It was actually like a little bit of a joke. And there's a point where. He is talking like there's like flashbacks and he is talking to the head of this, the head of Project Hail Mary, the one woman every government in the world has put in charge of this project. And he explains.

basic science to her in a way that I was like, that's just accurate. That's just mansplaining. That's 100% accurate. Yes, but I was like, bro.

There had to be another narrative mechanism for you to explain the science. Maybe he didn't remember what the exact formulas were and he had to have some kind of... computer explain it to him like i don't know and it just it didn't sit with me but there are some really nice moments in it that i was like i don't completely hate this there are some bits but it just it just wasn't me book i'm reading right now

is called The Husbands. And it is written by the narrative designer of Dicey Dungeons, which I didn't realize. It's written by a game developer. And it's a woman who gets home. And every time her husband goes in the attic, a different man comes out and it's always her husband. And so it's like this fun, cool sci-fi first person. very like very funny very like breezy read quite relatable character and the way that she talks about things and

So I'm really enjoying that. It's like a Goosebump book. It's like an R.L. Stine, like a husband transforming addict. I don't know. Yes. And then this weekend I'm going to be reading The Second Painted Cut. What was that? Cool. The second painted cup I've got on order that's arriving this weekend at my bookstore. So yeah, I'm really enjoying reading. That's awesome. I'm so jealous. It's taken me like...

Six months to read half a book. And you're like, my fourth book of 2026 on the 16th of January is this. I read so slow. So the thing is that I read very quickly. That's not a humble brag. That is always just, I've always read things with varying levels of, what do you call it? Not comprehension. Engagement, attention. Locked in. Locked in. Brain fog. What's the word when you take it and you remember it?

Retention, thank you. So I have various levels of retention and I think it is based on how interested I am in something. The Devils, I remember every character. I'm talking to a friend of mine who's reading it at the moment.

he's like he's saying oh this is happening they're at this house and i was like i'm locked in i'm remembering every single moment of it whereas i can feel time more and i can feel project hill mary slipping away already that's when you know that happens to me with video games too i was talking to somebody the other day and he's like yeah there was that boss fight he was talking about a game that i didn't

think I played and he's like, yeah, there was a boss fight in the oil refinery. That was cool. And I was like, wait, I think I played that. That could be any game that could be literally any game. And I play games and I forget often. It's crazy. So when you're really enjoying something and you're actually holding on to it, that's when you know, man. That's how you know. And also genuinely like margins.

uh the fact that it blocks everything i have i let like my spotify or something work you know i let music work and i let um text messages just in case But other than that, like everything being blocked. Yeah, that's huge. So fun. I've been commuting into the office a few days every week and just reading. And that's, again, that's great because I get 25 minutes.

You know, not on my phone, not doom scrolling. And then I'm trying to again, healthier habits like being on my phone less. Oh, mine is reading before bed and not looking at my damn phone. So I read and then reading makes me sleepy in bed and then I just turn over and go to bed. That's great. It's actually made me sleep better and I wake up better. Pro tips. I'm also doing dry January.

stopped once because it was my friend's like bachelorette hen do and we did karaoke and I was like look sometimes I'm a really extroverted person But even I have limits. I can't do karaoke. True. That's fair. We had one dip. But yeah, just like, I don't know, going to bed earlier, reading more, drinking less.

Should last for another two or so weeks before the news resolutions falter. And then we'll be back to our. I'm going to Las Vegas for days. So it's certainly breaking by the second week of February. Am I right? My dry January is not buying stupid shit. It's my save money January. Don't buy knickknacks. Don't buy action figures. Don't buy this. I need a new SD card. I'm like, I don't really need an SD card. Let's just wait. Yeah.

yeah all right i think again for a we're gonna have a short episode we've done like two hours i think that's good all right well thank you everyone for watching and listening we're very happy yeah it was good to get back in the next with you guys like Yeah. Got a big year. I had a lot to do. But first... Why don't you say it? I dare you to say it. No, I don't. Try it. Try it on. No, I don't like it. Ladies and gentlemen, tie your shoes and go to bed.