Scariest Gaming Moments

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All right. So I think like for the intro, we should do something kind of Halloween-y. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking like maybe we could do like we're, I don't know, trying to brainstorm like a scary game, but it's like really all the ideas are really. like not scary. Yeah. Boring. Yeah. Or like, or like maybe.

scary icons that haven't been in a game yet. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Maybe, maybe Dougette is in it. Like that could be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dougette's pitching, like maybe somebody, like there's somebody, um, Maybe it's somebody she saw that she was scared in a movie of and wants a game based on that. Tries to pitch a completely round character. Or what if there's a...

Oh my god! What the fuck? What the fuck? Shit! What the fuck? The fucking dogs just jumped through the glass of studio. Holy shit! The dogs just jumped through the glass of studio. What the fuck? The fucking dogs just jumped through the glass of studio.

Jesus fucking Christ! Where are those fucking dogs coming from? Holy shit! Oh my god! There's so much glass right there! Oh my god! Hey, a good boy. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Oh my god, don't do that! You're gonna get hurt doing that in the middle of- Don't do that. Don't do that. What the fuck? Don't do that. We drop our controllers in a panic and shit our fucking pants as we discuss our scariest video game moments this week on Get Slayed.

Welcome to Get Slayed, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get slayed. I'm your host, Death Cambling, along with my fellow host. That's me, Diger Weiger, alongside Mr. Games himself. Bat-Oppa. Dracula. Ah, ah, ah. Fuck. Bad Apple Dracula is so good. Can't really beat that one. Spooky name. So fun.

Spooky names is fun. You know, a long tradition, of course. Also, by the way, hello, everyone. Yeah. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast where this week we're talking about spooky games. Spooky games, scary games, scary game moments. What were you saying? I was going to say. Did spooky names, did the Simpsons do that? Was that them first?

Did the Simpsons invent or popularize scary names? I have to feel like the scary name pun predated the Simpsons. Yeah, it has to predate. But the idea of making the entire, like, they certainly own, like, we're going to make all the credits. Yeah. Spooky names. Man, that was.

event television. Oh, Treehouse of Horror? Yeah. Oh, yeah. As a kid, I was always amped up for the Treehouse of Horror episodes. These days, it's oftentimes the season premiere, which is wild. I was going to save this for later in the podcast, but since we're on topic. Yeah. Since we're talking Simpsons, I got some big Simpsons news for you guys. Wow. You met Homer? I met Homer Simpson. Holy shit. Is he cool? What was he like? He is a moron.

I heard he's a bad dipper. Yeah. I mean, like him being dumb makes sense because you watch him on the show. He seems extremely dumb. Yeah. I would say that's maybe like his number one attribute is that he's like a very dumb guy. Well, he has a crayon in his brain. He does. Well, that's the thing like that. Then that's that's.

You know, that's later canon, but it does come out that he was actually smart, which genetically makes sense why Lisa Simpson is so smart. That's right. But Homer has a crayon lodged into his brain, which he snorted up through his nose as a kid, which makes him dumb. And he's a millennial now, by the way. Yeah, I guess he is a millennial. I guess they've had to age him up to keep him at 36. God, Homer's younger than me. Owns a home. Must be nice.

Homer for a reason, I guess. No, but I mean, like, Homer's younger than me in the sense of, like, being anchored in our current time. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, I think... Like Homer in a new episode of The Simpsons. is older than I am currently. I'm pretty sure. Or I'm sorry, is younger than I am currently. I'm pretty sure. If I said older, I apologize. I think George Costanza...

is my age. Yeah, he's like 33 or something. It's really funny. All right, sorry, Heather, we went on a tangent. Yes, you have some Simpsons news. Art that I am about to show you is in-game graphics. If it's, uh... Bart and Marge fucking. I've seen it. For the confirmed next season of Fortnite. Let's go. The Simpsons. That was great. That does look really cool. Fortnite next season. is The Simpsons. The entire map is cel-shaded and it is...

Springfield. Wow. That's pretty awesome. The nuclear power plant, the downtown, all of it is... Don't tell me the Quickie Mart's there. All of it's there. Quickie Mart with a notably absent NPC. An unvoiced one. Yeah, he might just be hanging out. I just thought you guys would really get excited. That's awesome. I love it. I might have to get back in there. It being Springfield is very fun.

And that being a complete overall. And me being the Terminator, like hunting Bart Simpson is fucking great. Do you think if the season... is fun enough and interesting enough for you, you would maybe toss an episode on just to see what the heck this whole thing's all about. I would toss on an episode for you. Now that's a friend. What's the rude cartoon these days?

If people are like, if like, you know, South Park when it debuted was a rude cartoon. Is there a cartoon that's like parents are like, oh, no, the kids should not be watching that? Well, I mean, first, kids don't watch cartoons anymore. Well, I meant like, it could be something on YouTube or whatever. It's classic. This is...

unk behavior, if I had to identify it. Nick's being a real unk right now. What, am I acting like a childless man in his 40s? Who's completely out of touch with everything? What do you want? Nick, you're sounding chopped, my guy. Chopped? That's what the kids are saying now. I'm one of them, so it's kind of part of it. Like a basket with peach preserves and...

A baguette? Oh, no, it's getting worse than I thought. Six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven. Wait, what's six, seven? What's six, seven? Nobody has a satisfying answer for this. Natalie did try to explain six, seven to me, and I was just like.

Alright, cool. I'm just not going to know what this is. It's gotten close to the point of me just wanting to actually... taste concrete and just like see like instead of learning anything new i do like being around i will say this i think it is actually good for you for your brain as you age to be around young people in some capacity it

It helps keep you in touch. I think it helps keep you in touch. I also just – I think like that energy is nice. I think it's good to feel like you're part of a community that's not like a generational divide. You know what I mean? Because that is really – it's a really toxic thing that happened to us all in the 2010s that we've talked about.

And was obviously exacerbated by COVID is we all became so tribal and we all like receded into our own subgroups. And I like – it's just – I sympathize with things like OK Boomer. Not that I'm a boomer, but like –

Like I understand where that was coming from because boomers have been ruling the earth for all of our lifetimes and they're annoying as fuck. But also there is an element of like the carping between generations, which I think we actually interact with people of different ages. You talk to older people. You talk to younger.

people i don't know i think it's good for your brain i think it's good for everybody i think okay boomer also came from a place of like frustration where it was like no amount of facts no amount of like deconstruction of truth of like illustration of truth yeah would change or convince a single person's mind and so eventually it was just like okay boomer whatever like like you couldn't you couldn't bridge that gap north

But hopefully what you're saying is you can bridge that gap south. Yeah, I think so. And I also think like I'm not going to get a discussion with an older person at the gym, you know, about. tariffs or whatever the fuck but like I'll maybe talk to him about something else you know what I mean like it's like and I think that's still helpful to just be talking to different people I guess it's sort of like

Because, you know, a lot of these conversations often are happening around like dinner tables or something like that, right? It's going to be your immediate family you're going to have a conversation like that with versus like a stranger out in the street. Like I saw this old man, this old ass man yesterday.

with like an NRA hat and it like made me mad for a second. I was like, what am I gonna fucking tell this guy that his hat sucks? Like he's just a guy. He's gonna shoot me. Like what am I gonna fuck, I'm not gonna change his mind. He's gonna throw his hat away after I say his hat sucks. I was gonna leave him alone and just like be quiet.

But like around the, you know, around the holiday dinner table when tensions are already high, maybe that's when I pop off. I still like the moment that the NRA defended trans people's right to own guns. Yeah. I was like. The worst part about, and I think I said this on the episode around when that happened, the worst part about engaging in the present moment is constant hypocrisy. Yeah, sure. Like you say one thing and it's like, well, so do you think this?

And usually it'll be like, no. And it'd be like, well, how do you justify that? And be like, fuck you. The NRA having the philosophical clarity to be like, no, give guns to trans people was so. freeing and like effervescent to be like, okay, I mean, I guess. That's just your position. Yeah. Like across the board is just give guns to people. We have a core primary position that we follow and that we prioritize. It's, you know, it reminds me, and I feel like this is like.

foregrounded less but i mean the aclu uh used to be like you know defend like the clan and and you know neo-nazi marches and such as under freedom of speech uh you know absolutism sort of grounds and it's like You know, it's like in the era of a lot of those people just being in power. That's that's a more of a less of a thing to cheer on. But like, I get it. It's the same sort of thing you were talking about of like of like, yes, it's just.

these are people with established principles that they're following. Yeah, it's nice. Even in edge cases. Even in a worst, like the worst principle to have, at least it's- Philosophically consistent, yeah. Loved it. Worst principal to have, my principal at Hughes Middle School. There it is. Get his ass, dude. Man, educators, don't get me started. Actually, I'm really sorry because he was a good principal. He was a good man.

The public servant. I'm sorry for saying that. Nah, you're right. Say it straight to camera. School sucks, dude. I shouldn't have said my actual middle school. I regret saying that because now people are going to associate it with that guy and I didn't mean to do that. They're going to go back in the archives and be like, who is this? Who was the first principal at this school? All right. He didn't go to middle school in 1908. He went to school.

Everything was in black and white. Learned math on an abacus. Learned to write in a cuneiform tablet. You were there when they invented two. What the fuck? Man, Jesus Christ. Well, now I guess I know which grade comes after first. I thought that was many. Yeah, no, one and then many more. Two, you say? What's next? Three? Yes. I remember my dad talking about if we had a different number of fingers on our hands. Then we wouldn't do base 10. We wouldn't do base 10. Yeah.

I was like, that's fucking crazy to think about. Oh, that is interesting. If we had like, you know, like three fingers and a thumb, which I think a lot, you know, certain there are species that have that sort of distribution. Yeah, we'd be counting differently because that's how we learn to count. And that's how we form the basis of mathematics. That's fucking crazy. I still can't do it with all my fingers. That's why the metric system is bullshit because they're just relying on their hands.

The more complicated and evolved version of math is when it goes 12, 24. God, can you imagine if Trump was like... Because Carter was trying to usher in the metric system and also put solar panels on the White House. And then Reagan comes in and is just like, rip out those solar panels. Get rid of the metric system. Fuck that shit. Like imagine if like Trump was like undoing the metric system. Carter doing trying to initiate us into the metric system.

Gave rise to my favorite comedy sketch of all time. which is a Dan Aykroyd sketch called The Decabet. Yes, yeah. Oh, my God. It is so fucking funny. It is impossible to find except on the Best of Dan Aykroyd DVD. It's not online anywhere. SNL, if you're listening. Put it online. They're listening. It's about reducing the alphabet to 10 letters. It's so fucking good. It's not like, it's like, not like the hardest laughs. Yeah. But it is.

perfectly written. Just a good concept. Oh, my God. And, you know, he's so good. And his absolute, like, dead serious, like, introducing the Decabet. Like, the way that he'll, like, just, like... fire hose comedy out of it. Oh, so good. That rocks. Yeah. Our producer, Rish Hell Chen Ranch, I should have introduced earlier. Rochelle, are you still playing Fortnite at all?

Yeah, I play Fortnite here and there. Do you have any familiarity? Were you ever watching The Simpsons at any point? Episodes here and there, too. Here and there. But you're a little less jazzed about being able to control Ned Flanders and company. That sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty cool. Hell yeah. What have they had? It's like all the characters. Not just the main Simpsons. It's like a bunch of characters. Everyone is here. The leaks so far have been pretty significant. Really? Yeah.

But my ass running around is a capital city goofball. Disco stew. I don't know what you mean. I would love for you to watch a handful of Simpsons and just to know. which non-major character speaks to you. Just as an interesting idea. I like the Smoking Sisters. I know the Smoking Sisters. Patty and Selma are good. They're pretty funny.

Marge. Marge. We like Marge. Those women. Don't like Homer. Don't care for Homer. That's how you know that they're sisters because they're like, we like Marge. My exposure to The Simpsons is... pipeline through the album, uh, Simpsons sing the blues. Right. Okay. Yeah. Um, which I owned, uh, without watching the show. Uh, then, uh, the Simpsons video game. That was the beat-em-up. Yeah. Those are like my pipelines into The Simpsons. Part of the problem is there was never a fucking serial.

If you want Heather on board, you need a fucking series. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. There was so much Simpsons merchandise, but I guess not a not a zero. The reason I brought up rude cartoon earlier, just to put a ball on that with that. Oh, yeah. Forgotten about is just because I think I've said this before. But it's so weird to think about that The Simpsons was a rude cartoon.

back in the 90s that people were like, oh, kids should not be watching this. This thing that seems like the most innocuous thing in the world, this omnipresent piece of culture now. Marge had to write a letter to the first lady. Yeah. And now could you imagine?

George H.W. Bush. Yeah. George H.W. Bush got mad, like mad at the Simpsons, like bash the Simpsons for having poor family value. We should have more families like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. Yeah. The Waltons are referenced to a. the TV show that has to make a completely memory hold. Yeah. What is it? I think it was called the Walton. I think so. Oh, I thought it was leave it to beaver. Leave it to beaver. George HW Bush got so upset about the Simpsons. He threw up.

The president of Japan. That's true. Man, that's one of the funniest presidential things still. Just fucking puking on the Japanese prime minister. The Waltons was the show, and it was on for nine seasons. what yeah western I mean this is you just kind of get the coded of like like what a real family should be like a family in rural mountainous western Virginia that's okay yeah

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Uh, you mentioned leave it to beaver and we are a video game podcast and this just came to me. I just remember. So was playing street fighter two as a kid, my older brother, my older brother, Nate, uh, his friend. His friend Robert was describing Chun-Li's spinning bird kick when she flips upside down. Oh, no. And said, yeah, that's the move where she flips upside down and shows her Jerry Mathers.

Now, I did not know what that was until I looked it up later. Must have been years later because there was no IMDb. Jerry Mathers was the actor who played. the titular beaver on leave it to beaver. So this was like a next level. This was like a kid's bespoke invented slang term for vagina. That's like it. I feel on the show. It's a real Ned Flanders situation. And I'll be like, okay. Sure. By that we mean it's Oakley Doakley. I'm a man.

All right, let's talk about some video games we've been playing lately. It's, what are you playing? What are you playing? Hi, it's me, the Resident Evil Virgin. And I'm here on Halloween week with a spooky name. And it's... Resident Evil Are you okay? I'm not good at the game. You're trying to come up with a scary name for your name, the Resident Evil 4 merchant. Resident Evil 4 merchant. Resident Evil horror merchant. Okay. I'm glad you...

Just kind of a fixed horror onto. Refixed horror onto. Instead of four. Yeah. Oh, instead of four. Instead of four. I missed that. That is more clever than I give you credit for. Thank you. I hurt my head. I hurt myself. You hurt yourself. I hurt myself in my head. Are you okay? I'm okay. It's okay. I just don't play games like that. You're oozing. Oh, that's...

Yeah, that's unrelated. Okay. It's gray. Okay, so... You know, pepper. Yeah, I'm familiar. I'm familiar with pepper. Yeah, yeah. The opposite of salt. Well, I was like... Why can't you drink it? It's an interesting question.

I mean, I would say probably because it's solid. It's like a powder. You generally can't drink a powder. But like you can drink electrolyte drinks. That's true. That's a good point. You can put powder in a drink and then make it a solid. So I ground pepper real fine and I mixed it with water to make myself a peppery treat.

Wow. That's the grain coming out of me now. It's not good for you. It's just like a pepper solvent. Yeah, it's like a pepper solution. Yeah, pepper juice. Yeah, pepper juice. Pepper juice. Pepper juice. It hurts. You know, there is something called Dr. Pepper. Is it possible that you were trying to recreate that? Son of a bitch! They already did it! You can drink Dr. Pepper.

All right. So anyway, it's spooky week here on Get Played. And I want to know what you've been playing. So, Nick Weger, what are you playing? Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much for teeing me up here. I want to talk about Resident Evil Horror Merchant. I apologize. Thank you so much, Resident Evil Horror Merchant. That's me. I feel like it sounded like I said whore, not horror, which is always a danger with horror. It's...

It's dicey territory. It's really dicey. No comment, Resident Evil 4? What's the difference? He thinks they're the same word. You know what? We're not going to get into it. It's an antiquated term for sex worker. It's perhaps a little bit. Horror! We can't get into this. I should not have brought it up. I'm sweating. Horror. I'm nervous. Alright.

Because she's scary. No, I'm not afraid of anyone. I'm not. Yeah. In particular, sex work is work. I'm not afraid of it. And you're like, oh, no. I mean, that is true, but I'm not afraid in this instance. I guess I'm afraid of women in general. So I would, if it's a female. I'll give you just a quick list of everyone I'm afraid of. Yeah. Women. Men. Everyone. I feel like if I went around the corner and there was just a titty there, I would get scared.

You know, it's alarming. Yeah, just a disembodied titty. A loose tit, yeah. Especially when it goes across the ground and it goes away. You think it's like, wait. God, you just generated such a horrific image out of nowhere. And it's going. And I quote. Something on a silent hill. Yeah. Like it's got like crawling on the floor. You know.

It's got a locomotion of something that kind of rocks back and forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a single-celled organism. Propelling itself forward. The way you said locomotion sounded like locomotion, like it's crazy. And it does sound crazy. It is a little crazy to me. I'd be scared.

If I went around the corner and there's a boobie on the ground and then it skittered away, I'd be, I'd really, I could get out of here. I'd be scared as fuck. I might shit my pants, honestly. Yeah, I might immediately shit my pants. Me too, brother. Hey, Matt and Weiger shit their pants because they saw a boob. Aren't those guys married? Resident Evil Merchant. So the NBA season has started. And.

Speaking of which, there's an insane gambling story right now that like just came out as a report. Have you seen anything about this? Yeah, it's kind of fun. It's fucking insane because it's like an active player who, you know, he's in the league, wasn't playing right now, Terry Rozier, but like he's on a roster. Was arrested for, you know, being a part of a part of a ring that's doing sports gambling and then a head coach.

Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trailblazers, who's in the NBA Hall of Fame, or rather the Basketball Hall of Fame, it's more general than just the league itself, also got arrested for being in illegal poker games that are fixed. He was in mob run poker games and apparently complicit in some way or working in some sort of scheme to rob the high rollers who are in attendance. It's fucking crazy shit. The details of how they're fixed were.

so funny so funny yeah like because they had like they had card counters they had like little cameras in it they had contact lenses that had like uh that we're able to see infrared symbols on the back of cards and stuff. Like Mission Impossible gadgets. Teenage kid spy stuff. It's so funny. Fuck. It's so fucking funny. So that happened, like, we're in, like, week one. I think they're of the season, and this just broke. And...

There's also like some players who had previously been – some players who had some accusations or whatever were also informants in it, which is another thing. It's got all these layers to it. That's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about, but I feel like I had to note this because I feel like if people aren't following the NBA at large, they may not be aware of this. And it's the kind of thing of like, if you watch sports at all.

And I know I'm the only Sporto here, but I know we have some sports watchers and some sports fans. You know what, Matt? I shouldn't say that. You're a hardcore LA Dodgers fan. Your team's in the World Series. You're wearing a Dodgers hat right now. Of course you're a Sporto. You know what? I didn't take any umbrage with you saying it because I, you know, I follow the team.

I'm like, I'm there for the vibes. I'm there for the hang. I wouldn't say I'm like a big stats guy. You know what I mean? But I'm just like, I root for the team and I have a great time. And I also love to see the haters mad. You know I love to see the haters mad. It's the best feeling. What is best in life to see the haters mad? It fucking rips. It's so good because people hate to see my boys win. And they just hate it because I'll say it.

Their teams are babies. And you know, this, this, and that about the salary cap. There's things to get into about that. Yeah. But the guys are good. Joe Hyotani. Maybe the best to ever play the fucking game. Sorry about it. He's very good at baseball. He's so good at it. Handsome. That's the sort of thing I'm just like, man, this guy is just like my superior. This is like a better man. It's so crazy that he's like the best. To ever do it. And also.

angel that walks the earth. Super sweet. But also in gambling. Don't worry about that. He was gambling on his own game. Maybe not him. It's kind of harder to... You don't really know what's going to happen in baseball. Have you seen how handsome this guy is? I do think if you are handsome and you get in trouble kind of like one time, it's okay. Yeah. It's okay. Because then you're just like a pretty boy.

Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, they were just a little too pretty. They broke some rules a little bit. That's okay. When someone is, like, very, very beautiful and then they also have another skill, that's another thing that pisses me off. I mean, you see it all with actors and musicians a lot, obviously. But, like... Drew Carey tells this joke where he's like talking about how there's paparazzi photo of Brad Pitt. Yeah. And he's like, you know.

You come up in the 90s, Brad Pitt's everywhere, Brad Pitt's everywhere. And he's always the most handsome, sexiest man alive, whatever. His paparazzi photo comes out of him naked on a balcony in Spain. Yeah. And the guy's got a huge dick. And he's like, the fuck is that? You also get that? You just get everything? God bless him. I think...

It should be a trade. I think you should get one or the other. You shouldn't get both. You only get so many D&D stat points, or at least you should, but that's unfortunately not how actual human beings are rolled. Yeah, sometimes people just... have it all sometimes they just have it all and when they're funny too yeah god man handsome funny huge hog yeah who sounds like the guy on my right right here oh god bless you what a thing to say

Matt, that's so nice. Everyone's talking about how good Nick's looking specifically recently. Everyone's talking about it. That's really nice. By the way, somebody in the Discord thinks they saw you in the neighborhood today, and I know that they did, but I didn't confirm. In Silver Lake? Yeah, that's right. I mean, I guess it's fine for me to dox for the head gum. It's public information. Yeah. I was just walking around. They saw you at Sweetgreen.

They weren't sure if it was you or not. Oh, so they saw me sadly eating a bad salad alone. And they said that your backpack was unzipped. That was a fucking nightmare. My backpack was unzipped all the way until I walked to the fucking coffee shop. I had like multiple conversations. As soon as we're talking about it, let me just pull it up real quick. So lucky nothing fell out of it. I'll just read what they said. This is from Gert Burst. What's up, Gert Burst? And they write, Today...

I was working a shift at the Sweet Green in Silver Lake, and a guy came in to get a salad. I was 80% sure he was Nick Weiger, but didn't say anything because I'm at work. It was super busy, and if I'm wrong, I'd feel like a fool. I'll probably never know for sure, but I hope he enjoyed it. I enjoyed the salad. Gert Burst, thank you for your service. And I did not mean to demean.

the fine work by the people at sweet green i more meant my choice of salad was like very like neutral you know not exciting for you it was it was it was pure nutrition yeah i'm i'm i go to sweet green because i you know whatever like so you ordered the

Corn. A big bowl of loose corn. I've been getting the barbecue chicken salad just to feel something recently. You know what? That one is pretty fun. Yeah. We can't get into it. I mean, we can do whatever we want. We can't get into it. But here's the thing. That one is really good.

Yeah. That one's good. There's some good salad to sweet green. We're the captains of the ship and the ocean is ours. Also, Gert Burst didn't invent sweet green. He just works there. It's fine. Yeah, I know. I don't want to seem like I'm... No. If I'm necessarily... demeaning someone's work. No, not at all. No, no, no. But yeah, the particular salad I got was not too fun, but I got the job. How many forks? Bowl of carrots.

bowl of corn mix it up this was like a two and a half for the three about how many you'd use to eat the salad okay can you can you heat up the sauce for me the dressing sir yes can you heat it up okay let's we can't be getting hot salad onto this podcast Oh, it is a thing. I'm sorry, my friend. No, it's all right. Got any of that salad sauce back there? He doesn't even know the words. The lore is merging. I will say, I should shout this out. I don't know if we recorded.

and episodes since New York Comic Con. Maybe we have. This might be the second one. I think so, yeah. Greg Lee Thomas. But I didn't mention this. I met a lot of Get Played listeners at New York Comic Con where we're out there showing off our Doughboys comic. Lovely people. Some of whom came out.

And weren't even necessarily like, you know, like, like, like, like get played was the reason they were there. Good. And that was like, that was just really nice. So, so thanks so much for everyone who came by and said such kind things. I love it. Sorry, Mitch, that you had to hear that. I'm sorry. He'll never hear this. He doesn't even know it's a show.

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Anyway, the NBA season has started. I'm having a lot of fun. I'm having a good time. We're chilling. Once again, I'm playing fantasy basketball for like the 15th time in a row. And once again, it sucks. I don't know. I do this every single year. It's very fun to draft your team. But when you're actually playing fantasy basketball, it's just way less fun than fantasy football. So the fantasy football, which I don't know if anyone here ever.

play as fantasy football but i mean i'm in a league right now so it's like you don't necessarily even need to follow the league all that closely and the games are mostly one day a week you know you also got mondays and thursdays to worry about but it's just like mostly you can just kind of anchor your your efforts in one block of time. The NBA, there's games every single day. You've got to constantly be looking at your roster and managing personnel. It's just so much more of a...

commitment, less so than fantasy baseball, which I played once and was completely lost. But fantasy basketball is just like, it's just... So much work to do. And I also think it's just like less balanced than fantasy football, which is just like I think a better approximation of the value of an individual player. I guess that's not fully fair, but.

Ideally, you want a good fantasy team to feel like a good real team, if that makes any sense. That seems like the ideal of fantasy sports, right? And I think you're more likely to get that with fantasy football than fantasy basketball. Where fantasy basketball, a lot of times it's about stacking certain categories. Because the way these leagues are set up is 9-cat.

So you mentioned you're not a stats guy. Yeah. A nine cat meaning nine categories of statistics. OK. And so things it will be individual things like points, rebounds, assists, field goal percentage. three-point percentage, free throw percentage, turnovers. It's just a roster of various things, a block, steals, and that might be online. And you get a certain number of points like a multiplier is applied to each of the categories. So it just kind of skews things where –

Since you're trying to win, a lot of times the most common one I've encountered is head-to-head nine cats. So basically you're up against another team each week. You have... nine categories of statistics and whoever has the highest cumulative total in each of those categories.

by a majority ends up winning so it's like supreme court decisions you ideally just want you just want to win you just need to win five four and you win outright so it's good that those things are the same yeah but as such it is tilted towards

You can get a, you can like lean towards just trying to win the categories you need to win and then punt categories. Okay. So you could be like, like, you know what? I'm just not going to even try for three pointers because I am just going to like have a team that's all big men. And I'm.

going to try to win rebounds field goal percentage you know uh like like like like i'm just going to try to target certain categories to win and the other ones will be toss-ups and uh like like like a lot of times that's the best strategy but again it makes it feel like it's a little bit of an unbalanced build Also, an inherent issue with this format is the timing of the fantasy playoffs, which happened in fantasy football as well. Fantasy basketball, the way the playoffs work, fantasy NBA is.

They come towards the end of the regular season. But what happens with the NBA is... Towards the end of the regular season, a lot of players are resting because either they have secured their, like, hey, we're the Oklahoma City Thunder. We're the number one overall seed in the playoffs. We don't need to even win a game anymore. So we're just going to play all our bench players and rest our best players.

So they're fresh for the postseason. And conversely, hey, we're the Portland Trailblazers are. coaches busy fixing poker games. And we are trying to lose because we want to get a high draft pick. So we are going to rest all of our best players and just play all of our young guys and try to lose games so that we can ascend to the. draft lottery. As such...

If you have like a high value player like you have, for instance, Shea Gildress Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder and that team and he's going to be resting for the back end. All of a sudden, your single best asset is removed from the rotation and you have to play a complete.

completely different build in order to try to win the the finale even if you were in first place the whole way yeah so it's like it's like things like that just kind of like make the whole experience just kind of suck but i just have to take that with that's the experience you know this the journey is This sucks and it's frustrating. We're mad that players are rested. The injury system is so like, you know, the depending on what.

platform you're using whether players injured or not is sometimes so you get such unclear information on that you have to be minding your roster basically up until game start each day and if you're like fucking working or you're in school or whatever you got some other obligation

You're just not going to be able to do that. So, yeah, it kind of just like ruins my life. But I like being in the group chat with everyone in fantasy basketball. But, yeah, that's what I've been playing. That is so fun. Just to speak on my. This is my first time I'm playing fantasy football ever. I don't follow the league. This is an offshoot of my, the baseball team that I was on this year. Just like an excuse to sort of like keep.

keep up the season's over it's like fun to chat with some of those folks all those folks really but not everybody's participating I gotta say I'm in fourth place out of ten wow man I'm doing really really good um to Everyone else is surprised and my own. But it's a lot of fun, but it is very, very stressful to manage. Because you have to remember, you have a good window of time where you can make some changes. Yes. And it is like always...

That window sneaks up on me every single week, even though it's the same amount of time every week. But it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And then some of the people that you draft, you just don't look into their personal lives or what they think and believe. And you just got to be okay with who you get. Yeah.

Travis, I'll see you. He's handsome and he's got a big hog. He's all right. Sports in general, that's a big thing. You got to just like, like, hey, I'm rooting for a bunch of millionaires. Some of them have really horrible. politics or are bad people. I'm rooting for concussed. Yeah. Millionaires. But also the like like even worse than them is that all these teams are owned by like, you know, tech asshole. Yeah. Petro state billionaires like all these. They're just all these fucking.

absolute huge pieces of shit who are making the most money off of your fandom. Um, but you just have to like absorb it. Cause it's like, what, what am I doing? I'm not, I'm not going to watch sports. It's like, what am I not going to eat McDonald's cause it's a bad company. I mean, fucking McDonald's man. Oh man. That McDonald's sounds good. Yeah.

We should do it for dinner sometime. Heather wouldn't allow. I know. What, McDonald's? Yeah. We've had McDonald's for dinner. Have we? Oh, we did. For content. For content. Well, that wasn't dinner. That was for content. That was just for fun. Yeah, that was just for fun. That was extra food. Okay. Richel, you ever get some Mickey D's? Yeah, I would say.

Every couple months. Every couple months. Because Mark obviously isn't going to indulge, but that's like a little solo treat. Yeah, or if I'm with some friends who are trying to get it. What's your standard order? I like the fish fillet. Okay. You have to call it the fish delight now. Per the president. God damn it. Bad Apple Dracula, what are you playing?

I'm playing a couple things, of course. Wow. Okay. I don't want anyone to freak out as if I've dropped Ghost of Yote. I'm freaking out. No, I don't want anybody to be scared. I'm going to get to it. I'm scared. No, I'm telling you right now, you don't have to do those things. It's okay.

I'm going to get back to it. There's just some things that are currently, that are just new that I'm doing right now, but I am getting back to it. And I'm still chipping away at it slowly, but I'm getting back to it. Yeah, okay. It's a game I intend to finish is what I'll say. Of course, yeah.

Same with Silksong. Yep. Have not played Silksong in a few days. Right. Okay. Wow. Because two things have occupied my time. Ball Pit. Hell yeah. And? And Pokemon ZA. Wow. And this is what I want to spend a bulk of my time discussing real quick. Okay. Well, first, just to say about ball pit, it's unbelievable. Yeah, it's so fun. It's so fun. And you do sort of like, you have the option to turn on auto, like shoot the balls.

But it changes your rate of movement. Yes. Which I like that trade-off. Yes. But I'm constantly auto-shooting. Yeah, sure. Because I'm just like, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. It's fine to me. But when you have that on, you do sort of feel like, like a lizard. Just like a full lizard, just like licking stuff. Like touching rocks and eating bugs. It sounds like playing a clicker.

Ball Pit is like Vampire Survivor. It's actually- I talked about it last week a little bit. Okay, okay, okay. It's like Vampire Survivors, but it's also kind of like Brick Breaker. Right, okay. But it's also kind of like- I remember now. Those games you see on TikTok that aren't real games. Yep. Where it's just like-

a scroll of things coming toward you. Great. It's exactly that, but... real and good actually i love those fucking ads where it was like they would show those and then you the actual game is like nothing like that it's like an rts or something like that it's so crazy But the game, there's actual real strategy involved in some of the characters. I have three characters now, I think, in Ball Pit. And it's, I will say, my first couple of rounds, I wasn't feeling it.

I wasn't getting it. I was just kind of like, I don't know. And then I sort of just like locked in. There's like a base building element to it too, which is really fun. Not something I'm typically interested in. But I'm having fun sort of figuring that out. Well, it being a component, and this was another thing I got into last week, but it being a component of the larger gameplay, I think, is the formula there. So I think it's just incredible, really, really fun.

And so Pokemon ZA. Talked about this a little bit last week. The package that I wanted to be here last week arrived after we recorded. I open it up as soon as I get home, rip it open. like Christmas morning, like I'm the freaking Nintendo 64 kid. Wow. Yep. Which is neat. I did have this thought, though. Maybe it's a little too sad. Uh-oh. I like you keep trying to say that I'm the Nintendo 64 kid. Well, you are.

That's you in the video. That's like how Forrest Gump was at all those other things. That was you. I feel like I used to be more excited about stuff. Oh. Where like a new game would come out or something. Oh no, Matt. No, you're getting closer to my age. I'm sorry. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah, we do. With movies or something, you'd be like, oh, I'd be so excited that a new movie's coming out.

Now I just kind of go see a new movie and enjoy the time, but I'm not excited anymore. Oh, no. Oh, Matt. My back hurts. Oh, no. I got to pay taxes. Oh, no. Matt, no. I had to go to a doctor yesterday, get a special inhaler. Have a seat, buddy. Let me get you a cup of hot water. Too hot.

It's weird because it feels to me like the moment it happens is also the moment when you have the greatest access. And maybe those two things are related. That is true because I can have any experience I want, kind of. Within reason, of course.

Yeah, you get that podcast money. Yeah, that's right. All that fucking degenerate gambling ads we do. Fucking lining my pockets. That was the thing I meant to mention when I was talking about Sportos earlier. I meant to mention that there's so much gambling integration. into sports these days. Like it'll be like, you'll be watching a baseball game and then like a fan duel line will come up on screen and encouraging you to like make a specific bet. And that being so.

so baked into sports media, it makes complete sense why, and it being legalized everywhere, or almost everywhere, that makes so much sense why there are now these fucking gambling scandals happening. Yeah, and I would... wager to guess more people are watching those things than listening to maybe any podcast right for sure yeah be mad there first i think but um i used to be more excited about things like the idea of a new pokemon game coming out

would have been one of the moments of my year probably back in the day. You'd be like, imagine the balconies on those houses. So I open the package. I see what plush I get. I'm already kind of upset. Yeah, I get Chikorita. Of course you do. And but. Instead of pivoting and just changing what starter I wanted to pick, I remembered from Legends Arceus, the other Pokemon are available at some point. I was like, I'm just going to hope that happens again.

And just honor my word and pick Chikorita. And Chikorita's been clutch, actually. I have them fully evolved, and it's great. My whole team is fully evolved. They got a nice little roster there. Some of the mechanics that... uh, were in Legends Arceus have returned that I, that I've liked. Like there's alpha Pokemon. So there's like, there's really big ones. So I caught a, uh, an alpha, uh, and they're aggressive on the, on the, uh,

in the overworld. So they'll actively pursue you. With red eyes. Yeah, and they're huge. And they have a lot more HP, too. So they're harder to take down. I caught an alpha. I can't remember the name of it, but it's the... pre-form of Lucario, who I think kind of just looks like a Sonic kid. Rialto.

It's like Riolu or something. Yeah, Riolu. Something like that. And so I caught a big one of those. And he's like as big as you as a human character. Yeah. Which is really, really funny. So then when you evolve him to Lucario, he's fucking massive. Wow. And like for scale, I found somebody in the-

world that had a Lucario like next to them and it was a regular one and it was like two times bigger than it was so funny shit so funny so he's he's on my team it's great could you find an alpha Trubbish I'm sure you can find an alpha Trubbish Like the alpha from 28 years later is a huge hog. It's actually coming out of the bottom of the screen of my Switch 2. The thing, okay, so the things that...

I was not feeling it at first again with this because I'm sort of remembering Arceus as like a sort of to me like a near perfect experience. I know people talked about the frame rate and stuff like that. That's like that at that point wasn't very important to me. Right. With this being on a Switch 2, it runs very smoothly. That's the thing about it that I don't think anybody can say it doesn't do. It runs. It's smooth. Does it look good?

It's a separate conversation. Because fidelity and... Frame rate. Frame rate are different. Yeah. But it looks... I think what Nick called it, a GameCube... sonic game which is about the meanest thing you could say about any game i think uh it doesn't look too great it doesn't look so bad to me i just kind of wish they made a stronger choice yeah i wish that they because like i liked

the Arceus look because it had this sort of like, I don't know, kind of like washed out, kind of like Breath of the Wild look to me, kind of. Not fully, but it had that sort of aesthetic. And it was going for something because it was a period. uh you know a period piece it was hundreds and years before anything we've ever played before this is a contemporary day and they just abandoned that like just just abandoned an art style so it's kind of just like more normal and i was like yeah

I don't really like that. It takes place in one city, and so the thing about Arceus that I liked was that there was a hub, sort of like town, small town, and then you would go into the wild areas, and...

Those would sort of unlock as you would go and they were sort of some of them are bigger than others So you'd have you have a limited amount of time in each area I much preferred that whereas this it's one sort of big city that looks the same in any direction it's a circular city that's built like a maze kind of right so like you can go in any direction

And there's like different districts that'll pop up on your screen and stuff. But like it doesn't look that different than where you were before. That building's flat. That building's flat. Yes, exactly. And then everybody in the city. is standing like perfectly still talking to a Pokemon. Jesus Christ. And like that sucks. But, and the story is like whatever, but the story in all of these games are kind of just like whatever.

Where they really improved, I think, is the gameplay. Because it's an active battling system versus what used to be a turn-based battling system. Where you have four moves, as you always would. But they're on cooldowns. So you're actively moving around the battlefield as your character that you've made. By the way, it's a great dress-up game. Love that. There's some really cute clothes for the characters. Okay. The girls' clothes are...

Much better than the boys' clothes. Okay. But it's a cute dress-up game. My dress-up Pokemon trainer. I mean, here's the thing. And the clothing options are not locked to a gender. which is incredible. Love it. It fucking rocks. And so you can dress however you want. When you're battling, you can be running around and dodging stuff, but your Pokemon can't dodge anything, but your attacks are on cooldown, so if you sort of time...

your attacks right fights can be you know done pretty quickly uh and they're just a little more interesting because it's just more active but i wish you could like there was a dodge mechanic for the pokemon so you're not taking damage or something like that it's It's kind of like a mixed bag, but I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying the battle. So you start rank Z and you're working your way to become rank A, which is really, really fun. There is a weird part of the game where you're not.

You're not hitting every letter. Some of them you're skipping chunks. Which I'm kind of like, I kind of wanted to do the whole alphabet. You're taking some of the game from me, but it would be too grindy to do that and stuff. The thing that is really, really fun, which I think, Heather, you would really love, is that there is an online ranked mode. Wow. Where you can, it's like a player versus player, four player.

uh matches where there's four trainers running around with pokemon you get three pokemon per fight everybody is at is capped at level 15 so if your pokemon are under it you're bumped up to 50 and you get depending on how many um pokemon you defeat uh you get ranked so like if you get like if you you know if you come in fourth place you get negative points uh but you still maybe get some overall um but if you get you know eight

eight uh knockouts or whatever you get first place and you get all these points and then your rank just continually will go up until you're uh ranked a basically and then there was a there was an event to get a special item that i was able to get

by getting to rank K and was like, this is the most fun I've had playing this game, is playing against other people. And one, getting my ass kicked at some points, but also just having a lot of fun because the matches then start pretty quickly. It's a pretty fun experience.

I know people in the Discord are like pretty hot on it, actually, like just the game itself and are enjoying it. So I'm not trying to be like the game. I don't because I actually just don't think the game is bad. I just think that some things need to change. Yeah. It's a fine enough game. Should a trash can.

be more than three polygons. It's just like, in some of the stuff I'm just like, why couldn't they, I've said this before, but like, other Nintendo games and other games on the Switch work well within the limitations. of what the system is. The Switch 2 can do cyberpunk. Yeah, yeah. Like, there's no reason for it to look the way it looks. But anyway, I've gone on for so long. That's what I've been playing. I love it. Yeah. I love it.

Heather, what have you been playing? Ghost of Yote, non-fucking-stop. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Here's what I've learned, guys. The game that I want is inside of Ghost of Yote. What does it take to get there? Custom difficulty settings. Oh, you can beyond the you've got your easy, medium, hard, lethal settings. There is a tab for custom difficulty. My problem with the lethal difficulty settings. is that what I want is Bushido Blade, the game.

Yes. I want one hit kills in either direction. Just for our younger listeners, refresh everyone's mind on the PlayStation 1 game. Bushido Blade was a PlayStation 1 game where you use swords and any time you hit somebody with a sword, it would like... kill them or kill you or like cut off your arm, which I loved and became fixated on for the rest of my life. Yeah. So here's what I've done. In Ghost of Yote, I have set the enemy aggression to lethal. So they are constantly coming at me.

and they are constantly doing their best moves. They're not like, you know, being idiots and they're coming at me simultaneously. Right. You know, it's not like one guy's choosing and then the next guy's choosing. I chose. lethal damage to me. So I can only get hit at this point by any enemy once. Maybe twice. Like any enemy on the entire map. The guys that come out of the grass, if they manage to get me with a spear, then that's it. I'm fucking dead. My ass would be cooked.

Um, I kept on screen notifications for off screen attacks because what I don't like about lethal, like if you're imagine you're in a fight, you have. like visual awareness that you don't have when you're playing a video game. 100%. You have more than that, the field of view. So I kept on off screen notifications for incoming attacks because I was like,

If I was this fucking samurai and there's a guy charging at me, I would hear his footsteps. I would have a sense of him coming. So I kept that on. Then I found a mask that. increases my damage to other people and increases their damage to me, which confirms any attack kills me in one hit, maybe two. Wow. Right? Generally, it's one. And generally...

The enemies now take one to two hits also. Then I found an outfit that turns off fail. Like there's two kinds of parries, perfect parries and regular parries. There's an outfit that turns off regular parries. Wow. So now it's just perfect parries are your only option. Guys, I have not loved a game as much as I love this build of this game. I am...

Like anywhere I see combat, I am fucking running at it as hard as I can. And I'm like, very often in every fucking battle, I'm dying. Like Dark Souls style. Yeah. I get fucking murked. Guy comes at me from behind. There's enemies now that can throw, like... Kunai at me? That shit kills me. That's so funny. So I have to, like, they scream before they do it, so I also constantly have to be juggling, like, my defense to, like, deflect it. I am...

I am having so much fun in this build. I love that they have given me that much control over it, that the game is now extremely fast. I don't have to wait for people to like come after me. The boss battles suck. Right. They suck. Yeah. Because like my first, my first encounter with any of these fucking like dueling tree guys or whatever.

Like they're going to kill me like four times before I'm like even close to figuring out their first move that I have to figure out how to parry. And then after that, I can usually get like a momentum going and like, you know, keep distance and work it out. I've gotten a couple new weapons. Have I looked up shamisen lessons in Los Angeles? Absolutely, I have. Have I looked up?

How much it costs to buy a shamisen? Yeah. Absolutely I have. Imagine if you're like a shamisen instructor just like waiting by the phone for like years and then all of a sudden this game comes out. It's like, holy fucking shit. Yeah, my calendar is full. Well, I'm like you walk around because you can play it at any time in the game and it'll often like either lead you to like bonuses. But now I've unlocked things that lead me to fights. And so I like.

fucking kill a village like I don't like and of course this tracks but also I really appreciate the sucker punch storytelling and there's a lot of really nice turns in the story but I do wish I could skip through

the basic NPC dialogue. Like if I can read it on the screen, let me, let me click through it. Cause I liberate a farm. I really don't need to know what these guys were up to. I don't care. Like all I want to do is walk in. And again, I love that the game is built so that when you walk into a place and you kill a bunch of people and you haven't gone to the story that indicated you should go there, that they ask you.

Like more than once now I've had somebody be like, thank you so much. You should talk to so-and-so about the guy. He'll be happy to know he's dead. And Atsu will go, who? And they'll be like, what? Wait. No, he's a farmer. He really, these people were harassing him. You have to go tell that guy. And I'm like, oh, OK. I didn't understand the spyglass mechanic.

Oh, yeah. I didn't understand that you go to the highest place on the map and you just look around with the spyglass and it vibrates and then like show you what you think something is. And when you open up your map afterwards. Atsu has drawn like shitty versions of those things all over the map, which is awesome. I fucking love this game. I love it. I do wish I could skip NPC dialogue. I think...

When I'll work on a script and when I get frustrated, I'll go to the television. I will find one group of people to kill. I'll kill all those people. Pause the game. go back to writing the script. It is so cleansing. It is so playful. It is so fun and it is challenging. But also, one of my least favorite things in a video game is when something is super challenging. And the enemies have infinite hit points to soar. Like, that's not the game I want to play.

Yeah. I made the game I want to play. Yeah. Hell yeah. And I'm having a blast. That's rad. I mean like I've heard good things about the lethal difficulty but I love that it has enough things where you're able to tweak it to your liking. Yeah. You can have all of the lethal difficulty stuff you like and none of the, like, there's no reason for me not to be able to have offscreen alerts for attacks.

If I'm like because otherwise it just becomes a game of and I also don't I don't need the regular parries. Right. Like grind it into me that every attack has a certain timing. And I will then get to experience the joy and the rush and the catharsis and the adrenaline of recognizing each of those attacks and knowing exactly when I have to parry. Oh, it's so good, guys. I fucking love it. What you just described. So you're playing.

So I would never think to do this like but you're like you're like writing, which I also do. And then you go like you take a break from that to just play like a like a, you know, like open world character action game. Yeah. Is this the kind of thing you would do, Matt, when you're working on something? Because to me, that's like- It's too much- Are you thinking it's too much data? It's too much game while I have a work task. For me, I'm just talking about for my own brain, I'm like-

I'll play like a, you know, maybe a quick puzzle game or something like that. But like something where I've got to like, oh, I got to remember where I am in the story. And I got to, you know, like, I don't know. That seems like a. I mean, I only play the story sequences of the game, like when I'm actually sitting down. But like, yeah, if there's like.

Like in the area I'm in, there were like five farms that needed to be liberated, right? And they're automatically marked in red on your map. And that's just all gameplay. And that's all gameplay. There's nothing else happening in those areas. Not really any story progression. So I work on the script. I write a page. Maybe I write two pages. I'm stuck on something. I get up. I pace for five seconds. And then I'm like, fuck, I'll just liberate a farm. Sit down on the couch.

liberate the farm, turn off the system, go back to the computer, have the adrenaline, and keep writing. Like, it's... Sounds fucking awesome. It's... It's great. Maybe I'll give it a go. It's great. Why not? It's really fucking... Yeah. And it takes... What I don't like about Fortnite is that although they did add Blitz, right? So Blitz is like shorter bursts of gameplay. But my frustration with Fortnite was I couldn't get a momentum. Yeah.

It takes 25 minutes to do a zero build game, like from start to finish. So if I was writing and I get stuck and I go play Fortnite, I've lost both. I haven't built momentum at Fortnite, and I've also lost the momentum of the script. Right. But with Ghost of Yote, like, I fucking get on the game, play the wolf song so that I know where the nearest wolf den is.

Wolf Den is always pure combat. Go to the Wolf Den. Wolf leads me to combat. I kill a bunch of people and then get back on my computer. Wow. It's perfect, man. I don't want this game to ever end. I want it to endlessly generate these battles. I can't wait for the online mode that's coming. What? Like in the same way that... There's a... In the first game, there was Ghost of Yotei. So it's like factions? Kind of, yeah.

Where you can team up with another... We'll play. Team up with? You play with me. But you don't... I think you can probably do it by yourself. No, no, no. You don't... Is that a versus? You want to fight me? No, I think you take down bad guys in bases together and stuff. PBM, I think. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, that's fine. It's kind of interesting. They said you could play with me, and Heather said...

No thanks, actually. That's not what I said. No, I... No, it's fine. I just said I wanted to hang out and, like, have some fun gameplay. As excited as she was when she found out about her, her expression dropped in, like, a complete opposite way. I heard you throw up a little. No, because you said... No, because you said that was also the moment you revealed that it wasn't PvP. It was... Matt... And it's interesting, she wants to kill me.

He wants to hurt me. No, God. He wants to get in the game and hurt me in some way. You heard, right? You heard, listener. That wasn't me. Matt, you know that all I ever want to do is play video games with my friends. I'm just mad that. That we can't kill other people together. Like a Fortnite squad. You know what? Now I understand. Yeah. But when you want to play Fortnite with me. Maybe we can though. Ned Flanders and shit.

Here's the thing. I'm always looking to get back into Fortnite. Oh, it's the best. I'd love to team up. Guys, we have a topic, and we're like an hour into the show. We're having fun, but I do want to tee up Rochelle, because Rochelle, you were playing something. In an effort to connect with my eight-year-old nephew, I started playing Minecraft. What do you think? I really love it. It's really relaxing.

I just really like everything about it. That's awesome. That's great. I've also been watching a lot of Minecraft content I just watched a two and a half hour YouTube video. No, it was a movie starring Jack Black. Can you imagine that movie was two and a half hours long? Length of Goodfellas. Ever since I was a little kid, I knew I wanted a Minecraft. Kind of how it starts. It's this video where...

This guy did a social experiment where he made two islands and had 500 people on each island. And then they can all talk to each other. And basically, it's like the rise and fall of a civilization. Probably the most incredible thing I've ever watched. Wow. Do you know what it's called? It is by a YouTuber named Ish. And these are like, you say these are real human players who are on each island? Yeah. Got it.

It's called a thousand players stimulate civilization, civilization, rich versus poor. Are they role playing or are they just sort of like, you know, just seeing what happens? People are kind of like role playing. Got it. You know. Leaders come to the rise. Different little pockets of civilization happen. And then war happens in it. And it is the wildest thing I've ever seen. Wow. That's rad.

All right, let's talk about something a little spooky, some scary gay moments. I think maybe the reason we took so long to get to this point is because we're actually all kind of a little bit scared. Yeah, my teeth are chattering. we're we're talking scary game moments times we've legitimately been unmoored by something in a game something has happened and we have been spooked. My number one is my wife walking in on me playing Honey Pop 2 Double Date. No, I think we should talk with like some...

I mean, like I feel like the kind of thing we're talking about and maybe what we should begin with is the Resident Evil dog hallway jump. Because to me, that's like that's like kind of the example of this sort of scary gaming moment. Like that was the first I remember playing Resident Evil one. I might have been watching my friend play Resident Evil 1. I can't remember what – if I had the sticks or not. But just that being like a holy shit thing.

That I I've only seen that on like video. I don't think I've played the moment personally myself, but it's obviously it's so iconic and for good reason because it's legitimately very scary. Well, the reason it works also is because of the way it's framed like the. Often in a game, the terror won't be closer to the person playing the game than it is to the player character. Right. And in this moment...

The player character walks all the way down the hallway and the dogs jump behind the player character closest to the player themselves, which I think is the reason it works. For sure. Like the fixed cameras, the way that they were able to control the composition that moment. Like, yeah. And it's, you know, 100% that is so key to the Resident Evil experience.

For the early Resident Evil. Typically in games prior to that, right? Like in your Wolfensteins, in your Dooms, when you're like fighting scary creatures, they appear in front of you. I know this sounds... needlessly academic, but they appear on screen and the player character is a safeguard, like a fence in between the action.

And you. Right. Yeah. Like if you're if you're playing Doom, the zombie is on the other side of your gun, which is on the other side of the screen, which is in the other side of the player. Right. But in this moment in Resident Evil.

The dogs are closer to you. I know that sounds stupid. It doesn't sound stupid at all. It's why it works. Yeah, 100%. Well, I mean, just like with any sort of like... I personally do like to be... scared a little bit uh it's a fun it's a fun feeling yeah you know uh i don't want somebody to scare me sure i saw you kind of getting i was i was getting ready to go you're gonna get ready to scare me yeah not not interested i don't want it i don't want that

You like being scared, but you don't want someone to scare you. I don't want somebody to scare me. I'll pop on a scary movie, get freaked out. I watched a really fucked up... I watched Talk to Me the other day. Not Talk to Me, the other one. Yes. Bring Her Home. Bring Her Home, yeah. Don't watch it. They haven't seen it, but I like Talk To Me. I'm going to tell you right now, Nick. Yeah. I'd say wait. Just wait.

Just wait for a little while. I don't think it's the movie for you right now. I loved it. It was great, but it was deeply upsetting. The experience of playing a video game is active and it's scarier to me than watching a movie because it's happening to you. It's not something you're observing. It's something that you're in control of completely and you are...

You're experiencing the scary thing because it's just happening to you. So I get scared in many games. My earliest video game scare is not from a scary game. It is from a game that I actually love. And you guys are going to think it's kind of a crazy one. I'm ready. Marble Madness. No, it's... Oh, man. I just wish those marbles would be normal. Somebody's got to get these marbles under fucking control. It's an epidemic. I could slip.

Everyone's laughing. I could slip. It's true. You really could. I could break my neck with some loose marble. I'd hate to see that. Man. It'd be kind of funny if I broke my ass on some Marvels real quick. Whoa, whoa, like that. Yeah, I mean, that'd be pretty funny. If you weren't seriously injured. No. Got like a big bruise on your butt or something like that. I bounce a little bit. Yeah, yeah. All right, I'm laughing.

Maybe I fart on accident? Yeah. Maybe when marble gets sucked up your butt. Now that airs escaped, there's a pathway from the marble. In... You spit it out? And then like a couple other things come out too, like a bug. And like a spoon or something. And everyone's like, wait, what? And I was like, I'm dumb and I ate a spoon earlier.

I ate a bug with a spoon and I ate the spoon. The fuck is happening? Anyway. We're all on one. It's all us. It's not just me. No. Not just Matt. From Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow. I knew it. In Lavender Town, Lavender Town is where you can experience the ghost Pokemon for the first time. And there's a tower called Pokemon Tower, which is a tower that is basically a cemetery, a burial ground for dead Pokemon, which...

Up until that point, not something that ever crossed my mind that they could die or be killed. Because when they get knocked out, you take them to the Pokemon Center, they get all better. These Pokemon, dead beyond... Repair. They're corpses. They're corpses. They're buried there. So one, that's already scary to me as like a six or seven-year-old kid. And then you need a special item.

that allows you to see the ghosts for what they are. Because when you encounter them on the, in the, you know, as a random encounter, they appear as classic looking ghosts. And to me, that's... scary when you're a little kid I was like what the fuck there's ghosts are in this fucking sheet ghost what's going on what the hell and you need a special item to then see him and then you can see you know Ghastly and Haunter and stuff and then the thing that you're actually there

defeat is a ghost Marowak who is haunting the area and making everybody sort of a little upset. But there's also this creepy Lavender Town music that's all. You played. That music during a scary music episode of the show. It haunts me to this day. It does. It's scary, scary stuff. It's rad. I mean, here's the thing. It is cool that they put it in there. It's a game for kids and there's freaky.

dead ghosts in there? Yeah, dead ghost Pokemon. I don't know about that. Guys, I was worried when you talked about this topic because there's only two times I've ever been scared in a game. And the rest of the time, I'm very like... And I know to say that sounds, oh, this stuff is so fake. I don't care. I'm not trying to be an edgelord, but there's legitimately only two big scares I've ever experienced in a game. One is Silent Hill 2.

And it is the moment when I and my friend who were playing realized that the hallway we were in... There are moments where the walls turn different, like they corrode and they corrupt, and then you're in what appears to be a totally different location. And you are you're like, oh, fuck, I'm in the hell, the hell place again. And you don't understand why. When we realized that it was the exact same building, but fucked up.

was deeply unsettling to the point of being scary like we were both like oh my god yeah oh my god oh my god it's the same place it's the same place Total goosebumps. Total like, yeah, like creeped out, like full fear. Wow. The other was. PT. Oh, yes. PT's on my list. Yeah, PT's on here, too. Like, PT is sort of unknowable. Like, it's scary because...

You don't know what is happening. Yes, right. And that disorientation and the lack of what seems to be exploitable patterns and just the ultra realism of that hallway. Makes you feel like you are somehow watching slash playing a movie. And it is deeply unsettling when you encounter that weird lady. But that was it. And I really. like sort of dug in. I was like, are there moments in Resident Evil games? Are there moments in like VR games that I've been scared? And the truth is no.

For Resident Evil 4, I wrote... I mean, that scares me. Yeah. With both Silent Hill 2, I think Silent Hill 2 to me is... a good amount scarier than Resident Evil 4 to me because Leon as a character, if you're following me on the it's happening to you thing, you sort of assume the role as Leon.

kicks fucking ass and he rocks. It's like an action horror game. I mean, there's scary stuff, but it's less about that. Versus Silent Hill 2 is legit terrifying and unsettling. Yeah, and you play James Sunderland, who's a fucking loser. And everybody you come across is like, I don't feel good. And you're like, stop. There's a guy just puking in a toilet when you meet him, right? Yeah, that's right, Eddie. Is that before or after he eats the pizza? I forget the sequencing.

I think it might be before. Really though, I think I would call it. Rich Hell would know. Rich Hell has played it most recently. Yeah, I think it was. The pizza was after. I think it is after. Kind of a crazy move. I'd be eating like soup or something. I'd be eating like a banana or some saltines. Yeah, me too. Some white rice, plain. But with Silent Hill 2.

There's moments in that that are designed to be scarier than other moments. The whole thing is obviously very scary. When you first see Pyramid Head just waiting behind the bars, that's fucked up. Fucking Pyramid Head is great. For me, the moment is more like... What is that? Yeah, who, why? Yeah. Why? I have something from Alan Wake 2 did jump scares, I think, really, really well. Wake.

if too much because there's some really because sometimes it'll just be like wake or it'll be like the whole screen will be like of a human face that's all like it'll be like it'll be really scary like that it's fucked up um but there's a sequence where you play when you're playing as when you're playing as saga the detective and you're in a nursing home

And nursing homes are kind of scary, I think, just in general, kind of. But the vibes there are really, really bad, and you're looking for a really spooky old lady. who's like all demonized by the, I can't remember what it's called, by the darkness or whatever in the game. And it's, that's a killer combination, by the way. Scary old lady. Yeah. Man.

Some of the scariest stuff you can get. I was driving back from the gym today, and I legit had the thought there was a senior center. I was like, I wonder what the minimum age to move in there is. Can I get my ass in there at like 50 and just like have that be like, oh, they take my meals. I have people I like. I have like friends to play board games with, you know? Honestly, having and then you have a built in community. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems.

It seems fine. If you're treated nice, at least, I know sometimes it's not always the case, but I know sometimes a lot of these places are overworked. Yeah, I don't want to be one of those crooked homes. Yeah, you want to be one of the nice ones. Yeah. I bet you they'd take you. Yeah. Be the fucking king of that. Yeah. Are you here to help? No, I'm here to, I'm living. My wife dropped me off. She said she might visit me sometime.

Anyway, she's off to her private yoga lesson. She's wearing makeup for some reason. She said she didn't want to make Raul wait. It'd be so funny to trade you in for a Latin hunk. Oh, my God. She'd be so happy. What a fucking upgrade. Like Antonio Banderas in his fucking prime. Hey, Antonio Banderas now, honestly, he's still looking good. Yeah. Yeah, he gets cuckolded.

in Baby Girl but it's still but he's like he's looking good as hell he looks great do you remember in the Telltale Walking Dead there's a lot of scary there's not that much scary stuff in it there's like it's a horror experience it's a very upsetting franchise There's a family that you meet that seems like they're really, really nice. And then they're very eager to help you out. But then you learn that they're killing people and eating them. Yeah, they're cannibals. And it's fucking.

And it's specifically because of the rules of The Walking Dead, they are keeping people alive. Yes. So they're drugged and they're being dismembered. so that their meat is fresh and not zombified. It's so scary. Yeah, that's fucking awful. Because that's not like jump out at you scary. It's just more like... What the fuck? Seriously, you're doing that shit? Seriously? You're a cannibal. Really? You eat people?

What? You ran out of chips? You don't got chips no more? You're eating people now? Disgusting. You must have a stockpile of chips somewhere. Get some chips. What are you doing eating people? I guess you need some protein, so maybe you gotta have a little bit of people. I would just... eating chips I was going to bring up something that is I think only I don't know if anyone else has played Half-Life 2

But it's an incredible game. But Half-Life 2 has a sequence called Ravenholm, which is like it's a sci-fi game. But this is the part where it's like straight up horror. The closest analog I can think of is. Kind of like Bill's town in The Last of Us. You know what I mean? You get to that area and it's just kind of like this, you know, like.

this community that has been completely ravaged and it's kind of like, in a sense, kind of like a self-contained, but there's all these like traps in it. There's all these like head crab zombies, which are just like a very akin. into the Cordyceps zombies. It's the same sort of thing, except they've got like an alien crab on their face. And it's just an absolute fucking nightmare. It is so fucking scary. I gotta play this thing. I think Half-Life 2...

I would imagine if you played it for the first time today would hold up because it's got some elements that are like going to feel a little bit dated, but it is just like a really cool design. And it is a. Is Half-Life 2 the one that starts with Pick Up the Can?

Yes. And I have played it. Yeah. A million years ago. Yeah. I'll just bring up a screenshot just so you can get the idea of the sense of... of ravenholm i mean like it is just this sort of like moody like dark sort of like you know ravaged village um but There's a there's a there's one guy who's there who's a father Grigori, and he's the only person who's like not like, you know.

corrupted and can actually, you know, be something of an NPC. But it's so cool. And yeah, it's just one of the things that's awesome about it is... Just it being a horror section inside of a game that is not a horror game. It's just like a really cool tangent and it makes it really, really unexpected when it hits and really satisfying. So that's one that stands out to me.

Yeah. I'm surprised when I think back on The Last of Us, I certainly felt sad and I felt emotions, but I wasn't really scared in The Last of Us. I think the closest is the... jump scare in Last of Us 2 when you meet the fast ones. Because there's little fast clickers that run on all fours. And there's like a moment where it like runs in front of you. I think it does the same thing as the dogs where it's closer to camera than it is to.

Ellie? Yeah. And it's a really good jump scare. But other than that, the game's not scary. Two things that got me in. Last of Us, yeah, Last of Us Part 1, I don't remember being particularly scary. There's sometimes when it's a little, but I like it. It's less of that. I guess maybe when you see the bloater for the first time and some of the kills are like kind of like horrifying. But what about the damn rat king?

That's what I was going to say. The Rat King in Last of Us Part 2 is one thing. That boss is like such a fucking nightmare to look at and to fight against. And the other thing in Last of Us Part 2 is... There's a moment when you are crafting on a table and it's a scripted thing when an enemy pulls you out. And it's one of those things like, oh, I didn't realize this could possibly be interactive.

Right. So that's another thing that I remember getting me with. I've seen versions of that like on TikTok where people bomb like set up proximity bombs behind Ellie for the thing. Yeah. Kills the people. that are off screen for the moment. So you'll be building the gun and all of a sudden the whole screen will shake and explode. And then she'll like stop and like turn around and they're all dead. That's so funny.

The sneaky ones, though, I don't like those in particular because that is, I think, my least favorite form of human locomotion. All fours? Just like... Yeah. A little creeper, yeah. Creeping sneakies? Yeah. No, no, no. Like those little worm guys in 28 Years Later?

Worm? Yeah, they're just like these crawly little worm guys. They eat worms. Oh, I love this. Yeah. I gotta watch it. Oh, you haven't seen it? I haven't seen it. I just know about the hog, and now I know about these worm guys. I saw the preview for the new one.

The new one. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah, why not? Bone Temple. Maybe I'll hop in at the Bone Temple. I did. Watch 28 Years Later. It's a good movie. You don't have to watch any other 28 movies to understand it. I'll pop in on this weekend. Yeah. Honestly, I will. Why not? I have another scary thing.

Okay. It's more of the vibe. It's not necessarily a singular moment. I feel like, and this happens in other games, but I feel like the Bioshock games really, really nailed this. Hearing somebody from far away.

Yeah, sure. Down a hallway who's just being like, ah, the experiments failed, but I told them it would be good or something. And it's like, ah, fuck. There's a freak over there. I'm going this way. I thought you more met someone going like, that too it's a distant moan there'd be some people that are like I can't remember what the whole deal is in those games but there'd be people who are like

half regular like half fucked up by whatever the thing was and they're like I'm crazy and I'm over here now and it's like oh great I'm going that's you're in the place I'm going right I don't want to find you or see you yeah I gotta

I got to get over being afraid of those games. I start every single one of them, get afraid, turn it off. New one comes out. Understandable. Oh, maybe I'll like this one. Yeah. Oh, you're the big guy in this one? That's going to be easier for me because he's big. I'm not. Let's do this. Yeah. Too scary. Don't do it. Start the third one. There's racism in this one. Yeah. I'm not doing this. I'm out of here. It's got that and it's scary. Miss me with it.

There's another moment in Silent Hill 2 where you're going down... Maybe this is in Silent Hill 1. You're going down a staircase and you hear a baby crying that you reminded me of. And you're just like... Oh, man. What could this possibly be? And you get all the way to the bottom and there's no baby. There's no nothing. No. But the whole way there, because it's a long walk, you're conjuring for yourself.

what it could be and what they will subject you to. And I like that ultimately they don't answer it with like, you know. like a stroller monster or something. Yeah, the baby's red. Yeah, like, okay. But hearing something in the distance, that's what it reminded me of. It's like, I know it's like, it's just like my frame of reference to this Bioshock thing, but sometimes it'll just be like.

Like you hear that. Well, the little radio in Silent Hill 2 is good for that. You don't always necessarily see the two. sets of legs skittering around or whatever. Man, that game has really got everything. Sneaky. Legs on top. Legs on bottom. Doom was mentioned and this is making me think of Doom 3 because they also, you're in hell and there's babies crying.

That's another thing that's really exciting. The baby and PT really fucked up. Oh, yeah. And when we did the PT episode, didn't we learn that Lisa... the ghost is like tied to your character yes even though you can't see it it's just there at all times you just kind of feel the presence it's one of those things where it's just like that almost feels like it's like a

It helped guide the design more so than it actually directly affects the player. But it's really cool detail. I don't know. Kojima did say that he wants to scan a ghost.

Like, fully, like, honestly was like, I want to be the first one to scan a real ghost and put it in a game. I wouldn't be shocked if he's, like, got a ghost on a computer somewhere. I mean, like, what if that man on accident... unleashes hell because of his desire to make an authentically scary game experience and somehow manages to the ring an actual ghost in every copy of his game.

It's frightening to think what he's capable of. But I was gonna ask, Ranch, are you familiar with P.T. at all? I watched a playthrough of P.T. Wow. It's short enough of a playthrough. It feels like the whole thing you can do in like 34 minutes or something. I sent it to my mom and she was like, wait, is there more of this? I want to see more of it. I was like, no, you saw all of it. She loved it. She thought it was so...

scary and fucked up. She loved it. Funny that that thing ends with Norman Reedus. Yeah, she's like, oh, I'm just in this, too, by the way. I had one that I thought of. It was a game we covered in our old format, Doki Doki Literature Club. But that game gets really unsettling. And in particular, there's a moment where there's a character, Monica, where do you remember that there's an interaction? It's kind of meta. You have to go into the file structure.

and manually delete the character file and then you watch that character dematerialize within the game but like that's the like it like the thing you have to do to progress but it's just like one of those things that's really Just the way it plays out is so unsettling. It's not like a jump scare, but it is like a thing that sits with me as like a horror moment in the game. Yeah, totally. I remember that being insane. Yeah. Man, I can't believe that we played that.

I know. It feels like that was 100 years ago. He probably was. Jesus Christ. Fuck. Uh-oh. We've been doing this podcast too long. Oh, no. Not long enough. Not long enough. 10 more years. 10 more years. No, I'm not saying we're going to stop. We're going to stop it. It's just like it's one of those things where it's just like you.

Like, holy shit, a lot of time has passed since we launched this fucking thing. Yeah, it's interesting to track the progress of time. We've had two PlayStation since we started. And hey. PlayStation 4 was out already at that point. Hey, two presidents. Hey. Not by my count. Should have only been one. I was thinking about this. I can't believe that guy just destroyed part of the White House. It's so funny. Tore it down.

And there's no like... This part of it's going to be green. I decided that this part of it's just going to be green. We're going to paint it green. No system of like... Construction takes years too, by the way. But also it's funny because it's like... No part of the I'm sure there's laws about it, but in no part of the Constitution was anybody ever like.

You can't change your own house. And the president's house is the White House. So it tracks that somebody who lives in that house would be like, I want to change my house. Right. But it's wild to see just like that part is just gone. I was thinking about this as a non-horror game, but a scary moment to me near the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. Okay.

when the president, the colonel, is telling you to turn the game off. I hadn't experienced that before. The first time I ever even knew about that was when I played it for the first time. And I was just like, they can't tell me to do that. What is he doing? Why does he know I'm playing a game? Stop. Fucking stop, dude. Just like that sort of wall break. Yeah. You're just not expecting that type of thing in a game. Yeah. And obviously.

psycho mantis before it but in which probably was freaky for people when they played that even yeah but just just weird just yeah an unsettling vibe to say the least which i think there's obviously so many great games in the horror genre. I've not ever played... I watched my friend play Dead Space when it came out when it was new, and I made him... Stop. Fuck this actually. No, this is too scary. Yeah. What I did think of was was Clock Tower. This was a PlayStation one horror game, but.

Just what was scary about Clocktower is there was this motherfucker Scissorman who had big ass scissors. Let me tell you, big scissors, very scary concept that I've not seen before or since. And also he had like a Scissorman theme that would happen. And so, yeah, that was one scary antagonist. This guy thinks that Edward Penishands was the original movie and Edward Scissorhands is the parody. Yep. My brother got me Edward Penis Hands on DVD for my 18th birthday. Two things.

For a big scissor and also I think maybe your favorite anime of all time, you should watch Kill la Kill. I've watched some Kill la Kill. I fell off of it, but I watched the first few episodes of it. There's some scissor enemies in Silksong, by the way. Okay. The other thing is Clock Tower reminds me of back in 1995. Oh, yeah. We played back in 1995. That other weird horror game we played. Not scary.

But evocative of Clocktower. The title of the game is back in 1995. Yeah. And it's a more contemporary design that's meant to evoke those sorts of 90s survival horror games. Twin Peaks-y. Yeah. Sort of in its weirdness. sort of Alan Wake light. Yeah. Kind of. Yep. God, the stuff, I mean, there's so much stuff in Alan Wake 2 that I'm surprised you haven't played the whole thing because I think you would love it. I think Mary would love Alan Wake.

too yeah i i would love to play uh uh alan wake too with mary she is uh drowning in work of course drowning of course two successful people under one roof how could they have time to play a great video game how could they I mean, I get to play five minutes of Ghost of Yote at a time. I downloaded the Silent Hill 2 remake for her and I to play, and we just haven't gotten a chance to play it. Yeah. Oh, man. I kind of want to replay it. Yeah.

I really loved the remake. It's really, really good. But I was like, when am I going to... I can't elect to replay a game when I have an active... An ever-growing backlog, right? We don't have time for this fucking thing. Yeah. I know what you mean. No, but it's really, really great. That rocks.

Does anybody have any other ones, or should we move on to a segment? No, let's do a segment. Let's do a segment. It's time for the question block. All right, these are all from our Discord. Discord.gg slash getplayed. Here we go. This one's from Brown and Groupon. What's up, Brown and Groupon? Groupon. I don't understand it, but I like it. Matt, have you messed with the new free-to-play skate at all, or are you a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater purist?

I have messed with it. I have to, and I have to report. It's not, it's not for me. It's not great. It's too, it's too floaty. I feel like the important thing. about what Tony Hawk gets right is that you sort of, you do feel like you have weight on the skateboard. Right. And that like, that sort of matters. Yeah. Whereas in this, it kind of feels like it's floating in the sort of way that like Fortnite's a little floaty.

I mean, there's like, maybe not as much. Smash Brothers? Maybe, honestly, sort of closer to Smash Brothers, where you're sort of jumping, and it kind of feels like you weren't really even on the ground. Gotcha, gotcha. It wasn't really for me. But I'm happy for people that like it or sorry that people – sorry that you don't. I don't know. It's not my bag. So, yeah. If you like it, great. If you don't, sorry. People are pissed. People are so mad.

This next one's from Hellblazing Scourge. Hi, Hellblazing. I'm Scourge. What video game setting do you think would be the best to go trick-or-treating in? Would you think about people? You got to think about people. the candy they would have, etc. So, I kind of think the Stardew Valley... I was thinking Stardew Valley, just like the vibes. I mean, they do have, I forget the name of the roughly equivalent holiday they have, not the Winter Festival. Yeah.

But yeah, there is something like – there is an event like that in Stardew Valley. But yeah, 100% that sort of wholesome, small-town sort of energy. I'd like that a little bit. It kind of feels like you're going to get either like safe – homemade candy, or everyone's doing big ones. Kind of feels like everyone's doing big ones in Stardew Valley.

Well, yeah, but then also just like someone will just give you like a whole bass or something or just like a can of beer. Here's a ruby I found. That's a good answer. I think World of Pokemon. Would be great to trick or treat in. Yeah. Also, the Pokemon themselves are conscious enough that they would also be giving you candy, for example. Yeah. Like if somebody's got a Psyduck.

Yeah. It's going to have a little bag, and it's going to be like, Psy. Yeah. And you're going to get to take candy from the Psyduck. Yeah. And also, Pokemon might dress up. That's true. So you get like a Pikachu that looks like a little lawyer or something. They can dress like a human job. Yeah. I was thinking of like Pikachu dresses like Spider-Man. I got to pitch Grand Theft Auto 5. It's like our neighborhood.

Pokemon would be good. A Lickitung handing you a lollipop with its big tongue. Oh, God. Come on, man. It's a big lollipop, though. I mean, yeah. I like the... You had me with big lollipop, but just the other element. Yeah. Spinny cap, too, huh? All right. Kingdom Hearts would be a good trick or treat. Gummy? Yep. Well, you go to Halloween Town. Yeah. You can go, you can trick or treat anytime you want. There you go. In Halloween Town. Yeah. Man.

I wish there was something like trick-or-treating. I got to buy my own candy. You mean as an adult? Yeah. Give me something. You know what? Halloween was at some point. And it's been interesting to watch Halloween kind of glow. go global which it used to um but yeah like likely there's i think there's more asian countries that celebrate halloween these days i i don't know it's kind of wild but anyway it used to be like more of an a more of a

kids holiday and then it became an adult holiday and now it's like dressing up in horny costumes or whatever the fuck yeah um which i don't mind but they haven't had the trick-or-treating become an adult thing probably it's only a matter matter of time with all the infantilization of I thought about – I don't have the money to be able to do it, but that it would be neat to have a treat for parents.

That, you know, kids come to your door and you give them candy, but you have some adult treat that you hand out. Yeah. A little airplane bottle size liquor. Yeah. Why not? I'm sure that would get you. That's got to be a crime. Yeah. A little shot of fireball. Yeah. There's a Klonopin. Yeah, here's a loose pill. I guess that's the problem is that you can't give anything to adults. Yeah, yeah. Little back rub. Yeah.

Little background. Hey, here's some paid time off. Yeah. PTO. Yeah. Man, honestly, I'd take it. Give me some. This next one's from Gator Sacks. Hi, Gator. Gator Sacks. What's up? Wait, is that a reference? I don't know if it means what you're saying, but it doesn't make me think of gator sacks. Like, what do you mean? Like a ball sack. Is that not what it is?

It's S-A-X. Oh, I'm sorry. Just hearing it aloud. I thought I was thinking it was like a gator ball sack. I know that. Like plural. I know you don't want to be mixing the lures too much, but I know you're pretty familiar with gator sacks. Heather doesn't need to know anymore. Gator sax, like a saxophone. I used to play the saxophone. They talk about getting tricked by alligators into sucking them off over on Doughboys.

Which is supposedly a better show than this. It is. It's a wonderful show. God bless you, buddy. Gator Sacks writes, with Fallout and Five Nights at Freddy's both part of Halloween Horror Nights this year, what other video games would you like to see turned into a haunted house and maze? I have an answer, and it might shock you. Yeah.

I think Silent Hill 2 would be a fun maze. It would be an amazing maze. Imagine you go, because some of these mazes are, a lot of them are in, and I guess there's a divide in the states. whether they're called mazes or they're called like haunted houses. Like depending on where you are. Yeah, some people call them mazes, some people call them haunted houses. In the U.S.? Yeah.

There are some states where if you go to a haunted house, you're calling it a maze. Yeah. Because I think of a maze as a maze. Yeah. Well, I guess mazes are sort of like designed to trick you and not be able to get you out.

These all have a path that you're sort of, you're walking through a sort of like, you're walking through something. You're fundamentally, I guess I'm just thinking about my experience as a kid who would go into the public park, and I guess it was not a physical haunted house. It was more of a maze-like structure that they'd like, you know. whatever, constructed. So yeah, I do understand.

I've always called it mazes. I wonder what that divide is. That'll be interesting. I love seeing maps like that. It's right down the middle. It's really crazy. Like where Carl's Jr. turns into Hardee's? Exactly. Wow. It's the same divide. I think the... how jacked a dude would have to be in order to play pyramid head would be scary in and of itself it'd be really crazy but also like okay so these are these often take place in like some of the

now defunct studio buildings, and some of them are in parking lots too. Those ones, I'm sort of thinking, could have... different levels not just on one floor so imagine you start on like a second level and you get to the room that has a cemetery in it and you have to go down that's great that's fucking that sucks that's so scary yeah that is scary as fuck You got to keep just going down. That's pretty good. Pretty good. That'd be good. Sounds like me, man. He's scared.

Oh, God. It's the body he made. He wrote in DJ Khaled for president. You looked like a Sprite. And not the drink. I know everybody was thinking the drink. Yes, no. Not the drink. No. Some sort of woodland creature. Yeah. Silent Hill 2 would make a good one. I'm trying to think of, like, other... I mean... A control maze would be cool. It's not necessarily a horror game. It's got some scary stuff in it. I would just like to see the construction of the Bureau because the vault...

construction for the Fallout maze I thought was like the coolest part of the thing just to see like what the inner workings of that looked like was just really good set design. You could do kind of anything like that. I'd like to see more video game stuff. How about Nintendogs? Just a bunch of little pups. Yeah, yeah. But it's like, it's fucked up.

And there's a big stylus coming in and trying to tap on you. Scratches your belly. It feels pretty good. Maybe scratches your butt a little bit. Mikey Wombat writes. Hi, Mikey. The Mikey Wombat. For the release of Resident Evil 7, Capcom sold blood scented candles for a 4D experience. What scented candle would you release to go with a game of your choice? Wow. I kind of want to smell like the bog water in Silksong.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Just like some sort of mossy environment. I'm not a candle guy. Is anyone else into candles? I am. What do you do candle-wise? Happy birthday. Happy birthday, candle. That's fun. uh, an unscented votive candle on a, on a, on a paper plate. No. Um, yeah, I'll do like a, a nice. Usually I'll buy one luxury candle a year and burn that very slowly over the course of the year and then get a little candle topper.

To lock the scent in. Also, there's a place here in Los Angeles called Cantrip Candles, which fucking rules. It is a Dungeons and Dragons candle store, like an unlicensed. So you can go in and buy cents if you're a DM. Yeah. To evoke a room. So like you can burn a candle that smells like an old library. You can burn a candle that smells like a forest glade. You can burn a candle that smells like a dungeon. Wow. And kind of get.

like that 4d experience into your uh into your game cantrip candles on hollywood boulevard love it i like i like candles enough my wife's more into them than than i am uh but i i don't think i'm like I'm not averse. I just like I'm not I'm not as into it. There's like a whole candle subculture. I feel like I stumbled upon one time people reviewing three wick candles on YouTube. It was just fascinating that people.

had hours to say about, I mean, that's people listening to this too. People can talk about this forever. Yeah. But like, it's just interesting. Three wick candles. Some of these videos hours long. Yeah. I buy it. Yeah. People love the shit out of candles. What was the question? What scinted candle would you release to go with a game of your choice? A Kingdom Hearts candle would be pretty cool, I think. If you could somehow... Salted ice cream? Oh my god, Heather.

Yes. That's great. It smells like salted ice cream. That's so good. Yeah. No, I want, fuck, I want it. I eat the candle. I think I maybe don't understand how, like, candles work. Like, it doesn't have to be... What do you mean? You light them. Like, yeah. And then it burns down? Yeah. No, I'm more meant like, when you're talking about a scented candle, do you mean something that smells like the totality?

of the IP or whatever you want. Oh, okay. So we have a little bit of leeway here. Yeah. Like, like you could, if. If I wanted to say I'm, you know, playing Ghost of Yote right now and I want like, I'm like, oh, I'm in this bamboo forest area and it would sure be nice to have the licensed official Ghost of Yote bamboo. forest scented candle that I can burn at this area and it will smell like I'm in the game. Sure. That would be great. That being said, what I want is cooking mama.

Yeah. The candle. Oh, cool. And I want it to smell like I am baking chocolate chip cookies while playing Cooking Mama. That rocks. Um, I've been just been looking through my steam library, which includes a lot of games that we got specifically for the podcast has been browsing through this. And, um, so my answer is, uh, I'll do a, uh, leisure suit, Larry candle. Oh, God damn it.

Smells like... You know what it smells like. Oh, yeah. I'm not even going to say it. I was about to say something crazy. I mean, one of his games just has the word cum in the title. That's not what I was going to say. I would have said that. This next one's from Crest Sphinx. We talked about it when we did the Leisure Suit Larry episode.

My favorite detail, like, one of my favorite details about that fucking game in the original build, and I think they updated it out of it. Or, I mean, like, whatever. The original release on floppy disks back in the day. So in the original release on Vlobby Disc back in the day, his goal is to have sex within a certain time frame.

And if he doesn't and the time the time limit lapses, there's a cut scene of Larry killing himself. He's so horny that the idea of not having sex within like a 24 hour span. Caused him to eat a gun. I mean, look. Been there, brother. Hell yeah. This next one's from Crest Sphinx. What's up, Crest Sphinx? And they write...

I remember why I picked this. I have a story. Yeah. Specifically for this prompt. Who would you not want to do improv in front of, fictional or real? I have a very specific story I wanted to bring real quick. I one time was doing, I did a children's, like. improv show at the afternoon at a comedy club. Wow. While Gallagher had a loud meeting in the same room. He was talking with this show producer, I remember, that I recognized from...

the club that I worked at. And they were having just like a meeting. during this show for children. I think the calculation was, who cares, it's just a show for kids. And we were doing bad. We were doing a bad job because the kids were not interested, didn't understand improv, didn't know what was going on or anything. But I just remember just doing a bad job.

with Gallagher in the back, just like talking. That's so funny. Yeah. Wow. I like, I actually have a story about this too, and it is video game related. So there used to be a UCB show called Cage Match. Where it would be like an improv – that probably still is – that still exists in some form. It's a very common improv thing. It's where it's just like two improv teams will go up against each other and the audience will vote who did less bad. Anyway, there would always be like a –

there would be themed ones like on occasion. And so there was once a video game themed one, which Heather, I remember you did as Link in Link cosplay and you were just emoting Link. The whole time. But I had a Zangief costume that I wrangled for that. And then my sketch group later did a show. I think I've told the story on the podcast before. My sketch group later did a sketch group. A kiss from daddy later did a show where we did a whole Christmas review.

And so it was like we're all playing the same character for the entire show. And like, you know, Mookie Blake was playing Santa or whatever. And Alan McCloud, molasses boy, was playing an elf. Anyway. My bit that I did for that is that I was the guy who lived at the North Pole. Of course, the signature North Pole Santa's Workshop character, Zangief. I was in Zangief cosplay the whole time. coincidence, I didn't know this in advance.

Christopher Guest was in the audience watching the show. Oh my god. Like a legit like kind of like guy who could take an improviser and like give them a – A life. Yeah, like a career. And I'm just there committed to doing like my very – fucking half-assed russian accent and doing spin punches the whole time that's yeah a nightmare yeah I would not want to do an improv show at the Republican National Convention. I can think of no room more hostile.

uh, or upset at my, by my presence on stage. Yeah. Um, that would be my least, that would be the room I wouldn't want to play. Um, no, that's a, that's a great one. Um, and finally. Rez Dog Millionaire writes, as lovers of video game music, I'd like to ask, what's your audio setup when playing? Headphones? Stereo setup? Just raw dogging with your TV speakers? I love this question. I have a sound bar.

that I like. I don't remember, I think it's just like a, it's not, nothing fancy. It's just like a, it might be like a Samsung soundbar or something. And I like it a lot. But sometimes I'll toss on headphones if I want to become more immersed. And for that I have some AirPod Maxes that I really like that I'll plug into.

the controller or whatever or but i also have those i have those dual sense uh earplugs yeah whatever they're called i can't remember what they're called um earbuds but i like those quite a bit too actually It's always a matter of whether or not they're charged or not. But I sometimes prefer a wired sort of headphone plugged into the controller now.

for something like that for like ghost of yote or something it's so satisfying to hear to hear close what's frustrating me about playing the playstation 5 with headphones on is so often there are um sound accents that come out of the controller, especially in Ghost of Yote. Like crackling a fish when you're cooking a fish or the strum of your shamisen when you're playing your instrument.

That being said, I like to keep my gaming private so that I don't disturb the neighbors or my wife. And so I am often playing in the Pulse Elites for sound. When I'm not. I got a Sonos soundbar for some gig that I did. That is my sound setup. Typically in the past, before I had a wife.

I had a 5.1 system with the speakers all the way around the house. Oh, nice. But, you know, I gave up a lot of that sort of... audio enthusiast stuff uh in part because it's not very aesthetic and part because it uh it is not very often that we listen to something that loud yeah so um

So yeah, that's my setup. Wager, what about you? Okay, so I was just looking it up, and it's not a particularly exciting answer, but I just wanted to look up my PC speakers. Yeah, it's a classic gramophone, hand-turned. No, I have a G560 Logitech gaming speakers. They're 2.1 gaming speakers. So they've just got a subwoofer and a couple of satellites. And they're good. They're quality speakers.

And they're good for PC gaming. They put out enough. I didn't want to do a full surround setup. And I tried a soundbar actually before for PC. And for whatever reason, I just wasn't loving the, you know. I think it may be just based on where I was sitting. It was just almost like the way the stereo separation was working wasn't quite clicking for me. You were like that guy in the chair getting knocked back by the sound. So that's what I'm rocking right now.

And I usually do that. I do have some, if I'm playing with headphones, I just have some Sony headphones that I use for podcasting, but I'll just toss them bad boys on if I'm playing on the PC. If I'm playing on the... uh, the, the, my, my, my PS five or my switch to, I, I, I just have a Samsung sound bar with subwoofer that I use. And, uh, I'm generally playing that, but then on the, you know, if I'm, if I'm playing, uh,

playstation game very often i'm also using those pulse that that same headset because it's just a really good headset and you know you you live with other people you live in an apartment yeah um other people i called my wife other people you live with you live with a partner or you live with a roommate

It's whoever you live with. It's like you just sometimes want to be courteous, especially of repetitive sounds like sword slashes and gunshots or you losing to the same Dark Souls boss 30 times in a row. Isabel hates. how silksong sounds because I'm dying to the same things over and over. It sucks. I do have to go back and say something. Yeah. I've seen you at Jersey Mike's. You're a bit of a subwoofer. Pretty good. I liked it. And it's true. I can't argue with that. I saw that occur to Matt.

And him being delighted that it was happening in his own head. And it makes me happy that he shared it with all of us. I had a sub this week and it was. Heavenly. What'd you get? I got a mini Italian. I only get minis. Yeah. I'm never going above. The mini's enough. Yeah. I'm not trying to eat a whole ass sandwich. The mini might be sufficient. Mini's good. The Italian?

I get a regular and I sometimes find myself eating just half. Yeah. But here's the thing. The half sandwich we get at Mike's way, it's getting a little soppy. It's getting a little too moist in the fridge. Yeah, you don't necessarily want that. It's not necessarily the best stout. No. I'm a bit of a subwoofer too, I guess. I'm woofing him down.

Oh, and I'll, like, if I just have, like, a Switch 2 or my Switch, you know, on a plane or something like that, I'm just using AirPods Maxes. Yeah, yeah. Because they just, I'll just, I have them anyway, and I'm trying to travel not particularly heavy. Yeah, I can't imagine carrying more stuff.

Right. Every time I get a new, you know, a Switch or something, like, oh, great, I got to get a new case for this, and that's adding space to the bag and stuff, and it's, you know, across the bear. I like the AirPods Pro for...

for Switch and for travel. Yeah, sure. It feels nice. Yeah. Get locked in. No, I mean the little, the inserts. Oh, the inserts. Okay, yeah, yeah. The sound canceling pros. Pro twos, pro threes. Yeah, those are the earbuds that are sound canceling. Okay, cool. I like them. Nice.

And that's a question block, and that's this week's Get Played. Our producer is Richelle Chen, Ranchyard underscore underscore Sard. Our music is by Ben Prunty, benpruntymusic.com. Our art is by Duck Brigade Design, duckbrigade.com. Ranch, what are you streaming?

Silent Hill F. Okay, awesome. Check that out over at twitch.tv slash yard underscore underscore start. Get played merch at kinshipgoods.com and check out Get Animated, our sister show on Patreon. Matt, what are we watching this week? We're watching...

The Chainsaw Man movie. With the name of it, I always forget. The Res Arc. The Res Arc. And it's very topical, of course, because it's in theaters now. So you can go watch it in a movie theater. But we'll be talking about it this week on the show. And... I'm excited. I can't wait to talk about it. It's a lot of fun. Patreon.com slash getplayed. And you out there thought you escaped a scary game moment, but I have to tell you. You got played. Ooh, scary. Nothing. Huh? That was a hate gum podcast.