809: Bean Based

Hey everybody, It's Tuesday, October third, twenty twenty three. Welcome to the Giant Bomb Cast. It's Tuesday. Tuesdays are for emotional breakdowns that have eventually lead to breakthroughs on God's favorite podcast with the most handsome men in games media. I'm your host today, jan Ochoa joining me co captain of the ship as always, Jeff Grub I'm obsessed with a TikTok. I saw Chad Smith playing thirty Seconds to Mars. He's the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers.

It is like watching a drummer sleep with another drummer's wife. Is insane. How much he crushes that song. I'm obsessed with. It's the only thing I know the story about that. Jeff Backlar also here in the show. Please tell me so drum Eo is a drum eo video, right,

Yes, Drummy is like a drum enthusiast channel. And they basically played, uh, that song, whatever the fucking song, the one song everyone knows from thirty Seconds to Mars Jared song, I think yeah, And they gave him the track without the drum stem, and Chad Smith heard it without He just heard like the guitar, bass, and vocals, and then they were like, Okay, Chad Smith, you sexy man, you play drums to this song. And he just like it's just it's in a way like it's

insane. It's actually also hilarious, just because he's such a character. And he was just like, am I doing it good? And they're all like, you're a fucking god, sir. But it's like if I was the drummer, which I guess is a Jared Leto's brother in the band, I would feel like so embarrassed. I'd be like, oh my, oh you know why. It's like it's like losing to Connor McDavid and yeah, you've been thrown by a god. So who guess h And last, but certainly

never leased, Mike Manotti, please explain Connor McDavid to me. You never lead with venom. I don't know who that person is. Is that what you're just talking about? Yeah, he's what do you think it is? Yeah? What do you come on? That name just says that person does one thing. That's choie peppers. You're talking about a second, Mike, we're talking about being present and in the moment, listening to each other.

I wasn't really. I was really proud of myself for doing the venom things, so that I was thinking about my delivery and I was thinking about because then I thought another thing I thought might be funny to lead with. But then, like you know, I was gonna just go I'm like naught and I believe in God. But then it was a while ago that we talked about God. That would have that would have been Here's what bothers me, Mike. We give you tons of warning, tons of prep time about you're

gonna show. Okay, okay, you could have done all this research. You're coming in here act like I don't know who Connor mcgave it is. Maybe he's an MMA guy. Oh that is all the Connors have to fight in MMA, right, that's a rule of these days. Yeah, Connor hockey. So but yeah, he's the best hockey player alive. Is he? Is he a goon or hens the furthest thing in the world from you, Yes, sir, he's definitely. He didn't shooting him mop up.

He's a nice boy. He's a nice boy and he cannot stop being amazing at hockey. Does he believe in God? He is? I don't think himself. Yeah, goody good. One of us is God? Does God believe in himself? I don't know what if God was one of us, you know, just like one of us on the trainer. It's my goal for someone to have an emotional breakthrough today, whether that's on the show or just today. That is doesnt even mean the four of us here collected.

That's like whoever is listening live right now. I want this to be a very wholesome episode. No no C words. I mean, if it comes out, I did it, alright, alright, wow, okay, hey, hey, before we talk about video games. How's everyone doing, Mike, Jeff, Jeff better now? I mean I spent most of a weekend recovering from That's right, folks, the vaccine man. You were right.

You should have gotten that. Fauci hunted you down and jabbed him, jabbed you himself, held me down with leather straps, opened up my eyelids. Jurassic Park, Loss World. He's hanging off the side of a jeep with a netgun, just hunting you down. Held open my eyelids like clockwork. Orange. I don't know why, because it was just a They want you

to see it. They know that that's real. We're gonna hurt you force me to stare because it's the placebo effect is the only thing that works, right, that says so yeah, you gotta see it go in to actually feel something. Listen. I was on the dump truck later that day and I spoke about it. This fucking thing destroyed me. And what's bothering me is like, I don't know what's happening. Why am I feel like I'm the only one who's having violently ill reactions? Does it mean you have a

good immune system? Because it's like, dude, if we could put on serious educated back on our first second, this means it's working. But now that we're back to the truth, yeah, there's being smart and there's telling the truth all right, now that we're being no like, this is my first fiser one. I've been a madurna boy, durn mommy, get it right, sorry, durn the mommy, And now I'm a fiser father, get boy five, that's right. Because I was too busy shivering my teeth

all out of my skull. I am not joking. I wasn't at least, so I got it early in the morning on Thursday, and by the time I went to bed Thursday night, I was like like going crazy. I woke up still fucked up. I had maybe four hours of sleep Thursday night. I wrote in a couple of times. Right on Friday, I was just like I'm fucked up. I'm fucked up. It wasn't until Saturday around noon where I was like back to normal and then but I was still

like wildly tired. I tried to play hockey on Sunday. I played in the game on Sunday and got the shit kicked out of me, Like I just just beat you up, dude. I like collided with the dude and just stayed on the ice and just stared at the ice for like a eleven seconds, where I was just like I shouldn't be here right now. Kind of thing. This virus, this vaccine day after me. I definitely need to get that because I'm gonna be that cruise in about a month. Oh

boy, oh my crone's medicine. Humory is basically just an autoimmune depressing right, So like my musicism is already like weaker, So I gotta get that. I gotta get the flu shot too. I know you don't believe in these things. Backlar I hope you don't just be too much. I don't believe them, right, it's just one thing, and it's both the flu shot and this isn't a margarite. You know you can't just fucking mix that up in a van. I got my doctor. Dad said to get them

on separate my own science over here and give separate days. I did my own research and got both of them at the city. No wonder you felt like ship. Well, the flu shot never bothered me. I'd always got gotten it and never bothered. You know, back you got, you got knocked down, but you get up again. You are Yeah, yeah, you're never gonna keep them down. See, I had no songs. Oh all right, okay, they're offering another would say they were offering another vaccine.

But I did not choose for like the fancy upgrade. I did not want a boutique. They were genuinely trying to sell me on something on my way out, like it's a vaccines. I mean, no, I think there's a new designer hepatitis vacs out is a designer brand, isn't it? Or am I wrong? Am I misspoken? Is it endorsed by an AI? Tom Hanks rules Gucci, Like, does Gucci make vaccines? Now? AI, do you see that thing circulating that? Uh, there's a new flavor of coke designed by AI jen. Come on, it's a family show.

What are we doing? What? I can't believe Coca Cola would sell out like this. I don't understand it. I don't want AI to inform that is the AI already going to give us? Is that what this is probably do? It's like yoh, the AI audits, Oh, how nice

designed to do flavor? I would be competent enough to like poison something though, because it's like whenever I try to use AI these first I was impressed by the tech, and these days, every time I try to use it, I'm like, this is shit, this is garbage, and I think it's very unimpressive. It's now it's like like very unimpressive and so yeah, like Coca that that's gotta be like Cokel's like, yeah, we just threw some shit in there, and the AI did something and then we actually made

it taste good. Although I drink right, Like what does that mean? Like A I make a flavor of coke and it goes cherry and you're like, okay, nice, Try we already cherry all right, like vanilla the headline on Coca Cola's blog site or they're their media center here at Coca Cola Creations imagines year three thousand with new futuristic flavor and AI powered experience. Shout outs to whoever is in that AI space that fucking got Coca Cola to buy

in on your stupid pitch. Yeah, you're like, oh, you guys can't miss on on this. This is the future and it's somewhat I guess you're some money. Oh that metaverse money has to go somewhere else now. I feel like if it's the year three thousand and we're all still drinking soda, I feel like it would taste it would it would just come as cubes, like little liquid cubes. Yeah. Thousand years yeah, yeah, thousand. I mean a thousand years ago from now. It was like medieval times.

They were drinking. Show out of time to think that, like Coca Cola as a brand will still be a thing. I mean, we'll still be around. You know. It's no we're all gonna get electric. We're all gonna collectively get electrocuted at one one game of the year and then like our our spirits will live forever in the computers. Like Backguard though, because he got the booster's gonna kill him. Oh yeah, time's running out for this old boy. Yeah, we're all gonna get millennium falcons. Like a

joke about the oh Man. Let's just keep bringing him solo every single week. Huh. Way more contentious topic than the backs for sure. Like Solo, I thought it was okay, I have no problem. I don't even have a problem with them giving him his name that thing whatever. I did take a bunch about inane I can't ok alright, well, so that brings me to it's idiot. I want to go cry during episode eight again? God yeah, I will absolutely. I went to Disneyland, That's why.

That's that's the real reason, Dan, everybody's really tired of hearing about you going on on about Disney. Come on, I know I'm gonna go from Nope, new material. So thank you for my picture. Of course, that was that I was stressing out, Mike. I could barely walk because I brought the worst shoes and then I we had already walked like amateur forty k steps that damn, Like this is too much? Why are we still

doing this. Uh anyway, anyway, but I needed to take that picture five percent two percent left on my phone, Mike, I mean a picture of Judge Doom from Who Frame Roger Rabbit? Who's there this year? It's very good? Sorry, go on, wait, that's Disney. Yeah, it's Disney. Yeah. They have a Judge Doom character and he's like recreates the bit where he takes that cartoon shoe shoe, but he murders it. Yeah yeah, wait the portion of who Framed Roger rab they chose to recreate

things never been scarred by. Yeah. I just I just don't think like that's the thing we need to be celebrating, like the murder of an innocent cartoon character. Watch all the time, and this cost I'm sorry, think we're proud of. I just can't get behind Christopher Lloyd pushing that poor defenseless shoe into the ooze like that. It sounds Unamerican to me. You're saying right now, yeah, he's judged during executioner because tunes don't have rights.

I wonder what they're trying to talk about. I'm not gonna let my kids see that scene till he's thirty, Okay, it's very disturbing, it's very informed me. That stays with me. Oh yeah, well that's what I do because that's the scene that's scarred everybody's good. I just want to shout shout out. I believe the name is Garrett, shouts out to Bow, shouts out to the homie I saw eating a Ronto rap in Galaxy's Edge. What's up for saying? What's up? But anyway, good time, good

times were had. But yo, yo, yo yo. As we know, I I'm also a disney adult, almost almost to the level that Mike is not almost there. I've yet to attain those heights, but let me tell you I had two. I'm really just thinking about one very bad experience at Disneyland, folks, And that's not that's not anything on the park itself or whatever happens, it happens. It's exclusively on John Drake, who bullied you. I'm sure, yes, yes, I don't know why I thought

i'd see John Drake there, and I'm just assuming he lives there. Now it's like, oh, hey, Jan takes Coke. But yo, okay, I'm all about accessibility, folks. You know, uh, we we

need more ramps everywhere in the world in a lot of structures. Is there a butt coming, Yes, there is eight eight compliant for your But there are some folks that go on mobility scooters that you fucking need to take some sort of certific Haitian or hand your fucking license over Backlar was going to be on board with this, Yes, okay, all right, okay, So so we we went, my partner and I we went specifically for the Oogie Bookie bash, right, and there's a lot of tight lines for like the

little trick or treating that you do in the park. There was an older woman that definitely, definitely did not know how to fucking use her mobility scooter because my partner and I went in, like we went, joined the queue for everything, and then this person didn't almost did not know how to stop and almost hit my partner. Okay, I'm fair. Aren't they called rascal scooters? Maybe that's like a feature where they're like, oh, they're just

gonna act up, such rascals. I had never wanted to tip one of these over until that day. You can. They're easy to do, not that I would know. Okay, okay, hold hold on, the hold on, there's a there's another part of this. So all right, it turns out the rest of her party, uh what was in front of us. So we're like, all right, go ahead, go ahead of us, it's cool. Whatever. And then you know, like, okay, it's it's these two ladies and mobility scooters. That's cute. They're here on

Halloween whatever. And then they're two piece of shit. Like family members are like, oh, thanks for thanks for letting us know you were in line, and then like, you know, it's cool, save save space and lines whatever, join the cute whatever. It's cool. But then these two ladies completely leave their two older relatives that are ill equipped to ride these scooters behind, and like there's so much space and gaps in the line. And then all right, it's cool. It's chill, like these these old ladies,

I'm trying to just look look the other way. It doesn't sound very chill. I'm trying to look the other way. And then you know it's it's a trick or treating line, right, So they're dropping one two pieces of candy in each bag. There's a bunch of people, there's a bunch of kids having a great time, but these old ladies keep accosting every single cast member dropping candy in their bags, saying like, well, I need

more candy in my bag. Oh no, right now, that was that was Bacalar is like tossing something in his hand, fidgeting right now for audio listeners. But anyway, I thought you were against murder backlar, And then I was thinking, you know, my partner and I were trying to think, like it's it's chill, it's cool, we're here, it's fine. Just we're only going to be in line with these people for a little bit

and then we'll zip off somewhere else. And then you know, there's a there's a couple of tight, tight turns, a little couple switchbacks to keep

the queue contained. One of the women, the women, the woman that almost hit my partner, goes over one of the line dividers, uh like the little pylons and loses control of her scooter no at like a certain speed, yes, yes, considerable speed, considerable speed, and her two piece of shit relatives that are able bodied people just out of the way, concern for themselves, not even trying to stop who may who may very well be their elderly mother, elderly aunt, elderly family member, and this old lady

is going straight into a little child. No, no, no, And then thank god. You know, like my partner and I were like looking at the other way when this happened, so like I would have tried to stop or despite having a lot of negative interactions with this lady. Then this father, god bless his heart, was having a little lightsaber duel with his kid. He buys and this isn't one of like the cheaper lightsabers, you know, and Galaxy, Yes, in Galaxy's Edge, you can buy a

really really nice lightsaber. What's gonna happen to the lighter? The father and for concern for this woman, throws his lightsaber down. The lady runs it over, smashes over the tube part, and the father slams on the brakes, turns off the scooter. And then you know what, instead of saying thank you, this woman got mad at this guy. Why this woman got mad at this guy now putting his hands on her. I can't anymore. I'm afraid I need to leave. I cannot hear this. Yeah, yeah,

oh my god, keep in mind. Okay, so real quick, one last detail back, lard, and then I'll give you your time on the podium. So keep in mind, right, all right, everyone, everyone behind us, everyone that's witnessed this is like, oh, thank god, like oh, shouts out to this dag. Yeah, we didn't witness a kid die. Thank god, we didn't witness like a terrible thing. Keep in mind, you know, there's there's a different part of this queue that has not seen this event happen, and it's still the rest of the

this trick or treat line is proceeding. I see these two women that are associated with these two women in the mobility scooters continuing down the queue trick or treating, doing their thing, just like we're not part of this. Like I don't know her other than that I had a great time. All right, How did you like what I was gonna show? Popcorn buckets? Now backl do you want to talk about something else? If you're looking for justice

in this situation, I want to like lower your expectations. There was none. No, yeah, no no. I didn't bring this up when I got back because it just wasn't comfortable with it. But now that we've broken through that this is God's favorite podcast, we could talk about it. Right, do you have to like, how do you get one of these things do you have to can Can anyone get it? Anyone? I think, yeah, yeah, anyone could buy It's like a sea pat machine. I

think anyone could buy it. If you want to get a prescription, it's a lot cheaper. I just know for a fact. I know for a fact that I witnessed a gaggle of people on the scooters that absolutely were tourists in the sense that they did not need the scooters, because I saw them get up and walk around and do it, and like they were young and very able, and they made me think turn into Walter, like I know what, dude, this dude can walk. It's basically that Walter so check

moment. Guys more certain of anything in my life. That is it. And I know there's like other things where you're like, well baby, they could only sure, but like, no, not for people all afflicted with the same youthful energy that all coincidentally were on. I just know they definitely believe that. There are people who are like, here's so Disney Hack, you're gonna have to walk forty thousand steps. What if you just got one of those scooters instead? We have and we have fuck you money, Let's

just get them and the thing that that sucks. And I'm not advocating that, like shame on these people, or I don't believe anyone on a mobility scooter. It's just the folks that abuse it, ruining for folks that actually need it. You know, ability scooter doesn't mean you can be an asshole, like yeah, yeah that too, that too. Yeah. They were driving these things like the first time you've ever been in a golf cart? Do you know what I mean? The first time you want to drive a

golf tragic human. This thing's kind of fucking red, you know, Like is that energy? I should got three beers and drive it some more. Yeah, let's go. I don't know, I don't know. It was like a thrill ride for them. I just could not get behind it anyway. I just needed to say that now that we're in a safe space of talking about it yet. Yeah, of course, of course. Additionally, there was another thing that bothered me, but I'll say that for another day.

Yes, okay, so way behind me is sorry for audio listeners. There's a zero from Nightmare Before Christmas. It lights up in the dark. It's great, Jan Actually, could you bring it over to the camera, Come here, come here. Yeah, I want to see some Wait, is it like glow in the dark? Ord actually has LEDs let's see the dark? Oh my goodness, look what he's got. He's got the strap on it too. There go. Oh look it's got a dog from from

Nightmare for Christmas. That's sick. And then it opens up for popcorn you can put you Oh, you can put a popcorn in the butt that there little little treasures and you want to put your treasures in there? And then it lights up and I want it? You got it? Wow, not not this one. I'll get you a different don't worry. It's so good sick. I love that, very neat, very neat. How did you wait for that one? How long did you wait? Uh? We didn't.

That's a thing. I saw someone rolling rolling up a big bunch of boxes. I'm like, that's the one you saw somebody else? An accessibility? You're like that again again. I am all for accessibility, except for the assholes? Are you I am? He's scared Canister? Yes, yes, Mike, all right, all right, this is nying. This one. Scout is gonna just freak the hell out, all right. If you've watched Monsters, inc. This is one of the scared containers. It's a

little sipper right. Oh, it's so good. It's really neat. It's great. But I hear Scout pattering now she's freaking out. I love that. This is the dumb thing that I was looking for desperately when Mike Grubb, Dan and I went, oh, you got it. This is stupid. Okay, listeners, he's Mickey. It's like a giant Mickey glove attached to a pick. Best right now, So check my thing. Here's where I get off Twitter. Here's it was a functional basket. Sure, Oh

my god, this is where I jump off. You had me until that, even even I'm like, I don't know if I could do that. You had a choice of like a fruit roll up apple slices or carrots as as a snack. It was great. Sorry out all right, okay, all right, last last thing for Disney show and tell Okay, so this is the thing that has been offered at the parks for Mike pretty much since forever. Right, I'll show you in a second. But because of TikTok it kind of blew up even more so. But at Disneyland, and I

believe Disney World as well, you can at Main Street. You can get silhouettes made of pretty much whatever you want. Oh that's so we got scout, my partner and myself on this guy. I like that a lot. Do you get that that little cubby on Main Street there that goes off to the right. You know, that street was supposed to extend to a whole

land Edison Square that never got built. Okay, we're supposed to be it was gonna be like so like Main Street is sort of like nineteen like like early nineteen hundreds as a square would have continued a little bit more like age electricity kind of stuff. There would have been a show like, you know, basically a Hall of Presidents, but with like inventors from that era kind of a thing. Okay, sounds neat, sounds neat. That's real cool, jan Uh. I appreciate that. The fact that you didn't have to

wait for a while for the zero thing. Oh big win. Oh okay, what one last thing, and we'll finally talk about video games. I swear I'm only letting the Disney talk stretch because we can't talk about a lot of games this week because of embargoes and and all that stuff. So I

forgot. In Disneyland, at least, there's a whole ticket and reservation system, two separate things where just because you buy a ticket doesn't mean you get entry into the park because there are certain blockout dates where the park is expecting high volume of people. They block out people to have an annual pass depending on the tier that you're buying. Sometimes there's an event at the park, so they're anticipating even more people. And uh, I forgot that. I

absolutely forgot that. So night before I was thinking, like, oh, I'll just buy the tickets now instead of when we get to the park, I see it's blocked out. Oh yeah. And then you know, I'm I'm all on my like I'm gonna be a better person these days, type of type of kick. So I choose to be transparent and I straight up tell my partner, hey, we may not be able to get in the park on Saturday. Cause causes a little bit of a tiff obviously, so

I should have preplanned, but knowing me, I don't. I'm still working on myself. You know, I wear a car heart and Dicky's because I'm working on myself. Wait, everyone, I hope people did not sleep on that line, Jens Jazz got these gemsy like sneaks in and I don't know if everyone hears it. That's what I heard that, and I love it. But then, you know, the whole time, I'm thinking like I've I've put got a bunch of good juju into the universe. My partner is

a teacher teaching the youth. There's some good juju floating around, and I generally don't worry about stuff. Sometimes I'm Kevin Durant. I just trust the process. Yeah. So Saturday rolls around, still looking online, still still completely blocked out, completely blocked out. We go to the box office at Rope Drop. Rope Drop is when they open the park for everyone to enter in. But we get there, it's seven, seven o'clock at the park.

Am thinking like, oh, maybe the box office is open. Maybe we could split up, tell them a sob story, tell them the truth about how I'm a piece of shit. Uh, my name is Jano Choe, not Plano cho Come on, Bravo, you gotta write that down. I gotta write it's not impressed, which I always appreciate. I'm gonna run over and uh and then like the gentleman at the box office. Before we even step into the box office, he says like, sorry, man,

you're out of luck. You just gotta go. And then I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no no no. I don't believe this. Never give up, never surrender. And then I'm telling my partner it's like, hey, you know, like we could say this, we could go to Goofy's kitchen. We could have like a nice breakfast or whatever. Don't worry, I still got plans. She has a little bit of frowning face going on, understandably, so right know, you know, she dressed up and everything. You know, it's like, it's

it's all right, it's okay, Mike. I thought about texting you this as as soon as this was happening. Oh no, don't do that. And then you know, I was the gears were turning in my head. I'm like, all right, I have like I'm I'm like negative zalist celebrity on the internet. Maybe I have some options here. And then I thought, you know what, No, I'm not gonna try and desperately hit up

John Drake. He's he's taking care of a child, diet Coke. So I was like, you know what, screw this I'm just gonna open the app. I opened the app and then low and behold, oh my god, there were reservations at tickets available then and there. And I checked it a minute before nothing. The second I checked it again, boom bottom. I checked on my partner's phone a minute like literally while I was entering in my credit card information. Nothing. Man, there we go. Just just

just joined me. Just hit hit your wagon to me, y'all. This was this was literally them saying, like the park is sold out today, yes, like we're expecting Max's volume at the park. We can't let anyone else in except that dumbass over there, lovely partner that has a heart of gold. And then we got in. Well please right away, please. And then I was gonna say, these stories between Baccalar and u Jan is why I'm for my little break here. I'm going to the woods alone where

there are no other people. Literally, it's a treehouse, that's what we're doing. They have a treehouse in Disneyland. They're working on it. Okay, now listen, oh di, con go to treehouses in Disney World for a while. Excuse me, Okay, this is the big one. You were just talking to somebody who got maxed. Then there he goes, all right? Anyone else have any other things about Disneyland, some parks or I always do, but I'll spare everyone. I'll be there soon myself in about

him on Disney World, but I'll have Disney escapades of my own. Exciting, very very exciting, just like it is it oops, just like Jeff Grubb has been riding a bike that is exciting. Excited by sixty four. That's pretty good. New hot games, new hot games. Yeah, Like listen where we are playing a ton of stuff right now we can't talk about literally through the games. We can talk about tomorrow. I don't know. We'll find some place to maybe put some of this content, but definitely on

the bodcast next week. We'll have a lot of stuff to talk about. But Excite by sixty four got added to Nintendo Switch Online a little bit ago and I started playing. I'm I'm pretty happy with it these The n sixty four emulator on Switch is actually improved a lot. It's some of the effects are actually better than a lot of the emulators I've used in the past to play Site by sixty four. So it's like, oh, like the checkerboard effect when you get first place on a level like that shows up properly,

and that doesn't always work. It's like those layering effects often get broken. But really it's just it's such a good game and if anyone's been interested in it, and like you started up and like, I don't really get this, so you gotta you have to play the tutorial. It is very technical,

but it's real. It's like technical but very rewarding once you get the feel of it of really leaning in hard to these turns and doing the power slide, and you're gonna have to like lean off the power slide a little bit earlier than you think because your momentum is going to carry your tail in around and you gotta try to line it up. And that's a like that feels very like high skill level stuff. And so once you start like dialing

that in every turn, is this really rewarding thing. And it's got this it's got this boot system where you're going up a ramp and you can hold the boost up the ramp and that'll help a little bit, but if you time the boost at the very top of the ramp, the back wheel will hit hit the ramp and it'll you'll go much further, and then you kind of then it's excite, like if you hold back in the air, you'll stay in the air longer. If you press down or press forward, you'll

go down faster. And it's like and you want to land on the on the ground with both wheels at the same time. That can maintain all your momentum. So there's all these tiny little things that make the game, every moment of the game feel like, Okay, if I can optimize this,

I'm gonna be played better and better. And then it's just still kind of this this crazy cacophony of stuff where every turn there's a couple other riders there and if you hit their back wheel with your front wheel, you're gonna bite it. But if you hit them with your back wheel, they're gonna bite it and you get your full boost meter reset so you can just boost through

the next thing. It's it's such a good game. I really really wish it would come back, and it has to be interested in like looking like

there's a new MTV or motorcross game or something that came out recently. I'm like, I wonder if any of these try to get anywhere close to this, or are they are much more arcady or if they're sim in a different direction, and like I see them, they have pretty bad reviews on Steam, so I'm like, I think I'm just gonna be happy stick with the Site by sixty four for me. But yeah, I was there was a PS two motocross game game that felt like an SSX game that I absolutely loved.

Is there like a Tony of dirt bikes? Yeah? I wonder, Yeah, I don't know, that's the thing I was. I was like wondering that like Sitebikes exty four very much the skate of dirt bikes, that's definitely what it's going for. I think that these more recent motorcross games probably are trying to be a little bit more like Tony Hawk. That seems like the safe thing to do, although maybe the audience is like, no, we buy these games all the time because we like live and breathe dirt bikes

and we want the sim stuff. So I honestly have no idea, but

but yeah, I would be interested in checking that out. It's weird with these extreme sports games where it's like I can flip back and forth between what kind of like because for skating skateboarding, I definitely prefer Tony Hawk over skate, but for snowboarding it's it's it's ten eighty over SSX, which is like the reverse ten eighties, much more like skate And for a site bike, it's you know, give me the one that it's trying to be a little

bit more SIMI even trials to an extent, I feel like, yeah, what happened to dirt bikes? They were everywhere trials. They kept doing trials over and over again, and they didn't they didn't really have an idea of like what the new idea would be. It was, hey, we're gonna have your shoot a gun, and I'm like, okay. That was for a while, Yeah, that was the one I was looking for too, because it was that food blood Dragon one didn't like it. You know what,

there's it's it's fine for what it's trying to be. It's just not very much a trial game. And Trials is like such a specific like motocross platforming game that has a very certain fan base that they're very demanding about what they want. They want the tracks to be fun, and they want the platform and to be very very difficult. Who did you play as in a

site by sixty four you a jumping Jim Rivers. Guy. Jumping Jim Rivers is mid in my opinion, much more Vicky Steele because Vicky Steele can really She's got a bigger window for hitting the turbo at the at the top of the ramp, and that makes the game much easier. And she's also still very good at cornering, which is important. So up Rivers it's okay. But as soon as they went with the Vicky Vixon Steel, I was doing much better. I just like the way the announcer screams Jim Rivers name Jim

Rivers. Very is the second place, Yeah, it's it's it's very enthusiastic about Jim Rivers. We need more, like, we need more just random announcers yelling shit in games. That's I thought most power. I think that's why Smash does so well. It is just because when you select a character, it's like Carby Yeah, then like some of them, he like says it kind of weird, and I was like, mister damon watching like halfway through saying game and watch like that's mister dat. It's a little pause there.

He's like he's so excited. He's like, mister, it's just am I reading this correctly. It's really good. I do like all the characters from these ninten of sixty four extreme sports games. Jim Rivers like big Boy Bobby Malone, I think it's his name or something, and there's so yeah, there's always a fat guy. There's a fat guy on a wave race too, and they always have like the fastest top speed or whatever. I'm like, that doesn't make sense, but I'm fine with the like represent Okay,

somehow we need to work in talking about Kevin James. So I can use Kevin James as a thumbnail and then Kevin James and then the title is now the title is like there's always a fat guy. Okay. I'm upset because, like, con put my face on that Kevin James meme and it just a picture of this looks like a picture of me. It's completely seatless. It's remarkable. Travis Rawna, y'all remember that name. Yeah, he was like, I associated uh not be a max uh dirt bikes and stuff

with him. Yeah, that's a name. That's a Tony Hawk, a dirt biker. That's a dirt biker. Another than one person who doesn't know this. Dude, what's the name of the character from the original Excite Bike? Do you guys know that mister Bike? That's very close its Biker. I was almost there. I was getting there. Come on. Created by Shagero Miamoto. By the way, that's another gem. That's another gem. Uh speaking about another gem and another older game that I played. I play

this on the plane Hadies. I don't have anything new to say about Hadies. Have you played it before? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, played it before, got got good times in it and everything. It's just been years since. I've to go back too. But it's like, man, there's so much of the play right now and I can't even entertain that. And there's another one coming real soon, right great steam Deck game switch. I didn't want to bring the steam deck because it's a little it's a little big,

you know, especially the case that it comes with. It's pretty I've used that case. It's gonna be it's gonna take up a lot of space, and you know, I needed to keep space for all of these Sure, all the stuff from this day. Got it back. It looks like it worked out. We got it back. Fit in your picnic Basket,

though the switch would not fitted by Picnic Basket. Okay, but hey, Hadies is one of those rare games similar to like a rare for me, uh, similar to a Tony Hawk maybe dead Cells to an extent where like the muscle memory instantly kicks in. Oh yeah sure, and hey, Hades is still fucking amazing, y'alls, and then I still so much I will still always roll with that stupid shield shield boy love that build's rule. There's

not a bad weapon in the game. There's yeah, like there's not even really a bad build in terms of like every build can be fun once you learn how to like do it just a little bit. Yeah, some of them are more effective than the others others, but that's like that's the roll of the dice of of a Rogue Light game, where it's like some builds are going to be just monsters and some of are gonna be duds. The magic of Hades is every build is fun, whether you are getting far or

not. That's what separates Hades from other Rogue Light games. Yes, I'm talking about Returnal. Returnal is like one where it's like, hey, that game is very fun when you get the right build otherwise it's like it's very routine. So yeah, Hades just an example of early access really working for that game, where they just find and refined it. They found the stuff that worked, and they did more of that, and they found the stuff that didn't work and they just get rid of it. It's God, It's

a good game. And spoilers, I guess for Hades, but like the gun you get, I never really vibed with. But then I decided, like, you know, I'm just gonna try this out, try this out for a couple of runs. Man, the the combos that you can get on that just shooting that off several times and they just zipping around. Absolutely amazing. Hades, great game. Can I tell you what, Hades? Why Haities makes me sad these days? Why is that because you can't experience

titan Fall three? Is what it is. Titan Fall three was the content they were going to put in Apex Legends that was going to be titled titan Fall three. Basically, they're like, what if we made it more like Hades, where you have these core set of moves and then you could unlock new stuff to do on top of those moves. You're still doing the same like inputs, but now they do new things like dash into bullets and then the bullets get knocked back at the enemies, like as something that happened on

Hadies a lot. That sounds fucking incredible. Please give me that, Please give me that, And Nope, they're just not gonna make it. So I get very sad when I think about Hades now. Well, speaking about bullets, Mike Manati, you've been playing Counter Strike two, Yeah, just

a bit of it. It's so going back to Countrie is so weird for me because that is a game I played a lot of in like nineteen ninety nine, and it's just so weird to be like, I sure changed a lot since then, and this video game is just still there and you go in there and it's it definitely looks better. There's some nice UI improvements and things like that. Way easier to get into games. But you know, when you started up, they make you play a bunch of levels and you're

on what dustard, Dust two, whichever one. It's like, man, it's this map, like I but don't you think I personally think that map is like the perfect map. I know it is. That's why we still play on it. That's what I want to add, Like it is Counterstrike the closest, closest the game has ever gotten to just being a sport. Uh well, I guess since I guess maybe Rocket League, since the league

is gonna be the same thing forever. The counter Strike has like this, like it's the same map, the same mechanics, and some stuff has changed very slightly here and there, just like rules changed slightly in football or soccer or whatever Doda also occupies. But like counter Strikes has been around even longer than Doda, so it's just so too, like even bigger recepts than counterfl You can add characters of Dota or whatever they do, or make balanced patches

like here you have the guns. All the guns shoot people, you know, something so crazy as like hey this character can some I'm gonna ghost ship, you know, nothing like that. But you know, it was still

fun. It was almost having more fun than Tutorio because then you get back into it, it's like, man, this is just like Counterstrike where I turn a corner and then I'm just dead and I have to amuse myself by flying around the map while I kind of wait to see what happens and also, like the one thing that has to changed too much is counter Strike chat. Like it's just people being weird. People like like there's this weird thing like, oh the person had there was one person left on our team.

As it gets five, they're like, oh, killed them all. We're gonna vote to kick you. I was like, oh, they're joking. No, They're like ha ha, yeah he we're gonna kick him now. I guess, Oh, that's when you guys think it's funny. Yeah, people in that counterstrike culture, it's certainly and stuck in something. Apparently it's a thing I don't kick. It's like it's like this whole it's self contained, right, because the people who play Counterstrike, that's that's what they's what

they do. A comic capsule. Yeah, and that game. I mean, I still think that game is really good. I played it a bunch, and you know, it was funny because I was I was very excited to get going. I hadn't played in a couple of years, and I was like, all right, it's all coming back to me. And I got like a ten year coin badge on my name because I was like, oh, I've been playing this game for a very long time that's upsetting and

cool at the same time. And uh, I'm just like Dead Last they only dude with a ten year coin is just like absolutely getting destruct people. Yeah, it's like one hundred percent Like I'm getting back there having not played that game in a long time, but I've I enjoyed it. I played it for like two hours last week and it was it was a good time.

Like, I think there's certain cool things about that game that are just never gonna like they're just not gonna come back in any other shooter, right, Like you're very rarely you're going to see anything where like there's no ads or like, uh, you know, stuff like that. I just think it has its own very specific brand. Oh the all the regular things you

can eat us down, like you know, a scope. Sure, yeah, I mean this was I mean this original game was based was built off of Half Life one, so this pre Call of Duty everything ads, right, Yeah, it's it's very much stuck in the Yeah. Yeah, it's very much stuck in a certain time. And I think that's what you know, keep and look. I remember in college playing CS one six like for literally ten hours in straight like my I met my roommate happened to be this

like CS freak and we got along really well. And that's all we did. That's all we did for an entire year of college is play that game. So I'm very I look very fondly at it, you know, and I just think it's great that I think what it did then, right, it was clearly this lasting cultural impact. I mean, like the fact that it is still like is it how many people are still playing this game?

Fucking insane? Right? Yeah, that's really popular. So it's probably like I mean, could be like two million people a day or actually playing it. Yeah, boy. So like I'm there's a part of me that like maybe the nostalgia and the sort of like feeling of being a part of that is is you know, ways more than the game itself. Right, But I do want to maybe like play that, start playing that to to on Acadiens where I get a little better, get back to where I used to

be close to that. You know, you brought up something interesting about thinking of of CS like a like a sport and that like, you know, the basics fundamentals are all there, but I'm interested to see where like it's probably been documented, I'm sure, but like where there's been new like advances in terms of like no, yo, you gotta like keep crouching here, or you gotta keep me jumping here, like still coming up, just like

it happens. So yeah, when you play it, people like even though like, well this is where you throw smoke grenades right right right, yeah, but like the people coming from like other aspects of gaming to like just realize because you know, when you're you're too in your own lane with a specific game, you generally don't like try and innovate or whatever, you don't accidentally innovate versus someone coming in that's used to i don't know, playing Warcraft

three another modern game, and just seeing where they come from with it. I mean, I mean, I think this stuff does kind of still happen in the protein, which is obviously huge for counter Strike Massive, and it's going to be the skill level always goes up somehow, it always improves. They're like, hey, this, we didn't think this was possible. And then some kid comes along and it's like no, I'm actually pretty good at

that and starts using it regularly in competition. But it's uh, I mean that just goes back to it, Yeah, being very much like a sport where they kind of don't want the fundamentals to change. Obviously, they don't want the fundamentals to change because it's about the player expression instead. And yeah, there's there's something to be said for that, obviously. I think it's going to be interesting to see if if counter Strike two is some sort of

I don't mean, I don't think Counterstrike neither word vitalization. I suppose. I don't know how it's doing compared to Valeriant. Obviously counter Strikes is doing just fine. It's Valeriant, like getting bigger, faster or something like that. I don't know. I feel like I have friends that hover around D games, but the only game they talk about is Valeriant, And yeah, it is just the world I'm unfamiliar with. What kind of Strike doesn't have

why foods? So that's gonna you know, they're I don't. I've not I've not spent time in Valeriant, but I do get the vibe of like that sort of cementing its place for like a you know, a younger generation's counter Strike away. It's like a nice impty to play. It's nice in between because you know, it is very counterstrike like a really really fast time to kill you gotta be pretty tactical, but you do still have like some character powers and you know, you have characters, right, it's a bit

more perhaps visually interesting. I get that, but yeah, counterstick from me, Like, I don't think I'm gonna likely die back in and really get into Counterstrick again. But it's fun playing it and like, oh my gosh, I'm back in my brother's room because that's where the NPC was, and Digimon is on because I'm always watching that on Saturday morning while I play counter

Strike. You know, it really really was a partition. Yeah, there you go, and it knows I love, Like, you know, obviously once six was like very people were customizing stuff or this was the main This was like the original base version game that most people played was one point six.

Yeah, uh, and I don't know, like, you know, I remember the Path to one six where like servers were getting customizable and people would like upload all their own custom sounds and stuff like that, and I just, you know, you just remember being like the most tuned, refined

sort of version of the game. And I feel like, what's interesting with uh that franchise as a whole is like it's the one that really kind of taught me like how to play in FPS you competitively and like just basic strategy that has stayed with me for all these years, right of you know, like a lot of like duck to shoe kind of stuff and just the things that not having done a keyboard keyboard and mouse, like you know, FPS,

like a competitive game like that. I've done Call Duty a bunch, but like the fact that the muscle memory that just comes back after all those years of like crouching and you know, I'm a big f to reload guy in that game and just you know, just stuff like that where I was just like, oh, I'm back and it I don't know, it made me feel young and that's really all I'm after. Yeah, oh gosh.

That was just so much of my early like playing games online at all things was those half Life mods because first of Steam Fortres Classic and then everyone moved a counterstrike. They defeat had a little shine there for I don't know, I don't know what day of Defeat is up to these days, but all that stuff was exciting. Wow, what is what is old is new again?

Just like we're being reborn, like we've been hibernating in a cocoon because I've been playing cocoon shots at the turbo our own Turbo sean, let a quick look. We looked at this game. Uh that quick looks now on the website and on YouTube's. I played this during Summer Gamefest. It is a puzzle game, which I would like to call. It's very bug punk. Sure, a lot of a lot of goopiness, not less goopiness than you would get from Limbo or Inside. I think this is probably going to

be one of the more approachable games. You're not referencing the Sega Saturn game bug, are you? No? Not actual bugs, actual bugs, but not like shit, not too much bug, just bug adjacent bug informed. Hey, hey bug coded. Perhaps it's bug coded for sure? Yes, bug bug me my friends, that's like an expletive for us, is just screaming bug. We'd like to yell bug at each other because there's a then Cleveland Indians game where there were too many bugs and the picture couldn't pitch all

the team. So the bugs are on our side, so we started screaming bug. It's just a word history there, like this whole sentence you we're doing this whole thing. You know, it's very difficult for me to just not be picture my friends screaming bug in my face, the get up to

my face, go bug again, and then I laught. That reminds me one time I was at Disneyland, Mike and I was about to ride Radiator Springs, but then they which is a car's ride for folks that don't know, and then they had to shut down the ride because there was a swarm of bees on the track. And then like everyone went dead quiet because we were all up. Everyone was upset about having the ride canceled. That my cousin I we just hear like and like in the distance you can see a

shoot swarm of bees. I was like, you know what, I'll ride it. Put me on. I want to ride through a swarm of bees. But Cocoon. It's a it's a neat puzzle game. It's very linear. Some of the puzzles are a little bit more challenging than others because it's

it's all context in terms of the world. Like there's one very very early in the game that I got stuck on during the demo at Summer Game Fest, where there are at these four five little markers and they make a different sound as you like walk past them, and I thought like, oh, maybe you have to hit them in like lowest note to highest note, or they had like these different uh markings on them, so I thought like, oh, maybe it's like we go from whichever has like the most corners to

the least corners or whatever. And then I was just stuck there for forever. And then I walk over a little bit to the left, and it turns out there was this weird fleshy tube thing that you had to pull its ball and then it would rise. And then if not a fleshy tube thing with a ball, you mean, dick heard what we heard genital coded but cod yes, yes, yes, But then like there were markings on the

flesh tube that denoted the sequence you were supposed to activate the icons. But the mechanic that is really really neat about this game though, is you start in one world and one puzzle world, one biome, and then you eventually when you complete that biome, you pop out and you physically use that world

as like a puzzle piece or like a key to activate other devices. But sometimes you will take that hub world into your actual hub and then take that world into another world to activate icons there, and then you will eventually have to jump into that first world within the second world. It's really great. It has some of the most amazing sound design in a game, and for being like a little bug man, it really amps up the sense of scale really really well. A bugman, A bugman, bug This game looks good,

it's reviews, and it's resetting. Because how the hell I gotta play this too, I know, pile it onto the list. Listen, wasn't this the the vaginal one? Weren't we screaming vaginals? Yes, we screamed that at most games, but yeah, yeah, it's just like Mike's friends were yelling bug? Were you? My friends seemed very wholesome now compared cod Okay, listen, Yes, the game starts with you popping out of vagina. Yes, what is what the player like? The thead play dead pedigree.

People just all about that wet like skin, moist. What were the other words I'm missing? Hoopyo, drippy, discus grubb voice? Does it? Moist? Is such a visceral word? You say moist and I'm like I get it. Oh yeah, the moist thing again? What was that vagina hand thing? You and Lucy made me do it. It's like that he hadn't done the vagina hand thing. Have you done it? What do you mean? It's don't get don't get Anna. You don't know. You

don't know what you're looking at until you're like thirteen. She knows, she knows I'm doing that thing. Right, you do that thing and like, oh man, there's nothing better than the first time you realize what you're looking at. Mike. Look a month ago, Yeah, I almost I was passed out. I couldn't believe how it looks like I do that with right now. And he's just like fun and weird, you know, nothing, nothing to call home. That's like one of those tubes from Cocoon. Weird.

Yeah, that's a penis. That's a penis. That wouldn't be if that's somehow made a dick. Uh. You know, actually there's there there's a way you can do it where like you slide one of your fingers right and then you do a little how you you know, kind of like a dick. It looks at leg of a giant when you do it. It

certainly does. Michael certainly pointing that out last thing I'll say about Cocoon out of you know, you mentioned play Dead back are but like I do you think this may be the most the more palatable out of those other games? I'm sorry, are they not palatable? I mean other people might find them too gross or are not real relax with that number two. Wait, I didn't know that do people. I mean, I guess like the end of

in Inside is a little personal limbo that folks don't vibe with. I guess with like the Spiders, Spiders horror and you know our our protagonists losing a limb or two. He's a little black and white, you know, stick figure, what's the problem. But I get the child. They deserve that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got what it is coming to them. Uh. You know we were talking about the hand vagina and staring into the void, just like Mike Manatty. You've been steering into void of the

sea and space. We'll see if stars. Yeah, I am right at the end here. I'm about I got to like kind of the end period. And then there's there's basically a bunch of psychquests you can do to get every party member's ultimate weapon. I did all of those, so all I have to do now is the final dungeon and boss. I adore this game. This is really everything that I wanted from this kind of classic JRPG, and a lot of that is actually pacing, like the ratio of doing story

stuff and then having the combat and the puzzles. A lot of games get that wrong, especially when it's like more of an indie team doing that kind of a thing. They get really excited about their lore. They maybe like overthink puzzle a bit too much, so it feels like you're doing like that

more than you're actually fighting things. This handles that very well, where you're like in a town for a little bit, you talk a little bit, then you're going to probably do some big dungeon, get into a lot of good fights, fight some great bosses, fantastic bosses, and the combat system carries things too. Where what's great is like you have the whole combat system from the beginning, and it really is the most important things is the way

that you can use certain attacks to cancel enemy special moves. So it's like, oh, I'm gonna do my big thing. It's gonna hurt everybody, and they have a sword and like a moon above them, so it's like, okay, if I hit them with a sword attack and a moon attack. I can cancel that. There's just a lot of ways to play around with that and to kind of work around that and to be clever with that. But the other thing is, since whenever you attack you get empty back,

you're really encouraged to actually use all of your special abilities. It's not just a man a matter of oh I don't know a man, I don't have enough ethers or whatever. So just the fact that I am using my moon oring a lot, and that's the one we get to bounce it back to people, and it keeps getting faster, and you could do it for a long time and I've gotten real fucking good at that. Moving to Ring, it feels that's my main damage ability. Mike is great at Hot Potato.

It's so good. It's so good so and it's just gorgeous. It's maybe the best looking pixel game ever, just absolutely insane pixel arts. Uh yeah, I think Bailey and I are mad at you. I think Bailey, you know if you're talking, I'm upset with you. I'm getting baileyed on the weekends now where like home girls calling me out, whoa what the why am I cashing a strays on vacation. Uh, what was the issue I'm excited was this? Oh no, I just don't like Sea of Stars,

right, Okay, and then Mike's wrong. Then Mike is resonating with it, and I think Bailey has been streaming it it well here to be clear, Janz a lout and that like Sea Stars, I just I'm like struggling with what game to go to next. I'm like looking at what's coming in October. There's a lot of stuff. Obviously, I'm playing the games that we can't talk about yet. Sorry about everybody will talk about it soon. But like I have the backlog, there's Lies of p and Sea of

Stars and now a handful of other things. I'm gonna go back to Boulderskate three shoul. I just go to Sea off Stars and I'll settle this and I'll be the determining factor or yeah, but only if you agree with me. That's scary, because you know there's a chance. I don't know that it's weird because I have a hunt. Sometimes I'm like, I think Jeff will like this, and I don't see why you wouldn't, Jeff, But every once in a while you could be particular about things like small things particular.

It's a very good Yes, I could be very particular about it, so it's hard to predict, but yes, those could be there could be anomalies out there. I'm I'm very excited. The way you talk about this game, it makes it sound very good, so I'm very good. Don't give us some time into it and like even though like the combat system kind

of is what it is. The entire game, you're constantly getting It's not so much that you're getting a lot of new stuff, but that you are getting new characters and they get new abilities, these new combo moves to kind of Crown Sugar style Comma moves, which is always fun. But just the bust themselves, the enemies, there's so many different one of those and there are a lot of bosses, so that is kind of what keeps changing,

It keeps making things interesting. Yeah, absolutely, door absolutely love it. Maybe I was in a bad headspace or it came out at a bad time when I was checking it out. How far did you get? It was like four hours in like what's his face? Rejoins your party and everything. Gail not Gail Garl Garl Garls Night Baby, the one time on one moment where the pacing is a little I don't I don't know if it's off or

it's just hates the beginning of the game. So we have to kind of like be story heavy for a bit because you play it and it starts like in media Arrests, get those do a bunch of like a few battles. I know. I learned that in follow uh. And then but then it's like, okay, now we're gonna flash back and their kids and we're gonna like really tell you how they got there, and that is like the story

dump. And that's but that's the one time it does that, Okay, And you know, I like to listen character, So I was I was fine with that in it is still gorgeous. So I was vibing if you're able to kind of just vibe with that intro get kind of a little bit past that. Yeah, Greb, if you're gonna go and check that out over the other titles, I think I would just give yourself more patients than

I probably did. Yeah, I think that's so I'm gonna like, I'm gonna try to get through these first several hours before I really like try to settle on an opinion of it. It's kind of my plan because I mean, first of all, it's pretty beefy, but and I could play. But it's also going to fit really well with playing on the y the steam deck or whatever. So it's beefy, but but also like you, like you know, I'm doing a lot of side quests. I'm going to the

dungeon. I'm twenty five hours in, and it's something that's reasonable. It's very reasonable, and that's what that's the other thing. It's capturing from that sixteenth bit era, back when JRPG is actually worth twenty thirty hours long, which is still probably the actual length that most of these games should be. Yes, no, I agree with these things. Good. Yeah, I

agree with you, Mike. I thought about the Roman Empire. By the way, when you sent man a game that a game that Mike grub and I alongside Dan played last Friday on UPF was Whispers in the West is a cooperative mystery solving game, and I am still upset that we kind of didn't solve that last puzzle. Probably it's something there we really missed something. It was like, it was pretty easy to work myself into a shoot a little bit where I'm like I get fixated. I'm like a couple of pieces of

information. It's like, well that's true. These other things just can't be true, right, So then we I think we got too clever for it, and yeah, yeah, I think there was a big part of it. And its like we like, I think we had to communicate even more

than we were like we were. We were saying a lot and I think we had to get very specific about all the stuff that we were discussing, and we got really caught up on like we like misunderstood like oh, there's two sets of like foot prints, right, and then we thought we met, We thought I met there was four impressions. I was like, no, there's just two. Like, well, that makes it very clear because

we were stuck on that for a while. We who broke into bake Well that was kind of obvious and yes, right, like hindsight, it's completely obviously it's like, oh those are that's one set with two different imprints. Yes, so but that that look at it, that's that was one thing. It was the what was the other guys? Well, there was this whole thing with the priest and the priest's daughter. Yeah, and I don't

know those were red hering. Those were But then there was also like a mystery box at the end, like oh, you didn't discover the other secret mystery, right, sure, but maybe that was that, but it wasn't uncovered like the truth of like what really happened there. But in terms of like the core stuff that we were trying to solve, like that we were tasked with solving that. People didn't see the upf what this is is like

a four player co op wild West puzzle adventure games. So we're all walking around trying to figure out a mystery in this wild West town, and we talked to people to collect information, and then we all have individual our characters. There's four characters. They have individual abilities that might get you something that the other characters can't get. Like Jan had the the forensic kit, right, so you could actually look at the at the footprints and stuff. And

then Dan had a gun. Yeah, and I had a lock pick, and there were like the one door that was locked. The lady never left it so I can never use it. So I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, that was weird. I really like that. I did, I really do. I liked it a lot as well. I think maybe that's why I'm particularly frustrated, because I feel like we were playing it correctly

within the rules. And another thing we should mention is like, as you talk to characters, you can ask those characters about other characters in the world. And the neat thing is evidence you find as well, right, And the neat thing is if someone say, if Mike goes and unlocks a character to talk to, I who I myself can talk to the existing person I'm

talking to about the person Mike just discovered. So the cooperative nature besides like coming together at the end of each day to figure out the specific task or goal is like, okay, like we're all spread, we all split up to find different pieces of evidence, different key characters and everything. And hey, I think it's a good Cowboy game. I guess yeah. I had a good time with it. Uh last game I have here on the list. I feel like it is the thing that is going to haunt us this

year. Oh, going to be the thing that haunt us Mike, You've been putting in time apparently in Balder's Gate three. Yeah, Well, I'm just I kind of had some other things done. And even though there's these other games coming out, I made a decision like, look, I've done with Starfield and some of these other things, I need to play through boulders Gate three. I think it's going to be very important for Game of the Year stuff. I really liked it when I started it, but then just

got to strike my things. So I'm making like this this effort I want to say to at least get back into it. There's always weird when you stopped playing a game for like a month to get back into it. But once I did, it was just pretty easy for me to be like, Oh, this is the game I want to be playing. Actually it has some of the most just like time is fast forwarding while I'm playing this game. I really did spend just most of my weekend playing Bolter's Gate three out

of my time yesterday after work, I guess I have to worry. I'll do some other things and then you know, after work, I'll maybe go out and get some grow trees or something. Then I was just by the time I was done playing it was one I was like, oh, I guess I better eat something. And the go to bed that wasn't planned really well. It's so dense and that's that's kind of like what I'm figuring out when I'm I'm trying to figure out what about Starfield didn't really resonate with me.

I like that density and these kind of RPGs where everywhere I go there is something not only just like maybe interesting, but definitely interesting, like in my face interesting, like a narrator is gonna pop up and tell me why it's interesting. The three people with me are gonna talk about while it's interesting and maybe offered to have sex with me. So yeah, there was at one point, like I like I finished this big question and then there was

a party at my camp. Everyone at that party wanted to get it on with me, everybody across the board, and if they didn't, they still talked about why they would. I'd just like say hi, They're like, yeah, you don't. You didn't agree with me enough, so we're not gonna have sex tonight. Just to be clear. I was like, okay, well, I have a nice time. I'm going to play this right now. By guys. Man, there's banging in this What about like like

kissing. Oh, there's a little sweet like kissing, but like also some banging. Mostly it's just raw fucking that's what it's about. And like the combat was like a little tough for me at first because I don't have a lot of just pure D and D experience. But I'm really getting my grip on that. You know, what I love is hand trips. You love can trips. I do love can trips. It took me a lot to learn that cantrips are just spells that don't have charge slots. But that's what

those are abilities. I thought those were the sharp things you step on me too. I don't know why they're called cantrips, to be clear, non invitation to tell me why, everybody, but I love leveling up in this game because you actually don't level up much, like I just got level five, I think, and I'm twenty five hours in. That's Harry D and D. The D and D. Most d D campaigns top out of twelve, even though you can go up to twenty, because after like thirteen to

twenty, it's like, oh, you're God of the universe. That's what spells are. Each level up is so impactful, Like leveling up feels so good because you get a ton of stuff. You get so much stronger each time you level up. It really is like glorious to level up in this game. It feels so good again, like not to like compare boards get through to other games constantly, but yeah, but like it. There's like a lot of games you level up and it's like, okay, yeah,

nothing change, nothing, nothing changed anything. It's an empty level. I feel like even see if stars actually extend you with the level up. I like it there too, Like again, I'm going to the end game level twenty. That's pretty good. Actually, I don't think I need to be level eighty because I played a game for fifteen hours. Actually, I'm with you. I'm with you, Mike. We should get rid of levels in video games. Well no, I like levels, like no, no,

I love levels. I'm a little CHAIRPG boy, but there's too many levels. Give me a bun just so I can get that little taste, you know, little taste to level up, little levels. Level inflation, like the inflation of levels mean something, and I don't have these empty levels. Play a ton of this. I just got to Act two, so oh yeah that's Act one. Yeah, it's super beefy. The end of Act

one really fun. There's this whole thing with this forge you can discover and you're discovering molds for the forge the whole time, and then you're like, you can find some mythral veins, so you go off the beaten path and you can make some cool equipment. It's like this really neat boss there, and it's like, man, this is just all like optional stuff I don't have to do, but it feels incredible. I get it, Like the hype is real. I completely understand why this is the game for a lot

of people. Mike, I want to play this before the end of the year. I got like, I I got my trip coming up. I will be taking some stuff with me to play games, because that's part of it's just like relaxing kind of doing it. What I want to get, Like, I want to start again in this game because my save right now has a block lessner blocks. Why would you want to restart that? I

think my Friends is fun, but your Friends is fine. But if you really like expect to play through this game, you gotta go it right. And really it's store fun golfers. But what I'm looking forward you to like pointers, pointers give me. It's something that that shouldn't and it's a privilege that we get play started on stream and make chat help you, because that's what I think. I was like, I don't really understand how magic works

in these games, and then they explained it to me. I was like, okay, thank you that this all makes a good bit more sense. Don't be afraid of the long rest like each because you know when you use up level slots, they're gone until you do a long rest. You need to spend resources. I was like, should I be like maximizing this? Should I be trying to get through some battles without that? Pretty much? No, whenever you get into a big battle, just go do a long

rest, get all your spokes's back. You're gonna get enough resources. That's not going to be that big of a problem. It's you can hold quite a lot. So don't be too afraid of picking up maybe not like those stupidest junk like don't pick up a spoon, but anytime you see a sword, pick it up and go sell it somewhere. Because you can hold, especially amongst the four people, you can hold quite a bit. You can

get a lot of gold. You'll be buying plenty of magical items. And I guess the other thing like as exciting as all the spells and stuff are, it's definitely worth having at least one. Sometimes I wonder if I should have two just straight up bruisers, just people that can go in and smash people with a sword. That really is where a lot of my damage it's coming from. I don't know if that's if I'm correct in that, but

that's what it seems like to me. Do you have a Bard? I do have a Bard, actually, because I rolled a cleric and like, one of the first people you meet is shadow Heart, and she's hot and I wanted her in my party, but she was also barred. I was like, but you can reroll even the other characters, So I made her a Bard instead. So I was like, okay, this makes sense. Yeah, so I have her, I have the Wizard Gale, and then I have Carlac the Devil Mommy, who's a barbarian, I think, but

you know, just smash her. Isn't she racist? What kind of songs this in a small town or whatever? Like? Oh, shadow Heart? Yeah, well she's Look, look I'm gonna fix her. She's got some issues the wrong crowd. It never works out. That's okay, because I'm also with Carla I'm you know, I'm really Oh you're playing in the field, is what you're doing exactly, And they're okay with that. They even

Carla even says like, I see that you're with shadow Heart. That's fine, just save a little for me, sure, think Carla, God, you're such a player. I know. Oh no, this is it's fun. It's gonna it's gonna unearthed, scumbag jan I think. Oh anyway, uh grub. There's a bunch of games coming out, as we've said, yeah, October, in October specifically, it's kind of stacked with them. Yes, you know, I'm gonna put this so I already did already, like Carlack, Yeah, there it is. Uh. Lamp Player League just

came out. This is that like Indiana Jones looking strategy tie game. I kind of wild check that out. But apparently it's like so so buggy, at least on Xbox. I know people played it and they're like my Xbox crash like forty times playing it, and Jesse mentioned he played it for thirty hours. Ten hours of that was progress because that's how much time he lost. Maybe skip over Lamp Lighters League for now until it gets a few improvements. Dis Guy seven is out. I've never tried the dis Guy at games.

I like tactics games, so I'm like, maybe I should try check it out, but I've never really should a chance. You really just like be like this Guy is seven. That's my first one. I feel like the story matters feels weird. I think I would probably be fine, but I know why people feel that way, Like, definitely, we should become John the Arc people instead remember those that'll be our thing. We'll be John the Ark Boys Assassins screen mirage is out in two days. That is so

crazy. That's messed up. They shouldn't Why why they do that. Front Mission to remake is also out in two days. War Group two is out in two days. All the all the Front Mission people that I've heard from say basically wait for Front Mission three. That's when the series gets pretty good. I don't think we have to worry about Front Mission two. Don't worry War Groove two. I liked War Group one a little bit, I didn't love it. I bet they figured out a lot of the stuff with War

Groove two. I remember like moving the guys across the map every single mission, where it's like, okay, now, we killed everyone over here. Now we gotta go all the way over here and take four turns to do it. I bet they figured that stuff out this that that usually is what happens with these tactics games. Shout outs to war Groove two from my fantasy Metacritical League because it got me some points. Thank you did. Really, Oh reviews are how are people? How are people liking it? Yeah?

I think it's like an eighty six Metacritic or something like. That's really good. Obviously I have it opened here. War Groove eight four eighty four, So yeah, land Lighter League looks really good. That's about really good. But rud really like it. But sixty three yeah, and that all the bus it's already I guess, yeah, bug I do like that. Mike use that it's good. Oh sixty three for Xbox, seventy six for PC. That means okay, but it's just a fun word to say. It's

a funny word. That's a funny word. You know, it's another funny word. And then we'll get back for October games. No it is, but okay, okay, sure, no, okay, it's good of a vulgar gross word. Well, it depends in the context. Yeah all right, Grob, what like detect the Pikachu returns? October six San, Any chance any play this three days? Why? I know? Are you? Are you that interested in it? Yes? I love mysteries and pie Kachu? Okay perfect? I love those six too, And yet I could not

care less. I don't know why, really, Jem, maybe we should play this on stream. I would like to like see like the beginning of this game. This is gonna be rich coming from the Disney Adult but I like, look at I'm like, oh, that's a game for babies. Oh my god, I know it's toxic. It's toxic. I know the cheese pizza video games that we're trying to get the cheese pizza. Where's the pepperoni? Where's the fucking pepperoni in this game? Where is the spicy kick?

Forts of Motorsports October tenth. Total Total War Pharaohs coming October eleventh. Another game I got in my Fantasy Critic league. I need that to do well if I have a shot of first place. I'm skipping a lot of these. By the way, up, honk I Star Rails coming to PlayStation on October eleventh. What a way to celebrate my birthday. Yeah, the arch control you on switch actually got delayed. So no, what is it saying to have the word hawk in a game like that? I'm just gonna

say, honkers. What about The Fallen thirteen Lords of the followed by the Way, a sequel to a game called Lords of the Fallen. It's just a crazy thing to do. Uh, SpongeBob SquarePants. The Cosmic Shake is October sixteen, it's been out. Does that come in a new platform? Okay, yeah, new platform? Thank you it they kind of come and oh I can't get track of those ones. Yeah. Then we get the Sonic Superstars October seventeenth. That Hellboy game on October eighteenth. Cavern of Dreams

is this in sixty four looking platformer game. It looks great And I'm not gonna ask a code for this because that comes October nineteenth. Seventh Guest VR is October nineteenth. Let's see. He and I thought. I thought nope. I watched my brother play Eleventh Hour, a sequel Seventh Guests, and I was like, well, this is the scariest thing in the war. Now it's nothing. Gargoyles Remastered is October nineteenth. Oh, John Drake will

will remaster Gargoyles, but not Quack himself will do it. Yes, Yes, Hot Wheels Unleashed two Turbo Charged this is October nineteenth. Then Spider Man two October twentieth, Super Mario Brothers Wonder the same day. Oh that's insane. That days insane. What are you doing? That's great day? Middle Gear Solid Master Collection Volume one four days later on October twenty four. Ghost Runner two is October twenty six, Alan Goest Runner two, You gotta get

out of there. Runner two is a day later, October twenty seven. Runner two, You gotta get out of there? What are you doing? Yeah? For your own safety. A Sports UFC is October twenty seventh. Toussant that climbing game that I really enjoyed the Yeah, that was Halloween Day. That's coming. That is that's a crazy busy months And that's just October.

That's nothing that's come out so far. There will be more stuff in November, but October very very can't be as bad, right, No way, No, it's because it's there's like RBG and a call of duty, right, like yeah, there's I think there's more stuff now there's more, but like I damage a city. Skylines two is October twenty fourth. Did I say that? I don't know? Get out of there, say, Skyline two, what are you doing? Get out of this, Get out of there. Come on December. It will be fine. City Skylines two,

go to December. You will do great December. But these schemes, yes, swimming in the deep ends there, rowing in the deep. Yeah, exactly that thanks Adel. October it all right. The problem is I didn't play it. I haven't played I have no time to play it. Uh, holy smokes, please stop. Holy smokes. Said I didn't know music. See I got music that I'm seeing. Amount of games we can't and dont these nuts. I don't even know what that means. I don't

know one does, but it's provocative. Uh it's great, bug bug, I need I need another cup of Joe. I'm gonna go make it, and then we'll go talk about video game news right after this quick freaking break. It's gonna be all good things. I'm sure I'm talking. Oh no, all right, we'll see you soon. This show is brought to you by Better Help, Homies. Do you ever wind up staying up at night

because your brain won't stop talking we would therapy. You can't talk it all out, and you can slow those thoughts down and get out of that negative thought loop. Yo Friends Eats twenty twenty three. It's almost twenty twenty four. Don't ever feel shame asking for help, especially in the form of therapy.

Therapy has really helped your boy contextualize some of my problems. Is helped me get to the root some of my more negative behavior patterns, so I can wind up improving and no. Therapy is great if you've ever been wanting to get stuff off of your chest and you don't want to encumber friends, family. If you've ever been curious about starring therapy, give Better Help a try. The whole thing is all online and is designed to be convenient for

you. Get a break from your thoughts with Better Help. Visit Betterhelp dot Com slash BombCast today to get ten percent off your first month. That's Better Help Help dot Com slash BombCast. All right, just we're back with a giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and nine, God's favorite podcast, the most handsome, handsome podcasts on the Internet. Before we get to the news, Jeff Grubb, I just want to I just want to list one more grievance

with Disneyland. Please, it's more coffee everywhere. Come on, that's it. That's all I want. Yeah, if you're if you're not gonna allow us to do the hard drugs, make the legal drugs more readily available. Like there's that cartoon of like Donald Duck, like shaking and holding the cup of coffee. Just give me that in Tunetown. Now, that's a good cartoon. Like you have to have the Starbucks or can you go to one of the other coffee stands to get your fix? I'm Jan, Yeah,

Please don't insult Jan in front of me like that, Mike Manati. I was about to bring my own packets of Instant into the park and just have your third wave Instant coffee. You mean, yes, my third wave ins coffee. You have a brand of Instant that you're okay with? Oh, that's the big thing. More third Wave is all about Instant these days. This is why I know Jeff Grubb listens to me when I speak, because this is such a third way stupid sentence to say from you. I know

Jeff doesn't retain anything. I tell them, who are you a third wave? Okay, I'll bring I'll bring some sampies over. It is instant coffee usually more like grainy than the non instant. You just have to like stir it better, is the problem. Also, it generally will have a little bit more caffeine than your regular pour over coffee. You. Yeah, it doesn't bother me. It's choice, y'all. But yeah, I don't know. Just have like a little coffee fountain for all the adults. It is

still being based dan that just because instant. That doesn't need to change, all right. Jeff grab News, Jeff grab News, This is the News with Jeff Kraf. All right, everybody, I'm gonna need everybody. I'm buckling. It is not a good week for news. A lot of bum stories that we are going to talk about here. You're gonna notice a theme here pretty quickly. Fuckle up, So fuckle up. Let's start with a

little bit of breaking news. Twitch has made another round of layoffs. I picked this one from Games Industry Dots where which is actually most of the wording's going to come from them, so credit to them. Twitch has laid off employees for the second time this year. Today's cuts were reported by Today off streams Zach Bousey, who said the cuts were significantly smaller than the March round,

which included more than four hundred people. A source familiar with the situation told games Industry dot is that today's layoffs were limited to the Customer Experience organization, as the company shifts to rely more on outsourcing vendors to fulfill those roles. The March cuts came as part of plans from from a parent company, Amazon to reduce payroll by nine thousand employees. Obviously, this is still a

part a kind of of that overall effort. These are the I don't know when I read something like this, this is a company trying to cut costs. And that's why, you know, I think a lot of these stories we're gonna talk about, you're gonna hear QA is where they're cutting, and

you're gonna hear some like customer service and customer Experience. These are relatively easy cuts to make if you're a company looking to save a bunch of money by getting rid of payroll, and then there are services out there where you can outsource it. And so these companies ruthless as they are are doing exactly that

why they continue to feeling the need to cut cost. There's a lot of uncertainty out there still, but mostly it's just poor decisions by management, and it's it's hitting the people who actually do the work as always, that's going to be the thing that's happening with all these stories. For sure, I feel like a lot of the uncertainty is also just caused pipes of folks at

the top. Yes, I mean there's more examples of that in certain situations than others, But like I mean, across the board, who really should be blamed for the financial situation of a company or not having a vision about what to do in the future, which is another common thing across all these companies. That's the people at the top, and we don't hear ever about

them taking cuts. I suppose that they would argue that a lot of their income comes from the value of the stock, so if they are doing a good job, the market will determine that, and if they're not doing a good job, the stock will go down and they do get a pay cut. It's like, no, you're still getting that salary. There's still a lot of stuff where you are definitely getting paid. There are infinite amount of ways to manipulate that as well manipulating that exactly like let's let's be realistic.

Yep, yep, absolutely, it's uh it regardless of like the machinations of it, the appearance of it is people at the bottom getting hurt, people the top getting away scott free and continuing to be in charge. So I guess not at all these companies, and these companies are seeing executives leave. We'll talk about a lot of that, not necessarily related to that, though seemingly Jim Ryan is leaving PlayStation, Jim Ryan is stepping down. It's sorry, y yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, Okay,

Jeff, let the tears are. I said we'd have an emotional breakdown today. This is I just I don't know what I'm in space. Uh. The Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO is leaving in March twenty twenty four. Hioke to Toki, who is basically everything at the C suite level of Sony, is

going to take over as the interim CEO in UH in March. For now, though he is immediately taking over as Chairman of Sony after Interactive Entertainment, basically to help guide the guide this this role transition into a new person that will take over at some point in the future. Ryan said that he didn't like working in North America and living in Europe. That's his sighted reads for no longer being there. Not a ton of reason to doubt that he's always

been a big europe first guy. A weird thing to say, but that's true. He loves Europe and uh and and so he Yeah, I kind of buy him on that. But if I try to, like look at anything else that's happened here, you know, the next story is going to be they're they're cutting jobs at some of these studios. Even I wonder if PlayStation is at a point where he's done everything he can without having to get to the like the hard decisions of oh well, let's just spend less money

and let's see what that looks like. So far he has done like, let let us get very aggressive about raising prices, let's get let's get money wherever we can. He's done a lot of those, made a lot of those decisions, and for PlayStation, very very healthy. But it's inside of Sony Corporation that overall is not as healthy, not nearly as healthy. And PlayStation is the shining jewel there, so PlayStation couldn't leave any nickel or dime

on accounted for. They had to go after everything. Now it feels like, you know, the wind is blowing in a direction of a lot of these companies being like, okay, we've done a lot of that stuff. Now it's time to cut jobs. And I wonder, and this is me speculating, I wonder if Jim Ryan's like, I don't want that to be my legacy. I watched the PlayStation five. I you know, built PlayStation. You're up into a strong juggernaut, and now I'm getting out while the

getting's good. I don't know, do you guys buy that? What do you guys think? Yeah? No, the execs are always looking for kind of a high point to leave on Reggie Nintendo after the Switch launched, Bob Iger left Disney the first time after his launch of Disney Plus and the Fox deal went through, It's like, all right, now victory great, right, nothing bad can ever happen again. So, yeah, if you're looking for a time to leave where almost it seems like there's going to have to

be a little down period at some point, almost a course correct. And it seems like I could very easily be coming. If you know one of your top studios is having layoffs of its own and it's life service game, maybe isn't going to work out. Maybe that whole live service plan that you had seems a little rocky. Now, with the state of life service games we've seen the last couple of months, this is probably the time to get out, and I think we'll have an opportunity to talk about like the live

service stuff across the board for all these things here in a moment. What Mike's referring to Naughty Dog is cutting contract workers. Naughty Dog laid off at least twenty five contract workers, mostly in the QA department. No severance was offered to these employees. And we'll call them employees. They did not call him employees. The multiplayers spinoff of The Last of Us is also reportedly on

ice. It's not canceled, but on ice. And I'll say, for a long time now, I've heard that, like people would go look at the game and they'd be like, hey, Naughty Dog, it seems like you're doing things your own way, and that's going to be big and expensive and dangerous and risky with a live service game, and Naughty dog just either didn't care or could not process that that feedback and do anything actionable with it. So this game has been in a tough position for a long time.

Obviously, now we've heard the bunch. You went there and looked at it and be like, you can't you can't do We can't release this game as is. We got to do something here, and that led to a game being put on ice. That's an example of, hey, we are chasing a trend. We're gonna put a lot of money and effort into that, and it's and it's not even not going to work out. It's not even gonna get the opportunity to work out, it seems like. And that is

where I think a lot of the uncertainty comes from. These companies have chased trend after trend after trend, and the only trend that really ever effectively worked was free to play. It was let's make games free to play because people like playing games and they hate spending money. That's the one that's worked.

And now that is saturated, and so they're looking for these other new things and they don't want to miss out on the boat, and those boats people don't actually care about live service or anything like that, Like, yeah, some people, they definitely get into those games, but no one's like I can't wait to play the next live service game. People are like I can't

wait to not pay money for the next game I'm gonna play. That obviously was effective, but I don't think that there's any obvious trend now out there that has been untapped. And all these companies are looking around and like borrowing money is really expensive because of interest rates. We I'm sure the industry overall is pretty healthy, but we're not necessarily sure that like growth is a sure thing. Like the next generation of gamers they're playing roadblocks and they're playing all

these other things. Are we going to be able to win them over to consoles? Even there's a lot of question marks out I've been hearing nothing but infinite growth. What are you talking about? Yeah, And it's that's exactly where like I think for all these companies, they're looking around being like, we don't know how to actually put up even come up with a plan right now to convince investors that we know how to accomplish that. That's and that's

the scary thing here, that's where they're at. I think a lot of these companies we're gonna also gonna keep talking about have had successful games obviously PlayStation very just unmitigated success. It is just there is no caveat there to that statement. Everything they've done is worked, and yet they're still not sure about the future, and that that's kind of that's a strange place to be in. I mean, this is the first kind of cracking the armor for Naughty

Dog. It feels like since they've been on the kind of uncharted way that's starting forever, I guess it's kind of mean. It's interesting to see it comes even for them. Yeah, and it's again I think they would be like, well, it's it's just the quay people. Yeah, well fuck that. Fuck that. Yeah. I think that. I think that we

these distinctions between like skill roles or the people doing grunt work. It's like, no, that this is the people come to Naughty Dog fee they're part of a team and QA is important and now you're gonna probably start outsourcing that something. Obviously you're doing that because because you are more worried about future uncertainty than you are about this level of quality that you've committed yourself for a very long time. And it seems like one of those things is going to pay,

and the thing that's gonna pay is maybe the quality. Well, and it wasn't I assume that these are all, you know, QA people who are meant to work on the live service game, and then because of people in charge of making sure the live service game would work or even release, they messed up. So who's gonna pay the price? Now? It's going to be that people who are supposed to do the QA for the game.

Let's see, let's just uh, actually, let's come back to this next to the old public story Jim. So let's skip down to h let's see actually, Creative Assembly Okay, let's do that one real quick. Creative Assembly is canceling Hyenas and cutting jobs. A Creative Assembly is confirmed that it will be making redundancies following the cancelation of Hyenas, which was their live service game

that they were making underneath Sega Creative Assembly as a Sega studio. Sega announced on Thursday that it was canceling the multiplayer shooter, which was going to be maybe an extraction kind of game. People who've played it didn't seem too high on it. Creative Assembly has begun a redundancy redundancy consultation process in some areas

of its UK operations, meaning it was looking to cut jobs. Creative Assembly, while will prioritize supporting its people at every step, it says that the cancelation of the game means that they this is a major project that was getting funding and now probably they don't that funding. It's not coming from anywhere.

This is maybe the most prime example of you had a studio Creative Assembly that carried Sega on its back for a decade straight with great PC releases, and now they were in operating in a world where in order to get funding under a publisher like Sega to be like, hey, we want to start a new project, Well, you know, can you make it a live service game? So like, fuck, all right, I guess we'll go figure out we're gonna make a live service game extraction shooters. Well that will that

pitch get green light? Green light? I guess we could try that. They tried, and then at Sega, like every other publish right now has sort of lost their taste for making these big live service pushes, and Creative Assembly has to pay that price. A studio again that just was hitting home run after Home Run on PC for Sega, completely unfair situation, and that's

this is happening everywhere and gaming right now. Yeah, while Sega was doing things like Sonic Oh six right, create Assembly that was actually making hits on PC this market, Sega really had no idea about. Uh. Yeah, they helped carry that company pretty quietly, but they hoped carry Sega. I don't even know if there would be a Sega if it wasn't for I don't know, Creative Assembly. Yeah, I was like, yeah, that turns out like, hey, Sega on PC, that's a real thing, and

it's okay, what fuck all are they? Are they doing anywhere else? Nothing? So yeah, this is that's an especially frustrating one. Uh But at the same time, like I'm not suggesting, well, see through hyenas make that work. Clearly that's not an option either. These live service games were a bad idea in many cases. Were any of these things ever going to turn into Fortnite? I think all of us know, No, of

course not right. Yeah, Yeah, Creative Assembly is putting out that Total War Faraoh here pretty soon hopefully does well for him, and they can probably be great. I'm sure the game's gonna be good. You know, I'm ready for because of the Metacritic league, but I mean I picked it because those games people always there was a pattern already established. You know, it's fine, everyone makes a great city for Total War. Absolutely, there we

go. All right, let's let's do these other layoff stories. Epic is laying off nearly nine hundred people Epic Games, sixteen percent of its workforce, it announced earlier this week. Two thirds of the layoffs we're in teams outside of core development, music market marketplace, Bandcape can't band came, excuse me? And we's web services firms super awesome have been divested from in terms of Epics investment in them. They're like getting they're selling them off to other people

or just spending them off on their own. Uh, Media Tonic who made Fall guys, they got hit with layoffs pretty significant. Yes, yeah, that game is just again you would look at it be like that is a success. That is what you want from that level live service games. It doesn't have to be the biggest thing, but is it the most popular it's ever been and all of time at this very moment. No, well shit, yes, we got up and people's lives and so what was Was it

making money? Probably? But we lost money doing the metaverse. We lost money with all this other ship lost money fighting Steam, we lost money fighting in Google. And they lost money because they spend all this time doing like the Creator stuff in Fortnite, and then they're now they're whining. Well, the people who use the Creator stuff aren't spending as much money as the people

who just played. Even when they do Fortnite, even when they do the apparently the profit margins are way lower than they were when they sold something in Fortnite proper. It's like, it's all this for what do you talk about? It's so fucking insane. It doesn't make any goddamn sense and anyone who tries to defend it is full of shit. Okay, yeah, no, people will defend it. The people who stand to benefit from the gross reduction of staffing, like, they will defend it right in the name. I've

had weirdos on Twitter defending it so anymore cool? Yes? What? What? What? Rocket fucking scientists talking to you? They verified or verified? Probably? Yeah, verified twice. Okay, it's just like you. I do not understand how we can walk walk walk around this planet and be like epic is the most successful developer ever, Like, like, they have a game that prints money, handled the lottery, they won the lottery. Remember remember what Fortnite was, Yeah exactly, it was right, Yeah, it

was run Yeah exactly, Like I didn't work. We'll just copy that pub G thing. Oh we have the biggest game ever. Now great, what do we do now? Fuck if I no, let's just throw money everywhere? Well no, that's I think that's exactly the thing. Their success was an unoriginal idea. They turned Fortnite into PUBG and they had the engine, so they can make it very very, a very good version of that.

I'm not taking that away from it. But then they're like, well, we have all this money, let's do what we do best original ideas. And they're like, all right, let's go make a store like Valve. Oh shit, that's not working. Let's take our games, or let's anger Apple and Google so much that we're not even allowed to have our games on mobile. So we're losing out on all those that money for years and years and years. And why because Tim Sweeney has a bug up. It's his

ass about this shit. Everyone else has to deal with inconveniences in their life. Everyone else has to deal with. You go to the store and that costs more to for me to pay for it than it is for them to produce. That's not fair. That's a tax. It's not a fucking tax, Tim Sweeney. It's a fee. Everyone in life pays it. Why are you the only weirdo who was like, oh, this is an affront to me, and I'm gonna go out there and fight it and put up

goddamn cartoons. You're bad at this cart doesn't merch. It's one thing if you did just have infinite money, but you clearly don't, because as soon as you stop making as much money you want it, you start laying people off. This motherfucker like doubled his wealth in the last five years or something insane like that. Right, I don't understand how the whims of a psychopath

are then falling upon a thousand people who work for this company. It drives me fucking crazy and statement, yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry, just saying like, I just I don't understand how anyone can fucking stand there and be like, the system is working. It's not fucking working. Doesn't work. Is designed to fuck you over right, So just organize it. Works, organizing works. Look around this this year for labor. Look around it works. It takes way too long. It takes way fucking too long,

but it obviously fucking works. Yeah, and Tim Swee's statement, I find this infuriating as well. For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn investing in the evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse inspired ecosystem for creators. Long I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect, I see this was

unrealistic. While Fortnite is starting to grow again, the growth is driven primarily by creator content with significant revenue sharing, and this is a lower margin business than we had had when Fortnite Battle Royal took off and began funding our expansion. Success with the creator ecosystem is a great achievement, but it means a

major structural change to our economics. Epic folks around the world have been making ongoing efforts to reduce costs, including moving to net zero hiring, which means they have hire someone they have to fire someone else, and cutting operating spend on things like like marketing and events, but we still ended up far short of our financial sustainability. We concluded that layoffs are the only way and that

doing them now and on this scale will stay our finances. Bullshit. Yeah, it's it's a bunch, it's a bunch of it's a load of horse shit, is what it is. It's uh. We we can look at it from the outside, and no, this was not the only option. The option was to be a sane person from the beginning and and look at what you have and build a sustainable business for the people who made that possible in the first place, which were the employees, and not chase down every

single little thing that annoys Tim Sweeney. This is the worst example out of all these companies, and it's just so plainly obvious what happened here. You know. The thing that that sucks is the general gaming public probably won't won't won't realize this, but like, this is really soured enjoyment of a game like Fortnite completely for me. Like I don't feel good at all coming back

to it in a good chunk of time. Uh. And I feel part of the problem because I didn't cancel it stupid Fortnite subscription for months and it just feels it just feels terrible. Tim Sweeney watched subscription. Yeah you know what, you I know you fucked up when somehow Roadblocks is looking like the lesser of two eas at that moment. Okay, that's how you know you'd done fucked up, Tim Sweeney. Watch out for any big air ducks above you, homie, watch out, stay in the fucking treaty, Tim Sweeney.

Uh, yeah, this is what happens from here for for Epic, they probably they're gonna just keep making a lot of money. They probably will higher up again and then do lay us again in the future. I really

don't expect the leadership of that company to change their direction. But the idea that you can make all of those obvious mistakes and just baffling mistakes and then go out there and say the only way to deal with it is to fire other people and not take responsibility yourself up by taking to cut yourself some sort of just any sort of gesture anything, anything, even a small not even

a small cut, not even the pretense, not any for him. And it's like we probably, like, listen, if you still cut all those jobs and you do some little gesture, yeah, we're still gonna we're still gonna kind of criticize you. Absolutely, but something, something would be better than those, Hey, Tim, maybe maybe maybe take a pay cut, maybe take Yeah, absolutely, it's fucking let's just put the fucking games back on iOS and Google hand me a lot of money that probably pay for all

this. It would absolutely pay for it. We're talking about Tim you literally literally his employees bailing him out by sacrificing their their jobs. That's the bailout. Everyone gets bailed out unless you are at the bottom. You don't get bailed out. You get fucked in the face. Yep. Not even the quick kind, not even the three, not even like bailer skate three. All right, let's see here which one of these stories I skipped? It was at the Nights the Old Republic one. Uh at well, actually no

one. Let's hit this other playoff story. Team seventeen is cutting jobs. Team seventeen is planning to lay off around fifty employees. The layoffs will affect the company's QA department. Michael Pattinson is set to step down a CEO of Team seventeen's publishing arm. Debbie Bestwick, the CEO of Team seventeen group, is also planning to step down. This is the latest in a stream of mass laofs taking place across the games industry this year. This is also one

where it's like the team seventeen is the people that made Worms. They've tried to shift into this publishing business and they've had a lot of successful games that have done very well, but they seemed to and this is stuff they've talked about, I think, into financials, struggled to dial in where on the spectrum they're supposed to be. Are they supposed to be a kind of tiny,

scrappy publisher. Are they should they be growing into a big publisher, And that uncertainty led to a situation where they kind of spread themselves too thin. And this publisher kind of even with the successes they've had, like back to uncertainty in one game can kind of go bad. And now here they are. But unlike Epic or any of these other companies, really CEOs stepping

down is something taking from some sort of some form of responsibility. It's not going to make up for people losing their jobs, but it is some form of responsibility. Uh. Okay, let's see here. Let's let's hit this one Epic game store boss is leaving. Sergey Galonkan, Epic Games director of publishing strategy, is leaving the company. It is unclear if his departure is directly related to widespread j job cuts at Epic. Golancan said he was not

a good fit for where Epic is headed as a company. Glancan is the creator of steam Spy. He joined Epic in twenty sixteen. Galoncan's experience from steam Spy we're used to help develop Epic's Steam competitor, the Epic Game Store. Steam Spy is a sort of database that has a lot of information and analytics about how steams and Steam sales work, like the actual selling of games

on Steam, how that stuff works. Golancan was tapped as like, hey, take that experience and make Epic Game Store a thing, make it work, and make it kill Steam, which was always going to be impossible. But I think the underlying thing here is they have identified that as as the Epic Game Store and trying to beat Steam at its own game as tilting at Windmill Mills, and they're no longer going to try it. And Gluncan's like, well, that's my expertise, my area of expertise, So I think

I'm gonna dip. That's how I read it. I don't know, do you guys. I mean, I've gotten this since for a while now, Epic Game Store was pulling back on a lot of things. They were doing

fewer of those exclusives that are paying to keep games off Steam. They still happen here and there, but most of the time it's something like allen Wick two, which is a game they published and their idea is a publisher, which isn't what they were doing before, which was a finished game going to the publisher of that game, paying the money to keep it off Steam. They've done a lot less of that, which I think signified that they are pulling back from Epic Game Store. Do you guys get the same sense?

It definitely feels like they've been slowing down a considerable amount versus how how much they were trying to build up even earlier this year in terms of exclusives and even just marketing that. Yep, I've been around too long though. If it's not if it hasn't become a thing now, it's just never going to become a thing. I don't know how much longer At Big Game store can really last. You know, it might exists as a for like a show

of itself that's almost more of a launcher than anything else. If they store aspect to it kind of like what it originally was, right, it goes basically just a Fortnite launcher. I could see it going back to that, and I could see them going back to Steam. I mean we're in a world where overwatches on Steam, right, even Battleneck games are showing up one Steam. Yeah. I mean do you say, even even in a vacuum, that that software is not good, Like, you know, even where

in a world war Steam does not exist, that is still bad. It's so it's cumbersome, It's it's crazy, It's it's just crazy. Library doesn't load one out of every two times. Yeah, it's very strange. Selfishly, I'm worried about my library, but you know, like, uh, it's it just doesn't doesn't seem like it's had any kind of TLC in a very long time. So yeah, Kingdom Hearts is still fucking stuck on there. Like one of the Kingdom parts on my Steam come once just got off

there. Third grievance with Disneyland. I didn't the line for I did not see Kingdom Hearts Mickey or Goose. Oh no, so sorry, I thought you complaining about the line. Okay, Dan, I would have waited in line. I'm fine with it. Yeah, I would have waited in that line. Oh yeah, so I mentioned Assassins Cream Mirage is going to be exclusive the Epic Game Store, I supposed to being on Steam. They did change their way that they do that recently, where instead of getting the big

upfront payment, sounds like they're not going to do that anymore. Instead, what they're gonna do is if you put your game on Epic Game Store exclusively, meaning again Paint not being on Steam for six months, you get one percent of the revenue from those sales, and then after that it shifts to from after that six months, it shifts to eighty two eighty two eighteen or eighty eight twelve, that's what it was, So eighty eight percent of the

revenue goes to the developer of the publisher. So I think some of these studios are going to keep taking advantage of that. But it's not the Hey a big payday up front, where in some cases they these developers were getting millions of dollars just to put their stuff on Epic Game Store. So get slowing down, all right, Let's let's see what it was. Oh yeah, backing up to Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic here, Sony has

hidden trailers for Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic remake. References to the Star Wars Next to the Old Republic remake have been taken offline by some of PlayStation's primary social media accounts. The game was announced as a Timed PS five Council exclusive in twenty twenty one. The tweet announcing the game has been deleted and the titles revealed trailer has been made private. This has caused speculation that

the game could be canceled. Embracer group, Aspires parent company has been restructuring and canceling projects. Aspiring not even working on this anymore. It's now Safer Interactive that's still under Embracer, though Star Wars Next the Old Republic remake has reportedly been beset with problems, definitely stuff we've heard before. The Lars Wing of First, the CEO of Embracer, has refused to comment on the comment on the game's status, and I think Steven Stillo was asking only about this

and they said basically everything except for it's still in the works. They were like, hey, go ask Embracer about about the state of the game. So I haven't thought this games coming out for a long time. I'm more certain than ever based on what's happening here. Yeah, it's a barber because just watch you know, I saw that reveal tro again or just a screen cap from it, and just seeing that like redone Darth Reven, I'm like, yeah, that Darth Revend rules that would have been neat. The good

news is that Nights to the Old Republic still a very good game. I guess, you know, unless you're like really having adversion to just slightly older games. Slightly. I guess at this point this game is like twenty something years old, but I think it still holds up really well. I played through it again when it came to Switch. Didn't even mean too. I thought it was gonna see what it looked like. Is that the best version

to play right now? I mean, I'm sure if you've got like PC version, and you know, I see it some mods that can help with some things there there, But I mean it's perfectly fine on Switch. Though perfectly fine. Switch played really. I had a couple of crashes, and that was when it first came out. Maybe that won't be a problem. But I thought it was very easy to play on Switch because I mean this was original Xbox, right, This isn't one of those ones where you really

had to be well obviously play it on PC. This was made for consoles, so I thought it was pretty comfortable and pretty handy to play on switch. Yeah, despite being a Star Wars mark, I missed the boat on Cotur. H serious, think of it? Do you know? Do you know the twists and the turn? I think I do, but like I

don't know how it happens. You would still right, Yes, it's so especially like it's funny because like a lot of stuff that's seen maybe a little outdated, and Cotur was just how kind of naked the dice rolls are in it, which maybe felt weird to people who are more used to mass effects, not boaters. Gap brought the dice rolls back, babies. It is literally just D and D rules. It's it's DND three point five rules set

that like they just licensed that to use it in the game. So, uh, yeah, there's that stuff is a bit cumbersome sometimes, but I don't think in any way that's not fun. I think it's fun through and through. I have a great time. Someone make a clever show name so I have an excuse to play it. Nights of Nights, a show of the Old Republic, Nights Up Public, Well, the Workshop. This don't worry Joe Tour is pretty good. Actually, I'm I'm done with the bad

news. You guys ready for some good news? Please? Yeah? I don't believe. Oh I see what blockchain business sin is launching next month, Jeff Backlar. What's not to believe? Okay, I want to go home. Legacy is a business simulation game based on blockchain technology. Players own pieces of land in Legacy deed keys that correspond to the rarity of their land. Players can buy land an NFT Marketplace, open Sea, a thing that will

still be a going concern them years. I'm sure Legacy was announced at late twenty twenty one, when the NFT and blockchain craze was at its peak. The cryptocurrency market has seen since a huge since since seen a huge crash. Legacy is created by Molin New Studio twenty two cans previous games, Wold Goddess curiosity tapping game and name twenty two cans, so I could think of his twenty two bare asses, just up some of them. Flatulate is like a

top tier word for butts. Yeah, it's like a really good word for butts. Just as he's he's really lost it finally has he not been online in the last couple of years. This is elder abuse, right, someone's just like you, like popping out there and they're doing this in his game.

He was afraid to show his face for a while because he had that weird like click on blocks game and like the winner of that was supposed to he was supposed to get a scandal with the whole point of that was, hey, click the last back and you win a life changing prize, and the guy won. He was supposed to get profits from his next God games, right, he was. It was gonna help design it or whatever.

Like idea just didn't really pan out at all. Oh goddess, that's that One's the one that got like kick started a couple of times where I can't Yeah, I got it was supposed to be like his like New Populist because he did Populus and it was just a fucking disaster. So and so come back to lay low for a while. You think like, Okay, you've been humbled, You're gonna come back and just like make a new fable, make a new black or wait wait wait whatever, No, it's this shit

what I will say, listen whatever whatever with this. But if Dennis Diak wants will come back and make a Web three game, I would do that. I wouldn't. Oh my god, let's go. Dennis Diek was so toxic that he did just do the thing where he's like, hey, I just want to kick starter a spiritual successor to Eternal Darkness. You're all like that, and the Internet was like, no, no, thank you,

you suck. Don't like you get it man, Because he always he would always get in fights like neo gaff and shit, he was oh good, yeah, he was just yeah, the definition of petty yep, all right, finally uh or no. Two more stories. Your switch will continue to get support next year. Nintendo will continue to support the switch until the end of the current fiscal year ending March twenty twenty four. Then the switch will

continue to see new software in the next fiscal year as well. According to President Shintaro for Okawa, Nintendo has dispatched the Switch to development Kast, the key partners, according to sources, with a launch plan for the second half of twenty twenty four. They're gonna probably follow something pretty similar to what happened with the three DS, which continue to get games after the Switch launched.

But this is this is the President Nintendo saying this. I'm a little bit skeptical of them, Like, oh yeah, we're gonna have a ton of games after the Switch two comes out, because they got burned pretty bad by doing that with the three DS. Yeah, like what that that remake of Bowser's Inside Store and three DS is like Destroyed Maria Mario Game Ever, Destroyed Alpha Dream, and like a bunch of some of the other stuff that two

D Pickman game no one played. There was a remake of Our Port of Ladies Mansion one on three DS. I think most people forget exists again. They're doing ab whigs mentioned again. So we do know games are coming out next year. Princess Speech, Showtime, Luigi's Mansion, two HD Paper, Mario of the Thousand Year Door all due out in twenty twenty four. After that, I don't think they need to put out much more than that.

Will you guys be upset if software support dies off for the switch the day this Switch two comes out, because I would not be no, no, no, I'd understand. Yep. It had twenty of games and more good games maybe any console. Ever, it's fine, we get let's fine, move on. Yeah, I agree. Uh. Finally, Balder's Gate three Studio shaves the cat. Balder's Gate three Hot Fixed eight addresses several crashes and issues, including party members transferring every important item to the player upon dismissal.

Most importantly, though his majesty, the cat has been shaved again after players complained about the change in his appearance in a previous patch. So apparently this cat was always supposed to have fur, but the fur didn't fade with the original game, and then get their evil cat used to that. I thought, oh my god, I love this bald cat. And then they fixed it fixed. I don't know the ball. Oh yeah, I mean, to be fair, I did write it that way. That's fair. We're

all thinking it okay, all right, Mike's too wholesome. Dan Rykert was definitely thinking, you know, I think i've seen any pubic hair yet, because you could just you could just take them. You could just do you see this? Are you kidding me up? But uh, because you could just take their clothes off in their character manage, you can see everything. Yeah, I don't think I know any pubic hair. They're all very everyone's very smooth in those games. Good for them, all right, that does

Jan please take the show back? You did this, Jim, don't look at me. I'm not I'm not blaming you, Mike. It's just how Grubb wrote it. And I thought that's interesting that this is a new story. But I guess everything else is so dour. We didn't talk about care. I don't. I don't even know what to make of this comment from Chad, which ship says Mike is going to heaven. I mean these are so pure, like out of the four of us. Yeah, and then's

like, you know, makes sense definitely. And then back Lar and I were like holding on to each other here to do what for you guys, like you know, yeah, yeah, put in a I've been after like ten thousand years or something. God's gonna melt out of bed and he'll take it. So sure, Yeah, like internal damnation, like that's a bit much on. You guys are going to hell? Simply because you are unaware.

Jews don't believe in hell. Okay, shit, how convenient. How convenient is that there was a funny Hard Drive story and it was literally gonna bring this up. I've been waiting to do it, but yeah, great, Hadi's unreal Hadies. Diversity is unrealistic because there aren't enough white people. And it's hell. I didn't say it. I didn't say it. I love that one really got me. I like literally laughed out loud whenever. I love that. God fucking damn it. Folks were gonna take a quick

bricky break, go read something that will make you laugh. I don't know anything like a fun Sunday comic. Yeah, people still like Covin Hobbs, right, people know that. People are people still discovering Kevin Hogs. People are just people apparently rediscovered the far side like two years ago. Yeah, Snoopy real big right now. Snoopy stock on the rise, y'all go investing some Snoopys. We're in our Peanuts era, Peanuts first Peanuts, Peanuts,

and we're back with emails. These are the emails. I am very tempted to add more sounds to this podcast. Feel like I feel like we're a very sound on board light show. Yeah we can. I think we need to just introduce him slowly but steadily, or all at once, all at once, well maybe not played all at once, but I get your meanings. Like I keep seeing that Arcade button configuration thing, which is Hella buttons. It's just like a MIDI controller, and I just want to like just

slam them with with stuff like let's freaking go. Yeah, you know, sounds from uh, from our friends across the internet and everything, maybe like Jeff, like a dodgeball sound hitting something. God, it's so good. I wish I should have just had that playing the whole time. Favorite you know my favorite Jeff. Oh yeah, I got it right here, I got it right here. For young, we look for the I just look for the picture. It's Donald for real. Not a lot of Donald Ducks

at the Disneyland for some reason, but not very scary, right. There was like that one where he's in the devil costume like that. Well, yeah, there's that, and there's well there's the famous trick or Treat cartoon where his nephews come to his house and he does not get him candy or something. So then the nephews had to get a witch to torture Donald Duck for a while. He's a genuine psycho, like just like flip flopping on

literally everything, Like no one could get a clean read on Donald. He's like super nice one minute, a total fucking asshole to his nephews the next, like, what's happening? You know? I think Donald Duck is the perfect distillation of everyone here, a giant bob. Yeah. Whole thing is that Donald Duck's whole thing is that he can dish it out, but he can't take it. And I identify it with I think we can all find

a little Donald Duck in ourselves. Mike, Mike sound a little bit of a losing streak with some of our stuff, our games over the game Mess, and he reacted, I'll say strongly. When I tried to do a little research for one of our games, looking to a game where like we predict metacric scores, and Dep's like, OK, well, as we do this, I'm going to go on mac dot com and like look up the scores for similar games. I was like, no, just guess that's the

game. Yeah. Us, By the way, the rules were, we could look up stuff you said it should be, and at the time I try to talk you out of it, and you're like, all right. First email comes from UH, comes from Debugman and sane from Texas. Uh Jeff Backlar needs to settle a keyboard argument. As the resident keyboard pers does the sound of the switches impact the feel of the switches or not? I insist that yes it does. As an aside, I'm building my wife.

Thank you, Thank you. There's a call in response a keyboard with zeal clickies seventy five g bottom mount tacticals, UH switches bottom ount a taller perse switch on sale around one hundred dollars. Sarah key ceramic key caps roughly one fifty and low profile seventy five percent board roughly one sixty for Christmas. Did I do good? This is our first mechanical keyboard. Thanks for agreeing with me. Debugman in San Antonio, Texas bug Bug Jeff Backlar. Did you

understand any of that? Yeah? I understood all of it, except for the fact that, like my friend, you are building what sounds like some sort of machine gun keyboard. Like this thing is going to sound like so clickies are there are deliberately clicky switches right, so like they literally have like a part on the switch that plastic like flicks off and it like makes a it's that cretessential like click click click noise. Not to mention ceramic key caps.

Okay, so instead of plastics are gonna be ceramic. Those are heavy boys. Those are real chunky boys. I don't even know what that's going to sound like. It just sounds like a typewriter. It's gonna it's just gonna be so wild. I'm actually I'm actually sort of pervertedly curious about what

it will sound like. If you want to send me a sound test, I'd love to hear me am and then a low profile seventy five percent board, which means the caps, the caps and the switches they sit above the mold of the case of the board, so they don't like go into it, do you know what I mean? Like they just sort of like sit above it. They sit on top of it, so nothing is getting muted, nothing is getting muffled. I'm wildly curious to hear what this sounds like.

I missed that clickingness. I like that clicking sound like. Obviously I kind of get rid of it when I started streaming and stuff. That was the IBM keyboard that had like the really is the IBM M keyboard when I had, Yeah, the one I had in high school that I used, and it was like this keyboards sounds great. I want I always want my keyboards, and I would like go get mechanical keyboards, hoping it would sound like that, and they don't. They don't. I'm part of the hobby.

I do have blinders on about it, like all the Vine model stuff. Okay, Model him is the one. Yes, I have heard of that, Yes, yes, Metroid Model M. We we've like I've I've never Yeah, that's like I said, the one part of the hobby. I have a little bit of blinders on with legacy stuff. But I think you know, with the first question being about this, does the sound of the switches impact? Right? So that's same in fact, right, but

like it's a it's a bit of a paradoxical question. And if you're gonna get real serious about this in the way that I selfishly want to know, Jans just walked away, so we can't even go ahead anyhow, So let's do it. So, like I'm sort of on the fence about this because the feel of the switch, right, Like if you put on sound proof

headphones, you wouldn't impact the field. The sound is a different characteristic, like that's the whole Like, oh, no, one's in the woods to hear of sound as it exists, Like wouldn't because the sound has to be interpreted absolutely, right, So I kind of think like you have to leave this and and instead of answering the question, you have to accept that they are two different things, which help you sort of like unearth another dimension of

customization in your keyboard. Oh okay, here's how I view it. Taste and smell are different things when you're eating, doesn't matter, they're the same thing when you're actually eating that I so I agree with you. But that's because they are. They are like biologically related. But I think, but I think when our brain interprets sound, when it had when you do something has a feel to it, sure it combines them in the same exact way. I mean. That's why this is how the haptics in the dual sense

works, right. The haptics are so impressive because they actually improve the sound of speaker quality. So they combine every haptic feedback with a sound so you you your mind like automatically like that. No, that definitely feels like walking across gravel because it's making a little gravel noise with those movements, and it all becomes the same thing in your brain in the end. Sure, I think it's completely fair to propose that these things are like forever intertwined and you

cannot really separate them. But I do think you can. You can. You can tune those knobs right independently of one another, which is my favorite part of the hobby. Like, I obviously case design and stuff like that is great, but like I love the fact that like I can put really, you know, thocky like thirty switches into one keyboard and then like use a different plate to have it sound wildly different than what it sounds like with another plate. So yeah, I mean I don't think I don't think you

need to like settle that argument. I think you just got to keep talking about it, you know. Yeah, there's a reason people say it just a tree fall in the woods? Does it make us sound We still talk about that because it's yeah, it is at a certain point in academic exercise. On the other hand, ceramic key caps I simply cannot get on board with I've never I've never like used them, so again, I'm just speaking

from a complete switch. I feel like they would crack, but I guess they got to be so heavy like and to me that would also impact the like the weight the spring weight of the switches right, because every switch inside has a coiled spring, and the actuation force right, which is like the force it takes to put your to press the switch to engage the switch, like you're using such a heavier keycap that that's impacted as well, So I

wonder, Yeah, I don't. I've again no experience with actually using that, but man, that sounds wild to me. Click zeals switches, in my opinion, are also overpriced, so do with that what you will. Next email comes from Arthur and they write in about controller pain or controller joint pain. I have a question for the older or I like to say, seasoned members of the team. I'm approaching forty and I simply cannot play video games like I used to. Start to hurt and I'm getting some knuckles swelling,

specifically with my PlayStation five and Switch pro controllers. Are there any third party controllers They're a bit easier on the joints, I've haptic feedback disabled on the PlayStation five, but I'm still not able to game for more than thirty minutes without discomfort. Thank you, love the show, sincerely, Arthur.

Don't be afraid of aspirin as well. I'll say, first of all, uh, feel free to take some aspirin before you're in the game and let it kick in about that thirty minute mark, and you'll probably be definitely be a little bit better if you're already doing that. I don't know. Ergonomics and gaming is a big thing for me because I'm someone who's pretty uncomfortable sitting down. That's just kind of the way my body is. So there's reasons

for that, but I mean that's the effective parts. I'm pretty uncomfortable sitting down a lot of times, so I gotta like really think about how I'm going to get into a chair. And flat ass, isn't it. It's because it's because I got a flat back, that's right, exactly gicked up bitches. So yeah, I got to really think about But I've not found a lot of great solutions because most controllers are pretty much exactly the same.

Yeah, something something that I think a lot of gamers overlook is stretching your god dangn hands. Yeah, you've got to do that. You gotta get in the habit of that, just like you know, just just doing one of these, put a rubber band on your fingertips and just like pull some out and everything. Get a stress ball. Squeeze that. Yeah, I finally getting to me a bit. I have this little bean bag that I rest my wrist on when I'm using my mouth. I have one of those

like uh cast, I don't know what you call it. I sleep with it though, because it just keeps my wrist elevating. Oh sure, wrist just hurts anymore if I sleep on it the wrong way. My buddy has like really bad like risk progress. So like he like he likes taking like almost a whole year off just even playing video games. It's it's so bad him. One thing he did do was like he got he got an apid due just because you could take the battery out and have it just be charged.

Because he he needed the lightest control or possible for him, so something that didn't have like a battery pack in it or even the you know, vibrations stuff whatever. He was just only caring about the weight that was the only thing that mattered to him. I benefit we talked to your doctor as well, Like that's I'm promise you they've heard it before. Yeah, don't

don't feel weird asking a doctor about stuff to help you gain. And if you don't get the answer that you kind are hoping forward, that's like this is actually helpful, find a different doctor. Because that's my experience a lot with a lot of doctors where I'll mention, hey, this thing's bothering me to be like that's a cool story, bro. Oh just tell them it's for whacking off. Yeah, then they'll really if you tell it's for your

dick, they'll definitely have some their hands like they're listening. It's where the money's in your money. It's all of a sudden like ram got one money. Also, hey gets if you're on a keyboard all day or at an office job, get like a freaking wrist rest or whatever helps out. Yeah, that's why I don't need it for the left fist yet. I don't know why. Maybe at some point it probably you just get a big boy when it's the jerking off, like it goes back to it every time.

But also if you find a controller that has just worked for you in the past, Just use that. Like Yes, I have had the similar issues using the dual sense for extended periods of time. So if you have found a control that really fits like a glove, just keep using that, and their means to for them to for you to keep using them. Speaking of controllers, I have that the Starfield controler, and it's like my go to control, and I love the way it looks. I feel a little awkward

us the announce that's I kind of don't like start few controller. Even though the game is not good, it's still a good controller. Yeah, it's true. I mean, listen, nothing wrong with the aesthetic design of Starfield. I think it's awesome. I think it's the part of the game. Yeah for sure. Uh. Next email, as we're talking about general life advice comes from it, and write down the emailer, just write in thanks. This dumb truck was therapeutic this week. Speaking about the last most recent

dumb truck. Honest, I appreciate it. I'm gonna buy a hat. Please make new hats. Well, yeah, we're gonna get We're gonna have new stuff. We're gonna we're trying. We just talked about life, you know, I asked about why I don't remember a single thing it was. It was wildly undervoiced, like we had I think we only got through like five voicemails. And then we talked about salt licks as well. That was the one where I had a voicemail and then there was a voicemail about me.

So I liked it and yours didn't sound like you. It was a really good show. I was really sleepy. Yeah, it's it's a lot of fun. We will have new hats and we're gonna we're getting a lot of we are trying to get a good amount of stuff for this quarter.

Is a quarter happy with saying right now? Yeah, I kept throwing crazy ideas of Becklar when you mentioned new merch and we'll see, we'll see if anything can happen that, Like yeah, I mean, thankfully, we're very fortunate we have someone helping out with that now and that's really dope, so hopefully that comes to fruition. But yeah, it's tough. It's not it's not an easy it's not an easy thing. You know. The merch game not easy game, not not easy, Like, hey, why do my

t shirts my graphic teas keep falling apart, which one's hours. No, all of my graphic tas kind of no matter what. So here here's I consider myself a T shirt. Please just tell me, yes, treat me like a baby, because they just keep messing up. I getting I'm getting pretty frustrated. So you're talking about like the cloth quality or the graphic quality. So the graphic begins chipping away. So because you're because you're putting them in the dryer. Is it that simple? I just can't dry them that

Like any graphic T shirt you really like, do not dry it? Okay, I figured that was it. You're supposed to dry hang them like, I'm like, if you will answer, and I was, yeah, if you do, or drying the fifties, I'm not gonna hang my clothes if you if you want to. I mean, I feel like I get a lot of shirts now that say like, hey, you're probably better off not even drying this thing. So yeah, I shot a chat saying cold wash inside out that I have been doing. It doesn't seem like it's making much

of a difference. It's the dry Yeah, what I do if I'm in a pinch, right, because if you air dry your shirts. They don't know. Sometimes they get a little wrinkly or whatever it is. You just put them in like a fluffer mode where it's not super hot at all. Right, it's just sort of like, but yeah, it's if it doesn't have a do the lowest heat possible, because that's what's happening, like the heat damages the print. Right, I think I figured that's probably what was

happening. Now it's like, but I'm I don't like wherever the fuck you hang up your I have a lot of graphic T shirts and I do my those all I own all the Fauldy boys, right, do it outside and them gonna approach you and tell you about the bomb. I do think it's pretty good. Reference like that A lot got it Like inside out. Inside out is also like a big first step. I think if you know,

yes, I started doing that, that's yeah, definitely important too. But I feel like I just throw everything in there that I throw over the you don't care about your stuff, that's fine, that's mostly fine. I guess cares. You know. A couple like really like once that were clearly bootlegs, so they were low quality, but other ones were like no, this shouldn't be chipping away, and I would really like these to last. I

got a lot of graphic feats that have lasted for a long time. I think they used to just make the shirts better, used to be let I guess probably they used to be printed with lead back in the shirts. I'm a grown man. I could take lead, you know, a little bit of lead. Never I'm not gonna finish, never hurt. Yeah, I'm d I mean so, but yeah, like that's that's that's my advice on the shirt front. Thank you. I appreciate that you got a bit of

lead. Spices up the bed, the spice of life. Some say, right, all right, yeah, okay here sure sure speaking a gun into the bed, Mike, that's what that sounds like. I know, we're a bunch of he's lifting up his eyebrows everybody, or a bunch of goofballs. Well we can have a fun serious episode every now and then, or pulltions of it. Yeah, we get it real, get down to brass tacks. What that specifically, what that phrases meant? I don't fucking know.

Are we talking about like push pin ta type of tacks? It has to be right, I don't know, or like a tax. They were definitely made of brass for a while. And you know what, just like Mike Manatti, don't don't tell me. I don't want to know. I don't want to all of us, not on my own. I tweeted something about how people slept on Gravity Rush and I had to make sure when I tweeted it not you, person who played gravity. I don't worry. You don't have to tell me. It's okay. Uh. Last email of the

show comes from Yawe Bungaku. Shut up, Mike, thank you for skipping over the Yawi part. All right. Dodgeball tips high bomb cast. I'm not sure if Jan was serious about receiving dodgeball tips, but if he was, I can help with this. I've played dodgeball for about eight years and more dedicated to that children's sport than any other. Here are a few pointers. One aim low. Worst case scenario is getting caught, because it leads to a two persons swing in their favor. You want to aim for the

ankles to minimize the chance of being caught. Number two suggestion like that throw together. Find a way to identify your target. Eg. Number two meeting the person second from the left, and then throw at least two balls at them. It's so much harder to catch or dodge when there are a ton of balls coming at you. That's just life. Appreciate you providing the context there that makes sense. Number three bread basket. Put your arms out in

front of you like a bread basket when you're getting ready to catch. It makes it easier for the ball to bounce out, for the ball to bounce out of your grip. It's easier than catching with your hands, and you're less likely to hurt one of your fingers. Yeah, catch with your body for sure. Number five. There we go. Number four, wear volleyball knee pads. Then you can dive and slide and do all all of the ridiculous dramatic things that are demanded by such a ridiculous dramatic sport. Those are

some basic tips to get you started. I won't drown you in anything advanced, but I hope you guys actually try it. It's shockingly good exercise and not so shockingly extremely fun. Dutifully would have a great time with. Yeah. Yeah, like the kneepads, I think that's I think that's smart. Yeah, But if I get hurt, Yeah, we're gonna get hurt. Yeah, we would boo, We're all gonna get hurt. We're all boo

boo. What do you mean you're not gonna make Yeah, yeah, you get what if he needs hip surgery after one round, that would be the most pathetic headline ever written. In this email, he said the children's sport of dodgeball. Can I say that, in my opinion, all sports are children's sports, All sports can be children's children. Listen. I just think there's nothing wrong with something being for children. But like baseball is a kid's game that adults play. That's boxing, is it? Boxing is not a

children's sport? Okay, that's I do like. Okay, you're right, combat sports very good point that that was. I didn't think golf's not a children's sports. Into a hole, if you break it down to its component parts, hitting a ball into a hole is for children, mini mini golf. Yeah, I mean, that's how thing. That's the honor for adult bodies. But I think the fundamental, like what you're doing is like play,

and I don't think it's great. Play is great. I love play obviously, Yeah, but you know you're just too fucking old for it because you're not. I'm not saying that I put I eat cheese pizza, Mike. It's four kids. It's just you know, for kids all the time. I think everyone's right here, Yeah, everyone's right. No one's wrong. We should just make a Dodgeball Giant Bomb team shirt and then it's right. We should just band kids from zoos already. Alright, alright, that's

that's all of the emails. Uh. This week, once again, you can send your emails to BombCast at giant bomb dot com. I love and appreciate every single email. Got a bunch of weird ones, but that's cool.

Uh. All right, Now we've gotten to the shout outs, capping out of twenty five shots at two, Jann, you look amazing, so youthful and hot shots out to Jeff Gersman and his new baby and to Titan Fall two, Giant Bomb Clan, The jant To Menace, Attack of the Jans, Jan, Venge of the Sith, A New Hope show up. Oh that's good, The Jampire strikes Back, Return of the Jani, the Foce Awake, Jan's the Last Jan I, The Rise of Jan Walker. Some of these sucking I wrote them. Panda Choo Choo Gang y'all. Try

the strawberry and cream, Doctor Pepper, pretty tasty. I'm trying to help you get into sponsorship. The raided R super Star Adam Copeland is all elite baby, the l edge and Edge, and that's terrible. I'm here to defend honorable trophy perverts like myself from the evil Jeff Grubb. Most of us aren't that terrible and want to earn our dumb little JPEGs in peace, Michael

him, Let's go, how's your bird game? Jan yo yo? I heavily considered bringing Wingspan to Disneyland for my partner and I could play it afterwards, but I didn't because that's that heavy ox y'all it is every child in every child should watch The Never Ending Story. It's a whimsical PG movie where a treys pet and best friend are tacks. The horse dies of sadness and quicksand in the month. Yeah that's part of it too. Yeah, Happy

first anniversary to the Witch for Mercury. It can fly, it can dance, Aerial Love to Disney Talk More Popcorn Buckets, nineties Disney podcast, Let's Go. This is not a trill or is it? Truth's Alert? Truths Alert brock Purty. It's better than Patrick Mahomes. Truth Alert, truth Ler. Let's go foreign old Baby Bang Bang nine or Gang Brave in the Royal

Sentai are sent to a strange new world. This weekend witnessed the advent of z you didn't Sentai in a dinosaur encounter King ogre keyogre here their roar grub twenty four check. It's been a while, it's been a while. I actually am off the twenty four train currently because I'm doing some other stuff during my workouts. But I'll get watch in there watching it gets who it gets. We were working pretty hard. Pump an iron, if you know what

I mean. Love Boat check j K Lill nevermind, Mitch has been goballing us from months. Damn it. I'm gonna watch love Butot eventually. Look, there's so many videos. I ever told, there's so many video Okay, bug bug hype, hype, hype, it's all games, all month. Hype. Don't cry because it Jim Boats smile because it ryan very good. Jan show up more like jan O. Choke on these nuts. Oh, come on, Scout check please, Uh she's around worry I'll find her

later. It's October third, three do you know where your giant twelve foot tall home depot decorative lawn skeleton is? You know, there's a new one. There's a new one on the block and it's four hundred dollars and it's basically just like the bust of a skeleton. Okay, that looks like it's coming out of the ground. And then there's other pieces that are like mini

version of that. Yes, like that thing is wild weird. We're thinking about getting Jack Skellington because the kids are really into that's like totally reasonable. Yeah, what eye Carlac, I can make up four in shart hashtag we can fix her. Hey nos, fuck you. Shouts out to GB's aging millennials. To grubs gazebo, We get you, grub, hang your shirts under the gazebo. Small easy to install some sort of hanging apparatus, saying

this space intentionally left blank. Sean, Thanks for Sean, Thanks thanks super Mario. Odyssey is a bad game. McDowell, uh finger pointing up emoji, fuck you, beef hammer love Sean, and then once again, much love to Michael him My boys going through some stuff. If we could just send some love is what they're very much appreciated. We love you, buddy, We'll get through this. We love you. And that has been it for this episode of the Giant Bomb Cast. A lot of plugs to do,

y'all. There's a new Honest game trailers out for Starfield that Bailey wrote. She sent me a joker. I sent some jokes for that one. Where wait, where are you getting all the invites for the jokes? I've It's just like a cool discord. Amos. No, she only asks funny people. Got it? Got it? No, said I get it? Question, question asked, a real answer, question asked and answered respectfully. Nothing you have to talk about. It's fine, it's fun. Says it

on Twitter. She has it on Twitter. Jeff will remember this. Look, you're already approved by easily on approved it bug bug, Hey you new episode of nineties Disney about Journey into your Imagination when they took the best ride to turn into the worst ride. And also, don't forget I'm the managing editor at game Speak. I got week gaysbeat everybody. Yeah, absolutely. I was on an episode of game Spot after dark last week, hung out with Tim and Lucy. We talked a lot about Wingspan, talked about Liza

p speaking about game Spot after dark. The crew over there did a spoiler cast for Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven. Check out The Homegirl Emma on Reality Check check out Tam and Lucy on spot On, and other various game spot stuff. What else we got going on this week? Boys, I missed yesterday?

What's popping out? There's a new Jeff Jeff's coming out tomorrow as we continue to watch the best anime ever made, or at least top twenty no so I'm sure how it works, but there's a new one coming out tomorrow. We're doing a Titan Fall Thursday Night throwdown on Thursday Day. We're doing some Counterstrike two stuff tomorrow on Wednesday. That's also community things. So get counter Strike two installed so we could play against people who started the game.

Makes you like play some matches against bots or it's one match, but one match is like to ten wins, so you gotta get that's it's late. It's a little bit yep. Oh god, alright, Well, Game Mess Mornings all through the rest of this week as while everybody maybe Friday, so maybe, but probably I'm gonna say, don't do it, Jeff. I know the chan's gonna say don't do it, So we'll see what happens when

we get to Friday. You know what, Jeff winds up doing it when I say don't do it, So I'm gonna say do it, Jeff. Go alright, man, that does kind of work. Man, I gonna feel like I shouldn't do it. Uh, Thursday night, that throwdown is happening during the day. Correct, it's happening before the drum dump truck. Correct, before the dump truck. That's right, it's night somebody somewhere for sure, time somewhere. That's right. We're doing TF two again on T

n T happing folks. Well, folks, that about wraps up for this week's have a of the giant bomb cast. You know, I think sometimes maybe we should do two of these. You know what what would that be? Like? What if we did two second a second bomb cast? And what if we did a second bomb cast like a B sides? What's what did that be like? You know, who does Mike have to be on it? Fuck? No, just a B side, not a daily type of bomb cast, but maybe like one like later in the week. Perhaps,

Yeah, that's episode No, No, you said it. The boner episode it's the SmackDown to the bomb cast. Straw understood that, okay, okay, you know because like the dump truck, there's the hard rule that back of our points to the sign when we enter in no videos slaps the sign. Slaps the sign, gaze proudly at it. You know, maybe maybe two bombcasts a week. We'll see what too many fucking embargoes on Wednesdays, that's what it is. Yeah, someone make a poll. I want

to see where they petitis for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see, We'll see. We could call it the beast cast. We have a few East Coasters again, hey, you know we also if we're if we're throwing in Bailey, we're throwing an emo, throwing a Nikki on top of Tam Tam Lucy and I. That's that's like a West Coast team almost, all right? You have so many friends now, remember when like it was just you would have three people BombCast and everybody act like it was the

end of the world. Look at you now, see, folks, things can approve. Just gotta trust the process. Trust the process. You too could have a rock Party led football team, that's right, baby, Like last drafted QB. How good is that gonna be? Turns out the street. Chance Jan, that the Lions and the and the forty nine ers meet in the playoffs. So if that happens, I'm gonna come visit. We're gonna go Yo, BCB baby BCP. We'll see you for another episode of

the Giant BombCast. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff. He's also been Jeff, and he's been Mike. And you have been looking great today. Whatever you're doing, it's working. We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bomb Test. All right, let's trying to lift the docks. She didn't want to be lifting a mid cast