814: Grunt Double

Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday, November seventh, twenty twenty three. When did we collectively decide this? Don't adjust your clocks, because, folks, it is time for the Giant BombCast powered by NZXT. I'm your host, jan Oh Choa joining me co captain of the ship as always. Jeff Grub, you said that date, and I need to call my dad. It's his birthday, so I'll do that soon as this show's over. Happy birthday, Dad, Happy birthday, Papa Papa Grub. Jeff Backlar, you were

here the authority on birthday celebrations. What you for, Papa Papa Grub. We're gonna take him ax throwing Hell yeah, and we're gonna We're gonna see how he likes that. We'll have to go through that whole safety protocol first, but we'll do it. Uh. And that's how you should celebrate. I love how you intro the show. Uh, Jen. It's almost as if the date surprises you every time it does, like it sneaks up on you. It does. I like that about your delivery time terrifies me,

mm hmm. But you know what doesn't terrify me, h. What doesn't terrify me is making new friends, extending my hands across the internet and holding hands and joining those hands with our two special guests today joining us, we have Nathan Grayson and Chris Person. Hello, gents, Hey, how's it going? Fantastic? Fantastic? Ye glad to have you guys here. Why are you guys here? How'd you get here? How'd you get in here?

What's happening? Were done with video games? I tried to be, and then unfortunately I was forced back in by my own, by my new boss who is me? Yeah, I heard that guy's are all bastards and you gotta be careful with that. Yeah. It barely even keeps like a coherent schedule. I don't understand how he's made it this far. Yeah, So, you guys, guys started a website about video games in twenty twenty three. Tell us about it. Yeah. So, it's called Aftermath.

It is a new, worker owned, reader funded video game website. It's about games, the Internet culture, things like that. It's founded by people who used to work at Kataku. Four of us, and you know, we are hoping to just kind of do writing that is good and cool and interesting to us in a time when a lot of other websites are folding and things are going kind of horribly in that regard you guys. When you guys set out to do it, what was a conversation like what was like,

Oh, we need this to make it possible. I'm like kind of curious, like what stages of grief did you go through? All that stuff? I mean, honestly, like, you know, the making it possible element

was pretty contentent, just on like the right people being available. It was sort of like a handful of is because the so the whole crew is me, Luke Plunkett, Keta Jackson, Riley McLeod, and Chris and so it was just sort of a matter of like the right people being no longer employed, which again in this industry happens a lot more than it used to. And so it was just kind of this conversation that initially I had with Luke because he had just quit Kotaku, and I was like, wow, that

I think really speaks to the state of things. And so I was like, hey, you know, maybe we could do defector for games, just kidding un less, and he was like, yeah, let's do it. And so I was like, oh, okay, well then, and that that was pretty much the start of the process. After that, it was just you know, uh, learning how to start a business, which is not a terribly interesting thing to talk about, but which took a lot of

time. Yeah, that's that's the scary thing. When I think about anything like that, it's like, oh, that seems like a lot of work and a lot of responsibility and the kind of thing where with my brain I'm like, oh I can probably maybe I could get it set up, but actually maintaining it, it's just interview is going to come for it so fast. So I mean, do one of you stand out as like, oh, this person actually seems like they would be responsible and now you guys just

put all the work on them. I mean Riley, yeah, definitely, right, Like Riley is one of the most responsible people we know, and it seems to he's he's so cool, uh, just a great editor and also just really uh talks about it. I don't know, it's it's it's

it's hard to I don't want to to speak for me. It's just like it's very much like get the person who actually gets the things in all the ducks in a row instead of you know, just coming in and doing your your your flighty writer thing, and it's always just one of the most consistent people I know in a field of people who are very like, you know, flighty. I don't know other way to put it. Yeah, no,

I mean it definitely makes sense. I mean, together the Giant bomb at night, couch for a Game of the Year, and it's like, oh, man, hurting cats. Yet again, it's like I'm one of those cats. So I totally get it. Luke as well, Luke as well for for for context. Luke is also just phenomenally like, guys, what are we doing? You know, guys, what are you doing?

Guys, what are you doing? And so like yeah, they they they play off each other really well too, in that Riley is always fretting about something, which is good because somebody needs and Luke is on the other end of the spectrum being like, actually, it's gonna be okay, this is not going to be the end of us. This is not the worst possible thing that could happen. Most things are just gonna work. It'll be It'll be all right. And so between that we have a We're on every possible

side of the emotional spectrum all the time. I love it, right, you need a duck wrangler, a fredder, someone to talk someone down. Uh So, I mean then when it comes to like actually that like the content and putting stuff up on on a website, what's like, what's the vision? Yeah, so the basic idea is, like, you know, I think that a lot of the people in games media who have launched their own things have kind of you know, made it a little bit more personality

driven out of necessity and also because people enjoy that. But that means like, you know, a less frequent schedule than maybe the websites that they came from, And so we want to go back a little bit more to like the way things unfolded when there were more blogs around, meaning that like you

know, we're going to have daily content. We're going to have at least a few posts every day, if not more, depending on you know, longer term projects and things like that, and like you know, we're going to do a podcast, We're going to do a twitch stream and all that

stuff too. But yeah, we we want to do something that's a little bit more akin to you know, these sorts of places that we came from, places like Kotaku before they became overburdened by you know, the need to produce guides and a bunch of other types of content that maybe just just private equity generally. Yeah, I mean like that that's really the the sort of like that was always you know, we take a lot of you know, everyone involved has taken a lot of influence from Defector, and so like the

idea of being like, we don't have to stay here anymore. What you're what you want is the people we can just move is is really heartening, and I mean it feels strange. It feels strange to be like, okay, is this going to work? And you know there is still that anxiety, but you know, yeah, I do like for people that are listening might not know what Defector is. Defector was people from dead Spin who after

that turned into various kinds of trash fires. They left, did their own thing and had they all quit, ye, right, a real big exodus, yes, and then then yeah, yeah, starting their own thing. And it's gone pretty well so far, right, I mean, it's gone well beyond anybody's wildest dreams. Like they now employ a staff of around thirty people, but it's all still you know, reader funded, writer owned, and like, you know, it's i mean, it's the north star for

all of us. If we can do something even a fraction of that good, then we'll be set. Can I talk more about that, because obviously you you know, we understand the path that got you here, right, And that's the thing that find I find to be the most intriguing about all this is the sort of socialized worker owned element of all this. So talk to me about that, because I'm just a dirty socialist. Well same,

welcome to the club. Well yeah, so I mean like that that especially coming from a place like Geomedia, which owns Kotaku, also owns dead Spin, so like we have a commonality with defector there, and like having all of this, you know, this increasing corporate interference, our fates being tied to just like you know, the whims of these executives who like sold the company or the site multiple times. Like all of that definitely put us in

the headspace of like, okay, this blows. And like even as we were part of a union there, which was really cool and you know, helped I think ease a lot of the pain, it still didn't solve the problems. We were still sort of you know, stuck on the outside looking in with management making tons of questionable decisions eventually culminated in a strike after our

respective times. But yeah, so after all of that, we were just like, Okay, what if we just make something and own it ourselves and do it on our own terms, because you know, we kind of know best from having done this job for years and years and years. There's there's a a thing about being in a union is that a union always wants the

company to do well because the union members want to do well. It's always a constant talking point that you hear whenever, like private equity guys or owners and they're like, oh they want to they you know, they won't want the company to do well. No, you want the company to do well so you can hire more people who are also in the union. Like it's it's it's itself a symbiotic relationship. Not true for private equity. Private equity

does not care if a company lives or dies. In fact, many of them bank on that, Yeah, if you uh way to make money even if it dies, like they have sometimes they're betting on it. Sometimes they'll

overleverage a company like Toys r US and just like sink it. And you know that was the plan, yes, so so so for in the case of like, you know, there's this dynamic of like, if you're dealing with private equity, they will there's a chance that they'll do that, and then like the some of those tactics won't work anymore, the same way that

a cooperatively on place will you know what I mean? And that's the idea is like one last question that I'll let Jim get on with this if he wants Nathan you ever feel bad for having better cute boy curly hair than me? You know, I didn't want to say anything, but yeah, you know, it's constant jealousy, blow too much smoke up Nathan's butt here, but it's I mean, it's some slam and hair my dog yours is pretty good. It's like a pretty good but I'm at that distant fair enough.

When I met Nathan for the first time at last year's Game Awards, I was torn between commenting on his hair or his coheating cameo tattoo, and I chose the ladder And I'm glad we covered all our bases a couple of eventually. Yes, you know. A fun fact is that they just hosted a cruise like you know, in a boat that I was on like two weeks ago. Yeah, it was just them. It was like a it was like a music festival at Seed basically them and a bunch other bands they brought

along. But yeah, it was It was cool as hell. Hell yeah, before I forget call to action, like where can people go? What should they be doing? How can they best support? Yeah? So, I mean the the website is just aftermath dot site, and the way they can best support is by subscribing. Like we are fully entirely reader funded. We do not really have any other means of generating income, and so if

you can subscribe like that, that is the deciding factor. And whether we can do this long term, turn this into a full time job all that, or whether we'll have to, you know, in some number of months or years sort of say Okay, well we gave it our best shot and now it's time to scatter to the wins and try something else. So I'm as been a big fan of you guys for a long time. Really glad

you guys are doing this. This is all hell yeah. Yeah. When you were listening off everyone involved with Aftermath, I was like, damn, that's a murderer's row folks. Jeez. Yeah, I've done a lot of murders. I agree. Okay, we'll cut that out of the pod. Don't worry, Nathan, I don't worry. We got you recently too, very provable. Is that why you were on a boat? Our next target is Jim Spanfeller. Take that. How's everyone doing other than you know,

launching a new website? Everyone's good, everyone's yeah, okay, ish. I feel like I said this before the show. I'm trying to do walks before the first thing in the morning, and I'm doing because I like it and I think it's something I'll stick with because we got got the gym over there, and I try to do it, but occasionally it's like, oh boy, that's I don't have time to do that in the middle of the day and get all sweaty. But walk in the woods it's pretty good.

But I am looking for advice on how to not look scary in the woods because I am passing people who are frightened of me and I can tell and I don't know what to do with the knives my hair exactly. Yeah, trying to think of ways you could be more scary, Okay, yeah, go full circle. Yeah, which is like I guess you just look as though you're always out of vaguely out of focus and trundling. Is there a way to look like? Is there a way to look like a cryptid?

Is just? Is? Just is just? It's just I do I think I have a shuffle. I have a gate like a cryptid already, so I'm already on. I think that's a big part of it, is like they see in thick guy shuffling, Yes, exactly past I would. I would bring dead leaves with you. So if if everything's moist, you can create your own noise. Yeah, drag some sort of like rope and then behind you like something wrapped in a blanket with the room and just you know,

that's maybe overkill. But can you affect a main accent and clean out a carburetor and say something cryptic about like the local, like something that happened locally, the train used to be coming through here with a main accent. It's got a lot of history. How Yes, yes, I'm learning so much today. Grab the easy answer. Just carry a hula hoop with you. That's that's such a good idea. Yeah, most terrified, you get the it's like, Okay, I'm proud of you, Grub. It's the

right time of year to be walking in the woods. Sounds real pretty there. Yeah, that's real nice. It's gonna get real cold. You know. We went out to that cabin a little bit ago. That's we just did hiking. That's the whole thing we did there. And I'm like, I got home and I told you guys, I had that all trails app and I'm like, oh, there's one two minutes from my house that looks pretty nice, and that's the one I went to. It was really nice. I'm like, I'm just gonna do this every day the kids go to

school. I ain't got anything anything else to do until about you know, ten am eleven am. So it's been great to be clear. Don't do it in the summer. Don't go outside in the summer. You gotta go outside now, No, no, no, do it. Do it, Grub, And then you can start rocking bucket hats. Okay, that's what I do, And I'm not proud of it. I just fine. Now we've we've gone beyond it. There was a really long time where like you could only do it if you were like a Japanese style blogger or a veteran

and now like just nobody cares anymore. Now bucket everyone's Yeah, buckets are kind of fine. Yeah, the bucket had cargo shorts and my my fanny pack. I think I'm gonna look real hot. Sell the T shirt, Sell the T shirt. Yes exactly, helly backlar. If you're ashamed of your bucket, had just like flip up the top part of the brim and then you'll just look cute, you know. Yeah, well, of course that's my go to when I'm having a feeling self, feeling like I'm not

looking my best. But I've totally rationalized the entire thing. Now, I'm comfortable with myself anything to avoid the sun. You should see me on a beach. If I'm comfortable looking the way I do on the beach, I'm gonna be comfortable no matter what I do. So I appreciate it. Though, before we get to the games, I had to take like a proper photo of myself or something. And I know we joke around about this a lot, specifically I've brought up this joke, but man, do I do

have DSLS. Huh? I just got wow, I just got big ass lifts. I didn't think. Do you want us to agree like I do agree? I've told you sometimes in person. Well it's because i've told, because I've said the joke to Grub. That is me giving permission to Grub to also joke about it as well. So Chris Nathan, feel free anytime I see you in person, just like, yeah, do yes, we're all jealous of your mustache. Okay, no, no, it's not even the mustache. It's just like I was, well, it gets to hang

out with its important. Any chapstick brand out there or lip bomb. Holler at your boy because I do need it. Yeah, I need NXT and Carmex. It's like, yeah, oh, can you imagine a PC cooled by Carmex. That's a weird I don't know if that works in the loop instead of yeah, that blizzard that cooled by human blood that they were making. Yeah, that's right, that's weird. That's a weird thing that they did. Yes, I'm sure Carmex smells awesome when heated. Where did they

get the blood? Yeah, I don't think they answered, I don't. I don't think they actually did it. I think that's to like a joke or something like that. It's probably red Water. Who cares. I don't think anybody's taking a test of it, but I would like to know where they got the blood. Yeah, that's a good question. I would like a question that that aftermath the website could investigate that why that, uh, where did you get that blood? Blizzard exactly? Who I could ask?

Oh? No, I might actually look into this room. Favorite kinds of blogs, dude, those are my favorite ones where it's just like you see something kind of weird that's like a PR thing you just kind of pass over it. Did you see the bed they made for Starfield? No, there's like a gaming chair and it was like sponsored by like Sealy Apostrophedic or something

like that. It was only in England and it was like one of many confusing PR things that they make, and it looked really uncomfortable because it was dual joysticks and it was like way too far away with an ultra wide monitor.

It's just the one where it's like you're kind of like leaning back and it's like the joysticks are off to the side like this, Yeah, like the way nobody would play that game, and like also way too far away and like you can tell it was like okay, like a Mattress brand wants to do like an integration that will never leave England, or like Games Calm, and it's like those are always my favorite because I want you can tell

what they originally envisioned and then what came out. Sure, always really interesting, and there's the eternal question of who got to keep it? Where is it now? Yeah, I want to know. I want to know where the Evolve statue went, the one that was like yeah events, it was huge, and it's definitely in a dumpster, but like in parts, it's probably lost at sea. I'd say, you know that sounds like article. That's also like imagine ahead of that pop up, it's like you'd think it

was a kaiju. Yeah, we know there are no good like billionaires, because if I had that kind of money, I would be buying these things and just hiding them in random places in the woods so that when I was walking out there, I would get scared. I was I'm gonna get one of those twelve thirteen foot werewolves from Home Depot and just put them up in the woods somewhere and just see what happens. Wait, they're selling were wolves. They were selling Wolves skeletons. Well, guys, we're so we're so

far beyond the skeleton. The skeletons was like v one. It's very past that. It's very out of vogue for sure. Okay, this guy's too cool for school. But it's like, but lesson, I still love these things, which is the Witch is amazing. Those came out late in the season. Amazing. We just got Jack skeleton. We got a hot shit on that, so we got that for next year. That will always be fine. The Halloween meta has changed. The Witch okay, stands on like

the trail of smoke. It leaves in its wake like they did some real fun optic optical illusion and that's the weight is camouflaged in this. It's really cool. It's the one that does, like when you look, it does look like it's flying exactly. Yeah. Okay, oh yeah that's pretty neat. Yeah, so buy that now a coupon code Giant Skeletons, giantback Giant video Games. Oops, there you go, there it is. There is the button go Excel are fantastic piece of product, programs, software hardware.

Great. I also have one and it has a little like button you can press to like make bleep sounds for when your curse, and I thought I'd use that all the time, and instead I just tell people about it. Yeah, back of our presses it when he's saw too high to do the show in the middle of the show. So yeah, well, wow, wake and bake just means don't call on me. That's all I means. I have a baby face because I spent way too much money. Wait wait,

what is that Army? They just make really good interfaces. Okay. It also has one of the only non annoying like patching things like voice meter style that I've ever seen in any product. It just works. It's so that's the thing I'm worried about losing with the go xlr offentially deprecates and like stops working fully. I need that stuff so bad at this point, I'll hate I use it, but I hate it too, Like I'll use it if I have to, but I don't want to go back to it.

I know this is all it's it's all hardware done and like, yeah, the Army baby face is like a great thing, but it's also like a grand and like it has The problem is I had like a duet and Daddy Fandom's problems, but it's just the patching is really good. And under that, the Mode M two is my favorite for like two hundred dollars. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna hate you up. This thing actually breaks a little tech corner here. Absolutely Chriss on this front so well. In fact,

all the stuff that I have this microphone included was a Chris recommendation. That's the way it did, yeah baby, okay, yep, and that's the wish list. There you certain little capbacks. They stole that term from wrestling. No baby face, that's famous the rest? Sure? Yes? Is it pronounced k fabe or how do you say that? The ladder? The ladder? It's you know, you were too excited you try to work him. Kefabbi is amazing though, and we should totally make that a thing.

I don't know next to anything about wrestling. I just know it because I hang around these freaks all the time. It sounds like a small Italian car that you would like that would be a heart like difficult to end port like that, like an a breath uh huh. I gotta get my hands in that kafabi. Yeah, well, back Lar, don't worry you work with grub and I and not only are we poisoned by wrestling, we're poisoned by mispronouncing everything that's true everything. Yep, Jeff Greb, you've been playing Mortal

Kombat one. Yeah. Yeah, I've been playing it on the site, and uh so we have people who haven't watched. I started the story for Mortal Kombat nine, and then I did ten eleven. Now we're doing one and maybe three two thirds three quarters of the way through the story. Uh And I gotta say, I really like this campaign. I'm really the story mode in a way that I wasn't into nine, ten or eleven. I

thought nine's was kind of fun. I think that ten's has a kind of a fun Gi Joe vibe, and then eleven was like a bad Avengers movie in a lot of ways. This one is, Oh, I can follow the story. They are getting very mature with their blocking and with their uh with like actually setting up the action scenes and then the dialogue scenes, like the cameras moving in an interesting way. They don't linger too long on boring stuff, just they really got there their footing. I think with this one

to the point where I really recommend playing this story mode. If you're kind of into any of these. I haven't played too much of the like the actual head to head multiplayer stuff, but all the characters I've messed around with it's been pretty cool. I like, I like Reptile a lot, I like I don't like Smoke so much, but like all the the headliners, sub Zeroon, Scorpion, They've been fun to play with. But I'm just

like pretty impressed overall with this package. I think that some people mentioned that the latter half of the story kind of loses it. I don't think. I think I'm kind of getting to that point and I'm still totally on board with what they're doing. So yeah, I've been pretty happy with it, and we should be finishing that up next week, so if people want to tune in to see what that looks like, that'll probably be next Monday ish. We'll see grub. When I tuned in, you were just getting to

the portion of the story where Megan Fox is introduced. How do you feel about her performance? And I know Moral Kombat has been doing stunt casting since like Ronda Rousey, Yeah, I honestly just end up feeling bad for her because it's clear that she didn't get the direction she needed, and they didn't really care to pay her the extra money to have her stick around to do

a second or third take is what it really feels like. And so you get this person who has done great roles before come and do something that your voice acting maybe something that she hasn't done a lot of, and then the result is just this really dead delivery that does sound really out of place, even for a game that is going for a B movie vibe. Like across

the board that what they're going for, this one still stands out. It's not as bad as a shithead Ronda Rousey, like that was super bad, but I still like that you're gonna hear it, but whoa, what is happening there? I will say it's not ruining anything, but like not even close. It's kind of like, oh man, what was that line read? That's going to be memorable? And it is some of the most memorable stuff in the game, as she just says these crazy lines with no affectation

whatsoever. And I believe Turbo Shan mentioned this while you were streaming yesterday, but she doesn't. Megan Fox doesn't do any of the combat grunts, right, That's right, Yes, they got a different, specific professional voice after yes exactly, so all of the yeah so and that stuff is fantastic.

And then like she'll get done doing the fighting in the in the in the cut scene, and then you can tell the lines about the startup and you could just hear the shift back over to Megan Fox and it's again, it's it's pretty rough, but I love Megan Fox. Jennifer's Body one of them, you know, an all time great movie. Uh Man, this is not I don't think this is really a reflection on her in any way. I didn't think you were gonna say I love Megan Fox today. Yeah,

I say it every day. That's what I said after doing my woods walk exactly the entire time. During the woods walk, I repeated to myself out loud, that's why why people are scared, so scared grumb that doesn't know it doesn't make sense. Hey, I'm one of the people that enjoyed her run a new girl, and I'll say it. I'll say I'll be brave and say it. Uh. I've been playing like a dragon the man who erased his name. And I had to write this down because I constantly forget

this title because it is seemly long. It reminds me of a like early two thousands panic of the disco song song title but go. I hate describing a game like this, but this is like the Miles morales of the Yakuza series that I think may not be the best entry point for someone, but maybe someone because like it throws you deep to the story. This takes place in between uh like Yakuza Like a Dragon, and then the next game that is coming out, Infinite Wealth. That's right. It basically says what Kirio

is doing during us during like not like a Dragon. Yes, and it's interesting because it throws you back in into the the whole Yakuza world. But they give Kurrau a bunch of dumb items, like you eventually unlock a drone that fights with you. So as you're punching dudes beating people up in Camaroach show, you just have two drones floating around you. And it's not like, uh, like a combat drone, like an air strike or anything. It is just like a shitty dj DJI style drone, just like Boop and

dudes. And then like you get an exploding cigarette after a while that just acts like a little grenade. But I say it's like a miles morales because it's so condensed. I I'm about five hours into it, but I've been reading that it is exponentially shorter than a lot of hours. Well, hey, I might be near the end then shit. Yeah, But I akin this to if you want to try a new type of cuisine, I wouldn't go all the way to the Michelin Star version of it. Like say you

want to go get uh, you want to try crab or lobster. They'll go to like the special seafood place that like smells like seafood and just has people and dungarees and an old man wearing a red beanie that just pulled a net of dungeoness crab out. Don't do that just yet. Just go get a crab cake at the Red Lobster or something oh something to try it.

Try it out, you know, just just take a little taste. I still, I still don't think if you were Yaku was so curious though, and you want to dive in and learn the rich lore of it, I don't think I can recommend this as an entryway because I think zero does that really well, oh yeah, Zero is the best one in general. Yes, the best game in the series. Yeah. And you know, if you aren't clicking with Yakuza, like a Dragon's turn based combat like this is

this is more of that. I think it's uh, it feels a little bit better. They introduce another fighting style, but man, it's just I love popping back into this world and just encountering all of the dumb side stuff. And I say dumb, and I don't mean that to be negative any way, It's like dumb funning. Yeah, and I love like they like

a dragon the Yakuza series. They do this so well of balancing like very heavy story beats of Kiriu coming terms with his age and his like morality and everything he's done in his life, and then afterwards like all right, let's go play, let's go play majong for a little bit, let's go do some karaoke, and then you know what we're gonna We're gonna befriend someone at this karaoke bar. Yeah, and this is the actual story of my life. These are the things that I do and mostly coming in terms of my

age, but also a lot of karaoke. Hell oh yeah, I think Males Moss is a good like touch Point because this it's similar, and like they've admitted like, hey, this was gonna be DLC. They said specifically, we saw it was gonna be able to do. You'll see, like we'll just add a little bit extra to it and put it out as its own thing. We think that's fun, and I like the idea of the expand alone game. There's a lot of cool things to be done with that.

I do think that usually makes them more accessible, So it's interesting that they did that and then also made it a very like it's it's not contained you do, it is connected to every other part of the story, and

you kind of need to know that stuff. So I still might mess around with it, even though I've kind of only played a bit of Zero and then a little bit of Like a Dragon, But I might just like, you know, to test the waters with this, just to see how I'm feeling about the you know, the gameplay and the characters and all that stuff, and then watch a, oh, here's what's happened previously, and then

hopefully carry that momentum in and go back play Zero. And I am looking forward to the Infinite Wealth, so maybe could kind of carry that forward as well. So we'll see. But I'm glad they're doing so many cool things with this franchise. Yeah, I do think that it's doing expand alone for

this uh for the man who race his name. It kind of does assume that you already know a lot of the existing systems in the story, so the onboarding process isn't as slow as it normally is with like the proper numbered Yakuza games where it takes a while to ramp up in everything. Here, you get into the thick of it very quickly, which I enjoy. Also, man, carry you what a fucking stud that dude Jesus Christ in his

old age with a little salid pepper in his hair. Wow, I let that meat man beat me up, or I buy him a drink at karaoke. That's just a good night. I just keep remembering every time yuk as it comes up, like the one game am I traded in? That I

was like, should I have traded that in? Which is uh, the the zombie based Yeah, because a game yeah, which everybody forgets because it's just like it's like a weird like what It's like a Marvel what if situation where it's like, hey, well, what happened if the Undead did come down to Kamoracho. You know, it's just like, I don't know if it's good. It's probably not very good. It's just I was I think

people don't necessarily like it. But for the longest time, I was under the impression that was just Yakuza six, and I'm like, that's a weird series, all right, cool, It's like, oh no, then it's a guide in of its own. So but yeah, I think people in general don't love it. But I still think I just exists exactly. Yes, it's the thing that's like I can't I can't own. The only games I still keep are ones that are like not on any marketplace, that are

going to be a pain in the ass to track down. So it's like, yeah, like I like, I have Remember Me, and I'm not going to play Remember Me ever again, but I have it because I don't know if I it's probably somewhere, but like, you know, that's don't nod remember, don't nod. Yeah, we were just talking about that. We were just talking about that. I think you grub brings up don't nud a lot. What's on the list right here? Your son? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but we're not going to talk about that real right.

Yeah, wait your turn, Yeah, come on, come on, I'm sorry, oh the Humanity. Come on, you're just piling in here, just stumbling all over each other with these failed seguys grub because you've been playing Humanity, that's right. Uh. Yes. So we did BombCast Revengeance last week, and I asked, hey, what's a game from this year that you wish people would play before we talk about Game of the Year. I know that we talked about that a couple of days ago, but I forgot

again that Humanity came out this year. Yes, and so Lucy said Humanity. I'm like, oh, that's the one I was trying to think of. So I got that loaded on the Steam deck and I've been playing Humanity, and boy, that game rules. That's a really fun game. I think I would describe it as like the way that like Pitcross three D is to Pitcross. I think Humanity probably is the lemmings, but I just like the esthetic that they're going for of these this just huge horde of human beings

coming out of a portal and then falling off a cliff. It's the kind of thing where I'm like, this is just a good visual to the point where I'm going to show this to my kid. I know immediately she's gonna laugh. And I showed her and she cracked up because these people are just falling she oh you got laughing as a response from a shown yes, exactly, yet essential dread. I got who are these people? Where are they going? Where are all their mommies and daddies, And why don't they have

faces? She's four, she doesn't care if people don't have faces yet. So we're still good. There. You got in right before it all gets real. Okay, so keep going while you can. Actually, I think my kids are just broke because I bet the six year old it would find all this funny. I haven't shown her yet, but yes, I think they love people falling down. They just do. If it wasn't for that dog, there would be therapy involved, I guarantee you. Uh so,

yeah, I think so. The game is you are these people are coming out of portal. You are this white light version of a shebu in you who's the name, I can't say, and you set down these little markers on the ground telling them where to go or to jump or whatever. And it's like it sounds pretty simple, it gets pretty complicated, but overall it actually is like, no, you understand what you need to do. Get these people to the exit, and you need to get a certain mass to

the exit. And then throughout the level there's these goldies and these are like these big golden statues, and you need to get the horde of people to go through the goldies to convince them to walk with you and get them to

the exit. And those are like the bonus objectives. And really what it comes down to is it's just really satisfying to have these intersecting lines of this conga line of people like, oh, from over here, they're walking just straight, and then from this other side they're doing this long jump, and I gave them like this special bonus so that they do an even longer, floatier version of the long jump, and so they're jumping over the entire level

over this people that they're walking down here, and then up here I have them like falling down, and I have them falling down real slowly, so they're hitting the platform perfectly and walking right into the exit, and it just looks really cool. It feels really satisfying to the point where like Oh yeah, I think I'm liking this game, and then every time I turn on the steam deck to play something, I had it left on from last time, like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna keep playing this, And that's

been the last couple of days. So yeah, I'm just really into it and I'm glad I've gone back to it cause it's great. It's you know, it's a busy year, a lot of good games, but it's like on the bubble of like my top ten when I kind of think about it in those terms and just really enjoying it. God, another game I have to check out. Thanks a lot Grub. Yeah, you're welcome. It's

good. It was really and I think it's still on. Uh didn't you say it was on like PlayStation Plus or something, right, it might be on PlayStation I think I PlayStation V game. Yeah, I think you canceled that. I think I can man that. Yeah. Uh, Nathan, Chris, anything you've been playing you want to chat about. I mean, I know Storry website's a lot to do, but any games you got going

on underneath that? And for me, oh wait, actually, Chris, because you've been working on a blog for the site that is based around a game that you've been playing a lot of. I don't even know if you can call it a blog anymore. I think it's just a feature at this point. It's like really fucking long. It's really long. I've been playing After Life. Oh, the nineteen ninety six LucasArts, Heaven and Hell Simulator.

Oh well, okay, hell yeah. That came with everybody's like that that, you know, that five pack where it was like Sam and Max, right, you know there are two of them. I think there was one that was like the older games and one was the newer one. This is the Day of the Tentacle one. Here's the thing about After Life, like three people have beaten that game, and now four because I have, Hell yeah, because it's one of the most confusing games in history in a

way that I find so funny. Because here's the thing. Okay, sim City two thousand comes out. I'll make this very very much faster. Sin City two thousand and two thousand comes out. Everyone knows how to play sim City two thousand. You put a bunch of three by threes down, you put a subway system down, electricity, YadA YadA. It's pretty self explanatory. What if you had to play two games of SimCity at the same time and you had to design them in opposite ways ways of efficiency, and also

there's like twenty other mechanics. And also you're playing a game of sim Earth, but there's seven different zones instead of three for the seven deadly sins and heavenly virtues of course, and then a generically, and you have an impact on how belief structures happen, so you can influence the sins in Okay, there's a bunch of stuff. Like the real thing was they didn't tell you that two by two structures are more efficient than three by three structures, which

nobody would have considered unless they did the math. Because every time you're in you're in SimCity, you're like, I'll make three by threes. I'll make three by threes. Every city building game is like that. But yeah, it's just full of puns. Every one of the sins and tortures, sins and punishments and rewards are all done really funny. Like there's one that's just

and they have these like weird like art styles where they're all aliens. One of them is literally just there's an itch you can't get and The illustration is these like weird aliens who are not humans. They're called EMBO's ethically mature biological organisms that that it's just them in like a straight jacket with like boxing gloves on, trying to get to their back. There's one that's like what do

you call it? Like, uh A, just a nice afternoon. It's like, oh yeah, remember when you were six there was the nice Afternoon? And like I've actually reached out to the designer who designed Samon Mix and it's like nobody has talked about this game. I really want to get art some asking questions. But I have been going insane trying to beat this game, and I got. I got the the end state, which are called love domes and omni bulges, which are basically the equivalent of what do you

call them? Arcologies are in some city. Yeah, and when you beat, when you you that's when you know, you beat some city two thousand, you got ourcologies. It's it's it's it's easy from there on. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's it's a it's a really funny game. It's mechanically very funny too, because like you know, like if you influence piece instead of what wrath, like the conflict rate on your planet goes down and so there's fewer deaths. You can actually influence whether or not people believe

in reincarnation, which actually increases your population in different ways. Like oh wow, there's like, you know, just entire ways that this game is doing things that are like mechanically because it's basically like a Bahai simulator, like everyone believes what they get, so if you believe in hell, you only go into Hell. So it's it's like a weirdly universalist take which is just that, like it's it's Dante's Inferno done in sim City two thousand style, but

also like weirdly ba highest and self deterministic, and also very funny. It's one of the funniest games I've ever I've ever seen. Yeah, this is I'm looking at it. This is after I'm going to Here's the thing. There is one fact for this game, and is from n on game Facts, and uh, it is not the most efficient way to beat the game.

The most efficient way to beat the game is one post on the game facts forum from fourteen years later where someone's like, hey, I found a slightly better way to do that, and I can't contact the guy who did the original fact so I'm just gonna post it. It's like it's like a fucking Usenet group with like an edu is like the guy who wrote it incredible. It's six dollars on Steam and gog uh oh, it's like readily available. Okay, I'm getting Although it is just a doss box front end.

It's like you can if you need to get higher than like one thousand by whatever resolution, you can just change the I and I file. Although I think it's sound. There's four games named afterlife. I'm gonna go the one with the busiest logo here. Yep, that was right. Okay, there we go, and you get what is it? Area good. Halo and Jasper Wormwood are your uh are your angel and demon and there you're like, you can't do this. You know, they're your advisors and they're fully voiced

and they're really funny. But I'm writing this piece so that people know how to play this game because it is oh yeah, and if you go bankrupt, the most important thing, you are not God and it's not a god game. As a result, you are a demiurge, which, if you know neoplatonism or a Gnosticism is a distinct concept. It's not God. It's just the guy who's like Heaven's mayor, and so you have so you have stakes because if you're it's in a god game. It's like, you know,

omnipotence, it's the problem get mechanically with omnipotence. And so literally you if you the powers that be they're called can just like say, oh, you're bankrupt, and they send four surfers on a on a on a on a wave of lava, the four Surfers of the Apocalypto to come and like ride your your your like a wave of lava through your afterlife. And that's just like the like you fucked up your bankrupt enjoy and one of them, Patrick Swayze, one of these surfers them, No, there, it's death

It's the four it's the four Horsemen. It's just they're on they're on boogie boards instead, because it's developed by a guy in California in like nineteen ninety six, and uh and yeah, if you use too many cheats, the death Star comes out and destroys your your afterlife, the actual the actual well, yes, Lucas, Yeah, they had they had the right to it, it says, it says, if you use the money too too much, says, I hear it feel of disturbance in the force, and then

yeah, it just starts nuking everything. This is incredible, man. But the thing about it is, I think part of the reason why people haven't played it is that you could only play it as of like six years ago, because like you'd need doass box because like the thing about the scum games, part of their appeal is that like you could use scum VM. Scum games, s gum games forever built. Yes, were built to be cross platform, you know what I mean. They were built to be done it.

So like scum VM was this emulator that would just like work on anything. You could like get it working on a Dreamcast perfectly, Sam and Max, you know what I mean. And like, yeah, this was not because they had to specially roll it. And and the art's fucking weird. It's all these like strange like pig nosed humanoid creatures. It kind of looks like odd World. Yeah, and uh yeah, it's a fucking funny game. Other than that, I'm playing Allen Wick, which is like, I

think my game of the year. It's got another one. Man, I've got one person on my friends list here who on Steam who's playing any games. And that person's name is Chris Person and he's played twenty hours so far. So all right, and that's that's doable. When this when this feature comes out, I'm gonna read it and then we'll play it. That sounds like a good time. I would love to You're gonna start a trend.

Yeah, right, you're gonna bring it back. Also, wait, I want to quickly make a brief aside because I've been following chat and a thing that I kind of thought would happened happened, which is some people got confused and they're like, oh yeah, the name of the website that they're that they just started is Afterlife. No, it's like, oh wow, that crossed my mind. Aftermath dot site. Yes. Yes, people who are like trying to get everyone else to go to our I appreciate it. I

put it in a chat right now. Yeah, Nathan, what have you been playing if anything? Yeah, So, I, in the past like month or so, have become like a hardcore cyberpunk convert, which I never thought I would because I played that game in twenty twenty and bounced off it pretty hard. Like I put like I don't know, twenty twenty five hours into it that year, and like the glitches weren't even that bad for me. I just you know it, it was just just an okay game.

It was just an okay game. It was fine mechanically, it was just not really doing anything. But I tried to like stealth it and just didn't have much fun. It was like very rudimentary in that regard. It wasn't really that interesting. And then also like a big thing for me is I think like I went into it wanting this more coherent world and story, and like when all the side quests felt so tonally different and so like not really in service of any particular idea or message, I was just like put off

by that. And so then like I returned to it this year because of Phantom Liberty and like just kind of threw out all of those expects and just play it on its own terms and like, oh, this game rules. It's actually like, you know, very ambitious, very well put together.

I love like the because I had i'd like been playing Starfield for a little bit and didn't really like that very much, and like going to Cyberpunk where they have these like characters who like move and talk to you and like you can sort of move around them or sit next to them or whatever else, and like it just feels very alive. It was like this revelation to me. I was like, Wow, this game just like a system. Yeah,

well yeah it has. And then they put so much thought into how it functions, how you as the player can orient yourself around it and both like watch a cut scene play out, but also feel like you were involved in it, like you were actually physically present. And then also just yeah, like you know, some of the side quests or whatever others are really

fun and interesting and cool. Some of the characters or whatever others are great, Like you know, it has you know, some peaks and valleys to it, but like overall, it's one of those games where like I'm trying to savor it now. I'm like, I've finished a lot of the side quests. I can tell that like the games sort of being like, okay, you you should move into the main quest and kind of wrap things up, and I'm like, but I don't want to. Is this is this

the base game that you're playing? Okay? Saving Fantom Liberty for when I've already gotten one of the endings. I've heard that's the better way to do it, because I guess like the Phantom Liberty ending cuts out a lot of characters and sort of content from you know, the main game, like it doesn't really touch on them as much. So I don't I don't want to get that ending first because I want something that's more true to like a main

gameplay through. But yeah, that's that's what I ended up doing when I when I was playing Fantdom Liberty is I just took my save from beating the game took it into Fantom Liberty. And that's a perfectly okay way to do that. I know. They like first they were like, hey, just start a new game in Phantom Liberty. I'm like, and I'll just do

it this way, And it's worked out perfectly fine so far. They've done a really good job in that game of integrating edge Runners, not just like the lore whatever, but but like what I mean is like melee builds feel good in that game now, and they feel like how they they look in edge Runners, like it feel when you actually something in that game with a melee build, like you just you go psycho mode. You like, jump off your motorcycle, kill everyone with the katana, then jump back on the

motorcycle. Like that is anime. Cyberpunk is just anime. Yeah, at its best. It's just the reason there's a reason why Japan was so good at and why so many Americans were bad is because they were just doing anime. They were doing the mex stuff, and that's what it gets. And they had They've always had this in them. That's the frustrating thing about it.

The frustrating thing about any time you see like a big game like Starfield or one of the Follout games is like you're like, man, I know, you got like five guys in there that are all writing the fun side quest, and if you could just make it all the fun side quest, that would be good. And they did that exactly once and it's called Fallout New Vegas, right exactly. Yes, Yeah, I mean speaking of them, the like the the melee combat though, like yeah, I've been playing

like a samurai like sword build just like straightforward and like really cool. Yeah, it's incredibly cool. It feels really good. The only thing that I had to acclimate to is again because they put this level of d tail into the world, and because the world feels so lived in, you know, like I go on these murder spreez and I'm like, I don't know if

I feel good about any of this. Like I know your character is supposed to be kind of amoral, but it can be hard to gel sometimes, like the compassion with which they are able to approach certain situations and then like, oh yeah, I also just killed fifty dudes, and like, you know, that's true of a lot of video games, but I feel like in this one that tension never quite dissipates, and like, you know, the game even used to have like more non lethal options, Like now,

even if you like this is the weirdest thing if you like stealth choke somebody out, and then if you put them in a bin, putting them in the bin is fatal. It even says that as a pop up, like when you hover over a bin you can put somebody into it's like the lethal It's like, what, yeah, just them in the trash. I do wonder I just wonder why they emphasized that stuff, and it was I think maybe they think just killing people's more fun, and I think I made that

that choice. But Yeah, because they also have like an ocular implant you could get where all of your melee hits would be non lethal. They just took that out entirely. It's not the game anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I think that it was their kind of like way of saying that this was always a half based, half baked system on their part, right, like, yeah, we you know, there's just not room for us to really

like do this the way we wanted to, you know. I hope that that shows up more in like Cyberpunk twenty seventies eight or whatever they want to call it. Yeah, I think they they came to the realization that they weren't making the game where you could play any way you want and do it anyway. We're like, no, they have some things that are really fun and lean into those, and within those, within the builds you have, you have a lot of choice about how to how to approach any confrontation with

enemies. But beyond that, they don't need to be trying a million other things outside of those core competencies. And that's really kind of where two point zero got this game. And I've been enjoying it when I've gone back to it a bunch fantastic, fantastic, God. I just feel like I have to climb up this mountain before we get to Game of the year. Speaking about climbing a mountain, I want you to pronounce this name, the name of the Okay, okay, cool, cool, there you go. Yeah,

no problem, better than I thought you do. Good? Yeah, uh yeah, you saw. It is a mountain climbing game. It's you play as a little fella who doesn't talk a lot, and he's got a rope and he's got some of those things you put with those pegs there you put me into their mountains. Yeah, and then yeah Paton, Yes, and you got a small handful of those, and he's got hands that get tired if you try to climb for too long. So you got to get up to that next rest point so you can fully rest and recover. It's

we played a bit of this over the steam nextst over the summer. It's it's still that game. There is a little bit extra that wasn't in there, like as I'm redoing some of these sections where now you could do this sort of call to nature like this like actual like literal call from your character, and there are some elements in the stage that will grow and overtake certain

elements, and now you can climb on those. Uh. And those could either act as shortcuts to go back down and get back up, or they actually are like the gates to unlock the next part so you can climb even higher. But you know, this is a Dopte Nod game. This is a studio I've I've always kind of admired from, mostly from a distance. I've had some some good experience with some of their games, usually not making stuff that I'm like running to go play, but I have no issue with

them. I'm like, oh, I could see from a distance they're doing some cool stuff. So for them to make a game that feels very much like my shit and for it to hit really well is very exciting. I just like moving characters around three D space is having to figure out how to get them from point A to point B and have a game be very confident in its setting and then its visuals and in its stylings to be like,

this is just a cool place to spend time in. And so you'll get to these segments where all right, I am up on this next ledge. We are gonna, we're gonna, we are gonna take a second, go look at this thing, and and and then the game's gonna be like, no, We're gonna really look at stuff. And then it takes camera control away from you and just starts looking at these little vignettes of the world. And it's really pretty and moving and bordering on emotional because it's like this is

a place that was once lived in, now mostly abandoned. You could tell. That's like you know, the mountainside villages that you know that you might recognize from around the world. It's like this used to be a place that people were in what happened here? And I think I'm slowly discovering maybe what happened here. But for the most part, I'm just enjoying the ascension of going up this mountain. And it's it's very good at that It's got really

good physics. And for me, like we talked about, games is art a lot, and because we're idiots and we I think we fall into this trap of that means telling stories, that means being narratives, and and for me, I've always been like, ah, yeah, I get that, but like games are systems and they so you like, you know, in the same way, like jazz doesn't have to have to tell a story. Video games don't have to tell a story, even though this one is.

Really what I'm looking for is something that can help me play with my interaction with the world. Like I live on Earth, I have to deal with the systems of grab and physics constantly, So give me a space that can be the poetic version of that. And this game is very much doing exactly that, and it clicks with me really hard. So just yeah, I'm a big fan of it so far. I don't think it's necessarily going to be for everybody, but I believe it's on game Pass, so so it's

probably worth checking out at the very least. Uh, going off that real quick grub as games is art and not necessarily the narrative side of that argument. I think something like Tony Hawk is art just in the way that like the systems and it feels it's gonna It feels silly to say this, but it it's like you're playing an instrument almost right, Like oh, you're you're firing off commands and like you know what you're doing, and it is the

jazz of skateboarding. It's the jazz. Yeah, there you go. Well, I mean that's wonder like. It's like you're you are playing with these other great players, and the players being the developers setting up this this orchestra of a game, and they the space open for you to slot in and decide. All right, now here's how I'm gonna play along with them, And so it's a good feeling. Sorry, cut you off, Nathan.

What we're you gonna say? I was just gonna say, this's a so pithy in comparison that the soundtrack for Tony Hawk is the pop punk of skateboarding. Oh man, uh, Jeff Becklar, have you been playing anything? You want to talk? Okay, just all just all day, every day. I'm not done yet. I don't know why I'm not done yet. I think I'm just really taking my time, getting all up in those crevices of Valiwate two, trying to get my wife to stay awake and watch it.

She keeps falling asleep on the couch and she's like, wake me up for the cutscenes and all the narrow I'm like, every part of this is narrative. This is all happening. Now. You have to you have to see me open all of these lockers and see what kind of batteries are in there. You have to watch everything. It's Duristel again look at this, and she's like, she's super into it, but like, also I choose to play it too late for her, I think, but no, I'm

very much in love with this and that's really all I'm playing. I got back into Spider Man two as well, because I talked my kid into a sitting shotgun and not being scared that Craven's gonna stab another scientist. And then it happened. There's a scene in that game where you have to where you feed a tiger a drugged piece of meat, and he did. He was just like closing his eye. He was just like, they're gonna I'm like, dude, do you really think this game is gonna let a tiger eat

Spider Man? And that just didn't resonate with him. I think he still thought it was a viable option for the way this is gonna go. So we're making our way through it. He's not playing Allen Mike though, for sure. Based on based on the things that you've said about your kid's reaction to the various games you've played, how how old is your child that's for you to guess. They what do you think? Uh? I mean, I could guess anywhere. Betwe being like seven and eighteenager. Yeah, no,

he's eight. So you're you're your window? Yeah yeah, I mean are you is here? Is? Are they doing? Okay? Yeah? Like he absolutely loves video games. He just he loves Yeah, he just loves Spider Man. And then he saw Craven stab a man in the neck with his syringe with green liquid in it, and he was just like, well, something happened in real world. Yeah, and now he's just like, I need you to go into the bathroom first that because it's entirely possible

craving in there. I'm like, na, you know, I mean, look, Craven uses the bathroom too, That's right exactly, he said, Dad, Craven also ships. Therefore, I am terrified. Do you guys think that Davids was what's what we call Jeff's kid should watch Jaws? Do you think he's almost watching Jaws? Eight eight? Yes? Yeah, But here's why. Here's why, along you know, here's why. Here's why

because I grew up. When I grew up, that is, they just showed they just showed you terminator and aliens when you were they showed you a good movie. They showed you a good albeit violent movie, and it was like a little hidden treat thing that you've gotten and it's like, okay,

but this has taste. And that's why there were action figures of it because they didn't have and I know this because they didn't have like emotionally stunted adults that would buy those yet like to the degree that they could do it. That's why they were alien figurines, is because they were like children are watching these or at least see them at the video store and would like to have them. And uh, I don't know. I'm not a parente and do

whatever you want. It's just here's more selfishly annoying about that, Chris. We have another member of this website who also argues that an eight year old should watch Jaws, but you have such a lucid argument for it, whereas he is just like, I don't know what anything is. We should show

hard baby. So I think I think Et is a scarier movie to me for some reason, Like I mean that's the whole part where the whole part where like he finds Et and like he's washing the dishes and then you just hear him and it sounds like a like a pig screaming, Like it's just it's a really it's a really troubling movie that I don't like, and but out I respect because it's so troubling. Surely right, Well, yeah,

I was gonna say. I feel like the movies that did a number on me when I was a kid were not the ones that were like overtly violent or whatever. It was the existentially upsetting one. Yes, there was somebody like The Matrix messed me up when it like first came out. How long were you when you saw the Matrix? So I never saw it. I just heard of the concept and it sucked me up. It was really religious as a kid, and so like then it introduced this notion of like what

if the world isn't real? What if all these things aren't really? What if there's no God? And I was like, damn, what if there is no God? And also existence is fake? And so like that I ruminated on that, like just got super depressed, had a lot of trouble

for like two years. Oh my god. Yes, there's also like this thing where you'll see something that is like technically PG, you know what I mean, Like on paper, nominally this is a PG thing and it just includes such a troubling scene that like, well, we could show this to a child, it's fine. And the example that my girlfriend came up last night was the talking toilet from Look who's talking that? Yeah, evidently the

toilet is who's talking? Yes it is. It's like give me that pepe right, Yeah, it's mellow Brooks as like like a demon toilet going and it's just like it's it's so go back and watching You're like, wow, I need to go back and watch that. It's really cool. It's but it's never yeah it is, and like it always was like practical stuff. I think like Killer Clowns from out of Space did a number on me when I was a kid. That is something you shouldn't show to a kid.

But like, yeah, I don't know, Jaws is nice. It's my dad likes to fuck around and uh, when my nieces and nephews were visiting and they were very young, he put killer clowns knowing that they kept coming out of their bed the bedroom that they were sleeping in and standing up on like the you know, the banish or whatever. The hell, it is the upstorres floor, and they could look down and see the TV. And they kept just sneaking out and watching Killer clowns. And my dad got very

yelled at by his daughter in law. Yeah, it was very mad four weeks dealing with the trauma that that movie. Because I will say, I will say, if you show them, if you show them Jaws, just just also be like, take out some statistics about sharks and being like they don't hurt people. They just like literally never had they Yeah, like a handful of times, you know what I mean, Like it's almost an anomaly. They don't mean to do it. That's fine, don't worry about it.

In fact, they get killed a lot, and they probably shouldn't because we need something that kills jellyfish the way. Chris, I love this idea that children would be convinced by statistics like adults notorious statistics, but children definitely a love Facts about Animals magazine. That's just a dinosaur ultimately, and they'll love they love dinosaurs and be like no, they're actually like you don't have to just just don't worry about it. This is why Pokemon is so popular.

So many like little animal facts that they can just glom onto. That was a bunch of magnets. I love Chris. I love the way you you speak about everything, like you're really resonating with me on a way I was unexpecting. Fan out a little bit here. You cannot though, reason statistically with a child because I, like Grub said, I I've tried to do it so many times, like it's just there's something that doesn't talk about

exactly No, but what but what is amazing? Is like uh, I've also think we've stumbled across a really interesting topic of like perfectly where the NPA was like totally totally cool with releasing a PG thing, and inside that that work contained the most deeply troubling thing. I think we're very much onto something for me. I think it might have been Raiders of the Lost Arc Isn't that isn't the one that invented PG thirteen? Yeah, because it didn't exist.

Oh, you're right. I think it was eighty one maybe or like something eighty five maybe around maybe in the eighties. I want to say, yeah, maybe that was the one that went thirteen, because as soon as you see that dude's face melt eighty eighty four Temple of Doom God, So that means Raiders was PG, yes, which is parental, It meant pally, but PG, I mean PG. I don't know, Like that end

scene where my man's faces just melted, you're gonna say it's okay. If God does it though, like God's making the faces melt, then it's just a okay. I mean, I know they were Nazis, but fuck man, that's like rough the encounter argument. We should bring back. We should bring that element back to PG movies. There should be more Nazis. His faces are melting, and I think I think it's it's it's it's practical, you know, you gotta you gotta make it so that like, you know,

if something gross happens, you actually did that. Like I don't know, it's just if only if only, because it's just like that, that's that's good, hard hard work. Yes, I agree. I I had to go. I did do a lot of like filmmaking one on one with my child where I'm just like, this is why it's scary, and we would like record things on my phone and be like see no one, it doesn't look like anyone's here, but you and I are here we're in this

room making this movie is melting. This face is in your time really did resonate for like four hours, folling my child, showing my child irreversible or no, no, what is it? What's the movie with the guy from Omen three and Sam Neil uh oh? Event Horizon? No? No, no, the one from the eighties r the one the one where where he's like in Germany he is a spy. Anyway, that joke doesn't work anymore. Sorry, Okay, yeah's sorry. Event Horizon. Did that scare you

because of the religion thing? Because that's what Dan said. He was in Catholic school, so all the Catholic roman chanting at the end of the movie really scared him for a very long time. I only watched that movie as an adult, and the part that really sticks with me is the bit where like the guy flies out into the openness of space and it's like eyeballs pop out that that scene is striking. Yeah, Otherwise, I mean it is

like another existentially terrifying movie. People go off into like some part of space, come back ever of irrevocably. That's how you say that word changed by like the horrors that they've witnessed and potentially been like possessed by. Like you know, it's a sick concept executed in this way that I think at the time people didn't really like. But ah, it's kind of cheesy, but you go back to it and it's like, no, this is this is

wild. This movie is bonkers all the way through. I you know, we've touched on this with PG movies and having a very dark element and just have an odd attachment to our things here. But the Original Toy story and the Brave Little Toaster, I think it fucked me up in such a way where I have a weird attachment to my electronics where it's like, remember,

I don't I don't want you to go. There is a home fork k scan of the Brave Little Toaster that somebody did because a lot of people I won't I want to take up too much time with this, but like there

is like this there is probably because they posted about it. It's like yeah, yeah, So basically, like you know, as with most like preservation stuff, I do a lot of preservation stuff for tapes and laser discs, but like the real head stuff is the Original Trilogy Forum, and those are the guys who like have like a reel of like movies that for whatever reason just will never get a blu ray h. Some of them are like Contraband for example, like you know, like certain Disney movies that we will never

see the light, that will never ever be put out ever again for very very good reasons. And then some of them are like ones like the Brave Little Toaster, which is this like weird in between thing where it's like the rights are complicated, there's no interest from like corporate, they don't want to

acknowledge that it exists. And so like a lot of people do home telescene of thirty five millimeters reels like there was that guy doing trailers and stuff, and it's a really good A lot of anime is actually like this because anime rights are really really disgusting, just hard to do, you know, some things get complicated, and yeah, they do home restoration of this stuff. And the Brave Little Toaster scan that's this guy did looks great. Yeah,

why does it say it's uncensored? What is censored about the US DVD of Brave Little Toast. Well, there's a death scene of a client's the guy then, so so two Little Brave Little toaster effects that are interesting. The guy who did it, who wrote, who wrote the story it's based on a book is Thomas Dish, who was a really good science fiction author who passed away of complications of AIDS in was in the East Village and was very

good at writing about like having add in a science fiction context. He did a really good short story call or book called Camp Concentration that's very good. And he also did one of the caddiest books of science fiction criticism I've ever seen, called The Dreams Are Stuff Is Made Of And it's just this middle of the road, like science fiction isn't good, science fiction isn't bad. It is what it is, and it can be both of these things. And if you turn it one way, it prevents nuclear war, and if

you turn in another way you get Umshin Rayuku. And he's a great, great, great analysis because he was also the caddy gay man of the science fiction world. So he's just constantly talking shit, he's aching. And the other fun thing is that I believe it was Brad Bird originally tried to pitch this. Oh wow, it's like, hey, imagine if these appliances had a life of their own at home, and then it got like taken away

from him or something like that. And then later on he made Toy Story, and it's like Toy Story is just a brave little toaster rip off. He tried, we have the receipts. He tried to get this off the ground. He didn't do it. And then he made Toy Story and it made Bonco bucks or forget of his breadbird whoever. But anyway, Sobey involved in Pixar, that's that. It was clearly ripping that off and it's a

better movie. Crazy reminiscing about our childhood here reminded me. I don't know if y'all remember this at all, and I don't have anything to say about this other than how much it horrified me as a child. But the Adventures of Timmy the Tooth was a puppo, and it just made me scared of my teeth that I had to floss and brush every single night and day. God that Timmy looks, Oh, look at this fucker. I don't like this at all. This guy sucks. Teeth shouldn't be alive. Teeth shouldn't

be alive. About the kind of general makeup of our teeth. They are organic matter. They can handle this. Yeah their bone right, Yeah, they sucks. That's the end of our first segment here, Nathan, Chris, thank you so much, gentlemen. Once again, aftermath dot site just launched. Chris Nathan, you guys can hang out for the rest of the show. You got a dip let me know, we would love to have you either way. He I mean, I can chell for a little bit longer. I think I got to dip in like thirty. But I can

hang out and I'll just quietly bow out. Okay, dooky, all right, We'll see you guys after a quick break. This show is sponsored by Betterhelp. Holidays are quickly approaching, and I'm gearing up to have family over and throw a big dinner. We don't tend to give each other too many presents, but we do make sure to try and enjoy each other's presence. Whether or not your family gives out a bunch of gifts or whatever, what about you give a gift to yourself, especially this holiday season. Maybe that

gift is starting therapy, or maybe it's just being kinder to yourself. Make sure to love you this holiday season. Listen, y'all, I've benefited a bunch from therapy, and it has really put me in ease and given me the tools to handle tough situations much easier. I can't recommend it enough, even if you're looking for someone to vent those difficult feelings that you've been holding on too. If you're thinking about starting therapy, give Better Help a try.

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That's Better Help h e lp dot com slash BombCast. I can't handle how much stuff Chris is unlocking within my brain because during the break we were talking about Christian anime, and I swear that I've seen this little robot before. I don't know, within my dreams or within me, and I'm terrified now. I think it's in the Bible. Actually there's a lot of robots in the Bible. Yeah, there is. There is John the Baptist, actually a robot baptists. Just if you say the robot place that, does that

make them a robot? I think it makes them a robot though. Yeah oh oh said at least robots talk about him. Yeah. Uh, Jeff Grubb, Let's talk about some news please, absolutely. I mean this is God's favorite podcast's right, facts are facts? Oh right? We got a handful of news stories here. Let's start with the Nintendo addressing rumors about the

switch to at games Com and it's dual screen patents. Nintendo has denied reports that it was that it has brief developers on plans for a Nintendo Switch successor, and it's also dismissed a recent patent filing for a device with multiple screens. However, some analysts believe that a new Nintendo console could be released in twenty twenty four still seems very likely. Earlier this year, Windows Central and VGC and Eurogamer had kind of two separate reports at two separate times of hey,

developers at games come, we're briefed on the switch too. When asked about that, Shintaro for Okawa at Nintendo President Nintendo said that those are inaccurate, although he doesn't elaborate on which parts are inaccurate, if the whole thing's inaccurate. CEOs almost never do that. He also dismissed any sort of people extrapolating from that recent patent about a dual screen device that when you take those two sides apart, the two sides can still communicate with wireless signals and it

can act like a DS and all this other stuff. He's like, no, that's not anything either. I think that that's probably that one's probably truce probably right about that. That's the kind of thing where Nintendo patent stuff all

the times, all the time, and nothing ever happens with that. But I don't Usually Eurogamer and VGC thirty reporting is usually pretty spot on on this stuff, especially when they hear about it separately, And I just wouldn't be surprised if this is them being a little bit trying to obfuscate what really did happen. Say, yeah, we were kind of talking to some people about it. Maybe he's like, oh, did you show off the switch to at games Com? Well, we didn't maybe have the physical switch to,

but we might have talked about it to developers. There's a lot of space for both of these, both sides to be telling the truth here. Either way, we're expecting this the follow up to the Switch to be announced at some point in the next year or so, so they got to start talking

to developers at some point there. I don't I don't have the story here, but there is this recent trend of Nintendo games and at least one third party game getting a new button coloring scheme for Switch games that exactly matches the Super Famicom controller, where it's like, you know, the red is the A is red, and that's the yellow, blue and the green all the way around like the super Famicom controller had, and people, well, Nintendo's

just kind of doing a throwback, but once third party developers started doing it, there's like a fashion game that's that just released that's doing it as well. That lines up with some reporting that the next Switch might have a Super Famicom styling to. It might even be called Super Nintendo Switch To or something like that, and so people know something's happening here. They're getting these games ready to be backward compatible. So this is something we should hear about relatively

soon. But I don't know where are you guys that will like Switch to getting announced. Is it something that you guys don't expect to happen until middle of next year, being at this point, probably it's going to be at least a minute, like we're you know, coming toward the end of the year. I mean, Game Awards doesn't really seem like the kind of place for that would drop major. I mean, it's not impossible, but I agree, like, yeah, it seems unlikely. Yes, yeah, so

I mean I would figure that at the earliest. Yeah, i'd be probably the middle of next year. I think they just yeah, sorry, oh sorry, No, they just do things on their own time. Now. They don't care. They fully won, you know, whatever vestiges of the console Wars are left, they may as well just like do what works for

them. Yeah, And even when they were in a corner with the WEU, it wasn't like they were operating on some set schedule that they had done before where they're like, oh, we did this in the past, we're gonna do it this time. It's like, now we're gonna announce it in a video in December, and then we'll have an announcement event in March and or like in the early next year, and then launch it in March. So that's probably not going to be exactly what they do this time, but

I don't know. I think by next holiday we'll either have this thing or we'll definitely know a lot about it. But for now they are continuing to stay pretty silent, so and that like they were asked about this apparently inside of their conversation with investors, which is where a lot of this data is coming from. As part of this though, they confirmed that the Switch is now sold one hundred and thirty two point four to six million units as of

September thirtieth, twenty twenty three. That makes it the second best home best selling home console of all time, behind the PlayStation two. It probably will get to about one hundred and forty million units by the end of this year, or somewhere in that range. The PlayStation two is at about one hundred and fifty million. That's it could actually end up getting there. It depends on how fast the switch does fall off after the switch to is introduced.

Nintendo has sold more Switch consoles and games in the first six months of its fiscal year this year than it did in the same period last year. Obviously, that is because of Zelda Big. Zelda's going to push a lot more and that's really seemed to have the effect there. Switch hardware sales, however, overall, are declining, especially in major markets outside of Japan. It's

actually growing in Japan weirdly. Nintendo says this year software sales were driven by Zelda and Pickment four, and Nintendo plans to release those games that are coming up just now, either Warriorware which just released Super MARIOORPG and more, and that's going to carry them through the holiday. The best selling games on the Switch so far, the order hasn't changed, but just the numbers on some

of these games continues to be baffling. The Mario Kart eight Deluxe, the best selling game of the Switch, still is sold another one point five million copies in the last quarter. Is now at fifty seven point zero one copies sold. I mean a lot of those get packed in, but people are buying those packages because it comes with Mario Kart. That's the reason they're getting it. It feels like animal crossing. I don't know a little bit, yeah, but I mean they're like a smash I'm sorry, there's a smash

like package that they're just now putting out or something. Yes, so that part of their Black Friday lineup, they have a whole bunch of stuff. Usually they just do a Mario Kart eight bundle. They have I think an Animal Crossing bundle this year, but then they just announced a Super Smash Brothers Ultimate O lead bundle, and Smash Brothers Ultimate came out five six years ago

or something like that. So yeah, that's and I mean, like Breath of the Wild is getting a Black Friday sale down to forty dollars, a sixty dollars game down to forty dollars seven years after it came out. That's just out Nintendo's operating these days. Yeah, Animal Crossing New Horizons at forty three point three eight million, that sold another point six million copies. Smash Brothers is at thirty two million, Breath of the Wild's at thirty one point

one five million, Mario Odyssey's at twenty seven million. Then you have Pokemon Sword and Shield and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet at twenty at a twenty six and twenty three respectively. Super Mario Party at nineteen point six six million, And just to put that in respective, that's a bad game. Okay, I agree, I agree, Yeah, Mario Party fucking awful I think Mario Party Superstars is the better of those, and that one's like catching up to this.

That's like I think at like fifteen million copies or something like that. But Super Mario Party is just straight up a bad game and it's and that nineteen point six six million is better. It makes it a better seller than

I think anything from First Party Xbox or First Party PlayStation. That last Pokemon game was rough to those last Oh yeah, it's just been getting it's I mean, I know they have a different relationship with like the Pokemon Company and thus like their hands are tied and they can't do their normal thing, but god damn, like the quality control on that and even Archaeas was just so rough, and it's like I want them to do the tea table thing,

the tea table Urban Legend like so badly for this franchise. I want them to be like, no, you're taking like two seconds to make make to have time and staff and crew to make a game that's like that looks good, yep, but speak my language. These games on this three year schedule and they have never abandoned it, and they keep selling Pokemon. Scarlett Violet is catching up the Sword and Shield, it's still uh, it's still behind it. But in the last quarter it did sold it sold another point five

to seven millions, five hundred and thousand copies. Uh. And that that's before this holiday where it's going to have its DLC, and that DLC is likely going to get packaged in with the game here pretty soon and that will probably ship another couple of million copies uh over you know, several months. And so yeah, that game's probably gonna get to twenty six million as well. Uh. And then Tiers of the Kingdom is at nineteen point five million

already without having a first holiday to get through as well. So that's gonna shoot up a twenty million. God, it's going to be clear. Thank god, it's going to eventually out sell Mario Party. Yes, exactly right. Thing that they about right, oh yeah, is one of that means time still behind Super Mario Party. That's I mean that I do think about that. Like Pickment four, we got the new story coming up here. I'll just say it right now. Pickman four is the best selling Pickman game

of all time. It did two point six one million copies, and I'm like, I'm grateful, but boy does that make me sad that Super Mario parties at ten times that it's just so nice, stating it's a fraction of a Mario party. What is it about? I mean, why did like I get Mario Kart right? Like that makes sense. I switch is very popular with families, and a lot of those Mario Party sales, not all of them, but a lot did happen during the pandemic where people were buying

the switch and buying games to play to keep their family entertained. And that and that momentum is carried. You know. It sold another two hundred and seventy thousand copies in the last quarter. Again, better than a lot of brand new games. Fucking yeah, and then new Super Mario Brothers. You de luck, a port of a WIU game is at sixteen points seven more coffees sold. Yeah, again, and that's better than just about anything else from any other publisher. And this is a portable WEU game, so you

imagine Wonder is going to do pretty well there. But overall the hardware is dropping off. It's trending, it's kind of trending down in a pretty noticeable way. Japan is the one territory that is seen like, oh, actually, Japan had more looks like it has more hardware sold than the America's so

far this year. So that's, you know, really good that they're able to keep that momentum in Japan, something that was questionable there for a while in terms of like how much does that audience still care about traditional games when it's Nintendo stuff. They're very much on board still, but in the Americas, in Europe and other regions it's dropping off pretty big, and that's usually when they're ready to lock and load with the new system. So we'll hear

more about that soon elsewhere. Epic Game Store isn't profitable yet. The Epic Game Store is about five years old, still isn't profitable. According to Epic Games. It has offered generous revenue splits to developers and spent heavily on exclusives, exclusives and free games, but it has also laid off employees and increased prices, and they seem to have abandoned some of that strategy. The guy that was serge I can't remember how to say, the guy he used to

do the the Steam dB. Yeah, yes, yes, sech B. It was a different data it was a different thing, but yeah, he he managed to like figure out what Steam games are selling basically exactly. He was like a data analyst guy, and he was overseen or he was basically in charge of turning Epic Games into a competitor. Uh, he's left. And that was kind of signifying that, oh, the strategy we were doing before of a lot of free games and all this stuff, it didn't necessarily

have the effect that we were hoping for. Now. I mean, now that seems to be like where Epic is at in general right now. Like this is also you know, them talking about kind of their or like what they were hoping to do with like Fortnite and Creator stuff and all of that in terms of generating more revenue, and they just like came to the conclud like, oh, this is not making the kind of money that we expected it to. And that's where you know, a lot of the layoffs came

from. I feel like they still up go ahead, So no, go ahead. And I was going to say, they still seem to be fairly attached to that strategy or at least too you know, like metaversizing Fortnite. Yeah, but you know, it's become clear to them that the amount of money they thought they could pull in off of doing this is not going to align with reality. Yeah, and I think when it comes to the store, very much a fight being picked by Tim Sweeney. This is a something

I think he wants to fight because he's angry about this. And you know, recently it seems like they do have a strategy of publishing games and getting games off the ground like Alan Wake two that is going to be very successful and very like that's actually going to work as opposed to the strategy for a long time there of finding games about to come out and pain to keep them off Steam. I understand why they did that strategy, but it's just it

never really had the effect that they were going for. I think there was a couple of games that moved the needle order. Lands three I think was probably the biggest one that they had, but it just was a lot of money after a lot of good money after bad is what it seems like. And I you know, I guess hindsight's twenty twenty, but so man, imagine if all that money could have gone to projects that were similar to allen Wick two. Right. Not that there's a million developers out there ready to

make games like that, but there are more than are getting funded. So yeah, it just seems like a shame. It seems like a walk Just walk into Finland with like a boatload of money and be like, all right, we need more finish game designers. Yeah, that's where the twenty sam Lakes just merge from nowhere. The game is mo scene stuff and I just I just like I did. Yeah, just go into a guys who are really good at making things mon efficiently. Yeah, do magic tricks here.

Hey, if shifts into that, that would be great, a great use of that money. Yeah, I think right, I mean the thing we I mean, well, actually, I take it back. We do talk about it all the time. Epic Game Store as a product, as a piece of software is very bad, and that is also why it is probably not moving the needle. If that thing like the fact that I lament having to launch Alan Wake too, the fact that I do not look forward to

that tells you everything you need to know. It is such a like I don't know what is going on with this with this software, but it does not work. They have to redo it, they have to just stop and start over because it's bad. I hate it. I hate it. I

hate that software. The other thing, though, is like even if Epic managed to make something really good on that front, managed like achieve feature parody with Steam in almost every way, that probably still would not be enough because generally speaking, people don't move platforms or be for like different things when the client that they already have is perfectly good and they have stuff there and the other stuff. They've got their friends, they've got a community, they know

how it all works. They don't have to adjust to people. Yeah, exactly. And it's like unless Epic like comes out with something that just revolutionizes the entire way we do this, then you know they're not going to meaningfully pull people away from Steam. Like it's just that there's not a way to

do it. The only the only other use case, the only other like platform they think of is like Gog, and the only reason why gog is supported by people is because it has like one specific thing it does GM free and like nobody's else, you know what I mean, Like there is an actual like use case difference with the platform, and if it's like, hey, would you like this worst platform, everyone's gonna be like hate the imposition. I think that's the other thing is like it's the idea of just like

being forced to do it. It's like not even just that it works bad, it's that it is there's no choice in the matter. Where is gog? Is this thing that you do if you're a freak and you like that stuff, you know what I mean? Like that's freaks out there for sure. Yeah, No, it's good, valid, very valid. But I think there is something to that though, like because it's also yeah, to

your point, like almost an identity thing. Like I you know, if you're somebody who uses gog, you're someone who cares about older games, who cares about games being freely available instead of like lockdown by d r M. Like you know, it's almost a badge of honor. And if you can provide that to people, something that like you know, is a form of identity, then they'll be super into it. Something like band camp for a weight about that, Uh, check out Aftermath later this week, because I'm

working on I would love to answer. Yes, absolutely, We'll see what kind of what happens in the store space, But it seems very lockdown for Steam. Uh. And then if there's disruption, you would think it's coming from game Pass, but it's not like that's over taking PC gaming in any real way. Either. It's growing, sure, but it's not like no. Steam still has all that momentum. And if there's disruption, it's not

happening at Epic Game Store. Uh. PlayStation consoles are losing Twitter integration next week. Sony Interactive Entertainment will be disabling Twitter integration on PlayStation consoles next week. This includes the ability to view Twitter content, post content, and link Twitter accounts. Sony is now confirm the reason for this decision, but Microsoft made a similar move in April. Due to high API costs, Twitter wants

to charge around forty two thousand dollars a month for major enterprise partners. This is smart because Twitter was getting free content for its platforms and now it won't. Wait, that doesn't sound smart at all that I really like disengage me, man, you know, can I can I? Can I say the can I say the line? Say the line? If you'd like to read a post about this, you can go to after No. It sucks.

It legitimately sucks. And I have a very complicated reason, as somebody who does a show where I look for video game clips, which is that like, yes, okay, you know what you can do on Twitter find video clips in a way that is kind of organized, you know where. You can't do that everywhere else except kind of Reddit in needy YouTube, but not really because why would you look there? And like that's the thrust of the piece I it is there is a no good place for video game clips.

Nobody has thought about this, like and you can affect you can search by source operator for example, like search operators are important. And being able to upload from Twitter to a like platform without downloading it with your phone on a very good app. It's a it's actually a pretty good app, I like the PlayStation app, but like having it all organized as like this is a category that's just game clips is so useful not just for me, but for

people trying to find out what the fuck is happening. And this this this lack of indexing, this like slow erosion of like being able to figure out where shit is without it being fed to you by an algorithm that feeds the shit you don't want to see. That has made you know it's the in shitification. It's uh, it's it's getting worse, as it is so much worse. The web is becoming unuseful, like it is it was once a tool and now it is a content shoveling platform, and uh, it's it's

rough. The sad thing here is Yeah, for a very long time, Twitter very bad and then secretly got it got kind of okay, It got kind of it got okay there for a little bit where they dealt with a

lot of their hate problems, not all of it. They got really good at dealing with disinformation, and then all of their tools for searching and finding stuff and following the people you want to follow and curating your own experience was pretty decent, wasn't It was a good utility, And now it's most don't need to make money, right, Like if it's it serves the people, yeah, then I thinks it was making money. It was like, we're making a lot of add money and then here we are, so and of

course it's being ripped apart, you know, pup things. And like also like I had access legacy access to to studio Twitter studio, which is something that nobody knows exists unless you are of like a media freak, right, and like they revoked that, and honestly that like the fact that there is no actual front end tool for people, normal people to just do video uploads, to like do YouTube uploads or like YouTube style things where it's like here's

the thumbnail, here's the metadata, here's the SRT. That stuff hasn't worked. It's not that it's a good or bad. Like Twitter could be a great platform for video, could be very good because it's like engaging in a way that is correct. It's just it looks like you uploaded it from a PS three and it like is there's no tools for it, and they keep doing like who cares about the rationale because like even if it wasn't just the API CAU, you know what I mean, there's like twenty million reasons.

It's like they're hamorrhaging users, like it's bad to be associated with it.

And like if if Elon comes in and does this thing where it's like, oh here, here's like a slight I'm gonna shake you down a slight amount for something you're not really getting anything out of except let's be honest, it made it easier to figure out what people were doing on your platform, Like it's actually really a useful thing for Sony, but they're like I don't care anymore, and like TikTok's not that either, because TikTok's this other thing.

It's closer to YouTube. They like like content that's in like a very specific format that's memes, Like it's a lot of good recut twitch clips and stuff like that. Whenever you try to look up game stuff, you will not find like good gaming content that's just clips on TikTok. It's a that. Yeah, and then the TikTok is almost all the algorithms, so you're gonna get reinforced the stuff you've already started watching and discovering new stuff. It's it's

just not a tool, it's it is a content consumption platform. There is still waste obviously to post stuff to Twitter, but it's not no longer a button on the PlayStation. And as we were talking about, like, oh, people like you do, the people take the path of at least resistance. And if you put any resistance there, a significant portion of stopped doing things the way they were and they just won't find a new way. And

it's done. So that's the reality here. Yep, all right. Blizzard seems happy about being at Microsoft. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard is expected to have a positive impact on Blizzard. According to Blizzard, president mikey Bara, and now he would say that, but to be fair, a lot of employees there are are echoing some of these similar sentiments. They have their own

reasons that I think are separate from Ebarras. But Barra said that Microsoft's culture of trust, inclusion, collaboration wiant power Blizzard to continue creating great games. He also said that Microsoft is supportive of Blizzard revisiting older titles if they want to. Basically, though, what he's saying here is we're going to be more independent than we have been, and independent from what or who exactly. I think it's Bobby. Bobby Kottock is Bobby Kottak. Bobby Bobby had his

way of doing things, which is bigger, more faster. Also, like you know, sequels as often as possible, it's often time. I mean like Overwatch two is like a perfect example of this, right, Like a sequel that no one really asked for, that came at great expense of the original game that like still has not really found its footing. Like that was all internal Bobby Coottic stuff, him being like, we need a sequel to this game that's doing really well. The over Watch team did not want to

make Overwatch two. They wanted to keep adding stuff to Overwatch one, and like that's the reason. Like Bungee was like, we got to get out of this with Destiny because they're going to keep making us make Destiny three and there's no way we're doing that. So yeah, it's this is his mo for a very long time. Bobby Kottak is like, Hey, we have something that works. Here's my genius. Make it again, make it bigger, and make make it faster. Oh that's real clever stuff. There are

we going to probably eventually run it into the ground. It's like he's very lucky. The call of duty is one that was so resistant to that. But Tony Hawk Guitar Hero definitely got ran into the ground. And yeah he made a lot of money doing that, I guess. But there's something to be said for longevity too. So there's something to be said for the people making these things not feeling like they are being ground down, having to just

get this stuff out as fast as possible. Yeah. Well, I mean that is one area in which the workers some of these companies are potentially excited.

I did a piece on aftermath dot site that's after myth about the sort of unionized workers at companies like Blizzard, albany Man's Nmax, which is under Microsoft, and how like, as a result of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard, basically Microsoft has agreed to this neutrality deal where they will allow workers to discuss labor organizing unions things like that and to form them without you know, union

busting, so basically interfere by coercing people the committed they're committed to that because if they go back on that, that is something they've discussed with regulators,

and regulars would be able to come back and bite them. Yes, it is legally binding with a union called the CWA, And so a lot of people who work at these studios are cautiously optimistic because like now, there's not really much stopping you know, thousands, potentially like ten thousand employees from unionizing in various capacities and from and as a result, securing better conditions for themselves, you know, pushing back against things like crunch and even layoffs things of

that nature. So you know, there is reason to be excited, even though they've just you know, jumped from one behemoth to another behemoth. Right, It's it's it's not orders of magnitude different. The world is like a utopia with butterflies and rainbows because they're no longer because they're Microsoft now. But it's like, oh no, it is measurably better in these certain areas and the ways where it could be a problem that, yeah, that could be,

we'll see. But it's like for those the people making this stuff, mostly it seems like a couple of good, positive moves in the right direction for a lot of them, and we'll see how long that lasts. Nothing's going to last forever. Speaking of Xbox and what's happening there, they're talking up using AI tools to build characters, dialogue and narratives. Xbox and in World have partnered to create AI dialogue and narrative tools for game developers. The

tools will include an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine. The use of AI in the entertainment world is obviously a point of contention right now. Hyen Zing or Hyan Jing from Who's Xboxes, General manager of Gaming AI, said the tool set will include an AI design copilot that assist and empowers

game designers to explore more creative ideas, turning prompts into detailed scripts. Dialogue trees, quests, and more, as well as an AI character runtime engine that could be integrated into the game client, enabling entirely new narratives with dynamically generated stories, quests, and dialogue for players to experience. Now, I am of the sober opinion that there's no this is gonna be really tough to stop and and but the ideal solution, well, the idea of solution is

is Union's being able to step in and create guidelines. But short of that, it is okay, create tools for the developers to use. Don't replace developers with these things. I still think that seems like a risky thing here, though. What do you guys think? Ah uh? I The first thing that popped into my head was like, just as long as no one loses their job over it, it's uh you know, but how could that even be a thing that you like, measure and sort of like track?

Right? Yeah, I mean, I mean what usually happens with this stuff is like I always point to the example of Epic games saying, hey, an unreal inch and five, there's a button you get pressed that creates a city, an open world city for you. And that used to be a job that would employ lots of people, and it's like, well, so that means we're gonna get games just what people think we're gonna game. We're gonna get games faster because you could just press that button and now you can

make games cheaper and you don't have to have so many people. And it's like, well, yeah, that's true for certain tiers of games. For those top tiers of games, it's like they're going to take all the people that were busy making the city and now they're going to have those people work on other things, like the interiors that you can't just create with a button. They will the scope will keep getting bigger now that these other things are

easier. That's not always going to be the case, though. There are going to be situations where people do get replaced. Can I can I offer a rejoinder to that? And I saw somebody posting about this. Somebody posted a tool and what it was was, you know, used I don't know, like GPT or whatever, and it's like it would describe an object and

then it would render that object in a three D in like Blender. And I saw someone who worked in games who was like that, I for a living tell people to reduce the number of triangles in their models so it runs on consoles. And this would give me a heart attack and make me quit. And that is every AI tool I try getting it. I've used all that stuff, Like, Okay, it's useful for certain things. It's useful if you want to make the voice of Roger from American Dad, that's fine.

It's useful if you want to transcord and I have, it's useful if you want to transcribe things. There are limited uses to this stuff, but like more often than not, your babysitting it, and the babysitting treaks more time, like even with like you know, I don't think that's exactly what happened with City Skylines, but they clearly had like a tool that made like their teeth, their models have too many goddamn teeth, you know what I mean, or any teeth, you know what I mean. Like this middleware

stuff where you don't babysit it and you have to babysit. It's just it creates a lot of work that like I don't think people in charge understand that is not actually an efficiency. It's just you've created another class of people you have to hire to watch the people that you destroyed with the robot, and it's likely stuff with AI. It's it's also go ahead, Nathan. It's kind of a banall point. But like AI is not intelligent. AI is

a branding term. It does not describe the way the thing actually functions. It is a large language model. It just means that it can imitate things at a scale. But he and then it's mostly just taking them and reapplying them, which is also I like you mentioned specifically that this tool could like

aid in quest design or something like that. That sounds terrible to me because like if you try to communicate with an AI bot, they lose track of like individual threads so quickly, they like don't know that they have trouble calling back to things that you talked about earlier, like, which is all quests are. They're just a series of events that call back to each other.

Like it does not sound like a great idea to me. Yeah, and I think Chris, you're exactly right and think you extrapolated there as well, where it's just like these things are they have their uses. They are just tools though, and anytime where we're like putting the tools in charge, it's just not gonna work. And I've used a lot of the AI stuff, and it's like, if you ask it to do the things that we're told it's going to be replacing jobs for, it is very bad. Immediately.

It is so noticeable. It's not gonna be like it's not going to pass a SNIP test, let alone be able to like create these games the way that people say. And there are people like, oh, I coded a game using the chat GBT, aving me walk through it. It's like, yeah, you be a human involved in every step of the process. Probably can accomplish a lot more with a computer assistant. I could see that happening.

And I do think AI probably will get integrated into a lot of the workflows for a lot of people, but from people who know what they're doing, know what to look for, and are able to figure out where it works and where it doesn't, and that that's going to take time, and that that's going to require a lot of people still being involved in the process.

And I know it's not the same thing one to one, but I feel like, like, remember all those procedural generation games were coming out, and like you know, early twenty tens and twenty alone, you know, in that decade, do you think they would have used AI instead of procedural generator, like just as like a buzzword sort of term, where like, hey, Splunky's got that AI. Oh yes, right, and probably might have afraid of associating themselves with that, Yeah, of course, yes,

definitely right. Yes, it's also just it's run out of seat. I don't know, the whole thing, running out of team. They like they needed somewhere to park their money when Crypto crashed. Yeah, like and and like they needed to be a thing everyone in Silicon Valley that the like runs of runs of hedge fund like needed something to be annoying about for a year and are ye and everyone's like tired of talking about this the only thing that

that's fun. And then more importantly, all the cloud processing is just gonna money for crowd possing. It's just gonna run out, Like it takes a lot of energy to make, like like big bird dude nine to eleven in chat GPT and like and like eventually they're you're gonna have to pay for it, and everyone's like, oh fuck that, I don't want to do that. It's how it's gonna work, you know, it's it's it's it's honestly,

the results aren't worth that money. It's uh, you know, I use some some AI stuff when I put my notes in for the show the news run down'm running. I'm right here. I put a bunch of notes in, copy a bunch of stuff from a bunch of stories, and then I put like, Okay, here's what matters to me. Here's this,

this, now summarize this, and most of the time it works. Sometimes it makes a grave air that's oh, and I got to like remember actually what this thing said and work around what the computer's done because I'm reading it now. So it's like, yeah, it's I would not pay for this. That's in the Google docs thing. That's like their professional tool set that

they actually sell to the enterpriss. Yes, it's bad. Sorry, just real quick Tangentially, I've had some acquaintances say, oh, yeah, man, I used to write myself a cover letter get hard at a job. Now that that does work because the hiring process is such horseshit that that doesn't

matter. Fair, very fair. But those same acquaintances have wound up at these jobs and immediately gone fired because they don't actually have the tool set to fucking succeed at the job, and it's like, Bro, you're not gonna do well if you can't even get in on your own What the fuck are you thinking? You gotta go in lying. You need to lie on your own strength. Exactly when you get in there, you're better at lying and you won't get fired exactly, right for you, girl boss, That's such

a good point, all right. Insomniac Games has confirmed it's the nain Spider Man going forward is Miles. Morales. Games confirm this said Peter Parker will take a back seat, but will still be involved in the story. Miles development as a character was a key factor in the decision, as he has grown more confident and capable over the course of the story. They kind of explained their thinking here, and they explain like how that naturally happened throughout Marvel's

Spider Man two. There was a reaction to this from weird comic book people and Spider Man fans like good, I hope they can't sleep, and they're also just dumb as hell. There's no way that Peter Parker is not going to be deeply involved in the next given dies. He will still be involved in against comics the Jedi Ghost of Peter Parker Will Miles. Yeah, they'll definitely by the way to make that happen. But there's like plenty of threads

left over that they need to close up. All they're saying is that Miles Morales is more interesting than Peter Parker at this point, and they're correct, Yes, of course that's correct. Well, also, like the place a game says that, so it's like not a big deal. The Peter Parker story has been told to death at this point, right, like continued what happened to his uncle? Is he? Okay? One to tell you Uncle

Ben doesn't make it that far. It's like, and the story you once again, it's like, man, this is too much for Peter Parker and he needs a break. It's like, yeah, I mean, that's that's the story of Peter Parker. They did it again. They're gonna do a third game. What what do you do with that character? You do that again, like that's what happens with Spider Man. They probably are like, no, let's kind of leave that behind and do some new stuff with Miles

Morales. We find that more interesting in the storytelling. You me bone saw Oh yeah, where's he at. That's why I love uh Peter Parker in that New Spider verse where he's just sort of like this Dad's just like yeah, it's just like, go do your thing, Miles. That's great. Uh. Embracer co O leaves on a high note. Wait, no, that's that's not right. H Angel Struk, the CEO of Embracer Group, has confirmed his departure from the company. He said that he is grateful for

time there and it's excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. He also acknowledged that the last year has been rough for the company, but he is positive and Ambracer will come out stronger in the future. Departure comes during a difficult year for the company where they've had a lot of layoffs, some studio closures, and just bad financial report after bad financial report. Embracer is the one where it's like, how do you even talk about this? Because everyone this

entire time has been saying exactly what happened here? It's a wow. They seem to be spending a lot of money and don't seem to have a vision for what to do with all these things they're acquiring. Yep, that's what happened. Here, they had a lot of cheap capital. They took that money, they spent it, acquired a lot of stuff. Then capital got expensive and they needed that capital keep being cheap so they could pay for everything

that they already acquired, let alone do new acquisitions. And they don't have any real way to turn that into something that is going to sustainable. It's not even like on the table really sustainability for what they've done here to the point where they have had multiple successful games in the last year and that has not helped them whatsoever. So uh, yeah, he's getting out of dodge. It feels like he is starting his own company, those stream K games.

I think that's what it's called. Good luck with that. I'm sure that they're still capital out there for starting up new things, but I don't know. Yes, Embracer, like we have not the other shoe is not fully dropped there, right, Yeah, I mean they're they're just you know, they've been announcing like new rounds of layoffs at various companies pretty much like for months now. That's right. They what I heard they were thinking of

selling Gearbox. That could still happen. Yep, that would obviously be pretty massive, And yeah, like also just the impacts on these companies that have sustained layoffs we have yet to see, because that will only really show itself down the line in terms of how games are impacted in things of that nature.

But no, I mean, like, I think I just find it really funny that, like in particular, he's like, however, I'm going to stay in games despite like you know, being at least partially responsible for one of the biggest implosure of any game company in the past like half decade at least. Like, what are gonna do now? Yeah, strunk, I've killed before and I'll kill again. Oh just real quick, I gotta go. I have to hit a bus. Unfortunately, no problem. Thanks

for hanging out great. I appreciate it. A lot of fun matters. I've always always a pleasure. Let me know if you guys want to stream after life. Oh yeah, yeah, well you know, all right, bye, all right, and then let's see your last story. Fortnite's popular I had forty four million players over twenty four hour period after reintroducing its original map, and it had a concurrent player count of six point one seven million people on the Saturday after they did that. Seems like a good position.

You know, it's also maybe, oh, this is the thing to get people excited going back to the original thing, So can they build on that in any meaningful way. That seems like a tough thing to do. But it's better to have a lot of players than not to have them, so I think they probably mostly take this as a good sign. Do you guys hop back into Fortnite for the og map at all? Yeah? I guess

I missed that one. I did play Fortnite, although I guess like it kind of reminds me of like the dilemma of like World of War Wow and Wow Classic. Yeah, but like you know, Wow Classic initially generated like more interest than Wow I'd seen in years. It was this huge thing,

but like you know, Wow Wow remains popular the newer stuff. It feels like, you know, it's just not generated the same amount of interest over time, And it feels like for Whattnite might have also hit that stage now or like people are you know, it still has its core base, and the core base is enormous, yes, and fairness, but like you know, it's pretty telling that the thing that drew everybody back was nostalgia for five years ago, right, I think the lesson here is just stay old and

shitty, like like roadblocks. That thing's been old and shitty since two thousand and six and it's doing just fine. That makes all the money in the world. So yeah, uh. Runescapes another one that did, like RuneScape Classic that did really well. Right, Yeah, so, I mean you talked about this briefly yesterday during game mes Grub, but like, wow, is making a weird resurgence with the youth. Yeah, wow, it seems

to be doing Okay. My partner teaches freshmen in high school and some of her kids were talking about Wow, like it was like a cool retro thing and then a pain of the inside. Yep. I think young streamers are playing a lot of it. And yeah, I was gonna say, or they just saw watch Asmon Gold, who was not young at all, but that's not the young hips. But yes, he definitely has a huge audience. Yeah yeah, all right, that does it for the news. I'm heading this show back over to you, Jan. Thank you. Wow,

this this is full of news. It's great. I'm gonna moist. It's very moist. You know. It's a little tacky, just like a tacky bread dough. You got to need it a little bit, so we're gonna take any time that's just marijuana resin. Sorry about that. Oh oh okay, okay cool? Uh Nathan, you think you can hang out for the last seg if you got a dip, no worries dog? Yeah, sure, all right, okaytastic, All right. Well we'll see you after a

quick breaking break and we're back. Emails. These are the emails for the show. Emails. You can send your emails to BombCast giant bomb dot com and I will read every single one of them and I'll cherish them. I print some out and I put it in a little folder I put and I bury that folder. Every day. I dig it back up and then I rebury it. And then I think about how one day I might get a fun little email tree uh planted by all of us. He doesn't understand a

lot of things, guys. This is just uh No, I'm just incredibly charming. And then I just disarm people with it, and I speak with a lot of confidence. So it gets me a lot of places. Steve in a, I'm gonna assume Kansas City rights in goes Hey, BombCast crew. As we head into this holiday season, I can think of one thing that can bring joy to the heart of all gamers. Bobby Kottick is losing his job this January. Well, I couldn't find multiple stories agreeing to his

his total compensation. Most articles I read agree he's paid. He's paid a lot, somewhere north of one hundred million. It made me wonder once he is no longer employed, what will Microsoft do with all that money? I guess Phil Spencer could just pay himself more as it possible. It goes towards paying off lawsuits from former employees, but could it be reinvested towards game development? So my real question is how many game development teams could one hundred million

fund every year? Is there a dream ip from Activision backlog you would like to see Microsoft revive? Thanks Steven Kansas City. I mean, you know it's it's variable, but you think about one hundred million dollars per year, and then you think, like, what is the average developer paid, even like a high and like a very expensive city like Los Angeles or the Bay Area, and those are one hundred hundred fifty thousand dollars on the high end.

That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people you could probably make several studios with that. I don't necessarily think all that money goes right to that, so I think some of it probably does, but they're gonna

have some other cost transition costs that they'll probably do with that money. And they also wouldn't I don't think they would hate, you know, starting to pocket some of that stuff or using it to pay off any interest on any you know, they had a lot of money in the bank that they used to pay for this, but they might have financed some of it, and

using some of that money to pay that stuff off might be reasonable. But yeah, I think the point here is that they bought Activision Blizzard King for sixty nine billion dollars and they think they're going to get a lot more value out of that than what it costs them. And part of it is like they can use that they can use that company in a more efficient way than Bobby Kottock and it's a board of directors could have and this is part of

that. So like they already have you know, leadership in place, they've already been kind of streamlining that stuff a little bit with bringing ZeniMax in under Microsoft Gaming in a way that it wasn't before and just recently that happened. So yeah, they'll probably take a lot of that money and use it in waste much better ways than Activision Blizzer was using it and just paying Bobby Cottick.

Yeah, I hey, Microsoft, if you want to just park that one hundred million dollars somewhere right here, big Phil cut the check, got the check, Phil? I know, man, I probably know. You know what. I don't want to back up grub statement that I don't know a lot because people will find out that I don't know a lot. Uh next, cute? You know. That's what I'm here for. That's why we keep me around. Jerry in Wisconsin rights in. Jerry asks, Hey

bombers. Over the last few days, I've been thinking about the insane quality and quantity of games released in twenty twenty three, so much that I started my own list of the forgotten games of this year and plan A sentit y'all, And then I remembered that there was only one gaming thing that this year that was truly actually forgotten by literally everyone, The PSVR two. Thank Christopher, what is that? Thanks by Jerry and Wisconsin. I completely forgot that

came out this year. I mean I was thinking about it, but like the idea that it came out this year. Yeah, I concretely forgot that. No, the Jerry's right, there are I bet you there are easily fifteen to twenty games that would be floating way closer to the surface had this been a normy gaming year. And uh, this was just not This was just not the year to be discovered. I guess. Yeah, for be an indie darling, this was not the right time for that, unfortunately.

Yeah, I mean I'm enjoying humanity. I died. Someone mentioned Chia in Chata. I loved Chia. Wait Chield was this year? Yeah, it was this thing? Fuck at you was like early they were I think, okay, that's they listen to. I honestly don't remember because I don't remember. Yes, March, what the fuck man, It's not even like that

earlier. That's like yeah, so I mean, but it's like this, Yeah, you're right, this is a year with the games like that didn't have a much tougher time kind of standing out for long periods of time. I still I love these games. Yeah, I think about even like El Paso else elsewhere, Yeah, came out recently. Very max Pain inspired, but it's also sharing real estate literally with Alan Wick two from Remedy, a game which onto itself doesn't seem to be getting as much pick up as it

normally would in any other year. So it's like they're they're like layers to this, and you know, if you work your way down, it's like, man, yeah, a lot of games probably deserve to be getting more attention than they are. You could you could go and like fake re release your game in twenty four. I feel like with decent success, I would imagine like, yeah, man, it really is jam packed. A Game of Next Year edition, that's sick. I mean, why not, like

there's no rules surprise drop your game that is already out exactly. It's like, hey and that's out, Like you could pretend like you're ramping up for it again and then all of a sudden and it's available today. Guess what, you can play this right now. It's super good too, because people people would be like, wait, didn't this come out last year? And you can be like, no, it turns out you've forgotten you are wrong this one. Grobas there we go. I mean that's what the gaming industry

should just do. Uh, all right, Keith from San Diego rights in and uh they ask. With so many of Nintendo's franchises having releases this year, it appears obviously Nintendo will launch the Switch successor with a three D Mario platformer or a Mario Kart. But if you had to dream, what lesser property would you want launching alongside the console, wave Race would be my would be my vote, Keith san Diego hashtag let link talk man. Wave Race

is a good one. I would love that. I would I'd be great to go back to the old way of like pilot Wings being the the tech demo showcase that they would be like, here's how the system's going to work. Let's do a pilotling. So I'm like, yeah, I'm fine with that. But Wave Race ten eighty, Excite Bike or anything from the Excite series been like Excite box spots or Excite trucks. That would be cool to see back. But yeah, wave Race is probably the right answer. Okay,

okay, arms, arms, legs, let's get legs. The sequels Star Tropics, I'll say Star Tropics for Mike Hips, give me hips. The game The Unirasers is good too. I'd like to say Unirasers come back. That'd be cool. Yeah, yeah, I could go for that. Kevin from Chicago Rights and Hey Duders. So I have a really weird situation and wanted to know if anyone else had something similar. I was diagnosed with

colo rectal cancer last late last year. Sorry, I'm fully cancer free today, so there's no fantastic don't need to be super sad ending Uh well, happy for you, keV. And the first step of my treatment was eight rounds of aggressive chemotherapy. This meant every two weeks I would at chemo via ivy for around six to seven hours at the cancer center. During that time, I'd honestly have a lot of time to kill and thought, hell yeah

video games. I'd always play around around an hour of Marvel Snap short games, good progression, not a ton of brain power focus needed. I ended up dropping a game about six months ago, and today tried to boot it back up again to see what was new, et cetera. As soon as I opened the game, I suddenly got super nauseated and almost threw up. This happened two or three times over the course of a few days, because I was like, there is no way this is happening. But sure as

shit. I literally cannot play the game anymore because it makes me physically feel ill, like my bodies fully associate this game with these side effects of chemo what. It's a surreal experience, but I honestly don't think I can ever play that game again. Has anyone ever had such a strong emotions tied to a game that they couldn't play it anymore? Love you guys, Kisses on the cheek for everyone. And lastly, your body feels off, talk to

your doctor Kevin from CHATSK. That's incredible advice, that last line, Like absolutely, you know when something feels weird, talk, you know, go get it, don't sit on it. I've never had this. Like the only thing I can associate with the idea of like something turning you off in that kind of way is like a food thing just because it like will make

you ill, right like if you had food poison. Like I remember many years ago, I had like a shrimp situation where like I had some bad shrimp and I couldn't eat srimp for two years, right anytime I saw shrimp. So like that's what I'm trying to I'm trying to find that connection. But I don't know with a game. I mean, Kevin have a unique, very unique relationship with that game, so that yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't think it's happened with me in a game either.

But I did get in a lot of trouble for a bad thing I did when I was watching Bourne Ultimatum. And now I can't watch Burne Ultimatum anymore. Okay, Well that's gonna have to be explained. And I'm like, if someone calls into the voicemail dumb Truck, I will admit to my literal crime on there. If I comes to that you did have crimes with Marble Snap too, I believe so. Well, yeah, in my driveway, Yes, I drove down the back of my driveway while playing Marvel Snap.

But listen, that's just cool dude stuff. You were smoking a cigarette exactly. We're in sunglasses. The block out so much fish I couldn't see anything. So yeah, and it was at night and no Seabell, No, what are those four? I think? I probably like there's it's more so music that I'll have like adverse reaction to where I can't listen to this anymore because like I associate it with a person or like a specific time in my life. I can't say that with a I don't think I could say that

with a game. Yeah. Also, music is like very heavily tied to the same part of your brain. The process is like memory in general, So it stands to reason that, yeah, you're gonna have a lot of associations there. Oh sorry, no, no, no, Nathan, please, I was gonna say, I don't think I have a game. But once in college, for like a sci fi class, we were watching the movie The Island. What If I think, Greg, Yeah, and there's a scene in that movie where a character is like getting his chest saw it

open. He's like one of the clones that they're harvesting organs from spoiler and like the viscerality of like his helplessness caused me to pass out. Like it was not a particularly violent scene, despite having describing it like it's like a

hologram saw so like it did. There's no gore. Really, it's just like but you know, he's he like wakes up during the process and like panics and freaks out and it's just like very upsetting and so yeah, it's just like watching this movie in a class full of other students and like one moment, I'm just like, you know, watching it but feeling uneasy, And the next moment it's like I blinked on the m sideways and everyone is surrounding me, and I'm like did something happen? And like you passed out?

Wow? Have you passed out from stuff like that before? No?

And never again? No, never again, first and only time. W When I think of the Island, I think of what was what was the main actress's name, Black Widow. I remember her telling the story about like, uh, there was a scene where she wakes up in bed and Michael Bay wanted her to be wanted her to be shirtless, but didn't want her to be fully nude, so he made her like wake up in a bra and she's like he doesn't realize how crazy that is to have a woman sleep

in her bra. Like, yeah, Michael Bay doesn't understand a lot of things. Yeah, that is a very like sobering story. Also that that movie is exactly like the M S T. Three K episode parts of the Clonus Horror, So I also think about that, But that's just for me. It's a good episode. People shall watch that. Damn. I have a fear of passing out. I've never passed out, but I have a fear of passing out. What's that called frational? No, well, no,

I don't think it is rational, Jeff. I think it's a scary thing because like people, it does happen to people, right, Like, you know, there's but if you're driving a vehicle like something like if you were to suddenly like I don't know, something like paying attention to your body when you're doing something like operating like heavy machinery, I think that's a fair

thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean you know, but no, like for a reason right where like Nathan like passed that because you saw something that was like traumatic and you just that's how you reacted, like woops, you know that's what happened. They did. They did make me sit down in the delivery room when we had because there was what they did a procedure. They're like, oh, a lot of men pass out during this. You're not allowed to do it. You have to. It was yeah, there

was some that's you know, terbicy blast. But yeah, so it was kind of like, oh I was I think I would have been fine, but it's like they it must happen, so frequently that you know, like this is the part where you sit in the chair, Sir. I'm like, OK, I got that problem too, Like, sir, you might want to look away. Like I watched Jaws when I was eight years old. Braiders are the lostark freak me the I can handle anything, I think. God damn. Last week I believe it was last week we started talking

about juice and games. Let's go. Jeff from Quebec City wants to introduce a new concept high BombCast. Last week, Jeremy from Montreal wrote in about Juicy games and being from Quebec City, I'm now obligated to start beef with him, but since we're Canadians and don't fight, I'm just gonna ask about lean games. What's the leanest game you can remember? To find his games so perfect and to the point that there's absolutely no element left to be cut.

Every part is essential, Nothing is superfluous for me. It's titles like Into the Breach two in Portal. Cheers Jeff from Quebec City. Huh, Hades is the first thing that pops up here. I say anything from Super giantre also Pire is super underrated. I still think it's super Giant's best game.

Oh wow, and like it's it's leaner in terms of length, like Haitis can be like one hundred hours, you know, whereas Pire is like pretty tight and compact you can finish it in fifteen but like everything fits perfectly

into place. Hmm yeah, I'm like good, Like I think of examples, like they're also still pretty juicy, like like, uh, people a pointing out Pegel, But I suppose that's still I think it's still maybe fits this definition because it's like you take anything away from pegl pegel, you're going to be losing a lot. All the parts that are there are there for a reason. I don't know. I keep going to pubg but I think that's a different thing where that's like that is a utilitarian, which is different

than lean. I think. So yeah, I don't know if I haven't answer Celeste. Oh yeah, that's a really good one. Yes, yeah, that's a lean game. Yeah yeah, I love Celeste. What's uh, you know there's almost a lean game is vv vv V the game where you're like reversing gravity. There's there's a couple of stuff to be cut from that, but like it's almost lean enough. Oh man, do you remember from like the same era, Cannibal. Yeah, yeah, that was a

really good games, like when N plus was a thing. Plus is almost a lean game. Super meat Boy is like getting lean. It's like a skinny fat game. Yeah, it is me, you know, because an old one Robotron, that's a good call. Robotron is just like it's component parts early dual stick shooter kind of thing. Yeah, that's a good one. Miami. That game, like with so many other games too that like try to be similarly lean. I think Eight Out heavily inspired the drama like

that. It's also so juicy, but yeah, it's also procedural based on like what you're doing. The soundtrack, just build reactive. It's the best. It's so Yeah, not enough people played that game. Anybody in chat who has not played that, like, go buy it on Steam right now. You won't not regret it. It is. It's all phenomenal, especially if you like things like hot like Miami. It's got like grabbing guys and throwing them like you're gonna like you you're an ape. You're an ape and

you throw people. It's great. Would you say the like NBA Jam is a lean game or a juicy. See, this is what's happened. This is what's happened with the Juicy game, where we were just like, after a while, we just get like cultivated so much momentum. We're just like every game is leany you know, we're just like, what are we defining

anymore? But yeah, NBA lean as hell, because like I would say, def Jam Fight for New York is like right in between a juicy game and game sure I think, mechanically lean, where so it has the wrestling interactions that you need that are to make that work, and then all of like the the way that the bass music makes the whole screen shake and stuff like that, and that's part of the fighting. That's pretty juicy. MEDUSA Lover sixty nine So a game. Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough.

All right, that about does it for the emails this week. Once again, you can send your emails to BombCast giant bomb dot com. Help contribute to my email tree please. My downstairs neighbor does not like that I'm barging into the backyard now with a toy shovel and bearing a bunch of papers. Folk. Their problem, well, yeah, you know what it is. It is their problem, folks. We've gone to the shoutouts. Shout out God, They're they're pretty tame this week, and I'm proud of all

of us as a society. I'm proud of us because we had guests and everyone was on their best behavior. Thanks everybody. That's right, folks, Thank you for not showing who you who. We truly are. Shouts out to the discovers from a doc that we make public for a chat to put a bunch of shot outs in the middle of the show. So all this was written by listeners. It's the only pure social media now is a Google Shouts out to the Giant bum Extra Life twenty twenty three staff streams coming soon

to a stream near you this weekend. Special shouts out to Turbo Shan, Zombie Pie, the whole community for getting the ball rolling and starting strong. The John X team shots out too, trans writes. Shouts out to aftermath Dot site check it out, vote bitches, Tam is the man, Jan you beautiful mind. You wrote it down and then set it wrong. You left out Guiden sad Face, La d G Colan, tm W e h N finishing the grim Fandango. Relatedly, for Day of the Dead is top

tier et being buried with those cartridges is pretty lonely. Nathan's voice is too soothing for this early in the day. Children are small, they walk out the other end of Even by Sharks, Mary Kish frightening children is fun. Love Disney films. Mitch probably is good fun. Fact. Cheerios are a fine substitute for nacho chips if you're making nachos. I don't fucking believe. No, get the fuck out of here. I'm gonna have to do this now. I'm gonna have no uh, I have pizza, and pizza is

good. Hot take hot take out that is I for one. Welcome are great? Overlord chat gp F when Maple Story, When Maple Story Classic? When jan No, seriously, y'all? Who let the dogs out? A green Apple emoji? Apple emoji? Farewell? Halloween? Hello, Thanksgiving? Giant Skeleton season is now? Friend fake out should go. Shakuro Gang Forever Gosha the Curo Gang for on life, ha ha ha ha. Scal of Beam Powers Unite, epic store brand tattoos, Hey, nos, fuck you?

Are you okay? Is everyone okay? I don't know? Shouts out to be unemployed, and finally making it to a live show, also hot men, Hey, what can we say? Drew blinking married guy Scanlon, congrats, Drew he congrats, Hey, no, stand up for yourself, don't take abuse, and the final shadows of the show Animorphs. Check. I'm still at book ten. I stopped reading Animalphs because I didn't have time. And then, yeah, Nathan, are you familiar with how fucked up

the Animals books are? Let's see, I like watched the show when I was a kid, but I don't think I've read any of the books. They get very dark, very quickly, and tackle a lot of very adult themes, which kind of coincides with what we're talking about PG existentially upsetting stuff. Oh yeah, like maybe being stuck as an animal and having to Yeah, or like getting stuck as an ant for an extended period of time and losing your autonomy and then just being another cog in the machine. Wow,

animals, Oh that's terrifying, actually, capitals. I mean it's almost as if animals should have in the you know the Ya book franchise that took over the world because of the adult themes that it tries to conceptualize for children. Who knows, Nathan, Thank you so much. For joining us for this whole show. Shouts out to Chris person as well. Where can folks find you Chris on the internet? After math dot site please plug plug plug plug plug. Yeah so yeah, after math dot site, obvious is where you

should go. Subscribe if you can, because if you give us money, we can keep doing the things that we like to do forever. If you don't, we will wither and die. And then let's see on Twitter. I am at v a h N sixteen. I came up with that name forever ago. I regret it, I will that, but I'm stuck with it. And let's see Chris is I think okay? His name Papa P shoe p A p A p I s h u. Yeah, I've always wondered what that's a reference to. Do me? Do? I think he

mentioned it before? Now I can't remember. Okay, Well, we'll never We'll never find It's impossible. He's on a bus now, we'll never talk to you. I gonna hear from him again? Yeah yeah uh. And then aftermath dot site, folks, please check it out. Beautiful website looks great. I love it, Thank you, yes, very very crisp Uh Jeff, Jeff, what do we got going on this week. Gays Mornings happened for the rest of the week at this point. Uh, well until

Thursday, because Friday we're off Simmons. Things are gonna get shifted around. Wednesday we're doing the Dumb Truck. Thursday BombCast revengeance. Uh, and then there'll be some other stuff in there in between. I'll be playing some Allen Wake two on the website Tomorrow. I'll be picking up from where I left off. So if you started watching along with us from the beginning, we're gonna pick up from there back whar you're gonna be hanging out jan you're gonna

be able to make it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we Either way we're gonna be playing. It's gonna be a good time. That'll be tomorrow after game Mess Mornings. Yeah, we got some things popping off late in the week. And also Thursday, tune in for a BombCast Revengeance. We'll have a kind of a fun thing on there that we that's embargoed right now so we can't talk about yet. And like what was mentioned in the shout

outs, this Saturday is the SF team's extra life stream. John Luke is doing God's work and setting up a bunch of cables, so go ahead and thank them for the shenanigans that are about to ensue this weekend and the next weekend. We got the Beef and Shutter Boys joining Dan Reichert and also flying in. We got the wind Bag, got win Bag joining us. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. So that'll be next weekend.

This weekend, starting at nine am, I'll be streaming. Then I'll pass it off off the Jan on the West Coast crew, and then the following weekend on Saturday, usually kind of during the day mostly we're gonna be streaming a bunch of stuff from Dance House. He's got a whole bunch of stuff set up from us, so that'll be a lot of fun. Look forward to that, folks. That is it for this week's episode of the Giant BombCast. Tune in later for this week for a BCR and we'll see you

next Tuesday. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff, he's been Jeff, he's been Nathan. Chris was here and he was Chris. And you at home. Damn, the squats are working. You look great this week. We'll see you next time for another episode of the giant bomdcast