819: Dirty JPEGs

Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday, December nineteenth, twenty twenty three. It is way too late to get the Christmas gifts now. It's you should you should have thought about it. Go go make a gift or give the gift of the giant BombCast like we're giving you today, Episode eight hundred and nineteen, powered by NZXT. I am your host, Janetcho. I've had way too much caffeine for ten o'clock am today, but it's all right. We're gonna keep sipping. We got a glass loaded up. There's for you audio

listeners. It's loaded with the green juice. Joining me as always co captain of the ship Chuff Crub, I'm the opposite. I had blood removed for my body this morning, and then I rewarded my cell intentionally. Yeah, I went to I had my labs done, so I didn't eat for like the eighteen hours. I rewarded myself with a breakfast Buffalo Chicken pizza. It was a personal size. There we go, There we go. That was

a good reward. So I'm doing good over here. Master of Blood and all things blood related, Dan Reichert, that's me, Hello, Yes, how are the blood arts doing today? Dan, Uh, my knees are no longer bleeding my nor are my elbows from this weekend. So yeah, good all around. Then it sounds well, I mean the finger's fucked up, but like there's the blood is done. So yeah, the blood is

done, just like the blood is never done. Also for the for our other blood master, our our our blood ambassador, Jeff Backler, very very pro blood. I'm a pro blood guy. And speaking of NZXT, I just heard today that whoever won the machine, it's on the way and I just want to thank again n ZXY for giving away a ringing computer game of the Year live, which is that was cool? Event? Yes, it's a taxable moment. Yes we're using the euphemism moment, not an event,

got it. It's softened the blow a little bit. Uh No, Yeah, I'm doing well. Blood's blood's doing well, and I'm excited to hear about your blood report, Jeff Grubb. I'll bring it all here, you guys. You will. You'll be the first to know. Okay, give the lipids, the triglytrides, all that and the whole good lipids, the bad lipids, the medium lipids, all the lipids. Look at you getting work done, grug. I remember earlier this year you saying I haven't done

ship. Look at you ending you're strong. That's right. Months ago a co Ago, you asking me like, do you see a doctor? Uh huh? Now it was in a bad situation because I was asking Dan, right, yeah, yeah, you should be. You should have a doctor. Arguably the most uh like grown seeming out of all of us, Jeff Grubb asking for medical advice. Jesus Christ, like, oh, something's wrong. Why do that when I could procrastinate instead? That exactly always my motto.

Just take a take a soak in some apps and salts. Huh. We should go to it. We should go to a sauna together, not like a I mean, if you want, but whatever y'all want to do, or oh a hot springs, let's do that. It's good as hell. Yeah, okay, I'm a question. Hey, whatever happened with those bath salts that the Florida was doing, all those drug bath salt? They ran out, they ran out, they did the good question. That's a good question, Like people are like eating faces and stuff. Now where's that

face eating kid? Yeah? See, I think it happened one. But you know what, in my opinion, once. That's too many times. Yeah, I'm gonna say it wasn't the bath Salts that did that. That was just that kid. That could have been It could have been a kid situation. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like at a restaurant with his parents and then he just like calmly got up and left and went in like ate a dude's face and killed That is what happened. Yeah.

I remember that story being like fucked up, and I followed it for a bit and uh, yeah, he was just having a dinner and he's like, I'm gonna eat a guy's face and excuse me for a second. What Yeah, it was fucked up, Dan, do you know what he was eating for dinner already? Like what if that awoken something? You know.

I don't remember there was a security footage. I don't remember where they were at or somewhere in Florida, because sometimes when you eat like a lasagna, right, the layer of cheese on top feels like you're ripping off skin, So I you know that might be Oh so we had a taste for okay, yeah yeah, okay, yeah, Why why deal with this imitation face when I can get the real deal. This is Florida. After all, what why, why? Why why do you have to bring up bath salts?

You know, why why did we go here? I'll tell you that much. I regret doing it. I don't know why I did. But here we are. This is on you. Jan Oh yeah, yeah, it's your fault. Thank you for helping me in mind palace that out. It's the last BombCast, live BombCast of the year. Boys, what a yeah, just came out of like a lovely all hands. We're talking about all the nice things we've done, and I'm like, oh wow, huh,

look at us, look at us. I would just want to give everyone like a little little little hug and like a little pat on the back. There you go, there you go. That was nice. It felt nice, felt good, the warm embrace. Right. Yeah, I'm ready to sleep for like two weeks. Oh my god, yes, yeah, yes, oh yeah, I'm dying for like two months. Yes. Avoid any sort of mac and cheese incidents that might further your damages to your body

and things like that, yeah, I would, I would hope. So I think I'm I'm pretty slammed through the end of the year, and I think January second is when maybe maybe I can have a normal existence. Oh yeah, we're back to work on January second. Yeah, so that'll be perfect normal existence, just like it wouldn't work. It's fine. I'm talking about like traveling a much other ship. Like I specifically, yesterday, there was a moment where I realized I probably could get comped to the Royal Rumble

and go to the like two K event and stuff. Somebody was like asking about it, and I was like, uh no, I don't want to do that. Oh my god, he said, no, folks, Yeah, folks, I said, no, Yeah, it's good just to stay home. I want to stay home all day. Yes, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm gonna take over dan slot of doing too many things I wanted to. I want to do too many things. Yeah, not that I don't like me. You don't do enough. That's what everyone always

says. Yeah, I just have the one plate and I'm still learning how to spin it. And it's like about how lazy you are a lot. That's actually what most of all hands meeting was about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I didn't get invited to the first All hands where that was you know, yeah we got and everything positive. Yeah, but then like he was a problem in two parentheses, so it's like, uh, it

can't each other out. Yeah, this is a lie. Yeah, like pem dos right parent the fuck is pem dos rainbow exponent exponent multiplication division edition subtract. We got there, folks. By the way, I am like knee deep in math these days, because like you know, kids bringing home some stuff that's like little, well too advanced for my family. He's third, what they what are they doing? They should be doing like times tables

right least, that's what they're doing. Like they're doing it different. I don't think I got algebra to like the fifth or sixth algebraic adjacent things. Are they doing those different or backlar? I don't know if they're doing it different. I mean I think they're they're doing it in what appears to be

a more intelligent way, because it's I don't know. I always remember like not realizing how important math was till I was like, you know, thirty three, and uh, I think, uh, you know, if someone broke it down in a way that I think they're trying to for kids under ten, where it's like no, man, like you're gonna need this, like especially algebra and you know, basic math, like you will need that

every day of your life more or less. Yeah, And so it's just like breaking down like okay, yeah, six times six is thirty six, but what else does that mean? Right? And they're they're trying to like break it down like that, which I think is interesting. I don't know,

I'm enjoying like having a bit refreshed too. Well. Like they'll break it down and they'll like they'll they'll show you like a bunch of like a grid and they'll be like, well, it's also it's also two times six plus four times six, right, So they'll like put those into parentheses and be like, hey, it's okay that it's not just you know, counting six six times. You can break it down to two times six and four

times six. I will say that's actually like as a kid, how I would do a lot of multiplication in my head was be like, Okay, this time's okay, only just do like ten times that. So I break it up into one thing that's easy, yeah, other thing that's easy and right. And I think they never taught us that you just organically like figure

that out. And I think, and that's a good point. You bring up like I think they're trying to get them to realize, like you shouldn't be like obviously counting on fingers were way beyond that, right, Like now you need to like understand instant associations and taking these kind of shortcuts and understanding like what you're doing. And it seems to be resonating. It's interesting stuff. I'm enjoying it. Maths fun, Maths cool, and math is always

right, that's the thing, right, it's never like guess. You shouldn't be guessing. That's what I've been through this those stupid ass imaginary numbers. Sure, but we're not there yet. You know we're not there yet. So yeah, it's fun. Hey, Greb, how are they teaching the gimmicks how to read? Because a teacher friend of mine, not my partner, in elementary was flabbergasted that she had to teach kids how to site read versus phonetically read. Yeah, I will tell you my wife being an early

ED educator. For a while, they go back and forth on that, like site reading for like, that's actually way you should do it to Like now, I think there's a little bit of a backlash towards site reading, where it's like what is sight reading where they want you like whole word recognition. When you look at a word, they want you to recognize it. They don't necessarily want you always to be sounding it out. They mostly it's hybrid. Now, there are definitely words that you should be that are site

words that you should just know by looking at them very early on. And they don't even like waste time being like try to sound out the like no, just learn the And so there's a handful, you know, maybe a hundred site words that they're really focused on Emmy with and she's in first grade now, and then everything else is sounding out and she's like the sounding out stuff is she's good at the site words take some time and that you know,

problem with that is like she's got some bad site issues, so that doesn't help. But yeah, they do, they try to do both. And I will say they go back and forth. Do they do the like Greek suffix and prefixed stuff? Because I always liked that, like that that would help you like learn what a word meant just looking at it, like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then they aren't doing a lot of that right now. But I talk about that with her. What do you mean, like Greek like Latin. Do you mean Greek? Yeah?

Yeah, it's like, oh, well, this is this prefix. This suffix means this, and so if you see this prefix attached to this, you know you can kind of purse out what that means. They are on their way to that, but they're not doing that yet. She will get to that though. Okay, okay, well look at us, Look at us talking about education and all that jazz. What else is popping off before we talk about games? Geez? What is going on? Dan? You

had an insane weekend. I mean that's but that's been your past weekends for the past year. Yeah. Yeah, I had that realization the other day where it's like, oh, every Saturday for the last month plus has been like a seven plus hours show. I just I haven't been able to forget all the four of us Minatti, Grubb, Dan and myself in the elevator. I think the last night of the Game Awards and Backlar had already left,

so you can't feel film up. Jeff. Okay, good to know of Minati being like Dan, we're tired, we can't go watch Face Off, and then Dan you just yelling in his face. I'm tired too. I feel like I'm dying just twenty minutes. And you know what, I made him watch Face Off with me. Yeah, and you know you can win it important when things better, you got a rally, right, we know what happened. Crop Bell asleep on the fucking couch. I made Manati stay up and watch Face Off. It was to what end? To what

end? Listen to your Snati just has seen Face Off. Now I made a life better. Yeah, but just something you crawl through the desert for a week and a half like it's worth it. You know. It's like an emotional like hike that Dan is going on, an emotional and like physical test of the body, and the spirit is specifically testing Mike Manatti's spirit. And the timing was perfect because I learned that face Off and thinking about Face Off again, I realized that a four K just came out and it just

arrived in the mail today. It's got seven deleted scenes, it's got audio commentary from John wu it's got a making of but it's like out of the darken into the light that make a base off. So when Bonk and I open our Christmas gives to each other this week, we're going to watch all that stuff and it's gonna be a delightful holiday night. That's the true meaning

of Christmas. Yeah, y'all, y'all got like a good director's commentary movie you like watching or like you you've got It opens with him, I think I've said this fort Grimmin's too, the director com Terry opens up with Joe Dante is welcome to Grimlins, to the most unnecessary of sequels, and then that that attitude carries throughout the entire thing, and I really appreciate it. That's fun. Oh he had a uh, he had a specific thing he was going forward that sequels. All right, if I have to make this

fucking movie, I'm gonna make it dumb as shit. Yep. And he succeeded. It's a good way. Yes. What's the one with Schwarzenegger where he's just describing what happens on is a total recall where he's just describing now the part we're gonna get at the borce, but this isn't real and like and describing it. It's like, Arnold, I think you misunderstood what this is. You're active, all right, all right, you know we got

Game of the Year done. If this feels like the home stretch. There is the community Game of the Year voting happening on the message boards right now. So you go to giant bomb dot com you log in. The community is voting on Game of the Year as we speak, so feel free to go in weigh in on that. Yes, I love her, I love her freaks at home. I'm just curious as to what they think the game of the Year is. Yeah, I bet it's going to be boulders Kate

three. But who could win? We'll see that seems right. Who knows it could be a Pickman four. Heyet, it would be amazing. Grub. I'm with you on so many things, but man, I've never been more with you than when you stood up there and you were really uh giving it to Pickman four in a good way. There. It was I and I felt good about it. That's how I knew it was like this is the right choice, because like, yeah, this makes me feel happy that

I'm picking picking Pickman four. Yeah, it's it's my number two of the year. But like anytime I see someone go up there and be like, hey, let's give it to Pickman, I'm like, yes, yeah, Like I feel like that's a more underdog. You know, like, here's the Kingdom. I think is the bigger, better, more important game. Blah blah blah. Yeah, and I think that too. I think it's a better game. But like Pickman four, I think could use the kind

of that that raw spirit. It deserves it. It's like, definitely the one that hit the hardest above its bike, like it's weight, right, It's punching above its weight, so much harder than any other game this year. Yep, agreed, Well, we already started talking about games. Let's talk about games some more. It feels like the end of the semester. It's you have senioritis in a way that I can't put into words. It's just like, uh, I don't know this time of the year. But

you know what, I hope people can. Like I whenever I used to listen to podcasts when I when I did back in the day, I would like hear this in the voice of hosts and be like, yeah, I'm I'm enjoying that with you. So I hope people are getting that. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, this is the time of year. Enjoy enjoy the laxadaisical nature of it, all right, agreed? Agreed, Bone it

is what we're saying. Bone it in Now with Game of the Year over, it feels like we just completed finals and I've been playing a lot of the finals. Holy shit, guys, I feel a lot. I've been playing this a lot, and I blame Jeff Bakalar profess I don't know. This is the three v three v three shooter PvP. You're going to unlock bank vaults and then cashing in the vaults, and then from there you are defending the vaults until the time are completes. There are three different classes here.

It's Light, Medium, and Heavy. The different classes have different weapons and different abilities. And let me tell y'all, this has unlocked a part of my brain that Team Fortress two and Monday Night Combat had occupied in my early adulthood fun multiplayer competitive shooters. Yes exactly, where like I just turned my brain off and the reflexes and muscle memory just goes. Okay. The specifically, i've been only playing as the Light class. I've discovered that at

the tail end of that GB plays we did last week. Because you're a zippy boy, right, I'm a little zippy boy. Because the Light class had one of its abilities is a grappling hook on a cool down, and there's already a lot of verticality and a lot of easy movement in the game. Unless you're the heavy class, you just move a little bit slower. But the way that you can maneuver around with in conjunction with using the grappling

hook, the little zip lines. If your friend is a medium class that can throw out a jumpad and you can zip across the map like your Spider Man, and like the grappling hook refreshes pretty fast, So I've been able to get in steal the vault from someone jump all the way across the map completely skipping pro tip folks, don't go to the closest cash and vault, go to the farthest one away. Yeah, make that makes sense. Yeah, you're a zippy boy. That's easy. You're a zippy boy. It's

so easy. And then the phone grenade, the foam grenades, it's like, was it prey right, remake, Eat, pray love and then just smother that bitch in foam and get the homies to do it just like, uh, just keep pinging foam, foam foam. It's smart, it's smart. And then uh, you surround the vault and you're protected for a little bit. But the best part about the finals is the destruction. Yes, oh yeah, definitely hands down Like Backler, you said it best during that

that video, but it feels like Red Faction Gorilla. Oh what ykay? I need? I was already very interested in everything you were saying, and now I'm downloading it immediately out Dan the Heavy Class has a sledgehammer and in ability where you just hit Q and you just cool aid man through walls. Yeah, you tackle and it blows up in front of you. Okay, I'm going to play this like a little spoiler. It found its way into my top ten. Playing this game non stop, like it's the only thing

I'm really playing the last three days or so. It's really really good. It's really like I think the amazing thing about this game is that it like has on paper, this should be the most cringey, like annoying casino vomit like weird thing, and it's just not. It is a highly precise, uh really uh finely tuned first person shooter traversal game that's like feels so good to play. It is exceptional, you know, you know what. It feels like it's from Embark Studios, which is what I was gonna get at

here. It's Embark, which is former Dice people, including one of the founders of Dice and I can never remember his name, but he was like the big guy that went from Dice to be an EA and he was the guy at eas like everyone's gonna use frost Bite, everyone's gonna use the Dice engine. And he left and he made a game an unreal engine. But it like, it feels like, what if Dice had the freedom to take all the stuff they're good at destruction cool modes and make a new game without

any of the baggage of having to make Battlefield. This is the game they would make. I think it's totally like learning from like like, hey, Battlefield did destruction very well for a very long time, and now that feels kind of like, yeah, that's something that happens in those games, but

it's not what you come to those games for. I mean, I'm sure some people still do, but it's not like it is in the finals, where it's like it's core to the experience and every moment something's blowing apart and they specifically make the maps so that the vault is up in a thing hanging in the sky, and all you could think about is I'm going to shoot my rocket for broke grenade at that thing and make it fall to the ground.

All they want to do in this world right now? Yeah, And then it works and it falls right in front of you and people are scrambling. It's so much fun and like starting to think about how those classes work

together. Where I was playing the heavy class a lot, I did end up liking the light class and be able to zip around, but thinking that, Okay, if we are going to be a team, if I am the heavy, I can use my tackle and my sledgehammer strategically so that I can make holes for the people who are faster so they can get through these walls. And if like we start pairing that stuff up together, it's, oh man, that teamwork could be huge and it's a lot of fun to

think about. Quick question, real quick. So when I hear three on three, my only concern here is, like if I'm someone who like never puts on a headset, never plays online multiplayer, like Voice Chad, I don't want to like get a bunch of people like if I'm a solo, like when I play Fortnite, I only do solo. Is it good if I'm with two randos and not talking to them? Yeah, I've found a lot of success just randomly matching up with folks. I mean, the the

the objective is very clear, Like you're all working towards that. I mean, I think you're better off talking with friends, right, I think you'll you'll. That's true of any team based sort of multiplayer game. But yeah, it's completely you know, capable going solo. For sure. I like doing it, for sure. You like doing it with you It's easier in our context where it's like, Okay, we've got our like work days and we do this, you know, to do shows and stuff. So like,

I like doing it in that context. It's just a pain in the ass doing it, like everyone's got weird schedules and like doing it at night and trying to get people together. But like I would love to do it on a show here. Yeah, we will play it again for sure. Again for sure. Okay, the best part of this thing is like at least two or three times a match, the thought crosses my mind of like I wonder what's gonna happen if I do that? Yeah, and uh,

that's really special there there. You know, it's everything feels over the top, but not too over the top. I think there's just like a really good balance. And you said it like the things you say, I want to try that and things work how you expect. Like, yeah, I did have my RPG out and someone was about to capture the vault and it was on the floor right above me, and so I just like, I'm not gonna be able to get there. So I'm climbing up these stairs.

I'm like, okay, it's like four flights. I get to the third flight and I see the meters about to hit it. So I just hit the ground where I think the vault is with the RPG. You know, I take a little bit of damage, but mostly the floor just evaporates in front of me, and the vault falls right in front of me. I was a like they unlocked it. So the chest is right there and I just take it. I start running. I mean, they killed me.

But the whole like concept of like having this idea, being able to execute it, having the game, uh like have results that like work the way you expect them to work. All that stuff is very well done. Dan. The other great thing is that there are a bunch of barrels, miscellaneous barrels like smoke barrels, poison gas, flame, foam, foam, and just explosion barrels that you can syops pick up at any point and just launch

launch. Yeah. Yeah, you keep saying things that I mean, I was so old when you first started talking about this, and then you said like eight other things I wanted to do, and maybe this is like very throwaway, but there's something that really agrees with me, the fact that like it's all just like a virtual kind of thing, like oh, sure, you're just you're not killing anyone. You're you're sort of like in this virtual

reality arena and that's where this and they make it canonically takes place. And there's no there's no like over the top blood or like you know, explode when you die. Yeah exactly, you know, like and like other games too. That's also for like Call of Duty is virtual right now. Roman dies every time so much. I don't I hope you're not like putting guilt on yourself every time battlefield like they're not dying. It's Called of Duty the most. Yeah, you as far as I know, Yeah, as far

as I know. But you can never be too sure. It looks very realistic. No, I say this. The second half of the thing that I didn't say is it is because I'm like going back and forth of like showing my kid this, right, and like that's what it comes down to, And I do think like it could maybe be a good entry point into that. I guess Fortnite is like another thing, but you know, yeah, And I also think what's really cool about the Finals is that you can

it's very early right in this game's existence. I know it was in alpha and beta for a little bit, but now I'm starting to see like, oh, they're gonna hopefully introduce a lot newer modes and like ideas into this thing, and I'm very excited to see this grow. Yeah. I mean the mode is pretty fun too, right, Yes, absolutely, but you know they're gonna like possibly there's new like you know, specials that come in or whatever it is. I just think the runway is really long for this

game, and that's exciting. There's there's always just a fun way to think about it, a handful of levels, but there's variations of the levels in terms of times of day the weather as well, And I thought it was kind of whack at first that there are only the three classes, but then this depending on how you speck out your person, it really modifies it significantly. Like the Medium class can just be your all around like Mario, all

around your type of dude. It can also be a healer, or you could kind of play like an engineer and Team Fortress where you have a turret coming out. And then the Light class. I thought it was very akin to Scout in Not My Dog but in Team Fortress two. But because of the mobility, you can also play as like a spy because you have like backstabbing weapons, or you can go invisible if you choose a different ability, or you could be a sniper because you can't. You have that verticality and

you can reach places faster than other folks. The other really neat thing is how you revive people when you die and you explode, you explode into like a small little action figure type of guy. You can grab those yeah, throw them somewhere safe, and then just hide and revive someone on the spot, which is so it's just so smart. Yeah, it's cool. Yep, you know, it just adds to like the pace of it. Yeah, and when you're dead. You can either wait to respond or you can

request to be revived by teammates. And like I found that to be like, oh okay, cool, I'll just request the revives so you get me now, so we're all closer to the objective rather than me being way further away. I think I think there's a couple things that will also be finessed

too. I think like there you know, some of the especially that popular the main mode that we were playing, where you are just kind of looking to you know, a big stratus to like just steal the the cash out, right, Like that is kind of what this game turns into, where like it doesn't necessarily matter if you're the one to initiate the cash out, it's are you the last one standing when the thing when the timer's up?

And I do think like people are learning new strategy to like protect and ultimately like you are in a better position to win if you do initiate the cash out and and sort of have a strategy to do what how to defend it.

But yeah, I'm curious to see like how they tweak that stuff, Like it makes sense to approach it a different way, Like you know, I was just thinking like, oh, maybe you know there's like you know, just like random generative stuff you can put in there that yeah, changes the way people think about playing the game, and it'll cause newer strategies to form and evolve and fun. Another pro tip, there's just these giant cubes

filled with stuff suspended in the arenas. Just shoot those down because they contain like little gas canisters or like the little throwball items. I was in a game last night backlar speaking of like different strategies developing, Whereas me and two other people playing as the light class all had grappling hooks and we just hot potato the vault to each other across the hole map and it was absolutely insane, and I felt like I felt like the Raptors in Jurassic Park, just

quickly running around and killing dudes. It was great. Nor speaking about games that are growing, Lethal Company is something that Jeff Greb and I played on the website, along with More and turbot Shan. That's a that's a fun time is as how I'll phrase it. We never actually accomplished our goal, which was a very modest quota of Okay, the game is, it's four players cooperative. You go out in the world, you collect junk, you

bring it back. Chances are some crazy stuff is gonna happen. You're gonna se a monster, giant spider, you can fall into a pit. Uh, it's gonna be dark, there's gonna be dangers, and you gotta work together to bring that stuff back to your ship in three days. And on the fourth day you have to fly to the store sell everything you get. You got and if you meet the quota, then you can keep going, and then you could buy more stuff to make it easier, like a shovel

or whatever. We were figuring a lot of this stuff out on the fly. But that process of not really understanding what it is going in blind and having moments just happen, it was really a good time. Like jan would be going ahead, he would go a slightly different direction and he would turn around and he would hear us all our voices fading, and suddenly we were just dead and he had no idea what happened. He turned around, like,

what's going on here? And eventually you would piece it together and I'm gonna talk around some of these things because I think we should all play this together. And you guys Backlard Dan. Have you guys looked into this at all. I haven't seen it. I've just heard people talking very glowingly about

it. But yeah, like I'll be going in pretty Dan blind, just knowing that people are liking it a lot, Right, So I think the idea would be like us the mod, so we can get all of us in, as many of us as possible, and we'll see if we can make that happen. But it is just an emergent gameplay this situation generate or where it's like, hey, let's go in and try this. Is that

going to work? Let's try to jump across there, and you can stand on the great watching your friend try to make that jump, and sometimes they make it and sometimes they don't, and it's always funny though. The animations are really simple but expressive, especially the running, so it's like you just with some yes the heee. So when everyone's panicking and running and everyone's actually scared of something, it's still like a really hilarious thing to see all these

goofballs just doing this heiinee run back to the ship and freaking out. The best part is that it is all local voice proximity and proximity Yes, proximity voice. Yeah, yes, and so, and then the voice modulates depending on the environment end. So if you're in a metal environment, it's echoing

oft the walls and it changes and that sounds really great. And so if you're like getting further away from everyone else, so you can hear that, and then at a certain point you can't hear anyone anymore unless you buy a walkie talkie. Uh. And that really adds to the atmosphere and to the hilarity again where it's like, Okay, they thought I was dead, and then suddenly I come back around the like hi, host Silver and it's like,

ah, we're back together in these really fun moments. I don't know how much more there is to the experience, but I'm at a point where it's like I don't really care, because, like you could tell, we're going to be having a lot of fun playing this in like seeing seeing how far we can get. And I bet there are more experiences and moments that we haven't encountered yet that are waiting for us. We just happened to find a couple on the random planets that we landed on so far. Yeah,

this is a single dev as well, right, Greb. Yeah, I think it's I mean that's what I've heard. It's one one dude, one person Wow, insane, and it's a hugely popular. It's when I think it's still the most played game on Steam. It's one of the best line games of the year. It's huge. Speaking about another huge game, Dan, I see that you have put among Us DLC. Here. Oh, I guess I probably should have put Vampire Survivors among Us DLC. Oh. Yeah, yeah, I haven't played among Us in forever. Yeah, it's

anytime there's Vampire Survivors DLC. I loaded up and I this is now the third time I've started a completely new file a Vampire Survivors because I'm playing on a different account, and it's like at first I was like, oh man, I don't have my say, and then I was like, wait, that's an excuse to play Vampire. So yeah, like all last night I was just playing. I unlocked the among Us stuff. It's uh, I

mean, any new Vampire Survivors is always fun for me. I'll say that I never liked the look of among Us and so you know, like the nah and like you're playing is them and unlocking them, you're kind of playing on those maps and everything, and like it's always fun to see like what the weapon evolutions are and stuff like that, but it's all very much like, oh, here's the one where it's like the wires from among Us are stretching across the screen and killing enemies and stuff. And I guess I don't

love the look of it. I I you know, I do love the look of the original Vampire Survivors, just kind of that like vaguely Castlevania pixel art going on this one. It's all very among Us obviously, And at this point I think we got to be reaching the upper limits of like weapon evolution things that take up the whole screen. Like there's some clever ones where

it's like, okay, this evolution will make it. So there's a bunch of like a keypad on the ground and you got to press the keys in order like one, two, three, four, and then that's someone's like a rocket at the top of the screen that like shoots down a bunch of flames and stuff on the enemies. Like there's some pretty clever ones that work with the among Us theme, but uh, I mean they're all kind of just big bullshit that kills everything on the screen, right, I love every

weapon evolution. Yeah, it's it's it's its own like siloed off thing. It's it's the Adventures tab is like some of the most recent DFC not like you're not gonna have among us in the Core Vampire Survivors experience from what I've

seen. I just played the Core until it unlocked this Adventures thing, and then the Adventures thing is like, oh, here's the legacy of the moonsfell or whatever among us, with like its own power ups, with its own like currency and things like that that exists, and that siloed off thing. So I don't know, it's an excuse play more Vampire Survivors. It got me back into that, which is like the ideal. Like I just put on Raw last night and just played it all night, and it was at

a good time, so it's also a good RAW. I was pleasantly surprised the last couple of weeks I early sit down and watch an entire raw live. I'll just like watch a match fire. It was really good. Watch the last raws and I was like, wait a minute, all these stories like have places they're going and there's like multiple over baby bass and like like this, the Drew promo was really good last night, and it's like it's actually actually getting like to be a pretty good wrestling show. Yes, it

had to happen. Yeah, punk rolling stuff. It's fascinating, Like, man, what the hell? Our Truth just hilarious? God yeah, yeah, yeah, you would love Our Truth. It's like scary that there's it's just like a good show and it's a three hour long raw that I'm like, man, all this I started. What's going on? I'm waiting for to drop. I'm like, what's happening? Yeah, I don't know. I just did like a pie chart of like all the time I have in my day, and like there's just no sliver for aw Like it's just not

you gotta spare three hours in the evening. Come, there's just not I If I send you a series of gifts, will that help? I can't wait to consume wrestling? Yeah, Like if I could just have a gift based sort of like consumption of that medium, I'd be happy. You know, just do that. In fact, I encourage you to do that. I would like to consume wrestling only in gift form for the rest of my life. Get the whole you know, industry. Yeah, thank you,

thank you, even the promos you can get gift it's great. Dan. You also put here house Flipper too. Yeah. I never played that before. I think I think I was on a quick look that like Abby did back in the day, and I was like, oh, that was cool, but I never played it. I'm playing this now and like it's immediately kind of that scratching that hour wash itch where it's like you go into a new area and it's just like, oh man, this place is fucked up.

Like there's this trash everywhere in pizza boxes, and there's like graffiti all over and windows, like everything's fucked up. And then by the time you're done, it's looking great. And this is just like powerwash simulator if it was power washing and then a bunch of other stuff. So like, I love like getting my process together. I go into a fucked up house and at first I'm like, okay, all the trash, all the like, you know, just food boxes and just shit on the floor and broken glass

and broken bases. I'm cleaning all that shit up, put in the garbage, and then there's stains everywhere, and so I'm going around, I'm spraying everything I'm wiping everything down with my cloth, the ceilings, there's fucking gross stains everywhere. I'm getting all that figured out, and then you know, there's a bunch of just bullshit that you're selling, like you're flipping the house.

So you have like a flip or tool. So you go. It's like all these shitty old chairs, all this stuff you sell and that get rid of these cabinets, all that shit, and then you see like what you're supposed to buy to put in there. It's like, Okay, now I can reorganize this room however I want. I got rid of this dividing

wall. I'm gonna put this couch over here. Like it's it's scratching a lot of itches between like almost like simgame like more like like the ones where you're actually like designing a house or like when you're building a place in Minecraft or something. Plus it's got the cleaning element of like a power wash.

I'm also learning that I think I have no fucking skills whatsoever at like a design, like interior design, because like I'll get into the place where everything's clean, it's like, all right, now, what am I gonna do with the wallpaper and the tiles and stuff here, and I'm all right, this like geometric white and blue wallpaper looks you got to put that up there. And I'll get these like hexagon tiles and put them here and this for

the floor. And then I sit back and like, given me with no eye for aesthetics or anything, I'm just like, oh, this looks like shit. Like walk if I walked into this house, I'd be like, this place fucking sucks. So once it opened up and it lets you kind of do whatever you want aesthetically, I just realized, like, I don't I need people to tell me like, okay, yeah, put wood down here and then like stone up here, because if left of my own devices,

it's just gonna look like garbage. But your basement is really nice, Dan. The way you've organized it is that because it's all like memorabilia stuff that you have an affinity for. If it was just if you weren't allowed to put like any gaming stuff in her room, do you think that's where you would struggle? That's a cheek code. I mean if I'm just like setting up a fun game room, I know how to do that, Like, oh, here's a bunch of cool shit. I like like here's I

want to just play these nes games. Arcade goes over there, Like that's that's like almost like cheating. It's just like, how's that room not gonna be cool? It's just a bunch of video game stuff versus like if I had to go into a room and just be like get some nice couches and wallpaper, I would just leave, you know. Yeah, I'd be the same way for sure. Yeah. But a game room, I can put together game room for sure. Right. Yeah, that's always been I like

games like Animal Crossing, Disney Illusion Island. I mean I like that game for other reasons, but when it comes to the interior decorating aspect, I'm just absolute garbo of like I like that table, these chairs don't match, but I have enough money for these chairs. Yeah, but yeah, like I'm like, oh, all this stuff costs money and I'm gonna be bad at this, so I'm gonna make a mistake. So so I just sort of just freeze instead of like, oh, I'm afraid of wasting money on

chairs that won't match, so yes, I avoid it. I'm a very function over aesthetics guy. Yeah, yeah, just be that way. Yeah, maybe we should just have benches everywhere. Huh. You just slide into a bench, and I would be happy to have a bench sort of air like a picnic table as our table for the family room. I'd like I got a big bean bag out there, that's nice. Yeah, the big bean bag is what's what's what's the etiquette with a bean bag? When you

got to fluff it? Do you just turn it over and do you worry about the bottom side? I do a couple of rolls. You just like, you know, get it up on one side it's not normally on. Kind of roll it around a couple of times in its space and put it back down. It'll be nice and fluffed up. Jeff Greb, look you good for a second? Is there something about other kind of fluffing? So I was gonna say, cup the balls, that's that's what you're Wow, Hey, bad boy, I know listen. I stopped myself and then you

asked I was gonna let it go. No. I was curious if jerking off cardboard cutouts wasn't enough. Now, I don't know, I have no idea what I was just gesturing to my friends, just hosting a television hosting the show. Yeah, yeah, that was part of the feedback. I even heard that at a meeting. All good things, all good things, all get all good things, wonderful, all good things, all good things, all good things. Another good thing that has circled back around. Turns

out God of War Ragnarrock's really great. What if we turned it into a roguelike with God of War Valhalla something like I know, I know what this is, but I don't know what it is, so just tell me and I'll get around to it sometime next year. Yo. Hey, you ever want to like, go play God of War but you don't want the story and like him talking to his kid and like, yes, that's all I want. Dan. Do you like Hades? Yes? Did you like playing

twenty eighteen God of War and Ragnarrock playing it? Playing it? Yes? What if you just had Hades and God of War? Yes, yes, that's what that's what this is. Okay, I would like to play that, so as of course, yes, But I mean that fighting system was always really good, even though I didn't like Ragnarok, absolutely fantastic. Just do the fighting system. What if you had everything unlocked and had all the weapons right from the game. Yeah, the weapons you don't they're not fully

powered up. You're gonna it's a rogue light, so you're gonna lose some of that stuff. But yes, all this sounds good. Yes, So that's basically all it is. It's a separate menu item. You just launch into Valhalla quick download. There's a little bit of story bits at the time. It does take place after the story of Ragnarok. Yes, but I didn't play through Ragnarok, and everyone's like, you're gonna be so lost,

there's gonna be spoilers, and that just doesn't matter at all. It's a bunch of people being like, oh, you're in there, you're fighting these things because your credos. That's that's wild. Man Like, yeah, that's pretty wild. I'm gonna go back in there now, and that's it. So okay. And it does do the Haiti style storytelling where okay, you went through a run, you died, and probably pretty quickly on that first run, seems like they kind of put you up against stuff that's pretty tough

right away. You come back out and they're like, okay, now here's a new little quick cut scene that's gonna going to move the story forward. But it doesn't really get in the way in the way that I felt like the storytelling and some of these other PlayStation games Ken this is a really good idea. I'm a huge fan of this trend by the way of just taking a game turning into a rogue light, especially as an update that comes a year or like two or three years later. This is fantastic. I'm a

big fan of this. It's cool. I realize, oh shit, Ragnark looks amazing. Yep, and yeah, it's one of the best looking games all the PS five and then totally Backlar. I think we had this conversation where it's tough to want to revisit God of War specifically because you just don't want to replay all the story bits. It's because you've felt you've gone through it already, but going through everything and oh Jeff's is Jeff gone? No,

I see you for a second. But in Valhalla, just being able to riins through these enemies and then you know, like in a roguelike, have to quickly adapt your style of gameplay and then deciding of like, okay, I normally rock with the Blades of Chaos, but like this run, we're just doing spear and they give you different bonuses, so I encourage that variety of plays, so it's like your first room, you're gonna get a

couple of options. Do you want to do something with your Blades of Chaos or do you want to do something with the Axe, And then as you do that, that's going to influence all of the upgrades that show up in the world after that, so it's like, Okay, this is going to

be mostly an axe run. You can still switch your weapons and make some decisions that might change things up later during that run, but it does a good job making each run feel different than the last, which is something I think even Returnal struggled with, which like, oh yeah, to me, that felt very samy from them to run, So like this is actually in some ways more impressive than return It's really smart too, because you will have

run to run upgrades that you're unlocking for your specific runs, and then when you get to a checkpoint, which is after a couple of rooms, you can suspend the game and be like, all right, I'm gonna come back later if you wanted to, I guess check out the other parts of Ragnrock. But there's also general upgrades for Krados across the board, so you can increase your rage meter, increase your health, all your different stats like strength, vitality, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah,

it's real fun and I just love that mostly everything is un locked. You're not super powered up, like Grub said, but like also, when you're starting each run, you choose between like your shield and your different rage ability and and then also have bonuses each time, so it's like, Okay, I've never used this shield before it has the bonus. This time, I'll just use that, And now that means I'll get more benefit in the long run, where I'm upgrading the character longer term so that the next run is

even easier. Yeah, And then it's that way you're encouraging different play styles of like, Okay, I never would have checked this out if I wasn't incentivized to do it this way. And then there's quiet moments in between where you know they'll sprinkle in a little bit the story, a little bit of roaming around, but it's and the people do like the story have been saying that they like this stuff still, so it's not like a completely devoid of

the things that people do like about Cora Ragnarok is. It's just this is much more the style of game that I'm into these days, and so I'm greatly appreciative that this is here as an option. Totally wild that this is a free update as well. Yeah, totally yeah. And then the way that they're framing you being in these different parts that you've visited in both games. It's like, oh, well, this is Valhalla pulling the memories out of credos, So this is why you kind of remember it like this,

or this is why it's condensed. But you've been here before, you fought these guys before, and mymir is around, my miir is not like two talkie, and uh yeah, god it it's just so good. It's so good. I played it on my Steam Deck using the chiacky app Chiacki four decks, which has showed me how to do that. How'd that go? It's super easy. Now there's just a couple of steps that are weird about getting your PSN, Like, you know your the code for PSN, which

is something you just got to go to a website to do. So the first time I try to set up Chiocky for deck on my original Steam deck, something went wrong. It didn't work. I gave up. That's why I was I'm considering a PlayStation portal the new PSP for a while. Now I'll just get that. But then Chiaki four deck updated and now it supports HDR on the steam deck o LED, so I was like, okay, I should just try that first and see how that works and maybe I can

get working. This time, it was super easy. I just went through a couple of steps and again i'll show you that jan and it just started working. I was able to turn on my PlayStation five remotely from upstairs and I went over there, updated a God of War and started playing it, and the HDR just worked. And that's the best thing about the Steam deck o Lead actually is how well the HDR works compared to a PC where it's such a crapshoot and Windows is terrible of that stuff. Here, it's like,

if HDR is going to work, it'll just turn on. It's going to work, and that that's how it happened here, and it looked great. It ran fantastic. I was going over my six gigahertz connection, which is really great for all this wireless gaming stuff. Now that's how I've been using the mediquest three and steam is with the six gigahertz connection, It's flawless. There was never never even stuttering, stuttering like I've had before with it.

So it's like things are getting to a point where these things can work. And now it's like my preferred way to be playing PlayStation five games. So I would not have I would not have had time to check in with Valhalla. That just the way it fits in with my life. I sitting down here by by myself on the couch while people are upstairs. The guilt is too much. I just feel like I'm disconnected from everybody. So being able to sit around them on the Steam deck and fit it in here and

there and fits in spurts like fits and starts like that's it's worked. It worked really well that way, So yeah, and again it's super easy to set up these days. I faced a moral conflict when I fired up Valhalla. And it's been a minute since I've played Ragonrock. I don't I don't think i've touched it since last year, and I immediately hit square to melee, but then I've remembered, Oh, it's all the bumpers and the triggers.

They dark sold it. They dark sold it in and I got to ask, y'all, where do you land on the preferred melee button placement. I've come around on it because I like keeping my thumbs on the sticks. So this is I think it's just pretty good these days. It's it took me a while, I do I in my heart, Squire still melee like and then trying what is going to be the heavy attack. In my heart, that's the way it is. But once I get like it takes thirty

seconds. Okay, it's up here on the bumpers and the shoulder button. I'm used to it. Now, I'll just keep my thumbs on the sticks and now I can look around and attack at the same time. In this game, they always have someone someone running up behind you, so it's important to be like on a swivel. So I do like it. It's probably actually the right way to do things. I don't dislike it at all, Like I like, you know, Armored Core and Elden Ringing the way from

has kind of done it. But I am old, so I do like it when things are like they were on the PlayStation two. So as long as you can admit that ex. Jump, Square, Slice, triangle, heavy circle, grab. Yeah. I do like block being on the bumper though, Like that feels like a good place for it. El One l

One's block button. Yeah, yes, definitely. I think def Jam Fight for New York introduced that into my life, and then I'm like, okay, well this is the only place that has it can be now technically the wrestling games they made on sixty four before that did the all right pipe in a video that's going to come out next week, I learned that I've committed crimes holding sixty four controller of the way I've held it my whole life. Oh I don't want to see a picture of that. Yeah, not good,

it's not good. This was also covered in the meeting. I'm assuming this doesn't game. Oh yeah, yeah, totally. We had a conversation about this. Yeah, oh god, well you'll get the breakdown. Yeah, there's one more game listed here, and might as well call it the game of the week, because why not? Why not? Why not? Sweak a game? Yeah, Dan, I've heard this, just take I heard this yeah, like a week ago, and uh yeah, downloaded it. It's what three dollars. Yeah, there's a bunch of clones and then

there's a browser one I tried that out. The physics are all a won you no, no, you gotta go a physics have to be right. The browser very important garbage. Yeah, it's it's so interesting because like when you start playing it, it seems like it's like, okay, well this is like the simplest puzzle game ever. You get it. Within like thirty seconds, You're like, Okay, I feel like you're going to reach a

certain point where's get it can't really get much past that. But as you play it a few hundred times, uh, do you start to realize that, like, okay, the physics of this and like you know, there's there is a strategy that like I find myself getting better, Like I'm now like in the like mid three thousands on the score, which at first it was like, you know, two thousand was kind of like as high as

I could get. And it's because now I know it's like, Okay, I've got these big ones over here, I'm gonna try to keep the small ones over here, you know, how to kind of lay things together where it's like when they do start bouncing around like some we're going to get through the cracks and form together. You start knowing how to avoid things popping out if it starts getting too high. For those who haven't played it, it's just it seems like everyone's playing. So I don't know if I'm just reaching

the choir here, but you're just putting fruits together. Put a couple of cherries together, it turns into a strawberry. Couple of strawberries together, it turns in grapes. A couple of grapes turns into it. Some weird's that, like, the physics sounds like I just heard like a Southern auctioner voice come out of for a second with fruit you were like two firs Kansas fought for the North. Yeah, Southerner, but yeah, no, it's just

yeah, it's uh. I've heard it described as like, you know, a Tetris puzzler, you know, meets threes with physics, and that's what got me to download it, and it's far the accurate description, and it's very, very fun. It's simple. It's three dollars you get the switch version. How juicy is it in terms of like actual literal fruit juice, like spring out of fruits? No, no, no, no, no a lot. I wish it was a juicier. I wish it was much juicier, like a fruit juicry. Yeah, there's no real juice. They're

just kind of like smile on that faces. They don't really I'll be honest. I don't even consider them fruit. They just are like reproductively fruit. No, I realized, like JPEGs. Yeah, they're just sort of marbles like they they could be more fruits. Look, I call it like I see it faces that just smile and then if one pops out to go like, that's about it. I was saying grub saying something is just a jpeg. I'm like, wow, I never heard something more derogatory. We're making

new slurs. Let's go, God, this is going to hurt my political career in a couple of years. Man's fucking boning myself so hard. You're gonna be Mari James. We found some deeply troubling podcasts calling people jaypegs. As we all know is now uses a shirt two that I used. The one wants to open a portal to another dimension in them room. I don't even know how to open that, I do, I don't even I'm so scared. Who uses what is the practical use for a jpeg? Two thousand

I don't think there actually is one anymore. Support the future? What do you want? That? Is it for games? Unless anyone else has anything they want to chat about, real real quick. I want to play that as cards as cards raft to me too. Meta Quest three it got a ten from my gn what oh yeah, ten? It got a ten a VR ten, ten out of ten? Well, I mean like ten out of ten on VR? What is it like Alex? Right? Yeah? Alan definitely the best? Right, So it's like this has got to be

as good or at least as impressive as Alex. Right, So I'm gonna try this out. And is a v Yeah, like what's the what's the scales? VR ten? What does that translate? Oh my god, I mean Alex, are you a Miami ten or a VR ten? You know? Oh, I get what we're doing. Yeah, come on, play along alexas like Alex is like legitimately like a great game. If you take Alex out of the equation, What is the like next? Like VR ten? Astrobos a good one. It's a really good one. Yeah, there's

a couple of really good ones. I guess. Yeah, I'm interested, and I'll say I am using my MEDA Quest three still almost every night. Uh. Wow. The big thing is, uh, I started streaming Star Wars Jedi Survivor into it not as a VR game, It's not a R game. It just makes a big HD screen, so I could just like, Okay, I'm like tired, I don't want to go set up the

family room and play games in there. I'll just stream it in bed and have the screen be up here and like kick back and have the controller connected to the PC and I play. I played way to turn your brain up before a night of restless weep. Bright pixels shot directly into my next I've been sleeping great. I don't know what you're talking. I screen in my bedroom much. Yeah, exactly, Listen. I think we all just need to hear this every now and then. I know I'm surely not the first

person to suggest this. I just want to put this out there. Uh. The film, the film Wally was a warning, dudes, I'm not my bean bag. It's actually what I'm doing. So my body is like floating in mid air and I'm just like, I feel exactly like one of those big human babies. So yes, Wally was a warning, suggest ambition. It was an ambition that it wasn't a goal to aim for. This was the human human future? Bad, No do this. I'm I'm gonna

say this was something slightly naughty that I did. Don't think naughty like that and VR dirty shape eggs. Okay, So I pulled the grub, right, I pulled the grub. He said he was laying in bed with a VR helmet. I'm like, oh, I'll try that up through on the VR helmet. And then I was like, oh, you know what what if I fall asleep? So I put on my seat papachute, Oh my god. And then I just watched just two hours of Alita Battle Angel in

three D. This fucking rules. I didn't know you had your step machine on chan. You are living in the year three thousand. You must this is the next step of human evolution. We are witnessing it. Yo, you must have. That was cyberpunk, fucking abomination. Someone took a photo that was the best way to see a three D movie was greatly actually it Actually, it's a great way to watch three D movies like Dental Nitrous And then do that ship. Did you have insures and elixirs inside your seatpap Yeah,

I've thought about that. Is the meta Quest Is that, like, what's this? What's still the most powerful VR out there? You're talking about wireless? Yeah, it's I just want to know the most powerful one out there, the one we can go back to a computer, because your computer is the most powerful with the Medaquest like the mid platform, Like, so we've established it obviously has to be hooked up to your computer for the most powerful VR. Okay, feel you know in that case, mata Quest three

with the wireless over the six gigahertz has been fantastic. It's been so good and if you have trouble with that connection, you can always see the direct link cable things. So, like, honestly, the meta Quest three is without a doubt the best I've used. Yeah, I mean, you're gonna get better resolution and a few other very expensive headsets, but like what takes good it's good enough for me. We are at a point where it's like

everything is good enough. The tracking is good enough, the software to understand, Yeah there's a okay, sure, there's a bean bag in the area that I that I marked off, but let's just be chill about that. Let me fucking lay in the bean bag and keep everything working. And it just keeps working and then the resolution is strong enough so you don't get the screen door effect, so you can actually watch an HD movie or play a

game and it's not going to be distracting. The one problem is in in Star Wars, and I think this happens in any game that you're playing Eastern Steamlink. If the pointer turns off, it goes into sleep mode. It turns your headset into the mouse cursor. So when I move around now and the mouse is like looking around, and it's like very distracting. So I have to like kind of turn that off every a little bit. And apparently

there's no solution for that, so there's still some caveats. But if you're looking to get in a VR right now, I really do recommend the Meta Quest three. It's very good. Yeah, people really seem to like they're hot on this big screen. Oh yeah, that's that's what we're using. That's how I stumbled on to lead a battle Angel. There's also people can host public rooms. Yeah, and don't accidentally walk into the public rooms.

Well yeah, I mean if you want one there Because I caught the last thirty minutes of Leave the World Behind that new Julia Roberts movie on Netflix. I went into one of those rooms and that was there, and I'm just like, I had no idea what this movie was, but I got I got an Ethan Hawk vibe. I'm like, I think Ethan Hawk's going to be in the next scene, and then he wasn't, but he was in the scene after that. Yeah. Is Big Screen an app or future?

Okay? So oh, I thought you meant the hardware. No, No, big Screen VR is an app you can get through all the vrs. Okay, because there is a VR headset called big Screen. Oh they probably make I think they make their own right, Okay, yeah, they make them. Yeah, that's right. Yes, I saw them talking about that in the app. When you load up the app, they have a thing. But yeah, that's pretty It's probably pretty good. Yeah. My only uh, the only delta I'd say is when you're in a scout I swear

to god. Uh, if you're in a dimly lit room and you're trying to use the hand tracking to point to stuff you accident you occasionally will click on accidental rooms that you don't mean to walk into, and then some uh, some questionable audio pops up and then you you you suddenly accidentally start watching something with a bunch of other people in everyone else in the room. Yeah yeah yeah, and then you have to panically rip off the VR helmet and

then your seepet machine and go confess in church. Yeah yeah, well I mean the church part. That's that's a virtual confession. Yeah, virtual church. You go to a different app to launch. Yo, I'm sorry, but we could. Verch dot org is like, if it's not a thing, we need to get this episode VICH or dirty JPEGs. God, pretty good. Verch dot org for me is like, I think how we're gonna raise our Alex. But if you're still listening to the podcast, can you

do a cover of take Hosiers Take me to Church? But instead of take me to church, just go take me to VICH? Please take me to Did he text you too during this podcast? Because he also texted me? And now I feel offended? Alex? What are you doing? You text everyone when we do the podcast? What is happening? Why? Why don't you just make a group chat Alex? Day time you're in this discord? Alex? Anyway, you know what he wrote me? He's like, I'm not going to tell you. Second thought, no, never mind, he

just sent me a string of numbers. That was my only disconcerting Anyway, We're gonna go take a quick bricky break and we'll be back with some video game news. Fuck you, No one knows what is real anymore. No one knows what is fake. Uh. That was a fantastic demonstration of the abdominable muscles. Dan Reiker, thank you, Thank you, Jeff Grab It's time for the news. This is a news heard the show rch. Yeah, we got a yeah, welcome to Verirch. Let us pray on a

lot of news here, mostly this Insomniac hack. Oh my god, they got fucking hack to hell. I mean so, a ransomware group previously threatened PlayStations Insomniac Games. They claim to have a lot of material. They proved that, and then they said they were going to either put it out publicly or auction it off. This is a crime. A lot of crimes happened here. They apparently hint their hinting that they did actually end up auctioning off

two percent of the materials. The rest of the one point three million files have been uploaded online amounted to one point six seven terabytes of data. On the dark web of like unreleased game assets and suffered. So okay, so yeah, so let's talk about this real quick. We're going to talk about some of the things that are in this hack. It is a hack.

There are like you go online right now. I did. I saw the footage of early gameplay, footage of Wolverine, early animation tests, things like that, there's a you know, if you look in this dock here, I post some stuff for our purposes of like of the the name of the new Venom game, or at least the name as it is right now, and there's a Venom game. We're going to talk about this stuff. It's news. We can't go around this. But again, it's hacked the source.

It does make this a little bit questionable, but it's out there. It's public data or public information. We're going to discuss it. I'm not going to like point people to where it's where they can go find the early animation test. Beyond saying that it's out there, it doesn't really serve much

much of a purpose to see those things because it's so early. At very least I watched the animation test and you could tell like, oh, this is a team having fun making stuff for their coworkers, and then it's very easy to be like, man, I feel bad that all this stuff is out there because they was clearly never intended to be out correct. WHOA, so is this like I'm looking at like the actual flow of a game and like boss fights and like that level of so yes, so yeah, so

there's some information about Wolverine. Again, the data that is probably worthy of discussing here. It is going to come out in twenty twenty six, is what they're aiming for. They're in the middle of developing it now. Before that, though, they will have another game, Venom is going to be coming that's going to be a standalone eight to ten hour experience that they're planning to put out. And again, this is all this stuff could change.

This is as it is internally, and who knows actually when these documents are from some of this stuff could already be out of date. This is where it's like hazardous to talk about some of these things. Yeah, but you know, if you're looking at like the the at one point the roadmap did include Spider Man two and then Wolverine Spider Man three, and then they're gonna make some X Men games. Down the line, and then they're planning new

ips in like twenty thirty one and twenty thirty five. That's how far into the future they are planning. Right now is granular detail of like business deals and stuff too. That's so, yes, so we do have exactly I'm going to make this big so it's easier for me to read. Yeah, So they talk about getting the X Men license and how much that that costs. Like here, like this is where it's like actually valuable because it helps

us better understand how the industry works. For example, the exclusivity deal, where it's like, okay, between now December thirty first, twenty thirty five, Marvel cannot release or announce any X Men games on console, PC and streaming, or use X Men characters as a competitive advantage in a game for example, play as Wolverine and Ultimate Alliance exclusively on Xbox. X Men characters can appear in multi family Marvel games like Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy.

So that might date when this happened when the deal went through, because those games are now pretty old they wouldn't be of concern, but the time of this writing it clearly was. But Marvel retains rights to children's games and certain X Men games from the nineteen nineties, but they cannot release those or re release them forty five days before or after the release of Insomniac x Men games. So it's like a good look at how these deals actually get put together.

Yeah, this feels so like it feels dirty looking at all this time, isn't it. Yeah, so I don't see anything. Yeah, exactly all. You said that some of it was being held for ransom. Is it all out there or are they still like threatening, like, oh, we're gonna put out more stuff. I think that they said two percent of the data was sold off that I don't know exactly what that was. That the hackers did claim that they had personal information of people who worked in Insomniac.

None of that stuff is I haven't seen any of that stuff. I haven't been looking for it either. It's probably out there, But yeah, in terms of like what was sold off and what wasn't, my guess is if something was sold off and it wasn't the personal information, the source codes for these games would be valuable to the less scrupulous developers in some parts of the world. That's happened before where developers in China have bought the source codes

of games that were hacked and then use that to make their games. The big one I always remember is the same time, would like the Half Life two source code? Did anything ever come of that? Where did people buy? Did people use it? Or did that just delayed development? I think it just delayed development, But I don't know. I've looked into that a little bit before and I had the same question, and I couldn't find any exact thing that might have been. But the world's very different now at this

point. It's so much easier to make a game. Someone could take that source code and maybe do something with it or maybe not. Who knows how it's actually going to go through. Really, what this is going to do is going to feel very bad for the people whose job was to keep this stuff secret so they could build a marketing plan around it. And now it's going to also put expectations on the developer because they're going to get asked about

their X Men game that they haven't officially announced or confirmed exists. So it's that's going to be troublesome for them. But again, this information's public. Let's try to put it in context. On this show, we'll try to talk about it in a responsible way. This the Venom game. I think we talked about it when we got when we all talked about Spider Man two, like, they're probably going to do a Venom game as the next standalone,

expand alone game. That is what's happening. They're planning that as an eight to ten hour standalone experience, twelve missions, that sort of thing. Again, all that stuff could change, but it will. It will have switchable Venom and the apparently the other Spider Man will still be in the game, but it will be called Venom. So that's coming next year, which I mean that seems like you just kind of right, like it's just like pasted on in the way that Morales was. It's gonna be like Miles Morales.

Yeah, and I think that's a really good way of doing that, right. Playing his Venoms is a lot of fun. So right, Miles Marles feels like now he needs to be part of the core Spider Man games going forward, So how do you expand it out? Yeah, Venoms is right there, you do that. That's how I felt when I was finished with that game. I'm like, I would like to play a standalone Venom game. So, yeah, that's pretty cool. There is some data about

like what they might do with Spider Man three. I think the budget for this is maybe the most astounding thing in all of this data, or some of the most astounding. For Spider Man three, they're planning as a two part game at four hundred million dollars in terms of cost, that's how much will cost to make it. There's some more data about like how much games cost and how much they need to sell to recoup their costs. We'll get into that in a little bit. But yeah, so they would release part

one, and again, all these things could change. Part one we're releasing Holiday twenty twenty seven. Part two would release Holiday twenty eight of Spider Man three and then and both of those would be fifty dollars each, or you could buy always one like a combo pack in twenty twenty nine for sixty dollars.

So, and they also were gonna have a multiplayer thing. They have a whole plan to do multiplayer games for all of these games going forward, So to be a multiplayer a Spider Man or there's gonna be a multiplayer version of the X Men games. Wolverine all that stuff's happening as well, So they have a lot happening over there. Insomniac, insane, I don't jeff Mike Grubb, Yes, Jeffrey, please sorry. I was the part of Jeffer Mike. It's a really weird thing to say, but now I'm afraid

you're gonna do it from now on, so I should say anything. Has there ever been anything this granularly leaked? Yeah? I mean I don't think this is notable, not for data that is so current and future looking. The Nintendo gigaleak is massive. It's has so much data that people are still going through it today. It's been out for years. People are still coming through it and finding stuff. But that was like Nintendo documents going back for

decades. Uh, and so people are like picking up things, Oh, this is what happened with that game, and here's something that got mentioned there. Uh. This is like uh, the plans, And it's not just for insomnment. There's data here on like what's happening inside Gorilla a little bit, and how PlayStation thinks about things and things like that. So I don't think there's ever been a hack quite this comprehensive for current and future looking information.

Wait, so the Nintendo Giggleague theme missed that being huge? Was that like this level of like announcing future games and asktal Again, there were some of that stuff, but mostly it was like data about oh, how they made Super Mario Sunshine and stuff like that. There's all kinds of stuff in there, though, Okay, historically valuable stuff that actually would have been like, it's good to know, but again it's a hack. That was a hack as well, I believe, and so it's like illegally sourced, which

is always a problem when you're trying to cover these things. When Insomnia looks at that, how it's when it's making its games, like it's like, okay, how much revenue are we going to make? Their planning to make one point seven billion dollars in revenue from let's see here six games. That's Miles Morales, Spider Man one, remastered, Ratchet and Clank, Spider Man two, Spider Man three, and Wolverine. People are really looking at Ratchet

and Clank here because it lost eight million dollars according to this chart. But it's like hard to know if that was a projection or actually how much it lost in terms of like because we can't date this this information. So again it's like if you put this in context, because what else is on here, Spider Man three, Wolverine games that haven't come out yet, So it feels like all of these are projections. But they do list like how much

games need to sell in order to break even. Miles Morales needed sell three million copies, did way better than that. Spider Man two needs to do five point five, it'll do better than that. Wolverring needs to do to do for five, but like that's the the scale at which PlayStation studios are working. These games need to sell five million copies or more to break even. It's just so nuts that like these are all just like like this is not a very complicated chart, do you know what I mean? Like,

yeah, I find it's something, but it's not peculiar. It's just very interesting. Like this is just like a very simple chart with very simple numbers on it, and it's there's really not there's no like a method to the madness really, right, I mean, this chart is the kind of thing you hand to someone at the very tippy top, right. This is not for the actual finance personal act. This is Zmila Games This is like the simplified version of how they're making their decisions. They talk a little bit about

like what PlayStation thinks about Microsoft acquiring Activision. They said, it's elite frog strategy, and this is data from PlayStation, not just from Insomniac. It says Activision provides incredible strategic value across live service games, scale and mobile and PC storefront with battle dot net. In addition, Microsoft is building a mobile game store to compete with Apple and Google, and so this is how the

PlayStation views the threat. They also have a lot of information here about like how they're worried about Call of Duty and how the shift of Microsoft taking that over will affect things. But it's stuff they've talked about in so many terms before, but now we get a little bit more information about how they think about it. They also are worried about the best way to frame and present their subscription service. They said it's an elusive perfect game subscription. Trying to

figure out what this actually looks like. They want to have premium content, and they want to have a unified sort of presence across mobile, PC and console, but they also are worried about how these things are going to impact the sales of their premium games. That's their biggest concern still, and they don't really know how to solve that when they're positioning themselves up against game Pass.

These are things they still talk about in these in this content mostly though, it's like, it's interesting to figure out, Hey, okay, Insomniac is thinking ten years ahead of time and where we'll talk about the next Ratchet and Clank game that is like twenty twenty nine, but they're already planning it right now today, and that is six years in the future, and then their new IP starts in twenty thirty one. That's how long it takes to

start planning a game. These days, you are thinking almost a full decade ahead of time. And for Insomniac, you're like, I believe they can execute on this. But that's a well managed, well organized studio. Imagine what it must be like at a studio that has a little bit more drama happening internally, and you're not Insomniac that's had three or four great hits in a row. It's got to be a little bit it's got to be a lot more challenge, and I bet it's still challenging for Insomniac as well.

Who knows what's gonna happen as a result of these hacks. Who knows what's if they're gonna change things up because this stuff is public now, but a lot of these things they're committed to. We're definitely gonna get X Men games from them. How do you guys feel about like more than a decade straight

of basically Marvel games and then a Ratchet and Clay game from Insomniac. It's wild to see how things have swayed back into license ip right, Like I feel like that's in a hard, hard way, big distaste for like, oh, this is a shitty licensed Marvel game, Disney game, et cetera. But then to see those games kind of being major tent poles specifically for Sony, right, like Spider Man is bread and butter and it's hardcore associated with Sony and PlayStation In my mind, now, yeah, I don't think

I don't think it's a one to one comparison. But remember that meme of like the Marvel the MCU phase like three thing where like you see movies into like the twenty forties and you're just like, what the fuck they're gonna make eighteen Doctor Strangers, like, and my point being that they're not the same because it's much easier to make a movie than it is a video game or a triple a video game like this, Like without a doubt, Yes,

that is an objective truth. I don't know. But with that said, like, the planning for games has to be much more involved and conscious of, like your time, because of how long development does take. So I do wonder if like any of this would change. Obviously, when you look at that MCU meme, there's dozens of things that are just not happening anymore, right, Like things go and change and they move around. At the same time, there's you know, there's only like ten games here, right

because of how long it takes to make a video game. So you gotta imagine like starts spreading out to like we like, game after game from them a couple years in a row. What turns out that's not going to last forever? Right exactly? Uh, It's it's wild. It's absolutely wild. I just feel so bad for everyone in it, Insomniac and like that. I'm not advocating for cyber attacks on anyone, but why Insomniac. Yeah, there's any reason that I, you know, I don't know. I also

maybe I'm foolishly cautiously optimistic. I don't know. Again, like obviously there's compromises here that cannot be unseen and cannot be undone. I think I hope that ultimately the the end is sort of like gross of it all doesn't change

the sort of outcome of like how things would go. I think you could say probably something similar about like something like that GTA six trailer getting leaked or like, sure, I'm not sure how much that actually does move the needle, And I hope, you know, Insomniac experiences a similar sort of non turbulent future with this. But man, that's it's it's bummer. Yeah, I also feel bad for the studio. It's it's going to cause a lot of headaches, especially at the end of the year. Yeah, getting hacked

must be a terrible experience. I don't know the final the final couple of things here. If we're looking at like costs to make a Getting Spider Man two cost three hundred and fifteen million dollars. Now, I don't know if that's just development costs and also marketing, but even if it is, it's

like, that is a huge number. This is why we are getting what we are getting from game developers and publishers these days, because you look at how much it costs to make a game that can perform as well as Spider Man two, and you're like, Okay, we're gonna have to spend two hundred to three hundred and fifteen million dollars And they're planning to spend three hundred and eighty five million dollars making Spider Man three. By the way, they

have that listed, so it's going to be even more. And you look at that number, you're like, Okay, how much money on top of that would it cost to turn a new IP into something that is as valuable and as capable of selling well as Spider Man? And they look at the numbers and it just doesn't make sense. So if you are getting a little bit sick of big ips and you want these studios that you love to go back to making original ips, it might be time to look at it and

be like, that seems more unlikely than ever. They are sure they're planning to make a new IP in the twenty thirties, like yeah forever, which is that? Yeah, that could change you know, I do think games have the advantage of the space between right. I do think where like you are again back to that MCU thing where you are you know, it happened right like there was a Marvel overload, where like you know, we experienced that fatigue. The gap in between games is time allows for there to be

a recharged interest. I think, yeah, but this it's just I guess at the end of the day, the the the budgets don't surprise me really, I think, like, I mean, we had the sense that they were above two hundred million for a while. Now the fact that they're over three hundred million after years after hearing two hundred million, of course they are sure, yeah, yeah. The good news for Sony is they're pretty good at picking the winners and the ones that are going to make them back their

money. You know, God of War and Last of Us. Those games also are two hundred, two hundred and fifty million dollar projects. And sure they aren't as profitable as Something's because they are so expensive, but they're still very profitable. It seems like, yeah, based on these results, and I totally understand people's disposition to insomniac being quote unquote stuck making license games.

But the thing is, I if it were any other studio, I trust Insomniac the most to flip it around and make something amazing out of it. You know, back while you've talked about MCU fatigue and I've beat this drama bunch, that giant fan of Marvel and all that jazz. The movies have absolutely bored me over the last couple of years, you know, like I didn't think I'd ever experienced a fatigue, and I was really latching onto all those Disney Plus shows. But I can't bring myself to watch Secret Invasion.

Didn't even I didn't finish a Loki season two. I didn't start it. Don't quite care for any of the upcoming releases. But when it's like a Marvel game from Insomniac, you know, I want to be like day one, especially if you know they might feature my you know, the best X Men soon, you know, I think they make them. I mean, listen, if they're making the Wolverine game, then you make side Clops his sort of foil, like the friend that is also the rival in the X

Men games. I think that's the way to do it, especially since apparently this is the one small, very tiny spoiler that shouldn't be surprising anyone. Jean Gray is going to be a big part of the Wolverine game. Woo. So you take that into the X Men games and yeah, right there, you got to have your love triangle ready to go. The other slide

here where they talk about their multiplayer ambitions. They according to this chart, they've been working on their multiplayer architecture for the last three years, and the intention is in twenty twenty four to launch spider Man two Online, and then in twenty twenty six they will have Wolverine Online, and then in twenty twenty eight and this is like that will be like so multiplayer one point oh will be spider Man two Online, then they will update that with multi multiplayer two

point zero in Wolverine Online, and then they will have a multiplayer three point zero. No details about what that means. I guess we can imagine multiplayer three point zero with x Men Online in twenty twenty eight. So they are their plan is make these big tent pole blockbuster games and then their multiplayer slash live service question Mark games will be multiplayer modes in these massive games. Now we were just talking about Hey, a Spider Verse game. This seems like

Spider Verse was probably just a code name for this stuff. I mean, they do have like a Spider Man the Great Web. Then here in some of the documentation exactly what that is, I'm not sure, but yeah, it seems like this is going to be Their big plan is to have these two forks of the big tenpole games, and then multiplayer modes for those games as updates that come out later. So all right, I don't know any other thoughts on Insomniac before we move on. Guys, can you imagine planning

your life ten years ahead of time? I can't even plan two days forward or backward? Amen? Brother? Yeah, yeah, I don't like seeing these things like printed anywhere. That's upsetting. Please make it go away. All right? Hey, Suicide Suicide Squad spoilers are out there, and I saw some people getting upset about this. But guess what the Suicide Squad spoilers are for the subtitle being killed the Justice League. Guess who dies in the

game the spoilers. So yeah, avoid them. But if you think, hey, oh my god, Batman dies in this game, that's such a spoiler, I bet there's more to the story than that that stuff like audio and some clips are getting out there of these moments, So if you want to avoid how they happen, that do that. And then there is no information about like, oh, well, Batman's probably gonna come back or maybe you won't. I don't know, but the full story's not out there.

So yeah, if you want to avoid some spoiler, they're out there, but avoided. In the words of the great timre Hussein, grow Up, Grow Up Indeed. Of City and co founder has talked about getting rejected from when he pitched Elder Scrolls spinoffs to Bethesda. Of Cidyan has proposed multiple times to develop more Fallout games and the Elder scroll spinoffs, but were rejected by

Bethesda. The last mainline Fallout game was twenty fifteens Fallout four, and the most recent non mobile series entry was twenty eight teens online multiplayer title Fallout seventy six. Todd Howard said in twenty twenty one that he would be hesitant to outsource Fallout five. Howard reiterated last year that Fallout five remained behind Elder Scroll six in the studio's production queue, but apparently Bubsidian was like, hey,

we'll do that. We'll take that on. In the past, this hasn't happened recently, but in the past they were like, hey, we'll pitch this, We'll do this within the Elder Scrolls or Fallout, and it's been very hard to get. It's seemingly Todd Howard, but all Bethesda to be like, we're okay with that. It seems especially true of the Elder Scrolls. This doesn't make a ton of sense at a certain point, but that is this going to have to let someone else make a Fallout or else.

We're not going to get a new Fallout game until like twenty forty, so I'm not exactly sure what they're thinking here. Obsidian seems like a good choice for this, especially these days. That's a quality studio video footage vs.

Footage of Mario sixty four's two player modes showed up recently. This is from a Space World show from nineteen ninety five, and it has a glimpse of what looks like possibly Luigi or maybe just the color was shifting on a second Mario character, but there were two Mario characters running around on the screen at the same time. This is something that Mimotos had talked about being a part

of the game early on and then they removed. But you can actually see a quick glimpse of this for the first time ever, and it's from a video from what almost twenty eight years ago. Split screen or is it on the name two Mario's on the screen at the same time. I would have been fucked up, exactly. Fucked up is what I think, too, Like is there like an invisible wall that happens or could Luigi go all? We have to figure it out. There's problems. This is why probably why

they cut it right. They probably not have their solutions to all those issues. That's also a game they made, and we mentioned this on Game Last Mornings, but that's a game they made in like eighteen months, a year and a half smow right here, So you're right. So it's like they were probably like any sort of thing that presents a lot of problems that we need to solve, fucking cut it, get it out of here. Let's just focus on the stuff that's right in front of us that's going to make

this game the most fun right away. And thankfully they had that stuff figured out. Great game. I don't I still don't know how two players in a three d environment on the same screen happened. I was gonna ask y'all because I'm not as well versed with Mario sixty four, but does that game

feel like it'd be okay with the second person? I mean, the only things like I'm the person I've thought about it, but like em actually like King Babom the first Star, Like you know, Luigi's over here, like hey, King Bbom, and Mario's getting behind him and grabbing him instead of having to do a weird flip or run around. You know, like there's

elements that could be fun. Like if they announced that some fucked up two player Marius four is coming to switch on like tomorrow, I would absolutely jump out there and even see it like Sandboxy fund too, we both get make our own race or whatever and then not yeah exactly right away, race to see who can get eight red coins first, Like okay, remember, there's some things that could be fun there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. H

elder Ring DLC is possibly coming soon. According to a retail listing, elder Ring's first expansion, Shadow of the urg Tree, could release in February. The listing was uploaded by retailer data Blits and has since been pulled. However, it included details of it upcoming elder Ring theme controller from thrust Master. The controllers were said to be released in February twenty twenty four to two.

And this is a quote sync with the new Shadow of the Ur Tree expansion release and elder Ring's second anniversary that normally, when these things get entered into retail sites, it's easy to ignore because it's probably someoneho doesn't know what they're

talking about. But this seems more plausible just based on having that controller attached to it and saying that the reason for the release timing was sinking with the expansion, and also February seems a perfectly reasonable time to release an expansion for elder Ring. I've been I've been waiting. Let's let's make it happen. I'm too scared. I'm not ready to go back in that world. I'm ready. I'm ready to take my life. Yeah, we haven't heard much

about Shadow of the ar Tree for a while since they announced it. I thought it would showed up at the Kills, so if the fact that it wasn't there does make me question this. But they could announce that dang and release it a month later. Yeah, ever, it doesn't matter, it does. It does not matter. They could still announce it and release it

in February. We'll see though. Last couple of stories here. Activision Blizzard has to pay fifty more fifty four million dollars to settle its discrimination lawsuit. Activision Bliter will pay that fifty four million dollars settlement to end a twenty twenty

one sex discrimination lawsuit. The publisher, which was acquired by Microsoft in October, entered into an agreement with the California Civil Rights Department to settle the case, which was related to claims of unequal compensation and promotion practices on the basis of sex from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, so just five years of a

little sex discrimination. Activision Blister will pay as much as forty six point seventy five million of that money to female employees who claim they received in inequitable pay during this period. Might sounds like a lot, it's really a slap on the wrist. Not even that. If you look at like comparable cases, Riot Studio that is half the size, has half the employees had to pay twice as much. They had to pay one hundred million dollars, and there

was complaints about that not being enough. So fifty four million dollars for Activision is a very small number. They basically got away with a speeding ticket here, but hey, that's Bobbykottock's wholemo, always getting away with things. So yeah, as part of this, they also said, oh, there's no evidence of wrongdoing by Bobby Kottock or the board of directors. Sure, sure there is, and that was part of the settlement agreement. So it was

like very important to Bobby Coottock that they said that. Ohly shit, Yeah, it's it's pretty frustrating. This is one of the reasons to be optimistic about the Microsoft takeovers, like maybe things will get a little bit better. Bobby Kottock is out at the end of this year. Does that include drub I don't know if you know former employees as well. Yes, it's anyone that worked there during that period, and includes contractors as well, so not

just employees but also contractors. If you were a woman contracted to work at Activision Blizzard from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, there's a way to get some of this money. If that's the case. Fifty four million is way too low. Yes, exactly, it's going. Yeah, it's not going to go very far at all. Let's see here. Max Pain voice actor James occaffrey has passed away. James McCaffrey, renowned for his role as Max Pain in the iconic gaming series, passed away at the age of sixty five.

McCaffrey, who lent his voice and likeness to the Max Pain character across three games. That's mistyped, he wrote, just the Voice, reported lost his battle with cancer on Sunday. Mcaffrey's talent extended to Remedies Game Control, where he portrayed the Federal Bureau of Control Director Zachariah Trench. His performances have left

in enduring mark in the gaming community. Remedy also confirmed this and said they were sorry to hear the news and wrote a really nice message about James McCaffrey. McCaffrey was sixty five. Uh that does it for the news though, boys, So I'm hitting the show back over to you. Jan Oh boy, what a what a doozy to end the news segment on Yeah, sorry about that, but yeah, shout out to James McAffrey. Shout to James McCaffrey. Go play Allen wake too and celebrate Hisson fantastic work. It's Alex

Casey does the voice of Alex Casey. Very good, very good, and uh to his voice. You know what is that? It's not a moan? Was it a growl? It's a growl, A growl, a growl? Yeah like that? Where wow they got it? You get that vocal fry? Yeah, it's the fry. Yeah. My feet bloody and what all it's souring? Oh wait, I'm not finished. There you are and there you are. Another break and we'll be back with some emails. After a quick breaking break, go go take a one minute nap. Challenge starts

now. Wakey, wakey, It's time to read some emails. Please. Emails for verch verch verch dot org now apparently leads to giant bomb dot com slash chat. So welcome to our service. We're here today to read to you emails. The electronic variety BombCast A Giant Bomb is the email address to

send your emails to. I appreciate every single email, whether or not you sign us up for a spad list or not, or for whatever reason we're still on or we've wound up on or still on a longerie email distribution thing. So yeah, that's cool. I guess uh. First, love, a good push up bra, a magic bra, whatever you want to call it, A good Lacey number, a good Lacy number, A good Lacey number reminds me. Never mind, I'm not going to finish that sentence.

First email comes from Reza, Hey, GB crew, merry xmus and Happy New Year. Got some questions that needs an E needs an needs either and I do or I don't. Number one, brushing teeth in the shower. I don't. I do occasionally. Situational, right, yeah, situational. Never have I done it ever? Really, I don't think it's that weird the idea of it, but I don't think I've ever done it. I just I get. I just don't understand why, Like are you is time

that much of a crunch. I don't think you're time. Yeah, Like things, I shaved my head in the shower because then it's like, well, the little hair things go into the train. There's like a functional reason literally things. Yeah it's not even they're not even hair, they're just doubble, you know. Yeah, yeah, but at least the shower makes the cleanup make more sense. Get the toothbrushing. I don't really get the functional part of it. Sometimes I just want to spit all over yourself. Yeah,

that's what I'm saying. Like there'd be no way that I wouldn't do that and therefore would feel insane. I want to avoid that. That's why I limit it. But yeah, sometimes you know what it is. It's like when I'm like really tired, but I stole for some reason, feel need to take a shower before bed because it was like a busy, long day and I'm like, you know, I'll just get this ship out of the way, clean my clean, my mouth, clean my body, get

the bed right away. It doesn't. It doesn't happen very frequently. It seems like overkill it, you know, question on his list. But I don't pee in the shower, and I feel like I'm the weird one out now. I mean feel everywhere, man, Yeah, like no matter where I'm going, I'm pissing. No. I think pissing in the shower is fine because I also get activated by warm water, Like I can't not if it's just like association of that place. We shouldn't have a bad news to

beer around backlark. I'm just saying no warm water, like that's the thing. It makes everyone want to pee if you uh, if you're if you're not pissing in the shower. If I'm not pissing in the shower, I'm actively like holding it in and like I'm compromising the integrity of the shower. So I don't want to do that at all. In defense of brushing your teeth in the shower, sometimes you have to leave conditioner or shampoo in, right, and maybe you very sudds up your body, so you got all

that time to kill of letting the conditioners set. I realized this is a problem that somebody wouldn't I don't know that I do with the beard. I put the conditioner in the beard first because bigger. Then I can just sit in there the whole rest of the shower. Yeah sure, yeah, yeah, sure all right. Number two, finishing the last bite of food for your partners slash kids plate instead of throwing it away when they can't finish. This is why I'm fat, Yes, this is this is why I'm chubby.

This is like fifteen pounds of my overweightness right here. Yeah. I'll only do it if it's something I want, Like if it's just like if it's something I don't want, I let it go. Sure, but like yeah, I mean, i'd say half the time I'm grabbing. It's like, for sure, the last three bites of their girl cheese sandwich, I might not eat all, but I'll take a couple more bites of that. Sometimes if there's something that looks real good, I'll take a big old jeff

bite out of it. You know. Here's the thing. Emmy will walk up to me sometimes not even asking to me, like hey, finish this, and then shoves a spoon into my mouth and suddenly I'm eating half a bowl of rice, and I'm like, I'm looking at her. This is why I can't. You're just you're just the garbage and sposal that that's what she tells me, You're just the dumpster. She's like, all, my little raccoon, eat the garbage guy. I'd rather drop this in you than

the trash. So here it is these terms of endearment I can't tell anymore. Sometimes I don't know if she just doesn't want to learn how to use the compost bin anyway. Number three sitting till the end of video game credits. I do I do I do. I try to, but not always. I'll do this speed thing. If they's I'm like, ah, all right, yeah yeah, I'm respecting the devs, but faster, I'm letting my eyes do all the word faster. Yeah. Ye. Number four,

Skipping dialogue when you've already read the subtitles. Yes, yes, I'll never skip it before i've read it, but I will do a quick scan then i'll skip. Yes, yeah, I skip it in like it took me. It was like fifteen minutes before I was doing that all over Starfield, and it's just like, everyone shut up. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care every game, pretty much every game. If I'm reading faster than they're talking, skip the next line, next line, next

line, unless I'm captivated by the scene. Yeah, I'm touring to my middle year solid because like there's all those codex in the early games. It's just like, man, I love everything they're saying, and I love the voice acting, but it's like a lot, you know. Yeah. Yeah, finally, do the smell test on food left on the counter overnight to see if it's still good leaving food on the counter overnight. Yeah, I do to all food I'll smell all food. I'll be like, is this

food bad? Yeah, you smell. Why are you leaving food on the count overnight? It depends on what we're talking about. I don't think it's left uncovered, right. You wouldn't leave a slice of leaving uncovered overnight.

You'd put like I'm heard the questions applying here. I think the question I was asking if you have to slice of pizza out overnight, I would not trust the smell test to be able to smell that level of that pizza is good over pizza is gonna be fine overnight anyway, the fridge, I'm with you. Put in its foil, wrap it up, put it in the fridge. You're gonna get lives near place is gonna smell totally for the third time, we agree. But a kid my family would keep it in the

oven overnight, and I'm like, fine, it's not it's not. But yeah I did it and that was fine. You're right, Maybe that's fine because it was never a problem for us. What is the oven if not another closet when it's not on I mean, come on, hey, storage baby, talking about leftover food. Here's a here's a pro tip that I've done mild this amount of research for so don't completely take my word for it. Yo, baby's out there, not actual babies. Uh, if you

got left over rice. If you got left over rice, freeze that ship and then reheat it because you lower the glucose in it. So all my diabetic friends are on the verge of diabetes. If you got worried about glucose. There you go, babes, this does sound like science. I right again, quick tangential research, greb. Where's that barbecue medate at right now? It's in my freezer in the garage. And I'm so you you messaged me and you're like, You're like, tell me about the casey Joe's delivery.

And then the next thing you're like, and there's a there's a deal. Have you already ordered? I'm like no, And like, so I got a free extra pound of the burnt ends. Yeah. I'm kind of thinking I have enough that I could get some of this early and then still have enough for the Christmas dinner. Throw it, throw it in the fridge a day or two before, get it all softened up, and then throw it in the fridge, throwing the bridge and let it kind of soften up.

But then you throw the whole package in the bottle. Right. They gave me the rehit heating guy, and I put that in the freezer two so I know exactly where it is. Uh but yeah, okay, I'll read that up and make sure I do it exactly right, but i'll throw it the fridge. I'm very excited about that. So was it in that sauce? Oh with that? Oh, no problem there, that's gonna yes, okay, you're yes, yes, yeah me. It came in like a couple of days. Casey Joe's just online that you get burned in a

freezer delivered in a little styro from cooler with the dried ice. It came completely frozer right in the freezer. It has the re hitting guide where it's like it's in the plastic casing. So I'm like, I think you're supposed to put it in a boiling water, right, and that's gonna heat it back. It's like twenty minutes of boiling. Well, you do boiling and then when it gets to a rolling boil, you turn the heat off.

You toss it in there for like twenty minutes. You pull out the vacuum sealed thing, open it up, slatter it in the sauce, and go to town. Oh that's okay, that's Christmas dinner right there. I'm so excited. I'm about to be a dirty jpeg eating this. Uh it's about eight pounds of barbecue meat my freezer right now, and like like ten bottles of the sauce. So yeah, looking forward to it. Reza has a couple of specific questions for me, jan if you'd indulge me need some coffee

questions. Number one, do you scoop out the coffee grounds before pouring it out? Reza should have put this ahead of time, but they use a French press slash plunger method to get their coffee. I don't scoop it. I don't like French press coffee, so but I wouldn't scoop it out anyway, Just let that as you stir in their baby. Number two, should I stir the coffee grounds after the four minutes? Yes, get a even extraction. Number three, what the hell is the dome and does it actually

make coffee taste better? I'm unfamiliar with what you mean by a dome in this context, but in my context, often a dome is just the dome. That happens when you bloom pour over coffee. It's just for me. It evaluates the freshness of the beans and everything. Next email comes from We Tipper. They write into the show and ask, hi, BombCast, did you guys explain the tipping culture in America to an ignorant European? How much do you guys generally tip? Do you start pulling out calculators to measure?

How much is twenty percent of the bill? What happens if you don't tip? Do you get mean looks? Called out? Thrown out? You guys like the tipping system regards we Tipper. You know, nate a calculator for twenty twenty piece and I always do twenty is the default, Like pretty much the matter one point one place to the left or one point and then and

then you just double that. That's twenty percent. Yeah, give me give me a give me a reasonable dinner for two cost So it's gonna be thirty five dollars in twenty seven cents thirty five seven, so ten percent would be around three to fifty double at seven. That's it, yep. And then to be safe, you do seven. To be save, I always go one dollar up yeah, I would do. I would jump it out a

little bit, yes, yes. And then there are the things like twenty is like the default, and if it's like really really good service, you know, bump it up a bit. I rare rarely go below twenty unless someone's like actively being shitty, you know, like but that almost never happens. So I have in the last year discovered I do like the tipping system, and I'll explain why it gives me agency and my relationship to the person who is serving me my food, so that I can feel good about our

relationship regardless of how they feel about their place of employment. I'm tipping them, and a lot of times I'm tipping, like the driver, I'm tipping them up front a lot of times, so they see, Okay, this person did a good tip, and so I can prioritize taking care of them. And it's not like, oh, I hate my job, so I'm going to take it out on this person. It's like, no, this person's tipping me, so I I can feel good about it and they can

feel good about it. Like I still get like anxious going to someplace like McDonald's where I know it's just a minimum wage employee in there toiling away and there's nothing, no way for me to let them know I'm on their side. I would if I could give you more money. I would, if there's no means to do that. So it's like, God, I hope they're okay, and I just have to like roll the dice that they're not upset and they're going to take it out of my food in some way.

And maybe that's like anxiety, like, oh, people actually don't do that, but you know, I've worked at places I know how people can feel, and it's like artist, I was a sandwich artist and that wasn't people like pissing and elimonade or something like that. But people can get like hurt about like their job and then take it out on people. And I just want to get rid of that factor completely. Yeah. Growing up, my mom was a Chili's waitress, so like I've have pretty strong fail driver.

She would come back and she'd be like, this table at ten was here for hours and took up this table forever and then they didn't tip shit. And it's like I know how much that like devastates like a single mom working as a waitress, you know, which, by the way, quick tip while I'm thinking about it, If you type in Amazon thank my Amazon driver, it will Amazon you give the driver of your most recent delivery a five dollars tip, so you have nothing to lose. You're literally just giving Amazon's

money to your delivery drivers, free money and no reason not to. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, sure, it feels it's nice to be able to have that bit of a relationship with your you know, server, right, but like, yeah, that's what this is, just me. Yeah, no, you're not wrong. You're coming from the right spot. But like obviously it shouldn't even like be like that, right, Like that's the biggest thing is that people there are too many dickheads that don't tip, so the

system is not is just flawed in so so many ways. It's like you can't operate like this, and it's why people like we tipp are come to our ridiculous, bad shit country and they're like, what the fuck are you doing? And understandably so, because what are we doing? Yeah? Yeah, for sure, I just uh I when I go to other places now, it's like, oh, you don't tip here, It's like yeah, I still really really want to though, I like, because that's how you

like that's how the system spit you out. The system spit you can you'll be like I need to do this. Yeah, I work on both sides of it, though. It's like, yeah, I just like having that direct relationship with the person that's doing the work for me. Sure you're going to do Japan with Timptory once and uh he used to work at Applebee's before game and former not Applebee's outback, out back and we went to an outback in Japan and he had to like pull the waiters over and talk to him

about all the differences and so oh we have the same knackin holders. That's crazy. And then like, I know that's not normally how this goes here, but can I tip you? Can I please tip you? It's been so great to be here and talk to you and everything. And they're like, no, seriously, don't do that. We don't do that here, and like it could just broke Tim's brain to not be able to tip these

out back waiters. And it's offensive to tip in some cultures, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've never been called like I mean I do the twenty percent thing too. I've never had a situation where you just to follow up on the rest of the questions then thrown out. That

would be sick. I've seen people see like this is where it gets ridiculous and messy and dumb, where Like I've seen bartenders literally call out people who like did not tip what they thought they should have been tipped for pouring a drink, and it's just like I've seen it. I've seen the city dozens

of times. I've had a similar instance with like an uber taxi driver when I'm taking a personal ride and I'll hit zero on the thing because I just want to give them physical cash cash, and like they'll they'll get all up at you at first and be like, oh I live on Milish, is actually better for them? No, no, no, no, no, no, here you go, man, chill out. You should just do the money first, jam what are you doing then? And then hit the zero. Uh. Yeah. People do get called out sometimes, and mostly

though, people just get frustrated and quiet. That's what I mean. When I would go in early to Jimmy John's for a big delivery order on Ohiose State Campus and like, all right, this orders three hundred dollars. I'll come in, I'll help make all the sandwiches, I'll deliver it and then get stiffed on the tip, and yeah, that felt real bad. Like

I'm expecting to get thirty to sixty dollars and you get nothing. That's that can be very frustrating, But most people actually do tip and most people get it, and a lot of times as a delivery driver it was like, oh, put one dollar on this deal and it's like okay, well that still kind of sucks, but going home with cash every night was always good. It's it's the side where it's like, Okay, tipped employees make less than minimum wage because the tips are supposed to make up for it. That's

the side that like actually probably should change for sure. Hey, uh, you know the Giant BombCast and Giant Bomb in general is the perfect place to seek legal advice, right mm hmm yeah, lawyer, Yeah, yeah. Hey, if if I worked at a coffee shop for X amount of years and you know they they used the point of sale system where it's the iPads and you add the tips there, and if I never saw any of those tips that got added from a credit card or a debit card transaction, I

should probably uh cause a fuss about that, right, you should. You should if you have any way of tracking any of that, Jane, And I don't know if you do, but even if you don't, I would estimate and go to your Bureau of Labor in the state, and they will fucking go to town for you. They will, especially in California. They did it for me in Ohio, so if they did it for me in Ohio, California will really get their ass. All Right, the trap house

is about to get fucking retroactively praid these assholes. Yeah, let's go. I'm not gonna say the name of the coffee shop. Uh. Next email comes from dam and they write in high bombers Grub asked the question who are these people that buy the day before on the most recent BombCast? And I can answer that with at least one example. My sixty seven year old dad

what. He's been a gamer most of most of his and all of my life, and my very first gaming memory is sitting on his lap at around five years old watching him play MT and Magic three in nineteen ninety one. He's a real gamer. Okay wow. In the past couple of years, he's been playing mostly survival games like Scum Subnautica, Valheim grounded and most recently returned to Moria. He didn't know how much about the game, as is

often the case, that he just fell victim to it. Big thanks to you guys, because otherwise I wouldn't have known to tell him to get a refund for that game. He's never before, he has never before in his life refunded anything on Steam and has also played more than the two hours, but his request was just granted. Thanks for all that you do, lovely people, Daniel. But are you glad to hear that? What's the TLDR on? What is the day? Yeah? I was going to give that

to you real quick. So The Day Before is the game that got announced a while back, and it became one of the most wish listed games on Steam because it kind of looked like, hey, what if the Last of Us was a survival game, which is like catnip to a lot of people, especially on Steam, and it was it was clear from the beginning to

most people that it was not real in any way. It was always it was like they would take like the looks, the exact actions that would happen in other trailers, not just like games, but like movies and like the dum, what's the Will Smith movie with the dog men and zombies? Yes, men in Black? You would take the Men in Black movie and uh, and they would like make their trailer look just like that, and it's like, Okay, clearly they're just lying. But some people got pretty hyped

for it. It came out a couple of weeks ago and it was a disaster. It barely worked. It was clearly just stuff bought off the asset store, a completely empty game, and then the studio shut down four days later and they closed the same shit. So when we talked about it, I was like, I I'm mostly glad that games like this can happen because that means anyone can go make a game and something will come out and actually

be good. But that means people should go get refunds if they bought it, and Steam will give you a refund even if you played more than the two hours that they say you always you play more less than two hours, you can get refund. After that, you have to keep game. That's not true, especially in a case like this where they just pulled the rug out from everyone. They are giving refunds to everybody for this game, So definitely go do that that's what hasn't been delisted or anything. Yeah, I

don't think you can buy it anymore. Yes, okay, good, Yeah, definitely Jesus all right. Pocono Paul sent in a very long email about podcast point conversions. So I'm gonna go ahead and give Pocono Paul a good twenty podcast points. If you're listening live right now, you get five. If you're listening to the archive, you get five, and then you'll get

six later when the later point is well. But Pete writes in about about being under the influence while playing Allen Wack two Hey BombCast during the Game of the Year discussions on the Soldier Boy Presents category, Bakalar had such a strong opposition to playing Allan Wake two while HI that it made me curious to give it a try. I'm off the same That was the takeaway. That was the thing to do. I'm off this week. So I figured I would set aside a day, have a macrotost in the morning, and fire a

new game plus for Allen Wake two. Despite the discussions discussions during Game of the Year, I figured I would have a pretty good time and my state of mind would play well with the trippy aspects of the game. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it and build after a couple hours. Yeah, Shock nothing terrible, but I just wasn't vibing with it really well. Afterwards,

I went back to playing Avatar to get more more experience. Just curious, what are the situations that you have all been in where you were intoxicated from one thing or another and found yourself just wishing you were sober. Thank you

guys for endless hours of entertainment, Pete. I have the opposite where I was playing Super Mario Brothers while very drunken high at a friend's house, and it was like everyone's passing the control around and everyone was struggling with the level, and it got back to me and I just basically mainlined it right to the end, jumped over the hammer Brothers perfectly slid underneath the bowser, and I looked like king shit for playing a video game, which is even being

good at video games sometimes like that doesn't happen very often, so be able to like show off and have people actually be impressed. I was like, I was clearly in the butter zone there so love the butter zone. Like I guess the three times I you know, had anything harder than weed. And like when I was eighteen, like doing mushrooms a couple of times and just like the whole time. Well, no, there's a fun like hour or two there, and then it's just like, oh god, I'm dying,

make this stop. Like pretty much just that tweed, we'll do that something like half the time. But alcohol that's the time. Yeah, I got them. That's why I don't smoke a lot of weed. Like I just like it doesn't really I'm a very anxious up in my head person, and like it doesn't take much for me to just like fixate on just like my ears feel weird or something, and then I'm you know, having anxiety, whereas drinking. Every time I'm drinking just like yeah, this is this

is a good time. Yeah, if you had fifty if I had a fifty percent success rate with weed, i'd yeah probably do that right when I do. It's like a three milligram seltzer or something. Three milligram seltzer, Yeah, yeah, one of those during a movie or something like that. It's just nice and it's enough to feel it a little bit, but you're you're not at risk of getting up in your head too much. Huh.

They do three milligram seltzer. They have one milligram stuff. Now, oh no, that's a little yeah, yeah, it seems a little means I have have like and you won't even like you don't even really feel that when you get your weed seltzer. That's a big thing here in Minnesota because like it's going like full and dispensaries are coming like I think within the next year. But there is like a loophole type thing where like in breweries, like you can go to a brewery and you can all you'll get like a thc

selter with your beer or something. You know, you can do that. I think I accidentally micro dosed at a brewery recently. Yeah, like there was something like called space dust or some something like that. And then afterwards I was, that's just that's just a PCP oh ship cool. I was. Afterwards. I was telling him, it's like, hey, you're not drinking. You're like we're ubering home right like, are we going to get a ride with someone? I just can't be with people right now. Have

weed seltzer? Oh man, come on, I got a bunch of the bridge. We didn't win bag. Have one had one while I was here. We got yeah, very nice. Yeah, we got weed beer over here. I was puking. You were just puped it up and drinking weed, living in Minnesota. Fucking party right there, that we party in Minnesota. That's all Lucy god. Oh right, last email of the show,

the last live bumb cast of the year. Who knows if we're going to have time to pre record something for next week, Probably won't have time. Just wanna get that out of the way now, But we would be remiss if we ended the year without reading one. Last email from Nathan from tom Water, Washington. Are there any hobbies you picked up during COVID Lockdown that you still enjoy? Nathan from tom Water, Washington learning a bunch of production

shit. Hey, that that is what I applaud Dan for. I'm like, wow, look at you knowing all of this stuff, look at you diagnosing all this stuff. It's great. I think it's it's awesome. Yeah. I always had, you know, a Drew or a Bennie or a Hanson or someone before or I would just sit in be a jackass for a couple hours and they worry about all this stuff. Now it's like during the pandemic. It's all right, set up camera, it's gonna learn obs all the stuff and oh shit, okay, right, Like I used to do

a bunch of like video editing and stuff. I like doing that stuff to make a bunch of silly short films, and it's like, oh okay, I like I like reactivated something in my brain. And uh yeah, I'm glad I still get to do a lot of that here. I stopped doing this because it became very costly. But I used to develop film at home

and it was very fun and home. Yeah, wow, yo, they make the chemicals so much lighter now that it only will slightly poison you, you know, hell yea, And what do you like do it in a windowless bathroom or something? Yeah, you got to load up the film. I don't even know where they're in a bag. I didn't use a bag. I just used my extremely good night vision to load to unspool the film, load it up into a little thing, and then yeah, you just

go to town with the chemicals. That's why I bought a souv not to actually cook, but to like keep my chemicals at the right temperature. Sure, sure, sure, the black and white chemicals though. You can't pour those down down the drain. You got to figure out a ditch to throw those away. You just drink those yeah yeah, yeah, set them to

Canada. But the part of the reason why I stopped developing film at home, other than film becoming stupid expensive over the course of the pandemic, because a lot of folks were also getting into film, or was how time intensive it is to scan every single fucking film negative? Oh yeah, Oh so then like imagine you're right, you get a film stock of thirty six pictures in your head when you're taking the pictures like, oh, you're just zooming

through it. But then when you have to sit there and scan every single image for like five minutes plus just to get the right thing, and then to convert it afterwards. Oh fuck that. Afterwards, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. That reminds me of the thing that was like not really a hobby because it's something I did for work when I was writing for games Beat still, but getting into like benchmarking computer components GPUs

and CPUs, you could try to automate some of that stuff. You can try to like write script to go through all these games. But if you do that, something's going to break, and it will all the test results will be completely useless. So you kind of have to babysit as you're like going through one game after another and all these different components, and it was

so time consume. It's like, this is fun up to a point, but when you're on like the fourth GPU, like in the fifteenth game, for each one of these things, it takes up so much time that it became a name and I had to stop, even though I really liked getting computer parts for free from these companies to cover them, but even that wasn't worth it at a certain point. That about does it for emails. Let's get to the final portion of the show, the shout outs, starting with

shots out too. Hi, mister Grubb, Hi, mister Grubb's previous doctor here in my defense, he was a first patient I've had that wasn't a horse, and I respected he didn't want to kiss me. Sincerely, Richard Handler, ohs gp obg y N and slight hand slight fan magician. All right, you said it, true story. My dentist gave me shoot horse antibiotics for gum problems. The National Football League MVP front runner brock Perty is

not a system quarterback. He is the system. Bang bang giant bombs, bizarre buffoons, balance barefoot on bulky video game bricks, babbling about bewildering behemoth beatles and virtual battles, befuddling their feet fleetingly the doc cops Dan, you ever get to enjoy any more of that rented hero for Dreamcast? No, I just that w onet stream. That was a lot of fun and silly.

Speaking of Dreamcast, question for y'all, if you added a second stip stick to the Dreamcast bad, would it be the best controller of all time? Brackets? Also, I guess if you added shoulder buttons second brackets. Yes, this is hypothetical. It still has the VMU and you have to make the cable come out the top. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So you make a few slight changes make it a different controller than Yes. Yeah. Shouts out to Kingdom Hearts two, the perfect game to play for fifteen

hours of extra life. Shouts out to Mike for shopping the team doing final mix myths this past Sunday, and also thank you for that beautiful cover slash remix of I'll Make a Man out of You. But switching Man to Jan. Fantastic Shots out to TC Tuggers the only shirt that's got a little knob in the front half. Happy thirtieth anniversary to the Mega Man X series X

represents endless possibility. Shots out to Tanuki, those wonderful, adorable and ohso fluffy raccoon dogs, especially Science Factory Adorable Trio Sukushi May and Moogie, the Tanuki who loves to ride Torque in her own doggy travel pouch, Malagai and Pasco Mangakuya. Shots out to swag of Pinos and their drip for simbunka Slash, Midnight mass verch dot org and www Dot Gonzo hole dot com. Jan, you look great, Backler, you look great. Dan, you look

great. Oh oops, grub you look great. Dan, you look Dan? Saltlick check? Looking at it right now? I put it in a little notch between two trees, and it has at some point fallen out, but it is still very rectangular. You got a shitty salt lick. Yeah, Also like kind it's sticking out of some leaves and stuff. So around do you think Dan, that you interacting with the saltlic first interfered with uh yeah, with your dirty human oils. Yeah, the deer and turkeys happened,

like I know. Thanks uh parentheses. Also, Dan, you look great. Hey nos a very merry fuck you to you. Jangle Bells, Grubman smells Dan can't cook an egg. The back of our mobile has a Logitech wheel and Manatti went to Disney World to pray a everybody Jangle Bells, Grubman smells cook the wheel and Manati went to the Mike Manatti for a fifteen hour extra live stream mic saying sixteen Disney songs. Shouts out to Marino. The GV community Game of the Year voting is live now, Big Big Special.

Shouts out to Yes coming out per Game of the Year. That was excellent, guest listen everything just a huge help. The best egg. Shouts out to Alex Bunyello released the sheet music for the Mike MINNAUGHTI song fire Escape for an eight hour Game of the year's stream. Jesus Christ your butts Christmas in San Francisco is dog shit song and you all know it all right grub twenty four check. I haven't started back up? Yeah, yeah, I will. I dining tend to Maybe that'll be my New Year's resolution is to

get back to Jack Bauer. Yes, season three is hogg on Heroin to see that. That's the best one. I think for sure. I'm not going to read this shout out here because words, but shouts out to the GB crew for a wonderful game of the year and wishing ill happy holidays. And finally shouts out too, and as Tiny Tam observed, scout the dog bless us. Every one. Every one shouts out to these hooligans around me on the call. Right here, shouts out to the other hooligans that are

not on the call. I feel like we've had a fucking banger of a year. Boys. Yeah, good work, every good absolutely a crew here. Huh yeah, it's real good. I was telling afterwards, like, hey, it's not that I'm sad to be back home. It's just like, I really enjoyed hang out with everyone. It was nice to see everyone. It was a really good time. I know we've said this before, but it's like, oh wow, I like all these fuckos. We have a good time. So let's meet up more next year. Yeah, let's

do that. Let's do the place. Yeah yeah, maybe we'll go these coast first or something. You know, if you want some nice wheat selters. No, I just found out I could have it sent to me. So but okay, I got a great diary of toilet. If you're ever feeling that so cool? Can I pug in that top tier top tier? I legitimately had the idea this weekend when my hearty was here because we got Juicy Lucy's, and he was saying, like, oh, the dairy,

I'm probably have like a diary explosion in your bathroom. I said, like, if you do use this particular one, and I legitimately thought about getting plaques made up of my friends who have diarrhea in that bathroom, putting up like grub if I sit you like a portrait like when a celebrity eats at a restaurant, would you put it in that bathroom? That awesome sign of course? Okay, the perfect picture. Okay, it's not, don't worry. Oh boy, what what do we got going on the rest of this

week? I think mostly I'm just imagining, like you know, the middle of the week, Dan just like walking around the house, goes into that bathroom admiring all the people ship, just like, oh you remember that ship. Yeah, we had to change the play wed become a thang for that bathroom just a bunch of bush photos, yes, weird house. Okay, so let's see her games morning. The last one of the year is tomorrow, everybody, and guess who's on there, Lucy James. Look out for

that. It's gonna be a lot of fun. What else do we have happening tomorrow? We're gonna do a Blike Club, right, We're gonna do a Blake caub a little bit earlier, and then is the plan to do Lethal Company after that? Okay, whoever can show out of it, okay, Leaf of Company. I'll send you guys a hip file for the mods. We're gonna try to get as many people in the Lethal Company as possible. The game was not available for sale yesterday and we were worried about it.

It's back up now though, so uh, I think I think we're good. So we'll get that happening. Uh. That will probably be one of the last big things we do. And then we'll have a voicemail dump truck on Thursday. But we're probably not going to do a beast BombCast re vengeance this Friday, right, probably not. I'm gonna go to sleep, yeah, and then uh doing a BombCast next week. It's just no promises, like no, there definitely won't be a live one. For sure.

We might have something in the feed, but just no promises because it's the end of the year and we're kind of wiped out. Everybody. Okay, the Game of your list are going up, so look out for that of the site. Yes, and then you can catch up with our Game of the Year content on there as well. We did we say one more dumb brooni too, Yeah, yes, yeah, okay, we'll have well, we will have the Dumb Truck on Thursday. That will be live, so

look out for that. That will last dump of the year, last dump of the year, Get your get your calls in seven oh seven exit flew And that does it for the last episode of the Giant BombCast, at least a live episode of the year of twenty twenty three. Holy holy smokes you all week on Unreal Doune did it we done? Did it? Unreal? I am so happy and so proud of this team. Special shouts out to

everyone. You know what, I'll say this for everyone. Thank you to Turbo Shawn, thank you to Nikki, thank you to Emma, thank you to Bailey. Thank you to Marino, thank you to Chris, thank you to Mike, thank you to Tam, thank you to Lucy, thank you to Dan, thank you to Jeff, thank you to Jeff, thank you to me, and thank you for the folks at home. You've been absolutely amazing this year, whether you've been a listener for a long time a short

time. I love you. I'll kiss you in the mouth if you want to reclaim any of your podcast points, actually, you know what, Hey, if you just come to me and be like, Yo, this is happening, then hey, it's happening. I've been Jan he's been Jeff. He's been Jeff, he's been Dan. You at home have been great. We love you. We'll see you next year for a year episode of The Giant Bob Gust. Bye, everyone on by, I love yall. Goodbye. You're doing great. You're doing great. Good job. Bye.