831: Hi-Rizz Vest

Hey everybody, It's Tuesday, March twelfth, twenty twenty four. Welcome to the Giant Podcast powered by n ZXT. I am your host, jan A Shoa, powered by self loathing, black coffee and friendship. Joining me co captain of the Ship as always on the ones, the twos, the threes, the fours, and the twelves. Jeff Crebb I got my blood pressure down. I did it, everybody. I've been working on it and it's back down to normal. Let's go, there we go, There we go.

We got the master of blood pressure, maintaining cool as a cucumber under all types of pressure, even if the pressure might break his fingers. Dan Record, Hello. I also I had a bunch of blood tests done in the last week and looking pretty good over good. Blood numbers are good. Yeah, speaking about looking pretty good, he's looking pretty good. He's feeling the blood number good and the blood numbers master of all numbers covered in blood.

Jeff Backlar, it's right, my blood numbers five. Don't forget that. Wow, you got it to five. The answer is five, ladies and gentlemen. Woo Hey, I don't know anything about blood pressure. What should I mean? What? What is one? Twenty over eighty Okay, yeah, and you went to be very min was a little low, but it was high for a very long time. So getting it back to be it was like one seventeen over seventy five or something like that, that's pretty

good, man. Yeah, I want both numbers to be low, right, Yes, both numbers to be like you want the second one to be under eighty. You want the first one to be under one twenty. So it's like that was the that was the goal, and it was all like all that walk in and exercise and like I haven't like been like trying to like lose weight necessarily. It's been like let's get healthy first. And now I'm like there, I'm like, okay, well let's do the second part

of this. So is there a two like if you were like eight over four, is that super good or is there like you shouldn't go below right? Stupid blood pressure it's also a bad So there's there's a there's a window that you want to I think I think there's a window. But it's like for Americans typically we have high blood pressure. Typically Okay, doctor Chad says, that is death. So okay, okay, cool, cool, cool, Thank you doctor Ryan for chiming in making sure we are aware what death

is. How is it going? Boys? I've better what's going on? How's the bud light? And mommy back the bud light? It's the bud light. You saw what they did? Right? What happened? You know what these people did? Who's these people? What do you are you talking about your mommy and daddy? Oh? You don't know about this? What's going on? Dan? Is an update on the we stopped communicating outside of the podcast. Here's the thing. We talk so much on streams and podcasts.

I forget whether or not where I say things to you guys. I talked to you a lot outside of podcasts, right, yeah, Well, but I haven't heard about your parents lately. There's they're staying with me for a little bit. They moved in, well they they Tomorrow's the day.

They just brought up. Like I was away at a hockey tournament over the weekend and they brought while we were away, they brought up a lot of stuff and like conversationally or my dad an hour in a car both ways, Okay, I was like it was like bring you know the essentials, right, like bring what you It was like that scene in Spaceballs, bring what you need to survive, right, and motherfucker brought inspired bud Light that is older than my son. It'll be fine. I first of all, I

don't drink bud Light news flash number one. Yeah, for political reasons. We know that. For reasons exactly. That woke. Okay, I heard about that a lot lately. Yeah. Right, older than your son, yes, Jeff, older than my son, like many years older. It's been talking about. No way, they have bud Light that's been sitting there for like ten years, and they got to tell Stacey to bring the can up. So like, okay, you know it's a it's a logo.

I don't recognize they've changed their logo. Yeah, they've changed their logo. I'm trued to recognize it, right. I feel like I could recognize one from like nineteen ninety two. Yeah, she's she's grabbing a can. It's so you know, the current logo of bud Light. When you see this logo, you're gonna be like, what the fuck is that? You're gonna think it from like the nineties or something like. It's just so weird.

I I told my father, I said, bring up stuff like bring bring a couple weeks worth of clothing, bring like whatever, okay, And he brought me I think it's twelve year old beer. Twelve, but it's your favorite beer, twelve year old beer that I do that. He knows I'm a piece of shit with beer. And he still brought literally the bottom of the barrel, Like, no, it's not that beer is so beneath me. Grew up on Milwaukee's best light. Natty Light is not going to go

above that on the tier list, righties? Would yeah? I would be lying if I Yes, I'd be lying if I said I never had a bud light in the last like two years. That's I've definitely had one. Can you still order? Can you order a forty at a bar? No? No, I mean exclusively done that definitely. Maybe like a Mickey's hand grenade somewhere, but that's not a forty, Oh Dan, I think I smell a business opportunity for us, just a bar that only serves forties.

Yes, just like everyone out all the time. Your reserve and get that take out of your bag. Yo, does this look familiar to anyone? Like, yes, that's actually what I was picturing. Yes, yeah, that does so yeah, Yeah, that's about it's not the current one. But get the date on that. Look, we don't all exclusively drink and hops factories. We've seen normal beers before. Look at the date on this an old beer, June twenty twelve. Okay. And then also, I

don't even know what the hell this is. No, no, no, no, no, no, this is no no. Wait a minute. He brought these little guys. He cool if you want to drink their dad, it's a little can of bud Bud Wise, it's a little can of Bud heavy, the Marbo cigarettes of beers. Wait, okay, this is like an eight ounce litle Jimmy, jim Look, okay, how do you understand the order of the order of the expiration date to go? Like? Do you think it's day? Like do you think it's date? Month?

Year? Right? Yeah, month date. Well it's not because they say, because this has a number June and then another two digit No yeah, then yeah June. Yeah, my friends, if that is true and the year is last, I in my hand am holding Wait, I get it out back? What year? There's no way, there's no way. This beer is twenty two years old. Now, okay, that's I'm trying to find out miniature bud bud cans that says, oh two, I'm trying to see when they made those. That says, oh yeah, okay, the

twenty four maybe the first year numbers of the year. This is fresh. There's no way. This is like magically ready to go. Was this in a fridge or was this in a b and I don't know. He threw out his entire house except for expired beer and an endless supply a vinyl that he also just called me an hour ago and was like, should I bring up all my vinyl instead of keeping getting storage? I meant to drink with your dad From everything you're telling me, what's no? You don't know?

You don't don't tell me what I want to do. I want to get drunk with your dad. He backpack, are open it up and drink it? Yeah? A couple? What are you? Container is cold enough? This is older than Giant Bomb. It's uh je, come on, you know what you have to do? Taste what a freshly post nine eleven world was brewed? Like, come on, litten, this is hot off nine to eleven. It would be nothing but red, white and blue if it was just post nine eleven dude, you open open smell it, but I

am not drinking. You have to open this can. I feel like something's gonna come out of it and graxactly the spirit of America when everything was okay, Yeah, just open it and we'll heal. Wait, so you said post eleven, we all agreed on something. What's O two like twenty two thousand and two, two thousand and two, So it's it literally is older than the Iraq War like that. It's like I'm saying, oh says to do it. This pre dates shock and Awe. I was twenty. I

don't want to save it for the dump truck this week. So you have time for it to chill and you can summon a cold. It's real cold. Well I put it like a salt lick. Come on, all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna just like I'm gonna smell it. I'm gonna smell stand back. That's more air than I thought would get out of that. All right? I bet you like, what if this is going for thousands of dollars under the bay. Yeah, it smells like beer? How is

that possible? Probably? Fine, It's like, take it's the whole thing. Beer is like you know, the alcohol means it won't go that bad. Yeah, yeah, oh, these that she'll get a glass, just we should get a glass, so we should like just see what it looks like. Right, it's gonna look like a beer and taste like a beer, I guarantee you. But it's it's twenty two years old. Dan, I don't understand you gonna be okay, I've been in a can and it's sealed. But what is it? But like, are we all okay with

this? Is this? What? What do you think is going with this? I don't know. Maybe maybe this is gonna be totally fine, and like this is just maybe this is just bad. Like, well, we can't cut this out of the podcast. That's impossible. We're already okay, okay, I have a glass coming, it's right here. Okay, wow, excellent, all right, we're gonna pour it in here. Thanks. Oh, got to just make Dylan drink it if you're scared. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Here, you want to smell it,

Stacey smelling beer? Yeah right, it just smells like normal beer. Probably it's probably funny almost certainly fine. We're gonna be so upset if something happens to this guy. It's carbon nothing's gonna happen. Yeah, you're fine. He's gonna complain about it being trash beer and that's it. Yeah, same as if it was bottled yesterday. Watch they did get the date wrong and this is from twenty twenty four. Yeah, all right, I'm taking a

little sip. Should Are you okay with this? Because I want you to You've got saying people around you Beckler. Yeah, what kind of glasses it's called? It's a fancy glass. All right. It's definitely gone bad, like for sure. Really yeah it was. It tasted like uh if it was just very like not funky, just sort of like okay, turned right, Okay, you could take that. I don't we can pour that out. It's fine, right, Yeah, I don't know. Does their dates

and it does? It does look like that's the year number for it does, right, like, yeah, you know, and this is I just don't understand. When I told him how old it was, he like, he's like, you're lying. What am I lying? It's printed on the bottom line. Well, okay, fucking psycho Like he said you were lying? But did he He didn't like to say, well, no, I remember buying this a couple of weeks ago that if that remembers what he did Monday, Okay, well that's not helpful, But okay, so is Sweet

Lou regularly drinking other beer that he just has in reserve? No? No, no, no, I think he's a smearnoff ice guy. No, he's like, uh, what he's He doesn't really drink beer, obviously. I think he just as this is a party beer, like when you're having

people over, right, that you just buy a bunch of beer. There's a bunch of expired Corona as well he brought, and I think he just had it in his mind that like, well, you know, all this beer has been in my fridge all these years, I might as well bring it up to Jeff's house because you know, it's like he likes to drink beer, and why not just have extra beer around the house, regardless of whether or not it's you know, almost a quarter of a century old.

Yeah, I's an older generation thing that I found with my grandparents and now I'm finding with my dad and where it's like, man, I don't know what it is about the inability to throw things out, like hey, these fucking this thing in the fridge could be anything. You know, it expired literally eight years ago. It's still good. It's fine. Yeah, gret during the depression. So I mean that's a big factory. Yeah, I

know he did in the depression. Whenever I see something that's like even a little bit out of date, and I'm like, I know, I'm not going to like throw it in the trash is the best and clear clearing out space in the fridge so you have more space. I love doing that, my guys. He had an industrial sized dumpster in his driveway for a week where he could have gotten away with throwing out anything, and this is the stuff he chose to not throw out. To drive an hour away and throw

it out up there, that's what he wanted to do. That's a dumpster. He wanted to recycle the cans properly, right, sure, thinking sure. He did bring up a bottle of dom though, So that's pretty cool. Nice sick sick. Hey, it tastes bad in my mouth right now. By the way, guys, it's like chalk. It's a little chalky, if I'm being honest. Can I get some important advice from you folks on this call and the folks in the chat This is something that has been

plaguing me for six months as I've been living here. Okay, cool me too, afterwards, I need it. I need unsolicited solicit advice. Okay. I like to collect old games and old game stuff, right, and I've got them. You know, grub, you've been here, you know I've got them here. Nice. Yeah, it looks nice, but I want to keep it nice. And so I've got windows that go into like

a three seasons room and then there's another layer of windows. But sunlight can come in, especially during the winter when the leaves on the trees are gone. The sun comes in in the morning and things like that I am terrified of because when I lived in San Francisco, I had a bay window and I had all my game informers there and like all the spines just got nuked finally quickly from sun damage. And so I've been trying to figure out I

bought these gimmicks on Amazon. They're like the UV film that you put over, and I figured there's there's like two layers at least of windows filter out some of the UV like themselves. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. So I was testing stuff where it's like I've got the glasses that the transition lenses and stuff, and like I put my glasses there and they still turned even after two layers of glass. And then you did science. You did

science. Well, yeah, And I have a black light flashlight with like good test. I like that. I did the glow in the dark flashlight that came with the analog pocket, the glow in the dark one, and I put a dollar bill, like on a hundred dollar bill on the other side and the black light on the other side of the and I still saw the strip. So I'm like, shit, I think UV is coming through. And so I just I'm trying to figure out how to protect my games

and stuff. And I just got a quote it's seven hundred and twenty bucks to get five windows UV protected. Is that Do I need that? Or is it like you there's two layers of windows before any can even hit the games? You know. I'm a I'm a believer that, like any prolonged exposure to sunlight is eventually going to deteriorate the thing. Like I just I just think you need to either move them, like that's not an option? How is that not an option? A whole room, it's it's not.

It's there's a lot of windows coming in. Like what about curtains. Well, so I bought some some shitty like you know, just once an Amazon where you just cut them and they just kind of fold down. But I would love to have just the thing because now that it's it's getting nights outside, like to have those open and not have use So is it so? So I have a similar situation in you know, you've been in the pinballroom,

right. I have a bunch of hot toys there, and I don't want the hot toys being exposed to sunlight because it'll change the color of like the you know, the clothing on the things and everything. So I have them in a spot where like they get no sunlight, like and the sun moves across, so it's like sort of you know, it's it's like positioned in the right spot so that over the course of the day the sunlight just doesn't terfear with that. And you can also get like blinds that'll like go

up and down like, but that's the thing. I feel like curtains or blinds like actually installed ones would cost just as much as just getting this like you and I would rather just have the UV protection and not have these big curtains or blinds. You know, yeah, I hear you. I just seven hundred dollars sounds pretty reasonable to me, those five giant windows, Yes, that's all. Yeah. Here's the thing too, though, right, don't you do what you want with your money. The only thing that I

would like caution against, right is like you just don't know. You won't know till it's too late, right, like with the UNA. Oh yeah, if you noticed it right, fucked Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, so if you go with the UV coding and it's still being exposed all the sunlight and for whatever reason they just aren't as effective as you wanted them to be or whatever it is, you aren't going to find out till

it's too late. The only way to be one hundred percent sure is to like get the blind get the curtains right, or just like move them. I haven't been in that room. I also feel like I've not been in a lot of your rooms, Dan, but I've also figured out solutions to problems in some of your rooms. Dan, that's true. So maybe if you want to, you know, FaceTime and we'll figure it out together.

I'm happy to do that, but definitely get moved. But like all the like really good ones are in, Like I buy those like UV protected boxes and the acrylics and stuff on eBay, So like there's like numerous layers of shit before it gets to the game. So I'm wondering if it's overkill to actually get this done or if I because yeah, like I would just it would kill me if this actually Like, God, Dan, you're protecting a collection. I don't. I see it as an investment. But backs,

right, Like, who's to say it does work? The UV film stuff, Yeah, like three this is like a block ninety nine percent of whatever, you know, So yeah, and a curtain blocks. We're positive it's just the UV that's doing that does damage, right, There's a whole bunch of other waves of light that would still get in. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I do. I don't know, huh. I mean, just like the most effective like that, I think that's the thing

that has the biggest impact. Yes, but I don't think it's just UV light that I think you can still see some damage. Otherwise, maybe I'll get a quote on some of my curtains just basic blackout curtains. If there's a sun doctor in the house, please reach out to the BombCast. Yeeah, hold everyone, Sun's fucking terrible. Three M should be legit. Yeah, there's like yeah, oh yeah, three M stuff is kind of what

I'm looking at here. That's what the quote's for. Okay, Yeah, I mean if you I mean, if you get them, like if you get the UV protection and maybe get a little bit of a tent so like really like the you know, dampens the effect of the sun overall, maybe that would probably do the trick. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to give you any guarantees, so I'm not sure. Okay, Okay, I'll keep looking, but yeah, I do want to get some sort of permanent deal going on. Okay, Okay, Now I need advice

from you three and the community here. All right. I am a fucking mess in my life and this is we know this. I'm a dirt person. My real shoot person is just a shitty person. So I thought, what if I get my life together and just schedule stuff out and actually have hold myself accountable things. And this worked perfectly, timing incredibly well, because I believe it was last Friday Grub that Lucy was on game mess she talked about time blocking. Yeah, she was talking about time blocking. And I

was like all right, okay, okay. And then this past Monday rolls around Backlar tells me it's like, jan, you gotta get on Asaana, make make us Asauana. And I'm like, you know what, all right, I will make us asauna. And then I I thought, what if I do that to my own life? What if I regimend and schedule my own life and hold myself accountable. So I've downloaded Notion and if anyone has any like uh out there, has any templates that you like or tips for

Notion is basically like hasana dan. So it's like a it's like a notepad, but with every like every feature you could want to make things easier to do, Like people keep track of their like game collections on Notion using handy templates and stuff like that, and so so like reminders and to do list because like I live and die, but I can't function with it. But I've got like a million I've got the work calendar on Google, I've got my iCloud whatever thing for other stuff. You know, you can put them

all in one place. Yes, well, so that you can use your like Gmail account or a Gmail account to just merge everything together. And I before was keeping my work calendar my life calendar separately. Now I've just merged everything because it doesn't fucking matter. So you only have one life, right,

I only have one life to live, bless up. So I thought, because the neat thing Dan is you can have those table tables and everything where you're tracking stuff, but also creating subpages to link to other documents. So like right now, I have like a general work document with like miscellaneous notes and a to do list of stuff to take care of for this week. But I also have like for the games I'm playing, like little sub

pages of like notes for those specific games. And then on my phone you have an iPhone also, so I've made a widget to link specifically to that game that I'm playing right now. So I'm playing Unicorner Overlord in Rise of Ronin. So with those widgets, I'll just tap on that when I have an idea or something like sticks out to me and dump it there. Yeah. Okay, and just is integrate with like Google docs and stuff like that,

I think you can. Yeah, I think so okay, notion is like very The only thing I'd say with notion, I use it for a lot of like of my bullshit, my like hobby bullshit. But the only thing I'll say is, like, you have to invest in the time to understand the language of it. It's essentially a it's essentially like a big database. It's that gives you a lot of databasing uh power, you know what I mean, Like, uh, you can kind of like make it your

own sort of functional searchable Wikipedia database, if that makes sense. And I think it's Jean Luke has like a really good template for a game track. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah is everything I'm hearings hanging on the wall to get this woodpecker out of here. And it's right, it sounds like that. Oh yeah, they're just not so they're going to break through anytime. No, they're not neighbors. There are They're they're straight up

holes in the neighbor's house. It is, but not through the everything you give give them time. They are persistent. I put up the funky balloons. I put up bake owls and eyeballs and ship thenky balloons. What yeah, Mary told me about these funky balloons that look like eyeballs you can hang. So I got all these balloons hanging outside of my favorite part. Mary told me about these funky balloons. Okay, I need to see what these

funky balloons look like. Look at Woodpecker balloons. You'll see them. They got eyeballs. It's awesome. Speaking about funky balloons, let's talk about games. Season Pickers of Foam Stars has arrived. Gents, chan, what are you talking about? Man? Season two of Foam Stars has arrived? Okay, I'm sure did you play it? No? I received the news update. Yeah, I just thought i'd chime in with some relevant news. I got an email said Season two Foam Stars has arrived, and I forgot that

game had come out. Uh oh, crub, you got that hot dog controller? Got a hot dog controller? I'm like a hot dog controller, hinds ketchup controller. I also got a Craft Mac and Cheese controller that we're gonna give because she loves Mac and Cheese. It's gonna be one of her Easter presents. And it's straight up Craft Mac and Cheese and h Yeah. They so okay. These are hyper kid controllers. They look at lot like

super Nintendo controllers. We've got the sticks on them. If you've ever seen like the eight bit dough and it looks like one of those without the handles and stuff like that. But they're pretty comfortable whole. They got a little slant here on the back of the little grippers, but they are styled. This one's an Oscar Meyer Wiener controller and the other ones straight up behind this

ketchup bottle controller. It's silly and I like it. It's uh, they're kind of like they're as tachy as you're imagining if you're listening to this on the audio version. And yeah, it's like the for example, the Oscar Meyer Weener one has a hot dog shape and a bun shape and then there's a like a strip of yellow mustard across the top and it's it's a lot of fun. Yeah. They also like sent over a Miraculous controller, which

is a like French cartoon that my kids really like as well. And I don't know how they knew that, but that other one's going to the other kids. So we got we got Easter presence in this house happening. Jeff Greb you got a little hot dog control, Yeah, I mean as far as like using them as controllers, They're they're functional stuff. It's not like gonna be the thing I use daily, Like I still am gonna use like

a full on controller with the handles and stuff like that. But as we're having extra fun controllers, I actually think these are great, Like throwing someone the hot Dog controller and they're like, hey, let's play Street Street to Rage four, Like what's you know we're all over here for Thanksgiving? Yeah, here, this is the controller you're going to get now. I like it. When did we get to that point where like the extra controller that

isn't officially licensed by the company are now like almost better and fun. They're

fun at the very least. Yeah, uh well, I mean I think that happened this generation because I think a lot of these hardware manufacturers have gotten to a place where they are selling enough and the profit margins are good enough that they can put a little extra in there for I mean, for example, like API do's got the camera the hall effects sensors, that's what they are that don't drift over time, and it's like just demonstrably better than what's

in Nintendo's controllers. Yeah, and those are in like now all API dough controllers, so you don't have to worry about those things breaking down over time like you have to worry about with every other control. And it's like, oh yeah, they know that there is a savvy audience out there paying attention to this stuff and they could play to that, and so I think they're like, Okay, let's make these things a little bit better and have a little bit of fun and still make like joy cons. No, no,

but I got so much. I use it with not nixies, but like nixes like ny x I I think is what it is. They make these ones and I'm pretty happy with them, and they're like the uh, basically like a full on game pad that I just attached the side. There's a lot of them out there, but these ones have worked really well for a long time. Now. I'm trying to figure like what the most like you know, second player controller or whatever that I've ever had is. Oh,

I got they were both. I guess it was fourth player controllers because the first thing that came to mind were on the GameCube, the micro con, the man micro Con. I just googled it and yep, this is bringing me back. And on sixty four it was the Interact super Pad sixty four, real fucked up looking controller. Every want to google that. Those are the the fourth player control. I had the Blockbuster branded in sixty four controller

that was like kind of like shaped like a weird ass boomerang. It looked really really fucked up, and I always made people use that one, the the mad Cats one. You're talking about the micro con right, Oh yeah, yeah, that one pissed me off so much because it had like it was it was skinnier than it needed to be at the top, and then it had like a bul bulbous sort of like handles with ribbed grips on that. It was just so oh bulbused and ribbed. Yeah. Why yeah,

why didn't we understand ergonomics? We hated ergonomics apparently, yeah, we thought they were for oool God. I thought this controller that I got from game Stop once was so cool. It was I don't remember the brand, but it had fans in it and you could control the fan speed to make you sweat less on your palms. I guess so uh. And then a friend used it because I gave it to him as a second place controller, and then his hands actually swept so much that it clogged up the fans in my

controller and broke it. Yeah. Why yeah, Hey, never underestimate the powers of a prepubescent boy's hands wet. They can destroy anything. Stopping wet palms, Yes, stopping wet palms. I made my switch look like a GameCube. Oh yeah, I saw that looks really good nitro dick. Yeah that's a crooked c r KD. But yeah it's a straight up Yeah. Yeah, I'm I might looking to get in one of those. I think, are you happy with the results are? It's like comfortable and everything.

I just got it a couple of days ago. It's company. Yeah, it's definitely a little bigger, but it operates like a pro controller basically you have to turn on like the pro wired thing, but like it's got its own rumble and everything. So I just I think aesthetically, how stable does that feel? Dan, Like, when it's like connected to the switch and everything. It's oh, it's it's good. It's good. You have to like there's like a safety thing in the back put up to take it out.

Yeah yeah, so it lookally envelops it like, so it's like way more secure than a joy con. I would assume oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Cool, it doesn't look like it's going to break away. Just like Jeff Grubb has been playing Pennies Big Breakaway, I have, Yeah, I've played a few more worlds in Pennies Big Breakaway. It's like I I've been looking for something else mostly to talk about on the show, and so I was like, I was hopping in a few other things and I'm like,

yeah, i should go back to Penny's Big Breakaway. And I've enjoyed what I played before this session, and now I keep playing. I'm like, I'm starting to get the hang of comboing together the movement skills. So you are you do a double hit with your yo yo to do a dash forward that gets you enough speed so that kind of no matter what terrain you're on, you can then drop and then start running on your yo yo, so you sort of are are scooting along on that and that continues the combo.

And then if you want, you to do like a double jump and then try to swing and then do the dash again, get back to get back on your yo yo right on that for a little bit. And then occasionally at the level will have something like oh these rings you can hop in to give you a little bit of speed as well. And the part of the fun is just kind of keeping that combo going, and then the other part of the fun is just figuring out the levels and finding all the secrets.

And I'm finding that having those two things bouncing back and forth between being my primary goal of keeping the combo going or finding the secrets is enough to keep the game very engaging. I continue to think that Penny's Big Breakaway looks fantastic. I love the way it looks. I think it's such a good does such a good job of capturing a memory of really, honestly a time where games never quite actually looked like this, but it's what I want always

imagine they could look like. So I've just been really enjoying it. Cool. It's like Saturn aesthetics with the Dreamcast fidelity, yeah exactly. Yeah. And it's the ability, yeah, yeah, definitely. And the mobility is extremely Mario Odissey to me like the ability to change directions so much in mid air and now I'm gonna throw this thing. Now I'm going in that direction.

The one thing I don't like is, like I do I do feel like I have so much like mid air control and directional control, and I think that all kind of goes out the window for me when the fucking penguins attack, and when I feel like I'm kind of mashing and trying to get them off me, and it's like, ah, I feel like I have so much control over my motion stuff, and then it's just like I'm hitting stuff trying to get rid of penguins that I jump off a cliff or something

like that. Yeah, so the penguins are about halfway through most levels, you'll start like they let you get set up usually, and then halfway through a level will be like, all right, and now here's like a bunch of penguins breaking out of a wall, and all they do is try to swarm you. And if about six or seven or eight get on you, it's like you've been captured. Game over, your level over. You got to start over at the checkpoint. And it's not the most like nuanced enemy

design, clearly, it is just brute force and kind of annoying. I've gotten to a point where it's like I can if I'm picking up my speed and I see that the penguins are coming, I'm doing it. I'm much better now than I was at like avoiding them and not even engaging with them, so I don't have to deal with it. But they don't know. If a couple do get on me, I do the dash and they fly right off. But it's yeah, that's just not a good part of this

game. It's it's kind of silly. I hope they get away from it later in the game, although I'm getting the sense it's like, no, this is just gonna be how the me designed works in the most part, and that's that's the core thing. Yeah, yeah, it seems like a

core thing to the experience. But uh, you know that said, I'm like, I'm glad I'm sticking with it because I'm I'm really enjoying what they're going for overall, and as I get better at the combo system, it is becoming more like, oh man, I went through that whole section without ever stopping my combo. That's that felt really cool and you do feel accomplished at the end of the level like that, greb, was it you telling me that there's almost like a Tony Hawk level combo thing. You're saying,

Sean told me that that's what got me back into it. So yes, and then I told that, yeah, yes, definitely right. It's like if you you find your line through the level, and you know, a couple of times you're like, you will, you know, die on accident, you'll go in the water, you will get captured by the penguins,

and it's kind of like exciting. It's like, oh, yeah, well I just noticed this part where maybe if I can go through there, I can keep my combo going and and actually carried over to that second part of the level while having to stop. And then you do that and it feels really really cool. I've not been able to go from like the beginning to the end carrying a combo because it's like I'm still learning most of the most

of the like the layout of the level. But as I'm starting to put to put these pieces together, it does feel like the combos getting bigger and bigger to the point where it's like, oh man, that is really cool. Okay, wow that I just feel like we should have more yoyos in video games. Yeah, yeah, you got your Star Tropics, you got your h I mean that's what a grappling hook is. Almost you try Batman

grappling on top of building with a yoyo. No, I won't because I wasn't being literal, but I think like they're more or less a similar sort of adjacent device, their thing on a string. Yeah, like, and that's what Penny's doing. When when Pitty like grapples onto the air and swings from it, that is that is a grappling. Look at that point, it just grapp commando. Yeah, had yo is what we're saying to the areas. You can just bucked up, you can like swing from anything.

It's and that that's actually one of the coolest feeling things in the game. It's just like, oh yeah, I like forgot about that for a whiles. I was doing the dash a bunch, and then I started using that again for platform and it's like, oh, okay, if I mix this in more often, First, it feels cool. Second, it really helped me keep my combo going because it slowed me down in certain part in certain

sections of the level. Speaking about feeling cool, I'm curious as to whether or not Dan, you've been feeling cool with some brief thoughts on Unicorn Overlord. Oh yeah. I started it and I did like the first couple of battles, and I was like wait, I don't have any input on this. They're just fighting. I don't what the hell I like to play a video game. I don't just want to watch stuff. And I put it down immediately after like four minutes of the game, fastwarding through the story,

seeing two fights and not having control over I was like about this. I stopped. And then I went upstairs later that night and Bonk had been playing for a while and she's like, I love this game. This is really cool. And I was like, well, I thought you couldn't like really control the battles or anything. He's like, no, no, no, there's all this strategy and stuff with how he plays, Like she explained, she knows how to talk to me. It's like this. And I was

like, oh, let me try it again. And then I played more than four minutes of the game, and I was like, oh, okay, there's actually some pretty cool stuff you can do here. All right, Okay, well I'm glad you had that little arc there. Okay, I'm now interested to hear more. Yeah. I've done a few of the actual like not just individual battles, but the stages. I've done a few of the stranges now, and it's like Oh shit, there's some like RTS stuff

going on here. There's something like I'm garrisoning structures and I'm like, oh, I could optionally go kill these guys, or I can draw this guy away from the bridge and attack him, and like, I'm gonna set up this guy to take the hits and this guy to do the healing on the

back. And it's a it's got me. So Yeah. For for whatever problems I have with this story, I can't deny the power and the excellence of Vanilla Ware's character designs because like, I'm sticking with it because I like the gameplay mechanics, but also I just want to see what other like freaks they'll throw my way. Yeah. I don't know if you'all have seen this.

It's been circulating on Twitter, but there's a clip of a very tall and muscular character coming out out of the woodwork in Unicorn Overlord, very Rhea Ripley adjacent type deal, and it's like, I got it, I got it, get it she can. This is the same company that did the one what was it like ten years ago where there's a big controversey beds. Yeah, the witch with the chest and the Amazonian with the thickest thighs that have ever been conceived by the mind of manned. Yeah, what have I

always said? The thighs save lives. Yeah yeah, what if you're in gold and Eye, they they ended lives. Oh that's true. Good point. Well, you know that that person was on the wrong side, right, the thighs take it in. The thighs give it away. I've gotten to a point in Unicorn Overlord where I feel like I want to have like a whistle and like a coach jacket because I feel like I am because I'm not directly playing, and I'm just like taking care of the format and guiding

people where to go. I feel like the best and worst coach in the world, like because I always underestimate the units speed, Like Dan, you can attest like the cavalry units or the knights on horses way faster than the dudes on on foot that I'll wind up sending both out at the same time, thinking like they can kind of do like the leapfrog unit switch once you get there if they're in the same vicinity, and it never works out, and then my horses always get smashed by hammers. I'm the thing. I

also love about Unicorn Overlord is that we're bringing back big hammers. I haven't enjoyed a big hammer since perhaps Monster Hunter World or the last Monster Hunter Rising? Was that the one on switch? Yes, yes, that's gotta be what it's called. What else, Yeah, Harley Quinn, not a big enough hammer for me in Suicide Squad. That's why the game performs so poorly. That's what you need multi versus. There's just gonna have a bigger hammer

in there. Yes, jan I could picture you in like tracksuit and whistle and like I could see you being like a really good coach of just anything. Thank you. I could see it. And I totally accept either of you yelling at me in the heat of heat of the moment and just me

not acknowledging it at all and just continue on with the game. Kelse stone faced, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, just gosh on the prise, just put a headset on me and just like, yeah, god, that sounds great that or like i'd be the best at a drive through. No, Dan, you've also put on this document Astro Duel too. Yeah, as a game I had not heard of at all, and I had a bunch of people over for stings last match, and Ben Hansen was like, Hey, I want to try out this game. I want to get

a local group together. Can we play a little bit after the show, And yeah, absolutely, So we had a group of like six or so of us playing it and uh on the switch and it's you can do it with the joy cons so you don't need like six pro controllers or whatever. So we just kind of broke off a bunch of joy Cons and stuff.

And it's the way he described it, and it's very accurate is Asteroids meets Tower Paul, So like you know, it's very much that kind of like you know, pixel based graphics and like you're a little dude, but like when you're inside this like gravity field or when you're in an interior, you're just a dude running around with legs and arms and stuff and picking up guns and rockets and grenades and stuff like you would and like a TowerFall type thing

and then quick kills things like that. But the second you go outside of that, you're in space and you turn into a little ship and so then you're like asteroids control going around and you typically can't like shoot from inside to outside or outside to inside unless you get special items so it's like, let's say you're a ship, you're floating around the room or whatever, and you get a laser power up, then you can like just just straight through and

kill dudes inside of the It's just a really cool dynamic of just going back and forth between and seamlessly. You go outside in the gravity, you're a ship. You go inside you're a dude. And then there are stages that are just like this is just a dude stage, this is just a ship stage, and it super works. There was a lot a lot of that, just like you know slow moo replays like, Oh, I'm gonna see

how I do. That was awesome. Look at you dodged that and you reflected that, and it's it's really cool, like any game where a dude turns into a ship. And I also really like Toowerfall, so this sounds very cool. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. God, I I always had the biggest fomo watching people online play Toowerfall because none of my normy friends wanted to come over and actually play Toowerful. But there was a brief period where I was bringing an ooh yah, oh my god, that's

that's what the uya was. It was the tower. Yeah, and the Crazy Frog one. Whatever the prog was with the rag Doll physics, that was the game. We should do a mount rush wore of Oh that's a great idea with two heads on it. And then we got to get four. We gotta get mic Omali to do like an intro for that pod and just go, oh, you have it. I appreciate that, Jane, thank you, thank you. It was very good. No, it was very good. We'll give out an agro Crag, will be all and back

to the leader boards. Yes, yes, okay, I just want a piece of the agro cat Crag. You can that one on eBay? No, you can't. I look several times a year and I have for a fucking decade plus again, I've seen it recently Etsy remake Horseshit. Trust me, I look, what's the real deal? You want the real deal? Well, they also sell like one. I think that's just licensed. So

you okay, I take it back. We're after two different things. It sounds like I like you, I want to shoot agro Crag piece, right, you want like you know someone who's on that show like Preduce one thing? Yeah, just having a real bad middle aged second part of their life needs to offload this agro crack tainted with sadness. Correct, Yeah, okay, we're after two different things. Just like I want to be in the space camp thing where like they just make you flip around and ship right.

I desire that, you know what I always wanted. I always thought it would be the most fun job in the world to be the dudes at the top of the agro crag where there's just a bunch of fucking twelve year olds going up and you just have these giant foam boulders and like fucking Donkey Kong, you're just trying to see these twelve year olds in the head the fucking

boulders. That seems like the funniest fucking job ever. I did. I did think if I could have any job in history, the big burly American dude onto Keshi's castle that like would just jump out and scare the Japanese people. I want to be that guy so bad, so so bad. One day. Can you imagine if you were like of like American gladiator build and it was your job, Like there are so many hilarious Americans, like the Wall. It's like you just watch some scrub trying to climb a wall and

you're all right, I'm gonnaive him ten seconds. I'm gonna go fucking tear his ass off the wall or the maze where you just have the giant fucking like pillow things and you just come out of nowhere. Fuck you, you just give him the pounce. God, I'd love to just be paid to give the pounce people. Yes, Oh it's so good right now. Yeah, uh oh yeah, yeah, that's a good move suits me very well. Great move. While we're still talking about nineties game shows. I am

one hundred percent sure that I could assemble the Silver Monkey unscathed. And I think it's a I think it's a nerves fact when you're trying to go that past, because I think mechanically it can't be that hard. It's got three pieces with a fucking hole in it and a fucking two be put down in the ere. That can't be that hard. But when you're a kid and there's fucking temple guards and you're on TV and you're you know, I could see that being an anxious situation. You know. I also feel like they've

admitted they've made that game impossible to win on purpose. No, one ever fucking won. Speaking about being under a time crunch and a time pressure, we or some of us have checked out under a strict embargo rides of Ronin. There's no silver Monkey. I'm as far as where I'm at. Yeah, there's no silver Monkey stats maybe later in the game. I only just started this. I'm like early on and I'm trying. I'm getting a feel for it. It is, you know, it reminds me a lot of

other games that have come out recently. Like I think that this game was in part inspired by this the success of a Ghostsushima. I also think that it's got I mean definitely has frum Soft Secro stuff in there. I think they're trying to play those aspects. But it's the I mean, what it feels like is what it is. It's a Koe techmo action game, and

I mostly think that's pretty cool. Now. I think people are dinging this game for the way it looks, and it does not look like cutting edge graphics ever when I when I've been playing it so far, but it like

looks good enough to me most of the time. And I think that the art style is mostly pretty and and comes through in action and not so much in instills, but yeah, in terms of like putting my finger on the pulse of what this game's trying to go for, I think it's if you are down for a Choe techno action game that is informed by the likes of sec Row, I think you'll probably get something out of this. But yeah, again, only just started it, trying to see if it's going to

be able to maintain that at that action throughout. Yeah, a lot of the previews that I've seen floating around popping up today very very high on the game, and I feel like I'm going in saying I was chatting to you you guys earlier before the show started that I am not I'm not really enjoying the combat at all, and I'm trying to inform like my hands that it's like, oh, this is like a Coe techmo joint that try and temporary

expectations and like align them with something like Woolong, which this feels a lot like, God, I can't remember the full name of that game, Wolong Fallen Dynasty. Sure that sounds right, And I'm trying to think of like, oh, you know what, I loved everyone's favorite final Fantasy game to come out in the past five years, Final Fantasy, Strangers of Paradise.

But I think this it feels like in those games, the combat where there's there's a weird sense of gravity where I'm used to in my action games, like a lot more movement, a lot more fluidity, like in a Devil May Cry. And I think that's where my taste is anchored in versus like a heavier kind of like mechanics heavy type of game like how Rise of Ronan is this game also for folks that hate parry in any type of game.

This game is incredibly, incredibly reliant on perio. Yeah, and I like pairing, so I think that's where I'm like, yeah, this works works for me. And they do make a big deal out of it. It's like what do they even call it, like guard sparks or something like how counter Sparks. Yeah, And it's like a whole separate button from block. It's like its own mechanics, separate from everything else. And the windows so

far, from what I've experienced, has been pretty big. It isn't as punishing or demanding as Secaro, which is like, yeah, that's why a lot of these games do They're like, we don't have the confidence to be as demanding of your of your skills as a from soft game. So we give you these wider windows. So it's like, yeah, I'm pulling this off. Mostly. I think the thing for me jan is there's so many mechanics that very early on they are giving you these modifier buttons you need to

be pressing all the time. Yeah, it's like to do this, hit R one, impress this button and that's like to take out your weapon what And then immediately after that it's like, right now, hold down, I think it's our one again, and like press something else and it's like, okay, am I going to I have to be thinking about these modifiers already constantly. This isn't like some you know, tertiary scale. It's like, no, this is a course goo you're gonna be using constantly. And I'm

like, that's a bit overwhelming. That feels not streamline, not optimized in terms of the gameplay experience or something like that. But maybe maybe they earn that later on by giving you so much to do that it feels like, of course we needed to use all these buttons and all these combination combination factors. But when you start off, it just feels like, Okay, I'm probably not gonna remember that, so I'm probably not gonna use that, and

that feels core to this game, and that's a little discouraging. Yeah, it's it's funny with what types of information they are throwing at you, Like they're very willing to explain every different game mechanic when it comes to the combat when it comes, but when it comes to like the story flow and the general progression, once you get into the open world, it's kind of just

like, all right, just go over there. And then, like I thought this was kind of going in my limited apearance with Ghost of Tsushima. I thought this would be like, oh, I'm just gonna explore the environment until I get over there. Oh what's up little two dudes hanging out by this shack. You guys look like pleasant farmers. Oh no, they're gonna

try and kill me. And I think it just wasn't I wasn't expecting everything to be so hostile until you get to the point where you were like liberating a town, and even that process it just goes by super fast, like you roll into a village and it's like, oh, okay, I just

got to kill seven dudes now and this town is fine. Yeah, And I got the sense for you, like from like that from the intro video, that there'll be all this like wild stuff happening all the time that is outside of combat, and that you would be kind of having like a Yakuza like experience where it's like we're gonna have all these different things are going on, and like, I don't get that since early on it doesn't seem like

the game is actually gonna support that. Yeah, I think it's probably just I'm hoping that it is just limited to like this opening section of the game where it does kind of fell super light and kind of empty, but even like a dragon eishan similar ish setting, I feel like start on a stronger

foot. But I feel like maybe because of the foundation is there for like a Yakuza game to have that sprawling, well connected type of city area with a bunch of stuff popping off versus like a massive open world because I looked at the map and Jesus Christ, I don't know if I start feeling the open world fatigue and start sweating just looking at it, but it does seem like there is a lot of depth to it. There's like a very expansive

skill tree. They have you focus in on whether or not you want strength dexterity, kind of just like how you would in a Soul's game. But I'm curious to see how it opens up. I really want to get to the whatever flight suit that we've seen in trailers, because I want to be a little squirrel hang gliding man. And what character like trade did you choose.

I chose seducer, so I do have like a higher skill check, I guess, And so I'm like, Okay, well, I don't know when that's going to come in handy or that's like something more passive in the background. So I think that does come in, and that comes in on dialogue checks, where I think early part of the game there may not be is there may not have as much opportunities for those I rolled with whichever one was dexterity heavy. So I think I can parry bullets, which is kind

of sick. That's always what you want. The neat thing though, is like you know, if you do perry a projectile successfully, your sword for whatever reason, catches on fire, and you know there's a more damage to

posture and health. I think my biggest gripe with the combat so far is that they make such a big deal of doing this counter spark thing and switching between weapons and pairing successfully and breaking posture maintaining your stamina that it kind of falls apart from me specifically when they introduce like a whole swarm of enemies, because it doesn't feel like the combat is suited for taking out a bunch of dudes if they're not all falling like fly versus just like all right, one

on one, let's go mono imnou And I've I've fallen into a couple of situations where oh shit, there's a wolf, there's three dudes, I'm dead. But there is a grappling hook in the game, so there is that. Yeah, I think I think it's probably gonna be a game that the people that stick with it are gonna find a lot of fun stuff in there.

But in the first like two hour window that we're in that we're allowed to talk about and that I'm still in as I play, it's I'm like trying to like, yeah it is, there gonna be something here for me, and I'm not sure. There's so many games happening right now that I'm gonna play for a little bit while longer I'm gonna get out of this. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna see, like, oh, I picked that

seducer. Let me see if I can do something fun with that. And if it doesn't catch me at that point, I will probably put this aside. But you know, Kobe Techmo does a lot of these partnership games like this is a PlayStation studios game, like they it open with the PlayStation studios,

like that Marvel Studios opening movie thing. It's a first party game, and you know, Kobe Techno can can get that stuff really right sometimes and sometimes it's like it does feel like, oh, this was work for r er work, and I'm gonna be interested to see how this which side of

that it lands on. Yeah, I haven't been super blown away by the visuals, and I think not to spoil the news, but with like the rumblings of Ghost of Tsushima heading to PC soon, I'm like, yeah, I do like my Samurai fix, I might just wait, especially when like there's these art gigantic open world games like Infinite Wealth that I have still yet to finish, and like I'm deep, deep deep into Rebirth right now, let me. Tell y'all, I peeped the homies at game Spot. I

checked out their video of how you can break the game. Yeah, I'm nowhere near qualified to do that. Max Blumenthal is a fucking genius, shouts out to the homie. But oh man, I don't understand how it feels like I'm playing a different game sometimes when you have UFI specked out in a specific way. But forget about Final Fantasy seven for now. I want to hear about a hot game also from the nineties. Bro, I want to hear about tomb Raider one through three, the rebeat too. Tell me about

these visible keys. Yeah, so I have had this on my Steam deck, and like I said, I was like, look for stuff to play to talk about. I'm like, you know, I complain about tom Raider where I'm not sure it holds up, and I'm not sure if I ever

actually cared about these games all that much in the first place. So I'm like, I'll just go back and I'll start playing, and I boot it up, and it's I'll say, out of the gate, I think they do a good job with like what you want from these kinds of remasters where I could press a button, and I'm immediately going between the two visual styles.

You just hit the star button and it'll flip you from the remaster visuals, which are sixty frames per second with upgrade at lighting and better character models, and it looks okay. It looks like if you were to put out an indie game today, it would look like that. And then you go back to the old visuals and it's like, man, remember PlayStation games and when they didn't know what the hell they were doing it. It's rough.

It's rough, but in a nostalgic and I've been playing a lot under in with those visuals as well, but it's always like, and we're going back to thirty frames per second as well, so you can see the difference there, and it's like, it's rough. The big thing for me is, obviously, I think the tank controls and the action itself, and it is I'm realizing tomb Raider was very much a cinematic platform, or like Prince of

Persia taking into three D, that's what it was. It is like, you have to press that jump button way before the jump is going to happen, so that registers are else you're going to fall off the edge. Exactly. Honestly, it feels exactly like the early Prince of Persia games. They do have modern controls, though, so you can turn those on and now you are moving around freely with the stick. You no longer have to like press triangle to bring out your guns and then press the X button to fire

them. You can move around freely with the stick, and then you hold down left trigger to pull out your guns like any game, and then you press right trigger to fire the guns like any other game. The trouble there is that they have not really adjusted the way the enemies work, so that with tomb Raider, you pull out your guns, she's gonna aim at them, and actually the tank controls helps you to keep the guys in front of

you. So with the modern controls, when an enemy moves around you and you're like trying to like adjust that, you move in this direction and she starts running towards the camera and now it's like you've lost track of them, and it's actually much more difficult to fire at the enemies with the modern control So these wolves are running around, so they should lock on, right, yeah, I mean it's like they should have They should have given you like

a button to do the targeting. Yes, that should have been like one step further because it wasn't about like you would always be able to kill the animals. I remember. It wasn't about like I have to be strategic about that and dodge them. It was just like, you know, like it was just that. So I wonder like, is there a way to like when you when you encounter them, can you like real quick switch back to

the Hill of Controls or is that like that's menu shit now? So I did go back to Classic Controls, mostly because it's like I was getting used to the tank control season how the game these games were made, that's kind of what I wanted to experience here. You get used to it. It's it's fine, It's just you know, these games were never that great in the first place. Oh see, that's where like you use the organized egg

like they weren't. I just I think that they all they were shocking to people because they I mean, I think a Lara Craft Lara Croft was a huge factor in Aara Craft Lara Kraft Lara Croft was a huge factor of like, oh this is this is a you know, a woman character and she's sexy on the cover and all that stuff and that they played that up. And I think it's just the fact that it was like this three D adventure that did feel somewhat cinematic. I think that got a lot of people.

But then when you actually take control, it's slow and methodical to a fault, and and these puzzles you're solving have to be very basic because getting the character around the world is so dumpy, feeling flunky. Yeah, yeah, clunky it is. And you know it's so you run through, you die, you miss jump, you get a game over, you got to start the whole level level over again. It's like, oh great, I get to go through all these cool sequences. It's like, man, I got

to do this order of operations to get through this stupid puzzle. And that's like those early levels where they're putting their best foot forward, and it's just it's not great. Yeah. I think, like the nostalgia I have for tomb Raider is not a quality based nostalgia at all, Right, Like it's a time of place thing. I think, yeah, yeah, like, and I'm I'm aware of that. I think, you know, I think

the Crystal Dynamics ones are mostly pretty good. I think, yeah, sure, the you know that that sort of just turned them a bit kind of into you know, uncharted right and just sort of like did that pretty well. But I think the old ones, you know, I have very fond memories of just like banging my head against the wall with this stupid fucking PlayStation game, being like this makes no sense. What do you mean I'm looking

for? Like, I'm looking for a ledge that is just as dark as every other texture and this entire thing, and I can't reach it, and every time I miss it, she just falls to the bottom and just sort of rag dolls amongst all the other little polygon skeletons at the bottom there. What am I doing? This is insane, but I loved every second of it. Yellow paint the ledge. See back then there was no yellow paint.

It had not been invented yet. Even like there wasn't even like a second analog stick for most people, and so you couldn't even like easily pain around the environment like I. For reasons that Greb mentioned about the platforming feelings so deliberate and everything, I was so used to Mario and everything that I never really liked the platforming. And I also never really liked the puzzles,

but I was blown away by the t Rex. So I own the game, and I remember I would just play up to the t Rex every time and kill it and be done. But speaking of the control stuff and how like you know, it kind of breaks it a little bit with the new controls. I think it's interesting when an old game gets a re release with like quality of life control improvements that make you kind of understand better why it was that way in the first place. I remember the re release of the

Resident Evil GameCube remake. Remember in like you know, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, they really made like a sixteen by nine h D version of that GameCube remake, and it had just straight up like non tank controls. And I turned that on at first, and so you'd go around a corner, the perspective would shift and then you're running in a different direction. It's like, oh, wait a minute, I'm actually going to go back to the tank controls, which honestly, I never never bothered me that much, Like

I yeah, I was fine with that one. I mean, if the game with tank controls, it's usually the whole game is based around the need for that, and so you get used to it, and it's like, yeah, I mean, I mean, being an action game, have we to have her like take corners and be like okay. I'm like, now I'm doing too sharp of a term because it's hard to gauge with a dpad

and digital input. But whatever. You get used to it pretty quickly, and it turns out having the full controls is a little bit more annoying for other reasons, and so it kind of needed to be this way, and you're right, and I got you get used to it and it never bothered me so much. Tank controls are fine for the most part. YEP,

I probably am. I might try to beat this first tomb Raider because I'm about halfway through it now, and so I'm like, I think I want to just beat it and say I've beaten it recently, because yeah, I don't. I don't I remember like not playing Tune Raider and then Turn Rader two came out. I think I got it running on my PC and I played a lot of it and I never loved it at that time. So I don't know if I've ever beaten any of these original three tomb Raider games.

So I might try to make think I finished one in three. I don't know if I did two, and I'm trying to remember, like which one was the one that people like the most. I think they like Turn Raider two the best, Angel Dark, right, that's the one that's number one. Three. I think three was also Dreamcast. That sounds right. His last revelation was definitely on Dreamcast. I can't remember three. I mean one, two, and three are all on PlayStation one might have gotten a

Dreamcast. I do want to go through one just because I just want to feel all the feelings. I think that this, if that's what you're after, I think this remastered is a decent job of giving you that. Yeah, but there's and there's no like quality of life improvement for like hints and stuff. It's still all the same sort of like bang on everything until you

find the way forward. Yeah, that sounds that's right. But like I think what happens with the button to switch between the two visuals If you're looking for something and you're like can't find it, if you switch like from one to the other, something's gonna pop out. Like that happened with me. I was underwater and I couldn't like I found the gate and I'm like,

how do I get out of this gate? I'm gonna drown? And I switched the other visuals real quick, and then that made the lever I was supposed to be pulling pop out to me and it's like okay, because it

sets like pixels and yeah, it's like more. Yeah. Right, it's not like the greatest solution in the world, because it's like you have to completely change the way the game looks to solve this, not puzzle, but whatever that that that is would be a cool mechanic in a game, right, like yeah, you know, like you gotta play the high resume, right, Yeah, it's like the Windows game that grubs have been playing.

Yeah, god man, Windows Kill. Do you think we live in a world where maybe Nathan Drake and Laura Croft are more popular than Indiana Jones. It's close, definitely. There was definitely a time when Laura Craft was more popular than Indiana Jones. Yeah, I don't know about that anymore though. Yeah. It's it's like I think it's a back and forth. Probably not,

but I think it's a conversation. Okay, I think Nathan got to get his ship together, but he'll, you know, maybe he'll be all right, although I feel like by the end of you know the time the Circle game, what is it called Indiana, a great circle Dial of Destiny the Machine Games game. Oh yeah, hah, a great circle. Yeah.

I think that'll pull Indie back in front, especially with the with the Uncharted movie not doing like the Hottest So yeah, well, I mean I think we should talk now and end the segment with the greatest Circle, the squared Circle, Ladies and gentlemen. That's a good one. Yeah, well done. WWE two K twenty four I haven't had the chance to check this out yet, Dan, but I've heard good things about this one. It's

good. It is good. I've been shitting on WAE games for most of my career because the large majority of them are bad or different shades of bad. This, I would say, is the best I've played since two K fourteen, that first two K one, and that also that was the thirty years of WrestleMania mode. This is the forty years of WrestleMania mode, because

that's how time works. So I played through the whole Showcase mode and I still am very annoyed by the way they structure that and paste it out because all these matches are like, I like the idea of recreating these classic matches, but the way they do it where it's just like there's fifteen super specific objectives you got to do and then if like just some horseshit happens on the fifteenth one, I was like, oh, I didn't reverse three strikes in

a row. You got to restart the whole thing. And the way, like I understand that you want to show the history of these matches, and so they like to cut you know, in and out of the their slangshot technology or whatever they used to call it, of the actual footage, but it's like they want you to play like you want to play the exciting moments

of the match, the big moves and stuff. So a lot of the times it's like I'm just watching like I'm watching Hulk Cogan and the Ultimate Warrior lay on the ground for two minutes or like rest hoolds like headlocks and bear hugs and stuff, and I'm watching this with like way too specific narration, Like you know, they have Corey Graves reading a ton of stuff where it's just like Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior ran crisscross against the ropes for the

second time, and then they ran into each other and it took Hogan longer to get up than the Warrior, and then under the giant hit his head.

Oh is he going to be days? But then Hogan got back in the ring and it's like, Okay, I don't need all this, and also I don't I don't want to have to do every hyper specific thing and set my controller down for two minutes while I watched this, And it wasn't until I was done with that, and I just had my friend John Carson come over and we played a bunch of multiplayer matches and that were not constrained

to reality. We did Muhammad Ali versus Rob Van Dam and the Hammerstein Ballroom Prease and I got Ali power bombing RBD through a flaming table and shit, and like that's just when you get to play a video game and it's fun.

It's actually like the systems make more sense to me this time. Like I feel like the last decade plus of wrestling games are all the way back to the SmackDown Versus RAS series, It's just been a million different, Like how do you gauge you know, stamina versus this meter and that meter and

your reversals. Now I can't reverse because this meter dropped down. Like I feel like, I don't know if the tutorial is just better or if they kind of consolidated things quite a bit, but it it makes more sense.

I kind of just understood what was going on more. It does annoy me that, like a lot of the gameplay does still come down to like staring above your character's head and waiting for a triangle to pop up and being like, oh, got to dodge that, you know, like it's all like this, like waiting for a reversal thing that pops up for a couple frames. That's not fun, But I don't know how else you do it. I feel like wrestling, like there are one hundred wrestling games and like six

of them are good. You know. I think wrestling is a hard thing to translate to video games. I think the stuff that it does well is like, you know, all the creation stuff. Even in the bad games, the creation stuff is really fun. It's fun to make wrestlers, it's fun to make entrances, and like, you know, and that stuff is still there. So when that's there and the gameplay is better like in this one, I think you've got something it's still not a great game, but

I think it's a good game now. The additions, like the ambulance match is pretty fun. The casket match is like a less fun version of that, where it's basically just you try to beat up the other guy enough to where you can beat this mini game at the end. It's basically the submission mini game where you're just you know, jamming on buttons faster than your opponent and stuff like that. But yeah, it's solid, good roster. You know. The Showcase mode annoys me, as it always has. I mean,

that's again, that's over a decade of that. But I don't know. They started writing the ship after twenty was disastrous and they took a couple years off. Twenty two was better, twenty three was better than that, and this is better in that and uh, I think they're just they're moving in the right right direction. So good to see. Yeah, I I remember, I think it was last year's released doing the Showcase mode and just kind of just sitting there watching polygonal men do rest holds. And that's my

least favorite part of shoot wrestling is uh rest holds. Okay, but I'm glad to hear that they're on an upwards trajectory. Give me the head mode. They had that a few years ago. I wonder if they I haven't seen big head mode yet. You can play as a Cody Rhodes injured Peck action figure. Oh cool, Yeah, it's that hell one. Yeah, okay, all right, well I mean all over this one. Yeah. At least folks now don't have to I guess right now they have to make

their versions to see them punk. But uh down the line with some DLC. Punker is going to be in there again. Yeah, I'll be in the season pass. Yeah. What a weird world of wrestling we live in. But don't worry. We won't talk about wrestling right now, at least about wrestling. It'll be it'll be like sprinkled throughout, folks, don't worry, Like a little flavor crystal you bite into, it's like, oh God, love those like a clothesline. Oh man, that's a nice power bomb.

Folks will be back with some video game news right after this quick break, and we're back with Giant Bomb's own Steve Blackman, adjacent news reporting man, the most dangerous man in video game news, the lethal Weapon. Can we, Jeff? Can we license the Steve Blackman entrance music for news, It might just be yes, what the you're talking about? All right, that's a yes, who's wrestling? Obviously it's wrestling's interance music for a nightly

news anchor. Yeah, that's right. Is there's someone in wrestling who's like a news anchor. That's his gimmick. Well there was the Randy News Network when he was injured, but that was brief. Sounds like a no, yeah, not really, not really, no, all right, let's hop in here. Let's let's start just saying wrestful trails to a curatoryama. Uh. Toriyama died. He is responsible for the artwork in so many great things.

Krona triggered Dragon ball Z dragon Ball Uh, and that was it was really sad news to see that he passed a lot of outpouring from the industry, people throughout video games saying their goodbyes and saying how inspired they were by him. Uh, curator curia a curatoryama is. It was sixty eight and I really am going to start rewatching Dragon ball Z. Now That's what I've been thinking about this whole past week. So rest in peace, watchc just

I'll watch throw it in there. You know, I'm not hyper familiar with like a lot of anime, even though I go around calling myself an anime expert. Oh that's just ah, that's just my gimmick. And at the end of this week's Uh Jeff Jeff's Bizarre Adventure, John talks about, uh, you know, the sort of like impact that that that this person had on on on the world, and you know, Tam helps him talk about

it's really really good to hear that. Like, I was very impressed in sort of it was heartwarming, sort of a send off, so it was very special. Just an actual Titan, just some someone that was as culturally influential as you possibly could be. Everyone knows Goku. It is like a creating Superman and kind of beyond him many ways. All Right, there was a leak for The Spider Man the Great Web, which was the multiplayer game that Insomniac was working on. The trailer leaked online, and this was like

a fully market ready trailer. This follows the big Insomniac leak that had a ton of data in it. This was something that people had found in there and it shows what the game kind of was actually supposed to be. Like we've seen screenshots before, but this really lays it out as what the product would have been. It was a five player multiplayer game where five people get together as different versions of Spider Man and take on the Sinister Six in New

York City. And it looked really cool. I mean, it's hard to look at that and be like, well, why why wouldn't you put that out? I mean I can assume that, like, well, they got to a point where it's like, yeah, it works, it's functionally, is fun. But is this a game we could support as a live service game for a long time? I mean, I don't know. I hope it's not as simple as that, but it's probably what it came down to.

But this trailer's out there. It's got Uri Lowenthal, the voice actor for Spider Man, narrating it, setting it up, and boy, I'm kind of bummed that this thing is not going to see the light of day, at least as it stands right now. Certainly, yeah, it looked really cool, and just seeing it kind of like visualized of like four Spider

people just whipping around seems incredibly chaotic. And at the end of the trailer they have them dropping through like the uh like temporations, dimensions and stuff, and it's like, oh, man, I need really funk you with this. I know, like you could be your Scarlet Spider, you could be

what's his face? Tell me about it? Tell me about it. I Yeah, I really struggle with this because I do think you almost want to like not believe it's four reasons that are solely you know, just sort of that cut and dry kind of like, well, we just have to pull the plug because it's not gonna do as well as we want and wanted to

target to do and right like that, and that's really upsetting. Yeah, And it's they had multiplayer modes that they were working on Forced by Man two that that was going to come on an update, and the word was that that's been canceled as well. It's like called all the ideas that could like show up from this, it's like where where are they going to have a chance to re emerge. Obviously, Insomniac is still doing a ton of stuff. They are gonna make that spinoff Venom, there's a Spider Man three.

There are X Men games, multiple x Men games in the works, all from Insomniac, So they're busy. I get like, I'm glad that they don't have a distraction from that stuff in the form of an ongoing multiplayer game. But if they could have made this work, that would have been very cool. It's a shame that again that we won't get a chance to play it. Yeah, you could easily like do a Dan Doko Dare style thing or stream in it now had two spider men just like whipping around trying to

race each other. Yeah, that one part of New York. There are a lot of possibilities in there, and it's a we did. We lived in a world at one point where it's like, yeah, every game can have a multiplayer mode ship with it, and now it's like, well, if the multiplayer mode can't stand alone, is its own game that will last four years. It's not even worth like going after that. That that's where we're at right now. All right, get out the hard drugs for Mario

Day time to celebrate as Mario does. That's what the doc says. There's only one way to celebrate Mario Day, and that's with lots of alcohol and hard drugs. Backlard, do it right. They had a handful announcements on Sunday, which was March tenth, also known as Mario Day. Three games are joining game Boy on Nintendo Switch Online. That's Doctor Mario, Mario Golf, and Mario Tennis. I'm a fan of at least two of those,

and I think Doctor Mario's got great music, so that's pretty cool. It also gave dates on two upcoming games, paper Mario the Thousand Year Doors releasing May twenty third, and Luigi's Match A two HD is dropping June twenty seventh, So we have a good idea of what Nintendo's first half of the year

lineup now fully looks like. And then of course they dropped a tiny bit of info about the upcoming Nintendo and Illumination co production of a new movie based on Super Mario Brothers that will be a follow up to Super Mario Brothers. Why was their language around this so odd? Yeah, so they don't explicitly say SEQL anywhere, and they say things like, you know, it's we're thinking about broadening Mario's world further and it'll have a bright and fun story.

We will hope you look forward to it. And then Chris Son, Chris Meladandri, who is the head of Illumination, said on pro too announce our return to Super Mario Brothers. We start animation soon and rest assured. We're stressing over every detail to get it right. So, I mean, listen, what this game is going to be very Mario related. It probably is going to be a sequel. I guess there's a movie, Yes, thank you. There's a chance they might try to do something that's maybe a little

bit more of a spinoff first before they do Mario two. And that's why they're couching in this language. I don't know. People were speculating, Mabe, this would be a Yoshi focused movie. That seems a bit early. I don't know, you know, they should, they should do it, but like good, yeah, that's maybe that's not an option backler, I don't know, no, no, I mean, look, I enjoyed that first film, as you know, it was. It was fine, right uh, but like totally, I think what they maybe learned was some of

that. I think some of that fell through the cracks of people being like, oh this this, this is a movie, and this could be better. And I think maybe that's where it's gonna come. Maybe that's where that energy is sort of making room for they could do whatever they want. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. They could literally tell a wildly different story and it wouldn't It wouldn't matter. People still go to see it. Right, Mario's guaranteed to be box office successful, Like I think from now,

I think so. I think it's like a really solid bet. I think it's a wildly low risk gamble. Yeah for sure. Yeah, I agree with that. It's probably gonna be supermar Brothers too. Okay, okay, it probably will be returned to Boklyn. Hear hear me out. You get Captain Toad. Toad gets dropped into like a sand uh Biome level world in Mario and then he has to ride a giant wiggler. Okay, okay, that'd be cool. And then Toad has to get a Hella high and

the drugs. Yeah, this is NC seventeen. This this sequel for sure, Like Lot has like a fucked up sun right, Yeah, I have a nudity on every Toad. Yeah, yeah, I really This is the one thing I this is my like actual real criticism. I think the music that they licensed for the movie was very stupid. Oh elation, that's what they do, like when you really just zoom out and like like not take it from what it's like, what it's really dumb? What was that?

It was so dumb? It was the most like obvious choice for any situation, and they would save hundreds, if not millions of dollars, not licenses. Just how illimination makes movies though, I get it right. You're just like, oh, yeah, this is the moment for like aha to pop in. You know, it's like, what the fuck is this? You like, don't worry, You've got me. I'm forty two and I played Mario growing up, Like you don't have to play take on me as well.

I'm already pot committed. Don't worry the most Yeah, Like, who was that for? I don't know it. I think it's for I think it's for like when you bring the family for who. I think when you bring the family and it's like, well, you know Grandma's gonna come as well. It's like I've been Jones for a c DZ. She's just like, oh, I know that song. I think it's that simple. I think I tell a little maketure thinks about making movies. Yes, And I

mean, you know, take on Me as a phenomenal song. I will never not I will never be upset hearing it, except when I heard yeah it was it was. Those were some wild needle drops. Go back to the games Mario Golf, Mario Tennis. Those are the the RPG ones from Camelot though, and they're for the Game Boy Color. They are very,

very good if you have not tried those four. This is what people are always talking about when they complain about the single player in any other Mario Sports game ever since these except the Game Boy Advanced ones that had some similar RPG stuff in there. And then yeah, Paper Mario Thousand to Your Door and Luigi's Mansion two HD. I I will be playing a thousand year door. I'm probably okay on the Louigi's Mansion two HD. That that's the common consensus.

I hear. That's not why it's not good. It's dark Moon and it's it's okay, it's not it's probably the lesser of the trilogy. And like, I'm not super hot on Louigi's Mansion in general. Mansion three, right, Yeah, you know three, I liked a lot, a lot. It's it's an eight, it's to eight. I would say, sure, right, yeah, I got to protect my kid from two. Then yeah. I mean it's not bad, it's just it's slow and it's long.

But like he I feel like, you know, it's been a couple of years since he played three, and he really just play three, replay three? Yeah, do that instead. I don't know if he's his brain can handle something like that just yet replaying a game or yeah, like replaying a game, like just the idea of like do this again, to watch

eighty movies over and over again, but we'll play a game. We probably don't have too much longer to wait for Luigi's mansion, for that is almost certainly what that studio is going to work on for the switch to first put in a mall make dead rhymes with Luigi, and then we're talking bobbies, yeah Luigi and a parking garage filled with ghosts, and you get a big ass vacuum car yeah yeah, yeah, an echo he has his own ec

though essentially got the check Nintendo. Yeah. This makes perfect sense because like malls are abandoned anyway, and like they're haunted by you know, retail from the nineties, and at and let's go story four, Luigi would get banned at a Spencer's Gifts. He'd be too scared to go in there. I think it was black lights. Yeah, that's true. Uh. And then the paper Mario, the Fasten Your Door, that is probably the best of the paper Mario games in many people's estimates. Yes, that's correct, and

it's it's still going to hold up. People are going to play this game for the first time and be like, yeah, they should make more paper Marios like this, and they will be correct. I thought Gomi was good, Come on, right, it's good except for the combat, which you do a lot, exactly. There's no reason to do the it's it's the reason they've all pretty much sucked since thousand Your Door is because there's no reason to do the combat, and the combat's not it's combat itself is not fun

on its own, right, Yeah, yeah, you're right. That game is when you get a powerful enough Mario that you can hit hit one of the enemies with the hammer to initiate combat, and it said they just die immediately. Yeah. Yeah, that was Your Door. I played for the first time at the beginning of the pandemic. I'd never played it before, and it holds up. It's very very funny. I love that first Paper

Mario. But yeah, two is better. Got it? Orgonmi King is like such like my kid wants to play it, and then we get to the combat and she's like, I know you do this dat, I'm like, I don't even I do not want to do it either, kid. And the ticker Star color splash sicker Star is an abomination upon God. Yeah, sticker Star so much there. I don't know why we were so charitable

to like get through that. We we definitely locked horns with that combat stuff and we just like we just everything else in Origami King actually is fun. That bomb Bomb that like sacrifices himself for you is like such a cool character. What a guy? Yeah, what a dude. And there's a ton of stuff like that, and so it's like the best like secondary character cast since a thousand year door. I'll play that. Yeah. Adult Swim Games its entire library may get delisted by May. This is news out of Warner

Brothers continually just a beef things up. They are retiring the label within sixty days. According to Fist Puncher developer Matt Kaine, Warner Brothers is not granted developers the rights to their game to their own games, a decision described by

Kane as a universal decision across the board. A developer, Owen Deary, also discovered WB's removal of his twenty sixteen game Small Radios Big Televisions from digital stores, citing quote business changes with WB declining to transfer games to their creators. Michael Mulinari, involved in Sound Out Your Plus, alleged that despite proving IP rights, WB rejected his request to transfer Steam ownership, which is a matter of like three button clicks. This is obviously a could serve five game

preservation. It also just stinks because Adult Swim Games was very cool. They always had a really good voice and had a great did a great job of finding these games and highlighting them and bringing to them, bringing them to the four. And it's just a shame that there's another casualty of Warner Brothers trying to save money at all costs because they owe a huge amount of debt.

I guess this is what it comes down to. So, yeah, adults in games not really a going concern for quite some time, but now fully kind of being like collapsed under the weight of Warner Brothers. This is real shame. Yeah, agreed. I uh, I guess when I think of like game preservation. I think of collecting physical cards and being able to do it that way. I guess I have yet to think about the digital age, where there's just gonna be a bunch of downloadable games that just get loan.

Think about what happened like flash It's like the way to his flash games just don't work online anymore, and so there was like this effort to collect them along in this like one Bespoke launcher and you could download that thing. But it's like two hundred and fifty gigabytes of flash games and stuff like that, and that's the way to preserve them, but it's not ideal. And

then there's all these little games in between those eras. It's like is this a flash game or is this like a game that is was on Steam? And some of them made up to Steam and some of them are like this is going to be on the Adult Swim website and things like that. It's like, are those preserved not as much? Yeah, it's a shame in all these cases. Hopefully WB relents and lets these creators, many of whom own the ips of these games. Yeah, like they'll take them back,

and like won't that leave them? Won't that expose them, like in terms of legality, like like what are we doing? Like yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe in some cases, like I'm kind of racking my head over this stuff because it's like, all right, well in the name of you know, cost cutting, like certainly someone like that's a neutral sort of transfer anyway, right, Like if you're seeing it as a cost cutting measure to just absolve yourself, right and just like wash your hands of

the property, then like fucking be normal about it. Yep, be normal, Just like let these creators have their games back and be fucking normal. WB. What the fuck? That's a very difficult thing for w B. Starbreeze is ousting at CEO due to the disastrous state of pay Day three. Pay Day three is Who's a friend? Payday three is doing very rough since Payday two launched, or since Payda three launched. Pay Day two now has eighty five times more players actively than Payday three. As on any certain day,

it is a game no one wants to be playing. The issue seems to be that Payday two has a ton of content and people have made a ton of purchases, and Payday three not up the stuff in the basics and then it's just missing all that stuff. So people are just sticking with pay Day two. Now this is a specctually troublesome because you put Payday three out, It's like it makes sense. People want multiplayer games they could play with

their friends. Pay Day two did great, and it's not like, oh, well maybe that's just over hell Divers doing fantastic kind of filling a similar but clearly different gap there, but no Payday three is just kind of crashing and burning. So they have dropped a CEO, Tobias a Shogrin, and they told investors this, and now they are looking for a new CEO, but they have a Jurgen Goldener is going to be the interim CEO. But basically they're going to have to turn around pay Day three. That seems to

be the big goal there. And this is their mea CALLPAP to investors in the meantime. This is I think the this illustrates just how volatile this stuff is, right because you put out something like Payday three, like yeah, maybe it'll have a slow start, but it'll pick up over time. And now it's like, actually, there's a world in which pay Day three just never actually comes back from this or it requires so much time and effort that it was that it will still always be seen as a blunder by the people

that invested it in the first place. And it's like, yeah, this is a tough business to be in trying to follow up a successful live service game, even if it is like time to move on from that. Pay Day two is a relatively older game now, it's like, well, yeah, maybe do a sequel. People love having a new game to play. It's like, well, if you miss the mark, you can miss it so bad that it can undo your entire company. Like look at Overwatch two. Mm hmmm, yep, is that still not doing well? No?

I mean it's really it just never took off at all, and it's crazy. The person is just such a worse, worse place than the first game ever was. Yeah, aren't they doing like a cowboy bebop cross? Yeah? Yeah, they still have things going on. Over Watch two is not dead. Yeah. Remind like, the first Overwatch is gone, right,

didn't to replace it or something? Overwatch two was like, it's basically a new It was an update that they go on over Watch two that replaced Overwatch one, But that means that means meant fundamental changes, like for example, it's five on five now instead of six on five. So it's like that game you played as Overwatch one is basically gone and called Overwatch two now.

So you can't do what they're doing with pay Day two and just be like, I'm gonna go back to the one I liked, because that's not there anymore, right, that's what I So if you put the disc in your PS four, it just overwrites it with the it would ask you to update it to wow to play Yeah, and yes it would. It would shred the disc and spit it out at you. Yeah. Wow. I'm sure the Overwatch is like probably still making money, and so I bet, I

bet it's doing better in paid A three, that's for sure. But if like the the sort of heights of Overwatch are not even a glint in their eye at this point with Overwatch two like that, it is a much different game in terms of the success that's happening. It's such a bummer and pay Day three, I saw a different side of Mike when we streamed that. Oh yeah, where Mike is a cold blooded bank That was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed that. That's probably the most I played any pay day and

I like that. Yeah, I think I think that the again, like the basics are there. I think a lot of people just want I want them to be a little bit better, and then they're worried about all of these purchases they made over the years, and it's just that stuff's not going to come for very long time. Star Wars Jedi director Stig Asmussen has revealed

his new studio. It's called Giants Skull and it's described as a new Triple A game studio dedicated to building gameplay driven story immersed action adventure games, set and captivating worlds. The studios based in Los Angeles, but has remote developers from around the world, which is the way of doing most studios, especially once that open in Los Angeles. They are going to be utilizing Unreal Engine five, and that's usually how these announcements work, Right, We're starting a

new studio and here are the tools we're using. So if you're someone who wants to make games an unreell Engine five or have skills in that, we are hiring. He also brought in as CTO John Carr, who was one of the technical directors on the Jedi games before they left Respawn, So a lot of people from Respawn coming to join here. But they also have people from games like Fortnite and Valorant and League of Legends just across the board taking

on roles there. But I guess a couple things. It's next to see a studio could still get started in a world where people are worried about dearth of investments for these kinds of things. But if you have if you have a name, you're probably still gonna be able to find some money. And also this is a sign that hey, key people from Respawn continue to leave and start their own thing. Let's see it. Let's just move right on,

right along, because this next story is pretty similar. Empty Vessel is a new studio formed by former ID Naughty Dog in Activision devs Empty Vessel. Empty Vessel is a new independent Triple A studio and has been founded by industry veterans aiming to make their market immersive shooter genres. This is led by CEO Emanuel palac Apeleic and COO Garrett Young. The studio boasts a team of extensive experience from companies like ID Weight to Digital or Weta Digital, Wedded Digital,

Naughty Dog and Gearbox. They aim to prioritize creativity and innovation, breaking away from traditional business models to create Triple A quality games with smaller focused teams.

This is another similar example like bringing in a lot of talent and I'd like them mentioning that, hey, we're gonna use all our teams to make these bigger games, something I think is going to be a key initiative from a lot of different publishers trying to see how big of a game you can make without getting a team maybe over like one hundred people, maybe sixty to one

hundred. And if that's the seize of a studio or try to start right now, you probably also will be able to find money, especially when you come from like Naughty Dog or ID. I think the only thing that worries me grub is with this studio announcement in the previous one you just mentioned, is the messaging of Triple A games. Triple A. Yeah, I don't

think that's anything more than just like the qualifier. I just like Triple A and it's and it's in its own right, is just like a genre, right, Like it's not Yeah, it's an indicator of like in the thing, we're making a game that couldn't can be sold for seventy dollars. I think that's what they're trying to say. Yeah, and that whatever goes into that now, I mean, I do think that is what the next the next several years from game development is going to be figuring out how to do

that with a little bit less. And I think people will be looking to like, hey, Ghost of Sushi mods, maybe with like a sixty million dollar budget, what can we do something like that? They'll try to mimic that stuff. It's also like, okay, Unreal Engine five is fully here. Can we use the tools in there that promise to make things easier to make these big games without having to break our backs trying to do so?

And the creative teams that figure out how to do those kinds of games probably will be rewarded by selling a good number of games and having their budget below

enough that their profit margins are still pretty high. So I think this would be studios are setting out to do what was the budget for bawlers Gate three, I mean it was I'm sure it was big, but it's not going to be massive massive, right, because they're a spider man, right, it's not three hundred and fifty people, many of whom living are living in Los Angeles or something like that. That's you know, they're living in Central

Europe, and so they're going to be more affordable to begin with. And then also it's not three hundred and fifty people, so yeah, it's going to be a much smaller budget. Sony has announced Ghost a Sushi but Director's Cut for PC. Sony Interactive and Entertainment announced a PC version, and it's coming May sixteenth, developed by Nixy's. The port is it will bring together everything you had from the game previously, so that means the Ekey Island expansion

as well as that multiplayer Legends mode. I only played a little bit of Ghost of Sushima, and I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I'm like, I should go back, and I'm like, remembering, they're probably going to put out a PC version. Here it is. I'm definitely gonna hop into this. I'll play a lot on the Steam deck, but I wouldn't mind checking out. This multiplayer legends thing is something I never ever touched. We should do that. On the side. I've been curious about that

too, because I heard really good things heard good things. Yeah, so definitely got to check that out. This of course sets them up to one make more money from a game that that has already been very successful for them, and that they they'll love to catch those checks, of course, but this is going to lead into them doing more with the Ghost series going forward. Almost certainly we will have a Ghost of Sushima two announcement within the next

year or so, and it'll kind of use this as a springboard. That game was already super pretty uh previously. I can't wait to see that on a PC. Yeah, So they talk about taking advantage of PC folks down, including ultra wide. You can have three monitors all hooked up and have the game across all three monitors. So it's not even like it's not twenty one by nine, it's not thirty two by nine. It's something like forty

eight by nine or something like that. Something wild. Going back to Rise of Ronan, going back to the game segment, it has a very good horse. Horse, good horse, good horse. It's like almost an elder ring horse. Oh okay, I love good horse in a game. This will also spart like DLSS three and AMDFSR three and all the recent technologies, and yeah, I'm looking forward to checking this out. Final Fantasy sixteen, meanwhile, is going to head to PC, but probably sometime in the next

year. Squerens providing an update, and producer Nioki Yoshida revealed that while development is progressing smoothly, they're working on optimizations. Nioki Yoshida said something along the lines of it will we'll have a demo within the next twelve months, but I wouldn't be surprised with this game's out by this holiday for PC. That makes a lot of sense. They probably will try to get that done.

The game did have a small little exclusivity window on PS five. It could have shown up on PC by now, but they mentioned at the time of releasing the PS five version that they were just focused on that version to make that as best as it possibly could be. And now here we are a little bit later and like they're getting the PC version ready and about a year year and a half from release. That does put it in the holiday window for this year, so if people are interested in checking that out, that

seems like the likely released window for it. I desperately need to mod in Tifa as Clive, but it's still that Star oh yeah, of course. Yeah, he's got a great TIFA. Yeah. I think that's one of the things where I'm like, hey, huh, I enjoyed my time with that game, but thinking about what you could do with mods, maybe that could make that game even more interesting for me, and I would see it

through at that point, who knows. Finally, we got multi Versus re emerging in May, and multi Versus is that platform fighting game like Smash Brothers

from WB featuring all their characters. It was in early access previously, and they were selling characters and doing a whole first season, and the game was very successful out of the gate, had more than one hundred thousand concurrent players at one point, actually significantly more than that, and then it sort of faded away pretty quickly and it dropped down to fewer than a thousand concurrent players on Steam, and they announced out of nowhere that the game was ending its

early access season and it would go away and they would bring it back at some point. Well now, more than a year later, I believe it's here. May twenty eighth. It will re release and it will still be free to play, but they're gonna give it a second chance to see if it can catch on. I'm glad that it didn't like just disappear forever. I'm glad it's getting the second chance. I also don't personally care. That's

where I'm at with multiverses. I don't know if you got it. I mean, I know, Dan, you love playing this Lebron James in any game you can, so I was trying to pure out if this was the Iron Galaxy one or not. But there was a different one that had Versus and is it Rumble Verse. Rumble Verse which Rumble that died and stayed dead? Right, Yes, that died and stayed dead in a because of the world is unjust. That is a good game though. That was so good.

Yeah, I remember that was the one where you could do a stunner and it was three sixteen damage. Yeah, that's yeah. And then the movement was like Hule Cultimate destruction. Yes, yes, that's right. You could do an awesome elbow drop off a building and yes, it was very cool and it just well, I think the biggest thing is it wasn't on Steam, you know, it was exclusive Epic on PC. I think that hurt it the most. Yeah, but I have no interest in multiverses.

Also, I don't understand what the fuck Warner Brothers doing with anything. Yeah, what's what that? They got a Wiley Coyote movie with Will Forte and John Cena and it's supposed to be funny and they're just not putting it out. Yeah. And you know why specifically they're not putting out because they got offered money to put it out and it was a good amount of money,

and they Everyone's like, why won't you accept that? And it was the reporting came out that they were They're word they would sell the movie and make money, make a profit on it, but then the company they sold it to would put it out in theaters and make even more money, and it would be embarrassing for them. That sucks. They should put that movie out. I want to see That sucks. That's not even like the first instance of them like withholding a movie, right, wasn't. No, They've done

girl that woman. Yeah, he's like finished filming and everything and is never going to see the light of day. These movies are finished. Is that David Zaslav's fault? Yes, David. Are they just bad people? Yes, they seem stupid. They're stupid and bad, petulant in in a way that I cannot understand. Oh my god, well you got to you got like these are also the geniuses that renamed HBO. Go to Max the one to watch for HBO, Where to watch HBO is Max. Yeah, just

smart people. The idea like oh god, like as if as if, Like the embarrassment of another studio distributor doing well is like embarrassing, but the story about them wanting to do that is not as embarrassing, Like I don't

yep, what's happening here? Idiots, They're just it's baffling stuff. I mean, this is a loophole in the taxes they're trying to take advantage of where they're going to be able to write off all this stuff on taxes, so that will save them a handful of a couple of million dollars, not as much money as they would make from selling the movie though, which again they had multiple offers for around thirty million dollars. Thirty million dollars, But

yeah, it is. It's baffling and frustrating and it's a really dark period for this. They need to change that tax loophole though, where it's like if you do this the movie it doesn't not come out, it just becomes public domain or something like that. It's insane, like the like the movie has the clear waivers. Yeah, clear waivers. That's a great rule. They really should do that. Yeah, that would be super sick. Am I going to get Dune three? Is Warner Brothers gonna fuck up the bag?

And I'm not gonna get Dune three? Sam. You want to say, like, well, Dune two made a lot more money than Dune one, so you should be good. But who knows. God, they're so stupid paid so much. Your asset must clear waivers. Yeah, I like that a lot. All right, that does it for the news. I'm handing the show back over to you. Jan God, I just Lebron James. Do people like that game though? Like the Smash community, Uh,

there was some fondness for it at the time. I think most the mostly the Smash community was like, yeah, you guys did a good job. We're going back to Smash. I think they're mainly on PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale right now. Yeah, that's where that's where the bulk of the players are of course. Yeah yeah, I mean you want to do dirty hotel

cash games, it's only in PlayStation all Stars. Yeah. Yeah, Like with w W be like universe that they're pulling from they had, Like do they have like Bugs Bunny in there or Marvin and Marsh and stuff like that. I don't know what character they're holding back that they could announce to get

people so excited, like they have the Joker in there and stuff. It's just not the same thing as when Nintendo's about to announce a character and people are losing their mind about who's going to be in Smash Next, like legit like going insane trying to figure out who could be. W B just doesn't have that. So and that's a huge part of getting an excitement around these games, if you know, it's like it's like an Also Ran platform fighter.

If that's not drawing people in, Yeah, they don't have what it takes to kind of make this thing keep going. There is the Terminator in Multi Versus? Is the Terminator or Warner? I just see Terminator franchise under the Brothers franchise wiki. Yeah I don't. I don't remember he's in Mortal Kombat. Yeah, sure, Okay, did they put Orange Cassidy in there? Oh? Could they put Little Nikki in there? Okay? Well, if they put a little nicky in there. I'm showing up. Oh could

they put perhaps Austin Powers in there? Yeah? Yeah, Zaslov get me on the phone, baby, I'll turn your company around. Well, that does it for the news. We're gonna take another quick break and break and we'll be back with some e mail. When Jeff Backler pulled out that fancy glass in the beginning of the pod, I'll remember that if we all stroll down every lane specific shape. I was thinking like, oh, that's a fancy glass, and for some reason I couldn't get it out of my head.

It's not a sphincter glass, right, No, that's what it is. Okay, sphink the's something very different emails. Okay, quite, the sphincter is not just butthole though, just work clear spin can do sphincter glass. Dot com go somewhere if you could remember what dude, tubes is, because you tubes does go to giant bomb if you remember what that is. Yeah, me, neither, do not remember where they from. Why Why do I constantly discover new U r L forwarding like we got good We've got

some good ones here. Tubes is amazing. Do tubes dot com is great. That's what I'm going this cone no memory. Can we see like next time we're we're gonna all be in person for like packs East. We should do uh some like those of those trick shots. We should just try and do that for a while. Oh yeah, oh my god, I would love that. Play horse. Yeah, you know where you ricochet like the ping pong balls off a bunch of tubes. Yeah, I would love that.

Yeah. And then you and Dan need to have to constantly wear backwards hats and just go yeah youtubes, there you go, there you go, and then like Mack come in and like power slide and go nicky, is it really next Thursday? Shut yeahs yes, yeah yeah. And then we're gonna go somewhere very soon afterwards, Dan, Yes we are. Yes, Yes, I'm going to someplace very exciting with you. Yes, yes,

yes, I can't wait to perhaps see a big ringing object. All right, first email, I don't I'm pretty sure we talked about this on some giant pomp property. Uh. First email is about Jake Paul versus Mike Tyson. We get my dad. It does have stipulations its way, what are they? It's probably no headshots I mean, I know some of them. Is this that? What what the emails about? Is the email about something different? No? It is real quick. So they are going to fight

streaming live on Netflix. Can we get a talk over all that aside? Mike Tyson has this right? I mean, he is a monster in the boxing ring. I don't know. Okay, okay, so you don't know the stipulations they are insane. So okay, First of all, Jake Paul gets to wear a head gear. That seems pretty fair. Then he gets what but Mike Tyson is not allowed to wear headgear? Okay, you know nothing, Mike Tyxon. Wait Mike Tyson? Are they wearing gloves? Yeah?

I just don't understand why he gets to wear head Okay, just hold on, Okay, Mike Tyson has to be drug tested. Jake Paul does not. It does not get drug tested. Is supremely weird. That's let's keep going there. The wigh in is one sixty five, wighe Jake Paul doesn't has to be under one hundred five. Look, he's sure, but he's a tank. Like what does his way to a Traditionally I would I

will double check. I'll double check that one. But either way, he's got to be weighed at a certain set, like a certain wet level, and Jake Paul does not have to do the way in so he'd be as heavy as he wants. Sucks. Okay, at any time, Logan Paul can come in and fight at the same time as Jake Paul. Okay, this is the work. Not even makes me so mad. You can fucking handicapped tornado tag this thing and it's not. And it's like they don't they

can both fight at the same time. Now Jake Paul apparently it's like I'm gonna try to win this on my own, but he can do this like it is part you know, it is kind of cool, is that Mike Tyson could It's possible Mike Tyson could take out both Paul brothers. And this sounds like a word suck. Yeah. I from the beginning, I was like, there's no way that, like Jake Paul is going to go full like like even keel on this. But it's worse than I even imagine was.

Jake Paul is a young athlete and actual boxer. Mike Tyson's like sixty, I mean, he's terrifying, but see like fifty seven or sixty. He's probably fifty eight when he was in his prime, so maybe right younger than I just don't understand. Like the they basically said, okay, we just have to nerf Mike Tyson. Yes, I mean he is Mike Tyson. I understand that, but they are literally half his age, and I don't. I don't know. I feel like this is I mean, look

sixty is sixty? I don't know. So I I was on it when I thought this was just going to be an exhibition match. I thought, like, maybe Jake has it because he's actively conditioning, and then I saw a video of Mike Tyson training for this fight. That guy's a monster.

Jake Paul might die. All right, look, I'm back in. I mean, Jake Paul does say he's like these even if these rules exist, he says he's not gonna wear a headgear, so maybe, I mean, we'll see, okay, because like Mike Tyson's trainer got gassed very very fast trying to keep up with Mike Tyson, and like I think one of the shots almost whiffed and like hit the trainer in the head, and the trainers wearing head gear, and oh god, imagine I gotta say, like who's

who's who's responsible for this? Like like who invented this? Like who's I mean, people who want to make money and get a lot of people, They're gonna make a lot of money. I just gotta say, like it really is as gross as it is, it's also kind of amazing. Yeah, you know what what is insane? I like on the side, like, uh, you know, I told you all, I'm kind of looking

for a sitcom to just have on in the background. Instead, I've put on Top Chef And then there's just a random episode of Top Chef where young Logan Paul is like the guest judge for like one of the cooking segments, and it's like here's like all these esteemed James Beard Award winning chefs and then Logan Paul and what the fuck. It's also amazing because it's like Netflix, you know, the last couple of years has just been making Garbo TV just

like the worst bottom of the barrel dog shit. You you heard what I said. They're shooting that all around the city here right now. There are in Minneapolis. Well yeah, and I just you know, obviously a couple a couple of diamonds in the rough, but like really bad content. And now you know what they're doing wrestling too, right Netflix? Oh yeah, next? Oh yeah, big money. So they're just you know, they're they're course correcting live programming. I'm looking at this footage of Tyson training.

Uh. He seems to be in very good shape and also leaner than I'm used to seeing him, so I could see him cutting down a little bit here. He is very fast still yeh. Hearing that, I'm so happy any of us. Oh yeah again, Yeah, you'd take four of us and then, like Mike would just walk away. Potent to be very very funny if they just let it be, just let it be very funny, They're both gonna be even richard than they already are. Just let one of

them get rattled real fucking bad. God, it's gonna be let Jake Ball get rattled real fun just like punched them both in the face at the same time and won and that was it, And it was like a four second I would be so sick. I put like fifty dollars in my uh and on DraftKings for the Super for the Super actually for the Lions game before that, and I still have a few bucks left in there. I'm like, I'm gonna save it and bet on this. I'm gonna bet on my no

matter what. But like it's so crazy because like can you even gamble on it? Because it's like, well weird. You can gamble on fucking WWE backler you can definitely get Yes, you can count. You can't gamble real money? Right or can't? Yes? You super can? You can? Wow? Yes, supercan. Because in the last minutes before pap per Use, suddenly you'll see like the betting odds shipped wildly where it's like whoa, right before Wrestlmingia thirty, why did everyone start betting on brock Lesnar. That's

weird. It's like because insiders start coming into Okay, yeah betting, I've been Yeah, that's the thing. I bet there's a cap and I also bet they like you know, I think they still reserve the right to kind of like undo stuff. Yeah, So I'm gonna I'm gonna no matter what, I'm gonna bet. I'm Mike Tyson. Yeah right, Like who's who

wouldn't want to root for Mike Tyson? And is there any other sport that has just been bastardized and boxing in like the last couple of years, A high a lie isn't what it used to be, right, traditional highlight. It's disappointing in the UFC, like way worse than it used to be. I don't. I didn't never hear about it anymore. I don't. I did just watch the first three UFCS thanks to Deadlock, and uh boy,

those early UFCS were fucking something. They were just some weirdo dudes. But you know, luck through the seven foot tall pat guy against this weird little judo dude like it was. I mean, the idea really was like, let's do the kuma te right, Let's just do Kumata from blood Sport. And I'm like, yeah, I like that idea. Yeah yeah, but

didn't last too beautiful this world. M uh yeah, No. I was just gonna say, like, I I know what I'm gonna say about to say is like going to be confusing to people, but like, I just don't like, I don't like this stuff. I don't. There's something that upsets me about boxing also, just like traditional boxing, I don't like. I don't like fighting, right, and I know hockey has fighting and I hate fighting in hockey. I do. I'm like in a very very very

very small minority of people who does not like fighting in hockey. But I don't know, it upsets me. What is that? Explain that to me. Maybe I should see people get hurt. It's pretty normal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I and I don't like especially for like entertainment. Yeah. Sure, a lot of people feel that way. I don't know. That's not too strange. It's upsetting. It's very like boxing. They sign up like it's that's what they're doing, that's they're just but I don't think

that's TikTok. Put some Mike Tyson stuff in front of me. I'm like, man, Mike Tyson is cool. And then they do the slow emotion of like, nay, he that that guy and the skull so hard.

I don't think there is impossibly he didn't instantly get CTE. And then I'm like, then that that upsets me now thinking about how like we know the science on that stuff way better than we did twenty years in that one slow mo punch of the guy's got the big hair and he hits him so squarely and so directly in the face that like his head and skull are going back

before his hair. Realized that like, it's fucking incredible. It's like all tyson k things and he came out to just the sounds of chains rattling, just terrifying shit. Prime Tyson is There's never been more terrifying human being ever, Yeph God as someone that like really really really liked boxing for a really long time. You Filippino bums me out, Yeah, but fuck my name pac fight him in the streets. If anyone wants to see a fun boxer,

go on TikTok, Instagram, whatever. Look up Ben Ben Whittaker. He has a giant one piece tattoo on his back. This guy fucking pisses off so many people the way he boxes. Because if you all remember Prince Nam Nazim from like the nineties, he was like a really like loose boxer that like wasn't really orthodox or whatever. This guy's amazing. It's so good. Go look up a clip. Very fun. Uh. Next email, I'm gonna ask el to not look at the doc because we have a fun

quiz Wow or Taylor. Thank you Alice for assembling this quiz. Alice writes in Hey Bombers, can you give guess which of these names is either a wow spell, a strain of weed, or a song by Ms Taylor Allison Swift. What you guys, right, let's do it. So it's gonna be a wowspell or a Taylor Swift song or a strain of weed. Oh or weed? Okay, yes, three choices here. Don't look at the dock, folks, yep, I don't even have it up right now? All right? First choice, White Horse, Taylor Swift. Oh my god,

wait, what is it? If it's okay, world Spell, World of Warcraft, Spell, strain of weed, or Taylor Swift song. I'm going with Wow spell Jure, I said weed, I said Taylor. Dan is correct? Taylor? Uh? Next Brown That did you know that I know all of these? Oh you do? Yeah, Brown Horse? That would be a weird weeding again. Yeah, I'll say wow, World of Warcraft. Great white Shark. That's gotta be a weed weed. Yeah, I'm gonna say weed. We all right. Next one is Midnight Moon.

Wow Wow. I'll go with Wow. Two Yeah it is weed. Oh man, all right. Next one up, gentlemen, Midnight Rain. That's Taylor Swift. Yeah, Taylor Swift. See, I'll go with Taylor correct Taylor Swift. The next one is blue crush. Wow, well Weed, you're all correct. It is Wow and Weed. Oh okay, okay, curveball, I like it all right. Next one up is Lavender Hayes. No, it's a gotcha, it's a it's it's dude. That's a misdirection, classic misdirection. Alright. Well then what's the answer that, Beckler.

I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go with Taylor throw it off? What is it again, Lavender Hayes. I think it's Wow. Well, Grub and Dan are correct, because it because it is Taylor and Weed. All right. I forgot that's in play. Taylor's lighting up in the background with the Kelsey brothers. Uh sparks fly. That sounds like a song Taylor Swift. Wow, I'll go I'll go with Weed. Dan is correct again, Taylor Swift, all right, holy crack, yeah what wow? Okay? Wow?

Yeah, that's Weed al right. Next one up, Hope's Flame. It sounds like Taylor Swift. Right. That sounds like oh, it sounds like wow. It is indeed a wow? Spell all right? Final three here, Final three, wonder kid, Taylor Swift Weed? It is Weed a right? Do you think Dan is probably right? Oh? I don't know how you got into this call. Thank you. That's impressive. Runaway Kid, Taylor Swift, Yeah, Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift. It is actually a World of Warcraft spell. Oh, what the fuck? That's a

weird game. That's a that's weird. And last one, gentlemen, you're on your own kid Weed Taylor Swift. All three, that'd be a really good one. Uh it is a Taylor Swift song. Yeah, Dan, I think collectively you might have won this quiz. Yeah, you edged it out there at the end. I think he did there shouts out to the Swifties. Thank you, Alice for a fun quiz. What a strange thing, all right, h Next email, let's just skip a couple of these

once again. BombCast giant bomb dot com is the email addressed to send your emails too. I read everything, I read everything, I print it out sometimes and then I just stare at it on my fridge. This one comes from Jeff from Quebec. Hello, Jeff's and jeff adjacent peeple. Last Thursday on johnbomb dot com, we had the pleasure to see the new Princess Peach

demo, including Nintendo's fantastic new theat Loving narrative arc. Peach and her lovely feat are here to save the world, with the player help helping by glazing all over whenever required. I've already started a THEAT pickfolder, and I'm sure fandom will do its part with a new wiki THEAT page. I even managed

to establish that Peach is about six feet tall. I'm really eager to see the eventual Nintendo sanctioned Arms crossover episode and all the fanfic that might appear with Peach, Peach and theat Uh. My question is what are some impossibly brilliant names for creatures in video games? Bug Snacks immediately comes to mind, Stay on her Feet, Jeff from Quebec. I think Jeff from Quebec might be a pen name, but who No, oh huh weird Mike is obsessed with

Yeah, why do you think this? Hmmm? Good names for Yeah, I've always said Albatas and Mario two and Albatross. The tosses bombs. Albatas is great, Yes, that's great. The brutals is that's like a multiple entendre. It's you know, they are a brood of rabbits. They are brutal to you. It's the brutal party like a bridal party. It's a triple at the very least, and that's always impressive to me. Stirling stew

charge and Chuck charging. Chuck is the one that comes to mind frequently, the whole the whole cast of characters in Super Mario World at the end, when they showed all the names, that's their name. That's great. Torpedo Ted bonds, Yes, yes, absolutely all right. Next email comes from

Aaron. Aaron writes in and says grub is one hundred percent major Magic's was the ship climbing up the Walrus tube to take take your place within the tower, to rule over all the adults below, who had no chance of getting you out when it was time to go home, was an experience above all else. I about died when he brought this up on the dump truck. Aaron from Acomb County, Michigan, name twenty four miles shout outs to the old stopping grounds. That's that's that's literally the town I grew up in,

a comb township. Awesome. I love that. I love that. Yeah, that that saga was a nightmare. I continued to look it up afterwards. The Lady Fox is actually sticking with me in a way that I didn't originally. Now I'm like, oh boy, okay, that's something else. I don't know if it's still available on eBay, but you can buy some Chuck E Cheese animatronics. I would like an animatronic that I want to like house band of Animatronics. Yeah, exactly, that's what. But it's just

like robot. Yeah. Yeah. We could buy a Chuck E Cheese foot for two hundred dollars, some eyes, a set of three eyes for eight No, we could have remote control parts with them, so I could control the eyes remotely. There's there's like a bunch of vague electronics going on here. Someone is it is the same seller selling chop shopping a Chuck E Cheese animatronic because they are selling each individual part of this fucking monthy part of the

Chuck E Cheese. Yeah, exactly. Give back what you take from the world, all right. Two more emails. This email comes from Vaughn from Northern Ireland, high Bomb Digities. It's been well established what a triple A game is. CEOs are making claims about quadruple A games, and Giant Bomb has personally documented a number of B games. But I have no idea. What the rest of the letters mean. What games do you think fit the roles of double A, single A, C and D games? Is there

a Z game? Wats and love and Platonic grubby Kiss on the forehead? Vaughn from Northern Ireland. I think D would be like Rogue Warrior, the Dick Marsenco game. Okay, sure, okay, C puts the D in Dick Marsenko. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh double A single A scene Okay, double A for me is Dead Island two. Uh oh sure, yeah, that's like, well this game might as well be a triple A game, but it's like, you know, it's not, and that is

not the only difference is single A like Dark Void? Ooh? Maybe what makes you say that that's double the double A. I mean it just hm, it didn't seem to have the biggest budget or marketing in the world, but it was definitely not like a cheap game. Yeah, I think I think double A is sometimes used to and B are are like used interchangeably sometimes. Yeah, and I'm not sure there is like a single A, yeah exactly. Once you get down there, it's like, now we're talking about

indie games. Now, I think like a lot of these things are non existent. What was that combination word where it was like indie and A Like, what was that thing again? Triple I, triple I think there's more density, integrity, what is the last intelligence? And delevision? Yeah? Thanks? I think Z would be like something that gets thrown on steam and is up there for a little bit but found out it's just a thing that's

like a virus. Yeah, robots, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the rank, so the tier stuff is, it's not even there's there's not even a double A. There's just the double A is like you you know it when you see it, you use it, but it's not like there's triple A if there's n D and those are like pretty concrete things, you know, there's some nebulous stuff around obviously, so much in between those,

right, and then there's so much of stuff in between. It's like, you know, it's kind of like you just in the moment, you're like, oh, that's kind of double A. But that could change. You could call it a B game later, yeah, after after you play more of it could change. It's these are just like terms we use in the moment to get across an idea that's a little bit bigger than like these very bespoke and like the trying to stick ideas of what these terms might mean.

Right. I like that actually see like never Dead. Yeah that's good. What about all the games that Tommy tall Rico is having made for the in television amikoose those are rs right? Yeah, it's like, hey, the Dolphin game, so he play as a dolphin, Okay yeah? Or games like a Z game would be like a game that's on a touch screen in the back of an uber. Okay, yeah, that's it's like built into the back of the table game. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's the

it's the game that's built into the remote in the hotel. Oh that's good. Yeah, that's a Z game. Where do you classify a game? I've been googling this this whole conversation. Uh, the order eighteen eighty six that I think that was triple A. Yeah, it's triple A. Yeah. Money into that, yeah, a lot of money, big budget. It's just it doesn't hit like but that doesn't mean it's not going for me. Still amazing and we were all going to play it very soon. But

it's gonna check that out. Eighteen eighty six you just got to go and be like, what if this came out a year after rescuing you before? If you look at it that way, there are like two guns that are kind of cool in it and other yeah, the rail Guy hour experience. Now there's one where you could like shoot gun go and then explode it with a different button and that was fun. But you're like the nights of the

round table and stuff and it color just remember it looked really good. It does look phenomenal, but it's someone of those gifts they had, like the the the theater effect where like the black bars are the top and the bottle save the frame rate and stuff. Yeah, maybe they did, like I don't, I don't remember, but like I remember being genuinely like impressed with the fidelity of that thing. Yeah, yeah, you know, and it was like Tesla Coil stuff right there was Yeah, yeah, Tesla was like

your like buddy in there guy. Yeah. Anything prestige adjacent sign me the phe Yeah yeah, I mean this is the closest you're going to get to a prestige game probably. Yeah. It's David Bowie in it though. Pc port comment is what I want to know any day now, man, Any directors cut yeah, they're going to give you a like four x three ratio instead. Hell yeah. Last email of the show comes from Vanessa. Subject

line reads, I have the solution, Hello, Bombers. The solution to what you might ask, The solution to the situation that game dev companies like Sony and WB are currently in with having to pay licensing fees. Public domain needs a comeback like big time. Here's some games I would literally die for from public domain. Oh and then they provide a top ten list of public domain games. Alice in Wonderland horror game. I know it's already been done. I don't care. Just do it again, right, Okay, isn't

it funny? Like I know this is all in jest, but like I do think, like the well the Alice in Wonderland will is not dry yet, Like I just think. No, there's a lot of these, yeah, a lot of these, like public domain things. Like if you did a an actual big budget like Sherlock Holmes game, I bet that would do very well. I want I want to see a year in Ney from y'all.

Sure, Number two HP Lovecraft RPG. Yeah, yeah, sure, okay, Tom Sawyer Slash Huck Finn Telltales no good, no tripa a Sherlock Holmes like, Allan Wake two but Hound of Baskerville, Yeah that would work. I'm on the fence with that. But yeah, okay, Peter Pan Souls like or Action RPG. Nay, Peter like that would be That could be cool. That would be cool if it was like, what's his name Pinocchio? Yeah, Lies of p two because it's two ps ps pp.

Okay, that's the episode title. Treasure Island. Zelda like, yeah, what is Treasure Island? I don't know the story of Treasure Island, Like the Geena Davis movie that's Cutthroat Island that already had a super pirates Probably this sounds like a Disney thing, I know, the one Yes Treasure little little tiny people and then there's a big person and and also Gigan's Island. Jack Black is in a terrible version of that uh tale that's he is. Yeah. Wizard of Oz RPG, Oh, I'd be into that. I think

Wizard of is like criminally under tapped. Yeah that could be cool. I think Wizard of Oz is sort of dope. I know, Wicked is very much a thing, and they are coming out with a Wicked movie, which actually looks kind of dope. But yeah, god, y'all remember that James Franco Wizard off whatever from Sam Okay, okay, it's very sad. Winnie the Pooh as a stardoo valley. I fucking hate Winnie the Pooh. What's

the point? I love Winning the Poo my favorite. I have to answer to you, Dan Ker, who is Winning the poop for what's the trees? What does he have the Yogi Bear doesn't have? And Yogi Bear is more likable. He has a really depressed friend, a really scared best was Boo Boo Boom was pretty depress. Yogi Bear was stealing picnic baskets, and yeah, it was probably right, thank you, Let's go this family.

I love Winnie the Pooh, Like what about Winnie the Pooh? Like for real, I've just I've never I've obviously been confronted with images of Winnie the Pooh throughout my life, but there's never, for a second been a frame of anything where I've been like, oh, I should look into this more. I get what you're saying. Look, Dan, I'm with you. I think Winning the Pooh for the most part sucks, but I want to get into the mind of like there's nothing, like I don't even know what

it's about. I just like i look at a bear with a shirt on, and I'm like, what am I doing? Why? Why do I need to look into this? I just feel like I don't I wouldn't want to hang out with him. He's like a stoned little bear who's always like Donkey friand like like sad all the time too, or yeah, I see none of thus appeals to me. That's the pressed friend. Oh man, I don't like the tiger friend Calvin and Hobbs has an awesome tiger friend.

Yeah, man, I remember a good one. I remember the bear tigers hunting on like a date with my ex girlfriend and I just felt that the relationship was on its way out. But we were watching the Winnie the Pooh movie and then like she was really depressed. I was really depressed. But I fucking lost my ship at the Can you not not joke? Go look on YouTube for that, I'll link it. I'll say this, I speaking of fictional bears that I thought that I had no appeal to me. PI

Paddington I I had no idea what the fuck of Paddington Bear was? I'd again seen images of it and never looked into it. And then everyone starts talking about Paddington too. I hadn't seen Paddington one. I heard about the rotten tomato stuff and everything and bock, and I watched Paddington two, and I'll be goddamned if it is not a delightful, delightful movie and wonderful character

one sh movie. Yeah, I totally get it Paddington two moment yet, I will let me go Paddington. Let me make a Winnie the Pooh. I just don't think Winny of the Pooh is interesting or no, or you got there? You go? You ever wanted to think your jar hand in a jar? Honey? No, seems terrible, that's fun. I got I got hair on my hands. I don't want that in the honey. Yeah. Like what if Winn of the Pool like was motivated? I don't know, He's just like he is like a manifestation of depression. Yeah,

five thousand. That's why I'm so with everything all. Yeah, That's where I'm at right now until notion fixes me. All. My whole fashion sense is built off of fictional bears. When you think about it and boil it down, I dress exactly like Paddington Bear. Yes, in my private life, I win you the Pooh that ship all the time. You wear pants and you love pants, and you're in my private life. You know, sure you don't walk around in like a button down free ball and there's no

way because the pool wears a red shirt. And then like look at the Ralph Lauren Polo Bear. That motherfucker's got steeze out the wazoo. Anyway, Vanessa has two more options, Homer's Odyssey Rogue Light Yeah, sure, okay, I'll do that, and a Three Musketeers action game that'd be great.

What you got against the Musketeers are great, you guys. That was Man on the Iron Mask, right, I think that might be the only three Musketeers media Like, I like Three musket or Man in the Iron Mask, but I hate the Candy Bar. And that's all I know about three musket don't. I don't think Man in the Iron Mask is three Musketeers, is it not? Might be adjacent in the same universe. I had the same swords, and you know, I've never seen Man in the Iron Mask.

If I know, like inclination that it was about the Three Musketeers. Chatti thing. I'm correct. Okay, yes, I've never seen it. Yes, okay, look at that man. Oh I do think Dan is probably right. Thank you, Thanks Mike held He keeps popping in to say that. I appreciate it, Mike. Thank you, Mike. I hope you're recording your audio track one because you keep popping in. All right, thank

you. Vanessa from Denver, Colorado real quick. I found out what comes out the day we get into Boston on Thursday on Amazon Prime Video, the New Roadhouse movie. Oh yeah, maybe we could watch that that night. Yeah, in person live filming forties watch. I'd be down for that. Yeah, that's what I'm kind of It would be too okay, all right, Well maybe we're just like, yeah, okay, we'll make it happen, okay. Cool. I was looking I was looking at the demm like,

oh I think we get into Boston that day. That sucks, And I'm like, well, well maybe I do that, all right, cool, okay, okay, yeah, maybe I'll just like, I don't know, go out in Boston like I was just like, takings, Yeah, you could take in the the the city from like the view of a hotel room with your friends. No, no friends, my friends. We'll go catch a bunch of shrimp in the harbor and then bring them back to room and watch Roadhouse. We can't and Roadhouse. We can't visit major metropolitan city.

We've been to Boston a bunch of times. It ain't that much like I'm I'm with you Boston is. It's like a little town. We're going overwhelmingly just fine. I get it you're arguing against yourself, But that doesn't mean we should stay indoors. Just in the big city in the bright lights. We gotta go out. It's fine, but I don't think we need to like stay indoors. Plus, we're gonna have a lot of friends in town, Like there's no home. Put in one omni directional mic shove as

many people in that hotel room as we can watch Roadhouse. Yeah, because it worked out so well last time, A bunch of people in a hotel room in l a and eatee hundred chicken nuggets. Last time we traveled private moment, private friend that was made hundred nuggets at three in the morning. That was a private event for a select audience of six or seven. I forgot that for us and us only friends were made for a lifetime. There was he was like, I gotta go home. All you were it's just

too late, too many chicken nuggets. I'm like when Nikki had to leave, I was like, oh, we were doing something. Back to the hotel and I'm handed to phone saying Dan, I trust you, please make it so one hundred McNuggets arrive here. It's like, I think I can make this happen. Not that you pressed a couple of buttons. I will say this. I was shocked as to like how enthusiastic seven grown adults were about this, like on that Like I was just like, oh my god,

we're actually doing this. It was almost like we were like trying Heroin. It was like I just I couldn't believe how into it. And it was yeah, ah right, that does it for emails this week BombCast on bomb dot com is the email address to send your emails too. I love fun quizzes, I love lists. Go send those, go make those, and I appreciate all the time you put into making those. No, we're not trying arrowin at taxis now. We're not. Definitely not. Maybe SGF.

Here's the next thing I'll leave you with. Uh, this is a little is a fun little story. I think you everyone will like it. Uh. A couple of years ago, Vinnie gave me a bunch of clothes for his kids, like old clothes for her dib and David is finally growing into the size that, you know, appropriate size. So Dylan's were about to like TriCaster merch. It's not Vinnie's clothing from the TriCaster Corporation. Sure, you know, you dumb dumb. Check out that new tech fleece.

So among all, it's like a lot of jackets, a lot of vests, a lot of cool stuff. Right, check out those barringer shoes. Now, it's just not that old. It's all like relatively you know, newish, right or whatever. And there's this one highly reflective vest that he's been rocking like hardcore high viz. Yeah, he goes debt. He comes back from soccer practice the other day, he goes debt. I got to the soccer field and everyone's like, yo, you got crazy riz with that

vest. He's like, you gotta go riz up those girls on the playground. And Dylan's like, I'm wearing this vest every day and I just need everyone to know that very adorable and cool gime Bomb story. Yeah, I think we have to call him high Viz dib noo. Let's not start this. Jenn left the frame. He has gone by by all right, God, I gotta get Michael him on the phone with a new business venture.

Hi, Riz, Oh my god, that's brilliant. I think it'd be better if Dylan just started dressing and looking exactly like Vinny at the age of like eight, shirt, black shirt and jeans. What's not to like? Timeless outfit. Oh my god, that will never go out of style. By the way, you can wear a black T shirt fully black T shirt and jeans for the rest of your life and be fine. Yeah. I think I think that is the uniform of a lot of Giant Bomb community members.

Yeah for sure. All right, folks, thank you for tuning in to a lovely episode of the Giant BombCast. What have we got going on in the rest of this week? We got games mornings popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. We are not racing through all ninety six courses in Mario Kart again. That almost killed me. I will be dressed up like fuck I'm Superman again. And now Yeah, well here's the gimmick. I thrown No, well, I gotta because fucking Mike and I he's a maniac and

is now a mortal combat mythology. Speed Runner crack him out on twitch at told codo he is now legitimately doing speed run stuff with the Breakdown in the world. But he broke back into jail is basically what you're saying. Yeah, I don't know what the count because he doesn't have to make up on but for and Break season two. Yeah he did, which I fucking facetiously said, or you know, I did not expect this happened. I said, yeah, okay, I'll beat Superman on Superman difficulty if you beat Shanock.

Uh. And he beats Shanock. He just straight up did. It'srank honestly, nothing more respect for what he did. What's the what's the plan then, Dan, because you are the last level, I'm going to get the last level and switch it to Superman difficulty and then I think that works from what someone said on the internet and internet chat, which is never wrong,

you can switch it in the middle of it. So I'm going to get to level fourteen or whatever, and then I'm going to switch it to Superman and then from what I have heard that final level is like the hottest ship of the entire Superman game. I'm gonna have to play it on hard now, so uh yeah, it's gonna get real bad. You don't want to get your seat legs underneath you by playing the rest of our once Superman, so no, I want to as long as possible. All right.

Wait, so you're telling me that they're like who decides the rule that, like, oh, switching difficulty in that last boss is okay. Well the rule, the actual Blight Club rule is you play on the default normal default difficulty, but you also are supposed to try to see the end of the game and that means credits. No, No, I mean it's you play through the whole thing on the normal difficulty, you know. And that's what you know. Manati did he beat the game on normal and everything, And

I said, I's not gonna do the hard version. I will get credits and do the last hard level on the shitty difficulty, so I will have to switch over and if it doesn't work, then I have to restart and just do the whole thing on Superman. So it's just so funny how much of like Adrenale adrenaline junkies. You guys have become with like you're like, no, this isn't good enough, This isn't good enough. We have to it's a arms race. Yeah, yeah, club is heroin. Heroin Jason

injected In't your eyeball tomorrow? Folks? Uh watched Dan wear that lovely, lovely head of hair? Uh? My favorite thing, Dan is like at all of the green screen footage that you sent over, you were constantly like brushing the hair out of your face. There was one time where were like shook it out of your uh face with without your hands. I was like, that is so majestical. It wasn't a bit. I was just annoyed, shut out of my pants. Okay, something just came to mind.

Let's see if we can do this. How much would it take for you to wear the wig the entire pack? Wait, you're you're offering me money because we can talk. We're talking right now, dude. Five thousand dollars? Oh you are? Sometimes you just got number and see what's six? All right? Didn't work? Five hundred dollars done? You'll give me five Wait a minute, legit, right now, you'll give me five hundred dollars to wear that fucking wiket packs all packs, all panel and everything. Yeah,

of course. Okay, now it's changed very Let's go back to five k, dude, five hundred dollars and all of it. First of all, a hundred dollars. You know a bald head. We need a bald five hundred dollars to you, you're basically wearing the wig grub. What are you talking about? Giving five hundred dollars? You're gonna get a special gift that packs anyway, Dan, every time anyone sees you, it must be

on. So like, even if you're going I would that means you'd have to wear it anytime outside of your hotel room and the second someone sees you with it off. I don't know. What about all my important business conversations? Yeah, okay, just describe one of those that happened. I might need to eat a bunch of nuggets. I don't know. Okay, Yeah, so think about it. I can't look I can't afford to look like a damn fool game ridiculous. Back, I'm not a man who can afford

to look ridiculous. Packs over. You have one week to decide. Think it over, you get that five K. Up, we'll talk five K. That is so unreasonably stupid. Would you pay for my uh blackout curtains asation? You are such a weirdo? Why is that you're the one operating to pay coworkers to wear wigs at industry conventions next week, the two district conventions. Okay, buddy, m all right, look we're putting that out there. I'll get some quotes on curtains and if you cover that then we'll

talk. All right, we'll put it out there. Okay, all right, Uh, Thursday, we're gonna try and do a Thursday night throwdown on Star Wars Battlefront, specifically the PC version. PC participate get that version. Unfortunately, no cross platform play going on over there. Upf This week we're doing blind Bollatro buy in. We're gonna take turns playing the same seed of Blotro and see who can come out on top. Who is going all in the new old one for Star Wars Battlefront folks, Yes, got an episode

of Jeff Jeff's Bizarre Adventure popping off this week? Well oh yeah, no, Dewey, we'll get a little privy. What's popping off? Man? That show's entering a horror arc with Hair. I don't know if anyone's familiar with what's going on, but it's appropriate for the wig Bet then absolutely. Uh. Some more stuff might pop off on the website. Who knows. Everything is subject to change. What I do know is that it is the end of the show. Thank you for joining us for a lovely episode of

the Giant Bomb Cast. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff, he's been Jeff, he's been Dan, and you have been great today. Go add some whimsy into your life. I don't know, Stand on top of a table and say how much you love cattle, corn or whatever. Spin into a room next time you enter it. Uh, skip to your lou just like Jeff Beckler will have to skip to his loo with old cant of Budweiser and bud Light. Go run in a forest. God damn it. Do

that for me. I need that right now. We'll see you next week for another episode of John Bombcasso More