856: BALSA WOOD BOYS

Hey everybody, It's September third, twenty twenty four.

Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight one hundred and fifty six, powered by NZXT. I am your host, jan At Shoa. I'm going to say this is right off the tippy top of you of the show folks. Thank you so much for celebrating a successful B week. It is not BE Week anymore, but B Week lives on in our hearts, just like the co captain of the ship lives on in our hearts and our dreams and our nightmares.

Jeff Croub, I'm ready to hawk your dreams, everybody. That's right. I'm the scary man on the podcast. I go boo.

That's right, he goes boo, just like our own and sleep paralysis demon. You love him, you hate him?

That bad boy of games Media from Games Beat, Mike Manati.

I'm a bad boy. I just want this to get over. I want this tagline to get over with.

Everyone else media. I'm the bad boy games Media. Yeuh huh, yeah, good luck.

No, no, no, it's gonna happen. That's gonna happen. You Jnifested, Okay, exactly.

I've learned that I may have an innate power to jenifest anything, and it's not just dumb luck. Who knows what's what we're capable of. We could get an Emmy next year?

Is that what you're gonna use it on? The Emmy next Okay? I was gonna ask what you're gonna use it on? Is it all Emmy right now? Or are you jenifesting anything else?

You know?

I don't think I'm jnifesting the Emmy hard enough. Maybe maybe not. I think I'm jenifesting other things in my life. Also, for anyone that watches community, I hate and I hate that I've infected this website by becoming either the Dean or the Chang or I'm just self inserting myself everywhere. I mean self inserting my name everywhere.

Yeah. No, that's a good thing. I like that a lot.

I think it's pretty unbecoming.

Actually, I would never be a Yeah right, that's exactly boys.

There's only three of us today. Dan Record is out on assignment getting his mouth drilled. Parentheses questionable, but uh, how y'all do it? YouTube World Travelers came back from foggy rainy.

Yeah, I got done hanging out with the Chevy Chase of our crew here, Mike Manati, the Sturricane was at it in Seattle once again? Are these all things you want to be associated with?

Not especially Chevy Chase? Come on, what about early Chevy Chase?

Was that still okay?

Or was always a problem But we just didn't know because like you only ever saw him on SNL in a couple movies.

That's right. Yeah, we had a good time in Seattle. It was. It was a lot of fun. Mikey did a pretty good job of holding up, considering he's been traveling a lot more, just getting back from Germany.

But we saying I was cranky, but he forgives me.

Exactly see if you got a little craiky times. But you know, he was like, you know, pretty good about it. He realized, no, let's still have fun. It was great, okay. Yeah. Was We didn't like, like take too many appointments and things like that, though, so we were pretty smart with our time. It was fun to like go on the show floor a couple of times, but mostly, you know, we did our panels. We saw some things from Nintendo

Speaking about Mike being cranky in Nintendo now, we also played well, Mario Party was on the show floor and we can talk about much.

But you know the vague concept.

In the new Mario Party games, so you can like play not just as like Mario luig you we can play as like a goomba.

Right.

We were sitting down at one of the bars and I was like, I don't like that you can play as a goomb but I think you should only be able to play as bespoke Mario characters with proper names and just everyone.

He took a second, was like, is he being serious? Just looked at me.

He's like, Mike, I'm glad that you're the way that you are thinking about that a lot.

Since you you take a stand and you mean it. I was I knew you meant it, but everyone else was looking at you. Is he being serious? I'm like, yes, he's being serious and I love it.

How do you feel about like shy guys in Mario Kart? Then, Mike, you do you feel the same or did in Mario Kart DS?

When it was specifically like, well, you don't own a copy of this game, so you have to be a shy guy because you're a second rate citizen. Yeah, Like, just the idea of a shy guy is like a person who play as no. Like, you know, if it was like if there was a shy guy, shy guy and he had like an identifying hat or monocle or something, that'd be fine. But just the vague concept of shy guys, it's not special enough.

This is Mike's video game class. If you own the game, you get a named character. If you're just borrowing the game, you are down there and you get the riff raft.

Yeah.

Mariocres a little different though, because like in the original Mario Kart, you could just beat a Koopa, right, So there's like a legacy there.

I guess, I guess I have to con see too.

What about Monty Moles. Monty Mole enough of a character in Mario Party, because.

We did ask him a bunch. We asked about charging Chuck rip Van fish bullets. Yeah, those sound like proper names, but those are just specie names. Different.

There are many boy bills.

That's right, all right, all right, all right, great job doing the panels. Thank you out in Seattle boys both we missed you.

It was fun.

Yeah, it was really fun. I think it went great though a lot of people shut up. Thank you so much to everybody who came out to see us during the panels or who came up and said hi and between things. It was awesome seeing so many people there.

Also special shouts out to Marino for playing scorekeeper during the Black Live as well as VERBC I believe, and Steve Kim at fob watched on Twitter for taking some lovely, lovely photos. Yes, my one of my favorite photos I've ever seen of Lucy James just yeah, making a we mote look so freaking cool.

Yeah, she dominated in a couple of those games. And even though even though she end up, you know, you got to like see it if you want, I know, people don't want it spoiled, so go watch it. Even though she like it wasn't well we've talked before, I get to pick the next game for Blake Club. She didn't win, but it was a lot of fun anyhow, So you guys should go in there check it out. Good time.

Archives of both will be going up on the website soon. So don't worry, folks if you missed it, if you're hankering right now, if you just look through Packs's YouTube channel. They did split some breakouts, but we'll also have that on all of our YouTube channels.

Boys.

B Week is over and I'm sad. I don't know what to do now.

Man.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Man, I feel like I missed most of it. I was so busy traveling. It's a shame. But you know, B Week twenty twenty five will be here before we know it.

That's true, that's true. Uh.

Oh right, Mikey, you know what, You're invited to the Spelling Bee next year.

I'm gonna do bad. I'm not.

I've never been a great speller. I never was this year. I didn't want to do it. No right, exactly as soon as spell check became a thing, I've been coasting off of that my entire life.

Same.

Uh, definitely next year, I want to have more contestants for the Spelling Bee. Uh maybe maybe be Week moves up? What did we just double up Summer game Fest and B Week?

We can make.

No, I'm glad.

I'm Jeff says.

Everything's a good idea. That's an awful idea.

Well, the idea jan that. I don't remember who I texted this. I may have been like two buzzballs deep at this point I texted someone.

Voice smelled drunk truck.

And my idea, I'm not encouraging drinking Kobe's amounts of alcohol. You can totally stay or partake in other safe substances of your choice. Uh, we just, you know, have a voicemail dumb truck, maybe one or two hours later than we normally.

Do, and maybe we're feeling a little toasty.

Look forward, though, folks, Infrastructure Week is coming.

Yes, I did discover the multiplayer mode for mud Runner Expeditions is a whole running, So Infrastructure Week is imminent.

We gotta do an entire death stranding playthrough.

Yes, an entire a great idea, Mike.

God, please please don't make PEPSI zero sugar be the last thing I drink before I die.

Okay, p zero sugar? What happened?

Man? All that hot head burritos? Has? I have no drinks here?

I was like, I'm gonna go to the store and I'm like, going to sleep sounds better, So yeah, it's rough. After this, I'm going to drink water from the clascet. Oh you're really slumming it.

I did. I'm sorry, like some kind.

Of unnamed shy guy or something, some heathen that can't afford their own copy of Mario Kart.

So we gotta just be close to each other on the bus while we play.

Oh god, Infrastructure Week. Okay, so we got mud runners. We could do a Minecraft thing. We're gonna do Mikey is gonna do.

Is kind of a infrastructure thing.

Yeah, a bridge builder like that. That would would.

Probably be even better.

To just came out all right, all right here, I forgot who I told this idea to, but I'm gonna say this out loud, so we actually do it. For Infrastructure Week, We're going to play one of those like a roller coaster Tycoon adjacent game, and then Mikey is going to grade our theme park.

Okay, I love it. Yeah, that's great.

Two is still a classic planet coaster is the modern also good one, but you know it's newer monitors. But we're complicated. But yeah, lots of good stuff there. Did anybody what was that one that vandy Namco like released a year ago? And uh it was at Summer Game Fest. There was a guy with a big nose giving us ice cream for it had park. It came out, and I didn't we'll talk about it much. I don't know Park beyond park beyond, what happened Park beyond beyond what

Oh no, what? But did he push?

Yeah? Did you lose him too?

I lost him too. Don't worry. I don't know what.

Oh no, it's breaking for everybody.

No, no one can hear Jen.

I mean, he probably just tried to run a show on these cursed machines. Now, they did just release an open source coxer things, So I I hate to admit, I'm gonna try to keep making it work incredible because I'm broken. Apparently the fun thing when my headphone stopped working, I was trying to like fix the doxor by like you know, plugging it and plugging it back in, and anytime I would move it, the whole thing would come become disconnected. So I wonder if he's having a similar issue.

He looks very upset.

All right, we're gonna talk about video games, and the podcast said, no, that's right, Dadpool Mike, so we can can chat.

Hear us chat you hear me and grub right, let us know, give us some young I think they can.

Yeah, they hear.

That's great, Mike. What have you been playing? Well?

Should we do that? Do you want to do the big news story?

Well we could. You're right, we could talk about that first. Okay, you know what, since well Jam figures this out, let's just do that. Uh right before we went live. I guess this is news. I think Jim might be taking a step.

I am going to take this go xlr out into the back of this apartment building. I'm going to throw it straight into the trash, and then I'm going to get I'm gonna first I'm going to apply to be a sanitation worker because they're hardworking people. And then I'm gonna take the go x lar the back and then I'm gonna suggest that I take on the route of where my apartment is so I can pick up the dump truck. And then I'm gonna tell tell, tell uh

Like at the end of the teenage Ninja Turtles movie where Casey Jones pushes the lever, goes oops and the kills exactly.

I will fly you out there, Mike, just so we can do it.

Oopsops.

What a great thing to say? Is you murder a person? I love digital audio.

It's the best. It has never wronged me. Never once I started a new started a new audio track, and don't worry. We clapped because I thought about it video games.

I'm gonna I'm gonna subtly hit this button and hope and pray.

Do a Should we just sing the song? Oh god, I'm fraid.

Let's let's try it. Let's try it. Everyone ever close your eyes, so let's hope it works. Oh there it is? Oh thank god.

You know, actually, the second that go xlr stopped working and the company kind of imploded within itself and everything else started stopped working, that was actually my Dawn of Sorrow. So I'm glad you two have been playing Dawn of Sorrow.

No, no, no, we talk about Concord for us. That's a very good transition though. Okay, all right, Actually news.

There it is.

If we just.

Pushed that button from the beginning, it would have.

Been never would have broke it in the first place.

What's going on with Concord?

Yeah, it's things haven't been going great for Concord. I don't know if you guys have heard I did have a news story in here. Let's do that real quick. Hey, Concord may have sold us few as twenty five thousand copies. It has been claimed. That's from someone who like tracks the industry and has a newsletter sent that out. Who knows how accurate that is. But we were gonna say, we're gonna talk about that, be like, hey, what can they do here? What is the future of Concord? Is

I think it's just like with Artifact and like with Anthem, you had these field launches and they're like, oh, maybe it's gonna come back and back those like had actual announced plans to come back, were concrete than this, and it didn't. You know, I know, we always think about foun Fantasy fourteen or Rainbow six Siege. There's you know, like, wow, these games can't come back. Those examples are now old, those examples no longer represent the modern gaming landscape. I

It is. It is scary, right it is. We talked about it. We talked about when we were at PAX, saying that we were like looking at this game and like Dan was asking about it, being like, hey, what's going on because it's never been his thing, and he looked at it He's like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I just don't feel like playing it either. I kind of get why people feel that way, and it's like, yeah,

No, absolutely, and it's you know, trying to make money in this industry is already difficult, and you have to imagine if you're somebody who's you know, your decision is where's money being spent? Alkoly maximized profits. Well, we get to find trends. We had to chase trends. It's now almost impossible to do that when a video game takes eight years to make. Trends by their very nature have

Is the Guardian Galaxy was cool?

Yeah, right exactly, and like no, eight years later, like a lot of that stuff that seemed like a trend is now repulsive to people. It's a huge problem. You can't chase trends anymore in this industry.

And that's been You're right, that's been the industry's backbone from the beginning of hopping on trends. There were a million Maize games after pac Man, there were a million shooters after Space Invaders and Galagh and all that stuff. There was a million things.

A million Doom Clue clones and then we had the mob but TRN Yeah, exactly, it's just trend after trend and if.

The indist you can't do that, what like, they're not gonna get suddenly get more creative than they've been like that. They don't that that's more scary than what they've been doing. So what is the answer here? It continues to be like, Okay, maybe we have to rethink everything. And these companies are trying to grow fast after a long period of like growing pretty steadily. It's not gonna be the answer is just not out there waiting for them to discover it.

How much do you think PlayStation Sony internally may be kicking themselves that they could have and maybe should have just went with whatever the last of us multiplayer game was supposed to be. I I'm like, yeah, I think it's hard to overestimate how bad this must be for PlayStation. They don't get to release very many games a year anymore. Here's one that's not just missing, right, A game in development for eight years, and I thought they're offering refunds.

It's like nothing has sold.

Now, not everybody's going to get a refund, but basically zero money made a ton of money lost. Pardon me, is like, man, they're gonna have to do anything they can to make some money, maybe even including bringing back the Last of Us multiplayer mode, because at least that'll make some money. Right, we'll be able to live on as some you know, super lucrative successful live service thing for ten years. No, but people will buy something with the words Last of Us on it.

How does also with that Amazon series, that anthology series based off Video games Secret, there's a whole Concord episode planned. Does that get scrapped too or does that just wind up airing?

I mean, it seems like they already made it. I mean it's it's been like post production, right, it's probably editing phase, so I don't know, it probably still happens.

I mean, that would be some of the craziest loss media curiosity airs. And it's just kind of awkward.

But like god, that.

Is so it's weird.

There's just this episode about Concord obviously made as kind of like a money deal as part of getting the other PlayStation brands, right, because there's that whole PlayStation Universe episode as part of that.

Wow, I did this test with you, Mike, Jan and Chad. I mean you could give him a second answer. What is the name of Jade Raymond's game though? Is that this is the fire Spray one? Or was this fire Spray but Jade Raymond's game that she's making with Sony it's the other shooter. Do you remember the name of that?

Okay, it's not. Then it's not Marathon. It's not Marathon. Jesus age christ. I can only think of the Star Wars game and was that Jade Raymond?

This one is fair Games.

Fair That's what it was called. Oh, was this an extraction shooter too?

This it's like adjacent, it's all part of that like miasma of live service shooter stuff that's like picking out of a hat like different things.

Right now it's looking like Concord.

Yes, I mean that's like we couldn't. No one can remember the name of this thing that's coming along too. It's got to be so scary to be in that situation, looking at this happening and be like, do we need to preemptively change what we're even making here to make it feel like it has a better shot. Like I would be on my heels instead of on my toes attacking all the best parts of our game, trying to

That's the thing that sucks is that it's not like the team specifically set out to try and ape and Overwatch or a hero shooter, like you said, Grub, that decision got towed up and down that line.

Right they do the things that get approval, right, you just say, hey, this has worked, we'll do it again. That's why trends happen. And so we'll do it again, and we'll just do in our game, and we'll put our own mix on it, and you know what, we'll put the extra sony sauce on top. We're gonna make it very narrative heavy. We'll have new motion captured cinema sequences every single week, and people will like just get so attached to these characters. And that's you know, we know that's risky.

Hey, it told us we were gonna get a test, right, they told us how much we're gonna love those characters.

And in the meantime, they're spending a ton of money on that side of things. And I feel like that is the side that just flopped the hardest regardles. I mean, it feels like the whole thing people just don't want this game. But that side flopped the hardest and was the most expensive. It just was a miscalculation top to bottom.

I don't see a world where it feels like a safe and smart idea to create a new, brand new IP from the ground up, touting all of these like fantastical new characters you're gonna get attached to when our introduct like our initial introduction through that trailer, whenever that came out, is just like, oh, this is like Bad Guardians at the Galaxy.

And I mean part of me is like, if you tell me, hey, we're working on a Bad Guardians of the Galaxy, I'm like, I bet you can have some fun with that. Go go do that. Maybe that might work. People might enjoy that and make me like unironically and partially ironically, but that's fine. Shooters can work in that space. And yet I think the prevailing feeling is nothing. People feel nothing about the game. And yeah, these companies are

I feel like the safer bet if and I keep saying the unsharted multiplayer thing, but like, hey, I don't know, you have an IP with a bunch of guns already, with Ratchet and Clank, you could easily slot those characters into some type of hero shooter that's at least some brand recognition, IP recognition, PlayStation Battle All Stars two but with guns.

Yeah, I think even those like aren't safe bets anymore at this point, right, I mean, gosh, it's just who knows what's gonna work. And I mean the whole live service bet was already wild because we're already seeing the problem that it turns out that they're most people still are just happy to play Fortnite Her or Call of Duty war Zone from now until the end of time, and sometimes something does pop off. They got so lucky that hell Divers too did pop off. All right, we

So where are we yep.

I think the next step here is probably these studios that they've brought on are probably going they're gonna probably gonna be pretty scrutinized after this. And I mean I've said it every time, I'll just say it again. Jim Ryan got out, and it was good to get out when he did, because he does have to deal with any of the ramifications of these choices that were made. And I basically got out when they were at the tippy top for PlayStation and now I like, you know,

It feels the whole idea just feels so foolish. Like I'm thinking of like the shooter is that I personally am into or have some interest in, and it's pretty much just fort Fortnite and some adjacent interest in Black Op six And is I don't know. Do I like Fortnite because it plays very well and it's easy to jump into a game with y'all and we're nothing but winners when we play, Or is it because like oh, now Cyclops is available, or they're catering to specific ip.

And it doesn't matter. Like that's the answer is it doesn't matter. They have the juice. And if your game is adjacent close to getting the juice but still doesn't have it, well okay, that's fine, but now you still have this mountain to climb of relevancy that there's just no chance of doing that right now, not as some upstart, and especially or not even with Sony, let alone some upstart being able to do that.

Like I remember battle Bit Remastered or battle Bit Reborn last year, just like yeah, absolutely blowing up. And that's not a new idea. They're just making Battlefield all over again.

Right, that's like the gurgling of like understanding that these smaller teams are looking to fill the niches that have been vacated by these bigger companies, and that's happening simultaneously with a lot of experimentation. But Sony's place in that, Microsoft's place in that, like how do they fit in and making those kinds of games honestly might just be Hey, maybe we acquire one of those companies down the line

For Sony is too big now to pivot quickly at all, Like a pivot would have had to been made three four years.

Ago, right, and where do you pivot to? I mean, for as much grief as Microsoft deserves right now for kind of mishandling things with Xbox. To a certain extent, they did try to do something like a big move that wasn't chasing a trend, well, not a trend in video games in terms of having games having game pass and this is like a new idea and that hasn't

Here, Marathon betterhead, Ah, gentlemen, I hate to break it to you.

Yeah, it's it's gonna it's gonna be rough. I don't know anything else to say about concord or should we should we do the rest of the news, jan how do you want to do this?

Let's do the rest of the news.

Yeah, they're still rough here, Concord. It's just so surprising, just so fast.

Do you guys see that there's that new Maarin Luigi Brothership trailer and like the name of the place they go to in that game is called con.

A Cease and Desist. Is actually what happened to Concord there, probably.

Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, I was sabotaged by Nintendo.

Mike, you did mention. I don't know if I said it as part of the Concord story. People are getting refunds, So if.

Yeah, people are getting refunds that, I mean, you know, gosh, you imagine most people will. But god, that's just insane, Like eight years of development on this game for just no potentially no sales, zero, complete.

Like explosion in their face experiment is what it feels like. It's and I think it's easy to play fingers and just say make the game better, but it's like, god, so many mediocre games do much better than this in this game, is I think, Okay, yeah.

No it's not.

It's not a terrible game, it really isn't. But how do you find an audience? How do you make a

Because that is the worst possible thing that.

Yeah, I mean, it feels like the wolves are out a little bit like kind of not wanting to spend money and looking for reasons to get everybody whipped up to be like, hey, these companies aren't giving us what we want and when they do, it's too expensive, and uh, those there's truth to those criticisms. Uh, but occasionally it will come down to one game really getting the brunt of that.

How long did battle Borne last?

Longer?

I think longer than this, longer than this. Yeah, But it's funny because like Battleborn's whole thing was that it was sort of a you know, first person shooter mix of a Moba and that's you know what Valve's new game is really, right, Yeah, there is Juice and idem you know, it seems like Deadlock's gonna be new. There's gonna you know, Marvel Rifles is probably gonna do well enough, like there are going to still be lasts games that do come out.

And yeah, well I saw some folks in chat bring up the Gundam Breakers, which was Gundam's version or Bandai's version of like a hero shooter featuring Gundam, and I just and that didn't last. I think that lasted about a year or so. But I don't think that audience specifically that is super duper heavy into Gundam is necessarily hankering for a hero shooter.

Yeah, and you will be able to be broader, the broader appeal that.

Yeah, And I think that's why a game like Marvel Rivals will be able to sustain itself, because of the Marvel freaks out there.

Myself included.

That's right.

Nikki literally ran out while we're doing this and just posted a picture of them with their copy. Incredible.

I can't.

I am fucked.

I'm gonna I'm gonna order one on our break. I think all right, let's let's cover Oh, I know, but I can't help it. All right, Marvel Versus Capcom Fighting Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection two are now both coming to Xbox, as well as everything else. Marvel Versus Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics and Capcom Fighting Collection two will be released for Xbox next year. Marvel Versus Capcom Fighting

Yeah, Well, it's that some of it is just optics, especially with that you know, there is that like fan base that Xbox had cultivated, right, and they were very unhappy about this, right, They kind of did feel sort of lesser than it was. Almost it almost kind of became a point of embarrassment. It seemed like for that hardcore Xbox community that these projects were coming out just

Right.

It's the same thing as with with boulders Gate three, Right, where was this kind of big black guy that that became this giant hit and there wasn't an Xbox version or was coming out later. So it was good on them to come in and sort of make that fix and let it happen, but it still is coming out later than on the other platform.

Yep damage done to a certain extent. Absolutely. Rock Steady is reportedly the latest studio to suffer layoffs with the suicide with Suicide Squads poor sales bean to blame. Rock Steady in the video game studio behind Batman the Arkham series, has experienced layoffs affecting numerous employees, including over half of its QA department. That's according to sources that talk to Eurogamer.

It's I mean, it's very similar to what happened with Concord. It's you know, when this game goes into development, you're looking at the trends like, well, okay, the looters shooters online game and Suicide Squad. That movie just made a bunch of money, and that's Batman adjacent. Let's do that, right, And then here you are, seventy years later, you actually released the game, and people just don't have appetites for almost any of those qualtions.

I mean, it's like you this point, yeah exactly.

You have to imagine someone at WB saw Across the Water and how poorly uh Marvel's Avengers was received and assume like, all right, well we got to pivot. Our ip isn't strong enough using like this c team here to justify doing a looter shooter style game.

I mean, you know, the story is the same as that always is in the situation, what do they do? What do they say? When they get that fear? They look over and see what's happening with Avengers. Well, we have the rock Steady magic, and so rock Steady was going to be the magic sauce they put on this to make the game really fun and come together in the last minute. It was all going to be great, just like always and as not like always, because sometimes

Do you think like the Gotham Knights' reception also kind of hampered the impact of Suicide Squad.

I don't know if it hampered it, but I think it's just kind of a symptom of the same disease right going on.

There a lot of similar.

Yeah, it might applied to people to be like less and more skeptical because they didn't love Gotham Knights, so they weren't in the mood. But yeah, okay, all right, let's keep going here. We hit the Concord One already. Dragon's Dogma two director Hideaki It'suno is leaving Capcom after thirty years, and he's been making games for a long time, responsible for games like Powerstone, all the Devil May Cry games,

Oh, normally it's like, oh, yeah, you know, people just leave companies sometimes, but I mean, considering, you know, how long he'd been at Capcom Capcom Capcom seems like at the top of their game right now. It seems like the place you'd want to work at in his last two projects there Dragons Dong With two and Devil May

Of the world.

Maybe he wanted to make something smaller in scale as opposed to maybe Dragons, maybe just burnt out I mean DMC five and then especially Dragon's Dogma to all the stuff in that those games. Maybe he just wants to make like, oh, I just want to climb an ogre and that's it.

I think it's probably the situation that, like, for as many problems as Capcom had that they solved by entering this new golden era, no video game company has really been able to solve the problem of what do we do to keep our most senior developers happy because we need them making games, So we don't love the idea of them continuing to move up the hierarchy inside of the publisher so that suddenly they're in charge of not making games. They're in charge of people who do make games.

Yeah, I would imagine that there's some publishers out there that are knocking at his doors, like, hey, make us one of those please, yep.

Real, And I think he'll get kund of a blank check in that scenario, and deservedly so.

Dragon wonder what it means for Devil mccrior, Dragon's Dogma going forward.

Dragon's Dogma three. But with all the Concordians there you go.

There go.

Yeah, it's gonna be like when yeah, Epic like just released all the assets for Paragon.

Yeah, there you go. All right. Last couple of stories here visions of Anna Studio set to close as net Ease and Tencent reportedly scale back japan investments. Yep, this is rough. This game is just coming out and they

See that's like might almost a worries, like in it's sounotypes like you get some net Ease money right because they're investing right now, and then you know, this takes a change in the wind for them to send be like ah, never mind, and then.

Nothing comes of it.

I mean, they couldn't like wait a month to see if Visions amount of made any money, Like I don't expect it to be some giant hit or something, but it could be profitable at least probably just not tracking well.

Enough for them to even justify that, which sucks. Sure, yep, it's uh yeah, it's it's rough stuff. It's still yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say that when we we you know, we talked about some of these things with some people that worked in the industry and it was at packs and the conversation kept coming back to, you know, you know, is it a crash and like

Yeah, I And the thing that I hate is is GTA six is not going to magically fix the video game industry. By any stretch of the imagination, because then if and when that game hits big, it's going to hit big for various reasons. But my fear is that these big studios are going to once again take the wrong lessons and learn from the wrong trends and try

Yep, that it feels like that's going probably is happening right now and we're not hearing anything about it for sure. Last story here, Anna Perna is co financing Control Too will bring Remedy IP including Alan Wake to film and TV. This is Remedy's new partnership to publish Control two. It seems like they are not going to work with Epic games anymore, and that makes a lot of sense after kind of how things went with Alan Wake two. Allan Wake two was it seems like Epic helped them spend

If it wasn't Ana Purna, I would hope that Blumhouse wants to open in their eyes and ears to more being involved in more games and fits like Glove. I feel like part of the reason gosh, what was it twelve hours?

Was that the Incest game? Yeah? Yeah, right, yeah, I.

Feel like that hours right, yeah, one of those twelve minutes minutes?

Yeah, sorry, sorry.

The denomination of time sounded wrong.

Yeah, that's too many, that's too much time.

For instance, everyone knows that somewhere between twelve.

And I feel like, other than the odd buzz it had behind it, there was a lot of excitement because you know when Anna Perna gets excited or is really goes full steam behind a project or Incest, then it really does take off. I feel like control hit the audiences that needed to. Oh yeah, definitely, Alan Wake two Folks at Home. You should one hundred percent check out the Alan Wake two DLC because both all three chapters magnificent.

If okay, I'm glad to hear that.

Yes, I enjoyed them tremendously. Gosh, what's her name? Rose the Waitress?

That's the one I most want to play.

Yeah, that is incredibly hilarious and Remedy has such a good pedigree behind it of getting me invested in any of their side characters that anytime I just meet someone with a name and they're not a miscellaneous shy guy.

I'm like, all right, I want I want a full chapter with you. Give me a full chapter with you.

Yeah, be fun that.

I'm also excited about the possibilities that Anna Pern is going to bring along, especially when it comes to adapting Alan Wake to TV to film. We have to just get the cast that already exists, right, I think it would be crazy not to.

It's cert Chris Pratt joke here there it is. Okay, wow, good.

Perfect, that's podcast and everybody. Yeah, we'll see. Remedy and Anna Perna have good vibes together. I think they seem to fit well, so I hope this all works out, and ideally Control two feels like it could be the one that really pops off for them.

You know.

I think I said that about alan Wick two, and it did in a lot of ways, but it felt like it critically popped off, like right, yeah, and it still felt confined in a lot of other ways. So hopefully Control two can just hit both really hard. I look forward to seeing it. All right, jan that does it for the news. I'm handing the show back over to you.

God, Okay, Remedy, hear me out here? Uh you don't have to cut the check. It's fine. I like the games enough. Just put us in one. Here's what you do, all right. You you start a podcast, a true crime podcast in universe, but it's outside of the universe as.

Of right now. And then eventually it all just intercedes within the mind palace.

That's fantastic, jan that would rule hard.

Or or this. Someone may need to pull out the checkbook here, like what.

We just it would get me like, never mind, can we You were supposed to let it lie?

Let it lie, Mike, sorry, just would.

Get me hard in the heart. Is kind of what I was thinking, which is like, don't get hard yours doesn't. But you're healthy.

Okay, well you know maybe Sam, like you like coffee. Here, cut the check, big dog.

You invest in me and give me enough money to open up a coffee stand and we just sell fun remedy style drinks, like here's a cont roll to cappuccino. It's red because Jesse's hair is red.

There it is there you go, there you go, folks.

Apologies for all of the technical errors. It's big, big apologies to Sean for having to fix all this later in post. We're gonna take quick bricky break and we'll be back with some game talk and maybe with someone else right after this break. I'm never gonna press another button on this go xl R again in fear that it is gonna break everything and to fix all the audio issues are we got our tech man on the streets.

He's buried in wires. That's right. His veins have been replaced with Cat five Dan record. Welcome bopp.

Okay, I just fixed it.

Everything should be fine now, yeah, no, thanks for you know what you gotta not do again is you build up a big mystery guess like, oh my god, somebody's gonna come in after the break, and then it's me, I'm on, I'm on this up all the time. It's like it's like, oh, former World champions return on Raw and then it's, uh, I don't know what's the it's the lamous one that could come back, that's not dead.

World shit Jack swagger.

There you go.

Jake Hager is back. Gender Yeah, Gender, yeah, there you go.

Gender would have some fun of like, oh he got released, Oh you're don't hinder the gender do that.

When gender came back, and then it's like the rock interrupted him. They did the swerve thing.

That was smart.

He's too like, oh my god, he's even buffer. How many roids has he done?

Since he's a lot of roids?

Yeah, I actually I was. I was thinking about this a lot. I think Hugh Jackman is too yoked for Wolverine right now. I watched the original X Men and then he took his shirt off and it was like, Oh, that's that is That's just a dad.

That's a normal body. Now you look like a freak, and I'm judging you kind of like the freak look.

I think as we should get, we should get. We should go to a little little little.

Soft off dad built Dad's No, I only respect rippling muscles.

Yeah, Gina, I heard.

I thought Mike was just being a weirdo when he kept bringing up vagina bones on the panel. Afterwards, he had to fill me in on the context of vagina bones.

Thank you, Mike.

Context.

Welcome, Welcome to Welcome to the video game segment. We're going to talk about what we played. Grub you you tweeted me to remind you on the podcast that Dan Reikert introduced you to Sabrina Carpenter.

Yeah, yeah, Mike, do you know who Sabrina Carpenter is Oh Google car She's a very popular new musical artist. Knewer. I don't know.

Somehow introduced you to her before I knew who she was.

Yes, I never listened to her before in my life, and I've been meaning to, like, I'll look at the Sabrina Carpenter at some point. She seems popular. I should, I should be somewhat aware of this music.

She's Sophia the first she might have been so the first.

She's in Newbes. Mike, She's was she the girl in the gas station?

Uh?

We watched well. I watched for the first time the first real time. Mike watched it for the second time on too Well, Mike and Dan watched for the second time on two different continents in one week. You know that classic thing that if people do.

It's all Doctor Eisman.

Chad watched the entire thing on a plane after we told him about it. Yeah, check out all of nubes on YouTube if you hate your time.

We get in the Seattle. First thing Dan is talking about is going right to Mike's room to watch Newbes, and Mike is saying no on the first night, but he we pretended that he promised we would let us go into his room watch it on the second night, and he did. He was like, well, let us do that. But we also were like gathering up folks all evening. Yeah, come what we had.

JUSTI fighting a lot of other people to my room.

I was like, Mike's loving this for mcruber at summer games fast you osed.

For news and also ended up being in my room.

In your room back your your chrome cast wasn't working or something there. You're bad luck with that stuff. They That movie hurt me so much to watch. It is so much worse than I was expecting.

Is it the worst movie you've ever seen?

It's the one I hated watching the most.

Yes, yeah, me too. Me too on YouTube and.

It's free on there. You should go watch out. I want to be alone in this.

But our dear friend Casper van Dien isn't it.

That's what God I think.

That's what got me thinking about it is I was talking to Castle Randian in Germany and in the back of my head.

I'm like, oh, this guy was the noobes. Yeah, Mike, we got to watch the noobs.

Casper van Deem got me in trouble with my friends. Yes, last night, did he get how did he get you canceled?

No?

Almost.

I was just I was at a party, and not a party, but a gathering, like a friend was in town. They were just all talking, and they're talking. They're going on blah blah blah. Someone's like yeah and like Startship Troopers. And then my super brain was like and I just went like, oh I met the guy for Starship Troopers. Then they all kind of soccerly looked at me or like anyway.

Story, I'm glad that your friends treat you like how we treat.

You exactly that what literally just went personally be like, ah, here's a fact about myself. I'm like, damn it, I'm not I'm not beating the narcissist.

Got to know Mic that you are how you are everywhere, and.

I wouldn't change it.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all the same. There's there's no like maasks like Manadia. I don't have multiple personalities.

I went to find him at Packs and he was in the speed run room and he was sitting front and center in a row by himself, and I walked up there and I whispered to him like, oh, I should have taken you for like a front of the class nerd and he just points to the screen. He goes, no, if I sit up here, you can see me on camera.

I was waving the people, give the people what they want. Yeah, just trying to give games a quick little shine the road.

Games done quick.

God for putting this over, brother.

Yeah.

Uh. Saprinda Carpenter was in the gas station scene and we were watching them. I'm seeing them, like who is that? And somehow we got mixed up. We thought it was Casper van Dien's step daughter they got in the movie. Apparently that she's also in the movie somewhere, but we were like, she was by far the best actor in the whole movie. The girl like yelling at him in the sure, Yeah, she's actually got talent and she's like making the scene.

I mean, this is her first credited film appearance on her on Wikipedia.

Adam sesslerbes was pretty believable as Adam Sessler And yeah that's true.

Guy that shows up to get paid for something. Yeah, believable.

Bill Bellamy, yeahty minutes.

To go back and look at old XPlay clips.

Huh oh boy, Yeah that a great didn't I that's cool?

If you watch nubes.

Uh, it's made in twenty twelve, So put that in context of like all the jokes and scenes in this movie were it's it was not even a product of its time.

It is like in twenty twelve. It was like, holy shit, this sucks.

Would we can stay about the video game movie? What's that? Would you say it's a video game movie? Yeah?

Yeah, I mean it's like in conjunction with like epic and it's all about like yeah.

But it's like Grandma's Boy where it's not based on the game, not like that. But yeah, it's a it's a I would say it's in the video game movie genre, like more broadly.

Yeah, Doctor Ryan reviewed it on Letterbox after I made him watch it, and he was very succinct inaccurate when he said, it's a movie made by assholes for assholes.

And that's that's the thing that hurt me the most is we went to go watch the music video for what is the name of the song?

It's the Full Metal Jack, Like, this is my game controller. There are many game controllers, but this one is mine.

Yeah, it's like and I'm a gamer boy or something like that, like that's the name of the song, and there were like one hundred O it's original, yes with a robot voice. Holy shit, it's really bad. There were multiple comments for people there like one hundred more plus comments. People are like, man, I don't get the hate for this movie. It's just this is a gamer's life, and that really devastated.

This is a gamer's life. It should have been called a game. I. While we're talking about movies, I watched Night Swim Billy Myers his favorite movie.

Is that the swimming pool thing she was talking about?

Yep, yeah, yeah, how was it? Holy fuck? Is that the worst movie I've ever seen? Oh yeah?

And I think Whyatt Russell is a good actor. And then uh one of the actresses from Banshees of Initierin is in it as his wife, and it is Oh man, this pool changed me. This pool is the best thing that ever happened to me. And thank god I don't actually know how to swim. I still gave it a three out of five.

Though, nice.

Were you follow me already?

Okay, okay, okay, I followed you.

Mike do the video? What you have been playing music? Cowhich One is that.

You had a really good segue earlier. I'm not going to repeat the segue.

Don of Sorrow is a game I'm curious to check out. But boys, y'all have been playing it.

Uh yeah, it's it's continues to be really good. I got the double jump. The double jump feels good. I mean, hey, it's a Metroid Venua. It gives you all the things you need to feel like you're always progressing towards something. I really like. The leveling system is brisk, so like I you know, I haven't played a ton and I'm

Saw the tree.

That's just the genre.

Yeah, yeah, I love, love loved potting with you last week, but bad to sorry.

Different.

You know, there are two very distinct styles of Castlevania, so saying medrod Vania makes it clear which one you're talking about.

Yep, that's right. Also, I'm not gonna say such action. I don't like the way it feels in my mouth.

I could be I'll say such action if everybody, If I thought that, everybody was like going to agree and like tomorrow it's search action, I do it.

But I know that won't we're doing I've never done. I'm not going to about do saction work. I love Metroid is a bum thing to say.

It sounds gave me as hell.

It rules, it's a good genre name.

I love it metro Van and we all know what we all know what it means. It has already it is effective language, right, we all get it done.

And yeah, there's no confusion about it.

I mean, I am very happy with this whole collection so far. It seems like, you know, it's a tricky thing to translate a two screen game, even one where the one screen is mostly just uh, you know, the map. It could be difficult to translate that. But they did a great job at least with the dawna Sorrow game, and that's the one that from my memory had the

Just all around a very good time.

I'm just very glad that all those GBA and DS ones are now easily playable on things that was there.

They are up.

They're all like symphony quality almost, I would say, yeah.

Right, Well, speaking of symphony, it's still wild that we can't play Symphony of the Night on the play it and.

It's not on Steam either. It was a bit of annoying, but yeah, that one, that one is well preserved. The good thing here is these were toual screen games. They've made them one screen game. So even as it gets more awkward to play dual screen games, which there's always gonna be ways to do that, and emulating that stuff on a single screen. They figured that out. Those emulators

All right, gentlemen. Well that's the Dawn of Sorrow. A game that has kind of pulled me out of my sorrows lately is a game that I checked out actually at last year's Pax West. Arco, No, not the gas Station Arco, as it is described by the devs, is a Meso American fantasy RPG.

This is the game where it's top down. It's a strategy game where you tell your little dudes to go to from point A to point B and they take their actions after you tell them to. So you can have your first character all right, You're gonna shoot off to the right at this enemy while person B goes over and flanks them and tries to do a temporal pincer movement. But in the meantime, as you let your turn go the other or the AI, the enemy is

And like MS paint or something like.

A Bezier handle.

Yeah, okay, pull those handles, dog, And it's really neat. The The problem is I think my brain no work fast enough for it. Where I it is a little bit much more challenging than I'd like it to be. It isn't as pick up and play as I like some of my strategy games or tactic style games to be. But that being said, I do enjoy the setting. It's a very different setting than we normally see in yeah, a lot of games.

This game looks really good. I remember you talking about before. I looked it up again since you start talking, and this setting is incredible and the pixel art style really works well with it. These you know, Central American windmills, so they just look fantastic. It's really good stuff.

Yeah, there's all there's whole skill trees for each of the different character classes you pick up and everything. There's like different items and shops that you unlock as you go through and progress through the worlds. There's also like some light exploration when you're out of combat. I really enjoy the look of it. There's also really good mustaches in the game. I feel like we're very lacking on good facial hair and video games.

Y's right. Oh.

But also, despite the game being super challenging, it does communicate what everyone is doing very well. So once you set your person to do this, oh Jesus Christ, stop auto playing. Sorry, once you set a character to do this, it telegraphs that really well. Of like, okay, right, right, right, I told that person to go there, and it's laying out that trajectory for them. I feel like this is just with me getting StarCraft Too Curious earlier in the year and me not being able to get Dayo field

When I looked at it, I'm like, I was gonna ask you, ask you, hey, is this like do you field chronicles? So ever so slightly kind of like uk, it stuck with us ever since, right it has.

Someone has to bring it back and uh, gosh, the the battle mode and Pickment four. I think I just Dan Dory do I kind of want to I want to get into like the game, Yeah, you know, like I want to point a click at something.

Yeah.

Maybe I think I missed a trick there. I was pretty good at dan Dory. I should have gone prois.

Let's go against each other on something?

Isn't it is?

I think it's local only, but we'll find it. We can find a.

Time to do that fun as hell.

Yeah, yes, Jen, when you were talking about it becoming kind of a bullet hell, is that still like turn based at that point or is that more like does it become real time when you're like defending or something. How does that work?

So it becomes a bullet hell because the enemy's actions will just be like doing a spray across the streight.

Overwhelming but still turn based.

Yes, and then like stuff will slow down so you can kind of like anticipate. Okay, I can either eat this hit, try and arc my character to move around them, or drop their current action to kind of weave around the bullet so we can get through it.

I'm kinda I'm kind of seeing that. So it's like it's not tiles and that's what makes it dale feel chronic chronicles, Like it's like it's like you're actually moving across the space in a three D space.

Okay, well you're moving across the space top down space, no tiles, So.

Maybe that that's why it's not completely hitting with me.

But I do really like it. We'll probably try and do some type of grab bag stream this week.

Yeah, we want to catch up on some things so that this would be great. I would love to see this in action, and.

Yeah, I definitely want to show this game off because it is very interesting. Also, there's good mustache representation and lama representation.

Oh boo.

Lamas used to be real hot on the internet. I don't know what happened.

Yeah, I think Emperor's New groove kind of cornered the market and.

Not everything has to be about Disney.

I hate him.

So confused.

We were walking around Seattle and we passed this like ice cream place called Salt and Straw and he's like, oh, Salton Straw and he starts talking about Disney and I was like what ins Like, we went and got it and it was great ice cream, and I was like, so, wait, what does there's one of these at Disneyland or Disney owns it, and he's like, oh, no, there's one near, Like there's one near.

It's in the Disney shopping area.

So it's in Disney.

It's in downtown Disney, and I idea they had one in Seattle and it's good ice cream. But you know, like you could, like Jeff will tell you how happy I looked just having you.

Were miserable the second before because it was like a long night and then like dance, like, hey, the store we're going to is right down the street. And then it was all uphill and you're like, well, I didn't bargain for this, and you were like pretty grumpy, and then you run down. I was a little bay down and grumpy, and you saw salt and straw and you basically turned around and your face was beaming, literally beaming the way a pregnant woman blows. You were doing that. It was crazy.

The last couple of trips, I've seen my first real glimpses of grumpy Poudy Mikey and like between the train when he was mad that he couldn't sleep and when he had to walk up hill and he was very not happy about that. I was a little bit of grumpy Mikey.

He was grumpy when we were watching hubes in his room, but he still let us do it.

So yeah, well, trust me, I calculated, like, what it's going to be the bigger thing having to suffer through this or you know what you were doing. But then it happens anyway as well. Yeah, oh yeah, it was back of ours room that he had gifted to me. And then at what point I went to the bathroom and you put a bunch of plastic forks in my pillow so efter you left and I laid down my pillow.

Uh huh, yeah, got you went to the bathroom for like a minute, and he stood up immediately and started running around the room, grabbing everything he could to put in your pillow. I gonna say something I can't remember.

Well, if if Mikey fell asleep while you were watching nubes, would you guys leave or would you finish.

The pause or restart and we wake him up?

I knew that.

I knew you did get a reward though, Mike I did a game mess boy from a game mess account.

Yeah, we went to we went to pink Gorilla, the local uh of the retro game story chain there, you said, I had a one hundred dollars step in from the game mess account to get any retro game I got, and they had that amazing PS one Cowboy Sammaraizing, Samurai Gun Rising zama An actual people say hitting gem, an actual hitting gem for the P one.

It's like a proto character action game.

I showed me that an incredible Crisis the same time, and they're both excellent.

I don't need to get Jeff to play Crisis sometimes. So yeah, that that helped my mood. Well, good thing too, because like again, we walked up that hill and I don't know if it was the combination of the sun, and I was just exhausted from the whole like last couple of weeks, and I was wearing jeans for my future Blake Club costume. Later in the panel, I was sweating more in that store than I think I ever sweat in my life till point like this is a problem.

He was full on, like Southern Bell, fanning himself in the store and everything.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

And then we also on the Black Club panel that while we were at pink Gorilla. I was looking up when I was paying and I saw N sixty four powered on and it had a dik Aton of cartridge in it, and I look up and on the screen behind the counter, they're just the got dikatana like cut scenes. Playing I was like, grop comere incredible, right, Like.

The person working there was like excited to talk about dkatan and I was like, there's more dikaton and knowledge in this store right now than there's been in any single building since the days of Ion Store.

That's true. That's true. Oh my gosh.

Well, Mikey, how did playing Marvel's Marvel Versus Capcom Fighting Collection Arcade Classics make you feel?

You know, we didn't really play a whole lot of games at packs.

We've played a couple of the Town Things Can't Talk.

We played this one twice though, right, Mike.

Yeah, So we played this on the show floor and then they had this like when we saw Nintendo it's kind of like off to the side, but this is coming out on the twelfth, so pretty fun.

We started playing it and the lady came around to turn on the music so everyone could hear it, and everyone was very happy. When they could hear the Capcom or the versus Capcom to music. It was great.

Yeah, god, uh just playing Marsl's on to again made me so freaking happy. This is just one of my absolute favorite games. You know, that Dreamcast port of this was so legendary and it went, you know, people kind of for getting out. Kind of was a little under the radar at the time, but it was probably my most played Dreamcast game, and the Dreamcast was a console

Yep. It's so so fast too. It's like that's what has always been the thing for me about first Capcom two. It's like this, this is just there's so much happening at any one moment, and I think I does make it fun as from a casual perspective where which is where I'm at.

And you know, the collection is neat because you know, some of the other games I'm not familiar with, but like X Men Children in the Adam, which was kind of the first in this quote unquote versus series, it's just an X Men one v one fighting game, and that is more. That is kind of slower, and if you're looking for maybe a more traditional, like you know, Street Fighter two style capcom fighting game, you still have that.

You want to Storm And then she seemed like she seemed cool.

Storm's very very good in Marvels's Capcome Too.

Ah gosh, which one of those my my uncle God bless them, was so obsessed. Okay, it was X Men versus street Fighter. There was Captain America. No, never mind, not that one. It's Marvel Superheroes versus street Fighter. In the Captain America level, Captain America had like a circular tube table, and for whatever reason, my uncle was obsessed

That's just like a.

Leftover spool from a bunch of cables. Because Captain America's ship was like a navy yard or something.

And I remember very handsome these days.

You know who made a table out of that?

You know who who enrolled into a wood shop class in the late nineties so he could make that table?

My uncle did, is it you? N I was like, don't don't like kindergartener's enter a wood shop. But he was so excited to show me this fucking table that he made. And you know what, I'm glad he still has it to this day. And then I can you let me write Shuma Gorath on it?

Oh?

Really, that's great less, no less, I'm gonta, I gotta, I gotta take a picture of the day.

I get a picture of that.

Another thing that I have here, which is a proved to be a fantastic game at wasting a lot of time or using a lot of time fields of mystery.

Ooh, it's a it's a real good playing game. I got plenty of time on planes with this game. Recently.

Have we talked about it on the podcast?

For I brought it up when it came out, weames, but we should.

Yeah, I've been talking about playing it, and I've been really enjoying it.

I'm usually extremely reluctant to play games when they're in early access because I much prefer to just like play it when it's done. But I heard that this one had to good forty hours of content from early access, and sure enough, I'm many hours into it at this point, and it doesn't feel like in progress. It feels like, you know, this is a fully fledged like Stardoo like it's it is.

So stardu like that. Like.

I guess I don't want to criticize because started was also Harvest Moons, you know, so I guess it's just one of these games. But I've many times wanted to go back to Stardoo, because I know they added a ton since I played it that launch, but I never did, just because it's like, oh man, I'd have to start over again, start a whole new farm and everything. For some reason, with this one, I think the time was right.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's early access right now. It doesn't feel very early accessy, but it is.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

But if anyone's reluctant because of the early access nature, I wouldn't be because I've greatly been enjoying it so far.

Yeah, you don't have any multiplayer hooks yet? Is it?

Like not that our scene?

Okay, all right, no, because I've been curious about that, Like, you know, start who didn't have multiplayer at launch, and like, I know they added it, but like, I'm so bad about going back to games I play and when they come out then I'm done with them.

I'm sure starting multiplayers fun.

Well, Agriculture Week will come up after Infrastructure Weeks.

So I think maybe we could work in we started starting into infrastructure week.

Yeah, you're building buildings and stuff like that.

Yeah, for sure, you're building relationships.

That's the definition of infrastructure. I see that word a lot and I never think about it.

Infrastructure.

What's that mean?

Though?

Infrastructure it's the things to hold a s t r U C t U r E.

Infrastructure is it.

The foundational structures that hold everything else together? So roads, bridges, things like that.

Oh, it's like transportation stuff, well not.

Just transportation, but that SS city planning boring stuff.

Okay, some city city like, yeah.

We got we are more efficient if we have a road going from point to point.

B Okay, that's probably important.

Maybe we could even do like a ticket to ride for Infrastructure week.

Yeah, we do not tabletop simulator, so I can get my VR headset and not the table over.

Okay, only if you promise not to do that grub I take I take ticket to ride very seriously.

Okay, my bad, Wow, I might take it for a ride.

Connection.

There you go, there you go, thank you, Thank you. Dan.

You've also you were gone from the pod so you couldn't talk about it then, but you checked out milk your solid delta.

I did, and I'll leave my long thoughts for if you look on GameSpot dot com, just google Metalgear Delta impressions game Spot And there's also a video version as well that a narrator should be the exact same content. Yeah, it's I mean, you guys know how I feel about Middle Gear, and I feel like this is exactly what I wanted from it. It is not trying to do its own take on Snake Eater. It's just saying like, hey,

Okay, so how do I human it?

You like?

It's the tooltip stuff helps just lots of like little things like that that do not change the game. It just makes it more convenient to play. And it looks looks gorgeous, plays great. The new controls are fantastic. You can swap your items and weapons and stuff with a deep head and more like you know, fan of pain than it is the old L two R two stuff.

Oh man, I know that it's just using the old like voice lines, there's nothing new. Is there a little bit of a disconnect because there is like I don't know in my mind, like that there is something about that voice acting that is a little PS two we in a positive way, but does it kind of feel a little bit weird with the super modern.

Graph not at all.

I prefer that they did it this way because remember with Twin Snakes, because the original was like very compressed, they re recorded everything and like change some voices outright, like Gray and I think meleing.

Yeah, a lot of people lost their accents and things like that.

Yeah, But like grape Fox is just like a worse voice, I think, and this did not have that problem. It doesn't, I would say, no disconnect. I mean it feels like a PS two game, because it is a PS two game. It's just it looks a lot better. So No, at no point was I like, oh, I wish they would have re recorded this.

And Dan, I believe you added this to the list as well. Are you talking about cast Away the movie?

No, the game. I don't know if if anyone's aware of this. It's it's a very uh short it's.

Like looks like links Awakening.

Yeah, it's uh no, it's it's it's uh. It's like one of the good Zeld games. So it's condensed all of like just Zelda stuff into the most like you can beat this game in a half hour. But there's like several dungeons. It's straight up Zelda dungeons. You're getting heart pieces, you're getting items, you're getting hook shots and things like that. But it's just like a miniature Zelda built for like speed running, very very cool. You unlock like a certainly you know, fifty tower like Rogue light

So I will give it.

I mean, i'll give it that half hour for sure. Like that seems like such a low investment. That's actually a positive at this point because I see this and oh, I hope it is the links awakening to successor that I've really wanted. There's been others that have kind of promised that we'll see about Mina the Hollower that's kind of doing that as well, but here in what it's not even really trying to be that, it is trying

Yeah, it's fun.

I immediately started it again just to be like, okay, it took me a half hour the first time. When I didn't know anything. Like, I wonder how fast I could burn through this. You I could have ten minutes, fifteen minutes, you.

Know that's cool. I like and I like those like like Short Hike and Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip, these games that are like, hey, here's an open world game or whatever, but you know, a couple of hours, not twenty hours, and that that rules.

Yep, totally. Yeah, Tiny Terry is a good example of that.

Tiny Terry. There's some good mustaches in that game as well.

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely are.

I haven't played enough of the game to see if there is good facial hair representation. But Jeff Grubb, you've also been playing this Game of the Week. Let's say it, let's hear it. I can't put the vocal effects because it's gonna break everything again.

Uh huh No, that's one who emails.

Okay, Mike, just say the name, Just say Game of the Week with me, Star Wars Outlaws at the same time.

All right, ready three two Game of the Week, Star Wars Outlaws. Ah, that's that's not.

Mike.

Do you know how co works? I did it.

I thought I thought that was a great idea. Anyway, I am enjoying Star Wars Outlaws. That's I got really frustrated with my roger Ally because it does run on the on the roger Ally, I had it working at home. I left, I had it connected the hotel Wi Fi my phone's hot spot, and I just could not get Ubisoft connected to let me play on the roger Ally when I left home until I got to the airport

Hot on hell?

Yeah, hot as hell. N D five I think is his name's. He's also you know, kind of gruff with you early on.

That's you know, and that's style destiny.

Oh my bad, Yeah, of course.

And then it was a good joke.

Yeah, well done the dude. Yeah, absolutely should we should have stopped the show and said that more. And I think the where I'm at with it now is as long as these missions stay pretty varied and and give me enough to like, you know, within the the lanes that they're working in, which is again like stealth and some combat here and there, And as long as I'm seeing cool new places, I'm probably gonna stick with it.

Yeah, it seems like there is a lot of people like, oh no, this game is good, although it's a little weird because everyone's like, wow, the reviews are wrong. This game is good even though like the reviews are positive in that seventy range, which which means good. I guess my question is do you think it reviewed lower than it should?

Absolutely not, No, no, no. I think this is a This is a fun seven. I really would describe it that way. And I think there's people who are going to play it and be like, none of this is working for me, and the Star Wars stuff only goes so far and they will bounce off it hard and

Yeah, it's it's it's.

This is such a difficult game to try and demo at a trade show because you are not going to get the stealth aspect or being be immersed in the world where this game is really firing off on all cylinders. There's portions of this game where I'm you know, just doing the open world thing of like I'm just gonna watch.

These people for a little bit.

Yeah, people watch.

It's great because God, I walked out of the demo from games Com absolutely hating the game.

I remember you were not.

Yeah, just like the visual language, like the film grain that they add on top of it. Everything's so difficult to find in the exploration bits, and the shooting just felt god awful. But thankfully that changes as you are upgrading your gun a little bit and you're trying not to wind up in those big shootout segments because it just doesn't behoove you to to to get into those I agree with you grab one hundred percent. This makes me want to really have an open world pod racing game.

Yeah, just just let me climb up the pod racing circuit in Tattooing, let me go on to do my.

Backdoor deals and stuff and things like that and stealing stuff and then yeah, that would be.

Great instead of my summer podracer, instead of Nix on my shoulder and me telling Nix to go futz with like a stormtrooper. Let me send watto out, let me send to distract someone and then then like we steal some pod racing parts from some point.

I think the the underground element is what this game is doing the best of, like making you feel like you are part of this underground and I am starting to get to some of the more interesting interactions between the different factions now that there's four factions that I've actually fully met now and uh yeah, it does feel like you are bouncing around as a criminal that these

I also like what's Sibaba up to these days?

Think about him a lot. I'll be out a minute.

He didn't die in the end of episode one. You know, you think like you think, like when Anakin became Darth Vader. He's like, okay, I got a lot of old scores to settle and he went back to tattooy and he's like, where's that fucker's sebalba at?

He called me Bantapoodu or something.

I just googled it. He was on the Red Carpet with Sabrina Carpenter for Nubes, So there you are. Oh wow, okay, so he.

Did fine, wow, the interesting suit. I do like Kves as a character.

Uh yeah, me too. She's growing on me a lot.

Yeah, as compared to Calcastus, who I barely remember sometimes.

Yeah, Calkestis needed the aid of his friends a lot more than Kves does. I definitely came around on Calcastis as well in the end, but that was because everyone around him was so great that it. Yeah, he definitely floated up higher because of that. But Kves is great, and then Nicks is fantastic as well, your little animal partner, who I did do that sequence where I went to the snow planet and you can go to one of these.

We we we should do a draft of Star Wars protagonists, not uh, you know, not the main dudes.

So no, right, Skywalkers, Yeah, would definitely be up there.

Yeah, yeah, Kyle perhaps got there.

Those two people are so cool.

And then yeah, I have to I have to play and beat Knights of the Old Republic first before we can do this though.

Oh yeah, culture so good? Uh, folks, that looks like it.

That's it unless anyone else has been playing any miscellaneous games that we can talk about.

Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean, is that bad party game for the Wii that we play.

When you play Family Party thirty great games?

Yeah, that's yeah, that's a high.

I'm your champion, Michael. Apparently our final score was very close, so.

I pulled out some bullshit at the end.

He did.

Yes, we still got to figure out Lucy's game.

The Wii is amazing.

Huh, that's a word for it.

No, it is. It is a real specimen.

Yeah, I'll tell you what if somebody who hasn't had to play the Wii in like a decade and suddenly finds myself waggling a bunch again, I do not miss it.

I do not miss What are you.

Doing tomorrow afternoon?

Yeah?

The Wei is the night Swim of consoles where many people say that.

Yeah, many people are saying that. Put that on a box somewhere, either for night Swim or the Wii. Where Wow, you had this idea.

Huh. It's great that things can get made good for you.

What's incredible is that the head and it worked like this made them a money Yeah.

I don't know if Night Swim made the studio a bunch of money, but hey, that personally not we money, No, not we money. But what is we money? Oh God, I want WEE money.

Somebody check folks.

We're gonna take another quick bricky break and we will be back with electronic mails right after this.

But emails, uh email from myself to myself BombCast giant bomb dot com.

I'm going to absolutely burn this go xlr after this I'm just gonna go back to like like uh.

Paper cups and a string.

J you saw I did ping you in the the open source UH software is out for the go xlr.

Now it has gone to a point grub where I don't even trust the box itself.

Yeah, I was. I was wondering if that was the case. I do think some of these problems that we're having our hardware.

The problem I have is if I nudge my go exlr ever so slightly from its position on the.

Desk, it disconnects.

It disconnects.

I literally have the sur name exact problem.

Yeah, starts freaking out, saying like, oh, you don't have one, and.

You don't have one if I plucked it back in, It's okay, It's okay, Well give us ten minutes to get this thing working again. Like what the fuck?

What if we just super glue the port grub.

It seems it's Hey, Mike, I think that's a good idea too.

All right, folks podcast.

Earlier in the podcast you said, I say everything is a good idea, and I said super is a good idea. There we go.

Yeah, the grub brings He's very encouraged.

Let's positive look at how much we've grown as friends and family and as a website because of this attitude.

My come On Blood, Come On, Get on Board podcast.

Giant bomb dot com is the email address to send your emails to, uh right in about any and everything. You got a quiz, you got a conundrum, you got a quandary, you gotta I don't know. You casted us as perhaps the ensemble from the movie Dogma, and you see some similar character traits as to who's who?

Then let us know, Mike, did you almost past the.

Voice of God? Yeah?

I just was wondering who I am?

And voice of God?

Yeah, I'll be fun. What can I be?

God?

Set?

You're okay? I like that? Okay, yeah, a lotus more set? All right.

First email comes from Peter. Peter writes it Hi Bomb Crew. On Sunday, my wife and I started playing It takes two my wife. We had a blast. Then my dad called saying he was on his way over. His vibe was weird, and when he got here he announced that him and mom were getting divorced. I had to tell someone who understands the irony slash coincidence that it turned out.

To be you. Yeah.

Thanks Peter, I did they janifest their parents?

Do you think that they wrote this email? Like as soon as the dad left, I bet like the second.

Dad they wrote us Yeah while I was sitting there.

Ye.

Yeah, I've had a lot of those moments where like you're kind of just like looking out just thinking like how zappering? And then I just write the BombCast email dress to to try and quantify that existential dread.

Let's see, what's the ideal age for your parents to be divorced, because like.

Four, that's how old I was, and I don't remember it for it.

Seems like a right time.

Yeah, yeah, that's my mine was like I just like went to call like eighteen or nineteen.

It's pretty good.

I'd rather it happened then than like when I was starting high.

Especially if you're aware of college, like were you away, like were you living your Well? I went away and then I came down, okay still for a little bit.

Yeah, there's definitely there was definitely a bit of time where it was like this, all right, you were going with dad and the other bros going with mom.

I was like, okay, I'll just do that for a little bit.

I was so young and my parents are so different that it is fucking weird to me to picture them even like they are so different.

Were you guys married, like yeah, so yeah, young it.

Was good, okay, young youngern alright, uh yeah.

So everyone loves our relationship advice. So there you go, folks. We will not be celebrating divorce week.

Okay, Oh come on, well.

There's at least how many other divorce themed games it takes.

I've seen couples get mad because of Overcooked that.

Yeah, cause divorces Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need more divorced games. Cheepy robos, cheapy roboboutto home wrecord okay.

Yeah, home wrecking games could also be.

Faster, so yeah, Gundam Breaker.

Yeah, is Catherine like a homewrecker game?

Oh yeah for sure? Okay, depending on how you know which Catherine you pick? For sure, you picked the hot one who's like a devil. Yeah, there's a third Catherine in that they made like a re release of that. I don't know what the third cat head?

All right? Thanks.

The email comes from Josh and Ottawa. Hello Bomb crew, with Astro releasing this week, what do we think Sony's expectation sales sales wise? Are do you think they're underestimating or do you think they feel they got a huge hit on their hands. If this does well, are we going to get Astro cart Astro Party, Astro Tennis, super Astra World. Thanks and love you all, Josh from Ottawa.

I didn't, I would, I mean I would love that.

I hope, I hope exactly all that happens. That sounds great to me. I think the expectations are high. I hope they're not like crazy high. I hope it's not like ten million copies. I hope it's like five to seven. And even that seems pretty you know because look back at like what Ratchet and Clink did. Yeah, that seems

I hope there's not like extra pressure on it now because of what happened to Concord, But some are unfair that the.

Business chorice where they'd be like, sure would be nice if you guys get those extra couple of million copies sold that you know that, then we can make sure everyone going to be okay. That kind of those kind of conversations might be happening.

It does feel like there's a gigantic space for Astrobot to succeed because we don't have a new Mario game this year. There isn't like some type of three D platformer that's like blowing up the world, and Astrobot has at least has some name recognition with the previous titles, right.

I mean, and Sony's like never really made a three D platformer like this, right, Like they've had their like action platformers.

And yeah, Rats and Blank and Jack and daxterns.

They have plenty of you know, platforming elements, but probably.

Jack and Daxter one is the last time there was one that such a pure platformer first.

Yeah, and that has obviously been in a hot while.

I guess I'm curiously what is the effect of basically every PS five came with the predecessor of this. Right, so in theory, anybody everybody has a PS five got to play the last Astro game and hopefully really liked it, and hopefully that kind of turns into itself the best marketing pitch ever for this full blown sequel.

Now, yeah, you know, like I was thinking the other day, I'd like to play another Crash bandicoot, perhaps a spiral because that story came out. But you know, maybe I'll just wait for Astro to play, like right, Yeah, Jesus Christ, what a man. I can't wait. I can't wait all right. Next email is about Mike Manatti and singer songwriter Jesse j. So last week's show, Jesse Jay was brought up and the song price Tag, which Mike recognized only after humming

I've only ever seen Pitch Perfect three, which is really weird. There was a whole kind of like spy subplot in that one. It wasn't a raider good what what was going on?

It was? It was bad.

It was I think it was one of those things where it was like Christmas and like all of our friends want to see a Christmas movie, and the movie we wanted to see was sold out, so we saw Pitch perfect.

Those I thought you were describing the plot of the movie at first.

I'm like, I don't remember Christmas stuff in it.

No, Christmas is not involved.

No, I know price tech because like that that was the period of time when I was working at a pizza shop and that's the music just played the greatest.

Yeah.

So like any like circa tooth, like twenty eleven or twenty ten pop pits, I.

Know all our original radio yeah s and m yeah.

Like I'm very up to speed on anything that was popular ten twelve years ago.

Like who do you think is superior an a cappella group or a you know what? Never mind, I'm gonna ask Dan this, Dan, who do you think is more superior an a cappella group or a barbershop quartet?

I thought that when you said both of them I was just picturing the b sharps from The Simpsons?

Are they not both? No, that's a barbershop not acapella only.

I can't thinknically, but like acappella is like also making instruments and barshop quartets don't do that, right, They're just singing, right.

Yeah, well, I guess the acapellas like the where in the world is Carmen san Diego band?

That's rockepella.

Okay, okay, in that case.

On the ground where everyone understood what was happening.

I like that Carmen san Diego theme song a lot. So let's go with my rockapella against I.

Think I think I prefer acapella as well.

Okay, Zimbabwe, Ohio to check.

Us, great great show.

If a barbershop quartet perhaps, I don't know. I had more updated and up tempo songs. Y'all think you you could mess with that more than an acappella group.

Sure. I like the barbershop quartet from that was the best part of BioShock Infinite.

It was the biopiot was the definitely.

Yes, that was Yeah, you're right, I mean the whole intro was the best part of BioShock infinite because it seemed like it had a concentrated idea of what it was going to be about at that point, and then multiverse happened.

Hey you pekabus, we cauld celebrate ah cupell for next August. So no, we don't have to do that, Dan, Dan's gonna be singing everybody to watch that.

There we go, There we go, all right.

Next email comes from Levi and they're asking about console advice. Hey, Bombers, I haven't gone into the latest console generation yet. New is this PS four and I guess technically switch. I don't have a gaming PC, but I'm planning on getting a new console in time for GTA six next year. So my question is PS five or Xbox. Aside from a slight preference for the Xbox Controller, I don't have

Levi, Well, there will be a PS five pro it doesn't seem like there's going to be any kind of improved Xbox. If you like want like the best one, I guess you should go play Stage.

Yeah that sounds about right.

Yeah, unless you're like really big on the idea of game Pass and you look at the list and you like what's on there, because like I still I think that game Pass is just a smoother experience than the ninety tiers or whatever on PS five.

But uh yeah, if it wasn't for that, i'd say PS five.

Right, they're looking to play single player games, you know.

There's Sony's got a lot of good single player Yeah.

Yeah, and there's been a bunch already released, so you're getting it in it a good time where you'd be able to play those games that are on on PS five. Obviously some of those were on PS four. You saying you're just getting into this generation, so maybe you've played some of those. Maybe that affects things, But I don't know. The safe bet right now feels like PS five. I don't you end up with an Xbox, make sure you make sure you're doing it for game Pass, as Dan says, yes.

Yeah, forget like Xbox games are going on PlayStation now play games are not going on, right, true, that's true.

Why I think the safe bets PlayStation yep?

Yeah, all right. Two more emails, This one comes from Sorry, yeah, get that's the real answer, get a PC.

Aiden.

Adrian writes in the Pokemon Trainer Club had a data breach which allows someone to hack my account and take control of my Niantic user name and lose access.

To their apps.

I lost eight years of playing Pokemon Go. That's a whole content, as well as Monster Hunter now, et cetera. As of last week, Niantick sent me to Google.

Google sent me to.

Niantic Trainer Club washed their hands of it. Niantics take at this point is start over. It's not that they can't do anything.

As they completely restored the account of an influencer earlier this year, they choose not to. I'm heartbroken.

I lost eight years of playing with friends and family, connections made all over the world, and now any future plans are pretty much shot. It was something we all look forward to and has been taken away from all of us.

I can't bring.

Myself to go back. So two questions. One, why isn't this story about Niantic's policies a bigger thing. Two, have you or any of the crew had a gaming loss that was so devastating it made you never go back to the game. Thanks Aul, keep up the good work. Adrian from Parlan, New Jersey.

We were just talking to doctor Ryan. I remember him talking in chat before about like losing his Xbox account and not being able to get it back and so he lost all his game purchases and that really soured him on Xbox. And I was like, yeah, I've heard those kinds of horror stories for a lot of different things, and I think that's the reason that the answer the

Yeah, oh, same, Especially to play eight years in Pokemon Go, you were spending a significant amount of money. Because you cannot play that game for eight years and not spend money at it and have a good time with it. So I think that's the that's the stuff that stings especially, is that I've given you so much money at this point, nantick right.

Right, then they will give you a time of day and like and it's so obvious that, like if you had some kind of big Twitter following or something, then they would sure.

Funny enough, two of my instances where I stopped playing a game for a while, one of them is Pokemon related. The original Pokemon Blue. I had my whole group, I caught as many Pokemon as I could, and for whatever reason, I was battling a trainer and I turned off the game, just a hard shut off on the Game Boy Color. And I fired it back up an hour later and I said, my save was corrupted. Oh my Pokemon were gone.

Did you have a missing know in your party? Did not have a missing no on my party.

I was not smart enough to figure that out yet as a child.

But all my Pokemon were gone. That's not good.

Gamer did a story recently about like shutting off computers and games in the middle of like when the same thing pops up, but they say, never turn off your game to see when it happened. There was a lot of like interesting results. Most of the time things were fine, though the other.

Oh the other part of course, yeah, soured me on the Beautiful Joe franchise and official PlayStation magazine. I don't know if y'all remember there was a specific demo disc that if you played Beautiful Joe either one or two for whatever reason, it bricked or corrupted every save on your memory card.

Remember that.

Wow?

And I remember having a fun time with that demo. It's like, oh, I'm totally going to pick up Beautiful Joe. Oh, thank you OPM for giving me this demo disc like you do every single month.

This is great.

And then I restarted my PS two because I wanted to play something else, and then all of the blocks, the towers I collected over the years were all gone.

And then I'm like, wait, what happened?

What's going on?

Oh?

Man, that's rough.

And I opened up my.

Memory card and everything, like hours and hours of games were just now black corrupted squares.

And then I stopped buying OPM yeah, and I was like, I can't do this anymore, guys.

A game specific one that I had was Dark Siders two on the WIU. There was some bug when it launched, and I got like ten hours in and it it bugged out and corrupted my save and I was like, nah, I thought that game was fine, but not enough to restart all that stuff.

Sure.

The bigger one was in college.

I went home for like a winter break or something, and I brought my GameCube with me because I was working on something, and so like, obviously all of my game saves or the gamekeeper on this memory card. And I went back home back to college, which it's only like a forty minute drive from from John's County to Lawrence, but I didn't want to drive all the way out for that.

And so I got a hold of Kayla and my sister and.

Say, hey, Caylea, can you find my GameCube memory card and mail it to me and Lawrence. She's like, yeah, no problem, get a letter. You know. About a week later, it's just a standard ass paper envelope with just a hole in the corner and nothing in the envelope. And I'm like, oh, there's all of my GameCube saves are gone. No excellent, Yeah, yeah, that was a fun one.

Yeah ideal, I'm envelope maybe not the ideal way to send one of those things.

Yeah, Kayla's not a mail teacher, you know, right, of course. Yeah, it's not really her a thing.

I never would accuse her of being one.

Yeah. Yeah.

I also in the past couple of years, I talk about this one during some quick looks.

But I just have terrible luck with saves, stuff getting corrupted or stuff getting restarted. I don't know if it's just me and the problem. The answer is I'm not the problem. So fix your games, everyone, Jesus Christ. Next, we have a Traviy trifecta. Travis from Fargo writes in three emails three quick questions. I'm going to ask them right now. With Halloween just around the corner, What do you think is this year's big costume? And how about group costumes?

Wolverine's coming back in a big way? This okay, I think you know that that has been done a lot recently. All right, But like now that that now that the Wolverine costume was in the Wolverine movie, we're gonna see a lot of yellow and blue like group costume.

You guys want to tell about the chained people at the restaurant?

What?

Ah?

Yeah, it was confusing, but I think I think Mike or was it you grabbed to crack the code.

Yeah, well we saw.

Yeah, there's a couple that came in and they were just like chained together, and you know, we're talking, is this a sex thing?

Is this well, because somebody else came into not necessarily with the group, with a shirt that just said B D S M on it, and so I'm thinking, like, is there like a sex fetish convention happening at the same time.

As PAX in Seattle?

But it was weird because it was like, I feel like, wouldn't you normally like there's like the dominant one that's got someone on a chain or something, but they were chained together in a way that did not seem like.

One of them was like in charge of the other one. And so it was like, what is this sex thing?

What is this fetish?

And then I think Grub was like, oh, it might be a chain together cosplay.

I think so, yes, maybe baby.

Well, but the guy had a ratchet tattoo and it was like, well, okay, that.

Over.

Well they're freaks to those ratchet fans.

Yeah, yeah, they got they have their own guess.

Anyway, that's like, that's my answer. Is the group the group of costume could be a chain together group there.

Because it was once you said that it was exactly like it was a thing around their waist with like a big like.

It was like a big like.

It didn't seem like like oh sex thing chain, you know exactly.

So I think that would be a fun one to do with friends.

Yeah.

Do we think we're gonna get like Olympic costumes this year? Like that Bad Breakdancer?

Perhaps?

I think I've already seen that. I saw Dragon Con did that.

Okay, so yeah, you'll definitely see the Bad Breakdancer.

You'll see uh the Lady Shooter that won the gold medal.

To us, still a big thing.

Hawk Tua might be a costume, but.

Okay, we're done with of course.

Of course, every everyone got real indignant that Hakua was like showing up a stuff as if they didn't manifesto.

Yeah, you're right, listen, we can only janifest and chancel so many things. Once something gets through the pipeline, it's impossible.

That right once through the veil, we can't controlled anymore exactly exactly. Uh, do you guys have trigger treats that come to your door?

No?

Yeah, a few, but I'm usually I'm usually not home because I go walking with the Nevies and.

The Okay, well you'll be out there with the kids. Then what costume do you expect the kids to be? Mostly because I think Blue is gonna be big again this year.

Blue. It will be very, very big Blue. He hasn't been going anywhere. Lots of blue eyes and bingos will be strolling around out there for sure. Otherwise, Yeah, I don't know there's been any Oh, inside out, there'll be some inside out stuff this year.

Inside out to was a giant.

I should toilet That's that would be fun.

Just yeah, just buy a toilet seat.

Yeah, just buy a toilet seat and I'll be sere. Yeah.

The children are gonna be Yeah, the kids can't stop talking about number one kids movie this year.

Gosh, maybe someone will go as a pool Oh was that pool movie?

Right?

Okay, everyone's gonna go as a fairite character from Concord.

Oh boy, the one that looks like Drax or the one that doesn't look like tracks.

They all kind of look like dra the they hell kind of the one who looks like Dracs act so much like Drack. That was that was kind of rough that right there may have been at least fifty percent of the problem that they just put dracks in the game.

We're gonna have kids dressing as Cody Roads.

Oh yeah, we'll see kids and muscle Checker Tree Cody Roads. I want to see a bunch of little Roman reigns is just going aw it'd be fun.

Oh yeah, of course.

And then they're like, all right, kid, here's your candy. And then you just give them like one of those Smarties necklaces.

Oh yeah, Pop, I see an Astro because that game will have been out for a month and a half by then, and if I see an Astro.

I'll be very happy, y'all, Like Astro grew up.

Yeah, they already. Maybe do they play? Are your kids?

Are the gimmicks breaking in Bargo?

The kids are out there breaking it? By no. They like the Astros play room and they've been they've been very excited for this one. They have not played yet, y'all.

Y'all got a favorite Halloween costume you had in previous years?

I me and my friends did a Jurassic Park group cost you one time. We were all different people and I was the old guy and like I made like the staff. I even like like learned how to use resins. I made like little Mosquito in there, and my one friend looked just like Jeff Goldbloom and the other one

So it was a very.

Yeah, we should do that. Yeah. As a kid, Raccoon Mario, that was my favorite, My mom, that's really good. Yeah.

I one year, I took one of those Trifl poster boards and just cut it to look like Kirby and painted it and I just wore that around me like what like a hanging chat or was that called two thousand? Yeah, yeah, yeah, And then I was just like, hey, here, I'm a Kirby and it was hit that's pretty.

Good, uh baka, and I went as you know how in mcgerber uh he also makes Kristen wigg dress up as mcgerber when he sends her into Dangerous Ermances.

Yes, so she was MC and I had and everything.

That's very good.

We should just we should just be for Halloween this year. Yeah, we only have to like dress up from like like like boob up. Basically I have I have mcgoverer outfits. We know, I basically have the.

Best group costume myself from Jack Dragon con Over the weekend was a group of people dressed up as the French Army for Monty Python and they had a tarp they would throw over whenever they were on a balcony and they would just start yelling at people and throwing like toy baguettes.

It was, Oh, that's good, that's right.

Uh.

Travis's next question, if you had a nutrition label info on your body, what would it say?

Oh, God, might say don't drink water, Yeah exactly, there's way a nutrition label or like a nutrition warning label.

Yeah yeah yeah.

It'd be like the chicken and PiZZ crab fries jan.

Oh my god, yeah, like a little disclaimer of like don't eat too much it is yep.

Yeah, I would say, I there must be a lot of sugar because he's so sweet.

Oh mine, mine would have an expiration date and I wouldn't want to see it because I wouldn't want to know.

Ship.

We all have expiration dates. Yeah, have you ever think about that?

Yeah? All right.

Travis's last question I got him.

That's a good one.

That's a classic.

Thanks guys. Yeah uh.

Travis's last question in a post mustache is our funny world. What's your favorite kind of facial hair to see on others?

I always mark out with somebody has a Lemon.

I enjoyed the I like the Lemmy.

I also like it, ironically because of that period where Triple Ah just wanted to be let me and so we had let facial hair.

I thought it looked good on him. I wish he kept it longer. I liked when he had the Lemmy. I forget with I don't know lemmys. When you have like the full beer but the chin chop chin yeah yeah right, yeah yeah.

I like the complete inverse. Give me a soul patch. I was excited when I see a man pulling off a soul patch. Well done soul patch.

Yeah yeah, yeah, oh god.

I I had a I butted a lot of heads because because of my hairstyle. Someone was saying, like, you can't have a handlebar mustache as well, that's doing too much jin it's a lot.

Yeah.

I was like well, fuck you. What if? What if I tried and then I tried it and then I was ridiculed, So I just stuck with the pump.

You were unappreciated in your time.

That about does it for emails. Bomb cast at giant bomb dot com is the email address send your emails two and folks, that about does it for the show. Sorry for the technical difficulties at the tippity top. And if you're listening to this uh post not live of the archive, then you didn't notice anything. It's fine because of the expert uh producing an editing of Turbo Shan Sean McDowell.

Boys, what do we got going on the rest of this week? Game US Mornings Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, greb.

That's right, Uh, I feel empty because B week is over, But listen, the remnants of B week we'll live on in our hearts. For sure. We'll do we'll do some fun stuff this week. We probably because that game's out this week. Right by Friday, Astro we'll do some astro stuff on this website. How about that? That sounds good to me?

Yeah? Maybe maybe Friday is just Astro Friday.

Maybe it is, And that would be fair that sounds great to me.

Mike, you can tell that's good boy.

I hope so too.

Uh, Mike, you you you're blinking. You're closing your eyes right now, maybe because you're a little tie tie, but I am.

About half an hour ago, it hit me like a wall. Like, oh, like I thought, I got a full nights of sleep and everything like that will be enough to rejuvenate me from the last two weeks.

Nope, I need to go.

I'm gonna get my work done over at GamesBeat dot com, which everybody should go check out.

And then uh.

Yeah, con welcome to Imron Khan the games beeat dot Com. That kind of arrest up for Black Club because that is tomorrow Might continues his adventures and Alone in the Mitch possibly the best show title one.

Yeah, it's very.

Levels deep. You got to like really be in on it.

Yeah, I'm glad that you didn't let the lack of a good title dissuade.

You from That makes it even better to us.

Yeah, it just it's a shame too, because I how things shook out a packs that I'm not going to get to play mine for another run.

Proud of yourself.

Oh yeah, you'll be fine.

Okay, but we'll probably try and do a grabag stream sometime this week. Check out a bunch of games that we've missed that come out over the past couple of weeks. I'd also like to show off some tactical Breach Wizards. Funny game, good game.

Yeah, let's do that. That sounds fun. That game rules.

Voicemail dub Truck popping off later this week as well, folks. And I'm we didn't learn squat today because I'm too scared to press my go Xlr to play the music, so I didn't learn anything out. But I am here to formally announce everyone. Get your calendars out, get them callis out, send your Google invites right now, starting the week of September thirtieth, going on through the October fourth, that's right, nine thirty to ten four. It is gonna be Infrastructure Week.

Everybody doing it.

We're right track. Get your hard hats out. We're building towards this. It's it's gonna be monumentous, folks. Infrastructure Week. Wow, We're gonna build it and you will come.

I'm gonna make you guys play so many games. It's gonna be awesome.

What I've long been a proponent for the importance of infrastructure. So I'm glad we'll rise shine a light infrastructure guy.

Yeah, you're big into civil engineering, you you like I love to know what that is too.

Yeah.

Did you guys have to make a balsa wood bridge in school?

I think I did.

Yeah, I crushed that.

I like set a new school record my bals wood All right now number one bals of wood boy folks, so many, so much balse of wood boys is so bad. Let's do extremely make a wood bridge.

Sure you can do that.

That is gonna happen during Infrastructure Week, gentlemen, the competition.

Yes, yes, we're uh god, will you get kids? Okay, I've got a document.

All right, I'm gonna say this now. In February, we're gonna have science Week. Oh okay, hell yeah, we gotta play ahead. We're gonna do the whole egg drop thing off.

Of a roof.

Yeah okay, yeah, I want to.

I want to find those old interactive Magic School Bus CD and that taught me about minerals in the plane.

I'm gonna stream in Karta.

Yeah.

I love that instructure card running. Yeah, that would be incredible. Infrastructure Week, we're gonna get into trucks. We're gonna build a theme park. I'm gonna make everyone play Minecraft again. We're gonna play Skyblock because I've been dying to do that. We're gonna we can play Djenga again. Sure, ticket to Ride or boom Blo. Oh my god, we could play boom Blocks.

Yeah. Destruction is part of infrastructure, absolutely, exactly.

You have to destroy to build sometimes, folks, we can play we could play fucking red Planet works retraction, Gorilla reaction, struck camera.

That you do infrastructure with infrastructure sounds awesome.

Yeah, and you know what, infrastructure is a very fun word to spell that earlier n f r A S t r U C t U r E. Yeah, Dad, I was told that you maybe should have been disqualified from the jump though. Why because one of the rules I said was to say the word, spell the word, then say the word again.

It's no one's but that's never that strict. It's okay, just like it's an unwritten like.

People do it. But you're not going to get decued because you don't do it.

Uh wait, what is that, Mike?

My monitor is flickering.

Yeah, I don't see anything.

Oh god, this is to me Mike exlart breaking again. Oh geez, I guess we should end the show. Also, hey, your public call? Uh? Does anyone know how to make a puppet holler at your boy? Folks?

That has been the Giant BombCast Episode eight, one hundred and fifty six. Video are gonna go up soon. If you misspacks West, those are gonna get archived. Don't you worry your pretty sweet little faces. Uh, the Cologne Games Calm travelog is going to come out. I swear to god.

It is not going to be like the trained vlog.

I've been Jaring, he's been Jeff, he's been Mike, he's been Dan, and I don't know what that is on Mike's lap.

But we'll see you next week for another episode. Oh the giy bombed you talking to me? You don't need a haircut? You're fine, Aaron, Aaron, that's right, Sean.

It's a race the gorilla video. I'll edit that too. We can all race.

No no, no, see. This is why I introduced the meta of not editing a travelog and need just showing clips. That's not bad. That ex getbye