896: Current Next Gen

Bye. Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday. Welcome to the Giant Bombcast. It's June 24th, 2025. uh i did this out of order so welcome to the giant bombcast episode 896 i am your host a little bit foggy mentally and in the weather that i'm having jan ochoa joining me though co-captain of the ship his collars are pressed and clean Jeff Krupp. Howdy. Hey. Yeah, I started a new breathing technique to help with brain fog. You breathe less. Oxygen, it's for the birds. I don't need it anymore.

Speaking about birds, I would like a quick update on his bird situation. Dan Reichert. Paul, the guy who's like 80 and lives on my street, came and knocked on the door the other day. And he's like, hey, I cut down a tree in your lawn because it's going to help with airflow. And I think he asked me if I cut down the tree.

I don't know. Sure. And so he cut down a tree. He's like, yeah, I'm just going to cut it down. It'll help with like woodpeckers. It'll help with the airway between you and your neighbor. You just need to carry it down to the backyard once I'm done. And I just didn't want to talk about it. So I said, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And I didn't. There's just a tree. that's cut down and chopped up on the side of my house now and I don't want to do anything with it. Sounds like you got worked.

No, I'm fine with that tree nut. It's the side of my house I don't even ever see. It's on a huge hill. I can't go over there safely. It sounds like a tree chop pervert came to your house and made you deal with his mess. Yes. He lives down the street. He was just, he does like, live on every street in America. Dude, if someone came to my house and was like, I'm chopping down one of your trees, I'm like, I'm going to cut.

Your legs off. No, I said, just do whatever you need to do. I don't want to talk about this. Chops is a cut of meat and we've got the most delicious cut of meat here. That's right. He's our own filet mignon.

Jeff Bacalar. Oh, that's very nice of you to say. I love that cut of meat, even though I'm trying to slowly but surely eliminate red meat from my diet. I appreciate you giving me the best cut. Thank you. And last but certainly not least, I didn't give a second mic check question, so I think he's still a little bit perturbed with me.

So instead, I'll give him this. He's not only the bad boy of games media, but speaking about meat, he's the meatiest man in games media. He's the rarest of rare. That's right. He's just. past blue. He's still bleeding the meat juice. The hemoglobin is dripping off of him. Mike Minotti. Hi.

Oh, that red meat is bad for you stuff. I mean, I'm sure that's true to a point, but is that maybe a little? Oh, it's empirically true. There's no debate for your part. There's no good meat for you. Only chicken. It's like the one that's like slightly okay. Turkey's fine. I thought turkey was really good for you. Turkey's actually...

Yeah, listen, sure, whatever. Yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself. I mean, red meat's very bad for you. I don't know what else to tell you. What's wrong with real? Okay, but I believe you. You're right. It's just the way that Americans eat. you're wrong like that i think it's like i could definitely see us eating so much red meat that it has definitely i think that's the short version i did just get back from kc so barbecue happened uh a lot um i had uh

burnt ends, which is definitely red meat. And I had pulled pork, which... I do. Again, this is this is a genuine question here. It's a 3.0 question. No, it's actually confusing, Dan, because there was a whole ad campaign calling it the other white meat. But apparently that's a lie. Maybe. Oh, yeah.

less healthy than like chicken and turkey yes but more fat it's not just because of fat content it's just fattier pork probably the issue makes sense i i you know what i don't know for sure that might be what they were talking about at that time and we know with like fat is not as bad for you as we once thought it's hey you know what food still confuses me yeah yeah it's

it's kind of disturbed me that uh everything i learned about the food pyramid may be empirically wrong oh yeah that was also a lie yeah that was that was done by uh big milk yeah big milk and and the wheat farmers trying to get you to eat more bread yeah and the corn people

17 bowls of cereal a day, according to this food pyramid. I don't want anyone to leave this podcast thinking pork is somehow white meat. We cannot allow that to be said. It is most certainly not. What do you think are the odds that someone listened to G-

at night and thought maybe i'll try a silica pack i stand by it i am not going to back down on that i am right about that i am objectively right and i did not suggest anyone eat one okay What's the benefit of eating one? Exactly. It's just a fun trivia thing that you can eat them. I've never eaten one. I'm not curious about eating one. Nobody should. Why would you? But you can and you'll be fine.

You could eat a lot of things that aren't food that won't kill you. Your point is stupid. But the interesting thing is that everyone thinks the do not, the thing that says do not eat all over it. And that's the one thing people know about it. You can just eat and it's fine.

Folks, that's right. What do you mean fine, though? We're going to stop this conversation right now. It's more likely to get lodged in your throat because of the salt content. It's going to kill you to death. You're going to die, Dan. Go cut down someone's tree.

Jesus Christ. To the Giant Bomb cast. We're a long-running podcast about video games. We're able to stay on, keep the lights on. Thanks to your support, giantbomb.com slash join. If this is your first podcast, wow. And I'll say that about every single first time you listen to this podcast. Wow. Wow. This is the one you choose. Fantastic. You can also.

Throw some bones at ko-fi.com slash giant bomb. And we love and appreciate all of your support. That's how we're able to stay independent and keep the lights on. Mike Minotti, you're waving your hand. Are you just waving high? No, Jeff's wife is on the camera giving him a donut. I'm waving to her. I got a donut. Let's get some donuts. Yeah, thank you. What is that, a cream-filled one? Yeah, those are donkeys.

Thanks, best. Appreciate it. Hey. How'd the dentists go? The YouTube? Yeah. Dan, if someone came to your door and was like, hey, I'm going to break all your windows. Is that all right with you?

how do you feel about that no that's different come on baccalaur come on that's different you realize in order for the first step in the experiment to work you have to take the most extreme example That is super friendly and lived down the street and always does everyone's lawn stuff all the time. And it was very nice. I doubt he's trying to swindle me by cutting down a tree. It's just not okay. It's just not okay. It's just not okay. I don't like that. He came to your house and was like,

I'm cutting your tree down. I think he was doing a favor because they're selling the house next to mine and he does a bunch of lawn stuff for everyone. It sounds like that's someone else's favor. No, he's a nice man. Paul is good. He likes talking a lot. God bless Paul.

Thank you, Paul. Oh, speaking of Paul, I was in the Kansas City. I solved the dog thing. Remember my mystery dog? You mean the dog that you were, that you remembered from when you were a child and your dad just about. I distinctly remember, I think we had my dad on a few years ago. Yeah. We never had a dog. And I was like, yeah, we had a dog named Ringo. I distinctly remember when I was a child, we had a dog named Ringo. And he's like, we never had a dog. I've never once had a dog.

We did fucking have a dog. I was right. He was wrong. I was at the lake with my mom, my dad, my mom's husband, my sisters, all that, my niece. And so we're sitting around and- It came up and mom's like, yeah, we had a dog named Ringo. And I was like, yes, holy shit. Because remember, I showed a picture and my face wasn't in it. And it was all like, oh, Dan made up this dog. No, I had a dog named Ringo. And the story behind it is just very weird and depressing.

pressing. So basically my grandpa get it. It's dark in a weirder way in a more way. So okay. My mom had a dog named Bo. before Ringo, when she got married to my dad. And she had had Bo for seven years and loved this little dog named Bo. Apparently Bo got out and ran away.

and the animal shelter found them, and my mom and my dad went to go pick up Bo, and my mom was like, oh, thank God, Bo's alive, Bo's safe, but the animal shelter said, okay, well, for the services and everything, it's $85 to take him home. And my dad wouldn't let her take her beloved dog home because he wanted to save $85. Oh my God.

So my mom secretly got Ringo because she wanted the dog and could not bring her beloved dog home. Mike, this is worse than your grandpa. Oh, yeah. Shoot all the dogs you want. Come on. This is crazy. When my mom told this story, my dad laughed. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. My sister called him a monster to his face. Oh, that's putting it lightly. I'm sorry, but that's really dark, man. I told you. Yes. We joke about my dad's cheapness and stuff, but oh, boy.

Paul came off really well in the last voice build dump truck. His stock was on the up and up. And now that you've dropped this new Paul lore, I feel like I hate him. Look. I strive for an accurate portrayal of my father in the good and bad, you know? Oh, that's so gross, Paul. What the hell, dude? But the word... So wait, so...

Then your new dog was a secret from Paul the entire time? I think she got him just because she loved dogs and wanted the dog, but dad would never approve it because it cost money. Here's, I think, the problem. I found that my... Dad, I don't think recognizes dogs or pets as a thing of value. Because even just last summer, he was here when Bob was out of town. I just had my surgery. My dad came up to kind of like, you know, nicely came up to kind of watch over me.

I was telling him to not leave the door open because the dogs were going to run away when he was out smoking. And he's like, oh, it'll be fine if they run away. Just tell your wife that, you know, it was my fault. And I was like, the problem isn't my wife's going to get mad at me. The problem is I would like to know.

lose my beloved dogs. I just don't think, I think he thinks of them as like, I don't know, like a CD that gets scratched. Like a hat. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Is he, is he sea dogs? Does he know they're real? He he does not think about them or care about them or pets in general. He hates any time. Like there was a dog at the lake, Maisie, and he just he's just angry any time he's around dogs because they're an inconvenience. This is the thing that's going to take Paul down. Chad is not happy with.

I was back on board I was back on board with Paul and then I found out he thinks dogs are disposable and I was like And I was like, whoops, I gotta do a 180. That's broken. That's just broken thinking. Imagine leaving the shelter, saying goodbye to your dog. He didn't say goodbye. No, I'm not saying him. Oh, that's horrific. Yeah, so I did have a dog. My dad just forgot, and so when he said I didn't have a dog, he was wrong. So yes, I did have Ringo. I don't know what happened to Ringo, but...

Oh, I don't want to know what happened to Ringo. Yeah, let's, yeah. I'm, uh, okay. I don't know how we pivot out of that. Uh, join everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, back where you go. You go first. You got something.

So I'm sure you've been paying attention to the weather news. And you're aware, everyone who's listening to this show, that in the big, big portion of the United States is undergoing an incredible heat wave. The heat dome. The heat dome. If you get fucked summer people, this is what you asked for. I don't want to hear it. This is what you voted for. This is what you voted for. You ranked summer. Yeah, you ranked summer number one.

instead of Zoran like you should have. Anyway, my air conditioning is fine. I remember when I was getting my roof replaced, someone was in the attic, and they were like, hey, your air conditioning up in the attic has a tube.

that is disconnected and maybe you want to like pop that bad boy on there a little tighter so that you're not losing any cooling air as it circulates to your to your upstairs so i like that happened like in february i kind of forgot about it yesterday it's 101 degrees here and then you start to realize that like maybe the air could be better

So I went in my attic last night. I went in my attic. Must have been, I don't know, 98 up there. And like, I don't know if you guys have been in a scary attic when it's sort of dusk. You ever do that? We don't have those here. You don't have attics?

No. I instantly turned into like water. Like my body immediately. You were like the senator in that one X-Men movie? Exactly. And then I went into the ocean. No. Like water automatically started coming out of my body to the point where like I was just up there It's a it was a kind of heat that I I could not understand

And instantly, out of my forehead, just like water, was just like someone turned a faucet out of the center of my forehead. It was fucked, man. Don't do that. Bad time to go to an attic. Whenever I hear about attics, I just think about that treehouse of...

Of horror. Is it Treehouse of Horror or Treehouse of Terror? I can never remember. I feel like it should be terror because like the T's. This is not terror? The tot. Yeah. Yeah, right? It's not terror. But I always just think of the Bart evil brother. Hugo?

In the attic. Yeah, with the fish heads. Oh, yeah, I like that one. Hey, this is what it looks like outside my window. It's just white. That's beautiful. You just took a picture of a cloud. That's really beautiful. No, this is just fog. Oh, is that fog? Yeah. Is it fog or is it smog? It's San Francisco, so it's fog. It's San Francisco Daily City, so it's fog. What's the name of the fog? It's got a name. Yeah, it's got a whole name and everything. Carl. Carl, yeah.

You can't name Fog. Yes, you clearly can. And it has a Twitter account. Wait, the Fog? Yeah. Is alive? It's just got a name. It's got a name and has a Twitter account. I didn't say it was alive. That's absurd. It's not worth $86, though. Right.

Everyone was posting their 10 top movies from the century so far. I bet everyone would like it if I did that. I think like is a strong word. Real quick, figure this out. Yeah, let's do it. And do it for real. Yeah, the last 25 years. It's the New York Times thing that everyone's doing. I did mine. Here, while he's setting it up. Do you have an account? You have to have an account to do it. I'm on here right now. First off.

National treasure. Oh, you bastard. What's happening? I think that's a fun movie. I agree with you. The best Indiana Jones movie of this century still easily. Yeah, it's the best Uncharted movie, too. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, this is going to be... Because I kind of gave up on movies halfway through this century so far. That's what I was thinking. All the Lord of the Rings movies were 2000s. Yeah. Let's not put all of them. Let's get Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring in there for sure.

That actually is the best one. I'm glad you like that one the best. Oh, yeah. What's Disney? The Disney things. Coco for sure. Coco is phenomenal. Yeah, Coco's up. If it was like any of the Pixar Disney ones, I think I'd put up. Up is from this century. And so is Wally. Oh, Wally's really good. Yeah, I might do those three. Like, Toy Story 3 could get in there, too. God, it's kind of Pixar-heavy. Like, Disney was doing some good stuff. Pixar's very good.

Mike, I'll read my 10 and tell me if any of these would be on yours. I got The Raid, Uncut Gems, The Wrestler, The Dark Knight, Walk Hard, Mission Impossible Fallout, Annihilation, There Will Be Blood, Creed and MacGruber. I think I'd put Creed in mine. I'm just learning how many movies were made in the 90s. I like watching McGruber with you. I don't know if I would put it that way. No, of course not. Of course not. It's like in my top 25 for sure.

Grubb, what was your top ten? It's Wet Hot American Summer, Before Sunset, Children of Men, The Social Network, Moneyball, Everybody Wants Some! Really? Yes, I love it. I love that movie, too, man. It's so good. And people are underrated. They're like, it's not about anything. And I'm like, you're actually a dumb person. First Man Oppenheimer, Black Klansman and Boyhood, which Mike fucking sucks. I do.

I don't like Boyhead. That might be a me thing. Spirited Away. You're not. I've heard that before. Spirited Away is the one I'm like really debated. Spirited Away has to be on there. Moneyball is a good pick, actually. I do like Moneyball. Moneyball is like the actual movie.

I watch every time I see it. If it's on TV, if it's at someone's house at a bar, I'm like, I'm gonna go watch Moneyball. I think Moneyball and Ford versus Ferrari are the dad movies of the century. Yes, yes, 100%. Grubb, I'm kind of surprised you didn't put Interstellar.

I'm like, I was like right there with Interstellar. I like Interstellar a lot, but that one's something about that is almost a guilty pleasure. I don't know. Yeah, I don't really know how to describe it. I love Interstellar, though.

I'm going to try and do mine real quick, Mike, while you finish yours. Sure. I'm trying to think if I would do any of the superhero ones. There definitely were some I liked a lot. I liked Batman Begins a lot, actually. It's really good. I like Dark Knight also. Yeah, Dark Knight's really good. Yeah. Dark Knight's very good.

I love The Dark Knight. The more I watch it, the more I'm like... There's a link in my... I did like Top Gun Maverick a lot. That was like one of the few movies in the last five years that made me feel anything. That one's like the best... Let's go test my new stereo equipment movie. Yeah, sure. That's the new like Matrix DVD. Yeah. All right. Yeah, we got surround sound. Yeah.

I don't think there's any, like, I don't know, more Oscar-y movies that I've really liked. This is your list, Mike. I might have liked some. I like to nightcrawler a lot. No, Parasite's my Oscar movie. Did Nightcrawler win an Oscar? No, it should have, though, which is weird. The Jalen Hall one? That one's awesome. That's a great movie. It's awesome. It's really weird, but I like it.

Thank you, chat. Avatar The Way of Water? I did debate The Way of Water, yeah. The Way of Water, actually. I love The Way of Water. I watched that like five times. Okay, I need one more. Oh, I hope I'm not forgetting something. Gosh. Oh, the big, my galaxy quest is like 99. Yes. So I don't, okay. I'm not doing guards of the galaxy. Stop trying to push it on me. Uh, New York times. Uh, God. So minus one was pretty good. Fall out. It's a good call, Dan.

That's like, yeah, tremendous. It's perfect. It's perfect. Yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm more. Oh, did you do Mad Max Fury Road, Mike? I can. Oh, I considered that. You know what? You're right, Jeff. That makes me incredible. That's actually the one I think I might feel worse about not putting on my list. I considered Mad Max and John Wick, but I did think that as far as action movies go, Fallout is like the best I've seen in a very long time.

All right. I think I have my 10. I hope I'm not forgetting something. Read it again. I want to, because I lost track. Oh, yeah. No, for sure. It's Mad Max Fury Road, Avatar, The Way of Water, Spirited Away, Creed, Lilo and Stitch, WALL-E. Up, Coco, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, and of course, National Treasure. You had me for the first, like, three.

Yeah, I don't think you had me at all, but that's fine. That's your list. Creed's amazing. Creed might be awesome. Coco, to be clear, Coco's maybe the best movie on this list. Coco is insanely good. I was checking my letterbox. Coco was the one I'm like, I was looking for five stars and Coco was the first one for a very long time that had five stars for me. Mike, I told you I left Coco in the theater, right?

yeah i know i'm upset but it was not but no but it wasn't my like it wasn't like i don't like this movie thing i was enjoying it it was just we were high and there was a guy being weird walking up and down the aisle with like like fingerless gloves and black clothing on uh bonk was like i think this guy might shoot up the theater and we

left. But it did seem good for what I saw. Maybe try to watch Coco again. I don't know. My top 10 movies of the 21st century. This is all just like top of the dome. And I feel bad that I was kind of trying to dunk on Quentin Tarantino and the mic check because I have Django Unchained. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Everything, everywhere, all at once. I still haven't seen that. Oh, grab. I think you'd like it. I know I would.

A little overrated, but pretty good. Avengers Endgame. I had to have some MCU there. Yep, it's awesome. I still cry whenever Cap picks up the hammer. That was the best theater moment. Yes. The hypest moment I've ever experienced in a movie. Absolutely. Godzilla minus one. Yeah. Hell yeah. Greta Gerwig's Little Women. I love that movie. Hey, Saoirse Ronan, Perfect Joe.

Oh, God. Timothy Shalvin is actually really good at that movie. He's great in everything. He's a homie. I've learned I really like that kid. He's awesome. He seems all right. He used to customize Xbox 360 controllers. He's all right. He seems funny. He's Bob Dylan. Let's all watch. Wonka. Okay. It's great. I saw that. Wonka's really good. I have Fury Road, Creed, and then the last three are movies I rewatch a lot and I'm interested to see what everyone thinks.

Scott Pilgrim versus the world. Oh, you're going to make him mad. Zodiac. Oh, I love Zodiac. People love Zodiac. Yeah, that's good. Oh, Dan, you would love Zodiac. I love Fincher. Yeah. I should see it. Yeah. And then this is the only, like, I should have looked up if Romeo plus Juliet. I think that's, like, 90s. No, that's 90s. That's so 90s. Oh, okay, okay. That was, like, pre-Titanic as far as, like, Leo stuff?

It might as well be the same time, yeah. And then my last movie, The Wachowskis, 2008. Speed Racer. Oh, fuck yeah. Hell yeah. I do really want to see that. Speed Racer Rules. That's another one I've watched like five times. Yeah. I fucking love Speed Racers. Is Creed like the one...

I thought you were going to say Cloud Atlas. Creed seems to be on most people's list. Is that our connecting issue? Creed is probably my number one, I think. I've never seen it. I love Creed. I didn't put it on my list, but it's awesome. It's one of my favorite movies. I liked Rocky Balboa a lot, too, but I wasn't going to put two Rocky movies. Rocky Balboa rules, yeah.

I consider putting them both on there, but I was like, look, Creed's definitely better than Balboa. It is. It is. It clearly is, but I like it. I think Creed's existence almost hurts Balboa a bit because it's even better. Late sequel than that. If someone said Creed was the best Rocky movie, I would be like, I can absolutely see that. I think it's the best made one other than maybe the first one. The first one, it's like actual best film. I think it's definitely between Creed 1 and Rocky 1.

Yeah, for sure. All right, Gabe. I mean, it's Coogler, right? Doing Creed? Yeah, come on. Of course. I really like Coogler a lot. He's very good. I'll watch everything he makes from now on. How could you go 25 years and just pick the 10 just like that during a podcast like that? Because it doesn't matter. I'm sure I forgot some that I'll kick myself over. Oh, I've been in my entire Letterboxd history and I looked at all my top ratings, like sorted by decade, by rating.

I think I got it. I feel like I've got half of it, but I don't know. Do you want to read what you got? I don't know if it's fully conclusive. Take your time. It's not a commitment. It's all right. I've got The Prestige. That's a great one. Yeah, that's one there. I love the prestige. Yeah, I almost had Get Out on mine. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse. That's a good call. The second one. I like the first one better. The second one's good.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Dark Knight. Wet Hot American Summer. That is a good pick. I have to say it again. Dan. This is for Dan the Wrestler. Yeah, that was great. Children of Men. Yep. Yeah. Parasite. Yep. Definitely. And Big Fish.

Oh, I hate Big Fish. You hate Big Fish? I like Big Fish. Aronofsky, do you hear about what his next movie is going to be? No. I thought I did. What was it? It sounds kind of amazing. It hasn't started shooting yet, but it's going to be The Rock.

It's set in, like, the late 90s, and he's going to be starring as, like, one of those, like, you know, motivational Tony Robbins-type gurus, and, like, some, like, depressed guy gets, like, too unhealthily, and too, like, can't you see The Rock? Because he is just kind of that guy. He is just kind of that, like, incredible guy.

incredibly charismatic but there's also an element of bullshit you know yeah yeah like it's all a lie kind of thing yeah like the tom cruise magnolia character you know like right it's gonna be awesome that's interesting that's saying this and i'm glad i thought you meant like

They were remaking The Rock like Sean Connery. Don't do that. Don't do that. I was like, I'm surprised he ran into that. F1. with brad pitt has an 88 on rotten tomatoes and i'm like i don't need another dad movie in my life but i guess i'm going to the theater boys i almost couldn't believe that was a movie i know it feels fake you're like you're like what who's that director

I got it here somewhere. Is it the Maverick director? Yeah. Oh, yeah, it is. Oh, shit. I didn't realize that. Oh, I got to go. His movies are just, they're all beautiful. Oblivion. Like, that movie's kind of like, it's so cliche with Tom Cruise, but it looks awesome. It's worth watching. Yeah, that movie's pretty cool. There's a new Pixar movie and no one is seeing it. Elio. Elio.

Oh my god, I have to see this movie, Mike. You would love my enthusiasm. I must see it. It's bombing hard. Is it? Yes, Disney and Pixar can not get any of- Review-wise, too? Review-wise, okay. People pay money to see it very poorly. It's like their worst ever.

I think kids movies like that. I mean, again, they're not just kids movies, but they're obviously like you're bringing your kids to see that movie. Right. I think it's hard with these sci-fi movies. I don't know. Yeah. And I also think like it's, I don't know if kids like.

really love I don't know I think there's a lot of competition for that yeah I don't even my kids have never heard of this I think if I brought it up they would not they'd be like what are you talking about I mean I do this sounds like such an old man take probably but you know it's like that Lilo and Stitch remake which isn't

that good makes a zillion dollars. And yeah, people complain. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. And here's the new thing. And boy, new things are a hard sell these days, huh? Yeah. Plus, I mean, I feel like I by the transit of property would have been exposed to some of that marketing through having a 10 year old. And I just we didn't know about it only until we were on Disney Plus being like, here's a sneak peek of this movie.

right yeah it just feels like it's like uh like mismatch right now because like new movies are not doing well anywhere except for like sinners like right like sinners the one that can pop off like the minecraft movie right right yeah but that's the movie no gokus yeah

I watched the Minecraft movie over the weekend. Oh, no. Yeah? What happened? Solid three out of five. Really? Oh, that's generous, Jan. i think i really enjoyed it and i wasn't even under the influence of anything i just sat there watching it's been in my house on repeat for like a month oh my god First of all, thank you everyone that tuned into my Moving Fund Razor stream. It was fun. It was cool to see some BTS stuff. There's more.

There's so much more on so many hard drives. Yeah. But I was talking about it. If your boy can like lose enough weight, I think it's about growing out my hair. I just want to be Jason Momoa. From the Minecraft movie for Halloween. Wait a minute, Jan. I remember WrestleMania with you. You wanted to be Roman Reigns. I'm going down to Samoans. Okay. Well, you said you wanted to be Roman Reigns just as a person, but you'll be Jason Momoa for Halloween?

Yes, I'll be Jason Momoa, and then afterwards, it'll be an easier transition to being Roman Reigns. Then you start lifting, yeah. Yes, yeah. I'm just going to change all my teeth. Jeff and I will be Jack Black. We'll have a whole group costume going. There it is. Danny the Chicken Jockey. That's right.

He doesn't need to do anything. It's perfect. Dan will be the chicken jockey and Backlore can be the chicken. Yeah. There we go. There we go. Does he have to, I have to piggyback on Backlore for the night? Okay.

Absolutely. All right. Jeff Backler said the magic word. Oh, yep. So now we talk about video games on this video game podcast. I almost forgot what we were doing for a second. Movies. Movies. Folks, normally we save the biggest game to chat about right before break, but this game is so big and so odd. that we got to talk about it at the tippy top of the video game segment. That's right. I am talking about Death Stranding 2. Oh my. Oh boy.

I've talked about it a lot when I did the preview for GameSpot and the 30 hours I did in Japan. I'm well past that now. I think I'm like, on the home screen, it says I'm like 80-something percent of the way through the game now. So I'm late.

game at this point so i'm curious you know i've got additional thoughts past the preview stuff but uh jan you've been where are you at now yeah where's everyone at is what i want to know oh gosh our account i'm not 100 i'm barely barely started actually i didn't have much time for it I got the idea. I don't know if you do, though. I don't know if you do. There's not going to be anything new or weird in this game after what I played so far in the first couple of hours, I'm sure.

I have a question. I feel like I've, uh, I, I know almost next to nothing about any of death, uh, stranding to lore storyline, whatever it is. And we should say, we're not going to go into real stuff. No. What I'm saying though, is that like, But what I've been able to sort of discern and extract from the reaction online is that I've seen reviews all over the place. I've seen people who are like 10 out of 10. I've seen people say like, this is a six at best. I don't.

know what's happening i mean the metacredit it's sitting in like a 90 right now so i think it's there are some outliers but it is getting some yeah it's really okay i would expect this game to get outliers this game is a wild weird game like the first one and god knows you know

I took a turn on it. I went from hating it to loving it. Oh, you did that? I don't remember that. Yeah, yeah. This is not a just like... mainstream everyone's gonna love it there's nothing yeah but like no let's be clear open critic 90 is game of the year contender that's no this isn't like oh it's a game of the year contender this is this is you don't get an idea and not be like in the conversation for that like that's really hard to do

This is like, it's like this and blueprints. We'll see how it sticks, the landing, because I do have some complaints. I'll get around to that. That's part of this? I feel like it does kind of spin its wheels a bit now that I'm very far. It introduces some plot points early on that are like, and you've probably all kind of seen the big ones. Like at the beginning, there's like, oh, shit, what happens here? And then...

you know, you'll go 40 hours and it's kind of barely touched on. And I'm assuming near the end, I'm probably going to get a lot of info dump type stuff. But narratively, I definitely like it more just because I like the characters a lot more than the first games. But the actual through line of what's happening, it's like you're connecting Australia and Mexico. It's...

And then there's, you know, wacky characters and stuff you meet in between. You'll get backstories about everyone and things like that. But like the actual moment to moment is kind of just like, you know, hey, Higgs is back. Here's Troy Baker. But like, it's just still kind of unclear. Again, I'm not done yet. I'm probably like 80.

plus percent done but like he just kind of shows up and is wacky and does some evil looking stuff and then there's a big boss fight and stuff but it's like narratively it's not super grabbing me um unless it really sticks the landing here but i don't really care because it's just so enjoyable moment yeah i think i'm with you dan i think i'm about like

15 to 20 hours in uh because the last time you and i checked in i was like around 10 11 and then i kind of fast tracked the stuff that you said to go investigate And the overall narrative, I don't know if I'm super in love with, but the characters more than anything, I think I'm latching on to harder. Seems like the cast is really good. Like the cast characters hanging out with one another is really solid. Yes.

And Dan, you and I were talking a little bit more about Death Stranding 2 before we went live. And I'm trying to place for myself at least whether or not my evaluation of Death Stranding 2 is... more so informed by them addressing some of the friction points I had with Death Stranding 1 because like you I was not sold on Death Stranding 1 until the director's cut came out and then I gave it another shot and then I think I just

Similarly, I had approached it with less preconceived notions and a general understanding of like, this is just going to be a weird game. Like, I shouldn't expect anything like Metal Gear-ish, maybe some of the common tropes that Kojima does. But coming into Death Stranding 2, it's... I don't want to use the metaphor of it's like riding a bike because that's a very simple process compared to anything you really do here and the experience of playing this game.

But I'm from the jump enjoying it. And I think a lot of that is tied to, I think, the individual characters being a little bit more fleshed out versus how they're initially introduced in the first one.

Yeah. And the first one, I just feel like there's so many times where it's like, okay, you go to meet a single character and it's just a bunch of, you know, exposition dump type stuff that doesn't really make that much sense. But like, since you do have a crew that you're kind of flying around with, or I don't know if it's flying.

navigates the tar currents, the DHV Magellan, there is a crew of people that you're on there. And just seeing the interactions between all of them is much more interesting than just lore dump type stuff one-on-one, which kind of took over the first game. They're great characters, all of them. You know, I love Tarman, Rainy, Tomorrow. And Jan, I didn't oversell Dollman to you, did I? No. He's the best. Is it possible to oversell him? No, he's such a cool dude. Okay.

You know how labubus have taken off, right? I'm sorry? What's that? I know about this, Jan. I'm with you. You of us do not know this. One within arm's reach. What is it? They're like these little furry creatures. People go goo goo ga ga. Clearly none of you are friends with Emma. They're very cute. Oh, this was Emma's thing. It's not just Emma's thing. This is like everyone's thing. This is Emma's thing, and you're stealing it now, but that's okay.

Wait, Emma invented labubus? Yes. No, she did not invent labubus. They're called labubus? Yes, labubus. L-A-B-U-B-U. Are they doing well for her? Well, I don't know. Maybe Emma's spending too much time acquiring La Boo Boo's. But anyway, La Boo Boo's. Uh, are these things that a lot of people can, cause it's pretty great. Can I tell y'all what the fake ones are called? Yes.

They're called Lafufus. That's funny. They're probably better. Is this just like, what do you call it? What were those? Beanie Babies? Yeah. Y'all remember like Kid Robot? Of course. Okay, anyway. These are like in blind boxes. People are going Google Gaga over them. You can find them in Popmarts or like resellers. Are they soft or plastic? Soft, except the face. I can't wait to see how we get back to Death Stranding, too. Yeah, I mean, this is the most Death Stranding. Follow me, Grubb.

I'm on the ride. Check along with me. People have so many of these bag charms and other stuff you buy from Pop Mart. I need a shoot. Dollman to hang off of every single bag I own. Is his name just Dollman? Yeah, man. It's doll man. It's tar man. Die hard man. You're right. You're right. I should have been on board with that a long time ago. Yeah, that's the that's the gimmick. Hot cold man was in Peace Walker. Yeah.

oh yeah you did not undersell him at all dad i thought he'd be a little bit too much like um what's his name in god of war 2018 oh head head man head man uh yeah the fucking not atreus fujin What was it? Fujin. Fujin, yeah. I think it was Fujin. Mimir. Mimir. Mimir. Yeah, I hate that fucking guy. He's okay. That's what I thought Dollman was going to be like, but he's the total opposite of Mimir. He doesn't spoil any puzzles, and he's just a friendly, fun guy to talk to.

Whenever I go to take a nap, I talk to Dollman about his day first, and he's just helpful and empathetic and sweet and kind. Yeah. And then, okay, this was another conversation we were having before the podcast started. but like after getting to see kojima in the flesh and kind of see his temperament on that red carpet that dan and i went to where we interviewed ben star and he was very upset with dan for some reason yeah

um maybe he just doesn't like the french who knows um kojima just seems like a very put together person that this type of game and all of the stuff in it i just i am so curious about what that directing process is like Yeah, like you have to wonder how much these actors know about stuff because.

I considered asking the actress who played Rainy, like, hey, you know that, you know, you take a shower with the puppet and that keeps the puppet from aging and stuff. And it's like, wait a minute, she probably doesn't know about that. Like, Dollman tells you about that. It's not, I don't, she doesn't have any lines about it.

Dollman's just like, yeah, I shower with Rainy and it keeps me young. All right. She doesn't even know that, I guess. Okay, as far as the gameplay mechanics go, can I ask you, to me it seems like...

it is death stranding one but they made the combat much better so there's a better like sort of flow between the two states of i'm delivering and i'm building infrastructure and now I'm going to fight stuff, and that's fun, and I'll get back to building. It just feels like it's all connected a little bit better. Is that the gist of it? Yeah. It's kind of the best for me in terms of a Kojima game, because the thing I don't like the most about Metal Gear and...

Death Stranding is the stealth is the sneaking. I'm not patient, really. I just like every one of those games. I just. fuck up immediately and then i have to shoot everyone this one you can just start shooting everyone from the beginning if you want to but if you want to be stealthy which i know a lot of people do those mechanics are there you can sneak around the tall grass and strangle guys with the strands and do decoy hollow grenades and all that stuff or you can just

go in with some big dumb guns and, you know, tranq grenade launchers, which is a hilarious concept. And you can just treat it like an action game and it works great for that. So honestly, in terms of just that like moment to moment action and enemy encounters, this is my favorite of any kojima game wait so you i just i'm not i'm just trying to dan 3.0 here a little bit like you

Hate stealth, but you... I don't hate it. I love the idea. He's bad at it. I'm bad at it. Metal Gear is your favorite? I like the story and I like the world and the characters and stuff. I know. You just hate playing it. No, I don't even hate playing it. I'm just bad. I just wind up, most of my Metal Gear playing time is like...

hiding and an alert is going off and then somebody finds me again and I shoot them and then repeat until like, yeah. I was just wondering, I think it's a fair question. I've never beat a Metal Gear game without killing like at least 400 people. Got it the way, yeah, yeah. Kojima did it, yeah.

But yeah, mechanically, Grub, the action and the gunplay and stuff like that is worlds, worlds better. That's the first thing I noticed. It's like, oh, it's fun to shoot in this game. And I get it. I'm shooting non-lethal bullets.

But if someone walked in the room and saw what I was doing, I'm like, oh, you're just killing some people. I'm like, yes, I am. Oh, you're going around with an assault rifle with an underbarrel grenade launcher, but it's a Trank grenade launcher. I do like that. I'm the stupid ass. I was like, I feel better about this. Like in Arkham Dark Knight.

Where you're running over people with your car, but it's like, it has like an electric shield around. Like, it's just knocking them out. Sure. They're like ragdolling into a concrete wall. I'm like, they're safe now. They're just sleeping.

Grub, I think there's an item that'll speak to you later in the game, which I love using, which, you know, this is, I guess, a spoiler in terms of an item you can make later, so mute if you want to. Don't bother me. It might bother others, though, so yeah, go ahead. Yeah, mute for a second if you want to. It's called the Coffin Board, and it is a, like...

like weird metallic cyber coffin that you surf on and you can only use it within the chiral network. It utilizes the chiral network. So, but you can hold R2 to accelerate. So it's basically a snowboard coffin that like it rides.

So as you're riding it, it's like a splatoon tar thing underneath you. And so when I'm going up these snowy mountains and stuff now, I'm just surfing a coffin with tar underneath it. And it's like you can jump and stuff. There's ramps you can go off. That sounds incredible. A pop-up says extreme. Square and you hit square and you do a fucking SSX drink and it's fucking fun. Now, I'm sure you saw this, but let's break a little news here.

Did you see the latest crossover between Death Stranding and a brand? Domino's! Domino's! What are they doing? Yeah. Delivery makes sense. I'm going to order Domino's, though, because of this. Listen, there is a pizza chef in the game. It is not Domino's branded, but I've been studying in the ways of...

Pizza condo or something, Jan? I don't know if you have any pizza spinning attacks. It's like dough, but like pizza dough. Oh, I get it. Pizza dough. And so I've got like an M. Bison psycho crusher where I like throw pizza dough.

Get a rubber pizza that you can fucking throw to knock dudes out and stuff. And the pizza can fold up and put it into your grenade pouch so you don't have to carry it on your back. The pizza chef's awesome. You have a pizza fight with him at one point. Fuck, it's really good. It sounds stupid. and awesome. Yeah. We are going to put up a post tomorrow night at Embargo of something that I ran into that I don't...

Know if anyone else has run into because there is a specific circumstance you need. You'll see us to keep an eye on our socials. Really, it should only happen to you based on what happens in there. So, yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. Oh yeah, I see what you're talking about. But yeah, there's just...

Every moment I pick it up, I never know what kind of like, you know, it could be a normal delivery. And it's like some hologram tells you like, thanks, Sam, could really use this stuff. And then sometimes it's like, oh, I'm having a pizza fight and learning pizza fighting techniques and roundhouse kicks that shoot dough out and or doll man will.

At any moment, this game could do something that could just absolutely delight or confound you. And I love just not knowing, you know, you play a lot of games, you expect certain things. These are how games work. This one kind of turns a lot of it on its head and you kind of don't know what to expect. Apparently the pizza character's name is Higgs. Is that right? No, Higgs is Troy Baker.

Okay, well, Higgs Monaghan has the same surname as the founder of Domino's. Oh, did I see that? Yes, there is a Hatsuni Miko type thing that gives you a hat, and it's like a rabbit hat. But I put it on, and I was so confused because all the...

of a sudden every time sam was gonna do something he would go peco peco peco peco and i was like why does he say peco with every like instead of grunting he would say peco when he punched he would say peco and it's like what the fuck and then i realized that's what the anime lady says so If you wear the anime hat, Sam just says Peko all the time. I don't know what the fuck that's about. I'm delighted and confounded, Dan. Yeah. The person's name is Usada Pekora, but maybe...

It's the VTuber's name, so you're saying Peko in honor of this VTuber. Oh, okay. I also have a camel hat that's just a full and big lumpy camel thing. And I guess there's water in there. So if Sam gets thirsty, it's like a beer hat where it's like there's he can drink from the camel hat and it keeps you in the desert. It's better for you. You can carry more stuff. There's so much weird shit. Yeah. Are you pro VTuber now? No, no, no. But you'll give them a slide there for the VTuber inclusion.

I think he took off the hat because I'm not mad about VTubers. I just never think about them in any context whatsoever. He wouldn't rescue one for $85. If it meant something to someone, I would. I want to go.

back to the characters for a second because uh yesterday during game s mornings greb you brought up a story about how charlie cox felt like an imposter so they're fraud yeah Oh, that's amazing. I love that story. Apparently, you know, he did like a daze maybe of work. He said he recorded all of his dialogue for Expedition 33 in four hours.

and probably didn't think about it much after that and now all these people come up with him like you you are incredible in that game he's like i don't play games i'm glad get away from me nerd yeah i do not i feel like i do not deserve these accolades but like i just want to highlight how

Like, in this game specifically, you got Hollywood-ass actors in it. Like, you get Elle Fanning and Leia Sadu, and like... everyone's really good they're awesome in it yeah um uh shioli katsuna is is rainy and like everyone just like really well written that i i like hanging out with everyone and i don't know maybe it ties into

And I didn't think Death Stranding 2 would be my found family game of the year. But like, I think it might be because I love hanging out with these goobers. Yeah, the group photos of all the characters sitting together.

is one of the things that makes me want to play this game the most. It's like, look at that guy with the guitar sitting next to the doll man and the guy with the bandana. I don't know if all these guys are actually friends, but it makes it look like that, and I'm interested. It's almost like, you know,

is really good at just putting together these like ensemble weirdo casts and like you know i think about like foxhound in the first metal year solid i think that is my favorite assembly of like rogues gallery of bad guys i think they're all interesting and awesome together It's like that, but it's for your good guys on the ship that you hang out with and talk to all the time. It is a genuinely very fun crew. I think you made that point in a preview, Dan, that in the first game...

All these cool characters were like, you go talk to them on their own as you have these conversations with them and they're neat. but now they interact with one another. Does that interaction build to something? Does it really feel like they are a family at a certain point? Yeah, I compared it to Arrested Development season four when they couldn't get the actors together and the ensemble stuff from the first three seasons. That's what it feels like. And there are these occasions.

objectives where it's like hey go meet with the crew on the bridge and I look forward to those because I look forward to every cutscene where it's like Sam walks in and they're all in there talking about something and tar man's tar cats flying around doing weird stuff and you bang up doll man on his little like a hook and he

sees everything. And I just, I love like this whole cast is fantastic, especially your crew on the Magellan. And you do see like, you see backstories of doll man. You see backstories of tar man. You kind of learn why tar man doesn't have his hand and what's going on with that cat. and all that stuff. I appreciate it. You texted me when you got some doll man stuff because you knew I would appreciate it and I was very happy. I'm like, okay, I got to get there.

what i told you specifically i don't remember if that was a spoiler or anything but i'm yeah i'm sure it could be so yeah we don't have to talk about any of it but it was just like every little tidbit was like like what are you talking about yeah yeah oh man it's

I genuinely love it. And for the complaints that I have about like, you know, again, the narrative itself, you know, if you just looked at it on paper, it's not like. thrilling necessarily, but the moment to moment, whether what you're doing or just even if it's a thing, a scene that like is a story cut scene that doesn't really make sense or move anything forward much. It's all done with such style that it's all just fun to watch, you know?

um so i'm never i'm really never bored with this thing there are some things that seem a little superfluous that um you know like early on it introduces like oh you can uh you know start up these mines and you can build monorails to like move large amounts of cargo from you know station station and I was like oh that's a that's a big new thing but

It's you can utilize it. It doesn't. It's not a necessary thing at all. It's easy enough to just load up a truck with stuff and drive to the next area. Yeah. But what if I spent hours and hours building up infrastructure like I've been doing that road craft. It's fun as hell. I will have nights where it's like, all right, I'm going to.

start with like a story mission. So I make some progress, but then I am just going to sink in here and I'm going to do hours of just building these fucking highways out. And like there's mechanical stuff like the zip lines, which were really fun in the first one.

it's smarter now where it's like as you're making them you can adjust the angle so it's like it doesn't have to be direct line of sight you can make it so like oh if the beam needs to go up over a hill or a mountain oh smart round or just fun stuff where it's like i set a couple on a riverbank and i set the angle to like go

over the river. So Sam's like flying over the river and it looks all cool. It doesn't just have to be point A to point B, you know? Yeah. I love, I love hearing you talk about it, man. I'm not going to lie. Good job. Dan, I guess everyone would know this. Anytime I use a zipline and sometimes just writing ziplines in general in the game are just fun. Yeah. And Sam's like hooting and hollering. He's like, whoo!

I feel like the skit from I Think You Should Leave where it's like, he's just here for this zipline. I the means of transportation now are just like it just feels like, OK, you've definitely learned that maybe walking the whole game is not the most fun. So let's just incorporate and throw at you all these different means of like.

getting from point A to point B. Greb, you brought up the point of like combat and everything. I've kind of been trying to play super stealthy and I've also been having a pretty okay time and it doesn't feel like the game is getting in my way.

for trying to do that so if you do want to approach some of the missions or situations um not guns blazing or trank guns drinking uh you can uh sneak in and there's a thing you do with doll man to scout out the area that's just great the yeah yep yep it's just so it's just so dub of like Sure, like, uh, in one of the Assassin's Creed's, you could have, like, send out your falcon, but what if you threw out a small doll?

man, really high in the air. Floats in the air, tags enemies for you, and then when you pull him back, he's like, did I do okay, Sam? Did I do a good job? I'm like, yeah, you did a great job, buddy. Oh, man. I found when I texted you Grubb, and it is just a backstory thing. It's just a...

how Dollman became the Dollman or whatever. So mute for 30 seconds if you don't want to hear some Dollman origin story stuff here. But I texted Grubb out of nowhere saying, Okay, I thought this chapter title Puppets was going to be metaphorical, but it's actually an extremely earnest recollection of this fucking puppet losing his wife to a tar tsunami and him and his daughter go ghost hunting for her soul, but the mom's...

Ghost freaks out about K-pop and Tar People drag Dollman and his daughter into the ground and his daughter dies and her corpse is preserved in a swamp. I can't wait. Was his wife a puppet? And I said no. Spoilers over. Spoilers over. Spoilers over. Yeah. Oh, man. It's fucking awesome. Yeah. Like, honestly, guys, like, I really thought that Expedition 33 was a lock for my game of the year. Debate now.

I love where the story goes. And again, found family. It's mighty whole shtick. But Dollman alone. Yes. I want like that Ratchet and Clank where they had the Clank missions where he went and did puzzles. I just want to be... Give me a PSP game that's just called Dollman. Captain Dollman's Treasure Tracker. Yeah. And the voice acting, like honestly, his voice...

He's just such an endearing character. I love that little dude. Yeah. We'll probably talk more throughout the week about Death Stranding 2. We're planning on doing a quick look that will drop sometime tomorrow. uh i dan i do want to like power through and just do a spoiler cast but it's it's one of those things where i just kind of want to go down our individual notes apps of like hey this was weird right

Wait, speaking of spoiler cats, did you beat Expedition 33, Jan? Yes. Oh, we need to do that. I told you. Yeah. I believe in Jan. You didn't. I feel like I'm close. Oh, really?

Yeah, I've been playing non-stop. Yeah. Where are you, Bacalar? Speaking about Expedition 33, Bacalar, I think you're the one that put it on the list. I think I'm towards the end of Act 2. Okay. I can't be that much longer. I don't know. Who knows? I only wanted to bring it up because I love this game. The more and more I play it, the more I just cannot put it down. I don't want to spoil the one thing that you find out, I guess, after Act 1.

Where they just introduced Benstar. I thought that was like the funniest thing of like what they basically do in that game. I don't wanna... Sure. Right? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. No spoilers. I'm not going to spoil that, but it's just so funny how Benstar is sort of like inserted into this crew. I thought that was amazing. And then there is a scene between his character and... Monoco where

He's convincing this like furry Minoko guy to join their expedition. And he's like, absolutely not. What do you mean? I'm not joining your thing. And then he's just like, there's going to be fighting. And then they have this like back and forth that lasts maybe 15 seconds.

and it's the funniest. It's the funniest line. It's hilarious. They cut each other off real quickly talking about fighting, and I just was like, what is this game it's man where we started and where we are now is uh is very weird and i think That is the best and maybe most confusing part about this game is that the tone is all over the place. Sure. And for me, that's the only line of criticism, the only bit of turbulence.

that i've experienced during this whole thing um i still won't act like i've got a strategy i don't know if i'm making the best use of luminas and all the peak pictos and i'm probably not but are you having fun i could probably be doing the uh you know five digit damage but i'm not i'm like a four digit andy guy okay just leave me alone all right that's fine you're having a good time though you're having a good time yeah i'm obviously i'm loving it i

What's your party? Who are you playing with? Uh, well, so, I only have, like, six people? About, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got Monoko, Veros, um, and, like... Oh, Monoco. I was like, why are so many people in chat spelling Monaco wrong? No, it's Monoco. And then the first three female characters you meet in the beginning. They're all in my crew.

I'm in a part now where we're, like, separated, though. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're making pretty good proggies there. Yeah, I've been... I still think about this game nonstop since I finished it, like, a couple weeks ago. I really want to... I... I...

keep pushing about the spoiler cast. I just have so many thoughts about the game and the ending and all that stuff that I want to get out there. So yeah. Yeah. Back. Yeah. We'll try to finish. You guys do a spoiler cast next week while I'm out.

Yeah, I probably have. You're pretty close. So I'm playing it through like the Xbox Ultimate thing, which by the way, my goodness. It's the year of our Lord, 2025. Why is this app still occasionally a dumpster fire? You're talking about the cloud streaming stuff? No, just the Xbox app on PC. Are you streaming it from your local Xbox?

No, I'm downloading the game through the PC app. Yeah, okay, you know, that app can still be terrible, yes. Look, like, the cloud-safe stuff, like, I go back and forth between a Series X and my PC, and for the most part, it's been pretty seamless. No, no, they figured that out a long time ago. But yesterday...

you know i had like two hours and i'm like hey i'm gonna uh play through more of this game i boot it up and it's like what are you doing what do you you don't have this game error error and it took me 45 minutes to figure it out It was a series of restarting, uninstalling the Xbox app, uninstalling Expedition 33, reinstalling that. I'm sorry, it is not great. It is still showing its ugly face, and it's the reason why I'm like...

I used to feel good about getting Xbox games and being like, all right, I've got it on PC. Even if it's Xbox tainted, it's fine. It'll still do what I needed to do. Uh, but no, it is, it still has its issues. Yep. It's insane. And they like.

bought Bethesda in their launcher when that launcher actually works better, but they're like, we'll shut that down and just go with Xbox. It's like, ah, you should have just moved everything over there. It's just like the worst messaging, too. Like, there's still...

Legacy apps in the in the Microsoft store that you can get that have no current contemporary functionality So like there's just all this garbage still uh over there i still want that the rog xbox thing i'm not i still want that but i mean hopefully hopefully what that signifies is when that thing comes out they will

solve a lot of these problems and improve it because otherwise what's the point of that fucking thing yeah this is me holding my breath uh what were you saying dan didn't they just add like steam integration into the xbox app so you can load your steam games from that that that will be

as part of the Xbox app that comes out with this raw galley thing. So that hasn't happened yet, I don't think. So just as a launcher? Let me just... I heard it was like this morning that people were talking about it. Oh, maybe it happened this morning. Okay, cool.

So you would be like, what possible use case outside of like the ROG Ally thing? Like, why would I? Well, because eventually they're thinking maybe you can have the Steam on your Xbox console and stuff like that, and it'll be one unified app. I don't know. Also, they wouldn't hate having your information. in their app. So, right. And it might like load X or Epic games as well. So having one launcher where that knows where all your games is, something people sometimes ask for.

I've got the LIX and it kind of has that storefront thing where it's like, okay, do you want to launch Steam? Do you want to launch Xbox? Right, exactly. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, going from one JRPG to kind of another.

Jeff Grubb, you have continued to play through Paper Mario, the Thousand Year Door. Yeah, I'm on the last boss fight in that game, and I got too tired and had to put it down. Also, I think I need to rethink my badge situation. Yes, because it's like, I think I have some badges that are just completely worthless in that fight. And that's not great to have. But boy, I was like, man, I put the game down thinking because you get to the end of a chapter.

And then I mentioned this, like you want to start up a new chapter and it's like, oh, it can't be as good as the last one. And then. Throughout that game, it always is as good or better than the last chapter. And so when I did pick it back up here thinking it's going to be hard to get my momentum back, that wasn't a problem. I just kind of soared through to the end of that.

to the end of that game. And it's really nice. I was also playing it because I heard about people complaining about 2D graphics on the Switch 2's screen and how it can cause some ghosting issues. I don't think that game quite has like a enough fast-paced action to like see that but there were some like cut scenes where the background was moving pretty fast and I think had I like brought out a magnifying lens maybe I could have noticed something

But boy, it's really, I kind of don't know what people are talking about in most cases. I tried some other games as well. But yeah, Thousand Year Door is really fantastic. It is as good as everyone always said. The characters you continue to meet throughout the end there are really excellent. It's quirky and funny and warm in a way that I'm like, man, why can't all of their RPGs, the Paper Mario RPGs, have just been this over and over again? They really got it right here.

all these fun Goomba characters that have hats and stuff like that. It's just a simple thing, and they won't even do that anymore. But yeah, Thousand Year Door. Thumbs up. Really enjoy it. Who are you kind of rocking as your main partner in this endgame stuff?

You know, I kind of have to flip and flop between different ones depending on the scenario, but Vivian is kind of my go-to. A lot of times she does a good flame attack that attacks everyone and causes ongoing damage, and that ongoing damage kind of peers... is through defense so even if like the initial attack doesn't hurt them the fire damage will at least do something over time

And that's nice, but I like all the characters. I try to start with Goombella so I can always do the Tatl ability so I can get the HP for the enemies and things like that, especially on these big boss fights at the end of the game. If they make another Paper Mario on the Switch 2 and it somehow still isn't just more like this, I am going to lose my mind. It's kind of a lie. I probably shouldn't expect it.

It's certainly a lost cause, but the fact that they did remake this game brought it out and everyone is just like, we like this better. It's clearly better. If once again, we get somehow another like sequel to sticker star or some other new.

thing that's sort of weird and just isn't this again and it's just the combat too because origami king is a good game except for the combat that's it's unfortunate because like even when paper mario started going downhill after gamecube it's like i always took solace and like well okay mario

I'm still getting my RPG Mario kick. And then with Brothership, that was the first time I was like, I don't think I like this. So they're kind of both in bad spots right now. You know, Brothership kind of came and went last year. Huh? That was a big.

I didn't even try it because I just didn't hear anything great about it. So, you know, I'm not speaking from opinion, but it seems like that was a big letdown. I played a couple hours. I was like, this is not hidden for me. Yeah, it's kind of it's it was a bummer.

Speaking about circling back to things that now may be hitting, Mikey, you've been playing a lot of Splatoon. Yeah, so I finished that Splatoon 3 campaign. It was fantastic. It was so good. Mike, I assume that uses the same gyro control stuff, right? Yeah, it's just like it's all the same controls of platoon and a lot of those mechanics just in these levels built for a single player experience in like a very thoughtful and interesting way.

Actually, when I finished that, I know there's the DLC for 3 that's supposed to be good, but I'm like, I never finished 2s either, and I heard the DLC for that was great, so I'm actually now in the middle of Splatoon 2's single-player campaign. uh and then when i finish that i'll do the octa expansion there and then i'll do side order for splatoon 3. even here it's like interesting the differences between splatoon 3 and splatoon 2s because the splatoon 2

These levels are sort of long, and they're generally kind of similar. Like, yeah, go through this level, beat up the enemies, shoot them. Splatoon 3 is much more bite-sized levels. Every level kind of has its own gimmick. And those are really neat. Maybe even better, actually. There's a part in Splatoon 3. And look, this is a mild spoiler. This game's very old, but I just have to say it because I think Dan's going to like this a lot.

Remember in Splatoon 3, the band or the group, right? With Big Man and the girls and they're like pop stars. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Manta Ray. Big Man's a Big Manta Ray. Well, during this campaign, you fight all the people in that group. And the last one you fight is Big Man. the manta ray the boss fight against him he just turns into that shadow goo thing from mario sunshine wait it's just that wait are you talking about gooper blooper or are you talking about shadow mario

No, shout out Gooper Blooper. It's just that giant manta. No, no, no, no. We're grown men. Gooper's back with a cork in his snow? No, no, no, no. Not that. Remember that part, that one mission in Mario Sunshine where it was just... The shadow of a manta ray going along outside the resort, and you had to shoot it. Oh, and it breaks up, and it, uh... Yeah, it's that thing.

Wait, do they call it that or is it just like inspired by it? It's so clearly that. And it breaks up into a million different manta rays and stuff? Yeah, it is just that. Hell yes. Okay. I did want to play that at the airport and on the flight back yesterday. whenever I got back. But I figured with the gyro stuff, I would look crazy on the plane, so I chose not to. Right. I mean, you can turn it off, just make it a dual stick thing. I like it, you know, for Splatoon. It feels really good.

with the job even like the end of three there's like good cut scenes the like you know it kind of I don't know. It's like the production. I'm downloading it. Chill, dude. Chill. I'm downloading it. It's a lot of fun. I'm not playing this weekend. Yeah. Yeah. And I've heard I've heard some people say that the auto expansion for two is maybe the best single player stuff they ever done. And then side order on three is very good.

to so i'm just going through all of it i'm having a great time yeah i've been i've always meant to this is a good excuse um switch to splatoon all right that's happening on my vacation

Yeah. Well, just in case you needed to know all of the fun features of the Switch 2 while you're playing through all these Switch 1 games, Dan Reichert, thankfully, you've been hitting the books. By continuing to play through the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour. And that's the thing that I couldn't look crazy on the plane playing a flaily gyroscope game. So I was looking studious and learning about the hardware of the Switch 2.

I was doing the Morocco thing on the plane. I didn't say that's the thing. Most of the mini games I wouldn't do. I was just doing quizzes on the flight back, basically. Even like there was one where it was the kickstand and you have to like set it up and like, okay, see how close you can get to a 30 degree angle with the kickstand.

and I was like, I probably look crazy here. The guy next to me wondering why I'm... Wait, it could tell the angle of the kickstand? I was surprised. Is this a sensor in there? I thought it was just going to show me pictures. Oh, the gyro, right.

i'm um very alarmed that i apparently have significantly less social shame than dan because i act i literally was just on the plane shaking these things like maracas oh no i'd be put on a list i can't do that yeah um so instead you just took quizzes about switch to hardware for an entire plane ride

But I'm excited now because all I have now is minigames and that seems like a lot of fun. So once I go back to it, I'll have a bunch of fun minigames. Also, I think I want a speedrun welcome tour. I think that'd be a fun game. I was thinking, yeah.

As a joke, right? No, it's not. Everything we do is a joke. There is a scene where it's like there's the stamp rally speed run, which is just like how fast can you get all the stamps in the Welcome Tour? And then there are the minigame ones, but I think the stamp one would be funnier. So I do.

want to get on a leaderboard for Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour. So far, the number one time on Stamp Rally is 25 minutes and 49 seconds. I think I can beat that. I know where those stamps are. Yeah, shout out to TCB Trio for that record.

I'm going to look into it. I have a note to do that. I like it. I'm a pro welcome tour guy. That big switch looks real good. I like skating over the screen. The mini games are fun. I do Lost and Found and bring it back to the welcome desk and everyone likes me there. A lot of your appreciation for games is like the people in it are nice to me. I just like nice people.

That's good. I agree. Nice people. Dollman, the welcome tour folks. Yeah, they're all good people for sure. Upstanding dudes. All right. Well, that is something I've yet to check out on the Switch 2. but maybe maybe if i'm in the mood to go back to school uh i'll i'll do that but guys

I've been thinking about this, of all the miscellaneous things to get into this year. I really want to get into yo-yos, so I'm very glad, Dan and Mike, that you two have checked out Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo.

Yeah, I was playing this on Mega Man Monday evening games that Mike has at night yesterday. Mike, I think it's funny because you have to say the full title every time. Otherwise, it just sounds weird. Like you need to do the whole thing every time. A lot of people showed up last night to watch.

and we're kind of confused that I wasn't playing Mega Man. Including my son, apparently. I'm telling you, Mike, I'm going to be so disappointed if you ever play Mega Man on Mega Man. You're not allowed. Do Monday morning Mega Man after Myst. It is my favorite series, so my one regular block, I might want to play Mega Man. No. Not allowed. This game looks really cool, though, Mike. Pipistrello is super fun. I'm usually very skeptical of these.

zelda italian oh right slander and yeah but no this is a ton of fun it it doesn't just swap in a yoyo for a sword which some games you know i love um start tropics a lot but it's not like there's anything specifically yo-yo-y about your yo-yo in that game it's just your attack here you can hit it off of angles uh on on like this where walls connect

Because you can only throw it north, east, south, and west, right? It can only go in cardinal directions. Right. But, boy, it just feels so good. And as long as, like, the next angle is close enough to it and kind of keep doing that for a while, you can't even just straight up throw the yo-yo.

But if you do that, you're kind of without the yo-yo until it either, you wait a while, it'll respawn to, or you have to go and get it. So I don't usually want to do that. But just bouncing the yo-yo against these walls. Feels fantastic. And they'll set up a bunch of enemies like clearly in a row where it's like you're going to get that satisfying moment of throwing it against it. It takes out like eight things and there's coins everywhere. It's great.

also has this like really neat progression mechanic it's got a couple things it has basically the badge system from paper mario or from hollow knight you know that kind of thing but there's also a skill tree and there's a shop And the way it works is like you buy your next like kind of passive upgrade thing, like plus one attack power plus more health. But there's always a negative side effect to it, too. So it's like, OK, get plus one attack power forever. But it's going to be minus one health.

Until you pay off this debt that you have. It's not like you have to go back to this perspective of debt. It's just 50% or whatever of all the money you collect now is going towards paying this debt until that's paid off.

And then that removes the negative thing. Right. But then at that point, it's like, well, now I need to kind of work towards another one. So you almost always have some kind of negative effect so that you're continuing to make your character permanently stronger. I think that mechanic of it.

is really interesting it reminded me almost of the shop in link between worlds because wasn't that a similar thing where it's like you could pay to rent or then at a certain point you could own it i don't know it almost sounds more like that than it actually is because again there it was almost like effectively

you had the item uh and it just kind of kept from having inventory clutter basically for a while because you eventually just bought them while you had it and there was no negative effect here like you're having um so yeah it's it's really good i

The aesthetics, I'm a little bit, I'm not sure on. It's like, you know, it's one of these things with a lot of these retro games. I know this is more Game Boy Advance inspired than anything. There were a lot of colors they could use there for sure. And those games sometimes were very colorful.

But there is something about the 16-bit era and they can only use so many colors that kind of kept the palette in control. Sometimes here it's like, we have all the colors and some of the characters seem a bit over-designed and things like that. So, you know, I don't...

It's bright in a good way, but it's also over-designed in other ways, too. And it also does, you know, this game's not, like, super big on story. I know this is maybe a bit of a me thing, but I play these games sometimes. I'm like... We don't need this much setup in the front end for this yo-yo game. Yeah, I felt that too. It's like the first, like...

20 minutes at least, there's just like, okay, I really don't need all this money. It's like, every time I start Link to the Past, it's like, yeah, I know, you're a prisoner in the dungeon. I'm heading my way. Don't worry about it. I just want to play the game. It's like that times 10. Right. I mean, that's, yeah, that's all you need. As much as I like Minish Cap at that point.

In terms of those kind of Zelda games, it was like, wow, let's get moving here, everybody. I would like to play some Zelda now. Yep. I'm with you, Mike. I'm a sucker for any kind of just like, hey, this is clearly a Zelda-like, this is clearly a throwback thing. Even like Blossom Tales, which is more of a just one-to-one, like you've got a sword and you're getting like hook shots and stuff and boomerangs. This has its own flavor to it for sure.

like aesthetically, like the gameplay stuff is very kind of Zelda inspired, but it does enough unique things like with the yo-yo and the shop type stuff and the upgrades that like, it's not just another one of those, you know? Right, right. And the Game Boy Advance stuff, it is fun. There's even a mode.

Where you can click in your sticks and it zooms out and you're actually playing the game on a Game Boy Advance looking system. You can turn it around and still keep playing the game. So that's neat. I might. I still might want to check this out. I enjoyed watching Mike play it. Anytime he hit the yo-yo on an angle and it did the thing, I popped. Very satisfying mechanic. That always felt good. The general layout of the puzzles and things like that.

Felt interesting. I like the overworld being a city instead of just some big grassy field that switches things up to buying fast travel points. I think it's cool. Yes, I did lose a lot of my money retrying this arena constantly that I probably just wasn't strong enough for yet. And that upset me. But that was a skill issue, I admit.

Well, it was something that definitely was not a skill issue for you yesterday, Mike, was replaying through Myst because Grubb and I were trying to backseat game, but you just were on top of it.

Yeah, tell you what I've been wanting to play miss on the site forever mostly just because I liked the stupid idea of calling something Monday mornings miss with bitch I honestly didn't think much about if it would be good content or not

So I'm glad it actually seemed like it was a fun time. I know I enjoyed myself. Yeah, I had a great time. Mike, I assumed you were like a longtime fan of Myst and you wanted to show it off. But then I saw like the comments being like, wow, he's taking this really quick. He's really figuring out these puzzles fast. And so like, I didn't realize, is this your first?

time playing it this is my real really it is when this came out i definitely sort of wandered around i don't think i had any idea what to do uh i think i found because like i think you can beat the game in like 10 minutes if you know exactly what to do right away so i think at one time i did that for fun again way back then i don't remember how i did that but i always like thought miss was cool

and admired it but at the time it was a bit beyond me and i just never went back really but i'm always so fascinated by it because it was this big important thing in video games it was when people were still really excited about integrating all this live action video the pre-reader cut scenes it was this big driver of cd-roms and cd-rom drives and gaming and you know it was a good as a franchise for a while there were five of these games and the spin-off with uru so my brother aj

always liked them and it just i don't know there's a vibe to it too that i thought was cool and that's what i really enjoyed the most when we were playing there's this weird isolationist but p tranquil mist vibe Yeah, it's doing its own thing there, and I just really enjoy it. People talk about cozy games. This is cozy to me. Sure. Just kind of walking around these sort of puzzle games or adventure games. That's what I like.

um you know this is due to my own ignorance because i never checked out mist growing up or had any real exposure to it but mike watching you play through mist yesterday i couldn't help but think oh this is what Blue Prince is doing, huh? Yeah, that's exactly, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think that was still like the best single sentence descriptor of Blue Prince, and it's hard to do because that game's a lot of things, but calling it a roguelike mist.

I think it's kind of the best way of getting to the essence of what blueprints is. Yeah, it's a lot of that here. Now, we are playing the remake, and the big difference there is that you are just, you know, walking around a fully 3D world. The original game, it was all pre-rendered.

You're just kind of moving from scene to scene by clicking around the screen. But I heard that the remake was good. I know some people want me to play the original, but the remake's good. It runs very easily on modern stuff. It's widescreen. and it still has the uh original fmv acting in it which is i think a core part of that experience right all these games you want to see all those people who are just working at the studio and whatnot

I love that shit. I think it's fun when you play a modern game and it makes you realize that a game you've overlooked, you know, from the past. It's like, you know, when I first played Stardew Valley and I was like, what a great idea for a game. This is very fun.

Oh, I should have played Harvest Moon. Okay, got it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I wonder, Barmy hopes that the little bit of that blueprints pop off trickled down to mist a little bit. And if not, maybe then I'll show up here. But because this is good. And then the Riven remake, which is the sequel to this game. Which at this point, I'm pretty comfortable in saying, yeah, we're going to play that after this. Oh, yeah. People love that Riven remake a lot. So I'm excited to get there, too.

I did look to see if there was a mod to add subtitles, and there's nothing out there for using the old FMV, which is a real bummer, but what... What happens if you don't use the old FMV? Did they rerecord that stuff with new actors? So what they, I think it's just 3D models. It's that that's original was in the remake. Right. Everyone's like, no, it's like, look, we were okay. Getting rid of the, you know.

slideshow walking around stuff but you gotta have the pre-rendered fmv people right yeah yeah but it is weird that the subtitles don't work when you do that but uh Yeah, they said they didn't do the timing for it, and they were like, maybe we'll do it one day, and that was years ago, and they haven't updated about it. No, I don't think that's happening. No, it's not. It's definitely not. Okay.

Well, speaking about building upon the DNA of an existing game, last Friday for UPF Grub, Mike and I played FBC Firebreak, which is building off of the... Combined universe of Control and Alan Wake, as well as, I guess, the gameplay DNA of something kinda like A Left 4 Dead. And then just Sam Lake weirdness. Yeah. Yeah, like you got to wet your brothers or you got to wet your bros. I think it's not together. Hop in the shower together because you got covered in sticky notes. Yes. Yeah.

I continued to play this game after we did on UPF, and I think my enjoyment was severely lowered because I was no longer playing with friends. I was just playing with randos. And... It's kind of difficult to get into this game because still the level progression is a little slower than I'd like it to be. And they ramped it up a lot too. Yeah, and the developers have addressed that.

to to like you said grab ramp it up and kind of increase that speed but the problem is uh it feels like for me there's so much to do that it's really hard to coordinate uh with a lot of randos just jumping in to the game uh because it is so objective heavy of you got to go do this and then you got to go all the way over here you have to do this task to unlock the next task

And even when we were playing together, it took a little bit of time to get acclimated to what everyone should be doing. Right. And the game doesn't like... It has three classes, but it lets you jump into missions with whatever formation you want. But I kind of feel like you absolutely need someone to be like the water, the splash.

brother guy or the water person. There's that whole mechanic. First off, in the first level, people were catching on fire. I had to put them out. Then the other one, I had to splash the post-it notes off them or they just basically died.

it's like what would we have done if i wasn't you gotta go find a shower and it's like that's not the same thing as okay someone needs to fix this breaker box well i could just do that automatically or everyone else could just do do the qte right and that's that's like makes sense uh where it's like oh you know we need someone to get wet

And no one else has any other way of doing that. It doesn't feel equivalent. My job seemed disproportionately important. Yes, it seemed crucial. Yeah, I do think maybe low expectations helped me with this, because going into it, I was kind of just hearing pretty bad things about the game.

And it helped that Jan knew what was going on a bit to help us out. So I was having fun, but I was also constantly a little befuddled by some of the choices. The most egregious thing was we're doing this pretty long mission and, you know, every... like 10 minutes it's changing up what exactly our objective is and it's kind of a little confusing get reaccumulated then we go into this really big room

with a lot going on, and there's already a ton of enemies that are all making a lot of noise, and we're fighting them, and while this is happening, some guy over the radio is trying to explain the complicated thing we need to do in this room. and it's just like i didn't get any of that jan please tell me you know what's going on and thank god you did but if you did it i don't i guess i would just die and give up

Yeah, that's a rough first mission to start with. Yeah, and that's the first mission. And it's like you just go into this room, and it's like a lot of new ideas. And I appreciate that the game has a lot of ideas. I do. I think it's like, okay, that's one way to make one of these stand out. But it's probably not enough to overcome that. None of them really gel in a way that feels great. And it can be kind of convoluted.

The first impression it makes of like, oh, this is what I'm doing here. I didn't even realize that is pretty rough. And it's not so fun on the other side of that that it's like, well, it was clearly worth butting our head up against the game, not knowing how to convey that information.

I mean, it's difficult because you want to have these objectives, I guess. But I do think part of why Left 4 Dead works so well is that, you know, what you're all doing is relatively simple. You're fighting zombies and you're moving to the next place. Maybe sometimes it switches things up a bit here.

i think the second mission was much better when it was mostly just yeah take out all the post-it notes and sometimes that means fighting a giant monster made out of post-it notes right but that was showing a lot better than that first mission of like first you know repair all these things and fill up the barrels and move the barrels down and toss the barrels into this um it's just it's this game there the control flavor aspect of it i do enjoy that

for the most part the objects of power showing up honestly red light green light thing is like a really fun idea it was very stressful but i like that a lot and then like getting a powerful gun that shoots out a bunch of like shredded metal And blowing up those objects of power, that felt great. Yeah, there's some cool stuff in there. Chad is saying Jan may have dropped us into the third mission there, that one with the barrels. I don't know if they're confused. It's like...

Level three is what they were hearing. But I think that was like, oh, it's made for level three. And then we tried like the easier versions of some of those levels. I don't know. Whatever. Maybe you did. I don't know. Whatever. Yeah. When I popped into a rando game, I had popped in at level three because that's what was suggested to be able to move on to the next level. If that's the case where you have to like.

adjust the difficulty and play through these uh multiple times i could see it getting real old folks real crusty um because yeah after a while and we we eventually settled into the rhythm of it that first mission took close to an hour if not a little bit more yeah it was and there's shorter versions of those levels but then you don't progress if you do those simpler ones i don't think oh my god uh i'm like i was like just looking at steam charts right

I was curious, how many people are playing Night Rain still? Night Rain. A lot. 88,000 concurrents right now on Steam. 88,000. I want to circle back to it. I do too. I liked it a lot.

yeah i want to uh fire break meanwhile is uh 194. that is it's dying yeah it's kind of no coming back from that really that is yeah that's kind of just it's toast geez Yeah, that level like the leveling process and because like some of the I think what would make this game super fun is just having like a bunch of abilities popping off at all times and it takes so long.

to even get to that second page of abilities to get, like, a better shotgun or, like, access to grenades. Um, is it cross-platform? So, okay, yeah, so, yeah, look, it's on Game Pass and PSM Plus, I know. Okay. Even with that, 194 on Steam. Steam usually isn't affected by that stuff. Rematch is on both of those as well.

Mike, what's rematch's numbers on Steam? Let's see. Rematch Steam charts. Rematch is at least on Game Pass, but I think it's on both. Prematch is at 62,000. So, yeah. Again, it feels like at 1,000 be short. It is at 200. That's right. Well, speaking about one game we played on UPF to another game we're going to be playing this week on UPF Rematch. This is like Human Rocket League, right? Yep. Some would call it football.

No, no one. No. Sorry. That just doesn't sound right. You're right. You're right. This is not an 80 for Brady movie game. No. What is? Rematch is interesting. It's a world where an invisible force field surrounds a soccer pitch. And that is one of the things I feel like is the one of the coolest parts of this game where it has this arena soccer sort of vibe. It's made by Slow Clap. who did Sifu. So there's a lot of that kind of like technical sort of

There's not fighting in this game, but if you can imagine a soccer game playing like it was designed by fighting mechanics people, it starts to make sense. It does. I think this game's... Pretty good. I think it's almost equal parts frustrating and satisfying because I think there's a few quality of life things that maybe need to be sweetened over for me to really, really, really jump in.

Um, with, with, you know, with everything, right? The camera controls are a little weird and I've still not fine tune them in a way. Is there a lock on for the ball? A camera lock? i've been searching for that there is if there is i've not discovered yeah yeah and you know i think

There seems to be this sort of developing argument of what's the best way to control this game on PC, whether it's mouse and keyboard or controller. Mouse and keyboard was working really well for me. Yeah, and I think I might start to... go that route i think what's hard about this game is it's sort of you know the play to to really effectively play well as like a three or four or five person team and have good experiences with teammates is you need

people to like understand through balls and kind of like really i guess have a fundamental soccer i was playing with randos i don't think i got the ball passed to me once it's like several matches and you can call for the ball too and you can kind of like lead people in the right direction i think the shooting uh mechanic is very cool because it's sort of this like third person thing where you have to like target the reticle to where you want it and then kind of

cook a shot and let go and work it that way. The juggling stuff is interesting. It's just sort of... It is... approachable but a little but deeper than you might think with the technicality and the kind of like arsenal of soccer maneuvering you have at your disposal while you're playing it I The jury's still out for me on it. I enjoy it. I've played a lot with Dib, who loves soccer and loves Rocket League. And I was like, oh, this is a shoo-in. And he was like, I hate this game one more time.

I hurt this game. Let's play again. Let's play again. Let's play one more time. So there's that that's going on, which I guess is better than just hating it altogether. So, yeah, I mean, how'd you find it, Grub? Yeah, I mean, I found myself thinking I'd rather be playing Rocket League most of the time. Not that I think this is a bad game. I just, like, think that...

You know, there's more depth here and Rocket League limits what you can do. And in terms of like what your character is actually capable of, you can't do a rainbow kick to yourself, like where you kick it over the back of your head and it lands in front of you and you do a sweet move like you could.

do that or like there's no button combo that just does that you can maybe you can maybe get so good to get the card to do that but that's a different thing like that there's a huge skill ceiling there but like the skill floor required to play rematch is is uh much higher I think now I still think I was having a good time when I was playing yeah especially when I got in goal and like that there because it's like unlike Rocket League

it turns you into a goalie. Like you stand back and now you can use your hands and you can like dive back and forth. And I felt like there, it's like, you know, I have decent reflexes for something like that. That's where I was like, okay, at least here.

I feel like I can contribute to the team and not screw up too bad. And then when you do screw up, it feels really bad because, oh, I let down the whole team. But I was still having a pretty decent time. So I think I might be in a similar place to Dib. Yeah, there's good. I was going to say goaltending I think is really good. There is a, for my taste, too charitable of a sort of like forgiveness zone of...

what a goalie can kind of get away with, you know, just sort of like sucking in just by like a proximity sort of situation. I think overall it speaks to like the physics in this game just being a little wonky and kind of like just not...

you know, just sort of their own laws. Like they kind of exist on their own planet that don't really, they're very close to earth, but they're not earth one-to-one. What was it? What were you going to say, Dan? Now, you know, we are playing Friday. We were planning UPF against men. max yeah oh okay cool sarah janet and leo so i think we're gonna do a three on three on friday uh do i need to a put in a bunch of practice time if i haven't played it and b do i need to know how soccer works

Well, all you need to know about soccer is ball and net good. There's no like offsides, icing things I need to know? Not in this version of it. In real soccer, there's a lot of rules. Here, there's no rules. I don't think there's like even like fouls, right? No. go nuts I would play the tutorial like a lot and it's not just there's an opening tutorial and then you can dig down on a more granular level that stuff I think will be helpful for you you know

it's tough it's like you you for me it's frustrating because it's like I know what I want to do in this game and I'm just not able to do it and maybe that's a practice skill issue thing who knows but you know you That's always going to handcuff you in a frustrating way. I think the difference is in Rocket League...

I want to do the thing and I know why I'm not good enough. And I just got to like, try to get better at like doing the combination of buttons that I already have at my fingertips here. It's like, Oh, I feel like I'm. forgetting a button i need to be holding down lb and the pass button to do a lob pass and then i hold down rb in the past button to do a different kind of pass and it's like oh i got to keep all that in my head and it's just i'm not there yet um i mean

That's a lot of sports games, so it's not like this is something I'm holding specifically against Rematch, but for me, this is so Rocket League coded that I was kind of going there expecting, like, this is going to be simple, simple, simple, and all of the complexity, all of the depth would become...

what can you do with this simple set of tools and it's like here now the tools are a little bit more complicated do you want to try to like take the time to get good at that and i guess i kind of do i think this game is still fun and worth that but at this point it's still mostly an exercise in frustration for me You're right. I was surprised with how kind of inaccessible it is. Right. I was surprised with like how.

out of the how much out of the gate you're sort of lost a little bit even with the little bit of that tutorial that's unfortunate because like i i have for a long time wanted to see some form of return to like you know jam blitz uh just kind of that like grub i know you and i like that this is less than though anyway yeah like that's what the thing i saw some people

invoking the name of like jam and blitz and stuff like that and i've always wanted that to come back because arcade sports it's simply this is definitely an arcade soccer game it definitely is yeah but it's not like you know sega soccer slam or mario striker no it's not like a power-ups and stuff like that right there's no power

but it definitely it reminds me a lot of sega soccer slam yeah it does okay okay yeah i mean you know i just we're just i just feel like we're gonna constantly avoid doing this for hockey again and it's just like at every given turn

Mario sports See the slow clap like someone just do it for me people are making like roguelike hockey games and it's like that's awesome we gotta get the global south into hockey until that happens we're screwed here i just well i get it you know you twisted the knife

Pretty deep when you asked if there was icing in this game, Dan, that hurts. Well, I know that's not it. I'm just using that to represent sports things I don't understand. You triggered me. Yes, tape to tape was really good, but like, you know, it's not exactly what I'm looking for, but hey. Um, we'll see. Uh, all right, gang, that about does it for video game talk. Uh, and we're going to go get to the news right after we take a quick bricky break after I.

Do this on the virtual machine now. This is Jeff Grubb with a new... Hey, yeah, I got some news. First up, breaking news. Saw some super chats came in. We'll get to those before the end of the program, everybody. Hang in there. All right, so let's start here. AMD. UDNA graphics architecture to power next-gen Xbox and PlayStation. AMD's next-generation UDNA graphics architecture succeeding RDNA 4 is expected to power the GPUs of both.

the future Xbox and PlayStation consoles, placing them a generation ahead of the Radeon RX 9000 series and capable of handling demanding AAA titles like GTA 6 is what this story...

said here. Leaks suggest UDNA will offer a 20% increase in faster performance per blah blah blah. All that stuff doesn't matter. Basically, the story here is both these companies are making next-gen consoles and both of them are sticking with the AMD partnership and amd has a new grad like they're not going to do just like a slightly updated version of rdna4 now it's rdna5 it's going to be no they have a whole next-gen architecture so it'll be in that line but significantly more powerful

They're not changing things up a lot, essentially. And I don't think many people were expecting that, although it does feel like at a point we're going to reach a certain point where they look around like, wait, should we try to really change things up with our next?

Maybe Xbox, not necessarily PlayStation. I expect PlayStation to kind of just stay what it is because it's working for them. But there was talks of maybe Microsoft going with a more mobile-like processor, RISC architecture, RISC-V or something like that. And it doesn't sound like they're doing that at all. They're just going to make another Xbox. Does that sound appealing to you all? I am just so curious how they're going to present this thing.

what it's gonna look like you know you say oh this a new architecture should look better what's that actually going to look like right like what is that what is that buzz reel sizzle reel trailer Look, you know, like, Switch 2 had a challenge convincing people that its new hardware was exciting. And at least they had the trick of, we're not that used to seeing a lot of Nintendo games at 60 FPS and, like, 4K still.

An Xbox is well past that. Like, you know, I guess it's lucky that they'll have a GTA 6. Like, look how this looks on the next Xbox, I suppose. But boy, it just seems like...

It's going to be a challenge for this company that's not in a great position and also keeps firing people and is supposedly going to be firing more people soon. Yeah, that's a story that was pop enough that I include that here in the rundown. Doesn't look like it. They are reportedly going to lay off even more people from Xbox specifically. I think the last round of Microsoft layoffs kind of nicked.

Xbox a little bit, but didn't do much. The ones before that clearly certainly did. But yeah, you're right. It's this weird thing where they... You know, the whole marketing campaign is everything is an Xbox. We'll talk about the VR headset here in a little bit about, oh, that's an Xbox now, too, from Meta.

And so they essentially have moved past the need for the Xbox, but they're going to make another one. And, you know, at a certain point, does it just become like a Panasonic VCR that's just like another VCR on the shelf?

Does that make sense? Like, consoles are such a specialized thing. I don't know. Listen, I'll say I'm relieved that they're not leaving the hardware space. I do think PlayStation will need a little bit of a check in terms of making sure they don't go completely off the rails with hubris.

But I don't know how much of a check this is actually going to be. And I don't know, do I need an Xbox next generation? I really like using my Xbox Series X. It's a good console to use, but I don't think about it much beyond that. Yeah, I start to like tune out every time we start talking about the next generation of consoles just because of how. Right. What does it even mean? Yeah. I don't want to say underwhelming this.

current next gen has been but like ps5 is about to be five years old right it's characterless it's like yeah it just doesn't have any character i did like the phrase current next gen by the way it's so dumb because no one knows how to talk about it no but that's that actually tracks though but like I don't know the only console I'm currently excited about is the switch to yeah Yeah, I do not. Gosh, I don't think about my PlayStation 5 or my Xbox Series X at all at the moment.

I was just thinking, someone pointed out in chat that we're halfway through the 2000s. We are a quarter way through this century, which I suppose is why New York Times did that. The top 100. It's finally time to give way of water its crown.

Uh-huh. Chuck, build a tool on Giant Bomb where people can vote for their favorite games of the century so far. Yeah, that's an easy ask. Yeah, that's easy. Let's just do that in this afternoon. Real quick, that's everyone's favorite game of the century so far. Go, Dan Reichert. go around because I made an actual list. Jeff Grubb. Don't thinking. Prince of Persia Lost Crown. Jan Ochoa. Shadow of the Colossus. Jeff Bacalar.

What was the question? What's your favorite? I know. I don't know. I don't know. Too much pressure. Come back to me. You have to pick one or bad things are going to happen. He's going to show it to you. Just you. Resident Evil Village. Very good. Pick a number between 1 and 100. 1. 17. Okay, well, 1 is Breath of the Wild is the best of the last 25 years. Number 17 is Red Dead Redemption, the first one. Okay.

And I will say Super Mario Odyssey. There we go. Oh, you mean the third best game of this last quarter century. I'll also throw in Dead Cells. Oh, I love Dead Cells. There's a lot of Dead Cells disrespecters among us, Jan. Did you know that? What? Yeah. What? Who else is with me? Sean. Turbo Sean also doesn't like Dead Cells. What? Oh, yeah, Sean.

You mean the 44th best game of the last 25 years? 44. Hey, 44 is pretty good. It's right below Lost Crown, but above San Andreas. I'll tell you what, they added all that Castlevania stuff to it, and I'm like, surely this will... What make me like Dead Cells more?

Eh, not really. We already have a database, Chuck. How much work can it possibly be? What about Hades? Where does Hades go? Oh, Hades is super high up there. Oh, let me see where Hades is. Hades is the 80th best game since 2000. Hey, you think Hades is worse than Dead Cells? Yeah, it's below Ninja Gaiden 2004, but it's above Crazy Taxi. Wait, so where's Returnal? Let me see. That is the 70th best game of this generation. I do like Jeff and I. It's haters only like... proportionately uh-huh

The number one hater move is, well, compare it to this thing. Yeah, that's the best way to argue, right? It's the worst and the best. Yep. All right. It might be. Hey, guess what? Back to the weather talk. It might be too hot. to play your Switch 2 on the go this week. A heat wave is sweeping across the United States, bringing high temperatures to millions. As record-breaking temperatures are expected in North America and Europe this summer, it's important to be mindful of using...

handheld gaming devices like the Switch 2 or the Steam Deck in the heat. Nintendo recommends using the Switch in ambient temperatures between 5 and 35 degrees. That's in woke temperatures. It's 41 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit in freedom temp. If the device gets too hot, it has an automatic sleep function to prevent overheating. This can occur if the vents are blocked or the unit is used. in hot environments.

I kind of want to test this, but I don't want to break my Switch 2. Oh, you have another one, Grub. Just bust that bad boy open. I could just steal the other one from... I did actually end up opening the second Switch 2. I knew you would. There you go. Hell yeah. Now we're a Switch 4 household. and Emmy's still using hers constantly for Minecraft. All right. Nintendo has fixed its London Underground ad which claimed that Metroid Prime 4 was out now.

Turns out that's not true. They were lying. I guess they just removed the Photoshop layer that they clearly just borrowed from the Mario Kart one and left on top of Metroid Prime. And they got rid of the out now part. Does it say 2025 or coming soon? It says 2025. Yes, there it is. The original poster may have had 2025 hidden underneath the out now message. Still coming this year, Dan Reichert.

It's not until I have it in my hand. Not until I'm playing it on my screen. Yeah, but it still counts against you even if it's not in your hand. If it's available, then I lose, but I don't think it's going to come out this year.

When do you guys think this game is out? I asked the chat for their thoughts for Game S Morning. September. I think we'll get that poll later, but I said like, or maybe I already asked that, but it was like summer, fall, or holiday. I always associate November with Metroid, just because of Metroid Prime.

still uh i think that makes sense um not december oh if it's december we're gonna have that one of those really fun not eligible for game awards but we're gonna remember it next year kind of things I do feel like Metroid Prime is, if you ask me to name like a winter break game, I remember getting the Platinum GameCube and Metroid Prime for Christmas in like 02 and just playing the hell out of it all winter break. There's something about Metroid that's like, maybe it's Phenander or Adriel.

Drifts or something, but it seems a wintry day. That's how you say it. Yeah, philanderer drifts, yeah. They announced the mouse, double mouse Joy-Con Switch game is coming out August, right? Oh, did that get a date? drag to drive or drag cross drive yeah um i'm gonna say october for metroid okay 2020

Five. Get up, Dan. We don't get this juju out of here. I love how serious you are about it, Dan. You're really selling it. Listen, every day. I won last year. I'm good. Every day he becomes slightly more possibly correct, and it drives me insane. Of course. I'm going to.

go out of my mind if it comes out in 2026. The billboard says 2025. They just reaffirmed it. And that billboard has never lied before. Well, the billboard did lie just a little bit ago. Oh, Mike, you trust every billboard. You do! I can't think of anybody who trusts billboards more than you probably. That's like a very specific and accurate assessment of Dan Reichert. We should get a billboard. Yeah. I would love that. Greg Miller got one for his birthday once, I think.

Yeah, folks out there, like if you live in just some like weird rural area with a stretch of highway and you know it's cheap, I would love for us to get a board. There's a giant digital like... mega bright like the digital billboard right next to the highway not far from where i live i'm gonna look into that and see if we can get one on there do we know anyone that i don't know works for whoever does the billboards for times square

Because I don't want to pay for that because that's very expensive. I bet they make you pay. No, of course. I would just think it's hilarious. We do one of those videos like people do like, oh, I just made it onto the show and the show has a billboard and it's just like the five of us like. Yeah, just like looking lost. Yeah, I like that. Please. Yeah, give us the Holy Hookup.

Mario Kart World producer says it didn't seem necessary to add characters from other Nintendo games. The producer of Mario Kart World, Koysuke Yabuki, explained why the game doesn't feature crossover characters. from other Nintendo franchises, unlike Mario Kart 8. He stated that the development team felt non-Mario characters would be incongruous in a Mario-themed world and weren't necessarily given the existing wealth of Mario characters and costumes. Wasn't necessary, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, but who cares? Yeah, but I kind of get it, because, like, especially with all the costumes and everything, like, and adding all these, like, if you can be a para-bitty bud, you know, I think between Smash Bros. and All Out or having a bunch of weird, obscure Mario characters, I think I would take the obscure...

your Mario character. I'm enjoying the cast of characters that are in this game as it is, for sure. Dolphin on a dolphin, yeah. If they introduced a bunch of Nintendo characters, though, over the next five years... i would also be happy like there's no there's plenty of room for them i don't think it needs to be like super smash brothers cart but i did like an eight when you know you'd get one here and there yeah it was fun i do you know we get that dco dlc hope we get link i hope you

get some other surprises. You know, when Metroid Prime 4 comes out, give me Samus and a Mario Kart finally. That'd be fun. I want the new design of Donkey Kong. We have that. But with the overalls and everything. Oh, the costume? Well, there's only one costume for Donkey Kong right now. Yeah, it's just Spaceport Donkey Kong. I bet they're going to maybe add more.

It was good. I played a lot. I had the family test over the weekend. It's really fun with friends and family. It just is. We did a lot of local four-player stuff. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I found that people, even casual people that don't play a lot of games, like my sister Katie and my dad. knockout tour people love that yeah that's I'm surprised but yeah that's very cool

But yeah, I think my early problems with it were just like, I enjoyed playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so much just as a game on its own by myself and just getting into the racing. And here it's like, no, this game they clearly just made to be...

played with part, like at parties or online with friends. And in that context, it's always really good. So, I mean, Kayla and I, one of those nights I was home, we just like sat on the couch and loaded up a room and said to the discord, like, Hey, join. And we just played for like hours and it was just a blast. Yep. So good multiplayer.

All right, so related, a leaked Sonic Racing crossover officially unveiled, bringing Nickelodeon stars to the track. Nickelodeon and Sega have officially announced their Sonic Racing Cross Worlds collaboration. which will feature SpongeBob SquarePants characters, vehicles, and attract future Nickelodeon content from the Avatar and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universes is also teased.

The Nickelodeon characters will be available in the digital deluxe edition or via a season pass, which also includes Minecraft content and characters from Sonic Prime. The game is set to be released on September 25th. This is a game that I had a lot of fun playing. at Summer Game Fest. I thought that that collaboration with SpongeBob looked very cute and fun, but it does kind of rub me a little bit the wrong way where, hey, this is a series that once had all of this cool Sega stuff in there.

And is this in there in place of that? And that's, I do view that as a little bit of a bummer, but I have no complaints about SpongeBob. Thank you. I thought you were on the wrong side of history. No, I stand with SpongeBob. Okay, thank you, thank you. Yeah, also, I may have accidentally changed my input game, Jay, and let me know if I ruined everything with my microphone, but...

Yeah, I'm the same, Jeff. I don't know. Like, it's a little cute to have these characters in. They have multiple Nicktoon cart games. They had their shot. There's two of those, yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm such an old Sega head. that i you know what i'm hoping for is more old sega characters right like give me the give me the freaking uh uh guy from golden act

in there and Streets of Rage characters and real... Mike, we all know that you're clamoring for Vectorman to be in the game. I mean, honestly, I don't like Vectorman. No joke. Vectorman's a cool dude. Yeah, you know, ooh-la-la. Comic zone guy. Comic zone guy. They're bringing back comic zone and that stuff. You know, and we've got some.

uh sega characters announced i know how soon a miku counts as a sega character maybe you know i mean ones that i care about yeah like the space harrier guy just running next to everybody that'd be cool great yeah yeah i get yeah Put Joker in there, of course. Put Icheb on. Get the newer people in there. Oh, that Joker. I'm sorry. I hate the first Joker Joker. Yeah, they got Joaquin Phoenix in the movie.

Yeah, that's who I think of. In the game, actually. That makes me sad. How come no one had Joker or Joker folio do on their New York Times top ten? I know. Weird. That was left off suspiciously. Oh, okay. I get it. I get it. I might put a star is born online. I kind of like that. Tell me something, Jan. Jan, my Landro in chat says Times Square billboard. You could submit an image that displays on a rotation.

Individuals $150 and for brands it's $250. What the fuck? I'll do that right now. What does that even mean? It's like a slideshow. It goes up there for like five seconds every hour or something like that. But I feel like there's 80,000 screens in Times Square. Yeah, which screen?

Okay, guys, it's one comment in chat. I don't have all the details, all the answers, all right? Well, here, there's five of us. It's coming for the king, Jesus. There's five of us. We all pick a direction to look at for a couple hours. Shot north. Okay, north. I'll take west. Easy. No, this means we have to go to Times Square. I'm out.

There's an Olive Garden there, guys. I will meet you at the Olive Garden in Times Square. I'll be right there. Sky Ferry still have a restaurant there. Can I get some donkey sauce? I'm so excited to have mustard on a hot dog. I'm genuinely excited about that. I have not had the opportunity yet.

But I did have mustard a few times over the weekend. Hot dog and a soft pretzel. Those are big time. I'm so happy for you. It's just a crazy thing to say at 41. I know. I'm just like a grown ass fucking man. I'm so excited to one day have mustard on a hot dog.

I'm going to do it. The mustard arc is now out on YouTube, by the way. Everyone should go check that out. Yep. All right. Leaked. No, I already did that one. Arc System Works is hosting a showcase this week featuring the next project by Guilty Gear's creator.

Arc System Works, known for its fighting games, will host a showcase on Friday, June 27th, announcing... new titles and projects. This includes a new project from Daisuke Ishiwatari, creator of the Guilty Gear series. While a new Guilty Gear title is possible, it's not confirmed. Guilty Gear Strive. came out in 2021, did very well on Steam, outperforming even games like Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 at the time. However, blah, blah, blah. Okay, other details. There's also like a rumor.

I don't know if there's any juice to this, that Arc System Works is going to work on a Hotel Dusk game with Nintendo. What? I don't know. I don't know. That was mentioned this morning I saw somewhere. and i was like what does that mean apparently they've made games that are like similar to hotel dusk in the past and that like popped up around the time of that hotel dusk

the trademark getting renewed or something like that. So I think people are drawing connections where there might not be any. But either way... I'm ready to see some more stuff from Arc System Works. What are they doing right now? They announced something. Tokon. Tokon, right. Yes. But a new project.

uh is the creator of guilty gear the same guy who created blaze blue because that's another arc thing i assume so i would like another blaze blue i like always like blaze blue even more than guilt here apparently no that's not the same person we'll find out I was talking to Christian a bit. Christian from Argentina. Do you think Arc System Works is just done with Dragon Ball FighterZ? For now.

that game i bet you would think we would get another one they'll come back around they're gonna do marvel first right then marvel's gonna be taking all that energy yeah yeah yeah but what i'm saying is like they're probably pausing on whatever work they would have been doing for another dragon ball game in favor of this current license which is marvel yeah i think that's that team so yeah don't don't expect that any fighters do fighters with even more z's

The director of Hotel Dusk works at Arxis. Oh. Yeah. What does that mean? Wasn't there some other thing, like, about... remaster a compilation i don't know i i i think there was just a the hotel dusk trademark got renewed and that like that's right popped people off in a bunch of different directions i don't know if anything's actually going to happen there um

All right. Another showcase next week, Resident Evil, Requiem, Pragmata, and more to appear at Capcom showcase. That is happening in two days. It's going to happen on Thursday at 3 p.m. Pacific time, 6 p.m. Eastern, 40 minutes.

It's going to be one of those Capcom showcases. Mostly just an update on stuff we already know about. Probably not too many new announcements, but who knows? They have a lot to show off, though. More from Monster Hunter Wilds. More from Street Fighter VI. I did check out...

Ilana? What's her name? Elena. Elena, thank you. And Street Fighter 6 on Switch 2, and that was cool. But yeah, they have more characters coming there. Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem will also show up there. This is probably where they show off... the video demo.

that i got at summer game fest for uh for requiem oh gosh i didn't even think about that that yeah now i'm like a little bummed because like i already saw that but yeah they're gonna want to show that right that's not public yet yes exactly so

It's good. So, yeah, people enjoy that part because, you know, there's a lot of rumors about what else is in Requiem. And it's even clear that they're holding back. And I'm wondering if we're going to see that stuff now or if that's still coming a little bit later. Maybe a little bit later. Is now.

Go ahead, Grubb. I was just going to make a joke that if Pragmata is a secret Mega Man game, Mike's not allowed to play it on Monday. Anywhere else. Anywhere else. I'm going to play it on The Mist Show. Okay. Yeah. I was going to ask, is it too early to expect to see anything more from the Okami sequel? Too early. That game's out next year? 2026? Does it even have a year? It definitely had a year.

I don't know. I don't know if it's definitely a year. Nope, no year. I thought I could have swore they talked about a year at the SGF. All right, well, fair enough. I'm at the official web page where I don't see anything about it. Okay, all right. They just announced it was in development. Well, they showed it to us at Summer Game Fest, which we're allowed to say. Are you getting Okami mixed up with Onimusha?

Oh, yes, my bad. Onimusha, yes. I was getting Okami mixed up with Onimusha. Okami's not out for like 17 years. I was thinking of Odama. Oh, right, yeah. Definitely, yeah. Is Onimusha not on this short list? That's strange. Yeah, Onimusha I thought was out like this year, maybe. Okay.

Man, that's my brain just doing tricks on me. They can both start with O's. They're both Japanese. And then they kind of end in I's, too. They got to keep that in mind. That's a big part of it. Skate's early access release window has been narrowed down. EA's skate reboot is...

slated for an early access release in summer 2025. A major playtest update is scheduled for July 2nd and players can register as a skate insider until June 27th to participate. This update will bring significant improvements, including presentation improvements, a higher player limit of 150, more missions and challenges, a streamlined tutorial and additional character customization.

Full circle, the developer has confirmed that Skate will require a permanent online connection, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, this is a game that I think people are still kind of... concerned about because the rumblings coming out of people who have been in some of these tests have been a little bit like, it's not there yet. But hey, they're promising improvements. Maybe this one will change things around.

But it does sound like they are trying to barrel towards eventually releasing this game, maybe even this year still. I feel so bad for Skate because I feel like, you know, partially because of this website, there was a lot of hype for Skate 4. And then in that process of skate floor being developed, teased, shown, tested and everything, Tony Hawk came back and reminded everyone.

that tony hawk is sick as hell yes what what jan are you a skate person because i was never a skate guy okay so when people were saying they want skate four and now this game is going to be skate but like it sounds like it's gonna be skate but like you just hang out online and do skate stuff and everyone's like well that's not what i want i'm like well how is it gonna how is it different like what would you be doing different in like your ideal version of skate for

I don't know. I think it's just like the trick lines and everything. In the same way that people that have continued to play Splatoon are like freaks. with Splatoon, the people that have continued to play skate are freaks with it because they've turned the physics into something like Tony Hawk. But in terms of what I'm looking for, when...

I say I want skate for is like, I kind of want that smooth control with like flicking the analog sticks to like pull off tricks that I assume that this is going to have all that. So, I mean, I don't know.

But none of the other Skate clones or games inspired by Skate have necessarily pulled off good enough physics that kind of rides the line of... feeling arcadey and feeling sim ish uh because there was that game skate game skating game that came out i think last year that yeah that it felt pretty close but uh it didn't quite capture

All of the miscellaneous random stuff that like the skate franchise brings because like skate, you know, they really play up the fact of like being a skateboarder and like trying to get on magazines, getting the right angle of a trick and everything. What was that game? I went to an event for that. Session? That sounds right. It's Skater XL or Session. I think it was Session. I believe it was Session. Yeah, it sounds right. Yeah.

Yeah, it was very skate-like, which I've always been a Tony Hawk guy. Yeah. I mean, I hope that this game does deliver. I like the idea of hanging out online with friends and skateboarding and setting stuff up. As long as there's actual constructed missions as well alongside that.

And players can just mess around with those things if they choose to do so. I mean, to me, it sounds like a pretty good setup, but I don't know. I'm not a skate guy, so I'm not the one that they have to figure out and please.

All right. Xbox's surprise MetaQuest 3S VR headset is out now, but supply is, quote, extremely limited. Xbox and Meta have partnered to release a limited edition MetaQuest 3S Xbox edition available for... $400. The bundle includes a custom 128 gigabyte MetaQuest 3S, matching touch plus controllers, a limited edition Xbox wireless controller, an elite strap, three months of MetaHorizon Plus.

and three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. So the idea is this is just a MetaQuest 3S, kind of in the same way that the Xbox Asus ROG Ally is just a ROG. But you use this to access Game Pass and to stream games through the cloud. To your headset with the Xbox controller, which is something people can do right now. But since everything is an Xbox, why not call everything an Xbox? It's kind of what they're doing here. I don't know. Everything is an Xbox is just like, we're going to put...

The sticker on everything is really literally is what's happening with this. Yes. It's strange. I mean, to me, when I hear it, the supply is extremely limited. It kind of feels like a test. Like they're going to see if people care about this sort of thing. And my guess is they won't. I don't care about this. Yeah. I mean, well, it does have an elite strap. Shit, I didn't consider the elite strap.

so i think we gotta like redo the calculation here yeah make sure you know you're okay with that with your your significant yeah get consent first absolutely um yeah i don't know uh i guess you know i'm not really worried about playing my xbox in general much uh like i said i enjoy using it when i do but um them finding other ways to like bring xbox into my life so far nothing's been as compelling as the rog ally and even that

is only compelling to a point because i'm like that's just a pc handheld which i've had a bunch for years now and um this one I guess I'll have to get my hands on to see if I care about any of the improvements they've made to that experience. But as it stands right now, it's like, okay, I'm curious, but that's the best you got from me. Yeah. I think that's going to do it for the news, though. So, Jan, I'm handing the show back over to you.

Folks, we're going to take another quick break. And after that, we will be back with emails and super chats. We've gotten any. Stay tuned, folks. We'll see you on the other side of this. These are the emails for the show. Emails! bombcastagiantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to write in about any and everything you want you want to avoid an awkward social interaction where there's no one to talk to well feel free to email us you got a fun quiz

a couple of trivia questions or just general cues, quandaries, musings about the video game industry, then hey, send them to us. Bombcast.com is the email address. Continuing their trivia and fun facts, Simon from Saskatchewan has continued to write in. Thank you, Simon. Simon writes in, Hello, Bombcast. The Mandarin word for egg is Dan. Coincidence?

Yes. There's a very unpleasant egg dish in part of China involving urine. Not going to say here, though, although I found a thousand year egg. It's called Dan Reichert. A thousand year egg dish repulsive. It's worth looking up. if you don't know what it is. It can be rude to refuse food in China, so I felt like I had to eat it. The reason we eat chicken eggs instead of duck and turkey eggs, although also delicious and healthier for us,

is because chickens need less space to lay eggs. They do it faster than other birds, and they don't have strong maternal instincts over their eggs. Yeah, they're like, fuck it. I don't care. $86? No. Make an omelet. See what I care. The state that produces the most eggs is Iowa, followed closely by Ohio. Eggshell color doesn't mean anything in terms of healthiness or taste. It's based on genetics and usually the feather color around the hen's ears.

Now, are those like shoot ears or is that like hen's ears like a word for anus for chickens? I think it's definitely a euphemism for anus. You got it. I'm not happy with the chicken anatomy. Can we just skip over this part? Cloaca. Eggs last longer in the fridge. Many places around the world think we're weird for putting them in the fridge. Also, it's best to wash slash rinse your eggs before cracking them. Think of where it's been, parentheses.

The cloaca. Negative. Eggshells are great for the garden and they're good source of calcium for plants. They're not good in an omelet. Thanks for the content. Simon from Saskatchewan. P.S. Can Paul be a regular feature on Giant Palm? generally seems like a cool dude. Seems like the Midwest guy you'd like to have a drink with.

Wow. Simon hates dogs too. I didn't know that. All right. I don't know, Simon. You're going to change your tune after the beginning of this podcast, perhaps. He could be good to have drinks with. I've had thousands of drinks with him. Yeah, and just protect your dogs, you know? Actively. hurt any dogs, but yeah. Just indirectly, that's all. Yeah, he just didn't do the lever on the trolley problem is all. He didn't pull the trigger. Yep, he just didn't pull the trigger. You're right.

Yeah, not going to defend that. You bought the gun and the bullet. Eggs, just yes or no, doesn't have to be a whole thing. Again, Dan 3.0 doesn't entertain this, but chicken eggs were never in a chicken's asshole? Well, yes, it was.

Yeah, that's what, that's the whole, that's why I said chicken anatomy is upsetting. Oh, I thought the cloaca was like a different chamber. The cloaca, that's the whole thing is cloaca is one chamber where it all happens. Oh, okay. So it's that the piss and shit and eggs is all the same hole.

Listen, I'm no expert, but that's my understanding of what a colloic is versus genitalia. I understand that, and I don't need to elaborate. It's also proof there's no God. Imagine we shit eggs. I'm sorry? Like, what if we... Shit eggs. What if we shit eggs? I don't know. What if we shit eggs?

Yeah. No, I think that'd be perfect. If that's what we do, then it's normal then. Exactly. I was going to say, especially based off the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, sure. That'd be weird. Yeah, but we started tomorrow. It'd be weird if we started tomorrow. That would be in the news. Right. Humans around the world shitting eggs. If you started shitting whole eggs and it didn't hurt, didn't cause any problems, would you tell anybody?

Like if I just went to go take a shit and I looked down and there were like six eggs in my toilet? Yes, and it's like you didn't even realize it. Girl, the question isn't would you tell anyone. The question is would you cook them? No, I really have free eggs in this economy. No, not doing that. No, no. I would tell Bianca and then I would do a video call with a doctor. Sure. Okay. I would call my video call.

Yeah. This isn't worth traveling. It's just you get in quicker with a video call and just hold up. He's got to want to put the finger in there. Yeah. Okay. You're in, say you had to go, you decided to go to the ER. Would you bring those eggs or would you just tell them? Yeah, I'd bring them basket eggs. It's like, you know, when like your stomach's having weird stuff and they ask you to bring in like a fecal sample or whatever, they would want to see the eggs.

Quest Diagnostics. And you go to the ER and there's another guy across the room with a basket full of eggs and you sort of look at each other like... You too? Something's going on here, isn't it? God, what a weird zombie movie that is. It's the disease that makes you shit eggs. I would watch that. That's fucked up, man. Alright, next.

email. It was a little bit of a serious one. This comes from Dave in Roseville. Thank you for the heads up there after that egg thing. This is a little bit more real, gang. Dave from Roseville writes in. Becoming the better version of you is hard. Dan's recent journey into becoming his upgraded self has inspired and both enraged me. Small amount of context. I'm 40 and I've just now realized I've pretty much pissed away most of my life.

So I've made the effort to become my 2.0. I must say, though, doing so requires so much paperwork from therapists, psychiatrists, the doctors and gyms. You all have been with me through so much. that could be a short story in of itself. If this gets read, tell me how you crawled out of the darkness and at least started the journey of being a better you. If not, thanks for all you do. Dave from Roseville, now soon to be ex sad sack of shit.

I know Dave from Roseville. I wonder if it's the one I know. I'm sure it's different for everyone. I don't know. With me, I always like self-improvement and everything. And I think over the years, even those who probably watched me for a long time realized that like... There's a lot of things I like about my father that I got from him, and there's a lot of things that drive me nuts. And over the years, I have...

seen the things that drive me nuts and i've seen them in myself and i've been like oh shit i don't want to make other people feel like that because this is genuinely infuriating because like there's the stuff that is like infuriating in a funny fun way and stuff like that and i'm fine with keeping that but then there's also stuff where it's like okay i don't want to be

close-minded like this. I don't want to be, you know, a certain way. So, like, recognizing the things that frustrate me, I guess, and him specifically, and doing everything I can to, you know, excise that for my own personality. That's been a guiding thing for me, I would say. Yeah, Dave, as someone that is completely emotionally, mentally, spiritually still fractured, I would say what you're doing already is steps enough.

Any type of progress is progress. There's going to be days, weeks, months where it feels like a certain Blight Club episode where there's zero proggies. But like every incremental step is still a step forward. And hey, even you writing this email and taking some of those steps of like getting a therapist, a psychiatrist, even thinking about.

Uh, going to see a doctor for physical health and going to the gym, uh, is, is good because also you want to do this for yourself. Yeah. It's got to come from there. Uh, yeah, it's, uh, for me, it's always been like, um, A natural process because what happens is I always find myself kind of moving away from things that I dislike and there's nothing I dislike than me from five years ago.

where i'm like oh man i did that man that sucks i don't want to be that guy anymore and so i'm always trying to like be better than that person that i used to be that kind of annoys me so it's like okay i'm just gonna keep trying to improve or self-reflect at the very least and try to find the way to deal with these problems, which usually is just put a little bit of work in, try to have a little inner strength and find yourself and be a little bit better. But yeah.

I think it's normal and healthy to look at past versions of you. I think so. Like, you know, I look back, you know, even five, 10, the different versions, and I'm just like, oh, man, what a dumbass. What an eye. What a dumbass, yep. But I think that's a good sign that you're looking back at that with open eyes. I think it's better than the...

people who don't seem to ever self-reflect I'm I do feel better than those people yes yeah uh and also Dave if you know you're you're looking for tips or miscellaneous things to do in the process of improving yourself uh I would highly suggest Go read. Go read more and maybe read something out of your normal wheelhouse, even if it's something simple like a cookbook, just because there could be like fun little things to introduce into your life.

that you could get from stuff as simple as like a cookbook maybe be a little bit wary of the type of stuff you're reading because sometimes some of these um improve your life books are kind of a little bit of a snake oil because they just want to hoodwink you into paying for courses or whatever don't do that a lot of them though are just like you know because I've read plenty of them too with like anxiety and things like that yeah a lot of them you could just like

They've got like three or four ideas of like, here's a way you can, you know, if you have a panic attack to, you know, calm down or whatever. And then it's like, it's padded out to be a full book. And it's like, I normally wouldn't be one to just like Sparks Notes something or Cliff Notes or whatever.

but like a lot of these like self-help ones are just like okay you're just like this is way too much here you know yeah yeah uh and yo dave feel free to send in progress along to the bomb cast uh i demand it Yes. Yes. I think was May or June Mental Health Awareness Month. We're doing it again. Let's do it again in July. Never mind. Don't don't get in touch with us. Nice, Mike. No, do that. Yeah, I don't know. It's an important thing. I know that.

We've been very vocal as of late about politics and stuff, you know, fuck ice. But also at the same time, I think dudes, specifically dudes in our demo, should talk about their mental health more to destigmatize it. It's nuts to me because I feel like there have been so many huge strides forward in that in recent years.

I can't imagine not being open about how you feel about things with the people around you, you know, with your friends, with your family, with your loved ones. Like that just seems like the most unhealthy thing to not just be completely. You only get one life. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Talk to people about how you're feeling.

Yeah, go watch High School Musical 3. Yeah, that's what we're saying. Some of you are saying. Dan, I want to watch High School Musical with you. We should do a film. Okay, I know this is a long list now of film in 40s, but we have to do... starting with the angels and demons uh angels and demons and then a rickio interlude finishing it off with the da vinci code and then the high school musical trilogy yeah

All right. Okay, gang. Moving on. Peter writes in. Hi, I'm watching Dan play Sonic 06 and just need to know Mount Rushmore of volcanoes and games. Tekken is one of them, right? Obviously.

Yeah, I mean, Tekken... Boy, Tekken might be number one. There's the one in the Luncheon Kingdom in Mario Odyssey. That's a fun one because you go up there and you make a steak in there or something, right? Like you put food in there. It's like a soup and a boss fight. So Odyssey, Tekken. I think Tekken's number one. Yes.

All right, I'm trying to think of other volcanoes in video games. Oh, the volcano in Resident Evil 5 that Wesker is falling and then you shoot rockets into his eyes. Death Mountain is a volcano that you go into in Breath of the Wild. It's dormant. There's lava in there. In Death Mountain? There's lava in every fucking dungeon.

Okay, it's still a volcano. I think a volcano, I'm sure this probably isn't a scientific explanation, but I picture a volcano, you need a big hole at the top and it needs to be filled with bubbling, brewing lava. Amen, brother. Death Mountain. Mountain looks like. Right. It's not a bowl of lava. Correct. But it's a volcano.

No, I want it to look like the baking soda volcanoes. Okay. It needs to look like this with a hole on top. I want a mashed potato volcano. Well, that's going to limit you because there's only so many cartoon volcanoes in video games. Dragon Roost Island's got one, right? Good. Yeah, Dragon Roost Island's fine, yeah. Although it's not, like, is it Mount Rushmore worthy? I don't know. Dragon Roost is great. We've loosely picked some. Alex in Bendigo, Australia.

has given us all homework to do before the next bomb cast evening bombers. I'm sending you, I'm sending you all homework of a metal album to listen to. Oh, Dan, you get. From Beale Street to Oblivion by Clutch. Bluesy, hard rock. I'd be surprised if you haven't tried this band already. I have not. You've heard of Clutch. Jam. I think you have. Praise Armageddonism by Blood Command.

Pop punk inspired fun. Mike gets Ziltoid, the omniscient 2007 version by Devin Townsend. It's a musical about an alien that tries to destroy Earth in search of the best cup of coffee. Devin's very operatic. If you like Iron Maiden, you should like his voice. Yeah, that's a good call for Mike. Yeah, I think so. I was worried about Mike's choice. That one sounds perfect for him. Jerf.

Mariner by Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas, one of my favorite albums. Okay. Grubb, given your preferences for a Colorado night, there's really only one choice. Absolute Everywhere by Blood Incantation. Enjoy the black hole, bud. all right i'm going in deep uh i expect full essays on your assignment for your assignment next week don't actually do this alex and bendigo australia uh all right praise armageddonism i do love some pop punk inspired stuff

All right, moving on. Let's see. Oh, we have another quiz. Oh, shit. This one comes from Matt in Scotland. Let me pull up the. The answer's here. Hey, Bombers. Been an on and off listener since I was 15. Oh, my God. What the fuck does that even mean? Oh, my God. 15. Wow. Well, they're 15 and a half now. Right. Wow. It's only it's been a few months. And now I teach English literature to teenagers. What? God. Wow. Homeboy and I are probably around the same age.

Let's see. One of the best slash worst parts of my job is the slang, which I am now an unwilling expert on. So much so, here's a quiz with a series of hip new words that you can test yourself with. to make you feel old and disconnected from the youth. Enjoy and keep up the great work. Matt from Scotland. Okay. Basically, there's 26 words. I'm going to say the...

slang and you, y'all tell me what you think it means. Okay. Okay. Uh, no real scores for this. We'll work together. No scores. Don't matter. Points don't matter. Let's go. All right. Yes. Yes. Whose line is it? Anyway, rules. Number one, Sigma. Cool. Strong. Yeah, just like someone who's doing it right. Mega Man X, final boss. Okay. Generally, we got that right. It means good. Beta. Cuck.

Yeah, like... I'm sorry, what was that, Mike? Cuck. Yep, weak. Number three, skibbity. Evil. Okay, bad. Sure, sure, sure. Uh, four, mewing. 151. That's like, uh, putting your tongue to the top of your mouth. Yeah, like it's touching your face in a, in a, like a soothing way, right? Oh, it's like the Rizzler. Yeah, the Rizzler's probably mewing constantly. Yeah.

No, it's just like the proper tongue placement in your mouth. Well, according to this quiz, it means looking good. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. It's named after a doctor named Mew or something. I don't know. Okay. Oh, I get what you were saying now, Mike. 151, funny. I don't know how to pronounce this one. Phantom Tax? Phantom Tax? That's what you call the O company when you buy it from them.

Uh, I think it's like, uh, when you, when like, you remember you used to grab like, um, someone's food and like snack inspector. Oh, I think that's right, Bacalar, yeah. You are correct, Bacalar. It's like, um, yeah. Phantom attacks. What does phantom mean, though? I bet phantom is someone who bummed food off a friend in a video once on YouTube or something.

I always just do the poison test. They're like, oh, poison test. Oh, they hide the poison right here. Okay, Phantom is an American content creator, and he's done stuff with, um, what's the big, you Twitch guy that... Like the biggest Twitch guy. I show speed. The other one. Kai Sinat. Yeah. He was on Kai Sinat. I think he ate food once. He says Phantom Tex. Right. Okay. All right. Well. It's not phantom, yeah. It's phantom. Sus. That's suspicious.

But it's also sometimes skewed with like a sexual innuendo. Sure. Like you're being sussy. Sussy baka. Sussy baka, yes. Alright, well that's not on the list. Seven, Negative Aura. Just bad vibes, right? I think that was self-explanatory, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Xbox Heat. Yes, actually. Number eight, Mad Lit. That's just Mike Minotti.

Yeah, so you can take Brit lit, you can take American lit, or you can take Mad lit. Okay, that means stylish. I'm going to skip through some of these because these feel a little bit old. 13 looks maxing. That's what you're trying to like. do weird things to you to make yourself as handsome as possible to make yourself an alpha that attracts females. Okay. Uh, yeah, I'll, I'll take it. It means being attractive. Uh, 19 chuggy. Slow.

Uh, Chugi. Man, Chugi could be anything. I don't know what that means. I can't even think of it. I can't even... get one neuron to connect with another one of my brain with some kind of word association. It's gotta be someone's name. And then it's, he could possibly mean. Uh, it means out of date and trying to be trendy. Okay. Some of these other words, the words I'm skipping, Mad Lit, EP, Mog, Big L, No Cap, Bussin, 8, Op, Ohio, Bet, SK, SK, SK. These are all...

Yeah. Wait, what is, is that just when you're calling a cat? It's a filler. No, that's, yeah. Uh, that's a filler expression for excitement or laughter. Um, let's see. No op because of Samoa Joe. Yes. What about Jiddle Yang? That's not real. That's dessert at the Filipino fast food restaurant that you like, Jan. Yes, yes, that is correct. But it also is an attention grabber.

I don't think you can call someone a Jiddle Yang, actually. Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. And last one here, Fudulu, Fetulu Hogan? Fetulu Hogan? Fetulu Brain Rot. Hey, Emmy, what's Fetula Hoonigan? I think it just means like, it's like, it's just like, it's like nonsense, right? Italian brain rot.

This one is the most specific one because it means someone overweight and seen as less than. Oh, it's me. Yeah, no. That is such a, that is too many syllables for that. Too Latugan. I just don't know how to. read properly. All right. Well, thank you, Matt from Scotland for that. A couple more emails here. We'll skip a hip hop quiz because Mike is on the phone. Travis and Fargo writes in.

Which of you has a favorite video game that has the lowest Metacritic score? I think I really like for shoot like the bouncer. Yeah, it's not bad. What's the Bouncer's Metacritic score? Alright. Bullet Witch. Total overdose. Metacritic. This is like hard. Like I just don't like keep... this in my head yeah metacritic for the bouncer is 66. okay that's pretty good actually

I don't know what the first Twisted Metal is. A favorite video. The first Twisted Metal is going to be good, right? I like Star Wars Bounty Hunter a lot. Do I love it, though? I don't know. It's a 68, so Jan's got me beat there. Oh, wait, that was remastered, 65 for the original. Oh, okay. It's hard. This is a hard one. Yeah, it's tough. Favorite.

All right. Okay. Well, we'll just move on to the last two emails of the show. This one comes from Jeff from Quebec. Hi, folks. I was chatting with the front desk duder whilst checking in and somehow through the small talk. he let me know he really likes detectives and paranormal and so on. I didn't feel like asking about the esoteric, so I asked, who's your favorite detective? The question stopped him.

It suddenly felt very serious. He didn't have an answer ready, yet obviously he has a favorite. I just confronted him with the fact and he had to choose. Silence. He smiled and said in a soft but confident voice, Batman. So, using your new friend's very broad definition of a detective, who's your favorite detective? For me, I guess it's Lara Croft? Jack Bauer? Cheers, Jeff from Quebec.

It's hard to not pick Jack Bauer if he's ever brought up. Batman's more of a detective than Jack Bauer. I like Batman too, but Jack Bauer. Batman is like, he does get labeled dick. detective more than people. He's the world's greatest detective. Exactly. Detective comics. The answer's Columbo. It's Columbo. He's the best detective. It's Monk.

here's a columbus the best detective people have died on columbus watch right like sometimes it takes columbus so long to yeah down that that murderer will murder another person first and that's that's that's bad right i don't want that happening to me but people die on batman's watch all the time i want like i want i want a detective for more of a kid show thing right

Ooh. Inspector Gadget. He inspects crime. Yeah, that looks like crime, all right. Jimmy McNulty from The Wire. That's a good one. i have two answers it's monk um and um

Oh, someone said Eddie Valiant. I have my real answer. It's Veronica Mars. Veronica Mars is my favorite detective. Eddie Valiant was a drunk. He's a private eye. Yeah, he's a private eye. He's a great character. I don't know if I really... question with my life sure did i ever tell y'all when i cried when i found out that encyclopedia brown was a white kid no that's very funny you cried long buddy what do you mean encyclopedia brown was a white kid well

Well, yeah, but he's like a little white detective kid. And I bought the books thinking like, oh, his last name's Brown. That means he's brown like me. And then my mom showed me a cover of a different one of like, no, he's a white kid. I thought he was like me. Anyone's first name is actually Encyclopedia? Probably. I like it. I cried when Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas. That was eight, and it was very sad. He was from Michigan, like me. I like Psych a lot.

Who? Psych. The characters welcome, Mike. Man, that seemed... I could have guessed that you like Psych a lot, Jan. Parentheses positive, mostly. Your tone does not sound... Your tone doesn't sound like it, dude. Professor Layton. Professor Layton's a detective, right? Yeah. Yeah, Professor Layton's pretty sharp. Professor... Phoenix Wright's, like...

Seems like an idiot, but he always gets to the right place eventually. What Phoenix Wright does in those video games is really more like being a detective than being a lawyer a lot of the time. Is House... Kind of a detective? Yes. He's 100% Sherlock Holmes. Doctor detective. Yeah. All right. All right. That's why they call him House, because it's like, hey, we're just going to do Sherlock Holmes, but for sick people.

All right, gang. That about brings us to our last email. This one comes from Banger, Northern Ireland. Hey, team. FYI. I've started saying Jeff's Instagram username in my head.

in the style of Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rhone. Jeff, grubby grub. I think this has the potential to be the new Mike. Minardi, Mike, Mike, Minardi. Nothing has that potential. No, and the reality is, I actually, it won't get stuck in my head, because I don't actually need to sing my own name all that often. Yeah, only one person in the group seems to feed off that. I guess it also works, Alice points out, it also works with Jeff Bacillard. Jeff. Oh, that's good, too.

Thank you, Matt and Banger. That's his name. You know, once again, thank you for sending your lovely emails to bomb cast a giant bomb dot com. Mike, can I ask you to read some super chats? Yeah, absolutely here. Thank everybody for sending these in. During the show today, Martin Hollis says, I'm a weirdo who has a big retro game collection. Do I buy a physical copy of Mind's Eye to have it?

Where it may not be playable in 10 to 15 years. Yes. 100% buy that. Also buy Xbox games apparently. Kelsey Lewin on the thing was saying like... They'll get four copies of Xbox versions of third-party games, and they sell maybe one of those. No one's buying those things, so you should get those. So you wait like six months here so the thing's really cheap and then buy a physical copy of Mind's Eye? I think you get...

go for mine's eye, like anything under $25. I think you're good. I got a sealed concord. So like there is a certain, uh, yeah, appeal to that. Right up there. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Here's one from Stein. Catch one. Dan, disregard the PS of my email with that new lore. Poor Ringo. Also, will Dan eat 30 bananas when Donkey Kong releases? He said he could do it in a previous episode.

I mean, there needs to be a personal incentive, but I'm not saying no. I mean, could we do a Donkey Kong Bonanza stream where you try to eat as many bananas as you can just for pride? He's going to barf. Money in pocket for each one, but I'd be, I'd be, I'd be, I'd be a banana-thon. I would do it.

Maybe I'll talk to Chad if they want to incentivize you or something a little bit. I don't know. We'll come up with something. Can't you die from eating too many bananas? You're going to find me eating anything too much.

We're going to find out. It would have to be way more than you actually physically could eat. Let's look into this, everybody, before we just have Dan die from eating bananas. What do you think is going to happen? He's not going to eat. I'm not going to ask you, mister. I'm just going to blast him with a firecracker in his face. You're not Dan Roikert.

the advisor. That's for sure. Yeah, you get asked last. You're afraid of fruits, so what do you mean? Alright, we'll get a media. He seriously could die. He can't fucking die from eating bananas. No. I think you could die from eating enough of anything, but... We force feed him! Yeah, I don't think you'll literally just croak after 12 bananas. Well, what if his tummy explodes?

I mean, that lady died from drinking too much water. Hold your wee for a wee. What? You don't remember hold your wee for a wee? I remember that. Hold your Wii for a Wii? No, it was not a part of that promotion. It was like in 2006 or so when the Wii was new and it was hard to find. So the Wii killed someone? Some fucking radio, no, it was like a radio station or some local thing where they had a contest called Hold Your Wii for a Wii where you had to drink a bunch of water.

And whoever held it longest got a free weed. And this lady died. No, she had some weird poisoning or kidney malfunction or something. So yeah, trying to get a weed killed her. The most abundantly available console in the history. No, it was so hard to find. Yeah, no, you're right. She should have died. She should have deserved it, yeah. You're right. Never mind.

A spinny killer says, shout out to my eight-year-old son, Jack, for winning his first baseball tournament. He's a big Giant Pump fan, and we listened to you guys all weekend. Keep up the great work. Love this giant bump era. Pete from LeBlanc. Congratulations, Jack. Let's go, Jack. Yeah, Jack. My poor nephew, he's had two baseball tournaments now, like the local town one, then the all-star team for the counties.

and both of them he gets to the he's doing they're doing really well and then they get to the final game and they uh they can't quite pull it off it was rough on saturday because it was you know like 96 degrees he had to play in three of these games in that one day um I was going there for two of them, and that was bad. 400 bananas is what Chad says. I'm sorry. I'm stalling that. Abby, did he die? Yes. He's going to throw up before that. He's not going to be able to eat, like, 10.

Maybe 10. Maybe 10. At most 10. I like how Christian's last name is from Argentina. Yeah. I do like that. Makes it easy for me. Just want to say I loved having you back on the main cast. Bacalar. Love you, man. Just put the phone away during movies. The woodpeckers can wait. hashtag dan was right oh boy this whole thing again

Hell yeah. That was not the argument. That still never was the argument. Oh my god. Exactly. No one understands it. This is why people think January 6th is okay. This is why people are okay with January 6th because you're... Dan specifically is okay with it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much, Breezy. That's very sweet of you to say. How are bananas so fucking cheap?

Because we get them from countries that's all they export, and we kind of force them to sell it to us cheap. Okay, it's like 99 cents for like six of them. It's insane. Yeah. What? There's multiple reasons there. Bananas are very popular. It's the most popular fruit, right? I don't know. I think it is because apples aren't as popular in other countries as they are here. I would say apple is the default fruit. In here, but I think a lot of places it's not at all.

Yeah, I think globally, bananas probably are. Maybe oranges? Yeah, they're cheap. There's no way bananas are this cheap without widespread human suffering. So I don't know. Clearly, yes. Banana Republic's got their name somehow. I don't know what it is. Oh, yeah. Do you guys ever play Tropico? No. No, but I like the box art. It's got the guy that's always like, ah, you know? That's cool. Yeah, I like that guy. Yeah.

We should make Dan a, yeah, a tropic dictator. And where do you land on the blood fruit banana, Mike? The blood fruit banana? Oh, I'm not a fan of that one either. No. No, for real? Yeah, very stinky. Pretty wet. They're not as bad as apples. They're gross. They get all mushy and you step in them. And I don't like that. How many bananas have you stepped in? Three. What? What? Did you slip? I sat on one one time. Was it funny?

You sat on a banana? Wait, which way? The long way! This guy sits on bananas the long way! He's going vertical! It had the banana condom off already, so... I will say a very sort of like unripened banana is disgusting. Oh, yeah, for sure. I can't even wrap my head around. It's got to be chalky. Let's get through the rest of these. Oh, that was it. That was it. We're done. Okay, all right. People aren't sending us any more money for some reason.

All right, gang. What do we got going on the rest of the week? Game Mess Morning is popping off from Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Correct, Mr. Grubb? That's right. We'll have a Death Stranding quick look as well. And the Alters quick look. Blight Club again tomorrow. Mike, is this the week? Ah, boy, it can't be. It's feeling like I've been doing nothing but playing Rascal for my entire life. Like I am just stuck in this game.

Gosh, I'm trying to remember the last time I was playing the same game this long. It hasn't been since Mythologies, I think. Or it's had this many episodes. It's not that it's been that long, but it feels like it.

Mike, you know what you need to do. I just look at the calendar. So I do think you're going to beat it this week. I do genuinely. It didn't seem like you had that much left. I'm a rascal. And then Grubb, you're out next week, right? I'm out next week. You guys should do that. The Delight Club that you guys have. Guitar room, Mitch.

which oh i should bring kayla in on that she's the expert on guitar man uh yeah delight club with guitar man could be fun okay that would be good yeah i want to i know i could emulate it but down a physical copy you should yeah i mean because that's one where lag would be on that so if you can make it uh yeah even crt if you can split it out i don't know i usually don't like getting these games online but i'll make an exception

Guitar Man for the content. You should be able to get it for about $100 or less. Oh, Guitar Man's expensive? Yeah, I was going to say Guitar Man's expensive, yes. It's like $90. I'll tell you what, I'll do it anyways. For the love of the game. We also got voicemail dump truck this week with our dear friend, Abby Russell. Make sure to go call into the show.

They have voicemails specifically for Abby. If you missed it yesterday, yesterday was Mornings Monday. Mike, what is the title? Wow. Yesterday was Monday Mornings Miss with Mitch. And then, of course, we had Monday evening gaming at Mike's at night. I did see a comment saying, thank God you're not doing this in the afternoon. Yeah, that's what occurred to me, too.

Because that would change the show dramatically. It sure would. We ain't doing that. Although, again, if for some reason Dan or Jan ever have to host Mega Man, it just easily becomes Mega Dan or Mega Jan. Ooh, I like that. I like that. Yeah, we could do that. Works that way. We announced it earlier, but this UPF, we will be playing rematch against MinMax. So please tune into that. Y'all have to train up because I know that Janet Garcia actually watches soccer.

uh and is a big fan so like y'all need to like sync up and like get ball is life or whatever use your hands i know that much There we go. There we go. Unless you're the goalie. But use your hands on the controller, though. All right. And then finally, folks, for our premium members out there, we will be doing a town hall this Thursday.

on discord uh got some announcements and then some other housekeeping to get out of the way there's also a way for you the community to ask us questions directly you can always ask questions throw some cues There's a Q&A channel for premium members on the Discord. A lot of us try and pop in on that and answer some miscellaneous cues as long as we can answer them.

Folks, that about does it for the rest of the show. Anyone else got anything else they want to say? No. Sick. No. Stay hydrated. It's really hot out. Yes, yes. Please stay hydrated. Hydrate or dihydrate, folks. That about does it for the show. We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bombcast. He's been Mike. He's been Jeff. He's been Jeff. He's been Dan. I've been Jan. We'll see you next week. Goodbye!

All right. I'm going to stop recording. Gonna stop YouTube now. Gonna come back up on all of us to clap. Beep and raid coming up in three, two, one. Hey, for a first test of this thing, it worked perfectly. Yeah. Any robot voices? Oh, yeah. Any robot voices? No, no one said anything. I was looking. Yeah. All right. Robot. Kept them all down. Hey, shout out to Chuck, huh? Yeah, absolutely. Tell me something, Chuck.

He's busy making my top games of the century, though, so he's not here to take those things, but that's what makes him so great. Yes. I wonder if I could just, instead of sending myself this big file, what if I just put Premiere on this? and just edit it here. Totally. Remove steps. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, wow. The cloud. Anyway, let's go ahead and clap and beep respectively. All right. I'm going to get timed out. It is.

Tell me something, girl. How you tired in this modern world? All right, I'm ready. I think that might be Bradley Cooper's best movie. He's a talented guy. Wet Hot American Summer. Yeah, Wet Hot American Summer is the best movie. Limitless. I'm goofing on you. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and clap. They made a TV show based on that. American Sniper. 15 and 20. 1, 5, 2, 0. Hangover Part 3. Oops. Beautiful. There should already...