897: Ethical Pugs

Hey everybody, it's Tuesday, July first, twenty twenty five. Welcome to the Giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and ninety seven. That's right, folks, I'm your host gen Oh Shoah joining me co Captain of the Ship for this week. That's right, he's been promoted to co Captain of the Ship. He's also CPO. Is that your title? But he's also the title that we know the most.

The bird boy of.

Games Media, Mike Manati.

Hi, it's me and I'm a bad bad boy.

That's right. Uh uh. He's You can find him on the front of boats, dancing and cheering on his team as they paddled down the river because he is so fast with with with riz and charisma. He's Aura dynamic, Dan record.

The hell are you talking about?

Jan That's right, you're on a boat.

You're dancing. We got emotes for the summer. That's what all the kids are into.

IoT, you're doing a Titanic reference. But then you just lost me with a bunch of stuff. I decided, I don't know what you're going for.

I'll send a boat.

I was on a boat like a week ago.

Never mind, so long, I'll send you some links later Dan okay okay uh and and speaking about boats, he's keeping us all afloat. That's right, Jeff Backler.

What's up? I actually was on a boat this weekend?

Was that where the podcast was? No?

No, no, no no. That would have been way better than the situation I was in. But great to be here. I'm excited. We've got a special guest, jan don't.

We and that special guest that's right, call the Baja men from nineteen ninety eight to figure out who let the dogs out, because we got.

The big dog right here. That's right.

Man, Sorry scout.

Yeah, hello everybody, Thank you for having me first video podcast I've been on for a while.

Apologize for running late. It's all my faults.

I'm like this Frankenstein collection of screens and Mike's and trying to get everything working.

It's always a pleasure, man, Audio.

Matt Rory, throw the Catholic guilt out the window, all right, No need to apologize for the next at least two and a half hours. I'm asking you to see your face. Happy to be around. I've used the Lord of the Rings deck that you gave me several times.

Hey cool, I'm glad.

Do I think I'm good at playing magic. No, I think I'm Garbo.

Actually we gotta stream sometime. We can do little arena stream teach.

How's everyone doing this week?

Feeling good? Looking good, smelling good?

Jen?

Thanks for asking?

Yeah, what are you doing? Smell wise different?

Have you not been smelling good?

Like?

Did you buy axe body spray?

First of all, you know what when you live in New Jersey, axe body spray comes out of the faucet. Okay, is it that boy on?

And now it comes like in some beaches they have like those sunscreen machines where you just step in and it like sprays. Those are six thick really like that. They're like an outbreak has matt situation, but sunscreen, you know, is.

It natural where?

You know, Like normally you go to Jersey or even like California or something, you go to the beach and it's just like water has a certain like look to it, you know. But then like you go to like Aruba or like you know, like an island or something, and it's like kool aid blue. It is like like is that just natural thing? Or is that a hey, get the tourist in type thing?

Why is it that blue?

Time? Out. Yes, you're asking two different things.

Okay.

The first question was meant to almost imply that, like these islands and Caribbean islands are like doing something special to attract the tourists to their water.

That's the natural state of the watt So that's.

The thing, is like, what what is making it so much more just vibrant blue when you're on like a Caribbean island.

Probably less run off.

Like you know, if you're on a coast of the US, you've got a lot of rivers taking alluvial soil and taking it out to the ocean.

So it's probably gonna be a little more dense and darker.

But the oblivial soil dam river doctor, what's going on?

It's right, it's what Mike is right. It's I believe he's right. It's what is in the water and all the you know, I don't know, sediment and crap that's in the water needles.

It looks a lot better than the islands on the Yes.

The islands are going to have like big mountain ranges with.

Water offlow for the most part, so you're probably just from pure ocean water.

Matt Rory, You you read the most out of I think anyone I know, because I always see reading a newspaper of sorts, oh yeah, or like a little tiny booklet. How do you think you'd fare in a spelling bee?

Honestly pretty decent, but if you've ever watched like the real one, they gets really tricky. I'm really good at like crossing puzzles and spelling in general, but the stuff they pick it's always like some weird medical procedure from like the nineteenth century. That's twenty words twenty letters long for the last one, So I get pretty far. I got really mad in high school one time because I got called out and uh, and they wanted to know

Clean as the definition.

Bye, it's a bad bad call.

But still that feels like, yeah, that feels like a bad called bad sportsmanship.

Celebrity hominem from thirty Rock felt like I was on an episode of that.

No it's the other one, but no, i'd i'd pretty decent that I spelling me. I guarantee you.

Okay, okay, all right, all right, I was a Disney World again. Yeah, I mean it was the week.

Okay, no, no, no, no, before you get to that, Mike,

Yeah, well yeah this I got it here.

Well yeah, because then I flew out on Friday. It was like a very early, like six am flight, So okay, so you know you book that, you book the return flight. It's like, all right, six am, yep, that's That's what I'm thinking about. So then the whole time one, yep, leaven very early on Monday morning. I'm gonna be able to work a full day. Don't have to worry about Monday morning this with Mitch or Mega man, It's all gonna happen. So I get up early early. Sure would

Hi first time, long time, How the fuck does this happen to any human on Earth?

I guess I just I'll tell you what. I've had a few snaphews like this. It could be worse because like sometimes I go and like, oh, you're playing left yesterday, stupid sir. Yes, yeah, sometimes happened. That's one time. That was a one time.

Do you not check in for your flights? Like I just checking twenty check in? Oh but how could you check in twenty four because you go twenty four hours ahead?

You were twelve hours off.

I love it because you usually.

Checking checking twenty four hours ahead, like on the dot to get a good seat.

I mostly go southwest, so that's southwest.

It didn't I checked in, but didn't really matter. I had it was some smaller thing called breeze that flies out of cantidact Is.

Just like one of those Disney Air airlines.

No pretty convenient mix up though, because then that meant when we had our meeting midday, he got to take it from the et ride.

Yeah, thankfully, my my one buddy works at Universal, just got me a ticket to go to Universal. So at first I went back to the hotel because I was able to get back in my room and sleep a little bit. But I just went to the Universe. I went to Universal studios merely went on et Uh. It was in the line while we took our call and they had to get on the ride. I was like, all right, but I can still hear you, but I'm gonna be on the ride for the that's like five minutes.

It was how that worked.

That was a really weird meetings.

Yeah, what kind of financial outlay would all of you be in for twelve hours in an airport. I I can't see spending less than one hundred dollars on beer and food in twelve hours.

No, you gotta go to the lounge. You gotta go to the lounge and then pay for a lounge.

About it?

Crackets, crackets, crackers is a cracket?

A cracket.

Then like open bar and stuff, the lounges is the way to go.

You gotta pay for the lounge.

You just get a credit card that gives you priority pass access and then you can just go into a bunch of different lounges.

And it just saves you so much money. Well, that's assuming account a good credit score. If you travel, play.

You open up a credit cards, travel benefits and stuff like that, and then.

Lounges, Now, I mean you do you generally those credit cards you do pay for yearly, so you're still yeah, but they.

Come with like three hundred dollars travel credit and stuff like that that pays for itself like immediately.

Yeah.

Look, I'm not getting paid by the company, so I'm not gonna be, you know, showing for it. I'm just saying, look into some good travel credit cards. It's changed my life.

The only think of that that really sucked. Well one, I felt incredibly guilty because I couldn't do the shows that I'm supposed to be doing on Monday.

But don't worry.

We got Wega Man coming up now Wednesday evening gaming at Mike's at night. We'll play some of that new Dune game. So guilty about that. But then, like you know, having to pay extra Uber rides was annoying.

Do you do you.

Own a Sony Wega CRT?

No. No, I'm a poser, I'm a fake.

Okay, Mike, I will say, as as the chief content officer here at Giant Bomb, you do have permission to play Mega Man games.

Since it's Wega.

Man, that's okay, that's okay. I'm a product person. I think this might be more of a product and I think I think we're going to stick with Dune for for somebody points out a chat for some reason, I want to do a Saturday or Sunday stream and it's sega man that is dreamcast or Genesis stuff or Saturn or something.

You know, Manati, Yes, you know how I feel about you.

You love me.

I don't have any conversation that starts that way.

I'm not sure there's anything you could do that would make me not like you. I mean maybe there's something you could have said. I don't know, let's hearsay.

Who knows.

That is just like mysteriously gone from the record.

Right like who knows what you've said behind closed. I'm sure there's still nothing that you could have ever have said for me to be upset with you. But that's true. So you know, look, I feel bad. I feel bad this happened to you. Uh it boggles the mind. I just don't get it. But uh, you know, what do you what have you learned from the experience? How are you gonna how are you gonna approach flight the next time?

Because I want to say, like, I'm just gonna like double check a triple check. But I said that before because I've had is like this. It really was just like I got there. They said it was six pm, and I'm like, how can.

That be.

A three man?

Man? I got up so early, you're back I got because I get to the airport early.

Ye yeah, yeah, fel like I'm a flight Like those times are sort of seared into my brain a little bit in a way that yeah, you know, nothing seriously into my brain, but like flight times do.

Like it's like that is one thing where it's like, yeah, I know exactly when I need to be there, and I'm checking that all the time.

They should be in military time. I've decided military tip all right, Yeah, just to subtract twelve from the number if it's over twelve, and you'll get there. It's I felt so smart when I learned that trick.

What's what's doing?

Great?

What's going on?

I'm doing alright?

Been' been looking for work for a long time now. Games industry is kind of a mess, but I got some tires in the fire there. I also finally started up a Patreon, like you funding them on an a of COFIs and Patreons and everything like that. I'm mostly just trying to write more because I've been bored out of my mind looking for work, like sending out resumes.

Into the ether. But yeah, my wife and I have started up a podcast. I've been doing a lot of writing. I need to put some more stuff up there this week with that's patreon.

Dot com slash Matthew Rory And if you're a fan of properly petting puppies, I'm bringing it back. I'm gonna put it down to the dollar tier, so just sign up for a dollar. I need to start doing more than those cause even it's imagine getting back into doing that voice after like five years of not doing it. It's really tough. It's like I don't know if I have that kind of gene in me anymore. But I meant to send you a dog picture for this weekend and put it in a little folder. But I've met the

So, Rory is something I've always been curious about with dogs, right with you and dogs specifically, is there like a top tier breed of dog or do you non discriminate? Is it just like the vibes alone of the.

Dog vibes alone. Usually like all dogs are pretty cute.

I find it's the weird inverse for personality of like cuteness to health, Like you know, everybody thinks plugs and French ball dogs are adorable, but then they're just really unhealthy and probably shouldn't be around.

And then I like big dogs to love. Pippoles are great. I love pippoles.

What are your thoughts on King Charles Cavaliers.

I love them.

Oh, I love them, trust me, I've seen pictures of dog. Yeah, I would. I would totally be in there.

It's like every time I see one I had a girlfriend one time. Maybe watch every episode of Sex and the City so all I can call at King Charles Cavalier is Elizabeth Taylor Goldblatt and nobody gets it except for like get in the background.

That's a good one though.

No, I love them all, and I should mention before we move on.

I am doing this like twenty five episode blog series about my favorite author. Oh, that's gonna be free on the Patreon. I just loved this guy, nam Kim Stanley Robinson. I figured it'd give me a little structure to my week to actually be working on something.

Week two weeks so.

More streams were writing I've been I've been bored as hell, but thanks for having me on.

I appreciate it. I'm always I'm available anytime.

You guys much to go. You've talked about it. Where where do where do people? Dot com?

Patreon dot com, slash Matthew Rory should be there the Rory round Up. If anybody remembers the Rory Roundup from two thousand and five, I'll be very impressed. But that was one of the first shows I did for game Spot back in the day, The Lovely Oh do you know? I forget Tino's last name? He went on to design. He did the motion graphics for that show. In two thousand and five. He went on to make the UI for the character in Dead Space with the back pops out.

He did that UI.

You do you know? Yes? Yes?

Uh?

Track on every single Filipino in the video industry. If you're out there, I already know what is?

What does mean?

Panoy is just like a Filipino? Okay, Matthew Rory?

Uh?

This is This has been circulating the website a lot. Where is the Philippines geographically located? Oh?

That is definitely South Asia. I mean, if you want to get more.

Set that, you're good.

You sh the flying colors, not.

Your graphic oriented.

But would you say it's anywhere near the Caribbean?

No, No, definitely Okay.

I was reading about something in the Mediterranean like yesterday, and then I was like, is it Mediterranean or Caribbean? That's in like the Gulf of Mexico, Like I just Mediterranean?

Is Europe?

Yes?

Yeah, near Greece, near Greece and all those other places.

The Philippines.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know to talk about the history of American American and colonialism, but we have.

A no, let's go dog, Okay, Yeah, it.

Was one of the first American really like, how would you call it? Jan like the only American colony we've ever had.

Yeah, it's it's like it's yeah, Puerto Rico adjacent. My boy Taft was governor there. Please, oh knows problematic.

Glazing Taft again.

It turns out all the presidents kind of are.

But no way, look Dan three point zero, Rory, if

And he's like, yeah, but no, it's it's about kind of like also not playing up as much when I don't know something, but also I need to be honest when I don't know something. That Mediterranean was just a thing that happened in my real off camera life where it's like that Caribbean or Mediterranean.

Right, ask questions, ask questions when people get married.

Me. No, not three point not three point Zeros is the thing. Here's the thing.

I still don't know a lot of stuff. But I'm right.

So that's fine. You're doing, you're doing, you're doing, You're doing fine.

I'm not going to stifle your curiosity, Dan, I encourage it.

I do know the Philippines thing I stuck in my head. I know it's not in the Gulf Mexico.

Yeah, who knows?

You didn't. A few other things that I would like to have a take up space up there. I'm margin on it.

I'm I'm defragging the old noggin up there.

We're getting there.

I missed back to School. That was the fun show to edits one of us. Maybe you could do it one off episode one time.

Matt about.

Matt, thank you President.

I think he was a big apea. Yeah, yeah, well.

Last pamp I'll say My podcast is called Why does This Make Me Cry? It's about watching a ship that makes me cry all the time and I can't figure it out. So my wife is now my therapist for this podcast. We got to do another one, but the first episode is about why I cry at Air Force One and that's the last.

Yeah, that's actually really interesting. Why do you think you cry? We go into it, dude.

It's a half hour long podcast where I'm talking about it. You the one scene that I'm talking and I don't want to start this off with just me pipping stuff.

That's yeah, I do go on.

There is a scene in that.

Movie I can do like basically the almost line by line, Like you know, air Force one is run out of chaff and they're getting this mischell shot on the Russian jets and this one guy Halo two says throughout of countermeasures, they're not going to make it. I'm going in and he just flies in there and blows himself up for

For the president and that made you cry.

It does every time, dude, I get choked up. Halo two, he goes out, he goes out like blaze a glory.

It's beauty.

So what so so what is it about? Is it

Noble sacrifice? For sure, you listen to the whole podcast.

Did armagedon noble sacrifice?

Oh?

You know, maybe he did at the time.

Randy Quaid and Independence that we talked about that one too.

We have a whole list We're gonna make, like, hopefully a lot of these. So we have another one coming up this week. We got to figure out a topic for it. But it's fun. It's called Why Does This Make Me Cry? Available on all major podcast platforms.

Awesome. Now, I love it thinking of the movies that made me cry.

I think I have a whole list here Man, Whale Rider, Whale right, Whale Rider makes sense?

Yeah, I think. Yeah.

I'm more interested in the things that, like typically maybe would not make you cry, Like I don't know anyone who ever cried at the end of Air Force one.

We've got a whole list of men. I'm not gonna spoil too many of them.

But yeah, I'm curious to hear one more. Okay, that's like one more weird one.

Okay, let's see what we got here there.

I was reading a book called, uh, Goddamn Lonesome, and it just hit me like, battleship battleship dude, at the end of all those military Yeah, when the guys off the board game, Yes, when all those World War two guys are coming out to start up the battles pretty good. It is a good moment.

It's not Okay, I'm gonna shipped. They could stick this ship.

No way, No, I'll get wait wait, wait the one with Rihanna.

Yes, yeah, uh.

The speech the speech in Star Trek Next Generation where the tenant Commander Data has a correct lieutenant Wharf when Lieutenant Commander Data is acting captain and he comes to and he castigates them for being like disruptive, and then he says, I'm sorry if I've ended our friendship every time, that's great, And it's kind of sufar getting into why am I like this because I can't afford therapy unemployed?

Did I?

Maybe I should just do that? Maybe I should just start another podcast.

We won't guess you want to be Rory's therapist is no, no.

No, no, let's just like Daisy Chain this, like you know you'll want as Rory's therapist. Rory can be mine.

Yeah, we'll all be We'll all be worse off for it at the end, even more damaged.

Hear about the time I thought a movie finally made me cry a couple of years ago. Yeah, yeah, so no, no, no, it was well it's it's stupid, believe it or not. But it was Creed three and like I've never cried during movie one caveat being at the end of that fast seventh thing when it was like an actual touching the music, I actually died.

So that's the thing.

Fiction doesn't make me cry, and so like the real life circumstances cry. But anyway, fiction I think might have almost made me cry from excitement at the end of Creed three because I was very high and it was getting ready for the big fight against the Diamond Dame and he was coming out in the music and I

Wait, am I.

Crying during a movie for the first time? Or did you just get buffalo sauce?

You fucking trap setting motherfucker? What you just It's just three steps forward, two steps back, man.

Though, I think that that could have been shoot tear Dude.

I got overwhelmed too, like I just got.

Sometimes it's flooded with emotion and it's just like it's too much, and that's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is about video games, right.

I am real quick. I hate to bring things back to Taft. Okay, every time that came up, all chat Everton was that's the guy he got stuck in the bathtub, and that story is just not true. He was a big guy, but William Howard Taft never was stuck in a bathtub. Stop spreading that mass lie. It's a lie, Jeff. The truth matters.

Sometimes, I think, Uh, I think what we've learned is that wrestling could probably make you cry as well. Well.

Con No, So here's the thing, and it has, but again with the caveat that it's it's never the storyline. It's always the real circumstances, Like I have guys have had to retire young because they got injured, and that's a real moment. And so it's like, it's not like I didn't cry when you know, Cody finished the story, you know, when he beat Roman reigns a scripted outcome

Neck is fucked. Yeah, that's again.

Deaths and stuff like that will will absolutely get me a Letterman retiring. I cried when Letterman retired, you know, like that type of thing.

Sure a good goal to reach before the end of the year. I would love for you to cry at fiction, But can that.

Be a taught thing, Like I mean, I'm not I'm super not against it, and I'm.

Not for sure. This watch of the stuff on my list, and you should watch it. Show him, well Rider, if you don't cry at that speech, and well Wrider, you're not a human being.

I believe En Hanson.

I remember yelling at me because I said iron Claw didn't like make me sad.

It's like, but that's true.

Isn't that a true story?

It is?

But I knew the story. I knew it was gonna go bad.

And it's like, like, it's a sad story in real life, But I didn't like cry or feeling.

You still can't believe people chose to make that movie. Yeah,

And I'm again not against it. I would embrace it.

I just don't called empathy when you when you talk like you don't have empathy, you sound like a psychopath.

But can you can I learn? Is that a steel that can be learned?

It's living your life on the world.

Yeah, look in real life stuff, I have that like when tragic things happen in your life.

I don't think it's a.

Huge problem like that.

You don't.

Yeah, you know it's troubling.

You have a bit more of a window between fiction than other people. And that's fine, right, It's okay. I mean this is someone to get weird. But this goes to the whole Like you've never been attracted to a cartoon character, sure.

Well, where they don't exist. I think here, here's what I think that there's something going on right, and this isn't bad. I'm not like criticizing you, but maybe an explanation of why you're unable to have empathy for fiction or to relate to characters on the screen is perhaps you repressing something in your own life where you've like not allowed yourself to feel things for like other people.

Or perhaps absolutely it's just when I know it's fiction.

It's like if.

Modern mortal combat fatalities that are so gruesome and everything, I just think they're hilarious. If I see violence, I am mortified and turned white.

You know, like, we'll get there, We'll get there, We'll get there.

I feel like I've got as far off track.

Video games. Someone mentioned a video games so I guess now we're a legally obligated to start talking about video games on this podcast. We gotta. I haven't been able to play too many things because of the move You notice, for those watching the video, it's Cardibal mes Burke here. Yo. The movers I was able to hire were probably the three most uh unique individuals in the world.

Damn lucky.

I also thought they were the three stooges. Damn gup be like it was one of them curlyer, the other one had the kind of both.

One of them did have a bowl cut though.

Oh my god, it was mo It sounded just like Dan on the on the rematch.

But it was so funny because like one of them like looked like he was trying to be too handsome because he was wearing a dress shirt and a leather jacket the whole time he was moving stuff and then looking cool. And I'm just thinking, bro, like, you have no one to impress here, Like I'm already impressed that you're doing all this. Please do you need a shirt to change into? I will give you a shirt.

Uh.

And then he just like after the day is done, he comes to me because like I have like a husky tool chest here that's just full of stationary and he just like looks at me. He's he's like super duper Russian, and he goes like, uh, my friend, I have.

One question for you.

Why the toolbooks?

What are you doing there?

And I'm like, oh, it's it's just full of post it notes and and fun pens and cables, no tools, no tools? Interesting, Okay, do that you know you can put other stuff. It was great. It was great. And then like the head mover guy was just trying to drop knowledge darts all over the place. But he was one of those like big dudes that like, uh, he sent his like two other mover dudes to like do

I'm proud.

Like Okay, thanks man, all right.

Those guys are monsters.

Man.

They do a lot of stuff on their back like with like rope. No, they.

Exact, Mike, I was getting there. They were. They did the thing where they had like the big boxes and they'd put the small boxes in the other boxes. It was great, very good pack jobs. I highly recommend if you're moving stuff across the country, perhaps you shouldn't just throw it all on one guy's back. But in Death Stranding two they continue to do that. And Dan reichert, you have finished Death Stranding two.

I did, and I'm gonna be careful because you know, people don't like hearing specifics, and I'm not gonna say specifics here. I'm just gonna say, what's that, Beckler?

I don't think you Oh, people, people are mad at Dan for his very minor in fresh thank you say?

Oh yeah, people say I'm on board everything I've said previously about loving this game, and everything holds true, maybe more so now because I really think the last three to four hours of that game are the most Headayo Kajima things I've ever seen in my life. And I'm you know, people, oh, what about the end of the Middle Year Solid two?

Way wilder than that.

I don't think anything rates even remotely to the end of a Death Straining two, And I'm not gonna go into specifics. I'm just gonna say it was several hours of me just being like smiling or laughing or just jaw open, just like, what are we doing? Folks like it is fucking great.

What's that?

Is it?

Mostly cutscene?

There is a part where the puppet tells you, like, hey, Sam, just so you know, there's gonna be a long cut scene coming out, which I love in Kagema games when they just straight up say like hey, press the circle button. Yeah, exactly, like the puppet is just like, dude, it's gonna be a long one. And there's a decent amount of gameplay after he says that, but there is a long cut

I guess I'm curious then, you know, like with the story and just the game, do you think there's room for it? Do you think you want a death straining three or you think you know he's gonna move on? You want to see him move on more.

Of this world.

You know, he did that interview in GQ recently where he talked about like he really has to think about how many more games he has in him because he's all take three or four years now, and you know, he's a certain age and everything, and he has to really consider every project, and like considering there's OD and Phisiant that have already been announced, it's like, oh, right, I don't know if there's room for Like it does leave things in a way where it's like there's an

You know, I haven't gone the chance to dip back

What I'm very curious about this.

They were there obviously like breaking the game in in uh based off of using the two items in conjunction, but it was like, how are you doing this? And I don't know if Kajima intended it, but it is great that it is these two items, the metal coffin and then the other thing where this person is just flying.

I mean that reminds me of like, you know, when Breath the Wild came out, and just like people were figuring out ways like let's use stasis and stand on a tree and fly across them.

Like I love that shit. Like I think Breath the Wild is probably like the.

Ultimate with that stuff, or here's the Kingdom too, But like the fact that some of that exists and Death Straining two is awesome, and you know, I'm done with it now. Bianca has been working on so I've been watching her and talking to her about it, and it's just there's different ways you can approach it. Like you know, with me, I would find random stuff on hills and stuff and I would just oh and trust cargo. What I'll get a few likes, somebody will take that or whatever.

Yeah, I am curious for grub to get into it, because there's aspects of death Straining two that I feel like is right up is Ali in terms of like

Type of the spoiler cast, I'd beat it, and like I don't even know where I would start. It really reminds me of when I beat Meddle Year Solid two and it's like, boy, I don't know if I'd be able to explain this, Like now I think I can do it, but like you know, in two thousand and one, I don't think I under none of that was getting through the head.

There the same way though it was just you had the same kind of like the last four hours, like the rest of the game, it's like you can kind of get it. The villains are over the top and anything like that. But then you're fighting the president on a fucking harrier and I'm glad he has the ability to stick the landing in some way.

Well, and this is I honestly, I think the way they do this ending is better than MGS two's ending, because, like, I love what they're saying and doing with the end of MGS two, But the format is a lot of greenheads talking to each other, you know, it's a lot of that is like a lot of just like put it this way, I was taking a lot of screenshots on my PS five during those last few hours, like there is shit to look at in the last few hours here that you would not possibly predict.

You highlighted this in the Quick Look Dan, and I didn't realize this when I was playing in my time with a game. But if you fail at a boss fight or encounter, you could just select the option pretend I want.

Yeah, pretend you want, Like, all right, just move on to the cut.

That's cool.

I like it.

Yeah, yeah, So so that is pretty sick. You know.

But there's also like way more varied boss fights in this one. I think, like you know, in DS one, there was a lot more of just like there's tar everywhere and there's a goofy thing that's mad at you, and like there's there's a few of those here, but there's deff only some variety for sure that I appreciated.

Yeah, and uh, you know, the first game was pretty lonely, like a super isolated experience, and folks know me at this point, but like, I love a gang. I love having a motley crew to run around with. And the fact that Kachiba has convinced some top of the line actors to just like lend their likeness and just hang out in this weird ship is pretty pretty frickin' awesome.

Yeah, and they're game for it.

Like I love seeing all these interviews and stuff where like Norman Rita is describing what it's like, you know, to to work with Kajima, and he's like yeah, Kajima will be like, you hold the baby and then you cry and be like what am I crying about?

And Kajima will be like, well, you know the.

Strand and you know the you know the world, and this guy okay, I guess like the Strand?

Of course, don't you know about this game?

Is like how because I've been watching a few Terrence Malick movies and he's you did like The Thin Red Line and you did you know The New World and Treeabli and things like that, and every movie he makes sometimes has some actor coming out. For the New World it was Chrisopher Plumber and for Tree of Life it was Sean Penn. They said they shot like three movies worth of Seanpen and he's in it for like five minutes.

Floor like or there was a big part. Yeah, I'm curious.

I know most of these are kind of cameos unless you're part of the main cast, but I'm just curious if everybody just didn't work out.

There are there are.

Without saying specifics, there are characters that wind up being bigger deals than I thought they would be Throughout parts of this game that I thought was like, okay, is this is a name, this is this is a fun cameo thing. But it's like, Okay, actually this is more important than okay.

Yeah.

So I think I think utilized everyone in a really great way. And obviously there're ones like George Miller and stuff that's just a likeness in the same way year in WD del Toro where it's like they're not doing mokeap, they're not doing the Boys or anything, but like it is, we'll just be like, that's Gerymad del Toro. That's the director of Drive, you know.

Yeah.

For uh, For as much as I'm enjoying guest Straining two, I can't help but have that like itch inside of me of like I wonder what the director's cut is gonna look like or be like, because it feels like Kojima was more sure of himself and the team had figured things out more of like how to formulate death Stranding two versus the original where it's like, Okay, here's all this stuff here, we can see to the weird things in the first one. Here's a gun if you want to just shoot things, there you go.

That's a huge part of why this one, I think is so much more playable for someone like me. You know, it's like I think, you know again, watching Bianca play and like she's very stealthy and she's walked out. She's taking everyone out with the strand and all that stuff, and I'm like, oh boy, I'm approaching these like Fantom Pain.

You know, I'm going in there.

Maybe I'll make a watch tower, maybe I'll throw a doll man up to scope things out.

But then I'm going in with.

An assult rival, with an underbarrel grenade launcher, a trank grenade launcher. So it's, you know, it's healthy.

That makes me like, Mike, you were so doll man coded.

Though I know I'm going to try the game, right, I hope everyone knows I've dialed back the fuddy dysis the game actually came out, because I haven't played yet, so I don't know. I will get there, I'll give it a go, and I will give everyone a report on what I actually think about it.

Okay, there's a particular ten second clip that I clipped from my PlayStation thing and I've been texting to friends that I know have beaten it, and it is just like, it's kind of the moment near the end of where it's like, okay, we're just going all the way here.

Here's a very This won't make any.

Sense out of context, but anyone who's beaten it, it's the part where it made me think of James Brown. That's when it was just like, oh, okay, we're off the rails, let's do it. There's a good god people would be it will know. I don't want to say much more, but it's a very James b oh.

That just motivated me to get to just fast track everything.

Billion guesses you wouldn't guess in what context the James Brown thing comes up.

Uh, Okay, you know there's there's plenty of tar still in Death Stranding two, and it looks like a bunch of paint or ink on the floor and walls, which is appropriate because Mike Manatti, you have been playing Splatoon two.

Yeah, I'm actually just still playing through Splatoon single player campaigns. It's actually been my main switch to experience right now, because plasuon three had a big update to like look a lot better on the switch to. I think Splatoon two quite as that, but it's still a good looking game. But I know these are just kind of cozy and fun and simple. It's what's weird. This Platoon two campaign definitely not quite as good as three. The levels are

And glowing, glowing, they're evoking the stuff you want to hear. But you want to hear Mario wattas, do you want to hear Red Faction Gorilla? That's the stuff people are Red Faction?

Yeah. I saw I saw to like a two D section that just looked like Donkey Kong Country and they're just playing the music. Yes, that's cool, they're just playing the music. They're playing my favorite song from two, the uh gosh and a Sticker Bush Symphony, and I'm like, oh, let's go. I'm gonna play the Heil out of this. Yeah, so you know, but maybe meanwhile, I I enjoy being in the Platoon solo campaign waiting room.

I think I did the two Platoon two single player stuff and thought it was really good. So that is on my short list of things. And like, you know, I'm just looking for play on the Switch too right now. So that's that's on the shortlist for sure. I'm glad to hear it.

Yeah, Okay, it's fine, it's fun. Uh.

Speaking about shortlist this, I feel like due to a couple, not a couple, but like, uh, maybe a couple of years ago, I may have willed this game into existence.

Uh.

I have briefly checked out Persona five the Phantom X. Uh. This is the gotcha Persona and mobile games blow my mind or games that are designed for mobile just because I know that gen should impact and gosh, what are the other means?

Contail Skyrail, hon Kai.

Star Rail, Star Rail and the newer ones Endless zero. That's right, Endless Zone zero. All disease are here.

It's like, oh, these are full ass games. Like if I was not in this profession and I kind of just wanted like a flavor of a j RPG or like a hack and slash game, I could totally uh explore that in these these games. And in the brief time that are spent with Persona five the Phantom X, it does feel a little funky that it's like a supposed to be a grand sweeping Persona like story, but it still has gotcha elements. But in the time I've spent with it, I just keep thinking, Oh, this is

I do believe, if I'm not mistaken, that that game immediately went to like the top ten grossing games mobile games of like of the current moment. I think it immediately became like a billion dollar kind of revenue stream farm. So I could be playing that entirely out of my ass, but I think I saw that somewhere recently. No people are going to say I mean, I enjoyed a little

Yeah, it makes me wonder what, like how our at lists divided the development team if they had like a smaller team working on this, or this was one of their bigger teams. If folks are looking for another gotcha game,

I am excited to tell the internet about this game I found. Did you know that turn based RPGs can be very, very fun?

Yeah? I've heard.

Yeah, it's really really good.

I can't believe I beat you to the punch on this one. I never do. So you've been playing it, yeah, I'm like almost dumb with it?

Oh shit, okay, yeah it's uh.

Look, it was something like I feel like enough people through Osmosis. I've just like people have been like very positive on it. It's like, oh, Dan, if there's ever one you're gonna like, it's this one. Because I like Martin Luigi, like Paper Mario, you know Mario all that stuff. Yeah, they're right, this is I like the story, I like

Out of it.

Yeah, but yeah, on.

The stream I would with the VODs up on on the YouTube page, there was a boss I ran into there, uh and it whooped my ass the first time, to the point where it's like, man, I'm gon have to grind for a while here, and I think I maybe got one level up and I went back and I was like, ooh, actually, okay, I found a new way to kind of approach this and that's working a little better.

It's so cool because like, yeah, you don't necessarily need to just grind little. It's not just a stats game because there's so much customization you do with the pictos and things like that, but so much of it is you could just proof force it if you get really good with the Perrys and the Dodges.

And there's so much to learn, like everybody having their own systems here where it's like, okay, so I'm really learning that, Like with my l I want to do

Here's the thing.

I will never fucking dodge in this game. I will not die. Oh, dodge and then you'll learn the timing. No, no, no, I'm learning. I'm fucking parrying every fucking thing. And if I fail, that's fine. I'm gonna go back there and I'm know the timing a little better the next time. And if you get the bing bing bing that that parry and you do the everyone goes out there and hits it and takes a shield down or something. Yeah, it's just like I'm so fucking hyped about it.

Aren't There certain things you have to dodge.

I will Okay, the one thing, I will die.

Just sometimes you'll kill one of those those big fuckers and they'll like the fall on you.

Yeah, look he's already dead.

I'm not gonna lie.

I got right, But the power can give you an ap point.

But if the guy's gonna drop on you.

Right well, or he dies right either right. Yeah, this is great. I'm happy to hear it. I I mean, even for me, where I only have like a very surface uh comprehension of like all of their systems, where like the foretail stuff, I'm like, okay, it's dark out, it's light out whatever, Like even that stuff, you can kind of like, uh, you know, just sort of, I don't know, get your make your way through without spending too much time obsessing over.

The rocket and stuff. Right.

Yeah, but it's great that there is that kind of layered complexity to it, that all these separate systems on top of systems, and yeah, the game fucking.

Rules man after question, I didn't make anybody mad on bo guy, but I did let people know that I uninstalled this as soon as the first tutorial came up with parrying because I hate parrying so much.

Is there a slider for making that easy?

Or let me let me touch on that too, because like I per I know that's a big controversy right now, people talking about paying and like Perry slop I in like from games and especially like this is why I couldn't do Securo. You can't just you know, cheese it by leveling up, Like that's how I beat Bloodborne, That's how we get Eldon. The ring is I just get

Parrying in those.

This one it's literally like you're watching the thing and once you kind of owe the audio cue or the visual cue or something, all you got to do is hover your finger over that RB and just time it. It's not anything else like, And I'm just saying that it's one who's not great at pairing. I know, like people get awesome at it, and from games I struggle with it. I don't struggle as much. I think it's actually kind of a nice balance.

That's good.

Now I really appreciate the games that have I forget which game I was playing, I think I do. Maybe somebody's gonna talk about Doom to do Doom game, but that has a pairing clider like sensitivity, so you can just make it as big as you want, and the pairing is pretty easy to do.

I can't remember there's a slider in this one, but there's definitely like a story I got a story mode where the window is much bigger.

Yeah, says here.

They updated the game for story mode, making raising okay, the perry windows wider story mode.

That's huge. I think I've noticed that when I go from playing on my PC to playing in the family room where I have a PC connected to a television, I have worse timing on that than I do here. And it's probably an input leg thing.

That's I never got good at rock bands, Like I always play a guitar here too, on a CRT, and even with the lack adjustment, it just never clicked for me.

Yeah, I think like that's the I I kind of wish, like I thought I had convinced myself, and maybe it was just sort of like, you know, I'm kind of like you know, placebo effect, But I was convinced that, like you know, adding points into the luck category was like somehow or defense was like somehow increasing my parry juice.

It's kind of incredible how how good the story is without being like, you know, cause I've tried to start way more j RPGs and turn based RPGs than i've finished, and a lot of times it's just like, you know, two hours in, it's like I don't fucking care about this kingdom and it's hierarchy or whatever like or what the magic is like this you get into it, like people kind of warn me, Oh, it's a little talking at the beginning.

It's not even that bad. It establishes like here's the deal.

Okay, well we're gonna die when we're this age, and she's gonna paint the thing, and then we send these expeditions out and then the other stuff like they build so much with like finding the diaries of the previous expeditions and everything, and all the conversations at the campfire and everything. They all just get their shit in and get out. And it's very economical with that, which I appreciate.

I should not be this happy about another person liking a game, but my heart is full. This is good.

It's just a great game. There's no denying.

And he's gonna blow through it because that's the kind of freak he is, right, and so that means we can have our Yeah, there's I have so many questions still about like some of the things that they kind of established to be true in the lore and then you like bump into a direct contradiction to what they just sort of established, and I'm.

Likewown to you guys, like you know, and I love everything about it, but there is stuff because you know, I obviously suspend my disbelief and I want to be up in the lore, and but then I'll see things that I'm just like, I don't understand why you're doing this.

Now.

You just told me this can't happen, uh, you know, and and all the Mansion ship. I just don't know what's happening there. Well, maybe I'm assuming I'll get there's gotta be some kind of narrative payoff, right, So.

Jeff Grubson in our chat, I might refuse to play it now just to be a real ship during the Game of the Year. If he's a hardliner, like.

Do say something where it's like guarantee this is gonna be uh to me?

Because I was like I was talking about the Game Awards specifically where I said I think Death Training two is a front runner. Not because I think he Lea does funny business. I think like people just associate death strand it's the same. Do you mean what it is good?

But that's where a split fiction, right has like an underdog kind of chance where it's like, you know what I mean.

Wins this year.

It's not gonna win, I know, but it's funny because split fiction is so much better than it takes two. Yeah,

Is turning out to be a very like right now, I think it's blueprints Destranding two and thirty three that are like, boy, these.

Are all going to be still rips.

Yeah, there's still Metroid Prime for Donkey Kong, right right, gosh. I also want to check out more of Night Rain, but I don't want to team up with Randos maybe something.

It's so weird because it seems like ours, like people in our circle don't talk about that game anymore, which also makes you feel like, oh, abust the fallen Off. They look at the Steam charts, it's still like one hundred thousand people are playing it, so it's doing really well. It's just kind of I don't know, I'm interesting to talk about as a game.

Sure, I mean, like, you know, it's it's like the Battle Royal problem right where it's like, yeah, you can only talk about so many good rounds or wins that you've had based off of like night Rain. And I feel from my loose following of the scene or the meta right now is that there is kind of a streamlined way to go about doing going through the nights in night Rain now that it may just be less interesting for people it's been Max.

Yeah, no thinking about Game of the Year here, and I just mentioned Blueprints as one of my top three. I think something that's going to hurt Blueprints when it comes time to Game of the Year is that even the people who loved it the most, and I consider myself someone.

Who love love, love that yeah.

Yeah.

It goes so so deep into like if you want to, like everyone has that moment kind of halfway through the game, or you know, you could be twenty thirty hours in where you're like, oh my god, I'm just discovering things left and right, and then you beat the game, you see credits and it's like, well there's so much more, and it goes so so deep that like, I don't know if I've really met anyone who's done all things like I need to figure out the whole history of

You know, there's so many people in that kind of like completionist realm out right, and I think like they are a little weird out by blueprintces. Like you know, beating the game is like forty percent of the effort and there's like so much more beyond that. But you know, I it's still super high up there. Mee, I don't want to beat Blue Sprints at some point, Yeah, get a race on.

Yeah, Matthew Rewery, have you been playing anything that you

Like I said, I've've been getting back in a little streaming. I did US stream last week we did I did. I am going to beat Splunky two's secret stuff this year.

I've made it my goal. I've anybody recalled.

I said I was going to beat Splunky two this year, just the regular game, and I thought I was going to take me months, and I did the first time I tried it earlier, like March.

You can find that I'm on a YouTube channel.

But now there's like this seventeen step process of getting to the hidden Cosmic Ocean and Splunky two, and I've made it my goal going to do it this year. Twitch dot tv dot Matthew doc Phail's gesture, I guess, and then a lot of Division two. Still Division two. I still play pretty much every day. I've been a

Been looking for work. Like I just kind of I enjoy reading a lot more than video games right now.

But still time in my heart for the old, the old Country.

Matthew Rory. I need to tell you that I thought of you. I think last years Games Calm because I sat in on a demo or presentation for a Dying Light to update. Yeah. I couldn't folk the whole time because I was just thinking what what Rory would think of this?

I will probably love it.

They're doing a new Dying Light, I want to say, or are they still making deal c for Dying Light too?

I think I don't know.

There's a new one Dying Light the Beast or something.

Yeah, that's the one, I said. Okay, how was it yeah, I don't know. It reminded me of that Sonic the Hedgehog game where he turns into a wereg oh unleas unleast Yeah, yes.

Did you and I do that stream or rebeat Dying Light too? And how ridiculous it was at the end of that game, like it was I don't know if it was you or just be solo with a guest or something like that, but that was a ridiculous ending to a game, like really put off the rest of the game, kind of a you're basically fighting like a Goku level of Superman or something like that.

But it might not have in you maybe to me, and I guess I forget. I'm pretty sure it was a giant bam.

Though I remember watching you fight off hordes of zombies. Maybe not in Dying Light? What was or it might have been Days Gone?

Oh yeah, yeah, those were Days Gone. I also really enjoyed that game. I'm surprisedly remastered it for PS five, but if you haven't played, it's pretty decent.

I would like God this year this year has been pretty good for games. H Yeah, I love that little check.

In so I first halfway through let's go oh my.

Gosh, okay, bets here right now before we talk about the last game on the list. Are we going to see spoon Heaven this year?

Yeah? They said yeah.

Today Xbox Rock ally depends on it.

Yeah, this year, Matthew, we're talking about God, I don't remember.

Of the game.

You You enjoyed Hollow Night right, the first one?

Yeah, I got really far into that on my switch. I didn't ever beat it. I got past the three dudes at the bottom of that long vertical spot, and I kind of lost a little.

Bit, but I did.

I've tried to replay it a few times. It's just the early game like map finding stuff is really annoying. We don't have a mini map. I am looking forward to Silk Song though, but yeah, All the Night. It's a great game. I wish I could go back and finish it, but it's kind of a lost track and I started all over.

Fantastic, fantastic last game I have here on the list, Mike Elevator Action Invasion, Yeah, so what.

I yeah, I know, I know. I was actually taken to a cool arcade in Orlando called Arcade Monsters. Uh so I was checking all sorts of things. One of the more fun games though, Is this modern? Remember Elevator Action? Yeah, they made they made a new one. It's just more of a traditional gallery shooter. You have the guns with a ton of kickback. I think it's supposed to actually have elevator doors that open it closed on the screen, but that wasn't working. But uh, it was basically like

Do you know what?

People making interesting new arcade games because they had like the roth Rills NBA Jam. It was just NBA Jam and that was fun. Like the roth Rills Motorcycle game that's basically just cruising blast on a motorcycle and that was fun too. They also had god the weird Sega Racing series Initial D or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's like, you know, it looks like, you know, one of their Daytona things or whatever, but it's a story based game and it's only in Japanese. So I'm playing this story based Japanese racing game in like the full out like car Machine and everything. That was a fun time.

And I didn't know they made an NBA Jam NBA Superstars.

Yeah, that's it. It's just an NBA Jam and it was super fun.

I want to play this great.

Yeah, it's great. I mean I assume every Dave and Busters in the world is gonna buy that.

Sure, there wou When when you all go to an arcade or you know, like a Dave and Busters round one, do the employees get weird about I don't know if you guys want up recording it or taking pictures, but like, do they get weird about that?

For y'all? About why do they get weird about what.

Like recording like the game, like recording a friend. I don't whatever think.

No, I don't think that's happened.

Because I went to a round one yesterday. I was dropping off a family member and then I was like, wow, well, you know, there's a couple of crane games here I might as well partake. And I had just like I had the OSMO on me, and then I was just like recording myself doing it. And then like an employee comes to me and like they're the most gen z person in the world. I thought they were gonna call me unk and then they just say like, I'm sure you can't. You can't record the crane games.

Yeah, I can see that, Please put it away.

I believe that, Yeah, because it can be they can be manipulated of them. I have like trends because aren't they basically like saw machines or like.

One out of every five designed to market.

I think you're.

Right, so that could be you're not allowed to recording a casino, and that's the most casino like game of

I think Rory's right on the nose here.

I don't want you to expose the scam.

Yes, crane crane games are I've I've learned to stay away.

Yeah, they had a lot of pinball there back lare on free play, so that was exciting.

But that is exciting. I don't really get sick of that. I usually have to be dragged away from that kind of situation. So it's sort of a mixed subject for me.

You know what, I would appreciate a place that has pinball, even if it's paid, but has those little screws in the back all the way down instead of all the way up, so that goes a little slower and I could play a little better, a little longer, because every every pinball machine has those little screws on the back that goes up and down for height, and at the max height there's just way too fast for me.

I'm fortunate.

Well, you're supposed to have it calibrated to a certain degree. I believe it is like seven degrees.

I want to say, I never knew about these screws, just all standard.

Look at the back of a pinball machine. Sometimes I see one, Yeah, that goes up.

Now the legs they have them on all four legs. They're these sort of like adjustable height pillars.

Did you make it like a forty five degree angle.

Yeah, you could be a little shallower than most of the way the bars have them set up.

Yeah, but.

They are. I do believe, and you know, maybe I'm not one hundred percent accurate here, but I do believe there is like a certain universally agreed upon angle that all pinball machines is sort of be sitting at. It makes sense.

Yeah, that being said, no one will stop me from playing great games. I did win at two of them, and I only spent eight dollars.

That's not bad. Yeah, and you were entertained.

I was entertained. I was like, I'm very good at this and I wanted to put it up on the GB Socials until this young man told me I couldn't.

So should you should have? Do you know who I am them?

I was asked not to take a picture of my dog the other day, and I was like, do you know my whole deal?

It's my whole deal, dude.

It was really weird because we were like outside on the street at a bar a patio and I was just like, Oh, your dog's a really cute and it wasn't really that cute, and I was just like taking a picture of it, like, please, don't take the pictures of the dog. Likes totally fine for me to pet it and like say hi to it and everything else. And I was just like, are you worried I'm gonna take your ig views or something like. It wasn't like don't take pictures of us. It was specifically not the dog.

Do they not? The way I touch him?

That's right, folks. And with that, we're gonna take quick breaking.

Break and Mike Manatty will be back with the news. Uh, it's fine, it's fine. You know what, Matthew Rory. You can take all the pictures of any dog I am near, and we should get Yes, I'll bring my pup over faded to black. No, that was a that was a

That's what I call my dog?

You need the news? I can look at this docum. Yeah, yeah, Dan takeaway. Start with the first news story that Mike has written out here.

Okay, actually I put together the news every week and he reads it. But I can I can do I can actually read it here if we want.

Yeah.

Former Blizzard president and Xbox Exact says Xbox needs to pick their lane and stick to it. That's coming from Chris Scullion at VGC, that's right. Former Blizzard president Mike Yabara says Xbox should decide what its identity should be going forward instead of trying to be a jack of all trades. You Saie Yabarra. He served various roles in Microsoft for twenty years. It culminated in a role as corporate vice president on Xbox Live and Xbox Campas before

He's back.

They have to figure out what needs to change and fast. Yobar continued, I'm a big fan and will always bleed green checking the team off from the sidelines. Pick your lane and stick to it, as by Fall or what he thinks xboxould do should do. Your Bar said he felt it should focus on being a publisher rather than a console manufacturer. I always got weird vibes from your Bar during his brief stint at Blizzard Entertainment there for

But that's my point, Like it's like, okay, buddy, thanks for like the uh, you know, unique insight that only you could somehow provide about a thing that everyone fucking knows exactly.

Like it's I don't know if it's burning bridges. But I can't see how this helps him at all.

I don't know what he even means.

Like they have so many studios and so many different developing teams, Like what are they supposed to focus on?

Like one genre or something like that, Like there.

He means I think he means uh, Because so you know, they are still making a new console, and they are partnering with rog Gley for a portable. They're putting their name on a quest. Now the thing is the rog Atli thing in that Quest thing. Those are very low risk investments for them, right, they aren't making those machines they're putting They're slapping an Xbox logo on it and like some software shell.

Right when did they announce the whole Meta Quest partnership Because that just came out of nowhere for me, like last week.

Yeah, I feel like that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Thoughfore the impetus of this conversation. Sure, right like after you see that happen, you're like, okay, they're doing Xbox, you know this kind of okay, Well maybe they are strangled spreading themselves a little tooth in, but still.

Happened today. Like I thought today was going to be like a huge brown of layoffs.

Haven't seen There are supposed to be a ton of layoffs at Microsoft, and we are expecting them to impact Xbox this time around. I haven't seen anything about those going happening now.

It looks like Blue Sky today. Maybe there's a bunch of LinkedIn got Olino's LinkedIn. Whenever anything happens for me is always like oh shit, right, believe.

It's a godless place, not fun.

I believe the people are saying turn ten. It's looking like they might be shut down. Who does the votes forts of motorsport games? Not her Rizon the forts of Motorsports.

There, Brian Meckburg. I don't know if he's still there or not.

I think he moved on, but yeah, I mean, I think clearly the you know, the publishing stuff is going to be important for Xbox. They're not abandoning the consoles yet. We still none of us really know what that next console is going to look like. We're hearing some things about that. Let's see what that is and how really invested in it they are. Maybe it's the last Xbox I don't know. But they're definitely gonna be making money by selling Call of Duty and Halo and Gears of

Yeah, is this It is this part of Nintendo just wanting to increase bang for their buck of like, hey, we want to clear all these.

It's because of the weird trade tension.

Oh okay, yeah, it's real. Quicks, come down to that.

Real quick tand away from video games.

Jesus you get political.

No, I've been radicalized. These motherfuckers are increasing the cost and lowering the quality of my fucking coffee.

I've heard what I've heard everybody's complaining about Dutch Brothers and I hate coffee, but I've been hearing a lot of this going around, Like.

Wait, what's happening, Jen, what's happening on the ground there?

Well, you know, the beans are stuck on the boats back all are so the freshness is like the overall quality, it's just sitting there.

They're getting stale.

Note whenever I do the bloom of any bag of coffee, and I circulate around a bunch of different local roasters, scout, I know I'm getting worked up. It's okay, Daddy's okay. But like it's okay any of these local roasteries. Like I'm talking to the to the homies and they're like, yeah, man, like this bag of green beans, like it's just been sitting here, but we got a roast anyway because we got orders to fulfill. Wow, it's fudged up. Fuck you tear rips and you know Trump obviously bitch, Yes, yeah,

Oh oh good, next up here. Donkey Kunk Bananza developer finally confirmed by Nintendo, sparking questions over when Switch twos three d Mile will Arrive. This is by Tom Phillips at IGN. The title is finally confirmed to developed the team behind Donkey Kunk Bananas but Bananas Bonanza, and as many fans had suspected, the upcoming switch to Blockbuster is being made by the team who previously worked on Super Mayo.

No, I mean, no way, they've just been it's been on the back burner. Oh, we'll get to that after Donkey Kong. Like, I'm sure it's well on the way, and I'm sure it's going to be great. I don't know how they operate with their teams or whatever, but they're not gonna let Mario be like some B team product.

You know.

No, no, but the timing is pretty Wait another year or two, that's fine.

Yeah.

I was like, there are some people who were like, oh, maybe we're still getting a three D Mario game this year. That seems less likely. And I will say, you know, some people like, well maybe next year.

Maybe.

I do think some people maybe need to get prepared for the potential of no three D Mario till twenty twenty seven or.

And I do think people forget. I know, it's the difference between two and three D, but like there is maybe some sort of I don't know, reasoning of like, well, you got your wonder, you got your Mario fixed with something it wasn't the three D one.

Sorry, I mean to.

Me, it's like, Okay, the team is team behind Odyssey is making a three D platformer in like the Mario universe. It's like, Okay, yeah, you've replaced Mario with a monkey. It's it's fine, It's gonna be great and hit kind of the same notes and have some fun new wrinkles and stuff.

You know.

No, I'm exactly the same. The other interesting thing here is that Nintendo, it's weird that they won't just tell us right away like so many people, so many other people, if they were in charge of this would at the very beginning of that first trailer be like from the team that brought to Super Mario Odyssey. But Nintendo's go to answer whenever they're asked who what team's making game is always say wait till it comes out and read

Look, occasionally they exhibit like very alien behavior, you know, occasionally that I'm saying, they just sort of like they they just they are vibrating at a different frequency a lot of the time.

Well, they got famous in the eighties or like not having credits because I didn't want people to get poached, if I recall correctly, that.

Was a that was a regular video game industry practice at the time, honestly, But yeah, they were definitely big into that as well. Then they're still bad about crediting everybody to this day, so they're yeah, they are, just they want people to just think of things as being made by Nintendo, right, Nintendo made sure? What do you mean a Mario team. It's just all Nintendo, who's game freak. We don't know them what they're making a game for

I mean, most importantly, Bury, the lead here chat did say something about wrinkle Kong is in this game, which I don't think has been confirmed yet. Still no funky. I'm looking for confirmation of Wrinkley Kong. If Jack and like, but she's dead, she was a ghost. But like, if this is back in time because Pauline's a kid, this could be before she died, you know that's true.

What if this is the Kriaky Kong fails timeline that I.

Want to get the Donkey Kong historia.

Exactly. Actually, I think Donkey Kong Country was the Kreaky Kog fails timeline, you Wi being the Creaky Kongo succeeded.

This is what This is way more interesting to me than the Zelda timeline.

I am very excited for this game. This is gonna be dot here a couple of weeks. I cannot wait.

Tony Hawks and Donkey Kong coming out in.

A few weeks.

Good July.

I am excited for July.

How is Skate four not out yet?

I think skateboards miss the boat in by boat, I mean the cruise ship level until the ext pro Skate three that I'm going to be partying and all a.

Sudden god.

Uh.

Fans slam the Altars after discovering evidence of undisclosed jen AI in images, text, and translation. This is by Vicky Blake at Eurogamer. Players have hit out at the Altars developer eleven Bit Studios that their AI prompts were discovered in both subtitles and flavor text in the game. It's intimating a routine use of large language models without disclosure. Since Jerry twenty twenty four, FALF has required games that use pre or live generator AI to divulge this as

And then that's really funny because sometimes that does happen still, like like we've seen this temporary billboard.

Yeah, I'm a feeling this happens a lot more than than people know, like coming from like we didn't do anything like that. At NOUL, But I have a feeling like small I don't know the team that made the alters, but I'm a feeling like small teams will be doing this a fair amount going forward and trying their best to yeah, take it out hopefully right.

I can almost understand if they're frustrated, because you know, this is being all this AI stuff is being deliberate and promise to these develop persess it's going to help them with game development and blah blah blah, and you know, I guess from their perspective, like, well, that's what we're doing,

I mean, it reminds me of like the NFT stuff.

It's like when yeah, everybody was trying to do that and gamers were just like largely roundly just like hey, fuck this.

We don't want this, like they're doing it what.

They I you know how.

In Gmail, how it'll create create the separate tabs for like, hey, this is your promotion stuff, this is social blah blah blah. I normally just ignore the promotions, turn those off. Yeah, but I'm scrolling through and Louis Vuitton Folks is offering a free NFT if you buy a bag right now.

Oh shit, hitting right at the top of that curve, no doubt.

Yeah, seriously, way to stay current?

Alrighty here next up, Square Inix will make more turn based games and recognizes the success of clarib Scure Expedition thirty three. Yes, not many salty, outrageous success coming for claib Scare Expedition thirty three. The game had potential, but it's likely exceeded all expectations in twenty twenty five. So much so a square Unitch investor is reportedly pushing for Square Nex to shift yours back to turn based games,

It's not reductive.

Well, but like, the part that doesn't make any sense to me is that it feels like a lot of

I was so disappointed by Final Fantasy sixteen. I hope they do kind of take some of this to heart. Like I barely got through the first like zone of sixteen. It was aggressively bad looking on PS five.

Which is kind of stunnying, like it didn't run very well.

But I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy in general, and I've played pretty much all those games. Man, if you want to see some thirsty behavior, go to a game shop and try to find some Final Fantasy Magic the gathering product. It is crazy what people are doing for that shit.

So Final Fantasy has no problem being.

A platform or you know, it still is has a huge amount of people very interested in what they're doing. But I think sixteen, especially in fifteen two, wasn't like, you know, they've been missfiring on their main series, So maybe take a take a few years off, make a smaller one make something like Final Fantasy ten. I'd love to see Final Fantasy ten three.

How about that go back to the well, let's.

Do it even with a Dragon Quest. They haven't said much about Dragon Quest twelve since announcing it a few years ago, but they are kind of priming us to get right for gameplay changes. So I think people were been worrying that series. But you know, stay turn based even longer than Final Fantasy was going to do a shift,

Agreed, You have to imagine seventeen is pretty well development, at least predevelopment. I'm curious what they can do now to pivot. But yeah, card based battlers put it brought, write it down. You know, somebody's send that note over.

Yeah. Yeah, fancy Star Online episode three too. Uh? Next

Oh, we might be delight clubbing.

It might be Delight clubbing. And again I'm not expecting too much. I'm expecting something kind of like that Capcom presentation that happened last week, right, I think crazy Arc Tempered Arc Tempered Bandy Namco Summer Showcase WW two K two twenty five is coming to switch to late this month. Chris Gollan at VGC switch You version of W two

I don't think I went back to the island after that quick look or that stream that we did. Uh, don't that the game? The base game is pretty good now, but those modes are not great.

Say it.

I'm kind of at a low point in terms of wrestling interest right now.

Yeah, I say that I.

Am because of the scen stuff I've been hearing nothing about.

I mean, it's been the wrestlmaning was weak, the Sena arc has not been that interesting. Honestly, AW is kind of doing it and there's actually a lot of things that are rubbing me the wrong way about WIT are you this year in particular, AW, it's getting some momentum again.

So if you pick.

Between the two rails shifted much more.

AW, that's healthy for the community for sure.

Super Mario Strikers is the next GameCube title coming to Nintendo Switch Online plus Expansion Pack. This is also Marcus Stewart, a game reformer. Super Mario Strikers originally launched on the GameCube in two thousand and five. That makes it the twentieth anniversary this year. An extreme soccer game starting the cast of the Mushroom Kingdom and if So Plus Expitch Pack subscribers can play Mario Strikers when it arrives on

I never really played too much of it back in the day. Fantastic at big size, but like, I'm open to it.

What's the max amount of players you can do?

I think it's three four imagine.

Okay, well maybe we should play soccer again against mid max.

Strikers is fantastic to me. I think that game is really really good. It's one of my favorite game cube games. Just really tightly played and great power ups and everything like that. So I'm looking I would I'm not going to buy a switch to for this, but I would definitely play more of that.

It's a great game.

I think it's interesting like when they launch like GameCube games, like this is just like one game they're launching, and I feel like in the past, like you know, any Ass or Superintendo, it's like, here's twenty fucking games, and it's like, yeah, at this point, it's like I've heard of or played you know, maybe half of these. But now with like the gamekeep once each drop. I think feels like kind of like, oh, oh okay, now that's here. You know, it feels like more recent than a bigger deal.

Yeah, there's still some stuff coming that they have already talked about, like they announced like these games are coming, and this is one of them. Like I rembleming, Chip Robo Mario Sunshine was there. So there there there is more coming. I hope it's not a one one a month drop, right. I hope it gets something else this month for GameCube n S. So I hope they do not add Cube of War on there. I cannot afford to have the price of my Cube of Wore Go down. That's a big investment.

Products that would that would be a big deal for you.

I'm sorry, Yeah, it'd be a best bad day.

Mikey Uh.

Missed of Cyan Worlds lays off more staffs is from Rachel Caser at games Beat Sion worldsycling studio behind adventure games. Missed and Riven revealed today that is laid off more staph in the second round of job losses in twenty twenty five.

Uh.

It didn't disclose exactly how many staff had been laid off, but updated a contact sheet to reflect those of its staff who were still in need of work. Studio previously laid off twelve STAPH members in March, which amount two

They also had another AI kind of bungle with their Firmament game that came out a few years ago, which it has less than a thousand reviews on Steam. And I know that AI was a big kind of problem for people with that game too, So I'm not sure that game really hit for them in any kind of meaningful way.

But yeah, it sucks, Yeah it sucks. They like I said, they have they do kind of release this contact sheets with those being impacted by it for prospectible employers to look at at least, So I don't know. I hope, uh, I hope things turn out well for all in there and wishing them, wishing them the best.

Based in the.

Sion Worlds, I mean, I assume, so I assume. So I think that's right. Uh No, I'm trying to look it up because I'm a sick.

Oh.

Sign Worlds is headquartered in No Mead, Washington.

So so weird they were originally British, right or from the UK. I want to say that original games were developed over there.

Maybe I could be weird.

Maybe you're wrong.

I think they were from Spokane, Washington. If I'm looking at this correctly, it might be somebody else, somebody man.

Thank you, Mike Minatti. What a lovely news segment. I learned so much about the current state of video game nude job helped. Yes, yes, yes, you started started the segment. Thank you, Dan, thank you, thank.

You real quick.

But I'll be well, that's perfect, Matthew Rory, because we're going to take a break and we'll be back with emails and stupor chats from YouTube if we got any. In a bit. These are the emails for the show. Emails, uh Ry, you can put it.

This is the obviest thing I've lifted in like a year or two.

That God, that that I appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making that sign for folk audio listeners. Matthew was holding up the wooden metal sign that was displayed on the BombCast table. God, the things you could you feel someone with that.

I could probably just work out with that and have that be my Boddy workout that I'm desperately behind on.

Just do some squats or some like kettle Bell Bomb guest John Bomb dot com is email address to send your emails to write in about any and everything. You gotta quiz, you got some trivia, you got some questions about whatever. Please send an email into the show BombCast a giant bomb dot com. Uh wait what is this? Uh? Exclusive? Cody Roads to portray Gyle in the Street Fighter movie.

Man, that's not real.

It's a Roman.

And Cody is Gyle. They're gonna fight the movie, aren't they.

Oh they're gonna and Jason Momoa is there as well.

Oh my gods. Okay, Cody and the trailer for Naked Gun.

Oh really cool.

I didn't realize that movie.

Uh that source website isn't trustworthy. Okay, all right, thank you, Michael O'Leary. We will. We will keep our eyes peeled for any new movie movie updates with Street Fighter. God fifty cent is going to be in that movie? What the hell is going on? Yeah?

It's ballarrog I believe.

Who's directing that.

I don't know.

The guy from Late Night with the Devil is Bison?

What?

Yeah?

Wait David dem mash Chain, Yeah.

Yea, I saw someone post that today. I don't know if that's confirmed.

I could kind of see that.

Yeah, I can see it.

Murder that's really good too. He's really good on that. We need to catch up on murder, but it's a really good show.

They should uh fire fifty cent because fifty cent is like trash and just make some moa Joe ballrog make some moojo any character.

Put some mojo in everything?

Yes? Please? Yeah? What a cool guy anyway? Uh podcast balls?

I'm not gonna say, but this has been going on for like five thousand years.

With horoscopes gues. People do believe that they are matched with people like them on their birthday.

So yeah, again I'm wrong.

In general, it's going on for a long time.

Yeah, I'm with you, but I don't believe birthday is Tupac.

So you can start calling me the Tupac of Giant Pomp.

Yeah, I have.

I mean he's been.

It is with no great irony that I share a birthday with the Undertaker.

But no, you know that kind of makes sense.

I guess you know what it's like, why right?

Were?

I guess presentationally maybe a little like not anything else from what I understand.

I share one with podcast with both of you.

It's true.

Let's see, I've got Nicki Minaj and Lauren Phillips.

Well, Nicki Minaj, there's no shortage of similarities.

Yeah, I mean, that's like looking into a mirror.

Yeah, absolutely, Matt. Do you share a birthday with a celebrity?

Martin Luther apparently that was what.

Yeah, of the ten not to tend to seventy two things he nailed to the door of the church. That's a good one. I was just reading about that throughout him. He got called it the Vatican to to talk about his reformation plans, and they called it the Council of Worms, and I was like, I think that's what it was, the Council of worms, because there's a town called Council of Worms for worms.

Yeah, so that's my fun.

Martin Luca Trivia, he got called to the Vatican to talk about reformation and they called it the Council of Worms, like breaking out. No, it's a town in Italy, a thing called worms.

I believe could be making that right.

I got Laurie Metcalf from Roseanne Nice. Okay, the Joiner from the Royals, Yeah, okay, the Sandman, Oh.

Now there we got Actually, yeah, you are a lot like the Sandman.

The Ultim Warrior and the Sandman share my birthday?

Wow? Okay?

Yeah? Minati Rory, do you share a birthday with a wrestler? From what you can discern here orange.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, well yeah, that's yeah. We got a we got a wrap group right here.

I don't know if I a wrestler. There's got to be some wrestlers born in December eighth, but I don't see it. Sammy Davis Junior. Maybe Jim Morrison. There you go, Okay, okay.

That's pretty sick, all right. Next email comes from Matt in the UK High Bomb Crew. It was just on

I don't know why that got. That's like some man great revolutions.

On it, and it left me with questions. I feel only you guys can answer. What is next generation cheese? What features would you.

Like to see?

She could go a long way because I think Easy Cheese has been kind of just been in its wheel since the early nineties, and I could I could use an Easy Cheese renaissance right about now.

I think you're right there, yeah, thank you.

Yeah yeah. What they asked, what jenn of ches are we in right now? I think we're in cheese two point.

Oh, No, we got to be in like at least three or four cheese.

Yeah, cheese has been around for a while, okay.

I guess okay, so like we had the first cheese ever was just we accidentally separated way and and and the you know, the milk solads all this stuff. So we you know, we pushed together. We had cheese, and then.

We got back.

That's right. Then we learned about like aging and salting and flavoring the cheese. More you got your two point oh, then like three point oh more recently is when we started adding. The more we're getting stuff like American cheese and blue cheese. I guess we had blue cheese for a while by accidentally. No, oh, I love blue cheese. Everyone's surprised by that. By oh, yeah, give you that moldy cheese. Put a little honey on it. They got something going.

Yeah, and we're gonna say, there, Jen, I was gonna ask Dan, have you partaken in blue cheese? Dip.

I'm a big wing guy, and I will always ask for like, oh, we'll give you one thing a ranch, one thing in blue cheese.

Just gip it, give me two ranches.

Okay, give me that have.

You tried it?

Though?

I have Spring Street Tavern, my favorite wings place Northeast Minneapolis. I tried it there and people swear by it. I don't think it's disgusting necessarily, but definitely I won't take it over.

I don't. I don't blame people who do, because you know, it does have that flavor, Like I don't know why I like it, because it's like, yeah, this stuff tastes it's.

Weird that it goes with wings. Yeah, I don't know how to put it. Yeah, it's just good.

I put it on a cracker and I'm like, oh, yeah, it's a weird bite to this. I don't know. Uh, let's say cheese four point zero right now, but what's cheese five point Oh? Yeah?

God shaking real risks with cheese.

Chili's.

Chili's is taking real risks. How triple dippers, baby.

Triple dipperss? Is that too far?

What does that mean? Like?

The CEO of Chili's has revitalized the chain, franchise guy or the restaurant chain, and people are going crazy.

For triple But what's a triple dipper?

It's like an app like an appetizer play you pick three apps and you get those the freaks that I hang out with, maybe just get uh two orders of like their weird mozzarella sticks that are like kind of like Bucks.

Oh but so they're not so they're not doing anything unique.

No, but like it's the cheese is pretty consistent. You know.

Let me ask you. This was the stuff crust pizza more of a revolution for cheese or for pizza. Pizza

The former, I love the latter.

I think I love ninety eight percent of different types of cheese, and I love like some good age like are just an old fancy like going to Germany and going to a nice cheese shop and having all that stuff. But still I had to like Desert Island, you only get one cheese the rest of your life. Honestly, it's the fucking ballpark just farted into a little plastic tub. Like that's like the nacho ballparks or resembleslidjackle Bells is very very similar, and like I do think that's my favorite cheese.

I would take fresh mozzarella.

It's great, Sure, that's fantastic.

Yeah, I would go bree probably really.

Been a bit of pepper Jack guy recently.

Yeah, okay, yeah, you can string cheese now.

I got a bunch of that in the front. I've been going nuts.

Something good.

You know what?

When I worked at a different sandwichhop, have AARTI always made me want to party.

Parties my go to for jan How do you feel about this? I usually buy like a half pound to a three quarter pound of turkey cracked pepper turkey breast.

When I go to the deli.

I had a but I never quite be able to finish it because that's like a good I don't like a huge amount of meat on my sandwiches, like a few slices, so I always wind up having like five day old slimy turkey. A friend of mine said to freeze it between parchment paper and just bring it out, serving by serving, and I'm curious.

I tried it.

I'll let you know how it goes. But I don't know. Most frozen meats don't really quite taste the same after you do'n freeze.

In my find, yeah, agreed, they're cooks.

Yeah, what's the what's that Mexican cheese that's.

Spilled real weird?

Is weird?

Because like the waka yeah yeah cheese that that's not bad that cheese slaps.

Yeah. I was. Actually I went to the the Mexico Restaurant in Epcot on the on.

I don't like that it's called the Mexico Restaurant.

I called that. It's called the Sun on hell In that's Mexicans in the Mexico Pavilion. It does one of my favorite things, which is you're inside a building, but it pretends like you're outside at night.

Like the Oh yeah they do that. Oh is it? Oh right, I've been to that one and it's like in the pyramid thing.

Yeah, there's a restaurant there.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

My friend's made fun of me because I kept calling it dinner and talk about how it was the evening even though it's like two o'clock, and I was just tricked, all yeah, exactly, Dan.

Do you remember the cheese that we had at packs when we had dinner with Mary?

Yeah, that was good.

Hell yeah, hallomy cheese.

Cheese, the grilling cheese, honey on it.

It was.

How do they make what is it made out of? How does it grill milk?

It's like it's like it's it's like eating a pencil eraser and tasting pencil a lot of that in high school.

You know what was it called? Again?

H I believe? Yeah, I have a rack of that in my fridge. I don't know what to do with it.

I got to look at grill it up.

Question.

Yeah, I have a mustard question.

I'm going to eat a turkey sandwich right after this podcast is done and mustard and I'm in a mustard phase right now?

Is arc is?

Some say I also usually before the mustard arc began, I have this Taco Bell branded avocado ranch sauce that's really good to put on like a turkey sandwich. Can avocado ranch and mustard coexist?

Or yeah, put ranch on the one bread and put some mustard on the other. But I bet that'll taste good.

Okay, nothing weird about.

That band your horizonspan.

You go to TJ's and get some garlic aol and when you.

Say that stuff, it's very like it is.

People people have bounced off TJ's. I feel like in in in the last half decade or so saying it's all like mid and whatever, invating like it's super cheap. But there are diamonds in the rough that are still out there. Folks. You got to know where to look. Some new things have come out in the last three three years or so. We're going to do a rating of all the TJ snacks. What's TJ Trader Joe.

See, I don't have I don't got one of those. I haven't a got wah the German thing that they did that call these all these all these what nuts.

I had my first belt last weekend.

Whoa branch out there? How did you like it?

It was good?

And so it's ordered because Bonka I had a little picnic by the lake and I said, let's get some pop Belly.

That's a chain that's actually a really good sandwich chain.

And they had a b l T A and so it's a BLT plus a Percado and and she's like, oh, you gotta get mayonnaise on that. That's you know, like that's a critical part of the BLT. I did not know that. This being my first and this being Dan three point zero, I said, yep, put that MAO right on there, and I did, and it was delicious. So it was a twofer at once, my first belt and my well, no, not the first time.

I've had mayonnaise. I've had alia, but.

It was really your first belt.

Yes, absolutely, Dan, you just like unlocked the memory of this regular. This is before the Daily Gang. I worked at a different sandwich place that also sold a b L t A. But there was this one guy that insisted on calling it.

The black like that.

I am Les Mulligan and he would dap me up every time. He was like, what's top jad? He daped me up and goes like, let me get one of them bats.

There's a restaurant he wrestled, does a bat which is bacon, arugula tomato. And I find out, Okay, the problem is some bots. And I hate to say this sounds sacrilegious. Sometimes I put way too much bacon on there, like it's hard to even get through a bite.

Like that's the only thing I'm interested.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I feel like bacon is not overly expensive in the point in the way that they have to be conservative about it.

You know what I mean, A stomachs or pig excuse me, pig. I knew that that was just a slip of the tongue. I know where bacon comes from. Please don't make our for thread hunt Reddit.

No, you're good, you're good.

We don't have to worry about you. I mean, we know that spam comes from spam elopes.

Spam elopes. I got, I got a few aging right now in the basement.

Uh weird? Okay cool?

Yeah, okay, took the bit too far. Mark from Glasgow

Oh you know, man, you never say never, but it just feels like it didn't happen now, especially you know, it's difficult because from software, Yeah they own Tenshu, they also have this thing called Sekero Yeah success. Yeah, this boy is that good. And it's like, if they're gonna make a game like that again, like, why wouldn't it be Secoro branded and not instead of Tenchu branded. I don't know.

I agree.

I'm curious about the allegation of it being the most popular. It say, the most the best stealth franchise of all time?

Okay, not the most come on now, I don't know.

I mean it came out the same year as Metal Gear Saw.

Too that people love.

Yeah, does not have the kind of cultural cachet that I think this might be. Well, that could be wrong, would you uh ow, there's ten lovers out there?

What would you say?

I would say splinter Cell probably pure stealth. Yeah, yeah, it's like Cooper, does you know, I think you might be right? Did I think maybe more Sly Cooper heads out there than ten.

Shoe Yeah definitely.

Yeah, God I love Sly Cooper.

Yeah, like cool TENU, cool game, and.

I would like to see it come back. I would be surprised.

They had they had a play based on Tenshu play stage play adaptation ten Tie Wow.

I feel like uh, I feel like with Ninja's the interest is kind of shifted away from the stealth aspect, like even in like Assassin's Creed Shadows, like you don't have to do.

Prefer Yeah, Ninja guid in two thousand and four, it's like, yeah, there's no stealth involved there.

You're just doing cool ship. Like that's the better Ninja stuff I think.

And I mean, we should do a Mount right.

I know we don't do BCR anymore, but we should find a way to do an EP on a slow, slow week, to do like Mount rushmore of Ninja's Oh oh.

It's gonna be it's a big I mean I think that new Ninja Gaidem in the news Shnobi are coming out the same month or something. Like that rage and Batman cultural appropriation. Yeah, I don't think he's a real ninja.

As much as I love Naruto, I don't think Naruto is making the mount rushmore great.

Fox Yeah, Bab's scientist.

Okay, gang, moving along? We did get I do want

Yes?

I did. I forgot the name of it, but I really enjoyed it. Anything with a female lead singer that is adjacent to pop punk, I will eat eat it up.

Sure.

I also like listen to a lot of other people's recommendations too, So thank you email or whoever that was. That was very, very kind of recommention.

Who to give you? I forget?

No.

The one I've been listening to is Blood Incantation sounds.

Cool, which was pretty sick. Let me look up mine real quick.

Actually remember this.

I don't remember this either. Don't worry, Dan, I'm with you.

Uh mine was Blood Command.

Listen to that. I feel like Grub got Devin Townsend right right? No, no, no, Blood Grove got Blood Incantations.

I think maybe Mike did.

Mike, Yeah, Mike got Devin Townsend, Devin Towns Yeah, I right now, oh right, let's see, let's go up up up. Uh. We got an email from Eric from Saint Louis. You're jam You may or may not be aware of this, but if you are in the company of two, but you are in the company of two weasels, allow me

My bad.

Now, I want to do that.

I keep meaning to play Captain toa It just hasn't happened. Uh it's gotten busy. Yeah, for sure, I'm gonna hip the excuse for everything, But I do want to play some captain to maybe that can be a mega man some nights if I can get jeff to join me.

Speaking about recommendations, al Riley from Indiana sent in a lot of recommendations for other media as well. Real quick, good tidings, great bombinos on the latest last episode eight nine to six. Alex from Australia gave you a metal album to listen to you for homework and you just rolled with it. Reading that email was really opening the floodgates for you guys who live to recommend media. So I've taken the opportunity to prescribe each of you an anime.

Oh dudes love recommending anime.

It's only three hundred episodes.

More than any other form of media. Anime guys will let you know what you need to watch.

All right, I'm gonna try and speed through these grub Despite appearances, Jeffrey Michael Grubb is bit a bit of an enigma. A taste maker. He is known to enjoy some dragon Ball, but he doesn't give the impression of a guy who spends a lot of time with anime these days to you. I recommend Ping Pong the animation. It's got sports, it's got music, it's got an endearing old lady. It's got an unconventional art style atypical for anime.

Okay, he backled, pup your hands off of Isokin. Everyone, He's mine backlart. There are those who call him the coworker, and there are others who call him the king of anime. He has a whole show about it, though you might not know since it's been a month since the last episode. I'm not counting you. Are you new on this week? New on this week?

You? I recommend Vinland Saga. It's got spirit, it's got metal, it's got deep character study, the real things to say about Humanity's proclivity towards violence and revenge in the challenges of passivism in a violent world. This, my friend, is for you, thank you.

A lot of animes have metal bud Okay, just putting that out there, but I will check this out.

All right, Jan, you know this, You know this one was actually the hardest for me. Honestly, it was downright stressful. Jan is a worldly man, Thank you. It has tasted all coffee, smoked all cigarettes, and sipped all the buzzballs. As the youngest of the group, I get the feeling you've seen the most anime and it's hard to figure out which would what would taste fresh to a developed tongue to you, I recommend mob Psycho one hundred. It's funny, said, introspective, uplifting,

These are like two mixed metaphors here, like he's going for a somalia thing first and then smoke it up, like is he a bud tender for anime?

I don't don't get the.

A bud tender, Hey man, I love that word.

Yeah, that could be awful.

Last recommendation, Dan, what do you recommend to the man who hates everything? I don't think Dan hates everything.

To you.

I bestow the gift of Satoshi Cones paranoia agent, thrilling, surreal, unlike anything you have ever seen. The only naked woman is an adult and it's very much earned. At twelve episodes. Twelve episodes, it's only about four episodes long. This is a show for adults. If you watch four hours long. This is a show for adults. If you watch it, you can talk to Kujima about it and look cool with the deepest sincerity imaginable. Riley from Indiana, Thanks Riley.

Very long, detailed email. That's a really good one. Riley, thank you.

That Yeah. Last email of the show.

This comes from I'm going to say Miko from Finland.

Hi.

Giint Bomb.

Team Grub talked on game As Mornings about Charlie Cox's experience working on Expedition thirty three. A similar situation happened in Finland where two A List actors Marty so solo Ati in Alan Wake two in Control and Peter Franzen Costcola Brothers and Alan Wake two, gave interviews after the release of Alan Wake two s in particular, it was very surprised but also happy about the new fan base of young men he gained who previously had no interest

The Stone Sweeping Ducks.

I forgot she was in that.

Oh she was in there for one day and disappears.

That's one of those disappointing Like I don't know what the schedules worked out, but by default.

Emma Stone and Sleeping Ducks because she's adorable.

No shit.

Yeah, it's weird because they're talking about making a movie of that game now, and I'm like, well, does she come back?

Probably not, she's an Oscar winning actress, but yeah, but a fault.

Yeah, I don't think she makes it back.

I really liked it when it was a novelty, when it was like, yeah, Bruce Willis for Apocalypse and we got David Bowie for Amicron the Nomad Soul like such like oh, their likeness and their voice and everything like Now, I mean, I don't know. I think I think Kajima does a great job with it with deatht Randing, although it's like I was thinking about it with like the Yoji Shinkawa art and everything, where it's like, yeah, all the desk Randing art looks incredible, but it's like, Okay,

You know, is he Nemo?

No?

No, he was U shark Tail? Was that him?

Oh maybe that's I remember reading like an article back when.

Not Nemo?

No, yeah, everything like, oh yeah, that's I could see why they'd be frustrating for like a voice actor by trade, and all of a sudden, it's like, just because you're not that like super recognizable, you're not going to much work.

So I see that argument.

It's not that he Southern did a bad job as Snake and soft Fire, but I really disliked the cast change there. Even Yeah, there's some ways to justify in that story, but still I didn't like it.

Narratively, you there's definitely way you could have had both. But yeah, they look, I get it. Twenty four is great, but you know.

Solid I think the best one ever is Phil Hartman as Blasto.

Yes, and what's that from.

Blast PlayStation one game. Yeah's some big space guy named Blastom.

It's not a likeness, but he's just like the voice, like a very trimic glure voice. It's yeah yeah yeah.

Uh.

Then the worst one is Ronda Rowsey, Sonia Blade and Mortal Kombat eleven. Oh yeah, it's bad. It was like a recast. They already had a talented voice actor doing that character in their games, and they just made it significantly worse for no reason. Nobody was like, oh I didn't care about more a combat, but now that Ronda Rowse he's involved, let me get on board.

And I liked that story. And anytime like Ronda or Sonya Blade opened her mouth and like, it was just the abysmal performance from Ronda Rowsey.

Jesus, it was so distracting.

Oh they had Megan Fox be a character.

That was pretty rough too.

Yeah. I think the best job still to this day is JK. Simmons and Steven Merchant in Portal two.

Oh yeah yeah, oh.

Yeah that was good. Oh it makes me think of the Spider Man games. Yeah, Topey Maguire doing like he was just clearly like this isn't important whatever, like X wait, millions of people are gonna play this game Toby, he actually easy to do, a good job, didn't care. It's almost endearing how lazy his performances are.

I've pretty is kind of an asshole.

What way, there's there's a there's a pr guy in games has been around for a long time, and story about how we had to kick him out of a bowling alley once.

Oh, another couple options here, I'm googling around a little bit. Aerosmith with Revolution X.

Definitely that was kicks ass.

That arcade, yeah, midway and then uh, kind of one name keeps on popping up.

Fred Durst in the Fight Club game was.

Apparently Lincoln was in that too, Abraham Lincoln good twist.

Uh. I mostly don't have a problem with celebrities getting cast in games as long as you know they're taking seriously, right, Yeah.

That's that's my point, jan is that like, for the most part, they all understand and how important it is and they take it seriously.

Especially you get like like Samojo and ya oh, he plays games, he gets it, you know.

Yeah. Somo is also good in Suicide Squad.

He's good in Yeah.

Yeah. I just don't want voice actors to be put out of a job because like ye Triple A. Celebrities are like going to games as like a paycheck just because man, they're like, you know, Matt Shipman front of the site, very prolific voice actor. But like other voice actors, it just like they just get it in a way that screen actors for your normal screen actors just don't get that transition.

Well, yeah, screen actors do themselves really well, like they usually if you have a celebrity in your game, you wanted to hear like this sound like a celebrity, But professional voice actors can change their voice and do all kinds of crazy stuff when they probably like they take it as.

An art for him, like Ben Starr is Indiana Jones was way better than Harrison Ford would have been.

Yeah, hell yeah yeah, But we had her on the couch with Ben Star. Ben Star was more cordial when we had him on the couch than when Dan and I saw him on the red carpet. Who's weird? Jennifer English, she was really great and her work is my ol fantastic. You know shadow heeart, Mike, you still can't fix shadow Heart.

I'm sorry, I did, am I I'll show you my savee file sometime Tuesdays.

All right, gag, that about does it. For emails. BombCast at giant bomb dot com is the email address to send your emails to Mike Minati's throwing on the glasses. Now, if we have received any YouTube super chats.

Yes we have. We got to feel here, starting from Canine Biscuits, who says you are forced to teleport one fellow Giant Bond member into a super sexy hair I'm anime and the rest of the crew have to watch that anime for twelve episodes. I think I know what a sexy hair anime is just from context. Uh, Like, I don't think it's not porn. I think it's just.

High school It's just a bunch of high school girls. You're like a high school guy usually that kind.

Of stuff, like a tenshi muyoh sure, yeah yeah, so I mean it would it would obviously be fine to watch.

Dan do it, because he would suffer and like want no part of it.

Right, I think, no, I I transport you, Mike, oh yeah, wow, yeah, just because I want to see the hijinks and I want to see you turn comically red.

Like okay, it's just a lot of blushing blushing the anime. Ok yeah, and then like nosebleeds ye oh right, yeah, just bleeding everywhere. My thing is I'm going to bleed out of all the orifices.

Oh christ, I don't want to see the end of this hair an.

There we go. That's my bit. Uh. Last geek says when is jan going to get on cameo? My birthday is coming up and I want him to tell me he's proud of me.

I thought about this the other day and I'm like, there's absolutely zero people that would ever want a cameo from me.

No, I don't take my referral. Already got you already referraled me. The trade has to move on chance, the next bug the next little buggy behind me?

All right? Uh okay, yeah, I guess I'll join cameo. I don't know.

Yeah, sybio says Dan with a high real hustle style game show work and depth stranding. Also shout out to the big dog Matthew Rory.

Yeah, I think you know again.

Like Zelda as far as open world game, Zelda has the most you know options for a lot of things. But dest Training has got a lot of weird items and stuff and a lot of weird interactions you could do.

There could be something there.

Dan, do you think you'd have to be a like end game.

To do like that?

Pard is like most of the wackier stuff is kind of like as you go further, Like you're not getting the coffin board in the first ten hours, you know, No, yeah, yeah.

The last one here is from Arnold Diva Karen, Sorry I horribly pronounced that. Shout out to Matt for mentioning Brian Eckberg. Remember him being Game spots go to editor for reviewing all of EA sports games a long time ago.

He was he went on to turn ten. I think he left for somewhere else.

Ifull he's safe and and doing good things in the game industry, is a good guy who's there When I started a game spot in two thousand.

And four, man, the diaspora of those little giant bomber game Spot editors has been really fun to watch. So I hope you're doing well.

Brian.

That name is Eckberg.

He went by Meckberg as a social media handle, so that's why I got confused.

Rory when you said he went on to turn ten, Like legitimate first thought was how old was he?

When he was a game.

Little baby does for it, right, I know?

Yeah, says he's a prodigy. Get literally turning ten years old.

Oh okay, oh yeah, we had.

Some young kids at game Spot. There was a guy named Avery who came in. He who was like nineteen or something like that. It was as a handful.

Well how old was like Navarro?

When I was just gonna say he started like sixteen. Yeah, you started writing really early. I was seventeen when I started publishing game guides to those so I can honestly say I've been in this business for almost thirty years. But given the shape of the games industry, maybe it's time to find something else. And you have an interview on Thursday, so send me good, good prayers and hopes something like that.

It's really fun opportunity for me. I'm looking forward to that.

But but yeah, all.

Right, Well that's it for the super chats, So thank you so much. Everybody appreciate that.

Back to you, Jam, thank you everyone for the YouTube super chats. We definitely do appreciate them and all of the support. Speaking about support, Matthew Rory, where can people go support you on the internet?

Patreon, dot com, slash Matthew Rory.

Like I said, I'm pretty good on cash for now, like to the end of the year, so it's not really gonna be a lot of paid stuff. But if you want to send me a little tip jar or something like that, I'm gonna put properly petting puppies down to the dollar tier, I think, and then we have

Hopefully my wife and I just need to sit down and do the second episode. But yeah, it's really fun.

Been enjoying kind of getting back into writing, because when you've been unemployed for like a few months, it's kind of like there's only so many video games you can play, which is a weird thing to say on Giant Bomb, But yeah, I'm trying to be a little more accountable about writing stuff every every week and doing some more funny puppy stuff. I had a Holy mac ll The first thing I want to do when I switched this

Oh a dollar will get you in YO.

Did you all see they patched pugs? What's like the dog? Yeah, they got like the fixed the breathing.

Okay, yeah, what do.

You mean like they don't you still have your like smoosh face pugs. But now yeah, shiamarrow. They put ethical pugs that have like a little bit of a snout.

See.

I would get behind gene editing to make dogs more healthy. I know there's all these Chrisper stuff about making people smarter and everything like that, but make dogs healthier and live longer.

Go for it. Just put it.

Yeah, use your Chrisper.

I mean that's kind of what they're doing with the with breeding, right, like they kind of are engineering them in some combatis.

Well with Christopher.

I mean, you can actually put cells into an adult and have those be what's the.

Word for it.

There's a big long word for like inherited by the offspring epigenetics. You can actually do that and have the animal offspring. Because before gene editing you can do that, it would only affect the person they're putting something into so exciting times, I totally just go sign. It's go crazy right now. It's a wild world.

Just do whatever you want, make terminators on them.

Yeah, I mean, I think athletes should take steroids. Have you not heard about the Enhanced Games?

Enhanced Games?

There's a dude trying to make steroid legal, uh the Olympics for steroid users in America, and he wants it to happen this year and he is going forward with it and.

The Enhanced Games.

It sounds just like, I mean.

I love the thing that I'm like making a joke about. You're like, oh no, it's totally too crazy. Look, you know, if Dan's allowed to have a three point zero, a pug should be allowed to have a two point Oh.

So there we go, there we go. Have y'all heard of banana ball? Yes?

Is that that's like the Harlem Globe Trotters for baseball? Yeah?

But yeah yeah yeah, man, gosh. I try, me and my brothers try to get tickets from the coming to town so we could take the kids, and like like five different adults in our group we're in the raffle or whatever it is, and none of us got in and it is hot.

I I think it is, like I'm perfectly okay with it existing. You just don't like baseball, well, I don't like baseball, but they're trying to like make baseball interesting, so that's that's a noble effort. I just think there's certain things in this life, like uh, country music and wearing flip flops with jeans, and just there's certain things are just never going to be for me.

And I think how to share that email say I'm the one who hates everything.

And that's not I dislike a great deal of things. But look, I'm again happy it exists. It's fine, it's

Me, Okay, okay, Uh folks, that about does it for the show the rest of this week. Oh, Matt, may I give you a suggestion? Sure start a substack as well.

You know that ownership of that whole place is kind of they're kind of like there.

So Rory, he meant invent your own version.

Of an engineer.

Yeah, yeah, you can look it up. It's it's it's not like a higher moral stands for me. But they're definitely like free speech absolutionists, which other people say they are and then or not obviously, but they they allow some pretty hemous stuff on.

There's that ghost platform.

To Yeah, that's a weird one that's based on GitHub. I believe I did a lot of research into like what to put this platform.

Mom.

I just kind of like Patreon has a good CMS and everything like that, and everybody seems I haven't have a thing already. But sorry, Jane, I didn't want to bum me out in face for putting stuff up on the internet, but just some of the leadership stuff they said about who they're gonna allow on.

There has been a kind of patrio at least has all the pornography I want.

There you gosh, Matt Matt Roger Rory, Matthew Rory.

Folks.

The rest of this week, it's gonna be a little bit of a short week because of the holidays this Friday, So Gay Mess Mornings popping off Wednesday and Thursday, hosted by Mike Minatti.

I'm gonna keep doing the news. No one can stop me.

I can't wait for tomorrow to watch you do it. I just love you a lot, Mike.

I think is this the first time ever there's a Game Mess Mornings without Jeff Grubb.

NICKI and I did like a fake Game ass Mornings where we wound up talking about the Food Network, Cinematic universitys Mornings.

Yes, fake Meth Boys.

Uh, tomorrow, no Blight Club and we're waiting until Grub is back to start DAN season, so instead we'll be doing a Dlight Club with Kayla sitting Shotgun I guess or tomorrow.

He's the Guitar rooman expert. You know, I adore guitar Man. I've beat in many times. Kayla has beating on master mode. She can like sing all the songs word for word, like she's she's the one that'll that'll guide mitched through Guitar Rooman.

Hell.

Yes. And then later on Wednesday, that's right, we missed Mega Man, so we're gonna do Wega Man. Mike and I are going to check out Dune Awakening.

That's right, some MMOs Survival. So people seem to like this game, so I'm curious to try it out.

Mister Backlar s how you raise a finger?

Yes, While we're promoting a lot of different things, we should send people to our discord to help Chuck Tawski out with the Wiki Street Team. That's right, we're rebuilding this wiki. Oh, I guess people don't know that whole story, brick by brick. If they have not, they were not able to tune into the premium Discord town Hall, which will be up in its replay form on Friday.

Is that correct, Jam, Yes, that is correct. That's right.

So head on over to the Discord, and I believe Chucksy's gonna maybe unlock that channel for everyone, not just premium people. But we do need some of that help that was offered up at the beginning of this new Journey, new chapter in Giant Bomb to help rebuild that part of the site. A lot of cool stuff happening down the road on the horizon, so so go do that.

Speaking about the horizons voicemail dumb Truck this.

Week with super I Patch Wolf.

That's right. Oh, we got all the dogs this week, so seven oh seven Exit flu send your voicemails in and we can chat about them with John later this week. Anything else, I'm forgetting boys.

Next week on the Pomcast, we will have Garrett Martin, edit in chief of the newly announced Endless Mode. If you want to look that up. That is Elliest Gaming is now relaunched as Endless Mode. Look it up and we will have Garrett on next week.

And fantastic once again, Thank you so much Matt Rory for taking time at her day and sitting with us for a couple of hours.

Goofen and Gabin, folks. That about does it for the podcast.

He's been Mat, he's been Dad, he's been Mike, he's been Jeff, I've been Jad and you at home have been doing great. That's right. I'll open up the cameo. It'll be me and scout whatever you want out to say too. There we go.

I'll use my fling, use my leg.

Thank You's dance like I'm too lazy until next week.

Goodbye,