Giant Bombcast 07/05/2016 (Premium)

Hey, it's Tuesday, July the fifth, twenty sixteen. You're listening to the Giant bomb cast. Our nation is now two hundred and forty years old. Yeah, happy birthday. Yay America America. Yeah, to celebrate. Drew and Jason have gotten the hell out of here. That's right, they've escaped. I don't know where they went. We don't. We don't know where they go. Drew's probably outside of America, America, drews. Drew's on a secret op. Yeah, Jason sticks around. Jason's in Florida,

which I'm not sure if that qualifies. Part of it is either part of America, like not part of America or the most America. I know it's not the most. No, no, no, I mean, what are your criteria? Boy, that's a question. Tell me what defines Americanness to you. I'm gonna regrets Florida, that's all right, Will Smith? What's America? I was in Jersey over over the weekend. I thought Jersey was pretty America. Okay, all right, that makes sense, honest genuine people,

which everyone always shits on Jersey all the time. I've sent thirty years hearing that. Like the wrestling bad guys saying, oh, if this was, if America was, but this is where he'd stick to Anima or whatever. H No, I feel like, wow, that's wow, that's where you. They said that about every stop on the tour though. That's not just Columbus, Ohio. It was also the Nima place. No, you just people shoot on Jersey all the time. It was great a thing.

It's it's the classic. Okay, I heard there's bad parts. I heard Camden is bad, but where it's been Vinny's in Newark, Vinney seems a like here, right, I mean I don't know anything. Yeah, yeah, it reminded me weirdly of Kansas. It was like quaint, suburban, just nice people saying hi to each other on the streets. Can't pump your own gas? Really that was weird. Yeah, you cannot pump gas in Jersey. Yeah, I like that. We didn't actually do that, but

but I heard that, like it's a weird law. Yep. I don't understand that at all. I don't. I don't either. Somebody yelled at me for pumping my gas in Oregan one time, Like a guy came running out of the gas station as if his pants were on fire. Yeah, I tried pumping gas in Jersey, and yes, the guy was not thrilled about it. That might be a nice law, though, because my sister and I'm sure other people have done this, just broke their car by filling

it with diesel fuel. Wow it doesn't fit though, doesn't And no it doesn't. They purposely make the hole so you can't put diesel fuel in there. So I think she just squirted the diesel fuel into the hole and ruined A big part of Love finds a Way. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, New Jersey could help that, all right, Will Smith? Yes, sir, as a man who once saved America many times from an invading minute. Welcome to Earth. Yes, how was your fourth child? I grilled

meat over fire. Okay, that's something that you should do. I had some safe, insane fireworks, so check when when the people that drive to Rena. I don't even know where you go to get illegal fireworks in twenty sixteen in California, reallyan Francisco, really just go like you just is there some store that you go in the Chinatown. There's a store that's a truck. It's like a food truck, but for fireworks. Really, and they've been operating it for decades. Like, yeah, you can get that stuff

here. I mean yeah, okay, you can get anything here. It's a big city. Okay, what what is what is the state of fireworks legality in California? Like, can you county the county stuff a real city by city? Yeah, yeah, merin county it is all illegal. They will still have like city run fireworks shows and stuff, but the county it's a dry county. Uh. In Sonoma County where I'm at, you can buy fireworks, but they're the shitty California fireworks, which is what I'm It's

it's you know, ground flowers and fountains of fire. Nothing that fire fires into the sky, nothing that lows up, no black powder. Yeah, except for in the snappers. So you're throwing it at each other there. Yeah, that's a good time. Pacific where I live, home of the world's greatest taco bell. I was just there a week or two ago. Interesting, it was great. It's it's a nice taco bell. Yeah. They basically it's it's like Baghdad in nineteen ninety one. Remember when you saw

those videos on CNN. I'm all the lights going up. Yeah, it's basically like that it's got heavy an hour before it gets dark until two o'clock in the morning. One o'clock in the morning. Did the statue get pulled down at any point, then, okay, that's the next year. It was like I had Gary brought his daughter over and we kept them up three or four hours after bedtime, and at one point they were both chasing each other around the backyard screaming, I love fireworks, I love fireworks. I

love fireworks more fireworks. So that was my night. People down on the beach with that stuff, like you guys are pretty close to the water. The people mostly just go out in the street because the role in Pacifica is if the cop doesn't see you light the fuse, then they can't ticket you.

So they have all these signs that say thousand dollars fine for legal fireworks, but nobody ever gets fine because you know, one guy stands at the end of the street and says cop and then they stop lighting fuses and and you know, sit there with their fake say anyway, I've never felt more inadequate as a father when there's when there's fireworks that are going up in the

sky and like filling half the sky. Yeah, it's sparkles that make more sparkles, that make more sparkles, and we have like a couple of sparklers in our hands. Like, look, these are really cool kids, Like daddy, that firework better than yours. You got a storm slow. Yeah. Someone blew their leg off in Central Park this weekend trying to make their own fireworks, like jumped off a rock and blew up this thing. Like he lit this thing and tried to like jump off a rock and blew his

own leg off. You see. You see a lot of thumbs every year. But man, leg leg iso, that's you have to that's some serious ordinance of that. Yeah, what are you doing? That's balls? He sent for park is surrounded by a lot of places filled out the woods really yeah yeah, yeah, well you know it's fourth of July. You just gotta do what you gotta do. Now. I had a friend who liked to make his own fireworks, which is a fun way to say, make

pipe bombs. Wow, And those were always cool, I don't know, like super fucked up, but you know, he dropped in the sewer and hope for the best. We would just do the thing where we would buy like two hundred dollars worth of fireworks, put it in a cardboard box, just drive out to some farm. I mean, wasn't harden cans. It is just going ten minutes in any direction. And then we'd doused it in like lighter fluid or gasoline, and then we would all farm Roman candles at

it. No, no, just the box of fireworks. Yeah yeah. And then so it would be like, you know, one, hundreds and hundreds of bottle rocks and Roman candles playing in every different direction. And then we would get really far away and shoot Roman candles at the box, and once one of the little things hit it, it would look like a mushroom cloud, like twenty feet tall. Yeah, it's amazingly bad idea. Oh yeah. And then once it dives down a little bit, y'all dare each

other to go jump over it. That's always fun. You're perfect. Yeah, this is how the door Win Awards got started. The Door Win Awards. Oh right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now. My dad used to be big on getting the fireworks you're not supposed to get in California, and we would launch them off. So I at an early age

I got way into them. And then at some point I think he realized that he was going to burn down the neighborhood if if this like kept escalating, and he kind of backed off of it, and I was like, no, fuck that we got no what do we know? What when are

we gonna get the good fireworks brought block Pride? Yeah exactly. And yeah, So we ended up moving to a court, which was nice because we lived pretty close to the police station before, which maybe in retrospect between you know, like we were landing things on people's roofs and ship and it's like, yeah, a couple times he'd be like, we need go inside now. I'm like, all right, run inside for like ten minutes to come back out. All right, Okay, let's go in the front room in

the street or in the back street. Yeah, okay, yeah, and yeah, I don't know. The last year we did anything crazy in the street, it was take one of the fountains that they sell for real and just pack it full of actual gunpowder, and that just I feel like I've told the story before, but it just led to like a twenty foot flame in the middle of the street for about ten seconds, and it sounded like a jetts like a jet that sounds all right, and it was awesome.

It was like he we ran a separate fuse from like it tied it to the real fuse and ran it around to the bottom of the thing where we had packed all this stuff in and it was great. It was it was it lit up. It was like daytime out there for that those twenty seconds. So I was like, oh, this is great. I'd get a tan and then it was just fucking, utter, abject darkness and we went inside and that was it for us with fireworks, because at that point there

was, you know, there was nothing else to be done. And I was old enough to go out and get into my own own trouble at that point, so I did. H Yeah. So I didn't know this, but out here, like where Brad and I grew up, they have muzzle loading like black powder hunting season, right, So there's a period of time everywhere eyear where you go out and you literally you go to hunt deer with

guns. You pour black powder into the back and put the shot or whatever and jam a stick down there, and like you can just go to the gun shop and buy a black powder or whenever you want it. So we used to you, is it to like blow up stumps, you'd go drill a hole and then you know, put the put the black power in the fuse and put some like epoxy or something in there to hold alder. You

need the pressure to make it blow up. Yeah, and light the fuse and then run like hell and hope that the wood trappinell didn't kill anybody. And so a few years ago, for something we were doing on tested, we needed black powder. So I just went to the gun shop down around the corner from my house, as one does, and walked in. And you know it's the normal. You've been to a gun shop before, Yes, I have seen, right, there's a certain there's a certain a certain

look. Yeah, for the and like I do not fit lumber stickers, but not on cars, but in the windows type of place. And GTA, is that what gun traps look like? Are those accurate? It's not two? I mean that is camo? Yeah, okay you could yeah, sure. Have you ever been in a kmart that's not a kmart anymore? Like gout shut down, but the shelves are still in there. Yes, it usually looks like that, but with guns on the wall instead of nothing.

Okay? Yeah, And and there's guys in there. There's a lot of people wearing camo, and then there's also some guy that's wearing tack clothes, but it's the top usually. Yeah, it's just like this man is dressed in all black, but it's clearly not a police officer. Yeah. So I walked in with my stupid internet T shirt and pair of like skinny jeans, and the guy's buying the counter immediately made me as like, you

know, not the short place sized you up. And I walked back to the counter and I was like, hey, can we help you with something. I was like, yeah, I just need to get some some black powder, and just the silence the whole place. The ship stopped in the whole gun store and everybody kind of turns around and looks and they're like, we don't sell black powder here, son, And I said, well really. They're like no, it's so you can't just buy black powder in California.

It's you gotta go blah blah blah, you have permits and all that. And I was like, oh shit, I just you know, and I told I like went through the whole thing. I was like, I'm from Tennessee. He's just go with the gun store get at Walmart whatever, and and well we got some pamphlets if you want to help us here in California, calling the special number on the other line, like the yeah, this guy's about to go crazy and blow up as school or whatever. So

I went. I ended up having to go to the special place and getting the black powder there. Nevada. No, that's in Burlin game. Okay, all right, yeah, okay, yeah, so yeah, you can't get black powder here. Really it's hard. Ye who knew? Who would you just like provide id and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, a letter and like go talk to the ship. It ended up being such a pain in the ass that I just we just didn't do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you think anyone around here attached fireworks or Roman candles or anything to drones and flew them up in the air and like steered him around and shot him. I've seen the Roman candle on a drone before, So that's a real dumb idea. That's not all right. Fire fire and lithium ion batteries is not a go. It depends how much you care about the drone or raining down toxic smoke and ship that burns when it comes gets water this

doesn't this also doesn't sound bad enough. Yeah, no, I feel like maybe this was the first year, maybe last year, but this was I feel like I saw a whole lot of people shooting fireworks with drones, like using like flying drones around fireworks shows, Like maybe just the proliferation of these things shooting them. I've never quite understood the people that are taking video of an entire fireworks show, Like when, at what point in your life are

you actually gonna watch that? Again, it's technic like a picture or two of the fireworks exploding, but like the entire duration of it as a video. Yeah, same people like a concerts, like you know you're in the first row filming Bruce Springsteen or something like why are just watch the show that you paid one hundred dollars to see? Kind of a secret old man,

aren't you? Well, I mean I think there's a point here, right, Yeah, yeah, that's a picture or two to commemorate the thing, but like if you've got your phone in front of the entire and also I am a secret old man, yeah yeah, but yeah, when are you gonna watch that? It's gonna be there will be a professionally shot footage if you want to watch a fireworks show, maybe even that fireworks show, there's

probably a better way to watch it. Yeah, like people are wrestling events, like, okay, there are pro level cameras filming this exact thing from great angles. If you ever want to watch it again, don't film from your stupid seats in section one seed. If people weren't doing that, then that time that Titus O'Neil grab Vince McMahon would have been lost to time.

No, that was on the actual prodcast, but they could they faded if you want to watch if there's like a larger, better shot of live on the network was ok yeah, yeah there was, there was that, but also but I feel like there was also cell phone camera of that too. While we're being grabby old man. I was flipping channels last night and ended up on a fourth of July concert and the girl on stage was getting everybody in the audience to show their support by turning on the flash lights on their

iPhone and holding them. Yeah that's why. Yeah, that's that's bummed out. For years, it's been yeah, turn on your phone screen or the light on it was it was specifically it was the lights this time, and the screen. Did that at the skinnered concert, you'd probably get your asskicks lights. I was not. I was just looking at this. I was like, nobody in that audience has a lighter on them. This is if if it's an outdoor skinnered concert, then I bet you get a mix.

But an indoor they're gonna be like, no one's gonna plut aucking lighter and light. It degenerates. Okay, maybe somebody see I've walked through this. Yeah, yeah, did you get up to anything on the fourth? No? Nothing, Now it just wasn't I don't know's it's if I'm not gonna like go actually destroy things, I might as well not go at all. Like the safe and sane fireworks that's for when you have kids. It's sad, you know. So at some points are sad. Yeah, no,

they're just three, they're boring. Yeah, all rights, cool, there's no there's no danger, there's no fun totally. Yeah. And I'm even where I'm like, I'm not really into the danger that much. So, And you know, I think most of my hoodlum friends have gotten to a point where they're in a similar situation where they're just like, yeah, you know, yeah, I could go break all these laws and get all these

fireworks and do all this stuff. But at some point enough people around me are doing it that if I want to look up at the sky and see it, I can. It's not you know, I don't know any outside stuff this weekend, get up to anything. Yeah, yeah, I went around. I went on a hike, did some stuff, went around. It's Marine County business. Uh, hung out, generally kept it quiet. Okay, any inside a business. I don't talk about that on this podcast.

Okay, all right, it's highly personal. That's fair, really fucked up. Even ask I beat that game, Brad, Yeah, me too. You played it? I played beat it this morning. Oh wow, oh man, you're fresh. Yeah. We probably shouldn't say anything about Vague. I thought I thought it was gonna be out on Steam today, but I guess it's Thursday, what I thought it. Yeah, So, so anybody waiting on PC still hasn't had a chance to play it yet, So I guess we still need to be vague. But how are you feeling about

it? I the thing that they do with the way they teach you to play the game is amazing. So they teach you like they present you with this puzzle, You solve the puzzle, and then they go to the next puzzle and you have to kind of break down, like the thing that you tried that you did to solve the last puzzle doesn't work on this one.

But it's like one access off. You have to look at the whole state of the room that you're in, everything that's accessible to you, and you're like, oh, why is this why why is there a ramp over here? Oh? Right, okay, so you use you have to use this ramp. And they do a really good job of kind of teaching you experientially

without ever really showing you how to play. That's that's a good point because they were there were like three or four major puzzles in that game where I got to it and looked at like, you know, you you assess the situation and you're like, Okay, what are the like the points of interaction here that I can fiddle with? And there kind of aren't any, and I'm like, well, what the hell do you want me to do?

And then you realize that the solutions are like often very minimal. Well they're much more minimalist than it's it's not a lot of like different duhikis that you got to pull around and stuff. It's like there are some elements of the Witness that do that sort of thing as well as it's kind of showing you stuff. Is it? Is it like that or so the Witness actually shows you though, So the Witness has those teaching puzzles on the sequence, right,

and this does it, This does it. This is kind of the inverse of that, right, So this it just puts you in a situation, lets you figure out how to get out of it, and that teaches you got to play it. But whereas the Witness ran each one of those things into the ground as it went further and further on, right, this one you really only do each one. Like It's an incredible amount of work to do to build this game the way they did, I think, because

each each like encounter is its own kind of one off thing. Yeah, they're they're super elegant and well designed. But what I mean is like there are a lot of these puzzles where it's not like, oh, I need to pull this box or throw a lever or something. It's like I can subtly kind of manipulate the physics of the game to make something happen in a way that I didn't think I could. Yeah, I felt like overall though, it was easier than Limbo, Like I didn't think I think I could.

I could see that. Yeah, I didn't get really stuck at any point. I don't remember Limbo having these like total mind bidding, Like the Witness had puzzles that I would stare out for like thirty minutes. Sure, what the hell do I do here? Sure, but I think the Limbo Limbo had a little harder one than Inside did. Yeah I would, I don't. I don't feel like you ever got stuck for more than like three to five minutes and you just kind of look at something long enough and you're

like, oh, okay, yeah they're still super clever puzzles. Yeah, a lot. Very this has more. This is less about trial air, and there was very much like you get stabbed out of nowhere, whole bunch of just gotchas in that game. Yeah, that ended up pushing me away from me. So I'm glad. I'm glad to hear this. This moving away, This is this is a lot more thoughtful. For sure. I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna give that a look when it hits p Yeah, I

want to see that PIEC version two that. Yeah, but that's gonna look really nice on a big monitor. I had played about half of it when we did the last mombcast, and that was for a while. I was kind of like, this just feels like a kind of prettier Limbo, and then near the end it's just like, Okay, this is this is better like this. You had some moments that that surprised me in a way that Limbo never did. How long has it been since you finished it? Will?

I literally like how many hours? We talk like three hours ago to come here? Huh? So I finished it maybe nine o'clock yeah, and nine forty maybe okay, yeah, and it's eleven thir two hours ago exactly probably. Yeah. I mean everybody talks about the last x number of minutes of that game. It has like a Half Life two turn. Yeah. Yeah, but I think even before that, there's no no, no, no, maybe I'm maybe I'm not go oh no, I'm still like the

super gravity gun. What. I don't know. Half Life two didn't really do it for me, not neither to have like one. But but you're right, I was thinking I have Live one. Yeah, there's no zen. I am super curious to hear what you think of. Yeah, the way this game plays out, even even before go ahead, I want to see it. Oh yeah, yeah, even even before that crazy stuff late late in the game. Like I think there's a good slow build of just

weird things happening inexplicably even before that stuff. So there's real tension like it, Like there's bits, there's bits early on. I think you guys talked about it last week but I can't remember, but like it does have that thing that Limbo had where the protagonist gets killed and really gruesome horrible ways that are kind of affecting when it happens over and over again. It's it's really there's some explicit stuff in in the deaf animation, but the dogs and stuff

like that. Yeah, and then there's there's that water monster thing. Yes that is just a absolute fucker. Yeah, I think one of the more violent ones that like that pulse, Yes, yeah, I think I think getting to that area and again algies for anybody goes and played this game yet, but getting to that area was the moment that that game really took off for me, where I was just like the scale and the like just the spectacle of what was happening in that environment. There's a part where you get

to where there's like there's some unseen machinery like pulsing or thumping. Should shouldn't okay anymore? Fine? Fine, it's just yeah, it's not like a spoiler. It's like you have to see it to really get the effects. Just like the the number of different ways that they added detail to this machinery operating that make it like affect everything around you is just like seconds and none

cool, and more so than with Limbo. There were times that I just wanted to to like see how the deaths happened, Like you just want to try, try and fail, just to see what, Like is this door did they build an animation for this door coming that? Oh? Yeah? Is that snappy about getting you back in? Yeah, it's it's like three to five seconds after you're dead, you'll and you always respond in the exact

same room that you were in. Cool. Yeah, there's there were only like two places where the checkpoints were kind of jankie, and they had to be because of the way the puzzles were back. Okay, yeah, so makes sense. Yeah, but it's it feels really really deliberate and the really awesome like it's it's much more so than Limbo. I think I haven't played Limbo since a game like you can. You're gonna absolutely see how it took him that long to make. There's a four hour game. It's a lot

of game. Yeah, all right, next week we'll actually talk about it for real once everybody else has played it. Yeah, uh damn yeah. Do you play anything else while you were on? So my girlfriend's brothers have a lot of Jaguar and three D O and like, they have a lot of old, weird games, and it's kind of rare for me to see an old game that I had never even heard of or played. And that's pretty much all I played this weekend. So I played Ultra Vortex yep.

I played some Fight for Life, though I played Escape from Monster manor Killing Time and Unreal Tournament for Dreamcast. All right, yeah, but I had never even heard like they had all these old Mortal Kombat knockoff from like ninety four. We've played some Way of the Warrior and stuff like that, which i'd heard it. I know that one. But Killing Time not Killing Time.

I Fight for Life text. So I'm trying to Ultravortex was that was more explicitly Mortal Kombat like, and it was Fight for Life polygonal like More Fight. I think I think Fight for Life was straight up like taking on Virtual Fighter at the time. Okay, yes, I remember being invited to an event to go see Fight for Life, uh, and not going,

oh yeah, yeah, it's it's real bad. Ultra Vortex is too Ultra Vortex at the time, Like there were people on that game that I think that Ryan McDonald knew a guy who was working on it or something, or I forget what it was, but I remember hearing a lot about that game when it has been in development, is being like, oh no, it's gonna be it's gonna be super Legit isn't all of a sudden like did that game use actors, Like were they going that hard on the more Got that

angle? Yeah, yeah, but it's all digitized stuff. And I think even like the fatality animation is the same, just kind of like woozy standing there waiting for an input thing. Wow, it's a yeah. I've not played that game in a very long time, but it's I remember it being pretty rotten. Remember both those games being pretty rotten. The characters like Screen

and Ultra Vortex is pretty cool though. It's a big demon looking back and forth and it's handro and the players going their hands like cold knacks like Golden Yeah yeah, kind of like that. Yeah uh and played some Alien versus Predator. I'd never played that. Always heard about it. Jars, Yeah that that. Yeah, that game is like always held up as like the Jaguar game, and I've never been a fan, doesn't at an age that well, like during the it's kind of weird and you know, it's I

just thought then. I think that was another one of those cases where if you were playing shooters on a PC and came to that game, you were like, Okay, I guess it's like there are things about it that are like more complicated than a lot of other shooters and that's neat. But man, yeah, I just thought that game, Golden I was good if you played PC shooters, Like yeah, I mean it wasn't It wasn't quite good, but it was like the web stuffing they did with the weapons and the

fact that you could catch it, and it was it was different. They were they were building their own thing. It was they were taking advantage of the controller in a way that you know, Tarrock didn't. Yeah, and that was that was neat. But but at the same time, yeah, I don't know, like just the speed of it and all that, I still wanted you play real shooters on a PC. Were any of those Alien

Versus Predator games ever good? People really like like the ones of the game years later the Yeah, it wasn't lift Tech, but I didn't Monolithic one.

I feel like, I feel like there have been eight different games that just have the title Alien Versus Predator, right, And I can't straight Yes, those games were super well liked when they were on PC h but I think it was the same deal where I just came down like I if maybe if you really like Aliens and or Predators, you're willing to kind of overlook

some stuff. But I just I don't know. The one everybody seems to remember is it came out around like two thousand nish two thousand something like that, the Sega made one and like oh nine somewhere around there that was not good and wasn't good played. Yeah that was yeah, Yeah, that was a different kind of a different thing when they were kind of three different games like the one I think I played the Lift Tech one, which was three. It was three because it was a marine side there was a you could

beat the alien and like climb on the wall. Also, okay, yeah, it's a lot of like opening a door as a marine and there's an alien. I'm gonna walk straight backwards and shoot my shotgun for a while, and then to walk forward I have to take damage because it left a pool of acid on the ground. So if you killed in a doorway and then to strap ie, you can either hold in se and move left or right, or the dumb like number pad on the bottom. Yeah, what would

you think of that control? It was. I never actually held one, you know, I never had a Jaguar, and it always looked like this big, heavy, expensive piece of machinery and then you hold it and it feels so light and cheap. But yeah, her brother was telling me about

like the inserts or whatever the cards you would put over. It was like it was like the in television invision, right, like game specific stuff and man which you needed because otherwise it's just this number pad and you're like, I hit four to straight left, like yeah, mini map on, I had hit eight or whatever. Yeah, I always thought that on an emulator. Oh right, those games, the ones that took advantage of the pad.

Anyway, they have the CD. The CD, Yeah, it has a CD on like take a c looks like it did it look like a toilet bowl was attached to the top of the I don't think so. I think all of our stuff was on carts. They all looked like Sonic and Knuckles carts. Okay, yeah, yeah, uh yeah. The CD system, like the the latch would get loose. So I know multiple people that had just like butter knives permanently jammed into their CDs to keep it latched shut.

I'm amazed. You knew multiple people that have a Jaguar CD. Yeah. Period. I ran in past circles, you know. I knew one guy that had like all the weird consoles like the Neo Geo and the Yeah, like, I don't own a Jaguar CD. But I also had no idea about it. Was it the three do that had one controller port and you hung it out? Yeah, so dumb fucking idea. And we did that. We played a return Fire, which was this Yeah, like it was actually pretty fun. It's a great game. And uh, I guess

if you plug in headphones to the headphone jack. As you're listening, like we're playing against each other and I'm ahead, I'll be hearing like victorious, like Flight of Valkyriest music, and you'll be hearing like Doom and Gloom music or whatever. That's that's cool. I didn't realize they were that they did that. That's that's neat. Yeah, that games actually pretty fun. Yeah, return Fire is awesome. That's that's such a fucking fatst. What is

it? You can It's basically imagine like a Command of conqueror type view, like you know, top down, you've got a base, but you're not like it's not an RTS by any means you can play. I mean you're not building anything. Yeah, you've got Each team has a flag basically, and you can be a jeep, which the jeep is the only vehicle that can transport the flag. The helicopter is the fastest one that can like fly over water and like kind of scout out and find out where the other guy's

flag is. The tank is what you want to use once you know where it is, and you just blow up all the defenses around it. And then there's like this weird APC thing that I never really used. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, So basically it's finding the other person's flag, getting there, just throwing the defenses, driving the jeep there, and just hauling ass back to your It's the split screen where their creeps. No, there

are the defenses around the base towers need to kind of handle. But but yeah, yes, okay, in a manner of speaking, some of the maps would have a jungle, a pudge maybe the APC. Maybe the APC is pudge. I don't know. The only thing APC does this black hole. I don't know. Okay, Uh, return Fire is a hell of a game. It's really cool. I heard there's a PlayStation version too. Is it pretty much? I think so? It might have more maps,

I forget. It seems like one of those things that could have used the link cable, like one of the few PS one games that yeah, or like Clan of Conquer used that it was the Metal might have Doom, yeah do it? Yeah, wipe Out XEL obviously. Yeah. Yeah, it was just really cool to get this like huge assortment of games I had never

heard of or played before, since I never had those systems. Yeah, I had all the like the big systems that Anys and the Superintendent and all that stuff, but never these like weird expensive side ones and yeah, it's the whole wall of this stuff. Yeah, that stuff's nonsense. It's a lot of these games are forgotten for a reason. That's that stuff was hard to find when you were a kid, Like I don't remember what the Jaguar cost when it came out, but the three D two fifty I remember it

was not that much. It was not it was not three D expose because the first three DIO, the first the Panasonic, I forget what the model number was, but the first version was seven hundred dollars. Yeah, and that was in early nineties money, right, Like it was hard to find somebody that had a three do I like that one. The Neo Geo were basically and the CDI also was was similarly pricey, though the CDI was barely

a games machine. I remember in the old like game in magazines you would see the like the cost to import or just buy these games from whatever companies there were, and like the Supernintendo games like it would be the standard fifty sixty, SBM would be eighty maybe, and then Neo Geo games, individual

games would be like six hundred dollars. Yeah. I was constantly thinking like, is this some weird thing where they're not putting the end symbol or is this some weird currency, Like there's no way a six hundred dollars for this copy of Samurai Showdown. Yeah, they weren't. They weren't six They were more games a ton of money. Yeah, you console you would get, Yeah, you would get a console and the Neo Geo Gold, which was like the console controller and Magician Lord, I want to say that was like

a six hundred or seven hundred. Yeah, it's just the games. The ROMs were so big. They're pretty arcade perfect. It was literally, I mean you can you can install a custom bious into a Neo Geo now that will let you flip between home and console because they're all on the same and it's just a mechanical adapter. Or cartridges. The cartridges are different the cards because they don't want they didn't want operators buying the keep three hundred dollars cartridges

for their arcades. They wanted them buying the eight hundred dollars or a thousand dollars cartridges for MVSS. Yeah, but that was that was mainly manufacturing cost. Like, that's the same principle that made Chrono Trigger eighty dollars when it came out, Like Fantasy Start four was one hundred dollars. There's a lot of ram or a lot of ROMs on that thing, and it costs money. Yeah, well, what what did it console? Like the nests? I think I bought my nest for like eighty bucks and then this nest I

got as a gift. So was it like one hundred two? I want to say this nest was two hundred when it came out. Sounds right. I think any like the with the with Mario duck Hunt was one hundred, right, I would say maybe that was more than that. Maybe it was when I like the original launch a neys like rob the Robot, like Deluxe Kit Robot Gun. No, no, no, this is prepad Okay, it's like at launch it was it was like Gyromite and duck Hunt and I

think Mario Brothers on separate cartridges. Uh, and then this big ass box that had the robot and the light gun in there. I want to say that might have been like two fift That plausible, but I don't remember. I can look it up. But then yeah, I think I want to say Scess with Mario World was two was one nine nine, and the Genesis was I remember paying two hundred bucks for a Genesis, but I don't think it came with a game Altered Beast. I'm pretty sure I bought this was

one of the second bought fresh I got it late. Yeah, okay, so I would want in like ninety three. Probably the ninety four years was Sonic. The one I bought was was Sonic mine I bought. I went to Tower Records and bought mine, and I bought Madden and NHL because the kid who had NHL and Madden on our floor because I was a freshman in college. The kid who had on our floor funked out over the holiday. Somebody had to come in, so somebody had to step up, because you

know, I had to do what was necessary. I think I got some toys rust deal where it also came with pat Riley basketball. What a deal? Yeah? Wow? That perfect game? Who made that? Pat Riley? That's probably Sega. That's probably Sega's basketball game, because you know they did Tommy le sort. I was gonna say they were going after coaches for

their stuff. Pat Riley was at the Lakers still, right, Yes, so that would a been yeah wow, yes, yes that that game was super real basketball in Japan and then they put it out as pat Riley Basketball here. Yeah that game. Man, it was not a not a great game. But I love Tommy sort of Baseball's game and h L ninety four though, that's a whole reason at Genesis Yep, yeah, like that was

an amazing game. That was that crazy moment of like the Master System was like this also ran next to the NES like nobody cared, but then all of a sudden, the Genesis just like took off like a rocket. I remembers games. I remember buying a Master System and this was like after a year or two of the NES and like getting that thing and being really bummed out, like feeling like I had made a huge mistake. Yeah, there

wasn't a lot of sting that after you had a Nintendo. Yeah, okay, that would do it, and like there were games on it I liked, but at some point it was just like, man, like the games aren't coming out fast enough. Some of these games that I've got that I picked up just suck. I feel like we were buying Master System Games at Costco. I don't know. I thought I bought Nest games at Hills Hills and Kmart and it was always it was always based on cover art. It

was total crapshoot every time. Yeah, yeah, I was renting a lot back then because there was a good local place that was renting games. I did too. I looked at the Master System Games at Roses. You guys have a rose yet lun chairs at it Roses one time. It sounds about right, Yeah, you couldn't do that with Master System games though, because the box art was just it was just this white box with this grid on it. No, it looked cool. No, I was like, cool

box design. I love the box design. But if you're if you're like trying to shop for games, it's fucking terrible because it just says the wrestling and then you're pro wrestling. You pick it up and it's like, here's a dude. I don't know. I don't think it was any better than looking at that picture of Mega Man on the cover of Mega Man for the next that was at least more evocat oh man, this is gonna be awesome. It looks like a pit and no, no, maybe the mass games

were like more realistic than yeah or something. But pro Wrestling was a great Master System. Master System had two carts, two different kinds of carts. Cards. Yeah, it had carts and then had cards, and so those were I think that's just the legacy of like what that system was in Japan and the way they kind of upgraded it over time, from like the SG one thousand or whatever up to the Mark three. And yes, they wanted to have like cheaper games to be available on these cards, and yeah,

the Master System just had both, but it was I don't know. The card games came in thinner cases. It's like Transbot came in this like really thin case. I thought that was really cool, so you could tell yeah, okay, yeah, but the games were the same. I mean, you know, it didn't seem like like a capacity different. It probably was, but it's just like it didn't it didn't read as like this huge capacity. Did Ice Climber need as much space as the legend Zelda? Probably not?

Probably not, yeah, probably not. Both consoles are fun, I like, yeah, she could dig some more of those up. You're not gonna run out and buy a Jaguar anytime soon, though. No, no, but it was still super fun. Whenever I go back there, I'm sure we'll play some more of those. It's good stuff. Yeah. I I could bring in my Jaguar if you want to conroduce my UPF to play some garbage. And I don't think I actually own Ultravarte uh but Vortex or

vortechte. I think it's Ultra Vortex. It might be uh god, I actually do have a look, wait, you do have a Jaguar, crazy, just not a CD. I didn't. I don't have a CD. He's not a crazy person. I ended up. I ended up with Joe Fielders Jaguar. So I was vying Joe Fielders really war with CD at one point and then ended up not getting it. And it was this whole Did it have a CD? Maybe? I don't know if I still have it

or not, but I don't remember there being a CD. He he he literally drove up to the curb outside of my apartment and just like shoved a brown cardboard box out the window and drove off like he did not want that thing. And it's Vortech Ultra Vorte. Yeah, he was moving. Yeah. So yeah, while we're on the topic of old shitty mortal kind of bat Clones. What do you know about Tattoo Assassins. It's a terrible game. It never officially came out. It was right, it was test market.

Yeah, yeah, they put it out on tests. It was it wasn't quite finished, but it was. It's it is in a very playable

state in mame okay. That and it was the story and like stuff was come like it was coming with one of the guys that worked on Back to the Future, the movie Data East, right, yeah, yeah, okay, And there's a whole so there's a whole lower behind that where Data East was primarily a pinball company and they wanted to get into video games, and so like there's some ties to some guy who had like story credit on Back to the Future. Did data Did data used to get bought by Tato or

something like that or the other way around? Data East stuff ended up being weird. They ended up getting bought by a company called g Mode, which did mobile stuff in Japan. Okay, And so I don't know where the IP rights this is. So Data East made wind jammers. So at some point I spent some time trying to track down the IP legacy of Yeah, of course they made bad dudes. Yes, they made the RoboCop arcade games. Yes, that's a good game. Burger Time is a data East two

points. Well right, one of the fatalities and Tattoo Assassins is you just dropped the Burger Time burgers on top of someone in the points come out with that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, that's not Actually that's good. It's a good weird throwback. Yeah, No, that game sucks. Is then you want to hear the story about that game? Is that Tattoo Asassins is a shitty games. Thousands of fatalities, like YouTube like just you know,

Tatto Assassins fatalities. They're fucking weird and it advertises like literally thousands of fatalities. Well, there's there's also Bloodstorm which came out. That came out and that Johnny Cage and the ad right right, and that game also had a ton of finishing moves and that was the one that would like you know, they basically were baiting game magazines to cover their game every month by putting shout outs to game magazines in their finishers and shit, uh and like we're gonna

give you the exclusive ones. It makes your magazine name show up and like its fucking terrible. It was people like that, like just that took the exact wrong lessons from Mortal Conference. Yeah, then there was then there was time Killers where you didn't even have to wait for the end of the rounds to things like that. There's that that's a cool idea and time Killers. But man, that game is shit. It's bad. So whatever, we have not applied the science to it. Maybe I was I was maybe being

the greatest fighting game of all times. I was just about I was about to ask, so did Tattoo Assassins ever make it to any kind of market whatsoever? It was ineligible for rankings. I might consider it eligible for rankings. It is right, it is now widely available, should you want to play it and are willing to kind of look the other way on some intellectual property laws, I guess, But that's that's the way it is. Uh,

you should do a very special episode around Mortal Kombat clones. That's when once we get into that, it's going to be a very round actual dark time, like a bunch of really terrible games. Uh, some of them coming from Midway themselves, like Makes the Dark Age and and bio freaks, a lot of stuff that was what was the acronym for bio freaks? What is that sand for fucking really awful? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't even know I spell freaks Apparently. I just imagine. I imagine that those Mortal Kombat clones happen because the like, I picture an old white guy in a suit who's the executive for the game, and he's like, look, kids love people. It's it's like the guy in Wayne's World, right, okay, owner in Wayne's World. He's sitting there, he's like, look, the kids love to rip people's heads off what they want, and here you go, here we go, biological flying, robotic,

enhanced armored killing synthoids. Wow, yeah, that's synthoid. Jeff. It's uh, it's like it's like it's the fake Uh, it's the fake politicians that Cobra made to infiltrate the levels of government. Yeah, and and and uh ship ship wreck, yeah, shipwreck. All the people fucking melt and if everybody fucking freaks out, well they made a video game about it.

A good episode of Unlicensed, but you know, it's a pretty good episode of anything might be the best episode of eighties cartoon and really Haunted two part It's yeah, that's three. Is that one worse than when they go to the parallel dimension where everything is slightly off. That one's so good too. It's so creepy spiders they ended up and like some of the g I Joes,

this was how they wrote some people off the show. Was they went to an alternate dimension and then like Zap and Rock and Roll stayed behind in the alternate dimension to help the good Baroness fight Cobra. It was it was basically it was basically the Star Trek, like the Evil Universe. It was just like everything was slightly different in some way. But they were like, well, we want to put more of Bazuka and Footloose and the toys were

trying to sell this year onto the show. We need to get Clutch and all these other fuckers out of here. I mean, you know, there's a long history of that kind of Shenanigan. Yeah, you know, including like Orson wells oh yeah, I'm an in although those movies that example, it's just like like half of your favorite characters die in the first ten minutes of kids movie. You already owned Jazz we don't need to put him in anything else, But what if we turned him into something else? I was

holding Jazz just oh yeah, yesterday, we have abot of jazz. Jazz shitty. Oh, Jazz was one of my first one. Jazz and Blue Streaks were some of my first transformers. He's a car, you know, really a robot. Never I never had Jazz, But wasn't he super weird to transform? Like? I thought? Yeah? Arms didn't work? Right? Yeah, the ones, the ones where their arms had to like cross over in front of each that's always the never work. That's where they went.

And Megatron's barrel always would fly and he sucked. No, I don't know my favorite transfer. My favorite transformers are the ones where the doors become wings and yeah, both As and Blue Streak do that okay, where it's like the hot cakes thing turns into a terodactyle. I do have one of those somewhere. They're the only ones I ever had. But I had all of those. Okay, it sounds about right. Yeah, that's not hard for me to please. All right, Jeff, have you been playing much

like live? Really really talk about video games? Let's talk about the video Okay, you mentioned you asked me something about quick Live last week, and I was like, I wonder what that's about. Turns out you were playing. I bought a new mouse and keyboard, and then I was like, I need to fucking break that they need to fucking put in, so I need to play some real ass video games, and so I downloaded quick Live, which they've changed. It's not a subscription service anymore. They're just straight

up selling it from the web browsers. No Steam, it's in Steam. It has achievements. I think you can't. Actually, I think it just goes to the Steam page on when you go to their website. Do you know how much? Is it just straight off the store? So it's been on sale for five but I think the sales over now. So have they eliminated the like premium tier, the paper tier, run your own servers and

stuff out of it. So I saw some people posting relatively recently complaining about it not being free because the player count was not super high, and I wonder wonder if that just made a change of like, well, now it's not free, I'm not going to go buy Quake Live, which, you know whatever, it's ten dollars. Seems like a reasonable price for the most eminently replayable game perhaps ever Quake three DM. Yeah, although I mean Jeff

played it more recently than I have. But they have made some kind of weird changes too. Yeah, they've added weapons to it. It's got a chain gun, it's got the heavy machine gun, which is all due I think, but you know, yeah, I think so they've added some stuff

like that. There are over one hundred maps in that thing as part of the base, and a lot of them you just don't recognize, and even some of the ones you do, they have modified to put like quick Live banners around, so you're playing longest yard and the rail platform all the way out there in the end now has a big quick Live logo back there branding on yeah, which is ever it's who cares, But it's so it's slowly they're totally sullying Quake Cannon. At least it's not like fucking you know,

a billboard for actual in game advertises. You know, they're broadcasting they can put an axe body spray ad right, but they did. They did esports the funk out of that thing. They put like timers on the item responds and stuff like that. They did. Yeah, and and then they made the announcers. They welcomed a quick live whenever you connect to a server, which I think is kind of lame, but uh yeah no, that's that's it's still basically Quake three and that's still good. Yeah. So so I've

been I've been fucking with that a little bit lately. So did you find players? I mean wasn't? Yeah, they're related. There are Like when I look for servers that are under one hundred ping, I only find a few that have players on them. So there's one that doesn't have many players on it. Uh, that is fine and good and all that, but then there's one that is just always fucking over full for a lot of these map sizes, so it's just like telefrags and fucking nonsense. Which that's fun

too. Yeah, that's how it was when we played Quick one a couple of weeks ago and upf right like twice as many players as these maps can support, NonStop chaos. Yeah, and you know, it's I don't know the maps, so like it's weird having playing this game that is supposed to be all nostalgia or for me, is all nostalgia, and then like not recognizing any of the maps because they've added so many to this thing over the years. But then someone just did a call vote and switched the longest yard.

I'm like, okay, all right, that's like, okay, let's do this. You feel like you're home again. Yeah, there's there's like a weird fish out of water feeling. Yeah to playing new maps in those games, I find myself though, And I guess I've felt this way about this game about Quake three at the time. Is I played enough UT to want a weapon priority switching system instead of like either you have to switch manually

or it'll auto switch to whatever weapon you pick up next. You use ESDF for your movement keys, and then Q W, E, A, and Z are hot keys for railgun, rock launch a green launch machine. I just made Q the rock Shauncher and it's been fine. It's all you really Q and E one launch shotgun right good? Yeah? Yeah? And the rail gun maybe yeh, Like Q, Q and E are rocket and rail

yeah, rail rail and lightning gun. And I think it added like whatever F is to switch back to the previous weapons, so if I pick up something I don't like it, I can quickly switch back. Can we talk about the railgun. Yeah, do you think, like looking back now, but we know there nobody puts railguns in modern games, right yeah, if they're modern games aren't meant to be like like modern games are more lag tolerant,

so a railgun is a lot harder to do it. But it was his scan still, wasn't it. I mean, you know, like sniper rifles in the closest thing to that, probably it's kind of a hit scan potential one he killed sort of thing. Well, but then think about the railguns gives that trail to point back to you ever just missed you if they don't kill you. Did you ever edit your fig file to change the color of your trail? Of course, Yeah, you don't have to edit your

They just just dragged you thing built it in. Yeah, I think that was even maybe your race Quake three at some point it wasn't a confict file thing anymore. But that but the railgun is why I bounced off a Quake three after a while, Like where has quick one stayed forever? Because it's just basically about shooting rockets? Really Yeah? Yeah, no, I could see that, Like especially you just especially those wide open maps, you just

find yourself blowing up and you don't know why. It becomes less about tactics and more about how fast you can you put the thing. And then there's such a high skill ceiling on that though. If you got really good at it, oh that's the problem literally dominant. Yeah, so get better. But you and I have a railgun. We look, we're old men now, we're never gonna be good enough to do I hit four rail shots in a row last night. That's pretty good. So I mean that you could

still do I take it. You can, you can still do it. I'm gonna quit my job. I'm gonna go ahead and play. I have the Tiger on loop for our fighteen hours straight. Yep. Just get into that quick live. Something something about snapping off and hitting rail shots like guys bouncing off the jumpads and just tagging them out of the air before you even know what you did. Oh that's the other couple of changes they made a quick live is numbers fly off of guys when you do damage, so you

see the numbers. Yeah, so when you hit that rail shot and then eighty pops off, you actually feel pretty good. New Doom multiplayer that as well. Uh, and there's also a separate. You know, it has the hit noise. There's a deeper clunk noise when you like make direct contact with a rocket. That actually feels pretty good because you're like you're used to the damage noise when you hear it go punk, Yeah, you're like,

yeah, fuck that guy, that's pretty good. That sounds okay. Yeah, I guess Quake Deathmatch actually was all about doing the math right on, like how much armor do they have and right have they gotten the mega health and have they been controlling those items? And how many rockets is it going to take to kill this person? Yeah, but you don't know, so

you know, it doesn't display their health. It just that's the damage, you know, right, Yes, Yeah, but I was never I was never really into the like some people were just like Rocket Arena was like the beginning and end of Quake for them, and I just never got into it. Rocket arena was the was a big deal for me. I feel like in Quake two, yeah, that's I think that's where it's. That's what

they ended the arenas, right, and it already too. Yeah, they added all the multi arena stuff so you could just play more frequently and not have to watch as much so well. But the watching is where I learned how to play definite. Like like when you'd get on a server with seven people, which was totally worked on dial up yep, in that because yeah, that's I lived in dial up country. You'd stand on the on the transparent ceiling, look down through the arena and watch how people were leading and

like how they're using cover rather mix up their movements. And that's literally how I like got competent at first person shooters. I just didn't want to do that in an arena. I still like running the map in Quake is part of why I like it so much, you know, oh yeah, using using you know, entry ways and barricades to your advantage and you know that kind of thing. When and now when I play in a one on one

setup, I'm fucking awful, really the worst. Uh yeah. I am picking up kills from people who are shooting at other people a lot, now, you know, yeah, yeah yeah, and I'm doing okay. I'm not winning matches by any means. Uh but yeah, Like I used to be pretty good at Rocket Arena. I used to that those skills are gone.

Well, like one on one, I like I remember playing DM six on Quake one a lot as a one on one map and just getting so used to because because the other thing you forgot about Quake is there's no hit indicator. There's no thing that tells you which direction the hit came from. Right right, Yeah, So you just all of a sudden you're you're dying and you have to start spinning when you see the guy, and so you end up using audio cues a lot more like I remember, switching from speakers

to headphones was a big, big change for me on Quake. Not that never any good. You just but you can hear the rocket come, yeah, you hear what? You you get that left right? Split? You turn this way instead of that. You can't see what I'm gonna turn left instead of right. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good game. It's a good ass games, good ass game. I hope Quake Champions is good. Yeah, Champions. The new Quaked. They announced the new Quake and right,

you're what you're somewhat out of games. They announced the new Quake any three, but it's like single player only, it's multiplayer only. It's PC only, but it is not making it Quake live. It is they're ever seen it. The more the more I think about it, the more I think it's probably Quake Live too, or is it like Unreal Championship the Quake version also okay, so okay maybe, but also it's it sounds like it'll be more like character based, ability based, like there will be some of

that. Yeah, and like they showed that they only showed a CG trailer so far, but like one of the characters had a little quick blink teleport kind of thing like a tracer in this game. Saber Interactive. Who is Saber Interactive? They worked on the Halo anniversary campaigns, They did Time did that Time Shift game a few years ago, did not especially like, uh so, yeah, that's a little weird. But also it sounds like that there is some maybe some lineage or there are people there that were at least

around back in the Texas Shooter days. That's what I have heard that would that would care very much about making a great Quake. So we'll see. Look, the stuff that's come out of enfranchises that they've handed off to other studios right lately been awesome. A Quake four campaign look well, in the Quake four campaign, if if they marketed that really poorly, Yeah, they had they've done a better job with that. It would have been received much better. Yeah, but also that was yes, you know, that was

just over ten years ago under Activision. Like it's a very different world for ID properties these days. Yeah. I mean Activision well known for well kind of fucking things up left and right. So but I mean they are two for two so far since the befessayout of bringing back old properties and doing a damn good job of it. Yeah, so they didn't just say go make

Rage two, which is great. If they did not do that, I don't think good game in Rage. There's a good game in Rage somewhere, but it was not in Rage. Parts parts of Rage were really good and it looked fucking amazing. Yeah, that's the time, will Smith gradu Maker, what have you been up to? Well, you know, talking, I do a lot of talking these days. I went I went to the doctor and had my vocal cords camerad what because I've been losing my voice a

lot late, So I went to the special doctor and the camera. I've been thinking about this issue. It's it's scary, right, It's like if I lose the ability to speak for a few days, that has a pretty significant impact in my professional life. Sure, so I got appointment. It took a long time. I went in and they they talk to me for a little bit about how I used my voice, and I've never sounded crazier in my life because they're like, what do you do for a living?

I was like, well, I just I talk a lot. But they had this camera on a pole that was about a foot long, and it has a strobe on the end, and they tell you just you lean forward in the chair and push your chin out and stick your tongue out, and then they rest the probe on your tongue and he kind of holds it just

a little bit off so he doesn't make you gag. And they keep shoving it further and further back, and you can see a monitor in front of you until like some guy ger esque business opens up and you're you've got like vocal cords moving, and then they have you sing and talk and make sounds. It was really cool. Yeah, I wish I had video. I wouldn't want to see it. That would that would be the part that would

make it hard for me to do. I would videos. I watched it afterwards, like, oh God, that shouldn't be that far down there. You have to watch it live so that you can see that you're not doing something that abstocks the camera. So there's no choice. Okay, you have to know that your tongue isn't like moving away, that's it's the way their way past your tongue. Like like he get first, they give you a

little tour of like what's the business that happens? Like they're like here, this is this is the thing that closes over your windpipe when you swallow food. This is where the food goes, is where the air goes. This is where the air comes in from your It was really cool, is there? Do they have any way to suppress the gag reflects or do they just

have to be very careful. You have to not move And he hovers above and they tell you kind of if you feel like you're gonna gag to warn please please don't just vomit all over how many people they make throw up? And he's like, I haven't made anybody throw up. I'm a professional. He seemed a little bit offended that I suggested that, So what was the upshot of the whole thing? I have prognosis. I have to go to physical therapy muscles around my vocal cord. They're very tense, Yeah, because

I use my muscles to counteract some bad habits I'm developed. Because I didn't go to broadcaster school and learn how to enunciate properly. I'm finding on the end of a long recording day that sometimes by the end my voice will have gotten gravelly. Yeah, and that used to not happen. That's the thing that told me I needed to go to the doctor. What about at the end of something like E three, where you're doing four hour shows every night,

is that that will be okay? Because that was that's only four hours, you know, Like if we're going through a full day here, an extra life marathon, yeah, or even just a normal day of recording here, that'll end up. Or just walk around here talking to people or on a podcast day and then we would go record something. And yeah, we were. We were recording the ads after the show a little bit recently, and then I realized we can't keep doing that anymore because I sound worse after

the show than I do before. Huh. Well, So He's like one of the things that they said is if you find yourself clearing your throat more than is normal, Like that's the thing that resets the muscles for me, and that's why I do that. But it feels like you have something like just kind of back in the back of your throat. Degradation of vocal cords over and over your lifespan is kind of scary. Well, we could give it happen, like the stuff that we thought what you should should be doing.

Yeah, right, like like doing long asso gasts all the time and doing these sitting down from I'm just gonna do what Axle did joke get what was? Just drink whiskey? That's the thing I was. I was actually I was reading about that stuff recently, Like the lifestyle has an effect on this, Yeah for sure, you know, like professional singers got to take care of that stuff. Drinking a lot is real bad for your voice. No spoken, no drinking, no yelling, no screaming. Yeah. So

I played some video games. Yeah, yeah, I finally played an uncharted game, so I have over the ears, bought all of the uncharted games, and then played about forty five minutes and bounced off as soon as it got to be a shooting part. No kidding, because like those the bits, like there was a bit and Uncharted two specifically where you get to like the first kind of open arena. It's and I'm in the forest ruined someplace. Yeah, there's like big brut blocks, a lot of stuff to hide

behind, and the guys shooting. Yeah, I can't remember how that game starts. Well, so two starts with you're hanging off the train. But from there, but then it real quickly goes the train is an it's a flash forward forward and then the first big open thing is where you get the grenades and the jungle and all that. Yeah, okay, yeah it was. I want to say I might be wrong, but because I didn't really spend that much time figuring out how it works, because it pissed me off.

But the shooting was bad, and I would you're not, yes, that is valid opinion. I would say it's adequate at best. It's definitely not. There are better third person shooters. Yeah, And like it seemed like they were just monster closets that kept spawning bad guys infinitely unless you unless you pushed forward, So I was cheating. Like you would call a duty or something where you kind of shoot people and then you clear the room, then you move to the next spot and I was just like, this is

fucking going on forever. It's like an hour maybe. So I bounced off of all of the uncharted game. Is the long story short, I bought I bought four because I talked to boys, I think, and he was like, this one, this shit tries. This was pretty good. I was like, you have a bias here, man, But I was bored. So I bought it and it's a it's a really neat game, and I turned on. The big change for me is I looked in the options,

I turned on the lock on. Yeah. I feel like everybody I know who has had the best time with Unchartered four has gone that into like the assist features, like Vinny Vinnie played it on, like the lock on at some point is it takes a lot of the game out of the game. Yeah, So I turned it on. At first, I was like, oh, let's check this out, and it just felt like it was too much. So I felt bad for my I felt bad. Well, so you're saying I'm playing the game wrong. No, I think that that's

a valid way to play. I just I don't know. I liked I like the way Vinnie described it as like it lets you play the way Nathan Drake should be able to do things, which is like he's a bad flying through the air, like hanging on a grappling hook and like popping off headshots as you go. You know, like, of course he can do that well. And I left it off until I got to the part where the shooting was frustrating me, right, So I left it off for probably two

thirds of the game. I think he was in Africa by the time I turned it on, and then I was. Then it made me like that was the push I needed to want to finish the game, because otherwise I was just going to keep doing the same shit over over again, getting frustrated. And you were right to do that. The last I think Dan said the same thing, like the last major firefight in that game in particular, is a real fucking grind. Ye. Yeah, that's a that's that's a

a triumph of art. Man. Those games are unbelievable. Is like, Yeah, it's a mind blowing How good getting that game looks? Yeah? I like, and I lived like so the first the first Audie Dog game I guess I played in modern times was the last of us. And I played this a lot like last of us, like I steal through a lot of stuff and kind of stuck around people, And it's more of a viable option than for than I think it's ever been in that series. I think

it's the first time that it has been a fully viable option. You can play for my most entire combat, you can play through the most of that game that way. Yeah, it's I So. Yeah, I was skeptical that I was going to be excited about it, and was pretty stoked at it in the end. And then yeah, I think that a bunch of Overwatch. We went down, We went and watch I did Duke. Oh yeah that started since last week. Yeah, I was just gonna stay real

quick. We went down to the Stutra of Baths yesterday. Yeah, there's I had never walked around there for whatever reason, I've lived here for thirteen years and I've never gone down there. But there's some real uncharted shit around there. Oh it's significantly Like it's crazy. Like my girlfriend was looking around, going like that looks like a handhold and a jumping puzzle, little sequence straight up, Like there are parts where it's like, oh, you could

climb up that little rock face. And then there there's those old like rebar looking stuff sticking out of the cliff that you could like hand hold your way around. Like it's nuts. There's there are people I've seen people climb that maybe not the stuff on the cliff cliff side, but like they're definitely I've definitely seen people down there before. But it seems like it's a scary place to be. Yeah, anyway, I'm sorry. Overwatch competitive, Yeah,

it's a little broken. It seems like, I what part do you think it is broken? I found it. It's definitely tougher. It's a tougher breed of player for sure. So I've gotten through, I've done most of the I think I finished this my like competitive ranking matches. Yeah, I haven't had a lot of time to play Overwatch this week. It's it's like I like that idea, like the idea of a StarCraft style ladder in a

competitive shooter. That's like Overwatch is really really exciting to me. But the things that people seem to be bitching about the amount you go up versus amount you go down. And I think it's specifically the leaving penalty is like the rage quitting penalty is broke is not it doesn't work right well, it's right, too much, too little, like it's it's terrible, and if you're just playing quick play, well, it happens if you do quick playing quick

I've done it a couple of times because I have a kid. I think Bianca had to leave early in one match whatever for some reason, like we've never rage quit and she didn't earn she earned like twenty percent XP or something for the next like ten matches or it was something really bad for one VeryE one time and it wasn't even like she played half to match and then quit, like it seemed really, I mean, that would be a lot more damaging if you got anything useful out of XP, you know, like it's

it's just like I know, I know it's I know it's a bummer. But at least they're not like holding weapon unlocks back or something like. Yeah, so it seems it seems like well the rage quit thing, it seems like and I apologize because I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but but you when you quit, if you quit, if somebody quits within the first like two minutes, then the entire match just starts over right, which is which

is weird. Yeah, but I mean, but I get why with with a new player they matched somebody else in I think they match somebody else in, or you may they may dump everybody else out to match making and do it all over again. There was There was actually a really good post on either the Blizzard forms I think it was linked from the Overwatch subreddit that explained how like their goals with matchmaking. That was super interesting and like how they

do groups with groups and stuff like that. But so okay, So if you if you, if you punch out early, then it starts the whole round over or maybe the match. It was unclear whether it's per round or per match. But then if somebody quits that's not you, then that affects how much XP you gain on that, everybody else gains on that if they win, and how much rank you go up, which is which seems really

fucked right. It seems like it's weird to penalize people who don't rage quit for people who quit, and it seems like they're like the negative feedback loop that prevents people from quitting isn't quite right at least right now, Like they're not giving you a good reason to not quit and just stick out and take the loss yeah, because because like you're gonna lose a lot of rank, but you're also going to lose a lot of rank you lose and then you're

you punish everybody else when you rage quit, So it's it seems shitty. Also, is there any way that you could organize it, like a team could organize it to get somebody on the other team to sabotage, because we kind of thought that's what was happening when Bianca plays either Mercy or Farah, usually Mercy, because like if someone else was playing as Mercy, should switched

the Farah back and forth or whatever. And there was somebody on our team that every time she would switch, the other person would switch to what she was, and like when this other person was Mercy, they weren't healing anyone. When they were Farah, they weren't attacking anyone. Like it was just like very purposeful and antagonizing. And I didn't know someone just being a dick, or if there's some way that somebody get like a mold onto our team

or whatever, it could be somebody that knows you too. Didn't recognize the name, right, Yeah, no, no, I mean no, like not a friend says Okay, who knows. Like part of the problem I think in this first week was that the competitive matchmaking was such that you weren't getting like you didn't have the good matchmaking because they didn't know where people stood. Maybe I don't know. I had so far on my competitive matchmaking games it was one blowout every single time, either for or against me. And

part of it was that, like teams were communicating. So it's like like that that's a game that if you have two people that are shooting at one person, the team that has two people shooting at one person is always gonna work. Oh right, Yeah, And so like when people are going out in ones and twos versus people going on in a group of five or six, the group of five or six wins every time. Yeah, it sucks too, because if you're trying to take competitive seriously, you want to get

everyone on voice chat. And like normally with every multiplayer game, I turn off everyone except for if I'm playing in a party with someone with the headsets and just talk amongst them. But then he turned on voice chat for the whole team and competitive, and that opens it up to like, oh right, this is what multiplayer games are like. When I can hear everyone sounds like you're ready for Doda. Nope, I haven't had a whole lot of bad like I've muted. It's a couple of people probably, but I haven't

had a lot of like people using pejoratives about my skill or parentage. Maybe I just stuck because yeah, do they do they split people up into like leagues with names on them like they do in StarCraft and stuff like that. Do they have the kind of equivalent of like bronze and silver. I don't think so yet, but it feels like that option is there, Like it feels it feels like a real hybrid between like a like a fighting game ladder

and like a StarCraft kind of thing. They I don't think they're breaking out teams though, So I don't think there's like a team league, like you have a StarCraft and then at one mom like you don't have a separate three still ranking for your set team. Okay, Like I was a little I kind of wish that they had that where you had like where you had a ladder where like you get your six people together and and generated does a whole

separate set of placements. They would eventually grow into that and maybe this is just yea, they're out right now? Yeah? Can you do they expose any of your skill stuff at all? Do you see a number? You get a rank, and that rank goes up and down based on how you perform one hundred? Right? I think so. But they're but they're not hashing a like, oh you're you're whatever. Get an MMR and okay, yeah it's MMR indoda. I think my understanding though, is that there is

an MMR that's back there. I'm sure they're obviously there has to been invisible, and I just didn't know if they were actually exposing that to people, because that becomes a whole new point of contention once you give that information to the player base, you know, where people like immediately become super elitist about what people's MR is and make a bunch of assumptions about that. It's it's

just a recipe for more toxicity in a lot of cases that. I mean, that could be why people are so pissed off too, because like like with the amount you drop first of the amount you gain, Like if you're playing people with a lower much lower hittan MR than you and you lose to them, you're gonna get them right, a much bigger hit than yeah. So like, I don't know, it feels like they didn't test this stuff

during the beta that I was aware of. So it seems like maybe this is the first wave of them figuring out how it's going to work, and the second season will get better. Like I want to know if they're going to fix the first season while they're going, or they are already talking in terms of seasons. I mean, I guess that they do that with three

month season. Okay, and you earn like a different current, like this competitive points thing whatever, and it costs three hundred purple coins or whatever to get a gold version of your weapon, and each purple coin is one competitive win, so you have if you want to get gold weapons, you're going

to be playing a shitload. Wow. Yeah that's cool. And yeah, and then I'll drag you know, ideally that I'll drag all the people that care about competitive Overwatch into that ship and make the you know, quick play, the quick play a little bit more fun. I guess hopefully it doesn't a little lower stakes probably, yeah, or just lower stakes. Yeah, I guess that's fucking trial to me. To me, that is fun. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, are you still playing Overwatch here

and there? But I mean no, Like I haven't played it in like a week or two or something at this point, but I'm it's still installed, so theoretically I might return to the option, is there? Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I guess they talked about making different balance changes, specifically to the console versions of the game to deal with like the different

turning radius involved and stuff. It was specifically they were going to do something to the nuds to tour Burnes Turret on the Xbox Ory on the console versions of the game because of the way that it locks on very quickly and that sort of stuff. Maybe have like an animation like turning slower or something. I think it was more that I think they were that seems like the same thing to do. I think they were doing the opposite of whatever that was.

Like, like the solution didn't sound great either when I read it, but I take more I don't remember it. I mean I have to imagine stuff like Soldiers have any six is much more useful, Like his ault is much better on console than it is on PC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, problem it's really good too, Like he's my main guy that that alt

is great. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I've primarily been playing on PC, but but I did get to like level ten or eleven on console, and that's the that's the version of the game seems a okay. So yeah, I don't know alts olts. What's talking about alts? It's great. Now they're gonna take the olts away from you. Overwatch is gonna steal all your dodal lingo away from you. God damn it end like the more people who understand, the less cool it is. Yeah, I want,

I want. I want the next map to be the Jungler m double Wayammy. There. It's a good game. I agree game. I'll always have an aggressive try line. I don't know what is that on that's that's that's from battle Borne. It's when you run the popular mobile. It's when you run three heroes in the off lane try to shut down there. Ah, they're they're one. I like the mushroom guy. If you know whoever feels yeah, I know who's knives. Whoever's playing position one. You want

to make sure they don't get as a little farm as possible. You're you're a position one. Brad, stop moving on. Let's move on. We're gonna make a little change this week. Whoa because I got like thirty five cents said you wanted some change in Minesota. There's not a lot of going on in the world video game news this week. There's some little bit of some stuff and not really class Roy. I'll update, keep going, keep going, keep going, don't don't even keep going to keep talking about something

else. Do you have an installed? Yeah? Do you really know I'm playing constantly? Yeah, keep keep going, just keep wait. I thought you quit. I never said that. Oh that man, you said that when I said I'm throwing this away. I've never Yeah, You're totally shitty. You totally postured like you were done, like you were audio clips. Sometimes. I never said I quit. I said I went to quit. Okay close. I was under the impression. We held the microphone up to

her face and the words I quit were heard once. Once you realize that the match of the only match make you against people who spend more money than you, it's really hard to fucking play that game. Yeah, I'm looking forward to quitting. Whatever. Whatever day it was that, I tweeted a screenshot of the delete dialogue being up for that app was the last day I played that game. I actually deleted it and haven't touched it since. And I'm better off this bump across the law. So so will you be?

I know, I get Tap Tap TI Oh fuck uh Tap my Catamari came out. Yeah, I'm meant to play that before this I could talk about it. I have totally forgot. I've played a significant amount of Tap My Catamari. Okay, well, before we move into not news, tell me

about that. So it's you tapped to roll the ball to roll Katamari, and it rolls up stuff, and you buy access to your cousins, and that's your offline earning you buy except for the cousins, and that may they make the ball roll when you're not there, all right, uh, and it only ends like two music tracks or a few music tracks. It's kind of you know. But also your your sound is off on your phone most of the time, and so a lot of the Katamari charm I think is

wrapped up in the the audio. Best experience with the headings, Yeah, well, get me to play idole games the headphones on. Another thing coming. I'm not sure that there's a prestige mechanic. Yet I've played through the first seventy five levels or so for seventy five waves. I guess it's technically the second level, but it seems okay but not great. It doesn't seem like it has a ton of depth to it. It's no tap Tycoon, all right, I guess that is what I'm saying. Should I go get

that? Is that what you're saying? Is it better than Doomsday Clicker? Yeah? I have. I forgot that Doomsday Clicker existed until yesterday when I was reorganizing some apps on my phone when like, oh right, uh, tap Tycoon's pretty good. Okay, it's from the makers of tap Titans. I'll go check that out. And it has so adye has a clan element to it where you can form up in groups of twenty five. Okay, I appreciate earning potential, yes, ok yeah, investment groups. They're oh

wow, all right, that's pretty good. That does sound good. It's a hellish nightmare, all right, since tap Tycoon or the tap Tycoon, Okay, I think it's worth that is my current. That's my pick to click. Okay, Hellish nightmare. It's like a real yeah, well, hells Nightmare. You should all install it. Since we're halfway through the Giant Bombcass Mobile minute here, I've got one on you. Oh really, yeah, we'll hang on before that, I want to hear Jeff spend the other

thirty seconds talking about Pokemon. Go oh right, yeah, you got into the Beata four last week. I was supposed to get in it. Yeah, you were invited first and I said can I get in that? And then you inquired about it. Then somehow you didn't get it. You got it. I don't know that it worked, but anyway, it's ended up being the nittic nant antic makers of what Ingress? Right? Yeah, and so it's a location based game. They've they've said as much like Ingress is.

And yeah, so I played it. Not I didn't not play a ton of it, but there was one weekend where I spent like a day or two checking it pretty frequently, and I specifically went on a walk to go catch some Pokemon. I don't think it's very good. I don't think it's a very good location based game, and I think it's like a pretty poor representation of like the things you want out of Pokemon. Also, is it is it just Ingress? With Pokemon or is there mine to it?

You pick a team, there's blue, yellow, and red, and so gyms will will get taken over by uh specific colors. So in my neck of the woods up in Petluma, everyone had picked red. I picked red as well, and so I was able to fortify a gym by leaving like a pidgy or something there to you know, do Pokemon shit and markets territory. Yeah, basically the build you kind of so, but you walk around uh this, you walk around the real world. You go on a walk,

You're phone buzzes to say, hey, there's a Pokemon nearby. You load up the app, tap the button or tap the Pokemon, and then it is just a catching sequence. Like you have poke balls in your inventory, you fling them out there with your thumb. It's an ar situation. You have to aim it like a compass so you can fucking miss. So it's it's a AR. So you were at that point the camera is on and you were looking around your environment to find the Pokemon and then flinging a

ball. There's a timing element to it where a kind of circle turns from green to yellow, which I can't see with my color blind eyes at all, and then you fling that out there to catch them. You can miss, you can get bonus XP for curving the shot at it and it's weird,

and then you catch it. It's stats are reduced to like a simple number from from what they are, and in kind of traditional Pokemon games, they have like Stone, they have the Earthen's the elemental affinity didn't seem like it was a big deal because the only time you were actually engaged in an actual fight against other Pokemon were if you went to a gym. And so I assume if you're visiting a gym, that is and in the gyms in the our landmarks in the environment. So in my case, it was like

the local park was a gym. Uh, this shitty Mexican restaurant with a bar attached is somehow a gym in this game. I don't I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how Niantic picks what is what in that game. But I assume if you load it up Ingress, because Ingress has towers the same way this does, I assume they're the exact same landmarks. But but I don't know, and they're based on actual like businesses and places of interest and not just like hey, this is in the middle of the exactly.

Yes, yeah, they're using kind of Google. You know, this is a company that's spun out from Google, so they had access to all of Google's satellite and map data and all this other stuff. So they were very much kind of leveraging that well ingrets exist existed, so they could map like pass in parks, places that street us they were getting. They were just getting straight up walking data out of it. Yeah, that's like they would put a they would put a node at a statue in the middle of

a park, and then they'd see how people got to that node. That's that's that's how they get mapped. Yeah, that's a pretty benign type of data to collect. But I still feel like that still feels like slightly in city hearing that everything somewhere in the fine print. Man, Yeah, future sucks. They like they didn't make a secret of it at all. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I can't. Can't you just do something for fun? Though? What's what's is Nintendo trying to make street

maps for like this isn't even this is just Niantic making it Nintendo. So it's the Pokemon company Nintendo, and so that's a little different. Uh, and so I think this is just them continuing down that path even further. But at that point, at this point, they're also probably just trying to make money, okay, And I mean it makes sense. The game makes theoretical, yes, Like I love the idea, like I love the idea

of ingress as well. It's just that too many people had played it by the time it came out on iOS, so all my area was already so fortified that I would have had to go make friends with people if I wanted to actually do anything. And that well, how often is this thing buzzing in your pocket? Like on a typical you know, like one or two

every block or yeah, it's it's pretty frequent. But I imagine if you if you've got a bunch of them, eventually it might say, all right, we're not going to give you anymore because at some point you're getting too many Pokemon you might unbalance. Or if you if you could set some interval where it's like, hey, only alert me a maximum once per x hours, you know, so you just ignore it sometimes. How's the how's the aar stuff? Like is it neat to see the Pokemon scampering around the environment

is it's not. It doesn't always look like it's standing on something. It's just like you rotate around until you see it standing on air and you're like, okay, well, like they're not They're not able to like take a depth map and have it run behind stuff or anything cool. It has not been great. And so with the fights are like you when you go to a gym, you can fight, even if it's the gym is controlled by your color. You can go like fight your Pokemon and train your Pokemon against

the Pokemon that are holding down that gym for your team. And it's weird. It's this thing of like you, it's real time ish you tap to attack and swipe a dodge, so it becomes you watching the enemy Pokemon animation and trying to swipe out of the way of its attack and then tapping to attack, which when you think about what Pokemon is, it's very much more of a rock paper scissors and the elemental stuff plus the combined you know,

like you have multiple attacks all the other stuff. It's not a timing based thing. Yeah, and so it just didn't it felt inauthentic to the Pokemon brand. I guess I would say they took It's like they took it's like the Mortal Kombic clips. They took the wrong part of the Pokemon. Yes, definitely. Uh, they did not. They did not capture the feel of real Pokemon at all in this thing. It just it just feels like a game that they slapped together and they just happened to have the Pokemon license.

So it's poke balls and coughings and pigies and you know, there was that moment where you were standing in the office last week and you're about to leave and then you're like, wait a minute, there's coughing around here somewhere. Yeah, it'll just like it was coughing within one hundred meters, and I was like, fuck, fuck, but it won't tell you which hundred meters you need to walk in straight up. There's no hot and cold type

stuff at all. That stuff's weird. I think it's I think that mostly just means hey, if you walk for a while, oh we'll tell you. Yeah. But I'm not really sure not that, so, I don't know. The interactions felt really flimsy. Uh. It's attachment to the orse material also just feels really thrown together. So I don't know, like I'm not some Pokemon purist. I think the head of a Nyanta got out there and it stay like, hey, our goal is not to catch them all,

like like every other Pokemon game that's ever existed. Uh, you know, probably in the wake of some of the criticism out of this this beta getting out to some of the media, but it just seems like a bad product and or you know what, it feels like a really good first beta of a product. But they're launching it this month and it's gonna be free or is it? It'll have to be Yeah, were there any any indications

of how they're going to monetize this? So you will need uh, you need put some There are two types of currency you need to level up your Pokemon, and it's like juice it licks or I Pokemon eat, and then also candy that is specific to that Pokemon. So you'll need like Pitchy candy, you'll need squirrel candy, and like what the fuck is that? And that's just I'm not gonna launch becase I think it won't work right now.

But yeah, so you can go to poke A stops, which are lesser landmarks in the environment, and those are a little more randomly placed, so if you're within range of one of those, you can spin it to get like a few poke balls and other itemosphere your inventory. I suspect that that will be where they kind of build the shop around, is like, hey, you can buy gold, and then you can use that to buy a bunch of poke balls or a bunch of better poke balls, or these these

elixirs or whatever you need to level up your guys. That's probably where they'll make their money, or they'll try to. But you don't ever fight other people in the environment, Like if you're walking around and you see somebody with it. If you're red and you see somebody who's yellow, then you don't have like a trainer battle. I don't think that's the case, but I guess I don't know because I didn't encounter any other human players. So conceptually

that stuff sounds pretty cool. Yeah, I was exciting. I love the idea. I mean, like, if if you think about the like and it was the thing I loved about Ingress, you know, just conceptually was like that idea of like, hey, we're these warring factions and as we walk around the world, shit's gonna happen, Like, that's really cool. I carry that chain around my yea belt and I went for a walk.

That's nice. Yeah, but the stuff like a like trying to actually go for a walk with someone and then going like, hang on a second, I need to stop again, like every you know, every half block to fuck around with my phone is dumb. But then also I just feel like it doesn't capture any of the feel of Pokemon along the way, Like it just it just feels really off, like in a way that like it just feels like the game made by some other team that doesn't really understand why Pokemon

is great. I want to walk into a room and it'd be like the trainer battle and then you see Brad's picture come up and like I have to fight fight by Squirtle again. This thing that though, and I think Ingress ran into some of this in a different way. If you saw Brad's picture come up and you had a trainer battle, someone would eventually walk over and smack the phone out of Brad's hand and win. Yeah, yeah, this is actually happened. So no, the thing that happened with Ingress. Ingress

doesn't expose players that way either. But apparently some people with Ingress were like building fences and fucking setting booby traps to stop people from getting close to some Yeah, to stop people from getting close enough to some of these locations to take them back. If that's amazing or terrifying or both both both. Yeah, yeah, wow, people took that game really seriously home. Yeah.

Uh so that stuff's scary, Yeah, sure enough. And so Nintendo had no involvement in this whatsoever, right, doesn't far as you know, it's just company Nintendo owns some portion of Yeah. But uh but yeah, those this has nothing to do with Nintendo's a big No, this is not part of their big push. This is a different thing or the two they're working

on, animal crossing and fire fire fire arm right. Their shareholder call said that they would have five mobile apps, uh, including Metamo in twenty sixteen. I have fis fiscal probably, I think it's probably fiscal and that ends in March. Yeah, okay, you I should tender for my expectations after me Tomo, But I'm just dying to see what they do with animal crossing, like a first step from that, you know. Yeah, yeah, like if you want to do an avatar based game, you got to build

the avatar thing. That's just true. And then you know, and I have no illusion that this animal Crossing thing is going to be a full animal crossing you know, it's not going to be a three S game, but well yeah, I mean that would be the ideal scenario. But even if it's like some decent subset of that, how cool is that to have that in your pocket at all times, just at the ready, you know?

And you know, I think as we look at you know, the future of Nintendo's games on you know, on the NX and stuff like that, if you start to look at those as potentially tying into these mobile games, then you start to get like, okay, well now you can have your phone be the equivalent of a Pokemon Mini or a VMU or something like that. You know, if they if they go that far and actually time together, I think there's some cool stuff they could do with with the next full

animal Crossing game on NX. Yeah, if they tie it into this mobile thing, well, and you look at all the cool stuff they've done over the years with like the three DS. Is when a three D S meets another three DS, interesting things happen. Nobody fucking carries their three ds except for kids, and I think even them, But everybody has their phone with them all the time, so like you can do the same stuff. Yeah, but then doesn't everyone have to leave their Bluetooth on and train their battery

the bluetooth elly stuff. It's it's like it's low enough that it's fine. Would it have to be Bluetooth? You can do it with the location data too and get the server, but the stuff will probably an actual better you. Look, you're you can go to Google and see a path of everywhere you've been in the last like six years since you've got a phone and put the Google app on. It cool unless you turn it off, unless I think I might well not Google Maps. But but my my arrow is not

on. My arrow is on your look, the arrow is always on. There must be a coughing nearby. But yeah, right, yeah, all right, real quick? Will what's your train? Do you guys? Play? Tracky train? Racky train? Is it? Is it in the vein of crossy road? And the road is it like smashy road? Is it like flail Rider? I haven't played? Wasn't there? Also? What was the other one you mentioned? That's the one I've been trying to think of

tracky train. You drive a little car that makes train tracks, and you have to make the train tracks, go buy passengers and pick up coins, okay, and you can cross the tracks sometimes but not always, and you pick up passengers and occasionally you'll get to a train station and picking up passengers and going through the train station slows down the train. That's always on your ass. Okay. So it's Gary turned me on? Gary what it turned me on to this? And it is it's the first of the crossy road

alkes that I've actually liked. I actually smashy Road. I think it's pretty good. It's like it's GTA. It's GTA. You are it is you are getting away from the cops. There are stars, they are eventually helicopters and bigger trucks okay, but you just have to get away for as long as you can, and you occasionally pick up dollar bills along the way, just like that, but with trains and passengers. Yeah, okay, Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back and relisten to the segment. Smashy Road

A vital legend. Tracky Train Trenched Trent Trent Trench trenchy trench, trenchy trench, steppy pants, eppy pants, steppy hands. All right, okay, this is all right. Clail Rider flail Rider. Flail Rider is like Smashy Road, except you are a car towing a flail and you have to do donuts to make the flails. Building. That sounds That sounds good and it's

kind of cool. I feel like, yeah, I feel like we're at this inflection point where someone has to come up with a good term for games that stole cross the roads shit, yeah, yeah, like yeah, okay, done road alis just call it a mobi. Emobis an emotional mobile. Everything is moving though, and nothing is. What's the what's the GTA one? That is smashy rush, smashy road. Okay, all right, I'm

selling all. I feel everybody, get your down. I would normally feel bad about this, but I assume that everybody's doing this right now at homes. I'm not. I gotta just run the show. Hurry up and down. Kamari too, and let's go. Okay, I'm gonna like Katamari. If I don't care about tap games, No, I love No because it's not even the best tap game and it captures very little of the Katamari stuff.

So I just ate it right now. Uh yeah, probably it's it's it's it isn't Okay, I I game, but it is no tap tycoon. Okay, all right, as I said, very slowly, we can news. Uh, counterstrike go is rotten with gambling, another shady business. That situation seems to be developing on a daily basis. Yeah, and there's a BioShock. Yeah, there's another new new layer to the skins. Yeah. I'm hitting them skins, Yes, every day. We will keep our eye on that and see if you guys should make heads to do find out

what what how to how to get into that. Yeah, we're launching our own skin gambling site and its giant bomb dot com slash Skins with z and when we get that thing launched, don't go there now. Nothing's there right now but two broke girls. Yeah pants, we have two broke girls torrents for pay. That's also nice. Uh. So we got a couple other things lined up here in lieu of the news segment, Jeff, you sent over the results of the three Critics Awards. Yeah, yeah, those those

we would quickly run down that list. We're part of the judging panel for that. So we sent around some notices and said like, hey, I need to fill out these nominations. Did was this game good? With this again? Good? Based on some of the people who saw him, and I pull that out and set it in and now we picked some winners, and then every other publication that was involved also picked winners, and then they put them together for the actual winners. Uh some of which I agree with

this which I don't guess how it is every year. Uh. Well, with that said, let's go through the list. So what people think Right from the top, Best of Show was Zelda. Yeah, which probably could have seen coming a mile away. Seems safe. Yeah, this is a weird split. I might not have I did, in fact, I did.

We give that number one Horizon. We give it Horizon. That's that was your ballot or are you're talking about the that our list that we did on this show based on our list, our very bonding list that came out of the shot typically our vote for best of Show. Also, Horizon did win Best Original Game, which seems like a weird split. Well, best Original Game means it's not yeah, it's new I p which is Horizon. Horizon is the Rilla games of the worldwide, Dinosaurs, future robots, robot

animals. It looks really cool. Zelda took Best Console Game, Sieves six took Best PC Game. I guess they're probably not a lot of games in that category, right, Well, how everything is technically coming to PC?

I think the or I assume that the guidelines for voting on this stuff involved, like it was the game shown on a PC, which in some cases a lot of console games get shown, like we played Tech and seven on a piece, even even games that will never actually come out on a PC or sometimes shown on a PC. Right, So that that's always a little

Yeah. I feel like a lot of these world categories are very strange because they're they're rooted in genres that like, with every game being cross genre these days, it's always really weird to nail these things down, like what's a role playing game? Or so what's an action adventure? Like that's a that can be a blurry line for sure, that new Zelda role playing game because there's inventory and like, yeah, I mean I would I would call it

an action adventure game. Yeah, that stuff is more like a survival game than an RPG. From what I saw okay, taking a level up in a Zelda adventure, can they tell you? Okay, but the weapons have stats? Yeah? Assigning points though, is the is the is the gap skill points? Okay? Yeah? Sure, Yeah, that's a that's a very That's probably not the only dividing line, but yes, that is. That is probably a firm one. They're not quite there, but they're getting

there. Best VR game was Batman Arkham. VR could not which stream more could not until I heard you, like describe the full thing based on you talking to them, I didn't realize it was a game. It seemed very much tech DEMOSK. Yeah, well, you know a lot of E three demos are that way right right, throw on plates at Alfred or something like that. I didn't see. I only saw the Detective Vision stuff. I didn't see Nightwing and all that stuff. Yea, yeah, but it is.

It is a product that they were making them we'll sell, so I guess it does count. Yeah as a game, there were, but there were a lot of come out as a product that the thing was not that impressive. In fact, seemed kind of like old. Even walking around that PlayStation VR event, that seems like they're way more fully formed R experiences there than than the Batman stuff. Agreed, but not solely our awards. Yes, Best Hardware PlayStation VR, will any thoughts on that headset as a valued

partner. I'm very excited. Oh I see uh to see that PlayStation VR picked up some awards show, all right. I think it's great that they have. I think it's really great that they have a low cost headset coming. I'm I was kind of worried about the games that they showed, just in terms of making people sick and the fact that they're going to have this mass audience and if the games that are coming out that people are like existing franchises that break a lot of the rules of VR and are going to make

people motion sick right out of the gate like that. That is like, I'm much more excited about Super Hypercube and what's the thing where you hit the soccer balls in headaster, Yeah, I always get that in head Like I'm much more excited about those kinds of games that are made for VR things. Super Hypercube is so good. It's really good fun, it's awesome, it's

super fun to play. It uses the kind of the unique aspects of VR in creative ways because it makes you you lean around to see stuff, and and just the look of it, like the style is perfect hole in the wall, it's awesome. Yeah, it's a really coold So yeah, I would have rather seen more stuff like that than than like Metal, than like Final Fantasy. And yeah, I think that's the stuff. Like I get why a developer of a big game like Batman, like Final Fantasy, like

why they might not want to commit resources to develop a full game. Absolutely, but these like Bolton experiences, like especially in Final Fantasi's case, just seem like a huge step backwards to make or make it something you can get up and walk around the room and explore it, like like, look, I can tell you people are really excited about exploring environments from video games firsthand. Something they are it's fun, they're excited about it. It's good.

You don't have to make a weird game that's going to make people barf. You can just put them in a cool environment from your game. And that's what the day sex thing is like with the they're putting that out, I think I want to say it's free. It's part of their like a benchmark tool for DA SX, which seems like a weird thing to put out for that game. They did it last time too, though. Okay, all right, well so there's a there's a VR component to that where you can

just walk around three or four of the environments for the game. Like that's

that's enough for me. That sounds cool just because those those environments are going to be very nicely produced being part of a big Triple A game like that, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, when you put somebody in an environment that that twenty people worked on for a month, yeah, then you're going to look at it and be like, this is fucking awesome total like the Firewatch stuff that you guys did, like like largely for that reason. It was just like, oh, fire Watch itself does not have

VR in it, but this is a chance to explore that. I felt relatively underwhelmed by the day sex thing, I'll say, just because you use it, there was there was nothing to interact with. That's the Yeah, yeah, I get interactive. I guess that only stays interesting. Yeah. So it's just like you're looking at it on like, yep, that looks like these textures, but in my face, if it could be a three sixty video and you wouldn't have any appreciable difference, and there's no reason that

is not. Okay, yeah, I guess the Firewatch stuff you guys did. It was a large part of the appeal was being able to pick up the objects and like look at the back of them and see things that you could never see playing the real game, like the day sex thing. I want to load up that one of those computer interfaces and use their fucked up future like computer interface, right, just see how that stuff like, let me noodle around with that in VR? Do the do the prosthetic arms stuff

the JEFT did and realized that VR. Yeah, those arms are neat, aren't they? Yeah? Yeah, there was a moment there where I was like, what if I got off? No, yes, there's a Johns Hopkins is a team that has direct neural interfaces that they inject. They put like things into people's brains. Do it and but but but the brain reacts to them as if it's a far invader. So so like they have neural

control over a really high fidelity robot arm. Yeah, but only for like three months and then they yeah yeah yeah, so like the plaque grows on the electrodes and then they're no good anymore, and you want to do more, but it stays in their heads, you don't like I think they pull it out or something. No, yeah, I don't know how that works. I didn't ask about that. Is there is there not any like immunosuppressive

type stuff you can do. That's like they're doing the research to find out how they can make that last longer and if like they need some sort of brain teflon or something. And and but like the dudes who do it are are the people who go in and try those studies are heroes because they're doing it. Yeah, and they're not going to ever be able to do it again, or at least that's that's what they assume going in and they do it for three months, they regain the use of a hand, and then

then it goes away. Super sad. Sorry, three months better than no months, I guess. Well. Yeah, and there's helping people to come after them, right, Yeah, for sure, theoretically at least. Uh let's see best action game Battlefield one. A lot of games in that category. Uh yeah, like you said, best action adventure games ALDA. Yeah it's an action adventure, ye, say the E three critics. Yeah,

and then you end up yeah, stuff like where's Dax fall. Well, Dax has a skill tree and Discs has that sort of stuff, so I think that would go RPG also be a shooter, right, But then but then best RPG went to Final Fantasy fifteen, which, of course that's kind of an action game too, but yeah, that's maybe the least RPG that a Final Fantasy game has been in years, though it would still be an

RPG. And like I said, genres are super muddy. Like I saw some people like looking at the nominees list and getting all up in arms about like why some games were in one genre or another, And I think the answer is the genres are updated. Maybe maybe these awards and no awards should have genre awards anymore, because it's just crazy exactly why we stopped doing like like so it's been this way for like five years or just like genre awards or nuts. Yeah. Uh, Injustice two was the best fighting game.

Second seven sounded really good though, Tech and seven. Yeah, the Injustice demo was good. I am excited about that game. It ran a litle framing and stuff like that. I mean, obviously they'll iron that stuff out, Whereas like I had a fantastic time playing Tech and seven. Injustice too, You're like, you know this game will get there, and I'm sure that you know, when they spent all the time with it, it'll be great. Whereas Tech and seven I feel like was already great. Let's see.

Fort Horizon was the best racing game, easily the most talked about racing games. And I remember it's kind of a thing category yeah one, uh what else? There's no need for speed? This year's kind of a lot of the big heavy hitter. It's not not represented. Yeah, oh Grant for his sport. And obviously that was like not not emphasized, not like you're right Sony's booth, that game was not on prominent display. Uh sep sixth best strategy game. Sure, Skylanders Imaginators was the best family game.

Yeah. Uh Steep was the best sports game. No, you know, uh, what are the more original sports? Yeah it's Steep. It's a you be Soft likes game parachuting and wing suoting and skiing. It's like, yeah, it's like you be soft. What looks like youb soft open world design, but with snowboarding and skiing and towers mountain sports. I don't think so but it is open world, or they kind of portrayed it that way. You can kind of drop yourself the different peaks and stuff like that.

It Man, I I like snowboarding games and games like that. I love SSX and I like the cool boarders back in the day. This did not do it for me. Didn't like the snowboarding, just didn't feel great. No, and a lot of the stuff, like you know, there's four different things. There's the wing suiting, the snowboarding, you know, blah blah bla. Like the wing suitting. It felt like a side activity and just cause not like a quarter of a game, it's just flying through rings.

It really really didn't do it for me. And that's out I think this year, is it? Yeah, well yeah, we'll see. Uh. Titan Fall two took the Best Online. Yeah that's a weird category name. It's online, the best online, the best games that you best games, this best game that was shown in a multiplayer capacity that has online support,

which is again like every multiplayer game released. Yeah. But uh, but you know, they did not show the Call of Duty multiplayer here, for example, so obviously, so that that's that's where that that split starts to come into play, whereas titan Fall two was ly shown in a multiplayer setting, as was Battlefields. Weird the titan Fall two would win this category when Battlefield won Best Action Game, and all the show to Battlefield was multiplayer.

You know, Uhwards, this is this is how all the wards end up one way or the other. You know, you could try to apply a bunch of logic to them, but at the end of the day, it is humans voting on a thing. Yeah, there Destiny. Destiny was not shown capacity I did. I did a short interview for that new expansion in which they revealed absolutely nothing that was not already known. So titan Ball two was super fun. I had a great fucking time with that game.

That's that is? That is maybe? Yeah, depending on what day you ask me, I might tell you that was my game of show. Uh. But Horizon is also up there. Zelda's up there October October okay, Uh. Televid game, Yeah, at least what I saw of it, And then Best Indie Game went to Inside, which I don't remember seeing anywhere at the show other than the press conference. Yeah it was was huh. I wonder if it was. Maybe they must have cut it off early because

I can't imagine they would have just had the whole game out there. Just feels weird discussing that as like best of the three step when it came out of a weekly. Yeah that was it was. Yeah, it was technically shown at E three. That's a weird announcement. But it's also also out right like I had already played the cold chunk of it before we went to the show. Uh. Lastly, special commendation for graphics nonplayable went to God of War. Yeah. Yeah, that's a yeah damn good looking game.

Yeah sure, I didn't know they did any awards for playable games. Yeah, there's three categories, so there are categories that everyone kind of submits for, but if there aren't enough nominees, they end up getting dropped. So there was one for like sound that wow that you know sound, you giving out a sound award. It allowed a loud show for crazy. Uh, it is hard. I didn't realize you're just kind of opt out of categories

as a judge. Yeah, it's well, it ends up, you know, because like if you're the judge that doesn't and it's why we do it. As a publication. I think more and more of the outlets are doing it that way for this stuff now just because the or so many games at the show, like one person cannot see them all, ye, Whereas it used to be more about like the person is the judge, Like that's that's

never really been how we've done this stuff. So yeah, like sound is like you end up a situation where it's like, okay, like if you're the individual and you're like, I'm not a sports guy, so obviously I would leave the sports field blank because I don't have three games to nominate in that category. Like I could, I could write in stuff, but you know, that's the thing where having more people on staff and having more chances

to see stuff than more of those categories get filled in. That makes sense. And it's also I bet why a game like Steep wins that category because the makeup of the judges does not necessarily include a lot of people who like care about traditional sports games indeed more accessible wins or just you know, not my injustice over techn or not or not Bee. I can see that.

Not this year's Madden, you know, like that's not going to do much for most of the people, right probably and work in the games press, and every year they would show off all the ya's traditional sports lineup to judges. They did not do that this year, but they would show it off to everybody and you'd sit through the presentation and go like, oh, right, this, I am absorbing everything you're saying. And it's animation stuff you're

working on. Sounds very interesting, but you are still making a soccer game, right, and there's only that's only going to go so far with me as an individual, So that the sweat rendering fan fucking task, that's great. No, I don't know. It's always it's always like you can turn around the ball in a much tighter arc, right, every year they get a little tighter on on that turn. Sweat is very last generation though. Sorry, yeah, god, I've been twenty three last generation and you didn't

go at all the last couple of years. I went last year, and they before we just for we would go in for a VR stuff, just for like a fly in in the morning and then stay through the night and leave the next day. Even even test towards the end of tested for you, you guys were going for like a day, right, I mean, like I remember on the new console year, I came for four days or

something the year that you guys were at the porn set. Yes, right, and then every other year we would come in like fly, take the six o'clock flight, be at the show when the floor open, go do VR stuff all day, and then have like the morning of the next day just in case we didn't get all of the stuff and then we need to get done. Come and we would usually leave the next morning. That's so crazy to think of the three being like a day day and a half.

Let mean we spent type days. Yeah, okays out, I take you three overseas any day. That's fair man, dark times. Nothing being in Vegas for eight days is never It's not right. I went to Vegas for eight days on vacation and it was the worst decisions ever made. I've got I've got a pretty hard seventy two hour rules. I would say, I would just say forty eight many three days. Although times where I just never want to go to Vegas. Now, yeah, well I go. I

go to I go and eat because there's good restaurants there. Like, there's amazing world class restaurants there now, and I'll go for like three dinners and then leave. There's a ton of good like not deleterious stuff to do in Vegas. But the problem is the potential for bad decisions that surrounds you well, and the fact that you have to walk through the asthma of bad decisions. Yes, that's what I mean. Like you will and inevitably you will

do bad things for the pressing that you need to leave. Yeah. I just don't like gambling that much. Yeah, I like the circus circus. It's so fucking weird the worst. It's really bad. They were like a bunch of murders there years ago, or not a bunch, but there were. There were a couple. Uh yeah, it was just like in the hey day of organized crime or no, I mean yes, the nineties. Yeah, so yeah, I don't know, it's it's a dark, dark place. Uh all right, I'm gonna give you guys like ten minutes or

less if you don't need to talk about PCs and whatever. Okay, Jeff wants to build new PC, right, Yeah, there are new video cards out. You still have that thing we built for you attested years ago. Yes, I the yes, I the PC that we built, and yes, upgrading video cards so it's up to a nine eighty now. I have probably put some RAM in an SSD in it. I got thirty two gigs a RAM and that thing it's got ans D. Okay, Uh, there's something about me and RAM. I just if the slots are there, I

want to fill the slots. Did you just did you just know what I'm saying. Carve half of that out and make a RAM disc out of it. At a certain points, it's not worth that unless you're doing something real. If you need a scratch disc for premiere or something, then it's maybe worth it. But most people, so I do. I do audio stuff, uh, and so I end up loading enough plugins in some projects that the RAM starts to make sense. You can, like if you're using isotope

heavy or even like audition or logic or something like that. Logic some MEC only, but you can use enough RAM with the audio. Yeah, I'm loading enough stuff that is it does fat loops. Yeah, it ends up being more than sixteen and something. Yeah, okay, fair enough. So what so you want to you build the gaming PC? It's time and and yeah. So I've got this machine. It's it's served me well and it's

still is fine for the vast majority of games. But with uh, you know, the encroachment of VR with kind of of me running or a monitor that's higher than ten eighty and just kind of looking at where games are going. It seems like also also ripping my DVD collection to having a take too long. You know, they're like a lot of different factors here, gaming and non gaming that make me think it's probably time. Okay, So you want to do DVD ripping, you want to do video games VR and some

audio stuff. Yeah, okay, and you're gonna use your audio interface from your old machine, I assume, Yeah, yeah, that's that Stuff's all just use the primarily at the point, it's not that the big cold do so on the DVD Blu Ray ripping front, more cores is better than faster cores. Yeah, so I have a hexachor and I can rip a Blu Ray in like an hour and a half two hours. DVDs take like eight minutes. Now, it's crazy fast. I would probably be willing to sacrifice

some of that if it meant for better gaming stuff. So I was still thinking quad core, but I don't know. So you can get a cheap hexacore like the like the three hundred to five hundred dollars hexacor if you're looking at that five hundred dollar price point, you won't lose too much gaming performance because most of the games don't hit CPUs all the way. Are those are those even consumer facing products or is that enterprise level? But there? So

the thing you want to avoid is the zons. So the zons are those cores fucked really slow for like data center use. You don't want that, you want like the mid range, and I didn't, I didn't come prepared. Yeah, but there's a there's a five hundred dollars hexacore that the only problem with that is they need to buy a next ninety nine board instead of the cheaper boards. So you're buying quad But the good news is you get quad channel memories, so you get a lot more memory bandwidth. So like

there's a trade off. The motherboard's going to be fifty or one hundred bucks more expensive, probably your CPU will be a little bit more expensive. But you're, like I said, your Blu ray ripping time is is way way low. Sure, it's a totally valid choice to say I don't give a fuck about that, and I'm gonna I think I think I might go that route because there's a finite number of discs I need to rip, so at some point, I'm I'm about halfway through this project, so like, at

some point that will be done. I need to give you my my descripting image, right, Yeah, so you look like box or something, And dude, I have a folder that I put ripped mkvs for make MKV into and then like two hours later a completely ripped iTunes size movie comes out nice without having to do anything, and then that just goes into PLEX and I have my own, my own Netflix. Yeah. So that's the other thing. Is I this existing PC that I have, I'm probably just going to

keep up and running as a PLEX server. I've got like two I've got three two gig drives in it or sorry to terabyte drives in it, and an ssd uh. I might just get a four terabyte to throw in there as well, But but generally it's okay on size, especially once I get everything off of it onto this other game. I need a cheap video card, right because you don't want to run a night like you don't want to

run a big gaming video card. So I have a nine eighty right now, so I think I might just move that out of this machine into the new one and not just go buy a ten eighty right now and just kind of wait for wait for that ten eight to feel old enough to where, you know, I get a ten to get a ten eighty at that point or if they yeah, well they'll do a clock bump, uh process shrink probably at one point, like a year or eighteen months from now. Yeah,

and you're nine eighties. Fine, yes, you're not going to suffer even with your greater than AP resolution monitor right until like the third wave of VR stuff starts coming out. Yeah, okay, so mid range quad core, whatever amount of memory you need, get an motherboard that is reviewed. Well, I've just been going to PC part Picker and Prime, like I've picked like the processor that's seemed like an I seven sixty seven hundred K seemed like the way to go. That seems right. I mean, that's the

best quad core you can get. Skylake. Yeah, that's Skylake. That's what that's what you want, and that's the overclockable one. You don't even have to get the K if you don't want it. Yeah, you can save a fifty ye hundred bucks by not getting the K version, because like you're not going to overclock realistically. Well, so I ended up putting this cooler man, I know I'm not this cooler Master. There was a that wasn't the h one hundred eye is pre built water cooled things, the courser

because they're quiet. Yeah, so I'm quiet is nice? Like you you recommended that fractal design define our five cases are great use forested builds. Yeah, that's that's an awesome case. It's super quiet like so, so having, especially in an environment where I may be recording audio, having a quieter PC is really nice. I will I will say. I So I've got

a sixty seven hundred K and I've got what is the cool Master? Do you think that everybody gets its two twelve two twelve I've got one of those, and that thing runs so cool already that I can't tell that PC is on when it's idle. It's it's like I don't think the fan even runs. It throttles itself significantly, and even at even at high load, like I could barely tell that things on. So one of the things that I've noticed lately with Windows ten and VR stuff is that I think Steam VR is

the one that does it. It cranks you from the balanced profile to the high performance Valery was doing that? Is that? And is that what's doing? Valkyrie did that, and then the problem they had early on is it didn't switch you back when you stopped playing the game everything, which so like I ended up ref form adding because everything was fucking pegged at one hundred percent even when I wasn't doing the R stuff. I was like, well, my shit is fucked. What's going on? Yeah, and I was had

some sort of virus. Yeah, yeah, I was, Well I thought that I just you know, because I have this, I have a processor that triggers the dumb oculus like your PC does not meet these requirements. So I was like, well, shit, I guess it really doesn't because even doesn't run for shit. And then after the format it has happened that I formatted right around the time that they apparently fixed their shit, and oh wait,

Eve actually runs fucking perfect. Well it's not a problem. But the funny thing is like that actually makes a difference now because when it's in maybe balance is okay, but but quiet is not. When I'm running in quiet, I don't peg seventy frames sixty frames a second, and Overwatch like I have the little this stuff corner. I was just feels fucking framing when something's really bad with my computer. And then I switched it back to the balanced

or high performance profile, and all of a sudden everything was good. So even if you have a CPU controlled fan, yeah, and you switch back and forth between balance and high, even with the water cooler, it's going to crank the fan up on that, which is like, I have that water cooler. It's annoy it does that, but but I don't know that it's avoidable, and I don't I don't I have If anybody knows how to fix it, I would love to know, like posting comments or Twitter or

something, because because it's it's making me a little crazy. I just switch manually all the time. Okay, what else you got? What kind of SSD you going for? This is? I put a one tearabyte SSD on there. The five twelve is not big enough for all of the audio stuff I end up installing. Uh And so as a result, I've offloaded most of my games to not an SSD, which seems to be defeating the purpose of having an SSD. But it's just been how it's how it's going.

How much sure of those, now is it? Like, so there's an eight forty, same thing, eight forty that is four hundred bucks. I think it's one of the Satas six g ones. So it uses a satur interface what you probably want for your c drive since you're gonna buy everything else nice. Yeah, is an mvmme drive Okay, that basically is the low level interface between the motherboard and the CPU and the hard drive. And he

uses PCI Express lanes instead of like an intermediary part of all. So the bottleneck is less about the interface between the drive and the computer and the speed of the flash memory on. So this doesn't even like this doesn't even go into a drive bay at this point. This like plugs into a slot or get ones that plug into a slot there, Like I have one of those in my computer home. It's a fucking nightmare, really, just I built.

When I built that machine, it was still a super raw, brand new spec even even back in January when I've built mine, it seemed like there were some weird compatibility issues between certain boards and certain drives there. So there's there's two ways you can plug those in. There's you can get an M two like one of those most most high end motherboards have an M two slot. Now that will be either SATAH six G whatever that speck is, or MVMI. And I think some of them even switched back and forth.

I don't know how. I like, I'm I'm out of this world right now. There's also a thing called SATA. There's another spec that's like a wide SATA cable does the same thing. Yeah, just just don't don't go buy a Sata six G drive now if you're doing this from scratch, right, because like you, you don't you want the bottleneck to be the memory on the drive, not the mix up. So Intel makes one, it's the Intel one's expensive, Samsung's I think the eight fifty series is MVMME.

So you want to get that unless it's like if it's a shipload cheap, or go for the cheap one, right right. If it's if it's like fifty bucks more, one hundred bucks more, maybe go for the NBA Okay, all right, good to know. And then and then that also lets you do all day the fancy bias. So you but so you don't see

you know, you don't see the text screens. You just it goes straight to like a mouse and keyboard face and all that stuff, And that all means it will boot a lot faster into Windows because it doesn't have to load all the legacy bio stuff. If you have the nvame thing, that's neat Okay, And then I threw a Western Digital black four terabyte in there as a secondary drive, and I would probably add those to taste over time as

the prices go down. One four terabytes probably enough for now, considering I would be leaving this existing machine up as a plexbox. I don't need to then copy over all my music and movies and all the other ship. I'll just leave that on that machine and access it remotely. When you look at drives, one of the things that I like to do is look at wire

Cutter and back blaze. They both they do fail rates, and they vary wildly, even inside like Western Digitals four terabytes, right, the OEM lens will have a really high fail rate and the consumer ones will have a lower vice versus. So look at specific mode convers the Okay motherboard. You know, I just at this point, I just picked one that was compatible and was well reviewed on PC part picker. So it's this gigabyte GA was this Z one seventy X. Is it the XPSL I buy any chance, because

that's what I have. The LGA eleven fifty one. That's the socket. The socket sized Gaming seven is what it says. So that's I think that's a higher end one than mine. Mine was like one fifteen. One's two hundred. Okay, that's that's like three models above what I have. And that's one of those things where I don't actually know how much mother board I need, to be honest, that's probably way too much. Probably don't The

one. The one that I've got has got like USB three point one ports and a top and a Type C port on it, like it's it's already got a bunch of io ship. Yeah, I probably want to check the ports because I'm definitely gonna need I mean, ideally it would have like at least four USB three ports on it. Four USB three. Also also you can get like it has headers for like four more USB three and you can get like ten dollars headers because at this point I'll be, you know,

like I've got an Oculus hooked up to this thing now. H So, once Touch comes out, I will need three USB three's just for that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, even a even a cheaper or cheaper board will totally cover you there. Well, So the place that things get weird is when they don't have enough USB three root hubs. So like my old X ninety nine board has two USB three controllers. One's like a as Rock or some

third party brand, one's the Intel one. The Intel one doesn't have enough root hubs to have Logitech webcam for streaming the Vibe camera and then the two Oculus cameras plugged in all at the same time without running out of bandwidth. So like, like, I don't know that anybody realistically he's going to keep a Vibe and a rift plugged in all the time. Yeah. No, My room is not even enough for a Vibe, So there you go.

So I wasn't thinking about like what if I got a smaller case, but I'm because I was thinking if I do end up with a Vibe, I've got a room picked out, but it is at the other end of the house. So it becomes like, okay, I might have to move this PC around so with the handle, Yeah, I know, but I just I don't think I need a handle. I'm not looking to build a GameCube's allow these things. Yeah, I don't want a looud case. This thing's

quiet and realistically, I'm not going to move it that often. That one kind of has handles on the end. It has like Mackie doesn't. Yeah, it's it's easy to handle, like I, you know, I would take it outside to blow up the dust out of the case and stuff. It's it's fine moving that thing around. Ram I ended up sixty four gigs g skill riped Jaws. Is that on the list for that motherboard? It is? Yeah, And that's a d D four twenty eight hundred, which

seemed like those numbers seemed high for twenty It will go higher. I've seen suggestions that with this the latest round of Skylakes, the memory band with actually matters more than it used to do. Anything about that will yeah, I

don't know. I seemed like some conflicting benchmarks out there saying I have the bandwidth on the memory you buy actually makes a difference in frame rates now, But I can't imagine that that is really the case unless you're doing crazy stuff, right, Yeah, I'm not necessarily gonna do that much crazy stuff, but somewhat crazy stuff. Yeah, I don't know, Like I think I think that is. I think that is the brand of ram I have right now. Uh look, get the cheapest stuff that's on the list. That's

going to be the the clock speed pre CPU. Yeah, that's the that should be the goal there, unless you're if you're gonna overclock there, all bets are off right. I've made a place in my life where I value stability and reliability much much more than a two percent or ten percent faster performance. Yeah. Like, I had my stuff overclocked a little bit for a while, and so I guess like I you know, I didn't realize that,

but my existing processor will overclock itself automatically as needed. Said, Yeah, is that different? Okay, So so the way the way the old process, like you're Sandy Bridge, I think the twenty K. Yeah, so it would crank up. If you're using only one core, it'll turn off the other cores are cranking way down and crank the other one episode. It basically reallocates the thermal capability of okay CPU. Yeah, okay, so that'll get it over what it's like base like. Yeah, but it's still

within spec. Intel expects it to do that. Okay, So all right, and going stock cooler will work and all that. Yeah, okay, letters and number. Yeah you sign at last, see that you have? Now are you looking forward to when your PC is too old? I know I have a nine eighty. That's what I know about my piece. It's pretty good. I have several USB ports. Okay that you were blacklock blue two black on top and then some other ones in the back. Okay, blue ones are the good ones. Yeah, I heard that, So I

put all the more important things in the blue one. My three point one poor is red. Oh wow, yeah, it gives you extra power. Yeah, it's cool. It's yellow. So the only other thing is when you do Windows you're going to buy a disc copy of Windows ume or USB thumb driver or something with it on it. I mean yeah, at this point, I guess I would have to unless if I can get all this done by the end of July, I could probably drum up a Window seven

key somewhere in my collection of the upgrade route. So when you the only trick is when you install the Okay, so if you do the Windows seven upgrade, you have to install it, then upgrade to Windows ten, then

wipe it, then get a version of the Windows ten installer. That's for the that's not the bios legacy version, and that's for the new stuff, right, or that you do the fast boot because otherwise it'll always fire the bios and the This is something I only have like, like, well, you've done this build right lately, right, Yeah, if you your bios and your OS talk to each other in the it's not called the bios anymore.

And I can't for it's right, Yeah, the EFI, the U e FI stuff talks to the Windows in a way now that is in track. I have no fucking clue how that works. It's some dark wizardry. It took three tries installing Windows ten on this machine for it to get to for because of the n V and ME stuff and because of the U e Fi stuffing, because I was a dumbass and wanted to do the UFI boot

and not the BIOS boot. Yes, so I went through that process when I was formatting this PC, where I thought I could just do a like when I went through the like install Windows ten fresh, because I was coming off of the fast ring built the Windows ten which is a bad place to be yeah, and I was like fuck this, man, I can't do this anymore, Like I just I need to know that this is the Windows that everyone else is running. It's just irresponsible. So I went through that

process and it was like, oh no, man, you can't. Like I'd installed at USB and I went through try try to install it, and it was like, you can't install this partition yeah, like okay, well, I guess I need to repartition the drive yet then and formatted C yeah, and then was like, oh, I guess I'm dragging out one of my old PCs now and downloading fucking Windows ten and burning it to a disc because that's how I have to install it. Because it will not install off

USB. You can make a Uefi USB key, but the process to do that was fairly significant. Charge yeah. Yeah. So this just this was the shortest solution I could come up with, was find this PC that was still running Windows ten going up on my network when it was seven. Rather Yes, it had a burner in it, and I'd have discs everywhere because everyone bought discs when they were cheap and then realized they never needed to burn

discs anymore. And so I was able to get it done, but it was just it added like nine hours to this process, and I was like, oh, this went from very easy to now like I'm sitting in here all day just kind of pouting, went fuck man, fuck bloss a whole fucking day. So when I when I installed in this new machine, I used the Microsoft's just got a like make a dootable USB Windows ten Installer utility. That's what I did. Use that. Yeah, so you're your older

machine. Probably I assume introduced some weird compatibility stuff there, but they didn't, so they didn't say anything to me about like, oh you need the Uefi version of this they were talking about. But so my machine, now the guy like machine, from hitting power to being at the Windows desktop is like maybe fifteen seconds. It's oh yeah, completely nuts. But also like I get the gigabyte like your's. You're on a gigabyte motherboard splash screen looking

thing with the text or just a picture. No, no it's not. It's not the old school post with like the eighty eighty columns looking text. It's like a nice graphical gigabyte logo and everything. And then the Windows ten like animation, booting animation blends with that. Yeah, like they are the same screen like the motherboard like post like the nice looking motherboard logo and the Windows ten boot animation all the same thing. Sad disabled this logo because I

want to see some gritty ass graph so I can't get that anymore. That's what like, Like turning that logo off does not give me the old looking PC screen gone. Yeah it's not. There's nothing there except for like a text prompt that says like hit the leat for setup. And but yeah, like seeing those two things together is like the OS and the motherboard were the same thing. At a certain point, it was a weird thing. My

motherboard lets you replace the motherboard logo with whatever you want. Cool, that's awesome. Like its pornography, okay, all right, so hard core pornography. Yeah, I was picking locks man. Yeah, and then you see the little dots, the spinning dots, and then Knit's in Windows. It's really good. Yeah, so you're like you're on the right track. This is good stuff. Just the motherboard is the only place you can really go wrong. Don't buy a cheap, off brand motherboard if you're planning to use

this machine for a long time. Yeah, that's that. My plan is to do this once and then not have to like like I did get you got five years out exactly, Yeah, with you know, relatively minor upgrades, like I had some RAM go bad and put a video cards. Yeah, a couple of video cards. Don't cheap out on power supply. Yeah, so I ended up picking it's a brand. I mean, it's an e v GA, which is a brand name, I guess. But I

picked a seven hundred and fifty What which is for this power profile? For what I've built here is like four hundred and thirty watts, So I fear a seven fifty would cover it. Yeah, that's probably is fine for one video going forward. Probably. Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm probably never going to be an SLI guy. It's like SLI. There's a really limited set of circumstances where SLI makes sense. If you have a really if you have an older video card, you can get a second card for almost nothing,

right, kind of that's a good idea. You should never unless you're driving like three monitors that are four K or something idiotic. You don't need SLI. Don't buy SLI from the get go. Yeah, I've got two monitors. It's fun. Yeah, yeah, you well, I don't want to get too deep into the stuff. You might want to look at thee soonic power supplies. There by far the stable power supplies on the market as far as I know, they're not that quiet always. I've got one at home.

It's it's okay, it's been totally. Like I said, I can't tell that machine is on. So the thing people ever look at power supplies is that steady voltage is just as important as like total Weiland efficiency is important. It's important thing too. So you can look at that power rating, the gold, silver, platinum thing, and I like, I don't think

it's worth spending money on platinum for normal people at home. The gold and silver you'll want because it basically it's a measure of how much of the energy goes in comes as AC comes out as DC on the other side. And and you want to be like eighty or higher, okay, because and that is that what the rating is, So like it would gold eight or high silver gold is ninety or something. I don't remember the exact math, but

okay, but that's the jist. You good, no, okay, real fast, because I'm sure a lot of people's eyes of glaze over at this point. How do you feel about the current state of GPUs. We get We've gotten a lot of people writing in since the since the tenadies came out, and the radio on four eighty is happening at a pretty low price, and so like people keep asking like, hey, why don't you guys talk

about GBUS and I don't know that we are. The answer is, like a podcast, I'll buy a ten eighty when they're available and when it makes sense to you. But if you have any thoughts on that that you want to, so the four eighty seems to be the go to, Like it seems to like the cheap option now, right, especially if you want to

like a VR MEN'SPEC capable machine. I talked about this on another podcast a couple of weeks ago, but like, the the interesting thing right now is that that Oculus and Vibe shared MEN'SPEC for for minimum VR hardware the nine seventy

and whatever CP you and all that has made a really interesting spot. So now there's a target for like minimum viable that's actually a pretty good computer on the PC side, and it means that there's gonna be a min like that's gonna be the floor for your awesome looking PC game experience for the for going

forward. So I think as long as you get something that's better than a nine seventy, and like I wouldn't buy a nine seventy to day, That four eighties seems like a good card, but I haven't tested it or used it at all. Then the ten sixty specs got out there, Yeah, yeah, I don't know about that one. Yeah, it sounds like it's about on the level of the ft eighty and they're both they're both roughly in the nine eighty ballpark or two hundred two hundred. Yeah, yeah, it

sounds like the ten sixties is gonna get down there. That seems like a really good place to be if you want to have a machine that you can

that that gives you a lot of options in the future. And the big question always is, you know, when you're specking out a machine, you're picking out a video card, do you buy the expensive ass video card and plan to keep it for longer, or do you buy the half price video card and just upgraded every other year or every eighteen Right, I think I would rather like spend it all up front and then not worry about it.

That's kind of how I've always been with this stuff, Like if you if you look at it as a five or six year upgrade cycle for the CPU and motherboard, maybe you add RAM, you upgrade storage as you need it, and then maybe like three or four years in you get a video card or you know that you're then going to carry on to your next yeah build or something. Then that's then that's an okay place to be and that's a

good strategy. The other the other strategies equally valid, right, Like getting into video card every other every other year that costs half the price of that big one. You end up spending the same amount of money. It's it's it's how It's really about what kind of monitor you have and how how easy is it for you to spend five hundred dollars versus two hundred dollars. Yeah, like if you're running a ten eighty monitor and I think most people are

still running into an a video card you have? Yeah, at this point, like whatever do you think that we'll get to a point where we start to name them inspecs again, let's get back to MPC. This is this an Windows experience? Yeah, where's my Window Experience number here? It's like thirty five now probably right? Awesome, yeah, that seems high. No, there there is some kind of VR is that doesn't the vibe have like you're an eleven or something like that. I don't know. I think there's

I think they have a VR spec number somewhere. I mean that bull. The thing that matters is you have I mean, look, my computer is virtual number is bigger than your computers. Yeah, yeah, that shit's dumb, all right, computers. Hey, did you guys talked about to talk about the Xbox Preview the experience we had a little bit. I saw a

demo of it. I haven't used it, I haven't installed. Even using it, it's there are still things about that OS that just are too clunky, like pushing to the left and hoping that the log in thing is supposed to pop out, and then it just takes too long. There are too many things about that OS just in general, like even on the non Preview, the just aren't snappy. It acts, It acts like it doesn't keep

parts of itself in memory. It acts like a computer. Yeah, it feels like it has It feels like it has to thrash the hard drive to load parts of the interface in from time to time, and that's not fun. Especially if you have a lot of games, because I know we really all have a ton of backwards compatible Yeah, but I think my list is like if I have nothing installed, I think the ready installed to install list is like two hundred and six. Yeah, the games and app stuff takes

four ever populated. Mine's only like fifty because I'm not, you know, in the same I'm a normal person. I buy my games like it still takes fucking forever. It took three hours to download Inside on Friday night. Because of that, Wow, Like, I thought there was something wrong with the console. So I went and opened the door in the little case that it's in and like did the long press reset to clear this system cash and all that stuff. It's still really really slow, so it could have been

preview. I don't know. I'm download speeds on both consoles, Like like PSN is markedly worse than Xbox most of the time. PSN is like embarrassingly slow for me most of the time. But I haven't experienced slow downloads with they have just been Friday night. You know. What I did experience though with this preview though, is that it was actually just not downloading well, where everything was in Q and nothing was actually moving, so I had to

reset and and that's all fine. That was a specific They fix that one. Yeah, I'm I'm talking. As soon as I can get out of the preview thing on the Xbox, I'm out. I would just want an Xbox. It works. I dished monthy times a year that I use it. It's not worth the extra instability, like you said, it's I mean, but the thing is is is having multiple Xbox ones in the house, like one that is not in a preview program, that one is still not

great. And when it comes to like just snappiness, just feel of the interface and stuff like, I feel like that. It's why I didn't like build an XBMC box or like a Cody Box whatever and on an Uya or something, you know, because it's like I can't fucking handle slow interface. It's why it's part of why I unsubscribe from Direct TV because those boxes just weren't fucking snappy. Well, this is why, this is why I have a giant ass free en Ass box instead of a shitty Nass box in my

garage. Right, I have an old Hexacore PC running free Nass because I'm an idiot. Yeah, it's probably costing thirty dollars a month in electricity, but it's fastest, fast as shit. Yeah, perfect, yea, yeah, yeah, the speediness of an interface. I think that like the and that Xbox one interface is is bad for that stuff. That's you know, like the PS four just feels like its stores more of its interface just right there. Random that's not trying to do as much and a lot of interface

is not a bad. Interface is not a bad thing. Yeah, when it comes to just like I need to launch a fucking game, just list the goddamn game. Yeah yeah, but when I list my library on a PS four, that still takes forever and sucks. But it's also bad, still bad as bad though it's pretty bad. You can see even the library on the PS four is terrible. Games quicker than not online. I don't

know what's going on. You scroll down and then wait for its populate because you have to scroll it down and go like this is probably where s is, and then let off. You can you can scroll twice as fast as that thing can populate games on that list, and then you just like I feel like it still it doesn't show number of letters are where you are, no indication and stuff's terrible. It's really bad. I did stream all of inside to my Windows ten PC, so I played that on the PC,

streamed across the network wired and it was like that worked really well. So that's cool. My Pcmxbox one are practically touching, so I don't actually need to do that. TiVo is still connected to my Xbox one because wow, you know i'd have to rent cables to fix that. Sure. Yeah, all right, that was way longer than ten minutes. This concludes this week's tech talk. Sorry, no, it's fine. I love that stuff. Next week it's the audience Android and we're gonna get into it. Okay.

I have pulled roughly double the number of emails that I usually get, two times the email. We'll see. We'll see how many did we get through here. BombCast at giant bomb dot com is the email address. First email comes in from Zach from Louisville, Kentucky. You look stern down there wouldn't be there next week. Yeah, we kept next next week. What are you doing there? I can't talk about it. Eating something, maybe eating something, eat drinking? Eating? Okay, that's cool, enjoy uh I

Bomb Squad. When I was growing up in the eighties, my friends and I referred to finishing a game as flipping it, as in I flipped Ninja Guide in this weekend. Also, if it was the eighties, I'm surely calling it ninja gaiden. Today. When I tell people we said this, they look at me like, I Am crazy? Was this an actual term? Or did my friends and I just pull this term out of our ass? That one said that's an actual term? What really have you heard that?

Flipping arcades because you're you're beating boards, you're rolling it over when you when you would beat all of the Donkey Kong stages and get it back to the start, would be a rollover. Ok okay, so you would flip it? Uh? So that that is definitely. There are trophies that are that mentioned. Flipping was like did the nuclear Throne trophies do it? There's something that came out recently. There was some roguelike that was like flip the

game as like a term for beating it and restarting and continuing. But yes, no, that is, Yes, that is a term. But also you're crazy. There's there's a new idea, there's a new arcade a documentary coming out, isn't there did I see this? I saw Billy Mitchell on a YouTube video last Weekly and in Walter from Walter Walter Day talking about rolling over Jungler oh Man, all right, a billion points, getting getting into the deep gritty forty five hours Jesus, Yeah it was animated. Yeah,

that's ridiculous. Sorry. Also, Zach Zack asked what we called finishing a game? Beat a game as kids. Yeah, I've been beating in a game. It's usually what we said, go with the Occasionally, occasionally you would hear somebody say they have solved a game. That sounds yes, kids were bad people. I can't. I can't get on. If it's Raiders of the Lost Ark for the twenty six hundred, you could say you solved

it. Wow, that's it. Yeah. Rain from Reading in the UK right soon and says Dan touched on this in the most recent Rhythm Heaven Quick Look. He stated he was unable to complete a review of a Rhythm game due to not being able to get past an early stage. I've been wondering about this for a while. What do you do when you're reviewing game that you cannot complete for whatever reason, especially if it's pre release and there are

no facts available. That's the only time it's happened to me, and I just I just went to my boss at the time and I said, I, this game is not for me. I don't have any rhythm. I can't beat this many game with these monkeys on a clock and monkeys on the clock. Many game was fucking tough. By the way, It's good to know that I'm not that terrible. Was it a Rhythm Heaven game or a

different it was? It was the wee Rhythm Heaven, which actually I have been playing the new one on free ds and I'm better at that for sure. But yeah, I just had to go to and be like, hey, I can't honestly review this game because I'm not This is not for me. I'm not gonnable to meet it. I can't. I can't think of a situation where I'd ever ran up against something I just could not get past.

But I have. I can't remember the game specifically, but I do remember on behalf of other reviewers, I had contacted a publisher and said like, hey, our reviewer is stuck here and and you know, kind of keeping some separation, not having the reviewer talked directly to the company just kind of middle manning that conversation and being like, Okay, this is the situation

they're having. Do you have anything about this? Because you get to a point with something depending on the game, depending on the game, where you start to wonder like is this me or is the game broken in totally? That is really hard. It's a really hard game. Like you you just don't know it's very much. Am I missing something here? Or have I encountered a bug? Or is the game fucking up here? And there's no way to check because there's no information right online about yeah game at all.

So that stuff's hard. I It's happened to me twice I played. I found a bug in Hexan two, I guess the one in like ninety nine that basically it broke the save right and I had to go back and restart the game. But that was a conversation that was like you sent a note to Activision and hey, what's like, what's do you guys know about this? And they actually hadn't. They didn't know about that, they didn't have the bug listed. So then they fixed it in the first patch and I

had to restart my my game from the beginning. Uh yeah, I found bugs in Canan Lynch two, which was a weird one bugs, but that is reviewing that I I apparently ended up playing more of that game than the people who tested it or something, because it was like it got to a point where on the three sixty, if you got a lot of shotgun kills, like it was. It was it was testing to see if you would have got enough shotgun kills for an achievement or something, was what I think

I was eventually told. And it would that would build up to a point where if you got a shotgun kill, the game would halt for about two seconds and then resume. And it was just fucking crazy, and like the game's not out and I'm sitting here on this thing, I'm like, fuck shit, like I'd recorded footage of it because I'm like, this is a really boo not again, yeah kind of, it's a real this is a

real weird problem with this game. Like well, and I ended up going back to the guy who was doing PR four at the time saying like, hey, so I've got video of this. Uh, this is happening to me. What the fuck? And they're like, yes, we very much want to see that video. And then and then they still yeah exactly. Then they started working. They ended up fixing that bug, I guess, and a pretty early patch. I reviewed an Earth Defense Force game for OXM

once. Those are easy. You just put it in for five minutes ago, Man, this sucks and give it like the lowest score you can. Like. I like those games. They dumb and they're fun, but they get really hard. Yeah they do, and some of them do. Yeah. Like I got to the end of it, I was like, I can't. I just can't get past this boss, and so I hinted one of the other people at the magazine and they plowed through that part and then I finished the game. Wow. Yeah, there are plenty of times there

would be a game like like The Witness is a good example. I didn't review it, but I could totally see that being one of the games that if I was reviewing, like, well, yeah, you could do the seven hundred puzzles or whatever, or you could do four hundred and fifty and beat it the standard way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mentioned that in the review for Completion is whatever. Trying to remember I think I had finished eight of the areas and then beat the game before to the review.

But yeah, I mean talking about it before that last area of that game on the deadline was not Oh yeah, that not an ideal experience. How how did you handle like Splunky and Rogue Legacy and stuff like that. I don't think we reviewed any of them, you know, I think Patrick reviewed. Yeah, but I mean in cases like that, I mean, you know, yeah, I mean a certainly point, it's meant to be petable and stuff like that, So finishing the game is probably not actually that key

to it. It's just understanding how the mechanics work and is it fair and is it fun? At some point it's like a fighting game almost like it's meant to be like repetitive. It's meant to be something that you kind of grind against for for a good long time. So it's sort of a different

situation than like a story driven game. That makes sense. Yeah, So I think that there are there are definitely cases like that where you like, you probably don't need to finish Splunky to review to tell someone why Spilunky is so cool. Yeah, I think it varies from the game to game. I will say I am glad that I never had a review to the Necord answer, have you finished that game? No, no, I didn't. I still I keep going back to it for like fifteen twenty minutes at a

time, a couple of times a week. I don't know that I will ever finish that game if you did, if you got in his own four, I think I got to the end of three. Okay, Zone four I think is way too hard for its own game. I've gotten to the last boss once out of like maybe a hundred runs. It is really hard, but like that's my that's my Splunky ratio. Probably yeah, but yeah, you know, we're in a different situation than than we have been in

years past. I mean, you know, like we're not really trying to be this like day one review like workshop, right, so you know, it affords us the ability to pass on some reviews or run a review way late yea, which endst to a lot of weird introspection about like, well we're like the selection process for what we review suddenly becomes like this weird thing.

Definitely, Well, maybe our scores are skewing higher than they used too because we're only reviewing stuff we're really interested in, or but that then ends up going the other way of like I was really interested in a game and then it ended up being really disappointing. Like you know, I approached like something like Quantum Break. I can't, I can't like I am yeah, I am very interested in this game, and I hope it turns out.

Then you're like, oh man, I am super disappointed. That's the thing that people don't seem to undertand when they're riding and go, why would you review this game? You obviously hate it. It's like, why I review this game because I like saw it beforehand, it said this looks awesome. I wanted to play it, right. Uh So sometimes I pay putting me in the ballpark of someone who might actually buy that game, right, which

is kind of the ideal situation, I guess. But it's more interesting when their noteworthy, Like when it's a thing that you're it's a noteworthy title. Yeah, Like, I'm much more interested to read a review when you give a shit about the game going in, right, if it's just like, here's a here this fell on my fucking desk today exactly. Yeah. Like,

and I've and we've both done. I have written hundreds of reviews that are just like, this review needs to get done, and I'm going to be the one to do it because I'm here and I'm qualified to do it, and that's it's nice to not be tied to that anymore. That's a weird that doesn't exist anymore, doesn't need to Jim from Atlanta or recent demo Derby reminded me that Sony has had some cool slogans over the years. You are not and then a red eh and living your world playing hours are some

of my favorites. But do you guys have any gaming slogans that you still think are pretty cool or remarkably awful? Get in the game. I always thought the Sony this his living stuff was really really dumb. Make madop believe, make believe. Although that was a bigger Sony thing, wasn't. I don't think that was just PlayStation. I think it was around just it was like a yeah, it was just a Sony overall. Yeah. It was the Bloggable, Yeah, the blogg Ex. That was flip Cam it was

it was. It was a flip competitor, I believe. I mean do things like like print ad things like the Digatana thing. Count h. Yeah, he's asking more for kind of like companies like Challenge everything, don't. Yeah, like that type well that's more of it. That wasn't that was

more of an ad thing. Yeah, that was not really repeated slogan like challenge everything is a great like literally and well I guess makedop Believe was not in the games, so maybe like you are not ready though, and like Ninten don't you're right and you're right because well they used I mean really it's repetition more than anything. A slogan is like you were not ready was on everything? Like what it like McDonald McDonald's has had slogans throughout the year.

I'm loving it. Yeah, I'm loving it. Is is the classic example, right, yeah, right, I think you just see that. Oh my heart. Mhm, it's one of their more recent ones. Didn't stick with that one very Oh I idn't even heard that. Yeah, Taco Bells had some good ones. Oh yeah, Live Moss Think outside then what was the Border one? Run for the Border, Run for the Border. Yeah, Live Moss is good. Uh, it's it's perfectly terrible. Yeah, yeah, they're great. I feel like this like the Saturn Sega Saturn era

is where that stuff really got the peak terrible. Who was the ad with ice cube with the Saturn rings around his head. Yep, yeah, it was ice Cube with Saturn ice Cube did Saturday head. Yeah, it was pre like kids movie ice Cube too, right, yeah, it was angry ice Cube. Given the screw that was. That was not far panther dragoon, motherfucker far removed not he was more panzer driven saga. Fair enough. It's my understanding. He's getting a star on the Walk of Fame, is

he? Yeah? Right in that check huh as Yeah, exactly, as is Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Of course, anyone deserved one, he does. Question quick question from Jeff your dogs. Why no rumble mouses? I had a rumble mouse once Logic Tech three series mouse with the with the haptic feedback in like two thousand, mid two thousands probably, I don't know, is before the I remember with dual shocks. Well before was the dual Shock

three. Yeah, but remember they motion owned the haptic pat oh right right, yes, and there was there's no dual That's why it was just the six axis six They didn't want to pay the license, ye, and then they sucked it up and pay the license. Yeah, which was the right choice. But they Logitech license that same company to build up a haptic mouse and it was fucking awesome. So when you moved your mouse over, I feel like I used one of the problems blue. Yeah, but like it's

some trade show. Probably put my hands on one. That's weird. No one will ever buy one of these, but that's me. God, it's so good. So you would move, you would mouse over like window edges, and it would just bumped my car. Does that? It's yeah, yeah, because you have stick in my car that is that like has that same kind of haptick like guide you to the buttons sort of thing. Yeah, and it's it feels good, so you could do it. You can

do it with the phones. Now theoretically you can do it with the trackpad on like a Mac. They nobody's built the software yet. But it's like, I super super liked having because you could go with much higher precision because you could feel when you were on the spot. You didn't just have to

look at it right. Nobody ever used it in games. It was like it was one of those things that like there were two games that came out and it was always like you click the mouse and shook around like a machine gun, and you're like, no, one wouldn't ever want to use it for this, Let's gonna make your game worse. That was the The Microsoft Joystick had that same kind of like sidewinder, yeah, where it had all

the feedback ship just shake around, feel like all the different settings. It was really fun in the demo, but then in games it was terrible. And the demo it was like it's a rocket launcher and you and you would feel the joystick jerk back and then forward, and you're like, yeah,

like I'm shooting a rocket. That's badass, But fuck actually doing that in a game, especially a competitive one where you're trying to be accurate all this other stuff, like at some point that stuff, just the experience gets in the way of your precision. So I have to say I've looked in the post VR world. I looked at those speakers that you screw into your chair.

The butt kicker, Yeah, because there's a there's a certain appeal, uh like to be sitting in your chair and all of a sudden you feel the rumble of the engines of your spaceship or whatever D box for the home. I yeah, I sat in some so like pree three, went to some events and played some games and sat in some dumb and looking fucking gaming chairs, but they were kind of fucking comfortable on the floor in front of

the TV. No no, no, there's like like they did not have speakers in them, but they did have like these big, gawky, like just awful lumbar pillows in them, but they were kind of comfortable. Like so this is already. I just went out and bought like a Razor mouse and keyboard because of this specific like thing of like trying of of going to downs and having that ship set up going like you know what, this mouse actually feels pretty good, and this keyboard actually this mechanical I need to all

right, the clicky keyboards are great. I have one of those Logic tech ones. It was way too expensive. I bought it and it's terrific. And the lights change color when I mean games. And I bought it's a death add or a death Widow chroma. Yeah whatever the fuck Razor keyboard? Uh, and that has the ten key on it. The other one the death adder, I think, doesn't I forget? Uh? And it's at other than the part where when I type now it's all super loud. Uh.

It's the downside. It's a pretty good gaming keyboard. And the mouse is actually pretty good too. Like I clown on Razor for like the way that they market their products and a lot of their dumb fucking laptops and all the other ship. But death, that's a nice mouse. It's a decent amount. I have a Momba. It's a it's a it's a good ass. It's wireless, it can be. I'm wired. Yeah. They do a tournament edition of the Mamba that is just wired, okay, and it's

it's a it's a pretty good fucking mouse. You want to treat yourself, get some little fancy go out there and grab an aluminum mouse pad. That's what I have. Yeah, it's fucking awesome. That's what I use for because I do it on my couch when I'm playing over one and it's aluminum, so it doesn't bend or anything. It's just this tiny, thin little thing because before I had to put my big gass Zelda book in my like steel series like foam mouse pad on it. This razor thin little aluminum thing.

It's perfect. I love it. It's like twelve bucks or something. It's so smooth. Yeah, and it's like a piece of glass that you're gliding your mouse and when you get hand crud on there, Yeah, just put in the dishwasher. Okay, it's awesomely no, I'm yeah, hand crud's an issue. It's definitely an issue. Everybody hasn't say say no to hand crud. Please, Uh, let's see. Manny from Cheltenham in England wrote down and asking if Dan could elaborate a little on why he didn't like

Steep. I guess you kind of did that already and just yeah, it just didn't It didn't feel good. It didn't feel fun like there's It felt like Grabby many games, like I told you, and I don't know. I SSX a lot because it just kind of felt bombastic and over the top and you're landing like fireworks are going off, and it controlled really well. It wasn't just spectacle. I thought the tricks worked really well. Steep just it seemed like a game for people that are like way into actual skiing and

like watch a bunch of GoPro footage of people on YouTube skiing. It felt like Skate rather than Tony Hawk. That's why I didn't like Skate, but I love Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk was big and loud, and spectacle and not realistic in any way. And I don't give a shit about skateboarding, so that's why I didn't like skate But I like Tony Hawk in the same way that I like SSX, but Steep seemed lame. M all right, Well, a lot of people like skates so yeah, yeah, I know

I'm in the minority. Yeah, let's see, You're not the only person I heard saying that Steep didn't wow them for a variety of reasons. So I don't know. I heard one guy. I will say that Demo did not grab me at all, and yeah, I but I also would not be into a snowboarding game unless it was AMP three two Dark Summit too AMP

three two. Okay, Yeah, let's see. Don from California. I was digging through the Steam sale decided I was going to grab super Hot, but when I went to the store page, super Hot's recent reviews are quote mix. It turns out that since the super Hot creators announced super Hot VR, people went back and rereviewed the game in order to make the reviews look worse because they weren't happy with a VR exclusive. How do you feel about

people using the review system this way? A dev of a game announces a new game, time to go lower the review score of their previous game. Okay, they announced the Kickstarter for super Hot after they showed it at the Oculus booth at e three year GDC or something. Last you're talking about for

VR, No for the initial one, and they didn't tell people. The implication was that that that was going to be the VR version of the game, and the reasons for them releasing a separate VR version are good and fair and right, but I like they message. They messed that up. You're saying people thought they were going to get a VR game. The kickstarter who

bought back the kickstarter thought that they were getting the VR game. I thought I backed the kickstarter, and I thought I was going to get a preview build of the VR game that I could load up on my DK two as soon as the kickstarter cleared, Okay, which I did not get. Okay, I didn't realize they had ever said anything about it. I don't know if they did, but it like, look, I'm a relatively informed consumer. If I made the mistake, then like maybe their messaging wasn't awesome.

Sure, yeah, it's I. I didn't catch on to any of that stuff. I just you know, we played that Web demo and thought it looked cool awesome, so it never really seemed like it never really seemed like a VR game, and the mechanics of that core super Hot game, I think I actually would be really weird and bad in VR. So the idea that they're building a separate thing that would give them the ability to maybe revisit

some of those concepts and make them fit better for VR. I feel like I did a demo at a PAX or something of the just announced super Hot, but I feel like before that, like a year past again. Yeah, so the first time we saw a super Hot was that I think it was at an Oculus booth, and I think it was it was either a

g DC or eighty three last year. Okay, because remember like the first time I played Lucky, So it was one of those things where you go into the booth, It's like here's this, here's this, here's this. I'm like Lucky's Tale Eve Valkrie and I could have sworn I played super Hot, and I mean it was it was very much one of those really levels from like the Web demo e right, but it could have been just a demo and you it was when you moved your head side decide that moved time

as well. Yeah yeah, so you but you could you could pull back and watch the bullet go by vitational movement did nothing, so okay. But yeah, Like, look, going back and fucking with people Steam reviews takes money out of their pockets. So if ultimately, if you like them making games, if you like the people that are making those games, and you fucked their reviews up, you're going to cause them real problems. I think

that. But at the same time, I think you have to look at user reviews as not a reliable source in aggregate or it's the best way to go, well, accept it. Funnels like user reviews are one of the things that determine your placement on Steam that much money makes so like it is taking there is that direct link it is. It is really fucked up.

And the way they've redesigned reviews on Steam, like on the surface, you look at it and go, oh, that makes sense because they adopted that more of that Apple Store mentality of here are recent reviews of the current build, and here are the overall all reviews and giving the different you know,

negative positive, like that makes sense. At the same time, you still don't really know they've added Actually they've added some stuff where it says you user got this product for free, which is a nice one they tell you, and somebody is a confirmed buyer, which is also good like Amazon style stuff, and tells you how many hours they put in, which is interesting and

you would think would combat that stuff. But at the same time, this will sound super shitty coming from someone who's reviewed games for twenty years, because I probably have some kind of vested interest in that status quo. But at some point, the people out there, they know no code, they have no reason to not go back and do this, They have no reason to to kind of not funk around with that sort of stuff. I mean, it's it's it's it's used as a form of protest in too many different contexts.

Yeah, ever, really that's useful that that's annoying because I think that user ratings and reviews can be super valuable, but it's too volatile and too many people use it to, you know, get across different messages that were

not that the systems were not built to support it. Frequently does it has nothing to do with reflecting the quality of the product or the thing being reviewed, right, And if people use the system like this, then it means that just Valve and other companies that have storefronts like this will devalue the user reviews, which is probably not good for anyone in a world where there are like fifty releases on Steam every day, right, yeah, yeah, And

you know that's why you get into the ones that are like, well, well you know this review has been voted as useful and that sort of stuff like that can help combat that sort of stuff, but it just means you can never trust this aggregate number. And I know, like Metacritic runs into this all the time where you get just like tons of users going in and voting everything a one for whatever fucking dumb reason because they're board U. It's

that same thing of like you can't look at those numbers. Like if you can dig into the reviews and take all that feedback with a grain of salt, you can learn things from the text, but you do have to do some digging. It's not as simple as like mostly positive, I guess I'll buy that, Like, you can't. You can't operate that way, just you you'll get burned to time and time again. Uh, Josh wrote in I said this on this week's BombCast. You kicked off by talking about pickup

trucks. As someone who lives in Kansas City. Yes, all right, Drew has a pickup truck, right, that's right. As someone who lives in Kansas City, the Missouri side, not the dirty Johnason County, Kansas side County, I can say I heard it was the animo capital of the armpit of the world. That's what said when he came to town. Yeah, it makes sense. Who would have thought. Dino Bravo told me it was the worst place on the planet got shut up for selling Canadian cigarettes.

Well, shit happens. Man. As someone who lives in Kansas City, I could say that the number of people who own larger than needed trucks simply for their looks or the effect of look, how big my truck is far outweighs the people who own trucks for practical use or work vehicles. Also, the Ford versus Chevy versus GM war is much worse than any kind of Sony

versus Microsoft console war could ever dream to be. I know no fewer than six people who have either Ford or Chevy tattoos on their bodies and see several more on a fairly frequent basis, just chiming in from the Midwest, and they put a sticker in the window of your pickup truck. That's Calvin pissing on a PlayStation logo. There you go. That's not even the worst weird war in Kansas. In Missouri, I don't give a shit about college sports,

Blue and St. Lou That's what I do now. They just want you to go when there was when the Royals play the fucking or Cardinals. Yeah that I seventy war or whatever. So the Ku versus Missoo thing is insane and I don't give a shit about sports at all, but it goes

beyond just this friendly sports thing. Like I had this friend Libby, who is so obsessed with KU sports, Like I would ask for things like, Okay, if somebody said we'll give you a million dollars if you put a Miszoo Tigers a poster on your wall for a year, would you do it? Like fucking no, no way, it was like a one a million dollars, Yes, you would just take no. One completely serious, and

I believe she was serious. When we were getting on a plane from Vegas, to Kansas City and she had a Ku shirt on, and the flight attendant said, I'm like, oh, go Miszoo. You know it's like a little like jab like rival sports team. Right, We're sitting on a plane, an airplane very much post nine to eleven, that's probably like two thousand and seven, and she's loudly saying she's so mad that there's a Miszoo fan on the flight. She's like, fuck this, I hope this plane

goes down. I would help take this plane down if I could. I would die so that person can die. Like I like, as we're taxing, she's like, I want this plane to go down. I want everyone on this plane to die. And this is a pretty sane girl. No, actually no, this is not rare. This is not rare around there. There are whole stores that everything they sell is muck fazoo and all this

stuff. Like if it's fucking insane, like I've seen people like, Okay, when Miszoo was in town, people would be walking down mass Street like families with Miszoo shirt. Can we just say, can I just like fucking stop for a second say the word Missoo is maybe the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard, well Greg Miller that he went to Missoo. All right, well whatever, but is it in Missouri? Is it short from Missouri?

Yeah? Well Missoo called the college that's in Columbia, the University of Missouri. Okay, and so, like, if you're walking down Mass Street in Missoo clothes, like I've seen people Miszoo bad, they sell Miszoo baz. Can we start? That would be pretty good. You'll just approach a family like, fuck you, get the funk out of my steake, Get the fuck out of here. What the fuck do you think you're doing, Like causing trouble just for supporting a team, actually wanting to fight people, wanting

planes to go down. It's it's fucking insane. There's some of that that happens as a Northern California southern California thing. It's not the same. It's yeah, it's not the same because it's not. Yeah, it's not necessarily based on college sports, which is college sports seems like the most drunkenness and violent of them. Yeah. Whatever. There there was like the Dodgers, like the Giants, Dodgers stuff. There was that guy that got really fucked

up in la. I was very uncool. Uh but so like I went to University of Tennessee and you know, we have rivalries there and and like, I've been to stadiums where people through bodily fluids on you when you were walking through the tunnels and it's just shitty. It's not it's not like urine. But okay, like it's not. It's not ok either way. Yeah, hey, is that the slogan? It's not okay sterile? Like yeah, i'd prefer but you could drink it. But yeah, like it's not,

it's not, that's not. That's fucked up. I mean you hear in friendly sports rivalry stuff, and I used to do my shit. This will surprise no one that I hated college sports. So back in the day, like I would change my Facebook profile picture if Miszoo was in town playing Ku or the Tigers or whoever our fucking rival was. I would knew just enough to know what teams people and Lawrence hated, So I would change my fucking Facebook profile picture to the Miszoo Tigers and be like, hey go Miszoo.

And I did that until enough people were actually threatening to kick my ascid bars, like really being like like my friends of mine being I'm not fucking

kidding. If you don't take that down right now, I'm gonna beat the shit out you, like it is a super I mean, like you would hear, like Justin Calvert told me for years, and like Danny would probably say the same thing about like certain football matchups in England, they would effectively route traffic for the different fans for the fans of the two teams through completely different routes, so they just never even came to contact with each other because

otherwise it was just a recipe for like a brawl. Soccer violence makes sense though, hooligans plus boots, sports and rivalry. Yeah, no, all that shit just is the dumbest. Yes. I just remember every time k you would lose, there would be guys. There's one big game, I forgot what it was. Guys were throwing trash cans through a dorm windows. Every girl on the floor was crying, and when Roy Williams said he was leaving KU, just everyone was just destroy like just everyone's sobbing and screaming.

Guys are punching things and it's insane. Look, it's it's like college kids protesting political shit. It always happens around exam time, right like people, I'm kidding, but people you're in you're in college. Yeah, no, I'm every time for your newsletter, every sachem, trails, man, it's all connected, Tianeman Square, Arab Spring. Yeah. Man. People would turn on the red lights in here. You can see what we've written on

the balls for real and tie all these things together. Secret stuff. Brad's just given up miss the best news of the week pretty much the left for dead mud. That's just Jaden Smith's tweets. Chicago tag got real weird fucking a that stuff. That stuff is very good. You're right. That turned into a very depressing conversation, all right. Email from Andy. I used to work for a developer that won a game Spot award sometime in the early

two thousands. The award is a cutout of a tiny Greg to Savin giving a thumbs up. It used to face my desk and make me laugh every day. Where any of you around when this incredible award was conceived? Why and how did it end up a goofy Cassavan cut out. We thought it

would be fucking hilarious. There's one of me and there's one of the Greg you're right, those things are uh yeah, no, we I forget whose idea we had to We had to come up with new awards, like Game Center had bowling pins, and I always thought those were neat, but I think those were for Game of the Year awards. Those weren't. This was editor's choice. So anything that got a nine or above was one of these

kind of need to be able to make a lot of these. Couldn't it couldn't be too They made a lot of them, yeah, I know. And then Greg left and then I was gone. Not long after, they were still proudly displayed at a lot of game studios. When I was up at Bungee for Destiny stuff, there's a Greg in there. I think I'm in the two K lobby, at least I was last time I was there one Nevada. Yeah, like these are the loose site blocks that you see

in the last cases. Totally. Yeah, And we just didn't And it's us holding out a game box so that you know, whoever in marketing sent these things out would then go get a cut out of the game box, put it in there with the cut out of us or whatever, and send it off and they would get a little plaque at the bottom of it that the name of the game, and I just thought, like, you know, I forget how I talked Greg into this, or maybe marketing took it

over at some point, but I feel like I was probably involved in the conception of that dumb fucking idea. Yeah, I don't know. I just it was one of those things where just like, you know, the personalities of the site should matter at some point, right, like, let's let's focus on that a little bit. But yes, then they made them of Greg and he went to EA, and then I was obviously on my way less than a year after he left. So give you with cargo shorts,

yeah, wearing a black T shirt. I still have that exact T shirt. The T shirt was just a black shirt, and they had a sticker that had the Editor's Choice logo on it that they stucked. My shirts photos nice, all hundred percent reel, Yeah, exactly, all all terrific. And then they made our they photo shopped our hands bigger because they wanted it to, you know, look like it's wolding this game box out there, It's fucking coming at you. It's scary. Shit. I still have one

of those. I have one of each of them. I have a Greg and me and then what box art did you put on them? A roommate of mine, Uh, put printed out a pornography video and put it and just taped it to the front of it, a funny pornography video. Uh, they're all funny. Okay, it's not like a sign. No, this was pre the parody boom. So all right, so now you know, I guess, I don't know. That's that was my favorite dumb statue

for a long time. Like when you see those, you're like, man, some somem think I asked the wrong person how we should do these statues. They asked me a lot of wrong questions. For a good period of time there, the marketing came to me a fair amount, and there was a while there that I was like, man, it's really fun to come up with awful ideas. Maybe I should consider a career in marketing. And I guess a lot of people for a living. And then I was like,

no, no, that's that's all right. Let's do a few more of these emails. Mikey from West Australia wrote in and said, what the hell is a comforter? Is it a duno without a sheet around it. Do you know the d O O n A. A comforter is like a duvet with that that doesn't need a duvet cover. So you watch the whole thing comforter, goddamn blanket. You don't wash comforters if you've made mistakes. Yeah, that's true because because they're so thick that they're hard to try lumps

stuffing. Use a top sheet. Yeah, to use a top sheet and to get a get a duvet that has a cover on it. Then you just watched the cover. What's the duvet again? It's just get's like a comforter, but you put it in a little got a big down thing. I'm gonna go and tell you the duvet with no top sheet, that's some life changing shit. We had. We we had canvas, I don't know. We had an add on still entitled. They sent me some sheets, fancy sheets, fucking good stuff. We are we are not a no top

sheet household. Yeah, now after a lot of years of me not being that way, are you in? I'm in? Yeah? Also not tucked in at all? You know it's just loose. Yeah, yeah, you don't want to would be able to stick your leg out or something. I used to live a very tight in bed lifestyle of tucked in as possible, like short sheeting my own bed. You want to feel that comfort. Sometimes if the sheets are so tight that your feet can't stick straight up without your

toes like pressed down, that's fucked pressive sleep. Nobody wants that, like a cryo chamber. I used to think I wanted that, but then I evolved. I like the queen size bed with the king size duvet because then you get like you no matter how who steals the covers, there's still plenty of covers, and if you want to, you can totally kcoon up so you can like lay with the on either side, so you so you like

it's cold. That makes sense. Yeah, As as I said before we started recording, we are California King households, so we don't have no choices for bigger duvets. But that sounds great. California King is about the same size, right, but it's like longer but nothin wid Yeah, which by a little bit, which means that there are some nights where I wake up with my feet hanging off the bottom of that thing. See if I if I had a California King in my bedroom. It would touch two walls and

not the corner. M hm right, yeah. Uh. James, also from Australia, Brisbane in particular, says when music VR, are you off the grid or on the grid? In the grid? You are that? You are there? Yeah? Yeah, you're Jack, You're Jack, You're punched deck man, you've burning grid there? Yeah, you're in the computer. Yeah, cyberspace. It's maybe you've heard of it, most native interface between your brain and the computer, and we all use it to play varying

degrees of pong rip off. Pretty good. There's one that is just literally a ping pong table that I want to try. I've not tried it yet, but yeah, it's okay, all right, Henry and Minneapolis, this is a pretty good one. The moment you mentioned Pizza Expo, my ears perked up. When I was a kid, my dad was a salesman at a trade show design firm, and one of his big clients was the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, which every year had a booth at the Pizza Expo in

Las Vegas. One year from my birthday, he decided to bring me along with him and or where I got to experience the joy and miracle that is the Pizza Expo. The year that I went there, there were literally cement trucks filled with pizza sauce and dump trucks filled with cheese. What people were making insane pizzas that would be impossible to make its stores. Just to show

off their product. The booth we were there to set up had made a pizza that was constructed completely of cheese crust made from baked crunchy cheese, cheesey Alfredo sauce, et cetera, et cetera. If you ever get the opportunity, I highly recommend stopping to experience the heaven on Earth that is the International Pizza Expositions. Like my dream, it sounds incredible, it sounds I think it's in March. Yeah, we do something like that. Gotta find an

end I had. Look, all you have to do is call and tell them you're gonna send video cameras and they'll let you Hello, We're from CB. Yeah. Yeah, that's how that phone starts. Yeah exactly. I wasn't. I wasn't all that intrigued until the novelty pizza stuff came into the picture and then I'm like, oh, go see some experimental pizza development, having gone to several coffee trade shows where the people who are the best in the world that make the thing that they do will be there showing off for

their peers and competitors. Like, you want to go to a pizza trade show, fucky three, Just cancel that show and do full total wall to wall coverage. Let's cover it exactly like we cover E three. Let's do four hours of Yeah, all right, yeah you can get you get the Papa John to come by. No. Right before I went and did the Mario and Sonic quick look at John Bobby East. I went to go get some pizza and I thought I was just gonna get a moderate quick lunch.

And I was like, okay, I'll take a slice this, and you know, a nice size slice. And then as sides, they had this big bowl of like garlic knots things, and I'm like, oh, I'll take one of those. And then they advertise cal zones. And I never had a cal zone before. Yeah, It's like, oh, I'll take a cal zone too. Not knowing a cal it was like a pizza in half. And also they give you five of these garlic knots, so I had like eight pounds of pizza for like three dollars or something. Great.

That sounds great. It was, It was pretty great. Cal Zones are real good. Yeah they are. They're awesome. It's like a pizza folded in a half. It's really good. It's a lot. It's like a zone. But like if a person made it instead of a robot. What's a zone. It's pizza huts cal zoni ish like, do have products. It's a trademarked calzon. If you have, definitely you are you will be in some kind of zone. By the time you're done with a pizza. I'm zoned out, all right. Sounds are pretty good. I like pizza

hut, Yes, I like. I like a pizza hut, deep dish, supreme, thank you. There's no there's no pizza hut in my town anymore. So many people. That's where they that's where they built. That's where they built the little Caesars. That's a that's a ship. Trade heads great. Given him five bucks and walking out with a pizza immediately has a certain appeal. Yeah, sometimes you just need an emergency pizza. Yeahpa Murphy's around here. Yeah, I'm not a taken, big guy. I'm not

even there's too much work involved. Yea, if I'm gonna pays time, takes a long time to preheat, and fuck that. Man, If I'm getting a pizza, I don't. I'm not. If I wanted to make food, I would make food. Yeah, I wouldn't be entertaining the idea of ordering a pizza to begin with. Did you just say it's three dollars? They're really chea, they're taking bikes. You're not good. Look what

you They're fine? But like Papa Murfy exists so that your wife calls you on the way home from work, You'll you'll find out about this soon and she's like, hey, can you stop at Papa Murphy's and get some slop for the kids, and I'll turn on the ovens. It's ready when you get here, and you hit the door and you put that thing in because it's gonna explode if you leave it uncooked for too long. That's so like thirty minutes you have to wait or and a ready dude, Like even a

frozen pizza takes like minutes. It's not frozen, it's fresh, That's what I'm saying. Like a fresh pizza is gonna take less than next minutes, eight minutes. Maybe you're and you got this nothing, they're not frozen. I guess, yeah, I don't know. You should we ever decide I had to have kids, I don't know that slop would be. You don't know, I don't know. Eventually, okay, it's only a matter of telling me that I'll eventually break it down and then we'll just all be eating

garbage again. Road Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I guarantee he stops and get some bucket of fried chicken every once in a while now. And it's not recreational fried chicken. It's survival fried chicken. Yeah. No, I don't I don't know. It's it's good. Having kids is great. I encourage everyone to do that. Let's get on that right now, I really mean it. All right, let's get out of here. Then, Uh, let's do a couple of emails first before we go. Christian

writes in with an email entitled God of War scientology. The angry Yeah, the angry red and white smudge that is Crados has slaughtered many a deity. But what would a god of war games set in a modern religion be? Like? I would love to see Lord Zenu get his head ripped off Ron l Ron. Hubbard on a boat is like the second to last boss, and then Zeno and a volcano. Yeah, you're throwing in this just blood born, you're throwing or Dante's Inferno. Don't have nothing modern about that.

I think the space should be intentionally left blank, you know. I think it's thrown Hubbard into the volcano on the front of Dianetics, right, Tom, cruise Hubbard and you fucking pilot the boat and then there's a whole like youccumulated you have to take. Yeah, yeah, right, this is just going through killing all the old gods. It's just a Battlefield Earth game, right, okay, right, take for Whittaker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The character's name is tarl. I recommend watching that movie. Have you

seen it? Like, I've not seen it. It is Wow, I have not seen it. It's amazing. I've not seen it in it's in its entirety. You've seen that scene that's just Travolta speaking gibberish for like twelve minutes back and forth. Yeah, that's all that's you got the whole thing, Okay, it's just more of that. I just bought Batman and Robin on Blu Ray, and I'm really excited about watching stuff terrible. I've not seen that and good fifteen years or so. I'm pretty sure it's going to

seem even stupid. Or is that the one with the nipples? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that movie's real bad and the bad American Express Card or whatever. Even Clooney doesn't like that movie. Yeah, the ice skate Brother. Will you help me? Yeah? Will Smith, the shoemaker. Did you do your civic duty as a Will Smith and go see the New Independence Day? I have not seen he the only one that thought that's the man we need. He apparently turned it down. Well he was it conflicted with

suicide squad? Oh is the official word? Okay? Jaden Smith makes a cameo. Really what Independence Day? Independence? Yeah? Oh wow? Perfect? Ye. That tells you everything you need to know about whether you should go see it. You need to go see it because I imagine with a Twitter handle like at Will Smith, you probably know everything there is to know about it. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you I have gotten so little

Twitter business about this movie. I like a mute filter. Wow. Well, like like just to be clear when they were shooting men in black three in New York and he had that three story trailer. I heard about that ship every fucking day for a year. Yeah, nothing radio silence on Independence Day. Wow. Well, I mean he's not in it, so maybe maybe that maybe that's the only thing I get. Yeah, I'm sure you've discussed this at some point, but at any point has has his people tried

to contact you for that handle. So my friend Gary wrote a movie for Will Smith a few years ago. Oh right, and I was at Comic Con for work when they were doing the after Earth panel. So I met his Overbrook partners, his brother in law who's who's the producer on the film. And when I introduced myself, he started laughing so hard that he literally fell on the ground the first time. That's literally on the ground of the Omni Hotel in San Diego. As we're getting ready to walk over to the

convention center to do this panel. There is a man who shakes my hand. I introduced myself as Will Smith. There's a brief explanatory period, and then he is laughing so uncontrollably that he's rolling around on the Oh that's great because he was probably already where the Twitter account and that somebody else had it he maybe was aware of the Twitter account, like Gary introduced me as my friend Will Smith, yeah, or my other my friend other Will Smith or

something, and and he was just uncontrollably. Yeah, we never got to negotiations about the value of the Twitter account, and no one's asked you for that account. I'm at this point, I'm pretty you know what you're asking price b I'm not gonna put that information on the kidding. Yeah, does he does? He still not have one. He does not have a Twitter account. They're they finally cut down on the w one LLL's and all the people that use the ambiguity of the letter L and the Yeah, so that's

that's all solved. But now there's just the parody accounts that are ship bags. I mean, he would be at Big Willie Style, that's anyway. Yeah, or the freshest Yeah, the freshest bridge. I don't know. He was out there talking a whole bunch of shit about Wild wild West recently. Really finally yeah, no, he enough time has passed. Yeah, he very much came out and said like, yeah, that's the thing I did because I wanted to be the biggest movie star in the world. I

thought, because I thought it was a good movie. Yeah. He like he had a thing a couple of weeks ago where he was like, look, I don't I don't want to. I just want to make movies that are good, not proud of. Yeah, yeah that seems sensible. Yeah. It was actually like a I was gonna say, is this in the wake of like post Suicide Squad, I'm only gonna make good movies or is he actually trying to say that Suicide Squad is this is in the that movie

looks so interesting. Maybe people seem bullish on maybe thing. Look, if there's gonna be a DC movie this year, that's not dogs, Okay that one? Yeah? That out? Yes? Is that out this year? It's this Yeah, soon, it's like July. Okay, it's this month. Then all right, we're almost there. It's a good thing. We talked briefly about Transformers earlier. Now we're primed for a female from Taylor Good. Scrapper is the leader of the Constructor cons but when they combined into Devastator,

he's the right leg at Jeff help. Yeah, And that was before they really figured out what they wanted to do with their their combiners. Before the gestalts really were codified. Yeah, the leader always goes to cons was like one of the first. It was the first, and it was like it was a six piece. Yeah, it didn't follow the five character format. Yeah, the five character format helped them determine a leader very easily because

the fucking Torso was the bigger robot than the rest of them. Whoever was the torso in the head was the leader of the who was it in? The predicons don't just deeper knowledge than Yeah, I don't know that. I can't remember the name of any of them. I always had one of each of those sets. It was just the saddest way that we kind of fit them together in a weird way. Fucking ridiculous predic king, I don't. I don't know predic predic king the lion, either the tiger or the puma

because they were all like cats or something. Yeah, I can't I can't even remember. It was orange. There was one that was made out of like kind of emergency vehicles like protect the bots. That was an autobot, right y, Yeah, yeah, I believe it's all I got. There's the aerial botskay, Yeah, I think uh. The Dinobots was a missed opportunity. Well that was pre well with the constructions. You know, they

would often fight with Omega Supreme, which was just a single thing. No, metro Plex was the City a Mex spreame was the tank that turned into the dude with the tank tracks on his BA. Yeah, like wings, and then there was then there was Fortress Maximus, which was actually like two foot tall. That was like posts, I was crazy. Post Metroplex, they're like fuck it. Metroplex was the one that showed up in the end of that last not the cartoon Transformers game, but the last Cybertron game.

Right, Yeah, maybe because that was pretty good. Yeah, I have tripped to con the big the big Decepticon dinosaur and yeah, big robot Tyrannosaurus. Yeah, that's pretty good. I remember that thing. That's pretty good. It had battery power so it would walk. Wow, really did it actually do it? Or did it just kind of eat shit all the time. I just kind of go. I mean, if you were on a

flat surface, it was a okay, okay. Anything other than that could carpet, Yeah, carpet, okay, it would be generally okay on carpet, pretty good. Ipile carpet might trip it up. But I had the big metal airframe. What was it what was his name, the white jet oh sky Fire or fire one or the other. Yeah, yeah, he's Yeah, that thing was cool, but that thing wasn't originally Yeah, I

was going to transfer. That thing was like lifted from the Yeah, it felt like it one of the macross for robots because a lot of the original transformers were not part of a cohesive line in Japan. Really, it was all like, uh shit, I can't even remember the name of it now. But so it's like Vultron where the cartoons like Vultron, where they just took footage from a bunch of other cartoons, And I think I think jet Fire was kind of the one exception of like something that came from something else.

Eventually it all kind of codified that thing. That thing had a really aerodynamic look of like anime robots, not the angles of most transformers. So like that thing ended up not showing up in a lot of other stuff because of a licensing stuff. I think. Wow, I think. And then gobots where all types of fucking crazy gobots. Man, Yeah, what was like what was its optimist Prime's original name as a convoy, right, he

was an eighteen wheeler. Yeah, I have dark Convoy, which I bought when we were I didn't even know existed, and then we were over there for TGS or something. It was just like fucking black truck with a fucking anchor. I'm like, that's fucking gray black convoy. I eagerly await your mixtape. Two more emails and we will actually get out of here. This

one comes in from Riley. On the E three Live Show, Jeff talked about how he walked around while brushing his teeth and how falling forward with a toothbrush in his mouth was a real concern of his I have a relevant story. My wife's uncle went into his bathroom after his daughter had finished showering. I guess she had left a puddle of water on the floor because when he stepped in, he slipped forward and fell I first onto a wooden plunger handle.

He walked back into the lettering room, where his wife was sitting, hand covering his damaged eye socket. They rushed to the nearest hospital, but there was nothing the doctors could do. His eyeball was squashed. He now has a glass eye. Fuck. Why would you tell us this story? This is horrible. I don't write the emails. Give him mort paint or something that's gonna hurt so bad, probably wouldn't hurt that much after it's actually popped. The weirdest thing is that the end of the email says, I

have a bunch more eye stories from various members. If you want some more, I look, I'm not here every week, but I think it would be a great idea if you guys have a regular body horror, send in your eyeball questions and not send any Send him to at Will Smith on Twitter. It's easy to filter that. It's no problem spell all the words to get around as filters. Fuck are you verified? Fuck no? Right, then you don't have the quality filter, so you'll see everything you send him.

Why am I not verified? Dude? Can I get a job here for like a week so you guys on a check market? I could not. I could not believe a couple of months ago when the rest of us finally got verified, that they fucking lock up filtering options behind the verified on

Twitter. Dude. It's insane as a service, a service where the primary complaint is like, you can't block a bunch of the bullshit on the service, and they and they lock that functionality and the verific like behind a bunch of business ship was verified for a while, and the ship like the filtering options make Twitter really really good, right, let you get rid of the snaggs and all the problems that you have with Twitter and more to the point,

they make it feel like they are literally ushering you into like an exclusive club. When you like the first time you launch the apps kind of stuff you get you get this big splash screen where it's like your Twitter experience is about to get a lot better, and it's like, fucking where has this been for the last six years? Yeah. It will occasionally like I will now miss stuff like depending on the app I use, because some apps don't

like honor the like quality filter thing. I think it's is just the mobile app and maybe the website. Ye, like a lot of the other external clients and stuff. You'll see a lot of stuff. So occasional I'll look at that and go like, oh man, that's actually something I would have liked to have seen. It's fucked up. Can you turn that stuff off? Yeah? This is you can, but it's it's all or nothing, okay, you know, so you can see it all or you can see

there's not like a slider. You can say I want to see on my phone when I'm frequently like looking at it, when I'm not at work and not interested in hearing about work, it makes sense to have that thing turned on. Got it all? Right? Final email? Sure? From a meal? So would you rather would you rather be able to teleport or shape shift? Wait? Can you shape shift and and look like other people shape shifting? Like look like John Drake? Embarrassing ships could shape shift? Yeah,

you don't even have to look like person? Yeah, oh okay, it's like you could be a tiger. Are the rules like two one thousand things where it has to be like you know, I read the entirety of the email. Okay, I mean if it's just anything, then obviously I think Harry Potter rules apply. Right. You could be a cat. You could be a door knob. Oh, but it only lasts for like a few minutes, and Harry Potter, that's that's no good, no, no. If you have to worry about time or shape shifting, there's oh,

I guess you're right. And there's the drink stuff. Yeah, I was thinking about the poly juice potion. Yeah, I would probably go teleport. Why yeah, because it's a long drive home every night, and sometimes I want to go to other countries. What if you want to go to another country? You could shape shift into a thing? Could I shape shift into a fucking fast moving jet? That would work for am? I stuck on

the door? It is t two rules, no complex machinery or anything with Can a ship into like a basketball and then have someone like ship it to China like express? You know, the best shipping would be really boring. Fucking that's still a lot of time that sweat their basketball. It's not bothering. You don't have a brain. You would still have a brain, because

how would I shape shift out that I would fucking basketball? That'd be terrible, like a background process though you can come out of sleep mod when everyone no, no, I would probably. I think teleport would be far more useful. Could rob banks? Yeah, things that like, But you could shape shift into the boss of the bank. You still have to get you still have to get the money out of there. You still if you're the boss of the bank, you can walk around with big dollar sign bags and

no one's gonna ask you questions. MP has so many more like prank uses. You could do so much shit with shape shifting. Most of mine would be John Drake, but it would be great for a lot of purposes. You're just you're telling me that you want to be John Drake, which I think, oh I would a I agree, Yeah, but also that's really

haunting. Or let's say like there's some celebrity or something that's supposed to be on the Tonight Show or something, shape shift into him, get there before the real celebrity and go on, just do some super weird thing, like

some old Crispin Glover deal, and they'd be all over the news. Okay, if you were going to be a shape shifter, the actual right thing to do would be to start your own TMZ competitor and then take a bunch of fucking candid photos stuff of all of these people and get all these hot exclusives of you know, like, hey, here's some details, and I'm totally this guy that's really dark. That's that's like Biptanon using the time machine

to do gambling stuff. I'm Paul Giamatti here to tell you I love Heroin. And then like Paul Giamatti admits to Heroin dead no thinking, Paul prevenza. Uh and you know, just you kind of get those or yes, or you shape shift into people that are de ceased and then cause hijenks. Wow. That's before he passed away. He recorded this message for us. It's tupac vote Trump. Weird. Weird. I hear might bequeath all of my living possessions to Dan Record of San Francisco, California. Yeah, yeah,

thanks. I told you to teleport, man, I mean, yeah, that'd be sweet. Yeah. Why wouldn't you want to teleport? Like, look, there's three stairs to get up into the restaurant. Look, I don't have to climb up that shot. I'm just gonna teleport right to the top of those stairs. You get out of shape, real, QUI though, you just look Look, I guess if you can teleport. Yeah, if you can teleport, why do you need to be in shape? Could do whatever you want. And it's a good point. Yeah. And

I wouldn't teleport everywhere. I would teleport long distances or convene. Well, no, that's not true. Once you once you could do it, you'd be like, well, I have to go to the bathroom blank, and then I'm here, I am in the bathroom if you could teleport, would they have to draft new rules for like every majors, Like, as soon as one person on the planet can teleport, does the NFL and the NBA

and I have to like make new rules. You gotta keep that sht on the day I don't tell no. Yeah, if you, if you, if you like teleport, as soon as there's a closed room murder mystery, then who's knocking on your door? The five oh? I would love to actually like instead of teleport, like the ability to move at flash like speeds that are indistinguishable from teleporting, you know, so that you actually had to

cover that ground yourself a little bit. That would be helpful because then you would be moving so fast that you could rob a bank without being seen. I don't know, if I see the count you still cameras would be pretty good. You can still trip right to not just be a blur if I mean, if you trip, you get your up in faster than you Well, let's toss this in there. What about the freeze time ability? That's great grand robbing banks? Yeah, no, the's not on the table.

Awful things you could do if you could stop time in terms of just implanting memories and people's brains. I would wait till there's a big important business meeting at Sony, and then I would go take John Drake's finger and put it in his nose and unfreeze time. Okay, just do that over and over again. Stop stop there, like undress him and put him in the middle of the conference or something. You guys want to be John, Then get John Drake naked, all right, go on, switch Drake in boys' clothes.

That would be funny. That would be funny. Yeah, yeah, here you go here you like, suspend, suspend the can of paint upside down over his head and then unfree time. Like come on, man o, man, I think creatively. If you have teleport, you could be it's like ultimate weapon too, because you're just like I'm going to teleport my hand into your chest and then your chest would explode but kill people. But if you but I will say, it's almost could you telefrag people? That

actually? Okay? All right, yeah, yeah, askay, you're fine, all right, it's the telefraggy that has the problem. Not right, that's a good point. I'm in. I'm double in on teleport because I could get home fast. That'd be great. Yeah, just move closer. Do you think you have to do the little jumps you have to do? Like jump it's SCEs really fucking expensive, man, Yes, you can't rob

enough banks to before it. I think I think shape shifting is so good that you have to say that you would be able to teleport anywhere in the world instantly. Yeah, what about to balance it out? Yeah, otherwise it would be a no brainer. What if do you but can you tell, like, can you tell that the landing zone is going to be clear? Could you accidentally telefrag? People say you can it's safely teleport anywhere in the cold instantly, because I wouldn't want to have innocent by Sanders killed.

Just people who deserve him, right, bad people. There's somebody who's lived across the countr from their family for well over a decade. I would easily go with teleport switched to shape shifter. You don't have to tell your family that you can telephone. I don't know. Oh man, all right, hey, why why don't you come home work? Well, it's really it's like six hours of the airplane. It's really expensive here, asshole, what's

wrong with you? Like, I'm busy It's just like I have to eat a lot of a lot of It takes a lot of I do a lot of food afterwards, burns a lot of calories. Hummus is all that makes it work. I'm like, hummus, all right, I'd be a fucking horrible, fucking like price to pay. Like you can teleport anywhere, but it's fueled by hummus. Must the best man we're talking about. I like hummus just makes me real gass good. Thanks, super super useful informations.

No anyway, all right, that's it. I can't do any more emails after that. BombCast and giant bomb dot com. Thanks for being here, Will Smith, thank you for having me. This was fun. Yeah, that's life these days. You should check out the Food Show if you have a VR headset. We updated a couple of weeks ago, and the Jankie arm animation is significantly better now, so we use I don't know why you

would actually want to fix any of that machine. I mean I do know why, but we trained algorithms to learn how human bodies actually move, and now we can strain based on that, and they look pretty good. I really enjoyed the charm of the look insane body movements in that thing. If you take the headset off, you still melt into the floor. Okay, all right, so we got that. As long as that's in, there's

still lots of room for jank in there. Great, Like when we do in the future, we were going to do things that will break it in new exciting ways. So yeah, there's always the chance that's going to fly off the rails next one. Great, great, but more stuff coming in the not too two distant future. Yeah, cool, cool, as far as this place goes. Jason's out all week, right, yep, but Drew's back tomorrow. We'll be back tomorrow so we can at least try to

cobble some form of production stuff together. What are you guys doing? Those guys are gone, Just kind of sit around and we'll answer emails all day day. It's podcast for me, but for it's back tomorrow, so okay, let's never let this happen again. All right. I learned how to use most of the gear, but not that's true. Moved, that's true, Jeff. Jeff did handled a good bit of that last year during the production apocalypse or whatever. Yea, all right, thanks for being here.

I thank you as we said, Uh, We're gonna get the heck out of here. We'll be back next week with a regularly scheduled edition of the Giant Bodcast