Mohrta, Sonic Rumble, Goodnight Universe

Hello friends, welcome to episode 253 of the No Clip Podcast. It's a crew cast, the whole crew is finally back together. Jeremy Jane, welcome back to video games. How have you been doing? I've been great. I have been away, but I have not been away from video games. I've been doing many other non-video game related activities, but I have also been gaming for my life.

For his life. He's trying to survive in the world and games are the fuel he needs. Frank, what's the fuel you need? Japanese women's wrestling and Red Bull and... Uh, I guess the sun, uh, is good. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like a three-stroke engine. You need to get all three of those together in the amount, in the proper amount, and, uh, and you're good to go. I love it. That's great. Jesse, what could you live without?

What can I live without? Oh, I could live without snow because it's snowing up here and there's too much of it. I don't like shoveling. It's not great. Are you meant to be living in Canada? It feels like snow. How do you feel about it? I didn't pick this. Maple syrup. I just showed up here, man. Yeah. Everything else about Canada is great. Most things. Everything else. Everything.

Put me on record as saying every other thing about this country is great. Problematic. Don't look in the past. No, no, no. Exactly. Yeah. In the past. Yeah, exactly. We just save time right now and assume nothing happened in the past. Bye. We're not here. here to talk about the past. We're going to talk about the future of video games. Some of the best games that are out there. We have a shed load, a metric shed load of incredible indie nonsense to talk about. And also...

Some branded nonsense to talk about. We're going to be covering everything from Morta and Hypogeia to Sonic Rumble and Simpsons Fortnite. And, you know, maybe if we're lucky, I'll get some AI shilling in there as well. Oh, brother, not again. I was gonna I was actually I had this plan this is typical daddy doesn't have enough time to do the fun ideas he comes up with um I did have a plan to like just start this podcast with like a text-to-speech thing and say that I was being

replaced. Did you guys have an AI discussion without me? Because frankly, I'm no, no, no. You were honest. Well, my nameplate was on the video version. You were there. God damn it. There's some fantastic comments on the YouTube. a video saying, can't believe Jeremy's really going to bat for this voiceover stuff. I need the Danny nameplate this episode, and I'm going to drop some fucking, I'm going to say some shit on this episode. You can say whatever you want.

Start being, start, yeah. Do your worst to Irish history. Knock yourself out, my friend. Yeah. We have a lot of stuff to talk about. Do you guys want to, have you played any, let's, I kind of want, I've played like 24 hours of our creators between the two podcasts. So I just want to like quickly.

I guess, round up my thoughts on it at this stage. Jesse, you've played a bunch as well, right, this week? I have, yeah, yeah. I haven't played too much since we talked last, but I've played a lot. Oh, you haven't? Okay, okay. I'll do it later on then. We've got a bunch of other stuff to talk about. But first of all, a massive thanks to all of our incredible patrons over at patreon.com slash noclip and patreon.com slash noclip2. We have a bunch of cool noclip2 stuff.

hitting Patreon this week and, well, yeah, by the time this is up, or maybe a couple of days later, we have a Demon School preview going up and we have a load of extra bonus bits and bobs from that, which should be pretty cool. Cool. And then our Disco Elysium doc is releasing a very, very, very, very, very, very, very soon. I think the teaser should be up on Monday. It'll be up in early access for patrons over on Noclip. A full week ahead of its public launch.

And then we're going to have weeks and weeks and weeks of Disco Elysium stuff to go out to. And I hope you enjoy them. There's a whole bunch of them. It's been a lot of work putting it together. Loads of the crew have been chipping in on it. So, yeah.

We're excited to finally get that stuff out there. It's been a long road, and we wanted to make sure we stuck the landing, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. And a massive thanks to all of our Battle Pass holders, of course. Of course. Lovebreed. Yut.

Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passatieri, It's-a-me, Ferrario, Senator Armstrong, Reed Reg, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, James Brown, Mark Rojas, quote, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Goddison, Sven Hooster. John Akers, Ewan Nate, Tim Robinson, Forrest Pruitt, Dark Insanities, Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Fatui, Enox, Grizzly Mug, Cameron Laird, Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher, George Sakotis, Jacob Godserve, Entheagen, James Med, Tohir Tilyev, and Rycin. Thank you all so much for... For your support, your incredible support. And I love reading out your beautiful names. Jesse, I thought you were dabbing on ricin, but I think you were sneezing. I was, yeah. I even missed God Serve. I'm such a failure. You did. I wasn't going to say it. But you did. You've got to go to confession now. Miss serving God. Unbelievable.

Okay, let's talk about some cool indie shit. Jeremy, you want to start with Hypogea? How much have you played of Hypogea? What do you think of Hypogea? Hypogea. What are we saying?

I don't know. This could be a Bellatro, Bellatro, tomato, tomato situation. I'm saying hypogea, and I'm saying with confidence. It's a trap. Thank you, Admiral Ackbar. it Hypergea is is fucking fantastic I have not played I've been kind of like chunking it up I've had two sort of short sessions that I've both really enjoyed because I think the game is only like two to four hours I think you're right I think it's like yeah yeah two to three is what I heard but yeah two to four let's say

This is a game that I would normally just sit down and binge eat and then I would be sad it was over. So I'm trying to savor the flavor. But this is an atmospheric platformer is what I would call this. I feel like there's sort of, you know, there's like puzzle platformers. There's precision platformers.

one's all about just like the fucking you're in like a weird junk sort of like rusty post like post dystopian like broken down robot kind of environment like megastructure I guess yeah it does have a bit of that like Lauren's lore megastructure feel to it too um this is in the megastructure genre uh but

this is so you're a sort of like decaying robot that gets laying in a junk pile that gets its hands on a battery and springs to life and you're sort of traversing through this sort of very sparse very and when I say sparse that's like not only sparse in terms of There's not a lot there because it's very decayed, but also this is a very like quiet sort of passive storytelling game. It's a lot about just like immersing yourself in this weird megastructure space.

But the atmosphere is fantastic. But the platforming is also really fucking good. Like it's this. How do you even explain it? You're a robot with a pole. And you're sort of like pole vaulting. You're using a pole to like. pole vault you can climb up on the pole to get extra height you can reach out with the pole to grab onto ledges and stuff um and yeah similarly to a very different game than oo but similarly to oo i was surprised like

You know, the pole vault thing at first, you're like, oh, that's like a cool novel mechanic. But they get a lot of fucking mileage out of it. Like it's involved in the puzzles. It's involved in the platforming. Yeah, I've played maybe... I don't know, maybe an hour or 45 minutes of it. And yeah, I was surprised by not just how much they get out of it, but also the game. I feel like this game could have been twice as long and it would be like a lesser game for it because.

I like how, like, they are constantly introducing new stuff. Like, you know, I'm at the stage now where it's like I'm using the pole vault because you can use the pole vault. to like stand on it to jump higher or you can like chain stuff so you can you can use the pole vault and then jump at the end of the pole vault you know once you're at the top of it of the arc and then stretch to like grab something but then

That grab could be for a link on the wall. It could be the top of the wall that you're just trying to get to. It might be you landing on the ground and rolling through it to keep your pace up, which just kind of looks nice. And then there's also the chains that you can use. And there's a decent amount of puzzle stuff as well. It's like pretty low, you know, friction, but it's interesting stuff, I think.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It feels like this game is is much more I when you get into a platformer, there's always a question of like, is this sort of like a like a mechanically driven platformer? Or is this, you know? sort of like, am I here for the narrative in the world? And I feel like this game is so much just about being in the world, but I have really enjoyed just like...

Moving around is so fun that I don't even really care that the puzzles are kind of simple. Like the puzzles feel like they're there to give you something to do as an excuse to enjoy the mobility and like the feel of the controller. I feel like the core of this game. excuse me i'm choking up with excitement the uh the core of this game beyond the atmosphere is just that like this character controller is fucking like so good like this game just feels really good to move in um

There's also, when you land and do the roll that you mentioned, like the parkour roll, you can do an exit jump out of the parkour roll, too. That's like a little extra. So, yeah, I feel like when I'm done with this game, I'm going to... want to like like I wish there was like mod tools I want like challenge courses for this guy yeah I was playing it thinking like oh man I wish like

I wish I could play like old Tomb Raider games, but with this control scheme. Yeah. Because it's very like reactive. Like, you know, if you, it's also like very, I feel like it's, it's quite.

considerate to the player like you know if you're if you're just shy of something i feel like i'm grabbing it you know you're reaching out with your stick to grab stuff which is quite cool and then you're also um you know when you're chaining stuff together you feel like a badass like 20 minutes into this you're doing stuff that feels quite like the first time you do anything in this game it feels tricky and the second time it feels really good and you know it's just that whole thing of like

keeping momentum I'm trying to think of like a game that this reminds me I guess like a mirror's edge kind of to a certain degree and there's definitely also the fear of falling and the you know the checkpoints are very can you know I think fair as well I think they

pretty much spit you back out where you fell in as you're running around. But I also liked, I think the story stuff between you and the other robot that you're sort of with is really smart. It's very sort of... eco or last guardian sort of soft touch but a very you know that they're communicating a lot with a little with those yeah those folks yeah the character design and the

the lack of like a lot of heavy handed storytelling. I feel like it allows you to fill in the space. Like I feel, I feel more empathy for these characters who say nothing than I would if they were like, Oh, I'm, I'm, are you down here too? Like I'm a dead robot too. Like that would turn me. off uh of the game but for some reason it's just like i don't know it's sort of this like quiet desperation they share that engenders this feeling of like intimacy

Yes, I feel more empathy for them than I do the quest givers and arc writers, which, as it turns out, Jesse was right. I think the voiceover at the start isn't as bad because they don't like you. But the minute they start empathizing with you and arc writers... creators, it was like, oh no, this is like, they're like, thank you for finding my mother's diary. I will put this on. I was like, oh no, this is. Make sure you go to the fourth level. That's where I have all the items that you can get.

I'm like, oh my God. That was so good. Why was that so good? That was really good. Yeah, it was me actually. I'm the AI. I ripped my face off. I'm a robot underneath. I'm calling it now. Five, 10 years from now, we're going to cycle back around. We're real voice actors doing impressions of AI voice actors.

cadence from this era before the AI voice acting is perfect, that will be like a vintage niche. It'll be like doing a fake CRT effect, but for voices. It'll be like, well, it reminds me of the good old days. It's the Brian Eno thing where as soon as you like move beyond. the limitations of a medium people like fetishize them as like vintage it's the 2030 dither core that we're going to be enjoying um yeah that's wild uh yeah yeah yeah i i

And I don't want to spoil anything, but obviously, like, there are, I think there are some really great moments with character in it so far. Yeah, it's cool. Do you got any more, any other thoughts on Hypergear? The guys have any questions? Have you played Jesse? I feel like you probably played...

demo yeah I played a demo for this yeah a long time ago really you could just say a game name at this point I probably did a demo for it at some point it's it's really I really like the movement mechanics I think you guys nailed that the earlier section or at least in the demo I don't know if it's changed let me know if it has you're in this like watery area with a bunch of separate platforms you kind of have to move between them. That felt like the tutorial. Is that still the case?

I think it sounds familiar. You're sort of always in a watery area. Yeah, but it's like a basin and you're learning how to get up, whatever, it doesn't matter. But I remember doing that and I really felt like the controls, I had a lot of control in the movement more than any other platformer. really that I've played.

in the last maybe like 10 years, you have a lot of time to like consider what you're going to do before you do it. But also there's a lot of tension in the way that you get between areas. Like I felt, especially in some of the later areas where you're like moving on big pipes and it's just an abyss below.

you like this tension that I haven't felt in movement in a while. Like I would slip almost like the physics system was sort of failing me and I'd start to fall off of something. And I was like, no, no, no. But it was, it was like a fun. fun sort of stress in the same way that Ark Raiders... Can we just talk about Ark Raiders instead? In a sec. I wouldn't... I don't know. I didn't feel like I was falling off the stuff, which is pretty good. And also, like...

It spits you back out pretty quick, which I think is quite nice of it. So that's good. But there's nothing about a pole vault where like, because you have to stick the stick in front of you. So there's this tension between like when you're running up to the edge of something, you don't want to like do it too late, I guess. I don't think you really could. I think you'd have to run off and press the button after you ran.

off or something but there's definitely a tension with the am i going to make this like that's kind of yeah exactly yeah then the thing yeah which is which is pretty cool yeah it's great and yeah yeah it's got physics cool like even how the chain works is like Kind of, you know, reminds me of the tech demo stuff Jeremy was showing us years ago when you were just fudging around with cool tech and stuff. Ropes are fucking, rope physics is fun.

Yeah, no, I went to there's a huge chain, like maybe an hour into the game or something where it's like the longest chain I had ever seen. And before moving like this, this is a game where I feel like I'm, again, just like savoring it because normally I just be like, all right, you know, you hop from the chain to the chain. I went to the end of the chain and just.

started swinging to see how much momentum I could build up on this like fucking 400 foot chain um yeah I don't know it's just a very fun reactive game uh Danny did you ever play pseudo regalia I feel like if you like this you would like that I did a bit after You did a video of it on what was then Noclip 2, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, but I didn't play enough. I think I like...

downloaded it, booted it up, played 10 minutes, and then was like, okay, I'll get back to that, and I never did. I think I was like, oh, this will be good in the Steam Deck, and then stopped, so. Got distracted by the big goat ass, and you were like, I can't do this anymore. I have to go. Yeah, Pseudor Regalia is very different, and it's, like structure and format but um but in terms of like hyper precise satisfying movement mechanics this reminds me of it nice

Hi, Pigeia, it's available. I think it's $10 usually. It's available now for a little bit less. 25% up, actually. $7.49 until November 16th. That's a pretty decent opening. Sale for them and developer Charlie Wagner fair play. Yeah, really cool game and should be interesting to Talk about it when our game of the year stuff goes together. We are working hard at that

putting down the various types of games that we like and trying to come up with a Noclip 2 Game of the Year extravaganza. Even though the four of us have sometimes similar, but also often different tastes.

Speaking of which, let's head over to the Howleyverse here, and I'm going to let you pick from the three of these. Which one do you want to talk about the most? Sonic Rumble. Is it bad? They made a new Sonic All game, right? I like it. So if anyone says it's bad, play it. It's good. It's Sonic Fall, guys. It's free to play. So anyone can play. You can play on your phone. You can play on your...

But here's the thing. If you play on your PC with an Xbox controller, you're going to be the top 4% of the lobby because most people are playing on their phone. So if you're playing on an Xbox controller, you are crushing it. It's awesome. So, yeah.

rumble is a free to play fall guys game uh that came out like a few days ago oh it's free yeah it's free and uh and um so i've just been playing it with friends and it's so it's like that dumb funny like no one expected this game it's literally you boot up and it's like oh this is fall guys this is fall every mode in the game is fall like map mission whatever so it's so funny just blatantly playing like a fall guys clone but like

it's it's it's like every it's like playing like mario party with friends so it's really funny but again the fact that it's just like online there doesn't seem to really be a strong profanity filter for the usernames so it's genuinely so funny playing this game and people insane names. What's the worst name you've seen?

My friend uses the you'd name come guy, but that's a good one to be fair The top of the leaderboard it shows so it's like it's like congratulations come giant fought like i haven't someone else is like big booty latina and it's just like you're seeing all these little sonic characters and they all have vulgar names on top cream the rabbit like what the fuck are you out about sega what has happened so it's like it's this kind of thing where

like no one cares about it but it's like oh this is awesome this is so so like all my friends and i are playing and conquering the leaderboards it's it's billed primarily as a mobile game so it's got the like you like Even the UI, you play it on a monitor, it looks insane because the shop thing is like 60% of the window.

uh there's like four different like battle passes you can get again it's free to play it so you can log in every day it does the thing where it has a thing called a ring limit so When you're playing Sonic, you collect rings and you spend rings. That's how you get like different characters. You can only get like a certain amount of rings in a day. So my friends and I will play and after an hour, it's like, oh, we've like they won't give us any more XP. So let's just go back tomorrow.

and so like but yeah like you can spend money to get rid of the ring limit like the traditional mobile game practice but it's like no we'll just come back tomorrow um but it's awesome and so uh yeah i haven't spent any money on the game and i already have a cheerleader rouge the bat skin That amusing. Yeah. What's the most obscure character you can be?

God, I mean, like there's not Croc, but there's like an alligator from the Sonic. I think that's it. Yeah. How the fuck do I know that? Why do I know that? You should play Sonic Rumble. It's. Yeah, like Amy's in here. Eggman's in here. Metal Sonic. Oh, they have the movie version. So it's like movie Sonic, movie Shadow, movie Knuckles, things like that. Is Jim Carrey in this game? Oh, man.

I don't know if there was like a movie Eggman. I don't think so, but again, I haven't like combed. His Bagel Man or whatever he's called. Bagel Man? Yeah. Have you not seen the movie, Frank? The guy who runs the Dr. Robotnik's bean machine.

Okay, I assume Jesse and Jeremy have not seen it because they don't have kids. Frank, how are you? Sonic... aficionado how have you not seen the movies it was billed as like a kids movie and I have no interest in seeing it but the third one I think takes place in Tokyo so I'm like I might generally just watch the third one on Tokyo there's a fucking scene in Tokyo in the second one that has a chow garden

restaurant. Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah. Check it out. Can we watch all three of them for patron movie pods? Don't make me watch them again. The third one's not out yet, right? Amy's in the third one. Can we watch at least the first one? Isn't that the Knuckles one? Oh, the fourth one then? Yeah. Yeah, Idris Elba is Knuckles. Yeah, of course he is. It's a lot. It's a lot. I have seen the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie, by the way. And the second movie, I think about it.

Oh, Ben Schwartz is Sonic. I want to see this. I like Ben Schwartz. Jim Carrey is Dr. Bonick, and he is absolutely deranged in it. Yeah, it is. That dance scene. where they play chemical. I was in the cinema when that happened and that was just like a fever dream. If you Google Sonic movie, the first Google suggestion for people also ask is, is there any LGBTQ stuff in Sonic three?

I want to know, are they asking because they care about being represented, or are they asking because they're like, keep woke out of my Sonic. Oh, you know it's the latter. Who is an anti-woke Sonic fan? Like, in the year of our Lord, 2025, there are definitely more people who are, there's definitely more furry Sonic fans than there is. We should have them fight. Sonic is beloved across the spectrum, I guess. Exactly.

Absolutely. Man. What's the most expensive thing you can buy in the shop? Just off the top of your head, can you remember any? Like no, I I haven't like again. I'm afraid to look at the things I've I'm afraid I want there'll be something that I wanted to buy Is it gotcha pon style or do you just buy the skins? So there is it's like rotate like fortnight item shop like there was a rouge the back

thing I wanted but I didn't have enough rings but I didn't want to spend money to get rid of the ring limit that's how they're trying to get me but um so like they'll swap out every day but um yeah it's got it's got the thing where like completing missions you'll get like shards of a character so like oh you got like 20 out of 200

sailor sonic shards so if you collect enough like so it's so you so my everyone and my friends were all just unlocking random characters like um so that's what makes it really fun again like yeah just the fact that it's just a it's just a fall guys clone but it's all these very specific like fan service sonic characters and outfits and and and then everyone's got insane names like master chief on xbox like stuff like it's just like so it's just like a lot of like mario

yeah yeah yeah it's it's stuff like that so it's just like it's funny it's free and the fact that it's free and like i don't know i'm sure it's like very small file size but like it's always fun having a game like this where like you can invite people to jump on and just play and like there's no cost there's no time like but then people are always surprised like oh this is actually fun yeah let's play this let's play this um so yeah sonic rumble again

Free to play game. You cap out of XP after an hour. But if you have a group of friends, it's truly fun. Just like. download it, play, mess around, type whatever you want into the player name. I think you can change it anytime. I don't know if there's a cool down on it, but, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm banned from Sega servers and come as taken for anyone who's. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, uh, it does.

have the worst friends uh thing like it's a 32 character friend id you have to send it's so bad it's so so yeah so if you know if anyone wants to play with me my friend id is facd28 C33F9D7688999D3BD5FBAE5C763. That's your name for the rest of this episode on YouTube. It doesn't say Frank Kelly anymore. It just says that. that's amazing yeah so so again it's like i yeah so again what's funny is like

No, it makes sense. Because Sega's been showing off Sonic Racing Crossroads, which is really good. This is the sleeper hit. They should have been showing this at Summer Games Fest and more. So I'm a big Sonic Rumble fan. I think it's good. I love how we spent that entire time just mentioning in no particular order all of the bad things about this game and finishing with it's great every single time. I love it.

I love it. That's the Frank Haley juice that we're all here for. There's a great reviews on Steam. I've been reading through them for fun here. Almost all of them, positive or negative, mention Fall Guys.

My favorite one here is simply one that was done by somebody called Shu. After 3.2 hours, they gave it a negative review and just simply said, no. my favorite steam review is a negative review review i'll skip the opening text but the this is the the meat of it here uh and personally as someone who's a big fan of sonic i don't feel that fast i kind of feel slow which is Excurtiating review of Sonic Roads. Oh, man. Keep your personal life out of the review, man. Keep politics out of your reviews.

Great stuff. Thank you, Frank. We'll be back to you for some Simpsons Fortnite in just a little bit.

Jesse Garasha, let's spin over to you. Good night, universe. You know, you've always been somebody that I respected. Okay. I don't know what happened. You might say. Sure. But your infatuation with only playing games where you play as a baby is getting a little bit weird. I'll be honest. What was the other baby game that I played? Messiah. I'm trying to think of random baby games. You've definitely not played. Tiny Toons for Super Nintendo. Baby Games. Yoshi's Island. Sonic Rumble.

What did you say, Jeremy? What was your one? Tiny Toons for the Super Nintendo. Tiny Toons. You're not playing a baby. Wasn't there a game where you're a baby? Chuck Rock. There's an old Amiga game called Chuck Rock where you play as a prehistoric baby. I think that might have been on Genesis too.

Tiny Toons are babies. They're young. They're baby versions of Toons and Looney Tunes. Yeah. Oh, I was thinking of the what? Yeah, they're rabbits, aren't they? Yeah, but they're baby rabbits. I mean, when I say baby, I imply human. I'm not, you know. Okay. See, I don't discriminate against baby animals. I see them as babies. That's fair enough. Jesse, tell us about your love of six-month-old babies, I guess.

And weird control schemes. Set me up normal next time. Yeah, Good Night Universe is a very good time universe. I'm not done it yet. I'm about halfway through. I have not felt... quite inclined towards playing a video game where you play as a baby for, if you follow me on Blue Sky, obvious reasons. I'm going to be a dad this year. Well, next year. Yay! Congratulations, Jesse. Thank you.

Wife's pregnant. She's four months along. So. Yeah. April next year. Love it. Baby coming on the way. We don't know if we're having a boy or girl yet, but we're going to find out next week and then we're going to pick names and fight for the next six months. It has to be a sonic name.

It has to be Cream. I was thinking Rouge. Rouge the Bat. I thought would be good. Rouge the Bat. The Bat is the middle name. Yeah, of course. As it always is. I can't suggest this as a patron-only podcast, but I'm glad Jeremy did. So, you know. Oh, the Sonic movies, yeah.

Naming. No, I'm saying naming your child. Oh, sure. I suggested Jesse underscore two, but it's not going to stick. And if we get the noclip patron to a certain threshold that's to be decided, we'll name Jesse's child. All right, you guys can pick the middle name if we get. Get to $20,000. All right, patrons get to pick the name. Pick the cat.

I get most of the dollars, though. Okay, the video game. Good Night Universe. I talked about the demo for this a little while ago. It's another one of those. It's a first-person game where you use the webcam to play the video game from the team that... made before your eyes. A game with similar control scheme. Their new studio is called Nice Dream. It's published by Skybound Games. Yeah, you play as Isaac, six-month-old baby, and you wake up one day with...

abilities. Now, that is not a spoiler. That is the setup for the game. You have psychic powers. It's in the description. You can't buy it without knowing that. I guess if you just ignored everything, you could. Yeah, a little bit. Sure, if you want to be Jack-Jack related, why not?

And the whole thing is told from the first person perspective of the baby, but the baby is narrated or its thoughts are narrated anyway by Lewis Pullman, the actor, son of Bill Pullman, I believe, or grandson of Bill Pullman. Bo Bridges is also in this game for some reason. He plays the old man. There's an old man character. Grandpa. And what you're doing for most of the game is you're just playing through this linear narrative that's presented.

from the perspective of the baby. So the family drama that takes place around you, you get to observe that from their perspective. You can control the camera with the mouse and look around environments, but you have a limited range that you can look because you are a baby and you don't have a lot of control.

roll over your body. And you look at things and the character narrates them and you make choices. There'll be little floating words in the sky and you look at them and then eventually, if you look at them long enough, a voice line plays out and you make a choice and things go from there. The innovative...

thing here, the control gimmick of the webcam is you can blink and interact with the game. Now, this is similar to Before Your Eyes, but it's a lot more like a controller and a lot less like an artistic interaction with... The world like in before your eyes blinking was something you were like, it was almost like you were a participant in the game. You were sort of.

trying to not blink. That was almost what made it interesting. Here it's like blinking is how you click on things almost. Like your character has this ability to... It's, you know, make a TV channel change. It's one of the things you can do in certain points. Like it's all contextualized. Like you get a list of chores, do these things or like whatever, stuff like that. There's other things you could do that I won't say because they're cool if you see them on their own. But the one thing.

that I really appreciated from this is like the dynamic of the family. It starts off very straightforward and then eventually the narrative goes in directions that I think, I think you can kind of see coming. from the setup, they, they mentioned things we were not supposed to mention in the, in any reviews or anything just to maintain the secret. And I will, cause I think it's a really cool surprise. Um,

But this stuff is all really, really well done. I think I really like the story and the direction that it goes. Again, it's a little obvious, but I think the way that they do the... family setup stuff. And this is likely unfair because I have a baby on the way and I have a lot of these fears. There are moments where you can look at characters and close your eyes and you can hear their thoughts.

And one of the first ones that you hear is the father character. This was in the demo for the game. And I don't know, I think for me and everything that I have. That I'm worried about, that I'm like excited about and scared about and like everything. I feel like it's not a particularly, I don't know, uncommon way to feel when you have a kid on the way. But I just hearing it.

repeated back to me was like such a shock it's like every fear and every exciting thought i've had was encapsulated in this character and said back to me in the way that my brain it was so surreal uh and you hear a lot of these different things with different characters but that one obviously out to me uh in particular but the rest of them are all really really good and i think the performances are great from all the characters i think everyone's doing a great job all the actors um

it's very linear. This game also is like, it's very straightforward. There are moments where you don't have to do what it's asking of you. Cause I mean, you're a baby and you can be rebellious if you want, but then there'll be like, all right, do it, do it now. You know what I mean?

Any idea how long it is? It's about four hours, three to four hours. I'm a little over halfway there. Probably about as long as you'd want to be playing a wet game with your face. Yeah, exactly. Is it tiring to do it? That is the thing I was going to say is I think more than before your eyes, this is like.

It feels like it's doing a little too much with the gimmick. It does get a little exhausting, I think, at points, especially near the end, I've heard. I haven't gotten there yet, but I've heard there's a point near the end where it gets a little... A little tiring, but even at this point, I'm like fighting. You got to like fucking pull your ears out and stuff. Yeah, exactly. You got to throw rattles as fast as you can. Yeah. Yeah. But there are moments where I'm like.

Okay, let's get over this. Like, there's a section where you're doing a, I don't want to say what this particular thing is, but you're doing something with your sister character, and she's having you repeat an action a couple of times.

And it like after the first time I was like, that's a cute thing. Second time I was like, okay, I get it. Third time I was like, all right, let's move on. There's been a couple of those. They didn't include them in the demo. They just kind of skipped over them, which I thought was probably a smart thing to do.

But yeah, there are moments where I'm like, OK, this is dragging a little bit, which is not a great feeling to have about a game that's only four hours long. But I do think when it hits its highs again.

a perfectly biased situation for me right now is probably the worst person to be talking about this if I want to be unbiased about it. But I think just, yeah, no objective game reviews. No, of course. That's cool. It's cool that it's doing that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's touching on things that, you know.

That speak to me. So it's been a lot of fun to play. I'm sure babies who play this game are probably going to be like, whoa, finally a game. The baby demo is hitting on this one. It's nice. I feel represented on the screen. Goo goo ga ga, you know? It's only 20 bucks, 10% off again until like mid-November. I guess we are a week into November. We're like almost two weeks in November, so maybe I'm over-egging the pudding on how long these deals are.

But yeah, so are you feeling you're enjoying it or you're enjoying it with an asterisk? No, no, I'm feeling great about it. I really like it. I think the parts of it that, again, it's four hours long, like worst case scenario, I'm doing something that's not enjoyable or not like...

supremely artistically enjoyable for like 5-10 minutes. How many video games have I played where I'm not having fun for hours? So it's not a huge problem or anything. It's just like this... piece of art that I'm playing works so much better when it's straightforward when it does these things where it's like it feels like I'm playing a video game it reminds me that I'm playing like a capital V capital G video game it's not working as well

in its own favor. The linear narrative story stuff is really good though. I think the performances are great. And also I wanted to mention, I was curious about this because the Isaac, the baby character that you're playing as when they go to talk, they make like baby babbling noises. And I was like, is this.

This has to be like a staff member's baby. And it is. Bella Masex's daughter, the lead designer and lead programmer on the team. I asked about this because I was so curious. They just played around with him and like got... Baby crying noises. And yeah, she did everything for the baby. And they got a couple other ones. It's a bad time we start getting these kids back to work, man. Honestly. Just like, you know. So you said what? You can close your eyes and listen to people?

Yeah, there are. So, yeah. And the kid's name is the kid's name is Isaac. So can we call this the blinding of Isaac? Sure. Nice. Why not? That'd be your review byline. Yep. Thank you. Dad jokes. Get used to them, Jesse. I was already doing them. They're in your future. You have a captive audience now. Work the room. You know what I mean? It's a room of one, but it's a good room. You'll have a lot of fun.

Cool. Good night, universe. Is it only Steam or is it coming in? I guess the webcam thing is, you know, in a world where Kinect was still around. PlayStation Eye toy. That's a good point. The webcam controller thing is not a necessity to play this game. You can play it with just a controller or your mouse and keyboard. I think doing that would be wrong.

that feels like it's like trying to play half-life alex on a flat screen like it's not the same yeah experience it's yes you'll see all the same bits but like that's not how you're supposed to do this um yeah the screen sort of just like goes blank and you see an iris outline like a different scenarios um

But yeah, you can just play with the controller. But the webcam thing, it's solid. Weirdly, I had this, I don't know if it's a tech thing. I don't know what it is. But my camera was set to a higher resolution because I'm using a DSLR as my webcam. It's just like the game was running at half.

Frame rate, it was so weird. It was like really slow. Must have been a strange bug. But I imagine Nintendo Switch 2, because it has that camera attachment. Maybe you can play it that way. It's out on Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox as well. Excellent. Well reviewed by pretty much everyone. Eights and nines across the board. So yeah, that's pretty cool. So nice one. Yeah, I'm going to...

Check this out. Do you think it's gonna get dragged into the Game of the Year stuff or is it why you gotta finish it to sort of see if it hits that threshold? Yeah, I'm totally going to finish it. It's not like four or five hours long, so I'm not too worried about whether or not I'll have the time. It's just I was like mentally preparing myself. No, no, no. I'm asking, do you think it's going to meet the threshold for Game of Deer? Yeah, I mean...

Maybe I feel like at this point where we're already inundated with games, we already have to play the 60 hour long European adventure simulator. So maybe I could push this. I'm not. We'll see how I feel at the end of it. We'll see how I feel when it's over. How many indie games will we manage to fit into this game of the year? You know, what are our sort of training, our research for one Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? We could play probably 50 at least, give or take.

Oh, my God. Breaking news. Breaking news. It's snowing outside my window for the first time. Yay. I'm sorry. This is the first time I've seen snow in like fucking like five years. Oh, is there? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you've been in Cali. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't been to the Sierra Nevadas for snow since like 2019 or something. Right. Oh my God. That's crazy. Wow. Yeah. Enjoy. Fair play. Get out there. Yeah. I gotta go guys. Snow day. Awesome work. Cool. Goodnight universe.

We rumbled on. Let me do one of mine, I guess. I'll just get through some of these. I played a bunch of Hypergea. We already talked about that. Played a lot of Hades 2 the past couple of weeks. I've been finally jumping into post 1.0.

Maybe for a reason. Who knows? Listen to this week's or watch this week's Patreon show on Noclip to find out. Yeah, I've been really enjoying it. It's been... It's been great to see 1.0 or, you know, I was playing throughout the course of early access sort of here and there. I played a lot at the start. Yeah, I really enjoy it. It's a very different experience. Well, it's a somewhat different experience to the first game. Obviously, the controls are the same, but...

Each of the areas has its own kind of thing going on. And without getting into spoilers, there is a pretty significant chunk of game in here as well. Lots of stuff to do. which is pretty cool. I did find the run to Kronos generally not that challenging, which I think I found Hades 1 a bit trickier or something. But yeah.

The unlock, in a weird way it feels almost more linear than Hades 1 because the unlocks I feel like are very much based on what stuff you're finding in the world and instead of leveling up. um zagrius you're you're sort of it's more millennia is more unlocking things and aspects and you can you can you know do all there's just so much to do there's so much to collect there's so much more stuff going on at the crossroads at your hub area

And every run feels like it's worthwhile in a way that the first Hades didn't necessarily all the time, which was fine because it's a roguelike. But yeah, I'd say it's even less... It's weird. I would say most of the game, one half of the game is less frictionless than Hades 1 and the other half is four times more. So it's cool. I think it appeals in that way.

to many different people. Jeremy, have you had a chance to jump in yet? I've played like maybe four hours total. I have not played since 1.0 though. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I played like four, four or five hours collectively though. Oh, cool. I thought you were abstaining until it came out. I was. And then I was on a plane and it was on my steam deck and there was like a guy next to me acting crazy. And I was like, I need some. Oh, that guy. Yeah.

That was, yeah, the fucking, you got some long legs, boy, that guy. That's a weird reference for people who have not heard the podcast where I tell that story. That's true. I'll just let it lie. Racist long legs man.

Yeah, yeah. That woman just threatened to be in Arabic. And the stewardess was like, what did she say? He's like, I don't know. I don't speak Arabic. It's like fucking crazy. Incredible. Yeah. That's like a... speed run any percent make myself look stupid and racist in two sentences I actually while we're on the topic I had a great plane interaction on the way out to California on this trip I had an older couple next to me probably like

late 70s early 80s um incredibly sweet uh just like very very sweet old couple super normal and they were uh i was playing my steam deck And they were asking me about it because they were just like super chatty. You know, like old people are like on a plane. They're like, we're here for six hours. We might as well get to know this guy.

Is that the new iPhone? Like basically that. So the woman asked me all about it and I explained what it is and she's like, so it's like a Game Boy? It's like more like a computer, like whatever. I explained the whole thing. And and then after explain this to her for 10 minutes, her husband leans over and goes, now, what the hell is that?

She's like, I just asked him that. And they start arguing about it. And he's like, now, what is that? Is that a Sega? Which cracked me up because I feel like the last thing this guy saw was probably like a Genesis or Game Gear rather. Yeah, definitely. didn't see a Saturn or a Dreamcast, I bet.

So he and then he was like, well, what do you what do you got on there? What is that a Sega? And I tilted towards it. I was playing Silksong and and he sees Hornet on the Hornet has like the pointy like horns or whatever. And he goes. now what the hell is that a rabbit or it's just like this old guy was fucking cracking me up and so the conversation terminates after i explain what the steam deck is to them but both of them are so fixated on it that i continue playing silksong

And both of them just like watched me for like 10 minutes. And I, it was so funny. Cause like. Like at that point, I'm like, all right, well, I'll just hold it like perfectly centered because like I can feel they're they're like staring at it. So I don't want to like turn away. So I just start like slowly. Are you in the middle? No, I was on the aisle. They're leaning. So I like kind of.

of like tilted a little bit towards them because i'm like i am i do you want to like watch so they just this old couple just watched me play for like 10 minutes and i was like yeah they're like what is that and i explained you know like these it's like popular small developer from australia like all this art is like hand drawn they're like i don't understand like they drew it it's in like a video game and i was like i

I feel like I can't communicate this in a way that is effective, but it was so funny. I felt like I just was hanging out with my grandparents explaining video games as a concept to them. That's very sweet. Were you tempted to put Postal 2 on or something? I did. I definitely after that point was had to think about what I was playing just in case. It's like when you're watching. Yeah, you're watching like a movie and a sex scene comes on and you suddenly realize you're in the you're on a plane.

Yeah, I watched, what was it, Anomalisa, the movie that has puppet sex in it on a plane. And I was on my laptop. And when that scene came on, I was like, I need to, I can't, like, I need to fucking, if someone sees me watching a puppet sex movie on a plane, I feel like they're going to fucking throw me out the airlock. I feel like Team America is probably on a plane somewhere, right? Yeah. Yeah, it probably shouldn't be.

My wife watched poor things and didn't know what it was for the first time on a plane. On a plane? Yeah, she got to the first scene and was like, okay, I didn't know that was that kind of movie. She got Yargost. Love it. Yeah, she didn't feel the Lanthimos coming her way. Love it. Exactly. Lanthimos does sound like a sort of like a like a crazy like sounds like Cialis like it's a something you take One you want to split a Lanthimos you and me? Sounds like something you'd see in Mortha

Jeremy, should we talk about Mortha? Mortha? We have a... Mortha. We have a... Sorry, Mortha. Mortha. Mortha-fied. I couldn't say it properly. We have a... Indie rec going up for this. It'll be up by the time this podcast is up for sure. This games cool man first person like throwback graphics weird sci-fi fantasy, but the worlds are kind of like

mysterious, right? Like sort of like souls-y. Dare I say it, dare I say it, they're sort of souls-y. It's an overused term, but there's no other term for what this is. Yeah, this is, so Morda is a... They describe it as a nonlinear FPS adventure. So this is from a developer named Scumhead and a developer named Osiole. I hope I'm saying that right. O-S-I-O-L. Scumhead I know from their game Franzen, which we talked about in the podcast.

this is franzen is a free rpg that's kind of like it's like it reminds me a lot of final fantasy 6 but it's very short and free but it has kind of that like crunchy super nintendo era jrpg feel to it really like franzen um but i've been watching mortars development for a while because of my love of franzen and

uh it's it came out like a few weeks ago right before i left for vacation and i couldn't i didn't want to play i wanted to play it on mouse and keyboard because it's an fps so i waited till i got back so i finally got to play it this week and it's fucking awesome um so this is like it's not it reminds me of sort of like old doom and Wolfenstein meets.

Morrowind, but it's not like an open world RPG like Morrowind. The RPG trappings are more expressed in sort of the hub world and in sort of like the emphasis on characterization and narrative and world building and storytelling within this. And the look of it. There's, you know, big mushrooms and weird. Yeah, there's big mushrooms and it's got like this sort of, you know, crunchy dithery look to it.

But it's it's it's level based. So the levels are more sort of like something like Doom. You know, you go, you fight dudes. It's very fast and frenetic. You find keys, you progress to the level. There's bosses. But it's.

The thing that I think is like... kind of elevate i when i first played this i thought it was going to be like a series of levels that you're working through some degree of openness within the levels but you're just going level to level to level what happens after the tutorial is there's a like demon souls hub world except it's like an rpg town um

where you can upgrade your armor and your weapons and your healing and all this stuff and talk to a bunch of NPCs who all are very interesting and bizarre. There's like... two exotic dancers there's like um like a ramen stall it's just super cool um but the the way you enter the levels is a demon soul style like

it's it's the orrery it's like this giant rotating like 3d map of the dimension overlaying dimensions that kind of reminds me of outer wilds um but uh but there are these like headstone sort of things like demon souls and when you interact with them it'll be like oh this is

like the fucking you know like desert dimension and it says like world three dash one yeah three one two one one and you can progress through them but you can go to you know like danny and i for the video yesterday ended up going to three one with my level one character and getting

annihilated uh but i just love that like that degree of openness and freedom um and yeah it's also got like uh it's got a dodge with eye frames and stuff so even though it is you know a first person shooter with a sword um there is like

You know, you get to a boss who has a big red health bar and you're dodging with iframes and stuff. There is something very souls-y about that. Yeah, the thing that stood out to me from watching Jeremy play when we recorded the... indie rec it was just the world is very vibrant and incredibly esoteric and like there's just the enemies are bizarre looking like a sort of

like something that looks like a cross between a deer and a puma but it's made of skull gravestones and like just like yeah really bizarre stuff the weaponry as well is really strange the intro just sets this up as like weirdly as like this god knows where you are but it has like

It was, it's like in the sixties, but it's like, it was like 1865, but in like a totally different universe. Yeah. Universe. Yeah. It's so strange looking. It's very much like reminds me of, you know, sort of French sci-fi or.

or there's this, oh, I can't, or if anyone can remember the name of this game, I feel terrible, I can't. There was a sequel to it eventually, but it was a super early Steam PC first-person shooter that was like... took place in like a, I feel like it was mostly melee focused and you were like, half naked or something thank you thank you thank you it's xeno clash thank you what is wrong with me what do i have this i know you're just perfect i've been trying to think about this game for like

For like two days ever since Jeremy showed me. I got like some sort of Xeno Clash vibes from it. Oh yeah. But I would say it's even more crazy. looking yeah I love the look and the sounds even the sounds remember it was like a loon one of the enemies sounded like a loon yeah and the um the revolver you have when it finished instead of like you know a normal revolver you pop out and put individual bullets back in the entire

cylinder pops out with like an m1 garant noise it sounds like fucking metal of honor it sounded it sounds like it was lifted out of uh out of that game yeah yeah um yeah the the world building is is fascinating i mean that's what i liked about friends and so much is it uh You know, a lot of times there's something I talked to Bryce Boer about when I interviewed him that like a lot of times you'll play a game and.

No matter how good, like it could be a perfect 10 out of 10 game, but there's often this feeling when you play a game of like, oh, this feels like this, or I can see where this was inspired by this other thing. There's sort of this like.

perceivable cultural lineage that you can feel like there's trace elements of the inspirations. Something I really like about Franzen and about this is I when I make comparisons to things like Morrowind, it's more of a feel thing. This does not feel like a game that's inspired by Morrowind. It feels like tonally and like in terms of its world building, it feels so much in its own lane. And that's what I really like about Scumhead's work. It feels like they have a sort of like Gothic fantasy.

body horror sci-fi overlap that is like this Venn diagram and in the center of it is this kind of like new cultural flavor that I enjoy a lot um yeah you're fresh Your character is a I think they describe them as like a corpse that's sealed into like a living suit of armor or something. You're like a Hayward Gen 7 model. It's just like everything feels so thought out. And I love being thrust into world building. That's like, you know, like.

You don't know what's going on, but the way that it's so effortlessly described in throwaway lines, you're like... I know that the person who made this knows exactly what this is. And I don't need to know everything about it. I just want to, I want to feel like they know everything about it. I'd watched Jeremy play for 30 minutes and I was like, this is like if Kojima had like no budget.

I shouldn't say no budget. That's derogatory. Indie budget. Yeah, had an indie budget. It's like, I mean, and it's not just because your health is dictated by a tiny doll that follows you around or something. That you squeeze, you like hug.

or something. The healing doll. It's very Death Stranding. Naturally. Yeah, it's, yeah, I feel like the healing doll shows too that like this isn't, you know, like grimdark hyper serious like this is about death and destruction. This game also has sort of a sense of whimsy and like some of the characters in the hub world are like like henson-esque they're like fucking weird dark crystal jim henson shit that's a great point you're right yeah it is very dark crystal yeah yeah yeah totally yeah so

Highly recommend Morta. It's fucking awesome. I have not played a ton of it because I just started it this week, but I could see it easily sneaking into Goody discussions. Nice one. Yeah, I'm going to play a bunch of it this weekend. Yeah, I really enjoyed what you showed me. Also, you will be happy to know that they had a makeshift petition for a doll plushie, which is happening. They got 160% of their goal, so...

Those will be, if you want to get your little weird little Morta doll plushie. It's happening. I might have to. It's pretty cute. It's happening.gif. Great map as well. Very Doom. doom looking map in the game it's good stuff the map is explained very hilariously uh where they say that oh you can push this button to bring up the map but like a true hunter doesn't need the map like because it's there in case you get lost and you're frustrated um which is kind of a nice way of being like

Listen, you don't have to go to fucking YouTube and watch a walkthrough and be like, okay, did he take a left at the canyon and rewind and shit? You can just look at the map. But I like that they're like... unless you're fucking cool and then you won't do it. So it's like, I don't want to open it. It's like an interior sort of like a diegetic, um, motivation not to open the map, which is nice. More to 20 bucks on steam. Pick it up now.

Or grab the soundtrack and art book along with it for $24, 10% off. Support indie games. Leave your reviews, folks. Back to the Frank Howley-verse. It's time.

It's time to battle in the Battle Royale. But the real question is, Frank, which of these Battle Royales is better? Battlefield Redseck or Simpsons Fortnite? Pick one. Sophie's Choice. I really like Battlefield. The Battlefield Battle Royale map is SoCal, which is also really funny because it's surrounded by a giant flame engulfing. And so it must have been insane to have been working on that. Or whatever.

you know because we we experienced that like actually there'll be fires like every two years like two years ago there's a fire just down the hill like whatever but it's so weird playing sorry i just it's actually socal yeah yeah and there's a fire coming towards the circle so it's like it's so nuts where it's like this is crazy um so yeah i really like it um so so battlefield 6 launched and then like a month after a few weeks later

They launched like the second, the phase two of their multiplayer stuff, which is Battlefield RedSec, which is free to play. It's a battle royale map that's Southern California based. They're going to spin off and make like... like main multiplayer maps from that next week i think we're getting another socal map for conquest and other stuff um so there's battle royale and then there's a separate mode called gauntlet which is more like

uh round based missions on the battle royale map and uh yeah because i like battlefield so much and i've gotten used to just playing it by myself i've just been jumping into like quad matches okay and um yeah it's like it's it's like 50 50 sometimes we'll be thrown into lobbies with

uh people who don't know how to play the game or you'll get thrown into people who can carry you um and it are you you know our our balance is out but uh is there only quads or is there duos or triples there's no singles and that's where a lot of like a lot of negativity He's like, why can't we solo queue?

but um yeah so there's there's duos and quads and even when i played with just one friend we'll jump into quads because just it's just i like the chaos element of these games and playing with random people um like i was in a match last night and like me and one other guy were out in the field trying to do missions and

you know get gear and there was two like people just our two teammates were just hiding in a bathroom and i'm like this like it was pissing me off so much but i wasn't gonna yell on the on the mic or anything um you should have no i don't know i feel like everyone in online games is so negative that it's like i don't add to that instead i'll type dumb stuff in the text box like who do you guys think is scarier jason or freddy like that's my role in these games

I watched a clip of you interviewing somebody in, I think, Battlefield 6, where you were like, hey, what do you think about World War II, man? He's like, I don't know, it wasn't that bad. What do you think of Hitler? No, no, yeah. Something like that. I was like, I don't know. I just like making conversation with people.

and so i was like asking i was interviewing someone playing battlefield as if he was like an actual war veteran it was like oh did you play these games before yeah i played uh battlefield and i was just asking him his opinion on like the imperial or japanese oh i was like yeah what do you think what do you think of the imperial

red army he's like you mean star wars no it was like like i don't know it's just it's just stuff i've always done in like 20 years of playing games ever since like wolfenstein on xbox with a microphone i've just always been like Just like, again, like the old people on Jeremy's plane. It's that attitude. I'm just like, oh, it's just so.

I don't know. I'll ask. When I was playing Battlefield 6, just talking to anyone who would entertain me, I'd be like, what do you think? What is everyone fighting here for? Because Battlefield 6... takes place two years in the future. And like, it was just like, what's the conflict going on? Why is everything on fire? Where's this circle of fire closing in? Why are we fighting each other if we're all just going to die? After the 2026 midterms.

and like yeah and so like and like it's so it's always just fun just asking innocuous questions when people are just like i don't know so i always like that so um but yeah the battlefield six barrel stuff is really fun yeah it's it's The point of conflict came is there's a battle pass, but half of the battle pass challenges are for the free-to-play battle royale stuff. So a lot of Battlefield fans are like, why are you making me play the battle pass?

or the battle royale stuff right um but to me i like all of it again like i i uh i think it's i really so in terms of like comparing it to fortnite

uh like the simpsons fortnite map is incredible but the gunplay is so much better in battle i like the time to kill everything about it like getting sniped like just getting kills in battlefield is so much more rewarding than fortnite it's like i like i don't know

like it's not that hard to to to like win in fortnite so is the fortnite simpsons map it's springfield then i'm guessing yeah ten thousand percent it's like legitimately i was very curious about it that's cool i just want to see that yeah it's worth it so like there isn't a free roam mode you just have to dive in but like yeah it's incredible so Springfield it's straight up like

All of Springfield. So there's like the Quickie Mart. There's the town square with Jebediah's head. The Simpsons house. You can sit on the couch. Moe's bar is in there. You can answer the phone and it's Bart Simpson doing a prank call. Camp Krusty is in there. The Burns Mansion. the nuclear power plant, the Simpsons Gorge. What characters are in it? Like, if you get the battle pass, the first thing you unlock is Marge Simpson.

If you complete the battle pass, you get Homer. So when I was playing with friends, they're like, oh, look out, it's a Homer. I'm like, what the hell does that mean? It's like, no, this guy's already beaten the battle pass. Oh. Oh, my God. I have a list of the skins that can be earned in the Battle Pass. Marge Simpsons Tier 1. Witch Marge Tier 2. Blinky Fishstick Tier 3? What the fuck is that? Is that just like a...

Is that a Simpsons guy? Isn't Blinky the radioactive fish? Yeah, so it's just like a Simpsons looking one. And then hazardous Blinky fish stick. Ned Flanders is tier five. Tier six is stupid sexy Flanders. Oh, wow. They make you work hard for the good one. That's great. Yeah. And then Homer Simpson and evil Homer after that, it looks like. So I'm curious about this because I saw an ad for Simpsons Fortnite while I was away and I was thinking about this. Is this...

Does this is this for a demographic of people who like the Simpsons and play Fortnite? Or is this trying like do younger people like the Simpsons and play Fortnite? I'm curious who they were like, oh, this is going to be appealing to someone. Do you want to go first?

I was asking a kid while playing Fortnite if he even knew what The Simpsons was. Kids, they just play Fortnite. They don't care about anything else. To me, I was diving in just because I was like, oh, I like The Simpsons, not actively.

everyone grew up watching the simpsons i want to see virtual springfield it just happened to overlap with fortnite but because of fortnite's quadrillion billion trillion uh dollar industry like the the detail is in the game and it works but yeah like at this point fortnite has

Every single IP is in here like Star Wars took it over in May The last thing was like Power Rangers stuff like every battle pass now is focused on an IP I am blown away that they put this much time and effort like I thought it was just gonna be like, okay Here's some skins. No, the whole map is spring is Springfield but um I don't know like Fortnite I think

Because like when Fortnite came out, it was dismissed and seen as like a kid's game. And then they like to me, the thing that got me in is the added Master Chief. That was like the first crossover, like, well, what the hell? And then they started like at some point, this is even post quarantine. They started really going for like, yeah.

even say like the like an older audience because it was like oh we got predator we got terminator like 80s movies that like the fortnight kids don't care about but like maybe their their parents do or what and then because it's a it's a game that like and and critically had incredibly low licensing fees especially a lot of those horror ones. I think the math on this stuff is that, like, they are, I bet that they are, I don't know which way the money's going.

Because I bet there are significant advantages to like the Simpsons brand to being in Fortnite. So to me, it seems like this weird... like service deal where like they'll put in all the effort to like make all this content and then whatever way the stuff gets split but like it is basically free advertising

So there's like people like Frank and me who will want to play it and go back in and they have that benefit where like every time there's a battle pass, it collects some people or brings back some people who lapsed. But then I also think that there is this weird business case for them like, like.

putting Power Rangers in Fortnite. They probably got a bunch, maybe not loads, but like probably a significant enough amount of new Power Rangers fans because they were like, what's Power Rangers, you know? But I doubt it's all, I doubt it's like that permeable or whatever.

Yeah. That's kind of what I was getting at is I was, I was wondering if this was a play by Fortnite to appeal to an older audience or a play by the Simpsons to appeal to a younger audience. Sounds like a lineup. Yeah. It's funny, isn't it? Yeah. Reading out file names on this episode. And I wonder, I bet it's different for each IP. I bet the pillars kind of swing. You know what I mean? Because sometimes they have music artists that we couldn't give a...

shit about, but like are really popular with that age group. And I bet in that situation, it might, the math might be different or something, you know? I'm just trying to imagine how the conversation starts. To me, it's like, it's like two sex workers approach each other and they're like talking about having sex. And then at some point they're like,

So, like, $100? And neither of them, both of them think they're getting the $100. Oh, that's brilliant. What a comparison. That's brilliant. You're right. Oh, my God. That's so good. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Let's make all of these IPs have sex. Let's go around the wheel. What would be the one IP? I'm sure we've done this before. What would be the one IP you'd want in Fortnite? If you could pick any...

I will go first. I would say Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. I would like to see in Fortnite. I want to be Matt Berry. Sure. In that. You're the biggest jerk in Tomato Town. I want Shaft. Oh, Shaft. They already added Family Guy, so I need John Shaft. I want... Which version of Shaft? Um... Sammy Jackson. Okay, nice. I want Kirk Douglas. He must be in already. He's probably in like four times. You want Kirk Douglas? I don't want a specific movie.

I want a specific actor. I want Kirk Douglas. I want to have like an ace in the hole skin. I want to have like a Paths of Glory skin. Oh, okay. Yeah, what else? Faces of Douglas. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That's another good one. Wow. Although he's the hero of that movie, but he is the villain of that movie. Have you ever seen... I've never seen the movie Neighbors, but I know there's a scene where the...

The guys next door, the frat boys next door have an Al Pacino party or a Robert De Niro party. And they all dress up as different. Yeah, good. Nice one, Jesse. They all dress up as different characters from Robert De Niro. And it's surprisingly easy to see. who he is from some pretty simple, like, visual cues in the way he's acting. My favorite part of that scene is also that they keep going, whoah! Yeah, whoah! Which is an Al Pacino thing. He doesn't say that as a character. Whoah!

Yeah, which is just, you know, completely doesn't make any sense. Frank, I feel like all yours have already been done. Yeah, I mean, like, because, like, my brain generally...

there's like Resident Evil stuff is like already in the game. I was even asking friends because I hadn't played in like really in like... deeply fortnight in years and i was asking my friends who are up to date i was like yeah there was jar jar binks was in the game and i'm generally i think let me unless they're messing with me um but i think jar jar binks was part of like yeah he was i think there was a skin um Oh, my God. Yeah, damn it. They put them out.

Oh, God. It was part of the Star Wars era. Jar Jar Binks, I think, would be really fun to play as. He's in the game, but now I want to buy him. Because they put Hatsune Miku. Anything I generally would want would be deeper anime stuff. They wouldn't throw it.

heat show but it's a lot of like early 2000s type anime but there is like a lot of anime stuff is in there like dragon ball i wouldn't i bet eventually we'll get a one piece battle like one piece is so big i'm surprised that's not in yet actually what do you think we get first one piece or k-pop demon hunters One piece they would probably make its own battle pass. Probably maybe to coincide with season two. There's so much. Yeah, I bet they're working on it. They did Bebop already, didn't they?

Did they? No, that's not it. That feels too cool. Some game did bebop, didn't it? Maybe. I could be wrong. Hold on. Thought they did be I thought maybe I'm wrong. No, they did do they did do it. They did do oh, okay Wow What about like reviled historical figures like like Henry Kissinger Pol Pot they could do it

Hitler's on there. I've always wanted an Osama Bin Laden skin. If Hitler was in Fortnite, unironically, didn't I play Fortnite? Is that what you're going to say? It's such PR poison for them to do it that I would be like, that's pretty funny. actually. That's what they do when Fortnite has its right wing, it gets caught doing something stupid and it gets really defensive. That's when they'll start putting out the Pol Pot DLC. You remember when they had the Martin Luther King Jr. event?

Oh, yeah. Was that real? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What? They had a thing. They didn't have a skin, though. Sure. No skin. No skin. But they. They had a MLK memorial map you could go to, and it's straight up like, oh, here's like, you can read about the Civil Rights Movement and the history. But people were going in there and doing like, yeah, people were doing emotes.

Oh, no offense. It like they had to deactivate a bunch of emotes. Oh, yeah. Wow. I just saw the headline. I'm not even going to read it. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. This was like like them early on experimenting with weird stuff. And like nowadays, like. Like there was a Disneyland map. My friend loaded up some Disneyland thing. I was like, this isn't real. Oh no, it's real. It's by Disney. Like, so now they do a lot more.

stuff, but, um, yeah, the MLK thing was such a disaster. That's so crazy. Yeah. That's nuts. It's like, stand on this balcony and enjoy the view. Oh, no. It's just... It's like... What do you... Who expects to happen? Because it's like... I don't know like I picture myself when I was fucking whatever 12 playing like slash games in the school library and like the sense of humor that you have like when you're in a video game is not the time where you're like oh I'm going to like

be reached by this thing. That's like when your history teacher sits you down and it's like, listen, man, like the shit we're talking about is like real shit. And then you're like, oh, wow. He's like this person I respect is being very serious about this. Maybe I should learn. Go to a museum or visit a place. Yeah, you go to like the Holocaust Museum and you're like, oh yeah, shit, that's crazy. But when you're logging on to Fortnite, I just feel like there are like cultural...

Framings the cultural and like like psychological psychosocial framings to different activities and I think it's like, you know It's like my dad didn't take me to Pizza Hut to tell me that like about my where what the death exists or something or have like us be like the birds and the bees when we went out to fucking Papa Gino's. It's hard to focus on this memorial when there is a.

There's a banana flossing five feet to the left of it. Yeah, someone's building an infinite staircase outside of the fucking MLK. It's a stairway to heaven, man. We want to go see them. It's amazing. It's wild. Bring them all. It's just MLK, Malcolm X. We'll get the skins for them all. Sure. You know, just freedom. Rosa Parks sits at the front of the battle bus. Why not?

MLK does a revised speech about how he wants to be judged by the content of his character and not by the value of his skin, but he's referring to this. Oh, that's amazing. But it's a commercial for Fortnite and everyone's like, what the fuck are they thinking? Battle Pass. The content is right. Oh my god, the content. Oh my god. Somebody make that t-shirt. And it's MLK, but he's in the banana thing. His face is sticking out of like a little hole at the bottom.

I feel like you can't do that. That's like the Punk is Dead t-shirt for R that's sold at like... A Target. Target. Yeah, the Che Guevara t-shirt. Exactly, yeah. Wow, that's wild. Thank you. Colonel Howley for reporting on the front lines of several wars. Battlefield Red Sock War, The Simpsons 49 War, and of course, the Sonic Rumble that is affecting us all so much. For a quick second, there was also another mode added to Battlefield 6 that I love. They added a mode with bots.

So now you can log in every day and grind out your challenges and everything. And it's so easy and it's so fun. And just regular multiplayer? It's called Casual Breakthrough. So what it is is like half. What? It's called user activation mode. Yeah, it's called casual breakthrough. Jesus.

All it takes is eight human players and then it populates the rest of the lobby with bots. And then it'll add in a few more human players. But you're getting into in the matches where there's just like 10 bots standing in a row because they're like stuck on the environment and you can just.

them all down and like it's awesome so it's it's real so i'll like the only way i want to play battlefield i just i don't want to play it online i don't play any of these fucking games i want to play i want to run against bots i want to play quick three against bots i want to play battlefield vietnam against i want to be young spots

Exactly. I just don't care about... Especially now that I've played Arcturators and I'm like, oh, this is what... This is like the complex interactions you can have with people. It's not just people shooting me who are good. It's like now I have tasted the ambrosia of the gods when it comes to online shooter interactions and I'm like, nothing else will be as delicious anymore. Unless it's bots. Bots are great. True

We came back to Battlefield for a sec. I have to know this, Frank. I'm not curious enough to install the game, but I do want to know. On the Steam page, the description reads, now entering RedSec, the ultimate free-to-play FPS, blah, blah, blah, featuring Battle Royale, Gauntlet, and... The power of portal. What? Oh, yeah. Portals are a level design thing, right? Oh, that's what that is. Where people can do like community maps and stuff. I haven't messed with that at all.

It's their in-engine, in-game map builder. It's not a tie-in with Valve's video game. I was like, is it a split gate rip-off? What are they doing now in Battlefield? no just yeah it's just there it's like halo's forge or whatever but i think people have made like conquest maps using the battle royale thing but yeah i think it's like reduced xp and all those so i don't i don't touch it love it

That's Battlefield RedSec, which is free to play. Simpsons Fortnite, which is free to play. Sonic Rumble, free to play. Frank Howley saving them shekels this week. Playing some hot video games at the same time and crucially, staying away. from the Battle Pass madness. Congratulations, Frank, on your incredible week. This should be like Alcoholics Anonymous, where we celebrate when each of us hasn't bought a piece of...

DLC in like a week, especially when you've been like you've done the AA equivalent of gone to like two weddings in a bar mitzvah and still managed to make it the week. You know what I mean? That's that's that's that's how much battle pass you've

You've you've almost you've pumped through your veins as it were All right, let me my last game here is our creators. Let me talk about our creators. I played a shitload. I'm like level

29 30 now and I played my my game clock says 32 hours But I'm definitely left it idle for like four hours in there somewhere. I'm pretty pretty sure and Yeah, I'm really loving it like I said earlier I have the I have the quality of that questy voice like line stuff is is Has either Jesse opened my eyes or I think also

The annoying thing is that like at the start, they don't really like you, those quest givers. And then there's all these like emotional moments and stuff. And it just completely falls flat because they're the performances are not performances. So, yeah, I'm definitely closer to you. Just last week I remember thinking, oh, they're not that bad. And then I was playing this week and I was like, oh, no. They are that bad. Right here, they are. Yeah, when they need to be good, they are not good.

But yeah, the gameplay, I absolutely adore this thing. It's just, it's, I think in many ways, it's a game that is like really well made for me and that I have always loved games where I explore on my own, where I have small little fetch quests to do. And I just love that these games are so tense, but they respect my time. Like I loved playing PUBG, but so much of it was about spending 30 minutes for the last 10 minutes to be interesting and tense. And I feel like this game, you know.

throws you in immediately with that. The community interaction stuff, like we talked about it last week, but just I have had so many insane... moments where you know you're i had one earlier today where uh i there was a guy at a at a exit and i was like we're going like we're friendly yeah we're good okay cool yeah and he was like just give me a second i want to go get something and he went away and he came back around the corner

with a fucking Rocketeer right behind him. Oh, shit. And there was only two of us, and I had only specced in with, like, loot gear, so I had, like, a low weapon. I didn't have that much good stuff, and I'm like, well, there's no way we can take this thing out. We need to just, like... There was nowhere to really hide. He got downed. I didn't have a defib. He had already called the elevator. I got hit then and then I was down.

And then it was the two of us crawling across the map, hoping this rocketeer doesn't care about us anymore. And like, you know, when you're downed, you can still get up and do the keyboard thing.

I was like, I thought I was totally smoked. I've had so many. I got out of a map with three seconds left two days ago, which popped me an achievement, and that was really crazy. I... crewed up with like eight random guys and we took down a not a queen um and yeah no no that's what the queen protects yeah yeah um it's just

It's just so crazy. I had one guy, I had one guy who was like, uh, help, you know, he was downed by an elevator and then I went over and I was like, do you need a med kit? Like, what are you going to use? No, just, um, oh no. And the elevator he was beside.

shut down as he was telling me to shut down the elevator because I could have just hit the button I was standing beside it and he could have just flopped down and he would have extracted and he was like oh it's okay man just kill me take my stuff it's all right Stuff like that. I love helping random people. You just like go help people. You're just like, they're getting shit and you're like, don't worry, I'm here to save the day.

take out a bunch of stuff for them, giving people tips. And I think the thing that I enjoy the most actually from a world building perspective is that like I've played so many games like this, like PUBG or... I mean, it's not a Battle Royale game, but like I've played a game where it's like a realistic, large open world. Like you're talking about DeadSec, all that sort of stuff. RedSec, sorry. DeadSec's Watch Dogs 2. Yeah, I keep messing that up and I'm like, it's DeadSec. Yeah.

And these games are like, you know, when you're walking through the levels, they are, I don't know, they're just detritus, right? It's just like, this is the post-apocalypse. This used to be an office. This used to be a thing, whatever. You know, you're not really paying attention. And then the thing that happens with the quests is you slowly realize.

oh, there is actually like a surprising amount of intentionality in this game in terms of like what's in a room, what the room is. Like they'll, you know, they'll tell you like, oh, go to the medical office in like the spaceport departure thing.

And I'm like, oh, okay. And then when I'm in there, suddenly I'm realizing, oh, this actually does make sense. It's like a departure area, and then you'd go upstairs, and then they have these medical offices off to the side. And it's like, huh. And then...

like the raider stuff you find at the start it just looks like oh there's this other colored buildings you don't really think about what they were used for anything and then so over the course of these like very light touch story quests a lot of them are fetch quests

um they're not all that like compelling as gameplay elements they kind of don't need to be because the core gameplay is so interesting they're just like things to do but i feel like now i have this really like i don't know like large knowledge of like what the world actually is like why

that certain things were in certain places what that building meant what that building meant why this one and it's really cool because like it allows the game to do stuff like you know you're trying to figure you know i'm doing this puzzle it's like a multi quest sequence that happens over like five or six different quests about fixing the water like a contaminated water thing and then you start going oh they actually like

thought about where the water would go and where the thing is and then you start thinking like okay so where would this where would this trench be if I was looking for this in a map and I'm looking at the map and thinking and I just I wasn't expecting that I was expecting when you think about multiplayer maps

You just think they're just paintball areas, right? Like really well-dressed paintball areas. And I was actually surprised by how much consideration had been put into each of these, that they tell their own story. And the further you play the game, the more... you sort of learn about that. And I thought that was pretty neat. Yeah, there's one that I did that was like, go to any pharmacy on this map. And I was like, I went to a couple hospital locations and I was like, oh, okay.

Oh, there's no pharmacy here. So there's like one particular area I was supposed to go to and it said pharmacy. And I was like, Oh, that's what this place is. Like I want to do the quest on your own, but like, it's a cool, it's a cool spot. It reveals what that used to have been, which is like an interesting narrative point.

for sure. But like, I think some of the later ones get a little too needle in the haystack. Like they'll be like, go to this part of the map and then interact with something. And you're like, I feel like I've spent like five minutes walking around looking for the interactable yellow label to pop up. I love that.

like really because like yeah because the at the end it's almost always justified it's always like oh fuck i should have known like that was the that was the the reason like there was a clue in the in the in the words it was saying or or like oh i should have known to look for a piece of red cloth that was hanging off something you know there's like all these sort of

Things that aren't, some things are like explicitly said and some things that aren't. I know it can be frustrating, especially in a multiplayer map when like you've got this ticking clock over your head for sure. And there's been some times I've been like tempted to go to, you know, game facts or whatever and try and figure out.

I think the thing where that comes into mind for me is like, where the fuck are mushrooms? You know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to update this chicken and I'm trying to find that stuff. But what I like about that, for instance, that pharmacy one, which is super early, that teaches you.

Maybe you already knew, maybe you didn't, but it teaches the player, you know, if you're looking for like antiseptic, if you're looking for bandages, if you're looking for like, this stuff isn't randomly placed. It like, it actually, there is some sort of logic.

to this sort of stuff like the stuff that you find in certain apartments are cheaper than the stuff you find in other apartments because obviously that was a nicer part of the city to live in um you know there's all those type of things um

which I find really interesting. And then there's, I don't know, it's like, yeah, I found that aspect at least. Pretty cool. I like it as a teaching tool. For sure, I agree. I think it's great that they have all those quests there to give players opportunities to understand what's going on.

It's awesome. Yeah, and then you start getting your little place in the map you want to go to over and over because you're like, oh, there's good loot there. Like now at the spaceport, I constantly go up to the top of the thing and just fight whoever's up there if they're...

or fucking around. I was in one, and I should have put a mine on the entrance or something, because I did the damn control key, and I had that whole room to myself, and some guy came in and killed me, and I was like, next time I do this, I'm putting a fucking tripwire right in front of that.

And I'm going to blow whoever comes in. I'm going to be like, don't come in here. If you come in here, I'm going to kill you. And those, I just love that stuff. Those interactions are cool. Yeah, it's a cool game. Anyway, played an absolute shitload of it.

And yeah, Shield Zone. I didn't announce we were in the Shield Zone, but that whole thing was in the Shield Zone. The series is, I think the first episode's going out this week, so if you want to watch some documentaries about how that game came together, go over to Ark Raiders' YouTube channel. And check them out. Chill zone over. Jeremy, do you want to give us a quick little rundown on them? Actually, yeah, you played some Silent NF and some No, I'm Not a Human.

Yes, I played both of these while I was away. No, I'm Not a Human is a game that was on my radar for a very long time, and I did not play it when it came out, and I did not mention it when it came out. specifically because my girlfriend was like, I want to play this game and I want to play it in the same room with you. So I waited until we went on vacation together. But this is a game that came out back in September.

And I mean, it's very, very popular. No, you guys didn't talk about as well as gone, right? No, I'd seen a bunch of coverage of it, but we never, I don't think we played it. Yeah, I won't spend too long on it because I feel like a lot of people know about this game and it's like some hidden gem. But No, I'm Not a Human is a game where you it's sort of a post-apocalyptic scenario or like.

the post apocalypse the apocalypse it's apocalyptic the apocalypse has started at the beginning of the game um they're weird like creatures that look like human beings sometimes start crawling out of the ground and everything gets all fucked up and it's basically the apocalypse has just begun And you are in this sort of like vaguely Eastern European coded environment, living alone in a house and people come to your door with different.

stories and whatever they're like oh i my like roommate was a monster and he like tried to kill me and i can't go home can i stay here and basically you have to choose who to allow in your home uh because a regular visit from uh one of the one of the like

creatures crawling out of the ground one of them keeps coming back the fucking scary guy who's in the logo for the game and he'll be like are you alone in there and if you are alone you're basically fucked so funny so you have to trust some people But if you trust the wrong people, they start killing each other. And so then it's about examining, like learning the cues of what a non-human is. And then you have a limited amount of energy per day to be like, OK, I suspect that guy.

I'm going to like look at his eyes. I'm going to like check his ears. And it's basically about spending a very finite amount of resources and stamina per day on these phases where you're trying to suss out who is a. who is, I think they call them visitors. I don't know. I played it a few weeks ago now, but the alien people, but it's fucking great. The Papers, Please is coming from inside the house. Yes, it's like the thing and Papers, Please in a visual novel, sort of. Cool.

But I really liked it. So is it kind of run based? Yes. Okay. So you kind of fail and then you start again. So you can save. The way you save is there's a very finite consumable resource. It's a huge jar of kombucha that you use to save. I don't know why. Why not?

I would say in like a full playthrough of the game, you get like one and then you can buy like a like I don't think I ever had more than two kombuchas in a full run that last several hours. But there's a ton of different endings. There's like weird characters that show up and they suggest sort of like alternate.

paths to go in the game uh and also there's some degree of randomization about who is a visitor and who is trustworthy and what the what symptoms they present and stuff so even though you may see the same character sometimes whether or not they're trustworthy

the uh varies and stuff and you'll have different interactions with them so um really really cool very uh stylish and interesting and fun and uh just like a great sort of tight vision for a game that i really liked uh i wanted to say i think um If you have unprocessed COVID PTSD, maybe wait on this game. When I played it for the first time, I was going to throw up because like they dole out the information to you over time. So you learn what would be an example of a visitor.

And it's always changing. It's like, oh, now it's teeth. Now it's fingernails. Now it's like this specific thing. And it really reminded me of working retail during COVID, of like the way that we... treated had to treat people in that environment of like now you're sick oh cough is a symptom of being sick oh this is you're sweating that's a symptom so it was like

It was a very uncomfortable experience in that way. It reminded me of like how hard that time was and then also kind of how funny that time was and how sort of ridiculous we all were and like jumping to conclusions on stuff. It was a really interesting game. I got to play more of it when I finish my therapy session.

on COVID yeah once you've processed it yeah it definitely is like a um a COVID inspired apocalypse game is how I read it as well it's a lot about like trusting people and also the sort of combating forces of like

Someone will show up to your door and be like, Oh, I'm like a little girl. And my dad just got killed. And you're like, I don't know. I got, there's a lot of people in here. Like, I don't know. You also might be an alien. Like, how do I know you're not a fucking alien? Will Smith at that stage. He knows how to pick a.

You know, that girl shouldn't be out this late at nighttime. Oh, yeah, yeah. Look at her. She's doing theoretical physics, man. That's a dangerous little girl right there. Nice. Exactly. Is it scary, Jeremy? It's sort of more like... no way horror there there are Jesse you find it scary dude maybe throw up like there was a moment again it might be purely because I can like think back on how tough that time was but like there was a moment where

with one of the characters, she starts to convince you that she might be one. Like she doesn't know what's going on. And I was like, okay, for the sake of you, maybe I should kill you. And I did it. And it was like, The visual and the tension and the music and the writing was so like, I felt like I literally every organ of my body had to leave or else I was going to cave into a black hole. Like it was so uncomfortable.

I would say it's more... like dread than horror it's not like a cute horror where you're like oh i'm in the corner and the thing is closing in on me it's more just like a pervasive sense of doom um but in in that regard it's very i love doom it's one of the best games ever made of doom in that i was experiencing the emotion of the same name um yeah but yeah it's it's fucking great i highly recommend it um it's it's one of my favorite games this year and uh yeah and oh

I know. Game of the year, let's get talking. I was fucking starving for goatee contestants this year, so I needed some latecomers. What else you got? What else you got on your list? Do you have any other? I filled out my list yesterday. I won't spoil the whole thing, but let me pull it up. I can drop a few. Pull it up there, Jamie. No More Human is 15 bucks right now on Steam. Check it out. Yeah. I mean, you know, I played a lot more Look Outside on vacation on the plane. Oh, yeah.

That's in the running for sure. That game is fucking great. What else? I mean, there's a lot of stuff on here that is like I have weird sort of like internal confusion about because I. both love and hate them for different reasons um yeah like like night rain like i i'll save the discussion about night rain for gody but like it's

it gets rid of everything I love about Souls games and it's still one of my favorite games of this year so like what does that mean for me as a human being you know yeah that's the question we'll answer game of the year what does this mean for Jeremy as a human being. We're almost done with the games to talk about here. Last up though, Jesse, this game came out in early August of this year.

Overwhelmingly positive on Steam. It's a puzzle game. It's called Strange Jigsaws. Is this tickling your puzzle gland? Down there? Yeah, you have to talk to your doctor if it's tickled for more than eight hours. You've got to make sure to be careful when you're taking strange jigsaws. This is very, very good. I heard about this from Jason Schreier. He was talking it up and saying, hey, if you like puzzle games, this is a weird... puzzle game.

This is a weird puzzle game, man. Strange is in the title for a reason. Strange Jigsaws is really, really good. It reminds me of playing like the impossible quiz or like there is no game. Those kinds of like anti games where the joke is, can you get it? Um,

But here it like it reconsiders what I think the jigsaw puzzle can be as a concept. It's not just making a picture. It's like you are in some ways solving a puzzle. You're considering the edges and where to lay them. And then but this is not that kind of game. But like it does consider that part.

of jigsaws and goes like, what can we do with that part of it? The part where you're considering where the pieces go more than you are recreating the picture. Um, and it does some weird, funny stuff, man. It's like.

It's all over the place. It has that flash game energy to it where it's like, okay, and now we're going to go be on a PC screen and now it's going to be weird. And now the art style is going to change. Why not? But now you have to like do this weird interaction. It does a lot of mechanical stuff. really well. And I don't think it's like overly challenging on the puzzle end of it. It's like, it's not very cerebral. It's not super cryptic. It's just very like

Can you get what they're going for here and then just go from there? Like if a puzzle is solved by moving pieces in a certain way, can you see what you did and follow that rule for the next couple of them? They'll do a couple for each of the different sort of bits. You go from there and it's got layers to it, man. I won't say too much else. It's super short. It's like five bucks.

I think this is great. I echo Jason's thoughts on this. I think if you like puzzle games, there's really no reason you shouldn't play this. And if you like Flash games, if you miss that era of video games, go back and play it. Check it out. It's really funny. The trailer for it is six seconds long. That's all you need.

Strange Jigsaw. It's only five bucks on Steam. I'm making a Strange Jigsaw at the moment. There's a company called Magic Puzzle Company. I'm not too in on the jigsaw world, but I was in Target with my family. And I saw this for like 25 bucks. And I like a jigsaw. I'll do a jigsaw.

And this art is gorgeous. Absolutely hand-drawn. Absolutely beautiful. The one I got. It's like, I forget the name of this. I'm actually on a subreddit for this type of art. You know the type of art that is like, it's almost like Where's Wally?

as Waldo where there's so much going on right and you you can look in and see individual things like hyper detailed sort of art there's actually a word for it and I'm on a subreddit for people who draw it and it's I just it's amazing how people how good people are at this so it's almost like that it's sort of like well where's Waldo style thing

But the pieces are insane. Like there are flat pieces that aren't edge pieces. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it loops around. So you're... can't quite tell sometimes if something is on the right or left side of the of the image um it some of the shapes some of the pieces are just huge like sometimes i'll just have like a really huge jigsaw piece or small ones like it's just breaking and again this is probably not that new for people who are like into jigsaw shit

And there's also like a sheet that you get that is like Easter egg. So you can go in and try and find all these things kind of Where's Waldo style at the end. And then there's just a bag in the box that's like, don't stop, don't open until you're finished.

And I don't know what it is. Yeah. So like it was super good. It was like 25 bucks. It's incredibly complicated. It's going to take me like a week to do it. I've completely taken over the family kitchen table with this thing and we have to like sit and eat standing up in the kitchen.

Um, but it's really cool. Um, dude, if that stuff excites you, you would really, really like strange jigsaws. Like if you like when it's, it's going weird and adding layers to things, I think this is, this will be right up your alley. It's so interesting. Already added to my, uh, steam car.

check check out so what do you think is in the bag in the done up until you're done bag it feels like more pieces but I don't know what that means it's uh either that or Brad Pitt's wife's head oh no what's in the bag it's like new game plus is in there

Yeah, that's kind of what it feels like. And also what's cool is all the packaging, there's like no throwaway plastic. All the packaging is in. They're all like, you know, no AIRs. The bags are like little sort of brown bags that you can put everything back into.

It's really cool. It's a really thoughtful thing. And yeah, it's just like, I was just compelled. I was like, I did it for, I got it for the art. And then when I opened it up, I was like, what the fuck's going on here? Do not open until the, all right. Fair enough. It's just a fat joint to celebrate that you found. Oh, hell yeah. That'd be great. A couple of Cubanos. It's a big stinking joint over there. Knowing Target, it's probably some...

fucking vinyls from Taylor Swift that people didn't buy. It's a promo to buy other puzzles from the company. That would be so upsetting. I hope it's a smaller version of the same puzzle. Like an eight piece.

size. You know what I mean? Like a baby. Like an idiot baby like me could do it. Hell yeah. Like an idiot blinking baby in a video game. I think that's all the video games for us to talk about. Jeremy, did you have fun at California? Yeah, it was fucking great. This year has been tumultuous. It's involved a cross-country move. I have...

spent more time taking game dev seriously this year, which has been sort of like a second job on top of work here. And I have, I've, I think all year I've probably had like six or seven days where I was like, I'm taking the day off all year.

Um, including like weekends and everything. So, uh, this was much needed. I had not seen, uh, Chelsea, my girlfriend in like eight months either. Wow. Cause we're long distance. So, uh, we got together, we spent three weeks just hanging out in Northern California. Hell yeah.

Went to the beach a bunch, foraged for mushrooms, found some really, really fucking cool mushrooms. I'll post more mushroom pictures in the Discord and the podcast chat after this episode airs. Should we do a slash mushrooms, hash mushrooms chat?

A Mycology channel? That would actually be sick. I don't know if there's an active enough sub-community in our sub-community. Yeah, ate a bunch of really good food. Went up to Mendocino at one point and got some sushi and chill by the beach. Nice, in the town.

Yeah, the town of Mendocino. There's a sushi spot in Mendo? There's a good sushi spot in Mendo. It's called Narbar if you're up in Mendo. I highly recommend you check it out. They got good dumplings, good sushi, good noodles and stuff. Hell yeah.

I don't know. It was the first time in so long that I've just for like so many days in a row. It's the longest vacation I've taken in my adult life by a long shot. Like three weeks is a long time. But I think I really needed it. I feel like I like looked in the mirror when I got back and was like.

Felt like I looked like a different person. One of those things where you kind of don't realize how bad you need it until you take it. So, yeah, I feel very renewed. And also, even though I didn't I didn't do any game dev because I didn't bring a computer with me after the first week. I. I got a notebook and I felt like, like imagine like the fucking fiending kicked in. Imagine like a full size sketch pad, like huge pages. I felt like.

Almost 20 of them fully with text and diagrams. Whoa. 20 pages or 20? Pages. Page, okay. I was like, are you okay? I became Dostoevsky on vacation. Jeremy, yeah. Yeah, but but it was cool. It was much needed. And also, I think that like sitting down with a pen and paper, I think I'm going to make a more dedicated part of my game dev practice as well, because I found it very fruitful to be unable to.

to actualize the things I was thinking of. I think too often I'll have an idea and be like, oh, I got to sit down and make this because that's the impetus when you're sitting in front of a computer is like... It's very hard to draw a line between like planning mode and idea generation and idea realization mode. Sitting down with a pen and just like drawing an entire map for a dungeon.

uh was very fruitful because i could not i could not actualize any of it um so it forced me to just like make a uh just a blueprint for stuff so um hell yeah Also, it's an investment in your future because you can sell all that as an art book later on. Yeah, there you go. I don't think my sketches are good enough for that, but I might be in the comedy section of the bookstore.

They don't need to be. When I was at that thing in Melbourne, the awesome Game Worlds exhibit, all the Silksong stuff they had there, some of it was good, some of it was just real like...

I just wrote this shit down on a piece of paper. That's true. Some of the storyboarding for some of my favorite movies is like, it looks like a third grader drew it. So, uh, yeah, but, uh, but it was, it was a great trip. I really, really enjoyed it. And, um, I appreciate you guys holding down the four walls gone.

I appreciate the, you know, that, that I have the flexibility to work like a fucking demon for 12 months and then go away for three weeks. Yeah. It's awesome. Now we're glad to have you back. Glad you're. You got to do that and take care of yourself. And yeah, you know, we're heading into winter, folks. You know what I mean? It's like we sort of bang on this drum in Ireland a lot because we have unfortunate levels of...

You know, a lot of men, especially, who don't ask for help when they need it at this time of year. So, you know, we're sort of heading into it now. We are firmly in November and we have a couple of dark months to get through here. you know, in terms of light, at least. Literally metaphorically. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, take care of yourselves. Hang out with people. If you need some help, ask your buddies. If you don't have buddies, ask people you know, ask your family.

Yeah, ask a neighbor. Ask a stranger. Yeah, yeah. If you need any help, just make sure you ask and also get ahead of it. Get ahead of it and try and exercise and not drink too much and, you know, all that good stuff. Spend time with people.

And then Santa Claus comes and everything's okay. So don't worry about it. It's all good. Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving? No, you guys have Thanksgiving. Do you guys have it already? Yeah, ours is October. Like three weeks, I think. Yeah. Two weeks? Two weeks? Two weeks. I won't be here. Actually, I will be here. That'd be weird if I wasn't here for Thanksgiving. I have a family. I won't be here this coming weekend, though, because I'm heading to...

Las Vegas, Nevada. Although I'm not really going to Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm going to the town of Prim on the outskirts of Las Nagas. Wasn't that the guy from Negan? That was the guy from... Negan, there you go. Jesse's eyes are bulging like, oh shit, here's the moment where he does it. Stop, stop. They're going to clip this out of context. Got to hang out with the Negas. Whoa, hey now.

I'm going to be in, but if you remember the name Prim, it's because it's a little town on the border of California, Nevada, and it's where Fallout New Vegas starts. So I will be, I'm driving. I'm not going to Vegas, actually. I will not. ever go to Vegas on the strip. I'm going to drive here to there. It's been eight hours on Friday. And for the Fallout fan celebration, which is a Fallout themed like...

Expo fan meet and greet thing that is run by a independent group of fans and has grown a lot over the years. And this year is going to be probably bigger than usual because the TV show, of course, is is the season two is. to take place in new vegas um and uh yeah fallout's obviously pretty big at the moment with the tv show the the first season and you know they apparently released fallout 4 anniversary edition

which was like a new expensive version of Fallout 4 that apparently has a bunch of bugs, a time of recording, and obviously 76 is also getting a big update as well. They renounced that a few weeks ago. Yeah, so there's a lot of Fallout stuff going on. And yeah, we're big Fallout fans and I'm a big Fallout New Vegas fan. So I thought, hey, let's go film some stuff down there and see if we can turn it into some sort of Fallout New Vegas retrospective.

which would be cool. So yes, I'm going to go down and I'm filming there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. And then I'll drive my ass back to NorCal on Sunday night. No rest for the wicked, so. Yeah, looking forward to that. Should be fun. It's the last filming of the year, I'm pretty sure. There might be some more stuff in San Francisco related to what we were filming last weekend. Or at the end of last week.

Yeah, aside from that, we're going to have lots of docs to tell you about, but we'll get to that in a hot second.

First of all, we have a couple of emails here Frank and they want to take this take the second one first actually Yeah Bob Ace. Oh, yeah. So if people want to send us an email, please write to us podcast at noclip.video or in the Discord channel for podcast chat. Once again, email us podcast at noclip.video. Our question comes from Bob Ace. Other one.

Oh, okay. End of media. If you're going to a nice sandwich place, what's your go-to sandwich? Danny really wanted to answer this one way more than the other one. I do too. Jeremy, you go. Okay. I have, I've been a vegetarian for like fucking seven years or something.

And my favorite sub in the world is an Italian sub. I used to dream like for seven years is the only thing where I'm like, I should start eating meat again because I fucking love Italian subs. But an Italian sub is so cold cut heavy. It's got like three fuck. It's got like Genoa salami. It's got caliber.

crazy salami it's got like seven types of salami in there right uh i had a sub in california that was essentially it was it was called a veggie something like a veggie something i don't they had a name for it was veggie something it was a california italian is what i'm calling it it was two layers of cheese two different types of cheese uh And then like a similar core to an Italian, like chopped lettuce, iceberg lettuce, tossed olive oil and vinegar, like onion, tomato, all the trappings.

And you're like, oh, but there's no meat. How could it be delicious without that like umami and fattiness? It had smashed avocado in there and it filled the void in my life of not having an Italian sub. So when I got back to Massachusetts, I went to my favorite sub shop from when I was a kid where I used to get Italian subs and I asked them to recreate the sandwich.

And they did such a fucking bad job. Oh, I'm so sad. I was fucking devastated. I was like, I can have my favorite stuff again. And I got back and I like explained it to them. Like I was all excited and they were psyched. They're like, oh.

Dude, yeah, like fucking, oh, you're a vegetarian? No worries. We're going to fucking make you leave it to us. They were like psyched. Oh, this is so sad. And they made me. They even tried. There was like, they were too sad. I let them be excited, and I was like, I feel like they're going to do a good job.

like i was like yeah i mean you know if you got ideas fucking throw them in there that was my huge mistake is there were green peppers in this thing there were whole kalamata olives i love the kalamata olive but it was just like it was too concentrated uh It had, like, the pepperoncini in it were good. That was also in the California Italian. It had a pimento, though, chopped pimento. That was pretty good. But overall, just a fucking mass of a sandwich. Damn.

Can you go back and ask them a second time and, like, tweak it? Or is that a step too far? I didn't burn the bridge. I think as long as I'm diplomatic about the first sandwich, I think...

Cause it's a fucking small town. Like they're going to, when I go back, they're going to be like, so what'd you think? Um, so I'll have to be like, it was good. I'm going to go. It was great. Let's try something different this time. Just cause I'm in a different kind of mood. And then when the better one comes out, I'll be like, that was the one baby. Yeah. Name it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's, oh man. My wife came back from Santa Rosa on Sunday. She was at a friend's house with our kid, and she swung by Ike's. And got me something. Because there's no Ikes in Petaluma and you can't. So it's up there. So it's, you know, I'm not going to drive.

22 minutes return trip for Ike's, especially when we used to have one within walking distance of the Noclip studio in Emeryville. That was a bad time. That's probably where I put on like my fucking, I say, I call it COVID weight, but I'd been investing early.

It's Ike's weight. Yeah. It was Ike's weight. It's Dutch crunch weight. A hundred percent. God damn it. Ike's sandwich is so good. Yeah. If you're ever in California, I feel like they're in lots of places now. They're in Nevada and Arizona and all over the spots. It's good.

Ike's is good stuff. I met Ike before. He looks like the guy on the logo. You met the real Ike? Yeah. Where? In NorCal. He was in one of the stores. What? He was just doing like a meet and greet? He just does. Yeah, he's just around. He was just checking in. The fuck?

Follow him on social media. He's like, yeah, he just posts on Instagram when he's at shops and stuff. He looks like David Draven from Disturbed, like the logo, like a smaller version of him. He makes good sandwiches. Jesse, what's your favorite? There used to be a place in Toronto called Egg Bay. Rest in peace. Really good.

Stupid name, but very good sandwich place. They had like this Korean, I think it was Korean sausage they put on there with the egg and it was a beautiful sandwich. That's gone. So now my favorite place is Artie's in Hamilton, Ontario. You ever get the chance? Local place. It's on Lock Street. Really, really. Yeah, you know, people love going to Hamilton, Ontario. Really, really good sandwich. It's like this big focaccia loaf cut.

And then they put these like fantastic, like they make their own burrata. They got their own seasonings. They make their own anti-pesto. It's all on there. It's really, really good sandwich. And they have vegetarian options. Jeremy, so when you come up, we'll go there. Hell yeah. I'm coming. Love to hear it. Love it. Frank? Oh, I like... Do we hear an email? Do you like sandwiches? What's your favorite sandwich, bro? I like banh mi's and spicy Italian. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't have like a good sandwich spot. Isn't that a sandwich spot? You more of a burger guy? It's so expensive. Everything's so expensive. I can't afford to get like a... $20 sandwich, no chips, no drink. Suck me. I'm not doing that. I can't handle it. See, that's the thing about the local spot is you go to a house of pizza in New England. It's still like $7 for some reason for a large sub.

They have a large pizza for like $10. Just never mentioned it. They don't know what the economy is. They're just like, I don't know, $10 is what a pizza costs. They don't leave the pizza shop. Yeah. They're like, what's a pizza worth? Like five bucks these days? I don't know. Give me what you got in your pocket. I'll take that.

Yeah, exactly. You barter. Our next email, Bob Ace asks, people have been discussing the issues associated with having so many games in the online marketplace, with everything from quadruple egg juggernauts to the tiniest indie effort vying for the same spotlight. This isn't a phenomenon that appears to be slowing down. down anytime soon.

And I worry that this will only serve to further dissuade creative people from sharing the fruits of their efforts. My question is, are there any aspects, root causes, or other facets of the conversation around too many games discourse that you think should be discussed more? And what do you see the best course of action that people can do?

do on the whole to help address this issue hmm hmm to me the answer is that and it's sort of the thing that has happened throughout the entirety of my time playing games which is that The tools have gotten better and you are now able to make way bigger games with fewer people. which means that smaller studios are making big games, games that feel like big games, individual creators are able to make games faster than ever before. And like, you know, we talk about this a lot with AI, but like...

This is also just like the way, the direction of travel with, if we click our fingers and AI doesn't exist tomorrow, this has been, you know. I guess we don't call it a problem because it's not. It's just like because of the current state of the American economy, we are very sensitive to a lot of these things. But it has become so much easier to make games with fewer people.

Um, or, and also there are mechanisms like stuff like, um, you know, uh, outsourcing and, uh, buying assets online. Like all this stuff has just like completely changed. how difficult it is and how expedient it now is to get games online that I think it's just there's more stuff out there it's just there's more people able to do it I don't know there was probably a time when like

oil for paint was hard to get and there wasn't that many painters and then something happened and suddenly every child was painting. The Renaissance started and they were like, there's too many paintings, man. I can't look at all of them. There's just so much art.

do. This one's an asset flip. This one's just like a fucking asset flip painting. It is weird, is it? Yeah, I don't know. That's to me the root cause that I can kind of see and then there's lots of secondary sort of elements. Yeah, like accessibility of tools.

And the emergence of sort of like asset marketplaces, the establishment of sort of like viral meme genres that people will try to capitalize on before they're out of favor and stuff like that. It definitely leads to a... flooding of digital marketplaces I think that like I think it is and isn't a problem I think it is a problem because there are a lot of people doing legitimate work that's drowned out by the noise but I think there is another level on which I think

people like i mean this is what we're trying to do with noclip too is that there is an emergence of people who are trying to elevate the the reach of people who are doing meaningful work in games and stuff who need a little more reach um i think that they're

will always be a place for games that are made well and with intentionality and with originality and with vision. And I think that those things are sort of like, no matter how good the tools get, even if you had a billion infinite canvases and infinite paints and infinite... whatever, no matter how good the tooling is, it always needs to be leveraged to create something good. And so I think that like, you know, if you compare the team that made the original Fallout to like the team that made.

I don't know. I'm this is an this is a fucking low hanging fruit. But to compare it to like Fallout 76, like we went there when they were working on 76. There's a fucking there's hundreds of people working with like best in class technology, best in class tools, like artists who are incredible. Like just look at the concept art.

76 you'd be like holy shit these people are geniuses it doesn't mean that 76 is a better game than fallout because fallout had a stronger sort of like core vision it i mean it created the universe that then 76 was tapping into so clearly like it it tapped into something sort of like in its world building um yeah i just think that like

There's no not not to veer too close to like auteur theory, but I think that there's no replacement for someone or some group of people at the head of the ship who know where the ship is heading and have like an original idea. And that I think is the ultimate.

commodity uh that is sort of decoupled from tooling but uh yeah i but there's a lot of bullshit out there so the it's interesting like the i feel like i'm playing more games than ever I don't necessarily mean I'm playing more I'm playing more video games total like hours of gaming but I feel like I'm playing more games and I think one of the things that's happened with

this whether or not it's an attention economy issue or something is like I was we're saying earlier about But hypogia, where I feel like if, you know, I don't know the designer's intention, but imagine if that game came out five years ago, they might be reticent to have it be a... you know two to four hour experience they might feel like oh i should flesh this out more i should maybe i need to get a publisher then to do that you know whereas now we live in this space where

People make these super tight experiences. Like, I pay five bucks and play a game for an hour. And I'd like it. And I'm like, fucking great. Great. That was awesome. That was, you know, cost. I could have gotten.

you know, three, I could buy more, three more of these and still not afford a sandwich. You know, it's like, um, no chips. I think that's really cool. Sorry. The one thing I think that's definitely going to change when he talks about the AAA juggernauts, I think we're going to see a far less.

Yeah. We sort of have our established pillars. I kind of feel like they're going to be the established. I'm not saying no one's going to make any AAA games, but like I don't like see how much effort and money it costs EA to. to make Battlefield 6 to try and take over COD's crown. Like there's just no, there's like three companies who can afford to do this now. Maybe two. So I, in the same way, no one's trying to beat FIFA anymore.

I think the same thing is going to happen with a lot of these established IPs. There's going to be no new Far Cry style game to try and beat Far Cry. I think those are kind of... as as they were for the moment you know what I mean but that's where I worry about stagnation because to me that's what happened to the music industry is that you just had a bunch of things taking up too much space and then not enough people knew about the cool shit on the underground we didn't have the

we didn't have the vectors for it but like thankfully you know for all of Steam's faults I you know I really dislike and I've talked about it before the 30% thing I think especially for you know smaller studios and stuff That shouldn't be the case. But for all of its faults, it is a very effective tool at getting people to play weird and, you know, wishlist games and all that stuff. So it's not perfect, but I think it's...

It's pretty good. Discovery tools online now are really bad. And Steam is maybe one of the best that are out there. Certainly the best that's owned by a large company. which is kind of maybe says more about how bad all the other ones are. But I do think it's pretty good at helping to help with discovery, even if it's not perfect at it.

Yeah, that new calendar thing they released, I think, is a very useful tool. What's that? Oh, if you go to Steam on the store page under recommendations, there's a calendar you can check now. And it has...

All of the stuff, most of the stuff you have wishlisted releasing soon. And then some new games that you might not have heard of that might align with your tastes and interests. And I use the Discovery Q a lot, which shows me like games that have zero reviews. A lot of them look bad, but you know, stuff that.

you would never see. So they're getting, yeah, there's certainly stuff there that makes it easier, uh, on the homepage recommendations at the top and then explore my calendar. Okay. Yeah. Or. store.steampower.com slash personal calendar. It'll also show you recent releases and stuff. It was a really cool thing to have. I think, yeah, that to me is the thing with saying there's too many games because I don't...

I don't think like we don't say that about other mediums. I mean, maybe people do who are really locked into those mediums, but like, I don't know. There's a lot of books that come out all the time. I don't really hear.

You know, the general claim of there's too many books like this is there's books that you want to read and then there's books you don't want to read and that's OK. But the problem here, I think, is coverage is a big part of it is like you don't know what to risk your time on. I think we have that problem a lot where it's like, what am I going to play this week? I got to cover something.

let me play stuff. And it turns out it doesn't work for me and I don't want to cover it. Or like, it's not what I thought it was going to be. It doesn't work. Like there's, there's a million reasons, but it's so hard to parse compared to, I'm used to be so monocultural. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like games as like saying there's too many games is also sort of a weird like monolithicization of games as a medium that like.

Because there haven't been there's been like a fucking dozen games this year, max, that I've wanted to play really bad. And it's not that many. So, like, I think that, you know, it's kind of like saying there's too many YouTube videos where it's like. People don't consume YouTube videos as like a, you know, like, it's like saying there's too many food options, but some people like Italian food, and some people like fucking sandwiches, myself included. Like, I...

think that each subgenre of games is sort of like its own medium in some regard or something. You know what I mean? Like you could say there's too many... co-op hangout games. I think that that is a valid observation, maybe. I was trying not to say friend slop so bad. Now I'm just infatuated with the idea that

an alien would come to Earth and be like, there are too many food options. You know what I mean? I can see that. Because what if they come from a planet where there's like one thing they eat and they're like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? Like...

There's no consistency. I buy a sandwich from this place. I buy a beef sandwich over here. I buy a beef sandwich over here. And they're two different fucking sandwiches. Ketchup and mustard, you gluttons. I'll agree with that. There are too many condiments. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like it's a games as a monolith is kind of like a.

a miss miss labeling of, um, of, or it's a misunderstanding of what games do and what they are and who they're for. Cause like, I mean, I would be interested to, I was thinking about this when you were talking about like indie versus like AAA and how I would be interested to talk to people who are like

super normie gamers like people who don't like people don't even like check like fucking GameSpot and IGN just people who like play video games and kind of you know Horizon the new Horizon game comes out and they're like I've heard of that I'll play that or whatever just like people who play big AAA titles and i would be interested to talk to people who played balatro who are in that camp i know probably four or five of those because we should interview them

Cause like, I'm curious about like what it is. Is it just cause it's like poker? Is it cause it's like, they can sort of understand the concept so it doesn't feel like there's like a friction to getting into it because it's like. Indie games, I think like my brother plays like God of War and Horizon and stuff like that. But like and like Elden Ring. But he I would be curious to see for people like that.

what it is, like why they don't explore indie games more if they love video games as a medium. If there's like some sort of... mental cognitive friction where they're like oh I that's too artsy or something my interpretation of that and I also think some of this is like I worked in video game retail for a long time so like I'm I talked to a lot of these people over the years but when it comes to like Balotron in particular like there's a

bunch of like dad friends and parent friends who are in our circles who will always talk to me about game stuff and to me what it is is it's in the same way that like if I I don't go listening to like indie radio but if I hear enough people talking about this one band over and over and over again i'll go check it out or the same with like you know when i was a teenager in movies like oh i don't really watch you know romance movies but like people are like really talking about this one

over and over again. And I think what happens with something like Balatro, and this isn't the, I think this is an answer to this question, but I think what happens with something like Balatro is that they go, they the game reaches a certain or silk song or something like that it reaches a certain amount of like uh there's so much talk around it that it it stops being an indie game to them it starts just being part of

mainstream culture and then they're like oh I'll play that game and they don't even consider it as what they're thinking about is I wonder what the next game will be that sort of bubbles up from the ether to me you know what I mean like that type of thing yeah that's a good point it does I think you're spot on I think it's that like

it's people who don't identify as like, I'm someone who seeks out sort of like unique experiences game in games. They're more someone who's like, I'll play a fun game sometimes. And then if, if Balatro becomes, it's like when you see a hundred advertisements for Coca-Cola and then.

like one day you're in the store and you're like i could go for a coca-cola like it's just sort of um like a cognitive saturation point yeah yeah like and i wonder how many games people it takes to get recommended from like one or two or three like what the sweet spot is where you're like oh you know okay i'll i'll consider that i'll check that out um you know for you for that

door to open up but yeah it is interesting and you know I doubt many of those people get converted to the world of indie games but who knows I think a lot of people have been converted from AAA

gamers or double a gamers who now play more indie stuff you know yeah definitely definitely in like the enthusiast circles like you'll see even if you go on like the normie gaming subreddit like reddit our gaming and stuff which i very rarely go on but occasionally something pops up it'll be like you'll see even

people in those sort of larger more normal subreddits being like oh man like this was the year of indie games and stuff the last couple years uh yeah so that's heartening at least to see like you know like casual enthusiasts people recognizing that at least i feel like that's sort of the first sign of the wind shifting or whatever.

Yeah, and there's always those breakouts. Like even though I'm not human, there's like 5,000 overwhelmingly positive reviews. I mean, streamers are the biggest sort of like cultural shift in that is that more people who are like normie gamers will like only play normie.

normal games but they'll watch people like germa or queso or whoever the northern lion play these games that are like you know pretty like legitimately some of them are pretty obscure indies that these people play and are signal boosting them to you know 5 10 20 000 concurrent viewers or you know active viewers maybe that's not what concurrent means can you make sure you use the right stat terminology when you're I'm so sorry to the metrics fiends out there I'm so sorry CCUs bring that up um

But yeah, I mean, there's, you know. I do think that's cool. Mussolina got a huge fucking boost when Northern Lion played it. Oh, really? Which I don't watch Northern Lion, but I do follow the dev of Mussolina. Crazy. So, yeah, I was like, I saw them post about like...

you know, Northern Ireland played my game and now I have enough sort of like financial runway to continue developing this project I'm working on. That's crazy. So, or like Among Us, like Among Us was not an instant success. It was sort of like a soft simmer and then it became like the COVID.

era streamer game and it made 400 bajillion dollars and every halloween i see so many people little little among us people running around the streets yeah little beans candy i wonder how many devs games sorry No, you started laughing. I was curious what you were going to say. Oh, actually me. I thought you were talking about me. Yeah, I was going to say that I think that I wonder how many devs are like specifically making games with the hope.

that Northern Lion plays them and almost targeting him. Oh, yeah. Because there's got to be a lot. I'm not going to shout out a specific game. There was a game I played in the last few weeks that had a specific reference to a specific streamer in it, and I was like, this fucking sucks. You know what? I'll call it out. Egging on. I played that game last week. I thought it was really...

I was like, this is fun. I like it. It's a 3D platform. I don't dislike it now because of this, but I got to a certain point where there's a, I don't know how I didn't put this together on my own. There's a carton of eggs. that says like Northern Northern something lion, whatever, uh, eggs, proudly Canadian. on the carton and i was like oh how did i not figure out the game where you play as an egg was targeting the guy who looks like an egg that they call egg how did i not put that together man

Make it, make your dollars. Yeah. They knew what they were doing. Smart plan. I just think I just, I, it's a bit gauche. All right. It's tasteless. And I'm not going to hate on someone who wants to put their favorite streamer. I mean, like I fucking, I'm a germa fan. I'm not going to put germa in my game, but.

Like if you played it, I'd be delighted. But I would be I think it would be weird. Maybe this is just me. If I was a big streamer and I was like, oh, here's this cool game and I played it and then I was in it, I would be like, oh, I mean, half these people are paid to play big games anyway. You know what I mean?

Yeah, but these are like micro indies that are putting the streamers in, which is why it's both kind of like, it's not that big a deal. And also the morals of the question that we've already sort of passed the, you know. And I'm not throwing rocks in a glass house here, but I think they'd get tickled from that maybe.

Yeah, maybe. You're probably right. I probably am more more reviled by like this. I don't know. It's not even like parasocial. It's just sort of like, I don't know, fan service. But for one person, I don't want to be reductive about it, but I do feel that like. there are a lot of co-op horror games that are purely exists to try and be the next co-op horror game. You know what I mean? Like...

I totally agree. I think the line is, is when like they do the dead space remake and there's a reference to like an internet meme communication between two real people that happened on Twitter. That's where I'm like, you've crossed over from like.

Yeah. Is it the Khalif Adams thing? Yeah, it is. It's where it crosses over. Wait, really? I think they put like Cock and Cook or something right on the walls. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. That's where it crosses over for me from like... aha like it's you know it's fun to be a little cheeky in your game into like you are you are undercutting the artistry of what you're doing in a real and deleterious way

I think the worst thing is if you make that reference and the streamer never plays your game, then it's just in there for someone that would never, no one will get that. That's quite sad. That's like a, it's like a Valentine's day gift that never got. opened or something yeah yeah message in a bottle that never lands on the beach yeah exactly oh that's that's exactly what it is yeah that's heartbreaking

All right, let's wrap it up there. Noclipwise, what have we got landing this week? We have the indie rec on Mothra. Mothra, I keep wanting to say. It's an anagram for Mothra. Frank said those letters out earlier. That was crazy. I don't think my brain can do words that good. Words are hard, man.

Yeah, so we have that. We have some other stuff. We have a lot of stuff landing next week. Jesse, you have the Ambrosia Sky preview going up. Well, it's not so much a preview. It's more of a feature, right? Yeah, exactly. Talking about the act one of the game that launched on Monday this week. Yeah, I think it's going to be a really good piece. Talk to a bunch of the developers at SoftRains. It's a really good conversation. In person. Yeah, he went down to films.

Good stuff. Speaking of in-person filming, we have our big preview of Demon School. I've played a bunch of that game over the past couple of months now because I got kicked down the road a little bit when Silksong... dropped its release date. It was right on top of Demon's School and they were like, you know what, let's do some polish. We'll bring this game to Poland for a while. So I've been playing that.

Really enjoying it. I can't, you know, I won't say too much more than that because it's before the review embargo and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's very strong. It's not necessarily a genre of game that... is made for me or I would seek out. You know, it's a sort of half Shin Megami Tensei sort of persona style.

you know, overworld, talking to your school friends style stuff. And then what is very much in my genre is a grid-based, turn-based combat stuff. But it is doing a lot of very unique stuff in the combat.

particular it has some Brandon pitched it to me as if this is a game made for a sequel to the Sega Saturn that never came out and they actually gave themselves like like design and hardware style restrictions to try and keep it in that box and i think it's such a stylish game as a result so yeah i have a feeling when it comes out people are going to be hot about it but we're going to have a preview on it and next week um where it'll be

my thoughts on what I've played and a bunch of insight from Brandon and we have no clip to exclusive, uh, tour of Brandon's incredible home where he has. Just the most insane collection of old Laserdisc games and Saturn games and fucking... Japanese soundtracks and just absolutely mad stuff. And also some bonus scenes from the actual interview as well. We're going to have the two videos for that, it looks like.

So that's going to be pretty cool. And also a little announcement. We've sort of taken on our first, MinMax would call it a cohort. I'd like to say we just like working with creative, cool people. But yes, in light of Jesse might have a bit of maybe a little bit less time at some stage next year with...

Family responsibilities and whatnot. And then obviously Jeremy is doing his game dev stuff and working away with us. And Frank goes off to Japan every once in a while. And God knows I go off to Ireland every once in a while. I was thinking we needed a release valve. We needed someone to come in and help us do a little bit more. And also maybe some different style stuff that we don't do, like small scripted videos and things like that.

And so I'm delighted to... There'll be a little video on the channel by now, but we are going to be working with Nocaps, who is a fantastic... A YouTuber, she produces videos very similar to the types of games we do, like the types of games we cover here. She's been doing it on her own. She writes, edits, does the whole shebang. And yeah, reached out to her a few weeks ago. And we talked about maybe doing some types of collaborations. She pitched some ideas.

We're like, fuck it. Let's give it a whirl. So she is joining our crew. She probably won't be on the podcast. Maybe in the future. She's definitely more of a scripted feature style creative. I'm not sure. This is the type of environment where her insights would necessarily sing as beautifully.

Who knows? Like, I'd love to get her on here. It'd be awesome. But for the moment where she's going to be basically helping us with post-production on some videos and writing and doing her own ones too. And she is actually doing one on Hypergea at the moment. So that should be up. Maybe by the time this podcast is, maybe over the weekend. We'll get right into it. But yeah, welcome to the crew, no caps. Delighted to have you. And yeah, we're looking forward to...

making some cool stuff. And then Game of the Year stuff is happening. The nature of that being on podcast means it's going to be us. Probably have a little list from her as well, actually. We'll put it somewhere. do something. Maybe we should put together a video. We're going to be putting together videos this year too. We should mention as well. It's going to be...

The Noclip podcast is going to be the main place where the Game of the Year discussions happen, but we will have some videos up on Noclip 2 about Game of the Year and about some of the games that we played. And looking back on 2025, as it were, for... for games coverage, especially as there were many games that we didn't cover because Noclip 2 sort of kicked off halfway through the year.

Loads and loads and loads to talk about. Disco Elysium Doc. Check out the trailer on YouTube early next week. Check out episode one on Patreon early next week. And yeah, it's going to be a whole big thing. We got lots of cool stuff coming out there. And on Noclip 2 as well. Alright, gents. That was fun. Good to have you back, Jeremy. It's good to be back. Thanks, guys, for holding down the fort. Absolutely. And I'm very glad to be back.

Yeah, good to have you. And we are looking forward to chatting a bunch more over the next few weeks for Game of the Year. Until then, well not until then, until next week. Have a good one and see you soon. Bye!