Ninja Gaiden 4, Hyperbeat, Danny's Australian Adventure

you Hello friends, welcome to episode 250, 250, not quite 350.

I gave him a dollar. But we're here. It's a no-clip podcast. It's a crewcast, a partial crewcast. I have replaced Jeremy this week. He is off gallivanting, enjoying his well-needed vacation. I am just back. And I mean just back from Australia. I got off the plane a few hours ago. I got on the plane at 11 a.m. on Wednesday and I arrived at 6 a.m. on Wednesday. How about that dateline? Jesse Garasha, how you doing? I'm good. You know, my arms aren't tired. I didn't just fly in.

Oh, boy. We'll see how this podcast goes. Let me just tell you that. You guys said you pushed it to Wednesday, and I was like, great, Wednesday, let's go. I'll see you at 11. You were like, oh, noon. I'm like, okay, the more this gets kicked along, the more chance I'm going to fall asleep in the middle. Sorry. No, it's all to make sure that Frank could get some quality time with Ninja Gaiden 4. How you doing, Frank?

uh good yeah generally like now that we're creeping into like closer to winter and there's less daylight my mood is like like i don't know why i'm depressed there's no japan trips coming up but uh like objectively speaking like everything's fine everything's good um so yeah Yeah, you got you got to hit up some of that. You know, you're doing a not scary farm. You doing it. Yeah, I

Yeah, I did not Scary Farm like a few weeks ago, but tonight Insane Clown Posse is playing the Anaheim House of Blooms. So I feel like that's like naturally Halloween-ish. I'm excited for that. Yeah, how do you Halloween up an ICP thing? That's kind of already in the... In the realm. They're like walking jack-o'-lanterns. I think if you wanted to make it scary, they don't wear the face paint. Right? That's terrifying. An inversion. You all just turn up. The juggalos and juggalettes are just...

Is there a gender neutral juggalo word? Have they made one of those yet? Juggalems. I mean, I think like Juggalo is... Juggalo is very good. Juggalo is all-inclusive. Like the term Juggalette does get used, but like, no, yeah, Juggalo is all-inclusive. I like to think they're up there. Like we, we respect all people. All Juggalo are welcome. Exactly, yeah. Although I really like Juggle M a lot. I think that's pretty strong, actually. I like that a lot.

We're gonna talk about some video games today. I gotta talk a little bit about Australia. I'm glad I was on now, because otherwise it's gonna be like a week and a half before I talk about all the nonsense that went on down under. And I probably will forget most of it. So this kind of worked out, honestly.

We're going to talk about some games. I'm going to predominantly talk about the games I played in Australia. A bunch of stuff has come out that was on my wish. Like, I didn't play Battlefield 6. I was away when all that happened. Dispatch came out yesterday or today. Today, yeah.

Today I played the first 30 minutes of that. Played is maybe a strong word. You watched some good cut scenes? I did. I actually turned off the, this is the game made by, I think it's Ad Hoc Studio. Yeah, Telltale's re-founded team.

And a critical role, of course, lending their voices and acting talents to this project. Looks incredible. It's just like watching a... really high production value uh western anime as it were uh i turned off quick time events because i was like no i just want to do the other stuff that's not i don't need that When I'm watching, I want to be watching. And then when the game happens, you just give me a tap on the shoulder. So I've only played 30 minutes. I can't say much about that.

Any other bits and bobs have come out in the past? Arc Raiders had its server slam on the weekend. I missed that. I didn't even get to play that. Looks good though. Hey, I couldn't tell you because they paid me to make a three-part series. So I'm just going to sit here on my hands and say nothing about it. It was interesting. I was reading the Reddit on the server slam stuff. Frank, did you get a chance to jump on at all? No, no.

He's played a lot of our creators for us. I bet. For other reasons. No, the same reason, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. So, but like, yeah, we were, I mean, we were playing, I was playing a beta test with the team for a lot of the year and stuff like that. But it was really interesting. seeing the difference between Tech Test 2 and the server slam. Because people are like, man, this game is hard. I'm like, yes. Yes. Let's do it. Make it happen.

So I'm excited to jump in. I'm trying to decide if that or Escape from Duck Off is going to be my introduction to the extraction shooter genre. Explain to me what that, I saw that on Reddit earlier and I just, I filled in the blanks. Am I probably close? Yeah, probably. I mean, it's called Escape from Duck Off. They weren't exactly being subtle with the thing they're copying, but it's like a Tarkov style.

top-down-ish, isometric, I suppose you could say, extraction shooter, where you play as a duck against other ducks, and there's enemies in the world that you fight as a duck. Are they rubber ducks, or are they real ducks? They vary in style. There's like, I've seen non... non-duck ducks. You know what I mean? Like swans. I don't know what you mean. Like, you look at it, you're like, that's a goose. But like everyone, if you call it a duck, no one's getting mad. Oh, sure. Yeah.

We had three chickens in this room the entire week that I was away. You mean ducks? Because we are keeping our chicks. I mean, they're pretty much chickens now. They're like four times as big as they were when I left last week. But this room smelled pretty bad. So I put them outside. So they're outside. They're literally just outside that door.

And I've just weighed down the grill on top of them. And I hope no predators get them. But, you know, if I hear screaming and see feathers going everywhere during this podcast and I run away, that's more than likely why.

I know that you meant like a grate of some sort, but you said you weighed down the grill on them. And I was like, man, he's already cooking these chickens, man. They didn't even get a chance to be adults yet. I know the breasts look too good. You know what I mean? Please don't clip that out of context. Shit. That's my review of Ninja Gaiden 4. Yay!

Welcome to episode 250. Things don't ever change here. Exactly, yeah. Nothing changes. Not even our battle pass holders. Actually, that's a lie. We do have somebody new who came on and managed to squeeze in right before Cameron Ladd.

I don't know how they managed to do it, but they did it. So shout out to all of our incredible patrons over at patreon.com slash noclip. And of course, patreon.com slash noclip too. Over 550 patrons over there now as well. So thank you so much for supporting the work we do there. Passholders, of course, are the ones that are the true noclip friendos, the real sickos who want to make sure that we keep the lights on.

And in respect, we signal their, we salute their beautiful names, such as Lovebreed, Yush. Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Bossateri, It's-a-me, Ferrario, Senator Armstrong, Reed Redge. Are you gonna... Jesse's saluting this. You said salute the names, all right? I did. I don't know why you're gonna do it. It's, uh...

I'm holding the salute, but I will add the cross. Don't worry. Okay. Okay. We're going to get there. Thank you. When God serve pops up. Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, James Brown, Mark Rojas. Quote. Tucker Morgan. David McGarry. Goddison. Sven Hooster. Pez. John Akers. You and Nate. Tim Robinson. I watched that movie Friendship on the flight over. Yeah. Thumbs up. Have you seen it?

Have you seen it? No. You've not seen it? I have, yeah. You've seen it? You like it, Frank? Yeah, yeah. I just want to chat about it. So Jesse has to hold a salute the whole time. There's friendship, and then the new show is also the chair company. So the same team, same director. Have you started a chair company?

No, is that a show? I saw a trailer for it. Yeah, it's a new show. So Andy, the guy who directed and wrote Friendship, he's directing all the episodes, but Tim Robinson wrote Chair Company. So it's the same. I mean, it's even loopier, but yeah, keep the train going if you want more. But yeah. No Paul Rudd, though?

No. I was so delighted to see Paul Rudd in it because like when I think of Paul Rudd, I think of like Wet Hot American Summer, like earlier goofy Paul Rudd. So it was nice to see him back in like an indie film just being like so silly and great in it. So yeah, he was. He was awesome. And Kate Mara with a weirdly sincere. What a weird movie. I loved it. I loved it. It was not what I thought it was going to be either. It was not. Anyway. Anyway. Sorry.

Sorry, Tim. Different Tim Robinson. Forrest Pruitt. Dark Insanities. Jonathan Kremen. Eric Hamilton Schneider. Christopher Toohey. Enox. Grizzly Mug. Cameron Lurd. Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sakotis, Jacob Godserf, Enthea Jen, James Med, and...

Toyer Tillyaff, and of course Ryzen, thank you all so much for supporting the work we do here at Noclip in its various forms. Alright, what should we talk about first? Should we talk about the Ninja Gaiden 4? Frank, you've already reviewed it, but, you know, can you go a little bit deeper? How is Ninja Gaiden 4 going on? And why do you also have Dino Crisis in here? Oh, yeah. You just went back and played some Dino Crisis?

Yeah, I had to conquer an old fear. No, I can dive into Ninja Gaiden 4. It's so funny this came out because I feel like this got announced a while ago and just... It got distracted by a million other things coming out. But yeah, Ninja Gaiden 4 came out and developed by Platinum Games also the same week that Itagaki passed away, which was a genuinely huge bummer, but also...

It's a relief that the game is good because it would have been awful if the game was terrible. I did not know that happened until five minutes before this podcast. I was completely... When it was announced, was there much else said about... I'm guessing there's a lot of...

Just outpouring of folks talking about how much of an interesting... weird and talented dude that guy was it was it was weird to kind of see this resurgence of people paying their respects for dead or alive like ninja guidance always like has it has its praises like one and two the ones that he oversaw and like even re-released two earlier this year on on xbox

everything but yeah it was it was kind of nice and refreshing to see everybody like dead or alive 4 people were posting tons of screenshots and things just being like look how look how great these games were back in the day and everyone just praising itagaki and then like even harada of tekken like a lot of Japanese game developers just posted like eulogies and things and like yeah it seemed like it was a sudden loss no one knew it was coming like Harada

of Tekken even posted a screenshot of, like, Facebook Messenger chat that, like, Itagaki had messaged them, like, hey, let's go drinking. Let's cause some chaos soon. And Murata's like, oh, no, we didn't hang out. I'm sorry. And, yeah, and, like...

There was an old game article or something that was published where Itagaki published his top five hated games. It was like, Tekken 1, I hate this game. Tekken 2, I hate this game. Tekken 3, I hate this game. He was such a goofy character, wore the leather jackets, had Aerosmith do Dead or Alive music, things like that.

at um so yeah it generally did bum me out because like you know like in japan you'll see tons of dead or alive merchandise figures and stuff and uh yeah and then so ninja guide in four coming out this is by the current team ninja but also developed by platinum games

And so it feels like a mix of the best of both worlds. It's been a while, I feel, since Platinum's had a really great game. I tried Bayonetta 3 on Switch, but I just don't like playing the Switch that much, so I kind of bounce off of it. I think it's the same producer or director. Bayonetta 3 working on this. Ninja Gaiden 4 is...

Just like Ninja Gaiden 2, the motion is so fast and precise. Just running around the map, your character bolts across. When you're doing attacks, you're leaping over. There's so many things where you can chain attacks back and forth. Like a ninja, you're flying across.

It's so obscenely bloody and almost like Doom 2016. Everything's got crazy kills, but it doesn't slow down the game. It just moves and moves and moves. I think I've only done the first four stages. Each stage is like... an exhaustive like 30 minutes like it's very intense there's like checkpoints like like essentially boss fountains before you fight stuff to be lots of items and things to pick up but um

And yeah, you can upgrade your like any Platinum's game. You can upgrade your abilities, upgrade your weapons, get new skills, new abilities, things like that. And yeah, it feels like a perfect Platinum game. So awesome, incredible hack and slash character action. It takes place in Cyber Tokyo. There's demons, and now you're in forest fighting demons. You know, typical, like, nonsense. Futuristic-y.

kind of yeah yeah yeah very cyber tech very blade runner um even the menu ui kind of looks like cyberpunk when you pause the game it's just like that red and just it's very cyber and digital but um yeah and you're not playing as rio heyabasa okay i was curious about that yeah Yeah, you play as some other guy who's got like gray frosted. He looks like every K-pop boy. He's got the gray hair. Yeah, so kind of it. And a lot of people are comparing this to like...

Metal Gear Rising like oh it's like they made a sequel because of like hold on now you're saying the right things all right yeah they should have put that in the box it really is like it's like I like to me even like the the dodge pairing system like when you dodge it does the bayonetta like slow motion thing and you can follow it parries even doing these giant boss battles there's like mechanics where it's called like your blood rage that's your special meter

So if you do, like, your special move at the right time, it messes up the boss. Giant, crazy animation slashing all around him. So, yeah, this is a game that I'm like, oh, I'm excited to, like, keep going and playing. And it's funny because it's a Game Pass game.

you see this with all game pass games where millions of people will download the game, try it out for a minute and then drop it after stage one. So once I get to like stage two or three, any achievement I get is one of those giant on Xbox. So it's like, yeah, you get the diamond pop up. Yeah. Rare achievement. at hit level two. So it makes me feel so cool. That's depressing. But in the game, it's got missions also. So there is mission replayability. You can go off the beaten path.

What I love about this game, and I appreciate it, is if you press in R3, it immediately points to what the golden route is. So it's helpful because you'll get a mission that's like, oh, eliminate these Tengu assassins. so like there'll be three routes like where do I go and so you just don't go down the golden route the other way you'll find items you'll do missions come back turn and you'll get more items and so like the big thing with the core ten of like Ninja Gaiden games is difficulty

I'm playing this on normal and I'm finding it like appropriate. Like I, I'll die like once or twice on a boss. It's easy to restart. You can use items if you need to. You're capped how many items you can use or buy. There's currency in the game. Back in the old day of Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 on like Xbox.

normal was like hard and easy was normal and if you truly sucked at easy they made fun and that was like itagaki style they made fun of you and put it on like ninja you're a dog like ninja dog mode you suck you were forced to play on this right so i wasn't sure what this game's tone to be

Normal is appropriately normal. If you do easy, it warns you, like, we're going to have all these auto assists. Are you sure? So I just did normal. I think you can change difficulty in middle. I have not touched hard. There's bonus achievements and stuff for like, oh, don't take any damage. Like true if you really want to excel at this. And I think even peaking at like Steam stuff. I also love too when there's Japanese reviews on Steam. That means it's legit.

Yeah, looking at the same thing, it's, yeah, right now it's like 1,500 reviews, very positive. And so, and again, for context. I do. I am a, this, I know it's like a, like a, a class thing. I have Xbox game pass ultimate, whatever the hell the new. Wow. That's bad, but I'm happy. There's something worth playing. Also outer worlds two is coming out soon. So there's, there's a handful of double fine game keeper. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Come on. And Ball Pit.

This is really annoying because I think I also have Game Pass Ultimate and Frank has just listed three games that I bought last week. You fool. You fool. What are you supporting the games industry? You freak. I guess I just need my Steam Deck to play Xbox app stuff. I bought Keeper when it came out. I played a bunch of Ball X Pit while I was in Australia. So, you know, I just, yeah, goddammit. Do the balls go upside down?

In Australia, when you're playing ballpark? Yeah, exactly. I love doing that. I'm going to bring it up every time. There's going to be a lot of that today. Perfect. Frank, your relationship with story in video games like this is usually...

how quickly can I get past this? I want to have fun. How's the story in this? Is it in the way platinum games? I don't come to for, for their writing necessarily. I come to them for their actions. So are they still excelling in that regard? Cause this is a crossover with another team. I feel like the cut scenes aren't.

too long and if there are cut scenes it's like here's a big scary demon now go kill it like it's perfect like any platinum game like even bayonetta has incredible cut scenes yeah because they're campy as fuck yes they're ridiculous and camping so and so sure enough this game uh is uh

But yeah, again, I could not tell you the story. There's demons in Cyber Tokyo. I think people know of the legend of Ryu Hayabasa. Perfect. I think he does appear in the game, but as of now, you're playing as some random guy. Kind of like, I feel like all these, every one of these games, you have like a sidekick radio in on you. Like, look out over there. There might be something, you know, like just kind of guiding you. And so, yeah. So, but.

I don't know. The cut scenes are entertaining, but it's not like I'm not skipping the cut scene. It's not it's not boring. OK, again, they're very quick and very anime and very camp. That is the most praise I would expect from you in this particular instance is like I didn't fucking skip them. So you know what?

pretty good yeah again it's campy it's so it's so campy and um just like with ninja guy like you get different weapons so i just like cool it's just about to ask what the story is with the weapons and you can just like in the night like ninja you can swap weapons on the fly or even like dmc so

sure you can like do a combo switch a different weapon and weapons have different abilities um yeah right now i have this giant like lance drill so it's like every you just you pick up the enemy as it spins it's so much blood and i don't know it's awesome you have your sword i'm waiting to see if you get like the

the double-headed staff, which was like the OP weapon Ninja Gaiden 2. And then if you have Shurukens, you can spam with B and things like that. But yeah, it's awesome. So I'm so happy and surprised because I completely forgot about this game. And, yeah, it's been a while since I've enjoyed a Platinum game. I'm trying to even think, like, I don't know, it's been a while. Bayonetta 2? Yeah, like Bayonetta 2 was awesome. Did you play Astral Chain?

No, I started that, but it was on Switch. Jesus, there's a game I totally forgot existed. That's a good one, man. I hope they do a Switch 2 version of that. They won't, but if they could, that'd be very nice. You went to a Nier head, Frank? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, Nier Automata was fantastic. Have you played any of the other ones? I played Drakengard 3 and then Nier.

one which is like there's near replicant and near remnant yeah and like they changed the main character in the japanese release and then they remastered so i played that was now this version 1.3412999563 or something like that And I've wanted to go back to that, but I played at the time. It was, I think, the Nier on PS3. So I think it's where you're the old guy with long gray hair. Yeah. Yeah. But those three, those, yeah. They should make more games.

Apparently they helped on Delta, the new Metal Gear Solid, the Snake Eater remake. Oh, cool. And this is post-Kamiya, right? Platinum? Because he's gone. Yeah, because I think right now Kamiya is back at Capcom working on a new Okami. Under Clovers, right? Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, so Kamiya, this was the crazy thing. So Kamiya.

resigned from platinum games a while ago and he had a specifically like a one-year non-compete clause like he wasn't allowed to like sign to another company work on anything and then as soon as it was over he was like i'm back at capcom working on okami 2 like that's it and then um Also, Shinji Mikami, I think, also left his studio he founded under Behemoth, the team that made the Ghostwire Tokyo. Yeah.

The Hi-Fi Rush Studio? Yeah. Tango. Tango Gameworks. Tango, Tango. And so there was stuff where it was like, ooh, they were seen together. Where are they working? I don't know. Tabloids for game developers in Japan. Yeah, but like...

Yeah, so, like, Platinum Games, they, like, they were kind of off for a while, and so, I don't know, I'm just generally happy. Like, looking at the old school stuff, like, yeah, like, Vanquish is also incredible, that was Shinji Mikami, but, yeah. I think it's just good to hear they have a dub, because, like, I think...

whenever you hear the studio head that is so prolific, the sort of auteur of the space has left for whatever reason, the assumption is like, oh, well, that's the end of that. But no, like studios are a big collection of really talented people. So I have never subscribed to that. No, me neither. Absolutely. But I feel like. There's so many people like that. Yeah, I think it's one of the most negative pervasive things that we still sort of allow a little bit in the Japanese game dev.

Space more so like I think for whatever reason there's a longer leash there and I you know there's it's not like there's no truth in it you know Konami or Kojima Productions is making those games because Hideo Kojima is there but yeah it's it's a personal bugbear of mine, just the amount of emphasis that's put on these people. You know, we were somewhat part of it as well, I guess, with the Final Fantasy XIV doc, although...

I do think Naoki Yoshida did earn a lot of that praise given what happened with A Realm Reborn. But yeah, yeah, I do think it's a bit sort of, I don't know.

It's a bit old school or something. For sure. It's just good that there's something you can point at and say like, look, they, they know what they're doing. Shut up. I get Camille is great. You know, makes, has made great video games, but also it's not just him. He's not programming at all of it. You know, it's talented people with good creative direction there as well.

maybe somewhat connected to the fact that we don't get to see inside of Japanese studios all that much as well, which is a lot of the time for a very good reason. I remember being, you know. Some of the people leaving that studio the earliest when we were doing the 14 one and we were not leaving early either. Yeah. And Ninja Gaiden four. Awesome. Available on everything. It's an Xbox published game as well. Right. This is a Microsoft studios published.

piece of software. What were you playing it on? Yeah, Series X. Yeah, it runs beautifully. Excellent. Also available on PlayStation 5 and Windows, wherever you download your games.

Let me talk a little bit about Australia before I fall asleep. Is that right? Please do. Class. So I spent a week over there. It was kind of a fact-finding mission. I was flown over by South by Southwest to do a talk. with Skill Up, which many of you will know from the YouTube channel Skill Up, and the Friends Per Second podcast, and also ThisWeekInVideoGames.com.

The video game website, would you believe, that posts news and doesn't crash your browser with ads whenever you go to it, which is pretty awesome. So yeah, it was great to hang out with Ralph and do that talk. And that was sort of the main reason they brought me over. But as part of it. South by Southwest has its own game showcase, it has a student showcase as well, so I spent a good chunk of time in Sydney playing a bunch of those games.

I went to a couple of... I was just like meeting people. I went to a gaming event called Waypoint Constellations, which was... absolutely awesome it was basically like a punk show but video games like there was music on um it was in this like underground bar that was clearly like a like a like a rock

punk show place. They had a bunch of talks, like micro talks, like sort of five to ten minute talks that were really interesting. They had a bunch of games you could play. It was good beer. They had a couple of, you know, the whole thing was set up pretty awesome. That sounds amazing.

Yeah, it was really cool. It was the type of thing that I was like, oh, you can't do this in America because everyone's too spread out. Whereas the sort of geography of Australian cities kind of lends itself to, I feel like, this type of community. I think New York... probably has some of this and LA to a certain extent has had some of these collectives and things like that but

Yeah, it was pretty cool. Just the fact that there's only like, what, five major cities kind of in Australia and they're all fairly spread out means that you get these sort of really interesting little communities within each one. And then I spent a couple of days in Melbourne after that and bopped around to talk to more people. I went to Game Worlds, which was this fantastic video game exhibition. in ACMI, A-C-M-I in Melbourne, which is a museum in downtown Melbourne.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that. I got a tour and had a couple of pints with Ginny Maxwell afterwards, who was one of the curators on that. Again, learning about the Aussie game dev scene, because we've never covered a game from Australia. I think we did the Cult of the Lamb podcast, and I think stacking we also did on the podcast as well. Sorry, unpacking, not stacking. Stacking's an old double fine game.

um dredge we did but of course that's a kiwi game but but yeah we've not we've not done much down there so this felt like sort of uh due diligence on my part to really learn about this and i was just a sponge just talking to people um

around the place. And it was really interesting. I'm going to put together a little video about it. And I'm going to like a video that sort of highlights some of the games I played more so as well. But one of the things that comes across right away is that... There is a certain level of public funding of video games over there that sort of is very influential on the manner in which these games are made.

Each of the different provinces, I guess maybe they're called, I'm not quite sure, states maybe, in Australia has their own kind of regional funding group. There used to be, I think, some more... federal funding for games but like for instance in in melbourne um which is in i want to say victoria i'm not going to get that wrong um it's like vic screen right it's one of the funding things Yeah, exactly, yeah. So they have screened New South Wales.

you know, it must be Victoria, Screen Victoria or whatever. They have these government bodies that basically fund projects to a certain amount. The Victoria one seemed to have been really, really early to this, like, you know, 2000, 2001, they were doing this. So after the... The global financial crash happened in 08. That sort of decimated the Aussie AAA game scene. A lot of people went into doing mobile games. And then over the past 10, 15 years, it's been this sort of resurgent indie scene.

There's obviously games like Silk Song that have popped up through that. Silk what? Sorry? Goose Game as well is another big one. but yeah loads of other games that you mightn't even know or like there's some studios that do work for hire stuff because it's a little bit cheaper to hire Aussie studios but for the most part it seems to be

A fairly robust indie scene. And then Screen New South Wales as well seem to be sort of trying to get in on this a bit more maybe. Seems like maybe a lot more of the film and TV is done up in Sydney. And so they're a little bit late to the party on. on that. I did a talk as well with Ed Tran from This Week in Video Games. I used to work with him at GameSpot back in the day. I met a bunch of my GameSpot AU people over there, which was good fun.

But yeah, we also had a little chat about that stuff at South By. It was just, yeah, it was interesting to learn that. And then also there's a fairly aggressive rebate system, whereas if you want to, I think this is at a federal level, if you release your game. And there must be a cap on this. Maybe there isn't. I don't know. But you get somewhere between 30% or 40% of your gross expenditure back as a rebate, yeah, which is pretty remarkable too.

Yeah, so it just cultivates a different type of, you know, grass. It reminds me of back home in Ireland where the arts are obviously, you know, we have a massive... social welfare state and also there's a big thing for that this week or a couple weeks ago i saw a bunch of people talking about it where ireland's funding um just artists to just do art more i don't know none of this is

Yeah, none of this is particularly new or shocking. I think in particular, this one is closer to UBI. So it's sort of like a universal basic income for artists. I think it might be 33,000 euro or something. Something like that. So, you know, you're not going to buy a house in Dublin on this. But, like, you know, you can... You can just stay at home and work and make it happen.

Yeah, and the way it used to work, or at least the way it does work a lot of the time is like my hometown, you know, we have publicly funded radio and theatre and... plenty of things and and oftentimes money is given to organizations and then those organizations put on shows or productions and then hire people through that and that's you know i have plenty of friends who've worked in that world their entire life and have you know

you know, been part of putting together shows that are essentially government funded to, you know, a certain extent, which is such an alien concept in America. The idea that the arts would be like, you know, overhear so much more about, um, uh, looking to private money like rich people who care about the arts to fund things um

uh yeah so and then that becomes its own problem where it's the people who are able to schmooze up to those people similar thing in australia you need to be able to like play the game of bureaucracy to get access to this stuff and then there are certain types of games they don't want to

Like, you know, Australia had a pretty, you know, violent anti or sort of disarmament of personal weaponry. You know, 20 something years ago, they had a massacre happen. I think it might have been in Tasmania. And then they basically... everyone, they did a buyback for guns and now guns don't. There's no real gun problem in Australia anymore.

So guns, for instance, in these games, harder to get, you know, I talked to some devs, harder to get government funding. I met the developer who made Schedule One, who is a very young guy who lives in Sydney. He didn't get any government funding, did he?

And there were problems arising of that game even. I was chatting to him a bit about it. It was funny. He said that the issue they ran into was that they couldn't have any... there you know you can like you can edit strains by adding things to your drugs in schedule one like even silly things like you can add like ketchup and like all this stupid shit

But there was some that like gave you buffs and they were like, we can't have it so that drugs make you better was basically the issue. Yeah. So, yeah. He was a super cool kid. He reminded me of, and I say kid, he's an adult, but I think he might be 22 or 21 years old. First game he's ever made, did it all on his own. He was talking about hiring some extra help.

to do that. What I was actually happy was he seems like a guy who's really got his head on his shoulders, which I bet when that game came out and was as successful as it was, you know, outside of the... The financial sort of windfall, I'm sure he got, I'm sure he had a lot of people just trying to get in on that. You know what I mean? Like Moe's schmooze up to him or whatever. So he seems to be playing it smart and kind of keeping his head down. Good for him. That's awesome.

Yeah. I played some games while I was there as well, which was cool. So I played Mixtape. Yes, that's a new game from the people that made. Oh, my God. It's like a guitar side scrolling game. I can never remember the name. Artful Escape. Artful Escape. There we go. That game is so sick. How was it? How was mixtape? So have you played this at all? I don't know. No, I've just seen trailers any shows or anything. Yeah, so

I didn't play much Artful Escape. I think I watched streams or something of somebody else playing it. It came out in 2001. And I know people have really liked it. When I saw trailers for mixtape, I was like, how much of this game am I playing? Because this looks so well animated. Is this just Life is Strange?

Yeah, there's also a little bit of that. Yeah, it's very like, you know... you know in the pacific northwest uh you know listening to music all that you know and i'm like and a lot of this stuff can so easily like i think life is strange i never really, really got into them because I just found them to be a bit too corny or saccharine for my, you know, vibe or whatever. They're hella good though. I see what you did there.

Mixtape is fucking fantastic. I was really shook. I was shook. The writing is really smart. I interviewed one of the developers afterwards and I was like, how do you write dialogue for teenagers that doesn't just make me want to?

like blow my brains out or skip skip skip skip skip skip and uh he gave me a very detailed answer which i'm not going to say for about him here i'll probably put it in the video because i recorded some stuff on my iphone but um yeah it was just a really it's just it's an incredibly well written.

game you're you know i only played this demo was maybe 30 minutes long or something essentially involved some skateboarding some uh walking around this teenage kid's room with her friends there and just interacting with things and it started in conversations with them or flashbacks happen and basically the idea is that like the mixtape is

you know, sort of a mixtape to their friendship, their lives. It's a, you know, it's on the eve of a coming of age where, you know, going to college, that type of thing. We're all going to leave town. XYZ, let's go on one big last sort of... One Big Last Weekend together. It's got a bunch of, like, you know, licensed music from the 80s.

Yeah, it looks incredible. It's got like Spider-Verse style, you know, variable frame rates happening with the characters and all that sort of stuff. But yeah, I just found it to be like incredibly well paced. It didn't feel like a game. That I was like watching and then playing and then watching and then playing. It just all clicked and worked in a way that I have never seen one of those games really nailed. Like I was talking earlier about playing, what's it called again? The new...

The game I talked about at the top. Dispatch. And that felt more like a, oh, here's a game part. Here's a game part. Mixtape is like, just... Yeah, it's hard to explain without, I think, sitting down and playing it for 20 minutes. And I even said, like, the problem with your trailers is the trailers look like really good movies as well. Like, it doesn't, but it feels like you're playing.

a very well written very well animated movie but the playing is also fun it was uh it's pretty cool there's like a ridiculous sequence where you are all three of you are like one of your cohort has had too much drink at this party and you're leaving because the cops have turned up and you find like a shopping cart and so she's in the shopping cart and then the other two of you are hanging on to the edge of the shopping cart and it's basically like

going downhill and you are like turning it and spinning it and trying to get it to go down like the alleyways oh man but while you're doing it like the cops are blocking off roads there's like helicopters so it's like also like sort of what's real and what's our memory and what's, you know what I mean? Like, did this really happen this way? Probably not. It's very, very, very cool. Yeah. So I think Mixtape is going to be a big hit when it comes out. People are really going to like it. Wicked.

I also played Pro Jank Football, which is a game I think inside of Australia, everyone knows, and outside of Australia, nobody knows. And I'm here to be the... spokesperson for pro jank football outside of australia from now on can either of you tell me anything you know about aussie rules football no i don't know upside down i'm gonna keep making that joke no what's the difference

Frank, anything? Australian rules, AFL? Rugby? I don't know. It's a little like rugby. It's true. It's kind of like Gaelic football, the old Irish sport, the current Irish sport, where you can like, you know. knock into each other a bit. There's a goalie, but then there's these extra... posts but afl is played on like a oval sized pitch like shaped pitch and then also there's a separate second set of posts beside it anyway so this crowd has made this this afl game basically but

They have just filled it with complete and utter nonsense. You are playing the game, but every time someone scores, the other team gets to pick a card. And that card modifies the game in some way. So I had one card that I got, and I got absolutely battered by this guy I was playing with. I think he's an Oakland viewer anyway. He might be a patron.

And he played this game for years at various events. And he was kicking the living shit out of me. So I was getting all of these great cards. I got one which was just called like Big Lad or something. And one of my players was suddenly like 10 feet tall. You can get another one that turns one of your players into

Like I think it's like your dad's car. It's like an old sedan it turns it into and it can knock into people. You can make players faster. At one stage, the game was just like, OK, every time you score a goal, it's going to be worth three. because the guy was getting so far ahead of me. At one point, I got a card that was like, just reset the scores. It's going to bring it all the way down.

And it's so much fun. It reminds me of the era of sports games I grew up with playing when I was on like the Amiga with like brutal sports football, Mutant League football, Blitz, you know. speedball, like where we took sports games and we just made them weird. Even NHL 94 to a certain extent or 93 with the fights and stuff like that. Like there is so much you can do with this type of... this era of sports game that we just don't do anymore. And so what I love about this game is that it is

a really good sports game and you don't need to know anything about AFL. Because AFL is kind of a ridiculous sport if you know nothing about it. Like if you grew up around it in Australia, it's just like... fairly normal but if you watch it on television you've never seen it you're like why is there three goals that you can hit the ball into why are all the players wearing like

Like sort of like swimming gear. Like it sounds like you're describing this ball. Like, yeah. Oh yeah. Go watch it. Go watch the AFL. And you're like, why sometimes when they catch the ball, they just stand there and no one goes near them? And then why other times when they're running with the ball, people like tackle them like it's rugby league. Like it's like, yeah, it's.

I have seen AFL many times. I still do not really understand what the fuck's going on. And it looks ridiculous. It's a silly, silly, silly sport. So for them to use, I think it's very funny that they used AFL as basically a... launch point for a just fun arcade game um

Yeah, I'm going to keep my eye on that one. It looks really cool. There is a Steam page for it, but honestly, the graphics on the Steam page, the version that I played, looked a lot better. And it was also, the game that I should mention is, there's an old... arcade soccer game from the 90s. Frank, is this looking like anything to you? There was one game where you could like kick the referee and everything.

Looking at the graphics, it reminds me of all the early Neo Geo games, but nothing specific comes to mind. But I do love the art style. It does look awesome. Yeah, God, it's killing me now trying to find out the name of this. The game. It's like, it's like, it's like Sega. No, not Sega Soccer. What the fuck was it called? I'm on a YouTube thing now trying to find it. Big Striker. It was definitely not called that.

Dream Soccer 64. It just looks like one of those old arcade soccer games. It just is a bee's knees, so yeah. I'm super into it. The Neo Geo one was Super Sidekicks? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Super Sidekicks is... Yeah, yeah. That's not about yet, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is Red Card? Oh, no. I remember playing Red Card. Yeah. Red Card was a PS2 game, wasn't it? Kick the Riff.

Maybe. I'm just scrolling here. Xbox. And then Soccer Brawl is the other Neo Geo one. The art style looks like Super Psychics. Yeah, no, Super Psychics is what I'm thinking of. Super Psychics was awesome. That was a great arcade game. Man.

Yeah, so I really enjoyed that. That was a good time. Good fun. A couple of other quick mentions. Desktop Explorer. I feel like Jesse probably saw this at some stage. Yeah, horror-ish kind of desktop, like Windows 98 looking ass game, right? Yeah, and you're sort of... With a clippy who's like a monster. You're clicking through a bunch of interesting... It's like a puzzle mystery game. You have to use the UI to...

find the hidden files and do weird shit. And yeah, it's very clever though. Really enjoyed it. I think the demo is up on a... for Nexfest is basically the version that I played. So yeah, very cool. And then there was this other game called Gnaw, which I don't think is coming out for, like, the Steam page that's coming soon, but they told me, like, I don't know, 2027, like, it seemed like it was not anywhere near. Oh, but the...

The demo is actually on Next Fest 2. Have you played this? No, no, no. I just looked it up based on the name. This is fantastic. I really enjoyed this. It is a two-dimension. It's a 2D side-scrolling. platform beat-em-up kind of thing. They say Metroidvania. You can say it. I guess you could say that. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. It's in their description. You're allowed. It's okay. Did they say that? Okay. It's on theirs. You can say it.

It's a search action title. They're giving you the pass. You can say it. It's okay. You play as a, like a little baby Tyrannosaurus Rex or something or a raptor or something. You're like eating shit. You're eating the baddies to get your health up and stuff. It's got incredible graphics.

and animation it's just like super it's like a saturday morning cartoon or something so many games look like this have this not like a i'm not calling it derivative it's just like have the same sort of level of of quality to them where they look yeah like a saturday morning cartoon or like a late nineties, Mike Mignola comic, like very cool. Yeah, I agree. This looks awesome.

Yeah, it looks slick. The color palette on it, I think, makes it sort of pop out from a lot of other stuff. And then, yeah, I just had a lot of fun with it. Like, the boss fights were snappy and fun and were interesting. And, yeah, really tight demo. GNAW. I see you play basketball here in some of the screenshots as well, briefly. Maybe a mini game of some sort. I hope so, because I kept finding basketballs and trying to play basketball.

But I feel like I didn't have the requisite move yet or something. Because you are, hey, guess what? Metroidvania, you're beating bosses and then unlocking their abilities. You get new powers. Allows you to get into new unseen area. What?

There you go. Anyway, good time in Australia. Loved it. I'll talk about it some more some other time and I'll bore you all the tears here. I fed a kangaroo.

All right. Hell yeah. So wait, what do you mean? Like, were you in the enclosure? Did you just feed it through the game? No, kangaroos in the wild. You don't want to go near kangaroos. Yeah, no, they'll kill you. I don't think so. I don't think you want to go near any of them. I didn't see any of those crazy spiders, so I'm glad about that. Let's go.

to uh i went to like a like a a sanctuary i guess so some of the animals were kind of in locked up and then some were kind of free roam i guess they were just like the macaws were just Like all these birds were just screaming at me with Australian accents. They were like, hello, and all this. It was really strange. Like they were saying goodbye. And they were like in big Aussie accents. And then they had like four or five kangaroos that were just like chilling.

just walking around and they came up and they like did they have the big talons or were they shaved down um i'd say they were probably I couldn't remember. The thing they told me was that, like, the problem we run into is the feet, because their tail is just one big muscle. So it's the same as when you're learning how to box. It's all in your back and your legs is where you get your power. So it's the same with them.

they basically just use their back and tail to kick you into kingdom come. It's like a backwards donkey. Don't, don't stand in front of a kangaroo. Don't stand behind a donkey. Yeah. All that power has gone in, but not, they're very, very sweet. My favorite animal now.

Of all time. Is a wombat. Wombats are awesome. Yeah. Dude. Did you get to like. Pet one or. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man. His name was Patty. Patty the wombat. Perfect. He came over. Let me scratch his nose. He was just like. He was just like a little. Little fucking... Yeah. My yard is full of gophers, and a wombat is basically like the king of the gophers. Yeah. It's just a huge fucking pig.

Did they have any capybaras? Did you get to pet a capybara? I didn't see any capybaras. Damn it. There you go. That would have been the trifecta. Kangaroo, wombat, capybara. Hell yeah. Some wallabies. They're basically like... They're like the... You know in Dark Souls where there's like the small version of the boss? Yeah. That wallaby is just like a kangaroo.

With like 50% on export. And then that's what came out. Were there any joeys? Did you see any like baby kangaroos hanging around with their moms? No, I didn't see any of that. Wallabies though, their pouches are the other way around. So that when... When they're digging underground, they're not like drowning their baby in dirt, which, you know. So wait, so it's like on their back or? No, I mean, it's on their belly, but it's face the other way. Yeah, it's face down. All right.

Yeah, baby just sits there. Baby lives there for nine months apparently after it's born. Wow. Just sucking on a teat. Apparently the teat engorges in their mouth and that's what sticks them there. So there's a new kink unlocked for everyone listening to the podcast. Well, cool. Great meetups too.

Last thing I'll say about it. Had a meetup in Sydney. Had a blast. We did a meetup in Melbourne. Had a blast. Where's Team Cherry real quick? Let's Google real quick. They're in, I think, are they? Perth? They're down south, but I don't know. Are they Adelaide originally and now they live in Melbourne? Something like that, I think. I did meet some people from Perth.

Perth is incredibly far away. It's like five hours away on the west side. And apparently all the people in Perth go to holidays in Bali because it's only like three or four hours away. And it's much more interesting than going to Sydney holidays. So they all just stay over there and go to, I don't know where the Darwin people go to. The Darwinians. I need to play Darwinia again. Oh, yeah. That is a game. Multiwinia. Uplink. All those great games.

Uplink? Was it called Uplink? I forget. Anyway, we're not here to talk about that. We're going to talk about one of Jesse's games. Sure. Hyper Beast. You were chatting about this on the... I was. On the staff Discord, too, a little bit. Yeah, I think I brought this up in an earlier NextFest video. Hyperbeat, very, very cool game. Developed by, it looks like, just two people. Very small team of...

Very talented people. Alice Patino and Chancellor Wallen, published by Dreamware Media. This is a... I hope Chancellor is their real first name. I hope so, too. That's a dope first name. Even if it's not, that's a great stage name, great pen name. Yeah. Yeah, Hyperbeat. This is a third-person rhythm game. They've called it a Clash of Rez and Osu.

If that makes it easier to type, OSU. I don't know OSU. It's definitely a res vibe. Very resi, for sure. It's got that character on the screen. It's controlled by a thumbstick, so you're sort of pushing against the edges, and then there's neutral as well in the middle that you need to focus on, so it's a little... More strict, I think, than the older Res games. But Os is this, like...

Pinpoint precision rhythm game where you are following a series of numbers and shapes on the screen and tapping them. People play this with like a drawing tablet. Hyperbeat. It's like an arcade one that has like one of those. round ones that people touch.

I don't think OS has something like it might. But I just know about it from people playing with like pen tablets and stuff. But Hyperbeat is a you play this with a controller and you just use the control stick, like I said, to sort of maneuver your character around this.

circle on the screen and again there's neutral in the middle so it's a little bit more straightforward than you would expect you're trying to hit certain targets so there's some that are neutral and then others that are like you have to press the x button or the b button um one of two directions and you see the arrows on it it's a bit like um

The VR rhythm game, beat something, beat saber. It's a bit like that. Yes. We have to hit in a specific order to make it all connect. And it's all coming at you. Exactly. Flying towards you. You're like zooming into a tube of lo-fi goodness. This game, it looks. fantastic. This is a great looking, it's so stylish and it's not just in its visuals. Like you're playing as this

default avatar looking kind of character, um, where you have a bunch of different colors, you can customize them and add little add-ons to them. Like you unlock, um, cosmetics without, you don't have to pay for them. It's included in the game. You like get different colors and different, again, add on stuff. It looks like it's a very nice thing to do. It just makes your character look very individual. You're walking through this world that you enter after a brief cut scene.

introducing the setup and you meet all these different characters who look very similar to you, but it's just, just that alone I think is a good setup for. a rhythm game of like, the narrative is very focused on what is the concept of creating art? Why do we do that? What is the motivation for continuing to do something challenging?

I think they present that in a really good way. It's short conversations that you have with like little social link bars, but it fills up pretty quickly. The game's short. It's like two or three hours long. I think it took me to finish all of the tracks. And what's the benefit of the social link stuff? Is that for unlocking the skins or?

It's unlocking tracks in like a mod mode. I haven't been able to fiddle with that because I think they're waiting to release the workshop stuff when it's out. And it is out now, but I played it a day early. The dev sent a code. Thank you very much.

So I haven't seen how that works. It looks like, but yeah, you can make custom tracks. Like you can make your own setup for the things as they come towards you, the different targets and add your own songs. I think add your own songs. By tracks, do you mean levels?

Like levels. Yeah. Sorry. Like a, like a guitar hero thing. I think world tour introduced. You can make your own songs in the game. I think this has a similar thing. It's also a practice mode in here, which is pretty good. Um, it's the music. It's phenomenal. It's actually done all by them, which is, I think.

The one of them is like a musician. They've done like 90 minutes of music, I think is what they say on the Steam page. Like an hour and a half of fully original tracks. Some of them do get a little like, I thought I heard this one earlier, but like it's not in a bad way. It's very electronic. It's very like hyperbeat drum and bass. It's exact.

the kind of, when you see the visuals of this game, this like hackers, 1990s, like 3D animation look, the like low poly sort of no anti-aliasing look, a certain sound might come into your mind. It sounds like that. It plays great because of the way that it's set up. Like you're maneuvering around in these long levels, trying to hit all these targets. And like, they've just...

fine-tuned the patterns in this way that just like tickles my brain you're going in a circle it's like boom boom boom boom and then you keep moving on the circle like everything just lines up great once you play it once it's in your hand it just it feels fantastic um it looks it looks pretty intense reminds me of like

super hexagon or something. Yeah, that's a good hit. Is it like, how tough is it, I guess? So they've actually done a thing that I think is interesting in that they've made a game here that like is narratively focused on being something you can finish.

So the difficulty, there's different levels to it. Each song has three different difficulties that you can play through. The easy one is still pretty challenging. I've only gotten like three or four of the diamonds, your stars for this, on all of the tracks. But on the easiest difficulty, it ramps up fairly quickly. Like you are introduced to new kinds of interactions. Like, you know, you can hold the button if you hit a long tube of of a direction or something.

But then in the other, like in the higher difficulties, sometimes you've got to switch the button in the middle of flying through it. So you have to track your position and also which button you're holding. And it's like, it's a cool challenge. It's really fun. So the base difficulty. Fairly straightforward. It ramps up well, but I don't think there's a fail state. Like, I'm pretty sure if you just if you play and you mess up.

The only thing is you don't get all of the rewards that you need to unlock the next set of tracks. They just say like, ah, you suck, but keep going. Yeah. You tried your best. Keep trying. And I think they weave that into the narrative pretty well. Like the writing of it is, I think it's a little like straightforward, but they do it in a way that's like.

good enough for a rhythm game. I'm not coming to this expecting Othello. I'm here for a good time. I want to play some tracks and maybe be told that life is worth living even though it's hard. It's great. Is the difficulty setting per level? Per track, yeah. So whenever you pick a song, there's three different things, and then each of the...

difficulties has its own rewards as well. So if you, I think if you finish the highest track, you get all the diamonds, but each difficulty has its own separate set of resources. And like, there's a final, um, set of the social link that you only unlock if you've done everything. I haven't seen the ends of those yet because they seem really hard. But no, I think this is fantastic. So they're stretching a bit more time out of like a short game. Yeah, because it's like I said, two or three hours.

want to master the rhythm gameplay, if you want to really get into it, there's, like I said, a great practice mode that like loops through different chunks of the song and they've split it up pretty appropriately. Yeah, it's a really good time. It's a straightforward video game. Once you play it, you'll know if you like it enough to finish it. And I think you should. It's only it's pretty short, two or three hours. But if you dig it, you want more.

There's lots there and there I assume will be a pretty strong community around this making cool songs. Remains to be seen, but I'm pretty confident just from the looks and the music that's already there. I can't wait for everyone to add Kendrick Lamar songs so I can just play those for like six or seven.

Oh, do you think they will? Oh, yeah, for sure. No, I don't think the devs are going to. No. But I'm like certain there are going to be people, you know, there's going to be some, some Dempa music on here, but. Get the hip hop in there, baby. Get the rude sandstorm in there. Oh my God. Or just like all of the hacker soundtrack, as you said.

Hyperbeat. It's out today, right? It is, yeah. It's 15 bucks, but 10% off currently. Yeah. Pick it up. Nice one. Yeah, check it out. Check it out, folks. Yeah, it's a real check out the Steam page so you can... When Jesse was talking about going down tubes and stuff there, in your mind it might not be what... Yeah. Once you see it, then you'll know.

You'll connect. Also the UI for the, I didn't specify the UI for this game is amazing. The way that it moves around the stylization of it. It's so everything's chunky. And like, it feels like a, like a persona style, like. If one person did all the PS1 persona, it's got that vibe to it. It's so good. You know what we like now, folks. You've seen enough of these indie recommendations videos. We got a style. You know what we like.

This is No Cave is another game you've played this week. Yeah. Another little shorty here came out. Just a couple of days ago, I think. It was pretty recent. Yeah, I think it was last week. Yeah, This Is No Cave. October 17th, it came out. Five bucks. Yeah, it's a great small game as well. So I found out about this one. I think I was just on SteamDB checking what came out recently and I saw this name pop up and I was like, well, what the heck is this?

You're like, I want to play a game with a cave in it, but this one's... Yeah, there's no caves. What's the deal with that? And I'm watching this gameplay, Jesse. Let me tell you. This is a Jesse video game. No, I'm just saying, I'm looking as if I'd consider this a cave, what this character is flying around. I would say this is a cave. I think they're lying. It looks like a cave to me. I'm going to sue them.

false advertising. No, this is great. So this is no cave is a, it's a precision platformer speed running style game. As soon as I saw the description of it being a one-click parkour game in space, I was like, okay, all right, well, for five bucks, I'll try anything for five bucks. This is really, this is phenomenal.

I think it's a little janky. I think it's a little, it's got some things about it that they should maybe go back and revisit. But like for the most part, I think I'd say 95% of this, I was like, this is great. So it's a, like I said, a one click parkour game.

Um, basically it's an auto runner where every click that you do results in a dash coming from the character and the dash is based on the position of your mouse. So you can play the whole thing with just the mouse. I don't know if you can play with controller. It seems like that would suck, but you could try it.

But your position relative to the character is the way that the dash will go. The first dash is big and the second one's a little bit smaller. And then the last one is, you know, you're you're you're praying that it gets you where you need it to go. And dash could dash could be a long. is it do you mean jump well so jump is like underselling it because you go

pretty high. Like you're playing as a, some sort of astronaut who's crash related on a space planet, space planet, all planets are in space. Um, and you are just trying to get through this cave, trying to reach the end of it. Right. But

the dash that you do is seems like there's some propulsion involved in it. It's not just like a simple jump. It's very directional. You can go whatever way you want up, down, left, right, any direction. And, uh, I think it's just, it's, it's one of those games that I could see this being.

at a speed running event and it would just be so much fun to watch. Cause as soon as I was, I was a little unsure if this was great. I thought it was like solid. I thought I was like, this is a good, I like the idea. It's a good execution of the idea. And then they show what they can do with.

two buttons. It's really two buttons. It's not really one button. There's other things you could do. Um, eventually you get a grapple hook. Not like it's not a surprise. It's in the trailers, but like there's, there's these little things that you can hook onto automatically. And

It maintains your momentum so you can spin along like however fast you're going. You can hold on to it and keep going. And I did some stuff and I was like number 23 in the world out of 200 or 300 people. And I was like, first try. That's my kind of game, baby. How tricky is it? Because the trailer doesn't show you dying at all. So what happens if you do your two or three moves and you don't end up anywhere? Do you just...

stop on the ground and then you can just keep going or do you die if you hit the ground too hard or anything like that that's a great question uh the game is split up into levels so everything is like i'd say maybe like three minutes at most it takes me to finish a level even if i'm doing really bad uh you have health so but it's not like shown on the screen it's you get basically two hits you can hit

the rock face of the nada cave. However many times, or sorry, once and then again, and then that's it. And you go back to checkpoints. Levels are split up into different chunks. You pass this gate. And that's where you respawn every time you die after a certain point. It's pretty forgiving. I feel like difficulty wise, it does a really good job of like.

checking if the player understands the mechanic before taking you to the next part. It's got this great flow to it where like, here's a new thing you can do. They introduce it slowly, but also in ways that make you feel cool, even while you're learning how it works. And then they check you. And then they're like, okay, here's a really cool sequence where just cool shit happens for like a minute and a half. It's...

fairly controlled. You don't have to think too much about it, but it's fun. It's energetic. It's like bouncing off of walls and stuff. And like, it's like those Rayman levels where you sort of watch things happen. Like it feels like that. It's really good.

But it's like your reward for finishing the really hard challenge. I think this is really cool. I think it's one of those games that like for five bucks, you could finish it in an hour or two, have a really good time, see a cool mechanic and move on.

You don't have, there doesn't need to be 200 levels of this. It's like, this is the sort of thing you would play on mini clip or like new grounds. This, that's why I think why I liked this so much is it felt like the sort of thing I was playing when I was like 12 or 13, a novel mechanic done fairly well. I think actually really well, the things that are janky.

about it or like top level speed running stuff, it's going to get a little annoying because there's like bits and pieces that don't feel exactly the way you think they would. But for the most part, it's phenomenal. I think like I would love to just.

buy another game like this from more people. I'm trying to do that on itch.io and like watch out for stuff like this. But this is, yeah, phenomenal on Steam. It's like five bucks. Pick it up, check it out, play it for an hour. This is no cave. You know what it reminds me of? It's like if people...

If like when Cannabalt came out, there was like a whole genre of those. That's such a good comparison. And this is like 20 years later or 10 years later because it has a similar sort of... simplistic simplicity and kind of look like graphically kind of doesn't look a million miles the running animation does remind me of that like high fidelity high frame rate running from cannabalt as well not to the feel like i'm running as michael jackson on a

rooftop, which is how I felt playing Canabalt every time. But no, it's at that same level of fidelity and quality and like... I totally get what you mean. It does feel like if we just kept making games like that and that was like a viable way to exist in the industry. Mechanically simple one click kind of thing, but it has this vibe that lends it more of your attention. Because it's kind of like, yeah.

Cool. No, I'm definitely going to check that out. I'm on a real $5 two-hour game kick recently. You know what? I was actually on my drive. I drove up. I drove. I flew from Sydney to Melbourne.

Um, it's Frank. It's basically SF to LA, like Melbourne. And then similarly, they have a drive you can do that is the coast, right? So it's just, you know, you can drive the boring way home and it's nine hours, or you can take the coast and it takes... two days so it's basically like california um and so i drove the coast back and i stayed in a place called eden oh yeah i know yeah and everyone there was like

It seemed really old and happy and I was like, oh shit, I need to get the fuck out of here. But I did this drive and I was just imagining, because I'm turning 40. and next year and i've been thinking like oh what should i do in my 40s and one thing i was thinking was oh i should make a game i should do like a small type of thing and i came up

Came up with a little concept kind of thing. But the game I was basing it on was... I couldn't remember the name of it. Do you guys remember? There was a game a number of weeks ago I played that was one of these... five dollar games it was a it was like about waking up at night and having like hallucinations it was kind of about schizophrenia or something having hallucinations

Or you woke up and it was like a horror game. And then at the end, oh God, and it dealt with like mental health in a very aggressive way. God. Oh yeah. Without a dawn. Yes, that's it. Without a Dawn. Yes, thank you. See, I knew Jesse about this. I'm flipping through the indie game Rolodex. I'm like, which one is it? Danny mentioned. Where's that one? And another great example of a game that was like, how much did I buy this for? Yeah, like eight.

box and it was and it was just like a short and sweet lovely thing that i enjoyed playing and it's like yeah i'm so about it like this this little period we're in now or with all these little games it's just so so joyful to me i think it's great so yeah anyway without a dawn 2 from daniel to our productions coming in between now you can make a visual novel i believe in you

The problem is I'm terrible at writing. That's okay. This was the issue I was running into. I've played a lot of visual novels, Danny. You don't have to be a good writer. Sorry. Sorry. I had this idea. Will I just spill the idea? Sure. I had this idea because I was really trying to think about stuff that I was...

That was mechanically, I was thinking about where you could do something in like a room. Like what could you do if it was in a room? Of course, my mind immediately went to like a bar, right? You're sitting down at a bar. A lot of things are happening in it. There's lots of dynamic situations. You can do when you're sitting at a bar. And I had this idea for a game where you're like chatting up the bartender. Okay. But it's basically like a sort of...

Like the, the, the, the, it's not like a gamified, can you bring the, it's not leisure suit Larry, I mean, trying to make here. It's sort of like an inversion of that, of like, of basically like, and it's very obvious when you're like at the bar that you've got a wedding ring on and then it's like sort of playing with like the way that I think a lot of men.

like emotionally cheat on their partners, even if they're not actually cheating on their partners. And also I thought it would be a really good way of setting up like the bartender as... this uh this seemingly super two-dimensional character that is only meant to be there for you to you know objectify and then gameplay against but actually the trick is that

the way that you could I don't want to get too much into it because this game will never be made and but if it is I'll basically spoil it right now you believe in yourself the idea is that like most of the research of this game goes into actually like she's the protagonist and like has this really deep story

if you play the game properly. Like you can shoot, there's no fail condition either way. But I thought about it as an interesting thing where you could involve the alcohol and maybe it... changes the way the options that you have all those and then i thought the kicker will be when you get to the end of it that then

your partner's awake at home and asks you how your night was and you have to decide whether or not you tell them the truth over what you did or what you didn't do. Oh, brutal. And even if it's something as silly as like, you know, I was flirting with this. Bartender. Yeah, I had this. It was just an idea. I was like, oh, it would just be text, one room, but you need to have really good writing. And I was like, shit. I almost had it. I almost had it.

But yeah, I thought it was interesting. I thought it'd be like an interesting like, you know, we don't often talk about like sort of the male experience of romance like in a very real way in games, you know, it's often just very... And to some level infidelity, it's usually like, oh, you know, he's a hardcore fighter. He's what? He's not supposed to cheat. He's in he's in Macau. What's he supposed to not hook up with somebody there? Are you kidding me?

What's up with all the Macau-focused media recently? I don't know what's going on. Macau's coming up a lot more recently. People love Macau. Macau, Sri Lanka. I've seen a lot of stuff in Sri Lanka lately, but that's on Netflix. I think there's a new Brad Pitt movie that's in Macau or something. Probably, yeah. Something like that.

Yeah, I'll set it in Macau. That means I'll get some money from the Chinese government. Put it in Singapore. Dude, you get so much money if you put it in Singapore. Hey, put it in Melbourne. Yeah. Get some of that screen. Hire one Australian person and you'll get a million dollars.

Exactly. Anyway, so that's Danny's This Is No Bar, I'll call it. That'll be the name of the game. Frank, get us out of here. Please tell me about Diner Crisis. Is it still as good as I remember? Was it ever as good as you remember? No, so this is interesting. This honestly came up because for our patron exclusive thing where we'll be playing spooky games. I was trying to think of like, oh, what are like some of the scariest games?

And like I grew up loving Resident Evil games and like basically every Capcom game. But yeah, when I was at the Capcom Museum, I was shocked that there was Dino Crisis art at the exhibit. Like there was this new animation of Regina walking. I bought a Dino Crisis like postcard.

it was on like the history of games it's like oh my god Capcom remembers Dino Crisis yeah they're talking about this yeah so and but like it's always been this like um spot on my like backlog I've never played like I never beat Dino Crisis I got it as a kid but when I was like nine years old it was like way too hard and confusing for me um like in comparison resident evil seems simple dino crisis was like advanced sci-fi like the puzzle systems and crafting it was like what the hell is this game

So I thought surely like, okay, at 34, this will be easy. I start playing it and now I'm like halfway through and it's like I've almost lost the will to keep going. But...

Yeah, so I'm finally playing Dino Crisis. I'm emulating it on Dreamcast. I'm playing it on easy with save states, and I'm using a GameFAQ strategy guide. Let me see the year that this was published. And I had to try a few guides. I looked up, I found like... an archive.org upload of the Prima strategy guide from 2000, some other guide, but Crystal Celeste's guide on GameFAQs from 2018.

is the perfect hand to hold me through. I thought you were going to say 1998 or something. Me too. I sampled a few and like... The problem with old game facts, guys, is people treat it like their journal, where it was like, I came home from school and I updated my... It's charming. It's really charming, but there's so much extra text in here, whereas this is bullet points. This is what you do in this room.

But playing Dino Crisis, I really find it endearing because it's very much just like Jurassic Park Resident Evil. So much so like... that I feel like the team had to read Michael Crichton's books because there's so much extra science detail that's not in the Jurassic Park movies, but is in the Michael Crichton novels. In the novels, you'll find logs of the scientists, and that's straight up what you're doing in Dino Crisis.

But I like it because it's still the cheesy Resident Evil vibe. Like the first time you see a guy get killed and a dinosaur shows up, your army dude teammates like it's some kind of big lizard. And the dialogue, Regina. nobody told him the name of the game he's in yeah it's the the guy the regina's dialogue is like that's not a lizard that's a dinosaur oh man and so

It's just, it's like funny. It's endearing. The game does have this like very cool sci-fi. Like I feel like Resident Evil was campy and had like, I don't know, like an old school, like 50s B-movie horror vibe.

Dino Crisis is very like slick Y2K sci-fi. Even Dino Crisis 1 feels like Resident Evil the movie. Like that kind of sci-fi. So I am enjoying it. But man, it's frustrating. The T-Rex is like this game's nemesis or Mr. X. show up and it will one hit kill you the only way to deflect against the t-rex is like as it's like jumping at you with its bite you have to shoot it and then it'll reset but like

It'll just go through a door. It'll show up. It'll one hit you. We have to reload. Thankfully, even emulated, the Dreamcast loading time is pretty fast compared to like PlayStation. So I'm making, I just have to make save states. If you die, you can, items in your inventory to revive all this stuff. But like. Man, it's such a hard game, so I feel better about myself that I couldn't beat it as a kid. How are the boss fights? Is there a lot of...

Is there more bullet spongy enemies in this one? I remember that being a thing. And that's why I couldn't imagine playing that so normal. Because even getting ammo in this game is a nightmare. You have to spend... There's all these item boxes on the walls. Like survival... boxes you have to spend plugs spark plugs to open them to get bullets you're such you're limited on your inventory space but yeah you like those be so many dinosaurs you have to keep killing

But like any old school Resident Evil, it's better to like ignore them and run through. But I want to shoot the things like the difficulty in this game. isn't from the dinosaurs, just the annoying puzzles. But yeah, it is very fun. But the boss fights are, yeah, it's basically just the T-Rex will show up and you... shoot it a bunch and then like the team your army guy be like oh i'll open this door come here one thing i really like is like

the midpoint of the game the big objective is like we have to call the rescue helicopter which is how resident evil 1 ends and it subverts it you get to the helipad it's like the big final showdown the helicopter is about to come down and the t-rex like kills the helicopter immediately And it's like, oh, the game is still going. I thought I was about to beat the game. And I looked at the guy and it was halfway through.

So I thought that was very funny. And yeah, now just like Resident Evil, even though the whole game is you're on a giant like laboratory, now we're in the underground lab, the secret part of the research facility. So I want to keep going and see how it goes. Yeah, stylish, silent style wise. It's very cool. It's just the puzzles are all annoying. Like you have to get through a warehouse room and you have to go up and like just.

input commands to like lift up shippy crates and stuff and everything is so long and tedious like it's not fun or i don't know things like that and i but i just use the strategy guide i'm getting through it but I want to beat it because it's been in my backlog for like 20 plus years. I own the PS1 version. Dino Crisis 2 is good. I've never played Dino Crisis 3. That's the one on Xbox in space. So I really want to play that. Dinosaurs in space?

Right? I want to play Dino Crisis 3. I think I had erased Dino Crisis 3 from my brain. It's like Jason X. You got to just forget about it. I watched Jason X this week and I loved it. It's so bad it's good.

Yeah, it's very much like... It almost feels like a John Waters film because it's a sex comedy in space. The reason Jason wakes up is because there's this horny scientist in the spaceship, and then he wakes up and kills him. It feels like not another teen movie. It's so absurd. So I like Jason. Have you seen Leprechaun 4 in the hood? I've seen it in the hood, but I've not seen it in space. But I've seen the hood. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Have you seen that one, Jesse? I didn't know there was more than two of them. The hood one's in the hood. The hood one's pretty good. Is it in the hood or is it in the hood? It ends with Warwick Davis rapping. Yeah, sure. Lip in the hood ain't up to no good. Come on. Yeah. Oh, it's brilliant. All right. I know what I'm doing this weekend. It's very culturally insensitive to both.

Dude, I watched Scary Movie 1. Irish people and African Americans. Yeah, I believe it. I don't know if you could make a movie at that point called In the Hood and not have it be at least a little insensitive. I watched Scary Movie 1 again. They should never make any more of those movies ever again.

I don't think I, yeah. Didn't they make 50 of them? Yeah, they made four more and they're making a new one this year. But then they also made all the other genre ones. Yeah, like they made the Spartan movie and like Meet the Spartans, right, and all that. Yeah, yeah.

So the first two were by the Waynes brothers and those are awesome. And then by the third one, they, the studio wanted the, the studio wanted the, dude, David Cross and Scary Movie 2 is incredible. Scary Movie 2 has some good actors in it. They are doing their best.

But yeah, but so with Scary Movie 3, the studio wanted to make it PG-13 and the Waynes backed out. And so they got... They're like, we're artists. We're not going to conform to your... Yeah, we're all being censored. So Zuckerberg or what? Zuckerberg. No, the director of Scary Movie 3 is the guy who held him, David Zucker. Okay. So we did that, and Scary Movie 3 is fine, but then I didn't see 4, 5, 6, and then the...

these other guys did like spoof movie, epic movie, meet the Spartans. And then the parody movie genre collapsed on itself. Good. Now the Wayne's brothers are back and they're making a new scary movie. I watched one again, Frank. I really, I really hope. I really hope in the last 20 whatever years they figured it out. But that movie is fucking.

rancid I mean that's the point is they're obscene they're crude it's it's like but it's in a way where it's not even funny scary movie 2 like they figured it out scary movie 1 was like is it funny that gay people exist like that's like most of the book

movie oh yeah i bet there's a lot of yeah but yeah it's is it all just identity jabs 100 it's either an identity jab or it's like a reference to something that i don't even i don't know it was 99 it was four years old i don't know if it was funny then Like they do the Budweiser thing. That's the only funny thing. But it's funny because it's Budweiser. It's just funny seeing Scream do it, right? Or Ghostface rather. Like it's not, yeah, I don't know.

whatever oh yeah is it like scream mass comes up but it's like the weed the what up yeah it's funny it's a funny thing Frank's going under his bed he's gonna pull of course he does he's got this ready for the come on oh yeah Yeah, baby! Yeah. It's a classic. It's a classic. It's a classic. I love it. You guys are talking about this from opposite sides of the train tracks. Couldn't hate it more. Couldn't love it more. Perfect. Who says we don't have diverse opinions on this podcast?

American cinema, you know. That's fair. If they filmed more of it in Vancouver, I would have thought it was better. Good point. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, oh, man.

I think that's all the games we have. Frank, I'm excited to jump into Battlefield 3. You're still digging it? Yeah, so... now that i spent like a week plus in it it's so funny because i'm every day i log on and i do my dailies so battlefield 6 says dailies but i like it and now it's encouraged me to play the game beyond my like originally i found like the flow state i would be a medic and i use

an mp5 so like that's good for short range medium range i'm just going in reviving people turn around shooting revive like it puts me in a really good flow state and i do very well but now if you want to like level up faster unlock more guns faster there's daily challenges weekly challenges

So like even last night it was like, okay, get 10 kills with like a DRM, a long range rifle. So I was like, okay, I'll try this. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, I'm sniping people who don't even see me. Oh, this is fun. So like it's pushing me in other play styles. The other day it was.

like use shotguns so i was using the shotgun and just one-shotting people i'm like oh this is fun so so so i still haven't i oh if you play assault you can use like you can have two main weapons so you can switch from like shotgun to sniper so it's like okay you can get more creative with it and i feel like

people in the games themselves are figuring it out more um so like i i am starting to be revived by other people suddenly not always i was having that in the tech test or whatever i was like i was a medic and then no one would revive me

so annoyed but it's heartbreaking but yeah so people are getting better i'm now i know the level layouts a little bit better so as opposed to blindly rushing in i'm just very much like oh no there's i know where all the entrances are things like that it was i love playing it across play because on the top left will be

the text bot the text chat and there'll be people just arguing the entire time like someone last time was like you're taking you're camping in a tank what the hell and like just people yelling back and forth in the text chat and I just adore it um so yeah I really

really like it and now i want to try other modes there's again there's challenges for everything and like even if all it is just your xp bar goes up you level up it's still satisfying so yeah i i really really like it i'm still not playing with any friends but it's it's no problem getting into a game I woke up randomly at like 6 a.m. and I was like, well, I'll play a little bit of Battlefield, jumping in a match. So, yeah, I really, really like it. Hell yeah. All right. I'm going to give it a...

I'm going to give it a whirl. God, there's so many games. It's coming up. We're coming up on game of the year season two. November's fast approaching. And then after that. We might need to write a shortlist or something because I feel like there's a lot. I feel like it's a lot of individual things this year where people are going to be like championing five or six games and then it's going to be Silksong, Donkey Kong, anything with Ong at the end of it apparently, and blueprints for some reason.

reason like I yeah I think we should do that sit down and come up with like whatever we think should be in there Because I'd love to know, like, Frank, what are you going to have on there? Yeah, maybe we should mix up the format this year maybe as well. It's going to be, you know, we've done our kooky little pick 10 and then give them the rewards. And then we have Noclip too. There's other ways to do it. I think it'd be cool if everyone did like a top five or something.

That'd be a fun way to do it. Yeah. It's weird. There's even games of, I don't think I ever talked about my time with Project Silverfish, did I? No, no. Jeremy recommended it and I don't think we ever talked about it again. He did. Yeah, he did. I played like four or five hours of it. Absolutely love it. Nice. It's fantastic. Did you finish Atomfall? No, I never finished Adam Fall. No, did I? Did I finish Adam Fall? I got to the end of Adam Fall. I didn't finish finish. Did I?

No, I think I did, and then I loaded my save back. Because Atomfall has, like, have you completed Atomfall? I haven't played it yet. I just remember you playing it. It has, there are multiple endings to that game and some of them are harder to get than others is kind of the thing. So, like the good ones are hard to get. The best one.

is definitely, it involves doing all of the side quests kind of thing. It's got an interesting ending to it. I totally forgot about Atomfall. Yeah, Project Silverfish is like a... It's like a... Stalker?

cartoony version of stalker yeah it's like it's like a like a cel-shaded stalker it's got just pairs everything down you know because stalker 2 i've enjoyed i need to play more of it but it is somewhat laden down by its technical prowess like like the graphics and and i know the system they didn't get in quite as much as they wanted to i forget what they call it like the the system they use the drives the ai and all that sort of stuff silverfish is is a lot

lower touch on the on the tech side and it it kind of works because it like strips back everything so that you know what's gameplay relevant and what isn't and it's a great little open world mcme Kind of thing. It's not perfect. It's still an early access. It's definitely some rough edges. But yeah, loads of different little areas to explore.

Some of these baddies hate you until you put a furry cap on and then maybe they don't hate you as much and other ones don't care and they all get in fights. It's like Half-Life style three-way fights and you have to remember who is on your side and all that stuff. But yeah, I really like selfface. That's awesome. It's pretty cool. Frank, you want to jump in these emails here?

Yeah, we have emails if you want to write to us, podcast at noclip.video or on our Discord channel in the podcast chat for Patreons. Once again, that's podcast at noclip.video. Our first email is from Jack.

wrote about thoughts on corporate games industry. Hi, Noclip crew. I've noticed that whenever there's news of layoffs, price hikes, or controversial DLC in the games industry, people react with surprise, even though this is pretty standard corporate behavior. Acquisitions lead to layoffs, and public companies are incentivized to chase short...

form shareholder value over long-term sustainability. What I find interesting is why so many gamers who are typically tech savvy seem out of touch with how big corporations operate. Why do you think that disconnect exists? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the current state of the gaming business and how we got here. I don't know, it just depends how nihilistic you are, doesn't it? Like, you know, I wouldn't necessarily imagine that people don't think that that might happen, but holding...

Power to account or not, you know, it's not like all corporations gonna do it. Look they were Duncan toxic waste in the water again. What do you want me to do? You want them to process all of this waste properly? That's just what companies do. They got to save some money, man. They're going to fire people. What do you expect? Yeah. So I don't know. I wouldn't.

I wouldn't necessarily, you know, just say, hey, corporations going to cooperate. There's obviously, you know, from the two quick things I'll say on this because it's obviously a way bigger topic. And then I'll.

let someone else smarter talk is like number one like games are a medium that make people feel emotions and there is a tension between That and the company that makes it in a way that there isn't if it's a corporation that is, you know, a petrol station or, you know, makes makes a piece of software on your computer that you use to do it.

do a task or they create buckets. You know what I mean? Like at the end of the day, games are harsh, made by artistic people. And so, yeah, there is a disconnect between like the corporate overlord that. may not have been part of that but is part of the profit making engine that funded that and profited from that and then the people who made it so there's a tension that exists there and people let people are vulnerable about games and they become fans of games and then

Yeah, it makes sense that they get a bit more pissed off when that sort of stuff happens. And then secondly, and this is maybe from my particular perspective as an American immigrant and their citizen is that I find, especially in the States where I think people have such pitiful political power, like I feel like in other countries around the world where they have more

democratic democracies. I know America is a republic, but America is a very weird two-party system in a country of hundreds of millions of people. I feel like most people in this country have very little political power and how they enact political power is with their wallets, which is why I think a lot of people here are way more into using a... piece of software or or not buying things from this company or you know sort of um

as a consumer using what power they have as a consumer to enact change, which I mean, you can do that too. You know, boycotting does. work to a certain extent but you know for example the Microsoft stuff right over the Azure cloud stuff with regard to Israel and Palestine I think that was a good example of something that was far more talked about in america than it was with my european friends who are in that space so um

That's another element of this I think that I think Americans aren't aware of is that the way they do that is way more than other countries. And I think the reason why they do that is because in America you have such... little political power as a citizen. Yeah. Sorry. Very good points. I thought maybe there was one of that. Yeah. No, you're totally right. I think the way that people think about art...

especially in the games industry is so interesting because like video games are the cross section of art and tech in a way that I don't think people consider a lot of the time. The tech industry has had, I think. more layoff at this point. I don't know how necessarily true this is, but the industry is just larger in general, more layoffs than the games industry has by a gigantic, like just Microsoft alone.

They had like 3,000, 4,000 layoffs. And the assumption that I saw on the games side of things reporting on that was Xbox has had 4,000 layoffs. I'm like, okay, look, Microsoft makes a lot more stuff than the Xbox. So it's just an interesting thing where it's like tech. Video games are susceptible to the same forces capitalism that impacts the tech industry, especially in America and the West in general. That impacts.

You know, the company that makes Excel, the company that makes, you know, music software like Reaper, things can happen with them in the same way because it's a tech industry. But because we love the art side of it, we love the output. We love the way that it's made. You're totally right. Like it's way easier to get.

frustrated with it. And then there's this weird third part where like there's, you know, the section of YouTubers and cultural culture influencers who are like, if you charge me 10 more dollars for this video game. You're you hate white people like, you know, that kind of shit where it's like I turn it into a personal culture crusade because video games are slightly more expensive. There are totally reasonable arguments to be made about that on both ends of it. And in particular, but I think.

The way that we react is is an interesting one, because it's like it's it's a lot of younger people who haven't been hit with the realities of what happens at work yet, who aren't at that age where they get like.

People get laid off. It is a part of the workplace. Companies are going to make bad decisions that aren't in your favor. And you're allowed to be frustrated about that. And you should be if you want things to be better for those workers and you want things to be better for you as a consumer, but also.

you know, be a little bit more reasonable about your frustration, you know, and who you're targeting. Cause I feel like that's the, that's the thing that I find the most frustrating is the target. They end up making their, their focus of their attacks is like, Oh, I'm upset with this company. So I'm going to yell at the. you know, creative director for the studio that made it. And it's like, that's not...

how you would enact change. You know who gives them money. They're owned by PlayStation. They're owned by Microsoft. Like get mad at those people. If you want to enact change, like you got to target the people who put the money in their pockets. Like I don't think hell divers are the ones who made it. So you had to log into place their hell divers.

Arrowhead Studios are the people who are like, oh, I'd love all of our players to log into the Sony network before they play the game. Like, no, that's, that's a, you know, probably not. It's a PlayStation thing. Like it's, it's, that is the most interesting thing to me. with the game stuff. It's like, they'll go on Twitter and get mad at the wrong person. It's like, you know who to get mad at, man. Stop listening to Asmongold or whoever. Just get mad on your own.

Yeah, and I guess that runs into the vote with your wallet thing, which is, I guess, just part of, you know, any, it's just... But this particular thing, though, who do you target if you don't do that? I don't target anyone. No, of course. Don't target anyone. No, no, no. But if you have a frustration and you want an industry to operate in a way that you like, I think the thing that you should do is...

is go towards people who are acting in the way that you'd like more. Find developers and publishers who are spending money in the way you want. No? I mean, is that unreasonable? Yeah, no, no. I think, look, I'm no... pessimist when it comes to this stuff i think i think we have very little to almost zero power over wash in particular

large corporations do. Because even the people who work for those corporations and the people who run those corporations, they themselves have absolutely no control over it. or very little controller word either. It's just a makeup of the, they are profit generating businesses that exist for the purpose of enriching their shareholders. And that's just the thing. So like, I don't.

I think what I would worry about Jack is like just... There's a thing that I think happens with a lot of people when they get... It's not even when they get older. Like being, understanding the status quo is not like being smart. Like understanding why things happen is not like, isn't like picking the score in the game. Like when people are, you know, when people use what little power they have to push back against things that they find to be unjust, that's not them being naive.

That's them caring more than you do about changing things. And I think like you often find this in conservative circles, I find, is this sort of like looking down the nose at people who dare be vulnerable. to try and change the world. So I don't think... And I'm not necessarily saying you're saying this, Jack, but I'd just be conscious of that. That, like, if you're quick to judge people for not... sort of having this disconnect, as you say.

Maybe it's not that. Maybe they're just less comfortable in the status quo than you are. And that can be for a million and one different reasons. It can be because of the class situation they find themselves in. It can be because they are naive. Hey, you know, I fucking screamed about shit when I was...

younger and probably screaming about shit now that in 10 years time I think that was pretty stupid of me had I known better but I do think there is this thing I see it a lot with like my parents or like people of that era or generation. And especially actually now when it comes to sort of like the tension we have in the US between like leftist politics and liberal politics is this like, oh. I understand how the system works, and that's why we have to be this way, not...

fuck that system, let's build something new. Like there's this sort of like naivety that the people who are in love with the status quo or feel like because they understand the status quo that that's somehow them having the upper hand. So yeah, it's hard to hold two opposing truths at the same time. One being like, I think there's hardly any, as individuals, we have hardly any power to enact this type of change. But then also, we need to use what little power we have.

i guess to form collectives that then are able to you know make social change you know what i mean so yeah it's um it's a good question i hope i hope i'm not coming across as as as doing the same thing jack i don't mean to I think that the question was likely asked in all sincerity. But yeah, I think just because that stuff happens a lot doesn't mean that we should accept it, maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Get mad.

Get mad, but like target it or not. I keep using the word target, but like just you got to use the energy in a way that focus. That's better. That's better than the. image that the word target puts in my brain. Like, focus it in a direction that is beneficial. I'm thinking of Frank with his Battlefield 3 sniper rifle. They can't even see him when he's doing it. They can't even see me. Frank, you were saying some cool shit last week on Battlefield. That was funny. The trick...

I mean, I've watched Full Metal Jacket taught me how to kill. You snipe somebody. They're dying, writhing in pain. Their teammate comes, revives them. You let them get the revive, and you kill them again. That's three total kills you just got. And then more people keep like that happened last night. There was a guy reviving his teammates and I got them all over and over and over. It was so cool. You let them get the revive. Yeah.

Wow. Fucking sick fuck. You gotta get him again, I guess, right? Anything for XP. Anything for the XP. You should get triple XP if you down someone twice. I think that's what Gerbil said. It'll be like a multi-kill. The thing gets bigger. The numbers go up. I love when the bars go up. Sorry, the last thing I wanted to say about that was just that I think the way that you direct your energy should be...

you know, be upset, but like, what are you really going to do being mad about it being the way that it is? Like if you're still buying the $90 video games, then like ultimately what, what impact is there being made? Like, Oh, I'm so mad that I have to do this optional thing. Like.

go on itch.io buy games from there you know maybe give itch like a little bit of money but you can give more to developers that way they have developers have preferred ways of you giving the money directly if you want to do that and still play their games and like look for places ways that you can positively benefit people who have

Leave reviews. Co-op things. Yeah. Leave reviews, share their games with your friends or on social media or whatever. Like there's tons of ways that you can help benefit people who you think are working in a way that is beneficial to you as a consumer, as a person who loves video games and art and like wants it to get better instead of.

only ever getting mad when big corporations are doing what big corporations are going to do. And the last thing on the corporation stuff as well is I think this stuff changes country by country, especially in the States where like, or in California, where like at will employment, the laws for sure.

So like employment laws are obviously really important stuff, union busting within specific industries. And also just like the sort of slippery slope of deregulation that is sort of like you don't realize how bad it's gotten until it's just so...

passed any sort of reasonable amount. Like the ways in which we think about like the banking sector now post-crash is very much like, oh, those knuckleheads are going to do it again. And what should have happened is Obama should have broken up all the banks and they didn't. And so like... The problem is we sort of allow these systems, we get used to the reasonable answer to these things being like, oh, these knuckleheads can't control themselves when actually we should be controlling them.

There shouldn't be this much private money. That's not – I don't think that's why democracies were invented, was to create worlds in which the vast amount of money and power exists outside of the state. I know people get weird about the state having power, but if the state doesn't have the power, then individual actors...

do and I think that's worse because they're not accountable to us because we don't vote them in or we don't vote their parties in so yeah I think just you know as ever these questions in the video game world are about larger things that

we probably do have more control over it. The amount of times I've seen a conversation like this where it becomes so insular, where everyone's like, yeah, this is an exclusive problem to the games industry. I'm like, man, this is just, the games industry exists in the world and has workers. There's a music industry person in the corner going, you fucking idiots. You fucking morons. You know how many times we've done this? You know how many times we've done this? I know. Anyway.

uh goddesson asked um about dark this is continuing our dark patterns conversation oh my god no what's the currently best implemented evil dopamine hook the one you'd love to hate or hate to love either way you've got to give it to the developers for this absolutely nailing it

Wow. That's a fucking fantastic question. Thank you. I feel like every time I get involved in this, I'm just like, I listen back. I'm like, shut the hell up, Jesse. Shut your mouth. Should this be one of our game of the year categories? Best dopamine hit? Yeah. Best evil. Dopamine hook. I'm just going to start the ball rolling because I don't know if I have a good answer to this, but I always found rested XP in World of Warcraft very funny.

Because they would say that they are encouraging you to take breaks by logging off for a certain amount of time and then... basically uh when you log back in your character's xp progression is at like two or three times the speed or what i forget was it two frank or 1.5 or yeah two two times the speed so it's like oh if i take a break from the game

Whereas I always interpret it as I got to get back and use all that. It's as a reward for logging in. You know what I mean? Like that. So I always find that one funny because it sort of had a, it was like a double edged sword. Yeah. I think for me, it's probably Gotcha.

The what's it? It's like a mercy roll, like every certain amount of rolls. And they have to disclose this information. Pity. That's what it is. The pity meter. Yeah, yeah. They they'll always give you something decent after a certain number of rolls. That's the one to me where it's like. They took a law that was passed that was like, now you have to disclose.

how you're cheating these players and players were like, Ooh, now I know how the system works. Now I know how much money I have to give them. Like it weirdly had an opposite effect of like, Oh, actually people wanted to know exactly how they were getting scammed so they could be properly prepared.

where they're scamming. I don't know. Every time I've tried to play a gotcha game and I've seen that system in action because I get the free rolls because I'm never spending money. I'm always like, yeah, I see it. I see it. They get you to 95 in a season. The character you want is right there. If you just give them 10 bucks.

You'll definitely get it if you didn't already. That's the one that for me is just, yeah, I can't. Every time I see it, it makes me mad. This doesn't really apply. It's more of a... of a commerce thing i think but i'm a big fan of the a game in your steam wish list is for sale and it's like it's like two dollars off it's on sale but it got me i'm like oh

You got me thinking about it. Maybe I'll do it. Maybe I'll jump in there. Yeah. Even if it's a game I don't really care about anymore. I'm like, yeah, I mean, it's $5 now and it was originally 30. So that's pretty good. I'm not going to. No, that's not bad. I'm talking about like $30. Now it's 28.

Oh, I thought you meant it costs $2. Sorry. Yeah, it's $2 off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. That still gets you? The cheeky one. Yeah, they still do that to me. Yeah. No, I don't buy them, I don't think. No. But it makes me think about them. So I probably have bought one. That's probably an effective marketing strategy. It's not that big of a sale, but hey, did you forget about this cool game that cost $70? It's right here. $68 now. By the way, 90% off Noclip 2, your first month.

or 100% off, 100%? 100% off annual. What a deal. If you're a Noclip 1 patron, go check out those Noclip 2. I almost said them right now, and I realized, wait, that's a patron or anything. Sorry, forgot about that. For now.

but for me the dopamine hook really is like the XP bar because when it's so like Battlefield shows this like how much you gain a single level or mission and then it's like oh if I do one more then I will definitely hit the next level and it's arbitrary I don't care I just like I like just like, it's like finishing, you know, like, okay, I did it all.

yeah yeah and but then like with world of warcraft you ding our battlefield oh you get a new gun you get a new spell well i gotta try that and then just you level up in front of everyone oh man they all congratulate you you know yep you get your gratis You get your dong. The wind chime happens.

So like with Battlefield, if you quit out, you don't get your XP. So it's like, oh, I got it. That's why like if you really decide to stay in, it's like you're signing up for like 20 more minutes of war. But it's okay because then you think of all the XP.

So yeah, the XP bar, knowing how close you are. I'm the same way with achievements. Xbox does it well, PlayStation less, but sometimes PlayStation trophies will have the tracking. But if it's like... I don't know, like an example, if I get 100 kills with this weapon and I see my bar is at like 90, it's like, oh, I'm going to keep playing until I finish it.

So just closing the gap on any XP or achievement bars, it works for me, but the negative effect is it will keep me playing a thing longer than maybe I should or want to. I will push myself to finish it. There's so many things like that where... It's such a cool, useful little like yanking on the bits of your brain deep within. Because that...

The bar XP fill up dopamine thing is great for like weight loss. It's great for like learning stuff. There's so many positive. And every time I get mad about this, I'm thinking of the positive implementation as well. It's like. There's so many good ways to use it. And then we're like, what if we used it to siphon free time from children to keep our play times up? They could buy the family guy skins. And it's like, man.

I hate that that works both ways. So it's so cool and it's so bad. I love it. The dark pattern stuff I think is the worst is the is the feed on the phone. Like that stuff is just so. Bad. I catch myself now. But the YouTube app now has become so much more about shorts. Everything having shorts is so bad. I don't want to watch.

I don't want to watch a short. I want to watch my healthy content, which is this 55-minute body cam video about this guy who murdered his whole family. Can I not just watch that? I have seen a lot of younger people deal with that. Has there ever been? A piece of legislation that has completely changed the entertainment industry as much as... Body cam stuff on YouTube is absolutely insane. And obviously it's like freedom of information stuff, but there are just...

There are like these towns in rural Wisconsin that know, know if anything happens, that it's going to end up on one of these channels because they're just going to find out and they're going to get all the cameras and then build these little... Like it's crazy. There's a cottage industry. My father-in-law watches a lot of these of AI generated text stuff.

on those. So I think what they're doing is they're getting, not even text, but like voices. They're getting those, the body cam videos, splicing them together and using new audio. That's just like describing a different...

thing that didn't happen oh god yeah so it's like endless you you think there's a lot now with the real footage he's watching stuff that didn't even happen with the same footage just cutting them up into weird just like this guy committed a murder inside of the target and then it

cuts to it and the guy's like i hate target i'm gonna commit a murder here i'm like i hear it sometimes and i'm like bill turn that shit off it's either him watching that or a youtube video one of my friends made for some reason i don't know why he's like that it's so weird Wow. God, that's, it's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. That feels like a dark pattern to me when I watch, when I watch some of that stuff. I don't want to watch it. Scary. But no, so you're watching real body cam videos. Yeah. Yeah.

But like nothing's happening, right? It's not like cops. Or is it like cops? No. Yeah. It's like all the worst shit you've ever seen that's happened to people. Yeah. It's like car crashes or.

Like, you know, body cam and then they also have like the interrogation camera and they piece together these stories. I think the reason why I like it, I don't think it's like misery porn. I think it's just like... I love, it's like why I love documentary, like pure documentaries, because I just, it's fascinating to watch what people do. in the most extreme situation. And I, like, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not out here on my back the blue.

t-shirt on or anything but it is wild what some of these folks have to do for their job as a police officer it's just like i'm like What? Like, this was just a regular Wednesday, and then this happened. And I'm like, okay, now you just go home to your partner. Like, no wonder somebody cops are alcoholic. Yeah.

nightmare job at least in this country you know it's crazy yeah you hear the stories sovereign citizen stuff every time i hear that i'm like yeah yeah all right there was a great one a couple of days ago where I like watching the funny weird ones where they pulled over like She worked at like a she was like a lieutenant colonel or something or at a

That doesn't make sense. That's not a rank. At like an army base. And they pulled her over because she was clearly drunk driving. And then she was a sovereign citizen. Oh, boo. But she worked for the army. Boo. It was so confusing. She was asking them if they were Masons. It was bizarre. Man. It was bizarre. People are so weird. That's the other thing. You get to see the weirdest. people but it does feel very weird and exploitative and definitely not like the spirit of the law when they

made the freedom of information stuff for body cams. Yeah, that's what FOIA was for. So we could have endless streams of people getting pulled over for nothing. Yeah, exactly. It seemed to be like it was probably to stop cops from like letting their friends off from drink driving and doing all this.

stuff but actually what's happened is it's like creating an entire cottage industry of YouTube content and I remember like talking to my mum about this when they were over here and she was like oh yeah I've watched loads of those so I'm like oh shit everyone's watching

Dude. Or maybe it's just a Snow Dwyer thing. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is. Dark patterns. And then our last question is from Bilbo asking about... Oh, my God. Big fan. Love what you did with the ring. He took the pipe out just to write this for us. How nice.

Thank you. What's a plot prediction in a game that either got right to your surprise or spectacularly wrong? I've just realized that might actually be that person's name and now I feel like a shithead. I assumed it was a username. Even if your name's actually Bilbo, that's pretty badass. That's no, it is a cool name. It is an awesome name, but you're going to get that. You're right. You're right. That's yeah. I'm not, I'm not the first person to say.

If you're naming your kid and you're like, I'm going to name my kid Walter, like you're going to get Walter White's. Also, don't do that to your kid. There's a lot of Khaleesi's. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of like five and six year old Khaleesi's right now that I think are going to.

you know, mother of dragons or, you know, well, remember that one in particular is like, that's already a made up name. So is Bilbo. But like Khaleesi is definitely, that is a clear reference to something, you know, Bilbo Baggins also has like a more. This is not the question. No, sorry. We'll get to it in a second. We're doing name bits. Like Khaleesi is like a weird thing to name your child because like, I'm not going to say what happens to her, but some weird stuff happens to her.

That's a good point. You know what I mean? I wouldn't name my kid Khaleesi in that. And then there's a sweet spot in the middle where she's freeing slaves. And then... I know, and then, right? So like, so like, it's like, you're naming your child after the, remember when Hitler painted right in the middle, you know?

I'm naming my kid Khaleesi season three, two, five. It was like before, after world war one, after he did all these terrible things. And then before he started, before the Reichstag, before the Reichstag fire. Like, I think. Maybe he was painting or baking for like a couple of weeks there. That's what they're naming Khaleesi after. Whereas Bilbo is like. Bilbo was chill. Bilbo was chill. Chilbo. You know what I'm saying? Chilbo. Chilbo.

Anyway, what was the question again? What's a prediction in a game that you either got right to your surprise or spectacularly wrong? Oh, so it is going to be spoiler central for anything. Mark for your spoilers. It's even in the email. Thank you for being so thoughtful.

Classic Bilbo. Caring about others. Always caring. You know what else is a bad name? No, I'm just kidding. Let's answer the question. What? Hmm. Yeah, this is tough because like, I don't know. Games writing is so... transparent half the time especially older games where it's like yeah obviously like a lot of them and the ones where you want to mention it is like that's such a spoiler I'm gonna say a certain VR game that I really really like

had an ending that I saw coming, but then I think they knew everyone saw it coming, so then they did the most crazy thing ever after it. So I thought that was really good because, yeah, the sort of... The main menu, the main mission of what you're meant to be doing in a certain first-person VR. Well, all VR games are first-person, I guess, most of them. A certain... Alex game. I think the ending was yeah, they did a good thing there. Would you consider the series important to your life?

Half of it, maybe. Well, I'm only halfway through my life. I hope, I hope, I hope. I think for me, I like a good twist. I like guessing a twist early and being wrong or being right. Like, you know. If you're watching an important movie, I won't say any in particular because I'm going to tell you there's a twist. That is itself a spoiler. I have found out. That's the problem. Thank you. Yeah, I got you. No worries. But Grand Theft Auto 4 was one where I was like, in playing it, I was thinking...

The whole time. Does this guy suck a little bit? I'm not going to say who. Just the whole time I was like, does this guy suck a little bit? And then you finish the game. You're like, oh, okay, right. Well, this guy sucks a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a good game. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Yeah. Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. Similar vibe. Rockstar is good at making games where does that guy suck a little the whole time is the thought floating around in the back of your head. I was shocked by... how Red Dead handled the main character of Red Dead in the end. I thought it was really interesting. Like Red Dead 2, how it handled... Sorry, 2. How John. Yeah. Not John. No, yeah.

Arthur Morgan? No, Arthur. I think how Arthur was handled. I was really like... Oh, I see what you're saying. I mean, and they end up giving him a bit of a...

I mean, a bit of a very glorious ending in the end, but just the way it happened. No, it's beautiful. Yeah, all that stuff was really like, there was something really, for as much as games are like a... all about how much power you have as a player it was very like oh yeah like you could just that could just happen i guess yeah that is maybe one of my favorite

video game stories for us, like on a particular character. I don't know how I feel about the overarching thing, but the way Arthur Morgan progresses narratively, where he ends up so good. So powerful. So bad. Yeah. I wish I could play it again for the first time. I don't say that often. Cause I feel like a lot of games. I'm like, I love the fact that I only get to play that one time. That one. Yeah. The journey, man. So good. Fuck.

Because the thing is, I want to play that game again, but I know I do not want to play a lot of those missions over and over again. Because they're so linear and controlled. And there's that one spin-off mission, which is kind of cool, but a little too long. Whatever. Good game, though.

Great game. It's a good video game. I hope Grand Theft Auto 6 is good. I hope they like right at that caliber. I hope it's not Grand Theft Auto 5 again. Oh, I liked 5. No, I like 5. But Red Dead Redemption 2 was so good.

Yeah. And I'm like, if it's just, if it's just Grand Theft Auto 5. Can you do it? Contemporary stuff is so much harder though, isn't it? Yeah. Usually, especially to do that character stuff, right? Character writing in that way is like, you can still pull it off, but they're already, it's like Bonnie and Clyde. Where are you going to go with that? Looking forward to an interesting.

like plot between two romantically involved people. I don't think games do romance super well. GTA never really fucks with it. No, yeah. People still bring up Mass Effect and like that game is, you know. The romance stuff is good, but it's not the whole game. That seems to be the central thing here. And I think why I'm interested in it, too, is like Grand Theft Auto 6 is going to be a story about two people in love in tough situations. How do they rectify their own personal failings?

into their relationship and how it impacts what they have going on between each other. Right. Maybe, or maybe it'll be a game about how cool it is to shoot guns at people for fun, which is a lot. Yeah. And like kill the, kill whoever made the. in-universe version of tiktok or whatever exists exactly yeah yeah we're gonna blow up the tiktok offices in grand theft auto 6 in grand theft auto 6 exactly guys i'm about to fall asleep yeah go to bed

I don't know if I should. It's now 2 p.m. Pacific. Don't go to bed. Which I think is, I think it's 8 a.m. Thursday. I gotta go. Okay, alright. This has been a podcast, folks. It's spooky season. On Noclip 2 next week. Spooky sessions are coming. Ooh, spooky sessions. We, all four of us, have played a spooky game, and then we're going to have a spooky podcast for patrons.

to enjoy our spooky games and tell us which one was the spookiest video game. So keep your eyes open for that. I did some editing of the Lente interview. all about spilled cool which will be hitting noclip 2 in the not too distant as well um i just got home so i don't know if we're doing any indie recs this week probably i have at least one i would be down to do okay cool let's let's uh

Let's stick it in the stack, Jack, because I might fall asleep. We'll stick that for when you wake up. Exactly. So we'll have more of that stuff coming. And, of course, Disco Elysium will be coming out on Noclip in the next couple of weeks, too. The first one's already done-zo. We did a big... I think it was like a nine minute clip I put up for folks on the Patreon. But yeah, we'll have that up in early access probably in the next week or so.

And then we'll have the rest of the episodes coming as well throughout the month of November. I'm trying to think, is there any other bits and bobs? There's probably a lot of other bits and bobs, but for now. We've got Demon School. We've got that Demon School preview coming as well of Brandon Sheffield.

Yeah, and a bunch of other bits and bobs. So we'll leave it there. Frank, how are you waiting for the rest of your week? ICP is tonight. Sick. Yeah, no, the last two Saturdays I would like... previous Saturday was TwitchCon and before that was a wedding so I'm like exhausted so I don't know not nothing I mean I'll be catching up on no clip work and stuff but did you get your flu shot no not yet well there you go after the show or before the show up to you

I'd say after. Maybe at the show. It's crazy. Flu shots. Fucking vaccines. How do they work? You did the wrong voice for that. Sorry. But I didn't want to be too offensive. Okay, that's fair. Because the Juggalos are sick of hearing that one. You know what I mean? They're like, come on, you heard one ICP song one time and you're still talking about it 15 years later. So, you know.

Yeah, it's not even part of the original Joker's deck. I generally get annoyed because the first six albums... See? I fucking told you. The Magnet shit is like post... That's like their has-been era. It's a different band. It really is because there's the first Joker's deck and then the second Joker's deck. Anything on the second Joker's deck is not very good.

But the first, the OG six albums are awesome. But how is it a different band? Isn't it the same two guys? No, it's the same. Well, actually, the producer left. So they almost got swindled by a lot of money. So they fired their producer. And so literally, the instrumentals and everything is... Alex Abus, they hate. They will diss him and stuff. There's legit beef.

I do love when a band fires a good producer and they're left to their own devices. There is a Cypress Hill album, Skull and Bones, that sounds like it was made using the default tracks. in some shitty Windows audio program. It's amazing. She goes, check it out. Listen to Rap Superstar and tell me that's not...

Tell me that's not some... It's like the fucking when the Gorillaz loop, you know, got found on that fucking... It's like a $20 Casio keyboard or something. Yeah, exactly. Here it is. It's the song. Yeah, amazing. Jesse, what are you up to for the week? I am going to VGLX this weekend, I believe is what it's called. I would type it in when my keyboard is fighting with me. It's a video game expo in Mississauga, Ontario, if anyone's there somehow.

Let me know. Say hi. I'll talk to you. We don't have a lot of cool gaming conventions here in Canada, unfortunately. So that, you know, hopefully this is one of them. Doesn't seem like it's the first one. So hopefully it goes well. I'm excited to be there, though. See some video games there.

bringing one of the expos that was at the Canadian Game Awards. I think they're bringing some of those teams to that event. So maybe I'll meet some people there and talk to them, talk to some devs. That'll be cool. Sick. I don't know what I'm doing for the week. I have to sleep and then my brain will figure that out. So until then, have a great weekend, everyone. We'll see you next week here on the Noclip Podcast. Bye.