Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Part 3: The Return of Boys Night

Last time on Square Roots, we discovered a secret lost echidna tribe who was behind the theft of the Chaos Emeralds. Also, Cream, Shadow, and Eggman joined the party. Mmm, Cream. Ha ha ha. Hey everyone, and welcome to Square Roots, the classic RPG podcast. My name is Jim Banks. I'm joined by Matthew Van Zant. I put the P in RPG. Johnny Eggman Brandon. Mean. Too mean. I should. What do you think? Could I pull off that kind of pointy long mustache?

I feel like it would take a lot of mustache oil to make it all zigzaggy like that, though. I think I would hate it. I would hate having something like that on my face. I'll say this. Every time I see a man with like a long mustache, he's always like, you know, I don't know how to describe this. Like twirling it kind of? He's always like twirling it or like touching the ends and it really yucks me the fuck out.

Stop touching yourself. What was that? I guess I do this a lot. What was that? Snidely Whiplash? Didn't he have a mustache? Yeah. I loved Snidely Whiplash and his dog that cursed. Vanessa's not joining us tonight. She has a prior engagement with her toilet because she's got diarrhea. Just down in my HR notebook, that's one strike for Vanessa's probationary period. It's not diarrhea. She's having her woman's period. She's . Oh, God. She's getting rid of her chow eggs.

This is the worst episode ever. You know what that means, though. Boys night. Boys night. I know what. Boys night. I know what. boys want yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the theme to boys night you know shit about boys i know plenty I should also say this is a podcast where we play and talk about your favorite classic RPGs one chunker at a time. This is part four, part three of, part three? Yeah, part three of Sonic Chronicles.

The Dark Brotherhood. Whoa, we all love this game and we're having a blast. They should have called this the Cream Chronicles. Yeah, what? More like a Sonic 3D blast, am I right? Before we get into the proper game talk, like we do every episode, would you guys like to inform our listeners of any hot gaming news that's currently heating up the news reels? I heard some hot gaming news. Okay. This just in. This says... Wow, it's weird. It's actually kind of more like podcast news. This says...

Hosts of the Square Roots podcast, Johnny and Jim, are a couple of cucks. That's weird. Wait, why? Because we use our cuck lift assist? Yeah, our cup pads at the gym. Yeah. It doesn't say. I don't know. I don't know. I would hate to, but it's got your pictures, and it's wild. I didn't think we were so popular as to be on the front page of IGN, but there we are. There you are, rather.

i have some hot gaming news go ahead i know that i don't think you guys played it but uh robocop rogue city which came out in 2023 which is great by the way is getting a sequel

Whoa. RoboCop. Well, I think it's more of like an expansion. It's called RoboCop Rogue City Unfinished Business. So is it an expansion or a sequel? According to... Well, the first... paragraph of this news article says sequel but then it says robocop rogue city unfinished business is described as a standalone extension set after the events of rogue city so it says it's it's

The plot of it kind of sounds like the movie Dread. It says Robocop must fight his way to the top of a deadly OCP-built housing complex in his ongoing mission to protect the innocent and uphold the law. Sounds pretty cool. That game's great. In that game, you can upgrade your gun with different, like, chipsets, and you can get, like, a chipset that makes it, like, fully automatic and you never have to reload. It's amazing.

Cool game. Anybody else? Oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I do want to play that Robocop game. I just haven't had time. Yeah, me too. yes it's a it's a pretty quick play uh you can get through it in i don't know four or five hours so that's gym hours so that's what 15 hours you know i don't remember if we mentioned this in hot gaming news and please correct me if we have

but maybe I did mention it. That System Shock 2 remake that we were discussing a few weeks ago as if we weren't sure if it was a real thing is a real thing and is getting a Switch release. Ooh. That's cool. That's cool. I like it when games come to Switch. Bam Majera not coming back for... Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4. I think he's having addiction issues and stuff. He's been having addiction issues for a long time. Poor guy. Yeah, poor guy, I guess. I don't know. It's hard.

You know, quitting cigarettes sucked. I can't imagine what harder stuff is like. I think his thing is alcohol. Oh, really? I believe he is an alcoholic. Ah. Is his dad single? Inappropriate time to flirt. Sorry about your alcoholism, fan marcher. How's your dad doing? Twitch is unbanned Hassan. I believe that's Jim's favorite streamer. No, Jim's an asthma gold guy. Oh, yeah. I love it when he talks about how the Holocaust wasn't real. Oof. Oof. Yeah.

I'm surprised he hasn't been banned yet or maybe he has. I don't know. I think people were calling for a ban for him like last week when he was spouting a far right. conspiracy theories on his channel uh but that is that is interesting about hassan i don't did he what did he get banned for yeah i wonder if it was like pro-palestine stuff probably doing your mom I like Hassan. He's very insightful political opinions, I think. If you're on the left. Far left. Am I? I think so.

Kitten. I think you are. Where am I on the political spectrum? She's not answering me. I think she wants a snack. I'll be right back. I'm gonna give my cat a snack. In more hot gaming news, Jackbox announced that they will soon let you play their party packs without a console. You won't need a console to do a Jackbox party pack. I thought you already could play those on your phone.

I think it's going to have an app on smart TVs is the gist of this news article. That's interesting. Yeah. See myself playing around with that. Yeah, that could be fun. uh what else i did kind of want to upgrade my my tv to like an lg panel so i can do more color work at home but uh i'm not gonna go into debt for that so i have to wait How much would that cost you? Well, not that bad. Like $1,000. Oh, okay. $1,000. The 42-inch LG C3s and C4s go on sale a lot. Usually about $1,000 Canadian.

How big a TV would you want to have? 42-inch. Okay. I don't need a huge... I mean, I could put a huge TV in my living room. I just don't need it. I sit pretty close to the TV. I like a big TV. I know, but I just, I want to get something I can afford. And yeah, something with good color reproduction, like those LG panel, OLED panels are really good. And basically... Yeah, you can use them professionally. They're that good.

Oh, John, this might be interesting to you. There's a news article here that says, Suda51's most notorious video game story is now playable in English. Apparently, it's a wrestling game. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's called Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special. Oh, okay. Because those Fire Pro Wrestling games are just kind of straight up like...

NES-style wrestling games. I didn't know there was one with a story. I guess I got a lot of hate mail because the main character, spoilers, unalives himself at the end of the game. Thanks, Sue to 51. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. Apparently, maybe Marvel Avengers 1943 is coming by Christmas. What kind of game is that? That's the one that's Captain America and Black Panther, right? I think so. Oh, I remember the announcement for that one. There was a trailer not too long ago that looked pretty cool.

What kind of game is it? Is it like a third-person adventure game? There's not a ton of details yet, so I don't know. But it looks third-person. Looks kind of third-person action-y. Maybe adventure-y. We don't really know. I got one more question for you. If Grand Theft Auto 6 was $100, would you buy it? I'm not going to buy it for $60, so no. Give a shit about those games.

I don't know. I like the Grand Theft Auto games, but I don't know that I like them enough to spend $100 on them. You know that it'll be $40 or $20 in a few months, so like... Those games take... Grand Theft Auto 5 took a couple of years to go on sale. Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. Yeah, like Red Dead Redemption. I think I bought it half off like two years later. Red Dead Redemption 2. Red...

Red Dead Redemption 2, unless it goes... I think I bought it for $20 when it was on sale recently, but it's still... Like, it's regular retail. It's still $60. Yep. Yep. And, you know, they can get away with it. Like, I have bought games that expensive before. Like, did I pay? Well, I definitely paid for, like, Forza Horizon 5 Special Edition that had, like, the DLC, and that was over $100. I don't know that that's quite the same, though, right? Like, if you're saying, would I buy...

I still wouldn't, obviously. But if you're saying would I buy Grand Theft Auto 6 with a season pass and a bunch of extra shit, then I can see why you would entice somebody. But if that's just the price out of the gate for the base game... Yeah. That's wild. Like, the cartridges I got back in the day, like, you know, Genesis and Super Nintendo cartridges could be well over $100. Like, I think Phantasy Star 4 was $110 Canadian.

That one was expensive. And I think Final Fantasy 3 was pretty expensive, like the, you know, 6 when it came out in the US and Canada. You know, John, I think I'm, you know, I can't say, I don't know that I'm a definitive no, because... Like Red Dead Redemption one and two are probably like both.

Both the games are in, like, my top five favorite video game narratives. Those games are excellent, man. I cried at the end of Red Dead Redemption 2. Right, but as you said on your stream yesterday, you'll cry at anything.

Yeah. My heartstrings are easily pulled. Matt had a story on stream about... He told a woman that... kids dying and he's gonna go watch it uh really affects him and you know he's gonna have some troubles and uh right after the kid dies at the start of it the lady uh put her hand on his eyelid to check if matt was

her finger under his eye. Yeah, that's it. All right. Any other hot gaming news? I got nothing. I'm out. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out. The world's been dominated by other news that we're not going to talk about. There's a new feature on the Steam Deck that just came out in an update that lets you access a notes app so you can take notes while you're playing games. So if you need to remember a hint like in a puzzle game or...

Or a clue for later, you can use your little notes app and write it down. There's been a couple of neat updates, like Final Fantasy VII Remake on Steam Deck. Just reduced its file size by a lot. Like, basically, it got rid of the textures that the Steam Deck version doesn't use. So it makes it quite a bit smaller. Oh, cool. Yeah. Is that remake or rebirth? Remake. Does Rebirth play on Steam Deck? I think it doesn't, or it's very bad on Steam Deck. I think I heard it was bad. Yeah. You know what?

There's like 20 years of games that run of Steam Deck, so I'm not upset if a couple newer ones, like Alan Wake and stuff, don't work. Me either, yeah. Here's some hot gaming news. The PlayStation 3 just got a system update. Wow. Wow. That's weird. Because there's like some issues with permissions and stuff that I've been having. Like basically.

You're supposed to be able to keep your PSP and Vita games on your PS3 and then transfer them to your console, but that's not been working, so I wonder if it might fix something like that. It's probably otherwise like a security update. Oh, crazy. I didn't mention the fucking biggest, hottest gaming news of all, which is that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4 remakes got a release date. They're coming on July 11th, and I am fucking stoked. Those games are so fun.

I bought the remake of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 when it came out a couple years ago and played it for like 15 minutes and then never played it again. I bought the remake of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2, Jim. Oh, was it? One and two? When they came out and fucking 100% in both of them, basically. Wow. Went fucking nuts. That's awesome. Because those games are goddamn amazing. Two is my favorite because it has the best soundtrack, in my opinion. I think one, two, and three are all.

fucking amazing like one's missing some features two's amazing and I do think that three is just as good as two I think it got I think it was a little underrated because it didn't do much in the way of improving

But I played a shitload of that game back on my GameCube, and I loved every minute of it. That one lets you get really silly. Like... oh boy i think there's a level with a fucking roller coaster and you can grind down the roller coaster like through the loops and shit if you're going fast enough it's just wild you can launch yourself a mile into the air which is like that's what i really wanted

of Tony Hawk you know now we got those skate games and it's like realism man get the fuck out of here I want to shoot myself into space and have the game crash In my last year when I worked for a clothing company, we paid to have our pants in the game skate. It's not shocking. I think a lot of companies did that.

Those games were pretty popular for a minute, but I feel like they didn't last, if that makes sense. I don't know that anybody cares about the skate games anymore. Well, they're still making a new one. Like, their skate floor is being worked on, yeah. Oh yeah, and there's also a Grand Theft Auto 5 update just came out with new graphical shinies.

And I want to see how that looks. It's been on console that way for like two years, but now they've released a PC update. Some people suspect that the reason it's been held back... is because it might have broken like our P server stuff and mods and things. So I'm curious how. Oh, that's interesting. I have some hot Matthew news. Listen, you hear that? You hear that? Did you unsqueak your chair? I unsqueakied my chair. That's good. Yay.

All right, well, that's it for Hot Gaming News, and we should probably dive into the main segment of the show. Boys night. I know it's boys night. Who's your favorite monster truck? Mine is Bigfoot. Can you name another monster truck? My grave digger. Yeah, that's the only other one. Those are the two. Isn't there a son of grave digger? Wasn't there a swamp thing?

Was there a Swamp Thing monster truck? Probably. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes for sure. And there was a Son of Gravedigger. I think it was Son of Gravedigger. And that was the name. Son of Gravedigger. There is a Swamp Thing monster truck. You ever see Sven Gulli and Son of Sven Gulli? He was like a TV monster host thing. Yeah, I recognize the name, but I never saw it.

I've seen them only on that 80s commercial vault has a lot of Son of Sin, Ghoulie, and other, like, during Halloween, they post tons of segments like that, and they're really fun. I just Googled it, and that looks like something Rob Zombie would watch. Yeah, it just looks like Jack White. Yeah, but he's kind of rockabillied up a little bit. Yeah, like Jack White. Yeah. I'm sorry. Excuse me?

No, you're right. Jack White put on a weird fake English accent when I saw him in concert. It was strange. That is weird. Jack White is fucking weird. Yeah. But he's also wildly talented. He also kind of writes terrible lyrics. He put out a new album recently and gosh dang can that guy play a guitar. Holy cow. I didn't know about that. The smallest button to button. I saw. This is a song I fucking wrote and put on my top selling album. The biggest button to button. That right before.

Right when Fell in Love with the Girl was about to come out, I was going on dates with this guy. He's like, oh, there's this band. It's called White Stripes. Let's go see it. It was like 15 bucks at this tiny venue called the Bluebird Theater. That is the best concert I've ever been to. That's cool. Remember how they pretended that Meg White was his sister instead of his wife or ex-wife for a long time? That was weird.

All right, let's move on to the... What was it? The animal farm? The sonicals. The sonicals? Yeah. The animal farm? Yeah, because there's so many animals. Sonicles. Yeah, Sonicles. Alright, so today in Square Roots, we've now made it all the way to...

Metropolis Zone, which is like a destroyed robotnic city. I assume that the fiery- uh holocaust that that consumed the city killed all its inhabitants or all its inhabitants were robots what do you think did sonic kill the population of the city oh you think that like When the egg carrier came down, it just destroyed the entire city and everyone in it. Is Metropolis not the egg carrier? Is it not the crash egg carrier? Is that how it works?

But then why would there be a tunnel? I don't know. Why would there be a tunnel? The egg carrier crashed down into Metropolis. Yeah, that's what I think happened. And I assume that the crash killed... the entire population of the city, making Sonic a mass murderer. Maybe they're all robots, though. Maybe they're robots. You know, Jim, have you played Nier Automata? Because, you know, sometimes robots have souls, too.

Sometimes you go to their towns and they're boning each other. Why would the town be made up of robots? I think Sonic did a 9-11 to this town. That's what I think. Oh, yeah. Never forget what Sonic did to Metropolis. Wow. You know, it was in the name of stopping a war. So it's fine. The city is overflowing with toxic waste, which I feel like is just kind of a Trumpy style lack of an EPA in Eggman's world.

Like, he doesn't believe in regulations, just unfettered capitalism. Except it is fettered by Eggman's weird dictatorial rules and such. Metropolis Zone is the eighth zone of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Oh. Thank you. It's an industrial city that serves as a base for Dr. Eggman. Does anyone live there? It's a city cities need workers Industries need workers. I would assume yes. It does say Dr. Eggman established Metropolis as one of his bases. Was he the mayor? Yeah.

Oh, badniks are his robots? Yeah. But aren't badniks, like, animals that are, like, given robotic form? And then, like, if you break the robots, like, the real animal comes out? Badniks are an army of mass-produced military robots created by Dr. Eggman. What does he do with the animals that are in those... Remember in Sonic, there's those things and you shatter them and flickies and other...

Animals come out. I didn't realize at the time- I cannot give you all of the details of every piece of Sonic lore. John, badniks are robots, but they use little animal friends as energy sources. Okay, that's what I thought. Because I seem to remember that if you bust them up, a little animal friend comes out.

in the genesis yeah and they are they are called animal friends yeah too that's their that's the their proper name one thing i like i didn't know at the time uh the birds that sometimes pop out are Flickies, which are from the Sega game Flicky from 1983. I think that's really cool. That is cool. Sega loves keeping with its history. doing little references to other stuff. Like, I was playing something...

And it had, like, an Alex Kidd style. Oh, yeah. In Sonic 3, one of the final zones has a musical reference to Alex Kidd. I thought that was really cool. That is cool. In the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, Robotnik's drones are referred to as badniks. Ah, is that cool? That's dumb, and I don't like it. Here's a fun fact. Okay. Metropolis Zone is the only zone in the game, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, to have three acts as opposed to the standard two. This is due to the layout for the scrapped...

Genocide City Zone being reused for the third act. What the fuck? All right. So now we have made our way. Into the underground of Eggman's destroyed city. Genocide city. No. Well, maybe. And now the party splits into two because Tails and Eggman are going to go look for parts and start building machines. While Sonic and Knuckles are going to go find that echidna because Knuckles... in real, like, moody anti-hero. Like, I don't want to talk about it. Mode. Knuckles? Yeah, Knuckles.

He doesn't want to talk about it. No knuckle. Okay. They're both. moody antiheroes at this point because knuckles i don't think knuckles is an antihero he's just i think knuckles is just a hero but he's kind of a dick yeah he's pouty because he thought he was the last echidna and then he finds out there's a million echidnas not even special and these are like ninja echidnas so they're cool unlike knuckles well they're evil echidnas they're just from the nocturnus clan that doesn't make them evil

The Nocturnus clan who were like brutal rulers of the echidnas for a long time. Listen, I don't. I'm just friends with all people. You know, I am friends with the world. I don't. I'm not aligned with anyone except for God. Wow. So Knuckles is mad that he found some echidnas with their Nazis, which is probably a pretty reasonable feeling to have. Not everyone you don't like is Nazis. I like it.

I like the idea better that that Knuckles is like a real devout Christian and he met these other echidnas and they're not Christian. So he doesn't like them. He's going to try and convert them. That's why he's rushing. uh to angel island so they're trying to find a way onto angel island and there's some of these carriers still there that the uh nocturnus clan are using as transport they see him like taking off

I noticed in this chunker, Matt, did you notice this too? The art for those cutscenes seems to have taken a real dive. Yeah. Yep. It almost feels like it was a rushed production where they took their time and made the first couple chapters look good, and they just farted out the rest of the game. This chapter is fucking long, too. And also, let me just throw this out there. Fuck a split party. This is so fucking annoying.

I think the problems with this game, the way the encounters in this game work, really rear its head when you're trying to explore a maze zone and you have these enemies rushing at you. And respawning every time you leave the screen. Because the DS screen is so zoomed in. It's so small. It's like the Grandia problem. That the second you move out of a zone, an area like things will spawn in again. And there I must have fought.

dozens and dozens of random battles because also it's a maze and it's not clear where you need to go and there's a million little nooks and crannies to find well there's a million places yeah there's a million places to go And the game is constantly switching back and forth between your parties and constantly making you re-explore areas. And so you're just fighting and fighting and fighting. And the combat in this game is just not good. It's not... Like, it's got...

some good ideas. And overall, like, I don't hate it, but like, I don't like it. It's the same problem. We talk about, we've talked about this in a million other games. I talked about it in sea of stars. Every combat encounter takes like five fucking minutes. And I'm just like, please just, yeah. Can we please go? I want to go.

This is what Persona does right. This is what Dragon Quest XI did it so well, though. Dragon Quest XI, I had to go into the menu, but you could turn off animations and turn up the speed of the fight so that it was just bang, bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang. And the fights were over in 15 seconds. And it was awesome. The animations take a long time. The frame rate isn't very good. I would say...

The models and stuff look fantastic. This looks better than a PS1 game, which is surprising for DS. The models and stuff look really good for this era, right? I agree. I do think it looks good. Also worth noting, they do make you split the party between Sonic and Tails. So that means if you want a healer in your party...

Gotta have cheese. And even with my magic chow that does their moves for them. I'm sorry, cream, not cheese. I would like her more if her name was Cheese, to be honest with you. Cheese is her chow. Even with the chow that makes her moves automatic like her moves take So long. You watch this little rabbit run out into the middle of the field and do a little cheer and it just goes on and on.

I did the same thing. I moved the moves work every time thing to her because I was getting frustrated when her buffs would fail because the timing is so bad. Oh, and I was playing... Elite Beat Agents, because that's what I want to do for the bonus this month. Spoiler alert. And the timing on that is so much more forgiving. I mean, first of all, because the game's running at a much higher frame rate.

uh and so the timing's easier but also like it doesn't punish you if you're a tiny bit early or a tiny bit late this game is no you have to get it exactly right or we will fail you it's just the lines for me i can do everything else perfect every time but the lines I just I can't even describe how fucking terrible they are so anyway Cream's moves just they just take forever though she does get that

She has a lot of great moves. She's got one that refreshes your peepee. Cream loves refreshing your peepee. Yeah, and if you level it up to rank two, if you level it up to rank two, it costs... less to do it than you get back and if you level it up to rank three then it's fucking awesome it's it's awesome yeah i just use her i go back and forth between heal and refresh heal and refresh heal and refresh

I also got a revive just to get people not dead. Mm-hmm. Because that is useful, too. It's pretty great, but if you're like me, you're using that... chow to use the auto moves on the healers so i had to go in and change that between cream and tails every time yeah it switched between parties which it did a thousand times yeah oh my god

Because you start off as Sonic and his gang going up, trying to find their way out of Metropolis Zone's underground. And so you get to the overground and it switches to Tails. And Eggman. And then you have to find his lab, which is there's only three places to go. And one of them is the place you came out of. So it's the one you didn't go to get to the city. If you try to go to the city, Eggman will yell at you.

And that's not great. So you go to the other place, and then you have to find the honkulator or whatever. Mm-hmm. It is just a constant MacGuffin search between these two parties in this same small area where the enemies are respawning constantly. By the end of this chunker, the final fights, I... fucking wiped the floor with everything because I was so overleveled because I fought so fucking much. Yep, me too, Matt. Also, the enemies get pretty annoying here. Like...

They get pretty annoying. Some of the little there's little drones and those things can one shot you if you don't nail the command prompts. with its self-destruct and they're these big robots that use a shield on themselves where they close up and you're just stuck in one point of damage town and if you even if you get one one or two wrong you'll still die With that attack.

I don't like how that's handled. I got pretty fresh. I think just due to the sheer amount of times I had to do combat against those stupid exploding drones or the ones that take forever to kill because they go into armor mode or just decide not to take damage for two rounds.

That's the worst part. They also are getting the prompts, I guess. Let's call them QTEs. The QTE stuff is getting... harder they're getting faster and it's getting to there's getting to be more of them and they're starting to mix lines in which before so far in this game it's mostly just been like Tap to fill the meters and the tap.

on the rings as they close and I find those pretty easy but it's starting to work the line in and I still I just can't do that so that means anytime an enemy's got an attack with a line I'm fucked My success rate on the line is still 0.00%. Wow. So you haven't done most of the special moves.

Yeah, like, all of Tails' shit, I can't do. I just can't get it to work. Well, the weird thing with Tails and Cream, their lines are much faster than the... Because Sonic's is not... that bad i can do sonic most of the time and and yeah i can do sonics and uh i can do sonics and knuckles and shadow i can do shadows like they're getting faster too one of the enemies has a line attack that at first it makes you do the

rings tap the ring in the right time and then you have to do like three of those and then it'll throw a line up and the thing will just zip through the line like super fast and like I already can't do the line and now you're doing it Faster than I can do it. It's funny because I like a lot of things about this game and I'm having a good time, but this stuff is ruining this game. It's ruining it. I do like that. I like Eggman and Tails' banter. I was enjoying that because they're both nerds.

So they really enjoy talking to each other. Except it's like if you have a friend you really get along with, except that their politics are terrible. Eggman is kind of starting to see the other side where he's like, you know, this is actually pretty fun. We're on an adventure. He's like, you guys must have had a good time facing off against me.

Yeah, it was pretty fun, actually. We were having a good time. Yep. So back to Sonic now. Sonic gets to... Oh, wait. I do not use Eggman much. I don't like him. But he does have a move called bombardment that is pretty easy to pull off and does... wipe the entire fucking field if you get it yeah especially it'll kill those drones quite a bit actually yeah particularly if it's a field of drones it'll one shot the whole field and it's

Fucking rat. I like his, uh, his, uh, sabotage ability. Oh, with he entails or tails. Yeah. He it's tails. Yeah. He entails. Well, does it will completely take apart a robot. Um, But yeah, this area is, it's the largest area I think that we have run across so far. It's pretty big. And there's a lot of like places you can't get to if you don't.

figure out certain things, which gets pretty annoying. There is another puzzle in the middle of this that we'll talk about, I guess, when we get to it. It's kind of just a Simon Says thing. That's annoying. But, you know, it's fine. But yeah, this area is fucking huge and it is absolutely covered in robots and they just respawn instantly. And I did eventually have to go to a guide to figure out how to get to some parts of this map. I couldn't figure it out.

Yeah, there's a couple of parts that are very annoying here. But let's Yeah it's like well you can go left And fly or you can go right and fly But ooh you can also jump down That's what got me Yeah I didn't see that jump down But there's also like at one well we'll talk about it Like let's just You get uh Sonic and Knuckles get onto the airship.

I accidentally put stupid Rouge in my party. I don't know how she got in my party. I never wanted her in my party. She's useless. She does have a couple of good status effects, but who cares? Well, the status effects are handy when you're fighting the guys that you can only do one damage to. If you can get a status effect on them, you can hit them again. Oh, okay. Interesting. The...

Yeah, so I was fighting on board the ship. You fight a few echidnas and then take control of the ship. You're the captain now, says Sonic. And except that then the other ships notice that you've taken over. I guess they got like a sweet Captain Phillips reference, Johnny. I think we made the same joke last week, though. Who cares? It's fine. Well, I will say, too, Captain Phillips, written by a friend of the show, Billy Ray. It's true.

Oh, really? I've actually been meaning to watch that for a long time. I don't know if it's supposed to be any good or bad. It's a good movie. Now that Sonic's taking control of the ship. The other ships have somehow noticed or got an SOS or something and realized that Sonic is in control of the ship and are starting to BLAST it! They're blasting the ship somehow!

But Sonic asks Tails and Eggman for cover, so they need to figure out a way to take out the other ships. And this is you start at this one corner of the map and. Eggman says, we need to go underground. And there's two stars. There's a star by this tower in the middle of the map, and there's a star in the southwest corner. And you can't get to either place.

And it took me, I mean, you can, but not without going underground, which the game doesn't even give you a hint of that's where you're supposed to go. So I spent like an hour trying to figure out how to get to the southwest corner. It wasn't working because there's a million little jumps and things, but there's nothing your team can do to get there. So you have to switch back to...

Or you have to go back underground and then go back to the lab. And there's another exit, which I didn't know about, that takes to the north of the city. Oh, you went out the wrong exit with Tails the first time? Is that what you're saying? I guess so, yeah. But the star is down at the other exit when you start with tails. It's very clearly like, go that way. Go that way with tails. Okay. Okay. That's me being Matt.

Yeah, it's a great impression. You really nailed my mealy mouth. Meep, meep, meep, meep. You like those aliens? I'm the Muppet guy. Yeah, the aliens and the Muppets. A beaker. Meep, meep. Oh, yeah. Meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep. So then when you finally get to the correct place you're supposed to have gone and go up this long tower, yeah, there's two places you can fly to, and then...

Yeah, dropping. And there's arrows. Arrows is like, oh, so I guess it's the one pointing down towards the way you want to go. No, it sure is not that way. That takes you back to the Sonic starting entrance. So you have to either go. Go back through the tunnels or circle around. What a nightmare this whole fucking section is. And with enemies that run at you for a two-minute battle every 30 seconds. It's a real 16-bit, 8-bit RPG. this one. This was definitely the worst chunker of the game.

So far. If there had been a little bit less enemy encounters, this would have been fine because it's like a nice looking map. Again, I love the way that these are designed. They're really cleverly hidden and lots of little paths and stuff. I think the... maps have gotten they got they've definitely gotten better in this chunker than the previous two they're they're

They're getting bigger. They're like easier to look at and they look better. I don't know. When I first walked out into the chapter five map, I looked at it and was like, fuck like i'm kind of over it now i also i'm done trying to get all those fucking chow eggs if i see one i'll get it but otherwise fuck off i'm not well yeah you already farmed the the best I'm not doing it anymore. I tried that. I tried that.

I tried that probably 20 times, Matt. It took me about 30 tries, dude. Yeah, it took me a lot. I was trying to do the same thing. But you guys both have the chow that makes it more likely that you'll get a rare one, right? No, I got that after. I got that after.

that after i was because i don't have that so i was thinking maybe i should farm that first and then just save and then go find another chow egg uh so oh are they yeah maybe have a point of the rare one try to put your party full of people with high luck I think that does help. I've been...

I feel like it's kind of biting me in the ass now, but I was tired of missing all the time, and I was tired of doing only one damage to most enemies. That's just part of the game, though. Yeah, so I put, like... maybe like four straight levels, I put all the points for all the characters into luck. Wow. Like, especially for...

for knuckles because when you get him when he when he gets in the party his luck is like at a six it's super duper low so i got that up to 10 and i think everyone else is like at 11 or 12. um so like i don't miss i don't miss very much and And only in boss fights do I ever really do one damage anymore. But it's still annoying. There is a recruitable character. I don't know if he's missable. He might be. Because I know you don't have to get cream.

He definitely is, I believe, missable. Yes, but there is a recruitable character in this section. There's a little on the west side of the map in the middle. There's a little bunker you can go into where you will run across a robot. A angry, angry robot which is about to start a fight with you until... I believe his name is ED-209. It's E-123 Omega. E-123 Omega, yeah.

He's fine. Cream is optional, too, by the way. Yeah, cream is optional. I mean, I drink my coffee black, so obviously cream is optional. So you talk to... You drink your coffee black? You drink black coffee? I will sometimes. Sometimes, like at work, they have those little hot chocolate powder packets, so I might put that into my coffee and stir it up a little. Oh, I never thought about that.

Have you ever shared the Dusty Slay Starbucks thing with you guys? No. Do you know who Dusty Slay is? Uh-uh. I think of this clip. I don't. I'm going to find it. I think of this clip every single day when I drink a fucking cup of coffee. Every day. I'm going to share it with you guys. You go ahead. You talk.

All right. I was going to say, I usually drink my coffee black, but I like to put one sweetener in. No matter what size of coffee it is, it's usually just one sweetener. That's how I like to take my coffee. Maybe some oat milk if I'm feeling fancy. Ooh. Yeah, I'll put like a little cream or oat milk or soy milk.

Any of those are good. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. But I also like it black. It depends, like, not if it's a dark roast. If it's a light roast, totally I can drink it black. If it's a dark roast, ugh. Yeah, same. Yeah, I 100% agree. Yeah. I don't like dark roast coffees, really. Everyone at work does. It's like the craft beer of coffee. Yeah, you're exactly right. Give me a good medium roast. It's got a lot of flavor. It's not disgusting. Yeah. That's the best.

So you run into this robot and Shadow, who is Omega's best friend, uh says like what are you doing he says like i am programmed to kill all these stupid meat bags which is a fun kotor reference i liked it that's cool yeah and

And you can talk your way. Well, I'm sure there's either way. I don't think there's a way of failing talking to him. But I did like that this was a dialogue tree and it had some cute references. And this character is... overpowered he's great and i found because i did a million fights i have all these uh bonus parts although it seemed like i could only fit two parts i could fit a glove

or claws on him and i have like super good grapple claws i found in the chest and there's some other yeah he has special like armor pieces yeah like legs or something to fit on him and he does like his beam attack does 150 damage just in one shot I mean you can screw it up a little bit But it doesn't fail. This guy has been in a lot of Sonic media. He's at least been in Sonic Adventure 2 and beyond? He's in...

Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic Rivals, Sonic Rivals 2, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but that's just a cameo. Mario and Sonic, Olympic Winter Games, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations. Mario and Sonic London 2012 Olympic Games. Mario and Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games. Nobody cares about the games. A lot of Mario Olympics. I did get this month.

I guess that did we talk about that last week? I can't remember. The Dragon Age, not Inquisition, Dragon Age, the new one is on PS Plus. I just downloaded that. And Sonic Colors is on there, too. There's like three good games this month. That's cool. So get Dragon Age, Matt. You might need it later. What? Dragon Age is on PS Plus. You can get it if you have PS Plus. I don't know if you have PS Plus. All right. So we recruit super powerful robot. He's very good.

Do recommend getting him into your party. Even his regular attack can hit multiple characters, which is great. So he's just super useful. That is great, yeah.

and he's just really powerful uh so yeah a good robot i kind of wish there's so many characters that i do want in my party and and four slots just doesn't feel like enough uh but that's okay that's a good thing if you know to feel like ah there's so many characters i want to use uh but i i recommend getting the robot and cream in your party and uh meanwhile So you now find the things to make the deconculator and attach that to the beam gun.

And the beam gun shoots down all the ships, clearing a path around Sonic's ship. Unfortunately, this does give Angel Island's defenses a chance to shoot Sonic's thing down, and Sonic's craft crashes.

into angel island and then you start uh as sonic now you have to fight your way around angel island and up this uh ziggurat where all the uh ninjas are the nocturnist clan you fight a bunch of ninjas and make your way up the ziggurat and shade is being flanked by her ninja cronies so you fight a few of those

And you basically keep having to fight more and more. They're sending more. And Sonic's like, I don't know if we can get through this. And Tails and Robotnik have to come to the rescue. I love that Eggman's... It's like, I guess I have to rescue Sonic. It's pretty cool they made Robotnik or Eggman a character, like a playable character. I feel like he might not be a good guy. I'm sure he's going to have a heel turn, yeah. He has a heel turn.

right at the end yeah yeah yeah it's cool they it's cool they let him be a party character though also as soon as you get to the top of that ziggurat You get face to face with a new character, brand new Sonic OC, Grand Imperator X, who's like a evil looking rabbit, a real Yu Yevon kind of looking guy.

And, yeah, we'll get back to him in a second. But now we gotta... uh get our way up there and uh eggman's like well you didn't notice that the teleporter that i have back in my uh back my lap you didn't see that and tails is like ah geez eggman i guess not well and eggman's like You're a stupid, stupid little bitch, aren't you? Stupid little... John, he's not a rabbit. He's an echidna. Oh, he's an echidna too? Oh. Yeah, he's also an echidna. Yeah, I don't... Of course he's an echidna.

wait is he an echidna though but he's from a different dimension he's not part of the nocturnus clan he's i don't think he is part of the nocturnus clan i'm not sure that he is an echidna you could be an echidna and not be in the clan like you don't have to be a christian if you're echidna what are you saying all echidnas are related yes he isn't a kid

I mean, I hate to keep doing this, but according to Sonic Wikizone, which is where I'm getting all of my information. Oh, that's fine. He is a echidna and the leader of the Nocturnus clan, but we know why that is. Hmm. Anyway. Doesn't Nocturnuses look pretty cool, though? Yeah. They're badass. So Eggman breaks the child for not thinking of using the teleporter, so they go back to the teleporter.

Porter and fix it up and that allows them to boop onto the island in a process you do not see. But that's fine. Don't worry about it. They get onto the island. And are just in time to rescue Sonic. And then they join forces. This is, I'm sorry. This is still chapter five. Yeah, this is still chapter five. We have moved on to a secondary location.

After the longest fucking chunker in the longest chapter in the game, we have now moved into a secondary location and it's got a whole new set of eggs and shit. Like, it's got a whole new set of shit. I guess, like, you don't get a chance to go back here later because I was thinking that, oh, I'll just go back here later and get all this stuff. I don't think you can. I think this is it. No, I doubt it. Because this island does explode.

This does have a lot of the Nocturnist clan who throw those stasis grenades at you, which I am just a fucking master of avoiding those things. Like, it's only three taps. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Tap. They never get me. I love it. Although if they do get you, it fucking sucks. It sucks. Well, if you've got Cream and she's got her antidote power, that wakes everybody up. But if you don't, your character can be out for multiple...

rounds. It's the worst. I always hate this. Some RPGs do it and some don't. Some RPGs, if the character's asleep and they get hit, they wake up. And that makes sense. And some of them, if they're asleep and they get hit, they stay asleep. And that aggravates the shit out of me. I'm pretty sure if you hit me, I'm going to wake up. There's a status effect that some of the big red robots put on themselves called lock on, which I think increases their accuracy. But it's the most like Atari looking.

graphic on them it looks so weird is it charge are you talking about charge or is that a different enemy I'm thinking of charge up or something it's called lock on and it puts this like I saw that on their body and it looks like a choreographic. Yeah, it's weird looking. Anyway, so now you team up. So you gotta have Knuckles, Sonic, and I put... cream in the party finally and i put the robot in the party so i could destroy these uh uh nocturnus clan echidnas

And then, yeah, as you make your way up, then Lord Imperator X is like, yeah, well, I'm going to go take the Master Emerald. And Shade's like, no, you can't do that. We need... this and he throws her off the island. You know, I actually thought that Imperator was a word that they made up in Mad Max. I think it's like Latin. Oh, is it? What does it mean? I don't know. It means commander. Ah, okay. And...

Knuckles runs off to save her while Sonic tries to stop Lord Ix from grabbing the Master Emerald and does not succeed. The villain gets away. The end. That's how Sonic died. Yep. And so next time we'll be starting our next game. Thank God nobody wants to keep playing this. Like a dragon, infinite wealth. All right, so I'm taking the season off. I have the game. The next game is a gym choice, and I have it narrowed down to two games in my noggin.

I can't decide which one I want to play. One we just talked about last night, Matt. I'll bribe you. Do you need a bribe? Can I bribe you? I don't know what your second choice is, but Burst by Sleep, I want to fucking play. It's either Birth by Sleep or Chain of Memories. No, not playing Chain of Memories. I'd play either of those. I would love to play either of those games. Yeah, that'd be fun. Even Grandia 2? Yeah. Grandia's on the Switch, right? Yeah, it's got that HD collection. Hell yeah.

Yeah, Grandia 2 is actually awesome. I kind of do want you guys to play it. Trade my Switch for my DS with my daughter because she's obsessed with Pokemon. So I can handle the DS and be like, here, you can play Pokemon on this and I'll take the switch. All right. Yeah. So we'll just say tune in next week because that's when we'll make the final announcement. All right. Well, I guess it's not the.

end even though taking the master emerald does cause angel island to crash into metropolis zone city killing the rest of the residents that i'm sure that you know the couple that survived after the first uh assault We did get a great cut scene that you skipped over of Knuckles diving off the edge of Angel Island and catching shades and then just grabbing onto a vine. Yeah.

I liked that. I thought it was good. I mean, it's not like well animated, but like it was fine. Shade is a cool looking character. Yeah. She sucks to play as though. She sucks. Yeah, her moves aren't as good as the robot's moves. I was kind of hoping they'd be as good. I don't know. Maybe her cloak works well, because that does make her as hard to hit.

She's got a... I do always use that cloak. She's got a movement ability that's like teleport that I haven't seen pop up yet, but I'm sure will be important soon. So it'll kind of force you to have her in your party, I bet. Yeah. She's not great. Oh, she does have a team up move with Knuckles that does even one shot.

of some of the big robots. It's strong as fuck. It is strong. Also, I've been meaning to bring this up. There's some weird stuff going on in this game with the stats. Are you aware of that? What do you mean? Well, I like I hesitate to try and talk about it because I don't really remember what I was reading about it and like the attack and basically what I read was that you should

Pretty much take your attacker characters and just level up their attack and ignore all of the other stats. That's what I read too. level up the for the for the status effect characters level up their defense and that and oh and then there's also a weird thing between like The attack power that comes with your items is not the same thing as your strength that you level up. They're different. Different how? I don't know. The attack stat improves your hit chance, not your damage dealt.

and defense improves your evasion, it does not reduce damage. Huh. Oh. Yeah, it does seem like the equipment... isn't super useful like it's each yeah it sounds like plus one maybe plus two but who knows you know guys video games are a mystery who knows how they work yeah no one knows life is a mystery You know? Let's rewrite history. Are we getting a Matt's metaphysical corner? DuckTales. Woo! Life is a mystery. Matt has to stand alone. And when...

Matt calls his name. He says, Matt. Life is a mystery. Why do I sit to pee? All right. So that's it for chapter five. That's fine. One fucking chapter. For chapter five. Now for chapter six. If chapter six is this long, I will end myself in front of both of you. Chapter six is very short. Oh. Remember? After Knuckles saves Shade, now they gotta work together. Yeah, the game is like, Shade has to be in your party now. Fuck you.

tails and egg man are like okay so lord x has gone to his other dimension there's this weird term that they throw around called like was it trap something no let me look it up uh Where is it? Sonic Chronicles. Sonical Chronicles. Because he's from like a trap dimension or something? Where is he from? So he deals with drugs in like the hood of Atlanta? He's from the Twilight Cage where he was trapped in. I guess I could look up the... What's the Twilight Cage?

I'll have to look it up in the codex because, you know, this game does have a codex of all these terms. So I should look that up and figure out what his deal is. What's the deal with Lord of Pirator X? anyway so he so we gotta go back to i guess the trap dimension sorry the twilight dimension. What's it called? Twilight Zone? Twilight Town. Twilight Cage. We're going to go and have some sea salt ice cream. Yeah. And to get there, we got to start up three generators that are...

hidden around this area. So this is basically a return to Metropolis Zone, but it's a different map, a different painting that has been totally obliterated. The Twilight Cage is a mysterious prison dimension which has been inhabited by several alien races. Throughout the ages, including the Nocturnist clan. Oh, they got trapped. So after they did something bad, they were trapped there. Is that what happened? Yeah, because they were Nazis, John. I already said it.

Not everyone you don't like is a Nazi. It's the Phantom Zone. Can we just be honest here? I don't... No shade on Sonic the Hedgehog, but they just rip off everything. Is this from Dark Brotherhood, or is the Twilight Cage from other games? I believe it's only this. Remember, you got to remember that nothing else from this game got used because they got sued. Well, I thought maybe it was something from like Sonic Adventure 2 or one of those other games I never played.

Anyway, so you've got to go around this metropolis zone. There are some new, even tougher bad guys. That do lots of damage. How does crashing an island into this city make tougher robots appear? Someone explain that to me, please. It's called evolution. It killed off all the weak. Now only the strong survive. Oh, yes. It's fair. That's how robots work, I think. The Darwinism of the robots. It did remind me of a Gundam.

When the island zone crashed into the city, it was a real like, you know, that part where the dark world happens in Final Fantasy VI, like a real apocalyptic event. That was pretty cool. Yeah. But we're fine. Everyone's fine. It's like the party got separated and we had to spend the rest of the game collecting them and being like, do you remember who you are, idiot?

Feed Sid some fish and he'll be okay. Just make sure they're the good fish. The ones that move fast and not the slow fish. Or he'll die and then Celeste will try to kill herself. That game was good. We have to say unalive yourself now, John, because the future is garbage. Well, look, I'm not under the whim of the YouTube algorithm. I can say whatever I want. That's a thing that I was going to say is that that's kind of a depressing example of like...

trying to appease an algorithm making its way into everyday speech which is fucking dystopian and sad and weird. It really is. So there's three. I agree with you as well. But when you said it, it like hit me so hard. Like I needed a minute. Like, can we have a moment of silence for how bad things are? There's three generators. Jim laughed through it, but we tried. And then you turn them on, and then suddenly Eggman and Tails are able to teleport you to the Twilight Cage dimension.

and that's where you're going to go through the use of a spaceship, and I thought it was going to be a gummi ship section. I was sure when I saw screenshots of the ship that was going to be a controllable gummi ship moment. It is not, Jim. It would have been rad.

That there's no gummy ship in this game. What do you need? Oh, it's asking. We were talking to you. Yeah. Oh, you were talking to me? We were talking right at your fucking face! I was asking, Jim, if you were disappointed that there's no gummy ship section in this game. Oh, yeah. You know, this game does need a gummy. It needs some kind of like traversal mini game. Why not? Why not make some put in some Sonic sequences like that?

it has them where you're like where you're like running really fast it has those when enemies escape and they're very annoying no no Well, it's also got all the traversal stuff where every character has a different traversal mechanic that you have to use. Yeah, but like Sonic, he's not going... It sucks, but it's there. He's not going at supersonic speeds. He looks like he's doing a light bad job. What are you talking about? He does a loop-de-loop, Jim. You have to go fast to do a loop-de-loop.

That's true. That's how motorcycles are able to do it. I remember the first time I saw loop-de-loop was in the commercial for the Ford Tempo. Because it had, like, they built out the words Tempo on this big, like... thing in the desert and the O was a loop-de-loop and you saw the Ford Tempo do a loop-de-loop and it was so cool when I was five or whatever. It's probably CGI though.

This was a long time ago, Matt. The CG has been around longer than you think, Jim. John, you're John. I'm Jim. I'm stony baloney. Jimmy and John, as I like to call the two of you. Anyway. Yeah, and that's basically it. We've taken a ship to the Twilight Cage dimension. And we crash and meet the locals. But that's a tale for next time on Square Root. But. But. As we teleport away, John. Yeah. Robotnik stays behind. Yeah, I feel like he's gonna do something evil. He was being real muttery.

Well, you didn't mention this, I think, but he stays behind because somebody needs to be able to open the portal to allow us back into this dimension. Uh-oh. And the Sonic crew... is apparently fucking stupid. Stupid. Stupid idiots. This guy that we 9-11'd a city over is... Has hung out with us for a day and is now like, we're buds. I love you guys. He's changed his ways. He said that. Now he wants to do... Good and nice. I guess if Sonic did the 9-11, that makes Robotnik the CIA?

And now Osama bin Laden and the CIA are buddy-buddy, and Osama's like, cool, CIA. I trust you to take care of me. Don't worry about it. It's fine. What? You know, it worked for me. It made sense. Okay, well. Listeners, write in if my metaphor made sense. So next time on Square Roots, we're going to finish chapter seven and eight, but let's talk about the puzzle corner. What was this tower puzzle? You've mentioned it a little bit. Tower time. It's Simon Says. Red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow.

You have to, I was for a while because there's arrows and stuff that looks like you can get up this tower platform to that one computer, but actually there's a ramp off to the side that took me five minutes. I figured it out eventually. But this, I think, is the easiest puzzle so far. This one was pretty fun. I liked it.

I mean, there is that puzzle in the first Junker where it's just like, stand on four things. You did it! Yeah, that's true. You stood on things! Holy shit! It made me feel like a big, strong, smart boy who knows how to solve a puzzle. i can remember five blinking lights i'm very smart yeah that's it for for the puzzle time uh jim

Great. Great corner that we have. Thank you. I thought it would get more involved. I guess not. I agree. Yeah. I thought it would be more than this. Jim. I mean, at least they're changing it up. Last week it was Tetris. This week it's Simon Says. Next week will be Red Light, Green Light. Yeah. Maybe it'll be like Bop It. Ooh, Bop It. This kind of was Bop It. I mean, it was basically Bop It. Yeah, isn't Bop It Just Simon Says? Yeah.

oh yeah i guess it is just simon says but yeah it's just like three different things next week will be hopscotch yeah Jim, what are you roundly for or squarely against with Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood chapters 5 and 6? Also, take a shot, bitch. Boys night. I know it's boys night. I know what guys want. I'm going to go grab a beer. Boys night. All right. What am I squarely against a roundly for? I say a roundly for the character designs.

uh they all look pretty cool the big robot looks cool eggman looks cool sonic is kind of the least cool looking character if i'm being honest yeah yeah um I don't know. I don't like tails. Although, you know what? I say that, but I did notice that when you walk around the map, his little tails twirl like a propeller. as he's running, and that's cute. That is cute. Yeah, it's pretty cool. I am squarely against the timing on those button things. It is so...

Precise. And just after playing Elite Beat Agents, which is a difficult game if you play the higher difficulty levels, it's so much more forgiving and easier to get through and just more fair. than sonic chronicles so uh play elite beat agents that game is great actually jim i'm making you play elite beat agents so there you are uh i'm a you said that's on the the ds

It is on the DS. I wonder if I can emulate it on my Steam Deck. I bet you can. And then you could probably use the Steam Deck touchscreen then. You can. Yeah, that's how I was playing. That's actually how I was playing Sonic Chronicles before the ROM kept crashing. Yeah, I'll look into that. Matt. What are... He's almost ready. He's almost... He's just scooching up. How dare you insult Miles Tails Prower. He's a delight. His little tails spin around.

It is cute. Why does Tails get, like, an Anglo name and everyone else is just, like, Sonic and Cream? Amy is Amy Rose. Yeah. In that Sonic Bible, I think that Sonic has a full Christian name as well. You'd have to watch that video where Brian David Gilbert goes through the Sonic Bible and all the... Sonic lore from the U.S. marketing department. Sonic 5 goes west? Yes. All right, Matt. What do you round me for, squarely against? Ooh. Um...

I'm roundly for... I think I was last week. I'm roundly for Ferox the Chow, who makes all of the moves easy for one character. I wish I had four of them. The game would be so much better. I'm squarely against this fucking giant chapter five. It's absurd. It sucks. And most importantly, and this is the real one, I'm squarely against splitting the party. Fuck you.

And fuck your split party. And also, this game in particular can go to hell. Sonic Chronicles The Dark Brotherhood with your split party that makes me switch back and forth between the split parties. 15 times. It's constant. It's constant. I hate it. It's bad. It sucks. So I feel like the more episodes of this game we record, the more insane I go.

You know what I mean? Like, it's getting worse, gang. It's getting worse and worse. Yes. Well, are we ready to... Well, we should say next time we're playing chapters 7 and 8. Mm-hmm. Right? Those chapters better be short. They better be real short. Let's move on to everybody's favorite segment, which is Level Up. John, would you like to level up? Sure.

What have I done? What have I done? I got that video out. That was cool. I have noticed the algorithm at first it stopped me at 200 views. It stopped promoting my video. And now it's 500 views. So I feel like if I keep going, it'll give me more and more. Like eventually it gives you like three days to see how well your video is doing before it just cuts you off completely.

And I have not made a viral video, which is what it's trying to find by using this method. So I really I'm messing around with the algorithm, but I'm just being patient. My channel is slowly growing. You know, it's just a matter of time until I can finally conquer the world, quit my job, become a full time YouTuber and live a life of luxury in a YouTuber house with a bunch of assholes.

Yeah, you could live with Jake Paul. Yeah, that'd be great. And Aaron Paul. And Mr. Beast. Yes, that would be amazing.

Otherwise, I've been watching more Clone Wars. That show's okay. I don't hate it. I like that it gives more... background like it really does feel like it fills in the gaps because so much happens in those prequels that's off screen like i feel like the good parts are a lot of times off screen on in those prequels which is a interesting choice and it does fill in like the relationship you really don't get a lot of the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin and this definitely

gives you a lot of background for that. And Ahsoka, she's kind of the child insert protagonist. So she's a little bland, but she's fine. And then there's those delightful droids. Apparently there's an episode all about those Roger Roger droids that is terrible. And I can't wait to finally get to that episode. Weird. Yeah. Weird. I played a little bit of Jedi Survivor and those Roger Roger droids show up and they're still exactly the same as ever.

And it seemed a little bit not the tone of those Jedi survivor games or those Jedi games to have those very silly robots in there. Mm hmm. The battle droids. Yeah, those battle droids, you know.

And I've been working on my Saints Row 2022 script, and that's been fun. I've been going through various Volition games. I didn't realize Volition, under their previous name of Parallax Software, uh did the the descent games which are i don't know if you ever played those those are fun as heck the descent game yeah The ones where it's like a quake, except that you're in a fully 3D. Oh, but you're like a ship. Yeah, you're a ship and it's fully 3D.

So you can go up, down, left, right, any direction. So it gets real nausea-inducing as you're going... around in circles and stuff. Yeah, I play those Descent games. Yeah, they're good. They're hard. Yeah, they are super hard. It's kind of like a mix between a Quake and his shmup. Yeah. Oh, I don't think it had the bullet dodginess of the shmups where it was like.

You know how shmups, it's like, oh, there's a million bullets on screen at once. But it was very much like a three shmup. Well, you can strafe and stuff. The controls are a bit funky. It looks like Doom. Yeah. I mean, it's that era, right? Like, it's 95 or 96. But you're a ship, not a man. Yeah, yeah. But it was the first game to, like, come out and be performant using textured polygons. So it was, like, it came out before Quake did.

So it was definitely a ahead of its time game. And it looked like the ships look very basic, but like kind of fun. Atari style designs for the enemies. Like they look like space invaders and stuff. And I really like that. I don't know. It's like a classic style arcade game with a little bit of doom to it and impressive speed.

It's just fun. The other Volition games I've been playing, I got Red Faction 1 and 2 on the PlayStation, because those are PS2 classics, so I just bought them on PS3. And I've also been playing... Yeah, the Saints Row. Saints Row 1 and 2 I've been recording footage of. And I'm going to...

I also got Agents of Mayhem, which was the thing that killed off the original Saints Row timeline. That game is weird. Like, to describe it, imagine if Saints Row were combined with... overwatch but it's not really multiplayer but it has over it looks and plays like overwatch but also is like crackdown and also an open world game but has levels and ultimate and it just seems like a game where they tried to do what was popular and like mixed eight different genres together it's super weird

I remember when Crackdown first came out, I was like, man, this game is cool. I was thinking about it recently, and I don't know that I would like it as much now. just playing as a super-powered cop. I do want to play, because basically, Saints Row 4... And Agents of Mayhem are riffs on that crackdown style of, like, ultra-powerful open-world gameplay. Yeah. And same with... Like a prototype. Yeah, prototype. And infamous bit as well.

Yeah. And I'm going to play all these games for my Open World series. I've never really played Crackdown 1, and I'm excited to actually give it a shot. Yeah, I mean, those games are definitely fun. Like, I loved the first two, or I guess there is only two, but I love the prototype games. Oh, sorry. No, I'm talking about prototype. Yeah. Did you know those were by the Simpsons Hit and Run team?

I did know that, yeah. Yeah. Those games are pretty good. Yeah. Anyway, so that's about it. What about Matt? How did Matt level up? Well, I am still deep into my dungeon crawler Carl read. I have started book five, which I think means I'm tearing through these things at like a pace of two a week. There are seven out. Okay.

Anyway, it continues to be a good fun time that I'm really enjoying. It actually is kind of getting a little more serious. Still a good fun time, but old dungeon crawler Carl is starting to get kind of fed up with the situation he's found. himself in and is now trying to tear down an entire galactic government from the inside of a video game it's not a video game actually that's not entirely accurate but it's actually starting to hit some emotional beats that are pretty good

This guy might be improving as a writer. It's a pretty good series. Let's see. Have I done anything else at all? I already talked about Reacher last week and Invincible. Invincible's great. I haven't watched Daredevil yet. Ooh, I have some hot gaming news for you guys. I went to a baseball game. Whoa. Sweet. Whoa. That's a game, right? Was it outside?

Yeah, it was. Can you tell? What makes you say that? I went to a spring training game. It was the Blue Jays, Johnny's team, obviously. Toronto Blue Jays versus the Philadelphia. You guys aren't baseball guys, so you might not be aware of this, but spring training games are practice games. They don't care, and it doesn't matter if they win or they lose. You really just kind of show up in the hopes that...

In the first few innings, maybe some good players will show up. Matt, ask me how many baseball games I've been to. How many baseball games have you been to, Johnny? I don't know. A couple dozen. I've been to a few Avalanche games. I've been to an LA Dodgers game. I've been to a ton of Expos games. My parents had season's tickets.

Whoa, that's awesome. I love baseball. Baseball games are super fun. I love baseball games too. I went more just because I don't care about the Jays or the Phillies. I wanted to go to a baseball game and also... The Blue Jays spring training stadium is like 10 minutes from my house and is fucking awesome. They redid it a couple of years ago. It kicks ass. The outfield basically is all standing room only and they've got like levels.

like three levels but it's all standing room and there are like um shelves on each one so you can kind of rest your arm or rest your beer or your purse or whatever um All right, what's the Colorado team called? It's not the Avalanche. I've been to an Avalanche game. The Rockies. The Rockies. Yeah, the Rockies. I went to an Avalanche game where Patrick Roy was still goalie. That was crazy.

I went to, I think the second date I ever took Amanda on was a Texas Rangers game. And it was at their new stadium, which has a retractable roof and is air conditioned in the summertime, which is... Just an amazing experience when it's like 110 degrees outside in Texas. Yeah, the Rays Stadium is not a retractable roof. It's just a dome, and it is air-conditioned, and I have always really loved that. Unfortunately, the hurricane ripped the roof off that fucking thing and flooded it.

They actually will be playing at the Yankees spring trading stadium in Tampa this year. It's going to be weird. It's going to be a weird year because they front loaded all of their games for the spring as home games. And then basically the second half of this season is going to be all away games. All road games. Wow. Because of the chance of rain and the heat. Nobody wants to be out there playing fucking baseball. So it's going to be a weird season for the Rays.

Don't know that I'm going to be able to make it to more than one or two games at most, which usually I try to go to a few. And so I decided to go. Maybe I'll go all in on this blue. I don't know if you guys know this, but the spring training.

training stadiums get turned into basically minor league stadiums after spring training. So I'm kind of thinking maybe I'll spend some time going to some minor league games this year because I like going to baseball games. Smell that popcorn, all them hot dogs. Glizzies. We call them glizzies now. No, we don't. We sure as fuck don't. Did you have a chili dog in honor? It makes you age 10 years. Do you have a chili dog in honor of Sonic Chronicles?

what i did is i was leaving the house and i was like oh i should grab a hat because you know i'm a bald head and then i was like hey you know what i need a new race hat i'll get one while i'm there and then i got there and was like well duh this isn't a race stadium i kind of thought they would have some options because it's a

fucking minor league stadium, basically. But no, it was all Blue Jays stuff. And I said, nah, I'm not buying a Blue Jays hat. I'm not spending $40 on a fucking Blue Jays hat. Yeah. $40. Ooh. That's on the cheap side. That gay merchandise is pricey. Yeah. Oh, boy. It's just as expensive if you try to find them at the stores. It's fucking exorbitant.

Anyway, so then a friend of mine that I was there was like, hey, there's like a sunscreen station right there if you want to go rub that bald ass head of yours up. And I was like, yeah, I'll do that in a minute. Anyway, I kept putting it off, and I am the color of a ripe tomato. Yeah, poor Matt. He got wraparound Oakley's tan lines. Yeah. He's got like a dad tan. the ultimate dad tan, the Oakley tan line. You keep saying Oakley's like, I don't wear normal ass glasses.

I don't know. I thought maybe you would have swapped to your cool dad sunglasses when you're out. Yeah. I'd like to imagine Matt having prescription white Oakley's. Yeah. I'm not an Oakley's guy, gentlemen. I'm a way. Anyway, I got burnt to shit and I have been suffering all week because of it because I'm very stupid. Also, I got very drunk and then I walked from the stadium to downtown Dunedin.

which is, I don't know, a mile or two away, to an Irish pub where I proceeded to take shots of Jameson and drink Irish beers. And eat a Reuben. And that was basically my whole night. I Ubered home. I couldn't fucking see straight. It was rough. My friend Paul that I went with is saying that he might be quitting drinking after that. He's done.

Montreal smoked meat sandwiches are basically like a fancy Reuben. No, actually, it's like, yeah, different Reuben. Slightly different meat, but they're so similar. I love good Reuben. I had never ordered a Reuben before in my life until this past weekend. And I don't know why. It was incredible. Did you know that the Reuben originated in Omaha, Nebraska?

I don't believe that. Nothing originated in Omaha, Nebraska. It's true. And like every restaurant here, you'll go to like a Mexican restaurant and they'll have a Reuben on the menu. They're at like every single restaurant. It's crazy. I like a Reuben. It's usually on rye, right? Or is it just the Smoke Fiend sandwiches that are on rye? It is rye. And also, gotta love that Thousand Island on top. Really puts it over...

Wow. One origin story holds that Ruben Kulikovsky, a Lithuanian-born Jewish grocer, residing in Omaha, Nebraska, Asked for a sandwich made of corned beef and sauerkraut. That is a weekly poker game. So it sounds like an old wives tale, Jim. Yeah, because it's a Romanian Jewish recipe, the smoked meat sandwich. So it's very similar. Anyway, that's how I leveled up. I had a...

Reuben, and it was fucking amazing. I agree. I like a good Reuben. I like a good smoked meat sandwich. Jim, have you leveled up? Yeah, I have not. Alright, well then please do. And stop chewing on that straw or eating that Twizzler or whatever the fuck I'm looking at. I got a coffee from the coffee store this morning and you know how they put those...

They put those little things in it to keep it from spilling when you get it through a drive-thru. This is what that is. You still have it. Anyways. 15 hours later. I've been chewing on it all day. Anyways, I finished a book the other night that was pretty good called Our Share of Night. I can't remember the author's name, but it's like a horror slash kind of... of magical realism book that takes place over the years of like 19...

60 to like 1995 in argentina so it deals a lot with like the dictatorship that was happening there and like you know they went through a couple governments and but it's about this guy who's like a

who's discovered to be like a, like a medium, like he can channel this God that these like rich occultist people worship. Um, and uh he falls in love with like one of the higher-ups daughters and uh they kill her and so he's trying to find and they they have a son together and he's trying to like get his son away from this Group this group of cultists so he can have like a normal life And it's a it's a really good book. I liked it quite a bit So that was cool at the

I believe it was Chris in our Discord the other night let me know that the new Alone in the Dark game was like 60% off on Fanatical. So I snagged that. And I've been playing a little bit of that for the last couple days. And that game is... it's janky like the combat super janky um but it's pretty fun actually and the story's neat and oh so it's like a remedy game burn

Burn on Jim's favorite game maker. Aww. I saw on Fanatical that Suikoden 1 and 2 for the PC was half off. I saw that. Yeah. I saw that today. I'm going to get that on Switch anyways. I'm not going to get that on PC.

Okay. Well, yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, the game's really good. It's not scary or anything. It's more like just interesting than it is scary. And like I said, it doesn't... play very well as a survival whore because the combat is really bad but um yeah but i'm but i'm liking it quite a bit it's got david harbor harbor david harbor and there's another lady in it uh

Who is it? Hold on. I'm going to look it up real quick. It's sort of a remake of the first one, right? The first one. Yes. Yeah, similar. It's... David Harbor and Jody Comer. Okay. So you can actually play like you, you pick one, like they each have their own.

game, basically. So when you play as David Harbour, you experience stuff that's happening in the game as David Harbour for the whole thing, but then you can go and do another playthrough as Jodie Comer's character, which is cool. But yeah, I... I'm liking it quite a bit. I did watch Daredevil, the first two episodes of that. Oh, no spoilers. No spoilers, but I thought it was pretty good.

And I'm really enjoying Severance right now. After last week's episode and I had confirmed that Vanessa had watched it, I was sending her messages like, what do you think about this, this, or this? Do you think this is what... what happened such a fun little mystery show uh it's cool talking to my buds about it we john and vanessa and i were talking about it the other day

There's a lot of cool stuff going on in that show. Yeah, we had to make a different chat because we don't want to spoil Matt down. But yeah, that last episode was a lot to talk about. Yeah, for sure. Super good. But yeah, I guess that's how I leveled up. I think, oh, I started playing Pillars of Eternity 2. Oh. Decided to skip one, huh?

Yeah, I decided to skip one and just go straight to two. And it's really cool, actually. Is it like a Baldur's Gate or like a Diablo? It's like a Baldur's Gate. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's like a Baldur's Gate.

And I think that, you know, after finishing Avowed, I was like, I really think this Pillars of Eternity universe is super cool. So, yeah, I'm liking it quite a bit. I made another godlike character. And, you know, they have the weird heads. So that's... cool and I made a fighter no I made a monk my first character was a monk and that was cool and I used a staff but then I made a fighter character that I like a little bit better but yeah that's

That game is pretty fun so far. Tell us about it. Like, what's the deal? So, you know, like, I'm not... John, how far are you in Avowed? Five hours.

Okay. Well, in the game, they reference the god... eothys like possessing a giant titan like it's lore that's mentioned throughout the game uh that's the inciting event of pillars of eternity 2 where the like little sanctuary that you made in pillars of eternity one gets destroyed by this god titan that erupts out of the earth and he sucks all the souls of everyone around him and he's making his way to this

one place um and you're brought back to life by another god and they're like you need to go find out what's going on with this this aothis guy and uh stop him so that's kind of the thrust of the game but it it starts almost exactly like a vowed, which I think is interesting. And I wondered if pillars of eternity one did this, but it starts out with your character getting in a, in a huge shipwreck, which is, which is, which is exactly how about every East game starts like that too.

Yeah. So I thought that was funny. But yeah, I'm liking it quite a bit. The game looks great. All the stats are really interesting. It's similar to Avowed where you have like Constitution and stuff like that. But yeah, it's pretty neat. And that's it for me. I think that's it for the show. Now we have to talk about Vanessa's level up. She went and saw a thing called gospel.

Duck. And she said it was the best stand-up show she's ever seen. So glad she skipped recording. That's how she leveled up. That is what Vanessa sent to the chat. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we forgot to promote the streams, but we did do... Jim and Matt played more Kingdom Hearts this week. Well, we're back to our bi-monthly Kingdom Hearts stream. Yay! Yeah. Well, I mean, we've made pretty good progress in it. I think we just did part seven and we are about to be eligible to like go to the final.

level basically we're not going to be it'll be a minute till we're high enough level for it but yeah we're about to unlock the world that never was so there's probably not not more than a few episodes oh nice wow I mean, unless we want to do all the side shit, but I don't know that I want to. Come join us on Wednesdays. Come join us on Wednesdays for that stream. That's Jim and I and occasionally Johnny. And then it'll be always Johnny when Johnny plays Smoocher. Now, Snatcher is, I think.

gonna be three maybe three or four episodes it's not a long game hmm Oh, man, does that mean I have to figure out what I'm going to do? I don't want to. Well, you don't have to. I like co-hosting. Yeah. Co-hosting is fun. I mean, I don't think Jim or I would mind playing a different game and you commenting. Jim likes choosing games to play. Why are you bullying me?

I like playing the games on the stream. I'm not bullying you. John's kicking me under the table. He's kicking me right in the shin. Now you can't play games on the stream anymore. Good. I like that. Matt wants to choose the games we play. I think that's really what he's getting at. No, I didn't say that. I don't care. Okay. I actually think I know what I want the next game I play to be after Johnny. Oh, tell us. I want to play still wakes the deep on stream. Yeah.

It'll only be like... You know what? I changed my mind. I do want to choose the games you guys play. First, Johnny has to play Smacker. Yay! And then Jim has to play Chain of Memories. I thought Snatcher was so cool 30 years ago, and I wonder how it'll be to a modern Johnny. That's always fun. Yeah.

All right. Yeah. Johnny has a stream. I do. Johnny has a YouTube channel. Yeah, it's a YouTube channel. I don't really stream to it. And that's OK. But I'm working on. What you do is better. Saints Row 2022. And yeah, just writing. Writing takes a couple of weeks with a big video like this, but I'm working on it. It's going to come out. I'm having fun working on writing it right now. Doing some good goofs.

All right. Well, that's it for this episode of square roots. Just a reminder that we do have a Patreon that you can find at patreon.com slash square roots podcast. And on that Patreon, we have tons of great bonus content this month. Uh, Johnny's going to make us all play. elite beat agents it's true and uh i guess i guess have a discussion about elite beat i really can't wait that game is one of the more insane japanese games

You can have access to that episode and all of the rest of our content by subscribing at the $3 tier. If you subscribe at the $5 tier. You get access to all that content plus the ability to vote on the games that we play on the show. Just a reminder that Sonic Chronicles the Dark Brotherhood. We are playing that.

As the result of a vote. So you can be cruel to us if that's your jam. And Jim's got a next episode. Jim's going to announce what the next game is. Because it's Jim's choice. And that's the... penultimate sonic chronicles which feels like feels fast but this is a short a short game it's fine yeah uh i will i will say like Last time I had a choice, I made us all play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Not going to do anything that long this time. We'll not pick a 100-hour game this time, I promise.

Like, didn't you pick... Oh, no. See the Stars won a vote. Never mind. That's right. Yeah. Well, I did pick... I nominated that one for a vote. But it wasn't you. That was like... 40 hours, right? No, it wasn't even that. 25 hours? Just felt like 40 hours. All right, so another benefit of being a patron, no matter what tier you subscribe at, is we like to thank some folks on the show by name. I'll kick us out this week by thanking Loafing Around, Seth G, Wishbone is Gay.

Jason Timms, William Westgard, Joshua W. Broxton, Sergeant Spaghetti, Saul Wagner, Bree Gerth, and John B. Quaker-Oatman. I'd like to... Thank friend of DeSoto Aaron O'Toole, Brian Hassel. Oh, you don't have the right. Johnny Five Alive. My battery is low. Keys be night. Robert T. Butts on Parade and Samu Mitchell. I'd like to thank Sean Gonzalez, Cameron Shoei, Star Healer, David Shook, David Green, Tom, Dr. Say Everyone's Name, Hexagon, Ed Franco, and...

Josh Holt. Josh Holt. All right. Well, that's it for this episode of Square Roots. If you'd like to send us an email, our email address is squarerootspodcast at gmail.com. Come join our Facebook group. Facebook's your thing. Our group is called the Square Roots Podcast Group for smart, very attractive people. Or find us on Blue Sky at squarerootspod.bsky.social.

And we'll post the link to our Discord on our Patreon for all levels, but also you can just ask us. Just ask us, it's fine. We'll talk to us on Facebook or Blue Sky. Or the other thing. Discord. Not Discord. Yeah, you can't because that's how you get to the Discord. It's an eroverous. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. If you want to be invited to the Discord, you have to find us on Discord. Please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, Ghana, wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks to Stephen from Morris for our Scourge theme. You can find Stephen on YouTube. Links are in the show notes. All right. Well, for Square Roots, I am Jim Banks. I'm Matthew Johnny Zant. I'm Johnny Van Brandon. Vanden. Bye, Vanessa! Bye, Vanessa! Bye! Don't eat that pie, Matthew. Poor Vanessa. Bye!

Okay.