Doom: The Dark Ages, Control's Spin-Off, Despelote

Hello, everybody, and welcome to a new episode of the MinMag Show, a place about games, friends, getting better. I'm Ben Hanson. We keep stacking these episodes. It just happens to work out that way, where a lot of people want to jump in at one time, and we say the more the merrier, because we're joined by Jacob Geller. I'm here. We're joined by Jana Garcia. Hello. We're joined by Hayley. I pluck McLean. Something's in my eye. Get it out. Special guest Charles Hart, sir.

Heyo! Heyo! Welcome back, Randy Pitchford! Welcome, what is your title at Game Informer these days? Associate Editor. There we go. How's that feeling over there? Full timer. It's good, it's good. I mean, I'm now the only associate editor, I think, because the other ones got promoted to senior associate editor.

So I'm kind of at the top of my own little food chain. That's right. That's a way to think about it. I like it. Yeah, that's really smart. Way to go, man. We're also joined by the one and only Leo Vader. After the special guest is interesting billing. I'm a with Leo Vader. You always get the best, like, and the funniest guy on planet Earth. Ben always gives you, like, the best little intro.

He's just unbelievably cute. I'm iPluck McClane. Specifically, I wanted Leo to go last because I wanted to talk to him about the big news that hit today. I don't know if you've heard this, Leo. I hope you're sitting down or standing up or doing jumping jacks or whatever you need to do to digest and process this news. But did you hear?

that they officially announced for Riders Republic film. Yes! And I was like, boy, is this moving anybody's needles. I'm like, Leo Vader, the biggest fan of Riders Republic on planet Earth, more than, I'd argue, the director of that game over at Ubisoft. Is there a chance you will leave your house and have a little date night and go see Writer of the Republic in theaters when the film hits? Me? Yes, there is a chance. All right.

The meme factor for me personally is enough to go see that in an empty theater like I did with Borderlands. the movie. Now, do you think that movie has a better or worse chance of coming out than the Shadow of the Colossus movie or the Metal Gear Solid movie? Better! I think better. I think this is this is a fool's errand. I feel like this is going to happen. They announced the directors, the directors of like bad boys three and four, which solid films.

so you can go for it it's you know something like middle gear saw there's all these meetings of like how do we honor these different things like what matters about it what can we do in the movie That replicates the game. What do we do? That's new. In Riders Republic, every meeting is who gives a sh**.

So I think it could happen really easily. Yeah, well, they're very key to emphasize that, quote, this feature adaptation is poised to be a, quote, electrifying action movie delivering nonstop thrills, humor, and spectacular stunts on the snowy slopes of the Alps. That's all you need, baby. That's all you need. Do you remember when Uwe Boll was making all those video game adaptations and it was some German tax loophole where he was making money off of

these movies that were complete flops and bad. And then challenging critics to fight him in a boxing ring if they didn't like the movies. Yeah. This seems like something that they would only do if it's some kind of tax loophole to make money. Hey, speaking of tax loophole, somebody write down this idea. It doesn't need to be anybody listening or watching or on this call, but somebody on Earth should write down this idea. You make a video game.

that's based on Charlie Kaufman's adaptation and it's just called Video Game Adaptation. Is there anything there? I don't understand what we're talking about. Someone write it down. That's right, everybody. On this week's episode, we're talking about FBC Firebreak from Remedy, the new co-op shooter. Look alive. We'll be talking all about it. There's a twist because somebody has been very close to this game, but...

Four of us have played it. Then we're going to be talking about Despolote, which is a new indie game published by Panic that's about the role of soccer. Throughout a child's life in Ecuador I'm very excited to talk about this.

trying to qualify for the world cup for the first time yeah a very specific point in time very specific point in time uh then we're gonna talk about doom the dark ages and then back half of the show we have some great community questions that people submitted over there on patreon thanks everybody for making the show better each and every week bye

submitting questions over on patreon all right fbc fire break this is the next remedy game that is coming out next month it's coming out june 17th which is a wild thing this is a co-op game Now, if you really are tuned into your Remedy universe, you astute viewer might notice that FBC...

Federal Bureau of Control. So if you're a fan of the game Control, this is technically within that same universe, which is also within the same goddamn building. It's in the same building is a better way to put it. Alright, so... Jacob and Leo and Haley got to play this thing in like a remote preview. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Awesome. But please mute your mics because the one and only Charles Hart, he got to go to Finland.

to actually play this thing at Remedy's office. That trip must have been a joyous experience for you. Yeah, as they say in Finland. How much time did you spend there? Uh, three nights. So I showed up, basically immediately went to sleep, and then I had a day at the studio, and then I had a free day, and I went to the sauna, which is a big thing in Finnish culture. Did you jump in like an ice lake?

I did. So the fun fact I learned is there's, I believe, 5.5 million people in Finland and 3.3 million sauna. There's more saunas than cars. Remedy's office has two saunas. There was some debate about whether it was three saunas. I went to one called, I'm going to pronounce it wrong, but I think it's Lol, and it's On the Sea. So you do the sauna and then you step outside and dunk in the cold ocean water and then come back and go back inside. Way more adventurous than I ever normally would be.

but it wasn't a helicopter over the Grand Canyon, so I was like, that's the bar now for terrifying stuff. Didn't throw up Charles? I didn't, not yet. I still could. I still could. Okay, so... This game, it's an interesting case, I think, with FBC Firebird to try and wrap your head around it, because it's like, hey, Control fans, check this out! but don't expect like a big continuation of the control story or any huge narrative hooks it's just if you want to spend more time

in kind of a wacky co-op game, objective-based co-op game within the control universe, this is an option for it. Like, even the fact that they're not calling it, like, control colon revelations or something it seems like they're trying to like temper expectations of like this is something that is cool but don't think of this as like the next big alan wake control style, you know, moving forward with the Remedy universe. Do I have the right read on this, or what is it?

Yeah, when I got to talk to some of the... I talked to the game director and the lead designer and stuff, and one of the quotes was, we didn't call it control colon something because this isn't a control game. Perfect. This is FBC Firebreak. This is a different thing. Okay, because they're just worried about people being upset about it not being single player. You can play it solo for the record. Okay.

It was crazy how much of the presentation we saw was them tempering expectations. Like, I would say it was about 50% of the words they said was like, and this isn't And they're like, it's not a control sequel. It's not a big living game. It's not, you know, like they were really interesting in a way that I appreciated, but they were hitting like

Don't expect too much from this in a way that at some point I was like, is this a little diminishing to the game that they made? Because it's $40, right? They're leading with that, too. It's 40, I wrote this down, 40 bass, 50 to low. Okay. You're welcome. Haley, as a Gaga Remedy fan, what did you think of actually playing this thing? I'm so Gaga. Um... I think games like this, it's going to be as fun as the people you're playing it with. Jacob had to drop off a little bit into our playthrough.

And then someone from Remedy joined. Leo and I, we actually didn't ask them to join. And they said to us, if someone drops, get one of us to join. And we were like, that's. We're awkward. We won't ask, but then someone popped in anyways and played. So we were able to ask them a couple questions. And what I was curious about is, does the difficulty go down if you play it by yourself or only two people? And it does not. So if you're playing the solo, it's just going to be like...

playing on extra hard mode. Interesting. Essentially. So you're going to want to have three people, and you just kind of get more out of this if those people are fun, ultimately, I think, whenever I come down to co-op, objective-based games. You can put me into pretty much any scenario, and if the people I'm with are fun and funny, I'm like, this game is 10 out of 10, you know? I find it hard to dodge games like these, honestly.

And for mechanically, you're all playing a first-person shooter, and you each have your kind of kit. and they do require the assistance of the other kits kind of to get the most out of it like one of them soaks everybody shoots them with big water blobs that gets everybody wet and then you need another kit to electrify that and shock the whole crowd and stun the whole mob of enemies. So team play definitely matters.

with getting the most out of your kit. I think you would find it maybe a little dry mechanically if you were playing it by yourself. Yeah, I think the best moments definitely came when we were realizing how our kids worked together to do better things. Like I had the water gun.

there was fire, I sprayed water on the fire, check mark, but then, you know, I was spraying water everywhere, and Leo zapped one of the guys, and then, like, 50 of them all were like, and, like, got killed, and were like, yes! Like, things like that. are very, very fun in this game. I will say as somebody who's a Remedy head because of the lore stuff, I can take Remedy gameplay or leave it.

like you're there's no real lore in here for me personally like i've obviously only played a little bit of it but like What I'm seeing is how we already understand the hiss and the old house and like we know what's going on and we know what's happening. It's just like, why don't you play in that sandbox and have fun in that lore that you already know? Like, for example, I'm not such a loser, but like...

I was picking up documents which give you perk points and stuff, and I was like, I want to read these. It's like, no, you don't read those. I'm like, damn. It's just the currency, but I want to read revenue things, but that's not what this game... is four so if you're somebody who's like i love remedy in the story and i want to there's going to be lore drops in here like they're going to have little things in here but it's definitely not focused on that at all a quip based lore

Yeah. All through like little dialogue things you hear where they're like, did you know that if you're salaried, you don't get overtime? Isn't that messed up? And then it's like, oh, that's another thing you know about the FBC. So the rest gets longer. It's not a living game. I mean, are they going to have like seasons? Is this like an easy perk for them? Eventually, like season three, they'll be like, okay, we have an objective that ties into Jesse or something like that.

so they're they're adding like new jobs which is like the game modes you can play so i think we're getting like two more of those this year and they're adding cosmetics and stuff but as far as i know about like I don't think there is like a continuity to the game. As far as I know. Or time-limited stuff. That was part of the pitch, too. We're not trying to make this your life. We want you to have the fun time with your friends whenever you choose to dive into it so they're

The battle test is at least everything in the menu we scrolled through is like, activate it whenever, move through it at whatever pace. Huh. I'm fascinated by their angle overall, and like, especially... them realizing we need to get players in this we need if we don't get out of the gate strong so many of these types of games have you know had a tough time catching an audience so the fact that it's like launching on ps plus and game pass

and i'm pc it's like they're doing everything they can to be like please give this game a shot if we can be What is the measure of success for this game? If it's 120th Helldivers 2, it's mission accomplished? What are they going for? I kind of got the impression that they were like... And this is me.

speculating industry I have no idea but like The fact that it's launching on all of those places, I was like, my guess is they're kind of breaking even now, and that's... what they're happy with because they don't have a lot of plans for like they were not like there's going to be a new battle pass that you'll buy in three months like i i got the impression that like when you buy the game

You basically get it, you know, that it is not like a microtransaction-y nickel and diming you game. And so if they have managed to cut deals with Microsoft and Sony and all of these things, like... It's a double-A game, and I think, you know, like, people will pick it up on their subscription services, and, like, that is probably good enough, but I don't think it's, like...

If you had the Helldivers thing of like six months later, only a quarter of the people are playing FBC. I don't think that would actually be that big of a deal because I don't think that they need to keep making money forever in order for this to be like a...

financial success for them and if it takes off in a huge way it's just what a what a great boost to have a genre that has you know doesn't have a clear ceiling on it like survival horror does which i know they've talked about in the past of like you know you know we all like alan wake too

How many people could conceivably be like, Alan Wake 2, that's my jam. That's the new God of War. It's inherently kind of niche, whereas I feel like co-op first-person shooter, maybe there's more of an infinite ceiling on here, potentially. it's uh their first time self-publishing too so maybe this is almost like a little bit of a let's let's test this out on this low stakes fun thing that we're doing to we want to break even on to maybe set up those channels Publish control two and more.

expedited way or better way right right because yeah control 2 uh there's been some messaging uh through game file over there steven totillo Talking about Control 2 and how they want to have a smaller budget overall for Control 2. Like ballpark and Control 1. Or smaller than Alan Wake.

yes right yes well specifically i think the numbers there were like control one had a budget of like 75 79 million and they're looking for like a budget of like 57 million for control too but they have so much of the tech already in place that you know It's conceivable, don't think of it as going to be like some micro game compared to the first control, but the quote from Gamefile is interesting where the CEO of Remedy said, quote, we are moving from surviving to succeeding.

I feel like that's always the Remedy style as a big independent studio. If we could just... We're barely scraping by. Alan Wake 2 just became profitable a couple months ago. Like, we're always just doing well enough. But, like, if we could lower the budget on this thing and actually propel ourselves with our biggest IP that we own now. Think controls bring the dylan away?

It's all in the same thing now. I guess so. It's all the Remedy IP, I feel like. Yeah, yeah, I suppose so. So RootinForms is an independent team for sure, but it's fascinating just to understand the business of where Remedy's at, and especially because, like, You know, this project was started where it's like, okay, let's try and catch on to a multiplayer fan base. Let's try and have a game that can have a bigger ceiling for player count. Then also, they had...

Kestrel, Project Kestrel, which was through Tencent, which was like a free to play game. that we're working on for years a free-to-play multiplayer game.

um and then in 2023 that was rebooted to be like okay it's no longer free to play it's gonna be premium now and then like okay that project's just gone completely and now we got the max pain one and two remake ahead of time and this is like our multiplayer focus is this fbc fire break but i feel like we're diving too much in the weeds of the business but Overall, I mean, impressions are it's fun to talk to your friends and the game is

What? When I played it, I remember thinking like, yeah, it seems fun. And then played it, I was like, yeah, this is pretty fun. And just an interesting thing of when you play a shooter... like the bar is so high that i was like it's fun but is anyone gonna play it and then talking to developers and they were like yeah you know if you pick they were like weirdly not stressed about it at least the vibe i picked up maybe they're really good at concealing it but like

yeah you know maybe you play it on game pass for like three hours put it down or maybe you play for 100 hours i don't know whatever like i do that all the time there's so many good games out there we just want people to you know check it out and that makes you want them more right you know you're like oh wow you don't even need me hold on let me

And it did kind of lower my standards where I was like, yeah, I'd play a little bit of this. I'm not going to devote my whole life to it. But then I was like, you know what? Why should I devote my whole life to a game? I already play some games every day. I don't need to all be like that. So I think that kind of like...

recalibrated my feelings on it where I'm like it's not going to light the world on fire and then they said in the interview quote we're not trying to light the world on fire and I was like oh cool were they all wearing towels in the sauna during this interview because they were so chill or

They might as well have been, yeah. Yeah, their quality of life is really high outside of work, so they're not really that bothered. They're not putting all their hopes and dreams into this product. That's nice. My dumb question is, because I actually haven't been following this game much at all other than that, like, It's in the control universe.

Are you a firefighter in this game? Like, what is You're what I see put a lot of fires like what's it's just you're just on fire everything's just on fire what's that it's called fire yeah you're basically you're basically like a janitor but you're in a place that's crazy and so you're asked to do a bunch of fun things and so like the most fun thing about the game i think is that, like,

some of the objectives were pretty wacky. You know, that you go into this place and it's like, oh, there's an anomaly here and it's the post-it anomaly and there are like literally like 13,000 post-its in this room and you need to like get them wet or otherwise destroy them and so you're not actually your goal is not to like shoot a bunch of enemies it's literally to like knock a bunch of post-its off the walls and if you walk into the post-its then they like cover your screen and

funny and so it's like is the water thing to clean off jacob because he can't see yeah that like that level of interconnectedness with the world of control and it's weird anomalies and stuff like that's really fun but i think the the reason that none of us have been like

i can't wait to get this on my plate is like it doesn't feel that good like that's the you know that that is the kind of like If it's a multiplayer game without a story or lore, you are kind of relying on game feel and the fun of your friends. And we got great friends, but like shooting has never been Remedy's strong point after they stopped making Max Payne games. And like, it's not here. and it's a first-person shooter. And so, like, it is just, like, it...

The guns don't feel good, and I hate to boil it down to that. you know rudimentary of an analysis but like that's what you're doing in this game is shooting stuff to be a devil's advocate a little bit do you think how much of it because the game was jittery and we all talked about that like when you shoot it kind of like

It doesn't quite do what you want, and there's a little tiny layer of that. But how much do you think it is of their tiered battle pass-like system where it's just EXP and you get the better guns later on if they want it to feel kind of bad?

at first until you're goaded up, souped up, and you have all the... I would say that's not good game design. If the game doesn't feel good until I play several hours of it, you know, it was just like, there were kind of... you know like shooting these big globs of water at people was fun because it was kind of like a silly gun but then everyone had

you know a shotgun or a revolver or a you know tommy gun and i was like playing with a revolver and it's just like there are a bunch of enemies and they're running around really fast and i have this like slow gun that doesn't feel good to shoot And it's like maybe incentivizing cooperation to be like you shouldn't be shooting at all, but it was just like, you know, it did not have the Destiny or Call of Duty thing of just like immediate good feedback when you're playing it.

And it just, again, it matters because they took out a lot of the charm that Remedy has previously been able to, like, supplant that with. So, real quick, to be clear, it doesn't have, like, supernatural abilities then. Because to me, that was, like... The juice of the control gameplay was that element, not necessarily...

the morphy gun, even though I did enjoy that as well. We're middle management in this game. You're, like, secretaries and gadgets and weird devices, for sure. Yeah, you have the, like, supernatural part of it comes from, like, you have your kits, which are, like, all your secondary stuff. and each kit has like a I'm going to use the game term Altered Augment, I want to say it's called. Maybe Awakened Augment, one of those.

But it's like your super move. So when you have a splash kit, you have a water gun, and then you can add a teapot on top of it, and it's a magic teapot, and now you have a flamethrower instead. One of the kits has a gnome that when you throw it, summons all these lightning storms.

That thing is terrifying. I do not care for that. But that was more of an aesthetic thing than a gameplay thing. It's all fun and weird, but it is a comparatively small part of the experience. It's more supernatural in what you're fighting.

The post-it note thing, as you replay levels, you go further and further into them. That's part of the way they've done longevity is, like, you kind of repeat parts of levels, but It's harder and there's new twists on it as you go into the same mission again and again.

And the post-it note one is like the first time you're just clearing post-it notes. And then the second time there's full on post-it note men running around like people made of post-it notes. And then you can spray them with water and they're soaking wet and they look so different and weird and strange.

And it's cool that the Remedy personality comes through in that way. And honestly, like the pace of getting to that stuff didn't feel bad. But I think if you kind of need to have i don't know the shooting probably won't get you there you probably want to have a couple of remedy obsessed friends and you want to be into it just to see the fun designs they've put into it but it doesn't really assert the need for itself okay did you guys get perks at all

Was that in your build? I don't know when you played. But they said they were getting completely reworked, so we shouldn't talk about them. Okay, yeah, I don't think, like, they were getting reworked, so we didn't have them at all, but they were, when they were talking about them, like, in my interview, they were like... Talking about this whole perk system of like, they're going to be like different levels. And as you unlock more, they'll like take up more perk slots.

so you can have like a ton of perks that all do a thing a little bit or you can have some like major perks that you share with like the rest of the party And they also, they like compared the game to Monster Hunter, which I thought was interesting because I didn't pick that up at all. But they were talking about, I think just in the sense of like, you'd be making these.

builds that would be reliant on these perks a lot and so I'm curious like when the game comes out how major of a part that is and if that makes it more interesting in some way um but i've never i don't know if i've played a game genuinely where i've been like actually very excited about perks as a concept that's usually like the fourth thing on my list but

Yeah. I mean, Haley, you're the test. Sorry to put the spotlight on you, but turn up your light because it's on you, dude. I mean, you play Overwatch from other rivals multiple times a week with a regular group of friends. You are remedy drenched in your brain. Will you recruit your friends to play this game when it comes out? I don't, I need, I think I need you guys because my friends don't like Remedy enough and they also don't leave the games we've played for nine years. So I need help.

Okay. One thing I didn't get to touch on yet was like, as somebody who plays a lot of shooter games, is there was two elements of this I really didn't love. I overall had fun with it, and I'm not trying to have the last thing be something I don't like. But there's ammo scarcity in this, which I really didn't like. And that doesn't work for a game like this. I think it's the wrong call because there were so many times where me, Leo, and Jacob were grouped up fighting a wave.

We're clumped up in a corner. We can't really go and deviate and do other things. And it also really incentivizes you to stay grouped up because you get more shields the closer you are to your friends, kind of like Dynasty Warriors, kind of like... whoever's nearby you affects things kind of thing yeah and then i run out of ammo

And then I can't go get more. So I'm kind of just spraying water at the ground and nothing else to do. That kept happening. I really didn't like that. There are ways to get more, but it's, you know, you can't always get to the spot that gives you ammo. Yeah.

kind of incentivizes like later gadgets you can bring an ammo box you can give more ammo to your team, but that's just not an exciting thing to fill a slot with is like well i guess if you have like an exploding gnome having to be like no I'm bringing the ammo boxes I am generally such a fan of ammo scarcity but I agree it doesn't fit here I think it needs like you need four times more ammo

genuinely in your pocket before you do each level that's kind of what it felt like to me and then the other thing is they have like a shower where that can heal you of course but a lot of situations kind of boiled down to all of us jumping in the shower together and just spray and praying at the freaking monsters coming up to us and just hoping we live. What is this, Jacob and I in Brazil?

sharing out just kind of like heals you passively to the point that even when the remedy person joined he was in the shower so i don't love that there's too much simplicity i think with that specific mechanic of like hop in the shower to heal yourself up quickly and that's always located near the elevator exit

So the final push was always us all standing in the shower and just like spraying. And I was like, this doesn't really feel like strategy. This feels like a panic thing. I'm probably just bad at the game. But I also did love how every cool session always kind of deviated to that final result at the end as well. Right, right.

I will say, if Haley messaged me and was like, I've got this downloaded, let's play, I would be there in a heartbeat. I'm not put off the game, but I'm just not super... It didn't jump to the top of my list. This is, again, sorry to become video game executive 101 here, but like... How differently would this game be received if it was bundled into Control 2.

If they just made this game and then just sat on it for four years or whatever. Right, right. Interesting. It feels like a 2012 era multiplayer add-on to a single player. Yes, I'm looking at it and it does feel like... Gotham Impostors or something even, I guess, which is the opposite. But it has that vibe to it. But if it was in Control 2 and Control 2 had a lowered budget, I would be like, why did you do this?

put that money into control too the things that we want right right I guess that's true Fascinating. I mean, Charles, did going to Remedy, I don't know, make you appreciate the studio more? Was there kind of a, I imagine you already loved Remedy going in, but just what was it like to be in the halls there? uh yeah no it was cool i i hadn't been in i went to capcom but when i went there was a very like guided tour They had, like, they reorganized their office so there were white boards lined up.

along the paths we were walking so we didn't accidentally look over and see what was going on it was like being like railroaded in a video game. Whereas this was like, there were people around, like I got in the lunch line with other Remedy employees and got my food and then we went to lunch. I want to say it was venison bolognese. There was rice. There was a big salad bar. There's no burrito. I remember I was like,

There's a hot food line and I was like, I don't want to get in a second line. That's too stressful. I'm just going to get salad. So I filled up most of my plates with salad. But then I was like, oh no. This is like the remedy cafeteria space and there's no empty table. So I don't want to go sit down by myself at the end of a table full of remedy employees. So then I get in the hot food line next to the journalist that I knew.

And then I ended up getting some of the other hot food. It was fine. By the end of your question, probably, Ben, it was cool. I liked seeing it alive. And it's also really weird going to a place and they have, like, A framed game informer on the wall. That's so sweet. They had a shelf with gaming magazines and other related stuff.

I did open it up and I found, I don't know what issue you... worked on handsome but i found a picture of you in there for sure oh that's nice it was the quantum break yeah i visited remedy yeah and then leo visited for control so it's fun that three of us have been to remedy you guys have got to go come on rest of you just go over there did you see sam lake was he there no i did not I don't know if he was there. I assume he was, but I didn't see him. That's fine.

Well, there we go, everybody. FBC Firebreak out next month. Is there stuff that I'm going to mess it up? to have to play with me because he said he would. I was going to ask, when you see the message from Hayley, are you secretly coping? I hope this is not FPC. I was promised that MinMax was going to play Monster Hunter together, and then we did not. And I keep waiting. We did it in a stream. We did it in a stream. It counts. Content counts.

At some point, we'll all have a great time together in multiplayer, not on content, I promise. Ben, I think you're not making it there. You have a child. I know, I know. You know what's really important when you're playing multiplayer games? Factor underwear or something. Factor underwear, everybody.

Eat some food. If you crap your pants, get new underwear with me undies. No, Leo, don't be foolish. What I'm talking about, of course, is headphones, baby. You gotta hear where those enemies are. You gotta hear Jacob's dulcet tones ringing through to find out.

where to go in your firebreak team that's where turtle beach can come in man because they have this stealth 700 series of headphones available in their super cool online store I am honestly so happy to have Turtle Beach as a supporter of Min Max here, you know.

We get a lot of offers for different advertisers and we turned down a handful of them. And then this one was like, oh, what a slam dunk. Because Turtle Beach, look they make great headphones it's still 700 series i've been using it as i've been playing through clear obscure for the deepest dive and having a fantastic time and

80 hour battery on this thing you can switch as cross-play dual wireless transmitter systems for multiple consoles it's fantastic on that front but then also uh if you already have a head pair of headphones, a headset you're happy with. They have other stuff in their store as well. I mean, if you need a new mouse, if you need a new keyboard, if you want racing simulators, if you want flight sim controls, there's a bunch of cool stuff internally to the store.

Check it out. And you can head to TurtleBeach.com and use the code MINMAX for 10% off of your entire order. That's 10% off your order at TurtleBeach.com with promo code MINMAX. After your purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support the show and tell them that MinMac sent you. You can get the ultimate immersive gaming experience with Turtle Beach.

Link in the description if you want to check that out. Get 10% off using that promo code BINMAX. We appreciate it. I genuinely might use the code because Michael doesn't watch the show. My friend Michael. And he needs new headphones because he plays Overwatch with Apple headphones and the stupid little thingy. I hate him. Turtle Beach, everybody.

By the way, we knew which Michael you were talking about from the way you said it. It was obvious. It was obvious. Despolote. Has everybody been playing Despolote here? I haven't really gotten a fair shake at it. Okay. All right. Keep rolling with it. It is a shorter game. You can beat it in two hours or so. Ballpark in here. Soccer ball in here. I'm so curious where everybody else is at with Despolote. I played this game.

More or less in one sitting and was over the goddamn moon. Like fist pumping. This is what I want from video games. Hell yes, please. Is everybody else as hot as I am on Despolote? For some thought here, like, all of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, the notes I took is this, and Despolote has more notes than it's two hours long. That was like a 55-hour game, and this is a two-hour game. So, that's it. a little tease on how much I like this game. What were you taking notes on?

For Kingdom Come or Desperate. obviously that's full of things that'll be the worst the weirdest worst tangent to take us on right now i'll talk about kingdom right now if you want um i don't want to spoil i guess just like The biggest thing for me was the beginner's guide vibe of this, which I'm excited to hear Jacob talk about. And I don't want to spoil that element of it because there's one.

poignant moment in this that caught me so off guard and it was so good to the point that i was like oh god That's a moment of the year conversation. Yeah. In eight months. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. It's written down on that front. Yeah, it rules. It's just like I imagine, Ben, that your reaction.

It was similar to mine of like, I just want a thousand more of these, of, like, this, like, incredible kind of like memory snapshot of like one person's experience and one point in time in this like really just like small but well-painted corner of the world of just kind of like it's like using the

You know, like how much you can get engaged in a game to teach you about history in a way that really doesn't feel like a history class you know it just feels like you're able to like exist somewhere else for a little while yes and and then on top of it just like Every level of it is so... goddamn charming. Just seeing characters animate brought me joy the entire game okay we should we should explain what this is a little bit right um so yes it is late 90s early 2000s slice of life in ecuador

all about soccer and society and the interaction with soccer and how it intertwines with the family and culture at large, all that good stuff. Football, as we call it in the game here, Janet. But... It is. Why would you sing on Janet who's the biggest football player? Because I'm the only one that likes soccer. Right? Is that true of everybody here? I mean, I played it growing up and I was ass, so. Unless we're talking about Mega Man soccer, then yeah, that's probably true.

I like it now after this game. Hey, I like it a lot more after this game. Does anyone know Spanish here? Because the game is all in Spanish. We should point that out. Like, the voice acting part is all in Spanish. I haven't done Spanish in a while, but I did a lot of Spanish in, like, school and I considered, like... going back and changing the language because it has the English

text boxes, like if you don't speak Spanish, and I kind of wanted to start over and switch it to Spanish to be like, how much of this can I follow? That'd be nice. I'm in the same camp as Charles. I had years and years of it in school. Technically officially proficient, but I think you debunked that. I think we're in a taxi at some point, Janet, in LA. And I mentioned that I know Spanish. You're like, uh-huh, what's the word for floor? I'm like, well...

I'm stumped. So that's not a good sign. There's a whole little song about it too. So I'm like, I feel like that's a pretty basic. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Walking Sim and structure with a really striking art style I think is probably one of the big key standout elements of the game. It has sort of a grainy, like, Game Boy look to it, kind of pointillist in its backgrounds, kind of like photo-scanny, so it's kind of... the environment.

is it's almost like it's hyper realistic and then d made down to almost be like hard to piece out but yes yourself Other characters, key objects such as the soccer ball, things like cones that you can hit, things like pigeons on the ground, those are white with black outlines, almost like paper dolls imposed on a soccer ball. Yeah, it has a very like mixed media like.

look and feel to it and overall um i really like the game as well i'm maybe slightly less hot on it but i do think it is like a if you like walking sims you need to play this title um without giving it away specifically the ending like the last thing that happens i was like oh wow that that was a really amazing standout moment for me some of the other surprises i think were less

surprising to me and that i knew i think i kind of knew about elements of this game before i started it so i was like oh they said the thing that i heard about a bunch of times already so i kind of uh it kind of took some of the surprise out of it but it was

very nicely done. I think what this game does a great job at is taking you from moment to moment and really making you feel like you're in those moments in time as this young boy Julian like when it rains like the way that you can't see and the water comes down feels very like authentic to those moments um and really this is a game for people that you like walking sims you like good stories and you like eavesdropping in games it's a big eavesdrop listen to conversations and get a sense of like

what like literally like when people say the streets are talking like that it's the streets are talking the game it's like what are your parents talking about what's like the guy at the i forget the name of the vendor like what he sells he sells like it's like a corn

It's like a lentil ceviche thing. I forgot the name for it. Yeah, like the guy's talking about what's going on with him and then the other people talking and it's so much about that in the way that you know so many of these i think walking sims lean into

conversations and the joy of a good conversation that you can hear but i think what's historically fascinating about this game is an idea of like there is always the soccer ball to mess around with as the object in almost every scene just to kick around with as you're talking to your friends and so it's that

Fun disconnect of you role-playing as a kid, wanting to kick the soccer ball with your friends. Whenever someone tells you to do something, it's like, yeah, yeah, but where's your soccer ball? Because I really want to go play with that. And as you're playing with that, then... the adults and other people on the periphery are all talking about.

real life stuff about the economy about how life is like it's it's just such a fascinating blend of the core fun but then around you at all times you're getting glimpses of what everybody else is going through and you don't want to become an adult because it seems terrible

and they do a really like a really incredible job even in the subtitling and i'm i'm curious like if i spoke spanish and was able to like better pay attention to the video but like It's a game where everyone is interrupting each other in a really fascinating way, where it's just like,

when you're you know you're sitting at the table and your parents are talking to each other and to you but everyone's kind of having their own separate conversation in that way that just like that is how people talk where it's like you know people are talking to each other but their conversations aren't exactly lining up because they're each interested in saying something slightly different and it's just like it's really naturalistically written and then because you're a kid

you can pay attention to those or you can kind of wander off and they're all written to be like wander off the bowl where you can come in in the middle and pick up some of it and then you can stay and hear the whole conversation but probably you are going to go somewhere else and play with a soccer ball and like it also you're not missing the narrative by doing that

Yes, and the way that they talk over and around each other a little bit also accomplishes the being a kid and not fully understanding what's going on. I don't really get or care about what you're talking about. I'm focusing on my video game or whatever else I want to do.

Like it brings you into that mindset so well, including all this eavesdropping is done from you. You are an eight year old. You're half the height of any adult that you see. You're looking up at everybody around you the whole game. And that's such a cool effect. It's such a, yeah, it's such a real, uh, like.

transfer of a childhood into a medium and into our minds it's like so effective for that to feel like you actually experience this and just the small little moments too of like You know, you're at a wedding and everyone's at a fancy table.

And you can just, like, crawl underneath the table and have, like, the tablecloth come around just like a little fort. It's like, oh, I have not thought about that for, like, 30 years. But, oh, my God, of course hiding under tables. There are only being two kids there.

so like you have to play with your sibling because they're the only one there like that's also such a specific feeling that I was like oh yeah I remember being like that the little sister is like my character of their life like every time she's in a scene I was just like yeah it's like i love i love peanuts so much and i love like sally and peanuts who's like voiced by like an actual five-year-old and you can hear her like reading her lines phonetically in charlie brown christmas and like

that's what this feels like it just feels like there's like a little sally in the game who every scene is like doing something incredible yeah that's the part that makes me want to stand up and scream about this is i am so excited just to have more natural

dialogue in games games that sound like real life it's what i've been screaming about i feel like for so many years like more documentary games please for the love of god so to have this game emphasize that like here's just a non-fiction slice of life and

i had a moment of like these voice actors they're not the best then i found out that it's actually his parents and actually like people that he knows that are improvising these lines where it's like his parents talking about the state of the film industry in Ecuador and

I am over the moon all of a sudden. I'm like, oh my god, he recorded his actual parents to recreate these conversations from his childhood and put them in the game. She read her lines very well. That's true. But I was so excited about that idea of just the... humanity that's coming through in the way these characters are talking it is so so so rare in games and this is such a breath of fresh air yeah I also loved um how when there is

An indie game like this that obviously has constraints for budgetary reasons and stuff like that, leaning into the constraints to make that an artistic choice rather than a limitation is one of my favorite things in the world that games can do. Like, for example, with this, You're meant to feel like you're in a hazy memory. It's in the past.

you know you can't quite remember if this is real or not hence why all the backgrounds are hard to see whatever but the things that are crystal clear are like your toys the soccer ball your parents like

those kind of the local dog that used to pet all the time like only those things need to be rendered in like a good asset way not just because that'll save us thousands of dollars but also because it's gonna hit so much harder when you're playing this because that's like the underlying message of everything I just, I love when games

do stuff like that and of course the kicking mechanic is the most thought out mechanic because soccer feels it feels great and it's the whole underlying message of like isn't soccer awesome yeah like this local culture completely adopted soccer to the point that it's part of that location's personality as well as the protagonist's personality so isn't it fun let's make that the most fun thing to do when you're just like walking around

And all of these aspects of it that expand outward and affect society in such a real way, what a huge thing for that country this moment in time was, but also keep bringing you back to the simple joy of kicking a ball.

like holding all those elements makes it so interesting and so fun to talk about afterwards gets so many things out of it and to naturally connect of course to Remedy for this episode like the part that killed me is like oh my god it's all grainy distorted first person uh gameplay and stuff but then when there's glimpses of like oh there's this live action on this tv they're actually just showing

soccer games and there's some like great moments in that front of like hey just just look at the soccer match it's incredible like we're trying to get this across of how cool this moment was like that is the stuff that's just like it's so rare even just

well here's a snippet from a film that is in this entire thing like there's so many great little moments like that There was so much fun with the showing of the games on screens nearby, but you're still a kid and you want to go kick the soccer ball yourself.

but sometimes I'd be running by the TV in the local store and I'd hear goal. And so of course I'm going to stop and go, and like go look at the screen and they have like the time. So I would only assume that that's actual like timed footage of the game and like, Oh,

the goals were happening was actually happening in the moment and like maybe they're spacing it out strategically so that like when you're nearby it yells goal and it jumps forward to the point where there's a goal in that game or something like that But that's just like, whenever that kind of stuff is happening, I was like, of course, like every kid and myself now at age 31 would run in here when they heard like, everyone runs over to love.

I'm the time thing it's like you can look down at your watch whenever and check the time and it really I have no idea if this is part of the game at all but it really felt like time passed faster when you were doing more fun stuff. I don't know if that's a real mechanic. I sat down for a while and they go real-time slow minutes. It's so slow.

It would be like, okay, I have 10 more minutes. I'm going to try and kick the soccer ball and get it to knock the bottles over. And then you would look down and it was like 20 minutes later and you'd be late and you'd be like, and your mom's just screaming at you that you're not back at this point at this time and stuff like that yeah it

It's so exciting to see something different like this. And there's like just these magical little moments of like, oh, I've never done this in a game before where you start out and you're playing this kind of overhead. Soccer game. This feels so good. I can play that for a while.

yeah yeah but then just like have the camera like slowly pull back and it's a first person game as you're playing that like i've never had the frustration in a game before of playing a fun little mini game and then having my dad come and turn it off and be like oh come on dad or like

you know, your sister's being obnoxious and she's trying to get your attention. You're like, yeah, I'm actually just wanting to play this soccer game on TV. And then your sister's pissed at you in the game and crying because you weren't paying attention to her. And it's like, well, it's just perfect little... I don't know, role-playing of these scenarios that line up... It's a game within a game!

Like, Shakespeare's play within a play, the closest that a game can get to that, which is, I love that. But the only difference is I think this is better than Shakespeare in every way, Dash Below Time. You're not wrong. I would replace Shakespeare with Dash Below Time. It's a weird thing because I think this hit

So beautifully. I want more of these nonfiction slice of life games. Jacob and I just got back from South America. And so it's just like this lightning bolt to my heart. It's a tough thing to communicate because I don't think it's going to go down as this.

profound 10 out of 10 experience for everybody so i don't want people to be disappointed by it it's like it is a really cool little experience that i want more of but like i don't want people to get their expectations too high based on this conversation No, but I do think of, like, I think of one, it's, like, part of its charm is that it's not about uh you know the meaning of life you know like i i love my like dear esters and whatever but this is just like

This is maybe the most memorable summer of a kid's life, but it's not the day I became president or something. It's just these memories. You know, and then, if you get to this ending that we all keep alluding to, like, it does feel like it kind of universalizes in this really amazing, unexpected way without Without getting bigger than it is. It always maintains this really tight individual focus.

And like all good art made with that in mind, it's like, well, if someone is just like really, really honest about like their life and their experience, it will become kind of compelling and relatable even if your life is not similar to theirs.

yeah I think that's right and so you know Panic posted this video with the developers kind of talking through they have a couple of kind of dev diaries and stuff it makes more sense for the overall game where it's coming from when you learn they're like oh this is you know one of the creators

um the game director is just he lives in new york and he was kind of romanticizing uh and getting nostalgic about his life in ecuador and he's like i wanted to make a game that was just kind of the idealized version of my childhood in ecuador to kind of like unpack My experience and the importance of soccer throughout my life and it's like that that just unique angle is so great and then in the credits

When the credits were rolling by in Spanish, which was fun, I was like, God, that name, Gabe, that sounds really familiar. It's like, oh, he was on Ape Out. And so he was like a producer on this game. Yeah, I remember his name too, but I didn't look it up. Yeah, and so he was actually the guy who created the soccer game within the game then.

It felt like Ape out kind of. Oh my god. If that wacky ape was playing soccer, that's the game. Yeah. Oh my god, wait, but like the way that the legs and arms move kind of is like how shape works. In hindsight, it does kind of look like that. But yeah, I think the other important thing to emphasize is, and we kind of alluded to it before, this is the

that Ecuador qualified for the World Cup for the first time. And I think that game does a good job conveying it, but just to drive it home to people that are listening that aren't really familiar with... why that like matter like what the like what the vibe is for that like the world cup obviously what oh you'd want to win the world cup right but there's levels to it in terms of like international soccer like for many countries like

If you've never qualified, just qualifying, that is, that is, like, you won the World Cup because, like, it can be very hard to, like, even qualify. And if you are a country that regularly qualifies or somewhat regularly qualifies, like, you know, the United States or Mexico, you maybe have other sort of goals or dreams, like getting past certain rounds in the World Cup.

like that's part of why it was such a big deal besides i'm also mentioning you know elements of what is ecuador's professional sports history and yeah and how does that like drive culture but like that's why that matters it's like why does it you know like why is it that deep it's like that's that's why it's a big deal and and especially with the point system too and the way that soccer works it's not like

And I hope I win, you know, it's like NBA, I hope I win best of seven. You know, it's not that kind of structure. It's point-based, based on like goals.

matter, differentials, and there's all these other factors. Sometimes, depending on the setup, what another team might do might impact your team. So it's like this whole kind of more complicated like sort of setup so we're like these games each matter but they matter in the context of the holistic situation so one structure i really like in this game is that they spend

So much of it highlighting what does Ecuador need to qualify for the World Cup and sort of marking it as it went to sort of like... Facilitate.

the game structure um in that sense as well and you can like you know see people sort of getting more excited about it and and i thought the matches were really exciting to watch because it it really did convey the feeling of what it's like to watch soccer where like i when i caught the bolivia ecuador game in the game i was like oh it's 0-2 at like 28-18

okay like this is a lock and then I'm like oh a third goal I'm like okay it's only 56 30 like they still play I'm like oh yeah it's over I can walk away and go hang out and kick the soccer ball because You know, I'm like, they're kicking Bolivia's ass right now. This is wild. So, yeah, I think it had a lot of that fun combined with it. With also, like, the...

You know, I'm half Mexican, half Puerto Rican. So I don't have, you know, experience. I've never gone to like Ecuador or like know much about the culture, but. I do know Spanish and negativity, and there is a lot of that in this game in a way that really hit. Like, there's a line that I really loved that we played like never before, but we lost like always.

Oh, man, I've heard that a lot of times. The Spanish also just feels very organic. Again, I'm not Ecuadorian, so I can't speak to how authentic it is to people of Ecuador, but just the way that things were constructed.

jokes and the snips and and things like that um i did read along with the subtitles but i didn't fully have to and i think if you know enough spanish and it's slow enough that you can kind of just hear it but also that's sort of the point right like you're not meant to get everything you're kind of just meant for like things to wash over you so um but yeah definitely definitely enjoyed getting to

engage with it on on that way because i feel like i was able to catch a little bit more yeah yeah and i will say i i like you know didn't understand why it mattered at the start and then you just get so swept into it it's so convincing of why it matters like if it doesn't sound like it's gonna be that compelling to you like it will

It won't do its work on you. Yeah. This is like if Leo, you know, 20 years from now decided to make a video game about the importance of like Brack as a character in his life, you know, like just I'm trying to think of a foundational... Knockout City. Right, Knockout City. Yeah, that's a better example. Rumbleverse! Rumbleverse, sorry. Completely different. Completely different. Despolote is the name of the game. I mean...

World Cup's here, CONCACOF, 2026. This is the best time to get into it right now, as in the 90s. CONCACOF, that's the name for the region of the world. So CONCACOF is North America, South America, this kind of sector of the world. We're CONCACOF, so United States, Mexico, Canada. And reach off.

I never heard that before. That's cool. Yeah, I mean, have I been yelling at you guys more lately? A little bit, but it's okay. I think it's all right. It's been making the podcast great. Yeah, it's not pissing me off so much. It's okay, man. Sorry. I'd be surprised. If this is not in my top three at the end of the year, like I, it is just exactly what I want to such a ridiculous degree. Who knows? When I'm looking at the rest of the year, like it is, it is,

perfect in its own little way. That's right. So long. One billion dollar game. Here's the two hour game about soccer. Ben, have you played White Ocean Big Jacket? No. You should play that because that's another kind of slice of life talky walk around childhood kind of element. I think that's like, I do like the game a lot and I think it's very great at like capturing moment to moment stuff, but I think it's like another.

banger in that kind of vein sure um where it's not quite on like before your eyes or like that kind of like like for me personally like it's not that level of transformative but I do think it's it does a really good job playing with how can we convey moments in ways that are creative within like the the tool set that we kind of went for um and i think they get a lot out of that by looking at it from a lot of different angles in a way that i was impressed by but it's not necessarily

shaking my world on that same level. But yeah, there's some really great ones of this kind of walk and talk. Yeah, it's like there's a bundle from Panic. where you can get this along with Firewatch on Steam. When I first saw it, I'm like, that's blowtime. Why are they bundling it with Firewatch? I'm like, okay, I can see it now after playing it. I kind of get it, yeah.

But there you go. Despolote, everybody. Leo, do you remember how the food looks so good in Despolote despite being so distorted and stylized? And you can eat it bite by bite. That's right. Just like you can with HelloFresh, everybody. HelloFresh. I'm a terrible, yeah, just bite by bite, whatever you want, man. You can eat it any which way. But the first things first, you gotta cook it.

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a seven-car pileup on the freeway on the way to the grocery store. But what if I told you there was an easier way? with hello fresh my wife left me yeah that's right oops i don't know i don't know how to cook and yeah uh everybody my life is mad at me for it what have i told you whoops be gone with hello fresh everybody they give you a big box right to your doorstep that has a amazing fresh food, and the important thing, recipes.

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I guess Quibby's. You can probably cram a lot. I can't even shower and shave in 15 minutes. You're telling me I can have a whole meal? That's because you spend so much time watching Quibby's while you're shaving, and you gotta cut down on that time. You're right. But you can get up to 10 free meals and a free... high protein item for life at hellofresh.com slash minmax10fm one item per box with active subscriptions

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When the Turtle Beach code was Jess Minmax, I was like, it can be Jess Minmax? Wow. That seems so easy. Does it have to be a cryptic puzzle like it is from IM8Pit every month to try to figure out how to get a discount? And we love them. And we love them so much. Thank you, IM8Pit. You're our favorite. Don't tell Don't tell the others.

um let's see uh here's a tough pivot everybody uh we're gonna be talking about doom the dark ages uh on this podcast um naturally there is a larger conversation to have surrounding the context of uh doom the dark ages which has been a growing and growing concern. But the BDS movement, which is calling for a boycott on all of Microsoft and Xbox gaming in particular, we talked about it a couple weeks ago when Bossman was hosting the show, thanks for that community question about it.

boycotting Microsoft because of their technological partnership with Israel. People are canceling their Game Pass. Some folks are hoping that we don't cover Microsoft games moving forward in solidarity with this boycott. You know, people are canceling their Patreon support. dropping out of the discord. I get it. Totally understand that. It is horrifying what's happening in Gaza, and I totally get that feeling of,

What levers can I pull and move in my life to affect change? It seems like no one is talking about this the way that we should be talking about it. It is gut-wrenchingly horrific. And so I totally get it. You are in that camp of, hey, because of the boycott, I want to stop playing Xbox games. I want to cancel my Game Pass. Anybody that talks about... Microsoft Games, I want to cancel support to them.

I get it. Everyone gets to make their own choice. At MinMax here, a group of individuals, everybody's kind of making their own choice about how they best want to approach this. It's how we've handled things in the past. If people don't want to play a game, we don't assign reviews here. And so we kind of, Go along that path of find your own way. And so people in the Discord, people in the community,

I get it. If you feel like you need to bow out, we respect that, and I appreciate the tone being really civil in the Discord as well for the people that are bowing out respectfully on both ends. Because we talk about a game does not mean that we necessarily condone everything about the parent company and their policies and their approach to... events in the world. We have a link in the description if you want to learn more about the overall boycott of Microsoft here through BDS.

yeah Haley I mean just community manager what's your what's your read on everything going on here yeah I've been super appreciative for how civil everyone has been and understanding and like what a just an awful situation this is where you know we're we're supposed to be doing something that's not that high key where we're providing very

I would like to say I use the word mundane in my head but you know that's a little bit rude to us but we're supposed to be talking about entertainment products but now because of the way in which society is set up and the decisions of these large corporations We're now having to think about our contribution to horrific acts in...

Other areas of the world where like an act of genocide is occurring at this exact moment. So I appreciate it. Everybody has different takes. Everybody has different levels of comfortability with everything. Ultimately, that's all we can really do. I think our community has been really good at expressing their own opinions and saying whatever they want to say in a very nice manner, and we can just take that criticism and hear it.

ultimately do what we decide is best at the end of the day on our individual perspectives here not to speak for anybody on the call but I hope this comes across as something that we wanted to talk about Not that we were, you know, felt pressured to talk about because we all talked about this ourselves in the call before and chat about it. So this is something we want to talk about. And it comes across as not performative, but more of just like.

calling out how we feel about this precarious situation where we have to balance you know what we're here doing versus Being understanding of the purpose of boycotts, which are historically effective at enacting change against companies who only really care about their wallets. Yeah, and the people leaving, like, it's been nothing but

sadness for sure and understanding even internally for sure about those I think there's been a little pushback like a worst case scenario it can be right as performative to say I'm gonna leave for this reason and here I go that's like if you want to take it in a bad faith way you can but that's like You know.

You're making a statement. You're using what is in your world to... enact what change you can including getting us to notice more like leaving we pay attention to that that that hurts that's that's a real way to to use your ability to support or not support us for sure so we have nothing but

Respect for that. And I mainly do want to correct, last time we talked about it, we did talk about it as a general Microsoft boycott, which of course is there in every aspect of our life. That's really hard. But it is really focused on Xbox and gaming and the optional. things, the things you can choose to not participate in. So that definitely was worth a correction and I want to thank the community for the education on that. Yeah, right on.

Doom the Dark Ages. From id here. The new... Have they said this is the final of the trilogy? Do we see this as a trilogy just because there are three releases for the reboots? They're not phrasing this like this is... It's a prequel, so... Right, it's the weird prequel angle. As Janet said, you're still in hell, so I don't know. I guess you can do this. Are you in hell? I'm confused. Jacob, you're the one who's supposed to know if we're in hell.

I don't know. Anyway, it's more Doom. It's more Doom. Jacob, you've probably played the most of this. Charles has been playing as well. But, Jacob, I mean, set the scene. I mean, I know you love Doom. I mean, I'm trying to remember, what was your read on Doom 2016 versus Eternal, how many times you've played Doom 2016, all that fun stuff. Yeah, I mean, Doom 2016 is like my... The platonic ideal of a shooter for me. It's one of my favorite games. I've played through it a million times.

earlier this year i like played through it on a charity stream and was like you know counting every demon you kill was like a dollar to donate or whatever right right and i do think i i like I had a lot of respect for Doom Eternal for like, hey, we're not going to rest on our laurels. We're going to like kind of reinvent the combat system and make it something different and approach this game in a different way, even though we had already figured out something that worked.

We don't want to just keep doing that same thing. I didn't connect with it as much as Doom 2016, and that's basically the camp that I'm in again with Dark Ages, which is like I think it's really impressive that... three times in a row, they have kind of made a first-person shooter that doesn't feel like anything else.

you know that it is like this is a wholly unique way of playing a shooter and it really feels different than 2016 and Eternal but it doesn't The gameplay is interesting, and I like some aspects of it, and I don't like others, but I feel like the real problem with this is the rapper, and not just the rapper that's published by Microsoft, but also the rapper that, like, they really... are investing so much time in cutscenes to convince you that the Doom guy is cool.

And it like, 2016 did that so well with literally like they presented a story and then the doom guy like kicked the screen out of the way and was like i don't care about the story and for some reason in this game we are spending so much time on a story that I know the Doom guy doesn't care about. It's weird. It's weird to keep having to watch these cutscenes.

Well, if it's a prequel, maybe he used to care about it, right? Could this be whack when he cared? I remember when I previewed it, they talked about wanting to have less of the lore in the Kodak. And that kind of, I think, being maybe the rationale to adding more of the cutscene stuff. Yeah, but it doesn't, like, it's so... I don't know, like, 2016 and even Eternal were so, like, propulsive, and it's just, like, level, level, level, level, and you're kind of doing the action.

and there's just a lot of, like, there are other, there are, like, lots of other named characters in this, and you're kind of watching them do things, and I don't really know who I'm supposed to care about in them, and they're also just, like, There are a lot of cutscenes of... The Doom guy doing things. And the player, I think, is supposed to be like, man, that's awesome. You know, like watching him get on top of a dragon and being like, man, that rocks.

it is cool but it's cooler when i just got to do it and not that the game felt like it was like forcing its idea of what's cool on me so that's like i have a lot of criticisms of just like what the surrounding experience of the gameplay is. But then the gameplay is this weird mix of, like, parrying and melee attacks and like big open fields that I do find really interesting.

it is I mean this is silly to say about Doom at this point but it's like it is so gamey watching videos of this thing just to be like oh it's like green flashes and all like kind of puzzle based combat of okay they do this then you do this then you come in for this like it's it seems so kind of

mechanically silly and specific, I guess. I played Doom 2016 like a number of like maybe in 2021 like way after it came out and i had never played a doom game before and i was playing that and i was just like i understand what we're doing here i'm on board

And I kind of like Doom and Dark Ages, but I don't know if this is stupid to say. It feels kind of overwhelming. I think part of it is the story stuff of like, there's just so many characters and... I was so used to 2016 where I didn't pay attention to it, but I...

And I couldn't tell you now anything that happened in that game plot-wise, but I felt like I was following it as it was happening. And this one is like, I just keep kind of being like, I don't really get it. Should I have been paying more attention than I have been? And then the combat, again, I'm on like chapter five or six, maybe.

they just keep introducing new buttons. And it was like a hard game to put down and then come back to several days later. And I was like, I have no idea where I'm supposed to go. And it's like, okay, I forgot there's a shield throw button. And if you shield throw at certain... things you can then grapple to that point and it doesn't come up very often but I forgot that that was introduced a level or two ago and there's like

It makes the combat interesting because there's some enemy shields you shoot and then destroy, but other ones can be destroyed by a certain gun, and it's just a lot more... active brain thoughts and remembering buttons than what I was used to with the other one, which was a lot more like in reflex and just kind of like, I don't know, being locked in. And this one, I feel like I'm... strategizing a lot more.

Yeah, it is. It's really... thinky and really fast paced which is both a good and a bad thing you know that there is like a lot you can do at any given moment and like they've added the big new addition is you have a shield but the shield is The shield is essentially a grappling hook because you can shield bash people from 100 meters away. You can just fly across the battlefield to hit people with it.

And you can throw it and you can use it to deflect attacks in the parry window for parry warriors is like very generous. And you can even make it more generous. They have settings for that. And so there's all this going on, but it also... Because they've adopted this big open level structure, it almost feels like Serious Sam at times where it's literally like there are just guys running at you from all directions in these big open fields.

And a weird thing that they've done with the combat is in like previous Dooms, they had this kind of interesting little level AI thing where like when you killed all the big enemies, they would just activate a thing that's like all the little enemies rush at you at once. And so they're easy to mop up and you don't have to go like hunting for them. And that was, that was like a cool way of dealing with this.

In this, they've gone one step further, which is once you kill all the big enemies, the little enemies just disappear from the field completely. You don't even have to kill them. But that makes me feel, when I'm playing, like killing the little enemies at all is like a waste of bullets because i'm like well when the big guys disappear these guys are gonna get out of here anyway so why should i waste my time killing them

And so then it ends up just feeling like there's kind of a lot of fluff around the battlefield that I don't need to pay attention to. And they're like the three main targets that should get all the focus.

And maybe that's the intention of the combat, but it feels weird to play Doom and just ignore imps because they're literally not worth like the rounds in your shotgun right right it's just like there are a lot of knock-on effects of how they've changed the combat because everything is so tightly wound that like one change ripples outward Yeah, so just another another approach. to the core Doom 2016 formula? Like, do you think it's going to go down as

The worst of the three, but still fun? Or is it a thing of like, it's just the different approach to Eternal. Maybe there's going to be fans of Eternal. Maybe there's going to be fans of this one on an equal level. I think that this will be some people's favorite, at least gameplay-wise. It feels like there is incredible depth and a speedrun of this game or just a high-level difficulty run will be incredible to watch.

I can't imagine that anyone is going to be super compelled by the story, though I'm only... halfway through so maybe it does get cool um but like i i think there are people who really prefer 2016 and there are people who really prefer eternal and i could imagine that happening again with dark ages especially if you like being really up close and like there's a whole like melee combat system in this so it's just completely new yeah and and feels different again and so like i don't know it's like

It's a game that I view with kind of respect for the design even though it doesn't connect with me as much just because like It is so wild in game development to have a system that works and kind of throw it out just because you want to come up with something new. Right. Yeah. That's the fascinating thing about this entire push for New Doom. It's just like they're reinventing it. every time and it's really I mean I mean, they could be three deep, just basically creating more Doom 2016s.

And Jacob would still be buying them every time or interested in playing them every time, you know? uh but doom the dark ages uh it's on pc it's on playstation it's on xbox but yeah crazy that It's releasing day one on PS5 here for Doom the Dark Ages. They don't need to do a little quiet song and dance. Maybe a year from now it'll come out of the other systems. Nope, just right out of the gate. It's right there on whatever console you want to play.

Unless it's witch. Hey, Leo, do the names Mr. Mophead or Ryan M mean anything to you? They are... both DC villains. That's right. And they're coming out to play in Gotham Impostors 2, everybody. Look alive. That's still playable. I'm putting that in the new show plus. list right now. Is it really playable? No. It's Really? Alright, yeah, let's play it.

Uh, no, these are our new supporters on Patreon. Mr. Mophead jumped into the $5 tier. They unlocked the bonus podcast feed, which has access to, uh, bonus pod Haley's show every single Monday. Jacob Geller and I were on this latest week for an hour and a half long discussion about our entire trip to Brazil and Sao Paulo. It was a fun kind of podcast recap of that entire journey. And then also we talk about Thunderbolts and kind of have a mini.

uh max spoilers for thunderbolts in there as well if you want to check that out you talk about meeting the devil Oh, yeah, we talk about meeting the devil. We talk about meeting the devil on most of our content these days, though. Always with Indica. It just comes back to that every time. Can't get away. Ryan M jumped up to the $10 tier.

recently, and they unlocked the backstage pass tier. They unlocked the extended version of the Brazil Travelog, which is eight and a half hours. We appreciate that. And we want to give a heads up that everybody who jumps up to that $10 tier, like one Ryan M. did here, If they do it before Monday, This Monday, the 19th of May, we will DM you on Patreon with a Steam code for Chia.

you know, Jacob, the new Caledonian adventure that you hear so much about new Caledonian adventure. Uh, yeah, back in 2023, it was our number 11 on the two tens. And so we're excited to do a, code giveaway for a game we all like with Chia where it was kind of Wind Waker but then immersive sim elements and you're transforming into all the animals. It was sweet.

Physics-based traversal, really fun, really unique. Absolutely. So we will DM you a Steam code. If you jump in at the $10 tier before this coming Monday, support Innovative Games Media, or if you upgrade to the $10 tier and get also like 140 hours of bonus content and a bunch of other stuff like that. Shout out to some of the Max's biggest supporters. I'm talking about specifically the one and only IM8Bit. They want everybody to know about the messenger.

the vinyl soundtrack to the messenger from the developers of sea of stars they have the vinyl soundtrack in their wonderful online store. The music is by Rainbow Dragon Eyes, of course. This is a reissue of the vinyl soundtrack to The Messenger. It looks so good, sounds so good. You gotta hear it. And if you gotta hear it, you might as well hear it.

on a record player, Leo, as we like to say. But. Hear style. That's exactly it. Check out iMateBit's wonderful online store. Help support iMateBit because they support the MinMax community in a huge way by shipping out a prize each and every week to whoever submits. It's the best question or favorite question each and every week here on the podcast through Patreon. We choose number one favorite this time.

Whoever wins, question of the week, wins Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on PlayStation. Thanks to iMateFit. And just a reminder, you can use that promo code. It's gonna be me. It's gonna be me. 10% off everything in the wonderful online store. Okay, here we go. Ready for these community questions?

No. Yeah. Okay. Haley's going to bow out or just kind of chill and build up to it. Kind of wait until the water gets warmer in the pool. Charles, are you ready for these suckers? Ew. come on guys let's all jump in and warm up this pool together yuck mark garcia writes in and says greetings everybody with the release of the second gta 6 trailer last week the pointer sisters saw an uptick of their song Hot Together on Spotify?

Guess how much traction that song gained. Oh my god. I've never even considered this as a possibility. The song grew 182,000% in traffic thanks to the GTA 6 trailer. But Mark Garcia says, got me thinking, what's a song you'd never heard until it showed up in a video game trailer? Only for that song to end up in regular rotation in your life ever since. The year is...

Sorry, Janet, did you want to go? No, I didn't. I was going to say, Charles, what's on your mind? So you actually beat me to it. Thank you. Oh, we're on the same page. The year is 2014. The month is June. And during E3... Assassin's Creed Unity debuts a new trailer showing off their multiplayer combat. Featuring, I believe, a Lorde cover of Everybody Wants to Rule the World. This was...

A real formative video game moment for me where I was like, this is going to be the best, coolest game ever made. I can't think of any reason why that wouldn't be true. I was disappointed, obviously, but... i hadn't i i had probably heard the original song before that but it had never made like a strong impression on me so that's like the first version that i knew the song everybody wants to rule the world weird and then

backtracked and learned the other version. I like it also, but that was the first time I heard it. Big ups to the use of Here's to You. Sacco e Vanzetti um or maybe the song is just called here's to you from the film Sacco e Vanzetti which is the song used in the um Uh, the ground zeroes. trailer. Oh, okay, yes. By Joan Baz, who's featured in A Complete Unknown. Um,

But, like, I'm a big fan of most of Kojima's song choices, especially in MGS5. Like, The Man Who Sold the World is also a great one. But, like, That Here's to You was not a song that I was familiar with. um before then and it's like it gets stuck in my head fairly frequently still i think we told that story on the podcast where konami sent us that trailer like hey post it on gameformer.com

And then like hours before it was going to go live, they sent an email like, for the love of God, do not post that. We don't have to raise that song after all. We have a trailer for Ground Zeroes. Like, do we not run it? And so we we dubbed it over with Jeff Cork. singing turkey and the straw and we're like i think we can technically post this i don't think we ended up posting that one even but it's very similar

The poor person who had to email that, who probably was having an absolute heart attack. Yeah, Kojima just downloaded it from YouTube and was like, I'd like to use this one. And they were like, no, it doesn't work. It didn't hit regular rotation necessarily, though I think I did add to a playlist for that year. White Denim's Ha Ha Ha Ha Yeah, the song that plays for the Nintendo Switch launch trailer. Oh, okay, very good.

song before frankly no shade to white denim haven't really heard of them so like i'm just like what is this this track i thought it was it was like super catchy and that's like one of to me that's like one of the most iconic trailers ever wait this is my game some kind of cheating the reveal for the switch Or the launch? Not the revi- The- The-

The trailer where they're all doing the rooftop party. Yeah, that's the reveal. That was the reveal one. I couldn't remember if they did something more boring like they did for the Switch 2, so I didn't want to misspeak. No, the Switch 2 was the boring one, for sure. Yeah, there's no tech flyby on the Switch one, but yeah, and Man, that's such a good trailer, too. Everything about that time. That's beautiful. And the lyrics capture what you're feeling when you play. That's right, yeah.

Classic, of course, the Gears of War Mad World trailer. I did listen to that Gary Jules cover of Mad World for years after that, but only the last couple years did I listen to the original Tears for Fears, back to Charles' band. version of Mad World. And that is such a banger. It's such an amazing song. So I was almost like, damn, I was listening to the wrong version for so long. Does this count?

Mass Effect 2's launch trailer with the Two Steps From Hell song, which we've all, if you don't remember that launch trailer, you know this song. It's like the intro theme to Nathan For You. It's impossible not to get engaged, and that is still one of my favorite launch trailers, that Mass Effect 2 trailer. It's so damn good. No one wants to admit it, but humanity is at war. Neil McMahon writes in, you all know the rest of the trailer, the dialogue in it. Come on, take it away. Don't do that!

But Shepard can do or do do that. The choice is yours. It's your channel, but that's a suggestion. Yeah, let's face it again. Neil McMahon writes in, what game has the perfect length? Over the course of the last few years, I've been experiencing gamer fatigue due to games nowadays being incredibly long. I obviously know what I'm undertaking each time, but can't we have a new norm where games are under 40 to 50 hours for completionists? What game is the perfect length?

I'm curious if someone would have an answer to this. That's a long game. Yes, I'm also wondering. I think Rebirth is the answer, Charles, so we can all get them out of the way now. Famously the correct number of hours. That's everyone's big compliment towards it. I really like a game called Florin. 2018, 2018. Super short is like 45 minutes to an hour, I think. And it's like musical driven. I don't think there's any dialogue.

And that's just one where I played it. Yeah! I have that vinyl too, Hayley. I gotta catch up. But, yeah, no, it's a perfect length, and I've played it several times. I've shown it to people. It's always nice when you can go to someone that, like, maybe people that don't even play games are like, hey, this is a really cool story, and you should play it, and we're going to do it together.

shorter than a movie and you're not going to be annoyed with me the whole time it'll be very very in and out so it's funny i went the same way charles of like i'm thinking about games i've showed my friends and how long their interest can be captivated which is

I don't know why, because I feel like my patience is so much higher than others, but I always thought Little Nightmares was the perfect length for a little scary thing and then like my sister loved it my friend loved it like i've seen three or four people play that game all the way through and it's

just long enough the pacing's good when it's done it's done and the ending's good it's just an easy recommendation for someone who's like i want to be a little scared but not too scared like little nightmares Yeah, I mean, Chad's talking about a horror movie.

core games like that mouth washing is one that's like yeah you know what that's perfect i mean you guys are all you are all picking like short games you're right you're right i think about there's a um there's a post by i think it's uh head falls off on blue sky That's like a 15 hour game is long, but a 25 hour game is short.

Yes. I think one of my favorite games, Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, if you play that for the first time and you're looking for collectibles and you watch all the cutscenes It's probably, like, ten hours long, but, like, I can beat that game in four hours if you just, like, skip the cutscenes and just run to the arenas, and I feel like that's the kind of, like... It can be longer if you want, but if you just want like all killer, no filler.

you can like get to it all very quickly is is like a fun place for it to be of just like a game that lets you make it as short as you want You know, on subsequent playthroughs. Yeah. Resident Evil Revelations 2. Wow. That's all right. Game length. To me, the idea of perfect game length, it has to be that you never kind of do that thing where you're like,

how much of this is left? We've all been there. Sometimes I'm there before I start the game. I'm not going to lie. I was going to say, is this question secretly what game is based

the best. Yeah, because I think there's most games where there's at least one chunk. I was trying to think of a lot of my favorite games. I'm like, you could have cut this part or this amount of it and it's easier to have a game with no fat left to trim when it's really short yeah i mean that's that's why resident evil 4 is the best game ever made is because it is surprisingly long but there are no parts

that you're like, ugh, this part again. Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing about Revelations 2, Janet, too, with the chapter structure. I think that makes it, because it feels like you're completing little mini arcs with each one, so it kind of strings it along better, I think. Is Breath of the Wild a sneaky pick? I thought of it for that. You could just finish it whenever you want, technically, or hang out as long as you want, so it's up to you.

I think maybe the issue with Breath of the Wild, because this is one that came to my mind too, because that's one where I... like i'm very averse to long games and breath of the wild is one of the few games where i'm like i don't care that this it took me well over 80 hours to beat it i enjoyed every moment of it i feel like i wouldn't change anything about that game but i do wonder if have it if like the steps to

traditionally completed or maybe a little too long like I'm doing the Guardians and then I know I'm sure you can just run up on Ganon but no one's doing that except for three people on YouTube because they did it first and the other two are mad they weren't the first one to post it so but I think that That could be in there, because I don't really feel...

Like, anything's bogging that game down, really. Yeah. You can even just do one of the Guardians. If you wanted. Yeah, but I'm not good enough in the game to do that. I don't know what's going on. I learned how to parry in that game at the end. I'm like, how do I do that? They're like, you can parry. I'm like, the first time I did it, I'm like, right outside the castle. Marvel's Spider-Man 2? Yeah, yeah. That's why Miles is too short.

Is Spider-Man 2 the length that it did? Is Miles the best length? I was going to say, I think it works. I thought Spider-Man 2 was a little too long. Interesting. But also, Miles Morales is like a contender for my favorite game of all time, so I think that's like a... Jesus, that's great to know. I remember when I was shipping a bunch of... Holy mother of God. God, your bias is crazy. Oh my God. Charles has never played another game before. Rotate my camera.

In the video version, I do have an Into the Spider-Verse poster right behind me. Yeah, and he's been kissing it throughout most of the show. It's pretty distracting. With tongue. Yeah, there's nothing about it. Venom-like tongue. Also, Shrek 2? Question mark?

For the game? Yeah. For the movie? Yeah. Yeah. I would kiss track. No, the game. The game. Oh, yeah, the game. Because I never felt, when we were playing it, I didn't feel like it was too long. Right. Because we're too hard. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't too long. Hmm.

It was more than I expected, but that was so fun. Maybe it was too long then. Maybe I misspoke. I felt like the time we had together was the perfect amount of time. For sure. It was thrilling because of its length, so I really can't knock it.

uh the first paper mario is what i put on there for like an rpg that's like 25 hours that's like a very unique sweet spot i know clear obscure is kind of on the northern end of that but for a game that's kind of like as simple and pure as your first paper mario You know, it's way north. What do you mean? People are lying about how long to be. Like, how long can you take? Maybe 25. How long will people take? I don't know. Yeah, 60+.

Just this year, Adam Fall was 23 hours, and that felt perfect because I was like right at the end, I was getting one of the endings. I said I might go back and get the others, and then I was like, no, I'm satisfied actually with that. And that felt like, okay, it tapered off right when it needed to. That's good. Nice, nice.

Tom Rickard wrote in, says, Hey Ben Max, after hearing Bonus Pod and watching the Brazil Travelogue, I found myself really identifying with Jacob, and that a lot of my friends flat out refused to eat on vacation like Ben. Now that's an oversimplification. Believe it or not, this is not summarizing things accurately. No, it's not. He had an ice cream sundae at 9.30. That's right. I ate so much ice cream.

What are the rest of the crew's eating habits during a trip? Whenever I go on a trip, I'd say 70% of my focus is on eating new food. So hearing Ben skip whole ass meals sounds completely unhinged. If I may defend myself, Tom Rickard. There we go. And Jacob, you shut your little mouth. You can, but you have to mute yourself when you do it. Yeah. No kidding. I ate. Meals in Brazil we prioritize meals for like what two of the days I didn't eat breakfast at the hotel

I mean... We didn't prioritize meals. We had, like... Jacob's still here now, actually. Prioritizing meals is like deciding a place to go where you're going to eat a meal. And we did that... or like two meals

yeah we did we had one that first day and then we bailed on it because traffic was too bad it would have taken too long to get there but like there was like whatever I'm counting the gyoza place as one I think we did that and then the breakfast that we had with the xbox guy were like our two planned meals and then we like ate in the convention center a couple times, and we had, like, hors d'oeuvres at a party a couple times. It's just getting sadder. We didn't pick cool places to go eat.

as much as i would have on like a different vacation but it wasn't a vacation we were doing work stuff and so it makes sense that we yeah yeah work trip is way different but i will say ben doesn't eat on work trips though it's a thing I NEVER SAID YOU CAN'T HAVE LUNCH! You didn't want to give us

I said for my own schedule, I wasn't carving out time four days from now. I was like, we need to make sure we eat lunch. And you're like, why do we need to plan for when we're eating? Well, there's food trucks everywhere. Grab a food truck. I was not saying you cannot eat lunch. I just believe you still pick questions like this thinking how it'll go for you. It won't be like that. Ben, it's... Oh.

Wow, Ben just shot my camera off remotely. I was going to say, it's fine. I don't know why you're so... Why is this so... You're getting real worked up about this. That's okay if you don't eat all the time. Hey, thanks, man. Thanks. I eat. I think it's... Strike your meal skimmer. I often skip breakfast. That is true. I do skip breakfast as well. I don't like breakfast. I love breakfast, but I just feel like, especially if you're traveling, eating out like three times a day.

It's like, it is a lot of damn food. So if I could just skip out breakfast and not feel like I'm a hulking mass dragging my corpse from one location to the next the entire time, that's a perk. I think your friend just called me

Oh, very much so. He was judging us when we were eating at SGF. He's like, you're eating again? We just ate yesterday. I do want to say, at that SGF, like janet was like very much like hey let's all sit down let's plan everything let's get everything worked out ben was like this is way more intense than we need it to be

And in the end, I was like, I'm so glad Janet's here playing everything out for me because I know I need it planned out and I don't really have the strength to do it. One of those days, I straight up did not eat like I eventually I don't think I told you guys about it but I I had like a I barely ate a breakfast and I didn't eat until like 4 p.m. and I was like

Janet was right. I should have baked in an hour lunch break. Maybe I got distracted or something. I don't know. It's hard. They'll never say I'm wrong. I was triggered, Janet. debating food with you because i was so mad i was triggered janet i was so mad when i was in la recently we were walking oh yeah after after the switch to event

Janet's like, well, you don't like to go to restaurants. You don't really like to experience the city when you're visiting them. And I was like, what are you talking about? Let's go to a, choose a restaurant right now. Let's go anywhere in LA. And Janet's like, no, let's go back to eat at the hotel. And after you pushing, you were pushing, you were, no, you were pushing for us to eat at the hotel.

And then accusing me of being a boring eater on travel. And that was the part that made me want to run into oncoming traffic. I'm saying right now, let's go anywhere. Let's do anything. Yes, you were saying right now. But before you said that, you said, oh, let's just eat at the hotel. And I said, sure. And then you're like.

what do you mean i'm not adventurous i'm like i don't know you just don't really you have you do your work which is fair it's a work trip it's hard to do stuff that isn't work On a work trip? But, you know, some people want to and some people... I was not championing that hotel. I was not championing that hotel. Where we ate, though, it was good. It was a good meal. I marked it down. I would totally go back. We had a nice meal at some pub.

Good smash burger. Had, you know, had a dinner. It was lovely. Like two people. It was lovely. What was the question here? How do we eat on vacation? Yeah, what is everyone's eating habit? I don't feel relevant anymore. Yeah, you know, just kind of the regular stuff. I do love food for travel. I'm never going to stop eating. And I can't touch ice cream anymore now. Janet, what was the line you wrote down from Despolote about losing soccer games?

Because I feel like that describes Ben's defense of himself just now. We played like never before, but we lost like always. That energy for sure. God damn it. SunnyD22 writes in and says, hey, cohort. It's plural for no reason. What are the SGF plans this year? Who's going? And if Ben is going, can we please get another fashion montage?

No, my fashion's actually perfected, so there's no reason for any more fashion montage. But yes, we, I think, mentioned it briefly in the past, but this year for Summer Game Fest, it is Janet, who's... Holding down the fort in LA. And then Jacob Geller. Traumatizing people. That's right. And then Jacob Geller and Kelsey Lewin are going out there for the three of them for the SGF crew.

Awesome. Round of applause, everybody at home. Round of applause into the microphone, please. Chris Pelley asks, how much preparation for SGF is already done and what percent is left to do? Jacob, how are you feeling about SJF? Do you feel prepped? Are you overwhelmed by the amount of emails you get about it when you sign up for something like this?

Yeah, I mean, it's like I've never done something like this before. And even going to Gamescom was different because we weren't really setting up like meetings in the same way that I am for this. But like, also, it's a lot of kind of reactive preparation where like, if I had to go right now, I think it would be fine. And then I just kind of get an email, you know, once or twice a day that's like, hey, do you want to do this?

And then I see if I can fit it into the schedule and maybe I'll get to the day and be like, Oh my God, I have so many things on my schedule. I like book way too much or way too little. Um, but like i i feel good i i think like if it was tomorrow and i had a chance to pack i would be like i'm ready to go it's not too bad it's a lot of emails but you know played this game before sgf pack

It's always the same dance. So just, you know, trying to book stuff, making sure you don't overbook, double book, double checking what you booked, stuff like that. But yeah, I think it's shaping up pretty nicely. I feel like kind of similarly, like if it happened tomorrow. I would do very little different tonight. I'd wish my apartment was cleaner. Other than that kind of stuff. Because

I do tend to, if I can, really, like, prep everything I can. Like, I clean up my place. I know what is going on. I have meals that are, like, ready to go when I get home. You know, like, I just kind of... I don't know, know what's going on and things and kind of set up my week for hopefully success, like getting a good night's sleep, trying to be as involved in events without burning myself out, especially for a lot of late night stuff. I also do feel like... i really need to

be on it because like this is my hometown so it's like where i live so it's like okay i have home game advantage i can't be the time you know how are you tired and you're sleeping in your own bed like you know but it's not too uh wild of a time it's only a couple days um And I think we did a good job kind of Thinking a little bit about what's going on outside of SGF, there's stuff like the mix happening, which should be...

Fun to check out. I'm sure other things will pop up as people show up and maybe they have their own events as an outlet. And we're going to go to a Dodgers-Mets game. I think that's going to be really fun. Nice to have something. fun in LA that's on the calendar that also we haven't done before so that'll be cool to include in the travelogue a couple snippets of the stadium and

I'll be excited to see what wins, because we're split down the middle. Well, are we split down the middle? How many people are? Three? We're not split down the middle. We would be. I'm the Dodgers fan, then you guys are mad. So we'll see. I don't know what happens if who wins what, you know, if someone has to... Buy something? I'm not really sure. I'm going to figure out something fun for it. Speaking of Mets, you met Kelsey.

The other day, Jacob, what the hell's going on? I was so surprised with that. Yeah, and we didn't make it content, Ben. How dare you? That's an attack. on our livelihood. Whenever Ben replies, can I post this on Instagram? It definitely feels like dadcore. Like, hey, honey, is it okay if we post this? We took that picture knowing that it would be posted on the Midnight's Instagram. It's fine. Kelsey's in Durham.

uh her and her partner are here visiting uh her grandma um and so yeah she's just like hey i got here my grandma's busy you want to go get dinner and so me and annie were like yeah let's go get some durham dinner That's perfect. Walk us through it. First reaction to Kelsey. Making content now. Yeah. Oh, wow. I was going to talk about the food, but Ben's not interested in that. Yeah, no. Yeah, no.

Okay, come on, guys. Be nice. Be cool. Come on. No, it was like... It was... i i don't know it almost immediately it was just like oh yeah this is someone i've talked to for 100 hours so there was very little like oh weird real life like yeah it was fine and it was uh it was a great dinner and um her boyfriend's cool and like we had a we had a good old time okay he's hiding stuff and we did for those curious we went to x photo in the durham food hall which has these crunch wraps they're like

taco bell but like super actually good crunch wraps And then we took those to go and we went to Surf Club and had them at Surf Club. That's for all the Durhamites out there. That's right. Recreate the night for yourselves at home or outside your home. James Elder writes in this site with the announcement of Giant Bomb being bought by Jeff Grubb and Jeff Bacalar.

and going fully independent, what advice do you have for them as fellow independent games media? Any possibilities of collaboration in the future, perhaps as a way to save on costs for shared host spaces, like Summer Game Fest? Yeah, you guys should just sleep in their hotel rooms, if that's an option, I think. Sleepover! Yeah, super exciting. Super happy for that team. got giant bomb independent away from fandom it is a wild wild thing and obviously you know

Grubb in particular, everybody over there has been super sweet, but Grubb I feel like has been maybe beating the drum the loudest of like, we want to collaborate with more independent game creators. It's so nice that we're not competitive. And so, yeah, that'll be obviously fun to overlap with them in some big ways. Yeah, if you're wondering why last week on the podcast, we didn't really talk about the Death of Giant Bomb that much. It was like, it felt like 80% polygon and 20%.

Giant Bomb. I was like, I knew Giant Bomb was coming back. It was like a weird conversation to have. Never count Dan Reichert out. Let's see what happens on Saturday. But yes, very exciting for that entire team. And we should have some more content on that front pretty soon. So look forward to that. Rivalry, please. Oh, you want to... Oh, let's have a fake beef. Yeah, everything around together, it could be competitive, yeah. You guys should do, like, an Olympic.

Charles, have you seen our Google Doc of ideas? Because you are very, very warm. That's a great idea. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. I'll stop saying all your ideas out loud. Which side is Game Informer on? Who are they rooting for? Mad Max? Actually, well, I say obviously. Maybe we'll be split down the middle. No, don't be split down the middle.

It's Dodgers-Mets all over again. The middle is split evenly. I think we're more closely aligned with the mid-back specifically because of me and Kyle. We're cousins, at least. Hauling gas, right? Saying, hey, friends, in a non-parasocial way. You better fix that. Don't cause you things. Love you. No, Haley, no. What are some games that you've put on pause recently? Games you've put on pause that you already know you probably won't go back to finish. Ooh.

I don't like confessing these things. Wander Stop. I really thought I was going to finish Wander Stop, but I don't think I'm going to go back. Low key, it might be the same for me. Wow. It's so short that I'm like, I should just finish it. I know. Am I going to? I already forget how to make tea. I know there's a bunch of rules and stuff. I already forget them. There's a book that just tells you exactly how to do the game. Maybe we just don't want to do it, okay, Jacob?

One guy was like, I want coffee. I can't remember what the rules were for making that. It's literally all in a series of books. They really are very clever. Does the bean go in with the tea couch thing? or on its own I finished it because I felt bad about not finishing it and like I had a fine time, but also if I quit at the part where he started making coffee, I also would have had a fine time. Okay, yeah, we haven't touched on it without spoiling anything. Yeah, I mean...

ending the most interesting part? I'm curious, like, where you landed on it overall. No, I think kind of the, like, a twist that you find out in the middle is kind of the most interesting, and then it is more what I expected. Like, there was, like, the... the season where you like don't make any tea for anyone yeah you know like that i thought that was like the best part of the game and then the rest of it

Like, I thought it was good all the way through, but I wasn't like, thank God I finished this or I wouldn't have understood what it was doing. Okay, okay, all right. Okay. There's always those games where it's like, I feel like if I never play this again, my life will be fine. and I fear that might be one of those even though I did think it was like it was fine but it's like it's fine enough for when I got

I got blueprints waiting for me after Claire. It's like, oh, I wanted to get out. It's a vowed. Both because I no longer have Xbox Game Pass, but also like Yeah, I guess I spent too long in the first, to maps where i was just like There are like four more of these? No thanks. And just kind of immediately fell off.

team don't finish about let's go i could see i could see they not like us playing in your head as you were pumping your fist there yeah i'm an avowed hater i don't think that game is very good and everyone really likes it, which is fine, but I'm like, I'm just going to be quiet during 210s because you don't want to hear what I got to say about it. I'm not even those people who said they really liked it have finished it. I am genuinely curious. And Jacob, the hater in me is like,

Okay, but... Because every now and then there's some games where I'm like, I don't think there's... I'm like, well, you haven't finished it, though. So it's like... Hang on, Janet. You and Leo both really seem to like it, at least on that episode. I have 46 hours in it, and I didn't finish it, and I probably won't. I mean, 46 hours is still a lot. I know. How close to the ending are you? Probably two hours away.

Because you're like, I basically finished it. Why would I need to finish it? You're better than me. Because I would never be able to leave a game with just like the little bit left. I would have to finish it. All the big decisions happen in the last hour that cultivate to the big finale. That game's such a choice thing. It's like, are you naughty? Are you good? Are you doing this or that? And at the end, it's like, which one? And you're like, this one! And then it gives you your big ending.

I answered mine, so we can move on to the next question now. He's not finishing blueprints! Really? So, Leo, I was going to say the same thing. I'll stand in solidarity with you real quick. We'll hold hands. But I want to hear your reason before saying my reason, though. I hope to go back to it, but, you know, I've lived as me for a long time, and I probably won't. It's just been like a few sessions in a row, let me boot up and do a couple runs, and nothing happens.

And I was defending it against that for a long time. I thought the exact opposite of what I was saying. You've got to be patient. You've got to look for different answers every time. But sometimes there's just nothing in those runs, and they take a while. Oh, no. But you've seen credit. No. Leo! Naughty Naughty! I'm a talking bonus pod for not. Well, so then Charles, did you beat it then? So, here's my reason.

I did see credits, but it's one of those games where you see credits and I feel like I haven't even done anything. I was playing it every night religiously with my partner. And then made the mistake of, during the morning meeting Monday at Game Informer, they were like, hey, this game of Blueprints is pretty popular. Has anyone got any time to review it? I was like, oh, I played 17 hours. And they're like, oh my gosh, Charles, you should review it.

And so now it's not a fun game in the evenings anymore. Now it's work. And so I did procrastinate enough to play all my playtime in the evenings, like the next two or three nights. with Alyssa but then I like I made like a video of it for TikTok and now it's a thing where it's like I do want to sit down and I do want to play it in because I liked it a lot I hit credits and I was like there's still so much more to do but it's it's like a work game now and that kind of like sours it for me

sure also just seeing the hour counts of like people who are really into it on blue sky like rebecca valentine was like 120 hours i think i've finally seen everything and i was like uh that is not making me sign up for that game.

But it's kind of exactly what we were talking about before, wasn't it? You can finish it, but if you really want to keep digging in, then... But I feel like I want to see the cool stuff in it. Also, I'm just not going to... Sorry, same as Lorelei. I don't like puzzle games. I don't like puzzle games either, though. So many people in Brazil were like, Jacob, I cannot wait for your blueprints video. And I'm like, that is not my taste in games. I'm sorry. It's way less puzzly than Lorelei. Yeah.

I actually like it as a non-puzzle person, but I do have fears with Blueprints. I really am still loving that game. But I started playing Claire and I was like, man, I love this a lot more. And I'm spending all my time with that. And I worry that when I go back to Blueprints, that's not gonna work out or or that maybe i just don't go back but i i feel really confident that i'm gonna go back

I'm scared. Because I'm also me, still. The same way Leo is him. Unfortunately, it's all true. We're starting to catch on. See, I refuse to catch on, though. I'm gonna, well, for ignorance, I will finish this game. Respect, respect. It's just Sarah and I fighting for it, I think. That's right. I loved my hours 2 to 15 were incredible. And I'll hang on to that.

Yeah, but you didn't finish. And that's the thing that these guys are all going to latch on, Leo. We talked about this. We're going to tell you. We're going to never bother to finish at what point. We're not having this conference. That's why ARCO's not on the 210s, because I finished it too late. That's right. And I'm like, damn. What are we doing? No one will know that it was. That was good. That was my honorary 210. That's right. Yeah, you squeezed it in there.

Mike Fab writes in and says, Hey CLCs, I have a missed joke opportunity. Last week when you were deciding question of the week, you said Anna was the guest of honor. You should have said guest of Anna. Yeah, that burns. That burns, there's no doubt. Kickingit says, you all seem to have zillions of side things on the go. That's us. If you could pick one of them to take off and be your full-time focus, what would it be?

I would love to paint full time and just relax and paint. I used to just paint dogs and cats to make money so that I could paint. Then I had to get a real job. I love painting. It's so brain turn off. I feel like a human being experiencing life if that was your profession that'd be bomb do you think if it was If it was, like, a real job and not, like, a fantasy question job, would it hurt your enjoyment of it? Like, if you, like, had to wake up and paint every day even if you didn't want to?

I think it would have to be, I'm so financially secure that I get to paint and, oh, someone wants to buy this. You're, like, selling the paintings at, like, 50 bands. Then I'll have, like, a modular situation where I die and then they're all worth millions. That's the goal. Yeah. I would love to do video essays full-time, obviously, at least to just see how that feels, because I do feel like there's a chance it's not social enough so much of the process. Of course, I would miss MinMax so bad.

If I was just in my own little world, but I'm curious how productive I would be or whatever, how that would work out. But if I had to pick an interesting answer, it would be when I used to stream every week. Once a night. I wish I could put so much resources into making one weekly stream awesome. Like, hyper-produced with segments and stuff. I would love to... work on a live experience like that what type of segments would you have in mind what would you want to do

Not all the way to windbag-esque, probably. But I feel like a lot of graphics and settings, and I would, of course, end up doing some kind of story. I know my

And he's a narrative. If there's one thing to remember from this episode. No, I am with you on that front where like I feel like I'm never great at streaming but it is that idea of like what if I could just pause everything else in my life and just spend a year Just to have a period of time where I'm like, that is me giving it my all on Twitch, which I feel like I've never personally done.

You're already a step ahead of so many other people who try that because people know who you are and would like to watch you play things. Right, right. You just need the time. I guess, and it'll never come. And so I will just sacrifice that Twitch will just be me playing a game politely. And that seems just fine.

Was it cool that we were cyberbullying you in your last stream, by the way? We never really talked about it after, but we were being pretty mean to you in that stream. So talking about it here seems like the best one. Yeah. In the soda pop one? No, no, in the clear obscure one when we were bullying you. Oh, that was a nightmare. Yeah, that was a nightmare. all of ppbang showed up in the chat we were like he's stupid

Look at the garbage can. And then Ben was like, y'all in here on a Friday night? Couldn't be me. And I was like, okay. Alright, that's valid. I wrote on our Phoebe Bang channel, Ben's live, and then we all just went there like the Avengers. Oh, is that what it was? Is that the rallying crime? Well, I was already...

I'm the biggest loser on the beach, okay? Let's make that clear. I was more upset about a bunch of folks watching the new show Plus with Pop Leo the 14th. Of course, check it out. It's on YouTube now. As I was editing it, I was like, oh, every time I set up the new pop in the thing, it was just a big old butt crack front and center of the camera. I'm like, no one gave me a heads up in chat that my ass was banging out that entire stream.

i noticed how every time you set up a pop it was like all right boys stick it in the hole right here in the hole in the hole like every time i was like is this a bit but you it wasn't a bit you were the same That over and over. No bits here for just repeatedly saying, hey, boys, stick it in the hole. And you can make it a bit retroactively by including all your crack shots. I understand what you guys are getting at. Crack super cut, yeah. Charles, I assume it would be being a DM. Sorry, GM.

I am also a DM, but no, yeah, I recently stopped doing it because I have a full-time job now and it's a lot of work, but that's like a weirdly, uh, I, I will. I was going into it being like, hey, if you pay me, I'll run a game for you. And I was honestly mainly thinking of like, this is just like a way to make money on the side. And then I was doing it. I was like, oh, these are really nice people. And they really like playing these games. And actually, this is super fun. Every time I like.

in the lead up to it i'd be like oh i have a work thing on saturday and then i got up like wait a minute we're all rolling little dice and making up stories together it's the best thing ever and i didn't have any like uh I don't know, real butt cracks, so to speak. Is that rad? Everyone was nice. I also think everyone found me through Midmax. I mean, it's a testament to just Midmax as a bunch of cool people.

It was nice. It was good. And butt crack centric perverts. Other than that, yeah, they're a great community. Right. To be clear, they're not butt-crack-centric perverts because no one mentioned it. Everyone was like, yeah, this is normal and fun. I wasn't going to mention the ass. I did hate it. People were just like,

I just want to write about this. Maybe he'll never find out. Jacob, can you write down Blood on the Tracks, but a parody album called Butt on the Cracks? Could you just write that down? Oh yeah, I'm writing it down. Charles, has your first improv show coming on? That was going to be my plug, but that'll be... That's every Thursday for me now. I made the... I'll plug it now. Why not? What a great segue.

If you live in the Dayton area, every Thursday I'll be performing at the Dayton Black Box Theater as an improviser on stage with some of my... Improv teammates, I think that's what they're called. That's a team. For the next six months, that's my slot. Is it too early to say whether you do it as a full-time job? Have you been enjoying it so far? Uh, I would not do it as a full-time job.

But I think I just like that it's a good compliment to all of my, like, uh sitting in front of a screen digital stuff it's just nice to go to a place in person and like i hadn't really met people i moved up here from cincinnati so i didn't know a lot of people around here so i was like oh i have friends now and When, you know, Leo comes to town to try Skyline, I have a bunch of people to be like, hey, what is Dayton stuff?

So I like it as like a compliment. It's a nice side of sauce, but I wouldn't want my meal to be all sauce, you know? Right on. Janet, I feel like this question was for you, and you've been eerily quiet. You have the most side things, don't you? Yeah, pick one podcast. That's not what the question was. I go back and negotiate the rates on the podcast that I'm on. Consulting?

No, because the only thing I don't like about consulting is the fact that you usually can't disclose, and I like being a public game critic. The thing I like about consulting is just that it's like... It's just pure criticism. It's great. With what I do for it, where I do mock reviews and stuff. I think it would probably be writing. The stuff I do on my website, Pens and Pixels.

Yeah, I guess it'd be that. But I would also, if I could only do that, I would be missing the podcasting, is the thing. So... I guess, yeah, I don't know. Maybe just podcasting, because I don't think I could let go of that aspect but yeah i like doing everything so yeah it's tough it'd be kind of fun to just focus on video editing there's like nothing else just full-time job as a video editor You wouldn't want the content making sense? You wouldn't want to talk to people?

I think I'm okay. I feel like you love interviewing people so much. I've said enough. Maybe eventually I wouldn't be driven mad. But your background is production, no? Isn't that your role at Game Informer? You're like a video producer? That's right. That's right.

and before that even. You're quick at editing. Oh, thank you. You'd be good at it. I watch random things like reality shows or whatever where it's like oh you had to stitch so much together in the editing room to make a story out of this and I go if that was my job I would hate editing with my whole heart in two weeks

Like that much pouring through stuff to barely get something to work out of it. Right. Meanwhile, I just watch Survivor and think, God, if I could be on the editing team on Survivor, I'd freaking kill it. Final Sin writes in... What a cool name. They say, hello, everybody. What's the voice inside your head sound like? Does it sound like you or someone else? I said ugh when I read this question and I thought, what does that voice sound like? It sounds like me, I think.

Um, yeah. Wouldn't it be weird if it was somebody else? Yeah, wouldn't that be weird? Does someone have someone else in their head? I don't have a voice in my head. That's right. I remember this. Hayley doesn't have a voice in her head. Do you also have that thing where when I say apple and you picture the apple, you just see the word? Okay, so can you explain what's going on there? I have Epic Mickey.

I think it's like not that uncommon but still not the majority of people it's like it's a spectrum it's like when I say Apple You can see a perfect apple. You can kind of see an abstract kind of... You get the gist apple. You can see the outline shape where you can see absolutely nothing. And I'm just on the far side where I see absolutely nothing. The other side of the spectrum is photographic memory.

People who can categorize and cache images within their mind. And most human beings are just like the normal middle where it's like, I can picture things in my head.

But I was talking to my partner about this and we were just like drunk one evening. I'm like, reading must be awesome. I'm like, you just see all the book. He's like, yeah. I'm like, damn it. I think I have a way worse thing. If you read, is there like a... voice saying the words inside your head or does that so you're just it's really hard to describe the thinking process but it's like yeah I like Is it just pure, like, abstraction? Or are you, like, is it just, like, work? Like, what?

I don't know how to describe it right now. It's like, it's just like a negative space where the things that are being communicated to me are communicated with nothing. So here's a question I have. So let's say you're looking at a piece of paper and it's like a text chat. And the user icon on the left, it's like Mickey Mouse's face.

and it says and it says oh boy how's it going and then you see another one and it's like Wario's face and he says haha I'm Wario it's Wario time are you reading those in the characters voices like now that there's some context provided and you're like this is the character or you're just like that would just be what they say that's so Mickey There's no sound at all. I don't hear a sound, which I almost feel like I'm being gaslit.

That you guys hear sounds in your head, which I feel like you don't. You just think you do. Here's the weird part. That's true, but that's perception.

Like, I just think I see things. It's like electrical signals being communicated to my brain. When you say you think you think you hear something, I think you think you think you hear something. The weirdest part of this conversation is I think I'm... I think consciousness and awareness and thoughts are so weird and abstract that I'm like, I'm not convinced that we're all not exactly on the same page but just have different ways of describing it.

you know like they've done like several studies on aphantasia the voice thing i don't know but aphantasia is a thing where it's just like i you don't think i want to see stuff sometimes when i'm falling asleep i practice Trying to see stuff when I'm in that weird in-between phase of almost asleep awake. And I think I see something and I try to chase it, but it's just like nothing ever operates. Do you have dreams?

Yeah, I dream, but again, I don't... Like, when you wake up, I didn't just see those things that all happened in my brain. But you saw them in the dream. In the same way I don't see anything when I think of the dream afterwards, I didn't see anything. So, when you dream... Can we do a new show plus on this? Because I need, like, an hour. But here's the part. An hour every week of asking Hayley, like, I want you to read this and you tell me what it looks like.

When you said on PP Bang that you had a dream where you made sweet love to Ichiban, and it was a beautiful moment. Yeah, it was awesome.

But you don't have a visual. What happened? You guys remember that as like a text file. That's like how do you remember it? The closest thing I can get to explaining this, and I thought about it a lot, is And this is so nerdy, but Plato has a philosophy of everything has a form that you can never... like conceptualize which i think i've talked about this like so when i say spoon

Jacob might think of a spoon, that's like a teaspoon, and Charles might think of a tablespoon, and Janet might think of a ladle, which is technically, you know what I mean? We could all think of a spoon, but a jerk one. But also we learn to like... I don't know. Janet the idiot. Clearly I got the worst one, Hayley. Okay. I was like, oh, she's definitely going to say soups word. She's like, oh, a ladle? I don't know.

Janet's so stressed about SGF. She's just furiously polishing ladles, hoping she'll have utensils if they come over. But yeah, there's, like, one ultimate, like, form of spoon that, like... philosophically, everyone can agree on exists, but no one could ever conceptualize slash materialize. And that is the spoon. And I think that's how I think.

I don't see a spoon, but I go spoon and I know what a spoon is because I've experienced life, but I don't need to look at a picture of a spoon to know what a spoon is. My brain just goes spoon and I go spoon. I need to look at a picture. Yeah, I sound like a monkey. Spoon. I only eat with pictures of spoons. But what's funny is the only other person I've ever met who has Advantasia is the other Haley at my law office, and we talked about it a lot.

And she thinks it helps her be a better lawyer because she gets to cut through the fluff and read things really analytically. Which I'm like, oh, interesting. So it's like if you read a paragraph and you need to understand the logic of it in like two seconds and not like visualize.

This concept there, you can be like, if A happens, then B, if B happens, then C. If C never happens, then A, B, C. You can think of things more like that in a faster way. I'm like, oh, that's kind of a nice way. I really wish I didn't, because I'd rather see books in my head, because that sounds lit. That's why we never watch movies. Once you learn how to read, goodbye films. Raise your hand, though, if you think with your voice. If you're confident that it's your voice. Really?

Everyone raise your hand. Most of the time. And Ben? That's interesting, yeah. Did you raise your hand, Ben? No, it's just, it's a thought, but I don't think of it as having my voice. You're probably low-cap. I know, I got something. Ben, when I said the whole Mickey picture, Wario picture thing, would you read that in their voices? I was just thinking about Hayley having sex with Ichiban. What?

Well, you're the one that brought that up, Ben, so I don't know why. He said what I thought about it. No, yeah, I can imagine Mario's voice. Is that what you're asking me? I think it depends on how focused my... like my thinking process is am i thinking like because secondly you're always thinking right it's like am i thinking passively then i don't hear anything but if i'm trying to think through something i am thinking very actively

like and i'm hearing my voice say it back and be like okay so it's like i have you know i'd be like Like if it was directions or something, it's okay. It's left. And then at this thing, it's a right.

And I'd hear myself like, say that to some degree but if it's just like like i'm sitting here i'm sure thoughts are like formulating as y'all are talking but i'm not i'm not hearing myself and then repeating those thoughts into the mic it's all in the background yeah but it is like you know it's like my my job essentially is writing in my voice and so like when i'm when i'm like writing it is like i am hearing myself say it as i write it and that also happens like

sometimes when i'm thinking but yeah it's like when when someone says something and i am like immediately i'm like here's a joke that i can say It skips all the needing to verbalize things. Or maybe it just happens really quickly. I don't know. It's hard to... It's hard to exactly figure out how these happen, but I definitely, when I'm thinking about stuff, I'm thinking in Jacob's voice. It says here that 50-70% of people do not have or infrequently have a constant... Wait, what?

That's, oh, never mind. AI, stupid nonsense. No, no, I want to say what AI thinks we think. 50% of people don't have an inner monologue. It could be as low as 20. Huh. 90% of people dream in black and white. People just be saying things. Only 30-50% of people have internal monologues as the medium. 65% of people have a podcast.

to be obtained by 2026. And those people are using more than 10% of their brain as well. So it's like the stacked percentages. You have to use more of your brain to hear your own voice, I think. Tan writes in, of course, and they say...

I hope that was clear. Everyone leave a comment below about what's happening in your brain and how you want to express it. It's crazy because you don't realize. What's happening in my brain? Can you solve that? You would just assume everyone thinks the same way, but I would love to like... freaky friday somebody and be like oh whoa thinking's crazy like imagine if someone's brain just thinks different. But you can't because I would immediately go insane.

if I was exposed to someone else's way of thinking. It would be just like reality would cease to make sense. You're just in the body. Your mind is still in their body, Hayley. Your brain doesn't transport. Your soul or whatever. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. We can't do this. That's what makes it freaky. What do you mean? This is the whole point of this.

Why are we having these dumb questions in the comments if you don't want us to get crazy? Define a soul, yeah. All I know is... Yeah, your soul goes in there. It's just that you have their body. I'm going to Fandango and getting tickets to Freakier Friday right now. Can't wait. TAN! Did you guys watch that trailer for Freaky or Friday where they get swapped again? I don't want to watch that movie. Yeah, Tan keeps trying to butt in. We get it, Tan. Get out of my head, Tan.

So Tan Redson says there have been considerable... there has been considerable confusion on the internet. In my mind, I read that perfectly. So there's been confusion on the internet. So I'd like min-max to settle it once and for all. Can you give an example of a triple-A game, a double-A game, an A game, a game and a quad A game. Piece of cake. We can do this with our eyes closed.

Triple A. GTA V. Skull and Bones. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Skull and Bones. We're starting at Skull and Bones? GTA V. Skull and Bones. GTA has to be Quad-A or nothing. Exactly. If that's on the tier list. Yes. GTA 6 has to be Quad-A. I didn't realize Quad-A was there, okay. Yeah. But Charles is right that... Right.

Ubisoft said Skull and Bones was Quad A, so we'll put Skull and Bones in there out of respect. I want to note that EA and Visceral also insisted that Army of Two Devils Cartel was a Quad A game. during that conversation I came before because they said at Visceral we have a saying here which is quad A all day. So quad A is between B and C. It's on a below double A. Yeah, I think so. The golf rules or something, I don't know. I mean, the core idea is

This is ultimately, I've heard it described, this just means marketing budget, which is a nice way of looking at what actually these terms mean. So in my mind, thinking of just stereotypical... Triple A. I was like, Uncharted 3. Great, yep. I was thinking Spider-Man 2, you know, the previously mentioned, you know, that's even on that upper tier. Like, you can make a case for, like, Gunnar Ragnarok being Aquane, but whatever. This is nonsense, right? But that's how I think of it.

Double A is interesting. It's my fiction? So, of course, people make this mistake a lot, Jacob. With Hellblade, of course, that was triple I. Triple A but independent is how Ninja Theory represented that. It's been enough that we can admit that they were wrong and they were making a double-A game, right? I think that's right. Yes, I think Split Fiction is a good example. Mine was South of Midnight. I think it was a good double-A tier.

I like the lower price as an indicator there. That feels clean. Yep, absolutely. So Helldivers 2 would be double A? I don't know. It's really shiny looking. It's shiny? I feel like the other ones have a certain... There's a certain...

I don't know. Can you evolve from AA to AAA? Because I feel like Helldivers 2 might have done that. You have to trade to evolve. Yeah. It feels like It does feel like Helldivers 2. was it's like there's a level of polish and scale that even if your budget is small does seem to kind of thrust you into triple a And Helldivers seems there at the, you know, it's like, it feels,

largely indistinguishable from a multiplayer game that had the budget of, you know, a Call of Duty or something. Okay, so what about this? This is the silver wrinkle on that front, Jacob. Minecraft. Put it on the chart. Minecraft in 2012? No, that's... A. You know, Minecraft and now AAA. AAA. It's weird. If it gets its own dedicated showcase. Launcher?

that's gotta be uh launcher is another level yeah so the single a rarely used single a it feels like it's not even a thing but no i mean it's interesting you say split fiction my example for this was like a way out a double a for split i know i know i'm saying but i said like a way out for single a game like but even that was probably right that's exactly it

It has two A's in the title, though. Oh, God. AA out. Is there a difference between A and I, or are we just pretending that there's not? A and I? No, like, isn't single A just indie? I think so. Yeah.

I think so. It's like top tier indie. The top of the indie if we're just using this like made up thing. So like Slay the Spire 2. Inside. It's like a time inside kind of feels like it's like oh this is this is so silly but it's like whenever the next related game is like has to be at least double a because they've spent like 10 years making it so like that that feels bigger What about like a child of light?

For A? I think that's probably like... I think double A. Ubisoft published it, no? Yeah, they did. It's like a UB Arts game, but it's smaller. They don't really treat it on the same tier. This is like a while ago. No, that's a good A. That's a good A. If we gotta have an A, I think that's a great one.

How's it going, eh? B is B almost a different thing because you're talking about like B movies and that feels like it's a different Yeah, and so it's like deadly permanent defense force. Yes, exactly. It has to be like dumb.

I feel like we're talking about the budget, right? So wouldn't it just be like... anyone's pro like openish.io like those are all like be funded for the most part I think it's a different thing on top of this different thing yeah you can't have two things in one question Tan messed it up

No, no, we're talking, we're not talking about budget, we're talking about grand truths about our reality that we're all talking about. There's nothing we can do about the association of people. So, like, Epic Mickey? Epic Mickey was AAA in its day. Was it really? That was triple A's. Yeah. Oh, that was triple A and it's dead. It was dark days. Just like a big, like a licensed game, though. That's double A. Like a...

Like Cars 3 licensed game? That's a double A experience. But see, you guys are only bringing quality for B. Like, why do we bring quality into this? Like, I don't understand. Because it's just a different thing. Like, when you say, like, B-list movie star. It means like they're in slightly worse movies or they're cast in less good roles. I think the question I was getting at the money is... The question is just asking what one means when we say letters.

Yeah. It's like, what do letters mean? Really? What do letters mean? Yeah, I do think it's a different spectrum. I rescind any of my comments then. I don't know what this question's getting at. I've been stumped for the first time in like, what have I been here for like three or four years?

Your challenge is so completely fair, and there's just nothing we can do, Janet. That's all it is. I thank you for your time. And I thank Dan for writing it as well. What do y'all like for question of the week here? Charles, you want to... I really liked game length. I thought that was interesting. I also really liked how he got at the food question. I think those are the two more interesting moments. Questions all around, though, I would say. Yeah, for sure. Incredible week.

I liked the one about thoughts because it was the longest one and I don't know any better what's going on with anyone. And people got really into the Freaky Friday part. I don't know why that was like the... That was the best part of it. People were like, I'm done. We've spent too long on this. Okay, Charles, your final call? Length of game, final answer. Wow, Neil McMahon takes it.

Takes it right good. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk on PlayStation. Congratulations. You just won question of the week. And now it's time for something that we call Get a Lot of This. I wonder if I got it. Trust me, you didn't. It's really short, and then it echoes for a long time. Yeah, it's a mess. So you gotta do it right away. Gotta love this, everybody. Jeremy Parrish, back from 1UP and EGM back in the day. I'm a big fan of his.

Um, When all the news about Giant Bomb went down about fandom selling it and stuff, Jeremy Parrish just posted on Blue Sky, I'm sincerely happy for the Giant Bomb crew for reclaiming their work from a pretty awful corporation. It reminds me of how angry I am for rounding up seven-figure funding to buy one up from Ziff Davis only for them to refuse, quote, it's too valuable and let the site fall under rot for 12 years. Um, which is devastating to hear that somebody who loved one up that like,

Seven figures trying to buy that? And Zip Davis is like, nah, we'll just hang on to it for absolutely no reason. There was talk years ago, by the way, of doing a one-up yours reunion podcast i'm in max like you know the holiest of holies in my mind for gaming podcasts

And I was like, well, we've got to be careful with it because IGN technically owns it. I'm like, is that why we can't do a reunion podcast? Because IGN and Zip Davis don't own that. IGN owns you guys? It's such a weird angle. It's a mess. But shout out to Jeremy Parish and then made a shout out to Midmax and a follow up Blue Sky post. So thank you for that.

Get a load of this. Something Rotten has just finished its retrospective of all the God of War original trilogy. And in looking at them, I found a video of a bunch of the God of War... staff just sitting together doing some sort of round table and david jaffe gives his ending of what like what his god of war 3 ending would be yeah and it bananas and Cory Barlog is essentially like

Sitting next to him shaking his head the whole time It's just like it's like David Jaffe's being like yeah, and then Kratos would like kill himself using the six asses controller and then you would like melt the blades of Olympus into the scythe and you would become like death with a scythe. And Cory is just sitting next to him just being like...

Let the record show I think that's cool. And if melting his blades down, he becomes down. That's kind of cool. Do you want to hear the coolest part? Yeah. So you are going to fight a bunch of different, it was basically like you're going to kill Zeus in the first 10 minutes of the game and then all the other pantheons of gods would rush in and he said that at one point you would fight this giant cat and you would freeze it with Medusa's head.

And then that's what the Sphinx. Hell yeah. Like it would be like a boss. I love it. It's like, look at this basic idea. And I'm like, listen, I want to know. Okay. I always think of Leo, I forget what it was, but someone was dissing some game. Oh, I think it was during the 210s we were debating. The Impossible Mile, what was that game called? Longest Journey. What was that game called that was cool where it was like societies built on societies?

You know, it's like a time loop. Oh, yeah. Forgotten City. Forgotten City. Yeah. But I remember, you know, people were like, oh, that's like. high school philosophy. I really hope you're like, well, that's high school philosophy. Like, I need to go back to high school because I find this stuff fascinating. Anyways, you said that years ago and it was so funny. Does anybody else have to get a little bit more? Yeah, get a load of this.

you got it girl okay yay um uh this is a article that was posted on mlb.com from a few weeks ago about a red sox fan crocheting while a player whose last name crochet starts is on the field And her name's Anna Galbraith. And she's working on a sweater. And she crochets when he takes the field. And stops when he leaves. And she's just working her way through it. And she's like, I hope to have it ready by playoff. I love that. Wow. Is it like a sweater of like a Red Sox jersey color or something?

Yeah, it's a red and white cardigan. And she's at the games playing, and sometimes they'll show her on the Jumbotron being like, crocheting, crochet! Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's so cute. Uh, get a load of this. I thought I knew the color wheel, but my brain got blown the other day when I was trying to figure out complementary colors for my sheets. So I had a purple duvet. I was like, what's the complementary color of purple?

And then I realized that whatever color you're thinking of, so the complementary color, say for example blue, You take the other two primary colors and combine them, and that's the complementary color. And I fear that may be common knowledge, but I was like, oh my, because I always have to bring up the color wheel and look.

and know what I'm doing complementary color stuff like everyone does in their normal day just learning the colors and it's so like so for blue what's left red and yellow combine them orange the complementary color for blue is orange For red, what's the complimentary country of red? What's left? Green. Blue and red. Oh, I think I missed it. The complementary of blue is orange, yellow, and red combined. The complementary of red is yellow and blue, green. The complementary of blue...

I already said that. The temperature of yellow is blue and red, purple. You can just think of it in your head and not have to look at the wheel. Does it only work with one of those three colors? You could just say, what's the temperature of blue? What gets mixed out of purple? What gets mixed out of red and blue? What's left yellow? You could just inverse it. Oh. I don't think that's right. I can't see color wheels.

I do vividly remember learning that in kindergarten. So I do. Why do you remember it so vividly? Yeah, this is like kindergarten art class. And that goes, we should all go back together. Well, it wasn't as long ago for Charles because he's the youngest one here. so that makes me feel better. A couple years ago Charles was out there towering over everyone.

Get a load of this. The cow goes moo. Oh, shut the hell off, Leo. Last week you just want to sit in your car and listen to a song a little bit longer. Yeah, so can it, buddy. And I changed lives. Get a load of this. We're talking about YouTube rabbit holes on a MinMax charity video that's going up soon. The Backstage Pass version probably will have that.

A YouTube rabbit hole my partner and I go down is Heel Work, which is competitive dog dancing. A trainer and their dog doing a choreographed dance routine to a song with outfits and stuff. And it is just... wonderful to watch and i'll link one that is set to a dolly parton song called crackerjack that's about her childhood dog and it's uh Probably going to make you cry, but it's really good. And some of them are really funny. They're just like, it's a weird ass.

sport, and the dogs are very impressive in their choreography. Remember that girl who won, like, America's Got Talent doing that, and Simon Cowell loved her? He was like, yes! Like, this is the one thing I love besides the one direction. Leo, is it correct that you don't have a dog? It is correct. Two cats. That was just, that was a thing. When Leo visited, he was like, we were just playing fetch with toaster. And he's like, you ever watch like dog agility competitions?

And I was like, no. And I was like, do you? He's like, yeah, we actually watch them all the time. And I was like, do you have a dog? And he was like, nope. He's like, oh. Does the one on my TV every night count? Yeah. They're just perfect, perfect YouTube. Yeah. Cat agility? Has everyone ever checked? Yeah, there is. There's like cat tricks.

There's like, there's like crazy, uh, like cat trainers that'll have like, I've seen one that had like three or four cats doing things at the same time with like a big fancy set. Probably also America's Got Talent. I feel bad. I feel like society treats cat agility like society treats WNBA. wow I don't know if I'd say that I will. And I am not in someone's liberal arts thesis. I don't know what.

Dogs doing agility competitions are like the most actualized happy dogs in the world. That's the thing. If you make a cat do it, you'd be torturing them, I feel. That's the thing, yeah. They're kind of like, why would I do anything for you? They force women to compete in the WNBA? I was explaining why I disavow that comparison. WNBA, how many A's Sorry, you go Ben. Oh, Charles, I said to the NBA, how many A's?

I want to block my poster of a Haley with the quote. I feel like cabbage only contests are like the WNBA of pets. Excuse me, no, I said society treats them that way. Not that I believe. Jacob, what's your get a load of this, for love of God? I said mine. Damn it, who hasn't gone yet? Save us, don't we? Hey, kiss ass. Get a load of this. uh frequent uh wall of hero subscribers super cincy expo yeah this week and i'm gonna go to that because i live near it and uh

That should be cool. I went last year and it was fun. I'm hoping to run into Hugo, who does all that min-max art. He also lives down here. And I believe he did the art on the badges there, too, which is really cool. I hope you need some stinking badges down there. That's cool.

Hey, get a load of this from the community. Ariel posted this. Ariel in Seattle posted this in Discord where she says, hey, for the Pew Pew Bang listeners, there's a Gizmodo article with the headline, La Boo Boo's Creator on the Ugly Cute Sensation that's Taking Over the World. So if you want to learn the full history of Lububu, which

I just listen to Pew Pew Bang. I don't watch it. I subscribe to it. It's my favorite podcast app. And so I hadn't really seen one of those freaky things until seeing Sarah yesterday at this volunteering thing. What a disgusting creature. I thought the same way, and they're growing on me, man. The more I see them, the more I get it. Yuck. I'm just saying. It's Sarah's Funko Pop. It's like an uglier Funko Pop.

I'm not scared of Sarah. Come on down. I would argue you're very scared of Sarah. She just bullies me. We went to volunteer. cohorts you're scared of. That's exactly it. Good way to find that. Oh, okay. Did we get all the, get a load of this? It's stuff with six people. Did we get them all? We're all out there. We also had 15 tangents. Oh boy. Yeah. All right. This is like the drunkest podcast I've ever been on and everyone's stone cold sober. I don't understand what happened. Uh,

maybe people are still drunk from New Show Plus yesterday, everybody. Check it out on YouTube where Pope Leo, I'm sorry, Pop Leo and the Cardinal Jeff Fum did a blind taste test for different sodas is there booze involved tune in to find out uh that was a surreal thing but thanks for voting for that on patreon everybody uh bonus pod again yeah this week it's jacob and i with the full recap of our trip to sao paulo brazil

Also talk about Thunderbolts in that. And actually, it's a spoiler-free discussion about Thunderbolts. You can enjoy in there in the bonus podcast video support. So that $5 tier, you get access to that. The travelogue from our trip to Brazil is up on YouTube. Thanks everybody for watching that, sharing that. We appreciate it. If you want to...

really feel like what it was like to go down to Sao Paulo. Hopefully that travel log kind of gets the point across. There's an eight and a half hour version if you want to jump into that $10 tier, which again, we'll DM you a Steam code via Patreon for Chia if you do want to unlock that, which you'll also be unlocking the ability to vote.

for the show plus and the extended version of a bunch of other content including summer game fest travel on coming up which will be coming up in june if you stick around um yeah leo hinted at it we did a um a fun volunteering opportunity. through open arms where we prepped meals created meals for people in need and we just put a call out on the discord so like hey does everybody from the community want to help and come out to this and help us package up some meals and

13 lovely folks from the community said, hell yes, we will. And so it was just like the cleanest, easiest operation, open arms, like what an organization, like they have it down to a science. They were so great for onboarding and being super fun. It was a fun time in that kitchen, which I don't think I was expecting how fun those folks at Open Arms would be just to interact with.

Certain things I was reminding myself, like, they have to say this every day. Yes. It does not come across that way, that all they do is say this because they're so, like, effective at getting people excited about it. Yeah. for sure but we made a quick video that should be up sometime in the near future on YouTube if you want to see that and shout out to the folks in the discord who joined us on that adventure pew pew bang all about cosmetics this week and

It's a great podcast, obviously. You should subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. Review it on your favorite podcast app. But if there's ever an episode to watch on YouTube, this is the one because it's a very visual episode all about cosmetics and... The ladies are all in wigs and they have elaborate makeup as well that they show off. Is that the best way to sum up this episode? Do you wear wings?

I watched it in Haley and it made me laugh. I watched that Lord of the Rings thing just for you. I thought of you when I never see that meme. Oh, good. Thank you. Also, real quick mention, the deepest dive on Claire Obscura. That is, we're having a post up on Patreon this Friday for kind of the middle chunk of Claire Obscura Expedition 33, and then...

The Deepest Dive is recording next week and it should be up by Wednesday, I believe, on YouTube and the bonus podcast feed covering everything in the game. Game's hard. Game's hard. Covers everything in the game up until you deal with both axons is the idea. Axons. Ax off. But, Charles, do you have something you want to plug? Is that... the improv

It's going to be a fact. That's the Dayton Black Box Improv Theater every Thursday. We have shows Wednesday through Saturday, so if you can come Thursday to see me, there's other good stuff happening there. They want to see you, though. Yeah, probably do. I don't know. I presume. You can also go to GameForward.com and see all of our fun stuff there. We've been... We finally have Wes back from paternity leave. which is really nice to help.

on all that stuff we're writing. We're doing lots of fun trips. Lots of videos going up on the YouTube channel. Uh, yeah. Gameformer, we're back and better than ever. Sweet. Dude! I saw you, um, I saw an Instagram video where it was, like, shoving a mic into, like, Bam Margera's face at the preview event for 20Hawk3 and 4. I was like, I want to watch the extended version of that. And you're like, no, that was just for Instagram. I was like, ah, that's smart, but.

I want to watch the extended version of that. I want to see that interview. If only we had more... people to film and edit all the time. I know the feeling well. Bam's available. That's right. He's a very slow editor as I learned from that Vice documentary. Janet, you got something to plug?

uh yeah i posted up a south of midnight review on my website pen2pixels.com so uh check it out give it a read right there we go um by the way it was like i think it was vice i mean the documentary about bam just like in the modern day uh leo and

And he was like, he made this skate video. And a good chunk of the video was just about him being stuck in the edit. Like, I have 600 hours of footage and I can't get through it. And so it was like a glimpse into hell as an editor that always stuck with me in a way.

Wow. Full circle. Full circle. That is it. Janet, I have a thing I want to talk to you one-on-one about real quick. Yeah, absolutely. You used the word pointillistic earlier when you were talking about despolete, and that was just a great vocab drop. I was just really impressed by that. Thank you.

I appreciate that. All right, everybody, leave a review of your favorite vocab used in this episode. Below in the comments, thank you so much for being here. Until next time, be good, have fun, let's go!