834: Velvet Sack

Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday, April second, twenty twenty four. That makes my tummy feel bad, but my tummy feels so good to be here with you. On the Giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and thirty four, powered by En sixty, I'm your host as always, chan Oh Shoah joining me. Coke, Captain of the ship. He's feeling a little bit April Fools, and still he's giggling, he's chuckling, he's clicking on all the clickbait articles and thinking, well, Jeff Crabb, Yeah, my April Fool's joke was saying I would actually do my expenses yesterday. Gotta do them now, gatekeeper of the expenses, approving them and not approving them and not approving of any of our shenanigans, Jeff Backlar, I simply cannot go through with any of this. It is beneath It has work that is beneath me, and I'm you know, I'm too smart for that ship. So I protest all expense reports. Uh, steal the money you can and run away. Can we have a I do that job? You know what? Yeah? What the fuck? Use it for evil? To use it to? Yeah, get rid of our menial labor. Yeah, yeah, speaking by being too smart for us. We also have speeding through the podcast Sean Turber Shawn mcdowe. I'm taking man and the time that I've known you, I think you're the smartest one here. So how's everyone doing? Boys? Yeah, I'm doing pretty You know you did? You nailed it. Jan It should be April second already. That's it. I mean, I know this podcast is now just old men complaining about how fast time is slipping past them. Uh. It's a good category, by the way. Yeah, we're number one in that category. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely we dominate. Uh. It hurts to feel time go that go by that quickly. I used to be like, man, a year away couldn't feel longer to me when I was a kid, and now it's like a blink of an eye. So I can't have other people confer that with me and validate that feeling, because I just just gonna get worse. Oh great, great. No. I mean when you're you think you think time passes is fast when you're like sixty eight, I don't think it does. I just don't think you're as because everything hurts then, so you're just like in pain all the time. So my understanding of the way that we perceive time is full and substantial, and I know everything about it. Is that we need to, like you need to make new memories in order to feel time passing more slowly. Otherwise, if the days like run together and you're kind of have a pretty monotonous life, it will feel like it's going by very quickly. That's why the pandemic seemed to go by so fast for everyone. Our lives were so the same every day. I can't imagine most senior citizens out there doing something new every day. I bet their lives are going by pretty quickly. Yeah, right, you want an update on that? Oh yeah, please? What's going on with the senior citizens? What's Sweet Lou up to? Sweet Lou? Yesterday? So yesterday it was like real, like rainy and shitty in Jersey and it's like, I don't know, It's like twelve thirty and I couldn't find my dad. I was like, where is he? I knew he didn't have plans, I knew he wasn't going anywhere. I was like, where the fuck is this freak? So I don't know why I thought to look, but I opened up the garage door, and he's sitting like halfway in the garage and halfway out the garage door on the driveway in a lawn chair. Yeah, just close enough to not getting wet from the rain and the edge. And he's just and he's just like he's just on the phone with someone, just like shooting the breeze. And I'm just like, like, what are you doing. We have like a patio that's like covered and you're more than welcome to see. He's like, now drive aways more my speed. And I'm just like, okay, okay, dude, do you want anything, Like can I get your drink or something? He's like I'm all right, And I'm like all right. So he's just sort of on vacation, is what I've put together. Yeah, he's just living his best life. Took a little trip to the front yard. Yeah, pretty fun. He's like, maybe tomorrow I'll try umph the backyard. See what that's like. He's still hurt yourself. He's falling asleep real early these days. Let me tell you that sounds nice. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to get my life together, and time is like going by too fast now that I've like I've figured out the pieces to put together. I'm like, oh no, I've wasted so much time. I so, Jane, I do keep eyeing the time blocking thing. I do like keep like glancing over at Lucy James and her incredibly organized life and thinking that would fix me, that would make me, that would make me better. Okay, hang on, have you have you enacted? Okay, Sean, go ahead, explain this to me. Is this just using a calendar? What are you talking about it? It's like notion and a calendar. Okay, the sequel to calendar. I pullt my calendar right here. It's just a rainbow because I have everything organized. I'm like, what the hell are you people talking? Why you're smart? Sean? Yes, I've never been able to live that life that could eat Okay, this we know, Jeff Grubb, This we know. And it's it's like not like a choice, it's just who I am. The thing is I give off the illusion of someone put together a mess, the fake Yeah yeah, you know? Uh that. So I go back and forth on this, friends, I think that he doesn't want us to get our life together. He doesn't on us skinting our lives. No, I do. I think we should not just throw our arms up in the air and be like, well, this is what I got. This is the best I could do. Like, Okay, we're trying, Like listen, yeah, that's what we're talking about. Strive to do better. I'd like to think that I do that and try. But if there's something to be said for going with the flow to the extent of you know, a river flows in one direction, there's no point in trying to get it to flow the other direction, right, you damn it. You can like divert it, but why would you try to get the water to go the different directions? So I'm good, I'm flowing this direction. I'm a calendar is only going to go so far. Really, the idea is to just kind of be a little bit more mindful here and there, nip and tuck at these improvements. And so I was like, Jan, have you enacted any of these things? Like what is the current strategy for self improvement right now? Yo? I got an obscene list. I'm doing a mixture of the Dan Riker and Lucy James method. I'm going to coin this, turn this into a self help book, and then make thousands, not millions, thousands. I'm gonna be modern with my uh dozens of dollary dues. Uh maybe twelve downloads on a PDF or an epub. But I'll do the thing where Dan yells into his phone of Serri to remind him something. But I'll just type it into like my notion to do list and that organizes by today, tomorrow, this week, this month, and then I'll take that those tasks and time block them out. So right now I have the podcast for an hour, and then afterwards I literally have it say send files to Sean and CMS page. Dumbass. I'm very demeaning to myself on my list in my calendar logy. And then after that I got like, hey, idiot, you didn't pack yet and you're leaving tomorrow. And then it's just a rainbow cavalcade because I look at Lucy James that I think like, wow, Lucy James is so put together, calm all the time, accomplishes so many things. I want to be like that. That's all she does. Okay. See I'm afraid though, because my life is a little bit more chaotic with the kids. So it's like if something gets derailed and the time block like gets lost, I would I feel like I'd be someone with the with the way I react to things, would be very frustrated and then discouraged by that, and it could easily just follow This is why you use the calendar, dude, you just drop the block. No, the calendar is has been the only source of consistency for my organizational life. I'm always on the hunt for a new X to do app or something like that. I'm always on a hunt for like the next app I'm going to give up on, and an unreasonable wife of an app exactly like uh, you know, I'll say this, like the things I've found the most consistently, aside from just like you know, a plain old calendar is. There's like a built in Microsoft note keeping app called one Note, and I find myself using that in a lot because it syncs across every platform and it's relative. You could also draw on it two, which I do with my iPad sometimes. So that's that's been really the only consistency. I don't I use Notion for like database stuff. I don't use it for organizing my life. I've been using Google keep for since Keeping introduced. It keeps what I use and so for like lists. Yeah, since they integrate so well with just all my Android devices and everything like that. Just since I never if I needed to like doodle something down or anything. If that's the way I thought, I would use something like a one note. I did for a while, like in high school and college when one note was starting to take off, I used a bit too jot stuff down and then share it with friends and stuff like that. But since I'm just like I just need a to do list and a calendar, that's not for me and Google's got me covered on that. So that's that's just been how I've been organized for the past decade. Grub what you do is you factor in the chaos time you you twenty four hours a day. Yeah yeah, yeah. You create enough padding in between the big tasks to factor in, so you get yourself into the butter zone. Man, I want to be in the butter zone. I love the butter zone. Man, bring the butter zone. Uh okay, so wait, how minute are you titling these blocks? Is it I am going to organize my sock drawer or is it organization time? And then you decide what you're going to do within that block. Well, my personal problem is I forget about the specific tasks a lot. Yeah, it is super minute like that, so it'll has it's for tomorrow morning, it's drop off Dad to dialysis. But before that, take out the trash. And now I'm realizing I should just have a separate one that says, takeout trash, yes, before I take my dad today recurring. It's like it's like taking notes in a class. You need just the uh though I never did three or you to like, yeah, I know I was a terrible note taker too, but the way you need to do that is three or four words that just tell you everything you need to know. It's like use your journalism skills, you know how to write a headline to give like those three or four awards that will catch your attentions. So when we see it on the calendar or wherever you're putting it, stuff the chance talk about you dump bitch trash. And then sometimes I add like a little winky face to it. It's like, you know, sexual harassment Jesus man. Uh. And then like I have another reminder that's just like the text avery ouga wolf, like remember yourself at the end of the day. Uh, speaking of butter zones. Yes, you guys, I know the eclipsees next week and this time next week will be in its wake. You know, there's a there's a sizable portion of the United States in like southern Illinois and south east I guess Missouri that's going to have the double overlap for the eclipse. So they got it in twenty seventeen and they're also going to get it for next time. Clip the butt. Yeah, it sounds like it's two spos coming together, right the butt. Well, no, I'm saying they had a They were in the path of totality in twenty seventeen, and they're also in the path of totality next week. I don't know that that's wild. Isn't that nuts? Yeah, as I suppose it has to happen. But yeah, still certainly has the term path of totality been a thing because I heard that for the first time when you said it Backalar, Yeah, it's without a doubt a thing. It's just the sort of like one hundred path of totality title. It just exactly was disappointing. But the first one, I can't wait till they remake it. It's nuts. It's like very close to Saint Louis. This this overlap thing. I don't know, it's it's super dope. I'm excited. I'm excited for this eclipse. Yeah, me too. That's gonna be I might have like three and a half minutes of totality. It's gonna be pretty wild. Yeah, ship here, I'm pinking this. This the eclipse. Think about it. We're both successful people, right, we're both happy people. People at least respect us. That is the truth to some extent, A baby's handful of people that respect us based off of our brokenness. Now, imagine we call stuff together. That baby's handful would be two baby handfuls. Yeah, we'd be way too powerful for sure. Exactly I'd be proud of charm. I don't know exactly, But Sean, if the game as LLC gave you a raise, probably got you together. I'm excited for, like my kid to start using a calendar. I want to share a calendar with my kid, Like, I'm looking forward to that because that waved goodbye obviously with Lou and Sue. That's obviously not going to happen. But like, wait, wait, wait, wait, your mom's name is Sue. Sue and Lou, Yeah, Sue and Lou. I never knew this. Yeah, yeah, Stacy Man hands right there, buddy. Oh believe me, I'm living it every day. It's like somewhere between everybody loves Raymond, sort of like the sign fell with like the Florida parents thing a little bit, even though my parents ain't going to Florida. Uh yeah. There's a lot of a lot of that. That is my life right now. God, I can't wait to be the in law character and the old in law character in a sitcom in my life. Can't wait for that phase. I just popping out of the kitchen say something nonsensical and then you just you know, get your one episode and then there's like the heart wrenching thing like oh he's dead, Oh no, he's fine. Okay, You're the one they like visit in the hospital, right and they're just like, we gotta we gotta check on him. He's the glue of this family somehow, someway, and then it turns out I'm not related to this family at all. Games, wrong, music, games, You know, Aging is a lot like rolling the dice sometimes, right, you never know what you're gonna get. Sometimes you're just like, oh no, my kidney hurts, Oh no, my sciatica I don't know what a sciatic is. I hear it all the time, but speaking about diner, I have been playing Slice and Dice and shouts out to Jeff Cub because Jeff Grub linked to me this this morning on our team Slack, and then I laughed to myself. I lulled out loud when I saw it because I'd already been playing Slice and Dice. You motherfucker, that's incredible. Someone had recommended this during a game mess and then I sought it out. And currently it is on You can get the demo on Steam, but I think the full game is out on mobile or pretty much the whole game is out on mobile Android for a while, okay, yes, and I think it's on Apple and Steam like in the last couple of weeks, so it's not expensive on Steam, ohno. It is an RPG dice game of sorts where you have a party of up to four characters and each character has their own specific die. But it's not numerical dice. It is abilities, so some of it is defend, attack blank, so nothing you just whiff and then from there you use those abilities or like a spell casting or an archer depending on the class. And you use those you roll the die when it's your turn, and then use those abilities to attack the enemy. And you have up to three rerolls per turn, and you can lock in your dice by like yeah, you can lock in some of the dice and then hit the reroll for the dice elect did with or have it Like oh, I don't need to defend this turn because you can actually see the enemies what they're going to do beforehand. They show you Okay, they have they rolled these die and they got these abilities and there, and they will show you who they're going to attack. Yeah, so you can plan ahead based on what you're gettings you be like I want to try to roll this, so hitting that reroll button for things that whiff is mandatory. You have to have to do that. Yeah. I really like how they they project in this game, like you said, grub of like who's who they're going to attack and for how much damage? Because it really does just make this a in actual numbers game of like Okay, well I could theoretically kill off these enemies before they attack my one guy and kill him, or I could just try and reroll and get like a defensive type of ability popping off to protect that guy for the next turn. And I kind of I kind of want roguelikes to ditch the card mechanic, like Love Slay the Spire Monster Train. But I think I get emails for so many indie games that are almost very similar iterations of the whole card based thing, that like, let's scale it back, guys, let's just go to dice, and then as you progress through the tree and everything, you are upgrading those dice abilities so you can get rid of you get like items that you can apply to your dice and then it'll change it. So I think I did it with one of mine where I had an archer and they had a couple of blank spots, and then I added an item and it's like, no, we're going to improve. Every single side of the of the die is going to get an improvement and there's gonna be no blank spots left. So every single time this character rolls their die, they're going to get a bow and arrow and they're going to be able to attack on their turn and sometimes it's going to do a ton of damage. Yeah, and then other modifiers like a cleave type of ability where your main warrior dude now attacks adjacent enemies, so targeting enemies also factors in where you want to hit the middle dude, because you'd wind up getting the other two enemies on their side. It's very bare bones in terms of the graphics, but I think love the thing that they promote on these Steam pages three D realistic dice physics. Yeah, finally, and that's that does actually kind of matter to me Watching dice bounce around on a screen. I wanted to at least look somewhat realistic. They get, they get pretty close here. If they get I would really enjoy. I actually haven't tried to shake my phone when playing the game, but if they had a mode where I could shake the die, they should would be really good, you know, like the haptics haptic feedback on like phones for that for sure. Oh yeah, uh huh, I know, Jane, I think you're right about like I'm I'm not like sick of cards, but I want them to take that abstraction and apply it in different ways. And this is definitely a similar kind of abstraction, right, but for me it's it's maybe even more handy because a dice, a die has six sides, and I can very easily keep in my mind everything that's on that die, as opposed to like when I like, as soon as a card kind of goes away with the way my brain works, I do kind of forget about it. So I need to play a bunch of times over and over for the strategy of like are the possible strategies to get ingrained in my brain? Like, oh, yeah, that card is still in the deck. I can maybe plan for it to show up and make some moves and you know, I definitely get there eventually. Yeah. With the die, it's like it's all right there. I could see it. I know what I'm going for, and I know it makes it just easier to like enact strategies. And so I really like the way that they have taken this approach, and I think it's a completely valid way, next to a card mechanic to have die that you're rolling. Why was I I was like so obsessed with one of those booths at packs with the with the dice. Oh which one? Oh my god, the one they had like the millions of different kinds. I like, so it was doing something, uh, And I got it in front of it right like I wouldn't let it take over. I got in front of sure your dark passenger almost took hold. Yeah, but like you know, Vinnie was like looking at He's like, oh, I'm gonna get this one. I'm like, yeah, an right there. He bought a bunch of die yea plural. Right. He brought a bunch of dice he brought up and I was just like, I think I need that, and he's like, yeah, I get some, And I'm like, but why what am I? What do I need? What do I need? Dice for damage counters? You play Pokemon? Right? No, I don't do I don't do D and D. I don't do Pokemon aside from like opening a lot of packs. You could admit it. You do back alley dice gambling. Come on, you don't bring fancy dice to that, but we could start using fancy dice. Yeah, I don't know what it was like. It put like pulled out a velvet sack. Oh it's velvet. What do you got velvet? Whoa look at that, satchel? Very is this just for Pokemon damage? It is? How fancy are your dice? It's pretty sad? Shown metal? Why is that said? That's not sad? I mean yeah, Oh, he just likes giving me ship for uh for playing Pokemon for your metal dice? Do I have anything in here out of than the melones? This is what they give you when you buy and uh one of the products nowadays because it's like TV or whatever. Yeah, the et B actually don't. I don't know if they do it anymore. I think they do. They're just they're like I think they're more plastic. Yeah, I think they went back to plastic. It used to be if you buy like the Pokemon Center version, they would give you some little nice things and one of them would be metal dice like this one. So I still like having these around. Yeah, And like you know, Vinnie grab one and the one he bought it had like liquid in it. I'm like, what's like spark liquid? When I hear that, does that like change the like the fist? I mean it has to, like though maybe it's isolated in like the the Center where it wouldn't. Yeah, that I don't give and I don't make it more predictable, so I'm sure it'd be flying. Oh yeah, I have the one here that I always roll when we do a Jeopardy grub my one from the Pokemon state championships. This probably won't show up on camera. Twenty thirteen. I got stamped one there with the oh play Pokemon. Nice. Yeah, it needs to be done in a certain way otherwise it does affect the physics of it. Yeah, it's no differ. And aren't there like these like column like dice roller things where you just like drop the dice and then it goes to the sling kind of thing. Oh I haven't seen that, but that's that's just too much right there. Like they did h what do you remember the Pokemon TCG classic, the like really high end thing that they did. Yeah, oh it's called the Dice Tower, yes, thank you. Yeah, but that thing had this thing where you it's like a roulette wheel where you like roll a metal ball and goes into like this roulette and that does heads their tails. I'm just like, bro, just roll a fucking die. Yeah, I like the poppet die on a sorry super satisfying, very pops out and like wants to explode, but it's got the dome, just like we do on this flat earth, like hockey, hockey and earth and earth. Yeah. God, there there was oh, the YACHTI game, the Yazi Repoff in the fifty one game collection. I can never remember Clubhouse Clubhouse games on Switch. Me and Steff played that in bed like every night for like a month because it was just so fun to roll the dice in that, dude, Clubhouse is I played that last time I was out playing with my buddy, And that is just a great playing game, just going down the line. That's actually fun single player. Yeah, the board games, the car games, but like we're doing local wireless in like the mini golf, like the the like the you know, office golf set, and so oh that's a good game. Good game, unrelated to die completely. Hearing back of our talk about shooting dice made me think of the board game Crossfire. Sure, hell yeah fire yeah gross fire right, maybe the most powerful board game advertisement ever made. Yeah, I like you were. I was under the impression if you lost around you were sent to the depths of hell. Yeah. Uh huh. When I, like, when like CNN or whatever had that Crossfire show, I was, I still thought of the game first. The game. Yeah, that shit was cool. Yeah. Anyway, well I'm I'm I'm searching for images of Crossfire. It seems like Sean has been soul searching in a grab bag of sorts. Oh yes, Jan, Because as mentioned last time I was at you, I think pomcast last week, I did finish Persona three over the weekend, and man, I had the feeling feeling that I've had a few times with a game. I had it with Persona five and Royal with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where I'm just like, dude, video games are over. It doesn't get better than this, So like, what do I do with my life now? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Relo just kept getting better as you see all the remastered stuff and everything just being polished to a tee all the way to the end, game better and better, and the ending, Jan, you've you've never finished person three before, right, negative? That ending hits you like a truck. I won't say why, but man, even knowing what was coming and seeing this ending multiple times is still hits. And afterwards, I was just sitting there. I was in the chair back there, just like what do I do? What do I do next? I want to play now it's like ten pm. I expect to finish the ending that quickly. I don't know what to do, and so I kind of just started firing up other stuff, figuring out what to play next. I did. I did go back to Dragon's Dogma two. Like I said, I want to give in our chance, and they I don't know if it's because of the patch that they put out or I tried a couple of things. Some friends who were playing it reached out and were like, oh, hey, like you had a problem with this, you can fix it by doing that. Like no one mentioned the the mister x night that was following me everywhere. Someone mentioned that they did have that, and they think it's a bug as well, and if you just rest a bunch that reads us whatever, agro gets bugged out or whatever. So I did that and I was actually able to continue the game and everything. I was like, yeah, still just not feeling it, like I would take those cyclops and I'm like, uh, I don't know, I don't feel anything from the comba or anything like that. I'm sure if you get later on there's more combos and stuff you do, but yeah, it's just yeah, different different vocations might be different. You know. I gave a fair chance, and hey, just not for me. Whatever. So I was starting to just go down the line here of the other things on the backlog. I did fire up Unicorn Overlord. Finally I'm getting around with that one. U. So I only played the intro level. Jan help me out here because you've you've played at least a little bit here. It seems like you have sort of the RTS map where you're moving your groups around and then when a group gets to another group, both groups are on basically like a three by three grid that you set up beforehand, and so they auto battle. Now I know what you mean when you're saying it's like fire emblow me advance wars kind of thing where they're on the grid and you have to position them away that's the most defensive way possible. So like your healer is in the back of the grid, sun in the front defending them. Is it entirely just like you're moving the groups around the map, and then they auto battle when they come in contact pretty much, yeah, okay. And then like positionality, like you some if you're going up against like an enemy group that has like people holding spears, like they pierced through, so your friendly units that are in a similar column or right behind each other will both get hit at the same time versus like kind of staggering them out right. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, a lot of people are comparing to like Final Fantasy Twelves Gambit system, you sort of like set things up in advance and then it plays out. I'm not sure that's the kind of strategy I'm really looking for here. I do like things to be a little more active, so we'll see. It might be a good switch game. I started out on the big TV, you know, I do all games. I just want to see how it looks and sounds and everything like that. But it might be a good switch game. I think I'm gonna keep Trucking as my handheld game. The Steam Deck has blurred lines for me, man, because just like any Triple A game i'm playing now set for drying Sogma, I can just play on the Steam Deck as well, and so it's like there is no difference between console PC and handheld games for me anymore. So it's weird with Unicorn Overlord, I'm like, I think this might just be a handheld game for me, And that's surprising. Yeah, it kinda. I got on the PS five and then I'm tempted to pick it up on the switch because I'm in that similar boat Sewan, where I think I'd have a better time for whatever reason, playing a handheld versus just on the big screen, because just the way everything's formatted, it doesn't it doesn't give that huge sweeping feeling that a PS five would maybe require. Yeah, and that's why. Yeah, And that's why I chose switch, because I'm like, even if I were to end up playing this like a console game and playing down on the big TV and everything, I do think I at least wanted the option. I could tell that I would want the ability to play in handheld mode and THENK, yeah, like, and things are it's vanilla ware, so everything's basically a PNG if you will, and so things do scale a little funkily onto the big screen where uh, it's a little soft of an image playing on the switch, like the technical scaled upwards. Yeah, but I'm digging was put down. If only they released it on Steam, right, wouldn't that be nice? You could have both, we could have just just like PERSONA. That's the reason I knocked out of I finish at seventy five ish hours because I did almost everything. That's how I was able to as busy as I am is because I can sin from the TV, I can sit here at the PC, I can sit in bed with my steam deck. Like it just feels weird playing anything not in that method anymore, and everything needs to be on PC for that reason, I am. Yeah, I'm having a hard time keeping up with Dragon's Dog on two for that reason, Like it's just hard to get over to the PC and play. Even on the Rogers that's not going to run at super well either, you'll try streaming from I have this like a mental block of because the way I do the way I play games on steam Deck is I am, you know, I have an hour straight, I'm gonna play for an hour straight. And I do play for an hour straight, and then sometimes it's like, oh, I don't know how much time I have. I played for ten minutes. I'm putting into the sleep mode and I plan to get back to it as soon as possible, like in the next couple of minutes, but it could happen suddenly, it could be two hours later, and the idea of the game running idly on my computer downstairs in the basement because it's waiting for me to get to turn the steam deck back on drives me crazy and I don't Yeah, I don't know how to get over that. And also like it's not always super reliable to like rebuild that connection when you come back from sleeping the steam deck. Sometimes it's just gonna break. And it's like, well, now I got and I can't even shut that the dam the damn game down from a remote location, like from upstairs. I have to go all the way in the basement turn the game off, and then what I'm gonna start it back up after just shutting it down so I could play it on the steam deck. I just get frustrated by the whole experience. I have the issue of I mentioned this where we're talking about Dryanon's dogma, like knowing all this text stuff and sort of like a thing you can't Unknow. I can tell that streaming. I can see like the artifact and everything. Yeah, bothers me. I'll be in bed and you be fair, Yes, it's it's anything more realistic is going to do it for me if it's something simpler like Persona. I was in the middle of a long boss fight because I was doing one more challenging ones uh, and I was playing it on the TV. Because you know, I just had my PC hooked ups of TV here, so I'm just playing on a TV and I'm like, man, I'm really tired. I kind of just want to lay down. I was like, oh, you know what, screw and so I lay down, bring up the steam Deck and then it seemlessly connects to the game mid session. And that looked pretty good because you know, simpler colors and everything like that. But yeah, just steam Deck has changed the way I play games. But anyways, where I ended up in all this Soul Searching is the one that I've been trying to get back to for so long now, like a dragon if n oh cool, because I got like ten hours into it. You know, I was in Hawaii only a real RPG. Let's go, I'll say, you know, with you know, Kirio and Eric and everyone, and yeah, I just want to get back into that. I was playing it, and I'm like coming off a persona this type of like soap opera, e melodrama. I didn't know if I was feeling it right away, but Doe then et opens his mouth. I'm just like, I love this game. These guys are great yea. And so that's that's where I'm saying right now, I've played a couple hours that last time. I'm like, yeah, I'm just I'm just gonna keep rocking this. You're in Hawaii, Yeah yeah, I just I just got the bombshell that uh that cure you as cancer and everyone's like dealing with that now, right, Okay, Yeah, that's that's right. I'm cool. God, what a game. I'm glad that you circled back to a Sean. It's neat that Bailey is also it's now in Bailey's radar. Yeah, it's playing that, uh, Sean. Of all these RPGs, have you glanced over a Grand Blue Fantasy Relink at all? Dud give me a cod God, damn, I had to buy it myself. Dog, I don't know, as I like started it up and just to like feel what the combat is like, and it's you know, it's a typical RPG RPG action combat basically, and it definitely feels kind of like a Diet RPG right now in terms of or a Diet triple A game where it's almost on the production value side of of like not a Final Fantasy seven remake or reb but all other RPGs right now and it's like, but you could tell it's like they hold back a little bit. I don't know something about it just feels a little bit cheaper, and yet it's still pretty charming. I think so far, did you I did the prologue and it's like, okay, okay, did you play Tales of a Rise at all? I started it and I did the thing there where I tried to figure out the combat to see if I would be into it, and now I don't remember. Okay, okay. I hear that comparison a lot. I also hear that it's not because not much of an RPG per se. It's supposed to be more monster Huntery. Yeah. I've read that as well. Yeah, yeah, interesting. People treat it like a Fantasy Star Monster Hunter almost. Yeah, like you're I've heard from most people who play your first instinctive, who play like an RPG, but then like it hits you that, oh wait, this is Master Hunter and that changes the way you play. I haven't really touched it, but that's why I've heard interesting. Okay, So yeah, there's a really big, you know, dragon fight in the first five minutes, and I that like an RPG fight. It didn't feel like I was foreseen, you know, phases to change or doing anything specific because all this monster's a week to this this kind of thing and if you like really think of the way a Monster Hunter game forces you to think you'll get at some advantages. But they were probably just introducing the concept of big monsters at that point. So yeah, that's the prologue I've just barely touched on. Yeah, maybe maybe we'll squad up in that game we're reaching in. That'd be fun. A lull right now where I'd love to circle back to a bunch of stuff or just check in with some things. Yep, speaking about things. We checked something out on UPF last week and Grub you piloted this because my el Gatto broke and grub I don't know what happened. I think it's just fried. I yeah, you need a new one. Let's uh, let's see what happened. Gatto broke. Yeah, I had like an HD sixty joint, HG sixty s whatever, it doesn't matter too hot. I don't know work. I tested out Thursday night. We're completely fine. Then during game mess Hoop the best don't know what happened, tried it out and a couple other computers that we had here, different h to my cords, different USBC stuff, different ports. I don't know, but I gotta I gotta spare one leg around somewhere. But anyway, the Stellar Blade demo, if we're talking about gigantic set pieces, uh and oh, phallic looking things and fallopian tube looking a lot substances. Okay, beg are you aware of Stellar Blade? Yeah, it's like it's action sword anime game. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah, I think I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I uh So, where we stopped the demo on the stream right after that is when it's like, oh no, it is Secio. The first big boss you get to is straight up a from Soft Boss. Uh. And it's no longer just going there and whip it with your sword like an action game. It is like you're gonna have to be paying attention to windows and then and it felt really good. And then that's where I was like, Okay, this game actually does have something going on, at least in terms of its combat. I thought that was fun. Ye. Outside of that, it's like, you know, it's it's a fine action game. It does feel like in a lot of ways the game is missing that something. I think that's true for its world, its presentation, and even like the super sexy character, God, I think I think it was Geita on Twitter had a thread about the character and she mentioned it's like, Oh, this character doesn't know she's sexy and doesn't behave in a way that like Beyonetta knows she's sexy and like uses that and walks around in such a way, or she has ownership of it and that like makes it that much better, and here it's like she's completely oblivious to it, and that does sort of there's something missing there where it's like there's some charm to the sexiness that isn't coming through. Yeah, I think the character's attractive to look at whatever. Yeah, that's great if that's your thing, have fun with it. I was going to bring up that conversation that people are having or though yesterday or the weekend or whenever I saw it, it does feel weird and a lot of some games that are trying to be sexy and the same that bay in the way that Bayonetta does, they missed the point. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, that definitely looks like the say it definitely feels like, Oh, we made this character who's wearing a ridiculously sexy outfit and it's oblivious to it, and that just feels like, Oh, we put the character in the game for you to stare at, not the character is sexy, and therefore is a disconnect. I know, there's like some there's some stuff there where it's like, well, they seem to be androids, and so then they can like write that off and everything, but it does still just feel weird when it comes to the character in that world. And there's always a space for a game to just kind of like miss the point. You're allowed to miss the point, you could put it if it's fun that I'm gonna forgive a lot, including missing the point. But it is pretty blatant here that it's like this is from a studio that played Bayonetta and then played Near Automata. I mean that that comes through in every ounce of the game. That near is the nearness of it all. But when it's that obvious that they're kind of missing the point, it does feel like, you know, Okay, I get what we're going for here, but it feels a bits like Sophomoric feels like a Studio project in a lot of ways. Okay, you nailed it, Grub, because it does. It does kind of feel hollow in some parts and I couldn't put my finger on it, but it it reminds me, in a weird way of Lies of P, where like p or Pinocchio, the character just had no personality at all. And I know that most Souls games generally is kind of like a blank slate, but like right, kind of stoic characters, sure, but I kind of liked I think that makes me go back to why I like Sekuro so much of like you know, Wolf or whatever his name is is. Uh, there's so much character to him and he just feels cool and like and gruff and everything. And there's nothing wrong with being horny on the internet. Everyone. No, no, it's gonna be okay, what gave you that? Let me tell you there are people that are fucking banding around this game like it is the end all be all of like hardly we could be hordy a girl. Yeah, it'll see culture. I was just gonna say this game ended wokeness. Yeah, that's what there are people on the Legitimately it's good stuff. It's like I'm like, you know, we're mostly just making fun of it, like how blatant it is, and not like, oh, you're not allowed to do this, And people get so mad if you just have any sort of sense of humor about this game. They're like, oh, okay, you've never been horny, what are you talking about? Calm down. I just thought I just think it's a little bit silly, that's all. And I also think it's a fun game. Both things are true. I saw a streamer playing at the other day talking about their well, talking about their time streaming it on Twitter, and people were like attacking them on Twitter for like cracking jokes at the game. It's like, it's what they always do. They're a streamer, of course that's what they do. You're like, how fucking dare you? So seriously, what are we doing? Okay, But anyways, speaking about the game itself, I was letting Jeff Cook there because you know, I wanted to hear what he had to say. I've played the demo myself too. I was sitting in on the UPF, but I also then played the demo afterwards, because, as I mentioned during the UPF, I've been really looking forward to this one. You don't get a lot of this style character action game at parts. Everyone's trying to do souls games instead, So seeing one of these come along, it's a little more rare. And I think it's very interesting because I like that you brought up lies a PGM. That's what I was going to bring to this is this is too near automata what Eliza P was to Bloodborne last year stylistically, Yeah, it is very much A team played that game. They were like, Oh, we love this game. We're making a game. It seems like they might not make a sequel to this game we really love, so you know what, screw We'll do it ourselves. We'll just like and it's I keep dunkan pal World on this site, but power World is like, we all need to, you know, religate this. But it basically is like copying to the point of, you know, people talk about plagiarism and everything like that. I don't want to get into that, but it very much feels like it's copying things from our games. Yeah, this feels like it is inspired in the same way that Eliza P is like inspired. You know, that game was Victorian England and everything like that. But it was doing its own thing. This is like, yeah, what, we just had hot Android Lady in an action game and it's sci fi and stuff like that, and so this game is very much inspired by that. But combat wise, it's a hodgepodge of a bunch of different things. I think that's what's interesting is because people are seeing what they want to see. Like Rubb kept making the comparison with seci Ro, which I can see because you have things like enemies. Both the bosses and smaller ones have a stagger gauge stagger aage the big attack that you can press forward and whatever the other attack button is so you can jump behind them, kind of similar to the forward sort of lunge onto their web from Secro, that straight of thing. But I think because it's a mix of so many things that you like, I said, you can't see what you want to see in this and I'm playing this and uh, knowing so much about all these action games, it definitely feels like Devil May Cry to me. I think people conflate Devil May Cry with with Platinum games, but they are different in fear. Platinum is so much faster play this game. Now, Yeah, I think you have a good time with it. Yeah, yeah, this is much more methodical, and so I think that's why the Soul's comparison. You have to be to be a methodical and I do not do that in a lot of other Chara direction. There's there's also there's there's bonfires, there's a straight of bonfires and other like little things like that where you can make that comparison. But I think, like what I told Gball, he was playing it because he was taking the slower approach from soft game. And you can absolutely do that because trying to get fairy windows down, Yeah, she blocks. There's an emphasis on perrying. So I can see why you would play that. I play it completely differently. I play it like I would play Dante Slash Slash Slash Slash Slash Slash pair. Once I started, once I got the dodge and started using it more, uh, it was okay, you act you're supposed to use to the dodge way more than I thought the game was telling me. It was telegramed, well, it's weird that the dodge is locked because you need the dodge. You need a dodge. But I realized, oh, it's a tutorial. It's editorial, man, you will always. It wasn't a suggestion that like, oh, this is like an option. It's like, no, they force you to take it. You will get it eventually, uh getting the which time dodge Basically it's like, okay, yeah they were, They're they're taking a lot of inspirations here, obviously from a bunch of different stuff. And so that's why, whereas Near is an RPG, this is as least as far as I tell o, demo more linear game that's going to have a skill tree that branches out, so it's more action gaming, sort of like how you buy abilities in like a DMC or Bayonetta. But so far, that's the vibe I game right And even the boss fight, I was fighting it the way like you would a DMC boss, where DMC bosses are a little bit slower where you do like get in your hits and then you have to dodge their textra but and then get back in there. So I'm still really looking forward to this game. I do think it's stylish and especially yeah, my headphones on the soundtrack was good. I think Jan you're pointing out during the upf jet just like man, that's there's a vibe to it. There's a vibe to like the music and everything like that. That's hitting for me, and I can see why some people may not be as into where they're going with it. But it's gonna be a good game. And like like I said, I'm gonna let anyone spoil it for me either. I'm just gonna a good time. Yeah. I enjoy this big set pieces in games, and I think this is gonna but sometimes I think they can be overdone definitely, And I think because this game is hitting a weird almost butter zone of being kind of semi hollow but gameplays okay, that I'll take the set pieces because there's no consequences to anything. It's a good sp right, It's a good cheap fun is what it feels like we need. Yeah, not everything needs to be exhausting open world. I had this rant last week. I'm not gonna do it again. But we don't need We just need the Hollywood blockbuster of games to come out more like they used to back in the day. We just need more dumb fun. We need the mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part one. Hell, exactly did you go do? The boss? That was you could pick from the menu? I played that a little bit before I had to like abandon it, and that was also very fun. I'm like, Okay, I don't know how much I care about the stuff in between, but getting these boss fights and having to that I can mess around with, and the demo and I had a really good time fighting both, Like Okay, there's definitely something here for me. Also, the fit she wears when that optional boss fight from the menu is like, I don't know how to describe it. I'm like, I don't really, isn't the yellow hoodie you want? No, I don't have the verbiage for like women's fashion, but it's kind of like a hangy sweater, kind of like a knit sweater, and underneath she's wearing basically like like the sling KINI It's like it's the nuttiest thing. But I'm like, it actually looked pretty cool. I'm like, man, the style, the fashion in the game at the very least is appealing to me in a really strong way. Yeah. And then I think, like the character design has some hits, has some misses. I think the enemy design mostly hits. Some of that stuff starting to look pretty say, it reminds me of a shoe. What's the band ey Napco action RPG like Scarlet Scarlet Scarlet Next remind me of that, like having the like bug like Ari Mold kind of characters in this like more anime world. It felt like a weird mix. There's a little bit of that going on there here. Yeah, but I was gonna say that the game also in portions of it also reminded me of Scarlet Nexus minus the psionic powers. Yeah, but I don't know. At least I watched that hype trailer at the end of the demo. I'm like, I'm on board, man. I see her like skating on her sword down like a roller coaster track. I'm like, yeah, this is what I'm here for. Man, this is gonna be fun. Yeah, it's a I appreciate a game that like just wears it all on its sleeve, and this is definitely one of those games. In this game wears it all in the ass cheeks. Yeah, very very defined ass cheeks, speaking about bearing it all and just just being nothing but flashing pizzaz. I see here in the dock now, Dibb has been playing Fortnite, You guys Fortnite. Look, don't I don't care the way we got here as long as we could fucking put roadblocks in the fucking ground dirt, put it in the fucking dirt rest and piss. Okay, uh, I'm honestly this kid. I don't know what happened. He was like one weekend he went to a friend's house. Right, No, it wasn't even that. It was like we were down and we were down in DC for a hockey tournament and Joe Biden showed him Fortnite. Biden just like no, he was he was talking about Fortnite with a friend. Okay, yeah, he had not played in months and months and months, and it was just this the stoking of that memory that he was like you know what, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I don't want to do this. And that night he like SYNCD up with like six of his buddies all on the fucking headsets and there, and he's this guy now and it's been like and he's and he's good. I've seen him win and like he's just like, yo, Dad, like let's play together, Like when are we going to play together? And I'm just like, I guess we are just gonna do that? Are their custom games of Fortnite? Like could we do a TV team? Like to let dam and his team like rock in the community. I mean he would be down, like we should do it this week because he's on spring break. But yeah, looking to it, he's just super and he's good. And now he's he's just talking about you know, he's the update is pretty good. But I don't know what I feel about this part of it. I'm just like, no, he's he's there's nothing negative, right, Yeah, he's just like very much into the scene. Is he asking for v Bucks. Yeah, of course he's asking for uh, you know, Red Blooded America like any other Thankfully, we've got a couple of friends here and there who are in are in places that they can help us out there, and that's nice. Collusion just just light collusion, like surface level tip of the iceberg collusion, that kind of collusion a little and everyone was John Cena so like it's funny because he doesn't care about like the license skins. He just like looking ship this is This is the thing that messes me up is like the younger audience is much more into like the Fortnite O C's. Yeah, like he he thinks that's way more interesting. He thinks like some sort of demon with a flaming still right, He's probably right. Yeah, He's like, I don't need to be Peter Griffin, Like that's fine, that's fine for the people. Know I wasn't alive during the depression when all that stuff, like I need to be Bonita, damn it. He like somehow exists in this spot where he is like simultaneously like the youngest person playing Fortnite, but also just like above everyone. He's just like a better person at taste. He's not corroded by like the sort of grime of it all, and he's pure enough that he has this like saccharine, very like positive association with the game. And look like you know, he he kind of like plays on the couch and my mom watches him play and she's just sort of like this is colorful and nice, and you know, it's it's like win win as far as I could tell. And look again, as long as Roadblocks is you know, in the in the after, in the rear view, Roadblocks is gonna come back like Palpatine. No, Like you know, look, I always I will always maintain that, Like there are definitely fun games inside of Roadblocks, like you can like kids making games and Roadblocks stuff yeah, is Dibb into any of that, like the creation stuff? No, he I don't think he's there yet. Like he absolutely has ideas that he's like written down on paper, like wouldn't it be cool if you could do this. There's actually one that I keep at my desk where he just like wrote down, oh ship, where the fuck is it? He? I have it over. He basically wrote down like he basically described like a carnival game when he was like four years old in pen and paper, And here he's just like imagine cups stacked in a pyramid, you know, like sick keep going. But yeah, he's he's very much into it. It's it's I gotta say, like, it's pretty fucking cool. He's playing with his friends, he's playing on like every you know, it's innocent, right, Yeah, it is, like you know, I've never you know, I think I when for when I really began to pop off. I think we all had this collective reaction of like old man shaking fist at the sky of like what is this? But like that game's fucking good. Yeah, we discovered being good and then we kindly discovered it for everybody, it's been good forever. You know, we just had to get over our bullshit. I think they're the thing that was like the backlash that is also now aged at at this point is like, oh, this is like the Funko pops of gaming. It's good, it's plastic, could turn it into anything. But that's also a positive in a lot of ways because people do want to mess around with those ips, so having a home for that those things whatever. Yeah, the game continues to be very interesting at the very least for sure. And you know, I'm I'm excited for him that he's really like he's getting and he's getting he's playing with a lot of friends who he doesn't get to see a lot like that far away. Yeah, and now he he has this like awesome relationship and he's got like a really good crew that he's always playing with. And it took a while to like get everyone in Seek because I'm like, well, I don't want to open up voice chat for you obviously outside of your friends and then and now, so maybe the mistake I did make was like I don't have a separate account for him, so he's using mind still, so like which you know, and I'm not going to fuck up his progress, right like he's like level sixty seven already. I'm just not gonna like, oh, mess with the proggies, right gets those sweet progy I don't think they're I don't think there's like a best of both worlds situation here like yours anymore. When we were in Boston, I kept getting text messages or like discord from friends being like, why are you playing Fortnite on Friday night at eleven o'clock? Like what's happened? I'm like, no, it was my kid. That's my kid playing, and they're like gettings and they're like, what do you mean is he are you? Like are you not home on it? You know whatever? And yeah, I got to get through that. He's already been approached by people who are my friends who are there just like oh, I don't know you play Fortnite's sick, So you know, we'll see how that goes. But it's been mostly overwhelmingly positive experience for sure, right I've had in the last couple of days, and really it's been happening for a couple of weeks now, but it's like amped up in the last couple days since Emmy's on spring break. It is smash Brothers every day, and I'm like, is it some YouTube creator. I think some there's some YouTuber who like talks about all the Nintendo characters a lot and like crafts and stuff like that, and I think she always references Smash Brothers or something. So that got him. He's like, oh, I'm interested in that. And now it's like every chance she gets, she's over there playing Smash Brothers. She wants to be either Kirby or Meta Night and then she wants to beat the hell out of me, and so we I go and play and she she did it. So she had a team of like eight Kirby's, both seven Kirby's, and then I was whatever I wanted to be and she just beat me over and over and it was a lot of fun, a good time. I did find the the game description. He says, uh, he says game stack cups. Then person has five balls to knock it down, and Kendrick sets up her cups and you have to ruin or day right, and then yeah, it's just really cute. It's just like its respectfully respectfully. Sorry, Okay, you know I'm not gonna oh okay, I wasn't even gone a capilla covers to each other, you know, like the song cups right from Yeah, you know yeah Dragons Dogma two. Uh I I like that game a whole bunch. I think when I hear Sean talk about Persona is his thing and Dragon's Dogma two is is not, I'm like, okay, yeah, flip it and reverse it. And that's where I'm at. Yeah, all right, Dragon's talking about you very much, Yes, very much, my sandboxy, you have my own fun, tell my own stories sort of thing. And it hit beyond what we did on stream. I kept playing for quite some time and was able to like find some other towns and it's and they are much different than I was expecting. A pardon me started believing the idea that, oh, this game is going to look very similar throughout, and then I started getting to put, you know, up to like these cliff side cities and things like that. Oh that's that's pretty neat. That's interesting, And I think what I'm now just looking for from from this game is kind of what I go to like Hitman for where it's like, let me just go in here with an idea, mess around, see if it works, and then if it either it does or it doesn't, but whatever, I bet in the process of doing that, something interesting is going to happen and I'll come out with another story and it's delivered that every single time so far. I really wish it ran on the Steam Deck. It is about twenty five frames per second on the Roger, and I'm like, I'm I kind of settling into a place where I'm like, maybe I should just suck it up and play it that way when I'm looking to get some time with it more often. But the thing is, like, it runs so okay on my PC at this point because I kind of dialed everything in that I'm like, it's it's hard to go down to twenty five frames per second and sometimes actually much worse than that when you're in a city. But that's just why they got to where that game is going to be for quite some time. I think if they could have improved the optimization for the CPU, they would have before launch. I think it's going to take some time for them to figure out that that's actually going to need. But overall, I'm like, oh, yeah, this, I'm glad that we get open world games like this. It feels like a different slot on the spectrum from all the other open world games that are out there, and I appreciate that at the very least, Grub does this kind of fulfill a mud Runners aspect for you, where it's like you make your ow little fun kind of a little bit, yes, kind of like you know, the way it is like it is like mud Runners is the I don't engage with the fast travel stuff all that much. I know there's ways to do it. I'm not really looking to do that. The game seems to encourage you to like actually move around the world physically and kind of if you get caught in the middle of the woods and it's nighttime and you're screwed, like you're screwed and you have to deal with those consequences. And that's very much how I played mud Runners, Its snow Runners and now Expeditions. So yes, that sort of line of thinking of consequences to your actions and having to think of take ahead, or if you're like me and you don't always think ahead and you're kind of plunging along, some fun consequence is going to happen and you have to pay for your crimes. I like that too. Yeah, you've said that you play these games like a jackass, and I think that's a great way of pulling it because I can't do that if something if I'm like, I'm too logical of a person where I just have this idea in my head, I'm like, if the game doesn't accommodate this very simple idea, that's why I get frustrated. And I think Dragon's talking about two has a lot of that. People describe as a game with friction, and I think that's a good way of pulling it where yeah, they clearly are pushing against you a lot, and there's things where and also actively pushing against you. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's actively pushing against you, and there's certain things. I think there's a decent amount where they want you to do things in a certain way. And that bothers me too. I can't people keep describing as like, oh, it's like breath all. I'm like, I don't get that feeling, but I know why you get that feeling. On a higher level. The game doesn't work like Breath of the Wild though. Now, yeah, but I can see why someone like you would, like Grobert, it's just like, oh, I got myself into some shit, like yep, yeah, it's not you know, what I It's what I like about listening to a lot of real, actual play tabletop RPG podcast is the usually the people that are good at running those kinds of shows always make sure that when you do something and you the role doesn't go perfect, there's gonna be some fun consequences and it's sometimes it's gonna hurt your character, but it's gonna be it's gonna create for a better story. And I think Dragon's Dogmas has done that for me in most of my sessions so far. Yeah, I think of it like that playground game. It's not quite the tilted world, but you know the spinny joint where it's like it takes a little bit of momentum to get going, and then like as soon as you got it, you're like going and you're riding a high and then you get way too dizzy that you kind of got to skid to a stop. And that's been my experience with a lot of Dragon's Dogma two. Like I'll build up a lot of momentum, like I'll get a bunch of missions lined up, and then go across these random encounters and like the world feels really lived in and like dangerous at the same time, and then it'll come s getting to a stop where my camp will be interrupted in the middle of the night, and then I find out there are ghosts in this game, where it's like, how do I hit a ghost with my sword bone saw attack? And yeah, I want to love this game more. It's just maybe I just don't have a dialed in settings wise yet because it is crashing a lot. Did mostly stop. I had a lot of crashes in the early hours. I haven't had any no long time. And I love that. My last play session where I'm like, I'm gonna get this game one good as try to just put a performance patch. I doesn't fix everything, must get you some stuff fired up insta crash, I was like, ah, it's a good omen gi. Yeah, there it is. I came across one of the have you come across one of the sphinxes yet? No? That sounds like, oh, you haven't seen the sphinx Oh that's pretty cool. I don't want to spoil anything, but it is very cool. And then it just made me more confused about this game, where uh, I guess I wish I maybe had more context from the original Dragons Dogma of like, is this a thing I should be expecting, because everything feels so brand new and weird and scary. I really want to get to the point with a game, at least with Dragons Dogma two, where I am no longer scared of seeing a giant shadow dart across my screen because anytime I see it, I know it's a griffin and I know it's gonna fuck my shit up. Because then I went running the other way. I do love and hate the the more yappie ponds that will guide you to your objective and everything. One of them guided the whole party through a place where we were woefully unprepared for because there were maybe we came across like a yetty looking dude and then a bunch of lizards, and I'm like, guys, we can't we can't fucking handle this right now. Bone Saw is dead dead. And then I kind of just had to ditch everyone and just run to the town like a coward. Yeah, good move, Yeah it goes. That's how it goes. That's how it goes. Grub. I want you to stream this game more because I learned so much from the audience in that stream. Yeah no, and that is one of the fun parts about the game like that, and streaming is like we could just like do dumb stuff and then ask hey, how's this work, and then everyone usually has an answer it is. Yeah, it is interesting to sort of see like how there are a decent amount of games that have such a streaming shelf life, almost more so than playability by by yourself. I think I just think, like, yeah, the theatrics and what is potentially on display with a game like this where it's like it's performative, right, I think that's super interesting. And I don't think you know, I think that is developing into a genre in its own right in an interesting way. Well, I mean I think that like is definitely informed by early from soft games, and you know that this goes this concept goes before from soft games, but that's the recent thing that popularized it, and that is figure it out, or you know, we put a bunch of stuff in this game. You figure it out. Talk to each other, go online, look it up if you have to, you don't care, figure it out. And actually, and I think that sort of accepting that actually people talking to each other and once they once they're ready for the answer, them finding it on their own is a guaranteed way for them to remember it, as opposed to you know, Textbox at the beginning of the game saying how something works that a lot of people are going to drive with. But I'm I'm that stuff never you could see it online, But when I watch it on stream, when I see that stuff pops up, I can't process it. I just it goes right through. I leave it behind immediately. So I think that like that informs this idea of these games are maybe better played in a commutal way. And then what else, how else can that sort of manifest It can manifest in a lot of different ways, And now these games are maybe meant to be played in a way where it's like if you are streaming it or you're just talking to your friends on Discord, you could find out a lot more about it. I don't think this game needs multiplayer at all, but I would enjoy some type of message system because I think that would add to the dumb shenanigans in it. Oh yeah, sure that's something I wish more. I mean, God, Mario, yeah Wonder basically had that. So yeah, I actually think multiplayer could be cool, and it like, don't make it all focus but just like in a post game patch, like way down the road, they're like, oh, wait, figured out it made this work. I think that could be cool. I do think what you guys are describing is like the souls of this game, not the difficulty or anything, but just the playground game aspect of it, where you just you're gonna talk to your buddys buy and you're like, I found this thing over here. You're like, whoa, let me go figure out how to do that. I think that's neat. Yeah, yep. And finally, folks, we've gone to the last game here, and I'm gonna say it's the game of the week. That's the only one that I would accept this game of the week. This week, the game of the week is Mario Golf. Yah. Finally, it's Stay in the Sun grubbed. I'm assuming you put this on. Yeah, I've been playing it. I've been playing a lot of it on analog pocket. It did. It did come out on the switch on Nintendo Switch online. If you play it that way, it's perfectly fine. But boy, it looks really good on the handalog pocket on that screen, which is just ten x the resolution of a Game Boy color screen, So it just pops off of it in a really stunning way. That game is great, though, and we're talking about the game Boy Color one, so it's the early RPG from Camelot, and by RPG, it doesn't mean like it's some grand adventure. It's just you're golfing and you're improving your character by golfing, and you can challenge certain champions to match play. You could take tournaments on at different courses, but you're basically just going from thing to thing and golfing until you get better at golfing and then you're golfing some more. And I really actually liked the flow of it. It's very simple, very basic, doesn't get in its own way, doesn't like waste your time with a bunch of distractions or other side quests. There are little mini games you could do here or there, but it's like I remember like playing Golf Story and being like, oh, yeah, this is pretty much what Mario Golf was. Actual Golf Stories got way more distractions and stuff that kind of to pull you away from the golfing than you would than the original Mario Golf did. And it is like catching on in our circle a little bit. I know that Boniello had played it recently, and so when we were talking about it's like play it on the pocket, play on the analog pocket, and Dan started doing that, and Mike's been playing it. I've been play and I'm just very into it. I kind of like was giving Nintendo some some slack on this, like, oh, you know, it's hard to make an RPG for in these sports games these days, because it would require a ton more assets, a lot more time. It's like, no, you just got to arrange the assets you already have, because that's what that game did. It wasn't it wasn't some grand thing. It's just kind of putting a little structure around the golfing and it feels so good and I kind of I'm flabbergasted that they don't do this anymore. Yeah, it's it's kind of insane. I remember really wanting to, like Curse to Golf, which came out a few years ago. Yes, but there was too much going on, and I feel like, you know, maybe it's because of the time it came out, but Mario Golf just straddles that line of having enough systems and then just being golf. It's a good golf game. And it's good. Like the golfing is actually like you start like dialing in some chip shots and now I'm like, you know, one out of every five chip shots just go in from forty yards away or something like that. It feels great. Yeah. I think because of structure, people have always described this and the tennis game on Game Boy Color and the GBA variants as well. There always descround as rpgb as of like the structure of them, But really I guess it's more appropriate call them like adventure games. It's with a story. You're not necessarily building a character or anything, but they're just fun. It was your early idea of like, oh, if you have a leveling system, you're an RPG, which is what we said back then. That's why it became that. But it's like, you know, this is one of the early games to take that and actually do that, because eventually RPG elements were in everything. This is actually a very early example of what that looked like and play. It was a good idea. It's made me want to go down a rabbit hole of old sports games. And it doesn't necessarily only have to be on the Game Boy Color or the GBA. But if y'all have any rex and this goes extends out to the audience. Only any old sports games that you'll inion, NFL Blots, those two always always on the docket, Like NFL Street a lot too. NFL Street, I mean, NBA Street Volume two is the best. You know, oh, NBA Street Volutism one of the best games ever. Yeah. Yeah, But I feel like games fun to go back to. It's just easy to pick up and play just because it's like, you know, thing I do. Yeah. I think the Arcady stuff has this like endless tank in a way that the sim stuff does not. Oh yeah, for sure, you know. Yeah, that about does it. I think for games. Unless anyone has anything else they want to chat, I just want to shout out Zach in Chat talked about the Mutant League games more the EA Mutant League games. There was football. There's been a bunch of like efforts to do spiritual successors to those on Kickstarter and they've come out and they really haven't h caught on. I think there was a time and place for the mutant League games. Yeah, I think, if you because they were basically just like skinned versions of the old of like the NHL and the NFL. Yeah, I think so. I think if you had the arcady nuances it would they would go a long way for sure. But yeah, those games were ruled before we go to break. I remember I saw this at packs, but I didn't I forgot to say anything about it. Sports game kinda But have y'all seen bin ho or bin yo boards. It's kind of like it's fingersau Yeah, I saw that. I've seen that before. Yeah, it's b I n H. Like. I saw this at like a barbecue, and basically it's like a Yeah, you just set up a couple of pegs and then you take turns flicking a little soccer ball back and forth. It's neat, almost like foosball adjacent. Yeah, foosball adjacent, but like you're not moving any dudes, You're just like flicking it with your finger, right right right. I kind of want to get I kind of want to get one of these. That's the things. They're more expensive than you think. I when I saw I was like, oh it's that much. Okay. I like these kinds of games though a lot. Yeah, for sure. It's a summer camp where we played something similar to this, just not all week like Crossfire yeah, Crossfire was ahead of its time. Jan I did have one thing. It's it's gaming adjacent. I suppose it's I'm watching a TV show actually, which is rare for me, and you don't do that. I don't do that. I don't watch TV. I don't watch many movies either. The new Pokemon series post Ash is now out here in the US, and so I'm finally watching that, and that's just a good show, like not having the baggage of twenty five years of that dumb ass like finally being tell a more interesting story. But it's it's the newest in this way of kids shows, that our kids shows that also deal with issues that kids need to know about eventually, And I think that makes it more accessible for you know, the older fans like myself, but also the kids because like I don't know grub jerv helme out here. But like Bluey, I think is like kind of the shining example of that right now, where they'll talk about like divorce in a way that like kids can understand. That's kind of what they're doing on this show where like Leko, the main character, she like very clearly has anxiety, but like it's not just she's the anime trope of like, oh, I'm the shy girl. Like no, she actually talks about like she has internal monologues throughout the show of like, Okay, I'm scared, I don't know how to put my words out there so that people will understand them. And you take a second and like figure this out, and like just having that and having a show where you know, it's the biggest media property in the world, having a show that's like, hey, kids, are you like having the problems that Leko's having. Do you not know how to talk to people? Are you having trouble like communicating? That's okay, You'll get through it, like she does, like it's okay, we're all gonna work through this together. I just think that's really cool. That's really neat, and that is sweet. I appreciate that. Ye, And that's that's why I'm getting most sage. Like there's some fun stuff going on there with like the whole Pokemon storyline or anything like that. It is completely original, so, like I said, they don't have to like be tied to any of the ash stuff. But yeah, it's just cool that Pokemon has gone in that direction. What well, where do you watch this Netflix, Netflix, Netflix. Yes, totally, that sounded real. Do you guys see that graphic? Some I think a Pokemon company put it out of like how to watch all the seasons of the Pokemon anime from streaming services, And it was this massive list and it's like you can find these three on Netflix, you can find these on free v on Amazon, you can find these are prime on Amazon, and these are over on Hulu. It's like, what are everywhere? And it's it's hilarious. One of the reasons they have to do that because they just got rid of a Pokemon TV. It was a website and I got rid of it, right, Yeah, they got rid of it and it had almost that like not everything, but like a ton of stuff just all on one spot, and just they got rid of that because because of these licensing deals that have it everywhere. Now it's that's said, yes, Jeff, has thatone checked out? That that X Men rebooth my way, God damn good is it? I feel like, uh my wife actually watched it before. Yeah, when I got back from Boston, She's like, I watched the first two episodes just to I put have something on, like, yeah, I'll watch this. When I was a kid. Whatever. I didn't think I was gonna care that much. I was gonna have it on the background, and then I couldn't stop watching. Uh, there is some excellent stuff met with Magneto. They are tackling the politics just like X Men always did. The third their third episode was more action based and kind of you know, character driven, and that was also very good. I'm yeah, I'm all in. I think they are doing an excellent job of that. Cool. I'm stoked it's on Disney, of course, right, yes, Disney plus Oh my god, as an ex man, Oh my god. And then you fucking pitch an octave higher. Wait, someone told me they don't have the chime. Do then I have the bell? They did redo the theme song. I think it's still rips. It's still the church bell in it. I don't I don't remember the church can't tell you. It's not to make a break. I just want to know. But yeah, I'll have to check it out. I'm glad that the show is helping convince the world, or educate the fucking world about brilliance of Cyclopslops scout scene in his best scene in the in the whole series so far is uh I'm not going to abandon my child like my dad did, and then literally five seconds later, walks out of the room I can't be a part of this, and leaves the baby behind. But yeah, Cyclops, let's go. Yeah, I'm sure he's just narking on Wolverine. He is, Uh, he's pretty cool. And now there's well, I won't spoil it, never mind. Yeah, this is not spoiling. So that's how you know it's good. This is okay to watch it, would love it. But also it's like it's melodramatic enough where it's like that's happening here. It's definitely aged up a little bit. I think, Uh, there's you know, some cusses here and there. There's no like F words or anything like that. The only boy scout is Cyclops, I mean yeah, yeah, and the violence is a little bit tuned up, but it's still all well within yes, still, yeah, we'll check this out. Cyclops is so fucking cool in that first episode. I'm sure that's Cyclops has never been cooler except for him or verses kept on to yes, oh yeah in the back clip. I'm a little surprised that Jerff, you said you've heard some mixed things. I've heard nothing but glowing reviews. Is it the animation that rubbed people? Someone said it's like it's like very very clean in an off putting way, which you know, there's there's some boldlines you got to get used to. Yeah, yeah, but you know, nothing to deter me from from watching it. I'm going to check this out. The wolverine's voice. Yeah, that's the one thing that's like it's different enough that it takes a second to get used to it. I did get used to it, though. I love that he's a short king. That's how they made it. I feel like they made him shorterposed to be like four feet tall, right, is that like Danny DeVito? Right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah? Nice? This for is okay. I've loved the X Men. I've always loved the X Men. I think more so than the Avengers ever, because you know that's clear snick snickbub you know, bamf h. But I am so terrified that they're going to fumble the bag again when we get why when when they get to the movies, you know, like when when they hit the silver screen. Oh you think so they are going to redo X Men? Is that the course they are that's what they're trying to do with this whole Deadpool movie with the Pool okay, yeah, with the deep Pool. Oh, Deadpool is very much going to sad. That Deadpool movie though, looks pretty good. That trailer. Yeah, I thought it looked fantastic. I think a solid Yeah. The first one's good. The second one, I was pretty The first one was one of the few movies I was laughing out loud at theater. Yeah, but like I just mean, like, yeah, as a Deadpool movie, I didn't have much like reservations, but asked its ability to like get me interested about Marvel game, which I'm not like looking to do that. But when I watch them, like, oh, they're it looks like they're setting up some fun stuff for the MCU with this Deadpool movie. But I may be good in that level. I find this moment to be so interesting because the prediction that everyone collectively had of like Marvel overload, right, Marvel fatigue, MC fatigue whatever, It's obviously we're very much in the thick of it, right, Yeah, So it's like, how do you emerge from that primordial soup again and just sort of like make it tolerable? I mean, I think Wolverine will help that kind of like the answers coming back. I don't think the Fantastic Four is the answer. It's never the answer, Jane, It's never been the answer. Everyone collectively hates the Fantastic Four. I like the Bunch because I love teams and stuff. But again again also like old fashion, like Cyclops. Yeah, is a cool terrorist you to captain America? I just think it's cool. You're a unique Marvel person, is what I'll say. Oh, God, you know you're a bit of a bit of an island, is what you're on? Kracola, the island that they I don't know you're taking it to literally? But sure? Yeah? God I could talk about the X Men for I mean, like thing, I just feel like thing is always like can they just do it without thing? Can we like the worst part? Yeah? Give us like a what's your face? Missus fantastic movie? That's all I need. That's no, there's a Missus fantastic miss fantastic to the Invisible Girl. Yeah. Hey, I didn't wait, are they like together? I don't know if I knew that. Yeah, that's why they called the First Family? Is that? Okay? I have okay, invisible. Let me just me just put this out there. Vanessa Kirby is cast as the invisible woman. Yeah. That's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. God, yeah, Vanessa Kirby, very good, mission, impossible movies, just good in anything. Yes, yes, Well, we're all going to collectively just stare fondly off into the distance, and then we're gonna think about doing the news after this quick break. I wasn't that nice just staring off into the distance for five or so minutes. I feel fresh, energized, recharged. Let me tell you a sentence. I just said, okay, downstairs please. Oh the sentence was, and I repeat, Dad, the fucking shrimp ring you bought is leaking in the refrigerator. That's going well, I came out of my mouth. I'm learning that the back of our family appreciate. It's a good shrimp ring, dude, of the shrimp ring. A man carries like multiples under his arms wherever he goes. He is just in it to win it. You know, is Sweet Lou dipping them in like cocktail sauce? How is Sweet Lou consuming him? Oh? Yeah? He uh like a shrimp wolverine. He carries them between his nooks and just goes for the try dip and then just goes yeah, does tails. Though, No, he's not a monster, okay, Sean, unlike other people, he's learning. Okay, so there is a bit of overlap there, but Sean said it barely leave. So it's like, I'm still not overeating the shrimp tails. I still think I'm I'm fucking being had a little bit. But we'll find our way through that. Here's what we do, all right, Summer game Fest. One of the team dinners. We go to a place that serves shrimp. We slowly order shrimp for the table and then well it's like, you know, just to not arise arouse any suspicion here, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, can we get this shrimp for the table? And then we pass one over to good old Baiales and then we just like the side of our eyes, watch, yeah you want to get out, yes, because put on our lab coats because I think I maintain is a little bit of bullshit to this story. You think you think you're being worked. I think I'm being worked because I don't think anyone fucking eats the shrimp tails that are not like Tempore of the tempoor It. You know, oh got it? What I would I would pay so much money to get tempour it. Anyways, I don't know what that means. It's like Flash Fried, you know, cover me in batter Baby. Hello, I have news. I guess I guess. First, you guys see this content warning game popping off. I told you guys to download it yesterday. It was free. Everyone in the world did that. It's like massively successful. It is it? Just world content warning? Yep? Well, jan guess what. I predicted that, and I got your codes. I don't work yep. Don't you worried? I didn't block it out? Yeah, you're gonna be in Philadelphia and all that stuff. But yeah, that's that's popping up. That was a neat thing, like go free for twenty four hours knowing that you're gonna pop off on on Twitch and all these things and then sell a ton later. That's I bet we see more of that. Yeah. Uh, anyhow, let's get into the headlines. I do have here. Hollow Night Silk song has re emerged, so in one way or another's uh spoon Heaven itself made an unexpected appearance on the Xbox Store page on April Fools Day, surprising fans who had eagerly awaited updates on the game's release date. Despite the date of April fools, the page is confirmed to be genuine, although a release date is still not available. The game's Xbox Store page provides a prides and does provide new information, including an ESRB rating of everyone ten plus, which means they have submitted for a rating, which I suppose is good news for people who have been waiting for anything out of this game. But you know you're down bad when you're waiting for the ESRB rating. That's and I think that's just where Silk Song fans are are at right now. This game probably does re emerge pretty soon, but I don't know. It feels like it's coming out this year. Do you guys have any any guesses for where we'll see it, and we're getting relatively close TOGF SGF shadow drops guessing that's not bad. I would like that. That'd be cool and game pass like instantly after this uh press con. Yeah, that's a good points, like the tier of thing that like Killy could get as a shadow drop. You know, like everyone's looking forward to it, but it's still sort of that, like big indie realm. Like it was like, we'll give these daboscrabs again, like Bloodborne too, Shadow Drop. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, I mean usually when something gets a rating, it does come within the next several months. Not always, there's always exceptions to that sort of thing, but typically it's like, you know, six weeks, two months, three months, in that range. We'll see. I think by this summer we will at least hear about this game again. For the first time in quite some time, Embracer is done selling studios for now. Embracer Groups CEO Lars Wingafers announced the end of the group's a lengthy restructuring process, which resulted in job losses and studio closures. The devestments of Saber Interactive and Gearbox were key milestones in this process. Winge first emphasized that Embracer is not planning to sell any more businesses, as they are crucial for the group's of future growth. According to him, the Gearbox sale was primarily driven by negative cash flow rather than a lack of faith in the development team. Embracer will now focus on ips and projects where they can capture the most economic upside, the group has no immediate plans to resume its aggressive M and A strategy, So don't expect them to start acquiring studios anytime. I'm soon, which god I should hope, so please, yeah, please? So Okay, apparently they've reached some kind of equilibrium. They still do have several big developers, they have tons of IP I suppose we can expect them to start putting out games here pretty quickly or or what I mean, do you guys have any good hopes for Embracer going forward? Unfortunately? No, feeling great right now? Yeah, doesn't feel great. Yes, track record has not been inspiring. Yes. So they have like, you know, those deals to have Crystal Damics work on Perfect Dark with Microsoft. They have deals with Amazon to produce all kinds of Turmberator stuff, including Tom Rader games. So those kinds of things will definitely go ahead. And then they have like a ton of other smaller studios that are always working on a variety of games, and we hear about those, and every once in a while they come out like Space Marie and two is like kind of still half them. I think they're putting that out with Saber, even though Saber spun off like that's one I suppose, but even count that anymore. I don't know's it's a mess over there, But I kind of if they're not going to be selling off any more studios, and if they're not acquiring anyone, anyone and anyone else anytime soon, I kind of want them just to shut the fuck up, go away and come out, come back when you have games. Let's get to that point of embracer where I don't want to be in the news anymore. Just go make games and that's it. So we'll see Yakuza Kawami three will happen eventually. Masayoshi Yokohama Yoko Yama, the director of Rio Gago Toku Studio, has expressed the desire to create Yakuza Kawami three in the future, although he clarified that the upcoming like a Dragon game that they're making right now, is not Kawami three. Yakuza Kawami and Kawami two were remakes of the first two Yako Yakuza games, and we're released in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, respectively. Yakuza three Remastered was released in twenty eighteen on PS four and later on PC and Xbox One in twenty twenty one. Yeah, Kuza three's story follows Cure You and Sala Murma as they leave Kuma Road for the island of Okinawa to run an orphanage, but trouble soon follows. And I know all about that because they talk about it, and Like a Dragon Infinite well, I think this would be advantageous to do, especially with how much Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth has popped off, right, Yeah, I think they are gonna go and Kawami up all of these games eventually, even like so, the reason I think they have not done three previously is fans I think have mixed feelings about that one. Some I think many don't like three as much, at least as far as I can tell. I'm not someone who's in that scene at that time, so I don't know for sure. That's what I've been able to gather. I think coming off of Like a Dragon Infinitte Wealth though, Jan as you said, I think people are more curious about that stuff because they do a lot of great touching moments about this. So the game does a great job of reflecting on these moments. Having a chance to go back and play an edited version of these games to have some improvements. I think people would be very well, yeah, I insistists. Oh wow, thank you, thank you, Sean respecting your elders. I like it. I was gonna ask, all, do you think maybe RGG would think about perhaps like kind of consolidating some of these Kowami games versus like three being a full three remake remaster, especially if this one isn't looked at as fondly. That's like an interesting solution. They probably wouldn't write because then you get to sell another game, right, you can sell Kwame three in Kwami four, in Kawami five, and so I think they probably just stick it out. But you know, they could do the thing like the Dead Space remake did right where it's like, let's take some stuff that worked from the other games that you know, the zero G stuff wasn't in dead Space one, but it's in Dead Space the remake. They could do something along those lines, where it's like, let's bring some of the fun stuff from the other games and sprinkle it throughout Kawami three, even though it never showed up in the original game. They could easily do that. Yeah, And I think, you know, we talked about a little bit this episode of also last show about just you know, bringing back older games that are smaller in scale. I think doing this, you know, this all under the Sega umbrella. I it makes a lot of sense to bring back older games and just give them that freshco of paint, because once you bring them up to the at least like PS four quality level, like Capcom did with RI two and RI three, those games kind of just are immortal at that point. We don't need graphics that are much better than that. And those games still RI two remake was just twenty seventeen eighteen something like that. That's the game still scales incredibly well right here like six years later. Yes, yeah, if they keep doing that with these Kawami games, I think that's a really smart idea. Yeah, yep. It's kind of where a lot of these Jeppanese publishers and developers are at right now. We're like looking back at this catalog and be like, we have a lot of stuff that we can bring back. It's working for Capcom, lack can it work for us? And obviously they've done. They've had success with the Kwami games so far. I think they will continue to have even more success as the whole franchise gets bigger and bigger. Jim Ryan SAYSPS five is well on track to be Sony's most successful console ever. Jim Ryan, the once CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, has expressed optimism about the PlayStation five success. In an interview, he stated that the PS five is on track to be Sony's most successful console in terms of various factors including sales, player retention, and gaming experiences. Ryan highlighted the strong performance of the PlayStation Studios games on the PS five, indicating the PS five is delivering its best gaming experiences to date. However, Sony did fall short of its hardware sales target of twenty five million PS fives for the year ending March twenty twenty four. Of course, all of this is about Jim Ryan's done over there at PlayStation He's officially out. As of April first, he was no longer the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. Hiroki Totoke took over in his place. Who's basically, he's like five different jobs across all of Sony brands, but with a major focus on gaming at the moment. I mostly bring this up well yeah, the PS five futures one thing like the future of consoles. That's a conversation. What do you guys want to be in charge of Sony going forward? Do you think they need someone that can like figure out a way to make sure this brand makes a lot of money? Do you want to be a developer, someone that has like publishing ties. Who should be in charge? What kind of CEO does Sony Interactive Entertainment need next. I feel like PlayStation has such a lead right in whatever console war people insist that there still is that. I want them to just take the massive weird swings and green light odd things like they we have the PSBR two, which no one is making anything for. I want more odd titles like Humanity or just like the weird crap coming out on the PS three and the PS two. I want that. That's what they used to be, and that's what they got big doing was courting third parties of all shapes and sizes and having very diverse lineup. PlayStation has always had a slim first party. They have iconic franchises. Don't get me wrong. You know you gotta wars, your Rash and Clanksly Cooper's whatnot jagging dacks are uncharted, you know, not everything a naughty Dog, but they don't have like a ton of internal stuff being developed. It's more publishing partnerships and getting exclusives and everything like that. That's what they've been since the very beginning. You listen to them, I forget who would it have been talking about Mayo's jack trend or someone talking about the early days of PlayStation and how they they were frowned upon at Sony because it's like video games, Who the hell cares? Like, our video game division is small, You're never You're never gonna do anything. And they're like, so what do we gotta do? We just gotta get everyone on board, and so we need to talk to everyone and get all this stuff on And that's I think why we There are a Predictions episode earlier in the year and someone asked, like, who do you think is the least interesting the Big three right now? And I said PlayStation because they're not that PlayStation anymore. They could be, but I'm I just missed that they are doing the weird stuff that you brought up there, Jan And I think that's why I think every company needs someone with a good development background in charge because you get like your awatas in the seed, and that's how you get big swings that miss sometimes sure, but you get very creative stuff coming out of the company too. Yeah. Like I have no interest in another Days Gone title, right, zero interest. But if you told me that there was something new and interesting like or weird, like a new Katamari Domici or a Mister Mosquito joint getting the PS five, I'm like, all right, shows how you get stuff like Bloodborne. Bloodborne was a bit of a swing there, you know, like did their Tokyo studio is that what they're called Tokyo Studio or were called work Uh yeah, yeah, but Japan's thank you Japan Studio working with from self, Like that was a bit of a sway, and we think of it as just like you know, this iconic PlayStation like PS four game now, but no, it was slightly off left field when I was originally revealed, and that's that's how you get those classics. That's cool. I'm curious who you think grub Yeah, I mean, listen, I mostly agree with what Shawn has laid out here where it's like I don't know if there's a name out there, but like I look at like Boeing and how Boeing got in this situation. Obviously Boeing has people's lives involved, so there's a lot more it's a lot more serious than the video games to go here, but go on. I love the thing about Boeing's problem though, is like for years now, who's been in charge is people who are in charge of the money, people who are like, look, we need to like squeeze as much money out out of our products as possible. And there was a time when the person in charge of Boeing was an engineer. People who actually were in the like knew how the planes were put together and understood what it took to make a safe plane. And they haven't had that for a very long time. So now that they are looking for a new they're looking for a new CEO right now, they are very much going to put an engineer in charge. Next time they're gonna put a plane, They're gonna they're gonna yeah, yeah. And so I think Sony's in a similar situation. Jim Jim Ryan very much a money guy, someone who knew how to make money from this business. Had uh a passing interest in video games at best, and but he clearly was the right person for the time. But as they are now facing this future where they're looking down like, hey, we don't know what's next, they need to put a game person in charge, and someone who has actually done it it WoT is a very good example of that. Maybe that is Hermanholst. I don't know. Yeah, that was the first name that came to mind for me. But I'm glad you positioned it this way because I I would then challenge you and say, like, do you think uh PlayStation has the appetite to insert someone with that different pedigree? I don't that's that That's a very good question. It does not seem likely at this moment right now, I feel like they are probably going to go in the direction of having some one who is also a money person. Again, does seem Herman is your guy? Right? Like that? That would? I think he's a good candidate. Yeah, definitely someone who's who's rising up the ranks for a lot of good reasons. I mean, you know, he comes from Massive Triple A European style video game development, the very much the model that Sonya has already applied worldwide, and so maybe maybe it's a good idea to have someone like that that can like understand what the current big studios that you have need, well, that would that would be helpful, while simultaneuaneously every indication says that maybe that's not where we're headed the next Listen, they're not going to abandon that kind of making games, but they are they do need something else, They need something in addition to So that's where it's like, maybe you get a little bit more outside of the box, you know, I you know a lot of is the ideal choice where for Nintendo at that time where you're when you're looking at him and he's like I think there was a lot of questions when Nintendo put him in charge because it was like this guy just would make some games, Is he really gonna be able to run this massive corporation? And it's like, well, he is a game developer, very business savvy. Sure, he was a game developer, and so when he actually took over and understood the entire stack of what Nintendo was doing, that put them in a situation where they could respond and actually have some very interesting ideas. I think that that person probably is out there for Sony, But in terms of the appetite I don't know. It doesn't seem like they are going to go in that direction. Somebody in chat said Mark Serny, and I thought that was interesting. I don't, but I don't. Yeah, I don't think it's the p Yeah, I don't think it's like I think part of that leadership is like a certain aura that you exude, right, and like, yeah, where he's supposed to be. Yeah, total, he's yes, hardware tinker, kind of coming up with new ideas for her. I wanted Mark to have a soldering iron in his hand at all times. It's like a lab code and fucking bubbling like vials behind them. You know, you need someone who is I'm kind of blend because say what you will about Jim Ryan, and we could say a lot about Jim Ryan. But that is the era of leadership where we get stuff like PlayStation games on PC, which I think is a smarter way of explanding the business because the other side of that is the misguided approach of live service and look, you get your hell divers too. But as far as we can tell, everything outside of that has not been great for the company on the whole. We haven't seen a lot out of that, but we at least see like the last getting canceled and whatnot. So I think you need a combination that too. And maybe that's a cop out answer to say, yeah, you need the best of both worlds, but I really do think you need someone who can see both sides of the argument. And that's how they're gonna find this happy mill ground because they have the business every right now. They just need more of that, you know, not to be too cult here, but more human touch of just like someone who will be going out to these devs and saying, give me something weird, give me what was it the Shaun Layden speech where he talked about I forget what game it is, but he's like, yeah, it always saw a two million. But you know what we needed that we need more vib ribbon Princess that's up there, like those games. We need more of those one millions to round out the catalog. Otherwise you get your your Spider Man two's and then nothing else, and so things feel a bit bland. I think a lot of companies are going through that right now, yep. I mean I think that they need some stuff that can be small now and maybe can grow bigger in the future. If they were to treat it right, and they are not in a situation where they have any of those sort of like seedlings. At the moment, it is all the big stuff and that's it, and there's kind of nothing underneath, and you're gonna need someone creative to kind of come in and oversee that if you're going to have a solution to that, and right now they just don't. All right well anyway, Happy trails Jim Nyanh. Russia may begin making video game consoles Russia. President of Vladimir Putin has directed his government to explore developing video game consoles in Russia. The order, issued after a meeting this week, sets a deadline of June fifteenth, twenty twenty four, for executing the order. The president also called for developing an operating system and a cloud system for delivering games to users. Several high profile gaming companies ceased operations in Russia in twenty twenty two, following the country's invasion of Ukraine. I'm gamers make the world go around. If you don't have your gamer, the gamers on your side, you're gonna start shaking your boots. Like Putin is here, What does a Russian video game console look like guys, it runs on Vodkapawa. Yeah, it runs on Can you imagine it's just not going to like unscrewed like four and a fifth smearingoff in there and it just like themes like vaporous alcohol into the air and it gets yoursted Doc Bround's future car going put on up. There's like a bear logo somewhere. Uh uh huh. The reality is this like speaks to a deeper trouble in Russia. And I think it's one of the reasons, the underlying reasons of why he's probably actually doing this. If they can encourage your video game development and making a console, maybe they can improve their ability to produce microchips, something they fell behind on decades ago, which is one of the main reasons they actually lost the Cold Wars. They did not have the necessary from microprocessors to do smart missiles, and so they were falling behind very quickly. This is the reason that the United States just last year was like, We're investing fifty billion dollars in making microprocessors in the United States so that we don't have to rely on Taiwan, which is basically where all of the most powerful chips are made, everyone goes to TSMC, and that is in a precarious position and not just like from China, like you know, a natural disaster could disrupt that and then we would be fucked. Like those things are in every weapon ever made, let alone every other like consumer device. So yeah, video games does kind of like juice that makes like makes that world go around a little bit. So I could see this being sort of a strategic move to see if they can make that happen. Uh. The the bad news for them is no fucking way, not a chance in hell they'll be able to make a console June. Well, I mean even if I think we're to start the process by June, uh, there's no way that they're gonna be able to make something that can actually keep up with what is happening with TSMC or what Intel is going to be doing in the United States. It's it's just not gonna happen. I need a new console by June. To get me who's the god who's the rapper that had those consoles? Yeah, get me, Soldier boy on the phone. What are the Steven Seagal? What are the odds that someone is just going to order something off of Ali Baba and present at the poots and be like oh yeah, soldier, Like yeah, soldier, boys, back at it, Yeah boy, all right. Discord is rolling out ads. Discord is getting ready to launch its new sponsored advertising this week. Answered quests enable users to earn in game items by completing quest with friends, while on Discord, users must stream themselves completing and excuse me an in game task from the advertiser while at least one friend is watching to receive the rewards, So you're actually supposed to like stream it locally on Discord. Discord claims users can disable advertising in their settings. Discord has traditionally made money through its Nitro subscription service, which offers users at advantages like the ability to transfer large files, but despite its six hundred million dollars in yearly revenue, the organization fired seventeen percent of its workers in January. Discord CEO Jason Citron claimed that the cuts were necessary to sharpen our focus and improve the way we work together to bring more agility to our organization. Yeah, advertising is going to be in everything, like this is just this is the way the direction we're going. And if you have the eyes of millions of gamers. You're worth a lot if you can advertise to them. So this is just inevitable, surprised, it's kind of like working this way, and it's not just like like a big banner ad in the middle of your Discord server. But hey, I don't know, this is not too surprising though, right, No, no, no, this is the way it'll all go. I I kind of wish I don't wish this. Actually, uh, I thought it'd be funny if we just approached the Burnout Paradise method of just having in game updating billboards. Oh yeah, I kind of do want that. That's what everyone thought advertising games would be for the time. Like can you imagine like you're playing the finals and then like the cash in boxes next behind like a blue Choo billboard. Yeah, I mean, let's go the least intrusive, right, Like, yeah, I don't know, there's to get rid of the ads. You just blow it up. You can, you can blow up ads. That'd be all right, all right, last couple of stories here, Dragon's Dogma Dogma two has sold two point five million copies, and that's just since March twenty second, so we're talking a handful of days. Like a couple of a week and a half or so. That is really impressive for this game. It's kind of right in line with what Capcom's expectations were though, based on what they were predicting when they're talking about, hey, we're expecting to have a game that's gonna have a multi be a multimillion seller in the first quarter of next year. Here we are. It's doing exactly that the original game. Actually, if you can bind the sales of this game and Dragons Dogma one, the franchise is now at over ten million copies sold. So obviously Dragon's dog was a multiple releases of Dark ArisID as well. That's right, that's a good point, yes, exactly. So this is a massive new launch for a franchise that Capcom is kind of giving the goal up to and it's it seems like it's paying off, so not bad. Cool, And then Silent Hill two gets it's ESRB rate. Now oh I know. Now, okay, so there's more and more to this and this will be my own report and everybody, so watch out now. The upcoming Silent Hill two remake has been officially rated M by the SRB, which is not surprising given the franchise. Franchise is consistently graphic nature. The rating suggests that a release window might be imminent. I have heard that there will be a PlayStation something, either a State of Player or a showcase next month in May. So this is probably going to be there. I'm always saying, because of Fantasy, that's it. I I bet counterpicks Hill with the presumption that it was not going to come out. Yep, yeah, it's I. It does seem like it's probably going to come out this year. So yeah, I haven't looked at the Fantasy in a while. I should I should pick. Yeah. I fell off a little bit, you know, because I have a life, but also you have to break up the most often. You're damn right, I am. I'm living it both ways. Jeff Grubb, damn so good at it. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. The double dip, I am the No, wait, what did we we went over double dipping? I think we talked. We definitely talked about it amongst ourselves. I don't dan. Well, that was Boston, right, that was Boston? Yeah, mother fucker. Okay, yeah, we've got to relitigate that on Thursday. Oh boy, Yeah, you'll see Sean. Uh, yeah, I haven't. I've been kept up with it. I need to start looking around. Why you've not, You've abandoned your list as well, grub No, No, I'm doing very moments first place right now, and I projected to have second place, but I still thinks it's never accurate. No, but but listen, the blatro is really helping me out. Believe that that's the good stuff. I believe it because I played the demo before it came out. That's your welcome circles. Oh no, he's actually cheated this for sure. At least there's one person who has a negative score and none of us are that person. I believe that person did that and behave what does she counterpick? She picked foam Stars. I was like, I'm gonna shut up because I'm counterpicking. So, yes, you got to you got ten points from that ten points. Yeah, I didn't need nothing to do it. It's I think I think Tales of Kenzara Instellar Blade are gonna help push me. Yeah, both of those. Okay, interesting. Yeah, I've only had one game game reviewed so far. Do you have Harold Hallibit back? Okay, that's that's the next game that gets released on the schedule here. So I've had two okay, okay, well uh, anyway, well we'll do an update on that here pretty soon. But Silent Hill two is probably gonna happen there, and there's probably gonna be you know, does that game have a date yet? I can't. I don't believe it does, right, So that's why I'm like, that's why I brought up the PlayStation thing in May, because it's like, yeah, if they're if they're not going to announce a date by then, at that point when that thing is happening, I would almost assume like it's a guarantee that we get a date for this game at that thing. So and so, yeah, I want to play it, like you know, I absolutely want to. So I'm excited. I just wish it came out in January of next year. But yeah, that's your your Jeff Grubbs summer game. Miss update there. I've heard both the Showcase and maybe Stay to Play. It seems like it might lean towards Showcase. It's definitely in that timeframe when they did the showcase last year. All Right, I guess maybe I missed something here, But to challenge you a little bit, did you. I don't know if you linked these two together. Are you like anticipating Silent Hill to being at the Sony thing. I'm anticipating that. I don't know that. Okay, gotcha, gotcha? Yes, thank you? Yes, but but yes, you know, now we have this news and then I've been hearing a bunch of times. Now, as far as we know, PlayStation doesn't have a lot for the rest of the years. So yeah, I wonn't be surprised to see more partnery stuff like this partnery stuff. Yep, I bet they'll have plenty of partnery stuff to do. They're spending money on that stuff, even though you know they try to spend money to get the first party stuff going, but they you know, it can only go so fast. What they can't do is bring in some more of this partner stuff. So yeah, I would expect a showcase along those lines. You know what, Sony, here's what you do. You just put a pine up apple upside down outside of the office and then you can just have multiple partners as much as you want. That's right, That's how the code goes. Absolutely fantastic. That does it for the news and the shows. Once again, Yours well, you know, we're we're gonna we're gonna take this show. We're gonna go behind closed doors and confer with each other, and then we're just gonna put a squash outside and then see what happens. And we'll see what happens after the break. Pineapple upside Down O Cake is a real swinger. Emails turns out the squash Gords in general. Just draw out emails and you can send emails to bombcasta giant bomb dot com. Send all your emails and I read every one of them. I'll put a star next to them. Uh. It makes grub feel some type of ways. You know you've seen some ship on this website. You still have just the only one in front of me. There's like a pack somewhere that has a bunch of unopened I had no idea where that is anymore cool. The kids kept getting into them. That happens. Yeah. Uh. First email today comes from Dan from Sweden and they write about Chinese handhelds. Hey guys, I've ordered in Abernik to play game Boy and sn S games. It can run PlayStation one, but the screen is tiny. Can you think of any PS one games that would play well? On a one and a half inch display. What Amberding did you get with a done point five inch set? That's like, oh, I'm just processing that one point has a bigger scream. What the fuck? There are some micro handhelds out there for I mean, I got one of my key Shane. I've definitely I've shown you guys that before. I think I have a key chain game boy Chinese handheld that's like this big and it flips out and a screen. I think it's like an inch or something like that. Pretty okay, what what what would be good like jet Moto? I mean like no, you need like maybe like uh columns? What was well? No, that was that was Genesis? What was uh p s one games? Yeah? That the game gear, the little micro game gear I got, which I always lose that. I think that's a one point five inch screen. It's a very small screen. The reality is you ain't going to be playing much on there. You're just not. Yeah, you have it as a as a as like a conversation starter exactly. And that's what the keychain thing is. Yes, in the game gear if you're trying to like for for shoot play some games, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Grand Tarismo, something like kind of like plotting Racer. Yeah, what was the irritating stick? Playing Yloy and Super Nintendo games would even be a little yeah and nothing. I can't imagine anything going over well in an engine A half screen? I mean, how big was the screen on the game Boy Micro? I think that was like two and a half? Man really, Okay, what was the what was the console you guys are talking about the other day, You're like all jazz on it from Amazon or something like that. The me you Mini Plus that I got for Janachoa, and then Tam Tam got influenced. He got one for himself. Explained to me, like why anyone with an analog needs this? Well, you could play, so the cores for analog are pretty good. Uh but I don't know if like either fully there yet for like PlayStation and Saturn and stuff like that. Yeah, I think they're probably close. I don't know about playing PS one on something like that small that feels weird to me. I know there was to me, it was not that small plus No, I mean even that, Like, I just I like playing PS one my Steam ducky it looks great, and the screen on the Mew Mini pluses like the whole front. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I guess I just don't understand, Like, is it the cores are better on it simulation, so it doesn't doesn't use that PGA, so it can do more than the analog pocket, but it, you know, it technically runs worse for those older ones. It's a trade worse. Yes, some some will run worse. Some will run just software emulation will never be as good as PGA emulation for those systems. Yeah, but but some software emulation is like as good as the original. Just even cycle accurate is a bit of a misnomer. It's not actually psycho accurate. That's why PGAs exist, right, but the perception is going to be like, no one's going to really preced the difference is what I saying exactly. That's why these emulation handles are so popular. You're right, is just they can do more. The other aspect backlart is a lot of these just come preloaded with everything. Yeah, I don't care, and it's awesome. It's not, but we don't care. You just shut your mouth, take it. That's that's on my calendar blocking list. Just shut your mouth, shut your mouth, and just take it. Winky face. Yep. Uh they're also they're just cool and cute and I think they're they're fun, but you do not you do not know one absolutely, I think for the casual gamer in your life, or maybe like a cod bro friend. I think it would make a good stocking stuff for down the line, yes, definitely, or even like Mike was talking to us the other night where he wanted a handhelding is looking for a recommendation, and I was like, why don't you just you have, like you know, seen the deck Roger rally And He's like, because I travel enough that I do want something that I can literally just put in my pocket. Yeah, like an old handheldm okay, we put that way. My analog pocket is like nice and kind of expensive, and these things are like fifty to eighty dollars and that's not like throwaway. But I feel much better about like throwing them, throwing them in my pocket where I might have like maybe left my keys in my alid pocket. I just do you feel real bad. There's also those are readily available, whereas as are intentionally me MANI plus I got day one delivery one day delivery on Amazon for Leo got mine for jam yeah, ch analog is all about the hear official scarcity baby yeah yeah. I had to get mine from Alex h Yeah uh ok dokey. Next email comes from Aaron in the USA. Aaron writes in about being downstairs. Hey, friends, When I moved into my new house a few years ago, I was able to convince my partner that the best location from my PC is upstairs in the main living room where everyone generally hangs out. Three years later, they grew tired of the ugly desk, so I was forced to move the computer to the basement. Now I never play on the thing because the basement is like a million miles away. Any ideas, I'm thinking maybe some sort of streaming connection to the upstairs TV, but this doesn't really solve the problem since I would be taking over the TV to play games. Is the only answer to cloister myself in the dark basement? Thanks in advance, you shelter yourself away. What are we even talking about her, Aaron, I don't understand your problem. Your problem is Your problem is not a PC gaming based, it's living room based. Your problem is that you don't want to take up, uh, you know, the living room area to play your games, so it doesn't matter your choice is that of one. You must you know, banish yourself away to the dark tomb of your basement. I'm sorry, Like, can what's there? We do this? Can the Giant bomb cast be responsible for normalizing the two TV family room? Yeah? No, listen why I I think and Greg have it? Yeah? Probably Look look, look, look you can do this. I have a friend who has a uh not the living room, but basically the basement is set up like this, but their basement has turned into their living room because of uh well just how many fucking TVs they have down there? Right? You, Look, you can do whatever you want, but I think you will really run into a lot of like wonkiness because I do think at the end of the day, you have to work there. When you add two TVs to a room, sound cross sound becomes such an issue, right head of course, right, but then you're but then you're doing all these work around the fucking mcguy for things to like but the one TV is just like Speaker had that. Hey, listen, that's a real solution right there. Obviously audio is the big thing, but you just got to like have a system where it's like no, the one TV that that is on with the television show that gets the sound. And then if I want to hear my game, I have to wear my headphones. Yeah. Yeah, that's like built into the console. That's very simple. And then this crazy opportunity for us to like play co op games side by side, sit on the couch together. Yeah, which is truly the most romantic thing I can think of. So this is like, you know, rekindling across America. Keep in mind that part of the problem here is that this person is a PC gamer. Yeah, that's the long wires exist it is. Yeah, you know, that's not a problem. I would that was the first thing I was thinking of before Aaron mentioned Uh, you know, the situation Maut just sort of like taking over the living room is like get yourself some long ass wires and run them up to your living room from the basement. Like I think the real answers here are you got one or two things. Either you own that gamer cave and renovate the basement or steam deck or divorce. I'm not Chad who was screaming, but listen, but yeah, okay, no, I want to be clear, like I'm not against a two or even three television family room Like that's fine, you can absolutely that. But I also don't think I think people you know, if you are okay with like living with an inelegant mess, that's one thing, but like to really do it well and to do it right is an undertaking. What about Yeah, I really I've been eyeing those espress home monitors or screens like the one you got backlar, like a little Jimmy jams that you just plug into the switch. Ye. You know what if you make like an exit row airplane situation where you just flip up that screen from the side of a couch and TV just the gaming monitor. I am a big proponent in para parallel play. You know, your partner your wife can be watching whatever and then you're just there too, just silently gaming. Body doubling. Right, you know what, the living room of the future starts here, Naja. It brings that up if you just like want to if the big deal is that you want me in a living room for a comfort, you don't necessarily want to like interact with your partner, I think actually get it like a quest three and virtual desktop, like I genuinely do that sometimes where I just I want to block out fucking everything, just like kick back in the chair, listen, I go. But I have a family, and if I did that around them one they would never leave me alone. They'd be like, you look weird, and the kids would be like, my turn, my turn, my turn. I'm like no, I'm just like my documents aren't here, there's nothing fun, leave me alone. I think the two TV setup is less strange than having a man sit there in a VR headset. Well, ultimately, if the PC was in the living room like a decent sized mod or on a TV is basically two TVs. So yeah, I do think all right there, why not? You know, don't forget too write, Like you know, sometimes the thing you're playing like doesn't work well if you're someone who's watching like an NFL playoff game next to it and you're just sort of like trying to have an intimate moment with a game, like, it's not always going to be there. There are very there are a number a certain kind of relationships exactly. Yeah, it's not the one where you'd be like, hey, can we can we pause this? Like would you mind watching this with me? Like it's kind of a baby Like, yeah, I think it's contracting for people too, you know, like, uh, there is that like could you watch a serious movie while you know, dib is playing Fortnite next to you? I don't know, probably not. You'd have to like if we're watching a serious be one TV when we have pick and choose. Yeah, I just I don't like being alone away from everyone in my basement playing games while they're up in the family room. I do feel bad. I'm like, and I have broached the subject of of hey, can we maybe put two TVs in here? She's like, fucking no way, what's that? What's that based off of? Just like too weird? We're not that family. It would be like too weird in the setup would be. I think it's also hard to imagine it because we have the like the seventy inch to like TV kind of like right in the middle exactly room of there, and it's like, what would that even look like? Yeah, it's hard, That's what I said. When when you need to be very smart about how it's designed, because if you have some thing that's like like I said, and you know, in elegant and kind of like cumbersome, it's it could it could destroy the vibe of that room. You know, Yeah, exactly, it's a risk. Here's what you do, grub. You build an arcade cabinet tabletop style, so the table is just the TV. I really do want one of those. Really, I've always wanted one of those. I think my favorite time it was ever taken to the bar by my grandpa when he was supposed to be watching me, was he just sat me down at a tabletop arcade machine and just gave me a coke and I sat there all day. Yeah. Next email comes from Sam sam Wright said, Hi, guys. On the recent voicemail Dumb Truck one oh nine, Dan and Jan were raving about Backler's remarkable Excel skills. So you guys might be interested in knowing that there are esport Excel tournaments Yep, and they are crazy. The league is called Financial Modeling World Cup and they have points, world rankings, and live events. These events are designed for contests since the showcase or excel prowess through solving various case studies, all in front of a live audience. When I first saw an event, I thought it was a joke, but after watching it seemed they were earnest and the level of skill on display was nothing short of astounding. I learned so much about pivot tables and macros and I started incorporating them into my meager Excel skills. I've included a link to the video. Blah blah blah. However, it's over three hours to be prepared. Best wishes, Sam from London, England, not Canada. I peeped this. It's witchcraft. I understand. Awesome, it's so cool. I mean, you know, if you can find that kind of fun in Excels, I'm glad there's a place for people that find that much fun in Excel. Spread cheese. Also, to be clear for everyone listening at home, this was not like no expert level excels it excel. This was like he excelled entry level formulas and you know cheff conditioned, conditional formatting and shit like that. She have changed to number here and it made the big number go small. Oh my god? Why just really? And there were different colors way that I cannot describe, like literally like a day one in the class coming from the guys who don't know a fucking calendar is Why is this not surprising me? I guess this is like showing a caveman a lighter. I get it. It was like Plato's allegory of a cave like back. Largest showed it and like Dan and I were like, oh wow, and then we're just never gonna do it ourselves. Uh. Two more emails, This one comes from Calvin and Calvin Rights in about Wingspan. Calvin wrightes agiine bomb Crew after hearing Jan praise the board game Wingspan on multiple episodes. I finally got around to playing it with my partner last night. I thought it was great. However, my partner started comparing it to the complexity of Magic the Gathering and then got mad that I almost doubled her final score when I was on multiple occasions making terrible plays to give her the w Jan, I know you've introduced this to a bunch of friends. Would you say you've been successful in onboarding each friend onto Wingspan or any other board game? Also wanted to recommend, if you haven't tried it already, the game Scythe It has a lot of similar mechanics to Wingspan, but has a cooler steampunk alternative history vibe with mech building. Also Pandemic Legacy Season one is the all time game to play with a significant other. Thanks for reading and love the podcast. Calvin from Melbourne, Australia. This is always the biggest challenge with board games, right is onboarding your friends because then it's like at least thirty to forty minutes depending to get everyone to settled down to understand the rules. For whatever reason, Catan in Wingspan folks have had a little bit more patience because I think they like they are also hearing the hype of it. I don't know any all social circles, but for whatever reason, last year, primarily during like the peak pandemic, people would not shut up my social circles about Katan. Oh really yeah? And then like I posted, like on Instagram, uh, like a photo of like Emmy and I playing Wingspan, and and I had like a bunch of friends being like, yo, what is that? Why you got a bunch of eggs? Dog? What is birds? What? Mike did buy the Mega Man Dice game from packs Now he's telling me and chat I gotta play it with him, right, I probably go over for WrestleMania. He was like we were walking in the group and all of a sudden he's just like I'm going to go back to that megaon game. Okay, there he goes, he's gonna go by, all right, cool, see you buddy. I think Got Catan is the one I played. Uh the first time I played that was on the PAS train to Next East, like to years ago. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, me and my friends are big into like thirteen years ago at this point. Yeah. Have you all seen competitive Catan on on like the Internet. It's insane, like people talking about their build order and just like tile, the placement is insane. But it's just it's gonna be a challenge to get your friends into a board game. I think setting aside a board game night and have it setting the expectations like, hey, this is a new game. It's a little bit complicated, but once you get going, it's gonna be fun. And you, as the more experienced player, kind of have to temper your expectations when you're going into it that like your friends or whoever you're playing the game with is gonna make a bunch of boneheaded moves or like head scratching moves that it's like why would you play that bird there? That makes no sense, you idiot. But the neat thing at least where I live. There's been a lot of board game cafes popping off, so you know you can find some like minded folks, play some pub games with some people. Cool. Yeah, it's neat. That's the most important thing, is not everyone's gonna be a board game person. Yeah, just you can never force that. You just always be mindful of you know who you're trying to into this fold. But once, now that things are slowing down, we will do that board game week here at Giant Bomb where we get a upf and get either tabletop simulator. People recommend it like a website that's like much more organized that has like you just like find all these games on there. Maybe. But in tabletops we can like flip tables and ships, and the danger of someone flipping the tail at a second is very fun. Okay, that's a good point the drama. I spent a good deal of time in the back packs East area with the tabletop stuff, and I found out to be a very interesting Oh yeah spot. I played a little bit of uh poetry for Neanderthals with Abby and Vinnie. You know that is like this party game where you can only give clues in one syllable words. Oh that's cool. Yeah, so you so you sound like a cave person. That was pretty neat. I like that a lot. Yeah, I was. I was really like blown away. And you know, you rent the board game and you like then you like hold up a sign for other people where are like, I'm looking to play, come play with me, and they like put the put the top of the board game on the top of the cone as a sort of like peacocking event, which I thought was interesting. It was cool, it was, It was definitely very cool. I was telling Backler when we were like making our way through that that I hope people are actively falling in love over dude. I said that too, I said it in a much more inappropriate way, but right, like, I hope that's what happens, right, Yeah, you know, yeah, there's definitely some kids that are gonna be named Katan. I'm just like it has to happen, just like by the by the Numbers game. Yeah, there's so many. And then you put that cone ups and I'm looking for I'm looking not only for someone to play the game, but I'm looking for love. I'm looking for love in all the right places, am I right? I guess ever think about Chris Catan. I do like, yeah all the time. Of course that was the all those responses to what I was expecting Sean. Now you guys like, yeah, me too, Sean. Sean doesn't know who Chris Catan have literally no idea. Yeah is right? All correct? No change nothing about Yeah like Roxbury, I think about a lot. Yeah, think about that movie a lot. Whatever. Yeah, I'm a big snl mark like I used to watch the show all the time. All right, final email, save him the best for last. This is about hockey. Hey, greetings from Roossville, Russeville, Alabama. Russellville, Alabama. There's hockey and Alabama. Let's go. Hey, I'm not gonna take the geography quiz because I know I'm gonna fail. Yo, Jeff and Jeff, Hi Jan ethnic DApp I'll accept it. Ey. Recently made a new friend that's into hockey. As a good friend, I started watching some games. I'm very much enjoying it so much. I wanted to pull for a team. I've got some options, but I'd like to have some advance on advice on who to commit to, as will define the rest of my life as a sports fan. WHOA, Yes, this is true. Yeah, that's how it works. Option one the Avalanche my friend who got me into hockey, and I don't want to seem like a bandwagon because I know they are very good. No, they're very good. Pick them, I'll pick them. Option two the Arizona Coyotes. Oh, come on, I spent a lot of my life in Arizona, and I felt that connection when I watched their game against the Capitals, winning six to two with a disadvantage of with two disadvantage goals. I don't know what that means. Winning six to two with two disadvantage goals. It's going to be on the powerplay. It's got to be talking about penalty kill or something. Yeah. Okay, well look the lingo will come mind blowed emotion. Either way. I'm into the sports. I love the hype. Can't believe I've missed out on it for so long. Open to other suggestions, I e. Predators, since they are the closest your geologically to me. Now geographically I believe is the thanks it's fine, smiley face emoticon, there's nothing to think about. Pick the Avs if it's your buddy, like they're gonna They're awesome. They they're good ownership, They have the great GM the Coyotes. Future of the Coyotes is so up in the air, right, But being a fan of a team that's about to move can be fun because complaining about sports is half the fun. So you'd like, the fuck they're gonna fucking move this team? Heeces a ship betraying us. It does sound like in the next five years there will be a team back in Atlanta again. Yeah, and I wonder, you know if the Coyotes are that are that team? It's just Arizona like apparently hates anything fun, or at least that its ownership does. And what's his name from Arizona? Fucking the Maple Leafs goalscorer whose name I should be able to remember, Matthews from Arizona. Yes, what's wrong with Arizona? How do you not have like a native son? Like it's the best goal scorer alive? I don't know. Look, Arizona has its own problems. I don't know. It's got to figure it shit out. The Coyotes, I cannot. I will be surprised if they're still there in five years. It's really questionable for that, don't do the Coyotes abs are probably right if you want like a if you want like a new team, I think the Kraken or the Golden Knights could be fun too, because it's like, no one can accuse you of jumping on the bandwagon. They're two young of teams, so it's like, yeah, you're just deciding, no, I'm a fan of them now. It's also okay to do that. It's also okay to be a front runner, I think, yea, yeah, totally, that's true too, Like enjoy the things. It's okay. Yeah, Abs and Abs are gonna be good for a really long time. Cup this year, have some fun? Would I would also choose the Avalanche, even though I'm a red wing standard that's blasphemy. Ye How many hockey teams are there in thirty two? Okay? Well in America twenty eight or twenty six, and there's eight or so, six or so in Canada. Do we play with Canada? We play nicely with them, Okay, cool? They haven't won the Stanley Cup and forever, so it's really nice. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic. That about does it for emails? Gents, What do we learned today? We learned a lot about soul searching. We learned about old men and aging, and we also learned that it's okay to be horny on the internet. We said goodbye to Roeblocks. I made an inappropriate joke inadvertently about cups and Anna Kendrick, and I apologize to the Kendrick camp. We talked a lot about making wild swings and swingers. I guess that's the next chapter in giant Bomb Today. I also want to wish Happy trans Visibility Day to our trans friends out there. We stand in the show, we see you. And also we just talked about hockey and other sports like Mario golf. What we got going on the rest of this week at giant bomb dot com is normal stuff. No black Club today or tomorrow, I should say, but gay mess mornings for the rest of the week. Grub did a very good great tech and eight stream yesterday Thursday. We might get some stuff popping off voicemail, dumber will popping off as always. Game mess for the rest of the week. Upfbcr happening as well. Grub and company. We'll figure that out. And Dan and I are headed to WrestleMania, where you expect a bunch of WrestleMania related content pre and post podcasts Shenana Jans all over the place. I've been Jan, he's been Jeff. He's also been Jeff. He's been Turbo Sean. And that's been The Giant BombCast, Episode eight hundred and thirty four. We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant BombCast. Until then, I love you. It's April. I can't fucking believe it. We'll see you then. Bye. Five podcast points to everyone. Whooo you get it? That brings me up to five. Do your taxes? Do your taxes? Shit,