Giant Bombcast 07/14/2015 (Premium)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. It is July fourteen, twenty fifteen, and you are listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm Brad Shoemaker with me Jeff Kursman. Hello, Drew Scanlon. Hi, fresh off the road, back from the sunny reaches of southern California. Right, I'm so tan. Dan Reicher say there, how are you doing great? Yeah? Yeah, after Friday's Taco Bell binge, Yeah yeah, and I had a gun on Saturday. Oh god, how could you? Because there's a billboard that said they had a taco fiesta at my local time. Okay, so I showed up, but then there was no fist. That's why I just ate Taco Bell. So yeah, the phrase taco fiesta would be hard to resist, isn't the whole thing. It's just like every time you go there, there's a taco fiesta, you just have to order the tacos. No, it's said from eleven to two they were gonna be giveaways food and music, and it had like a radio station logo on it. Oh, they're doing some crazy fun party at Taco Bell tomorrow. So they just lied. Yeah, I just went there. There's no banner, there's no fiesta, So it was bottomunch of taco bell. Hey, the taco fiesta lives inside you always. It's where every turn, always, meaning it's never gonna come out of you. I'm okay with that stuck in there. Okay, it's like chewing gum. Once you eat a double decker taco it's in there for seven years, gonna come out of you. Let they go on Friday. You guys ordered delivery taco bell. Yeah, it was not as good as getting a taco bell fresh from the bell. You want it fresh. Yeah, it's a taco bell begins to deterior if the second that it leaves the establishment. I find driving away from the taco bell back to where I lived, where I eat my taco bell oftentimes too much time. Yeah, the case of Dia was a little funky. It was that kind of flipped inside out at parts. A couple of those double deckers were like wet, like it was like kind of dripping from that's that's the thing, like as someone who goes to the drive through it when I have wall butter, was the last time I went to taco bell fucking forever? But uh yes, driving taco bell across town, you get a lot of wet food. I imagine it like the vapor comes out so steamy, like it just yeah, everything gets a little damp. And also the only one that delivered was the tenderloin Taco Bell, so I have to imagine that's not the highest quality Taco Bell in the area. I ordered one of everything from the Taco Bell menu one time delivery with did you Postmates? When did you do this? I know this is the new official one? Oh wow, yeah, they officially postmates one of these. Fancy. Uh. I want to say I've told this story before, but I ran a a half marathon with obstacles adventure races. Yeah, called the urban Athlon like a tom Streets of San Francisco mud Yeah, zero mud, but more asphalt. Anyway, in celebration, HO order one of everything and then me and my friends ate it all the dark secret It all tastes the same. Yeah, that's all the same ingredients. They have fun, they're just different configurations and the let's try this one, but they find the same let's try this one. They find new fun ways to do it. The crunch trap is like an octagon thing. The girl stuff Nato is a triangle, but it's all you just put in your mouth, and the show's different fun. It's different fun ways to put the best food on the planet in your face. I'm completely fine. I did like the dorito thing. That's stupid. You know. I actually not huge on the dirita loco taco. I'm they're too salty. It's just salty, and it doesn't taste like a god damn derrito. It's just kind of like a dusted taco. I'm not not big on it. I went there day. I went to the Dusted Taco every day until they closed. They lost their liquor license because they kept serving miners, and then they had to shut down. It was a real bummer. That's still my favorite bar all time. Bouncer is a good guy. Yeah, yeah, Earl, I do day one. Whenever they have a new minu item or anything, I always go to Taco Bell And I've been disappointed several times. The Drita Loco the breakfast. I'm always there, like right away, like I make an ex appointed to get up early and get there. The day they introduced something, the breakfast was ship It's not good. I changed it. But yeah, I heard the news stuff of the chicken biscuit thing was. That was the last time I went to a taco Bell was after the chicken. I went there once and got one and it was not the word. It was better than their old breakfast. Yeah. The waffle taco was super gross. Wait, yeah, did you say the word biscuit? Yeah, it was a piscerved big pridly serve bread of any form. Yeah, it's a it's a breakfast biscuit with a big piece of chicken on it. You can get it with honey or with gravy or like white gravy. I assume they were required by law to deal only in tortillas. No, I don't care. Man, all right, it's understandable. He used to sell burgers. What the bell beefer? What that was like? That was before my top thought. That was Del Taco's angle. Yeah. Did you ever have McDonald's selling pizzas here? That in Kansas? While early nineties they're pretty good, mc pizza was never sold out here. I got Mick Lobster in Canada. I want to say, yeah, I think in Canada that's like their mic rib It's like once every every once in a while. Yeah, after that lobster corn dog, I had a few weeks ago. Corn dog. Yeah, that's that sounds. Oh you weren't here. It was at a county fair, that sounds yeah, it do not. No, nope, no county fairy got to go to or state fair Minnesota. They know how to do step. It's just deep frying everything. And it's exactly like everything you hear about state fairs. It's deep fried Snickers ice cream, deep fried type of deep butter deep last week yeah, yes, oh yes we did. Yeah yeah, what did deep good problem for July discussion? Right, yeah, I knew this sounded familiar. Yes, it certainly does lamentably. I want to lead off with news this week. Yeah, because, as most listeners of the Giant BombCast have no doubt heard by now, Satoru Iwada of Nintendo passed away at the tragically young age of fifty five over the weekend. Yeah, and I want to talk about it. Yeah, that was it was would have been Saturday, yes, yes, I guess he passed on Saturday. They only made the announcement fairly late on Sunday. And well it would have been Monday. It would have been probably business. Yes, yes, I didn't even think about that, but yeah, and kind of in Kyoto characteristically, uh, kind of taciturn and like the driest manner possibly or possible, just kind of like public corporation like sort of flat. I mean, it was notice of change in leadership. Yeah, yeah, it felt like that. It looked like a filing of a corporate document. Its like say, hey, we're a public company and this thing has happened. Yeah, and you know, I'm sure they were required by a law to do so or yeah, yeah, or there's some stipulations in place. But uh man, who saw that coming? Well, I know, I know, you know the hindsight twenty twenty and I'm sure we have all gone back and looked at the articles and stuff. Well there was I guess year, you know he had missed E three and twenty fourteen because of health concern right, but did they say anything specific about like the bile ductor. I went back and they had to say, like after E three last year that that's why he missed it, because that was out there. He underwent the surgery right around the time of the three last year. But then coming out of that, you know, he'd seemed fairly upbeat, which yeah, of course, of course he would be about about the state of his health and his prognosis. Yeah, yeah, but you know, they kind of hadn't touched on that in a while. It wasn't really something you thought about. And like, you know, they ran a direct as expected at at E three, right, and and he was not president at E three this year, and they kind of said Leo and I think that it was one of the things you could look at and go like, well, this fits into a Nintendo's strategy. The show is not quite as important as you know, as it once was, exactly like they're they're treating it with the appropriate level of important, exactly what I thought. Yeah, when when they said he wasn't gonna be there, like they don't have a press conference, they don't need you know, he can prerecord that stuff, and that's that. It's it's a done deal, right, It's like, yeah, they got mobile stuff happening now in a new platform coming, He's probably super busy, right, But in actuality he was very unwell. Yeah, but yeah, like I just wanted I feel like when I saw the news, the feeling my stomach indicated to me that there was a certain like, you know, I don't know him, I never met the guy. It's like, it's weird to say this about somebody you never met personally, but like he just seemed like such a likable, approachable guy, you know that the like the way that my stomach kind of dropped when I saw like Dan send a message out on Slack just saying like, wow, you want to just passed away? Yeah? And I was just like that that should not have happened, Like this is an awful loss, right, And he seemed like a really like a good person, but also like a a good figure in the industry, a positive influence and role model for like, you know, someone in charge of a giant corporations, not not just for Nintendo, yeah, but but yeah, also somebody who would kind of internalized like the important aspects of like why people love this medium so much? Yeah, I have so devoted to this hobby. He always seemed to me to be like very evenly split between that kind of you know, that almost ruthless Japanese devotion to kind of the efficiency and and and you know, representing that style of business while also still kind of having that foot and like realizing that it's the video game business and there are certain aspects of fun that come with that, and we need to be able to have fun with that sort of stuff. Yeah, one of the last that I think that has that you know, that had had that spirit about him. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. You know, like the stories have gone you know obviously, like a lot of the kind of things that have been in you want to asks and other kind of apocrypha from his career that have been out there for a while have all kind of started bubbling back up to the surface in the wake of the stuff and a lot of the stories about him as a young programmer, like at how Labs have come out, you know, and like that's where you kind of see where he has his roots or had his roots, you know, was was in like you know, he'd programmed Balloon Fight, right, Yeah, he apparently rescued earth Bound because it was a complete mess and he went in and basically recoded the entire thing to make it work properly. Where the game was you know, at risk of not coming out right right, like he'd had shops, you know, he was in the trenches, like he did the work. Yes, yeah, but and he did it obviously. You know, people that come up that way do it because they love it, you know, right, not because video games are a multi, multi billion dollar business. Yeah, it's not. He's stepping into it and going like, well, it's a packaged goods industry, so let's do it. Right. It certainly wasn't you know that big when he got into it. No, No, yeah, definitely, Yeah, like you know he was, he was doing it, and I guess it looked like he started at how in the early eighties. Yeah, that would that would understood. He just did it for decades. Yeah. I liked the story that he I guess he did a lot of programming on which Pokemon wasn't I think it was Gold and Silver and he did a little bit, okay, so I think it was Gold. Silver was the one where he basically had gotten compression on the game Boy down to such a degree that they were able to include double the amount of land masks that they planned on in that game, which they were able to include the whole second world in that version of the game, like because he was so efficient and I had writing these compression tools and stuff to get that stuff in there. Like he did work, you know. I guess he helped debug Super Smash Brothers Melee on the GameCube before it came out like well, well after the time when which he would be doing something. He was general manager of Nintendo at that point, but the game was behind schedule and danger of not shipping on time, so he literally like went to step aside. Yeah, he like sat down with the other coders and helped debug to get that thing out on time. Uh. Yeah, that's Kirby Titles, Yes, Kirby. Yeah, Like he's you know, obviously a ton of a ton of like big Nintendo properties to his credit, but also like it's just crazy to think about the era of Nintendo that he presided over, you know. Yeah, like he came in before the DS was even out. If you think about that, you know, like that was I think he came in two in two thousand and two. Yeah, he kind of came in around the game cube era, and you know which is you know, you can kind of say it was Nintendo at a fairly low point. Yeah, and was there for the crazy ride that was the Wei and and you know and the DS to a certain extent as well, two of their most like important and will products. Ever, right, we're kind of the two major things that first happened on his watch, which is kind of us to think about. Yeah, I mean, you know, he's the guy that like took a pay cut when the financials weren't you know, weren't hitting the way they used to kind of post we uh. And and the guy that you kind of could always look to and go like, well, you know, he's he's going to be one of the guys that'll figure this out for them one way or another. You know, well we'll see what shape their business takes. But you could look at him and go like, well, you know that's that guy'll he'll they'll figure something. Yeah. Always always seemed pretty confident in the course of the company. Sure, sure, for sure in a way that I you know, like in a way that I don't really get from other people at Nintendo. You know, like he really seemed like he straddled that line really well, you know, at kind of understanding their business, what business they were in, and the ways that it differed from you know, the game business at large. Uh, and then how to kind of execute on that in in a with a Nintendo like solution. Uh. You know, like he was the guy that I think personified that in a way that like I don't think anyone else that Nintendo truly does. I mean, you know, it's like, obviously there are legendary individuals at that company, but not not in the way that like can kind of encompass or the kind of embodied the multiple facets of the company the way that he did. Like no other one person is capable of steering the entire ship in that way right where. You know, Miamoto obviously is is brilliant on a design level, But who's to say he would want to run a corporation? And I don't I don't know in the way that that i Wata did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh yeah, like it's I think it's it's a it's crazy, uh and telling as to his work ethic that I was looking at our news section and like two stories before the Iwata passed away story was the Iwata responds to like investor questioning, Yeah, shareholder like the Q and a stuff like it really just a week ago that they talked to answer about mariners retirement or the next platform, which he must have known full well at that point he wouldn't live to to see brought to to market. You know, well, I mean maybe it's hard to know kind of what I mean unless they've said more about it, but I mean the way that the way the cancer progresses, it's yeah, the prognosis becomes clear at a certain point that that there's no not much more that can be done. But uh yeah, it's uh, it's a a huge overwhelming loss for that company and the industry as a whole. Definitely. Yeah. Uh. And I don't really know what they do from here. I mean, you know, they carry on because they must write. I mean, you know, like it's sure obviously there will be a succession plan or whatever, but you know, you have to take your time and figure that sort of stuff out in the meantime. I think that that Terse document did say that Miyamoto and Uh I think would be kind of interim running things in the interim, right. I imagine they've you know, they've probably had plenty of time to sort of prepare for this eventuality at this point to think about it. Yeah, I mean it's you know, this is only two years after Yamuchi passed away. Yeah, that's right, that's you know, they're there, past president who was eighty eighty three eighty five, and we're on there. And I always got the impression that, like, you didn't hear a lot of specific stories about this, but he's always seemed like kind of the power behind the throne, even after he stepped down officially, you know sure, Like, yeah, I got the like that guy had of carried a pretty just sort of imperious reputation definitely as being kind of an iron fisted guy and those classes. He was on the Yeah, he was on the board for you know, after he resigned as president, he was still on the board of the company for a lot of years, so he was you know, directly involved for for a good long time and then kind of stepped off the board as well. But yeah, he want it just brought such a lighthearted, kind of like a playful just a playful kind of atmosphere to the leadership of that company, especially as it got more kind of forward facing, you know, with with an interne directs and they want to asks and stuff like that, and like it's kind of crazy for a Japanese company to get to be that open about some of that stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, they're they're one of the companies that has been at the forefront of kind of speaking directly to their consumers like through that sort of stuff, right, I mean, you know, more and more companies are running their own Twitch streams, and you know, like community management is this huge thing, you know, but like their own blogs and stuff like, right, yeah, but there's something to be said for like the actual people doing the actual work and making the actual decisions, making actual time for the audience directly, and and and Nintendo has been, you know, really great at that. You know, we wouldn't we I think we wouldn't see more companies kind of out there doing this sort of stuff very publicly, having their kind of executives out on Twitter. If it's unizing their executives, right, yeah, totally humanizing their executives if it hadn't kind of been for some of the stuff that Nintendo has done. Yeah, it's like, as much as it's easy to think of Nintendo as as like stagy and stuck in the past, like I Nintendo doesn't understand the Internet and stuff like that, I think those are valid criticisms. Yea in some cases, sure, But all these other cases of them leading the way on stuff like the like the Treehouse streams last year and you three, that nobody else was doing at the time they've been they'll they'll surprise you, you know, every time you kind of want to write an into no off, they will come out and come back and surprise you. They've been supremely resourceful. They've been very good at finding their own way. Yeah uh yeah, yeah, So I guess I guess it's you know, really nothing, but time. We'll tell now how things go for them. Obviously, it's a it's a pretty pivotal time for the company, between the DNA mobile deal, the NX probably being no war than what two three years off at the absolute out side. Sure, yeah, uh yeah, it's it's definitely yeah. I mean, you know, they're they're in full LR and D on next stuff. Sure, yeah, yeah, Dan, what's your next move if you take over Nintendo? Oh boy, just give me a business plan, let's hear it. Well the jokey responses the Wallouigi plan, but man, the year of Wall Luigi. Yeah, they just have to do something novel and interesting with the NX because it's never gonna be Nintendo's never gonna be that company anymore. That's going to try to hang with the others as far as as sheer tech goes. So you know, the we worked as kind of shallow as that gimmick was you know, the game pad didn't work with the Weiu, so I don't see them shying away from kind of the more gimmick focus thing. I just hope it's one that actually kind of makes sense and works. And uh, you know, I feel like the three DS didn't have that and it didn't worked. Just I can't think of one of those really working since the Wii. As far as an actual gimmick. They've even like going the Virtual Boy and stuff. They've always liked the idea of more gimmicky stuff, and like now with VR being such a thing, I gotta wonder you could make the argument that, like the Nintendo sixty four controller was the gimmicky stuff for that. I would argue that, and I think that that gimmick happened to turn into an industry standard, you know, like in that case, they were just time No. I mean, I mean, if you take it in the sense of like analog controls on game consoles, yes, but I think that they're specific implementation of it. Oh, it wasn't great, it was, Yeah, well it was bad for third parties that we're making still making kind of traditional games because of the way that that controller was. Sure, that's always been ever since the sixty four though, Like those controllers have been great, been great for first party Nintendo games, great for anything third party, Like you know, the game Keep controller is great for Melee and Sunshine, but it's it's not great for soil Caliber or splinter Cell or things like that. But that's how it's been for for so long. But didn't the Saturn have that analog stick first the Saturday It didn't launch with that, but they came out with the Nights controller, the Knights controller. We all like to forget the Knights controller. Yeah, but yeah, I like the sixty four pretty well for him. Yeah, And I remember when when you were hearing the news of the DS and the PSP. I remember thinking like, oh, this stupid dual screen thing, like, you know, there's no chance this is going to stand up to you know, the super powerful, you know, portable PlayStation. It sounds amazing like the DS is gonna die and the PSP sucked, and the DS just became the biggest fucking thing totally. Yeah, that was I think I was right there with everyone else on that one, being like the DS seems like a like even the launch games just didn't even make a screen makes sense down there, right, Yeah, which is what they did, is what they did like May sixty four and Steven Rubber Rabbits. You know, even even Nintendo at the time was hedging their bets on that thing by calling it the third pillar as opposed to like an actual replacement. Yeah, Boy advanced, but of course the second that thing took off, the game Boy was done, you know, right. Yeah, the first DS is my favorite portable ever. I think like, by the end it's library is pretty ridiculous. Especially Yeah, the library is crazy, you know, I mean, but you know, they also like as it matured, the library relied less and less on the touch screen for sure, for sure, but you know, even even kind of the industrial design on the hardware, I thought, like, the first DS is pretty hideous. It's huge, clunky, It's it seems like a prototype, just like the first one. Yes, but then that light it looked like it looked like something that should have cables coming out of it into a little dev kit or something. Yea, the first DS, but the but yeah, the DS light was just like a fucking triumph of of revisionism with your hardware. And by the time that came out, that's when when you started seeing like Mario Kart and New Super Mario Brothers, And that's when I started doing that kind of the brain age sadoku stuff that really took advantage of a Yeah, brain age was a big moment yea for me. I think that that was one of the things like, Okay, now now I'm actually like hooked on a game for the DS. That's what they should do if they should get doctor Kawashima in there, put him on the board. Absolutely, but his brain is strong. It's a motherfucker. Yeah. I think the like for my understanding that all the meetings get derailed because people just keep shouting glasses glasses at him. My understanding of the timeline is that's around the time that I guess the WATA Act really would have kind of come into its own, you know, like from from what I was reading right before this podcast, I guess that the DS project was conceived under Yamauchi. Uh, it would have came in and obviously shepherded it to market. But then you know, obviously I'm sure it's going to take a few years for a new executive's influence to truly be felt. Yeah, I mean, you know, roadmaps are in place, like you know, there's there's stuff, you know, it depending on who they get in there, I mean, I mean, if they're promoting from within, it's likely someone who has been in there at every step of the way on their plans and has already been walked through all this stuff. Sure, I didn't. I didn't. It actually didn't really occur to me until I went back and to look at this history that he was at had how Labs right up until they brought him in as the general manager of Nintendo. So he was kind of off at this little like side studio, kind of think tank, experimental kind of game shop and did so many interesting, amazing things there that they were like, oh, this guy should probably run stuff. Yeah. They're a fascinating company. Yeah, absolutely, always have done. And it's crazy to think that they've been through so few changes in the leadership over time, you know, despite being like they've got they've got to be the oldest major company in video games, right Oh yeah, yeah, I mean are you counting like if you go all the way back to like the Hana food of stuff, Like, there's there's no doubt of that. But even even after their transition mostly into video games, like that was still very very early. Yeah. I mean yeah, in the history of modern back to radar scope and takey Kong and stuff. I mean, well, you go previous to that, you had the weird light gun things and some of that stuff that they were doing before a gun fight or whatever. But but to think over the course of that entire history that it was just Yamauchi for almost the entirety of it, and then I Wada for the last like twelve thirteen years. It's like it's been a it's been kind of a fairy monolithic company in terms of leadership up until now. So I guess kind of uncertain days ahead for them, but I'm sure they've got a plan in place. Yeah, yeah, I mean, or at least some inklings you would think, I don't know, I don't know if it's who who can say, Yeah, Yeah'd be very curious to see how things go for them as as mobile stuff comes to fruition, is the NX comes online? Yeah, but yeah, I mean, anyway you look at it, what a what a tragic yeah, yeah, fifty five. Seriously, like if you mane it's crazy, it's it's it's absolutely one of those like what would this guy have done with another two or three decades of working experience, you know, one of those things just like you know, not that anybody deserves to be taken that young, but like especially a guy like that. You know, it's like he had so much left to contribute. So it's a shocking loss. Hearts go out to his family and and such and so forth. Yeah. Uh, And on that note, I guess we're already into the news. Yeah, I guess let's just keep banging these out, all right, you know. I actually I'm sorry. I pulled a couple of emails. I mean, not to what are we doing not to make this I think it's a loose cannon not to not to make this two more bun But I pulled a couple of emails that came in about uh, about Ewatt is passing. You know. Actually we covered all right, sorry, Ben and Ian both from the UK, Like we kind of covered the stuff actually kind of mostly about their direction and kind of what our favorite memories of him are. I will always hold puppet Iwata close to my heart. That was a brilliant moment. Some good stuff, all right, Let's move on to some lighter, more standard video game news. EA has hired a Jade Raymond to running new studio in Montreal. Where was she before this until this? Right? No, she she she took off from some time last year. I know, I know she did Blacklist there, right, I'm pretty sure she ran the studio that did blacks. Yeah, so she's been out of there. Actually, I can check for you, if you give me a moment, I can tell you because I looked at this just today, Uh October twenty fourteen, she left you be soft and then how here we are in July and she is running Motive Studios. She probably just went over there and started that thing. Uh maybe, well, I mean, was it Montreal? There was some no no, this is this is a new studio. Announcement from EA is also attached to this. There are weird I don't remember how it shook out, but there's some non compete stuff in Montreal specifically that went back and forth. I think between EA and UBI that got a little weird for a bit there. So maybe she just kind of had to sit out for a while to let some stuff expire expire, But I don't I don't know. Yeah, it is certainly possible that she's been there for a while incubating this stuff or something. But but I don't actually know. Yeah, so, so the structure of this thing is a little puzzling to me because the company side, yeah, or kind of more what the role of the studio is, because it sounds like in her purview is going to be uh, such things as Visceral Studios or Visceral Games rather, which is located at main EA campus in Redwood City just south of here, right so, and the other like Amy Hinnick is there. They're doing that big new Star Wars single player game, which is kind of getting a lot of buzz recently, definitely, so they say, got it sounds like it might be like a lot like uncharted though. But anyway, like so, this mode of studio is apparently it's gonna be overseeing what Visceral is doing from you know, a continent away, and they refer to Mode of Studios as a creative driven team incubating a continent away. I mean, yeah, pretty, it's the same contin well, I mean across the continent. Okay, there's kind of something weird going on with that with Army of two where Visceral and LA was doing work on it. But yeah, I mean, obviously it's Canada. A lot of a lot of that crew got laid off the Canada. The Last Army too, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Last arm you too, like the Canadian team that was working on that, as I understand, it is not there. Yeah, I think that's right. But I mean, yeah, I mean to your point, Dan, like, yeah, that's obviously it's not a new thing for for big companies like this to have work spread out all over the place. You know, you'd be soft. You always hear about like ten different studios worked on I mean these three this year and they're announcing like wild Days, Wild Dogs, Wild Cocaine Party in the video game that game called again Wild the wild Lands. That's that's what's called wild the wild Bunch that like it had like four studios attached to it that announced times. But I always get the sense that's more like oh that studios handling the multiplayer or like the studios doing art. I think they don't just assign shit out willy nilly. It's not like you just walk in one day and everyone has to draw straws and like you're on You're on the cocaine party game. Yeah, but it seems I don't know. It seems less common for the kind of like ongoing working relationship to to happen where the studios are so spread out. But I don't know whatever Motive is hiring. I'm sure we'll find out more about exactly what it is they'll be doing over time. Did you say they will be incubating entirely new IP and taking on some amazing projects. It's a weird it's a it's a weird look for EA, Like EA doesn't really get into the hole, like we're going to take a person and put them on a pedestal. But the Motive Studios page is literally a photo of Jade Raymond and like a statement of purpose from her where she goes on to say, like you know that that she is going to be overseeing Visceral. Yeah, it says, I I'm in addition to building the new Mode of Studio Montreal, I will also oversee the Visceral Studio in California. And yeah, so they're gonna work on or touch that stuff. You know that we're going to work on Amy heading Star Wars game. Ye, so yeah, they'll be working on that stuff. Yeah, like you said, and they're hiring, Yes, that's kind of all we know for now. That's uh yea Stock doing real well lately. Really, Yeah, I don't know if it was like coming out of the three years war stuff. I don't know how much of it is directly tied to Star Wars and how much of it is directly tied to like them kind of getting their act together. Like you remember, they've been getting this weird transition for some years now, changing coming from last year where they're like, we don't have anything, we're working on it. All we got we got a bunch of footage of people's monitors, people who are making games that will come out at some point. Yeah, I got it. How long has it even been since Rire Cautello was out of there? It feels like ages at this point, two or three years yeah, yeah, And then they finally got their leadership stuff sorted out. I don't know. I mean, I think their mobile stuff is doing well. They announced a bunch of games that people seem to want, right yeah, yeah, and investor confidence high, I guess, But I guess that's that's the longer. The short of that, I guess is investor confidence, is I right? You know all these people that are out there rating stocks, keep saying like these guys, you should maybe buy it. I don't know that's a bye, he's a bye longer short. Oh god, I don't know what that means. Long term investment? Heard those I see Okay, Uh, I'm gonna stay long. Okay, say this is a slow build for them, and we'll see where it ends up. Giant Boom, you'renumber warring source for investment. Yeah, stock tips like they took their lumps when all those Battlefield games launched, broken and boring. But that this kind of put me in a position to buy it because people will probably want that Star Wars game. Yes, books, all right, it played, it played fine? Yeah uh Dan, Yes, I got a story for you. Okay, but I'm sure you've heard before, but I'm gonna lay it on you anyway. John Rambo y' go on went to Vietnam yep and one Yes, okay, a good movie. Then on the way back he took a detour through Japan and he dissolved Coajima Productions. Oh no, he liquidated oh no, studio blood. Uh. This actually comes from a tweet from the Japanese solid snake Akio Otska, who basically got out there and said, hey, tweet of the week translated tweet of the week. I would read the quote to you. That's translated from his twitter. Coajima Productions got dissolved, and due to the team's hard effort, the game is just about finished. This is no exaggeration, but it's bound to be a supreme masterpiece. Yeah, yeah, that's translated, all right, yep, I can't help it if I want to say I kept you waiting, even even if this is the last time MGS lives forever. Yeah. So you know, obviously Konami didn't come out and confirm or deny this immediately. Yeah, this isn't necessarily even new information right away. It's I mean, it's like you you know, it's it's not like you couldn't see this coming a mile away, but I didn't expect it to happen this soon. Could Hideo Kajima himself not getting a paycheck from Kadami. I don't know, Sam, I don't know. It's tough to say. I mean, I mean, this doesn't necessarily indicate one way or the other. This could just be him just get late to the party, going like, wait, what's happening with all the stuff that happened, you know, months ago. Sure, I think, yeah, this is obviously going to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just kind of expected that at least they would get the game out, yes? Or is it all a ruse? Oh, that the ultimate Kajima trol and raiding would put it to shame if anyone could do it. It's all right, let me put this to you. Would you rather all of this be an elaborate ruse? Yes? And after everything man and even finished laying out your options, and after all this is over and the game is out, like Kojima basically like springs his trap and everything's hunky dory, and then he goes back to working for Konami. Yes? Wait? Or would you prefer the more likely outcome that he is going to now be a free agent and be able to do potentially whatever he wants somewhere else. I mean, both options are fascinating because I want to see what the hell that you just want to chain this man to a desk and make him You are no worse than the mobsters that run Kanami. You are You are no better either. You are right there in league with them, fucking saying like keep making the robot game. As a longtime fan of elaborate ruses, I would love for this to be the most elaborate and rusie of ruses. But no matter what, if he's making metal gear more, I will love that. If he's doing his own bonkers thing elsewhere, that sounds great, and part of me has to wonder what bonkers thing he would do, because sometimes it's like, mah, here's Bakti, which I actually kind of like. How there's a cool bonkers that is it possible? Let me ask you this as a possible if you to dislike anything that man produces. I mean, I'm not like a huge Baktai fan. I like the idea, but I'm not gonna say like I'm a huge fan of the game. It's the ideas he has, Like I love the idea of like you know, ten years ago, he wanted to make a game to where if you died like this, the disc would self destruct inside your console. Want him to be like blood, Yeah, I want him to be free to do crazy shit like that. That was more than ten years ago. Okay, all right, but like that type of shit, I know. I want him to be free of all restraints and to just do anything. He's rich, he's free to go where every once and make any game he once too. I want him to go as bonkers as possible. Is he rich? I don't think that's guaranteed. Oh, he's gotta be right. I'm sure he's He's the autour of one of the biggest game series of all times. Sure he's done well. He's he's a man who's worked for a Japanese corporation for a years. They don't pay I mean maybe he had a different arrangement, but that's not you know, Yeah, you've seen this Jack doesn't It doesn't necessarily be the jack isn't free. Doesn't mean he's necessarily like independently wealthy, or especially that he's in a position to fund a game by himself or anything like that. He could kick start the shit out of anything. Yeah, No, he couldn't. You don't think he could kick start like I. And it's the thing I started thinking when when actually this tweet got out there, I started thinking about Kojima on Kickstarter, Yes, and I just started realizing it, like like now it's a prison of their own design, rather than the making the same sequels and making the same franchises for the companies that used to work for they've gone on and said like, we want to keep making that game, but now we don't even have the name of the thing anymore, and maybe it'll be great, right, Yeah, but he I think if he did kickstarted, though, he would not like, you can't do a Metal Year. Yeah, if he came out and said like, hey, I want to make a tactical espionage action game, it would be the most depressing thing in the world totally, because the thing that Metal Year fans like is this like decades of lore and everything, Like you can't just be like, oh, here's these new characters you don't give a shit about, Like he would have to come up with a new Super Kajima more the point it would just be super tired and desperate. Yes, yes, And I don't think that's him. I feel like he has not had his heart, like he has said since too that he's done with Metal Year and he just has to keep coming back to it. I'm sure he would love to do something completely different than Metal Year, and I think that people would would fund whatever that It depends on what he was asking for, but I think that, you know, like people are metal gear fan I'd say that the majority of game buying consumers are game fans first, like people fans second. With most of this stuff, so Kojima getting out there and saying like, hey, I want to make a new game like this, like it's you know, they it doesn't have the same impact. He's the best people. I'm only asking for eighty million dollars, right, give it to him. Give key for Sutherland doesn't come cheap. We're gonna get him to like we get him for another two hours, this time two million dollars stretch goal, Key for Sutherland, nine million dollars stretch goal. We're gonna mo cap a horse. I don't think there's any outcome. I'm disappointed then with this guy, I'm never doing anything again. That would be a super disappointing. Okay, yes, but that would be rad if he just said, fuck it, I don't need to do this. I'm done and I'm just gonna show up in weird spots and you can follow me on Twitter. And I'm jacket shopping today. What are you doing looking at jackets? Opened up a coffee shop. Yeah. Rick moranis just lea. He just he just became a Kardashian esque professional celebrity. I think that, you know what, I'm like, you know, he's a fucking earned it if anyone has right, I mean to say, like, hey, you know what, I made a lot of games that were like very pivotal and very well loved. I'm good. Yeah, like that's cool. That'd be cool by me, like the likest stuff or not. You gotta admit he has built a pretty solid cult of personality around himself. Solid. Yeah, it's good work espionage that one in there. Yeah. I would be tremendously upset if this whole situation led to me not having Middle or five in my hands in a month and a half. But like, that game's happening, it's coming out. I just want him to fucking retire and be like I bought a hind D and I'm gonna learn how to fucking fly it and fuck everything. Man, I'm gonna yeah helicopter. Yeah, he's gonna turn the hind D into his house. Yes, I grafted my arm onto David Hayter's body. He was bored and we all and he speaks with my voice. Yeah, he's my vessel. Curious about to learn a lot about that. Yeah, right, that's the Yeah, I mean, it'd be great to see him do something new, even even if it's not a game, even if it's like direct the movie. You're gonna go produce this big, long and anime franchise, Yeah, like sure, Netflix original series. Yeah, okay, yes, I would be completely into that. I just starts unding a bunch. That'd be good too. Also pretty good hariscoping. He was just yeah if he was just like just with an act with like a Danny de Vito level of it was just picture of his pictures of Kajima's feet all the time. Boy, wait, he's got to put some pretty snazzy hues. Though Danny Fedo have a social media presence, does he really? I did not know that. I'm gonna have to go look that up. Drew. Are you planning to join us for the Phantom Pain that could contemporaneously? I don't know. We really need to discuss that. Are you gonna? Well, first of all, are you on track? Is it even possible with Game Beat production schedule to finish four before or five things? So you will? What would you say? Six? We're already two hours in, six weeks away? Yeah, wish. Yeah, we're at leasting what two episodes a week? Yeah, Yeah, that game's a fourteen fifteen. It's not a short game, but it moves like I don't think you can. I don't think you can waste a lot of time in Metal your solid four. Oh do you Well, it's a challenge, Drew. It remains to be seen, but like it's got it's got a momentum to it where you kind of have to keep going. But assuming that's out of the way, are you gonna in my idea? In my world, if I had my way, I would want to just play it by myself. Oh. I didn't mean play it on the side or anything. I just mean, or are you gonna play it when it comes out? That's what I'm saying with I would want to do that, But that kind of diminishes our series, right, because it's the fun part is like you know, me, you discovering how crazy this all is. I could see that, and I mean, I'm clearly gonna play it at all, like the day it comes out, right, So I mean maybe months later, maybe we can come back to it. I mean we still got to talk about it. We're doing peace Walker. Yeah, if we wanted to, we haven't really discussed what we're doing past four, so we'll see Shell get back to us when you finish four. Your feelings may have changed, okay. You know, you may feel some closure on the whole arc completely. You may feel like everything that follows it didn't need to happen. That's not exactly what I meant, but but also kind of what I mean. You may be so satisfied with the events of four that you think, like, man, everyone should walk the fuck away from this thing, all right now. He may have a point. Yeah, you know, but I've never played a Metal Gear game when it came out. Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. You know, you can be part of the eye guist. You can kind of discover the insanity. What if you we record it and then just sit on it for six months. That's a pretty good idea. Walk the footage in a nuclear vault somewhere. That's not a bad idea. To be sure to tweet constantly about all the recording you're doing, just so everybody knows that it's out there. Pretty good idea, but just can't It'll be like Prince's vault where he's got like hundreds or thousands of recorded songs that nobody's ever heard, which because he just did it and I don't want to share it. Current event references are going to be really dated. We're talking about like the Kennedy assassination. For some reason. By the time it comes out, we'll cook up some elect You need to be at this clock tower one hundred and fifteen years from now with these three keys, and then you will get to see the next installment of this video franchise. Yes, indeed, not a whole lot of other news this week. Does anybody want to play Journey again? Yeah? Because it's coming out on PS four next week. I would totally play that again. Do you feel like my wounds from the first time I try to play Journey may have healed? And maybe I would give it another way? I don't know. I was playing and then the guy I was playing with disappeared, and I spent time looking for him and could never find him, and then I stopped were okay, no, no, left him changed. I didn't want to sad, I didn't want to go back to it. I went. I spent like twenty minutes looking around for him, and he was fucking gone. So it didn't break it all for you. I remember somebody on staff had it break somehow, and I forget it who and how. No, I don't think it broke from me. I did the big like first, like big surfing part. Yeah, and then when we were done surfing, I looked around and I waited for him, and he never came. That's so sad. That is a show. Who would quit out during that sequence of all sequences? That's I don't know, that's that's not even how you played journey anyway. You don't quit. You just sit down and you played it all in one sitting. Yeah, the ultimate sit down for two hours, block out that time. You don't hit a checkpoint and then come back to Ye. It's not long enough to get up for him and come back to You have to do it all in one shot. Yeah. I feel like that and gone home, and I'm trying to think of other ones. Never never came. Somebody else might have shown up. You don't even know at the time, right, unless they've got like some weird scarf unlocked. You can't really even tell the different. I mean, he could have had like a new best friend show up. No one, No one came. I had I was there for twenty minutes. No one can. It's like a kid waiting at soccer practice first day. Yeah, what's a journey undertake him alone? Exactly? Who would want that? I really liked that stuff because when it happened for me, it felt very poetic, like I was in the snowy area. And the way that they they'd like visualize people dropping out of your game is like the body and the cloak disappears, and the cloak just kind of sinks down. I think if I affirm it, isn't that right? If I remember correctly, the cloak just sort of collapses on its own into the Yeah, and it's just like it just felt like the dude had succumbed to the elements as we were trudging through the snow, and like I had to forge on alone or something. You know. Yeah, it's I told myself when I played through that game, I was like, that's it. I'm done. Like I only needed to play that once, but I wouldn't mind seeing it again in ten ADP. It's been long enough with a better frame rate. Yeah, boy, that was a pretty game. Yesh flower again once they did that on PS four, it's also a pretty game. Yeah, yeah, anyway, they Yeah, they announced ages ago that it was being ported to the PS four and then never said win and then all of a sudden they're like, hey, it's stout in two weeks, so get ready. Did you guys play Entwined at all? No? That was one of the new Plus games, right, Yeah, that's not the yarny one? Right? No? What No, that's and Twine. Was that like student project game? Right, there's like a sort of I do not know its fruits, but temple I'm not not quite tempesty because it's not in a yeah not quite too, but but yeah sure, some some behind the back flying through spacey kind of action. No, I have not played it as good. It's neat. Yeah, huh, give that a look. Was that out before? Oh yeah, no, that came out. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, I could just weren't because I because just when I had seen it like three like a while ago. The reason you probably missed it is it launched to add any three okay my last year. Yeah, I guess it had to be last Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, that was one where they showed it on stage at the press conference. They're like, it's coming out this week okay, and we were all in Los Angeles. That makes a lot more sense now because when I downloaded it, I thought, I'm pretty sure I've seen this before. Was it on PS three years? And I just never looked it up some plus right now? Yes, Yes, that's one of the month's plus games. Just looked that, wouldn't it Rocket League and sticks and that? Yes? Or wait maybe in point was last month? Yeah, because I just looked it's like last night, I want to say, and it was just League and I feel like I had downloaded and twined and Rocket League at the same time. But I could be wrong. I don't know. Rocket League's cool. Don't want to talk about Rocket League? Yeah? Sure, shall we convene on Rocket League? That game's all right? I like it, that's pretty fun. It looks like car soccer. That game is okay. Came to that realization while I was playing this weekend that like, I was liking it so much, and I was like, wait a minute, this is kind of like soccer and I hate that. But then I realized it takes away all the like boring stuff and penalties and stuff from soccer, and it's got cool rocket cars in it, but with the basic thing of soccer, So I feel like I understand soccer's appeals to the same the same reason. Mega Man Soccer is one of the other greatest soccer video games ever created. You know. Yeah, it likes rid of all the crap. Yeah, a World Cup soccer for there. So when the ball gets close things you get exciting. Actually it's pretty exciting. They're all like five minute matches. I was. I've liked every matchup done of that game. It's the movement, uh at your disposal that that really makes that thing work like a skid and hit the ball with the back end of your car. But you can double jump, yeah, but that's the thing is you you can jump and then flip or roll, and your double jump can be a boost in a direction, so you can boost forward on your double jump, do a front flip to kick the ball forward, dude, or a backflip will kind of halt you. And you can do side flips. Oh, I didn't know you could backflow. Or you can do bicycle kicks. Yeah, it says bicycle kick and you get extair like points for that, yeah, Drew. You can even do stuff like let's say you're going parallel to the ball like your car is parallel to the ball and the goal the direction of the ball movement. Yeah, and you're about to pass to the goal. No, no, no, pass the goal. It's sideways. Sideways, Oh, I see, And you could just like hit right and double tap X and you'll like barrel roll your car into the ball and knock it end. Okay, this absolutely convinces me. Somebody already told me that I need to do this to do the advanced tutorials because I haven't looked at any of that stuff. But apparently they run you through, like here's all the crazy stuff you can do with the X button the advanced tutorial. Yeah, the AVANST tutorial is like another forty five seconds. I really should have looked at that stuff, but yeah, like I didn't because I didn't realize, like, you know, the first couple of matches, I didn't even know about the double jump until I noticed it. But another aspect of it, Drew, is that the all around the sides of the field are curved, so you can just straight up drive up the wall and be driving and the ball will knock up the wall and yeah, you know, like you and so I was watching a YouTube video right before we came up here of like apparently one of, if not the best current Rocketball or Rocket League players in the world. Okay, ESL has picked the game up. Yah, I kind of believe that, especially watching this guy, you should watch this fucking video because holy shit, he is doing all kinds of like the ball will be up in the air and he will drive up the side of the wall, jump, do a lateral jump like off the wall, and do another flip in the air and knock it into the goal from like half court. It's the first thing that I could see myself watching, like like esports. You know, I don't want to watch FPS. I don't certainly I don't want to watch MOBA, but like this, it seems like an actual like the role cam. It doesn't have that. But if they think it's the pick up that it seems like it will, then I'm sure that they will develop a solution for people that want to broadcast you watch you want to watch mobis or FPS, but you will watch socar, socks, car working titles, good stuff. I would absolutely watch this overt or anything. Yeah. Yeah, it's got some replay stuff that you can save and you can like add key frames and do so there's recent tools for that. Yeah, yeah, oh I hate that the replays are on by the fault though. Every time somebody scores, I just want to get back in and everybody, everybody in the game has to opts to skip the replay before you can move on, and nobody score the goal and never wants the person who sport is always the only one who doesn't skip the replay. I mean I got a couple of good side side bumps into the goal and stuff that I felt pretty okay about. Of course you want to see that. Check that, guys, but it does give you the option to save the whole replay at the end. But yeah, also, like you know, for me, it's been a mix of like having matches and having that like go like, oh this this seems like pretty cool, and then having the servers gonna be completely broken. I we tried it this weekend. I never ran into that, it sounds like. So it sounds like this weekend it was good. There was some stuff where it was down for a while today for some kind of maintenance or something, But like the previous week has been real hit and miss. Like they launched on PC and it's free on PS four and it's just seems like they got overloaded and plus plus game of the Month and it's twenty bucks on PC, so like even you know, because the servers are connected, the people that paid money for it on PC kind of got fucked on that one and body non working game. I did good on them for at least doing dedicated servers though, as opposed to just peered peering it I like most people do. Yeah. Yeah, Like obviously it made for a rocky launch week, but once that stuff settles out, presumably it'd be a better smoother game. Yeah, for that reason. But but yeah, I mean just the control is so tight and you you definitely feel like you are one percent in control of that thing at all times, and it feels very skillful at the same time. Man, when you whiff yeo, yeah, like it's frustrating. No I do soccer. I miss a lot of shit. Yeah, Like when you especially with it just you know, it changed the direction of the last second, or you miscalculated an angle or whatever. It's just a constant miscalculation of how high the ball is and and me like rolling under it and dumb shit like that. Yes, specifically trying to hit balls that are bouncing. In the ball that's bouncing, I'm in ball camp pretty much. I go back and forth consistently, Like if it's a high bounce or something, I switched the ball kind can see it. Yeah, I turned ball came on and never turn it back off. It seems like the only way to play the game. I feel like that screws up, Like you have to think more about the orientation of your car and then you know, if I do left, if I want to barrel roll to the left, my car is facing that way. So do I need to Like I like having that anchor of like, Okay, the camera is always behind my car, so left it's gonna be left, Right it's gonna be right. I still I still think like you need the situational awareness of what the ball is doing at all times. For me, like I don't know what it is I want to do. If I can't, I wish so I kind of wish that that game had a like a mini map is where's that sounds? But some kind of like overhead view of the field with where everyone else is and where the ball is for passing, Like just like okay, is this person set up and where they need to be for me to kind of pass the ball down there for them to score or something like that like that. Like that's the thing you run into, is like you can't see everything at once. So far, yeah, so far in my experience, people aren't even trying to do things like that. Like the every match is just like barely controlled chaos. You know, everybody's just driving at the ball at all times, Like I wonder start of hanging back a lot. I've absolutely been like kind of playing defense a little bit. Like when people go for the kick off or whatever you wanna call it, I usually kind of just back up toward our goal. Yeah, it's a million way to see what happens. It's a million times easier if like I was playing with two friends who were doing three and three stuff, and so anytime it was getting close to our goal, like if we had the headsets on and stuff, it's like, okay, I'll take middle. You try to get it over there. Like if you do any kind of little communication with headsets, it's way way better. I imagine it's something the Trek I R could help with. Like imagine if your camera was behind your car, then you could like look over and see where the ball was. Well, you can use the right stick to like look around the field and stuff if you want, okay, because you do all your steering with the you know, the dog stick and gas and break and stuff. So it's it like the car control feels like San Francisco Rush twenty forty nine stunt Okay, Okay, Yeah, that's umble racing style flipping and like you know, jet boost in the air to kind of you know, if you want to stay up there, you sort of can. Uh, when you drive up the wall, does it stick to the wall or Yeah, it's pretty to an extent, like like if you drive on the ceiling for a little while before it, if you if you completely stop accelerating, you'll fall off the wall. But it's pretty generous, okay about letting you just shoot right up there. The more I play it, the more I wish that this car control stuff was in a totally different game. That's maybe my one issue with it is that I wish it wasn't some weird team sports game and it was instead a fucking rad like rumble racing style racing game or platform or or just some kind of other more driving focus. It's you know, it's it's built on Unreal Enge and four I could as successful as it as it is, I would like to see some kind of mod support happen on the PC. I just I just wonder, like I could see why I wouldnt launch with any because I looked at it and so like, man, if this had like a low gravity mode or like infinite boosters, like that'd be fun. But then but then they're like splitting the player base pretty heavily, and you know, like that it might not be super popular. So I could see why they wouldn't do the gate. But match making stuff is already set up for different hoties. Yeah, yeah, so that there there is that too. Then they said that in the wake of Sony kind of coming at them and making it be free on PS four or you know, like them doing that deal, it is kind of they have assessed an entirely different and larger DLC plan, So we'll kind of see where it ends up over time. Do you think that stuff works monetarily? I've heard different things depending on the game and depending on where the game was in its cycle, Like this time around, like Sony like it and Microsoft they've been more aggressive about having games launch free, whereas last generation, it was more frequent that games would launch, taper off, and then become free, right uh. And in those cases, like the money that the developers were getting for those games was not great, but it was more than what they were getting before. So I mean, I imagine they have to sweeten the pod pretty significantly because otherwise, like you know, they're cannibalizing the game, right, yeah, yeah, exactly. What if what if we dropped the sales of this to zero? But in turn you get a very active player base that then spreads the word and after the first month, you will see sales based on that, right and then and then yeah, and then then if they if they get more aggressive about DLC, then you know, theoretically they've got a larger player base to sell to and and that sort of thing. And they did sell it on PC, so there is that's it's been the top seller on Steam too, that was out there for twenty bucks. That that is that is a better version of the game. Yeah. Yeah, the four version plays okay, but it's not quite as smooth as you would want. I think it plays great. I mean they both play fine or the only the only place where it doesn't play as well as the PC is, the frame rate is not quite as good the PC. Yeah, no, four, it's it's it's smooth enough. It's not quite the rock solid sixty that you'd want out of this type of game. Yeah, it's good to hear they're expanding the DLC stuff because like, as much as I like it, there's not much there on the periphery besides the one match type, you know. Yeah, like it's four match types. It's one v one, all four v four's. You know, that's just number of players. He's saying, there's only one map. Now there's more, there's a bunch of visual treatments, but there's really only but I think there's just the one field size. But they're you know, they've got rain and there's one at night and stuff like that. That would be pretty good. Yeah again again like low gravity would be pretty crazy for this game. Yeah, but but yeah, you know, it's the one rule set. It's the one the one field, the one mapuh, and you can unlock like there's different car chassiss and paint jobs, car hats, yes, hats for your car. Getting to that, there are literal car hats in this game. I have a Fez I have a hard hat. I've got a beanie with a propeller on it. I don't know. I don't remember which platform I have the fez on though. I have an eight ball on my antenna. Oh wow, I am using the flag of Whales on my car because it's got a rude dragon on it. Fair enough, they've got a dragon on their flag. That's pretty good. It's pretty silly, you know, like you can get you get different, like rocket kind of contrails from is silly. Thanks for bringing it up. Like my car shoots snowflakes out the back when it when it goes turbo. Right now, it's it's fun and goofy in that way, but there's still like there's not unless I haven't seen it yet. I'm only like lavelight. But it doesn't seem like there's much else to unlock besides those little like cosmetic trinkets. Right, Yeah, it seems like that's the that's the thing. I mean, you'll go from like rookie to semi pro. Rank increases and and you know, it's it's fun in its own right, but it's just yeah, I mean, mechanically it's so fucking tight and it feels so damn good. But it seems like they've absolutely got the resources to expand it from here, which is exciting because it's cool. I can see that working for a game like this that gets really good buzz and would work with DLC, I can't see it working as well like they did that with Mercenary Kings where that launched free and it didn't quite have like and set the world on fire necessarily. No, So like I could see once this game Rocket League is not free, I could see people buying it up buzz, But Mercenary Kings, like I wonder if they just got screwed on that. Well, I think people just weren't super thrilled with that game before it turned out. Yeah, it's kind of the proof has to be in the pudding at a certain point, right, and just has to be. But like if it ended up being like you know, everyone got it for free and then there was bad word of mouth, so like sales did not yeah, did not go anywhere after it was for sale? Yeah yeah, yeah, god man, Mercenary Kings, that game what a bummer? Yep? Well yes, But also like after I put like eight hours into Monster Hunter, I had a completely different view of that game because they really did just try to make a contra monster hunter, and I did not understand that at the time, and like it seemed nonsensical, like the whole thing about the boss moving around. Yeah, it's totally monster right, Yeah, Like I didn't know that. I though. I was just like, this is not fun with the fight. I knew that at the time, and it's why I thought it was not funny. I'm not saying I'm not saying it would make me like it if I went back to it, but it at least makes the design make more sense. Yeah. But yeah, that game, Rocket League seems to be doing super well and rightfully, so yeah, everyone's been super high on it, like even like I expected it, you know, like in the wake of like Steam refunds and all this other stuff being a thing. Like when it launched broken, I kind of was like, oh man, this is gonna be some shit, and no, it totally wasn't. People were just like, whatever, it's great, yeh know. It just seems like a simple case of kind of server load, yeah, over overwhelming what they had. Oh yeah, if it feels really nice, I'm I was surprised by that because I played I can't remember a damn thing about it now, But I did play the previous game. This is a sequel to that super Sonic Supersonic Rocket Power. God damn it. I remember thinking that game was bad. Yeah, what did that come out on P three? Just PS three? Yeah, okay, I never saw that, and it was a very similar concept, Like it was nobody noticed. Was it a sporting pretty sure? It was just car soccer? Yeah, I remember, right, made it better, but but I did not play a ton of it when it came out. I just remember it like, oh, this is it's a unique game coming to PS three is a downloadable, let's check it out. And I just remember bad feelings. That's the overwhelming thing I remember about that game is like this is no good. But yeah, I have to show you that video later. Like I cannot hyperbolize about this enough. Like the thing is fucking insane, Like just the guy apparently is able to dribble the ball in the air the entire length of the court without it ever touching the ground. That's shit like that, Like his ship's crazy. So hearing that it's like coming up in the esports community is kind of interesting, just to see what people like if somebody were to play this game eight hours a day for a year, what would they be able to do at the end of it? You know, right, who's gonna be the messy of the Rocket League community? Who's gonna be the dndy? Yeah? Okay, sure, all right, I'll take that. Uh Jeff, Hello, have you been playing other video games? I played The Magic Circle? Yes, I meant to play it, and I didn't get around to it. This game, I pulled around with it for I don't know, an hour and a half or something like that kind of got past the first So it's a game that takes place inside of an unfinished game, and the entire narrative is like, this game is being finished and you are somehow in the world of this game that is totally unfinished, and you get to hear the people developing the game bickering about how to finish this like super long and development super like long awaited sequel to a text adventure. Wow. The fake game is the game you are playing? Is are you playing the game or are you playing a game about the game? You are playing the game. The developers of the game are represented as big floating eyeballs in the world, which doesn't really make much sense in the grand scheme of things. But but you are kind of playing an unfinished game, and you are then given tools to kind of subvert what is around you to see more and more unfinished parts of this unfinished game. And you know, the kind of the logline or whatever the Steam descriptor is like finish this game from within the game, because they are trying to frantically finish this game and show off a demo build and all this other stuff. And I feel like, as you mentioned the like the sort of narrative through line of this game, it's important to mention that these are people who previously worked on BioShock. Oh yeah, yes, okay, developers of this game. Question games we're involved in the Is that their name? I think so? Yeah, it's Jordan Thomas is the one name I remember from this team, But yeah, it's They've been involved in BioShock before, so I got some experience with like the heavily delayed, ambitious games that are This doesn't seem to I mean, you know, like I can't really say one way or the other, but like I didn't get a BioShock vibe from the kind of what they're projecting on this stuff. It's it's a little different than that, but there definitely is a figure at the well, I don't know, there's a figure kind of at the center of it that is like the developer of the original thing, and he is uh he's the star Father, which is okay, was the fucking Starbucks okay, which is ridiculous. Uh, And and he has been trying to make the sequel to this game forever. And there are other kind of side characters are coming. You don't necessarily interact with them directly. They're kind of you know, you are going to try to, you know, rest control from them somehow, I assume, But anyway, you your interaction with the world. So they cut weapons from the game, so there are no direct weapons in the game, and as a result, you can hack things. You you basically you look into like Hall of Mirrors style cracks in the map, suck life out of it, use that life to open traps to trap enemies, and a trapped enemies you can then click on and hack. So you're still trying to complete the objectives of the game as designed nice or you're kind of trying to make your way through this broken world, like restoring deleted content to get to the bottom of some mysteries. And and basically, like I said, hacking thinks. So when you hack something, you can strip it of all its tendencies and then apply those tendencies to other creatures or something like that. So you'll find just you know, standard like dog like creature, and it'll have tendencies like it moves via the ground, it has a melee attack. Its enemies include you the Hero, so you can remove Hero from the enemy list and go to its ally list and put Hero there, and then it will follow you around. First I thought, yeah, yeah, there's an element of that in to this. Does it feel generalized enough that you could really play with that stuff? Or is it more like they designed one solution for every problem. I haven't gotten deep enough in Like, there's actually been a very like there was a pretty like laid out moment here where kind of the game's like narrator for lack of a better word, who is he kind of the only thing talking to you directly most of the time, kind of says like, hey, look, if you find a solution that you think is not the actual solution at the creators of this world intended, then go for it. You'll be doing one better than they ever did, you know, so you're kind of like it. They kind of frame that as like you're getting one over on the developers by finding unintended ways to solve their puzzles. And are you a developer of this game, it's that's not clear or if you're a hacker or you know, like like what you're the nature of your character is not is not clear, and so you know, you end up in situations where, like you know, you'll you'll find a door bot that has a lightning rod on it. You can steal that lightning rod capability apply it to any one of your other creatures. You basically have like a little harem, like a little posse following you around. But those things you pull, those tendencies you pull are limited. So like in my inventory, I have three melee's, two grounds, one lightning rod, and I can apply those two guys, but no I can I can go back in and take them at any times. So I can walk up to a mushroom, hack it, make it, give it ground movement, and give it a Melee attack, and then it responds and it kind of will bounce and follow me around and have a cool face on it, man, man, really great art style. This sounds largely kind of black and white kind of it looks like concept art, Like you're walking around concept art, like black and white concept art, and you kind of bring color to the world in a sense as you go through it. It's really fascinating. It's the joke is good, and it goes some really interesting places, and I want to see how much further they can go with it. Yeah, it's it sounds like a super interesting setup that could collapse under its own weight if they don't take it in the right direction. But it sounds like they are making good use of it. Yeah. I mean there's already been like one good like twist in the action that have been like, oh fuck, this is not something I expected to see here, and and I'm kind of curious to see where it goes from here. Well, we'll run a quick look of it at some point. I just need to figure out, like, how can I start at a point that is either before or after this cool, crazy fucking thing I saw because it's cool and crazy. I saw them, I saw them demoing that game. It's a pack east and it was aware of it at that point because it came out on Early Access a while ago. Yeah yeah, which is like like the weirdest situation of this like video game meta release where it's like, like the game about an unfinished game, is itself unfinished and yet for sale? You know, doing QA on that would be right, right, But at that time, like the concept is self sounded so unusual and cool and kind of inside baseball leave that I was like, I'm gonna wait until that's done before I jump in. It's it's weird, like the cast of characters that are playing, the developers like and the interactions they have are really weird because it's this feeling of like like in fighting at a dev studio where they've all been working this concept for a very long time. They need to get something shipped or like a demo or like a vertical slice or something out there for people, so they're kind of slashing and burning their original design doc. And then like there's this you know, star father character who's like the visionary idea guy. There's the lady who is like former professional multiplayer player turned game developer okay, which I don't know if that's supposed to be someone specific or not. Like it made me think of Stevie case, but I don't, huh, you know, I don't. I don't know. And then there's kind of like this third character who is like an extreme fan of the original game and represents the fans in kind of a way that like struck me as a little gross in a couple of spots. I bet I bet even if they're not referencing specific people that they know or whatever, with those characters, I bet those fit into pretty like specific archetypal roles. Yeah, I'm sure, probably probably. Yeah, it's it's interesting. Yeah, I do want to see where it's gonna go. I have to go home and start that game tonight after what you've just said, dying to see this. Like the mechanics are I mean, it's kind of slow moving. You know, it's a puzzle game. It's not you know, like things will attack you and kill you. But it doesn't matter, right, you know, you just respond. It's it's just meant to be like, Okay, you need to be faster on hacking them next time before they kill you. And that's fine. It's it's satisfying to have something running at you and just like trap it, hack it, strip all properties and then let it go and it just kind of falls like take that, you fucker. Yeah, it's neat, excellent, it's neat. I'm glad to hear that that turn out. Well, I'm really looking forward to playing that, and I think that's it. I've been fiddling with a game called track Mania two Stadium. I heard of that on the street. Uh so we talked last week about track Mania Turbo. Yes, maybe that was a week before. They have since kind of they have since kind of come out and said that they're not doing dedicated Yes, I saw you talking about that on Twitter for PC, which makes everything we talked about last week in terms of them getting out there and saying we think that, you know, Mania Planet will be the place where we do our thing right make way more sense. Fucking sucks like track Mania Turbo now seems like this is the one four kids that have never heard of of track Mania before aren't going to give them this hyper consulized take on track Mania and aren't going to be in a position to get mad about this omission that the real community is going to be furious about or or just not care about. Because you know, there's there are four environments in track Mania Turbo and three of them are the track Mania two environments, so roller Coaster Lagoon is the only new one, and that could theoretically come to Mania Planet at some point. I think they're visual refresh that they're doing for Turbo is really awesome, and i'd like to see that come to a track Mania that still allows for server mods and such, and they'll let players get together and like they'll they'll they'll run official servers and then players can start multiplayer sessions and kind of are more console the sort of sense. But I don't know if the player count on that is not at least fifty. I don't you know, it's not they're not making the track Mania that I that I like. They're not making my track Mania. Mania Planet is where my track Mania lives apparently. Uh So, I don't know. I want to see more of that thing and get a sense for like really what they're doing. But as much as what it sounds like, as much as it sounds like the decisions they're making are like tailor made to piss off people who like track Mania. Maybe they don't care so much, or maybe the business people don't care. It's like it's not even a like I look at it's like they're making a different and more accessible track Mania for consoles that's also happens to be coming to the PC. Like it's more like it's like it doesn't matter that much if the old community doesn't like it, because the potential new audience we could gain is so much bigger, and if they has still have the track editor, Like who, I can't speak to the needs of the entire track Mania community. I can only speak to my weird corner of fucking eurobeat, fucking dubstep, fucked up bullshit remixes and garbage tracks all day long. Share like you know, if there's probably still a segment of people out there that just you know, and user tracks will still definitely be a part of TrackMania Turbo, So it seems like people will still be able to get that aspect of the game in spades. It's just a matter of like my specific fucking weird server mods. I feel like when they said that Battlefield wasn't going to have dedicated servers anymore, okay, for like, well that wasn't two, that was three, right, I think so? I think so, and then you could like rent servers or whatever the fuck it was. But I feel I feel angry the way those people must have that now you feel their pain or like I feel their pain. I'm not angry because like you know, like track Mania two will exist, and you know they're like where it doesn't matter, like wherever the maps get made is where the players will go. So I will have to wait and see. I do like the visual design for Turbo. Have they shown enough of the UI to know if it's going to look like a quick three mod still or so? That's the thing is like stock track Mania two doesn't look like that, Okay, Like all that shit are that's all bolt on sequel servers that are keeping track of local records and user voting on the quality of track They just they just had like some markup language where you can make your own like UI modules and API for track Mania servers. Is as I understand it, fucking bullshit and crazy and arcane and dumb. But also you know, the people that are figured out exactly how to do it. I've made some very key things for it so you can listen to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Dubstep remixis you know, things you need? Yes, the X files theme, the crucial components of a good racing experience, right, exactly, drag Menia. All right, it's good to know what's going on in that world. Yeah, Drew, Yes, tell me about Comic Con. I went there. Yeah, I took some vacation days and went down to San Diego and helped out Joey Familli and the other fellows at tested dot com with their with their coverage. Returning the favor because Joey's helped us out a couple of times. Yes, three show. Yeah, yeah, are you dead mouse? I neither confirmed nor denied. Right, Okay, what's the big thing at your feet there? Looks like a helmet. I don't want to alarm anybody, but he just put a giant mouse head on Chloe. Yeah, that was fun. A lot of video games there, Yeah, there's experienced. Video games seem like they've been on Like they're sliding out of Comic very rapidly, literally on the fringe of the show floor. They are shoved way back and like you know the I think the hall it's one giant room and it's numbered like one hundred to eight thousand or whatever, and video games are all just down at one hundred. Didn't they have like Morpheus there. I thought I saw people tweeting pictures. There was Morpheus thing. They're set up. Valve might have been somewhere, I don't know. It was weird, like the Nintendo booth just said super Mario Maker and then it was just what super Mario Maker there? Yeah? Okay, Yeah, it wasn't just a banner that said super Mario Maker. No, because I would believe that, yeah at this point, but yeah, I I basically just saw a bunch of movie props. Oh that sounds awesome. That's what I wanted to see. It's all screen used original enterprise from something. Fuck a lot of star treks. You leaked a suicide squad Trailerner Brothers a job on that? Yeah, they're really upset on fire. Yeah. I was just following your your footsteps, Dan, right right, leaking stuff I'm not supposed to. Did you? Did you? Did you? Did you get the special Adam Savage access to all the movie stuff? I know? Anything? I met the man? Oh okay, are you not shooting for him? I was shooting for him. I mean he's affiliated with Test Yeah yeah, yeah, uh so, yeah, we shot some stuff with him, but he has his own props that he makes and stuff, but he did not have access to the original stuff, an original Zorg gun from Fifth Element there. This is all in in props prop store. I think that's the booth. Uh God, should they have the other MythBusters hat? No? No, did not see Jamie. Okay, that's the hat guy, right. Yeah, Jamie's busy in a workshop somewhere. Yeah, with a hacksaw and a blowtorch making stuff. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was. I think those guys have been there like six times or something with Testa dot Com, so they they've they figured out a way to not make it dreadful. Well, it seems like they also had some gigantic fucking party they did with dead Mouse Sam tweeting from thing. They've also figured out how to do a party because it's only you know, there's only three of them. But they have you know, the backing of way inside Baseball but whatever they have. They have a sport tank whatever the hell the name of their Black Black Shark. I don't remember what rock? Yeah, yeah, that's their company. Do you see that's Adam tweeting that like his rare stone. I forget what they're called. The little like amber looking stones from Raiders of the Lost Art got swiped from their party. Oh really, yeah, I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. You see those were they all just act out on displayers. They would fit perfectly into a messenger bag, yeah, or a camera bag. Were they were they like in they must have been encased in some kind of thing, right, No, And most of that stuff is just out wow, like that was that was what he adorned the party with all his all his prop stuff. It made Oh he made that stuff. I don't know if he made those he made us off like those were from the movie. I don't know. I don't think that's I don't think. I don't know. Maybe maybe I just read that. But now I had a bunch of cool helmets on the wall. Uh yeah, guy named Bill Duran uh made one of the guns from District nine. You have to hold it's like seventeen pounds. Uh yeah, it's cool. They had like the dance floor above it was Han Solo frozen carbonite. It's good stuff. It's I mean, you can't have a dance floor without that. No, it's true. Yeah, so that was your weekend, then that was my weekend. Yeah, well yeah, so Wednesday through Sunday. I got back yesterday after a Yeah, I did not really get to see many any video games. How does Common CONMPA compared to E three in terms of just like how does your body feel at the end of it? Like which one is more draining? He's sitting now, I am sitting there. That's that's true. Yeah, I guess the nature of E three has changed for us a lot. I guess. Yeah, Yeah, I was. Yeah, I did more like shooting on the show floor for Comic Con because you know Adam Adam dresses up, as you know, in one of his costumes and walks around the show floor. So I shot a couple of those. So he was hanging out with an astronaut this time. Yeah, that's the one I shot. Man. Yeah, Chris Hadfield. That was fun. He's cool, dude. Yeah. Yeah, remembers everybody's name, firm handshake, direct eye contact. Yeah. I mean, you know you're want to be an astronaut a military man? Yeah yeah, detail or he did, yes, the Strong Constitution. I didn't see much coming out of Comic Con that, like the Game Wiser just at all anything normally it seemed like there was was it Candaze and Street Fighter five Ye is that is that Comic Con news technically, and they're doing a g I. Joe and Street Fighter comic book crossover, a weird admitted series. There was an Assassin's Creed obstacle. Course you could sign a waiver for Nah, who needs that? When you got that thing? That thing is a marketing machine. I mean this is not news, but it when you're there at Comic Con, it's just it's a giant act that is and that thing is that shows like forty years old now, like Comic Con has been around, like they've had a long time to crack that nut. It's like, hey, you want to go to this giant booth and see some like paper machee walk up thing for the Last Ship or whatever that to tell you all about this thing you're going to spend a bunch of money on in four months and maybe sell you some stuff with the logo on it. Right now, Yeah, here's a I did get a poster for a l Ron Hubbard book, which candid to me, I didn't. Yeah, that's good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people uh signs out in front of the convention center saying that we were all sinners, of course, not wrong, not wrong. Was it Dante's Inferno two? Viral marketing? You know what? Yes, even the protests of comic Con are now marketing. Get a pray station, not a PlayStation. Yeah, did you see? Uh? Was it Frank Chew? Is that his name? Yes? There are ads on his Yes. For quite a while, I didn't know he was a famous personality. I've seen him walking up he signs all the time, and so he's a crazy person. And I actually copped at him to day. He can he can, he can, he can, he can, he can be both, although I wonder how much of that is just like knowing at this point how self aware he is about that stuff. He's selling ads on his right freaking you know, nonsensical. Yeah, the first time I saw that. For people who don't know, Frank Chew is just a guy who hangs out around downtown San Francisco with a big sign. It's always covered in like decals that proclaim these like hidden truths about the twelve galaxies into the world stuff. Yeah, it's kind of then. Yeah, the number goes Yeah, like reptile people in like seventy five million gallons. I think it started out as the twelve galaxies right like years and yes, yes, the twelve Iron galaxies years and years ago. But then yes, you're right, it's gone up to Wikipedia page goes into like, yeah, the mythology, Yeah, thank you. I think he used to like he's like war he used to preach about that stuff, right, like verbally, didn't he There's a picture of him on Wikipedia preaching into a microphone at the twelve galaxies bar. It said, which I don't know what that Wow, I have no idea that the Wikipedia said it was. I haven't. I haven't seen him. I've seen him like as recently as like two weeks ago, but I haven't heard him like utter a peep in years. Like he just walks around with a sign. Now, Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't like proselytize about his about the galaxies so much anymore. He's he's like a San Francisco local fixture though he's he's cool. Yeah, oh comic con yep. I'm pretty happy with my streak of never having gone same year. Yeah you don't need to. Yeah, I mean stuff that was cool, but that's like a booth. Yeah, there's like some sixth scale tie fighter like from the original shoots. Okay, it's just something somebody built, yeah and is selling yours or whatever. Yeah, this is where nerds go when they have too much money and and too much time. From the looks of it, I saw the pictures of the Hall h Line where people were camping out over the line for Mondo. Mondo has a booth there. You can buy their custom movie posters that, you know, hours long. Maybe they're like I was sitting next to a guy on the plane coming back from and he's like, oh, I'm a comic book guy. So apparently comic book people still go there. I don't know. Oh yeah, yeah, no, I think it's yeah, it's still signings, not a lot of those movie trailers. I did see the Black Ranger sign on autographs. That's pretty cool. See the one that wants to fight Sam Punk's that the Green one? Who's the UFC guy one? I don't the Green Rangers. He has the big sign that says Jesus never tapped out when he signs autographs. Okay, because he's this was not him. Oh you're talking about Power Rangers, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, now I got it. The Black Ranger is the Black one. Oh that's right, yeah, right, right, Oh, I see okay, all right, well there's your annual Comic Con report. Yep. I think he's in the Shield. I'm watching the shield and they think I've seen that guy in there with his helmet. No, no, they took it off for the shield. Okay. I thought that Batman Superman trailer didn't look terrible. No, it looked a lot better than that first one. I didn't even know they had put out one before. This first one looks kind of lame. Why are they why are they fighting? I don't know. I think Superman's an alien? Okay, yeah, that cool Superman like blew up a city. Yeah, you like, took down Wayne and Congress are happy about it. Congress, you know this guy's this guy's a loose cannon and it needs to be controlled. Finally a political movie. Yeah, I don't know. It looked a lot better than I expected. I did see F one twenty fifteen. Yeah, today Daniel Dwyer played it. Oh yeah, it was a quick clock on the site. How does that look? It looks fine. Apparently it crashes a whole bunch some non good steam reviews. People, they're not They're no longer the masters of code, is what you're saying, apparently not Man, that's a bummer. This is the first one that appears on modern consoles as well. Right, yes, yeah, so is it? I mean, does at least look dramatically different. It looks It looks way different. It looks way better. I think it's a new engine and the handling is new, and the AI is new and supposedly better. Danny seems to like it. It's very u taxing. If you turn things like traction control off, you gotta be real careful with the Excel accelerators. But I don't know. I think it's cool cars. I like like project cars to me, like Danny loves project cars and you know, maybe he should just be on the podcast to talk about this, But uh, I think that's too much for me. Same as forts it was too much for me, like too many cars, too many different disciplines, too many tracks. Like F one to me, is is is very directed, gives you something thing to sit down and get good at. Yeah yeah, and plusly you know I know all the drivers and cars and stuff, so that's fine. Well, like, I'm sure there are variations, but an F one car is an F one car, right, as opposed to like, yeah, forts those all over the map in terms of different styles of car and capabilities and stuff like that. You want a truck, you want a ward hog? I kind of do, right, Actually can't drive that one, can you know? It was only in the Auto Vista. You would only walk around a virtual award hog. You can actually drive. See everything is marketing. Yes, six will have Formula E, however, which is the crazy XFL version of Formula one that's all electric. Do those cars have like spikes in the wheel wells or something? No, but there is the concept of fan boost where if you tweet enough to a specific driver, he gets a boost during the race. What can he control it or can he be like preparing for a hairpin turn and then it just go flying through the wall? Shot him? He doesn't get somebody hashtagged him. He controls it. You are granted before the race starts, and then you'll use it at any point during. Okay, that sounds better, But like it's you like it. You can overtake somebody with it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Formula is nuts. That's fucking great and terrible. Like it's every bit that like it. It's it's again just gets us one step closer to speed race or the movie becoming real. Yeah, like that's where this ends. Yeah, there is a there is a live DJE at the races who spins during the start and in like the last five laps. Starting to sound yep, nice. Yeah, he just stops in the middle and then picks it back up. Yeah. Well, I mean he is the formula e j yes ye ye. Also, they're not grownd PRIs, they are e preise. I don't know, but tweed boosting stuff just sounds like the logical conclusion of stuff like twitch place Pokemon, the right bleeding into the real world. I guess just people hitting an Internet button enough times to make something happen. I mean, like, think about it, though, if everyone was wearing like hollow lens, every every car can be controlled remotely if you like had an overlay of like say a red turtle shell on your hollow less okay, you could blast it out, hit another car and then slow him down. Okay, yeah, okay, all right, Yeah, put a bunch of hydraulics in the cars to simulate the craft. I mean, that's that's like the dog fighting stuff I did yes years ago, Like just the weird, like airplane laser tag type stuff like, yeah, that stuff sounds nuts. So that was your weekend comic con and you're here a little puzzling dragging them the plane. All right, that sounds like a good airplane game. Yeah, Dan, have you played anything besides Rocket League? I have? I played the entirety of God of War three remastered. Yes, that's out this new game, and I had my world shattered this morning. One of my long held beliefs about the video games and the industry as fans, I always assume that God of War was one of those universally beloved series that everyone just loves God of War. I can't think of ever talking to someone who didn't like God of War. And this morning we were doing the quick look because embargo lifts on video stuff, and it's like, oh, who's gonna be on this with me? And everyone's like, God a War. I was like, what are you saying? What are you? What are you talking about this God of War? And nobody wanted to play it? And I realized that is there no big God of War fans in this office? I got bad news, gas coolest shit? No, you still you still feel this way? Yeah? Like Okay, having played through three yet again five years later, Yeah, I just Platinum three again. You're like, no, I only got platinum this time. Is it really that easy to just that tighten Moe's hard, just rip through it? No? No, Yeah, this blows my mind. I always thought this was one of the most beloved like high quality bar action games or series ever, Like I thought the portable ones were really good for portable and then one, two, and three talk about three games that just I thought set the world on fire. I can people loved. I kind of kept trying to come back to God of War and seeing if will this one grab me? Will this one grab me? And No, I don't like Krados. I don't especially like the way those games play. I like this especially like that genre, that style of action game. See that's okay, that I understand because you don't like like Devil May Cry. You're not big like Bayonetta guy, So this is in that genre. I think. So with you saying you don't like those type of games, middle Gear Rising, I like Bayonetta and Bayonetta two. Like Vanquish, right, Uh yeah, Vanquish is quite put Vanquish in that. Yeah, it's a little different. Yeah, it's better than the rest of that bullshit. But like, but I thought, like the whole Credos story and his fucking big dumb like no, I'm we're gonna kill his family and it was the god's fault. I'm so mad, let's look at boobs. Like the whole thing just seemed like the dumbest high ass power fantasy. I didn't think it was weird that he was having sex with all these ladies while covered in the ashes of his dead wife. I thought that was a little up four form. But he gets going, he writes, I mean que Yeah, he starts out the beginning of three saying something like, now I will have my vengeance. Starts now, were you doing well? Because he never got to Zeus got He's in the first one man, never got the daddy. But I mean, like, I absolutely agree with just point about like he just like they can't keep ratcheting up. The fucking had like fucking jack shit to begin with, and then they just doubled down on it. But he's over again. It's like I'm a little I'm angry. He's a tiny angry man and he's able to kill giant, hulking gods. He's just going through mythology murdering. These some of the prettiest quick time events on the PS two and PS three. Yeah, Like the production values are unparallel, killer looking, game like visually, Like some might even call it the best graphics of that year for sure, but not much else. But like, the kills are fucking hilarious. Were like Theseus or Perseus whoever? In two where you put his head in the door and you're jamming on circle, just like, smash his head in this giant marble door eight hundred times until he dies. Like the deaths are great when you're poking out Besideon's eyes, when you beat the ship out of Zeus and you keep hitting circle forever until his head's gone. Like I think the kills are so over the top and awesome. I don't. I don't think there's self aware enough to be over the top form. The whole thing just seemed corner. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I feel like it takes itself a little too seriously for me to have fun with it like that. That's crazy to me. I just I've never heard anyone not be like, Yeah, I got it worse fucking awesome. Yeah, that's fucking bord, and I think that, like I played some of this remastered version, and it seems like they did a you know, unless it goes to shit later in the game. But like from what we've seen in the first couple levels, like the remaster job is well done. Yeah, it's it's pretty basic. I mean there's no new modes or anything. You know, you still have the old challenge stuff and everything. But yeah, just like the basic clicks kind of square square triangle flow of the combat. I know there are more combos and stuff, Like, I just don't like the way that the weapons feel in those games. I don't like the way that they kind of go through enemies as you're doing combos. I will say that Bayonetta and Devil may Cry, like the actual action in those series is way more you know, there's more to do there, there's more combo opportunities and there the controls are tighter overall. But I think God War felt like kind of like an easier not not easier, but like a simplified version of some of those games, which I think it has more to do with it with identifying enemies behavior than it does with combos. Sure, sure you know which you know, I think it is good gameplay, I think for sure, And I think those boss fights are fucking spectacular. Like that's why I like them. Is I love Spectacle. I love big dumb, violent Spectacle, and that series I think does it better than any other. You know what, you know what you need to play? What's that you need to play? Assros Wrath. I did play that, really, I only did a few chapters. I think the combat was not good in the Spectacle. Well, the combats, I've seen the cut scenes and stuff. It's cool. It's anime. It's extremely anime. Maybe that turned me off, but I think more combat that's pretty cool. The combat turned me off. Yeah, it's it's it's it's bad, but it's rough. But also there's not there's all there, not that much of it. Like it's like entire chapters go by where you don't fight anything, Like, yeah, it's not that kind of game really, But I just thought the production value I ever got a war was just it is it is, but that's kind of all there is there, well produced like it's an empty suit. You know, Yeah, I'm beautiful, But like the first game was genuinely a revelation because like people hadn't really done that kind of action game to that extent before, especially, you know, the hardware wasn't really up to the task. Like they squeezed a lot out of the PS two to make those good two first two out of war games, right, the first one was just like holy shit. But the first hydro fight. Yeah, yeah, the hydrophight is like an iconic moment of that generation of consoles. But beyond that, they kind of failed to evolve it in an in any kind of interesting way, and you can kind of blame it for the overuse of quick time events around that generation. I know she did it first, but like, God A War was the first one where it's like, okay, here's the part where I was they crammed it into action game, into you know, action gaming at that point. Yeah, yeah, they weren't. I don't know if they were the first to do that, but I think it was one of the most high pro file early ones because yeah, I guess the Shin move would do stuff like that, but it was not an action game. It's like it'd be like, oh, a soccer balls fly to my head, hit Lais or something. Yeah. I was just I was just kind of shocked I uh yeah, maybe maybe people don't look kind of War not maybe not everyone has the same reverence for God of War as I don't know. I understand that it is incredibly well liked, but to be fair, a lot of people do. To be fair, even I was not big on Ascension. Yeah, I remember, I don't know anybody that the Ascension seemed like that was the moment where they're you know, because that's that's the game where they were like, we put multiplayer in, that's what you were waiting for, right, And that was a big reveal. I remember I got flown out for game in form or to some Santa Monica thing whe it's like, sweet, I'm gonna see the new God of War. This is gonna be awesome. And then it just did that reveal to where it's like Kratos did some big kill, but then it pans out and there's another Credos or whatever the fuck they did, and this is how you're gonna show people this game for the first time. Did the game also have like some kind of weird time mechanic or did I have totally dreamed that time travel like for like in some kind of light puzzle solving stuff or maybe I completely don't think stream that up. That's where I saw. Are you thinking of that ratchet and clank? The cracking time? Were you the time you go back in time of Cratos is there and he's like, I'm mad. Oh right, okay, yes he was very mad. Yeah, it was like it wasn't No. The PSP games were like young Crados. Yeah, those were Prequelsos on the microphone one of them. This is a prequel. Ghost is Sparta was I think between one and two. Okay, I want to say yeah, and then Ascension was maybe before all of them, but yeah, like that one killed the buzz you think. I think ascensioned it because he had three ended the story. It's kind of the metal gear. So that's the thing. There's this kind of persistent rumor. I feel like I keep hearing like us and Monica's working and I've gone a war. No they're not, Yes they are, No, they're not, Like I don't know for sure, but man, if they are, I hope they're really going back to the drawing board like Newboot. New mythology didn't well, we're gone through Greek mythology. Yes, I agree with you. Credos in modern times. Huh, all right, he's chain whipping a taxi cards Shadow too exactly, Yeah, like I near future okay, all right, credos, these cyber jumps and the fucking nanotechnology future. God of War. Yeah, he picks up a nuclear warhead and throws it at a guy. Okay, and then he says I'm mad. I don't think he ever said it's famous catchphrase. What's up, everybody? I'm cradles and I'm mad. You're listening to ninety five seven to the whip? Oh by e a stock? What is he have? A wolf? Hewl? He's mad? All right, Okay, it just comes out. I think those games are cool as shit. Surprised, I don't know. I feel like God of War is of a time and place that has passed, and if they really are making another one, I hope that they're really rethinking what that series is going to be. Yeah. As much as I love that series, like, I'm not necessarily like if they had shown at trailer ady three of God of War, I would have been like, oh, okay, I guess I'll play this like I did Ascension. But it's kind of like, right, I feel like it, you know, is right in line with like Gears of War in a lot of ways of like they could make another one, but really, you know, lower Gears of War status. I think Gear's Wars. We're just looking at GW franchise. Gears is the one. I like Gears of War, but I think that is more. I think God a War has more to offer if they were to do another one than another Gears. Man, I think all the gameplay, I think, I like, I'm looking for like a different type of character action game than that. Yeah, I definitely think Gears. Gears remained more interesting and had more to offer over time. Absolutely, I played all Gears. I played all the God of Wars three was so crammed full of like extra modes and there's like a Horde mode. Stuff was sweet. Weapons they sold those those are great, but you know, I mean they they they they ramped it up to four player co op and three there were all those extra modes, like I just thought that was the mode. Stuff definitely went a long way. But then, you know, much like with Ascension, like Judgment, was there fucking like horrible misstep where you're like, oh, fuck this whole thing. Yeah, yeah, Like those series followed kind of similar trajectories, right, you get three of them and then yeah, and then they then they kind of they dip their toes and go like, let's make a fourth one that's not directly tied to this trilogy, like Sonic four. Yeah, exactly like that, yes, exactly one or episode two. I mean, I mean because episode two they corrected the movement. No, hear me out. Maybe maybe Sonic just wasn't mad enough. Fame Douglas set all these rings out in the forest. Yeah, it works. Pretty cool. Is a good character, dude, Like, man, if you want to tell me that God of War is cool, I'll be like, absolutely sure. I see why people would think that, Like it's not It's never been my thing, but like it looks fucking rad. It has the scale in a way that a lot of games didn't. But if you're gonna tell me you think Kratos is cool, his kills are was so much more anger than any other character. Like he's killing others. He's very mad. I know, other people kill bad guys. He just kills the ship. He will rip out like a leg and then stabby to death with that leg bone, Like it was awesome. Credos is like the honor and victor of action fucking character, action fucking games man. He showed up late and said he was better than all the ship that came before it, and fucking a couple of people bought that because they're idiot. You got beat up by the new agel. Yes, exactly. He made two wrestling references quickly. I don't quick entrance music. Oh. I said that all of the book gott a War music sounds like russev Entrance music person, And I'm bring up pressing that much out of wrestling. I'm just hoping Alberto do Rio is alive right now. How much is this game? It's uh forty? Is it forty? That sounds right? Okay, look that I want to say it's for standard, but also that also sounds proper. Anyway, there should not be a full price thing for for anyone. Hearing me talk about gott a War like this and felt similarly, it's fun playing it again. It's been five years. That game still looks fucking awesome. It doesn't look really good. It runs nicely. Yeah, is there is there? Literally nothing new though in terms of like even need thirty nine ninety nine, even the trophies are the same, like it's it's the exact no, like just kind of god, I don't know, even Concept Olympus. Even the graphics are the same. It's it's it is the same game. Yeah, all right, I think games about dido graphics comparison. So yeah, like the textures are a bit better. Yeah, it's it's not a Night and Day like remaster. It's it looks a little better. But I mean, gott A War three was one of the best looking PlayStation three games if there was game to not do that much too, like, yeah, like are they gonna be did they say they're gonna do a lot for the uncharted thing on PS four, because like two and three looked awesome. They said something about there being some enhanced art assets, but I don't think the Last of Us looked good. Yeah. Yeah, they did a good job with that. Somebody's been doing good remasters for a while, you know, like they did some they did stuff on the PS three from the PS two that was pretty quality graphic Jack like the Jack collection. Yeah, it's like that stuff. It seemed like when those gott A War games came, Oh yeah, yeah, they got the whole Legacy collection thing with like all five one this well yeah, yeah, but I I like to see a little material around the edges, right, because probably mostly selling these things to existing fans already, right, yeah, And I remember even like the first God of War when it came out, I had a ton of cool concept art and like maybe even like video of like early prototypes and stuff, right, and they would have whole documentaries and stuff about the making of it. Yeah. I wish more games had making of stuff like oh yeah you think I mean, you say that there'd be selling to existing fans, but like, don't forget that there's there are a number of people that are crossing from three sixty to PS four. It didn't play these Sony franchises well, even even if it's your first time with it, it would be nice if there was a little something extra in there. Oh I mean, well, especially for a God of War, especially for like God of War three. Yeah, you know, it's like, hey, come play God of War three. What happened one and two? I just I guess actually that's just one slide that says this guy's pissed. Look, you don't want to get on the side. Guy's very angry. He really is. He's even angrier. Still his anger nos No Bounds, God of War four. He's completely complacent. It's like totally they went all the way around to put on like eighty pounds like a pencil pushing middle manager now until someone pushes him too far from Farmland and Ohio and it's just falling down with Kratos. Okay, I played that. I played that game. I played that game in a fucking minute. Problem. Sure, yeah, that sounds all right. It's a good game to player. One person plays, is the Robert Duval character? Play anything else? Dan? Uh No, those are the two? All right? Uh? I think I'm good. Like that's everything I played too, push Shriangle to yell you forgot the bravecase. I mean it's fair to assume at any point the next like five months, I'm also dinking around with the witcher. But we've talked about that so much. Yeah, yeah, I mean I didn't so like it's not like I'm like hell bent on not touching the game until that next patch comes out. But I at the one point I was said, I didn't have time to mess with it anyway this weekend, But that patch coming also is like a good reason to be like, I'll do some other stuff. It seems like I've gotta play Magic Circle until that because yeah, everything we've complained about over the last like two months about the Witcher, it seems like that patch is gonna fah. We didn't talk about that patch on the last podcast we did, did Yeah, I guess we did. Okay, Yeah, yeah, right, I guess. Yeah. They had announced it and it hasn't hit yet, so they posted the full change log on Friday, so it's got to be pretty close, okay. But yeah, I'm absolutely looking forward to getting back into that. I will start a new game of that when given another shot. We've got an email about that stuff that we'll get to here in a minute. As we move into emails, pomcast Chambon dot com, I'm glad you like emails. There's some decent there's a bumper crop of emails this week. I could have even got grabbed more than the fifteen or so that I have here, but we'll save some of those from next time. Nick from Nashville in Tennessee, Nashville, Nick yep Ville, Nashville. Nick writes soon about Xbox One backwards compatibility. Microsoft is slowly rolling out three sixty compatibility for the Xbox one, while saying they must have the publisher's permission to allow compatibility, which seems unusual. Excuse me, when the PlayStation two at backwards compatibility the first notable case that I can remember, games just worked, as was the case with the PS three, right, I think that was right? Yeah, But over time the model you had determined, like some games didn't run on the eventually sixty gig launch ran everything, and then after that because that had two hardware in it, right, And then at a certain point, yeah, the three sixty required software rappers for the games, though I don't recall any mention of publisher permission. But then again, there weren't that many games that anyone cared about playing from the og Xbox. That brings us to the current gen systems, which curiously both launched without backwards compatibility. Is it possible the publishers actually discouraged backwards compatibility, realizing they could make good money pouring old games. Could there be written contracts about making the games work on future systems. That seems unlikely but possible, though with the digital games, they may only have the legal rights deliver the game to three sixties. Like, no, we've been over before that, they're uh word specific hardware reasons. The backwards compatibility was not in there. But what he's getting at here, So what I think is actually happening is publishers are making decent money with HD remakes and Microsoft knows this, so they're being polite and giving the publishers the option to hold back their three sixty games, not as a legal matter, but maybe just as professional courtesy, which is good business, I suppose, But it would be nice to see Microsoft open the floodgates on all the old games. I think a lot of it depends on how the publisher agreements are written these days, and I bet that they probably have changed since then, and that maybe the wording has gotten a little more specific, are a little more nailed down with regards to that, where now it is a business like another transaction, another another negotiation, another sign off. Yeah, Like I absolutely see where he's coming from. Like it feels like if they say, hey, three sixty games work now, you should just be able to put any three sixty game in there and have it work. You know. It's like like if you bought a Blu ray Player and only some of your old DVDs would play on it, that would be really shitty, you know, but now you know patches download over the internet. There's you know, some of these games will be digital purchases to begin with. So it could even be a case where like you know, yeah, maybe they can make all the discs work, but the digital versions have to get signed off on, because that's all specific. You know. If you think about like, you know, rock Band deal C, I think they have to go back, and you know, when they're doing rock Band four, I think they're they're having to go you know, because those deals expire anyway. Oh sure, So you know, like rock Band DEALC disappears from the service here and there because the deals don't get renewed or whatever it is. But you know, and and games are in the same boat. So I suspect it has more to do with that sort of arrangement, that sort of expiring agreement that has to be re upped or kind of you know, hey, we have to we have to add you know, a clause to this that says okay to go ahead with this sort of stuff. It is I'm sure it is just legal wrangling, but it is polite of them to ask because it does give the companies that very specifically do not want their old games playable so they can sell you the new HD shiny versions of your old games. Say no, that's a huge bummer for people that own those games totally. Uh. You know, maybe by the end of the year, when this rolls out for real, this will be a moot point because everybody will have just signed off and everything will be playable. And I really want to know how it'll go, because I just don't get the impression that publishers actually care. Kataku did a story I was going to bring that up not that long ago where it was like, you know, most of the publishers that talked to were just like, no, we're not talking about like the best. The best they got from anybody was a very tentative like we're looking into the option or whatever. Nobody would confirm anything in particular. Yeah, yeah, And you know, like there are so many used games out there in the retail channel that even if these games get flagged for inclusion, it doesn't necessarily mean that publishers are going to sell a ton of copies of their old games. It means that, like people are going to go buy four dollars copies of three sixty games and use those unless you get you knows, like Burnout being on sale last week. Yeah that is apparently back up, it's twenty bucks now. Yeah, so I missed it, and as much as I said I was gonna run straight home and buy it after the podcast, I forgot to do it. Yeah, but yeah, you know for me. For me, the thing that makes that thing makes sense is like the concept of digital sales of those games to people that don't already own them. I'm like, hey, you know, now you can buy these games on your Xbox and one if you want to, and they'll run fine, and you know, maybe you don't own them already and they're still cool games. Yeah, maybe maybe a bunch of people's old disc games or whatever get backdoord in just in the effort to sell them to people who don't have them already, you know. But but it's just none of that seems like it's a significant like revenue opportunity for any of these publishers at some level. They just they just Sunset writers that ship and it's go like, we don't care. I guess, like yeah, but they don't have to do any work for it. Since Microsoft did all the heavy lifting right, so who who knows, We'll see it's it's still a few months yet until they launched that future for real. So there could also be cases where, like you know, music that gets licensed for those games can't be brought from onto another platform warm without negotiating those deals. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of dumb bullshit that can get in the way of that stuff. Sure, basically, Yeah, next email comes in from Kevin, who is in Frankfort, Germany. Frankfort Kevin, Yep, that's the guy. Everyone calls him that, even in Frankfort, which is weird. Yeah. With PlayStation Plus turning five a couple of weeks ago, and the PS three's and to some extent, the vitas libraries being exhausted of content, what do you guys think is the future of PlayStation Plus? Will they try to offer six titles between the Vita and PS four? When will they abandon the PS three? Do you think they might start to put now titles into the mix? He means PlayStation now the streaming service. Do you believe they might even expand into the realm of movies or music? Thanks for your time and all you do, Like, yeah, like they're kind of getting to that point where I mean, there's obviously there's a zillion PS three games they could throw into the free games, and they do. They rotate through those things. But at a certain point, like that stuff is all such old news that I feel like you, I don't know, I don't tell to anyone who's like caring about what the free games are on PS three, Like you know, they're that's fine for that audience, right, because it's like old games for old consoles. I mean, that's how it's gonna go. But you just if you figure over time, more and more people will be trading up to PS four, right, you think at a certain point, if they if they keep the mix they have now, which is pretty even split, right, it's usually Yeah, this is kind of like two per platform generally roughly more, you know, it kind of varies a little bit, but like the more time passes, the less attractive the PS three into some extent, the Vita games are going to be in that mix, right sure, Yeah, like they're gonna have to start biasing it more towards the PS four. Most months, I forget to go add the least three Vida games. Yeah, like whatever, I just do it on the web store, so it just kind of hit everything and one go there. But yeah, I agree with this guy. I feel like it has to They're gonna have to evolve that thing. So so whenever they do their flash sales, you know, their weekend deals or whatever, they've definitely worked TV and movies and stuff into those. It's like, hey, we're having a Superhero sale, and that includes like to the point where it's clutter, to the point where I'm looking for the game deals and they're like, don't fucking what the fuck is Hero? That's the powers? I mean, I don't want to ship. They've got decent filtering options. I think, yeah, you filtered out and then get down it like, Okay, actually there are only like three PS four games and I don't want any of them. That's usually how the most of those sales have gone. Yes, yeah, So they could dip their tone to that or just kind of stop offering PS three games, And I don't know that that many people would be like I'm canceling, Like, I just don't. That doesn't seemed like that would be a huge needle mover. Su Yeah, he's pissed about lack of PS three fucking free games. Man, My instt game collection knows no bounds. This large PlayStation. Three guys a real hair trigger anything and set them off all right after after last week's on Professional Friday and Dan's experience with Quake, Wait, this email mysteriously comes in from one Zan Creeker. What can we get a refresher? I played Quake. We tried to make Dan play Quake for the first time on your not played Quake no, because, like I always say, I never had a PC that could run games and I grew up. But it was kind of a it was a weird experience though. Yeah, So what was weird to me was it was the default control, so I had to like hold the middle mouse button the wheel, I had to click the wheel into zoom in and the left button to shoot. Remember when I at the beginning, when you first started playing, and I made you go into the console and put in him look. Yes, like that's how old and sort of feedle that game is, you know, like like that was so far beyond any kind of standardized controls for games like that, you know, like like there was no expectation of w ASD and mouse look and stuff like that back then. You know, like the that version that's up on Steam is just original nineteen ten ninety six Quake. Are you saying it's strange that you had to use the left mouse button to shoot? No? No, No. The fact that I had to be like holding in the middle mouse wheel thing like the zoom, yeah, and then clicking like well don't zoom. This was I'm sorry. We also made a play Quick three. He played some single player Quake one, and then he played some Quake three against bots. Okay, so you wanted to zoom with the rail gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was far away. I was on the weird spaceship map or whatever. You can rebind zoom to whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, but no, it seemed cool as shit, Like I think like a game I would have played that. Ye, multiplayer Quake is still my favorite multiplayer shooter of any kind. Of Quick one and then Quick three behind it, it seemed awesome. But yeah, you had kind of like not necessarily the ideal first Quake experience. But no, but I mean, I I completely understand why that was a thing and why it's it's looked upon stuff on Like, yes, you just you played single player Quick one. Uh, briefly. Yeah, I think it was in the middle of also eating taco bell that just got delivered, so I was distracted, but I was able to play something. It's a good way to play quick one, you know. Yes, that's the Yeah, you just needed to add some mountain dew on jimp up on that ledge and find that secret right right at the beginning. I don't think we had him do that. Yeah, I don't think it did, right, Yeah, Yeah, it seemed cool though, like like I did Doom ever have a thing Doom one to where you could do free mouse look up and down and had no looking up and down period. Okay, because that I could only play Doom and Wolfenstein three D on the PC I had at home, And so yeah, I'm trying to even remember the first time I looked around with a mouse. I don't I didn't even play Doom with a mouse period. When Doom was new, I played with like a Gravis game pad or just the keyboard like arrow keys and control to ship. I think most people just played it with a keyboard for sure. Yeah, that was kind of that was like it sounds so rudimentary now, but one of the crazy revelations about Quake was like just mapping look to a mouse and just being able to look all over the place, you know, with this analog device. It was like at the time, like I was so rooted in like Doom and and Wolfenstein and stuff that I didn't play Quake with a mouse. Didn't either. Six months Yeah, same, totally, Like you hadn't warm up to that because it was like a new I just didn't even think it was like a vital thing until I got to an office where people were playing Quake a lot and they were using a mouse, and I was like, oh, I'm getting Okay, I understand, Okay, this is why you would want it. Okay, Yeah, I get it. Yeah, Like when like when we talk about Quake being an important game, it's because of stuff like that, you know, like I think people people forget in a lot of cases, like how and because if it's cool death messages? Yeah right, my rocket man, Come on, what a weird game. This is a weird mix of like Norse mythology and like like love crafty and yeah, demonic stuff and just like what the fuck was that? The final confrontation being just like the dumbest fuckers thing, just telefrag the boss and then it's just over. Have No, I had no idea when I beat that game, I had no idea what I'd even done. Totally. It's like, oh what it just I mean ended, I don't know when you go back now and read about what the development process was like for that game, like they had no fucking idea what they were making. Like John Carmack made an engine and then they tried to wrap a game around it. Yeah, while they were like fighting with each other and couldn't agree on anything. Jealousy. You guys are playing that with like mouth, some keyboard and online and stuff, and I my FPS is like playing Forsaken sixty four. Forsaken. Forsaken is an awesome game out of sixty four. The PC version, okay versions was better, but but you know it was on Dreamcast two wasn't none. I think I think the might and sixty four has played Hex and sixty four to be fair. Playing online multiplayer over a modem back then was not all roses, you know, like it was very rough. Oh, I remember spending dozens of hours trying to get Command and Conquer and red Alert to play online over at fifty six K and that was fucking impossible. Those were nice because you could just call up your friend across town and play. Yeah, as opposed to like Quakes, you had to go over the internet and it was bring your giant Tower PC over to your friend's house and play. I got a link cable for PlayStation one and would play Red Alert with a PlayStation controller with somebody in the same room with two TVs. Yeah, I'm not having a PC. I'll read this email from Zan Kreeger. Now, Quake one was all right. I remember lagging out with a thousand paying on an M player tournament once, but that was mode, so whatever. Hamburger Brad talked up the supposed superiority of Quake three on upf Fuck Quake three. I mean, to be fair, it's pretty cool. A toaster with Netscape Navigator can run it at sixty frames a second or whatever. But how darey all ignored the superior game Unreal tournament UT was the bomb dope music, dope graphics, Last man Standing instant GiB with honor official DLC pack letting you play as a two legged crow. You should remember who is the Alpha and the Omega M Fuck this email. Wow, it's fighting words. This email is a bunch of bullshit, as UT looked upon as finally as Quakes really good. Like UT did a lot of really cool stuff. I liked the I mean like the later well, I mean Unreal was cool. Yeah, yeah, like regular Unreal was multiplayer as well. But UT was really good. Yeah it was. I'm not saying it was a bad game or what, but like it just never had the feel of Quakes to me, Like, well, this is one of those games that you're either in this camp or the other, right, right, people, You either like the Beatles are the Stones, They're both great. Sounds are better. I don't think the games are comparable on a fundamental mechanical level. I like, I like you just move on. And I liked UT until it got all the way up its own ass with the CTF. Yeah. Sure, but I'd say the same thing about Quake also, Like as soon as fucking everyone disappeared down the CTF hole, I was like, it was so good. You fucking ruined a good thing by putting a much of bullshit, fucking team mechanics in it. You asked, the rocket launcher wasn't going anywhere? You can still play death match fuels, Yeah, it was still there, but I mean Drew, like you yourself talked about how much you don't like the feel of the cry engine. Yeah, like that was the problem with UT back in the day. Do not feel right like Quake did, Like just basic player movement and physics stuff, We're not there. But like you two down three times four, you know that that's when they kind of they nailed it down, I think. But I think it's telling that those games felt way more like Quake three. I was, I was like, oh three man, yeah, yeah, you two two K three, two K four I think are fantastic, Like I had a ton of fun, yeah, original and real tournament was was a little more divisive, Yeah for sure, Like it had a lot of cool ideas that like the Quake should have had, you know, Like Quake was like an engine and some rules and that was it as opposed to UT having like a proper server browser and like like the Mutator stuff was pretty well thought out, you know. Yeah, like UT was a more complete package. I wouldn't argue that I don't think it played as well. I was holding a copy of Unreal Championship two in my hands not twenty four hours ago. You lead a strange life. Did you did you just like lose all self control and throw it in and select rating. No? No. I so apparently that game has land support, meaning you could tunnel. Oh you could fucking get your x link ki on tunnel that ship over the internet. Play Unreal Championship two online. Still weird, which I kind of wanted to do. Should totally do that? Hook it up to a laptop and then bridge that? Yeah, so you would you have to do it? Did you have to mod the Xbox itself? Or people just do it externally? Just do it externally. You know, if you had a router with custom firmware on it, you'd probably do it all there, I guess. But or hook it up to a PC and like have the connection bridge through there or whatever it is, whatever the fucking bullshit processes. Maybe we should play some Unreal Championship too. It sounds like a lot of work. Yeah, I do. I would like to try to do it. To tuck that one away in the back pocket for later. All right, go through some more emails. Jason from Illinois just finished playing excuse me? Just finished replaying Bastion for a third time. Because of how the narrator is so great, And I would also put the narrator from the Stanley Parable up there in greatness. I was wondering if you guys had some other favorite narrators in games. Those are two of the best. Those are not only two of the best, but like the only two I can think of like extrectly like narrators. Yeah, I mean, I don't feel like that device has been used as much as it could be. But they're a little bit of Patrick Stewart at the beginning of Oblivion. No, he was a character. He was the King. I mean, he did narrate the interest, yeah, but he was also he was also in the game as a character. That's right. I'm trying to think of like actual narration, like throughout the duration of a game. Yeah, it sounds like Magic Circle's got some of that, right, Or is it more like it's more that there is a character that's talking directly to you and conversations you are overhearing, and that's a ton of games. Yeah. Yeah, it's not led the legend of Matt Hazard by the amount of times that you bring up Matt Hazard with somewhat distressing that game is somewhat distressing. Yeah, I felt bad for will Arnett. He deserves better. He went on to be bigger and better things. Uh shit, I don't know. Like every every nineties point and click adventure game never made, there are a lot of good narrators in there, right, Mmmm, I'm sure that there's something I'm forgetting. But yeah, there's Dandy Lion and the Witcher. Make more games with narrators, I think, is what we're saying, because there's not many. Conquer Bad Firday. He's kind of talking to the camera. Did he narrate that game? Yeah? I don't know if that counts? All right, clearly his question is non starter. Let's move on. Next email comes from Tom. It's about Artemis. Remember that? Yeah, yep, Hi. I always enjoy your conversations about Star Trek, and I recall a few mentions over the years about the starship simulator Artemis. Are you guys ever going to give it a shot? I'd really love to see Jeff as a Federation Starship captain. And after this week's on Professional Friday, it's clear that you have the cinema quality performance capture tech to cast someone as an alien slash cheeseburger member of the Bridge crew. Give me that star treking. God, it's a lot of setup. Yes, we talked God folly looking at the logistics of it too, and at some point Whiskey Media on Front Street we talked repeatedly about trying to do Artemis. I always wanted Gary Witty to come in with his captain Kirk bathrobe and be a captain, and I felt like that was a good setup. But but yeah, I like it. Just the amount of logistics to pull it off properly seem completely insane. Uh, Like how many screens was that? Nine? I think it was, yeah, because like you need a bunch of screens around the set, but every crew member also needs their own screen, and like, I don't know, I think we had that many PCs. Yeah, yeah, Like I think like we were literally were trying to figure out how many PCs we would need to drive together and we didn't have enough or whatever. Like it just seemed like a crazy thing to try to actually implement. It's still on a list somewhere of it. Yeah, Like you know, just like in the spirit of the old Battle Tech centers, why aren't there are't in the centers out there where you could just show up and like captain a starship for the afternoon maybe, so that's entirely possible. That's what I heard. Yeah, thats what have you heard? Is that like it's a cool experience, but the actual thing is not very good, Like piloting a starship actually not that entertaining. Yeah, punching in coordinates yeah not that great. Yeah yeah, all right. Plus you don't have like the people in like eyebrow prosthetics on the other end playing aliens, right, come to make that stuff up for yourself. You we already did a video on Space Team. Yeah, that's true. That's a good game. Uh. They just updated it with like different language support, which wow, what does that mean? That sounds horrifying? M hm. Who can say they're flaming Zimmer or whatever? Yes, all right, next email comes in from god Biarka. Okay, I'm gonna say from Denmark. Sure, I hope that's at least reasonably close. He's played track Mania n VR. I have tried track Mania with the oculus. That is not the line. We can go further. Okay, okay, in all seriousness, I tried playing track Mania two with a DK two rift. It was an experience, it should be said. I got a pretty I've got a pretty high tolerance promotion sickness. I've never really had any sickness from using the DK otherwise, and track Mania was survivable for me. Although when I crash, I do have to close my eyes and spinning violently through the air is the line. It's still the same camera from standard track Mania, so you're still seeing the car in third person. There's a more there's a more hoodcam style option as well, but I felt the third person worked better for some reason. So it's really just a more in your face version of track Mania, and it's great and horrible and perfect. If you're susceptible to motion sickness, I would probably tread carefully, So there you go. I have to know I would want first person, though you can set it that way. I mean you tracks, user created tracks will often drop into first person. Your bumper cam though, right, yeah, you're not in a cockpit, yeah yeah, all right, but that's what you want for that project. Cars has uh like they've modeled the helmet, right yeah, So you're looking through a visor and every time there's an explosion on the track, you see Samus's face and the visor, right all right. Next email comes from Matthew the bomb Crew. Matthew from London here. I was just thinking back to Elin War and thinking how much I enjoyed it at the time. Yet I've never revisited it, maybe because I remember how disappointed I was with the ending. But I was thinking back to all of your comments at the time about how you hope a lot of the ideas in the game are stolen by other devs. My question is, why do you think they haven't. Elin warre seems to have been forgotten after the demise of Team Bondai. I guess my like, my understanding is that actually doing that stuff with the face stuff was incredibly expensive and most games don't actually need it. Yeah. In fact, like they developed the technology themselves, right, and they probably owned it. Like you sat in the middle of that thing. Yeah yeah, what's like Brendan Getaway guy, Brendan get Away. Yeah, he he was actually I didn't remember his name. I remember him talking on that trip about like how that's what he saw himself doing, is like maybe even leaving the game industry to just pitch this, uh this technology around for you know, movies or whatever. Like he thought that was going to be like the next huge thing. I mean it was fucking incredible in the game. The first time you saw we were like, oh my god, this is the best. That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah, it was just like its like these are the best like fake video game faces I have ever seen in my life. And they kind of still are went into a certain degree well, and just the ease in which that they were able to capture that, I mean, because you just get the person, you put him in there and they say stuff. Yeah. Yeah, So I sat in the thing. They put a orange poncho. There's pictures of me if you google Dan record Elinore. So I got like a big orange poncho on. They put a green little ball on your neck, which is kind of the anchor point for the head to the body or whatever. Because yeah, it was none of the body step I just the head and the voice. But yeah, they're just capturing your faces. Yeah, they had to cut my hair and paint it and put glue in it and all this stuff, and uh, yeah, they're just filming it. There's nothing on your face really, there's no like little markers or anything, and it's just capturing it from so many different angles and it on the fly just renders it in a three D environment. So yeah, you just pull in actors you haven't read it, just like any other you know, audition or whatever, and then it's done. Like if you if you nailed the line reading, you only have to do it once, right, Like they didn't have to have you do it for multiple angles or anything crazy. I would do the lines they gave me about twenty lines that I said, and then they would be like, all right, now, just hold like a kind of angry you're an inquisitive face or something, and you know, or here you're listening to someone, hold that face for a while. Here's you smiling, and then that's that's all I need for that character. It seemed really cool the way they did it. Yeah, I'm sure that's an expensive initial investment to set up a studio like that though. Yeah, it all fly into that stuff. But that wasn't the only like the tech wasn't the only thing about that game that really struck me. Like, I loved the detective work aspect of it, you know, elements of it. I like the idea of questioning people and figure out if they're lying. By yeah, we're where it got like it kind of broke down because it was so arbitrary, you know, And also there was so much time of just like rotating around the same hairbrush for you know that, I know the idea of all that. I just think the execution was a little weird on a lot of it. Yeah, I still I still really enjoyed the sum total of that thing. I enjoyed it. Like I remember Vinnie talking about it after the fact, because he's such a big adventure game guy saying like that game felt to him like one interpretation of what like a modern adventure game could be, you know, where you're like mix adventure elements with an open world and shooting and stuff like that, and dialogue scenes and everything. I'm also a sucker for just how obsessive they get, Like they did this with a getaway too, where it's like street by street. You know, this is very right, like they look at pictures from the air. Like I remember playing La Noir, there was like a mission where you chase a janitor across the high school football field or something. I remember pausing the game, going to Google Maps and going on street view and like, oh, that high school is still there, and like side by side, like yeah, there's the real football field now. And here's the nineteen forties video game version of it. And I was constantly doing that street view thing. It's like, oh my god, they really got the street by street Like that movie theater looks just like that one, Like I love that set. Yeah, it was such an obsessive attention to detail, Like there's a it's a real feeling of kind of very smilitudor about that stuff, just the way they created that world. But that's kind of all rock star stuff to a degree, it is, but like you know, that one kind of almost fetishized it. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And that one was based on a real place where where they do you think that that like, I mean, what do you think that did anything for them? I mean, like it's awesome that they had that attention to detail, but like no, I mean I had to break it down in like the most callous way possible, like how many of what percentage of that game sales could you attribute to that attention to detail versus the amount of work that went into that attention to detail? And yeah, it's probably not worth it in the long run. Like it's a cool little thing, like I think it's awesome, but basing it off of like a real place, maybe easier than trying to make a fake place seem real, like the GTA route or it's like this is pretty much la but right like things you wouldn't even consider, like are there like how many traffic lights are here? Or how many Is this the correct density for this type of inde? Yeah, maybe by not designing it, by just gonna like, well, someone else designed it and they probably knew what they were doing, so we're just gonna replicate that. Maybe that took some of the work out of it, so we already have the whole layout of the roads from you know, square. I'm saying there could be an uncanny valley of urban planning that we may not even be cognisant of that you would get around that by basic off of a real city. What. Yeah, all right, man, check this out, Like let's get some candles. Okay, that's my whole plan. All right, all right, wow far out? Let me eat them what? I feel like it's time for Rock Start to announce new game. Yes, yeah, I wish they would. I want Right Dead or Bully. I think we're uh, we're what right up? I was holding a copy of Red Dead Revolver in my hands twenty four hours ago. Wrong, Red Dead Gun? What. I did not touch a copy of Gun anytime recently, Like, yeah, we're we're coming up on two years since the first release g t F five came out, right, yeah, yeah, ready for the next chapter in the Max Pain. I didn't finish Max Pain three, so I don't know what happened there, but like I assumed that was kind of con say, there's a lot of things about Max Pain that I said, like, I don't know what happened there. Sure agents still a thing. Is that officially? Not fucking way, Like, I don't know that anybody's come out and said anything, but yeah, I know there's a lot of chatter about Bully two for a while about like people like music guys updating their links and saying they're doing Bully two or something, which like Super one, although it makes so much more sense for them to make another Red Dead since that's sold a billion units and Bully not quite ave been pretty good about not doing the thing that makes sense some of the time. Yeah, like they do they Yeah, they they definitely come out of left field with stuff on on a frequent basis, And there was a yeah, it seem like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it seemed like there was a while where they were almost like trying to court some of for Bully, to try to maybe win some internal argument about Bully or something. I don't know. I just felt like it was coming up enough with Yeah, some of those soundtrack stuff and some of that other yeah, yeah it is scholarship editions. Yeah, yeah, I wonder. I went back a couple of years ago and played through All the Bully again, and that game is so damn charming. Some of the game pad controls on PC were fucked up when when I tried to do it version, Yeah, I was kind of in the way. But PS two and three sixty Midnight Club, I was holding a copy of Smugglers Run in my hands ago that that early PS two classic. Yeah, the last time he held Ony uh less than twenty four hours ago, a sealed copy of Ony for PS two No less all right, god, yeah, it's it's it's crazy to think that rock Star used to put out stuff like that Bungee and rock Star put out on Yeah. Yeah, but also it just like that weird. It feels so different than the stuff they do now, you know, like wild metal racing or whatever. Right, there's that Dreamcast driving games technically a rock Star game man Hunt God, yeah, man Hunt Ship. Yeah, yeah, I wonder. Yeah, it's just you have to like, what what would they be working on next? Which studio would be the most likely to be San Diego? I've been Red Dad. It's been over five years since Red Dad came out, right, assuming San Diego, Like, I know they had some layoffs or something after that game ship, but I don't know, like what the staff situation was there, Like was that after Red Dead? That that huge? All those news stories about the like crazy work situation there, Yeah, in San Diego specifically. Yeah, I want to say after I think it necessarily solely applied to San Diego. But yeah, that's yeah either way, Like if that studio is still a going concern, They've had five years since their last game shipped, So we modeled all of Arizona. God, I don't even know what I would want out of a new Red Dad. I really don't. They are all so the Midnight Club studio, that's right. I can't imagine who did midnight club ever? Read Dead? They're going to change the name back to Angel Studio. Think about it. Let's do it. Yeah, we'll see. Yes, what was it beat Maker or what was the It's master Flex MTV Music. Yeah, remember that Beaturator was kind of cool. Yeah, yeah for what it was. Of the things that are exactly that thing that have appeared on Sony platforms, I over and over again, I liked MTV Music Generator for PS one. Yeah, that stuff was all right, but yeah, the Beadurator was was better at that ship that was? That stuff was all right for what it was. Uh. I think about a new Red Dead though, was like, where do you go with that stuff? Because like, not only was the story of Marston completely and utterly put to bed, but all of Red Dead is about the end of the West. Like I would not just say Western, It's about the fact that the West is in right, Like, how do you make another Western after you have depicted the near future? Okay, cyber cowboys punching deck mm cyber cowboy, cyber cowboys. Okay, okay, they're making a westward We're talking like have you seen the video for Knights of Sidonia by Muse. I've heard things about it. What if they just made that into a video game? That's my pitch, all right, I'm gonna go watch that video and then I'll report back. Yeah, it's it's a pretty good video. When you say robot cowboys, I just think about like Steam World Dig Yeah, I guess there's more robots of something. Yeah. Can you can jet boost, double jump and wall run the Western movies in Red Dead? But that's my dwarf. That's my whole point. Though. If you go back to that stuff, it's like you're going backwards. I know. But I mean, who's going to give a shit? Like I mean, if it's just another Western game that controls great and has a fun new story and everything I think is the exact, I'm sure who would give it Rockstar more. They would be the people that would be like, no, we don't want to do this, where we've said more than anybody in this industry. Those guys stand on like their creativity, of originality and like artistic statement. I'm talking about like fans, like people that played the game and like Red Dead most I know it would feel like it's been done, But I bet the majority of people are like, I want to ride around on a horse and shoot people again, Like yeah, that that's the gun too. Great God coming from Sierra. I could see them doing like a prohibition era like uh Mafia, that could be cool, but yeah, that kind of gets in a different territory. But yeah, yeah, maybe it'll be something completely originally talk about the early days of Nascar. Yeah. Sure, what happened to that Dirty Harry game? Uh? They showed like a trailer for that, didn't they trailer? Who was making can't remember or somebody? Yeah, like Eastwood was in it. His likeness and voice. I want to say, I think there's a really weird CD trailer. I'd love like a really good Dirty Harry game. That'd be cool. I don't know that that works anymore. I mean, cool tough cop guy running around shooting back guys, open world city. I just it's gold. I just don't think it. I just don't think like Eastwood as Dirty Harry resonates enough really pretty iconic. Yeah for old men. I'm thirty one, and I think that's psychic. Yeah, uh huh uh Yeah, I just I don't know. I was like, yeah, I think they should make a game based on Cobra or another like, you know, like let's not get ahead of ours too far out of fucking pocket or over the top Okay, Yeah, No, I mean Nintendo's arm wrestling game with the dual screen punch out thing, but over the top, like now you're talking like now you're selling selling me on a video game that I will happily buy into. No, but you know, I don't know, like they're certainly not above fucking weird. Like I mean, they did that Warriors game and that made that made zero business sense and was a fucking rad move, even if that game was not quite as fucking cool as I wish it was. The collective was doing that dirty hairy game. Uh, and the collective was they were the Buffy the Vampire Slayer uh studio, which that was a good game. I don't know, like if you Buffy one. Yeah, that that Buffy game for Xbox was actually like super well. Liked that they did. That's kind of the thing they did that people like, Oh they well, I mean they did Getting Up Contents under Pressure, the Mark Echo Classic. Yes, I held two copies of that, not twenty four hours ago, one regular one limited a sealed PS two copy. No less, you had quite a Sunday. Yeah. Uh. They apparently shipped a game based on the Da Vinci coat. I reviewed that Wow. It was one of the first games I reviewed. It was that just like a photo hunting game. Look at a bad I was gonna say, it was like a bad fucking point and click adventure game. I think there was a lot of weird puzzle stuff because I hadn't seen the puzzle game from a third person perspective. The aim of the game, as with the book, is to to locate the Holy Grail. Spoilers, Yeah, yeah, I definitely reviewed that. Who did the Bourne Identity game? Oh, like Vivendi or something, right, I guess so. I kind of liked that game. I forget who developed that. All right, do you want to do some more emails? Yeah? Text some more email. The game was going to take place between Dirty Harry and Magnum Force. It's like a really funny like detail to have. What many Dirty Harry movies are there? I couldn't name any of them besides Dirty Harry, Magnum Force and yes, now now a Sudden Impact. What about death? Wish I get some Charles Bronson? Yeah, Charles, Okay, yeah about Doomsday Grand Torino. That's a Dirty Harry movie game, like somehow more of the Rock as a Bond movie. All Right, Greg in marl Up, excuse me, upper Marlboro, Maryland now where the cigarettes are from. I hope, so we'll call you the Upper Marlboro Man. Yeah, Greg, Well, here's what Greg has to say. I like the idea of how do you think I got these swell emails? All right? Go ahead. I like the idea of Dev's using tongue in cheek references to universally despised characters and scenes in their future projects, so you can seethe from your memories. But I'm not sure if it has been done all that. Often only metal your Solid three and major Ivan Ridanovich Raikov comes to mind. For instance, how stoked would you be if Horizon zero Dawn had an Easter egg featuring Rico from Killzone courtesy of Gorilla? Not at all? It's ever been stoked to see Rico from kills Yeah, that's not, like, I mean, you know what, You're gonna find his body and go, yeah, Rico got his Like, No, that's not I'm pretty sure the arbiter is in Halo five. Yeah, people, but people, people hate the art. People don't hate the armit, or do they? Keith David, how could you hate that? I'm drawing the comparison between him and Yeah. So the email is talking about like if they made jar jar jokes in episode seven kind of yeah, I guess yes, No, I think you gotta fuck it, like like that doesn't look good regardless of like where the jokes come from. If you are the people that made those decisions that then fucking go back and try to play it off like oh, we know, guys, that sort of sucks. But I just mean generally speaking, like like remove from all that. But if you're the new crew on something that goes back and fucking tears apart something the previous regime did, you're also shitty because because you're just shitting on the people who came before you. Yeah, what if you're just doing it to genuinely troll your fans, and that's maybe okay, So I think I'm all right with that aspect of yeah uh, but yeah what about them? Ges three appearance was like a rip on riding though. I mean the funny we'll like. Okay, So if you pick uh, it's you know, at the beginning, it's like pick I like Meddle Year one. I'm like Middle Year two, Like you get the Camo. It's like, well, when you land though, he takes the thing off. It's like, yeah, he plays riding again. That's funny. And then like if I remember right, Major Rykov is just like a total wiener, Like what what's the joke with him? He's just like a total wiener. Part grab his crotch and get and there's like some kind of crops grab medal back to Meddle Year two, President grabs Riding's dick and then Volgan does it to Major reich CoV in three, is any like in the bathroom when you find him or something That's where I found him. Yeah, I think he gets really afraid when you set off the alarm and he runs to the bathroom or something like something like that. But the main thing I remember is that like you land and it's like, oh, you're playing is Riding again? So it should have stuck with that. I agree, all right, they should have eliminated Snake from the franchise after two. Yeah, but then you wouldn't have gotten full or you should play Metal Gear Solid four. What is that? Stupid fucking game? Is what it is. It's a visual novel. I hope you like button mashing. Some pretty good button mashing. It's some of the best button mashing one specific most some of those poignant button mashing in all of video games. Irrespective of you guys doing this feature, my cousin also just bought a p S three and is playing through MGS four for the first time as we speak. Great is he giving you updates despite being like a huge metal Gear fan, Like he's just you know, he's a lawyer. When he's got kids and stuff. You know, he just doesn't play a lot of video games anymore. But like, I almost feel like I am reliving Metal Gear Solid four along with all of the people I know who are playing through it right now, to the point that I kind of want to look up at PS three. Yeah, you probably played it when I didn't have trophes. I played it like the day of the day, like tes the weeks that it came out, and have never touched it against and I went they were pretty fast. Ye, I don't have time to play met of your sold four, but I kind of want to play me out of your sold four before five comes out? Fuck, yeah, how else you gonna understand what happens in five? I'll play four? Of course I know what happens in twenty eighteen to understand nineteen eighty four. I'll make all the difference, all right. Next email enigmatically comes in from G. I don't know who g is is the agent is the frightening zombies? Right, okay, he's got a Dreamcast type straptos back and a typewriter. Oh, never mind, and never mind. In the first line of his email, Hey it's Gareth from Ireland. Oh there you go. Finally g has been revealed. So I bought a play a PlayStation TV for fifty euros yesterday. It seemed like a reasonable price. Well, what a miserable, fucking turd of a box. The UI is clumsy and barely functions without touch. It's hideous on a fifty inch screen. No, you can only access the one gigabyte of internal memory if you don't have a memory card in the system. I mean it's a gig The list goes on. But I thought, at the very least I could use the system as a box to play all my PS one and PSP games. I was wrong. Certain Vita games won't play because of missing functionality. Fine, good even. However, I can't for the life of me figure out why certain other games are incompatible Faceria Chronicles two for PSP is incompatible on any PlayStation TV resolution issue question mark, question mark. Much of the Final Fantasy Series four or five, eight nine and Tactics are compatible with Vitas globally, but won't run on PlayStation TV and PAL regions. No idea. What the fuck can you think of any reason why this would be the case? Has Sony soiled the only reason that anybody would want this abomination much appreciated? G Like, I think that's kind of the whole thing with that thing, right, Like it doesn't even do the thing it's supposed to do properly. I mean, they put out a fucking you know, this could have been a beautiful thing in a world where any game developer gave a fuck about putting a game out on the Vida, you know, like or gave a fuck about updating their existing games to work on the Vita. But there was zero and sentive for them to do that because no one bought one of those fucking things, because people didn't buy the regular Vida to begin with. So everyone fucking ran away from that thing like it was scorched earth. And now you see a lot of like really interesting indie games and that's fucking cool as shit, Like, there's some fucking cool games on the Vita. But yeah, remember when we used to care very deeply about getting video out of a Vida. I spent hundreds of dollars of my own money on buying a Vita with custom video out, only to find that the video out was not of a high enough quality for us to use reliably. But then by the time they put out advice that actually served our needs, it didn't actually serve our needs. And also there are no games. Yeah, it's fucking insane. The trajectory, the trajectory of the Vida has been nuts fucking day one. Remember when that thing had a cell phone in it? Yeah, the Vita, that fucking sim card and use model, Like, what the fuck do you see? Man? The Vita. I saw a Vida TV a couple of weeks ago on the internet for thirty four that's the things is also a lot of money to pay for that, it actually is. The main reason I included this email is because so is that price drop permanent? The PlayStation TV has been available for forty dollars in the US for a while. There's a bundle with a PlayStation three controller and the Lego Movie game or something for fifty dollars, And then I saw the actual Vida TV for thirty four recently. That seems like not a bad deal, but I almost bought both of me. I'm just staring at it at the page on Amazon. It's like, what am I going to ever use this for? One time? Every time the price drops on the PlayStation TV, I'm like, well, I would be stupid not to buy it at that price, right, But then, like, what what did you do when you do when they came out in Japan and then didn't do anything with it until they turned on US functionality and then did that and then started hasting out games, And you're like, oh no, they were not lying about this compatibility list. This thing's fucking useless, even games that you think should totally work on that thing. You know, the developers just didn't go back and just flip a switch and resubmit it or something to say like, oh no, we tested it works, Like it's just they don't care. Why would they why? Indeed, like they have to just be liquidating those things at this point, right, like the yea I got this, I mean just to fucking yeah, like the Vida, Like it's a shame because I'm not you know, there are quality products available on the Vida, I mean make like make no mistake. Most of them are also available on other PlayStation systems, and it's a product that has like a pretty good build quality. Like it was satisfied with the about the Vida, except what the fuck are you gonna do with it? Yeah? It's nuts, man, Like, like we joke about the PSP and where it ended up compared to the DS, but man, the PSP had itself a fucking lifespan. There are a lot of fucking PSP games, yeah, and some of them are pretty goddamn good, but man the fuck. Yeah, holy shit, Vita like you take away whatever, like indie support. It's gotten by like, you know, indie developers thinking it'd be really cool to be on a handheld or Sony, you know, kind of jingling keys in their direction, convinced like tricking them into doing the work or doing the word for him or whatever. Been it's been. But and like what is on that though, Like it's it's imagine what it would be without that. Yeah, yeah, like holy shit, like that thing's like abysmal in a lot of ways and all of it should have gone in a different direction. Like every single piece of it is cool. Yeah, except for the part where just no one bought one in the games don't matter and like, you know, its just yeah, it's trying to throw all their big, you know, console franchises on there. You had an uncharted, a kill zone, and a resistance. It's like they double they double down on all the mistakes they made on the PSP. You know. It was it was like those were the sorts of experiences that people didn't want to have on a handheld. Yeah. Uh, like the DS is doing the and the three DS is doing the complete opposite, and like, oh this is perfect for while I'm on the butt s right, Yeah, Like the portable console thing only works if you're like on a toilet a lot. I guess, I don't know. Yeah, I like the PSP. There was there was some cool PSP stuff. It was kind of a it was a neat thing. Lumines again, luminess still the best games. Rich racer games that came out on the PSP were quite good. Twist the Metal Head on what It's pretty good. I wish they had just straight up ported Lumines One to the Vita. I would have bought that again. Yeah, I would buy an iPhone port of lumines one. Sell me lumines Those skins in that music in the first game, I think are just better than a lot of the stuff they've done. Like, none of the Luminous games afterwards made the same impact on the ATOL. I remember being thrilled when I was coming at three sixty and something about it just did not grab me the way that PSP one did, and it did have yanky rockets one song. Anyway, it's a good thing to have. Jacob in Austin, Texas a lot bombers. Have any of you updated your favorite device? For getting analog systems using RF or S video onto HDTVs? Also, what is the healthiest way to store cartridges? I plugged some in the other day only to find out if you didn't boot any longer. What gives some preservation stuff going on here? Now? I haven't. I've done zero console modification for that sort of stuff. But I didn't buy a PC Engine Duo R that was modified for r GB out and I don't use the scart or RGB on it at all. I use S video but where's the S video? Go? Uh, I have a TV. I have a gigantic fucking Sony with an S video port. Yeah okay, yeah, ten eighty I we just got a DV I pored on it, but no HDMI. Okay, we've got a cheap little mono converter box that does composite video and S video to HDMI. Really have you tested the latency on it? Do you know what it's like? M? I think it's pretty good. Is that we did for the Tyson thing? No, we did some crazy things. I mean I think the Sony DV deck right right? Yeah, yeah, well don't forget you were playing on a CRT for that, right, yeah, yeah, like that we split it before. Yeah, that was an old TV. I mean that's kind of the thing, right. It seems like still the best solution in a minute, No, we did. I never m we use something. I don't know. I can go back and look at that video, but like, still the best solution for playing old analog consoles does have an old analog CRT, right, I mean, don't use RF if you can help it. Yeah, yeah, there'll be some cases where you don't really have a choice. I bought I don't know what they're even called at this point, but on Amazon they were like three dollars. It was just a little coaxial to r C a plug for anything that used a switch box like an Atari twenty six hundred like that kind of single plug audio video solution like RF and that would that worked pretty well. It's just replaces the switchbox in that uh in that transaction with just a single little, tiny little barrel. Uh and and that's convenient to have. But that's the that's the most I've done. Get out there and Craigslist TV or I mean, do the mod's like fucking sawder the ship out of your ship, like I go nuts. I mean, I'd like people go crazy with that stuff. And it's that you can do some really insane stuff if you want to go all the way with it. You can could pony up five bones for the god what is the name of that new like designer piece of analog. And that people are fucking furious about that goddamn thing. Why because they haven't been shipping them. Oh that reason, as it turns out, a good reason to be upset. It sounds like they've started to ship once, so they were originally taking pre orders for those things. I guess under the idea that you would have to buy it and then buy your own, or they would sell you an Hdmi converter. It would come out RGB and you would have to convert after the fact. And then they said no, no, we're gonna have this internal solution, but you have stuff to pay an upgrade fee to get this other thing. So I think some people got kind of caught with their pants down on that one, and you know, wanted to move to the other ordering thing. Anyway, it seems like anyone that got the one with Hdmi has not received one yet. It sounds like a few of them have gone out at the last time I looked. But it just seems like that this thing was supposed to be in people's hands a while ago and it's only just now starting to hit in any real way. Did you buy one? No? Fuck? No. Yeah, it's a cool concept, but just like, what is the concept? So they are basically recreating the NES. They're using original NES chips out So yeah, they went out and harvested the right you know, PPU, the right co processors and stuff from old famicoms, but they're printing new circuit boards, and but that's kind of where that's part of where it brakes down for me, is that they have gone so up their own ass about like turning this thing into a piece of art. But they like they spend time on their web page talking about like how beautiful the PCB is on this thing. You know, it's like it's a blackboard, it's a nice looks it all looks awesome. But like you're never gonna see that circuit board it's inside the device, you know. Yeah, but if you're gonna spend six hundred dollars on a fucking Nintendo in a cool aluminum shell, are they I don't think are they even all aluminium? I don't know. I thought only like the sort of like early buy in, like deluxe version was illuminating. I think maybe they'll all be illuminateybe, they're allminum. But at some point it was just that's an insane amount of money for that thing. That's a cool idea, but like, yeah, it's just too much. I'm probably gonna pick up. It's gonna be like the Retron in a lot of ways. I'm sure it'll probably suck like the Retron does in a lot of ways. But there's another one of those type machines coming out called the retro Freak, and it's coming out of Japan later this year. Uh, and it's got like terbographics, PC Engine support, uh Famicom Snest, super Famicom Mega Drive, Genesis, and then all flavors of game Boy. Looks like it doesn't do any s games natively, but still that's pretty good combo. Yeah, yeah, I think I might pick up one of those. Oh'll do supergraphics as well. That's kind of cool. All fucking eight of those games or however they were. And they're selling adapters that'll let you hook up original controllers to it and some other stuff, but I don't know. Yeah, that seems interesting. It also seems like it dumps the cartridges, which is super weird, which the retron does not do well. I mean, it does, but doesn't let you get at those dumps afterwards. I assume this is still some kind of emulated solutions, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, that's I don't know how the quality on that will be, but that's still cool. Sounds like an interesting device. Yeah yeah. Does anybody sell just the circuit board and the cartridge slot like I wonder if you could go out or like if you had an NES and it doesn't work, could you go in harvest the chip, put it in a new thing, and then have like a brand new NES. Not not the chip but the I mean you have to take the whole board because those all that stuff is printed, you know, on an assembly line. I don't think unless you maybe you could solder the chip onto a new thing. But I like the problem is probably you could harvest parts out of it and you cobble something together, and which probably the console, they're the connector people have definitely done repairs to kind of you know, frontloading ANYS is that you know, like the spring is bad, or you know, something about the cartridge isn't seating properly anymore. Like if they've fixed that, I have to assume the biggest point of failure in old ness is just the contacts on the cartridge slot, right, Yeah, I would guess it seems like it like it just can't read the cart I have to imagine those those circuit boards hold up fine after thirty years or whatever. Yeah, I might be wrong. Who can say, I don't know, Oh, it sounds like, well, I don't know. Maybe this doesn't who cares on some level, but like this retro free thing sounds like it will dump the cartridges, but it will protect them in such a way that makes it so they can only run on that device. So it's not like you can just pop an SD card out and run on a PC or something like that. Oh no, whatever will you do to obtain these realms of these twenty year old video games? And it's not like there are fucking eight trillion copies bad dumps, over dumps and all of all that fucking shit on every website on the internet ever made most of them have us and exclamation marks in the file name. What does it all mean? All right, this email comes in from a Dragon Warrior, but I need it partially translated into Chinese. You know what American version of Dragon Warrior programmed by Iwata. Yeah I read that. Apparently Apparently it was also like massively improved over the Dragon Quest original in Japan, Like it was cleaned up a lot and like just ran better and stuff like apparently the Dragon Quest is is kind of jankie awesome he made it happen. Yeah, that was a hell of a game, dude, is super legit all right. This email is anonymous for reasons that will become clear. Take it with a grain of salt. We don't have any way to val Fortnite still not a real video game. We don't have any way to vouch for or vet the stuff. But here it is. Just finished listening to last week's podcast and once again hearing the speculation about why CD Project read chose to make a Garrold move like a clinky mess. Did they just not realize how terrible it was during all their playtests? Were they just too close to the game to realize their horrible mistakes. Well, I'm an industry dev myself and happen to know people who worked on the Witch or three, and boy have I heard some stories. Garrelt's controls were criticized by team members, and it sounds like it was quite a point of contention. The problem was that the project leads wanted realistic animations and we're unwilling to back down on the matter. The lead combat designer resigned after repeatedly being shot down on his request to tighten up the controls, and the lead animator was fired for trying to fight back against upper management on the issue. I suppose it could be retribution for the dissenting team members that the fan base protested so strongly against those design decisions, but it just goes to show that sometimes dev's can have all the best advice in the world and still choose to ignore them for the sake of realism. It does make me wonder though a CD project Red has actually learned a lesson, considering the game still received an overwhelmingly positive response. Anyway, Take that as you will. I realize it may just read as hearsay, but I've heard you guys bring it up multiple times now and decided to finally write in I'm in the same boat you are right now where I love the game but took a break and now don't know if I can just jump back in. Well, yeah, that is the story as this person tells it. We don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's I mean, there are certainly decisions on other games that are succumb to that exact scenario. It's not unheard of in game development, yea. If if that stuff is true, you don't It just seems like one of the situations where you start out with a philosophy in mind and you're kind of like so slavishly devoted to it that you can't necessarily step back when things aren't maybe working out as well as you for ye, that's happened, and kind of reappraise the situation. Yeah, I mean, if if everything is liquid, it's hard to make a solid game, you know what I mean, I can damn it true. Yeah, you have to go Yeah, I was, yeah, I was like, man, Drew's got some thoughts about this Witcher situation, and then I'll just talking about metal geary one of us. Like if if you if everything can be changed, you have no you have no anchor to to anchor yourself too. So okay, I imagine that if you you you want to once you pick something, you want to stick with it, because then you will never finish your game. Yeah, you kind of need core tenants. You can't just open up everything all the time, and yeah, you'd be tweaking everything forever and go fucking nuts. Yeah yeah, actually, And in general, I'm a big believer in the in the idea, like in terms of philosophy of sort of like creation of pop culture, art or entertainment or whatever. Like you often more often want to tell the people what they want not ask them what they want, right, but in this but in this case, like it's I feel like the consensus is extremely clear on this, that a lot of people have had issues with the way this is implemented. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's just one of those things that like, you're right, I think that, you know, there's something to be said for creators creating, yeah, or just having like a purity of of focus and like a design intent and sticking to it. You know. But but at a certain point, if it's sometimes like if it's when it comes to like mechanics like these, like you know, I feel like those are those are always going to be open to more interpretation and some of the other stuff we talk when we talk about like choices that get made during game development. Sure, all right, how about like two more emails? Maybe three, I don't know, called the more emails. Let's do it. Hey, guys, my name's Muaba. It's my first time writing writing you, but I've been listening to you guys every week for a while now and love the work you do. Now, just a few questions about No Man's Sky? Is this game playable off line at all? Will need like a mandatory first time online check of some sort. Also, if playable offline, there's the issue of who discovered what planet first and how that whole mechanic would work if said game was offline. Also, do you know if a retail copy of this game will be available? I come from Zambia and internet costs are pretty heavy. Keep bombing. I'm actually, as far as I know, I think that game is like always online, right it required anybody answer that, I assume like I, I have to assume that the amount of data that is involved in the galaxy that they have created is way too big. I don't think so, Like I think the galaxies on the disk, Well, so they haven't said anything about their being a disc. That's his other question about there being a retail rou there was something mocked up box hard or something that was out there not how long, Yes, but who knows if that's final or I suspect there will be a physical version of the way Sony's getting behind it, it would not be at all surprising if a disc version of that game came out. But what I'm saying is, I think from at least the way I understand it, and I have not heard this from you know, direct or I haven't hearn anything directly from a developer about requiring online. But from the way I understand it, the game is all generated within itself. Yeah, I mean, like none of the world or a galaxy structure comes from a server. Things like person who has discovered this planet, that metadata comes from some central server. Maybe I'm not sure you need that to play the game. I might just be able to play this offline. You discover every planet, and then if you do connect it, then it's accept whatever date or whatever it'll fill in and overwrite the stuff that, yeah it needs to be. You might be right. I know that. I remember me and you specifically met with those guys last year at E three. You were wait you were there, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And like they were talking about like, oh, you know, we're like they're fractalizing a bunch of stuff. They're finding all these super crazy mathematical ways to dense the volume of information that's in there. But I still was under the impression that, like the seeds for a lot of that stuff existed off site. But I could totally be wrong on that, But but yeah, they have not gotten out there one way or the other. Instead, for sure, as far as I know, correct me. If I'm wrong, going once, I don't know, Okay, I could go either way. Then I suspect it's something you could play offline. That's my guest. But maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. We will see Trevor from Cannuckville, Canada. You think that's a real place, Canuckville, Canuckville. Probably, I don't know, I think, and it is a weird place. Maybe so they race chuck wagons up there. Okay, all right, fine, maybe that is real. I've spent the last week or so listening to a lot of chuck wagon racing. Cannuck chuck what from the Calgary Stampede go on? Kurt Benz Miller wrought one the one the Calgary Stampede chuck wagon races on Sunday night. I'm gonna start. This is filing and noddings back to back for him. He won last year as well in the Dash for Cash. Okay, you want to hear I'm still a lot sure if any of this is real. You want to hear some Canadian cowboys? Yeah? Fuck man, listen you listen to some chuck wagons? All right? Hey, blow your goddamn mom. Google these guys and these big, billowing fucking shirts on these tiny chuck wagons that don't look like the ones that you think that they would look like in your head. But then you stop listening to the satellite radio and turn on the t the ESPN three stream of the fucking chuck wagon races, and like, oh, these are like streamlined tiny chuck wagons, and these these enormous men in billowing shirts standing up getting MUDs splattered all over their faces with these dumb looks. Like it's no fewer than five times during the course of that sentence did I change my mind about whether you were making that up or not? And I'm still not sure. It's leaning toward real. I think it's real. Something mouse man. Okay, I'm gonna google this later and find out Trevor's email. There's a guy named Dallas Dick. All right, now, I know it's real and he's a chuck wagon racer, but it's spelled d y c K now I wow, Okay, I'll know. I'm not sure anymore. Here's Trevor's email. I was recently listening to your twenty eight Game of the Year podcast. Not only was I blasted with a huge Joseph nostalgia from that year, but hearing the high praise from Nuts and Bolts made me want to dust off my three sixty and build some dumb shit again. My question for you guys is whether or not you think another banjo game is viable in this generation of consoles. I A Rare is probably focused on their pirate MMO right now, but perhaps a few Kalle drums up enough attention we could see a banjo three E. I'd love to know what you guys think. Keep up the great work. I don't think that's how it works. What that like, the thing made by the people who made the thing drums up so much interest that they go back and make an actual sequel to letting the actual people go back. Like the layer goes like, fuck, we gotta get in on some of this. We were wrong all along. I know, I basically agree with you all that. Who's to say if there aren't still banjo Becauzoo developers at Rare, I don't sure there could be. We'll have more inside once we started Dan Joke and Drewy God damn it. No, no putting my foot down on this one. Uh, I mean the whole reason they had to run a Kickstarter was because those games don't get made anymore, right by publishers. Yeah, like, I you know that Kickstarter was successful on a respectable scale, but nothing like would convince Microsoft to make another band Joe necessarily, right, I don't think so, But what do I know? Yeah? I like Nuts and Bolts. Yeah, it's the best banjo game. It's the best bandjo game. Yes, Banjo Pilot. What did that come out? Pilot? Was that a racing thing? I think wasn't? Then? I don't think that came out. Yeah, they were working on that at one point. Yeah, sounds pretty good. Bando was already in You Could Fly Planes and Diddykong Racing. Yeah, Banjo Pilot for the Game Boy Advance. Oh okay, yeah that did that did come out? It's originally planned? Yeah that okay? Yes, all right. This was originally supposed to be a sequel to Diddy Kong Racing called Diddi Kong Pilot, but since Rare got bought out by Microsoft, they changed it into Banjo Pilot and THHQ published it. So it was one of those weird things where Microsoft had a GBA game out. There's like one other instance of that I think. Huh, there's like a Viva Pinatic. No, what am I thinking of? For? What? For GBA? Yeah totally was yeah, no dyes, yeah was on DS. Yeah. Uh weird right kind of anyway? Yes, so that conclude your trip down Banjo's memory lane. Yeah, sure, all right. In conclusion, Banjo Nuts and Bolts is the only banjo because the weekend. Yeah, okay, I'll agree with that. Last email Michael in Portland, Hey, Bomb Cast Portland, Mike, Yep, what's the guy? Well, you've heard of him? Yeah. Do you know if the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest ever happened? In the summer of nineteen ninety, Ninteno Power ran a series of issues promoting Final Fantasy with a Final Fantasy Treasure Quest. Each month, you were asked to send in your answers to two trivia questions and win weird Final Fantasy prize is like a fanny pack, a suit of armor, or a crystal ball. I totally remember this. I don't know about your guys. However, those prizes paled in comparison to the grand prize the Ultimate Fantasy. Here's the copy from the issue describing the Grand prize. Have you ever dreamed of yourself in a tropical paradise surrounded by sea and sand, they volcano rising at your back, a land where pirates hit vast fortunes and underwater caves and built forceresses to protect their booty from unwelcome adventure. That dream will become reality for one lucky winner and three loyal companions In the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest. The four adventurers will explore an ancient fort, sale to mysterious caves, and use hidden clues to find a wealth of treasure. He goes on, did this ever happen? You and three friends going on a real life Final Fantasy adventure on a mysterious island sounds pretty fucking amazing, even twenty five years later. I know this is a pretty obscure question from video game history, but surely there's a photo somewhere, a weird interview somewhere with the contest winner, or some information about where the Final Fantasy Adventure took place and how it could be recreated with friends. I'm hoping that the Giant Bomb crew or its audience can help figure this out. I won that, but they made a sign. NDA's Oh wow, the story that'd be great? Can be told or actually can't be told. Yeah, sadly, No, I don't know if you, I mean you search for that online. It just it's a bunch of deads. It's a bunch of scans of the magazine with with what you just read, people asking similar questions. Also, like I I googled this after I read the email and landed on a couple of tumblers from people going like did this ever happen? Like to this day, nobody can figure out who the winner was, and like what the outcome of this thing was? Maybe they all died. Yeah, maybe if everyone had to cover it up, maybe they were responsible for four little kids drowning and they were like, fuck, are we gonna sweep this under the rug? It wouldn't be the worst thing that happened because of final fantasy. That's yeah, you know, that's that's a good point. Uh yeah, I guess we don't have any answers here unless Drew sitting on any nuggets down at the end of the table. I'm pretty sure it's the same kid who won the PlayStation truck what oh yeah from that demotrey. Yeah, yes, maybe so maybe this person is to this day is just living off the spoils of their video game contests. Maybe a club did the thing recently of they found two kids that won the like Nickelodeon toys, r US shopping spree things. Oh yeah I read that. Yeah, it's really fascinating. Like it actually sounded like even better than you expected it would be as a kid. Yeah. Wow, And I guess Micha O'Malley is like the nicest guy in the world. They just like offer any trips for like gaming or tips rather for gaming the systems, Like here's how they get some stuff in the least amount of time. Yeah, they would like actually take you in a walk through the store and stuffing, Like you could make a list of the stuff you wanted and they could make sure that things were kind of like located in the same area so you could just stick an arm out and throw it all. It's a time limited or there's a time yeah, okay, it was. Yeah, so it's just how much can you get in this amount of time? Yeah, the kid got like, you know, five mountain bikes and stuff like that. So that's a really good read. And you could go like, yeah, I don't know if you could get like if you got multiple you would just get the cash value or something. I don't know. I know he got a lot of stuff for like his friends at school. Yeah yeah, yeah, good article. I'll have to look that up. Uh. This contest sounds amazing, So it doesn't surprise me that potentially nobody ever won it, because it would probably be really maybe that treasure chest is still there, was still out there. Mark Jeff's making a weird face. We've got some breaking news. Pro Prototype and Prototype two are now available for the Xbox One, right in a forty nine bundle, right like new versions of I forgot about that. So this isn't like backwards compatible stuff. No, No, the ratings got for that got out there recently, and now it's real. It wasn't a fifty dollars bundle for these two. It looks like they are in the system as two separate downloads, the Prototype Biohazard Bundle. The Prototype Biohazard Bundle is what I'm saying called the Prototype Resident Evil Bundle in the US. But yes, of course, yes, Prototype two is not terrible. I forgot there was a prototype that great game is by any means, but two I had some fun with its. Two better than one. Yes, I think so I thought, I remember that being in a situation where they put more effort into one than they did two. I remember like with one it was like, okay that an Infamous are coming out around the same time. An Infamous was way better. And then Prototype two there's nothing like it around then, and Prototype two I think there was much better. Prototype two. I hate computers. Yeah, yep, that's the one. Do you remember it now? Yep? All right? Is Radical owned by Activision? Yes? Yeah, I think they pretty sure, Yes they are. Is that is that a present tense thing? I could have sworn. They got shut down at a certain point, layoffs support team twenty twelve to present Yeah, yeah, yeah, after a Prototype two they kind of got gey are supporting other existing Activision projects walking in the studio Active leaving them as a support team. So like they're they're like making call duty maps or something if that, but they're listened as the developer on this Xbox one. I don't know. Maybe they still got people around who know the codebase or whatever. I have no idea. What why you were making a really weird face over there when you read that news. It's confounding. It was like a somewhere between like a scowl and like a I don't know, it was it was hard to get a read on that. It was like it was like the announcement equivalent of kind of a bad smell. You're like, this is yes, this is kind of funny, but also it's exactly the face that was being made. It was kind of like you know how to react to that, and it was not wasn't where's your late breaking news? Get your prototype on? Its safe to say prototype backwards compatibility will not be happening happening on the Xbox One, do you think? Yeah, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. All right, well, let's gonna do it for emails BombCast at hi bomb dot com. Let's gonna do it for the podcast. Okay, you say, so, what's going on in the site? Tell me middle Karkay as of this's going up? Yeah, middle Year episode one. I'm ever your four should be up. A bunch of quick looks in the Pipeline Rocket League. We're waiting for that golf game to show up. Yeah, I got a war one, Yeah, I got a war F one Magic Circle. We may have something else F one related this week for premium members. Okay, oh man I'm gonna do our best to knock out the bloodborne stuff. This week, it's a new down the home stretch. On that there's new dancers starring the host of the Giant Bomb Cast. Yeah that guy, he's a real dick. Yeah, seriously, we would take advice from him. Yeah, come on, have some respect for yourselves. Uh. I guess that's about it. We got some other stuff, but yeah, we're not quite ready to necessarily like put a name on yet, but we can get some stuff to work that might be fun. So stay tuned for eight. You're gonna do that magic thing magic circle. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay. For a second, I was like, no, what you get way in the gathering? Fuck? All right, well, stay tuned for a week chocolate block with content, and come back next week for another edition of The Giant Bomb Cast. See then,