Giant Bombcast 03/08/2016 (Premium)

M hm. Hey, it's Tuesday, marks the eighth, twenty sixteen. You are listening to the Giant Bomb Cast. I'm Brad Shoemaker. Hey, it's d e Hey, forget that. Not into it, not into it, forget about it. You guys said what I see you? Guys? Oh hi, I see you, big big Avatar fan at the end of the table here. Wow, Jeff Kersmin Hello, Hi, Jason A Striker Hello, true Scandlin that's me. I have a question. As as of this recording, we have let's say, just under forty eight hours left without Dan reichert here. It's been great. What are we gonna do with this time? Enjoy it? While last you have the most experience I do. I actually straw on your wide basis, your your wide and deep base of record knowledge and figure out we'll strategize here. Yeah, my my stress levels have been actually really good. Okay. I muted him for a while, like probably this last like a month or so, but mentally no no Twitter as well mental sulter. But I am blocked him today. Oh wow. Well, we'll see how it goes. Give it another shot. It seems like it'd be a good time to do it. Because he's you know, he's backstage at a wrestling event, so there's a lot, so he's he's making good on his victory over Patrick Kleppick, who writes for dot com when he's not Yeah no, it's like that. I guess they they're like wanted to employ some YouTube people just to like have that new kind of fresh look or something, so they brought him in get some visibility into that world. Yeah, but he's starting to look a little aged, so uh, you know, luckily he lost this bet, and now I guess someone is going to be shaving his gotee backstage at Monday Night Raw, you know, not him classic yeah shave the go tea match, right, Yeah, yeah, Okay. This is all over the super Mario Maker stuff that Dan and Patrick had going uh last last year. I guess you might expect, you might expect. I don't understand how I believe Patrick came out ahead on that thing, and yet he is the one. No, he didn't, Patrick, Patrick did it to himself at one point. Yeah, he kind of mean like I'm gonna get it done tonight when he didn't have to, like like Dan tried to up the stakes on him and Patrick was a double or nothing thing, because if I'm not mistaken, the score stands at two to one something something like that. No, no, well, I mean in the Grand arc of you know, in the Grand Arc, Patrick failed at the end by he first two, right, what that doesn't matter. He failed at the end, like he continued through. Uh, and now and the stakes got raised such that now this wrestling thing is happening, right, I don't know, so that he shot himself in the foot, yeah, because it was like New Year's Eve and he had until the end of the year to beat it. Right, we shot himself in the foot by entering into a competition, was dan, Yeah that's true. Yeah, there's no winnings, yes, something something not to play. Yeah, but yeah, he gave it a good hard effort, but he wasn't able to beat it by the end of the year. So he asked for an extension, like he admitted defeat, but then he added the caveats, well, give me a little more time, you win, but let me try again. And then it got worse, and then it got worse. Yeah. So and now I mean, I don't I don't know how it's actually going to go down, but I think that the way I understood it, and we'll see how it actually goes, because I imagine that wrestlers get pretty busy on a Monday night. But I believe one of the potential outcomes was that Tag Team Champions the New Day was going to be shaving Patrick's coat. That makes sense, I don't I don't know. Is that a big poll I have no idea. Xavier Woods his crew, well, yeah, they're they're kind of like the best thing going these days. They were purple. Yeah, the unicorn horns. Yeah. I want to get shaved by Biggie sometimes. M big he can do whatever he wants and yeah, no, that's yes, it's that's why they call him big Big Biggie. No, that's the heat. Big Biggie's fantastic, very flexible in the ring. Okay, I keep thinking you're saying Biggie, Yes, Big Biggie is also great. I mean, we're coming up on the anniversary ship sailed almost twenty years ago. Unfortunately, I assume this is going to be recorded to some degree, right This podcast absolutely we recorded every weekend. We put it on the internet at giant bomb dot com slash podcast. Uh will the hair shaving incident I would assume, so excellent. Oh sure, I would assume. So have to imagine and then I believe Patrick has to write a ten page handwritten book report on his trip to Monday Night Row. What do you say to that? I mean, like, how do you I guess we'll see, Yes, we'll see. I don't know. I will he compare and contrast? Perhaps, yeah, I would hope. So did you say ten page and page hand written? Hand written? Handwritten and written? Oh well, I was double space, you know, like add an extra quarter inch to the margins, like maybe go to twelve or even thirteen point font. You can make this happen, did you guys? If ever you were punished in school? I have to write sentences, I think I over and over on the white board, not on the white well. I mean, yeah, that's that's where it kind of started. But I think I had to do it on like notebook page. Yeah, I had to do that, if I remember paper, And I would try and like slip in things that I didn't think that they'd catch, like mister Wolf as a dick, they'd always catch, always find it, they'd always catch it. Do you remember do you remember you're in fraction? No? No, there were so many. I'm not kidding. It was a frequent occurrence. Yeah, I kind of man, it's uh, yeah, I don't know that. I got in a fight in the fourth grade. I think it was a two on two rumble. Excellent, Yeah, it was, yes, exactly, and uh for punishment, they made us clean up the kitchen at school, like every every lunch period we would have to we would eat and then have to go into the cafeteria and do some like rudimentary things in there. And it was like it was me and one of the kids I got in the fight with. Of course, they they're gonna make you work together so you can you can make amends and something about cooperation. Wash knives next to you. So it worked out great because we became friends. We bonded over the act of fucking subtly destroying this fucking elementary school's kitchen. I'm just like, oh, well, let's put flour in the phone that's here. We can crack open the receiver on this phone and just pack it full of flour, because fuck them. Let's pour all this stuff down the sink, because fuck them. I'll look all this milk, it's probably still good. Let's pour it on the floor. That'll be cool. All right, let's go. That doesn't seem like it gonna be that hard to trace back to the culprits, though, they never once came to us over any of it. Yeah all right, yeah, when we were we were friends. We were friends for a while and then he moved away, so yeah, well that sound good. You don't keep in touch, No, no, that time. Yeah, no, I have not heard from that dude. Now. They were just sent me to you, like, you know, in school suspension or you know, out of school suspension or whatever, and I'm like, cool, all right, whatever. One time I got suspended from school for not going to school, Like they rewarded my fucking not going to school with don't come to school suspension and like this is great, this is fucking perfect. Eventually they made me like do like a four hour stint on a Saturday. And I think that's when they were bad. They were still making kids pick up garbage. Then. I think they have since I think school got soft where they live, like that's technically labor and it's it's unpaid child labor. You can't do that. I think you're so dirty around here all the time, right, yeah, exactly, we just get some damn kids to pick this ship up. Did you guys have isso in school suspension? Yeah? Yeah, what is that? Like they take you out of class, you have to sit somewhere. Yeah, so that's like I think it was. I think it was the level before out of school suspension, and I love the out of school suspension. So they started giving me more in school suspensions because it makes sense they could keep tabs on me. I'm like, your son's a bit a bunch of hell raisers in this room. Well, I just I got to a point in high school at some point where, like I don't know, I read it somewhere or like, determined that schools got paid based on attendance, and the last thing I wanted was them for to make money off of me. So it was like a really good justification for me to just fucking stop going to school. And also I didn't want to go talk to a counselor or have to like confront a teacher over ship. So there were a couple of classes I just stopped going to. I gained the system one year and I went into I think it was like a course class or something like that, and it's like, oh, my class schedule got switched. I've actually got homeroom this hour, so like at the third period, like I had nothing to do. So the course was never like taking attendance for me because they didn't think I was supposed to be there. But I just went off, you know, okay, nice stay in school kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was a bastard. Get an education more importantly, like however you need to get it. I kind of went the other way. I had my grades were good enough that the last semester of high school I just didn't have to go to that. That's actually what it end up like. I had enough credits that I didn't have to go for the last whatever. The last semester was four months, five months. I totally yeah, I turned my ass around. Yeah and yeah, actually tested out of high school. Also, the journalism class wed I was part of the school newspaper senior year, a huge scam, which meant that I think we did it once a month, which meant that basically twenty nine we're gonna whatever. Twenty days out of the month. He did fuck all and then spent one day just frantically putting a newspaper together. That's actually brought. That's really good experience for working at a print match. Totally. We brought our brand somebody brought their brand new Nintendo sixty four to that class a few times awesome. We sat on the floor playing risk a lot, okay, and then team building, like once a month we would bang out a newspaper. I'm glad Dan's not here because whenever the conversation drifts in this direction, he always talks about how he did nothing but got everything. Yeah in school, I don't, I don't. Yeah. I ended up bending things to my benefit in the end, where like all the not going to school stuff ended up paying off, okay, because we were we started doing public access and my friend Glenn and I didn't want to go to school because we wanted to work on our bad public access show and it was bad. And then it just ended up that they were like, hey, you seem to have stopped showing up to all your classes. That's bad. And then eventually they said, we have got a pilot program. I've probably told the story before, but like I ended up on some pilot program for independent study, which had primarily been for it was a lot of like pregnant high school aged girls were were on independent study because they had, you know, they had things they needed to do that precluded them from going to regular class. And they said, well, why don't we take these two assholes and put them in that so they're not here. So it was like it was at the Continuation High School, but it wasn't part of the Continuation High School technically, so it was like I but I and I ended up like doing a year's worth, like like they were like, well, let's get you just let's get you graduated. You're doing stuff like I was going to gaming trade shows at that point and weird stuff. So they're like, let's give you a ten credits in video production because you're doing a TV show. Like yeah, it sounds good, Yeah, it sounds good to me. And they asked me, like, write, write down what you did to produce this. I wrote down and they said, great, that's five credits, Now do this. And so they ended up just cobbling a bunch of stuff together and I ended up graduating early because of that, with like a some GPA that was higher than four. Wow, and sounds like pretty good deal if you can get it. It worked out. It worked out really well yeah, I got to go back to school and find the one teacher I liked, a math teacher, and show him my diploma. And then he cursed disbelief. He was like, you fucking beat him. Gersman like, yeah, it's pretty cool, all right, I gotta go, and then he put on his trench code and walk out the door lead straight up retired. So so that was his final year. He revealed the entire system to be alive exactly. I shaped it and said I went, and he couldn't take it through up his hands. I went and learned more on my own than this school. Anyway. I'll say that, allowed loud. That's dangerous ideas that here. I went to every class. Yeah, I did too, basically except for the ones I didn't have to. We were no. I mean that's a ship. We were. We were good and obedient. Gate classes did me really wrong. And in the end is how that worked, like the gifted classes and honors classes and all that sort of stuff, where it was like, hey, take marine biology, you're a fifth grader. And then when I got to junior high and I was like, no, d Math, and I was like I already fucking know this because I learned it four years ago in this other class. So like I had this chip on my shoulder about like repeating stuff that I already knew and it, you know, like all the advanced classes I took their elementary school actually super fucked me over when I got to junior high because I was just was the opposite of me. I started at a deficit. Like when I came to sixth grade, I didn't know division. Okay, you see, I learned long division in kindergarten. Yeah, as part of some monosolari school or something. And I went to public school after that, and it was just like I was just pissed at how dumb all the classes were. I was pissed at how dumb I was. System failed you. Why didn't you idiot teach me this? Yeah, it made it though, and I did. Yeah, it all works out in the end, I care. Indeed it should. Yes, in theory, that's the idea. I don't know if you guys know this, but sometimes we talk about video games on this podcast, and I kind of just want to get into it because I played No Man Sky last week. I'm common During the section hang on, hang on, I thought you said you wanted to talk about video games. Let's let's get into it. Okay, let's get into it. I'm gonna talk about the thirty minutes that I spent with that game. You flew to Los Angeles to see a game for half an hour, thirty minutes sick video game press events complied to another city, eating shorter than the flight. What is the number? I think it's eighteen quintillion planets in this game diver take I had. I had half an hour to look at one of them and then get into orbit and like look at another one point my ship at another planet and think, okay, I should try to see two different planets in this half hour, said Eta twenty three minutes. I was like, all right, well, I can fly in a straight line for twenty three minutes and maybe see this planet for a couple of minutes. Or I can go back down and land and like try to find something meaningful to write about as a quick I said, like, why was this event so short? It was, well, I mean whatever, I mean, it's boring nuts and bolts of like, oh well, they had another round of people coming in an hour after hours was over, like like like it was in La so it was like local you know, like la. I don't know if they got any actual TV there, but it was I think some more kind of entertainment press coming in. But it was like a busy day and you know the Hello games guys are and girls are from England. So yeah, it's not like you have them here in perpetuity too. So I flew ninety minutes. Can you believe it? You know? Yeah? But the point is, you know, like they had a limited amount of time here to talk to press before they go back and finish making this game that is coming out in June twenty one. We don't know that's pretty sexually, which is like a yeah, what three months and change? Yeah, right after E three? Right, yes, it is literally the tuesday after we get back from E three. Oh man, that coveted knew them forever. Enter the Matrix spot. What a great place to be. I actually wish it was coming out the week we were there so we would have it ready to go. Is like the second we had touched down, because I can't think of a better game. I want to just like sink into a couch after the E three week, just sink into the couch and like get lost in this game. But so yeah, I asked me anything about non Scott. So what you so? What I mean? So you had half an hour on one planet? Did you see the space cops? Did you see died died to them? Oh? Okay, what happens when you die? What happens when you die? You get a quote? You get so they straight up have the call of duty quote when you die. Thing, except they're all they're all, they're all at They're all asthm Off Arthur C. Clark and who was the other one I saw Asthma Clark, and I forget there might have been one other. But yes, you get like, like fucking that is fucking incredible classic science fiction. Literally literally you die, cut the black like just white white quote from author, and then you'd respond somewhere nearby. I don't love it all right, Yeah, but do you lose anything? Yes, I didn't. I've read this in somebody else's preview because there's so much to take in that thirty minutes was just not remotely adequate. You know, everybody kind of stumbled into different pieces of information. But yeah, so I guess you bank things that you collect either at your ship or there may be other places, like maybe a space station or something. I don't know, but anything you're carrying that you have not stored you lose when you die. Can you do corpse runs? Do you think? I don't think so. Those resources, at least what I read, did not indicate that. It's not like, if I read this correctly, if you die in space, you respond at a space station without your ship. That's what I was going to ask. Where you no idea how you would deal with that? That's what one of the other previews that I read said. I kind of so, I kind of spent most of my time focusing on the I guess I don't call it that, just the minutes a minute, like a loop of what are you doing on the ground when you're on a planet and what are your goals like? And yeah, so I mean it's you know, it seems like it's a survival game, like you're collecting resources to craft things to go up tech trees and then what So they had super temp you I in there for like crafting and all that stuff, which was a bummer because they didn't have anything implemented at the moment as far as I could tell. Although there were some signs of this, there was not a good central way to see, like, here are all the blueprints that I have. Here are here are the things I could be making if I had the resources. Do you think that's something that they will serve because some games don't. Yeah, they said they were working on like that. You I was all, I think that's why they didn't show any of it in the footage, because you know, I was super early, I said, worrying three months away. Oh well, it's just you know, they've got the systems in there. It's more about and just how do you present it to the player. Although it is it is still a small team game. Like, despite this thing being a game that has captured so much time and attention since its announcement, Like it's the thing that I think gets lost is that there are not a zillion people working on it. So I think with that in mind, I don't think it's too crazy that they don't have that. And yet I think they said they're up fifteen people now, okay, like that, Like it's still pretty small, Like that's like twice as many as they had when they announced more than that, and you and I saw it in god was it late twenty thirteen? Like that it came around before they announced it. Yeah, they came around to that like secret press tour. Yeah, uh yeah. There were four of them on that tour and that was the entire team, right. They were they were working on the game in that hotel. They were all in that hotel room there to show us what they had. But uh yeah, so you craft things in categories. There is your suit, your weapons, and your ship, like those worthy tabs in this UI that I was scrolling through, So it's like, you know, are you they should be those things should be pretty self explained, right, But but I guess I actually though I do have questions like if are you bolting things onto your existing suit or crafting whole new suits That I didn't get deep in enough into it to say for sure that was not explicitly clear, because I'm wondering, like if you can mod your suit as you see fit to be like, well, I need more oxygen, so I needed to do this. It seemed more on this It seemed like I was upgrading the systems in the individual things that I had. But it's it also seems like you can get whole cloth replacements, like you could get a whole new ship as opposed to just right bolting things because if it's just like this linear progression of like there are eight suits and you have the same I don't think that that would be less interesting. Then I don't think it's necessarily anything like that. But uh, you know, as as this kind of game, I like I almost hesitate to keep calling it a survival game because immediately, like in the comments on the coverage, you see people like immediately assuming like it's just another rust or but it's a forest or like you know, like those games are a time. It doesn't on Steam right right totally, but it seems like it is. I mean it's strong inspiration from that, Like there's there are definitely commonalities there. But like I feel like this is the third time I've used this line. I said the same thing on the Beast Cast, But like is that what's that Beast? Oh it's this other podcast, These these these upstarts they said they're big fans of the podcast. Yeah, I mean I was gonna say it sounds sometimes it similar, uh like like in those games, like you're just the scope of everything you're doing is super limited, right, Like you start on a beach and like the first thing you make is like a stone axe, and then maybe you make like a lean to or like a palette or a camp fire or something not a fucking faster than light spaceship that will take you across the galaxy. But that just says that speaks more to the scope of the game, right, I mean, it's it's that initial planet is your beach, the silicon is your sticks, right, so you're gonna move so far beyond that, you know, and presumably the range of things you're gonna see is so much greater. Have you played about star Bound No, I watched you play some of it. I played Terraria, which seems very similar to staround is. But Starbound is is like is this kind of infinite generated planet thing as well to where like you can even join other players, Like if there are other players on the same server, you can say, hey, I want to join you, and like they'll have coordinates. You can either enter those coordinates to go to a similar planet, or if you're connected, you can actually just kind of warp to them, warp to their ship, I think is what it is. But it is that same thing of like it's space, it's sci fi, but there's a very nitty gritty like all the way down to like I need wood to convert into coal, and I deposited in this spot in the ship and that turns it into fuel that I can used to get to the next planet. Okay, this burning ship. That's pretty cool. So there is there's misterffusion. Basically, you know, there's there is nothing so rustic about this game, Like it is very high tech. It's very like like you're you know, the the crafting resources are all chemical elements. You know, it's like, oh, I need silicon to make this computer chip. Yeah that I need to hack stuff, or you know, I need plutonium to power my suit. But yeah, but like you is there still wood to get They just don't call it wood well as like, yes, you can destroy trees and turn them into resources, but what it'll turn into is car carbons, and that could come from numerous sources, right, it's not as specified as that, okay. And also they were saying that the uses of those elements don't like basically just describe this, but like carbon would be a something you would need for most fuel sources because it's a good fuel source. You know, No it's not it's dirty. Well okay, sure, yes, we should be looking to cut down on our cardnet or whatever. Can I get a solar powered space ship? That would be cool? Nuclear powered even you know, I don't. They didn't talk a whole lot about like the space exploration aspect of it, other than to say there are like just kind of astrophysical features. They haven't really talked a lot about, like you will run into black holes and they do something like in the gameplay sense, did they kind of limit the scope as far as you know, not how far you can go initially to keep you from getting a little overwhelmed. So yeah, you so everybody so like, so we didn't start a new game. This was a pre made character on a specific planet they had picked out. But everybody starts on a different planet. You do not have the means to leave that star system when you start. I believe, I believe you'll start with a ship. I don't think you'll have to build a ship whole cloth, but maybe you do. I have no idea. But you do not have a hyperdrive, like I didn't have a hyperdrive in this demo, So presumably that was basically the system that I was starting in with a new character. And if I'd had a few more minutes. I was like, I basically set myself toward building a hyberr drive because I wanted to jump to another star or if I possibly could in that thirty minutes, which it turned out I didn't have time for. It's been a while since I've played it, but I want to say Starbound is a similar progressionally to just like you know you can the length of the distance you can travel increases as you kind of just like get better at acquiring more fuel and figuring out where you want to go and how you want to get there. That that very much seems like the kind of trajectory this is on. Yeah, but there's also there are all like a bunch of upgrades you could get even in the system that you're in that will be relevant. Like like when I pointed my ship at that planet and said it will take twenty three minutes to get there, there's actually a boost you could use that I didn't know I had. You have to use. I think it's like hold both bumpers to turn it on, and that consumes a fuel source that'll run out that you would have to replenish. But point being like even in early on in the system you start in, there will be like kind of shortcuts two other planets. They said there was a scanner upgrade you could get on your ship where when you pointed it at a nearby planet, it would tell you like what the biom of that planet was, and maybe potentially like kind of what the resource competition. You wouldn't necessarily have to land on right, so you would as you follow upgrade paths, you could find ways to kind of streamline the experience of exploring for what you need. That's really interesting because like potentially that means if enough upgrades happened, then this sort of I don't know if you want to call it the loop, but the your goals of the game or the things you have to concern yourself with doing may change drastically totally, like and it seems like that would be very much up to you. You know, It's like do I want to get to planets that are farther away, Well, then I need to work on a better hyperdrive, Or do I want to maybe there's a planet that has like a toxic atmosphere and there are resources there that you need, but you can't go there until you build like some rebreath or system yes, is this Star Control. I've seen it. I've never played Star Control, so I can't answer that question, but I saw one. I forget if somebody I was talking to who was familiar with that series mentioned there were elements of Star Control. Are there there are other aliens? Yes, there are alien factions. They showed that for the first time. I was really annoyed that the Corvas was the name of the race that they had in their demo. I really wish there had been some shots of that in the b roll they gave out, because that was kind of like the big new feature they were showing. It's like, yeah, you walk up to them and talk to him. It just zooms the camera in on them and like, here's a dialectree like fall out, just like that that kind of zoom in like kind of like locks the camera to them and pops up a little list of of dialogue options. I'm really excited right now, dude. Yeah, Like there are factions. They're they're like there's faction, there's rep with each alien race. But there's also the element of learning alien languages. Okay, I don't know there maybe there will be some aliens that you can understand right off the bat, but this alien and they made us sound like most alien species you will walk up to and what they come, what they spit out with is a bunch of gibberish, Like it's a bunch of alien looking talk. And there are ways to learn their languages. The only way they showed seemed kind of plotting, which was like they showed there was like a stone totem, like a monolith with a bunch of inscriptions on it, and you just literally walk up to it and use it and you learn an alien word. So does that one word? Like one word, so when next time you talk to him, you might have one word. That's exactly what they did. They went back and whatever the alien was saying, there was one word of English in there. But it might be enough English for you to figure out what they're trying to say to you and give the perfect rds. Have you seen anything that indicates that these languages are real? And oh, like people could maybe yeah, like if you're if you played the game a bunch and then started over, like came over to my place and looked at it, you if could you I wonder if you could look at that and go, well, here's what he's saying I would hope it's at least consistent, so if you saw the same phrase a second time, you would know what That's the one thing about Farcry Primals language is that it was it was consistent, okay about that stuff to where like you would hear some of the same words in the same order and that sort of stuff. And it sounds like the MP season's game, or very much about just advancing the progression stuff, Like they're not there to tell a bit deep story. It's very much like, well, I'm gonna give you some new star chart information or I have a new weapon for us. Every single when you talked to is just like you just the first thing words out of his mouth, or tell me a tale of the shepherd, that would be really good. You're not voice right, No, not kind I saw. No. I don't know how else you'll learn language. It seems like if you're only finding those totems, that seems like it would take forever. But there has to be other other ways to figure that out. Like I busted my way into like a kind of a factory, like an alien facility at one point because I wanted what was in there, and it set off an alarm, and I ran up to a terminal in there and it just popped up alien gibberish with like three options, And one of the Hello Games guys was there watching me, so he was telling me what was going on, and he was like, yeah, if you could read that like this, this terminal is basically the way to shut off that alarm because it was the robot cops were coming, Yeah, because of the alarm. And if I could have read that, I would have known easily which option to pick, but I didn't, and I picked the wrong one, which then shut down the terminal and just locked the alarm in the on position. So like there was some interesting like utility to learning these languages and how you can access stuff in the world with those any indications to how many languages or how many It probably depends on how many different aliens, but it almost sounds like the rise of the tumb Raider language stuff kind yeah, a little bit, Yeah, sure, And they kind of implied like different aliens would have different kind of just behavioral tendencies, like some are more aggressive than others, like some are more willing. I know, I would assume those are designed. Surely I found a robot This is totally a random aside, but I found so there was a little robot vendor on the planet that I was on, Like it's just like a market vendor, you know, he like ties into the galactic market or whatever, and we'll sell you some stuff when you meet him. All the other like the other NPC's they had shown at this event, it's like this nice like stylish like properly curned font or whatever for their speech. I went up and talked to this robot and his speech all came out in fucking fixed ciss nice awesome, like the notepad like the mono space like blockie looking notepad font. And I was like, yes, like this game has made like specifically for me. It's cool. Yeah, I'm trying to think what else. How was the talk about drying uh plan on PS four? Yes, yeah, yes, it was present. Let's and no, I'm taking from your tone that it was present on the PSC Yeah there's Yeah, they've they've all looked good. Yeah, they've got a little ways to go on that version. Okay, but whatever, it's you know, it's not finished, like all the optimization happens right at the end, right, Yeah, Uh, did you engage in a combat like what shot stuff is tas as well as what I saw. There's no melee. Uh you Basically you've got like a multi tool. It's a single weapon that just changes modes. So but you hit triangle to change weapons like the phasers to kill basically kind of like so you've got a mining laser like a like a steady beam that is mostly for cutting like resources out of rocks and stuff like that. And then you've got a projectile weapon like a rapid fire, which seems more specifically for combat, although they both can be used for either. Like it seemed like like the mining laser might be good against certain enemies as well. I mean that's that's yeah. I mean if you like things like terraria and stuff like that, like you swinging the pick axe, you can do damage whether sure, So yeah, that that stuff those interactions are generalizing in that kind of way, any amma for those yes, you absolutely have to. Like I think the projectile uses AMMO and the laser uses like energy energy. You have to charge it back up with the correct resource. And then I also crafted kind of an energy grenade like it basically it's the same weapon, but it would turn into a sort of a like a lob this energy projectile which blows holes in the terrain, like blows the ground away, and he used that in his presentation. So the planet we were on was super cold. Actually it's like minus one sixty c or something like that. So you have you have like a warming element, like a thermal protection layer in your suit. And that's one of the components that was equipped on this character, a thermal energy if you will. Yes, basically yes, you got to feed that thing and yeah, you're like your your your thermal protection was sure enough constantly while you're in this temperature, and that's a constant pop up display like here's what the temperature is. But in his demo or this is Sean Murray from when he gave the presentation, he used that energy grenade to blow a hole in the side of a hill which revealed this like giant sprawling underground cavern like almost mind you know, like how bust open the ground and minecraft and like a giant cave and a bunch of cool stuff down there. And he used that to run under there where it was much warmer, I mean relatively warmer. It was like above freezing barely in there or something, But the point is like he could escape in there and survive and yeah, like all of a sudden his suit is no longer consuming energy, which he may not have much of sore. It seemed like there are some kind of strategies like that. I had no idea this gamehead geomod, Yeah, sure, yeah that's in there. Did it seem like the sort of game where does it seem hard because it's some suit hard some of some games that have this kind of survival aspect to them, like you know, you've got to worry about temperature, You've got to worry about you know, whatever alien life forms are coming your way. Uh and and you know, hey maybe there's no oxygen, so that's ticking down, like just the number of things that can kill you at again, moments there were like there's a bunch like your shields, just like the thermal thing you're the shields on your suit do not recharge automatically. You have to go in your inventory and charge those back up. So does it There were definitely there was definitely a point where like I had made the robot cops mad and they took my shields down, and my thermal thing was running out and they were beating the shit out of me, and I was just running from them, trying to charge that stuff back up and not really getting a chance to do it. But at the same time, they were the only aggressive entities that I saw anywhere, Like this planet had a bunch of animals on it, but none of them. No, I take that back, I'm sorry. At night there were some predators that came out. Who's gonna say, there's one other aggressive entity and it's you, motherfucker's that's true as you adicate all life in the universe, Yeah, one planet at a time. You can, you know, like they tracked that stuff for all players. You know, you can. You can wipe a whole life off a planet if you want, and it'll it'll stay that way. I feel like that's that'll be like the sad noby Noby boy esque realization, like twenty years from now, somebody, well last bits of life were exterminated in no Man's Scott somebody, congratulations, humanity. Some really determined players just decided to ruin that or not even determined player. Just like you know, that'll be the general, like the you know, adds more and more people play it, they'll just be like a fuck it, yeah, like up, yep, humans are violent. We proved it again. Sure well, actually I forget they trotted the stat out or maybe maybe some outlet did the math on this. But like the number of planets in the game, I think if you viewed one every second, it would take like five hundred billion years to see all of them or something like that, which kind of you know, like they they've talked about like, oh, you're it's basically going to be impossible to run into other players because it's just that big, like the odds of just the odds of doing that or are super slim, and like does that well, I don't, I don't know. That sounds like like a really cool moment. Think you're gonna see them? Okay what people that I've read discussing this game swear up and down that they've come out and said, yes, you will see the other players running around in the game. I think they've described it as journey like but I yeah, I could just feel this kind of like limited server type stuff that right, huh, But that makes me wonder like they were emphsizing at the event, like you know, they're like, oh, make sure you scan something and try to rename it, like they wanted you to see that, Like, oh you can, Like if you discover an animal, you can then just bring up a text parture and give it a name. You know. The same goes for planets. But if it's that unlikely to run into other players, it shouldn't be that much more likely to even run into things that have been touched by other people, you know, Like, well, it depends on how long the game runs. Well, yeah, obviously over time, up, over time, you know, it's increasing, especially if everyone is directed towards the center. Yes, yeah, like you know, you're eventually going to have just a tighter radius of people, you know. I didn't get any sense at all, like they've been saying since the beginning, like oh, the goal, the ultimate goals to get to the center galaxy of the galaxy. But I didn't see any indication for the player to follow that that's what they should be doing. Like nothing was pushing me in the direct I mean that's a quote end game sort of thing. Yeah, maybe that's something that reveals itself over time. Get to the middle of the cube. Yes, Peter Mallin, who's in there? See let him out? See what's at the middle. What does does it seem fiddly? Like does it seem like I was watching violent Dan play. I was watching Dan play Stardu Valley, and he kept getting sidetracked off of what he wanted to do because oh, I have to go do this thing. I'll have to go do this thing and like upkeep and stuff. Yeah, it seems like it could go in that direction, but I didn't have enough time for those things to really kick in. Okay, But like I would hate to have to like, oh, I could go, you know, explore to their planet, but I gotta like feed my mag or Yeah, that's something that will happen in a lot of these games. Though early on, you know when things are at their harshest, when you have nothing right, and you know a lot of games will have it. So like you know, like Stardy Valley as it so you can craft sprinklers, so eventually you are relieved of these tasks and then have more time to pursue the stuff you want. That absolutely seems to be the case here, Like it seemed like you you would upgrade your thermal stuff so it didn't deplete as fast and cold temperatures and stuff like that. Yeah, I guess those those annoyances become your sharp term goals. Absolutely. Yeah, Like like there was you know, there was a specific moment where I was trying to get all the resources to build that hyper drive, and then I realized that those same resources also needed to be used to charge up my suit systems and stuff like that. So it's like, oh, I've almost got enough like I don't know horridium that I need or whatever, and then all of a sudden, I have to cash in a third of it to keep myself alive for another half hour or whatever. So it seems like there's some of that, but I don't think there's like it doesn't seem like there's like hunger and fatigue mechanics necessarily. There's just like the good temperature stuff I saw, and then I have to assume, like I said, there's like probably atmosphere stuff. And I feel like that's kind of the thing that will push me away from a game. Well, a lot of the survival games I just I have a hard time digging into too much. But like specifically, like hunger and fatigue are the two systems that will definitely make me want to not engage with a game like that, Yeah, I was. I tried the Flame of the Flood a little bit everywhere. Yeah, and that one has a hunger, thirst, fatigue, and what's is temperature. The other one, I think like it's got all four of those discreetly broken out, and I was like, oh, this might be one meter too many. Yeah, I just want to keep up. Started. I started playing it, and I gave my way down the river and kind of like saw a little bit of what was on the other side of it, and I was like, yeah, maybe some other time. Yeah, I might starve the same deal, like I just, I just I respect, don't starve for what it's trying to do. But man, I don't want to play, don't. It's a lot to keep up with. I got y'all beat? Yeah, I played The Unreal World? What the Unreal real World World? It's a it's one of those games. It's been in developments nineteen ninety two. Oh okay, all right, say no more. Yep, that's how serious it is. Yeah, like the Door Fortress of Survival Games. Yeah, yeah, okay, it came out in uh it just came out on Steam. Oh yes, okay, yes, I saw that headline. Of course that would be a headline on every blog, you know. Yeah, it's the game that's been in development for twenty years or whatever. It's like eight bucks on Steam but still available for are free from the developer's website donation where people like having stuff on Steam. Yeah, And for me, the key difference here is the incentives that they offer, you know, like, what are the incentives behind completing all these goals? We're keeping yourself alive and upgrading enough to get to the next kind of big tier of stuff in this case, like just the sheer range of different places you can go and the variance that's apparently going to be there. Like like John was saying in our interview that, like I was asking, you know how if they kind of buy us the generation of the planets toward like you know, you want x percent of them to have good stuff, you know, right right, and he was saying, like nine out of ten planets are going to be like relatively barren and shitty cool, and well, what you know, it's I mean, I guess as long as you get that scanner that right lets you know that those planets are shitty or you can tell from a distance. If I got to go into orbit on every planet and then or even get out and look around and go nope, it's so fast like getting I want to say, you can scan, Yeah, you can. You can scan in your ship. You don't actually have to land to see what's there. You can basically ping the environment and it'll highlight anything that's worth interacting with. I think that sounds good. Yeah, I'm I'm with you, and like, you know, he made the point like, you know, what, what good is the feeling of discovery If you're like you're discovering cool stuff every planet the gland that's valid like nine out of ten. Sounds like a little harsh, but maybe, well that's not to say there will be nothing on those other planets, but he won't be like element rich. Well, the language he used was like utopian planets you to like lush with vegetation and animal life and tons of resources and checks every box like and alien structures to explore and stuff like that. Okay, yeah, it's not to say that nothing on those other planets that's valid, Like like you, I remember there was a shot of like I think maybe the very first trailer they showed that really stood out to me of this like kind of it's this barren, desert looking planet, but then this like gigantic sand worm snake looking thing comes out of the sand, you know, like the hundred foot long like monstrosity, and it's like, what if that's the only thing on that planet? You know, like there might be one decent resource there, and then it's just just like giant fuck off monster that will eat your space ship. You know. Yeah, Like who's to say what all's out there? Yeah? Yeah, I think that I said this in the in the preview that I wrote. But like they kind of have to stack the deck for public demos, right, Like they have to pick out planets that offer a little bit of everything. So during that one E three demo, I guess not, yeah, there was that much there, and like people seem to not love that demonstration actually, But that's the problem. You know, It's like the range of stuff that's potentially in this game doesn't show well in a short you know, in a little vertical slice. Right, You've either got everything there and it seems like it's all at your fingertips and boring to search for, or you've got nothing, and then it seems like there's nothing to do, you know, right, I don't know. It's a it's a it's a weird thing. How many other people did you talk to that I played the game at the event? And how varied were we? I basically we have a leave and jet off to the airport like right after I played it, so I didn't really get to talk to people a whole lot. But we were all on the same planet, so there wasn't all no no, no, you know, they had picked a hand picked they plan it for everybody to play on, so we all kind of saw the same stuff for the most part. What do you what do you think has the highest chance of being a fatal flaw for this game? Like, what do you think could be the Vanpiroism? Uh? I would say the like potential lack of high level incentives to keep going. Okay, it seems to be what not enough Joe danger? Yeah, yeah, not not enough hot wheelies and yeah yeah jumping over exploding barrels. Man, I want him on the side of my ship. Man. Yeah, that's I hope, I hope that's in. I really hope there are some like deeply hidden Joe danger secrets in this game. But uh, yeah, like that that's kind of that seems like the subtext of the like the kind of the what do you do in this game brigade that comes out every time this game is mentioned, you know, is that like it's a fair question it is they had when talking about it. And if you go out there and kind of piece it all together, I think you do start to get a pretty good impression of what people are. That's that's what I mean about, like long term incentives. You know, right moment the moment, it's very clear, like what do you do? You collect resources, you potentially fight some stuff, Why build more and more stuff? But I think I think that is the actual question people are asking when they say what do you do? I think they actually want to know, like what is the through line that is supposed to compel me to keep building better systems and keep going? And I think but I think if you if you look at the other games that are kind of being called out here, like he mentioned when you in your interview you mentioned like what the Long Door Dark was one that he said, and some of the other games that are that are kind of filling this space in different sizes and scopes and stuff like that, like there they'd never Minecraft does not answer that question right. You know, Terraria doesn't answer that question. I mean, there are endgame things to do, obviously, and you know, even in Terraria, like there's kind of like, oh, I cleared this world out and then we reset it in hard mode, and you know, there's like a progression to the state of the world in a game like that, which is you know, a lot of games don't even have that. And I feel like I would be curious to know how many of the people asking that specific question have played a lot of these other games, you know, and because and if they actually like them, Because I feel like the people that like those types of games are probably maybe a little better suited to wrap their mind around what No Man Sky is. And if you haven't had that experience with those games or just or just look at those games, go man, fuck this. It seems like there's a pretty high probability that you will feel the same way about that. That's very possible. But they haven't. It feels like it's just now that these I feel like this connection has been made firm. And maybe it's from you going and playing it or whatever, but like that's like I feel like a lot better about like Okay, it's one of these, And for me, the answer becomes a maybe, you know, because there's there are some of those games that I've gotten way deep into and some of those games that I just am repulsed by. The One thing I'll say, though, is that the games that tend, the games in that setting that tend to keep me there are the games that have a multiplayer component, even if I'm not working with those players together on a regular basis, Like being on a Terrarius server with other people and seeing what they're building and seeing their progression and seeing what they're doing star Bound, like going to someone else's planet that they've designated their home planet and built all this shit on and visiting it and checking it out, and they're like, oh, you should come over and see mine. Like that aspect of the game is the thing that drives it. So I don't think it's going to be as infa. Really it really doesn't sound like it. And so that's the I wonder, Man, I just don't know, Like everything about it sounds really cool and thoughtful, Like they seem like they're taking a very smart approach to building this thing without having a thousand people and but still building something that has like a meaningful size to it. But at the same time, I just even as we know more and more about it, I feel like I know less and less. If it's something that I'm gonna like spend a lot of time with, I don't think anybody's gonna be able to answer that question until you just have it and it's finished, right, and you can put twenty hours into it and see if you want to keep going or not. I mean, I'm you know, I'm not going to come out and say there's definitely no like coherent storytelling in the game, but there may not be. I don't know, Yeah, there may be more. The big turn off to me if there was not actual because then you know, a big driving component for you know, star Control. You know, for me, it was you know, a space exploration and then meeting up with other alien races and there wasn't overharking storyline, and there definitely wasn't endgame to that. They absolutely could see these NPC encounters that you're having with some kind of direction, you know, where like you kind of as you learn the language, you can ask them about rumors and they're like, I hear that if you go in this way, right, You know, there's a lot of different things they could do if they were on it or subtly guide people but there yeah, or they might be oh, hear the so and so empire has a has a stockpile on such and such planet. Do you get the impressure that I don't know if that's in there or not. Do you get the impressure that there's any kind of trading mechanics? Absolutely so, I can literally like even asked like, I was like, well, once you're out in space and you got your first hyperdrive, could you kind of eve online it and focus on by low cell high kind of like commerce stuff and not just scrounge everything. And they were like, yeah, totally okay, Like there are markets you can work and stuff like that with an area that big man, I need a little bit of direction, Yeah, yeah, like you you would hope. Well, I don't know. Maybe I don't. I don't know that at least for me, I don't think my direction needs to be that explicit. But I do hope that there is at least some sort of like drip feed of constantly constantly but at some rate seeing new stuff, whether that is a new upgrade or a new like I've never seen that animal before, or I didn't know there were caves or like things like that. But my impression, my impression is you won't have to go very far to find those things, but you might have to motivate yourself to look for them, if that makes sense when you come across that stuff, you know, organically totally. It's the sort of thing where they could be writing quests, you know, in a sense of like you know, you know, they could be wrapped around this commerce system of like someone saying, hey, we really need this component. I hear there's a lot of it at this other planet, or hey, I can you bring this stuff to my brother he lives over here, just literally like holidays, like cargo missions or something like. There's stuff they could do there is, But I question why they needed a galaxy as big as they've made if you're if they're just going to direct you to much of hot spots. But I think you know they would you I would think the thing wouldn't those wouldn't even necessarily be hot spots as much as they would be like a reason, like some people will need a reason to leave yeah and leave the planet. Yeah, uh, And instead of just like you know, like getting hyper focused on one if you have like multiple things that are kind of saying like, hey, maybe go out there and explore around, or hey, they'll be an incentive for you to do this and then you'll see another planet. I mean that could that could be as simple as just tooltips that pop up, like you know, you should you made your first hyperdrive, and they could just say like, hey, now you can get to these stars. You should go check one of those out right and see some other planets or something. What if everyone starts at some place on the rim of the universe. That's yeah, that's that is exactly how it happens. Like the spawn points that sounds like are on the outer edges of the and the universe collapsing, So you've got to lead your planet and go to the center of the galaxy. Space is expanding, no, but not forever. That's forever. The other space is expanding and making our space smaller. There you go, infinite space. Somebody on Twitter said this, but it's just that episode of Next Generation where the universe is collapsing until Doctor Crusher is alone on the bridge and nothing else exists. That's cool, Okay, Okay, that's good, would get into that. Yeah, And can you design your character at all? Can I look like doctor Crusher? I don't, Actually, I don't know if you can ever view yourself? Okay. I never saw a way to like see what I looked like A I don't Gates McFadden all day long. I don't, I don't remember. I don't know. Che do you have a shadow? I have to get back to you on. Then it just it seems like the polar opposite of a mass effect, right, yeah, where like mass effect is super tightly paced and written and there's this grand storyline, but you only go to like four planets in the course of the adventure and this planet is about a mile across. That ended up being like the frustrating thing about like there were aspects of mass effect where it seemed like you could explore it. I mean, obviously you go to other planets and scan them for fucking minerals and all that they could most of it was Yeah, like at best you might do a little side mission that had like a combat arena on it. Right, you flew down to you and killed twenty Here's a room for you to shoot people in and then get out of it, and they all and every base looked exactly the same, you know, so like this is the complete other end of that spectrum of here you actually can land on every single planet that exists, but there might not be a lot of like handcrafted stuff there, yeah, for you to explore and a story to experience. I don't know, uh I, I just like the idea of space exploration games enough that that stuff sounds like enough for me. Yes, very curious. Yeah, Getting getting the end of my thirty minutes and being that close to building my hyperdrive and being able to go check out another system and not being able to do it was this hugely profound like moment of like loss or just emptiness of like I was so close I would give any Like I'll fucking I'll give you twent ten dollars if you just let me sitting here for another thirty minutes and try you give him new going to another Spotify Jesus, you know that's that's bad. But I I was super intrigued by what's there, and like if if that's all it is, if it's just building stuff so you can go see more stuff and build more stuff, Like yeah, I think I'm into that. Do you think they see your planet start off of your Mac address? Oh that would be interesting and I spoof my max. But but start nothing is being generated, Like the entire galaxy exists before that game ships to stores, right, but where you start? Oh yeah maybe, I don't know, Like I don't know if that's I don't know if that's super randomized or like I was, I should have asked randomize. I don't know. I should have asked him about this, because like, by necessity, any planet you start on has to have the resources to get you off that planet, you know, so they must have some mechanism there to make sure people aren't like spawning on planets where they're just stranded forever. Uh. But I wonder if your Mac address is a location and then they just build that planet. No, no, because all the planets are I don't know, the planets are all math, you know. Yeah, so's it really is just a set of numbers. So any seame numbers that planet is the same for the other people. Yeah, they can't just make you a planet, right right, Yes, it could be a server side thing of like you know, hey, how far away are players that start today? Like, let's what's a good distant planet in this area that's not going to be sufficiently distant from other humansyfe. Yeah, yeah you can. Yeah, like the whole the whole galaxy. The whole galaxy is offline, small enough to fit locally. Do one offline the generation of they did it where you starting, well, then maybe offline they just flip a coin, a series of coins, many coins. Yeah, but I'm even sure that the same person doesn't that two people don't land on the same planet. This is the this is the stuff I really want to ask, Like, I what I really want to do is get get a couple of them in here, like a month or two after it comes out, so they can just talk about everything and joy and dispense with all the secrecy and just like I want to hear more about the nuts and bolts of it. Yeah, but I am. They seem committed also to post release stuff. Yes, uh, they've They've said basically like, yeah, this is something we would love to keep updating. If it does well, then keep adding more stuff too. But you know, they gotta they gotta nail the foundation of the gameplay before they could add yeah, kind of higher level features. But anyway, I came out of the demo like dying to play more of it, like absolutely intrigued, encouraging by what I've seen. Uh, that's it. That's all I can tell you. I don't know anything else, No, man, Scott, Yeah, it's coming out in June. God damn that full price sixty bucks? Yeah, okay, yeah, totally planets per dollars ratio whatever this I'm kidding value with the way that Sony was marketing it and on the quote of them saying like we intend to market it like it's a first party title, Like you kind of saw that price coming from a mile away, you know, like the way that it's getting treated, the way that it's Yeah, I don't know, it doesn't strict me as wrong. We'll see. I have to see the game pout. Yeah, that you can't say for sure, you know, like it's entirely possible that you could get to your third level of Hyperdrive and decide like, well, I've seen enough planets, I'm good. Yeah, but who knows what's waiting later in the game. I can't say we will find out, can't or you won't plead the fifth okay on that? Uh, Jeff, Hello, the division is in your possession. Yes, the division is live. Yes, it is playable. It is playable by people by people depending on which version of the do you have a physical disk in your hand? Yes or no, I don't have any then version, so that it's the servers went online ahead of the man. Yeah, this one ended up being a mess of time zones and times, unlocked times and all this other stuff where like the servers went online technically Monday morning American time, West Coast USA o'clock uh eight AMMI, which was like midnight in Australia. Okay, so if you had physical copies of the game at that time they worked, which Austin had, And then I got one a few hours after that in the mail from you be Soft, who came out like last week. It is the messaging situation, Like I was. I was a little surprised to see them actually message the audience about this like it's it wasn't. It wasn't. We got emails from them saying, hey, we're not sending it out until released days They wouldn't happen, said it. The thing that's happened out there is that the audience is starting to get this impression that if there's not a lot of launch day coverage or no reviews ahead of time or anything like that. It's starting to get like movies where they take that as a sign that it was not screened for critics, it must be garbage. And the Division has been one of those games that has been delayed so much for so long, uh that that I think a lot of people have very weird impressions of what it is and what it what it is scheduled to be. The beta I think actually settled a lot of things for people I didn't. I think the beta was the closed beta, and then they didn't open one after that, like what was largely a positive thing for them and that game because those were it was a solid experience overcome and I think they did it yeah yeah and gotally like my twitter feed and stuff was very positive. Yeah yeah, Like it's been the top selling game on Steam for and that's the thing. And then the the backside of that is that's exactly what happened with Destiny, and then everyone got full Destiny and went where's the game so or or realized like wait, that's that's a way, that's the demo they put out was a large chunk of that game right now, there's not that much coin here, and playing that Destiny beta was like, this seems awesome as long as there's must times of this just must be what's in the game, And it turned out to be a fourth Yeah. I immediately on two different platforms, thinking I was gonna spend hundreds of hours like like playing that first well, I say first Earth area turned out to be the only Earth, right yeah, yeah, playing the Cosmodrome during that beta, and it was like, Okay, I'm gonna there must be like half a dozen other Earth locations and then you go to another planet and that's fun. That's gonna be amazing. No, nope. So so like, did you have a good sense of like what the scope of this game is other than asking people that would know, is this game gonna have a Destiny like problem and being told no, that's no. We no. Yeah. I mean they've even referenced Destiny in the marketing a little bit, like they must expect the comparisons, and yeah, hopefully have taken that. There are a ton of parallels you can draw between these two games, including how they're launching where you know, the servers are going up on the Monday morning before the Tuesday, and they didn't let press in ahead of time. So that's exactly what Destiny did. You know that they except in Destiny's case, the servers were actually live for quite some time before that. You just had to be white listed by Activision to play right, and the Press was not on the cool people list for that. I can I can kind of in the is not to defend them, but I can kind of see their perspective, you know, like like if it is a game that's largely based on like character interaction and it's having populated servers, it's kind of tough to convey that. It's one of those things where I think that, like, you know, you wouldn't finish Destiny before the servers went live, even if they gave you a couple of days head start or whatever, so they would eventually populate and you'd see what it was really like. And it's one of those things where it's like even I think, you know, you are not missing anything in Destiny by playing it largely alone, at least that base first launch Destiny. You know, obviously the competitive multiplayer is what it is, but you know, if you were reviewing the game, you would check that out separately when you had enough people to do so. But for the publisher to like claim that it is a huge online game and continue to justify why it's always and always connected experience and all this other stuff, they have to ride that ship all the way down, and that includes not letting anyone play it until the servers are live quote unquote, you know, and treating that like it's some kind of big MMO thing or something. You know, it's the only way that they can continue to like get out there with that front of like, hey, this is a big online game. It's got to be online. If you played it, if you played it before there were people there, what would you even be playing? Like? They have to make it sound like that because that's been such a key part of selling this game to people for years. So I guess that does that say anything about, like, you know, the single player components, Like can I sello this like totally? I've been you know, I've been playing a few hours of it this morning, and you know, there's an easy matchmaking before you go into what it would kind of quote unquote be like a dungeon more or less like a kind of scripted missions. Is that where story missions happen. Okay, yeah, so you can match make with people for story missions, yes, okay, yeah, that's wow. Yeah right, all right, that sounds cool. Yeah uh and yeah you can repeat those, I assume yes you can. Yeah, And there are multiple difficulties for each one of them, and and all that sorts of it seems like they may scale along with your level because they're our trophies involved. For like, play on Hard at level thirty, which might be the level cap because there are multiple trophies associated with being level thirty, So I don't know if that's the cap or what. But yeah, so you know whatever. There are a lot of parallels to Destiny you can draw in that. But Manhattan seems like it is also the only area once you kind of get out of you start in Brooklyn for like a tutorial area, and that's the stuff that was cut out of that beta. They just started you at like when you first get to Manhattan. So I played through that stuff, got to Manhattan, did the first mission that was in the beta before, and now I'm like finally ready to start seeing more new stuff. And yeah, I don't know, I think that game feels good. I think the combat feels nice, like out of the gate. It's it's a very promising start. I felt that way about the beta, and I still like even playing through similar content or something the same content again, I'm still enjoying it just for the way it's built. You know, the combat's good. It's a it's a cover shooter. It's the third person cover shooter. It's all. It's not you know, it's not you know wheel, it's you're getting like substantial loots, not just like crafting. Yeah, you got a classic a K forty seven. Yeah, all right, and then just fucking classed it and turned it into weapon parts for craftics classic like a rarity tiar or No, it's just it's just classic AK forty seven. It was in the bottom rarity tier. So yeah, no, it's it's so. Yeah. The loot's been interesting, and equipping it and finding fucking bubble jackets and spending you points to get knock off knicks jackets. I want. Yeah, he told me the vision jacket is one of the things you can unlock, which is like the dumbest. It's not iconic. The game's not out yet. I saw a bullet point that you could customize your backpack. Okay, all right, I'm in you could wear scars. You're telling me last week that bubble jacket was a cosmetic item you could equip. Was like, I was like, all right, I want to play. Believe it is really called a puff jacket or a puffer jacket. Just it's got my first one. So it's on man. Uh you know, and sure enough, like for all the trailers and sessions and all the other stuff they've shown of fucking people closing car doors in cover, doing that as a is a doing that as a trophy. Be Closing a car door is the fucking first thing your character does in the entire game, because the character creator takes place in the reflection of a fucking cars window. Oh so it's like you see the character from behind reaches out closes a car door. I'm already laughing, and then the fucking character creator shows up, and I'm like, well, this game's all right. Uh it seems like it's a little self aware at least in that aspect. I guess. I don't know that's it's I mean whatever, but it's we'll see. I hope that there's some good endgame content. I hope that the dark zone ends up being interesting because it's that seems iffy. That group. Yeah, that's like the Canan Lynch style, like are you going to fuck over? These people are not kind of thing. And that's and that's like group versus group versus group versus group, Like it could be a bunch of squads like running into each other there, right, yeah, how that works. I mean you could be in there alone and you're technically a one man group. But what I mean is it's not just a like yes, it's like there could be It is this free flowing area. And I think the one the one benefit you get is if you're inner group with other players, shooting them doesn't turn you rogue because you turn rogue as a team. So if one person on your team says fuck this guy and starts shooting another player, you're all flagged as a rogue. And then it's on. Are there any kind of factions in the game, like in the most style or is everybody on the same kind of playing fields? So I mean there are enemy different types of enemies. There are like the Rikers, which are like rikers island inmates escaping or something like that. It's a it's a clone army of Commander Rikers stepping over chairs and fucking playing trombones. So I I, but I don't know if there's like faction rep there are three basically sets of uh, Like the tech tree is split in three parts, and a lot of your stats are split along those same three lines, where there's like a there's the medical wing, the tech wing, and the security wing of your home base, and you're kind of doing missions that are building up those three wings of things, and then your skills are unlocked based on how far you've gotten with each wing, And it seems like that's how kind of how this the campaign aspect I will build out. Is there kind of ten upgrades per wing, and you'll get points for doing side missions and then also you know there are additional missions, but you're not you're not like picking a faction. When you create a character anything like no No No, or a server or anything like that, you're just you're creating character. I think I feel like the character creation actually is a little underwhelming in terms of just like number of faces available and stuff like that. It's like they're they're ticking the boxes, but it's like it didn't seem like I had a great level of controls. It's no Black Desert Online, but then what would end be? But also the aesthetic of this game that is just so I hate to use the word drab, but it's you know, it's it's it's near future military, near future military, snowy New York. Like the snow looks great and the visibility gets really less. It's not a bad look. It's not a bad looking game at all. Yeah, but but it's one of those games where they had to get out relatively recently and say, oh yeah, we have vehicle bosses too, like it's part of their like Twitter marketing things, was like check it out. It's a card you can shoot at. I'm like, okay, I'll fight a car. Yeah, absolutely, you need that. You need that sounds cool. If I can't like square off against a tank or something like that at some point in this game it's just me running around shooting looters in the face with an assault rifle, that still sounds okay. The idea, there's there's only so much of that. The idea of hitting your raid boss and it's just a fucking tank rights has a certain appeal to it. Yeah. Yeah, So I don't know how how they've crafted the endgame content if there is a raid concept that you'll get to later on or how this is going to go. But in terms of just like hey, I'm leveling up and the numbers are going up, I'm finding weapons that says like this does this oneps? And I'm like that sounds cool. That's better than this other one. Let's do that. Uh. And you know medikits and abilities and talents and mods and you know, putting silencers on weapons. There's like a threat concept. Uh, you know like agrow yea. Yeah, so you know if you put a silence there on your weapon. It's sort of like Army of two, do you pick a class on how you put skills? Yeah, but you you're kind of unlocking all the skills and then you're you're slotting them in as you see fit. You're not making any permanent choices or that stuff from the looks of it, so you can kind of reconfigure as you see fit. Uh And but yeah, there there's it's it handles agro Well. I shouldn't say this, I haven't played enough, but like the way the numbers look in the way they're wording it, like threat sounds like a very army of two concept, where like, if you're gonna squad with people and they have louder guns than you, the enemies are going to shoot at them. So if you're silenced and and all that sort of stuff, you can get your hits in and it'll they'll be less likely to turn on you, which is you know, that's it's a pretty bare bones concept of how agro works, but uh, it's so nice to see there's some kind of dynamic teamwork component there. Yeah, yeah, it seems like that that could because yeah, I saw and you know, I had a guy on my team pulling enemies off of me onto him as he was shooting them. So there was like that that that pace of like he's gonna shoot, that he's gonna reload, and while he's reloading, I'm gonna shoot because then they'll start. But then when they start shooting at me, he'll be up and shooting again, and so you're kind of like drawing their fire back and forth. It seems like there is room for some kind of team work along those lines. It really is just a matter of like if you're gonna actually have to do that, because it doesn't seem that difficult either well who's you know, who knows what the harder totals. Yeah, yeah, but it's it's a promising start. I really I hope it pans out. Yeah, I'm I'm enjoying it. But again, yeah, it sounds kind of awesome. Is it solid technically so far? I mean, you know you're on pre release servers. These these are the real servers. I mean, this is technically the games out. They're not gonna reset me or anything like that. This is it so but we'll see, you know, kind of nine o'clock tonight, Monday night is when the game will be out in the US and they'll unlock and in a lot of territories at that time, like they they have. It's one of the things, like they have a worldwide Steam release date, which I thought they were going to do the rolling stuff to like manage server load or something like that, but like, you know, the PC version of the game unlocks worldwide nine o'clock tonight. I've never release yeah, which that's yeah, yes, yes, yeah, I've never heard of a game on Steam locking globally at the same time. It happens, as it happened. But I can't, like any other online heavy game like it seems scary, Yeah, like it. Yeah, it like their their rollout strategy seemed built around the idea of let's put it out everywhere but the US, so that we have a good idea of how this game looks under load before we get to the real load of of East Coast US. You know, when when that finally hits, but then the steam time is just like fucking all at once, it seems nuts. Yeah, uh curious to see. I mean by the time people hear this, that will will have passed already. But I'm really curious to see how things go tonight. Right, But in terms of just like you know, like you occasionally see other players running around the environment, but it's not you know, it's not like a full MMO. You know, it's not gonna You're not gonna have your like moment of like there are a thousand players here and we're all standing in town waiting for the auction house. I think I saw it goes up twenty four instance. I think that's what it is. Uh yeah, yeah, that's fairly standard. Yeah, totally totally. Have you have you been able to get a sense yet of how realistically Manhattan is modeled? Like it's because you know, it's not a big island, Like, is is it the entire layout? Like are the streets labeled? The streets are labeled, did you if you knew your way around street, could you kind of kind of find your way around one? I want to say that there was some people out there saying like, oh, man, look at this corner. This is actually this corner. It just looks, you know, like I saw some people commenting positively around the time the beta was going, But I don't know Manhattan well enough to tell you it looks like a real city. Yeah, yeah, I mean because it seems like the one the one upside of having a fairly small land masses, they could put a lot of attention to detail into it. Yeah. I mean there are interiors and stuff like that, and you can't go in every single building, but you know, you had safe houses that are upstairs in a building and stuff like that, so there's you know, there's stuff it's not would be cool. I feel like you know what it's like, there's undergradue like oh, there's the flat iron building or something like that. Stuff like that's in there. Yeah. I don't know, but yeah, it seems interesting. There was someone put a virus on the money, and then Black Friday happened and people were passing the money around. Was that everyone's story? The story? Wow? Wait, so has the entire world gone to shit? Or is it just like the New York is kind of corn So it's quarantine. It's a good place to start. Yeah, and uh yeah so it's but yeah, there's there's like this high production value, a lot of video in the intro of people dabbing things onto money and then use reports and all this other stuff, and people go, we weren't trained for this. We got a call in the division, you know, and then the division just seems like it's like mask. It's just like fucking people just doing their ship. And then the fucking watch starts making noise. They like, I gotta go, and then fucking Dusty shows up and his motorcycle turns into a fucking helicopter and what or you know, they go fight venom sold. Yeah it's uh sounds all right, it seems all right. Yeah, I hope it holds up. Yeah, it seems it seems that's I guess. That's the thing is like it seems like a game that like it could be hyper repetitive, and I could come back to you next week on this very podcast and be like, Yeah, that's all there is is. It's that over and over again for twenty hours and not worth doing, you know, But it could very well be the opposite. I hope it does. I hope. I hope it has variety. That's what that's the thing. It needs. Definitely room in the world for more and better loot shoers surest not been played out yet, although I will say the numbers popping out of guys look a little too close to the Borderlands font from my tastes in terms of numbers popping out of guys for loot. I like that though. Can you put like element old ship on your bullets so you've gotten like fire bullets yet? Yeah, you totally can't. It's but I think they are. It's a limited resource equipment that you kind of pop like a grenade or something like that. I'm not sure how they work, but it'll do area of effect damage if you have incendiary bullets, ice bullets. I don't think there's ice, but I'm not sure. There's canned food. Okay, you know there's stuff energy bars that keel you from status effects. How about that? Huh? All right, okay, and puffy cut I put on a puffy jacket and gets work. Yeah, save New York. Uh, you guys got anything else? You've been playing street Fighter? I've been trying to play street Fighter. Yeah. Well, I've been on vacation, like the past week or so. I've been done in Florida at the the in loss House, where there is no street Fighters. I brought Street Fighters with me. We brought it to the unwashed masses. I brought my god damn PS four. I brought that that cool ass hoary monitor. Oh yeah, yep, So that worked out pretty well. Unfortunately, I was been playing on a laggy TV officially, and I couldn't bring a fight stick. So I'm like, okay, fuck it, I'm gonna try out one of these mad Cats fight pro fucking controllers a six button. So do you not feel good about the PS four dpad? Like, I feel like that's a decent dpad, but it's just it's totally okay, but it's got I've got a junkie one this okay. Yeah, so the one that yeah, that I have, Like, the dpad doesn't doesn't work the best, not for fighting games anyway, so decided to give this guy a shot. Did not work out very well. Those buttons are freaking mushy. Circle button kept sticking on me and would stick in. You couldn't press any other button, nothing else with registers. Yeah that was that was correct, and that's messed up. But yeah no the in laws do you have internet there? But they have the router in like a closet and I didn't bring it either a cable. So I try to get Wi Fi. That was not working. So I ended up playing a shitload of Survival okay, trying to unlock colors. How far have you going? So you guys records? Wait, I thought you couldn't unlock any colors unless you're online. I was online to a certain people. Totally not good for server pings. Yeah I did. I did the Survival load once on easy, which is like that's the ten round one, right, yeah, and that goes by real quick, you know, but that only unlocks you know, wanted to shore, so you want to go up to like the next year where you unlocked like three more, that's thirty. Yeah, that's that's that's thirty. And I did that with Nash as well. So I moved it to hard, which is uh fifty yeah something like that, and uh no, I'm I'm getting my ass not happening on that happening. So I started playing the PC version to unlock some colors over there over and uh, you're cheating. No, no, no, really no, I can you can you cheat? I looked and didn't see it. I I but I bet you could cheat off, like in a in a survival mode context or like single player kind of context. I bet you could. Actually there's and there's already like mods out there where you can you know, adjusted textures and shit like, but that's adjusted on your end. Like the whole point of cosmetics is isn't so you can look you want to show it off. It doesn't matter pretty. I am yeah, exactly, damn exactly, damn right. And so so what I was playing with a fight request turned on. So I was getting matches as I was playing, and I got to round thirty. I got to the end of survival mode and someone came in and I said, oh, you know whatever, I'll fight this person and then and then beat Bison, unlocked these colors. I hit go. It went to connect to the other player. The connection failed to the other player, and you've been disconnected from the server and dumped me back to the main menu. Many that might be the last time I ever played Street Fight or five. If that happened to me, I don't know, fucking piss, I don't know. I had all my fight request stuff turned off, and I'm like, I got to level twenty eight at one point at a disco disconnected me from the server, and it's just like there goes your run, there goes that is it is the worst shit. Not only is it just like you know, super hard and you get one shot at this, you know, so if you're you know that high up, it's actually these are one rounds, yeah, one round fights, and sometimes you can get you know, bad luck of the draw with your supplements. So it's like, you know, increase your health just a little band. Oh I thought. Okay, I thought they offered the same ones every time. That's the same like categories, but there's different strengths. Okay. So you can have like a low medium like high okay, full like you know, how much health you get back, yeah, or like you know, defense boosts or something like that. And I had a case where like sometimes you know, so when you get a fight that interrupts your survival mode starting it, let's you retake that round over again. So there were some cases where like if I was doing really well in a survival fight, I was like, out, whatever, I'll just finished this one out and not take the fight. But in that one, that round thirty fight, like it wasn't going great. Yeah, I was like I'd lost about half my meter of my health and I was like, ah, you know, I could do better on this. I'll take this fight and then beat it the next time and fucking nothing bad. Yeah it was shitty. That is harder shitty. Yep, that was That was enough fun. I did it eventually, like get it wired though, Like I brought my pu my god namps four in the closet with the router. I hooked it up a man on a mission. I was son of a bitch. I really wanted to play like Rocket League and Reefighter while I was out there. So like, you know, after everybody went to get and went to bed, I'd just get a couple of drinks in the office and player or whatever. But yeah, I got to hook up with a few your friends online. We just started like a party and you know, the battle lounge stuff is only you know, two person right now. So you know, we just had like a party of four people play a set of you know, first five or whatever and then then switch so and that works for reasonably well yeah, for the most part, I can't wait for you know, the person a lot of stuff. They given a date for this March up date, not a specific date. Yeah, but though this week they are supposed to start punishing rage quitters and like, yeah, probably the worst place possible, worst way they're gonna manually look at stuff and determine who's cheating and then knock their league points down to zero. Like they give a fuck about points. They just want wind streak for the most part, and they want you know, high ranking I guess. But you know, even deducting them points isn't as much of a deterrence, I guess, you know, because that only happens, you know, once, however often they're they're going to do it. You know, if if they implemented something like well you just disconnected, you can't connect again for like another ten minutes or something, and yeah, you know that's going to piss up people where you know it legitimately happens to them or whatever. They need to find some kind of algorithm where oh, you just lost and you disconnected at the same time. Well, that's I think that's considered a rache quits and you can't play for a little bit, or at least like, hey, if you do it multiple times, then it's you know, there there they can see the patterns. That's that's the thing that they said is like they're looking for patterns of people that have like unnaturally high wind streaks and uh, you know whatever, not a lot of losses and stuff like that. Like they're you know, they're trying to figure it out that way, but they're really going to try and manually and then they're gonna eyeball it and then fucking knock people off once a week or something like that. Like they also did say that that was like they temporary fix for like a larger implementation, so maybe they'll get there. But like the idea that this is where they're at with it, and that this stuff was well, I'm sure that this stuff was considered at some point, but they probably just had to not do it because they had a game to ship. Yep. But still that's terrible, Uh, lots of missteps here. That said, I did look on eBay for bearded re codes at one point, and for a second there I was like twelve dollars? Was that just a pre order thing? Yeah, okay, because I've seen I'm seen a couple of hot reuws and online matches. I want that certain retailer. Yeah, there was a movie. Maybe there was a second there that I was looking at it that I maybe not outside the realm of that's a really good costume. I'm gonna wait and see because I imagine that I'll be available with fight money or some other end games will not be fucking twelve dollars at some point at some point, So I'm gonna wait and see how that goes. Have you seen Bison's costume? What is it? It's just he's fancy as fuck, dude, he's so cool. But yeah, yeah his pre order costume for I forgot where it was from. Yeah, he looks really good. It's like there's four different costumes this Gammychly Yeah, so far on PC, I have the chun Le costume, but I never as well. Yeah I created it, but yeah that's sir, that are the same. But yeah, I can't wait for this, uh this big march up. Yeah, I supposed to do. So. It's kind of all the main features you need, like the multiplayerbes, the challenge stuff, the big lobby challenge mode of the shop, Like there's currently no way to spend the currency that you learned from playing online and playing through the story mode and all that stuff. There's currently nothing to spend on a lot of shit they should have had at launch, Like yeah, like if you weren't, if you weren't front and center for when this game launched, and to observe all the complaints about it being half a game, like that is very illustrative, Like you can still earn currency that you can't spend, yeah, man, And like those icons are like you know still on the main menu you can, but you can't. Like there is a shop item on the menu, it just says coming in March, right. There's a challenges item on the menu too. It's also it's crazy, it's crazy, it's crazy. But yeah, the game continues to be like really good though, Like when I play it, I absolutely love it so like all those matches that have played with friends good. Yeah, connection was great. If I if I wanted to actually learn that game. Well, should I go on YouTube? Should I do? Yeah? That is absolutely that's place you to learn my V triggers from my V skills. I mean, look up, you know, you know showrekne dot dot com. Yea, herbs dot com, and you know they're gonna have links to tutorials, you know, so you yeah, there's there's so many, so many resources out there. It's really easy to to get that information. Okay, it's just not in the game, which is unfortunate. But the ship's out there, all right, that's good? Yeah, uh out this week? I think that is the unreal world. Oh right, yes, it is an unreal world. How is that going? It? Pretty good? Yeah? Yeah? Should should we do a thing with that? Uh So? Vinnie played it three years ago on an unprofessional Friday. I talked to him. You can't even remember it, but as soon as I said it's the one with the full color photographs of Finnish people out in the woods, that's when he remembers, Wow, and there's a lot of great pictures. Sounds pretty distinctive of Finnish people wearing furs. Game. It's fantastic, right, Uh it is. It is a survival game. Yes, it is sort of the error game of that. Okay, the most different ways that you have to survive. Yeah, so I'm looking at a screenshot here. You've got hunger, thirst, fatigue, injury, Uh, carrying, and that gives you a movement penalty of course. Uh, you have a fog of war based on the direction you're looking. It's all tile based except for the photographs of course. But I don't know. I played a few hours of it. It's it's not actually that like cumbersome and weird, like like door fortresses, like kind of impenetrable. This is like, well, I okay, I chopped down a tree. I've got some firewood. I can push the firewood. I can pick up the firewood. Oh it's too heavy. If I want to make a fire, I put down enough pieces of wood and then go to my skills fire point at the fire would and it has you know, mixed fire. Yeah. There's a lot of steps. Yeah, and the game actually does does a pretty good job of teaching you how to do it. It's gotta like if you just do like the quick start, it'll give you quests and let's teach you how to do it. I don't know, it's free. It's a fun little thing just to book around at. Uh. I don't know run on anything. So it does it look like a twenty year old game? Yeah? I mean I don't know what the art you know what it looks like. It looks like ski Free. It's it's it looks like the art from ski Free. What is ski Free? Yeah? The windows skiing thing? What? What? Dude? What versions of Windows was that? I think it was part of the entertainment pack, so it wasn't I always built into Windows. I don't think I ever had access to that. Yeah, so I never boughty of that stuff either, So I like you did not know what ski free was for a good long time. Oh man, ski free is the best? That the jetty chasing it down the hill? Okay, yeah, I'm looking at SkiFree right now. I was a little too busy with Hover. Thanks. Oh yeah ski Free? Uh unreal world expetit than ski Free? Oh wow? Yeah, huh all right, it's because some nice art. I don't know. It's still top down, tile based. It's not unpleasant to look at. Okay, it's kind of fun. I'm I have to check that out. Yeah, you know, cool survival it's the name of the game. Yeah, these days, and then what about that fucking mobile game. I don't want to talking to you. Fuck, I've been playing way too much Clash Royale. I mean, like way too much. What are you doing it? It is a head to head tower defense game. It's competitive tower defense. Like so it's Doda No, not at all. They're no heroes. It's a competitive tower defense exactly. The things that are, the things that are you are sending up the lanes towards the other person's towers are entirely spawned by you actively. They don't. They'll come out at a regular clip. They're not generated that. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a deck building tower defense game. Basically, you build a deck of eight cards. Okay, now you have my attention cards determined which kinds of units you can spawn, also what level they are, how much health they have, etc. It seems like a lot of people have been falling into the trap of getting hooked on this game and also cursing at it. Yes, that is me with disgust over and stuff. It's the it's the Clash Clans people. It's super cell Yeah, so I mean they've got some Pedigree in the free to play mobile world obviously, and of all those terrible games that I tried last year Super Bowl, that was the one that felt like smoothest and the easiest. This game is addictive as fuck, Like it is super fun. I kind of can't stop playing it. How long have you been playing it though, even though like I don't even know, man, since I downloaded it last Wednesday night, I think I've probably I put hours, many hours into it. Okay, I am neglecting real, actual video games that I should be playing for this fucking There's been a ton of games that I've downloaded, you know, that have me on the hook only for like five hours the matches. Every match starts with a three minute timer. It's super fast, like the matchmaking times have been like between like point five and five seconds. Like, so it's real time multiplayer. It is real time, absolutely uh and it works that it even works well over LTE like it's been other I've have a one or two bum matches, but generally like it plays well. The technical aspect of it is nice, but like g g PO or what yes, Scott a rollback system? Okay, yeah, but like by the end of the first or second match I played, I was just like completely fucking hooked any rage equators. I've had a couple of people leave really here and there, it'll just say it'll just say opponent has left the match. But it still makes you finish the match out. It still makes you keep spawning units to destroy all their towers before you can exit instead of just giving you the wink. Although they can come back. I had one guy come back with like twenty seconds to spare, so it is possible to resume the match if the app crashes or something. The problem is that you hit within like two hours of starting to play this game, like you run out of the currency they give you, which is necessary to keep making like any progress at all, and there's no way, like you might as well not be able to earn it in game because it trickles at such a slow rate that like it's meaningless. Have you put money into this? Not yet? But I very nearly like the first night I was playing it like I needed to keep going so badly that I almost just like I was staring at the twenty dollars and the fifty dollars options, going like which one of these? I mean the most popular the ninety nine dollars one is the best value. Of course, of course that'll probably keep you going for months. The the how obvious it is that when you are running up against people who have just put a bunch of money into their deck is the thing that makes me want to stop playing every single every single time. Like I won't I won't go into exhaustive detail about the different ways they track your ranking and your progress and stuff, but but there is a there is a single number that it basically indicates like this is your skill. This is how much you've won your MMR more or less, and not exactly, I mean it's a trophy score. It like shows up. It's represented by trophy you basically you typically earn like thirty points on that thing every time you win, and then you'll lose, like it seems to vary, but like fifteen to twenty twenty two something like that when you lose. So it's possible to lose a bunch of progress on your ranking or whatever. But every time I've started bearing down on this game, I have continued to win to the point that I start running up against people with units that are just way more powerful than mine. And it's because the progress is represented by opening chests, which gets you more cards, and the more cards you have of the same unit type, the more of that unit levels up. So the more chests you're opening, or the faster you're opening chests, the faster your units level up. And you earn chests by playing matches, and you can either spend that currency to open themmediately or they go on timers, and the fastest chest opens after three hours. From there it's an eight hour chest and then a twelve hour chest, and that's all I've seen. I can't do it. Yeah, nope, nope, And I find myself constantly every time you play, when you don't have any progress happening, they warn you, they say like, hey, you can't earn any more chests. Are you sure you want to keep playing? And I just keep saying yes, like an idiot, wow, And then I keep moving up the ladder again until sure enough, if I hit the people who are more powerful than me where their units are like anywhere from one to three or four levels above mine, and you just get busted back down, you lose a string of matches, and then you're back where you were again. That's like such a good game. Like ranking down in something. It's it's yeah, it is. I actually got demoted to an earlier tier earlier today and it was a horrible feeling. But like, it's such a good game and I can't find a way to spend money on it in good conscience like I would. It's twenty the lowest option. No, no, no, no, you can. Uh. I want to say nine nine cents for a little wad of the gyms which are the currency, and I think it's I think it's a dollar, five dollars ten. I want to think usually how most of them go. I think, yeah, like I would, I would gladly like and whatever I mean, I was gonna say, I would gladly put like maybe twenty bucks into this if it was something that would be valuable in perpetuity, right, and not just a resource that's going to deplete quickly and then I have to buy again. You know. Yeah, I have very little problem actually bumping money into two games that you know, where I will get like more cards or something something that will add to my collection or right like that. But but but if you describe it, I'm like, no, right, it's like that that would definitely be enough to move me up a couple more tears in on the ladder, but I'm sure enough I will hit people who are just ahead of me again, actually hit that, Like I You'll never be able to just continue progressing by playing the game at the rate that people are spending a lot of money, Like I'm out, Brett. I Like, I ended up on the subreddit for the game just looking around at what people were saying and like what kind of strategies they were using and stuff, and like people were min maxing not the game but the person, but the micro transactions. They were like they were like, all right, well, so if you're willing to throw in for the hundred dollars right up front, here's what you do, Like get the hundred dollar bundle and then get these types of chests and open them in this pattern to ensure like the highest rate of epic cards added to your deck. Or if you only want to spend twenty dollars up front, here's the best way to get the best cards quickly. Like it's a huge it's a huge turn off. I Uh, the game's so good and so rotten at the same time. That's shame. I don't want to hear about it. Anymore. Yeah, I'm done. It's really fun here all here. Yeah. I played some Mortal Kombat XL Yeah. Talk to me, yeah, talk to me about leather Face. I did not play as leather Face. Talk to me about the alien. I did not play as the alien. Talk to me about the fact guy the Farts did not play as Talk to me about cyber sub zero ice version or I played as Triborg. Okay, and it's like, that's three robots in one. Yeah, that's best value absolutely. Uh yeah. Each of one of his stances is either Sector Cyrax or Smoke, which is the one that can shoot rockets. That's Sector which I went with that mainly rockets. Tribe Org's cool. Almost all of his specials are brutalities. So it's like, if anything, you finished the match with just murders a guy, and it's it's kind of fun. Uh yeah, it's I don't know. I played some online matches and they felt good, but I didn't play enough of it to know if like their new net net code is like panning out. But but Triborg is a fun addition to that roster, and the x ray brutality is funny. I like, I like funny because like the x ray is normal, like he takes his head off, throws it at the other guy and then launches his body at him after the fact and does it throw and all this other stuff. But if you finish with the x ray, the head just knocks the other guy's head off and it the robot head lands on the body of the other guy's head, and then he raises his hand as with his new body. It was a robot head and new body's good. It's a great, like dumb Mortal Kombat style finisher. You're just like, man, these guys, that's not one of the the alien brutalities where he throws like a face hugger kills them. Then all of a sudden, like a little chest burster count comes out. Yeah, and it'll be wearing whatever. You know, that opponent was like Aaron Black or something. He'll you know, the little chessburster will have like a little Aaron Black hat or something like. It's almost like a little babality or something. Yeah, exactly, That's that's pretty good. Yea love. Wait, so when you do like X Ray moves on these guys, what happens. It's just it's like an ultra and Street Fighter. It just does a bunch of damage, and it's like, what's it looked like? Yeah, like, what's on the inside of the alien of a robot? You know, I don't know the robots are converted, they would still have Yeah, they're sie Works. They're not They're not robots, they're sie Works, right, Yes, but they're alien is it? No? In a suit that looks like really good, Like the alien in the game kind of looks really really good if it just could see the guy in the alien suit in there. Uh yeah, I don't know. It's I don't know how much more of it I'll play. I feel like I had a great time with Mortal Kombat X when it came out. It's been so long, it's a weird time to put out a bunch of more kids. Well, also, the like I'm I'm kind of trying to get better at Street Fighter, and the more time I spend playing another fighting game will fuck me up in my quest. So like, yeah, these are very different. Yeah. I play a little bit of it and thought like, oh this is this looks nice. I like this game, but I don't know that I'm gonna get back into it. Yeah, and like it sounds like the new neck code, which is rollbackstyle as well. It's been pretty successful, so I wonder if they're all there'll be some people popping popping on boarding, especially with you know, on the Street Fighter being where it's at right now, sure completely out, we gonna talk about opposites, man. Yeah, Mortal Kombat XS has so much stuff in it yep, in terms of story mode and starts all the test your luck and testrimony, like they've packed that thing full. So it's yes, I enjoyed playing Street Fighter more, but at the same time, I like playing with other people. Yes, m tempting. All right, news anything new and news hang on the new news microphones were muted. Yeah, yeah, okay, let's talk about the news. You've gotta blank out the wave for him. M hm, so you can tell where the edits are. Yep. That's a handy production trick. All right, I got some grim news start off this week, right this morning. Microsoft started the week off by destroying two of its studios two. Yes, uh, Lionhead is the one that grabbed all the headlines. Storied English developer found by Peter Mollanu, makers of Black and White and Fable. Yes, Yes, yes, fabled to developer line, but also another studio, press Play, is being shut down. They made. Yeah, I've never heard of Colimba. I saw that listed with this MAXA. The Curse of Brotherhood is the main one I was. That was one of the early Xbox One games. I'm not I'm still I don't know what Colimba is. Yeah, I don't know that I've played it. They are press Play is Danish. So they were working on an unnamed game going by the name Project Knoxville, which they actually ran a vote for last year, Like they name the project No No to let let people pick what their next project would be. Then John Johnny Knoxville similar Yeah, they were unable to secure the elusive Stevo license to abandon their plans. Yeah, they had their thing going and then uh Landhead was working on Fable Legends for a very long time and now that's canceled. Yeah, they showed that at the three. They recently played it back. It did not look great. Yeah, Like I wanted to try it just because it said Fable on it, but I didn't really know what to expect. And that was meant to be, Like it was meant to be a free beame and then like it was like a four on one like one player was the DM right, like that kind of thing like a four yeah, four people do a dungeon crawl and somebody else like not necessarily a fable, no no, no, no no, it was not a proper story driven fable sequel. And then what was the connect one fable? The journey there we go? Yeah, Like, how much of that stuff do you think was kind of pushed by Michael? Oh god, most of it? You think Microso killed lion D What do you mean do you think? I mean literally in the literal sense, absolutely, But it's it's it's like and it's one of those very like uh British kind of things that they're saying they're having discussions about shutting the studio down because I think to go into to do that, like the way employment law works in over there, it is a very it's a different thing, but it sounds like what do they call it? They call it something administration company going into administration, which I suspect that's why aren't there aren't there people that you you call in usually probably think they have a name administrators. But I think all I think all this aliffs Aliffs maybe Punisher. Sorry, there you go, what Barristers? What I meant? Actually? Is it? Like, you know, do you think how much like influence Microsoft had in like, you know, saying well, you guys should probably do a Connect. Oh I'm sure that came from on high right, and do you think you know Lione d was like fuck, like really we gotta do this. Fable the journey was better than it should have been for what it was, but it was still Also I would say that, yeah, the Connect are you saying it was on rails? And I am did you sign the wall? Uh? Well, let's move on. I did not sign the wall? Okay, all right, good. I could also like, you know, we're talking about the times of Peter Malaneu and I could see, you know, with the Milo stuff, like he seemed very at least he seemed excited and potentially interested at what Connect had to offer. Oh yeah, I didn't didn't pan out like as a device and all the stuff. Like no, but like at the times that can make those commitments. They probably didn't know that sure. But you know, even even before they kind of went onto these bizarre one off projects like Fable three was the last proper Fable game they made, and it was not not especially well received, real real bad at that at that end. But yeah, but that's but that is the problem with that game, really, right, I mean it's that the ending kind of comes at you out of nowhere. It's the point of overturn comes at you out of know absolutely, and that's frustrating. The last Yeah, the last two three hours of the game three still all right, Okay, it's okay. I played through. Yeah, Like the early parts of the game, we're like, yeah, okay, yeah, this is Fable. That's all right, Like, yeah, it's not. It wasn't terrible, yeah, Like I think more it was just it was a disappointing follow up to Fable two, which, sure it was like this breakout thing that people were kind of awed by and thought had a ton of potential. Yeah. I guess I really liked Fable two, but I guess maybe I just didn't like hold it in such high regard that Fable three seemed like this big, like treason this thing. It was just like but it was just kind of it was kind of just more Fable and then it went bad at the end. Sure, yeah. Uh and and you know, like for the special place, the Fable two occupies and a lot of people's hearts like that was not enough by any means. Stuff. Yeah, it's true. Yeah there was a there was a dog. There was a dog. But then yeah they did Fable Journey and then and then this thing yeah, uh which will never come out now. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean Microsoft is in such a weird spot. Yeah, a weird, weird, weird spot that you know you have to wonder. I mean, you know, look, it's not like Microsoft is like hurting for money. They make fucking Windows, right, I mean, they're probably doing a ok. But at some point you probably have to look at the Games group and go like, hey, at least make like place good bets with the budget. Like, you know, they still have a budget, right, They can't just go spend all of Microsoft's money on everything so for five years or what, right, Yeah, so you know, at some point they probably have to make some tough calls around the sorts of games they want to make those ten for free. Yeah. So well yeah, but I think that's that's part of what the statement was. Like. They even said like we're gonna focus more around the types of games that we think that people you know, want to play quant a break is absolutely and actually kind of it seemed like they went right into promoting some of the other products that they were working on, which is maybe a little crass, but it's entirely possible to Fable Legends was just not shaping up the way they don't want to, you know, as opposed to it fundamentally not being the type of game they thought was gonna sell or something. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that game didn't seem I will say I did not actually play it, but you know, like it seemed like the people that did, and you know, I spent some time looking at it the three last year. I went like, oh, you know, it's an interesting idea, like the execution I don't I don't know, and you know, like it seemed like the people that took closer looks at that game came away from it saying like, this is not a it is not a Fable sequel, and b it doesn't seem like it's a great represent It doesn't seem like they're nailing the thing they're trying to nail either. So that's you know, that stuff ads up and it sucks. Yeah, I I don't know. I feel like a postmalanew lionhead was just this like weird headless thing in a lot of ways too. I mean it did have a head, but I got well, yeah, also I got the sense that defend as of like Fable three, he was not super involved day to day with design decisions and stuff like that, because they would occasionally, like and they're even in their pr efforts, would like reference the actual director of that game, right, who was not Peter Mullen, you know, like, yeah, there were other people making and then he went on to be created ahead of the studio I believe, didn't he That might be the studio director or whatever whatever their title is. Yeah, uh yeah, But either way, I don't know end of an era. That studio was fifteen years old, like I was in I was in freaking college when Black and White came out. All right, that feels like forever ago, and it's weird. Like I said, black and White fucking rules. I don't care what anybody says. I it's it's the the quintessential thing. The thing of maybe that studio is like the idea of black and white rules. The execution of black and White is leaves something to be I'll say this, I don't think I ever got past the second Island and White, but that first Island great, Yeah, I don't know. Those those among the times that I've been the most fascinated with the video game and the things you could do in it, right, yeah, just like just having that hand to figure out like what having that hand cursor that could just grab and mess with anything in the world, or just like plucking villagers and throwing them into the sea and like making the little magic symbols with your mouths and oh man, when we were talking to Jonathan Blow about The Witness and he talked about it as like starting from this idea of like gesture based system for casting spells like black and White, like totally yeah, right, yeah, I don't know, it's it probably says more about like me and and whatever, But like I never really thought of lion Head as the thing because to me, it was always the thing that happened after Bull for sure. Yeah, but I mean that's just the career of Peter Malanu. Sure, right, that's what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, And so it was always like this thing of like a Lionhead's it's it's not bull Frog. But all right, Fable's pretty good. I guess not that every bull Frog game was amazing either, but sure, sure I always thought Black and White felt more Molanu than Fable did. Yeah, but at the same time, there were definitely some very molanusque touches in Fable. Yeah. Uh, you get fired on things, Yeah, exactly, totally. Yeah, that's you know, it's a bummer's unfortunate. But yeah, I think you know, like we we talked a bit about some of the stuff from that event last week, and you know, the the things they are looking to do with the Xbox platform, yeah, or the things they're talking about, Well, we should just move right into that because we need to revisit that topic anyway. Yeah, condolets, it's people at Lanhead and press play. That's it sucks. It's that's never unfortunate. Uh. But but yeah, like there are some common there's maybe maybe the Clash Royal Clone to be made. God, that's where the money is now, right, dude. That game is the number one grossing game. I find it a little weird that that ranking exists on the app Store, Like it's not like here's the most downloaded or the most played today. Here's the things that are making the most money. They have like top free apps, they have to have paid and then paid is done two ways. I think it's gross and then another one. But yeah, okay, I can't imagine how much money that game is making on a daily basis. Yeah, no, it has to be a lot, probably a lot. Anyway, that's video games now, yes, uh yeah, so uh. Phil Spencer had made some comments at that Spring showcase that we were at for a little bit. Yeah, that just kind of came in to light more. Well, I think it's the last that it's that we showed up in the afternoon. Yeah, we were there. We actually see your speech. But you know, like I had talked to someone there just about kind of the I asked about some of the stuff around the Windows ten store, right, and so for yeah, that that seemed to be the thing that the people we talked to who were focusing on was well, that's the stuff that I was focusing on because I knew about it going in. So those are the questions that I kind of asked and and and yeah. But you know, there was also the larger topic of the Xbox platform, and some of that was reflected in you know, forts Fort's coming to the PC, Quantam Break come to the PC. So, yeah, we talked about all that stuff last week. But the a little bit there that's there's a little bit more to it is when they're talking about the Xbox One, it's a platform and unifying these things and the potential for upgrading Xbox one is the is the specific thing here and we should probably find that quote. I've got the quote here. Yeah, if you would like me to read it, I would. Here's the Phil Spencer quote on PC and mobile, you get a continuous innovation that you rarely see on console consoles. Lock the hardware and the software platforms together at the beginning of the generation. Then you ride the generation out for seven or so years while other ecosystems are getting better, faster, stronger. Yeah. Absolutely used he used the word decoupling, uh, basically saying they're decoupling the Xbox One, like the software platform, from the hardware that exists right now. Yeah, which opens up a lot of potential for them to create additional products with the Xbox brand on them. If if that's an upgrade, if that's an Xbox one point one, yes, or or if that's a that's a PC that just plays all the Xbox One games. That's an Xbox One blaster that you put in there. Such card used to a PCI Express card. The phrase he gave to all the best consoles have PC Express cards in them. Yes, absolutely, go on the phrase. The phrase that he gave to Polygon when they saw it, comment was quote capability of hardware iteration. Yeah, that's what they are committed to bringing to the Xbox platform. Yeah, and and I think you know, you talked about you know, the idea of like typical iteration on a platform is, you know, you're making it smaller, you're making it more efficiently, You're you're getting some cost savings out of it. But the end user benefit is the capabilities are identical across the generation. And you know, they're in this interesting position where they control the PC market or they control Windows anyway, so they have you know, they have a lot of power in the PC market, and they have a lot of interest there, and their platform is not doing that great, and their platform is not selling that well. It's also the it's also not as powerful as its main competitor. Yeah, although I mean, you know, those differences like there, it's totally. Yeah, it's not a super meaningful thing. You know, it's one of the things where it's like Killer Instinct for example, that'll come to PC at the end of this month and you'll be able to run it all these beautiful resolutions and also other stuff. The Xbox one version runs at nine hundred or I guess. The reason I bring that up is that, like, if all they were to get out of this is to be able to come back to market and say, hey, now our box is more powerful than Sonia, that's not going to cut. It has to be. It would have to be above and beyond by quite a bit to be, you know, to sell that to an audience and say like, hey, here's why you should buy another Xbox. But also, you know what, what is the message to developers there, Like, well, how does their path change? And so I think there's a lot of dust around this that has not settled in terms of like how far they go, because this could end theoretically with them figuring out a way too much like they've built a rapper to run Xbox three sixty games on an Xbox One, there is a potential that they could figure out a way to get x Xbox One games running on a PC in some way. Yeah, that's me intrigue. Yeah, I'm totally interested in this. But I mean obviously, you know, the old hardware is not going to be yeah yeah, but also at the same time, isn't I mean, like, you know, you could be designing the same games just like they're going to be at a higher reglation on this better developers have to account for two skews of console and then it becomes like phones at that point. Yeah, that's yeah, fragmenting, That is what kind of scares me a little bit. And who you know, yeah, right or PC? Yeah exactly, Well, what would you get into PC? Like the requirements are just like you know, what you're doing to test for the different kind of your figurations, Like it's exponentially higher than a closed platform like a phone would be. On PC, you have things like middleware taking care of a lot of that stuff, which hopefully Microsoft is providing with They're all that's the thing though, it's so it's it's unified stuff. So it's all direct X twelve, you know, it's it's you'll have to do work. Uh, you know, I don't think it's just simple as like save as Xbox one right exports, you know, it's not quite that, but they're trying to create efficiencies. So some of this is something like some of it that's that is pretty much their pitch for apps when it comes to the Windows ten store and Xbox one apps, which they still haven't done that yet, but that that is part of the plan, Like the core of the Xbox one is the Windows ten core. Now, the eventual plan was to have it so that there is some unity across the app stores themselves, and so in some cases you may have apps that wouldn't run well in the Xbox one environment because they're built for a mouse or they're built for a PC monitor and you to be right there and the text might not look good, but it's the idea is that it's a minimal amount of effort for you to spit out a an Xbox one like first version of that app, or a Windows Phone version of that app as well, because Windows ten runs there as well. And so that's all finding good for apps. For games it gets weird, and for games it's gotten weird. And right now they're handling it as this kind of two this this double approach, like you know, quantum break is like, you know, hey, you can get the PC version, or you can get the Xbox version, and hey, if you get the Xbox version, will throw in the PC version for three for free. But I don't know exactly how much they're benefiting from the kind of that architecture of or that that unified platform stuff there. We'd have to talk to Remedy about that. I don't I don't know. And third parties aren't necessarily gonna like buy into this right out of the gate because they sell their own PC versions on Origin and you Play and Steam and Dog and all these other places that are not the Windows ten Store. So that I didn't dig into this with tumb Rator. But does that mean that there are two different versions of tum Rator for sale. Yes, Like the version on Steam is not subject all these restrictions, right this Windows TIMS store version. Yeah, So the the apps coming out of the Windows ten Store, because they're not you know, you can't really get at the executable. It's a different type of package and so as a result of that, it's a little different. So a lot of it and that's the thing that we you know that I asked them about it said, hey, this is this is an issue with people that want to mod games with people that want to you know, like that are used to owning PC game and it cames in a certain way and being able to tinker with them as they see fit. Uh, this is not that. And they said, we know it's we're aware, and we intend to work on it. And I suspect they'll get where they need to get with that stuff. But the larger issue is when when they decouple hardware and software, all bets are off with everything and and they can build the pipelines as they see fit, and it could be really exciting in the long run, but in the short run, you've got that case of like, okay, do you introduce a more powerful Xbox console at E three? Now? Do you start making steam Boxes that run the Xbox one library in some weird way? Do you even care about the existing Xbox one library or is this go forward path of like quantum just coming to the PC as well? Is that how you do it? I'm kind of hoping it's not the right word, but assuming that if you can go one, like if you can put Xbox one games on the PC, like, who who is developing Xbox one? Games and is thinking, finally an easy way to put these on our PC no One, people developing PC games might go, well, I mean we could do a little of this weird Microsoft stuff and then be able to play it on an Xbox. Yeah, so yes, that's that is absolutely a potential benefit there. And but you know, the self publishing programs, the idea Xbox stuff has already been pretty successful in terms of just like getting games on that platform that you wouldn't have thought of, the same way on PS four has been the same way you know, of getting games onto those platforms that you wouldn't even think of as a console game in the previous generation. So like that stuff's already kind of happening regardless. So if this makes it easier for more developers and that sort of thing, that could be cool. I haven't really heard them say anything to that effect though, not that I've been watching closely. But yeah, but I think that like all these benefits are are there are, all of these potential benefits do exist. It's just a matter of like how far do they go and what does it really mean? And and for existing Xbox one owners really yeah, you know, yeah, because they're they'll they will now always be the least powerful platform in this chain, right, Uh, Like, Like it seems like there's a lot of potential to alienate people who just bought an Xbox one six months or a year ago and are already being shown like, hey, here's a better one. You should buy that now, because yeah, like better, that's you know, people have grown to accept those that sort of way of life when it comes to phones, but consoles, you know, as they said, it's very much a seven year thing or five year things. There's very much an expectation that, hey, if I buy this box, assuming it doesn't break, I am good for the duration of this generation to play whatever you guys put out. And there was a lot of talk last time around of Xbox three sixty of them taking a half step there, and that rumor did go around. They started it seemed like they started maybe doing the work of like, hey, when could we put out a more powerful Xbox three sixty? What would that mean? Uh? Is there a way to get that to existing Xbox three sixty owners without them having to go buy a whole new box. It's so fucking crazy, dude, Like, if this actually happens, I feel like it's like nothing short of the biggest change to come to the console business model. Yeah, kind of ever, right, and what does that force Sony to do in response? You know, like nothing right now, you know, like short term but yeah, I mean, okay, obviously term I mean, but but long term, the viability of consoles isn't necessarily yeah, like like maybe it's own up this. Maybe this is just something that had to happen at some point by necessity, and somebody had to take the first step because because now every other hardware platform works in the opposite way, which is that it iterates constantly. But also like, I don't like for that to all happen, you have to count on Microsoft to nail it and get every aspect of this right. And I just don't think they will, you know, I think that they there's too many opportunities for them to, you know, like make calls that will kind of screw over like loyal consumers that purchased an Xbox. Like if I when I look at the stuff, the thing I see first and foremost would be an Xbox branded Steam Link style of thing. Sure of, like hey, like get your PC games onto your TV this way through the power of the Xbox Link or you know whatever you got, uh and and find a way to run more and more of those Xbox One games as with the PC as the powerhouse with the this other box getting it to your TV. I think that makes a little more sense right now, like like early days, but it's it's not the next The next year will be like like for Xbox will be tumultuous. It was going to be anyway, because you know, the console's just not moving even the you know, when we have our first party conversations and look at like you know, Halo and Gears as these kind of titans of development, like they're not doing it the same way they used to do either. You know, we'll see how Gears the New Gears does. That's that's obviously still in development. Like, you know, you don't get the impression that like Halo is burn out the charts because it requires people to buy an Xbox One, which they're just not doing, and then those games aren't driving people to the platform the same way that they used to. So yeah, imagine though, like the Xbox one point one comes out and it looks better than the PS four and whatever, and you can play a bunch of PC games. I mean, this is longer down the line, but like people who don't have PC's and are coming to maybe don't have either console, that starts to look kind of attractive or it's like, yeah, I mean it's all conjecture, but like the PS four starts to look long in the tooth, and well, I mean you could just get this one right now, and those things look great. That's what I meant about making Sony response, Like, at a certain point, all of a sudden, Sony has the inferior box on the market. If this works out the way Microsoft acts like it much, they've also got the install base. By that at that point, developers would be developing for the PS four first the way they are now. In a lot of cases, yeah, maybe people just don't really care, and so like, you know, if that stuff is kind of set, then what developer is going to go out there and go like, well, we definitely, but unless it's easy, you know, and if if the architectures are such that it is easy to take advantage of this extra power, which you know we see in PC ports all the time now, yeah, yeah, then maybe that's a different story. But I just I've found it. I found it like as as things like Digital Foundry have gotten more popular. I always find it interesting when they do their analysis and say, like, okay, well the PS four version of this is the equivalent to medium settings on the PC version. Yeah, right, so in those terms, like maybe this new Xbox runs everything on high effectively on average, or maybe it runs it on medium, because sometimes the Xbox one version can't achieve that. You know, it's but it's it's one of those things where the message coming out of this continues to be if you truly care about gaming and visuals and all this other stuff, the right answer is still to get a PC. And it's you know, now it's this like tacit admission on Microsoft's part that like that maybe that's the way to go instead, like especially if all their games end up coming to all places, which I don't know how you actually pull that off. I'm not an engineer, so I can't tell you how easy it would be to get Xbox one games in their current state running on a PC without assistance from the people who developed those games. Oh, I think that's probably crucial. Yeah, there's still some basic differences with unified memory and stuff, right, But also, like you know, could they even legally do that? You know what what would what would EA think about? Oh they were to do it without asking or whatever? Yeah? Yeah, like well even with the exactly there to become that same conversation where it's like, no, we sell a PC version on the store that we own. The last thing we want is a confusing competing like not as good version being sold in the Windows ten store, right, So no, so does that dump a bunch of customer support on the third parties laps because they're like, wait, why don't why can't how can when I put this Xbox one disc in it doesn't work? Right? But Halo five does you know? Or like there's which who knows if they even go that way? This to me, this seems like a go forward thing, you know, with Quantum Break and you know, the other thing around Forts was, you know, they're putting out APEX and that's they're big kind of like hey, let's let's build the tech and do it at four K and all this other stuff. And then the kind of other quote coming out of Dan Greenwall was like all future Forts of games will of course come to the piece. So at least on the first party end, they're like, hey, fuck it, we're gonna put the games where people are because they're not on the Xbox One. You think Gears four comes out on PC this year absolutely, day and date. I don't see why not. I don't see why, you know, like if they're committing to it with stuff like Quantum Break that they're publishing, they're not even developing that. Uh you know, they put Gears out last week for thirty bucks. That's that the vision thing that they put out on a Xbox one already. But I don't see them looking too much further back, Like I bet I would not be shocked if Halo five was never on the PC, but Halo six was day one. Sure, you know, like unless that work is incredibly easy to do, then at some point you're like, well, let's just bring the entire catalog over and then we've got this weird thing of like, okay, well does the Xbox three sixty catalog then carry over with that? Are you doing that work too? How far do we go? And I'm sure the question that the answer to those questions are like probably right now limited by how much time and money they have to put into this stuff. And I'm sure they would like to do all of it everywhere forever. But in terms of just like what's actually realistic short term the only, the only short short term thing I feel I feel like reasonably confident about right now is that maybe you shouldn't buy an Xbox One, right, yes, seriously? With everything they just said, yeah, serious, holy shit, Like that almost makes it feel like they have to announce something more concrete because you've already to have like you've already pulled the rug out from under your own hardware sales rights. Like yeah, you kind of have to say you've got to clarify what this means soon and put out a box this Christmas or something, right, you know? Right? But is that even will anyone care? Will anyone want it? Like what idea? No idea? You know, because like the power is like you know they're there, you know, Like I just this is a kind of a random thought. But like another vector for them is that four KTVs are actually really starting to sell. It seems like and like they just launched the four K Blu ray format right like the players just became available in the last I want to say that the PS four is far more upgradable to I don't I don't. I don't think that's the case. I don't think you can play back four K blue rays. I'm pretty sure both consoles are not currently capable in that. I thought it was something where like specifically for the blue rays like games never but maybe it can do four K. I'm not like a bandwidth I think I think it's that. Yeah, I think it's an HDMI port on that thing kind of situation. I might be wrong, but like that could be another way for them to like trojan horse it into the house. If you're like, well, this one, this one will play the new four K blue rays for that four KTV you bought. There might be a market for the person who doesn't have a PC, doesn't want a PC, wants to play games on their TV and the PlayStation four years old. But there's Xbox one point one that's kind of the only person I see YE engaging with this, Like, like, what do you say to the people who have bought Xbox ones over the past two years? You say, hey, do you give them a path to upgrade to the new one? Man? I think I think that would be the right move, just to give them like a very comfortable path to upgrade, Like Hey, send us your Xbox one and fifty bucks and I would have like all the two hundred or something in terms of what I believe they would do. You think I'm saying what they would do, not what should they should do. Like, if you're spending two hundred bucks, like you might as well just fucking or a hunt maybe a hundred like I just I can't. Yeah, I don't think that's fucking real costly if they're packing that thing full of newer hardware. But I think if they wanted to giving it away, if this is them trying to dig themselves out of the situation they're in, then they need to take the hit, you know, assuming they can. Yeah, right, so exactly the budget to do that sort of, but they need to and then make it up on components later on. Yeah, maybe software, you can they win back hearts and minds? Will Will the next Xbox hardware be user accessible in a more meaningful way so you can go like, well, I'm going to rip the video card out of this, ye put in something. That's the route they're going. They have to build the new one with that with upgradeability in mind, right, phones aren't Well that's true, you know, like like when you when a phone reaches its end of life, I mean, apps start stop working on them. Yeah, there are certain you know, you go back to generations iPhone, you've got games that straight up don't run. Yeah, but you know, Apple set those expectations right off the bat, even the first iPhone only lasted a year or whatever. So like people are just going to be more resistent to that with consoles. But because they've never been used to it. But maybe it's one of the things where they have to take the hit. And then the long term on the other end is once they've kind of made their case and and all the other stuff is maybe it works for them. But I don't know, man, I think that's so weird. The ability to like play these console games on a PC. I think that's good. I think that's yeah, that's you know, put the games where the power is. Put the games where the people are, assuming they iron out all those those unfortunate restrictions. The other and the other part of the problem is like the people are not in the windows ten storey. Uh, And I just and so Tim Sweeney wrote his big open letter about the his concerns around the Windows ten store His fears around that thing being a potential problem for all developers down the line because of some of those restrictions and and Microsoft kind of owning that sort of stuff and and you know all that sort of stuff. Personally, he's right, but Steam is so big that I just, yeah, it's it's hard to imagine it being toppled by, especially by you know, something like the Windows ten store, you know, it's current state. But also like I don't know, like im I think Tim Sweeney's kind of you know, is making this case that like, you know, back it's compatibility is a must at this point because of how ubiquitous Windows is, and at some point, I don't know, like I feel like I've been waiting for them to just say and by the way, this next version of Windows will not run your old shit. It's but it's so much better that you won't care that. But not that I think that they could actually do that, but I think that that that pitch. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. There's there's a lot of ends and ounce it's a very weird thing. There's kind of no reason for them to not do this. Yeah, and even though they've got nothing to lose, at this point, even though that'll be frustrating for people that bought an Xbox one. Yeah, it's gonna be a weird E three Yeah, sure is Yeah, yeah sure dude, if they if we get through this E three and they don't reference the stuff again, it's, oh god, to be very unfortunate. Like that's got to be I mean, you know, that's got to be the thing that they almost announced ahead of the show to get it out of the way, right and get the big news out there for hardware so they can focus on games for this new stuff. Yeah, you know, the same way they did when they want to console the first time. It's like, get all the hardware boring stuff out of the way, so when you get to E three, it's good times and video games and you know, let's shoot some guns, you know whatever. But uh yeah, it's uh, look at some matrix inspired target renders. Yeah, are you talking bullet time? Yeah? Finally, m Uh. The business of games is big this week. A lot of shit going on, a lot of moving and shaking. Uh. The E three booths keep dropping like flies, see you man? Yeah right, what is that show even gonna be like at this point? So easy a month ago, two months ago. It's been a while. Yeah, yeah, announced they were pulling their booth for E three. They're having their own thing. A couple of days before the show starts. Early last week, Activision announced that they were pulling their E three booth from the show floor. Those guys got big booths, Yes, they do Activisions a yeah, yes, And Activision always has a big booth without and they never have that much in it. Yeah, like you have appointments and you're going to see stuff, but like Active, well whatever, let's go on. I think that this applies to all of these companies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, an Activision easily two of the biggest booths at the show outside of the three hardware makers. Is the Activision doing something outside or I don't believe they've announced that yet unless I overlooked that. I want to say that they have said that call of duty information would be coming in the relatively in your future. But didn't they come out and straight up say that that would be at Sony's press conference? Oh right, yes, they straight up like the news on the next call of duty will be at Sony, So they'll get that out there that way. Well, now more companies are following suit, Disney YEP has announced they're pulling their booth. Wargaming, the makers of the World of Tanks Yeah, also are killing their booths, would they and they both had very large booths, Yeah, which I think both of those cases makes sense. Wargaming they speak directly to their audience, but they free to play game that is very popular, but also like doesn't necessarily need a huge booth space, and the show that like has a portion of it devoted to like retail excitement. Right. Uh so the idea of them spending on I never understood why Wargaming had a huge booth there other than they had the money to blow. Yeah, and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time when they signed up for the booth, and then Disney so this this They also had the other announcement this week of there's no new Infinity game this year, Right, they are releasing more stuff that will work with Infinity three, so they will they will have no new game to show at E three because that's the only game they're making. Yeah, don't you lose your spot though? Yes? Yeah, these I was gonna say these companies are betting on the idea that E three will not be a relevant concern or that or that there will be big companies to step in and take that space from them, which like you know, when Activision dropped out for a while, and that's why Activision always had this huge booth at the very back of the show, you know, instead of upfront where like two K and you know, ea, we had that upfront spot. Uh, you know, Activision was at the very back of that hall with their big monolith that like last year what they had like Guitar Hero out there for anyone to walk up and play, but the rest of it was just this upstairs area for you to go take meetings like black ops who haven't played Destiny in a tiny room like those. Activision is a big enough company with enough games and enough cloud to just like have an event for that separately, whether it's Addy three or their own thing or individual things for each game they can do that. People will show up somewhere to cover Call of Duty any time of the year. You don't need a booth. Well you need a booth when you're a little guy that it's just going to capture someone walking around the show, right, And I guess I'll go over here and look at that. Oh, this is kind of cool. And the bulk of information on call of duty is from the press conference. So like my Black Ops three appointment last year was you know, like I got to sit down with someone and see a longer version of the thing from the press conference. That's typically what the call of duty appointment is, all those spots where in the press conference they say like in the interests of time, like you just you see all that stuff that got cut more or less, and it's interesting and you get a chance to talk to them about it and maybe kind of figure out where they're going with it. But like in terms of just like raw information that's been fed out to the public, all of that stuff comes to the press conferences for almost all games. Now, you know, like the the actual act of going and seeing and playing games and stuff like that at E three is less and less important as the years of going on. How far something like that? Yeah, yeah, you didn't take those spots, June. I don't know who would, right, I mean, you may have publishers that want to move up to a bigger space and stuff like that, and that would have the opportunity to do so. Twenty all right, let's do it. Yeah, Yeah, there's gonna be room. We could just like set up shot there, take over activision spot. Yeah in the back. M let's not pay for it. I mean if if it's just an empty space, like we'll bring some launch spots and just yeah, squat it. It's officially ours. In retrospect, I feel like that, did you see that little classic gaming corner year? Yeah? I can't remember who was running that, but yeah, I feel like that should have been more telling than I interpreted as being. Last I was like, wait a minute, I looked at him with this is a cool thing to have on. Yeah, it was one of my favorite things there. But at the time I didn't look at that and think like they, Wow, they've got some space to burn here, don't take I mean, they've been doing something like that for at least a few years, I guess. But it was bigger and more elaborate than I had ever seen AN three. It's had some sponsorship there that this like into the pixels stuff. Yeah right, but you know, like in sponsorship, but in the hey day of E three, like companies were fighting tooth and nail to get space to show new products in that in that thing you know, but it's you know, this is this is how game coverage has evolved. You know, this is this is how it is. This is how information gets out and in such a different way now than it used to. Like you used to think about E three as a place where you got to go to an appointment, you played a game, and then you immediately went to go right up the thing that said, here's our hands on report, right, But now you don't need hands on reports because every shooter plays the same more or less. You can watch someone playing it, ask a couple of questions and glean almost as much information, uh from that as you would from a hands on It's why I just you know, also, if there are any real differences, like there's gonna be video of the game online, yep, more than likely, So people are just going to see what it looks like. Yeah, yeah, by and large. So it's you know, the relevance of E three, I think is something that people you know, give a little too much lips are They spend a little too much time talking about it, like it's still a relevant show in in a lot of cases at the same times, you know, like National magazine or something like that. But like, but if you think about it for the past few years now, and maybe it was kind of like this all along. Ninety five percent of the information that matters is in the press conferences, yeah, you know, and then there's the handful of you know, it's like what like we got to go see blood Borne, uh, you know in some like they did their their you know, the typical Sony appointment, like the kind of theater demo, hands on type saying or or you know, we wouldn't infamous, you know, Sony booth or you know when you know you went and looked at fall Out or like that sort of stuff, or you know, we got to talk to John Carmack about VR right before that was cool, which probably a bunch of people could to this day have been tweeting me like he apparently nailed the six hundred dollars price in that interview I did with like three years ago. Of course, of course, Yeah, I mean E three is just like the game industry is constantly changing, so E three obviously needs to continue to evolve to match that. And it looks like it is yeah, exactly with with with or without the EESA, it will continue to evolve, you know, And I'm I don't think you can clean everything from a press conference. No, No, it's like certain games. A lot of games require like a deeper dive to really understand. Yes, there are things that you can absolutely get out of a deeper dive, but in terms of like, hey, we're announcing a game, and here's the information that stuff's all at the press conference or or or there will be plenty of time to get that nuance later because the bigger games are going to show up at multiple events over the course of their development, and you know, like everything's gonna be kind of eked out over time as they have more and more to show. So it's you don't have that many cases of like, hey, we're announcing a game and by the way, you can play it here. Typically it's like, hey, we're announcing a game and we'll let people play it three months before it's out, but you can sit and talk to a producer about it if you want. And I think like that you see a lot of like the first time playable at E three. Yes, for games that I think have been announced already. Yeah, yeah, you'll you'll just sure, Yeah. I think I just think there's value there. Yeah, I don't know it's I guess I could from from my perspective. It's like written so many things at E three over the years, and such a premium was placed on the co incept of being able to call something a hands on, and it was a thing where like, you know, you would, you would your E three judge would get to play a game for judging purposes, but you'd have to like, hey, don't call it a hands on. Like there are some companies that still say stuff like that, like you're like, you can't say that you play, can't say that you played this, And it's like, okay, well that's fine because the only difference between me saying I played a thing and me saying I saw a thing is me describing the controls which you're making a first person shooter, let's not be crazy here, or you're you're making the next Fallout game, it's you know, got a pretty good idea about how that's going to play, So yeah, it's it's it's one of those things that used to be I mean, used to negotiate for like the exclusive world first hands on, and that is just so insane to me now that you know that it is one of those things that I think reduces the usefulness of a lot of E three because that's not what people are looking for. People just want a lot of video. Yeah, typically Yeah, yeah, I don't really need to know like how a lot of hot takes. Yeah about what happened. Yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna miss the spectacle. And I'm not saying that you know he's dead or anything. Yeah, it'll it'll have the spectacle. I mean, the post conferences will have all the spectacle you need as long as those are there making at the show floor. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna it's gonna feel emptier, like like even if other companies start taking up some of the space, Like you bet your ass, they're not going to spend as much on those booths as these companies did. Sure. Yeah, like you're not gonna have these ridiculous multi level catwalks and like blaring subleffers and stuff. Like all that stuff is like fleeting, and I mean, you know, when it gets down to it, it's like fuck, it's just hard to cover. Yeah, So there's so much it's loud and chaotic and kind of a mess. Let's take a yeah run through or two, and it's like, Okay, yeah, all right. It just it makes you wonder, like what is there going to be a domino effect where other publishers look at this and go like, well, maybe we can get away with it too, Like that's exactly how it happened last time. But the the ultimate conclusion of that is like, right now, YEA is kind of getting to have it's cake and eat it too, because they are getting people from all over the world into one city. Yeah, and then saving the money on the booth and not having a fiddle with the ESA crap and still getting all those people to come to their event. But if everybody pulls out of E three, where is the incentive for everybody around the world to converge on this one city again? Yeah, well, like keep in mind that EA is live streaming that thing, they're holding it in two cities, they're letting the public in, so you know, like it's well, the press aspect of it is one thing, but like the press can show up to that thing wherever it is, sure, you know, and there'll be some outlets that don't go everywhere and they try to, you know, focus their efforts and they go to E three because they have an expectation that that'll be a place to see everybody, and that might not be the case down the line, but generally speaking, yeah, I mean, you know, when EA has a thing whatever, we we've turned down a lot of actually EA things in different cities. But if EA has a thing here where they're based, we've gone to a lot of those, sure, Sure, and they could continue to have stuff like that. Yeah, you're just you're never gonna get that critical mass of just people from every different But I think that's the thing is is you don't need it, don't Maybe you don't need that if the critical mass happens on YouTube, the critical mass happens, you know, like if they if they really want to get this stuff in people's hands, like you know this year they're doing LA and London for their event, Like this could be a mall tour, this could be a truck tour or something. You know, they could they could take the EA games around the country if they really want to do hands on with this stuff, and that's probably still more cost effective and gets it out to more people than uh, you know, a booth presen City three. You know, because even even EA's booth is just like this big loud mess of like, well, there's a back room in here where I, you know, can can play Battlefront. There's another set of kiosks over here where I can watch a Need for Speed demo, play Need for Speed once and go do something else. And you know that's not super efficient, and I'm sure at some point the return on investment for them is just not worth it anymore. What about you know, still staying in a like Packs or something like that, where it's a public events and it creates hype and people get extremely excited for whomever's there, their value. There is a low barrier to entry, right, yeah, for the relatively I mean, I mean for people to show off stuff like indie stuff. Yeah yeah, if if again, there's a critical mask there, so like, you know, people are going to come to this, get your indie stuff out there. If every major publisher rolled up on that thing and wanted booth space, it would crush something like Packs. Like Packs is already really hard to get around in some cases because it's just gotten so so loud, so big, uh, and the walkways are so narrow. If EA and Activision rolled in there and said, we want E three sized booth space at this thing, where would you put it where you can put it, Like half the packs floor is gone. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's the Internet's great, you can distribute demos playable. It was all this other stuff. I was almost gonna say, like, do we ever see a situation where like an EA just put out the playable demos, they would have had a trade show like on a console. I mean that's you know, EA access is a great road for that if you wanted to go that route, but limited to those people and just be like here, here, here are all the playable demos. We have an E three units. You know, so many games go into betas and pre order betas and three order bonus, this and that and that. Like you know, like the average person out there has a ton of opportunities to play unfinished games. Some of them even cost sixty dollars. Uh, you know it's that Yeah, everything has changed around that stuff, and you know, it's like to the point where we're like, what does a release date anymore? You know, everything about the way games come out and are promoted and everything is so different now that like the idea of this big, like monolithic trade show that is built around you getting pre orders of a game to put on shelves to you know, create a midnight launch, and you know, like all that sort of stuff just seems really out of place. And I think E three still has a place in everything that's that's changing, but I think they need to figure out better, newer ways to kind of present that show. Yeah, ethere, he's got a change along with it totally, and that they've they've tried to do that over the years, and you know that is it got smaller and bigger and all this other stuff, and so they'll they'll continue to try. I'm sure, yes, indeed, very curious see how this year show looks. Uh should we talk about this strange situation with rock Band? Yeah, sure got even stranger today the rock band? Uh so last I guess it was day last week? Was it? It might have been. I think it was the day I was out seeing No Man Sky. But Harmonics wants to bring rock Band to the PC finally after years and years. Yeah, and they for this finished shipped game finished is not well, it's it's a weird situation. On its face. Obviously there's a bunch of works that has to happen when you pour a game or whatever. But also I think that the version of rock Band four that's even out right now. Yes, I see what you're getting sty full rock, but but you know, it's it's a product that shipped stores, like a product called rock Band four has been on shelves for months, and yet now they are crowdfunding rock band four. Yeah for the PC I mean in there and they're but they're super upfront about here. Here's what the costs are. You know, it's like, we need two million dollars to do this. It's almost all like testing type stuff. And I imagine, you know, like they're they're outsourcing the work I think to Sumo Digital, so you know, they have to pay them to do the work. They want to build rock band network tools into this thing, which is a cool idea. Uh and yeah, it's this seems like a bad idea. This seems like crowdfunded or both. Yeah, I think do the crowdfunding like what they want? Yeah? Yeah, I mean they want one point five million, right. The other is they're they're kicking the other. They've got three hundred and sixty k right now with twenty nine days to go, which you know, maybe they'll make it. I don't know. It's it's if you think about rock band and the way that people play rock band, the PC has never been the right place for four people huddled around it, you know. And yeah, you can obviously, like more and more people hook PCs up to their TV all the time, but it's still not you know, yeah exactly, And you know, the variety of PCs out there can create a situation where you can run into weird latency and stuff like that that you are you know, like like performance variants that you wouldn't necessarily get on a console. Though that's a solvable problem. It's it's I mean, it's gotta be situation where it's just there was enough community outcry people. I think it's it's it's been happening for years. Yeah, and and but it happens now, saying okay, all right, fine, if you guys really happened now with rock Band four, a game that didn't do so well, that is not a great rock band game. Uh, and it feels like too little, too late, and and that that seems to have partially contributed to the collapse of its hardware partner. Yeah right, so that's the other aspects. Yeah, So the press release came out today. Harmonics announces rock Band co publishing partnership with PDP. What happened with the Mad Cat stuff, But just I don't do we know for a fact that the the their venture in the rock Band four instruments is what has damaged Mad Cats to the extent that, like, you know, they laid off like a third of their workforce or whatever. Yeah. I don't know that it was wholly around that, but I think that you know, a lot of people just assumed, Yeah, that seems to be the thing. So they will be looking to make new instruments, better ones. I don't know, new instruments. They're not just picking up the like existing designs the Mad Cats was making and running with that. Well, I guess I mean new, like, you know, making more of them. Whether it's the exact yeah thing or not, I I can't say. I don't know, but yeah, I'm looking through this thing right now. Uh. Yeah. The quote from Harmonic CEO is they have the logistical and technical expertise to support our ambitious plans for the future of rock Band with new hardware, alongside a major rock Band four feature update coming this fall that's always off. Yeah. So this so this is also that they will then make the hardware for rock band vr uh, which is a separate product that right. Yeah, so it's I don't know, like rock Band four is kind of a bummer because it was one of those things where it's like, oh, man, rock band, I'd love rock band. They should, they should absolutely make another rock band. And it came out and it was like this like kind of like not like this kind of feeling of this under featured, uh, bare bones thing, like it's you know, you can almost look at it like Street Fight or five, where it's like a little bit you know, like the core of it is the thing you think it is. The thing I'd say about this is like rock Band four made me realize that maybe I didn't actually want to go back and play that much more rock band than the first, like as I thought, sure, you know, it seems like they themselves are not real sure about this venture. So hence the crowdfunding. Yeah, well, they had said a while back Alex Alex Rogopolis is on the board of FIG, and they had said a while back that they would have a project coming to FIG and it's this okay, yeah, and they want a lot of money, and the rock Band network stuff makes sense. Because I think that the person who's gonna play on their computer is the guy that loves playing the Dragon four songs, wants to wants to track their own songs or the like just yeah d d y kind of track. And you have to wonder, like, you know, one of the things that I think they were reluctant to put the game on the PC. One of the things that kept them off the PC in the first place was the notion of like the song stems getting out, like the unmixed audio leaking out, and you know, the piracy of that music leading to a zillion awesome remixes from people that want those masters. Uh, which happened anyway, because you know, the three sixty was not the as closed a platform as one might think, so a lot of that stuff got out there that way. So maybe it's kind of like a you know, the ship just do it. You have to wonder like if they'll like encrypt things differently on the PC or how that will work. Uh. Yeah, I don't know. It's like, what are some of the tiers. I'm just curious. The you will get the you will get the game for forty nine dollars, okay, uh, and that will include the you know, the the RBN tools for making your own songs and all that sort of stuff, but not a guitar. No, no hardware. They do have like later bundles, like if you need hardware, they will happily let you back at a tier though, so this will work with existing so yeah, it will work with a lot of the existing hardware, like going back even to like PS three with that just being bluetooth like some of that stuff, you'll be able to sync up. Some of it. You will need new dongles depending on what you're doing. Some wired stuff will work. They'll have to right drivers. The ion drums which did not work with the other versions of rock Band four will work with this, and yeah what a tangled Yeah, exactibility, so so you know, work will have to be done to support all that shit, and Sumo Digital will do you know that work, I guess, and no deal seek compatibility with anything you've previously bought, right right exactly, so they will have the store that you will be able to buy seventeen hundred songs or whatever it is and and all that sort of stuff. But no, you won't yours music won't. They've said that they will have a robust store. Okay, so that seems like another licensing yah thing, so that they may have been doing that work all along, hard to say, wording the contracts to allow for this kind of thing. Yeah. Uh. For me, it just kind of is this thing of like, I like, Rock Band four was a disappointment across the board, So the idea of like ponying up a bunch of money to get a port of Rock Band four seems preposterous. Uh So yeah, it just man, it just looks grimy. They still haven't delivered all the physical rewards for the ample Tude to kick Starter really yeah, you know, it's little bly. It came out, yeah, yeah, came out on PS four, not on PS three. It was supposed to come to both. Is that still happening, hey, because they had layoffs right after ample Twode came out, right, I don't know if those were related, but I do not know. Yeah, So it's it's just one of those things where it's like Harmonics is a weird company now, and and they're scrapping and struggling and trying to figure stuff out, and I don't know, I just look at this and it's just you know, it wasn't FIGG supposed to have like one game at a time and it is going to be this curated thing and they're gonna be very careful about the games they put on the platform. And right now it's a PC port of a disappointing music game and a fucking j and Silent Bob Brawler, Right, I forgot that on which are both running at the same time, which I thought they were only supposed to have one game at a time. And you know, it's like the the fig success ratio is not so hot. Yeah, Like even even like stuff like Psychonauts Too, which I thought would be just the most guaranteed slam dunk in the world, like kind of made it but not didn't exactly like blow it's goal out of the water, and they got three point eight million. They were asking for three point three right for Psychonauts. You have to wonder like if if the repeated crowdfunding stuff, and you know, it's like, whatever the quality of the games that have come out on the other end, I think, you know, it's been fine, broken age and stuff like that that I just you know, the long term hit on a company on on like the goodwill that people have for a company over time. Like if Psychonauts two was the first thing that they were putting out there in a crowdfunding capacity, double fine probably would have made more money. I think. I'm that sure, but I feel like crowdfunding like that, you know, some of the stuff has been scaring people away and it's just that weird. Yeah, yeah, people. Yeah, a lot of people seem to be kind of losing their stomach for the idea of putting money into something they're not going to play for two years or whatever. Not only that, there's been so many, you know, examples of you know, shit just like bottoming out. Oh sure, yeah, yeah. It's obviously no guarantee of anything. Yeah, at least with these bigger companies, you would hope that, you know, they're they're in business. Yeah, you know, it could be reasonably sure they're at least going to deliver a product, you know. Yeah, well good, it's going to be another question. Yeah. Is that Descent Games still going? Yes? I look today, they are three days out from their conclusion. Not looking good. It was not looking great. What is it? Was it cool? Oh? Gosh, over food, over over lord. It's it's unfortunate that I can't remember the exact title of it. It was pretty generic. But it's like straight up in the original Descent, team overload the foot overload. Yes, footage of that looks pretty good. Good. It looks like a fucking modern game. Their goal is three hundred k and there one seventy five years looking great for them. But you know, like something even with the pedigree of the name like Descent and like saying like, hey, all the original developers are here on this is not enough. Yeah. But and I wonder if they got hurt because there were other games that were trying to evoke the feel Descent. Somebody else went out and got the name Descent and slapped it on a right rappy game. Yeah. It's like there's any number of things they were like, you know, trying to look like Descent that came out and it was like this game seems kind of shitty or Level zero zero is cool. Yeah, but it's the same kind of game. Like you know, like there have been people already trying to remake Descent without the name for a while, So you have to wonder, like if you know, the excitement around someone making a new one of those is probably reduced by a faculty of every single one of those that has come absolutely and gone. Uh so, yeah, it's I don't know, man, the video game business is fucking weird, sure enough. I like it. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's got its quirks. If those tapes I saw, it's been weird for a while, you're absolutely right. That is accurate. It has been super weird forever. Yeah, but the type of weird is ever shifting, you know. It's it's never boring. Uh, sitting here on the edge of the video game industry looking in on it for all these years. It's such a man. It's weird and dynamic and industry like more so it than like you know, movies or in a traditional pet or anything like that. It's all over the place. It's crazy. It's wild. Uh man. It's a lot of business focus news this week. Yeah, so much so. I need to take a break, all right, I gotta, I said quietly in the quarter for a few minutes. We'll be right back. Okay, let's go hog it out and we're back. Jason a striker, Yo, you have to take off. I do yet at this late hour. There's there's an infant that needs you. But I can't let you get out of here. Oh what about reading a couple of emails? Babies waiting? What do you want? Emails? Man? Okay, let's wait. The people have questions. Let's keep our priorities straight here. Okay, number one emails baby number two? Baby got it? Uh. So there's there's only there's only like two emails in here that I really wanted you to be here for, and then I will release you. My opinion is well else these will no. No, it's no. It's that these two are street Fighter related, so we kind of can't read them without you here. Uh, and now I have to scroll down to find one. Okay, okay, all right, here we go bombcastagiantbomb dot com. We will start with the street Fighter emails and then you can you can bounce. This one comes in from where's his name? Scott B? What's up? It's right? Sent about street Fighter announcers. Listening to a recent podcast about video games with sound test options a cool thing, and was wondering which Street Fighter announcer was your personal favorite Original street Fighter guy with sock in his mouth street Fighter two disinterested, weirdly non accented voice. Super street Fighter two reverbed and energetic uh, Street Fighter four Little John pre show hype warm up act. Uh. He you know, he didn't include a description of of of his interpretation of the three Fighter five announcer. Oh, we hear that a lot during the day. I wonder why is the three Fighter fight you did you think the three Fighter five announcers or is not worthy of inclusion on this list? Not bad because I don't know. I don't know why Scott left it out. I kind of preferred, like, you know, hearing the well, it's nostalgic anyway, hearing like the you know that when they're growing to India, when they're going to China. Yeah, yeah, that's just talking about the two that it's real the two announcer. Yeah yeah, okay, regular too, right, Yeah, like Jeff, Jeff like winced when I read the Super the that was the worst part about Super Yes, I had fully totally with you on that. That is yeah, definitely less on the nable, but also Alpha announced. I was gonna I was just gonna say, like, this email is almost a travesty because he did not mention the Alpha announcer. We Yeah. I got on on the subject of like old game tapes, and that led to like old like B three footage, which is like you know, EVA before EVO Battle at the Bay from like ninety six or something like that. Yeah, I dug up it like a YouTube clip of you know all Alpha two footage and I left that on for like two hours. It was it was the Alpha two and Alpha three announcers. Both. Are they different? I thought it was the same guy. I think it's the same, the same guys to free the stuff, Okay, go for broke. Yeah. Yeah, but also they should like, wait, do I know what you're about to say? They should let you buy announcers for Street Fighter. I knew that's what was coming. Yes, I hate how much I like that ideas. Would they would they would they have enough existing voice samples to cover the necessary announced They would not need to hear out how the original Street Fighter two announcer stuff was created, saying back and record used the old stuff. We're appropriate. Yeah, but you've got some cases where like those characters didn't exists, That's what I meant. Yeah, yeah, so you would need you would need to record h okay, new stuff, Okay, rashid need they've got a store, Yeah, they've got a store. I certainly do that would be a great use of five money money. Yeah, like if they want to defend it, if they want to turn street Fighter five into an ongoing service where they continue to pedal new features and stuff like that, is like that would be cool, frighteningly good idea. And put the street Fighter two music and I not feeling the music, and street Fighter five doesn't a handful of tracks. Maybe, like the Rashid music is really really good. I like Ken's remix and stuff, but I mean other than that, Yeah, so I like the zang Geese just sounds like music that someone would rock walk to the ring too, Like it's almost like Kurt Angle esque. So it sounds like everybody has an agreement here of this list, the regular street Fight or two announcers the best? Yeah, yeah, I think so, all right like the three Oh yeah, he didn't mention the three one either. This is kind of a weirdly scattered list of announcers here, which is a bummer because I was enjoying his descriptions of each one. Uh all right, well take that answer for sure. Also just an honorable mention to the Mortal Kombat to announcer, which this potentially my They still should they still should figure out where all the players live online and have the plane fly when you're connecting on that would really good, and record names of every location. That would be really good man for you. I would spend real money on something like that. In Street Fight or five. Yeah, that's that's really good. Five minutes Okay, Scott was in Perth and he says, ps, fuck Melbourne, it's full of hipsters that don't wake up before one pm and make shitty vapor wave projects. Uh and then fair enough? Yeah, And then actually I had an email from a guy in Melbourne right after that, but we'll get back to that later. Let me find this other street Fighter email mail burn Yeah, yeah, we want to hear your best Melbourns. All right, Eddie from Bellingham, Washington an email entitled is you a Wizard? Street Fight or five Edition? In Street Fight er five us Hodokan appears to be made of lightning. Thus I must ask the question again, does this make for you a wizard? In a previous bomb cast, you guys settled that because he was projecting a wave of force, he wasn't casting a spell as such, But surely he couldn't be projecting lightning from inside of himself. Could he wouldn't he be required to be evoking or summoning the lightning from some ethereal place. Wouldn't that make him a spell caster? I don't think so. He's chucking plasma, any lightning, chucking plasma. Okay, but that's it. Not a wizard. He's he's got sciences, got hands science, the sets we know how too sweet the sweet science, sweet science, the sweet science. Yeah, oh boy, bye Jason, thank you everybody. But also, I mean when he pops his like v trigger, I mean he's got lightning like fucking raiding coming out of his fists. Is raiding a wizard? Is Riu a god? Oh? Wow? These questions got broad and deep at the same time. Huh yes, let me say yes, as a god? What does god need with a dragon punch? Just infinitely dragon punching a waterfall? Forever? Yeah, in space? That seems like something a god would do, because what is forever to a Riu? Fair? Fair? What if for you was one of us? Wow? Yeah, just a slob like one of us. It's like a stranger, like on the bus or something, you know, trying to find his way home. Oh boy? All right? Oh that I'm actually business out of the way. I don't know that I'm ready to like say with certainty that Yu is not a wizard. I feel like the lightning actually maybe does change those things. May have to look at some footage, because does he do some stuff before he casts it? The kind of like flexes when you pop goes, and you know, he gets lightning hands, the crazy lightning hands. It's Masters of terras Cossi all over again. I mean he's not He's not exactly like uttering an incantation or anything. Maybe he prepared the spell in his previous turn. Now it's just ready to be he said, like different things depending on which fireballs you're thrown out there. And oh now that's compelling on your Wow he x fireball. I think he's saying strike. Oh wow, that could be a crucial piece of evidence. Yeah, and if you've busted your lightning and then you throw lightning fireballs that actually shock on contact, so different implications for the receiver as well. You guys may have to apply some science to this question at some point. There is a venue for that. It would be improper to apply science to anything regarding that game. It needs about thirty patches in five years before before you can really rank it, you know. Sure it's got age in that digital locker, yes, browd in there. Yep, it's not quite there yet. All right, well, Jason's out of here. Now we can read other emails. I guess the real No. Yeah, uh Mitchell and Michigan, Michigan. I really want that announcer now, right, something about hot dogs now we're talking. Yeah, it's an important question. I love hot dogs on I love hamburgers. Well, yes, all right. However, when I'm out to lunch, I'm hard pressed to pay any money for a hot dog. Somewhere in my reptile brain, I think a hot dog should be priced flatly at a dollar fifty or something? Am I right? Am I wrong? Maybe two for two dollars or send us is a little jumble. I'm not quite sure what he's getting at here, or two for three dollars. Cony dogs and flint have always spoiled me. I don't know what he's talking about there. Coney dogs would be like at two for three dollars anyway, whatever. Also, have any of you ever eating Chicago style hot dog? That thing looks like a fucking shit show. But I'm nonetheless intrigued. I had a hot it's got like tomato on it, but stuff I didn't. Yeah, I didn't get that. I just don't. I don't like I don't like tomatoes. It's got like tomato and like peppers and stuff. It's it's weird, okay. But I am totally with him that for whatever reason, I feel like a hot dog should be very mostly priced. Yeah, I'm because I mean I like low quality hot dog. Yeah, I like a gas station hot dog. You know, the buns are drive from sitting. You know, they're on the roller for a couple of a dog off the roller, throw it in this drive bun. Yeah. Yes, a lot of snaps, snap, a lot of snap to it, and that bun's gotta be like cake yeah yeah, or like star somewhere between cake and sty. Yes, that is that is a gas station hot dog bun. Absolutely not say I you know, I like all I like hot dog buns of all stripes. But it's just something about a roller hot dog, movie theaters and gas stations, all that sort of truck stops, all that sort of stuff. If you're calling it a hot dog, it should be pretty cheap. Yeah, I'm with you, like I got a sausage or you know something, sure, kill boss or whatever. Anything. I think it's like a seven dollars things. I can't I can't think of anything you could do to a hot dog that would make it seem worth like ten or twelve bucks. Yeah, like what would you put on that that's an expensive dog? Gold flakes? Yeah, maybe the gold Schlogger a hot dogs like that might be enough to justify it. But there's a hot dog place in my town near the animal auction Yard that seems and fair houses kind of really questionable. I've not been over there since it became the hot dog place, but before that, like it has been a few different types of restaurants that were all fucking awesome. That's the freshest dog exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I guess farm to Mouth Okay, sure they used to. I don't. I think they might be opened more. But like before it was called Mike's at the Yard, and it was this guy that was very very like focused on making kick ass hamburgers and he nailed it, but also didn't sell French fries, like had this moral no like stance against fries, so like he was sold bags of chips alongside it like no man work in a pinch, Like, yeah, you know, you'd rather some fries. But so like there was another place in town that was selling burgers, and they said, and so they put up a sign that said, have you had any good burgers lately? Dot dot dot with fries. Sah, that's a low blow. Mike's sense has gone away, there was. I think he moved. I think moved. He was a big Jets fan. I don't know. So I think if you talked positively about the Jets, maybe you got a deal or there's Jets Burger or something. I forget, but what they no bads that. Yeah, okay, all right, let's move on to the next email. I was all excited because it just so happened that directly after the email where the guy talked shit about Melbourne, came an email from a guy in Melbourne. And it's this email. It's a Nathaniel, it's his name from Melbourne. Uh, it's about street shitting. All right, So you're coming to the right place. Okay, all right. Last week when you mentioned quote other things besides printers being left by the curb in San Francisco, I was sure you were going to mention human feces. No one notices that anymore. Yeah, it is. It just goes without saying you live here, Drew, how much human feces DC? You're gonna address that question, even as in Australian I've heard that this is quite a problem there, putting you in the company of rural China or India. Some guy even made a map and he links to that now famous map the charts in somewhat real time the district should have poop. Really, Oh, you haven't heard about that. I've seen. Yeah, it was a few months ago. Somebody like the link was kind of making the rounds on Twitter. Yes, you can go to this map and see, like, I don't know if it's the sanitation department or what city group poop that keeps track of the stuff, but you can see which areas of the city are the most poopy. Anyway, a few years ago, on a holiday to the US, my wife and I went out for a nice dinner in your city. As she stepped out of the rental car, she made a sound of annoyed disgust and said, I just stepped in poop. There was a brief pause, and then she said, in a much more panicked voice. It's human. Oh my god, I think it's human. She started to cry a little. Questions, Welcome to San Francisco. Home on the super Bowl pretty much? And Rizaroni and street poop? Number one? Is street shitting really that much of a problem there? Number two? If so, with your local knowledge, how likely is it that this incident involved human waste? We were parked on the street somewhere near State Bird Visions. I don't know where that is? Number three? Do you think you could reliably tell the difference between human and dog shit just by look and feels? Yes? Yes, smell yes, yes. Number four? Is stepping in human shit really that much worse than stepping in dog shit? Was my wife's reaction justified? It's more rare, So I understand why. I mean, the thought of like a person taking a shit on the street is it's it's sad as a society. Yeah, that this is something that happened. Sure, I don't mean to make light of it necessarily, it's it shouldn't people should have a fucking quiet place to take a ship. Sure, can we at least start there? Yeah? Upgrade to like beds and homes and stuff like that, you know, like, let's you know, yes, there are there's a fair amount of homeless people in San Francisco, and the super Bowl was another kind of bright light being shown on some of that stuff as they deliberately like moved homeless people away from the super Bowl city, like pack them up and bust them. To my my understanding is the place where where they dumped them was like literally under an overpast, which is just like could not put a more perfect bow on that ridiculous situation. Yeah, it's enough to make me want to go start shitting on the street, to be honest. And there's a certain aspect that wants to execute a dirty protest. Yeah. Also yeah, and all that said, it is a daily hazard here. Do you see it every day? If you spend much time walking down on the sidewalks, I would say I'd see it just about it every day walking around down I guess I'm not looking, but walking walking from market up here, you will see, Yes, it's cleaned up like somebody is doing some work. I mean, yeah, like trades more like traces of the sidewalks are constantly damp with power wash. Yeah, so yes, that is true, but you can definitely tell, yes, it's not that hard to tell the difference. I once walked into Whiskey the mis Whiskey Media offices. Oh no, I was going to tell the story about and then I saw our business guy throwing away his shoes. I remember that what you're doing. I just stepped in human theces. Yep. He threw his shoes in the trash, yes, and somehow went out and got more. How do you do that? This was a pre Amazon now I have no idea. I don't know what he did. Maybe drove to the store and his socks. I don't know, he had to walk on the street and his socks. Then this map, look at it looks accurate. Yeah, yeah, I've looked at it before and it definitely checks out. Yep. I remember that line market mission. I remember that morning and like being surprised at the sight of him throwing his shoes away and thinking to myself, like, I don't actually know what I would do in that situation. Like initially it struck me as a very extreme thing to do. It's like, why wouldn't you just watch the shoes? But then the more I thought about it, the more I was like, maybe he's right, it's poop on that maybe you should just toss them. I don't know. Well, in that office didn't really have a great spot to where you would wash your shoes in the immediate right then and there if you could try for some grass, but you know it's still there. Yeah, yeah, like I would. That would throwing away shoes in a situation like that would be an absolute last resort unless it got on anywhere other than the heat the bottoms of the shoes. You know, if you'd stepped on it and it squirted up in a way that it got over the side the canvas of your shoe on the side, Like, Okay, this is a bigger clean up job than I'm seem to recall them big nice shoes. Also, yeah, yeah, he would have been wearing nice shoes for sure. Business guy. San Francisco. What a place. Yeah, it's like paradise on Earth. You should visit. Everyone should move here. It's affordable. Oh, let's move on. It's another email call from Orlando. The division is stated to be Tom Clancy's, but Tom Clancy never wrote any book or characters present in the division. Since Tom Clancy's name is now one to be utilized as a way of communicating a products, style and inspiration. How would you market and sell Tom Clancy's Giant Bomb if given the chance. I think that there's an important distinction here. It's it's not Tom Clancy's the division, it's Tom Clancy's. Is the division? Wait? What? This is not the division owned by Tom clans Yes, yes, this is the division with Tom Clancy's in the front of it. The brand is Tom Clancy's, right, Yes, that's so weird. Yeah, Like we've been living with this reality for a number of years. There is an author who wrote stuff. His name was Tom Clans, right, he has at this point nothing, This is not his thing. No, the brand is Tom Clancy's, wholly owned by you be soft. Yes, yeah, what was it? What was the question? I don't know Clancy's Giant Pomp, I mean, you know, I think the question there is what does the Tom Clancy's name. What does clants provide when you put it on a title? What does it mean? Realism? It means yeah, well, political intrigue. Yeah, like movie realism, though not real realism like they At one point it was absolutely like a tactical realism of six and stuff, but clear in present ager now it's you know, Ben affleck and nuclear bombs, you know, like that sort of stuff. Like at some point it just kind of became like near yeah, like modern to near future military situations, geopolitical turmoils, perhaps some amount of nationalism. Yeah, sell Team six fast roping from the ceiling. Yeah, there's there's definitely some America up in there. Yeah, I can make it more time. Clancy in here. Yeah, oh oh man, all right, it really doesn't play an audio, but really red in here. Now it's a submarine. Now we're on okay, yeah, now we're on the Red October right October or something. How many pings? Where does you like? All right, does the does the division seem sufficiently clants so far? I mean it's like this you know, future terrorism, you know, not even not not future, it's it's this you know, modern day terrorist attack. They are activating the division, which specialists have shown up, specialists of the specialists to take care of business like yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's you know, Hella Clants. It's it's Hella Clants. Yeah. A K forty seven's and M fours and you know, real guns, vintage classic a K forty seven. We should all get some night vision goggles in here, probably then we can have a dark podcast. I think the podcast is already plenty dark. Yeah, you're probably right, it's being a dark whoa well, Drew just turned off on the turn lights. This is actually crazy, which is the perfect time to talk about. Do you see any of this clicoion? No? Man, what a look Calico chameleon it is. I mean there was a kickstarter for it, I know that much. So No, there's not been one for the flico. So this thing started as the retro VGs, right, and they launched an indie Go go That's what I was thinking of that failed and they pulled it down when it was clear it wasn't gonna pass. Is this the thing that looked like a Jaguar, Yes, they purchased. They say that they purchased the shells of the Jaguar cartridges and console and they were going to make a new Oh. This was also the one that pitched itself as like you'll ever have to patch a game because we'll make them write the first time, Zach. Yeah, and like their their thing was like we won't let people ship games with bugs. It's like, okay, well, are you going to have the QA department size to actually make that a reality or I mean you're getting a lot of indie games that you know, like these guys are small teams that maybe need a little hub. Like what no answer to that question anyway. Uh So, yeah, they launched that thing. It didn't it didn't go. Their retro VGs Kickstart, INDIEO Go did not go. And there's a lot of questions about like the innerds of it, and they were like, well, if it gets back to this level, then we'll put a bunch of FPGA stuff in it. You'll be able to play Super Nintendo games, do all all this stuff. It'll be a more capable system. And it just like it was this crazy sounding thing that was like, oh, this is maybe intriguing, but this also sounds insane. And by the end of it, when they kind of wrapped up shop on the retro VGs side of things, it started to look a little bit like a scan. They had not produced any kind of prototype hardware. You were just like, Okay, this seems like a guy with an idea. Uh and it's the guy that it's a guy behind an alternative to eBay for retro games. It's an auction site that they sell you know, just for games. Uh yeah, yeah, and no it's not. It's it's been around for that. That site's been around for a while, and you know, in that community, my understanding is that it's effective doing what it sets out to do. And so the retro VGs thing kind of came and went and you're like, okay, well, I guess that's that. And then the Collico Chameleon was announced and it's a console and a jaguar shell with the jaguars shaped cartridge. It's so they put out an announcement a while ago, this was late last year saying hey, we you know what. So basically it seems like the guy or some of the people that worked on that other thing went to a company that is called Callico Holdings LLC, which is now the company that owns the IP rights to Colico Vision and all that stuff. It's not the original Callico, it's not the same company. It's not like a going concern in that way, right, and secure the rights to the name to release a new console. And it wasn't really clear like at that point they were like, we're gonna have more at toy Fair and and we'll have more to say at toy Fair was there was the gist of their initial announcement, I love I love the toy fair is still a fair? Yeah? Right now, the Devil's advocate part of me is like, oh, maybe they stopped development on this VGs thing once they realized they could acquire a big name like Calligo Vision, like, okay, let's turn this idea into they would give it some clout. Yeah, yeah, that this would give it some oomph that it would need to kind of get out there to people. And yeah. Absolutely. At that point, I was like, okay, well, you know, like they say that they're, you know, maybe gonna rate it in a little bit and kind of focus more on some stuff. But it was they said they went and contacted they contracted a long time video game pr person or company, so like the release came from someone I knew. Oh wow, And I was like, okay, all right, well it looks like these Callico guys, and these guys are like at least trying to make a go of it in some kind of legit way. So I responded with some questions. I said, like, so is this going to be equivalent to the high end retro VGs or the low end retro VGs? Assuming it was just going to be the exact same platform, and you know, hey, what games are coming, because they'd already announced some games that we're supposed to be coming to the retro VGs. So I was like, Okay, are these games still coming to this thing or not? This is not a plays old Collico Vision games thing. Well yes, but not only that, like the cartridge port would not fit Collico Vision cartridges. Okay, are you burning new games onto rom you will buy the I think the theory is yes, you would buy a cartridge for a game. You would put it in, turn it on, and play the game done like like like an old Yes, a new old game or old games repackaged. Perhaps it was. It was unclear in a lot of cases. Okay, but they put out a trailer that actually showed a bunch of old Calico Vision games as if to imply that these would be coming to the Clico Chameleon, but without kind of saying how they be sold or priced, or you know, if it be a collection or what the deal is there. So so so I wrote back. I responded to the press release with some questions, and the PR person said, I'm gonna let I'm gonna let Mike take these never heard back okay. So okay, I was like, all right, well whatever, you know, they're they're getting ready for toy Fair, don't have time to respond or you know, or they're not ready to talk about it, and that's that's how it goes or whatever. We don't always get well more to say, yeah, we don't always get responses to the emails we send or receive for them. Man. So they went to toy Fair. They put up video on their Facebook page of a thing of Jim Power being played, which was a Super Nintendo game that was kind of like Turken. That's the music from the same guy that did that game, and it's this weird double triple parallax scrolling, fucking nightmare side scrolling game. And it was just footage of that being played with what appeared to be a Super Nintendo controller, which is weird. And so it was footage of the thing running on the thing. But you're like, wait, this is it's a game that appeared on Steam like they it's one of those things, like almost like that Bubbsy thing where they put out the Nest game on Steam. So I was like, okay, well, maybe this thing will play Super Nintendo games, and you know, because they talked about it as like this not quite an emulator, the f PGA is a little bit of a different thing inside that would let them play old games and not it might as well be an emulator basically. So but at the same time, people were like, well, what's powering this thing? What's going on? Like you we'll see the other games. What are you doing? Like, you know, people had a lot of questions because of how things went the last time, and they were like, oh, we're getting ready to launch ourkickstarters, going to launch on this date and all this other stuff, and then you know, the actual order of events I'm not one hundred percent clear on, but they put up a picture of the prototype hardware, which was a clear like a frosted clear jaguar shell with some kind of intransparent cases coming back. Yeah. Yeah, which when they did the retro VGs, that was like, you know, if you paid extra, you could get a you know, a skeleton shell like Dreamcast or something. So people started staring at the supposed prototype console and looking at all the different hookups and trying to figure out like, what is this thing actually and it seems like it might have been a gutted Super Nintendo crammed into this shell along with a PCI capture card. What that was sitting in it to look like it had chips? So people were staring at it and going like, well, what is this thing? What is this thing? And then someone produced a photo of this old ass capture card that if you look at it, you're like, oh, this like that chip there those resists here that here like this is there are those capacitors here? That is totally that board slapped into that shell. And then that picture disappeared off of their Facebook. Wow, So I hang on, was it determined that that capture card was in there serving any function or was it just there to tably just there to take up space. That's my take on it is it's just there to take up space. So if you, you know, the shots at the back of that thing had ports in the exact same place they would be on a SNST Junior, the smaller Supernintendo that you would gut to put in this case. Sure, they have since postponed their Kickstarter launch because the kick you can't launch on Kickstarter unless you have prototype hardware. That's actually one of their rules. It seems like a good rule. Yeah. So then a Facebook, a separate Facebook page for Calico posted Actually, let me see if I can call this up, but I think I heard this part and it sounds crazy. The gist of it is that Kaliko is like, we are asking them to produce the prototype so that our engineers can look at it, and if we determine that it is not on the level, then we reserve the right to back out of this man wow project. Yeah, so here we go. This was posted on March second Chameleon product colon. We are thankful to have a large group of passionate engineers and retro game enthusiasts who follow Calico and other product lines. It has come to our attention that the community has certain concerns over the prototypes involving the Retro VGs model. The team at Retro remains confident that their product has developed to the extent as described. However, in order to confirm or debase these concerns, Kaliko has demanded to inspect the prototype units within a seven day time frame, at which time independent engineers will review their findings and determine if those units are up to our standards. We will report some or all of those findings to the community, so as long as they do not interfere with proprietary information. We remain hopeful that the community's concerns are merely speculations, but if there's merit to the concerns, then we have no choice but to abandon the project rather than release a subpar product. During this time, we ask the community allow us time to complete these inspections time expensions. Time extensions will only be granted if requested by the independent engineer. Time extensions and results will be posted here. That's on the That is the last update on the Colico Vision Facebook page. Seems shady, Yes, I think it is safe to say absolutely shady is the word. So so when they first announced the Chameleon, they didn't say it was going to Kickstarter. So I actually created a page for in the wiki, which you know, we normally don't allow things into the wiki until they've cleared like a crowdfunding stage, right or if they fail the crowdfunding stage, but it is confirmed that development will continue, then we'll add it at that point. But while it's kind of this iffy both thing, we don't want to add a bunch of pages for games that don't exist and are just like someone's idea right before then. So uh so I created a Colico Chamelian page and then realized it was regretting it. Realized it was going to crowdfunding, and I was like, well, I'm going to leave it in here for now rather than delete it and just recreate it if it clears funding. Upon seeing this message, I went into deleting man. Yeah, it's fucking crazy. I can't. I can't believe that the legal remains of the Clico company are the ones that are like the good guys and all, yeah they actually care ye like for brand. Well, it's the little holding company that that like contains the remnants of this old brand, So they licensed their stuff out for those Colico They put out a flashback machine, which is one of those like it's a Clico Vision shaped box that is just cooks up to a modern TV and has thirty built in games or whatever. Like, They've put out products like that that we're relatively well received. So, I mean they do have something to lose by putting their name on subpar stuff so that that name is still traffics. Yeah, I'm extent. I mean they wouldn't have done this deal to do the melon if the name didn't still traffic in some circle. Sure, Uh, this is insane, this is it seems like it all pretty much traces back to this one guy more or less, or at least Season one putting his name on it. Yeah, you know, there was a team responsible, like people you know, people that you know, There were names associated with it that had real experience developing like classic consoles, right. Uh, and so it's I don't know, it's one of those things where it's like you look at their message all along the way, it's like, well, their heart's in the right place. But it seems like there's this real lack of understanding about, you know, why a game might get patched and why that might be an okay thing, or how modern game development has changed in such a way that not allowing patches has probably become a negative. Like that makes that just makes that guy sound like some kind of crazed ideologue basically, like like he's more concerned about his philosophy of how games used to be and how they should be again, yes, instead of paying attention to how they're actually made now. Yeah, So that's that's real, wild, real wild wow. Uh. And I'm curious to see how this wraps up, especially because they straight up said, hey, we'll post our findings here once we get that would be Wednesday of this week, seven days. So well then maybe they probably wouldn't post the results immediately, but you know that they are still within the seven day window as of this recording. What a perfect name, right, right, Holy shit, that's good stuff. I just I just yeah, I don't understand how this stuff happens or how or how this happens and to this extent and gets to this point, like you know, is everyone's heart in the right place? Is someone trying to pull a fast one? Is someone trying to like make some fast money and bail? Like you have to wonder, like what's the endgame here? Is the endgame to produce the actual product? Or is the end game to try to like launch it, yeah, swindle people or like what? I just don't know. Uh. And and you know, it's like some of the name is behind this thing again. Have been kicking around ritro of communities and stuff for a while and some just stuff. So it's I just found that press release in wainbox and you're right, yeah, like there are recognizable names in there. Uh huh, uh huh. And and so I I don't know what to make of it. It's a it's a real it's a real weird story. Get the money first, then build it, like maybe yeah, maybe that's their plan is to try to like get yeah, exactly, get the round of funding so that they can build the thing. Like they know what they want to build, they just can't prototype it without any of the money. You're you're at least not just trying to defraud people at that point, you at least want to believe go into this thing just attempting to just straight up defraud people, right, Yeah, Also, like is there even the money in this idea that even? Yeah? I mean that's that's the other thing is like you know that idea of like let's make a new old video game console. It's interesting, Yeah, but there are things about modern video game consoles that aren't necessarily bad. Like, you know, one of the things they were like and there's not going to be any and you were front ending this thing just boots of the game just becaus of the game, and you're like, okay, like there are some benefits of having other features and functionality in constant, like what if you wanted to have some internal memory to boot emulated games or something like that, or you know, like there's other use cases for this thing. I just don't. Yeah, like like it was one of those things where, yeah, exactly, the the ideology behind it seemed uh to to be like trying to be faithful to a fault, to a real fault, when when there would be a smarter way, like if you had it all back and you could make a new old video game console, like the things you'd hang your hat on wouldn't be no patches and no front end, right, it'd be like, well, why don't What's what's some cool ways we can use that stuff? Right to like learn from all the developments that have happened last twenty years. No wireless controllers okay, yeah, two foot cable saying that's right, the second controller is hardwired to the system. Now I have to Now I have to sit cross legged on the floor in front of the TV like when I was a kid. Yeah, it's it's a weird situation. Irie weird situation. I will be super curious to see how that stuff shakes out. Yeah, that's that's pretty wild. That's a book. Totally, that's almost a book. There's so many good books in the same stream. One or two more chapters of tests and turns and you got something. There are so many books waiting to be written about weird business ship. Yeah in video games. All right, crap, i'm m I'm sorry to totally derail you. No, it's fine, it's fine. I'm a drift and see if emails here. Let's take a couple more. Uh, Dylan sis, what is jib Bob's opinion on salami? I like it, Yeah, it was. It was a like a good songe. I think when you put it on pizza it's a little too greasy. Yeah, I wouldn't want it on a pizza. I don't think you can have bad salami though, in my opinion, Yeah, it can be too bitter weird. I like, I like a spicy Oh yeah, okay sure. And then you have to answer Ques. I feel like we hope should really get Viney on the line for this. He knows his SALAMMI. You have to decide if you want like the fin slize SALAMMI or like the nuggets, like the thicker, real thick, chewy slices. Yeah, yep, I'll take I'll take both. Actually, it's a fine meat. Jeez. I don't know about these emails. Do like one more? Maybe pscudo shudo is Yes, I would take pursuto for Salammi any day. I don't know that I would. Purshudo is weird to me, so good I've not. I've not had it as frequently because I am not a fancy man. I feel like I run into it a lot more of these days than I used to. It's just kind of a round you're running. You're running higher brow circles. Yeah, it's not your fancy meats. Maybe all right, I gotta find one more email here that's gonna work. Spec Americano I had fully intended to end the show with the U as a wizard thing that had some legs, and then everything got all jacked up. All right, here we go. Here's an email from Scott last one. Why do people like Conquer? Back before Conquer was a foul mouth pop culture reference machine, he was a cutey side character in Diddy Kong Racing with a cute game of his own. Allegedly on the way that cute game of Scrapped and Conquered was reimagined into his current form the aforementioned piece of shit on the N sixty four. Then that game was rereleased on Xbox and maybe again on the three sixty. By the time the original Bad Fur Day was released, the pop culture references were dated. By the time the game was rereleased, those references were tired as fuck. Why is such an obscure? Also ran like Conquer such a hit with people? What's with the Conquer love? Having never completed Bad Fur Day? Is there something crucial to the character or experience that I'm missing? It's that you weren't fucking twelve when it came out. I guess that's it, right, I think I was, Yeah, and I think who loved it? Yeah? Okay, so those people do exist. Oh yeah, that's what you're saying. Okay. I feel like it's the same attitude that led to people not liking wind Waker Link. They're like, oh, finally a adult platformer because because people at that time were way into snark and irony and could not appreciate the earnestness of wind Waker snark and ironies forever. Well, I guess, edge, I guess they were in the edge. The edge was hardy, sure, yes, yes, coming right off the ball rats and shit like the Not only were you that age people who liked that stuff, it was also the nineties. Yeah yeah, the Sole Edge, that's right. Okay, yeah, I guess all this is in reference to Young Conquer making his his triumphant return Young Conquer on the mic to the world's augmented reality No Boy Conquerors hologram. Yeah, I don't. I don't know anybody who ever seemed to have any love for conquer yeah, or the game he was in, or games. I don't even to this day. I think it's just well, they're saying swear words. Yeah, yeah, he's really taking the piss out of a bunch of literally beloved could pop culture. Everyone's peeing on Conqueror's face. Like, didn't they game open with like a saving Private Ryan style like Normandy Invasion the demo did or something like never? But yes, absolutely it did have a do we do a demo? Yes? Okay, it was a save as squirrels running around in a fake saving prit Ryan and they're all getting murdered. It was very bloody. Yeah, and you were like, this ain't your father's and sixty four platformer Banjoe did and it did come out on the answers before, right, okay, all right, it wasn't one of those canceled and then well I guess what got canceled was the original. Yeah. To their credit, at least they identified like, hey, we have enough cute platformers on the system already, so let's try something different. Maybe we should didn't make another one, yeah yeah, yeah, but then they just led. Then they turned it into the wrong thing. Yeah. I don't know. It was popular at the time, and I think even then I was just like, why what was it? Like? It was like every level a send up of a different movie or something. Does that was like yes, right, I remember there's like a there's like a shot of him with like half his face blown off and you can see the robot underneath. Man, what I remember of the of the demo derby we did it was just not a good game. Yeah, Oh what's in rare replay, isn't it? Yes, I remember that not being good. I tried to play it in there and I was like nope, oh thank you, all right, well all right, not much love for conquering around here. We'll see how no, how that turned did not part of that ven diagram? Yeah, you were right there in the target demo. Yeah, and it just didn't click. All right, Well that's it for three man emails, bombcasting Giant bomb dot Com. Jason would have weighed the Conqueror flag. I know, right, never will never know how this podcast would have ended if you've still been here. Yeah, another forty five minutes of conquer fights. How unfortunate. It feels like a long podcast today. I don't know why. It feels like we've been in here for eighteen hours and the recordings is three hours twenty really, yeah, that's pretty long. Yeah, I guess shit, all right, let's it free emails should be Jerne. Yeah, anything else going on? I don't happening on the website. Yeah, I and Daniel O'Dwyer are bringing back All to F one. Oh yeah, for the upcoming Formula one season. Tell me about your Vettel. He's in a red car okay, yep, and he's very fast. Also, All to F one is now free shit yep? Really yeah, okay, I didn't actually know that. Yeah, that's cool. We're excited about that. Yeah, because that means there'll be a new RSS feed to subscribe to, and provided I can figure that out, yes, yeah, and I think we'll have all the back issues free as well. That was my question. Yeah, not really sure how exciting those will be because they're all year or two year old racist it's archival content. Sure, but yeah, we're working on getting that up free forever. But it's cool. That is good news. Yeah, yeah, excellent. All right, well, uh yeah, let's get the hell out of there, out of out of here. Jeff yourd doing stuff with the Division. Yeah, yeah, we'll do. We'll have some more stuff with the Division that we'll probably have already happened by the time you hear this. But yeah, yeah, we're gonna it's gonna be weird when though, like people kind of scrambling to say, hey, this game is good, order this game is not good right because nobody had access to it until today. That's how Destiny was too. Yeah it came out fine. Yeah. Sure, a bunch of live streams this week, I think, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know he used it. He used to doing some stuff. Yeah, we got some ideas percolating quick looks. They're weird stuff. Things will happen. Yeah, that Mario updates coming out. We didn't even talk about that. Mar Yes, we did not talk about the it's in direct I thought about it. God, this podcast was chock full. Yeah that well, there are two things. One horse solitaire to that Mario of Maker update. We should have talked about horse solitaire. Horse Solitaire looks very promising. Okay, forward to playing it church Till versus Horse. All Right, we need to talk more about the solitaire in a private than you. Let's go do That's all right, all right, that's it for this week's edition to the Giant Bob Cast. We'll be back with four people next week, maybe more than four. Oh god,