824: Year of the Segue

Hey, everybody, It's Tuesday, January twenty third, twenty twenty four.
It's already the twenty We're almost done with January. We might as well pack
up, everyone, We're done with the year. Welcome to the Giant BombCast,
Episode eight, one hundred and twenty four, powered by NCXC. I'm
your host, Janet Shoa, joining me as always co captain of the ship.
He is the keeper of the calendar. He's going to be the cover
model for the month of March. He's going to share that with someone else
here. Jeff Grubb. Hello, jan You're the pal of my world,
and I'm glad to be here. I like that a lot. I like
that a lot our own pal. He loves the furry fuzzy creatures all abound.
They bear no distinct likeness to any other furry pocketable monsters, or digital
monsters or even real animals. Jeff Becklar, what do I say that to
that intro? I don't know what you said, Wascali pals. I wasn't
even going for that. He you made that connection, Grub, No one
else made that connection. Hi, Jen, great to be here. Thanks
for having me. I'm happy to have you, and I'm also happy to
have our special guest, my dear friend John Warren. Welcome to the John
BombCast, Sir, Hi, thanks for having me. I had just gotten
fired last time I was on the show, so I think we're bringing a
different energy today. Yes, I hope it almost getting can it ain't gonna
be you though time? Right yay woo. Yeah, but I'm happy that
you all invited me here on the special Duck Season Webbit season episode of the
show. Yeah. I'm looking at the rundown here and it's just repeated for
like twelve pages. Duck season, Webbit season. Yeah season Webbit season can
get our bills to flip flip flip all the way around to the back of
our heads. Yeah. People under like I don't know thirty five, like
no Looney Tunes, Like do they even understand what that is? Uh?
Not really? I mean it was on Cartoon Network for a while, like
after school I think, so they know a little bit, but it's not
like us where it was like that's the cartooned right, that's the one cartoon.
Who do you think Space Jam two was made for David's oslav? Yeah?
Perhaps perhaps? Yeah, okay, Yeah, I mean I mean when
you look at some of the shots of that that movie specifically, it was
more about those other cameos I feel like than the Yeah, it's like,
man wouldn't be awesome. Agent Smith was wh in a basketball game. It's
like, no, I actually I hate it. I have more fun memories
of watching Free Guy than I do a space jam two. You like Free
Guy? You said that was like, uh, your secret gem for your
Free Guy freak. Yeah, I'm a Free Guy freak. You know this.
I swooned when Ryan Reynolds pulled out the lightsaber. I'm like, oh
my god, it's the thing from the other thing. I like, wow,
Okay, Kermit, just bring out them up and we'll have the try
Fuctor here. Okay, Scout, fine, fine, exactly. We don't
actually like Free Guy in this house. It's an okay movie. Scout just
wails Thomas. Scout's not even like rough. Scout is just like I wrote,
like insanity. Huh yeah, she'll she's ready to attack. She stays
strapped, just like her father. You know, I'm ready to go at
all times, human father. How's everyone do it? I have concerns.
Okay, I am worried about Mike Manatti. Do you guys watch that new
Best of Giant bomb. I ain't worried about him. I'm very you don't
understand what we're doing too big. Oh yeah, it's gonna come back and
it bite us in the ass real hard. I'm worried about it. Okay,
pay me a scenario where this somehow blows up in our face. We're
like your boss, Jesus Christ. That would that would be that would be
wild, a wild conspiracy of events would have to take place for that.
But that's look, I welcome it if he's the right man for the job.
Also, though, like, do you pay me a picture where like
this is bad where his head is like I'm not giving him any more money?
Okay, well all right, we're good. Yeah, never as long
as we're not getting him any more money. What if he retroactively uh bills
us for those for being featured so heavily on that best back. Well,
what's funny is like I'm trying to uh visualize a conversation where he's trying to
be serious to me or he's just like, oh, bacalar, I feel
like I'm due for more money. It's like I can't make some more money
than fucking straight face talking to me like that, like, sorry, man,
I uh you know, be be a be a human man for a
second. Yeah, No, I'm kidding, he's not. I don't No,
I'm not kidding. No, it's great. I love that Manati is
getting all the airtime he's getting. For sure, he's my favorite person on
the site. What wow, it's it's because he doesn't know how to add
an EMO to the website. That's why. Exactly. His answer, Uh,
well, you know, grub, we we just got to inadvertently,
We're just gonna let him cook and just see what happens. Just let him.
Yeah, just stand back, because usually the best advice I can give.
I was telling Jurf this morning that it was a jump scare when I
logged back into our chat and then I was just greeted with Mike Manatti's feet.
Oh yeah sure. It was like, oh right, right, this
was here. I'm gonna just keep typing things, make the window a little
smaller scroll. But hey, speaking about feet, I do just want to
say something, Okay, fine, yeah, speaking of feet and say that
torpedoed your segue. But like, uh, you know that best of is
obviously a little bit of a throwback at this point in the year. But
I watched the whole thing yesterday, and I gotta say, like, there's
some real fucking spicy gems in that twenty twenty three huh like man and it
get and it it reinvigorated that fomo I was experiencing from h yeah, where
I was. It's very weird to like watch all these highlights from the thing
I couldn't go do and then another one of them in between that. Uh
yeah, that was really wild. What a freaking circuit that entire at night
situation was? Yeah, a little bit, yeah, yeah, you know,
I think I can really appreciate how much of a circus it was.
You know what from the outside also a circus? Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah. Like is it me
or did or did like TJ seem a little bit more like down earth?
Oh yeah, well keep this in mind. Back alar that the closing shot
of that best of was after three nights of GB at night. Sure sure,
man Riker just like as spread eagle as any human could possibly be on
that count, Like, how did no one say, like, Dan,
you have a really odd sitting position right now. Perhaps you reel it in
just a smidge. Yeah, it was great, It was great. Yeah,
I remember uh that last night Bailey walks up to me wearing an eye
patch, saying like, and I hurt my eye. I almost stabbed it.
I'm like, what do you meet? You almost? La is different,
folks, it's different. It's very different. Alright, do your foot
segue? Okay, say the thing about Dan sitting awkwardly, Dan sitting Mike's
feet. What are we doing? Yeah, Dan's feet just up in the
air. Just Dan spreading all over the place. That's good. Wow,
wow, good Take two. Love it. There we go, There we
go. Segue machine, Baby, John. We have you on the show
not just because I love and enjoy your company and you're one of my friends,
sure, but also you're doing something with feet. I am. Yeah,
I'm I'm speed running the games industry. I feel like in my career
I used to make games and then I was in media. Now I'm doing
hardware, which is so wild. But uh yeah. I For the past
year, I've been working with Glider. It's a company I co founded with
a couple of folks in Dallas. We're making a foot control device for PC
games and VR and much anything else you want to do on your computer.
And it's a lovely thing. You can map a bunch of stuff to it.
It's bipedal, it's different than like card pedals or rudder pedals. It
does a lot. It's super versatile. And we're gonna start a kickstarter in
a week, so that's very exciting, and we're we're stressed and nervous and
I'm running around and doing a lot of stuff. But I've also got a
very loving lighting setup on my feet and I have for the past month shooting
stuff. So it's a very cool vibe here in my just just lots of
feet shots, just always like people can walk in and they see like the
lighting on the feed area and they did they ask questions. Yeah, they
asked for my only fans, and I'm I'm pretty quick to give it to
them. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's it's it's awesome. It's
super cool. Like I the longer I've actually had one under my desk,
the more I've used it with a bunch of games that I play a lot
of. So it's it's super cool. And you get a big discount if
you want Legal dot Com is the go to go do that. I was
so happy when my co founders allowed me to buy that URL and actually use
it to uh to guide some traffic. So yeah, that's that's what I'm
doing. It's a lot of fun and uh, it's a it's an awesome
device that I think, like anybody can use and get some awesome like you
know, vibes when they play their games, improvements, awesome, reduced brain
on your hands. Listen, we were talking about how old the four of
us are before we went live. I don't know about y'all, but if
I play a Wasdi game for more than like thirty minutes, I'm like full
on handcramping. So this is a cool way to to to relieve that stress.
And it's it's awesome. Uh. We have a question from the chat.
Yeah, do we know what your wiki feet rating is? I don't.
I've actually been in touch with the wiki feet people to see if we
could do something that's got to keep those numbers. People don't know that it's
wiki very political. Yeah, very political. That's not a joke. I've
I've had two emails out to them to see if we could do something like
set up an ISSI. Yeah. They have so far ghosted me, which
is fair like what, you know, it's probably the most deranged email they've
gotten, and it's like and it's wiki feed, so they don't realize it's
a perfect fit. That's their lot, perfect fit. You're absolutely right,
So, uh yeah, I know. We're just excited to get get people
thinking about their feet using their hands and feet in conjunction. We do it
a ton in the physical world. We just don't really do it a lot
in the digital Yeah, And it's different than stuff that's out there. You
know, a lot of stuff that's out there is for a single purpose or
for like one click or whatever, and this is a super versaal device that
does analog and a bunch of different motions and all that stuff. Let's say
I'm a very uncreative and stupid person and I get one of these things and
I set it down. I don't know where to start what like for me,
who's probably still gonna be also using the mouse and the keyboard at the
same time, what's a good thing to map to that, Like, what's
the first thing you like try this? Like what you could probably get a
little bit out of this. That's a great question, Grub. I'm glad
you asked. So, like FPS games like I use game pad a lot.
If I use Wazzi, I get I get super fatigued. But like
with game pad, you're dealing with toggleable sprint and crouch and a lot of
that stuff, which is not actually very elegant and mobile and nimble. My
go to when I play Apex Legends is I'm playing with game pad, but
I've mapped sprinting and crouching in analog to my feet really like insanely nimble in
that game in a way that I was not core. And also like dpad
stuff, like dpad stuff is like such a big deal right now, where
it's like, yeah, let's map a thing where you have to move your
fingers off of movement or camera to access the thing that heals you kind of
silly, honestly, we we kind of just deal with the fact that like
we have so much to do with our hands that we don't really think about,
you know, like even manufacturers are putting paddles and extra buttons on stuff,
and actually just using your feet is a lot easier, to be honest,
And so that's kind of that's the starter, and I think that's where
most people are gonna be kind of like mapping a few crucial actions, but
like it's also awesome for like screenshotting and Steam and it's also awesome for like
push to talk and you can do full three D movement. So I play
Risk of Rain with all movement to my feet and I'm just using the mouse
to shoot and do my cool bellies and stuff. I played about half a
star field using my feet to to move around. Wow, which made that
game approximately fifty percent more interesting. Shot shots fired, I guess. But
it's like that was will be the last time that was one of the that
was one of the cool things. So it's like, yeah, I I
love this thing. That's a great question, grub. It's gonna come with
a configurator that has a bunch of built in profiles that we've already thought of,
so you don't have to you can build your own and you're gonna be
able to share them, and we expect a lot of people to share really
interesting bizarre kind of combinations. Last question, Yeah, if you if you're
playing a multiplayer game and they realized you have an advantage because you're you're doing
this, do you think instead of being called a cheater, you'll be called
a feeder? You'll be called a feeder. You'll be called a feeder,
and if you use hashtag feeder in your complaints, you'll get a discount on
the device. Fantastic and just just go, uh, you know, just
go go get one. You know. Yeah, the whole like additional device
cheating stuff. Like we just saw what an MS i'm monitor that like shows
you where enemies are coming from and like the fog of war, and people
are already like, oh, that's cheating. It's like we're due for probably
a more nuanced and positive conversation about like alternate control schemes and accessibility and all
that stuff, and like, you know, it's like we we definitely get
comments that are like, oh, cold duty shooters gonna loak this thing,
and it's like okay, but but like I don't think that's the vast majority
of no. I don't either. So yeah, it seems like something it
seems like something that you have to like try that that it like clicks with
you. I would imagine, Like, I mean, look, I think
I think every first person shooter should have a kick a kick drum for sure.
Sure, Like That's what I'm thinking about, right. Yeah, it
was like how much I know that motion, so well yeah, yeah,
yeah, you know, and I think, like, you know, we
just had a gu right and all the speed running that was happening, and
like we saw someone beat Mario with a drum kit. We saw Aba,
you know, playing with foot pads, custom foot pads. I've been in
touch with them, by the way, so stuff, and it's like,
yeah, all those spied running speed runners are like, yeah, I use
my feet for a lot of the stuff. And so I don't know,
I think it's a it's cool. Yeah, I think drummers will have a
nice advantage piano players, sewing machine operators. We're just gonna really love this
thing. So yeah, my mom is finally gonna get into games. Yeah
exactly, exactly. So yeah, we're we're super excited about it. Kickstarter
next week, and I don't know, it feels feels wild to put this
thing in the world. As an indie. We're like super you know,
we're not backed by any major corporation or anything like that, and trying to
disrupt gaming hardware is kind of bonkers. But I'm having a good time trying
to do it. So Proddy John, that's awesome. Yeah, I gotta
ask one more question, please, Yeah, ask as many as you want
shoes, socks or bare feet break the glider question. So, the the
pads on the production model are textured, and also I wouldn't say cushy,
but like I would maybe describe like the way like a kitchen matt works,
you know, like if you you know, it's like that kind of curve,
like not not not that thick, but like so it's gonna feel good
and you're gonna be able to do it without sliding, whether you're using shoes,
socks, or barefoot. We had been using shoes the whole time,
and then someone just put their bear feet on it. And I dawned on
us like six months ago, like oh a lot of people are going to
be playing this barefoot or with socks. So we've had to make some adjustments
with like what those pads are going to be because we had been using on
the prototypes, so we've been using skate tape, so like the texture,
yeah, but it's like sandpaper, right, So it's like so it's like
someone put their beer feet on it and they were like huh, and I'm
like, oh, yeah, that's not gonna feel good at all. So
it's gonna have that stuff. It has like a little bit of uh,
haptic feedback with like vibrations, So you could just set this thing to vibrate
with this little cushy thing on your on your feet. It might feel good.
So we we've got you covered no matter how you want to play.
I'm I'm I'm very excited about the possibilities. John. I'm just imagining trying
to do a pop shove it with a glider and then like transitioning to three
different obs scenes in the process. You could do that. I mean,
that's that's the beauty of it. And it's like, yeah, it's like
even outside gaming, I've been editing some of our content with Glider, just
using it to scrub mark stuff up and podcast production stuff. Also. Yeah,
we've had a few live DJs come to us and be like, might
twitch That's gonna be fire now because I could do lots of my feet.
So that's cool. Yeah, it's it's it's a versatile device and we're like
to bring into the world. Imagine beeping with your feet everyone, Oh my
god, Yeah, there you go. I already do the tap for the
timing by tapping my foot. Yeah, I mean just actually tap on it.
Yep, yep. That's exciting, folks. Uh. The Kickstarter for
Glider is gonna be up next week, John, Yep, yep, a
week from today, so you could. You could already follow it. If
you search for Glider g l y d R on Kickstarter you can follow the
campaign. The preview pages up now, so you can also go to Glider
dot gig or feet legal dot com. Yes you can. Now I understand
why Nikki messaged me feet legal dot com. I was too scared to check
and click on the link. But now it all makes sense. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, it all makes sense now. Yeah, don't be afraid
if you get that link, it's gonna go to a page that will not
get you added to a list. Don't worry about it or be afraid,
but just be brave enough to actually click on it. Yeah. Yeah,
folks listening at home, live or the archive, just be a little bit
brave click click on the link that says feet this time, it's not gonna
lead to anywhere bad. Oh man. I just love thinking about the the
the odd possibilities of using something not for what it's intended for. Perhaps,
perhaps John, could we play power World with the Glider. With Glider,
you absolutely can finally, finally can step on these pals show what's going on
power World. We'll talk about some of the other stuff regarding Power World in
the news section. It's in the news. It's in the news, but
grub you and I played this last week on UPF with Nikki and Jeff's new
swar Nemon Turbo Sean John. Have you checked out Power World at all?
I have. I've watched a lot of playthroughs of it in the early game
and is now loaded on my machine. It's one of those things that like,
I really fought against it yesterday and the day before as the discourse which
we'll discuss kind of course through the internet in a way that I think gave
everyone kind of unforeseen levels of derangement, which is great. Yeah, But
but so I haven't played it yet. I've watched enough of it to know
that, like, survival games are still not really my thing, but this
wrinkle kind of makes me want to check it out, So that's why I
picked it up. Yeah, Jane, I got a question after we played
it on UPF, did you play any more of it? That's usually my
like gauge because sometimes I get surprised. You're like, I kept playing that
over the weekend. Did you do that with Power World? I kept playing
that over the weekend. I knew it. Can I help him? I
can't help myself. The thing that I need my fellow Pokemon people to understand
is that this is this is not a Pokemon game. This just has furry
creatures that look a lot a lot. They are Pokemon with guns. It's
not the Pokemon with guns game like like TM like, that is not what's
happened here. No, no, And I'm not super familiar with Arc Grub,
but it's a lot like Power World. Turns out it's very much like
Power World. Yeah, it's a lot power It's a lot simpler, a
lot easier to grock what's going on to make it? It's just playing.
You understand all the motivations. You understand how to get creatures a little bit
easier, I think, and ARC you have to build certain food and attract
them. Maybe it's a little bit more like Viva Pinada. It's been a
minute since I played ARC, but uh, this is a lot like it,
and this is a lot more simple. At the same time, is
this a Viva Pinata like actually, we are not blessed enough to get a
fucking Viva Piyada like I wish. Why haven't we though? Huh because Microsoft
cowards. They don't have the guts to do it, that's the Yeah,
Phil, Yeah, you know what this summer watch out, Watch out,
We're gonna adorn the boys are coming for you. We're gonna adorn the set
with pinatas. But I don't know, Like, this is a perfectly fine
survival game, right, grub. You do the whole loop of you have
like three different trees of you have your technology tree, of which you can
build, and then you have your building tree, and then you know,
you just got to punch a tree, punch some rocks, punch some poke.
You can punch some Pokemon, And this is completely decent as one of
those. I don't I'm not the biggest fan of survival games either. I'm
finding my brain is just broken where I just wind up following the carrot on
the stick and then yes, I've already had this carrot for a while now,
so I'm just walking on my own accord. At this point, this
feels a lot like Valheim in terms of it's blowing up. Oh sure,
you can You can play this with friends if you choose choose to. But
I feel like after the initial hype, war is off of like ha ha
haa Pokemon with guns. That's cool. I'm not saying it's gonna die,
but I think the excitement and like the hullabaloo around it is going to It's
definitely going to reach an equilibrium here in the next few months. I think
it's still going to be one of those games that's among the top one hundred
most played on Steam, maybe the top twenty. Those concurrent numbers are crazy,
yes, yeah, yes, so over a million concurrence. That is,
they passed like they passed like CSGO this morning. I think like it
was nuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's wild. It's uh yeah.
And you know, there is a good game there in terms of that,
like, hey, some people actually haven't played a survival game before,
and this is one that really does grind off a lot of the rough edges
on that and makes it a very pleasant experience. And there's like value there
for sure. And I'm you know, I started playing on my own on
the weekend just kind of like check it out again because I was goofing off
during the upf because you were doing all like the main tutorial stuff, so
I could go do my own thing a little bit. And once I started
doing the tutorial, I'm like, oh yeah, I could see how people
why people are picking this up and getting into it and going like, no,
I'm really enjoying this. I don't think there's much more to it than
like, once you get through that process of Okay, I've done the survival
bits and now I have my my big base that is a mechanized factory of
man and machine and pals working together to create various stuff. I think once
that automation kicks in, most people be like, h maintaining this isn't as
fun as it was as it was getting there, But that's fine. Well,
there's nothing wrong wrong with that. Really. I just think we'll probably
we will get to a point over the summer where we look back and be
like, well, I was wild. I think I think you're right.
It'll be very similar to Valheim in terms of how many people were talking about
it. Did you play craft Topia? That was another one of theirs.
I played it for like ten minutes because I was interested in it, and
I'm like, I'm wait to see if I can get some other people to
play with me with with this, with this company, we could talk about
more than Nuance in a bit. But it's like this company is interesting because
I feel like they they make stuff and they kind of dip their toe in
to see how popular it'll be, but maybe not necessarily and this this is
speculation, but maybe not necessarily with the clearest roadmap of what the game is
going to actually look like if it is successful on a long enough period.
So like now that we've got this massive concurrent number, a lot of people
are going like, Okay, cool, what's next besides maybe an injunction from
Nintendo? Like what is you know, what's what's what's after that? And
I think, like with Kraft Topia, the question you know that was kind
of like a weird unanswered, like Okay, well they're just going to keep
throwing weird stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And it's like,
well, if they do that with this, that may not also be that
interesting. So I don't know, I'll be really interested to see how big
the drop off is and also what Pocket Pair does with the mechanics and kind
of roadmap of the game. Yeah, I mean very least pocket fame to
the studio. I told you it's a poker reference. Yea, oh fer
uh. You know. At the very least, let's just talk about the
game itself. The way that the mechanics work together with one another to like
all enhance each other is pretty impressive. Yeah, you're not like, it's
not like, oh, there is a Pokemon catching game inside here, and
you can go mess around with that if you want. It's like, no,
you do that because it's going to make their survival stuff easier. It's
going to make managing the base easier, it's going to make gathering resources easier.
Everything plays into one and to every other thing. And I think that's
one of the reasons people feel really good about it, is because they like
everything I'm doing contributes to the overall goal I have here, and that's that's
it's well done. It's and I don't know if it's like a Game of
the Year contendering thing like that. It doesn't have to be. I think
it's just one of these surprising hits that everyone's like, No, of course,
you know, to January, what else was I going to be playing.
Let's have some fun. There's a lot of other good games coming out
but whatever, I'm I'm happy that games could pop off like this out of
nowhere, even if there's a lot of messiness with this one in particular.
Yeah, I John, you you brought it up, and I was thinking,
like I already see a lot of people streamers and YouTubers alike getting to
whatever the end game of Power World is already, and we're what like a
week from the initial release, so I don't know how much more attention it's
going to capture after people have already caught them all. And I mean there's
already Pokemon mods for Power World where you can reskin all of the pokem the
pals to be exactly their Pokemon count. Counter there what they're inspired by.
Yeah, it's it's a completely fine game. It's completely fine. Yeah.
I think like even games like Rust gets to a point where later in that
game, yeah, you have gone through the content and now it's up to
you to like make your own fun. And I have friends who have done
a lot of that in games like Rust, where like, no, we
have our enclave, and we have a server, and there's other people on
this server, and we basically have like this this ongoing war where these skirmishes
pop up, and we build up our defenses, and then one day the
person on the other team forgot to you know, set the password on their
door, so we go in there and we build a trench underneath their floor,
and we set up a trap, and you know, this guy that
pretends to be a robot on our server is going to be this guard that
is going to have this guy fall into this pit and then just walk around
and yell at him while he's in this pit for days on end. I'm
like that, Okay, I don't know if Power World's going to be able
to enable that sort of thing, right, but also you don't necessarily need
to be aiming for that to win over this mass audience. The game being
just a decent survival sim is is kind of enough at this point. And
I think about like the folks that are like super die hard Pokemon freaks and
and a different way than I am. I'm thinking a lot of them are
after collecting them all or trying to get like shiny variants of their Pokemon,
trying to breed their Pokemon to get the right nature and the right stats and
everything, and that aspect is not present currently in Power World, if at
all. The pals are really disposable actually, Like one of your first objectives
is to capture thirty of them. Yeah, and it's there's no rhyme or
reason, and just like get thirty of them one of them is like get
seven of the sheep pals. That doesn't do much, Like can you like
fuse them together or make a more powerful sheep not that I've found. Like
I just throw them in my base and just have them continue to harvest my
berries, which I think is funny. Yeah, and having a berry plantation
and having a little sheepies work at it, And I think it's cute when
I start building or crafting something and then my little monkey friend is like,
hey, I'm a pit up this hammer and help you buddy. Yeah I
do. I like that. Uh yeah, another question for you Jan as
a official pokey head people, you know, again, we're gonna getting all
the stuff in the news, but we don't have to like necessarily talk around
it. Like people are like, hey, this plagiarized U Pokemon or it
stole from Pokemon and stoles like definitely not the right word. Pokemon still has
all that stuff, so I had nothing's been stolen from them, But like
One of the defenses that people come up with is maybe this is parody,
this is a parody of Pokemon. It could be argued that this is parody.
I don't get that. I don't see that. Do you, as
a fan of Pokemon, feel like this game is parodying your your your boys.
I don't think it's parroting the Pokemon at all. And like, as
like a poke a freak, I don't give a shit that they look at
almost exactly the same. People just need to stop working themselves into a shoot
you seem like the in the minority there, like there are a lot of
people who are upset in doing these big threads of comparisons, and like some
of them, I admit, there are a couple full of them, and
I wouldn't the Pokemon they are engaged copyright infringement. I just don't care.
But but it's also just like I don't know people just like this kind of
game. Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't. What it feels like is
like some of the people are angry are the kind of people that would also
say the sanctity of Pokemon with a great face. You know. It's like
where I'm just kind of like all right, Like, okay, you know,
so I don't know. I'm curious for like what the defense is.
Like, Okay, you've been accused of, you know, ripping this off
in a way that like is damaging, right, because that's the reason why
you would do why you would kind of uh so what's the defense? Like,
what is there? What is the Power World position? Power defense would
be like, well, yeah, it doesn't look exactly like that Pokemon.
We made the chances three fens instead of two fens. And and to your
question, there there's you know, if Nintendo decided to do something which they
have not announced, they don't like to, they don't like to could you
know, comment on individual cases all that stuff, which is common. But
it's like Power World is probably doing enough stuff differently that they could probably go
in and change some things and kind of get out from under this pretty easily
if there is something going on, Like there are really only a few designs
that are like, oh yeah, like this might be an asset lift,
you know, if I didn't know, if I didn't know differently, But
it's like so those it's like but but it's like their defense is like okay,
well, yeah, the Monster Hunter games all kind of look alike and
I kind of do, but like, but like, you know, some
of them are egregious examples for sure. Yeah, I think the most damning
evidence against Power World is this artist who took a bunch of the models and
put them into artwork software and found that a lot of the models map one
to one in terms of proportions, right, and saying how impossible that would
be just for that to happen naturally. So it's almost basically it means that
the artists on Power World took those models and used them as the underlying thing
and then drew some shit on top of them. And you know that happens
all the time and creative stuff. Though I'm not here to defend power I
Again, I don't care if Nintendo and Pokemon Company want to sue them,
sue them. Copyright Copyright law is very strong. You might be able to
make it happen. It will be tough to prove this case. But mostly
it's just like, I don't know, artists for comic book covers like take
one cover and then they're like, Okay, I'm gonna kind of use that
as the baseline for mine and basically draw on top of that, and most
artists agree that that's that's you know, that's fine, that's okay. Some
get upset about it, for sure, but a lot of them are like,
no, that's yeah. We all do that. We are all kind
of like drawing on and building on each other's work. And I'm like,
I think that's going to be the kind of thing where if you want to
fight this, that's fine. I'm not going to go out there and be
a warrior for Nintendo in the Pokemon Company to try to protect them. When
it's like, ah, a cool game or at least an interesting game got
made here, and you could either engage with it or if you hate it,
you could ignore it. And I'm like, that is a viable option
for most of these people that they are not exercising. Yeah, you know,
this is a conversation we're totally going to have in the news and we
may also have in the emails later. But I also don't see Power World
as a game that's going to push game Freak or Nintendo to do anything different.
Like the only thing that Power World is on their radar for is to
perhaps pursue a legal action down the line. Like, as far as you
do, I think that that game freak is in a position to make a
survival game with Pokemon. Hell no, like they could barely get double digit
frames sometimes well some games. But I do think I will say one thing
is that because I'm not a Pokemon person, but I you know, I'm
someone who friend of the show Red Valentine has been covering Pokemon, Scarland Pviolet
really really well on IGN covering you know, obviously a fan died in the
wool fan of Pokemon, but is highly critical of the way that those games
came out, and highly critical of the fact that they've never really been optimized,
even after, you know, more than a year being out on the
market. I do wonder if Power World and the popularity of it, there
is a Venn diagram middle area of people who are like I do kind of
wish the Pokemon company would do more with this. Yeah, I do kind
of wish like I could recruit more pals and spend more time with them and
all these all these systems could work together if they spent more than a year
working on one of these projects and they come out with the twenty frame per
second game on modern hardware like that, it is disappointing. I think to
some Pokemon fans that more isn't being done with the franchise, and so like
I do wonder if the vitriol and the anger and the tension is coming from
this feeling of like, man, maybe they should be doing more with this
thing. Maybe not a survival game with with like a sowd off shotgun like
not. I don't think anybody maybe, but it's like we see spinoffs of
Pokemon, Detective Pikachu things like that do interesting things, but the kind of
the nitty gritty gameplay of those of those games as mainline games are maybe a
little bit stale, and like, you know, like maybe this is this
is something that could push them. I do think the popularity should not just
be oh, this is just like some flash in a pan social media experiment.
I'm kind of like I would maybe maybe think about why people are really
digging this thing specifically. Yeah, and and like I'm like right there with
you, and it's like I also usually fall on the near side of the
line where it's like and if someone else is going to take similar looking designs
and do something different with it, again, you have the copyright law on
your side. It's very powerful. If you want to go fight it,
you can. Yeah, I'm going to kind of enjoy it. I'm going
to watch weird videos with my kids on YouTube of like these kids doing like
stuff with their Pokemon toys and telling stories and stuff like that, and I
don't want them to be sued out of existence. If I want to have
a printer print me a shirt like a custom design with some of these character
models on it, like, yeah, that's copyright infringement, right, but
I'm kind of guy. I still I'm kind of gonna do it because I
like these things a lot and feel an ownership over it. And if the
tenda wants to come get me for that, okay, they are allowed to
do that. But it's like, uh, I still am like a human
being who exists and wants to mess around with these things. Just I want
this space to be able to be more vibrant and airing on the side of
letting these things exist and like not like having steam come in for example,
Bill, And you're not allowed to do this, right, Uh, sure,
this is a better way of doing things. Just see, let these
companies experiment. If someone crosses a line, well they can figure that out.
Amongst themselves. Yeah, I uh god, I lost my train of
thought. Never mind, it doesn't matter, it didn't matter. Fuck fuck
you're too beautiful for a train of thought. Jan you don't need one of
those. Yeah. I don't know what the Pokemon company does from here,
because they've tried stuff like Detective Pikachu, the Pokemon Fighting game. If you
go back to the three DS and GameCube, they had like single player,
story based RPGs and stuff. I'm just glad that there is a Pokemon like
or something that claims to be a Pokemon like that is I don't want to
say, dominating the space, but taking up space and taking up the conversation
in good and bad ways, obviously, because there are other Pokemon likes like
tem Tem or Cassette Beasts that have come out in the past couple of years
that, after the initial release, barely register on the radar for Pokemon freaks.
So I don't know. Like, if Power World suddenly wanted to release
like a battling sim where I can choose the minute stats and I can just
do two v two battles and an easy way against friends or perhaps a community,
then gosh, dang it, I will pick that up. Yeah,
I don't know, Like for the for the Poka freaks that are concerned and
acting and litigating on behalf of game freak, fucking touch grass. Yeah,
go outside by a rip open a Pokemon card pack or something like. Game
freak doesn't need you defending them. Don't don't be a white knight for a
company, folks. Yeah, and like you want to be careful what you
wish for with that stuff that like if they have more powered exercise exercise to
stuff like imagine like commissioning someone to do art for you based on your favorite
character, and now they're not allowed to do that because if everyone's cracked down
so hard on these things, it's a different it's a different thing when a
big company does this. Now Pockepair is definitely a big company, but it's
like, I don't know, let them again, let them figure it out,
and let's just have this like a little safe space over here where we
can be a little bit more cavalier kept with copyright. You need to fight
the war for these people. Yeah, yeah, let's let's let's let them
work it out. Yeah, don't don't enable n Tendo the Pokemon company and
game for it to keep punching down. Instead, what you should be doing
is punching and kicking your way through teching eight. Everyone. Wow, Hollie
Ship, King of what, King of the Iron, you're killing it today?
A baby, We're on one. This game rules. It's yes,
yes, good. Yeah, it's so well made. It's so good.
They and they know it. They they have a game where it's like they
are very confident about what they put together here. I did some all my
matches when the online servers were up and played with like with Mike and Sean
and Christian and we went back and forth and I was being very responsible and
trying to learn the game, and they were all like, oh my god,
it's Maximilian dude over there, and they were being nerds about that.
So I just thought, I throw them under the bus real quick. But
that that game, it just feels great, It looks great. It is
very much still teching underneath and then has all you know what. The fighting
game it most reminds me of in terms of the juice is Killer Instinct.
Yeah, yeah, the Killer and Stick has a ton of juice where it's
like there's a lot of great uh particle effects on top of everything and it's
just like everything is is vibrant, and and like there's just bubble. There's
stuff bubbling under the surface in every hit, and that comes across in Tech
and eight really well. And then it's like it's still taking. So it's
a game where it's very easy to understand what you or what's possible. You
know, you have the four face buttons that correspond to the limbs, and
then every direction on your your input is going to do a different move with
one of those limbs. Uh. And and then like the the heat actions
where you're hitting RBU on the controller I was using, Uh, you just
spam that and you could do a big heat action and you can do that
once for a round, and those look really great, look really cool,
and overall you just got a solid fighting game that I think is very approachable.
The Arcade mode does a really good job of teaching you all these basics,
and then hopping in with friends is a great way we all we all
start playing. I think Christian and Turbot Shawn have a ton of fighting game
experience. Mike's gotten a lot recently, and I'm relatively getting I'm kind of
getting back into it. I played TECHNI a lot back in the day,
and we were all able to quickly understand like, Okay, here's where we're
at. Let's get in with some of these characters and mess around. And
we were having a good time immediately. So, yeah, I'm a I'm
a big fan of this game, and I want to be playing a lot
more. One complaint it won't launch for me anymore. I'm getting you an
unreal engine air that I cannot fix for the life of me. So it's
saying something like a shader it won't decompress. And I looked it up.
This was happening a lot shoulders. Yeah, I was. It was happening
to a lot of people in the beta period, I guess. So if
anyone has a fix for this, let me know. I've reached out to
PR they have not gotten back. Maybe you're too good. It's you know
they banned, Yes exactly, I did. I did beat Christian and Sean
uh and then and they might beat me. So, you know, playing
as you mostly jack Ate, the big robot looking asshole, because I love
him. He flies in on his rail gun at the beginning of the match.
It's like a little rocket rail gun and he just holds onto it like
an idiot. I love him. He's a big dumb dope, so as
someone who only knows techan through its cut scenes, which is great, which
is, by the way, a great way to know tech. H Yeah,
Like I feel like I'm getting everything I need out of the relationship.
Is there any of that? Like, yeah, I know they got Brian
Cox to like, you know, he's it, but like Brian Cox thing
is the best thing in the world. That was amazing. He's on camera.
Uh, yeah, we're gonna do it for Giant bum. Uh here's
what I was told. I did not touch the story because I was told
we should play this on the site. Yes, because it's very good.
That was the first thing I decided to do. Yeah, and Backlar,
you would be very happy. Oh goodie, all right, because I I
don't think I'm gonna play this fighting game, but I'm gonna watch this fighting
games cut scenes. That's what I'm gonna do. That's how I prefer to
interact with it. The characters also just the best looking fighting game characters.
I love every single one has so much style. And yet Jackie is a
big idiot. Uh and and Paul looks stupid as hell to actually they all
look really stupid in a really fun way. I'm just a fan of what
they've done here. So do you think like this is gonna move the needle?
I don't know, Like, I know Techan's popular, but I know
it's like there's certainly an atmosphere in which you cannot penetrate. Yeah, right,
So what do you think this feels like it has the chance to be
like, Hey, we played a ton of Street Fighter last year, and
we've or we played a lot of Mortal Kombat. A lot of people are
kind of picking one or the other there. Uh, we're feeling good about
fighting games right now. I think tech and eight can pick up the sort
of the baton. Yeah maybe like lift up. It's its profile in terms
of where tech tech has been previously, But you know Techan has always been
like yeah, in that secondary tier. It's not been Street Fighter, it's
not been Mortal Combat, but it's right behind those, And I think it's
going to kind of get a little bit of shine from the fighting game community
being very excited about fighting games right now. They've all been very good and
this one is going to be another sort of notch on that belt. And
I think people are going to carry that momentum for it in a big way.
Nice. It's been interesting to see, you know, because I was
a big arcade I'm dating myself here, I was a big arcade kid in
the mid nineties, mid to late nineties three D fighting game renaissance, right,
Like, so, yeah, you had your soul calibers, you had
your techans, had your virtual fighters. It's been really interesting to see for
me how tech and especially has been able to evolve to integrate a lot more
of the staples of two D fighters to actually kind of get into that relevant
you know, conversation. Evo has obviously been a big deal for Tech in
some really high level tech and has been so interesting to watch, right and
now it's like it does feel like one of those things that there really aren't
that many three D fighters anymore, right, And it's like pretty much pretty
much it. Virtual Fighters is my all time fave. But it's like,
we don't know what's happening with that when, you know, when does I
don't think I don't think Sega does. When when Tech and eight was announced,
I was skeptical because you know, they're getting rid of their most iconic
character. Honestly, in Aachi Mishima. Uh spoilers for Tech and seven,
but it's like, so I was, I was worried a little bit,
but everything I've seen is so slick. And I don't normally point stuff like
this out because it's like kind of antithesis. It's it's antithetical to kind of
my my whole vibe. But the marketing campaign has been so good. Yeah,
they have daily YouTube uploads with like character focuses, this Brian Cox thing
which was so insane but so lovely in a lot of ways. And so
yeah, they've got me hyped and and I can't wait to play it this
week. Yeah, I don't know, it's it's techn eight or techan in
general is always felt more approachable than Street Fighter ever has, like I can
yeah it was in the arcade, right, but it was also it came
of age alongside the PlayStation. So it's always felt very much like, hey,
this needs to be a console game. It needs to be friendly for
them. I mean having the four limbs attached to the four face buttons,
like this is still a game that you can play with a pad. I
have been playing with the Knsune. It's been great with that, but it's
with a stick, I should say, but it's also one you could definitely
play with a pad no problem. So I think that inherently makes it more
approachable. Yeah, and I don't know, maybe because there aren't a lot
of three D fighters that I've been playing with at all lately. It does
feel intuitive in a sense to pick it back up versus trying to make my
muscles remember how to do anything in Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. Yeah,
where it's like, oh, okay, like I'll just strafe around you and
grub You're right with the mapping the limbs to the face buttons, I think
it does something completely different. You know that when you're straight from that way,
if they get a right hook in there, you're going to be actually
be moving into them and it's still going to work really well. And that's
it just makes logical sense. Yeah. It also feels like wrestling in a
lot of ways, where it's like you almost sure they take turns. The
characters take take turns a little bit, and they're like, once you start
your combo, it's gonna be kind of hard to get out or out of
it for the other player. And then once you get a chance to come
back. It's like, okay, now I'm doing my attack. Now it's
like, who is going to be able to make that last move there and
actually get the pen. It's kind of how it feels a lot of times.
Yeah, my partner doesn't play games at all other than Pokemon Go,
which is an addiction that I help fund. But you know, I passed
her the controller and she was able to have like a pretty decent to good
time with it, and like, oh, this is fun, Like why
do we do more of this? What if we got sticks? I'm like,
what if we got our kid? Yeah, and then I started going
on Allie Express looking for the shiit hit box knockoffs in the world, and
you know, I didn't want anything to explode in my house. Yeah,
once a year, I convinced myself, I'm gonna get really into a fighting
game and get good at it. And and Teken is this year's and you
know, it's it's hitting early, so at least I have a good you
know, a year before I decide to that I abandoned and never pick it
up again or whatever. But yeah, Screw Fighter six was great last year.
That was kind of my my fighting game of choice, and I love
a three D fighter. My sucker for it. You know, tech in
is you know, so nuts in a lot of ways. I've been playing
a lot of tech and Tag tournament on my Steam deck, so like I
I've just been getting ready for for eight and you know, kind of re
equating myself with the gameplay there and a lot of changes obviously between you know,
even seven and eight. But I'm excited. Uh and you know Grevy
touched on this earlier, but Yo, this game just ooz is swagger.
Like I don't know if they took notes on how Street Frater six, but
just like approaching like the pre fight type of walk up stuff and just like
leaning into that, but they have leaned all the way into the style and
also like the dumb fun side of Techan. Yeah, and like they fully
embraced the wrestling aspect of it. Actually, Yeah, Like I think that's
a very apt comparison. And I think they should just add ww superstars into
Techan. Yeah. If Mortal Kombat, if the nether Realm's not going to
do it like they had that mobile game, I would love it. I
would love it if Techan would kind of take on Sure they've tried, like
absolutely what do you mean? What do I think? You don't think one
of these fighting games is attempted to license a wrestler. Well, they had
new Japan wrestlers in tech right, like Okata or Omega. Thought that was
who But I don't think there's definitely wrestlers in I don't think. I don't
thinking. I don't think a new Japan wrestler has been one of the second
game. They did have a Megan from Not Dead favorite character, everyone's likable
and totally cool and normal character. Yeah about we got them. We gotta
get Jeffrey Dean Morgan in from MOCAP, let's go. I don't know if
y'all have stayed up to date with The Walking Dead, but absolutely the fun
Now wait it's it's still on TV, like there's several wait wait wait wait
wait really yes, it was one of the most successful shows of all time,
and they are keeping that momentum going however they can. I guess.
I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of stuff that stayed on
traditional cable where I was just sort of like it did its thing, it
had its trajectory, and I just sort of like watching Yellowstone, like yeah,
yeah, Boomer Sopranos for sure. Yeah, no, I don't know,
Like I didn't realize it. I look, I was a huge fan
of the book, for sure. I think I I did finish reading the
book. Yeah, but like, wait, and I don't and I didn't
watch the AMC show. Uh. And I didn't meet Meagan, like I
didn't get to that. Like I bounced off it because I thought the prison
season was so horrifically bad that I left. But then, uh, yeah,
Sean is planting a segue, But I need to continue talking about The
Walking Dead because Yo, why Meagan and what's her face Maggie have a spin
off together? Yeah, that's why, Like Daryld didn't together. I don't
know. Darryl Dixon somehow wound up in Paris. H wait spoilers. Grimes
quote unquote died but was airlifted and now he's coming back yep with the show
at yeah it is twenty four, we're bringing dead people back. Wow.
And then they had like they had a long running side series that was like
the West Coast perspective of The Walking Dead, where the priest man was like
a big character and then he went back and forth on the shows a lot
of the characters go back and forth on the shows. God, what else,
how's Norman doing? He knows he's on the show. Everything's no,
he doesn't know. They just they just film him without him, and I
feel like they just lift him with a dolly and they're just like, Okay,
do your greasy thing. You come around. They think it's he thinks
that's a Kojima thing. It's fine. Norman Reidis acts in The Walking Dead
just like how a Yakuza n PC will initiate a battle where it's just like
and just like a lot of snapping, but not actually snapping. You know.
It's like his joints haven't found the place to just naturally stand just yet.
Yeah. It's like it's like one of those little dolls where you push
the button and they kind of stand up on the halfway up there like yeah
yeah, yeah, it's like uh, Jello that hasn't completely set yet,
right, the soft wabble Ye I'm remembering. Yo. They had another spin
off that was like The Walking Dead but with a bunch of angsty teens.
Oh really yeah, New Mutants of that's cool. Yeah, oh that's neat.
And then it wasn't cool because like no very rare? Are these shows
cool? These kids like grew up in a world where like the zombie outbreak
was just the norm, so they were like, oh, this has been
fucked up. Huh, all right, cool, I guess we'll go back
to regular school. Uh. And it's just like a fascist military regime that
they live in. See this pisses me off because I mean, say what
you will, but like why the Last Man fucking did not have a super
strong season one? It got canceled and like that's a that's the that's what
I wanted to watch and keep going. I know that's sorry relevant, but
like, I don't know, man, I thought that was all right.
He had a little monkey friend. Did you watch it or no? I
read the show has been The show is not great. The show is not
great. It was not great now the book. It did such a disturvice
to the book. But uh, fucking yeah, I can't believe there was
like a Zoomer Walking Dead show. Okay, but okay, Norman ritas someone
pointed out, would make a really good sujimn uh And I want to collect
him as one of my man weird weirdo man pokemons and like a dragon Infinite.
Well, the game of the week, folks. That's right, we
finally have a game of the week. And for folks that were a little
concerned about like you guys are talking about it off games, it's because all
of them are embargoed right now till right now, right now. It's a
really good alip YouTube by the way, really nice. I think this is
my favorite. Yaku'sa game. Uh same, And again, most of my
experience is checking in on the series very late. I think I've only ever
finished Zero and the original Like a Dragon, just because there's so much in
all of these games. Right I'm happy to report that I will still and
continue to take a bullet for Ichi band Kasuga. I would fucking die for
him, but I know that he would push me out of the way.
Yeah, I'm pushing him out of the way for the bullet. We will
both get shot, and we'd both look at each other like lovingly and like
I love you, bro, I love you, bro. God the adjustments
that they've made from the original Like a Dragon. This is still a turn
based JRPG, but the adjustments that they've made to the combat is something that
I want to see in other future turn based RPGs where I played. I
played it a few hours like a dragon. I really enjoyed it. I
liked catching the guide that was peeing in public. Remember that that really stuck
with me. And I remember the combat being like, oh, yeah,
this is solid sort of Dragon Quest inspired turn based combat with a lot more
sauce on top. But then I'm also remembering being like, well, it's
not going to carry me through this whole game, so I'm good, I'm
gonna shut this one down. I don't remember exactly enough about it to know
what they've done different here that you're liking so much, But I will say,
I too, am really liking this combat. So what is it that
they changed the positioning one hundred percent of positioning? It reminds me a lot
huge Final Fantasy twelve, where like position was super important. Where when you
get to the turn of your specific character, whether you're Ichibon or I won't
name some of the other characters you play as in case, folks are have
been avoiding everything on time getting there. Yeah, but once you get control
of them, you have a little circle whereas where you can position your character
and you can either attack us an ability item et cetera. But the position
tionality is very very important because you can either attack and enemies back, which
will you know, do more damage as video games have well established the science
of but most of the time with most enemies, there will be like a
little bounce off arrow, so like if I hit this dude, he is
going to ricochet and go that way. So you could either send him into
an obstacle, perhaps oncoming traffic, perhaps one of your homies who will also
follow it up with an attack, and as you and that builds your like
social link with them too, exactly exactly, so you're teeing up attacks for
your teammates. That's and and you know there's there's social links in this game
as well, Like a dragon has too many systems. But it works,
I don't want to say incredibly well, it works very well. Where the
deeper bond you have with your teammates, the more actions they'll they'll take on.
So say you do that follow up attack, or maybe you miss maybe
your positioning was a little bit off where you didn't quite tee up your homie
to take the second attack. Sometimes if you're cool enough with your your team,
your friend will just like ah, you know that dude on the floor,
I'm gonna kick him right now. Hell yeah, fuck that guy.
And then yeah, like a lot of the abilities are translated. I don't
want to spoil one of the playable characters because I know there are folks that
are completely avoiding everything on this game and just want to check it out.
But the way that they've mapped older, older games to just work in a
turn based structure and format so fucking clever, so so fucking clever in a
way that like, I am never skipping any of the combat. Like I
turned on automatic battling a lot in the original, like a dragon. I've
never touched it in here. I accidentally turned it on and I was like,
no, no way, give give me back control. And I turned
it off again. It's one but one button to turn it off and on,
and I was like, nope, I want to be controlling these combat
sequences. They are a ton of fun. Yeah. The part where I
think it's going to throw a lot of people off, other than finding out
it's a turn based game, surprise surprise is how long the on ramp to
the actual game is. So That's where I'm at right now. Jan I
feel like I'm Finally, I'm in chapter four and I feel like the game's
still getting started, and that is hours and hours and hours like and it's
it's especially hours and hours if you are not skipping through the dialogue when it
gives the option, and then sometimes it is full and cut scenes where you
can't skip the dialogue. And I haven't skipped anything yet because I am still
mostly enjoying getting the getting to know these characters. I think they are all
super sweet and the way that the relationships are really affectionate and that it means
a lot as I'm playing this game to like feel that. So I'm still
engaging with a lot of that stuff. But it's been a long time and
I'm like winning going to be able to actually play this game. I hear
about all these fun systems that people are are these many games that people are
doing, and I haven't sniffed almost any of that I met. I ran
into one guy who started talking about Sujiman, which is the Pokemon of gathering
creep creepozoids that was in the first game or the last game, I should
say, and I haven't really done anything with that. He just mentions it
exists in this game as well. And then we went to Hawaii, which
you know this game takes place in Hawaii, that is everwhere in the marketing
you should know that. But I still haven't engaged with that system at all,
let alone anything where it's like, Okay, I'm gonna be doing the
crazy taxi stuff that I've seen and ads and things like that, all these
things that I've heard about. Haven't done any of it, And yet it's
like still kind of a minor complaint from me. I think if we're talking
about pacing, the pacing does feel off totally, but I think they are.
They sprinkle on enough things to care about that it's going to drag most
people through. And I think the evidence of that is I'm still on board,
and I'm someone who bounces off this kind of thing very easy if I
feel like I'm not like being engaged or you're not meeting me where I need
to be met to be entertained. And I think the game is doing a
good job with what it's offered me so far to keep me hooked. I
like when I'm meeting some new characters and kind of figuring how they're going to
join the crew or whatever. That's been really cool, but yeah, I'm
still kind of waiting for it to open up, and I've been told it's
going to open up very soon. But after a series of like, Okay,
here's this mini game, here's this side thing, here's this side thing,
and so far those side things have been interesting. I really like the
saying hello to everybody. That social system is very cool. It feels like
straight pass but in a video game. But overall, I'm like, Okay,
once this game game opens up, am I gonna love it? I
hope so, because I put a lot of investment in terms of time into
it so far. I think after chapter four, Grub where you're at it
finally starts to open up, and I think they're the pacing is a little
off because I think I clocked in at ten hours by the time I finished
chapter four, which for some people is too much time. And I know
that that's par for the course, right for for any yakuza or like a
Dragon game, but for to hook in the casual person, that may be
very off putting. But what I will say is Grub is one hundred percent
right. I think the writing is some of the best. I care so
much about ichivon it. He is one hundred percent the shoon In style protagonist
where he is a fucking idiot. He's such a dumb shit alive. Yeah,
but I love him so much and I want to see him succeed because
his heart is made out of pure gold. Uh. And I feel like
I'm a better person for playing this game because he is making the proper decisions.
And I also like that, you know, they got out of Yokohama,
they got out of Japan, and that they're exploring a different setting with
Hawaii. It's fun and it is so stupid grub that I enjoy and actively
pursue. Anytime I see a little icon where you can throw a shaka to
someone, I always throw a shaka, always, even even if they don't
have one. And I'm walking amongst a group of people, I'm like anglos
bros. And like, I mean, that's just how Hawaii works. And
it's fun because you know, the story does tackle some like interesting stuff with
like the politics of like being an immigrant or being a tourist from Japan to
Hawaii, and that natural pipeline of like, oh yeah, you know,
like a lot of people from Japan do feel more comfortable going to Hawaii,
but like Yo, Hawaii. It's got some funk, got some stuff,
real problems, and I'm surprised that they try to tackle that, like particularly
with like the homeless issue and how expensive things are in Hawaii because of like
uh, you know, tourism destroying the island. It's I think there's one
thing that struck me about the game is it does very progressive, you know,
like yeah, at the very least, it is like engaging with a
lot of these conversations. I don't know if it always has like the most
progressive taken all of them, but they at least point out like, no,
we know this is a problem. We know this is a problem.
We know that this is a thing worth criticizing about Japanese culture, you know,
before you get to Hawaii. I'm like, man, oh, okay,
like a lot of these things I just assumed from being an ignorant American
and it's like, ah, we don't really talk about that, And it's
like no, this game's like we talk about all of it. And I'm
like, okay, that's pretty yeah. I like, okay, this game
is engaging with it the very least. I don't think it's like the one
that's going to solve these problems or have the answers to a lot of them.
But the fact that they are at least acknowledging this stuff is a step
in a direction, Like I say, ord be like, that's the right
direction for your country's media to go. I'm not saying that, I'm just
saying I enjoy it. And it feels like a very well thought out writing
team working on this. Yeah. Yeah, Like they tackle issues that I'm
pleasantly surprised that they're choosing to try and tackle. Right on top of like
you know, the diaspora of like Native Hawaiians and like the homeless epidemic in
Hawaii. There's also like they touch on stuff like police brutality and like how
there's like a huge class division happening in Hawaii. And I'm like, oh,
okay, all right, I see what you guys are doing. GREB.
You're at chapter four currently. Yes, I have not beat the game.
There's too much game. There's a there's a lot of game in these
games. We are hoping to have a We will have a proper review cast
later this week on BCR featuring some friends of the site. But let me
tell you, the dumb side stuff is still great. It's not spoilers because
this was in the trailer. You get a segue in this game. So
cool. You get a segue in this game. It's so stupid, and
I thought, like, oh, maybe they're just gonna have Ichiband just stroll
through, and like no, your whole party winds up being on segus just
following you and tailing you. That's great and it's so fucking good. H
ah god. Yeah, I think this is my favorite like a Dragon game.
I felt a huge attachment to it. Yes, I'm in. I
have more like personal like momentum with this game in terms of I want to
stick with. It's stickier than any of the other ones I've played for me
personally, and I know other people love these games, so I think most
people are going to come out come out of it being agreeing with you,
saying that this is their favorite one. Yeah, and you know I say
this with every new Yakuza title dropping, like Yakuza Guiden the man who forgot
his name and I forgot the whole title or whatever. This is a great
entry point. They don't do the best job of recapping every single thing that
happened in the first like a Dragon but I don't know if you completely need
that, because they're embarking on a whole new story. If you're through Osmosis,
if you absorb some stuff from Yakuza or like a Dragon, some of
the story beats will still hit. Yeah. I don't know. I think
all you really need to know is there's a guy that is kind of trying
to move beyond his relationship with the Yakuza. Yeah. Yes, and you
know because the characters doing that, the whole game is trying to do that
as well, and that relationship of like, okay, where is Ichibon?
And therefore this entire game series is relationship to the criminal history of this used
to be a straight up crime game. And it's like, well, we're
still going to have some of that, but why and how like how can
we justify that with the character we have now who is very much trying to
grow beyond that. And I think they do a good job of setting that
up because there's like, there's plenty of reasons to be like, Okay,
well, yeah, I am someone who wants to do right by society,
but then I'm going to encounter parts of society that are angled against me in
some very harsh ways and how do we square that circle or whatever? So
it's it's well done from the beginning, and I'm looking forward spending more time
with it. Yeah. Oh, also, ever, run's great on everything
runs great on everything runs great on this apparently, Yeah, it runs grand
steam deck. I read, So it's going to run perfect on the steam
deck, it seems like because it's running great on the seventy eight to forty
that's it's inside this the AI in EO slide and it's been sixty frames per
second without a fault. It's perfect. It's really well optimized. I go
ahead. I was just gonna say, I think this team deserves a ton
of credit for seizing a moment where this franchise got really big and it felt
like it was gathering momentum, and they decided to kind of go in this
new direction instead of saying, oh, we got everybody on board with this
CARRYU and the setting and all of these elements that they've decided to take.
I think what worked best about all of it so far and kind of put
it in these first two games. And I keep hearing that it's a good
entry point. Infinite wealth is and I don't know it's like any game that
tackles things like, you know, having positive masculinity kind of like oh as
being a core tenet of like all this stuff. Like there are so many
things that are have been kind of mildly progressive as this as this story has
unfolded, and now it feels like they're just kind of doing more with it
and you know, kind of letting themselves cook a little bit and this kind
of new normal and having all of this attention and all of this kind of
like goodwill about the series. It's a really interesting time for this team and
this franchise. And I don't know, I'm I'm I've pre installed and I'm
super excited. So yeah, it also really touches my personal problems with Persona
four in Persona five, where I'm kind of tired of playing as high schoolers.
I'm tired of playing as angsty teens, right, I'm so happy to
be playing as broken adults that really reflect that the problems they have bills and
they have weird issues, and like their positioning of kind of like you know,
how the Elder treated in the first like a dragon was really interesting and
like there was like really interesting interesting things being said about adults, like real
adults with real problems in this goofy fucking video game, and I think that's
awesome. Like I think it's just really refreshing. I think it's I think
it's the best part of the game. Honestly, is that I listen.
I love my fantasies, I love my sci fis. It's just like,
it's cool that we got a game series that it feels like one of the
bigger ones in gaming right now, and it's just about normal world. Like
obviously it is a grandise in a lot of ways it is. There's a
lot of flourishes. Ichibond specifically has an imagination that gets applied on top and
gets pasted on top of the battles, and he's imagining these these enemies as
different things sometimes, but it's you know, mostly it is real people in
the real world. And there's something very attractive about that to me right now,
I don't know exactly what it is. Can't put my finger exactly why
that means so much, but it's like, no, this feels very different
and very cool when they do a good good job of capturing that feeling of
normalcy and then taking it and putting the little like a dragon spin on it
and making it weird again. But uh yeah, I really like that aspect
that Yeah, I think people, you know, I've been a little selfish
about this game where I'm sort of just like, hey, I keep going
up to people who are you know, Yakaza veterans and whatnot, and I'm
like, hey, is this the one and then that I should play?
And then people are like, oh, Jeff, well, you know it's
a little slow, and like you're you're sort of you know, you're sort
of stupid and you might not enjoy it. And then elmer fud motherfucker and
they say that too grub and they're like, oh, well maybe you should
you know, play with this yo yo. No, But like I just
feel like this has been nothing but you know, twenty five minutes of high
praise, and I feel like I feel like, why am I still getting
this, like, you know, half answer from people. It's a selfish
question, I guess. But to tell someone to go play something where it's
like the first ten hours is going to be a lot of setup. It's
ten hours, that's a lot, But like I am the most susceptible to
that, and I'm like, I think if you can start up this game
and you find yourself having any affinity for Ichuban Kasuka, you're gonna be able
to see it through. And if you start if you start with I know,
right, and I think because saying I'm not saying it's boring, it
just hasn't opened up yet. They are. There's a lot of interesting,
interesting stuff that happens in that time, and I care about Kasuga. So
I'm like, I am on board. If you start up the game and
you're like, I don't care about this, idiot, I think it's going
to be a very easy game to just turn off and walk away from.
When you say ten hours like that? And then what did him said something
too? I overheard, and I'm just like, oh no, yeah,
that's that's the half answer. That's why. Because we're scared of recommending that
to people. That is that's a big ask. I think, right,
that makes sense. I think you would love the story of back Lar,
to be fair, like I think you'd love each So that is the ten
hours. That's what you're doing in that ten hours is you're getting a lot
of like it's not like it's nothing's happening. A lot is happening. A
lot changes, a lot of stakes get set up, and really you see
through a lot of those early stakes and they set up even higher stakes the
next time. So yeah, it's worth I think it's worth giving a shot
to this one in particular. Yeah, I remember you you put in decent
time until like Final Fantasy sixteen, right, Yeah, but I like fast
I fast forward, I like skipped all that Shitki. Well, I think
like I think like this the story beats here will grab you in a different
way than you're playing that game right away. I mean you're right, right,
Yeah, but it's a bad game. So yeah, like I don't
I didn't love it. I thought it was fine. I was just sort
of like, if at Wealth is is what I've heard is a good game.
So that's kind of I think the key difference there for me in my
emotions high Am right now is to this and getting so mad because that's one
of his favorites of last year. I guess I never can reread what Sean
says in chat back of Lark because this is how this is like. Death
Training is a good example of a game that has the first ten hours talking
about death stranding. He's saying right, this is he's saying that this is
the opposite. Okay, hold on, Yeah, I hate Death Stranding because
the first ten hours are bad cut scenes, which is true. I really
enjoy this game because the first ten hours are really good drama. Even if
it is a bit much quantity wise, the quality of exposition matters in this
type of game. All right, well, yeah, I'm on board with
that. Like, uh, you know, death Stranding uh is you know,
a sort of just like a fever dream for the for a long time
before whatever even materializes in anything worth uh you know, spending time with So
I feel like, Okay, that's good to know that that that definitely moves
the needle a little bit for me. Yeah. Uh, I you know,
maybe give it a shot, back, Lark, maybe give it a
shot. I think you'd like these freaks. Maybe I'll just give you.
I'll give you my save file so you pass all that stuff. Oh that
seems illegal. I think, like, you know, time is like my
most sensitive metric now where I'm just like, yeah, I don't have time
for this, Like I don't have time for traffic, I don't have time
for waiting to fall asleep dans bullshit. Oh dude, that's like so far
down on the list. I mean, yeah, it's just like time for
this, you know. So yeah, playing Yakuzer like a dragon is like
being okay with being in traffic, like knowing like I left like two hours
early, I did this to myself. So you're sitting like this. So
if you're saying it was like if I was in traffic, but I just
didn't have to like watch traffic and I could do something else that could work,
while I'm like, it's like traffic. Oh man, I really I
downloaded the Giant BombCast in Today's Actually it's fucking hitting it got It's like,
I'm cool just sitting here and like basking in it type of ship or perhaps
you you get a fun audiobook or something, I don't know, sure,
okay, you're selling it. Yeah where where you know you download it and
you know that you're in for a specific ride for a specific amount of time.
Man, it's just really impressive to just see a game also try and
tackle like real world issues with real people doing dumb shit. Yep, and
they could be very smart and very dumb. And I think that's my favorite
favorite way to good combo. Yeah, yes, good combo, yeah,
where it's like not smart enough, but it's also not that dumb where they're
meeting each other in the middle and giving each other so smart and so dumb
that it averages out to a really meaty part of the curve. Yeah,
there are quick time events in this Most of them aren't too uh detrimental to
the gaming experience if you miss them. A lot of them, specifically for
the combat is just adding a little bit of a damage multiplier or body is
There are no accessibility options in terms of like skipping past that as far as
through the menus I've explored. And then during combat when I am, I
know I can time the defense so I can get a perfect guard and mitigate
how much damage I'm taking, other than when the buttons come up to prompt
me to say so the qt's during combat during an attack, am I doing
more damage if I press the A button at the time that I'm landing the
attack that you're aware of. They have that tooltip where you can kind of
like block a little bit, and I feel like I'm just doing that out
of instinct. Perfect guard, Yeah, but in terms of attack, no,
I don't think you're adding any more extra juice to it. Okay,
that's what I figured, and that like sometimes that does sometimes the button press
does pop up. But I'm like, I really like anytime where I can
press a button during a turn based RPG and like do more damage you could
do, you can get less damage. I still like to having the perfect
guard option, and then some of the attacks for some of your characters definitely
have things where it's like, Okay, at the end of this sequence,
press a button at this right time and it will do more damage. But
that is a QTE sort of thing. God, I can't I can't stop
playing. I did. The worst part about this type and this specific game
coming out on and being playable on the Steam deck very well is that this
is just like a time muncher where I fired it. I like, I
woke up from my little coffee app at night and I was like, oh,
just put in a good two hours into like a Dragon to talk about
it tomorrow, and then I looked at my phone. I'm like, fuck,
it's four am now. Oh my god. But like I'll tell you
for those for that stretch of hours, I was captivated the whole time,
just like, look at these dumb idiots, like you're so stupid, but
I love you so much. Yeah, it's real good. Yeah uh,
all right, well we'll stop glazing a video game and then we'll take a
quick breaking break and then we'll hit you with the news. This is the
self serve key. We ask for fro yo, we don't because we've just
got nothing but big scoops of news. Jeff grub the news. Yam yam
yam yung yam. Folks, don't don't fill it up too much. You
pay per pound here, remember that. And it's that it's that Greek yogurt
scoops, So it's really going to fill you up, so be careful with
that. All right, let's start. Let's get the bad news out of
the way, because I think it's that's going to be twenty twenty four,
everybody the Riot layoffs. Right Games has announced substantial layoffs, eliminating approximately eleven
percent of its global workforce, or about five one hundred and thirty people.
The company emphasizes that this decision is crucial for its future, aiming to refocus
on core development and prioritize areas that have the greatest impact on player experience.
The majority of the layoffs will affect teams outside of core development. Riot will
concentrate on internal development, specifically supporting League of Legends, Valorant, Team Fight
Tactics, and Wild Rift. However, Legends of roun Terra will undergo downsizing
due to financial challenges. Since it's twenty twenty launch, riot Forge, the
third party publishing label, will be discontinued after the release of Bandletail the leak
of Legend Story. The announcement follows a trend of industry wide layoffs, with
an estimated nine thousand job losses in the gaming sector in twenty twenty three.
A GDC survey reveals that around one third of developers were impacted by layoffs and
indicating ongoing challenges in the industry. So, kind of what what's happening here?
There's a lot of things that are causing this. A big part of
this always goes back to people at the top mates of decisions. People at
the bottom are paying for it. That is the simple version of the story.
It is true, and when you try to look at like, what
were the factors that caused those decisions to get made. There's some some good
analysts out on Twitter who were kind of pointing out that Hey, the industry
was up big time during the pandemic, and then forecasts got made at that
point that a lot of these companies began operating under the assumption that that's how
it would work out. And those assumptions were like, Hey, the industry's
going to grow abound around five percent, which is fair. It's a little
a little aggressive for what we were expecting, but five percent single digit growth
in the gaming industry is fair. It's growing a little bit slower than that,
Okay, that's one thing. The problem is that it's growing a little
bit slower than that, and it is sort of sort of coming to terms
with the fact that the industry overall was thirty percent ahead of where forecasts were
supposed to be because of the pandemic. Basically, the industry got really inflated,
and forecasts were based on that inflation instead of sort of a stronger foundation
that is much more realistic. And so all of these companies had really big
ideas about the amount of money that would be coming into the industry, and
they they kept making huge bets, and they kept borrowing money because money was
very affordable to borrow. And now both those things have changed. The forecasts
are looking much gloomier and money is very expensive to borrow, so these companies
now have to sort of exam at things. On top of that, this
is a company that has a big investment from Tencent. Tencent is dealing with
a lot of challenges on the home front because of new laws enacted in China,
which I'm always like, is that actually gonna happen? It seems like
they were going back and forth on this, but basically they're like, all
the monetization tactics, the aggressive monetization tactics that made them a lot of money
in China have been outlawed effectively, and there was a huge drop in the
expectation for Tencent to make money, and that hurt its stock price or whatever.
In China however that works, but basically they don't have like this infinite
backer anymore necessarily that can bail them out. So all these subsidiaries or these
companies that have big investments from Tencent are looking at what they have on their
on their page and they're like, Okay, maybe we need to be stronger
on our own and have a better outlook than what we have right now,
and that means cutting costs. It's over and it's over an over show in
each direction. Yes, right, exactly. It's always hiring too much for
you know, well look in the in the context of like what uh a
company's leadership will accept, right, and uh, it's always uh shedding too
much in the same sort of context. So it's like nothing can ever be
normal. Yeah, in terms of like that overreach, right right. I
mean it comes back to, like you know, obviously infinite growth. Uh.
These you always have to be growing. You can't just wrestle in your
laurels. You can't just make them some amount of money you did last year.
Uh. These whole systems is set up that way. There is no
way to justify that to the to your stockholders. Uh. So you have
to always be growing, and that means making big bets and taking risks.
And so when you're at high tide and you have all this money and the
forecaster are looking great, Yeah, they're gonna They're gonna make these bets.
The problem isn't necessarily that. I mean that is, there's issues with that,
for sure. Yeah. The problem is like who always ends a pain.
It's never the people of the actually make the bets. The CEO came
out and said like, yeah, this tried to make it sound flowery.
Never said anything about taking responsibility in terms of cutting their Yeah, their salary,
the amount of money that they're making from shares, anything like that.
No, it's all we're cutting five hundred and thirty people. Riot is a
studio that people in the industry are looking at this and now they're starting to
worry that because, right, that's a really big one. Riot is the
one that was untouchable, right, it was so well insulated. And I
think to your point that the tencent point cannot be ignored because because they're now
facing this kind of lack of total vertical integration over in China, it's not
just a check they can count on every year now they have to They knew
this was coming. That's why they've made so many investments in the West and
in Europe. So they have been preparing for this for a long time.
But now now that they can't rely on this thing back in age two,
they're looking at even their most prestigious properties and saying, hey, we got
to figure some stuff out here. And yes, it's never the execs that
take that hit, but I would also say it's almost never the shareholders that
take that hit. Like, realistically, what should happen is that you make
this bet, you make it in front of the shareholders and you say,
we're on now a new five year plan. If it doesn't grow five percent
year over year, we're still committed to this employment increase and going through you
know, seeing these things through, and if that means a dip and shareholder
value in year two or three, so be it. But those conversations never
happen like that. It is always so right reactive and it's so scared to
have any sort of shareholder value go down because that's ultimately what exacts care about.
That this is this is the move which is precisely why organizing labor is
so impactful. Like that is how you combat the sort of like cutthroat gross
behavior of you know, a corporation like that Like that, That's how I
mean and that and that to me is still the only silver literally the only
silver lining of twenty twenty three was you know, labor empowerment across all industries.
Right, So yeah, that's how you fight it. It's not gonna
get any better with like actual elected people going forward. Let me promise you
that, right, Let me just promise you that. So yeah, but
you're right, it feels devastating, like it feels like it's a it's a
moment where Okay, this this this company that had figured it out, they
had actually at a scale that was kind of nuts. You know, like
they've got some of the biggest games in the world, and they're scaling in
a way that seems pretty smart, assertive, a little maybe aggressive, but
smart. We know they're going to take on fighting games, we know that
they're going to do interesting stuff. But it's like now the riot war just
going away as part of this restructure, and so it feels it feels big,
and it feels huge in conjunction with the fact that we've already had over
what two thousand layoffs before that. So yeah, not great. Yeah,
and we're not at the end of this, No, we're not. The
In a separate story, and I think games industry dep is talk to an
analyst who has said, if twenty twenty three was the year of layoffs,
twenty twenty four is going to be the year of closures. That's according to
a CEO of one public company. Not just developers, but publishers, media
and service companies. There are just too many unprofitable businesses and video games.
We're looking at up to two years of pain. One publisher boss said,
too many games were greenlit and twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. We need
to get to pre print pandemic levels in terms of release schedule, and that's
probably going to take two years. You could already see publishers signing fewer games.
That's happening everywhere. The stores are saturated, not just Steam, and
the games just aren't delivering the levels that they were. And I think that's
like we can look at several examples of games hitting better than ever. I
think we're talking about though, the average, and we'll talk about fourteen thousand
games getting released on Steam in a year something along those numbers. Obviously,
the average amount of money that those games make is probably literally in the triple
digits it is. So that's just the games. Obviously sort of everything around
there is going to suffer as well. This, yeah, a bubble burst.
The pandemic was, it turns out, was a video gaming bubble and
it burst a little bit, and it's not you know, this is baked
into capitalism. These ups and down, these things are again part of the
system. Which is like, okay, well, what do we do to
mitigate the pain that it causes. Well, the answer for us in the
United States the very least is nothing. We don't do anything to mitigate that,
which is a shame because it's a known phenomenon and a part of capitalism.
We know what's going to happen. Abobb a burst, A bunch of
people are going to get hurt, and two years of pain sounds about right.
I don't know for in the second year of that, probably maybe two
years left it's going to be. It could be rough out there. In
the meantime, a lot of these companies are making more money than ever though,
so it's like, how do we again square that circle? I don't
know, right, all right, Yeah, well, I'm sure we'll have
more talks about layoffs going out through the rest of the the next coming weeks.
Quick question for y'all with for as many layoffs that have happened in the
video game industry, like when does this start to gain traction with like mainstream
media or mainstream news instead of just lumping it with more tech layoffs, because
like you know, I'll tune into the local news and they'll talk about they
will touch on some of like these video game layoffs, but they'll lump it
with stuff like with Meta or Google layoffs as well, when it's it's still
related to tech industry. Yes, but it's very very different, right.
I think you have to penetrate, right, you have to penetrate through the
storyline that unemployment in this country is fairly low. It's under four percent,
I believe, I think it's like three points something. So I think you
have that as the sort of pushing back narrative of like, you know,
obviously jobs getting lost in our line of work is terrible and shitty and it
impacts a ton of people. But I think if you're looking for a mainstream
coverage of that unemployment being so low, it's just not piercing through. It
would have to be one of these big named publishers closing. It would have
to be like, oh, you know, Activision shut down half of their
business or something like that that might get picked up like on NPR and stuff
like that. And this stuff actually does occasionally here on like like if like
hey, Google, what's the what's the latest news? And it reads me,
it does like the NPR thing. Occasionally they'll talk about big video game
playoffs, right, twitch ones broke through also, I think because of it
being an Amazon property, right right, exactly so. But in terms of
something that will be talked about in a way, it's like, oh,
this is a pandemic in the industry of people losing their jobs. It feels
like we're very far away from that. Probably doesn't happen unless it's like,
oh, PlayStation is going to cut something something close to like ten thousand jobs
or something like that. I think I asked this because, you know,
with like the wag strikes and the sag after strikes from last year, I
feel like a lot of friends suddenly became literate to the the plight and the
woes of the inn attainment industry. So I wonder, like, well,
some more literacy with video games will Will that help educate any people? But
you know, capitalism, Yeah, and we're just like it feels like,
you know, the video game industry is as secretive for this reason. They
don't want us really understanding how our games get made because that would empower the
workers a little bit more. So, we're kind of we're far away from,
like me, understanding how we get a lot of these video games,
let alone people who don't follow this stuff at all. The disgusting side of
it is like seeing people defend it online of like, oh, well,
yes, that's rough. You know, this game wasn't measuring up, so
I'm glad that they're going to get some fresh blood in and it's like,
no, you fucking idiot, let's not really how that was. Yeah,
there was, and there was a lot of that was around Destiny and Bungee,
where it's like, oh, they're up to fourteen thousand people or fourteen
hundree hundred people and they just laid off people so that they're hiring more people
than they laid off, and it's like, no, you you actually just
are your numbers are wrong. They've laid off people, they have fewer than
they have before. But you are trying to celebrate because this is part of
some weird console war thing and they're owned by Sony and you want to celebrate
that. And now you and you're kind of dancing on the grade of the
graves of the people that did get laid off because you're like, oh,
they must have cut the fat. They cut the fat. These people weren't
delivering because look at those states of the game it's like, now, homie,
that's that again. I could tell I could show you who to point
to, and it's it's the people that are at the top that aren't going
to lose their job. Yeah. I think jan To kind of checkered a
question about like how does this break through at all? I think you look
at Riot because just this yar size of it, I think you can also
almost feels like an afterthought, given how many layoffs that have been so far
this year. But I think Unity is a good example of a company that
is so gaming focused it had been, and then their CEO, John rickety
rickety buckets or whatever. Yeah, he he decided, he said, hey,
we're we're no longer just a gaming company. We're spreading ourselves into all
these different directions. And then you know, when that stuff was a total
disaster, everybody else kind of paid for it with this crazy turnover. And
you know, I think that's a decent intersection of tech and gaming that I
would hope people focus on, both in terms of capitalists excess, but also
the ways in which games companies have scaled in irresponsible ways since the pandemic started.
And it's like, I feel like games companies are maybe not uniquely responsible
for scaling like that, but I do think they are. We're seeing so
much of it and it's so clear what's happening that that's you know, I
think those are pretty good examples. Riots should be absolutely one of the stories
that breaks through, but we'll see. But yeah, it's a it's a
harrowing, harrowing thing to see this many people out of work that report about
like, you know, a third of people working in games have been affected
by layoffs in the past year. Like, that's an absurd number. That
is an absurd number, and we should hopefully these games battle but I'm sorry,
we just we should just feel bad about it, sit with it,
and think about how to fix it. And it does start with organization probably,
but they're also legislative and regula. Story of stuff that I think is
going to happen have to happen too, yep. And are we anywhere near
any of that? I hope doesn't feel like it. Yeah, well,
this keep sticking with these stories. I think it's what we're going to find
out here is that, Yeah, the industry is going to have to shift
out of that high tide of we did green light so many games and that
hopefully that doesn't mean there's like a ton or a lot fewer jobs out there
right now. There are still so many projects being made that a lot of
these senior developers are going to be able to get jobs no problem. People
coming into the industry right now, it seems like they're going to have a
harder and harder time breaking in. If you want to work at one of
these big companies and making a game, it's just going to be really rough
out there. They are not going to be green lighting a lot new a
lot of new projects. So yeah, well and good luck everybody, And
not to put such a gloomy period at the end of the sentence, but
like also with hiring cycles, you're having so many layoffs. This is a
grim thought, but I think it is happening that these other companies that are
hiring are almost waiting for the big fish to do their layoffs, so that
then they've got that pool to pull them from. You know. You know,
hiring recruiters just got a bunch of really high quality candidates from Riot,
and now that's going to push down a lot of people that were already applying
for jobs and interviewing for jobs. Whatever the interview to success pipeline is as
worse as as bad as I've ever seen it in my fifteen year career as
a professional. It is the worst time to be looking for a job in
the space. There is nothing I can tell you that can make that better
except for broaden your horizons a little bit and maybe work on the craft of
making games outside of this coosystem while something changes, because it is going to
be so tough to break into these places right now. Yep, I think
that's right, all right, Moving on, Power World is the biggest game
in the world right now, and people are being very chill about it.
It's sold about six million copies. It looks a lot like we got this,
We got the six million copies. Yes, it looks a lot like
Pokemon, plays a lot like fifty other games. It's a successful game on
Steam, facing allegations of plagiarism for its character designs resembling Pokemon. Well the
gameplay differs accusations on social social media claims similarities in character designs of course to
Pokemon. It's because like it feels like this game has been with us forever
now. It just came out on Friday, right, so it's like four
or five days that we've had this or something like that. God, that's
wild. But basically the story here is, uh, Pokemon Company, Nintido
haven't said anything. The VGC has talked to some people that used to work
at the Pokemon Company. In fact, like I think someone who's like the
they're head of legal and that part has said, yeah, that this looks
like rip off shit, Like it looks like crap, that's just ripping off
Pokemon. That's you know, not going to necessarily to want like to Pokemon
Company doing something, but like that, Yeah, that's the opinion of someone
that used to work there. There's been a lot of back and forth about
is this actually plagiarism and then what can the company do about it? It
almost certainly has I look at him like you can do the eye test.
This is trying to be like Pokemon. They're not trying to hide that,
and clearly they want you to be thinking of Pokemon when you're looking at a
lot of these characters. Did they do enough to get out from underneath any
claims that like, oh the damages have been done to Pokemon. I don't
know a lot of experts that think, yes, that this is going to
be a very hard thing for the Pokemon Company to prove was actually done.
And even if it's like they did take some of your models, it's like
if they were inspired by it and they changed that, they might still be
able to get away with it. That doesn't mean people aren't very mad about
it online. They are, but the game continues to sell. Like last
time, Yeah, it was like four million a day and a half ago
and two million copies since then. It's just continuing to sell. I don't
know what do you guys expects next for this game in terms of how do
they support it. Do they lean into this stuff or do we get a
point where, like something, we wake up one day and it's off of
Steam or something. No, I'm trying to think of the game that it
is reminding me of that had such a meteoric like you know, out of
the Gate sort of reaction and then fell off a fucking cliff, and I
do I don't know what it is about this one, but I do get
that from it again Bird, Yeah, litigation aside of what could potentially happen,
I have no idea, but like you know, I also haven't played
this. I only watched you chuckle FOCKX play it for a little bit,
and uh, I'm not interested. But yeah, I don't know. I
don't know if it has legs, I don't know. Yeah, that is
like one of the questions they are. They're at least going to make a
lot of money. Six million copies sold. It's about twenty seven dollars on
Steam. It's gonna be thirty dollars a year pretty soon. It's also in
game Pass. They made money there. It's probably also selling on Xbox separately.
They're they're doing they're doing Buco Bucks. They are making a lot of
money from this. I just I kind of hope they stick with it.
I hope they keep improving this game. I hope this is not a case
of like, Okay, well we did that, now we're going to move
on to our next game, which is basically a similar idea of taking something
else, mashing together, mashing it together with a bunch of ideas, basically
doing another Craft. Hope, Yet they did Craft. Hopia they did this.
I kind of want them to stick with this and see what they can
do. But I think you're on Backlar. I think there's a strong chance
that we look back in six months and be like remember when everyone was playing
that, right, Yeah, like, uh, there's something about it.
And again this is just me completely surface level from the outside looking in,
it feels and now I know people are saying like, well, it's competent
and it actually like is a game that is fun and people enjoy it because
it's actually fun and it's not just like a mean game. But that's what
I But that's that's where I feel like my brain sort of instantly knee jerk
points. They was like, oh, people are playing it just because of
just how because of that momentum that it's been able to cultivate. Well,
that's true. A lot of that come out of twitch and stuff. Yeah
yeah, but I don't think that necessarily means that that doesn't guarantee the game
is going to disensure. I just of course it very easily could. I
mean, suicide squads out in a week everybody. So this game does not.
I don't believe you. February second, right, gamebody, whatever you
say. I'm thinking about this more about trying to chase like the Pokemon,
trying to chase Pokemon in general, and I feel like out of all of
the Pokemon clones, out there, because for as many that blow up like
Powerworld, there's like a million other Pokemon clones out there. Like, they're
not all pocket monsters. Some of them are like little robits or whatever.
I think this one's probably doing it right. And it feels weird to say
that because chasing the proper Pokemon formula exposes that the base game of Pokemon is
kind of bad and boring. Yeah, and I'm sorry to say it,
my fellow Pokemon freaks out there, but we're playing a baby game and I
fully admit that, fully admit that it's dumb. It's for babies, and
we're all dumb babies. But like, you know, they can make the
game better. I think that's why like Pokemon Legends, Archaius Arsius whatever at
the one game. Yeah, like that was such a fresh injection into that
formula, right, yep. Yeah. I think there's there's a lot of
dryness to the formula and has for a long time that that franchisees operated on
a passionate mix of nostalgia and uh. I think I think love for the
visual design, and I think that visual design stuff is part of the equation
here of like why some people are mad is that you know, they are
copying a visual design. You know, they're not doing something like a little
robots or collectible uh ruffians in Yakuza or whatever. It's like, it's it
is just a a riff on this and I'm using rift loosely because it is
close. So you know, I think they're they're weirdly shrewd in a way,
uh pocket pair to say, like yeah, like they kind of they
kind of get the you know, they kind of get the formula and they
know what works about it, but they know what kind of doesn't right now,
so there doing something different, you know, And I think that's why
it's breaking a lot of people's brains. It's just like, yeah, it's
just a combination of like, oh, they've done this thing that looks so
similar, but it's also like, you know, it's a it's a bastardization
because of the guns and putting them the work of these factories, but also
it's like kind of interesting in a way that Pokemon hasn't been maybe in a
little while. So I don't know, it's it's I kind of get why
it's breaking people's brains now. Three days in a little while before that,
I was like, oh wow, I don't I don't know, but uh
yeah, I kind of get it now, I get I get it.
The discourse is frustrating, though, because it's just a lot of people that
won't play frustrating, won't acknowledge that, like all these things could be true,
that it is Pokemon fans like this is they stole it. That's why
this is not acceptable. You can't be like, oh, you don't care
about this because someone stolen. It's like they just literally didn't steal. It's
copyright infringement. They copied something and I just don't have it, and copyright
it's so strong, I don't feel the need to give it my weight by
being like I'm going to stand in the way of this in any real way.
And then there's people on the other side like, well, this doesn't
look this just looks like any other animal. It's like the good fuck off.
Clearly they're clearly they're copying. Don't be an idiot, don't be silly,
like, of course they're trying to copy Pokemon. It's obvious if you
just look at it per a second. But so what, there's so what.
I just can't care. There's also a contingent of people that have frustrated
to me that have just asserted that this is AI generated and some yeah again,
And I feel like we're we're now coming into a place where if someone
doesn't like something, they go, I think this is probably AI generated.
We like, we have got to get a grip on that conversation because like,
one, the technology is not where you think it is. First note.
Two, it is important, in my opinion, for us to fight
the tide of creative genera of AI in these spaces to an extent, because
like, I believe in real people doing real work and all that stuff.
But if we're at the point where we're like, oh, we see something
we don't like, we think a machine did it, well, One,
you're being pretty fucking rude to some people who probably did work on this thing,
whether you think they copyright in French or not. That's that's a that's
a whack thing to do. And two it's just not helpful in the in
the broader scheme of like this conversation, which is new. One, it
degradates the argument. Yeah, it totally does. So, Like that's another
part of it that I've been really frustrated by. I'm just like you're asserting
this thing that has not been confirmed or reported at all. You've been using
the words of the CEO who said, like, yeah, we've done some
AAI generated stuff before in this one game. The CEO say that shit all
the time, and it's like, you can't just go around saying something is
true to and it hasn't been reported on and confirmed and all that stuff,
and like that's to me, that's been a frustrating part of this as well.
It's the only lesson you ever need to learn is boy who Cried Wolf?
Like that's it. It just shows up over and over again. I'm
forty one and I'm like, man, that's the fucking lesson you gotta learn.
Fucking really gotta lay that in there. So tell me this, bud.
Can we have this conversation over again in the fantasy world where you don't
own this as a game that you're betting against. Oh yeah, in that
case, this rules. I love this ship just started to bring this up
at every point in every franchise Giant World. Yes, I think I'm gonna
I think I'm gonna be safe because I think, uh, I don't think
it will go into one point zero this year. So I think. I
think what will happen is it won't get a score on Open Critic, and
so I'll skate by. But I'm worried that if it actually did get scores,
it might get like low eighties or something like that. That would be
messed up. But listen, it's a fine game. The people who are
like this is really good and really Solid'm like, no, it's fine.
I played a lot of other survival sims. It's one of those guys.
Come on it really like I think we said what I was playing it like.
It felt like someone took if there's like a survival sim pack on Unreal
and they copying and paste on the game. Now, the way it's impressive
is the way the Pokemon, the pals like interact with all that stuff.
That is cool, but it actually it still it gets you to the same
place in the end. It kind of feels like I think there isn't a
lot of crossover with the Pokemon audience in playing survival games because I feel absolutely
they don't have that barometer for like, oh, okay, this is this
is a good one of these oh sick cool. The avenue that I'm sorry
to think about is do you think that seeing the overwhelming success of Power World,
whether or not it is stolen things from Pokemon or whether it's generating you're
using AI for any garbo, do you think this motivates the Pokemon Company or
Nintendo to bring Pokemon out of the Nintendo Switch and whatever? Is the Nintendo
switch too interesting? What do you mean like move it? Move the Pokemon
beyond then to the platform I can I can play a Pokemon game on my
esteem deck legally. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it may be
causes a conversation to happen, but I think everyone's like, no, no
way. They're so tied to their first party hardware kind of ecosystem, and
I don't hear anything that differently about the switch to stuff, So I don't
know. And also I think that they would look at it. I think
as yeah, we're leaving money on the table, but it's because we're not
taking the time to make all these other things to have Pokemon stuff in them,
like we didn't make a Pokemon survival game. I think they have that
conversation at the Pokemon Company. Yeah, I don't know if Nintendo is going
to be involved in that, you know, they would be as much as
they need to be involved for the games to get made. But I think,
you know, with the Pokemon Company, like, hey, Nintendo,
who is one third of our owners ownership, can we work with a new
studio to do this? I think they would probably come up with something like
that, there's too much money being made by this game for the Pokemon Company
to ignore it. They won't ignore it completely, but I don't know how
much the Pokemon Company is capable of responding. It feels like a company that
is very, very set in their ways and they make enough enough money,
Like we say, it's never enough. I think it's one of the companies
where maybe it's enough money. Yeah, maybe, Yeah, the Pokemon Company
got me. They decided sorry, they got you. I can't believe it.
Oh no, oh no, you're in the pal zone. You're in
the pal zone. All right. I'm gonna keep moving here with the news
insider claims that PERSONA three reload in metaphor Refantasio are coming to switch to an
Atlas insider whose name I can't pronounce because there's a bunch of letters known for
accurately suggest that PERSONA three reload in metaphor Refantasio could come to the Switch's successor
Persona three Reload is a modernized remake set for release on February second, and
it's coming to PS five Xbox Series X and SPS four Xbox one and PC.
Metaphor Refantasio was expected release later this year for PS five Xbox Series X
and SPS four and PC. Despite initial plans against they Switch release, Atlas
is reportedly discussing it with the team due to fan demand. The Insider indicates
that both games will be on the next Nintendo hardware. That sounds about right
at this point. Putting these big games even on the Switch would be risky
e even if you do like even if they could run great, and even
if you've got them out on time, any game that you're releasing on a
Nintendo platform and the year when a new Nintendo platform is coming out is a
risk. Well, look what happened three Yes, very successful, the Switch
came out and fucking dead. Just completely pull the plug on it. No
game sold after the Switch came out. It won't be exactly the same year.
The Switch is gonna have more momentum than that, But it feels like
why not if you have a game like that ready to go? And you
want to like have it running on better hardware, put it on the switch
to and yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me. We're probably
gonna see a lot of this, right, a lot of these games,
Yeah, I think so. WWE two K twenty four is coming to March
and Cody Rhodes is on the cover. Two K Sports is officially announced WWE
two K twenty four, the latest installment in the WWE two K series,
set to release on March eighth, available on PS five Xbox Series X and
SPS four Xbox One in PC. The standard edition features Cody Roads on the
cover. Well, the Deluxe Edition showcases Bianca bel Air and Rhea Ripley and
that both those covers look really really good. A special forty Years of WrestleMania
edition includes the original artwork with iconic WWE figures. The main showcase mode celebrates
WrestleMania the forty years to WrestleMania. I believe they're calling it enabling players to
recreate historic matches and unlocking new content, new match types, and interactive features
in the backstage areas, which is working elevators and breakable glass enhanced gameplay.
It's gonna shoot glass Yeah, the game's coming. I think the last one
was pretty decent. I wonder if if they're going to keep it, if
they're going to have the momentum to be able to make this even better.
I don't know. They're sticking to yearly releases. They did take one year
off. I think that they're very happy to be back here. I'll check
it out. We'll see Cody Roads in the cover makes a lot of sense.
Did you hear Netflix? Yeah? Oh yeah, Raw Raw. Yeah,
that's crazy. So it's going to be the streaming home of Raw.
I will still be on USA, I suppose, but if you want to
stream it, it's going to be live on Netflix, probably with commercials.
Yeah, right, what are they going to do? Actually? Yeah,
I don't know. That's interesting. That's a huge deal. It's uh,
what was it. I think it was five billion over ten years, So
it's it's a huge deal. I think it's smacked Down not on USA.
Yeah, it's not. And so Peacock is going to have I think the
maybe the reruns of SmackDown, I think, but Fox is going to be
on SmackDown Raw on Netflix, and then I think all the pay per view
library is once again going to migrate to a news service, so we'll probably
lose like thirty percent of it because we lost the percent of it going from
Network to Peacock and now Peacock to Netflix. So yeah, kind of while
good deal for w W, I guess five billion dollar, five billion dollar
deal. I mean, ye, this guarantees more people are gonna watch it.
Yeah. Yeah, either and the wrestlings, like, the stories are
good, the wrestling is pretty good right now. This is the time for
them to have a little bit of a surge in terms of interest in wrestling.
They could capitalize on this in a big way. Yeah, I'm certainly
in a w gurley, But like I I do, I have to admit
like they've they've got me back in a little bit, just because I think
the roster has gotten really good. I think less Vince McMahon is good.
It turns out you can tell that there's less events, and I think less
events is a good thing. So yes, it makes a difference. So
yeah, No, And in the game, like I thought two K twenty
three was pretty good, it's I don't think it was just in comparison to
that a w game, which was actually I think very bad. I enjoy
I enjoy it, but it is it's not I don't think Yeah, I
don't think it's good. I think it's an okay game. So I was
I was happy they took that year off to make, you know, get
really reacquainted with the engine, because it was not theirs originally, so they
wanted to kind of build into it. And two K, like say,
we will about the modernization practices of the NBA two K games because they're bad,
but in terms of Bell, the Bell gameplay like that stuff is pretty
solid. Yeah, having two K take more time with this engine, I'm
expecting good things from from twenty four and uh yeah, Cody is on the
cover and they're never going to finish that story. Sorry but no, no,
it makes too much money from not finishing it. I think Hamming of
Texas did break it down for US. Netflix is on raw, CW has
NXD, Fox will still have some backdown, Peacock will have the premium Live
events Peak. However, however, Netflix has it all outside of the United
States. Oh outside, That's what I was thinking about, all right,
So thanks, let's go on that VPN. Thanks for yeah, thanks for
clearing that up. Yeahs, So, is there still a ww not that
I care, but no, there's not an aw work not in the US,
in the US. Yeah, okay, I guess I missed that headline.
Yeah yeah, that's when they went over to Peacock. Yeah, he
got it. I can't wait for uh Randy Orin to pop up an extraction.
Three, let's fucking go. I mean what like, yeah, I
don't want to make this. Let's beat up Netflix for their garbage content the
last three years. But like I've I don't what was like the last really
compelling, awesome thing on Netflix original that was like an original squid Games.
No, there's been something since that. I'm talking about the reality show Squid
Games. Hasn't there been like a movie or something or movies have been pretty
pretty much duds, Like I Feeltflix and it's become like some weird combination of
like network and like yeah, yeah, Fincher's yeah there the new Finchers.
It's not a great Fincher probably. Yeah, it's okay. A lot of
the shows hit. That's the Beef the show, their shows hit. But
I think that someone said that that beef show, that beef show, Rebel,
moon Child, fire emveryone's talking about Rebel moon Child of Fire Part one
World. I hate that movie is so bad and I kind of want to
watch it again. I hate I hate that that director's cut ship is just
now built into his entire ethos, like released a bad one, the brand
A new one is gonna come out at some point, and it's just like
it's a there's so much sex in the Lady Wood can wait for you see
people on Newflukex. It's just like, like, I don't know, I'm
so tired of the director's cut ships built in. Society of Snow got the
Oscar nomination. What's that? That's Oh yeah, that's one of their new
movies. I haven't I haven't watched it. Yeah, Avars New Live.
Actually Avatar is coming. I that looked pretty shit hot. Actually it's a
sight. It looks all right. Yeah, sorry, sorry, But Society
of the Snow is a twenty twenty three Spanish survival thriller film that is based
on the true story of the nineteen seventy two Rugby team plane crash. Is
that a love it's a lot? Yeah. Yeah, this is the Cannibal
Snow people. No, I'm no longer in the Society of the Snow.
Yeah, I've heard to qush the home back. You live that life.
You don't need to see a movie about it. I love the Winter,
but not that much. Hey, let me tell you, I watched that
Avatar trailer this morning. It looks it looks pretty good. It does look
good, just like in the Pocket Avatar exactly. It's not that Avatar Backlar.
No, No, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I was
those guys first, and then I joined the Blue People. Yeah yeah,
but yo, man, man, like the casting is God on point in
a way that's like, oh y'all, y'all did that? Well? Okay,
okay, great, Yeah they got they got us in in ane shyamalana
a bottle of champagne for like setting it up at the bar so long.
Yeah right, yeah right, like now we're onto something. Yeah, five
different Asian people there we go. Right. Uh. The best thing on
Netflix is that show where little Japanese kids have to go to the store by
them. Oh my god, what's it called? Uh? Little Japanese kids
have to go to the It's been on television for like thirty eight years or
something. Yeah enough, old enough enough, old enough. Yeah, rule
love that. I watched that I'm like, you can do it? Like
this is cruel, Like they're crossing the street. They're like buying stuff at
the market, breaks the chicken. Like the chicken and the fish go rolling
down the hill and it's all dirty and they put it back in the bag.
Good oh man, that show all right? Capcom broke it his own
game on Steam Deck because of DRM and because they're kind of stupid. The
latest update to Monster Hunter Rise has removed Danuvo anti tamper technology or replaced it
with the controversial Enigma Protector DRM. This is something that they have done repeatedly,
causing performance issues and making the game unplayable on Steam Deck. It works
on a switch, so if you made your game worse and it came run
a steam Deck anymore, excuse me, you made a mistake here. Capcom
has acknowledged the issue and is currently investigating. There was a report that Capcom
was going to stop doing this because there was a backlash then putting Enigma after
Danuvo, but it seems like they just keep doing it, so, I
don't know, hopefully get to a point where they just cut this out,
because who's really Capcom? You need DRM in a game that's like that old
and has already sold. Just please let us have our games work, especially
if you're breaking it on Steam Deck. Lego may have a Great Deco Tree
set. A Lego set based on the Great Deco Tree from the Legend of
Zelda's rumored for release in September twenty twenty four. If accurate, it would
be the late Goes first set based on the long running Zelda franchise. This
is from a person that has a pretty good track history of getting these right.
It would be a twenty five hundred piece set, and I think I
think that'd be very very cool. I don't think we've seen any like leaked
images of it yet, but I can imagine it and I want to build
it. Walmart is going is we're probably going to throw copies of Starfield,
sorry I thought, and I'm gonna bury it in the desert. Walmart is
reportly set to dispose of physical copies of the Xbox Series ex exclusive games Starfield
starting next week. The retailer plans to mark down the game's physical copies from
sixty nine to ninety nine to three cents and implement a point of sale block
from Monday, January twenty second. This means customers won't be able to purchase
the game, but some may have the chance to acquire it for next to
nothing. The memo outlining the plans was shared by Walmart employees on social media.
While there's a possibility of it being faked, it's actually it seems like
it's real. By the way, crazy So it seems like this is one
of those situations where they order too much stock and they're gonna go take it
out back with a hammer and destroy it. That's probably what's going to happen
here. So yeah, can they just give it back to Todd? Right?
This is yours now? That only works at certain circumstances where you can,
like the publishers promised to buy it back or whatever. Wow, that
is wild. They Xbox is very digital at this point. Yeah, Xbox
series was pretty popul like everything's digital now, oh my, oh my god,
everything, you know, everything's just digital. We're just living a digital
world. We're living in the all digital future. It's here now. Yeah,
this is inevitable. I guess I asked this on Game this morning.
I'll ask you guys this it Does the next Xbox system have a disk drive?
No? But they'll sell you one. Yeah, yeah, that sounds
right, and they are. I feel like the most horny to do that,
to like get rid of the drive for sure. I mean, and
the PS five Slim it doesn't have a drive unless you buy a separate one.
So Sony's already doing it. Xbox is definitely going to do that.
I don't think I think that's coo cool. Here's the most important story of
the week. It's a rumor that Hayden Christiansen is going to play Shadow and
the Sonic movies this fucking Anakin Skywalker mother. Yeah? Yes, Oh?
Is that not a good enough actor to play Shadow? The head choice?
Why is it a good choice? Explain to me what's a good choice.
I I don't really care, but why is it a good choice? Because
shadows moody and tumber, mental and angsty, and he's like the perfect little
like whiny little Vader exactly. Yeah, it's gonna give Hayden Christiansen a chance
to be kind of the best version of that. I feel like, all
right, then I embraced this version and I'm happy for him, honestly,
of course. Like it's like, I don't know that the prequels are getting
a re evaluation. I think I think for some good reason that ideas and
yeah, but it's like, you know, when he showed up to do
that Obi Wan presser or whatever, like the reception for him was so warm
and he was like so amblin. I'm just like, Okay, Yeah,
this dude's career legitimately got kind of derailed by how the fandom of this thing
is just kind of like could not detach him from the parts of this that
they didn't like. So I like that he's getting more work. I think
he's a talented actor, and I think like, especially if he's got something
to chew on with something kind of coah, he's charisma, like this will
be fine. I think it's a good call. Cool. Yeah. And
then finally there was an extbox to Developer Direct last week Indiana Jones in the
Great Circle. Ben name is first person that's coming to twenty twenty four as
help Blade. Hel Blade tell me it's bad. Hel Blade two is coming
May twenty first, it's eight hours. It's gonna be fifty dollars. They
confirmed later. Ora History, I'm told is fall twenty twenty four. That's
that civilization, Like that's gonna have some grand strategy elements in it. Avowed
is confirmed for fall twenty twenty four. They did it even longer, a
video of this after this Developer Direct Games looking pretty good and it's Obsidian,
so I'm gonna I'm kind of giving them the benefit of doubt right now.
And then they also had visions of mana show up in this from Square Innox
that's coming in summer twenty twenty four. Got a better look at that.
That looks really good Indiana Jones, though, that's the high the highlight of
this show. It looked. I think it looked really good. I was
pretty impressed by it. Yeah. I showed a lot of normy people this
trailer and they were just blown away. So really that's cool here. I
loved match cuts people. Oh my god, Jan you're so especially up to
rhythm like music. Absolutely, And I do think for whatever, I like,
I don't know, I guess I didn't. I guess I know Indiana
Jones is like a relevant ip in twenty twenty four. I don't know how
much for people under like thirty, not very right, but like there is
something about it, you know. But again, the instant reaction was like,
oh is this uncharted Is this a jar? And I'm like, yes,
it is Charted five. Uh, they are separating themselves from that by
being first person. So you showed it your normal friends. Were they prone
off by the first person or like they played no friends? No, they're
they're not site their normies. They're not psychos, their normies. Right,
So they were like, this is fine, I'm gonna play a game that
obviously thousands of people worked on really hard. Like that's okay, fantastic.
Yeah, So if these games come out when they say so, this is
a pretty decent lineup for Xbox except where we look at and not much until
May. That said, they did have power holding game paths, so if
they're worried about getting people playing games on Xbox, they're probably doing just fine
when you look at it. Uh, that does it for the news.
I'm handing the showback over to you, Jan. Can you have imagine,
Jeff Backlar, how much more your normy friends would be into it if it
had match cuts to imagine dragons? Oh, let's go imagining. Could you
imagine paying fifty Could you imagine paying fifty one dollars for this game in a
fantasy league? I couldn't. Oh is that how much Mike Manatti spent on
it? That's like half your budget? That's and he got another game,
too, didn't he? He got Scull and Bone. Oh no, wait
he I got Picking against Scull and Bone. Sorry? Who he got a?
No, he got a vowed did we pick about? Yeah? No,
one picked a so he picked it up. Okay, I got a.
I got a Dragon age a Treadwolf. And what I did before I
got that as I talked to a source and that says, is that's still
coming out this year? And they said yes. And I put a little
trading bit in there and it was not fifty one fucking dollars we need the
commissioner. Isn't that insider trading? Is that not illegal? Try stop me?
Actually here, here's why I did it. I told Sean about it.
I love I love that he's on it. I love that, at
least for me, this entire Fantasy Critic thing is like the underlying like C
story DP of Giant Bomb. Right. I love that you keep bringing it
up. Honestly, that's great because I'm wanna forget so having you always been
like, doesn't someone have that game? I love that I'm the little ticker
at the bottom of the screen reminding everybody this is still an important storyline.
It's an important storyline. Somehow Lucy James is going to win the league.
I know this, Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, and then I'm
going to be in prison because the SEC is going to come for me.
So but oh well, well it's fine. We all need our prison arc.
We're gonna go imagine ourselves in prison and imagine a bunch of dragons and
then we'll be back with emails. Collusion. Uh BombCast giant bomb dot com
is the email addressed to send your emails to. You can send your betting
odds to who you think is going to win the Fantasy Critic League. Here
giant bomb dot com you can send emails about virtually any and everything, and
I read all of them, even the spam email chains and mailing lists that
you sign us up to. Thank you for sending me that jollyb coupon.
I'm going to assume that was geared towards me anyway. First email of the
show comes from Josh from Ottawa, and I'm going to tell you based off
the subject, no it can't be but Josh writes in Hello Bomb Crew.
With the recent successive Power World, it had me thinking, what do you
think it would take for Pokemon to go through a drastic change or a breath
of the wild kind of change, a serier strong competitor, serier strong competitor,
Pokemon games not being as profitable, or jan giving up on Pokemon cards.
I hope you're all having a fantastic day, Josh from Ottawa. If
Pokemon made a real life like action adventure thing where you're, like, I
guess swapping out between Pokemon as you like, have a campaign kind of thing,
like, I feel like that would open it up to a huge audience
that is probably not into Pokemon, right, Like it's pretty much one dimensional
for the video game side of things. I think, Yeah, I think
Legends Archias is like trending in that direction, right. I mean, I
definitely got I get Breath with the Wild vibes from Linoleum, but I got
Breath with Wild Vibes from from that game as well. Okay, so,
but very very very like diet diet diet, like the zero calorie version of
it, I think for them to like go whole hog in a new direction,
to fully embrace like what a Legends Archias like follow up could be.
I do the guests to be loss of sales, less money, or a
very obvious stagnation for a very long time, even like a slow just slow
tail off. It doesn't have to be a drastic drop in sales, but
if things stop growing from time to time, it's like, oh, the
last one's sold twenty five million, this one's sold nineteen million. That's still
more than almost any other game. And if the next one does seventeen million,
I think right then they are they have other ideas ready to go.
There's something such a shame about that thinking though, of like kind of like,
oh, this has got to get bad for us to get out of
this groove we're in. But it's like it's so non aspirational, Like I
would love for them to take a chunk of that team and say, Okay,
you've got five years to yeah, build something really profound and interesting,
and Nintendo's go We're gonna go out and get the budget for it, Andtendo's
going to greenlight it. We can probably project a certain amount of sales if
we do these certain things differently, they take a big swing, like just
try it at some point, like you've got one of the most beloved franchises
of all time, do something a little bit different. I'm not saying get
out of your full groove. You can still release a couple of standalone titles
that do the same thing and people are still going to gobble them up.
Probably, But yeah, I would love for a chunk of that team to
break off and do something interesting. It reminds me a little bit of like
you've got these different teams within Square Enix. You obviously have a big team
that's working on all the Final Fantasy seven stuff, and you have some Final
Fantasy fourteen people, and obviously the main line Final Fantasy stuff. It's like,
you can you can kind of be all those things at once. If
you have the resources, and I think Nintendo has them, they could just
you know, allocate them in a way that they haven't been. I don't
know, It's possible, but not likely. I'd love to see like a
reboot of sorts because I thought, surprisingly enough, Let's Go Pikachu, Let's
Go EV was like revisiting the old formula in a positive way and taking in,
yeah, lessons that they've taken from Pokemon Go in a positive way.
Well also still having some of that hardcore shiny hunting collecting on them all,
even the battling aspect of it, in a easily digestible way. So yeah,
they have the runway to make a mistake or shake things up where maybe
do a harder reboot where you don't have to be in line with whatever the
current anime season is. You don't need a whole new generation of new Pokemon
that are like not that great. You have a whole wealth of Pokemon to
just fludge around with and pick and choose to make like a different one fifty
from the original one fifty because there's what a thousand Pokemon now and even those
newer Pokemon they got introduced in Scarlet and Violet, some of them are just
rehashes of existing Pokemon, but they made them robots. It's stupid. Yeah,
I I think that we'll get to a point where they do kind of
reset some of these things. But I think it'll be like after a new
sort of crop of leadership comes into the Pokemon Company. I think that's where
we're at. Where it's like they are they they aren't aspirational, They just
straight up aren't they have they that is they have what works, and they're
gonna stick that plan and keep doing it over and over again. Yeah.
I think that's kind of so we're gonna be stuck with what it is for
quite some time. I just hope, like on the margins here where we
do get the Legends games, someone can take some risks sort of under the
radar, and maybe one of those pops off so hard that's like, whoa,
what if this was just our main next game, Maybe that could happen.
Yeah, Like some of the Hisisuayan versions of Pokemon kind of like wound
up leapfrogging the existing Pokemon and kind of took a place in the existing Pokemon
meta. Yo, what if there's like a different Pikachu. What if Detective
Pikachu is completely different than regular Pikachu and he has completely different moves. He's
not an electric mouse, He's just like coffee type. He's just a guy.
He's just a dude. I played that my new game of Power World
for five minutes and caught a shiny cat Tivia, So I'm sorry for you.
Here here's my pitch. Here's my pitch. Pokemon Company. Get ready,
get your check books ready, get ready to cut to the check.
All right, you have like a uh your your main protagonist. You play
as chars Ar chars Ards down on his luck and uh he's trying to get
out of the crime world and bad gambling addiction, bad gambling addiction. He
was caught up in the crime world. He got switched at birth with a
different with Dragon Knight right, and then Dragon Knight wound up taking all the
charm and all the shine and Charisards fighting from the bottom and he chars be
friends a bunch of ragtag other pokemon that are kind of like dumpy but fun
loving. And you call this game pokemon like a dragon because he is not
quite a dragon, he just looks like one. There you go, folks.
Next email comes from Uriel from Texas, and this is about poker names.
Hello bomb cast crew, first time emailer, long time listener with all
the recent poker talk and possible future poker content. Oh what everyone's poker name
be formst regards during this cold winter season. E'rero from Texas. John,
You're You're just gonna have to be feeder, Okay, sure, yeah,
I'm feeder, Sure, Okay, I'm just I just have to let you
know that now. Yep. Hmmm, from what I've learned from like the
three poker books that I've been reading sometimes, yes, three poker books that
I've been reading. Yes, I finished one of them, the Biggest Bluff.
I highly recommend. Anyway, it's checked out because you've been talking about
it too much on the podcast, so I couldn't get it from my library.
Jane. Thanks, I'm sorry. I've been duping my location to be
where you are, grow damn you. I've learned that some poker names are
just from like hat habitual stuff, right, Like they talked about this dude
that got named Chewy, and not because he resembles Chewbacca or he's chewing on
stuff or he's like chew and some chew. It's because he has shoeye bars
next to him, because they are a totem of sorts. So I think,
like, I think Backler would be keebs. Oh, yes, exactly,
he's talking about elves all the time and legs. I like that.
I'll take it. Thanks. I think grub would just be gimmicks that's good
gimmick or or monkey man Cleveland gimmick monkey monkey monkey day man and gimmick is
actually pretty good. Yeah, like that gimmick. That's gimmicks. Pocket EIDs
yeah yeah, I never not like play pocket EIDs. I always to the
end. I have to see the river pockets. Would it be in bad
taste to call grub Chinese knockoff? I love it? Okay, I don't
know. Oh sure, we'll have to maybe get a consultant on that,
but I don't know. I was like the only Asian on I think it's
okay, Okay, it's a green light to me. I don't represent the
Chinese community, but I will speak for them. I say, you're here
first, folks, says the Asian community is a model with anyway, on
to the next point. Uh god, what would Dan be? Dan would
be like salt lick, salt lick, slim one that shows up a lot
of poker names. You just slim in there and you're good like Yeah,
okay, I think Manati like would just be Manati? I think no call
him apples Oh yeah name okay, but apples MANATEI is for real, like
the cool hardest gangster name. Yeah, I would not fun with the apples.
Yeah, apples apples went in. Why why do they call him apples
hates? He's fueled by hate because hearly allergic to that. You know,
an apple a day, God, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Mikey apples
also very Mikey apples, and we can just start calling them Mikey apples.
Yeah, okay, I think we Yeah, the we're just coming up with
like gangster mob names. But that's also sounds are pretty changeable, uh are
right? Next email comes from Lee from Minster, Ohio, And I only
said that because they capitalize all of Ohio pure BombCast. I just had surgery
on my right wrist to repair some tendons. During the recovery time, I
will be unable to use my right hand for much of anything. Do you
have any recommendations for games that can be easily played with one hand? So
far, I've only found that I can play Snake Bird on the switch and
Duck Hunt on any on the ne e s I mean console gamers, so
anything see us out left to hear suggestions, So keep me from going stir
crazy, loyal fan, Lee from Minster, Ohio. Damn uh, I
was gonna say puzz Mo Go Puzzy. Yeah, I mean those puzzle games.
Do you like turn based role playing games? Yam? I mean,
actually you can do that pretty easily with one hand. So there are a
lot of those. If you've never played any of the Final Fantasy games,
those are available on pretty much every console at this point. To be clear,
the turn based one, So don't don't go get sixteen. You're gonna
be sad for multiple reasons. That's gonna be a tough one to play with
one hand. So turn based repugs, I think, like I'm trying to
think of games that have actually one hand in mode. Uh, let's go
and let's go. Ev It does have a one joy con mode where you
can Yeah that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. Vampires Vivus is also a
great and then it's like left hand too, right because you're controlling just where
you're moving and that's it. Yeah yeah, so yeah, I mean that
could just be that could be a put a controller in your lap thing too.
It's like it's not you know, it's there's very little to do there.
So yeah, those would be my my first choices beyond very menu heavy
games, which is the People one had a one handed mode, but I
think it was for different reasons. If you want to bust the we out,
I guess, you know, get your waggle on yeah no nun chuck
games yeah yeah yeah. Folks, if you have any recommendations, please drop
them in the comments and we'll get them to our dear friend here. I
also hope for a fast recovery because uh, your tendance sucks. Yeah yeah,
get well, uh, get well and get games. Last two emails
of the show Carlos from Monterey, California rights in Hey Bombinos. Everyone talks
about the Mount Rushmore of games, but what are the four horsemen of games?
I, of course am talking about wrestling parentheses? Sorry Jib. Who's
the dant Malinko of games? Jesus technical master? Maybe low Charisma does a
thousand things masterfully but never gets the glory. Who is the Brian Pillman,
fast paced, high flying in a little crazy loose cannon of gaming. Who's
Arn Anderson? Every attack hits like a truck and feels visceral. Maybe a
crowbar is involved? Who is Rick Flair? Flash and Charisma out the wazoo
a true thrill ride of style Calfornia. Can I just say Carlos is who
wrote this? Yes? Carlos? Can I just say first of all the
fact that your four horsemen pull is Brian Pillman and yeah the fucking wild that
is truly wild. Of course, Arn and Rick are always there, but
like no Berry Windom, no only no Steve Mongo Michael shot out. Yeah,
that's those are wild pulls first of all, but also a great question.
Would I have to still on this for a second. I always thought
Dean Malanka was like it was like someone had like shrunk down John McClain.
I can okay that, like I can see a very muscular person. Yeah,
I have an answer for Dean Malinko. Technical master, Uh maybe low
on charisma, does a lot of things really well, uh never gets glory.
A pub G, I think, is one that just had like a
game that like does what it's doing really well and actually technically it runs,
it works very well. That like, the shooting mechanics are still better than
any other uh batter yale game, and the sound mechanics are actually way better
than any other batteryale game. But that stuff's not as flashy. It's it's
not as charismatic as Fortnite, not even close. So yeah, I think
pubg's are de Malinko. Okay, are we going with this definition of the
four horsemen? I mean, if you've got other if you have other four,
if you've got a good Barry Windom of games, I love, Yeah,
trying to place what characteristics Berry Windham hasn't even know Cowboy Boots. Yeah,
past Cowboy boots. I don't know red Dog. Uh, who's a
Rick Flair of games? Yeh's what's what? Who is? Like? Should
go away? But like you know, your fun sometimes. Yeah, I
really like all the the clips of Rick Flair though, now you know,
like the bright lights, big stitty thing that they play at Devil's Games is
so fucking good. It is it like Final Fantasy because it's like they're just
like show up. It's all flash uh kind of if you were to oh
and it used to be great folks used to off the top rope. Yeah,
yeah, it's but it's oh beautiful moments. I mean some classics with
Ricky Steamboat and then that's her Final Fantasy seven eighty nine, and then the
remakes is just Charlotte Flair because it's like, you know, it's finding the
good beats not nailing at all the time. You know what the Flair family
is just Final Fantasy. Okay, there we go, all right, okay,
okay, all right, and is tough, aren't tough? Enforcer?
Always there? The bouncer, the bouncer, I was gonna say, Tecan.
Tecan feels like it has been there, and it's like it's hit,
it's been there, it's solid, it's reliable, and it hasn't had a
notably down time. I feel yeah, yeah, I feel like that's a
solid answer. Has anyone ever had a gun in Techan? Yeah? The
robot guy? Yeah, yeah, what's your name that has the offshoot game?
I think has Nina Williams? Here you go. That's totally the Arn
Anderson because Arn Anderson has a gun. Arn Anderson has a gun. I
don't remember that he does. He's he gave a promo in a w where
he said he was going to go get his gun and oh yeah, and
it sewn says everyone in the game can have a gun as a customer station
option. Okay, so that's fantam. What a good game. The Brian
Pillman of video games. That's paced on, high flying and a little crazy.
The loose cannon of gaming. Cannon of gaming. I don't know why
I'm thinking tetris n. I like that, like I feel like, is
there like something like just like it feels like it doesn't belong in games,
but is a video game? Still? Quap, that's good, Benet Foddy
games. Sure games, Yeah, actually that's good, Benet High And every
few and every few minutes you're like looking at a bit of Faddy game going
like, wow, you shouldn't exist, but I'm glad that you do.
Yeah, so i'd say Benet Faddy is the Brian Pillman of Loose Cannon for
sure. Yeah, there we go, there we go. All right.
Oh that's good, that's good. Actually, yeah, all right. Final
email of the show comes from Chris from Kansas. Your recent love of Guardians
of the Galaxy had me thinking who's who in the universe. I came to
the conclusion of Jan Lord, I am Grub Dax, Dan Drax, Lucy
as Mantis, bay oh oh Baye Mara, and I'm thinking Bakar the Raccoon
no offense. Jeff Mister always gets upset because he's compared to something. Just
curious if you agree besides Bakala or whose role you choose for whom listener and
love the direction. Keep up the good work, Chris from Kansas. Yes,
Dan still has dirty elbows? Oh wow, Wow, what fuck does
that mean. I look, I don't. First of all, I'm happy
to take like a Rock and Raccoon thing. That's that's fine. It's the
things that are bad when I'm compared to it. I don't like being compared
to things that are lame. And I think space Nazis are lame. I
think mister Slat, who's just like a prehistoric boss, is lame. So
mister Slat about it. And Elmer Fudd, who's just like some fucking hillbilly
with a shotgun going around shooting freaking animals that can talk, is bad.
That seems bad on its face. Are you telling the listeners to be very
quiet right now? Jeff, there's no there's no pivot out of this back.
It's very good but also very bad. Uh so, yeah, so
that's all. But I'll take Rock and Raccoon. Sure, that's very flattering.
Yeah, yeah, I like that little guy. Yeah, LEXI,
sure you can be Cosmo. You can be Cosmo the duck folks. That
does it for emails this week, Send in your fan castings of whoever you
want to be or want to be. No, no, no, keep
keep coming, keep them coming. Maybe if we just like stop singing on
the dumb truck and we stop doing this on the podcasting on the cheek.
Start singing in your emails, uh to figure that out somehow. Start writing
them in iambic pentameter. You know it goes bah bah. It's ten syllables
per line. The stress is on the second syllable of the line, so
you know, there you go. Is my partner currently teaching Romeo and Juliet,
so I have iambic pentameter on the brain. Yes, yes, that's
what's happening. Yo. That's cool. Last thing not getting related Romeo plus
Juliet still goes so fucking yeah. That's a good one. Yeah, good
one yo. That was like peak bas peak bash. Yeah. Anyway,
John Warren, thank you so much, my friend for coming over show having
me. This is a blast, very fun times, very fun talks.
Where can folks find you on the internet? Oh, you can find me
at Flappy It's all basically everywhere. I'm a Blue Sky person most these days.
And glider g l y d R feet legal dot com. That's where
you can grab a discount for our amazing foot controller. He kickstarted goes live
next week and I appreciate everyone's support. Fantastic fantastic. Well. I have
been Jan he has been Jeff. He has also been Jeff. He has
been John. And peace peace. I hate the word peace. God John
looks almost fucking cooking in that movie. We'll see you for another episode of
the Giant BombCast next week. Got a bunch of fun fun stuff popping off
like a dragon. We'll play tech in eight Morgan to play those games this
week. Ye ben Pack on the hundredth voicemail. That's right, we broke
him out of podcast jail. Ben Pack is coming back to the dumb truck.
He's backing it up. Send fun voicemails for boyd Benji p And the
podcast is ending. Now I'm looking for the scene. I'm gonna face the
black now, love you. No more shout outs because it was slowly killing
me. Bye. Twenty twenty four