CORE 537: Year of The Sword

0:00Hello and welcome to Corr, the video game podcast that talks about games so that you two can talk about the video games. My name is Scott Johnson. I'm joined today by where to go. There it is. By John, you think he's going to Perry, but then he'll dodge Jagger. Yeah, which is good for the game. You've been playing this week. We'll talk more about that. Oh, we are going to talk about Dodges and Perry's and the four other things you didn't even know were options. And the things John's going to try to get me to do while we're on the air because I'm so tempted to click go on that game. I don't know why I'm having. I don't know why I'm not doing it. Anyway, we'll get to that. Also with this bow, he can guarantee you that the cake is not a lie shorts. Yeah, right. I don't know what I don't know what reaction I expected. Can you tell me that this cake is or is not a lie? I don't know. Bush, but air bush burger. I was thinking about I wasn't prepared ahead of time. Well, that's the idea. It's all I didn't know how to react to. It's all very improv. We got to like just let it rip. I just so I can't tell if the cake is a lie. I couldn't tell you.

1:21Are you excited? I mean, Blizzcon's this weekend and I always think of the Bush burger first. That's my first thought. Do you miss? Do you miss that we're not all there hanging out and doing hell? Yeah, I wouldn't love to go. It's, you know, cost money. It's so expensive. They didn't do press the way they usually do it. Even if they to give me press passes this year, I'm not sure I could afford it. It would have been like insane. Well, we had a year where Bethany hooked us up with hotels and everything. Like there was. Yeah, we need that again. It like. And I was like, man, it was so cool. It was so it was like definitely up there as an experience in life, just like not having to be concerned about anything, being taken care of, having the press room, being around my friends. Yeah, it was great. Bush burger. Yeah, the only part that was not great was not enough people going to hear as a storm panel. That's right. That's the only part I agree with you. That may have turned things around and more people gone to that. Well, I mean, it was a sign of things to come, obviously, but I just that's not on blizzard. That's on play. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like we're going to get some starcraft finally. So it'll be fun to see that light shift a little bit. I don't know what that's going to look like. Yep. But we'll find out on Saturday. And I'm going to be doing.

2:34It's the first one, like, I think really where Microsoft had some time to have the fingies in the pudding. Oh, yeah, they're firmly in the pudding now, for sure. I'm it's just made up in my head, but my guess is they're like, okay, guys, they're on the John program now. Just release some shit. We need we need fodder for game. I hope so. Just make some video games, please. Yeah, you are a video. You are going to make video games here. Video game company. So I I'll be honest. I don't really care. But the existing franchise is out from heroes and starcraft. Like if there's new hardstone expansion, don't give a shit. Honestly, wow, it's great. It's not a knock against. Wow, I'm just not playing it. So I'm not. I don't really care. That's not doesn't mean anything bad. I'm saying anything bad. I'm just not into it right now. So I'm not really hyped. I'm sure if there's a good cinematic for Warcraft, I'm all about watching those though. Those are amazing. Oh, yeah. Um, and Diablo, I'm pretty Diablo for I'm done with the devil for pretty much like it's. I bought the X back. I played the campaign and was like negative

3:37interested in doing anything beyond that, in spite of all the new systems and whatever. So I don't know. I want some new shit. Starcraft Shooter, Starcraft 3 is the big buzz right now. The rumors out. Maybe both of those things. That's exciting. But you know, I haven't been thinking about it too much because you know, it's agonizing to wait. So I don't know anything. So yeah, well, myself and Bobby Frankenberger are going to under the. You know, stuff. Did you mind, Bettsin? I know very little. Even if he did know, he's a can't tell. Yeah, I can't say it on the air. I didn't know. I just want him to, you know, to, I just, I want to know how much gravy is you want him to say, okay, I'm not going to spoil anything, but it rhymes with Starcraft. The police are even bothered to rhyme the Starcraft part. That's great. No, I don't know. Let's say I know a little about the potatoes, but very little about the gravy going on it. So that's it's, it's really kind of there's a mystery that I think

4:37even some of the top that aren't involved directly in those franchises are unaware of. They're trying to keep it real tight is my impression. I'm not trying to get you or anyone else in trouble. I just, I'm not even knowing what you just say anything. I just want you to like, how violently are you shaking with excitement? Guys want to hear. Don't tell you this last week. Randy told me I know I will have four records at Blizzard. You want to hear that. First one's an easy one. I'm the last person to host the Wow Q&A. We did that at home one in 2021. And that was me. No one's hosted since they don't do it anymore. So that looks like that'll stay historically. Two years before that, I hosted the 2018 one. So that, and I'm also that makes me the only person to ever do it twice. There was room for that if they kept doing them, but they stopped. So I think I get that record too. And then the record that made me laugh. What did he say it? He said, Oh, he goes, you know, I think you got another record. I said, what's that? And he goes, I don't think Chris Benson's ever going to talk to anybody on camera again.

5:40I think that may have been it. That might have been the last that we, that we get to see his visage on again. I thought I heard some room or somewhere that he wasn't going on or maybe it was from you. I don't know. No, he, as far as I know, everything's full speed ahead. They, the event. I mean, he's gone on record to say, well, you got camera for his or boroughs update. So he has, yeah, he'll do that. He'll do that. I just think you, when you ask somebody to constantly be up in front of the world in that way, I think that can just wear you down. Sure. You know, yeah, just if you don't enjoy it, you don't enjoy it. I get it. Make it tired. I get it, especially with, you know, it's just, yeah. It is what it is. But anyway, Bobby Frankenberger and I are going to do under the banner of the instance. We're going to do a live coverage of the opening ceremonies on Saturday, 11 and 30. Oh, nice. So tune in. Check it out Friday or sorry Saturday, Saturday. Yeah, Saturday is the opener and it runs through Sunday. It's only two days this year. It's always just two days, I guess.

6:44And then there's questions about what's on right after that. There is some kind of wow thing. So we may stick around for that. There's room on the panel. We can come hang out too. You know, I mean, anyone's welcome. Yeah, it's up to you though. Anyone's welcome. A bunch of chatter. Well, I mean, I'm talking about John and I are available there as well. Yeah, no, as far as like you and John, I'll be always invited. But yeah, Randos, maybe not so much. You don't get me when you throw open the doors and you go everyone. Anyone can come beyond. You might see results you didn't expect. Yeah, yeah, nobody wants that. Feeling a little shy about it just because I don't, you know, you and Bobby get so precious few time to do the wow stuff. Oh, we don't care. I mean, we're doing a weekly wrap up now anyway. So we're, you know, we're doing all right. We're counting this thing out on TMS, but you talk about farts and stuff. Oh, yeah, always huffing on each other's farts. That's it. I am likely available. I'm likely able to do it. Oh hell yeah. People want to hear my thoughts. I'll bet they do and I'll think they do. I don't think I'll

7:50I know Bobby listens to the show. He may hear it before I talk to him. So Bobby, if you hear this before that, we may have some guests coming. Well, Bobby kept all of our collective shit together for Nerdtacular. So if Bobby tells me to be somewhere, I'm inclined to listen to him. He was very good at that. Had to do it for like, oh my God, he was a super cute drinking attack. Yeah, he really was. I didn't know it was going to be that good to ask him to do that thing. I really didn't. So he was walking around with the clipboard. He's giving people information. He was a content creator on panels. Chewed out a couple of people for a camera. What happened? He had to keep some people in line. It wasn't like bad or anything, but they're banging in the restroom. I thought I remember there being a restroom problem. I can't remember what it was. Really? No, I know the elevator elevator problem. Yeah, there was the elevator problem, but I thought maybe there was a somebody shit in the elevator could be both. Oh, I know what it was. Just because like people were interacting with me a lot. So I was too nervous to use the bathroom on the main floor because I didn't want to get

8:55Cornered while I was taking a shit or something. You know what I mean? So I would I would like and then the elevator was an issue. So I'm like, I got a pee. But then I got to use the elevator. I'll be gone for 45 minutes. One of my favorite things about the entire event day after it ends. We go to a Drag bar. I'd never been to in Salt Lake that was turned out to be awesome, but it was freaking packed. It's a Sunday morning. And we're all going over there. Bo's kind of ahead of other people in line. This group we went with. And he's wandering in there goes in. I see him go in. I'm like, all right, cool. I'll see if I can find Bo and I get inside. And then before I get to the door, I see Bo bolting from the building. Walks past me and goes, nope, nope. Yeah. And it wasn't because it was a drag show. It was going to go in the story. It makes it sound like I had enough gainess for the day. Not the case. No, not at all. The problem was I was up till four in the morning talking to Louie, you know, the guy from Belgium.

9:56And he was telling me about his engineering problem. You know, it was fascinating about Belgium chocolate that like the pipes never shut off. So they're constantly like heated. So he had to solve some problem where the pipes finally shut off. And they got all smoked out and rusted and they need to be, you know, Belgium relies on its chocolate. It's like a national thing. So like the country's going bankrupt. I guess all the Belgian. It sounds like a symphony. Really. Tell me there's fascinating story he did. We just stayed up on life. We were talking about he was fun to talk to his new. He's great. He's super cool. Yeah. I was like, and you flew all the way from Belgium to be at Nertacular, you know, as like if I thought it was far imagined crossing the Atlantic to come to Salt Lake City. Yeah. It's awesome. He was great. So I stayed up till four in the morning. So so when we were like, oh, when I come for brunch, I was like, yeah, sounds chill. And then I get in there. And everyone. I don't. Not only was it like very gay, which is fine, but it was very gay. It's very loud. Very gay and loud. No, no, no, no, no, gay,

10:59late risers were there. All morning people. I say I say gay, but it's like, who has this most energy at 11 o'clock to like it's not gay. It's right. But we know it's been very very very very very very very loud. And I was like, and I saw the seating. That's why I turned around. And I'm like, oh, we're all going to be hunched over in the small area. They're going to be yelling. And I think I made the right choice based on what you guys talked about after where they were like, I guess sitting in your lap or something like that and you were eating dicks. And like, I was like, I just did not have the mental fortitude. I was going to be grumpy the whole time. And I just knew in my head, they could be like, look, a Mr. grumpy pace over here. Not eating his dicks. No, I got it. I was like, I just don't need this. I do. I got dude, I totally got you when you did. And I understood it 100% it was never an issue, but it was a little worried it was taken as a like no, no, no. No, we didn't think that. But for the record, can I just clear something up for anyone who doesn't

12:03understand the dicks we were eating and vaginas were in the shape over there were waffles in the shape of those said items, not actual human beings offering their genitalia for consumption. It was a lot more than I was expecting for to be brought. Well, if you ever saw like, city, check out the tiki. What's it called? The tiki, the wet tiki or something like that? What is it? Dirty tiki, the tiki, something anyway, it's very good there. Anyway, I'm actually sad I missed out had I known it. I needed mental fortitude to be there. Yeah. I think I would have had a great time. But it's just the way you bolted it was like, you went in there just kind of, huh, what's this came out going? No, no, no, too many guys. No, so he said. It wasn't that at all. I just could not. I was already overstimulated all weekend and I just couldn't deal with it. Yeah. Yeah. Chat says it's called tug. No, that was the bar next to it that they thought said tug because when the weather's on at night, it's actually called

13:11I already forgot what it's really called. No, but it looked like tug and so what I think Shane Maddox goes to a gay bar down there. Like, a why? What's called tug? And I went, oh, no, that's no, what was it actually called? It wasn't tug though. It was called. I can't remember the name, but it's something like what else could it be T gardener science like, oh, Ivy, that's what it is. It looked like tug because it had this logo aspect. How does Ivy look like tug that I'll find the photo and you'll be like, oh, okay, because it's pretty obvious. Okay. If Shane's around, you know what? I can see it now because the Ivy, if there's like a T thing, I could see I being the T and the V being you, the Y being G. Yeah. And the T looks like a team or because at night, the neon leaf that was on the Ivy, I don't know how many customers they're losing because people are like, I don't want to go to Well, maybe they're getting extra customers from people.

14:15But I've ear, sorry, squishy, twitchy or who was in here for my five o'clock tug. They like, sir, it's digital. Hi, digital high, digital high, digital high, as a point, we saw it from like 30 floors up on the hotel across the street. So it was hard to see that way too, but someone's got a photo of this and it's pretty funny and just shame with that kind of flat face like, so the gay bar. No, why? It's just tug. It's called tug. I love him. He's great. He. Well, there you go. That's that's what we're going to talk about before we talk about games. We're really going to talk about games though. Everybody. So sit back and relax. Here it comes right here right now. Let's talk about what we played. I played a bunch of the blood of the Don Walker because I got it last week and we've had a week since I've been able to talk about it. I'm hearing really good things. It is very good. Here's the problem. Well, I played it until I couldn't progress anymore because there's a bug and I'm still trying to work around it without deleting my save and starting over because it's way too much progress for me to do that. Pretty big bug. Yeah. Here's where maybe you got this far or you got to

15:22I am not far at all. I've been asked to go meet somebody like go get something for mom. Oh, you're very early then. Yes. I barely had any time to play and then another game that I played this week came out. Yeah, I just switched. Well, there's two things at play. One. I've been stressed about this timer business that a lot of people are put off by because I don't like timers and games either John. I will tell you like for anybody that's like, oh man, I wish John stuck with it. I probably will come back to it, but the easiest reason, the easiest thing that made it the easiest for me to drop it and move on is knowing that this timer exists. I hate timers in video games. It's not how I want to play the video game. I don't like it, but I have heard and read a lot about it. Scott, sell me on the time. I'm very anti like what have you done? Why'd you ruin this? Here's where I potentially flipped on the timer if I can get my save back. I guess I'll tell you what happened to the save first.

16:28I go back to my homestead after I'll call it a calamity. I don't want to spoil where this goes because the story's really been interesting so far. I like it. I go back to my house, just searching for stuff for survivors for things to loot, whatever. And I go in there. And the quest in my journal even says, perhaps somebody's hiding in the house. See if you can find them. I'm thinking it's maybe one of my siblings or something like that. And I go into the house and sure enough, there's a slight not even a cutscene, but an in-game moment where the bed shifts. And my guy even says, I think there's somebody under that bed or something like that. Some words to that effect. And then I just walk around duck down, look around the bed, nothing happens. I save reload, come back, thinking maybe it was just bugged for that. I still can't nothing. I can't get past this because it's whatever's hiding in there will not make itself known to me in any way. And I've done everything from inch around the room, one inch at a time on my knees, hoping to trigger something that's not being triggered properly in the scripting or something.

17:34I've gone out and in, out and in, it keeps telling me to go. I've looked up what would you call guides and videos and the video shows a guy go in there. And immediately he runs into the thing he's supposed to run into this hiding under the bed. So I go back in and do exactly what that person did, nothing, it's just not triggering for some reason. It's really sad when that happens because I just feel like I can do nothing at this point and tell you maybe patch it. And there was a patch yesterday and I haven't tried it yet, so it's possible. Could be fixed. This guy rovers off, so I'll check that. But here's where I'm landing on the timer. I also did some reading. And what I didn't know and I sent a video to you as well, and I knew you already knew this, but we were just passing stuff back and forth. But the way that timer works is it's only a part of the game and tell you either save your family or fail to do it. Yeah. And if you fail to do it, the game has basically turns into a revenge storyline from there on. And there's no timer ever again. You're just now you're getting revenge for your family and you're still doing whatever you want in the world, whatever you want.

18:35But your main course of action is I've got to avenge their deaths. Is this like a mortal family or a vampire family mortal family? So they were I won't get into why you're not quite them anymore, but it's interesting where that goes. I really like the bad guy in this like I think he is. In some ways, it's like a stereotype of vampire badness. But in other ways, I'm like, oh, yeah, I could use like this kind of half nose for ought to have Baraka looking guy. You've all seen him in the trailers. Yeah, he's cool. Anyway. And he's a kind of guy you want to be mad at and chase down and get revenge. So part of me is like, well, maybe I don't give a shit. I mean, I love my family, my real family. I would do anything for them. But do I care that much about these people? I don't know. I'm a sacrifice them at the name of not having to worry about a timer anymore. Yeah. Is it explore like maybe not caring about mortals like they get to start when you first get a vampire? You're like, I'm still mortal bro.

19:36And then you realize it slowly ends away. Well, it's different because his, his transition to vampirism. Again, without giving anything away is not traditional. It's different and it's a different path. And by the time you finish the big line, it's a long prologue. Once you get done with that, you realize that you kind of stand apart from what they think. You shouldn't be able to walk around in the daytime. Well, the name suggests it's called Don Walker. So I assume it's kind of like blade or is the day walker a bit like that. Yeah. I think that's fair to say. There's more minutia there, but I don't, it's not, doesn't spoil anything to say. It's a lot like blade. And you fight very different night than you do during the day. You're very much vampire at night and you're very much a normal dude with a sword during the day. Couple of things I really like about it. I really like the combat. It's just enough of a change of like directional blocking and directional hits and stuff, but not so far into kingdom come this. That it's, it's not a simulation. It's still like John said last week.

20:37It's kind of arcade and it's better for it, I think. Yeah, I had to, to me, it was a jump scare. I was like, oh, no, we're going to do this. I hate this because that's what I was trained to think. And maybe I'm going to feel the same way about the time. Maybe when I finally get to this game, it's going to be a game of all things. I think I won't like, but then like the execution on. Which is really cool. Yeah, easily could be. Yeah. But I was like, oh, no, we're doing this. There's no way. And then I tried it and saw how they were doing it. And I thought, you know what? If kingdom come deliverance had done this, I think I would have played a lot. Yeah, I would have given more time to kingdom come for sure. Because I really liked that game. I just didn't like playing it. Yeah. This one you can really capture that control scheme quickly. It's enough. Also, everything feels enough witchery that you just feel like you're at home and the controls. It's not like, you know, they don't change everything. It feels, it feels familiar. It's very pretty. I'll say that in its favor. It's actually beautiful. This game, I haven't had any glitches except for this game save, which is just killing me right now,

21:40but we'll figure it out. And we ate that dog or that goat. Anyway, sorry, got distracted by the video. I never did do. So you can, I'll tell you about a mechanic. When you're in vampire mode and your hunger is going up, you can satiate it by a bite and an enemy if you want to. But if there's a rat around or a dog or a sheep or some other animal, you can do it with that. And he'll just like leap over and like a smoke explosion and like bite him and get their blood and get you back up to full. But if you get down to that second bar because you have two bars in vampire mode for life, if it ever drops below that, you might in the middle of a cutscene lose your shit and bite the head off someone you love. Like, that's cool. It's really cool. So it's like there's a little bit of tension about, well, let's never get that line below that because we're going to be in trouble if we do. So that's pretty neat. And it's all like hand-to-hand claw combat kind of at least so far for me in the vampire parts. Really like the character Cohen is his name.

22:42All that stuff is cool. Where I was like Leonard Cohen or the Cohen brothers, that kind of thing. Where I started just getting my hang up is A, this bug and it's just pissing me off. And I felt like I was banging my head against the wall which is so mad. It's a big hang up. Yeah. I got to figure that out. But then the other was this timer and it was just kind of looming. And I'm like looking at activities and going, all right, if I pick lock that treasure chest, that represents half of this day or something. Because the day's the timer's actually kind of arbitrary. It's not ticking all the time. No, it's like milestone experience and dungeons. Yes, it is like that. You did something so time went for it. Yeah, which I kind of like that because then I'm not looking at a ticking timer all the time. But I still don't like overall being timed on something that seems very important. And in my head, I'm like, well, what happens? A game ends and you're just screwed. You have to start over and try to beat this damn clock. Like those attitudes were getting in my head and I was being pissy about it.

23:45What's the time again? 30 days? 30 days. There's already a mod that put it to 90. So if people want that, I think, see, the thing is is like, you sent me that video and I've had other people go, no, no, no, the game just changes. If it's weird because I didn't know that prior, but I assumed that's how it would work. I don't know why I assumed that. I just as the person who again, I've brought this up a lot on the show that gets upset if the other civilizations don't like me and civ. I still have a hard time with the idea of, oh, they died and the game keeps going. I'm definitely the person that's like the family died. Restart, even if the game keeps going. So I have some, some my own hurdles that I have to get over. It's not that I assumed the game would be over and that would be, oh, that's it. You know, GG try again. It's just that in my head, it would be like, well, yeah, but if that's the goal that they've

24:47presented me to do, then that's what I'm going to try and do and trying to be okay with the idea of not that's the hurdle for me to clear. And I've heard again is that I think it was co-carnage talked a lot about this. And I really liked listening to him talk about it because he went in saying, I hate the idea of a timer in this game. And so it's like, okay, great. He's coming at it from where I'm at and his big talk about it was this is a game that rewards failure with interesting changes to the narrative, not just that the narrative goes forward, but even deciding to do this instead of that, it will do something interesting with this. Kind of like what you were talking about with the hunger mechanic, right? You let that get too far and you might just eat somebody you didn't intend to eat. That's technically a bad thing that should be upsetting, but it ends up making for a more interesting world and experience. Most games don't adhere to that.

25:50And so I, and this is kind of what he said, we have been trained by other video games to assume that we have to perform perfectly or to get the reward, to get the stimulus for what we did. This game rewards failure and it rewards it in an interesting way, but it's hard to teach gamers like me that, hey, that'll be in there for you and that that's okay. Yeah. And there will be, there will still be cool stuff. You just have to let it happen. It's a brave choice they made to do this because I think more than not, they're going to, the reaction is going to be like yours was, which I think is a reasonable reaction. It's like, you're going to time me. How am I not going to see this content? You mean I'm going to time myself out of the opportunity, even if the game doesn't end, and there's another story twist or whatever? Like, you're right. We're trained to want it that way. And this game's like, how about we have you play a game that we made the way we wanted to make it and see how you feel about it? That's kind of what the vibe is. Now, the problem I'm having is

26:51how, how disregarding do I want to be about the timer? Because part of me wants you to say, whatever vampire go, oh well, they're dead and now go on a revenge tale and never worry about a timer again. Part of me wants to just do that. But when I'm in the thick of it, that's not so easy, Lee said partially because this game's very good at conveying emotion and concern and human frailty and all this. It's actually good at telling this story. So it's not like that's just going to be easy for me to go, families dead. That's funny. Isn't the timing tension like part of what makes your choice is interesting, though, because it's not a timer like a myriad level where it's like myriad, myriad, I said myriad. That's a new one, myriad. Myriad. I'm emphasizing, I know I'm going to chance going to respond to it. Myriad. All right. Anyways, it's not like a level where it's like, do this thing really quick. It's a narrative like device, right? Because the way you describe it, it sounds like

27:52disco, Alicia, where everything you do that counts as increments of five or 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the compound run. If you're not doing anything, like if you just walk around the map, it won't, but as soon as you do using the interactable, do anything, time elapses. That's exactly what this is. You do get to a point where it's like, oh, it becomes evening and it's like, you know, Kim, just like Kim wants to go sleep now because he's been with you the whole day and he's exhausted. And so then you have some time to go out in your own. And then I think you can play to a certain point at night, which like shuts off a lot of stuff during the day, but the time sort of stops and lets you like, think around a little bit till you go the next day, but like you do have a sense, especially because it's so narrative heavy every time, every new dialogue. The longer you spend talking to someone, the more time elapses, right? Like that's how they measure it in that game. And it feels like, but it doesn't, I don't feel like I'm, you are on the clock. You can't do

28:52everything, but I don't feel like I'm on a timer. And that would be true in an investigation, you know, you ever watch like the first 48 that detectives have got to figure things out within 48 hours because the trail goes gold. And it's like, you know, these like a narrative timing can like, potentially enrich your experience because then you're not like, oh, I need to check off every part of the map. I need to do every side quest in life. You're deciding like, what's important to me? Is my family important to me? That means I need to solve their problem as quickly as possible. And if I love the game later and I want to see the side content, I'll just do a bullshit playthrough or something like that. Or a new game plas or just an easy overpowered playthrough. So I feel like, if it's 30 days sounds generous, I don't know how fast it feels like the day goes by in game. It doesn't because you, because you're told before you do anything, like you said, you'll look at a thing and it'll say, this will take half a day. And you've got a marker and it'll show how far it

29:52will go if you decide to do that activity. But if you just stood there and left it on and walked away from the house for five hours, no time passes. Because I will say having played a lot of Witcher 3, there is some stupidity with respect to Witcher 3 when you're like, series gonna get, you know, whatever you got to find or they're hurry up and you're like, actually, I'm just gonna sail back and forth between Novograd and Skelliga and just play Gwent for five years. And you're like, it's a stupid. And then they're all acting like, oh, it's so urgent, so important. I'm like, yeah, I feel like everyone should be mad at me for disregarding the care of my adoptive daughter for Gwent and Drinks and you know, and and and and traipsing around in the song. Like it's nice that it's casual, but I do remember feeling a sense of like, this is stupid. Well, an open world game has this problem in general where you you're told something's crucial. We've got to go now. And then you're like, okay, but first I've got three markers on this map. I'm gonna go clear.

30:54Yeah, cyberpunk is like, you're gonna die any second and you're just like, well, how about I just hack some shit, hang out. I'll just like, I mean, it does a good job of carrying that the vibe of like the vibe of what is it like, you know, you don't care about your life, right? Like, clearly, I'm destined to die. There's no solution. I'm fighting desperately. Like that vibe carries all through at the game, but there is stupidity with the fact that I'm just like, I'm gonna level up chasing cyber psychos. It's like, you got more in sport shit to do than stuff for, you know, these fixers, right? It's like, I'm just gonna get a part time job while I slowly die any second. It's stupid. So I, that's what that's the one thing that's intriguing about this. We're clearly the people developing it. We're like, no, there needs to time sensitive. Tivity needs to matter to make the narrative make sense. Also extra irony because vampires, you know, if it was just vampires, they live forever theory, right? So why they're like the last

31:55species to care about time? Like, it was like, that's why I mean. I'll put you in that walkbuster video 10 years. Well, that's why in this case, his only concern is that he can somehow save his family. Right. After that, it's just revenge and then an eternity of vampirism. But if you're like into the roleplay, you might also be like, I don't want my family to die. It's important matters to me. Yeah, which, which again, see, that's, I guess is their whole point and you've kind of helped even more light on the way I was thinking about this. I think, I think that it was easy to discount this because it's just simply, Oh, timer, no like timer, mean, no play game with timer, which is kind of what my brain did. And then I was like, I really want to see it. So I'd get in and go, Oh, it's not ticking so much. This isn't bad. Okay. I can deal with this. And you're the mortal being like caring for mortal beings who have a limited timer. Right. Yeah, their timers took it hard. Like they're going to grow old and you're not. And also, and then the cosmic timeline, you are, you know, you're not, you're going to live forever and they're not. So it's

32:59suddenly becomes very weird. That's, I think what they're trying to do. They're trying to tackle some of these ideas. And I want to give it more than just not doing it because I'm afraid of some timer. So that's one thing they didn't, like even in what we do in the shadows that like, I don't leave explored even from a comedy perspective would be a procrastinator vampire. Because you know procrastinating shouldn't be bad because then you get stressed out. You got a ton of shit to do speak from personal experience, right? But if you're a vampire and you're a procrastinator in life, like what is your, what is that vampire's life? Like, yeah, it's the funny thought. Yeah. Got thousands of unpaid bills. Like, you know, other vampires are pissed at them because he doesn't fulfill anything. He's like, I'll do it tomorrow. I live forever. So yeah. So many of the Chad just said, can you just turn the timer off? It's not that kind of timer. It's, if you turn the timer off, then nothing in the game would matter anymore because it's integrated into the interface to the quest system to

34:01tell the, how they tell the story. Yeah. So if you took that out, I suppose they could fake their way through it, but it would lose a lot of its tail. I wonder, even very early on they train you in this because like, I've barely played any of it, but even even the little bit that I've played has had it where it's like your dad tells you, hey, go get this medicine or whatever it is, go right there. And then immediately on the way, you run into someone that's like, hey, come do this with us because it might be dangerous. And it's like, well, okay, but I was told to do this right away. And then the game's like, yeah, it's going to use time. Yeah, your dad's going to be pissed. Like, there's going to be consequences for, for what you do. Like, it is, it is a factor to the game. It's one that worries me because, you know, again, it's like, you can't, it's like a game being like, oh, you're not going to make everybody happy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I also wonder to, it makes me wonder too, that if events are tied to the calendar because you also have to consider some quests

35:04and some choices inside quests are probably a different or not available or available based on where you are on the 30 day calendar. That is true. Some stuff opens up later and some stuff opens up earlier. So as you get closer to the deadline, you might start experiencing like, you know, it's called desperation mechanics in certain games where you get low in health so the game increases like the drop rate for like healing items and shit like that. Yeah. They don't tell you that that's happening and you just feel like, oh, man, I got really lucky. You know, and you just think, you don't have some rubber banding going on. Yeah. You just think, well, no, you're low on health. It's looking dire in the game secretly like boosts the drop rate for potions. Yeah. You're like, but you just, you don't know that. You don't know what's up with the hood. You just think, damn, I got lucky. That's amazing. I got the healing. Just what I needed it. Imagine my luck, but it's really it's the dungeon master of the game. You know, nudging things in the direction of you having fun with the experience. You can decide whether you like that kind of stuff or not, but it is close

36:05to the dungeon master thing where like you see your party struggling and maybe you made things a little harder than you intended. So you have some compensation mechanics to ensure a party wipe doesn't happen that wasn't earned in some way. So because the calendar seems like a core mechanic, I would guess that as you get closer to the end timer, you might have shortcuts. Like if you didn't do enough to get there, there could be shortcuts, desperation mechanics, different kinds of quest opening it. I don't know. It seems like a big effort of a game. So I would kind of because it doesn't end there though. That's the point because right after that, if you fail, and again, I'm curious about the fail state and I would almost prefer playing a failed state like this. I guess either way you're getting revenge because if your family doesn't die, you also you owe someone some revenge or other things. Happy revenge and sad revenge. Exactly. Maybe when you save them. Yeah. They die anyway. Maybe when you save them, they die anyway. I would also assume that the game and I don't know. Maybe this is not how it goes, but it would

37:09also feel a little weird if they're like, yeah, you got 30 days to save your family and you're on the night of like you're going into day 30, right? Yeah. This is it. It's an hour never. And you're like, yeah, but I really need an herb for alchemy and you pick it and you're like family's dead. You pick it. I would assume that there would be like some story moment, you know, so that it is just like picked herb family died now revenge tale. But I don't know. I don't know how it all works. Yeah. It's been the rest of your life. I think you should keep with it. See what you think I will get there eventually. I'm on a side quest. Yeah. No, your side quest is a whole other game. But I have a new girlfriend in a video game because I want to see who I've who my new crush video game crushes. Yeah, let's see your name is Anka ANCA. She's like your mom. No, no, no, this is the herbalist lady who's roughly my age in the game, game age. Just so you know, yeah, it's everyone knows, age appropriate to my character. She is she is she's awesome so far.

38:13Seems like we have a real bond. It's not like romantic or anything, but she's she's on she's in my corner. I like her a lot. You're reminded me of a mother name and BG3. Kind of shadow art. Yeah. Maybe it's not the same voice actor, but reminded me of her. That's good because if it was, you'd be reaching creatures very creepy. It really would. I'm stocking her in video game form. Anyway, it's it's cool. I'll let you guys know how I do with the getting past the bug. Hopefully that bug is not in my way much longer because that was a real bummer and is a bummer until it is no longer a bummer. So we'll see how that goes. More on that next week, I also played a game this week that I didn't know I needed in my life and turns out I really did. And it's a game called security 51. And let me tell you about security 51. You know about you've heard of papers, please. Yeah, I'm well aware of your fondness for papers, please. Massive fan. I've still picked it up and play it here and there. I love papers, please. And I love other games that are sort of like that. And many of them are good,

39:18but all all of them kind of not quite reach the level of papers, please. It's an all-timer for a reason. Put that dude on the map, all that stuff. I feel the same way about his other game. Return of the overdened where I constantly of people say, I think this is like overdened and I have yet to play another game like overdened. Yeah, it's he's in whatever he does next. I mean, I know he did a play date game, but I don't have a play date, so I can't play it. But I will always look forward to whatever that there's news about him making shit. I'm not signing me up. He's just a Lucas Pope. Yeah, guys are genius. Anyway, this game, Area 51, or security 51, not Area 51, not to be confused, is very similar in a bunch of senses. You are a security guard at a highly guarded place, a checkpoint between the public and a deep underground facility, kind of an elevator shaft, and it actually goes down into Area 51. So where are

40:18this heads? Okay. It's going to say, you've said Area 51 twice. At some point, we've got to get to actual area 51. Yeah, we are. We are in Area 51, I should say. The title is Security 51, but anyway, the gameplay boils down to this, not unlike the mechanics of Paperplees, you are comparing people's IDs to their passports to their employee information, whether they're allowed to go down there or not, but then it opens up into a whole other bag of tricks. There's something like this in Paperplees, but you basically have various kinds of body scanners. And if you use the body scanner that checks for bone abnormalities, then you hold this thing up to the dude and swirl it around, and it looks like X-ray of the guy's bones, and you're looking for titanium replacements, or this guy's got a weird alien growth on his ribs, or something like that. Some of those things will disqualify the person and you reject them. Sometimes it's so serious that the rules say, call security if anyone shows up with a heart that's not the right color.

41:20Because there's also an organ scanner. And then when you do that, these guards come out and escort the employee off to the side, and then you hear gunshots, and basically they get killed off screen. It's a little gnarly. And you're just following the rules, right? You don't know why this is going on, but slowly in the story, they unravel what's going on and how it works, and you basically, here's the job essentially is checking the IDs, matching documents, clearing levels, ensuring that the right personnel go down to the labs. You also determine when that elevator goes down and when it goes up, and when it goes up, you want to turn on the camera in there, and it does an infrared check on any abnormalities with the people coming up. So if they're carrying any like diseases or funguses or anything that they're working on down there, you have to decide what you're going to do with those people. You're either going to kill them, exterminate them, and let the others walk that are in there with them, or you're going to put him in quarantine and

42:22test him, do tests on him, which is a whole other aspect of the game, and you get to that like three, four levels into the game. Um, do interrogations? Yep, they're interrogations as well. When you scan, I don't know if this will show this with this lady or not, let's find out. When you scan the ladies, this game, the game's like, hey, they're just, check out the boobs. We have boobs. So you can scan for their boobs. This guy right here getting scanned. That's a man, but when there was a light, whatever is the lady in there, you get to see their boobs. So if you're into pixel boobs, this game's got you covered. Okay, good. Now just for those list, for the purve, for the gooners out there, really want something like that. This is the school. We hear you. Yep. And you know what? The passage of time, the passage of time is told by once in a while, you'll see a janitor come out and do a thing. And you're like, oh, about midway through the day. And then later he's vacuuming. You're like, oh, we're getting close to closing down. See, I think that's a lady. He's skipping over the boobs. Okay, he's going really. You're really calling it an uncomfortable way. Anyway, then the janitors at the end, he's pulling

43:28body bags of the people that were eliminated because of their, you know, they had the carry to disease or they didn't have the right documents or whatever. So it's got this dystopic thing going on. It's all very hush, hush. Nobody knows what's going on. And slowly you're learning through these like government agents that will come out and tell you things once in a while. What I like about it is the mistakes have of course consequences. If you get the wrong thing, you're going to lose money or you're going to have an outbreak happening outside in the world that you caused because you didn't stop something from getting out or you have these different fail states. I like those a lot. But what I like the most is papers, pleasing games like it usually just stack the objectives on top of each other until it's like ridiculous. And you're like, oh my gosh, I'm not going to be able to keep track of all this information. There's 14 documents to compare. It's like kind of gets pretty crazy in those games. This game says, here are a bunch of mechanics. I'll look at that. But see there they are. They take them off. And all right.

44:31It's pretty great. Anyway, this thing where where where differs is the manual what they call it. Basically, your instructions for the day, they're different every day. And they are various things to do. But they're never like just stacked on top of the other hundred you have to remember. They're just a mix mash of the ones you've already learned or that you know, you've already acquired. So it doesn't feel like as much work work later in the game. I really like that about it. And so the loop, the core loop that you like from papers, please is there. And then I feel like they handle that stuff down the road a lot better. The reviews are okay. On steam, they're not great. Some people think it's too simple. And they are too easy, I guess. I think that it's just easy enough. Like, I don't come to these games to be stressed out. I come to them because I just I like the methodical core, core, chore, chore of like figuring out who belongs here and who doesn't. There's just

45:36something about the vibe that I always, I've always glombed onto. And you don't have enough mind numbing employment in your life. Yeah. Yeah. I need a little bit more. And this one has a good vibe. Like it's the sci-fi X files vibes. Pretty strong. I have a lot of questions about where the story's gone. Some haven't filmed with that. There's an endless mode if you just like doing it for funsies. I like the art and the vibe and stuff. Yeah. Art school. It's good. So if you are into it, now this game, oh, this game has a timer, but you can turn that shit off because it doesn't require a timer. It just adds a little more intensity if you want to play on the harder levels. But I turned the timer off. Like a timer for what? Like time of day or? No, time of day still passes. It's timer for each person. So like you they want you to like get good at going, oh shit, I got to compare his paperwork for you. It's mad and leaves or call me. Real employment. Like when they give you a job, take an hour to do a six minute job, you get like, there you go. Yeah. This the way I

46:36play it, I can leave the screen up, go do something else and come back in that guy. You get differential treatment because you know the boss. Yeah. The timer in this game only acts. The one that stays only acts as like knowing when your shift starts and when it ends. And then you can go spend money on upgrades and food. And you have a brain meter and a stomach meter. So you got a little bit of survival mechanics going on. The more brain power I use, the more you need to buy things between levels and that little cart up there that will help you. I tried telling my wife that she didn't think that was a viable excuse. I mean, she's not more brain power. I use the more stuff I have to buy. Yeah, I feel like she, my wife did not go for it either. I had to buy some stuff on Amazon because I was just using too much brain power. Yeah. Yeah. All those brains were working. I put it. Amazon's got me covered. It's quite good though. It's up on steam. There's some bundles that I end up getting cheaper. So go get it. Check it out. Speaking of shelves, did we put that in the news?

47:36Security 51. Sorry, I forgot to say the name again. What are we not putting the news up? Security 51. All of the new Cosmos update? No, the Ikea and Skyrim collab. What? I hear about this. Sorry, but we can talk about it later. Let's sneak preview from the Skyrim. Ikea and Skyrim. All right, let me get you. It involves Matt Berry. So you'll want to hear about this. Oh, Skyrim's official Ikea crossover mod might be the most definitely assembled Elder Scrolls gag ever. Let me get you the link. We should watch it. We should watch it. It's a little video thing. It's a one minute video. We can I'm sure watch it on the show and experience it together. It's worth it. Okay. It's Matt Berry. So I'm all about it. All right. I'm playing with it. And Bethesda collabed on a new companion of a Ikea shelf called Kalex Storageborn. And it's voiced by Matt Berry. And it's actually kind of great. Okay. Here it is. Let's watch it

48:36together. Since the dawn of time, Skyrim has been played, not by Dragon, Beast or Man, but in Congress, this organization, Clothter, Tom Rhea, Yernish, for a new type of hero. What is that a barren mess I see before me? A hero to carry your burdens, organize your loot, and send Clothter back to the fires of oblivion. Ikea! Ikea! Kalex Storageborn. Your inventory voles and here. Ah, you're finally awake. Jubilation. That's the actually a mod and is also that's Ikea. It's an Ikea. It's an official update from Bethesda.

49:47You know how wow did a collab with some company? Yeah. It's a furniture. It's that, but it's a Skyrim companion. And I'm not going to lie. This makes me want to play Skyrim. It's Matt Berry. Yeah. No, I want to hear him talk in the whole time. That'd be great. He's going to talk to you. He's going to talk to you about in Congress. I'm sure they're going to do some comedy stuff with it. Oh, man, in VR. And Ikea shelf of VR. Oh my god. I mean, we can't. Can we dare to dream? That sounds fine. Yeah, this was actually, you know how this reminded me of when like, you know, people would do Mimi Shit on the internet and it was great. We all loved it. It's like, oh yeah, this again. I was like, yeah, this is this is a beautiful, well done. Yeah, I kind of missed that stuff too. Yeah. All right. So that was security 51. Play that game. I brief mentioned I played more because it's a addictive and and and it's a big piece of shit. This game called Shadow Dungeon. And by shit, I mean, it knows what I need. It knows what drugs I want my brain to to be pumping.

50:48And it gives me them and copious amounts. It's the game I talked about last. I'm still playing. I can't stop, dude. I don't know what's going on with this. I know what it is. It's just pure dopamine. It's just like, this is so early in the game, even you should see my guy now just flipping out with stuff. What's interesting is you own Diablo, but this is clearly more fun. Yeah, I'm having. You're not wrong. Like you're kind of that's what I'm saying. The game boils it down to what am I actually getting out of an ARPG? Not just Diablo, but any of them. At the end of the day, other than some nice story points or whatever you get out of a modern game, what I'm really getting is that hit of like more loot. That one's better than the last one. Replace that item. I'm going to gemcraft that. Oh, this gave me this much power to whatever. This has a weird fix on it. I'm now level 90 or whatever I am. New level Diablo's vampire survivors mix, but that exists in Hall of Torment, but this leans more on the Diablo side than the vampire. Way more,

51:49because it's also persistent. Your death doesn't mean you start over. Your death means you go back to camp, repair, go back out and fight more. So it leans much more Diablo. And they give you a lot of control. I mentioned it last week, but like, it comes. It looks like it's got everything except for graphics. Yeah. Graphics are not bad. They're technically not terrible. I'll play a game with bad graphics. If it's fun, that doesn't matter that much. But clearly it's, we know, the always assumption is always like, look at the 3D super graphics. And you're just like, actually, this bright art is just it's probably what he doesn't even run in the right direction. No, he doesn't. No matter where he's going, he's running sideways. He's running left or right. There is no up or down, except you do sort of moonwalk up or down. But here's the thing. I think the graphic treatment is actually pretty interesting. Like it's not just throw away. It's kind of fun. I don't know. Stoner. It's not like to. Yeah. Nothing. It's bad. I'm just saying like on a, you know,

52:50they didn't burn tons of money on the pyre of, you know, these expensive games. No, no, no, no. This is just one guy. It's artists. But even just one guy. I think it's a dude. And are they sprites or are they? They're all sprites. I mean, sprite games have the X's stuff these days. But yeah, they look like sprites. They're definitely sprites. And they're all they're all very diverse. I'm playing some stuff now in the later levels that are I'm seeing very different weird things. So it's not a lot of repetition. You know, I would could I do I wish I could see my gear on my dude. I guess. But the dopamine is how is coming. No, no gear on dude. No, he's just who he this, this guy's the Necro. I think we used to that a lot of games. But it's one of the more sadder things that we've done with gaming is normalized, like especially gotcha games where you get gear and you just don't change. Yeah, that's kind of annoying. In this case, it's just it's not really the point. Also, I think the graphics style lends itself well to performance because they're where I'm out in the game. I mean, it is tons of enemies at once. Tons of special effects going off left

53:53and right. Like it's a big scary thing. That's Blaschart. I love it because it's not AI. It's just shitty, you know, just somebody, you know what I mean? Like shitty in an earnest way. It's like, yeah, dude, I drew this all night. I only smoked two joints before I finished it. That kind of thing. I wouldn't say it looks shitty, but I get what you're saying. It doesn't look like a studio professionally. We did 10 passes before watching it, right? And it's not some super talent. That's saying. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I know I see it. And they give you lots of shortcuts to do cool stuff like sell all your inventory in one big sweep by, you know, you don't, oh, you can tell it to filter like I don't want any more rares or below. So I just won't even bother with them. And you auto pick up everything else. And then if you have a sprite, he will auto sell that stuff before you even go back to town. If it's like the grids are in this because that's always you know, played Diablo like every Diablo game. It's like can't they afford to give me more squares? Yeah, no, right? And that's just the first page. You can get pages of that. So it's really cool. I don't really use the storage in town because there's really no point. The progression is

54:57just you just keep getting better shit. So no reason to hold on to anything. And I also am slow to put, unless they're the higher end later gems, I'm slow to put those into new things because oh, that so special. So it looks like record games. Yeah. Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, the vibe there's even a level where there's a guitar thing going. Like kind of like your interest room. So they're wearing their inspiration on their sleeve and have boiled it down to the essence of what these games are. And I am having a feeling you've got a good instinct with this one because it's like, it's just got the fun loop of like, you know, like you said mindlessly, you know, killing monsters, getting gear, progressing, you know, it just keeps being fun. Yeah. Oh, I'm looking at some of the what you're showing because you're showing pretty low key stuff. I just went to the trailer. Yeah, tie in. And it does have like vampire survivor level like projectile spam. The screen's not full of enemies, but I definitely see the archer shooting like

55:5915 different arrows. Well, that's and that's the other thing that makes it different from vampire survivors is there's not just swarms of enemies constantly coming for 20 minutes. Oh, this is coming at you for 20 minutes is what I meant to say. And if they, what they do instead is you're entering dungeons where they're there. So you go and you kill them, you can clear dungeons. It's not like they just keep coming. And I like that too, where it just feels like. I was based on the trailer, too. This is a some look at the developers called UCAT and the game developers from Cat Planet. I just I think this is like Chinese developers. Nothing that like doesn't matter. I'm just saying like I'm just I'm curious about the developer, right? Yeah. And one of their videos says it's made by developed by one person. It feels like it. So the person photoed who has cat ears is maybe the one who made this. It's interesting. Yeah. And there's like Mike Bo said there's a lot going like here's a better screen of some stuff. Oh, they made it called Cat Castle. You gotta see this.

57:02This is interesting. Cat Castle. All right. Oh, it's a terrarious something we built in terraria. That's a cat castle. It looks psychotic. Anyway, oh, weird. So you can see how look how nuts this is. This right here where there's just shit flying everywhere all the time. This is where I'm at in the game. They claim though is that it's one person. So assuming this true one person made this. Yeah, it's impressive as hell. It looks amazing. Yeah, I love this game. I'm super into it. My dream, my steam deck is getting tons of play plays great on PC with keyboard too. If you want. I'm just getting more and more into the the indie movement in general. You know, because I'm like I look at a game. I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe a big studio could do something better, but like I'm just not that I don't take a so like so toxic in many ways. I just feel a good playing a fun fun enough, you know, fun, a really fun game that's just I know is made by like a shop. Yeah, I'm saying I love it. It's like this is our shop. He tries to, you know, we did that marketing. He really resonated with it. He's just like these are all people we worked together and were shopped that makes things. And I know obviously Blizzard is trying to maintain that attitude while being

58:06obviously the mega corp that it is. But that spirit sometimes is like I think it's weird how it's like the appeal increases when I'm just like, yeah, there's just a couple just a guy made this. I mean, I want to play with this guy made. Yeah. And it's clear in the guys notes like show notes, update notes and stuff that his focus is like I'm redoing all the fixes that deal with point five whatever blah blah blah blah like he's not he's not in here going to experience the dark world of the whatever. He's just like mass numbers go up colors go up. Beep beep boop. Like it's like this is the this is the authorship thing which like we often attribute to someone like Hideo Kajima and he's just got an army of people that work for him. But like, you know, we do this with books a lot, right? We don't read books that are written by 15 people. You read a book that's written by one person's vision. And like that sort of like, it's a lot of work to make a game which is why I don't think it happened as much. All the tools are getting easier. It almost makes it interesting from a

59:06more person like they they're not like you said they're not writing marketing speak because it's just something they worked on. They don't even care about that stuff, you know. Yeah. So kind of feels like we're going that's kind of how gaming originally started the PC games to you write. Couple guys made it. This is a fun. There's a cool. Yeah. So yeah, I interesting. I'm going to wish for this. I don't know if I'm going to play it. But yeah, put it in the back. One day when you mean this week with the game, I'm like, yeah, one day when you're like, man, I'm just itching for that vibe of like, give me all those points. Super techable. Yeah, very decapable. Yeah. And he's improving it all the time, new updates all the time. It's just a rad little piece of I here's my description. I put in the notes. I stand. I can't stop loving you. You basic ass bitch dopamine router. Because that's how it feels. Me. That's what I say about it. That's my review. What? I say I can't stop loving you. Shadow dungeon. You basic ass bitch dopamine router. You said that. I wrote it in our notes. You can speak that way. Yeah. All the basic

1:00:12ass dopamine router. I didn't spell it right. But no, I think that's a really. No, dopamine. No, dopamine. Not router. No, that's how dopamine spell too. There's no spell check and sheets. So I'm never sure. Yeah. All right. So that's what I played. Blood of the Don Walker security 51 and shadow dungeon. Good. Do that. But John, let's get into the place. The game that I hovered my mouse over for hours this week. Tell me about on the moosh away of this order. All right. Scott, I am too proud of a person to retract my you should buy it. But I do have to be honest and I have to come to terms with the fact that when I described this game to you, there's a very good chance what I'm going to describe is going to put you off buying this game. But I still think you should get it. All right. Just to be clear. All right. All right. But this game is awesome. Let's talk about Onimusha way of the sword. Capcom's

1:01:17hey, we're killing it this year. Yeah. The title. Man. Okay. So this is a third person action game. It is a soft reboot of the Onimusha series. It takes place in a new era, technically after, where all the other Onimusha titles would have happened. So it doesn't directly contradict the existence of the others, but it also does not reference any of them. So for anybody that's like, ah, but I haven't ever played any of the Onimushas or, you know, it's like me. It is thinking of watching a four and a half hour long video about what the story was and the history of it. You don't have to. You, ah, you can go into this game fresh. And this game is spectacular. From the intro cinematic, I immediately really liked the main character Musashi. He is

1:02:20very well animated, a very interesting, ah, compelling character that they've created here. Um, I mean, just from the get go, like he's laying on the ground enough to where he looks like a dead body and someone thinks he's a dead body. And then he goes to enjoy, uh, rice cake and is interrupted by a little boy just staring at him with his mouth open. And he tries to ignore the little boy. And then he hears a wine and turns around. And the little boy has now been joined by a little girl and a dog all looking hungry at him. Uh, and he begrudgingly shares his food with them, which is basically like it's a fantastic introduction to the character because it really does summarize what you need to know about him. Like he's a little rough around the edges. Like he is a samurai. He's a very skilled samurai. Um, he's on the path that is the way of the sword. And he, uh,

1:03:21but he, he kind of goes by his own code. And that's the idea is it's like, hey, it's not a necessarily just about honor. It's about, you know, winning. So he's not afraid to get his hands dirty a little bit. He is based on an actual historical figure. Um, I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. A lot of these, a lot of these games have genuine historical reference. Um, in fact, I even see Chad say, is he a brave fencer that Musashi? Because yes, it is the same Musashi that brave fencer Musashi. Oh, I didn't know that at all. That's cool. So this game starts very seemingly simple. Uh, it introduces you to him. It's like, Hey, here's the button for a one hand attack. Here's your button for two hand attack. You can press, you know, for me, there's multiple control schemes, but, you know, for me, you know, XXX, that's your light combo. Why? Why? Why? That's your heavy combo. There you go. Um, enjoy. And it's like, okay, we're starting off simple and then sure enough, you know, here's your

1:04:25block button. And when you get a hit with block, use a little bit of stamina, but let's introduce perfect block, uh, which will cause a little stagger for your enemy, but also will not use any of the stamina. So you don't get a stamina drain if you time it right. Here's Dodge. We're all familiar with that, but there's also perfect Dodge. You timed it just right so you don't take any damage. So, you know, you can dodge to be out of the way of where attacks are falling. But if you get a perfect Dodge, even if you're in the middle of something, you dodge it. So, you know, if somebody does like a mass AOE and you perfect dodge it, you could be still standing right in that AOE and he just does a little hop. That prevents him from getting the AOE. Nice. So, okay, still so far, pretty simple. And then they introduce the idea of burning parries. So, burning parries are basically quite a little time. A meter that fills up when you parry in the game, and when you get to the

1:05:30highest level, your katana lights on fire, you enter a burning state, and you will do more stagger damage on an enemy when you hit them, which also ties in to actual parry instead of just block. So, in addition to pressing the block button and the perfect block that we've established, you can also press A in block at the same time at the exact moment that you're going to get hit and perform a parry, which does a massive amount of stagger damage to the enemy to interrupt their posture or whatever, but it doesn't actually stagger them physically. So, you they can attack you again right away. So, you have to be more on your guard, but you're technically pushing them towards being able to execute a lot quicker. There's also perfect dodges and a dodge meter that fills up

1:06:32where you can do an execute attack on a dodge that you do. In addition to all this, there's also a called Eason attacks, which is a like basically pixel perfect press attack when you're about to take damage, and you will immediately dodge and counter strike the character. For weak enemies, it's an instant kill for stronger enemies, massive damage. Okay. This is these are the stacking mechanics that build up and it has created what I think is one of the most satisfying combat systems in a video game I've ever played. And that's high praise. So, it's this part you think I won't like though, because it's like salty at the end when it's all stacked. It is. So, it's not exactly salty. If you die, you hit retry and it loads you basically right where you are and you fight again. There is sort of a limited healing, which is common in Souls likes, but it's common in all third-person games. You're

1:07:37usually not allowed to just sit there and spam heal yourself. And there are other mechanics to get around it as well. It's you're not using the Souls you collect as like your XP to level up. You do use Souls that you draw in for upgrades and stuff, but they're static upgrades. And the game kind of filters them out to you at the same time or like at a reasonable time. So, it's never really feeling like you're losing anything when you lose a fight. But the boss fights are hard. I genuinely think I hurt my finger yesterday playing the game. It's so good. Now there is a story mode if you just want to see the story. And I recommend it because that's the other thing. The story is pretty good. A lot of it centers in the same area and it's not like it's not bombastic over the top right

1:08:38away. It's a slow build, but it definitely is going off of character building more than anything because I have found like you know you see a character and it's like oh that character is pretty cool. Like there's a character named Takamura. He's just like this giant guy. He kind of sounds like Gimli from the Lord of the Rings, at least in the English voice acting. And he's he's just I was like yeah he's cool. Seems like a cool dude. The more I play I'm like this is one of the coolest characters in video games. I really like him. And so it's just a case of it's building up this characters in this world in a way that I find really intriguing. And then on top of that the boss battles are so wildly interesting because they can go from there'll be times you walk in and you just hit the flow state. And you're like I just mopped the floor. And I looked like

1:09:41the coolest most badass samurai in in all of history with what I just pulled out. Nice. And that's why I put hard not to buy it because John's selling me you guys I gotta understand I realize it's another Asian theme thing where it's gonna burn like sashima at some point. But to hear John praise this thing as the week has gone on it makes me I'm having I don't get FOMO that often. I had serious FOMO about the $69 purchase. So it's getting tough it's yeah that's the that's the other thing though is like sometimes you walk in and you just feel like a badass sometimes it feels like there's been times where all of a sudden I get through a fight and I'm just like oh my god thank god I don't have to do it again except I also committed very early on they will let you redo the boss fights like it kind of has a built in boss rush mode in a way where you can go back and play previous boss fights whenever you want and they've already said they're like if you do

1:10:43them all you know we're gonna give you something cool and I was like okay well just do them all as as I unlock them I'll do them so every boss I've beaten I've had to beat twice and there have been somewhere I'm like oh god I gotta do that fight again but it's always interesting because I'm always learning I'm always getting better there have been fights where I'm like this is like the third boss of the game and I'm never gonna beat this thing and it's gonna be forever and then you get it and it's it's just like oh my gosh you actually feel like you have accomplished something and so it's got really high highs as a result because it does feel like you were putting in an effort and I've had fights to the most recent boss I thought I was just getting my ass kicked I think I like lost four times in a row and I was just like oh I cannot get this and then I entered that flow state and I got through phase one and I didn't take a single hit off of him and I was like I'm the greatest player ever phase two comes up we're going through all the moves nothing and then I

1:11:48hit a run of bad decisions and bad inputs and he had like a third of his health left maybe even quarter less and he killed me in like three seconds and I was like shit oh my god this game will also punish you terribly for it it's mostly a boss boss encounters of the way where you're finding this problem right like yeah although you can also get a little arrogant and regular enemies can get you to so all of a sudden you you walk through you know town and you're just like I can handle all of this and the right combination of enemies pop out and nail you and you're just like oh I was not being cautious enough but I cannot tell you how much of a high high feeling it is when someone goes to hit you and you hit the perfect like eastern counter and and just take them out immediately in fact I've even gotten the ability now where I can do it with arrows and projectiles

1:12:52that get shot at me and I just shoot over do the attack and take the guy out so it's fun it's it's very very fun it does feel a little bit like a hybrid of a souls like more in terms of difficulty and challenge and the reward that comes with fighting a difficult fight and having to get through it less from how the world works how the gameplay works and stuff like that more just how deadly enemies and monsters and things can be but at no point do you feel like you are under equipped to handle it every time I have died I have understood that it was an error and execution not oh they just haven't given me enough tools to do this um they have given you a ton of tools and the funny thing is is the thing the experience from this year that this feels the most like to me is trying to learn a fighting game because it it really is like the number of things

1:13:58where it's you do this and they counter with this and you have to know to counter with this instead of this and that's where your mindset is operating so for example there's times where you will just lock up you both attacked at the same time and then you have to look to see if they grab their weapon with one hand or two and you have to press the opposite of what they've picked so if they take a two handed stance and you do a one handed strike you'll win the clash and vice versa but even then if you mess it up and they do come at you you can still dodge so the game stacks all of these mechanics on top of each other to where if you just execute it properly it plays so well and it's just the most fun combat I've had in a game like this um in a while I would honestly say probably since stellar blade because I really love the combat and stellar blade too um and this is

1:14:59rewarding in a different way this is a little bit slower and more methodical um but it really took what I liked about like uh ghost of suushima where it was like because for me suushima was very methodical you didn't go in and button mash you didn't go in and get aggressive it was very reactionary it takes that more deliberate combat style of suushima and instead applies a more active and engaging combat system in its place interesting I mean you're still selling me on it and the boss fights are incredible like the spectacle of the game is really good do you have any complaints I've heard a few people complain about the the monochromatic colors games of bothering at all or is that unfair to say that about no it is very um it is very like drab like everything is very kind of washed out I do tend to like games a little more colorful but

1:16:03it fits the tone and it fits the setting because it it gives everything an oppressive nature that you're in the middle of um because it does get bright and colorful at time so it definitely feels like there is a deliberateness to it because there's even a part where uh a demon has kind of possessed the shrine and is supposedly giving people what they want like there's a girl that doesn't like her music lessons and she wishes that she didn't have to do them so the demon takes her fingers from her so now she doesn't have to do it and like that area of town when you walk into it it's obviously under an illusion because all of a sudden everything becomes bright and vibrant and colorful and idealic and all of that because it's this demon's illusion of what's going on there so there's a deliberateness to what they've uh chosen it's not my favorite thing you're not going to ever look at this game the way you look at Sushima where it's like whoa

1:17:04visually it's just a spectacle graphically it's amazing and the the facial technology and how the characters look and all that is is staggering are you engine baby I think it's good yeah it runs really good too and it doesn't have any of the kind of open world problems that I guess monster hunter had run into so whatever they're doing with it they're doing well um but yeah I mean it's meant to evoke a dark and kind of dreary atmosphere yeah it's it's I mean it's I'm into this particular vibe I should just get this game I would recommend playing on story mode maybe if you don't want but I mean you can drop I think you can drop it at any time yeah I think it's pretty sure you can yeah so I mean you may want to see how you do but definitely you will go in and you go I get this this is fine and you get to your first boss and the boss will humble you pretty quick yeah um and if not the first boss then shortly thereafter and like this guy you just knocked down the door

1:18:04in the video you're showing yeah like he's a boss the first time you fight him and then later he's just an enemy that can show up sometimes oh shit I love this so it is definitely a game that's like you gotta get good at this you're gonna have to you're gonna have to figure this out how big is the demo chat keep saying play the demos got is it large I think people are saying play the demo because they're worried that you're going to not like the difficulty I say you know if you get the demo and you like it you're just gonna have to play through all that again just skip the middle man oh there's no save transfer or anything like that they say the demos log a good everybody's trying to be so nice to you Scott you know they're not looking out for you in a nice way yeah they're telling you to play the demo no that's not why they're doing it why they you just think they don't have faith in you no I think they love they love saying air isn't good sushi misstilt burns house only mousha burning now as burn everything burns that's what they want that's what they want I don't know I

1:19:08think you will get something out of this game do I know if you'll finish it I have no idea but I think you will get enjoyment out of the game I haven't played on story mode so I don't know what the easier setting is by comparison but I can tell you the the action mode where it is basically the harder difficulty is pretty challenging at times well another apparent banger by capcom in a year where capcom's got like five bangers or something it's so good it's all I really want to play right now and every time like here's where I knew the game was good is I would watch clips of other people playing it and they would get to a boss or something that I wasn't too and I would go oh I can't wait to get to that boss I can't wait to do that yeah and to me that is a good sign that the gameplay experience is where it needs to be because instead of looking at it and going how am I going to figure this out how I can't do this oh there's no way I'm just like oh I can't

1:20:10wait I can't wait to test my metal against that it's good it's a sign of a good game it's and you didn't really have any connection to the old ones either really right they weren't that big a deal to you no I wasn't even sure if I was going to get this game and then they started getting like perfect scores and stuff like that and I was like well shoot maybe it's good and you know I got to send some love to capcom they like at this point I think pretty easy to say within my top 10 games of the year three of them are going to be capcom games that came out this year R9 pragmata in this for sure right that's insane and so you know what they deserve my money and I'm happy to give it to him so keep going capcom I look forward to next year which is also going to be probably a decent year for capcom because the code Veronica remake come out yeah at least I think there's like two other games I'm sure there's more yeah gotta be and they'll be expansion

1:21:10content probably for this thing and I'm sure they're going to get some more money out of me somewhere today because I don't know how the deal works but friggin fortnight is putting mega man in today but they pulled a they pulled a John flavored switcheroo oh not only are they putting in mega man they're putting in mega man X more importantly they're putting in zero no who is my favorite character from the mega man X games and I'm like oh that's the good news is I think we might have reached as high as it seems likely fortnight will get on the mountain of uh John's interest yeah and I think that's where I'm gonna stop yeah I get it you were tiring from fortnight yeah and then I'm done for forever for forever wow all right you buy the skin you uninstall the game let's help Tim Sweeney's listening right now he's gonna be he's not gonna be very happy with you

1:22:13Tim Sweeney he listens to core yeah I don't think if he ever did he probably bails we're not exactly very nice to him we're not very epic friendly around here sometimes um yeah but also don't forget Tiff is coming to street fighter oh well yeah supposedly I got to learn how to play another game in between learning remember yeah you have an appointment with street fighter at some point this year well uh John one one match and is now beaten for night did he wins all the time that was Marvel rivals my undefeated streak in Marvel rivals yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that Tim Sweeney quote there goes our quarter four earnings report because of John's comments I'm sure that'll be true yep well nice what else you get up to this week so I also had a lot of people recommending the final fantasy resonance demo to me saying like hey John you said it looked like mobile slop but it's getting good reviews you should check this out um and so I tried it I

1:23:15still have more to play I was kind of hoping I would get through the whole demo and there's just other stuff I had to do before I mostly I just played only Moussa but uh I did check it out there are things I definitely like I will say first of all I don't think the game while I can see where it might have been a mobile game at one point there there hints I think the game does a very good job as presenting itself as its own thing and so if their goal was to disassociate itself from that lineage and present as like this is a game I think it does a very good job because there was that other game that was by and I don't know why I can't think of names right now but by the guy who created final fantasy oh the apple one that went on the mobile one you know what I'm talking about yeah that's called it was like everything was the backgrounds were all kind of clay hand done clay star for something fantasian that's fantasian was it

1:24:18no it's fantasian I don't know now you're thinking of uh refantazio you're right it's that one which also has a timer but it's got nothing to do with any of this so yes it's uh fantasia neo dimension that's what it is that is a game that very clearly is a mobile game um like it's cool I liked it I liked my time with it but it's very clear that you're playing a mobile game um this one does a better job of hiding it it has it has a very beautiful pixel art cut scenes at times like it's got some really cool cinematics it's worth checking out the demo alone just to see the opening cinematic it's it's pretty sweet um I've said this before and this game as well as they do the 2d3d has not changed my mind on it I think 2d3d art style is kind of ass I don't particularly love it now selecto path traveler vibe stuff yeah I don't I and I

1:25:21played adventures of Elliott this year it's probably going to be on my game of the year list somewhere as well it's not like it prevents me from enjoying the game I'm just telling you when it comes to personal aesthetics that I feel I don't like it they always do weird depth of field things you know wait I always feel a little disconnected from the world instead of immersed in it that for some reason when you have the full cohesion of all the sprites together I feel a little more immersed whereas this I feel a little more disconnected instead I feel like I'm watching a weird little puppet show and that's just how my interpretation of it is that said this is one of the best looking one of those I've ever seen so if you like it and it's your thing this one looks very very nice I think the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired so far from the characters that I've met I'm shocked shocked to hear this shocked but I don't know man final fantasy usually does a pretty decent job we're in the middle of playing a lot of final fantasy 7 remakes that say hey

1:26:25we got great voice actors there and even that adventures of Elliott game which if you want to say okay but final fantasy's got all the budget in the world that adventures of Elliott game I think has better voice performance than this I agree yeah yeah it's really good I it's good if not a little it's still a little saccharine but it's still it's their good performances for being they're good at sounding sugary I don't know if that makes sense yeah yeah we talked about that before but this didn't this didn't endear me to anybody from the performance side in fact I've seen people in chat say yeah I turned it off and I can kind of see why that would be an advantage yeah because it didn't it certainly didn't help the game sure that said the actual moment to moment gameplay is pretty solid so far like it plays like a final fantasy like a turn based one but it's got some it's got some cool mechanics I've only just gotten to the point where I can summon heroes from other worlds to assist me so I haven't I haven't dove too deep into that

1:27:31and I'll probably have more to say about it next week because I do want to finish the demo the demo is one of those where it is the entire first chapter and when the game comes out you can just continue off of how far you've gotten yeah not till October which gives you some time to look forward to it I guess if you're gonna play yeah yeah yeah so I I think in a lot of ways it succeeded it has gotten me away from the idea that this is just a mobile game port and not worth my time but I also don't know if I would go as crazy about it as I have seen other people go at least not yet but I'm not through the first chapter yet we'll see where it where it ends up landing nice cool anything else besides that this week I played a very small bit of the new vampire survivors DLC I don't have much to say like it seems like more vampire survivors it's clearly aimed at in-game experience because even having unlocked everything I was like oh this is challenging

1:28:32this is nice yeah so it seems like they're giving you more to do if you've kind of done everything in that game but I haven't done enough to really talk much about it but just worth a mention that I gave it a try there you go only Moosh away the sword final fantasy resonance and vampire survivors DLC is it legacy the blood moon the new DLC does that the name I don't know that works for our switch one yes that's it yeah legacy of the blood moon let's get over to Bo who would like to remind all all of us that Valheim one is now officially in the world it's a thing yeah one point I played it yeah I'm actually way more stoked than I was initially because um aren't you kind of feeling like oh man I played everything and now yeah but then I watched there's a creator stage games who does just nothing but Valheim stuff and I watch an overview of what's come like or what's you know what there is to do and I got super hyped and I was like oh man I'm gonna

1:29:35play it over for the start so I actually logged into a new world because I we're not doing the multiplayer thing quite yet so I don't want to jump the gun on on our multiplayer server but after slay this by we're gonna get back to it I think in the coming weeks but I think I'm just so so there's more quality of life like they not only is it like the next like biome but it's a 1.0 release which means like they've done a lot of great stuff just to the game for example difficulty meters you can turn off having to go do corpse run I don't mind the corpse runs but you can also turn off skill loss on death oh I like that more like Skyrim so you know you do doing things increases your skill it gets harder and harder and you lose about like up to 5% of your skill progression which is like not a big deal in the early stages but goddamn losing a point you spend eight hours chop and trees to get in the high tier can be a little frustrating even though it you don't get a lot

1:30:38per point right it's very incremental it's still just sucks I don't I'm glad it's in there but it was kind of forced on for a long time in Valheim so you just used to it I personally never gonna play with that on again I've you know I've had 500 hours I've played plenty yeah on higher difficulty I don't think it does much for my enjoyment of the game don't really care so that is good to know because I'd like that already I'm that actually makes me want to play you can turn on his other options you can turn off like like there's teleportation rules they have a full slider for different so if you want to teleport with or you can you know and again I'm at the point where I've done so much muleing of ore and I might just have a casual playthrough so there's that also you can upgrade your inventory space this is the biggest biggest news forever we've had those four rows it was I might even three probably four four rows and it looks like a lot but you have also like a weight and cumbrants so you know heavy things like rocks you don't feel your

1:31:38bags but if you're like collecting monster like you do dads you just run out of slots also as as the gate they had a trinkets to the game so you need four slots for armor one for like a special slot and then like up to like three different trinkets you can hold and I like to hold a number of ones as a magic user I just needed more inventory oh my god it's the best thing in the world they actually increased inventory now I'm like I want to play this the other thing they did was they also did a pass through on all the biomes so the farther out you are from the center of the world which is where the game starts the more interesting and variations there are to biomes so as I want to start on a fresh server and see all the cool shit I don't I didn't really spoil myself I know they added bear caves the bears were added at some point there's caves bears in them there seems to be a promise of new things at all levels of play so I'm like I don't you know what that means I went from being like I don't know if I'm gonna replay you know it's being like I want to replay this and like I logged in you know that feeling you get when you log into it happens

1:32:40with world of warcraft you go and you just hang out in the barons and hold barons music yeah and you just got this feeling from it this vibes the nostalgia I'm home is comfort this like that just new content can't capture I get that with Valheim when I'm just hanging out in the opening biome in in the meadows chop and trees listening to the music there I just feel so good so I'm now like I'm gonna play Valheim so it's great I don't know much about what's coming except it's in the deep north and apparently reportedly they've added quite a lot of content like it's not just a new biomes like they might have gone pretty hard on epic finale for the whole journey and including some giants which have been teased all through the game because there's giant there's at one point in the mislides you mine the corpses of giants to make things with them so now you're gonna get to see the giants it looks amazing so I don't know much to say I

1:33:43play the game to look at because I always go I always walk away going why is this game look so pretty when really if you zoom in everything's like PlayStation textures it's so weird to me how does game come look amazing whatever yeah it's just weird have you zoom out it's just it's they put a lot of effort into the vibe of everything like sometimes especially in the black forest it'll look like a painting you know you're just like wow this is beautiful yeah and it the increase the render the draw range which has a great effect too so when you're looking off into landscapes because you know if you look too far it would just be generic like geometry no trees so now when you look far off in the render monsters and things really far off and it looks oh this game's amazing and the one thing you know me and I GNF had a checkered relationship you know ever since heroes of the storm yeah really don't like the game yeah they gave it a 10 they gave it a 10 good lord and I was like holy shit rare IGNW like usually I'm you know I'm just like I never agree with them I don't like or many reviewers it's not just IGN but I was like oh man this is like repairing my

1:34:48relationship big time like acknowledging like basically game of the year for me probably I've been played yet but I played it time so I know it's game it's the release here yeah accounts I think accounts and probably it's probably gotty for me so yeah I'm please look forward to me playing with some more I might have to you guys should play it now that I have it John have it we all have it yet it's true I do and remember even when I got it but I one thing I will say to Alex at home if he's old enough yet but like Mike and his son play it a lot and they get like it's a really good multiplayer game like just being like let's build a camp and let's make a fire and like you have fighting and the fighting's fun and it's there's parrying like it's not it's not on a moosho okay but like there's parrying and rolling and stuff but you also work together to build a house and explore and there's some quests now and the shops and you know it's they both have had a good time playing

1:35:48it together it's a really good multiplayer game for even people who like often don't play a lot of video games there's something about the coziness of building your cabin and fire and workbenches that you know you'll have like your action packed person who likes to fight and they got something to do and then you'll have someone who's enjoying the crafting or just the exploration and they get something to do and because it's like a procedurally generated world you will still find interesting stuff but like just exploring terrain could be interesting because you know you're mapping out where to go next where to find the boss to fight where to find resources for your thing and now that the difficulty sliders are in there where you can make it an extremely casual experience it's much it's much more fun you know like it's I think being punishing was kind of a turn off for some people you know and I could see that so yeah yeah well there you go I want to get in again I want to try

1:36:49these sliders they sound like they're right up my butthole because I didn't like all the lift and shit around and not porting with stuff you know how I was with the vampire survivors thing the second or vampire they'll be rising was I couldn't I couldn't turn off I couldn't turn off the tell you all your shit can't teleport with you thing and not fast enough I hated that like this let me play that's weird resistance you know I don't want to be that that guy we had a troll in the chat a minute ago saying that um uh it's baby mode that's why this game sucks now they ruin the game play it however you want do the sliders however you want slide them up slide them down yeah I mean I'm all around whatever I've done plenty at that stage it's just it's mainly just it's not really a difficulty thing more as it's more of a time sync you know if you want the challenges there for you if you don't want it it's also fine you know I just feel like at this point I've done everything on hard mode already not ironman mode we're like I think they have a permanent death mode but um it's a cozy game so it's nice to have that coziness uh in there especially from the multiplayer

1:37:56standpoint so um yeah it's great yep very cool it's the game 10 on 10 game of the year four like you're I'm even flying it again we're already there you're already picking your pick and it's it's September I like it I like where you had that um I mean but you know it was a four-gun conclusion just mad just it took five point five years for it to hit her full release sure yeah they take a while okay so um yeah uh next up uh well you know we talked early I hope it was pretty sure or not but like I've been having neck issues right so like like just been working through it and it's getting better but like I really can't sit at my desk a lot so um for whatever reason I wanted like a low impact gameplay like I didn't want to be part of it is is we talked about like I mentioned today I might be getting a mouth card for sleeping some grinding my teeth but I'm like I think I grinded my teeth while I game like I don't think it's a sleeping thing I think if I'm playing a high intensity game you know I might be doing that too so I just just because I'm flared up like I

1:38:56want to take it easy so we've been we're at ascension level 10 in slay the spire in our multiplayer sessions right so our first attempt we failed and not everyone was available last weekend so me and Crofton just did a two-man run two silence on ascension nine we seemed to have that nailed down but we just had that one last thing but as one of the things is we always seem to be playing are just means right I'll play lich Crofton to play silent um pepperoni Pete always plays ironclad the first class you get hasn't unlocked any other classes yet which is hilarious to me like he's not played any solo and then locked nothing um I hasn't mastered it yet yeah well he always he's like I'm not interested in it but then he's always talking about it likes the game you also got in the magic to gathering the past few weeks and I went uh oh because his kids wanted some decks but now he's like pricing them out on mtgstocks.com and stuff like you got bit you know but um anyways so he

1:39:59likes the game he just doesn't want to admit it yet you know oh some people uh it takes time to to to warm up for some people I wouldn't know anything about that I never I've never been stubborn about any no no never been wrong never been stubborn doesn't happen to me so anyways I just played a ton of slave spire like because I only got on a solo I got to ascension level nine um playing by myself or I'm not playing by myself playing by myself but playing as the lich but I didn't really pump the other classes so I got to ascension level six with like all the other classes some I'm on seven you know so I'm like getting more familiar with their cards because now I can be like because like pepperoni Pete and Croft and they never have any block they're always like doing damage and then like taking lots of damage I'm like yeah you don't have to use block if you kill a fast and the way the way we talk about it is like I hear you John I hear you but the way we

1:41:01talk about it like I play as a try try to play as support so like whenever I can I'm often like giving them block so I wanted to get more familiar with the other classes because I wanted to see if they're just ignoring block options turns out they definitely are I mean um but particularly with silent anyways that's why that's sort of what motivated me to start just playing a bit more was to understand the card pools for those classes sure also I'm sort of making a card game and playing a card game kind of goes hand in hand if I can't work on it because I can't sit at my computer with my nose and good though while I'm having neck pain it's that that was my main frustration was just like great I'm sitting here and hurting myself so that's so I play tends to say this by anyways nice it's just a statistical fact though you can't show a rogue a shield we don't understand it we just go but that hand is for other that's for another poke or sword or maze there are less obvious ways that they do it so like there's a card after image where it's like

1:42:02every time you play a card get one block which is not a lot of block but silence get zero cost shifts and so you can get to a point where you have you throw like six or seven shives a turn I'm just like seven block and then there's ways to boot to upgrade to get two block and then you're playing other cards and then before you know it because you're supposed to break the game with the interactions you can get tons of block the card just doesn't say here's 20 block buddy you should play the new class ironclad if you want that custom what if instead of these block cards we did attack cards oh that's more damage how are the damage more better you do you do more damage with powers and skills too but but yes you're right it is the rogue archetype where they are favored to do damage fast because their passive ability is even draw two extra cards on the first turn yeah which implies having more options to burst out John likes the block is just called parrying that's just a different turn there's no parrying and play the spider no there's not

1:43:05there's tangible but it's exceedingly rare to get also not a rogue that's a samurai and that's a different kettle official that's true but if you were a rogue with two knives you'd mitigate with stealth where you could you'd mitigate with you know throwing a sand in their face or whatever yeah but you would also try to you know he'd swing at you and you'd try to like deflect that thing with your blade you know and then other blade up under his chin then John lives another day I like it all right well that's what we all got up to and bono no big updates on the game dev no I mean my neck hurts so I didn't really do much also this isn't like a every week to expect things like I made a lot of progress but what I the problem I'm interested in looking X is that 100 different ways I can go with like the next little step of something that I'm like interested in solving and the thing that I'm like oh now that I got the cards in there I want to make like some example cards like this 20 or 30 test cards but the actual cards and like the kind of

1:44:06TCGs looks like the spider and hardstone and magic they have a lot of data points so I'm you know like mana cost card types resolving rules text the keywords what are the different other things like attack and damage or whatever else is going to be as like key numbers and so that's a lot and also do the cards upgrade or evolve and how do they receive passive effects from other states of the game like the UI or the enemies so I'll let to say is I've been working on designing a database which sounds fancy when you say it that way but it's just listening out all the different variables on the need in the class of a card because right now the card I make it all in blender and it just doesn't you know has one rule in the code which is like what's the targeting of this card doesn't have any of that other stuff no card name even no mana cost like nothing so I want to make some example cards but I need a database and it's a lot more complicated than you'd expect because I

1:45:10need information about a lot of its behaviors and I'm trying to capture everything I think all need for that upfront which means having to do a lot of thinking and I can't think of my neck on fire so I've been picking at it but all that to say is all this is being done in Excel spreadsheets so I'm not going to share my Excel spreadsheets with you yeah it's just part of the work right now so I wouldn't expect to see anything for a little while until I've mapped out even if it doesn't have to be final but I've mapped out I think I want to map out and that's just where my interest is like all the data all the data and options like in a card and maybe for some UI elements and maybe some example stuff doesn't mean I'll work on it all at once but that's kind of where my head is at next because I want the what the game should ideally do is take like a mesh that's like blank and build the card in the software and then populate it with everything from the database

1:46:10rather than bake them so what I might end up doing is I'm not even making the game I'll be making a separate program where I can create the cards in my own tool based on the data right so I make a database and then then what I can do is I can export to a CSV or some sort of data file and then also load up you know so I'll be doing loading and saving of a data file where it's a card construction app basically that I'll be making and then that data set will be and then that that work will like save me time because then I can import the work into the game it's going to be the same business loading it up so it's kind of worth doing that's just where my head is at so I'm but right now I'm in Excel spreadsheets so now there you go thanks Microsoft you did it well we're gonna take a break oh quick note I've a lot of you are probably like do you guys play Wolverine no we none of us play Wolverine the reviews aren't great all the big major outlets

1:47:12I've been reading games rate our plus game spot IGN Eurogamer Europe and otherwise Guardian they're all giving it 60 out of a hundred it's not great a lot of them are saying New York Times gave it a 70 there people are bummed about the story mostly and that they come back it's old is it out it's out today I believe okay on your playstation it's not reviewing well no it seems like it's too linear to handholdy is the criticism that's what I'm hearing too in the stories a little limp but yeah the action's cool I've heard that yeah I watched review two sounds like it's a press W simulator for the most part like um it's a it's a corridor game but it also has a lot like a dead space line on the ground you follow or like a scent you know like from Witcher but but also there's warnings on top of the scent like so just the game just kind of like there's literally a rail we say on rails when it feels like it's on rails but this game apparently

1:48:13is just actually your it's a rail like it's a literal rail yeah chat Sean Shinobi in the chat says he's on YouTube says it's out on the 15th I think he's right today was the embargo lift for reviews 15th is the actual release date that's another reason why we haven't played yeah and we got we get we have so many things like why are we playing this and it's like because not I just but also Sony didn't send us anything if they send us copies of the game we might have played it we all have play stations but I'm not buying that one now sounds like we might have dodged a bullet yeah it sounds I mean I'll wait we'll do a little wait and see over the next few days but I'm no longer a feel any pressure to grab it yeah that's why I was asking the questions I was asking about like how are they gonna do the Wolverine unique but it just sounds like it's you know you control an avatar you do cool cinematic attacks and we tell a story and GG you know so yeah yeah it's kind of what I was expecting to be honest but I guess it's lacking that the inspired traversal that

1:49:15that they're known for with Spider-Man people really like the web swinging that they did that's like it's hard to under it's hard to overstate how important that is feels like they should like valheim like the valheim of it all like rather they should have probably made an open world but not open world like red dead or something like that or or GTA it should have just been like like open world but like no very little hot spot they needed to do was put frigging like stellar blade but instead of sexy skimpy costumes your yellow and blue spandex there you go what you get and stuff yeah like it would have been would have been fine they should have just copied copied that lifted this is this is big budget gaming where they got to mitigate things you know it's a committee I mean you don't want to watch a bloggin with a little like a G-string up his butt is your following behind him you don't want to do that um I mean I don't think you see the G-string with all the buff here oh that's true he's a furry boy yeah yeah good point I think a G-string

1:50:19would just be not visible he's so bushy and there he just wouldn't see it the adamantium should come out in hair follicle form that way tiny whiteies tiny whiteies that's the that's the new one yeah it would be like the well where they in those like old ice windale books where there were the dwarves that just were really sharp armor and they would just jump on enemies and shake oh yeah well you know I'm like the dressed books yeah they were just these dwarves that would just dive and like land on an enemy and then just go I'm just tear them apart by just vibrate a gun they have they had a subclass in dnd5 I think at least I remember on dnd beyond um it would do like that like how to yeah I don't remember specifically but I remember it was something from the forgotten realms that was like these dwarves dwarves stuff you're you're right I don't know if it's like holding a cat that doesn't want to be held kind of yeah this case the cat jumped on yeah cat bloodlust all right we're gonna take a break when we come

1:51:22back from this break we are gonna spend some time looking oops don't do that there we go we're gonna take some time looking at the news there's a few things pop in this week that we will get into some of your feedback and more so please come on back stay tuned we're back hey everybody we're back and if you were a patron and or a supporter of our substack you would also get the john show if you weren't here live but sadly you weren't and if you want it and uh all the back order stuff all the time he's done it before it's all up there just join today and be a bigger part of the community patreon.com slash core show all right core not show if you prefer or if you even like better to read all about it go to fraud pants.com slash core all the websites they're all there for you all right let's get back to the business of hand we got some news to talk about so here we go finish the game no that's me um let's go to the documentary oh what that's uh uh let's talk about Nintendo I watched both I know I think

1:52:23we most of us at least john and I for sure watched all the legend of Zelda ocarina of time remake thing as well as the Nintendo direct yesterday I watched I watched both and man there's one that was hard to get through but I watched all of both of them well I had to stick through the Zelda one because it was what is all the shit of so boring dude that okay well I'm working this is good to know because my I am legitimately excited about that remake after that showcase now the weight Nintendo does things is corn ball and weird and whatever it makes for a weird presentation I kind of find it cute the legend of Zelda movie will be called the legend of Zelda yeah and they do it with a straight face like I it must be translation or something there was another part of that where they said by the way you notice there there was a loading screen between this area and that area we decided to keep those because they were in the the the the spirit of the original game

1:53:24no you didn't you either needed a load thing or you didn't I don't buy that at all anyway that kind of shit whatever the game though looks incredible I think I was tuned into your live stream for a bit yeah I kind of lost it on that I I think this game looks amazing I was very it's very nervous after our first little preview we're just show links sleeping on the floor I was like oh I don't like how this looks I don't think I like it at all hmm once I saw the proper game in motion I think it looks a lot better now the internet is on fire with diverse opinions on this games look there are people who love it there are people who hate it there are people in all various levels of it um I definitely think I'm going to wait into unpopular territory here with my my thoughts on the look of the game don't for it because I feel like I feel opposite of what I've seen from most people um I think because I think I see the most as people complaining about the

1:54:29faces and the looks of the characters like the skin and stuff like that yeah I think that's the best looking part yeah I think the over textured and overly detailed clothing and every the periphery that's the part I don't like oh you don't like that interesting no I actually think like links face is the best looking part and I kind of wish he just had a plain-ass green hat that didn't have the words on it because I think the reason it looks weird is because his face has like two shades and kind of anime eyes um underneath like extremely detailed and shaded hair and armor and we've put patterns on it and texture on everything like it it's jarring I think most people are like yeah the face should look different but I think the clothing and everything should look different I wish it matched to the face and not the other way around so that's my unpopular take on it but I

1:55:32think overall while that would be my critique if you said John you know what do you like and don't I still think ultimately like I'm excited for this I think this looks good I went from being worried about it to oh yeah I'll absolutely buy this and play this game again like that was my big takeaway from it is all 100% play this game again yeah there's no doubt in my mind now that I will be playing it based on what I saw I love the detail of it I'll go opposite on you on the character detail I think the the runic stuff in the hat and the wood the wood grain of the shield and just that tighter like you see his laces and his boots and all that I think that stuff looks fantastic and um I also like that there are areas in this game you have to go back and look at the old one to compare it but there are areas in this game where like that bridge that falls apart is just kind of hovering there in the old game and this one it's got structure and things holding onto it in some cases you know big ropes and vines holding certain objects or rocks afloat and that sort of

1:56:32that attention to detail they didn't have to do but they did and I am all freaking and dude I can't wait for this game so I'm also excited to see if my son likes it or not yeah yeah oh yeah it'd be super interesting to see how you took to it right sometimes you show your kids stuff and you're like oh I think you'll like this and sometimes you show them stuff and you're like are you gonna like this are you how are you gonna feel this is gonna be like hey buddy you want to play a game dad really liked when he was little let's try this together and see what you think have you seen the so one of the complaints I heard from somebody in our chat I don't remember who it was but at the time I was watching this they kept saying um it looks like AI and I and I want to throw this out real quick this is one of the things I hate about AI like aside from all the other obvious issues some of the useful things about AI but one of my favorite least favorite things about the discussion around it is because something looks nice compared to what it used to because we're using new hardware to just say it looks like they passed AI over the top of it is just it's way too

1:57:36dismissive of what's actually going on here well not to rabbit hole too hard but like I also feel like I hear that about everything yeah it's too simplified it's AI if it matches an aesthetic that has existed before it's AI if something doesn't look perfect it's AI if something looks too perfect it's AI if something looks too detailed it's AI yeah like it feels like that is the short form criticism for everything and it honestly doesn't work as a criticism because when it gets used constantly what you end up selling is the narrative that AI is actually far more capable than I think it actually is exactly and not only that you just you just false positive left and right on everything you see there's does nobody any good like it's just to absolutely wasted conversation and I hate it so that part F that I really like the look of it I think this game looks like what your imagination made the old one to look like in your head

1:58:39it's there's a little bit of truth to that and I can I like that one games do that it's also an all-timer for a reason they gave you a jump button they pretend in this that they invented a journal I think that's pretty funny yeah they're like oh this good lord no they went on long about the jump well I'm just like I don't you didn't care about that so much gradually like I'm sure it's good and they just why you know you're like oh what can we tell people that will hype them up for the game let's see I don't think you understand but before in the game when you would walk to a ledge link would jump automatic now no listen now when link approaches a ledge you compress a button and he will jump manually whereas before it was automatic wait a minute wait a minute can you order I'll do it now by the same you go back and reiterate that I'm not trying to say is original in the n64 they didn't have a button oh that was for jumping oh now they have oh it's a button

1:59:41for jumping now you push a button so it'll it'll be manual okay instead of automatic I got it kind of like a car and Lincoln swim yeah it's all that he went and dug a rupee out of the river whatever yeah honestly though like I agree with bow I'm giving him shit but I agree with him but the thing is is when I heard that I was also like okay maybe we are saved for my son to play this because the he was watching me play only moosa and he's like dad jump and I was like I can't he's like he goes why I said there's no jump button he goes why yeah so he's already on board with the like why isn't there a jump button dad good games have jump buttons so yeah no he'll he'll have an issue clearly important I didn't know to the to the new generation the jump button this city's a big upgrade the old one was like flat textures just looked like shit they didn't go very far in making that do anything so now it's fully explorable you of course have a right stick and

2:00:43a left stick I kept pausing it so it's kind of annoying in my playthrough or my watch there but anyway I'm personally ready for that game I'm good to go that's coming out early November that'll keep my mind off I have an await for GTA on PC uh I think I'll I'll think I'll go for it and yes some of you're gonna come into discordance go either they're gonna think this is ironic yeah Scott says wait now he'll wait for GTA for PC and buy a console exclusive in the meantime but not GTA on ps5 no I know what you're gonna say shana fan I can hear it now all right I wait too much time I don't we just gave just gave too much food I can't like him I like I like I feel like we've we've you know we're well trained on the Nintendo just like we don't even bother hoping like because there's hope for other studios and developers which is the hope for Nintendo first party that's gonna be going anywhere else yeah and let's see what I emulate which it does exist for you know there's some games but thanks a while and who knows how

2:01:48stable it is I don't know but um I want to say on the art I think the art looked fantastic I like beautiful right I like the fact that it's got like this dark crystal you know weird like grossness to everything I was like oh that's cool it's a good choice um I don't think that'll mean I'm gonna play it so I'm gonna switch to and I just I have no hankering to revisit ochery enough time but um good news they're gonna sell you a switch to that look that has Zelda yeah do you want to Zelda pat look and deal unit thing no no I honestly I just probably wouldn't play the game like even though I can say like it looks cool I'm just not interested in the rehash of okay it's so good though that game is so good I'm not the biggest Zelda like I have fun memories of playing one and two on the regular nests and even linked to the past but I just don't feel up for it anymore but what if it had a jump button what if it had you be able to think it didn't do it like show me something that like makes me interested but what if you could

2:02:50sing into your controller and it would do you different yeah you can get out your guitar and play the ocheryna songs yeah what do you think of that I mean if I really wanted to get into Zelda I also have plenty of like games to play that I haven't gotten to you like linked to the path like I'm played any of it or whatever that links awakening you know the switch one deal yeah it's really good boy gangs really good and I mean I played it a little bit and really connect with it but you know happy like it looks like the earth style anyways I just want to say on the earth style school but yeah I don't I don't really care I didn't mean to make this about me being negative sorry I like the earth style that's it goodbye fair enough I'm very excited about it personally and we'll be getting that in November I forgot the date would they say early November something like that you know they're giving a little it's the only game even daring to release anywhere near GTA and Nintendo is always getting Nintendo and they don't care yeah they're right I don't know if there's a company that makes me go and like cause as much psychic damage as Nintendo does but I'm

2:03:56like at the same time I'm like just don't change you guys just being you I guess you the same be weird like this so do this you know what I make fun of the singing into the controller for the ocarina I guarantee I'm to you I'm gonna do it I promise you I will do it at some point I mean you have to do the whole song you just do the ocarina thing you need to do right that right you don't have to do the whole song but why stop there you've already started yeah and you can buy this little ocarina toy and blow that and your game will recognize it and then do the moves I mean that's cool I guess I don't know I mean the Kirby games the one that really got me we're not to that yet but we'll talk about it okay so that happened and then the next day then the next day Nintendo Direct which the only I think I've stumbled on the best way to describe what watching an Nintendo Direct feels like watching an Nintendo Direct is like deciding you're gonna

2:04:57organize your family junk drawer and you go through it and you're just like pulling out every bit and Bob that ever got thrown into a drawer and didn't have a place or a purpose and every now and then you find like a $20 bill yeah and you're like oh man there's something great in here somewhere mm-hmm that's what an Nintendo Direct feels like and this thing either had stuff you already knew like crap in your drawer that you already knew is in the drawer so big deal like this revelations we knew this was coming DLC revelations I should say revelation DLC for certain things ports of games that have been out on other platforms forever and then they go and what about a new 2d Zelda called or not Zelda Metroid called Metroid ravenous and I thought of I thought of bokehs it looked really bad as sequel the Metroid dread yeah that looked real good it's almost like a Mega Man game if I can find the enemy powers and then get power something like isn't that just Mega Man

2:05:58okay I mean look if you're excited about with the Witcher because then you know that all on there too that's the thing I'm trying to find I started to skip around on this I should do chapter you gotta you gotta get through the junk drawer to the thing that is actually a lot the life there it is that's it that's it a lot of string has the mark if you go to them Nintendo of America yeah I'm I should have done that to mine but I was lazy um but ravenous looks good man you know you like you 2d yeah it's yeah only the psychic damage John was talking about was like oh if I want to enjoy this game I have to spend on a switch to and I'm like now a good point yeah can you can you not part this like I why do I have to one of those again I didn't touch it at all I'm made to keep here I didn't touch anything I know it's a weird I swear it's electronic it's not a it's like a the electrical time yeah you hear that all right they also what else do they show oh then Kirby in the world

2:07:06beyond okay this is easily the thing excites me the most because I love Kirby unabashedly don't care what you say Kirby's like all-timer freaking best here you have to defend loving Kirby I'm good attacking you for liking Kirby nobody yet but we'll see when we get the emails I love Kirby regardless of the game and what type it is and what platform it's on so a open world ass Kirby game very exciting to me I'm all in what's this full called full name the world beyond yeah because he's in the Truman show yeah it seems like a trip he's like big old glass wall that's supposed to be the sky and he breaks through the acts and looks like link here there's the hat you want John is a real basic hat yeah there's that Kirby Kirby's wearing that I love love love Kirby so this will be a no-brainer for me now the one thing I was confused this doesn't look like an eating Kirby he eats he he sucks in the he sucks in the bad guys takes their power that's still there that's still thing oh maybe I just didn't see anyone I watched it because I I noticed he had a sword

2:08:10yeah he sucked a guy in to get that okay I'm sorry I didn't see any sucking he's got a suck a guy to get a soul yeah that's the only way you can do it and he does plenty of second and then it goes to this it goes to this wall and then he's into a whole new world and who knows what the hell happens after that I don't know that's Kirby for you yeah it's a tremendous I'm very excited about Kirby and that will be soon inish no that's next year sometime early next year February I think I will play the shit out of that um and then a bunch other stuff John what do you think of the proto man mega man dual override business all that yeah this was the only thing in the junk drawer where it was like showing us stuff we already knew that I I got excited for which was we knew proto man was going to be in the new mega man dual override game that's coming out we didn't necessarily know in what capacity and now they've confirmed it's a like secondary character it's a different playable

2:09:11experience different moves that all of that and going to be a playable character in the game so that is cool well all right then I'm I'm almost excited about that one but I'm more excited for you because I know the level of mega man fan you are it's high yeah it's pretty high uh chat says I didn't I didn't know they were talking about Kirby what with all the the second and dude still talking about tug yeah tugging tugging and sucking dudes well I came out worse than I expected it sound sorry about that eight different people submitted a new showtime I wonder what it could have been I can't imagine all right uh often intend off for a bit PlayStation and Kojima had had a bit of a falling out and Microsoft pulled up and said we'll do it so they're going to do the what's the game called uh they're gonna put fizzin to that it sion is it sionter fizzin is it's p I mean p h y s is like physical right oh that's right yeah is that it here it is just from place

2:10:15they're found a thing there it is fizzin I just assume it's how you say it but this was originally a Sony joint and now they're gonna get it was gonna be a Sony game but now it fizzin yeah now it's fizzin it's sure fizzin that's not good yeah enjoy it anyway even to confirm this on a zex account as confirmed earlier our official channels and mid-June this year we're expected to receive notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the fizzin project fizzin is an important important project to build me in personally so chat says it's pronounced fizin well no it's not if it is then they should change the way they phonetically put it there let's get fizical fizical yeah that's if that's fizin f that I'm not buying that game f that game fizical that's crazy but uh Microsoft's paying for it they're fitting the foot in the bill so even if they're right he deals wrong it's fizz anyway this is a big deal because it's a lot of

2:11:15people are like man PlayStation losing Kojima is a big deal and it is and Microsoft immediately like I don't remember what the time between the two was but it was same night it was very quick and it but Microsoft was like yeah we're working with them we're putting this out so uh that's a big shift right there and yeah this is the console or chaos that I do actually yeah I kind of like it too I hope it doesn't go away Microsoft not out of money yet you know oh yeah they always have a big deal Mike we're losing so much money and but they're like okay I guess we'll we'll agree to your uh price increases you know and then and then they immediately go and spend money again and you're like what do you know yeah you just made a big deal how about what do they call it we're not they didn't say profitable whatever it was they're forecasting bad yeah they're forecasting poorly right is the deal then someone went to Asha Sharma was like you know

2:12:17you just got broke up with Sony by him immediately yeah and we're all fro John is frozen no he's not frozen he's fake yeah yeah I already faked it or fixed it fake it John was fake it um it's uh there's always money in the kajima stand is what I said so get get that done that's why Sony broke up with them yeah that's weird I feel like that's the whole story is why did Sony break up then when they need a win in the golden child the golden the parent golden goose they're like na bro you know what I mean they're being weird in general Sony is right now they're being very weird kg weird moves this psn uh cut off some guys access at games he paid for because the free games became games he owned became psn monthly free games and when that happened it reset something and the guy couldn't get any of his saves and when it ended his ownership went

2:13:20away and Sony's just like mirror I didn't like that story because it was just pissing me off what are you gonna do I guess you gotta I don't know buy more shit like the Sony of today if you could go back to the Sony of 2012's ps4 announcement and compare them it's it's so different it's so different now over there I don't know why I mean that was the same thing going from the xbox 360 to the x-bone yeah like yep you mean are they spiraling like I feel like I feel like they always say like PlayStation's doing well so I think that right now I think a lot of companies are in an interesting place financially and I think because Sony maybe feels like they're in a very secure place market wise because you know Microsoft hasn't been doing the best in the console area they think they can kind of just do what they want yep so now it's time for Sega to come in throw the cloak off

2:14:21dreamcast to let's go oh my god can you imagine I don't know if it would work out but can you imagine the like excitement about a dreamcast to I don't think it would work out either but the excitement in the initial like let's go moment of them announcing such a thing people would live here but it would be a lot of older people yeah like yeah not a lot of kids would get excited about the dreamcast too if I say dreamcast too and you don't feel a warm feeling in your tummy then congratulations you're still young you're a young person you don't you think it's a meme enjoy your youth yeah you didn't have dreamcast like can't feel those things well that's true but you at least know the say the ads the like kids think like that spiral and feeling like oh this is god damn it the fuck is wrong with camera oh they can the two pages you're back yeah I happen again but you're back you're back it's really weird I don't know what

2:15:26causes it there there was an error where I was checked out a gaming I think it's hey day was during that period oh well you missed out on this sound right here and check this out oh sounds like a really like relaxing spa a little bit yeah a little bit they got rid of the Sega say I mean they kind of do that still with the games at the time but anyway well you know some waspaws nice yeah spa is nice always nice this is my favorite Sega guys burps burp right through my favorites the t-rex oh the t-rex is good that one's really good and I also like oh no this is this isn't it I'm in the wrong place here it is I like oh this isn't Sega though it's just big that's my favorite video game sound that no one uses anymore it was for SS X and NBA street and all

2:16:27that as into it all right well done let's move on to shroom and gloom I just wanted to tell people that shroom and gloom 1.0 sorry not 1.0 early accesses out from the developer and the publisher devolver digital which I feel like we haven't heard a lot of devolver lately but oh this screen is also effed I mean fix that real quick talk more about fizz and what's going on man so annoying every time I say that name and try to correct it I feel like I'm picking you feel you feel like it's it fizz and correct is what you're feeling see that good that joke just comes back yeah um shroom and gloom is this this dungeon crawly deck builder thing that just has a visual style that is hard to deny and I don't know how it's I mean it's reviewing with 89 review or 59 reviews at about 89 percent just shy of 90 it's in early access so I don't know but I kind of want to just grab this this week and see how this goes it is a vibe man like look at this crazy thing there's two

2:17:30pants what what look at all this weird like parallax scrolly shit man we need scottonari like like ubi soft games instead of the fake things where it's like okay squad let's get it right this time okay just get him we just need scott in there there's two two pads what we can go multiple directions look call me ubi soft I got you covered does do it anyway shroom and gloom out now and looks neat I've been watching this one for feels like forever not I'm not for views to really make a call but most of these are positive people are pretty stoked about it so anyway that's it for that let's get to some feedback yeah that's right we do feedback here on the show and we play this when we do it back up good question speaking of mega man let's get in here to this email from beef blast nice yeah I like beef blast um well oh it says what is the core core gaming for core gamers opinion

2:18:31on hit sorry hit makers markers in single player games I think they are perfectly valid in multiplayer shooters where they assist in hit and kill confirmation but they have no place in single player games and they completely ruin immersion so as an example if I'm playing if I'm playing um battlefield for and I hit a guy from way across the place I get a little if I just hit them like a little this cross here I'll do like a little and make a sound but if I kill them call dude he's got the same thing you kill them it goes like a red one so you know you kill them I like those personally I like the feedback um yeah but I think the feedbacks there because you don't um it might not see whether you like if you don't have health bars to confirm like an amount of damage seeing the click like in a multiplayer setting means you can do that calculus of oh I did a crit on them so they might be severely injured depending on the game right so you get the little x like Overwatch does this

2:19:32where you have a bigger x if you crit um then if you don't um I don't know I don't I don't mind them in multiplayer settings as he's saying they have a saying what do you think in single player yeah this isn't a case against multiplayer this is a what do we think about it in a single player experience uh probably unnecessary um these things kind of come about because like the lexicon of gaming develops so that you build on you build on these things so if people you play shooters and you use a lot of multiplayer you kind of want the features from your multiplayer game and your single player games because it's just the standard mm-hmm that being said um I'm inclined to agree that I think just make it an option if you can well you can because you can there's other ways of solving that solving that one is like a melon popping sound like oh if you get a head shot you know that kind of thing um or like in dark tide when you pop ahead you just you hear you hear

2:20:36and the head explodes so you get good visual feedback you don't need the crit indicator I'm inclined to agree actually um depending on the game if you're playing a game like borderlands though like numbers are popping out of the guy and that's also kind of the vibe you know that's that's why you're playing that kind of game so I don't know I haven't thought about it too carefully but I can see an argument to be made where this is just uselessly obstructing my view but can't these things be turned off in a lot of games uh probably yeah do we have some examples of like where it's like because maybe it's not the fact that there's a hit marker it's just that the hit marker visual design is bad like in that particular use case and game like some games are worse than others like I've played a lot of Far Cry in the last couple of months and they all use something like this and some were more egregious than others like big red crosses would pop up but then others were more subtle and then like both says and I think it's true of battlefield which we're looking at here I think that's a thing you can turn off in the campaign but who's playing

2:21:37the campaign anyway or else see you know I played it it was bad it was okay it was just a lot of dude pro bullshit I also played I'm just not into them all the we're being invaded the murder of a bunch of people yeah most player was fun there's a great game like I'm not gonna leave you behind just stuff like that I just not getting into it I was like okay you know yeah you guys have any entries human beings have conflict with other human beings and we're just meat for the meat grinder and which actually would be a compelling story if it weren't couched in but we're the good guys and draping ourselves in the flag of being on the right team you know that shit yeah do you guys have any interest in the war dogs thing that's up at like number one right now um yeah Zagreb let me know about it because he thought it would be up by Ali it's just a little too military means very military right but it does have planets like it says destructible environments big matches like a hundred team like there's three teams hundred players and they've incentivized

2:22:40so you basically you get cash to get better stuff but you get cash not only for kills but for like helping like res people and do other support based mechanics throughout the game yeah so it all sounds compelling the only thing that's not compelling is obviously the fact that it's you know bilcym and I'm just like yeah it is definitely a military sim it seems like the things I've heard pretty consistently or if you like the if you like the immersion of armor but find that a little too fiddly but but you find collodity to arcadey you want something kind of in the middle this is that no it honestly sounds very compelling actually um with friends this would be really fun I was sitting at mix it was kind of hyped for a while it was 90% this morning I think I think it's just I mean servers can't get in yeah all that kind of shit never trust never trust first day reviews on these multiplayer games I never is this today the first day I think it's I've heard about it for a few weeks yeah 10th today oh I don't know interesting there was a playtest a while back and then

2:23:43some influencers had early access I think already one thousand or ten thousand reviews that's like guy you were talking about john I always forget his name um the guy who was talking about blood they're done blood blood of the don walk walk don walking on the don walker that guy yeah he was saying that he was playing it and saying that it was really something he was very impressed oh okay so there's you guys two things apparently streamer priority cues or thing and everyone's got a wait to get in streamers wait listed such a launch disaster I hate that's okay yeah and then and then there's some anti-sheet complaints as well so it doesn't look like it's substantially about the game it's a I mean every awesome game many awesome games have had large-dave login Q issues I would recommend that go look at this lady for a while just stare at her uh everything will be fine I forgot her name now you've brought it back around to being weird I made it weird all right uh this did I finish this email I did so beef blast thanks dude actually did he finish

2:24:46no he didn't he says a perfect example is the recent GTA 6 showcase on Netflix they showed a beautiful handcrafted environment with character animations and graphics that felt alive and immersive then when it goes to the action the immersion comes crashing down when you see these ridiculous x's on your targets confirming kills instead of letting the blood and effects be your indication at the very least all the game should include a simple option to say what I agree with that so that's a entirely different thing because there's there's kill confirmation it's not just for crits right right in a multiplayer kill confirmations I'm not a big fan of that that is immersion breaking depends on the game though because you'd like big numbers flying up in the oblo right depends on the game like yeah like Borderlands the oblo whatever but like I'm just I want to see some cyberpunk gameplay because I think I might have been a complaint I have with even though it's like sci-fi weapons um it hides that like the problem is there's ops ops obfuscation obfuscation that's a word it's obfuscation of like what's happening and

2:25:50you don't need that in every game right like especially if a high production value game that puts a lot of effort into the death animations and until like sound and animation feedback do you really need an ugly-ass basic-ass couple of lines covering what you're looking at like no right so right yeah I think I think cyberpunk does that I'm not sure though I had a memory of it actually bothering me in a game for kill confirmations yeah anyways there you go more discussion to be had have it in our discord or wherever you feel like messaging us or doing whatever you want do what you want people that's what I'm saying okay now it's at the time for us to do our goodbyes however I would like to say this if you are a fan of the show and you have yet not or not yet joined our patreon or our sub-stack today would be the day this would be a great day to do it hop in there for some reason our views and downloads went up I don't know why um I'd love to see our

2:26:55patreon go up as a result as well so if you can handle it head on over to frogpants.com slash core you'll find all the details there about what you can sign up for what the differences are and what may I might be right for you some of you do both that's also really nice be like Dorado that's cool name yeah ill Dorado will call him he he's done this very thing that I mentioned and you all can be like that too so sign up today get no commercials ever pre-show content every week host specials and other stuff as well check it out that's frogpants.com slash core and thanks for the support for all of those who already do it's time to give dear Martha the microphone well is this AI Martha home or what is this today what do we don't know do you want me to use the AI I kind of like the AI lately it's cracking me up so you know what we're just gonna make the call it's AI Martha doing AI stuff telling the folks at home or she's not doing anything she's being told by the AI how her husband's doing because he's too lazy to write the letter himself so he had AI do it right that's the premise I guess I don't know is the AI just turned it on it tells you what games

2:27:59we played so you don't have to go back and look for it excellent let's do it go my dearest Martha today on core podcast gaming for core players the following video games were discussed in depth with strategy guides prima blood of the dawn walker is a game with his time limit to be a vampire security 51 is exactly like obrden and made by lucas pope shadow dungeon is deoblo with vampire survivors in an open world setting only moussaway of the sword has bosses that the host found fun and thought was good he thought it reminded him very much of other games where combat was good final fantasy resonance the demo is a demo of the upcoming final fantasy resonance demo video game he also played vampire survivors dlc which is dlc for vampire survivors boh was excited because valheim hit 1.0 which means he can play valheim 1.0 again on his server valheim 1.0 he also played

2:29:06slay the spire too because his neck hurt would you like other suggestions on things you can do at home to remedy your neck hurting yes can i have one more yours in this life and the next motha dot ai oh shit don't go to tug no stay out of tug stay out of the range of tug the gay bar or ivy the daytime lovely whatever all right that's it everybody thanks for listening thanks you're hanging around with us and please please please go enjoy your week i want to give a quick shout out to our pal pop some recline sometime during the show today uh he saw fit i swear didn't ask for this but he saw fit to send me on moussa so i have no excuse now i'm going to be playing it so there it is i will i will i will i will pay back his generosity by playing the livin's shit out of that game so watch for that now that was very nice very kind uh that is going to do it for us for me for john for bow we'll see you next time

2:30:10find all our shows at frogpants.com awesome shield