896: Current Next Gen | Giant Bombcast

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hey everybody it's tuesday welcome to the giant bomb cast it's june 24th 2025 uh i did this out of order so welcome to the giant bomb cast episode 896 i am your host a little bit foggy mentally and in the weather that i'm having jan ochoa joining me though co -captain of the ship his collars are pressed and clean jeff krupp howdy hey yeah i i started a new breathing technique to help with brain fog you breathe less oxygen it's for the birds i don't need it anymore more uh speaking about birds i would like a quick update on his bird situation dan reichert uh paul the guy who's like 80 uh and lives

on my street came and knocked on the door the other day and he's like hey i cut down a tree in your lawn uh because it's gonna help with airflow and uh i think he asked me if i cut down the tree and i don't know sure and so he cut down a tree he's like yeah i'm just gonna cut it down it'll help with like woodpeckers it'll help with the airway between you and your neighbor you just need to carry it down to the backyard once i'm done and i just didn't want to talk about it so i said yeah yeah i'll do it and i didn't there's just a tree that's cut down and chopped up on the side of my house now and i

don't want to do anything with it sounds like you got worked no i'm fine with that tree now i don't it's the side of my house i don't even ever see it's on a huge hill i don't go i can't go over there sounds like a tree chop pervert came to your house and made you deal with his mess yes he lives down the street He does like Live on every street in America Dude if someone Came to my house and was like I'm chopping down one of your trees I'm like I'm going to cut your legs off No I said just do whatever you need to do I don't want to talk about this That's one way to deal with it Chops is a cut

of meat And we've got the most delicious cut of meat Here that's right he's our own Filet Mignon Jeff Bacalar Oh, that's very nice of you to say, I love that cut of meat, even though I'm trying to slowly but surely eliminate red meat from my diet I appreciate you giving me the best cut, thank you And last but certainly not least, I didn't give him a second mic check question so I think he's still a little bit perturbed with me so instead I'll give him this, he's not only the bad boy of games media, but speaking about meat he's the meatiest man in game names media he's the rarest of rare that's

right he's just past blue he's still bleeding the meat juice the hemoglobin is dripping off of him mike menotti hi all that red meat is bad for you stuff i mean i'm sure that's true to a point but is that maybe it's empirically true there's no debate only chicken it's like don't like the one that's like so slightly okay turkey's fine turkey was was really turkeys actually yeah listen sure whatever yeah whatever you need to tell yourself i mean red meat's very bad for you i don't know what else okay but you know i'm like you're right it's just the way that americans eat you're wrong like that i

think it's like okay i could definitely see us eating so much red meat that it has definitely yeah i think that's the short version i did just get back from kc so barbecue happened uh a lot um i had uh burnt ends which which is definitely red meat, and I had pulled pork, which, again, this is a genuine question here.

It's a fair 3 .0 question.

This is actually confusing, Dan, because there was a whole ad campaign calling it the other white meat, but apparently that's a lie.

Maybe it's a lie. Pork's less healthy than, like, chicken and turkey.

But is that just because of fat content?

It's just fattier pork, right?

Probably. That makes sense.

You know what? I don't know for sure.

That might be what they were talking about at that time, and we we know with like fat is not as bad for you as we once thought it's hey you know what food still confuses me yeah yeah it's it's kind of disturbed me that uh everything i learned about the food pyramid may be empirically wrong oh yeah that was also a lie yeah that was that was done by big milk yeah big milk and and and the wheat farmers trying to get you more bread yeah and the corn people you need to have things 17 bowls of cereal a day according to this regular i don't I don't want anyone to like leave this podcast thinking pork is somehow

white meat. We cannot allow that to be said.

It is most certainly not.

Sure. What do you think are the odds someone listened to GB at night and thought, maybe I'll try a silica pack?

I stand by it. I am not going to back down on that.

I am right about that.

I am objectively right.

And I did not suggest anyone eat one.

Okay. What's the benefit of eating one?

Exactly. It's just a fun trivia thing that you can eat them.

I've never eaten one.

I'm not curious about it.

you can eat paper nobody should why would you but you can and you'll be fine you could eat a lot of things that aren't food that won't kill you i know your point is stupid but the interesting thing is that everyone thinks the do not the thing that says do not eat all over it and that's the one thing people know about it you can just eat and it's fine but but the reason that's right what do you mean fine though we're gonna stop this conversation right now more likely to get lodged in your throat because of the salt content it's actually a tree you're gonna die from someone's tree jesus to the giant

bomb cast we're a pod long -running podcast about video games we're able to stay on keep the lights on thanks to your support giant bomb .com join if this is your first podcast wow and i'll say that about every single first time you listen to this podcast podcast wow wow this is the one you choose uh fantastic uh you can also throw some bones at uh ko -fi .com slash giant bomb uh and we love and appreciate all of your support uh that's how we're able to stay independent and keep the lights on mike menotti you're waving your hand are you just hot waving hi no no jeff's uh jeff's uh wife is on the camera giving

him a donut i'm waving i got a donut you got some donuts yeah thank you what is that a cream filled one yeah so the donkeys thanks best appreciate it hey let's go to youtube yeah um dan if someone came to your door and was like hey i'm gonna break all your windows is that all right with you how do you feel about that no that's different come on back along come on that's different Right.

You realize in order for the first step in the experiment to work, you have to take the most extreme example.

I don't think that 80 -year -old man that is super friendly and lives down the street and always does everyone's lawn stuff all the time and is very nice.

I doubt he's trying to swindle me by cutting down a tree that I don't ever see.

It's just not OK. It's just not OK.

I don't like that he came to your house and was like, I'm cutting your tree down.

I think he was doing a favor because they're selling the house next to mine, and he does a bunch of lawn stuff for everyone.

sounds like that's someone else's favor but he's doing no he's a nice man paul is good he's he likes talking a lot god bless paul thank you paul oh speaking of paul i was in the kansas city i solved the dog thing remember my mystery dog yeah the dog that you were that you remembered from when you were a child and your dad i just about remember i think we had my dad on a few years ago yeah we never had a dog and i was like yeah we had a dog named ringo i distinctly remember when i was a child we had a dog named ringo he's like we never had a dog i've never once had a dog we did fucking have a dog

i was right he was wrong i was at the lake with my mom my dad my mom's husband my sister's all that my niece and uh so we're sitting around and it came up and mom's like yeah we had a dog named ringo and i was like yes holy shit because remember i showed a picture and my face wasn't in it and it was all like oh dan made up this dog no i had a dog named ringo and the story behind it's just very weird and depressing so basically did my grandpa get it it's dark in a weirder way um in a more weird way so uh okay my mom had a dog named bow before ringo when she got married to my dad and she had had

bow for seven years and loved this little dog named bow apparently bow got out uh like and ran away and they went to the animal shelter found them and my mom and my dad went to go pick up bow and my mom's like oh thank god bow's alive live, oh safe.

But the animal shelter said, okay, well, for the services and everything, it's $85 to take them home.

And my dad wouldn't let her take her beloved dog home because he wanted to save $85.

Oh my God. So my mom secretly got Ringo because she wanted the dog and could not bring her beloved dog home.

Mike, this is worse than your granddad.

Shoot all the dogs you want.

Come on. This is crazy.

When my mom told the story, my dad laughed.

oh my god oh my god my sister called him a monster to his face oh that's putting it lightly I'm sorry but that's really dark man yeah I told you yes like we joke about my dad's cheapness and stuff but oh boy that came up really well in the last voice bill dump truck his stock was on the up and up and now that you dropped this new Paul lore I feel like I hate him I mean, look, I strive for an accurate portrayal of my father in the good and bad, you know?

Oh, that's so gross, Paul.

What the hell, dude?

But the worst. So wait, so then your new dog was a secret from Paul the entire time?

I think she got him just because she loved dogs and wanted the dog.

But, you know, dad would never approve it because it cost money.

Here's, I think, the problem.

I found that my dad, I don't think, recognizes dogs or pets as a thing of value.

Will you—because even just last summer, he was here when Bob was out of town.

I just had my surgery, and my dad came up to kind of like, you know, nicely came up to kind of watch over me.

I was telling him to not leave the door open because the dogs were going to run away when he was out smoking.

And he's like, oh, it'll be fine if they run away.

Just tell your wife that, you know, it's my fault.

And I was like, the problem isn't my wife's going to get mad at me.

The problem is I would like to not lose my beloved dogs.

I just don't think he thinks of them as like, I don't know, like a CD that gets scratched like a hat, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Is he is he see dogs?

Does he know they're real?

He he does not think about them or care about them or pets in general.

He hates any time. Like there was a dog at the lake, Maisie, and he just he's just angry anytime he's around dogs because they're an inconvenience.

And this is the thing that's going to take Paul down.

Chad is not happy with him.

I was back on board. i was back on board with paul and then i found out he thinks dogs are disposable and i was like and i was like whoops i gotta do a 180 uh he's a bro that's broken that's just broken thinking imagine leaving the shelter saying goodbye to your dog say goodbye no i'm not saying him yeah oh that's that's horrific yeah so i did have a dog uh my My dad just forgot, and so when he said I didn't have a dog, he was wrong.

So, yes, I did have Ringo.

I don't know what happened to Ringo, but, yeah.

Oh, I don't want to know what happened to Ringo.

Yeah, let's, yeah. I'm, okay, I don't know how we pivot out of that.

ChinaPipit .com, join everybody, yeah.

Wait, oh, back where you go.

You go first. You got something.

So I'm sure you've been paying attention to the weather news, and you're aware, everyone who's listening to this show, that in the big, big portion of the United States is undergoing an incredible heat wave. The heat dome.

The heat dome. If you, you know, get fucked, summer people, this is what you asked for.

I don't want to hear it.

This is what you voted for.

This is what you voted for, and now you must - You ranked summer.

Yeah, you ranked summer number one instead of Zoran like you should have. Anyway, my air conditioning is fine.

I remember when I was getting my roof replaced, someone was in the attic, and they were like, Hey, your air conditioning up in the attic has a tube that is disconnected, and maybe you want to pop that bad boy on there a little tighter so that you're not losing any cooling air as it circulates to your upstairs.

So that happened in February.

I kind of forgot about it.

Yesterday, it's 101 degrees here, and then you start to realize that maybe the air could be better.

So I went in my attic last night.

i went in my attic must have been i don't know 98 up there and like i don't know if you guys have been in a scary attic when it's sort of dusk you ever do that i don't have those here you don't have attics no um i instantly turned into like water like my body immediately you were like the senator in that one x -men movie exactly uh and then i went into to the ocean no um like water automatically started coming out of my body to the point where like i was just up there it's a it was a kind of heat that i i could not understand and instantly out of my forehead just like water was just like like someone

turned a faucet out of the center of my forehead it was fucked man don't do that bad time to go to an attic whenever i hear about addicts i just think about that tree house of of horror is it trios of horror or trios of terror I can never remember I feel like it should be terror because like the T's yeah right it's not terror but I always just think of the Bart evil brother in the paddock yeah with the fish heads oh yeah I like that one uh hey this is what it looks like outside my window it's just white you just took a picture of a cloud oh is that fog is it fog or is it smog It's San Francisco

so it's fog It's San Francisco Daily City so it's fog What's the name of the fog?

It's got a name Yeah it's got a whole name and everything You can't name fog Yes you clearly can and it has a twitter account Wait the fog Is alive?

It's just got a name It's got a name and has a twitter account I didn't say it was alive It's not worth $86 though Right Everyone Everyone was posting their 10 top movies from the century so far.

I bet everyone would like it if I did that.

I think like is a strong word. Can I real quick figure this out for me?

Yeah, let's do it. Century?

And do it for real.

Yeah, the last 25 years.

It's the New York Times thing that everyone's doing.

I did mine. Here, while he's setting it up.

Do you have an account?

You have to have an account to do it.

I'm on here right now.

First off, National Treasure.

treasure i think that's a fun movie i think i agree with you i agree with you the best indiana joe's movie of this century still easily yeah it's the best uncharted movie too yeah yeah um gosh this is gonna be because i kind of gave up on movies halfway through this century so far that's what i was thinking this would be hard for you movies were 2000s yeah so so yeah let's put let's not to put all of them else get lord of the rings that the fellowship of the ring in there for sure um that actually is the best one i'm glad you like that one the best oh yeah uh what's disney if the disney thinks

coco for sure coco is uh phenomenal yeah coco i if it was like any of the pixar disney ones i think i'd put up up is from this century and so is wally um oh wow he's really good yeah i might do those three like toys you could get in there too god it's kind of pixar heavy like disney was doing some good stuff i don't know it's very good here mike i'll read my 10 and tell me if any of these would be on yours okay all right i got the raid uncut gyms the wrestler the dark knight walk hard mission impossible fallout annihilation there will be blood creed and mcgruber well i think i'd put creed in mine

yeah yeah i'm just learning how how many movies were made in the 90s yeah yeah yes yeah um i like i like watching with group with you i don't know if i would put it no of course not of course not it's like it's like in my top 25 for sure grub what was your top 10 it's uh wet hot american summer before sunset children of men the social network money ball everybody wants some three exclamation mark Yes I love that movie too It's so good and people underrate it Because they're like it's not about anything And I'm like you're actually a dumb person First Man, Oppenheimer, Black Klansman And Boyhood

I don't like Boyhood That might be a me thing I've heard that before Spirited Away is the one I'm really debated Spirited Away has to be on there Moneyball is a good pick The actual movie I watch every time I see it If it's on TV, if it's at someone's house, at a bar, I'm like, I'm going to go watch Moneyball.

Moneyball and Ford vs. Ferrari are the dad movies of the century so far.

Yes, yes, 100%. Grubb, I'm kind of surprised you didn't put Interstellar.

I was like right there with Interstellar.

I like Interstellar a lot, but something about that is almost a guilty pleasure.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't really know how to describe it.

I love Interstellar, though.

I'm going to try and do mine real quick, Mike, while you finish yours.

Sure. I'm trying to think if I'll do any of the superhero ones.

There definitely were some I liked a lot.

I liked Batman Begins a lot.

It's really good. Dark Knight's really good.

Dark Knight's very good.

I love the Dark Knight.

The more I watch it, the more I'm like...

There's a link in my...

I did like Top Gun Maverick a lot.

That was one of the movies in the last five years that made me feel anything.

That one's like the best let's go test my new stereo equipment movie.

That's the new Matrix DVD.

Yeah. We got surround sound.

Yeah. I don't think there's any more Oscar -y movies that I really liked.

This is your list, Mike.

I might have liked some.

I liked Nightcrawler a lot.

Parasite's my Oscar movie.

Parasite's awesome.

Did Nightcrawler win an Oscar?

No, it should have, though, which is weird. Gyllenhaal won?

Gyllenhaal, yeah. Gyllenhaal's awesome.

That's a great movie.

It's awesome. It's really weird, but I like it.

Thank you, Chad. Avatar, The Way of Water?

I did debate The Way of Water, yeah.

The Way of Water. Fun time with that.

I love the Way of Water.

I watched that like five times.

Yeah, okay. I got, I need one more.

Oh, I hope I'm not forgetting something.

Gosh. Oh, the big, my Galaxy Quest is like 99.

Yes. So I don't, okay.

I'm not doing Guardians of the Galaxy.

Stop trying to push it on me, New York Times.

God's Own Minus One was pretty good.

You're supposed to fall out.

It's a good call, Dan.

That's like, yeah. Tremendous.

It's perfect. It's perfect.

Yeah, I think I'm more of a...

Did you do Mad Max Fury Road, Mike?

i can oh i considered that you know what you're right jeff that makes very incredible that's actually the one i think i might feel worse about not putting on my list i considered mad max and john wick um but i did think that as far as action movies go fallout is like john wick's the best i've seen in a very long time all right i think i have my 10 i hope i'm not forgetting something i read it again i want to because i've lost track oh yeah i know for sure it's mad max tax fury road avatar the way of water spirited away creed lilo and stitch wally up coco the lord of the rings the fellowship of the ring

and of course national treasure you had me for the first like three okay yeah i don't think you had me at all but that's fine that's your list creed's amazing creed might be awesome coco to be clear if coco's maybe the best movie on this list Coco is insanely good I was checking my letterbox Coco's the one I'm like I was looking for five stars and like Coco was the first one for a very long time that had five stars Mike I told you I left Coco in the theater right yeah I know I'm upset but it was not but no but it wasn't my like it wasn't like I don't like this movie thing I was enjoying it it

was just we were high and there was a guy being weird walking up and down the aisle with like like fingerless gloves and black clothing on and uh Bonk was like this guy might shoot up the theater and we left so but it did seem good for what I saw Maybe try to watch Coco again.

I don't know. Okay.

Plus my top 10 movies of the 21st century.

This is all just like top of the dome.

And I feel bad that I was kind of trying to dunk on Quentin Tarantino and the mic check because I have Django Unchained.

That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Everything, everywhere, all at once.

I still haven't seen that.

Oh, grab. I think you'd like it.

I know I would. A little overrated, but pretty good.

Avengers Endgame. I had to have some MCU there.

Yep. It's awesome. I still cry whenever Cap picks up the hammer.

That was definitely the best theater moment.

Yes, the hypest moment I've ever experienced in a movie.

Absolutely. Godzilla minus one.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Greta Gerwig's Little Women.

I love that movie. Hey, Saoirse Ronan, perfect Joe.

Oh, God, Timothee Chalamet is actually really good at that movie.

He's great at everything.

He's a homie. I've learned I really like that kid.

He's awesome. He seems alright He used to customize Xbox 360 controllers He seems funny, he's Bob Dylan Let's all watch Wonka It's good I have Fury Road Creed And then the last Three are movies I rewatch A lot and I'm interested To see what everyone thinks Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Oh, you're gonna make me mad Zodiac Oh, I love Zodiac good oh dan you would love zodiac adventure yeah i should see it yeah uh and then this is the only like i should have looked up if romeo plus juliet i think that's like 90s no that's 90s that's so 90s okay okay that was like pre -titanic as far as like leo stuff

right i'm guessing it might as well be the same time yeah yeah yeah uh and then my last movie uh the wachowski's 2008 speed racer oh fuck yeah I do really want to see that Speed Racer Rules that's another one I've watched like five times yeah I fucking love Speed Racers is Creed like the one I thought you were gonna say Cloud Atlas and I was like Creed seems to be on most people's list is that our creed is probably my number one I've never seen it I love Creed I didn't put in my list but it's it's awesome it's one of my favorite movies I like Rocky Balboa a lot too but I wasn't gonna put too Rocky

Balboa rules yeah I consider putting them both on there but it's like look Creed's definitely better than Balboa.

It is, it is. It clearly is, but I like it.

I think Creed's existence almost hurts Balboa because it's an even better late sequel than that.

If someone said Creed was the best Rocky movie, I would be like, I can absolutely see that.

I think it's the best made one, other than maybe the first one.

I mean, the first one, it's actual best film, I think it's definitely between Creed 1 and Rocky 1.

Yes, for sure. Alright, Gabe.

I mean, it's Kugler, right?

Doing Creed? Yeah, come on, of course.

with centers and i really like coogler a lot he's very good god i'll watch everything he makes from now on how could you go 25 years and just pick the 10 just like that during the podcast like that it doesn't matter because we're not i'm sure i forgot something that i'll kick myself over oh i've done my entire letterbox history and i looked at all my top rate like sorted by decade by rating i think i got it yeah i think i got everything i feel like i've got half of it but but I don't know.

Do you want to read what you got?

I don't know if it's fully conclusive.

Take your time. It's not a commitment.

It's all right. I've got The Prestige.

That's a great one.

Okay. Yeah, that's one there.

I love The Prestige.

Yeah, I almost had Get Out on mine.

Spider -Man Across the Spider -Verse.

That's a good call.

The second one. I like the first one better.

The second one, yeah.

They're both great.

Second one's good. The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Yep. The Dark Knight.

Wet Hot American Summer That is a good pick Dan this is for Dan the Wrestler Yeah that was great Children of Men Parasite And Big Fish Oh I hate Big Fish You hate Big Fish I like Big Fish Aronofsky do you hear about what his next movie is going to be I thought I did It hasn't started shooting yet But it's going to be The Rock this is set in like the late 90s and he's going to be starring as like uh one of those like you know motivational tony robbins type gurus and like some like depressed guy gets like too healthily and to like like can't you see the rock because he is just kind of that guy he's

just kind of that like incredibly charismatic but there's also an element of bullshit you know yeah yeah like it's all a lie kind of thing yeah like tom cruise magnolia character you know like right it's gonna be awesome that's interesting chad's saying this and i'm glad i thought just me for some reason i thought you meant like they were remaking the rock like the sean connery don't do that don't do that no i'm surprised you read that no f1 with brad pitt has an 88 on rotten tomatoes really and i'm like i don't need another dad movie in my life but i guess i'm going to the theater boys i almost

couldn't believe that was a movie i know it feels fake you're like you're like what who's that director uh i gotta hear someone the maverick director yeah oh yeah it is Oh, shit, I didn't realize that.

Oh, I gotta go. His movies are just...

They're all beautiful.

Oblivion. That movie's kind of like...

It's so cliche with Tom Cruise, but it looks awesome.

It's worth watching.

That movie's pretty cool.

There's a new Pixar movie and no one is seeing it.

Yes, Helio. Oh, my God.

I have to see this movie, Mike.

You would love my enthusiasm.

I must see it. It's bombin' hard. Is it?

Yes, Disney and Pixar cannot get any...

Review -wise, too? Review -wise, okay.

okay people pay money to see it very poorly it's like their worst ever i i think kids movies like that i mean again they're not just kids movies but they're obviously like you're bringing your kids to see that movie right i think it's hard with these sci -fi movies i don't know yeah and i also think like it's i don't know if kids like really love i don't know i think there's a lot of competition for that yeah i don't even my kids have never heard of this i think i if i brought it up they would not they'd be like what are you talking about i mean i do this sounds like such such an old man take probably

but you know it's like that lilo and stitch remake which isn't that good makes a zillion dollars and yeah people complain but here's yeah exactly that's the thing and here's the new thing and boy new things are a hard sell these days huh yeah plus they've i mean i i i feel like i buy the transit of property would have been exposed to some of that marketing through having a 10 year old and i just we didn't know about it only until we were on disney plus being like here's a sneak peek of this movie right yeah it just feels like it's like like uh like mismatch right now because like new movies are not doing

well anywhere except for like centers like right like centers the one that could pop off like the minecraft movie right yeah i watched the minecraft movie over the weekend oh no yeah what happened solid three out of five really oh that's generous dan i think i really enjoyed it and i wasn't even under the influence of anything i just sat there watching it's been on my house on repeat for like a month oh my god i uh i was i was telling i oh first of all thank you everyone that tuned into my uh uh moving fund uh razor stream it was fun i got it was cool to see some bts stuff yeah uh there's more

there's so much more on so many hard drives yeah um but i was talking about it if if your boy can like lose enough weight i think it's about growing out my hair i just want to be jason momoa from the minecraft movie for halloween wait a minute i remember wrestlemania with you you wanted i'm going down to samoans okay well you said you want to be roman reigns just as a person but you'll be jason momoa for halloween yes i'll be jason momoa and then afterwards it'll be an easier transition to be roman reigns you start lifting yeah yes yeah i'm just gonna change all my teeth jeff and i will be jack

black we'll have a whole group costume going there it is a chicken jockey he doesn't need to do anything it's perfect Dan will be the chicken jockey and Baklar can be the chicken yeah there we go does he have to piggyback on Baklar for the night okay absolutely Baklar said the magic word so now we talk about video games on this video game podcast I almost forgot what we were doing for a second movies movies movies folks normally we save the biggest game to chat about right before break but this game is so big uh and so odd uh that we got to talk about it at the tippy top of the video game segment

that's right i am talking about death stranding 2 oh my oh boy i am uh i've talked about it a lot when i did the preview for uh for game spot in the 30 hours i did in japan I'm well past that now I think I'm like On the home screen It says I'm like 80 something percent Of the way through the game now So I'm late game At this point So I'm curious You know I've got Additional thoughts Past the preview stuff But Jan You've been Where are you at now Yeah where's everyone at Is what I want to know Gosh Our count I'm not 100 % sure I barely started actually I didn't have much time for it But I got the idea I

don't know if you do though I don't know if you do No no There's not going to be anything new or weird in this game after what i've played so far in the first couple of hours i'm sure i have a question i feel like i've uh i i know almost next to nothing about any of death uh stranding to lore storyline whatever it is and we should say we're not going to go into real spoiler stuff no what what i'm saying though is that like but what i've been able to sort of discern and extract from the reaction online is that i've seen reviews all over the place i've I've seen people who are like 10 out of 10.

I've seen people say like this is a six at best. I don't know what's happening.

I mean, the Metacritic is sitting in like a 90 right now.

So I think there are some outliers, but it is getting some really.

Yeah, it's really good.

Okay. I would expect this game to get outliers.

This game is a wild, weird game like the first one.

And God knows, you know, I took a turn on it.

I went from hating it to loving it.

Oh, you did that? I don't remember that.

Yeah, yeah. This is not a just like mainstream.

stream everyone's gonna love it there's nothing yeah but like no let's be clear open critic 90 is game of the year contender that's no this isn't like oh it's a game of the year contender you don't get an idea and not be like in the conversation for that like that's really hard to do this is like it's like this and blueprints uh right well we'll see how it sticks the the landing because i i do have some complaints especially 33 uh well i'll get around to that um that's part of this i feel like it does kind of spin its wheels a bit now that i'm i'm very far um it introduces some plot points early

on that are like and you probably all kind of see in the big ones like at the beginning there's like oh shit what happens here and then you know you'll go 40 hours and it's kind of barely touched on and i'm assuming near the end probably gonna get a lot of info dump type stuff but narratively i definitely like it more just because i like the characters a lot more than the first games um but the actual through line of what's happening it's like you're connecting australia and mexico uh it's and then there's you know wacky characters and stuff you meet in between you'll get backstories about everyone

things like that but like the actual moment to moment is kind of just like you know hey higgs is back here's troy baker but like it's just still kind of unclear again i'm not done yet i'm probably like 80 plus percent done but like he just kind of shows up and is wacky and does some evil looking stuff and then there's a big boss fight and stuff but it's like narratively it's not super grabbing me um unless it really sticks the landing here but I don't really care because it's just so enjoyable moment yeah I think I'm with you Dan I think I'm about like 15 to 20 hours in uh because the last time

you and I checked in I was like around 10 11 and then I kind of fast -tracked the stuff that you said to go investigate and the overall narrative I don't know if I'm super in love with but the characters more than anything I think think I'm latching onto harder seems like the cast is really good like the cast characters hanging out with one another is really solid yes and I we were you Dan you and I were like talking a little bit more about Death Stranding 2 before we went live and I'm trying to place for myself at least whether or not my evaluation of Death Stranding 2 is more so informed by them

addressing some of the friction points I had with Death Stranding 1 because like you I was not sold on Death Stranding 1 until the director's cut came out, and then I gave it another shot.

And then I think I just, similarly, had approached it with less preconceived notions and a general understanding of this is just going to be a weird game.

I shouldn't expect anything Metal Gear -ish, maybe some of the common tropes that Kojima does.

But coming into Death Stranding 2, I don't want to use the metaphor of it's like riding a bike, because because that's a very simple process compared to anything you really do here and the experience of playing this game but i'm uh from the jump enjoying it and i think a lot of that is tied to i think the individual characters being a little bit more fleshed out versus how uh they're initially introduced in the first one yeah and the first one i just feel like there's so many times where it's like okay you go to meet a single character and it's just a bunch of you know exposition dump type stuff

that doesn't really make that much sense but like since you do have a crew that you're kind of flying around with or i don't know if it's flying it navigates the tar currents the dhv magellan um there is a crew of people that you're on there and just seeing the interactions between all of them is much more interesting than just lore dump type stuff one on one which kind of took over the first game um they're they're great characters all of them you I love Tar Man, Rainy, Tomorrow.

Jan, I didn't oversell Dollman to you, did I?

No. He's the best. Is it possible to oversell him?

No, he's such a cool dude.

Okay. You know how LeBooboos have taken off, right?

I'm sorry. What's that?

I know about this, Jan. I'm with you.

Okay, thank you. Few of us do not know this.

One within arm's reach. What is it?

They're like these little furry creatures.

People go goo -goo -ga -ga.

Clearly none of you are friends with Emma.

They're very cute. emma's thing it's not just emma's thing this is like everyone this is emma's thing and you're stealing it now but that's okay emma invented labubus yes no she did not invent labubus they're called labubus yes labubus l -a -b -u -b -u are they doing well for her well i i don't know maybe maybe emma's spending too much time acquiring labubus but anyway uh labubu's uh are these things that a lot of saying labubu i don't know you can because it's pretty great can i tell y 'all what the fake ones are called yes they're called lafoo foos oh they're probably better it's just like uh what do

you call it what were those baby babies yeah kind of y 'all remember like kid robot no like okay anyway these are like in blind boxes people are going gichoga go over them you can find them in pop marts or like resellers are they soft or plastic soft except the face the face i can't wait to see how we get back to death stranding too yeah i mean no no no most death strand follow follow me grub i'm on along with me um people have so many of these bag charms and other stuff you buy from pop mart i need a shoot doll man to hang off of every single bag i own is his name just doll man yeah man it's doll

man it's tar man die hard man you're right you're right you're right i should have been on board with that a long time ago yeah that's the that's the gimmick hot cold man was in peace walker um yeah oh yeah you did not undersell him at all dad i thought he'd be a a little bit too much like um what's his name in god of war 2018 oh head man head man uh yeah the fucking not atreus fugin what was it yeah i think it was fugin mamir i hate that fucking guy thank you that's what i thought dollman was gonna be like but he's the total opposite of mamir he doesn't spoil any puzzles and he's just a friendly

fun guy to talk to whenever i go to take a nap i talk to dollman about his day first and he's just helpful and empathetic and sweet and kind yeah and then okay this was another conversation we were having before the podcast started but like after getting to see Kojima in the flesh and kind of see his temperament on that red carpet that Dan and I went to where we interviewed Ben Star and he was very upset with Dan for some reason maybe he just doesn't like the French who knows Kojima just seems like a very put together person that this type of game and all of the stuff in it i just i am so curious

about what that directing process is like yeah like you have to wonder how much these actors know about stuff because i considered asking uh the actors who played rainy like hey you know that you know you take a shower with the puppet and that keeps the puppet uh from aging and stuff and it's like wait a minute she probably doesn't know about that like doll man tells you about that it's not i don't she doesn't have any lines about it doll man's just like yeah Yeah, I shower with Rainy and it keeps me young.

All right. She doesn't even know that, I guess.

Okay, as far as the gameplay mechanics go, can I ask it?

To me it seems like it is Death Stranding 1, but they made the combat much better so there's a better sort of flow between the two states of I'm delivering and I'm building infrastructure and now I'm going to fight stuff and that's fun and I'll get back to building.

It just feels like it's all connected a little bit better.

Is that the gist of it?

Yeah, it's kind of the best for me in terms of a Kojima game, because like the thing I don't like the most about Metal Gear and Death Stranding is the stealth is the sneaking.

I'm not patient, really.

I just like every one of those games.

I just fuck up immediately and then I have to shoot everyone.

That's when you can just start shooting everyone from the beginning if you want to.

But if you want to be stealthy, which I know a lot of people do, those mechanics are there.

You can sneak around the tall grass and strangle guys with the strands and do decoy hollow grenades and all that stuff.

or you can just go in with some big dumb guns and you know trank grenade launchers which is a hilarious concept uh and you can just treat it like an action game and it works great for that so honestly in terms of just that like moment to moment action and enemy encounters this is my favorite of any kojima game wait so you i just i'm not i'm just trying to dan three point out here a little bit like you hate stealth but you i don't hate it i love the idea he's bad at it i'm bad at it it's just like i remember your favorite i know i like the story and i like the world and the characters and stuff

it's i know i know you're playing it uh no i don't even hate playing it i'm just bad like i just wind up most of my metal gear playing time is like hiding and an alert is going off and then somebody finds me again and i shoot them and then i've never beat a metal gear game without killing like at least 400 people got it the way yeah yeah could you even did it yeah um but yeah mechanically like grub the action and the gunplay and stuff like that is world's better.

That's the first thing I noticed.

It's like, oh, it's fun to shoot in this game.

And I get it, I'm shooting non -lethal bullets, but if someone walked in the room and saw what I was doing, like, oh, you're just killing some people.

Oh, you're going around with an assault rifle with an under -barrel grenade launcher, but it's a trink grenade launcher.

I do like that. I'm the stupid asshole who's like, I feel better about this.

Like in Arkham Dark Knight, where you're running over people with your car, but it's like It has, like, an electric shield around.

Like, it's just knocking them out.

Sure. They're, like, rag -dolling into a concrete wall.

I'm like, they're safe now.

They're just sleeping.

Grub, I think there's an item that will speak to you later in the game, which I love using, which, you know, this is, I guess, a spoiler in terms of an item you can make later, so mute if you want to.

It won't bother me.

It might bother others, though, so, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, mute for a second if you want to.

It's called the Coffin Board, and it is a, like, weird metallic cyber coffin coffin that you surf on and you can only use it within the chiral network it utilizes the chiral network so but you can hold r2 to accelerate so it's basically a snowboard coffin that like it rides tar so like as you're riding it it's like a splatoon like tar thing underneath you and so when i'm going up these snowy mountains and stuff now i'm just surfing a coffin with tar underneath it and it's like you can jump and stuff there's ramps you can go off that sounds incredible a a pop -up says extreme square and you hit

square and you do a ssx trick and it's fucking fun now can i i'm sure you saw this but let's break a little news here uh did you see the latest crossover between death stranding and brand dominoes what are they doing yeah delivery makes sense i'm gonna order dominoes though because of this listen there is a pizza chef in the game it is not dominoes branded but i've been studying the ways of pizza condo or something thing uh jan i don't know if you have any pizza spinning attacks dough but like oh i get it dough um and so i've got like an m bison psycho crusher where i like throw pizza dough um

you get a rubber pizza that you can fucking throw to knock dudes out and stuff and the pizza can fold up and put into your grenade pouch so you don't have to carry it on your back um the pizza chef's awesome you have a pizza fight with him at one point fuck it's really good it sounds stupid and awesome awesome yeah you know we are gonna put up a post tomorrow night at embargo of something that i ran into yeah that i don't know if anyone else has run into because there is a specific circumstance you need you'll see us so keep an eye on our socials and really it should only happen to you based on what happens

in there uh so yeah yeah it's uh really interesting it was really oh yeah i see what you're talking about um but yeah there's just every moment i pick it up i never know what kind of like you know it could be a normal delivery and it's like some hologram tells you like thanks sam could really use this stuff and then sometimes it's like oh i'm having a pizza fight and learning pizza fighting techniques and roundhouse kicks that shoot dough out and or doll man will at any moment this game could do something that could just absolutely delight or confound you and i love just like that knowing you

know you play a lot of games you expect certain things like these are how games work this one kind of turns a lot of it on its head and you kind of don't know what to expect the uh apparently the pizza character's name is higgs is that right um no higgs is troy baker okay well higgs monahan has the same surname as the founder of dominoes oh amazing oh did i see yes there is a hot suny miko type thing that gives you a hat and it's like a rabbit hat and um but i put it on and i was so confused because all of a sudden every time sam was gonna do something he would go peko peko peko peko and i was like

why does he say peko with every like instead of grunting he would say peko when he punched he would say peko and it's like what the fuck and then i realized that's what the anime lady says so if you wear the anime hat sam just says peko all the time i don't know what the fuck that's about i sound i'm delighted and confounded dan yeah it's like this it's the person's name is usada pekora but maybe uh it's the vtuber's name so you're saying peko in honor of this v oh okay i also have a camel hat that's just a full -on big lumpy camel thing and i guess there's water in there so if sam gets thirsty

it's like a beer hat where it's like there's he can drink from the camel hat and it keeps you uh in the desert it's it's better for you can carry more stuff there's so much weird shit yeah are you pro vtuber now has he been uh no no but you'll you'll give him a slide there for the vtuber inclusion i think he took off i'm not mad about vtubers i just never think about them in any context whatsoever he wouldn't rescue one for 85 dollars if it meant something to someone i would i want to go back to the characters for a second because uh yesterday during game s mornings grub you brought up a story

about how charlie cox felt like an imposter so that fraud yeah like like a fraud it's amazing i love that story um apparently you know he didn't uh he did like a days maybe all of his dialogue for expedition 33 in four hours and probably didn't think about it much after that and all these people come with them like you you are incredible in that game he's don't play games i'm glad get away from a nerd yeah i do not i feel like i do not deserve these accolades but like i just want to highlight how like in this game specifically you got hollywood ass actors in it like you get l fanning and uh leah

sadu and like everyone's really good they're awesome in it yeah um uh shioli katsuna is is rainy her and like everyone just like really well written that i i like hanging out with everyone and i don't know maybe it ties into and i didn't think death threatening 2 would be my found family game of the year but like i think it might be because i love hanging out with these goobers yeah the the group photos of all the characters sitting together is one of the things that makes me want to play this game the most it's like look at that guy with the guitar sitting next to the the doll man and all the guy

with the bandana i don't know if all these guys are actually friends but it makes it look like that and i'm i'm interested it's almost like you know kajima's really good at just putting together these like ensemble weirdo casts and like you know i think about like foxhound in the first metal gear solid i think that is my favorite assembly of like rogues gallery of bad guys i think they're all interesting and awesome together it's like that but it's for your good guys on the ship that you like hang out with and talk to all the time and it's uh it's just it is a genuinely very fun crew i think you

made that point in a preview dan that in the first game all the all all these cool characters were like, you go talk to them on their own as, as you have these conversations with them and they're neat, but now they interact with one another.

Does that interaction like build to something?

Does it really feel like they are like a, they are a family at a certain point?

Yeah. I compared it to Arrested Development season four where they couldn't get the actors together and the ensemble stuff from the first three seasons.

That's what it feels like.

And there are these occasional objectives where it's like, Hey, go meet with the crew on the bridge.

And I look forward to those.

Cause I look forward to every cut scene where it's like Sam walks in and they're all in there talking about something and tar man's tar cats flying lying around doing weird stuff and you hang up doll man on his little like a hook and he oversees everything and i just i love like this whole cast is fantastic especially your crew on the magellan and you do see like you see backstories of doll man you see backstories of tar man you kind of learn why tar man doesn't have his hand and what's going on with that cat and all that stuff um and it's i appreciate it you texted me when you got some doll man stuff

because you knew i would appreciate it and i was very happy i'm like okay i gotta get there what i told you specifically i don't remember if that was a spoiler or anything but i remember Yeah, I'm sure it could be.

So, yeah, we don't have to talk about any of it, but it was just like every little tidbit was like, what are you talking about?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man.

It's I genuinely love it.

And for the complaints that I have about like, you know, again, the narrative itself, you know, if you just look at it on paper, it's not like thrilling necessarily.

But the moment to moment, whether what you're doing or just even if it's a thing, a scene that is a story cut scene that doesn't really make sense or move anything forward much. it's all done with such style that it's all just fun to watch you know um so i'm never i'm really never bored with this thing there are some things that seem a little superfluous that um you know like early on it introduces like oh you can uh you know start up these mines and you can build monorails to like move large amounts of cargo from you know station to station and i was like oh that's a that's a big new thing but it's

you can utilize it um it doesn't it's not a necessary thing at all it's easy enough to just load up a truck with stuff and drive to the next area yeah Yeah, but what if I spent hours and hours building up infrastructure like Roadcraft?

It's fun as hell. I will have nights where it's like, all right, I'm going to start with like a story mission.

So I make some progress, but then I am just going to sink in here and I'm going to do hours of just building these fucking highways out.

And like there's mechanical stuff like the zip lines, which were really fun in the first one.

It's smarter now where it's like as you're making them, you can adjust the angle.

So it doesn't have to be direct line of sight.

you can make it so like oh if the beam needs to go up over a hill or a mountain or around or just fun stuff where it's like i set a couple on a riverbank and i set the angle to like go over the river so sam's like flying over the river and it looks all cool it doesn't just have to be point a to point b you know yeah i love i love hearing you talk about it man i'm not gonna lie good job uh dan uh i guess everyone would know this um anytime i use the zipline and sometimes just just riding zip lines in general in the game are just fun yeah i just feel like hooting and hollering he's like you know

yeah i feel like the skit from uh i think you should leave where it's like he's just here for this zip line and like i the the means of transportation now are are just like it just feels like okay you definitely learned that maybe walking the whole game is not the most fun so let's just incorporate and throw at you all these different means of like getting from point A to point B.

Grep, you brought up the point of combat and everything.

I've kind of been trying to play super stealthy and I've also been having a pretty okay time and it doesn't feel like the game is getting in my way for trying to do that.

So if you do want to approach some of the missions or situations not guns blazing or trank guns tranking, you can sneak in and there's a thing you do with doll man to scout out the area that's just great the yeah yep yep it's just so it's just so dumb of like sure like uh in one of the assassins creeds you could have like you send out your falcon but what if you threw out a small doll man really high in the air floats in the air tags enemies for you and then when you pull him back he's like did i do okay sam did i do a good job like yeah you did a great job buddy oh man i found when i texted you

grub and it is just just just a backstory thing it's just how doll man became the doll man or whatever so mute for 30 seconds if you don't want to hear some doll man origin story stuff here but i texted grub uh out of nowhere saying okay i thought this chapter title puppets was going to be metaphorical but it's actually an extremely earnest recollection of this fucking puppet losing his wife to a tar tsunami and him and his daughter go ghost hunting for her soul but the mom's ghost freaks out about k -pop and tar people drag doll man and his daughter into to the ground and his daughter dies and her

corpse is preserved in a swamp I can't wait was his wife a puppet and I said no spoilers over spoilers over yeah yeah like honestly guys like I really thought that Expedition 33 was a lock for my game of the year I love where the story goes and again found family it's my whole shtick but dolmen alone load yes i went like that ratchet and plank where they had the clank missions where he went and did puzzles i just want to be give me a psp game that's just called captain doll man's treasure tracker yeah yeah god and the voice acting like honestly his voice and everything he's just such an endearing

character i just i love that little dude yeah uh we'll we'll probably talk more throughout the week about uh death stranding 2 we're planning on doing a quick look that will will drop uh sometime tomorrow uh i dan i do want to like power through and just do a spoiler cast but it's it's one of those things where i just kind of want to go down our individual notes apps of like hey this is weird right wait speaking of spoiler cast did you beat expedition 33 jan yes oh we need to do that i told you yeah uh i believe in jan you feel like i'm close you're oh really yeah i've been playing non -stop yeah

where are you bacalar speaking about expedition 33 uh bacalar i think you're the one that put it on the list i think i'm towards the end of act two okay oh i can't be that much longer i don't know who knows i only wanted to bring it up because they're you know i love this game the more and more i play it the more i just like cannot put put it down uh i don't want to spoil the one thing that you find out i guess after act one where they just introduced ben star i thought that was like the funniest thing of like what they basically do in that game i don't want to sure can we right you know what i'm

talking about yeah no spoilers i'm not gonna spoil that but it's just so funny how ben star is sort of like inserted into this crew i thought that was amazing uh and then there is a scene between his character and Monoco where he's convincing this, like, furry Monoco guy to join their, uh, expedition.

And he's like, absolutely not!

What do you mean? I'm not joining your thing.

And then he's just like, there's gonna be fighting.

And then they have this, like, back and forth that lasts maybe 15 seconds, and it's the funniest, it's the funniest, like, line, like, I legit, like, it's hilarious.

They're quick, they cut each other off real quickly talking about fighting, and I just was like, what is this game?

it's man where we started and where we are now is uh is very weird and i think that is the best and maybe most confusing part about this game is that i the tone is all over the place sure and for me like that has only that's the only line of criticism the only bit of turbulence that i've experienced during this whole thing um i still won't act like i've got a strategy i don't know if i'm making the best use of luminous and all the pixels and shit i'm probably not what are you having fun probably doing the uh you know five digit damage but i'm not i'm like a four digit andy guy okay just leave

me alone all right that's fine so if you're having a good time though you're having a good time yeah i'm obviously i'm loving it i what's your party who you playing with uh well so i only have like six people yeah yeah yeah yeah i got monoco veros um and like versa oh monoco okay i was like why are so many people in chat spelling monaco wrong okay no it's monoco uh and then like the the first three female characters you meet in the beginning i'm all they're all in my like crew i'm in a part now where we're like separated though Okay, yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

You're making pretty good proggies there.

Yeah, I've been, I still think about this game non -stop since I finished it like a couple weeks ago.

I really wanna, I keep pushing about the spoiler cast because I just have so many thoughts about the game and the ending and all that stuff that I wanna get out there, so.

Yeah, yeah, back to me.

I'll try to finish it, you guys do a spoiler cast next week while I'm out.

Yeah, I probably have, you're pretty close my my ex so i'm playing it through like the xbox ultimate thing which by the way my goodness it's the year of our lord 2025 why is this app still occasionally a dumpster fire you're talking about the cloud streaming stuff the x no just the xbox app on pc like are you streaming it from your like local xbox no i'm i'm downloading the game the pc game oh okay yeah okay you know that app can still be terrible yes look like the the the cloud save stuff like i go back and forth between a series x and my pc that's fine and for the most part it's been pretty

seamless they figured that a long time ago but yesterday you know i had like two hours and i'm like hey i'm gonna uh play through more of this game i boot it up and it's like what are you doing what do you you don't have this game error error and it took me 45 minutes to figure it out yeah and i had it was a series of like restarting uninstalling the xbox app on installing expedition 33 reinstalling that like i'm sorry it is not great it is still showing its ugly face and it's the reason why i'm like i used to feel good about getting xbox games and being like all right i've got it on pc even if it's

xbox tainted it's fine it'll still do what i needed to do uh but no it is it still has its issues yep it's insane and they like bought bethesda and their launcher when that launcher actually works better but they're like we'll We'll shut that down and just go with Xbox.

It's like, ah, you should have just moved everything over there.

It still is. And it's just like the worst messaging too.

There's still legacy apps in the Microsoft Store that you can get that have no current contemporary functionality.

So there's just all this garbage still over there.

I still want the ROG Xbox thing.

I still want that. I mean, hopefully what that signifies is when that thing comes out, they will solve a lot of these problems and improve it because otherwise what's the point of that fucking thing yeah this is me holding my breath uh what were you saying dan didn't they just add like steam integration into the xbox app so you can load your steam games for that that will be as part of the xbox app that comes out with this rog ally thing so that hasn't happened yet i don't think or they just had it maybe they did at it maybe they let me just don't i'll take it with myself this morning that people

were oh maybe maybe it happened this morning okay cool yeah just don't do like what possible use case outside of like the the rock ally thing like why would i well because eventually eventually they're thinking maybe you can have the steam steam on your xbox console and stuff like that it'll be one unified app i don't know they also they wouldn't hate having your information in their app so right and it might like load x or epic games as well so having one launcher where that knows where all your games is something people sometimes ask for uh but not as much and it kind of has that storefront

thing where it's like okay do you want to launch steam do you want to launch xbox you right exactly yeah uh fantastic well going from one jrpg to kind of another jeff grab you have continued to play through paper mario the thousand year door yeah i'm on i'm on the last boss fight in that game and i got too tired and had to put it down uh also i think i need to rethink my badge situation uh yes because it's like i think i have some badges that are just completely worthless in that fight and that's not great to have but uh boy i was like man i i put the game down thinking because you get to the end

of a chapter and then i was i mentioned this like you want to start up a new chapter and it's like oh it can't be as good as the last one and then it throughout that game it always is as good or better than the last chapter and so when i did pick it back up here thinking it's going to be hard to get my momentum back that wasn't a problem i just kind of soared through to the end of that to the end of that game and it's uh it's really nice i was also playing it because i i heard about people complaining about uh 2d graphics on the switch 2's screen and how it can cause some ghosting issues i don't

think that game quite has like a lot enough fast -paced action to like see that but there were some um like cut scenes where the background was moving pretty fast and i think had i like brought out a magnifying lens maybe i could have noticed something but boy it's it's really i kind of don't know what people are talking about in most cases is uh i tried some other games as well but yeah thousand year door is is really fantastic it is as good as everyone always said and uh the characters you continue to meet throughout the end there are really excellent it's just and it's you know it's quirky and funny

and warm and in a way that i'm like man why can't all of their rpgs the paper mario rpgs have just been this over and over again they really got it right here all these fun goomba characters that have have hats and stuff like that uh that's just simple thing and they won't even do that anymore uh but yeah thousand year door a thumbs up really enjoy it yep um who are you kind of rocking as your main partner in this end game stuff um you know it's i kind of have to flip and flop between different ones depending on the scenario but vivian is kind of my go -to a lot of times she does a good flame attack

that attacks everyone and causes ongoing damage and that ongoing damage kind of pierces through defense so even if like the initial attack doesn't hurt them the fire damage will at least do something over time and that's nice uh but i like all the characters um i kind of i try to start with like goombella so i can always do the uh the tattle ability so i can get the hp for the enemies and things like that especially on these big boss fights at the end of the game yeah if if they make another paper mario on the switch too and it somehow still isn't just more like this i am going to lose my mind

uh it's kind of a lie probably shouldn't expect it it's certainly a lost cause but the fact that they did remake this game brought it out and everyone is just like we like this better it's clearly better if once again we get somehow another like sequel to sticker star or some other new thing that's sort of weird it just isn't this again and it's just a combat too because origami king is a good game except for the combat that's it's unfortunate because like even when paper mario started going downhill after gamecube It's like I always took solace in like, well, OK, Mario and Luigi, I'm still getting

my RPG Mario kick. And then with Brother Ship, that was the first time I was like, I don't think I like this.

So they're kind of both in bad spots right now.

Brother Ship kind of came and went last year.

That was a big – I didn't even try it because I just didn't hear anything great about it.

So I'm not speaking from opinion, but it seems like that was a big letdown.

I played a couple hours, and I was like, this is not hitting for me.

Yeah, it was a bummer, for sure.

speaking about circling back to things that now may be hitting Mikey, you've been playing a lot of Splatoon.

Yeah, so I finished that Splatoon 3 campaign it was fantastic it was so good.

Mike, I assume that uses the same gyro control stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's just like, it's all the same controls of Splatoon and a lot of those mechanics, it's just in these levels built for a single player experience in like a very thoughtful and interesting way so I, you know, actually when i finish that i know there's the dlc for three that's supposed to be good but i'm like i never finished twos either or and i heard the dlc for that was great so i'm actually now in the middle of splatoon two single player campaign uh and then when i finish that i'll do the octo expansion there and then i'll do side order for splatoon three even here it's like interesting

the differences between splatoon three and splatoon twos the splatoon two these levels are sort of long, and they're generally kind of, like, similar.

Like, yeah, go through this level, beat up the enemies, shoot them, you know.

Splatoon 3 is much more bite -sized levels.

Every level kind of has its own gimmick, and those are really neat.

Maybe even better, actually.

There's a part in Splatoon 3, and look, this is a mild spoiler.

This game's very old, but I just had to say it, because I think Dan's gonna like this a lot.

Remember in Splatoon 3, the band, or the group, right, with Big Man and the girls, rolls and they're like oh yeah yeah big the manta ray big man's a big manta ray well during this campaign you fight all the people in that group and the last one you fight is big man the manta ray the boss fight against them he just turns into that shadow goo thing from mario sunshine wait it's just that wait are you talking about gooper blooper or are you talking about shadow mario no shadow gooper blooper it's just that giant manta no no no no remember Whooper's back?

No, no, no, not that.

Remember that part, that one mission in Mario Sunshine where it was just the shadow of a manta ray going along outside the resort and you had to shoot it?

Oh, and it breaks up and it...

Yeah, it's that thing.

Wait, do they call it that or is it just like inspired by it?

It's so clearly that.

And it breaks up into a million different manta rays and stuff?

Yeah, it is just that.

Hell yes. Okay. I did want to play that at the airport and on the flight back yesterday or whenever I got back.

But I figured with the gyro stuff, stuff i would look crazy on the plane so i chose not right i mean you can't turn it off just take it dual stick thing but i like it you know for splatoon it feels really good but the job even like the end of three there's like good cut scenes the like you know it kind of i don't know it's like the production downloading it chill dude chill i'm downloading it it's it's a lot of fun i'm gonna play this weekend yeah yeah and i've heard i've heard some people say that the auto expansion for two is maybe the best single player stuff they ever done and then side order

and three is very good too so i'm just going through all of it i'm having a great time yeah i've been i've always meant to this is a good excuse um switch to splatoon all right that's happening on my vacation yeah uh well just in case you needed uh to know all of the fun features of the switch to while you're playing through all these switch one games dan reicher thankfully you've been hitting the books by continuing to play through the nintendo switch to welcome tour and that's the thing that I couldn't look crazy on the plane playing a flailing gyroscope game so I was looking studious and learning

about the hardware of the switch 2 I was doing the maraca thing on the plane most of the minigames I wouldn't do I was just doing quizzes on the flight back even like there was one where it was the kickstand and you have to set it up and see how close you can get to a 30 degree angle with the kickstand and I was like I probably look crazy here the guy next to me wondering why I'm wait it can tell The angle of the kickstand?

Is there a sensor in there?

I thought it was just going to show me pictures.

Oh, the gyro. I'm very alarmed that I apparently have significantly less social shame than Dan.

I literally was just on the plane shaking these things like maracas and not cared.

I'd be put on a list. I can't do that.

But I'm excited now about Switch 2 hardware for an entire plane ride.

but i'm excited now because all i have now is minigames and that seems like a lot of fun so once i go back to it i'll have a bunch of fun mini games also did the work i think i want a speed run welcome tour i think that'd be a funny yeah that's a joke right yeah everything we do is a joke there is a scene where it's like there's the stamp rally speed run which is just like how fast can you get all the stamps in the welcome tour and then there are the minigame ones but but I think the stamp one would be funnier.

So I do want to get on a leaderboard for Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour.

So far, the number one time on stamp rally is 25 minutes and 49 seconds.

I think I can beat that.

I know where those stamps are.

Yeah, shout -out to TCB Trio for that record there.

I'm going to look into it.

I have a note to do that.

That's fun. I like it.

I'm a pro Welcome Tour guy.

That big Switch looks real good.

I like skating over the screen.

The mini games are fun.

I do Lost and Found.

I bring it back to the welcome desk, and everyone likes me there a lot of your appreciation for games is like the people in it are nice to me i just like nice people that's good i agree nice people all man the welcome tour folks yeah yeah they're all good people for sure a standing dude uh all right well that is something i've yet to check out on the switch too um but maybe maybe if i'm in the mood to go back to school uh i'll i'll do that but guys i've been thinking about this of all the miscellaneous things to get into this year i really want to get into yo -yos so i'm very glad dan and mike

that you two have checked out pipistrello and the cursed yo -yo yeah i was playing this on mega man monday evening games that mike has that night uh yesterday by the way mike i think it's funny because you have to say the full title every time otherwise it just sounds We're like, you need to do the whole thing every time.

A lot of people showed up last night to watch and were kind of confused that I wasn't playing Mega Man.

Including my son, apparently.

I'm telling you, Mike, I'm going to be so disappointed if you ever play Mega Man on Mega Man.

You're not allowed. Do Monday morning Mega Man after missed.

It is my favorite series.

So my one like regular block, I might want to play Mega Man.

Not allowed. This game looks really cool though, Mike.

Pipistrello is super fun.

I'm usually very skeptical of these Zelda -inspired indie games.

Italian slander. But no, this is a ton of fun.

It doesn't just swap in a yo -yo for a sword, which some games, you know, I love StarTropics a lot, but it's not like there's anything specifically yo -yo -y about your yo -yo in that game.

It's just your attack.

Here, you can hit it off of angles, unlike where walls connect.

Because you can only throw it north, east, south, and west, right?

It can only go in cardinal directions.

Right. But, boy, it just feels so good.

And as long as, like, the next angle is close enough to it and you kind of keep doing that for a while, you can't even just straight up throw the yo -yo.

But if you do that, you're kind of without the yo -yo until it either – you wait a while, it'll respawn to you, or you have to go and get it.

So I don't usually want to do that.

But just bouncing the yo -yo against these walls feels fantastic.

And they'll set up a bunch of enemies, like, clearly in a row where it's like you're going to get that satisfying moment moment of throwing it against like i didn't take that like eight things and there's coins everywhere it's great that's why it's like really neat progression mechanic it's got a couple things it has basically the bad system from paper mario or from hollow knight you know that kind of thing but there's also a skill tree and there's a shop and the way it works like you buy your next like kind of passive upgrade thing like plus one attack power plus more health but there's always

a negative side effect to it too so it's like okay get plus one attack power forever but it's going going to be minus one health until you pay off this debt that you have it's not you have to go back to this perspective of debt it's just 50 or whatever of all the money you collect now is going towards paying this debt until that's paid off and then that removes the negative thing right so then you don't but then at that point it's like well now i need to kind of work towards another one so you almost always have some kind of negative effect so that you're continuing to make your character permanently

stronger i think that mechanic of it is really interesting they They reminded me almost of the shop in Link Between Worlds because wasn't that a similar thing where it's like you could pay to rent or at a certain point you could own it?

I don't know if it's a higher payment.

It almost sounds more like that than it actually is because, again, it was almost like effectively you had the item.

And it just kind of kept from having inventory clutter basically for a while because eventually you just bought them all you had.

And there was no negative effect here like you're having.

So, yeah, it's really good.

The aesthetics I'm a little bit – I'm not sure on.

It's like, you know, it's one of these things with a lot of these retro games.

I know this is more Game Boy Advance -inspired than anything.

There were a lot of colors they could use there for sure, and those games sometimes were very colorful.

But there is something about the 16 -bit era, and they can only use so many colors, that kind of kept the palette in control.

Sometimes here it's like, we have all the colors, and some of the characters seem a bit over -designed, and things like that.

It's bright in a good way, but it's also over -designed in other ways too.

And it also does, you know, this game's not, like, super big on story.

I know this is maybe a bit of a me thing, but I play these games sometimes.

I'm like, we don't need this much setup and the front end for this yo -yo game.

Yeah, I felt that, too.

It's, like, the first, like, 20 minutes at least, there's just, like, I really don't need all this.

It's, like, every time I start a Link to the Past, it's like, yeah, I know, you're a prisoner in the dungeon.

I'm heading my way.

Don't worry about it.

I just want to play the game.

It's, like, that times 10.

Right. And, I mean, that's, yeah, that's all you need.

as much as i like minish cap at that point in terms of those kind of zelda games it was like wow let's let's get moving here everybody i would like to play some zelda now yeah i'm with you mike it's i'm a sucker for any kind of just like hey this is clearly a zelda like this is clearly a throwback thing even like blossom tails which is more of a just one -to -one like you've got a sword and you're getting like hook shots and stuff and boomerangs this has its own flavor to it for sure like aesthetically like the gameplay stuff is very kind of zelda inspired um but it does enough enough unique things

like with the yo -yo and the shop type stuff and the upgrades that like it's not just another one of those you know right right and again the game boy advanced this stuff it is fun there's even a mode where you like could like click in your sticks and it zooms out and you're actually playing the game on a game boy advanced looking system you can turn it around and still keep playing the game so that's neat all right i still might want to check this out i enjoyed watching mike play it and like this anytime he hit the yo -yo on an angle and it did the thing i i popped because it was a very satisfying

mechanic that always felt good and just like the the general like layout of the puzzles and things like that felt interesting i like the overworld being a city instead of just some big grassy field that switches things up to buying fast travel points i think it's cool yes i did lose a lot of my money retrying this arena constantly that i probably just wasn't strong enough for uh yet and that upset me but that That was a skill issue, I admit.

Well, it was something that definitely was not a skill issue for you yesterday, Mike, was replaying through Myst. Because Grub and I were trying to backseat game, but you just were on top of it.

Yeah, I'll tell you what, I've been wanting to play Myst on this site forever, mostly just because I liked the stupid idea of calling something Monday morning's Myst with Myst. I honestly didn't think much about if it would be good content or not, want uh so i'm glad it actually seemed like it was a fun time i know i enjoyed myself yeah i liked a lot mike i assumed you were like a longtime fan of mist and you wanted to show it off but then i saw like the comments being like wow he's taking to this really quick he's really figuring out these puzzles fast and so like i didn't realize is this your

first time playing it this is my really it is when this came out i definitely sort of wandered around i don't think i had any idea what to do uh i think i found because i think you can beat the game in like 10 minutes so you know exactly what to do right away so i think at one time i did that for fun again way back then i don't remember how i did that i always like thought this was cool and admired it but at the time it was a bit beyond me and i just never went back really but i'm always so fascinated by it because it was this big important thing in video games it was when people were still really

excited about integrating all this live action video the pre -writer cut scenes it was this this big driver of CD -ROMs and CD -ROM drives and gaming.

And, you know, it was a franchise for a while.

There were five of these games in the spinoff with Uru.

So my brother, AJ, always liked them.

And it just, you know, there's a vibe to it, too, that I thought was cool.

And that's what I really enjoyed the most when we were playing.

There's this weird isolationist but tranquil Myst vibe.

Yeah. It's doing its own thing there.

and i just really enjoy it's people talk about cozy games this is cozy to me sure walk just kind of walking around these sort of puzzle games or adventure games that's what i like um you know this is due to my own ignorance because i never checked out mist growing up or had any real exposure to it but mike watching you play through mist yesterday i couldn't help help but think oh this is what blueprints is doing huh yeah exactly yeah yeah you know i think that was the still like the best single sentence descriptor of blueprints and it's hard to do that games a lot of things but calling it a roguelike

mist i think it's kind of the best way of getting to the essence of what blueprints is yeah it's a lot of that here now we are playing the remake and the big difference there is that you are just you know walking around a fully 3d world the original game it was all pre -rendered you're just kind of moving from scene to scene by clicking around the screen um but i heard that the remake was good i know some people want me to play the original but the remake's good it runs very easily on modern stuff it's widescreen and it still has the uh original fmv acting in it which is i think a core part of that experience

right all these games you want to see all those people who are just working at the studio and whatnot i love that shit i think it's fun when you play a modern game and it makes you realize that a game you've overlooked you know from the past it's like you know when i first played stardew valley and they're like what a great idea for a game this is very fun oh i should have played harvest moon okay we got it yeah yeah i wonder i brought me hopes that the little bit of that blueprints pop off trickled down to miss the a little bit and if not maybe then i'll show you up here but because this is good

and then the riven remake which is the sequel to this game which at this point i'm pretty comfortable saying yeah we're We're going to play that after this.

Oh, yeah. People love that Riven remake a lot.

So I'm excited to get there, too.

I did look to see if there was a mod to add subtitles.

And there's just there's nothing out there for using the old FMV, which is a real bummer.

But what what happens if you don't use the old FMV?

Did they re -record that stuff with new actors?

So what they I think it's just 3D models.

That's what was in the remake.

Right. Everyone's like, no, it's like, look, we were OK getting rid of the.

you know slideshow walking around stuff but you gotta have the pre -rendered fmv people right yeah yeah but it is weird that the subtitles don't work when you do that but uh yeah they said they didn't do the timing for it and they were like maybe we'll do it one day and that was years ago and they haven't updated about it no i don't think that's happening no it's not it's definitely okay yeah well uh speaking about building upon the dna of an existing game uh last friday for upf grub Mike and I played FBC Firebreak which is building off of the combined universe of Control and Alan Wake as well

as I guess the gameplay DNA of something kinda like A Left 4 Dead and then just Sam Lake weirdness yeah yeah like you gotta wet your brothers or you gotta wet your bros gotta take a shower together hop in the shower together because you got covered in sticky notes yes yeah i i i continue to play this game after we we did on upf and i think my enjoyment um was severely lowered because i was no longer playing with friends i was just playing with randos um and it's it's kind of difficult to get into this game because the still uh the level progression is a little slower than i'd like it to be and they

ramped it up a lot too And the developers have addressed that to, like you said, ramp it up and kind of increase that speed.

But the problem is it feels like for me there's so much to do that it's really hard to coordinate with a lot of randos just jumping in to the game because it is so objective heavy of you got to go do this and then you got to go all the way over here.

or you have to do this task to unlock the next task.

And even when we were playing together, it took a little bit of time to get acclimated to what everyone should be doing.

Right. And the game doesn't like...

It has three classes, but it lets you jump into missions with whatever formation you want.

But I kind of feel like you absolutely need someone to be like the water, the Splash Brother guy guy or the water person well there's that whole mechanic first off in the first level people were catching on fire i had to put them out then the other one i had to splash the post -it notes off them where they just basically died it's like what would you have done if i wasn't you gotta go find a shower and it's like that's not the same thing as okay someone needs to fix this breaker box well i could just do that automatically or everyone else could just do do the qte right and that's like makes sense

uh where it's like oh well you know we need someone to get wet and no one else has any other way of doing that it doesn't feel my job seemed disproportionately important yes it seemed crucial yeah i do think maybe low expectations helped me with this because going into it i was kind of just hearing pretty bad things yeah about the game and it helped that jan knew what was going on a bit to help us out so i was having fun but i was also constantly a little befuddled by some of the choices the most egregious thing was we're doing this pretty long mission and you know every like 10 minutes it's changing

up what exactly our objective is and it's kind of a little confusing get reaccumulated then we go into this really big room with a lot going on and there's already a ton of enemies that are all making a lot of noise and we're fighting them and while this is happening some guy over the radio is trying to explain the complicated thing we need to do in this room and it's just like i didn't get any of that jan please tell me you You know what's going on.

And thank God you did.

But if you did it, I don't, I guess I would just die and give up.

Yeah, that's a rough first mission to start with.

Yeah, and that's the first mission.

And it's like you just go into this room and there's a lot, it's like a lot of new ideas.

And I appreciate that the game has a lot of ideas.

I do. I think it's like, okay, that's one way to like make one of these stand out.

But it's probably not enough to overcome that none of them really gel in a way that feels great.

And it can be kind of convoluted.

The first impression it makes of, oh, this is what I'm doing here, I didn't even realize that, is pretty rough.

And it's not so fun on the other side of that that it's like, well, it was clearly worth butting our head up against the game not knowing how to convey that information.

I mean, it's difficult because you want to have these objectives, I guess.

But I do think part of why Left 4 Dead works so well is that, you know, what you're all doing is relatively simple.

You're fighting zombies and you're moving to the next place.

Maybe sometimes it switches things up a bit here.

I think the second mission was much better when it was mostly just, yeah, take out all the post -it notes, and sometimes that means fighting a giant monster made out of post -it notes, right?

But that was showing a lot better than that first mission of like, first, you know, repair all these things, then fill up the barrels, and move the barrels down, and toss the barrels into this.

It's this game. The control flavor aspect of it, I do enjoy that for the most part.

The objects of power showing up, honestly, red light, green light thing, is like a really fun idea.

media it was very stressful but i like that a lot and then like getting a powerful gun that shoots out a bunch of like shredded metal and blowing up those objects of power that was that felt great yeah it was there's some cool stuff in there china's saying jan may have dropped us into the third mission there that one with the uh the barrels i don't know if they're confused because like like level three is what they were here but i think that was like oh it's made for level three and then we tried like the easier versions of some of those levels i don't know know whatever it may be maybe he did

i don't know whatever i yeah when i popped into a rando game i had popped in at level three because that's what was suggested to be able to move on to the next level um if that's the case where you have to like adjust the difficulty and play through these uh multiple times i could see it getting real old folks yeah real crusty um because yeah after a while and we we eventually settled into the rhythm of it that first mission took close to to an hour if not a little bit more yeah it was and there's shorter versions of those levels but then you don't progress if you do those simpler ones i don't

think oh my god uh i'm like i was like just looking at steam charts right i was curious like how many people are playing night rain still night rain a lot 80 like 88 000 concurrence right now on steam 88 000 i want to circle back to it yeah i do too i liked it a lot yeah i want to uh fire break meanwhile is uh 194.

Oof. That is... It's dying.

No coming back from that, really.

That is... Yeah, that's kind of just...

It's toast. Geez! Yeah.

Just that few. Yeah, that level...

Like, the leveling process...

Because, like, some of the...

I think what would make this game super fun is just having, like, a bunch of abilities popping off at all times.

And it takes so long to even get to that second page of abilities to get like a better shotgun or like access to grenades is it cross platform?

so okay yeah so yeah look it's on Game Pass and PSN Plus I know okay even with that 194 Steam usually isn't affected by that stuff Rematch is on both of those as well and Mike what's Rematch's numbers on Steam?

let's see Rematch Steam Charts Rematch is at least on Game Pass but I think it's on both Rematch is at like 62 ,000 It feels like at 1000 be short It is at 200 Well Speaking about one game we played on UPF To another game we're going to be playing This week on UPF Rematch This is like human rocket league right Yep Some would call it football No Tom Brady's not it You're right This is not an 80 for Brady movie game now uh what rematch is interesting it's a world where uh an invisible force field surrounds a soccer pitch uh and that is one of the things i feel like is the one of the coolest parts

of this game where it has this arena soccer sort of vibe i it is uh it's made by slow clap who did sifu so there's a lot of that kind of like technical sort of there's not fighting in this game but the but if you can imagine a soccer game playing like it was designed by fighting mechanics people it starts to make sense it does um i think i think this game's pretty good i think it's i think it's almost equal parts frustrating and satisfying because i think there's a few quality of life things that maybe need to be sweetened over for me to really really really jump in um um with with you know with everything

right the camera controls are a little weird and i've still not fine -tuned them in a way is there a lock on for the ball a camera lock i've been searching for that i don't think there is if there is i've not discovered yeah yeah and you know i think that's what there seems to be this sort of like developing argument of like what's the best way to control this game on pc whether it's a mouse and keyboard or controller mouse and keyboard was working really well for me yeah and i think i might start to go that route i think what's hard about this game is it's sort of you know the play to to really

effectively play well as like a three or four or five person team and have good experiences with teammates is you need people to like understand through balls and kind of like really i guess have a fundamental soccer i was playing with randos i don't think i got the ball passed to me once it's like several matches and you can call for the ball too and you can kind of like lead people in the right direction i think the shooting uh mechanic is very cool because it's sort of this like third person thing where you have to like target the reticle to where you want to and then kind of cook a shot and and and let

go and and work it that way uh the juggling stuff is interesting it's just sort of it's it is is uh approachable but a little but deeper than you might think with the technicality and the kind of like arsenal of soccer maneuvering you have at your disposal while you're playing it i i'm the jury's still out for me on it i i enjoy it i've played a lot with dib who loves soccer and was and loves rocket league and i was like oh this is a shoe in and he was like i hate this game one more time yeah let's play again let's play again let's play play one more time you know so there's that that's going

on which i guess is better than uh just hating it all together so um so yeah i mean how did you find it grubb i yeah i mean i defile myself thinking i'd rather be playing rocket league most of the time not that i think this is a bad game i just like think that uh the you know there's more depth here and rocket league limits what you can do and in terms of like what your character is actually capable of you can't do a rainbow kick to yourself like where you kick it over the back of your head and it lands in in front of you and you do a sweet move like you could do that or like there's no button combo

that just does that you could maybe you can maybe pull it off good to get the card to do that but that's a different thing like that there's a huge skill ceiling there like the skill floor required to play rematch is is um much higher i think now i still think i was having a good time when i was playing yeah um especially when i got in goal and like that there because it's like unlike rocket league it turns you into a goalie like you stand back and now you can use your hands and you can like dive back and forth and I felt like there it's like you know I have decent reflexes for something like

that that's where I was like okay at least here I feel like I can contribute to the team and not scrub too bad and then when you do scrub it feels really bad because you know I let down the whole team but I was still having a pretty decent time so I think I might be in a similar place to dib yeah there's good I was gonna say goaltending I think is really good there is a my for my taste a too charitable of the sort of like forgiveness zone of what a goalie can kind of get away with, you know, just sort of like sucking in just by like a proximity sort of situation.

I think overall it speaks to like the physics in this game, just being a little wonky and kind of like just not, you know, just sort of their own laws.

Like they kind of exist on their own planet that don't really, they're very close to earth, but they're not earth one to one.

What was it? What were you going to say, Dan?

Now, you know, we are playing a Friday.

we were planning upf against min max yeah oh okay cool sarah janet and leo so i think we're gonna do it three on three on friday uh do i need to a put in a bunch of practice time if i haven't played it and b do i need to know how soccer works well all you need to know about soccer is ball and net good but they're like offsides icing no there's i need to know not in not in this version of it in real soccer there's a lot of rules i don't think there's no rules i don't think there's like even in like fouls right yeah go nuts i think i would play the tutorial like a lot there's and it's not just there's

an opening tutorial and then you can dig down on a more granular level okay that stuff i think will will be helpful for you i you know it's tough it's like you you for me it's frustrating because it's like i know what i want to do in this game and i'm just not able to do it and maybe Maybe that's a practice skill issue thing.

Who knows? But, um, you know, you, uh, that's, that's always going to handcuff you in a frustrating way.

I think the difference is, is like in rocket league, I want to do the thing and I know why I'm not good enough.

Right. And I just got to like, try to get better at like doing the, the combination of buttons that I already have at my fingertips here.

It's like, oh, I feel like I'm forgetting a button.

I need to be holding down LB and the pass button to do a lob pass.

pass and then i hold down rb in the pass button to do a different kind of pass and it's like oh i got to keep all that in my head and it's just i'm not there yet um i mean that's a lot of sports games so it's like not like this is something i'm holding specifically against rematch but for me this is so rocket league coded that i was kind of going there expecting like this is going to be simple simple simple and all the complexity all the depth would become what can you do with this simple set of tools and it's like here now the tools are a little bit more complicated do you want to try to like

take the time to get good at that and i guess i kind of do i think this game is still fun and worth that but at this point it's still mostly an exercise in frustration for me you're right i was surprised with how kind of inaccessible it is right i was surprised with like how out of the how much out of the gate you're sort of lost a little bit that's even with a little bit of that tutorial that's unfortunate because like i i have for a long time wanted to see some form of return to like you know jam blitz uh just kind of that like like grub I know you and I like the this is less that though anyway

yeah like the that's what the thing I saw some people invoking the name of like Jam and Blitz and stuff like that and I've always wanted that to come back because arcade sports is simply this is definitely an arcade soccer game it definitely is yeah but it's not like you know Sega Soccer Slam or Mario Strikers no it's like a power -ups and stuff like that right there's no power -ups but it definitely it reminds me a lot a sega soccer slam yeah it does okay okay yeah i mean you know i just we're just i just feel like we're gonna constantly avoid doing this for hockey again and it's just like at every

given turn mario sports see the uh the slow clap like someone just do it for me people are making like roguelike hockey games and it's like that's awesome we got to get the global south into hockey until that happens we're screwed here i just well i get it you know you twisted the knife pretty deep when you asked if there was icing in this game dan that hurts i know that's not i know i'm choosing that to represent sports things i don't trigger me yes tape the tape was really good but like you know it's it's it's not exactly what i'm looking for but hey um we'll see uh all right gang that about does

it for video game talk uh and we're gonna go get to the news right after we take a quick bricky break after i do this on the virtual machine when your daughter's learning how to drive and says but can i drive you say here we go but what you should say is something that helps protect your ride like a good neighbor state farm is there and that's where state farm comes in to help you You choose the coverage you need, so you can relax until you hear...

Can we pick up my boyfriend?

Wait, what? Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois.

Now. This is Jeff Grubb with the news.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, Jeff Grubb.

Hey, yeah, I got some news.

First up, breaking news.

Saw some super chats came in.

We'll get to those before the end of the program, everybody.

Hang in there. there.

All right, so let's start here.

AMD UDNA graphics architecture to power next -gen Xbox and PlayStation.

AMD's next -generation UDNA graphics architecture succeeding RDNA 4 is expected to power the GPUs of both the future Xbox and PlayStation consoles, placing them a generation ahead of the Radeon RX 9000 series and capable of handling demanding AAA titles like GTA TA6 is what this story said here.

Leaks suggest UDNA will offer a 20 % increase in faster performance per blah blah blah.

All that stuff doesn't matter.

Basically, the story here is both these companies are making next -gen consoles, and both of them are sticking with the AMD partnership, and AMD has a new they're not going to do just a slightly updated version of RDNA 4.

Now it's RDNA 5. It's going to be no, they have a whole next -gen architecture, so it'll be in that line, but but significantly more powerful, they're not changing things up a lot, essentially.

And I don't think many people were expecting that, although it does feel like at a point we're going to reach a certain point where they look around like, wait, should we try to really change things up with our next, maybe Xbox, not necessarily PlayStation.

I expect PlayStation to kind of just stay what it is because it's working for them.

But there was talks of maybe Microsoft going with a more mobile -like processor, RISC architecture, RISC -V, or something like that.

And it doesn't sound like they're doing that at all.

They're just going to make another Xbox.

Does that sound appealing to you all?

I am just so curious how they're going to present this thing, what it's going to look like.

You know, you say, oh, a new architecture should look better.

What's that actually going to look like, right?

Like, what does that buzz reel, sizzle reel trailer look?

You know, like, Switch 2 had a challenge convincing people that its new hardware was exciting.

And at least they had the trick of, we're not that used to seeing a lot of nintendo games at 60 fps and like 4k still and xbox is well past that like you know i i i guess it's lucky that they'll have a gta6 like look how this looks on the next xbox i suppose but boy it just seems like it's gonna be a challenge for this company that's not in a great position and also keeps firing people and it's supposedly going to be firing more people soon yeah that's a story that was popping up did i include that that here in the rundown doesn't look like it uh they are reportedly going to lay off even more

people from xbox specifically i think the last round of microsoft layoffs kind of nicked xbox a little bit but didn't do much both the ones before that clearly certainly did um but yeah you're right it's it's it's this weird thing where they you know the whole marketing campaign is everything's an xbox uh we'll talk about their the the vr headset here in a little bit about oh that's an Xbox now too from from Meta um and so they essentially have moved past the need for the Xbox um but they're going to make another one and you know at a certain point does it just become like a Panasonic VCR that's

just like another VCR on the shelf and does that make sense like consoles are such a you know specialized thing um I don't know I listen I'll say I'm relieved that they're not leaving the hardware space I do think PlayStation will need a little little bit of a check in terms of making sure they don't go uh completely off the rails with hubris um but i don't know how much of a check this is actually going to be and i don't know do i need an xbox next generation i really like using my xbox uh a series x uh it's a good console to use but i don't think about it much beyond that yeah i start to like

tune out every time we start talking about the next generation of consoles just because of how right what does does it even mean yeah I don't want to say underwhelming this current next gen has been but like ps5 is about to be five years old right it's characterless it's like yeah it just doesn't have any character I did like the phrase current next gen by the way it's so dumb because no one knows how to talk about it no but that's that actually tracks though the current to say that but like I don't know the only console I'm currently excited about is the Switch 2 I do not gosh I don't think about my

PlayStation 5 or my Xbox Series X like at all at the moment I'm just thinking someone pointed out in chat that we're halfway through the 2000s we are a quarter way through this century which I suppose is why New York Times did that the top 100 It's finally time to give Way of Water its crown Chuck, build a tool on Giant Bomb where people can vote for their favorite games of the century so far That's an easy ask Let's just do that in this afternoon It's everyone's favorite game of the century so far Go, Dan Reichert You go around because I made an actual list Jeff Grubb, don't thinking Prince of Persia Lost

Crown Good, Jan Ochoa Shadow of the Colossus Jeff Bacalar What was the question?

i know i don't know i don't know i it's too too much pressure don't come back to me you have to pick one or bad things are going to happen in the next 10 seconds he's going to show it to you uh resin evil village very good pick a number between one and a hundred uh one 17 okay well one is breath the wild is the best of the last 25 years number 17 is red dead redemption the first one okay and i will say super mario odyssey there we go oh you mean the third best game of this I'll also throw in Dead Cells I love Dead Cells There's a lot of Dead Cells disrespecters among us Did you know that?

What? Who else is with me?

Sean, Turbo Sean also doesn't like Dead Cells What?

You mean the 44th best game of the last 25 years?

Right 44 is pretty good It's right below Lost Crown But above San Andreas I'll tell you what, they added all that Castlevania stuff to it and i'm like surely this will let make me like dead cells more and not really we already have a database chuck how much work can it possibly be what about hades where does hades oh hades is super high up there oh let me see where hades is hades is the 80th best game since you think hades is worse than dead cells yeah it's below ninja guide in 2004 but it's above crazy taxi wait so where's returnal uh let me see uh that is the 70th best game of the of this uh

uh i do like jeopardize it's haters only like proportionally uh -huh like the the number one hater move is well compare it to this thing yeah that's the best way to argue right uh it's the worst and the best yep uh all right it might be hey guess what back to the weather talk it might be too hot to play your switch to on the go this week a heat wave is sweeping across the united states bringing high temperatures to millions as record -breaking temperatures are expected in North America and Europe this summer, it's important to be mindful of using handheld gaming devices like the Switch 2 or the Steam

Deck in the heat. Nintendo recommends using the Switch in ambient temperatures between 5 and 35 degrees.

That's in woke temperatures.

It's 41 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit in freedom temp.

If the device gets too hot, it has an automatic sleep function to prevent overheating.

This can occur if the vents are blocked or the unit is used in hot environments.

I kind of want to test this, but I don't want to break my Switch 2.

Oh, you have another one, Grubb.

Just bust that bad boy open.

You could just steal the other one from...

I did actually end up opening the second Switch, too.

I knew you would. There you go.

Hell, yeah. Now we're a Switch 4 household, and Emmy's still using hers constantly for Minecraft. All right.

Nintendo has fixed its London Underground ad, which claimed that Metroid Prime 4 was out now.

Turns out that's not true.

They were lying. uh they i guess they just removed the uh photoshop layer that they clearly just borrowed from the mario kart 1 and left on top of metroid prime and they got rid of the uh out now part and it just says does it say 2025 or coming soon 2025 that's 2025 yes there it is yes the original poster may have had 2025 hidden underneath the out now message um so still coming this year dan reichert It's not until I have it in my hand Not until I'm playing it on my screen Yeah but it still counts against you Yeah but in this moment you've lost If it's available then I lose But I don't think it's

going to come out this year When do you guys think this game is out I asked chat for their thoughts For Game Mess Morning I think we'll get that poll later Maybe I already asked that Summer, Fall or Holiday I always associate November with Metroid Just because of Metroid Prime still So I think that makes sense.

Not December. Oh, if it's December, we're going to have one of those really fun, not eligible for Game Awards, but we're going to remember it next year kind of things.

Mm -hmm. I do feel like Metroid Prime is, if you ask me to name a winter break game, I remember getting the Platinum GameCube and Metroid Prime for Christmas in like 2002 and just playing the hell out of it all winter break.

There's something about Metroid that's like, maybe it's Phenander or Drifts or something, but it seems wintery to me.

That's how you say it.

Yeah, Philanderer Drifts, yeah.

They announced the mouse, double mouse Joy -Con Switch game is coming out August, right?

Oh, did that get a date?

Drag to Drive or Drag Cross Drive?

Yeah. I'm going to say October for Metroid.

Okay. 2020 -5. Shut up, Dan.

We don't—get this dude out of here.

I love how serious you are about it, Dan.

You're really selling it.

i listen every day last year i'm good every day he becomes slightly more possibly correct and it drives me insane i'm gonna go out of my mind if it comes out and billboard says 2025 they just reaffirmed it before it well the billboard did lie just a little bit trust every billboard i can't think of anybody who trusts billboards more than you probably that's like a very specific and accurate assessment of dan reichert marketing yeah we should get a billboard yeah i would love that we should do great greg miller got one for his birthday once i think yeah folks out there like if you live in just

some like weird rural area with a stretch of highway and you know it's cheap i would love for us to get uh we have like there's a giant digital like mega bright right like the digital billboard right next to the highway not far from where i live i'm gonna look into that and see if we can get one on there do we know anyone that i don't know works for whoever does the billboards for time square uh because i don't want to pay for that because that's very expensive i bet i bet they make you pay no of course i would just think it's hilarious we do one of those uh videos like people do of like oh i

just made it onto this show and the The show has a billboard, and it's just like the five of us, like, eh, just like looking lost. Yeah, I like that.

Please. Yeah, give us the homie hookup.

Mario Kart World producers says it didn't seem necessary to add characters from other Nintendo games.

The producer of Mario Kart World, Koisuke Yabuki, explained why the game doesn't feature crossover characters from other Nintendo franchises, unlike Mario Kart 8.

He stated that the development team felt non -Mario characters characters would be incongruous in a mario themed world and weren't necessarily giving given the existing wealth of mario characters and costumes wasn't necessary blah blah blah um yeah but who cares yeah but i kind of get it because like especially with all the costumes and everything like and and adding all these like if you can be a para bitty bud you know i think between smash brothering and all out or having a bunch of weird obscure mario characters i think think i would take the obscure mario character i'm enjoying i'm enjoying

the cast of characters that are better in this game as it is for sure dolphin yeah if they introduced a bunch of nintendo characters though over the next five years i would also be happy like there's no there's plenty of room for them i don't think it needs to be like super smash brothers cart but i did like an eight when you know you'd get one here and there yeah it's fun i do you know we hopefully get that in dcl dlc hope we get link i hope you get uh some other surprise again you you know, when Metroid Prime 4 comes out.

Give me Samus and a Mario Kart, finally.

That'd be fun. I want the new design of Donkey Kong.

We have that. But like with the overalls and everything.

Oh, the costume? Well, there's only one costume for Donkey Kong right now.

Yeah, it's a spaceport Donkey Kong.

I bet they're gonna maybe add more.

It was good. I played a lot.

I had the family test over the weekend.

It's really fun with friends and family.

It just is. There's a lot of local four player stuff.

Yeah, it was I found that even casual people that don't play a lot of games, like my sister Katie and my dad, Knockout Tour, people love that.

Yeah. I'm surprised, but yeah, that's very cool.

But yeah, I think my early problems with it were just like I enjoyed playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so much just as a game on its own by myself and just getting into the racing.

thing and uh here it's like no this game they clearly just made to be played with part like at parties or online with friends and in that context it's always really good so i mean kayla and i one of those nights i was home we just like sat on the couch and loaded up a room and and said the discord like hey join and we just played for like hours and it was just a blast it's yep so good multiplayer uh all right so related a leaked leaked sonic racing crossover officially unveiled uh bringing nickelodeon stars to the track nickelodeon and sega have officially announced their sonic racing crossworlds

collaboration which will feature spongebob squarepants characters vehicles and attract future nickelodeon content from the avatar and the teenage mutant ninja turtles universes is also teased the nickelodeon characters will be available in the digital deluxe edition or via a season pass which also includes minecraft content and characters from sonic prime The game is set to be released on September 25th.

This is a game that I had a lot of fun playing at Summer Game Fest. I thought that that collaboration with Spongebob looked very cute and fun, but it does kind of rub me a little bit the wrong way, where, hey, this is a series that once had all of this cool Sega stuff in there, and is this in there in place of that?

And I do view that as a little bit of a bummer, but I have no complaints about Spongebob.

Thank you. I thought you were on the wrong side of history, no i'm i stand with spongebob okay thank you thank you yeah uh also i may have accidentally changed my input game jane let me know if i ruined everything with my microphone but uh yeah i'm the same jeff i don't know like it's a little cute to have uh these characters in they have multiple niktune cart games they have their shot uh they there's two of those yeah yeah you know i'm such an old sega head that i you know what i'm hoping for is more old sega characters, right?

Like, give me the freaking guy from Golden Act in there and Streets of Rage characters and real...

Mike, we all know that you're clamoring for Vectorman to be in the game.

I mean, honestly, I don't even like Vectorman.

No joke. Vectorman's a cool dude.

Yeah, you know, ooh la la.

Comic Zone guy. Comic Zone guy.

They're bringing back Comic Zone and that stuff, you know.

And we've got some uh sega characters announced i know hasune miku counts as a sega character maybe you know i mean ones that i care about yeah like the space harrier guy just running next to everybody that'd be cool great yeah you know i get yeah put joker in there of course it put ichiban get the the newer people oh that joker i'm sorry i hate oh that's the first yeah joker joker yeah they got joaquin phoenix in the movie yeah that's who i think of in the game actually that makes me sad uh how come no one had joker or joker folia do on their new york times top 10 i know weird that was left off

suspiciously oh okay i get it i get it uh all right i might put a star is born online thinking i kind of like that yeah tell me something jan jan mylandro and chet says uh Times Square billboard, you could submit an image that displays on a rotation.

Individual is $150 and for brands it's $250.

What the fuck? I'll do that right now.

What does that even mean?

It's just like a slideshow.

It goes up there for five seconds every hour or something like that.

But I feel like there's 80 ,000 screens in Times Square.

Okay, guys. It's one comment in chat.

I don't have all the details, all the answers.

All right. I'm coming for the king.

Jesus. there's five of us we all pick a direction to look at for a couple hours and then shot north okay north I'll take west no this means we have to go to time square I'm out there's an olive garden there guys I will meet you at the olive garden in time square I'll be right there can I get some donkey sauce I'm so excited to have mustard on a hot dog I'm genuinely excited about about that i have not had the opportunity yet but i didn't have mustard a few times over the weekend and like a hot dog hot dog and a soft pretzel those are those are big time so happy so happy for you oh it's just a crazy

thing to say in 40 i know i was like a grown -ass fucking man i'm so excited to one day have mustard on a hot dog i'm gonna do it uh the mustard arc is now out on youtube it sure is by the way everyone should go check that out yep uh all right leaked or no i already did that one arc system works is hosting a showcase this week featuring the next project by Guilty Gear's creator.

Arc System Works, known for its fighting games, will host a showcase on Friday, June 27th, announcing new titles and projects.

This includes a new project from Daisuke Ishiwatari, creator of the Guilty Gear series.

While a new Guilty Gear title is possible, it's not confirmed.

Guilty Gear Strive came out in 2021, did very well on Steam, outperforming even games like Street Fighter V and Tekken 7 at the time.

However, blah, blah, blah, don't be in the movie, okay, other details.

else um there's also like a rumor i don't know if there's any juice to this that arc system works is going to work on a hotel dusk game with nintendo i don't know i don't know that's that was mentioned this morning i saw somewhere and i was like what does that mean apparently they've made games that are like similar to hotel dusk in the past and that like popped up around the time of that hotel dusk uh uh the trademark getting renewed or something like that so i I think people are drawing connections where there might not be any.

But either way, I'm ready to see some more stuff from Arc System Works.

What are they doing right now?

They announced something.

Tokan, right. The Marvel thing.

But a new project. Is the creator of Guilty Gear the same guy who created BlazBlue?

Because that's another Arc thing.

I assume so. I would like another BlazBlue.

I always liked BlazBlue even more than Guilty Gear.

Apparently, no, that's not the same person.

We'll find out. I was talking to Christian a bit.

Christian from Argentina.

Do you think Arc System Works is just done with Dragon Ball Fighter Z?

For fighters? For now.

I bet you would think we would get another one.

Come back around. They're going to do Marvel first, right?

Then Marvel's going to be taking all that energy.

Yeah. Yeah, but what I'm saying is, like, they're probably pausing on whatever work they would have been doing for another Dragon Ball game in favor of this current license, which is Marvel yeah I think that's that team so yeah don't don't expect that any fighters to fighters with even more Z's the director of Hotel Dusk works at Arxis oh some yeah what does that mean wasn't there some other thing like about a remaster a compilation I don't know I think there was just a the Hotel Dusk trademark got renewed and that like that's right popped people off in a bunch of different directions I don't

know if anything's actually going to happen in there.

All right, another showcase.

Next week, Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata, and more to appear at Capcom Showcase.

That is happening in two days.

It's going to happen on Thursday at 3 p .m. Pacific Time, 6 p .m. Eastern, 40 minutes.

It's going to be one of those Capcom Showcases, mostly just an update on stuff we already know about.

Probably not too many new announcements, but who knows?

They have a lot to show off, though.

More from Monster Hunter Wilds, more from Street Fighter 6.

I did check out Ilana?

What's her name? Elena.

Elena, thank you. And Street Fighter 6 on Switch 2, and that was cool.

But yeah, they have more characters coming there.

Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem will also show up there.

This is probably where they show off the video demo that I got at Summer Game Fest for Requiem.

Oh, gosh. I didn't even think about that.

Yeah. Now I'm a little bummed because I already saw that.

But yeah, they're going to want to show that.

Right, that's not public yet, yes, exactly.

It's good, so yeah, people enjoy that part.

Because, you know, there's a lot of rumors about what else is in Requiem.

And it's even clear that they're holding back.

And I'm wondering if we're gonna see that stuff now, or if that's still coming a little bit later.

Maybe a little bit later.

Now... Go ahead, Greg.

I was just gonna make a joke that if Pragmata is a secret Mega Man game, Mike's not allowed to play it on Monday evening gaming at Mike's at night.

Anywhere else, anywhere else.

I'm gonna play it on the Myth Show.

Okay. I was gonna ask, is it too early to expect to see anything more from the Okami sequel too early that game's out next year, 2026 does it even have a year it definitely had a year I don't know I thought I could have swore they talked about a year at the SGF alright, well fair enough I'm at the official webpage where I don't see anything about it okay, alright All right, they just announced it was in development.

Well, they showed it to us at Summer Game Fest, which we're allowed to say, so they probably showed it.

Are you getting Okami mixed up with Onimusha?

Oh, yes, my bad. Onimusha, yes.

I was getting Okami mixed up with Onimusha.

Okami's not out for, like, 17 years.

I'm thinking of Odama.

Oh, right, yeah. Oh, definitely, yeah.

Is Onimusha not on this short list?

That's strange. Yeah, Onimusha I thought was out, like, this year, maybe.

Okay. Man, that's my brain just doing tricks on me.

You know, they both start with O's.

They're both Japanese.

And then they kind of end in I's too.

I got to keep that in mind.

That's a big part of it.

Skate's early access release window has been narrowed down.

EA's Skate reboot is slated for an early access release in summer 2025.

A major playtest update is scheduled for July 2nd, and players can register as a Skate insider until June 27th to participate.

This update will bring significant improvements, Improvements including presentation improvements, a higher player limit of 150, more missions and challenges, a streamlined tutorial, and additional character customization.

Full circle, the developer has confirmed that Skate will require a permanent online connection, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, this is a game that I think people are still kind of concerned about because the rumblings coming out of people who have been in some of these tests have been a little bit like, it's not there yet.

But, hey, they're promising improvements.

maybe this one will change things around um but it does sound like they are trying to like barrel towards eventually releasing this game maybe even this year still i feel so bad for skate because i feel like you know uh partially because of this website there was a lot of hype for skate four and then in that process of skate floor being developed teased shown tested and everything everything tony hawk came back and reminded everyone that tony hawk is sick as hell yes what what jan are you a skate person because i was never a skate guy okay so when people were saying they want skate 4 and now this game

is going to be skate but like it sounds like it's gonna be skate but like you just hang out online and do skate stuff and everyone's like well that's not what i want i'm like well how is it gonna how is it different like what would you be doing different in like your ideal version of Skate 4 um I don't know I think it's just like the the trick lines and everything the people in the same way that um people that have continued to play Splatoon are like freaks with Splatoon the people that have continued to play Skate are freaks with it because they've turned the physics into something like Tony

Hawk but in terms of what What I'm looking for when I say I want Skate 4 is I want that smooth control with flicking the analog sticks to pull off tricks.

I assume that this is going to have all that.

I don't know. but uh you know none of the other um skate clones or games inspired by skate have necessarily pulled off good enough physics that kind of rides the line of feeling arcadey and feeling sim ish uh because there was that skate game skating game that came out i think last year that yeah that It felt pretty close, but it didn't quite capture all of the miscellaneous random stuff that the Skate franchise brings.

Because Skate, they really play up the fact of being a skateboarder and trying to get on magazines, getting the right angle of a trick and everything.

What was that game?

I went to an event for that.

Session? That sounds right.

It's Skater XL or Session.

I think it was Session.

I believe it was Session.

yeah that sounds right yeah um it was very skate like which i've always been a tony hawk guy yeah i i i mean i i hope that this game does deliver um i i like the idea of hanging out on friends but hanging out hanging out online with friends and skateboarding and setting stuff up and then they're being at as long as there's actual constructed missions as well along alongside that and players can just mess around with those things if they choose to do so i mean to me it sounds like a pretty good setup but i don't know i'm not a skate guy so i'm not the one you that that they have to figure out and please

uh all right xbox's surprise meta quest 3s vr headset is out now but supply is quote extremely limited xbox and meta have partnered to release a limited edition meta quest 3s xbox edition available for 400 the bundle includes a custom 128 gigabyte meta quest 3s matching touch plus controllers a limited edition xbox wireless controller an elite Elite, Strap, 3 months of Meta Horizon Plus, and 3 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

So the idea is, this is just a Meta Quest 3S, kind of in the same way that the Xbox Asus ROG Ally is just a ROG, but you use this to access Game Pass and to stream games through the cloud to your headset with the Xbox controller, which is something people can do right now, but since everything is in Xbox, why not call everything an Xbox?

it's kind of what they're doing here i i don't know they're everything is an xbox is just like we're gonna put the sticker on everything i mean it's really literally is what's happening with this yes uh it's strange i mean to me when i hear uh it the supply is extremely limited it kind of feels like a test like they're gonna like gonna see if people care about this sort of thing and my guess is they won't i don't care about this yeah yeah i mean well it does have an elite strap uh shit i didn't consider the elite strap so i think we gotta like redo the calculation here yeah make sure you know

you're okay with that with your your significant yeah get consent first absolutely um yeah i don't know uh i guess you know i'm not really worried about playing my xbox in general much uh like i said i enjoy using it when i do but um them finding other ways to like bring xbox into my life so far nothing's been as compelling as the frog ally and And even that is only compelling to a point because I'm like, that's just a PC handheld, which I've had a bunch for years now.

And this one, I guess I'll get my hands on to see if I care about any of the improvements they've made to that experience.

But as it stands right now, it's like, OK, I'm curious, but that's the best you got for me.

Yeah, I think that's going to do it for the news, though.

So, Jan, I'm handing the show back over to you.

folks we're going to take another quick bricky break and after that we will be back with emails and super chats if we've gotten any stay tuned folks we'll see ya when your daughter's learning how to drive and says can I drive you say here we go but what you should say is something that helps protect your ride like a good neighbor State Farm is there and that's where State State Farm comes in to help you choose the coverage you need so you can relax until you hear...

Can we pick up my boyfriend?

Wait, what? Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois.

On the other side of this.

These are the emails for the show.

Emails. Bombcast at giantbomb .com is the email address.

Send your emails to write in about any and everything you want.

you want to avoid an awkward social interaction where there's no one to talk to well feel free to email us you got a fun quiz a couple trivia questions or just general cues quandaries musings about the video game industry then hey send them to us bombcast .com is the email address continuing their trivia and fun facts simon from saskatchewan has continued to write in thank you you simon uh simon writes in hello bombcast the mandarin word for egg is dan coincidence yes uh there's a very unpleasant egg dish in part of china involving urine not gonna say here though although i found it's called dan ricard

the thousand year egg dish repulsive it's worth looking up if you don't know what it is it can be rude to refuse food in china so i felt like i had to eat it the reason we eat chicken eggs instead of duck and turkey eggs although also delicious and healthier for us is because chickens need less space to lay eggs they do it faster than other birds and they don't have strong maternal instincts over their eggs yeah they're like fuck it i don't care 86 dollars no make an omelet see what i care uh the state that produces the most eggs is iowa followed closely by ohio egg shell color doesn't mean anything

in terms of healthiness or taste it's based on genetics and usually the feather color around the hen's ears now there are those like shoot ears or is that ear like hen's ears like a word for anus for chickens i think it's for it's definitely a euphemism for anus you got it i'm not happy with uh chicken anatomy can we just skip over this part cloaca um eggs last longer in the fridge many places around the world think we're weird for putting them in the fridge also it's best to wash slash rinse your eggs before cracking them.

Think of where it's been.

Parentheses, the cloaca.

Negative, parenthesis, negative.

Eggshells are great for the garden and they're a good source of calcium for plants.

They're not good in an omelet.

Thanks for the content.

Simon from Saskatchewan.

P .S. Can Paul be a regular feature on Giant Bomb?

Generally seems like a cool dude.

Seems like the Midwest guy you'd like to have a drink with.

Wow. Simon hates dogs too.

I didn't know that.

All right. I don't know, Simon. You're going to change your tune after the beginning of this podcast, perhaps.

perhaps it'd be good to have drinks with them had thousands of drinks yeah just protect your dog sometimes you know actively hurt any dogs but yeah just indirectly that's yeah he just didn't do the lever on the trolley problem is all pull the trigger sign failed yep he just didn't pull the trigger you're right yeah not gonna defend that no off the gun and the bullet a eggs uh just yes or no doesn't have to be a whole thing again Dan 3 .0 doesn't entertain this but but chicken eggs were never in a chicken's asshole.

Well, yes, it was. Yeah, that's why I said chicken anatomy is upsetting.

Oh, I thought the cloaca was like a different chamber.

The cloaca is the whole thing.

The cloaca is one chamber where it all happens.

Oh, okay, so it's that the piss and shit and eggs is all the same hole.

Listen, I'm no expert, but that's my understanding of what a cloaca is versus genitalia.

I understand that, and I don't need to elaborate.

It's also proof there's no God, so we shit eggs.

i'm sorry like what if we shit eggs what if we shit eggs i don't know what if we should yeah no i think that'd be perfect if that's what we do then it's normal then exactly i was gonna say especially based off the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution sure that'd be weird if we started tomorrow that would be in the news right yeah oh headlines humans around the world shitting eggs okay if you started shitting whole eggs and it didn't hurt didn't cause any problems would you tell anybody uh yeah like if I just went to go take a shit and I looked down and there were like six eggs in my toilet

like yes and it's like clearly you even like realize girl the question isn't would would you tell anyone the question is would you cook them no clearly yeah three eggs in this economy no not doing no no I would I would tell Bianca and then I would do a video call with the doctor sure okay I would call my video call the video you're like this isn't worth traveling it's just you get in quicker with the video call I just hold up yeah he's gonna put the finger in there yeah okay you're in say you had to go you decided to go to the er would you bring those eggs or would you just tell them yeah I'd

bring them basket eggs it's like you know when like your stomach's having weird stuff and they ask you to bring in like a fecal sample or whatever they would want to see the eggs quest diagnostics and you go to the er and there's another guy across the room with a basket full of eggs and you sort of look at each other like you too you do something's going on here isn't it oh god what a weird zombie movie that is it's the disease that makes you shit eggs i would watch that that's fucked up man it's like okay all right next email is a little bit of a serious one this comes from dave in roseville

uh the heads up there after that egg thing we were yeah this is a little bit more real uh gang um uh dave from roseville writes in becoming the better version of you is hard dan's recent journey into becoming his upgraded self has inspired and both enraged me small amount of context i'm 40 and i've just now realized i've uh pretty much pissed away most of my life so i've made the effort to become my 2 .0 i must say though uh doing so requires so much paperwork from therapists psychiatrists the doctors and And Jims, you all have been with me through so much that could be a short story in of itself.

If this gets read, tell me how you crawled out of the darkness and at least started the journey of being a better you.

If not, thanks for all you do.

Dave from Roseville, now soon to be ex -sad sack of shit.

I know Dave from Roseville.

I wonder what's the one I know.

I'm sure it's different for everyone.

I don't know. With me, I always like self -improvement and everything.

And I think over the years, even those who probably watched me for a long time, realized that like, there's a lot of things I like about my father that I got from him.

And there's a lot of things that drive me nuts.

And over the years, I have seen the things that drive me nuts and I've seen them in myself.

And I've been like, oh shit, I don't want to make other people feel like that.

Cause this is genuinely infuriating.

Cause like there's the stuff that is like infuriating in a funny, fun way and stuff like that.

And I'm fine with keeping that.

But then there's also stuff where it's like, okay, I don't want to be close minded like this.

I don't want to be, you know, a certain way.

So like recognizing the things that frustrate me, I guess, and him specifically and doing everything I can to, uh, you know, excise that from my own personality.

That's, that's been a guiding thing for me, I would say.

say yeah dave as someone that is uh completely emotionally mentally spiritually uh still uh fractured um i would say what you're doing already is steps enough and um any type of progress is progress uh there's gonna be days weeks months uh where it feels like a certain blake club episode where there's zero proggies um but like every incremental step is still a step forward um and And hey, even you writing this email and taking some of those steps of like getting a therapist, a psychiatrist, even thinking about going to see a doctor for physical health and going to the gym is good because also you

want to do this for yourself.

Yeah, it's got to come from there.

Yeah, it's for me, it's always been like a natural process because what happens is I always find myself kind of moving away from things that I dislike.

like, and there's nothing I dislike than me from five years ago where I'm like, oh man, I did that man.

That sucks. I don't want to be that guy anymore.

And so I'm always trying to like be better than that person that I used to be.

That kind of annoys me.

So it's like, okay, I'm just going to keep trying to improve or self -reflect at the very least and try to find the way to deal with these problems, which usually is just put a little bit of work in, try to have a little inner strength and find yourself and be a little bit better.

But yeah, I think it's normal and healthy to look at past versions of you and i think so like you know i look back you know even five ten the different versions and i'm just like oh man what a dumbass what did i what a dumbass i think but i think that's a good sign that you're looking at that with open eyes and i think it's better than the people who don't seem to ever self -reflect i'm i do feel better than those people yes yeah uh and also dave if you know you're you're looking for tips or miscellaneous things to do in the the process of improving yourself uh i would highly suggest go read yeah

go go read more and and maybe read something out of your normal wheelhouse even if it's something simple like a cookbook uh just because there could be like fun little things uh to introduce into your life that you could get from stuff as simple as like a cookbook maybe be a little bit wary of the type of stuff you're reading because sometimes some of these um uh improve your life books are kind kind of a little bit of a snake oil because they just want to hoodwink you into paying for courses or whatever.

Don't do that. A lot of them though are just like, you know, cause I've read plenty of them too with like anxiety and things like that.

A lot of them, you could just like, they've got like three or four ideas of like, here's a way you can, you know, if you have a panic attack to, you know, calm down or whatever.

And then it's like, it's padded out to be a full book.

And it's like, I normally wouldn't be one to just like sparks notes, something or Cliff Notes or or whatever, but a lot of these self -help ones are just like, okay, this is way too much here.

Yeah. And yo, Dave, feel free to send in progress along to the Bombcast. I demand it.

I think, was May or June Mental Health Awareness Month?

We're doing it again.

Let's do it again in July.

Never mind. Don't get in touch with us.

No. Nice, Mike. like no do that but yeah i don't know it's an important thing uh i know that we've been very vocal as of late about uh politics and stuff you know fuck ice but also at the same time i think dudes specifically dudes in our demo should talk about their mental health more uh to de -stigmatize it yep it's nuts to me that like because i feel like there have been so many uh huge strides forward in in that in recent years like it's i can't imagine not being open about how you feel about things with the people around you you know with your friends with your family with your loved ones like

that just seems like the most unhealthy thing to not just be completely hey you only get one life what are you doing yeah yeah talk to people about how you're feeling yes yeah yeah go watch high school musical 3 um yeah that's what we're saying some of you are saying dan i want to watch high school musical with you we should do a film okay i know this is a long list now of film in 40s but we have to do with the angels and demons uh angels and demons and then a rickio interlude finishing it off with the da vinci code and then the high school musical trilogy yeah uh all right okay gang uh moving

on uh peter writes in hi i'm watching dan play sonic 06 and just need to know mount rushmore of volcanoes and games tekin is one of them right obviously yeah i mean tekin boy tekin might be number one there's the one on the luncheon kingdom and mario odyssey that's a fun one because you go up there oh yeah good one dan in there or something, right?

Like you put food in there it's like a soup in a boss fight.

So Odyssey, Tekken.

I think Tekken's number one.

Yes. Alright, I'm trying to think of other volcanoes in video games.

Oh, the volcano in Resident Evil 5 that Wesker is falling in and then you shoot rockets into his eyes.

Death Mountain is a volcano that you go into in Breath of the Wild.

It's dormant. There's lava in there.

In Death Mountain? There's lava in every fucking dungeon.

okay it's still a volcano i think the volcano volcano right i'm sure this probably isn't the scientific explanation but i picture volcano you need a big hole at the top and it needs to be filled with bubbling brewing lava and that's not what this amen brother is stranding death uh death mountain mountain looks like yeah but right it's not a bowl of lava correct but it's a volcano no i want it to look like the baking soda volcanoes okay like it needs to look like this with a hole on top i want a mashed potato volcano Volcano who that's that's gonna limit you because there's only so many cartoon volcanoes

in video games Dragon Bruce Island's got one right good yeah Dragon Bruce Island's fine yeah although it's not like is it Mount Rushmore worthy I don't know um all right well it's great we've we've loosely picked some uh Alex in Bendigo Australia has given us all homework to do before the next Bombcast. Evening, Bombers.

I'm sending you all homework of a metal album to listen to.

Oh. Dan, you get From Beale Street to Oblivion by Clutch. Bluesy, hard rock.

I'd be surprised if you haven't tried this band already.

I have not. You've heard of Clutch. Jan. I think you have. Praise Armageddonism by Blood Command.

Pop punk inspired fun.

Mike gets Ziltoid, the Omniscient 2007 version by Devin Townsend it's a musical about An alien that tries to destroy earth in search of The best cup of coffee Devin's very Operatic if you like Iron Maiden you should like his Voice oh yeah this is that's A good call for Mike yeah I think So I was worried about Mike's choice that that one Sounds perfect for him jerf Mariner by cult of Luna and Julie Christmas one of my favorite albums Okay grub Given your preferences for a Colorado Night there's really only one choice choice, absolute everywhere by blood incantation.

Enjoy the black hole, bud.

All right. I'm going in deep.

Uh, I expect full essays on your assignment for your assignment next week.

Don't actually do this.

Alex and Bendigo, Australia.

Uh, all right. Praise Armageddonism.

I do love some pop punk inspired stuff.

Um, all right, moving on.

Uh, let's see. Oh, we have have another quiz oh shit this one comes from matt and scott when let me pull up the uh the answers here hey bombers been an on and off listener since i was 15 oh my god what the fuck does that even mean i don't oh my god 15 wow well they're 15 and a half now so right wow uh It's only been a few months.

And now I teach English literature to teenagers.

What? God, wow. Homeboy and I are probably around the same age.

Let's see. One of the best slash worst parts of my job is the slang, which I am now an unwilling expert on.

So much so, here's a quiz with a series of hip new words that you can test yourself with to make you feel old and disconnected from the youth.

Enjoy and keep up the great work.

Matt from Scotland.

Okay. uh basically we're there's 26 words i'm going to say the slang and you y 'all tell me what you think it means okay uh no real scores for this will work together no scores don't matter points don't matter let's go all right yes yes whose line is that anyway rules number one sigma cool just like someone who's like doing it right megaman x final boss okay uh generally we got got that right it means good uh beta uh yeah like uh um i'm sorry what was that mike uh yep weak uh number three skibbity evil okay bad sure sure sure uh four mewing 151 that's like uh putting your tongue to the top of your

mouth yeah like it's touching your face in a soothing way?

Oh, it's like the Rizzler.

Yeah, the Rizzler's probably mewing constantly.

No, it's just the proper tongue placement in your mouth.

Well, according to this quiz, it means looking good.

Oh, okay. It's named after a doctor named Mew or something.

I don't know. Okay.

Oh, I get what you were saying now, Mike.

151 funny. I don't know how to pronounce this one.

Phantom? Yes I think it's like When you When like You remember we used to grab like Someone's food and like snack inspector I think that's right Bacalar yeah You are correct Bacalar It's like yeah Phantom tax I bet Phantom is someone who Bummed like food off a friend In a video once on YouTube or something something i always just do the poison test thing like oh poison test oh they hide the poison right here okay phantom is an american content creator and he's done stuff with um what's the big you twitch guy that like the biggest twitch guy i show speed uh the the other one uh yeah uh he was on kaisa not i

think he ate food once he says phantom tax right okay all right well uh it's not phantom yeah it's phantom yeah sus suspicious but it is but it's also sometimes skewed with like a sexual innuendo like you're being sussy well when you add that to us sussy baca yes well that's not on the list uh 7 negative aura just bad vibes right xbox heat yes Yes, actually.

Number 8, Mad Lit. That's just Mike Minotti.

Yeah, so you can take Brit Lit, you can take American Lit, or you can take Mad Lit.

Okay, that means stylish.

I'm going to skip through some of these, because these feel a little bit old.

13, Looks Maxing. You're trying to do weird things to you to make yourself as handsome as possible, to make yourself an alpha that attracts females.

Okay, yeah, I'll take it.

it means being attractive uh 19 chuggy slow uh chuggy man chuggy could be anything I don't know what that means I can't even get one neuron to connect with another one in my brain with some kind of word association it's gotta be someone's name what chuggy could possibly mean uh it means out of date and trying to be trendy uh okay um Um, some of these other words, the words I'm skipping Madeline EP mog, big L no cap bus and eight op Ohio bet.

Yeah. These are all.

Yeah. Wait, what is, is that just when you're calling a cat?

It's a filler. No, that's yeah.

Yeah. Uh, that's a filler expression for excitement or laughter.

Um, let's see. No op because of Samoa Joe.

Yes. Uh, what about jittle Yang?

That's not real. That's a dessert.

At the Filipino fast food restaurant that you like, Jan. Yes, yes, that is correct.

But it also is an attention grabber.

I don't think you can call someone a Jiddle Yang, actually.

Don't do that. Yeah, don't do that.

And last one here, Fudulu...

Fetula Hoogan? Fetula Hoogan?

Fetula and brain rot.

Hey, Emmy, what's Fetula Hoogan?

I think it just means, like...

It's just like... okay it's like nonsense right uh italian brain rot this one is the most specific one because it means someone overweight and seen as less than oh it's me yeah no that is such a that is too many syllables for that to latugan uh i just don't know how to read properly uh all right well thank you matt from scotland for that a couple more emails here uh we'll skip a hip -hop quiz because Mike is on the phone Travis in Fargo writes in which of you has a favorite video game that has the lowest Metacritic score I think I really like for shoot like the bouncer yeah it's not bad what's

the bouncers Metacritic score bullet witch total overdose Metacritic this is like hard I just don't like keep this in my head.

Yeah, Metacritic for the Bouncer is 66.

Oh, okay. That's pretty good, actually.

Um... I'm just thinking what the first Twisted Metal is.

Ah, favorite video game.

The first Twisted Metal's gonna be good, right?

I would think so. Um, I like Star Wars Bounty Hunter a lot.

That one... I don't know if...

Do I love it, though?

I don't know. It's a 68, so Jan's got me beat there.

Oh, wait, that was Remastered.

65 for the original.

Oh. Okay. It's hard. This is a hard one.

Yeah, it's tough. Um...

Favorite. uh all right okay well we'll just move on to the last two emails in the show this one comes from jeff from quebec hi folks i was chatting with the front desk tutor whilst checking in and somehow through the small talk he let me know he really likes detectives and paranormal and so on i didn't feel like asking about the esoteric so i asked who's your favorite detective the question stopped him it suddenly felt very serious he didn't have an answer ready yet obviously he has a favorite it i just confronted him with the fact and he had to choose silence he smiled and said in a soft but confident

voice batman so using your new friends a very broad definition of a detective who's your favorite detective for me i guess it's laura croft jack bauer cheers jeff from quebec i it's hard to not pick jack bauer if he's ever he's well batman's more of a detective than jack i like batman too but jack i mean batman is like he does get labeled detective more than people more than the world's greatest detective like that detective comics it's colombo he's the best detective uh it's monk um columbus the best detective people have died on columbus watch right like sometimes it takes columbus so long to

yeah that that murderer will murder another person first and that's that's that's bad right i don't want that happening to me but people die on batman's watch all the time i want like i want i want a detective for more of a kids show thing right oh inspector gadget you want kids show then you're definitely not gonna get hurt he inspects crime yeah that looks like crime all right jimmy mcnulty from the wire that's a good one it's i have two answers it's monk um and um oh someone said eddie valiant from my real answer it's veronica mars veronica mars is my favorite detective Eddie Valiant was a drunk...

He's a private eye.

Yeah, he's a private eye.

I like he's a great character.

I don't know if I really pressed it with my life.

Sure. Did I ever tell you all when I cried when I found out that Encyclopedia Brown was a white kid?

No, that's very funny.

You cried? Aw, buddy.

What do you mean Encyclopedia Brown was a white kid?

Well, yeah, but he's like a little white detective kid.

and I bought the books thinking like, oh, his last name's Brown.

That means he's brown like me.

And then my mom showed me a cover of a different one of like, no, he's a white kid.

I was like, I thought he was like me.

I think anyone's first name is actually Encyclopedia.

Probably, yeah. I like it.

It's a good word. I cried when Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas.

That was eight, and it was very sad.

He was from Michigan, like me.

I like Psyche a lot.

Who? Psyche. The characters welcome my TDs.

Man, that seems, I could have guessed that you like Psyche a lot, Dan.

Parentheses positive, mostly.

Your tone does not sound like it, dude.

Professor Layton's a detective, right?

Yeah. Yeah, Professor Layton's pretty sharp.

Phoenix Wright seems like an idiot, but he always gets to the right place eventually.

Eventually what Phoenix Wright does in those video games is really more like being a detective than being a lawyer.

A lot of the time is house kind of a detective.

Yes, he's 100 % Sherlock Holmes.

Yes. Yeah. All right.

All right. Uh, that's why they call him house.

Cause it's like, Hey, we're just going to do Sherlock Holmes, but for sick people.

All right, gang that about brings us to our last email.

This one comes from bat and banger Northern Ireland.

Hey team. FYI, I've started saying, uh, Jeff's Instagram username in my head in the style of Pink Pony Club by Chapel Roan.

Jeff, grubby grub. I think this is great.

That's going to be my head now.

I think this has the potential to be the new Mike Menotti, Mike, Mike Menotti.

Nothing has that potential.

No. And the reality is I actually it won't get stuck in my head because I don't actually need to sing my own name all that often.

Yeah. Only one person in the group seems to feed off that.

I guess it also works.

Alice points out it also works with Jeff Bacalar.

Jeff Bacalar. Oh, that's good too.

Mike Minari. I guess whatever.

I mean. To Koto. Thank you, Matt and Banger.

Yeah, that's his name.

Once again, thank you for sending your lovely emails to bombcastatgiantbomb .com.

Mike, can I ask you to read some super chats?

Yeah, absolutely here.

Thank you everybody for sending these in.

during the show today martin holla says i'm a weirdo who has a big retro game collection do i buy a physical copy of man uh mine's eye to have it yes it may not uh be playable in 10 to 15 years yes yeah 100 buy that now also buy xbox games apparently i would kelsey lewin on the thing was saying like they'll get four copies of xbox versions of third -party games and they sell maybe one of those no one's buying those things so you should get those so you wait like six months here so the thing's really cheap and then buy a physical copy of mind's eye i think you get go for mind's eye like anything

under 25 i think i got a sealed concord so like there is a certain uh yeah appeal to that right up there yeah nice okay here's one from stein catch one jan disregard the ps of my email with that new lore poor ringo oops also will dan eat 30 bananas when donkey kong releases he said he could do it it in a previous episode.

I mean there needs to be a personal incentive but I'm not saying no. I mean can we do a Donkey Kong Bananza stream where you try to eat as many bananas as you can just for pride?

He's gonna barf. I need like money in pocket for each one but I'd banana -thon, I would do it.

Maybe I'll talk to Chad if they want to incentivize you or something a little bit.

I don't know. We'll come up with something.

Can't you die from eating too many bananas?

You're gonna find them eating anything too much. We're going to find out.

It would have to be way more than you actually physically could eat.

Let's look into this, everybody, before we just have Dan die from eating bananas.

What do you think is going to happen?

He's not going to eat something.

I'm not going to ask you.

Mr., I'm just going to blast him with a firecracker in his face.

You're not Dan Roikert's safety advisor, that's for sure.

Yeah, you get asked last. You're afraid of fruits, so what do you mean?

All right, we'll get immediate.

You're like, he seriously could die.

He can't fucking die from eating bananas, no. no i think you could die from eating enough of anything but not force feed him yeah i don't think you'll literally just croak after 12 banana well what if his tummy explodes i mean that lady from drinking too much water hold your way for a wee uh what that you remember hold your way for a wee i remember that hold your wee for a wee yeah it was like 2006 when the wee was new and it was hard to find so that we killed someone some fucking radio no something it It was like a radio station or some local thing where they had a contest called Hold Your We

for a We where you had to drink a bunch of water.

And whoever held it longest got a free wee.

Did she drown? And this lady died.

No, she had some weird poisoning or kidney malfunction or something.

So yeah, trying to get a wee killed her.

The most abundantly available console in the history.

No, it was so hard to find.

Yeah, no, you're right.

She should have died.

She should have deserved it, yeah.

You're right. Never mind.

A spenny killer says, shout out to my eight -year -old son, Jack, for winning his first baseball tournament.

He's a big Giant Pump fan, and we listened to you guys all weekend.

Keep up the great work.

Love this Giant Pump era.

Pete from LeBlanc. Congratulations, Jack.

Let's go, Jack. Yeah, Jack.

My poor nephew, he's had two baseball tournaments now, like the local town one, then the all -star team for the counties, and both of them, they're doing really well, and then they get to the final game and they can't quite pull it off.

It was rough on Saturday because it was, you know, like 96 degrees.

He had to play in three of these games in that one day.

I was only there for two of them and that was bad.

400 bananas is what Chats says.

I'm sorry. I'm stalling that.

He's going to throw up before that.

He's not going to be able to eat like 10.

Oh, maybe 10. Maybe 10.

Yeah, he's going to get at most 10.

Al Grogg says I like how Christian's last name is from Argentina I do like that makes it easy for me just want to say I loved having you back on the main cast Bacalar just put the phone away during movies the woodpeckers can wait hashtag Dan was right oh boy this whole thing again that was not the argument still never was the argument Oh my god.

Exactly. No one understands it.

This is why people think January 6th is okay.

This is why people are okay with January 6th because Dan specifically is okay with it.

Yeah. Thank you very much Breezy.

That's very sweet of you to say.

How are bananas so fucking cheap?

Because we get them from countries that that's all they export and we kind of force them to sell to us cheap.

Okay. It's like 99 cents for like six of them.

It's insane. Yeah. What?

There's multiple reasons there.

bananas are very popular.

It's the most popular fruit, right?

I don't know. I think it is.

I think it might be.

Apples aren't as popular in other countries as they are here.

I would say apple is the default fruit.

In here, but I think a lot of places it's not at all.

Globally, bananas probably are...

Maybe oranges? Yeah, they're cheap.

There's no way bananas are this cheap without widespread human suffering.

Clearly, yes. Banana Republic's got their name somehow.

I don't know what it is.

Do you guys ever play Tropico?

No, but I like the box art.

It's got the guy that's always like, that's cool.

Yeah. We should make Dan a tropical dictator.

And where do you land on the blood fruit banana, Mike?

The blood fruit banana?

I'm not a fan of that one either.

No? For real? Yeah, very stinky.

They're not as bad as apples.

They're gross. They get all mushy and you step in them.

And I don't like that.

How many bananas have you stepped in?

Three. What? What? Did you slip?

I sat on one one time.

You sat on a banana?

Yeah, it was the wrong way.

Wait, which way? The long way.

This guy sits on bananas the long way.

He's going vertical.

It had the banana condom off already, so.

I raw dogged that banana.

I will say, a very sort of like unripened banana is disgusting.

disgusting oh yeah for sure i can't even wrap my head around it's gotta be chalky all right let's get through the rest of these sorry that was it that was it okay all right people aren't sending us any more money for some reason uh all right gag what do we got going on this the rest of the week gay mess morning's popping off from wednesday thursday and friday correct mr grubb that's right uh we'll have a death stranding quick look as well alters quick quick look blight club again tomorrow mike is this the week uh boy it can't be it's hard it's feeling like i've been doing nothing but plague rascal

for my entire life at that point like i am just stuck in this game it's gosh i'm trying to remember the last time i was playing the same game this long it hasn't been since mythology i think or i've had this many episodes it's not that it's been that long but it just it feels like it mike you know what you need to do i just calendar.

So I do think you're going to beat it this week.

I do genuinely. It didn't seem like you had that much left, Rascal.

And then Grubb, you're out next week, right?

I'm out next week. You guys should do the Delight Club that you guys have planned.

Guitaru Mitch. Guitaru Mitch. Oh, that'd be fun.

Oh, I should bring Kayla in on that.

She's the expert on Guitaru Man.

Yeah, Delight Club with Guitaru Man could be fun.

Okay, that'd be fun.

I know I could emulate it, but I've got a physical copy of that.

You should. Yeah, I mean, because that's one where input lag would be fucked on that.

So if you can make it, yeah.

Even CRT, if you can split it out, I don't know.

I usually don't like getting these games online, but I'll make an exception for Guitar Room Man for the content.

You should be able to get it for about $100 or less.

Oh, Guitar Room Man's expensive?

Yeah, I was going to say Guitar Room Man's expensive, yes.

It's like $90. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll do it anyways.

For the love of the game, um uh we also got voicemail dump truck this week with our dear friend abby russell uh make sure to go call into the show and have voicemails specifically for abby if you missed yesterday yesterday was mornings morn mike what is the title wow yesterday was monday mornings miss with mitch and then of course we had monday evening gaming at mike's at night i did see a comment saying thank god you're not doing this in the afternoon yeah that's what occurred to me too uh because that would change the show dramatically it sure would we ain't doing that although again for some

reason dan or jan ever have to host mega man it just easily becomes mega dan or mega jan Oh I like that I like that we could do that way we announced it earlier but this UPF we will be playing rematch against min max so please tune in to that y 'all have to train up because I know that Janet Garcia actually watches soccer and is a big fan so like y 'all y 'all need to like sync up and like get ball is life or whatever I use your hands I know that much there we go there we go unless you're the goalie but use your hands on the controller though um all right and then finally folks for our premium members

out there we will be doing a town hall this thursday on discord uh got some announcements and then some other housekeeping to get out of the way there's also a way for you the community to ask us questions directly you can always ask questions throw some cues uh there's a q a channel for premium members on the discord uh i will a lot of us try and pop in on that and answer some miscellaneous cues as long as we can answer them folks that about does it for the rest of the show anyone else got anything else they want to say no sick no stay hydrated it's really hot out yes yes uh please stay hydrated

hydrate or died rate folks that about does it for the show we'll see you next week for another episode of the giant bomb cast he's been mike he's been jeff he's been jeff he's been dan i've been jan we'll see you next week goodbye later boy all right i'm gonna stop recording uh gonna stop youtube now gonna come back up on all of us to Clap, Beep and Raid coming up in 3, 2, 1 Hey for a first test of this thing it worked perfectly.

Yeah Any robot voices?

Oh yeah Any robot voices again?

No one said anything I was looking.

Yeah Alright. Little robot.

Kept them all down.

Beautiful. Hey shout out to Chuck huh?

Yeah absolutely. Tell me something Chuck He's busy making my top games of the century though so so he's not here to take those thanks.

But that's what makes him so great.

Yes. I wonder if I could just, instead of sending myself this big file, what if I just put Premiere on this and just edit it here?

Totally. Move steps, yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Okay, okay, all right.

Well, wow. The cloud.

Anyway, let's go ahead and clap and beep respectively.

All right, I'm gonna get timed out.

is tell me something girl are you tired in this modern world alright I'm ready I think that might be Bradley Cooper's best movie he's a talented guy Wet Hot American Summer yeah Wet Hot American Summer is his best movie limitless I'm goofing on you okay alright let's They made a TV show based on that.

American Sniper. 15 and 20.

1, 5, 2, 0. Hangover Part 3.

Oops. Beautiful.

[Giant Bombcast Episode 896: The Meat, The Heat, and The Mystery of Ringo the Dog]-[896: Current Next Gen]

📋 Summary

The Giant Bombcast: A Deep Dive into Personal Lore and Gaming

The "Tree Pervert" and Dark Family Lore

The Century's Best Movies

Gaming Deep-Dives: Death Stranding 2 and Expedition 33

News, Weather, and "Egg" Quandaries

Final Reflections on Self-Improvement

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript