904: A Dolphin Situation | Giant Bombcast

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Hey everybody! It's really early, but it's Tuesday!

August 19th, 2025. It's 742 AM for me. Why are we doing this so early?

Welcome to the Giant Bombcast. We were talking about Kirby at 7.40 our time, brother.

Catch up. All right, I'll go, I'll go, like, talk about Kirby or others in my own time.

But welcome to the Giant Bombcast presented by MSI.

I'm your host, Jan Ochoa. Slowly waking up, but he's ready at the crack of dawn and even a little bit before that.

Co-captain of the ship. Jeff Grubb. I'm wired.

I'm wired, Jan. Ready to go. man in the mainframe.

He is within all the systems. He's got his tendrils and he's seeking data.

Jeff Bacalar. That's right. I am addicted to data.

That is the only purpose I have in life.

I scour the universe looking for data. Because, I don't know, that's a fucking storyline.

He's constantly FaceTiming every single person he's ever met.

And that's not awkward at all or not out of character.

Dan Reichert. I'm right-clicking every camera and drone in the United States and commandeering it.

Oh, you got a dropdown menu, bro? I got a dropdown menu.

You can just do that. You just right-click everything.

It's great. Amazon Prime Air. It's the future of delivery.

That's right. He's the baby daddy of the podcast. is your father doesn't respect him until he flies a drone through an office and delivers one USB drive.

He's a bad boy of games media. Also, sorry for spoiling the Amazon movie War of the Worlds.

You can't spoil the fun that is that movie.

Nothing will prepare you for it. It turns out it's all about family.

Salumi Familia is what they say. Now, before we get to the bands. gang uh we are presented by msi and i do want to give a special shout out you'll hear more about that later on in the first ad break unless you're a giant bond premium member But if you are heading to PAX West, MSI is going to have a booth number 1109 and they're out the latest and greatest cutting edge graphics cards brand new mobos and high performance components but yo yo yo yo yo because you're part of the gang, our gang, you roll up to that booth and you whisper to them like, yo yo giant bomb sent me you're gonna be entered to win a brand new shiny msi mobo and other free stuff.

So if you're heading to PAX West, holler at the gang at MSI and holler that you roll with us.

Now. I put this movie on because you guys forced me to.

They did this to us. We all got together in the last few days and we all separately, or actually Mike kind of watched with me.

I started at the same time as you guys, but I was on my phone in bed, so I couldn't actually watch you stream it.

So I was watching in spirit. Do you have headphones in, or are you just... are you disrupting the sleep of others in your household?

I had headphones in. Yes. No. Yeah. I was like, I'm going to try.

I couldn't put it down. It was great. It is, uh, Well, yeah, I did see on Letterboxd, Grubb, you gave it five stars.

I gave it the lowest possible score, a half star.

I did not rate it. I did not rate it. Zero stars.

I think you just said this is insulting.

I just wrote insulting. And meanwhile, Mike Minotti calls me at two in the morning and defending the film.

No. Yeah, no, I don't know if I was ever more upset at a poll.

Then when you ask your chat if this movie was worse than Love on a Leash and like...

It was almost a landslide saying that War of the Worlds was worse than Love Unleashed.

Oh, that's a skill issue. You guys are bad at watching bad movies.

I've never... Wait, wait. I've never respected Jeff Grubb more in...

Like the over a decade I've known him than when he came out and gave this movie five stars.

I love this movie. I'm very happy it exists, you know.

But it is maybe the worst thing I've ever seen.

No, you know, I think it's amazing it exists, actually.

No, I don't think... This movie does not deserve the ironic...

No, it absolutely does. It's so good at being a bad movie.

No, but that's the thing. I don't even think it qualifies.

I don't think it qualifies. I... I'm... I don't want... This made me want to destroy beautiful things. baby.

What part hurt you the most, Bacalar? It is insulting on a level that I'm... I don't...

It's propaganda. Let's be clear. Like it's straight up propaganda.

I, I, Yes. I mean, I don't think it's a pro surveillance state and pro Amazon movie.

It's definitely pro Amazon. And it definitely says like, look, The problem isn't the surveillance state.

It's the wrong people are using it. We can't let the government have it.

It's gotta be Amazon. You're giving it so much credit.

You are injecting a level of cerebral consciousness.

None of these are good. That's not a good point.

That's a terrible thing to say. I don't under... At the same time, we deserve this movie.

We deserve this. You know what I mean? Like things are where they're at, where this should be what is good for, you know what I mean?

I like, that's, I think the thing that I, the conclusion I drew at the end of this was like, oh, we're getting this because it's what we deserve. as a society for me it's like a bad movie enables you to like see the seams so you can kind of stick your head in and like take a peek around and be like there should be something here right they should have built something good here and instead there's just nothing And so you kind of like invites you to look around.

So the fact that it's propaganda is like kind of a good thing because then you get to like see how propaganda works because it's because it's so bad at everything it's doing.

And then, every line Ice Cube says is the funniest thing I've ever heard.

The montage. I can't believe they forced him to look at a camera lens for 90 minutes. insane and then when it oh god when he gets in the ship or whatever he's in at the end of the movie like independence day i like couldn't sit down for my When he says, move, bitch, get out the way, which is not even his reference.

No. And you can tell that that was like a pickup line because like they don't have him actually say it in the movie.

So it's like happening like when you can't see his mouth.

They're like, this is a good one. We got one here, guys.

Wait, does he go onto an alien ship? I don't remember that.

No, he goes into like a data center. It's like a server. but yeah he's like sitting in the like a seat though and he looks like he's like piloting something yeah I love that you actually took real footage of catastrophes and stuff.

Oh, that doesn't bother me. At this point you're gonna be mad at that supposed to be mad at that process Like, we're supposed to be upset that they, like, licensed someone's disaster footage?

I don't know. Am I supposed to be mad at that?

I have no idea. At this point? Well, like...

What, Jan? There's a lot of pro-Amazon propaganda, and I may catch some heat for this, what I'm about to say, but yo...

If my daughter is an award-winning scientist that creates like a viral code to hack DNA, I'd be upset if she was dating and had a baby daddy that was an Amazon delivery driver.

The important thing posed by this movie in 2025 is, would you accept his Facebook friend request?

That actually doesn't even bother me all that much.

That's the plot of a social network. This movie is so made for millennial dads that have no taste.

Is this a dad movie? Is this a dad movie?

It wants to be really bad. So it's like...

What are they going to do there? They're going to use TikTok?

Paul Riker might understand Facebook. He would hate this movie.

I get that. He would hate it. But he might understand like Facebook versus like any other social network they would have used there.

So I get that. You know, when you when you when you grub, you might be able to speak to this more than anyone else.

You know, when you like meet a bunch of dads and they're all just like, just see this new movie and you know it's. slop and they're all like definitely gonna get talked about when i drop the kids off at school yeah And they're all like, I thought it was pretty good.

And then you're sitting there staying like, is something, did you have a brain injury as a young person?

Did you eat some bad shrimp? What do you mean?

I don't even think this is going to clear that bar.

Like, I don't... It's meant for that audience, for sure.

I don't know. It's top 10 on Amazon, baby.

I can't believe they put credits on it. Could you imagine being like... Alan Smithy, Alan Smithy, Alan Smithy.

You want to be... credited on this the nerve how dare you put hg fucking wells's name on this What do you mean it's based off of his fucking... What are you talking about?

How dare you? I think... I think that this is a movie for people who kind of hate movies now, which is maybe a big part of why I like it.

I think this movie sucks in a lot of ways.

Yeah. I think that a lot of movies people also like these days suck in similar ways that they're not willing to admit.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, Mike, dive into that.

What movies that people like... are similar to this.

To be fair, it has the plot structure and the characterization of all the characters around the main character, the fact that it's propaganda, All that stuff is like just 100% in most Hollywood blockbuster pictures.

I can't believe how much you're using that propaganda word by you.

It's so blatantly. propaganda but i think you're giving it an undeserved sort of like compliment no no no it's like a new jurassic world movie came out and made a billion dollars right That was okay.

I just don't know if you can convince me that's better than this, Jan.

I don't know. Wait, are you saying it's an average movie these days?

Like, I just saw Weapons, and I thought that was fucking awesome.

Okay, let me say, this is a me thing. I have not seen weapons.

I will never see weapons. I don't know what it's about.

I promise you that if I saw weapons, I would not enjoy it as much as I enjoy it. join War of the Worlds.

No, Chad is right. Propaganda is too high of praise.

This movie is weapons grade abysmal. Like in a way that this could be used as torture.

This could be used as torture in certain circumstances. think of propaganda i think of actual like you know war stuff and news stuff but like this is consumerism yes right but but it's it's right but it's a corporate consumerism repeats the propaganda that's been fed to it.

So like that, that's what this is. This is part of the propaganda machine, but like, so is every Hollywood movie.

That's not some like weird, like, it just happens because someone's like, I'm going to write a script.

Who should be the bad guy? I don't know the government, but like, what are we really trying to say here?

I'm going to say something. It's, it's, It does feel like you gave AI a prompt and was like, miss a movie.

I'm pretty sure AI wrote the script for this movie.

The Ice Cube's boss in the movie, like the DHS dude that is secretly running.

Briggs? Agent Coulson? Yeah, Agent Coulson.

When he's first introduced into the film, he's sweating.

It looks like he just finished having a little J.O. session by himself.

Jesus, James. You really look at the weird corners in this movie.

I think they're implying that he's like just from the gym and like immediately came to this call.

No, no, no, no, no. I like the part where it's like they were clearly doing so much surveillance.

That dude is getting fucking freaky. All right.

Oh, that's true. He is violating so much shit.

You're right. I'm on board now. Uh, I like the part where it's like, clearly they, they needed him to like say something different, but they didn't want to get him back.

So they would, they have to pay him money.

So they just had the, the, the buffer of the video. be really bad so that the lips didn't have to sync up to what he was saying.

It's like, oh my God, there's so much shit like that in this movie.

For the people that don't know what this is and just hear us ranting about this immediately, keep in mind, this is all a movie on Zoom calls and Facebook windows and Google Maps and Amazon.

To be fair, people have made good versions of that.

Searching was very good. During the pandemic, there was like, you know...

It's a small genre, but it has been done effectively.

Yes. This movie is beneath... Everything.

It is insulting on a level. I think it's the movie we deserve.

I think it's 1 million percent the movie we deserve.

I just said that. I said that a few minutes ago.

We absolutely deserve it. I also don't understand how like every brand was like, yep, Go ahead.

Spotify, Microsoft Play. I don't care. No, but I think at some level they do because you still want to align and you still want to license out your thing up against something that you... don't have to have nightmares about for the rest of your life.

I just think there's a certain threshold that you're willing to accept.

And I am kind of maybe because Amazon was like sort of the driving force of this thing.

I don't know. I just find that crazy. I can't tell if this movie costs $40 or a million dollars.

I don't know. I saw Fantastic Four the other weekend, and I thought, yeah, that was good.

Don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare. I think there's so much more...

Maybe value's not the word. I'm much happier this movie exists than MCU movie number 47 or whatever.

I'm sorry. I'm with you on that, Mike. I'm with you on that.

I don't think that's necessarily... No, not a brave take, but I get it.

I mean, okay. I can't be yelling like this.

I have more joy out of watching this and talking about it than I have... literally any Marvel movie.

So I am with you on that. Stacy said this last night after I came back to the bed and I was visibly shaking.

She's like, what happened? What happened to you?

And I'm like, I've had to watch that War of the Worlds movie that and oh i hope i was hoping you made her watch it too oh man come on i'm a good husband and she she's like she's like wow it really makes you appreciate something like a sharknado where you're like wow Yeah, you're kind of right.

This is beneath any sci-fi movie, sci-fi channel movie.

You look at a Sharknado and you're like, oh, all of a sudden Sharknado is kind of a Picasso, I guess, if you're directly comparing it to what this... film at least that one's intentional intentionally i don't know that makes sharknado kind of cynical and like hard to watch for me because it's like No one's actually... You're so far gone.

Yeah, like, no one's, like, really trying here.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that room aspect.

There has to be like a legitimate time to do something.

It has to be earnest. And that's why a lot of the rooms, stuff like that.

This is a new The Room. Yes, this really is.

That is that's my actually like strongest stance here is the people think that this movie isn't so bad.

It's good. Oh, come on. This is so in that.

That is literally, I mean, it's a skill issue.

Like you're bad at watching bad movies. You got to come on, get on our level and enjoy this shit because it's precious.

I don't want that skill. I don't think I want that skill.

It's so much fun. Oh, man. Grubb, I think even though we are on the polar opposites of our Letterboxd ratings, I think we are coming at it from the same spot.

We both think it's a bad movie. And I rated it as a movie being bad, but I love that it exists and it was very fun to watch and talk about.

In some ways, a five star is closer to a half star than it is to like, it just sort of, it begins to like wrap around, right?

Sure. I'm enjoying it so much because it's bad.

And yeah, like your assessment is like objectively fair.

I enjoyed it five stars worth. gonna probably watch this movie again another 15 times in my life parties yeah yeah for real Absolutely.

I heard a friend not too long ago about how Netflix or the streamers were intentionally trying... to start making creative that would be good for second screen viewing, like stuff that that you just don't even have to pay attention to.

And it just exists in the background while you're on your phone or whatever.

And like, this almost feels like something like that, where it's like, it would just exist in the background.

Yeah. I don't know. There's aliens and ice cube and whatever.

Uh, terrible. Yeah. The whole time I was watching this, I put this movie on last night, and my partner goes, why the fuck are you watching this?

I thought you said this was supposed to be terrible.

I just quietly look over at her and just say, Dan told me to.

She just nodded her head and was like, oh, okay, sure. but it's a crime I just think it was like an actual illegal crime and people should be made to pay for it 100% I think that we could do this movie Oh, yeah.

Well, right. And it is public domain, right?

We could just shoot a thing and put it on YouTube and call it War of the Worlds.

Okay, here's what we do, all right? We just go for like half of a regular bomb cast, so that's like 90 minutes already.

We'll just improv the whole thing, right?

And then we'll go in later and edit it. Okay, and can you put some aliens in there?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in the editing afterwards.

Let's just steal seeds from the movie War of the Worlds.

We're recording one right now. Can we all just get some quick pickups that Jan can use?

Hang on. surprisingly no no no hold on okay dan dan i need you to take that again okay i'm gonna i'm gonna type ready so yeah Oh, that's crazy.

No! Aw, man! Okay. Can I do the right clicks?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm talking about!

Aw, go to hell, alien! All right, that's what I got.

All right, give Jayne more to work with.

Come on, Mike, give him some stuff. I want to do mostly like concerned looks.

Okay. Yeah. He touches his glasses for 45 minutes.

Oh, this is an audio podcast. I gotta make the sounds of concern.

There was one realistic thing in this movie.

Wow. What? Okay, now we need a little bit of diversity here.

Jeff Baclar in like a foghorn leghorn accent.

Can you say, baby, don't do it? Don't go.

Oh, baby. Baby. I said, baby, don't go, baby.

Fuck all of this. Fuck all of this. Yeah.

Yeah. This is great. Put yourself in, put yourself in the movie, Jan.

I'll just quote Ice Cube. Baby, no. Take your intergalactic asses back home!

There you go. I got one more. Okay, okay.

Move, bitch! Get out the way! Backyard, can I have you take that, but in the foghorn leghorn?

Yeah, please. In the... Move, bitch. Get out the way.

Now, Mike, I need you to do like a very quiet, like take your glasses off and go move, bitch.

Get out the way. Okay, but sad. Move, bitch!

Get out of the way! Stay with me, baby.

Stay with me, baby girl. Get out of the way.

We are now all involved in this. The war of the world.

I hate this war of the worlds. Okay, actually, Grub, I need you to say a war of the worlds.

Yeah. It's the war of the worlds. Acklar.

Oh man, it's the war of the worlds. No, no, no, no, no.

You're breaking character. Come on. Come on.

I suppose this is the war of the worlds.

That one's more Harry Carey than Foghorn Leghorn.

I think. The data's draining. My data's being drained.

So that scene is what actually sealed it for me.

That was like a MacGruber sex scene. Your memories are deleting.

Sick. It was so fun. Sick. They're like, Starfire, no!

It's like this weird white guy running away from the camera.

Oh, man, this movie owns. I mean, it's terrible.

It's evil, but it owns. It's evil, yeah. boy I'll tell you what that is the only believable thing I'll say is that the government would use teams One million percent.

Boy, chat really didn't like it when I said that.

I will never see weapons and I've already decided I like this movie more than it.

That is insane. Who direct the last thing who directed this movie I think it's rich Lee is the criminal I he's in jail now yeah he's facing 25 to life yeah he's He's got the Steve Buscemi mask on from Con Air.

Oh man, just Google this guy and right away, just no thanks.

Okay. All right. Well, this is a video game podcast.

He's a Michael Buble music video director. he does music videos for Michael Buble Maroon 5 and the Black Eyed Peas Oh, he did the M&M video for Venom.

I just... Oh, Christ. Alright, well... Hey, video games.

Nah. Jeff, you know that I probably wouldn't like weapons, right?

Mike wouldn't like weapons. You wouldn't like weapons.

Have you guys seen it? Has anyone seen it?

I'd like to. I'm going to, yeah. It was tremendous.

It's a very well-made movie. I like Zach Krieger a lot.

He's very good. I think I like this better than Barbarian.

I love Barbarian. Dan, you know how you left Hamilton and you're like, well, they're all very good at their jobs.

I bet that would be my take if I left a weapons or a sinners or something.

I don't know. That's crazy. Totally the same as weapons.

Mike Minotti, yesterday on the website, you played SpongeBob SquarePants, the cosmic shake.

See, I can't be watching Weapons or Sinners or Barbarian.

I gotta play Spongebob Squarepants games.

You would like sinners. Did you see naked gun?

You would sinners kicks ass too. Oh, naked gun was amazing.

Oh, you did. Okay. Okay. Okay. You're not that.

Far gone. Okay. No, I'm not. Trust me. I'm playing it up a little bit.

I mean, what's the... Actually, I don't know single thing.

I guess I just assume weapons is going to be violent and weird.

From the trailers, yeah. Yeah, so this is not going to be my thing.

It's about kids disappearing. Basically, just the premise.

This is no spoilers. It's literally the tagline on the poster. is at 2.17 in the morning, there's a classroom of 18 kids.

17 of them just run out of their house and they're never seen again.

They're like running out and they have this creepy run with their arms like a Naruto run type thing.

And there's all these like ring cameras and stuff.

And at the exact same time, 17 out of 18 of these kids in the middle of the night left their house in their pajamas and just sprinted into the night.

And the whole town is like, what? the fuck happened.

It's a very compelling setup. It pays off in an incredible...

I thought like, oh, is this going to be some weird, stupid payoff or confusing thing?

No. The payoff is awesome. The movie is awesome.

Excellent. They're all going to play city trials.

Also based on a true story, right? Oh, yeah.

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Mike Minotti.

So I played that remake of Battle for Bikini Bottom not too long ago.

You like that, right? I like that a lot.

That is just a very good... sort of slightly simplified Mario 64, like, right?

Where you have these worlds and they're relatively non-linear.

It's like, Collect as many gold spatulas as you need to unlock the next area and stuff like that.

I just like that sort of setup. Thought it did a good job with the SpongeBob license.

It was a beloved game for that GameCube era, and then the remake happened, and I thought the remake looked really good.

So I enjoyed that quite a bit. That remake was such a success that they made just a new Spongebob Squarepants 3D platformer.

The Cosmic Shake, that came out a few years ago and I hadn't touched that.

I've been meaning to. So yeah, played some of that on Mega Man Monday evening gaming at Mike at night.

And I enjoyed it. I don't think it's as good as Battle for Bikini Bottom.

They make the structure, at least in the two hours I played, much more linear.

You know, there were collectibles, but it seemed like it was much more do the goal of the level and then go to next level and less like, you know, get this many... thingy, so you can unlock the next thingy.

So structure-wise, not as much. There's also...

I don't want to complain about talking in a SpongeBob SquarePants game.

It's not like there was an insane amount, but there was too much.

It was like, oh, every 10 minutes they're interrupting the gameplay just so I could talk to a character and... hear a joke that maybe will land, maybe won't.

But it still felt pretty good for one of these.

It looked great. I thought it captured the look of the shows, especially those more 3D movies, really well.

It did a good job of being a licensed game, right?

It was like, ah, yeah, I'm just around by the SpongeBob stuff that even I, somebody who hasn't watched it Really, in 15 years or whatever, I'm getting decent chuckles and doing the Leonardo pointing thing because I understood that reference sort of stuff.

So yeah, I was enjoying it. I think if you haven't played any of these, you should just get rehydrated first for sure.

I liked it. They're making another one that they announced a bit ago, so I'm curious to see what they do with that.

They've been consistently making various games.

They have the Patrick Starr game, which...

A little bit more Goat Simulator. That was a lot of fun too.

They're doing right by the series. They're also putting out a Hades-like in the near future, I believe.

Are they really? nickelodeon that's like a whole nickelodeon thing right that thing yeah right it's not just spongebob like dice something i think Yeah, right.

But Mike, if you could spoil a little bit of the story, why is Patrick Starr a little balloon guy?

Yeah, you find some, like, um... You find, like, a fortune teller lady and you buy special bubbles from her that, like... make your wishes come true, and you blow too many of them, and you alter the fabric of reality...

And a bunch of people disappear and you have to find them and it opens portals to other worlds, right?

So that's, you know, why you have the levels.

But yeah... Patrick's also just turned into a balloon.

It's just that he can kind of be a Navi in this game.

He's just a Luma, yeah. He's your side character there, yeah.

I love that voice actor. I love his voice.

I forget his name. he's been on a few things he was like what's his name's dad on How I Met Your Mother yeah he was Jason Segel's dad in that show yeah I pop really hard in Hunchback of Notre Dame because he has a very small part as just one of, like, the... doofus soldiers early in it.

He just is exactly doing the Patrick Star voice for it before that show happened.

It's great. I just Googled him. Is this Dauber from Coach?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about. him being on coach which is what i actually know him from you all remember coach right you know I do a bad Patrick Star to annoy my kids.

Hey, Addy, how you doing? Oh, she immediately looks at me so mad.

She gave you the finger, didn't she? Basically, yes.

I remember last comic-con we had the at our little booth we had the spongebob cast come in and it was just amazing seeing them all just like snap into character and just start singing out of nowhere.

Jesus Christ. Uh, his name is Bill, uh, a group.

He's dauber. Oh, okay. Yeah, when I think of coach, I also think of the great pantheon of shows like Coach, Becker, that's it.

Night shift. Whoa, Becker? Night court. Night court.

I feel like Becker is at least 20 years later than Coach.

Yeah, it was. Well, yeah, that's why it's the great...

It's the great pantheon is why. Yeah, the Mount Rushmore of just those two.

Murphy Brown. Was Wings, did they work at an airport or were they- They worked at a small airport, yeah.

Wings was in the Cheers universe. Was it?

Yeah. Okay. You know, I don't mean to bring this back to War of the Worlds.

Please. Do you think we could make or slash fake a sitcom that is all in that style?

Easy, right? Yeah, you just literally need three cameras.

That's it. Right. Is it three cameras? No, no, no, no, no.

We don't even need three cameras. We have...

I want it screen style. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're going to do War of the Worlds for wings.

I forget which show we're talking about.

Somebody had to just make a sitcom like that during the pandemic, right?

They tried to get that going. It was mostly horror movies.

Like, oh, we're going to do a seance over Zoom, and then a creepy guy showed up.

As an SNL apologist, that was a rough season.

Oh, I didn't watch that one. Don't, Dan.

You don't need to go back. Speaking about platformers and beloved characters, Jeff Grubb.

I'm sorry. You're doing this to yourself.

Yeah. You checked out Bubsy in the perfect collection.

Yeah, I got a little preview to check it out.

Audie handed it to me, said it's good to talk about.

So here we are. This is the one that has Bubsy 3D, but it has Bubsy 3D refurbished as well as a separate entry in there and uh it now has analog controls And it's still a really bad game.

It doesn't fix it. Listen, it fixes a lot.

The game is now playable. I expect people... to now go play Bubsy 3D, come to me and be like, that game wasn't that bad, and me to have to, like, hold back violence.

It's a Dacatana situation. Yes, it's going to be even worse now because this is significantly better.

It's still a bad game. The controls are...

Yes, you do move around now with the stick in the way that you would expect a 3D platformer to move, but Bubsy's still underneath all that. still kind of has the same jittery movement, and so it's tough to dial in and do specific precision platforming, which that game... always required, even when it had the insane digital controls.

Now, the new controls, do they... Would you say we're getting closer to like a Croc or Gex level...

I mean, I played Croc recently when they just re-released that.

And, you know, I think it controls a little bit better than Croc even.

At least you have more freedom. You feel like you can run around a little bit better.

It's just still not great. But that game always had a look.

And I like I was just like, man, this has like they weren't going to do games like this for a very long time because they were going to get more effects in here and be able to do a lot more.

So them kind of just like working with what they had and kind of putting a flat colored texture on everything.

It just has kind of a stunning style still.

So I like enjoyed going back in there and trying things out.

And I beat that first level in like a minute.

So I bet people are. Oh, and it's like Rewind and all this other stuff that you would expect from a modern collection.

So I do think a lot of people are now going to finally beat this game.

And this is the way to play it, I guess.

I don't recommend going back and playing it the original Blake Club way.

Now, gun to your head. Gun to your head.

Is Bubsy 3D Refurbished a better game than Rascal for the PlayStation 1? oh wow yeah probably yeah i mean i like i think having analog movement in a 3d platformer is just like, I think every single one of those is better than any of the ones with D-pad controls, and that would include Rascal.

D-pad tank controls in a 3D world. Oh, God, they're going to fix rascal next.

Be amazing. All right. I would love to see it.

Yeah. I love when they take these old games and like apply modern controls.

I just want to see what it's like. This is a really good use of that.

So cool. Cool stuff from limited run. Sometimes it can be really eye-opening, too, because I think in like 2015 or so, they re-released the RE1 remake. and they added it so you could do analog controls.

And I played through it, and I switched to the analog controls, and it's like...

No, I think the tank controls were the way to go with this.

And I was always a tank control defender, but it was so interesting to play it with new analog controls.

I mean, like... I don't think this feels as good, you know?

Yep. Yeah. And it's like, and here it's like, well, clearly this is the right answer and they just didn't know any better.

Um, It's like, what would the world have been like had they figured this out in time to put it into the to the actual game?

So, yeah. Informative. It's like, again, it's like one of those things where like having something that's bad enables you to kind of go in there and see where things are missing.

And this was just so obviously bad in terms of the controls that getting the stark reality of what it could have been is really eye-opening as well.

Speaking about furry creatures as main characters in video games, Gang, I'm going to report cyberbullying right now.

I think the team at Playstack... Oh, yeah.

Has it has it out for me because coming for you.

Not only did they publish Bellatro last year, but now they're publishing a game called Ratcoin Pusher.

And y'all know me. I chase little dopamine.

I've been compared to a raccoon a couple times, several times on this website. uh so rack coin pusher it is a coin pusher game with bellator like elements and it is going to destroy my life Because I am just sitting here at the screen, tapping at both mouse buttons, just like trying to get these coins to go and push the other coins.

And like the terrible thing is you get special coins.

These are special tokens, right? Like, hey, here's a bunny token.

If this bunny token touches another bunny token, they'll multiply because they're doing it.

The coins are doing it. Oh, they're... banging they're banging yes they're fanging and banging um and there will be other uh special coins that synergize with other ones uh there's like a bomb one And the whole point of the game, similar to Bellatro, you have a target goal of a score to get to, and you get to that by pushing coins in and you are just launching coins from a left lane and a right lane.

If you launch them both at the same time, you can kind of like bank them off each other so they get stuck in the middle and push coins that way.

Um... There's power ups where you can drop like a tower of coins somewhere on your board, which is sick as hell.

I fucking love seeing a tower of coins. There's a black hole somewhere power up where everything in the vicinity will get sucked up a ufo one where a ufo will just come on screen after a certain amount of time and turns It's a good turn your brain off and just like,

You know, much like the aliens in War of the Worlds where they were just like seeking data.

This is me seeking dopamine and like number go up.

I understand your meaning. I just don't want to make these connections.

It's our new shorthand. I just can't. I can't allow that.

Everyone will understand what we're trying to get at when we use War of the Worlds as our reference.

Yeah, we're done doing wrestling lingo. It's all War of the Worlds now.

It's all War of the Worlds now. All right, all of a sudden, I'm back on board.

Instead of like, you need to do this, it's like you need to right-click this.

I'm going to call back every morning. A muffin?

Are you serious? You're eating a muffin?

You need protein, baby. I was rooting for the aliens it's really cute it's in early access right now um And I can easily see myself, much like a week or two ago, I could easily see myself losing too much time and Merge Maestro.

This is just a bad year for me, gang, because the horse game came out. and then Merge Maestro came out.

This is coming out. When is this coming out?

Do we have a sense of like, suggest in the time frame or is it october it's like in the next couple months i thought relatively soon they're like on steam it says it says to be announced for release date okay okay so Um, I just watched in the trailer.

It was doing things to my brain, both in terms of just like the stuff that's activating Jan and also just the physics of it all, like seeing the big tower drop down and, and, you can tell every coin has its own like physics.

And also maybe cathartic because I spent a lot of time in arcades as a kid and I probably put a, billion coins into those fucking things because it's so tempting.

It's like, oh man, they're about to fall.

I mean, I've never won a single coin from it.

So this should be cathartic. Yes. And the boards, or I guess your play field, it feels weird to say play field or board.

Your push area. Your push area persists as you keep going.

So say you had something set up, but like, these bonus coins or these special tokens didn't quite fall into the pit um but you reach the goal you can still hit those and get those in on the next level as you go through um when y'all have played a coin pusher game, right?

Like a real life coin pusher game. Is there like a roulette wheel or like a special like a wheel on the side? it depends yeah yeah like a lot of them i know for like uh the the the the kid arcade casino ones It usually varies where it's like a Plinko board with the pegs, right?

Some of them have complications where...

It'll be like, oh, there's like a roller coaster.

And if you slide it down that peg, it bypasses the pusher and goes right into the redemption slot. so yeah there's all these different kinds of variations but it's all like the ticket based stuff right like that's your like i've never seen this in a real life casino I see Bonus Hole.

Bonus Hole is hot now. Yeah. The Vegas Lounge got a new Bonus Hole I've been enamored with, so...

I feel like you couldn't put this in a real casino.

Is bonus hole kind of the barren one? The one that was like, there's nothing else going on there except for the coins?

It's just the bonus hole, yeah. You guys got to stop saying bonus hole.

If you do a bonus, I literally just do a bonus hole and hit images without even thinking about it, but it is just the arcade machine.

You know you're getting what you need out of that phrase, Mike.

What are you talking about? Well, I just Googled it and I didn't get what you were talking about at all, Dan.

Wait, we got different results? Yes. Personalized.

What do you mean? What do you mean? What?

Are you kidding me, Dan? That stuff's been personalized for like 20 years now.

But even just like an image search result?

Like I know... Every search. I think I have that turned off on my stuff.

This is why it's bad that the government is tracking us.

If you search, I get bonus hole. I search bonus hole and it's nothing but bonus hole the arcade coin pusher.

Yes, but I'm in all and then I just see a bunch of miscellaneous different articles Not talking about the game, bonus hole.

If I'm in all, I get a lot that is different.

Yeah. Vagina rebranded as bonus hole by cervical cancer charity.

That's from the Telegraph UK website. Snopes are health professionals urged to call vaginas.

A lot of vagina stuff here. But if you do images, it's not vaginas.

It's just the bonus whole game. Fantastic.

There's a whole ticket mechanic in Ratcoin Pusher as well.

You are allotted 20 coins when you begin a level and you're accumulating tickets as you play the game, so you would exchange those tickets for more coins.

And that's enough for you? Yeah. That's enough to scratch that itch?

You're fulfilled as a human being? Yes. Your cup has been filled with that?

Yeah, I mean, my cup has a hole in it, so I just need whatever I can get.

A bonus hole. Yeah, that's a little bonus hole.

I need whatever little itch I can scratch, you know?

Just... Hey, it does not help that I really enjoy train spotting and that I'm thinking about meth.

Just kidding, I'm not. Don't scratch your bonus hole.

Don't do meth. Just these two things are so important, Gian.

Okay, okay, sorry, I'm just running on a little bit of fumes here, just like Jeff Grubb has been playing.

Yeah, so we tried this on UPF. Was that last week?

No, two weeks ago. two weeks ago, I played a little bit more last week and a few other times here and there, and, uh, kind of put piece start piece together, like how the game works and, and the progression there.

And, um, It holds up to extended play. It is still...

I do believe it's early access, but yes.

And so you could see where they're sort of developing the structure around all the cool stuff. uh and and you can also see how like the ux is a little bit confusing there's parts where it's like wait my guns just won't work it took me a while to fix that but i got everything figured out and was just racing around and going from like one cloud, like these dark clouds that hover on the map and you drive into them and they start an instance where now you're taking on a boss and their minions and so you just got to shoot all the minions and then take out the boss and then when you get done with that instance they drop a bunch of goodies and then you can take those goodies to the the spy hunter truck drive up into the back of the truck apply those goodies or maybe uh or like there's an upgrade system where you have six of these You want to combine them all and slowly increase their letter grade so they work even better than the one that you actually have equipped to your car.

It's like, yes, I do want to do that. And then I'm going to go back out there and find another one of these clouds and find another thing.

And there's like... other distractions on the map or other like uh um sort of ways of interacting with the world uh like with like small like puzzle like things where it's like you got to find something before a timer goes out or something like that.

But that you could tell like they're just kind of picking at that to see if that's something that's going to work.

The main thing of just driving around this world and shooting things, especially with like actually mouse and keyboard, having the mouse to aim while you're driving around. is super handy.

It feels really good because I can just like precision target these things without having to like worry about trying to, You know, the dual analog is going to be fine, but the mouse controls were really good.

So, yeah, I'm into this. And this is definitely one where I'm going to keep checking in every once in a while, kind of like I did with Dead Cells.

I want to see how this thing evolves. I'm very curious about that.

I'm very curious too. And I think I'm going the opposite approach.

Cause I always like, I don't really play early access.

It's like done, done. And so like, but I've, I've seen this and it does seem very like, I've wanted to see that kind of twisted middle of spirit and that car combat genre be a thing in some form since the late 90s.

And it hasn't really been. And this does seem to be hitting all... The aesthetics of it look awesome.

And I do think that... that genre has needed some sort of shift up because like that 2012 twist metal was kind of just, you know, playing the hits a little bit of just like, oh, arena car combat.

And I remember feeling like, maybe this genre kind of died out because it's just a little too simple, a little too stale at this point.

And like what the beat him up thing did, where it's just like, yeah, they're kind of doing the same thing over and they're not really like pushing it forward.

Yeah, and so like when I see something like Fume just definitely has a different control scheme and different objectives than just like killed these eight other cars or whatever.

I think that excites me because I do think that that's what car combat would need to be relevant and make some sort of comeback.

So like I very much have my eye on this one.

And really, I think the thing that really sets it apart is the physics system where it's like, okay, so now I put on different suspension onto this vehicle.

So I have big tires in the back, little tires in the front.

And now it, like, feels very different when I'm turning.

And you can just see every single, like... gram of mass being shoved into the front right tire when you do a fast left turn.

And it just looks good and feels good. And you really see the tires dig into the dirt.

And that's super satisfying. It just makes it feel like at any second you could flip your car because you're going so fast, but you got to turn around and shoot these guys.

So it makes everything feel very hectic and harrowing.

Is there multiplayer in Fume Scrub? I don't think so I don't think so, yeah not yet.

The definitely seems like the one where like eventually they could do a, uh, a co-op mode or something like that.

Obviously it could be competitive multiplayer, obviously, but, um, I think making them would make sense to let you get in there with your buddies and drive around and, you know, take on these missions.

It could totally work. It's got a really cool look to it, very blocky, just like Voxelgram 2 looks very blocky.

Yes, it's got blocks. If you're like me and you've wanted a Picross 3D forever, Nintendo doesn't seem to be wanting to make it, but the folks behind Voxelgram, they did it with the first one.

And the second one's out now. And it kind of does follow the same thing that Cross 3D did from round one to round two. in that it's got a two color system now.

So it's got blue and green. So, you know, you will see you're painting blocks like in Picross and rotating and everything, but you'll get blue ones and green ones.

Definitely adds a certain level of complexity to it that I like.

And it also, if you own the first voxel gram, it has all like 250 puzzles from that, but they've added the two color system to it. it so oh cool I will say the uh it was an issue I had with the first voxelgram too was that like if you're playing with you know analog sticks and everything it's just like It just takes some real getting used to like, you know, the rotating and deciding like what you're actually interacting with.

But I'm playing on Switch 2 and I am finding that the touch controls are are actually very good um so i basically feel like i'm playing a lacrosse round two and like you're kind of filling out a diorama so like each like world or whatever is like okay you've finished 12, 15 puzzles or something and you fill that room with all the little puzzle things you're putting together.

Very, very good if you're into lacrosse stuff and don't know if Nintendo is going to keep doing it.

Yeah, I'm looking at this. I love Picross and Picross 3D.

And I've also been waiting. Don't expect Nintendo to do it. these little dioramas are very cute like this looks really nice and then um You said you're playing with it on a touchscreen on Switch.

I wonder, I bet the Steam Deck has the exact same controls.

I'm going to try it on there and see. And if not, then I'll try to get it on Switch too.

Yeah, and I don't think it's impossible to get used to the standard analog control.

Yeah, but I know what you mean. yeah bianca's playing on steam deck and she is doing the the analog stuff and she's like yeah i just got used to it so okay all right cool all right yeah i i've got love love uh love these kinds of games for sure Me too.

Sticking to the puzzle game theme, Dan, you've been playing Is This Seat Taken?

And I've been really curious about this, Jimmy Jam.

Very different type of puzzle. This is, you know, logic puzzles.

So if you remember in school, all those logic puzzles, you know, just like, oh, this person you know, we'll only do this and, but won't sit next to this person.

And this person, like, this is just that with a really kind of cute aesthetic.

Um, It'll be a movie theater or a diner or a concert or a boat.

And you have all these little cartoon characters that pop up and you hover over them and it'll say like, I need to sit next to my daughter, but I don't want to be next to anyone smelly.

And so you got to figure out like, okay, there's these like 20, 30 seats or whatever.

And like just the visual language of it, like they're just these little cartoon characters with legs.

And some of them will have little, you know, Linus, your pig pen, whatever stink clouds over them.

And so it's like, okay, that's a smelly one.

And then you got the ones that want to party and they'll have a little party hat.

And when you put them down, there's like music and stuff.

And it's like, okay, these four people want to party.

So I'll put them in the back of the bus here where they can not bother the people where it's like, I want to relax or I want to read on the bus.

You put them in the front. I want to be alone.

I don't want to be next to kids. And so it's just a lot of like, putting people in place and you can tell if they're in the right spot because they'll be like smiling.

And then, so you put everyone in there and it'll say like, oh, you're not, and you're looking around like, oh, that guy's frowning.

Oh shit, he's too close to a stinky person.

Oh, this person's separated from their date or whatever.

Is there anyone who wants to sit next to a stinky person?

I only want to sit next to smelly people, please.

No one prefers it that I've seen. Another stinky person?

Yeah. Yeah. But it's like they're movie theater ones where it's like, you know, there's a guy with a big hat and or there's people that like need to sit closer to the screen.

There's people that want to steal popcorn.

So you got to put them next to someone who has popcorn.

People can't sit in a dirty seat. So, you know, if you see popcorn on a seat, you can't put them there.

So it's just a lot of just like, you know, just single screen, just taking in, you know, the seat structure and then like where you can put these people and super, super like really for someone like me that loves logic puzzles, this is a really, really, fun way to gamify it and put it in a real nice aesthetic package.

It also just looks really nice. So from one level to the next, Is it the way that they're making it more complicated by changing up like the possibility of the seating or are they introducing like new complications?

Like I'm seeing some here in the video. It looks like you've got to put food down.

Yeah. So there's like fast food restaurants and stuff.

Yeah. It's like, okay, I want to sit by myself and I'll eat anything.

And so you can put burger, fries, whatever you want.

Then there's people that are just like, oh, I just want some coffee and I need to sit with this person.

So you can put a cup of coffee between the two.

So yeah, there's a decent amount of variety.

I've probably done 15 levels and you know, there's like a dinner where it's like I don't want to be next to any snooty people.

And so there's a bunch of people that are wearing fancy hats and such.

All right, so I'll put them all in their own thing here.

Um, but oh, but these people can't sit next to kids.

So they'll sit over here. They got to sit next to the newlyweds at this thing.

So here's the wedding table and all these people got to sit with the bride and groom.

Yeah, it shakes it up enough to where, yeah, just from bus to restaurant to concert to wedding.

And you feel like there's a natural progression.

Like you could see how it's like getting more complicated as you're playing.

Like they're introducing new ideas at a good clip.

I mean, 15 levels in, maybe you don't know yet.

I mean, more complicated. It's more it's just there's more variety than complication.

It's not like a Baba is you where it's like you know it gets right point it's like this is overwhelming right like when they've added stuff it's just been like little tweaks on you know like people partying on a boat versus people wanting to eat fish versus cheese or whatever.

Okay, so they're kind of changing their theming.

Yeah, yeah. It's just variety more than... complicated.

It's like a $10 game right now. It's on sale for $9.

I don't know. It It's like I almost wasn't like too interested in it.

Then I saw that price. I'm like, oh, for what?

Nine bucks. Maybe I'll have fun here. Yeah, I really really cute.

Speaking about synergy amongst a bunch of people, that's very important in a JRPG party. specifically in Clare Obscure Expedition 33, which Jeff Grubb says you've been playing it here on this document.

Yeah, I'm doing it. I was going to come to this podcast with a beret and everything and make you guys guess what game I was playing.

So I picked up my Steam save again and I looked at it and I was about five and a half hours in and that was like a couple of days ago and now I'm like 13 hours in.

I've doubled it. And it is on plan right now, basically.

It's really all I have time for. because it is, I think that's the way I would describe it, very playable.

It is a game where it's like once you're in it, and you are just kind of like, you get done with the battle, like, man, those synergies I just kind of was like working with are really working now.

I can't wait to just kind of do that again, maybe throw in some other ideas.

It's a battle system where you can have ideas. and try things and see, hey, is this going to work?

If I do this one thing with this character and it'll make it easier for this other character to do that thing, And it's fun to experiment with that to the point where I am excited to get into every single battle.

My only complaint about the game really is... The French.

Clearly, God, that goes without saying though.

It's beneath complaints. I am definitely a person that wouldn't need a map in a game like this.

I'm able to get through these areas eventually, but I get lost at least once per area.

There is an unspoken kind of directional language that those levels...

Yes, I think they break down occasionally, but I've definitely got that back a lot.

Yeah. Which is like kind of, I was actually like pleasantly surprised, maybe more impressed than anything else of like, oh wow, like I'm...

Being an idiot and still finding my way through, you know, the Midlands or whatever.

Yeah, I agree, Jeff, that it kind of worked without it.

But part of me is also like, eh, why isn't there a map?

Like, I don't think it would have bothered anything.

I know. I would take a waypoint, just a little bit of direction, like, hey, go in this general area so you know where to look.

There was definitely this one in a place called the Forgotten Battlefield. and I got lost in here for a while because it was kind of funneling me to this one bridge that was made by a giant like fallen cannon and it just looked like part of the background because a lot of the other parts of the background looked similar to that so I didn't even try to walk on it until eventually that's the one time I've had to look up where am I supposed to go but I do feel like that's a relatively minor complaint because I have been able to find my way through most things.

And then, what I consider to be the core of the game, which is these characters interacting with one another and then the battle system, I am enamored.

Just I'm really kind of getting into the story.

I just recently got Verso a little bit past that now.

So you're after act one. Yes, I am a little bit into act two.

Yes. And it's like, okay, all right, things are happening.

And now I'm very curious to see how these characters deal with these problems.

Yeah, it's really well done. And I think my initial sort of like play of the game where I'm like, oh, I think this is something that people are going to be into.

It's like, oh, I guess I didn't realize just how much it was going to be for me.

So I'm pretty happy for that. Neato, Neato.

You know what, let's save that game for last.

Dan Riker, you have been playing Sword of the Sea.

Oh, how's that, Danny boy? It is a lot of fun.

I loaded this last night. I think it came out today.

It is by Giant Squid who made Abzu and the Pathless.

And I believe there's some lineage going back to Journey.

And you can super see the journey in this game.

It is a lot of surfing around sand and seeing beautiful stuff in the background.

Yeah. It's really cool because basically there's almost no talking and stuff like this.

There's some little tablets you can read and stuff, but The gist of it, what I've played so far, which may be like an hour and a half or so, is that like there's just this big desert and you're basically bringing water and life to it.

And so this is one of those very, you know, no HUD games.

So... it the visual language is great where it's like there are no there's no map there is no objective marker you can just look around and be like if there's a huge swath of sand and desert or in other areas and just dry land, basically, you know that like, okay, there's got to be something around here I can do to bring water to it.

And it's usually just like, Okay, there's this big pillar, rock pillar in the middle of the desert, and there's a bunch of lanterns and stuff surrounding it.

So you just kind of like surf around and light all the candles.

And then all of a sudden you'll, you know, it's, it's, Just very elegant in how it lets you know that there's something to do in an area.

There's never an arrow. There's never an objective marker.

And just the moment-to-moment moving around this world is so satisfying.

Grubb, I thought about you a lot playing this.

It looks good. You're on a sword, the sword of the sea, and you're surfing.

There's skateboarding. There's grinding at times.

He's riding on a wall. So that's good. There's wall writing.

There's half pipes. It is just fantastic.

You're just immediately in this game, just surfing around, skating around, sand, water.

There's boosts and ramps and things like that.

And it's just this beautiful world to just... explore and there's never, there's no health bar.

There's no real penalty. If you go off the edge and die in a hole or something.

There's no combat that I've seen yet or anything.

And then there are just kind of those fun surprises like in Journey where it's like, whoa, okay, I guess I'm doing this now.

This is interesting. Oh, space dolphins. yeah space orcas too yeah i got a dolphin situation going on now and that's been pretty fun um But yeah, it's absolutely beautiful.

It is just really good. Just zone out and surf around and not super stressful by any means.

Yeah, this is gorgeous. You said there's so there's no combat like what is the like surfing around does seem to be the main thing you're doing is it like okay solving puzzles like finding things hitting switches like you were saying so like for instance you know there are some areas where it's like okay this door is locked and there's an eagle statue and it's got a big open mouth.

And then you learn that like, oh, okay, if I can skate over to this water orb I'll suddenly have a water orb around me.

And then if I can just escape myself to this thing, the water will go into the eagle's mouth and it'll unlock a thing or whatever.

Um, and there are like, you know, as you destroy things or explore, you'll find these little kind of like triangles and there's, there's a merchant, type guy that you'll cash into him, like Luma's in Mario Galaxy.

And it's like, all right, you give them 50, you give them 200.

And it's like, now I can do tricks in the air and now I can do spin tricks.

And now I can do, you know, like while you're, you, and you immediately have a double jump.

And it's almost like kind of a triple jump situation.

So it's just the mobility situation is just like, you're just flying around, skipping around, jumping, doing tricks and stuff.

And it's not in the effort of getting a high score or some SSX situation.

It's just... You're just kind of doing style tricks and stuff just to pop yourself, you know?

God, I would love to ride a longboard or a skateboard down a hill. or whatever, but the fear of getting shoot hurt terrifies me.

Yeah, I'm at a point where it's like breaking a hip is a very real possibility.

I don't want to. I don't want to deal with that.

Dan, is there any of the online like sort of multiplayer stuff from Journey?

Okay. No, and I was thinking about that because it's like, I think that is the main, like Journey, obviously, unbelievably gorgeous game.

It is, I think, those moments of, you know, the interaction and connection with other players.

Yes. really elevated journey to something super special this does not have that this is a much just kind of lighter like you know if you played the pathless or abzu and stuff it is It's just a visual treat.

It's like a really beautiful interactive screensaver.

You know, it's like... um but maybe that's straight up half pipe in this in this trailer that's just a half pipe it really does just look like a skateboarding or snowboarding game yeah but with awesome visuals Yeah.

And actually I think calling an interactive screensaver is probably reductive because like there is like, you know, light puzzle solving and platforming going on here.

You know, you'll like. right. Light some lanterns.

Then a bunch of jellyfish will show up in the air and you're kind of like, boom, boom, like very, very satisfying platforming.

It's not super demanding. Um, Yeah, like the grinding and stuff's really fun.

Just the world is beautiful. It's, yeah, just a good time.

Yeah, this is definitely one I'm going to try.

All right, cool. And to wrap up the game segment, gang, perhaps the War of the Worlds of video games right now absolutely and how polarizing people's times with it are Last week, we played Dragon Drive on UPF, and...

Well, some of us had fun. You know everything I said about how good it feels just floating around, flying around?

It's like... Imagine the polar opposite of that, of every motion was the most laborious and frustrating and annoying thing you've ever done.

Do you like it? Oh, it's awesome. Nintendo.

I heard I like everything Nintendo. That is mostly true, but yeah.

It is a game where it has so many things going against it.

It is... The fact that the control system is cumbersome.

Like, you're gonna need to get the Joy-Cons out and either use your legs, but that's probably not good enough.

You're gonna want a table surface. to actually play the game.

And then the online multiplayer is so fundamentally broken that even when we did, the three of us, get into the same room together, there was no way for us to tell the game, hey, put us on a team... the next time you start up a game, it just randomly selected people from this room that didn't just have us in it.

It had other people in this public matchmaking room. and just threw us into random pickup games.

It's insane. There was no way around that. as far as we could tell there's no way for us to make a group of three people who can then fight another random group of three people We could fight another group of like three friends if we had six total friends around.

But that's just wild that they didn't. Care to consider that?

Yeah, like even remove all of the very frustrating motion control elements of this, which is, I think, the first thing that drove me nuts about this game.

Imagine if it was just a functioning arcade sports game type thing.

Like let's say you sat down and play rocket league with two friends and you couldn't party up. like they're like yes this game is even for this game being 20 completely unacceptable It is wild.

I just don't get it. I always wonder, like, is it because they somehow just didn't think of that or somebody vehemently against it? for some reason?

I think they're against it. Yeah. Like that's not the pure experience that we want people to have.

What do they want? What is the pure experience?

I think they want it to feel like you're at a gym and just like a random pickup games are happening.

I think they were trying to do that. Yeah, but even then, I could be like, well, to be clear, we're playing with my friends.

I know, yeah. It's very bizarre. Now... When we were playing the game, I actually was having fun.

I kind of like the stupid BS in it. I think the haptics really sold me on it.

It really felt like I was rolling those wheels.

I also just like the idea of like shoot tank controls, like two treads or two tires on the ground.

And where it's like, yeah, you can move left and right or move back with the right one, move forward with the left one.

And so you're going to spin in place. I always have liked that since I was a kid.

And this game really nails that. And I was doing dunks and stuff and feeling pretty cool.

I enjoyed myself. The dunks looked cool.

There's a certain amount of actual depth to the controls that I think is like I was learning during the tutorial that like if you hit the brakes and then you pull back on one side, you can do like a real like hairpin turn There was a surprising amount of depth to the control.

They thought they were making an eSport, but then they... everything around the game is like, well, you literally just can't play this online any way you want to.

And I always like one of these games that is like skill-based inputs instead of like, there's a button you press to do the hop.

It's like, no, you need to like... get going and then stop with one wheel, lift that mouse off the thing and then immediately like lift the other one and you'll do kind of a bunny hop.

What are you talking about? I couldn't even get it to work.

It's an insane thing. I think I did it once. yeah i could like pass the tutorial it's it's insane i could never get it to like work in an actual game or they're like these challenges around the uh perimeter of the room in between matches And there's one where it's like, try to do the one wheel ride through this area.

Because if you get one wheel over here, it's going to be in sand.

So you'll be really slow when you go up against everyone else.

Couldn't get that to work, but I'm like, I'm glad that they have made it weird in terms of the controls.

It's just everything else is weird as well, and that sucks.

Yeah, it looks like a very dour-looking game, too.

Like, everything's so dark. Not a lot of personality.

More like drive-and-drive. Shit! Get him!

Oh, that's pretty good. Drab. That's nice.

You should write that review down. How would you like to write the sequel to War of the Worlds?

Dan, you could knock out the sequel to War of the Worlds in like 20 minutes.

Yeah, we can do that in an afternoon, yeah.

All right, gang. We're going to go take a quick bricky break.

And after that, we'll hit you with some news.

Is that a Disney World mug? Back over. You're goddamn right it is, Mikey.

Just for you, pal. That's the retro logo, too.

That's hot shit. I know my roots. Come on.

There you go. I'm the only adult at this company.

Alright see you guys later Jam my computer's sick I've decided it's time to start building a new one I just don't know where to start Grub, if your computer is sicky-poo, you gotta start with MSI, which just dropped something big in its brand new Z890 and B860 Intel Are those the motherboards that unlock the power of the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs?

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Okay, but Jan, you know me. I'm scared of tools.

That screwdriver's so sharp. It's okay, bud.

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We're calling them GPUs too now. okay hell yeah oh okay yeah msi has that modern bios as well that looks like it was actually made for humans to use not some relic from 2003 give me more of that Yes, that's right.

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This is Jeff Grubb with the news. He's gonna read story for you.

Lyrics. Nice. That's right. Yeah. Giant Bomb has lyrics now.

I have the news. Let's start here with a couple of stories that Mikey helped me out with here.

Hollow Knight Silksong special announcement set for Thursday. the 21st of August at 7.30 a.m.

Pacific time. That's this week. That's in two days.

Do we have to burn the clown makeup? This is it, right?

Yeah. I mean, it's a little weird because we have opening night live today.

I think it's going to be in both. I think we get the teaser in opening night live and they say, come check out our equivalent of a direct for this game. or whatever they end up doing maybe it's just a bunch of info on a blog or something but I think we still see it at opening night live today yeah but it certainly feels like we're not getting through this week without actually getting a release date for this video game.

Will this also be 45 minutes? It'll be much shorter I bet.

I hope it just uses one button. Maybe they're just going to announce that they're canceling it.

So there's still a chance. Apparently, Schreier is going to have a story about this.

Did he say it was on Thursday as well? Yeah, he said he's going to release a story on Thursday about this lengthy seven-year development process for this game.

So it seems like they've also just reached out to him to give him access for this sort of thing, too, if it's timed up with this video.

So yeah, they're starting. They're starting their marketing blitz here.

This is a very real video game. We're going to be seeing actual info about...

I'm guessing we're going to be playing it this year.

They might say 2026. After all, I don't know.

Boy, yeah. After all the years of clown makeup and jokes and memes, this is going to be a real video game we can look forward to.

If they do not make a reference to Spoon Heaven, I am boycotting this game.

I agree. Yeah, that's probably the move.

I will cancel this game. Thank you, Jim.

I appreciate it. Speaking of Schreier, who said, by the way, said that story was very fun.

I bet the reason it took so long is they just wanted to make a very good game.

And now I'm looking forward to that. Like I said, Trier had another thing here, breaking Bioshock 4.

For developer, Cloud Chamber is laying off an unspecified number of staff.

And so this is like a follow-up to kind of what we were hearing from him a little bit ago about Bioshock 4 being in a weird state.

They delayed the game because it didn't meet a certain internal check And I guess the main reason for that was the story, according to the reporting, although the leadership of the team was basically removed from the project.

And now it has new leadership. Like when I talked about when he left, where was he at before he was at working on Diablo?

He was at Blizzard, yeah. He was at Blizzard.

Rod Ferguson, industry closer. He's the guy you bring in when you want to get a game finished.

Well, now he is working on Bioshock 4. Former Diablo boss Rod Ferguson is taking over as Cloud Chamber's new studio head more than a decade ago.

He joined the troubled Bioshock Infinite and helped salvage that game's production as well.

So this is what he's known for. This makes it clear, like they know they're serious about getting Bioshock 4 done and out, which is something they said recently in an earnings call.

But it's like, well, you know, I guess it's been long time.

Are you really going to do this thing? I guess so.

I guess then the question is, Jeff Backlar, what do you want from a Bioshock 4?

At this point... Jeez. It'll be okay, buddy.

You have an atomic heart. Don't forget. Don't forget.

I do, and I guess I have atomic heart problems. the sequel yeah the pre-sequel I think is what that one's called which will likely be out before Bioshock 4 at this rate uh huh I don't know.

I kind of I don't know. And, you know, I guess the question is like, are there people like me still?

I like Bioshock. I still carry a toy for Bioshock.

There's a lot of old people, yeah. Is that what it is?

I'm a young old person. I'm with you, Bacalar.

Like that game's important. No, I think it's exactly what it is.

I think there's a lot of people out there who think Bioshock is important still.

Yes. And like when you say, hey, what is like a really good game?

I think Bioshock comes up pretty quickly when you ask people that.

Where was it in our century poll thing? I'm going to look it up.

Oh, there wasn't one. Do you not like that game, Dan?

Is that what you're saying? I thought it was a great game.

I reviewed it very strongly. I don't dislike it.

It's just, I just, it didn't hook me. And so I never really, I played like probably like five hours and was like, I don't know.

Isn't it about how capitalism is bad? I thought you would love it.

Yeah, but I already know that. Yeah, but Grubb, Bioshock and only Bioshock taught me that. yeah how to teach the normies like us this back or do you want it to just be another let's return to rapture thing or do you want another super new weird location I mean, look, I think Infinite has aged like a diaper baking in the sun.

Agreed, yes, very quickly. You know, so I don't want that.

Yeah, go ahead, Jen. What's a diaper? No, no, no, no, no.

I'm well aware. I loved one and two. Loved the DLC for two.

I think two is like... I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think 2 is like, that is aging in the exact opposite way.

People like that game now. I didn't like Minerva, especially.

I liked 2 a lot when it came out. Yeah.

Go ahead. Sorry. But I never checked out infinite and I'm loosely aware of like the story beats in it.

Can I tell you the first thing, the first choice it gives you in the game, Jan?

Sure. hands you a baseball and asks you, do you want to throw this at this interracial couple we have tied up on the stage?

No matter what you choose, the game kind of whisks you away.

It's just like... i don't know it's so edgy edgelord horseshit i i never really loved that game maybe i don't have to check it out Yeah, I honestly don't think it's worth your time.

Yeah. You know, right? You disagree, Mikey?

No, I agree with you. Absolutely. Bioshock Infinite has a lot of problems.

It feels good to play, I guess, but just a lot of other problems.

Yeah, and I also have a weird, unique sort of personal POV on it just because it's like I spent like 90 minutes interviewing Ken Levine about...

Bioshock infinite on a podcast I did. And like the fallout from that was really weird.

I just didn't like anything. And like anything that like sort of rubbed me the wrong way and left a bad taste in my mouth.

I don't know. I think I'm perfectly happy with just erasing that from my memory.

You know, there's a lot of discourse about like, oh, how can anyone possibly make a Bioshock game and not be, you know, irrational, right?

And that whole thing. And it's like, no, I think I think you can do it.

It's not exclusive to one person. bones of Irrational was that they made System Shock 2, and they weren't the people who made System Shock 1, right?

Right, exactly. It's completely fine. Yeah, so – and I do have a fondness for the – on paper, the concept of like – a magic you know uh utopian hellscape city thing like i think that is a cool idea I don't know if they're going to just sort of, I don't know how they sort of redeem themselves, redeem that franchise.

I hope it's, it should not be a direct sequel to infinite.

I don't want to see any of that multiverse crap.

No, but yeah. You know, if it's just another weird human enclave city thing, like underground, right?

Like it's a bunch of caves now. I don't know.

Maybe it's space. I don't know. I love mole people.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we can do like a Taco Bell Dennis Leary thing.

Yeah, mole mail is the best part of Fantastic Four.

That's mole AP. By the way, it was number 43 in the 100 Best Games of the 21st Century poll.

No, it's actually number 68 of the century. that's dan that's dan's oh weird um so oh that's and that's bioshock one yeah yeah yeah it's going one uh yeah i almost made it which is fair i mean you know the storytelling in that first game is really strong it's really good the presentation Incredibly compelling first 15 minutes.

It peters out a bit by the end, but that opening is like an Alzheimer's game.

When that demo came out and it was just the opening, I was like, this is the greatest game demo I've ever played.

I don't think I've started a game more than I've started Bioshock 1, just to show somebody.

Grub, you were talking about this a couple weeks ago on Game Mess Mornings, but Do you think we can't get a Bioshock 4 because people would say it's too woke?

Well, my suspicion here was when so the way it went down was this game was getting going through an internal check. they delayed it, and they said that apparently in the reporting that the reason was the story.

And I just can't in my brain rationalize any executive at a gaming company being like, this story's not good enough. because I don't think they know what a good video game story is, especially Strauss Zeldin, who doesn't fucking play games.

So my guess here was, and this was just a guess, that...

The game was maybe critical of the kinds of people that are in the current administration.

And the people who are paying for this game don't want to step into that.

And so they are trying to back off now. bringing in rod ferguson firing the directors makes it sound like no the game's just not getting finished up so i don't know how much of the of the problem was the story really Okay.

It would be amazing if Rod Ferguson like wraps this game up then immediately goes over to Judas and does this. puts his back foot over the finish line also.

What comes out first, this or Judas? Judas. probably yeah i think i like i think was i think this still comes out before judas Does Judas have like a generalized release date?

I can't remember. I thought it was next year, but I don't know.

Didn't people play Judas and say it was like relatively far along?

Yeah, I played Soak Song in 2019. Yeah. Now that Silksong is real, Mike, so Judas is real.

Yes, in no time. I agree with Meganize.

I want to play Judas more than I want to play Bioshock 4.

Judas has absolutely no release window from what I can see.

All right. Fair enough. All right. Either way.

Cloud Chamber going to keep making Bioshock 4.

Rod Ferguson helping out. We'll see what happens there.

I appreciate you making me the de facto Bioshock roving reporter.

That's your thing. You're a man on the street.

Happy to own that. Appreciate that. All right, let's get on with it.

PlayStation is officially getting Halo content in the form of Helldivers collaboration.

All those teases did lead to something. PlayStation users will receive Halo content in the form of crossover DLC for Helldivers 2 launching on August 26th.

This ODST war bond will include new equipment and weapons.

Helldivers 2, which was recently announced for Xbox, will also release on the same day.

Game director Mikael Eriksson expressed excitement about bringing more players into the game, highlighting the ongoing fight for Super Earth, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.

Yep, so... We knew that something was happening here because they were playing ODST music in the trailer and saying this is PlayStation 5.

Yep, Helldivers 2 is getting Halo stuff.

This is probably more about the fact that Helldivers 2 is going to Xbox.

Still weird to see anything Halo on PlayStation.

Yeah, but I think we're going to get used to that real fast.

I remember how weird it was when Sonic Advance came out.

I was like, what? A Sonic game on a Nintendo system.

I'm on Nintendo. And now it'd be weird if the new Sonic game doesn't come out on the Nintendo system, right?

About to have Marcus Fenix's durag on our playstation fives yeah that's right yeah it's all happening yeah it is all happening yeah but i'm used to it already you're right yep yeah so RODST is an interesting choice here.

People still like that expand alone quite a bit.

You could take a lot of that fun stuff about those ODST characters and make it map real easy to the Helldivers.

So it makes some sense. Is red versus blue still a thing?

Because I feel like that would lend itself well to hell divers.

I think they finished that, but I guess I don't know for sure.

Is that, That's got to be a boomer thing now, right?

Oh, yeah. I mean, what's red versus blue?

I've never heard of it. It's a Roblox thing, Jan.

Oh, okay. Cool, cool, cool. It's like dress to impress, right?

Yes. Uh-huh. All my niece wants to talk about is Dressed to Impress.

What the fuck is that? It's a Roblox game.

Is the game in Roblox? She was freaking out about the summer update all summer.

It's like they delayed it. I was like, oh, no.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. All right. There was that Kirby Air Riders direct this morning.

45 minutes of Sakurai explaining. Oh, is that it?

Just a mere 45 minutes, it flew by. Well, Bacalar was marking out the whole time, so time probably flew for him.

That's right. Oh, it flew, baby. The game's out November 20th for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Yeah. It looks $70, by the way. They announced the price at $70.

Yeah. Same price as Donkey Kong. But I'll tell you what, it looked more substantial than I was expecting.

I guess I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't all of this.

And that city trial does look fun, especially like now that it's online and be easy to find people to play with.

That's probably something we'll spend some time with for sure.

So, yeah, everyone But the most part was like, yeah, this looks okay.

Okay. It looks great. Awesome. Actually, all jokes aside, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'd like to play this now.

Right, okay. It's a really pretty looking game.

I think the courses, especially, they're really cool.

That one track he showed with the Moses LaFleur. right?

You're parting the season and riding on ways.

There's a Moses level, Jan. Don't worry about it.

Oh, thank God. Kirby fan service, he got Gooey as a playable character.

I went vertical for Gooey. I got Dynablade.

I caught a little bit of the talk over y'all did.

And the thing that instantly made me turn it off is Mike's terrible take that the Kirby anime was bad.

It is banger after banger. That theme song is great.

Right back at you. Yeah. Oh, just a minute.

Speaking of bad mic takes, Mike, I just realized from your shirt, if I can sell you on weapons, Mickey and Minnie Mouse both appear on screen in weapons.

Wow, there must be really culturally prevalent characters.

I'm just trying to get him in the theater, yeah.

There's an Escargot called Escargoon in the anime, Mike, and that's good stuff.

Yeah. How's that not enough for you? Is he a gooner?

Well, that didn't like that. Never mind.

Tales of Zillia remaster announced. This is coming to Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X and S and Steam on October 31st.

Mike, what the fuck is a Zillia? Yeah, so I like the Tales series.

They've been remastering a lot of them. This is one of the PS3 games of which there were quite a few from that era.

It's not one that I usually hear the most praise for, so I'm kind of wondering if I'm going to check this one out The last one they did was Tales of Graces F, which was originally a Wii game that then got played. ported over to PS3 and then got remastered.

And I played through that one. And by the time I was done with it, I was like, I don't think that was really worth my time.

I was only okay on that one. But some of these games, like Symphonia, I think is great.

Vesperia, Tales of Vesperia, which was remastered not long ago, I think that one is fantastic.

Fantastic, that's the one I would recommend the most so silly.

I'm not sure also toes of silly was I One of the few ones that had a direct sequel.

And I think a lot of people are weirded out.

We're not just getting Tales of Zillia and Tales of Zillia 2 remastered. because it is a bit of a duology.

So, yeah, I was kind of hoping for maybe... them to do Tales of the Abyss, which is a PS2 game that people love that got a 3DS port But it's not available on modern platforms or even Berseria, I believe.

I hear more about generally than the Zillia games.

So, you know, I'm glad they're continuing to remaster these, but Zillia isn't exactly the one I'm going to go vertical for.

Are these Namco? Bandai Namco. Yes, this is kind of their big JRPG series.

All right. Yeah, there's certainly a lot.

How many are there? Do you? There's a number on your ass.

There's what? Tales of Fantasia, Tales of Destiny, Tales of...

Tales of Symphonia. Tales of Legendia. Tales of the Abyss.

Tales of Vesperia. What the fuck is this guy going on? about.

Close your bonus hole. We don't need any more tales.

Tales of Berseria. Tales of the Abyss. Tales of Hearts is one of them.

Yeah, there's a bunch of these things. That's 12 alone right there.

All right, well, shit. Oh, is Arise in this?

Yeah, Arise was the last brand new one we got.

It was good. I liked Arise, yeah. Yeah, people like that.

Yeah. All right. Microsoft hints at a more affordable Xbox cloud gaming plan, just what everyone was craving.

Microsoft is exploring more affordable and accessible options for Xbox cloud gaming, potentially including new pricing tiers or regions.

As hinted by Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stewart and Vice President of Next Generation Jason Ronald, Currently, Xbox Cloud Gaming is exclusive to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. who have to pay $20 a month for all of those benefits.

Microsoft is also working with AMD on dedicated silicon for the next generation of Xbox hardware, focusing on advanced rendering technologies like neural rendering and AI capabilities, just like everyone's always been craving as well. some of which will be tested on the upcoming Xbox Ally X device.

These developments suggested a future where Xbox and Windows are more integrated.

Blah, blah, blah. As a reminder, Microsoft is under, well, Xbox specifically is under a BDS boycott call because of their support for the ethnic cleansing in Gaza. which they are very much a part of.

Yeah, I boy, I just the cloud gaming thing is just not really moving the needle at all anymore, right?

Like even like, you know, I was like, yeah, I get it.

Eventually, we'll all be playing that way, but I don't know what that timeline looks like.

I don't even know if I believe that anymore.

No, because storage space is just... Having a device is cool.

Yeah. I mean, storage space is just so much more readily available now.

I don't even know what we need. The cloud. for you know obviously some stuff i've always been a cloud gaming hater i've never liked it i always thought it was a bad experience yeah i think it should always like eight better right you like squall more no Zidane I'm a Zidane guy give me that monkey tail Jesus.

And the reality is the Xbox cloud gaming is pretty bad.

Like they kind of like launched in beta and never did much more to it.

It's visual quality, image quality is pretty low.

It also takes, every time I've done it, Like when you try to start up a game, it takes like five minutes for it to start spinning up a server somewhere, a blade on a server, and then finally get the game going.

It's infuriating. Like, if this is what we have to put up.

Is anyone doing it? I guess the G4 stuff is pretty good, right?

NVIDIA GeForce Now is definitely much better in every regard.

Yes. Yeah. playstation cloud stuff got an upgrade in the last year or two to kind of make it quite a bit better as well but geforce now is the one that i would recommend is amazon luna completely dead I have a Luna controller in this room with me right now.

They should have used that to control the drone in War of the Worlds.

It's the future delivery. Amazon. You know what?

I'm just going to say we don't have to actually look that up.

I still have my Google. What was that? Stadia.

Stadia. You have until the end of this year to update those controllers to work as regular Bluetooth controllers on your PC.

Yeah. And it's real simple. I did this over the weekend.

Actually, I just had it like plugged into my computer for some reason.

And I like went to the website and It's just a web app, and you just got to go through the settings real quick, hit a couple buttons, and it'll update it.

And they're decent controllers. I never hated the Stadia controllers.

Yeah, I thought it was fine. Yeah, Stadia is also a good alternative sweetener.

100%. That's a good aftertaste. All right, Pokemon Legends, the ZA reveals Battle Club, a four-player online multiplayer mode.

The Pokemon Company announced ZA Battle Club, a new four-player online battle game mode for ZA.

It's basically just who can kill the most Pokemon in a certain amount of time.

Finally! Finally. Jan, what's up? Jan, can I help you?

It doesn't matter. Pokemon World is coming to where I live next year.

It is coming to SF, yes. In San Francisco.

If I do not get in, I'm going to open up my own gym next door out on the streets. and we'll have Pokemon battles on the streets.

But legitimately, the actual really big news for the VGC community is that Scarlet and Violet is going to be replaced with Pokemon Champions, which is the VGC-based game that they've been showing and teasing.

It's huge, because... For the last X amount of years, it's been a mainline Pokemon game to do the VGC stuff, so this is wild.

Wow. Yes. So, like, to break that down, when they have these tournaments...

People have to play the most recent game to do the battle mode for the video game tournaments at Pokemon Championships.

Now they have Pokemon Champions, which is a specific containerized version of the battle mode that people could just access directly, right?

And that is going to be on both Switch and phone?

Or is it already out? Switch and mobile.

It's not out yet. Okay. Otherwise, that would have been the game this week that takes over my life.

But they did promise that that will be the way that they do the battle mode, at least for Pokemon Championships 2026 in SF.

So I'm hoping and I'm wondering if there's going to be an actual organized spectator mode because that has always been lacking in the actual games.

You would hope so. If you're trying to do a tournament, you have to show someone... Unless you are Nintendo or Pokemon proper, you have to show someone's gameplay.

And in that process... uh there is the likelihood that you're showing off this person's decision-making process and what moves they're making and I'm going to trust some VGC players that they haven't looked at the other person's screen while this is happening, but...

Big news for people like Sean and I. Also, I want...

Sean and I to take replays of VGC matches and commentate over them.

I want to be the Taz. Oh, yeah, we could shoutcast that.

I want to be the Taz. I want to be the Taz.

But I digress. But I digress. Clefkey Jones over here.

All right, well, so you're back in, huh?

Are you back in? Not yet, not yet. Okay, all right.

I thought you were out. Yeah, that sounded... It's when I...

Ken Watanabe let them fight. I'm in. But I... have like 10% interest in Pokemon Legends EA.

Like I don't care for it. I don't need to roam around fake Paris.

I've already done that in Expedition 33.

PlayStation will reportedly hold its regular September State of Play this year.

What idiot said that? What moron would suggest such a thing?

That's according to Giant Bomb journalist Jeff Graboff.

Well, shit. God damn it. I didn't know that was going to happen.

They've had a state of play every September for like the last six years or something like that.

I forgot that. So when I heard it, I'm like, yeah, that sounds right.

But yes, it does sound right. I... I think like, how do I set expectations for this?

I don't know everything that's going to be in there.

I think, but like, to me, it feels like the biggest game that could be in there from Sony itself is, Is maybe that God of War spinoff that was supposed to come out this year that's now coming out next year?

2D1? The 2D Metroidvania one, yeah. Now, there always could be the Cory Barlog game.

That could show up here. It feels too early.

There could be a bunch of other... Sony Santa Monica's game probably is going to be the next... really really big one if it's not um uh wolverine but wolverine also feels like it's way too early maybe maybe next year maybe the year after that um Yeah, what would... So Insomniac would be Wolverine, right?

Wolverine, unless they're doing that Venom thing.

I mean, we gotta see more about Heretic. yeah so venom i i just don't i i don't think venom's like not happening but i don't know if it's happening next yeah So, yeah.

It's probably going to be a state of play.

I don't know how excited people should really get for it.

It's got to be the big fair game showcase, right?

Yeah. Mikey. So that's, I didn't include that news.

Oh, no, I did include that news right here.

Fair Games is now the latest live service shooter cancellation, if Michael Pachter is to be believed.

Oh, did we? I didn't actually even know.

I was not trying to do a segue. Not read down one below this.

Compile the news, you liar. What are you talking about?

Michael Pachter is not to be believed. The game is not canceled yet.

But when I ask about this game, there's definitely like a sort of like, yeah, man, I don't know why it's canceled or not canceled yet either.

Like sort of thing. There's definitely a suggestion, I think, that had this game not been publicly announced, they probably would have scrapped it by now.

It's just embarrassment. I think it might just be embarrassment that's keeping them going.

I don't know if that's for sure. I really have no clue if that's exactly how it's going on, but it's definitely the sense I get when I ask around about it.

We'll see. Does fair game show up at any... I don't think they... because the fair games is one that just got new leadership as well like jade raymond's left they probably want to let that cook for a little bit bring it right let him do it all yeah Bring in the closer.

Quick update on a game I talked about earlier.

Sword of the Sea, I just realized, is on PS Plus today.

Oh, cool. Check it out on PS Plus. Thanks for doing that, Dan.

You also got your codes, too. Oh, you're a sweetheart.

Wow. Alright, last handful of stories here.

The next Resident Evil remakes are, according to a rumor...

Code Veronica and Zero. And they'll come out in 2027 and 2028.

Although the person who had the rumor, who is that Dusk Golan person, who has had... accurate Capcom information before.

Also had some stuff wrong before. Who knows?

This sounds right to me. I would certainly hope that's the case.

And I hope it would be Code Veronica in 2027 and then Xero in 2028.

Uh, I'm, uh, yeah, we probably don't get these, uh, get news about this for a little bit.

They're still focused on nine, but nine is like, oh, that's the 30th anniversary.

Yes, the 30th anniversary of Resident Evil.

Yeah, 96. So I think they'll want to like carry that momentum forward and be like, okay, nine's here and this is still the 30th anniversary.

Here's other reasons to be excited for what's happening next year.

And maybe they start talking about these games, but you guys can't think of any other Resident Evil games that should be remade before this, right?

It shouldn't be five. It shouldn't be five yet.

I want Code Veronica and zero more. Outbreak.

Yeah, right. They're going to do a remake of one again at some point.

Sure. But I kind of want them to do that after they have exhausted all of the other ones.

I want Code Veronica and then like Zero.

If they can make Zero good. Yeah. Well, that's the expectation, I think.

That's the whole reason to do this. If they get the full RE2 remake treatment, that could be awesome.

Yeah, it'll be fine. Yeah, Code Veronica, though, because they've technically already skipped over that one when they went from three to four.

Yep. Cove Veronica did happen in between those.

So I think going back to that right now would be great.

And that's a game that... you know, was really well liked at the time.

I think some people say it's aged a bit.

Because that was the first one that didn't have the pre-rendered backgrounds, at least of the mainline games.

So some of that looks kind of a little, maybe a little ugly now. especially if you compare it from other games of that quote-unquote generation.

The look of Code Veronica compared to that Resident Evil 1 remake is kind of a difference of leagues.

Yeah, I think with both of these they could do a ton, and I would love to get both of them. and then I'm sorry to cut you off I talked to someone last night actually about how the RE4 remake was their first experience with Resident Evil 4.

Holy shit. And because they're 20 years old, right?

Right. Uh, and I just found that to be amazing.

And, and I'm like, you know what? Like that's, it's just great.

It's great. you can talk about the same kind of experience with that game I think that's the magic is that all those moments are like carried over.

Do you know what I mean? And I think... And it's like... man there's really no reason for this person to like play the the 2004 was it oh play the wii version you know yeah you think so jen maybe the wii version or if like they have a vr helmet Yeah, I don't know.

It's like, well, especially after just recently finishing it, it's like tough to go back, but, but I, I don't know if the appetite is there and I don't think it needs to be.

I think that's what's kind of so special about these remakes and just, you know.

Yeah, it's great because they don't necessarily replace the originals because they are so different, but also they kind of you know, they, they can, I'm not going to, I think they can.

Yeah. Like, like for me, it's like, yeah, I think you can still play Resident Evil two on the PlayStation one.

That's still really interesting. A cool experience.

But if somebody was 20, I wouldn't be like, you have to play both of them.

Go play the remake. You'll have a great time.

And they'd also be like, how am I meant to even do that, old man?

Have you heard of reticence? Metro Arch.

Don't make sure you don't accidentally install a Yahoo search engine.

Like go steal a Gamecube. I don't know like get the game like no there that's just not a realistic or reasonable thing to ask of someone who's Born after 9-11.

Those remakes are so freaking good. Resident Evil 4 remake is one of the best games ever.

Resident Evil 2 remake is one of the best games ever.

They've been doing such a good job with them.

I can finally finish the story with Code Veronica because I did the thing where I hardlocked myself out of progressive Oh, really?

And that is the reason that I have like 900 save files every time I play a game now.

Now I can finally beat it. What do you think Resident Evil 7 is going to look like down the line when it gets remastered? this is way down the line right yeah I guess it's like 10 years away At least.

What's the year we have, Jeff? 2016 and forward?

Is this kind of like games don't actually look that much better?

2016 is the year that I'd always point to.

And I think that's a, you know, seven is a little bit past that.

So I'm sure there's things they can do. do um we already had last of us part two right it's not always about like what can they do it's about can they make more money by reselling it so they'll come up with something to do now Capcom get ready to cut the check here D makes okay sure they did that with dark void yes that's true do that yeah do make a ps1 version of resident evil 7 yeah oh my god yeah that's incredible Do that for Resident Evil 6, right?

Just shake it a Contra-like. Actually, I'm back on board.

My gut tells me the audience for that is not as large as you might think.

No, no. Yeah, absolutely. The Resident Evil audience, though, is big enough to justify that a couple of times.

It can't be like, it's not going to sound like Resident Evil fucking 4.

No way. Yeah. All right. Jeff Bacalar's most anticipated game, that new Jurassic Park survival.

Survivor? Survivor. It's a survival here.

Yeah, it's Trespasser 2. They did it behind the scenes on this, just kind of confirming that game is... still happening they're pretty excited about it from all the way that they're talking in there they had people from universal being like this is this is it this is the real jurassic park game It takes place a day after the first Jurassic Park movie.

You play as a scientist and you're trying to escape and it just it looks pretty promising.

It's also, it's called survival. I apologize, Jeff.

It happens. I was like, not sure as well as I was saying it and reading it here on my screen.

Is this my anticipated? You were a fuddy-duddy when they revealed this game.

You were like, we were all like, that looks pretty cool.

And Backyard's like, it looks kind of cool. are you sure it was bacalar i'm a jurassic park guy Right, but the frame rate wasn't up to your snuff.

Sure, sure, sure. I think I dropped in a couple things, you're like, Nope, that's trash.

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, look, it didn't look great, but hopefully they'll be able to pull it together.

This is another Saber joint. They're doing a ton of stuff.

We've talked about that every time I bring this up, but they're doing Turok.

They're doing that new game that I'm excited about, about docking, where you run a dock.

Yes, yes, yes. The knocking game. That kind too, Mike.

Yeah, sure. They're doing the Knights of the Old Republic remake.

They're doing, yes, they're the ones that took that over.

There's a bunch of others as well. So...

They're doing that Hellraiser game that's not an asymmetrical multiplayer game.

It is a straight up like survival action horror game.

And they're doing the same thing with Jurassic Park.

I hope it's good. I'm excited for it. I think it looks really neat.

Last thing here, as we get done, Gamescom will just be going on.

Opening Night Live is going to get started.

We're going to talk over that. So I'm not i'm not sure if like we should be doing any sort of predictions or whatever but let's do like one last like hey do you have any hopes Or dreams for what you want to see from Gamescom.

And then we'll get to see really fast if it's going to happen.

I hope a game comes out on Mikey's birthday and he can tell us that.

That'd be great. Oh, sure, yeah. I could just turn to somebody and be like, that's my birthday.

This is, and I'm not expecting it, but this is kind of my, almost my last hope. for Final Fantasy IX Remake.

We'll see. Oh, yeah. I'm pulling for you.

Rooting for you. Randy Pitchford will show up.

I think you're right. We had the freaking Peter.

Yeah. We had the Peter Molyneux jump scare last year.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. God. All right.

I hope he's back with goddess too. Curiosity Cube.

Yes, Curiosity Cube. Curiosity Tube. There we go.

All right. And we have it written here, so I'm just going to say it.

I think it's still going on, our beta test for the website, enormousexplosive.com.

Go check that out. It's good. Update's happening.

He's doing some really good work. So if you are a premium member, you should go check that out.

And if you want to check it out, you could just become a premium member. giantbomb.com join, then go to enormousexplosive.com and sign in and you can partake.

All right, Jan, that does it for the headlines.

I'm handing it over to you. It's all yours again.

Fantastic. We're going to take a quick bricky brick and we'll be back with emails and super chats if we got any.

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Beside. These are the emails for the show.

I will read your emails now. Emails! Bombcast at giantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to.

You can write in about any and everything.

Something funky we've said on the website across...

The internet, please feel free to write in about it.

We don't accept corrections because we've never made a mistake, though.

You got a fun quiz, you want to avoid an awkward social interaction, or you got some fun tricks?

Send that our way at bombcast at giantbomb.com.

First email of the show. Hola. gbzaibatsu in light of recent and upcoming video game to movie adaptations a movie podcaster i follow declared he was going to make his own return to video games after 25 years away by playing to completion Death Stranding, and Elden Ring, which are obviously and hilariously two of the worst games to pick up to try and get back into video games after a long time away.

What are other terrible ways are there to get back into the passion of yours?

Jan, worst way to get into coffee. Menotti, worst theme park rider attraction.

Bacalar. Are there any experts only pinball experts, only pinball table, other examples of hobbies, love the show.

Love you all Mike from Loveland. Yeah, I think the worst traction you can do to get back into theme parks is that Spider-Man ride in California Adventure.

It's so bad. You just kind of move in front of screens and you're forced to do like this motion over and over again.

Wow. Yeah. Too much happens on the screen.

I did that, and it just made me mad, that ride.

I was having a bad time on there. I want to say real quick.

I don't think Elden Ring is a bad choice for someone to get back into games.

There are enough people that are like, Again, I don't ever use this pejoratively that are casual about games that just have spent like five, thousand hours in Elden Ring it's all they do and they're like and they're people just like this is I don't know that's the one game I play that's video games to me There's something about it that I think would be a really good thing first I like to teach someone like this is what video games can be now and You can get completely lost in there, which I think what people want when they come together games after a long time.

Souls games have become like a subset of streamers as well and just content creators.

Like, no, I only specifically do games of this style.

Yeah, Tarkov. Tarkov would be a bad one to try if you were trying to get back in the game.

Daisy. maybe easy yeah yeah uh worst way to get into coffee is you just start by roasting your own straight off the bat and you don't know what flavors to look for Or how to properly extract a good roast.

Or just putting the whole beans in the filter.

Yes. That would be the worst possible way.

I learned a bad way to get back into running after taking a winter off is to run.

To just start marathon training after not running for several months, that's a great way to get injured and not be able to run.

So don't do that. The worst way to get into Star Wars is to watch any Star Wars content right now.

It's mostly pretty bad, so yeah, don't do that.

Feels like people... mostly agree that like pinball in the seventies was bad.

Hmm. You know, I don't know why, but I guess there's really nothing that's sort of like withstood the test of time there.

80s stuff. A really bad game is the Mario Brothers pinball game.

That game sucks. That game sucks, but...

No, it's just generalized Mario Brothers.

It's just bad. No, I think it's like green and blue.

There is a yellow one I remember, Jan. I want to say it's got like mostly a Super Mario World sort of thing.

Yeah. Backlar, I'll see it on Facebook marketplace every once in a while and be tempted just because it's like, oh man, that'd be a cool thing to have.

And then like, I hear the nah that's just a slanted coffee table for you buddy this blue one looks like it's based on three Yeah, around then.

Whenever I see that in the wild, I'm just like... Oh, no, now I see the one with Yoshi.

Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, whenever I see it in the wild, I'm just like, fuck that.

Yeah, I think that for me, you know, there's just...

Just because it has a good theme doesn't mean it's a good game.

Yep. All right. Next email comes from Jeff in Quebec.

Hey gang, why is there so many games featuring spooky skeletons rolling around a giant wooden wheel like Axel from Twisted Metal?

That is so f- That's not right. That is so fucking specific.

Not really mentioned in other media, yet I...

There Dan goes. Boot up Wu-Tang and Bam.

There they are. What other common enemy types would you ban from any and all future games?

Because, I mean, we've seen it all by enough by now.

Jeff from Quebec. Dan, are you just trying to prove to us that Axel's wheel is not wooden?

We know that. It's not wooden and he's not a skeleton.

What are you talking about? What's under all that flesh?

Right, but that's a man. That's not a skeleton.

Also, in Dan's defense, Axel has two... He's an Axel, right?

And he has two wheels versus the one... skeleton wheel that's just doing like weird cartwheels.

Okay, now wait a second. I think... I think we're misreading here.

Why do so many games feature skeletons rowing around a giant wooden wheel?

They're rowing around in the style of Axel from Axel is not an example of the enemy type here.

He's talking about those things from Dark Souls, you know?

The real question is, are Axl's hands not inside the wheels?

No, you haven't seen the end. It's Twisted Metal 2 ending.

You got to be careful what you ask Calypso for.

Oh, shit. Okay, never mind. I don't think you have to be careful.

I think it's just don't ask him for anything because he'll always just make it a bad thing.

Yeah, just don't enter the Twisted Metal Tournament.

Yeah, turns out. Bad idea. Yeah. enemy archetypes there's like a ball that every once in a while like has spikes come out of it so like be careful when the spikes come out there's always those guys They get erect with spikes.

Jeff's a skeleton now. Oh, great. Oh, no.

What do you mean? What are you talking about?

That's very cute. I stopped myself from saying this earlier.

I'm just going to say it. I did not realize the actual thing was a play on...

A wheel ax. Oh, like the motor vehicle part.

I just thought it was like Axe Rose. His name is Axe Rose.

Sure. But that does make sense. All right.

That's okay, Dan. Fuck, that's fine. That's fine.

You were like seven. I don't think about cars ever, so I didn't even Honestly, it's better than during the War of the Worlds watch-along thing when you were like, how are they able to just do this?

That Tom Cruise movie wasn't that long ago.

They could just make another one. You were confused about the fair use thing.

I just didn't know it was public domain.

Yeah. That's very public domain. I look forward to Giant Bomb's take on War of the Worlds coming to a streaming service that is our own.

Hold on, baby. I'll call you back. I got a Microsoft Teams call with the president. like going around the table when's the last time you like facetimed or video called a friend or a relative Oh, we're doing a lot.

Holidays. Yeah, I was doing a lot of them during the Zoom or the pandemic.

My friends, they're even more boomers than me.

They were doing Skype calls during all of that.

Skype is still around? It's not anymore.

It's literally gone. They're all like, what do you mean Skype's gone when I told them?

And I tried to explain Discord to them. I don't know.

Is Skype really gone? I think Skype turned into Teams.

Yeah, I think it's gone. Oh, man. Microsoft really knows what they're doing, huh?

Every Sunday my wife FaceTimes with her mom.

Okay. That's how people talk. What do you mean, Jen?

I'm just not a FaceTimer. I'm sorry. I don't want to FaceTime.

I'm not a phone talker. I think that's the dominating sort of way that people communicate now.

Like I'll talk chatting. Like, I love a good phone call, you know, but like, I just don't want to look at someone's face.

I hear you. Also, like I get self-conscious of like, am I holding the phone too low that it looks unflattering for me?

So then I have to like hold it up like that.

I don't want to think about that. alright next email comes from let's skip around here so we have some time before games come Evie Mae writes in hey duders My girlfriend and I watched a really interesting movie tonight called Under the Silver Lake. it's david robert mitchell's blank check follow-up to it follows it flopped and it reviewed incredibly mixed So why should you watch it?

Why Giant Bomb? It's because it features a Nintendo Power Magazine as a plot point. has disaster piece as the composer, and if that connection to Fez wasn't enough, features tons of cryptography.

Also, it is heavily inspired by David Lynch, If that's not enough, Andrew Garfield is pretty hot in it despite playing kind of a sleazeball.

Check it out. If you do, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

It would make for a great discussion, too, if you need a content justification.

Love y'all. EVMay. I've heard of it. Silver Lake?

Is that the movie? Under the Silver Lake?

Under the Silver Lake. Under the Silver Lake, okay.

Okay, maybe we'll check that out. We only review terrible movies on this.

You know what I like about War of the Worlds?

What's that, Mike? What's that? Surprisingly, not a very violent movie.

Did any of the face characters, like, does any character with lines die in that?

Yes, Andrew Savage died. So here's the thing. about that, Mike, is when I was watching that movie, I might have been a little high and And so the 90 minute movie felt like five hours and still a good way.

And so as the movie's progressing, if I'm like with you, Mike, I'm like, this is not. too like in your face or anything.

And then there's the scene where the pregnant lady is bleeding out.

It is so visceral and insane. And they're just showing it all.

And I'm like, I can't handle this. I don't even think...

I don't even think it's like rated. I don't even think it's like it got like a rating.

No. The NBA doesn't know about this one, boys.

Give it that one. It's just PG-13 because there was just the one non-sexual fuck, right?

That's how I think I know the rating. those action scenes of him just move bitch get out the way and him kind of like tumbling over it's so incredible the dolly zoom on a zoom call Yeah, that was great.

That was great. God, like... Hold on one second.

Okay, two years ago in my email box, I got a film premiere invitation.

That we should have just done. I should have just shared it with the gang at the time, but it was for 80 for Brady.

Oh, you mentioned this before. Yeah. Man, we should have gone to that.

That'd be great. Was that where people were like all the old grandmas were horny for Tom Brady?

Rita Moreno. Not Rita Ripley. Who's the Rhea Perlman?

Rhea Perlman, yeah. Wait, from Cheers? No.

Yeah. No. Yes. Danny DeVito's ex-wife. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Yep. But God, how hilarious would it have been if the five of us showed up to a red carpet thing.

We've talked about movies a bunch. But the premiere we get to go to is for 80 for Brady.

I would love that. Holy shit, Mickey Mouse is here!

Josh Grubbs, Mickey Mouse. Hi, Mickey. I'm a big fan.

Hey there, Mike Bonatti. Set it on fire.

Which part specifically, Mickey? I'll do anything for you.

The one with the children, Mike. Okay. All right, Mickey.

I'll burn them all. Just love me. Thank you.

You know, I know part of this is a joke, but sometimes I think it's real.

Is that the plot of Weapons? I think when Mike interacts with something mickey adjacent or mickey i i think we're getting raw uncut monadi yeah He's coming from a real place.

I'm Steamboat Willie, just to let you know what's going on.

It's okay. It's all right. That's published.

We're tapping a vein with him. Can we put Steamboat Willie in our War of the Worlds?

We can. We can do whatever we want to Steamboat Willie.

That's how we infect the mothership. And Winnie the Pooh and Popeye.

Okay, so it's all these characters on Zoom calls about aliens.

Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes could be in there as well.

And we should wait a few years for original Batman.

I call Jesus. I call Jesus. We need to kill Warren Beatty if we want to get Dick Tracy, right?

I'm not sure that's how it works. I'm not sure the murderer of Warren Beatty inherits the... You wouldn't think so!

Yeah, you would think so, but that's exactly how it works.

That should be the plot of the Dick Tracy reboot.

Lord Beatty. He's 88. Let's just wait it out.

He's 88. Again, upon his death, the rights to Dick Tracy do not transfer magically.

I think it's first come, first served. that's not anything there can't possibly be a a movie or character franchise that zoomers care less about than dick yeah but you know what if they watched it Alec Baldwin's The Shadow.

They love that. Dude, Dick Tracy is fucking awesome.

What about Billy Zane's The Phantom? I love that movie.

I'm insane for the Zane is what I say. yeah insane in the membrane blue neurosis you're right dick tracy should be in fortnite Okay, I'm going to say, look, I think it'd be neat, but you know they're at the tail end of characters that they haven't put in Fortnite yet.

I don't know if that's true, Mikey. I don't know.

I don't know. The cast of Cheers remains outside of the Fortnite universe.

We still need a sitcom pack, right? Yeah.

It'll be friends. Where's Alf? Alf's not in Fortnite?

That's a crime. Like Elaine's little kicks dance as an emo.

Oh, my God. Oh, awful dance. Right. That'd be so good.

Just just. Larry David as himself should be informed.

You can't pick up a gun as Larry David. You just sort of do that faint.

His emote is that face, the suspicious face.

Yeah, like, you know, yeah. I was thinking about you, Jan.

I saw the clip from Seinfeld where Putty was raw dogging an airplane and Elaine broke up with him over it.

That's good. Oh, God. Just give me the putty pack.

Every character that guy's ever played. What's his name again?

Patrick Warburton. I want him as the flight attendant who does the safety spiel for Soarin'.

Yes. Yeah. That character. And Kronk. And Kronk, yes.

And Lemony Snicket in Series of Unfortunate Events.

All right, Wes. Yeah, get Urkel in there.

God, if it was the 90s, Urkel would have been like number three.

Reginald L. Johnson in any form. I need Reginald Bell Johnson.

That's always just a cop though. Did you see that Urkel Saves Christmas came out like last year?

What? It's an animated special. I think no other Family Matters characters are in it.

It's just about Steve Urkel saving Christmas, and I've got to know what that is like.

Hear me out, Fortnite character, Ernest.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He would have been number five if this was the 19th.

Hey, I was from coach. I was maybe a little.

Oh, hell yeah. I was maybe a little young at the time when the show was actually airing, but was like Screech from Saved by the Bell a beloved character?

He wasn't Urkel-like. He was supposed to be more annoying.

Urkel was more lovable. I think Dustin Diamond just put a little...

Stink on Screech. That was after the fact, I think.

What about Jughead? Can we get some Archie characters?

That's a big part of it. Riverdale. Mikey, what are you talking about?

None of this edgy reboot stuff where freaking Mindy dies at the end of season two.

I want like good old fashioned going down to the soda shop. no it's veronica who knows who's better for you it's it's betty uh but yeah i want that Always a Veronica guy.

I want to be Aunt Becky from Full House in Fortnite.

You gotta go to jail? You could use the money, yeah.

Oh, no. Yeah, she went to jail. Don't feel too bad.

Just for a little bit. Yeah, just a little tiny bit of fraud too.

Just a little jail. Was it fraud or she was bribing people to get her kids into good schools?

Who's that? Who among us? All right. Last crush ever.

The last two emails of the show. This one comes from Brock from Spokane.

I know it's Spokane. To the bomb boobers.

Oh. I have a story of a video game helping me get a job.

I applied to be a box truck driver for the local newspaper.

This was in 2019 and yes, I was also surprised they were still around.

Anyway, when I first drove the truck with my boss, He was telling me to break a turn wide while I was already in the middle of said wide turn.

He was surprised at how fast I picked it up and told him that I played a lot of Euro Truck Simulator 2.

He was impressed with the entire drive and I got the job despite running a forklift into a wall later that day.

My question is the opposite. Is there anything you experienced in a video game that was totally different in real life?

I just got a Beginner's Lock picking set, and it's very different from Skyrim, obviously.

But there's lots of different types of locks, and it seems insane that an area the size of a video game would all have the same locks, and you would use the same technique for each one.

Cheers, Brock from Spokane. I had a friend when I worked at Subway when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was huge, when it was first huge.

And because everyone was so into skateboarding, because Tony Hawk, he wanted to learn how to skateboard.

Oh, sure. And he was trying to do like he was trying like he got pretty OK, but he like never shook the Tony Hawk like foundation to the point where even when he was doing kickflips, you could still see his hand doing the input motion for the controller.

Like he was in his brain, like still doing kickflips.

I'm like, how does that even work? They're so unrelated.

But he just like, that's insane. Yeah, I think he just connected these motions in his head and that's how he learned how to skateboard.

Trying to kickflip into manuals. Yeah. I'm like...

I don't think this is helping, but yeah, he kept doing it.

All sports. You know, I played a billion games of NBA Jam before I joined like a basketball team and it's just, it's not like that.

But you got handles we saw on the travel log.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Grinding. uh is not the same like it is in video games specifically with your shoes or feet i remember buying soap shoes as a kid thinking like i'm just gonna be like sonic or ratchet and clank No, I fucking ate it big time on a curb.

Not to blow everyone's mind, but... Pretty much everything.

Okay. Like nothing translates aside from like Sudoku and maybe poker.

Dragon is just like it is in Final Fantasy.

What are you talking about? I had a casino game for the NES.

It turns out slot machines do just work like that.

There's nothing easy in real life. Nothing is easy.

Fishing is both a lot like actual fishing and not like it at all, right?

Video games, the real fishing. Power wash.

Pretty close. Way easier in game. No, I bought a power washer after getting into that game and used it one time and fucked up my driveway and then sold it.

Oh yeah. You fucking destroyed your driveway with a power washer.

And sold the house. well this driveway is destroyed might as well sell the house no way to fix that A game about digging a hole?

Digging a hole is actually very hard. Yeah.

You can't buy a jetpack very easily, it turns out, let alone upgrade one.

Yeah. You know, being a mosquito in a game way easier than being one in real life.

Lord knows we've tried. Oh, you know, playing it.

Yeah. Playing a guitar. Right. There's a guitar here.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess the drum stuff translates somewhat.

Yeah. It teaches you to have rhythm at least.

Okay, last email of the show before we get to Super Chats comes from Andreas from Sweden.

Hi Bombcast! Due to time zones, I'm rarely awake to watch and comment live, but this is something I thought you absolutely needed to be aware of, after I heard you talking about how there should be a third-person mode for Trespasser.

The player model is actually just what you see in the game.

A pair of breasts and an arm. and it's attached to a wheel hitbox that basically rides on to make you move because of how the engine works.

This is also why going upstairs feels weird.

It does feel weird. You're basically riding a unicycle.

Hope this helps. Andreas from Sweden. Yeah, Dan sent me a video of someone going into third-person mode and having the character fall down a hill, and it's just a 2D plane of boobs and an arm Like, just tumbling over for five minutes straight.

It ruled. My dream. Yeah, that's what we all want.

I'm so excited for you to play more of that tomorrow.

You're looking for a keynote. I think I'm looking for a blue key.

And people were like, this could take five minutes or five hours.

I'm like, yeah, I guess I didn't think about the fact that we did not have any idea where that key was when we left off.

You're like in a whole abandoned town, right?

Yeah, there's a church. It'll be easier to defend it.

That's right. I know where a turd is now.

Man, that is a weird game. All right, Mike Minotti, do we have any YouTube super chats?

We do have super chats. Thank you so much, everybody.

Avid Demon says, Love on a leash is so much better than War of the Worlds.

It isn't even close. I don't even know how to say that fucker's name.

Bezos, Bezos, Bezos. Bezos money. Long-released lady had to pay her actors with wantons.

Look, I don't want to have to play this card.

But, like, Love on a Leaf has a gay joke in the first two minutes.

Right? One of the first jokes is that, no, it's just that the dog's being pet by a guy and the dog's like, oh, I don't, no, not you.

I'm not gay. Like, come on. It is immediate in the movie.

Like, Wimbledon does a lot of things. I don't even watch this.

That's insane. I adore the clip of Mike when that joke happens and he just... screamed the most Mike screamed ever.

That's right. I think that was the most Jeff Grubb I ever found.

I actually just screamed. After that line.

I think that Love on a Leash is actually a...

I think they're both so bad that they're fun to watch.

Lone Leash is a grosser movie than World of Wars, even with all the Amazon bullshit, which is gross and bad, for sure.

Cy from Saskatchewan says, is Mike taking food off your families with his draconian mug policy?

Thoughts on Fly Backlar and the latest Pickle Giraffe, all-timer Pickle Giraffe episode.

I'm sorry, what? Yeah, you should watch that.

It's really, really, really good. Okay. Yeah.

They could pick a draft shout out for the amazing work.

And yeah, Mike's fucking us on this. This is our money that he's... Food directly off family.

Next time he's out of town, we are just going to go in that store and put a mug up and make him do it. don't you dare I don't know how hard this is to do but a big thing in a bunch of different groups of fans lately are picture cards, right?

Not trading cards, but picture cards. The K-pop people love this.

Mike, is it possible to have like a little wallet-sized photo, a randomized photo of one of us in each order?

Oh, interesting, interesting. No. Oh. Well.

Next up here is from Simon. Again, it says, you should make sitcom intro videos from 70s and 90s.

Songs... I think it should just still be that last action, the great American hero song, right?

Believe it or not, I'm walking on air. Yeah, that one.

That's so good. The one that George Costanza made his answer machine.

I only know it from the Costanza thing. Believe it or not, George isn't at home.

I think I told you guys that I recorded a version of that for my family that was our answering machine thing for, like, my entire life.

I didn't need to hear you say that to know that that's absolutely true.

Next time all of us are in San Francisco, we should remake the full house opening.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Days gone by.

Yep. That's it. That's the one. Wait, was that family matters?

Shit, now I'm scared. Wow. Oh, right. You're right.

That's Family Matters. Whatever happened to Predictability?

It took me decades to realize it said predictability there.

I thought it was just kind of mumbling. There's no lyrics.

That's what all lyrics sound like to me, though.

You know what's fun? Have you ever seen... When they did Full House, they shot a pilot with a different person being Danny Tanner.

And they filmed the intro too. And that's the weird part to see.

It's like there's the intro, literally the car and the zoom out on the Golden Gate Bridge.

And it's just... Some other guy as Danny Tanner.

Who is it? And I do not like it. Yeah, who is it?

Barack Obama. No way. They call him Black Danny Tanner.

It's really weird. Very straightforward.

Very uncomfortable. Right, yeah, but it's literally if you woke up one day and somebody else was pretending to be your mom and tried to give you a kiss.

It's very uncomfortable. I don't like seeing it.

I do feel the same way about Bob Saget that I feel about my mother yes you're right I agree Next up is from Beardsley.

It says, instant early access for Recoin.

What have you done to me, Jan? I'm sorry.

I got to take everyone else down with me.

I downloaded it. I'm really into it. We had that fun coin pusher arcade asset flip game that was a lot of fun.

We should go check and see how they've done on that because they keep updating it.

AP Fug or Fugue says, I want Steep 2. What impossible sequel do you want?

Ooh. Kirby's Dream Course 2 is definitely the one that I would love.

I guess that's not impossible, but it seems impossible.

Final Fantasy 10 2 2. I want StarTropics 3.

I want a very modern AAA StarTropics. Like a Breath of the Wild-like, but with StarTropics.

It'll never happen, but it would rule. Anyone else?

Dan, come on. Impossible sequel? Yeah, not going to happen, but you would love it.

Say whatever you're thinking. I was thinking Twisted Metal.

You know, it's not impossible. It's not impossible.

Like it was rumored and like in development, people just got canceled yeah yeah the show's doing well they gotta be trying again right now with that show doing yeah yeah is it generally liked yeah it's really well liked yeah huh who's a chance uh hell yeah all right uh backwards you say one are you you pass in here No, I think the impossible, I don't know if I have an impossible and I do in the spirit of steep, I do want like an SSX tricky too.

Oh, that does feel impossible. Just EA Big 2.

That's just impossible. A whole new line.

NBA Street. How about that? Yeah, that's a good one.

What's wrong with these companies? It's right there.

It's right there. I know it's boomer and I know it's like cooked to say it, but it's also true.

It used to be better. Like it honestly used to be better.

Yeah. When we got NBA street games, that's just demonstrably better than what we get today.

Yeah. Yep. All right, next up here is from Grant NP.

We better get B-Week again soon. I saw Pogtato wearing the B-Week shirt during the... What was the name of the game?

I'm sorry. The Pizza Bandit. Go to Kind of Funny's YouTube and watch us. and drew scanlon and rory and pugtato and me and mike take on uh kind of funny and make some yeah i won't spoil anything but i really enjoyed that video guys that was really good well i'll that that was too much Parmesan, Dan, but I'm just glad that you lived your truth.

You just went for it. it was just like the base cheese.

I didn't realize. He tried telling you and you weren't having, you're just like, he's like, oh, that's not the right cheese.

He's like, I like cheese. I thought he was telling me it was too much, and I was about to go into, I'll tell you when I've had too much.

It's the wrong cheese. Now it's Dan Parmesan.

I'm sorry, bud. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, the pizza was awesome.

It tasted great. I think the Premier League has started up again, Dan.

We've got to see how our Brentford Bees are doing.

Oh, the Brentford Bees are big bee heads, yeah.

We're going to have a golf week soon. Maybe we'll have the return of B-Week either later this year or next year.

Mm-hmm. Next up is from the McLean, who says 80 for Brady is a surprisingly fun.

They didn't specify a surprisingly fun weapon.

I'm going to assume movie or time. Probably.

Yeah. Yeah. I bet that movie's a nice watch.

Sure. I think I saw 10 minutes of it or so.

I do like the genre of old people having fun.

Old people, yes. Wild hogs guy. I kind of like the idea.

Or space cowboys, the Clint Eastwood in space movie.

It makes me feel better about my own mortality.

Yeah, geriatric cinema. Yeah. Simon Saskatchewan's back says, Jan's right.

Phantoms aged surprisingly well. Okay. Wait.

Phantoms? No, not the Ben Affleck. Phantoms.

The Phantom. The Phantom, okay. Did they make an SNES game of that?

Yes. I feel like they did. Like a cartoon, like the Phantom 2099.

I'm just kind of picturing one of us on Blight Club. wearing the phantom suit and it's pretty funny oh yeah that's a funny yeah okay Next up here is from the Dubious Food Hello G Unit.

Have any of you been watching the Twisted Metal TV show?

I saw a David Jaffe reference yesterday and went...

What was the reference? I wonder, did they just swear a lot?

Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, I'll get to it eventually.

I really like everyone on that show. Yeah, I've heard people like season two maybe even more than that first one, which people were kind of surprised by how relatively good it was.

And, yeah, here people seem to be having a good time with it, which is shocking to me, right?

When we were seeing the trailers for that, I think we were all dunking on it.

Yeah. Even on paper, it's a franchise that you just wouldn't think would work.

No. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen it. I don't know.

I love the characters and the story of the game, but I don't know.

I just experienced it in the game pretty much, but it sounds good.

Spencer Nations said, I learned how to play shoot drums from playing rock band.

Yeah, I think you said it back when I that is the one that is the one instrument in those games although Rock Band 3 added like a keyboard thing yeah and that right and then There's Rocksmith from Ubisoft, the actual learn a guitar game.

Oh, that's actual guitar. Right, yeah. I think that's still a going concern.

They made a new one. long ago. That's what I said.

It was a new one. They sent me a guitar.

Oh, really? Yeah, I was like, do you have a guitar to preview?

No, I was like, we'll send you one. Nope, just the flute. uh dj hero was not a good oh god mike stop waving that around DJ Hero is not a good way to actually learn how to DJ, but I think Fuser can actually teach you some good fundamentals.

Sure. Oh, sure, yeah. But boy, DJ Hero ruled.

God, it was a fun game. And then Tristan KW says the demo for Hello Us came out.

Big recommend. yeah i should try it starting again soon as well we should probably be on top of that but i'm gonna trick of this hell is us Was that a U game, Bakalar?

How was us? It is a me game. And then Dan told me, he's like, I don't think it's a U game.

And then I was like, oh. shit, maybe it isn't a me game.

And then I tried the demo or something I played and I seem to enjoy it.

This game's out in 12 days for the early access.

Yeah, I've got on Fantasy Critic, so I'm crossing my fingers here.

I don't think I can sign into my Fantasy Critic anymore.

Well, suck to suck. I think that was my old fandom address.

Oh, we could probably reach out to the person that runs that site and get that fixed.

Sean can reset something, right? Yeah, he is the commissioner.

Yeah, we can maybe check that. Maybe you can resend the email.

That's a good point. All right, Mikey. There's a Phantom 2040 cartoon series, a game for that for the Super Nintendo.

That was... Generally positively reviewed, so not a Blake Club game, unfortunately.

I'll dress up in a purple suit and play it.

Yeah, maybe we could just do it that way.

It could be a license to thrill. Yeah. Mikey, any more super chats?

No, I just need to do it. Don't mute yourself.

Okay. oh i go i go hard where does the sneeze go right mike where does it go i think it like goes into your heart valves and like we use them right like it's like yeah it always makes me want to die yeah the heart it contains sneezes and blood Okie dokie gang.

What do we got going on for the rest of this week?

Game Mess Mornings popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Right Grub? That's right. Yep, we'll be back all week.

Looking forward to it. Definitely tune in.

Beautiful, beautiful. Blight Club continues tomorrow with Jurassic Grub Jeff Passer.

You said you like this game. Yeah. I do.

I actually... That's... this is why i kind of feel responsibility give you guys so bad they're good games for your guys's next game yeah i think i am legitimately falling in love with War of the Worlds equivalent games.

Yes, it's very similar. Because it's so bad, you can look at the seams and look around and be like...

There should be something here. Why didn't they think of that?

Like this is what a normal game would have.

It's instructional, informative. This Thursday, we've got a very special guest on the voicemail dump truck.

Danny O'Dwyer is joining us. Defender calls in now.

707-EXIT-FLU. Get your dancers questions in.

Oh, yeah. Get your dancers in. You could have like a mini dancers, like a rapid fire one.

This Friday on Unprofessional Fridays, we're playing Bubsy Robo.

No, that's not a Bubsy mod. We're playing the new...

Bubsy Remaster, the perfect collection as well.

Yeah, the perfect collection. As Chibi Robo.

Dan's going to try that for the first time.

I think you're going to enjoy it. I think I am too.

If there's time, we may throw in some Raccoon Pusher into there as well.

I want to see it. uh, sometime on the website.

Uh, Thursday, we're going to do a business, a business, uh, that four player, uh, A roguelite cooperative game.

It's a shooter. It's Abyss with us at the end.

I'm saying it weird. And you know what? I hear you.

And you're right, all of you. I should be a team player in co-op games.

See, now this is the problem. He's gonna overcompensate and become so cooperative that it's also gonna be a problem.

You've never seen a fucker be so cooperative.

No, I'm going to be a team player, no horsing around, no trolling.

I'm just going to be a good teammate. I don't want you to change, Dan.

You can't do that. You don't possess the ability to do that.

I can turn it on. I can turn it off. You watch me.

You watch me. You know this feels competitive in a way that it isn't cooperative.

Yeah. You watch. Your switch is broken.

I can turn it on. I can turn it off. Oh, I see the problem.

I see Dan set to evil. Okay, there we go.

Exactly. Reset Dan to factory setting. Okay, gang, and we were just talking about it, but please go check out on Kinda Funny's YouTube the Pizza Bandit video that we did with them.

A lot of fun times. Once again, shouts out to Pugtato, Matthew Rory, and Drew Scanlon for popping on Team GB.

And going against the kind of funny gang.

No spoilers, but hey, it's a very good time.

Very good time indeed. Thanks again to MSI.

Thanks, MSI. Thank you for your support.

Once again, the Giant Bombcast is presented by MSI.

If you are going to PAX West next week and go ahead and stop by the MSI booth, tell them that we sent you.

Don't be shy. Don't be shy. Also, don't be creepy and whisper it.

Just tell them. Get that feedback during the break.

Just go there and say, hey, Giant Bomb sent me.

Because I want one of you guys to win the stuff that they're giving away.

And send it to me. Yeah, and give it to Mike.

Yeah, I want one of you guys out there to win a mobo, all right?

We need some hot mobos. They're good for jippoos and all sorts of things.

What are you saying? What? They're good for what?

All sorts of things. Jibus and peekies. Mopas are good for jibus.

They sound like Dejo Kazooie collectibles.

You expect me to say words properly? I don't.

I also don't expect you to change. They're good for your Rams.

I'm going to keep shortening words and make new words.

Uh, gang, I think that about does it for the Giant Bombcast.

It was fun during the read to enchant Red Mobo so I could tell he was delighted.

I'm always delighted to say something with hella syllables or just fun words in it.

Anything that ends in an O sound. Folks, that does it for this John Bobcast.

He's been Jeff. He's been Jeff. He's been Mike.

He's been Dan. I've been Jan. We're presented by MSI.

We'll see you next week for another episode of the show.

I love you. Goodbye. Happy birthday, dad.

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[Giant Bombcast: The 'War of the Worlds' Debacle and Gaming Industry Deep Dives]-[904: A Dolphin Situation]

📋 Summary

The "War of the Worlds" Cinematic Disaster

Gaming Discussions and Industry Trends

Industry News and Corporate Shifts

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Giant Bombcast: The 'War of the Worlds' Debacle and Gaming Industry Deep Dives]-[904: A Dolphin Situation]

📋 Summary

The "War of the Worlds" Cinematic Disaster

Gaming Discussions and Industry Trends

Industry News and Corporate Shifts

Conclusion

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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