Angeline Era, Routine, Birdcage | Noclip Crewcast

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Hello, gamers and non-gamers.

Welcome back to the Noclip Crewcast.

It's episode 257.

We've done so many of these podcasts.

This is another one where Danny is unavailable.

As I said last week, if you missed that one for some reason, go back and listen to it.

It's a great episode.

But if you want to stick here with us, Danny is unavailable as he's dealing with family stuff back home for who knows how long.

Hopefully he's doing all right, though.

We haven't, you know, he's busy.

So we just, again, in our thoughts, send him love.

Hopefully he's doing all right, but you know who is doing okay?

I hope I didn't just set up a terrible story here.

Jeremy Jane, how are you, my friend?

I'm doing great.

A lot of good games to talk about this week, and yeah, I don't know.

It's fucking winter.

It's gaming season, man.

That's right.

When the weather is nice outside, I feel bad gaming.

When it's eight degrees outside, it's like, what?

I'm supposed to game.

That's what God wanted.

Meetups get canceled and you're like finally I can play that video game.

I've been holding off on playing for weeks.

I finally have the time to dedicate to it.

Frank Howley, what's your favorite... christmas season video game what do you go to i don't know i i generally usually around over the winter i'll usually find like a dynasty warriors type game something that i can just like binge audiobooks while playing something very like mindless and like nice so like a few years ago it was like one piece warriors i don't know what what warriors adjacent game it is this year dk bonanza is kind of the closest thing to that because you're just smashing the x you know anything that can match the x button but yeah yeah it's always it's always some kind of like mindless grinding game because like yeah you feel like you have you feel like you have the space and time to allow yourself to like really get deep in a game, even if it's not that like, I don't know, uh, nutritious.

Yeah.

Well, that's what it's all about.

The holiday season is all about cramming your gob full of just sugary, sweet goodness.

And that's, I think, the best part of of anything relating to the holidays is like you can just, like you guys been saying, you can just take it easy.

There's no responsibilities unless you have responsibilities.

Um, like you know, getting ready to uh, to have a uh a child, means I have to prepare for like traditions and we need to think about what we're going to do in the future every year and stuff like that.

And that has been an interesting switch, because Christmas for me for the longest time has been you get socks, you get underwear, you get one cool gift and then and then everyone leaves you alone for a couple of weeks.

But now I got to make the Turkey.

It's a different situation.

I don't, you guys ever made Turkey before?

Like I had to do the Turkey on your own.

No, I've roasted a, I've roasted a Cornish game hen, a Guinea fowl, a chicken, never a Turkey.

What are you going to do now?

You can't do vegan turkey.

What would that be?

No, they have like a, I've never had it, but I actually, I ate, I ate a little turkey this year.

It was the first meat I've eaten in like seven years.

Okay.

But I was, I was visiting my folks.

Wait, was this before or after the Italian sub?

This was after the Italian sub.

So you've had it twice this year.

I'm calling the vegan police.

No, no, the Italian sub was vegetarian.

Oh, okay.

No, no.

Didn't you say you had one?

Oh, no, no.

That's the one thing you've wanted since you stopped eating meat.

That's what I've wanted for seven years.

Yeah, I've been craving it for seven years.

No, I don't know.

I just like my mother was like I worked on this turkey and I was like I fucking, I don't know.

I'll just take it back.

I was afraid it would make me sick, though.

That was the way I was holding back.

Yeah, you don't have the... microbiome set up to break down the turkey's germs.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it's like seven years of vegetarianism versus like a million years of hominid enzyme development.

I didn't know which would win out.

Yeah, very different.

You know who my favorite hominid enzymes are?

Our Battle Pass holders.

That's right.

Our Battle Pass holders over at patreon.com slash noclip.

They keep our gut clear and ready to to to produce matter, fecal or otherwise.

Uh, but they're, they're not.

Hey, don't talk about our videos like that, bro.

I'm sorry, come on.

No clip to the home of fecal matter.

Check it out.

Uh yeah, our great battle pass holders who support all the work we do and uh and other things.

Uh, all the work we do do uh, including little toast.

I'm sorry, that was terrible.

I said I'm going to be a dad.

I got to get the bad jokes ready.

Lil Toast, Corey, Lovepreet.

I'm sorry, by the way, if you've been added to the list of Battle Pass holders and we are not saying your name, it's because we've all been locked out of the Noclip.

We don't have access to the Noclip Patreon account, so we can't see the list.

We, you know.

Danny's busy.

So again, apologies.

As soon as we get access, we'll tally up every week that we missed and say your name that many times in a row.

I bet that won't bother you.

Anyway, the list as it stands.

Lil Toast, Corey Lovepreet, Yutt Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Bassetteri, It's-a-me a Ferrari-o, Senator Armstrong, nanomachines or whatever right.

Reed Dredge, Harry Flanagan, Joosh, Arno, Matt Pearson, James Brown.

Wow!

Uh, what do we got where I lost it?

Mark Rojas, quote, Tucker Morgan, David McGarry, Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez, John Akers, Uint Nate, Tim Robinson, I think you should leave, Forrest Pruitt, Dark Insanities, Jonathan Kremen, it's Kremen, but I think Kremen's funnier, Eric Hamilton Schneider, like the lunch meat, Christophe Fatui, like the salad, there's not a Fatui salad, uh, Enox, I got nothing, Grizzly Mug, camera lad Zachary Snader Alex Goucher George Sarkotis Jacob God serve bless up Entheogen James Med Tohir Tilly of and ricin thank you all so much for your support for throwing money our way being awesome This week's pod, we got a lot of stuff, a lot of indie games to cover.

This has been a hot, hot week.

There's stuff that we're not even going to cover because we didn't get codes for it and didn't bother to ask.

But there is still a lot of cool stuff that we did get the chance to check out, at least a little bit of.

Angeline-era skate story.

We're going to be talking about that cool skating game where you're made of glass.

We're not going to be talking about that, actually.

Maybe a little bit.

Eh, we'll see.

Frank?

Oh, I know.

I just I just didn't have time to play anything.

That's OK.

Yeah.

Yes.

But I will mention it briefly.

I will talk about it in brief.

We did play a demo version of it.

I checked a little bit out on PlayStation myself.

So we'll just talk about some of it.

I'll give you like a brief five minutes if you don't know what it is, maybe at the end of the pod.

And yeah, routine that sci fi horror game that took like 13 years to finish.

Well, not really. the story of it, it's a, it's pretty interesting.

I'll I'll even link to the article about it an interview with the devs about what happened along the way of the development of that game.

In the description.

But, uh, yeah, we're gonna talk about a bunch of cool stuff.

Is there anything anyone's dying to talk about first?

Cause I feel like all of these games are pretty cool.

Uh, Jeremy, you want to hop into Angelina first or Angelina?

I feel like deserves to be first.

Totally.

Um, yeah, Angelina is out.

Uh, it's.

It came out yesterday as of time of recording, but I have had access to it for like a week.

Um, it's fucking awesome it's so good uh so angelina this is a game from analgesic productions um this is melis hontani and marina kataka um so analgesic have done we've talked about anodyne one and two on this podcast uh sephoni uh was also them those are the only ones i've played there's a couple other games they've done um but angelina is their new one it is uh i feel like I have loved all of their games and they have all had a very sort of interesting melding of like, oh, it's like an art game.

Oh, but there's like a strong gameplay focus.

I feel like this one, the gameplay focus, like the art focus is no less strong, but it feels to me like maybe the gameplay focus is deeper or maybe it's just like hitting more of like more catered to my taste and gameplay or something.

But this is like a.

This is like an art game that plays like uh like East or like linked to the past or something.

Um, to me, this feels like, so they refer to it as a bump slash action game.

Um, so this is a top-down action rpg where, instead of pressing a button to swing the sword, you kind of just you bump into creatures and it swings your sword automatically if you hit them at the right angle.

So if they hit you from behind, they attack you.

If you hit them from the front uh, you know, barring certain conditions, like if it's like an enemy that has like a charge or something they can override, your bump slash, but otherwise um, your sword just kind of swings automatically.

And so this is really interesting because it frees you up to basically think mostly about sort of like positioning and pacing and timing and less about like you know, like the Dark Souls swing animation.

Like you're not thinking about when do I hit R1 or whatever.

So this is a really interesting game.

I feel like to me, it feels like a game that.

When the N64 came out, I feel like a lot of developers who were going from, like you know, Super Nintendo to N64.

There was sort of this transition where they're like like, look at Link to the Past, to Ocarina of Time.

It was like, oh, we got 3D.

Let's do, like, full 3D, like, rotational camera.

Let's just, like, do the fucking thing as hard as possible.

We'll spend 30 seconds every time you want to open a chest.

We're going to spin the camera around.

Yeah, and there's like a little bit of that.

Like you know, they lean into the 3D-ness of it as well, but I feel like, because it's 2025 and it's not like Oh, 3d is like novel and whatever,

Um, I feel like this.

This feels to me like an alternate universe and 64 game in a weird way, where it's like it has the sort of uh, the mostly the perspective changes.

There's like an overworld and there's like levels or whatever, but in the inside of the levels um, the perspective is largely more like a uh link to the past with 3d sort of graphics um, and that's a really interesting thing to me, because it doesn't feel, it doesn't arbitrarily feel the need to like change up the entire formula of action rpgs from that era.

So to me it feels gameplay wise, more like a, like a super nintendo arpg um Or, you know, I've never played the East games, which I gather are sort of an inspiration on this, but like action RPGs of that sort of era.

But yeah, I don't even know where to begin with this game.

It's fucking it's so good.

Jesse, how much have you played of Angelina?

Yeah, I played the first two hours or so over the last couple of days.

Like I've been very busy, but I finished up a routine, which I'll talk more about.

But yeah Angelina, the bit of it that I've played is so I think I think they do this thing analgesic or analgesic.

Analgesic always feels wrong to say i say that.

I'm always like, i think it's analgesic, not like anal.

Yeah, like the anals of history earnest, i don't know, whatever.

Anyway anal anal anal, whatever.

Uh, their games i i love their games.

Anodyne one and two, for me, were very impactful for a lot of reasons.

I think like the, the worlds and the way that they're designed, the npc conversation and like the way the dialogue is written.

It's very flowery but not like overly self-serious.

It's like there's times where they really apply this level of like the writing and the way that they're designing their world is structured in such a way that they need to get that across to you in the way that they write.

And then there's other moments where they're they give themselves this opportunity to just be funny with it, like they've sold the world to you and now they know how to tell a joke in that space and it's not going to be off-putting because, like it's funny.

Or sometimes there's things that like aren't funny but they are.

If you view them from the lens of the world, like Angeline era, uh opens pretty strongly of like this is the setting.

You are a bump slashing character.

There's angels.

You're helping them or not.

Like there's, there's just a thing in the world.

There are Faye.

There's like so much mythology going on here.

They do this great setup.

You go to the first town in the game which, like everything, is broken up into this, this overworld area.

And then these, these dungeons is sort of spaces, which is pretty similar to Anodyne.

Like you go into those 2d areas, but here it's more of the same perspective and visual style.

But yeah, It's that combat bump slash that Jeremy was talking about.

And then in the towns, which are structured in the same way, but like there's no combat, you're really just walking around talking to characters, which I think is funny that you're still bump slashing.

I was so afraid to bump into anyone in the first town.

Yeah, because you think it's funny in the, in the overworld, or like in the combat areas, because you see enemies or things that you so far have thought are enemies and you bump into them and they're like hey, what's going on, man?

Here's the.

Here's the tutorial.

Sometimes they're right next to.

Sometimes there will be enemies that are uh, conversation npcs, but they're right next to enemies that look identical, that are like kill them npcs.

So you'll be like bumping your way through a crowd of bugs and then one of them will be like did you know that?

Like god is always why you're just like jesus christ.

It's so funny.

I thought you were just like a fucking goblin.

God's light has shown away from us.

He does not care anymore.

And you're like, but you're a beetle.

Like the mythological stuff is really interesting.

Yeah.

So you alluded to the story.

It's basically like this, this setup where an angel calls like a chosen hero to this land, that is sort of beset by uh like weird sort of happenings.

There's a lot of sort of like weird little vignettes that are rooted in this dichotomy between sort of like more Christian mythology.

Like the, you know, Angelina refers to the angels.

There are just like angels in the world.

There's just like angels are just like in this world, like normal kind of like people.

Um, I mean, not like normal people, but they're just like hanging out.

Uh, and then there's contrasting that as sort of this more like um, like folk mythology angle, like uh, their their second game this year with with like evil slash, mischievous Faye, like fairies and weird Irish mythology slapped into here as well.

Um.

So there is sort of this interesting like world torn between these two sort of uh mythological, uh framings um, but literalized, like in terms, there's like actual angels and actual monsters and stuff.

Um, and yeah, you're.

So you're, you're going around collecting basically these like mystical artifacts called bicones, which are uh, that's what it was two cones back to back.

They're kind of like you know that they're your standard sort of like rpg, like triforce pieces, you know what i mean or like a little shape with some like flashy colors coming off of the cool like transparency shader that's shiny on it.

You know you've played a game before.

Um, And yeah, you're kind of just like going around collecting these things to like help set things right in the world because of like an angelic prophecy which is like it gets.

I feel like it gets going really fast.

Like the start is so bombastic and it has this incredibly beautiful cinematic.

But you're kind of just like in the world, in the game and, you know, seven minutes or something.

Yeah, it's very quick to get you started.

Like you you're pretty sure once you launch it, you're just immediately doing combat, right?

There's no big narrative, there's a little bit of conversation, but it's like a minute yeah, and then you start fighting after the sort of like first boss fight, exactly yeah, and then it does the big sort of narrative reveal of here's the setup go kill the seven beings, collect the triforce, save the princess, all that sort of stuff, not literally.

Um yeah, i think the setup for the world is very interesting.

They've sort of touched on uh, religious themes in their previous games, like angie or sorry, anodyne 2.

They get to a lot of that, like the concept of religion and what that means for characters.

I think they sort of allude to more specific concepts in Christianity or Catholicism in that game.

But this is very explicit to the point that you're like reading Martin Luther's.

What's the name of the book that you read?

The Sins of the First World, the Cause of Its Destruction by Martin Luther.

Like part of that text is included in the game.

And there's a conversation you can have with a librarian in the first town where he dissects the concepts of Martin Luther's criticism of the church and like what are you?

I'm playing a video game where i bump into like caterpillars and make them explode.

This is what i love about the way they make games analgesic, i'm gonna say it that way.

It makes the most sense in my brain productions the way that they make games.

They do not shy away from the fact that they're making video games.

I never feel like they are embarrassed or they are like trying to, Oh no, but we don't do that.

We do it differently.

We care about artists.

No, they think that the way that they make games at least from what I've read in interviews and the way that I've experienced the work they've done so far is like these are games that are about the story that they're telling in the world they're creating, but they're presented in this way.

That's like, the settings menu has an option to skip the dialogue.

Like they understand that these are games for people who sometimes just want lights to flicker on the screen and distract them for a couple of hours, as much as they may also be something worth dissecting and being interesting.

Cause, like they make it almost in this way where, if you don't care about that, if you just want to play a game where you're running around an environment killing little enemies in like a 2d pixel art, a little environment outside, like inside of a character's brain and anodyne, like that's there for you.

You can play that kind of game.

Stephanie, if you just want to run around and do the like Tony Hawk grind along the world gameplay that that game has, you can do that.

But if you get into that and like something, somebody speaks to you in the right way, there's a line of dialogue that makes you go Oh, what is this world about?

They have the stuff there to give you the opportunity to really get invested in the narrative.

I think that is just to me.

It's the thing that I'm always drawn to with their games is like there's always more there.

And if you're tired of it, it's still fun to play the game.

Like the game is still really good.

I love moving around in all of their worlds.

Yeah.

Analgesic always makes me think.

Their games always make me think of, um.

There's a martin scorsese quote that i'll paraphrase where uh, he was talking about making movies about serious themes and he said if you want to, if you want to make a, a movie that is about like, real and serious themes and you want to explore them in a real and serious and sincere way, then you put it in a genre movie.

Because if you're, you know, if you want to make a movie about god, you don't just like make a movie about god, you make a movie about like, it's like a gangster film, it's like a western, it's like some flavor that is understandable to people who are not like, you know, weird cinephiles, like martin scorsese um, but then you, you sort of like, give them this thing and then, contained inside it trojan horses, these deeper themes in it um, and analgesic games.

To me they like they make games that are so gamey that even if you weren't into art games, you could put like I could hand this to someone who just, you know like, had a super Nintendo growing up but doesn't really like, like my brother, someone who's like, plays games, but more just kind of like big AAA titles that come out.

And he would play this and recognize this as like, Oh yeah, this is like a cool action RPG.

And it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that like you would miss out on those themes.

It means that, like you, could have sort of like an experience that is more just about playing the game, and then sort of be exposed to these more like philosophical and deep and sincere discussions.

And I think that's really interesting because I think that, like a lot of people maybe I don't know, maybe this is an assumption or whatever but I feel like the way that sometimes it's like a mode of thinking that I find myself slipping into, where I'm like there are like games like balatro, and then there are like art games where you just like walk around and there's no gameplay, you're just like reading the letters that your sister left you in the house, or you know what i mean like and i feel like analgesic.

Does this really beautiful merging of the two, where it's like i, i'm playing like a fucking, you know a game, ass game, and then it'll be like a conversation about god, just like happens and i, for for some reason, it like It makes it more effective because it's it's not like I'm I'm not in the mode always of like oh, I'm going to like experience some fucking profound shit.

And then like a caterpillar tells you about about angels and you're like, oh, shit.

All right.

Like, damn, dude, I was just here to walk around this environment.

Yeah.

I was about to swing my sword at you.

I was just going to beat your ass.

I just got a gun.

Watch out.

Oh, yeah.

There's a gun and there's a gun and it only shoots up.

Which, I mean, sure, right?

Makes perfect sense with the perspective.

But it's very funny because they said up and I was like directly, like in the Z direction, but it just means like forward.

Oh, there's another gun?

No, no, no.

I was going to say, they do play with perspective sometimes in this game and it's very funny how the gun reacts.

I won't say anything more than that.

Okay.

I can't wait to see that.

Yeah, I think...

For me, the thing that I'm really enjoying, maybe more than their previous games because, like I said, I love their previous games.

This one, I think, captures something that those earlier ones were successful at doing, but I didn't feel like they built around it enough, which is like the joy of discovery in those earlier games.

Like Anodyne 2, finding an NPC that you can interact with and going into their brain and seeing what the environment looks like and interacting with the puzzles and, you know, doing the sort of straightforward combat.

Was fun, but I didn't feel like I got anything out of the exploration other than that.

Here in Angelina era.

I think they have really done a good job of like giving you the tools to discover on your own, because the way that you reveal dungeons is there's this search mechanic that you have and you have to sort of do like.

What would you say?

Breath of the Wild Korok Seed visual discernment puzzles of like, there's a pattern.

If you stand in the center of the pattern, hold the Y button and then you'll reveal the dungeon and you can go do the dungeon.

It's like a little mini game to get into it, which is fairly straightforward.

But even that has... bits to it where it's like, you have to learn the rules of how that works.

And sometimes it's revealed through experimentation.

Uh, but you can also.

There's characters who will say something and like it'll be a riddle, like Hey, you'll run into an enemy.

Like, uh, this is a fake thing, but like a mushroom, I don't know if it's a fake thing.

I haven't gotten that far, like a mushroom.

And like if you hit it, it poisons you and you die faster as you go through this mini game tunnel basically.

But maybe you'll talk to a character who's like, Oh, mushrooms.

If I, you know, if I walk away from them, they tend to disappear, which doesn't make any sense.

But then you you're like, oh, yeah, remember that thing I couldn't get past?

What if that's the way to do it?

Stuff like that.

So much around the world where it's like these little opportunities to discover the things that I found so great about their previous games.

There are like extrinsic.

I think it's extrinsic in this case.

Motivators for you to go do it.

It's not just a personal thing.

It's like the game is saying hey, there's this thing over here you can go see.

You go see it and you discover what i think is some of the best writing in games.

In my opinion, it's like the stuff that they were doing in anodyne one and two.

Now there's there's a more explicit reason to go find it than just your own curiosity or or whatever.

Like you might get a reward for it.

You might get an item or an upgrade or a level up which you do in your dreams, by the way, which is crazy.

Um, one of the characters.

So every time you mention it, i think for this game, i'm like oh yeah, there's like.

Oh yeah, that's a weird thing, that's not a normal thing that most video games do.

The last thing I want to mention, and this is like for me, the games like Anodyne one.

There's a, there's an NPC dialogue that happens in that game, where I think it's just a nothing character.

But like you talk to them and they tell you that chewing ice is bad for your teeth because it causes chips.

And for whatever reason, I found that like I think the whole conversation was like either very profound or made me realize I should stop chewing ice.

Either way, it was important to me.

And that's the kind of level of writing that i don't necessarily expect from most games is like the willingness to stop and say something that's like oddly profound and and willing to be weird in the world that it's in, but still grounded.

Um like still finding a way to communicate something real about the world while taking place in this space.

That makes no sense.

Um, and there's a dialogue that happens in the town jeremy, i don't know if you ran into this.

Um, it's like off to the side There's two angels having conversations.

One's looking at the door frame and there's etches in the door frame of these like of the height markers for children as they're growing up.

Right.

And the other angel goes into a long conversation about how there is a theory that you could crunch the entire encyclopedia onto a stick, if you like.

Did a compression algorithm to turn every letter into a number and then use the distance between like measurements to figure that out?

And in that, like that little, those two interactions right next to each other, for whatever reason, I found to be deeply profound, especially in between again shooting and blowing up a little, a little green guy with a chestnut face.

And then also going and reading about God and how religion impacts people's lives.

Like I, That is the level they're operating on.

And just in this early section, it's already clear that they're doing a lot of that stuff.

Jeremy, you done the game?

Have you finished it at all?

No, I've not.

If it was not Game of the Year season and a bunch of other games weren't coming out, I would have played nothing but this for the last week.

But I've been bouncing between this and other stuff.

I'm probably like a third of the way through it.

I gather.

It's hard to say.

I saw Mellos posting about how sort of the faster playtesters got through it in like 15, 17 hours and most people were like 20 25, something like that.

So I'm probably like a third of the way through it.

I'm being pretty thorough, but...

I'm really enjoying it.

I think it's really good.

And I think what you're saying about the writing and the sincerity and profundity of it is kind of like the special sauce here.

I think if this game was, if it did not have the sort of like profound philosophical angle and sincerity and authenticity and stuff, I think it would just be like one of the best games of the year still.

Like, I think it's just incredibly fun to play.

But I think that it just yeah it like pushes it that extra layer forward where it's like I don't know.

I feel like I'm being assaulted by weird, sincere writing.

I don't know how to describe this.

This is going to be a really poor description, but I feel like some people might understand what I'm saying.

It's this weird paradox where I feel like analgesics.

Games capture the feeling that outsider art gives me but is not outsider art, because outsider art is a term typically reserved for like people, like a person who is not like trained or schooled in their discipline, but they manage to make good art in that discipline in spite of that and i don't think that applies here, because these are incredibly skilled crafts people of games, but i feel like the way that their games feel so different from everything else, it feels like they're not.

They're not like responding to what's happening in games.

They're just like making cool games from their brain out of this, like alternate universe of of game dev or something.

Like if it feels so external to everything else I play um.

It just feels like this game that you know could have been made two decades ago or now.

And it kind of doesn't matter.

Like it's just fucking, it's just great.

Um, yeah i don't know yeah the the sincerity is a big part of it i just feel and the other thing the last thing i wanted to touch on was um when i said that like there's sort of this dichotomy between like game games and like art games and this falls in the middle i think that uh it's not just that you're like playing through like oh cool like rpg dungeon and then a guy's like have you heard of god and you're like oh wow it's it's not like it's not flipping between these two modes i think that the game design itself in anal or analgesic era in angelina era is um it's like it's like when i talked about birdcage every screen in birdcage there was like a tangible idea where i'm like oh wow that's a cool design idea that's a clever like design conceit and then it just instantly moves on to the next thing and it's like oh wow that's another like crazy different game design idea um or like when i talked about why i like dark souls 2 uh it's like again you'll walk into a room in dark souls 2 and it'll be like there's a hallway there's arrows shooting down it it's the floor is poison there's a guy waiting for you at the end and it's like ah this is like a joke from the developer it's a transmission of an idea and i can clearly see the developer like winking at me be like that's some shit huh like how are you gonna do this um i feel like there are so many sort of just like I just feel like there's a lot of like inspired game design itself in here too.

And I think that that is like a, that is a dimension of the artistry.

I I didn't want to like misrepresent the artistry as like it's it's all philosophical, or it's all thematic, or it's all aesthetic, or it's like this layer that's separate from the gameplay.

I think the game design itself and Angelina era is, uh, is very inspired and inspiring.

Um, and I constantly walk into new areas in this game and I experienced new things that, uh, yeah i don't know it's just it's shocking to me that like i've been playing action rpgs that remind me of this for so much of my life for like decades and to see someone have so many fresh ideas in this sort of like genre space is like it's crazy to me i don't know they're just fucking they're doing they're doing crazy shit over there totally agreed it's it's great to see something that feels so you're 100 right so foreign and yet so familiar at the same time like it's a thing that i i feel like i've been in before like i turned it on and my wife was like is this trying to be ocarina of time i don't understand and then the screen went black because i switched over to the apple tv so she could watch that new you guys watching heated rivalry probably not uh it's it's a really good show check it out just google it i'm not gonna say anything um i actually think it's really good i'm not being facetious when i say that if you if you've seen the show then that probably sounded facetious i wasn't being facetious it's about hockey so that's it that's all you're gonna tell them all right perfect i think that's the best way to sell it just google it um yeah it's because that happened she heard the music playing and she was like oh that's totally ocarina of time like that's exactly what it sounds like um and i think that they capture that nostalgia in the visuals in the in the like in the design of the like the modeling the presentation the uh the colors the way that they do like i think mellows posted an infographic of like this is how we do all of the vertex lighting how we do all the shading so everything like animates properly but holds its visual style like it's So it's the fact that this is mostly two people blows my mind and that they've made multiple games like this.

Like, am I wrong to say that, Jeremy?

Is it more than two people on a regular basis?

I feel like it's usually just the two of them.

I don't know.

I haven't checked the credits for this game, but I know that Marina and Melos are sort of the core of this, if not the whole of it.

Yeah, I would not be surprised if other people contributed, but I would be equally unsurprised if it was like almost entirely them.

I'll have to double check the credits.

Yeah, I'm just pulling up the ones for Anodyne 2, and they're the only two names that I see here.

There's some coding tools that they credit, some QA people that they credit as well.

I'm sure it's not exclusively them, but most of the technical stuff looks like it's done by the two of them, which is At least on Anodyne 2.

I don't know the deal with Angelina Era, but their previous games are, I would say, of the same caliber of quality.

There's just a lot more content here in Angelina Era, which, I mean...

Took a while.

Stephanie was a couple years ago.

It's like having played, you know whatever, several hours of it.

Like more than five, but less than 10.

It's a I feel like I've played a lot of this game and I'm surprised that I have so much to go.

Yeah, it's a biggie.

It's really impressive.

Angeline Era, check it out on Steam and GOG for 20 bucks.

It's a discount at launch of 20% as well.

If you want to pick that up early enough, it'll still be on discount by the time you hear this, if you listen to it when it comes out.

And if you are listening to it too late, that's your fault.

Try to keep up to date.

It's like it's worth.

It's worth every penny.

Sometimes i'll see a game and be like it's like a, is this like a five hour experience?

And it's like 30 bucks or whatever, and i'm a little skeptical.

But then i play it.

I'm like, oh well, you know what?

So the quality is high enough that it's there.

This is a game where it's like the quality is there, it's 25 off sale and it's like a huge fucking game.

That's just like this is.

This is one of the best games of the year, for sure, absolutely.

You say 25.

Is it 25 dollars?

I think isn't it.

Hold on, we gotta double check this.

I thought it was 25 on steve.

I don't want to lead people astray.

It's 20 off currently 1999.

It is $24.99 when it is not on sale.

Oh, that's so weird.

But it is on sale until December 22nd is when the sale ends.

So you got time.

There you go.

Grab this game.

It's fucking awesome.

Support people who make weird, cool art games that are also fun.

I don't know.

I feel like you should throw money at these people so they can keep making games.

Agreed.

I want Androdyne 3 or whatever they want to make.

I'm joking.

I don't care.

Everything's been good so far.

There you go.

Angelina Era.

Check it out.

I would like to talk about.

We talking about birdcage.

Can we talk frank?

Did you play a little bit of birdcage?

You gave it a shot.

Yeah yeah, i played.

Yeah, i played.

I think, i think technically half like three, four out of the six stages, maybe that's most of it by the time i recorded yesterday and you were killing it.

There you go.

Yeah, what was your rank?

On average, you get a rank.

So i, i tried doing, i tried doing normal, and then, like by the i don't even know if i finished the first stage or the second stage, so then i bumped it down to easy and that was like oh, perfect.

So the difference between I think easy, you regain health.

I don't know how often, like what the mechanic is that you gain, you get health back on easy, but it was enough to like.

Okay, I can beat the stages and see the game.

But even then I died by like stage four.

But you do get achievements for killing each boss, so I was very happy to see that.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like, should Jeremy pitch or talk about the game?

Sure, yeah, yeah, please.

Jeremy, if you want to take it up.

Yeah.

Birdcage, a game by Polygon Bird, right?

Yeah.

Malono Giannis and Barry Epoch Topping, the team there, made it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Super talented developers.

So I came across their work or initially Giannis' work earlier, because i saw a game called eco breaker that they were working on.

Uh, this is what is this?

Uh, it was so.

This is a game that is not out yet and i hope comes out someday.

Um, go wishlist.

Eco breaker too.

This game looks sick.

Uh, this is another polygon bird game.

Uh, tba release date, but it sort of looks like a xeno gears inspired ps1 looking jrpg.

This looks amazing yeah.

So i was blown away by eco breaker and i was like, whatever these people make, i will fucking play uh.

And then I started seeing updates about, about Birdcage, and I was like, all right, fuck it.

I don't even play the genre of game, but I will because I'm just like sold on these people's vision.

So we talked about Birdcage a tiny bit at the end of one podcast, but we kind of never had a proper discussion on it.

And I had not completed it when we talked about it.

And now I have beat it on normal.

You know like 16 percent of people on the game on Steam have done so.

I'm just just saying it's kind of bragging, kind of a hard game.

Um i, this is a uh, shmup bullet hell, i don't know.

These are not, this is not my genre, but it's a.

I i gather this would be a shmup, if you know what that is.

Yeah, it's like a toho looking ikaruga ass.

You know uh, what are?

Radiant silver gun?

Yeah, a bunch of i've been educated blast rush, ls if you want to go there.

Star providence, i don't know whatever gradius.

Sure, Since mentioning this game I have had.

This is a very passionate fan base because since mentioning Birdcage, I've had a lot of people reach out and be like oh, you got to play this.

You got to play the same.

Yeah, it's really not just like it's not just one game that gets recommended.

I've had like six different games that people are like oh you got to play every game by like treasure.

You got to play.

You do need to play every game by treasure, though.

I will.

I'm fucking I'm radicalized.

We start a series on no clip to where we just play all the treasure games.

I would love that.

I would die for that.

I will do that.

I would do that.

I so British is like. i really frank i think maybe this i don't know if this would be a good streaming experience but i was watching you play on easy and you were crushing it i think i think you could push it up to normal and i think you could beat this game yeah no so like i've played toho games and all like i love those games just like you have to like play it enough to memorize the patterns and you get into a flow state like it's incredible like so it's the it's hard because it's coming to ps5 next year and i feel like so many of these games will come out on steam like i see it wait till i can get trophy you know but um yeah i know birdcage blew me away just from the presentation everything like um yeah someone said it perfectly it's yeah radiant silver gun meets metal gear solid one like it's it's like even the codec calls is so incredible yeah the music is phenomenal it's so it's so perfect and like yeah again it's got the the bullet hell all the all the lights and stuff but like yeah it's it's what i what i really like about it is like it feels like there's three shooting modes there's your default which spreads i don't know the fuck like Seems like, I don't know geometry well.

Whatever, you're a wide shot, a wide shot.

You can then funnel it straight.

And then my favorite thing, I think you hold L, you have like a laser sword that auto homes.

And that was my favorite thing.

So you're being more aggressive, like running up to the ships or bosses with your laser sword or whatever.

And like, it was very fun to swap between all that.

And then there's also a lot of times you're playing it where it's like, Oh, just survival mode.

Like, okay, crap.

Let me park, park my planes at the bottom of the screen and try to avoid stuff.

Um, but yeah, it's also like when you kill enemies and stuff, you get these little chips, these coins that fall and it's so satisfying to grab.

Like i don't know.

So um yeah, i was.

I was very very, i mean not surprised because jeremy recommended so i knew it would be good, but i was um yeah, but even still, i think still surprised like oh, my god, they really nailed this.

Uh yeah, i don't know.

So i've only played, i don't know me like 30 minutes of it, but that 30 minutes of it i did play and yeah, it was fun looking at the achievements because there's like, there's like just beat the game and you can do on.

If you do it on story mode, even on easy uh, if you die you can just restart from that level or go back to level select.

Um, there's also I haven't tried the arcade mode, but then there's achievements for doing like one credit clears, which I'll never be able to like.

I just I, just I don't focus on any game, except like fighting games you can do, but not uh these, I don't know bullet shooters.

Um, but, um, yeah, it was awesome.

The one credit clear.

I, I want to try it's fucking the, without spoiling anything, the last, like, few encounters of this game the entire screen is just bullets it is like you got like one inch to move between all of the shots it's it's yeah it's it's like i would say like 98 of the screen is bullets in the last boss fight and it is like i it was i was pulling my hair out trying to do it it was fucking hard as shit but like that's what i like about this game i i said this when we did the indie rec too it's like i I like games where I feel like I'm out of my depth.

I like to be pushed to my limit.

And then I Like, when I got to stage four or five in this game, I was like I don't think I can beat this game.

I think this is a game that I do not have the required, like, neural pathways to understand and do.

Because it's like... You don't have the right flavor of ADHD.

That's what it is.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I've got the distracted kind, not the hyper-focused kind.

No, I felt like, to me, it was like... because i haven't played the genre before i the i felt like the skill sort of floor was like above where i could get to or something on like the nor at least on normal difficulty it felt to me like i was like walking into the fucking arena and like a bunch of nfl players were like yeah everyone you know everyone here knows how to play football right and then they just like you know we're like all right go fucking run 60 yards i'm gonna like talk it to you hail mary style i was like i don't know if i can catch that man i'm like uh but i feel like that's the joy of it is just kind of like pushing myself and doing these levels over and over and over and kind of hitting a point where i was like all right i today's not the day and then i would think about birdcage and i i wouldn't walk away being like i'm gonna come back and beat this i would be like all right maybe i can't do this but then i would get the itch to play again and be like maybe i can and i would just fucking do a run um and you know like frank said there's a stage like you don't have to start from the the the sort of like design language of the game um like the sword is all about risk reward so when you pop the sword you can release it like frank said and it's like a homing thing that shoots out and does damage but if you hold on to it there's like a finite period where you can kind of like leave it in an enemy and stab at them and like fan it through them or whatever um and it does way way more damage but it's this risk reward thing where now you're like you know a foot away from where the lasers are coming out of so unless you really really understand the encounter that you're in or the enemy patterns or whatever uh you're instantly just gonna get fucking you know laser walled or whatever uh but yeah once i started once it started to click and i started to kind of like understand and once i started to like look more at my character model and focus more on dodging and focus kind of like less i kind of always thought was like looking ahead at where the road was leading and like looking at the enemies and that's why i was taking damage because you're just kind of like I didn't really understand you're supposed to just hyper-focus on these little micro-movements to kind of, like, thread the needle.

Like the enemies are in your periphery and you're kind of like shooting at the blurs at the corner of your vision as you hone in on the character.

Yeah,

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I had to swap where my rods and my cones were looking.

Everything's too red!

There's too much red!

Yeah, I don't know.

I just like.

The other thing is like there's this sort of like, there's like this game sense that you have to develop in this game that I I feel like this is part of the joy of the genre.

That clicked for me is that it's like when you look at a screen that's completely full of bullets.

Like if I showed this game to like, if I put it on a screen and showed, like my, like parents who don't play video games, they'd be like well no no, this would kill your parents.

This would kill a man.

I, I.

I think that like understanding that it's about sort of like seeing these patterns unfold, like these geometric patterns which are often overlapping.

Sometimes it'll be like a spiral that fans out, and then there's like another thing where it's like a like a 45 degree cone coming from the right side, these overlapping geometric patterns, And then letting your brain sort of intuitively figure out where the gaps will be.

Like, that's the joy of this is like it's like this.

It's like this puzzle where you're responding in real time dynamically.

Again, I like puzzle games when they're not puzzle games.

One day, one day we'll get you to play Minesweeper.

Uh, I mean, I've played mind sweeper.

I'm just bad at it.

It's the same, like muscle sense.

You develop those rhythm games.

Like for me, it was like guitar here.

You see a hundred notes going down and you're just like, you're reading it.

And you're, you're always, you're like what your physical body is doing is behind what your brain is reading.

And you're like, you're, you're like stacking inputs in your head.

So it's the same thing when you see the lasers come like, okay, like, my like like i keep my eyes at the where the projectiles are coming out of i don't even necessarily see my plane i can just intuitively like yeah you can i don't know like modulate where your thing is going and it's like yeah and that's like the funny thing too is like with like the japanese arcade cabinets there are these long vertical machines and and um you could have like if you had an ipad or a switch and you flip it over um yeah and so uh it's it's it's like an art to it of like a really or a technique that you really develop by just playing them over and over and over how intense are the ones in japan on the cabinets did you get a chance to play many of those or do you watch anyone go like you've seen the ddr modes but yeah i know you you will see salaryman just sit there like that's amazing just just doing it and it's like oh and it's like oh i'm assuming this guy's played this game every day off work for the last ripping cigarettes and playing gradius for the last 20 years because it's like the life i want capcom has a series called like 1941 1942 there's also like ride in all the all these like old school and like those are games are i was playing as a kid and not like you know with infinite credits or just throwing quarters not caring but then you realize like oh wait to truly play the game is to like not you know um and again that's where achievements become like a backbone for me i'm just like oh no wait if i force myself to be a pinch better oh you get the whatever the bullshit notification um no it's not bullshit it makes you happy yeah exactly that's what i live for um so yeah so it's uh i don't know but yeah so like just diving into all these because i had never played radiant silver gun i just looked up there's they had a game called sil feed for ps2 i'm more familiar with like i know like ikaruga um but yeah there's just so many of these games and like yeah it's weird because of like price tag it's so hard to justify like playing like a bullet shoot if you're not already obsessed with the genre it can seem like wait a game with like three levels why play it's like no it's it's these are like so superbly crafted like mechanisms for you to like try to survive and learn and master and like i feel like just now we talked about like with geometry wars like that like it's like a shift shift of the genre but i feel like that's what was successful on xbox live arcade and things like that but um yeah it's there there's like the lineage of this stuff is uh fascinating and yeah i get it comes back to like also with japanese games like galaga and stuff like that totally space invaders and the very origins of video games yeah yeah yeah cool it is interesting that both birdcage and angelina era are games that are sort of like elevating in a older genre in a way like neither of them feel like I guess this is what I wanted to say about Angelina and I feel like it applies to Birdcage too.

I think that they both feel like they are doing something that is in some way homage to an older style of game, but neither of them feel like homage games to me.

And I think that's really important.

There are moments in Birdcage and in Angelina where I was like I, i i'm more familiar with what angelina is sort of inspired by, but like i, i didn't feel like i was playing like a this is like a zelda one inspired moment or like this is like a link to the past moment.

Uh i, i got that sense that birdcage was also kind of like doing its own thing while being inspired.

But i never, i don't know, i i would be curious to play more of these and start to like wonder if i start to notice patterns that birdcage is playing off of.

But to me, i mean to my naive brain, it's all new.

So birdcage just was like fucking constant novelty.

Um, But Angelina and I just felt like it was like nothing, was like doing homage.

It was just fucking it was inspired by those things, but felt like totally its own thing.

I do think that's the greatest compliment that you can offer as someone enjoying a game from a genre you haven't played before, but also maybe the best thing you can do as a fan of something.

If you're trying to create a new version of it is like to have someone who's never played a game in that genre go.

That was so good.

I want to play more games in this genre.

Yeah.

That is huge.

Like, you know, to, to Jonathan, his team, like that's congratulations.

I think you've succeeded in getting a lot of people excited about this.

I've heard more people talking about triggers, or sorry triggers treasures games uh, in the last couple of weeks because of birdcage and and Sektori, than I have in a very long time, because they're so good at introducing the sort of gameplay.

Like you guys are talking about noticing when, when the game turns into lines, you can like you're not seeing it literally but, like you know, this is the bullet path and you start, like subconsciously, detecting all of the lines you need to weave between.

And when the bullets are going to get there.

That's like that's Bradley Cooper limitless stuff, right there.

You know, that's, that's a whole nother level.

You're playing, you're gaming at a different wavelength.

And, and I think they've succeeded in making something that works on that, on that wavelength so congrats to them yeah birdcage is great check it out uh it's on steam for 14 bucks right it's on sale i would have to double check it's been a while i keep every time i just type in birdcage and i get the 1996 robin williams movie oh well i mean that's that's a different experience it's a great pairing with this game it is 13.99 on steam and worth every penny 14 smackarinos put that in your mouth and swallow it i don't know whatever birdcage check it out it's on steam it's a great game it's gonna come to consoles next year you were saying frank ps5 yeah i think i don't know if it's limited run games but some there is like a physical edition coming out somewhere i think um oh yes right yeah east east asia east asia east asia soft is uh has a page for for yeah the physical version digital uh 2026 hopefully yeah ps4 ps5 switch xbox um all of that so Yeah, oh my God.

Oh yeah, I see the giant physical edition.

Oh my God.

And the collector's edition comes with a CD for the game, which has Barry Topping's fantastic music.

I think that he's such a great composer.

Paradise, like the music in this game is great.

Do not get me wrong.

Every song, menu songs are great.

The action stuff is great.

Cutscene stuff is great.

All of his music is very good here.

If you, for whatever reason, like the same kind of music I do which I don't know if I've been very vocal about, but like, if you like that weird 80s.

I was listening to a playlist on YouTube music and some of the stuff I listened to got called Yacht Club music.

Not not like Yacht Club, like Shovel Knight, like a club on a yacht.

And I felt very insulted.

But if you like that, like Stevie Wonder, is sort of like new wave pop stuff that was happening in the 80s and late 70s.

The music from Paradise Killer that Barry Topping did is phenomenal.

So good.

That like New Jack Swing sort of sound.

It's very, very good.

Yeah, great composer.

And the soundtrack that comes with the game is just like a picture of free birds flying through the sky.

Beautiful image.

Birdcage might be soundtrack of the year.

It's up there.

It's up there for sure.

When when, when we do game of the year discussions I want to do, I would love to do a category debate about best, best OST.

I would love to do that, too.

Minmax does that every year.

Well, so far for the last couple of years where they like sit down and talk about some of their favorite music from the year.

So I would totally be down to do that.

It's an original idea.

We didn't take it because I think there's so much so much good music.

There's no reason to have only one good podcast that talks about all of it.

You know, I'd be down for that.

We do like a category for best podcast that talks about the best soundtrack of the year.

That's right.

And we would win it.

And we would give it to ourselves.

That's because, of course, who else are we going to give it to?

Minmax, Games Friends, and Getting Better.

That's way too much for one podcast.

Yeah, Birdcage.

Check it out on Steam.

$14.

It might be on sale next week.

Who knows?

Probably not.

Maybe.

I don't know.

I'm not a doctor.

What do you know that I don't know?

There's a Steam sale next week on the 18th, I think.

It starts.

I'm not exposing anything.

You can Google upcoming events on Steam.

You're smart.

Yeah, there's a bunch of great homage games.

While we're talking about homages and getting nostalgic for the past, how about we talk about a game that's been in development for so long?

It is weirdly nostalgic for itself.

Routine, the first person sci-fi horror adventure game.

It is finally here after more than a decade.

I feel like, again, I said at the top, the story is a little bit more interesting than that.

I don't want to get into all of it because I'm not a journalist or anything, but I'll leave a link in the description to a good interview where basically they talked about restarting the game a couple of years ago.

And it's still taking quite a long time, but not. not 13 full years it's not a duke nukem that's not even true for duke nukem forever so that joke doesn't even make any sense anyway yeah yeah routine new video game i have completed it jeremy you've said you've played about half of the game right i have uh yeah without spoiling anything i got to a sort of crescendo moment where it transitions into something quite different is i think you'll know and anyone who's played it will know but that doesn't spoil anything so you haven't played past the like the opening of that bit correct okay all right Okay, I'm just making sure that I don't say anything because you're right at the point where I shouldn't even say anything from that point on.

So we'll just talk about the first half of the game lightly.

We're not going to spoil anything, but I'll stay in that territory.

I mean if you think the back half of it is significantly worse or better.

That's not a spoiler to me.

No, no, not worse or better.

It's just I don't want to overhype it.

I don't want to color your expectations, positively or negatively, overhype or underhype.

Uh, I would, I would like you to experience that on your own with your own emotions.

Um yeah, routine is the.

The chunk of it that Jeremy has played so far is is, I think, visually very arresting.

Uh, it's a first person sci-fi horror adventure game where you are playing as a software engineer, right?

Coming onto the ship to repair a security system that is malfunctioned.

Uh, after an event that took place on the moon,

It's a.

It's a moon base, where whalers on the moon uh, We carry our harpoon for all my Futurama fans out there.

And you are basically helping out this, it's sort of a resort colony almost, I think.

They sort of mentioned that there's people living there who aren't there just for work.

They're also there for leisure.

And you are adventuring through this area trying to Yeah, just repair that security system.

And the way that you do that is by finding clues and solving puzzles that are fairly straightforward.

I would argue this game is incredibly linear.

It uses a lot of good visual language to direct you.

But the most common visual language they use is you can't see in the dark.

Dumb, dumb.

Get out of there.

So don't go that direction.

Go towards the light, Carol Ann.

And this one.

Routine structure of like it's puzzles and everything I think works quite well for delivering the information.

Like there's no hud, there's no quest marker, there's no map you can pull up.

Everything is self directed.

You have to pay a lot of attention to the point that the first like 10 minutes of this game was me walking around in one room trying to figure out where everything was.

I was very lost at the beginning.

It's sort of an emergent problem with like this game looks so fucking good and the issue with incredibly high fidelity is that like You play like an old game.

The item that helps you progress is like a big glowing key that's like 20 times too big and it's spinning around like it's a symbol that represents a key.

When everything is one-to-one hyper-fidelity... like a coffee mug looks equally as important as the thing that you need to to progress through the game um so i got stuck in the beginning because i was just like i don't really know i don't know what you want me to do like i don't know where you want me to look i'm like like you said i'm guided by what's glowing and what's lit up and stuff but i was kind of like this game is very hands off, which I appreciate about it.

Um, but uh yeah, I was a little, I was a little confused at first, because it's so, it's so like immersive.

Like it was just like, yeah, like fucking figure it out.

Um, and I didn't know what it wanted me to figure out or something.

You know what I mean?

That's a very good point.

Like the, the way that they deliver information to you is typically not in the way that most games do, uh, which I think is cool, but because you don't know what you're doing and you don't know how to find anything out, it is that very early, uh, like learning a new language and like you spend weeks memorizing, you know, pronouns and nouns and.

How do you form a basic sentence?

This is that sort of experience of like the first 20, 30 minutes of this game.

Is you figuring out how to learn anything before you can progress?

Like, uh, you have this weapon called the CAT, I think is the short form that they use.

It's this very cool, probably one of the coolest weapons in games.

It's a really good prop.

It's like a big cassette futurism, uh, kind of like dead space looking kind of, I don't know.

It's like this whole game's cassette futurism thing is like uh, You know, for people who haven't heard that term before, it's like an aesthetic that is, you know, like alien, like it's like big China.

It's what they imagined the future would look like in the 70s and 80s.

Yes.

Like nothing ever got better for video than the cassette tape is the ultimate form of recording and sharing video.

Audio cassette tape.

Best way to do it.

So visually there's like glitches and visual effects that are reminiscent of like a glitching tape, or it uses this one stock VHS glitch to that.

I see all the time and I want to just keep a record of it.

I'm not knocking them for using it.

I just think it's very funny that everyone uses that exact same clip.

Um, but like, so there's that there's the CAT, which is very cool.

Cause it's like your puzzle solving tool and your weapon that you use throughout the game.

Um, it is uh scanner that you would use, sort of similar, I guess, to Alien Isolation's heart rate scanner, but you can hold it up and zoom in and see everything around you and it has a little bit of a lower frame rate so it updates a little slowly.

There's puzzles that you solve with that and different ways of using it.

But the way that you learn how to interact with the device isn't like.

You pick it up and then there's a little pop-up in the bottom left corner.

That's like press triangle to look at the gun and then interact with the buttons.

You're sitting down and watching what is effectively a presentation like a tutorial presentation in the universe for people who come onto the ship and have to use that tool.

There's a um like a power, not even really a powerpoint, just a slide presentation that's projected onto the screen in front of you in this room and you have to interact with it to learn, like everything in the game the menus and stuff, because there's no hud.

It's literally screens being projected on the walls that you interact with by moving the mouse cursor and looking around on the screen and like clicking with your controller or your mouse, whatever you want to do.

And that's how you interact with the menus and everything.

So like the way that the information is given to you is tough.

It's like really in the universe of the game.

And then also you still have to walk around these environments that I think look great.

But because of the way that the creatures are handled, because this is a horror game.

There are monsters that are maneuvering through areas trying to stop you from you know living, because that's not what they want you to do, because they're evil, because they're corrupted.

And you have to maneuver around them and like you can stun them with the CAT, the cat gun.

You can.

You have like a laser shot where you can, you know you can, you can disable them if you want to.

But because they're like androids.

Just to, just to explain why, like the tool in the, like the electronic tool gun disables them.

It's like the security helper robots are like haywire kind of thing.

Yeah.

They're Androids.

Uh, they're, they're creepy robots that to me as support robots, there's part of this game.

I want to be critical of, but like, I just, I don't, I, part of it doesn't work for me.

I don't know, whatever.

Um, but the gameplay stuff I'm going to.

I want to just make sure that I get clear of of explaining what the game is before I say what I didn't like about it.

I think what works for that delivery of information stuff is like the puzzles are very linear but like the challenge of solving them is finding the information.

Jeremy, have you found the first half of the puzzles?

Because that's how I felt about it.

It's like the hard part is is finding what you're supposed to parse, because once you have the information, it's very easy to sort of crunch it down and solve whatever the puzzles are.

Yeah um yeah, there were i.

I, during this like more so towards the first like quarter of the game, before i kind of like understood the, the pacing and flow of the game, i found myself lost a lot.

I feel like uh, this game's aesthetics and it's like it's visual design and like it's lighting and like the way everything about it i think is like basically perfect, like i think it is like i, i wouldn't change a thing.

I think it's like a 10 out of 10.

Looking, sound and sounding.

Sounding the sound design is amazing.

It is some of the best sounds in video games i've ever heard.

When the, when the androids, the type fives or whatever, when they find or they're looking for you, they scan for you and the scan is like yeah dude oh, my god, that's gonna be my nightmare still today.

It's, it's fucking scary, um.

But in terms of the game design, i feel like maybe that is sort of the weaker aspect of this game.

I don't think it's bad by any stretch of the imagination, but i think it.

Uh, There were moments where it felt like I was trying to do what amounts to a very simple puzzle.

But the way in which I was teed up to do it was like a little unclear.

And I think the reason is, is because I think it really is committing to very like diegetically driven immersive experience i think they wanted to make a game where it just feels like you're living in this world they didn't want like the fucking i mean that's the trade-off when you get rid of like the the you know ubisoft world of warcraft icons that point you in a direction all of a sudden it's like the the bumpers are gone and it's like you can fall into the fucking bowling gutter you know what i mean like that's the that's the price of this it takes a very very specific type of design to keep you on rails without the rails being there um And so I did find myself kind of like lost or confused sometimes.

I eventually always got back on on track, but I did feel like that was sort of the least focused area of the of this game.

Yeah.

I think from a design perspective, it was like the, the setup of it, because this game started in development like 13 years ago, in in 2012, 2013.

This would have been a pretty novel experience.

We were still sort of making games that were about characters following you around an environment and chasing you down and sort of attacking you and resetting your progression.

You go back to the save point and like that stuff wasn't super played out at that point in time.

It was kind of like an acceptable thing.

Now I'm so tired of that that, even though I thought this game was great, that part of it really really weighed down on me, especially in the back half.

Again, I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to cover your experience.

But at that point I had done enough with the type fives the big Android enemies to, and then sort of getting in the way of me just solving the puzzles that.

I wasn't excited about doing any more of that at any point.

Um, if anything with these games, I just I think I've said before I don't find horror games particularly scaring, especially ones that are like jump scare, cut your progression back, stuff.

Cause the thing I'm afraid of in that scenario is not being scared.

The thing I'm afraid of is wasting my time.

And there were a lot of instances in routine, despite it only being like maybe six, seven hours total for me to get through.

Um, I was like, I do why I don't want to waste more of my time.

Just let me get I know what I need to do with the blocker between me doing the thing.

And, you know, the thing being done is this enemy that I'm not particularly excited to deal with.

It's just kind of a little jump scare moment.

And then I continue on or it kills me and I got to redo the first two things because the game has save points that are like

Actually, it's a pretty interesting way of interacting with it.

Like, you got to take out your cat gun and press the wireless connection button.

Yeah, you got to sync with it, and it's like, you know, they got to say pairing, pairing.

No, it works pretty quick.

It's good.

Like, that's how you save.

You interact with the menu on that, and they're all over the world and stuff.

That part of it, for me, did not work, especially after Soma.

I don't know if you guys played that, the...

Soma?

I've played a little bit of it.

I've never completed Soma.

There's a version of that game or I think it's the setting that they released later on where you can disable the enemy AI.

So you don't have to worry about the creatures on the ship.

And it's a different design, of course, like it's very not what they were necessarily going for at the start.

But there's something to be said about like exploring these environments and just seeing, because routine.

Jeremy is totally right.

This is probably the prettiest game of this year.

I think the art direction is fantastic.

The use of color.

It's hard to overstate how like insanely good this game looks.

Yes, like it doesn't even feel like i think it was done in ue4 ue5, whatever the case.

They started working on it in unreal 3 that's funny and then they transitioned to unreal 4 and then transitioned to unreal 5.

It feels like it's an unreal 6, like it looks so good and it's clearly not just a graphical fidelity kind of thing.

It's like they're doing Like the projector.

Stuff I was talking about is like real in-game projectors.

They've invented light bulbs.

No, but like they're projecting the image from a point onto a wall.

So if you see a character or you walk past the projector, it projects onto part of your body or the cat as you hold it up.

Like the lighting is just on another level in this.

It looks so good.

The environment's everything.

So when I'm pushed away from looking at them because there's an enemy nearby, I feel like I'm missing something.

It's like, i don't i just don't it's totally a personal preference thing i think but like i just don't get on with that kind of game design uh which is a shame because i said i like everything else about routine and i liked i thought the puzzles were fine they were fairly linear and like easy to solve there's a few good puzzles like uh some of the scanner stuff they use an interesting way totally yeah there's a point that you would have got to that was like yeah very smart um yeah no i agree with you i typically am not a fan of like uh run and hide horror games like i don't really like games where even like alien isolation is maybe one of the ones that worked the best for me in moments and i it's just not like a genre type that i really gel even that game though by like halfway it was like i was so tired of seeing the xenomorphs that i was just you know i knew exactly how to deal with them i was like here's a just enough flamethrower that you run away from me so i can keep doing what i was doing yeah yeah i i don't know games especially with like really strong atmosphere like um even uh the fuck is it called is it little nightmares yeah um i i liked little nightmares one which is the only one i've played uh but uh i don't know i'm just like bad at fucking if there's like a guy and he's trying to get you i'm fucking he's always gonna get me and i'm like if it's like instant fail it's even worse if i get caught and it's just like all right back to the fucking start the ocarina of time castle over because the guard found you um i just suck at it and it's not like fun for me it doesn't it's not like a gameplay loop to me it's like a punishment loop or something yeah totally um And this game is a little more forgiving on that.

You kind of get like if a robot catches you, it'll like pick you up and throw you and then if it catches you again, you're dead.

But yeah, I don't know.

I kind of would have rather had more moments in this game be just about exploring like atmospheric horror.

Like.

More about like, because there is a lot of like reading, you know, emails that were sent between the crew here and stuff, and kind of like putting the pieces together on what happened.

I kind of would have preferred almost like like um, like science of blake manor.

I think is a really interesting contrast with this, because science of blake manor it's like there are, there are sort of like zones of permission where it's like you can't go in there because there's a person in there and it's about it's more about like being context aware and less about being like spatially aware.

It's not in science of blake manor.

There's not like npcs walking around and like thief.

You know what i mean.

It's not like you have to like pickpocket an npc, it's just about being aware of where you can and can't go at certain times.

Um, And I almost prefer that because it lets you just like focus more on narrative and immersion and world building.

I don't feel like running and hiding.

I mean, I guess that's not entirely true in this case, because there were moments where I was running and hiding in routine that I thought were very effective and powerful.

Trying to like lose the robots.

Seeing how their patterns of chase also their behavior, changes when they're in pursuit of you was very cool.

Yeah, totally. and like kind of learning the rules.

I think there were moments where it really worked for me.

I just, I wish that maybe there was a, a little less of it is my only note.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I think when you see them sort of like the, the Android, sort of standing off on their own, not moving or doing anything, and then suddenly they turn and just start running in one direction, it's scary.

It's way scarier when they're not moving for some reason, like when i would walk in a room and one of them would just be like fucking t-posed there because you're just waiting.

It's scary.

But like i walked in and i was standing right next to one and one was just like staring into the wall and that scared me way more than being chased for some reason.

100 agree yeah, it was, it's.

It's one of those things where i'm just like I don't.

I don't know if you can make it work on purpose to have these enemies and have them be a threat, but like not interact with the player.

I'm sure you could do it.

I just don't I don't know if I've seen a shape like that where it's worked.

I would love to play a game like that is what I'm saying.

I think routine looks great.

I wish there was more stuff to do like like seance of Blake Manor.

If you could do that sort of horror storytelling stuff, like they do in the emails and the in the media that you can uh listen to and watch in the game, like there's those menus that you can interact with on the wall.

Sometimes there's there's diary entries or emails you can read, there's cassette tapes with people recording their, their thoughts and everything.

I think all of that works quite well.

The voice acting is good in the writing for it.

Uh, i think, especially as it leads to the conclusion it continues to get better and better, which i thought was great.

Um, i would have loved to see more of that.

Not totally a, I just or I thought it was still quite good.

It just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be because of those parts.

That's just me though.

If you, if you like, if you like like Soma, Alien Isolation, if you like, who is it?

Jeff Vandermeer, the guy who wrote Annihilation.

If you like his work.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

If you like, you know the thing kind of Um, if that, if any of those are sort of in your wheelhouse.

I think this is an experience worth having.

Or weirdly 2001, a space odyssey.

Like, yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of, cause you're on a spaceship and kind of like the shining a little bit.

There's a little bit of shining in this.

Um, yeah, but, um, yeah, I don't know.

It doesn't quite, it didn't blow me away so far, but I, I really am glad I played it.

I would love to hear your thoughts when you're done with it.

If you want to save it for the pod next week or whatever, maybe you don't finish it.

Maybe you're like, this is a terrible.

No, I'm definitely, I'm kidding.

Yeah yeah, it's not much longer.

It's like i said.

It's maybe like five or six hours.

If you know what you're doing uh, you know, pee your pants like i did, maybe you can fish it a little quicker.

Um yeah routine, check it out.

It's on steam and uh xbox, ps5 right, it's not a bunch of different platforms.

Uh, how much is it?

I, i 25.

I think that is a reasonable price.

I would say it is on game pass.

Oh shit.

Really?

If you support the Microsoft Corporation, there you go.

Developed by Lunar Software.

Congrats to them for getting the game finished out the door.

It's a long development process.

Not again, not just the whole time they were working on it, but it's great that they were able to have that idea all those years ago and get it down to the finish line.

So congrats to them for making something that I think is is, at the very least, one of the best looking games I've ever played.

There's also a cute robot in it and he's kind of snarky and funny and I was like Claptrap could never.

No, not in a million years.

It was like if I didn't hate Claptrap, and I was like, wow, that's fucking impressive.

Yeah, it was like a cute version of Claptrap that didn't make me upset and wasn't voiced by Jack Black in the movie, so automatic free points there.

And it's also voiced like they really stick to that, that 70s technological aesthetic, like the best thing we ever had was cassette tapes.

This is like the best voices we ever had was a speak and spell.

We never figured out anything better than that.

Yeah, it's fucking the.

The aesthetic vision for this game is is out of this world.

I think it's worth.

Uh, that's not a space pun.

Um, i think this game is worth playing just for experiencing like this aesthetic strengths.

Honestly yeah, break through your routine of playing video games and check out routine the video game that we think you should check out.

All right, GameStop TV.

Thanks for coming.

Be sure to buy a Funko Pop.

That was a wrap-up that would play on the TV in GameStop.

Oh, boy.

Well, okay, we've talked about most of the games that we had to cover this week.

Angeline Era, Birdcage, and Routine.

Quick hits on two things.

Skate Story.

New game out this week from Sam Ang.

I think we've talked about it a couple times now, both on the pod and in a Next Fest video.

This is like a third-person Tony Hawk-style skateboarding game where you're doing flicks and tricks and lots of cool other stuff in a world that is like demonic and scary-looking and sharp and very weirdly poetic and philosophical about the culture that skateboarding has around it.

Like it's not exclusively a game about performing great tricks.

It is, but it's also a game about what skateboarding is and how counterculture works and everything.

I think the game so far of what I've played, the first hour of it is hitting all the same notes that the demo was and continuing from there.

It is so much fun to play and get the controls down.

The music is good.

It's done by blood cultures and just, There's so much individual style losing from everything.

Like there's text layered on the world.

It's not just environments that you're skateboarding through.

Like sometimes you could stop and look and there's literal lines of like bodies of text printed on the ground.

It is such a weird aesthetic vision that I absolutely adore.

I think it looks great.

Sounds great.

Plays great.

I'm loving skate story.

Can't wait to finish it, though, because I want to see if it totally sticks the landing.

Finally, we can use that.

And it kind of is a pun.

Yeah, check it out.

Skate Story on Steam and Switch to PS5.

And that's it so far.

I don't think it's on Xbox yet.

I've not played the demo for this.

Does this play like Tony Hawk?

It plays, I would say more like skate, because like you get when you're doing the tricks it's sort of like you're doing flick stuff.

But then also the you bend the It's so hard to talk about it the way that it presents it.

It plays like SSX.

You're using the top triggers to prime your moves.

There we go.

So you hold, like, R2, and then there's kind of, like, almost like a rhythm game.

But, like, there's a sweet, like, active reload.

It's got, like, years of more active reload.

You hold R2, and you'll be, like, a circle cursor.

And if you pop on the green spot, you do, like, a perfect trick.

If you miss the green you'll do it, but it's like rough and you get more points if you smooth it.

Um, so yeah.

So if you hold like r2 and r1, oh my god, it's like a nollie heel flip or whatever.

So it's like figuring out those combinations.

I've only played like an hour of it, so it's like i but i did not in my instinct was like, oh shit, i don't really like, so i want to keep playing because it's as someone who's so, so hardcore with every skate game it was like oh, i kind of like skate more.

So this is, this is actually what i was hoping you were, you would want to talk about with uh, with skate story because like, i think maybe it won't be a quick hit folks, maybe we're going to talk about a.

I like Tony Hawk, but I never really got into those games growing up.

Right.

So I like the idea of a Tony Hawk game.

And this works for me because it puts it in a narrative structure that I also appreciated.

Not to knock Tony Hawk, but it sounds like so you're not enjoying the narrative stuff as much as getting in the way of you skating.

Honestly was like, I like Tony Hawk's underground story way more.

I was like that.

Like, but again, that's why I don't want to talk about it.

Cause I want to play the, I have had like not there's 10 chapters.

I've done only one out of 10.

So I feel like I can't judge the like.

I feel like, if that's the case, you're not going to dig it.

Yeah, and that was my horror.

I thought i was like anxious going to sleep last night.

It's like shit.

I said i was gonna talk about this game, but i don't like, oh crap oh.

So i tried playing it and then i was miserable playing it.

Not because it was like i'd rather play other games, like and like there's a review of it folks, so that's my instinct, but but again, i i played this game at like paxi's 2019, so like, and aesthetically looks awesome, but like, sitting down to play, it was like, oh shit.

I don't know i'm like, but again, i've spent so many hours playing skate.

There's even Tony Hawk three and four remaster.

I have to go back to.

My brain is pulled in 600 different directions of games to play for, games of the year stuff that it's like it's so hard to find a groove on a game right now.

So it was like, Oh, I got to come back to this game.

Cause this guy this, you know this this this, this game's been development for so long that I don't want to be dismissive after 10 minutes when I'm already in a bad mood.

So I'm like, no, let me.

So like if I, if, if we do a regular podcast next week, I would love to play and talk about it.

But yeah, I feel like Oh I I, but again, but I feel like this sounds so, but it's like sorry, because I've played almost every single skate game.

I feel like I need to truly play this and, and, and, and like pack my thoughts together.

But I just have not had the time to, to, to do that.

So that is where I'm at now.

I'm very interested in it.

My, it does control differently.

Um, and then one thing I do like when you press square, you like, what's the term?

It's not, you like, you like conclude, you punctuate your combos.

So there's been some instances where there's like a this is what the cool thing I like.

Uh, at the end of a chapter I don't know if it's every chapter, but at the end of the first chapter there's like a boss, a quote unquote, boss.

And it's like, you have two minutes to deal damage to the boss.

How do you deal damage?

Oh, stack a combo and then press square to like slam down.

And then you're sending that combo to damage the enemy.

So the bet, and if you're, uh, hitting your tricks on the active reload on the green, you like, you like land it smooth as opposed to sketchy.

So, so there's this like timing and rhythm.

And then there's like, um, almost like super meat boy.

There's like hazards on the floor.

And so you'll get points for jumping over the hazards.

But if you run into the hazard, you fall, you shatter, you lose your combo.

So it's like, Oh, this is like very interesting.

It's different than like extreme sport, whatever MTV skateboarding, like all these, it's like, it's so different so that's why like my initial um distaste for it is like oh okay wait it's it's wanting me to really re-approach i'm looking at this and yeah the music is good but yeah i just have to like i just need i again i just need the time to be able to play it and uh gel into it but yeah well i'm glad that you were able to at least give it a shot and and it sounds like your perspective on it i think is even more valuable because like i like it because it's like a post-modern um exploration of the counterculture of skateboarding it's like you know you're you're made of glass it's this is what it's like to be 35 years old i imagine as you fall and everything breaks skateboarding in your 30s yeah it's not like in college and thinking fucking capitalism is bad which hey yeah being made of glass yeah that's what's exactly what it's like smoking cigarettes drinking arizona iced tea i never grew up um so i i like that interpretation of the the world and style of skateboarding but it's totally not it's i don't know when i was growing up I had this friend Jasper, coolest kid I ever knew, and he would take me to the skate park all the time.

And we'd hang out with these guys who clearly were too old to be hanging around a bunch of 13 year olds.

But they would tell us like, Hey man, skateboarding, man, skateboarding is for losers.

And I was always like, what do you mean?

You guys are so cool.

Fuck in history has ever said that's crazy.

He said the only thing everyone thinks is cool.

He said it in this way where it was like, not like skateboarding.

Like, you know, I got the element brand logo and stuff.

He was like skateboarding as a thing that you do in your free time.

He's like, it's what losers do.

Cause it's like, we have nothing else to do with our time.

And I was like, at the time I was like, Oh, that's a profound thing to say.

But now, you know, now I'm not 13 and I'm like, well, I don't know what you meant by that.

But it's just interesting to see the way that you can interpret the idea of skateboarding and like the counterculture that comes with that.

Is it something that's exclusively up to interpret?

How do you look at it from an outsider's perspective?

Because that's how I end up looking at it.

Right.

But this guy told me this thing that I like clearly is exactly what someone who's 26 would be saying to a bunch of 13 year olds like yeah, people who do what I'm doing are losers.

And I was like which part the skateboarding are talking to children at the park like strangers.

Yeah, very just.

Every time i think of skateboarding and all that aspect of it, i go back to that weird, random moment.

It wasn't like deeply uncomfortable, it was just like what a weirdly, not profound thing to say.

That's the funniest guy to be telling you what's worthwhile.

As a guy who's hanging out at the skate park at 26 talking to who's drinking at 2 pm like like yeah yeah, he's like listen, you don't want to be you, you want to be like me.

Like that's fucking hilarious.

Let me tell you how you should be.

Yeah, here's my tutorial on life.

Kid, don't be like me.

Crack open a mickey's and throw that skateboard away, don't you want some smeared off?

You're 13, you can drink.

You can drink, right?

Your parents aren't here.

Um, that's my review of skate stories.

You can drink.

My parents aren't here.

Don't talk to 26 year olds at the skate park.

Uh, skateboarding is like the coolest thing.

I say this as someone who's bad at skateboarding and has never been good at skateboarding.

Skateboarding is cool specifically because it is one of the dumbest ways you can spend your time.

That's what's fucking cool about it is that it's like, it's awesome to be, to master something so cool. so like dangerous and so anti-utilitarian that's so dangerous so high risk and low reward yep that's just like i don't know that's why it's a cool creative expression and it's so like it's like ephemeral too like it doesn't it's like a sand mandala like it doesn't create like a lasting thing it's just like this fucking it happens in the moment and it's gone and like if a buddhist monk was hitting a an ollie that would be so sick though dude if the dalai lama was fucking hitting a five oh i'd be a skateboarding is cool check out skate story it's on steam switch to ps5 20 bucks and it is on playstation plus i don't know which tier it's on one of the tiers but yeah yeah not just the subscription you got to get the like plus extras catalog again it could be on the base one but i i just paid i have the max out one but i don't know what the different tiers are yeah again terrible at the naming over there at uh at sony what are they doing what are they doing what happened to fair games what are you guys doing i want to play game of the year uh yeah those are all the games this week again angelina era birdcage routine what else you want to talk about what's up yeah i'll talk about the game actually i so i bought melgar solid snake eater and i started skipping over this why didn't you tell me i've only played again because we record early in the week it's like i i thought we would have way more time to play all these in your defense we recorded on thursday last week recording on tuesday this week so i was like dude oh my god so so that's why i was like i feel like i didn't do my homework but i but i put i spent i don't know so that's the constant anxiety i'm in but um yeah so i i had a rule to myself i wouldn't pick up metal gear solid 3 snake eater until i beat death stranding 2 because like koji you know kojima this team has spent years making working on a new game while konami just remastered their old one and it's like well i can't like ignore death stranding 2 and go back to mgs3 so i finished death stranding 2 and then it was on sale for like 40 bucks metal gear solid 3 um and again i've only played the first hour but like oh my god just my memories of mgs3 i played on ps2 i played the ps3 remaster um But it feels like playing Resident Evil 4 Capcom style.

The new camera is so good.

Even the mud effects crawling around.

This is just the first 30 minutes or hour.

I'm playing in the Japanese audio language track, which is really exciting.

But that is a game I'm generally like, okay, I'm excited to play this.

So that's the game I'm most...

It's like there's no review.

That's the thing I'm most excited to play.

I also have played a third of Mind's Eye, because that game was on sale for – these are Black Friday reviews.

I love the games that you're playing, man.

Hell yeah.

Yeah, again, this isn't – it doesn't fit the like – Hey, who cares?

But this is what I – It's a video game you play.

Talk about it.

Yeah, that's – like I feel like it's important.

When you're on episode 257 of a fucking podcast – You know what you're into.

No, it's the opposite.

It's important to like keep it fucking – i, i think the every podcast i've ever listened to that got bad is because they adhered too strictly to a formula or because they were trying to like recapture what they did back in the day or something.

I feel like it's fine like, if this podcast is sometimes about like these are games i'm excited to play.

These are games i haven't had time to play, but this is why i find them intriguing.

Like that's fine.

I don't think it always has to be like a fucking book report yeah, so so thank you.

Yeah i, i uh.

Yeah, so i got mine's.

I was ten dollars.

That was the thing where everyone came out.

People were, you know like like, Yeah.

Yeah.

People weren't very positive about it.

No.

And it's not it's it's, it's.

It's the kind of thing where it's like extremely fun to stream, because then you have like hundreds of people making fun of it and we're clipping it.

So it's like you're playing this game by yourself.

Don't.

If you're playing it with friends it's it's, it's funny.

It feels like playing a bad like xbox 360 launch game.

But so what is it?

Is it like a gta clone style thing?

Is that unfair?

Is it metaverse still so i, i don't know the story of my the the, the um, what do you call it?

The um, the origin of this thing?

I feel like they came on stage at the game awards years ago and was like we're working on a game, it's called everything, it's going to be everything, and it felt like an nft metaverse, tech bro, like grift thing.

And then the end result, like eight years later, was like ah, here's Mind's Eye.

When you're playing the game.

It's the most bizarre experience because you can tell they wanted to make like something that was like Cyberpunk or GTA, an open world game.

But so this is a open world game where you're just going from mission to mission to mission.

There's no open world activities.

You can even like when you're driving to your next mission, you can like press square to skip the drive sequence.

So it feels like you're only playing 20 of a game in which the side content would be it feels like playing saints row, but like, but you can't do anything.

It's just, it's such a bizarre game.

Cause it feels like 20% of a finished product.

And so you're playing it and you're like, I think I knew what they were trying to go for.

Um, but yeah, it just feels like like playing like a generic Ubisoft game which again, it's not a compliment, but it's it's.

I'm I'm always interested in ambitious failures.

Like I'm so excited.

It's like Oh, this is so fascinating to see um, there's only English language track, you can't play in Japanese, but yeah.

So.

But what I think is really funny about it is like the trophy progression is like if you just beat the game, you get a platinum.

So I'm like, you'll, you'll do the most mundane thing.

And it's like, here's a silver trophy.

It's like, wow, this is all like, I don't know.

So I think I'll keep playing and keep beating it.

Yeah.

It's just it's.

There's also something very funny and inconsistent for like, the first mission or two, if you run over an npc, it's like an auto fail state like oh, be careful of hitting civilians.

If you run over three people, that's your max, you fail the mission.

After that first mission, they like, they like, forgot to like put that gate on or whatever.

So like it's inconsistent because then most of the missions you can just run around and run over people and the game doesn't say anything or penalize you.

Um, so it's like.

It's like it feels like I'm actively QA to a game that's already been abandoned and they're done patching, but it feels like I'm QA testing because every single mission I'm just I'm just seeing how I can break the game.

Um, so like, I, it's very, so like, I don't know.

It just feels like a thing that shouldn't have been released, but I'm playing it.

I have the physical disc.

It was $10 and now they can't take it away from me.

I own the, it's not like Concord.

We're going to shut down the servers.

Um, and conquer is a game I wish I was able to play.

So yeah, I don't know.

Mind's eye is, is, uh, yeah it's like a fascinating failure and um the actual shooting and driving is okay like this is not a recommendation this is not like but it's like it's just like it feel it's it's a it's a bizarre game because yeah it feels like something that shouldn't have been released it feels like 20 of a finished game and it really makes me wonder like what the hell were they going for i don't know it's also something that's kind of cool is the city i think it's like red rock it's las vegas it's yeah so i'm like oh my god it's they even have the dome there's the mandalay bay there's the luxor it's not do they have the big uh bass pro shop pyramid i should maybe i should i should see because it's it's yeah because the fact that we have the dome in there is like oh this is like modern well it's like it's it's i don't know it's fake future but it's basically las vegas the fact that there's the luxor the mandalay bay treasure island so it's kind of funny noting all these locations and like oh my and like i like I love Las Vegas.

Again, my dad sent me to Vegas.

There's been lots of video games that have taken place in Vegas.

San Andreas.

There was like LA Machine Guns by Sega.

There's a level where you're in Vegas.

So anytime I see a real-life location, reimagine a video game, it's always fascinating.

It's also interesting to see what era they've captured.

So this might be the first Vegas-inspired video game that has the dome set in its place.

So if you just want to talk about the history of a city in terms of las vegas games this is one that no one knows about like this is they used las vegas as the model and um yeah, i know, i feel like it's it's.

It's like the um, it's like chasing bigfoot or something, i don't know.

There's a thing where it's like i need to, i need to, i need to keep playing this game because it's a game that no one would play beyond the the novelty of being a twitch streamer and like look how bad this shitty game is, ha ha.

But now it's like dude, i don't know, it's ten dollars.

I like getting trophies, it's easy to play, it's funny to play.

I'm going to keep playing it.

I like playing it.

It's not good, but it's fun.

It's like skateboarding.

It's like only losers – only losers play Minds Eye.

Only losers skateboard.

You don't want to play that game, bro.

Yeah, you don't want to play Minds Eye.

You're not cool.

You don't get it, bro.

Do you want a PBR?

Yeah, because I like – I can probably look at my PlayStation stats.

I probably play like half an hour of Birdcage, half an – no, like an hour of Skate Story.

I played five hours of Minds Eye this week.

Wow.

Amazing.

So anyway, I play- Sorry, Sam Eng, my bad, brother.

We got some Mind's Eye.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

It's genuinely like- There's like no pressure if you're playing Mind's Eye.

That's the thing too.

It's like, who cares?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I don't know.

But again, hey, build a Rocket Boy.

I want to know your story.

Lensley Benz.

Published by IO Interactive.

Can you believe that the Hitman developers published this game?

I was at an E3 conference and they like had a presentation on Mind's Eye, but then there was nothing.

There's no like follow up like, oh, do you want a key for this or anything?

I was like, I want to play Mind's Eye.

And then the reviews came out and all that stuff.

But yeah, it was weird that they marketed this game at E3.

And now, you know, I think I also played it earnestly.

Just because like oh, if we are going to be doing a comprehensive game of the year thing like it is worth talking about, like well, it's not worse.

We're going to have our Razzies.

That's such a mean thing.

But like under underwhelming because I have a lot of complicated feelings about skate.

That was.

On one hand, an abysmal disappointment.

On the other hand, it's really fun to just skate.

It's not fun to do the achievements.

It's not fun to do the story or grind, rip chips, or listen to the fucking voiceover or all the crap in the game.

But the skating is really good and skate story. from my shallow, like, uh, first impressions on it.

Um, I'm not a hundred percent gelling on the story or the vibe of it.

Like I get it.

I just want a skateboard.

Oh, the skating is cool.

It's different.

So it takes me a minute to learn unlearned skate.

It's not Tony Hawk, but the, the, the SSX trick, like the active reload jumping, the slamming.

Okay.

That's cool.

The super meat boy.

There are some skate story now, not mine's eye skate story.

There's sequences again that remind me of Super Meat Boy, because you're barreling down an alley or a hall and you have to jump over stuff.

So it does have that Super Meat Boy platforming, which is also like Olly Olly.

So it's like, oh, there's a lot here.

But again, a lot of the times I'll do is I'll play a game, then I'll go for a walk, I'll go for a bike ride shower, and then my brain is thinking about it, comprehending it, and then I come back to it ready and refreshed.

So yesterday was my day one.

I played a little bit of Birdcage.

I played a little bit of... skate story slept on it now we're talking about it and now after hearing jesse being like really charmed by skate story i'm like oh shit maybe yeah okay let me again and i want to report back later and i feel bad sometimes because like we'll talk about a game and then i'm like oh wait that was our was that our one chance to talk about the game on the podcast like i generally do why do you think i haven't talked about digimon story time stranger i'm fucking waiting i don't want to talk about it because if i talk about it this will be the only time we talk about it so i'm gonna wait i brought up birdcage twice but it also it wasn't in any of the episode thumbnail titles so i feel like it was clear to do again But I know I totally get what you mean.

It's like there's this pressure to make sure that you have the one thing you're going to say is how you talk about it the one time.

You know what I mean?

Like you got to have your definitive statement.

And then my true obsessions, I'm obsessed with, no, it's not video game stuff.

It's Sentai Car Ranger, XPW wrestling, but like.

But the video games – although I'm watching XPW, which was public access.

Los Angeles backyard wrestling.

But all those wrestlers ended up in backyard wrestling too.

So I'm working my way to playing backyard wrestling too because I'm studying.

I like how you six degrees of Kevin Bacon your way into talking about stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It works.

Can I say one thing about Mind's Eye?

Yes.

Having never played it and only ever seen screenshots of it, the vibe I get from it is that it looks like a game that exists – purely in screenshots and for the sole purpose of swindling chinese investors.

That is like millions of dollars.

That is i, for some reason.

That is what i look at it.

That's the feeling i get.

It is called ever was previously going to be called everything right, so it's.

They were definitely trying to be like.

This exists within, isn't that everything?

Didn't they change it?

So now the platform in the game.

So there's a thing in Mind's Eye called Arcadia.

Arcadia.

Okay.

Which is like, it almost feels like Fortnite has creative mode.

There was a game called Dreams, which I really like.

And State Story kind of feels and looks like a game that was made in Dreams.

It's way more than that.

But like it's god.

That's why mine's eyes interesting.

It's like there is, it's so.

I don't even know if i have access to the tools to create levels in arcadia.

I think.

I think anyone can make stuff in arcadia, their arcadia is.

The idea is like okay, we've given you all the tools to make missions, so does that mean people can buy this crappy game for ten dollars and then program their own gta missions?

If so, it's like.

It's like oh my god, this is a, this could be a genuine like.

It's like an unintended.

It's like Cargo Colts.

Like this game was dumped in the middle of nowhere.

Kids can find it and start building levels.

And they're dependent on it.

Yeah, I don't know.

So that's why I gotta keep diving into it.

There's a lot to unpack in Mind's Eye.

I've only just begun my excavation.

The funniest thing about Mind's Eye to me, more than the game's troubled development and release and post-launch, is it stars Alex Hernandez.

Yes. as Jason Diaz, right?

The main character.

Um, he was also the lead in mafia three.

Oh, he did a really good job in mafia three, but that game did not do well.

I don't know if he's done a good job in mind's eye, but this is now the second open world sandbox driving around shooting video game that he's been the lead on.

That has not worked.

Most curse man.

What a, what a weird trajectory to work on two of those and have them both do poorly.

I just want to say if you're, you know, if you have like a billion dollars and you live in Shanghai, I mean I could throw together a few screenshots of like a guy driving like a you know golf cart in the in the desert and maybe you throw me 40 million.

You get so much money for that.

Well, there you go.

We did talk about more than the three video games this week.

I'm so glad you're able to talk about those frank and yeah to jeremy's point.

Don't ever feel like you need to not talk about something just because you're not gonna be positive or it doesn't feel like it fits with the current tone.

Just talk about whatever you feel like talking about.

Some of my favorite episodes of the podcast we've ever done were not a person who played a game and reporting on it.

It was like, you know, when we like called that dinosaur a pedophile and looked at super nintendo games.

You know what i mean.

Like i don't know, i i've, i don't listen to the.

I don't listen to the podcast, i just like exist when it's recording.

So maybe i have a different experience of it.

But i like when we just like someone comes on and they're like i want to talk about this, like idea in games or like has sort of a weird orthogonal topic, it doesn't always have to be like this is.

You know, i read catcher in the rye.

Catcher in the rye is a book by jd salinger.

He wrote this and said that and yeah, you don't have to do that, Just make sure you're having fun.

That's all anyone cares about is that we're all having a good time.

And we do when we're talking about or playing video games and answering questions from our listeners, who have sent in a ton of questions this week.

We have so many.

This might be a second podcast in terms of the amount of questions we got.

Frank, you want to take it away?

Yeah, thank you, everyone.

Yeah, feel free to please send emails to podcasts at noclipvideo or on our Patreon Discord in the podcast chat channel.

You can send us questions.

Our first one is a really great question because I always paralyze myself over this.

Peter asked a question, sent in a question about indie games.

The term indie game has been stretched by journalists and award academies for some time now, to the point where even high budget publisher-backed games are sometimes called indie titles.

What will your criteria for an indie game be starting in 2026?

Do you think this term should finally evolve into some more defining category?

Do you think that the term indie has become a publisher buzzword to promote more risky approaches to games?

What is an indie game?

All right, so we've talked about this a lot, with no clip too.

I the here is, here's the secret trick.

Indie means nothing.

It is a label that like, you can put on something that's like double a or something that was made by, like one guy in a basement in houston.

Um i, we've talked about the term underground games, which is a term that is so try hard and cringe that it safeguards people against self-labeling as underground, And so I think that it is a like if you make a game and you're like I'm working on, like this kind of, it's kind of like underground.

It's like, oh, Jesus Christ.

But if we say it about your game and we mean it as a compliment, then I feel like it's a meaningful distinction from indie.

But what's indie?

I don't know.

It's not fucking these.

It's a market is not triple A at this point.

No which yeah, is a useless distinction because like, like you said, the range of size of the development team, like that, really it's a marketing term that we shouldn't really have to use the way that we do.

Like when people talk about indie movies, they end up bringing stuff up that's like published by Fox, Searchlight or or orion.

Like these are subsidiaries of large, large film publishers like fox or uh, i forget who orion's under but like they have these big companies that have all this money.

Or a24 a24 is not an indie publisher anymore.

Like it's they're so far past that you see the money that they have for these movies.

Um, it's just, it's.

It's a nothing term that's more vibes based than it is anything else, and i think when you try to define it, it's like it's not useful outside of the context in which you're using it.

Like there's.

There was this big controversy conversation and going around with the, the indie game awards where it's.

It's run by a group of people who run six one indie.

They're like really nice guys, but they have this collection of games for game of the year that includes expedition 33.

And like, that's not an indie game.

Anyone with eyeballs can see it's not an indie game.

But for whatever reason, it's like when you start to define the term.

It's like how do you categorize it?

And I think that's why I've seen a lot of indie developers there.

I am doing it what we would call indie developers trying to self-categorize in different ways of being more explicit about what they mean when they say indie.

Like, do they mean self-funded, self-published?

Do they mean, you know, a single developer?

And when they say that, do they mean single developer?

Do they mean one dev who's contracted a bunch of work?

Like just being more specific, I think is the more useful thing.

Cause when you say indie game, do you mean pixel art stuff?

You know, I've had people say indie games are like like anything self-published, which is like, also not entirely true.

Cause what do you do with Larian's games?

You know what do you do with like cyberpunk 2077, like the categorization is so useless, where it's like indie game is fucking super funny, it's self-published, what i know?

No, it's technically.

Yeah i, and like uh kepler, who published um.

Expedition 33 is interesting too because it is a independent like publisher formed by seven independent game developers that came together to form it.

So it's like if, if your publisher is like a megazord that's made out of seven indie game developers, is it still indie?

I don't fucking know.

I think indie at this point is just it's purely, it's just a, it's vibes based.

Yeah, it kind of means nothing to me if someone says this is an indie game.

I just know it's not like a god of war or assassin's creed yeah exactly, which is like not not clarifying or useful as a, as a genre descriptor, but it ends up being all that said sometimes, like yeah, this is really cool indie game, what about it?

Go on, i don't.

I feel like there should be.

I feel like team size should be.

We should restart everything and we should.

There should be like a uh yeah, like expedition 33 was made by 33 people.

Yes.

That's why they called it expedition 33.

Um yeah, we need like a uh like a Starbucks cup size system where it's like a venti game.

Uh Has like 35 or more people.

You know what I mean?

I agree with that in theory, but I feel like the industry has a hard enough time crediting people that we would end up saying stuff like I was joking about the expedition 33 thing because it's like everyone was saying it's made by 33 people.

But like, look at the credits.

It's not 33 people.

It's clearly the contract.

It had a bunch of work.

And who knows how many of those people are properly credited?

Like there's so many questions around it.

I also feel like it can be stretched the other way too, where it's like anything that's not Fortnite or Roblox is indie.

I feel like we have to unite.

I don't know.

This is a conversation I always talk about too, because it's like I'm terrified to mention anything for like, an indie rec, because it's like I don't know what that means.

The word has lost meaning to me.

But I get the core behind it.

And in my head like if a game is has the resources enough to end up on a console, that doesn't feel indie to me.

It's like somehow they were able to submit it to Sony.

It's just like, I don't know.

I truly do.

That's why I kind of like, I'm still playing Mind's Eye.

I don't care.

This is an indie game.

I don't know.

Mind's Eye is cheaper than most indie games these days.

Mind's Eye is an indie game.

I don't know.

So yeah, I truly do not know.

I think like, but that's, I think this is, I mean, Jeremy can, this is like, what is it?

It's like, everyone has their own perception in reality.

Like what you define, like everyone perceives stuff differently, even across languages, whatever.

Like I was even looking into like a, there's an indie game festival in Tokyo.

And I'm like, what the hell does that mean over there?

I got, what is it?

What is it?

I don't know.

I got, I got to find out.

Like, I don't know.

I truly do not know what an indie game is.

I think to me it's like the way, like to use a parallel, when people talk about about movies and there's kind of like people will be like Oh, is this like a?

Is this like a Hollywood blockbuster, like popcorn movie?

Or is this like an art house film?

And I like having gone to film school, you meet some of the most insufferable fuckers imaginable who are like Oh, you like, you know cause, like I fucking.

I'm kind of an anti Christopher Nolan guy, but I feel like the film bros who think that Christopher Nolan is like the peak of art are equally obnoxious as the people who are like Oh, that's not like a real movie.

It's like, cause the way I talk about movies is like and this is the people that I enjoy talking to movies about are people who will talk about like an Ozu movie.

In the same way they'll talk about, you know like uh, that fat camp movie with Ben Stiller in it.

Heavyweights, you know what I mean?

Like a movie is a fucking movie and like a game is a game.

And I just think it's like it's more useful to talk about uh, you know, like sort of like Oh, this was.

This is a game I really like for these reasons.

Um, And in terms of scale, just being like, yeah, it's interesting.

Like Angelina, I can't believe these.

You know, this small team maybe like small team, is like a more useful, like a craft artisanal, Locally sourced small team game.

I think part of it too, is the reason that people are looking for them.

Like when you're looking for an indie game, what do you really and I think that kind of gets to what you're saying of like the art house bro thing, of like I want to play games that are against the mainstream.

I don't want to play the big AAA stuff.

I don't want to play the popular things.

I want to play something that's weird and small and indie.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to do that, but it means that it's like an easier term for marketers to prey on of like oh, this is an indie game.

You want to play something weird and offbeat?

Come play Dave the Diver.

It's an indie game.

Yeah.

And even like games that are truly like indie or whatever, like made by a solo developer or whatever, but just sort of like reify existing design patterns that I think are kind of not, you know like.

I don't know.

I guess are tasteless.

I won't say a specific game name, cause I don't want to shoot anyone, but like game, you know games that are just like emulating casino games or just doing like dopamine loops.

Uh know, just because just because a game is made by one person doesn't mean it's high art and just because a game is made by 300 people doesn't mean it's like dog food.

Yeah, i think that is an important it's.

It's weird because, like the distinction that we do on noclip too, is we do it, i think, with the intent of helping developers who are smaller and like don't have the resources to do their own marketing or don't have enough of it to do what they really need to do to have the game be successful, and they continue to make games and we try to do whatever we can to help them out.

That's the goal i think we have when we use that word.

Um, at least, that's my interpretation.

Danny might come on here and say, I'm entirely wrong.

Uh, I doubt it, but like that's my feeling on it personally, when I try to recommend something for the, for an indie video that we do on noclip too.

Um, and I think that's, that's really the way that we look at it.

If you're looking for the group perspective.

I don't think that's unfair guys, that we just use it as a as a tool to help people and look for teams that need that help.

Usually who are smaller developers or don't have the term, the way to do their own marketing.

Is that unfair?

Yeah no, that that feels reasonable.

It's the stuff that we feel like is good and it deserves more attention than it's getting.

Is maybe more of like a relevant dimension for us than you know.

Indie or whatever um yeah is, is this game?

Should more people be paying attention to this game?

Is it getting not enough eyes?

And that is sort of like a downstream effect of like indie in some sense too, because if you're making a game that costs 50 million dollars to make, you probably have like a marketing budget and you probably have like people who are like the marketing guy.

You know.

I mean yeah exactly, even stuff that has publishers sometimes it's it's still like you need a little help.

It's all right, stuff happens.

Lots of thoughts on indie games.

Next email frank yeah uh, the wyvern uh sent in a question about sentimental hardware and uh, have you guys have any hardware that's got a story behind it or that has sentimental value they'd like to talk about?

Could be a family console, a periphery you got from a first partner, a pc you built and will never part with that kind of thing.

I recently started wanting to play some classics i missed out on, so i've picked up some old games, consoles from ebay and friends.

I always wonder what some, what the stories are behind some of these items.

Hmm, i'm trying to think if i have anything in particular, i mean all my like childhood consoles.

There's not really like a story behind them, it's just that they're.

You just had them for 20 years yeah, but with growing up, like getting a super nintendo and playing it as a kid, it's kind of just the extent of it.

Um, i do know that my parents bought a, an nes, when my mom was pregnant with my older brother uh, so that she would have something to entertain her while she was just like chilling in bed pregnant um so uh I I, that's kind of like a neat story but uh, I don't know if they still have the NES or anything.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I think that's the thing for me too, is a lot of that stuff.

I can think of a sentimental story, but I can't, I don't think I own any of them anymore.

Like I know my mom worked really hard to get me a Wii.

The second year it was out or something.

I really want one for Christmas with my neighbor had it.

I was like mom, if you get me this, even if you only give me Wii sports, I'm going to.

I'll be so happy.

I'll play Wii sports, nothing else.

And I really did.

I really only played like Wii sports for three weeks.

Don't catch me on bowling.

You're going to get your ass beat, but like, I really loved having that thing.

And then I asked for another game and now I have a problem, but it was, uh, it was a big deal.

Cause that was like that would have been right after the financial crisis, I think, when she would have had to get that for me.

So it wasn't like 200 bucks for a game console was a big ask.

Uh, and I always think back to that of like, my mom worked really hard to get that.

We were never well off.

She was a single mom and you know, she, she didn't have like an amazing job or anything.

So she worked really hard to make sure that me and my brother had everything that made us happy.

Um, and and i always think back on that and you know i'm very meaningful when i think about that i don't know where that we is i i should probably probably track that down sorry mom you worked really hard for that i swear i still have it somewhere that's sweet frank you got anything yeah i mean i i still have like the the game boy my original like game boy color or whatever and i was thinking like oh that thing's gone to russia like that's kind of wild like um that's so cool i would play pokemon yellow and then i had a cd walkman with like limp biscuit um and then like that's the most frank holly thing you've ever said um the only like like i guess like yeah i have my dad's crt tv i didn't which i didn't even realize he still had but in his bedroom he had a crt with like a vhs uh like player inside i'm like that's so valuable and crazy so now i have this like crt i've barely used but like if i ever want like want to connect old consoles it's like i have a prime crt because those are so hard to get they're so heavy and like the ultimate way to like play retro consoles whatever but yeah that's the only thing here like i have consoles and stuff but i was thinking like as a kid like i had ps1 ps2 but it was easy you would like i would sell them away because like ps2 can play all your old ps1 games ps3 fat can play all your old games and and then even like ps4 i can play your ps5 can play your ps4 games so it's like oh yeah for a while for a long time i was trading away all my consoles um everything i have is now but it's like stuff i've purchased like as an adult i have i have a friend who um works at fortnite who like on their spare time like kind of like um mods consoles and like like so i have a my i have a friend who like sent me an xbox with every xbox game with a built-in hard drive and that is like the greatest thing ever and then they also sent me like an xbox 360 where they did like brand new um what's heating gel or whatever it's called like they like yeah they legitimately like it's almost like it's like it's the equivalent of like building a pc but they'll take about take apart a console and replace the parts but it's still running the original like software and hardware but it's like oh now like replace the hard drive on this xbox like that's just a crazy sentence to me i know people do that but like that is a very thoughtful and sweet gift so these two xboxes for my friend in north carolina are like i don't know it's like it's like um yeah it's like custom custom having custom xboxes means the world to me so yeah thank you very very very very much to my friend over there that's really cool i uh i dated a girl in high school whose brother-in-law made a living by modding xboxes by putting like a ton of games on the hard drive and selling them on ebay it was just like the most illegal thing fucking imaginable but i always thought that was very very funny uh yeah i don't know i wish i had a fucking xbox that was loaded up with like a game hard drive that rules it's the best yeah And then, yeah, another question, Koshimitsu, which I love the name, Koshimitsu asks, when you pick up a fighting game, what kind of characters do you gravitate towards and why?

Do you choose the all-rounder main characters like Ryu or Jin Kazama?

Are speed and maneuverability more your thing, such as Kami?

Big characters develop half the screen.

Personally, I always go to the free code characters like Voldo.

I love going fast.

I'm much like Ricky Bobby.

If you're not first, you're last.

I want to go fast, mama.

Shake and bake. i yeah no matter what if there's a character there that they're like oh yeah every hit does like one damage but you could do 300 hits a second give me that or someone who's doing like cool like capoeira or like dancing while they're fighting like dj and street fighter 6 was my immediate go-to i never learned how to play anyone else until m bison um because i just love the way that he moves and shakes or like i think i uh similarly in mortal combat i played um is it boricho is that the oh yeah boricho yeah yeah i played him because he was just like the drunken master he was like wiggling around on the screen i love how slippery he is yeah that sort of thing anyone who moves weird or moves really fast those are my go-to yeah like it's weird because as a kid like i just a lot of like my mains and all the fighting and fighting games are like choices i made when i was like 10 years old like sports teams i like the broncos because they were orange i'm never gonna move on so like as a kid like because of wcw versus nwo world tour i like became obsessed with wrestling so with street fighter oh my god zangief he's a wrestler and he's russian like me uh oh my god he's a wrestler and then um yeah so i but like when i go to games for if i play like a weird ass old random game i always pick like all right what's the what's like the token like cute girl character what like so I always like, like, and you'll, you'll see these games and everyone, there's like the archetypes of all of them.

So like nowadays, if I don't know this franchise, I'll just pick the cute girl.

Um, but then like, yeah, there was definitely an error.

Like the like.

Even Marvel's caps come to our um three, 60 era, when games are online, I would pick like what's the troll character?

So like serve bot.

Okay.

The tiny you know like so harassing people with like yeah, the weird characters are dead or alive.

For specifically, I picked, there was a.

There's a 16 year old boy character named Elliot, and In a game that's filled with hot girls and Master Chief, I would be this little boy.

I was also probably 15, 14 years old.

I would talk mad shit, and I would counter every single move.

I have one of the rarest achievements, like reach SS rank in Dead or Alive 4.

I picked the annoying boy character, and I parried every move, and I would talk shit.

I was so horrible, but I was really good at Dead or Alive 4.

So yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, so I always like wrestlers, hot girls, and then... Yeah, I get some weird characters too.

Nothing's changed.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Hot girls wrestling weird characters.

Yeah, yeah.

Put that on your fucking t-shirt.

Sell that.

Jeremy, do you play many fighting games?

I feel like that's not your purview.

I do not play many fighting games.

In fact I was trying to remember the name of The two fighting games that I've played the most in my life are probably the two least serious fighting games ever created.

One of them is mace the dark age anyone.

Oh yeah, nothing.

Is that the one with the chicken?

Uh, does it have a chicken?

I haven't played it since probably 1998.

It's the guy it has, like the big red knight on the cover.

Oh, this game yeah yeah okay yeah, i love this game.

The game, the fighting game i've played the most in my life by far is clay fighter 63 and a third.

Dude, you're such a nintendo 64 kid.

It's so funny, frank made.

When i said that was like it was like if someone told you their favorite, like the finest piece of cinema they'd ever seen, was like it's the worst clay fighter sorry uh, i loved clay fighter 63 and a third.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

No no fucking hey listen, don't hate on it.

All right, i'm not hating.

It's a serious game for serious fighting game, people.

All right, we were in Earthworm, Jim Main.

Was he on the N64 version, or was that just the PlayStation?

Is there a PlayStation version of that game?

I think there is.

There is.

No, there's not.

Okay, I will tell you this.

I don't know about the PlayStation one, but I will tell you this.

There was an updated version called Clayfighter Sculptor's Cut and it was released exclusively as a blockbuster rental, which is fucking amazing.

Ah, perfect.

That's a crazy fucking talk about exclusivity platforms.

That was an era before there was game pass, there was blockbuster exclusive.

How far away are we from the game pass exclusive version of something?

I'm waiting for it.

It'll happen.

I mean, that's basically a call of duty.

No one, i'm not buying that shit for 80.

Are you crazy?

Yeah, so it's basically a game pass exclusive game, All right.

Clay Fighter 63 and a third and Mace the Dark Ages.

Is that what it was?

Mace the Dark Age.

Yeah.

Classic.

We got to get you playing like you'd like.

No, you wouldn't like Tekken.

You would like.

I don't know what you'd like.

I mean, I've played like Street Fighter and I've played a little bit of a lot of fighting games, but not enough to nothing.

That's like stuck for you.

No, I've you know.

I would say third place for most played is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, like tournament fighter or whatever it's called, with the shark guy.

I didn't know they made one.

There's a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting game that's quite good.

Neat.

There you go.

Oh, I see this.

Yeah, yeah.

It looks like Smash Bros.

Smash Bros?

It's like a pixel art game.

TMNT Smash Up?

No?

Oh, okay.

Never mind.

It's called Tournament Fighters, I think.

Is it not?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters.

Oh, I see.

Yes.

Shark Man in the screenshot.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a goodie.

Neat.

Fighting game.

Next question, Frank?

Yeah, Riven wrote in what are some of your favorite weird game covers that don't really represent the game, or have things that aren't in the game.

The Mega Man cover is a classic example.

I always think about TimeSplitters 2, which features a gun that's not in the game, and Resident Evil, with the guy's weird face and weird shotgun slash machine gun.

Hmm.

Those are good.

There's the one you guys always talk about.

I can't remember the name of it, but it looks like a guy just ate a fruit gusher and his ears are coming smoke coming out of his ears or something.

He had something really spicy, like his head's a volcano.

Oh, is that Incredible Crisis?

Is that what it is?

Is that the logo?

Yeah, I think Incredible Crisis has that.

Every time we look at it, we all go, oh, that's very funny.

But then the Japanese version of it is also really good, but obviously more accurate.

Phalanx is like the classic one that has the banjo guy on it uh, but it's like a shmup.

Um yeah, i don't know, this is a tough one to think of off the dome.

Yeah, the one, that one that popped to my head is super bust.

A move has a baby on the cover and he's blowing a bubble and it's like such like p, it's like such y2k, like gross.

It's not even gross.

It's like such like lame ass magazine marketing.

Yes, it's like that's the cover and i it's like oh, i said why the fuck?

Why would you want to?

I don't know, i hate that cover.

You can see the text.

That's like play this game if you're not a baby or something like in the corner.

It's like the worst cover, but it looks like a magazine ad, but it's a magazine ad that turned into a cover.

Yeah, it's hard.

It's hard to think without like my games in front of me.

Totally.

Yeah yeah, uh this is sort of related to what frank was saying not a game box art but uh, an ad campaign.

I think earthbound the uh, the north american ad campaign, for it was some of the worst shit ever.

Yeah, which is that?

The scratch and sniff, the one where you yeah, they had like a yeah well, it was like a fart scented scratch and sniff or some shit, and it just says this game stinks right, is that?

Yeah, they were trying to do a primus thing where they're like This game.

Yeah, it says we're warning you this game stinks.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, so weird.

I'm glad I didn't encounter these as a kid and just played Earthbound for some reason.

Now I just want to look up weird boxes for games.

Because I feel like there's got to be a whole.

Oh my God, this one for Ninja Scooter Simulator, which is already a great game.

Hold on, let me drop this in Snapchat.

Let me try.

You guys need to see how good this is.

I want this on his T-shirt.

Look at this danny's gonna see this and be like what's going on over there?

What are these guys?

Oh wow, i like that one.

That's sick.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

That's like fucking.

I like the.

It's like 80s, like pink and i don't know whatever, like vaporwave.

Yeah, weird lines.

I wish we had better answers for this.

Off the head top, there's just so many.

No yeah, it's a very like visual thing.

I mean again, and that's the fun, like i'm, that's like.

What am i?

One of the joys of like just browsing video game shops is see, and especially like in japan, like there's a, there's an, there's a, there's a store in akihabara, i think it's called.

I think it's called rare item shop, but it's like it's so funny because it's like it's perfectly curated where it's.

It's the kind of thing where it's like there's not that much stuff, but everything that's on display is like, is like incredible.

So it's like they just have everything out on the floor.

It's like almost like a boutique and every item there it's like what the hell is this?

What is this game?

What is this box art?

I'm pulling out my phone for google translate and stuff but um yeah, that's the joy of go, that's the, the thing we've lost with.

Like the digital, all digital stuff is like being able to browse physical media, picks up something, be like, what the hell is this?

Flip flip, look at the back, look at the, the screenshots, that blockbuster experience.

Um yeah, looking around for stuff but Yeah, just a cool cover.

Now you go on the Steam page, here's a trailer, you gotta look at those screenshots.

No, I want to be sold on a bad cover that has nothing to do with the video game and I spend my hard-earned cash on it.

And then i i looked up just for clarification, so it's called rare item studio.

Yeah, in in akihabara, rare are you?

You can like look it up on google maps, whatever.

But yeah, rare item studio was a shop i went into and it was like oh, this is perfectly, this is awesome, like everything was on display.

So that's that.

Yeah, that i also truly feel bad for, like in television and and like atari era, where you'd have a realistic uh painting of a game character and then the back is like four pixel art, like four blocks.

Like that i feel so bad for that era of people.

So it's like, i don't i i, because i feel like, even as a kid, what i get screwed the most on uh, bruce lee entered the dragon on super nintendo, had sick box art and that was like one of the worst games i ever played and like, what a waste of like a birthday gift.

That's a problem now too though, like what you're saying of the covers looking inaccurate to the actual game because like, my wife will be scrolling the Nintendo Switch eShop or she'll be looking at me scrolling through stuff on PlayStation or Xbox.

And she'll be like, oh, that looks really cute.

Click on that, because the art is this like well illustrated, bright, colorful thing.

And then I click on it and she sees the gameplay is these big, chunky pixels.

She's like, I don't want that.

I want the cute art.

There's a cute fox.

And I'm looking at it and it's like a hamburger that's been ground up.

Like.

I don't want to play that.

I like the mismatch between art styles.

I've always been a big fan of like when the because like steam kind of has this with capsule art.

Now, where it's like there's like the beautifully illustrated thing and that's like a pixel art game, i always like that like.

To me it's the same appeal as um playing the original final fantasy 7 and there's like there's like three or four different levels of fidelity where it's like the characters on the overworld and in the world, characters in battle characters and cut scenes, they're like three different densities of fidelity and they all kind of give you different Like you integrate them all into a holistic version of what that character looks like.

Yeah.

It's like you get to fill in the gaps with your imagination in the pixel art, but you also have a reference to say oh, this is what they would look like if they were doing this.

If I imagined it in my head, there's aspects to it that are good.

I don't dislike it that much but it's just always funny when my wife sees something and it's like pissed because it doesn't look like the capsule art looked very funny reaction to have.

Yeah.

Thanks for the question.

Riven, we've got two more here.

Yeah.

Uh, we, we, we've answered, I think this question, like maybe two times.

I feel like we just answered a week ago.

It's always we're talking about uh, as someone who struggles with depression, what game have you, or somebody you know, used to play in those dark times?

I'm living in Norway and we're in the winter months.

Now it goes dark when we get what's called winter depression.

Um The two games I fell into a genuine groove with, as we've been doing our Game of the Year stuff was Death Stranding 2 was a thing that held my attention.

It was very soothing and satisfying.

A big thing with Death Stranding is especially number two one.

I feel like the environments are very similar and grim and mundane.

And I feel like with Death Stranding 2 because we lived through COVID, I think they went in a way more colorful route.

So Death Stranding 2 has a lot of variety in the biomes.

So playing Death Stranding 2, it's like oh, it's like, it's like it feels it has a lot more color in like positive.

I don't know.

It's, it's way more charming.

So death stranding two is like really clicked for me during this bout of, of depression or whatever.

Um um, uh.

I'm not dismissive to your, but I'm talking about my.

It's like I don't know what the hell it is, but like.

And then DK Bonanza right now is so colorful, cute poppy.

So I grab it.

Like I, I will, I'll say this with my friends and on stream and stuff.

It's like I need, I need something colorful, because I am so like There's varying degrees, but it's like yeah, I'm not clear.

And so DK Bonanza has been perfectly daffy, bright, colorful, cute.

And then Death Stranding 2 also was very helpful.

It felt satisfying.

A genuine reason why Death Stranding 2 clicked recently was like every time he delivers stuff, it's like Oh, thank you, Sam.

Thank you.

Like you're kind of it's, it's like it's, it's like it's weird, but you are, there is like this dopamine of like Oh, people like me.

I'm helping people.

This is great.

Like and when you're delivering packages.

Everyone's so free and everyone is so sweet and charming like the characters.

And it's like, I don't know.

I think with Death Stranding one compared to Death Stranding two, I think they like wanted to elevate the tone and make it more optimistic, and because Death Stranding 1 became reality so quickly.

So yeah, I don't know if it'll match for you, with Winter Depression right now, but for me it kind of clicked and, I don't know, filled a gap or something in my soul.

So I like that.

And then DK Bonanza.

So those have been the two for me this round of Winter Depression bright and colorful.

Yeah, i this is a weird, like inverse version of that answer.

For some reason, when i get super depressed, i like media that is like matches the pace.

Yes, same 100 to me if i'm, if i'm depressed and i play a happy game, i'm like this is like this is fake, which i wish i could ever be this happy outside of the game is how i'm thinking.

Yeah exactly, i'm like no one feels this happy if i'm this depressed, no one could ever be that happy.

Uh, so i like to play like um, Like Silent Hill games or like Signalis or just like weird survival horror games about how your wife is dead or maybe wrote you a letter but maybe is dead.

I don't know.

I like weird, depressing shit.

I weirdly agree.

Like I've always been like that.

If I'm sad, I want to listen to sad music, which I don't think is that strange, really.

But for video games, it's like when I'm depressed.

I always gravitate towards.

Like the sad, like I was.

I was in a real bout of depression when I was playing and Roger, which is not the game you should play when you're sad except it worked for me.

I played it and I was like, Oh, this actually weirdly made me feel better.

I don't know why.

It's almost like I don't want to say cathartic because that feels wrong but it is kind of like seeing seeing that that situation has an ending.

Even if it's not positive, it's that it eventually is over for me.

I find to be, I don't know. comforting in a weird way it's not always a good ending but that it ends works for me yeah it is cathartic too to like i don't know sometimes like if you if you're sad and you watch a sad movie and the movie makes you cry it's like crying about something that isn't the thing that is your depression is cathartic in some way like just like the act of of being sad or crying is like cathartic in some way um sometimes i mean that's like that's like one of my favorite things about art is that it can be a facilitator for uh for for working through or like bringing up emotions that are in you that are otherwise like painful or difficult to access or something yeah you know like even putting words to it right like if you have an emotion like there was a good night universe there's a there's a couple of moments in that game where i mean you're playing as a baby and the family is talking about you know the hardships of having a child i wonder why that connected for me um and hearing that said aloud by somebody else and like it wasn't exactly one-to-one but the way that they communicated that stuff really really affected me it made me feel i don't know not not alone like that doesn't make me feel good to know that other people are going through the similar stresses that i'm going through but it was nice to hear it explained i guess to me how not necessarily exactly how i'm feeling but how someone else is feeling about a similar situation it's i don't know maybe feel better are we freaks no right No, it's the it's the happy game people that are wrong.

No, just kidding.

I think it's just personal taste.

I think some people want to be taken out of their misery.

And I think some people want to, like, experience, you know, misery loves company type shit.

Yeah, I want to stew in it.

I want to stew in it.

We have, like Frank said, have answered this question a couple of times the last couple of weeks, which is, you know, sad.

I hope that everyone who is going through seasonal depression or regular depression or whatever any sort of hardship has people that they can lean on and talk to about what they're going through.

Um, and if you're looking for games, like i said, last couple weeks we've answered similar questions um, and maybe think about going back to something nostalgic, something that used to make you happy, that you know.

Maybe you can look back on fondly and have good memories and talk to the homies, talk to them, always talk to the homies.

That's number one is make sure you guys talk to, just talk to some people and uh, you know, just uh, facilitate a connection.

It doesn't always have to.

It doesn't have to be like will you be my therapist friend, slash parent, slash sibling whatever, just like, Just connect with people.

It can take you out of your own situation a little bit.

Totally.

Go do something dumb with your friends.

It's great.

Go tobogganing.

You got a lot of snow up there.

I don't know.

That's what we do in Canada.

So you just go tobogganing.

Don't break a bone.

If you're over 30, maybe don't go.

You're made of glass.

And we have one more question here from Disco Cat, Frank.

Yeah, Disco Cat wrote in and asked I have a thing for games that manage to get a unique atmosphere or thing going on, even if they're flawed.

The original soccer games come to mind.

Do the crew members have a love for games that aren't globally seen as good or even seen as bad, but their uniqueness won you over anyway.

Hmm.

Uh, that's tough.

Cause I only like good games that I like.

Uh, so I don't know.

Uh, you know, like clay fighter 63.

This is a tough question.

Um, cause I feel like the games this week, the games that are bad that I like, I think of as good games.

Mostly that like, like for me, saints row one is like one of my all time favorite games.

Like you know and like the reason I liked it is, it was a shittier GTA and it didn't take itself seriously.

And I loved it.

And then saints row four, I hated it. but like, yeah, like, like for, I had time.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Like all the games I like are games that are most not, not, not, not to like, but I don't know.

Like I gave him mine's eyes.

Like I'm having fun playing it.

It's bad.

It's a bad game, but there's a reason it's again, I love trash cinema.

I love a trauma.

It's like, there, there is something so fun, but like, even like one of my earliest, like favorite games, like PS2, or I love dynasty wars and I'll always defend it when people mock it.

But I feel like people know Like I love Dynasty Warriors 3 because I grew up playing Final Fight, which was just a 2D beat-em-up, where you were stuck on static screens and it was scrolling.

All of a sudden oh, you're in a massive open battlefield with a thousand people and you get XP and you level up.

And to me the Elevate.

It was like my dad would always make the analogy of like oh, it's from going from horse carriage to automobile.

Dynasty Warriors 3 was like going from horse carriages of Streets of Rage and Final Fight to the automobile level. so for me dinosaur history is like that's the peak of gaming gta3 you know like so yeah so i so i i love exploring games that are that's why again i wanted to play a mind's eye everyone's dismissive of this i get it but wait what's on the other side i want to beat the game i want to like so i'm always i'm always interested in stuff that's like immediately met with like vitriol like i'm genuinely like oh well what's what's what's what's the what's the silver lining here I think that's an important reflex to have, too, just in general, not even like if you're a critic, just if you're a person in the world, if you hear everyone dogging on something, you're like, well, OK, there's got to be something here, right?

There's no way everyone universally hates this thing.

And there's not at least something funny to see unless it's like putrid.

But in that case, maybe even that's worth checking out.

It's like you always the only way to know if a game is good or bad is if you play it and you think it's good or bad.

That's my typical philosophy on that.

I'm gonna fire up clay fighter 63 and a third.

I'm trying to think if there's anything that i don't that i can think of.

Jeremy, do you have anything that fits the mold for this?

I don't know.

This one's tough for me.

It's tough.

I kind of i don't know.

I i only like good games and that doesn't mean that i only like good games.

It means that the games that i like i think of as good.

Yeah exactly, i can't think of like a game that's like a four out of ten critically.

That i think is great.

Um, But there's a lot of negativity around Final Fantasy 16.

I really like that game.

I know you liked it.

That's how I feel about like 13.

I love 13.

I love 13 as well.

Yeah.

Final Fantasy 12 was highly regarded by critics, but it's shit on way too often by people in general.

I completed it for the first time over the holidays and pretty good. i thought it was over the holidays when during my vacation it is currently the holidays over my personal holiday when i went on vacation i beat it and uh i thought it was fucking amazing yeah it turns out like maybe that there's a reason that game sold a bajillion copies because i also i have a soft spot for like uh shitty old mmos like i played a lot of anarchy online oh man dark age of cam a lot i played a lot of mmos when i was very very young and they were just like these mystical worlds pre-world of warcraft like it was just it was a wild west uh everquest was just like a fuck everquest is not a shitty game but you know what i mean it's like every game to me was of the caliber of everquest because there was like a world with other people in it it was magic yeah it's just anything like that when you're young is suddenly it's like magic it's like i played bad free to play uh big open world mmos because i was just excited to hang out with people online i didn't care if it's bad i played ragnarok online that game makes no sense this is a bunch of big numbers I want to make an MMORPG so bad.

I wish I had infinite money and time.

If that was your first published game, that would be like the joke answer to what games you did first.

Just an MMO?

Yeah.

No, I got a game that works, but it's not an MMO.

If only.

It's less of an MMO.

It's more just a.

Oh, it's a minimally, minimally single player, offline single player game.

Aren't you doing the?

No, never mind, i don't want to spoil anything.

Don't spoil it.

Jeremy's got a little cool.

He's got a lot of cool ideas.

I do have a.

One of the games i'm working on is co-op.

Okay, i'm not crazy.

There is one.

Uh yeah, the only other thing i could think of, by the way, that's like was pretty universally panned but that i weirdly enjoyed for spoken.

I thought what's that again was okay.

It's that like third person.

Uh, i think it's published by square enix, developed by one of their studios.

Oh yeah yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Third person action adventure game where you're playing as like I don't know what her name is, but just like a black woman from New York who transported phase of fray.

Fray who gets transported to, she gets east side, basically into another world.

And it's like there's stuff about it that I like, because it's got like this melodrama, Final Fantasy nonsense, magical world stuff going on.

Yeah and like, but there's so many little things like you get to customize the character's nails and that's how you get powers, like stuff like that.

I'm like this is great.

I really like the idea of this and then playing it's kind of whatever.

But like i enjoyed the in-between parts between the running between locations with, like the really fast magical parkour.

I thought it was better than people were putting on, but it wasn't great.

Is is what i'm getting at.

I enjoyed it still, i loved i wouldn't go that far.

Can i ask you a question about it?

Yeah, on the wikipedia it says the writing team includes gary witta and amy headache, while black girl gamers provided consultation on the characterization of fray.

This is i'm not doing a bit.

I'm legitimately asking did it feel like there was weird tension having two sort of like established white writers write a black character with consultation from a?

You know what I mean.

I can give no opinion on the behind the scenes interactions between these people.

I will simply tell you how the game opens and you can come to your own conclusion.

Okay, good.

I would love an example.

How about that?

The opening of this game is Frey is in court.

She's been charged with a crime, eventually is let off.

It turns out she was committing crimes and there was money in her apartment that she had stolen or had gotten from stolen goods and and then her apartment is set on fire and then she gets isekai'd into this other world.

Interesting, it opens with her in a court case.

Okay, i wonder if that was.

Oh, i wonder who came up with that?

Established white writers being like listen, we got this character, we just want to make sure this is like tone sensitive, and they're like all right yeah no, what's it up is like all right, she's a criminal.

And they're like i don't know, i don't want to say anything.

Maybe that was their idea right, maybe that was the black girl.

Gamers was like that's that was.

They were like that's a interesting way to open this character's story, because the conclusion of the story goes an interesting place, interesting capital i, interesting places, I don't know, but I do think that is a very, very funny way to open that game, especially based on the question that you just asked.

Yeah, that's cool.

I honestly I didn't want to play it until I until now.

And now I do.

Shawshank Redemption opens in a courtroom.

It's like Andy Dufresne.

Is it going like a Shawshank Redemption route?

I would play a Shawshank game.

If Morgan Freeman was quoting over the entirety of that video game, it would have been better.

It would have been a lot better.

I did get the game on a clearance sale at GameStop.

I have not played it, but I did buy First Spoken.

But that's the games I like, the games that are critically dismissed and then they go on sale super cheap.

And then you buy them, and then you get the trophies.

I will say the Wikipedia article, for Forspoken in the gameplay section has a sentence.

Following each combat encounter, the player earns experience points.

I'm sold.

If I can get XP, that's a good game to me.

Why do they even need to say that?

It does have a Devil May Cry like.

It's not like I think you do get level ups, but it's like you get rewards for yeah, using different magic, because you have all these different magical abilities that you can juggle around, like you can do the weapon swapping in Devil May Cry.

So it's a little bit like that, but not really that good.

It's like, why wouldn't the wikipedia say like, using a controller, the player can navigate the world to jump?

Yeah see, i mean, i'm interested because this is a japanese developed game, like they the, so i yeah, can you play this?

Can i play this?

Yeah, can i.

Yeah, luminous productions yeah, based in doesn't say exactly where um, but um yeah, i gotta know.

Can you play?

If you can play this in japanese, i might.

I might play that over the holidays.

I think we should do.

Okay, i think this is we've been looking for, like a video game book club to do.

I think it would be way more interesting to do games like this than it would be to do, like you know, the greatest games of all time.

Yeah, it would be.

We should call it the middest games of all time, The games of all time, the games that exist, the games that you could buy for money.

This is a 30 percent recommend on Open Critic.

That's wild.

It's not that bad.

Maybe maybe this will be my answer to that question of games.

Here's the thing, though.

I forgot.

I omitted.

The one thing that will drive you guys insane is Frey has a I forget what the actual term is, but basically like a bracelet that talks to her for a lot of the game.

And he does not shut up.

Like the way people were complaining about Miles in Metroid Prime 4 or Atreus in God of War Ragnarok.

This thing is so much worse and aggressively British, aggressively British.

Oh, is he voiced by Stephen Burchett or something?

I can't remember.

It doesn't matter.

But it's I think that shit will drive you guys crazy.

It'd be funny, though, if you wanted to do that.

I would love to do a sentient bracelet cuff voiced by Jonathan Cake, which has to be one of the best names I've ever heard in my life.

Or Satoshi Mikami, meaning there is Japanese audio in this game.

Oh man, Frank.

Uh, this game does have japanese voice.

Yeah, there you go.

So i'm in, you're in, perfect.

Well listen, watch out for that.

On noclip2, the patreon, we're gonna do a live, we're gonna play the whole game or another.

Another angle on the podcast uh, we'll gauge how culturally sensitive it is.

Yeah, we'll do that.

Jeremy, two and a half white guys will do that.

I'm just saying we, i think we could do.

I think we could do it objectively.

I think we could remove ourselves.

Oh, this podcast has been running for too long.

Two hours and 14 minutes.

All right.

Well, that's all the emails this week.

Thank you so much for sending those in.

Always fun to chit and chat about stuff we would never have an opportunity to talk about, like Forspoken and Clayfighter, 63 and a third and lots of other weird stuff.

So thank you so much for sending those in.

And, of course, thank you to all the people who fund all the work that we do at patreoncom slash noclip and patreoncom slash noclip2.

You support me. all the cool stuff that we do like indie recommendations.

What is an indie game?

Uh, quick looks, lots of other stuff.

We've got a new one coming out this, maybe this week about, uh, we got some cool invasion.

We got cool.

No clip to stuff cooking.

So uh, if you want to, if you want to see us do like weirder and more ambitious stuff on no clip, to uh support that channel, share the videos we do.

Sign up for no clip to his Patreon.

Um, we could, we're, you know, we're, we got a big pot and we're moving a big stick around in it.

We're trying to come up with cool stuff for you.

I promise.

I will say too.

I mean, I, if I can find something, but it's like, I'm already actively planning another Japan trip.

So I did see there's an indie game festival in Tokyo the same week.

So, uh, Hey, I have to see if I can try to get like industry and go the business day.

I don't know, but potentially I can shoot another thing. while i'm over there but go ask them what an indie game is yeah that's a good question that's a good question you should just ask everyone that you meet that question see what they say what is an indie game they're just like uh what like no one knows they're gonna have a term this is what there's gonna be a term for it that's gonna be so good it's gonna it's gonna rewrite metroidvania to search action you know what i mean like i'm gonna find what that word is yeah what's the search action of indie game that's what we need we need boots on the ground frank reporting do it and you can only do it thanks to your support and also the regular money that he makes but patreon.com patreon.com give us money or don't whatever i'm glad you're here listening to the podcast for this very long to a two hour and 15 minute long podcast wow thank you for being here thank you guys for chitting and chatting we'll catch you next week no idea whether danny will be back or not but hopefully he is doing well because that's really all that matters is that he's taking care of his family and not concentrating on work all the time so i hope he's doing well i hope you're doing well we'll see you next week See ya.

Bye.

[Noclip Crewcast Episode 257: Indie Gems, Bullet Hell Challenges, and the Definition of 'Indie']-[Angeline Era, Routine, Birdcage]

📋 Summary

A Winter of Gaming and Reflection

Angeline Era: Blending Sincerity with Gameplay

Mastering the Bullet Hell: Birdcage

Routine: The Beauty of Cassette Futurism

The "Indie" Dilemma

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Crewcast Episode 257: Indie Gems, Bullet Hell Challenges, and the Definition of 'Indie']-[Angeline Era, Routine, Birdcage]

📋 Summary

A Winter of Gaming and Reflection

Angeline Era: Blending Sincerity with Gameplay

Mastering the Bullet Hell: Birdcage

Routine: The Beauty of Cassette Futurism

The "Indie" Dilemma

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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