Baby Steps, Skate, Ghost of Yotei | Noclip Crewcast

🎵 🎵 hello friends welcome to episode 246 of the noclip podcast it's a crew cast the whole crew is here we have a million games to talk about we're recording a patron exclusive pod about the duncan jones movie warcraft after this we have it's just a video game feast and i for one can't wait to to dive in jeremy what is your favorite chinese food see i put a spin on it right at the end it's a really good question um i haven't had it in a very long time because i've been a vegetarian for a very long time but uh my it used to be there is a is a boston specific americanized chinese oh my god why is it fucking lobster chow mein it's lobster dumplings no it's uh baking ravioli they're like um imagine like a pot sticker but the dough is thicker and like breadier on the outside and inside is like ginger and cabbage and pork it's so good sounds like a like a pierogi maybe as well it is a lot like a pierogi actually wow what is it peaking peaking ravioli ravioli what it's an absurd name too did you make this up is this an incredible improv bit no google peaking ravioli i defy you oh my god i gotta eat some of this this sounds this sounds pretty pretty dope uh frank what is your favorite italian food i guess pizza yeah i guess that was a soft love wasn't it What's on the pizza?

I do like pepperoni and jalapeno.

California boy.

How do you feel about pineapple?

You like Hawaiian pizza?

There's no such thing as bad pizza.

Even bad pizza is still pizza.

Even if it's free and crappy, it's still good.

The most Frank Howley thing he could have said.

Absolutely.

You're right.

Even if it's bad pizza, it's pizza.

I'm a staunch defender of the Hawaiian pizza.

I absolutely adore Hawaiian pizza.

I think it's a good time.

And you are a big fan of Hawaii.

So it makes sense.

Do you enjoy the Hawaiian pizza?

Jessica, which American state have you been to?

I've been to New Hampshire.

I've been to Massachusetts.

And where's Wisconsin?

I've been to Wisconsin as well.

Cheesehead, you jumped over the border for a hot second.

Yeah, just stopped by, said, can I fill me up with the cheese?

Where are the where's the team there?

What's the team?

What's the, you know, the football team?

Wisconsin Cheeseheads.

Thank you.

Green Bay.

Yeah, absolutely.

Got to use all that to get all that cheese on those delicious Wisconsin style deep dish pizzas.

I was waiting for a cuisine.

I didn't get a cuisine question.

You're welcome for the pineapple pizza.

Do you want one?

No, that's fine.

The moment has passed.

What's a food you didn't like as a child that you like now?

Oh, that's a great one.

Brussels sprouts, like all children.

I hate it.

Yeah, that's true.

But man, when you put them in the air fryer with some salt pepper, a little bit of bacon, even if you're trying to make them fancy dancy.

We have been cheating.

That's the thing is that now, when I order Brussels sprouts, I'd like, you know, like a, like a.

It's usually like some sort of bar restaurant style thing.

It's like, first of all, they've like fried them, so like okay, instantly when you fry something that's like you know nicer, you know.

Or like on a skillet a little bit burnt, then they've covered them, like you said, in like salt and butter and fucking, there's usually a like a like bacon dripped all over.

So now we're cheating.

Now we're like is it really broccoli we've made here?

We're making like a little sort of a little broccoli salad.

If you took pieces of cardboard and gave them the same treatment, I feel like they would be pretty good.

I disagree.

You ever try to eat cardboard in any capacity?

Wet cardboard is somehow worse.

I think if you took cardboard and gave it the panko treatment and fried it and made it like a chicken katsu, I think it would be pretty good.

All right, report back to us.

Let us know how that goes for you.

Here's the thing is that the last part of this is that they usually give you like a big lump of some sort of dipping sauce with it too.

Yeah.

So you're just – covering and look, i've come around to brussels sprouts flavor too.

But they are sort of just obfuscating the brussels sproutness of the dish by just covering it in salt and bacon and sauces.

You know, i mean, that is fair.

I usually just air fry it with like the tiniest bit of oil, so i still enjoy the brussels sprout flavor.

But uh yeah, i can't get down with soggy vegetables.

I don't know, i can't do it.

You don't like a wet carrot?

No, i'm not a big fan of wet carrots.

Nope, Serve me up a wet card.

The wetter, the better.

No, that has to be one of the worst transformations in the vegetable kingdom is from a delicious, crispy, raw carrot bite into it snaps.

It's like a.

It's like a delicious, it's nature's.

You know, crunch is a rare texture in nature and you cook it and it just turns into like a fucking mush and not like like potato gets mushy, but it's delicious and delectable.

Carrot just turns into like a texture that I can only describe as like damp styrofoam.

Oh man, give me a damp carrot, absolutely.

But if you panko, if you panko crusted styrofoam and i mean now we're talking that might be okay.

This is the whole theory of vegetable tempura is you could take yes, whatever bullshit.

That's true.

There's a good point.

You could sneak in some cardboard in there and i would just, i wouldn't even know.

You know, i'd be like what is this a fucking cauliflower?

Uh, i've just i've just reached uh, i've just reached a critical moment um, in my in uh, this podcast, because i have realized that i have my phone here beside me, But I've just realized I also have my wife's phone right here.

And we're going to be down here for about two hours.

So I better bring this up if I want my relationship to make it past the Warcraft one.

Talk among yourselves around about fucking tempura vegetables or whatever we're talking about this week.

You guys ever had budgie before?

Uh, no, isn't that a bird in Australia?

I think so.

Maybe I'm saying it wrong.

Uh, it's like an Indian dish.

They, it's like, Oh, like Bajie with like a BH in it.

Sorry.

My, my friend says, no, no, it's all right.

That's the Canadian accent.

I just, you, I think you said it right.

And my brain just fill it in the deep.

That shit goes crazy.

I've never had this.

It's so good.

I know of it.

It's delicious.

Some tamarind sauce or whatever sauce.

It's like battered fried onion.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Damn.

That's like the onion ring of India.

Get down with Indian food.

Oh yeah yeah frank, is there a lot of indian food in california or where you're about, southern california?

Uh there, probably is, but i i i don't think i've tried any, but i was.

When i was in tokyo i went to a non-spot and it was so it was like one of the best meals i had.

It was like ten dollars for just non-bread.

Is that the cart that you went to that everyone was saying you gotta go to, or is that something else?

No, that that's moses kebab, although that's good too, but no yeah, it's the best, it's the best restaurant.

They serve it on like a fucking little sushi boat.

They put down a river, you know.

No, it's like, it's like straight up, just like you can get like a shawarma or kebabs and it's just they throw it through.

It's 24 seven stall in Akihabara and they blast hardcore hip hop.

And it's just like six dollars for like the best, like most filling meal.

And so I eat it like half half of my meals in Tokyo.

You'd love clubbing in Europe, because that's how every night ends is basically with a big, dirty donor kebab and some chips.

It's a good time.

Indian food.

You've never had Indian food, dude. we got to break you in.

We got to, like we got to, we know we got to.

We have to do like we have to go to home, to the home of Indian food, Brick Lane in London.

Yeah.

We need to go do it.

They stole all the good shit.

It's all there now.

There used to be a load of video game devs down there too.

I remember the DJ hero people were on Brick Lane.

Sure.

There was a, yeah, that sort of makes sense.

There was a bunch of stuff down there.

I want to say it was free radical.

I think it might've been in London around then.

Um man no, they weren't, they were somewhere else, they were lemmington.

You know it's a pretty good substitute is if you don't want to go full tilt and spend like a bunch of money on takeout but you want to try indian food.

The trader joe's frozen indian food is shockingly delicious.

Yeah, get that.

Chana masala, the lamb vindaloo it's fucking, that's insane.

Yeah, it's one of the best frozen meals in the world.

I will contend i'll throw another one in the butter chicken.

The butter chicken's good.

You know It's a cost effective.

It's good.

Even like good butter chicken that's frozen though.

I always feel like, and I've had a lot of people from India make Indian food for me at this point.

Whoa.

And like it's no matter how good you think you've had butter chicken until they have made it for you at home, a 65 year old aunt who everyone calls auntie, regardless of relation when she makes it.

That's when you are truly eating butter chicken.

It is a different experience.

I used to go hang out with Tamor at his house in London sometimes and his mom would bring food upstairs.

And I didn't know what the fuck any of it was, but it was all delicious.

I was like, sometimes it was kind of like a dessert.

Sometimes it wasn't.

I couldn't really tell.

It's like a yogurt situation.

It's kind of sweet.

This one's not a dessert, Tamor.

Enjoy this dessert.

It has chickpeas in it.

What do you mean?

Yeah, exactly.

100%.

Yeah.

It's just like delicious little Pakistani dessert meals, just delivered every once in a while, because it was.

It seemed like the Pakistani mom and the Irish mom were very similar and that if you entered their house they had to feed you, even if you weren't like hungry or anything.

It was just part of the deal.

This is also a Jewish and Italian mother thing.

I feel like it's every culture except America, because America does not have a long enough running culture to establish the tradition yet.

Hey, Americans will.

When you're camping, Americans will offer food.

I feel like that's like... That's so true.

Camping is like, hey, let's throw another thing on.

We have so many fucking games to talk about.

I don't know why we open this with 10 minutes of food talk.

Apologies to anyone who's like a couple of hours away from lunch right now listening to this.

We have a packed show.

There is a lot of games coming out that have come out, and so many, so that I've got one section where I'm just going to go through six games in like a minute, just to get them out of the way.

And we've also got loads of stuff hitting no clip and no clip too.

So we're going to be talking about all that stuff as well.

But first of all, none of this would be possible without our patrons on Noclip and on Noclip2.

Our Noclip2 patronage has broached to 300 patrons.

Woo!

We're up to 2,000 a month, which is not enough to keep this running.

But we figured, you know we got some time with all the annual patrons that signed up as well, which is awesome.

Cool.

But yeah, we're having a blast putting all the stuff up there.

There's a bunch of really cool stuff dropping this week.

Frank's Japan trip, I think, is an absolute highlight.

Um and uh, and loads of indie game recommendations and other bits and bobs.

I'm uh barreling through the mugenics preview as well, which i think is really gonna um, people are gonna find interesting, so loads of stuff to talk about there.

Uh, we have updates as well on patreon, on noclip and noclip2, about sort of some of the questions people have had about.

You know there's an exclusive podcast on both feeds.

Is it the same one?

No, it's not.

Um, you know uh, how can i contribute?

You know, which one should i contribute to?

If it's only one, i should contribute to stuff like that.

We've answered some of that stuff in blog posts, but There's a bit more going up as well and we'll probably do something a little bit of a QA on that, on this podcast feed, in the next few weeks as well, once we've sort of settled down a bit.

But first of all, massive thanks to all of our incredible Battle Pass holders.

I'm going to go from the bottom from here just to mix it up.

See, it came out of nowhere that time, didn't it?

Enoch's following it this time.

Christophe Fatui.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Jonathan Kremen.

Dark Insanities.

Forrest Pruitt.

Tim Robinson.

Ewing's Nate.

John Akers.

Pez.

Sven Huster.

Goddison.

Tucker Morgan.

Quote.

Mark Ross.

And James Brown.

I think I mentioned Matt Pearson.

I'm going to say him again twice.

They felt twice as long when I flipped in the middle.

That was weird.

Felt like we got stuck in some sort of singularity there.

Of Battle Pass holders.

Thank you all so much for keeping us doing the work and uh, thank you for listening to this, this podcast.

Okay, we have games to talk about.

I'm just going to rattle through them right off the top so people have an idea.

We're going to talk about ghost of yotei yay, ghost of yotei.

Pig face skate, baby steps, consume me blood thief uh, and then a little bit of catanaut formula legends, butter side down, and the demo for blank sword uh, which has its kickstarter right now as well.

Uh okay, can i get one of mine out of the way?

Yeah, you've got 17, so i have a lot of games.

Yeah, what's?

What's the choice?

If you want, if you could hear about any of these.

I didn't know baby steps was coming out.

I didn't realize it was this week.

It came out uh, 75 minutes ago.

So maybe we need to move this podcast to wednesday.

This keeps happening.

We're like a really good game drops on a tuesday at like 10 am, 9 am, pacific.

So i've only that's a good one to start on, actually frank, because i've only played, you know 30 25, 30 minutes of it.

So I don't, I don't really know.

Uh, baby steps is out baby steps.

If you don't know, you've probably seen the trailer for this thing.

Um, it is the latest from, uh, Bennett Foddy, who was, uh, teamed up with maxi Bosch.

I want to say, and Gabe Cozzillo, um indie developers, of a lot of them.

It's published by devolver digital.

It's out for 20 bucks, uh, 10% off at the moment.

It is – Bennett Foddy, if you are aware.

His most famous game, I suspect, is Getting Over It, which is the one you probably saw a lot of streamers play.

It is essentially a man in a large urn with a pickaxe attempting in 2D to get himself up a – an increasingly higher level, which kind of spawned the difficult climbing game thing.

I think Grow Up existed before this, but at least the streamified version of this sort of subgenre.

Baby Steps is not dissimilar, but it's also quite different in that baby steps is a third person game where you control a sort of man baby, like a sort of arrested development um guy in his 30s, let's say, who's wearing like a onesie and, for reasons unknown, when you start the game he kind of doesn't know how to walk, or the way you control him is by independently controlling each leg's actions.

So essentially the game is a sort of physics joke of you attempting to do seemingly basic things like walk in a straight line in levels that are increasingly ridiculous.

You know, lots of thin beams to walk across, lots of, oh no, there's a mud slide which is going to take me the entire way back down this mountain if i mess this up.

Um, and then the game is sort of uh, pushed along by uh, a very esoteric and, i think hilarious uh, these narrative moments of like you again, first 30 minutes um, there's like a when you spawn in this world as a guy who's trying to help you and your character is just the most socially awkward, weird guy in the world.

And it's just like, the guy's about to tell you why you're here and everything.

And he's like, no, it's okay.

I'll just, I'll just keep going.

You're not gonna.

I don't have to, you know, i'm just gonna go like he just doesn't want to be like hi man, i'll get you shoes.

I've got shoes right exactly yeah yeah, oh so have you played a little bit as well?

There was a demo a long time ago yeah, and you, you're helped out by british bill burr, who's very helpful and yeah, it's a lot of insightful things he wants to say.

Yeah, it was good.

So you've only played the beginning of it, which is probably what I ended up playing in the demo.

I suspect.

Yeah, probably.

I thought that was a pretty good opening to that idea for a game.

I mean, have you played Getting Over It?

Did you finish that?

Are you a masochist as well?

Getting Over.

It was just layers of difficulty that I immediately was like eh, I'm not really for this.

And for whatever reason, like aesthetically and everything, it's like I enjoy it as a idea, but I didn't feel like I needed to play it.

I think I'd watched so many streamers probably play it that I was like oh, i don't need to play this myself.

Um, this is hilarious, this is.

This reminds me of rock band in that you remember when you got like good at rock band guitars or drums, when you were in the flow state, it like worked, but the minute you started thinking about where your hands were, it just like fell apart.

And this has been, you know again 20 minutes of this.

For the first two to two minutes i couldn't do shit like this poor guy.

It's the way it works, is that you sort of I would?

I would explain it as the left stick sort of leans your gravity almost like your center of gravity, like forward or backwards.

And then the triggers.

Trigger each foot, but the automatic.

So at the start you're sort of holding it down to about one leg and then holding that leg and then holding it down to do the other leg.

You know, we've QWOP like this is a sort of its own subject.

Is that also Bennett Foddy QWOP?

Yes.

Oh, it is.

Okay.

Okay, great for that.

There you go.

Um so uh.

But by the end of the 20 something minutes I was like kind of like sauntering, you know like left and right and left and right.

And I had a rhythm going.

And then like you're turning a corner and you're like changing your center of gravity.

And then you trip up on a log and it's just hilarious.

And you just beefs it on the ground.

So, yeah, I'm into it.

The story stuff is probably what's going to keep me playing this, because I imagine it's going to get much, much harder.

Yeah uh, does it feel like more approachable than benefati's other games?

Because i can't tell if baby steps is, is like pulling a trick where, because the presentation feels more bombastic and story driven and character driven and if like, does the gameplay feel more approachable or is it equally brutal but just like it tricks you along with more narrative and characters and stuff?

Again, i've only played the start, which is probably what jesse played as well.

I would say I wouldn't describe it as brutal off the bat.

I would say it's challenging, but it's funny and fair.

But again, I suspect that there are parts in this game that get quite difficult and frustrating.

I'm guessing, I'm projecting ahead that it probably gets harder.

But I do.

I mean, i think maybe half the reason i feel more interested in playing this is because whenever i watch streamers playing getting over it, it did look brutally difficult, like it looks like a really hard game, whereas this didn't and it doesn't, at least in the opening 30 minutes does not feel like a brutally hard game, feels like a tough game, challenging game, a game with friction god forbid.

But it doesn't.

It doesn't feel um like that.

But i don't know, we'll have to see.

I've read a couple of reviews quick, right off the bat.

I think ign gave it a nine.

Um uh, i read somewhere else there was was eorg, i don't know, say the wrong outlet, but somebody also said that like, said it was it was quite tough and uh, maybe too tough in parts.

Um, can't remember polygon.

You will not survive.

Baby steps, open world, but you'll laugh.

Um, not really sure if that's saying it's too hard or whatever, but yeah yeah, here we go.

Game informer.

I appreciate how baby steps commits to the bit by making the player the brunt of the joke, but it's frustratingly difficult, paired with occasionally poorly designed levels, kept me from laughing alongside it.

So there are differing opinions on this one, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Yeah, and there's a bunch of reviews out right now, so presumably we've got some, you know.

You can go check them out for yourself if you so wish.

But yeah, I'm into it so far.

I'm looking forward to playing it on the big TV and my daughter watching and being like.

Video games are weird.

I mean, yeah, going, yeah, exactly.

Well, it's interesting how I feel like there are specific genre niches where player friction is more tolerable.

Like there are certain games where you hit a level of friction and you interpret it as like this game is too hard or overtuned, or this, this part sucks.

But if it's like.

If it's a horror game or if it's a funny game, you're like, ah, they got me.

Like Dark Souls works because Dark Souls is kind of both.

It's like it has its horror adjacent and comedy adjacent.

So you're like, I just like ended up in a Buster Keaton film and now I'm dead and lost all my soul.

And I would say, yeah, I would like to see the comedy in this.

And I wonder what the horror is, because obviously that comedy and horror are so closely aligned, as you know, psychologically and artistically.

And I think the horror in this game so far is the idea that people, you can slip and fall all the way back down again.

I think that's... That's what I was going to ask.

Is it like Because there are sort of like sections in Getting Over It where you can, There's like limited falls and then there's exposure where you can fall all the way.

Is Baby Steps like that or are you kind of locking in progress so far?

It seems to be because there are like plateaus and...

Or like I was I was walking again early game stuff.

There's a part where they very clearly make you fall down this one area, so that you you know it's like a comedy slide where you're just sliding.

You slide down the mud in like a hole.

Right.

So funny.

I just like that the first time.

I was wondering if you could actually.

Yeah.

So I was not trying to be epic pro gamer mode.

So I played it the first time.

Nice.

And I had a bunch of bugs.

And it wouldn't I couldn't stand up for five minutes.

I was trying to stay.

I was like, is this how the game starts?

Because that's hilarious if it's, you know, but like, how funny is that, really?

But eventually it worked.

I still had the bugs, but I got to that section and I just skipped over the fall.

And I played it again to show my buddy.

And I was like what the hell?

Hell is this?

And I like slid all the way down that thing.

It's very funny, but it seems like there are a lot of opportunities to miss stuff or see stuff because of failure, like that's what I.

I think I'm excited about this one for that, because it's like it's it's willing to be, it's willing to have more fun with you if you fail, as opposed to Bennett Foddy where it's just like do it all over again.

There's no reward other than a quote telling you to persevere.

That's, that's the only thing.

So that's a good point.

When it happened, I did think oh, I wonder if I could have avoided this.

So that's cool.

I'm glad to hear that that's the case.

Um Yeah, I.

What was the question again, Jeremy?

You're saying whether or not it was or how far you can slip down.

Sorry.

So for instance, in that part then what I found myself doing was like kind of intentionally walking in places where there were rocks, that if I fell it might slow me down.

You know what I mean?

And then same as climbing a mountain, right?

Eventually you sort of reach a crest of a hill or something.

And that sort of seems like the natural thing um, the way to do it, but i haven't quit and saved yet, or anything like that.

You know what i mean?

Like i literally played for 30 minutes and then and then went and did a podcast uh so yeah that's, that's baby steps.

I have nothing else to say at the moment.

Uh, we might do an indie recommendation video of it, or maybe a video on the patreon.

Um, we'll have to see uh, what the sort of scuttlebutt is around it.

I can't tell.

With this one in my head, i was like this is a pretty big indie release, But there wasn't that much fanfare around the release.

I was the same as you, Frank.

Last night I was up playing Pig Face and I backed out and went on Blue Sky or something.

I saw somebody say, oh, it's out in like 12 hours.

And I was like, oh God, I completely forgot.

I remember they had the Silksong trailer where they avoided the Silksong release date.

But yeah, it wasn't like I was getting bombarded with ads for it.

So yeah, we'll have to see if it's like, if it's as big a launch as i kind of assumed it would be, being a devolver published game from from some some cool folks um, but yeah, so now uh, pc and i'm playing on playstation 5 and i don't know if it's out on anything else.

Actually this feels like a ps5 pc game.

Is it a game pass game?

Feels like a game pass game.

Is it?

It's on a win?

I don't think so.

No okay, could be wrong.

There is a trial on the PlayStation Premium service, but there is no, I don't think it's even on Xbox.

No, I don't believe so.

Never mind.

It does feel like... You remember games that were PC and PlayStation only?

This feels like one of those.

I don't know why.

It feels like a PlayStation game, you're saying?

Yeah, it's got a sort of sheen to it or something.

Well, it does look a bit like... I was calling it as a joke, Death Standing for a while.

It's a bit like that.

It's not far away.

Death Standing is a great name.

Oh my lord.

How have none of the reviews done that one?

Because they're better than me.

That's the lowest hanging fruit.

You might as well be picking it out of the ground.

Good stuff.

That's 9 out of 10 from IGN.

4.5 out of 5 from The Gamer.

4 out of 5 from Eurogamer.

Most people seem pretty confident.

That's Baby Steps.

Go check it out.

Frank, we recorded a video for the Nocliptube patrons.

We did like an over an hour of us sort of extended impressions on Skate, which finally came out.

You have played a lot more Skate since we recorded that.

Let's talk about Skate a little bit.

What do you make of the early access launch of Skate 4 Knee Skate?

Skate is the most fascinating thing because I love the game, but there is so much bullshit in it that most people you try to convince are like you're crazy.

This is horrible.

I've had text messages from friends.

I had a message from a friend that was so salty.

It was like I hope no one spends money on the new Skate and they go bankrupt for making such a stupid game.

Wow.

That's just one message.

Well, it's free to play, so he's right right now.

I have spent five dollars.

I've done my part.

There was a there was a cheetah print sports bra in the store and I had to get it.

So the new skate it's insane because also I'm mad that they're calling it early access, even though it's out.

There's also the bigger thing that this has been available for playtesting for like two years.

I never got to play it.

I'm finally playing it and I'm so thankful. the core mechanics of skating is excellent.

The city has a lot of variety.

It's really cool.

The thing that like is so blatantly like annoying and frustrating is all of the actual story tutorial.

Everything that's not the skating is the most like abysmal, frustrating thing in the world.

It like the the you're constantly bombarded by there's three characters who constantly talk to you.

V is this AI robot girl.

Who's like, wow, welcome to whatever.

It's like, it's like, it's like an app.

It's like series is talking to you basically.

Yeah.

And then, and then there's not an AI voice.

We should make.

It is not.

It is.

It appears to be voice acted by a human, but it is.

It is a.

It is a little AI app that's talking to you or whatever, which again is already like one strike against it.

Cause the whole idea of like skate culture is like Oh, people coming together of all all backgrounds, like expressing themselves in the physical world of physical movement.

And the person coaching you is a, the idea is like, Oh, it's an AI app.

And it's like, that's so not cool.

Nobody wants that.

That makes me like want to scream.

That's such a bad choice.

Number two you've got like I forget the.

There's slappy.

Slappy is the most annoying.

It's like borderlands level crap.

It's so bad.

So there's a guy named slappy who comes in as like, all right, dude, time to learn the grab.

I know Shingo's trying to get you to shred some pipes, but Hey bro, come to my place.

I'll teach you how to do the method.

Okay.

And it's like, that's the level of dialogue.

And you have to do hundreds of hours of these missions with with Shingo Slappy and V Slappy was in the other skate games.

Was he always a stoner like that?

Yeah, I think so.

I remember Slappy's Park in Skate 2.

They try to cram all these skate terms.

It feels so forced.

It's so bad.

Shingo's not as bad, but even then it's like, dude, it's time to get the footy.

It's like, I just want to skate.

I don't want to do any of this.

So like that is excruciating.

But when you're just playing the game, when you're actually skating, it's really cool.

The weird element is it's like an MMO.

It's always online.

So you're just thrown into servers with other people skating.

But it's cool because then you'll be alerted to like people glitching in a corner or people just like throwing down half pipes and trying to do ridiculous spots are sometimes.

You'll be in sync with other people doing challenges with you.

And it's like, Oh, this is kind of, this is like actually cool.

There's still a lot of like week one opening month bugs where sometimes cross play is like impossible.

It just doesn't work.

My friends will try to join and it'll be like Oh, your friend doesn't have cross play enabled, even though we all do.

Are just party issues?

Sometimes they'll join a party.

And then I can't see my friends like they're there.

I see their username floating above.

You can't see them.

If you go to spectate, you can see them.

It's just a lot of weird glitches and bugs.

But when it works, it's cool.

But at the same time I wouldn't mind if I could just buy a physical retail disc and play this without the online stuff enabled.

This game feels like the online mode of what Skate 4 would be.

It's as if like, OK, imagine there is Skate 4 with a career mode and everything.

And then, oh, you do the online mode.

This is the online mode with with the crappy story missions, voiceovers and all that stuff.

But.

The world map is good.

But what makes me stressed is I don't know, a year from now when they shut this down, or three years from now when they shut this down, will I ever be able to play Skate 4 again.

Probably not.

I have no idea.

And that's what like is like sad.

It's like, oh, there's there's like the game is good.

There's so much stuff that's annoying and get like steps on its own foot or whatever.

It gets in the way of itself.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no, please.

Like, I just want to play this thing and I'm happy to keep playing it.

But there's so many things that are annoying with it.

But at the core, I've already put 18 hours into it.

I love it.

But, oh, my God, it's frustrating to play because you want it to be better.

I feel almost the exact same way as Frank.

I think they have nailed the feeling of skate.

They've also changed parts of it that I've come around to maybe.

The butteriness of the moves really threw me at the start, where every single – kickflip, or shove it or heart flip, whatever you do, is just like the.

It's almost like when you're doing the animation, like real skate tricks.

When you pop them, especially when you do them wrong, you like aggressively over kick and then you catch them, whereas these are like the most buttery, like perfect kickflips, that like rotate exactly the amount and then you catch them.

You come down at the exact same moment and just it felt like oh, this feels a bit canned, feels a bit tony hawk or something.

Um, but I've come around to that.

I don't know if it's just like it's easier to visually spot which tricks you're doing now, because the animations seem a little bit longer.

But that's super nitpicky stuff.

But yeah, the actual like skating around the town and stuff like that is super cool.

I like the map, but I think it could use a lot more variety.

It's just all downtown shit which historically, was the stuff that I was least interested in in the skate series.

I preferred like barreling down the empty you know la river kind of looking thing or you know in the suburbs or whatever in like a weird mega ramp park or something like that.

There's none of that in here um, but yeah i, i it's weird like they need to like dinklage this.

Remember with destiny where they just like they just rewrote everything and got a new actor.

So replace me with Nolan North.

Is that what you're saying?

It was just such a weird, like I was saying this to Frank, like, look, I'm almost 40.

I haven't stepped on a deck properly in years.

Like, what do I know?

Like I grew up skating.

I love skateboarding culture.

I still, you know, grab a skate mag every now and again, I'll watch videos, all that sort of stuff.

But like, I'm no expert about the culture in 2025.

I don't hang out at a park anymore.

So what the fuck do I know?

But in the opening like two hours of this I was just like banging my head against the wall, going like what the fuck?

Who the fuck thinks this is like skate?

Like, this is so weird.

Like skate was always the legit one.

Cause Tony Hawk was like way more arcadey.

Right.

So the skate always leaned into.

We're going to be a lot more sort of like hardcore skater type stuff.

Um, The fact that there's no pro skaters in this game at all is also very strange.

The fact that a lot of the music is random universal licensed music that they just Frank, described it really well as it's like.

Here's a fake Beach Boys song.

Here's a fake Ska song.

There's real tracks mixed in there too.

I actually like how you find music in this game.

Sometimes there'll just be music playing outside of a store and it says grab music, which I guess you use a fucking app called Grabber to grab the music.

But before I knew that, I thought it was cooler.

But basically you like collect music.

So that's kind of cool.

Like in the open world, there is music to collect.

That's pretty awesome.

But yeah, it just keeps getting in the way of itself.

All the tutorial stuff, like a lot of it was just completely unnecessary.

Like, let me skip the tutorial where you teach me how to play fucking skate.

Like I've played like hundreds of hours of these games.

Like I was like, oh, it's like a tutorial.

There's probably going to be some stuff in here that's a bit different or a bit new.

And it's like, no, she's literally teaching me how to change like kickflips and manual and stuff.

And I'm like, it's been 40 minutes of this.

Can we get through it?

And then each mission, it's the same thing.

It's like a lot of just, it's just bad script writing, bad voice.

You know, it's just, and the vibe is off.

That's the thing.

It's the vibe of it.

It's just like weird.

It's like, no, I don't want an app teaching me this shit.

Like, and also here.

Yeah.

I think this is like like, in a way, this is kind of the problem that skate culture has a little bit is that it's sort of like mainstream adoption was always the thing that made a decent amount less cool.

And there was a lot of skaters in the nineties and early aughts that were very much against the sort of like mainstream of vacation, of skate culture.

This game is like fucking like skateboarding neoliberalism, because literally the concept of this game I shit you not Jeremy, I know that sounds like just like one of those stupid statements I make the concept of this game is that they are inviting you to this city And there is like a fucking local ordinance to like import skateboarders to like to like and there's like a, there's like an app, like a citizen app that you have about skateboarding and you get level up on the app because the more like hot skateboard shit you do, the better it is for the local economy.

I don't know.

You said they invite you to the city.

Who invites you?

Frank, what's the, No, it's like a... Is it Slappy?

It's like Slappy and Shingo and V... I don't know.

Again, that's the thing.

There's so much in this game that isn't connected.

The funniest thing my friends told me who were in the early beta they had to redo all the story tutorial stuff four times because they kept resetting everyone's progress.

So they were like, my friend Etienne... I didn't know that happened that many times.

My friend Etienne was like, dude, you think this is bad?

I had to do this four times.

Like, that killed me.

No, no, no, you go ahead, you go ahead.

I was going to say, like with the Universal Music royalty-free library that's in here, there's a lot of stuff that feels placeholder that they forgot to take out before the early access launch.

The biggest thing is their loot crates are called product boxes.

Oh, no.

And that is like... Yeah, yeah, product boxes.

The way you get progression in this game is you level up the in-game item.

What?

That is literally your progression.

Oh, the skate shops level up to five.

You get access to more product boxes.

Bro, what happened?

Tony Hawk.

OK, Tony Hawk used to be like it was it was all the skaters you loved and they were terrible acting.

But you'd go up and Bam Margera would be like, hey, hey, man.

And it would be like the only take he did of the line and it would suck.

But it felt authentic for that.

It was like a fucking mumblecore movie.

Yeah.

And there was something about it that was like that was like.

I don't know.

It's not that it was like fucking punk rock, because it was still like all of the brands you love to buy.

It was still selling you skateboards and hoodies and shit.

You know, like you were still like going out and buying your element hoodie after because, like whoever did, a fucking Christ Aaron one.

But it it felt realer because it was at least like.

The hyper consumerism around skateboarding, around buying skate shoes and decks and hoodies and hats and all this bullshit it was attached to.

People wanted to consume those things because it was attached to a like, legitimate and visceral and real cultural phenomenon of skating.

There was something about skateboarding that was like alive and real and cool, that people wanted to tap into and they wanted to purchase things as a reflection of you know.

I mean this is all like fucking hyper individualist adam curtis bullshit.

I'm not saying this is good, but like at least they wanted to buy the things to consume because it was an expression of something real and they're like emotional investment in it.

Uh, i feel like skate is just like I don't know.

Like, do they know?

Do they remember skateboarding?

It's very strange because, like I've been watching their dev diaries for years and they really seem tuned in.

But, like, and this doesn't seem like an old man yells at cloud situation.

This particular critique of this seems to be fairly universal.

Like, this is the thing, like, that people are saying is that, like, the vibes are just weird.

Like, it is.

And you play it and you immediately understand why.

Like to your point.

Like skateboarding is very commercial, like it is very performative, it is very aesthetic.

It sort of always has been.

With 80 of skateboarders.

There's always been this subset of skaters that were very anti that um, you know and i and they're sort of like respected within skating for being the purists right, and that's that's awesome.

But, like the vast majority of skaters were trying to sell decks like that's how they, That's how they – getting sponsored was the thing.

Like this was – this is like Twitch streaming before Twitch streaming.

You fucking did cool moves.

You got photographs taken.

You got sponsored.

You got free decks.

That's how you got up in the world.

And like I mean Thug and Thug 2, right, are basically about that.

It's like it's capitalism, the game.

It's just that you're sort of doing it in this weird – like it is weird.

That's like one of the only games in the world where like except for like, I don't know mafia, where it's about job progression.

Like, isn't this so weird?

Like it's before, but it is right.

And that's.

That's the sort of the weirdly skate is is kind of a game where loot boxes or product boxes are kind of work, because like yeah I, you know, skate for a while and then you know yeah, I do want to get that toy machine hoodie, and that looks fucking cool.

And then I want to look cool in my toy machine hoodie and get, take photographs with it.

But yeah, it says something that they managed to fumble it in this game.

Because I think the thing that really throws me off when you get into San Van, what is a San Van?

I can never name the fucking town.

Is that like skateboarding is supposed to be at the very level, base level, counter-cultural.

Like it is, you are doing moves in places where you are not meant to be.

There are security guards chasing you out.

That stair set is not made for skateboarding.

It's made for people to walk down right like we're gonna drag quick kickers into this part of town and do it.

And some of the coolest things that you see in this game, with the online stuff especially, is when people do that, when they make these weird improv skate parks and weird improv jumps.

There's a moment in our video on patreon where frank is doing insane jumps off of a skyscraper to try and hit like a ramp.

That's like you know fucking 15 stories underneath him.

And when he does it it's like this amazing moment right, and all that stuff is like super cool.

But the game is sets you up as if you're coming to this town to help the local community.

Like love skateboarding more.

It just immediately starts on the wrong tone.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't do that.

Like when you're skating and skate one, two and three, you're like there's cars on the road that probably don't like you.

There's pedestrians on the path that are, you know, you're different.

You're, you're, you're the special one doing weird things.

Whereas when you boot into this game, it's like the fucking destiny of, lobby with like hundreds of skateboarders like it's mostly this town is mostly skateboarders it's if this was like you know 2025 america trump would be trying to like wondering where all these fucking skateboarders going coming from invading our cities invading the democratic cities are full of fucking skateboarders and it's bussing in skateboarders yeah and every everything in the world is about skateboarding and it just makes it feel like oh okay it almost sounds like you should have leaned into that like they should have been more explicit and been like welcome to skatetopia where skateboarding is the only way to progress in life the better skate the more money like they but they don't do that right it's i mean you go to the store yeah i'm not sure if that would have worked either to be honest i mean it doesn't sound like either of them would have worked but at least it would have been like you know bold and straight about it instead of like here's your your loot box for gear like when you buy skate stuff like you're totally right that like it does make sense in some respect that the commercialization of skateboarding leads to this sort of thing.

But when you buy skate gear, people who were even like under like, when I was a kid, like 15 years ago, it was like you would go buy skate stuff.

And it was like, you, you went to the skate shop.

You did not go to zoomies.

You went to where, like the losers who, like the store, was held together by plywood and everything was like duct tape to the wall.

That's where you bought it from.

No.

And this one, you go to one of the legit, one of the four locally uh probably state run uh skate shops that are in each of the districts of this game.

So yeah, to your point.

It is like there's nothing about this that feels underground or countercultural, which to me is like it's kind of hard to do skateboarding without having that like that seems like it is, because of how nakedly commercialized skateboarding generally is, like sort of saying the quiet the the, the quiet part loud.

Like that is, you know, I have no problem with that and admitting that.

And that's a whole thing is like skate culture is a fashion to a certain extent.

Um, the only way you get rid of, you get away with that is by being counter-cultural.

It's like, it's like fucking, you know.

It's like when, when they started selling like you know, punk is dead shirts in like general ladies fashion stores.

You know what I mean?

Like it doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

And I think, like if you pulled skateboarding out of that counter-cultural stuff, none of this stuff works.

And I think that's the reason why it sort of, it just feels totally off.

And it's a shame because the game is like there's some good fucking skateboarding in this.

You know the replay stuff is good.

The missions, I'm not so sure about Frank.

I think they're, they're very, they're kind of samey.

There's like three or four different things you do.

A lot of it is repeat the tricks, collect all the bearings.

There's not that much variety, i don't think, but i haven't played as much as you does it.

Does it get more variety?

No, it's like.

So you'll have like daily missions in each district and you do the like.

Each time you do the daily mission, you level up that district a significant amount.

Once you repeat the mission the second time that day, you get very little.

Until the next day it resets and like there's like stunt challenges and there's like a thing that's kind of similar to Tony Hawk's like combo thing, where it's like you have like 11 bearings, whatever the hell you need to collect, do them in the same line, but oh, you get extra points if you do like 10 grabs or whatever.

Things like that.

Like they're all very linear challenges.

When you do them in co-op, it's kind of cool because you don't have to do all five.

It's just like.

It's kind of like as a team, you just have to check all these boxes so you can make progression very fast if you do it through co-op.

But the most fun I have is All my friends and I are just kind of on the same rail together, like not in a mission, not in the structure.

It's just in the free play mode of like, oh wait, let's just do tricks on this in this section for a little bit.

And then we'll start doing it.

And then a friend will put a ramp to fuck with us.

And then like and stuff like that.

It's like, oh, then it's like a legitimately like we're all at.

It's the same thing.

Like in Los Angeles, you always see like the Hollywood Hills High School.

There's always like 30 kids just skating down that same that same rail.

But that's the experience is when everyone in the lobby is kind of hanging out.

I'm just tricking on the same thing.

Not because EA or the mission designers are like, hey, bro, collect these 11 things for Shingo.

It's like, oh, no, I don't care.

Oh, here's a ramp.

Like last night I found you can I don't know if the collision was messed up or intentional on a hot dog cart.

There's an umbrella.

And if you bailed on the hot dog cart umbrella, you like bounce super high.

Oh, gee, really?

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

So my friends are bugger by design.

I can't tell because it is kind of almost like a beach ball thing.

It makes sense.

If you landed on a trick, you didn't bounce.

It was only if you ragdolled on it.

But it seemed like the value was too high.

Even it was intentionally meant to be a launch pad.

It's like, this seems like a bugged collision thing.

So my friends and I were just tricking on it.

And people would see us and come up to us.

No one designed that mission.

That was just me glitching onto something and being like, oh, this is cool.

And then we did that for like an hour.

That was incredible.

There was no voiceover.

There was no missions.

There was no loot boxes.

There was no XP.

There was no progression.

I was just in a virtual world skating with friends having fun.

That is what I like about skate.

That's the, that's the juice.

Yeah, I agree.

And it's funny.

Like you go on steam and read the reviews and it's all similar stuff.

Like, which makes me crazy.

Like cause I want.

What I want to do now is talk to people who are in the early access and be like surely this was stuff that people were bringing up.

Because that's the thing that shocks me the most is like people are saying, like the skateboarding is good, but this game has the worst vibe.

Like it's corporate and weird and sauce-less, but it's, hey, skating's good.

You know, it's like, it's, yeah, it's very, it's very peculiar.

Yeah.

I'm kind of stunned.

I cannot think of a game like this.

We often talk about games that we play, that mechanically are, you know, not perfect, but because they have like a sort of a feel or a vibe or an aesthetic or a, they just make you feel good inside.

You stick with them and you love them.

And like this is I don't think I've ever played a flip of that where this game is just like.

I hate everything about the vibe, but the actual gameplay is great.

It's really strange.

It's very, very weird.

Um, I don't know if you can fix that in early access.

Like, I don't know what that is.

Is that, I don't know if you could fix it.

Period.

Like, is there a version of an EA 2025 EA published skateboarding game?

That wouldn't be a little bit lame.

It's a little bit lame, sure.

But the way they fix half these problems is by stripping out tutorial shit, recasting some of that, and by starting to put in stuff that's cool, like getting pro skaters.

Apparently, I think the characters are voiced by pro skaters.

Who would you get is the thing?

Who would you get?

Are there like...

Are there skateboarders now?

Like if you pick anyone, it's going to be like 40-year-olds.

They're all going to be like, I'm not doing that.

No, no, no, no, no.

I'm sure there are young people.

It's just like – No, no, no, Jesse.

There is a very popular – like between the Olympics and – uh, professional skating there is.

There is large amounts of people you can pull from.

I don't know.

Lots of them.

That's what I'm saying though, is like I'm sure there are tons of professional skateboarders that you could put in the game.

It's just like, are there any of them going to be like massively popular?

Like if they popped up, would anyone know?

Yeah.

They're all like Instagram people.

Yeah.

It's it's, it's just a generation of like, in the same way that like in Tony Hawk, when you none of us knew who Eric Costin was before he played Tony Hawk.

You know what I mean.

It was, it was the other way around.

It wasn't, you know, they add a legitimacy.

Like, in many ways, like, playing Skate and Skate 1 was a sort of re-education on who's hot.

It's like it was more like picking up a magazine and seeing like, who are the cool bands that are around now?

You know what I mean.

Like, that's kind of the thing.

So, like in a weird way, these games are like vectors for discovery, for music and skateboarding culture.

That's true.

That's a very good point.

And this game just doesn't do it very well.

Even the shop.

Like, there's no... You'd think the shop would be full of shit to buy.

It's like, not at all.

It changes every three or four days right, it's like, and most of the stuff is in lucre.

What are they?

Product boxes, product boxes.

That's terrible, danny.

I think you nailed it.

I think, like the, the idea isn't that you need to get the record.

I mean, tony hawk obviously was the name on the game, because people did recognize tony, maybe bam and thug, and i think, outside of that you're, you know, You know, no one's like like Jeff Rowley.

I think a lot of people were exposed to by like playing like.

I learned a lot of skaters and a lot of bands from playing Tony Hawk.

And I think that that's the mentality that you need to have with a game like this is that.

It needs to like expose you to cool shit.

It needs to know about the cool shit you don't know about, and then be like let me fucking put you on.

Here's like, you know, like like GX 1000 should be in this fucking game.

Do you guys know GX 1000?

Oh my God.

Let me fucking put you on.

Please.

I grabbed this link earlier.

Uh no, it's a?

Uh skate crew uh, from san francisco.

Uh, just i.

This is a time link.

If you, in staff chat, watch literally 10 seconds of this, this is a skate crew from san francisco who bombed the hills of san francisco, and it is dude.

Gx1000 are fucking awesome.

Um, one of my two favorites, apparently.

I've watched half of this video because it just plays.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

Oh, I have seen these guys before.

Yeah.

This is.

That's that's upsetting.

That's so crazy, it's utterly insane.

Like this is i feel like if you showed this shit to people doing skate videos in the 90s, they would be like skating goes down a dark route and because it's like suicidal.

But like these are the types of people that need to be in.

Like if you're working on a skateboard video game, you need to be, you need to be fucking watching.

Like you need to be watching skate crews who are like going to be on thrasher next year and you need to like tell me about them.

I mean, obviously it's tough because video games take years to make whatever, but like i don't know even if they were the people who were going to be in thrasher three years ago.

I was trying to frank about this.

I think we brought it up in in the extended look we did over on the noclip2 patreon.

But the one thing that i was wondering was is the fact that this is a live game?

Does that create like, was there just not enough love in the ea legal department to figure out contracts that would work for a live game?

You know what I mean?

Like when you're licensing music or people's likeness, I, I can't, I, I don't know.

Like I, like even the sports games are annual franchises and that stuff is negotiated with the unions, I'm guessing.

But like, it's just, that's what I was trying to think.

Cause like there is, it's probably like for anyone.

It will probably be really cheap to try and get some of these folks into this game or bands.

Like it's, it's music's never been cheaper on a commercial level.

Um, So it seems crazy that EA couldn't get a bunch of this stuff in here.

Historically, I was talking to Frank about EA tracks and stuff.

I think they have a pretty big licensing and A&R team at EA.

At least they did at a certain stage.

It just seems crazy that they didn't.

Yeah, you're right.

Like, you just buy yourself cred.

That's... Right?

Just get a bunch of... If you have the EA budget, literally... Get him in the game.

But people didn't think about it.

That is interesting, though.

Because even in skates, people didn't think that.

Or in Tony Hawk.

I mean, some people did in Tony Hawk in the early days.

They were like, oh, these fucking guys in a video game.

But skateboarding gets away with it, right?

A little, you know... Sometimes.

It's because, like...

It's because the ultimate fantasy is This is why, you see, every fucking young kid is like I want to be a YouTuber.

I want to be a streamer.

It's not because those things are countercultural or anti-corporate.

It's that it's a thing that seems cool to do, and to be able to make a living doing something that you think is like cool and interesting is the ultimate fantasy.

And so like bands who tour and sell merch and sell albums and sign record deals and stuff.

It's the reason people aren't instantly like fuck.

That is because that's what you need to do to sustain a life doing cool shit.

And I think, as like as cost of living goes up and everything is more and more expensive, I think that there's like it's only more acceptable because it's like you're like a professional skateboarder how the fuck do you pay rent?

And they're like, oh well, like i have a, there's a skate deck with a cartoon version of me on it giving a peace sign.

It's like yeah, i mean that sucks, but like of course there is, there has to be um, so i don't know it gets away with it because it like it's necessarily everything is monetized.

Like that's.

You can't just be like a fucking zen weirdo who just is like the biggest skater in the world and like lives in a trash can?

It's funny how, like even in the old skate games, you would earn cash and for doing like you know you do a trick and it would be on the front of skateboarding magazine or something.

You know what I mean?

Like that was, that was like a mission in the game and you'd get money for it.

And like, you could go and buy the cool skateboard and hoodie.

And like, that was enough in those games.

That's the most simple version of progress that you have in those games.

And that's not even in this game because you don't earn money.

You aren't, well, you would do, you weren't like sand van bucks, which don't look real.

They're like you weren't like five of them or something you know it's like or like, they don't account, there's no decimal point.

So you don't feel like it's money.

And then there's also like this other money, you know what I mean?

Because of course it is, it's a live service game.

So it's all obfuscated.

So like even that loop, and then you can't just go, I was saying to Frank, let's go to the go.

I'll just, I want to buy all my favorite decks.

I've got my classic blind decks, my classic toy machine decks. you know, my Royal trucks, I'll get my Spitfire wheels.

We'll do, you know, all your favorites, but you can't do that either.

Cause there's just like, you know, like Tony Hawk, you go in and there's like 800 wheels to unlock.

Like even that's the loop in THPS and the new ones, right?

You just go in, you go and there's a certain sicko fantasy about making sure you have all 80 trucks on lock.

So you can fucking never use any of them.

But in this one it's like no, do you want to?

Do you want to spend five sand van bucks on a on like the Silverado?

Uh, purchase crate or whatever the fuck it's called?

And then one of the eight things comes out of it.

Thankfully, there's no dupes, but otherwise there's no satisfaction in that.

You know what I mean?

It's like, let me buy the JNCOs.

Just let me buy the JNCOs.

That's all I want.

It is a weird sort of like inversion to of what what Tony Hawk Underground did, which was that it took that sort of like hyper commercialism and corporatism of skating and made fun of it by making like a caricature where everything in Thug was like hey man, if you want to fucking get a deal, this is what you got to do.

Like it was.

It was embracing it in a way that was sort of like, you know, the sardonic sort of like turn of the millennium.

Yeah yeah, exactly like it was.

Like everyone sells out, bro.

Like fucking, how this is how you're gonna sell out was the plot of the game um, but if you're running a live service game, you can't really like, can't be like hey microtransactions, am i right?

Those things fucking suck.

Also, do you want to buy this?

Imagine really good writers, though.

Imagine really good writers on that.

Like, imagine if somebody pulled it off, hire me, that would be pretty awesome.

This might be a really good transition, because a game that, weirdly enough, does like, like poverty, economy stuff really well is pig face.

Um Oh which uh, I wouldn't mind talking about next if uh if, that's all right Frank, you've played a good amount of this as well.

Yeah.

I've done, I've touched, I think four out of the five levels in the game.

So pig face is, we've talked about it before.

I had it on the summer games fest uh podcast last year, i think, when i, when i played no, was it?

Was it this year, was this year, wasn't it?

Um uh, it's published by dread xp, developed by tito loves you.

Um, this is a first person shooter in the guise of, you know, your classic late 90s aughties, early aughties.

Um uh, first person game the, the Version I played at Summer Games Fest.

I enjoyed it in some ways and in other ways I was like oh, it's a bit limiting or a bit, you know, a bit puzzle-solvey.

I am absolutely in love with this.

I've completed all the early access stuff in it.

Essentially what it is, is it's a first-person shooter.

You don't have a reticle so you never really are quite sure where you're going as shooting, and it has a sort of a weird floatiness to it that feels kind of nice like a waste to the character.

Bullets hurt a So if you get shot like three or four times, you're done for.

But similarly, when you're shooting people, a lot of the time you were killing them in one shot.

It is sort of rag dolly and bloody, like heads explode.

I've heard people mention games like Manhunt and Postal a bit with regards to this.

Yeah.

And essentially it is your classic base invasion style FPS game where you start and you have a list of some objectives.

Usually it is obtain something in this place, kill all of the people in this place.

It's all urban, so it's all like set in urban places and the people that you are killing seem to be mostly sort of like street thug, narco dealers, that type of stuff.

Um, it's gritty and disgusting in that way.

And you're basically being sent in as a sort of hired hand who wears masks.

Um to uh, to kill everyone in there and to do the objectives.

The way each level runs is that you have a house that you launch your game from, you pick the job you're doing on a laptop screen and there is money for each objective that you do.

And there's also a shop, an online shop, that you can use to unlock new weapons and accessories, melee weapons, ranged weapons and some other stuff, Um and including health packs, which you might use into uh in in levels.

So there can be situations like I got into what I was alluding to earlier, where I was sort of in the poverty economy problem of I could not complete the last level because I didn't have enough money to buy med packs.

So I had to go back and replay another level, uh, to try and save up enough money.

Like it makes no sense, right?

Cause you're going back to the level that you killed everyone in and doing it again, but to basically save up enough money so that I could afford to do the next gig properly by getting like a silenced sniper rifle and buying medical packs or just syringes to basically like give yourself a health boost during the game.

There is no UI basically, very stripped back.

There's no health bar.

There's nothing like that.

You sort of have to intuit how much life you've got left, based on a bit of red gradient around the outside.

The only, I think, UI they give you is how many bullets you have left in your weapon.

Yeah.

And this it's just a satisfying game.

Shooting people is satisfying.

It's very arcadey and that it sort of lets you like I went in with a silenced shotgun and was just like absolutely murking people.

It was so much fun.

Yeah, I really like it.

Frank, what's your impressions been?

Yeah i, i mean like it kind of feels like a first person hotline miami like um, i mean it's explicitly like with the masks and stuff, but yeah, like the time to kill is so fast that it feels like playing counter-strike.

Also uh yeah, you are ingesting, you are using morphine as health packs.

Uh, it does have that like gritty manhunt or even like david fincher vibe.

It's so like filthy yeah, and it's like it's so cool and uh, I don't know.

Yeah.

Like we, we saw this at the mix at summer games fest and like didn't hear anyone else talk about anything.

It was like, Oh, this is so cool.

The condemned has also been cited as like a point of influence.

But yeah, I just like a gritty, gristly game.

And for me, I like that.

It's quick and arcadey.

You pick your missions.

It is very like satirical.

The online web store is very like ammunition, GTA, like bounty supply.

And there's like windows 95, like eagles and midis, like it's it's.

It's a genuinely cool game.

It's an early access, i think, for like eight dollars, ten dollars.

Right now it's 899.

I didn't even realize it was that cheap.

Actually, that's great, yeah.

So it's like oh, this is awesome and yeah, the early access.

There's a tutorial and then, i believe, five missions and i'm assuming there'll be more missions and um, it also kind of feels like golden, io7 or perfect dark, where the mission structure is like okay, here's your main thing, blow up the drug den, kill the boss.

There's optional objectives.

You get extra money if you kill every gang member.

Uh and uh yeah, it's just like, it's just a funny cool, like morbid game and so uh, i was like very happy to play, but it feels cool to play it like it's like everything about it was really really cool, so i enjoy.

Yeah, when you die you also get hospital bills, so that also takes away from your money as well, which i think contributes to that interesting poverty economy loop.

I am replaying levels is a lot of fun, like i.

I i don't know what happened when i played the demo at summer game fest.

I think it was like didn't have enough ammo half the time.

I feel like maybe i just got a bunch more ammo and i did find it.

I didn't find it particularly difficult, like i, that most of the levels i did on my first go was only the last one.

I had a little bit of trouble with um, but it's, it's super interesting to replay, i think these levels because the levels have us.

The level design is really good.

They have a sort of labyrinthian vibe to them where there are hidden ways in and out of places that once you've completed the level, once you now know, which is pretty cool.

And similarly, I think it's like fun to play the game in different styles.

It was a game that I was excited to sort of run and gone in.

I was excited to do it range.

Like, for instance, like, you know, I'm using a silenced sniper rifle and there's no bullet drop.

Like you.

Literally, if you pointed at someone's head and they are five football fields away, their head is going to explode.

And it's very funny.

Um, the voice lines are funny.

Uh, you know, she's here or, you know, oh my God, they sent one of you.

And like all these really flavorful lines, like one of the optional missions in it is to kill the chef.

And you're like, who the fuck's the chef?

And then you eventually end up going downstairs in this subway station.

And there's just like a guy walking around with a huge chef hat who's like buried in the corner and has like a big uh you know bulletproof vest.

You do get people who have bulletproof vests and like sort of um metal masks and they take a little bit more killing and there's a cool physical aspect to it, like if you kill them and they die they fall over.

But a lot of times you'll shoot people and they won't actually be.

They'll fall down ragdolled, but they'll get back up again.

So you're you sort of have to go finish them off, maybe shoot them in the head while they're down, while they're getting back up, or um, or melee them to death.

If you're trying to not make noise um, you're picking up scrap and things in the world as well, even when you're doing the bombs is it's like straight up counter-strike, uh bomb placement, where there's like a ghost of a bomb and you go and press a button and it goes beep beep, beep and you have to get out of there before it explodes.

The some of the levels are very like kingpin or very half-life 2.

There's one level that's like straight up, like oh, you've made, you've made your little half-life 2 homage here one that there's actually a vent in the game.

That is 100 taken from half-life 1, which i also thought was pretty cool.

Um yeah, it's cool.

And then how it works is when you start the game you're in a van and you basically choose from all the weapons that you've unlocked.

The weapons are permanent.

You buy them in the store and you have access to them forever, and so you basically just cycle through which ones you want and then you go out and do the mission.

So it seems like a game that is meant to be replayed and have fun, and I bet they'll add a bunch of like they should add more objectives in, I think.

I think I'd replay these levels over and over again if I had a chance.

But yeah, I enjoyed it.

SGF I wasn't blown away by it because I knew there was a little bit of heat around this game.

People have been talking about it, you guys have been talking about it before, and So I went into this with sort of hoping it was going to be fun and it exceeded my expectations a lot.

So, yeah, we'll probably have a video up on the channel as well at some stage, I suspect.

Jesse, let's head over to you for more retro first person, at least in its title.

Yeah, retro and its visuals, I would say.

It's visually quite retro.

Yeah, Blood Thief.

This is a really sick first person speed running dungeon crawly kind of game.

It's called Blood Thief.

If you see the visuals of the first couple levels, Thief inspirations there.

Danny pulled something from blood, perhaps.

I don't.

I didn't, I know nothing about that game, so I couldn't make the comparison.

Yeah.

It's definitely more thief than blood.

It's more about having the blood than it is about looking like blood.

Cause you play, I think as a vampire also.

Oh, do you?

Yeah.

I think that's the narrative setups that you're playing as a vampire trying to kill the king or God or I don't know.

Kill the timer in the game.

Um yeah, this is uh, if you, if you remember my disease that I had for a couple of months there with neon white uh, where I couldn't stop playing, that this has all of the same things that I was looking for in that um, without the thing that seemed to turn a lot of people off, which was an overt narrative.

That was a little too anime, uh in neon white.

This is more straight faced.

And like you are in a Victorian era uh environment.

You are running really fast, but like it has the physics of playing like a cs surf map and like flying around these levels running on walls, dashing and sliding as fast as you can.

I think the appeal of blood thief is the fact that there's so many unique and intricate little interactions with the mechanics.

Like any good speed running game, especially post neon white, is like you need to be able to communicate to people the basics of playing the game of like exploring, finding keys.

This has a lot of like doom or quake inspiration, i suppose, because there's secrets to find around, levels that are like upgrades, that let you to unlock different weapons later on, that give you different tools to do speed running and stuff, which is really cool um, but they introduce mechanics in a really like smooth and straightforward way where they'll be like hey, this is how you do a slide.

Okay now, if you jump and slide, you maintain your momentum.

Oh, it also has the coolest ability that every first person melee game should have by law, where you can dash to enemies with your sword and that is always the best ever since um, you could do that in.

Uh, what is it?

Middle earth shadow of Mordor.

I was like, every game needs to have this.

It's the coolest thing ever.

Um so like you have a blood meter at the top of the screen that determines how many abilities you can use, and your blood meters also your health, and you get blood by killing enemies and picking up blood.

Um, and these little vials around the map.

Um, of course, like the neon white speed running part of it, the thing that makes it stick around.

And the the reason I honestly was playing it until the exact second we needed to record this podcast was uh, you have to reach a certain level to unlock sort of the boss levels.

Oh, my camera just died.

That is so weird.

I'm so excited about blood.

Yeah.

Um, so strange.

Sorry about that.

But yeah, uh, it's like you have to get to level 18 maybe.

And to get to level 18 you have to get a certain number of um metals, um And the metals you unlock by completing the level at a certain speed.

Right.

But the speed like it seems impossible because the first levels like beat it in 45 seconds.

Like, how could you do that?

It takes 45 seconds to get to the first set of enemies.

Oh, you jump like out of the level geometry and start dashing over buildings and flying across the level.

It's like it's a totally different experience from Neon White because Neon White was like very directed in its direction. um speed stuff like the the skips you could do were sort of obvious or like the level design was so narrow that there were only so many options you had to skip stuff here it's like no jump into places you could never feasibly get to or wouldn't even think would make any sense in a regular first person shooter that's how you skip stuff it is yeah it is a very fun spin on that idea just in the first like i've only played like two or three hours um just in that first chunk it's i think it's great i'm a little iffy on the melee combat i think the sword feels a little too it's floaty and like the hitbox in front of you is a little too far or a little too close uh given the speed that you're going at times so i i'm a little here or there on that but overall i think it's fantastic i'm excited to see what they do in the later levels because the last level of the first section or first chapter uh is this like big cathedral area for the boss it's like yeah it's really really good i'm i'd be interested in why how difficult you have found it because i've played maybe 45 minutes of it last night and uh during the tutorial like this game is fast like people should go check out video of it because you are absolutely booking it it is like high fov like you were if you don't change things in the right direction you're you're restarting like super meat boy style is how i'd sort of explain you know explain the flow of the levels like you're really trying to make it so you can get everything and keep your momentum and and you know it's blow open a wall or kill all the right people or make sure you collect the blood or or make sure that you're you're double dashing or wall jumping because you're doing a lot of like wall jumping and running around corners and stuff like that as well and you know in in the opening hour of the game they're sort of layering on all of the mechanics like you should slide here and this is right click to you know suck onto the level or zoom to the players as you were saying the baddies um does it keep getting that like more and more and more sort of mechanics and more complicated and and less uh i guess is there is there are there like are there ways to fudge the levels so at least you complete them and then you come back and try and do them faster or have you have you found how challenging it is uh i have found basically that you always have to finish a level at least the first time the intended route you need to kind of do it as it's like given to you you can see skips you can see like oh i know if i dash here if i get enough momentum i could probably get over that or there's a hole over here i wonder if that goes anywhere um so there's a little bit of that in the early game but i think you should just for the sake of learning how to play the game play it the way that it seems as though it's designed to be played um both to understand and to see the mechanics as they're introduced you can fiddle with a little bit but you don't really need to but later on in at least in the first chapter again um they keep doing things not that are harder, but that are like asking you to learn and do different things.

Like one of the levels has a bunch of bounce pads on it, which is a really interesting mechanic, because when you're going really fast, the last thing you want to do is go up and suddenly be out of control.

But like, there's a ground slam you can do.

That's quite powerful that you can keep triggering off the back of those bounce pads.

So like it's a totally different feeling of exhilaration to forcing yourself to go really quickly and find those shorter routes and jump off the walls.

Um, you get like different.

You get a sidearm at some point as well, which is like an exploding arrow.

Um, that has its own abilities.

Could you imagine what happens if you shoot an explosion under you?

And this sort of first person shooter?

I bet it's something cool.

It's like an arrow jumping perhaps.

Yeah, this is, i think, just from this early section.

I think is is doing a good job of introducing a lot of interesting stuff.

I want to play more of it and see how i feel at the end, but uh, if it can keep up the pace that it has in this first chapter, I think it's going to be awesome.

Also, I don't know if it has a level designer, but if it does, I might fiddle around with that, because this is really, really fun.

And just it is cool that they're adding in all this stuff.

I guess my question was, sorry, are you finding it much harder?

No, I mean yeah, the later stuff.

It doesn't really build on the mechanics from previous in such a way that you get so much better.

It's always new stuff.

That means you don't have to be better at the mechanics, because it gives you different, new things to do later on.

OK, that's cool.

All right.

That makes me freaked out less because I was like man, there's a lot of different movements.

You got to figure out how to do in these early levels.

That's cool nice, and then the progression is sort of based off of these.

You said medals, is that?

So yeah exactly uh, the the first boss level, you have to have like 18 medals or something.

Uh, each level has three, i think, maybe four.

Um, the top one is like yeah, really hard, even if you figure out those weird level skipping mechanics sort of things.

Um it's, it's even hard to get that top level one and it's Yeah, it's a good challenge, but it's like it's fun to go back and replay those.

It was like neon white.

You know, you get to the end of a situation and you're like OK, I feel like I understood the mechanics or the fundamentals well enough.

And then you go back and you're like oh, this thing that I was uncomfortable with, that I didn't feel a level of skill enough with in the first level to really get that score.

Now, they've done enough tutorializing later on that I can go back and be like oh whoa, this is a totally different map.

You look at it differently in a really cool way.

It's like you see the Matrix every other couple of levels.

It's nice.

Love it.

Blood Thief.

Available now for $20, 10% off at the moment.

And it is not early access.

It is out.

There's also a demo available as well.

Hey, sweet.

Yeah, check it out.

Have you been playing Steam Deck?

If you play this with a controller, I'm going to come to your house and beat you.

You have to play this on mouse and keyboard.

There's just no possible way you're going to have the same amount of fun.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

We're going to play some more of that.

Jeremy, another indie banger has just come out.

The embargo is up tomorrow, so we can talk about it today.

I think it's out tomorrow as well.

It's out pretty soon.

Consume Me.

It's on the 25th.

Consume Me.

What a bunch of awards at the IGF this year.

Another one coming out of the hotness that is NYU Game Center.

Tell us about what this game is, first of all, before whether or not you're enjoying it.

Yeah, so Consume Me is a semi-autobiographical life simulation RPG, which sounds like a lot of words, but it's basically.

I'm going to read the Steam byline, because it's short and it is hilariously accurate.

Did you feel stupid, fat, lazy, and ugly in high school?

Well, I did, but at least I made a life simulation RPG about it.

This is like.

So i i, this game is about being a, a junior, a girl who's a junior in high school um, obviously semi-autobiographical, so based on the real life of the developer, the primary developer um, and it's sort of a like it's a balancing act.

I thought this, a huge part of this game is about dieting and being very strict with what you eat, and i thought this was going to be way more of a like.

This is a game about an eating disorder, which it is in many regards, but it feels way more like a game about um, about perfectionism and about unrealistic like standards for yourself and what you have to achieve as a young person.

And eating a certain way, like in a disordered way, and being very strict about your eating feels like it is one facet of a more sort of complex constellation of expressions of that perfectionism.

Um so uh, part of this plays out sort of like a, not like a visual novel, but like there are sort of like narrative chunks, like sequences where you'll have like a story unfold, but between those, essentially what you're doing is progressing through the stages of a day um, and sort of repeatedly making a series of decisions and playing a series of mini games within this structure uh, to to balance, like your hunger meter, your mood meter and your energy meter, these sort of three meters that you have to do a balancing act between.

Um, Every single day, you must eat as, as humans do.

Uh, and in, in the, there's this like, there's like food or like Tetra minos.

It's like almost like Tetris, but every day you'll be presented with sort of like a randomly sequenced set of um of food.

Three food options.

And you have to like slot them into this big grid basically.

And you have to make a like a balanced meal, essentially with these semi-randomized uh food items.

Um, some of them are better like.

Some of them will be like an l piece.

That's a very convenient shape like a corner piece, but it's a cookie.

So uh, every food item has a, a bite rating, which is like it's basically calories.

But there's a thing at the disclaimer at the beginning of the game that's like we don't talk about calories, because it's like then this is a game where it's just like all right, you're actually literally counting calories and i think that's it's.

It's less like allegorical and more like oh boy, this is fucking.

It's depressing and sad um it.

So it's sort of like.

You know, it's a very funny game for a game that's about such a serious topic.

It takes things like calorie counting and it's like oh, that's like Oh, that's a cookie.

That's like 200 bytes.

So it does a good job of sort of like doing a caricature of the serious thing it's talking about.

Just because the I feel like this came up a bit with our thousand times resist chats as well.

The protagonist in this game and the developer is an Asian-American woman as well.

Is there is there much about sort of.

You know, there's often the trope of the the, the single child in a Japanese or Asian-American family and the amount of pressure that they're put on and that that type of thing.

Is that sort of what's is there any of that going on in here as well?

Yeah, there's definitely the like strict Asian mom who has insane expectations for their child.

Thing going on here.

They're like, you know, you've got to get straight A's and be a doctor type shit.

So it's like that definitely is like not get fat.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, why aren't you as thin as, like, another person's daughter who's beautiful?

And just sort of, you know, like, the, like...

Immigrant mom who means well or, like you know, like first, second generation immigrant family who, like they, mean well and they want you to succeed.

But their expression of love is this sort of like bristly aggro passive aggressive, sort of like, oh like.

Why do you look so fat?

Like I bought you all this healthy food.

And you're like.

That's like the meatest way you could have phrased that, but I know it comes from a place of love.

Um.

So yeah, it's about sort of like managing that and dealing with um, with the expectations of young people.

And as the game sort of builds the, the management side of things.

So each day, not only do you have to eat, but if you under eat uh, if you're like fail the balancing act in that direction, your hunger meter goes down.

And if you overeat, then your calorie, your bite meter is overextended.

So, either way, if you don't have a perfect meal, if you don't get lucky and play your cards right, you have to either eat more later, which can cause you to go over your bite allowance, or you have to exercise to offset the amount of overeating you did.

If you have to exercise then you have less time for things like studying and doing chores and making money.

And in each of the chapters of the game, there are sort of these large overarching goals.

So, for example, you know, like get a 30 for a bus ticket to like go attend this thing, or like buy a bathing suit for a beach party that's coming up things like this.

So you're trying to basically like eat well, so that you don't have to exercise, so you have free time to do chores, to earn money, to get good grades, to impress a guy, to go on dates, to do all of these things that a young person wants to do.

Yeah, it's just, it's a really brilliant way of like taking all of these sort of like positive elements of youth and reminding you of how stressful it is actually to be a young person and to balance expectation on you and to balance like a million different fucking juggling acts that you have to do.

So it's kind of like it's not just about I think in my head I had it more about you being a child and having to manage this.

But it sounds like it's actually you're.

You're sort of like a young adult being going going out into the world for the first time on their own and having to be an adult kind of and all this stuff is that the case?

Or still living with your family.

So you're a junior in high school, so it's sort of like the the cusp of that phase like um, there's a lot of talk in part of this about like applying to colleges and what the process that goes into that and stuff, um and like leaving for the first time, but uh yeah, sort of right on the cusp of adulthood, which i i think, like you know, to what you're saying.

That's sort of an interesting aspect of this story as well is that when you're a junior in high school, you're so close to being like recognized as an adult and being independent, but your parents still like infantilize you and view you as you know, like you're a child to them, but you're like almost a legal adult.

Uh, so this sort of like cusp period between adolescence and adulthood is also an interesting element of the story.

How are you enjoying it?

I already finished it.

Um, I got early code like last week.

I reached out to them because I've been excited about this game forever.

And I played the whole thing.

It took me a little over six hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I thought it was the management stuff is very like fun and silly.

The minigame.

It's not like when I say minigames, I feel like it's it's not like a WarioWare game.

There are there are looks a bit like a WarioWare game.

The art style.

There definitely is like a whimsy and mini games thing to it that I think could sort of like evoke that.

But um, But it's.

I feel like it's more about like the mini games themselves, aren't about like nailing these sort of individual tasks.

It's more just to give an expressive element to the choices that you're making there.

It does like gauge your skill.

Like when you exercise you have to like drag a rag doll that flips all around to do like yoga poses.

So it is like there are little games, but it always kind of felt like it was.

It was less about nailing the mini games and more just about, sort of like, doing your best to maintain within the sort of chaotic life structure of this young woman.

Um and uh and yeah, and I I won't spoil anything about the story, but I think it is an incredibly beautiful story and clearly just like really comes from a place of sincerity and vulnerability.

And uh, it gets.

It gets very real in terms of like things that happen in the real developer's life.

And I, uh, I, I, I've never played anything like it.

I thought it was absolutely beautiful, fascinated to play it.

I think the thing that strikes me about it is that, like when you I could be wrong I think this was originally an NYU Game Center student project, like a final year project that then it took them a number more years to actually get it finished.

I could be wrong by that.

I remember talking to people at GDC about it.

But one of the things that comes across when I watch this, like gameplay trailer looping here on Steam, is how much game there is like you know you make a student like.

A game like Pig Face is like okay, you make the.

You know, get all the mechanics.

It's first person.

You get the guns in there.

You make some levels.

You know what I mean?

But it's like it's all within one engine, one framework.

We just have to make assets for this thing.

This game has so – it looks like every screen is like a new thing or a new, like you said, mini short game.

The art style just looks gorgeous.

It's like all – it's almost like a scrapbook, you know, but like not – you know –

I don't know what the aesthetic is, but it's like even the colors.

I feel like it's probably pulling from somewhere culturally that I'm not familiar with, but it kind of looks like the beautiful sticker books and calligraphy sets you'd see in Japantown or something.

It has a look to it that feels very unique and cool as well.

I just love the aesthetic of it.

Yeah it's, it's gorgeous.

It reminds me of like um tonally, and it doesn't have like a comic book style, but the the way it's presented in sort of these like segmented frames that do they, they sort of like push each other on and off the screen.

There's a real physicality to the separation of these screens.

Um, where it'll be, like the you know, the calendar in the middle of the screen has like a vertical column and then, like your character sleeping in bed will come and like push that to the side and make room for that.

That's cool um, and it has this sort of like living, interactive comic book feel to it.

Uh, and I really there were a lot of sort of like tonal elements and the like presentation elements that reminded me of sort of like uh like slice of life manga.

Um, this.

This felt to me a lot like a playable sort of like young woman in growing up in New York city, slice of life, manga uh, but interactive and with uh with management elements.

And, um, And yeah, and it strikes a really good balance of like difficulty.

I never failed.

I want to go back and like intentionally try to fail and see what happens.

If you like, game over, because you cannot go to bed with any of the meters empty.

So if you, you get a couple cheat days every week where you can overeat and not totally just like you know, not die essentially, um but if you can't go to bed with zero mood or something, so if you're like right at the cusp of your bite allowance but your energy or mood are zeroed out and you're about to go to bed, it's like you can eat a bag of chips and save the run.

But then it's like you use one of your cheat days because a bag of chips is like 200 bites or whatever um, and so it it like It gives you options to sort of like salvage, to not insta-fail, but it makes you feel guilty in a way for doing them.

That, I think, is really beautifully expressing sort of the core thematic focus of the game.

Awesome.

Consume Me, available now at Time of Publishing.

Jesse, you excited for this one?

Yeah, I've been waiting to play it for a while.

I played a demo a little while ago that was pretty cool.

It's probably the same thing as the final release, but obviously paced a little differently, and not a demo.

Um, i think uh, the thing that i found most impressive about the game that uh jeremy, you could probably speak to because you finished it um was that like walking that thin line of of making something that is about an eating disorder and systematizing that, and like applying bars to it and and levels and goals and limitations can be like very hard to do that in a way that is expressive of a specific point, without literally teaching you how to like do that on some, on some level.

Not like literally, this is how you would get an eating disorder.

That's not how it works, but like to show you the mechanics of it.

Like it's, does it feel like it walks that line well throughout the whole game?

Cause the demo, obviously it wasn't a whole pastiche of the entire thing.

Uh yeah, no it's.

It's kind of interesting how um, Like I said, I thought this was going to be like an eating disorder game.

And I think instead it does what a good piece of art should do, which is it feels like a game that expresses a sort of like amalgamation of ideas that are all interrelated.

And it feels like like when I, when I experienced a good piece of art, I usually don't walk away and I'm like ah, and the moral of the story is never never, get fat.

You know, like it's, it's never that simple.

Like it's always sort of a more like amorphous collection of emotional truths.

Um, you know, it's the classic David Lynch thing that like if, if I could write down, and if if the thing I was trying to express with a movie was something I could write down and hand to you on a piece of paper, I wouldn't make the fucking movie, because the movie has to express a larger emotional truth.

Um and so this, this does not feel like a game where it's like, You know, you do the eating game, the eating mini game, 100 times and you're like oh my God, I get it.

It's just like it's expressing that, like this person had a complicated relationship to eating that was not like a you know, not like a single, faceted like I, you know, had anorexia and now I don't.

It's more just like I was.

I was flirting with an unhealthy relationship to eating.

That is reflective of a larger mentality of perfectionism that I had because of unrealistic expectations for myself as a young person.

So yeah, I the fact that they were able to gamify such a complex and like potentially, you know, I mean it's like a dark subject matter.

This game never it has moments of darkness, but it never. you know this isn't like um like mouse you know this isn't like a graphic novel where you're like oh my god this is like a graphic novel but it's serious it's like a game that is very silly and bizarre and colorful and cartoony um but uh but it taps into some some real shit and like there's you know there's some legitimately really moving portions of this game where it gets real awesome consume me consume it today on steam for the price of we don't know because it doesn't no clue though no clue all right there you go i mean i can i'll double check the email and i'll say at the end if it says something while you're doing that let me rattle off a couple of ones that i quickly played here i played some catanaut which is a uh 2d metroidvania style um i would call it a mouse and keyboard uh at least that's the way i played you can't play with a controller um style game where you are a it's a sci-fi futuristic and you have a katana and you are chopping zombies apart and the art style is super cool looking and the progression is interesting and i played an hour of it and i was into it and it looked really cool maybe it plays well in the steam deck i don't know um and it's not you know game of the year or anything but i have enjoyed it and definitely will find an audience with people who are into those types of games And I'm going to keep playing away with it.

It kind of reminds me a little bit of... Not Kronos.

What was that really crazy looking fucking 2D... Dead Cells?

No.

Blade Chimera?

No.

Looked like a French graphic artist.

Looked like... No, it was all Greek.

Oh, Mobius?

Mobius-ish.

It was kind of...

Ultras, thank you.

Jesse got it.

There we go.

We got that together.

Kind of an Ultras-y vibe where I'm like yeah, this is weird and cool looking so I'll play some of this.

So yeah, Katanas just came out September 10th.

I've been enjoying that.

I also played the demo for Blank Sword, which is going through Kickstarter at the moment.

This is definitely more of a Jesse and Jeremy coded game.

Psyched for this one.

But I have enjoyed messing around with it.

It is sort of in the you know, what would you say?

Undertale-y, Final Fantasy, old Final Fantasy, old Zelda, I don't know.

It's a quirky RPG.

Exactly.

Turn back, roguelike RPG.

The world it's building is super strange and weird.

You're like sort of in this like, your brain is killed and you're in fucking purgatory or something.

There's a big train that brings you to the different levels of purgatory and You do turn-based combat like a Pokemon game.

It's definitely pulling, but it has a lot of clearly weird, interesting esoteric story stuff going on.

One of the enemies you're fighting, by the way, is I can't particularly describe it, but just from the screenshots on Steam it is someone holding a glass of red wine, wearing a bathrobe, and their face or head is like a pentagon, with like sketched on eyes and mouth.

What a creepy setup for an enemy.

That's fantastic.

It's a very it's like a fever dreamish sort of.

You know reminds me of like the how i felt when i played grim fandango, where i was like what is going on in this world?

Like well how, what are the rules of this place?

But yeah, it's a genre that's sort of outside my wheelhouse generally.

But i saw everyone talking about the kickstarter in the game and i wanted to give it a go.

So Um definitely wanted to shout out to people to go check out the demo and the Kickstarter is halfway to getting funded.

I think now it's a 24,000 of a required 56 and change, uh, 23 days left to go on that blank sword.

So check out the, uh, uh, details on the, um, on the podcast, uh, description.

Thank you as ever, Jesse, for doing all that awesome work.

Um, I played butter side down, which is just an absolute fever dream.

I don't know how to explain this game to you.

It is six bucks, 20% off at the moment.

You basically load up a, you play it.

It's like a desktop.

You just load into a desktop and there is a log on button and there's a bunch of other buttons.

And when you log on, you answer asinine questions that are very hilariously written.

For instance, here's one of the questions.

Your cousin has asked you to bring something for the potluck on Sunday.

Which fish do you bring?

A, salmon.

B puffer fish.

C do not bring a fish to any potluck.

D a small can of tuna.

And then it asks you like a million of these questions.

And then at the end, it gives you like a result and you unlock a bunch of things.

And then you're like, what do I do next?

And you can like, there are different programs that you can open on this desktop.

And some of them have like weird hidden stuff in them.

And there's like a mystery.

And if I say any more, I will, uh, i don't know if i'll explain this it's it's so weird it's just it's super bizarre it's like um crazy esoteric again so uh butter side down very weird game uh yeah i don't know how to explain it it's fucking bizarre uh formula legends thanks for the key frank uh this is a new formula one game um unofficial formula one game uh it is uh interesting in its approach it's it's like more arcadey than a than a f1 sim but like not super arcadey like kind of just plays like old ps2 racing games used to back in the day very physics-y um it does a good job in the tutorial of explaining like the importance of like not locking your brakes which is kind of a cool mechanic in this where the driving line is, how things like DRS would work, drag, using other people to break toes and break wind and stuff like that.

Break wind?

Yeah, it's the important farting element of Formula 1.

That's how you go fast.

Exactly.

Eat your beans before the race.

It's got a bunch of different eras of F1 in there, and it's all... fake versions of teams and drivers and stuff like that um it's kind of tricky it's uh i wanted to give it a shout out to people who want to play formula one games got mixed reviews on steam at the moment um it is a not early access but it kind of felt like it kind of should have been a little bit to me so i don't know if it came out of early access or whatever but um i've enjoyed it it's uh it's it's got its quirks for sure but if you're into f1 games and driving games you should definitely check it out because um it might be something that you're super into and the last one to talk about is i think that was all of them except for ghost of yotei you got it again i get it again who cares though really i mean triple a sequel to ghost of tsushima get back to talking about formula legends you know these developers worked on a paw patrol game not one but two of them the formula legends ones yeah wow it's like george miller and happy feet That makes perfect sense.

It is just like that.

They're both equally as good.

Guess what my review of Ghost of Yotei is.

Did you play Ghost of Tsushima?

Well, here's another one.

Nailed it.

And you know what?

It's a good time.

I've played, I don't know how much of this game I've played, 15, 16 hours.

I've not completed it because I don't care about completing games before I talk about them, because I don't work at GameSpot in the reviews team anymore and I don't have to do that shit anymore.

What is that sign?

I'm... Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Is that what that is?

Rubbing your finger?

Yeah, is that not... All right.

I don't know.

I feel like... Am I 100 years old?

I don't know.

Do you know that one, Jeremy?

I thought that's when someone said something where they were going to, like, hex you with bad luck.

Oh, maybe that's what it is.

I hope you don't break your leg and you're like... He thinks that... Get that evil out of here.

He lives in Salem.

He thinks that about everything, Jeremy.

It's always a hex.

That's true.

We do learn magic in school alchemy um.

Ghost of uh, ghost of yotei is great.

It's uh, i'm like yeah, i don't know 15, 16 hours into this thing.

It is a strong sequel to ghost of tsushima.

Um, the big i think the big takeaways we had from ghost of tsushima as a, as a game playing community was that that game had so much style and looked awesome uh, and the story was great um, but some of the side stuff was a bit repetitive.

It was kind of the same one over.

You gotta find the Fox, gotta do a haiku, gotta do all this stuff.

Um, there's a lot more variety in the side quests.

Uh, the story in this one's strong.

I don't know if it's as strong as Tsushima, uh, especially because I haven't completed this one.

And I think Ghost of Tsushima really nails its story at the end.

Like it, it kills it.

Um uh, but the character is great.

Voice acting is great, the main character is is strong, um uh.

It's compelling, the setup's compelling uh, the one area, i'd say that another area.

They sort of everything's leveled up a bit.

Like you know, there's more variety in the side quests.

The world is about the same size, i think, but it's it's varied and interesting.

Again, i'm not sure if it's as varied and interesting as tsushima, because i'm not.

Uh, it's hard to remember really, because There's definitely an element of this game not being as impressive because it's a sequel, just by virtue of the fact that I've seen a lot of its tricks already.

So you kind of get away from that.

But the combat's way more varied.

You've again loads of different weapons you can pull from, but in this they seem to have really gone crazy with it with the amount of weapons and who you should use them against and all that sort of stuff.

There is a lot of go to a place, watch a cutscene, you know, watch another mini cutscene.

Walk to a place, talk to somebody, do a thing.

So i've spent my time sort of doing main quests and then being sick of having to watch a bunch of cut scenes.

You know, not everything needs a long story kind of thing, and i'll just run off and do a bunch of side quests instead and then eventually come back to it.

But yeah, if you liked ghost of tsushima, you'll love this.

If you peaced on it.

I think this is a really strong sequel and a good one to jump in on.

And um yeah, it's not like you need to play the first one to play this one.

They're two totally different stories and people and maybe they connect at some stage but, like you know no, it's a whole different map, whole different part of japan.

Um yeah, pretty cool, it's out on october.

Second, is that right?

How much of this have you played?

Like hour wise, would you say?

I said 16 or so.

Okay, i think.

Yeah huh, all right, why do you ask?

Well, i just this was like the shortest conversation we had on the entire pod and yeah, It's like a 90 game Canadian.

It's just, I don't know, just a reminder of the AAA space and the fact that yeah, it's a sequel, but there are sequels that do interesting things enough to have anything to say.

That isn't just that you play the first one.

I don't think it is a sort of a critique of it.

I think it's just genuinely... what you see is what you get.

Like, like it's, it's a, it's, it's a classic big franchise sequel that like, unless I want to dive into story stuff, which I don't really want to, there's, there's a, there's not too much to, to dive in.

Yeah.

You're just doing haikus again.

There's no like other side things that are interesting or.

No, there is.

I said that.

I already said that.

Did you say what they were?

No, I don't need to say what they were.

Cause like people can figure that stuff out if they want.

Like, you know, if saying what they are is half the, half the fun of playing the game is is on seeing what those other things are but it's similar type of stuff to like you know you're you're you're often you know some of it is the type of oh i'm sitting down in an onsen and reflecting in some way she has a guitar that she plays so that's kind of utilized in some mini game stuff and some um some narrative stuff as well here and there um there's like interesting ways in which it develops like the camps.

You sit down and do your camp like you did before, but sometimes you can camp with other people and maybe they some interesting conversations happen there.

Like it does interesting stuff with how it flows some of this stuff together.

Like sometimes you don't realize you're actually going to get involved in, like this really long side quest out of nowhere.

And then there was this um Sort of a multi um, multi quest sort of chain that eventually ended in like a really dramatic fight.

And I got a cool set of armor from it.

Um yeah it's, it's.

It's similar in that you're unlocking all the weapons and armor and bits and bobs and but they just kind of the same as Tsushima.

They just kind of give you that stuff in a really elegant ways.

That sort of makes sense within the cinematic.

I don't mean cinematic universe in terms of the Tsushima cinematic or the ghost of cinematic universe, in that this this, the world that you inhabit is, is very cinematic.

Like it's very pulling from, uh, various Japanese, uh, uh, um, influences in that respect.

So it feels pulpy and not re, you know, not necessarily grounded in that way.

Um yeah, but uh yeah, it's um yeah, I think anything particular I don't want to get too much into, because all it's going to do is you know so much of what this game is is being titillated by the narrative beats and the interesting way it sort of rolls out its mechanics.

Sure.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Ghost of. but you're right.

It is funny.

I've been playing this game for three weeks and it's, you know, like there's nothing like it's fine.

It's fine.

It's just, it's just interesting.

It's like you've played three hours of other things and there's like I've got 45 minutes of something to say about that, but this is just like I don't know.

I would describe this review of ghost of your toy as frictionless.

You know what I mean?

There's nothing to really explain.

We all kind of understand what that game is.

Yeah.

And it, and it is what it is.

Maybe it speaks to the design or the.

There is an elegantness to the design of ghost of tsushima in that it is a game that is weirdly not like a lot of other third-person action games, like it has its own vibe, it has its own style of how it gives you its narrative beats and all these things that this very ghost of tsushima and i've not seen it in other games.

I think it's easy to imagine them doing that again and better.

And that's kind of what this is.

At least that's sort of where my brain went with it.

But yeah, it's great.

I really like it.

It'll probably be one of my favorite games of the year.

It probably will be my.

I can't think of any big AAA game that came out this year that I'm super in on.

Was there any big mainstream AAA thing?

Even AA thing?

I guess Borderlands we didn't really play.

I'm going to.

I'm excited.

But yeah, Dying Light also I hear is quite good, if you like Dying Light games.

Expedition 33, but that's AA, I guess.

Yeah, good show.

The Liza P DLC I hear is good, but is that a game or is that just a DLC?

Did you see the video that those two developers did?

Oh yeah, the interview between p cube or whoever who's the developer of uh lies of p.

Is that something like that?

Yeah yeah, it's.

It's just on the um lies of p like youtube channel.

They just did an interview between them and the clear, obscure devs.

It's like all right cool, like now we're just now.

This is games coverage.

Games coverage is dead, so now we just have the studios doing it themselves.

You know?

You know yeah, maybe that's a good thing.

Yeah, All right.

I think that's all the games.

We didn't miss anything, right?

I think that's everything.

Can I do a very, very brief update?

Silksong update.

I am into Act 2.

I've played probably about 15 hours of this game.

Okay.

And I'm going to say this is going to be one harsh thing and one complimentary thing.

I found the entirety of Act 1 boring, until the very last boss, which I thought was 10 out of 10, perfect.

Okay.

And it was very interesting to me because I was kind of waiting.

Like, I like the game.

I like action.

This is a genre that I really like.

I like, like, Metroidvanias and action platformers.

I like when they're tough and there's like some tough moments in this game.

Nothing was like really getting me excited.

The entirety of act one, and i was like i gotta at least finish act one and see if there's anything here for me, because i know a lot of people, like everyone all my steam friends who've played this game have like 40 to 60 hours in it and i just don't think people like people whose opinions i respect on video games, and i was like there's got to be.

I want to know what is here that people are like enjoying.

I, i don't think it's just like.

Everyone is like oh, it's like i loved hollow nights.

I gotta play 60 hours of this, 40 hours of a game based on yeah, that based on nostalgia or like hype or whatever.

Um and uh, and the entirety of act one.

I kind of just was like this is fine, it's like incredibly well made, but just not exciting to me.

And then the very end of act one, i i beat that last boss uh this week and i was like holy shit, this was, this is fucking like.

This is like doing something, because my critique of it was that it is sort of just like play in the hits in game design turns.

It's like you know a lot of a lot of what's cool about silk song is like i've played donkey kong country and i've played metroidvania.

Is it like it is play in the hits as an action platformer?

Um, but i thought that last boss fight, which i'm obviously intentionally not saying by name um the, the run back to it as a, as a intentionally frictional piece of game design and then the fight itself being long and difficult and just like building in a really brilliant way.

Um Yeah, I thought it was fantastic.

I was blown away by that fight.

So Jesse, you've played more than me.

Do you feel like Act 2 is better than Act 1?

Act 2 is a lot better than Act 1.

I really liked Act 1 because I think it was doing a lot of the things that only Hollow Knight really had done for me.

Like the feeling of cracking open a wall in Hollow Knight and discovering two hours of gameplay that you totally could have missed.

And It still exists, at least in the first act.

There are a lot of sections of the game that I feel like I got to on accident or like because I went out of the way to double check something, which is a cool feeling.

Act two does more of that. on a way wider scale.

This game is so much bigger than I thought it was because Act One's pretty big.

Act One's pretty fucking big, man.

Act Two is like, what do you mean there's three Hollow Knights in here?

Like, oh my God, the sequel is gigantic.

Yeah, it's great so far.

I'm excited to finish it, but I definitely won't.

I'm going to put it down for a little while and come back to it if it ends up on Goaty Conversations.

There's just too many other games to play and everyone's going to like this one.

So what's the point?

Yeah, that's why I've been taking my time with it.

Yeah, we're going to have a lot of stuff to play for Game of the Year.

It's going to be a busy, busy, busy season.

Busy podcast today as well.

Loads of games talked about.

Ghost of Yotei, Pig Face Skate, Baby Steps, Consume Me Blood Thief, and then also a little bit of Katanoff, Formula Legends, Butterside Down and The Blank Sword demo frank.

We got a couple of questions before we ran this baby out.

Yes um, if you'd like to.

Oh and sorry, on holiday, it sucks on.

Um yeah, if you'd like to send us a question, email us at podcast, at noclipvideo, or in our patreon discord channel in the podcast chat.

Um, once again, that's no, or podcast at noclipvideo.

Uh, we have two questions, one from jordan.

My question is about failure.

Are there any games you think are failures that are worth playing or talking about?

I don't necessarily mean good or bad games, nor do I mean commercial flops, but rather games that fail to deliver on their creative ambition or perhaps fail to leave the impact on you as a player that they intended.

Ooh, this is a tough one to come off right off, right off the bat.

Yeah.

Uh, I mean, my mind goes to mafia three, a game that is, by all accounts, trying to do something really interesting, but fails to do it because it presents itself in the wrong shape.

Like.

It's a game about playing a character who is on the border of two different racial groups at a time where racial disparagement is like such a big problem in part of America.

And you're dealing with factions that are segregated on race, but also on culture and so many other things.

And like, how do you toe that line as this character?

How do you exist in a world like that, where no one accepts you necessarily, but also you have to align yourself with them?

And then it's like, in order to prove that you're aligned with these groups, what if you did 90 Ubisoft clear the map missions with some of the worst third person action combat of that era?

It's so strange because when it hits, it really, really hits.

And when it doesn't, it's like, why did you do this at all?

I'm trying to think what other ones come to mind.

The Dying Light games.

There's parts of them I really love and there's parts of them that don't stick, but they're not bad games.

Dying Light 2 is the worst offender in that regard.

Like it's good, but i assume that game has done really well, though.

I mean yeah, they all do really well.

Dying light 2's problem though, is just it's like so much bigger than it needs to be.

Similar problem to mafia 3, where it's like yeah, there's a lot of game in there.

Dying light one was fine, i like running through the favelas and beating up zombies, quake champions.

There we go all right, there's a game, there's a game that's kind of kind of jank.

It's got some good shit going on in there.

Yeah, i feel like lots of games are this probably?

Yeah yeah yeah, this is a very this is just subjective, but Planescape Torment I've failed to get into, despite the fact that it's influenced some of my favorite games.

And I think a big part of it is just that the sense of humor and the sensibility in that game is a very like when you like hang out with your uncle and he like says like you know, like women they're just not as smart as men.

Am I right?

And you're like, I can't, are you joking?

Or like cause it's not funny.

But I just feel like it has this very weird sensibility about like I don't know.

I don't think it's like an overtly like misogynistic game, but I think that some of the some of the caricatures of the ways it like treats it's a it's the women in the game and in its world are weird.

And then I think that sort of like dumb bro sensibility reverberates throughout the game in a way that really cheapens uh, a lot of the cool things about it.

Yeah.

Tough one.

It's just so many games, so many things you could point at and be like, was there anything about it?

Like, What else we got, Frank?

Uh.

Tommy keys wrote a letter and asked I would really love to hear about Frank's gameplay capture process.

I've gotten bits and pieces from listening to the pod, but not the whole picture.

What goes into it?

And how do you play games differently while filming?

Is there any sort of checklist or mechanics or places to show, or do you just play through the whole thing?

And how do you feel about a game after finishing capture?

Um yeah, so i feel like there's two uh like passes of it typically um, i'll play through.

Well, depends like if i'll play through the whole game or not.

Daniel usually give me a sense of like scope, of how much we need.

A lot of the time it's the whole game.

So yeah like like, like for indiana jones, i played through the entire game for the wolf and both wolfenstein one and two.

I just did like the first 10 hours, but even that was still like three quarters of the full game.

So like, the key things when i start a game, a is like all right, am I recording this in 2K?

Do I have to do anything weird to get it to run in HD?

If it's like Chronicles of Riddick took like an hour to get running, but then it worked.

And so I record with the music turned off, because when Danny edits, like sometimes a lot of the gameplay he'll just use like, the sound effects, but usually he'll mix in music or honestly, it's just interviews or talking over it.

So I record with music off just to give more audio space.

And then, yeah, I'll hit record as I'm playing.

I make sure we talk, like a week ago, about like data backup is, like I can see my file explorer, as I have two monitors set up.

So I'm playing the game.

And then on my second monitor is the file.

You're recording the OBS or shadow play or I'm using an NVIDIA shadow play.

So I hit like all and it starts recording.

I can I will always like test it or record like 10 seconds, test the file playback.

I've had one day where I was recording, I think, Rogue Legacy 2.

I played maybe two hours, did the whole thing, and then I realized it was capturing the wrong monitor.

Thankfully, it was a roguelike, so there was no extreme progression.

So I always double-check my footage.

So I'll record, and then I'll usually record within 10 to 20 minutes at a time.

And if it's a game like Half-Life or something where you can make as many saves as you want, I'll usually make a save for each.

Finish recording, make a save or something like that.

Um, and so i'll go typically a little bit slower, like with mouse sensitivity, i'll lower it.

When i play games regularly i will skip cut scenes, i'll rush through it, and sometimes i actually get in that habit while recording.

But um yeah, i try to play a little bit slower and so record the game and then like, as danny's finishing the editing or getting close to it, or jeremy or jesse, or in any case, i'll get a list of specifics like oh, can you go back and do this level again?

Can you use this weapon on these enemies?

Like half-life had the most specific things like that.

Then it's easy to like load up an old save and then do like a few takes of it and uh, like that.

And then um yeah, and usually i feel like i'm like two or three games ahead of what we're actually like what danny's working on.

So you just wrapped on the extra.

I needed the ending of disco elysium, so you did that.

Recently you're working on something we haven't announced publicly yet, so i'll keep that one to decide.

But the frank's superpower is that frank logs each clip.

So frank will put the title of the video, the like dot mp4 file will be 200 characters long, because it'll have like zero minutes, 50 seconds, good kill.

Uh, two minutes and 40 seconds.

You know, um nazi takedown would whip and all this stuff.

And so when i'm in premiere editing, like i was editing a whole whip section on the indiana jones, i just typed whip into the search bar on premiere and all the clips were there that had a whip in it.

It's like that's the thing that has saved me so much time in these edits and has has made it so that i'm able to get through a bunch of these faster, as is him doing.

That it's it's life-saving.

Um, and the craziness that I'll often just like scrub through the titles just to go like Oh, you're like amazing moment here.

And I go good to do.

And I'm like, Oh yeah, this looks great.

I'm going to find a spot for this somewhere.

Um, yeah.

So that on the post-production, on the, on the, on the editing side that's, that's my favorite part of what you do.

Yeah, frank does like pre pre-logging where, like i, i it's always so nice when i'm like all right, this needs to like open with a bang, and i just open all of the insanely long titles that frank has written and it's like 202 great gameplay moment, cool takedown, and i'm like, all right well cool, there's like that's my like sizzle moment.

It's like pre pre-tagged um, but yeah, frank is the best for we, our docs would not be half as good without frank's amazing capture.

Yeah, big time.

And then the.

And then, like usually after a game, I'll be sick of it.

Like, Half-Life 1 and 2.

I bet, dude.

I had to play so much of.

So I'm like, okay, I think I'm okay on all that.

Prey was another game I played, like, did capture, like, 30 hours of, things like that.

But usually, like, the games we all cover are games I usually love, like, Yeah, I had never there's also specifically I never played Hollow Knight because I figured one day we will do a Hollow Knight documentary.

So that's why it's like I'm not going to play it now.

I'll wait to get paid for it.

It's Australia next month.

So if we can get Team Cherry on the line, I'm all I'm all down for that.

Just tell them Frank needs to play holiday and they'll, they'll be it.

Disco Elysium was a game I never played.

Cause I, I think I just assumed we would have covered it.

And then I finally got to play it through no clip.

And it was like, Oh, awesome.

If I wasn't recording Disco Elysium, I would have beaten it in like a quarter of the time.

Because like for a lot of disco, I'm letting the voiceovers play.

Of course you're right.

Yeah.

God, fair play.

Yeah.

I would just hit X through it.

Like, that's why I play like oblivion and stuff like that.

But it's like, sometimes it's like, Oh no, this, I have to like, let the whole cut scene play out.

And do it.

But, but again, i i also like know like oh, this is good, or i'll know like no one cares about this skip, like i feel like i'm pretty good at like getting a sense of it and um, and then yeah, like those good moments um, like whenever something crazy happens, i'll like okay, stop recording.

That's like you know.

So sometimes, if a clip is three minutes, it's like oh, it's because i got something insane in that two minutes and i didn't want to, i didn't want to like flood the, the log notes with so much crap that you miss it.

But um, but yeah, that's the process and i've been doing it since think 2019.

The first thing i thought i think i had to record was like gish, um was, which isn't that, was that, that was uh, was that did abic?

Yeah yeah, him.

And alex austin yeah yeah, it was for good stuff.

Yeah, frank is our gameplay czar gameplay direct director is the the official title, i guess, and he's, he's been doing it and killing it.

For yeah, it's crazy.

2019, that's wild man um.

Thanks for all the emails folks, and thanks for listening to the podcast.

We got a bunch of stuff hitting the channel.

The indiana jones doc should be up at time by the time you listen to this.

Um, we will also have our patron exclusive podcast on patreoncom slash noclip.

We are reviewing warcraft, the 2016 duncan jones movie.

We're going to talk about it directly after this, so i can't wait to record that in a second and hear what you guys think about that one.

Frank's Japan trip as well will be up on Noclip2, and the Noclip2 Patreon will have access to an hour-long extra pieces of footage from Frank.

He's commentated over them.

It's basically a tour of a bunch of incredible places and video game shops and stuff, with awesome commentary.

Great job on that, Frank.

It's a good time.

We should also have some new indie recommendations up.

Hell Clock went up.

I think on Monday, is that right?

I think it went up yesterday.

We'll probably have some other ones as well.

I imagine we'll record Pig Face and a few others.

You guys are recording one after this?

Yeah, we're going to do Consume Me.

Oh, terrific.

Excellent.

Okay, so check those ones out as well.

Yeah, and loads more other stuff hitting the channel.

The Mugenics preview will probably be up next week and we'll have a bunch more bits and bobs as well.

And then we are into Disco Elysium time.

I have been editing that stuff all day yesterday, so looking forward to getting those episodes out.

Jeremy obviously did an awesome job um uh, putting together the uh original edit of the big version of it, and i'm just sort of chopping it up into episodes and writing and doing all that madness.

So it's funny because the version i handed you was already i was like six to eight hours.

It was fucking insane.

And then you were like yeah, let me edit it down oh, but also like, let's interview a bunch more people.

Yeah, so it was huge, and then it got smaller and then it got huge again.

Yeah, it's big again.

It's pretty uh, It's good.

We needed the two of us on this one.

It's worth it.

Yeah, it's worth it.

It's Disco Elysium, man.

Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.

Bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 246: Indie Game Deep Dives and Gameplay Capturing]-[Baby Steps, Skate, Ghost of Yotei]

📋 Summary

Navigating Indie Gems and Gameplay Culture

The Physics of Comedy: Baby Steps

Skating and the Corporate Vibe

Gritty FPS and Speedrunning

Perfectionism and Life Simulation: Consume Me

The Art of Gameplay Capture

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 246: Indie Game Deep Dives and Gameplay Capturing]-[Baby Steps, Skate, Ghost of Yotei]

📋 Summary

Navigating Indie Gems and Gameplay Culture

The Physics of Comedy: Baby Steps

Skating and the Corporate Vibe

Gritty FPS and Speedrunning

Perfectionism and Life Simulation: Consume Me

The Art of Gameplay Capture

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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