Giant Bombcast 930: Other Jill | Giant Bombcast

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Everybody, it's march 3rd 2026.

Welcome to the giant bomb cast.

I am your host, jan o choa, constantly surprised by the passage of time, but here to help guide me.

Co-captain of the ship, jeff grubb.

I have stopped playing old video games to come talk to you Jan, about old video games.

Thank God, we have the master of ceremonies of everything old, everything new and everything in between, Dan Reichert.

I also spent last night playing old video games, and I'm ready to talk about old video games.

Well, fantastic.

We have the podcast just for that.

We welcome all video game discussion, new and old, except the next fella right here, because he's the bad boy of games media.

Mike Minotti.

I need to stop eating whole burritos 10 minutes before the show starts.

It's your brand.

You can't stop that.

For those that listen to just the podcast itself and aren't privy to the pre-show and things like that.

We were getting into the meat of what's going on with Mikey's mornings.

And Mikey was getting into the meat as well.

He was.

Mike, you seem like a man who has strong thoughts about eating in the morning and timing of things.

What was this morning like?

Well, this morning I had to get up to do a Nintendo thingy.

When I got up then I had one of my granola bars so I could take my morning pills and not be miserable for that.

And then just kind of doing other things.

And then I was like well, I'm not hungry yet because I have my granola bar, but I'm going to be hungry tomorrow and as often as the case on kind of a busy day where i'm like i'm not gonna go somewhere between like the nintendo thing and this.

So at 11 o'clock is exactly when i can order grubhub uh hotheads, because you can only order it right when that store opens.

You can't like do it before.

So At 11 o'clock I go on my phone.

I'm like, I want hotheads today, please.

And there's a little bit of a crapshoot.

Sometimes it's like 25 minutes it's here.

Sometimes it's a bit more.

And honestly, I got distracted just being on the internet.

And I think it was here like 10 minutes before I realized.

So I think I got that thing at 1145 and then was like I think I went to the bathroom or something too, so I didn't even start eating that right away.

And then, like, it's like I'm basically it's like time to eat my burrito.

Oh, shit.

People are in discord.

Ah.

So then I started that thing.

I basically took the first bite as I joined the discord call to get ready for this.

Yeah.

And you're like, it's hard.

Has a burrito ever breached the perimeter of your bathroom?

No, I don't take it in there.

What are you asking?

Just chowing down and he's like well, I gotta go in the bathroom and, like you know, having it in one hand while he runs in the bathroom,

Yeah, I mean, burritos are portable, but I don't want to walk around with them.

There's too much rice and stuff falling out of them.

Sure.

I'm going to eat wherever I have sat down the burrito.

That thing is getting finished there.

I'm not taking it around.

The efficiency of its portability, like as soon as you start thinking about the logistics of the rice flopping around, it's like there's no benefit to this.

I'm going to pay for this later in cleaning up time.

Now, I feel like the four of us here are burrito aficionados.

I've shared breakfast burritos with all four of us before.

Jeff Backler, by the way, is out on assignment.

I need to ask you all, what is the burrito tech in attacking the first bite of a burrito, right?

Say a burrito standing tall.

Where do you attack that?

Do you go straight down on it?

Top left corner.

Okay.

I just try to find a corner.

I try to find the largest, most protruding corner.

Now, any corner on the top of burrito could be the top left corner if you turn it.

So I guess, yeah, I might actually come at it from that angle, Dan.

Well, the folds have to be at the bottom when you're holding it.

Well, both sides are folded, but one side will usually be more tightly wrapped up.

So I look at both sides, and whichever end seems tighter, that goes on the bottom.

Are we talking about it?

Is it in foil for you guys?

Sometimes.

It depends.

Some are, some aren't.

Mine's always completely out.

I always eat burritos.

Why?

What?

To what end?

I don't know.

What's the end of it?

Are you getting out a fork at some point?

Is that your strategy?

I just focus really hard.

I'll keep it all in there.

Look, guys.

Also, my burritos maybe don't have quite as many little wet particles in it as yours do.

Right.

Yeah, you don't have to worry about the rice, basically.

If it is the type of burrito that comes in foil, I think you need to kind of utilize that.

Like if it's a big old hunky chipotle or kadoba.

Tomatoes and stuff in there.

I get what Mike's saying.

Right, but then there's like Taco Bell ones that are just like, you know, it's a smaller one.

It's a cheesy roll-up.

It's a cheese and beef burrito.

That's fine.

That's easy.

Okay now, if we're going with like a burrito that is wrapped in foil, this is something that I do personally and I've never shared this with anyone, but this is a safe space between all of us and, I guess, the internet.

I squish the burrito a little bit and decide from there which side to start on.

Like an avocado.

Like, well, which side's right?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And generally I'll start on the softer side because I want all the meat and stuff to like kind of stew at the bottom.

Have I told you guys about my french fry squishing?

I think so.

You squish two together?

No.

Explain it again.

Is this when you save the crispy bits?

No, no.

As a child and I'm talking like I had McDonald's almost every day as a child, like for most of my upbringing.

And so tens of thousands of fries I've done this to.

For some reason, I thought it made it taste better.

You take the fry, you fold it on itself, you fold it again until it's like a little squishy, potatoey oily ball.

And I would eat it like a little ball.

And I would do that to each one of them.

I want you to the starburst to just had a fascination of turning things into balls, right?

This is this is not the first time I've heard this.

People like to squish bread and like just eat slices of bread.

And I've heard that before.

I never looked it up.

I just looked it up.

Squishing bread concentrates its flavor by forcing out air, creating a denser texture that feels more satisfying, doughy and moist to the palate.

And I bet the same exact thing is happening when you do that to the French fries.

I think it also, you know, I'm never happier as a child than eating McDonald's french fries.

And so I think it also extended the pleasure, you know, folks at home.

Dan, please finish the sentence.

I was edging my french fries.

Right.

Folks at home, you can support all these shenanigans by joining Giant Bomb Premium.

Jeff, what's other ways that they can help support us over here?

Yeah, you know what?

You could tell a friend about this website and then, if you're really excited, you want to ensure we can keep doing what we do over here.

You can go to giantbombcom slash join.

Become a premium member.

Gets you ad-free versions of an episode like this, as well as our other shows.

Gets you Grub Snacks Premium, which I'll probably be recording this week.

Today?

I think so.

And then you'll also get Nine Lives of Mr. Mistoffelees.

This is the run.

We're doing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, third edition right now.

Regis is the real star.

You're going to want to check that out.

There's plenty of cool stuff, including a new Marry Me Tomodachi happening this week.

You can get all that as part of premium.

Go to giantbomb.com slash join, please.

And thank you to everyone who has come through and supported us.

We see it.

It means the world.

You're the best.

I say it all the time.

Best audience in gaming.

And I mean it because you put your money where your mouth is and seeing what you want to see on the internet.

And that's us.

And, gang, we still have more stuff marinating and cooking behind the scenes.

There's almost a show that's completely done shooting, actually.

It's filmed.

It is.

We just got to throw it in a post.

That'll be very soon.

It will be announced and released.

They have to sign the release, the person you did this with, right?

We have to still convince them that that's okay to put it there.

I'm working with them on that.

We didn't actually tell them they were going to be on the show.

Gang, I don't think we've talked about this and I think it's safe to say we can talk about this because I book travel for it, but we will be at PAX East this year.

Surprise, surprise.

So we don't know the specific dates in terms of timing of the panels, but rest assured, we will have panels.

We will be there.

So if you were going to PAX East, don't be a stranger.

Say hi.

And if you want to be a stranger, then just politely wave from a safe distance.

Gang, boys, anything else you want to talk about before we get to vidya game?

I was going to say it shoots spit wads at Dan, but I'm going to say don't do that.

Please don't do that.

I will get PAX enforcers to tackle you.

Yes, he will have you dealt with.

Right after they're done kicking Jeff out again, they will take care of you.

Yeah.

God, that's right.

Oh, man.

Oh, no.

Right.

God, that was weird.

Okay.

All right.

Chuck Tuskey wants us to mention that the premium videos RSS feed is up.

Yes, if you are a premium subscriber to this website and you know what RSS is, congratulations.

A lot of people don't know.

But you can plug in your premium API, get all the videos downloaded to whatever RSS reader or ingester you use, so you can get all those videos straight to your pipes.

Really simple syndication.

What does that mean?

What is really simple syndication?

RSS feed.

Really simple syndication.

Let's say I'm a listener and I hear, ooh, I'm premium.

This sounds good.

What do I do with that?

You know what, Dan?

I actually think these are excellent questions.

Thank you.

I'll be brave.

Yeah, I'll be brave.

No, yeah.

Jan said a lot of people don't know.

Yeah, what is it?

Yeah.

So you go to Giant Bomb, and there's a premium podcast feed or the premium video feed.

You can find that on the toolbar up top.

If you're signed in, you'll get a premium link that you can then take to your podcatcher of choice.

So I use Podcast Addict.

If I were to just like open that up while having that link copied, it would be like oh, you want to add this, don't you?

But you can also just hit a plus button and it will take that RSS feed, put it in there and you'll get the ad free versions of the shows without having to, like you know, download the free ones or without having to go on the website.

They'll just show up on your device.

You'll do what you want.

It'll do a podcast.

We'll do video.

Yeah, if it's a video feed, yeah.

Yep.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's how I used to listen to the 1UP show, I believe.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, my iPod video or whatever I had.

Oh, man, shouts at the iPod video.

Yes, folks.

If you go to giantbombcom, right in the top right corner there should be these Wi-Fi-looking bars, pointed 45 degrees.

Go hit that.

That should link up.

If you're logged into the website and your premium, that'll get you the specific feeds that you need.

Gives you all the links that you would need.

Yep.

And, you know, shout out to Chuck.

Also, hey, special shout out to Sean.

Special shout out to Will.

I have a great day working at this website pretty much every day.

That's right.

Boys, burrito talk.

Are we finished?

Do we want to move on to anything else?

There's only a couple video games to talk about.

Yeah, i did i.

I don't look at the burrito itself, i look at the, the foil.

Um, we're talking, i'm talking exclusively and then like, i'm like which side of the foil is sturdiest?

And that's that becomes the base, so it can hold everything together.

And then the looser side.

I peel that and start on that side, and then i just put a little.

I put a dab of tabasco okay, right there on the corner and i bite.

The first bite has to have that hot sauce on it.

That's the strat.

I just take it out.

I don't want to be peeling a burrito the whole time.

What am I, eating a banana?

I get it.

It sounds nice, but yeah, I have liquid matter to deal with.

Yes, tomatoes and green chili.

Sometimes I don't finish the burrito in one sitting and I need to rewrap it.

Right.

Yeah, I keep the foil.

If I'm taking it out of the foil I am keeping the foil top and everything, so I can mush it up and put it in the fridge.

Yeah.

Burritos reheat great.

You do a little bit in the microwave to make sure everything's heated through, and then you throw it in the air fryer to make sure the outside's crispy.

Yep.

This is probably another me problem.

I don't think I've ever not eaten the whole burrito.

Yeah, I was the same way, and then I got on the Zimpy and now I haven't finished a burrito in the last year.

So different life.

Sorry, I just started thinking about.

Oh, actually, I think a cold burrito is one of my favorite leftovers.

I know we talk about pizza.

Yeah.

I've never done that.

Because I feel like, you know, like with a lasagna, right?

You let it sit for a bit.

Everything just sticks together.

Yes.

I apply the same mentality to a cold burrito.

Oh, he won't work with a fast food burrito, just because everything just gets so much harder and stale in there.

I think that's things i'm used to taco bell ones and it's just like yeah, that just gets kind of like you need you need the air fryer for that.

Yeah, you guys ever like really like, just rub uh your foil against like a surface for like 10 minutes and then it's just super smooth.

I love that.

Oh, that doesn't look good.

I'll choke the chicken.

Do I ever rub it out for 10 minutes?

Not that long sometimes, Mike.

You just weren't looking at your own video frame when that was going on.

It's a lot going on there.

Does this look less like that if I do it over here like this?

No.

It's so far away.

It looks like you're mocking doggy style and it's worse in every way.

I just want to get my thing smooth.

I you know I normally like the top of the.

Sometimes the top of the pot is my favorite.

Before we actually talk about video games,

And this is your most favorite yet.

Yeah.

I'm doing more of like a sawing motion now.

No, that's worse.

You gotta just.

That should be smoother.

All right, I'll stop.

Man Mikey, just like stun locks me sometimes.

Yeah, there's nothing to be done.

Each week I feel like I haven't done a good segway in like a year or something.

I'm sorry.

I've thrown you off, just like Mike Minotti has thrown this game in the trash.

Mike Minotti, you have been playing Mio and I understand that you may not be as high on it as other members of this website.

Oh boy.

I mean, I like it okay.

I was sticking around with it for a while.

I maybe played... I bet I played for like four or five hours.

I don't know.

I kept waiting for it to pick up a little bit.

I'm usually somebody who minds a slower pace.

But there is something about this where I kept thinking that at this point in the game I should have like two more movement abilities than I do and maybe three more combat things.

Because you know, it's one of those where you start off and basically all you can do is walk, jump and you have this three-attack combo thing and it's relatively simple.

I'm like, okay, I'm going to start getting some stuff, though, and that's fine.

And you have this one spawn point and from the very beginning, from this one spawn point, a lot of Metroidvans will have the first relatively linear section.

It seems like almost right away.

There's a lot of different paths you can go to and they reach certain bosses.

But even fighting these bosses, I wasn't necessarily getting...

I opened up a store the guy who was selling some upgrades and then I bought like all of those upgrades almost immediately and it's been like four hours later and he still won't restock.

So I can get some other things.

I fought one boss and I got this ability where I can kind of do a little bit of a grappling hook thing, but it's when there's a grappling hook item there.

That's fine.

Like four hours in I finally got a counter button and that was nice, but I felt like I fought like five bosses without them.

It was kind of five bosses of just... jumping out of the way and attacking them.

Oh, you start with the double jump.

You do have a double jump.

See, that's their mistake.

They should give you the double jump very late.

That's the big one.

That's the main event right there.

Yeah, that's the main event.

Chuck said skill issue, and that's funny.

I have that coming.

It kind of is a little frustrating because, like I mean, I got a second spawn point when I was like playing last night again like four or five hours in.

I feel like maybe that's exaggeration.

I don't know.

But it's a lot of going relatively deep in this game.

And then you die.

Then you go back to that one spawn point.

So uh yeah, i didn't feel like i was making it, like the progress was i'm.

I had a similar experience to you, mike.

Uh, where it wasn't off.

It was just different than what i was expecting.

I like the idea of pushing out into the world in a metroidvania and and feeling like it takes a certain amount of getting over the hurdle to get to that first and next save point.

But that's an important milestone that I want to get relatively early on and I want to feel like I just overcame a little bit and it's like now I know okay, so the game is going to dole out these feelings of advancement at about this pace and I can sort of count on.

If I were to push out into the world again, it might be a little bit harder, but I can expect maybe 10, 15 minutes.

I'm going to find another save point.

And I didn't have that, so I kind of didn't have much to grasp onto and I wasn't necessarily loving the base gameplay.

Right.

Question for you guys.

I know we've talked in the past about, like JRPGs, having a slower start and kind of having patience of like OK well 10, 20 hours, that's when the game opens up.

But with a Metroidvania, where is your barometer of like, OK, no, it's got its hooks in me.

I'm going to stick in for the long haul.

I mean, I'll allow a little intro narrative sequence, like Super Metroid kind of a thing, right?

Most of them have that.

Like okay, you can do your little intro thing and then maybe again when you start the game.

Even Silksong was like this, where almost the first act was almost surprisingly linear in a way and then kind of opens up a bit more later, right.

But I do think that even when you do just have kind of your jump and your attack and not much else, it should feel good as a baseline and then you start getting stuff relatively quickly.

I mean, you know, like in a Metroid, they usually give you that pretty quick and then pretty quick you're going to get the missiles and it's just like really a constant evolution in the flow of the upgrades that you're getting, and I like that feeling.

Now I think this game is doing a lot with the environment and the aesthetic and the music, like all that stuff is great and it looks really good.

It's just not, it's just not quite as, I don't know if zippy is the word.

It's a little, it needs a bit more sauce, I suppose a little bit more meal sauce on here.

And I think I'd be into it a bit more.

I feel like a Prince of Persia lost crown was like, I don't remember like a long build up there.

I remember just kind of like right away being like, Ooh, yep.

This feels good.

You know?

Yeah.

And there was like an intro thing where you're at war and then you were like at the palace talking to people.

So there's like again, there was a little bit of a windup, but it felt like good right, it also felt like a wind-up.

The beginning of this game doesn't necessarily feel like a wind-up.

It feels like the game and i'm like are you throwing me into the meat of it and this is what it is, or is there more to it after this?

And there might be, but i just it didn't feel that way.

So it didn't feel like a launch pad, the way some other metroidvanias can have their intro sequence feel that way.

So I mean, that's where I am and I don't know.

I kind of did put it aside for now and I actually just started up Dragon Quest II, HD 2D and then I realized well, Pokopia's coming out, so I'm probably not going to get super far into that.

But you know, it certainly is not some bad game or anything, but it's missing a little something for me.

For sure.

That is Mio, Memories in Orbit.

We should have actually started with this, because I feel like you need to be celebrated, Dan.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

Of course, of course, you should be celebrated every day.

Sekiro, Dan, you've climbed the mountain.

Man.

Man, I get it.

I get it.

I know I've brought it up for weeks now as I played through it, but I think it really was at that last boss fight where I was like okay, this is a perfect boss fight.

This is maybe the best boss fight I've ever played in a video game.

It's a culmination of every skill you've had to pick up over the last 30 hours or whatever you've played the game. um and then the feeling when you beat it is so fucking satisfying um it's i see what everyone said for so long but like i was so scared of this game for so long just because like i never really took the time to get good at other from soft games and i told myself i would do it here and again i i said when i started this game it's because i love punch out and yeah and that kind of like learning patterns and counterattacking and stuff and like damn this feels like a modern version of punch out which to be fair the stuff i loved about it was the boss fights you know, there are my, my, the things that frustrated me were sometimes around just how kind of opaque the, just like, okay, wait, what do I do here?

Wait, okay.

I talked to this person and then something happens over here.

And then like it, just it's it's.

A lot of stuff is obfuscated in a way that like well, how the fuck was I supposed to like this would have been annoying as fuck to review.

Yeah.

Pre-release.

You know, before there were guides or people to kind of help you know movie along and stuff like that.

Um, Because I don't really care about all the different endings and stuff like that.

It's just the boss fights.

Every single one of those I fucking loved.

And that last one was the best ever.

Did you end up doing the Demon of Hatred?

That was the one I did.

I think I looked at it before I went to the final boss.

And I was like, okay, I kind of see what this is.

And people were saying like oh, it's more like a Bloodborne boss fight or like a Dark Souls boss fight.

It's funny in its own way.

Yeah, my tech kind of egged me on to beat it after I beat the game.

And it was a part where it's like, Boy, I don't know.

I did it, but it almost was a little bit of a kind of a weird like nah, I felt really high after beating Isshin and now it's like go do this other boss.

It's kind of weird mechanically, and it was still fun, but I don't know.

It's fun.

It was almost like, I would have been just as fine not doing it.

And that was my thought.

Is that like, especially if it feels like a totally different type of combat and stuff, like I'm fine with just kind of staying in the course, with kind of that traditional Sekiro style beating the game?

And then if I want to come back and just do a little epilogue episode or something like that, I can do that and fight the demon of hatred.

But it's...

What you were saying was so interesting about, like, you're there for the boss fights.

Because I've been playing, like, all these FromSoft games recently.

And I kind of feel that way about all of them.

I like running around the world and doing the exploring and things like that somewhat.

But it's also sometimes it can be a little frustrating.

I mean, it's great in Elden Ring, like, where they made that the focus.

Yeah, of course.

But I guess I was surprised, because sometimes I would vocalize this and other people would be like oh, this is why I like the games.

It's this stuff.

It's this exploration.

And the bosses are actually kind of frustrating for me.

There are a lot of people who like the obfuscation that Dan was talking about.

A lot of people are like.

That gives me an opportunity to go watch seven-hour-long videos about this world.

And then I get, oh, so much more from that.

And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, we're just coming at it from different angles.

Different strokes.

Yeah.

There's something cool too about like that last boss fight.

I consider it like a four phase boss fight because it's a different guy.

And then it was a one phase and then three of Isshin.

And it's like, you know, I love the multi-phase things because it's like okay, you're learning one at a time.

And then by the time you get one, mastered enough to where you can beat this phase.

You've seen peaks at the next phase, but you haven't really been able to put it together yet.

And then it becomes a thing where it's like, oh, I can easily beat phase one, phase two.

I got to start figuring out what the fuck happens in three because I haven't seen that as much.

And then, you know, I was streaming and Kayla called me at one point and she told me about oh notice, he does this.

And it's like, oh, right.

He does this thing where he does this like jumping back sweep attack with the spear.

Shoot, shoot, shoot with the gun.

And then he comes in with the Makiri frequently afterwards, or the thrust that you can Makiri counter.

And it's like having that moment of just that, like yeah, seeing the matrix, and be like okay, I know what to expect.

Now he's doing this guard, guard, guard.

Fuck you.

Like, and you get in there and that feels awesome.

God, it feels so good.

It feels like punch out.

I remember watching you do the first Ganitro fight when you had the lightning for the first time.

You struggled for that.

Then your winning attempt against Isshin, you got him with like three lightning things.

That was the round I got the lightning thing for the first time during that fight.

And then I got it three fucking times.

And I just felt like, God.

All right.

And I talk about the game being culmination, because at that point you had, you don't see the lightning mechanic for a bit in the game.

That like, finally shows up again.

You're like, oh, my God, here we go.

It really is that ultimate just building off of everything you have learned in that game.

Each in himself.

Super cool.

Sword Saint.

What a title.

I wish I was called a sword saint.

Yeah.

For folks, that was a good five minutes of our meeting yesterday.

Mike just wanting to be called the sword saint.

We finally relented.

We agreed.

You told me why it'd be a bad idea, because then I would lose the bad boy of games media thing.

You talked me out of it.

That's the second phase of Mitch, though.

Once we defeat the bad boy, that's when the sword comes out.

Mitch Kokoda.

The sword is actually just a burrito.

Burrito saint.

I have never played Punch-Out but Dan hearing, I mean I've witnessed Grub climbing the charts and becoming a pro at Punch-Out and I loved Sekiro, absolutely loved it.

But now I'm curious of like, should I get in a Punch-Out now?

You should play Punch-Out for a week.

You can't say that around me.

You should actually play Punch F for the Wii.

I think you would love that game.

That's fantastic, too.

I think you start with the first.

I just, yeah.

I mean I think he'll.

I just remember Jan like remember when we had him play Yoshi's Island and like the in-boss didn't have the same effect on him as it did us.

He's like, yeah, the guy was in the background.

That was a graphical thing.

That was, like, just because we had not seen something as grand and crazy as that.

The punch-out is not a graphical thing.

Punch-out is pure reflex.

Those are pretty big sprites.

I mean, they look fucking incredible.

They look pretty cool.

Guys, pictures don't impress me.

The whole appeal, like i feel like the thing is more graphical than it is.

Gameplay it's just punch out is tremendous.

I would love to watch and play that.

Okay okay, i don't.

Now the the problem is i don't want this to be a gateway where then now i need to go get a mister and go get all this shit, because i can't.

I will have a crt delivered at your house by the end of the day.

Can I punch that on NSO, which isn't a great way to do some of the later fights because of the input lag.

But get a sense, if you like doing that first circuit or so that you'll know if you're a sicko.

Okay, okay, okay.

Good to know.

Also, you can play it with basically like zero lag on an emulator if you use Retroarch because they have the run ahead thing, which is basically you press the button and it instantly happens.

So it's about as good as CRT.

Okay, okay, okay.

Dan, Sekiro or Elden Ring, which one's better, do you think?

That's so tough, man.

Don't say better.

Which one do you like more?

No, say better.

Be a hero.

Let's start with which one you like.

Okay, let me think through this here.

Because Elden Ring is up there with Breath of the Wild, in terms of that sense of discovery and unknown around what's around the corner, or seeing the map expand and stuff like that.

That is a certain feeling that games give me that I fucking love.

And Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild both did that the best of the best.

Sekiro is just pure reflex and counterattacking and timing and like just the most boiled-down video game shit ever you know.

And I don't know if I can say that I prefer one of those feelings over the other.

I will say Sekiro did more to my fucking brain and just I felt like catharsis isn't even the word.

I felt tingle.

It was just like like a drug when i like there were like three or four boss fights in that game where i beat him and i seriously i'm just like in like bliss at, like i'm just like yeah, like i just feel something happened in my brain that elden ring did not quite do because i didn't.

The exploration is a different type of joy.

I get it.

I get a follow-up question, though are either of them better than metroid prime 4?

You know, I didn't score either of the front ones, so it's hard to say.

You did play them in the Tokyo Dome.

There's six stars, actually.

I muted Metroid Prime 4 on Blue Sky.

How do I mute Mike Minotti on a fucking podcast?

Please don't kick him out.

It's going to ruin the layout.

Dan, has this kind of reawakened a hunger for any Souls games, or are you kind of thinking about taking a break after this?

I don't see myself immediately jumping into anything, but I do think shortlist for me would be looking into those ways to play Bloodborne at a nice frame rate.

Sure.

Because I did play that.

But again, every like almost as a bit, you know, I was streaming it back then.

I would just like I summoned Eric Tay and Eric Tay, just like, did all the work while I hid in a corner.

So it's like I never actually fucking learned a Bloodborne boss fight.

You know, I just like, oh, I beat the game.

Ha ha.

What a stinker.

And it's like, no, I didn't.

You know, I want to actually do it now.

You know, I'm I beat Liza P main game.

I'm in the DLC for that now.

That game is fantastic.

And it is actually a counter game.

Also, if you're, if you're hankering for more countering.

Liza P is very much about the countering as well.

Yeah.

And you can skip past all this story because that is like a moisturizer game.

What does that mean again?

Smooth faces?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's as much of a moisturizer game as like a Mahoyo-verse thing, but I know what you mean.

Sure.

There's all kinds of new words in video games these days.

That one, to be fair, that one I invented.

Mahoyo-verse?

No, that's a company.

No, I meant the moisturizer thing.

Oh, okay, gotcha.

Yeah, the Mahoyoverse.

They just lovingly ape other video games and then just turn it all into gotchas.

Speaking about emulating and lovingly copying games, gang.

I have been playing a lot of Pocopia, the newest Pokemon game.

Or as they said it on the stream recently, Pocopia is one of the ways Nintendo said it.

They said it two different ways.

That was one of them.

What?

Ew, Pocopia.

What the hell is that?

Pocopia?

Yeah, it's nothing.

It's wrong.

Clearly wrong.

Yes.

Um, I don't uh, I I don't have like a written review or anything gang, but I think this may be one of my favorite Pokemon games.

We're going to, we're going to go hard on this.

We're going to find a bunch of ways to like talk about it, cover it.

Uh, yeah.

Mike, you're planning along a day one stream on Friday evening still yes yes, i'll technically update too, but yeah, i'm gonna be.

Well, it's day one for you right, because you're gonna be starting from the beginning.

Yeah, absolutely uh.

And then uh, we'll have a multiplayer stream earlier in the day where we like some of us who are have we'll have spent some more time in the game.

We'll actually get together and try that stuff out.

Uh gang again, this is one of my uh favorite pokemon games of recent memory.

And uh again, i come to pokemon with a very skewed perspective.

I generally like the battling in the games rather than the, like collect-a-thon, or like the, the exploration, or like the, the stat, the heavy stat wise, of like trying to hunt for shiny pokemon um Um, but with Pocopia, I think this fills me with the same type of joy that I had when I first picked up Pokemon.

Uh, let's go.

Pikachu and Evie, because that was one of the first games where you would just see the Pokemon out in the world doing their thing, doing their thing.

And, To be fair, there wasn't a lot of interaction.

They would just spawn and walk around the tall grass or flying Pokemon, fly around the sky.

But here, once you get the game rolling and you start developing your island...

Just seeing all the different Pokemon happy and just interacting with each other.

And then from there, like, okay, cool.

I'm going to go put this Drifloon, the balloon ghost Pokemon that is normally super lonely with all the other Pokemon, so it can have friends and talk to each other.

For folks unaware, Pocopia is...

Very, very similar to an Animal Crossing, a Minecraft, a Dragon Quest Builders.

Which one is it closest to, Jan?

Is it closest to Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders, Viva Pinata?

Actually, Viva Pinata and Dragon Quest Builders is probably the best combination of games.

That sounds kind of awesome.

It is because you're the whole flow of the game is you will get to an area and then you'll have to create like a little environment, like a little like four by four, five by five, mini biome or habitat, and within that habitat it attracts a Pokemon of like.

Okay, I have this two by two chunk of grass.

And then you'll see that there are specific types of Pokemon that will spawn and be able to spawn in that two by two biome.

And then like, oh shit, there's a Bulbasaur here.

Cool.

Let me go talk to this Bulbasaur.

And then from there, it will be welcome into your little world.

And then from there you work on improving Bulbasaur's relationship, not just with you but with the other Pokemon, and like the overall environment.

So, like Bulbasaur wants a bed, I'll go craft a bed and then give it to Bulbasaur and then Bulbasaur will be happy.

And are things inter interdependent, where it's like once I have Snorlax, now he can do something that will help me get another Pokemon?

Or is it all just kind of like here's the gathering stuff and then here's the attracting stuff of uh, where you will need specific pokemon to like further advance your building abilities.

Um like, a certain pokemon will have an ability that you'll need to go craft and build a building.

Um Like, the resource gathering isn't as intense as it would be in like a Minecraft, where it's like got to chop down all these trees, got to get all this wood and then all this iron ingots.

There is some light processing of materials.

So you'll get a specific type of, let's say logs, and then you'll give it to another Pokemon to process the logs and turn it into wood.

So you have like those different crafting materials there.

Um, but like going back to like the interactivity with all the different Pokemon.

It's just like I.

This is one of those games where I've been playing for 10 plus hours and I can't stop smiling.

Not just because of how cute it is, but because it is just so fun and novel to see the different Pokemon interacting with each other.

Like one of the early Pokemon you'll, you'll come across is a Hitmonchan, the boxing one.

Right.

And like, He'll be like hitting the speed bag and everything.

And there will be other Pokemon just standing there watching him like, wow, that's cool.

Cool.

Oh, sick.

Um, and it's, it's very novel because it is, uh, the whole setup of the game is that what happened?

Why is this land so desolate?

Why is it a wasteland?

Where are all the humans?

How come there's no Pokemon here?

Uh, because you are playing the game as a ditto, um, Right.

You're not a person.

You're a ditto pretending to be a person.

Yeah, you are a ditto pretending to be a person.

So, because you have these like memories of your former trainer and you have these transform abilities, you are learning from these other Pokemon how to do things so you can help improve the world around you.

It's.

I'm not going to lie.

The ditto aspect of it I don't necessarily like, just because I don't like the implications of like ditto kind of being this Kirby adjacent omnipotent power.

Right.

Is ditto like the thing?

Yeah.

I do like that.

What?

What was that you cut out?

I do like that.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

I guess I got too excited for my freaking gate thing.

Because Ditto will learn different abilities from the different Pokemon of like.

Okay cool, I guess Ditto's arms are now just vines and now Ditto can just suck up all these materials, like Kirby can.

Jan, what percent of your enjoyment, would you say, comes from the fact that you have a fondness for Pokemon?

I think it's like about 50-50, to be honest, because, you know, I don't often play these games.

Unfortunately my biggest introduction and time spent with this, I guess overall genre of like farming and resource management games other than my

Yes.

Other than Minecraft is Disney Dreamlight Valley.

We don't need to get into why I enjoy that game.

It wasn't because of the Disney characters.

It was.

Yeah.

But the carrot on the stick of like, oh, cool.

Like, I want to improve this biome.

I want to improve this place.

Let me go like kind of low key terraform. this part of the island, make it hospitable.

Oh, let me go make this easier for me to traverse and, in turn of me, improving the island.

So it's easier for me to get back and forth from point A to point B.

This also helps everyone on the island, like all the different Pokemon get back and forth, because sometimes they need to do specific things to help me continue building up on the island.

And it just does the management really well of like here's a big list of things you got to do and then it doesn't feel insurmountable to like be ticking these things off the list.

And if you need the busy work in between, like waiting for uh, bigger objectives or other things to unlock or happen, it doesn't feel like monotonous busy work where it feels like i was thinking it too, thank you.

Where it feels like oh, this is a slog.

Why do I have to go collect these things?

Because in turn of collecting those things, you're getting money for collecting those things, or there will be a different discovery along the way.

And the whole Pokemon wrappings around it is more pleasant for me.

But from my understanding some of this was kind of present in Dragon Quest Builders and a lot of folks really enjoy Dragon Quest Builders.

Yeah.

Is there a world where it's like, if I like Stardew and I like Animal Crossing and I just, I'm not anti Pokemon, it's just I've never cared about it.

Like, is there a world where, you know, would I enjoy this?

I think so, Dan, because I from my memory, like you, you really enjoyed Stardew Valley.

I don't think the systems are as like developed and as deep as Stardew Valley, but there's enough building like farming, growing things and like uh, like the different little activities to like stimulate and uh get those endorphins going of accomplishing things of like oh cool, like this is great, and they don't lean too much into the pokemon aspect of it where it's like you need to know this deep lore about squirtle uh, but like oh, just through osmosis, like okay that one has fire on it, the one with fire can help me Start a campfire, light a candle, just stuff like that.

And yeah, it does a very good job at playing with, even just like oh OK, this Pokemon looks like they can help me with this.

Oh, you can help me with this.

And it does a good job at like that on ramp and not expecting anything too much knowledge of the player.

Like if the gimmicks grub since I know you've mentioned that one of them is starting to get into Pokemon, I think this would be a fantastic way to introduce them into the overall world.

Yeah, that's the plan.

We're going to be playing a ton of them.

I'm looking forward to it.

I'm getting the sense this game is going to be huge.

You think it's going to.

Obviously it doesn't even need to break out of the Pokemon sphere, but at the very least could it bring back a lot of people like you who have been on the fence about Pokemon, maybe a little bit sort of have a broken relationship with the series.

Is this something that you think will make those people happy?

I think so.

I think this will also capture, like the lapsed Animal Crossing casual audience that like got really into Animal Crossing.

Or even the non-lapsed people who are still playing that every day.

Maybe this is something they can like, okay, finally something different.

Yeah, and I have friends that have gone from Animal Crossing to Hello Kitty Island Adventure and I think, because Pokemon is such a gigantic IP, this will attract a bunch of people and I think it's just a pleasant enough experience.

That isn't trying to do too much and what it is doing it's doing very well.

That it's like not I don't anticipate this pissing anyone off, and you know, on Metacritic not that we should base a bunch of things off of Metacritic but it's like one of the highest rated Pokemon games, if not the highest rated, it's the it's the highest pokemon rated pokemon game.

And then uh, depending on what you look at metacritic, it's the highest rated game of the year so far.

And then open critic, it's second, just behind requiem.

That's, that's crazy uh, but like i, you know, i fully agree.

Like uh, there's a bunch of reviews out there from other pokemon fanatics and i pretty much echo similar sentiments, if not the same.

I haven't gotten the chance to check out the multiplayer and from my understanding it is uh, greb i've heard you describe this where it is kind of like that minecraft style where you are hosting a server or your island for other people to be able to just jump in, Not like the Animal Crossing style where you have to sync up with your friends, have your island open in that online mode and there barely being any interaction.

From my understanding, you can cooperatively build up and a lot throughout your islands.

Yeah, it's kind of how I want to approach it, where it's like we'll get one of these spun up and we'll get whoever can get in on Friday.

And then, if we have fun, maybe check back in a week later and see what we've done and kind of stick with this game for a little bit.

Because, yeah, I'm very curious.

Again, I don't know if this makes sense.

To me, I keep going, this could be this year's Claire Obscure.

And I just mean a game that comes out early and just captures people for the rest of the year and blows up even more than was expected.

But, yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, and I think I on this website, across podcast streams, have expressed my frustrations with the mainline Pokemon games and how I feel it's just behind on a lot of tech, like the lack of voiceover and everything, or just graphically performance-wise it's kind of poop in the bed.

This is just further proof that I want the Pokemon company for as greedy as they are, because they'd be making millions.

Continue outsourcing and giving the Pokemon IP to other game studios because I want to see what others will do with it.

Continue experimenting because this is a successful one.

And, like you said, Grubb your predictions.

I think this game will blow up because it's it's like at a uh the barrier of entry is not too high where this could appeal to like the sickos out there that want to do all the type of min maxing terraforming, or just like the casual type of person that wants to check in and like, oh cool sick, that bell sprout is there.

I fuck with that bell sprout um, but yeah pacopia, i'm having a fantastic time with it.

I i So excited to see Mikey dip into it on Friday and see some of y'all check it out on Friday as well.

And boy, what a couple of weeks for your fantasy critic.

You had Resident Evil Requiem.

Yeah, for real.

You had that Scott Pilgrim game that ended up.

It's got like an 83 right now.

That's good.

So, yeah.

I counterpicked that kind of hoping it would like get like maybe low 80s, because I don't think we're going to have a lot of good choices for our second counterpicks.

So I'm like, I'm just going to panic and pick this.

And it's like, oh, that was a little bit more painful than I thought it would be.

So, yeah.

You're hurt a little bit by Pokemon, Wind and Waves being announced for next year, but you could recover from that.

You could drop that for free now that we know it's coming out next year.

Jan, last question about this.

What is the sort of bell curve for the representation of Pokemon?

Is it like oh, it's a lot of earlier Pokemon because we know what sells, or is it like an even spread across all nine generations?

Um, just by virtue of the sheer amount of Pokemon, I don't think.

Uh, it has all 1000 Pokemon, right?

Um they're, they're going to start you with, like the original one, 50 and like a lot of those big players, just because of like familiarity stake.

So I'm under the assumption, based off of, like some of the trailers that I've seen, that there will there.

I think they're just going to do the greatest hits in like hey, this is the popular Pokemon from this generation.

This is a popular Pokemon from that generation.

We don't need the 12 other birds that we have across this or like any of the other miscellaneous dogs.

Let's just lean on these starters or these popular like meme Pokemon and everything like that.

God, it's just it's just such a pleasant time.

Also, I just can't get over that, the the player character being a ditto and it's just like dead funko pop style eyes just staring at you.

Hell yeah, it's just fucked up.

And i didn't even think about dan that this is kind of like the thing yeah, that's first thing i thought of.

Yeah, or it's just like a thing.

They can morph and be whatever.

What do I think?

I should think of the thing first.

I think I would think of pod people, but that's not exactly the same.

It's much more like the thing.

Yeah, I haven't played for Pokemon too long that I would think of Ditto.

Mike, you were talking about Fantasy Critic, and we're talking about some inside baseball.

I hope there's no insider trading happening with Fantasy Critic, but there is some happening with Jeff Grubb.

Yeah, so if I said I was playing a game called Insider Trading and you guys had to pick a recent popular game that it was going to be most like, what do you think it is?

Adventure Capitalist.

Uma Musume.

No.

Papers, please.

No, it's Bellatro.

This is another one of them.

So, okay.

I'll try to explain.

I played a little bit.

I think I have a pretty good grasp on it now, although I feel like the systems could get more complicated.

Um, you are insider trading and every day is a day on the stock market.

And basically there's a goal and then there's how much money you have.

And the goal is like, you know, the auntie or whatever it was called in Bellatro.

And, um, You can get to that goal by, let's say, $1,000.

You can get to $1,300 by looking at your cards that get dealt to you from your deck that you can add more cards to over time.

And if there's a lot of green cards versus a lot of red cards and these are like bulls versus bears The stock price will go up.

And what you want to do is, on a day where you have a lot of green cards and you can like, look at the cards and rearrange them, and then they happen in order.

So you could kind of just set up these combos or whatever on a day where you could tell the stock price is going to go up.

You want to trade.

And then there's days where you're going to get a lot more red cards than green cards.

Or you might get an even split and you have to make a choice.

Do I want to go one way or the other and kind of use these tokens?

I have to either arrange these things in such a way that it'll be a little bit positive or a little bit negative, or maybe drop some cards.

But if it's a red card day, you're going to want to wait and then you can add more tokens, which gives you more options to do more moves in future turns.

And the idea is just kind of going back and forth between these two things so that you can just barely get above the target goal while keeping as many tokens as possible to give you more opportunities to have more maneuvers on future days.

And then, after each round, you get an option to go to the store and you can use these tokens, some of these tokens, the same tokens you use to make maneuvers during the day.

So you don't want to spend all of them.

You use these tokens to buy new cards and you have to pick like one green one, one red one.

And then you can get like pills because you're an insider trader.

And obviously they're all on drugs.

And these pills act like the, you know, the bonus cards or whatever in in Bellatro.

It's like oh, this is going to have either a permanent effect or it's going to have a one turn effect.

All of it's very familiar.

I think the sort of setup here is like.

You know, if this is appealing to you, it's the exact sort of NASDAQ.

Oh, there's the money going up line versus there's the red line coming down.

It shows you how much it dropped each day.

And you know if that's appealing to you and if it's like OK, can you imagine imagine a fun Bellatro sort of game on top of that?

Well, they did that.

They made that.

That's what this is.

And I can tell it's like, oh, it's just going to keep getting deeper.

And despite the fact that I haven't gotten to all those deeper elements yet, still early on it's like oh, I get it.

This is fun.

I want to do one more turn.

So it's kind of delivering on its promise right away.

Is it as refined as much of a miracle as Bellatro and some of its better clones have felt like?

Not necessarily, but it's right there and it's using all of those elements to good effect, at the very least.

Now, let me ask, because I was obsessed with Bellatro and everything you were saying.

When I look at my stocks and stuff, green line up, red line up, I'm obsessed over that stuff.

So gamifying that sounds fun.

Would you say there is more going on than to On paper.

I also thought I was going to like the.

What was the fucking game?

The slot machine one?

Yeah, I always forget the fucking name of it.

Clean Brew Room...

Oh, gosh.

There was another one.

Boom shot.

Buckshot roulette.

No, no.

It was a clover pit.

Clover pit.

Yes.

Clover pit.

I thought that was going to be great.

I loved everything with the look of it.

And it's a very block trope at slot machines.

But I feel like when it came down to it, there was just not enough.

It was too chancy versus like I felt like I had more.

Sure.

I could do in Bellatro.

Like, where does this fall on that spectrum?

So I think, as the cards get laid out in front of you, it does feel like okay, that sort of defined what kind of day it was going to be.

The reason I think that this could still work for you because it's working for me is, like well OK, once you know what kind of day it's going to be.

It's not like well, that's chance.

It's all decided.

Now it comes down to maximizing your return during during that turn.

So like on a red day when you can tell, OK, I have a lot of red cards.

There's a few green cards here.

Sure.

So it's going to go up a little bit.

How can I arrange it so that like, let's say, I want the price to like drop as much as possible on the first day?

So if I have a minus, a certain percentage, I want to put that up in the front, because that will give me the biggest chunk of that.

The percentage will have the biggest effect while the stock price is the highest.

And it's like oh, if I can get that stock price below 100, this card will activate and it will get a permanent bonus and it will be my deck forever.

So it's like, okay.

I know what kind of day it's going to be.

Now I have a bunch of choices I can make about how to maximize my return on this day.

And to me, it's like, oh, that's I mean, that's what these games are.

All these games, most games these days are these compound, compound interest games where it's like you get resources, you spend those resources or that capital to get more resources.

So the next turn that you like.

I have those same resources and the new resources.

I can do even more the next day.

And this is like definitely playing on that feeling and already sort of got me on board with it in its first turn.

So I'm like, okay, I think it might work.

Man, I really, I like steaks.

And so I wish you could like tie something like this to like your bank account.

Exactly.

You know, just kind of like see it works, if only stocks were real, yeah.

Yeah well, i do that too.

But like i wanted to be more gamified, i just kind of like and we'll see if it goes up or down.

I bet there are platforms like that where it's like uh, faux gambling but or full investing foolish.

I want to invest, i want a game with right.

It's like yeah, sure you could put like a hundred dollars in there and pretend like it's a hundred thousand dollars or something like that.

I bet there's stuff like that.

But yeah i, This is working for me.

It works on Steam Deck, although you have to use the touchpad to navigate with a mouse.

Sure, sure.

That works just fine.

I was able to read everything on there.

You know, it's not as trippy as Bellatro.

It's not as immediately appealing.

And you can tell it's like this is a game that was made by people looking and being like oh, I can copy one of those.

And yeah, as far as that goes, this is a good one, at least so far.

Nice.

Well, speaking about the horrors of investment banking and insider trading, we move on to actual horrors.

But before we get to Resident Evil Requiem, I see someone put on the list here.

Resident Evil 1.

Yeah, i uh been thinking about resident evil a lot lately, very in a resident evil mood uh, you know, not by coincidence um, and i realized i owned resident evil 1 back in the day and i was fascinated by it.

I would have been like 12 years old and like you just i've said it before but like i, i never beat the game because i just couldn't get past the idea of like well, there's bad guys, i gotta kill them.

And like i didn't think about oh, i can go around things and resource management and like the adventure game elements and stuff.

Like i thought it was so fucking cool, like kind of the movie, like nature of it and i even like the tank controls, i like just the cinematic quality, like all the different angles and all that.

Like i like both versions of re, i like tank control and i like over the shoulder re4 style.

But I just could never.

I never beat 1, 2 or 3 the original games.

And so I was like, maybe now it's like, you know, that clicks with me more now.

I understand more kind of what I would need to do.

So I played it on the AYN Thor.

And I started it that way and I was playing it and it was good.

And, like you know, you can do little hotkeys and speed up the door opening animations and stuff like that.

And then I started getting funky with it, where it's like Oh, I wonder, I've never actually docked my Thor and, like you know, play it on a big screen.

So I hooked my Thor up to the a hundred inch and And then it's like ooh wow, RE1 on a big 100-inch and I got a Bluetooth DualSense I'm playing with and stuff.

And I was like, wait, I want this to be more authentic.

And so then I hook it up through the RetroTINK 4K onto the 100-inch through a Thor and I'm like, oh yeah.

And I remember I was taking pictures of it and Tim Turi, a good friend of mine, the biggest Resident Evil sicko I know I'm sending him pictures of it and stuff.

I'm like, look at this.

Oh, I got the proper scan lines and everything.

This is great.

And he's like, Dan...

You have multiple CRTs and PlayStations, and I know you have the game.

Yeah, but that's not as fun.

Well, but the thing is, so he said that, and it's like, oh, whatever, Tim.

Then I'm going to go back to playing on my 100-inch.

And then I borked the save stuff somehow, where it's like i was doing a combination of in-game ink ribbons and quick saves.

And i don't know exactly what i did, but like i got to a point where i like loaded it up for the night and i'm like wait, why do i still have this, my inventory?

I use this thing like this key in the courtyard or something like that and i was like wait, what the fuck?

I'm like trying to load from the ink ribbon, i'm trying to load all my save states and it's like everything's fucked somehow.

It's like oh motherfucker, and like i didn't want to keep going, but i was in the mood for it and i was really enjoying it.

So i just started playing on my crt on my original It's through the mister, but I'm playing with the actual PlayStation 1 controller on a CRT and it's like I'm sitting in a fucking beanbag in my game room with the lights off, playing with a PlayStation controller, and it's like alright, I do like this game.

That game is still fun, actually.

Resident Evil 1 is still a really good time.

Are you doing Jill or Chris?

Always Jill.

I've never.

I think I picked Chris the first time and I was like, I can't hold anything.

And I think Jill and these two more spaces change everything.

It's like I cannot imagine playing that game as Chris.

I can't.

I have the same way, like something I want to just, I guess, for the challenge of it.

But Jill has Barry and we all love Barry.

Barry.

Oh, we love Barry.

Yeah, like I can tell you, like going through the dialogue and stuff, I just know like hope this is not Chris's blood and all this stuff.

I've heard a million times.

I don't even know what the fuck they talk about if you're Chris.

Yeah, Rebecca Chambers is there from Resident Evil Zero, I guess.

That's wild.

Yeah, that's the thing.

In the opening, the real FB montage thing where they show the actress and stuff.

It's like I don't know who that person is.

I didn't really play Zero.

And it's like, who the fuck is Rebecca Chambers?

There's just a whole side story I don't know at all of that game.

But I am enjoying it.

I'm back up to, I just beat the snake.

I was past it.

I was going through the courtyard and all that stuff on the Thor.

So I'm kind of catching back up to that and everything.

I need to get the chemicals for the plant and all that shit.

We know.

Kayla told us all about all this stuff.

We know exactly what's going on.

Check out that YouTube short.

She really went deep on all that stuff.

She went deep on every aspect of it, yeah.

I think the part that didn't make it into the cut that I loved was when she was trying to describe her as an evil too.

And she's like yeah, you can be Leon or.

And then there's like other Jill name a hundred women Kayla,

Maybe we should put out the full uncut on premium.

Oh, that's a good idea.

Yeah.

It was one take.

I mean, she sent us an eight or nine minute one take and we'll just had to like, chop it up into three minutes.

Yeah.

Yeah, oh, God.

We should do that.

I lost my shit with the door, door, another door.

I mean, Spain Town, USA is going to be my vocabulary forever now.

I immediately started, like, it started in the 60s.

Like, nope.

1998, right there.

And then I texted her, and she was like, I really thought it was in the 60s.

Yeah, I was dead set.

Like, no, it's a 90s game.

And then when we watched it, I'm like, wait, is it?

No, it's not.

All right.

Well, I suggest, if you haven't seen that folks at home, you go suggest the video that we'll cut together.

That is Kayla explaining the lore of Resident Evil.

To get you up to speed to modern day, because all of us have been playing Resident Evil Requiem.

Have we all beat it?

I finished it last night.

Okay.

Oh, you beat it.

There we go.

It fucked me up.

Was it yesterday in a meeting or something, where we were talking about like oh, should we talk about it again on the, the bomb cast, now that Mike's been playing it?

And I think Grubby were like, we have not talked about on the bomb cast.

Like, Holy shit.

I feel like the last two weeks, it's all I've been talking about with anyone.

Oh, yeah.

We originally beat it two weekends ago because we couldn't stop playing it as soon as we got it.

And it's like, oh, yeah, I can't wait to talk about it on the next Bombcast.

It's like, we can't.

And then the embargo lifted after the last Bombcast.

The day after.

Yeah, the Wednesday.

Wow.

Okay.

F's on Twitch.

It's fine.

YouTube is still going.

We've uh, we've.

So we have talked about it in a lot of places but uh yeah, we've all now beaten it and I continue to play it.

So I have, I beat it right away.

Started up uh, with the classic save, uh.

Right after that, then uh got like halfway through and I was kind of like trying to rush through it as quickly as possible.

And I I screwed myself with like a say like no ammo uh, on the run to go, take the person to the thing.

Uh, And it's like, oh, I'm not going to be able to survive this.

There's just no way I'm getting through this gauntlet.

So I was like, I'll put that down.

I'll come back.

And then I started on PC, played through half of it again.

And now I've also played through it halfway again on the Switch 2 again.

So it's like, I just can't stop.

My question is like I've always found them very replayable because they're so good at like okay, here's these outfits and here's these guns, and here's these unlockables and stuff.

And so I guess you have not done any of that.

You're just playing on different consoles and stuff, right?

Well, I've done a little bit of New Game Plus on Switch where it's like okay.

So one of the cool things they do is halfway through the game shifts perspective, kind of in a more permanent way, from Grace to Leon and Leon's the much more action-focused gameplay, and he gets the bracelet where every time you kill a zombie you get money and then you can use that money to upgrade your weapons.

Fantastic.

What a good idea.

That's such a fun thing.

Also could not be a more telling thing that the tone is going to shift when you're just like oh God, oh God.

Like one bullet cut is like so, until like, hey, here's a bracelet for you to get points for kills.

And it's like, everything, every choice they make with Leon versus Grace is screaming.

This is a very different game.

You should play it very differently, but that's like seals the deal.

You get that bracelet minute one in the new game plus.

That's Grace no no, as leon okay, so anytime you're as leon now and they put those little um the chests around that sell you the stuff.

Now those are spread throughout, like the chronic care center and stuff like that.

So any moment you get to play as leon, you're like oh, as grace, i might try to save a bunch of these zombies for leon to kill, because he's going to get a bunch of money now and it's like yeah, another new fun way to think about the game that i've already played a bunch of times.

They're so good at that.

I remember like beating uh, the seven and immediately, like i think there was like a choice in seven you could make.

That was like this or that, and so i was like well, i gotta see the other way.

Um, but they're just so immediately replayable.

And it's one of those things where it's like, after you've played it hell, i'm seeing that now, when i already won, because now i have to go back through the mansion after beating it on the thor and it's like okay well, now you can just really kind of speed through it and stuff, and it's super satisfying.

It's yeah, and they're like moments where, like you know, i was like okay, i'm gonna clean this place up as leon and then grace is gonna be able to go back in and get all this stuff.

But it's like i don't have to do that and i could really speed things up maybe and i could probably still get by.

Fine, you played in a crazy way yeah because yeah, like got like so, like it's not out of order, it was.

It was actually super cool to see oh right, You got the first.

Basically, there's these three things you got to get in the Chronic Care Center.

The one that everyone gets first, you got last.

And you still had to clean up after you played as Leon.

So you got to go around as Leon and basically just clear this place out for her.

So now she has a much more easy time to look around and stuff.

Yeah, he... The pencil...

I did not put the pencil puzzle together.

He picked up the piece of paper where you're supposed to kind of scrape.

Yeah.

He saw the beginning of the letter M and he goes, Mike.

And he played for hours and hours with a pencil back in his chest.

It was great.

Amazing to the point where it's like there's a second room where they just show you the answer that puzzle.

I'm like oh, you just looked at that.

Now you got the answer there, but of course then it was hours before he got back, so he had forgotten about that.

Yeah yeah, i was just busy running around, boy.

Very very, very good video game.

Yeah.

So freaking fun.

What surprised me is that as much, you know, I'm such a Resident Evil 4 remake guy, right?

Like that's my favorite Resident Evil game.

And yet, as great as all the stuff here is, I do think that the gray stuff is the best part of the game.

Like that big, long chapter in the clinic. was so classic Resident Evil.

It obviously felt very Resident Evil 2 with this big place with an east wing and a west wing.

You're kind of jumping back and forth.

The whole game's very good, but that section especially is certainly the best, I think, even the first-person Resident Evils I've ever felt.

It's tough because it's like that is.

I don't even want to call it a complaint because the whole game is great, but it's like.

I want kind of a whole 10 to 12 hour game, just as grace, and a big interconnected area like a classic resident evil.

Like I think that would be even better than how great this game is.

You know, I, I really like the feeling of, of wanting more from both these sides.

So it's like I'm like I kind of trusted that what they did here was maybe best for this game.

But just that you're right.

I can imagine that.

And it's like, Ooh, yeah, I want more of these things.

So it's like no matter what they do in the future with this, like two pronged approach it's.

If they kind of keep doing a two pronged approach or give me more of one or more of the other, I'm probably going to be pretty happy, no matter what.

I'll have my preference, which at this point is the great stuff.

But it's like, oh, this just sets them up for a future where all this stuff is great.

You know, the one common complaint people have about this game right now is it's too short.

Like, oh, the dollar per hour.

That's evil.

Ten to twelve.

That's all of them.

I would not add a bunch of hours on top of this game to make it more valuable.

And replaying it has been like, oh, this is great.

And I kind of hope more because I'm not a guy who immediately starts replaying games.

Usually most games I do not do that for.

It's something about Resident Evil.

It's really good at it.

And that's where you're going to get a lot of the value.

Nor would I want them to artificially stretch out the game, because I feel like it's paced so well.

Yes, that's their priority.

Just hence enough as Grace.

All right, Capcom, here's what you do going forward.

You get yourself an Infinity Ward and a Treyarch okay, that's what we're gonna do going forward and everyone's happy.

And i do think, like the whole 10 hours thing, like that's the in-game counter, i think for a lot of people, i don't know, like my steam play time is like 164 hours, which is pretty beefy to me, and then yeah, when it be, it took you 10 hours because you know it's not factoring in reloading, reloading exactly, and you know i'm a big boy, so i played with the ink ribbons on, of course.

So there's a lot of maybe lost progress.

Yeah, i don't know.

Nice yeah, i know i'm very impressive and manly uh, but i mean that was fun.

I think uh, you get enough of them early on.

It's like a lot of resume games, but early on that's a pain point.

Then by the end you're using so much blood to make ink ribbons that you're completely fine.

Actually yeah, it kind of it really doesn't change the game all that much because you could just make so many of those.

I am surprised that people are upset about the length because, like It really was.

When I saw the length, I was like, yeah, that tracks with every one of these.

I don't think it's for many people who have played the game.

I think it's for people who are like, should I get this game?

I hear it's only 10 hours.

That's a lot of money.

You know which one was fucking long?

Six was.

So go play six.

Yeah, it doesn't cost this much right now.

I hear people, but it's just that it was not a complaint I had and do not have as I continue to play it.

This felt like watching, like going back and forth and watching like two movies from differing genres that I absolutely adore and love because, like I would Shouts out to the characterization of Grace, because I feel like she finally echoed a lot of sentiments of how I feel playing these games.

It was like, oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, I'm scared.

She was actually properly terrified, which is like something you don't often get with these characters.

Like Ethan was just such a like.

I mean, you know, we know what he eventually is and is in the series of like you're.

You're not a real person in the way that you're reacting to any of this Ethan.

But Grace is like, OK, cool.

You're properly scared.

And then when I was feeling like the game was getting too much for me and I was just like kind of being too tense. masterfully it switches to Leon and Leon just being a fucking himbo and just having a line for every single thing there is the thing that killed me was I won't say specifically the circumstances but basically there's a scene where like he comes across a horror scene like just death like some of the goriest just bodies and stuff you can imagine and he watches a video of what happened kind of that event horizon moment of like seeing what happened to the crew and it is just just fucking awful gory murder everything and he takes the thing out he stops watching it and he has a one-liner for it's like thought i had a short fuse yeah He's got like 40 of them in the game.

It's non-stop.

It's great.

When Mike was streaming... The doctor with the chainsaw, like, ugh, I want a second opinion.

We need a second opinion.

Mike, you were so upset during that launch stream when Leon didn't do anything to save that nurse.

Oh, yeah.

Like that one nurse that you meet when you walk into the clinic.

Yeah.

And we'll push open the door.

There's a chainsaw.

I feel like for 10 seconds, she's like, whoa.

And then she's like.

And Leo's like what do i do?

Like the awesome powers, like very slow car running over the guy saying yeah, it's like i'd like to help you, but you're not a main character.

Did you see the next clip of leo vader and jacob geller?

And there's that part where there's that boss character who's in an office.

He's like you're fired, you're fired and they decide to use the requiem on him and it is just the whole room gets fucking splattered and it is so fucking violent the requiem.

He's the big gun and when you use that gun you feel like you used the thing that should be on the name of the title.

It affects you.

It's crazy.

It's so cool.

Usually in these games, you'll get a super pistol.

I forget what you would call it.

Yeah, it's like you get as many collectibles as you get.

You buy it for a ton of money.

You get that from the start.

It's just going to be hard to get ammo for it, but have fun yep, and then like, if you kind of do get the the, you know the craftable stuff for it you can craft about eight or nine of those bullets in that first section.

As grace yeah, that becomes.

It comes in handy when you are trying to like oh, i need to clear a path to go to this place or whatever it's.

It's pretty good, kind of like the for the climax of that section of the game too, but it's fun because, like crawling around grace, like you can get past the zombies and a lot of times you know they kind of do it.

Resi one does where well, killing a zombie might have a consequence.

You might not want to do that unless you can do in a sort of very specific way.

So a lot of times I am just shooting them a leg and pushing them down and running past them.

Right.

Yeah.

There's like a few of the big chaser ones.

And, you know, I love that there's like this kind of instant kill stealth thing like this shot.

And for like the one really big guy, I did one.

It like wasn't enough.

I did two.

Still wasn't enough.

Like this third one better kill this guy and I better get something pretty cool for doing it.

I did, and I did get a charm.

Like, okay, fine.

That feels nice.

But you also, like, it's clear, like, oh, Leon could just take that guy out later.

In fact, Leon did take out, like, this butcher guy that I think other people took out as Grace.

You took out the chef with that.

Yeah.

I think I took out almost everyone with Grace.

I was very meticulous.

In my first playthrough, yes.

So many injectors.

Yeah.

Yeah gosh uh, it just, and also it looks so freaking good such a such a, such a pretty looking game like, especially some of the lighting stuff.

Uh, if you're able to, you're playing on pc.

Yeah, pc with the, with the.

It was funny was the second half, the leon stuff was heavier than the first half.

I actually had to turn off the path based ray tracing on switch to yeah, when i was streaming it, but this still looked um really good there though, of course, But it runs really well on Switch too.

Just like to reiterate stuff I've said elsewhere.

Surprisingly well is kind of how I would describe it.

There are those heavier sections where there's more prolonged, obvious frame drops.

But the G-Sync VRR screen really helps a lot of times whenever it dips from like 60 to 50.

I didn't notice in handheld mode, especially in handheld mode.

And then it does run at 60 a lot of the time.

Like, you know, this is not one of those ones where it's like, oh, it's a great switchboard.

It's locked at 30.

It's like, no, it's going at 60 most of the time.

And there's going to just be an occasional moment here or there, or the occasional section where it's going to be noticeable and you get over it.

I'm not going to say this is the definitive version that people should play, but if it's where people want to play, you're not going to regret it.

Yeah, Dan, I think you said, it may have been in the review video.

And folks, if you're still curious and on the fence about Resident Evil Requiem, go read Dan's review.

Great review.

Go listen to the review pod with Backlarger.

Oh, I can listen to that now.

I was waiting for spoilers, but i think, like the comparison you made was, like you know, we kind of need these like will smith, hollywood blockbuster style movies, and i feel like we don't have, at least in recent years, have like this uh, pillar of video games, because we've just been mired with like a lot of live service games and like the big sweeping triple a games from sony, the prestige, so the guy out of war, ragnaroks and the last of us and all that.

Like it's like sure there's space if you want your, your prestige tv versions of video games, but like i kind of want dumber triple a and this is dumber triple a.

Like yeah parentheses, positive big time.

Like again yeah, just the big ass.

Dumb wild, wild west independence day, shit.

You know, like this is like top gun maverick right yeah, Give me more of that in games.

Yes.

Yeah.

Where it's like you know what to expect beat by beat, but you were still on the edge of your seat having a fantastic time.

It's a roller coaster.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Any other thoughts before we head to break gang?

Just like I don't want to do spoilers, but like going towards the end, I kind of had like two complaints, I would say, with the story and then both of them actually were sort of resolved for me.

I was like, oh, that's nice, too.

So I just, you know, at the end, I walked away very satisfied, very happy.

I kind of just do want to just jump back in and play again.

Did you guys, there's multiple endings.

Did you guys do both?

I did.

I've never seen a more clear, stark thing that, like, oh, that was the bad one. that was the right ending i chose there that was the second time yeah my first time yeah yeah i didn't read any of the material so it's just like yeah i don't know this one person said to do this i'll do that i guess oh well any of you guys uh about lose your mind at one point when you're going to the police station when you could have sworn you heard saw something and saw it okay i spent a while looking around being like i swear if i like i hit record on my playstation like what the I will say, that particular easter egg is something I would have expected.

Like if you play the game for the fourth time, this happens.

And no, it was just this thing happening and it was relatively easy to eventually see.

I'm like, what the hell?

I love that.

Yeah.

It's interesting just how Resident Evil 2, like this game's a Resident Evil 2 sequel really in so many ways.

Yeah.

It has Leon, but Resident Evil 4, not really mentioned plot-wise.

And after doing 7 and 8 it was kind of its own almost separate thing with the mold and a lot of different characters.

It is neat to have things once again kind of be like Umbrella and the T-Virus.

Raccoon City is kind of cool to have. be very Resident Evil.

It is funny with the umbrella stuff because it's like I was going back through some like lore stuff and it's like, oh right, there was like good umbrella at one point like blue umbrella that like they should have just gotten rid of that.

Uh, that the whole thing.

Right, right.

Maybe just throw that branding in the trash there.

But like Chris, Redfield works for Umbrella but the good one, That never made any sense.

We work with good Blackwater.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, see, our Squashica's blue.

It's a whole different thing.

Maybe we should get rid of it, yeah.

Just anything else.

How about that?

I think it was because Capcom was like...

A lot of good branding and merchandising opportunities with Umbrella.

How do we keep that going?

Not going to lie though, after beating RE9, I have a hankering for more Resident Evil and I think it can only be satiated with six, because i've never played six.

I never played six either.

That is the one when i was playing like the co-op stuff with kayla, and you know we loved, you know, even like for all of its faults, five is still a fun co-op.

It's a fun, you know.

Yeah, i like five.

We went on to six and it's like there are those four different campaigns and we did one of them i think we might have done the leon one and it's like this fucking sucks.

Are they all available from the start, or do you have to beat one to access another one?

I think you can access three of them, and then there's like a fourth one that's shorter or something.

But it's just, like, an everybody in the pool.

Here's every character you've ever heard of, and here's, like, Wesker's kid.

And it's like, okay, great.

But, like, there may be enough of us to tackle each campaign individually.

We have to get Kayla involved, too.

Yeah, get Kayla in there.

She could be other Jill.

My thing is that yeah, my thing is I just kind of want to play all the main lines I haven't now, which is at this point original two, original three, Code Veronica, zero and six.

I don't know if people have revelations.

Mike, those are the exact same ones I haven't, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

One, two, three, zero, Code Veronica.

Code Veronica, I got right to the end, but I got fucked over on my save files.

I've heard that happen.

Yeah, I played a lot of Code Veronica at my friend's house.

Right, but no, it's like you know I hate doing this, but I am like when's the next one?

Sure, so that's.

You know, i didn't include it in the news.

We could talk about it here.

Um code veronica.

It seems to be like that will be the next remake.

Uh, so that's cool then that'll happen probably pretty soon, but then, apparently later this year, capcom leadership is going to do their resident evil retreat something they lasted in 2023 where they decide, they get together and they decide the next several years what resident evil is going to look like.

So the So this game is going to be so successful that it will probably color a lot of those conversations.

Like, what did we do right here and how do we do more of it?

Yeah.

And I'm glad.

What they didn't do with nine which is, I think, a thing a lot of us thought they were going to do was make a big open world game.

It's so unnecessary.

You could maybe look at some of the Leon parts later in the game and be like maybe they were trying to do something here and they pulled it way back.

Yeah.

Whatever they ended up doing way better than what they could.

Right, maybe there's a world where there was a version of this game that was an open-world Raccoon City thing.

And again, there's a part of that here, and there's a part that's more open, and it is very good.

But the best part of the game is still when it's just so Resident Evil.

You're in one big building and you're clawing a scrunchy way to get this door open and get past this zombie and figure out this puzzle.

And it's basically what the series was when it came out in 1996.

And that is still super fun.

And there's still room for that.

And yeah, I just I hope that they kind of continue on that court.

Yeah.

Doing like the more action stuff to also super fun, whether to spice it in there or do a game like that.

That also works.

But they're in a really good place right now.

They've really figured that out.

And I don't need I don't need some. huge shake-up to it again anytime soon.

You know what's interesting?

I said, Jesse Vitelli had a thing on Instagram and I like this theory.

He's got where it's like.

They've got this kind of cycle of three games where it's like one two, three are all kind of classic survival horror and then by three it's kind of diminishing returns.

It's not bad, but it's like Okay.

Reinventing this in like four.

Sure.

Totally reinvents it.

Five.

Takes it further with co-op and stuff.

Six.

Gone a bit too far.

Scrap it.

Got to do another trilogy here.

Go totally reinvent the wheel again with seven.

Eight.

Does a whole wacky thing with like a weird fairy tale thing and everything.

Nine is like.

I think this is probably the.

If we're talking three, six and nine, nine is definitely the best.

Yeah.

Yes, it is the best Baltimore 3 entry in the series yet.

Yeah, but it's the one that goes really hard and goes really far in all of these themes and gameplay and stuff.

And he posits that oh, if they kind of keep up with this, maybe the next one will be a whole other reimagining of what this could be.

I mean, that's what those conversations will certainly be about.

I expect they come away from 9 being like not yet, let's keep going in this direction, right?

Three and six people were kind of tired of it.

Nine people fucking right, but everyone's on board now.

Yeah, i feel like there's a lot of weight, because the next one would be 10.

Yeah, all right.

Yeah, it's like you gotta like it's.

Either you gotta get off on all like all bells and whistles or do you take this as another soft reboot of everything?

The time they went like we got to do all the bells and whistles when we got a Resident Evil 6.

So maybe you almost kind of fight that urge a little bit.

I mean, that's what felt like.

What did happen here is they threw everything in there and then they got rid of every single bell and whistle.

That fucking sucked.

You could tell that they just took an editor's scalpel to this game.

Sure.

And anything that did not contribute to the feelings they wanted you to have.

So it's like, OK, here's a long description or a long cut scene.

Cut that down to like a couple of paragraphs.

Cut that down to just a quick hit where they're going to have a quick conversation and move on quickly.

They could like have luxuriated in their success here and done too much.

And you could just tell they know not to do that anymore.

It's. really impressive actually you know what even the remakes are going to be able to still you know co veronica zero those are going to be very much the survival horror style ones some point they're going to remake five and that's going to be like the four remake in the leon sections here just pure action again so they're going to be able to bounce back and forth between these things just oh yeah through those um then whatever 10 is relatively easily veronica that's the one on the boat No, that's Revelations.

This is the Dreamcast one with Claire.

It's still very much in the vein of Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3, without being informed by what was happening, kind of the same time.

We had 4.

4 happened very quickly after that.

But it's like, okay, this is the culmination of everything that happened in 1, 2, and 3.

A lot of people really like it.

A lot of people are like, ah, it's a bit too much.

I thought it was okay.

It's funny, I'm a huge sucker for like bad guys that you thought were dead unexpectedly coming back.

Like 24 used to do this and like, you know, all sorts.

It's like, oh God, we thought he was dead.

Liquid Snake died 400 times or whatever, you know?

And so there's a part of me that like, I always liked Wesker.

And there were parts in this where I was like, wait, this is a new character.

Is that, could that be Wesker?

Are they going to bring back Wesker?

You know?

And I think I don't know if any character in the history of video games has ever died harder than Albert Wesker.

Right, right, right.

Yes.

He was drowning in a volcano and then you're in a helicopter.

It kind of makes you feel like he should come back because he died in a volcano.

No, you should.

Rock it into both of his eyes while he's drowning in a volcano.

It's my favorite video game death maybe ever.

Like, because he died in such an extravagant way, He's still alive in my head.

I mean, that's the thing.

Ripley in Alien 3 falls into a vat of lava.

They bring her back in Resurrection.

You can do it.

Lava's never killed anyone.

No, that's true.

I don't think Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection should be anybody's North Star for how they treat their media.

Yeah, I would still be, I would pop for Wesker coming back.

I disagree.

It's wrestling, so it should be dumb.

This game was at its best when it was at its dumbest.

At least with the Leon stuff.

Maybe we can do a full-on spoiler cast someday, because I have more thoughts about some of that stuff as well.

Sounds good.

But I mean...

This is kind of like my argument against it.

I think the new characters this game were great.

Grace is the best character we had in forever.

The voice acting, fantastic.

I really like Victor as the villain.

He was awesome, fantastic.

Oh, he was great.

Yeah, so I'm like, no, we can still do new characters.

We don't have to bring freaking Wesker back back.

It's fun to bring back like a Jill and a Rebecca Chambers.

That's not like.

The argument is like I want Wesker instead of new characters.

Like obviously the new characters are great.

I just think like be dumb in the fun way that Resident Evil is often dumb in the fun way, but I get.

Everyone has a different story.

Like what if Wesker has a sequel hat?

You know oh yeah yeah, Jill too.

We're so different for Jill, right.

We haven't had Jill since 5, and that's a weird Jill.

Well, since 3 remake, I guess.

5 Jill sucked, so... Yeah, I mean, I hope we get Jill instead of Chris.

Chris is all, again, Chris, I'm like... Chris should just kind of keep...

He should keep his role that he's had recently, where he just kind of shows up sometimes.

Yeah.

I'd rather see a Sheva from Five back than- Actually- Yeah, she should be back.

She's awesome, yeah.

Yeah, that would make me pop more Rebecca.

Give me Carlos from Three also, actually.

Sure.

I didn't know there was this much Chris, I don't even want to say hate, but annoyance-

I think a lot of people like him.

He's just like, he's just like, Bravo team, go in.

Like, he's that guy.

I'm like, eh.

Whenever you see him, your first thought is, man, I wish this was Leon.

Yeah.

Leon is, there were multiple times in this game where I'm just like, I love you, Leon.

I just like that character.

Yeah, there'd be multiple times where you're like Leon, my hero, uh-huh boy.

You realize how hard the tonal shifts are going to be is when it first goes to leon and it's like you know, you've been super scared as grace going through the thing and everything, and the doctor is carrying the doctor, carrying grace out, just like out of the hotel, on the street, like crowded like chicago ass street.

Uh, just on the sidewalk and everyone walking up be like whoa, that's a nine foot tall guy carrying a passed out woman.

This is bad.

And he's just shooting them all with tranquilizer darts in the middle of the road like okay, oh yeah, leon pulls up in his porsche.

I'm in for this, let's do it.

Hamilton, yeah god, i want to just play it again right now.

It's great and you should.

It's so freaking good folks at home.

Uh, i think it's safe to say you really enjoy resident evil requiem.

Uh, we will be back with the news right after this.

Quick brick and break more berry.

Give me more berry.

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It was great.

This is Jeff Grubb with the news.

Jeff Grubb.

Howdy, yeah, let's get into the news.

I'm Jeff Grubb, and I'm with it.

Let's see here.

First is the Nintendo Indie World Showcase happened today.

We talked over it, thought it was pretty good.

I had games like Densha Attack, Moonlighter 2 Blighted, which is a Metroidvania game from the team that did Guacamelee, so that's exciting.

Blue Prince.

It's coming to Switch 2 now and Switch 1, I believe.

It dropped today.

It's available immediately.

Other games that were notable Heave, Ho 2 Woodo Mini, Shoot Adventures also dropped onto Switch today.

Huge.

Rotwood, which is a Switch 2 console exclusive multiplayer monster slayer game.

Mixtape, which we've talked about before, that's coming to Switch as well.

And then a bunch of other games like Rot.

Rattaton.

Oh, the Patapon.

Rattaton, which is the Patapon-like.

Yep.

Outbound, Unrailed 2, something we've played.

Overall, pretty good showing for indie games on the Switch 2.

Nothing mind-blowing.

A lot of stuff we've known about from other platforms or just straight-up ports from other platforms.

Minishoot!

But Minishoot is great to have on Switch.

Yep.

Yeah, and blueprints.

Gotta love blueprints.

Just the idea of more people playing mini-shoot adventures and blueprints makes me happy, and I wouldn't mind replaying both of those games honestly.

I think yeah, it's pretty huge for a game like Densha Attack to get this platform on the Switch too.

Yeah, it opened up the show, too.

Yes, that's a good point.

That game's super cool.

Y'all gotta check out the demo.

It's just so bonkers parentheses positive.

The demo is on Switch 2 now, so I was actually thinking I might just check it out there.

Pretty easy to do.

I'm curious about Blighted, because that is a drink box and I've liked a lot of their stuff in the past.

Nobody Saves the World and Guacamelee, Mutant Blobs Attack.

They've made good stuff, so I'm curious about that one.

You love being blighted, too.

Do you love being blighted?

Oh yeah, he's a big fan.

Yeah, that's what he's always saying to us.

Uh, all right yeah so uh overall, nintendo coming with these, these showcases.

Everyone's still wondering where the big uh, general direct is.

I'm still the opinion we don't get anything of that sort until after at least mario day, and maybe even after the mario movie comes about a month from now.

We're about a month out, really.

Yeah, it's early, it's april 1st actually, so it's less than a month.

Um, there we go All right up.

Next, Sony Santa Monica is apparently going to expand the God of War franchise into an MCU-like thing.

Sony's Santa Monica studio is reportedly building on the God of War universe with Cory Barlog's next game, The Unannounced Project.

We haven't heard anything about it yet.

We've heard previously that it's going to take place in a familiar franchise, but it might as well feel like a new intellectual property.

Now we have a few more details.

For example, it might star Faye, who was Kratos' wife, played by Deborah Ann Wohl in the games.

Didn't know that.

Yeah, and it's going to be more action-y.

And this is the reporting.

None of this is confirmed.

Okay.

But yeah okay, that sounds pretty interesting to me, especially of it going in a more action-y direction, because it's like yeah, I like those God of War 2018 games just fine, but I prefer the action ones.

And the idea of taking everything they learned from 2018 and Ragnarok and applying that to a game that is explicitly supposed to be a more action-focused take on this universe cool.

When you guys hear this, what do you think?

I think, the one thing I'm skeptical of here is how this isn't going to kind of feel familiar.

I mean, you know, Faye is very much this Norse person in this Norse world.

She's one of these, you know, the giants.

Norse warrior, yeah.

Yeah, she's from the giant realm, a place we have been to in these games, and...

I'm a little bit over, like, the whole Norse God of War stuff.

I'm a little bit over Norse in general.

Am I allowed to say that?

All the Norse mythology-type games, I get a little, like, Thor.

They're just too human, in my opinion.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, Ragnarok is this, and a metaphor is an actual thing this time, right?

Yeah, so...

Cory Borg's very talented, though, and his team's obviously great.

I bet they will make a good game.

I guess I wonder.

It's not like these new God of War games are thoughtful, slow.

They're very action-focused as well.

They're action-focused, but Ragnarok kind of tilted things.

I considered God of War an action series, and I loved it for it.

In 2018, I thought it was a great action game.

By the time Ragnarok came around, it was kind of like, okay, I don't really care about this story.

I would like more action than a story here, you know?

Sure.

And they definitely have their RPG adventure elements to the action-adventure genre.

Yeah, all I was meaning by action was it could be maybe more like the original game.

I wonder if it's any more like Valhalla at all.

Because Valhalla was leaning into a roguelike-ish experience.

Sure.

I'm sure they will learn from that.

My worry is that what they mean is just not as many of the RPG elements and maybe some of the puzzle solving stuff.

But that's fine.

I feel like there's no way we get a giant AAA Sony game that is not very story focused still.

Oh, yeah.

It'll still have a lot of the story stuff for sure.

Like, yeah, that's the reason they're doing that.

I mean, that's the whole idea here is spin up another character in the same universe, have this game stand on its own, but with obvious hooks to the wider universe, so that you can then bring all those together later into one super game or whatever.

I will not worry to the remake trilogy.

Yeah well that's also happening.

Not that I don't think that they can make a good story or a good game following Faye, if rumors are to be believed, but like and not that I ultimately knowing her fate, that's like.

Well, I don't want to do this because I know she dies.

If they're going to go back into God of War, I'd rather they just explore a different character in the universe or, like I don't know, do something with Atreus.

Do something with any of the other characters.

They were going to do something with Atreus.

That was going to be the Bluepoint game where...

Each person played as a different aspect of Atreus' personality, and that was going to be the multiplayer characters in that online multiplayer game.

Oh, that makes sense, because they kind of definitely leave it open for that in Ragnarok.

Boy.

I mean, don't you think there's a bit of a worry of god of war fatigue?

We had that metroidvania which granted, i bet not many people are going to play.

It's going to be the remake.

We're going to get a certainly an actual new kratos, god of war at some point, and now even this game god of war spin-off, and there was supposed to be a live surface game.

I just it just seems like sony is in the beating the dead horse market, right?

I mean, we got this with horizon already, and now god of war, we got it with last of us, and it's five remakes.

Um Well, I don't know, because Horizon is a bigger franchise than any of us are familiar with, right?

I mean to a certain extent, because a lot of that is.

It was bundled with the cheapest version of the console you can get.

So a lot of people own that game for sure, and a lot of people do like it.

But I don't think it's some order of magnitude beyond any other popularity or anything else.

I think God of War still eclipses that in terms of popularity and like brand name recognition.

So I don't know, maybe with the general audience they want more Kratos.

Yeah, I mean, I think it will come down to how different does this feel?

But I don't think that sort of disregards or discounts the appeal Mike's making to the idea of fatigue, because well, you know, an Iron Man movie feels different than a Spider-Man movie and yet I still had MCU fatigue after really liking those movies for a really long time.

At a certain point, it's like, I'm just done.

I don't want this anymore.

I want to do something that feels different and more exciting and I'm not getting that from just the base level of the stuff all coming from the same place.

I you know, After playing Resident Evil Requiem a game that I can't stop praising it's like yeah, could Sony do more stuff like that?

And I don't know if they can, and that doesn't seem to be the kind of game that they would even approve of making in this moment.

I feel like they had their chance with peak Last of Us, Part 1 and 2 popularity that they could have done more shorter contained side stories and ultimately they didn't do that.

They kind of did it with Miles Morales, but then haven't followed up on that since.

Right, and it's like you kind of hope that that was going to be a blueprint of sorts, but it doesn't seem like it.

A blueprint for a studio like a Bluepoint who doesn't exist anymore.

Yes, who is being shut down.

Yep, absolutely.

Did you guys see that image of Kratos or War God and Arrow Boy?

Yeah.

Very funny joke from Jeff Bacalar.

It looked like spirit Halloween costumes.

That looks like garbage.

Insane, yeah.

Wow, that looks stupid, like there's a possibility it looks better with correct like uh, you know, theatrical lighting and all this stuff uh, cinematic lighting.

It just, I don't know.

It looks so cheap.

I'm kind of excited because it's like oh, I hope the show looks like trash, because that'll make it fun to watch.

But, uh, Yeah, I don't know.

It's something, like I know Kratos has been a white dude for forever, right?

But then just seeing him as like a white, oh, this is just a white dude now, huh?

This one looks like he's from the Midwest.

Like, yes.

He does look like a Chicago guy.

Yeah.

You know it's because it's on, like these weird streaming services and stuff that people don't like.

Like, for instance, Halo.

I feel like during Halo's peak, everybody was like oh, we've got to have a Halo movie or a Halo series.

Like, that would have been huge fucking news.

And, like, I'm only vaguely aware that there is some sort of Halo series that happened.

People didn't like that show.

So that was Paramount Plus's most popular show.

Which no one's ever subscribed to.

Yes, exactly.

That's like, what does that mean, the most popular show on Paramount Plus?

What did it have to do?

10, 15 viewers?

Like, exactly.

And is it a show about Master Chief in Halo?

Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, but you can just see his butt cheeks and he takes his helmet off.

He cuts Cortana in it.

Does he bang one of the Covenant aliens or something?

I don't know.

He has his helmet off a lot.

Oh, they were.

There was quite a lot of discourse about people not liking it.

Oh, okay.

That would be such huge news, I feel like, back in the day, but is it just the streaming landscape?

How do you feel about like for fallout?

Do you feel like the the sort of uh, i feel like people talk about show?

I haven't seen any of these, but i feel like fallout i've heard people talk about and i i feel like people like fallout.

People seem to like the last of a show.

You know like i hear people talk about that, but that's hbo and fallout was what amazon and maybe it's the Paramount.

Yeah, I mean, it's just there's so many of them like some breakthrough and a lot of them don't it in.

Almost that doesn't necessarily depend on what the franchise is like.

The Twisted Metal show kind of broke through even though they haven't done anything with that forever and seemed like they still don't plan to.

Yeah, but that has like three seasons now.

Oh, the show does.

The show does.

Yeah.

Good for Joe.

Yeah.

Even a lot of these shows seem to have a second season.

People don't like as much.

Even after the first one is good.

Yeah, Fallout.

I've heard mixed things about the second season of Fallout.

I certainly don't care.

I've seen the God of War TV show.

It was called God of War.

They played it in between the sections where I was beating people up.

Yes.

It looked much better in that video game because, you know, having a guy who's ashen, white and with red stripes and wearing kind of, you know, silly looking Norse armor everywhere,

It looks fine in video game.

It looks kind of fucking dumb in real life.

It seems like they're trying to do too much like the actual video game rather than make corrections to what would make sense in real life.

I think you just need such a good director of photography to make that whole thing work.

It has to just look like a whole other world at some point.

Right now, this just looks like someone went on the set and took a photo, which they did.

So it's especially like Metal Gear Solid, like a series or a movie like I would not be excited for.

I think I would just I would watch that one out of sheer morbid curiosity.

You know, those other ones are just zero out of 10 for me in terms of interest level, you know?

I will say the Castlevania anime, the Castlevania anime was actually quite good.

I liked that one.

Yeah.

Did you, have you watched all of them?

They did like an original run, then they did like another series.

I didn't see the other series.

Two more series.

Okay.

I watched the first four seasons or whatever, and they were very good.

There are certainly some where it's like, oh, they're making a live action Zelda movie.

I'm going to see that, I guess, for sure.

Because my assumption with the Zelda movie is that it would be more stylized after a while, right?

And maybe this will be as well, but I don't know.

You would hope so.

I know it's God of War, but looking at that photo just gives me a Sons of Anarchy vibe.

Sure.

And that guy's from Sons of Anarchy.

Oh, there you go.

That's why.

Yep.

All right.

Bluepoint reportedly had a Bloodborne remake pitch rejected by From Software, not by Sony.

A bunch of reporting around this happened over the week.

PlayStation's Bluepoint Studio reportedly pitched a remake.

They did that a couple times.

In the most recent time, Sony's like, yes, thumbs up.

It looks good.

The money makes sense.

Like, we did the math.

The math makes sense.

Let's go for it.

We just got to go check in with From, and they say, go fuck yourself.

So... this what's one of the things they pitched that led to blue point not having a project and then led to them closing down or getting closed down next month um but yeah this is kind of right in line with what you know i've been saying for years this is from soft is the barrier here i never knew exactly why uh over time it's become a little bit more clear that that they just want to control it which is what i heard originally but it's like okay well yeah what does that look like can they like work with another studio, and it sounds like they just don't want to work with another studio, specifically because Miyazaki does not want to.

Right and it sounds like they maybe didn't like the Demon's Souls remake, which I hear that from fans of Demon's Souls 2 and I'm always a little bit like why not?

And they'll be like, well, look what this monster looks like here.

Look what it looks like here.

They changed it.

I'm like, yeah, because the one on the left is from the PS3.

Yeah, right.

So the interpretations of the monster designs is the most common complaint.

Whatever.

I bet it's more complicated than any of these things, like any of these fan theories about why Miyazaki specifically doesn't like it wants to be the one that holds the keys to Bloodborne and then wants to be the one that actually does all the work.

We don't know all that.

But Bloodborne, nothing's happening with Bloodborne because of this specifically.

So no remake, no remaster, no re-release, no port.

Go get it on PC.

Play it on emulator.

Get it 60 frames per second.

That's the thing, too.

It's like everyone just like some people want them to just remaster it.

That's all people really want.

Doesn't even really need a remake.

People just want to play that game on modern systems at 60 frames per second.

And that doesn't seem like some giant ask and don't.

Okay, if they want to be cagey over at From Software about another team coming and remake their work, I suppose that is their privilege.

They have earned that at this point.

But you're not going to let somebody come in and remaster the game even?

That's a little silly.

I think part...

This is me speculating now.

I don't know.

Part of me thinks that, like it really is a little bit about frustration with Sony, because you know they go back to, like they did, Demon's Souls, and then Sony had that.

And so they had to make spin up a whole new thing with Dark Souls, so they can kind of get control of their thing back.

And then I wonder if they're like, is the same thing going to happen with Bloodborne?

And then the same thing kind of happened with Bloodborne.

I don't know why they didn't foresee it going that way.

They went back to Sony.

They went back.

So, I mean, they took the and I'd be like, well, you know, PlayStation paid for it.

It's a privilege.

Not necessarily.

But yeah, like you went back to Sony and had them paid to make that game.

And again, I'm not saying if you don't want them to make it and you have that power to stop it, that's OK.

But they specifically don't have that power is the thing.

Right.

That's it.

That's where they have the cloud to stop it is what I have the cloud.

If you want to push that cloud again, you have earned that to a point.

That's OK.

But like come on let's let's, let's all work together here and get people what they want, which is just to play that game on modern platforms at 60 frames per second.

That shouldn't be some giant ask.

Nope.

Yeah, definitely not.

PlayStation certainly wants to work with FromSoftware again.

That's not even speculation.

It's just obvious to everybody.

So they're not going to take any chances on anything that could ruin that relationship.

And I don't pretend to know what relationships are like in Japan specifically, but I bet they take that sort of respect between one another and not doing something that would step on another company's toes pretty seriously.

I think that's what Sony.

Sony's probably just being extra cautious here when they do something like say no after Bluepoint says please say no.

Pokemon Wins and Waves was revealed.

There was the Pokemon Day on February 27th, just last week.

We talked over that as well.

Pokemon Wins and Waves is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive that is coming out in 2027.

So it will not be out for the 30th anniversary year.

Instead, they're taking a little bit of extra time and they are not going to support the Switch 1.

A lot of like positive inclinations that they're really taking it seriously about getting this game right.

And then it looked pretty good in these early trailers.

How'd you feel about it, Jan?

Yeah, very pleased to hear that they're taking another year to continue baking and marinating the game, just because you know gosh, what was the last one.

Scarlet and Violet, very rough upon launch.

And I know once the Switch 2 came out there were a couple patches that improved things, but it wasn't enough for me to really want to re-explore the game.

And, you know, ZA was fairly good with my expectations being very low.

But I'm excited for a brand new generation that is going to only be on the Switch 2.

So no, you don't have to factor in anything and factor in the Switch 1 and any of that player base.

I'm also excited that I like these starters.

I like a good fire dog.

Also, I'm a big fan of the setting.

I've rewatched the trailer a couple times.

Why?

Because it's going to be my people this time.

Oh, man.

It does look like Southeast Asia is heavily influenced.

I've seen Michael Heim actually has an article on IGN talking about the influences.

You can see the trailer in the trailer.

A lot of Philippines inspired rice patties, other geographical stuff that looks like it could be pulled from Indonesia and Thailand.

Um, so I'm just excited to see what this game will bring.

The bummer part for me is that how much it heavily features older Pokemon.

But I guess older Pokemon you're just going to use them to fill out, like the regional Pokemon.

Yeah.

I mean they used to do the thing where, like some, I can't remember what they do is where some generations would be like It's only new Pokemon until you beat the Elite Four and then old Pokemon populate the world.

I don't know if they ever do that kind of thing again necessarily.

Now there's so many old Pokemon that maybe each one, maybe a new generation, adds 50 of them and they get sprinkled in there.

But who knows?

50 is the optimal number, right?

Of like number of Pokemon that they should add for a new one these days.

It's like they don't need to do 100 each time anymore for sure.

Yeah.

I am just hoping that Pom Bon doesn't wind up becoming a firefighting type, because we have too many of those.

We have too many.

None of them should evolve into a fighting type at the end.

We don't need that.

No.

I think there's too many dual types in general now that at a certain point you kind of need dual types, because why wouldn't you?

There's so many of those options.

Goodest Hour will do kind of miss when that was a big luxury.

Usually, if it was a dual type, it was always the same ones of grass also being poison or water sometimes also being ice.

A lot of times you just here's a guy and he's just fire and that's his thing and that's okay too.

Monotype it's.

It's low-key, kind of good and competitive, so i would also welcome that right.

Well, fewer weaknesses right, yeah.

Uh, austin walker pointed out what pom-pom is going to evolve into and it's the big armored um pomeranian from.

Um, what's the?

Uh, what's the little dark, cute rpg.

Uh, from from back on, back in the day, the one with all the pomeranians and stuff.

Um uh shoot, The guy did music for Pokemon.

He made the game.

Oh, Undertale. undertale thank you i want to say unknown i'm like that's a pokemon uh yes the undertale pomeranian armor guy it's like yeah that's exactly what it should involve in some of those things are mostly more sci-fi and that's what was blocking me there just sorry i i get it the other thing i enjoy about the game is that pom bon oh cool pomeranian bonfire gecko aqua and then brout is just like bird with eyebrows me i like i like browd a lot i think i'm going team browd on this one i'm a little angry bird yeah it is an angry bird and i'm into that uh pokemon company had a bunch of other announcements champions has a release date that's coming but uh really i want to talk about the pokemon company releasing a mini game boy that plays pokemon music by swapping 45 different cartridges they made hit clips they made hit clips they brought cartridges that you don't just put in the one It comes in red and blue versions and includes 45 colored cartridges, each with a singular one uno music track.

Well, this is what you guys used to have to do with cassette tapes, right?

Oh, my God.

You could get so many songs on a cassette tape.

And then you got a whole other side, Jan.

Oh, sorry guys, i didn't mean to offend.

I mean it's almost impressive to be able to like put some kind of storage device in there that only holds one song right, it seems like i bet it holds more than that.

They're just limiting it to one.

Yeah god, gross.

Uh sure, all right, it looks like a game boy, though i already ordered it, this i.

I saw a friend posting that they saw this at the nintendo san francisco store and i might make, i might, i might go, and There you go.

If you do, unbox it.

I want to see you go through it and actually use all these cartridges.

All right.

Sony confirms a major PS5 Pro upgrade is rolling out in some form today, and that was the day that Resident Evil Requiem came out.

They have updated Pisser.

PlayStation Spectral Resolution is getting updated, everybody.

And this is the one we've kind of been waiting for for a while, because they worked with AMD on this one.

They shifted from an old version of AI upscaling, of machine learning upscaling, to the new version that NVIDIA has been using for forever and AMD has been using recently.

And it's much better.

Basically, it just enables the game to tell what something should look like over time, and that makes the image sharper.

That's all you really need to know.

They launched it with Resident Evil 4. on PlayStation 5 Pro.

So if you have a Pro and you have a Requiem, you can see what this looks like now.

They will begin putting this into a bunch more games next month, I believe.

Yes, in March.

So I played a suboptimal on my Pro.

It wasn't ready.

Yes, you played it before this had launched.

So yes, you played a suboptimal version.

You might as well have just played a garbage game.

We're saving my review.

Yeah, i assume people are saying that looks very good on the pro.

By the way, it's amazing on the pro even before this update, so i'm curious to try that.

Yes yeah, and this is going to really kind of bring all that stuff home, because it's like the playstation 5 pro was already pretty impressive in terms of its hardware specs.

You know ps5 already looks good, so it's maybe sometimes hard to tell how the games were visually improved.

This will kind of like really seal the deal in some ways.

It was the missing piece of the puzzle for the ps5 pro.

All right, let's do this one.

Casting call seemingly confirms Wolfenstein 3 is coming and reveals new character.

There was a leak of casting details for the project, which is codenamed Valkyrie at the moment.

Valkyrie was the name of the movie, and I bet it's historical reference as well.

The Tom Cruise one where there was a plot to kill Hitler among a bunch of German soldiers.

So I bet that is a reference to something that really did happen.

Reportedly this will corroborate this leaked casting detail that a third Wolfenstein game is in production at Machine Games following the completion of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which they've moved on from now that they've put it out everywhere and finished the DLC.

The casting call specifically is attached to the performance director for the previous Machine Games title.

So the person who oversaw the performances in the previous game is back, it seems like, and they're kind of starting that process up all over again, which is why people are like OK, something is really happening here.

And then there's a new character named Sophia, who is an eight to 11 year old Ukrainian orphan who bonds with BJ.

Blazkowicz.

Sounds like a good time to me.

I kind of every little tidbit about this making this game feel more and more real is.

It's very encouraging to me because I was definitely at a low point thinking we would never, ever get this game.

So now that it feels more real than ever that's fantastic.

We need it.

We do need it, and they'll nail it.

I bet they'll really nail it.

Video game preservation service, MyRant, is shutting down.

MyRant is.

It's what I've been using for a while now and it's one of those ones that kind of try to keep pretty low key because we didn't want this to happen.

It got too popular in the last year or so.

It was costing the person who runs the site $6,000 out of pocket.

So he was getting, I bet, some donations and stuff like that.

And then, after he spent all that, he still had to spend 6000 of his own money to kind of keep things up and running.

He does somewhat credit AI and data centers, causing the price of RAM and storage to go up, and that's affected him running the site.

And this has led to a bunch of people going hey, we got to save all of these excellent things on Myriad.

Because one of the best things about it, it's like full sets of ROMs and ISOs.

And it's not just the games.

It's the games from every region.

And then it's like every demo disc and every like behind the scenes, like the PlayStation developer demo disc, the one they would send out with like the Net Yerose or something.

That's on there.

And it's like, oh man, just having all this in one place was so important for me, like for history, for kind of like going back and looking at these things, to lose.

That is very depressing.

Bunch of people are trying to mirror the site now, but that has led to a bunch of competing projects and and that's on top of everyone else just trying to download things.

I'm might be one of those people and uh, down download speeds have just cratered and you kind of can't get anything anymore.

It takes a long time to get like a um, a gd rom for the dreamcast at this point.

Uh Yeah, this is just.

We know.

These things kind of happen a lot of times because of lawyers showing up.

We don't always think about the fact that oh, a lot of these projects do depend on one person doing the work and spending the money.

And they're often unsung and to the point where yeah, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to keep this up, although it is going to be a great loss.

So hopefully we're able to replicate it in some way.

And then finally Fallout.

New Vegas, Remaster Hopium goes off like Mount Vesuvius as Iron Galaxy teases.

What's coming next?

Quote unquote with a very famous loading screen.

So basically they said they're having a meeting about what's coming next for iron galaxy.

And they posted an image about this meeting on social media.

And the image is a picture of someone's computer with the fallout sort of be right back loading screen, sort of thing.

Um, What the hell?

What do you guys think is happening?

Before we actually talk about this, Grubb, what do the gimmicks think about volcanoes?

Do they think it's an imminent threat?

Because reading Mount Vesuvius, I'm like, what?

They know one day they're going to have to throw me in one.

They do understand that.

Like a dinosaur when you're 72.

Right, exactly.

To placate the gods.

No, they're not too worried about it.

I wonder how they feel about quicksand.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Um, okay.

I'm like if there was going to be a remaster of fall at new Vegas, I feel like this isn't how it would be teased.

Right, sure.

I agree.

Yes.

I would like to play that game.

Wouldn't that stuff be very locked down?

I've always been curious.

People seem to like it.

And I remember when it launched, it was super busted.

Oh, it's a great game.

It's a great game.

And the release on 360 was busted.

So it's one of those things where it's like, I'm sure it'll get better at a certain point.

And it sounds like it did.

But I never went back to play it.

So I would love to play a remaster of this.

Yeah.

I mean, if you played the original now, it's still going to run well.

It's just going to fall out.

Those Bethesda games from that time look a certain way.

Doesn't necessarily bother me, but certainly it would look better if they remade it, and I don't have a problem with Iron Galaxy doing it.

I know some people have issues with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Plus 4.

I liked it.

I mean, a lot of people just fucking hate Dave Lang.

I mean, that's just what it is.

Sure.

It's understandable.

Too tall, too cool.

Just an eight-foot pile of bones.

Yeah.

Too quiet is what they do say about Dave Lang.

That's right.

Mike, I agree with you.

The idea that this is the way that they would tease it is the one thing that has me hung up where it's like.

I want to believe this does make some sense.

It feels like the kind of thing that could have been scrapped together, since the show got really popular and Fallout is at its peak.

And it's like okay, so get these guys to work on that stuff and then have them tease it themselves in a very obvious way on social media.

Yeah, that does fall apart, but...

I don't know.

Maybe this is their plan.

Maybe they don't want to wait for their like SGF time frame to announce something like that.

And they're going to just announce it as part of, you know, is the second season done?

I bet the second season must be done by now.

So, yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, it's just it's weird.

I'm not sure what to think.

All right, Jan, that does it for the news.

I'm handing the show back over to you.

Wonderful.

We're going to take another quick break and we'll be back with emails and the new not the news super chats.

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Quick question, why does every pop star suddenly cover one eye?

Why do kids' movies have more occult symbolism than a 19th century spellbook?

And why does everyone say, oh, it's just a coincidence right before they change the subject?

Welcome to Occult Symbolism and Pop Culture, the podcast where we ruin movies, music, and your sense of reality in a fun way. name is isaac wisehop in each episode we decode the hidden language of hollywood conspiracy theories secret societies mk ultra mind controls attorney and death cults and much more through familiar pop culture from deep dives of the shining to 1984 book clubs to alien disclosure updates to dark enlightenment conspiracies of peter thiel's antichrist to interviews with guests like dr jacques valet it's your new home for truly independent research into the occult is it all intentional is it psychological is it spiritual warfare or am i just being paranoid i don't tell you what to think i just hand you the red string and let you connect the dots subscribe to occult symbolism and pop culture on all podcast platforms and my new youtube channel at occult symbolism because once you see it you can't unsee it ever wonder how dark the world can really get Well, we dive into the twisted, the terrifying, and the true stories behind some of the world's most chilling crimes.

Hi, I'm Ben.

And I'm Nicole.

Together, we host Wicked and Grim, a true crime podcast that unpacks real-life horrors one case at a time.

With deep research, dark storytelling and the occasional drink to take the edge off.

We're here to explore the wicked and reveal the grim.

We are Wicked and Grim.

Follow and listen on your favorite podcast platform. right after this.

Emails.

I'm writing an email real quick to you, Jan.

Hey, none of you guys on this week's episode talked about playing the Marathon Server Slam.

Did anyone play the Marathon Server Slam?

I'm waiting to find out.

Email.

Came in from one Jeff Grubb sent from my not iPhone, my computer.

Did any of y'all play the marathon Super Server Slam?

Server Slam is a cool name for something.

Did you check it out?

Is that like Shrek Super Slam?

It's the same concept.

Exactly the same.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I didn't.

I don't know.

I was kind of like...

Look if I didn't have Resident Evil this weekend.

But I definitely want to just kind of play Resident Evil.

Who can blame you?

It's not the actual launch, and I'm like, I'll just wait for that.

It's interesting trying to get a grip on what people think of this game or not.

I have a hard time getting it.

It's all over the place.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Going into the server slam, it seemed like it was at its peak.

People were like, this thing's back.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

We can't wait.

Going into it, it's like, oh man, already 140,000 concurrent players on Friday.

I can't wait to see what it does on the weekend.

And then it did less on the weekend.

Because everyone was playing the Horizon one, right?

Uh-huh, exactly.

Yeah, right there.

That was going on at the same time.

I think that we are going to get to launch day...

And it's not going to be Concord, but it's not going to be one of these games that pops off.

It's not going to be Ark Raiders.

I don't think it's going to be Ark Raiders.

It's a $40 entry fee.

You have to pay $40 to play the game.

So this was free in Server Slam.

So it's not going to have more players than that once you have to actually buy it.

Yeah.

We'll see.

I'll be curious to see if it once people have to pay, if it actually surpasses 100000.

Concurrence on Steam.

Ark Raiders costs money right yes okay, and i found the audience right.

Did that grow 40?

It was a 40 okay, and that grew.

Oh yeah, it grew.

Yes, because the word of mouth really really carried that thing through the holidays.

Yeah, alright.

Bombcastgiantbombcom is the email address send your emails to write in about any and everything, and I will continue to say this that I've said over the last couple weeks we were getting a lot of emails, so thank you everyone for writing in.

We love the engagement and everything.

I personally love seeing it.

First email comes from Arthur in Portsmouth, UK.

Dear bombers, I've occasionally heard it said that Mike Minotti is the burn boy of games media.

But if that's true, who's the good boy of games media?

Also me.

The cutie patootie of games media.

The sweet little lad.

Good boy Vitelli?

No.

Cutie patootie of games media?

Maybe Vitelli.

You said cutie patootie.

Oh, is it Brad Shoemaker?

Is that the good boy of games media?

Ben Hanson?

Oh, Ben Hanson's a good boy.

He doesn't even cuss.

Yeah.

But in an obnoxious way.

He's definitely not a serial killer.

It's like, I guess he could be a good boy.

I don't think he's a serial killer.

Does Ben Hanson think he's better than us?

Well, no.

Ben Hanson doesn't have an ego about him.

I'll say that.

No, that's true.

The sweet little lad of games media.

There's more.

Is he all the same people, or are these different people?

These are different.

Is that blessing?

Sure.

Sure, okay.

And then Arthur continues, in my head, Mike is also all the above.

But that can't be right.

There you go.

Yay, me.

Please solve this conundrum for me.

Kind regards, Arthur, Portsmouth, UK.

Everyone, you'll need to write in as to who's who in games media.

Next email comes from Rochester, Minnesota.

Dear Dan, congratulations on pulling through and finally beating Sekiro.

As someone who was glued to that game back when it released and unlocked the platinum trophy, I'm glad more and more people are realizing how great the game is.

I feel like most people just wanted a Dark Souls experience, but Sekiro was something more focused and definitely shined in its own way as a result,

I still think it's up there with Elden Ring for me as well, and it undoubtedly gives you a unique feeling of accomplishment by how difficult yet well-designed everything is.

Maybe someday Dan will load up New Game Plus and obliterate Genichiro in the intro and feel that spark come back.

Time will tell, I guess.

Regards, Andrew.

I do think I will definitely play this game again.

You know, I played through Elden Ring two or three times, and...

I could see this being even easier one to go back to just because, like okay, I just want to do these boss fights again.

It's the way I go back to Punch-Out, like numerous times a year, just to kind of get that rush, you know.

Sure.

I feel like I could feel that any time with this game.

Right.

Well, when we did that thing during the X-Royce stream where, like you had me and Kayla fight Genichiro, as soon as I got back into it I was like oh, this feels so good.

I want to just play this entire game again right now.

I can see the itch.

There still really isn't anything else like it.

We've had some games that are a little bit there.

Like I said, Liza P has the pairing, but yeah, Sekiro still very much feels like its own thing.

And if you want that, if you really want the experience, you kind of just got to play Sekiro.

Trent from CU Falls writes in this one is mostly for Grub, but I like everyone else's opinion as well.

With the recent news of the chaos at Xbox over the past couple weeks, I can't help but think is PlayStation really in that much of a better spot?

Their pivot to live service seems to have done more harm than good.

While their games are technical and graphical showcases, they take a lot of time and money to make.

Look no further than Naughty Dog.

They might not even release a game this generation unless the PS6 is delayed.

All this to say, is console games really in a bad spot or is all of gaming in trouble right now?

Sorry for the downer of an email.

Love you guys and everything you've been doing.

Trent from CU Falls.

Yeah, I think every time this conversation happens, we always kind of talk about PlayStation facing a lot of the same problems.

The good news for PlayStation is they've got a lot of slack to work with over the next couple of years because they have defaulted into the sort of select position for console gaming.

If you want to get a console right now, Everyone's going to recommend you a PlayStation.

Rightfully so, because you know the PlayStation games will come there and a lot of the Xbox games will probably come there, as well as all the third-party support.

And then that's helping it stay right on target for sales.

It's selling as well as the PS4 for the most part, which was a very successful console for them.

And then Grand Theft Auto 6 is still yet to come.

And when that comes out, it's going to be available in two places PlayStation and a console no one wants to buy.

So it's just like they have a lot of time to figure things out.

So that's the good side of things.

The tough side is...

It's hard to figure it out.

They would have if they could have done it by now.

They were like, what's next?

How do we sort of build a sustainable business for the future as we go through different kinds of growing pains?

And everything they've tried has not really worked, other than spending astronomical amounts of money making bigger and bigger games.

And they don't really want to do that anymore.

That's what's not sustainable.

So, yeah, they face a lot of the same problems.

All right.

Moving on.

This one comes from Chuck Zimmerheld.

It's Feld.

Oh, God.

I knew he was going to be upset about me not liking Mio.

He might write it next week.

I love scary movies and I'm totally cool with gory stuff.

But for some reason, video games with first person perspective and scary slash stress situations like Outlast or Resident Evil, parentheses grace parts, make me put the controller down even though I really want to play.

How do I get gooder?

Chuck Zimmer held.

It's not real.

It's interesting.

It's a work.

The first thing you messaged me about this game was, this is so stressful.

I love it.

I'm like the opposite, where I'm not great with scary movies, but I really don't mind playing scary video games at all.

And I will say, I play a lot of them when I'm streaming now, which does kind of help a bit.

Mitigate the fear.

I think the way you do it is, like, play it with somebody, right?

Like yeah, maybe see if you have a friend or a partner who wants to kind of watch you play the game.

Like you know, when people see horror movies after doing it with friends and they're all kind of giggling and laughing at being scared together.

I think if you have someone there to break the tension with you a little bit, that can go a long way towards helping.

Your third person is Grace.

Yeah, do third person with grace, just just switch it.

There's a reason.

It's there, that'll help.

Uh i, i was definitely at a point with scary games where it's like it's like like i remember getting to the part and last of us, part two, where you have to like walk into the obviously terrible hospital or whatever it was, and it's like that door is so ominous i just don't want to go in there.

Sure, i'm just gonna go play something else.

There's the part in rd7 where you have to go down the stairs into that basement.

It's like it's gonna be bad down there.

It's gonna be, and it's like i got like i have to like deal with like that.

And then it's like it's gonna be stressful the entire time.

And now, with this game where which definitely has its stressful, scary parts um, especially early on, it helped to play it handheld.

Honestly, it helped, oh sure, to have it in my hand to be like i'm holding the thing that is scaring me, how it can't i'm holding it.

Come on, and that'll help like trick my mind into being like you.

Don't you just not be scared if you don't want to be, i'm in control here.

Yeah, I'm in control.

There's a button.

I can turn it off and it goes away.

So it's like, yeah, that made it a lot easier to deal with.

It also probably takes away from the experience, but if you just continue wanting to play the game, I don't know, put on a podcast.

Listen to some music outside of the game can help out as well.

And you can sort of wean yourself off of that stuff as you build up tolerance.

Because the first time you get introduced to one of these monsters, that's the scariest moment.

That's another trick is...

Yeah, sometimes.

That's another trick.

The first time you encounter a scary scenario, especially if you're playing on a mode where you can save a lot just go run right into it and get killed.

Just go run right at it, get killed, and you'll be like, okay, now I've seen it.

It's a little bit easier to deal with.

The thing about Resident Evil is once you understand the logic of the zombies, it's not as scary.

They don't even know I'm here, and I'm basically walking right past them.

Most of the things in the game aren't as scary as they seem.

Yeah, I can realize.

The worst that can happen is that I have to reload a save, right?

So what are we really afraid about?

Yeah.

All right.

Next email comes from Randy B. Jan, I'm going to Japan for the first time.

I'm leaving next Tuesday, March 8th.

If you still have the info, would you be cool with providing me the address and general area of the awesome denim guy you found on your trip?

I would be forever grateful.

Thanks, Randy B. Randy, you go to Ginza.

Ginza, G-I-N-Z-A.

You go to a little shopping area.

You go to Hanoia1.com.

There's multiple ones.

Hanoia 1 is the best one.

Hang out with my friend Rio.

Rio and I became fast friends, as well as Alex Boniello.

We all became best friends.

We all took a picture together.

It was lovely.

If you need denim brand recommendations, they will do it for you.

They'll just eyeball you and will instantly know what size shape you like, what will be flattering for you.

If you need recommendations from me, though, I highly suggest...

Berger jeans.

Smelled like Berger.

James, did you just take your pants off to make this point?

No.

I think they're Velcro on the side.

You just ripped them off like a Chippendales dancer.

It's a lovely shade of indigo denim.

Look at these fucking fades on the back of my knees.

And then if you want something else, if you want a fun recreation of old jeans that miners used to use,

Did I take his pants off?

I dropped something.

I dropped my tinfoil.

I've been playing with it.

I've turned it into a four-sided dice.

Oh, that's what he's been doing.

See, I told you it's fun to make it smooth.

See?

Can you show me how you're doing it again?

Oh, yeah.

It's like this.

I see it's bad.

It's just bad.

The other sugar cane.

Sugar cane is lovely.

Uh, look at that, look at that, it's great.

They look like jeans to me.

Sugar cane denim it's a heavier denim, so it's going to take a little bit longer to break in.

Uh, and also, if you're uh, if you don't want to because with salvage denim you don't want to wash it immediately just stick it in your freezer.

Uh, it'll get rid of any other miscellaneous smells or bacteria.

Don't ask me why.

I don't know the science.

I'm not.

I'm close to a jeans doctor.

I'm more of a jeans first responder.

Um, All right, moving on.

Mike, have you ever made one of those perfect foil spheres with the perfect smooth surface?

Not like perfect.

You think you need some heavy machinery to get it that smooth down, I think.

Or maybe I'm just a coward.

I think you might be a coward.

I posted a clip into the chat of someone doing this.

So there you go.

Get to work.

Man, that delivery.

Right.

We do have a lot of emails here, but I'm going to end the emails with this emailer.

They use a username to write in, VirtuaCat.

Hi, friends.

I hope you all are doing well.

Now that we are 20 years on and the turmoil at Xbox has people wondering about the Xbox future, is it viable to say that the Xbox 360 was a fluke?

Was the PS3 launch so bad that the 360 won by default?

Your pal VirtuaCat parentheses.

Please don't use my real name, even though it's in the email address.

Thanks, y'all.

Sent from my iPhone, BarackObama at GiantBob.com.

I would not call it a fluke in that I consider the first Xbox a success.

And that 360 built on that concept.

It did.

It built on Xbox Live starting and Halo.

Like it was building to that.

But it was like it felt to me at least like the 360 was the one time Xbox was the dominant console.

You know?

Yeah, we know what happened here is, yes, they had an idea of what an Xbox should be.

Let's take DirectX and make a console and we're going to put a modem in there, or we're going to put a cable modem in there or Ethernet, so you can just get it connected to the internet and that's going to be great.

And then the Xbox 360 was like let's do all that and make it better, more streamlined and more accessible to more people.

And we're going to have people pay for online, so let's make it a premium experience.

And it's like, that all worked.

It was very good.

The game sold well.

And then they noticed... that people were using their Xbox 360s to watch a lot of Netflix.

And they're like, man, we have the telemetry data here.

People are buying this console and they're watching way more TV and movies than they're playing games.

We need to get that money.

And then the rest is history.

They fucked up Xbox One by going that route.

It completely sort of undermined their gaming credibility because they showed that the jangling keys could distract them.

And they literally never recovered from that decision again.

They ask about, like, was the PS3 launch that terrible?

And, I mean, so Xbox had a year head start on it.

So I mean Xbox, you know, kind of got its foothold in like Call of Duty, right when that was, you know, really hot.

Yeah, that was it.

That was the moment.

Like, you know, Xbox had, like, a hell of a first year there.

Even Bioshock.

Yeah, the thing is, it was also, the system itself was kind of fun.

It just had, like, personality.

Like, the Blades people are nostalgic for.

Summer of Arcade.

Plugging your iPod into it and playing your own music and things like that.

The XBLA stuff was huge.

Achievements.

All these things were really kind of fun.

And the PS3 came out, and it just kind of felt clinical.

Like the whole XMB and everything just felt like like there's definitely good games on there, but like I don't know, it was like PS3 launch resistance and it just didn't really have the personality Xbox had at the time.

What's wild to me about all that is that the PS3 was just worse than the Xbox 360.

The 360 had like got worse as time went on because they kept breaking and they made the UI worse and it became a Kinect machine.

But, like you know, the 360 was much better and cheaper than PlayStation 3 and yet still, ultimately that generation was kind of a tie and PS3 maybe even ultimately sold a little bit more when it was all said and done.

Really?

So like, even with all of that right going for Xbox, like it's a generation that in our minds like oh, they won that one.

And then like financially, you know, close.

Well, financially, they certainly didn't because that billion dollar write-off or whatever it was.

Right, exactly.

And it's like, boy, can they get back to even that?

And it just seems impossible.

For me as a youth.

With the 360 coming out, one of my best friends was, like at the time, very diehard PlayStation console warrior type of guy.

And it broke his heart when I bought an Xbox because he was like we're never going to play together again.

Were you friends with Chad Warden, let's get him on the dump truck.

He would love coming over to play like Halo 3 local co-op and like Gears of War.

That he eventually because I had an Xbox 360 and our other friends had a 360 he wound up getting one anyway because that's where all of our friends were at and I think that's like what helped making the 360 more popular.

Also, That first half of that generation was just so in favor of 360.

I think it was Uncharted 2 that kind of started turning that a little bit.

And then again, Xbox faltering a bit with the Kinect moves.

I still think Xbox 360.

I would count it as winning that generation, despite the huge financial cost of the Red Ring and despite PS3 outselling it worldwide.

In the end,

It's like, yeah, it kept selling for years and years for people buying FIFA around the world.

And they always do that.

And they got that unlocked.

But I'm more excited about what it's doing new and different.

And the Xbox 360 got the gold medal for that generation.

Even when they started making poor decisions like I don't feel like sentiment-wise, they ever really recovered from.

Like I remember being at that E3 where it was just like the whole, like the messaging, the dot matrix stuff, like oh, can't do used games, the fucking Atom Boy's QA video, and it's just like that was just the biggest, just like oh, we have a very clear just in terms of messaging.

The consoles hadn't even come out yet.

But in terms of messaging, it's like, oh, Sony trounced them, that E3.

For the gamers became a thing that everyone was actually saying.

It was like it meant something.

It's like, yeah, PlayStation's for the gamers.

I don't think they ever fully recovered from that.

Yep.

Yeah.

That was it.

The Xbox One launch was just fucking.

Oh, boy.

It was.

$500 instead of $400.

It was just every bad decision.

Yep.

You had Rise.

Actually, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launch games are funny because you have stuff.

It's like Rise and Knack, right?

Yeah.

I kind of like Rise and Knack.

Yeah.

They're both really weird launches that I do kind of like.

I saw somebody on some nostalgia retro gaming subreddit or something be like oh, I found a hidden gem of the Xbox One.

It's Rise, Son of Rome.

It's like, that is not a hidden gem.

There is a reason no one talks about Rise, Son of Rome, like if you like, i could see someone convincing themselves like why don't people talk about this?

It's like, oh man, at the time it just completely missed.

I got in trouble for writing a preview that was negative, because previews were always supposed to be like it could be.

It could turn out okay.

Rise was so fucking bad.

I wanted that preview to be like this shit sucks, and it's like you can't say that in a preview.

Watch me, it's All right, boys.

That about does it for emails.

Once again, you can get your email right on the show, right in about any and everything.

You got a question.

You want to remind us of the passage of time and that the 360 was.

Was it actually that long ago?

That hurts.

Oh, yeah.

It's over 20 years ago it launched.

Over 20.

It was over 20 years ago.

Bobcastatjohnbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to.

Mike Minotti, hit me with some super chats if we got any.

We got some last geek says you should make a video of teaching Dan to use RSS feeds.

It might be a good tutorial for everyone.

Actually.

Sure.

Yeah.

Make it a short even just put it out there.

Yeah.

Martin Hollis says, as soon as Jan mentioned the one-up show, that theme went through my head.

Everyone, hey, I don't want to go to work today.

I want to stay home and play video games.

Yeah, yeah, at the one-up show.

Did I tell y'all that I applied to be an intern at one-up and then I didn't get it and it devastated me and I didn't want anything to do with games for a very long time.

Oh, no.

I was a runner-up for a win trip to go to E3 with one up and then Jen Frank got it instead and I was like well, that seems right.

She's much better.

It made sense.

Tony Morales says if I send Dan a copy of Virtuoso, can he forward to Mike and find some old Blight Club law of 1812 or something to have him restart his Blight?

Mike said he would if he got a physical penis.

I said that non-legally binding.

I don't even know if I said it like that.

Also, no, I'm not going to restart Virtuoso.

There's just no way.

So send it to me and I'll keep it safe in case he just changes his mind.

All right.

Nobody wants to watch me play the first two thirds of Virtuoso again.

Hey, wait, what was the physical penis thing, Jan?

Your facial expression, I think matched.

What was going on with the physical penis?

Oh, if you got a physical.

So when you do a super chat, you get so many characters based on what you spend.

So people like to make sure they get their money's worth.

So sometimes they'll add penis there to fill it out.

I see.

Oh, I'm not happy.

No one is.

We'll sync your audio file in later, Jeff.

Thank you.

There you go.

Migsy says that Sarah Bond leaves to join His Majesty's Secret Service.

Oh.

Because her last name's Bob.

Oh, I see.

Oh, boy.

I think I would have figured that out sooner.

No.

I don't mean boring.

I bet she'll get a very nice job.

It'll be someplace, like, boring.

You know?

I don't know.

Like, she'll become, like, the COO of Kleenex.

J-Man says, hey, Mike, I missed your demonstration of balling up tinfoil.

Can you demonstrate that again?

I've been working on this.

What do you call this?

Because it's not a pyramid.

No, it's not a pyramid.

It's like a Hershey kiss.

Do you take a hedron or something?

No, it's not a hedron.

They're sides.

It's rounded.

How many sides are there?

There are four sides.

So it's a four-sided die.

Polyhedron?

A polycule?

Is it a rhombus?

It's probably a polycule.

Mike, you've got to stop doing everything you're doing on camera right now.

They wanted a demonstration.

I think you're doing it now to get a ride out of everyone, Mike.

They paid money for you to do that?

You're going to get us TOSed.

All right, you can't do that for money.

Migsy says, hey, Jeff Grubb, have you watched The Raid yet?

I have not watched The Raid yet.

Oh, you haven't seen either Raid movie?

I've seen neither.

Oh, my.

Grub.

Yes, I know.

I know I need to correct this.

I'm well aware.

Yes, they are.

Yeah, I listed.

By the next time we're together and have like an evening where we're not doing anything.

If I haven't watched it by then, I'll ask these guys if they'll put on the raid for me.

Well, I mean, that might be my time, so.

Oh God.

I understand.

Well, that's of course packs.

We're going to do.

Yeah.

Of course.

And then last geek says, Dan, I'm a YouTuber going to Minneapolis a couple of days.

What are good places to make a vlog of slash with?

What's big?

Like what do, YouTube, like, is it a nature YouTuber?

Or, like, what does that mean?

I think he's probably just a travel guy.

Travel guy?

Yeah, he's just gonna go, wants to see neat things.

Check out some local stuff.

There's legs.

Legs are great.

If you want to do a Mall of America, you get a whole fucking, you can do one of the 18-hour video walking through the Mall of America. um you can do a burger tour there's a lot of really good burgers and stuff you go to prince's house paisley park you can go uh bonus hole uh go to matt's go sing vegas lounge film that yeah matt's bar is great yeah yeah yeah i mean you gotta tell me if it's like like a food focused thing a nature focused thing yeah like yeah yeah he says if you were gonna make a vlog with giant bob what would you show Oh, that's a fun mental exercise.

Our respective towns.

Oh, I would want to show Matt's.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, if I go to, like you know, a city, like we did the New York one, the travelogue or whatever, like what would we do here?

Yeah, probably just what we would do anyway, which is probably get burgers and go to the Mall of America and shit gang.

I went to a martini bar in oakland um, and i still don't know if i like martinis, i like olives, but i was too full that day.

They had an extensive hot dog menu.

I think i might go later today.

I'm gonna share, share with you all the menu, because it was fantastic.

It reminded me of the place we all went to in new york.

Oh yeah, thrift dogs.

Yes yes, of course.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Dirty, dirty tall boys.

But they are vegan hot dogs.

That's it for Super Chat.

Thank you, everybody.

Boys, what do we got going on the rest of this week?

Game Miss Morning's popping off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, right?

Yes, that is correct.

I'll be back with that show for the rest of the week.

But just after today, we'll have This is the Run on Wednesday and Saturday.

A little weekend treat for you.

But Mike Minotti, later today...

Yes, I am going to be checking out the new World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight.

I have not played this yet at all, so I'm going to make a new character.

Use my level boost.

Just jump in and see what's going on.

I have not played WoW since I messed around with the last expansion for a bit there, so...

I'm going to be really jumping in there.

We'll see what kind of character I want to make.

And maybe we'll make a house, too, because that's a whole thing going on there, too.

This is going to be a couple hours here, so we'll see what we get into.

But yeah, I'm looking into it.

I haven't really done any MMO content on the site yet, right?

Mike, what's the whole Zillow World of Warcraft thing?

So there's a new player housing thing going on in World of Warcraft, and I don't know.

They've partnered up with Zillow somehow to tie into that.

I don't know exactly what that all entails.

That sucks.

I don't like that.

I already can't ever buy a house.

I don't need it in my video games.

I don't think you're like, is it actually people are using Zillow to buy houses in the game?

I hope it's more quote unquote cute than that.

I hope it's cuter.

I don't think it's actual.

People still think that's cute.

I don't know.

Join us.

There's not a scarcity of houses.

Home ownership awaits you.

But then you guys are stressed out about owning homes too.

It's worth it.

It's worth it in a lot of ways.

It's very worth it.

Guys, we don't actually buy World of Warcraft's homes with Zillow.

Don't worry.

Okay, okay.

But tomorrow, perhaps maybe for the last time, the Blightning Round continues with Mike Minotti.

It's absolutely not.

Everyone's like, oh, he's probably going to be it next time.

I'm two-thirds of the way through.

No, you're more than that.

There's going to be some bullshit.

I just don't believe it in my heart that I am almost done with this game.

Chuck said it's going to be a short episode.

I don't believe that.

Don't believe that.

We'll see.

But Mike, it's all of us believing in you.

What if Goku asked us to channel in our energy and then he got the spirit bomb and was like nah, never mind.

The Spirit Bomb never did shit, right?

Like, who did that actually?

Oh, wow.

All right.

We got voicemail dump truck.

After Hercule slash, Mr Satan did all the real work of getting people to give their energy to it.

People didn't know shit about Goku.

They just trusted Hercule, who was a fraud, mind you.

They didn't believe in Goku.

They believed in Hercule, who they shouldn't have.

Voicemail dump truck popping off on Thursday as well as another episode of Marry Me Tomodachi.

Gang, if you're not premium.

Greatest dating show on the internet.

Yes.

Fuck Love Island.

I don't actually know what Love is Blind is, but go watch this.

Marry Me, Tomodachi.

I think we need to take Jeff Backlar down a peg, because he's getting everything he wants in that game.

It's going too well for him.

Yeah, he's just like, I want a cool room, and then he just spent all of our budget on that.

You know what they say, if jerfy ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

The loudest jerf gets the grease, yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah, yeah.

Things like that.

Grease up your loudest jerf, everybody.

That's right.

Hey, there's a quick look on Demon Tides that we've uploaded as well, which is this really cool indie 3D platformer.

I guess I could have talked about it earlier, but I did forget.

But I think I talked about it last week.

It's very good.

Yeah, I think you did.

Yeah, you did.

You did.

Check it out.

I dropped my thing again.

This friday we'll have a multiplayer pacopia stream.

Uh, grab and company gonna get something going upf.

Uh might be marathon, marathon might have a.

I think we should do marathon on upf quick.

Look that we're shooting, so that's going up this week.

Oh, If anyone missed the video of Dan and John Blood breaking down WWE 2K26 amidst Just loving it right.

Oh boy, yeah.

Well, I heard we were promoting the game, I heard.

You guys are on the marketing team, right?

Oh yeah, congrats.

Did not like the game at all and I've been playing more of it and I'll be showing that off in the quick look.

Also I was on, if you're on, the Deadlock Patreon.

I watched all of Slamboree 2000 with them, which I was in attendance for as a 16-year-old.

Oh, really?

So that was a really fun thing over on the Deadlock Patreon.

So really great working with John Blood and the Deadlock Boys a lot over the last week or two.

So yeah, check out that voice from Dumb Truck.

John Blood was on.

He's the best.

You said the word missed a moment ago, which reminds me that people should check out, miss for revelation.

Part three, the Monday morning.

This was bitch has continued.

So we're having a plenty of missed adventures still.

And then Mikey's going to continue doing these launch streams.

Mikey's going to check out the opening hours of Pocopia this Friday.

Very fun, very pleasant times.

Boys, anything else we want to plug got going on besides everyone should be premium members.

Giantbomb.com slash join.

We're doing a lot and we got more coming for premium.

Yes.

Yeah, come hang out with us.

Yeah.

And then come see us at PAX East.

We'll be there.

Details around the miscellaneous various panels we'll be doing.

We'll be arriving soon.

And hey, you know, might have some friends there.

Might have some friends there for a panel or two.

Until then, that's the end of the podcast.

Boys, he's been Jeff.

He's been Dan.

He's been Mike.

Backlar's out on assignment.

Shouts out to Sean.

Shouts out to Will.

Shouts out to Chuck.

I'm not happy.

He's not happy no matter where he is.

I've been Jin.

We'll see you next week for another episode of the John Bonk Cast.

Until then, we love you.

Goodbye.

This is Rob Gronkowski from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jules.

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[Giant Bombcast: Deep Dives into Resident Evil, Pokemon, and the Art of the Burrito]-[Giant Bombcast 930: Other Jill]

📋 Summary

The Culinary Logistics of Burrito Consumption

Metroidvania Frustrations: Mio: Memories in Orbit

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the Joy of Mastery

A New Era for Pokémon: Pocopia

Resident Evil Requiem: The New Blockbuster Standard

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Giant Bombcast: Deep Dives into Resident Evil, Pokemon, and the Art of the Burrito]-[Giant Bombcast 930: Other Jill]

📋 Summary

The Culinary Logistics of Burrito Consumption

Metroidvania Frustrations: Mio: Memories in Orbit

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and the Joy of Mastery

A New Era for Pokémon: Pocopia

Resident Evil Requiem: The New Blockbuster Standard

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

ListenLeap Brings You Into Real Context Learning