Everybody, it's Tuesday, August 4th, 2026.
Welcome to the Giant Bomb Cast.
I'm your host, Jan Ochoa.
Daddy's home.
Joining me, co-captain of the ship, is out on assignment.
So, co-captain of the ship today, who's going to get that title?
Jeff Bacalar.
Oh, if it's only fitting.
Not that I have any sort of experience with the title.
Glad to be here on the high seas of podcasting with you, Jan Ochoa.
Let me be the first to say, welcome back and ahoy.
Ahoy, ahoy.
I know that we have the bad boy of games media here, but we have the naughty nautical man himself, the skipper, the co-captain, Jeff Backlar.
It just feels right sailing the seas.
Permission to podcast, sir.
Permission granted.
We have the master of etiquette on all things radio, walkie talkies and other forms of communication.
Dan Reichert.
We need to bring walkie-talkies back.
I like them a lot.
I like using them in Big Walk.
I like using them in real life.
I think it's a cool technology, and we should throw away our iPhones.
Imagine a day at a theme park with us all, and we just got walkie-talkies.
Are they legal in a park?
Can you have them at a park?
Yeah.
I want to get in the back of a roller coaster and you get in the front and we have walkie-talkies and we scream at each other through the walkie-talkies.
You can't do that, but I like the idea.
Remember the Nextel Chirpers?
Yes.
I was hoping that was the future of communication.
I know.
Those were dope.
Speaking about dope, we have the fastest man across the internet.
Turbo Sean Sean McDowell is on the pod today.
I'm happy to be back on the show, Jan.
I'm happy you're back looking like Billy Joe Armstrong.
It's great to have you here, Jan.
I'll take it.
It's better than random people on the streets of San Francisco stopping me and saying like, hey, you look like Jun Tao from Rush Hour 1.
And it's extended past my friends at this point.
And speaking about my friends, we have the bird boy of games media, the Cleveland streamer, Mike Minotti.
So when me and my brothers were like young teenagers, pre cell phones, even my dad.
And this was like we were old enough where we could probably do the theme parks by ourselves.
And my dad wanted to just rest at the hotel.
So he did acquire.
I'm not sure how legally kind of like.
Military grade walkie talkies and just gave us one of those and he had one
So yeah we went around the theme park with a walkie talkie and we communicated that way if he like wanted us to come back to the room
Military grade they must have been enormous
No, maybe military grades being a silly boy.
It's like you're calling it a mortar strike?
Yeah.
The legality of it was questionable.
I remember that.
I remember that.
Did he have a guy?
He had a guy.
Yeah.
What'd they run on?
I don't even remember.
AJ was in charge of ours.
So we had like the boys had a mic, had a radio.
AJ was in charge of it.
He was the oldest.
Then my dad had one.
We would just walk around in Magic Kingdom every once in a while.
Come back to the room for dinner.
Did you guys have like code names for your dad and the boys or?
No no not really
We weren't really having fun with it
It was just like this is just the normal way we communicate Disney's not for fun right
Two years later like flip cell phones became very cheap and like every teenager had them and then smartphones from there so yeah
Can you talk to your dad and just be like, yo, dad, can you show me a picture of what these radios are?
Yeah, I'll try to get more information.
AJ probably remembers even better than I do.
He's at Disney World right now, though, so I won't bother him.
No, bother him.
What is he doing?
He's just at Disney World.
Every teenager has a cell phone.
You're not that much younger than me.
I'm trying to think.
I also think I had my first one in college.
It had to be before that.
Yeah.
Late high school.
I'm a little bit younger than you.
So it was like right before that was super common.
And like, we were young teenagers, like Chris, the youngest may have been more even like 12 or something, but it was like, that's not okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It's very close, but okay.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, that was the thing.
Like, okay, this is safe enough.
You guys go around Disney World, you have this walkie-talkie, and yeah, we just kind of use that.
To the best of your knowledge, as our resident Disney expert of the parks, do you think you could bring in radios and walkie-talkies to the parks now?
Because I feel like they'd interfere with everything.
Yeah, I bet they would stop.
I'm trying to think.
I don't know if this was pre-9-11.
That seems like maybe too early, right?
So I wonder what the security checkpoint person thought of them.
But maybe, could it have, no way it was pre-9-11.
It could not have been pre-9-11.
So if we got through with it then, I don't think so.
That would have been too young, I think.
Maybe not.
Is 9-11 what got you into Disney?
Maybe then.
Hmm.
I'm going to, I'm going to have to confer with my brothers, get some more details about this.
It had to be before I, I had a cell phone before nine 11.
Yeah.
I guess I would have been like 13 then.
Uh,
Yeah, it could have been right before 9-11.
That's actually a good point.
Yeah, even if it was just 2000.
Yeah, they were getting popular then.
Yeah, we might have snuck in right before 9-11 so there wasn't the security checkpoints that they have now.
So they didn't care.
Different ways to word things.
Well, folks at home, you can help us get a pair of walkie talkies, several pairs of walkie talkies by subscribing to Giant Bomb Premium or YouTube memberships over there on the YouTube channel over there.
You can get.
Ad-free podcasts.
Your premium membership supports us.
You get a special chat, access to special discords.
And most importantly, you at home get ad-free viewing for some of the shows.
And speaking about shows, we got a bunch of stuff in the pipeline.
Currently, we have a season of This is the Run where Mike Minotti is navigating the sewers as Sewer Shark with Jeff Grubb and Dan Reichert flanking him there.
You can go back and...
Watch a bunch of shows shows such as marry me tomodachi our dear pal mary kish joining us for portal pals where mikey and mary get the peepees out for the peepees out
There shouts out to the peepees right mikey
Yeah, the peepees will rise again.
They keep saying that, and I don't know what they mean by that.
Blue Chew.
Oh, okay.
God, I would love to do an ad read for Blue Chew.
Yeah, that'd be fun.
Like a personal endorsement?
I'll do it.
I don't care.
I guess I would do it.
I would take it.
Whatever.
Who cares?
YOLO, right?
At this point, yeah, just...
Wait till I'm 40.
Wait a few more months, and then I'll be like, I got nothing.
I'll do the blue chew ad.
Candy that gives you a boner doesn't sound like the worst thing.
I don't think it's candy.
It's not.
It's like a little blue thing you chew on, right?
Do you actually chew on them or is it just a swallow situation I assumed it was a chew starburst type thing
Well I don't think it's like that I thought it was like a pill why would they call it a chew
Viagra is a blue pill also blue that's a pill rhymes with chew
Right, but you would chew in there if you don't chew it.
I can't imagine it's like a Tums.
No way.
It's not Starburst.
Anyway, folks at home, you won't need Blue Chew or any performance-enhancing supplements to get you going for the newest premium season of Blight Club, dropping next week.
Cat Jerfman.
Cat's out of the bag, baby.
Meow.
It is.
First off, let me just preface the conversation with Meow.
And also, this is the most fun I've had in a long time, I gotta say.
I don't get to do too much content.
This is great.
I'm having a blast with everyone.
Yesterday we recorded an episode that had me giggling.
That based on the long play, the entire hour plus or so episode we recorded got back from like 51 minutes to like 54 minutes on the long play.
It's fine.
It's been great.
I see it as like vacation when I get to do this stuff.
I get to like dress up and confuse all the people that are working inside the house.
I have to lock doors so that we don't make eye contact.
It's fine.
It's fine.
It's normal.
It's great.
It's fine.
Please look forward to this.
We are planning on a release date very soon, and I mean very soon.
Yes.
We have several in the can already, so I think we're ready to start putting these out.
We also have multiple ideas, multiple plates spinning around in terms of other premium shows for you premium people out there.
Also, not to jump the gun, but the quick look for Big Walk is out now.
You can look at everyone's point of view except Jeff Grubb because he has yet to upload that to the Google track.
Yep, that's correct.
Apparently, people really like what we did there.
And I thought it was an interesting idea.
I thought it worked out really well with the main video, which, of course, you can watch ad-free, Giant Bomb Premium.
Of course.
Uh what we did is we
Because adobe premiere fucking sucks and me and jan can barely use it anymore and so don't worry we're getting off it
We're trying to get over to resolve
It's happening slowly but surely um because we can't really edit multicam videos
We just did live switching and OBS as if it were like a in-person recording, basically.
And it seemed to go over really well.
People seemed to really like it.
If you haven't checked out yet, definitely go check it out because I'm pretty proud of how that one turned out.
Yeah special special shouts out to sean for running the ones and twos and having all of us yelling in his ear
Uh that was so funny yeah production wise so you guys were just using prox chat but then i heard everyone discord
So there were times where you were split into like three groups and everyone was yelling something different
I had to pick out okay like who do i switch to
Who do i switch to it was really funny and a fun thing to produce uh yes i'm starting to see the adobe hate here because like i'm starting to edit more videos and my last
A couple have been like shorter ones.
Like, you know, the San Francisco travel log was like probably what, 10 or 15 or something.
The steam machine one was a lot of cuts, but shorter.
Uh, I'm like 40 minutes into the road trip travel log now with a ton of cuts and bullshit.
And like, I'm starting to see premier chugging and like, Oh,
All these clips in my bin aren't, they don't have preview images and this thing won't actually hit play when or play when I hit play.
So starting to see why premiere sucks now, especially the videos that you've been doing, Dan have been like more, uh, you have one video that you like trim and then you go to the next video in the timeline.
But if, if,
Especially when you're doing multi-cam
You have multiple sources all like together and you're like swapping between them rapidly
Premiere just shits the bed
Yeah i've ran into that too when i was trying to pixelate mike venati's crotch uh yesterday and um as you do and
And I was just trying to do the mask.
I was trying to do the mosaic over it and everything.
And it's like, oh, you want to do an AI thing.
You want an AI thing to find Mike Minotti's crotch.
No, I know where Mike Minotti's crotch is.
I will put the rectangle over it.
No, they wanted AI to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
We should switch to Avid.
That's who we had.
We had Avid at WWE.
Really?
They were still using Avid?
Avid's still pretty popular.
Yeah, I know for shows and some movies.
It's just they haven't switched off it yet.
The reason they had WWE is just that vast video library, and all of that stuff was just on Avid, and so all the computers we got on Avid could access everything from every camera in history, so they didn't want to move it off that.
Okay, all right.
Well, boys, how's everyone doing?
How are things?
Things are good.
I watched the Backrooms movie.
Oh, okay.
I enjoyed it.
I like that.
I want more of that, please.
I thought that was fun.
It seems like we should be entering these liminal spaces more.
And fucking around
With all the creepy creeps there within i will say uh there hasn't been
Well there's several things that make me question my uh career trajectory and progress in my life more than kane parsons a 20 year old directing a whole ass movie uh and that made me just stand and just like oh okay
Oh, something's happening.
My back rooms are opening.
All of my memories, all of my thoughts.
Dental work?
What the hell is happening?
What's going on?
I told you, I'm hiding my cat woman outfit from these people.
Did they get it?
Oh, gosh.
What?
Oh, God.
Are they like drilling into your room right now?
They want the keyboards.
Oh, it's so loud.
Alright
Well maybe someone else can I ask a question and I just want the most dumbed down answer for me to understand here
This is the worst pivot possible
Yeah it's not even a pivot
The back rooms it's a game it's a movie
Is this the same IP
Who owns this
What was the first one
What the fuck are the back rooms
So I'm not we should get Super Eyepatch Wolf to maybe explain it.
But the way I understand it is that the back rooms is just sort of like a Internet phenomenon of like liminal space photography.
Uh where there's there is uh conflicting reports of where it may have originated
A lot of people point to a single photograph i think posted on 4chan many years ago
Uh that just depicts like a a backroom's photo similar to what the movie has popularized
And then kane parsons took
His interpretation of Back Rooms and made an entire YouTube series.
The director of the movie.
That's correct.
He made a YouTube series that looks very, the aesthetic is very similar to the Back Rooms film, the A24 film.
But that was just sort of like his interpretation of it.
No one essentially owns Back Rooms.
So we could make a movie called Back Rooms and just put it.
I don't know if we can now.
I don't think you could call it that, but you could certainly have some wordplay and make it there.
But this has been a concept that has existed in several different mediums for a while now?
Yeah, mostly born of the internet.
Like, born out of the internet.
It's like an urban legend thing.
Like, nobody owns Sasquatch.
Oh, it's like Thunder Man.
Yeah, there you go.
And the story that Cain Parsons portrayed does deviate from his YouTube series because I was very much into his YouTube series when it was first starting to come out.
This has a much more kind of like
Focused story where there's maybe perhaps more answers than the uh the way it's popularized on the internet provides and this is a much more
You know they had like a a writer come in and kind of like really give it a
A film sort of treatment yeah i'd say it's like adjacent to like all the uh what is it called
Scp stuff like the oh sure like uh uh objects of power sci-fi kind of like uh appendix on the internet
Sure that's that's right cross over there
Doing a good job here saying like no one owns vampires no one owns zombies
It's just like a concept i would dan i was gonna go with
Nobody owns the concept of the bermuda triangle
Okay stories about it obviously bermuda is a real place and everything they own
But the concept of like ships sail here and disappear or whatever like that nobody owns that concept
So same thing here
Yeah I see yeah I think like the vampire stuff is that's like cryptid stuff that is now public domain
I feel like at one point someone like MGM probably sure Dracula but yeah vampires I don't know
Yeah maybe we can make a chupacabra movie no
Yeah.
Yeah.
We could, we could do that.
Um, so, so we did back rooms and I'm also, I also, uh, was forced to buy my first, um, crystal this weekend.
You, you're a crystal daddy now.
What spoke to you?
Was it like a tiger's eye?
Does it remove your toxins?
Wait, I want you to describe what you think the most me crystal could be.
Like black.
Lapis lazuli.
Okay, we've got the color.
That was easy.
Okay.
One that protects against sunlight.
No, no, all that's bullshit.
Talking about...
Shape.
This ain't protecting anyone.
The shape.
Can you predict the shape?
The shape is... A frowning head.
A chaos emerald.
I feel like something you would crack open in a Zelda game, you know, like coming out of the ground.
Oh, sure, like a geode.
Chat's got good ones the shape of a hockey puck the shape of New Jersey
You didn't have any of those so I could just get a hockey puck
I got it's a cube
This is my crystal
It's a black cube
It's made of shungite
I don't think we can say that.
Okay.
I don't remember that Steven Universe character, but all right.
And this is where it bothers me when you read about its powers.
It says that it's mostly carbon, by the way.
So I just got a cube of carbon on my desk now.
I'm not going to eat it.
Don't worry.
It protects you from laptops?
What does that fucking mean?
What does that fucking mean?
I'm not joking.
It says it protects you from laptops.
What the fuck does that mean?
I absolutely believe that that is what the crystal people wrote.
You know, and I'm like, we're in the store and I'm like reading the description and the lady there, she's just like dead fucking serious.
She's like, yeah, laptops, laptops, cell phones, microwaves, and TVs, which as we all know, put out EMFs.
Yeah um it's so it's such so bad g stuff it's such bad faith i mean look i like it because it's fucking cool
I don't like it because i think it protects me from 5g yeah uh that's not a real thing
If you're worried about that let me tell you about the sun
Now UV rays, okay?
Does it protect against SPF?
Or no, you need SPF is what it is.
Correct well when he's on his boat yeah right of course we're not getting into whether I have or do not have boats
Okay that is again private that's private business man please respect that I wasn't the one who brought it up
I think you were Dan we don't have to air out my boat laundry
Okay.
All right.
Mary to blame, but okay.
No, Mary.
Actually, it is.
I think you gave Mary the assist.
I think she scored with your assist.
We asked what your biggest passion was, and she earnestly said he's a boat enthusiast.
He loves talking about his boat.
So either Jeff married, just wildly misremembering something, or you are a boat guy and you're lying to us because you think we'll make fun of you.
Did she, did she look at perhaps the skipper photo and just stick with that?
She earnestly thinks that was the first thing before pinball, before hockey, when I asked her, like, oh, name the passions of the Giant Bomb guy.
She said, well, Backlar's a big boat guy.
He loves his boat.
Okay.
What the fuck are you talking about?
And what if I did love my boat?
It's just weird that we would be hearing about it this way.
There's a lot you don't know about me.
I have a private life.
Do you ever think about that?
Boats aren't private.
What did Barry say about everyone else?
Do you remember?
You can hide a boat.
I'll hide a boat for you by the weekend.
Because I said like outside of video games, name the passions of like the Giant Bomb crew.
And she didn't go to wrestling with me.
She went to running.
With Mike, she didn't go to Disney.
She went to Tiki.
But she's also just going off her recent experiences with us, I think.
So like recently in Portland, I was running.
Mike went to a tiki bar with her.
With Grub, you know, Grub loves talking about his kids.
So that's what she said with them.
And then everything came to a screeching halt when she talked about Bacalar and his boat enthusiasm.
Look, Mary and I have private conversations.
Perhaps one or two of these details slipped out of her mouth in a moment of weakness.
Okay.
I want to go on your boat.
I don't know if that's a thing.
Do you have a toilet on the boat?
I'll put them in the water.
Most boats do.
You don't bring your laptops on there, do you?
How sick they are.
No, of course not.
Not with my, what was this called?
Shungite.
Man, they got to rename the name of this fucking thing, right?
Shungite.
What are we doing?
It's chakra is root, if that means something to you.
Cool.
Cool.
Before we get to video games, I watched the new Spider-Man movie, Holy Moly.
It's a good one.
Oh.
It's good i liked it a lot
I don't want to spoil anything i liked it a lot
I was supposed to see it on sunday and i was sick and i couldn't go
Oh yeah i was supposed to see it on sunday but got busy with uh work stuff we'll talk about in a second
Oh no oh no still tom holland
See the current one
Yes it's still tom spider-man
Yeah i was uh chatting it up with someone and she had asked like
Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, right?
They're still in it.
I'm like, oh.
Nope.
Oh, friend.
No.
They've rebooted it two more times since Tobey.
So I have a legit question.
I was talking about this with someone.
And I was like, oh, they're like, oh, it was good.
You should see it.
And I don't even, I don't even think I can.
Like, I think I have to watch at least three or four films before watching this.
Because I don't, the last Spider, I'm not joking, the last Spider-Man movie I watched was Spider-Man 2.
No no spider-verse ones
The spider-verse ones are really good
Oh yeah that's
I've seen all those
Those are yeah yeah um my last one was three with toby mcguire
Yeah so i'm i'm past due and spider-man's like my guy like i'm i'm a i don't know what
The movies mean nothing to me
I'm gonna have to fucking like Spider-Man and not fucking see these movies, Mike.
What do you mean?
Does the Shungite prepare you against Tom Holland as well?
Yeah, I guess it makes me allergic to Tom Holland.
This is my guy.
I didn't see his last six movies.
Nah, dog, that is the most sane reaction to have here.
No, Bacalar's in the right.
If you like Spider-Man, stay away from the Spider-Man movies.
You're absolutely right to do that.
That is somehow a validation of my interest in Spider-Man.
I read all the comics.
No, no, because I'm a Spider-Man guy, too.
You were okay to skip most of the Spider-Man movies after that.
That last one was fun.
It was a little multiverse-y, but it was neat with them all showing up and doing things.
I'm not the biggest fan of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Mans.
Whatever.
So then what should I watch?
I honestly think you can just jump in on this one.
OK, I prefer that.
Yeah, I like the director for this one.
It's a more grounded Spider-Man.
He's not fighting some like gigantic world ending threat.
It's just a dude.
OK, sad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Has anyone seen the the Spider-Man noir stuff?
I like it.
I was just talking to the friend about that at a party because I'm just like, man, culture is so weird because there was a Spider-Man TV show starring Nick Cage and no one seemed to care.
It wasn't even a point of conversation.
I didn't know it existed until you brought it up.
Is he live action or is he just a voice?
He's live action.
Wow.
Yeah, but to be fair, it's Amazon, right?
Yeah.
And that's where shows go to die.
How the fuck is that on Amazon if Disney has Spider-Man?
Well, Disney doesn't have Spider-Man.
Sony has Spider-Man.
Oh, that's the one they don't have.
X-Men and Spider-Man were always weird, right?
But they bought Fox, so they have X-Men.
So now it is just Spider-Man where they have to play ball with Sony on that stuff.
I see.
Okay.
But bigger picture, I just think, like, Amazon, like, cannot figure out a way to make TV accessible.
The rings of power.
I think we're going to get into that later in the news.
Yeah.
About Amazon shows.
Yeah.
So.
Oh.
Uh yeah i don't know
I didn't have anyone in my life to talk about the spider-man noir show and i thought it was good and there's like commercials
Even if you have prime now what are they doing
What do you think you're fucking doing
Yeah i can't remember the last thing i went to prime to like oh i gotta watch this war of the worlds with ice cube
Oh, God, that was amazing.
Holy shit, that was awesome.
God, what incredible... Fuck.
I think that was the last thing I watched on Amazon, actually.
Me too, maybe, actually.
Fantastic, fantastic.
Well, gentlemen, I'm happy to be back with y'all.
I'm happy to be viewing and watching things.
But I'm especially happy to hear about video games.
Games.
Game Freak is a developer that Sean and I are intimately acquainted with.
And a review went up last night for Beast of Reincarnation, the new Game Freak game that is not Pokemon related.
And our own Turbo Sean Sean McDowell reviewed it.
We did a quick look.
Quick look is up on the site.
So is the review.
Go read that.
Go watch the quick look where Sean and I get into it and Sean shares his thoughts.
But Sean, tell the folks at home how you feel about Beast of Reincarnation.
This is a bit of a weird one because...
So first of all, yeah, my review is up.
I gave it three and a half stars.
That to me on the giant bomb scale that we have right now equates to how I feel about the game.
It's a good, not great game.
I was even feeling a little bit lower on that earlier in the game and then...
You know, some things changed that I'll talk about that really, like, brought me around on aspects of it.
So, it's so unlike anything that Game Freak has done, because they've done plenty of non-Pokemon games throughout the years.
Usually they put one out every, like, five or so years, something like that, that's not Pokemon.
You know, like...
Genesis games like Pulseman to like Drilldozer on the GBA to like Pocket Card Jockey and stuff that they have ideas sometimes that they want to put out there.
And it's fun to be weird and like flex those creative muscles when you're not just pumping out annual Pokemon products, right?
Yeah.
And so this one though is like a a pretty like wild swing for them to do a like bloody over the top
Uh kind of action game as uh souls elements in there
You know very from soft stuff of there's bonfires and an estus flask equivalent and early in the game if you get hit like twice you'll die
You know stuff like that yeah um
It's also just near Automata at home.
Literally everything about it is just post-apocalyptic Earth.
It's overrun with nature.
Robots are running the place.
They're kind of just taking over for humans and stuff like that.
They're not even trying to hide it.
Jan, I think the fun fact that you told me the other day is that the Japanese voice actor for Emma, the main character, is just...
To be in japan
So yeah that's kind of funny
I uh i did find it interesting because uh the quick look we did it with the english voice actors and i know that uh emma's character is kind of supposed to be a little stoic but the english voice acting specifically did feel a little uh stilted um
More she just sounds like samus another m
It's not good
Oh oh no um but from like the that preview event i went to they encouraged to play with the japanese voice acting and it it was a little night and day of like
Oh there's like dimension to the voice acting in japanese versus what we listen to in the
Uh the quick look
It is a very Japanese game, so I wonder if maybe the voice direction given with... Because language is different.
Japanese versus English.
Things come across differently.
Maybe it just plays better in Japanese or something like that.
And also a friendly reminder with voice acting.
Bad voice acting is usually the result of bad voice direction.
It's usually not the actors themselves.
But yeah, in terms of the game...
It starts off too slow for my taste, at least.
Like I said, it's got some of those Souls elements in there.
It's trying to be a little bit faster paced.
You have movement options, and that's what really kept me going through the game faster.
Honestly, even when I wasn't really feeling the combines, Emma, she
So the world is like sort of overrun with nature, like I said, and that includes like the living beings, including Emma, where like her hair.
She has almost like a Bayonetta thing going on.
But instead of her hair being used for weapons or stuff like that, her hair can like turn into vines that she can then use to like boost herself like Mario using the hover nozzle in Super Mario Sunshine of all things.
Yeah, it feels good to sort of just like boost yourself a little bit around the levels.
She can extend them horizontally to create bridges.
You can hang over enemies like off of rooftops and then like stealth kill them.
And you can use it as a grappling hook to like zip around levels.
That is very, very fun.
And I always had good time with that.
And then the combat, interestingly, goes from being that more punishing style of action game to there's a skill tree, literally, because it's all about nature.
And once that opens up,
You get so many abilities that open up the combat.
I think the biggest one is the game revolves around this stagger gauge.
They call it the entanglement gauge because, again, nature.
But sort of the concept here, I...
Again, I don't play this type of more punishing action game.
I don't know if others have done this and I missed it, but they thought like this is the one like kind of unique and original idea that I enjoyed is they thought, what if the stagger gauge in a game
Was a resource.
It's an all-in-one resource where you start a battle and you have a little bit of it.
You parry attacks.
It's just Sekiro parrying where you can guard and now diminish your stagger gauge or you can, with every parried hit, you build it up.
But what if it was broken up into pips and you can use it like special moves, almost like super moves at a fighting game or something where you can spend pips of it to do various things.
And so once you go down the skill tree and expand,
Expand the entanglement gauge
You get access to so many more things and you can choose how to spend it
You can either like fill it up to the max like this is what i expect into you never really long gauge that then you fill up by parrying a lot and then once you uh stagger the enemy or inflict an elemental blight on them like paralysis from electricity or something like that
You can then activate basically Witch Time from Bayonetta where you just slow everything down.
But Emma and her wolf companion Ku can just like wail on the enemy for a while.
If you've built up a bunch of abilities, you can spend them all at once.
Or you can use the entanglement gauge to perform special moves.
You can use it for a variety of different things.
You can burn it in different ways.
And I think that was interesting.
It just takes too long to get to the point of being interesting.
It was like...
Halfway through my playthrough where it really clicked and i think that's a long time to be one type of game and then almost completely switch genre into a different type of action game something that's much faster pace which i appreciated that back half of the game
I just think it's a weird separation between the two
I haven't seen something quite like that
You highlighted this in the quick look, Sean, and this was like an issue I had at the preview event, but at the skill tree system, your skill points between Emma and Ku are a shared pool.
Correct.
It will take a little bit longer to really invest and get deep into either one's skill tree if you want to go in one specific direction.
Yes.
And eventually I I wasn't really thinking about why it was happening specifically.
But early on, you only have so many skill points to work with.
And so leveling up Emma a little bit or cool a little bit or focusing on one of them, that's a choice you have to make.
But people can even see in the quick look, you know, around like a third of the way through the game.
I just like blinked and I suddenly have like 100 skill points to use.
I'm like, well, when did that happen?
And then so that is around the turning point around my playthrough.
My playthrough was around like 23 hours.
I think Steam says I came in at 23 hours on the dot.
Pretty long for this.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a little bit longer.
They even, you know, pre-release, they prepared me for potentially 30 hours or more, depending on how much you get into some of the more side stuff.
But yeah, mine was a little over 20, which I think is...
Maybe right for a game of this style of a sort of from softy kind of thing
And i yeah but about halfway is when i started getting a lot of skill points to really open things up and that way i didn't have to choose between ama and ku and i think that the game is at its best when it's doing that and i kind of just wish it was that way the entire game through
Sure sure uh near the end of your time with it sean would you say it started feeling more character actiony like a bayonetta like a devil may cry
Definitely yeah because like i mentioned not having played uh games the way this starts at least i was kind of asking everyone like subtly did
Do any of the FromSoft games really have like skill trees or like games sort of playing off of them?
It's more about like speccing into a build through like stats and then like equipment, right?
Yeah, Sekiro has like a kind of an ability tree and stuff, but it's not a huge deal.
Yeah, it's usually not about that.
Yeah, this is very much like... First of all, if you played Stellar Blade, it's very similar to that.
Or, like, an action RPG skill tree, like the Final Fantasy VII Remake Trilogy, which, you know, there's an element of that in the combat, too, with Ku, where you probably saw this in trailers and stuff.
You can...
Every time you parry you earn a point for a coup and then when you have x number of points you can then command coup to do like sort of a just an assist skill
They never get too far into that which they maybe would a little bit more of it
I think it could be more interesting if they did combine uh the from soft with the character action with
FF7 remake a little bit more by utilizing Ku as your assist by commanding your teammates a little bit more.
But yeah, it's a very action RPG or character action skill tree where the various branches go out to either this division of
Leveling up all your meters or this division of leveling up your ranged attacks this division of uh leveling up your melee attacks
And then it's kind of a funny thing about doing a literal tree is that all that stuff is the roots that go down and then the branches that go up
Is every time emma defeats an enemy a literal flower will blossom and open up a new branch
Of the skill tree with new abilities for you to learn.
Sean, I forgot to, I forgot to ask, do the weapons ever switch, switch up anything?
I know that you get different ranged weapons.
You get a bow and arrow.
So it's just the sword the whole time.
It's,
So it's just the sword.
There are no other like weapon types.
What they what changes about them is elemental affinity.
Jan, you point out kind of find that, of course, Game Freak would like lean into elemental affinity.
Pokemon and everything like that uh but the various weapons do give you different ways to stack stacks of burn of paralysis of binding poison various elemental things and they all
Also, like in the late game, combine those so you can actually like split your stacks between like instead of every strike building burn.
What if instead every strike builds a little bit of poison, a little bit of paralysis, and then, you know, you can hit them with two at once a little bit later on.
So it's.
They could have done more with that as well, even just having like, for example, there's only one attack button, which isn't the end of the world, but they could have had something heavier.
I think the only thing that really changes about weapons is that you do have ranged weapons as well.
So you have a bow and arrow and you can choose between either a fast firing crossbow or
Or like a traditional bow and arrow that takes longer to load, but you can do more damage.
But really, the weapons just are differentiated by the elemental stuff.
I'm still curious to check it out.
The way that you wound up landing with it slightly on the more positive side near the end of your time with it, Sean, is still kind of incentivizing me.
And also just the general morbid curiosity about checking out a Game Freak game that is not a Pokemon game.
Yeah, I think it is.
We did say this in Quick Look.
I think it's...
I hate saying this about a game because I know it's detrimental to the game's perception, but it does feel like a Steam sale game, a PlayStation Plus game.
You still get a little bit on that Game Pass subscription.
It's out in Game Pass Day 1, so you could hop in there while you still got that sub going on.
However you can approach this game in a way that makes sense.
Maybe just watch your favorite streamers who like action games play at first, like see what a Souls streamer has to say about it.
Or if you're like me and you prefer character action games, see what like a DMC streamer has to say about it.
Sure.
See what the people who you align with say about this one because it's a bit of a weird one and the reactions were mostly around how I felt about it but they did vary a little bit so I think people might feel differently about this.
Yeah, Beast of Reincarnation feels like it has a lot of different games in its DNA.
And speaking about DNA, Dan Reichert, you've been investigating the body with Pathogenic.
Uh, yes.
Hey, it's a fun concept whenever it's like a thing is really small and goes into a body and goes around shooting stuff.
Uh, you know, you got, uh, Avidox for NES.
I don't think anyone ever played that, but me, uh, uh, inner space, the Martin short movie, uh, you know, like body wars and Epcot.
Oh, God, yes, but the inner space is better.
The Rugrats episode with the watermelon seed.
Oh, classic.
Go the ios silent level where you go into the stomach and you gotta you gotta shoot the thing
That's fun
Um yeah that's what this is
It's a twin stick roguelite
You are like a little amoeba or something some little molecule body thing and you are evolving and growing
You're like a virus or something and so it's almost like a terratech legion type thing where it's like as you level up you
You're evolving and getting more like nodes and everything you can attach like, Oh, these flagella you can put on the back of you to, to kind of propel you and move faster.
Uh, on the front, you get these little, like, you know, things that this thing's like a shotgun.
And then on the side, you can make it more like, this is like a machine gun or here's a laser.
And, uh,
This one is a thing you connect to your mitochondria and anything that's connected to that will have arcing energy that attacks everything around you.
So you are like entering in through the skin.
Going up the leg there's like us intestine boss there's a stomach boss so like the biomes of the game are like as you're working your way up
I don't know if the ultimate goal is to get up and destroy the brain or whatever but uh it's just a really good gimmick
Um everything is just very readable
Like the art style is very uh it's very just stark different like contrasting colors and stuff and
It's just it's mixes up a lot of things I like, like just the concept, the theming and everything, but also like the almost like mini shoot adventures kind of twin stick element and the roguelite stuff.
You are unlocking stuff.
There is persistent upgrades with like you're collecting DNA during your runs that you can use to
You know expand a skill tree unlock new amoeba things
Um it's it's very good
I've only done a handful of runs right now but i can tell i'm getting into it
Yeah it looks fun
Yeah uh there's a quick look for it on the website now with chuck and grub
Oh so you guys are up to okay yeah yeah i want to check this bad boy out looks pretty fun i do
I do kind of like that idea like let's go inside the human body the human body is its own little weird world
That is very, very true.
Speaking about weird worlds, I continue to be fascinated and appreciate the weird world of Splatoon.
I've been playing Splatoon Raiders.
Sean, so have you.
Mikey, you reviewed this a couple of weeks ago.
Now on the website, there's a quick look of it as well.
Splatoon Raiders.
What an interesting Jimmy Jam, huh?
Mike, what score did you wind up giving it again?
Three and a half out of five.
It was kind of like what Sean said earlier about a seven out of ten.
I'm like, that's a good, not great game.
I think it's a game that's fun.
Does a lot of things well, but nothing exceptionally, nothing stood out as like, whoa, wow, that thing, right?
I think it's... Yeah, I think it's good, just not stand out for me.
I think I'd feel about the same.
I'd maybe like a little...
I would go a little...
Stronger three and a half out of stars for me.
I think it's a really pretty looking Switch 2 game, except the beaches can feel a little bit bland when you get into those dungeons that you're crawling into and the Salmonids designs and all the paint and goop.
Spilling everywhere
I think if anything what i'm more excited post splatoon raiders is how they may potentially spice up and switch up the combat in a future splatoon multiplayer shooter game like with the different gadgets you get and everything like the different styles of tanks if they ever choose to implement that into the game
Um
I would love to use some of the splatch it or the jump that you get and the weird Superman punch you get in Splatoon Raiders.
Yeah, this felt like a very good game to play in recovery while post-hospital.
You can turn your brain off.
It's chill.
It's chill.
You can play a couple levels.
You can revisit a couple levels.
I think the part that I was not enjoying is how much stress it started to add with the timing element of like...
Hey the tank it's at 50
You only got 30 more seconds to fill it up all the way
Uh and i'm like that is usually the roadblock right
That's kind of when it's like oh i guess i better go back to some other levels and kind of make myself stronger
It's not
It's not survivability which is you know people like joke about not putting upgrade points into health this game especially
It's like forget about that
You need to be able to do a lot of damage to some of these levels because there's a time limit.
You need to kill things fast.
And sometimes it kind of just comes down to learning like, you know, you have like that super move with the meter.
It's like, all right, save that for the boss, I guess, and just kind of throw it out there.
Yeah.
Sean, how did you wind up landing with Splatoon Raiders?
Well, I am curious, Jan, how into the Splatoon series are you?
Like, have you played a lot of it?
Are you more multiplayer versus single player?
Primarily only ever multiplayer.
I've dabbled in some of the single player.
Okay.
But it just winds up not being for me because of...
My introduction to Splatoon, just much more of a social multiplayer aspect than like the solo campaign where you are on your own.
That's definitely how most people play, because that's how it's really intended.
But I think I lean where Mike is, where I've always preferred the single player.
And that's the thing that shines for me in these games, and it's why I like Splatoon.
I still play the multiplayer, but for me, the single player is why I show up to the series.
And so with Raiders...
You know, they switched the genre a little bit.
It's still a shooter, right?
But it's mostly single player.
You can play it co-op, but it's mostly single player focused.
It's a looter shooter kind of thing.
It's not what I want out of Splatoon.
It doesn't have like the puzzle platforming elements of the single player.
It doesn't have that sort of
You know level based figure out how to get to the objective
It's kind of just you know get to the end and like get a currency defeat a boss or something
It's much more straightforward than that and even to the point of like yeah the you're kind of just walking forward you're not really messing around with the the pipes as much.
There's no real level design, right?
There's levels, but it almost could be anything.
It doesn't matter.
It's just ground jutting out of the water.
There's not much to every level, at least where I'm at.
I'm only like four hours in, so I'm not super far.
It doesn't change much?
Got it.
I don't think so.
It's just not like necessarily giving me what I want.
Now, that being said, it is still Splatoon.
It still looks, feels and sounds like Splatoon.
And so I still maybe I'm a little more positive because I'm just enjoying playing in our Splatoon.
Splatoon feels great to play.
Exactly.
Those core Splatoon mechanics feel really good.
Especially when you find your weapon or like you switch to a different weapon that you know you want to try out
For a little bit you're like oh wait a second i didn't realize i would like this one
Or they have a modified new one here in raiders and that's really cool
And this game actually is making me like deep cut
You know the the idol group for three because i did not like them in three
But yeah suddenly here like they all i
I just feel like their personalities are showing a little bit more.
And I like all of them a whole bunch.
Like, you know, when big man is like, I don't want to stay on the Island.
I want to go home and play my dragon quest three or whatever.
I'm like, Oh, relatable.
I feel that.
Yeah.
So I, I,
I'm enjoying my time with it.
It's just, yeah, it's not what I want on Splatoon as a pretty big fan of the single-player modes.
Yeah, I was bummed out by the level design now that you mention it because, like, I would start to explore and look around only to find, like, the only thing I'm going to find is just a couple crates and a couple, like, the currency, right?
Like, those, like, kind of linear levels have, like, kind of, like, one or two, like, very slight off-beaten path things to find, but they're not hard to discover.
It's not, like...
It is not an exploration game at all.
It is... Yeah, it's very just action-focused, and, you know...
I guess I appreciate them sticking with that.
And there are some of those levels where, oh, try out this gadget and this is going to be a little bit more gimmicky.
And I do appreciate those.
But even they don't feel as fleshed out as some of the more interesting levels and say the Octo expansion or whatever it was.
Some of those gadget level specific dungeons were a little frustrating for me.
I couldn't nail the timing of some of them for whatever reason.
I think those are very fun.
Yeah so um yeah to to train you on using the new gadgets and new weapons
They'll have like challenge levels that are individual and it's like a puzzle challenge for you overcome just in case anyone doesn't know or whatever uh and those are
I think those are really fun
I really enjoy my time with those uh because i think they add much needed variety
That the
The individual levels don't have as much um but real quick on the exploration um like i had this one moment where i was on like a i got to like the volcano area and then you start one of the levels like higher up and then you like drop down off of not too tall of a cliff
But you drop off a little cliff and you're supposed to just keep walking forward
I was like this is a splatoon game
If this was Splatoon single player, I would turn around and there would be a secret like built into that cliffside because that's what you do.
You don't you know, the average player isn't going to look behind them to see what's back there.
And like in Splatoon, I know if I look back there, there's going to be crates for me to break open and there's going to be one of the collectibles in a level.
I look back there.
And there's a painting on the wall instead.
Oh, cool.
But that's the difference between these games.
It's like, okay, someone on the dev team knows that in a Splatoon game, I'm going to look back there if I've played these before.
But the level design of this game dictates that they're not going to actually put anything there.
And I'm like, ah, that's the difference between this and the previous games.
Bummer.
Bummer.
The last thing I want to say about Splatoon Raiders, I am enjoying it.
I would like to perhaps maybe we do a multiplayer stream sometime in the near future if we have like a quiet week.
Yeah, a couple levels.
This game reminds me so much
Of ratchet deadlocked
Y'all remember this
Yeah i never did that one
Yeah where it's like hey we're gonna take all the things you like from those games and just make it like a run based or like a level to level arena type of thing that's a good call
Yeah i think you're right about that
Yeah, nothing bad against it at all.
I liked Ratchet Deadlock.
You know, they did take away one of my favorite parts, which is Clank.
Yeah, what the heck?
But interesting game, interesting game, just like Splatoon Raiders.
That's what Secret Agent Clink is for.
It's all right.
Oh, yes, you're right.
Speaking about looking around levels and clicking around for secrets, Mike Minotti, you are also looking, pointing and clicking, looking for secrets in Endocopia.
Jeff Grubb actually told me that I should play this game.
This is a pretty new indie game, point-and-click adventure style that's sort of designed to look like those sort of early 90s, almost edutainment games.
But, of course, it's like, oh, it's a bit wackier than that.
It's kind of absurdist, right?
Sure.
So a little bit of that Undertale energy, but even further than that, dare I say, some of that Newgrounds Flash energy that maybe isn't everybody's Jimmy Jam...
I know I could sometimes be in the mood for that silliness, although like sometimes things are so absurdist that I can feel like, well, anything can happen and nothing matters, which is hard for a puzzle game.
We're trying to parse out the logic of a place.
But still, this game is designed such a way that what you need to do at any given point is relatively not too hard to parse out.
There's also a tip board named Tip.
He's a sign with a face.
You kind of summon him whenever you need help with anything.
But...
I really like the look of this one, just kind of being weird and looking like an old-school point-click adventure game, then occasionally doing things like having the really weird early-style pre-rendered cutscene things, and whenever it cuts to that, that's strange.
Every once in a while, I'll try to get you with a jump scare of just something looking real freaking weird.
And that stuff is also fun.
Weird minigames, too, where all of a sudden you have a boss fight, and it's a little Punch-Out-esque for a moment, right?
Something like that, out of nowhere.
Some of the puzzles were good.
The best puzzles so far, there was a theater with these colored seats, and each time I sat down in a seat, it would show a short video
Song about a clown
It talked about how they either hurt themselves or died
And then i found a whack-a-mole thing with colored clowns where i could either hurt them or kill them
I was like oh i need to learn from the theater which clowns dies
And then like translate that to the whack-a-moles
Can I share something very personal real quick?
Of course.
Yes.
I think I understand the clown thing now.
Oh, like about not liking clowns?
Oh, you're looking at the Steam page, Jan?
No, no, no.
The other, the complete opposite of that, Mikey.
Oh, no, you're attracted to clowns?
I think I get it.
Wait, wait, wait.
Are you scared or you're attracted?
He's attracted.
Yeah, it's a digital circus thing, right?
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm on the Steam page.
Okay, let's throw the Harley Quinn part.
Oh, that one clown was kind of cute.
I know which one you're talking about.
All of a sudden, Mike's on board.
All right.
I get it.
That one actually was kind of cute.
Yeah.
Okay, she's like...
Bad.
I've been seeing like there's a specific clown popping up in like a bunch of like conventions and convention pictures and videos.
Is it Pomney?
I don't know what Pomney is.
What is Pomney?
From the amazing digital circus, I bet it's Pomny.
Oh, yeah, it's that clown.
That's who it is.
The kids love the digital circus right now.
Dan, I'm going to cut you off at the pass.
Nobody cares about your opinion on this one.
I wasn't going to say shit.
I wasn't saying a damn thing.
Gotcha.
I saw you Googling.
I got worried.
I just wanted to point out for this game that...
I saw you Googling.
We all know where that goes.
I wanted to point out, this game came out one week ago.
It is a $15 game on Steam, so not nothing, but still indie price, but, you know, not the kind of thing that everyone's going to own.
It's...
Overwhelmingly positive reviews with almost 1900 reviews like that's crazy
I'm trying to figure out yeah because it's like it's popping off a little bit to the point where grub heard about it and recommended to me and i'm trying to figure out where that happened
It looks like it's just
A very small developer who's...
He has, like... His last game in 2023 was called Pika Yun Dreams, and it also did really...
It also has, like, a lot of really good reviews.
So maybe...
I don't know.
Maybe this indie developer's just somewhat well-known.
I don't know.
I don't know how this has kind of gotten some...
Attention uh
But yeah you know if you have an affinity for old point and quick games like me i think you will like it again
Like like almost during the game i find myself at different points of being up for some of its bullshit with the whole like oh man it's real weird
I'm like, I like how it's weird.
Then other times I'm sort of rolling my eyes at how weird it is.
But it definitely has been enjoyable so far.
Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.
I'd be interested in seeing more of that game down the line.
Folks, I had some health complications and everything.
I've been on the mending process, and part of that mending process
Is figuring out that I'm getting winded just walking down the block, you know, fingers crossed that I continue to heal up and everything, get my blood levels back up.
So the best thing to do is to go for a big walk with my friends in Big Walk.
The biggest of walks.
The biggest of walks.
Mr. Bacalar, you went to a virtual preview event.
You've checked this out.
But then the rest of the GB owners explored the world of Big Walk.
And Sean, you were sitting shotgun there live producing that thing.
Once again, there is a quick look up on the website.
Highly suggest you go check that out.
Sean expertly switching between POVs.
And if you're a premium member, you can go watch someone's specific POV, except for Jeff Grubb.
But boys, I had a lovely time.
Yeah, it's good.
I think that's so cool.
I actually heard some people, I can't remember if it's on here or whatever, talking about they didn't like the aesthetic.
I can get it.
I get it.
I love it.
I kind of like the weird Homer Simpson bird dropper thing set against realistic backdrops and stuff.
I just think it's got...
A right amount of just kind of like quirky, like weirdness mixed with just like, Oh, these are like just realistic trees and stuff in motion.
It's very charming.
I think in screenshots of me, it doesn't play as well.
Sure, sure.
Yeah, I got really curious with the first trailer because it just seems like, again, people are quick to use the phrase friend slop for anything where it's like, oh, proc chat and, you know, several people running around doing different stuff.
But this is different than like a peak.
And also, I don't consider friend slop to be a pejorative at all.
I like friend slop games a lot.
Yeah.
But this is a open world puzzle game.
This is a, yeah, just because there's proxy and everything doesn't mean it's like these other games that look like it.
I like all of the emergent things that aren't even like these big, crazy moments.
Like there's not really like combat that we've seen or anything.
Like I like moments where it's like,
I split off from the group at one point to go do something, and I had a walkie-talkie, and that's how I was keeping in contact with all you guys.
And I jumped to see if I could slide down this hill to get down faster, and the impact caused me to drop my walkie-talkie,
But I did slide down the hill, and it was at night, and I didn't have a light or anything.
So I can't get a hold of you guys.
And for a while, I'm just going through a hill at night in the woods.
Like, where the fuck is my walkie talkie?
Like, that was hard to earn that.
We had to like solve puzzles to get that walkie talkie.
I'm just looking at the ground like, fuck, fuck.
Fuck, they're probably wondering where I'm at and I can't talk to them and I'm yelling.
I'm like, guys, guys, I'm just hoping you can hear me.
These type of experiences that I can't really say I've had in other multiplayer games and like the puzzles themselves are clever.
Like there's the one where I went into a soundproof room that had like a window
And I could see these like five different like glyphs light up and you guys couldn't see it.
But there were switches on the other side.
And so I can't talk to you with Prox Chat.
So I'm having to come up with like a little like language of my own where it's like, all right, if I sit on the ground and point, that means I'm pointing at the one on the ground over there.
If I'm raising a hand up and pointing, that means it's a high up one.
If it's two of them, I'm just going like this because you can independently raise your arms or point.
And there's just so many clever uses of like what seems like pretty limited mechanics.
And yeah, just charm for days.
Solid puzzles.
Really good use of like prox chat and the gimmicks of the walkie talkies and things like that.
Like I am.
I'm loving this game.
Yeah yeah anything that's a mist like right just put me in some island or something with a bunch of puzzles yeah and let me figure it out
Kind of walk this way see what you're going to find over there and it was like a good combination of like sometimes we just we come across something
We're like i don't know what this means yet
We'll come back to this and then we'd walk a little bit further
And there's a basketball hoop with like an egg.
And it's like, well, this one I understand.
Let's just try to throw this in here for a little bit.
And yeah, there's a good sense of progression.
Like in that first area, it's like basically, all right, solve four puzzles, get a thing and bring it back here.
Then you open up another area and it's a similar thing.
Like, all right, we're going to have to solve this many puzzles to sort of get this section done.
So it kind of conveys the, I don't want to say loop, it's not necessarily loop, but it kind of conveys the objective of the progression system relatively simply and effectively.
I like that the game kind of forces you to be a little twee.
All of the sort of parts are kind of really expertly offered in a way that you...
The characteristics of the game that are the most engaging and the most fun are just...
Realizing your limitations and the the ways that you are forced to kind of communicate and i know you know the whole like friend uh slop spiel it's
It's obviously a mechanic of the game
It's very it's crucial
You can't progress without speaking
Uh you you have an impossible time doing so
And I just think, like, it says a lot that the sort of rule set is governed by the communication because I feel like, you know, obviously there's other Prox Chat games that, you know, where you're forced to rely on communication, but, like,
This makes it more of like the mechanic in an interesting way that I feel like no one else is really doing.
Yeah, I mean, there's, you know, the thing that keeps getting me every time I look back at our footage and get back into it, it's like, man, you are really at the mercy of like
The deliberate design choices that have gone on in this game.
And that's not shackling in any way.
You're left to your own devices.
And I think there's something about how all that stuff is just sort of presented to you and you organically assume things about the environment.
Like,
That stuff is just so smart
I feel like having that you know at your disposal is a really awesome thing to be able to experience
It's cool man
They really did such a fun job with it and I'm really really digging like what you are kind of
Because there's also like this kind of mystery aspect to it that is a little unsettling in a way where you're just like, what's the bigger picture here?
Like, what exactly is going on?
Like, we all look so kind of goofy and the world is rendered relatively realistically.
What's up with his eggs?
Yeah, what's going on here?
Why are these little Kong dog toys going on?
What are those things?
What is the bigger picture?
What's the message here?
Yeah, and I'm sure like, you know, there's probably something I'm missing or someone's favorite $5 friend slop game on Steam that they played that I haven't heard of.
But I feel like we haven't had quite this style of like Myst or Portal or that specific type of puzzle solving in this type of multiplayer game in at least a while.
I feel like it's usually more about...
Figure out a way to work together to get to the end the ending goal or to like a raid something you know something like a repo or whatnot lethal company
I feel like this is bringing things back around to to that time of portal of like okay i'm gonna sit here i'm gonna position you over here i need to do my task you do your task
We need to communicate to like make sure that we're doing them in
Sink or whatever and it was
I know not everyone is going to be able to have experience like this
Hopefully you can
If you're like talking to your friends afterwards of like oh what were you doing while i was over here
If you like split up or something but being able to have almost like a bird's eye view of things like uh switching between your guys's perspectives it led to some just
Naturally funny moments of like, you know, Dan mentioned when he like slid down the hill and kind of tumbled a little bit,
But it was funny that I could be like, uh, you know, you guys are all in a group and saying, Oh, I wonder what Dan's up to.
I can switch over Dan.
Yeah.
Or like where's grub and grubs walking along the beach singing to himself or like i wonder if those guys are finishing their task and i just switch to everything going wrong with the other half like
It was moments like that that were like really comical i think
Uh hopefully a lot like streamers and youtubers pick this one up and like do something like that of having multiple perspectives because i think that that's really cool and also i think sells the game a little bit more because you can have those stories of what were you doing when i was doing this
Yeah
It is interesting.
It's like I do think it would behoove you to stick with the same group throughout because I was thinking like, you know, we want to stream more of it.
I believe Friday.
But it's, you know, on paper, it'd be fun to like, oh, let's bring in someone.
You know, we talked about like, oh, let's reach out to like Vitaly or something.
And I found out Vitaly's played it.
And so it's like, I think that would kind of screw it up if it's like somebody has experienced the puzzle and then they're just kind of like standing around like, oh, try not to help too much.
I think it's a game where you want to pick your crew, two to eight people or more, whatever you want, and just stick with it throughout.
Did any of you guys play more of it or have you all sort of waited until the next time we replay?
I haven't touched it since.
I don't have friends.
You have.
Other than here.
Okay.
Eat shit, Grub.
Well, Grub would have went off in his own direction anyway.
He did do that very quickly.
Yeah, last thing I want to say about Big Walk is that it is very apparent that the previous game that...
House house made was untitled goose game because of just the twee nature of it like you said back larva like just poking and prodding around of like wonder what this does
Oh shit.
Uh, type of deal or like how little the game will actually convey to you of like in communicate of what you can do.
So it does encourage that, uh, missed like poking and prodding around and, and just like puzzle solving together.
Um,
And the way that you like troll with each other in the levels
Like you know in untitled goose game the goose would be trolling everyone else
But now here you're trolling each other like i remember you guys had like you called it like the sex ladder or something like that just this weird ladder looking thing and uh dan's like oh let me see that
He just grabs and like punts it into the ocean like
Moments like that are very funny
Yeah and it's funny
Despite being a co-op game it still feels like there's a level of competition like no i'm gonna get the key i'm gonna get right of course
Yeah yeah and i'm stealing it from him
There's something about it too
Where you like we all kind of turn into cavemen
Like, uh, you know, you know what I mean?
We're just like, ah, we found the egg.
We all like worship an egg for the other guys split off.
Cause like there was something where some of the guys had to go up to a tower to get like coordinates or shoot a laser.
And we had to stand down where the coordinates info was.
So,
Back there for a while
There's just me and you just waiting by these coordinates while they go off to a tower and we don't have anything to do
So we're just like talking and like we start playing catch
We had like a radio or something
We're just like playing catch but it's like we're just interesting little emergent things that pop up like on the social front too with this game
That's cute that's right
Uh the game is 20 and it is cross-platform correct
It is, yes.
Okay, cool.
So there you go, folks.
It's also on sale.
There's a lot on sale.
It's like $13.
Oh, shit.
It's on the top tier of whatever PlayStation Plus's offerings are.
Oh, okay, cool.
And I saw people in chat asking about this.
I remember as the developers, they said that it does...
Uh uh what's it called
It does sort of change depending on how many uh people are playing like not the oh
Okay it adjusts to accommodate
There's certain kind of like you know height things that won't work if you've only got uh you know three people or two people whatever
So the puzzles do adapt to how many players
Oh that maxes out
That maxes out at four i think
Like so if you do yeah after four it's all this
Okay yeah so you can play with up to 12 i think but it caps the puzzle okay
Yeah seeing you guys play it seemed like every puzzle was designed around 4s so i was worried because i have a group of three that was like my core group i play with every week and so i was worried oh can we not play this even though it seems pretty fun
But if it adapts that's really cool to hear
Yes two or more can play together
Oh okay there you go there you go go play with the top tier it's the essential tier or whatever the base one is called
Now again every company has terrible tier names and no one knows oh my god yeah jesus yep yep what the fuck
I'm actually still confused about which Xbox we're on.
I just politely nod.
That's the last one.
We'll get to it in the news.
Folks, that does it for games.
We're going to take a quick bricky break and we will be back with the news right after this.
This is Mike with the news.
Mike Minotti and a kitty.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, everybody.
How's it going?
Yes, Jeff Grubb is out on assignment, so I'm here.
He actually did curate the news for us and has bolded some of his commentary on these topics himself.
Just delete those.
Yeah, we don't care what he thinks.
Let's just guess.
Starting off here with Xbox's leaked disk to digital system could solve an impossible ownership problem.
A leaked Microsoft developer document says Xbox intends to expand backward compatibility on PC in several stages.
Original Xbox games are reportedly headed toward a full PC launch in October, while developers would be able to opt Xbox 360 games into the ecosystem gradually during 2027-2028.
Those games would then work across Windows-based Xbox hardware including Project Helix, other Xbox PCs, and handhelds.
Developers would control participation, pricing, and Game Pass availability.
This digital ownership seems like the key to this strategy.
A player inserts an Xbox One or Series disc into a compatible console.
That's stage one.
Microsoft grants that account a digital entitlement.
Stage three, the entitlement remains associated with both the account and the physical disc.
Stage four, selling or lending the disc would transfer the entitlement to the new holder and revoke it from the previous account.
This retains the full functionality and resell the disc while also smoothing out a transition to a future where fewer Xbox systems will have disc drives.
But this also means that Xbox will likely have to provide some way to use discs on consoles.
Project helix grub says here at the very least this feels like a very thought out and coherent plan which distinguishes it from everything else xbox has done this year yeah right exactly um
You know, this stuff is nice to see, and it's going to be interesting to see what the PlayStation response to this is.
You know, it is kind of like, yeah, okay, so if we're going to be able to save our discs...
Are you going to have a disk drive on the new console so we can do that?
For PlayStation 6, it seems pretty unlikely if they aren't going to make any disk games for it.
So whatever PlayStation solution is going to be, it's going to require you to use a PlayStation 5 to register your disks somehow.
So yeah.
And this seems like a cool system.
Um, this has come up in the past, but now we have a few more things to talk about here where, yeah, specifically it will have to work with, uh, an Xbox one or an Xbox series desk because those have like the identifiers on them to be able to, uh,
You know say oh this is this game it's not just an xbox game or an xbox 360 game this is uh battlefield one for xbox one you know something like that and so
This is a cool system, I think, because you can pop that disc in.
You can get basically a digital copy with all the convenience as long as nobody else uses that disc.
I've always thought that this is a cool system.
It's kind of the bare minimum that these companies need to do if we're going to transition all digital because people have physical games.
You can't just like.
Toss those aside willy-nilly
Um it's a little
Still a shame that it won't work at least seemingly won't work for original xbox or 360 games
Maybe they'll reverse that in the future and they just say oh your xbox one x or your series x a red a
You know like looking at my shelf like i have a
Let's say Dead or Alive 3, like if I pop that into my disc-based Xbox, if they could just be like, all right, we don't really need the sale on this one.
We'll just grant you this one.
That would be nice as well.
I know that with the backwards compatibility that they just started announcing for PC, John Lineman asked them about, well, what about my physical discs?
It was, of course, John would.
And they said, well, we actually wanted to do that on PC, but not every DVD drive can read those like encrypted Xbox discs correctly and identify what they are.
And that's why there's no option for that on PC, which also that's the type of thing that has me a little worried about if Helix is a PC.
Because then, you know, it won't have the ability to read some discs like that.
So how is that going to work?
Are, like, your original Xbox and 360 games just not going to work?
Are you going to have to rebuy them digitally?
That's a little bit weird.
Yeah, there's some other, you know, and, like, yeah, so...
You don't have to hand it to Xbox, right?
I think is kind of the point here.
Of course there needs to be solutions to these problems, right?
That should be their responsibility.
And PlayStation better have
Solutions as well though i think with them it's a little bit of a worry like maybe they're just going to rip the band-aid off a little bit more forcefully than than this even yeah like to be clear i'm happy about systems like this because it means i don't have to give microsoft any more money by replying right right yeah
Also i'm a i'm a little confused about like what helix is going to be now because it seems like you know with the backwards compatibility on pc expanding and stuff like that that they're trying to get more and more stuff on pc which would indicate that helix is just that pc like we've been talking about the way like asha's talking about like
I only barely caught Gamus mornings yesterday, but like in general, talking about committing to the console and everything like that, I'm just thinking like, well, doesn't that seem a little contradictory to the idea of it just being a PC then?
So now I'm wondering, and you know, she has said about like the...
The steam on helix thing
You know i wasn't there for those discussions and stuff like that
It seems like there's a backing away from that kind of thing
So now i'm just really curious what helix actually is right
I mean there's still so many questions about these consoles including their price and grubs kind of like
Put some stuff in here too to remind us like hey those latest price increases have gone into effect
These things are more exciting
They're more expensive.
More are probably coming.
Microsoft themselves have been like, yeah, this problem's not getting solved.
These components keep getting more expensive.
That's not going to stop.
There's this larger question of how is Xbox going to have
Growth
How is them seemingly focusing on the console business again at a point where that that business just seems a bit uncertain right now
Uh we don't know
There's a mention i guess of the these xbox pcs we didn't really address that of yeah
I'm assuming that terminology means something like the Asus, ROG, Xbox, Ali, XXX, XXX, XXX, XXX, what the fuck is that thing called?
Something like those handhelds are what they're referring to as Xbox PCs, right?
Of like a partner device that is like branded Xbox.
I assume.
And that's something that I think was probably, at one point, a bigger part of the strategy before the regimen changed.
And now it's like, no, that Project Helix, that is the main thing.
There might be other things that, of course, are kind of Xboxes.
But not everything is an Xbox.
Who would say that?
That would be ridiculous.
I guess I'm kind of wondering if...
I'm kind of wondering if Helix is a more traditional console.
They're trying to like, since it's not out yet, they could scale back the software, the operating system to being more console like to be more exclusive based.
And then the Xbox PCs are the more open thing that they can work with like Asus and stuff on.
I was assuming that Helix would kind of be closer to that Roger ally, uh, Xbox triple X that you mentioned Sean versus like a traditional console and that it would just be more windows up.
Um,
But now I don't know.
I mean, day to day, week to week, I have less and less of an idea of what the strategy is, specifically with Helix, and what to expect with it.
I'm also looking at these price increases.
Bonkers.
Crazy town bananas, y'all.
It's insane.
I pointed out the other day that I looked around my room.
I was streaming.
Someone brought it up.
I looked around my room.
I'm like, every piece of hardware I've bought in the past five years has gone up in value, which is insane.
Everything's appreciating.
It's very weird.
It's wild.
All right, EA's $55 billion private takeover is expected to close today.
The investor group led by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund received approval under the European Union's Foreign Subsidies Regulation
Remaining significant regulatory hurdle for its $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts.
He said all required approvals have been attained and expected the transaction to close.
August 4th, which is today.
Grubb says, I won't expect that means we get more and cooler games.
Some people are like, well, it's a good thing anyways because EA is not a private company anymore, so they don't have shareholders.
But the new owner is buying into $20 billion in debt.
Michael transactions, yeah.
Yeah, Michael Transactions is going to be having more sway than ever at EA.
This does not mean like Burnout 4 is coming out or like anything interesting like that.
It's going to be the same EA that releases a few sports games every year and then maybe a Star Wars game if you're lucky and more Sims 4 DLC.
Right.
That's the future we are looking at here with EA.
Maybe grimmer than that.
I mean, so it's bad, but like,
Yeah there is a like i i guess my whole thing is like you're buying into this debt what's to say like this debt can't grow like what's to say like just do more bad and never like it will right like i
I guess that's maybe the comedic sort of takeaway of all this, of there's an opportunity for consumers to do the funniest thing and just continue to put this business in the dumpster and not give a fuck and watch it just completely implode.
That seems...
I mean, like...
You're describing this thing like, well, we have to do all these microtransactions.
All right.
Is there success where they're like, oh, we just have to open up this kid casino and we can generate the money?
If it's bad, it's bad and don't engage.
I realize I'm taking a very sort of like...
Surface level examination of the situation
But there is there
There is like a dark humor to it of like man
The kingdom of saudi arabia must really think that they can actually sports watch their image with stuff like this and they just don't seem to realize that's not working like people
People only think less of snk they only think less of evo they only think less of like the investments in like nintendo and capcom and stuff
Nobody likes this
It's like when hank hill talked to those uh christian rock people right you're not
You're not making
It's exactly like that
You're not making christianity better you're making rock and roll worse
Yes.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
It's sort of just like... Did they get some bad advice?
Like...
I think that's when you have an obscene amount of money that you could just make.
They can't afford for this to not work out is the stupid thing, and that's why they can't do it without thinking about it all that much.
Now we have this weird world where Mass Effect 4, which has been historically a pretty...
You know, queer friendly franchise from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
What is that going to look like?
It's going to be interesting.
Yeah.
I, it's just, it's a very weird thing.
I think people like the money when they aren't aware of all the bad things around the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and,
Everything that's happening here with them trying to buy their way into everything
People like the money that gets invested
You know like evil evo having well i guess evil at this point uh having large prize pools and like uh they created the esports world cup where people are going to compete in various esports for a bunch of money and people think that's really cool
But
But then they learn, then they find out about all the atrocities of that kingdom and their government.
And then immediately the switch flips of like, oh, nope, you know what?
I can do without that money.
And like, it just feels like bad timing of more than ever with people being chronically online.
They learn eventually.
It might take them a second.
We saw, for example, with Games Done Quick, for example, just somehow most of the speedrun community, it wasn't even just GDQ staff, most of the speedrun community just hasn't heard of this because they haven't been following gaming news.
And that's why it's on us to educate people.
But just as this stuff is spreading, again, instantly people are turned off by it because they just know that's bad.
I didn't think it would be possible for a future Harry Potter game to get worse, but it can and it will.
Yeah, right.
A little bit of a tangent, but just like talk about things like sort of breaking containment.
I know this has been brought before, but I was at a friend's birthday party this weekend.
So like I'm talking about normies and normies parents.
And everyone there was asking me about PlayStation not having discs anymore.
The amount of containment brokenness on that is absolutely wild.
So give me a little uh give me a little summary of how that exchange went i mean it's just
I mean it is just like oh yeah like playstation's not gonna even have discs anymore
Huh i'm like yeah yeah you know that's crazy
Yep that's usually how it goes
Oh or maybe they were just looking for something to talk with you about right like maybe just like talking yeah but just the fact that they know is just
It's wild to me because they don't know
Again they don't know about saudi arabia investing in video games
They don't even really necessarily know about uh xbox you know closing studios laying people off things like that
No yeah that doesn't penetrate
Yeah everybody knows about this
Yeah, some of the stuff is getting big enough that's on mainstream news.
I'll still say, when my almost 70-year-old mom knows about PlayStation consoles are going up in price, that's how you know that something is pretty big news.
Because I think those...
I think those headlines are like milestone kind of like easy to digest in a single sort of phrase, right?
Where you're just like, oh, I don't need to really understand anything more about the story.
Discs are going away.
Got it.
Right?
Like maybe it's a digestible bite size, stuff like that.
The EA stuff is particularly causing up a stir because like their main office in the US is in Redwood City in the Bay Area.
So it's been like circulating around like local San Francisco news a bunch just because people are worried of like.
Is this going to go away now?
Like, what's happening?
Like, local businesses are also spooked because, you know, they depend on those people going to the office for lunch, etc.
So, ugh.
All right, a little bit of pivot here.
Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave.
Hey, that direct was earlier today, showcasing more of this turn-based strategy game, which is coming out September 17th exclusively for the Switch 2.
Pretty good look at the game here, including some, like, I don't know if...
If it's a spoiler, if it's part of the promotion campaign, but like a character we wouldn't necessarily expect to see or hasn't been introduced yet.
Although kind of the craziest thing here is that part of this game is dungeon crawling with more traditional turn based battles.
That's here somehow.
Yeah, it's like...
So, Fire Emblem games have it where you can, like, go out and... At least the more recent ones where you can go out, you can, like, train somewhere on the map and, like, do a side thing.
And apparently in here you can...
I didn't see the exact...
Specifics of it
But you can go in a dungeon and suddenly they line up like yeah like it's dragon quest or something and the animations are still fire emblem
But it seems like a different type of battling
I was like watching this while i was getting ready this morning
And there are details like that
Um but also yeah they're
They're doing some other wild stuff like this
It's really funny when they like introduce i think these are just a new type of weapons i don't remember them but like gauntlets that can apparently take different forms
They do said there's even ones that look like firearms and my girls is holding the most futuristic uzi you've ever seen
It's so funny, because I was scrolling through looking for the direct today, and I found GameSpot's first, and the thumbnail they chose is just a nun-looking character holding an Uzi.
I was like, who over there at GameSpot is pulling the goof on me right now?
What am I looking at?
It was very funny.
None with a gun.
They showed in the direct that they are doing something similar to Three Houses, where everything we've seen up to this point, all the four characters you can play as and everything, is just the quote-unquote prologue.
And then the actual story...
Is that you, the main character, they say, like, this is the real protagonist, is...
A time traveler like one of the gods or like an angel messenger of the gods because like one of the gods
Fortuna is like they are also playable i guess and so like you play a prologue that tells like how these four characters got the world to apparently a state of post-apocalypse and
And then the the real story is like you fixing that as like a messenger from the gods or something like that.
Again, I'm missing some small details here, but I'm like, well, that's a really that's honestly a more interesting way to do the time skip of like three houses and stuff.
I think that you can go back and like fix mistakes or something.
I it's wild.
And I think it looks really cool.
It also kind of gives us that the thing that they've done since awakening where you can kind of like, yeah, the, the main character is this kind of sound protagonist where you can pick the male or female version of, right.
And, uh, they don't have Pepsi colors this time.
So that's good.
Correct.
Right.
Uh,
They definitely seem to be leaning into the three houses aspect of it, which is something they've been trying to connect to from the beginning.
And three houses, very well-liked.
I like that one a lot.
Love it.
Engaged, the previous, more divisive.
Um this
So just looking at this though and it's a pretty looking game also
Yeah i did enjoy engage this kind of bright color palette and this
This is like a good compromise i think between engage which could sometimes be garish maybe with its color choices and then three houses which was sometimes a bit bland and muted
I think they got the right balance here
Just looking at this
Yeah it feels like they're going back to say awakening which i think there's a lot of elements in here
That where i'm like stylistically it's going back to awakening which people a lot of people including myself still say is the best they've played because i do love that game and so i'm excited to see them go back to that and also do some interesting stuff with the story
I am super in the mood for one of these.
I also see, of course, you can send characters to a hot spring together.
Oh, yeah.
Hell yeah.
Because anime.
As you should.
Like, what are we doing here?
We should all go to a hot spring.
Sure.
People work hard.
They're awesome.
They work hard.
Yeah.
Final Fantasy XIV launches on Switch 2 today.
That's right, everybody.
The hit MMO.
I'm not doing the whole thing there.
That is now available.
You can get the...
Even just the free trial basically is going to give you 300 hours of gameplay content, honestly.
So you can get that.
You can also get a complete edition, which will get you up with the current expansions as well.
There's kind of a launch discount on that.
30% off until August 8th.
There's some funkiness with this game.
You need a separate subscription from your normal Final Fantasy subscription, I think, just because of the way the Nintendo stuff works if you want to do that ultimate thing.
It's a little bit complicated.
Also, it's huge.
So it's like 117 gigabytes to play this because it's an MMO.
So I spent last night just kind of clearing space on my SD card to prepare myself.
Because I'm very...
Excited to try this version out
I have a good bit of catch-up to do with dawn trail before ever cold
The new expansion comes out last year so i'm hoping this is going to be a good way for me to kind of work through that main story quest
Yeah, I've...
Despite not playing much of Final Fantasy XIV, I've bought it twice already on the PlayStation and on Steam.
And I think I'm going to buy it a third time.
But this time I will play it because Final Fantasy... Well, the funny thing is...
Kind of don't need to buy it just yet
So i was thinking about this hypothetically
So you do need switch online for this correct
Yes yes okay so you need switch online and then if you play the recent expansions you'll need a separate subscription
Unfortunately it's not like it is with a playstation pc where you can buy a subscription on one and like works on the other or something like that
I forget because I just always do PC nowadays, but you'll need to buy like a specifically the Final Fantasy 14 switch subscription because I guess Nintendo needs their cut or whatever.
Hypothetically.
Sorry, real quick.
Maple QB in our Twitch chat says, no, you do not need switch online.
Okay, you don't need Switch Online.
Hey, that's not misinformation, everybody.
That's me asking if you needed this thing.
I'm confused.
I'm confused how it works.
How could it possibly work?
Yeah, I thought you needed both, but if you don't need Switch Online, I thought that was the messaging at first, but okay.
So then it's even better because...
With the free trial like Final Fantasy 14 at this point is just six Final Fantasy games in one and the free trial is basically just the first four of those at this point
Yeah it's a lot of freaking game to just download and play for free
Yeah it's like literally 200 to 300 hours just like get through that stuff and like
I think the free trial includes Shadowbringers, so the free trial includes the first three expansions.
So a lot of the best stuff, honestly, at that point.
So yeah, you'll be good for quite a while with that.
For folks asking, Final Janice is coming after Pokemon Worlds happens.
Pokemon Monday Night Combat, we will sunset the gym, we'll close it for renovations, and then open up Final Janice 14.
All righty neck yeah i'm ready too i'm excited for that do you have you figured out what like race you're gonna be
Are you gonna be a fellow lala fell with me i'm saying look i know it's always weird
It's always weird when you talk about these things because you just throw the word race out in a different context
Huh i'd like to throw any race out mike what do you mean yeah wow look
I like the rabbit ladies.
Yeah, I thought you were going to pick a rabbit lady.
What do you mean?
Nothing.
All right.
Next up here is Dave Bautista's in talks to replace Ryan Hurst as Kratos.
Okay.
This is for that Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures TV show where this is not finalized or anything.
Ryan Hurst was like, they released a photo of Ryan Hurst as Kratos.
In full makeup costume, yeah.
Well received.
Four episodes and then he tore his bicep and uh well that is that apparently Batista just did the Highlander reboot so hey shouldn't they get someone who's not larger than Kratos
Considerably he's off the gas you know they're gonna have to use trick photography to make him appear smaller so that he could be the god of war he resembles a human being at this point
He does.
I bet he would look pretty good.
I'm just surprised because like this is a bigger name, right?
Huge name.
This is a huge name.
So to be able to kind of rope that in, maybe it's because of timing, because before maybe Batista was in consideration, but was working on Highlander.
And now it's like, well, that's done now.
We don't have that problem, so you can maybe come in here.
It's funny, because Batista's often wanted to be Marcus Fenix in a Gears of War movie, right?
No, I don't want that for him.
He's always looked like him.
As Grubb points out here, he'll be in a different G.O.W.,
Perhaps.
Good actor.
Cool dude.
Oh, yeah.
Snap your fingers, man.
What do we gotta do?
Doesn't seem impossible, right?
Please.
You know, I love Dave Bautista.
I would...
Aren't they also replacing the child?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Yeah.
That's going to be drawn soon though.
I could have sworn.
Keep me honest chats.
I could have sworn that they're also having to report for season two.
Okay.
Perhaps that's what it is.
Man i mean look it's it's an amazon thing no it's going to be impossible to watch and see i just that's this is the time skip thing because season two i guess will be based off ragnarok uh
Again like of me it's like those those games have so much story i feel like i've already seen the god of war tv show
It was called god of war the video game so these things don't have any interest for me
I get it it's different i know that's reductive
No, it's not.
I'm surprised you're saying that, Mike.
I thought of you differently.
But also, I think there's fun you can have there.
I'm just more interested in the direction they kind of do, how grounded they kind of make it.
I think that's, to me, the most interesting.
Intriguing part of it and just like the story they want to tell how grounded is that story is it going to be this sort of like over the top insanity I mean none of the stuff in the games happened
That's still out for discovery, Dan.
We have to do more carbon testing.
We have to really figure it out.
I don't know.
I also don't know how badly I want a God of War show.
I will say if Dave Bautista is involved with it, my interest suddenly jumps up to interested now versus God keep it away from me.
And he can get hurt.
If anything, the show will get hurt from him.
Like, I'm not worried about his health.
He'll work through the hurt, brother.
He walks for miles inside this pit of danger.
It's true.
That's where I heard.
Oh, man, that's such a cool interest with the freaking, like, cat looking.
It's an Alzheimer, yeah.
Speaking of cool things for cool people, Square Enix says the Strange Kingdom Hearts artwork was human error and not AI.
Dave Bautista drew it, and he just wasn't sure about the details.
Grubb and i talked about this on on game s yesterday
I heard that i heard that yeah this is
I'm sorry but like you're not fooling anyone i like what the fuck man
So this this is for that artwork for that kingdom hearts collection
Uh that is coming out that like you know bundles all the games together
It has this special artwork and immediately when everyone looked at it they're like
This reeks of AI.
Donald Duck had too many fingers on one hand.
Details were blending into each other.
Donald Duck's mouth was doing weird stuff.
It just did not look right.
Look at this thing.
It doesn't look right at all.
And like Square Enix finally came out and said like, no, that's not...
It wasn't AI.
We just did some oopsies.
And I'm like... Oopsies?
I don't know if they're allowed to just lie like this, but... You're allowed.
If it's not a lie...
Then our standards have fallen so much because of AI somehow for this to get through.
It is just, it's difficult to believe because it just reeks of AI.
It's got all those hallmarks, right?
And we talked about this yesterday, right?
The one comedic silver lining of AI's proliferation is like,
We all now know we are like programmed to sniff it out.
Right.
Right.
There is a look to it where everything just is like super smooth and porcelain and uncanny.
And it's like, oh, I know what this fucking thing is.
I'm not going to buy a smoothie from you guys because you're fucking lazy bitches.
Right.
Like, I'm just not going to do that.
If you're putting that into the like, there's no way this is going to be quality.
So that's fun that you can pick out and selectively boycott the things you don't want to support because they're fucking demons.
And then we see this and it's like, oh, all the alarm bells go off.
And they're just like, no, we just got like shitty artists is essentially what they're saying.
How are they going to possibly find any good artists at Square Enix and Disney?
It's Disney!
That's the craziest part, though, is how did this get by Disney, right?
I'm assuming that there's some type of approval process with anything relating to Disney, but I don't know.
Disney loves AI, don't forget.
They wanted to feed all their characters into Sora or whatever.
The other Sora.
They broke that deal.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that
They've changed the way they feel.
It just means that they realize what public perception is.
I think maybe the most likely thing here is that people are theorizing, oh, wait a second.
The Japanese box art is different in that it is the same Nomura art, but...
Almost all I think it was all I didn't follow this too closely because I'm just like, well, this all sucks.
But I believe almost all of the details that look weird were obscured on the Japanese art.
And so people theorize, oh, they just used AI to extend the art when they rearrange things to fix like North to fit North American backgrounds.
And maybe that's the truth in the middle ground of Square Enix saying, well, we didn't generate it with AI.
We just use a human who was kind of stupid and didn't notice that, you know, when they extended it, that they made some mistakes.
I think that might be what's happening.
Oh i'm looking at this because yeah like that hand of donald ducks is behind sora a different version
So yeah okay i could see
So you know here a giant bomb
We have dan reichert who when adobe tells him i'm gonna use ai to fix this for you he's smart enough to say no
But square enix they don't have a dan reichert they don't have someone who'll say no i will not use the generative ai bond that's
The problem with Square Enix
That's the problem
Yeah that almost gosh
As you say that now I'm like that's almost certainly what happened here and like now they're like maybe even Square Enix is confused at this point about what happened
I don't know
There is a separation there.
I can tell.
I don't know personally anyone at either branch, but I feel like there's a separation between Square Enix in Japan and like the Western representatives.
So maybe there's like a breakdown in communication.
Show me the procreate files show us the files show us the time lapse come on also going back to places and discs there was an earnings call and they were finally asked about the whole hey
You still going to do that?
They acknowledge the backlash, and they're like, yeah, we're still going to do that, actually.
Sony's offering profit rose 40% during its first quarter, helped by gaming and image sensors.
It increased its full operating profits forecast by 8%.
Sony sold 1.6 million PlayStation 5 systems during the quarter, down roughly one third year over year.
But gaming profitability remained strong.
During the discussion, CFO Lentau acknowledged the opposition to Sony's plan to stop manufacturing discs for new PlayStation releases beginning in January 2028, but said the company would cautiously move forward.
What the fuck does that mean?
Yeah, around 80% of Sony's full game sales were already digital during fiscal 2020.
It means that they're going to continue to shut the fuck up about it for the most part, I assume.
Yeah, that's right.
Yep.
Grubbs says here,
Lin Tao is the person who said in an earnings call a few quarters back that PlayStation's plan is to minimize the impact of rising memory costs by focusing on monetizing the install base and growing software and network services revenue.
You already see that strategy in fact, because again,
Console sales were down like a third, but the profitability was still there because, again, it's all about kind of squeezing that very dedicated consumer base.
Eventually, stones do run out of water would be my cautionary tale there.
Stones run out of water?
You have to explain this to Dan.
Jane, you were also confused.
I'm also confused.
You never heard the phrase.
You heard like squeezing water out of a stone.
Blood from a stone.
It has to be blood.
I've never heard water before.
It's blood.
It's okay.
I got my idioms mixed up.
I'm sorry, everybody, but you get the point, right?
There's only so much juice to squeeze.
I mean, water is the biblical idiom.
It was in a Mickey Mouse short one time.
He had to squeeze water from a stone.
He had the stone cold shirt with the blood and it says blood from a stone.
You should know that.
That'd be so crazy if blood came out of stones.
It'd be cool.
I would be diving into rocks right now with how much blood I need.
There is actually probably some water in stones.
There's no blood in them, so I feel like mine's better.
You're not looking hard enough.
A little bit of water in all sorts of things.
This reeks of sorry you got mad.
Like, sorry, not sorry.
Anytime a CEO, CFO, whoever, like, comes out and says, well, you know, you have to understand that things are progressing and this is the future.
It's just like looking down on the rest of us, belittling us, like...
All right all right
You idiots getting mad over there shut up
We're doing this either way and we're just gonna like write you off
That that's all this reeks of
Yeah um it's it's funny
I there was like a the wolverine trailer for an update trailer teaser that came out and then i was like
Scrolled down looked at the comments and everyone is talking about discs
Yep it's it's crazy i you know
The problem is i wonder if people will stick to their convictions stick to their guns on like either doing a soft boycott or only buying the game on on disc or whatever
I don't know
Tragically I don't think it'll move the needle at all
I think the reason though that this is so popular because it is so unpopular right like there's not anyone who I mean
There are a few fringe weirdos who are like you know embracing and ushering in the death of physical media with open arms right like for the most part
People are generally in agreement
They're like this is a net negative right right and and and very uh
Infrequently is there some sort of uh topic that like the majority of people can get behind together and all root against the same sort of thing
Tragically, because they're taking something away from us.
Anytime you take something away from people that doesn't need to be taken away, they could have just let physical media peter out like it is in all the other aspects.
Yeah.
Or even become niche.
CDs are still produced.
There's still millions of CDs on market every year.
They're a small market.
Yeah, vinyl's coming back.
Is it really just like, because then they have to have a disk drive and they don't want to even make an optional disk drive, right?
Like we have right now.
They don't even want to do that anymore.
Because then they would have to still produce them.
And it's ownership.
It's just coming in.
It's ownership.
That's I realized we just got finished talking about a story that rubs against it, but yeah, it's, it's, it's the, the thing everyone needs to be more upset about is the ownership part of it all.
Right.
And not the thing that like, I can't hold this in my hands.
It's the ownership when it boils down to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, that is it for the news.
Thanks again to Jeff Grubb for putting that together for us, handing the show back over to you, Jan.
Even though I'm not your co-captain, it's okay.
I'm not mad.
I'll allow it.
You're the bad boy.
You're the Cleveland streamer.
Yeah, I know.
Well, it's okay.
We'll talk about it during this quick break.
And we'll be back with some emails and some YouTube super chats if we got them.
We'll see you right after this.
These are the emails for the show emails bombcast at giantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails
You can write in about any and everything, and we will do our best to read all of them.
Once again, I say this every week.
I haven't been able to say this for the past couple weeks, but thank you for sending your emails in.
You send them in about various miscellaneous things about the website, and I do appreciate them.
We are flooded not just with spam emails, but with actual shoot emails.
First email comes from Nathan from Osceola, Wisconsin, and this is to Dan.
Dan, it was a little surreal seeing you hanging out around my hometown while you were camping with Minmax.
If you're ever in the area again, I highly recommend checking out the Wisconsin side of Interstate Park in St. Croix Falls.
It's incredible.
Anyway, gang, do you have any must-visit state or national park recommendations or hikes around while they still exist?
Long time, first time.
Nathan, Osceola, Wisconsin.
Yeah, gosh, I haven't been able to make it to many of the big ones, so kind of all of them.
I want to go see the Badlands, like the Tetons, things like that.
Yeah, right, definitely that's high up there.
Even just like Yosemite, things like that.
I haven't really been able to do much.
Went to Zion in Utah a couple years ago, and that was beautiful.
And also Bryce Canyon is near there.
That's awesome.
Very nice.
If you live in California or near Yosemite, you have to just make it out over there.
I know that it's just very busy now, tourist-wise, and people clamoring to go there, but...
It lives up to it.
It's fucking gorgeous.
It makes you think about the scale and your place in the world.
It's beautiful.
Also, fun gift shop.
Oh, I'm there for the gift shop, baby.
I'm assuming some of it is park, and forgive me if it's not, but Hawaii is a place that I just think really should be experienced by everyone.
I know it's tough to get there, and it's not the most accessible.
But it's incredible.
It basically represents every biome imaginable on Earth.
You can see everything from desert to rainforest to snow-capped mountains.
It is...
Amazing.
And the volcanic situation there is mind blowing.
It is incredibly young island in terms of the age of our planet set of islands rather.
And that stuff is nuts.
And you start to find out like, oh, Hawaii is getting way bigger.
It's on its way.
It's going to be even bigger and bigger and bigger.
Stick around a couple tens of thousands of years, man.
There's going to be a brand new island that we'll have to name.
So that's very exciting.
Will you go there on your boat?
Oh, yeah.
It is a long flight.
I'd rather take your boat.
I would imagine if we did that.
It's tough.
Oh, maybe the San Diego one.
Oh.
I mean, who's to say?
Both coast boats.
You won't let me drive your car, but can I drive your boat?
There's no roundabouts on the ocean.
Yeah, you ain't crashing into anything on the water.
No one's ever gotten in a boat crash.
Yeah, I mean, not in the vastness of the Pacific.
Right.
But, yeah.
And then I would also, like, and then on the East Coast, like, I don't, again, I don't know if it's parks.
Cape Cod's amazing.
All that up there.
The potato chips.
Yes, exactly.
Only the potato chips.
Okay.
Yeah.
I don't know if these are parks.
Sorry.
No, I also agree.
Go out and appreciate nature while we still have it.
Hawaii is definitely one of those places.
Also, in Hawaii, spend ethically and responsibly.
Go to a hotel because the locals will work at a hotel and all the Airbnbs, Vurbos, whatever the fuck else have you, have been bought by out-of-towners.
Oh.
So so i when i went to um the big island for my honeymoon we did maui in the big island uh
This was right as Airbnb and all that stuff was starting to pop off.
And the place we rented was definitely not some private equity coming in.
Sure.
That had not come into vogue just yet.
And it was like...
It was real rustic.
Like this was like someone's like palm tree house that was off their, uh, you know, a larger home and it was like frog infested and it was really, it was, it was beautiful cause it was Hawaii and there's nothing bad about that.
But yeah, that was at the beginning of all that.
That was, that was crazy.
Yeah the long flight for you geez oh yeah geez do you have a layover somewhere bacalar when you actually not so bad
I think we did arizona i think we did phoenix as the layover um and then coming home i think we did it in one shot
Okay it's not the worst yeah
Yeah.
And in Hawaii, you can send it brother instead of send it brother.
I've been meaning to go there.
I really like we typically do Aruba if we want to do like an island vacation because of the flights and everything.
I heard great things about Hawaii.
It's not even in the same category, for sure.
Multiple different islands, too, Dan.
You can pick your poison in terms of do you want something more touristy and not industrial, but city-like, or do you want something more nature-focused and heavy?
Also, you can see big turtles on the beach.
It's just fucking amazing.
It's sick.
Yes.
Also, oh, God.
Just thinking about Loco Moco now.
I just want to go ballistic, but I'll resist.
Next email comes from Mike from Loveland.
Both work five days a week, and because they don't have a union, the shifts are long enough to accommodate your lifestyle.
Both have incredible British accents.
Both are world-class professionals.
The driver has whatever car you want them to drive.
The chef has every cooking gadget and can get any ingredient.
This is such a fucking easy question.
Sorry, keep going.
Once a year the chef is going to poison a meal they make only for you.
You will get 24 hours of explosive diarrhea.
Once a year the driver will purposely make you miss a flight or appointment.
Why?
One more thing.
One more caveat.
The driver has a good sense of humor and will choose a moment to completely mess your day up with up that you will someday be able to laugh about.
The chef has no sense of humor and always poisons you on a completely random.
Why are we trying to stack the deck against the chef?
Because I'm like, wait, no, the chef is the answer.
Mike from Loveland I'm sorry but like you're fucking the hypotheticals here are so dumb like why is this part of the fucking exercise you get poisoned what are we doing
But also, 24 hours of diarrhea, that's not that bad a poison.
It's not great, but it's not bad.
Driving is like at the end of the day it's just you fucking dry
Like I can't cook the way I want to fucking cook
Right like yeah I eat several times a day
I need to go somewhere like every once in a while like I'm definitely doing the thing I do every day but would you be incentivized to go more places with a driver
I mean, I go places as much as I want to.
It's just not nearly as often as I eat.
Right.
Yeah.
Eating is so much more crucial and enjoyable.
And you're talking to someone who really loves driving.
Mike has got the poker chips.
What's up?
I'm on team chef.
I'm sorry.
These are my little fidget poker chips.
I get it.
I would like to hear from team driver.
Why?
Sean, you first.
There's two things here.
One, you need to pay for gas slash food.
Dog, first of all, if I'm not going that many places, I'll gladly pay for like a tank of gas here and there.
I'm not...
You know, if the chef is making all of my food or most of my food because I want to utilize the chef, I ain't paying for all that.
Are you kidding me?
I'm forking out like a thousand dollars additional in groceries every month.
Screw that.
But also seven and eight.
Getting 24 hours of explosive diarrhea versus I miss a flight that I can rebook for a few hours later.
Absolutely, I miss a flight.
It's the worst drawback.
What if you miss saying goodbye to your great-grandmother?
I get 24 hours of diarrhea like 30 to 50 times a year probably.
Wait, 24 hours then?
That's a user error at that point.
That's a you problem.
You were saying you have a month or more of diarrhea every year.
It's not that far off.
What do you mean
Okay hang on hang on guys
You remember that dan started eating vegetables two years ago and that taught him what a good poop is right
Uh no i've dabbled with vegetables throughout my life
I've never liked it
But um if someone go back to the bomb cast where he was very proud of this like
I can't even imagine, I mean, unless you're getting that parasite, I can't even imagine what a full day's worth of diarrhea is.
Usually it's just like, let's say I'm traveling or people are in town or something.
Let's say there's a night where I drink a good amount.
The next day, I'm going to shit my brains out six times.
Get the natty splatties.
Six times?
It's crazy.
My dad always hated this because of how much I just destroyed his bathroom.
I would go back in town.
Yeah, so I'd go back in town.
My dad and I usually go out and drink a lot when I'm in town.
And then he knows the next day, it's like, oh great, he's going to be shitting his brains out every 30 minutes all tomorrow and stink up his bathroom.
We're definitely getting Dan the chef.
And also i can drive
All right i can't cook anything so i'm definitely doing the shift sure
Well i've said there are two evils i think with over there just great
I've said this multiple times where i wish there was someone to drive me home in my car versus like calling an uber because sometimes i don't want to be in an uber
Okay.
And if I could develop a rapport with my driver where he knows like, oh, he's not feeling it today.
No more jokes.
Driving me.
Driving Janny.
I also think like... Mr. Jay-Z.
No.
No.
If you lived in Manhattan or LA, you want a driver, right?
Because it's not the best driving around in those cities.
Sure.
I just can't even like to be able to like enjoy top quality chef cooking three meals a day.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
You are really going to have to come over the top.
Yeah.
For like a thousand dollars a week.
No.
No, Sean, that's the point.
Chefs can turn a relatively affordable grocery shopping into masterpieces.
Find a cookbook, man.
Come on.
Yeah, that's time.
I don't want to do that shit.
I can use my personal driver to, like, yo, go pick up my parents, all right?
You do this today.
Oh, is that allowed?
We need more.
I got a mom who can't drive, man.
Like, I'll have him drive her around.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Like, hey, you don't got to pick up Dib anymore, right?
Or you can send him away.
He's around the corner.
He's around the freaking corner.
Fucking corner, bud.
What are you talking about?
Driving is just fine.
I don't mind it.
What are you talking about?
I like driving a little.
You know, way more than you drive.
I would get more inebriated if I had a personal driver.
Which is a net negative, number one.
Number two, Jen, I'm surprised.
You, of all people, I realize you are a better chef than the five of us combined.
But like...
Okay.
See, all right.
So even such, I'm surprised that you would want to have that kind of luxury.
No, because then it'd be that thing where you have a friend that kind of imposes their knowledge or their will of like, oh, I know better than you.
So then I'd be very self-conscious in the kitchen of like...
Like, oh, suddenly my knife skills aren't up to par because this professional British chef in my house is saying like, oh, it's not how you julienne carrots, Jan.
It takes the joy of cooking away from Jan you know the criticism sure versus driving where it's like hey maybe you know why my AC doesn't work
Alright.
I'm with you, Backlar.
Chef is the obvious answer.
Chef still wins with the votes.
There's a clean divide between the youngs and the olds.
I love this.
I think Grubb would also pick Chef even though Grubb...
He would.
Because Grubb loves driving.
Yeah, a grub and I like driving the same amount, I want to say.
What's up, Mike?
I got five months till I'm 40.
Can you pretend I'm part of the yugs for just a little bit longer?
Dude, if I consider Chuck one of the olds, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you that.
Chuck is a year older than me.
Mike, you're out of your mind, buddy.
What are you trying to abandon us for?
Look, I'm being forced into your camp soon.
You're fucking 39, dude.
What do you mean?
Mike, do you remember at SGF how we divided the Airbnbs?
Oh, yeah.
That's true.
That is true.
You know what?
Chuck's hanging on my thread there.
Embrace it, Mike.
It's good over here.
Not only that, Mike, you were on the first floor.
That's the most accessible.
It was.
It was really nice.
It was right by the bathroom.
Can't have you going upstairs yeah yeah unless it's a disney day then you're spry as a whippersnapper did you even see the terrace
I went up there one time and I was like, whoo, that was a trip.
Put that down.
Took a nap.
There you go.
Back where it's safe.
I get it.
All right.
This is our new, forget knife versus bat, everyone.
This is car versus cook.
Personal chef versus personal driver.
Uh all right
Um let's see
Let's speed through a couple of these emails
Travis afargo writes in
He writes in five questions
I choose one of them
Travis writes in what would be more devastating the more devastating word to remove from pop music for all time baby or tonight
I think Baby is used a lot more.
Whatever Led Zeppelin song would be gone.
Justin Bieber's whole career would be stalled.
Baby would be more catastrophic.
Yeah.
Britney Spears wouldn't have popped off with Hit Me Baby one more time.
Oh, yeah.
Tonight, what do you lose?
You lose Tonight Tonight twice from the Smasher Pumpkins, yeah.
That Pitbull song, where they go tonight.
Tonight's gonna be a good night.
Tonight's a night.
Let's live it up.
Oh, is that the Black Eyed Peas?
That's the Black Eyed Peas, baby.
Okay, right, right.
Yeah, that's fine.
That's how you learned about Mazel Tov.
I feel like Baby would be more destructive, but maybe it takes away more of the songs that I don't like, so I'm okay with it.
I feel like
Yeah, I just think if you took out tonight, you would wipe out more strays than you anticipated.
And I feel like baby is a safer bet.
Sure.
So if we have to remove...
One i guess we yeah i mean one of my tonight like one of my favorite i i guess this is considered a vocal stim
I just love hearing oh baby i like you raw yes yeah and then i just need the baby part of that
Yes baby will take out more christmas songs because of baby jesus right but the baby jesus ones are the lame ones
Yeah, who wants to preserve that shit?
What do you mean?
Away in a major?
That's nice sometimes.
All right.
I only like Silent Night.
Let's say Babe Jesus.
I don't know.
Let's say Baby in it.
Maybe we're fine.
All right.
We have a recommendation here, a whole list of recommendations from a Mike, not our own Mike or Mike from Loveland.
We'll speed through this here.
Hello, GB.
A while back, someone wrote in with fun Ska album recommendations.
I thought I would complete the fans warp tour experience and assign some pop punk to the crew.
Jam cool
This is my favorite pop punk album of the last 10 years warriors survival pop
Sorry to pin the nervous energy album on you but it's really good trust me bro
Jeff bacalar from one jersey boy to another i'm recommending the latest ash ashbury's own part ashbury parks own teenage halloween
Until you return asbury parks sorry
Yes, I am familiar with Teenage Halloween.
Very good.
Excellent.
Beautiful, beautiful.
Jeff Grubb, sending your way the aesthetically sweet but lyrically bitter debut LP from Pony TV Baby.
It's pretty Daria coded, so I feel like someone your age, same, would appreciate it.
Mike Minotti, you're getting the Mr. T experience.
Revenge is sweet and so are you.
This album helped get me through high school by basically turning everything that stressed me out into a big joke.
I hope you enjoy the silly and clever lyrics.
Will Crosby.
Will has said he didn't know a lot of music while growing up, so I'm sending him one of the most essential albums ever, Jawbreaker, Dear You.
Legendary will just listen to this record right now uh dan reichert appealing to your affinity for classic boomer rock here's the ramones rocket to russia
Okay there we go
Chuck zimmerheld please enjoy this beach boys influence album about the existential horrors of adulthood
Bomb the music industry vacation
It's very good sean mcdowell sending you go go
7188 go go go go probably the most versatile album here drifting into garage surf Anka I've never heard of Anka and all delivered with fun pop punk energy bonus if you have a guest today
That album title sounds like Fall Out Boy or Panic at the Disco, so maybe I'll go check that out.
Bonus, if you have a guest today, they can have Antarctic Go Vespucci, Love in the Time of Email, which I can only describe as extremely neurotic romanticism.
Some people may say, hey, that isn't pop punk.
That's power pop or college rock.
To that I say, it's just an email.
You should really just relax.
XO, Mike.
Wow.
Thank you, Mike, for the recommendations.
I'm going to go add this survival pop, the Warriors.
Backler, you approve of most of these?
Yeah i i gotta admit i probably haven't heard of at least half of them but uh uh definitely bomb the music industry
You know what i'm going to listen to mine i'm going to listen to revenge you swede so are you
By the mr t experience very good band
There you go.
Yeah, it's a very good name for a band.
Oh, Backlore.
I think you'd really like, hold on, let me double check that I got their name right.
The Paradox.
I think you'd really like The Paradox.
Pop punk band.
Okay, I will check them out.
Yeah.
All right.
Last email of the show comes from Bevan, a.k.a.
Humble Bees.
Hey, GB and friends.
Just wanted to say that last Friday I was out pre-gaming with some friends at a bar for a drum and bass show.
And in the midst of drinking and smoking the good stuff, if you know, you know.
I saw Mike Minotti walking by wearing a gnome cap.
Super surreal.
Couldn't stop myself from walking up and asking if it was him.
And it was.
And he was with Mary Kish and Chuck, too.
Thank you for being kind and gracious to my faded self.
I hope I didn't bother y'all too much or do anything too weird.
And in hindsight, I definitely fanboyed a bit.
I'll see you next time.
But even the few minutes was great vibes, and I'll do my best to make the next PNW meetup work.
Also, it was fun to say, I know these guys from the internet, my friends.
Also if gb people don't know the genre of drum and bass in the new james bond game when bond infiltrates that club that's drum and bass
The two djs are actually modeled off of two actual famous drum and bass djs named chase and status who made music specifically for that scene cool
Though our show was a little dance your style of D&B from a DJ called Dimension.
Also a UK guy.
Cheers, Bevan.
P.S.
For real, if you want to go to a PDX EDM show, I got you.
I guess we got to go, guys.
I guess we got to go.
Yeah.
Jay, did we ever get a missed connection?
A follow-up from the person I thought I saw at the Stavi stand-up show?
Mike got a bunch of missed connections in Portland.
That's very good, Dan.
Very, very good.
Nice.
But seriously.
No Stavi misconnections, but someone saying, hey, please check my voicemail when I called from prison.
Oh, I don't know why those are connected, but oh.
Okay, that's exciting.
I loved when this fella came up to me because I was already really happy because I had ingratiated myself with the gnomes and became one of them.
And right after that, the person was like, are you Mike Minotti?
And we know, I love being recognized.
So yeah, it was a great...
Two minute period for me I was very happy has this happened with your family Mike
Uh yeah yeah the best was on my disney cruise when i was at the disney trivia thing with my dad where a guy came up
It was like i really liked it
I was from my dad because like my dad doesn't really understand what i do right it's kind of it's confusing and weird
I get it but like yeah that seemed very impressive my dad that this person knew who i was and seemed excited
To see me.
Now he took it too far.
And then like, as soon as we were in the monorail, like an actual Disney world, it's some guy in the monorail just said, I like video games.
My dad's like, you know, my son then,
I was like no not that much dad not that much when you say your dad doesn't understand what you do does your dad still tell his friends that your son writes for CNET
No it's not quite that it's like i don't know if he remembers the name giant bomb wow it could be hard it could be hard sometimes my dad will just say like the bomb thing which is really cool
Uh i i just get my mom a shirt and i make her wear a giant bomb shirt and it's just funny to me
Hell yeah that's good that's nice by the way i got a confirmation from jeff grubb
He he did say i hate cooking and love driving so chef so oh yeah all right there we go right
Uh will chuck i i need y'all to chime in i i need to see where the rest of us land on this
Is it a dry split from a
Team old and team yeah a gallon of gas for my boat uh car on that you use gas on a boat
You certainly do is what i'm told coal right titanic use coal coal yes a hundred years ago that oh will
Will his team driver
Because his wife is a chef.
Isn't Will married to a chef person?
We don't have to worry about that.
I don't want to assume what Karen does.
I'm pretty sure she's an immaculate chef.
Come on.
Is that why he was stressed out about going to the grocery store?
Oh.
Maybe there's trauma there.
I don't know.
His standards aren't up to hers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that is all household is all chef, right?
That household was me, Bacalar, Minotti, and Grubb, right?
And we're all chef?
Yeah.
We're all chef.
We need to hear from Chef now.
That's...
You know, all that means is that the young people haven't ever had a good meal.
That's like the only thing I can understand.
So then you're like, oh, this is disposable.
I don't need to have this all the time every day.
You guys are crazy.
What if we threw a private masseuse into the mix?
Oh, okay.
Is it also a physical therapist?
Because physical therapy, I got all sorts of issues and I don't like driving to the physical therapy place several times a week.
So if they're just in-house, I'm going that.
I think, I believe half of what, and I also think like young people are like scared of driving for some reason.
I'm not scared of driving.
I know you're not.
And you're also not young, Jen.
I am.
He's on team young.
I'm still on the other side of 35.
All right.
You're on the right side of 35.
That's for sure.
But also, I don't know, man.
I want to say in a couple of years, you might change your tune.
No, no.
I think I'd want to be more relaxed.
Also, I think I'd be too concerned with what my personal chef is doing in the meantime, right?
Like, what are they doing in between shifts versus a driver who I'm assuming is constantly reading a newspaper?
Sure all right of course
Yeah to be clear the chef sounds fantastic just like the
The stipulations on there i i'm not down with
Yeah i mean again we can all agree like six seven eight nine on the list are stupid and we should just throw those away because it's really just about chef versus driver
I would probably swing towards the chef side of things then, yeah.
Honestly, if I didn't get diarrhea for a whole day once a year.
Everyone's too afraid to change things, at least.
No, well, Dan, I mean, you're like best friends with it, apparently.
You're the guy.
Who wastes an entire roll of toilet paper every time you have to wipe your ass because you're so afraid of touching your own shit.
Why do you think I have three bidets?
God.
I think that makes it worse.
I'm saying I'm not going through a roll of toilet paper because I'm smart.
I got three trashies.
Why would I ever mad at you?
Why?
Because you waste toilet paper.
So I don't waste toilet paper.
What the fuck are you talking about?
When you're traveling, you do.
Yeah, I bet you do.
I do?
Yeah, excuse the whole world toilet paper.
You took one shit.
An entire roll?
You're a one roll per shit guy?
That's incredible.
No, I've never got through a whole roll with one shit.
Close, maybe, but... Close?
We just got a new Toto
All in one that is like the most
It's actually confusing how fancy this bidet is but it's like I can't wait for you to try it
I can't wait
I do miss the
That's like the worst thing about traveling is I do miss the bidet
Because your butt lingers for it, right?
It's like...
It lingers?
It longs for it.
Sorry.
After you bidet, you just sit there for a while before you wipe.
No, you're right.
Your butt longs for your bidet.
It reaches out into the air for it.
We've got one non-bidet toilet here and I just don't even want to look at it.
Yeah, you might as well throw it away.
Might as well throw it away.
That's a pee-pee one then, I guess.
All right, that does it for emails.
Bombcastatgiantbomb.com is the email address in your emails too.
You can write in about any and everything, I guess.
So yeah, we'll read those next week on the Bombcast.
Mr. Minotti, do we have any YouTube Super Chats?
Yes we do
First up from amy winehouse of leaves who says after one and a half years at work i finally got my own root and of course it's root 69 nice
Now everything with my name on it has the 69 at the end
Now hashtag nice there you go
Very happy for you amy winehouse of leaves nice uh
Makes he says jeff backler we would like more giant back rooms please uh is does that mean like the stream we did with loose is that right i think so i think okay you got it let's do it baby
Stu says, Duders, my lovely pregnant wife is turning 40 this month.
Please could you all wish Mags in Scotland a very happy birthday?
Cheers.
Happy birthday, Mags in Scotland.
Happy birthday, Mags.
Congratulations.
Thank you for turning 40 slightly before me.
It makes me feel better.
It's all about you, Mike.
That's it.
Migsy says, hey, Jeff Bacalar got Peter's B&W cube.
Do you have any idea what that means?
Oh, the cube.
What?
The Shudite.
Oh, your magic crystal.
Why is it Peter's?
What?
Who's Peter?
Wait, what kind of cube?
Peter?
Peter's B&W, black and white.
B&W?
I don't know what that means.
It just looks black to me.
Yeah, it's just black.
Bobby Porn says, you think Durf lost his butt keys on that boat?
Yes.
Maybe it's in the ignition.
Boats have an ignition?
They do.
So I'm told.
No comment.
Uh, makes, he says, Jan, the dude abides.
It's not looking like the dude.
He's looking like a character from the office.
Well, yeah.
Oh, wow.
Damn.
Well, I know, but like I bought a box or I bought 30 ties off eBay for 10 bucks.
I have to wear all of them now.
What kind of situation did you find yourself in where you're like, this is what I'm buying right now.
I don't get it.
I was thinking about ties and then I thought eBay has a bunch of fun stuff in bulk.
So I bought a bunch of ties.
Is this like the time you bought like a hundred bucks worth of like camera parts or something?
No, I almost did that.
And then I almost bought 10 pounds of watches.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
Hey a deal's a deal i get it i want to show i want to show you all my favorite tie that hold on mike
Okay go get it go get it buddy was chan just poking and scratching his face with a butterfly knife
What did i just witness is that the knife what no that's not the jive the jive can't hurt you
No true i use the jive almost daily look at this shit look it got wolves on it
Oh, my God.
That's a pretty cool tie.
I like that.
Yeah, it's very outdoorsy.
That's cool.
Big Z also says, no Amazon exclusive ghost in the show for you all.
Yeah.
People like the new ghost in the show.
I don't know.
People like that a lot.
Is that Amazon only?
I didn't realize it was Amazon, though.
It had an Amazon joint.
That's interesting.
I thought Sony owned all the anime.
Close.
Simon from Saskatchewan says, did you guys play Steel Battalion 1 and 2 with the intense 40 button, two joystick, three pedal controller?
Give up the great work.
Really great big walk video.
Thank you, Simon.
I played a little bit of it back in the day.
You were ready.
You had a setup.
I don't know if you committed.
I think we tried it.
I think we did it during Extra Life.
We did Extra Life a couple years ago.
We just kept falling over and getting blown up.
I think one thing on it doesn't work.
Maybe no we just no we sucked
It's hard to tell yeah there was there was like a major component of it like aiming or something that we didn't understand and so we just kept dying
Hmm uh let's see here now
Then uh makes he says uh jeff bacalar can mike minotti forego his super chat as a business expense
What no
No, I got to be responsible with these things.
I understand.
Yes.
It says Turbo Deshawn.
Any thoughts on the new HB choice?
I assume that's Humble Bundle choice.
I don't know if you've seen that.
Is there something good in it?
Let's see.
Yeah, this is their Buffy subscription thing, right?
Yeah, like a dragon, infinite wealth, dead cells, turtle shredders, revenge.
Seems good.
Good bunch.
Seems alright.
This one's from Jim Around Sound.
Shout out to Dark Horse Workers United for their first rally yesterday and showing up for their colleagues.
I assume that's Dark Horse Comics?
Yes.
There you go.
Good job.
Keep it up, everybody.
Uh zacy zacy says random question gba or snes link to the past pppp oh absolutely snes original
The gba one does some interesting ones where you can like cut down bushes with the boomerang and stuff
Uh huge uh recommendation there is a fan made
Version for the thor that came out recently and you can pick
There's all sorts of these little tweaks you can choose like to turn on or off all the gba stuff but it's got a persistent map overworld and dungeon depending on where you're at on the bottom screen and then they widescreened uh length of the past up top
So if you look up ayn thor it's like length of the past
I think they call it like zelda 3 or something like that
Um really really cool
And you can like add different things.
So it's like, oh, instead of just the one item thing for the boomerang, you have the boomerang and the bow and arrow equip things like that.
It's.
Oh, yeah, because I think a link to the past got decompilation.
So that would explain how they did that.
OK. Yeah, it's very fucking cool.
Neat he makes he says i'll jet back or back to the cube that that was referring to the peter mollis the cube game
Oh curiosity cube peter oh god yeah you're doing peter griffin people are doing
You know i'm doing lois griffin please
Oh, man.
Look, you just can't say Peter and then, like, expect us to get the Peter Molyneux from that, all right?
Man.
Man.
He's probably the Peter I think of the most.
Wait, okay.
Who's the Peter you think about the most?
Uh probably griffin i'm afraid to say unfortunately yeah you don't think of pan first
I know i'm sorry if you say peter i'm gonna immediately hear love like peter right
Yeah it's stuck it's an institution okay and then last year's brain be proud of it
Zombie porn says
Also congrats on sean for another written review on the site
Right five reviews of september
Young people don't need sleep
Yeah we actually had a little meeting to kind of like try to figure out like all right who's gonna probably do what game here
Yeah it's like yeah getting things set up
There's a lot of games coming out the next couple of months, and we like doing reviews, so you'll probably see another one from me, because we are spraying things around a little bit.
Hell month is coming.
Hell month is happening.
Migsie snuck in here and said, great teacher, Ochoa.
There you go.
You look a little bit like a science teacher in high school.
It's a very specific anime.
No, he does look like the main character of Great Teacher or something.
Oh, that's a very specific thing.
Someone show me a picture.
What would you want your students to call you?
Mr. Ochoa or Mr. O?
How's this going to work?
Mr. Ochoa.
Say my whole fucking name.
Of course.
Protostar Janet Ochoa.
On fair treatment, that's all.
Did you guys hear that?
Did you guys have a teacher in your high school?
It was like cool with a nickname.
Yeah.
And we'll just call him that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had one Rico.
We all just called him Rico instead of Mr. Whatever.
Oh, well, I don't think it's because he was a really white guy who taught Spanish one year poorly and then never again.
Everyone called him Rico.
Alright, is that it for Super Chats, Mikey?
That's it.
Thank you so much, everybody.
Okay, before I get to what else is happening in the rest of the week, I need to get this insane thought out of my head.
I watched The Odyssey as well.
Fantastic movie.
Enjoyed it a lot.
Afterwards, I was just thinking, that was like a long Family Guy episode with all the cutaways.
Wow.
Jesus Christ.
All right, folks.
We've got a packed and stacked week ahead of us.
Another episode of Super Shark is dropping later today.
Day folks
If you have missed nine lives or not caught up in nine lives I highly suggest you go check out this last episode that will lovingly crafted together insane edits
That man go crazy behind the ones and twos as well
Game this morning's popping off Wednesday
Thursday Friday grubs not here to confirm
But he's also not here to confirm.
And it's going to happen anyway.
Grubber Dillo coming back tomorrow.
Guys, Jesus Christ.
What is this game?
What's happening?
God, he's in a whole...
Is he still in the dog asshole zone?
Is that what he's up to right now?
Oh, he might be mid-dog asshole.
He's done with P-Land.
Yeah, he finished P-Land.
Yeah, he might be deep in the dog asshole right now.
You're not inside a dog's butt.
Well, maybe sometimes.
No, the dog asshole zone.
No, you're collecting the buttholes, right?
You're collecting the buttholes, but there's also pictures of buttholes.
It's just the whole theme of the world is dog anus.
Oh, this is so great!
I don't like it!
Oh, okay.
Voicemail dub truck popping off on Thursday.
And then on Friday, I have the time...
He's crying.
I have the time wrong here on the schedule, but...
Almost after Game Miss Mornings, perhaps right after or an hour after, we are going on the big, big walk where we're going to have a longer stream playing through Big Walk.
Might have another person join us perhaps partway through.
We will see.
Might have some pop-ins.
Might have some pop-ins.
Might have some walk-ins.
Might have some hop-ons.
Beast of Reincarnation review out on the website now.
Sean wrote that up.
There's also a quick look for your viewing pleasure.
There is a pathogenic quick look also on the website and the YouTube premium people.
We mentioned it at the tippy top.
But if you like the big walk quick look and you just want to view someone's own solo dolo adventures, that is also available for you over there.
Gang, did I miss anything else?
I don't think so.
You got it, Jan. Ooh.
Actually, last UPF, we did play Machine Party.
Very, very good party game.
Very good party game.
Yeah.
Dan, you missed it.
It's more of a Fusion Frenzy style.
They don't even have the board.
It's just the games.
Oh.
Okay well i'll accept it
Yeah yeah it's fun
It's fun uh maybe add an extra life should uh i would like to
I would like to try it out
Yes yeah yeah i've just been
Uh if i've been off stuff a little bit lately it's because i've just been working on editing this travelogue
But hopefully uh maybe you know in the near future next week or two that'll be ready to post
Lovely.
Lovely.
Also, catch me if you dare to.
Don't worry, folks.
As I'm getting back up to 100 percent, taking a look at all that footy and it feels like a fever dream.
Yeah, I bet there's a lot of stuff I forgot about that happened there.
Yeah, Dan, I was not to spoil anything.
I don't want to spoil anything.
But I was looking at the footage that when I handed you the camera on this little guy.
While I was taking a little trip.
Yes, while you were taking a little trip, I was like, yeah, right.
Yeah, that happened, huh?
Yep.
Yep.
How's the audio?
Can you hear what we're talking about?
It was good.
It was good.
Okay, good.
All right.
Deep conversation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also, one of my favorite things that we have put out on the website,
Uh recently is chuck and sean diving into the sega saturn and uh showing you folks how to get into the guts of that
Uh very cool go go check that one out i think we want to do more stuff like that
Um you know grubs mentioned uh me and him and maybe chuck or someone else uh building uh diy steam machine
Uh steam os is out
There for anyone to use on AMD parts.
So yeah, Chuck had that idea.
I think it was a really good idea of people always tell you, you know, use your own legally acquired backups when you're emulating, but nobody ever actually tells you how to do that because...
You know, in part because maybe they assume you'll do something else, but maybe they want someone else to be the people who give you that guide.
And we did do that guide for the Saturn.
Chuck set that all up and that was a fun time.
So definitely go back and check that one out.
Yes, yes, 100%.
Thank you, folks, for joining us for the Giant Bombcast.
That about does it for the show.
He's been Sean.
He's been Mike.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Dan.
I've been Jan. Shouts out to Jeff Grubb.
Shouts out to Chuck Zimmerhell.
Shouts out to Will Crosby.
Shouts out to you at home.
We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bombcast.
Until then, goodbye.
Goodbye.
Oh, so great to be back.
Thank you.
Love you.
Shouts out to little kitties, too.
