Hell is Us, Silent Hill f, CloverPit | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you. hello friends and welcome to episode 247 you're in podcast heaven here at the no clip podcast it's a crew cast the whole crew is here frank you got a little coffee action going on there what you what you've been brewing uh god it's like the little coffee k pods i don't know what the hell they're called k-pop k-pod demon hunter yeah k-pod k-pods it's the thing you put in your machine the environment gets worse but i get a little bit of caffeine it helps me wake up because i've set my alarm like five minutes before but i'm here and i'm ingesting caffeine and warmth and the love of my friends and fellow crew cast mates nice very well said yeah we come in with different energies jesse's obviously it's he's on the east coast so he's been up a while jeremy's also on east coast but he runs sort of vampiric hours so he's actually still sleeping while he's recording this not at all that's how good he is he just he draws eyelids on the eyeballs on the outside of his eyelids I've usually been up since the ungodly time of 630 Pacific because I record a different podcast this morning as well.

So I'm also enjoying the beauty of ruining the planet by funding corporations like Starbucks.

Do you know how many houses you could own if you didn't buy that?

If I didn't buy a Starbucks?

Yeah.

In California?

Not many.

At least one.

That's what I've been told.

I don't know.

Maybe you can own a – Maybe a condo.

Like a plot of land that used to have nuclear waste on it.

Maybe I could get some of that.

There's a lot of land in California that used to have cannabis growers on it that is just absolutely trashed and covered in garbage and plastic barrels and water detritus.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow, that's incredible.

Some of the only cheap land in California.

And it comes pre-baked, as it were.

Yeah, if you want to move into a place that has all of the reputation and paraphernalia, you need to become an illicit cannabis grower.

I mean, you could just buy an AK-47 and roll about, humble on like an ATV.

Nice.

Yeah, this sounds like Schedule 1.

Yes, this is the more rural version.

All over again.

Yeah, it's good stuff.

How are you doing, Jeremy?

I see you've been stocking up on water.

Yeah, I've had a few comments.

I've had some social media posts be like, what's up with all the waters?

Something we should know about.

I just drink a lot of water.

The way my brain works is if the water is far away from me at any given moment, I can justify oh yeah, like in 15 minutes.

I'm thirsty now in like 15 minutes, I'll go get some water.

If it's right here, I will be the most hydrated man in America.

That's what he's aiming for, folks.

Make sure you go to www.mosthydratedmaninamerica.com.

That's a charity to fund waters.

Jeremy's journey.

He's been waking up 16 times a night needing to go to the bathroom.

But by God, this man will never dry out.

Jesse Gratia, what's the driest you've been in your life?

Oh, probably when I was in the Dominican Republic as a child.

And we were on the beach.

I drank some of the water that you're not supposed to drink.

And, uh, I couldn't drink water for a couple of days.

I was just, apparently I was just in bed, just, just on an IV, very dry, dry little kid.

Dry V. That's coming out of coming out of everywhere.

I suspect I've had, I'm, I'm quite sick here.

I'm not quite sick.

I'm tired is what I am.

That's not. what sickness is, because my kiddo was sick over the weekend.

So there was a lot of like random just waking up with night terrors because she has a fever and being like what the fuck?

Why are you screaming?

She woke up at one stage and was like, the world.

I feel so relatable.

I was like, wow, she's seven.

She's already figured that one out.

She's doom scrolling her mind.

Exactly, her mind.

Absolutely, yeah.

Well, that's why we are here, folks, so you can listen to us and pretend that everything's okay.

We're all pals here, pals in your ears.

Don't worry about it.

We're going to tell you about something else you can use to blot out the world.

Video games.

Video juegos.

They're here to transport you into interesting, exciting worlds where you don't have to worry about medical debt or impending fascism.

Unless you're playing World of Wolfenstein, I was about to say.

The MMO, the secret MMO you just leaked.

Man, that might be fun.

Are we living in the world of Wolfenstein?

Is that where we are right now?

Basically.

Now I want to do a podcast episode where we try and figure out what the best single-player game to turn into an MMO would be.

Maybe that's what we should do this month.

We did do Warcraft.

Speaking of World of, we did do the Warcraft...

2016 movie directed by Duncan Jones.

So if you're a Noclip patron, you can go listen to this.

Listen to that, rather.

Much like these people who are probably listening to it right now.

Our incredible Battle Pass holders Lovepreet Yutt, Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me Ferrario.

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Quote Tucker Morgan, David McGarry Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez John Akers, Ewan Nate, Tim Robinson, Forrest Pruitt, dark insanities.

I think that's what my daughter had when she woke up at night time.

Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Fatui, Enochs Cameron Laird, Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sakotas, Jacob Godserve Entheogen, James Med Tohir, Tilihev and Rison.

Thank you all so much for supporting our work over at patreon.com slash noclip.

And thank you to all of our month one noclip two supporters.

We are so grateful to all of you.

We definitely need to build more patronage over there to keep that thing healthy.

But we are super grateful to everyone who has taken a jump with us over on noclip2 and uh, people seem to be enjoying the stuff that's going up there and i spilled starbucks coffee all over myself so yeah yeah, we got that.

The whole room smells of pumpkin spice.

Now this is good stuff.

Um okay, who wants to take over?

Who wants to?

While i dry this uh, while I drive this small battery and everything, I don't see how bad it looks.

Look how bad it is.

Oh no.

It's like most of it.

Um, worst case scenario.

I, uh, yeah.

Okay.

Give me, you guys talk among yourselves for a minute.

Well, Frank, you're drinking a Keurig pod.

Did you, is it a Folgers one or did you just get, we just go, whatever's at Costco.

So whatever, like whatever the D it's not Kirkland, but it's whatever the default thing is.

I think I just get the Hawaii flavor.

I put cream in it and sugar, but yeah, like I said, I, I said we record at 10 a.m.

I set my alarm for like 920.

I always snooze it.

And then I have a second one at 950.

So I dash to get coffee.

But that's why I'm always so like tired and not talking about the podcast.

I'm still waking up last night.

I was as I was going to bed.

I was like oh, this is why I was so miserable in school is I would wake up and they would just throw you in front of a classroom.

You have to learn about, like the gulf war or something, and it's like i don't.

I'm still like a, trying like mad about not getting loot and dead mines last night yeah, and then b, i don't know, but it's like it takes me so long to wake up and so i'm always.

That's why i'm always just like oh, i feel like molasses, i feel so bad.

Do you think you would have had an easier time with algebra if you were allowed to do math like eight hours later in the day?

No, that's why when I did college, I never had a class like before 1 p.m.

Oh, that was good.

It was like I graduated magna cum laude or whatever it's called.

Like I had like straight A's 40 in college because yeah, just set your class in the afternoon when I'm awake.

And I was so happy I wasn't miserable.

Also it was good because if you had homework due, you could wake up at like 8 am, spend four hours doing homework or writing papers, show up to class and it was like – you know, kids just be in night school.

I don't know, but whatever, but i don't know, but yeah, so I don't know.

But it's good to exercise talking and chatting but um yeah, it wakes you up, gets the vocal cords moving.

I think uh for for school.

For me it was like I went for early classes, but I would.

My school was like an hour and a half drive away, or like I had to take the it's called the go bus here uh between Hamilton and uh and Mississauga for school.

And, like you, would go for the morning class, but because of the way they were structured, I'd have one at like nine in the nine in the morning and then one at like two and I'm like I'm not going home.

It's three hours of busing.

I'm not, I'll just stay here and not do homework for three hours in the cafeteria.

That's why I started smoking cigarettes in college is because I would have long blocks of unbroken time to kill.

I had two friends who lived within spitting distance of the college and they didn't mind if I kept an extra PC in their house.

So we just go over and play World of Warcraft.

Dude, that's sick.

You were taking all of Frank's rolls in Deadmines.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm needing on all that shit.

I'm greeting on most of it, too.

There's a Panda Express on my campus at Boston University.

It was the only Panda Express in the area.

There was no Panda Express in northern Massachusetts where I grew up, so suddenly I was like ooh cheap, shitty american chinese food that's actually kind of like weirdly good.

No, i like hard to fuck up chinese food.

Shitty chinese food is still, is still good.

You know what i mean.

That's like a compliment yeah, like it's like a genre of chinese food.

Exactly, it's not.

That's right.

If you're drunk and you're getting pizza, you're like, oh dude, i'm fucking hammered, we should get some shitty pizza.

It's not like the pizza's bad, it's just like a.

You know what i mean.

But apparently there's no bad pizza.

Frank, you set off an entire war in the discord on your comment about there being no bad pizza.

Who was giving out pizza?

Chicago people?

Everyone was, yeah.

They were like, no, there are bad pizzas.

I've had them.

They're in St.

Louis.

People need to hate things to love things.

Yeah, you can't enjoy ice cream without the broccoli or whatever, right?

Yeah, exactly.

That's why you love broccoli.

Speak on that, my brother.

That's what I heard John Green say 14 years ago on a YouTube video and I never forgot it because it sounds dumb as hell.

I love broccoli and I love ice cream.

I can think ice cream is delicious.

Actually, maybe his argument may have been you don't really need the broccoli to appreciate the ice cream.

I think that might have been what it was.

That's the opposite of what I thought he had said.

I'm going to be sticky for this whole podcast.

You usually are.

That's true.

Also, what's really annoying is that the button for start recording is still up on my thing, even though we're recording.

So I'm going to hit the button again and just see what happens.

Let's see.

Maybe they'll stop it.

No, it didn't do anything.

It didn't get rid of the pop-up either.

Continue to start recording.

Yeah.

All right.

God, I'm so sticky.

This is awful.

This is going to be a... Frank's tired.

I'm sticky.

Jeremy's too hydrated.

What are we going to do?

We're going to talk about some video games.

Can I talk about Baby Steps?

Let's do it.

Baby Steps, I played like, I'd barely taken my own Baby Steps into the world of Baby Steps.

I'm literally washing this table now.

When we talked last week, I played maybe an hour.

I don't know how many hours I've played now, but it feels like a lot.

It feels like I've played, I don't know, 10 hours?

Probably not.

Have you guys touched it at all?

I played the beginning again, basically like five minutes after where the demo ended.

I want to play more.

It's just do I want to do that right now to myself?

I think it's the problem I'm having.

I did see some footage of donkey men, though.

Yeah.

Did you see the penises?

I saw blurred footage of it.

Oh, no, no.

You have to opt in at the start.

They ask you do you want to see?

They don't say donkey penises, but they say do you want to see nudity?

Some explicit sexual content.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if I call it explicit.

It's just dongs.

It's just hanging dongs.

For video games.

That's pretty explicit.

Yeah.

I've got farm animals, man.

I see hanging dongs all the time.

I guess they're all, yeah.

You know, anyway.

Um, yeah.

And I grew up in Europe, so, you know, just penises on television.

Guys just walking around.

Yeah.

Euro trash.

Um, yeah.

So I, I adore baby steps.

It's like going to be definitely top 10 games of deer for me.

Um, it is such a special, weird thing.

Uh, it's funny and it's silly and it's like you know it's a bit of a meme game but like design wise and execution and controls, it's absolutely fantastic.

It's like i it's like rock band, where now i am just zen with it.

I have if i don't think about my control, what i'm doing with my hands, with the controllers I'm able to just do things.

I'm like, I know how to touch the analog stick and the triggers when I'm on mud.

I know how I'm supposed to throw my character's weight around and how specific I should be in these areas and where I should worry about falling and the cadence of my walking.

Should I be taking big steps if I'm walking uphill on something that's going to have soil that gives out?

Or should I be taking little steps if I'm running downhill on something that's That's Sandy.

Like there's all these, uh, it's just like, great.

It's this great, great game design language that I've never experienced.

Um, and it's kind of like what I like hope, I think, what I hoped I'd get out of death stranding or something where, like yeah, what you're describing is making me think, cause people were like oh, navigation and death stranding is the hardest part of it.

Like you have to be cognizant of what you're going to step on.

And it sounds like baby steps is doing that to the extreme.

Like.

You have to be thinking about every single step you take and not like oh, this is the snow part.

This is downhill.

Is that, yeah, that's trending is mostly about like the waste, right?

So it's about like how much stuff you have on and the risk reward and, your center of gravity gets higher yeah so then you're like to your point you're yeah you're you're trying to figure out which way to throw your weight and stuff like that but in a way that stranding is and it feels weird comparing it because obviously death stranding has like also loads of other systems and crazy big story beats and all this stuff but um and combat and things but the actual movement in death stranding is is more like you're trying to avoid when the gravity goes wrong like you're trying to avoid being uh losing your step losing your your balance whereas in baby steps you are constantly gaining your balance it's like every time you walk properly is a small victory you know it's a tiny little victory so it feels less like you are trying not to mess up and more that you were trying to achieve good like movement you know what i mean so it just feels more positive in that respect um and so it's really satisfying like like like your character is an absolute doofus he's like the world's biggest loser he doesn't take a help or advice from anyone just because he's socially awkward even when he clearly needs the help and the person is clearly not put out by it whatsoever he's like no i'm okay i got it i've got it you know don't worry about it he's just like like olympically socially awkward such a loser and he's in like a onesie and all this but by like hours and hours into this game i was like really proud of him because he like managed to achieve like getting around all these places like the levels are funny and interesting and zany like it's it's clearly this weird fantastical realism world there's all these donkeys that you party with every night and they're kind of messing with you and you know they're like trying to get you to use your one wish you get one wish when you get to the castle at the end and if you get there he's like shut up you're just saying words now yeah and the donkey is like could you you know do me a favor you get a wish when you go to the castle and one of the donkeys is really trying to convince you to wish for cigarettes because they're out of cigarettes this is now you're just reciting one of your daughter's fever dreams yeah this sounds amazing but this is not the pitch that i thought the game was going to be i thought it was just like quop like third person no the story stuff is brilliant the story yeah wow and it's like and also like you know i am going to basically try and not talk about this as much as possible because um because it goes interesting places but it's like it's There are moments where it is very sincerely heartfelt and you're like, oof, okay.

And there's like real growth between these weird characters that you only meet a couple of times.

Yeah, but the actual process of – so first of all, my wife and daughter love watching me play it.

It's such a weird game to sit down and play.

Do you have the nudie filter on?

No.

Oh yeah no, I keep the donkeys away.

When she's Donkey sightings are usually hours apart, so it's not that big a deal.

But like so the thing is the world, the way the level design works in this is super, super fascinating.

Like, because it takes so long to cross a space...

That is basically the currency that the game is playing off.

So yes, there are moments where you can fall and slide down the side of a mountain and have to come back up again.

That's really not that rare, not that common.

And honestly, when it does happen, more often than not it's the game telling you you are going the wrong way.

Probably like we're trying to send you back down so that you can come back up maybe the right way.

It's not a game about that.

It's not a game about, which I feel like co-op is right.

Like, oh, or, or not, maybe not co-op, but getting over it.

Right.

Which is a game where like, oh, I fell the whole way back down.

Cause I did that.

Now I got to go back up and it's that struggle.

To me, that's not really what this is.

To me, this is there's something cool off the beaten path.

Do you want to waste some time going over there?

Or like there's this weird quest that we're giving you that you don't actually have to do.

Like you'll just see a sign at one of the early, what do you call them?

Like the fire watch towers, right?

There's a couple of them around.

And you'll see one which is like, my family lost our prized cup.

Drop it here.

And you can go and look for the cup.

Or you might find the cup later and then be like oh, do I go all the way back and drop it off there.

So it's less so that it's, like, challenging you to, like, redo an area.

And that's the tension.

It's more like, hey, do you want to spend, like, 90 minutes just walking in this direction?

It's not really the critical path of the game and experiencing something that might be cool.

And it's such an interesting, like... decision to be making as somebody playing this game there's one point in the game and again i don't want to get into it too too much but there's one point in the game where i felt i had an abundance of things to do and i had this real moment where i was going is this the end of it or should i keep going is there more story or should i spend like three hours just exploring this area or should i go back like there's one part where there's one part where you climb up it's it's one of the moments where you you've climbed quite high because the game does a lot of like sort of plateaus where the world you know you got up to this point and clearly you can see a lot of the world behind you but then you go into the next area and it's you're safe again right it's like there's no way of falling all the way back down again you're just going to be here now this is one of these moments where i was incredibly high and there was a guy sitting at the end of a pier that was hanging over it all right and i walked over and it triggered a cut scene and it's a guy i've met before he's like some dude who's on the on a walk and he's like sitting there and he's like and my guy's like oh what you doing he's like oh i've just been sitting here like okay i can't like you know i've been sitting here for like four or five hours though i was just thinking like i could jump and he's like because you don't die here right because like you don't there's no fall damage right in this game you can just fall as long as you want you'll be fine and you just unfortunately you just have to walk all the way back up again so he's like you know i could there's nothing you know i could die or i won't die but like but he's like my guy's like yeah but you'll have to walk all the way back up and he's like yeah Yeah, I guess I would.

Like, I probably don't want to do that, do I?

And he's like, no, you probably don't.

He's like, yeah, all right.

Okay.

I was just thinking about it.

Maybe I would.

And then he gets up and leaves and the game clicks back into the game and you're standing at the end of the pier.

So it's doing that stuff where it's like, hey, you want to do something?

You want to do something stupid?

You want to go on a weird quest?

You want to throw away four hours of walking up this hill?

Maybe something cool would happen.

And it's so fun and playful.

I really think it's a fantastically well-developed game.

It's playing with this sense that I have as a gamer of objective, and why am I doing this in a way that is very new and interesting?

I love the writing.

I love the world design.

There is constantly interesting new things that I'm having to figure out about how to like, how to cross certain things.

I don't want to get too specific about it.

Cause I think those moments of revelation are quite interesting and fun.

Um, but yeah, it's, it's genuinely really, really good.

And it's, it's playing with this in this design space that I've never experienced before.

And I think that's what I'm enjoying the most that and just uh, the mastery like it's a game about mastery.

It's, it's really strange.

It's about like learning how to walk.

You know it's.

I think it's cool that it recontextualizes, that it makes that the thing that you have to master.

It's something that we just sort of accept as a thing that you do when you're playing a video game is like I can walk, the left stick takes you forward but, like here, it's making you think about it in ways that the previous game sort of have.

But also it's like when you say mastery, it's usually about Perry windows or like combos, or like figuring out how to juggle in the air long enough, and devil may cry.

This is like no, taking one step forward and making that something that's innate again instead of just being an accepted thing.

When you pick up a controller, that that is like yeah, such a smart design decision.

I think that's fantastic, and imagine the satisfaction that, like you know, a climber has when they look at a wall yeah, and then when they're on the top and they're looking down, or like a child walking up a set of stairs for the first time.

It's like it's.

It's that fun of like Each, you can see each little area and you're like okay, okay.

I gotta get across this.

All right.

And then, when you do it and my favorite moment is there are moments of panic where like, you're losing grip or you're one of your feet are sliding.

Cause the thing is like you learn after a while that it's not necessarily always about having your feet planted.

Sometimes you can have your feet planted and because there's extra weight on one of them, it starts to slide.

And so you end up doing is stuff that you do when you like are walking, like going on a hike somewhere, especially somewhere where it's like there's loose ground or it's slippery, where you start to like anticipate that you're going to lose your footing.

So you like, there are times where you'll you know I'm trying to get up like a step and it's too high for one foot, but there's like a side wall.

And so what I'll do is I'll put my foot, my first foot, up on that wall, just so I can transfer weight onto it enough to get the other leg up.

Yeah.

So you start doing all like tricks that basically, like the actual, like walking model is very quote unquote realistic.

So you intuit like oh, if i just kind of like lean forward, like sometimes the gaps are too big for you to like properly plant both feet while having enough balance.

So what you do is you like step one forward and then, before that one touches you, lift the other so you can get up onto it like wow, It's very slick and cool.

And then one of my favorite things is you'll notice it.

Actually yeah, I won't say it, but there are opportunities where you have to grab things in the world, and the way that the game handles grabbing things is very funny.

Because, like in most games, when you grab something you just get close enough and you press a button and it appears in your inventory right.

Or a canned animation grabs.

In this game, everything's physical.

So like hey, if there's like something hanging from a tree and you're like standing on the edge of a rock wall, you have to hold X for him to like lean out and grab it.

So you better make sure that by the time his hand is at the thing that you are balanced enough.

Oh man.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's, it's, it's great.

Yeah.

Baby steps is fantastic.

I can't wait for you guys to play it.

It's a, I hope I'm not overselling it, but I really genuinely love it.

And I, I'm, I have, it's, it's a chill out game for me.

I thought it would be a game like, like a dark souls experience.

Well, I'll have to like, okay, I got to get through another area and baby steps.

I got to do it.

It's the complete opposite.

Even if I don't make that much progress, I'm like, uh, Yeah, that was fun.

That was weird.

In a weird way, I feel like it sounds soothing in the same way that Dark Souls is soothing to me, where... like sort of the genius of benefati's games to me is that it takes these incredibly frictional experiences and intuitively you're like okay well this is going to be horrible because i'm going to constantly lose progress or like fall or fuck up if i lose focus for one second but i think what actually happens with a lot of these like frictional games but like well-designed frictional games is that uh when you create like a triumph out of the smallest little bit of progress yeah it sort of feels like a constant like the game is patting you on the back for you know making your bed and doing the dishes like these little tiny little things become small victories and so it sort of imbues the whole experience with this momentum of like you know like in dark souls you're like i just i beat this like one guy or i can consistently beat this guy to get to the boss store now or like something that used to be impossible for me is now attainable um so i i don't know i find very frictional games relaxing in a weird way because it's it's like the the bar i set of expectation for myself is is so low that like any progress i make i'm like i fucking did it i made it up the stairs like look at me go and yeah you're right and you're speaking to what i think the sense that i get when i look back in this world is i don't look back and go oh i hope i don't fall the whole way down because i think it's really it's generous in how it i think it's a generous game and how it like deals with difficulty i think there are challenges and there are areas that are hard um but it's never spiteful about it and so like you said like every step to me feels like a victory and then i get these like bigger victories when i get over an area that is tricky and then i have these other victories when i have reached into a new biome and i know i'm past the forest or past the desert or past the whatever is you know um yeah it's pretty cool it'll be interesting to talk about it i think for game of the year stuff i bet it'll be on our short list for sure baby steps available now is it only on steam think so no is it is that five as well you said oh it is you're right sorry yeah it is ps5 as well um i'm sure it'll come to other stuff um wow it only has 517 reviews on steam oh i thought you're gonna say thousand for some reason isn't that crazy uh not that crazy it's pretty good it's a devolved digital published game it's kind of like what you mentioned like it looks like a game for streamers or for youtube people so it's like but you know you're you're selling people and actually playing it um yeah yeah I mean, getting over it has 40,000.

Granted, that game is like, you know, five bucks or whatever.

But yeah, I'm surprised.

It hasn't really been a week, though.

I would have thought this game would have had a hotter launch.

Oh, you're surprised it's low.

Yeah, no, low.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's only Banana Week.

I suppose that's right.

I don't know.

All right.

I think this is just a bad window to be releasing.

Releasing.

It's because I heard the Australian accent in the game.

No, to be releasing a game just in general.

It's so hard to get eyes on stuff at this current moment because every day it's like here's a game of the year contender.

There's a 90 on Metacritic.

You better go buy it.

Even if it's a guy in a onesie walking?

That's not enough.

It's not enough for the gamers.

All right.

Well, leave your reviews, folks.

Leave your reviews.

It's an interesting like baby steps, i feel like has a weird sort of um like looking at the, the label of the cereal box identity to it, because i think that, like benefati's games, largely being sort of like 2d, they had the.

I feel like benefati's games often have this sort of like flash game feel to them.

That i think makes it like oh, this game is so hard and you're like all right, cool.

Well, like it looks like it's just some sort of like advanced version of a new grounds type game.

You know like, let me just jump into it and play a little bit of it.

Whereas i feel like baby steps is like oh, i'm gonna go on this whole fucking voyage, but with like a foddy and level of friction yeah, i it.

I think it's like convincing people to play something like um, you know, like getting over it, or or like jump King, like not a benefit of game, but like a Foddy in game.

Um, is so good.

I like it.

Yeah.

Foddy and slip.

That's what they should call.

That should be the lead.

That should be, you know, that's yeah.

A Foddy and slip, but like you could call a game that, and no one would ask a question.

That is a great guideline for a review on Baby Steps.

But I think that when you see something like Getting Over It or Jump King or QWOP, you're like oh, it's just like a little experience.

And then you get into it and spend more time with it.

Whereas Baby Steps looks like a game that is going to take a long time to, you know, to not only to like master, but to complete or to have any sort of like longitudinal experience with that game yeah if i that's what i'm saying is like it looks like it looks like a fucking triple a open world game but you're like oh but i can you know it's impossible to take 10 steps or something i think it may be like a combination of factors that it seems a little sort of like uh this the subconsciously it feels a little daunting to jump into because frank like was saying earlier that it's uh it looks like a streamer game like but from the way danny's describing it like it it sounds like it's lot more involved like it's not just uh because i was with him i was like oh this is just one of those games where you fall a bunch and it's funny watching the guy in the onesie no this game this is a game it's a video game yeah i think i think it would be a great game to watch you know my like i said my daughter and wife were happy to watch me play it i think it does work as a streamer game but no this is a game this is a game with like shit to do and well not you know it's a it's a game where you're walking but like it's it's yeah it's it's not this is not some weird meme game it's it's actually like doing some cool stuff for sure i also feel like the idea of i i feel like benefati's games are sort of misunderstood as meme games where it's like oh they're they're so hard because it's going to be like this is rage bait or something and i think that a lot of the games that have been spawned in the wake of Bennett Foddy's work have been rage bait games.

Like I'm not saying those don't exist cause they're fucking.

There are a million of them.

But I feel like Bennett Foddy's work specifically and and some of the stuff inspired by it, is just like, is frictional, because it's interesting to create these hyper frictional experiences as games, not as like spec to you know spec uh, like spectacle of, like watching someone fucking fail and scream and pull their hair out.

But because there is, there are like interesting types of, experience that you can curate by having a game like i said that you know beats the shit out of you so every little bit feels like a victory baby steps 20 bucks on steam a little bit less the moment because got that uh got that little uh little early window sale going on as well uh check it out some good stuff you want to you want to be freaked out by steam reviews consume me has 172 wow is that is that again surprising because it's too low or because that sounds too low that sounds par for me that's that's not that surprising that sucks it should be more but also yeah i played a lot of great games we're gonna talk about in a second that's got 3294 so makes sense that does not surprise me consume me i feel like is a i i don't know i feel like most people if you're not super into games as art i think you would see that and be like oh that's one of them That's one of them art games.

Yeah, that's a sticker game for girls.

I'm not playing one of them art games.

That's one of those brain games.

Oh, what am I going to feel some feelings in this one or something?

I'm here to shoot you.

Todd's not a bad feeling stuff.

Why is his name Todd?

I don't know.

Todd Howard.

Oh, no.

Not the same Todd Howard, just a southern guy.

I'm a different guy.

Just a southern gamer named Todd Howard.

All right.

Frank, I know Silent Hill F's a big one, but I want to talk to you about Crime Boss...

What is it?

Prime Boss Rock A City.

This is the Michael Madsen thing that I saw months ago.

I forgot this game existed.

I saw it on the list, the sheet this week, and I was like, when did this thing come out?

Was it last year?

I think this came out in 2023.

24, it says here.

June 18th on Steam, apparently.

It's 23 on Xbox, I guess.

Oh, really?

Or was it an early access or something?

Maybe this was like the game where the trailer came out and they were like we're really trying to get that grand theft auto five audience over here.

That is the vibe I got.

What is this thing?

Is it, is it online co-op or something?

So yeah.

So crime boss city is basically payday, but it's like they made it for divorced dads entirely, but it's awesome.

Cause I love it, but it's like I don't think there's anyone younger than me who would give a shit about this game.

It is.

So it's a, it's a game that very much is going for the tone of like grand theft auto five.

It's got like, It has the worst.

There's so much like it is one of those pinnacles of like this game is so bad.

It's awesome.

Mechanically, it's payday.

The premise of the game is you exist in the city.

That's basically a fake vice city crime city.

You're assembling teams.

You're cracking safes.

You're robbing banks.

You're killing cops um, but the whole time you're playing either as, like michael madsen, danny trejo, there is sheriff chuck norris and all the triple a, not triple a all the d-list actors.

They do all their takes in one line reading.

So chuck norris, like is all?

His line delivery is like super flat um and um.

So playing it with friends it's like genuinely hysterical experience.

The reason i played this i wanted to get it.

When it came out, like i remember keeping an eye out on the scene pages and stuff and immediately had like mixed reviews, i was like okay, i'll wait.

Now it was 2 on Steam.

$2?

$2 on Steam.

So I was like gifting it to friends, getting to play.

That's so funny.

It's included on the PlayStation Premium, the PlayStation, I don't know.

It's not like the basic PlayStation Plus, but it's the PlayStation Extended Premium.

Sony needs to fix this stupid name.

It's so annoying.

I think you're right.

I think it's Premium or it's Plus.

Plus.

Something like that.

So so I downloaded it and immediately was like oh, this is like.

I was shocked because my friends and I made a lobby.

I was like, no one's playing this.

And someone immediately was like level one hundred and seventy joins and was like carrying a friend.

Yeah.

I can't believe it because this feels like a game that no one's playing.

But now it's just one of those things where it's like, oh, I mechanically I like it again.

There's something so funny about like all the AI in the game is extremely stupid.

So you're supposed to like stealth through these bank robberies.

You can literally like walk in front of them and like you knock them unconscious.

You zip tie their their their hands behind their backs.

You can escort them in the closets.

It's almost like Hitman ask.

But the whole time, Michael Madsen, everyone is just is just.

So this game was developed by the Czech, by the Czech Republic, by by in-game studios in the Czech Republic.

But it's it's very much like people who grew up watching eighties action movies and wanted to write their own, but that.

There's just something so like just kind of off and cheesy about the dialogue.

But every other word is the F word.

Like so, like like it feels like it was written by 12 year olds and it's like.

So, playing this it's like incredible.

Um, so yeah, crime boss, rocky city.

The online mode is yeah, doing heist.

There's cut scenes for it.

The single player there's single player, there's single player, and in the main menu it's even called roguelite mode.

So the premise of the single player is kind of like the godfather games or maybe saints row or san andreas, where you're claiming territories.

So it's almost like Dynasty Warriors Empires, where you have your crime boss empire and you're leveling up your crime boss.

You have gangs and you're supposed to take over enemy territories.

One of the three gang leaders, there's one gang owned and operated by Vanilla Ice.

One gang that's operated by Danny Trejo.

And yeah, you're just doing missions.

Dude, this game is so epic bacon.

What the fuck?

Does Vanilla Ice's whole team have ice written on the back of their cup things?

Oh, I hope not.

I don't think so.

I forget.

They have a different thing.

But yeah, you can kill cops, like, gleefully.

The way the AI is, it's very, like... like monster closet.

Honestly, it's kind of like left for dead.

Like hundreds of cops will just start showing up in cop cars.

It's so nice.

It sounds based.

Yeah.

You can also like shoot civilians.

There's no penalties.

Like it's just, it's so absurd.

And the frame rate will like slow down to like 18 frames per second on console.

But it's kind of cinematic.

Cause it's like 24 frames per second.

And Jean-Luc Godard said that life is, you know, what is it?

Life is fiction.

Slow down to 24 or something like that.

I don't know.

But it's very cinematic.

It's very awesome.

But yeah, it's it's so absurd.

But I generally like playing it and I want to keep playing it.

But yeah, it's very fun to play with friends.

And it has a Call of Duty zombies mode in it.

I think they call it Nightmare City.

And there's, there's gang members who all of a sudden, their eyes are fuming like fire and they're chasing after you.

And it's just straight up Call of Duty zombies mode.

But that's what.

That's what cops see actually by default because of the pill they make them take.

They have the, they lives glasses.

That's what those big black aviators, they have a cop's nectar from a, from haze.

Yeah.

What a pull.

I have a question about this game and this on the steam page. i feel like the screenshots have like a within the screenshots on the steam page from left to right there is sort of an arc where it's like starts out and you're like oh this is like a the battlefield hard line left for dead and then by the time you reach the later screenshots there's like city 17 guards and there's like robot cops and the the the criminals look like weird i don't know like juggalos at mardi gras uh what's is there is this like does it become fantastical or is it i just i'm so confused it doesn't seem fantastical until you hit screenshot like eight yeah so i think those are like the dlc so so the base missions it's already goofy but then yeah by the second i did buy the dlc because that was on sale too the game there's a lot of dlc the game does a cool thing where your teammates don't need to have the dlc as long as the host does so i bought the dlc and they can invite people to my lobby So the second DLC pack is straight up like Terminator.

You're basically fighting Skynet.

But it's ridiculous because that's Michael Madsen fighting Skynet.

So it's like, look at all these fucking robots.

Holy shit.

That's the dialogue the entire time.

It's just like, the fucking cops are on the way.

What the hell are we going to do?

It's so silly.

And yeah, you're fighting robots.

It's so absurd.

And the funniest thing is this is a game that nobody's played.

This is so nuts.

It has 65 reviews on Steam.

Oh, no, wait.

That's the DLC.

Sorry.

No, the game has...

3,300.

It also launched on Epic Games.

Maybe you're missing five or six reviews from that total.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

That's important.

The idea that this game has so many recognizable celebrity names and you bought it for 2 is like endlessly hilarious to me.

Because it's like I'm picturing, like someone pitching, like having full knowledge of the trajectory of this game's development and sales, and I mean like yeah, we're going to make a game.

It's going to have Michael Madsen and vanilla.

They're like, all right.

I mean, yeah, that sounds cool.

They're like, no, get this.

It's going to be $2.

I'm not sure if this is in its favor or not, but the 2 is of course a sale price, but it is a 90 off sale, which is like that's aggressive.

You can also get all of the complete collection for $25 down from $60.

That's 60% off.

Oh, whoa.

Let's check that one out.

Which I think is a safe cracker.

He's a safe cracker, yeah.

He is a white guy, though.

It is a white man.

And yes, of course, the aforementioned Cagnalli's Order, which is the robot-ass looking one.

Baker's Bundle is another one, presumably a Bakersfield level.

It feels like it would work here.

Who's Hielo?

Is this a vanilla ice, Frank?

Yeah, Hielo is a vanilla ice.

Wow.

Baker is Michael Madsen's guy, I think.

Good stuff.

Thank you very much Frank, for venturing into the world of Rock, A City for us, and coming back with this important report on Crime Boss.

Uh, yeah.

Pick it up now for two bucks folks.

If you want to, if you want to have a, if you want to have a weird time.

It sounds like, um uh, Jesse.

Sure.

Hell is us.

How's it going?

Uh, hell is us.

It's, it's going.

Uh, so do you guys know anything about this game?

Have you seen it before?

Third person action game looks kind of high budgety, but is, uh, I don't know.

People say it's.

It sounds like it's wedged between a couple of different genres or or game genres, sort of archetypes.

Yeah, I'd say that's a fair acknowledgement of what it is, because it's hard to describe and yet it's also very simple.

This game's weird.

It's like, it's not... So Hell Is Us is a third-person action game, but like... Full price, right?

50 bucks?

Well, yeah, I guess double-A full price.

Published by Nacon, developed by a new studio called Rogue Factor, led by Jonathan Jacques Ballet or Balletette maybe, is how you say it.

The creative director on deus ex, human revolution and mankind divided, i believe.

Uh okay, like cool, like i had no idea that they had a new studio and that this was their game until i started playing it and the first thing you hear is the player character, whatever his name, is voiced by this.

Yeah, it's just his voice actor, or not even doing a different voice.

Um actually, so okay, the opening of this game, because that that is the genre description.

It is a third person action game with puzzles and there's weird stuff going on.

You can call it a souls like if you want.

I feel like that's an unfair connection.

But the way the game opens is a cut scene where your player character, who has clearly the wrong haircut for this character model.

It's like the broccoli curly haircut on like a 40 year old man.

And it's blonde.

It makes no sense.

We got two shout outs on this pod this week.

We love the broccoli.

We are funded.

And across from you you're being interrogated by a very scary looking.

He looks like his name is Cheeseburger Man or something.

He would be in a Kojima game if no one told him no, I guess earlier in his career.

Very weird character design.

And then the through line of the game.

And this is their big selling point, for it is that there is no direction.

So the whole thing, you have no map, there's no objective markers, there's no explicit compass.

You have a compass in the game that you can use to orient yourself, but not like an on-screen HUD thing.

Nobody gives you an explicit point to go to, except for when you want to transition between maps.

And the whole experience?

Is you deciphering what is going on in this world that's been ravaged by a civil war that's been sort of taking place over the last couple centuries?

And you're trying to find your parents.

That's the opening mission.

Your parents are from this place called Hadea, and you're looking for them.

Apparently, they're in this small town.

You eventually get there, and then the story sort of branches out from there.

And, I mean, gameplay-wise, the combat is not great.

It is a third-person action game.

You're doing sort of big slashes.

You have different weapons.

But they're not, like... It's not overly deep.

All the enemies are these big, crazy, like... white no-faced creatures yeah we should probably mention for folks who've never seen this game that this is not because it's some of this sounds like it's fantasy this is like sci-fi sci-fi this is very futuristic looking futuristic weapons um sort of like post-futurism maybe something like that i'd say the kojima comparison is pretty apt as well because like your player character is wearing a black poncho and has a drone that sits on their shoulder like a You maneuver between locations in an APC with like a bunch of computer screens inside of it.

But the world itself isn't particularly science fictiony.

Like the town that you get to is very rural Europe.

I think this is supposed to take place in.

Like you know, it opens with that long message of I swear nothing here is supposed to be related to anything.

We're not using any names for legal reasons.

And then the first thing you see, basically of like a named thing is the ON, which is definitely not the United Nations.

Going into Haiti and saving stuff.

Yeah, but the gameplay, the combat is not very, very deep.

There's a lot of it.

It's sort of like half the game.

It's like that Dark Souls closed-in thing.

You do dungeons.

You do big open combat area stuff.

The thing that's appealing about it, though, is the thing that they're pointing to.

And I don't know if they're going deep enough on it.

So I got to the end of the first act.

And like I said, there's no map markers.

There's no explicit delivery of any information, you have to learn everything on your own.

You will be lost a lot.

But like designing a game like that can be so disorienting, like there's not a ton of games that can pull that off, i feel like it takes a lot of work and they do a baby steps.

That does it really well.

Baby steps there's no, you know there's an implied you're supposed to go up this way, but it's actually really smart in how it's kind of it's almost non-euclidean and at times i don't get into it too much.

But yeah, it does a really good job of similarly not really telling you anything and adapting to you.

But yeah, how does this one sort of, is it less effective, do you think?

So, like when you do it in a narrative game, I feel like there's a lot of things you have to do to still direct the player in some regard.

Like, if you want to give someone a quest and you want to tell them to navigate a place they've never been before, you either need to really tightly railroad it right.

There's probably a million ways you could do it, but like every instance I've seen of, it is really tightly railroaded.

So it's super linear or it's this sort of game where it's really broad and really wide, but everyone talks like they're in a simulation.

Like it feels even more fake because when you talk to a quest giver, they'll be like uh, you know, I need this item from over here.

It is north of the camp.

And it's like, that's not how people talk.

Like you say, it's over there.

It's past this building.

Like maybe once in a blue moon, you should hear that.

But that's like most of the conversation.

One person said around the corner, but it's like, yeah, there's nowhere else to go.

Just keep following the road that I was already told to go on.

It's not a knock.

It's just like.

I think my issue here is I've played so many games like this that are trying to deliver this information in interesting ways that this version of it feels so scaled back.

It's definitely trying to appeal to people.

If this is the first time you've played a game that's not doing quest markers and objective stuff, this is probably awesome.

I think the way it tells its story, I think the way that it communicates what war does to people and places, the stain it puts on your heart, but also the stain it puts on the world.

The game communicates that stuff really, really well.

That is, its strongest point is its storytelling and its ability to deliver that information to you.

If you care about it like, it forces you to care to follow along.

I just don't know how many people are going to be willing to get into that.

That's what do you say.

Are you saying that, like the, you're not motivated to do it?

Like the the, the like?

What are you doing in this game?

Like, is this?

Is there one main quest line that you're following?

Are there loads of things to do and you're having to, like write down where you're you're going?

Or is it just a?

Is the thing just that like, it's hard to find the next place you're supposed to go to?

Yeah, so it opens with you having that quest of like going to find your parents and um, i thought it was going to be a bunch of investigations.

There's this like data pad that you can pull up um, which is basically just your.

You know we don't have a hud.

There's no ui, there's no menuing, except for the menu that you pull up um, and when it comes up, It plays this animation every time, for some reason.

You can disable that, which is nice, but like it's needlessly long, for how often you have to go into that.

And you can see all the investigations you have.

It actually reminds me of the Outer Wilds not the Outer Wilds, but the Outer Wilds' screen, where you could like see all of the bits of information that you've got and the web of investigations.

You can go on in that game.

But it's only like one thing.

And each of the points off of that is like oh, we've recorded what this person said and you can highlight them and it'll give you all their information.

And basically you're just like told you need to go find something and you infer, based on the information that you're given, where you might need to go.

Sometimes it's obvious.

They'll give you like an item with a.

It's a map and there's like an arrow telling you where to go.

Follow that.

And someone will tell you where to go in the next bit of the story.

Um, so it's, it's just like, it's, it, I mean, it's not too different from playing like Dark Souls.

Like you have to go find Firelink Shrine and then you got to go ring the two bells.

Where are the bells?

You got to figure that out on your own by adventuring and and being willing to be scared or unsure of where you're going.

Sort of accepting the friction of being unsure.

Like it's a fun experience in theory.

But I got to the end of the first act, checked the achievement completion percentage and just barely over a third of people finished the first act of this game, which is, I think, when the game starts, because act two is like way bigger.

It talks about politics and maybe six to eight hours, give or take.

Like it's not that long, but there's a lot of not a lot, like a handful of these gate puzzles that are like you go into a big area and they're like here's a million things, which four do you need to combine the numbers on them to to solve the puzzle?

And it's like very, it's not cryptic, it's just like there's a lot of pieces to it.

Um, it's just.

It's such a hard game to describe because it's just like you play it and it makes sense, but it's, it's just, it's I don't know.

There's not like it's so hard, because literally the whole point of playing the game is learning what's going on, is being confused and then not being confused anymore.

The coolest thing to me was this moment where I'm adventuring in this world, this big, dark space sad, grim field.

Basically the walk through in the opening area, you can see this big city to the distance.

It's your first sort of point, but you turn your head and you see this big church with this uh I symbol.

That's important to the the one group of people that that uh prayed there.

And like, you go over there and no, they're like, you can't go in here, go to the village of Jova.

And I'm like, okay, whatever.

I'll go over there.

Um, but on the way I killed these enemies and upon killing them, I got a notification on the screen.

That's like, you killed the time loop guardian.

And I was like, what does that mean?

Like eventually you find out what that means.

And I was like, that's really cool.

And the through line of that is really cool.

Like it's.

I'm telling you, this is one of those games that like, You need to play a demo of it, and I don't think there's one anymore.

I really like it.

I really wish I could communicate... Wait, you do like it?

So that's the thing is.

I like it, but like It sounds like you've been shit-talking this game for 15 minutes.

That's a shame.

If that's what I've been doing, I apologize, because I do like the game.

It's just like, again, I don't think... I think if you played like...

Oh, my God.

What is that game I played last year?

Are you answering to like a public critique that we are not of?

No, no, no.

This is not a public critique.

This is my own perspective on it.

I would never argue about a thing I've never heard someone say or you guys haven't.

I would give you I would at least introduce it.

There's no like there's no consensus on this.

I feel as though.

I like this game.

I wish it was deeper.

Like there's so much to it where it's just being very explicit, but also arguing that it's not like we're not giving you any leading direction on anything, except there's only one way you can go.

Right.

It's like you have to be hyper linear to tell this kind of story in the way that they want to tell it.

And I think they succeed in telling.

So is it wasting your time or do you just wish the story was.

Do you wish the story was deeper?

Do you wish the combat?

What's the thing that you would like less or more of?

I guess would be the way I'd ask it.

I think the direction of it, I think, works.

I wish... Yeah, I do wish there was more.

I wish that there was more investigations.

I wish that there was more variety to the combat, because it's kind of fighting the same six kinds of enemies.

And I wish the areas were a little bit bigger.

You get to this location where you're sort of You reach the climax of the first act, i would argue um, or maybe like the, the inciting incident.

Um, you meet an important character and there's not really much else in the area.

Maybe the area is way, way bigger later on um, but i haven't seen any gates or anything that would imply that.

Maybe that you know me.

Okay, you wish there was more.

It's it seems yeah, it seems overly tight, but not tight enough, or something yeah, i suppose.

So okay, hell is us.

I don't know if I'm more interested in it now, because I'm like, what is this fucking game doing?

This is like – I've had a – like you said with the opening question.

At the start you were kind of like does anyone know what this game is?

There is this weirdness around people talking about it.

Like even on social media.

When I see people, I'm not quite sure what they're saying about this thing.

Like it doesn't –

It doesn't fit into a box.

It's just a rollercoaster ride.

Like every time you think, okay, I've had enough of this.

I'm in these tight corridors fighting the same enemies over and over again.

I didn't have to piece anything together.

But then you hit such a dark, sad observation about the way the world shifts when conflict takes place in it.

And you're like, damn.

That's amazing.

I hope it does that one more time in the next 60 minutes or I'm turning this off.

This game is like I I feel like it's a I feel like I'm outside a restaurant.

My friends like, do you want to eat here?

And I'm like, oh, yeah, what kind of food is it?

And I'm looking in and there are things that look vaguely like foods that I recognize, but none of them are foods I recognize.

Like this game looks like it wouldn't be deep, but then it's like it's like making deep commentary.

And I'm like, oh, but it's like souls like.

But it looks kind of like French.

And then the guy kind of looks like the Watch Dogs guy.

And then there's like a Kojima guy.

I feel like this is what my parents see when they see a video game.

This is like in the background of like an episode of SVU or something.

Kids are getting high on Hell Is Us.

It just feels bizarre.

I kind of want to play this now.

I think you guys should.

See, this is why I wish there was a demo, because I, straight up, I don't think you could communicate what is fun about this without either spoiling what's fun about it or apparently sounding like you hate it more than any video game I ever have.

I know you sound conflicted about it, but that is making me interested in it.

That's why that's that's my thing is, yeah, it's it's not easy to recommend.

It's not going to work for the vast majority of people.

But the people for who it works and can acknowledge that it is limited in its ability to do the things that it's trying to do, that it's telling you it's doing like it's telling you there's no direction.

But like everything is very explicit.

It's telling you there's no compass.

But like, where else am I supposed to go?

There's two places here.

You know, it's like little things like that where I'm like I get what you're trying to do.

What you're saying you're doing and what you're actually doing are not lining up on the screen.

But I still like what you're doing.

I just wish you would stop lying to me so much and telling me it's bigger than it is.

Hell is us.

It's been out for almost a month.

It looks like um 50 bucks on Steam.

If you have experience with Hell, With Us and would like to talk to somebody about it.

Podcast at noclipvideo.

Let us know.

We're running a support group for people with conflicted feelings.

If you have any insight into it, wild.

Wild-ass game.

Let me get through a couple of mine real quick, because there's a bunch that I've played not loads of, but I think they're definitely worth recommending.

The first is Mars First Logistics.

This is a very special game.

It came out on, i think, just a couple of days ago.

It is a how best to explain this thing.

So it is a uh, a game where you're predominantly it's set on mars.

It has this very um, why am i blanking on the french mobius ass, looking art style to it?

Um essentially, you are building and piloting a bunch of, you know walkers drones uh, you know little buggies that are meant to deliver items from one base to another on mars, and the process of doing that involves um, not just driving to one base, grabbing something and then bringing it to the next base, but upgrading your little uh, your little um Uh what, what's the best way calling it?

Like it's not, it's not quite a buggy, I guess a Rover.

Is that what we call it?

Yeah.

Like upgrading your Rover so that like, oh, it needs to pick up a bucket.

I better add like, like an arm to it that will do that.

But you don't just buy the arm, you buy the.

The little servo that's going to rotate the thing and you put you know it's almost like Lego like, or you are.

You are building the thing out in between these missions.

It looks gorgeous, the physics feel fantastic and it's how it's very emergent in, like the, the simulation of your rover, once you are able to add different things to it and and, and.

Then you know it, even down to the point where you can choose which button on your keyboard does what.

So you can add different servos and have them like, work together or against each other, and then you can do weird and wacky ways to solve the actual physics problems that you have.

How many ways are there to pick up a bucket?

There are as many as there are imaginations in the world, right?

And I think this game does a really great job of empowering players to come up with novel solutions.

It does extend beyond that.

The initial stuff, I'm quite bad at this game.

I think I'm just not very good at these types of games, so I'm not very far in it at all.

This has been, I believe, out in some sort of early access for a while now, but it just hit its 1.0.

It's actually 40% off at the moment as well, which is pretty wild, until October 9th.

So you should still be able to do it for a week after this goes up.

And yeah, I think it's really special.

It's a very, very well designed game.

I want to spend more time with it.

But yeah, it's something super cool.

Did you guys ever play or hear of a game called Star Wars Droidworks?

I know the name of it, but I didn't play it.

Is it similar to that?

It's kind of the only thing this reminds me of.

I'll post a picture in Snapchat of what Droidworks looks like.

You build droids for specific missions.

This picture is R2-D2 with C-3PO's legs.

I'm sexy.

Yeah, it's sexy R2-D2. uh but it's it's sort of similar in that you'll have like a mission where it's like you need a droid to like go up the stairs with a box and you're like well r2d2 could never go up the stairs with a box so let's give him arms and sexy legs um but uh yeah no it kind of reminds me of this it's a game that i loved as a kid it's like um one of lucas entertainment sort of like educational edutainment software that's very cool but it's this is it's kind of the only touch point i have for this other than um one of the bylines on the steam page for mars first mentions the tears of the kingdom like building oh yeah connecting things to make like machines that have function but uh it's cool i mean that's a very like complex sort of like untapped thing or there was a there was like a was it banjo kazooie nuts and bolts or banjo kazooie or besiege i think of as well for this yes yes besiege is a great shout yeah and i i think the you know we've seen the mobius style um graphics applied to lots of different games i think it works incredibly well here because there's something really important about i guess um color discipline like when you think about legos when you think about like looking at something that you're building and the amount of specific colors and how that helps you to sort of make sense of a complex design i think this game both with its colors and also with its the sort of um the the harsh black stroke that you get when you do cell shading i think really helps to simplify what would be a much more complex feeling game um i think so in a way i feel like the art style is actually like a very smart design choice on their part in making this game more accept more feel less simmy maybe and feel less like hardcore than maybe it is because i i think it's actually it's encouraging me to to have fun and test it out and it does it in a number of ways like some of the missions you do are ridiculous like transporting a toaster and the toast falls out of the toaster and, and there's like, it definitely goes beyond just doing fun Rover missions here and there.

Like you can get real wacky with it.

There's car racing.

There's lots of like weird stuff in here.

So um yeah, I feel like.

I feel like there's an a universe of a game for me to experience in this.

And I'm looking forward to uh, to doing it, but initial impressions are incredibly strong and it's got um Uh.

All reviews at the moment are at one and a half thousand or so and it's at O, overwhelmingly positive.

So, um, another, another interesting one, shout out to shape shop and apparently was, uh, somewhat published by um by outer sloth they came they seem to be throwing in a few shekels with a lot of people they're like not the main publisher but like ah here you go you look cool so for people who haven't heard of outer sloth it's inner sloth who did among us have outer sloth which is sort of like it's it's sort of a publisher but it's more like um uh funding and like milestone check-ins and sort of like uh yeah insight but sort of like a non-traditional publisher but uh it's cool that they've done that i mean i imagine you know i don't know how many dollars among us made but it is cool that they have leveraged the immense success of among us into uh sort of helping other people get on their feet uh speaking of helping other people get on their feet let's talk about the latest slot machine nightmare uh clover pitch have you guys seen this did you play the demo at all I played the demo.

Was this the one you were talking about before?

Jesse, you mentioned this game before, did you not?

I probably mentioned it.

I did not play it.

I played a game called Raccoin, which was similar to this.

Thank you.

Raccoin, yes.

Yeah, I dabbed a little bit in the demo.

It's a slot machine roguelike with a sort of crunch.

A very nice, low-poly, pixelated, crunchy, sort of a PS1-adjacent aesthetic.

Yes, very well put.

I...

It's quite tricky.

I like it a lot.

I think it's For as much as you're doing slot machine stuff.

It's done in a very self-aware fun, dark kind of way.

Essentially, I believe the setup of the game is that you are gambling away your debt or something.

You're trying to get your debt back.

So you're locked in this room which has, like the, the floor is a trap door, and if you don't make to the next level, the floor just opens and you die and then you're a new person um, trying to do it again, and essentially what's happening is like you are given an amount that you have to raise on the slot machine, you have to pay for the slots, and then you also have like a little bank telling machine that you can put money into and that'll earn interest as well, and you're basically like they're like all right, you gotta earn 75 coins in the next six rounds, good luck.

And then they, there's a couple of different like mechanisms where they give you these little tickets that you can use to upgrade um, you know, get little modifiers, essentially like the jokers in volatile or whatever, that will modify and increase your luck.

Or like i have one that like gave me plus seven luck on the last spin every time, and i was like, oh god, every time it went down to the last spin, whether or not i was going to survive or not.

Uh, once you level up, there's like a telephone and you answer that um uh, that uh you uh, will give you sort of permanent upgrades.

There's a toilet in the corner you can pee and poop in, get an achievement for it's good, fun game of the year, absolutely.

Um, and it's funny because you're in this tiny little boxed room but you actually have like wassad and mouse controls, even even though you're just like turning to this machine, turning to this machine.

So yeah, i like the crunchiness, i like the aesthetic of it.

Um, i found it quite tricky.

Again could be another just game, danny's badass.

It's interesting and neat.

And, um, um, I've, uh, I've, I've found it novel.

It's, you know, $10 game.

There's a demo out.

The demo is still available.

You can check it out for yourself.

Um, Clover pit.

And one of the things that actually it had in it was uh, you know, in the in the about us section, they had a link to a game that they had made before which uh Jesse, you are familiar with this one.

This is, um, uh, the taxi.

Yeah.

Yellow taxi goes room.

Very cool.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like a – what did you say on our meeting?

Mario – Mario Car, Cario, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

It's a 3D platformer where you play as a taxi and you see a Mario-looking character in a bunch of paintings throughout the levels.

I think he's – is he like the pizza guy or the mayor or something?

I haven't played in a while, but it was – it's a really good game.

Like that is the sort of thing – I was thinking about Clover Pit actually, because I knew we were going to talk about it.

It's like –

I don't know if this is the trajectory or the future or anything.

Maybe it's just a funny coincidence of the era of time that we're in.

But I think people have almost like figured out if you make one of these, you know it's like when the movie, like actors are like oh, one for them, one for me.

It's like, right.

Yeah, this is the one for them.

I'll make this and I'll make a bunch of money off a pretty straightforward easy, fun project that people enjoy.

And then I'll fund my cool thing, which I hope is Yellow Taxi Goes Room 2 and not Clover Pit 2, because that that's the game I want more of.

I can hear what you're saying.

Cause the design on yellow taxi goes room is really good.

Yeah.

But I never saw this game.

I never, never came across by.

You know, it took an about us section in a different game.

That did get shared around enough that it came across my plate for me to notice it.

So I hear what you're saying, where you're like yeah, let's make, let's make one of these dark crunchy games that has some gambling mechanics in it.

And you know, and who's going to, who's going to say that?

You know, you know.

Cast aspersions on anyone who spent all that time making a game like um yellow taxi goes room.

And it seems like it did.

All right.

It's got 1200 or so overwhelmingly positive again, reviews came out last year.

Um, so it's a pretty, you know, it seems like it's done, done.

All right.

Um, but yeah, I do hear what you're saying.

Um, I think, I think we're here at the crew especially we're a little bit sensitive to these games and there has been a bunch of them coming out recently, sort of gambling, adjacent games.

This one seems self-aware enough that I felt comfortable.

But is that okay?

Is that not having your cake and eating it too?

I think so the fact that, like the rounds in this are so short, like this, is not a game like a lot of these games where, like you, are sitting there doing the gambling thing a lot.

Like, you know, I don't know.

Maybe I have different feelings about this.

It has an endless mode, though, doesn't it?

Once you get to the end of all the.

I guess you haven't seen it yet, but I'm pretty sure it says in the stream description or something that you can keep going at the end.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's not... It's so... To me, it's so clearly anti-gambling because the vanilla version of the slot machine is dog shit.

You win nothing until you start to buy these upgrades that basically fix the luck on them, so...

Isn't that a little bit like the restaurants in Vegas, where they're like?

You know?

This is like the heart attack burger.

It's like six billion calories and it's clearly a parody of American cuisine.

But like people do die eating it.

Like.

I feel a little bit like self-awareness does is not does not absolve you of the thing that you're doing.

And so I feel like here's the thing.

I think this game is perfect. beautiful.

I have so much respect for the craft of the people who made this game.

I think it looks amazing.

I think the sound design is good.

I think there's so much craft that went into this game.

The people who made it are clearly incredibly talented.

I just think that I...

I have a lack of respect for games that are like stacking the deck, of sort of like pull the lever games.

There's another game out right now.

That's very popular where you just flip a coin and you're stacking the odds.

That's better than Hades to have some respect.

Okay.

Northern lion.

I, yeah, I don't know.

I just like there's something.

There's something about games where you're just like stacking the deck and watching the chips fall where they may, where it's like I don't know.

There's something that's just wrong with me about it.

It's because it's.

It feels like it's just a dopamine button and you're just manipulating the odds of the dopamine coming out.

I mean, so I don't know.

Maybe this I think we differ on this a lot.

And like I we have different probably outputs.

Like I've come from a country where there are there are, had that had been traditionally pretty strict gambling laws.

There's no casinos in Ireland, for instance.

And there's no casinos, not not not native land.

No casinos in Ireland.

No.

What do you mean?

Like illegal casinos?

Yeah.

Right.

There's got to be a craps table somewhere.

Like maybe people play poker somewhere, but like, no, it's not really part of the culture.

There's horse racing and there's, like Ladbrokes, you know, going down to the.

That's where people lose their money.

And I worked at a dog track.

Right.

So like I I'm sensitive to that type of stuff.

I think what I think the thing that I feel is that like.

But, like, Boletro is maybe the exception in that you can play that game for hundreds of hours.

I don't know if, like, I'm playing shotgun roulette for, like, 20 hours.

Like, it's not affecting me monetarily.

I'm not wasting my family's money on it.

It's, like, an $8 game.

And I'm only going to play it for, like, a certain amount of time.

And what it's doing is like all games are doing some amount of RNG or fucking.

You know, I think destiny is worse than these games because like that's the Skinner box stuff.

Right.

Whereas like, and that's trying to get you to sink hours into it and keep playing.

And so I, I find it hard to critique these games for that.

You know, I guess it's it's not the like gambling theming of them.

That, just to me, is a particularly laid bare version of a larger dark patterning trend in games that I have a distaste for.

I think Destiny is also a great example of that, where it is like.

You know or like.

Just compare like Diablo two is sort of an interesting hinge point for this, where it's like I do not feel like Diablo two was a game designed around the dopamine that emerges from my brain when I do my 700th and Dario and Dario run and get like a fucking skull mace with you know whatever unique color text it's like.

But it became part of the experience where it's like that feels fucking good, but it doesn't feel like a game that is built around that.

Whereas I feel like Diablo to me is 100% like just taking hijacking people's minds.

So more than Clover Pit or the same amount as Clover Pit?

Oh, I mean, how many hours could you put into either one of these games?

Right.

But there's, like, little differences you can do.

Like, I agree that there's a lot of dopamine that goes into those games.

I love action RPGs.

But wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

We cannot fucking monolith Diablo.

No no, no.

But it's very important to me that I said Diablo 2 or 1, because I feel like Diablo 3 is the pivot point where it becomes like the fucking roll the dice and see what comes out of the slot machine thing.

And I feel like that trend like Diablo is like the radioactive dye that exposes the sort of like laid bareness of this trend in video games to me, where it was an element of Diablo 2.

And it's part of the like I feel like Diablo 2.

They they struck like fucking lightning struck with that game because that was such a sticky part.

But I feel like they weren't making Diablo 2 going.

Oh, yeah.

And people are going to fucking like it's going to be so more ish when people like roll the dice every time and the little things go like and drop and you see them and they make the noises and stuff.

I feel like Diablo 2 is a game that has like aesthetic strengths.

It has narrative strengths.

It's creating a world.

It's curating atmosphere.

It's telling a story.

It's doing all of these things.

And inside of it are these sort of sticky mechanics.

But I feel like the polarity is reversed on a lot of these dark patterning games where the point of it is to push the lever and see what comes out.

The point of it is these incredibly short round-based, run-based let's go again.

It's only five minutes.

And I think that's what's insidious about them is that it is not like...

Clover Pit isn't telling you a story.

It's not curating an experience that's going to make you think differently about anything, especially not about gambling.

And I feel like that's why it's kind of hollow as satire is, because if you're going to do satire, Clover Pit should be a game that makes the case somehow that you shouldn't be playing clover pit.

And I don't think it's doing that.

I don't think it's a game that's going to convince you that, like these rapid, dark patterning, dopamine button games are bad in some way, that that is the one dark pattern game that I would be like fuck yeah, this game rules is if it convinced me that I shouldn't be playing that type of game.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's like when I watch Pulp Fiction.

I don't require the movie to tell me that violence is bad like I.

I don't.

I don't always need us to align with my like it, with my views on It's a particular thing.

It's not that, though, because it's not the like, oh, Scorsese makes crime movies.

He must like want you to do crime thing.

That's not what I'm saying at all.

I don't need media to reflect my values back to me, but I need them to have some sort of value beyond just being like a time sink.

I think I think that Pulp Fiction has artistic merit and narrative merit.

It tells like, you know, it's very like does Diablo after 200 hours.

No, but I didn't play Diablo for like, I wasn't one of those people who got stuck in the loop of just getting loot forever.

I played through Diablo 2, you know 10 times or something like that, which is probably low on the end of number of times played by a Diablo 2 fanatic or whatever.

But but I think that Diablo 2 accomplishes things outside of the stickiness of that loop.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, but it doesn't have to 200 hours, you know, and there are people like it's like Yeah, those games have you know.

Yeah, but you could say that.

Couldn't you say that about any?

Like you could say Are you saying because it contains some level of RNG?

Because couldn't you just say, like, you could play Mario 64 forever?

Yeah, I think what I'm getting at is that the things that are actually dangerous to people when it comes to, like gambling is getting stuck in inside of a system that is giving you some sort of positive feedback for extended periods of time or losing money.

And i think these indie games, while maybe they don't aspire to something great like balatro or clover pit um, i think mileage varies on this stuff.

Right, the one jesse talked about a couple weeks ago sounds like it was maybe less, even less so than than those games.

Um, they're not sucking people's time or money.

I mean, boletro is the one example of maybe it is, and that we talked about that a lot last year.

And you know jeremy, you made a very explicit decision to stop playing it at a certain point and, and i i, i fell out of interest with it after a long period of time.

But yeah i, i guess i just don't find i i think it's an over correction to like critique these games that hard.

I think it can be not for you because of that, but I don't know if they're damaging society if ultimately, they're these small games that are cheap.

I like a lot of what Clover Pit does that is interesting artistically.

No, but think about it, though.

You're covering this game for a reason, right?

Because it's aesthetically doing something interesting, because it's a fun game that you enjoyed.

But you brought up a game that I think is better.

That's a personal opinion.

Uh, yellow taxi goes room that you heard about.

Cause it's in the about us section.

There's only so much coverage we can do for games.

And it tends, we tend to have these conversations more and more about these kinds of games, dopamine rush games that are like fun and enjoyable.

And obviously people like them enough because they're getting good reviews and people are talking about them, but there's only so much landscape.

It's like, we never, we don't have enough time to talk about enough stuff.

Even just between the four of us on this podcast every week and no clip too.

This is what we're talking about.

Not a bad thing.

You know, it's a conversation of what we do with the time that we have.

But if people are playing this for eight hours and not playing something else, that might set their heart on fire because this is fun and they enjoy it.

Isn't that our job, to introduce people to more stuff?

I guess we could apply it to any game, though.

I'm just saying that there's a certain heat that these games get on.

These podcasts that I don't particularly enjoy necessarily align with you guys on yeah no, it is very.

It's totally subjective.

I my, i think the only point i'm really trying to make is that i feel like games to me what are?

What i personally value about games is that they curate an experience that is on a spectrum from like games fall all over this spectrum and they are, they have inherent value for different reasons.

There are very toy like games like katamari that i think curate these beautiful experiences of pure play in the way that like children play, in the way that children go outside and like find a stick and are like where are we have swords now, and like that's a beautiful, inherently human thing that i think that those things do.

I i think that this particular like subgenre of like the coin pusher game and balatro and clover pit and the coin flipping game, these games of like somewhat pure rng, closed environment, doing this like short feedback loop activity, that is sort of like dopamine inducing.

To me it feels like it is uh, entertainment that is sort of more like dark, like more transparently dark patterned in a way that i think is like You know, I'm not saying people are throwing their lives away over a clover pit.

This is not like a moral catastrophe, moral hazard argument about like, you know, satanic panic.

I just think that like this is I don't know.

Is this like a valuable experience to have other than is there?

There is an argument to be made that like, you know, whatever time waster games.

I think it's a very derogatory term, but sometimes you're exhausted.

You just want something to fucking look at and push the button.

I just wonder if, like these experiences are, you know meaningful fulfilling satiating, in some sort of way, beyond just spending time looking at a thing and pushing a button and getting a little dopamine.

Yeah, I think you can, you know, nothing you've said is I don't think is an unfair critique.

And I just think maybe people should also apply that to the games that make them feel good because, like the easiest thing to do and this is like how the difference, I think, between sort of hopefully, people who are skilled reviewers and sort of everyday people, when they're talking about things that they enjoy or don't enjoy, is that things that we inherently like, we find moral, we find elegant reasons why that's the case, and things that we that we sorry, things that we like, we find we can speak to why we like them, and things that we don't like we come up with moral arguments for why we don't like them.

And i think you can apply both of those things invert, invertly as well.

And i think to me games that are like clearly vibing off of casino shit, that's like a more honest way almost.

And not every game can be inscription.

You know what I mean?

Where it's a game that is doing a lot of.

It's about stacking the deck and cheating and using cards and abilities.

I would like to push back only on one element of that, which is that I liked balatro so much and at some point i found that it was not like satisfied, like i felt like i i liked it and i liked the experience of playing it, but it was leaving me feeling worse, and so i i guess what i'm unpacking is a sort of complex tangle of emotions of liking something and feeling that when i'm in the moment of playing and i'm like this is this, is i'm enjoying this, but then afterwards feeling like empty or like i had like wasted time in a way that like i don't feel that when i play, you know, like dark souls 2 or whatever yeah, i stopped playing balatra before i felt that way.

So yeah yeah, i felt that way after like 15, i played like 15 hours of balatra.

It's not like playing hundreds and hundreds of hours.

I would do that.

But uh sorry jesse sorry yeah um yeah, anyway it's.

I just want to make the point that it's not like i play these games and i'm like this fucking sucks.

Let me like, let me reverse engineer, like a philosophical take on this.

It's more me exploring a sort of like negative psychological spiral that i think these sorts of games can create, even if you enjoy them.

Perhaps there is space for you to have be able to uh, less generalized that feeling.

Cause that's clearly something that you felt, but it might not be the case for a lot of people.

No, no, but I'm not speaking to, that's what I'm saying is like, this isn't a universal good or bad.

I think there are probably people that have like a healthy relationship to MOBAs, but I think that, like the fact, the fact that my relationship to MOBAs is one that tends towards being unhealthy, and I think, like I'm, clearly I'm not the only person in the world who has had an experience with MOBAs or with Balotro or with competitive shooters, where it's like you keep smoking the cigarettes even though you're not enjoying it.

Like, I don't think I'm the only one.

And so I may not be speaking to a universal experience, but I think I am speaking to a, an experience that you know.

More people than just myself have at least resonated with some aspect of it.

Yeah, at least half the people here you know if we're if we're talking about this particular game as well.

Um yeah, it's not going to be like winning game of the year awards for me or anything like that, but um uh, i've been enjoying it.

It's been a fun, sort of like late night uh diversion.

Um, let me just get my other one out of the way, if that's all right.

Just to round off on stuff i don't have too much to say about this one it's called.

It has my face, which i think is the reason why i played it.

It's because it has such a a strong name.

Um, this I want to say is an early access game.

It is.

Yeah.

So there is a demo ad for this as well.

Um, it is a, essentially a game where you are, you are loaded into a world.

Um, you have like a small mirror that you can press tab and it'll show you what you look like.

You look different every time the game loads or every time a level loads, I should say.

And you are filled in a space with lots of other people.

And you have to find your clone who is trying to kill you before it kills you.

You have to kill it before it kills you.

You also have to find a weapon in the level.

We're stored in these little suitcases.

So you got to go up and press E, hold down E for, and then the weapon might be a baseball bat, might be a gun with one bullet in it.

And it plays off this really interesting tension.

It's like a very, it's like those games you played.

What was that game where you were a sniper and you were trying to like killed a person in the party?

Oh yeah, remember that one.

Yeah, it's like, it's like one of those, except there's a sniper pointing at you as well.

You know, it feels like there's a tension of oh, i have to find them, but they'll also find me.

Um, every once in a while like, there are different mechanics that emerge within this playful space.

Um, for instance, every once in a while uh, you might uh get like tense and suddenly everyone looks like you For a little bit.

And that sort of like re.

It feels like it resets the map, where suddenly you're like, oh no, there's going to be like six seconds where everyone is me.

And people will come up to you and ask you things like hey, do you want to buy some booze I made at home?

Like it's set in this nondescript future dystopia.

It's kind of hard to understand what's going on.

Um, but the tension feels so good.

And when you, when you kill your clone, sometimes you do it and you're like oh like, I'm pretty sure I have a beard and a blue shirt, but I'm not sure if that's the hat my guy is wearing.

And you take the shot and you hope that it's, uh, it's, it's your guy.

Um yeah it's, it's a 3d first person shooter world, but all the all the um baddies are like, or all the humans are like two sort of like a pixely sprites.

They kind of look like um, And yeah, there's all these different mechanics like the bear traps hidden, so some things you can get stuck for a while.

And yeah, I really like it.

It's a very interesting, weird little novel game.

It's nine bucks, I believe.

It's in early access, so they're going to keep adding to it.

But yeah, I wanted to mention it.

I've really enjoyed playing around with it and it creates a tension that I've not felt in a first person shooter in a long time.

Were you playing against AI or against other people online?

AI, there is online stuff, right?

Yeah, it did say online PvP.

I was just curious which one you were playing.

Yeah, I've just been playing against a computer and it feels very... uh spooky and i don't think i could play against other people that would freak me that sounds really fucking scary how do you know you're not the ai's just people this whole time that's a great i i mean i like when games do that like that to me is i like when pub g does that i think that's silly when it's not yeah it's not no but it's not even telling you you know what i mean sometimes where you're not quite sure i think there's there can be a fun space in there when you're saying they it has your face is it your face or is it old dirty bastard which which one do they see for people who don't know google danny o'dwyer and let me know what face you see when you google his name oh lord um it's yeah it's so it's it's not just like you're it's every it's like the clothes you're wearing the shorts you wear whatever it's everything right and so like i'll be walking around going like a black skin blue beard you know yellow shirt but and then i'll keep responding that my head and then i'm like fuck i need to go with yellow shirt first because that's the thing that's easiest to see this is what the cops do by the way exactly they just they don't pick yellow shirt from that list and so it is a roguelite as well i should say like every level you do there's unlocks and stuff like that but um which i think fits with the format which is these like pretty punchy levels like levels are over in a couple of minutes you know because you're hopefully sometimes you find them pretty quick but a lot of the time i i had ones where i was in there felt like forever like well like where are they this is freaking me out um so yeah i yeah it it has my face absolutely terrific name and um yeah we've been really really enjoying it and i think that's all my stuff so i'll shut up now somebody else told me a game about a game like about a game called hole which i've been playing but i i haven't played enough playing with hole playing with all love to play with that hole um jeremy you dove into eclipsium last night what is this i did so eclipsium is a um it's a game by a developer named house fire published by the uh magnanimous critical reflex um this is a first person experience game this is i have mixed feelings on this but it is worth shouting out because i think it does some things really really well i i'm going to finish it it's a short game i have not finished it so i think it's about three hours i've played somewhere between one and two so maybe about half of the game um so this is a i'm gonna read the description because it's the game itself is so sort of like abstract and artsy that i feel like it's it's not like you wake up in a this and then go outside and it's just like a series of bizarre sort of art installations um So this is Eclipsium's Steam description.

Longing for light, a sunless world begins devouring itself.

Every step shifts the landscape beneath you as you search for what remains of her.

Okay.

So, you know... The Spike Jonze movie?

It's a sequel, yeah.

It's a little bit like those social media posts that have been going around where the grammar is nonsensical, where your brain is trying to parse it.

Except this is grammatically correct.

I'm just I can't like there's, it's not breaking through my brain.

I don't understand anything more from reading that other than answers.

Um, so eclipsium is you sort of like wake up and go through a series of these very dreamlike, just mostly linear sort of art installation, corridor environments?

Um, especially early on, the interaction is very, very light, like there.

There was nothing i would describe as even remotely sort of like puzzle like for at least 30, 20 to 30 minutes in this game.

It was a lot of just walking around and i'm looking around and i open and there's one thing to grab and there's one thing to use it on very locking key design of stuff.

Um, and so i i feel like the interactivity of this game was sort of losing me, but the thing that i really liked about it is that it is.

It has an incredibly like crunchy pixelated dithery, idiosyncratic.

Look to it.

This is not like PS1 inspired where it's like doing the vertex jitter and stuff.

It's like taking the crunchiness that a lot of those games do and just like turning it up to a thousand in a really interesting way.

It looks like you're looking through like a gauze made of dither.

And the sound design is also just like.

Everything is like crunchy and like wet and visceral and everything has noises corresponding to it.

Um, i think this is one of the best soundscapes that i've encountered in the game this year.

Um, i think there's an unbelievable amount of craft that went into this game, and so that's why i feel conflicted about it is because you, you also you move incredibly slowly in this game and i feel like that's It's like one of my like cardinal sins of game design is, you know you hit, you're playing a AAA game and they're like all right now your character walks really slow because there's like something important happening.

And it's like the thing that's happening better be so fucking captivating if I'm forced to walk slow.

And sometimes I feel like in this world, I'm just walking very, very slow.

And I can, you know, it's, I can tell what they're trying to do.

They're trying to invite you to drink in the atmosphere and to like, look around and later like Oh, what's that?

That's like a weird goo tentacle.

And what's that?

Oh, I'm like in a weird hospital place.

Um, but I just, I just found myself like wanting more to do.

And so the first one is like your hand turns into like a weird mutant hand that can cut stuff.

So you'll, you know, you'll progress in sort of the one direction you can progress.

And then there's a one path and it's blocked by things.

And you're like, clearly I have to cut the things cause it's the only thing I can do.

Um but, but the level of interactivity is sufficiently restrained that um, if you pull out the knife hand and you're not at a knife hand place, you can't even.

You're not like spamming knife hand.

And again, again, the design intention here is clear.

And I think it's a correct, intuitive decision on their part that they they don't want you going around spamming knife hands to see if you can cut things, because that's not the point of this game.

But it it did feel like I was brushing up against the like restraints on interactivity in this game a little too much.

I wanted to be able to have a little more, little more play in this world.

Do you know?

What reminds me of a little bit is is that there is these um, these in virtual reality with the vr headset stuff um, and i've i've had my daughter sort of enjoy a few of these over the walls.

There's like almost like interactive.

They're not even attractive, they're just like vr movies, essentially like animations and stuff that are like really cool and look great and sound great, but you're basically like not really doing anything, which is fine, but But it sounds like it's like you're almost doing too much, because it's like sort of early walking simulator style walk around and see the world and reach the gate that then gets you to the next area.

But that's kind of it.

Like it's it's it's like almost none.

It's so uninteractive that it's making you frustrated.

Yeah, it feels a little bit like a museum or an art installation is what I would compare this to.

And I think, if you set the expectation at that and that sounds like something you would enjoy.

I think there's incredible surreal, dolly-esque.

This is like PS1, Salvador dolly.

It looks incredible.

It's one of the best-looking games I've played this game far and away.

This is maybe a weird way to explain this, but what it looks like to me...

Cause like the hand looks like it's a real hand.

It's like a dithered, like sort of 15 frames a second kind of.

It almost looks like the technology used for the characters in Mortal Kombat 2 is being used for everything.

Yeah, totally.

There's a lot of photo and video, hyper-compressed and dithered and used as sprites or heavily processed FMV kind of cutscene, kind of things going on.

So yeah, there was a part of this that felt like I was playing uh, bizarro universe kind of like missed almost.

Um, right.

But I, I I wished that in terms of structure, the game was more like that, where it was sort of like pockets with puzzles in them.

And I was sort of, this game has the atmosphere to pull it off.

I think I would have spent a longer amount of time in a sort of less linear pocket and poked around with weird obtuse puzzles.

Um, but instead for most of the experience it was more like I have, you know, I have this hammer and there's this one nail over here and there's kind of nothing else to do in the room except look around.

Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's, I'm going to finish it.

I think it's compelling and uh, I think it's short enough that you know it's.

It's not like a 20 hour museum game.

It's a, it's like a three to three hour game.

Um, So yeah, I think it's worth checking out if you if, if the idea of like an interactive, very lightly interactive, surreal art installation appeals to you.

It's cool in that regard.

I just I'm not sure if it's like completely clicking with me.

Yeah.

Let's use it on us then.

Jesse, does this look like something that you'd be interested in playing?

I mean, it did until Jeremy described it.

No, no.

I really like the screenshot.

See, the thing that I like about that sort of thing, because you said museum and I got excited again.

I do like the idea of a place that you just observe, like you don't do anything in really.

You kind of just have to see it like hell is us.

I think that's part of what I liked about that game is the world presents you with these bits of character writing and moments, and like bits of the story that are told through just visuals, but then yeah, I'm not really doing anything.

So like what, what about that is appealing?

Is it not like, there's nothing going on here.

You're saying interactively.

That's appealing.

But the stuff that you see is appealing.

So, like, let me give a very early example of like a level of interaction beyond that puzzle.

You walk into a room and there are there's sort of like weird tentacle goo everywhere.

And there are these spotlights.

When you turn the spotlights, it chases away the goo.

And so you're.

You're turning the spotlights off towards the next spotlight so you can walk to the next spotlight to turn the next spotlight.

You're creating a path by shining the light on the goo.

But this is not a if you set that in an environment where it was like there are other puzzles to solve or something.

This would be sort of the like oh, I'm in the goo area and I need to like figure out where the I have the blue key or I have like a marble, and then I need to like where does the marble go?

But it's removed from that sort of like extra meta layer.

And so the only kind of thing you're doing is like, turning the lights to clear the goo so you can walk um would you prefer this to have been because this is like a like it's a cheap enough game right it's like 12 bucks or something yeah 13 i think it is current uh with a bit of a sale at the moment it's down under 12 um would you prefer this to be like a 30 game that was like like the witness or something that you know was like bigger first person thing with this art style but was doing a bit more with its interactivity yeah i wanted to i wanted to like I definitely resonate enough with the aesthetic and the sort of like type of tonal atmosphere that this world is curating that I would want to spend like a long time in a game world like this that played out something like Myst that was like pockets of sort of like very obtuse. puzzle solving um i think this game has the chops to pull that off uh and you know i again i who am i to fucking dictate this is this game has its own intention and it's doing the thing that it's trying to do very well um i just wanted to have a little bit more to do in this world and instead it feels like i'm sort of going through this like mostly linear uh you know art installation of dreamlike imagery let me then sort of because i'm in a similar spot so jesse i'm not sure like i maybe i feel like this is i feel like this is a game i just need to get baked and just sit down and play so then speed there was a speed review i after i played like an hour or two of this i was like i wonder to like people like i wonder if like people are liking this game because i i find that i have a very high tolerance for games that are sort of like challenging or weird and so i went to the steam reviews And one of them, one of the negative.

I think it was a negative review.

Now I'm doubting it might have been an ambiguous review.

I wish there was like a symbol for that on Steam, but it was whatever edible dose you're considering.

Double it was the review.

And so I think that would also be my advice for this game.

Right.

Well, I have a similar game that I wanted that I wasn't going to talk about.

Actually, I forgot to talk about it because I wasn't even sure what I could talk about it.

But it feels very similar to the experience you've had with this, which is Blippo.

Oh yeah, so this is like this.

This god it's.

It's basically a game, it's it.

Is it a game?

I don't think it's a game it's.

It's a piece of software that's sold on steam, so i guess technically it's in the game section, if if it's not in with the software stuff um, it's an experience that is basically like you have tuned into the cable satellite of an alien planet and it's like very human looking aliens but like It's very, you know, late 80s, early 90s cable TV silliness.

That's going on.

And you basically just flick through the channels.

And I was I played this for like, I don't know how long played it.

I went through it for like an hour, watched everything, I think.

And I was waiting for something to happen, you know, or like there to be a thing that I could do, or like oh, I noticed something and there's something else going on here.

And I was like really doubting myself.

I was like, am I just not picking up on what this thing is doing?

It was just an expectation thing, I think.

But I don't think it does.

I think like I've read Steam reviews now, a couple of days later, and people are like yeah, it's just like a weird interactive cable box that you can flick through these channels and i don't know the like the it's.

I'm like the um, the middle ages kid seeing uh, seeing a jet fighter for the first time.

My my peon old reviewer brain of video games cannot seem to wrap my head around what i meant to be doing to critique this thing or appraise it in some way.

Um so yeah, i didn't really want to even bring it up, but it's a what it's doing, but i need it.

I need there to be some type of back and forth between me and it.

I think part of it's lost in translation as well is uh, because blipo plus came out on the um, what's the panic device called the play date?

Play date yeah, the little yellow toy crazy right, so like this is a full color.

Yeah, the the play date.

For people who don't know, a little crank um handheld device Yeah, literally it has a crank on the side of it that you crank.

It also has regular buttons that you can play really interesting, great little indie games on.

It's a fantastic device.

And Blippo Plus launched on that.

I don't, is Blippo Plus published by Panic, the company that does?

I think you're right, actually.

Yes, yeah, it is, yeah.

So I think this was a really interesting experiment for that device, because they did drops every week or so where so you didn't just watch everything in one go.

You had to like come back to it and see a new channel or a new thing, or watch, you know.

Oh, like the mountain hiking guy.

What's he gonna do this week?

Like that was, I think, part of what made the experience interesting, where here it's sort of just like tv that you flip through, which that's funny, i do think is an interesting idea.

I think immortality is sort of like spoiled us and it created an environment where you can't just do that anymore.

I'm waiting for the shoe to drop right.

There's no shoes uh, so it's like it's.

It's an interesting thing and it would have been really cool to play it from launch until all the content came out on play date, but i didn't do that, so i'm playing this version of it and it's like It's like reading a Japanese novel translated to English but not localized to English.

And you miss all of the references.

Yeah.

Look, even looking at, cause I have a play date, but I just didn't update the season two stuff yet.

I've been, I don't know, just dilly dallying on that.

So a lot of this seems like it's in, in that.

And it looks, cause it's like, it's black and white then on the play date.

And because it's like you're tuning into this weird channel with your weird crank thing, i can totally see how it makes more sense in that format yeah, so that okay, you've totally cleared up what i think that thing is now and it is a.

It is a weird fit for steam.

It is a, it's a because it yeah a lot of that doesn't communicate.

Um man, video games are weird.

Now they're cool.

You can do weird things with them, like make tv, Exactly.

And gamble, you can, oh, okay, oh, gambling games.

You can gamble.

And then there's like different gambling games.

There's gambling games that don't have gambling and are really bad.

Do have gambling and are not so bad, or do have gambling and are bad.

Okay, stop talking shit on gacha games, all right?

I like to collect the JPEGs.

What if this was when I reveal that the reason I don't like pseudo-gambling games is because they're not gambling enough?

That makes sense.

If Clover Pit had a $5 button on it, it would be a much better game.

That's what I need.

A guy comes around to your house every week and unlatches the back of the playdates and gets all the coins.

You need a maintenance guy to come fucking empty out the coins.

That's great.

I love it.

Yeah.

Can I use my Steam wallet funds or Steam?

What's that currency they have for like buying avatars?

Is that right?

Like points.

Oh, yeah.

The points.

I didn't know about that thing.

I looked at that for the first time. like last week you must have a quarter million points so many points i was like oh my god where do i even go on this daniel where do i go store points shop how many points do i have in this non i think if you bought this account steam index you got like your valve index or whatever you got like a hundred thousand points or something when they launched oh really for that as well yeah what do i have i'm trying to go through here i need to know now i need you all oh i have it here can you guys look up yours sure because i want to see if this is crazy or not where do you see it again go to steam go to store and then points shop okay and then your balance is on the left most uh column oh yeah i got a bunch although i do you know what they're good for is when you see a steam review and someone's like you see a game that you love and the steam review is like game sucks game is boring this game sucks you give them the fucking clown award you give them the reddit award you can do that's where you get those yeah yeah yeah is you buy them oh my god i'm gonna go on a tear with that that's great okay so many downvotes or the yeah you've got yours jeremy what do you got uh 266 804 yeah fair fair okay what do you have danny you said fair like 704 000 wow that's a lot i have 480 but it's not like it's not orders of magnitude more than jeremy you know what i mean like it's not like disgustingly more i don't that seems fair jesse i feel like you have a pretty fat steam account what's what's on how many do you have i've got 480 000 okay cool and then frank i feel like yours are all in xbox points yeah i have 389 000 oh okay jeremy are you even a gamer he's just been clowning on too many steam reviews yeah maybe that's what it is i you joke but i do i do give the jester award a lot also you can give uh profile awards to your friends definitely have done you know give the brain award to my friends when they do something dumb like check your profile yeah i uh i use my steam points you know i'm in the marketplace you guys are fucking hoarding and i'm recirculating the currency And things do cost, like, things cost, like, $1,000, $2,000, $6,000.

So it's not like we have, like, generational wealth of Steam points.

I'm going to pass mine down to my kids, all right?

Okay.

There wasn't a lawsuit where someone's dad died and the kid was trying to see if they could get access to the Steam account and it wasn't transferable or something.

I didn't know that.

That's crazy.

They sell backgrounds for your Steam profile.

Yes.

But unfortunately my friend Carl of Sidburn19 said Um, gave me like maybe 10 years ago, gifted me the best possible steam background, which is?

It sort of?

Looks like cool 3d world style 3d models of a bunch of leprechauns like holding potatoes and stuff like that.

So I can't ever change that.

So never going to get to do that.

Ah, that's that dream dead.

Um, There goes that dream.

Okay, what else we got on here?

Do you want to talk about Goodnight Universe briefly, Jesse?

Yeah, I can quickly hit that.

Yeah, Goodnight Universe.

This is the latest game from some of the team that worked on Before Your Eyes which, if you haven't played, is a really cool first-person story game.

It's like two maybe three hours long uh that you control, or can control uh, should control, in my opinion with your webcam or camera.

Um, i think it's on mobile as well, if you want to play on your ipad or iphone or whatever you want to, whatever phone you've got, didn't?

Wasn't that something i was trying to think about like a couple of weeks ago?

Was there any game that controlled your webcam?

Uh yeah, i think i brought this up.

Uh, i think i brought before your eyes up when we were talking about that.

But um yeah, really great game.

I think it's one of the most affecting video games i've played in a very long time.

It was one of the first games i put up for game of the year, actually since joining the team, which was cool.

Yeah, me and jeremy both had the same list that year, which is a little awkward uh, because we didn't talk and that was how we became best friends, and But this game, Goodnight Universe.

I've been excited for this since it got announced.

It takes that idea.

I thought that was like a magic trick you could do once, where the player blinks, interacts with the game with their eyes and that is the one thing that you do in Before Your Eyes.

How can you do that again and have it feel as special?

So I got to play the demo for this.

The demo is available now on Steam.

It should be anyway as this when this podcast goes live.

The email they sent says it's going to be live October 2nd.

It shouldn't be October 7th when you're listening to this.

So but it's it's 30 minutes long.

I really recommend checking it out.

They have taken that idea and they have built on it just in that 30 minutes, in ways that perhaps for particular reasons to me or um, just because I have a heart in my chest uh, really affected me and like, made me feel things that I was not ready for.

And on a technical level, it's doing stuff just with the camera.

That is great.

That would make, uh, uh, Don Matrick or whoever from Xbox really excited 14 years ago.

Wow.

It's like a connect with no connect.

Uh, it's yeah.

It is a really interesting video game where you're playing as a baby who has a powers.

That's it okay um, and that's it.

That's all i'll say.

Play it.

It's 30 minutes long.

I think if it launches this year, it will absolutely, just on the first 30 minutes, be one of my favorite games of the year.

If it's not, it will be probably one of the best games ever played.

I i think just that 30 minutes is up there with before your eyes a game i think every single person should play.

Such a cool.

You just you gotta play it.

And the calibration, just as a point before you hop into it.

The calibration that you do at the start is a just trust it.

If it, if it feels okay, if it feels like you have to blink kind of hard to get it to trigger, that's okay, let that be the case.

You want that when you're playing.

You don't want it to activate accidentally.

So just trust the calibration, trust that it worked, trust your camera.

October 2nd it's out.

Uh, we should also mention that is this is part of uh steven x fest as well.

So there's going to be a bunch of stuff dropping and we will have a bunch of stuff to talk about um on the podcast next week as well, I'm sure.

Frank, have you played enough of Silent Hill Left to talk about it?

Do you want to give us a little bit of a heads up?

Yeah, I've played a lot about it.

I would love to talk about it.

So Silent Hill Left is the new game that Konami published, but this is a different team.

It's very fascinating.

So the studio that made it is a team that worked on all the Devil May Cry and Resident Evil collections and a bunch of other games.

And they have the team is called Neo Bards.

Neo Bards Entertainment.

They're based in Hong Kong.

They have studios in Taiwan and all over.

But they hired Ryukyushi07, who is like a visual novel writer, who's done a bunch of old school Japanese like fucked up, like horror dating sims, weird visual novel stuff.

So the unique thing with Silent Hill F, this is the first new Silent Hill we've had in a long time.

Post Silent Hill 1 through 4, we've had Silent Hill Homecoming, which you're like an army veteran who's come back to the town of Silent Hill.

Downpour, which is like, I beat that game, but I hated it.

But 1 through 4, the original, I like this game even more than Silent Hill 4.

It's not on the tier yet of 1 through 3.

I think those will never be matched, but playing through Silent Hill 2 remake last year.

I liked it, but I wasn't impressed by it because like, oh, this is just a remake.

They did it.

Awesome.

Cool.

This is a brand new game.

And yeah, what makes this game unique is this is the first Silent Hill.

It's not in the Midwest America.

Instead, it's in Japan in 1960s.

You're in a mountain village.

And so even just that setting is like, is it foggy?

Is it foggy, Frank, in the mountain village?

Yeah.

Is that what F stands for?

It's F for fog.

Yeah um yeah, it's uh, so so, playing it, i'm already stoked just a to be in japan.

I'm here, i am again back 1960s.

There's so many like cute specifics, it's just like of the culture.

You go to like the local general store, the candy shop and things like that.

So it's like oh, this is like i'm generally learning about 1960s japan, let alone all the like fucked up stuff that's happening.

Um yeah, the stories that they set up i'm like generally engaged with.

It's really fascinating.

Uh you're you're, you're a girl and her schoolmates are are what's going on?

This time?

We have to fucking get out.

But like, like euphoria there's, there's drama and oh, you know it's, all your favorite things have been rolled into one.

So this really is for frank.

Yeah again, this is all this is all like, do the kids wrestle at all?

You know there's a lot of violence, trauma and like even playing further.

There's scenes that are happening like oh, this is fucked up, this is awesome, this is so like i'm really digging it.

But yeah, you'll find notes and it's just petty high school bullshit and it's like oh, this is good and then fucked up stuff about the mysteries of the town.

There is combat in this game.

It's all melee stuff.

There's weapon durability.

But it's so funny.

When you start the game, you can play on story mode or hard.

What I think that really is is easy mode and normal.

When you beat the game, you get harder difficulties.

But I'm just playing on story.

Same thing with all the Sun Hills.

There's combat difficulty and puzzle difficulty.

I'm just doing easy for both.

And it's linear enough to where I'm not getting too lost or too frustrated.

There's definitely parts where you're trying to figure out doors and switches and shit, and then there's monsters chasing and that's that's the.

That's the survival horror stress, but overall it's like i'm i'm getting through the game without having to resort to too many guides or anything like that.

Okay, same thing if you die, at least on story mode.

Checkpoints are pretty favorable.

Um, there's enough save points.

I've had the game crash on me once on ps5 and i was so thankful i had saved like just like two minutes before.

How do you save?

So you go to like little prayer shrines and this is kind of cool.

I think it's the first time this game has done this, but there is like a little bit of like Resident Evil 4 influence in here is you can go to the shrine and you can trade your health items for like I forget what they call it.

It's not it's not prayer points, but something like that.

But like you can use those to literally like upgrade your character content boxes.

Yeah, you can upgrade your character or get like equippable, like talismans that will affect more stamina, more health, things like that.

So there is a little bit of like, oh okay, like like you know what strategy do i would do for this, and there's different environments with different you know things like that.

So uh yeah, so i'm generally impressed by it.

Uh again, the monster designs are so gross and awesome and uh and like sign hill 2 has the the the, the nurses are iconic here.

All the marketing they've been using are these like scarecrow school girls and it's just the way they move and interact is like so creepy and great.

And the camera is like tight third person over the shoulder when you're not engaged in combat.

No UI.

So it's just you in the, in the town or wherever you are.

So it's just really pretty engaging, uh, to go through.

And, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's, I'm so happy.

It's good.

Cause everyone was holding their breath.

Like, Oh my God, what is this going to be?

And, uh, yeah.

So i'm digging it.

Um yeah, silent hill so far is awesome.

I i have a question and i just want you to shoot from the hip.

Just you don't have to justify your feelings on this, just in your guts.

What do you feel on if there's a, if there's a, a line and on one end is silent hill 2 and on the other end is the silent hill 2 remake not in terms of like camera or mechanics or perspective or anything what do you feel like this is closer to?

Well, I think this is my answer.

It's because it's a unique story.

It's like Silent Hill 2 original because it's not just a remake of it or anything.

Yeah, like Silent Hill 2 did have a lot of like... I feel like there's a lot of gun combat.

Here, it's melee, so you're up close.

So it's way more just vicious and stressful.

Where I feel like Silent Hill 2, you could run away.

Shoot, run, shoot, run, shoot.

Here, it's like... There's a lot of things where the quarters are tight.

You have to get through and slip by.

The game also like...

Um, I feel like there's a really good job of like, Oh, like there's just go, just run.

You don't need to kill every enemy.

So it's, but there's like that constant resource management.

Like, Oh my God, what do I do?

So, uh, I am digging it.

I don't know if he'll again.

I'm eager to see how the story pays off and stuff.

But um yeah I, I really like it.

Like again, so I know it's a remake I liked, but it wasn't impressive just cause it was a remake.

Whereas this is like, Oh, this is all new stuff.

This is so cool.

And it's very unique because of the setting.

How, um, you know, so the, the Silent Hill games, um, I've not played loads and I'm right.

We talked about that when I was playing the remake of two, but like it seemed to be that those and like the resident evil games obviously I have way more experience with um I mean they're linear in that like there is a start, middle and end, but the areas that you're in you're sort of exploring a bit and you're backtracking and you're doing a lot of that stuff.

Is that how this plays out?

Or is this more like linear, like you're in one area, then you're in the next level, then you're in the next.

It pushes you forward, like, and there'll be things, like, it's not weird to say point and no returns, it'll give you a heads up, but you're like, open a door, here's a cutscene, and all right, we're in the next zone of the game, and you're not backtracking to the very beginning, so it's just like, you know, it's, it moves along.

Do those areas feel like you're exploring them when you're in them?

Yeah.

So it's like and you can check your map constantly and like anything like you, kind of like side hill.

Oh no.

And the road is blocked and stuff like that.

But, oh, here's a little health pickup.

Here's a note.

Here's environmental storytelling.

So I do the thing.

If I can sense, this is like, there's going to be a boss fight or something coming up.

I will literally go down every crevice and the game has like the fog of war on the map, or okay, you get to the end.

Here's the X or it lets you know, here's a door you haven't opened up yet.

Standard survival horror, but it's like, Oh, this is good.

This is super helpful.

And yeah, I feel like a lot of in the previous side hill games.

They'll kind of hide the map until you're further on.

So far, I feel like I've gotten the map early enough.

So it's it's like, OK, yeah, you can you feel safe going through stuff.

And they had easy mode.

They give you so many items and stuff.

So I've gotten way more confident at like OK yeah, I can, I can get rid of some items to upgrade my stats again.

There's weapon durability you'll get like toolkits to repair weapons.

There's like different.

There's like light, like you get a knife that's quick, a sledgehammer you can block with.

So it's like oh, there's different strats, you want to do it.

So wait sorry, the combat.

I, because silent hill 2, i remember doing the melee combat and being like this sucks.

Why would they put this in?

Just don't have me hit things.

I get why it's there, but don't, it's not fun, and that's the point of it.

But like, is the combat fun in this?

It's cool.

So as you get better weapons, it gets way more fun.

But like... Yeah, so there's a thing where... It's got a unique system.

There's like three meters.

One is your health.

This is what I think is funny and goofy.

There's a sanity meter, like Eternal Darkness.

All right.

And so it's like, okay.

And so... and then there's uh weapon durability and so what it does is like as you approach an enemy they call it like the focus meter i think it's you hold l2 and you start charging up for like a strong attack um and if you get hit you lose your focus or as you're charging up there'll be a small like the character will like a little like parry window essentially and the enemy will do something and if you hit r2 you'll basically counter-attack them so oh and you can spam dodge like dark souls you have a stamina bar but it's like oh okay get all melee focus but again it's the thing of you fight them or just try to slip past them but in a lot of these areas you're going back and forth and and things like that so you have to make the choice like do i again like kind of like resident evil one in the mansion do i want to kill a zombie in this corridor or am i never coming back in this room is it okay to save your ammo and stuff what happens if you lose sanity So if you lose salmon, Sandy, you take more damage.

I think your character will kind of like, Oh no.

Like, and you'll just start seeing more.

Whoa.

Yeah.

You'll, you'll see more of like this effect on the ground and stuff.

And I, and, uh, but it's nasty.

Like there'll be an enemy that'll come up and just lick your face.

And it's like, Oh, that's so gross.

Like, yeah, it's, it's, so it's, It's pretty fun.

I think they were very conscious.

Like, they're like, oh, we wanted to make traditional J-horror.

And yeah, it feels like a PS2 game.

Not in the jank way, but just in terms of like, people compare this to Siren, like Rule of Rose.

It's very Rule of Rose.

Right.

Because that was like, that game was frustrating, but that was like melee and just weird shit.

So I really, yeah.

So this is, and Rule of Rose is also school rules and stuff like that.

Hey, have you ever played Rumble Roses?

Yes.

Yeah, I was about to say.

That's like a Frank Cowley special right there.

That's the PS2 Joshi fighting game.

And there's a unique storyline.

Every character has a unique story.

But yeah, yeah.

Hell yeah.

Nice one.

All right.

Silent Hill F. Thanks very much, Frank.

A bunch of games this week.

Baby Steps, Clover Pit It Has My Face.

Mars First Logistics Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom.

Silent Hill, F Crime Boss, Rock A City Eclipseum, Hell Is Us and Goodnight Universe.

An absolute murderous row of games. you can check out and play yourself.

And we'll probably have some videos of some of them up in the next couple of weeks too, over on Noclip2 or maybe on Noclip2's Patreon.

Keep your eyes and ears peeled for that.

I definitely feel like Silent Hill F as we enter spooky season, Frank.

It could be worth a little bit of time there.

We got a couple of emails, it looks like, too.

Yeah, if you want to write to us, you can send an email to podcast at noclipvideo or in our Discord for Patreon members and the podcast chat channel.

We have two emails.

Benny wrote in and asked, favorite handheld port?

Hey all one of the wonderfully weird parts of the 90s and 2000s gaming was that multi-platform releasing a game basically meant making multiple games at once.

Due to enormous differences between home consoles and handheld hardware.

I'm currently being blown away by how weirdly addictive Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is for the Game Boy Advance, despite its super low specs compared to the home consoles.

Do you guys have any handheld slash weaker hardware versions of major releases that turned out to be incredibly fun in their own unique way?

This kind of counts, kind of doesn't count.

But grand theft auto, chinatown wars, oh man because, because that wasn't like a, like a, they didn't release it on anything else right, but it was a gta for the ds and that game was absolutely outstanding.

It's so much like gta1 right yeah, but it did a lot of stuff with the touch screen and crunchiness of the like.

The graphics was like.

They were like chunky, i'll say actually like they filled the screen up and the.

The audio design was great and yeah, it had the top down sort of feel of of gta 1 and 2, but it but it was, it was 3d, it was i don't even know, it was almost like jet set radio.

The graphics were kind of like very yeah, like cell shady yeah, cell shady yeah yeah, that game was.

That was really cool.

That was like a very good like.

Oh, when people buy a ds i was working at gamestop at the time it was very easy to recommend them a grand theft auto game.

But for it to be not just some knockoff grand theft auto game, an actual like, very unique to the ds experience, that was cool, was like a was a massive boon.

It was really easy to recommend it to people.

Yeah, i always wanted to play that one.

That was cool.

Um, the wii version of modern no, not modern warfare resident evil 4, which is like oh yeah, a handheld version, but it isn't this the only one i can think of.

It's like a downgrade of something, But also an upgrade.

I think that's the best way to play that game, personally, is the Wii version of Resident Evil 4.

Is it first?

No, it's still third person, but you use the Wiimote to control the pointer.

We all just did the same thing.

We all just pointed like a TV remote at the webcam.

The Wii is the best console next to the Nintendo DS.

That's what people wanted Red Steel to be. was Resi 4.

That's what Red Steel 2 was.

Reggie brought out the Wii Motion Plus and was like, we finally did it, folks.

Ubisoft made the ultimate video game and they didn't.

Zombie U. Yeah.

That's the Wii U. Remember they released that as not... That's the opposite.

It was when they brought the zombie game off the wii u do you remember that?

And it was less fun.

All of a sudden it's like why why?

The one thing that made this novel, the like weird little screen with your inventory on it and cameras and stuff.

We're taking that away, if we're, is this just a bad first person game now?

Is that where we're releasing?

Yeah exactly, apparently so.

I similarly have a game that was made not as a port to a different console that was developed in parallel, but sort of the alternate, you know, extension of a universe.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is one of the best Final Fantasy games ever.

I prefer it to Final Fantasy Tactics.

Really?

There's something about it that... I like the gameplay more than FFT.

Yeah, I think it's more fun to play and there's something about it that is very Tactics, is very sort of like you're on this like adventure and it's very narrative and there is like a map that you navigate, but it's sort of more of like an overworld, whereas um tactics advance is you build a party of uh, adventurers i don't know like a combat party, um and you are basically like freelance mercenaries and you're taking contracts and going out into the world and on the world.

It's sort of like um.

It's almost like a like a board game game board where there's like little like chess pieces of bands of mercenaries moving around and stuff and if you touch them you get into combat um.

But it's very cool the way that you can just like pick and choose which missions you take on and then reinvest the funds you get into your party.

It almost reminds me more of something like um, like Mountain Blade Warband or something.

There's something very, it's like a sandbox tactics RPG.

Are you going to play Evilist Chronicles?

Do you care at all about the remake they're doing of Final Fantasy Tactics?

No, I do think it looks really good.

I've, like I've.

It's one of the few remakes where I've seen it and been like holy shit, they actually they did like this weird like magazine stippling look to it where it's.

It's it like softens the pixel art but adds texture and granularity with this like magazine stippling.

Yeah, I think it looks great.

I just, you know, I don't want to pay $67 or whatever.

It is an American to play the same game, but it's OK.

It has the Final Fantasy 16 lore thing you can do, where you can take the slider back and check the history.

I'm just not a remake guy, i just feel like it's.

I would rather just play the real game, that's fair.

I'm trying to think of psp ones, but the psp is tricky though, because a lot of them were straight well, not straight ports but, like you know, the gta games came out on them.

They were pretty, they were strong, i think on psp.

Um, i guess metal gear acid is kind of like yeah, that's i'm trying to think.

Is there any?

Yeah, there was a bunch of like good racing games.

There was a good street fighter 3, i think it was, alpha was on a was on psp, and midnight club was good on psp as well.

There was a decent need for speed on there too.

Um yeah, a lot of games look really good on that screen, just because it was like so compressed and small, you know.

Yeah, Good question.

My the all time.

Like my favorite mobile port or whatever handheld port, is Resident Evil Deadly Silence.

It's like an improved version of the game because you can skip the door loading animations.

So that became the Resident Evil.

It's like speed run.

So, yeah, it's funny.

It's Resident Evil.

And I think the bottom screen, you can see your map.

So it's like it is the optimal way to play Resident Evil one because like there's no load times.

You press start.

You skip the door loading animations.

The map is always there.

Inventory, your health status.

All the stats are down there.

It's incredible.

Um, the one weird thing is like they're, they have a knife mini game.

So sometimes they'll open doors and I think it's like there'll be spiders on the screen or like, and you'll just you just have to like, wiggle your finger to hack them.

But I think at any time during the game like you can have your gun out and I think you can just swipe the screen and do a knife attack.

So it's like, as opposed to having to re-equip the knife.

So it really became like the speed runners resident evil.

Um so yeah, that resident evil, deadly silence, which I yeah i, i sorry.

I just found a list of all the games that took advantage of the d and the s.

Yes yeah yeah, because i knew you're, you're going to go there, so shout out to the um red pages podcast who did this uh, back in 2015.

So um, we're gonna.

I want you all to let me know what your favorite one of these is.

So, for people who don't know, when the nintendo ds came out, A lot of studios did DS versions of their games, and what they would do is give the game a subtitle, with D and S being the italicism of that title.

So let's go through these.

I'm going to read through them all and at the end you all have to remember which one was the one that you liked the most okay.

In alphabetical order.

Advance Wars, Dual Strike.

Betty Bop's Double Shift.

Bleach, Dark Souls, would you believe? uh bokoro no tayo ds django and sabata bubble bobble double shot castlevania dawn of sorrow yeah dig dug digging strike adora base dramatic stadium double sequence the q virus invasion Full Metal Alchemist Dual Sympathy.

Godzilla Unleashed Double Smash.

That's my favorite is the colon subtitle one.

I think that's so silly.

Guilty Gear Dual Strikers.

Mage Knight Destiny Soldier.

Mr. Driller Drill Spirits.

Lunar colon Dragon Song.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword.

Peggle Dual Shot.

Resident Evil Deadly Silence.

Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 1 and 2.

Soro no Otoshimono Forte?

Dreamy season.

Oh, but Ghost of Yotei is too hard to say.

Yotoi?

Super black bass dynamic shot.

Is that fucking?

Is that a fishing game or a music game?

Tenshu dark secret?

Or, oh jesus, my fucking.

This is okay, this is my boss.

Fight zetai zetsumi.

Dangerous g-san ds colon, dangerous sensation.

You nailed it damn, would you believe.

There are a couple of honorable mentions, so i should say commando steel disaster, Dora the Explorer, Dora Saves the Mermaids, The Dark Spire.

These are kind of like not really doing it.

Like they might be DS by accident, actually.

Postman Pat Special Delivery Service.

All right.

Maybe not.

All right, what do we got for favorites, folks?

I got two that stood out to me.

Bubble Bobble Double Shot is my favorite drink at Starbucks.

And then... The alliteration on that is very satisfying, isn't it?

Bubble Bobble Double Shot, yeah.

Or the assonance or whatever.

It's very bouncy.

And then there was a bunch of Japanese sounds and then dangerous sensation.

Sounds like a.

It sounds like a, like a special subtype of condom that you know, like a, like a dangerous sensation.

So dangerous that it might actually, it's like, you know, they make extra thin condoms.

It's what is so thin that they're like, it might break.

We can't guarantee it won't break.

It's, it's a dangerously safe sensation.

Yeah, exactly.

I like bleach dark souls.

Uh, for me, I love bleach and dark souls is cool.

I didn't know they did a crossover.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Bleach Dark Souls.

Frank, I'm guessing yours is Deadly Silence, is it?

Yeah, I generally like that one.

Dark Secret is good.

I didn't realize Devil Survivor was the DS thing, because that's a game people like and always talk about.

But it's like, oh, that that only exists because of the the need to have DS as a thing.

But people still talk about Devil Survivor and Dawn of Sorrow is really good.

I was like, oh, yes, Dawn of Sorrow is one I didn't pick up on.

I did not think of that.

That's so good.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

I think my favorite is also zete zetsumi.

Dangerous g-san ds colon dangerous sensation, because they also have a superfluous extra ds in there which uh, which in any name is not needed.

In a name that already has four words before, it is especially unneeded.

But there you go.

Oh, thank you very much, red pages podcast um for that awesome list um.

One more question, I think.

Yeah, I think Graham Walker asked in the Discord channel how do you view the sustainability and ongoing availability of Noclip in Noclip 2?

How long can Noclip's documentaries last?

What if YouTube goes down tomorrow or in 20 years?

Is there a Noclip beyond Danny and the current crew?

Whoa whoa, existential question man exactly, we're two hours and 15 minutes into this shit.

Don't make daddy ask what the future is like without him.

All right future.

Well, if you all sign up today at patreoncom, so like yeah, let me do a quick version of this.

Um uh, the youtube numbers on the most recent series haven't been amazing, but youtube numbers kind of on all channels have been down, but i think we're at like 40 000 on indie and it's been 24 hours, which is like quite lower than what we're used to getting.

Like, our Machine Games dock did 75,000.

The Wolfenstein one did 150.

These are kind of low numbers for what I would have assumed was like a big studio thing.

We'll see you with.

If the disco Elysium one doesn't do gangbusters, then we're definitely something's going on.

You know, anecdotally people have been saying we've not been popping up on recommendations.

YouTube is pushing shorts a lot more.

Um, I know someone who works in the sort of video industry, online video industry, and there is a lot going on behind the scenes with YouTube, with what they're doing with JavaScript and on the, uh how stuff gets presented so i there has been a like red letter media put out a video a couple weeks ago we talked about it about how there's something going on people were positing that this new ad block software that youtube used was partly to blame which is why some gamer focused stuff was getting lower number like as much as 50 percent lower than usual so like that definitely threatens us for sure and also so does like the just the the feedification of youtube you know what i mean like it's it's definitely pushing people into shorts and the app especially is getting people into shorts more and um the mobile experience and that's going to have an effect on a crew that posts you know long documentaries about about games um i also think we've covered a lot of big games like a lot of the games that like especially like my generation of game player would have been into.

We've ticked off a lot of boxes.

So I do think it definitely puts us in an interesting position, sort of looking into our second decade after we turn 10 at the end of next year.

We have an insane lineup for the next six months.

On Noclip, we've talked about, obviously, Disco Elysium, our cyberpunk documentary.

We have a pretty big first-person RPG.

If you're a patron you know about that one we're filming later this year.

You know we're probably going to go back and talk to our friends at Supergiant.

You know, there's like a bunch of these ones that are going to happen over the next six months or so, and I think that's really exciting and will give us an idea.

Noclip2 definitely needs more patrons.

We are at about half of what I think we need to keep that sustainable.

So um, i'm super grateful to all the people who have joined up on noclip2.

Um, it's going to be more money out of my pocket, more money out of the war chest.

Whatever you want to say, war chest is pretty low, maybe non-existent.

Yeah, big pocket.

If you're calling it a war chest man exactly, i've got a big pocket.

You know, i wear, i wear baggy pants.

That's what the cargo pants are for.

Yeah exactly, all your money the the war chest.

Um uh, so it's like that's, that's gonna be the case but, like you know, we're not.

If we were chasing the algorithm or chasing what people we thought people wanted, this would be a very different looking channel.

We are trying to build something new and trying to to express ideas and ways about covering games and talking about games that perhaps don't exist in much.

So that's, that's part of you know.

I think we all feel very passionately about the work that we do and that's the motivator.

So, Um, yeah, so it all depends on that stuff.

Like if, worst case scenario, I've talked to Jeremy.

If if, no clip, you know if I disappear tomorrow?

Uh, you know, I think no clip.

I'm happy to pass no clip on to whoever on the team.

I think Jeremy would, we've talked about that.

You, you taking over it.

If the worst happened, all I would ask is that my wife and child are supported in some fashion.

Um, if, if it's continuing to. to make enough money to do that and support all the work that we do.

I think if noclip and all the crew, I mean if there's some horrible plane crash or fucking global pandemic or whatever.

Four different spots across the whole globe right directly on us.

That's why we record remotely is because if a tactical nuke hit the building where we record all together, then it would just be over.

Someone needs to be one survivor, gets like 70 of all the admirals in one room to do his stupid fascist moron, idiot.

You know what i mean.

Like we're all.

You know we're here for many reasons idiot.

Everyone has one key to the youtube channel.

We all have to turn them at the same time to launch.

We gotta call for the codes when that stuff happens.

You know what i mean.

That's you know.

The way i think about noclip is that like it will have.

Like i want it to be around for as long as it can be around.

If it's around for the rest of my life, that would be amazing and great, and i think it's.

It has enough of a.

It's designed to be somewhat evergreen.

And also, the docs don't belong to us, is the thing I always say.

If there's future copyright laws that allow people to... We don't care if people pull the footage.

The reason we record this stuff is to record history.

It's to document history.

I think that in many ways, our videos are not documentaries.

Some of them are more documentary than others, but they are aggressively documenting the current moment in a way that only grows with time.

So in 20 years time these things are going to be worth their.

You know, to some people they're going to be the most important record of the game.

Right.

And I mean that's just going to be the case.

You know, in 20 years time we built when immortality is hard to get running on your quantum computer.

And, you know, half the cast of are dead or I don't know, you know what I mean?

In 50 years or that.

That thing we made is going to be the thing that people can point out and go oh, did you hear about this game?

Check, watch this, watch this documentary that got made 30 years ago and you'll learn about it.

That's why we make them, you know what I mean?

So uh, so in many ways it's.

If noclip dies, that's fine, because we're we're here to record the present moment and We're not trying to pretend like we're going to be around forever.

You know, we're recording what we can.

And if there's a time where we don't need to record anymore or doing it this way doesn't make sense anymore, then it'll end probably.

But I hope not.

I can't wait till the like generation beta Ken Burns interviews us in like 2070.

And we're like, I remember when video games used to be 3D.

I remember when there was only three dimensions.

That's the era.

The idea of doing no clip forever is like. like i i mean i hope it exists you know until we're all fucking dead but i the idea of us all being old men talking about video games is the greatest thing i could possibly imagine like it's it's like the joke about how like oh yeah when we're all old bro we're gonna be like playing fucking gears of war in the nursing home yes but it's like that but on a professional level is the funniest shit ever but also no one can retire anymore because of the economy so yeah we'll have to so we'll have to well it's also like speaking tours fund our like diabetes medicine when we're 100 it's like how's everyone's 401k doing we haven't haven't started it yet okay all right okay let's make some more documentaries let's get out there more like a 41k with the amount of money i got more like warhammer 40k am i right it's gonna be yeah that's there's like a shitty fucking uh never mind i'm not gonna fucking spend the effort to expend on a shitty joke about a shitty joke exactly all right at that at that point look everyone who's able to support us on both patrons we really really appreciate it like you've no idea like we we we need it all so thank you so much and um thanks for sending in the question graham as well and speaking of our indiana jones documentary 55 minutes of it i love the reception we've had to this series uh we went that extra mile with it uh ole was involved so we have two camera shoots for all three of them so they look the bees knees uh frank did amazing work on the on the gameplay and yeah i'm super proud of them i think they stand up as as really great docs uh delighted to showcase machine games especially in the you know i didn't want to say this until i was kind of over and done with but i definitely felt some way after the closing of arcane austin i remember thinking god who's going to be next on the chopping block over there and i worried about indiana jones and machine games and that sort of stuff so you know it's not like we can change the course of a studios whatever but it felt important to me that in the limited power that noclip has that we can get over there and tell their story and celebrate their heritage and some of the great stuff they did because i think or they have done because i think machine games is one of those studios that's packed with talent and uh they're just typical swedes who are very humble and chill about everything so it's nice to go over there and toot their horn for them and also if you're a nuclear patron our warcraft review is up so go check that out over on the patron feed and japan's frank video as well of course if you've missed it jesse's gonna have a video up in the next week or so um highlighting some really important games you want to give us a quick uh 101 on that one jesse yeah I mean, you know, everything that was going on a month or so ago and is still going on, just it has fallen out of the conversation with adult games, not safe for work content being restricted on different platforms, including itch.io and Steam.

I wanted to make something to highlight great games that I think were impacted by that likely will be in the future.

Talk a little bit about what was going on there and how we should try to support those developers in the games that they make as much as we can, even if we don't necessarily agree with the content within them.

Yeah, if we don't play them, we're not down on it.

Absolutely, yeah, I agree.

So looking forward to that, Jesse.

Awesome work on that.

And also awesome work on Blowback.

Season seven?

Six.

Six, okay.

Thank you.

Seven will be next, I'm sure.

Great series.

Yeah, if people don't realize, because I think your name got popped up on the credits, on maybe the free one that went up, I forget.

But yeah, people were like, oh my God, is that the same Jesse?

And it's like, yeah, Jesse also produces, you know, he produces many movies.

Of the best podcasts in the world.

Busy guy.

Yeah, this one.

Not just ours.

Talking Simpsons.

Yeah, Talking Simpsons.

They're what, a cartoon series as well?

All those guys are great.

Blowback Season 6, you should absolutely go listen to it.

It's a fantastic story about the Angolan Civil War, the way that America impacted that country.

Obviously Russia and the Cold War that took place, sort of surrounding that, and the power struggles involved.

Really interesting stories.

They talk about Jeffrey Epstein at one point and probably the funniest story in the whole show.

It's a really, really great series.

I couldn't believe it when you told me.

Dude, it's crazy.

Yeah, every season of Blowback is fantastic.

Brendan and Noah are great.

You should go check out the show if you haven't already heard it.

How do people get it again?

Go to blowback.show and they have a subscription option there that you can pick up and listen to it.

It's not free.

It is a paid show.

You have to get access to it that way.

I think the first episode is free.

First episode is free, but who cares?

You're going to hear that and want all the rest of them online.

100%.

I have swallowed blowback over the years.

It's my...

It's my one.

I'm actually listening to this one now, but it is the one that I have traditionally kept for a long road trip because I was like I need it.

You can't.

Yeah.

Once you start, you're like, oh, man, I got to know what happens next.

Oh, 100 percent.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's you got you got to you got to go down the rabbit hole.

And so we'll be on to Disco Elysium next as well.

For our first episode is actually edited and done.

Jeremy's given it his thumbs up as well, with two of us have been working on this project for a long time.

So I'm excited to get the rest of those hours.

I will be at South by Southwest in Sydney, Australia in a couple of weeks time.

So we will be doing a Sydney meetup at some stage for no clip people.

So keep your eyes peeled for that.

I'm still trying to figure out my schedule while I'm over there.

I am bringing a camera.

I'm doing a talk with skill up at South by Southwest and I'm doing a couple of other appearances around.

Um, the Sydney, possibly Melbourne, uh, game dev scene.

I will not be at the Melbourne, uh, video game festival.

That's on the week prior to South by Southwest.

Um, I can't spend too long over there.

I have responsibilities at home.

Um, but I'm bringing the camera.

I'm going to be interviewing some devs while we're out there as well.

So I'm reaching out to a bunch of people and I'm trying to fill that all up.

So, um, expect probably a week and a half from now to have details up on the, the meetup.

I'm trying to try and keep it to a weekend, but it's quite tricky.

Um.

But, uh, I'll let you know either way.

And uh also, if anyone has any suggestions for where in central Sydney, around where South by Southwest is on to, to hang out um, otherwise we'll just do it in the apartments that I have been, that has been rented for me by South by Southwest.

So, um, we'll see if, uh, I'm sure they won't care if I just use that for, for a party.

Have a rager.

Exactly.

Um, also I interviewed, uh, Lente developed, sorry, Lente, the developer of, uh, Spilled. great suggestion by the guys i did not realize because i played spilled earlier this year and really loved it a short game very cool game about um uh collective sort of cleaning up oceanways rivers and canals and stuff gorgeous art style uh developed by lente who i did not realize is a she lives in uh she lives on a boat in the netherlands um and the lads uh suggested her as a as an indie dev uh highlights similar to our one on bryce boucher boo boucher booer booer got it yeah jeremy pointed out lenta that was a great great pick uh talking to her on a boat and everything yeah had a great job we didn't talk to her on the boat but she's on the boat i imagine no i did she actually said that she purposefully went to her friend's house who had wired ether so that she could yeah yeah do it again get her on the boat um so yeah it was uh it was a great chat so we're going to talk uh you'll expect that up on noclip2 as well in the next couple of weeks i'm also working away on the megenix preview that's kind of like my my big push at the moment so uh we'll have loads of that stuff uh over the next couple of weeks including patreon exclusive pods on noclip2 as well this month because it's our first full month here in october and a bunch of other bits and bobs um i was a little bit slow on some updates on noclip2 i was posting stuff to the Not updates on the Patreon side, but specifically an update about some of the content that's going to come to it, which I promised at the end of last week.

But then there was some sickness in our family, so I had to deal with all that stuff.

But that should also be up by the time you're listening to this podcast.

And that's a podcast.

Patreon.com slash noclip.

Patreon.com slash noclip too.

Go check out all the stuff we're working on.

And yeah, there's plenty, plenty more coming in the not too distant.

All right, gents.

Shall we call it?

Let's do it.

It's been a long one.

All right.

We're out of here.

Take care, everyone.

We'll see you next week.

Go play some video games.

Bye.

[Exploring Niche Gaming Gems, Frictional Design, and the Future of Noclip]-[Hell is Us, Silent Hill f, CloverPit]

📋 Summary

The Frictional Appeal of 'Baby Steps'

Embracing the 'Bad' and the Absurd: 'Crime Boss: Rockay City'

The Enigma of 'Hell Is Us' and 'Eclipsium'

Debating 'Dopamine Button' Games and Dark Patterns

Noclip’s Mission and Future

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Exploring Niche Gaming Gems, Frictional Design, and the Future of Noclip]-[Hell is Us, Silent Hill f, CloverPit]

📋 Summary

The Frictional Appeal of 'Baby Steps'

Embracing the 'Bad' and the Absurd: 'Crime Boss: Rockay City'

The Enigma of 'Hell Is Us' and 'Eclipsium'

Debating 'Dopamine Button' Games and Dark Patterns

Noclip’s Mission and Future

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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