Kirby Air Riders, Kingdoms of the Dump, Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved | Noclip Crewcast

Episode 255 of the noclip podcast.

It's a crew cast.

It is the final regular scheduled crew cast of the year.

We are in game of the year season.

From next week onward through december, we'll be talking about our favorite games of 2025 and giving out some category awards as well.

It's going to be a good time.

The crew has been painstakingly playing through our large excel spreadsheet of games, trying to cover off as many as we can.

Make sure we've got multiple people on as many as we can as well.

Uh so uh yeah i'm, i am.

I am totally game of the yearified at this stage in terms of what i've played.

I have nothing in the documents because i feel like anything i have is going to feel game of the year ish, And we've got a bunch of new stuff to talk about this week as well.

Kingdoms of the Dump, Kirby Air Riders, Detective Instinct, Farewell, My Beloved.

And Jeremy also completed Blake Manor, which we did talk about last month, but he wasn't here.

So I'm excited to hear his thoughts on that.

Jeremy, what is your favorite manor that you've ever been to?

Aside from Blake Manor, of course.

You've been to many manors in your long life.

I don't know.

I did a lot of field trips as a kid.

I've been to Monticello might be the only manor I've been to.

Which was what?

It was John Adams' little spot down there, right?

You have slaves?

Thomas Jefferson.

I'm sorry.

It's been a long time.

You know what?

He did have slaves, probably.

I don't remember.

I was just.

I remember I ate a huge milk chocolate bar and I'm lactose intolerant and had a really bad stomachache.

Oh, man.

So I don't remember Monticello.

And don't don't eat stuff you're allergic to.

Jesse Gratia, have you ever drunk lemon cello?

I have.

We did tastings when I worked at a liquor store and it was not good.

Cool.

Yeah, there you go.

There you go.

Frank, what is your favorite drink that has a fruit in it?

I do like V8 juice, even though it's all vegetables, but I don't know.

There might be a fruit in there.

There's like eight things in there, right?

Yeah, it might be one of those secret fruits.

Exactly.

Perfect.

Exactly.

That's the thing.

I can't do a Bloody Mary.

I don't like tomato in a drink, though.

I don't know.

Then you guys like a Bloody Mary or anything?

I'm not.

I can't deal with that.

I've never had tomato juice my whole life.

Good.

You're living the real life.

It seems like tomato sauce, but with more water.

That's why you have to have a Clamato.

That's a good point.

When I see a big thing of V8, I think of like a ragu pasta sauce.

That is basically it.

What's a Clamato?

It sounds like something that there's like a medicine that they have during NFL games.

You know, ads.

You've never had a can of Mats Clamato?

No.

It's like clam juice and tomato juice and vodka.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I don't know about the clam juice part.

I think that's why it's called that.

Like it's tomato and clam, clam auto.

And they put vodka in there and they sell it as a drink that you can just buy in a can.

It's ready to drink.

You can suck it down if you want and hate yourself afterwards.

People used to buy that shit by the tray.

They'd buy 24 cans like every two or three days.

In the liquor store you worked in?

Yeah.

Clamata.

Was it like one guy?

He was just like.

It was weirdly a lot of people really loved the clam juice.

Clam juice sounds like something that, like the, the people in like a lovecraftian village would eat.

Yeah, everyone who came in had tentacles coming out of their heads and they were like where's the clamato?

I would love to it's so fucking content brain.

But i would love to do a patron only podcast where we just try obscure and and or disgusting beverages like clamato.

I would love to just drink weird beverages on webcam with you guys for two hours.

It's like the jeff garstman reviewing uh, energy drinks.

But we do.

We get hammered Every brand of Clamato.

There's a lot of flavors.

I really don't want to do that.

You know what sucked up?

I think you'd love it.

I'm quite hungover today, which is bad because we recorded this on a Tuesday morning.

But we had a get-together at our house last night. guys know i was on discord doing yeah you're being really nice so i knew you were drunk you're having big ideas so i knew he was drinking having big ideas yeah shout out to brandon sheffield we should uh we should top off start off with that i guess he put out a tweet a couple of days or yesterday i think it was i couldn't tell you i was um it was because i need to justify why i was drinking on a monday afternoon we had um it's thanksgiving week so the kids are off so we had some of the family's over so um they all brought bottles of wine and then you know gotta be a good host gotta sample the blood of christ if it's poured in front of me or the the what's the what's white wine that can't be the blood of christ that's the piss of christ the piss of christ wow i was hoping for like the adrenal gland or something or the white bloods no the piss The white blood cells, they separate the blood of Christ.

The adrenochrome of Christ or something.

Oh, that's very Hunter S. Thompson.

Exactly.

I was in Barstow last week, so, you know, he's top of mind.

No, I was, what was I getting at?

Drinking on Monday?

No, what was I saying before that?

I forgot.

Brennan Sheffield, you were saying.

Oh, yeah, Brennan, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, guys.

He's still trying.

It's going to be a long podcast.

Yeah.

Brandon tweeted out that the Demon School credits actually saw it on the front page of Reddit games or slash games.

They, he.

Instead of just like listing people's job title, I guess they did like a little mini paragraph breakdown of the work that they did, which is

Yeah.

Just once I had seen it, it was like, oh, that's a no brainer.

Of course, people should.

I get that like a big studios.

It might be hard to do that for games, films and stuff like that because of union rules, bush.

I was like we should do that, so we brainstormed it a bit last night.

So the i re-rendered the disco uh, episode one stuff last night.

So it now has a little blurb about what each of us did um, so cool.

I feel bad for frank's blurb because frank's was the shortest but was arguably one of the most amount of time uh, that was uh, that was spent on.

It was like frank recorded all and logged all of the gameplay and it's like there's so much gameplay.

Your logging on this one, Frank, was crazy good.

I was like, type, because it's all esoteric terms.

What was it like putting renaming all of those files to have very silly things written on them.

I gotta pull them up if they're still there.

I don't know.

Like the worst thing, the log was like all the indiana jones stuff because a hundred things like killing nazi, nazi on fire, like all the wolfenstein one.

Yeah, whip pistol.

This is like scab leader.

Call me manana courtyard, inspect hanged man.

Kuno chat.

Uh, rhetoric pass.

I said i like the dice rolls, Empathy Pass.

Working Class Woman Bookstore.

Steelbook Building with Kit.

I don't know.

It's just I don't know.

I try to do it as fast as I can.

There's so much stuff.

Payphone, prank calls.

It was great.

I needed to get stuff like the Dice Maker or like the what's it called?

The Working Class Woman.

And then the behind the bookshop.

What's that area called again?

The all the commercial zone.

Abandoned commercial zone or whatever it is.

Yeah.

Ruined something commercial zone.

Yeah, it was great.

So it just makes it so much easier in Premiere.

I just type a term in and it finds it right there.

So.

Frank Howley doing the Lord's work, as is Jeremy Jane on that project.

Doomed commercial area.

Doomed.

Mine was like an off-brand version of that.

Abandoned.

Yeah, that's one of the Disco Elysium spiritual successors will have that.

Yeah, that's the Dr. Thunder that they sell, you know.

Is that a Dr. Pepper off-brand?

Dr Thunder.

So all the grocery stores there i think they they probably have some equivalent of this everywhere.

It's kind of like shasta cola, but um, all the grocery stores near where i grew up had a vending machine outside that would sell off-brand versions of all the popular.

So you had um wow uh, dr thunder, um mountain.

I think.

I feel like it was also mountain thunder, was mountain dew.

Maybe they all had thunder in the name.

Uh, orange thunder Yeah, Orange Thunder.

Thunder Coke.

It's like Thunder Girl from Action League now.

She flies like thunder.

Exactly.

It's good stuff.

We love it.

No, it was Dr. Thunder and Mountain Lightning.

Mountain Lightning.

They're all fucking lightning and thunder themed.

Mountain Lightning.

That's brilliant.

Mountain Lightning.

Oh, Safeway's got Dr. Dynamite.

I like that.

These all sound like bad Acme villains.

Yes.

We've almost completely covered off one of my favorite Simpsons jokes.

When Homer is, I believe his car is parked.

He's like stuck, like he has a lock on his wheel at the base of the Twin Towers.

I think it was when they went to New York that episode.

And the guy is like, you know, no bowl, stick.

And then he's like, would you like a drink?

And he's like, what drinks do you have?

And he's like, Mountain Dew or crab juice.

And he goes, oh, I'll take a crab juice.

So we did that.

We've had it wasn't crab juice.

What were we talking about earlier?

Clam juice.

Clam juice and mountain lightning.

So pretty good.

Also, that joke did not land for me because we did not have Mountain Dew in Ireland.

So I didn't know what they were talking about.

Also, it's not that bad.

No.

Yeah, probably not.

I've been over this.

Mountain Dew can be removed from the planet and we might be better off.

He likes Baja Blasto.

Yeah, it's true.

You know who I like?

Blasting the names out of our incredible Battle Pass holders.

Little Toast, welcome to the crew.

Corey, you've been here for a week or so.

Welcome.

Introduce Little Toast to the refreshments area.

Lovepreet, Yutt, Tiny Tal, Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Anthony Thomas.

Nico Passateri.

It's-a me, Ferrario.

Senator Armstrong.

He sounded like a Dracula.

It's-a me, Ferrario.

I'm here to suck your blood.

I can't do any more voices.

We already did that Kingdoms of the Dump indie recommendation.

So that's me and Jeremy's reel for our voice work.

Senator Armstrong.

Reed Dredge.

Harry Flanagan.

Joosh.

Arno.

Matt Pearson.

James Brown.

Mark Ross.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry.

Goddison.

Sven Huster.

Pez.

John Akers.

Uint Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Fatui.

Enox.

Grizzly Mug.

Cameron Ladd.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher.

George Sakotis.

Jacob Godser.

Entheogen.

We love you.

James Med.

We like you.

Toyotilev.

We touch you racing taste you.

Thank you so much for being our battle pass holders.

All right frank, i feel like we need to start our day racing and running around and maybe eating things and taking their powers.

I don't know, kirby air riders came out.

Apparently people are down with it.

You have taken the plunge on the Switch 2, an unlikely Switch 2 game to talk about here on the podcast because there's not that many exclusives over there.

We talked about Bonanza.

We talked about some other stuff.

But what do you make of Air Riders?

Are you enjoying it?

Yeah, so Kirby Air Riders, I never played the originals, the 2003 game.

The first one's called Kirby Air Ride.

And then here they did the aliens thing.

They added like two letters to it.

So Kirby Air Riders is the sequel.

It was too close to Tony Hawk Ride was the problem.

Yeah.

No, no, uh, skate, skate peripheral, but it's a new game from, it's a new game from Sakurai.

And, uh, it's so funny playing Kirby air riders.

Cause it's like the same UI system layout, everything is smash brothers, uh, announcer voices.

Like it's just it's it's, it's So.

Everything that's awesome about Smash Brothers outside the actual gameplay like the UI, the way you unlock stuff, the modes it's like oh, this is just Smash Brothers but Kirby and Twisted Metal.

It's a wild game.

So I've never played the original. it's a cult favorite.

Um, I played the original once at like a sleepover, like when I was 12, and then someone someone spilled Coke accidentally on the game cube and then the party ended.

Oh no.

That was my only experience with the Kirby air ride, but everyone was so excited for Kirby air riders.

And I never like caught on the hype of it.

A cause I don't really follow much Nintendo stuff.

B didn't play the original.

Um, but yeah, there's so few like switch exclusive games that I am even remotely interested in.

But all of all, a lot of like my friends were so hyped on this game.

And I saw like a few friends streaming it.

I was like, oh, this looks nuts.

Kirby Air Riders, there's like three different type of modes.

There's like your traditional racing thing.

And the thing that's so weird and unique about Kirby Air Ride is it's a racing game that primarily uses one button.

You are always accelerating.

So I don't know if that's the same as like Wipeout or even like F-Zero.

No, neither, yeah.

You're always accelerating.

So even when you're playing the game, I'm instinctually like holding up.

Maybe an F-Zero you are actually.

Do you guys know that?

I've confidently said no, but actually I'm not sure.

I think you don't.

We definitely don't in Mario Kart or any car racing game.

Yeah, exactly.

So you bolt out.

The only time you're hitting a button is on turns to like drip.

They call it boost.

When you boost, you stop and then you charge up and then go.

Again, which is helpful for like the open worlds minigame stuff.

But here you never have to like worry about accelerating.

Instead, you're you're you're timing your drifts and stuff accurately.

But yeah, you're you're getting there's other racers and then there's like NPC enemies on the map.

And that's where you're sucking up like a bomb enemy.

And then that's how you get your power up to then throw a bomb in front of you or throw a bomb behind you. um so it's it's so fast and chaotic which i like like and i didn't stick with mario kart world either that was fun it was fun to play each level online but this game's sense of progression is insane there's like four different grids of like 200 achievements each or something like that and smash brothers is the same way so you're always unlocking things for like Winning a race, winning a race with this character, winning a race with this vehicle, using 100 power, whatever.

So my achievement brain is constantly satisfied playing it.

So there's the racing mode.

There is a top-down racing mode, which feels like the old school, like off-road, like arcade racing.

Oh, the arcade machine with the wheels.

Yes, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Track star or something.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that's literally that.

So it's a top-down game.

And it's so funny because you can also do that mode online and that feels like the most ridiculous thing to like ranked matches up, but that is really fun, but it's the same thing.

You're you're, you know, using your boost button on turns.

You're you're, it's like tank controls right, it's like yeah yeah yeah, and you do have the option to do free roam or whatever free, you can change the controls, but uh yeah, doing the tank controls a little bit easier, i found.

And then the thing that people really like is called city trials, and this is the one that's like twisted metal meets like wario ware and City Trials.

You're on this giant city map with like 16 other players.

It's also very fun to play online.

And you have five minutes to essentially assemble your machine, and you can swap like...

At the base, you get the Kirby Warp Star.

You can hop onto a motorcycle.

You can hop onto a washing machine.

All these crazy-ass machines.

Then you collect power-ups.

You can bump into other riders to steal their power-ups.

And then there's events happening.

It's almost like Fortnite or something.

Oh, in this area, a bunch of loot crates are dropping.

Get over here.

Oh, there's these thieves robbing things.

And they have so many power-ups in their knapsacks.

You've got to attack them, whatever.

So it's five minutes.

Basically, collect as much loot as you can.

And then you have a series of, like, missions or derbies or whatever using your assembled machines.

Oh, crazy.

And then there's a winner after.

And that's, like, the fun party mode.

Sorry, five minutes to, like, make your thing, and then it sort of kicks you out into a race.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

So that's kind of neat.

And then –

The story or campaign mode is this roguelike mode where you start.

You're like level zero on all your stats.

You drive so slow.

What is this game?

But then you're doing little missions.

And some of them, there's a thing called Gourmet.

This is the thing that got me.

This is like the WarioWare type stuff.

There's a mission called Gourmet Race.

And you're on a map and there's just PNGs of food.

Like 2D PNGs, that has like the Duke Nukem stuff um, oh yeah, but like yeah.

It's like who's the first to eat 21 food and you're just collecting pngs of grapes.

And like there's this sense of humor that smash brother has against the same team.

That's like oh, this is like funny.

It doesn't take itself seriously, it's so hyper like It's almost the thing.

I wonder if this is why I didn't like Kirby Air Riders when I was a kid.

I was like, this is too ridiculous.

I don't know, it's so nuts, but it's really funny.

And then all the modes you can play online, and then there is a fourth separate achievement grid for doing stuff online.

So it's like, I was even playing in bed, I don't know, a few hours ago.

And yeah, there's so many things to knock off.

Every mode of play feels like you could do in five minutes or less, so it is kind of the perfect pick up and put down like switch or our handheld type of game.

But, uh, it's really fun to the fact that it has this innovative, weird one button control scheme.

Um, and I think there's not, the original was one button.

This one, there's two.

There's a separate second button that you can use to like user item or something.

It's a little pinch more complicated, but yeah, it's so bizarre and weird.

But after, like i think, four hours of playing it, trying all the modes, i was like, oh okay, i get this, this is weird and uh, now i want to do separate things where i make lobbies with friends and there's achievements for making uh, local lobbies and things like that, and uh oh, and then the last thing i like that all racing games have is you can customize your vehicle and you can put that vehicle up in the item shop.

So what people were doing was taking the Warp Star and decorating it with, like a bikini.

And Nintendo immediately patched that out.

Oh, really?

They had Chef Kawasaki looking like fucking Patrick Star in a bikini.

Yeah, yeah.

They're dressing up the characters in bikinis.

But they took that down.

But if you browse the item shop, like, people are making GameCubes, Hatsune Miku, anime characters.

So it's, like, the same thing you'll see in Gran Turismo or Forza.

That's crazy.

But you have to buy those designs with coins, and you can get the coins by grinding them. the other levels and stuff so so yeah it's very playful and fun again it has the smash brothers ui uh the voice there's like 12 different languages supported there's also male voices in in in female voices so it's like english a english b span like latin america spanish uh portuguese there's portuguese there's uh uh latin america spanish is this online um or do you guys online No, no, no.

What's the voices?

Oh, OK.

OK.

Narration like winner or whatever.

So you can have voiceovers because I started playing it.

It was in English.

I was like, oh, hold on.

Let me switch.

I said to like you could do Japanese B for narration and the system announcements.

But yeah, there's 12 different languages, which is so detailed.

And yeah, so I really like it.

Man, what a I don't know.

I just assumed this was a car racing game.

And it sounds like they've sort of deconstructed the car racing game.

And I like it more because like Mario Kart World, I played like during that week or two.

It's like, OK, they didn't really have a solid sense of like single player progression.

I really cared about outside unlocking characters or the outfits.

This Kirby thing has so much crap to unlock again, like Smash Brothers.

And then I was playing Sonic Racers, Sonic Racing Crossroads, which I liked better than Super Mario Kart World's.

But I think Kirby Air Riders is now like, oh, this might be the best racing game or the best car, whatever goofy. you know silly arcade racing but yeah i was like oh this is even cooler than sonic rate because sonic racing is already so much more gonzo than super mario uh cart and then this is so extremely weird but again i it's it's almost like wario ware where it's just so hyper so fast again like wario you don't have to worry about a complicated control scheme it takes a minute to understand like don't worry about accelerating use the boost to like make sharp turns but it's I don't know.

It's just such an insane sense of speed.

And the city trial thing, the five-minute game type, because you have five minutes to get power-ups.

Once you start stacking speed, you are zipping to the end of the other map within like seconds.

So it becomes so insane and overwhelming, but in a fun, chaotic way.

And then, yeah, so it's... Yeah, it's... Again, I didn't know anything about this game.

A lot of people...

We're obsessed with Kirby Air Ride.

And again, there's like that melee brain.

It's the same team doing both.

You know.

So I've even seen them do the character announcements in the same way, where it's like Knuckle Joe is here.

And it's like Waddle Doo, like, you know, all your favorite Kirby characters.

I couldn't name like, you know, a King Didi, I guess, is right.

One of them.

A character that everyone loves is Rick.

It's just this little hamster.

So, you know, I saw that.

I saw I saw a picture of the hamster.

I was like, why is the hamster doing?

It was like an Akira slide.

It was one of the screenshots, you know, with with like a bike that looked like Akira's bike.

So what's his name?

Jeff Rick.

Rick.

Rick the Hamster.

He's one of the mounts.

The dude wearing the cowboy hat.

I keep seeing pictures online.

Oh, yeah, and you can customize.

So you get miles as your points or whatever, and you can buy accessories.

So you can get, like, bow, cowboy hat, bunny ears.

Like, again, just silly accessories.

So when you play online, you see people's custom bikes, custom accessories, custom names.

You can decorate your license plate with, like, stickers, almost like Call of Duty emblems.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, so it's like, oh, this is really charming.

Get Snoop Dogg in this game.

That's awesome.

That's wild.

You can customize your Meta Knight.

Hold on, let me post this in the staff chat.

In Kirby's Dream Land 3.

This is all the friends you get, and the Mola Mola fish on the far right is my favorite.

Probably.

I did see him on the license sticker, so I don't know if you can play as him, but he's in here.

That little blue slime, I thought that was like a Dragon Quest slime.

That's in the game.

It does look like it, yeah.

And then there's even like you can like there's again, there's so much stuff to unlock.

So you can get like get a Game Boy sprites to decorate your cart or license with.

So it does do like like the fan service of like the Kirby franchise.

Like there's Game Boy sprites and like all sorts of stuff.

And yeah, I've generally been outside all the Kirby games.

Like I really liked Smash Brothers and I would use Kirby in Smash Brothers.

And I played Kirby Super Yarn.

Did you play that one?

Didn't play that one.

Epic Yarn.

That was good.

I.

I played the Super Nintendo one.

Superstar?

Yeah, and that was like a collection of minigames at the time.

That one had so many games in it.

But this Kirby Air Riders kind of reminds me of that, where there's so many modes, so many things in progression.

Knuckle Joe, the little karate guy, is in here.

So it's like I'm recognizing characters from Kirby Superstar.

I do like that Sakurai was forced to put, like Minecraft, Steve and Banjo and Kazooie in a fighting game.

And then every time they did that, he was like, I'm putting Knuckle Joe in Air Riders.

I'm putting Rick in the goddamn game, all right?

Who is Knuckle Joe?

Why does everyone know who Knuckle Joe is?

He's like one of the little guys in Kirby who punches people.

Do you know Knuckle Joe before this?

He's got the boxing gloves, right?

I just remember him.

He's Knuckle Joe.

I'm sure he's boxing gloves.

I think he's an assist trophy in Smash Brothers.

So I think if you get like a trophy, he shows up.

Yeah.

I've seen this guy before.

He's an enemy in Kirby, which people would know because Kirby transforms into a version of Knuckle Joe.

Oh, okay.

People might know him as sort of like a Kirby power more than a character.

But yeah, Knuckle Joe, he's one of the boys.

Every game has its like Mike Tyson, right?

Like M. Bison.

Yeah. you know, is the, is the, what's his name again?

The normal guy, the Balrog Balrog.

Yeah.

As he's known in the Western version.

And I was like, it does sound like Mike Tyson.

That's good.

Yeah.

That's what, so that's why he's called in Japan is they swap the names.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

He was M Bison.

And then they were like uh, Copyright maybe.

So we'll just, we'll make the shadow Lou guy and bison and make Balrog the other guy which is interesting to an International because, like the Japan players know, you know, inverse net.

Now everyone just goes by boxer claw and like dictator.

So funny Why what was Vega was he?

It's like Vega.

Okay, so, let's see in the Japanese version of M. Bison, I think, is Vega.

Vega is Balrog, and then Balrog is M. Bison.

So it's like rock, paper, scissors, three things.

I don't know.

So then they switched them all.

But yeah, so now internationally, it's like, oh, there's Claw, there's Boxer, there's Dictator.

That's good.

Dictator.

Yeah, just to keep it simple.

That's amazing.

There you go.

I was looking up Knuckle Joe, by the way, and Knuckle Joe's father is a character.

I think the Kirby lore goes far deeper than anyone was realizing.

Damn.

He was a close friend of Meta Knight.

Well, I mean, there's only six people in this universe, so I guess.

I mean there's listen, you got the eye, the floaty eye guy, the other floaty guy who's like a cloud.

There's Knuckle Joe.

There's the witch.

There's the heel guy.

The fireball.

Classic TV show.

I could name them all, baby.

I mean, I don't know any of their real names, but I could describe them all.

Yeah, that's true.

They're very like.

You know, they all make great stickers.

That is true.

The sprite design of the old kirby games is fucking fantastic.

Kirby's dreamland 3 is one of the best looking sprite art games ever made.

It has some of the best pixel art ever.

Love it.

Love it, kirby air riders.

Uh, worth the 70 price of admission.

Frank, it's the.

It's tough to say because nintendo never discounts their games, so it's gonna be 70 until the end of time.

But um yeah, i feel like if you're someone who knew and liked the first game, then it's like oh my god yeah, I feel like you have to see this game in motion.

I didn't.

I was like, oh, this is awesome.

Again, it's hard to say like is it worth 70 at this time when there's a million new games coming out.

But I would absolutely say, like, oh, this is... If you are...

If you use your Switch 2.

If you're going to go on a long trip with your Switch 2, it's definitely worth one of the three games worth getting.

I like this more than Mario Kart World.

DK Bonanza is probably my favorite Switch 2 exclusive.

But I would say, if you have this and DK Bonanza, oh my god, you're set for all the flights in the world.

Does it have local co-ops that screen racing at all?

I'm assuming so.

I never have anyone to play co-op games with, but I assume... It has to be, right?

I have not tried the local co-op, but I'm assuming there is.

But you're saying the multiplayer is good, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And I haven't noticed any online issues.

Again, I feel like Switch 1 and Wii had bad online stuff, but Switch 2, no issue.

Again, I tried finding a multiplayer lobby at like 5 am, so it took like a second longer than normal.

But yeah, it's pretty...

Seems pretty simple.

I hope it persists in terms of the multiplayer base, because that's my one thing with Nintendo games or any multiplayer game like this.

That's like kart racing, like even Mario Kart World.

That one sort of everyone was like, all right, we've had our fun with this.

Let's move on.

This seems like it's got a lot to it.

So I'm curious if it lasts a little bit longer.

But you know, spending 70 bucks right out the gate might be worth it if you want to have consistent, good multiplayer before all the sweats get on there.

Start doing time skips in the car.

Yeah.

Mario Kart got crazy.

We still play a lot here and shit.

Cause we do.

We do um co-op or we do like split screen in the family, but we'll play online as well.

And me and my wife will play online, uh, a bunch and it's, it's pretty good.

But, uh, we get, we get, if we play late, we get all the Japanese players in, in our lobbies.

Cause the the time here in the west and they're a lot of them are pretty, pretty badass.

Air ride has split screen up to four.

Two player layouts can be vertical or horizontal as well.

City trial is up to four and top ride uh, i guess that's the one where you are looking down right, the arcadey one.

They say it says multiple but you share a single screen together, i guess.

So the that the entire course is visible at all times.

It sounds like yeah, that's how it is.

Single player yeah, Cool.

Awesome.

That's great.

So yeah, I might give it a whirl because we've sort of milked Mario Kart worlds dry at this stage.

There's one character we don't have, which is super annoying because we've probably got like 80 hours in as a family.

But it's one of the ones that the... Is it Knuckle Joe?

It might be Knuckle Joe.

It's one of the ones that you get when somebody uses the wizard and turns you into someone.

But I think they're course specific and random characters. to a certain extent.

So we just never got it.

It's really annoying.

I keep, it's been like, you know, weeks and months now and not being able to get it.

So, you know, you could buy for a lot cheaper than Kirby air riders.

I feel like Diddy Kong racing is probably, you could buy the analog 3d and play it on your TV at 4k.

It's pretty weird.

A lot of things you could buy kingdoms of the dump, which Jeremy Jane, uh, played.

We have an indie recommendation up, uh on no clip two.

Uh Jeremy, how are you finding it after we played it?

I mean, talk about it broadly as well, but yeah, you played some more.

Yeah, I have played a lot more.

I played a big chunk last night as well.

So Kingdoms of the Dump.

This is a retro RPG, sort of directly inspired by the Super Nintendo era of JRPGs.

It's got a little bit of Chrono Trigger in there.

It's got a little bit of Super Mario RPG in there.

It's got a little bit of Earthbound in there.

And, as I mentioned on our indie rec, this is a genre that sort of typically falls flat for me, as someone who really loved the original RPGs on the SNES.

I find that a lot of the ones that are trying to sort of like oh look, we're like still making RPGs like that.

They kind of miss out on some of the fundamental qualities of those games.

They're either like... I often find them much more self-serious than those games.

Those games were so whimsical and bizarre, like so over the top.

They had these like memorable characters who, i think people often because we, like people of my generation and people who are obsessed with snes, jrpgs idolize chrono trigger.

I think there's a there's a remembrance that these games were a lot more serious than they were.

Um, that's rpg is one of the funniest games i've ever played.

Earthbound is like you're like pulling diapers out of the trash and beating kids up with baseball, but like it's so fucking over the top and uh, kings and Kingdoms of the Dump.

I feel like really captures that.

It's a game that we also mentioned on the Indie Rec.

It's made by two janitors, and it has this, like... This is a weird phrase to say.

It has this like authentic love for the theme of like trash and bugs and detritus and like I don't know.

It's not like a trash-themed game that's like, oh, trash is disgusting.

It's like trash is just the sort of like background of this world um, and it's done so so lovingly, like there are like weird bug characters who are lovable.

There's like the main character is dustin binsley.

He's a fucking trash, can um?

Your mate, your main, we met the uh, you're sort of one of your antagonists early in the game is a recycling bin.

Yes, the nefarious blue bin um, and his father, lord plastique.

Uh yeah, it's uh and it's just like that, that's.

The other thing is like the there's so many fucking puns which i feel like is also.

I feel like that's.

That's sort of like a localization thing, more than i like.

I don't know how punny the games were in the original japanese, because i've never played these games in the original japanese, but they're uh, i can't remember his fucking name.

I wish i could give credit to him, but there was like one dude who localized like every fucking squaresoft game uh, and a lot of these games probably ended up more punny than they were intended or at least like equally punny and accessible to an English audience.

But, uh, you got Garba mash.

Who's like Gilgamesh, uh, Dustin Binsley, obviously like dustbin.

Everything is just like dumb trash puns.

And, uh, and it's like, I don't know.

It's just like, it's got the right amount of whimsy is what I really like about it.

Um, I think that, like sometimes I'll go, I'll go back and play the original like iconic RPGs on the SNES.

And uh, And I realized that, like it's not that the stories in them were the tightest stories or the best stories ever.

Like, they have their moments.

But it's more just that like, spending time in this world and with these characters is kind of the crux of the experience.

It's more about, like, a place and a time and less about, like, tight story structure.

And so far, Kingdoms of the Dump.

I feel like I haven't had a moment where like why the story is really cracking yet.

Because, you know, it's a long game.

It's, like, probably...

25 ish hours is what I've gathered.

So I'm probably like, you know, a third through it or something.

But I but these characters are sort of the draw for me.

I won't spoil anyone beyond the initial two, but like Rotavia and Dustin Binsley are sort of they form this dyad where Rotavia is very sort of like serious and like world weary and like understands how dangerous the world is and Dustin Binsley is this sort of like errant, foolish hero who thinks he can just rush into danger as an, as a squire and save the world.

Very, very Guybrush, Threepwood.

I felt yeah yeah, for sure you play, uh and it's yeah, it's fun to watch their sort of like them play off each other and uh, I don't know, I feel like that's a fun archetype is like the hero who thinks they can solve anything by rushing in and then gets their ass handed to them but somehow ends up on top.

It's like very sort of classic storytelling trope.

And I guess that's the other thing is like this game feels like it understands that a lot of these old RPGs functioned on the very powerful tropes of types of characters, types of stories, the way in which stories are told.

Um, there's sort of an omniscient perspective that this game does that a lot of these old rpgs do, where you get a dustin story but then it'll cut away and it'll be like this is what's happening back in the kingdom and then it'll cut away and be like this is like the nefarious, you know, like simpsons table, where all the villains in town meet like um, i don't know, it's just like I feel like it understands the genre of these classic RPGs.

It's not just trying to like tap into your nostalgia for them.

It's trying to understand them and like unlock what actually made them lovable in the first place.

And then from a gameplay perspective, it was interesting to see that like it has the sort of walking around town stuff which has some like platforming elements in it.

The overworld has that awesome, what do you call it?

Like the rolling landscape.

Yeah, it's like mode seven stuff.

Yeah.

And then the combat encounters the like turn based combat stuff that is like sort of you know quintessential to these SNES JRPGs.

It has its own sort of flavor.

Right.

Because you can move the characters on on a kind of grid as well.

You know, while you're doing this sort of side by side classic fighting style.

Yeah.

So the the combat has sort of like all of the familiar elements.

You know, a Super Mario RPG other than the positional stuff is what it reminds me the most of, because it's turn-based, but it also has sort of un-telegraphed timed hits and timed defenses.

So you sort of just like through experimentation, learn when to defend from certain enemies and mash the button, when to sort of like get crits and stuff and mash the button.

But they're like you said.

There's this positional thing where there's nine tiles on either side of the battlefield.

And as you move closer, you do and take more damage.

As you move back, you do and take less damage.

But there's also sort of like divinity, original sin style positional, like there's like a glass bottle you fight in the dump.

And when he dies, he shatters and it makes a tile that hurts people of just like glass on the ground.

And then, as you, as you get into it, there's like you know, there's like an oil status effect that turns a tile into oil.

And if you use like lightning or like a fire spell on a character who's staying in oil, it does bonus damage and turns the tile into fire.

So, yeah, that's like a real. it at first it's like is this like a gimmick are they going to lean really hard into this but i have been authentically surprised that every new area i get to it feels like it introduces a new and compelling sort of like wrinkle into the combat system through the positional stuff awesome it looks great too it's a really good the art style i adore i think it's yeah pixel art's fantastic uh a lot of the bosses were done by uh francis uh coulomb coulomb i still don't look outside dev look outside dev did a ton of the bosses in this maybe all of the bosses i'm not 100 sure but uh i saw them posting and saying uh that even though they'd drawn most if not all of the bosses in the game they had they knew almost nothing about the game so i thought that that was a really interesting position to be in where you're like every boss you get to you're like oh yeah that's like the worm i drew or whatever uh but then the rest of the game you just have no idea what it's about or what happens That's cool.

That's really interesting.

Kingdoms of the Dump, available now.

20 bucks on Steam.

Indie recommendation up on Noclip2.

Go check it out, yeah.

One of Jeremy's... Will we be talking about a game of the year or category maybe?

It's definitely up there.

I had to.

So I played probably like the first four-ish hours and then we did the indie rec, because it's i don't know.

With an rpg you can kind of just tell, like i feel like i either know whether i like the flavor of the game or not right off the bat, and then whether or not it delivers after 20 something hours is kind of a different conversation.

Um, so i took a break from it to play some other games for game of the year uh, but came back to it over the last couple days and i mean it's really good like it at playing that amongst the game of the year games it feels of of equal caliber.

So uh, it will, I would say, at the very least, be an honorable mention.

Excellent.

Good stuff.

Pick it up now.

Jesse, I thought your game was two different games because there was a comma in there.

Sorry.

No, but there is a comma, but it's in a different spot.

Look at all these extracurricular non-letters in this name.

Detective Instinct colon farewell comma my beloved.

This is a Steam game.

I've never heard of it.

It's a Steam and a Switch game.

Yeah, this is a visual novel that's presented a bit like Do you guys know the Famicom Detective Club series games?

Very briefly, yeah.

Ace Attorney is maybe a better comparison.

Everyone knows Ace Attorney.

So it plays a bit like one of those.

This is a very linear detective story-style narrative game where you're not piecing together bits of the puzzle of this crime that's been committed or these series of crimes that's been committed.

You're mostly just playing out the story of the investigation.

You play as this kid who's in college.

He's at a hotel with his classmate and his professor and they're just like on a trip to this fictional land that's been split after a civil war.

There's I don't remember the names are.

It's like vendor vendor Breck and Garbeck or something like that.

Two neighboring countries that have this, this conflict of like one of them is left destitute and the other has all of the resources and, like the political conflict that happens there, sort of underlying the narrative.

But the focus of what you're doing is just working your way through, like I said, this plot of an investigation.

Someone's murdered outside of the hotel.

These two characters who are. fairly have nothing to do with investigation.

It's not like the Hardy Boys and they just happen to be where a crime is committed.

This is like two characters who aren't investigators.

They're in school for like history or something.

They end up being picked up by the detective on the case.

And he's like, hey, You kids look like you're smart.

You want to go investigate this murder case real quick?

Sure.

Yeah.

Why not?

Right.

Seems like fun.

You look into it.

It's like a hokey thing.

Like the detective is sort of aloof.

And that's the joke there.

And the cops are aloof, too.

Like one of the first opening moments is the cop runs into your, your room in the hotel and is like hey, what do you do?

You're the murderer.

You're coming to jail with me.

And you got to sort of piece it out what he's talking about.

And he's eventually he's like yeah, the police guy was thrown off the fifth floor and you're like, but we're on the first floor.

And he's like sorry, and it's that sort of sense of humor, that sort of tone to everything.

It's a little silly but like also serious at certain moments.

It gets better later on.

Um, the way that it goes gameplay wise is is very interesting.

I played one of these, the famicom detective club game.

Uh, they made a Two of them in like the 80s and I think in the 90s, maybe for the Famicom, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Eventually they ported them to Switch and like gave them upgraded graphics and everything.

And then they made a new one called M.E.O.

The Smiling Man.

That's the one that I played.

Right.

That was really good.

I thought that was fantastic.

I had never played one of those before.

So I eventually started looking into the series more and like the origins of it.

Like there's a game called Portopia Serial Murder Case from the eighties that inspired like Kojima to make snatcher and like I knew what to do.

A bunch of stuff.

So like very important video game in the history of Japanese design which I thought was really interesting to learn about.

Um, but the way that these games are played the Famicom detective club and stuff like that you have a series of commands and you select from them.

So they're called some, uh, command select specifically, uh, visual novels.

And you're like, given they don't tell you what to do, but you sort of have to parse.

Uh, what to say to advance the story.

So someone will talk to you and be like Hey, I'm.

I've heard about this guy who sells eggs at the store at the corner.

And then like, you'll have a new command that pops up in, in the talk section. that's like eggs.

He could be like, eggs are inside of them.

They're as delicious if you cook them.

They're good.

And that sort of thing.

And you sort of have to work your way through to find the next narrative beat and progress things.

It's fairly linear, but like it gives you that sense of control over how you progress the story.

And I think the fun part of playing them because, like they are, it is sort of fun to watch a narrative like that play out

Like everyone loves a good whodunit.

Um, but the fun that I find in this one and that I found an Emmy on the smiling man and and uh, I played a little bit of snatcher and I was like this is cool.

The way that those I find those enjoyable is like it's almost a game of figuring out what you're not, what you're supposed to say, and then not picking that and doing all the other stuff and seeing what happens.

And detective instinct actually has a lot of It's fairly short.

I think it's probably like six to eight hours, but it has a lot of funny side character stuff that I wasn't expecting.

That's exposed either by picking the wrong thing or just like picking something that seems innocuous a bunch of times.

Like there's a pair of characters that you meet who are golfers.

And, like, they're so over the top and they have nothing to do with the story.

And, like, why are they on this train that you're in for the whole game?

And you just talk to them and like, eventually a minigame spawns.

If you repeat the same, obviously wrong answer.

It's just – it's very fun and silly and lighthearted.

How are you selecting, like, the stuff to say?

So is it – like, is there anything stopping you from asking every question to every person?

So everyone has – it's sort of contextual.

The commands as they come up are, like, you wouldn't ask –

Well, you know, it depends, like I said, but like you wouldn't ask certain characters, certain things,

But whenever you walk into an area, say you want to ask someone, like a random character, you'll run into a, an attendant who works on the train.

Most of the game takes place on a train.

Like there's three days that you spend on there.

Three of the chapters are on there.

And the attendant that you talk to you can be like I'm looking for this character, but that's kind of it.

But once you meet the character that you're looking for, then you can sort of look into things a little bit more deeply and ask them like Hey, I'm looking into these characters on the train.

How do I, you know, I've heard about this.

Are they grayed out or do they just like, do they appear?

They just don't show up.

Like the list is very sliced down.

Uh, if you've picked a point though, like if you've already said something, you'll have to pick those commands, sometimes multiple times.

Um, and this is where I think it gets a little sticky for some people.

Uh I've, I like this stuff, but I have heard, especially with MEO, the smiling man and I could see it being a frustration.

So, if anyone checks this out, just be cognizant of the fact that When you're playing these games, you will often pick something you've already picked before.

And that will feel annoying if it's something you're not supposed to do to progress.

But this one in particular, and I feel like I mean, I mean, the smiling man had some of this.

They make the dialogue shorter or they reveal something like slightly different, but a lot of the time you will have to just pick the same dialogue option multiple times.

Luckily, if you find yourself stuck, a lot of them have this feature where, like one of the commands you can select is think or discuss.

And you'll sort of like have a little internal monologue, or you can talk it out with your companion character, Emma.

And she'll be like yeah, we should have gone and done this, or like hmm, they brought up the handbag.

Maybe ask him about the handbag.

Were you not paying attention?

So it's kind of it's funny in that way.

I really like this.

Also, the art of Detective Instinct.

Very cool.

I love the way this game looks.

It reminds me of playing like a Nintendo DS adventure game or visual novel.

Like it has this it's actually inspired, I think, by Hotel Roommate.

215 um.

So there's that hotel dusk.

Um, it's got this.

Look to it where it's like pixel art for the character portraits.

When you're talking to them, cut scenes are done in this hand-drawn art style.

Flashbacks are like in a pencil sketch style, and then the backgrounds for all of the environments are pre-rendered 3d and they all look really good.

It's like a very simple style to it, like it's not over the top, but like yeah, it does just enough to set the scene.

Sorry, are you playing on pc?

So I started playing on PC on Steam.

It looks really good.

The pixel art's all formatted properly and it's fine on keyboard.

You can play it on controller if you want as well.

But then I started playing on Steam Deck.

Yeah, it's fun.

It's good.

Everything works.

The only problem, the scaling for the pixel art is wrong.

Oh, bummer.

OK, so it doesn't quite look as good as it looks on PC.

It doesn't look bad.

It's funny because I was.

I was going to make the argument that this would look bad on my PC because it's mostly menus, like you know, like a lot of the screen is taken up by the men.

Like, is it not?

Is it not like?

Maybe that's like a personal thing.

That I don't like sometimes is when it's like big text options.

You know what I mean?

When you've got like a high resolution monitor, because it kind of looks like a, like a, like you said, a DS game like, so I could see it working well on Switch um, and sadly i would have said steam deck even, but it seems to not be the case.

Maybe it's probably something they can fix with just a couple patches of, like how they're scaling the uh, the pixel art.

But as it, as it is now pre-release maybe when it's out there'll be a patch for it.

But as it is now it's, it's not perfect.

But yeah, i agree that, like the, the menu stuff is is a little it's big, but like, For whatever reason, it didn't bug me much because you are, it's a lot of reading, right.

It's a visual novel, so it's not too big of a deal if it's just.

You're mostly looking at the text boxes and then looking at character reactions every once in a while.

Also, the music.

Very, very good.

I think the creative director of the lead is like a composer and musician.

They have a whole YouTube channel, Jalopes TL.

I'll put a link in the description where they do really interesting breakdowns of like How people make music and games and like lovely sort of letters to like the Wii music.

He has a whole video about that, like the Wii menu music and how all of that stuff was put together and what it does harmonically, which I thought was really interesting.

Or there's a whole video about Ace Attorney's music and how that works, which is also an ad for the game, which works perfectly.

Yeah, really cool stuff.

I really enjoyed this a lot.

I think this is very cool.

I want to see how it finishes before I give it like a full thumbs up.

But just where i'm at right now, but maybe 75 of the way through, i think it's uh very, very well put together and i like the story and uh, i like this genre of game, so it works for me excellent.

Um we yeah, we should mention this is a pre-release version of the game and a lot of steam deck compatibility stuff does come further down the road, or maybe post release.

So uh yeah, keep your eyes peeled for updates on all that stuff.

Um yeah, it's out.

It'll be up at a time.

This uh podcast hits the internet.

Uh, there's also a demo, so the demo might still be up by the time uh, when the full game is released.

I feel like most people keep them up at that stage.

Um but yeah, there you go.

It's a detective instinct.

Farewell, my beloved.

So obviously they're hoping to make more of these in the future.

This is, i'd love to see them.

Yeah, there you go.

Very cool uh, any idea price?

There's none.

It's 26 bucks canadian on switch, so i would guess that's like 20 american.

Okay, somewhere in there Cool.

Very good.

Excellent.

Harmonica LLC.

Sorry, Armonica LLC.

I had music on the brain there.

Jeremy, you took a trip to Ireland, I see in the 19th century, to check in on our good friends at Blake Manor.

I adored this game, but obviously I sort of talked about it in two fronts.

I said just as a game perspective.

It's one of my favorite games of the year but as a As an Irish person, it was very special to play a game that was tackling lots of elements of our history and prehistory that have never really been shone a light on in terms of games.

So how did you find it?

As a Yankee Doodle Dandy, how did you enjoy your time in Blake Manor?

I really liked this game.

I wanted to talk about it a little bit because I anticipated it will also come up in Game of the Year stuff, so I don't want to go crazy on it right now, but i missed out on the discussion because it came out well, i was on vacation and i know you guys chopped it up a little bit about this game but uh, i played the entire thing over the last week and uh, i love this game.

It's really really, really good brilliant, yeah it.

Uh It's funny because you had like this sort of like Irish cultural heritage background that drew you in.

On a personal level,

And I loved this game, like even if I had no sort of personal investment.

I think it's a fantastic game.

But my version of that is that I have done a lot of so, like I've talked about this in the past, but my, I double majored in religion film at college and I did not finish my film, or my my religion degree rather, but uh ended up with like a you know, a fat minor in religious studies.

Um, and a lot of that was taking classes and doing research projects on the occult.

Uh, so this era of late eight, like sort of turn of the century uh, occultism and magic uh is something that I know an insane amount about.

I remember playing it thinking, Oh shit, this is a Jeremy.

I don't know if the gameplay is a Jeremy game, but the the text of this is a jeremy game, because whenever we were on shoots and stuff, you would like fill my brain with all of these stories about narcissism and like yeah, all this stuff, it was you're, you're very well read uh, in that regard, so that that's amazing, that's cool.

So yeah, this.

So i guess a lot of that stuff was getting written around that time or was getting shared around that time.

There was so that era.

There was this sort of resurgence of like um, a lot of older ideas about occultism and magic and spiritualism.

It's like the spiritualism movement.

So you had these um, these like huge numbers of sort of like well-off, very bored aristocratic people uh, And a lot of them found their way into things like Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, you know, like the Hermetic Corpus studying people, people who studied these sort of like.

A lot of them were apocryphal texts.

Like a lot of them were like, oh, Hermes wrote this 3000 years ago.

And it's like, no, like three European guys wrote this 300 years ago.

A lot of that kind of stuff.

But because there wasn't a lot of sort of like deep archaeological record of these things.

It was just this sort of like pseudo magical time where it's.

It seemed like all of these ancient, you know Dead Sea Scrolls text style texts were popping up and people were like really into magic.

There were rich people who would get together and do things like this, like have seances.

There were like parlors of people who would get together and just like smoke a ton of hash and try to have these sort of like flights of fancy.

Nitrous oxide was very popular.

A lot of people would get together and have like nitrous parties.

So something like racing, you know, sticking in their cars.

You blasted your face and then blasted your, you know?

Uh, 1897 proto car.

Um, but uh, but yeah.

Also the idea of uh.

The fact that, like 18 year olds in like america in 2005 were partying in the exact same way as aristocrats in the late 1800s is very funny to me.

Um but uh, But yeah.

So not only that, but also sort of like some of the specific cultural references.

There were a lot of people in this game who had very specific types of religious paraphernalia.

And you could sort of interrogate them about that, but they're very cagey about it.

Because like, you know, if you're part of a secret society, it's like fucking Fight Club, you know?

The only rule is don't tell anyone what the fuck we do.

So there were people who had what are called Rosicrucian crosses, which are the cross with the rose in the middle.

And it was cool because they never talk about Rosicrucianism overtly in this game, but they constantly sort of skirt around the edges of it.

And what Rosicrucianism was.

Again, it's been a very long time since I studied all this, but it was sort of a sect of like esoteric Christianity centered around a text that was I believe it was the uh, the chemical marriage of christian rosenkreutz or something was the name of the text.

But uh, but just this like very, very specific references to like hyper specific pieces of occult lore.

Um, and every time something would pop up about, like you know the the, like gnostic black iron prison, and i'd be like, holy shit, like this is fucking.

This game was like written for me in such a specific way.

That's amazing.

So i was losing my mind.

I i kept texting chelsea because she'd played this before me and i was like they fucking talk about like rosicrucianism and she's like i that i don't know what that word means.

So i guess yeah, it didn't come up in my playthrough either, but obviously you noticed yeah that, or like someone to have pins for the various secret societies and things like that yeah um, so i felt very, i felt fucking locked in uh, like more than the protagonist, who's like a detective of this era.

I was like this guy needs my help yeah um, But he doesn't know anything about any of this stuff.

He's like, you know, over his fucking death here.

So it was a bunch of freaks of every flavor of spiritualism all getting together in a house and talking about their weird freak shit.

And I was like, that's my I'm one.

I could be one of these freaks.

So I love that about it.

And also just as like a mystery game, I think the design of this is very bold.

I think it gives you much freedom after sort of the original onboarding.

It sort of gives you like a little like mini mystery to solve so you understand the mechanic and then it's like all right, here's just a house full of like whatever two dozen fucking people and each of them has like a little mystery.

Um, and yeah, two days, it was very good.

Look yeah, i was.

This game stressed me the fuck out because of the time thing.

Uh i, i think i probably hurt my experience with it a little bit because i was like obsessed with scouring the grounds to make sure I wasn't wasting time.

There were periods where I didn't have access to the people I needed to access and I was like, let me just go to every fucking zone and make sure I didn't waste a single minute.

So I feel like that's.

The only downside of the time system is that you don't want to get the bad ending, so you're like I guess I'll just play this game forever.

But I really enjoyed it.

I think that it was at its best in the first like five, six hours because before you sort of like feel the structure of the game, it just feels like this world of infinite possibility where you're just going around and interviewing people and like sneaking into their rooms and looking at their shit and opening their drawers, reading their journals and stuff.

It's just a like...

I don't know.

In terms of like fantasies that video games can enable you to do, that real life does not allow.

It's funny because typically people think about like flying and like shooting and doing like fantastical things.

I just want to like.

I just want to like rifle through weirdos like shit and just be like oh, he's got a receipt here for 10 condoms.

I wonder what this means.

I just want to like rifle through people's.

I'm going to go confront them about their 10 condoms.

Yeah, yeah.

Hey, man, you... What's this all about?

You know this is your expired, right?

This is... What is this?

What is this?

You got a cold.

I found a trash can full of tissues.

You didn't Sudafed.

Are you all right?

I don't think about what they were using as condoms in the 80s, like like skip pig intestines or something.

Right.

Wasn't that?

Yeah, I'm sure.

But anyway yeah, it's just like the.

The core fantasy that I love about this game is just like, just like calling weirdos out about their weird shit.

Who's your favorite weirdo?

Oh, that's tough.

I. Hmm.

That's really hard.

I don't know.

Tell me a character you liked.

My favorite might be the Druid.

Yeah, mine too.

Yeah.

That guy is just OG Irish.

He is so funny about, like, if you use any English phrase, he gets you for it.

He's like, you say, I forget what I said.

I said something about his crown.

That's what it was.

You said crown, yeah.

Yeah, and he said, we're not in the pale now, son.

And the pale is what Irish people call the area around Dublin because it was the Protestant spot.

So it's like... little references like that i was like holy shit that's something someone would say today like you're not in the pale now or whatever so i thought that was like very cool and he's like it's a sig what was it it was called a not a circlet right circlet or something yeah yeah he does um he calls you out on turns of phrase which i think is a very sort of like i think when people think about magic like magic with a k like big mad bm magic um i think a lot of people think that it was about like just drawing sigils and doing spells and rituals, which is a big part of it.

But a big thing that people misunderstand about actual fucking like magic with a K is that a lot of it is about sort of the manipulation of your cognitive framing of things.

And a huge part of that is that, like language is the is the building blocks with which we construct our models of reality.

And so it's interesting to see the contrast between the druidic dude and all of these sort of like Western occult practitioners, because they're sort of thinking about like spells and rituals and ancient texts and like this is important and you gotta like do the wear the thing and do the thing.

And his way of just sort of like cutting through the bullshit to me feels sort of like more authentically in touch with what magic is often about, which is that like you know, like when you leave a dialogue with him, you're like i should be going and he's like don't do something because you should do it, because you want to.

It's like the core tenet of um, of uh, I believe it was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

It was like the core of Alistair Crowley's like version of the Ten Commandments was do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

And it's about like aligning one's will with the universe, or the universal will with one's own individual will.

That's what like the compelling of magic is to do.

And a huge part of that is like framing things in a way so that they are perceived differently.

So it is interesting that, like oftentimes, magic isn't like casting a spell so that it rains.

Magic is about like manipulating the world so that if your model of the world fits uh, what you want the world to be, or something.

So linguistic framing is a huge part of what magic is actually about.

So i thought that was cool.

That's mad.

Wow yeah, it's great.

Like i, i feel like i had this extra bonus layer of the game to enjoy and it certainly sounds that you had with with all this stuff.

That's really, that's really awesome.

It just goes to show how well written it is that like yeah we're, you know, all of all, the three of us have played it right frank, you haven't.

You haven't played seance right yeah so, like i feel like we all each of us had our own, you know, very enjoyable narrative experience in this game, and some of it was stuff that was blind to other people and vice versa.

You know, it's that's that's really interesting.

Having that library is such a good indication of that.

I think it's not just like internal narrative gameplay stuff.

It's also like exposing parts of the world to you and history and like culture that you may not already know, in order to help you solve puzzles in this fictional world.

I think that that library like it's nice to have games like final fantasy 16 that include like i'll press a button and it'll tell you what the in-game narrative stuff like that's super helpful.

But the library being a place you have to go and like dedicate in game time and real human time to going and learning about the world.

Yeah.

And these characters in the world they've created within the narrative of the seance of Blake Manor is such a nerdy, cool fucking thing.

It's like that's what libraries could be like, baby.

That's what real libraries could be like if you had things to care about.

If only there was like potential murders coming up that you could stop, if you could only investigate.

If only there were murders.

If only there were more murders I could investigate by looking up sphinxes.

If only every book was reduced to a paragraph that I could easily read.

The one paragraph I need.

One note on that.

You don't – remember we talked about this.

You don't waste – spend time when you read the books in the library – specifically, but up until about a week before the game you did.

Oh right, that's what it was.

Yeah yeah, i saw them on a live stream saying that and that was very interesting.

I would have felt less encouraged to use the library.

Yeah, to do the research.

Yeah yeah, for sure.

The other thing that's really interesting about like all of these occult freaks is that i think uh you, there's this perception also that it's like that magic was sort of this thing that people did for you know like, personal power is sort of the only the sole dimension of why people get into the occult.

And I think it's way more complex than that as a historical phenomenon.

People were into the occult for personal power, for entertainment, for like cultural status, because it was like you know.

I mean it's like any sort of being part of any sort of like fringe or niche thing.

Like when I, you know, used to do psychedelics in college.

I knew a lot of people who were into psychedelics, not because they were like this is an inherently meaningful thing, but because it was like People would perceive them as like doing something cool.

It had like a cultural cachet that came with it.

And occultism is very much the same thing.

It's like, by becoming part of this sort of this in group that is outside of the norm, it gives you a sort of, like you know, a social power, not like an occult power.

And I thought that was an interesting dimension of this game is that people in this game, a lot of them have different motivations for being invested in the occult.

Some of them are like scam artists.

Some of them are like people trying to get in touch with lost loved ones.

Some of them are like have a cultural lineage connection to it.

And I think that that is an interesting dimension of the occult that people don't often talk about is the sort of like social and psychological role that occultism and magic play throughout history.

It's not this thing where it's like oh, that's the guy who you know divines water with a rod so we can dig wells.

It's like it's also about um, you know like like, sometimes in folk medicine there will be like healing rituals like uh, like you see, with like um, what do they call them?

Uh, like charismatic preachers or whatever, where they're like the like, the lay on hands or whatever.

And then people were like, he could walk like a guy gets up out of a wheelchair.

It's.

It's not that I mean.

I'm not going to say that there is no magic in the world as a blanket statement, but I am not personally a believer that you can just like put your hands on someone and cure them with magic.

Usually,

But I think that there are bizarre sort of like psychosomatic things that happen in the brain through uh, through deception, through theater, through dramatic ritual.

And I think that like, I think weird, I think bodies and brains do weird shit.

And I think if there is a dimension of like quote unquote magic I think a lot of it is that like, coaxing the brain into framing the world differently can yield results that seem very unexpected.

And so I think that this might be connected to the way in which You know, people who are have like a terrible prognosis health wise, but then they're very optimistic about it.

Their outcomes are statistically significantly different than people who are like oh, I'm fucking, I'm dead.

Like it's death sentence to me and now I'm going to die and there's nothing I can do.

Yeah.

Placebo effect is a real thing.

Like.

It's not just a case of like.

Oh, I gave someone a sugar pill and tricked them into thinking they were better.

It's like no, there's.

There's real positive benefits to having a positive outlook on your, your results.

Yeah.

It's not just a scientific. scare tactic.

It's like, no, there's real reasons to do it.

Yeah.

And like again.

Like you know, I'm bringing up psychedelics again, not only because I see it as a parallel but as a totally intertwined.

I mean, like the hallucinogens are mentioned in this game as well.

And a lot of these spiritualist movements were involved in, like altering one's consciousness to perceive reality differently.

The alteration of consciousness is part and parcel with the history of occultism.

And I personally had like a traumatic event that I was like having trouble processing and took mushrooms a very, very long time ago one time.

And it just like silver bulleted out, like instant, one day processing of trauma, and whether, like that, could be an inherent, like power of that substance that allows the brain to sort of like let go of trauma.

It could also be because part of me was like this will be something, that facilitation experience that lets me let go of this.

Um, And it's hard to say.

In my mind that is sort of like I had a faith healing as someone who is very atheistic and not faithful.

So it's interesting.

I don't believe in magic, but I do believe that we have a sort of poor understanding of the things that the brain is capable of if coaxed in certain directions.

I think what's also interesting about Blake Manor and you were just talking about how the game does sort of like a who's who of these different belief systems or different aspects of spiritual, like you said, like like the the, you know the voodoo person, and they actually do a good job of like speaking about, like that term as well, that sort of stuff.

Yeah yeah um, the you know it's sort of like a who's who of, i don't want to say archetypes, but like they do sort of run the gambit.

But the thing is that no, so few um, like games certainly, but also just like sort of contemporary media, have tackled this, that they're sort of free to do that because it's not like you know, you're like oh it's oh look, it's the person pretending to be a such and such.

It's the priest.

It's the thing.

Like, and it made me think kind of like Disco Elysium that I'm not, both of these games are incredibly well researched and written, obviously, but it also made me think like these, there is open space pasture for games to talk about things that aren't, you know, themes or locations.

We talk about a lot, I guess, but like themes or aspects of humanity or whatever that are that are ripe for this type of thing and actually might fit really well into the architecture of a of a story or gameplay within games.

But, and if you're first one there like this kind of game you know it's not the first game that has magic in it, but it's It's like the only game I can think of that's really like discussing this topic from like like dozens of different sort of angles.

If you're first to market, you can really like have fun with the archetypes and, like you know, flip them around because people come in.

I mean, you didn't you you're you're well, well read and taught in this, but like. most folks, myself and Jesse, I don't want to speak for Jesse, but like, I don't know shit about the occult.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So I'm coming in like, like a blank slate and it's really interesting and fascinating.

And I similarly with Disco Elysium.

You know there was so much about uh uh politics and human condition and all these sorts of things that that you know I I, I'm not well read it.

So it was, it was really compelling and interesting.

And I, I think that's I don't know you.

You just talking about it there made me think like Oh, it is interesting.

It's fun.

If you can be one of the first to do this then, and obviously if you do it right, then it results in really a great connection with the player.

Because I genuinely enjoyed the game, but I feel like I learned a lot as well.

Yeah, that's the interesting thing about.

We talked about this with Disco, Elysium and a few other games that, like Pentament is a great example of this.

Yes, 100 if you, if one of the sort of like pre-production and production phases is a is a huge dedicated research phase, it affords you this um, it's like world building.

It's like a.

It's like a more sort of like realistic form of world building where you're creating, you're doing world building for your game by, by rooting it in these sort of like real historical or cultural phenomenon, because you're tapping into this like.

I mean, it's like the fucking lore.

It's for lore, real lore for the real world.

But by steeping your game in that or, like you know, being very well read in politics or like I mean, one of the great things about Disco Elysium is that it is a left leaning game, that it understand, like no one understands the flaws of leftist political circles more than people who are in leftist political circles because they have seen firsthand how fucking like fractured and like contentious it can get between these sort of like micro niches and so seeing, like the two communist guys who, like you know, they're just like overly literary and intellectual and analytical and boring and inaccessible um, it's like yeah, no one can make fun of a niche better than the people who understand that niche.

Uh, but by rooting it in these things and being educated in it and that having that be part of your world building, it's not like you're making a game that's like i'm gonna educate people about, like the occult.

It's just that like it becomes the uh, the background radiation that makes this interesting, things you can draw upon as you craft a story, like the story is the primary thing, but by having all of that to draw upon it, like It becomes inherently interesting and educational, entertaining because it feels like textural and real in the same way that disco does by creating its own world history.

You know what I mean?

Like it feels, lived in because they wrote the fucking.

There's like a history book that they wrote about, about Elysium.

Turnips are pumpkins, which make better or scarier jack-o'-lanterns.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know.

The turnips weird because they're like unfamiliar and fucking kind of like earthy and grotesque looking.

Yeah, I think pumpkins may be better.

We just don't have many of them in Ireland.

That is the seance of Black Manor.

Thanks, Jeremy, for checking it out.

Yeah, it's definitely going to be in the chat, I think, when we're talking about our top 10 games of the year.

Yeah, I'm delighted to you connected with it.

That's that's super cool.

And from such a unique perspective as well.

Great games this week.

A real uh interesting bunch here as well.

Detective instinct farewell my beloved.

I feel like we haven't talked about a game like that in in ever.

I don't know.

It's like an interesting, cool throwback.

Kirby air riders the, the deconstructed car racing experience thanks frank, for jumping in on that.

Uh, blake manor, of course.

Uh seance of blake manor and uh kingdoms of the dump as well, uh so uh, some some a great little uh menagerie of games for us there.

We have some emails this week, Frank.

Yeah, if people want to send us emails, please write to us.

Podcast at noclipvideo or on our Patreon Discord channel for the podcast chat.

Once again, that's podcast at noclip.video.

Our first message comes from Bulwark asking about genre matchups.

Do you have any genre mashups that you really want to see but haven't yet or haven't seen done well yet?

For example, I'd really like to play a game that's got traditional roguelike or mystery dungeon mechanics, but with a social sim twist.

Think Caves of Quud.

But you have a village with quirky handwritten characters a la Persona and you take them out with you on your adventures.

Yeah, I'd like a Dwarf Fortress that's more the scale of The Sims or something.

A Dwarf Fortress like I could play.

Exactly, yeah.

With a menu, you know, with controls.

Yeah.

I would have said sports was always my go-to for this, but I feel like in the past 10 years, there's been a lot of really good non-sports sports games or weird sports games like they brought back uh, wind jammers and rocket league.

It was great, and even rematch, which we talked about recently.

Um, i want more sports.

I really want um uh, arcade sports.

I want more back.

I think those like nfl blitz and stuff like that 100 bring it back.

Yes, but i also really want um, a roguelike like a turn-based volleyball game.

That's what I want.

Turn-based sports tactics.

I want that, baby.

Gimme, gimme.

Yeah, say turn-based sports games.

There's that new soccer game.

It is in 11.

That's supposed to be like a masterpiece.

But that's like you do an – it's like turn-based, like an RPG, but instead of doing like – planning the moves like I want demon school.

But you're playing a sport on purpose, not on accident, like you're not.

It doesn't just turn out that you're playing football.

I want you to be playing football in that same sort of structure, like you plan the team out.

I need to play this Inazuma 11 game.

It's so cool.

Have you ever played any of the level 5 Inazuma games?

I don't think so.

Is Inazuma like a?

What is it?

Is it like a?

Is it an anime?

Yeah, it's an anime manga.

Yeah, I think it was a video game first.

Am I wrong?

Was it a manga originally?

I just know it from the level 5 games.

They've made so many of them.

In the character collection and football simulation RPG series.

So yeah, it must be a game first.

In a Zoom 11 with the original story featuring main characters, over 5400 players from across the series history.

What?

To collect and train as well as an exciting online tournament.

You can play the game your way.

So it's like an anime mixed with a turn-based soccer game.

Look at this.

He's like taking a shot.

Fire tornado.

You're pointing it in the corner of the goal.

Shaolin soccer, baby.

They did it.

Oh, the best soccer movie.

Take that, bended like Beckham.

Oh, wow.

How are you going to do the big green like that, man?

Dude, do I got to spend $70 on this guy?

Everyone loves the big green.

Oh, my lord.

He's got that guy with all the fresh ones.

She's the man.

I don't know.

Let's just name soccer movies.

She's the man.

The big green.

I'm sure that's a Boston Red Sox movie.

Although I could see where you'd get that impression.

No, it's got Patrick Renna, the guy with the freckles.

The cover of the movie is him getting hit with the balls.

Hitting the balls with the balls.

Is there a goat in that movie?

I remember there being a goat.

Hey, green.

Oh, my God.

I've seen this cover before.

Yeah.

This is a classic.

I mean, I don't know if it's good.

I haven't seen it probably since I was seven years old, but I liked it. classic in terms of its age rather than it's it's uh from the Disney's angels and it's an angels in the outfield uh it's like the spiritual successor to angels in the outfield which I have seen yeah wow the big green there we go I gotta check it out who made this who's Holly Goldberg Sloan I gotta look this up is it the director it's a Disney movie so That's the director.

They don't have a filmography on their Wikipedia, which is not a good sign.

Man.

What are soccer movies?

She's the man.

Oh, the writer for The Big Green worked on Angels in the Outfield.

That makes a lot of sense.

There's that bad one that Taika Waititi remade.

Yeah, exactly.

Uh, next goal wins great documentary.

Don't know why it needed a movie version.

What happened to taika waititi man?

Taika waititi made like two great movies and then he fell off.

I think the thing is he made two good movies and they thought that means he could make infinity good movies, which is not how that works.

Hunt for the wilder people.

He did a really good short film before that as well.

Behind the shadows is great people's great people's so fucking good.

Yeah, i don't think about that he did.

Yeah, you're right.

I was thinking about Wilder People recently because I watched Jurassic Park for the first time since I was a kid.

And I was remembering how great Sam Neill is in Wilder People.

Yes, he is.

Yeah.

I forgot he was Aussie until I saw that.

What was the question?

He's Kiwi, is he?

Sorry.

It was about genre hybrids.

Right, right.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Now I need to figure out how I fucked up Sam.

Yeah, he's Kiwi.

Sorry, everyone.

Jeremy, you got to be careful.

You can't give away any good game ideas you're working on, but genre is dead, you know, it's all, it's all a vibe now.

So who cares?

In many ways um let's, let me think of a game that i'm not working on, that i would like to exist uh, i would love a game that i.

I feel like.

I want more games, not like blake.

Okay, two things i want more games like blake manor in the sense that they're like investigative open-ended, immersive mystery games where i'm just going around and fucking being like did you do it?

Did you fucking do it?

And i also want more games that are about the occult separately okay, but separately i.

I would love a seance of blake manor sequel that's all about like uh, like sex, i mean, like it's a, it's like it's like eyes wide shut and but it's like all the different types, karma sutra kind of thing yeah, but ever all let's, you know, let's taste the ring ball in yeah yeah, let's like there's be well, maybe not bestiality, because team will block it but, like you know, i guess team's gonna block this one anyway.

Now that i think about it, like you know, to explore all the different like uh, you know, groups and uh, you know desires that people have.

That'll be interesting.

I like that.

That would certainly be interesting.

The sexing of Blake Manor.

Yeah.

The fucking of Blake Manor.

Fuck Manor.

The fucking of Fuck Manor.

Perfect.

Is Job coming up with the name of this game?

It's a great title.

I actually was furious in the first couple hours of Blake Manor because I was like, holy shit.

I wrote a design document for a Haunting of Hill House style inspired game.

Oh, cool.

It was literally the exact.

I was like oh what if you took like Obra Dinn and made a Haunting of Hill House game.

And it was just fucking Blake Manor.

And I was like, damn, I got scooped.

Man, oh, man.

Well, fuck Manor's still there.

It's on the table.

It's still on the table.

I told you the story about that party I went to and a friend's... I went to a party in, like, a... I'm just going to out him.

No, I'm not.

It was somebody who worked at GameSpot.

He had a friend having a big birthday party and he invited us out to it.

It was in a manor out in the middle of fucking nowhere outside of london, oh no, and uh it was.

We went in the main room and there was a stripper pole in the living room.

Uh, this was a like i think a 21st party or a 23rd birthday party for somebody, but this house was basically their parents like like swinging house, like there was like a pineapple on the way in for you to put your keys in and everything.

Yeah, we found the like in the.

In the attic there was like a whole bdsm like yeah, it was fucking great.

There was like with, like you know, straps and fucking.

The attic is crazy, though like i could see like the finished basement, But in the attic is fucking nuts.

All those steps you got to take, man.

I'm all sweaty before we even start.

Jeez.

Yeah.

Well, that's the thing is, if you're, if you're, if you're down in the bed.

That's why they put sex dungeons in the basement.

Because, you know, all of the all of the motion is not causing a commotion.

But if you're in the attic you're just like I don't know what, if you just are like turn in a little early, and then you just hear like the whips and chains above you, you know.

Yeah, we were we were swimming in the same swimming pool.

And I was thinking.

Probably lost Berman in this room.

Anyway, sorry, Frank.

Next question.

I hope we answered Bulwarks.

And if we didn't, at least we gave some other non sequiturs.

Eric has a question about QuakeCon with dad.

Hey guys, my dad and I are huge fans of the Quake series and gaming and computers in general.

We're thinking about going to QuakeCon next year.

We wouldn't be renting a BYOC table, just grabbing fan tickets and walking around for a bit.

How much is there to do for those not landing?

Could we get away with just getting a one-day ticket and see enough of the sites and have a good time?

Or is it worth going multiple days with a fan ticket?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yeah, me and Frank went.

I went this year again.

Me and Frank went two years ago.

You and your son?

Yeah, you guys both went to the... Me and my son, Frank.

Yeah, exactly.

I went with some of my mates this year.

The BYOC is sort of.

I don't know if you'd agree with this Frank, because I'm coming in.

You're coming in from a bit of a, not an outsider's perspective, but like you're less of a than I am.

The BYOC is kind of the flavor of the whole thing.

You can do the fan pass and they do have things on.

They have some showcases.

They have developer demos.

They have meet the staff stuff.

There is timetable of things you can go do and you can still walk around.

Can you walk around the byoc frank?

I feel like you can.

I think i feel like there's a separate thing because they don't want people like stealing pcs.

So i think there's a byoc lanyard, but also it was very easy, like no one was checking.

Like yeah, that's true yeah, they were checking for guns more than they were checking for.

Yeah yeah, you know, you know what it is is like there's separate, like what i'm just talking, like I go to a million conventions so I see all the security loopholes.

They have doors up front.

Here's the fan area.

Walk in, see your fan badge.

Here's the BYOC area.

Here's your badge.

Once you're inside the con center, there's no dividing wall between the BYOC and fan section.

So if you're in the fan section, you just walk into the BYOC.

That one, yeah.

I don't think they cared.

Yeah, they don't care.

Well, people – that's what's cool about it is if you're just a punter, you can –

And you want to go to the BYOC like that's one of the most entertaining places to walk around because you see all the crazy like PCs people have made custom PCs and all the weird shit that they're projecting on the walls.

And yeah, I'd say go do it.

Like it depends how far you're coming from and all that stuff.

And you can rent PCs.

You can you know, it's not the cheapest thing in the world.

You can just bring a laptop.

You can do whatever.

Yeah, I think once you see that, I think the schedule won't be up before the tickets are, but the tick the, the fine tickets i think are pretty cheap.

I think it's like is it 45 quid maybe or something, i don't know, like 20 bucks for a single.

I remember like i would.

Yeah, i would say i don't think it's worth traveling from out of the state.

Also, texas is massive.

If you live within the city, oh yeah, go for a day.

It's like it's air conditioning and 100 degrees.

Um yeah uh yeah, like i feel like every city in texas at least a three hour drive away, but like I don't know.

It's not bad if you're just driving checking it out, and then you can decide if you want to go back next year.

But if you're a fan of Quake, yeah, you'll see developers.

You'll see teasings for some.

They do giveaways.

There is a very small vendor area where there's random booths.

They always sell those exclusive puppy shirts.

They do have a cat section where you can adopt cats and dogs.

But they do these really cute collaborations with the Dallas Pet Society.

So there was like...

You know, instead of Quake, it's like Bark or whatever.

I don't know.

There's really cute animal-themed shirts that go to a good cause.

But, yeah, if you're local, yeah, it's worth checking out.

I wouldn't fly out of state and then not do the computer stuff.

But there were people who had their Steam decks and then, like, a cheap monitor.

So it's like, oh, or, like, bring a laptop.

Maybe it's worth checking out.

But yeah, I would say, walking around and seeing everyone's custom-built PCs, what games they're playing.

Some people are bringing consoles and inviting oh come play smash with us.

So i i would say it's absolutely worth walking around the boc stuff because it's so silly, inventive and crazy.

Um, but yeah, i don't.

Yeah yeah, i'm with you.

I'm not sure i'd fly in from out of state just to do that.

But then the other thing is that it's at the gaylord, and the gaylord is like a really fun place to stay.

It's like it's not it's not cheap, it's not crazy expensive because they do like a money off for quake con attendees, which is pretty cool but like it's just like a huge hotel with like there's a water park that you can go to, there's a pool there and there's like a you know sort of atrium place with restaurants and stuff.

It's like a.

It's like a fun place to be and you can go to your room in like 10 minutes, like five minutes away.

You know, it's just an elevator away.

So it's yeah, you could go that way, but it's kind of Yeah, I feel like you'd be better served to like stay the night at least or do or do something there.

But yeah, it's a great time.

Hope you have fun.

I'll see you there.

I'll see you there next year.

Maybe.

I hope to go.

And then Steven asked, hey, crew, this is the season to play and critique lots of video games.

I was wondering if any of you have a particular ritual when you play video games for extended sessions.

Like do you have a particular snack or drink to accompany said fat sessions?

Yeah, i actually pick drinks based on what i'm playing.

If it's just like for fun, if it's for work, i just i i have a big cup of coffee, drink that and don't think about it too hard uh, because i have to, i have to brute force my way through it.

Um, but when i'm playing something for fun, if it's like a detective game or a puzzle game, i'll have a coffee and, like just a nice little, i make my own, i got my own beans, i grind it all like i go serious on it and i enjoy that.

Or if it's like something silly that i'm playing um, like a like a you know, goofy older game, something for like the game cube that I'm just going back to for nostalgia.

I no joke.

If I can, I will have a Kool-Aid jammer.

I love just having a blue Kool-Aid jammer and playing like uh uh, Billy Hatcher, like stuff like that.

Um, but if it's something that I like that I just play with the boys, I'm cracking over a beer.

I'm having a nice, I have a specific craft beer that I'll go to.

I'll just like go and check whatever they got new coming out and have a craft beer and sit down and play some art creators with the boys, or call of duty seven for one round before we all refund it.

That kind of thing.

Wow.

I was not, that was the most detailed answer we could have.

I love doing that man.

You're playing video games very seriously for fun.

Wow.

That's awesome.

I fucking love that.

Yeah.

If you guys want me to make you a little tasting menu, if you want to play an RPG, I have this buddy.

Well, we're not, we were barely friends when we were talking.

Um, but, uh, you guys know satchel Drake, uh, satch bags.

Good.

Yeah.

He used to do like drinks and Pantones and stuff that he would do with games and that like got me thinking about doing that same sort of thing and he would always come up with like cool drink options to have with RPGs and stuff.

It's really cool.

What would you pair with, hold on, let me think about my goatee list, what I have to play.

Oh, Sands of Blake Manor would be great with a little.

With, like, an old-fashioned?

Oh, man.

Yeah, I was just thinking with like a whiskey yeah, with a big cube in the middle, you know that type in a heavy-bottomed glass, you know.

Oh.

What kind of beer should I drink?

I was going to ask you Birdcage, but I feel like Birdcage, I just need like a monster energy.

Fucking Red Bull and a line of Coke.

A Red Bull vodka.

What's a Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 beer?

Oh, mead.

Yeah, a mead or like an old, like a Pilsner.

That's my favorite style of beer.

Like a Kolsch.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Yeah.

That's my name.

Maybe.

Oh yeah.

Oh, you're getting, I like this.

We should talk booze more.

I fucking love.

I've, we rarely talk about beer on this podcast, but I have brewed beer.

I love beer.

I'm a beer enthusiast.

I'm Irish.

And he's Irish.

I'm an alcoholic is basically what that means.

It's a cultural excuse to love.

I'm hungover on a Tuesday, folks.

That's how much of a fucking connoisseur I was right now.

Did you taste the wine or what were you doing last night?

I did.

I had the wine.

Yeah, I had the wine.

You're supposed to spit it out if you don't like it or even if you're just tasting it.

They were like pairing.

They were like, we brought this cake.

It's really good with this red.

And I'm like, hey, man, all I know is all this shit tastes good.

I don't care, supposed to put the cake in in my mouth and then swirl around the wine.

Is that how it works?

Something like that, i don't know.

I don't know.

Uh, do you guys have any answers to this?

Uh, i don't have any particular snacks or drinks but uh, i like to responsibly enjoy a small amount of cannabis when i do a long gaming sesh.

I find that it is a nice.

Uh, if i like, if i drink when i play games, it's often like i'll like have a couple beers and then i'm like two hours into the game and i'm kind of like sleepy and fucked up, But just like a little, a little weed and just like like I'm talking to like a small amount.

I'm not getting fucked up.

I'm just fucking just cruising a little bit.

Love it.

We've my my, my decision making in our craters is very much depends on how much alcohol I've had to drink.

I have I am YOLO swaggins when it when it's like last night.

What did I do last night?

Oh, my God.

I had such a crazy round last night.

I tried to kill a bombardier on my own with no grenades.

And it's like I had it behind a pillar.

And it was like, well, this will work forever.

And then on the fifth time, of course, it just moved and blew the shit out of me.

And I was stuck in the in the buried city in the car park, just going like into the microphone.

I'm down like defib.

Anyone have defib?

And I hear a guy going where are you?

And uh, he fucking runs up out of nowhere and i'd like two health.

And he defibs me and i'm like, oh my god.

And his name was like sir ducky or something, and i'd found three rubber ducks.

So i was like, there you go, take the rubber ducks, they're yours.

And he was like yeah, no problem man, now check this shit out.

And he ran at the bastion.

That is like walking around in that area.

And another guy came up and he's like, let's just.

He said, wait here and watch this.

So he was like he was running and we're like, should we help him?

We're like whispering to each other, standing beside each other.

I was like, and he told us to stay here.

I don't know what the fuck he's doing.

And he ran in and i think he had a mine and he was trying to stick it under the bastion's arse.

But as he was doing it, the bastion like kicked him and then just blew him away and the fucking flare went up.

We were like no no, does anyone have a defib?

We gotta go save this guy, you know.

And then none of us had a, had a defib, so couldn't get him back.

Anytime anyone says hey, watch this, and tries to do something cool, it will inevitably go wrong.

It was very Leroy Jenkins.

You know, he just sort of fucking ran out on his own and we were like all right, let's see how this goes, I guess.

That's great.

So I spent the next five minutes trying to find his body so I could loot it, but I couldn't.

So I got out of there.

That's the worst part of that.

You see the flare go off and you show up.

But the game is so detailed that it's like you can't find anything in the map.

You're like, where's the dead body?

It should be easier to find.

It's all robot parts and plants.

Totally.

Where's the body?

I found some guy was throwing grenades at me.

And this is again when I was half cut last night.

He was throwing grenades at me.

And I had like a heavy shield and a bunch of stuff on.

So I was just like dodging them going, what are you doing?

Stop.

Like, stop.

And then he took out his gun and he missed me.

And I'm like, stop.

And then he hit me.

And I was like, fuck this.

And I ran into the.

I didn't want to kill him and I ran into a room and I shield recharged.

But when I walked up the stairs there were two of those little ball fuckers whatever they're called and the first one I ran past and it got me a bit.

And then the second one exploded and I was down and I was like you've got to be kidding me.

Like it was so stupid, like why didn't I shoot them?

Like why didn't I shoot them?

And then a guy ran in and I was like there's a guy outside, just be careful.

And he was like oh yeah, he's been shooting at me too.

That guy's a jerk.

And I was like I was like kill me now and take my stuff, because I don't want him getting it.

I was like, that would be the worst thing is that that guy.

So just kill me now.

Kill me now.

Just do it any way you want.

Just kill me now.

And he was like, OK, brother, see you in Valhalla.

And then fucking killed me.

Fucking blue gun or whatever.

Oh, I love it.

It's just like a game.

It's yeah.

Somebody in the discord was talking about how it's like it has more emergent gameplay than most in Sims because of the social aspect of it.

Like that's not a gameplay thing.

That's just like some weird shit that happens and it just, it keeps happening.

So yeah, it's a very silly game.

That's the bad.

I mean, that was my experience with rust is just that, like right.

My favorite parts of rust were things that had nothing to do with sort of the core gameplay mechanics.

It was just sort of the emergent social like.

We me and my friends had a base on a peninsula and there was one other group there.

And it's not like we allied with them through any sort of game mechanic.

There was just a loose understanding that like we owned the peninsula and And like we had like a call sign.

And if you called it out, we'd be like, oh, that's just Dave from next door.

And then if strangers would come in and you would say, yeah, you would just like recognize them.

So you know, when other people started moving into the peninsula, we had a united front against them.

And it's like, wow, there's no incentive to do that in the game.

It was just like fun and interesting to do.

They're like gentrifying the peninsula.

We got to get these.

We put up a Starbucks.

Exactly.

And fortified it.

Now all the coffee places are six bucks a cup.

Like, what the hell?

Got to craft our own.

Frank, snacks and drinks.

I feel like you've got something for this one.

Yeah, no, I mean, I always just drink Red Bull or water.

I don't know.

Didn't you get into the Call of Duty weird mines where you were like going and buying stuff for Call of Duty 6 to get the codes?

Yeah, I mean, this year.

What was that, Little Caesars?

This year, it's always it's been Little Caesars for like the last few years.

This year it is once again.

Wow.

They have a locked up.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I'm always so like calorie conscious that it's like.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's what you've got DDR for.

You can just work it off.

Is there a snack or a drink that people like do with ddr?

Is it just water?

Is it just a lot of water?

Everyone has their like what.

Everyone brings their like water bottle sets it down the thing.

You gotta have some gatorade.

You gotta get your electrolytes back.

I do.

I don't have any like here, but like i on the amazon there's these like what is it iv hydration thing, like a pedialyte?

Yeah, so i'll put like half it in the water bottle, drink that and then when it comes, just like refill.

That way it's like it's a little sweet but it's still no calories.

But when you said IV uh, I've instantly pictured you with an intravenous like a saline bag hanging next to the DDR machine.

And you're just like going fucking ham with the IV in your wrist.

He's not pro yet.

That's what they do at the DDR Olympics.

That's like, that's pretty good.

I like the idea of that, man.

There we go.

Thanks for the emails.

Thanks, Steven.

Thanks, Eric.

Thanks.

Bulwark.

Uh, for your awesome emails.

Um, 90-minute podcast this week.

I guess we got a lot of podcasts to do in the next week.

So, hey, you know what?

We'll let it slide this time.

Thank you so much, everyone, for supporting our work.

There is bunches of cool stuff over on Noclip and Noclip2.

The Disco Elysium documentary is going up soon.

This week, it'll be up by the time this podcast is out.

If you're an early access patron, that means you can now watch the second episode of our Disco Elysium series the building of Disco Elysium.

We also have a bonus scene, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

I have to send this to you guys.

It's Alexander Rostov, Helen Hinfra and Robert Kervitz opening a bag full of Chinese fan mail that they had just received and sent. the fan art is disgustingly good it is just an outrage and their faces when they're opening this thing is wild so it's like i think it's like 20 something minutes of them doing that it's really cool we'll have some other bits and bobs i'll probably put the full tour of their studio in uh in there as well as a bonus video so yeah bonus patrons will get those bonus videos early access patrons will get early access to the docs again this is a really long project we've worked on uh you know loads of us have put in a lot of time on this one so any support that you can give us um is really really appreciated we'll also have a couple of trailers out in december for some upcoming projects and we will have a trailer for our cyberpunk 2077 project uh going up on the 10th anniversary of cyberpunk 2077 which i believe is december 10th sorry fifth anniversary which i believe is december 10th so that'll be going up then and then we'll also have a little teaser i think on christmas day we'll see first for something else that's coming in 2026 um yeah and then no clip two we have the uh the aforementioned kingdoms of the dump indie recommendation we're also going to get two of our bullet hell guys in here right sectory i think we're doing this week and then early next week we'll have birdcage as well um which are two unrelated games that both you and jesse jeremy and jesse have uh really fallen for in the past week or so yeah birdcage is fucking great i we didn't do a full discussion on this episode but my my quick hit on it is it is maybe the most i've liked a game that i'm bad at this year it is so punishing and it is not a genre that i have any experience with i'm not good at uh but it's like the art and the music the driving like fucking like the story stuff is so much better than i thought it would be the story stuff is the story stuff is like a ps1 jrpg but it's a bullet hell um and it's just fucking it's fantastic i love birdcage excellent we'll have a great robin williams movie as well if you haven't seen it go check it out um and jesse yeah we'll be checking out sectory which we did talk about last week or the week before we did yeah yeah great game which looks really cool like geometry wars one kind of one we were talking chatting about um oh i have a quick correction on that one i think i said you were asking because i said pacifism mode was in the first geometry wars i think technically it wasn't in the first geometry wars because you were surprised by that you thought it was only in two i think you're right i think what i was referring to was i think there's an achievement in the first one for not killing anything frank's not yeah right i think it was like if you survive for two minutes without touching anyone you got a pacifism achievement so that was sort of that probably inspired them to make the mode i think that's what it was yeah because there was a bunch of discourse around the pacifism thing with the first game But I think, yeah, I think you're right.

There is no actual distinct mode in that one.

So, you know, just a silly little correction.

But I like to correct, especially when I say things so confidently and wrongly.

Yeah, and then Noclip 2.

Look, we're in Game of the Year season.

So we're going to have a bunch of podcasts up on the Noclip podcast channel.

And then in December, we're likely to do a bunch of videos around our Game of the Year stuff.

So that might be us doing our own little...

You know, here are our personal top few games we liked.

This might be us doing some Let's Plays on the Patreon or on Noclip2 as well.

We're going to figure that out.

We're sort of going to let the voting happen and figure out what the games are.

And then from there, we'll figure out what we think the best video stuff will be.

We're also going to have a bonus pod next month for Final Fantasy X.

Advent Children we're going to do.

So it'll be early in December.

It'll technically be our November one.

So you'll go check that one out.

And also, I totally forgot.

I think we're also going to do a Kirby Air Riders quick look as well, right, Frank?

We're going to get that one done in the next week or so as well.

A bit of a short week here because of Thanksgiving.

So happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates.

Happy American Thanksgiving.

Sorry, Jesse.

Thank you.

For everyone who celebrates.

I'll celebrate Black Friday.

OK.

All right.

Good for you.

I will, too, by purchasing items.

I love consumerism.

Yeah.

OK, that's OK.

Cool.

Excellent.

All right.

That's a podcast, folks.

See you next time.

See you next.

This next crew cast will be next year.

We'll see you then.

But game of the year stuff kicking off, kicking off real soon.

So play your games.

We'll talk to you then.

Bye.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 255: GOTY Season, Kirby Air Riders, and the Occult Mysteries of Blake Manor]-[Kirby Air Riders, Kingdoms of the Dump, Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 255: Game of the Year Preparation and Deep Dives

Kirby Air Riders: A Deconstructed Racing Experience

Kingdoms of the Dump: A Love Letter to SNES RPGs

Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved

Seance: The Blake Manor Experience

Community Q&A and Future Projects

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 255: GOTY Season, Kirby Air Riders, and the Occult Mysteries of Blake Manor]-[Kirby Air Riders, Kingdoms of the Dump, Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 255: Game of the Year Preparation and Deep Dives

Kirby Air Riders: A Deconstructed Racing Experience

Kingdoms of the Dump: A Love Letter to SNES RPGs

Detective Instinct: Farewell, My Beloved

Seance: The Blake Manor Experience

Community Q&A and Future Projects

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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