Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, Mashina, Battlefield 6 | Noclip Crewcast

🎵 🎵 Hello folks and welcome to the Noclip podcast.

The Noclip, it's a crew cast. Maybe one day it'll be the two cast.

That seems weird. We're not here to talk about that.

Those are mysteries happening in the background here at Noclip.

Maybe you've seen some of them. Maybe you've heard about some of them.

But we're not going to lift the veil quite yet.

Maybe we will for our patrons. Frank Howley, what is your favorite mystery of all the mysteries in the world?

Which one do you find to be the most mysterious?

The creation of the universe, the extent of the universe.

There is no beginning. There is no end. Does that mean that there is no creator?

Who knows? Wow. Wow. frank pissing off both religious people and astrophysicists saying that there was no start or end to the universe love it jeremy what's your favorite mystery uh there's this thing called the voynich manuscript we were actually talking about it the noclip discord recently so if you're not in the noclip discord this is what you're missing out on um there was a rich guy who owned a manuscript that was like very difficult to date from back in the day and it had a language that no one has ever seen and has no touchstones and a bunch of like Technical diagrams.

Yeah, it was Welsh. No one had ever heard of it until then.

So no one has ever translated it. It's an untranslated document with technical drawings of plants and animals and all sorts of weird shit.

Whoa. Do they know when it's from? I will look it up.

I don't remember. Get Fox Mulder on the case.

Jesse Garasha, while Jeremy is trying to solve an unsolvable mystery.

What's your favorite mystery? You got any Canadian mysteries?

Oh, Canadian mysteries. That's a good one.

There's a lot of I'm trying to think of something that's not sad.

Oh, yeah. Good point. Nothing about babies buried, please.

Yeah, there's a lot of that. I want to know what happened to the bread bowl they had at Tim Hortons.

Bring it back. It was delicious. You used to be able to go to Tim Hortons and get you a bowl made of bread.

Full of coffee? That they would put chili in.

No, I wish it was coffee. You can get chili or soup and it was great.

And you could eat the bowl. It was the ultimate biodegradable food vessel.

It was fantastic. Bring it back. What about a bread mug full of coffee?

Settle down. What about a donut? We're not getting crazy over here.

What about a donut bowl? It's a bread bowl made of donut full of coffee.

I feel like Krispy Kreme must have done that already, right?

I don't know. A cup, yeah. It couldn't be very sticky is the only problem because it would just be an absolute nightmare.

Like a hot donut you're holding onto for an extended period of time. putting it in your little cup holder in your car.

It just sounds like an absolute nightmare.

It's a way to ensure there's a yellow jacket nest in your car by the time next time you come out there.

Yeah. Also, you can't eat the donut because you just put it down.

You have to put like, what's the point of the cup is to protect the beverage from the outside world.

But if the cup is food, then you need a plate or cup for the cup for the drink.

You know what I mean? What's a food that we eat with our hands purely?

Because like corn dog comes on a stick. Hamburger?

That's true. Who said that? I mean, sorry.

Go on. I was going to say, to me, pizza.

I mean, there's Chicago pizza where it does get deep and messy, but like traditional pizza, I feel like is very hands.

French fry. Yeah. Why are we okay with that?

Because the whole thing just got like burned.

So we feel like all the germs got burned off of it.

You know, they even give you like a, like a little piece of paper when you get a churro.

Yeah, that's true. Like, come on, man. What's going on?

My favorite mystery is Well, I'll be driving to QuakeCon later today.

No, tomorrow. Quake Convention, to use its full legal name.

I'm not driving the whole way. I'm driving to Vegas.

So I will be. And then taking a very fast, cheap plane over the boring part.

Because there are so many flights between Dallas and Las Vegas.

Because nobody wants to have to drive. that particular stretch of road which is just unbelievably boring um but on the way to vegas i will be passing area 51 once more so i might have to check in on that uh no you got to be careful you cannot do that again in the same 12 month period on the list now good point that's a good point yeah do you think that whole thing's a front you know what it's just aliens live there like oh so it is real but they're pretending that it's real so that we think it's fake Oh, I like your idea more, that it's like a front for... It's just a meth lab, maybe, or something?

Or maybe that's where Bigfoot is. It's a real psych out.

Yeah, they keep playing it up, but really, that's the last place they would look, because it's the first place they would look, you know what I mean?

Well, you think he's going to be in the trees, exactly.

Exactly. Jeremy, have you ever been up to that Bigfoot store up in... It's north of Mendo.

I don't think so. It's on the way out of California on the coast.

There's a real good... I mean, everyone thinks they have Bigfoot.

Every... I was in fucking Wyoming and they had Bigfoot things in the forest.

I used to like every everyone thinks they have.

I used to hang out with a guy who grew weed way up north in California.

And one time he used to come down to the East Bay.

He was friends with my roommate. He's a very sketchy character.

He got a gun pulled on us. You don't very, very sort of storied individual.

Oh, is he the guy that all that stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

OK, he ripped some people off and then they came by.

I don't know why you'd hang out with people you rip off, but they pulled a gun on us.

But anyway, one time he and I were smoking a blunt and he very seriously looked me in the eyes and he's like, oh, here we go.

You know, I've seen Bigfoot up there. And I was like, where?

And he's like up when I was like growing.

He's like, weird shit happens up there, man.

They got vortexes in the forest. Oh, I love it.

It's like vortexes in the forest. And he's like, yeah, you know, these there's creatures out there like Bigfoots and they they like take the vortexes in.

And that's why people don't see them because they don't have to cross like populated areas because they're taking the vortices between unpopulated areas and and um and he was like i used to sleep with a gun because i saw a bigfoot and i was like whoa that's i don't i think i gotta maybe you finish this blunt i'm gonna go because like you're scaring the shit out of me it's this guy and then that guy went on to make pacific drive really uh i bet you're gonna say pacific rim and say it was hugo martin it was hugo martin bigfoot man But why can't we see the vortex?

Are they invisible? They're imperceivable to us.

You should have been there, because these are the hard-hitting questions.

These are the Louis Theroux questions that needed to be asked.

Well, when we filmed all the Half-Life stuff in Sedona, that's a place that likes a vortex.

That's what I thought of, too. They love fucking vortices down there, man.

That's their whole thing. It's like white ladies buying turquoise jewelry and getting your chakras aligned by the fucking vortexes. absolutely i wonder if you can get a vortex from sedona to like portland you know like so you know the only two locations americans are so cooked you guys don't even like you don't want trains you just want imaginary vortices to move you between locations faster dude i feel like the only thing that you can like acceptable law the the only thing that makes myth like acceptable or unacceptable is time.

And that's the problem with like all American myth is that it's all older than like pubs in my hometown.

Whereas like when Irish people talk about like, you know, banshees and leprechauns, it sounds so mystical, but it's just as stupid.

You know, we're like, oh, Bigfoot. Yeah, right.

But then you're like, yeah, isn't it cool that there are like pukas and leprechauns and banshees and stuff?

And like we celebrate that or that. Or like Dia de las Muertes or whatever.

We're like, yeah, look at all these. This is how.

And then we're like, Bigfoot, Nessie, you idiots.

Get some real myth. Does Canada not have any then?

Did you guys just have the decency to not create any modern myths or the lack of imagination perhaps?

Uh, probably the latter. We tend to just copy whatever America's doing and put a Canada at the end of it.

We do have Bigfoot believers up here. I saw someone with a, I saw a Bigfoot sticker on their car, which to me seems impossible.

I don't think he can come live up here. It's too cold and they don't have any vortices from as far as I've seen.

I've been in a couple of forests. Yeah, exactly.

How annoying is it that I keep asking you Canadian things?

That's okay. I'm the representative. It's fine.

Although if you ask some people, I don't look Canadian.

I don't have to look. You know what I mean?

Oh, I've never been to Canada. Did I not all look like you?

Roughly, like 50%. Okay, cool. Yeah. Canada is so chill that I forgot I actually have been to Canada.

You have been. You've been to London, Ontario.

I went to London, Ontario. That's right.

Fakest London. Yeah, it's up there. It's up there.

We did that bit already a few weeks ago with the names.

You know what we haven't done, though, that I forgot last week? our Battle Pass holders.

Amazing folks over at patreon.com slash noclip that fund the beautiful work that we do at Noclip.

Those people, some of them have names. And here they are.

Love Priest. Yus. Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Anthony Thomas. Nico Passateri. It's a me for audio.

Senator Armstrong. Reed Dredge. Harry Flanagan.

Joosh. Arno. Matt Pearson. James Brown. Get up.

Mark Rojas. Copernicus. Quote. Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry. Goddison. Sven Hooster. Pez.

John Akers. You Ain't Nate. Tim Robinson.

Who puts his name in upside down? which you can see in the credits.

It's near the end of the credits on our videos.

You want to check that out. It's the hot stuff.

Patreon allows it. Forrest Pruitt, Jonathan Kremen, Eric Hamilton Schneider, Christophe Vitui, Cameron Laird, Zachary Snader, Alex Goucher, George Sakotas, Jacob Godserve, Entheogen, James Med, Tohir Tillyev, and Rison.

Thank you all so much, lads and ladies, and people of all description, for funding this silly nonsense podcast. that we produce over on patreon.com slash noclip.

I thought you were saying that we got a new patron named GetUpba.

GetUpba. And that was not you doing a James Brown bit.

I was like, wow, that was really convenient of them to sign up with that name.

I've let James Brown, you know, I figure they get that enough in their life.

But it's been a while since we did it. We've known each other long enough to make that joke, I feel like.

Exactly. We're cool. It's like I had two friends in my hometown growing up called Barry White.

And that's just like, you know. none of them were particularly sexual chocolate, but you know, damn, what a shame, you know?

Yeah. It's a real shame. They were skinny Irish people.

So, you know, white people, it does sound like that assumes whiteness.

I've just done a white, I've just done a fucking white supremacy.

I did it up first 10 minutes. I said, look, 10 minutes, we'll get through this podcast without me doing it.

We had a whole meeting about it before. We were like, come on, man, like just 10 minutes.

And then you're off the leash after that. uh you're fucking a pop to their credit though barry white does sound like uh if you didn't have the cultural context you would be like that's that's like a white guy who works in like a call center if his name is barry white you know a little bit barry it's a very like normie name yeah it is yeah it's it says a lot that he didn't like do a stage name or something you know what i mean like what's prince's real name what do you mean oh it's a good point sorry yeah good point Sorry.

I mean, the artist. Apologies. Apologies.

You can't say the symbol. You never learned that one.

His real name is Prince. Prince Rogers Nelson.

Nelson, right? Yeah. Oh, it is. I didn't just pull it up. holy i knew that the whole time was he born that though or did he do a usually on wikipedia it'll say like prince rogers nelson born like alphonse white you know uh born terry whatever whatever hulk hogan was rest in peace i guess um also rest in rest in peace is legend of bigfoot the place you're talking about the bigfoot store it's it's like it's a big big up near uh Like, what's that town real, like, what's the town in the northwest corner?

Oh, no, we're talking about different places.

I was going to say, I searched Bigfoot store, and it's the exact town where that guy grew weed.

So I wonder if he just drove by the store so many times that he was like, man, you know, maybe there are fucking Bigfoots out here.

I don't know, dude. So do you think that the guy who smokes weed and is paranoid because he's doing it illegally in a town that had a Bigfoot store might have accidentally...

I don't know, Jeremy. You don't sound like you might be at a mystery club.

You're too critical. Your critical thinking is way too.

I just want the truth is out there. And I've got to know if Bigfoot's out there, you know.

Ask ChatGPT about that thing's got some ideas about Bigfoot that are probably as accurate as the ones that you're right.

At least as accurate as that guy. And that is not a compliment to ChatGPT.

The security guard at GameSpot used to be a Bigfoot hunter as well.

No shit, really? I remember him. He was a really nice guy.

Do you remember the guy, the chatty guy?

Not the one that was subsequently fired for stealing, like, what did he steal?

PlayStation 2 dev kits or something? I don't know.

The short guy got fired. Did you know about that?

I don't think you knew about that. No, I didn't know that.

Why was he stealing PS2 dev kits? Was he trying to get a job at Atlus in, like, 2004?

Yeah. yeah he was stealing i forget what it was it happened after i left but the other guy was super nice we went ducks these people obviously but he used to go on like walks and he never found bigfoot but he'd been on like a bunch of these hikes he'd go off to different parts california and like search for bigfoot that's like a harmless hobby like i had a friend in high school whose mom was like one of the nicest ladies i've ever met and i went over their house one day and she's like a single parent raising like three kids she's like a sweetheart i And we're sitting there and she starts telling me about how she goes ghost hunting.

And she was dead serious about it. Like she had like, she had like gear.

She had like the fucking, like the EVP recording gear and shit.

And she was just like dead serious about it.

And you know what? I was like, that's fucking awesome.

Cause I think that's cool. Everyone needs a hobby.

Totally. Yeah. And that's a cool hobby. You know, some people do like, like if you believe in it, if you believe that there are ghosts and you could hunt them, why would you do anything else?

That's so true. That's, that's a great point.

Imagine that. Imagine you could like maybe communicate with somebody dead.

Be like, yeah, I'm not going to the cinema.

You know, I'm not going to do some crochet.

You know, fuck that. I'm going to speak to, you know, Edgar Allan Poe.

I bought a Ouija board when I was a kid because I was so intrigued by this possibility, like as a young child.

And it just sits in my bedroom closet of my childhood bedroom closet to this day because I was too scared to use it.

Oh, did you ever use it? No, it's never been opened.

I wouldn't fuck with that. No, why open the portal, dude?

It could be a Bigfoot situation. Bigfoot could come through.

Imagine if Bigfoot came in and you'd be like, well, this is terrifying in a whole different way.

Do you have big feet? Oh my God, it's going to yes.

Frank, I feel like you're the most likely person here to have used a Ouija board.

He's thinking about it. No, I don't think I ever have.

You don't think about it? Should we do it?

Should we do it? Patron exclusive content.

I'm down, but not. We're not doing it in my house.

That's my only rule. Oh, come on. Dude, you're building a shack in the woods.

If there's anywhere else to use a Ouija board.

That's the scariest place to fucking. That's the only place you're supposed to use it.

What do you mean? I don't want the vortex in my fucking one bedroom cabin.

Oh, I don't want Bigfoot to come visit, man.

Just say you're a xenophobe and move on.

All right. Jeez. There are not many, many people that I'm prejudiced against, but big, big feets are one of them.

I always think about that. Like if you did something like a spooky thing in your house, would it stay, you know, would it stay in the house forever kind of thing?

But then I think like, but like the earth is spinning and like flying around the sun, like do the, do the ghosts also like, does the magnetic field and the, and the gravity.

Does that keep them in the same spot, or are they, like, stuck in, like, a... Danny, birds.

So, like, once a year. You think when they fly, they just, like, career off?

The Earth rotates, but the ghosts stay in place.

Okay, this is the question, though. Do they stay positionally with the Earth as it moves around the sun, or do they... Exactly.

Or is there, like, a ghost location where once a year you pass through them, and you're like, oh, what's up, Jeffrey?

And then you see them again next year. But it's, like, so fast.

Like, you never... Like, when you die, that's your point in space.

But also, the universe is expanding. So... so many fucking unless you're frank he doesn't believe that um so so yeah so then they're just like stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere forever until like you know a little you know two millennia later like a like like Haley's Comet flies past them.

Well, maybe it's like ghosts are attached to something in this corp.

You know, they need to they need to be apologized to or like they have to throw the locket into the ocean.

Right. Until that happens, they're attached to it magnetically, but not like real magnets, like a different.

All right. Now I want to write like a like a Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov. high-concept sci-fi novel about a distant future where humanity is so flush with cash and resources that we're like, what do we do?

What do we do with all this? But we discover that ghosts are real, A, and B, that this theory is true, and we launch a spaceship toward the origin point of the universe to make amends with all of the ghosts that earth has left in its trail as the universe has expanded to free them from hell because we've discovered that hell is becoming a ghost and just hanging out in space and being left behind by the earth dude you just made a really great indie game pitch you should we should go back and delete that that's a genius idea so that's like because that what it would look like is a sort of a spiraling you know, like lie.

It would be like a crazy straw, a DNA, DNA.

What if DNA is ghost? DNA is just ghost in space, brother.

Did we all take like fucking a bunch of edibles before this podcast?

Don't we all this shit? It's just you two.

But Frank, if you could go back in history and talk to any, sorry, if you could get a Ouija board and talk to anyone who's a ghost, who would it be?

My dad. Sorry. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's a good answer.

That's a real ass answer. It's a good answer.

Danny's leaving the room. Bye. Bye. Oh, man.

You walked right into that one, man. Sorry, Frank.

Fuck. Sorry. You're good. What about like Jesus?

No, I'm just kidding. Just joking. That is a fucking real answer.

Is that your dad? My dad is Jesus. Same birthday.

Is that? I guess, you know, until I left the Catholic Church, he was.

Can I volley something? Are you changing your fucking answer?

Yeah. Jeremy and I read Askiwada. We never had the chance to talk about it.

Oh, that's true. I bought the book and everything, and I was dying to talk about it.

I thought Frank was going to go actually scratch that.

I want to talk to Hulk Hogan. oh my god no no stop putting frank under the bus like this all right and talking to you what would be awesome i reading that book i got this like profound sadness that i would never be able to talk to him about games because it was like i don't know he had this like incredibly pure view that just like making games would make people happy and that this was that this was like an ultimate like a calling with as much purpose as like and becoming a doctor or like saving lives or you know getting on a spaceship to liberate ghosts from their mortal coil throughout space um Mortal Coil.

Oh, shit, dude. That's the name of the game.

Fucking hell. Yeah, Askewada is a great book.

Frank, did you finish it? Did you read it?

Yeah, the thing I really liked about it was there was one thing he talked about with the Wii, or the whole idea with the Wii is they wanted to, same thing back with the Famicom, the family computer.

They wanted the computer in the living room that everyone could play, but with the Wii, this is such a Mad Men marketing thing, is they intentionally called, instead of it being called a controller, they call it the Wii Remote.

Because they wanted to reprogram everyone's brain.

Like, oh, when you come home from work, you sit down, you turn on the TV with the remote.

But he's like, wait, what if we get everyone to turn on the console with the remote instead?

And he was like, that's going to be our machine.

And his idea was like, if you turn on a Nintendo console, you're guaranteed to have a good time.

We just need people to turn on the console.

And like, I was playing games on Saturday with that Nintendo mindset of like, don't worry about the game itself.

Just enjoy your time with the system. Ironically, I was playing PlayStation 5.

But... It was still just like, yeah, the way you water wrote about video games and everything is like, I mean, there's that famous saying where it was like, Oh God, what's the, in my heart, I am a gamer.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh God. I forgot what the whole thing is.

It's like in my, in my day job, I am at such an, I'm a executive corporate president.

Yeah. In my heart. Yeah. In my heart, I'm a gamer, but, um, but yeah, Jeremy was one who originally like, uh, had mentioned it.

And also there's so much information about like the creation of earthbound.

So there's a famous anecdote of like, oh yeah, we could either fix this game.

It'll take us two years or start from scratch and get it done in six months.

And like, it was just filled with interesting anecdotes.

I think the most beautiful thing about the earthbound anecdote is that, um, it shows how like egoless Iwata was about this stuff that he came in and he was this like ridiculously talented programmer.

And they were this, you know, project was kind of like drowning under its own weight.

And he said what Frank just said, which is that, you know, it would take two years for him to fix the code base or they could gut it if he got permission to start from scratch and build it in six months.

Um, but in the process of so doing, it wasn't like he was like, I'm the hero programmer.

I'm going to come in and I'm just going to like, let me solo it for six months.

Stand back. You guys already fucked up. Let me fix this.

Let me fix your mess. Instead, he was like, the first thing he did was build a bunch of tools, uh, so that the people on the team could all participate in the rebuilding of earthbound and have ownership over it.

Um, And like, I don't know if that, you know, like expedited the process or if that made it slower or faster or whatever it was.

But like, I think just in the abstract, that's such a beautiful thing that even even like rescuing all those people, he wanted them to sort of like be part of the scrapping of this project or not scrapping the like whatever the what's the word salvaging of this project.

Yeah. Yeah. The other anecdote I really liked from it was talking about the origin of Smash Brothers and how Sakurai had this idea for it.

And Iwata was like, yeah, I got like a lot on my plate.

But tell you what, you come up with the design and I'll just like spend all my weekends programming it.

And it was it was just like the two of them and a guy doing sound at first, like the first build of it.

And he I can't remember the phrase he uses, right?

Maybe it's stuck in your head. But he says like, like, you know, that's like a true indie game or something, because it's it's like fucking Smash Brothers.

And it's just like two dudes who are like, yeah, this idea is like, yeah, I could do it on the weekend, I guess.

And it's fucking Smash Brothers. I don't know.

It's crazy. Can you give us some context for the format of the book?

Because it's not like a memoir he wrote.

Yeah, it's a bunch of collected writings that he did over the years.

And there's a bit where there's other people talking, writing about their memories of him.

Shigesato Itoi and Miyamoto. Yeah, it's basically...

I don't know, Frank, it was like a, like letters and a blog.

And he, it was like a blog that he published on like Nintendo's corporate website.

It really was a call. I'm like, ask you water.

And he would answer. It was called the water asks.

That's why they flipped it for the book.

Yeah. Um, but it's a beautiful book. I highly recommend it.

It's a, it's very readable. Um, and yeah.

And I mean, it's, it starts at the, the, like the beginning of him talking about, like there were no home computers and he was making games on like a calculator for his friend at school to play and talking about how, like, he probably never would have become a game developer if he didn't have a friend to like give his calculator to and show him these little games he was making because the friend was like, that's sick.

And then it was like this feedback mechanism.

In fact, that's like the last thing I want to say about this book is the part that really like touched my soul that will stay with me forever is he talked about how like talent for doing something is not the ability to do it well.

It's the ability to glean reward, a feeling of fulfillment from the doing of it.

Because that will keep the process going.

So it doesn't matter if you make the best model ever, do the best gameplay programming ever.

What matters is... that from the process you can derive a sense of inherent fulfillment because then you will keep doing it and keep getting better.

And it like, it's a self fulfilling or like a self fueling process that keeps rolling forever.

I thought that was really cool that like, that's his model of talent is like, can you enjoy a thing?

And then time takes care of the rest. Yeah, exactly.

You get better. Very cool stuff. Uh, ask a water.

It's, uh, available where books are. I got it at the library.

So check your local library. Oh, sick. Even better, use the library app.

I don't know if there's an audiobook version of it as well, but in case you don't know, you can also use the... There's a pretty big audiobook library as well on there using the app for the library, which is pretty cool.

We have some video games to talk about as well this week.

Dead Take, Ninja Gaiden, Ragebound, Mashima, Heartworm, Dear Me, I Was, and we're also going to talk about all the Battlefield 6 stuff that dropped and we got a few questions too.

Let me get Dead Take done and dusted. It's a short game.

This came out last week. It is from Insurgent Studio, which is the studio that Boubacar Salim... runs uh we talked to abubakar on uh dear dwiry uh last year after the launch of why am i forgetting the name of the game tales of kenzerazow thank you tales of kenzerazow the rogue like um platformer that they put out uh this is very different this is a um it stars about like ben stars in this and a bunch of other reputable actor voice actor people newbin right from uh baldur's gate 3 right uh there's a couple of other cameos in here uh lana pierce turns up at one stage matt mercer and there's a couple of like little bits and bobs here and there um the uh the what it is is basically it's a it's a first person puzzle game um which has some elements of cinema sort of inserted into it When I saw the trailer, I think the trailer sort of like put me on the wrong expectation for it or something.

Cause I saw it and I was like, oh, is this like an FMV game or something?

Or, you know, is it like super linear? I think it looked, I was worried it was super linear.

I didn't realize that it was like a, I don't know, like an open, like a, like sort of like a, like a house, like a Resident Evil style house that you spend a lot of time in.

You're opening doors, you're solving puzzles, you're walking around in, you know, as much as you want.

The puzzle is, you know resident evil is linear in that the progression of the puzzles is in a particular order but you are free to move around the place and that made a difference to me because i enjoyed sort of wandering around in it it's only about three hours or four hours long i did it and under three i think it was 245 or something by the time i i knocked it out i did it in two settings um but uh i enjoyed it it's a i enjoyed it quite a lot actually it's um It's a puzzle game.

I would say the puzzles are low friction.

Some of them are quite easy. Some of the trickier ones aren't too hard.

You can brute force some of them as well if you want.

But I found them all interesting. And I think that was the most important thing.

They are very much like unique. Each puzzle is a different type of puzzle.

Um, uh, and you are, you know, the, the things you get from them and the story that it unveils is really compelling and interesting.

And it was one that I couldn't put down because I was like, I wanted to see the next part of it.

Um, there's a lot of, it all takes place sort of around, it's psychological horror sort of around the, uh, it's like a parable for being an actor basically.

And like how, executives and studios and everyone takes advantage of you and the sacrifice you have to put into it and the story is all about a bunch of actors that are going for a part you're wandering around this house and you're finding like videotape tapes and and memory cards with audition tapes on them and then there's a part in the game where you get to like splice together hilariously with like an ai piece of software called splicer you get to like merge clips together and We'll look at them in like a little cinema room and stuff.

And that's where a lot of the VO or the voice actor.

Well, I should just say actors pop up on the screen and sort of act out this story.

But yeah, it like doesn't overstay its welcome.

It was super. I like the level design and the world design was cool.

The acting stuff was super good and interesting.

And yeah, I was super into it. Yeah, this seems cool.

This seems like a... I feel like this is like in the... You know how Dark Souls came out and then everything became a Souls?

I feel like this is a Sam Barlow-like... Yeah, right. yeah it's definitely um has a lot of that video stuff but like that like i said the gameplay is closer to it's like i think i said it was like if immortality mist and resident evil had a baby it's kind of like a a little weird open world puzzle game um with uh with all of these interesting i like the themes i thought it was like a really interesting insight into like just how shitty being an actor is in lots of ways Um, I thought that was really cool.

Uh, and it's only like 15 bucks. I think it's a, there's a introductory offer at the moment, which, uh, should still be open 10% off.

Um, and it's, uh, it's from pocket pair publishing as well.

So this is pal world sort of the power world universe.

Yeah. No pals, a couple of jump scares in here for folks who are wondering sort of where this lies on the horror list.

It's a, there's a couple of like, sort of cheap jumps, you know, like the, the face flashing on the screen type stuff.

There's a couple of in world ones, which were pretty well earned.

Um, uh, I don't want to spoil too much. Um, uh, yeah.

And I just, yeah, the, the, the puzzles were neat and interesting and, you know, the ending is a bit kooky, uh, but you know, kind of had to go somewhere kooky.

I think when you're doing something like this, yeah.

Any, any questions about that take or kind of, I'm just glad to hear that it's pretty solid.

Yeah, because like you, I saw the trailer and I was like, I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what it was.

I just got a different impression. I just got an impression that it was like a bit, you know, like the opening of Atomic Heart.

Like the first like two hours of that game is fairly on the rails.

And I was like, I like games where I can move around a bit.

And I think I just didn't realize that you could, you know, it's way more puzzled than it is. video stuff oh that's good yeah because the trailer made me think it was just gonna be here's my actor friends here's the people i know that i work with that are cool like put them on the screen and then here's the gameplay and but the gameplay in the trailer was so limited it didn't really make me think it was like an escape room style thing or like a mix style puzzle solver it was like you put a key in a thing and then eventually ben star shows up and i'm like yeah i also think he's good looking but is there anything else i do so yeah the trailer didn't sell me on it either it's good to hear that it's a solid, uh, experience.

Yeah. I think that's what it was. I think I didn't realize just how it's definitely like, you know, 80, 20 in the gameplay to you watching videos thing, maybe, maybe even a bit more.

Um, yeah. And I was, I was, I was also sort of pleasantly surprised, you know, as well.

I was, uh, I got quite drunk with Ben star tomorrow.

Say it's wedding about a month ago. So I was like, don't be shit.

Cause then I'll have to say it's shit, but it's not shit.

It was a fun video game. Uh, and it was definitely worth the cost of admission, you know, 15 bucks for, you know, It was like renting a horror movie.

You know what I mean? It felt like a good time.

So yeah, Dead Take, available on... Is it only on Steam?

I don't know if it's on consoles. I should have maybe looked this up beforehand.

Bad Daddy. You know Pocket Pair. They don't have the money to do that.

Port the console. Settle down. Come on. They got Pal World.

Pal World. Probably like a billion dollars, dude.

That's not that much. Yeah. Yeah, let's settle down.

Yeah, I did your bit. Did you do Spoon Man with Pal World?

Yeah, I did your bit. That's pretty good.

You're welcome. Pal World. I can't find links to it anywhere else.

I'm going to assume it is only on Steam.

If I'm wrong, apologies, everyone. but none of their stuff that I can see.

Is it all linking to Steam? Steam, Epic Game Store.

I think that's it. PC and Steam Deck for now, they said.

Okay. It could work on Steam Deck, actually.

Yeah, I didn't play it on Steam Deck, but I could see it working on Steam Deck.

It's dead take. Jeremy, you got a couple here.

Let's go through them. Which one do you want to do first?

I want to talk about Machina. machina machina is a a delightful game it is is the most delightful game i've played this year um this is a game from the same developers as a game called judaro which is very high on my shame list in that i know it is an excellent game uh came out last year i believe yes september last year i have not played judaro uh i've heard nothing but praise for it and for some reason i just have not gotten around to it so but now i will judo judo is one that people might know the look of it's like a what how would you describe it like stop motion kind of like i don't know like plasticky and clay-y looking with little like kind of action figure looking folks um It's a it's a like a folklore action RPG in sort of like the old timey Scotland setting.

Right. Yeah. I mean, again, I haven't played it, but it looks awesome.

I just have not gotten around to it. But I fucking love Machina.

And so now I'm all in the Judo might be the next game I play after this.

So Machina is a how do I even describe this game?

It is a. It's a digging game. It's a game where you dig into the earth to mine out resources and find weird little friends and surprises and all sorts of things down there.

But the sort of loop is that you're digging into the earth and exploring and doing all these things and then. once you fill up your inventory or do your objective, you go up to the surface and there's a little colony of cute little robots that you're helping out.

You're like helping them build a little colony.

And they're just like the most charming little stop motion characters.

They're like, they're so cute and tactile and weird.

And like, they just all kind of look like, I don't know.

It reminded me of like playing with action figures as a kid in that they have this like, you know, very physical texture, the like physicality of them.

And also sort of like, some of them will be like a ball of plastic with like a bet what looks like you know three paper clips twisted together as like a leg with like a boot on them um but it's like uh it's like the the people who make these models are so clearly talented at it and their aesthetic is just this very like visceral free childlike like joyous expression um that it's you know it they don't look like the toys i had as kids but they evoke the same feeling um But yeah, you just kind of like dig into the earth and you have a little jet pack, you're a robot named Machina, and you're just kind of like helping your friends and digging out minerals.

And there's a few different things you do underground.

There are like, you can find like ore, like chunks that you can build conveyor belts that bring the minerals back to your base.

So there's a little bit of very light automation if you want to participate in that.

But mostly it's just like doing favors for your pals and upgrading your drills so you drill faster and can drill through harder stuff.

And yeah, It's just very like I saw a Steam review that called it therapeutic.

And I feel like that's the best explanation for it.

It's just it's it's just calming and soothing.

It's soothing to dig. And like, I don't know.

I mean, I feel like this is a thing that's kind of underexplored in most digging games other than Minecraft is that digging is like.

It is expressive in a way where like in Deep Rock Galactic or a game like that, digging is a utilitarian thing where it's like, oh, this on the other side of this is an alien egg we need to get.

Let's dig through the wall. But in Minecraft, it's like you dig through a thing and then you leave that place.

And when you come back to that place, you're like, oh, yeah.

Remember when we like dug through here and made that tunnel?

Machina is more like that, where every time you go back down into the earth, you're re-exploring these sort of tunnels that you've dug, this system of tunnels. uh and eventually you kind of like move on and make new sets of tunnels and stuff but um but yeah it's just this very sort of like soothing wholesome cute life-affirming little game and i think it's wonderful uh you guys are gonna do an indie recommendation yes over on we are no clip whatever it's called do um excellent yes i'm excited to see it it looks very cool um and i also for my shame have not played judo row oh that's great you guys are gonna yeah you'll really like it i played it last year and it was just like phenomenal such a poetic video game like it it's yeah well so how does it play what's what's the like genre now it's um sort of like a action rpg angle i don't know how to describe it's sort of like isometric but the camera angle changes a lot it's a combat focused game like i'd say 70 of it and then for a little bit it's like puzzles and stuff.

You have this ability where you can take over some of the enemies and use them to solve puzzles in the area.

So it's a bit like Super Mario Odyssey, weirdly.

But it's fun. It's like the gameplay of it isn't too distracting in terms of like how much you do have to do actually quite a bit of it, the more I think.

But it's not like it's not so involved that it takes over.

Like you still are looking for these characters in their houses, like the quests are a little silly and and perhaps hard to parse.

But like what you're doing in the world, the names, the characters, the designs of them are just so charming.

It's hard to not feel attached to them. There's a, there's a group of enemies you fight called like the men of, of, uh, Calibre or something like that.

I don't remember what the exact name of the city was, but when they spawn, they just go Calibre, Calibre, Calibre, Calibre and come towards you.

There's like eight of them. And so their voice lines overlap.

It's yeah, it's very funny. The voice acting is very funny.

And the writing is like, it's so it has such a great juxtaposition between the sense of comedy you get fighting the men of Calibre or whatever it's called and all the other enemies.

And they're so random. And then you walk into a house and you talk to a character who's like, I haven't seen the ocean in like 30 years.

I forget what the sound of the waves is like. but I can still smell the salt when I think about it.

Like stuff like that. Like, it's just so beautiful.

I don't know if that's an exact line, but it's something like that.

Like there's so many moments like that. It's, it's a bizarre, enjoyable experience.

It's pretty short too. It's like two or three hours.

Machina hits a similar tone. It's like, um, it's kind of what makes me now want to play Jotaro is I feel like I comprehend the tone that these people are nailing that people are connecting with so much.

It's like, it's so deeply sincere, but it's not the kind of sincere where it's like nonstop.

Like, let me pull your heartstrings. Let me like, you ever seen a man die?

And you're like, I mean, that's fucking real.

But like, Jesus Christ, dude, it's like there's one character who's asking you to find new radio stations.

And the game has in-game radio stations that are so weird and funny.

And you have to find the frequencies for them underground.

So so when you talk to her, there's this line.

It was in the trailer, too, is one of the things that may be interested in this game where she's just like, there's just radio waves like up in the air.

Like, think about that. They're just like hanging up there.

And it's like, it's just very weird. Like, it's like, it's like you have that really deep friend who smokes a ton of weed, but it's like the smartest person, you know, that's like the sense of humor of this game.

And then he starts talking about Bigfoot.

No, that guy's not the smartest guy I've ever met.

I sleep with a gun. You're going to shoot the Bigfoot.

Anyway, sorry. We don't have to go back to that.

Is there voice acting? There is voice acting and it is fantastic.

Um, It's this game is 16 bucks, by the way, or like 18 without the discount.

I think it's pretty short. I feel I'm like three hours and change into it.

And I feel like I'm coming up towards the end.

I've just been kind of saving the last chunk of it for, uh, you know, when I need like a, a soothing dig session.

Um, but yeah, no, I mean, it's well worth the money.

It is, there's so much production packed into this and the voice acting is fantastic.

And it's like, you know that, you know, when like voice acting sounds like you like, some of it sounds like you got like your friends to do it but they like fucking killed it like it's so good and it's like better than professional voice acting that's what it is here or I assume anyway because in Jotaro it's yeah it's a bunch of family members and friends and one of the developers I think does a bunch of the characters it reminds me of Danny uh Despilote the family like the same sort of quality as that where it's like it doesn't like Jeremy's totally right like it doesn't feel as though They sat them down and said, here's what you're going to say.

They kind of just sat down and said whatever.

Obviously, it's scripted. It's a little different, but like they just they nail the feeling of there's a there's a character you come across who I won't spoil because there's oh my God, there's a million.

Actually, can I can I describe one character?

Sure, because finding all these kooky characters is like part of the appeal of this game.

I feel like I need to do this to properly explain the game.

There is there are two characters you find in the first area.

One is named Yum Yum and one is named Sushi.

And eventually the, cause the conveyor belts up to this point are only to carry minerals and you find the two of them.

And then someone up top is like, you know, it'd be great.

What if you build a conveyor belt from sushi to yum yum?

So the sushi could send delicious treats over to yum yum.

I bet he'd really like that. And then you're like, okay.

So you build a conveyor belt from sushi to yum yum.

And then the conveyor belt just carries like little sushis to yum yum for the rest of the game.

And it's like and when you meet these characters, they have an intro cut scene.

So you find sushi and she's just like whipping up like bao buns and sushi.

And there's like a really like uncanny, trippy, like stop motion, full video of them.

And then it says their name at the end. So it'll do the little video that'll be like sushi.

And it's like it's so charming, man. I just fucking love it.

Holy shit. I love the frame rate. It's like 30 frames a second, maybe for the.

The CG for the animation? Probably less than that.

I feel like stop motion is only like a half dozen or like 10, 12 frames.

Yeah, it's like 12 frames or something like that.

If the regular animation is 24, it's usually every other frame.

Maybe the camera movement or something is higher.

Yeah, it definitely does not feel like a low frame rate experience or whatever.

But yeah, it's very... this is like a fucking some real love went into this game and you can, that's the thing is like, it's, it's, it's a pretty simple game, but I think that the thing that feels rewarding to me is like Danny, you evoke this metaphor or this, this anecdote all the time of that interview where like finding art in games is like in like point and click adventures and like more narrative games, the new art is the reward in this game.

It's like the gameplay is inherently fun and interesting, but I really just care about like, meeting more dudes named like yum yum and i'm like oh it's fucking yum yum dude i found yum yum that's awesome mashima mashina sorry mashina uh do yourself a favor go download the demo folks it's uh there's a demo right there and also if you have played this game you're thinking about playing it current time of recording it came out just late last week uh yeah um but it's only got 45 reviews so um do yourself and them a favor and make sure Review your games, folks.

Don't forget to review your games. I was forgetting to review my games.

I spent the last week reviewing some games.

Go review some games if you've played them, especially indie games.

Big difference between, you know, 45, you get that up to 100 or so, makes a big difference for people.

As Jesse talked about in his most recent video, too.

Let's transition over to Frank. So... I did not talk about this because I didn't pay enough of it at time of recording for the embargo.

So we're a little bit late on this one. I should have just given you the code, Frank, honestly.

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound came out as well at the end of last week.

This is the Game Kitchen developed Ninja Gaiden game. um side scrolling action game frank how much of this have you played and what do you make of it i'm sorry the game kitchen i should mention are the folks who made blasphemous one and two i believe they are in spain um massive fan of both those games of course uh yes frank what's what's your uh what's your take on ninja gaiden rage bound Yeah, I've played about three to four hours of it.

I think I'm like 70% of the game. I'm on the last area of Act 3, and then there's Act 4, which is all the final stuff.

It's incredible. It's really, really good.

The thing I like about it is it's not like Metroidvania or Search Action.

It is pretty linear. So it is a side-scrolling action platformer with phenomenal pixel art, awesome music.

The difficulty is... pretty good in terms of like if you die there's very favorable checkpoints i feel like it never takes longer than a minute to kind of get back to where you were uh on your on your run and then even boss fights might take like four or five attempts before you get all the patterns down and then you have different like abilities you can equip and i'm sure you could like slot out the perfect build for a certain enemy um there's also varying difficulties so like Every mission you do, if you press start, there's, like, three challenges.

Like, try to do this section without getting hit, or no deaths, or whatever.

There's collectibles on each level, and with those collectibles, you buy different, like, items.

There's no, like... not like skill point progression.

It is kind of skill based, but it's very satisfying to play through.

And yeah, I equate the action of it. I mean, again, it's like an old school ninja guiding game, but I never really played much of those.

But even those had really slick like platforming and jumping and hack and slash.

But to me, it feels kind of like playing like mega man x or even like celeste or super meat boy just in terms of like when you get in that flow state of like running like the game wants you to kind of run through them fast like you're hitting enemies you're also like it does the thing where you can like jump and then hit an enemy in air to kind of like bounce on top of them and you can just do runs where you're kind of just killing everything on the screen just going from it like there's this special ability where um you'll kill an enemy that has like a pink like orb on it if you kill that then then your next kill is one hit and you get that ability back but if you get damage you lose your streak so if you have this kind of like i don't know what you would call it but you can kind of get this flow so you're killing everything in one hit but once that combo drops then you kind of slow down a bit but uh yeah when it clicks it's really really good i feel like each stage is maybe like I don't know, like 10 to 15 minutes long.

So it's kind of that perfect era. It almost feels like golden age of like Xbox Live Arcade.

It has the same like act, you know, one, one, one, two, one, three, whatever, like awesome map and everything.

So, yeah, it's I played it first at Summer Games Fest and I sat down within like five minutes.

I was like, oh, this is excellent. This is perfect.

So, yeah, it does have to teach you a decent amount in terms of mechanics.

I feel like over the first like opening hour and a half at least, I think I played a little bit less than you.

I think it's longer than you think, though.

I don't think it's... How many hours have you played, did you say?

I think three to four, but I'm also not doing every collectible or challenge.

I'm just kind of beating the missions and moving on.

I think it's closer to 10 or something in total.

I could be wrong, and I think there's maybe more acts than you think as well.

So just to let people know just in case.

I'm not exactly sure how long it is, but I think it's in the 10-hour range for the story stuff.

Frank's just really good. He's just going through it so fast.

These are levels that you can kind of...

But like you're supposed to like the feeling of running through these levels is kind of the point of the game like it is very they do great stuff with the framing of the levels like some of them are ones where you it scans with you some are ones where you go you exit out left and you appear right like all that stuff is done. really well the production and presentation on this thing is super slick like the animation the uh story stuff is cool the boss fights are super tight the uh look of the game is is super what's what's the other game that's coming out that's that's like another shinobi sega has one coming out like at the end of august pretty similar shinobi is metroidvania but and and that's has more like a this is ninja guidance pixel art shinobi's look is like hand-drawn illustration Yeah.

The Shinobi one looks really interesting.

It looks like a, like claymated or something.

That's cool. The Shinobi one. Yeah. Yeah.

It's got, it's got, yeah, it's got, it's, it's a, it's a crank is actually a good shout.

Yeah, totally. It's got like hard, dark lines on around the outside.

Um, I think this Ninja Gaiden game, when I saw screenshots of it, I was like, oh, it looks great.

It looks good, but I think the Shinobi one maybe looks a bit better.

This thing in motion is beautiful. You know what this reminds me of?

Because I also did not play the NES or SNES Ninja Gaiden games.

I never played any of the 2D stuff at all.

This reminds me of like, oh, this is what I wish Revenge of Shinobi was.

You know what I mean? This is like a very... like slick and fast what are you laughing at what did i say i'm laughing at me i said crank i'm at shank shank that's what you were talking about yeah all right i was wondering what the fuck you were talking about i was like i guess yeah or mark of the ninja maybe more actually you're right that's probably closer ninja is yeah that's actually the closer one it was right there not the jason statham one um But yeah, this game is super fun.

I really like, they do a lot of like really clever stuff with enemy types and the levels, like that first treetop level you go in where suddenly you're like, you know, you're fighting in the treetops and it really feels like you're fighting in the treetops as a ninja.

Like it's super cool. Yeah. You guys have any questions about Ragebound?

Yeah, I played the demo for it and I found it to be a little easy.

I spent a lot of time doing the tutorial stuff.

Like you said, Danny, it takes a while to sort of explain everything.

But I didn't find it particularly challenging.

I think until about, I don't remember, was it Kumori or something like that? who something, yeah, the girl who, I hate saying that, but the woman who shows up and gives you like a kunai, gives you that extra ability.

Um, then I sort of felt like it ramped up, uh, Frank, you're a little bit further.

Does it feel like it gets more challenging as time goes on or is it still kind of like, I feel like by act three is like, you'll have these levels that were, and it's like, it's almost Mega Man style.

You can pick which level you want to go to first.

And those, and those feel like full on Mega Man X levels where it's like, it's a long run and then a really tough boss fight at the end.

And when they introduced the, yeah, the, uh, the, the female Ninja character, like, there's these sections where you can like transform a story and you have to do these really, you have these timed platforming sections.

And in order to like refill your meter, you have to like throw your, whatever the ninja star, to refill your meter.

And it takes a few tries, but it's like these little time trials to like make progression.

So it's like, you're just caught. There's so much, it's just constant action.

That's why I like it. It's like, oh my God.

And like, also it's like where it's testing your mechanics and everything so you don't have time to think you just have to do it and like react and it's like oh again it keeps me engaged that's like number one thing when i want to play video games just keeps me engaged and um yeah it's in like the music just yeah it's so sick yeah have you played on steam deck at all no i've just been playing on ps5 yeah i've been playing it on pc on the on the on the just pc monitor and it looks great on that too Um, I bet it would be good on a steam deck, but yeah, yeah.

The flow state, Nate, like you'd often be like jumping in and realize, Oh, I have to do that jump thing to stay alive like twice.

And then I have to hit this person in the, and it's like that thing where you, you nail it all.

And you weren't even thinking about it. Like, um, I always forget the name of that first person on the game.

Yeah. Neon white. It's a very neon white kind of feel where you're like, you're, you're, you're decision-making is like a quarter second behind your eyeballs.

And it's, you feel the satisfaction you feel when you do it.

Um, Yeah, for sure. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is 25 bucks normally.

It is 10% off. I think it's probably going to have ended by the time this podcast is up.

There is also a Game Kitchen bundle, which I cannot even look up because I own all the other games.

But I own all three games. So yeah, I can't even look that up.

But yes, if you haven't played Blasphemous 1 and 2, I highly recommend them.

Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. leave a review it's got 815 at the moment but i'm sure the game kitchen uh are under a crazy contract for that one so you know the better it can do the better for them um jeremy let's no jesse let's bounce over to you sorry uh this is your new thing is you just bring games that are hard to Yes.

Games that have ellipses in the title. Yes.

Anti-SEO titles. I love them. It's so good.

Yeah, this is Dear Me, I Was Ellipses. It's...

Oh boy. Okay. Video games. I like playing them, especially when they're short.

I don't know why that's been happening to me the last couple of weeks.

I just keep playing stuff that's like an hour long and it changes my life forever.

This one, maybe a little less so. So at the start of the last first, maybe arc system works showcase the, the company known for making guilty gear and like fighting games, DBZ and yeah, Dragon Ball fighters.

They open with blue, right? Like they open with a wordless, visual novel but like that seems wrong because there's no words um developed by people who used to work at sing or seeing however you say it the company that made hotel dusk 215 room 215 okay another code and stuff uh the art director for this game dear me i was uh taisuke kanasaki he worked on he was the director actually for both of those games hotel dusk room 215 one of the best ds games ever made in my opinion it is a very very cool visual novel yeah awesome game Um, well, the art director for this was that, and then the director for it was, uh, Maho Taguchi, who I think helped bring the another code games to America.

So it's like this weird collaboration between like a fan of the series who helped bring it to life.

And then someone who worked on it, making this experience that again, doesn't really fit with our system works who are also publishing it.

And, um, I don't, It's such a weird video game.

This is like the least a video game has ever been.

So it's 45 minutes long, maybe an hour. It's all done in that art style.

If you've played Hotel Dusk Room 215, then you know what it looks like.

It's like a rotoscoped hand-drawn style.

Like it's a very neat look. It's very immediately obvious.

Like they hadn't even shown who was making it yet.

And I knew who it was just from the look of the screenshots.

You play as an unnamed woman who because there's no words.

So I don't know who anyone is. But you play as a woman.

You play through basically her whole life.

You grow up with her as a child. She meets a friend in school and like develops a relationship.

And over time, things sort of bounce around.

It was a sort of story about grief in life and what it means to make mistakes, but also acknowledge them as not mistakes like it takes time for you to look back on those moments where you you feel like you did the wrong thing and acknowledge that like that let your life move forward in a different path like it's very beautiful in that way um but i make that point about it not being a game as much because like there's very little interaction like even in games like this where you you know a visual novel you gotta press a button to advance the text It just plays the videos.

Like there's some very small little interactions that you do and they are impactful and they happen because of that.

But then why are they like sort of gates where you have to make a decision or not even that?

It's sort of just you have to click enough things to move forward.

Like, OK, so the main ones that you get are the main character is an artist.

And that's the connection she makes with her friend.

And several moments throughout the game, you have to use the... And it's only on Switch.

I don't think it's on anything else right now.

You have to use the controller to sketch part of a sketch page of some drawings.

And then... The story moves on or you have to draw a penis.

Unfortunately, you have no control over the pencil.

It just colors in the shades. I know. Right.

Worst game ever made. But then like other times you're just eating a plate of food, but you can eat them in whatever order.

There's like two or three moments where you make a really impactful decision.

But for the rest of the time, it just plays out.

Was the 80, was the eating food an impactful decision?

I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, it never comes up again.

So you ate your sandwich real quick. I don't know.

You saved the, you ate your dessert first.

You're a freak. I'm not going to be your friend anymore.

Um, yeah. Compartmentalize what's wrong.

Right. Exactly. You want everything separated?

Um, no, it was, it's a very, I think the story of it is really good.

It costs like $8. It's on switch to, um, it reminded me of past lives that movie from a couple of years ago by Celine song directed by Celine song.

Uh, really good. And look back, uh, Frank, you might know about that one.

The, uh, the Tatsuki Fujimoto, uh, manga.

Yeah. Really, really good. Especially that one, because it's like a story about an artist and the grief that she goes through.

And it's, it's almost unsubtle. Uh, but this, this is like a very strange experience.

Cause it's just so straightforward. Like I don't bemoan it for not having more interactivity.

It's just, there's a lot of points in it.

And I just played and Roger a couple of weeks ago or last week, which I thought did it much better where I was like, I wish I had not even more agency over the narrative.

I just wish I had more involvement in it.

Like it kind of just happens in front of you.

And I, at moments I was asking myself, couldn't this have just been a movie, which is like the most gamer ass thing you could say, like, why don't I get to shoot a gun?

But there are times where I was like, I wish I had something I could be doing right now because I, I feel connected to these characters.

I care about this story. I want to be, I want to have some involvement.

The moments where you get to make the narrative move forward are like, again, really good.

Like they're impactful, but it's not necessarily a criticism.

I guess it is, but like I would, I just, I liked it so much.

I wanted it to be more, which is the nicest thing I can say about it.

Yeah. It's like $8. It's barely an hour.

And again, it's very it's just really nice.

I found myself not necessarily getting teared up, but like thinking about life in a deeper way.

And that's the most I can ever ask of of anything, really.

So, yeah, I love it. Arc System Works out there making the game.

Right. What is that about? That's so strange.

It's I'd love to know the story about this because I was looking into it and kind of sake does not talk much.

I think he's on social media and he's sort of like people are like, I love your game that no one played.

And he's like, oh, thank you. Yeah, I thought it was the best game ever made.

Sucks. No one played it. Um, and that's kind of it.

Like he doesn't really talk much about his process.

Uh, so I'd love to know more about where this came from, why arc system works, why they hired a bunch of people from sing or at least just, uh, just Taisky.

Like it's yeah. Very interesting situation there.

Uh, hopefully he gets to work on the Marvel fighting game.

Yeah. What's it called? Marvel token. Yeah.

Fighting souls or something like that. Fighting souls.

Um, Yeah, they're fun. I'm just looking on their list of games here.

Like they have, they produced a bunch of stuff as well or published rather, I should say, sorry.

They actually made, weirdly enough, they made last year's Uma Musume game.

They made a game called Party Dash, which apparently wasn't particularly well, like co-developed with Cygames.

Obviously Cygames have made the one that's kicked off.

But yeah, another code as well on Switch and stuff like that.

They made a game called, I'm just like, there's a bunch of games I've never heard of.

Is it a game called Happy Birthdays? I think it was called Birthdays The Beginning.

Oh, hell yeah. Origins Korea Birthdays? I wish.

They went back. It's like a life sim game or something.

I don't know. Like for dinosaurs? I don't know.

It's very weird. So yeah, who knows? Maybe they do a lot of contract work or collaborations or something.

Some of the stuff doesn't make it over here.

I don't know. But yeah, it definitely outside the wheelhouse for what we're used to. um that is dear me i was so do you recommend it yeah i mean it's eight bucks it's less than an hour uh it's on switch too so if you're looking for a new killer app uh there you there you go um weirdly you can use the and i bet this will be a problem with the console moving forward i was thinking about it um you can use the mouse mode with the joy-con where you you know hold it like a mouse i've still never done that so this is the first game i've ever felt compelled to do it although mario paint is on there now i don't know if it has mouse control support it should because that would be um exactly.

Well, of course that that's, that's what the whole game is for.

Yeah. Final boss. That's what the P and paint stands for.

It's penis. Um, but like you can use the mouse in, in dear me, I was, but it's really bad.

Like a thing that the switch one had a problem with was bringing DS games to the console.

They wanted to do it a lot. They did it with the world ends with you.

Like, but the translation of mouse or, or stylus input, Just did not work like the Wii was the only platform that was ever going to work.

And they just like the DS was out. Why would you play a DS game on your TV?

You just buy a Nintendo DS right now, please.

So now they have them and it's like before it was the gyro controls were bad, but now they have the mouse and it's really on a system level, not much better.

Like it's OK on the menu. But again, why would you do it?

Here it's like, this is the one opportunity I was expecting it to be a little bit better implemented.

So I don't know. This does at some point, the more I think about it, feel like almost a tech demo.

Like they're trying to make sure that they can. make a game for the switch to, it's a really fantastic tech demo, but it does feel a bit like making sure they know how to make the kind of game they make on the platform.

Um, not a knock. Cause again, they do great stuff with it.

But like, if this is, if this is what it takes to get hotel desk room two one six, I will, I will do whatever it takes.

I will, I will buy this 40 times. You tell me, you send me an email or podcast that no clip.

The gameplay in that, in, in hotel dusk was like walking between the rooms, knocking on doors, um, selecting what you said to people, I guess.

Yeah. You'd have conversations and sort of like discover keywords.

And then over time you could go back and be like, Hey, what did you say?

Your mom died. And the kid will be like, I don't know.

And then run away. And then you have to be like, that was weird.

That was like the weirdest at that time for me.

Anyway, the weirdest visual novel I'd ever played.

Cause it was just so off the walls in terms of like what the DS was willing to do. willing to do it's a console being forced to do like this puzzle where you have to use all of the features of the of the ds which is great like some of that stuff that turned into a gimmick was like a reasonable game mechanic it was a very interesting video like i yeah i'd love to see more of that hot piece of hardware there is a sequel to hotel dust room yeah what was it called last window the secret of cape west Right.

Yeah. I want to play that one. I didn't know about it until I was looking into a bunch of older visual novels.

And that was one of them that came up and I was like, oh, my God, how I never played this.

And then I found out that there's like a whole series of visual novels that Goichi Suda worked on with Human Entertainment like 30 years ago.

Really? Yeah. I never heard. They never made their way to the West.

There's a group of fan translators who are working on them right now. to bring them to English.

They're not done yet. Bring them to English.

My favorite. A lot of human games did not make it over.

There's a whole series of Formula One games called Human Grand Prix, which is one of my favorite names of a video game ever.

Was that not them? I'm not sure. I don't think they made racing games, but maybe.

Human Grand Prix is just... Maybe I'm getting my humans crossed.

That's Uma Musume, is Human Grand Prix. because it's humans yeah it was human entertainment oh it was the same one okay all right yeah but like this is back in like the late 90s i think these were human grand prix games were yeah i mean how why else would you call it a game human grand prix that's just like yeah it came out in oh 92 yeah so it's like oh it was f1 pole position over here that's now it makes sense okay sorry i'm i'm hijacking this thing sorry no but yeah it's cool there's uh yeah do you mean i was picking up on Whatever you want to buy it on.

Switch 2, actually. It's your only option.

So you were talking about DS games, visual novels, things like that.

And I was like, what happened to the Professor Layton games?

Because they were like the hottest thing.

They got a new one coming. On those. So there was one.

Is there a new one coming? Because they released.

When you look at the release timelines between 2007 and 2023, there are eight games. professor layton games yeah there's one in 2017 which is four years later and then there's not one until this year yeah new world of steam yeah yeah which is a confusing title yeah not on steam not on steam only on switch and switch to it's coming out this year so far first one since 2017 yeah it was a really popular series for a while there and then i think they just made a couple of them that were like spin-offs that didn't get very well received and they sort of shelved it I think they were pumping them out.

I think that was the problem is that the first one did amazing.

Yeah. I, I was, that was prime me working in video games, retail and yeah, hotel dusk and Layton.

And like, there was so many of those games that were just like, had these waves of people had played a bunch of the early DS stuff.

And then we're like, Oh, I need to play this.

I need to pay that. Yeah. And those Layton games, we couldn't keep them in stock.

And some places I worked, it was not so amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, dear me. I was Jeremy. We're going back to you.

Heartworm is out. This is the, uh, doctors when they're, uh, working on a dog who is currently sick and he finishes the operation.

Heartworm is out. Heartworm is out. Exactly.

The heartworm is out. We pulled it out. Vincent, Dr. Vincent Adinolfi has pulled out the heartworm and this is published by dread XP.

This I feel like is if, if you asked, mid journey to make a game that this crew of people would like don't you fucking say that ever that's the meanest thing you could ever say oh sorry you're right actually yeah i've just i've just called this game some ai schlock i'm sorry if you ask a talented group of people there you go exactly tailor-made um yes heart this is like some silent hill ass resident evil ps1 looking fucking shit uh tell us about heartworm heartworm is a it is so deeply homage driven in a way that uh i was actually saddened to see um vincent posting on social media yesterday that like i'm shocked to see people saying this game is like derivative because like It literally says when you open the title screen, like, copyright 1998.

Like, it's like, the whole bit is that it's like a PS1 game.

Vincent posted a video on social media as well of, like, digging through, had a physical copy of Heartworm made and was digging through, like, old PS1 games and was like, oh man, like, Silent Hill, this game's awesome.

Oh, what the fuck is this one? I don't think this one was very good and it was Heartworm.

Like, the whole bit is that this is supposed to be of that time and it wears its influences on its sleeve throughout the entire game.

So Heartworm is a a ps1 era survival horror game very inspired by resident evil it has the door loading animations where the doors slowly open when you go through doors a bit of silent hill in the dna as well a bit of fatal frame as well fatal frame using yeah i just saw on the video i was like oh there you're shoot you've got a camera a camera is the weapon and film is the ammo um so this is a sort of there's there's different camera modes but the way i'm playing it is a uh retro ass fixed semi-fixed camera survival horror game um where you are a young woman who hears about a is is fixated on the loss of someone they love and hears about a house on like internet forums that people talk about where there's a room in the house that if you go through this room that you are transported to the, that you can contact the dead, that you're transported to some realm where you can contact dead people.

Um, and so she goes, or Bigfoot, Bigfoot.

Yeah. It's sort of part, it's part of the same vortex network, but it doesn't connect with Bigfoot.

Um, and so she goes to investigate this sort of like haunted house and see what's up with this room that lets you talk to dead people.

And, uh, and it, it pulls her into this bizarre sort of Lynchian world of, of memory and, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's very, I have not completed it.

I'm probably about between two thirds and three quarters through it.

It is very sort of like, theme driven so i i don't have like answers yet i am very curious how concrete the answers to like how how much narrative there will be how lynchian is yeah yeah exactly like at the end am i gonna be like the fuck was that and then like two years from now i'm gonna be like oh um who knows that's what happened with mahalan drive so fingers crossed um But, yeah, it's really, really good.

I'm enjoying it a lot. The first sort of hour of the game is... It has more stuff, but it is almost beat for beat.

The demo that came out, like, I don't know.

Jesse, it was like two years ago, wasn't it?

Yeah. It was a long time ago. They were showing off a demo at PAX East as well, which I don't think was very different from the demo I had played.

So, yeah, still very similar. But if you did play that demo, sometimes I get turned off by games when it's like, oh, no, the demo is just like the first hour of the game I have to do again.

There is more packed in there. It's like it is that, but there's more things sort of interspersed.

So do not worry if you have played the demo.

But but yeah, it's a. it's a very sort of faithful survival horror game of that era.

It's a, it's interesting. The atmosphere is, I sort of think the, the, the thing that got me interested in this game and it's the thing that has delivered the most.

Um, there are, you know, sometimes you play a survival horror game and you're like, okay, like a haunted house, like a, seen those oh like a cemetery whoa fucking calm down vincent price um but uh there are some some like environments here that are like um i'll just say one is like a national park uh and it's like, that's fucking cool.

Like a fixed camera survival horror game in a weird trippy dreamlike national park.

Like I, I have not seen that shit in my whole life.

Um, and yeah, I'm really enjoying it. I, I don't think it's particularly super long or anything.

Um, my playtime right now is about three hours and I think I probably have like two hours at most left in the game.

Um, but, uh, but that playtime also does not go advanced when you're paused or whatever.

So it's probably slightly more than that.

Uh, and yeah, Yeah, it's a very light touch narrative.

I'll be curious. I really hope that it delivers on like I need a little concrete narrative to drop now that I'm getting into the last couple hours, because so far it has been very like theme driven there.

They'll be like, oh, you're thinking about like death.

Here's like a you know, this whole area like reflects the feeling of loss or the mood of loss or like you see people experiencing loss.

But you're also sort of experiencing the the protagonist like reflections in the same way that silent hill is a reflection of the person there this world is reflecting back to you like memories and regrets and things about your life so um if it ends up just being kind of a mood piece i won't be totally disappointed but i i do hope that there's a moment where the other other foot drops shoe drops i don't know whatever the fucking saying is um and then gameplay wise i'm assuming mixture of like combat sort of ammunition scarcity and puzzles and stuff yeah yeah it's um it's basically they're like these sort of uh static creatures walking around in the whole first zone they're like people that look like tv static that are just haunting you and you have to take pictures of them and uh and then eventually they get so tired from like a like a child in elementary school they're exhausted from having their picture taken on picture day they lay down on the ground and stop bothering you um but yeah you just you take pictures of stuff and it fucks off and lets you explore and Um, and it's fun.

Yeah, I the one thing I will say about the combat is that, um, it, it snaps from semi fixed into like over the shoulder kind of.

And I think that's good, because it would be very, very fucking hard to aim this camera in true, like fixed camera angle, you know, just like rotating like a fucking you can turn on tank controls, by the way, but I did not.

Hey, how did that work, by the way? I don't remember because there was when you fight the enemies in the area that are sort of like glitchy TV ghosts.

I get why you took a picture of those. I mean, I could I could fathom that.

But I remember there was a spider you fought in a boss fight in one of the demos.

Yeah. And I don't remember how the hell you took a picture of the spider to kill it.

Was there like a is there a reason for that?

Does that make sense? Yeah, kind of. I think it's like this whole this is just interpret.

This isn't spoilers. This is pure interpretation.

I am the whole world seems to be spun off. out of memories, like in the intro, uh, in the very first area.

And if you've played the demo, this is in the first 20 minutes.

So you've seen this, there is a, um, sort of the owner of the spooky house was someone who was like obsessed with preserving the memory of someone that they were going to lose in their life.

And so there's like, there's videotapes and media everywhere and like paintings commemorating this, this woman and like the obsession with like preserving the memory of a person who they were going to lose.

Um, and I think that I, if I had to guess, I would say that taking pictures of things in this sort of like dream memory world is, uh, that like, I I'm guessing the game is eventually going to be like hanging on to people who we lose is fighting a losing battle because you know, everything fades away or whatever.

So I kind of, I wonder if it's subtly being like, trying so hard to preserve things is like harmful or something that you're like i don't know not like the fucking cliche of you know taking a picture steals your soul or whatever but like kind of something like that yeah a bit like luigi's mansion then yeah yeah for sure it just it's basically luigi's mansion no that's great he's hill resident luigi um another game that's these 15 to 20 dollar games man they're just they're doing the i love this shit this is great stuff um This game's 15 bucks, 10% off until August 14th, so it should definitely still be up by the time you're watching this.

Yeah, if you're a survival horror... If you're not a survival horror person, if you don't like old Resident Evil, Silent Hill, I don't know what this game... It may appeal to you on just a random chance, but I would say that this is so hyper-catered to people who like those types of games.

But I'm really enjoying it for that reason, because that's my shit.

Excellent. Not particularly difficult? Um...

You know, it's, it's, there's an abundance of ammo, but I swear to God, I went through like the entire second biome and I could not find a health pack to save my life.

I did the entire second biome on like danger health.

And, uh, and it was, it was very tense. There was a healing item that I had walked by, but I was just like, this is fucking, this is brutal.

Like Jesus. Um, so yeah, it's not, it's definitely not easy.

Uh, but yeah, it's a, it's sort of a good, a good balance.

Excellent. Um, there's a demo for this as well.

Uh, you can check it out. I'm not sure if it saves your progress or anything, but, um, uh, it is available there.

Uh, heartworm on steam, uh, quick little one.

I just want to stick in here. I played some, uh, of that demon school demo, which is pretty big.

It's pretty decently. Yeah. Really girthy demo.

Yeah. I'm into it. I'm not, I hadn't, I'm not a big, like, I like the combat stuff.

I like the, that type of thing, you know, that I don't tend to play like, persona e games or games where there's lots of like chat going on between everyone um so i've been patiently going through that stuff it's not usually what i when i touch but um yeah it's it's a big it's like a full-throated game like there's there's a lot in there there seems to be a lot of like stuff you can do and and it has that sort of weak timeline thing you can do like week timeline thing going on but the combat's super interesting yeah it's like you know it's turn-based but you like do all your turns and then engage it and then it's cool because it's like it's like all the action happens really fast like like like your team is working together which is the whole idea is that you're setting stuff up for everyone else yeah jeremy what did you call that you called the combat system in demon school something like uh like turn-based football yeah it's like final fantasy tactics football yeah right yeah yeah because there's like an end like it's not they don't call it an end zone that would be a little on the nose but there's a zone at the end of the arena that you have to like push towards or something so yeah it does have like and stop them from going to as well on the other yeah it's it's brilliant it doesn't i feel like it does not i don't think of sports when i'm playing it but it captures like this sort of very like It's a good setup for soccer and football or like that because it's like we're going this way.

They're going that way. It's like it's so fucking binary and you're just like it's readable.

You could never could bring a caveman to a football game and you'd be like, OK, yeah, I see what's going on.

Yeah. Yeah. For four. Is that the end zone?

You're fucking picking this up really fast, Grog. loads of demos out there folks to enjoy uh there will also be a beta for an upcoming i was about to say dice game but it looks like it's coming from the folks at battlefield studios now just like five different studios it is battlefield 6 had its official reveal last week after we recorded um just on the weekend they released a bunch of extra videos so there is an open beta happening it's not this weekend i believe it is the next weekend august 14th to 17th weekend as well Oh, it is also this weekend.

Great. Well, I know what all of QuakeCon is going to be doing.

That's so fucking funny. It's a good time that they dropped that right there.

So you're right. Weekend number one is August 9th to 10th, which is Saturday and Sunday.

The next one after that is the 14th to the 16th, which is actually a Thursday to a Saturday.

This is an open beta, apparently, so you can pre-download it already if you want to do so.

And I'm assuming it is a couple of multiplayer maps.

But obviously they showed off. A bit more.

Jeremy, what did you take of this? You're sort of, I mean, I'm a big Battlefield fan.

Vietnam and two are my go-tos. Bad Company, big fan of those.

Three, obviously, we put that video up. But you're a huge BF fan, too.

What did you make of this reveal? I have mixed feelings.

I mean, like, my golden era of Battlefield is farther back than most people.

I think a lot of people want the series to go back to three and four as their sort of peak era.

For me, that was sort of like when I fell off i played a little bit of both but neither really captured me whereas battlefield 2 i played in like a competitive league battlefield 1942 was like when my family upgraded our computer and like i didn't have to sit on the loading screen listening to the dun dun dun dun for like 20 minutes um so yeah it's a it was a formative fps for me i um i have i reservations about... I watched... They did an event where they had a bunch of streamers playing it or content creators playing it for an hour, an hour and a half or something.

And I watched a lot of it. And I feel like it is... battlefield for a long time has been trying to beat the we're not call of duty allegations and i feel like they keep leaning farther in the call of duty direction in a way that i do i do not think benefits them because i think that they're like it needs to be like frenetic it needs to be like spectacle it's not call of duty where it's like these small maps that are frenetic it's like it's big it's spectacle it's like massive it's levolution it's vehicles roll it's a tank rolling down the street with your buddies and you're shooting it with an rpg um But I think that what they've kind of lost is Battlefield used to be like a very slow game.

I think Battlefield games used to be like, all right, we're going to go or we're going to do a fucking Hail Mary.

We're going to walk the entire length of the map and sneak up behind him and it's going to take 15 minutes and then you're going to die and there's going to be like a 30 second respawn timer.

And you've just like, you know, you could have watched an episode of The X-Files and the amount of time it took you to just walk the length of the map and die.

And watching this footage, it was the spawn timers are so quick.

The spawn points seem to be very close together.

Again, these are things that are like, you know, this is early days.

Battlefield Labs, the whole idea was that they're like, we're going to gather data and sort of continue to massage this into the perfect game or whatever.

So these things are subject to change. But the feeling I had was that this was so fast and so frenetic that it felt Call of Duty-y in a way that I think is undercutting what I like about Battlefield.

And I heard some of these people who were participating in this event say, reflect on the same thing a lot of them were surfaced to the front page of twitch and like the week after this happened so i saw a lot of people on the front page of twitch who were quote-unquote streaming battlefield 6 and i was like oh do they have like early access but it was just them it was a lot of people who had never heard of watching their footage from the event um so i watched a few minutes here and there of a bunch of content creators that i was not familiar with and i heard a lot of them echoing the same sentiment that um that it felt like they couldn't get their feet under them because it was so frenetic that they would like spawn in and run into a room and there's like a people in there and you die you die you kill them and then they respawn and they're running into the room against the same guy running in and it was like that was the feeling i had watching it um so i hope i don't know i hope that maybe some of the other map maybe they wanted to show it off in a really frenetic way because it makes for sort of a good trailer fodder like you know if you're doing like an hour event and someone plays like four lives as a sniper where they're like crawling the length of the map in a prone position i don't know if that makes for good footage or whatever so this may have been a a sort of optics marketing decision to do like a really frenetic setup but um yeah i don't know there's also portal which is hilariously their map maker portal is coming back um And hilariously, it's in Godot this time.

It's a Godot game engine. Oh, wow, really?

Oh, crazy. So when they're like, and now you can make your own battlefield maps again.

And it just is like Godot in the corner.

It's a Godot game engine, which is... That's so weird.

I mean, that's fucking huge for Godot. Yeah, I hope they're giving them money.

It's a free thing. Is Godot open source?

It is, right? I'm pretty sure, yeah. You can get in there and fiddle around.

Yeah, I don't know. But maybe if you're using it for commercial... You should probably... I mean, one of the biggest game companies... in the entire industry should probably donate a little bit more.

There might, there may be some, something going on that we will never know about.

Yeah. Who knows? Yeah, it is open source.

So yeah, who knows? Um, it's fucking, yeah, it's MIT licensed.

So you could just like, I mean that it is hilarious though.

And it's just like, you know, good dough is what you associate it with.

Like, and it's a, it's a visual novel about you're like a librarian and it's like battlefield six good dough.

Um, so that, that was funny. I think I echo a lot of your, like feelings on it.

Like, so I'll talk about the speed in a second, but like my biggest fear with this stuff, especially when they announced it was battlefield studios, right.

We're throwing even more bodies on this than we have in, in recent years.

And like what that communicates to me is like big companies like EA, right.

The problem with them is that they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.

Battlefield is the big IP that they have that could be a Call of Duty beater.

So there is no world in which a corporation that size is not going to try and achieve that.

And that is just fundamentally opposed to the Battlefield games that we grew up playing.

I was a big Battlefield Vietnam fan. I played the shit out of that game all the time.

But that is also a game that if I was to... actually find out the amount of time I played it, and I played in a competitive amateur league in Vietnam as well, it's probably lower than I thought.

And the thing about these games is they are designing them as games of live games.

They are designing them as games that you cannot get away from, that you play every night, that when you press the button, you're into a game as fast as humanly possible, and that once you're in, you are... getting progression, all this shit that did not exist.

Like there was no progression, obviously, in Battlefield 2.

In Battlefield, you know, there was achievements in Battlefield 3 and stuff like that.

And I'm sure you could, maybe there was unlocks in 3, but like, we didn't play games like that.

And we played games until we were done with them.

But the problem is now, because these games are so mass market and you're trying to, the metrics for success within, you know, the global financial world is so much about how much sort of marketplace you own and how many retention and all this shit, that they're just fundamentally making these games more like the casino shit I was talking about a few weeks ago.

And so when I look at the gameplay, that's all I see.

All I see is the time to kill in this shit is like at the speed of it.

I watched some of the Twitch streamers. I had the audio turned off because I just didn't want to listen to any of the propaganda, but...

I was watching it and I was going, like, this is so fast.

Like, this is faster than Call of Duty. The tanks.

Look how fast the tanks go. It's a fucking tank.

And it's like, it's like my Jeep driving up a fucking hill.

And you're like, oh, like, the whole pace of this game is ratcheted up.

And to me... that is go go go unlock go go go next maps loading go go go you know what i mean it's the same reason why there was always this big pushback against the like the server browser thing i need to do a video where we talk to like four network engineers in games about this because whenever it comes up on reddit or anything especially about battlefield games people go would it really be so hard for them to build a server browser I think the answer is fucking no.

Really? It's not hard for them to do it.

The reason why they don't do it is because they're trying to control the pace at which you play this game.

It's a friction. They are trying to control the experience of you playing this game.

They want you to feel powerful. They want you to be... they want to be able to use the metrics that they're getting from this shit to put you into the next game.

They don't want you playing on the community server with the same people because five of them might go asleep and then you decide you're done for the night.

They want you playing in like a fucking hopper that they have control over.

Like that has to be it. Like it's the only reason why it's so pervasive in live games that they don't give you that, like even Counter-Strike 2, it's the same problem, right?

They get you into these these loops right and to me that's like a big part of it and you know I've one of the things that I found really interesting playing Mario Kart for the past week is that like whenever you finish a Grand Prix or a knockout or whatever then you go back to the main menu and I'm like that is so different to every live game that is like because Mario Kart is a competitive game right it's like a It's a match.

We don't think about it that way, but it is a match that lasts a certain amount of time and you either win or lose or get coins or unlock a new character or whatever it is at the end of it.

But by God, they put you on back onto the main menu because it's not a live service game where they're trying to keep you in that ecosystem.

They've already spent the money on you. And, you know, Nintendo has a history of telling you to stop playing their games and go for a walk.

Right. So and when I think about that with these games, I think, no, that's not what this is.

This is this is they need you to. to, to, to play as much as possible, as long as possible.

And this, and that's why these games are designed that way.

And I, you know, I've nothing bad to say about the developers making this ultimately. that's the remit that they're given.

The corporation needs that retention, the executive level who are doing it, the folks who are leading the creative thing, they have a responsibility to make this game sell and to do right by what the company wants.

The people underneath that are making great maps, great looking guns, making it sound good, all this sort of stuff for God knows what reason, putting Limp Bizkit in the fucking trailer.

And then, you know, that's the game that gets made, but it's just like, we can't escape this form of mass media like this.

And this is why I think games are in, in trouble because I don't think people want this shit.

I think it works in the same way that people don't really want casinos or people don't really want Tappy games on their phones, but it's a great way to spend some time.

Yada, yada, yada. It's getting, it's getting away from the, the thing that makes our, our hearts lift. about games into this more of a, like just pervasive thing we spend time on in the attention economy.

And I think that's the problem. I think that's a big problem.

And I think as Jeremy says, it's a big problem for battlefield because every time they do this, it probably in some ways meets the metrics of the company of what they've wanted to do.

We all talk about these games as if they're not successful because to us, they're not critically successful we look at battlefield 3 a lot of people do and say wasn't as good as 2 right i like battlefield 3 i'll totally admit that as well i see that right battlefield 4 similar thing people don't feel that way battlefield 4 might have had way higher retention and gameplay times than than 3 did i don't know but maybe just because but every time they do it it just like it takes it does a cost and it's we're less trusting and if you never already see next time just all the comments and all these videos are don't pre-order Yeah.

Don't preorder. You know, I'm optimistic.

I hope it works out. I'm the same as Jeremy.

Maybe it plays well when you get into it, but I just can't get away from the idea when I play these games that ultimately what they are is an attempt to make a mass market Call of Duty killer and that they don't really respect my time.

Yeah. There's a real sense of sweaty desperation in the sort of psychological dark patterning that you were describing.

And it often feels to me like this game is trying to trap me rather than appeal to me on inherent... like real levels um for the reasons you said like it's just like a constant mill it doesn't let you do the thing that i described another time which is the like the the anecdote for i think it was from the natasha dao shul book about like a a slot machine just like you pull the slot it's like go again go again you already put in 500 a quarter just pull the thing whereas like a chess board is like oh i lost like let's fucking go again i'm gonna beat you this time and then by the time you set up the pieces you're like actually maybe i don't really want to play chess maybe i was just mad that i lost um all right yeah yeah yeah yeah it gives you that mario kart boot back to the the menu and it's like do you want to play let's leave it up to you if you want to play again instead of being like come on man have another fucking drink with us like it's only five but it's fun it's good you get back into it and you get to shoot again quickly you know i i will say i don't i'm not the fit i agree with you guys uh but when i was growing up i got into games with server browsers probably too late to appreciate what's fun about them because like by that point It was very insular.

It was like you would join a service like, what do you do?

Who left the password off the server? And I got booted every time I have to go play in the official server anyway.

So for me, it wasn't very different from playing a console first person shooter because I just pick whatever the first one was anyway.

So I wonder if it's a little chicken in the egg situation there in that part of it.

But I do agree that like, like, is it a case of like, oh, people don't stopped giving a shit about server browsers and just picked whatever so we stopped including them or if they stopped including them because it was more beneficial i i would love to know where i in what direction because you guys have more history with the series like with that kind of thing yeah and just server browsers in general because they've i think matchmaking became way better so i think like server browsers i think for some people are great and i think for other people like normies right well my brother boots up the battlefield game, he wouldn't want a server browser to pop up.

Right. So they, they, and, and if they're trying to make like a sort of a thoroughfare for you to play the game, you know, like. let's just, yeah, let's not have multiple thoroughfares.

You kind of want to browse a menu with a, you want to scroll through a list with a controller.

And sometimes, and sometimes like there are some games where it completely makes sense.

Like nobody's screaming out for a server browser in like Rocket League, right?

Like it doesn't, but there's something about this.

I don't know. There's like things that you miss.

There's a feeling of, when you're looking at server browsing and i do think like the problem is that if there is a server browser only let's say i do think then if you had a thousand people play the game they would all play less i think that is just like the the process of doing a server browser is like to me it's like going to like a like picking a bar in a town when you go into a town you're like you're not quite sure which bar is going to be the best one to go to but the process of exploring them is part of the fun like seeing what the vibe is here it's so strange no no i agree it's like you just default to kelsey's that's what quick match is right it's like if we all we all go to like the you know the fucking what's the there's a chain in england what are they called whatever pub chain It's like, you know, you're just going down to like the, you know, the seven 11 of bars or whatever.

Right. It's like, it works and all the stuff you want is there.

All the best maps are there, but you'd go to a server and, you know, obviously in the old days, they'd have like all the crazy unreal tournament sounds and kind of strike or whatever.

In Battlefield, though, they'd have like, we're doing specific rules or we're doing specific only these maps or we're doing like, you know, and that stuff, it had its own culture in it.

And then you got to favorite the ones you liked.

And when you went online, you saw who was on, how many people are on.

And then, you know, oh, none of my ones are good.

So I'm going to go exploring some other stuff.

And like this type of thing is just kind of has been in a way. seeped out of all of the internet as we've sort of, you know, algorithms and stuff have sort of done all this work in the middle.

But there was a joy in that work, I think.

And like finding a weird server some night, you know what I mean?

Or like, you know, finding a weird server and there's only two English speaking people on it and you end up buddying up because like everyone else is Russian or whatever, you know?

And I think people miss that. And specifically with Battlefield, I think people miss being able to customize game modes, being able to like be in control of like stuff like tickets uh, you know, uh, uh, depletion or, or, uh, respawn timers or, you know, things like that.

And this battlefield has some cool stuff in it.

I like the hitching a ride on the, on the, um, on the tanks and stuff, the vehicles, they sort of solve that problem with the squads, I think.

Um, I think the, the, the, the classes they've built are, interesting and cool like i like the sort of sniper class that they made in this one seems like it has some cool shit the destructibility looks really good as well but i think what happens is the super fans are the people who want to spend time in this game they want that control they want to be able to have a server and and have their favorite maps and do their do their fun nights do their fun community nights like we've lost all of this yeah you know who still has that halo yeah halo infinite yes has a server has a custom game browser i remember joining in when they added uh their own version of what's the game mode it's like infected um they finally put that back in and i was like yeah yeah yeah i'm 14 again let's go baby yeah the bar metaphor i feel like works so well as well for server browsers because back in the day playing battlefield 2 it wasn't just like it's not just like, Oh, you go into a place and they have custom rules, which is a huge part of it.

Like I almost towards the end of my battlefield to a career, as it were, I basically only played 24 seven car canned infantry only.

And that was it. It's so specific, no vehicles, one map, like 32 player cap, like so fucking dialed into what I liked.

Um, but the other thing is that like when you have these servers, there's a sense of, community.

And even if you are not a member of that community, even if you're just a stranger who wanders into the bar, it is when you walk into that place, there are idiosyncratic, sort of like, like the sound effects that are modded in or like the sort of tone of the place.

Those are specific things. But it extends beyond that to, I think that it actually changes how people play games.

And this is a thing in like old Counter-Strike, especially where It would just be like it was about having a good time and like ranked.

I would love to do a video someday about how ranked matchmaking has changed the attitude, the culture around FBS.

Yeah, because if you hop into a game of Valorant, it's like a bunch of sweaty teenagers yelling racial slurs at you because they're like, I got to fucking win.

I got to rank up. It's like this League of Legends feeling old Counter-Strike was like. oh let's do like everyone fucking meet at the middle with knives because it wasn't about it wasn't about like winning it was about everyone having fun it was it old like server browser driven games feel more like a um like a pickup soccer league or something where it's like there's another dude at the park and he's like oh we're man down hey do you you want to play with us and it's not like oh by the way if you suck we're all gonna be mad at you because we'll lose it's like they just want to have fun do you know what it feels like is that like The third space, the place where you're playing that game, like today it feels like you're playing it at like it's the company's place.

Like this is owned by the company and we will – it's like a football stadium.

We can trash it. It's not ours. We can like – we can be sloppy.

It doesn't really matter. It doesn't – you almost feel like you're owed it, right?

And also – when you play ranked, there is this feeling that you then should be doing better because you're with your peers.

Whereas like I used to love going on one of these servers and there were clearly people that were way better than me.

And that's fine. Like you found your position in the culture of the, of the server or of the game.

Like, I don't care that there's these legends who are like, if I had just someone on my team who was a really good chopper pilot, who was blowing everyone to smithereens or like an incredible support, like that's awesome.

That's cool. But if you played on like a server that was felt like it was a community server where people were playing, it was like you wandered into a bar and there were regulars like you behaved and people behaved and they were jovial.

They were this might be a server that you want to come back to.

So you you're respectful and you play properly and you try hard.

And I think it totally changes the psychology of it.

Yeah. Where you're maybe with the genies out of the bottle in that respect.

I don't know. But like, I don't feel that way when I play a lot of FPS games.

I feel like I'm I feel like my time isn't being respected, that they're trying to get me on some Skinner box fucking thing to keep playing this game over and over again.

And there is no culture in any of these places I'm playing these maps.

You know what I mean? And for some games, that doesn't matter.

Rocket League, it's 3v3 mostly. You get to know your teammates, whether you like it or not in that game.

They're short and sweet and they're over.

It makes sense. But there's something about the complexity and tactics and communication of a game like Battlefield that where like having community servers just makes so much more sense.

Like what, what, you know, war is terrible.

We were all, you know, agreed on that one.

Is that one of the most important aspects of like any media about war is like fellowship and like working together.

So like it makes complete sense why if you want to make a good game, that's about war. that you should encourage that type of psychology in it and not the fucking meat grinder of Vietnam, which is, you know, what kind of, or I shouldn't say that because obviously people felt brotherhood in that war a lot, obviously, but, but just the idea that like, it's some like sci-fi war where you're just like, it's just about getting points.

You know what I mean? It's not, I think you just lose a lot of that.

I feel like there is a direct parallel where, um, when you talk about like sociology and criminal justice, you're like, if you live in a city of 250,000 people and there's no, you don't know your neighbors and nobody knows each other.

Criminality takes on a very different relationship because it's like, you know if i rob my anonymous neighbor three doors down like i don't fucking know that guy and like you know everyone's doing like it's hyper individualistic and i feel like when you're just spawned into these ranked matchmaking things where you'll never see these people again it's the same thing because those aren't people to you those are just the people that are in this game and you'll never see them again like who the fuck cares if you're on your best behavior but if you come into a community server and you like the vibe and it's cool there and you then it's like, well, fucking behave yourself.

Or like, if you act like a shit Lord, you're going to get banned in three seconds and you cannot play on this cool server where cool people hang out.

And so it really changes the way that people relate to each other.

And like, I still remember, I joke with my friend who I played battlefield with and as teenagers and like, we still remember the the names of people like we joke with each other and we're like hey i wonder what like this specific guy's name is up to now and it's been like 20 years like why the fuck do i remember that you know what i mean it's just like and it's because i played with those people night after night after night and they'd be like hey what's up man like i still remember like phrases they would say i still remember like personality traits that those people had because i you know they were like you said they were regulars in the bar they weren't like friends of mine who i hung out with in real life but they were people who were you know part of the ambient atmosphere of what it was like to play battlefield in my favorite servers um and so i obviously wasn't coming in and being like fuck you guys fuck this place this fucking server sucks because then it's like then you can't hang out at the bar dude you're gonna get bounced yeah my battlefield vietnam team i was like the youngest person on it by like six years or something so i tried to like you know i was really like oh sure all these older boys are gonna kick me out of this thing if i don't if i don't I better not talk too much and all this stuff.

Fucking madness. Yeah. Yeah. So like, yeah, I hope it's cool game.

I'll say, you know, we'll, we'll wait and see, but I'm, I'm definitely cynical about this.

If you signed up for the, even if you didn't play the battlefield labs testing, if you signed up for it, um, you get early access.

So the day that this goes up, if you signed up for battlefield labs, you'll be able to download the, uh, the test on Thursday, August 7th.

So I'll be playing a bunch of it this weekend, uh, And I'll have to look into, I'm sure you can talk about it publicly.

I'd be shocked if that's not the case, but I will bring back impressions of it and I'll let you know.

Yeah. Yeah. It's open. So yeah, that's true.

That's true. Yes. I'll be getting it when I'm at QuakeCon on Friday or Saturday or whatever.

Look, I have one very important question regarding Battlefield 6.

What are the crossover properties going to be?

They need to start thinking about this now.

I will give them credit. They did say that there is not going to be like a, you know snoop dog skins or whatever yeah yeah yeah if if if they yield in every way to call of duty except that one i have to give credit where credit is due for the stick in there you know what they might do they might skip the property and just go straight to here's an actual war hero we're just gonna put him in the game just now you can play as in the game yes yeah is that that is that the sniper who killed 700 people or whatever a russian guy or whatever Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah, exactly. Get him in there. I don't know why that name is.

Yeah, fair play. Damn, that is his actual name.

All right, cool. It's like Jesse with the fucking tank game.

What is it again? I forget. Oh, Planeten, Vataitagungs, Kononen, Kommandant.

No Germans correct me. I nailed it. I love German.

What a beautiful language. Love it. Love it.

Language of love. That's why they call it that.

Those are the games. Dead Take, Ninja Gaiden, Rage Band.

We're saying Gaiden or Gaiden. It's Gaiden.

It's Ga-E. It's Ga-E. Ga-E Den. Ga-E Den.

Like guys. They say it in The Wizard. The classic film.

Not Ga-E Den. No. It's not a... Ga-E Den.

Doesn't that sound cool though? It's like a den.

It's like a gay bar. The Ga-E Den. That's a different game.

Ninja Ga-E Den. They wouldn't sell that one in America.

Great name for a gay bar. Ninja Ga-E Den.

You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like...

It's just said the same way. Yeah. Written the same way.

People are like, what? Um, dear me, I was machine, uh, and heartworm.

Yeah. We've got some emails here. Frank Howley.

Yeah. If people want to send us emails, write to us at podcast at no clip dot video or in our Patreon discord, uh, in the podcast chat channel, that's podcast at no clip dot video luxury.

Malcolm wrote in and said, I've recently been searching for fifth and sixth generation console games.

I missed out on playing when I was younger, uh, Currently, I'm playing Parasite Eve, and I'm absolutely loving it.

Do you have any slightly obscure but highly recommended titles for these eras of gaming?

Killer7. Play Killer7. Killer7. Play it 100 times.

GameCube. That's 6th Gen. Obscure Ones. Devil Dice.

Oh, man. yeah get in there play some fucking devil dies in cooler world yeah that's the good that's a good time yeah uh jeremy you got me yeah i most of the ones that i really love are not super obscure um i've been playing uh breath of fire 3 before bed every night and it's been it's become a nice little ritual um i don't know if i'll finish it because that game is long as shit but i've been enjoying that a lot all the silent hill games one through four are unmissable um You've never played Final Fantasy 7?

A little obscure video game. Who made that?

No. What'd you say? Who made that? I don't know.

Some indie. Enix Soft. Oh, right. Something like that.

Square games or something? Yeah. Most of my recommendations are not obscure, but there's some fucking heavy.

Parasite Eve is great. Just like everything Squaresoft did in that era is unmissable.

I thought Parasite Eve was called Parasite Eye for a long time because I think the way the logo was or something.

It was a long V. I don't know. It's a long V. I think in my head it was anyway.

It might not have actually been. Big fan of Hogs of War.

If you like, that was the Rick Mayle voiceover.

Rick Mayle, if you're old and grew up in the British Isles, you might know who that person was.

From the young ones. It was basically Worms 3D, but with pigs.

And it was World War II themed. So hilarious.

Lots of throwing grenades and having them physically roll down and stuff like that.

Big fan of that. Yeah. I don't know if these are like obscure, but like any of the like Psygnosis, like G police and colony wars.

Have you guys played those? Nope. Okay. Those, I guess maybe they are a bit, they are a bit obscure.

You're in the European barrel now. That might be the other part of it is like, if there's a part of the world, that game was never popular.

That's fair. Um, and then my last one would be the diehard trilogy game.

Oh yeah. That's a great one. That's actually okay.

Right. All three of them are solid games.

Really? All right. There's three, all three movies have three different games.

The first one is a, uh, like a, like a isometric platformer where you go floor by floor in that Nakatomi tower tower.

The second one is a light gun game. Um, and the third one is the most insane.

It's like crazy taxi. First person, like crazy tech.

Well, it doesn't have to be a first person.

It's like crazy taxi where you were in a taxi with, it's that part where you're looking for bombs in diehard with a vengeance and you have to crash into the bombs.

But it's like, you're like in New York, basically in a grid trying to hit these bombs.

It's like timer based. It's pretty tricky.

It's the hardest of the three. And the hilarious thing in that game is if you, If you're in first person and you drive into the pedestrian, yeah, Frank's fucking nodding his head.

He knows. When you drive on the path, it just straight up, there's blood all over the windshield and your windshield wipers wipe the blood away.

It's so gory. That's like something that a kid would tell me about at school and I'd be like, that's not real.

Dude, I swear. Like Carmageddon. Remember, people were like, you can do it in Carmageddon.

And like Carmageddon was like, you know, you could do something.

The Die Hard with a Vengeance. first person driving people over thing is, is gratuitous.

It's like ridiculous. I can't believe I got in that game, but yeah, that's good.

Another one is chibi robo for the game cube.

Love that game. Oh yeah. That's the thing with that era of games is like the, the, the passage of time has made even the most obscure things relatively well known.

Like there's some dog shit on the PS2, but we are not talking about any of those.

Like we're still like Parasite Eve is, is obscure by like regular person standards, but that's like one of the games on that console around the PS one PS one, right?

Yeah. You know, if I was somebody who knew somebody who bought a GameCube back in the day and they played lots of the games, I go, have you played beautiful Joe?

Right. Exactly. Have you played eternal darkness?

And they're like, no, they played that. Yeah. and they are twin snakes like games that like people just didn't play because they were playing mario yeah party or come on your car you know double dash yeah yeah so it was yeah totally yeah you're right like it's weird that we talk about these games now like i could say vib ribbon and people would know what it was you know it's like uh erges is another good one the like it's the tekken power stone style like final fantasy fighting game but it also has like a weird mystery dungeon in it that was square right right yeah persona 2 is actually sick uh i really like persona 2 a lot i've not completed it but i enjoy it a lot oh shadow heart um oh yeah not not shadow hearts like the original shadow hearts from the new world the like spin-off third game or something i think it's the third one yeah because the second one was covenant it was a weird game it opens you're like in 1950s america and there's like Some slow jam, some big band music going on in the background, and then it turns into regular Shadow Hearts.

Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64.

Great game. Oh, yeah. Early DMA, pre-Rockstar.

Love that game. I think a Dreamcast ones that are obscure.

Phantasy Star Online. I don't know how that would play now.

You could probably emulate a server or something, but...

I think Gersman loves it. So I think he found a bunch of servers that you can connect to.

I'm not sure if the first PSO, I think maybe PSO two.

Um, yeah. Ikaruga maybe. Billy Hatcher. Billy Hatcher fans.

Billy Hatcher. Classic. Yeah. We gave him enough.

We gave him enough. I will say, uh, aggressive inline PS2 GameCube era is like that never gets enough credit.

Like I really like aggressive inline and like, there's not even retro achievements for it.

Like, Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You could make them.

You could do it, Frank. You could become the Retro Achievement producer.

And then for PS1, if you haven't played Incredible Crisis, it's a game you can beat in one sitting.

It's hard to beat. There's a math section where you have to do groceries.

It's annoying. What? Oh, it's that crazy one.

You just play every family member does stuff.

But there's one part where the mom is doing grocery shopping.

You have a certain amount of budget to buy these groceries.

It's such a stupid section. Everything else is great, though. but um yeah that's a quick um the warriors game on ps2 is also very very actually a good another rockstar game the rockstar were fucking churning out the hits at that time um i like that game a lot also uh freedom fighters uh it's gorilla i think isn't it um uh no it was um you're talking about the isometric it's io isn't it yeah no no oh freedom fighters sorry freedom fighter i was thinking of freedom force which was a ken levine one it's io um sorry freedom fighters is uh a like cold war throwback of uh the russians in like the i think it's like the soviet union never fell and they invade new york and you're like a plumber in brooklyn and you gotta start like a gorilla cell resistance movement against the cartoon like mustache twirling like we are so evil in russian love it it's good stuff And then Christian wrote in asking, a recent question about games that give you whiplash made me think, has there ever been a game that is almost universally praised and after you played it, you really disliked it or never clicked with you?

So many. Yeah, I would say I don't dislike the Diablo franchise at all.

I'm like sad that they don't click with me.

Have you played Diablo 2? Because it's the only one.

I've tried each one of them. Just a second.

And I just, I don't know what it is, like the camera angle or something.

Like, I wish I was in there a bit more. I don't know.

That's fair. Yeah. I mean, Diablo 2 is like one of my favorite games of all time.

And it's brilliant, right? They're all brilliant games.

Do you ever like, have you ever showed someone like a piece of media and you're like, oh my God, like even like a YouTube video, you're like, it's the best.

You've got to watch this. And you sit down and suddenly you're seeing it through their eyes and you're like, oh God, maybe this isn't as good as I thought.

I will forever. Look, Matt Berry now is an accepted comedian.

But I will forever be haunted by the time I made Timur Hussein come over.

Like maybe the fifth time we'd ever hung out, watched Snuffbox, like the weirdest Matt Berry show, like weirder than Toast of London or fucking Darkplace.

And he was being very... cordial about this awful shit that i was making i had that experience with uh also matt berry uh season one the bitey boosh i made a friend watch it in high school and they were like oh god what the fuck is this um that's a real if this doesn't click i'm never seeing this person again show yeah yeah boosh is uh such a good show it's fantastic um Game that is universally praised that I hate is God of War 2018.

I hate the God of War reboots. I think that they do this thing called, there's entire GDC talks about it, where they do a suck to target thing because they're like, oh, we don't want the player to experience friction.

If you're facing this way, the target's over here.

The game sucks you to target. It plays the game for you.

I think it is a crime against God thing.

And I think that it is a fake video game.

Um, and I fucking think it, it sucks. I hate it so much.

I hate that game. All right. Well, it makes me cry.

I just, I've, that's fine. And I've, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. I know it's I've, yeah, well, I don't like the story either, so that's fine.

I, but I will say this about God of War 2018.

I thought Ragnarok was way worse. Wow. Okay.

What else we got? Frank, you got any? i'm like generally kind of cold on a lot of nintendo stuff which is why like dk bonanza sticking with me is so remarkable um i i think the biggest thing is like i spent my first decade was just not all nintendo like super nintendo n64 and then once i got like ps2 xbox it was like fuck oh i don't care about nintendo and then like i don't know why but every i'll still dive in but like it took me a decade to beat breath of the wild like And even like tears of the King.

I just never went back to like, there's some Zelda games I really like, but like, yeah, it's just, I don't know what it is, but I think just like, In my head, I was brainwashed by the console war.

It was like, oh, Nintendo's for babies. I'm not playing this.

But I'll bring my Switch 2 with me on my Japan trip, and I will finish playing Smash Brothers Wii or whatever the hell.

I'm so behind all my Nintendo stuff, but I'm generally happy with the Switch 2.

You're going to be pissed when you find out the Switch 2 doesn't have a Wii disc drive on it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Smash Ultimate, whatever.

Have any of you guys done the GameCube thing on Switch 2?

I haven't paid for the online thing, so I don't have access to any of that shit.

Nah. no what is it that's the point games are on there if you're gonna emulate gamecube games you can do that on like your phone now like don't say that i mean not come through your window with a machine gun so yeah exactly yeah soul caliber 2 is on there which is a really good like they call it weapons mode but it's an in-game career mode that's that's pretty deep um i figure what else is on 10 out of 10 on game spot soul caliber it's one of the ones is sunshine on the gamecube emulator thing i think it's coming later i don't think it's there yet yeah it's not there now that'd be a bigger deal You know what I don't like that a lot of people like?

All of the games like Repo and Cruelty Squad.

Not Cruelty Squad. No, what am I thinking of?

What am I thinking of? Oh, my God. Lethal company.

Phasmophobia. All of those like co-op. Co-op-y.

Do like a little task and go back to a little ship and then get the resource.

I can't. Every time my friends are like, dude, this is going to be so much fun.

We do it for three hours and I'm not enjoying a single second of it.

I tell them after I'm like, I'm refunding this game.

I hate this. This is awful. Does it just feel like work or something?

It feels like work and like repo especially.

I can get the appeal of it. But like. to me it's just clip fodder you know if we're gonna have our talking shit hour over here all right i hate that those games just feel like my friends want to be streamers a little bit yeah like hanging out with their buddies i look you will have fun however you want to have fun but every time i'm like i wish we were just like pushing a bag of rocks down the street like that would be equally as challenging and we could have a fun time with that at least the rocks might hit something interesting like what if you get jump scared the little puppet does like it's cute one it's cute exactly one time and then you gotta do it for four more hours i just i can't and they just keep making more of them like peak at least at least Peak is climbing.

At least that's a little bit different. Like it's, it's a little bit different than walking around a tight corridor room and then collecting some resources and going back to the thing. you know, it's, it's a novel in that regard, but I just, I can't get into these games.

I can't do it. I wish I could. Cause everyone else is having fun.

Except for me. I feel the same way. I think that they're the, the bar of entry is so low because they're also affordable that it is like a, it's cheaper than like a movie ticket for a lot of these games.

So it's like a single serving. What am I doing with my friends this evening?

And it's kind of just like a, yeah, I don't know.

I think that like the novelty of hopping into a weird game one time for a couple hours with your friends is such that I think people excuse the sort of, uh, very you know like the lack of game design in a lot of these games or the very sort of like light touch game design i think it's i think games can be just like cool hangout spaces but i agree with you a lot of these games do not resonate with me as games they are just like i i'd rather just be like on a discord call with my friends yeah go watch a movie talk about it true We got one more email.

Yeah. And then Zach wrote in and asked games that trick players into experiencing thoughtful art on the July 18th episode.

You're mentioning there should be games that would suck people in like a call of duty or a God of war game gears of war.

Uh, but then we would be, uh, informative or deep or expose them to some new and interesting ideas.

Think spec ops line is the game I played the most that fits that idea.

Yeah. Spec ops does a good bait and switch.

Like, you know, I think, I think if you did that in 2025, people would say it's rote, but I think it, I think it especially worked because of the era it came out in.

Like that was, there was a lot of, you know, a gloss of sort of military third person cover based the military shooter to start style things.

And, um, it had this one, you know, spec ops was an interesting, it was an interesting setting.

It was sort of ridiculous. It was like Dubai had a sandstorm and now everyone's turned into fucking, you know, it's like the post apocalypse.

Um, but, uh, yeah, it has a heart of darkness sort of, uh, uh, style turn.

Um, at the, it's basically, they just did hard practice, right.

In a different setting. Um, uh, and it was good.

And it had one, I think it had, there's one scene in it where you, uh, where you are an active participant in something that is that, that then the game sort of puts the mirror up at you.

And I think because it's a game, I think that was more powerful as a result.

And it did a good job of that. Yeah, it was like the Bioshock moment.

Spoilers for Bioshock of like, you know, yeah, it was more earned than.

Yeah, absolutely. But it's still like making the player think about their own agency and the sequence of events that they've caused.

And at that time it was like, what do you mean?

I just press buttons and things die. That's not I'm not killing them.

They're dying in the game. It's different.

So, yeah, it was definitely interesting that they they made something that successfully did that.

And yeah, I liked. I'm trying to think about games that do it that like, where you don't realize, cause like there's games like this war of mine or like cart life, which like, you're not firing up this war of mine and being like, I wonder what this is about.

Yeah. And then, and the whole point of that game is that like, it's kind of, it's not a matter of, do you win really?

It's a matter of when you die. Like that's the hard part about, you know, that, and it's trying to talk to you about the siege of Sarajevo and, and, and sort of the hopelessness and whatnot.

Yeah. But yeah, games that do it that don't necessarily show their hands.

It's a hard thing to pitch because you got to do it like a meta level, right?

Like if you tell a publisher, give me $20 million, I'm going to make a game that looks like Call of Duty.

And then actually it's going to make people cry about losing their son.

That's harder to pull off. It's got to be some indie, some weird indie stuff.

Undertale does this a little bit. It depends on how you play it.

I don't want to spoil Undertale, but Undertale has the capacity to do this to you.

Um, the, um, the darkness, cause you can watch to kill a mockingbird.

I've, Hey man, I've been editing darkness footage this week.

There you go. Do you watch to kill a mockingbird?

I've, I'll keep that up. We'll keep that offline.

I'll tell you. I did watch it. I liked to kill a mockingbird quite a lot.

Um, the, uh, yeah. What else? What else?

If you, if anyone knows, send us an email, I'll put it in the comments.

Like, I feel like there's ones out there that are doing this little bit of, uh, A little bit of bait and switch.

This is kind of different, but Metal Gear Solid 2 for me was a very... It's not like integrated into the mechanics where it's like, oh, no, you've been like... The people you're killing are actually like refugees or something.

It's not like that. It's just like a game that you're like, oh, cool, like a blockbuster action game.

And then it's like, did you ever think about how language is limiting us all from speaking the truth?

And you're like, Jesus fucking Christ, no.

La-lee-loo-lay-lo. What was the Haze? Remember Haze?

Oh, yeah. Where you were like... Hayes did one where it was like, again, we're drifting from the actual question positive, which is about like sort of teaching something without people realizing.

And I'm just going towards Hayes because it's kind of in a spec ops vein of like in Hayes, you're like. you realize you're on the bad side, like for a couple of missions into the game and that they were like the, like medical thing that you use to like get better is making you see the other people as combatants.

And if you stop taking it, then you realize that you're on the bad side, basically.

And then you swap allegiances, which was quite, you know, you know, another man's one man's terrorist, another man's freedom fighter case.

You haven't heard that one before. Um, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, Frank, you got any come to mind?

No, I mean, yeah, Metal Gear 2 was kind of the one I was thinking of.

Man, oh, man. Good stuff. Let us know in the comments.

Oh, Braid. Those are the emails. Braid, sorry.

Braid is an obvious answer, but Braid. Yeah, good point.

Why is Braid? Because you think it's just a puzzle platformer, but actually it's a commentary on whatever you want to be.

Vaccines are not real. It's about vaccines.

It's about nuclear bombs. No, I don't want to spoil Braid.

Two of them. To that point, you should keep playing the witness.

And we talked about this already. I don't.

Here's the thing. You might need to spoil whatever you're talking about because I don't know what you're talking about.

And like, I might have seen it already. We'll talk about it offline.

Okay, sure. All right. Let's take this conversation off.

All right. Step into my office for a minute.

Let's take this podcast offline. Don't say it with that whispery voice.

I can't handle it. We'll talk about it. All right.

Okay. Don't worry about it. Okay. All right.

The games we're talking about this week were Dead Take, Ninja Gaiden, Ragebound, Gaiden, Machina, Heartworm, Battlefield 6, Dear Me, I Was, and a bunch of other slime.

We're working on some nonsense. If you want to head over to you know, youtube.com slash at noclip2 or patreon.com slash noclip2.

You might start to see some stuff you're not meant to see yet or some stuff you are.

I don't know. We're updating things at the moment.

We've got some very exciting announcements about that to make very, very, very, very soon.

I will be out of town for the rest of this week at Quake Convention.

If you are at QuakeCon in beautiful Dallas, Texas, Head over to the BYOC area.

Myself and my mates will be sitting at, we are section C, rows 19, sorry, seats 19 to 23.

We'll be there at the BYOC from Friday. I'm also doing a stage presentation for a short amount of time there, but I can't talk about it yet.

But keep your ears and eyes. Actually, by the time this has gone up, we should have a video over on the second channel.

And also, uh, I will have tweeted what that thing is, but, um, yeah, we have some, uh, I just, for fucking God knows what reason, I do not want to say it publicly on this thing, but we'll talk about it later.

And we'll talk about all that stuff as well.

Uh, Frank has some shitty one. You can speak about it a little bit as well next week.

Um, I think that's a podcast folks. Uh, thank you very much for listening and supporting our work.

Um, patron show will be up, uh, next week after quake con i'm going to record that um there's loads of updates going on of course we're still working away on our uh doc we shot did i announce what that was publicly yet i forget i don't know i can't remember shrug shrug all right well the darkness is in it so and a bunch of nazi killing games so you can figure out what studio that is we're gonna have that Oh, no, I tweeted about it.

Yeah, I put a post up on Patreon. Yeah, right, you did.

We're doing machine games. And if we haven't said it already, we've filmed a bunch of documentaries in Uppsala, Sweden.

And we're going to have three videos. One is about the prehistory of machine games, sort of all the Starbreeze stuff.

Second one is focused on Wolfenstein. And the third one is a proper no-clip doc about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which will be coming out The next few weeks, the first one will be up in about two weeks' time, third one about three weeks' time, and then a week after that, I think, first week of September, I think we're going to have the third one.

We just have to wait for that DLC to come out because we asked them a bunch about the DLC thing.

So it'd be weird if we had a bunch of that stuff in in a game that's not even out yet.

Okay, and that's it. That's a podcast. Thanks very much, everyone, for listening to our podcast, and we'll see you next time on the podcast.

Bye! Bye!

[Noclip Podcast: Indie Gems, Retro Horrors, and the Future of Battlefield]-[Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, Mashina, Battlefield 6]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast: A Deep Dive into Indie Innovation and Industry Trends

Indie Spotlight: From Digging to Acting

The Resurgence of PS1-Style Horror

The Battlefield 6 Debate: Live Services vs. Community

Reflection and Legacy

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript