Songs of Glimmerwick, I Am Jesus Christ, Derelict Star | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you, hello friends.

Welcome to episode 275 of the noclip podcast.

We're all here.

Well, jesse's not.

The j crew has been torn in two.

Jeremy, how do you feel about it?

Uh, i'm gonna have to do a lot of heavy lifting this, not because you guys aren't great, just because jesse's not here.

I'll feel his absence like a phantom limb, exactly.

Yeah, all the weight is on your j shoulders, uh today.

Uh, frank howley's also here.

Frank, how you doing uh down in socal?

Good yeah, i'm.

It's weird.

My sleep schedule is like normal for the like first time in years.

I i at first i started waking up every day at like like five or six or seven.

And I was telling friends like, dude, my sleep schedule is so fucked up.

I wake up at like, I wake up so early and then I realized like, oh, that's normal.

I should just get out of bed.

So like this is maybe the most alert I've been on a podcast in a long time.

And then, yeah, we'll dive into it.

But I got my racing wheel yesterday.

So now like I am.

Yeah, I got an Xbox racing wheel.

I ordered a PS5 adapter that's coming in the mail.

And now like I was already talking.

I have to wear shoes when I play.

I have to get racing gloves.

It's a whole new world.

I'm excited to talk about.

So I'm like fired up and feeling good.

So, yeah, I'm happy.

I cannot wait to see your racing gloves.

Are you gonna go for leather fingerless or what's your go-to?

I don't know.

I have gloves I use for when I'm riding my bike at night when it's like cold, but those are like too warm and thick.

But like, so I don't know.

So I don't know if you need to get like sleek leather gloves or like golf gloves.

Like I like Lacoste for no reason.

So like getting like a nice pair of Lacoste gloves, I don't know.

Are there gamer gloves?

What's the thing with racing wheels?

There's like drive as the scorpion gloves.

I have no idea.

Yeah.

Maybe you can get like a pair that like work as well for batting cages.

I feel like that's going to be your next Japanese culture thing, right?

Is because you've already done.

All the wrestling stuff.

Your video on racing games should be live by the time this podcast goes live on Friday.

You know, pending any thermonuclear global disaster that might happen.

We're recording this on Tuesday morning, so we're seven hours away from from midnight.

I don't know, maybe 20 seconds from midnight when it comes to global news.

So if anything happened this week, we don't know yet.

But yeah, Trump is saying some very inflammatory things.

But anyway.

So that's what I'm saying.

If Japan is still there, you can go and yeah, get into the world of batting cages.

I feel like there's probably loads of those around your area too.

Yeah, I mean because we're right near.

Well, now it's the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, but like SoCal is such a huge baseball I mean there's baseball season starting.

We got like Padres, Angels, Dodgers.

Yeah um, so i have friends in the batting cages and round one.

Funny enough, in puenta hills they have a thing called spocha, which is it's like it's from japan, but it's like a sports round one, so it's like 20 bucks an hour.

There's batting cages, there's roller skates, there's basketball, um i don't know.

There's also a free play arcade.

So it's like i've gone once and it was so fun And um yeah, I don't know.

So batting cages are, are, are pretty relaxed.

I don't know.

Maybe it is like therapeutic to like smash something.

Yeah.

They're pretty bad-ass and they're deeply into, yeah.

Deep into Yakuza games, but also MLB the show 26, I think just came out.

I don't know.

MLB the show a, it should be, it should be renamed, especially down there.

My Lord.

No caps.

Thank you for joining us this week.

We're going to have you along for a couple of podcasts here.

Ever gone to a batting cage before?

I don't think so.

I don't think I would be very good, though I don't have the best hand-eye coordination.

That's probably a must.

Yeah, I've never done it either.

I've kind of I kind of want to, but it's like.

It's like if you were, you know, as an adult, if you'd never gone bowling before or something like that.

First time you have to do a new physical activity is always like you know.

In what way am I bad at this that I don't know yet.

You know, that type of thing.

How's your bowling?

Any go to bowling or darts or pool?

Nope.

Keeping it digital.

That's it.

Just video games.

These fingers are just for keyboards.

That's the way.

That's the type of dedication we like here on Noclip2.

We have a bunch of games to talk about this week.

Nocap's going to lead the way probably with Songs of Glimmerwick.

You should check out her video up on Noclip2 at the moment.

Uh, frank's going to talk about his racing wheel, jeremy's going to talk about derelict star.

Uh, apparently he's got some more to say about world of warcraft as well, so we'll jump into the last time.

The last time we're going to talk about world of warcraft.

Well, the last time we're going to talk about wow midnight.

Current retail expansion.

Okay that's, that's fair, i'm gonna hold you to it.

It's like thank you, i need someone's like jesse the digimon shit.

You know what i mean?

We gotta, we gotta.

It does feel like traditional wow addiction where i'm like i swear it's not like i like i'm unsubbing at the end of the month, i promise, because i started playing wow classic with panda stuff and i i Is that what it's called these days.

I don't know.

I've had such a kerfuffle.

I'm trying to lead a WoW Classic guild, but I'm saying the wrong thing.

WoW Classic now, I think, means literally like Vanilla or TBC.

I'm in this weird Twilight Zone.

I'm playing...

Mop and Mists of Pandera Classic, which to me still feels like a brand new WoW game, because that's when I stopped playing WoW.

Yeah, I didn't play that shit either.

So I'm playing Mists of Pandera and it feels like I'm playing World of Warcraft 2 because it's post-Cataclysm.

I felt like, oh my God, I can't wait to do this and this.

And my friends are like, oh no, it's all new.

All the starting zone quests are new.

So I told people I was playing WoW Classic.

I had people make characters on the wrong like era.

So i'm like oh my god, so i don't know.

So we got midnight, we got bop classic no cap should start playing vanilla, wow.

And then we can.

I don't know, but i'll catch up.

Yeah, but everyone has no caps.

Yeah, have you ever played an mmorpg?

Nope, does club band count?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, we'll count that, absolutely.

Yeah then yes, all right, cool.

I was just curious.

I'm always curious.

I feel like in MMORPG, the one that you associate with the genre is like a personality test.

So I'm always curious to ask people which one.

That's why Jeremy, in his heart of harsh, is an EverQuest guy.

You know, I've only played EverQuest twice in my life.

Oh, what was the game you played before?

I was a Dark Age of Camelot.

Oh, that's what you are.

Sorry, that is of course what you are.

Okay.

That's like, if you want to paint a picture of me as a child just a precocious child who read a lot and played a Dark Age of Camelot and like talked on the chat and i mentioned this on a previous podcast how weird it is that if you were like a 30 year old nerd in like 1999, you're like uh, one of your guild mates is like a fucking nine year old child, fucking.

Yeah no, thank god there was no fucking voice chat.

Uh, i i remember Everyone on the internet being sort of like openly cinephobic about Mists of Pandaria.

I remember it being like very like, oh, they were only making this for the Chinese market.

You know what I mean?

Like, how dare?

Yeah.

Do you remember that, Frank?

I remember that.

Yeah, I care if I was at the BlizzCon.

They announced it, but it was immediately because, like my group of friends, we we tried cattle.

You know what it was?

It was like the same time Kung Fu Panda was blowing up like Jack Black.

And that was like, so heavily marketed as a kid's game.

So I remember the sentiment.

Again, this was me and my friends were all I guess in our twenties or like late.

Yeah.

Like, so we were just like, what the fuck?

This is a kid's game.

I'm not playing this anymore.

And then we all stopped because of the pan.

Like we tried it out and was like, this is lame.

And then one of our younger friends got into like, was playing it.

We're like, I don't know.

I can't, I'm sorry.

I'm not going to like, right.

Like my friend Connor kept playing.

I was like, dude, this look, this game looks lame.

I don't want to play it.

But now 15 years later, I'm like this.

Sure.

All right.

It's like you kind of give it a go.

You don't get to be a panda, though, right?

There's no panda race.

I made a night elf, but you can't.

So, yeah, it's like pandas.

You can make a pandaren character.

Can you?

Yes.

I think it's playable race.

Yeah, because in retail, I don't know.

It's funny you say that the Miss Pandaria thing is like for kids, because even now, as a 35 year old man, when I see a panda player character I'm like come on, dude.

Are you even like?

Are you taking this seriously at all?

And i don't.

I don't know why.

There's something fucking wrong with me.

So maybe the xenophobia was like it was accurate in a way, because it's like art imitating life.

Like people are now racist towards the panda people in the game because they're like i like china's cool, but i don't know what it is about the.

To me it's like um, what is it?

It's like It feels like it's I don't know, were the Pandaren a big deal in Warcraft 1 through 3.

It feels like such a fucking extra.

It feels like... It's a bit poochy, you know?

Yes, it's Fuji.

That's what it is.

That's the exact thing I'm looking for.

It feels like a holiday event, like it was Chinese New Year.

They were like, for one day only, you could be the Pandaren, but then they left it in.

It's like the hard fantasy thing or that type of fantasy.

You're not expecting it, but like they ran out of runway.

You know what I mean?

It's.

It's kind of the way I feel about like them adding in the goblin cars and stuff.

You know you're like ah, come on man.

Like that's The last expansion.

I did not play World of Warcraft last retail expansion, but my two friends who I'm playing with now did, and every few days I would text them and be like did you get the goblin car yet?

And they'd be like, dude, shut the fuck up, because it's so demeaning.

Like, there's just no way to...

Do you finance your goblin car?

Have you passed your goblin car test yet?

Is that a quest?

We have to go to the goblin DMV.

I feel like the Pandaren thing is like... I'm trying to picture another...

Like.

Imagine Lord of the Rings, a friend, a beloved franchise, with all sorts of characters and whimsical people, and like different races and orcs.

And like there's there's trees that fucking walk around and talk and Lord of the Rings.

If there was a panda in Lord of the Rings, no one would like it.

You don't even have to go that far.

You could have like a race of bunny people that would do it.

That would.

That would that would be too much.

You know people, that's true, although final fantasy has um the uh, what are they called?

The frank knows this.

Oh, is it the valve?

Because they're, because they're all beautiful women.

So frank knows the girls are huge in final fantasy girls.

Oh, there's bunny girls in final fantasy.

I forget the, i forget the.

It's vaughn.

It's what, not vaughn, but the girl from final fantasy 12.

Her thing, so yeah.

Are they just girls with ears and puffy tails?

No, they have sort of like, sort of like you know, for people listening to the podcast.

Frank just kind of did a little sort of a bunny.

Yeah.

I feel like they got like a little bunny hooves.

Yeah.

The VR, I must call them Vaughn.

Yeah.

The Viera.

So they're, they're like very tall.

You could, yeah, you could do male, female, um, But yeah, they're a very popular class.

Patrick Fiera, great football player.

They are kind of just beautiful ladies with bunny ears, though now that I re-examine through that lens,

So were the Pandas the last?

I mean, they kept adding people into this.

The new thing that's gross to me like I just it was just cause it was so different is now there's like dragon kin or whatever in midnight.

Cause my friends show me the character select skin and it's like full, like it doesn't look like it's the same game anymore.

The new dragon class.

I don't know what it is.

It was that introduced in midnight.

It is insane that we have once again.

This isn't even the World of Warcraft section of this podcast.

This is the World of Warcraft podcast.

This is the two podcasts about World of Warcraft.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's just fun.

Again.

I feel like when I was playing WoW for decades, all it was was everything in my life was telling me I need to stop playing this game because it's so addictive.

But now it's like, you know, I don't know.

It's like smoking cigarettes vices are so fun and wow is a great vice dude, it is like i've, i know we're like getting into fucking wow talk, because this is what i want to talk about.

We're in there, but we're in there shoulders, should we?

Should we?

No no, we don't.

This is a world of warcraft.

It's coming live from aggramar.

You're listening to baron's chash with Jeremy, Donnie Frank and NoCaps, who is our Club Penguin expert.

And if NoCaps does want to play, you can get a refer-a-friend, and whoever claims the refer-a-friend link gets bonus XP, and you get a special...

I think token where you can summon your friend anytime you get an extra amount.

There's so much stuff you get recruiter friends.

If you consider playing, let me know and I'll give you my here.

Smoke these cigarettes.

Yeah.

We got a Marlboro Marlboro recommendation from Philip Morris here for you.

You get a free pack for exactly.

I buy.

Yeah.

World of Marlboro.

I was gonna say that what Frank was saying is is so true that, like the, I never did like dailies or endgame shit.

Back in the day when I played wow, I played until wrath and I kind of just, you know, I like, just like adventuring the world, doing quests like we've talked about.

But it is so fucking interesting because I hit endgame like after the last podcast and was trying to gear up so I could do Mythic Plus Dungeons with my friends, which is like the endlessly scaling endgame dungeons.

And it was like there.

There's so many different types of ways to fucking like essentially just like spoof your item level, to just like get gear thrown at you and get your item level to go up.

Item level is a aggregate gear score that averages the item level of all of the items you have.

Um, And item level is really interesting, actually from a game design perspective, because in original World of Warcraft it existed under the hood, I believe, but was not a surfaced variable to players.

And then at some point it was there like a mod surfaced that variable and was being used by high level guilds, I believe, as a sort of metric for who can join and who raids and all these things.

Um, so I believe they officially added item level in wrath at some point.

I don't know if it came out with wrath or if it was a patch during that era.

Um, But it is fascinating to me how it's completely sort of like shifted the meta, where now you get a piece of gear and it's not like I asked my friends.

I got a new piece of gear when I was trying to gear up and I'm like okay, so this one's higher eye level, but this one has, like this stat that I think is better, this stat composition.

And they're like, yeah, no, always go with eye level.

Oh, really?

And I was like is there some sort of Like mechanic that they're like no no, you just go with?

I was like yeah, but like why?

It's explained to me why.

And they were like because when people add you to in the party finder, the dungeon party finder, all they look at is I level.

Uh, so you basically like my, my buddy who's running like and like super end game shit was like i'll put on a set of gear that has a higher item level, get into a group and then switch it out for a lower eye level with better stats.

Um, And I think that that – someone posted in the Noclip Discord the other day a book that I'd really like to read about gamification and how chasing numbers is.

This evil, fucking rabbit hole that you can go down, that it creates an abstraction from the actual goal itself into this – exterior motivator that has nothing to do with the actual goal.

The more you abstract it.

And I think eye level is kind of like that.

Like I think eye level might be sort of like the flying mounts in a way, like we talked about last week.

Right, they sort of corrupt the whole uh, the whole broth, as it were.

We uh i yeah yeah no no, we got so many messages like emails and discord, and i definitely did on blue sky, from people like chiming in on a lot of the wow conversations.

There was one a couple of weeks ago i don't think i mentioned it last week which was somewhat of a uh clarification of the.

Remember you talked about the um, the one button thing yes yeah, and somebody said that it's true that you can do that, but like, was it something along the lines of like it slows you down or it doesn't give it's 25 slower okay, okay.

So there's some type of yeah aspect to it there, which is that's interesting.

But apparently the flying man thing is a hundred percent of conversation that has happened within the wow community, and and less so that people had flying mounts, but more so that the uh, the level cap for flying mounts has kept coming down.

You know what I mean?

Cause they did used to be, you know, you had to be, what was it?

80 or 90 or something.

I got, I'm.

All I'm doing is setting myself up for more emails here, but like yeah, but apparently these conversations, naturally enough, are happening within that community because yeah, this is the game they play and love and spend time with and they can see it too.

You know, they see the trouble that's in it.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah yeah, it kind of erases a uh, a relationship to the world and i i think in the same way, eye level erases a relationship to the gear that you're accruing by sort of like flattening it into just this one number you have to look at instead of comparing all these statistics and stuff.

I gather that later, what it is, the eye level is like, you know, plus or minus one.

It becomes more about stats um, But it is interesting to me that it became so abstracted that for the first time ever, I was like oh, I'll just do these dailies.

I've never done a fucking daily in my life because it was like and you're guaranteed like a box that will have like this level of gear in it.

And I was like, oh, a blind box with an item level in it.

And I could.

I played for like one afternoon and I could just feel the fucking mechanisms turning in my brain because I went from eye level.

I beat the game at like eye level 176 and endgame raiders are like 260 something.

Sounds like a fucking credit score.

Yeah, it is.

It's a fucking.

Yeah, I can't get a home loan because my eye level is too low.

And I went from 176 to 245 in, like, one night with my friends.

And I felt, like, the hooks of, like... It got me for a second.

Because I was like, oh, this fucking... I love when the number goes up.

Especially when it's a social acceptance number.

You know?

Yes.

It's, like, directly connected.

No, totally.

Because my friends were like, oh, dude, that's so good.

Like, look how fucking high it is.

And I was like... oh, is that good?

Am I good?

Suddenly getting invited to all the raids, all the parties.

Yes.

You know, people who never would have talked to before.

The wait time to find parties was dropping as it got higher too.

So it was like all of these mechanisms were reinforcing, like everything was cheering me on to become addicted to World of Warcraft.

Well, here you are, talking about World of Warcraft again for the third week in a row.

That's true, but critically.

And the reason I'm talking about it for the third week in a row is because I feel like this eye level and end game stuff is like a different thing where I

I'll still play with my friends until the subscription runs out, because they very kindly paid for it for me.

But I don't think I'll keep playing after that.

And the reason is that as I was running dungeons with them endgame dungeons I felt the way in which it is a sort of endless.

There is strategy.

I'm not trying to undercut that.

There are interesting gameplay mechanics and stuff like that, but It felt like 80 of the experience of Endgame to me is hoping that you get a drop that raises your eye level and spamming your rotation, which are sort of the optimal sequence of abilities that sync up their cooldowns and spending.

You know different points and mana and all these different things.

Points being, you know, like charges kind of things.

And...

It felt like I was just.

It was so constant of ability spam that it felt like the foundation of playing the game, like when there was no situational awareness necessary, when there wasn't like a oh, I need to cast like Blessing of Freedom on that guy because a bird grabbed him or whatever.

It was just like okay, we're just doing damage.

Uh, you just spam this kind of like mostly pretty like linear rotation.

You try to get the dps number higher.

You watch the dps meter, which is now integrated in the game, and um, and the dps, i feel like, is just another form of abstraction, it's just another eye level.

So i feel like you're chasing eye level, you're chasing dps or, like You know, if you're a healer, whatever a certain number you want to hit on the heals per second HPS.

And yeah, I don't know.

I just, I wasn't having, if you remove all of the metrics, I didn't find it that fun.

And I think that that's the problem for me is that I was like, When I was like, this is cool, this is interesting, what I was really having a relationship to was everyone being like look, how big your number is.

Like, wow, you almost out-DPSed that other guy whose eye level is way higher than you.

And I was like, oh, my number is almost bigger than the number of the guy with the bigger number.

Right, like that's not fucking.

I don't like value that.

I don't know why i was like i don't know it like wore off very quickly for me.

So i think it's interesting how i've never had like a end game experience with world of warcraft or with any mmo.

Really um, and i just uh, i i'm sure, as it gets harder, i think the friction would be interesting, like learning all the different sequences for the bosses and having to sort of like perform as a team.

But i've played like 20 something hours of it and i just uh, i just haven't really.

It hasn't come online yet for me, so hopefully by the time my subscription runs out that was very generously gifted to me i will experience some of that.

But um yeah, i just thought it was.

It's interesting to feel that friction of uh, you know, wanting something more than just doing the optimal rotation and watching the numbers go up.

Yeah.

You've had a.

It's been fun listening to your your sort of journey over the past few weeks with this um, this whole thing.

And, uh, yeah.

And you got Frank to resubscribe.

So, you know, I'm sorry for now.

It's.

I've been wanting to play it for like I feel like a year um but, like i said, it's like every time i work on these big video pro, like i was obsessed with ddr for six months, i was obsessed with racing games, and now it's like okay, i can kind of like mess around and waste time for a bit, and then summer conventions come up and there's anime, all this stuff.

So it's like oh, i got, i got some time to mess around.

Um yeah, yeah.

And classic is i classic?

We talked about it for three weeks now, so i won't talk more about it.

But classic is such a different experience.

It's so slow and like pacing of gear is so different.

There's no, not only no eye level, but it's like i have like a butter knife for a dagger and then you get like a slightly better butter knife and it's the world opens up.

Yes exactly yeah, i know, you're like fucking screaming green item.

You're like yes yeah, you know yeah, yeah.

So it's just the the, the relationship to progress requires some degree of you know, I keep saying I've said the word friction more in the last three weeks than I have ever in my life before.

Well, you can get a cream for that.

So that's on you.

I've got a real friction problem.

But yeah, anyway.

So that's the end of my report on World of Warcraft, my book report on World of Warcraft.

Thank you.

A plus, Jeremy.

By John Steinbeck.

Great job.

Thank you.

No cops.

If they put penguins into World of Warcraft, would you play it?

I'm going to have to say no.

You didn't really sell it to me, Jeremy.

Oh, shit.

That's probably a good thing.

Yeah.

I'm pretty busy as it is.

That's true.

You're busy making videos about Songs of Glimmerwick, which we're going to talk about in a second.

But first of all, massive thanks to all of our incredible guild members who The Battle Pass holders.

Brian Beru.

Little Toast.

Yush.

Dwayne the Rock Lobster.

Anthony Thomas.

Nico Passateri.

It's-a me, Ferrario.

Senator Armstrong.

Reed Reg.

Harry Flanagan.

Joosh.

Arno.

Matt Pearson.

Mark Ross.

Quote.

Tucker Morgan.

David McGarry.

Goddison.

Sven Hooster.

Pez.

Bum Mold.

John Akers.

You and Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Fatui.

Grizzly Mug.

Cameron Ladd.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher.

George Sakotis.

Jacob.

God serve.

I'm going to talk about some godservant stuff later on.

Entheogen, JamesMed, and Rison.

Thank you all so much for your support over at patreoncom slash noclip and patreoncom slash noclip2.

Let's jump into Songs of Glimmerwick.

No caps.

You put a video up on Monday, a preview of this game.

The demo has been available as of today, Tuesday the 7th.

This game is coming out.

Do they have a date for this thing yet?

No, not yet.

Okay, okay.

But this is a.

I did not know anything about this game and your preview was.

The word enchanting, I think, came up in the preview and it is very much that.

This is a gorgeous-looking I don't know isometric life sim, but it has this almost like um I don't know children's book art style to it.

Um, and I was surprised, I think, from looking at the screenshots and the videos, the sort of depth of gameplay that's that's in this thing.

Um, what exactly is songs that can work for folks who haven't watched the video, and what have you made of it so far?

Yeah, so it is Overall a life sim where you play as a new student at this magic university because you find out you have magic powers or whatever.

So there's the whole student schedule part and going to classes every week and talking to the students and everything.

And then there's also a town and a bunch of shops and all the people that live there will have like quests for you.

Um, and it's takes place on, I think it's Glimmerwick Island is what it's called.

Um, and there's like a magic forest and, and all this stuff going on.

Um, and so you just kinda like live your life as a student, slash explorer and magic learner um, but yeah, it is a beautiful game like it has this like fairy fairy tale storybook kind of look to it um, and it's very like detailed like all of the interiors of the school and the shops and everything there's just like all this like little stuff to look at.

Um, and the the magic system revolves around playing music.

So there's this whole like you learn kind of the lore about the, the magic and like there's these people that tried to like silence the magic or whatever.

But basically you can like play instruments, to like enchant items like your gardening tools and then to actually like also interact like with the earth and like um, like grow.

Like in the trailer there's like this like bridge, like a rock bridge, that you can like earth bend up from the ground.

Basically um, which you don't unlock, unlock in the demo, but lots of like magic things to do to like unlock new areas, and there's also like a potion making part and like a magic gardening part.

So a lot of like different things to balance um, and it's all just like very whimsical and Magical.

Yeah, it has a very like, you know, it's for fans of magical student, you know, lore.

It's been tough out there for the past few years.

So it was very nice to see a see a game that's sort of taking this and really running in a very different direction to that franchise.

I was even surprised by stuff like the fact that you can like remodel your place and like it just seems very like systems heavy is.

Is the story like fairly linear?

Like you mentioned stuff, like you know you've got your daily.

You know stuff to do at school and then stuff outside.

Like in my head, you know, did you play demon school at all?

I played I played a couple hours, but I didn't get that far into it.

So that's a fairly I mean, the stuff you can you can choose to do things basically after hours.

But a lot of that game is sort of like this is what's happening this week.

Right.

This is what's going on.

Is it similar in this, or is it?

You know, is there things that like story stuff that happens at a set cadence, or can you just go off and kind of do your own thing for a while?

It seems like it's a lot more open than Demon's School.

Like from what I remember playing of that it didn't really seem like there were that many side quests.

Is that right?

Yeah, there's sort of optional stuff you can do in the world, but it's...

I'm not sure I'd call them side quests necessarily.

Like I don't know if there's many dungeons that are outside of the main stuff, but there's stuff, stuff you can do for sure.

But like, yeah, it's pretty, you know, quick things.

Whereas this you're saying, this one has like the town and you can go in and get quests off of shopkeepers and stuff like that, right.

Yeah.

It's, it's definitely seems a lot more open.

Um, the demo is actually like it's the first like two ish hours of the game.

So it's not like a separate like demo build or anything.

Um, but it seems like you're almost supposed to mostly be focusing on all the side stuff rather than, like the main story.

Cause that's kind of just like going to school and then like, You'll have like a class like one.

It seems like for now one class each day.

And it's like OK, if I go to my class at 8 am, then that's like my only like real thing, like on my schedule that day.

So I'll fill the rest of the day with like gardening and then like going to talk to these people and like kind of just poking around.

Could you not go to class?

I didn't try that.

Actually, i got there like early.

It's like the classes were at 8 am and i'm like okay, it's 6 45 and then they just let me in.

So, just like the podcast, you were the first one here to today as well, right?

Yeah, if you, if you get into magic school, i feel like you don't want to blow it.

You know what i mean.

Yeah, like that's everyone's dream, you know.

Reading books like this as a kid is like i'll, maybe an owl will bust through my window and i'll get a letter, but it's like you don't want to fucking abscond, i don't know.

It's interesting that that's like it's such a core fantasy from when i was growing up and it's cool to see games kind of tapping into that like um, is it?

Witchbrook is the other one i'm thinking of.

Yeah, games that are doing kind of like uh, like witch, like magic slice of life, but like in a magical world.

I think is a a really interesting area to explore.

Um, Does this remind you at all of Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon at all?

Or very different genre-wise.

Definitely inspirations from that.

There is a gardening part.

You get a job as a student on campus, and you have to fix up the garden.

I think you could probably not do that much gardening and just be like okay, they want me to grow this specific thing and that specific thing.

But also I feel like you could really get into that and like the customization and like planning everything if you want to.

Um, but then like there's a lot more emphasis on like the story and like interacting with the characters than in like Stardew Valley.

Like you'll like, go to the character in Stardew Valley and then they have one new like dialogue line every day.

But this is like these people are talking to each other and there's like they have different things to say every day.

And like it's also fully voice acted, which is another thing, like i couldn't believe that.

That's crazy.

Yeah it's.

It adds, like so, so much to it.

It's crazy.

Um uh, which book's coming out this year as well?

I think we're having a bit of a supposedly release date right, which is um, i remember playing the cosmic wheel sisterhood as well.

That was interesting.

It was kind of like a witchy fortune teller kind of kind of thing.

Smaller, smaller type game.

No caps.

You also played.

Was it Eastshade?

Is that the name of their previous game?

Because I don't know this studio all that well.

What was Eastshade?

I'm on an Eastshade page here on Steam and I think it's a very different game.

Maybe I... It is.

It is and it isn't.

Okay.

So I...

Eastshade Studios is the name of the developer.

They made Eastshade in 2019, which I actually I played like a month ago, like before even knowing that the Songs of Glimmerick demo was coming out.

So it's kind of good timing.

Yeah.

But so Songs of Glimmerick is like top down life sim kind of thing.

And Eastshade is a first person game, um game where you play as a painter um, and it is also though, very like quest heavy and like there's like this small open world, also on an island, that you like get to know each location and there's all these landmarks and you can kind of just walk somewhere and see something interesting.

Um, it's also fully voiced.

Wow, really.

This is because i mean this looks amazing.

This looks like like a modern version of like mist or something like.

The graphics on this thing are crazy.

I can't believe.

I feel awful for not knowing what.

We're never hearing of this before.

Like a they.

There's a lot of like inspirations from like early elder scrolls games, but there's no combat, so it's all like focused on on quests and the there's like you shade studios youtube page has a bunch of devlogs about like designing quests, and there's this whole video about like one of the devs, Danny like Danny, not you, but different Danny.

He looked at like a bunch of people's favorite quests in games and like gathered all this information about like the different stages and what the motivations were and what the rewards were, and all this to create quests that actually feel rewarding, to complete all without having to rely on combat.

I was going to say, I recognized Eastshade.

I had not heard of Glimmerwork until you brought it up, but Eastshade, I remember seeing YouTube videos about the two devs leaving their jobs to work on this project.

Yeah, you're right.

I've just gone to the YouTube channel after NoCaps mentioned it and I'm like oh, I've actually watched these before.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It's very cool to see, you know, a... i was gonna say success story but like i guess so but uh more just like that they're continuing to make games you know what i mean that the process of cashing in their life savings and making a game didn't make them go like fuck this we can't keep doing this yeah those videos are great for like learning about just the whole process from someone who's kind of like it's not like their very first time they've ever worked on the game so they have like more insights into like the business stuff and the design stuff and all that cool videos yeah it'd be interesting to have them on maybe just to talk about like how does that transition happen too from making this like lush like seemingly quite technically uh you know rich first person world again with voice acting it's not um to you know something it's it reminds i haven't played it but like i'm thinking of games like the forgotten city for instance as a sort of a comparison to making this like you know isometric witch game and like both of them look amazing like they both they're like completely different art styles but they both look very very good for a first time doing that type of game you know it's like it's quite remarkable I wonder Is one of them an artist or is, you know, are they just like very good at hiring and setting up, you know, contractors and setting up a pipeline?

But, yeah, that's really interesting stuff.

So, yeah, we don't know when Songs of Glimmerwick is coming out, but the demo available now.

Awesome.

Very cool.

Songs of Glimmerwick.

G-L-I-M-M-E-R, WIC.

Check it out over on Steam.

I played a video game.

I played lots of video games this past week.

I think I'm playing three games I can't talk about because of embargoes.

One is not coming out for a long time.

One is coming out next week, and we'll have an interview about it as well.

I wonder if I could even mention that.

Just in case.

And another one is is a big AAA game coming out from a big developer that is coming out later this month that I'm very excited to talk about as well.

Feel free to put your guesses in the comments.

I played a little bit of the start of Crimson Desert.

I've been thinking about it for too long, and I was like, oh, I got to give it a go.

I got to check it out.

And I want to play like the first hour or so.

And it's like it's like very the production value is absolutely insane on this thing.

But I'll probably have more to talk about that next week.

But the game I did play a decent amount of that is out that you can buy right now.

And I don't know, folks, maybe the Easter spirit just got to me.

But I did play.

A few hours of I am Jesus Christ.

And I was I was Jesus Christ in a video game.

Be careful.

You got to be careful.

So if Mark David Chapman is listening, you got to be real careful talking about this game.

Is that blasphemy to say I'm Jesus Christ?

Well, that's the guy who killed John Lennon because he said the Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ.

Oh, wow.

OK, well, you know.

Sorry, I'm not trying to bring it down.

He got out after a few years, didn't he?

I think so.

He's around.

He's still a threat.

He remains a threat.

Much like Jeff Gerstmann.

Yes, exactly.

Him and Jeff Gerstmann.

Wait, Jeff Gerstmann shot John Lennon?

That's fucking crazy.

Some people say, um, I played, I am Jesus Christ from space boat studios.

This is a game that went, uh, somewhat viral a few years ago.

Um, because it's a game where you play as Jesus H Christ.

Um, it is a first person game that largely follows, I would say, the sort of uh, the Western book literature, of sort of Jesus's life as written down by the apostles.

So this is very much a You are starting and you're going to go meet John the Baptist after some Romans smash up a smash up a stall.

So it is.

It is and it's kind of beat by beat going through.

You know, various aspects, various stories of of Jesus's life.

I don't know how much of the. you know, child Jesus turning into a sheep stuff.

I don't think any of that's in here.

I don't think you beat up any money lenders.

I'm guessing you don't hang out with any sex workers.

I'm assuming that this is sort of a more you know I could be wrong, but a sort of a more Protestant, perhaps evangelical perhaps, you know, sort of what I would consider sort of American Christianity to a certain sort of extent, although I am not a I'm not a theologian or a storied educated man when it comes to religion.

That's Jeremy.

He's the one over there.

Not about Christianity, though, unfortunately.

It turns out.

Yeah, I was raised Catholic, of course, as an Irish person, and I don't practice anymore, but I'm fairly well-versed in a lot of the stuff that this game has in it.

So yeah, it's a first person game.

It is definitely of a certain I don't know production value.

You know what i mean.

Like, this is a small studio.

They're making a first person game unfortunately, or and i went into this like genuinely just being like you know let's, let's give him the benefit of that.

Like let's, let's check this thing out.

I am very comfortable in my um, my secularism.

I'm, you know i i, i.

There are aspects of the church that i, you know, as in the catholic church, that i remember fondly, or growing up in a catholic society that i remember fondly, like being involved in choirs and the comfort that I had from the church when I was a child and that sort of stuff.

Obviously, I ended up having a pretty strong rejection of those later in life.

And obviously I have no love for the Catholic Church as an institution, especially given all the stuff that happened in Ireland over the decades and centuries.

But I went into this kind of like feeling, a little bit of like all right, let's have some, let's have some nostalgia some, some you know, some you know, let's engage with this stuff on its own terms.

And yeah it's, I think it's.

I found it just interesting and bizarre as a as a game, that you're like getting quests from people to go get baptized, and the whole thing.

I just found like very entertaining.

Perhaps not for the reason intended, like i can see, if you're a child and you're not allowed to play games and you're in a very religious household, this would easily be one of these types of games you could play like it's very like, And then he did this and then such and such said unto the Lord.

One big problem this game has is that, like I think, all of the voices are AI generated, and boy does it feel like it.

Maybe some of them aren't, I don't know.

But like it's weird when it's like supposedly like i'm being talked to by the devil or john the baptist and i'm like i think this is an ai voice.

I'm not quite sure.

Definitely all the people walking around the villages are.

They're like i heard the romans did.

I'm sick of all these taxes.

You know, like like all the stuff that they're saying as well is sort of like sunday school shit, like they're none.

This does not feel like you're immersed in the middle east.

This feels like very much and again, i could be wrong, but this feels very much like a uh, a game about a.

You know the, the region around.

You know galilee and jerusalem from somebody who's never been outside of.

You know iowa.

You know that's like it doesn't feel like a lived in place.

It doesn't feel like so.

You know like the middle east at any period in time.

It feels kind of like the, the version of these places that you hear about when you, when you go to church um Uh, yeah.

And I, yeah, I just find, I found it like fascinating and weird.

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

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

It's just sort of this story.

I mean, it's like, it's cheap in many ways, but it's a small team.

So I'm giving it a benefit of doubt.

I'm glad they got to make their Jesus game.

Um, It's it's yeah, it's, it was novel to play.

But yeah, it's obviously nothing to write home about, but also yeah, I I enjoyed.

I just found it such an oddity.

It was so strange that there are like mini games to try and get away from the devil in the desert where you have to like move your mouse and hit.

Keyboard is like laid a certain way.

And it's just like, what are we doing here?

You know what I mean?

Like this.

This is so far removed from the sort of sanctity of like how we're supposed to think about these things.

We've gamified faith.

You know what I mean?

Like You know, in a weird way, like complete the quests to get all the apostles and all that sort of stuff.

And you know, make sure you get to this part of the river so you can hang out with John the Baptist.

It's a weird thing.

Does it feel like this game?

Because I feel like when a game comes up about religion, specifically about Christianity, I feel like my question is always is this trying to Like, is this targeted at people who are Christians, to sort of be like the greatest hits of Jesus Christ so you can like, relive them?

Or...

Is.

Is this like trying to educate people who are outside of that about Christianity?

Or I'm curious like, what is the tone of this?

Does it feel like it's sort of just like reifying the faith of people who are already faithful?

Yeah, it's 100 percent the former.

Yeah, it's like and I think I was sort of I think that's the thing I find sort of so.

Disappointing is a strong word because I came in with such low expectations of this thing.

I would have liked to have.

I think you could do something with the texts.

I mean, like you know, I don't want to like.

My position and the position of lots of churches around the world is that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was a real person.

And he was like you know.

Islam and the Jews were totally fine with him until these Christians started saying that he was the son of God and that he had died and risen.

Like up until that point, we were, you know, he was part of Judaism to a certain extent.

Like I think you could tell a very interesting story about the life and lessons of Jesus Christ and arguably a lot of the sort of Western orthodox churches have stripped a lot of the like socialism out of jesus.

You know what i mean.

Like he was a lot more about again beating up money lenders and hanging out with sex workers.

Like you know, there was aspects to his you know, almost communist view of society that he was a Paul and Peter and some of the other apostles were very quick to strip out and then start putting in all this homophobic shit that, like Jesus never said any any of that stuff.

And so like, you know, as is written on at least, you know, what we have.

And obviously the problem with historical stuff is that you're always it's the winners who write it.

So you're always getting like slivers and slivers of. of the absolute truth.

So I think there is and you could tell an interesting story about this person and the impact that he had during his life, but without telling the impact of what happened after his life.

And that's I think the problem I have with this is that, like you said, this is the greatest hits of you know Sunday school.

You know it's Palm Sunday it's.

You know it's the 40 days in the desert, it's John the Baptist it's.

You know all that sort of stuff.

And I feel like you could like a lot of this stuff, especially when it comes to like the crucifixion.

I was obviously.

You know, as far as we know, Jesus was actually crucified.

But you know a lot of the.

I don't know if it's like retconning or you know, because Christianity has changed so much over the years as they try to, you know, get pagans to come on board.

And, you know, that's why we do certain things at certain times a year, like Easter's. just so happens to happen around the same time as fertility festivals.

And obviously Christmas happens during the period of, you know, when people are inside and winter festivals and whatnot.

But yeah, I feel like there is a version of this you could do.

That would be more about the man and less about the myth.

And this is very much about the myth.

So yeah, if I don't know, if you've, if you've not, if you don't know about, if you've not played any of the prequels to I Am Jesus, if you're not up on the franchise and

I don't know.

This doesn't like tell a particularly cohesive story either.

Like you literally hang out with John the Baptist and run into desert for 40 days.

Like it's weird.

Even as someone who studied religion, I feel like I would be a little lost if it was just the greatest hits, without sort of connected.

Yeah.

If I wasn't part of the, the, the ARG for this game, it's very popular in America.

Super popular. crazy how popular it is.

Um, yeah, so it's, uh, yeah, it's interesting.

They made it.

They made a game about Jesus and uh, I'm sure people will like it and I'm sure you know it'll be a game.

Maybe the, like I said, sort of kids who aren't allowed to play games will, will, will check out.

And as one of those, I think it's perfectly.

Uh, I didn't see anything in it that was, you know, nasty or anything like that, you know.

So, yeah, more, you know, fair play to them for putting it out.

Very positive reviews, it seems.

On a I could see a play.

I think it plays to the crowd.

You know what I mean?

Like the crowd who this is for.

And there was parts of it that I thought were like, oh, yeah, I remember that.

I remember that.

I forgot about that bit.

Yeah, that guy.

And, you know, but yeah, it's it's it's, you know, as a as a piece of art, it is deeply disinteresting.

It is just, you know, the greatest hits, as you said.

You think it's better or worse than Captain Bible in the Dome of Darkness?

Jesus Christ.

You've talked about that before, haven't you?

I've talked about it before.

Yeah Captain, Bible is like a.

It's an old Christian video game from the 90s where you go around collecting scripture and answering trivia.

But you're like.

I believe Captain Bible.

He's sort of like a superhero figure who descends into the land of heathens, into this world that doesn't have God.

It's not hell?

I don't think it's hell, I think it's more like a Sodom and Gomorrah type dystopia.

It's like if George Orwell wrote the Bible.

And uh yeah, and you're disseminating trivia to the people.

I guess?

I don't know i've.

I've only played it on like the dos archive one time.

And uh, as a sort of oddity.

You know, what i've always wanted to play is um uh, left behind so that this is based on, on a book series that was like about the rapture basically, Oh yeah.

Holy shit.

I forgot.

And there was a video game left behind, Eternal Forces, which was like a, like a.

If I remember correctly, it was a sort of like an isometric like, kind of like syndicate or something like that.

But yeah, it was like it was like you were.

It was all the people who were like left behind after the rapture.

Yeah, I never played.

I think it was hard to find.

I think I remember trying to find it like maybe 10, 13 years ago and I couldn't get it anywhere.

I want to play this.

The screenshots are taking me on a wild ride here.

Have I completely made that?

Is that right?

Left behind?

Yeah, it's real.

There's a thread on our abandoned Reddit of people like, here's how to install it.

That was posted just a year ago.

Oh, really?

Yeah, and there's like 4K footage on YouTube, so there is a scene for it.

Hell yeah, we might have to do that.

This is part of our religious uh religion in games.

We will do.

We're gonna play that medic commander bible 38, 38.

That's fucking rough.

Could be worse.

I'll be honest, i'm like, all right, could be worse.

Um, is hellgate london a religious game?

No, although they are hell gates, but it's uh.

I'm saying yeah, It's a.

It's kind of a run based pseudo MMO.

It was kind of online, but once you, you kind of went in, what was the other one?

Not Guild Wars.

Was it Guild Wars?

It was kind of like that too.

It was like instance.

Yeah.

Instance multiplayer.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's what Hellgate was like.

Hellgate was cool.

Yeah, I guess if Diablo isn't a religious game, then Hellgate London isn't either.

That's a good point.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You know, the Christianity doesn't have like the, you know, the patent on the devil.

You know what I mean?

Like.

That's true.

Well, maybe they do.

That's why they called him Diablo.

Diablo.

They were like.

It was Satan, wasn't it?

It was Satan.

It was not a. Yeah.

That's the devil that's made of vital weak gluten that Buddhists eat.

We needed somebody to to basically the devil exists because they needed somebody to tempt Jesus.

That was it.

Like there's so much of like Christianity's like like story isn't it's just necessitating.

We need this guy to die and come back to life like that's it.

You know, it's also, you know, like, he's got to go to hell.

He goes to hell on the Saturday of Easter and defeats evil.

And I think that's where he fixes original sin.

But everyone born before that is fucked.

That's like the premise of Spawn.

Spawn is like... Really?

Yeah, I think that's like, yeah.

Spawn is like, he's... he's like a devil armies, Steve spawn from able gamers, Todd McFarland spawn.

So it's like every 250 years, like the D, it's like the devil soldier comes and he has to fight like I don't know.

It's so insane.

But like that tickled my brain.

He has to fight in a, it's a tournament in the throne.

The throne of hell is like abandoned.

And so like, he wants to take the throne.

He wants to be the king of hell, but everyone else wants to be the king of hell.

And there's like violator.

And there's like an antichrist.

There's a Christ soldiers.

And it's insane, but it's hundreds and hundreds of issues of everyone talking about going down to hell to fight.

So if that's what happens, if Jesus goes down to hell to fight, then that's like I don't know if Jesus meets Spawn, but that's kind of similar.

That'd be cool.

It's like the metaverse, you know?

I'm sure, is Jesus in Fortnite yet?

Can we make that happen?

I'm sure Spawn is.

I'm sure he plays Fortnite.

Yeah, I mean.

But he's really good at it.

When I was on message boards, remember you used to make those message board cigs?

Make a signature?

I had one that had like Buddy Christ on it.

And it said could Jesus make a burrito so hot that even he himself could not eat it?

Thank you, that's like.

That's such an encapsulation of the sense of humor of the internet in that period of time.

That's great shit man, edgy stuff.

There you go, folks.

I am jesus christ and i also played that video game.

Do you want to tell us?

I'm gonna make this joke one time because i've watched too much zoolander?

Derelict my.

No, do you want to tell me about uh, derelict star?

Um yes, this is a new video game available on the steam platform.

That's steampoweredcom.

You can buy it for 849 at the moment.

15% off.

What am I looking at?

This looks like fucking VVVVV and like Spelunky Flash had a baby.

Yeah, no, that's pretty accurate.

So Derelict Star is a...

It's like a movement based platformer.

So this is not a Metroidvania of the combat and stuff.

This is sort of a exploration driven platformer with an interesting control system, where you're like a little astronaut in these abandoned sort of like mega structures in space.

And you have a little sort of like boost jetpack kind of thing.

But the boost jetpack is quite weak if you just launch it when you're standing still and then it gains as you gain momentum, like running from side to side.

The jetpack sort of gains power.

So there's this sort of interesting relationship where you're like running to the edge of a platform, boosting and then doubling back.

Okay.

Boosting into walls and bouncing off of them.

So it kind of speeds up the more you're in the air or the more you're moving side to side?

It's more like the more runway you have, essentially.

You can sort of get a You know how in Mario 3 there's the meter that fills up before you can fly in the Tanooki suit.

Yes.

It's kind of like that is how I would describe it sort of a tanuki suit system.

But there, it's it's fascinating to be, I've only played about an hour of this.

But there have been, like so many permutations of how to use this that I've been very pleasantly surprised with this.

I won't describe too many of them because discovering them is sort of the joy of the game, but just to give one example that happens very early, in the first 15 minutes or so uh, there's sort of like green growth on the underside of a platform.

And when you boost into it, you sort of stick to it, but keep sliding like moving.

Uh, and then you realize that uh, this has different implications when it's on the top of a platform and you hit it going up, when it's on the floor and you're walking across it.

Um, Different surfaces have different qualities.

And so sort of like learning these and learning the rules of this world.

Yeah, I guess Metroidbrania is an unavoidable fucking phrase in this situation.

We need to find a new word for that.

But yeah, it's just like.

I find it very pure and simple.

It's kind of you're just kind of doing this one thing with a bunch of different permutations, kind of in the way i talked about ooh right, where it's not, it's uh, it's not like doing all these things where it's like, all right, now you have like the, the grappling hook, and the grappling hook combines with this and this way, and now you have like the bombs and the bombs and the grappling hook can combine it.

Not like that at all, it's.

It's so just like one thing done in a bunch of interesting ways that uh Yeah, I don't know.

It's very simple and satisfying and kind of meditative.

And you basically are just going through these megastructures to get these sort of like power cell things and bring them back to your little ship on the edge, your little pod.

And there's like optional collectibles.

But you literally go to a terminal the first time you collect one and it says to you hey, by the way there's, you don't get anything for doing this.

If you want to collect these extra things, like you could do it for the love of the game.

But uh, i don't want you to like go around expecting anything for this.

Um, and i, i like that, i like that it's very sort of straightforward with this other thing, rather than sort of creating artificial incentive to do this thing or um, You know, you get like a green helmet if you get 100 of them or whatever.

Yeah, but they should totally do that anyway at the end.

Although that would be sick if they did that.

But yeah, no it's.

I don't want to talk too much about it because I feel like the less you know about it, the better.

Not because there's some crazy twist or anything.

It's just.

It's just yeah, it's just a game about sort of like discovery and rules uh, i guess, like leap year.

If you liked leap year, maybe you would enjoy this.

Um, it reminds me a little bit of that.

Uh yeah, leap years.

That is that the right game.

The sock pop?

Uh, not the 2010 movie uh, hold on oh yeah yeah yeah okay yeah yeah, all right.

Yeah yeah, the clumsy platformer yeah, That's neat.

Yeah.

I was wondering like how sort of deep it got with mechanics.

Like I think I have animal well on the brain a bit, you know, but it's not that right.

It's.

It's much more sort of stripped back closer to something like a new in terms of, like core body abilities.

And then the levels are the novel sort of thing going forward.

Is that kind of like the level design is what mixes it up a bit.

Yeah, it is sort of that simple core mechanic and then the levels have different um mechanics in them that allow you to utilize that core mechanic in different ways, and so that's sort of.

The interesting thing is like mastering this one core mechanic and then being introduced to new wrinkles, new ways that it can interact with your environment, which I think is sort of an interesting reversal of the way that most Metroidvanias are giving you all of these powers.

Instead, you're encountering these new situations in which to use the same power.

So...

Yeah, it's very.

It's like a.

It's a simple game, but not in the.

It's not like.

I don't mean that as diminutive.

It's simple and like a very pure and beautiful way.

So I've just been playing it in small chunks and finding it very kind of like. relaxing and meditative i give it a steam but but it is a little challenging as well like i it's it's kind of a difficult game but uh but it's all in four three as well oh i didn't even notice is it i think well the screenshots and videos on steam are it looks it looks oh yeah it it launches in windowed mode so i didn't even really think about the aspect ratio um yeah yeah that's funny uh yeah it's got a very nice retro aesthetic too as well um the the sound design and the pixel art does remind me of animal well quite a bit uh it's got this like crunchy sort of like saw wave sound effects everything sounds uh like crunchy like an old arcade game so um yeah i i highly recommend it i think this game deserves a lot more love than it's getting it's got something reviews at time of recording so uh yeah check it out if you like you know thinky brainy platformers not this is this is a platformer where you'll be like stuck for a while this is not like a rapid you know, blasting levels through.

This is like your grandpa's platformer.

Yeah, it is a hardcore platformer.

Derelict Star available on steampowered.com.

Maybe you've heard of it.

$8.49.

It's 10 bucks usually, 50% off at the moment.

15, I said 15% off at the moment.

And yeah, go check it out.

Looks pretty neat.

I'm going to check it out after this podcast.

You don't have to wait because you could be listening and doing anything you want.

You could be playing a video game, buying a video game.

You could be on the toilet.

You could be fixing a toilet.

You could be racing in your car.

Frank, tell me about your recent journey, your personal journey into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights of racing.

Yes.

Um, yeah, this is insane.

This is such a, like, this is, it's weird to say this is an active story.

This is in development.

So, wow.

Yeah.

Breaking news.

Frank, Frank said stuff.

So it was uh yeah, I spent two weeks in Japan playing like real racing games on our cabinets and everything in Japan is like is, is is um in pristine condition.

So every racing wheel was it had forced feedback and snapped to the center, as opposed to having like broken down old cabinets that didn't work.

So I came home and started playing like Gran Turismo and stuff to log footage for this car video.

And I was like, This sucks.

That's I can't go back to this control.

I like the controller, but like, damn it, I need a racing wheel.

So I the same way.

How I got a DDR pad at home, I messaged my friend Jordan Jones who's in the DDR video.

He'll be in this car video for a second too.

As I messaged Jordan, I'm like, okay, what do I do for a racing wheel?

And he's like, oh, did it, did it, did it.

Logitech's pretty good.

And so so the the.

So what I have right now is a Logitech G 29, but it retails for like 300 plus dollars.

I would say it's worth it, but Jordan Jones is a genius and he's always scouring Facebook marketplace for like junk electronics.

And he repairs them.

Like that's his hobby.

He'll get Peloton, but he listens to the podcast.

Thank you, Jordan.

Um and uh he.

He will find like Peloton bikes and repair them and then sell it to other people in the Peloton or whatever he repaired.

He found a, uh, like a, 500 DDR pad for a hundred bucks repaired.

It gave it to me like, it's insane.

So we owe it.

He has a closet full of broken X boxes that he repaired.

Like he's just a super genius.

So I immediately asked Jordan, like, what do you think?

And then within an hour, he's like, I found a race wheel for a hundred dollars.

He's like, really?

I'm going to go take a look.

So on Facebook marketplace we found this like dusty, dirty race wheel and, And in the description it said Como Nuevo, which means like new in Spanish.

My friend Jordan was like, I don't know.

Let me check it out.

So he gets there.

It's missing like cables, so you can't even test the race wheel.

And so Jordan's like, I don't know.

So Jordan lowballs the guy.

So originally, the Facebook offer was like $200, the $300 wheel, $200.

No one bought it.

It was set for 100.

My friend Jordan gets there and is like, I'll give you 40 for it.

And the guy's like, okay.

So Jordan comes home and he looks under the hood of the thing.

The brake pedals are like cut.

I don't know what happened.

They got pinched in a way where the brake put off, somebody tried to kill, kill the guy.

Oh my god, thank god my mechanic.

Yeah, i could have got to an accident.

Cia job, yeah.

So I guess the brakes didn't work, even though on Facebook it said Como Nuevo.

So so he just like he restarted the cables.

Yeah, I got it working.

He dropped it off.

What day is it?

Tuesday.

I'm recording.

He dropped it off Sunday and we calibrated it.

And the first thing I booted up was a Sega Dreamcast emulator so I could play Sega Rally 2, because that was that was the game in Japan.

I was like, this is awesome.

And so I've been playing it now for two days.

I've been testing it on like a Sega Dreamcast simulator.

I've been testing on my Xbox.

It's natively.

So there's like, I hate how stuff is these days.

So Logitech has two racing wheels, one that works for Xbox and PC works for PS5 and PC.

So I got the Xbox one.

But what I did is on Amazon Prime, for like 130, you can buy like a A thing that basically like an adapter so you can plug your Xbox to the PS for one hundred and thirty dollars.

One hundred and thirty.

Jesus.

But right.

But my my thought I got the wheel for 40 bucks.

I got this PS5 adapter for one thirty.

So I've spent maybe one hundred and seventy.

What is a three hundred plus wheel?

But playing the wheel for two of them because you can you can play it on Xbox and PlayStation.

I can do it all.

And so even plugging in the, I've never done racing.

So I feel like Danny, you have like an F1 rig at home or something crazy.

Yeah.

They send a, yeah.

Who sent us that?

We have a, we have a, we did a charity stream back like before COVID.

I think it was Jeremy.

Remember we did that big stream and, um, Yeah, I feel terrible.

I can't remember the name of the company.

But they sent us an entire race seat, like the whole thing.

And then i had uh, i slapped a monitor on it because we had a bunch of monitors at the studio, and then um uh, i think i have a g29 on that one.

I'm pretty sure it's a g29 as well, but oh, i do i have a g29.

But then somebody sent we didn't pay for any of this shit.

Somebody sent um, This might've been a game spot thing.

Maybe there was a leftover wheel.

I forget how I ended up.

I didn't steal it.

I'm just going to say it right now.

Um, but I did end up getting maybe a patron sent.

I forget, but I have like the Formula One wheel, like one of those that sits.

Oh, because the G29, you can take off the wheel and stick another one on the pipe that comes out.

Yeah, but are you talking about when you plug it in and it goes like?

That scared the hell out of me.

So on the back of the wheel there's like a big caution symbol and like a little baby standing in front of the wheel.

And it's like, don't let any babies near this device.

Because it's like a saw trap.

You stick the wheel in it, all of a sudden, it violently spins.

And it's like...

Oh, my God.

It's like a blender.

It's like it calibrates basically to find the dead zone points or whatever on that.

Yeah.

But it's really like if your hand was in between that, it would like you hurt your arm.

Oh, it's insane.

It was like a term.

Yeah.

So.

So, again, this thing could have killed me.

The brake lines are cut.

The things are whatever.

It's a trap, but but so that's the thing i've never really experienced before, except i guess in the arcades is like it's so, and so, even playing all this stuff, it took me like an hour to calibrate on a dreamcast emulator.

We just we set it up pretending it's just it's a dreamcast controller, so like steer left is left on the d-pad, steer right's right in the d-pad, uh breaks.

Or you know, like there's back pedals, ones accelerate, ones break.

You have to recalibrate for every game.

I did like Crazy Taxi, Sega Rally, Star Wars, Pod Racing, which Pod Racing on a race wheel is maybe one of the coolest games I've ever played.

Wow.

It's so good.

So have you not played like Gran Turismo?

No, I'm going to play that today.

I'm going to play that when the thing gets in.

So like.

So it's so fascinating playing it with like yeah, it has.

I don't know what it's called force feedback, but the wheel will snap to the center.

So it's like.

It feels like I'm driving a real car.

Like I'll do a turn.

And then, instead of having to turn back left, I'm like oh, let me just let you know, let go and let the wheel kind of recenter.

And it's like, this is so, so cool.

Oh, it's a totally different format because you can feel oversteer and understeer, which is like, so like most driving games are like you basically, especially if you play with a controller, like grip doesn't matter.

And grip is arguably the most important thing in racing is, like you know, breaking is obviously important, but like breaking and not locking your tires, like stuff like that that you're now going to get used to or yeah, like how much front end like is there understeer?

Am i coming into this turn and?

And I'm turning, but the car isn't moving.

Right.

Like that, that type of thing or, you know, a rear grip, like when you're lighting up the tires out of a turn.

You know what I mean.

Like you'll start doing things like, cause like racing games are so binary.

It's like accelerate, hold, accelerate, brake, accelerate, brake.

And then when you end up playing racing games and, The gas pedals, it's not about, like, on or off.

It's the space in the middle.

Like, you're fighting it.

And you can feel it in the force feedback, right?

You can feel the grip.

Yeah.

So I'm so glad you're enjoying it because yeah, it's a completely different like gameplay experience situation when you're playing with a wheel, like your knee and then, and then you turn all the things down, you know, i mean all the safeties off, because because now you can feel them and i, you know, and then it becomes like this sort of it's almost like active reload or something.

It's this thing that you're constantly thinking about when you're also thinking about my driving line, my breaking point, you know all that sort of stuff.

It's raining.

These tires are getting dirty, you know, that type of thing, you know.

Yeah.

It's the, it's the most like immersive form of gaming I've ever played.

Like not counting like a DDR pad or like VR.

It's like, so like I'm locked.

And again, maybe it's from like coaching myself as driving, or I'm like I can't have all these fucking distracted.

I got to focus.

But like, yeah, I had to turn off ABS and all of a sudden I was like, oh, it's doing better.

And yeah, you're right about like like I was when I started playing.

I was just like all right, mass accelerator.

But it's like, oh no.

Like, so now when I'm turning.

So it's like forcing me to like, I'm getting better at these games.

It's like two steps back, but I'm going to have so many steps forward.

Exactly.

Yeah.

The ceiling is higher.

Yeah.

So the game that really taught me was like four.

So Forza Horizon might be the best.

So Forza Motorsport might be the best game because I can rewind.

Cause I am over steering.

I'm spinning all the time, but I'm rewinding and I'm getting it.

Gran Turismo doesn't have rewind.

So that's going to be like the hard mode, but there's license tests to teach you how to drive.

But when I was playing on Forza Motorsport, I still had to like Reduce.

Is that the range of sensitivity?

So like there's a range of sensitivity, I think by default they have, it says a 900.

I've been dialing it back to like 300, which is like the dreamcast Sega arcade preference.

So it's like, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have to steer that much to do it.

Like. because i can do y but i have so like i don't know i have so much crap in my desk i keep knocking stuff over so let me reduce it so playing forza has been teaching me and then as soon as i get first and hold that oh it's so like Yeah, it's Jeremy talks about friction.

It's like, oh my God, as opposed to now playing racing games on autopilot where I have like a podcast.

I'm just, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

Now it's like, oh, shit.

Oh, so intense.

The controller is vibrating.

If you over.

And I think it's like the it's like sensory recall of like when I hydroplane in my real car.

It's like, oh, shit.

Right.

Yeah.

You're in the threat of crashing into humans, whereas.

But, but the race wheel.

There's some of that sensory recall coming back to you where it's so.

It's so like do you have any?

Do you have any VR headsets?

No.

So now I'm like, crap, do I get a PSVR too?

If you get a PSVR too and play GT with a wheel in VR, that would be like, yeah, that's that. that now now you're now you're now it's like you're that's it man we'll never see you again the next spot because i also suddenly played half-life alex and someone told me you can get a pc adapter and connect it so i can do half-life oh cool people also said i think they're about to jailbreak the uh psvr2 where you can now do like eye track they're like the the scene and that is about to explode so I'm wondering, have the prices of that thing gone up as well?

Because it was already pretty bright.

It was like it's 400 box it yeah, and i feel like they dipped it a bit because like, i feel like the vr thing kind of died a bit, but yeah, maybe it's skyrocket.

You'll get a second hand one of those.

Or i can ask jordan joe.

I was just about to say i feel like jordan jones might have the hook on this 50 one that someone brought in the bathtub.

Best buy is selling them new right now for 320.

Oh my god okay, so They're clearly fucking getting rid of their stocks of those things because the boxes are pretty big for the cost.

Do you know what I mean?

For like a place like Best Buy that sells phones and like hard drives, especially now Jesus, like the PSVR2 box is actually like pretty big.

So they probably don't want to have them on stock.

That'd be good to keep an eye out for clearance.

And then another.

One other game that I found like a really good sweet spot was Wreckfest, which is like a 2018 game.

Wreckfest is great.

It's tremendous.

It's so fun on a race wheel.

Cause it's like, it's kind of a combination of rally, which I'm just getting into.

It's got the demo during me.

You can crash.

And it's funny.

They just put out Wreckfest 2.

It's in early access, which I might try on PC or wait for consoles.

But I'm like, oh, that's a 2025 game.

But then my brain is ticking of like, wait a minute.

Now I'm hyper-interested in playing any and all upcoming racing games.

So I feel like I'm even more well-equipped for our work here.

But I'm just like, oh my god.

But Wreckfest, I feel like, was the kind of thing where...

The handling is a little friendly.

It's a little arcadey.

It's pretty friendly.

You're feeling like the traction on the ground with all the dirt tracks.

When you jump I don't know if the wheel stops moving or whatever, but it's like I had the most fun kind of landing on that.

Forza's really good for learning it.

Wreckfest is fun.

I'm excited to try Gran Turismo.

Doing the Sega stuff is cool.

Crazy Taxi and all that.

So, yeah, this is just now my third day.

I'll try the PS5 adapter.

I'll keep doing it.

But I encourage people, like, yeah, in the comments, like, what are games I should try?

I downloaded F1 on the Xbox.

I might try.

So if I do that, I'm sure I can ask Danny questions.

You cannot break and turn at the same time.

The first piece of advice you need.

I mean, that's the case in lots of driving games, but in F1, more than anything else, you break straight.

And at the end of your break, you turn.

So don't drive into a corner and be like, here we go.

I'm going to drift around this because you're just going to go fucking straight, because you're going 180 kilometers an hour or whatever.

I was going to suggest picking up Project Cars, but I think both of them are gone from digital stores.

I can't find them anywhere.

I don't know, was that a thing that they got taken down off of stuff?

I don't.

It's not on steam, i don't.

Is it on anywhere else or is it on xbox somewhere?

I don't know where it is.

But yeah, those games were.

Project cars was fun, and then project cars 2 i played a lot of, and then i think three was the one that people didn't like maybe, but they were cool because they were very sandboxy.

That was just like.

It was kind of like what i wished gran turismo was for years.

Like project cars is like this track, these cars, this many people go you know what i mean like just fuck around, like sandboxy, kind of like racing stuff.

There was another D listed game was drive club on PlayStation four.

So yeah now, as part of my research, I've just been kind of thinking of any and all racing games, but yeah damn, there's no project cars.

But um the the uh, what is it?

Codemasters.

They have, they have all the rally stuff.

Yeah.

Dirt is basically, um, it's like SSX or Tony Hawk for rally games.

Like you should, yeah, those games are, are great.

They're very like, they got, got some great style to them.

Capital.

Oh, sorry.

Oh, how like an off-roading, like a snow runner would be with that.

Oh, I downloaded snow runner.

I downloaded snow runner, which I haven't played, but playing that with a race wheel sounds incredible.

Oh, I've never done that.

That's a good shout.

Like SnowRunner, MudRunner, that expedition game I played a decent amount of.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, oh, fucking download like American truck driving simulator.

Yeah, that should be there.

I'm so into that.

Oh my God.

Have you played that?

Yeah.

What's the vibe?

Is it just like getting places on time?

Is it the same thing Frank was talking last week about this? what was it?

Japanese train game.

Yeah.

The denture to go.

Yeah.

Which is just about like getting on time, not hitting anything.

Is that the whole vibe with those games?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like I would just put on my own music and just like literally pretend I'm driving a truck.

And then occasionally, I would have like a.

Okay, I'm just going to ram into this at high speed just to break the immersion for a second.

Then we'll just go back to the race.

Just to feel alive.

There's no cost to driving into other people or can you turn that off or something?

Yeah, you can turn down the penalties and stuff.

Okay, okay.

And you could just probably like save too and load.

Is there any like cool?

Like you have to stop at one of the special gas stations that has the showers for truckers.

None of that stuff?

I don't know.

I haven't played it in a while.

That's the trucking life I want.

Jeremy, there's a lot of those around this part of the world.

Do they have those on the East Coast at all?

Truck stops with showers.

Uh, I don't know.

I've done, it's weird because I have done way more of my road trips on the West coast.

Right.

Yeah.

Cause I I was like a kid, and then I moved to Boston for college and then I moved straight to California.

So by the time I was like an adult in the world, I lived in California.

Um, Yeah.

So now that the weather is finally getting nice, I want to do some road trips around here.

Cause even though I grew up here, I've done way less.

Where would you had like North?

Like you're, you're on the border, right?

You're pretty close to the border up there.

Yeah.

Um, although not that far.

Yeah.

I'd like to go up to, uh, I was looking at the, the green mountains in Vermont.

I'd like to explore a bit.

Um, I would like to go up to Acadia national park in Maine.

I've never been to one of the lesser remembered national parks. yeah it's although it is one of the most visited i think it's the it might be like the it's like in the top five most popular alongside yosemite it's weirdly popular i've been there it's really nice oh really oh you've been to acadia that's awesome i might have to hit you up for like recommendations while i'm up there um yeah i've been up to maine a million times i've just never been up that far um but uh yeah maine and vermont are kind of the two places i'd like to explore um vermont has a lot of cool shit going on there it's just driving around there in the winter in my shitty little truck would have been a nightmare oh yeah it gets legit snow up there right and maine yeah yeah and the forest roads like you can in the green mountains you can camp anywhere um oh cool like on the side of the road you can just pull off and camp but uh i don't want to get stuck out there in the green mountains and have to you know resort to cannibalism not again you know not only so many nightmares you can have before you know you can what was the game that had like the psychotic meter it was uh not darkest dungeon oh eternal darkness did as well yeah what was the one with the last is it the maiden denver it called it's like run based and they'd all go crazy oh darkest it was darkest dungeon yeah yeah okay yeah yeah yeah nice love it love it uh frank i was gonna ask did you ever play racing lagoon i feel like no so that that's a game yeah so racing lagoon was like a 1999 uh it's like a jdm rpg jdm rpg it got a recent fan translation like a year ago Um, and, uh, yeah, it's a game where you like, you have random and bad battle, random encounters on the streets.

You, you race them for parts.

You upgrade your thing.

I think the hub world really is like Yokohama Daigoku Plaza, which I want.

I didn't get to go on this, on this trip and maybe next time.

But yeah, and that's the game like the soundtrack's incredible.

And yeah, I just had a recent fan translation.

So it's popularity has been blowing up more and more.

But yeah, it's really cool.

It's pretty hard.

But but also I'm just so naive when it comes to picking car parts and stuff.

But the more I keep diving into this, hopefully I'm better at it.

But yeah, it's really cool.

I've always been curious about it because I am not a huge racing game guy, but I like racing when there's something attached to it that I enjoy.

Like.

Hence Diddy Kong Racing is the fucking touchdown for me, because I liked colorful adventure platformers as a kid.

But yeah, having it be in like a like parasite eve era squaresoft game, like i just look at screenshots of racing lagoon and i'm like this is the racing game i would play.

What a.

What a crazy name as well.

Apparently, it was hard to do a fan translation for this because it's written in a poetic manner and often features words written in english.

This accent, called lagoon go, has been cited as a challenge in creating fan translations.

Never heard of lagoon go.

Is that named after the game or is the game named after, i don't know?

Racing lagoon.

Racing lagoon and panzer dragoon should be in like a like a two-piece.

It's beautiful.

Yeah, there's a lot of games that have lagoon in the title and i am curious why.

Um, there's a lot of very weirdly named japanese racing games.

Um they, what was the name?

F1 dream, something.

They had this.

Oh my god, what the fuck was it called?

Oh, i'll have to come back to you on this, but there was this very strange japanese formula one.

Yeah, there is an F1 Dream game by Capcom, which that sounds cool.

What's it called?

Yeah, F1 Dream.

It's a 1988 Capcom game.

No, that's not it.

Although that's bizarre that that exists that I was talking about.

Fuck are those things called?

I'll have to find them somewhere.

Can anyone pad for a minute while I try to find this?

Yeah, I found a Reddit thread.

Why do so many games have Lagoon in the title?

Racing Lagoon, Lagoon, Bahamut Lagoon, Boarding School Black Lagoon.

Okay.

And no one has an answer.

People are just like, it just sounds cool.

It's a cool word.

That's true.

It is a cool sounding word word.

I swear to god i maybe use it once every four years.

Yeah, i don't see that many lagoons like a lagoon to me is a very specific geological like a.

Like i wouldn't just go in a body of water and be like this is a lagoon.

No, i'd probably like say oh, it's just like the water, or like a swimming pond.

Is a lagoon attached to the ocean?

What's the specific geological makeup of a lagoon?

Is it still water?

A lagoon is a shallow body of water separated from a larger body of water by a narrow landform, such as a reef islands, barrier peninsula or an isthmus.

That makes sense.

It's like a big tide pool, you know?

Yeah, it's like a lake in the ocean.

Yes, it is an ocean lake.

Lake in the ocean.

I like that.

Oh, Human Grand Prix F1 Dream Battle.

That's what it was.

That's a hell of a title.

Human Grand Prix.

Like, I think it's because it was made by like Human Entertainment.

Yeah, that's what it was.

Yeah, so there's a company called Human Entertainment that made a bunch of games and for some reason they decided to.

They didn't think it would be weird.

To call their game like Human.

Grand Prix is like an alien saying I'm Dave the human.

You know what I mean?

Human Grand Prix sounds like a marathon of just people running.

Human Grand Prix.

Yeah, you expect it to be like one of those Japanese digital.

You know the horse racing thing where the horses get long.

It's like that, but they're all riding people or something.

Human Grand Prix.

Yeah, like a human cannonball is like a guy in a cannonball.

Regular human Grand Prix.

It's like Kang and Otos have put on a Grand Prix.

Yeah, what are they hiding?

Exactly.

Second Simpsons reference of the day.

All right, that's all of our games this week.

Derelict Star, Frank's Racing Wheel Extravaganza, No Caps' Songs of Glimmerwick and Eastshade.

Some WoW Midnight discussion in there as well.

And of course, I am Jesus Christ.

Emails.

That's good.

We had so many emails.

Thank you.

We did a patron exclusive episode and we have so many more backed up so we can probably handle these over the next few weeks.

But please keep adding to the pot.

Email us podcast at noclip.video or on our Patreon Discord and the podcast chat channel.

Our first email comes from Bone Mold asking I'm asking you if you can remember the first game that had an emotional impact on you, that resonated with you for reasons beyond.

Yippee, this is so much fun.

I can still remember watching the ending cutscene of Twilight Princess as a kid, and my eyes filling with tears as I realized the story was over and Link and Midna would never see each other again.

Oh, man.

What a bummer.

What about you guys?

I would say Earthbound was probably the game that moved me the most as a child.

That and Final Fantasy 4 and 6.

I remember staying inside like an entire, like half of a summer to play Final Fantasy and just having to explain to my parents that I was in the middle of this, like emotional experience.

They're like it's fucking beautiful outside and i was like yeah, but like it's beautiful inside too.

Mom, that's beautiful.

Sorry um, i didn't say that, sir.

I wish i did, though i think it was in.

Oh, i'm trying to remember.

Is it call of duty or is it?

No, it's call of duty, it wasn't medal of honor um.

Storming of the Reichstag at the end of the Russia campaign.

When you get to the top with the flag, that was like that was one of those moments where I kind of realized how many people have to die to get one building.

Cause, like you play the, Is it the Stalingrad level, I think, at the start, where they send the guy in front of you?

They only have enough weapons for every other soldier.

So the guy in front of you gets a gun and a clip.

You get a clip.

And they're like, you pick up a gun when someone dies.

Like, that's what you do.

You're like, what?

And then, like you know, looking this stuff up on the internet afterwards and it being like true, like some guys were just sent in with flags, you know like way, here we go.

And then you're like no wonder, like russians lost you know what, 15 times more than any other uh country or whatever.

And i remember, i remember i was quite young i mean i was like 12 or something and i remember playing the, the call of duty, getting like kind of overwhelmed at like jesus christ, like this is war as hell.

You know, in this like chintzy video game situation but yeah, definitely had an effect.

No caps, you got any.

You got any emotional childhood moments with video games.

The first thing that I can think of like that wasn't just yeah, like video games jumping around is The Last of Us.

Just like seeing that a game could have like a dark story and like.

I feel like I didn't play that many games where you're like a human, like you're always like an animal or like whatever kind of character.

And so this came out like early high school for me.

Right.

Like, whoa, like this is really dark.

Yeah.

The start of it, like the whole way through as well, like the opening of that is pretty heavy.

And then obviously the ending is...

Very heavy.

And the whole way through the middle.

Kind of heavy, you know?

Good stuff.

Frank, did you answer?

No, I was trying to think.

Like I definitely cried playing Donkey Kong Country 2, but only because it was so hard and I couldn't beat it.

Like I definitely had emotional attachments to games as I got older with like Metal Gear Solid 3's ending with the boss was great and like Last of Us.

But like I was, And like my child and teen years, like i definitely had an emotional attachment to super mario world as that being like a very colorful and fun game.

And like the ending cut scene where you finally kill like bowser or baby bowser and then spoilers man.

And like you're going back with all the yoshi eggs and like now the castles are now yoshi homes.

Like i remember that being really cute.

But like, And then in teenage years I was just chaos with like WoW and Counter-Strike.

But like yeah, it really wasn't until like hitting some of emotional maturity was like oh, Metal Gear 3, oh The Boss oh, Last of Us.

But like yeah, in my childhood and teen years, like films is where I – and that maybe like got me.

But, like, yeah, I don't know.

But there was something sincere with like Super Mario World as a kid was like oh, this is like, I think just the – the palette of that Yoshi's Island actually, maybe.

Cause I, I think it's just the, from a like, yeah, visual emotional level.

It was like, oh, that is so soothing.

The palette for me.

But yeah, I don't think I had any like deeper emotional connections where I process story and cried over that until i was older and just more emotionally mature.

But yeah, something with like mario world and yoshi's island were like childhood sweet games of like oh, this is like kind of tender and cute in a way that.

Do they still remind you of being a kid?

Like if you play them now, do you go back there?

I think like Mario world.

Yeah.

And I think I thought that's why I kind of, I don't play much Nintendo games these days.

Cause it was like, Oh, that's like my childhood stuff.

I don't really crack it open.

It doesn't hit the same way.

Like Donkey Kong hit in a way of like, this is so fun, but I can turn it off and not care anymore.

You know, like, yeah, but yeah.

Whereas the Mario world and Yoshi's, on that specific like I can think of like street fighter, two ending cut scenes like that.

Like there's something like with the pixel art and music and like simplicity of it.

That's like like a childhood, like a like a childhood fairy book store.

You know like that, like that kind of like like.

Yeah, that animation of the guys in front of the building with the punch yes is like i'm, i am six, like it's just like there.

Immediately, it's amazing yoshi's island also.

There's something about like the, the aesthetic being so cutesy and then the premise is like a, like an abandoned baby mario, like taken in by all the yoshis.

It's just like.

I don't know, i found it it's very disarming and then it does, when it does, like tenderness or sincerity.

You're like oh, i was just like here for fucking yoshi and now i'm crying on my super nintendo.

How dare you?

Um, Another one.

Diablo 2 the cutscenes were so visceral and weird to me that it was this feeling that is pretty unmatched for me in games, very rarely matched of the thing that they talk about in Cosmic Horror and Lovecraft, where it's like you're not supposed to behold something.

Oh, right, yeah.

There's this, this scene, where the guy who's traveling with the wanderer like sees the wanderer like decloak with mephisto and um, the delivery of the guy, i don't know who did the fucking voice acting for that?

I'll have to look it up um, because i know a lot of voice acting in old games is like just devs and stuff.

Did you know like uh, just scratch track, like the thief guy remember i got the interview, the thief guy, and this is like one of the devs that he's like, oh you tougher or what.

Yeah yeah, and it's perfect.

Like it feels like more authentic sometimes than people try like do it, like i'm acting.

Um, that's what i was like, i'm jesus christ.

People like it's almost, it's all i was like just give it a go, give it a go yeah, that's what you know.

Just fucking have someone in the studio do it, uh.

But there's a line where he sees the wanderer decloak and he's like, He's like, what I saw there was not meant to be seen.

And you're like, oh, fuck.

Like, you could feel like, I don't know, like he saw something that's not supposed to be seen.

And you know, I mean, I still think those cut scenes look great, but obviously they're like dated and weird.

Dude, some of the scariest cut scenes are the old ones.

I remember the intro to Shadow of the Beast, too.

Still freaks me the fuck out.

That was like... that was like, it's like a baby gets stolen by this bat creature.

And it's like in the middle of like, you know, the dark ages or something.

And like this mom screaming and like the, the, the like digital voice.

Cause you couldn't do voices on the Amiga.

So like it's like this, like this, like a sonic attack of this person, this woman it's, and he used to scare the shit out of me.

Even now I watch it.

It's like haunting.

It just makes me feel terrified again, like I was a kid.

Yeah, the audio thing is an interesting thing that I rarely think about, because usually I think about like pixel art or low resolution, low poly graphics, and how the abstraction lets your imagination fill it in and it makes things more horrifying.

But with audio to high fidelity audio has the same effect where it's like.

Oh, that sounds like someone slapping a steak against a concrete wall or whatever.

But back in the day, it was so fucking crunchy and weird.

It was like the Pokemon screams are so fucking iconic because they're just like these fucking two bits rubbing together.

Or the sound of the players in... nfl hitting each other or speedball yeah it's just like you know what i mean like it's uncanny in a fucking very memorable way sore you know it's like a lot of there's a lot going on there nice one good question bone molds thank you so much and thank you for your battle past patronage as well how about this one from steven yes steven asks depending on your opinion walk this way by run dmc and aerosmith is one of the best ever music genre mashups which games for you have the best genre mashups ragged league oh yeah ragged league that's a strong one for me sock car uh yeah i mean yeah it's a racing game it's a it's a football game it's Pretty undefeated in that respect.

I think I still have, like, on my YouTube channel, the day it came out, I just did a stream of it.

And I think I have the journey of... oh fuck, this is really good.

You know it's like this is.

Let's see what this football car game is like to like.

Oh shit, this is brilliant.

What?

It's not even like, it's like, it's better than I thought.

Oh wait, it's really good.

Oh my God, I'm going to play this for the next, you know, fucking 500 hours.

Yeah, that's the first one that comes to mind for me anyway.

What about you folks?

That kind of reminds me of how I felt about like Twisted Metal Black when I was like I don't know the perfect age for it, like 12 years old.

Because, like generation before, on N64, I loved Mario Kart 64 and GoldenEye and i just didn't play twist the metal on ps1.

But then ps2, it's like all right, you got mario kart, you're driving around, and then gold, now you're just blowing people up with guns and it's like oh, this is awesome and like no.

I thought you said golden axe first.

Oh no, i was thinking that that's a game.

I want to play a driving.

Beat him driving golden axe game.

I want to be the little fucker with the, the little imp with the bag.

You know what i mean.

Maybe he's the Latiku of uh, of golden ax racer.

Um, and then, uh, I twist them.

I'll never like scratched it before or after.

Um, but then separately.

This is like more, more complex systems, but honestly like persona, I mean, you can pick like three, four or five, how it like blends, JRPG stuff, but then also, like I mostly hate, like sim stuff or stuff like that.

But, like, social sim, dating sim stuff is, like, oh, this is cool.

Because dating sims all the way is, like, too hard, too complex or whatever.

But, like, Persona is, like, it's, like, sim light, life sim light stuff.

And then the JRPG stuff is, you can go nuts with it.

And I play on easy, so it's very easy.

But those are two complex genres, and Persona makes them super palatable.

Yeah yeah, this is a tough question to just like think of answers, because it's so specific.

Inscription is one that comes to mind um, i slay the spire was sort of the first deck builder, or like something about cards and video games.

I'm like why, like don't i play video games to not play card games?

Uh, is my mentality for a long time, for some reason like it felt like it was like um, It's like playing a video game version of chess.

Right, yeah.

This isn't a video game.

It's a game of life or something or life.

You call it life over here, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

Inscription, doing it sort of like elevated the cards, because in the game it's not like a game with cards in it as mechanics.

It's like a you're playing with physical cards in the game with like a guy in a room.

It feels very um, it embraces the card thing as a premise, rather than like slay the spire, you're not like.

You don't walk into a room and a guy's like oh, let me take you to the spire and like deals cards out to you.

You know what i mean.

Yeah yeah, the cards are just there.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

Yeah, like games that have I guess there's a lot of these like two part games, which I don't know if they're mashups necessarily, but like things like Cult of the Lamb and Day of the Diver.

You know where there's like there's the going out part and then the staying home part.

I don't know if I necessarily call that a genre mashup, so much as that.

That game has two different games or two different genres in it.

You know, it's not a melding of the two necessarily.

But that's been an interesting thing to see people like kind of keep the game simple, but just add variability in that respect or add like sort of pacing, you know, to it instead of having like, oh, here is like a like a. exploration dungeon crawler like call to the lamb and then they have to put in like sort of quiet moments in that to try and keep the pacing whereas yeah just the idea of like creating an entirely new set of systems outside of that that then they sort of speak to each other and handshake each other is that's kind of an it's a new game design thing i think we've seen over the past whatever five six years that has sort of emerged you know it's it's sort of like a um it's like speaking of someone who you know like six years ago had never done a line of code and then over the last five years has learned a lot of game design it is funny to see how you your impulse as a like a neophyte game designer or an amateur is to be like oh what if it was like this game and this game combined and that's like the ultimate game idea is two things you love yes but then you realize in the in the combination of two things you love it creates a new third thing that often loses what's special about those other two well i like omelets and i love pop tarts so yes so a strawberry pop tart omelet would be the best food ever and then you make it and you're like this fucking sucks i wish i had it isn't omelets and pop tarts which is yeah right maybe that's the way to do it is like you know is make both games and stick them together somehow my my friend keeps talking about the idea of making an indie game that has the both dd the ddr dance pad and a racing wheel oh my god that's so overwhelming right but the idea of like just use every peripheral or maybe you have to drive band drums stick them in there the we fit fucking boards donkey kong bongo controller trans vibrator everyone went quiet when i said that like i made i made some sort of sex crime or something i didn't know the reference you know the trans vibrator that wasn't like sold.

Oh yeah.

They had that like, like, yeah, it's like a suit you wear when you play res.

I'm not a sex pest.

I swear.

I've never, I never heard the trans vibrator.

Yeah.

You could.

You could get in it in like show floors, which the idea of getting in like a full body suit, that's been on a show floor.

Like I'm already weird about like using VR headsets that have been at show floors.

But yeah, the trans vibrator man, it's like chain mail.

Yeah.

You could feel the game pulsing through you.

Okay.

Now I am starting to sound like a bit of a sex.

Um, you could wear that.

Yeah.

What's the most, what's the most obscure, the donkey conga bongos.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Hell yeah.

That'd be a good time.

What's the weirdest one?

There's all those like weird third party ones that like don't actually work.

Like, remember there was that one, Jeremy, there was one that was in GameSpot.

It was like a gun with like four tripod legs stuck to it.

Do you remember that?

God, it was so fucking weird.

I forget.

I think Gerstmann held onto it because, like everyone wanted to throw it away and it probably should have been thrown away, but it was like it was like a big ball sort of like, and then it had like four like points of articulation coming out that could bend, and on the end of them was a gun and And you could basically move the gun around and like the points.

Do you remember that thing?

Yeah.

What the fuck was that thing?

I have no idea.

It was like a way of playing FP, but it was like some third party thing for PC that like clearly never took off, but they just had it there.

It was the most insane thing I've ever seen.

I've seen ones where it's like for VR.

It's like almost like um I forget what it is, but for a VR setup It's like for playing Counter-Strike in VR or something where it's like you're walking on like a.

It's like a 360 degree.

Oh yeah, those things.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The track pads, you run on them, right?

Yeah.

And it like holds you, it like hugs your middle.

So you're like floating.

You just like run and walk in like 360 degrees.

But for like, so you can strafe while playing, it seems so unreasonable.

I remember working at GameSpot.

That was like the era, because I started GameSpot in 2013.

I feel like that was the era when VR was sort of just initially showing up more popularly.

And every CES and E3, there was like a thousand peripheral companies that were like this is the infinite treadmill, this is like the fucking.

You walk on a giant like trackpad mouse ball while you play.

Yeah um, everyone was trying to get in on the like running in your living room infinitely.

Yeah, there was a lot of that weird stuff and it always terrifies me because i always think, like all you need is for that thing to stop, like the the, the gyro in it to just go for a second, and you are.

You are falling over in a machine in your house.

You know, like with no, like you've ever seen those videos of people in VR like jumping for real?

Like you give granddad the VR headset and then he like runs into a wall.

You've seen those, yeah.

Or like there's one where there's like a plank game that you, you know you're, you're wearing the headset, you're like standing on a plank between the twin towers or something i don't fucking know, and then, like i said, you know, so i've seen people like granny on that and then she like falls off and then, like in real life goes ah, like holds her body and breaks her hip.

You know, there's All that stuff.

I'm not sure they're a good idea.

I can't find this video game gun controller thing.

I'm going to text Jeff and see if he remembers what it was.

The one that came to mind for me was the Wii frying pan for, I think, Cooking Mama.

Oh, my God.

I've never seen this.

It's completely unnecessary.

I don't think I know that.

I don't think I... Wii frying pan?

That's bizarre.

Wii has a lot of them.

I used to work in a store when the Wii was out and we did have a lot of third-party stuff, but I don't think I ever saw.

Oh yeah, look at it.

It's a frying pan or spatula.

Yeah, there was a.

There was a lot of these in that era where, because the wii controller was a motion control, it was just like a plastic housing in the shape of different stuff.

There was like a million of these, but i'm like most of them didn't do anything, it just went on the end of the controller.

Because, you know, your human imagination is is limited, I guess.

Oh, yeah.

You could probably get, like, a Zelda sword.

Yeah, you just have a giant blade at the end or something.

You want to ask the next question while I spam Gerstmann?

Yes.

Let me see.

Okay.

Ken Gold asks, challenging docs.

Dear Noclip crew, I just finished the final part of your Disco Elysium series.

You guys often create docs for games that aren't in my wheelhouse, but I was blown away by the depth of the story and the incredible job you did telling it.

I had many feelings by the end, but one in particular stuck out.

This doc seemed really hard to make.

Has there ever been a project you've worked on more challenging than Disco Elysium?

Uh, it was challenging for a number of reasons.

Like it was challenging to organize in the first place.

It was challenging to edit as Jeremy can attest to.

It was challenging to yeah, like tell the right version of the story, and to contextualize everything and to um Yeah, it was really hard.

I don't know.

I think maybe for me, the Dwarf Fortress one was harder.

I think that was because there was no clear.

You could we could tell what the sort of general order of the episodes was.

But Dwarf Fortress was recorded over so many years and was people don't know that story, like people know the disco elysium story.

It's just that we're giving more detail and we're talking about process and aspects of the game's production on a more detailed level, where dwarf fortress was telling a new story that people didn't know.

So to me i think that was probably harder, and we did two of them last year.

Well we, within a year of each other.

So gonna tell some simple stories for the next couple months, fucking chill out a little bit.

I mean, the cyberpunk doc that's coming up is also, it's like, a lot of interviews um, so that'll be, that'll be tricky, but uh yeah Jeremy, what was the hardest one you've worked on?

Obviously you worked in a sort of uh many capacities over the years, editing more recently, but you know, filming everything for the first, god knows how long six, seven years six yeah, god damn it.

Um, i think, editing.

Editing the black mesa one, oh yeah, because it was a lot of hyper specific things and it was bouncing.

Frank did an amazing job labeling all the footage, but there's only so much you can do to.

You know, be like all right at 32 seconds is a great headcrab moment and then it's like okay, but i need like a headcrab coming from like 30 degrees to the right to match this shot.

You know um, that was that one was very like specific and technical.

Um, The Disco Elysium one, I think was difficult because the opening of it obviously changed a lot from the Omega cut that I sent you into the series you made it into.

But the opening sort of like 30 something minutes of it was talking about a stone.

You did a great job.

Yeah.

Video games mostly.

And so it was a lot of just going to like archiveorg and YouTube and all sorts of places and just looking up like, um you know, archival pictures of communists.

Yeah.

Just Googling like Estonia and sorting by video.

Oh dude.

Yeah.

You, you got.

It's like the opening shot of the doc is him mentioning the region outside of of talon that he's from, and it literally goes from a map of estonia to that place that he mentions.

And i was like like mustama, and i was like how the fuck did you find that?

I was like, and it totally like yeah, oh yeah yeah, that was amazing work.

That's always the tricky thing with if someone is just like um yeah, we like played this game and then we worked on this game.

We were inspired by these games.

You just fucking download.

It's the easiest b-roll in the world like, like every other form of documentary filmmaking, maybe like i don't know, television or something what might be easy too.

But man, we just have unlimited b-roll whenever we want, you know, except when we're talking about, you know, post-soviet estonia Yeah.

Yeah.

And then he talks about like, you know, his father, who was an artist in Estonia.

And it's like, fuck, I hope there's footage of him.

Yeah, exactly.

Thankfully, there was.

Yeah, that was good stuff.

Let's do one more email.

Frank, we'll keep a couple of the recipes for next week.

Um, let's go with this one.

Peter says oh sorry, patter.

Patter says gaming one year behind, slightly at odds with noclip2's mission and computer worlds.

But is there any real reason why i shouldn't just game exactly one year behind the industry?

I crave full-throated recommendations of games.

I know i'll want to finish.

I'm not really a demo guy or a play and see guy.

End of the year discussions and top tens from MinMax, you guys, et cetera, have become an incredible source for that.

The few things that really bubble up.

I'm currently playing Angeline Era.

What if I just play old stuff this year and then next January start playing the best games from 2026, but cheaper?

I think it's not a bad.

I mean it does fly in the face of us saying like support devs and support games when they come out, but like kind of sounds fun.

Yeah.

I think it's a good idea.

Yeah.

I totally agree.

You almost want to do it?

I almost wish that, like I feel, like I'm like split, like part of me, like needs to keep up with every single thing ever coming out, just so that I don't miss the one big thing, even though, like I, if it was meant for me to play it, I would have found it eventually.

And then the other part is like when I'm playing games that aren't for work, I have to specifically pick out things that I'm like I'm not going to talk about in a video.

I'm just going to play it for me.

But then maybe, actually maybe, I could put it in a video.

But I kind of created this problem for myself, I guess, by just getting into this.

And I started out by being like I want to talk about these games that are aren't even out yet and no one knows about them.

And no one's talking about them because they're not out, but like oh, they uploaded a new trailer, they put this post up, so I'm going to analyze this.

And then it just became this compulsive obsession, and I check Steam.

I literally check Steam every day.

Not the new... like and popular, but just all the new games.

Like I scroll through that every day and I hate it and there's never anything good in there, but like sometimes there is.

So I would love to game one year behind and just like turn off the internet.

Yeah.

I feel like what you're talking about is, like every games journalist or reporter has had this exact like, uh like crisis of consciousness or crisis of of faith in the.

Have I chosen the right path?

Because yeah, I basically sort of workified my main form of entertainment, you know, made a process out of it.

Honestly like, because i used to teach film, i couldn't enjoy movies for a while because i was like like, even like i would sit down and watch movie in theaters and all i would think about was like how they're editing it, because i had just like it was con.

I was in premiere all the time with students and stuff and i just like i couldn't enjoy movies.

I worked in a movie theater so we had to like this is what this film is.

This film nowadays i watch mostly.

I mean, i'll go.

I just saw um Uh, the drama in theaters with my mom and her friend.

It was great, but it's like yeah, I'm not worried about like, I'll just see movies when I see them usually.

And it's like oh, it's and I'm not even trying to keep up the psych like the Oscars happened, came and went, but it was like oh, I'm just kind of outside that zeitgeist.

And that's awesome.

It's so, it's like, oh, this is so great.

Yeah, I have that relationship to movies as well, because there's a weird phenomenon with media in general, which this email kind of alludes to, which is that when things come out, people are sort of excited about them because they're new and exciting.

And then, like, I don't watch any new movies the year they come out.

I wait because if in a year people are still talking about a movie, I know that it is something that is worth my time.

Whereas, like Sometimes, I'll see the new movie everyone's talking about and I'll be like I guess that was OK.

And I'll never think about it again and I'll never hear anyone mention it again.

So there is sort of a like a new shiny appeal to media when it comes out that you don't you don't understand the staying power things have.

Until, uh, it's like that interview with, um... Who is it?

It's the fucking Nick Raffin and, uh...

Fuck, who's the guy?

Frank knows what I'm talking about.

William Friedkin, I think.

Is there a gas leak in here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Reffin is like.

He's like.

Yeah, I think Drive is, like you know, one of the greatest movies of all time.

Saying that about his own movie.

And Friedkin's like, have you lost your fucking mind?

He's like, we won't know if Drive's a good movie for 20 years.

Yeah, right, yeah.

Yeah, I kind of feel that way about media in general.

Man, oh man, good question.

Yeah yeah, all right, let's call it a podcast right there.

Um, thank you so much for listening.

We will be back next week with more video game stuff.

Uh, on the no clip and no clip two sides obviously, disco elysium series is now totally out.

Uh, over.

On no clip two, we have the songs of glimmer wick preview.

We also should have the video.

Uh, our latest.

Um, We're figuring out a name for this but, like you know, no clips, game recommendation zine or something.

It's like our our, our collective video, where we all chip in and talk about games that recently came out that we um, we want to recommend.

Um, We also have Frank's discovering the, I guess, unknown world of video, like arcade racing games in Japan, which is so fascinating.

It has so many different aspects of car culture and arcade culture in it.

Definitely check that out.

We're going to have new episodes of Metal Garasha going up.

I'm also posting a one hour I think it's one hour 45 minute cut of Alexander Rostov from the Disco Elysium series.

People were like, Oh, I'm so sad the series is over.

I just listened to Rostov talk all day.

Well, now you can.

I'm uploading almost the entire thing.

I had to trim out some parts because he had bathroom breaks and we drank coffee and talked about family stuff at parts.

But yeah otherwise, the whole whole part, the whole thing is in there um, so you can go check that out.

Uh patron show should be up by now as well.

Um, and uh probably have another couple of bits and bobs i uh i haven't thought of, so yeah, loads hitting the site uh, the various youtube channels and also various patrons.

So thank you all so much for uh supporting our work.

Patreoncom slash noclip, patreoncom slash noclip2 and uh yeah, we'll be back next week with more uh video game chat and who knows, i might still be jesus.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 275: Racing Wheels, WoW Endgame, and the Oddity of Religious Gaming]-[Songs of Glimmerwick, I Am Jesus Christ, Derelict Star]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 275: A Deep Dive into Gaming Habits and Hobbies

The World of Warcraft Addiction Cycle

Racing Games and the "Trap" of Hardware

Exploring Magical Life Sims: Songs of Glimmerwick

The Bizarre Reality of "I Am Jesus Christ"

Reflections on Gaming History

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 275: Racing Wheels, WoW Endgame, and the Oddity of Religious Gaming]-[Songs of Glimmerwick, I Am Jesus Christ, Derelict Star]

📋 Summary

Noclip Podcast Episode 275: A Deep Dive into Gaming Habits and Hobbies

The World of Warcraft Addiction Cycle

Racing Games and the "Trap" of Hardware

Exploring Magical Life Sims: Songs of Glimmerwick

The Bizarre Reality of "I Am Jesus Christ"

Reflections on Gaming History

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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