Hey everybody, it's Tuesday, March 4th, 2025.
Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 880.
I'm your host, J .N .O.
Choa, and I want your soul.
I want you to be mine.
I feel the goosebumps, baby.
I feel it in these arms. The mana is flowing through me because of these gentlemen assigned, not assigned, sitting next to me, virtually next to my soul, and I need yours.
Co -captain of the ship is also here, Jeff Grant.
Howdy. Howdy, everybody.
Are Canadians bad at counting down from 10 or are wrestling fans bad at counting down from 10?
Why was the counting down?
Were you talking about a rumble?
They could not keep in time during an elimination chamber.
They would start on time and then by the end, they were saying like one and it would still be saying like three because they were counting too fast. It's like when Cesaro would do the swing and then he would swing five times and people would count to, you know, 20.
Yeah, yeah. People, they were just bad at counting.
So it's wrestling fans.
It's wrestling fans.
That's a problem. That's a whiteness thing, says Nikki in chat.
Our man on the street, talking all things numbers.
He's counting with the folks at home.
He may or may not have figured out that count from Sesame Street is about counting.
No, let me be clear here.
I knew he was about counting.
I did not realize it was a Count Dracula.
Hanson explained the Count Dracula thing while we were watching Elimination Chamber and I was like, oh, that's incredible.
He counted. That's obvious.
why are counts called counts it's like a honorific yeah but like for like what are they in charge of I bet I know I bet I know what they're counting go for it no no no no no no no no no we haven't introduced you yet yes you can't I'm pretty sure it would I'm just guessing honestly the county are they in charge of a county like in the way that a Dutch like a duke is in charge of a duchy is it a wine thing and And our own Travis Scott.
He's got the Rage Sage.
The Rock is bringing him out at WrestleMania.
He's going to punch Cody Rhodes a little too hard in the head.
Mike Minotti. It's still real to me.
Damn it. Hello. It's me.
It's Mike Minotti. So tell me about counts.
Why do you think counts are counts?
Well, I mean, count is definitely just, like, another word for a lord or something like that.
So of a manor of a castle, right?
What? Well, yeah. But why do they have a castle?
Because they're rich. OK, that's you could just have a castle because you're rich. Often, though, you're given it by the government in the olden times.
And it's because you are the lord of that area and you have governmental responsibilities and report to the king.
I was thinking about castles a lot yesterday because Grubb kept talking about entrapment.
Sure. Is there a castle in entrapment?
Oh yeah they're sneaking into a castle with lasers Oh yeah Okay Oh is that the butt laser movie It's the butt laser If you say what is the butt laser movie On like Jeopardy the answer is what is Entrapment I bet if you google butt laser movie I'm certain Entrapment There's no way it's not just image search Butt laser movie I know exactly what you're saying Human centipede came up real First It's mostly human centipede Are there lasers in that movie?
I suppose they did not count the human centipede What if you added in quotes Catherine Zeta Jones I mean that's just the movie Was she in human centipede?
I have not seen it No Man what a weird movie I watched a flick last night Where It's called The Gorge And Miles Teller With Kilometer Teller yes yes a kilometer teller and anya taylor joy they're guarding a gorge and it's bad stuff in the gorge it was it was one of those movies okay you said gorge but i kept hearing my brain gourd i'm like what do you mean they're guarding like a pumpkin yeah like just some squash i might have enjoyed that more to be honest is linus gonna come and like expect gifts from it or something what's the issue gourd is a good word right that's a fun gourd absolutely Yeah,
it's a top -ten word, maybe.
Just rounded sound.
Yeah, yeah. Word. Into it, then you have the commissioner from Batman.
Word. Hey, how many syllables are in the word gourd?
One. One. One? Yes.
Gourd. Just one. Just one.
Gourd. Open shot. This is not going to be a thing.
Open shot. It's one syllable.
Open shot. I've thought way too much about the oil one.
The oil one is two.
Yes. Fire. It's two.
Okay, fire might be two.
In a lot of places, it's one, but it's two.
It's two, the way I say it.
because if i were to yell fire that's two that's definitely yeah yeah yeah uh how's everyone doing how's everyone going it's a tuesday it's a it's a jeff grubb it's very dark where you're at yeah my my elgato key lights power supply tried to kill me uh okay so i am in shock from the wall let me kill you well it just got very very very hot uh and stopped working so i'm assuming something in there went bad and they're like after it stopped working it didn't stop getting getting hot so i'm like oh eventually this thing is going to just catch on fire so i pulled it out of the wall and we're good now
safe but it's dark and i'm scared it's incredible that there's not just a switch to turn it on yeah i mean that's a whole other thing right where it's like there is a switch to turn it on but then it turns off immediately until you then go to a computer yeah it's really stupid oh i am i bought a pizza steel yesterday and then i never felt more swindled in in my life that this is just like a piece of metal that i'm gonna stick in my steely like uh the thing in indiana jones he was finding oh that's a cooking thing yes cooking thing i i bought the newest oh sorry jen go ahead no no no please i want
to hear i was just saying i i caught on to the latest trend i learned about in culinary arts from mike minotti the cast iron pan pan that's a fad the new trendy thing cast iron i was like i mean i forgot i said that i was like what are you talking about you said that to a professional chef and he roundly mocked you for it no all i was saying was that they were getting like really glazed up for a bit there of course cast iron pans are always seasoning a pan hands mike it's not glazing you wouldn't glaze yeah come on actually i've been learning about the seasoning and stuff yeah because now i'm
doing i've been doing all the cooking stuff and i always to beat the chicken and they're like oh you can sear it i was like that seems like a whole lot to do just to you know oh you're just eating unseared i was and it's fine it's not bad but i am searing now i don't sear it if i'm like putting them into tacos or something like that if i'm just like shredding it up i don't see it but i've started searing it with some canola oil and stuff in a cast iron pan before i make it i made some parmesan green beans look at that you want the new oil wait what i'm sorry go ahead jen no you unlocked the new
oil dan first it was just olive then avocado now you're a canola well no because olive has a lower smoke point so the thing is who the fuck are you it's true that's actually right what have you done my curiosity knows no bounds jan you should know that's what they say yeah you have a lot of like a lot of like history like seasoning things you have that shoebox you seasoned the hell out of Yeah I just can't afford a cast iron Pan now the hot new stuff That chicken you weren't searing Did it have the skin on still I do boneless skinless Okay then that's fine If you weren't searing skin on chicken
that would be crazy Oh uh no no I haven't done that just I'm sure it's better with skin on But it's also a lot more calories I never get the skin on one and everyone's like the skin's the best part I'm like maybe you're right it's also the hardest part To cook and like the part that's maybe not as Healthy for you anyways Here's what you do boys You get the skin chicken breasts And you rip the skin off You throw the skin in an air fryer That up Make your own little chicken skins Is that what crackling is?
Is crackling just like fried animal skin?
I think so for the most part Don't quote me on that I did get an ad for Buc -ee's I don't think there's any Buc -ee's around me They just sell the fried chicken skins That's just the shoot chicken skins fried i mean pork rinds is just fried uh right pig skin yeah um i i saw a story about bucknees today apparently they were gonna build the first one here later this year and now it got moved back to 2026 now i don't know where in ohio but i hope near me because i i went to uh the new loves that they open up here and it was like i had an amazing time there i almost like i almost wished i was a trucker
the vibes were so good it's good yeah i'm like i i walk into a place like loves and i'm like i walk i go to the bathroom and then i see the other hallway that's like a shower it's like really clean showers yeah i want to take a shower at a gas station i know i don't know why i think that but i really do there's like a pa system saying when like number 44 yeah your turn to use the shower i'm like this is lucky i think there is a novelty to uh to like showering in a place that you normally don't like i feel that way like airport lounges like when i was flying back from tokyo i was there like four
hours early and there were just like showers in the lounge and i was like do i just want to take a shower at the airport before i get on that's crazy yeah yeah and like some planes and stuff if you're depending on like what class and stuff you can shower like each passenger could like get one shower during the flight i've never done that but yeah in the 787 kind of have that yeah i don't know if i want a plane shower that's a lot of water that has to be on the planes to shower it's more limited they limit it by time and again each Each person only gets one, and obviously not everyone does it.
What if we just banked our time together?
That might be frowned upon, too.
Who? If we're in first class, anything goes.
Clemenos is next to godliness.
Are you saying we should shower together?
Yes. Well, I don't want to.
The gas station is like the new meta.
Have you guys been to a Walmart recently?
Shockingly, no. I don't have any near me.
Okay, I went to the Walmart the other day, and the first thing you're greeted with now is a small, like, it's basically a gas station inside a Walmart.
It is like a small, quick convenience where it's like several rows of energy drinks, water, Gatorade, snacks, the kind of stuff you would see in a gas station.
And I'm like, this rules.
I'm so excited. In a store?
I mean, it just feels that way.
It just feels like they took the aisles from a gas station and copied and pasted it inside of a Walmart.
Just putting all the essentials right away, right?
do they have dedicated like checkers there's like a dedicated checkout or like self -service no but it's right it's right next to the into the self -checkout so it's just like too far from the entrance anyway it's adjacent to that yeah so it was just like oh they've been this is like you know psychology apparently men really like gas stations so i think they're just like we're gonna put this here for them so they can like have the you know maybe spend a little bit more money remember how like the entertainment sections of like the walmarts and targets used to kind of be walled gardens it was kind
of a store in the store you could only go in and out one way and there was a separate checkout for it they made that feel real special you don't remember it, Jan?
I don't have a Walmart near me well, it's not just Walmart Target had that, Toys R Us had the whole different thing where it was just the weird game window Toys R Us, for sure all the tickets Menotti, when we went to the Toys R Us here at the Mall of America they didn't have that that but it seems like they had no physical games they had no video games like they were only like we can't sell videos anymore nobody nobody buys video games at stores we just have to sell shoot toys because you can't download lego yet that's right hey um your question for y 'all i went to a speak since we're talking about big
box stores i went to a costco over the weekend yeah um and say hey we're costco guys here oh yeah I've never been to a Costco.
Double chocolate cookie chunks.
Chocolate chunk double chip or something.
Is that what he says?
Double chunk chocolate cookie.
There it is. And say you are the person scanning the items. Generally at a Costco, you'll load some items on the conveyor belt, and then you put the cart behind the cashier, and they'll scan the items, right?
Yep, yep. What would you do if there's just a child that won't move and is still in the cart but there are items covering the child?
Wait. Wait. Say this again?
You are a Costco cashier.
I'm working at Costco.
I got the beeper. I'm okay.
Right? And then like there's a bunch of items in a cart that are covering a child that will not move.
Wait. The items are covering the child or the child is covering the items?
The items are covering the child.
and the child's not moving because the child is on an ipad oh calling protective services oh my god yes please let this focus this sounds insane what the fuck i mean there's a it's a baby under there no that's like a like a six -year -old what wait how where's the where's the six -year -old six -year -old's head is it underneath the toilet paper there yeah oh my god Oh, God.
I mean, listen, we all love to be crushed.
I mean, come on. I get it.
You know, I've never understood you two more than just now.
I was like, this is just normal Ohio stuff to me.
Yeah. Of course, Jed, I've never been to a Walmart and shocked to see this.
He had never thrown a kid into a basket in a cart and just like you know, whatever happens, happens.
happens the coastal elite in me is this like because like i used to be the one to always like if we're going to the bar and we had a full car in college i was always the one to be like i'll ride in the trunk and i would just get like in the trunk shut it and it's just a fun little like cozy like this is my little trunk spot um is it like that feeling like anti -clastrophobia yeah okay i definitely like uh recently been like i'm gonna pull the blanket around me pretty tight and get like really tight i think it's kind of like that just like outside pressure pushing in on you your body always pushing
out i do think kids have gotten like really bad at like walking around in crowded spaces like my brother's nine -year -olds even they're nine he's like i can't just let them walk around in a target still they just trip all over themselves and bump into things they still can't handle it yeah i think we should be dancing more as a society i think this would solve a lot of more things like i get a footloose going up in here yeah let's let's add a little bit of whimsy uh speaking about whimsy you know it's whimsical games yes mike minotti why what's he win got it at one can you imagine if i said something
like uh now ribbon dancing would be it is whimsical um so yeah video games mike minotti you win uh the ability to talk about the first game today and that is uh we've talked about this a lot on this website actually uh the The Thing Remastered.
Yeah, I played through my fundishment from one Jeff Grubb, who is the superior hole digger.
I'm a hole digger. Kind of the superior giant mole dodger, to be honest. But whatever the reason, he won, so he had all of us play The Thing Remastered.
I played through it in two settings.
It's nice to have a good two setting game, by the way.
But yeah, this was originally PS2, original Xbox era, kind of mix of an action game with Survival Horror.
Got remastered by Night Dive recently.
We talked about it a bit but I really did enjoy this game.
I have so much love for that era anyways.
And you know, Dan, it's kind of like when I was watching you play Psy Ops yesterday on Riker's Roulette.
I love these PS2 era games that are doing something pretty interesting that even games today are still kind of trying to do maybe as well or maybe even just half as well and the thing has some interesting ai squadron stuff with people freaking out and worrying like oh the thing's gonna get me so you have to calm them down by giving them a weapon or giving them a shot of adrenaline or giving yourself a blood test to show that you're not the thing yeah exactly like all that stuff is uh is is really neat and there are some areas where it was kind of puzzly like there's this one level where you get
captured and you lose all your guns and there's a very specific sequence you sort of need to do of, okay, I got to dodge the thing and get the medic and then dodge the thing again and go to this other place and then the medic can use his gun.
I lured the thing into the medic room and locked him in there so I didn't have to miss.
I sucked at that part.
There's a lot of stealth involved there.
That was definitely the hardest part of the game to be clear.
That took me the longest time.
Would this be the weirdest game to race in?
Oh, yeah. It would be a weird one.
yeah it would be a very weird i also kind of want to see how all four of us would problem solve like the thing at the same time i feel like a weirder game maybe like papers please would be a weird race game i mean aside from that one situation you do mostly just shoot the thing uh like the game's pretty generous with ammo and things like that it's like the survival horror element of it it's not like a resident evil or a classic resident evil right um sometimes it is more about your squad uh and just telling them what to do it is funny like because just like in one of these games your squad members
never survive very long either they'll get turned into a thing like you're supposed to test them to be see if they're the thing sometimes if you want to i kind of never really bothered with that much because like they're still useful if they're pretending to be a thing once they turn into a thing it's pretty easy to kill them real quick yeah i just kept them around until they freaked out and then i just flamethrowered them we we talked about the thing remastered a bunch in uh during revengeance i have a question for you too and grub you as well what developer studio would you trust with a game
like the thing now now you know what i i know this is a lofty one but like looking at what rockstar did with the warriors where it's like the rock star is obviously a a big team that has a lot of of reverence for movies and music and things like that and i feel like i would trust them if they cared enough to make a game based on a movie they're gonna do it right like the warriors game was like that's kind of what you would want a warriors game to be like so maybe then okay um i mean obviously the alien hot uh the alien isolation people at creative assembly could do something there right uh probably
randy pitchford and the alien colonials marines there you go you're right i had the wrong alien game yeah that wrong one now you look like a real asshole.
I'm a big stupid dumb dumb.
Who's the Saber Interactive?
It's kind of, I think, a realistic one that I think would be pretty good at this.
They do a John Carpenter game?
They're doing a bunch of games.
They might be. They're doing a Jurassic Park game that we haven't seen since they announced it, but it looks really cool in the announcement.
Yeah, it looked neat.
Yes. They did Space Marine and Evil Dead, the game, and all that stuff.
Yeah. Toxic Commando or something, the Carpenter one, which Carpenter like, he does, his likeness appears in the game.
Right. It was so clear that this game was made by people who understood and cared about the film because i feel like especially back in those days there's so many just licenses that just got sold to acclaim or whoever which we'll talk about in a bit and it's just like okay here's just like it's got the the likeness or just the general plot points right but like this one is like okay they are clearly trying to incorporate the distrust and the testing and all that stuff from the movie so i like yeah it was trying things you know and a lot of it like worked like some of it like nothing didn't work
some of it was maybe just not as consequential as it could have been but in the vibes were very good especially early on when you are like in those locations straight from the movie like yeah this feels like the thing this is awesome yep yeah it was a fun one i uh kind of look forward to the next punishment and maybe uh and i'm not kink shaming there if you are too at home uh jeff grubb you talked about this a little bit yesterday on game mess morning soon to be named uh but i'm very curious to hear more about claire obscure expedition 33 yeah i think it's i think it's really good uh it's a lot
of fun they know what they have and they focus on that they make all that stuff as good as possible that being a really snappy fun combat that has a lot going on and all the stuff going on doesn't feel like too much it all just just feels like complementary to one another uh to the so that's like um you'll get into combat and you'll start off and you'll be faced with these sort of robotic looking enemies that have giant like triangles for heads and there's glass in the middle and you're like well that looks vulnerable so there is a real -time component to this combat uh that is mostly turn -based
that real -time element is you can just aim and shoot with a magic gun and so you shoot them right in the middle of their triangle and that does massive damage that sets them up for uh for for now you can like they've been softened up so now but that uses action points so then you want to go over to your attack use your normal attack that builds up action points and then you get to your spells there's spells that use a little bit action points and then there's some that will use all of your action points you kind of want to like do this flow of going back and forth between these various things
yeah that sounds so hot oh i know i i think turn -based jrpg fans are gonna be be very horny for this one it is it looks real good i am interested because it's like the ones i have been able to get in are the ones that have that actual component of timing and dodging paper mario mario and luigi that type of stuff and i watched him and lucy's video on game spot about this and just seeing the seeing you actually aim with the gun and just the way the back and forth looks it looks really snappy and stylish so i think i'm gonna give this a real shot yeah i think there's a chance like dan you're going
i think you the things you'll be turned off by is it's so over dramatic in the way that presents itself as like a fantasy game but does it ask him if metaphors can be reality in the beginning it doesn't it doesn't do stuff like that but like everyone's very dour and serious because they're you know people dying there's dead bodies everywhere and stuff like that it is dour and serious but it's just it it's got theater kid energy and i think that's a parenthesis positive uh and like and that's not in terms of the way like the story is told it's just the way that the characters move and animate but it's
like i don't know that lean that lends into the snappiness of it because it's just everything just everyone moves and you feel like when you press a button stuff happens like the character will do this flare this move to be like i'm opening up the menu and it just looks pretty neat uh but i i think that uh you know you could see the seams and those seams are you're going down corridors uh i you know i my my brain of i've initially went to like final fantasy 13 but apparently people say it's much more like final fantasy 10 yeah like those are the two more linear term like final fantasy games and there
is a difference final fantasy 13 is just like straight ship walk down the corridors and fight and watch cut scenes for the most part 10 has like some some branching paths and you go to a town and whatnot still um yes like there's more to it with 10 for sure in terms of the linearity it definitely if i felt very corridory to me early on um and then uh yeah kind of there maybe there's some branches later on but um that is i think this is a good choice because uh they have a limited budget this isn't a team that has all the money in the world and so they're doing the thing of okay we can make it
big and and open and expansive and great looking and it'll take a lot of time and cost a lot of money it's like well okay instead let's just make these corridors where where clearly, if you were to look over that hill right there, there would be nothing.
The game would just be nothingness.
So let's just make this corridor look really nice, give you a few, like, small little nooks and crannies to explore here and there, and then get you back into the combat, which I think is the star of the show, and it's a ton of fun.
So, yeah, I think people are really going to latch on to this if they can get into the combat, and I think most people actually will be able to.
And, like, yeah, the timing on the dodges and the parries, like, once I started getting into that, it gives you multiple ways of understanding what the enemy is going to do obviously it's animated, like hey I'm winding up for an attack but the enemy itself will make some sound effects to let you know they're building up to the attack and the music also lines up with that so subconsciously I got very good at lining up parries to the point where I'm like oh okay yeah that's a high risk high reward but boy when you nail them it feels incredible, you do damage of course in response to that because it
is a parry yeah and then yeah the music is phenomenal I think the presentation is top notch it just has you know a lot of extra flair to it that is in my heart I'm like I am charmed by this even if I think it is a bit much it looks so dang cool and if more fantasy looked like this I think I'd be into wizards more yeah sure I am into wizards and I am into JRPGs or turn based RPGs or what have you and I am I am so excited for this one.
It had that incredible showing at that Xbox event we had earlier in the year.
And ever since then, it's kind of become one of my most anticipated games of the year.
Like last year, we had Metaphor.
ReFantasia is this really big JRPG experience.
And I feel like this is maybe going to fill up a similar slot in a lot of ways.
Everything Jeff is saying sounds good to me.
Yep. Yeah, I think it's interesting that, you know, know squeenix kind of fumbled the bag with well i enjoyed final fantasy 16 but the wider final fantasy 16 or final fantasy audience didn't quite mesh well with it i wonder if this might eat its lunch um yeah i think my opinion come like playing this was definitely like this is i think the thing that most final fantasy fans are asking for from square enix right in this moment because um you you know, when Square Enix tries these other things, trying to get away from the, I think, still the criticisms of Final Fantasy 13.
I think that they're like, oh, you left, you threw the baby out with the bathwater.
And this game feels like, no, actually just make the stuff you were doing as good as possible, look as cool as possible and make the combat kind of exquisite to engage with.
And you have what we want from Final Fantasy.
So I think this will inform a lot of the criticism going forward for Final Fantasy and kind of like let people's voice hey, Square Enix, this is what we want, at least for one of your games.
It doesn't have to be every Final Fantasy game, but at least one should play a lot more like this.
Greb, what was the last turn -based RPG you remember kind of digging?
I mean, obviously I liked Infinite Wealth.
Oh, okay. But, you know, I like turn -based combat.
That's never been my issue with RPGs, for sure.
I like turn -based combat a lot.
Yeah, you were kind of getting into Dragon Quest XI.
I think you felt that.
Yeah, yeah, Dragon Quest XI.
yeah i played like a good 15 hours that uh that was uh now must be how old is uh addy because i played it on my yeah it's a bit oh it's like 26 six or seven years or something like that yeah 17 something like that um god i'm looking at like gameplay of the combat here it looks so freaking good it's just it does look like a mix of like persona 5 with phone music 10 maybe some legend of dragoon in there a little bit i don't know i mean it's yeah i i again the look is uh so interesting i've said this elsewhere but i'll just repeat it for this podcast uh that the the visuals because of the motion capture
of the like and that popping off every time you press any button it does look like just real people on a stage putting on a performance and then there's persona 5 menus layered on top of them like as if that if that were possible that's what it looks like and that is a really cool effect it gives it this this real sense of things are popping off the screen a part of that i think is that the menus are 3d rendered and so that they exist in the world as far as like the lighting and the physics are concerned and things like that so uh you just get the sense that there's this space is magical and that you
are reaching into the screen and kind of making these decisions i just it's really really working for me yeah part of the combat also reminds me of legend of lagia lagia lagia for the ps1 yeah sometimes i get legend of the Dragoon Legend and LaGaia mix -up, but they're kind of similar in some ways.
Not just because they both have the word legend in it.
LaGaia was the one where you almost did fighting game.
The bun combo. Bun combos, yeah.
I'm all for other developers taking on the Persona formula and the Final Fantasy formula and spinning it on its head because this looks really freaking sweet.
When is this coming out?
In a month. I think it's the end of April -ish.
Holy shit. I am so excited for this.
were you able to get any inkling of what the story is like and why it's called Claire obscure yeah yeah so this is not spoiler it is the setup to the game every year a like a witch a witch or something called the painter something like that paint dress I think she paints a number and that number represents everyone of that age and they will die so there is an expedition sent out to stop this witch and kill her i believe to kill her so that this will stop happening um i i don't i think expedition 33 might be called expedition 33 because everyone is 33 years old and they're going out to like stop
them i think that's what it is i'm 33 yeah it's gonna be pretty rough out there for you and the tone of the game is you know fantasy for sure very gruesome early on there are piles of dead bodies in a room with like heavy red light just to let you know yes yes that is blood blood everywhere that you're seeing, and the character, you could tell it's like having a, this is traumatic for him, and he's like silent because he can't talk, and you know, then the friend comes along, it's like, no, you got to pick yourself up, and let's get back to Ben, and it kind of gets back to the tone of, yay, we're
having fights a little bit, but in those moments of the cut scene, it is heavily produced, very, very impressive looking CGI, cool moments, a lot of good acting, really good performances, I think this is one of the the ben star games uh his his friends are in there too everyone's killing it so yeah i think it's going to be a very emotional uh kind of uh game in terms of this is going to be like the first jrpg ever where there's no party members under the age of 30 um i have infinite wealth right oh you're right the yakuza wow good call uh infinite wealth how old was the the girl i think she was a little
little bit younger she would have been in the late 20s oh yeah get her out of here then uh yeah i don't know mike there's definitely some older older characters i don't know if i've seen any if it was a real jrpg there would be like 36 and everybody would call him old man charlie charlie cox is in this game okay all right is that today or something isn't the new daredevil show i believe so yeah we'll see see how i watch it um speaking about fantasy settings i briefly checked out knights in tight spaces uh oh right semi -sequel to uh fights in tight spaces and i never checked out the original game
uh i i feel like it'd be up my alley because it's like loosely tiles loosely tactics um and i I really wish that I enjoyed this game more.
It is you have a small map and it is run based.
It's a roguelike. So you have like the branching path of where to go, whether or not you want to take on a combat mission, visit a blacksmith to upgrade your cards or just some miscellaneous random chance encounters, unlock some treasure, heal up, recruit new party members, et cetera.
But like the flow of the combat.
bet. I'm not really clicking with just yet.
Um, and I don't know if that's because I'm kind of, um, growing fatigued with, uh, card based games.
Um, so how it works is you, uh, start with one character and you, um, and, and generally your objective is to just eliminate all the other enemies.
You have a mana meter that, um, is shared once you unlock more characters and the different character archetypes that you start with you have your warrior you have a rogue and a hunter which is a uses a bow and arrow um but for some reason i don't know if it's like the tiles aren't clicky enough for me maybe it's too too soft tiles for my taste or maybe the overall art style but i'm not digging this as much even compared to uh the tmnt tactics demo from last week because this it just feels a little slow for the tight space that i'm in um and even when i did unlock and had a full party of three
players or three uh party members um it just didn't feel like it was clicking off and and popping off in in the way that i wanted it to um despite like tight being in the title it didn't feel like a tight experience like Like, it just made me long for something that was snappy, like Tactical Breach Wizards from last year, and just made me want to circle back to something like Into the Breach. Maybe I'll give it some more time, but even some of the auto attacks where, you know, you'll have a party member that is next to an enemy, and it's supposed to auto attack.
None of that felt like the sequences were coming off how I wanted them to.
um and the big thing in tactics games at the moment or or this is the this is the gas station meta is uh you are kind of operating on a map in a void so you can kind of push people off the map and i could just never get that position wise to to work because your movement is tied to one of of your cards and i think that might be where i took an issue with because positionality or positioning huge huge huge in like tactics games and the fact that that is tied to one of my mana points um kind of was obscuring my own uh uh tacticking with the game um i wish i liked it more but maybe it's because it's
a fantasy game maybe i don't like knights perhaps maybe i i I enjoyed Fights in Tight Spaces, but I did not fall in love with it.
And this sounds pretty similar.
Maybe I'll give it a shot and see.
Yeah, there's a... I know Alex Navarro loved Fights in Tight Spaces.
Yeah. There was like a combo system that I couldn't quite, or a momentum system I couldn't quite wrap my head around.
And then just some of the UI stuff just felt a little clunkier than it had to be.
I feel like switching between party members has just been so streamlined in other games that the way it was handled in Knights in Tight Spaces just felt clunky.
Speaking about knights, there are generally knights and cavemen and war reenactments and other big dioramas in museums. Mike Minotti, you've been spending your time at a museum yourself.
bunch of museums all of my museums and two point museum i've talked about this game a bit today's the official release date there's like a lot of big games right now big games coming out a lot of very good ones i'm enjoying them but this two point museum is my game i am playing a ton of this and just having so much fun almost like getting up in the morning be like well this is is a day i'll be able to play more two -point museum and being happy about it a reason to live yeah we can all use some of those these days uh gosh it's i don't know it's just so engaging it's a management sim and sometimes
in those maybe you have a lot of downtime you're just waiting for things to kind of happen but there's always something you can be doing some little min maxing thing reorganizing the museum or just being like well i should decorate the security room so that when the security supervisor comes in, maybe I'll get a little bonus because he's really impressed that I put up some extra security screens in there.
It's just the way that you do have multiple museums. So I have my main kind of natural history museum and an aquarium in the space museum.
And it's always like, hey, right now, to get your next big kind of progression thing, get three stars on every museum.
So I'll go to this museum for a bit.
Then I'll go to the different one.
And each one is kind of its own self -contained campaign, just the variety in the pacing there feels fantastic yeah i'm just liking this one a lot and i think i'm trying to get jeff maybe to check it out tomorrow i don't know if you're still planning for that jeff i yeah it's the plan right now i think the only thing i was thinking maybe might replace it as thug pro but no i'm gonna play this because you are so hot on it i want to give it a shot yeah it grabs gimmicks yeah it's such a the game like just eases you into to the game so so quickly it's not a boring tutorial process you do just start
playing the game you get like tool tips and some things explaining the systems but it's not bogged down in that stuff at all i'm not i you um is this something the kind of thing that eventually could work really well on like ipad because this is a game i think i want to just like have with me all the time or something like that i'm not sure or how about like even like steam deck team deck no i think it works on uh i think it has console control so steam deck i bet probably completely fine yeah okay yeah apparently two point campus came out on switch so console okay then they probably figured it
out i played all of sib seven on uh steam deck so yeah this game's coming out for um playstation 5 and xbox series xs so yeah it has console control so there you go yeah my brain these games like this and like sib things like that that were you know traditionally pc i'm like well i just got to get on the pc for that but like they figured out console Controls a long time ago so i can just get in i'll get on board with that yeah i've always been uh curious about these two point games i was interested in two point campus but never uh actually checked it out so i never checked out the other ones either
now hospitals sounds stressful i don't want to run a hospital uh like what am i gonna do with all the corpses but uh two point campus let the clowns eat them right i feel calmer in a hospital than i do a campus or a museum really i mean i do not i don't i would like if i I could just live in a hospital.
I would do that. What stresses you out about a museum?
Nothing stresses me out about it.
It's just a hospital is just like I'm safe, you know?
So it's like, it's the opposite of stress as a hospital.
Like I, this is an anxiety thing.
This is an anxiety thing where it's like, Oh God, if something goes horribly wrong, I'm in the right place for it.
You know? I guess. I guess.
Fair. I don't want to give you reasons to be anxious of hospital.
So I'll just be quiet.
Yeah. I would live in a hospital.
Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to go down this thought train with you.
You can't. I can't.
can't descend down this so instead i'm gonna go to jeff grubb and go to descenders next yeah uh so uh one game i didn't put on the list was 1080 which i uh i beat last night i went through normal hard and an expert and so i was like man snowboarding games rule uh but they were better when it was just 1080 and like ssx like those were you know the arcady and the sort of arcady that 1080 is and every time i try to look into a new snowboarding game it never quite you know get get it right for what i'm looking for it's either not enough ssx or not enough 1080 um so descenders next is from the company
that did descenders which is that downhill bike bicycle bmx game it was very good like they nailed that that was a lot of fun this kind of takes that idea and applies it to snowboarding and what it the real analog here is it's much more like skate for snowboarding so it's dual analog control for all the all the motions you're doing so left controls basically your feet your how you how you maneuver the snowboard and the right kind of controls your hips and whether or not you um sort of like want to dig like carve into the snow really hard by like hitting left both left on both the analog sticks
at the same time and that's a cool feeling like that really gets the idea of what it's like to snowboard uh which is kind of what i want from these games it's why i like 1080s so much um and so when you are going to do an ollie off of a ramp you need to uh just kind of hold down on the right stick and that causes you to scrunch down you get more speed and then you push up on it to do a full jump off the top and that feels really good and then use the left stick to sort of start the um the sideways movement of doing a spin uh or maybe that's the the right stick and then the left will do like whether
or not you're going to try to do like a sideways flip or an upside down flip things like that it it all worked really well I think the what really kind of nails it is the fact that the the snow physics are really on point you really do feel like you're carving into the snow very hard uh it does this thing where um you to get speed you just press a and you hop forward that looks a little janky it doesn't like look right so it doesn't like really convey the feeling of moving over snow in the way I want but I feel like this is the kind of thing that they dial in with these games because they develop
these games for a long period of time and always update them.
So I'm kind of hoping like make that look a little bit better and we might really have something here.
But yeah, it's got a mountain you explore with various different kinds of tracks and courses where here's a park where there's a go do a 360 over the snow cat, do a 540 melon off the vertical ramp.
My one issue with this is is I couldn't find anything.
I couldn't find the snowcat.
This is a big, massive park with different like trails going down it, like forking off in various directions.
And I was like looking for a map.
Maybe I just missed that, but I just could not find any of these specific points that I was supposed to do these specific objectives.
So anything where it's like, you could just do this trick anywhere, that was fine.
But actually navigating the space was pretty difficult.
But again, this game is a demo.
This game's not out yet.
It's coming soon. I think that they will probably iron out some of those issues and make it a little bit easier.
If they could just put a waypoint out there for me, which they weren't doing, or if you got close to one, just kind of be like, here's the waypoint for it now, that would work.
But otherwise, it just feels really cool to snowboard in this game.
And that's sort of my bouncing off point.
If I can get past that, if I'm enjoying that aspect of it, everything else is really secondary for me.
So yeah, this has been a new pillar in my snowboarding game enjoyment.
I'm excited about that.
I love it. I love it I have been Checking it out Everhood 2 did any of y 'all ever Check out the original one Everhood right No I don't know what Everhood is Ever Everhood 2 it is Kind of a Bullet hell Rhythm Game it looks like Jimmy's Stage in WarioWare Sure yes yes that is that was was the touchstone that i arrived to as well thank you um where you're not quite hitting the notes um you're kind of avoiding them but with some of the notes or most of the notes um you can absorb them and you if you absorb three or more of uh similar colored notes so say you're getting blasted by reds and blues and you
um are absorbing all of the blues you can fire off your blue stored a power to the enemy attacking you um and there are some uh notes that cannot be absorbed you have to jump over them you have to sidestep them and you have like a i believe it's five or six lanes to hop and bop around to um and this game makes me feel very uneasy despite it having like a very uh simplistic look to it um i don't know if it's the writing or it's the music but But I'm like strangely intrigued.
The look of it somewhat akin to Animal Well, like the animals in the background, like very single pixel or like just a couple pixels of pixels of animation and colors.
But it makes me feel some type of way where and like the rhythm game aspect of it isn't quite hitting how I'm expecting it to.
And maybe that's where I start feeling off kilter with it.
Like, for instance, one of the first things they introduce you to is jumping over the notes.
and that doesn't quite hit in the way that i'm expecting it to hit and i don't know if that's just maybe my timing uh i've lost my ability to time music because i'm hanging out with y 'all too much or uh because it's a joke just fair wow there's five podcast points amongst you um i'm trying to bring back podcast points to appease us okay mike you get 12 okay yes thank you okay Okay, there we go.
See? See? But it is like the absorbing factor that is, and how it controls kind of feels a little bit awkward. I am intrigued by the weird story, because the game starts with what feels like a personality test, and then they deem the color of your aura or your energy, and mine was not amber.
You're such an anti -J.
Jesus. It was blue, and then I'm like, oh, man, I'm fucking blue?
um but anyway it it um i'll be die i'll die is it trying to be undertale yes rhythm game i think that is what it's going for uh as someone that has never played undertale still it feels like that that's what it's going for because of the uh like even like the text animations and like the interactions you will have with other characters the enemies are like even like framed on the screen yeah i'm like looking at a video now and that was immediately what i was thinking like oh it's kind of undertale -y yeah yeah that font is undertale -y yeah one day i'll circle back to undertale folks we'll get there
it's good um but there's something about everhood 2 that just intrigues me because it feels like this could have just been a weird rhythm game but there's also like a odd story that it feels like you were just like a kid thrown into like um I don't know like a grungy New York almost but there's also like a forest behind you it's really weird I kind of want to stick with it um because I kind of wrote off the original Everhood because I thought it was just a weird rhythm game only for folks like after the fact sharing and saying like oh no you gotta dig in it digs its hooks into you so Everhood
2 just came out yesterday folks we're gonna take a quick bricky break and we may be back up and then we'll go back down because of some jazz and shenanigans we will still got the news coming up as well as some talk over spliction which seems to be reviewing very well we'll see you right after this quick break a break a new era of power has arrived with the alienware area 51 gaming laptops intentionally engineered to push more power to the cpu and gpu for maximum performance this otherworldly power paired with the game changing ai capabilities of nvidia geforce rtx 50 series gpus with dlss4 amplifies
performance and image precision for ultra smooth stunning in gameplay and with the new cryo chamber design airflow is focused exactly where it's needed most fused with alienware's enhanced thermal solutions it creates a high power output without raising noise levels allowing you to play with confidence even during the most demanding marathon gaming sessions so no matter what you're playing alienware ensures every game runs precisely as its developers intended a new era of power is here all you have to do is take it discover area Area 51 today at Alienware .com.
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And we're back with video games, just like nothing ever happened.
Split Fiction has now hit the charts, folks.
Mike Minotti, Dan Reichert, and myself have been playing it.
I checked this out a couple weeks ago with Nikki Grayson, and I enjoyed my time then.
What do y 'all think?
I think it is a tremendous game.
What is that? It's super fun.
yeah it's like It Takes Two was very good obviously like one game of the year I think the main complaint was it was just a little too long kind of wore out its welcome but to me the big differentiating thing is like I don't know I think it just it looks a lot better not just I'm not talking graphically necessarily although it does there too it's just I don't know I didn't like the way the characters look that much in It Takes Two and everything kind of just happened to be in that same like the tone of just kind of the family drama thing and it's all kind of set in the house it was a little bit
limiting whereas Whereas the whole idea of this being these two authors, one's fantasy, one's sci -fi, and you're just playing through all of their ideas means you're constantly bouncing back and forth between like, okay, here's like Cyber Ninja stuff, here's Tron stuff.
But then here's like, you know, fantasy village and orcs and stuff with all these side stories that are just way out of left field.
Just like, oh, we're pigs on a farm type stuff like that.
Yes. That was so great.
Yeah. There's crazy variety.
And like, even like the tone, uh, like Mike speaking of the pig thing, there's some like like weirdly dark jokes in this that are not like i don't know like everyone brings up the elephant thing uh which understandably that was a weird scene and it takes two i feel like the dark jokes kind of worked better in this um sure because it kind of fits in with the more you know like yeah i didn't i didn't mind the aesthetics of it takes two um but uh the maybe that tone was yeah the whole divorce angle and that like an objective to make a child cry like maybe that's not great or whatever yeah well well
maybe right um but yeah there's still some silliness here like there's one involving hot dogs that's very funny right and it gets kind of weird uh and i enjoyed that aspect a lot but yeah you know it is mechanically in a lot of ways just it takes to two with different characters and different setup i think it's a bit more kind of leaning a little bit more towards action platforming uh there's still a good amount of puzzle platforming here for sure and it's very set piece focus there is a lot of set pieces and it takes two but this one really goes hard and that stuff and it's fantastic it and just
like with that game what shocks me here is just how good the base kind of movement feels yes it's like right like they they made like this these systems that themselves would just work fantastic in a 3d platformer and used it exclusively for this really like not niche but it's like oh i can't believe this is the game this like old school style uh co -op couch game or online but i played it with my brother on the couch and playing a game like that again uh it just feels wonderful it's super neat uh Dan I'm curious were you playing as um Mio the sci -fi writer or as um uh Elena Fish and Chips the uh
fantasy writer I am the sci -fi writer okay I was the fantasy she was on the left side of the screen so I just went it was like I'll be me I was like wait nope I'm sitting over here no yeah Nikki and I had the same uh decision making it is it is just so smart with the way it does all the co -op stuff it's just so seamless like every time it's like okay usually split screen but then you go to open a door and it just kind of like pans in and you know it's just one screen and then there's whole gameplay segments too where you're both on the same screen going down a slide or something yeah um there's
even like little subtle things that I didn't notice right away that like if one partner dies and you have to kind of do this mini game where you're jamming on triangle to fill in the circle just very subtly the screen area of like the dying person just becomes kind of smaller just kind of scoots to the side so the living character and the boss fight kind of has some more screen real estate to work with and like doesn't make a big deal out of it very subtle smart decisions like the game really moves at a certain clip where you're just you always feel this like kinetic energy just like pulling you
forward and there's no collectibles and i was thinking about that that like man if they did if there's even just like a couple things a level to find that would mean one at least one person would probably be like kind of like scouring every area it would slow things down i'd be like hey i don't want to see it hurry back hurry back i want to see if there's something here but because there's not and you learn that pretty quickly whether you realize it or not you're always just moving forward and it's just fun fun fun just like shuttling you from thing to thing it's like a huge generic genuinely
difficult boss fight to some chase sequence and all of a sudden your pigs on a farm or you're like exploring this like water park yeah the the pacing is incredible between just like this is a tense fucking fight to like okay kind of open area you got to find a couple apples you know that type of thing it's incredible I think it also just communicates to the player very quickly without any like overt instructions of like, all right, you move this way, you move that way, go.
Right, you don't have on -screen tooltips.
It's just obvious. Like, yeah, like one character's got a laser sword that can kind of, you know, it can teleport you to walls because you see it happen in the cut scene very briefly.
The other character has a gravity whip.
Like, yeah, it just makes sense.
And all of a sudden, yeah, you're going through like a, it's like a Attack of the Clones style, speeding through a city.
like i'm flying a space car and the other person like oh they get a rocket launcher i guess i'm shooting these evil cars behind us like yeah the the great thing also is that each individual player has like a different experience not just for the gameplay itself but also when it comes to like little action set pieces where um like for instance one of the first early ones is you as i I think Mio will, like, dive through the helicopter and throw the pilot out versus Angela Fishing Chips.
I forget her name. What's her actual name?
I said Elena Fishing Chips.
It's whatever Joseph Ferris' other daughter is named because the guy who never, the most put himself into his game guy ever, Joseph Ferris, which, by the way, the Fuck the Oscars thing is also in this game.
Oh, yeah. Wait, so he's done that twice now?
Yep. It's in It Takes Two.
if you look up at a thing with a satellite you hear the fuck the oscar speech and here there's a radio if you go up and you tune it you hear him saying fuck the oscars cool i got it at this point i just really respect that can you believe somebody would be such a mark for themselves like by the way watch the uh hansen and min max did a rapid fire interview with him it's incredible it's very very good um but going back to the individual experience part as you were playing the game together like um nikki and i had to replay that segment and i was watching nikki's screen and nikki instead of like
because their character is doing something different they wound up on like the gunner position and like just bopped that dude in the head and threw him off the helicopter it was just so cool that like there's that small small attention to detail for like the individual experiences um i don't know if y 'all got to this i don't think it's spoilers but when you are on a motorcycle chase or escape sequence yes uh one player you are are navigating um uh through the obstacles you're driving the motorcycle the other person is sitting um behind you and they're tasked with unlocking a phone um yeah so yeah
this was the point where me and my brother were just cracking up because i was unlocking the phone first it's like you gotta swipe and you have to like hold it to your face that's the face game then you have to play like the like i got how many uh click the squares that have a box like the capture type of stuff yeah And then it's like right in this word, and you like write in BKE, then it auto -corrects it to bake even though you don't want it to, and then a countdown.
Oh my God, that's amazing.
That was so funny. I was doing the motorcycle part, and it is a really high -speed, like jumps and stuff, and you can't be looking at the other screen.
So it's like, I'll be trying to like, what the fuck is going on over there?
What are you doing?
Yeah. God. Yeah, I don't want to give away too much, but there's like one part where like the fantasy writer kind of becomes the level.
instead and it's just moving all the platforms oh yeah and the other person's jumping it's just constantly changing the pace within those but they're like dan said the side missions which are these portals you find like for you'll be in the area of the game where you have like the one character with the sword and one character the gravity whip for a bit but that is where you'll find these side stories where you go into this maybe like 15 minute excursion where you are two pigs suddenly or you are kind of like on hang gliders trying to do a train heist or something something like that that get
dance edit uh the pacing is just immaculate and like it's even though it's not like oh i gotta go in here and get collectibles or level up or anything every time i've seen a side mission orb or whatever it's just like well yeah we're gonna do that because like that could be anything that's gonna be fun and i know we said like yeah i think the writing and characters here are better than it takes to it's sometimes still a little bit corny for me like yeah these two characters are very different like the one sci -fi fantasy and the one really likes the big city and thinks that the country would be
boring and the country girl thinks that the city is just too darn loud, right?
I love that it doesn't get bogged down at all in over -explaining the story because the whole concept, like, oh, we're a publisher, we're going to suck the ideas out of your brain and stuff, they explain this all in a couple minutes and then you're having fun.
They could just be like, well, here's how this machine does this, or here's how you escape.
They get in there and they're like, oh shit, we're in our stories.
Guess we got to find glitches to get out.
Great, that's all I need to know.
do you think it's do you think it's symbolic of anything ai and corporate greed yes dan you just got 100 podcast points today wow i'm so proud to say pretty clear i'm genuinely the thing i'm genuinely shocked by is that this feels like it's joseph forrest's bag right to do this style of game and that someone had approached him like hey you got an idea for a game and he's like yo I got 20 and you know coming up with this device to be able to dip into all these different ideas I think is very fantastic even if it is a very small sequence where you're just a hot dog and I think this might be hot
dog as well what are the physics on my hot dog jump it's just so much fun to play through it i'm i'm just curious as do you think there is like um you know there's a sony or a microsoft out there somewhere saying like we should just do that we should ape that idea i i don't know because like at this point i don't think anyone's could execute wait no i've got it it's not sony it's not microsoft it's from software it's from soft and they're making cookies and cream too it's time yes surprise it's gonna have fortnite elements in it yeah go ahead mike no no you go ahead jeff i was just gonna say i
think that the uh the studio is just in the right space i talked to this on a game this morning so a few weeks back that it's like if the studio was a bigger studio like and they actually worked it for a publishing company they probably wouldn't be able to justify this for opportunity costs and if they were a small indie studio on their own completely it'd probably be too much for them but because they're a bigger indie studio that gets published by EA and has had a massive success from EA, and now so they can continue to increase their budget.
I think they're just in this sweet spot that no one else in the entire industry is really in where these kinds of games actually make sense for them.
So I really do think it'll just be them making this stuff.
Some other indie games will probably try to copy this here pretty soon, but it'll be a bit crowded, I think, at that point.
yeah i know like um like snipper clips right or pico eight are like very small scale down examples but i kind of want to see um i don't know i guess i would like an uncharted game to kind of be like this yeah i mean you did the like lost legacy type thing where it's like well it's about kind was that wait that wasn't co -op was it lost like no it wasn't it was just two characters what was co -op was there's that wolfenstein two co -op yeah was that new blood no that was blood I tried that I remember not loving that people were kind of cool on it even though it sounded like a neat idea it sounded
good that's why I was disappointed Youngblood I played the Switch version and I don't recommend that no that was one of those games when it was was it that or just say two in general where they were really talking up the Stadia aspect of it it was really on board with Stadia at first Oh gosh, yeah, I just want to play more Split Fiction It's reviewing incredibly well You would know that, mister I have it in my fantasy credit card It would be a boon for anyone that has it on their fantasy credit Whatever, you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 more slots to fill and now you have like 19 bucks I project it first
I project it first Me, I'm the winner KDNR.
Do we know if this has PS5 Pro functionality?
I don't think so. Okay, because I'm playing on the Pro.
It just looks good on base.
That's what I was going to ask.
I was going to ask if it looks great on everything, because yeah, I'm playing on a Pro, and it's just like, holy shit, this looks so good for a console game.
Yeah, it looks fantastic on Series X, where I'm playing it.
Nice. How long is it?
Has anyone beat it?
Joseph Farris said, I want to say he said 12 to 14.
Okay. Which is like, I think that's about what it takes to, like, it takes to kind of loss of enthusiasm at the end, but i am liking this a lot more than any of their games before so like i'm hoping it keeps up i'm probably like four hours in probably gonna play a couple hours tonight but yeah it's it's got a lot of like little fun neat winks and nods at like everything whether it's like joseph faris himself or like other games uh like it's a very early sequence but you dive into a bale of hay and then you hear like a bird yeah um so i thought that was cute update from the fantasy critic Giana Cho
is once again projected to finish first because of this game Mike was really loud a second ago that's just projected points the big dog is dead you will respect me as your podcast chief alright just let the record show we have our own wise man he's working back there He seems stressed out.
Jeff Grubb, the news.
This is the news for the show.
Jeff Grubb. Let's do the Tony Hawk stuff first, real quick, just to get that on the podcast. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Plus 4 has been revealed.
It's coming July 11th, although you can get it July 8th in early access.
If you pay a little extra, it is $50 for the base version.
version uh then i think i'm trying to track down the digital price digital deluxe edition i think that was like 70 or 80 bucks something like that and then there is a 130 version a last one came with a skateboard deck i don't know if this one does like what it comes with or anything like that but uh either way hey looks really good they showed up they said there's gonna be new new courses actually added into there they showed off one of them it is an abandoned it's basically Basically Action Park, right?
Heavily graffitied and just like colorful and looks really neat.
It seems like all water parks now because all of them seem abandoned.
Waterparks are a thing.
You just go to Disney for those now.
I was going to say it, then I'm like, I shouldn't bring up Disney.
Iron Galaxy is developing it.
It is just building on the tech from the first one, which is what everyone wants because you kind of don't need to change anything at this point.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 Plus 2 is perfect as is.
This is just more of that in the trailer that they showed off we've only watched it once because we watched all, we did a live react which you'll be able to find on GameSpot and Jivebomb and a bunch of places later I'm sure as far as we can tell we didn't see any Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 levels in the trailer people were saying there were some it's just kind of harder for me to know I'm so much more Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 coded that I'm just going to recognize this right away way sure uh well either way i mean we're expecting to have all the levels from both games uh they you know they had ace
of spades as the soundtrack to the trailer of course they did and it's it hit all the right notes for me how about y 'all god absolutely tonics pro skater 3 is my favorite game in this series and just one of my favorite games ever in general so just every time it's like oh my god there's the foundry there's airport there's the cruise ship i am you know i play this this game again every few years, really.
But I'm so, so excited to get back to it in this new format with this presentation and having the new skate parks.
That is really cool.
Yeah, I think Tony Hawk, he was on Colbert last night, right?
And he pretty much announced this.
But he had said in that interview and that quote is kind of circling around that skating is probably one of the most inclusive sports or activities.
And I also feel that way with the Tony Hawk games, right?
Most people that are into games Well, you know, fighting games aren't their flavor.
RTSs aren't their flavor.
I feel like we can all unite and play a game of graffiti together.
This has also got to be so wild for the younger, newer skaters that are going to get featured as a part of this roster as well.
Because like, you know, if you have aspirations to be a pro NFL player, even WWE, right?
You want to be that cover athlete or be in that roster.
with Tony Hawk it's such a smaller roster of skaters but to be amongst what is considered the greats like Tony Hawk Bob Bernquist Bam Margera Bam I got work in the morning it's got to be something super special to be now part of that lineup right it's got to be so fucking neat yeah and I can't wait to go back to that part in LA because as Grubb said in that talk over when we stayed dan when we stayed in that hotel that was near that little park area i'm like oh hey it's tony hawk wow cool but for those like i wonder if there's a lot of like younger gamers that don't understand like how hallowed
how revered uh tony hawk is i'm looking i know you know take it early paint pinch of salt whatever you want however you take it it is tied for third best game of all time it's mario galaxy one two and breath of the wild have the the same meta score as tony hawk pro skater 3 that is the limit it's not just a nostalgia old man thing like this is a master class video game yes what i mean it's to me i we've said this before that's my my definition of a video game yep yeah tony hawk when i think of what a video game should feel like or make me feel like it is tony hawk's pro skater 3 and then you know
kind of like a little bit of radiates out there to two and four and things like that but yes definitely tony hawk's sports skater 3 is the sweet spot and i mean everyone played it back then i remember i was like starting to work some early jobs and i'd go you know i know it wouldn't talk about video games at work because a bunch of like cool people or people just trying to you know get a paycheck tony hawk would be the one game that would come up that everyone was playing also that popular it was also like early -ish in the ps2 it's like a year after the ps2 came out and like i know a lot of people
you know think ps2 right out of the gate had this amazing library you had your tech and tags you had your ssxs you had twist metal black the next summer your bouncers yeah but there was a big complaint for the first like year or so that's like oh there's no big you know playstation 2 games and so this came out in like october like a year after uh the console came out it was a massive upgrade this is a killer fucking but like mike you talked uh mike you talked about this during the talkover but like with tony hawk being on everything i didn't get to play tony hawk pro skater 3 until like well after it'd
come out because i only had a ps1 at the time and i was still having a ball with that uh just because like it just translates so well to everything and it influenced like i know everyone talks about the soundtrack but it was a real thing like you know when it came out i i put it in the same same way i talk about ecw and that it opened my eyes to things outside of like you know oh i only listen to classic rock in high school and all of a sudden it's like oh man rage against the machine motorhead dell the funky homo sapien like all this stuff like oh fuck okay i need to start like i was buying albums
because of the tony hawk series you know i mean it really was kind of the call of duty in a lot of ways of its time uh i have the sales chart here from matt piscitella in 2000 uh the third and fourth best -selling games were tony hawks pro skater and tony hawks pro skater 2 only beat by pokemon games uh in 2001 uh grand theft auto 3 and madden uh sold them but three and four were tony hawks pro skater 2 and 3 and then in 2002 tony hawks pro skater 4 was number seven 2003 tony hawks underground was number five best -selling game uh they just were perennial best sellers every single year and again they
were massive just culturally important and they you know they say about say that it had a cultural imprint on skateboarding itself i mean tony hawk didn't make real money until the video game uh it didn't really reach the mainstream like like tony hawk's name until the video game so it goes back it goes both ways and yeah so when we continue to get more of these makes me feel feel like okay at least this aspect of video games continues to be okay a lot of other things have fallen away we don't get the kind of kinds of games i want all the time anymore but at least we're getting this i can like
hold on to this it didn't hurt to that like it's you know uh it reminds me of like madden in that it wasn't just a like oh i signed my name over thing but like john madden wasn't a huge gamer but he fucking cared about this game he put his name on and it's very clear that tony hawk cares about this series too yep absolutely it's kind of wild that that um we're gonna get three plus four before skate four yeah well they announced that very early man they were like they announced that they were like building a team to make the game yeah exactly um i should try skate some i never played them i bet
i'm not gonna love them but i didn't love it it felt like a more of a simulator where it's like i wanted to the the wackiness of tony hawk the video gaminess of it all is what i love do you know i think i want to i gotta push the foreman into the pit or whatever yeah i gotta pull this pizza box out of my ass yeah right there i think there are and there are a lot of people who just like love skate for it being exactly what it is because it's like well i want it to feel like skateboarding i totally get that uh that's how i am with snowboarding games uh okay uh let's wrap back around here to iconic
game publisher a claim has been resurrected and then there's another phrase on here yeah with wrestler jeff Jeff Jarrett as advisor acclaimed the U .S. game publisher known for 1990s hits is making a comeback after declaring bankruptcy in 2004 led by CEO Alex Joseph.
The company aims to support indie developers, revitalize classic franchises and publish new games and advisory board of industry leaders, including wrestler Jeff Jarrett will guide a claims future.
You keep saying that name and it's friend of the website, friend of the site, voicemail dump truck.
Yeah, let's get him.
Jeff Jarrett we probably should have him back on yeah like yeah you think we caused this probably yes yeah I sure it was like the first thing I saw when I woke up today was that oh no I saw I was a Chris Scullion that was uh Blue Sky uh oh big news for retro games today and it's not Tony Hawk and I was like oh what is this and you could have given me infinite guesses it would have not been this yeah out of every wrestler that is loosely tied with video games now i don't think i would have ever said jeff chair like kenny omega sure yeah i see that woods yeah okay diversify his portfolio right the rest
is going to an end i mean jared worked with a claim i guess on like the old 16 -bit ones and then like warzone attitude i think we are responsible responsible i'm gonna say that yeah it was it was y 'all but i also there's two things about this that are just like okay i saw phil salvador from the video game history foundation said like oh i hope people understand this is just a trademark being transferred or registered yeah and also like what could the possible like i was looking at the acclaim the list of their games and all of the ones i remember were like back when i was a kid and i was buying
movie games and and nba jam sports games and stuff that like okay you're never going to be able to like re -release or make well i mean you could make a new mba jam like well no ea owns it right yeah yeah their big thing i mean they're turk they don't own truck anymore right they did that and a lot of licensed mortal kombat terminator simpsons all those games yeah to me i think they're trying to do the uh recent like atari um night dive thing where they will find the games that they can bring back that even the ones that are licensed and sort of just do a nice sprucing up of them and re -release
them will they do as good of a job as night dive and even atari has done recently atari has bought night dive i think right um probably not but i think this is a popular trend right now and i'm not against it i think this is like so this like i mean who knows what jeff jarrett and jeff jarrett's involvement means but i think if this is the strategy right now of mining old content well i'm an old man that sounds fantastic yeah i'm worried it's just going to be more of this is going to be a studio that's going to be a content farm for licensed games which to be fair is largely what actual that's
a claim was too yeah okay i got i got two things one when i saw this news article from the from when i woke up i thought the acclaimed as in the wrestling stable had gotten back together and that jeff jarrett had like superseded the uh billy gun daddy ass uh but now i'm also looking at how a claim entertainment is spelled and i'm looking at the logo yeah and i guess this whole time i thought those were k's and not c's it's yeah every time i look at the logo even though i knew it was spelled a claim with c's i would i would think those are k's i remember back in the day like even when people would write
into magazines and stuff you know how like now occasionally you'll see trolls write like microsoft the dollar dollar sign is the S yeah we used to be like ah flame like they used to do like yeah like yeah yeah or a crow uh all right so this means we get a new armor range project swarm right that's what we're going for here Mike Maharty yeah yeah meet Mr. Domino's coming back right yeah I like extreme g uh yeah yeah that's fine I made three of those somehow now bmx triple x oh yeah right uh -huh come on man i'm trying to just bring nothing back but the tasteless marketing that they used to do sure
oh yeah i mean it's weird though because like i do when i think about my childhood playing games like the 16 -bit era specifically i feel like i saw the acclaimed logo maybe more than konami and capcom like so many acclaimed games they were such a yeah a rental game company because again they would have people making the the you know the the terminator games and bart versus yeah bart versus the home versions of mortal combat and stuff like they were right all over the place yeah yeah and then jeff jarrett and then jeff jarrett double j for him there cool chosen one incredible all right well uh
we'll see what that turns into uh they will have a you know god maybe we can move up that terminator 2 story right now i'm gonna do that now jan as well oh yeah did i even include that oh there yeah here we are a new 2d game based on terminator 2 is coming in september they did make a terminator 2 game back it was a claim was involved with it made a couple they made i had the one that worked with the minister for genesis it was like it was the arcade game yeah yeah that in revolution x they did yeah music is the weapon brother all right they worked with like ljn on that and i gotta say this new
terminator 2 game looks a lot like an ljn game a new 2d action game terminator 2 2d no fate based on Terminator 2 Judgment Day is coming to multiple platforms on September 5th players will control Sarah Connor the T -800 and John Connor across different timelines aiming to stop the T -1000 and Skynet it's being developed by Bitmap Bureau the game blends iconic scenes with original scenarios and multiple endings it is described as a love letter to 80s and 90s arcade games with each character having unique combat styles the new release follows five previous Terminator 2 came from the early 90s including
the popular T2 the arcade game um yeah I think they're it's taking a lot of inspiration but it does remind me of these movie platform platform run and gun shooters that you would get a million of based on movies for the Super Nintendo specifically and I'm fine with that except for it's like I never loved any of those really for the most part they weren't great but I think they they know now they can't just put out one of those exactly that to be a success now like I I went in pretty skeptical like you know everyone was posting to me like, oh my god, Terminator 2 game.
I was like, alright, there's going to be some pandering nostalgia.
You know, bad game.
And I watched it and I was like, actually this does not look bad at all.
Like, I am curious about it.
Pretty good. If anything, it kind of reminds me a little bit of the Sega CD Terminator game.
Which actually was not bad at all, that one.
There's like some, yeah, the run and gunning here looks really nice.
There's a bit of a, gosh, there's a little bit of a Contra vibe.
But also a little bit of that Alien 3 game on Genesis that was amazing.
that wasn't bad yep um just really good looking pixel work here you know there's they have the scene uh in the uh the the water trench whatever that's called in la it looks fantastic i'm oh i'm into this i'm excited yeah where they raced in greece yes exactly yes yes yeah there's there's like naked arnold schwarzenegger beat -em -up sections that's fine there's the like shooting the t -1000 into the the lava there's the frozen t -1000 yeah i mean i think the thing that i'm like what works the best for me out of all this stuff though is sort of the animated attract modes that you would see like on the arcade
machines if you would walk past them of like we're going to like animate the T -1000 going from liquid metal into his human form and we're just going to have it's just going to flash 2D pixel frames really fast to kind of like emulate that and that that style of attract mode has been stuck in my brain this entire my entire life now so when I see a new game like going for for that it's like okay these are people that kind of feel the same way i do about that stuff and when you said the different combat styles what i'm seeing here maybe like john connor's the run and gun like contra sarah connor maybe
like metroidvania maybe a little bit more stealth action stuff and then yeah like the terminators just beat them up yeah perhaps some shooting elements in there too all over the place i think they showed uh don't they have sarah connor in the asylum because like that escaping there and just beating the shit out of everyone with like a broom handle should be fun you know she looks so cool doing pull -ups in her cell yeah yeah paper clip on the mouth screen is very good yeah the um the string in the fucking yeah it's oh man terminator 2 have we ever talked about that did we do like 40s for this no somehow
what really it's for terminator 2 i don't think we've ever done a terminator film in 40s i think we did one because bacalar was there because he never maybe we did one maybe we did the first one right that's what it was back i hadn't i was like just thinking oh right was there one never good too well what better time look i will watch terminator 2 if someone asked me i don't mean to force you dan but you ought to be ready for me to feel bad for like a random mall security person getting caught in the crossfire and dying oh my god yeah i love that part it's got the coffee all right uh well let's
see here let's go back over here to activision taps ai for sneak peek peak at possible guitar hero Call of Duty and Crash Bandicoot games this story is insane Activision apparently created AI generated ads for games put them on social media services like Instagram being like hey look at this it's guitar hero mobile or Call of Duty Zombie Defender or Crash Bandicoot Brawl you should click on this and then people would click on it and that would lead to a survey link that would be like Yo, this ain't real, but fill out the survey to tell us if you would be interested in something like this.
And everyone's like, what the hell are you talking about?
Why would you do this?
Why would you put this crappy AI art out of these games in the first place?
And then what do you want people to feel when they are filling out the survey?
Betrayed? Yeah. Because that's all you've done here.
What a crazy thing.
Just wacky, stupid, weird, unhinged behavior.
you know what though what's going on this decision to do this probably took way too long yeah probably had way too many heads involved and everything enough people had to approve it to actually happen and so many people were high on all their own supply to go make this thing yeah right and there was like a lot of people who were like initially trying to tell them that they shouldn't do this but were like shouted down just like dead inside for months as this was moving ahead what the hell there's got to be other ways to find out if there's interest in a potential video game yeah it's objectively
a terrible fucking idea yeah this this data has got to be useless uh because like who is going to fill out the survey that is going to be i mean i you're gonna get some random people i guess but that that don't like realize it's ai i suppose but anyone who does and then realizes the games aren't real are just going to come in there and yell at them so yeah i i would be mad if i was like not in tune with like game news or whatever and it's not like oh new new guitar hero sure and it's a fucking survey uh like there there are fake games that lead to an actual game still uh all over tiktok does a way
better job at convincing me to do something and the click through right there versus whatever the fuck this was yep just Just a weird thing from a company that continues to be just buck wild weird, stupid, and activism.
PS5's Twisted Metal game, now speaking of good ideas, was a battle royale with third person shooting.
As in you would get out of the car and shoot like in a battle royale.
Now you could get into the cars and drive them around, but to me that would mean like you're getting into different cars.
And so maybe you don't have that association with the driver in the car and like there's a strong character for each vehicle.
I don't know but some screenshots were put out by someone who was who worked on the game and they kind of like put a little bit of a blur on them but you could see what was happening and it looked a lot like you know fortnight radical heights any of these battle royale games that have come out over the years I mean I would love this I think I would prefer if it happened I would have liked it to stay in the car yeah I'm a huge anytime it's a vehicle based series and it's like oh now you can get out starfox is you know main offender number one i think or drive three or it's just like nope this is a driving
game i want to be in the car i want to be in the r -wing um twist of metal i don't need to run around in fact this weekend i was playing head on extra twisted edition with the weird sweet tooth mode where you're running around as sweet tooth and it's like this is not what i want this is not it so so the idea of just cars like 100 cars on an island sounds fucking awesome to me well yeah that would have been awesome but that's that's not what this is so yeah so close yeah like you know to differentiate you fortnite literally has had like seasons with car combat in it and i don't i didn't even really
love it in there i was like i felt better when i was just actually running around shooting people as opposed to weird car combat stuff but yeah like yeah twisted metal is a battle royale that's not a terrible direction but you would need to make maps based around driving and you can really optimize it for that.
Once it's both driving and on foot stuff, the maps have to serve both those purposes, and that's very difficult.
Folks, Fortnite kind of did it, though.
Yeah. I didn't try it.
I didn't love the car combat seasons before.
Was that the Mad Max season?
There was a Mad Max.
I think it was supposed to be Mad Max, and clearly the deal didn't happen, but that stuff was still there or something like that.
This isn't happening.
This game's canceled.
But they kind of tried to do something, which was the medal it's when they're you know that the show was getting a second season yeah but i mean that's gonna take five years to make a game so they're gonna they you know they start now it might not make sense i thought it was ready to be announced years ago like because there were people in the media that i know that like had articles written and we're just waiting for the go -ahead to publish like like played or saw the game so it's like oh okay this is an eminent sgf reveal or something and then it just got canceled yep and that i think that might have been
the original version because i heard a lot about that one and then that got canceled and then got moved over to fire sprite to be this live service free to play battle royale where you get out of the car and can shoot um and then now yeah this was canceled last year or the year before that something like that so imagine if uh instead of making blue point work on a live service game they'll get canceled if they were just doing a twisted metal black remake this whole time or something that would be nice that's cool might be a good idea to just shift in that shift them to that now after canceling
their game um all right sony has been sued for disproportionate sony tax abusing its market position to increase game prices.
It was a class action lawsuit that has been filed against Sony in the Netherlands alleging that the company abuses its market position in digital PlayStation game sales to inflate prices basically the argument is PlayStation consoles have a grip on that market and then you can only go through Sony to set your prices on their store and so they have this unfair advantage and that has led to digital game prices being like something like 40 percent more expensive than physical game prices when you can compare the two and so the nether ones sued them sony settled now the real thing here is like this keeps
happening um sony does keep getting like facing regulation from these from different countries saying hey you uh control this walled garden that most people buy their video games through uh what what's like what like what's going on here why are you setting these prices so much higher and sony just keeps settling and it does feel like they might keep getting these like speeding tickets essentially to the point where it could become a problem for them and if they don't change maybe these governments might get more serious and say hey we're going to introduce regulation forcing you to open up your
store forcing like what has happened with apple and android um that seems to be the trend the direction that it's heading uh this is just the latest example of like of that sort of feeling um but i do think that that continues to be the long -term goal for a company like microsoft hoping hey we'll just have our own microsoft store on playstation one day maybe 10 15 years from now uh but because these like these governments especially in europe continue to crack down on this it's feeling more and more likely that something like that could happen do you guys think sony could have a response to this that maybe
brings pricing more in line with physical so that they can avoid getting sued and avoid this they're not gonna be would ever help themselves right they're going to like push it push it and push it and yeah like you said they'll pay their speeding tickets along the way but uh no we know how this all works they can't they can't make less money right the whole pot easy that'd be insane you give people a taste of the fun dessert you don't give them the whole thing yeah and it does feel like uh they they probably could if they were willing to but you're right they need that growth and uh all that is is sort
of their number one focus.
We'll see how this progresses down the line.
It's also the possibility that governments get distracted or find some other target and Sony can skate by.
I think that's Sony's hope, we'll see.
What could possibly distract them in the world right now instead of this?
Oh, nothing. It's all chill.
Okay, just ask. It's so chill.
Pokemon Legends ZA trailer dropped.
This happened after the podcast last week.
It showed off new mechanics.
but we still don't have a release date um basically it is uh the sequel to the last one but it takes place in the city and so there is fewer like wide open areas that's the big change other than that it is a pokemon legends game where you're capturing pokemon in a live setting and then uh the other major change i suppose is that the combat is more real time and that you are issuing commands and yeah i mean i i guess i don't know how to describe it as pokemon fan fan number one jan how would you sort of explain it um someone had pointed this out in the chat as i came to the same conclusion but it
kind of does feel like xenoblade chronicles 3 where right because you're positioning and you there are cooldowns so you can like do a loose dodge and kind of command your pokemon like hey scurry on over here to get out of the way um and yeah positioning very important here um which normally isn't a thing to worry about with the uh baseline or the mainline pokemon games because you're just kind of taking turns hating each other here you got to get your little dudes out of the way um and i cannot wait uh it does i don't know what the internet's saying i think it looks okay i don't think it looks
like garbo like everyone is saying but it looks i think if i did it if i lived in a world without scarlet uh and violet i'd be like oh it looks looks pretty bad and it looks just enough better than scarlet and five and I'm like I'll take it yeah I think that's what it is I'll take it the starters here are Chikorita Tepig and Totodile and you can pick between characters Urbane and Townie and yes that's really their names I think Urbane and Townie those are your rivals oh those are the rivals okay players will have a new companion you're right companion slash rival but the wild thing is we're back
with Mega Evolutions I hope we get more Megas I mean we're gonna get Mega Mega Meganium, probably, right?
Mega Mike Minotti is not a fan of the Megas.
I'm anti -Z attacks.
I'm anti -wearing a crystal hat.
I don't go for any of these bullshit gimmicks.
I am the anti -gimmick, I'm just saying.
It was the Nemesis system, guys.
Wonder Woman was canceled, and the studio that was working on it was closed down.
That's Monolith Productions.
Long -storied history for that studio.
this also happened after the show last week um and the one of the key culprits of the reason that the development went so bad for that game because it got rebooted last year after being announced in 2021 is that they couldn't really figure out how to make the nemesis system work they were going to try a different variation on it where it was going to be kind of a friend system where wonder woman would gain allies as she played the game and the allies would show up and would evolve based on how you interacted with them that also didn't work so last year they rebooted it and and we're like we're
just gonna make basically a version of this game that is like god of war 2018 but by then it was too like it had they spent too much time and too much money and um warner brothers had lost their their taste for this and so they just closed the whole thing down um yeah it's a real shame that this studio just kind of got caught in that rut of warner brothers being like well we got to make something more with nemesis let's make that make sense and um and now they are paying the price by having that entire studio wiped from the face of the the earth i think they've made video game players their nemesis actually
i think general consumers of media warner brothers has just adopted the nemesis system well i mean they're just canceling their beloved movies still come on everyone loves that they make movies and don't release them you think the leash would have been longer here if like suicide squad wasn't that jass of money uh loss for them yes yeah i think so i think it's uh they probably were looking at and thinking this this would be a repeat because it's very similar setup right where the Suicide Squad movie came out made a lot of money so they were green lighted a game based on that the next movie came
out didn't make as much money because everyone hated the first one actually in the long run so all of the excitement ran out of the room uh Wonder Woman the first movie did really well made a lot of money second one came out actually that that one failed because a second movie was pretty garbage I hate that movie and so they are probably expecting no more excitement for that so this game doesn't it makes sense anymore.
It's almost certainly kind of the way they viewed it.
Alright, last couple of stories.
Just four months after its release, Bioware's Dragon Age The Veilguard has joined PlayStation Plus.
I think it's up to claim now.
And this is not like, oh, it's temporarily in the back library.
This is part of their essential where if you have the base version of PlayStation Plus, you can add this to your collection for as long as you have PlayStation Plus.
Yeah, this game they're clearly just like, man, we got to make as much money back from this thing as possible.
It just did not find an audience.
It's that simple. Yeah, that's really early to be on there.
Like you said, it's just, well, we'll get a check from Sony if we do this at least. And I'm sure Sony wrote probably a pretty hefty check for it.
Yeah, it's wild. And I wonder if it's going to be a longer consequence of people being maybe a bit more hesitant about bringing back semi -dormant franchises.
It feels like a Mirror's Edge, what was the second one called?
Cataclysm. Yeah, it feels like that.
But we still have things like Animusha and the Amaterasu's game that I'm suddenly flaking out.
Okami. Okami, the other, oh, right.
Those things are coming back.
I didn't know it was coming back.
So maybe we'll see some other successes here.
There's, you know, everybody's like, what's the one reason why Dragon Age, the Veil Guard didn't work?
And there are so many.
Yeah, there's no one reason.
There's no one reason, but there are a lot of them.
I mean, it was too woke.
It was too woke, right?
It's like, that's definitely not a reason.
But Chuds being very upset set and making that kind of the biggest talking point about the game online probably part of the reason yeah legitimate complaints people had about the story and the gameplay and just that long span of time between two things that awful first trailer that just was not the tone anybody wanted from this um boy I I'm glad I'm not working on the new Mass Effect because that is probably very stressful yeah especially with like the reduced team that they got working on that now oh that's true uh yeah okay well we'll see they're not gonna make any more dragon age games at least
not anytime soon probably never uh and then yeah mass effect they are still gonna try to make we'll see how that goes down uh last story i have here hideki kamiya wants to revive canceled xbox exclusive scale bound or just basically just like there's a video i guess of him looking at this game with uh his staff and like reminiscing about it and he was like explaining to him like you know look at he's got headphones but it's a it's a fantasy world it's like an isekai and everyone's like oh cool dude like we didn't realize that uh but then i guess he ends up by just saying hey phil we should go
back and do this um do you three the three of you think that they will make and release the video game scale bound no for the xbox platform no No, absolutely not.
No way. No. I mean, for one thing, he's not at Platinum Games anymore.
So he's at Capcom again.
Yeah. But like, don't you think Microsoft probably owned Scalebound?
Sure. But even beyond that, like, I don't think I don't see Capcom.
Like I know Capcom's done some partnerships with Microsoft. I don't think they're going to be like, let's work really hard on this Microsoft based project again.
Sure. I don't know.
Well, I get people being upset about Scalebound.
Right. but we never really knew that much about that game.
We never really knew if it was going to be good.
If you want to make a game about a person riding a dragon and fighting other dragons, yeah, yeah, sure.
You get a PS3, you get layer.
Yeah, exactly. I don't think it needs to be scale -bound anymore, right?
Yeah, fair, yeah. Do these people know that Spyro the Dragon exists?
You can just be the dragon.
That's true. Cut out the middleman.
Apparently Clovers is not part of Capcom, by the way, I didn't realize that either I thought they were just Wow, okay So maybe they're going to make this In that case, I'm going to say yes This will happen, it'll be out next year It'll be a game of the year I'm wondering who wants this game in 2025 But I pulled up one of the trailers And I'm looking at the newest comments And there are still people actively upset About this game being cancelled And I guess that's why I don't understand that But I guess that's why Hollywood felt compelled to make a how to train your dragon live action movie that is just
the same movie yeah do people really like dragons dragons are cool how to train your dragon one is a good movie I think you know the remake looks really stupid they want to keep that franchise a bit relevant they did just build a giant theme park section off of it and that new one in Orlando so I don't know my kids just got into how to train your dragon big time in like the last week so Good music.
I kind of want to get the gimmicks and dib a skateboard. I just want to see what happens.
Sure. Dib will die.
Yeah. I'll get one for Mike Minati as well.
Oh, great. Mike will become the great skater a lot.
That'd be awesome. You were talking about how inclusive it is.
You're right. I could see Mike Minati being the most supportive skater at the park, and he's banging his board of, like, you did it, buddy.
You did it. You dropped in.
Yeah, but I would hurt myself horribly very early on and not be there very much. But everyone would be supportive and check in on you.
They better, because I'll need it.
I'll be in a lot of pain.
All right. So one more story here.
This one comes from Nikki.
What it mean that Yoshi P not on the Square Enix board anymore?
This one I missed. Let's see here.
Final Fantasy XIV's Yoshi P quietly removed from Square Enix's board after years of wanting out.
It's much more fun to just make games, they said.
So that's probably what it is, is that Yoshi -P is very busy doing other stuff that he wants to be doing.
I mean, he's in charge of Final Fantasy XIV.
That alone should be a full -time job.
Right. Then he just also made Final Fantasy XVI.
Right. That's wild.
And you're on the board of the whole company.
Yeah, that was clearly too much. Like, they're very appreciative and impressed with how he saved XIV as they should be.
but there's still only so much you can throw on that man's plate and honestly like you know I think maybe there's probably more to it than this but yeah he did seem a little stretched thin there in the last few years right like yep definitely Dontrelle not as well received an expansion 16 had some issues so yeah let's let's try to give the man a little bit of space here he's also like still going to be very crucial to like the executive management of that company like they They've said that he'll continue to serve as an executive officer.
He'll also be joining the Executive Management Committee starting April 1st, which, you know, is not going to be the board of directors, but might be actually more crucial to how Square Enix operates as a company.
So Yoshi should be still incredibly crucial to Square Enix, like maybe the most crucial employee that they have. All right, that does it for the headlines.
Jam back over to you.
We're going to go take another quick bricky break, and we'll be back with some emails right after this.
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E -mails. BombCastGiantBomb .com is the e -mail address to send your e -mails to.
Mike, we actually got an e -mail where someone sent in a beat for the next Gamer Rap.
I heard about that.
I was complaining that I didn't have a backing beat for it.
So I'm running out of excuses now.
I'm going to have to really get this thing done soon.
Thank you. I'm going to say this out here out loud because this is how the stuff happens.
You just say it and then you're kind of held to it.
I think I want new segment music.
Oh, yeah. It's time.
It's time. Is the new gamer app is going to be that?
No. Well, I mean, it could be.
Mike, drop a bar. Oh, hey, it's time for emails to send them in before it's an e -fail.
I want to know what you're thinking.
If your opinions are bad, I'll tell them they're stinking.
did you that's a giant bomb okay that was better than i expected that to be oh thank you you're like you're like a kyle lamar mike wow wow um also very funny that drake was in the first row at elimination chamber and they never know i'm sure he asked not to be shown but still very funny yeah oh god yeah because they'll show vanessa hudgens at every single event she's in and and I don't mind that at all Topanga is the biggest star in the world in the WWE universe yeah Topanga is the biggest star in my heart too Topanga's got podcast beef do y 'all hear about this y 'all see this no no she's with a former
co -star the woman that Maitland Ward that played Rachel in the later seasons of Boy Meets World they had beef or have beef Topanga I'm not going to it's not my place Mike is it about boys no yeah yeah ward yep okay yep yep yeah I googled it yeah all right yeah yep yep yep yep yep we don't need to I brought her on to the new day podcast once as a surprise because woods was like in love with her from his childhood and so we just had I forgot if we like queued up some conversation about boy meets world and I just had to panga join the zoom calling Woods freaked out let it be known I would love that I've
still got her number Jan if you need to talk to her we should get Topanga on the voicemail dump truck oh my god yeah oh sorry I think we need devil jay first I'm sorry my heart's beating too fast like the whole thing with Topanga originally was like she was like a weird character and then like Like, she got Steve Urkult in, and they kind of normalized her to just be, like, the kind of love interest. But at first, like, the whole point was, like, Topanga's the weird character with a weird name, and she's a weirdo.
Really? They were like, actually, she's gorgeous.
What are you talking about?
Was she Kimmy Gibbler?
No, she was not Kimmy Gibbler.
She was, like, neighbor.
Oh, hippy kid. Hippy kid.
It was a hippy kid.
Got it. Okay. All right.
First email comes in.
Subject line read avowed. I didn't write down the emailer's name.
that's it. I don't understand the reviews on this.
Play, exploration, art, and narrative are fun.
Anyway, have a good week.
Thank you. There was a part of me that was like, okay, yeah, the reviews aren't maybe as high as they will be, but I bet the Steam reviews will be much better.
And even those are just mostly positive, which is kind of the same a bit all over the place vibe I got from a lot of people.
There are a lot more people, I guess, concerned with because everybody keeps saying this phrase, the world doesn't feel alive enough.
And I kind of know what people mean by that, but also Also, one, kind of don't, and two, kind of don't care as much as so many people.
Because it's an action RPG.
Like, it's, like, a lot, it feels as alive as a lot of other action RPGs.
I mean, I get the thing in that, like, oh, okay, yeah, it's cool that in Bethesda 1, you know, you could just kill, like, an NPC, and then you can't take that quest from them.
Like, I think that is cool, but that is also a giant Bethesda thing.
Like, this was, this is a shorter, more streamlined thing.
Like, and it didn't bother me.
It's so fun as hell to play.
about definitely got graded on a like different rubric it got like sure like you're not the game that i thought you were going to be so therefore you are bad and that it's weird that happens sometimes in people's expectations you're allowed to have your expectations but it definitely is getting i think a little unfairly assessed based on people thinking it was a very specific kind of game and it didn't do a lot of that stuff because it wasn't interested in that stuff so So it's a shame.
Yep. Next email is about Cousins.
Hi, Bombers. I'm here answering the Bombcast call for aid.
Parentheses, emails.
And I assume you're being inundated this week.
I recently read Polygon's Cousin Games article, which, if you haven't read, is essentially coins the term Cousin Games for essentially in your youth that you loved but later found out they were essentially a store brand video game.
Perhaps could even be thought of as a B game as you thought was a AAA game.
it brought my mind uh a game when i was a kid speed freaks i think it was called speed punks in the u .s this game is important to me for a few reasons when i was a kid it was my first introduction to kart games and i loved it i really thought it was amazing it i it's only recently i found out that basically no one else i knew had played it it just happened to be a game from my childhood uh that my childhood best friend had so we played it to death i later found crash team racing and then Mario Kart when I got DS and learned what proper kart racers feel like, but I still sometimes replay Speed
Freaks as it holds up for me.
I also later found out that it was actually developed by Funcom in Ireland, which has really added to its lore as Irish -made games are few and far between.
So, I'm wondering if you had ever heard of this game, play this game, and also what would your cousin games be?
Thanks, guys. Brian, Dublin, Ireland.
i heard i've heard the word oh for ps1 okay i remember seeing this box art in the vault yeah i never played it yeah yeah oh gosh i think i did oh yeah these are crazy i saw the box i was like oh yeah these are atomic warheads characters yeah wow yeah god 99 that's way later than i would have guessed yeah i was thinking super nintendo um yeah i guess mine very literally really cousin games because me and my cousin played a ton of games uh growing up and it was usually nes but these are probably bigger than what this writer's talking about but the ones come to mind are bubble bobble rampage and caveman games
those are the two player games that like i'm ever staying over at matt's place we are definitely just playing those all night that's so funny because like bubble bob was definitely a game i mostly played at my cousin's place like i love bubble bobble i have a like this little poster of it over here so i love it it but it was a game i never actually owned it was uh my cousin slash grandma's then the other two i associate with that which i aren't like big games but there was a barbie game for the super nintendo they had where you rode a horse and did some other things and um spot not cool spot for the genus
super nintendo just spot which was an othello clone for the nes oh sure yeah i thought that game was they had some sick animation i'm not gonna lie yeah my uh if we're going over we're doing like cousins or family members house i remember like that's where i discovered carnoff which was for me was a long time was this game that no one else ever talked about and then it's all anyone talks about a giant bomb so it's different now um all anyone talks all anyone talks about uh everyone loves carnoff come on i don't know if i've played it man i i was it blew my mind a couple years ago when i discovered
the carnoff was like had like a fighting game series like he was like uh the ringleader of and stuff like that he's like a whole character for whoever whoever that company was dating carnov and rigar mixed up yeah i get it too um and then uh heinie heinie ocio alien was this like a game boy game that's about digging holes and trapping trapping aliens in the hole and then that's another one where later i discovered apparently that was like a very popular arcade game in japan and so it like has this history that a lot of people know about but no one ever talked about that in any of the circles i
was in for a very long time um my cousin game is rayman arena i don't know if y 'all remember this oh yeah yeah yeah this was a rayman racing game i guess split screen jimmy jam um yeah me and my little cousin played this a bunch uh cousin games also kind of extend to something like minecraft just because it was just like a sandboxy environment where you could do kind of do whatever ever i i definitely also associate jrpgs with my cousin because he was a big rpg guy or jrpg guy and so like super nintendo era he'd be like okay i know you don't usually like these people check out secret of evermore
and then i would like play it until it was a turn -based uh thing i was like why are you why do you play these games like he was the final fantasy guy all those i do not understand this but he also introduced me to mortal combat and command to conquer so hey there you go yeah okay uh next emailer is seeking some validation emailer it's in hello Hello, Bombers.
I need some of y 'all to possibly validate an issue I might have. This could be so long, so I'll bullet point the story.
All right. Move from New York to Raleigh in 2017.
Have old retro consoles, primarily RGB.
All look like ass on big, fancy modern TV.
Discovers North Carolina has an insane thrift store scene.
Purchases CRT, coax only, and VCR, coax out, RGB in.
Life is good with old TV.
Maybe I get another.
other discovers um north carolina thrift thrift also has an insane vhs scene purchase some classics purchase more classics some more classics and more classics um uh they write i asked jan read this below with sincerity so here's my potential issue it's now 2025 and i have easily over 500 vhs tapes yeah i absolutely fucking love every single one of them and watch them all the the time now this part with intensity and slight hint of concern what did I do what have I become am I a monster or just a man with a passion for cool VHS tapes they look awesome and reek of nostalgia I even crafted some
floating shelves and put them on display in my gaming room back to sincerity anyways that's my rant this is my issue for the world of GB to know this kind of thing ever happened to you guys Jeff Grubb Jan mostly looking to you too love you all and And remember, rewind and be kind.
Heart emoji. I see no problems here.
No, no problems. This is a cool guy.
This is fantastic. Big fan of this.
Yeah. Cool dude. I would love to be in your situation.
Absolutely. I've had to stop myself from doing that.
I got the CRT and the VCR, and I'll see on like the Facebook marketplace, like, here's every great action movie from the 90s on VHS.
I'm just, that takes up a lot of space.
It's only $20. Oh, God, he's got Cut the Rock.
And yeah. I do like the way they look, though.
Our parents when they had midlife Crisises they would like buy motorcycles and boats But you know money quite as good as it Used to be CRT and a bunch of VHS tapes That's fine that's better that's fun Yeah way better yeah like A movie critic I really like Shea Serrano He started like collecting a bunch Of VHS tapes and I thought like oh no I don't want to do that and then I kind of want one of those old Dorky Spongebob CRTs That have like the VCR combo Totally totally i kind of just want one behind me at all times just i just pop a new tape in that's whenever i have like a party here i'll usually
just like i have boxes of my old vhs tapes of just like everything i taped on tv and like junior high and high school and i'll just put one in and be like we'll see what i was taping when i was 13 and then it's usually just like a bunch of like conan bits and simpsons episodes and old wrestling and just like here's a bunch of the man show here's a bunch of insomniac you know i gotta find it but like the one new year's There's, like, a, like, 2000 -something.
They just did a Iron Chef marathon. And I, like, diligently recorded the entire thing.
I loved Iron Chef so much. Oh, such a good...
I would just watch those tapes over and over.
God, Iron Chef is amazing.
Like, some of those tapes are just...
I just think about them.
Like, the Jurassic Park VHS and how clean that looks.
Did they have the textured...
Or am I thinking of the book that had the textured logo?
Maybe I'm thinking of the book.
Maybe it was a little embossed.
I forget. or just like a little bumpy logo yeah it's just like the like the batman vhs is the same right it's just like that clean logo maybe like one like pool quote or like tagline there the old original trilogy itself yeah the original trilogy with the silver boxes oh no the silver and the gold wasn't one full screen and one was gold gold was full screen silver was widescreen i got the gold one first and then i my friends like the movie's getting cut off i'm like what are you talking about they're not cutting out scenes and then i got um the abyss special special edition because I was just
into James Cameron I'd never heard of or seen this movie before and I took it home and it started with a long explanation of pan and scan and I was like oh okay so this is like they are just cutting off the science of these movies and James Cameron's like you're a fucking war criminal if you watch a movie and pan and scan only widescreen so I'm like well I'm gonna go out and get those the silver Star Wars trilogy right now that's totally that era's version of Tom Cruise being like you know don't watch with motion smoothing or like like don't watch movies on your phone.
Yeah. And it happened kind of overnight.
That last issue of the non -special edition of the Star Wars trilogy, each one opened with Leonard Maltin talking to George Lucas, right?
Stuff ruled. VHSs are cool.
Recording stuff at home.
Do you guys remember a TV special or an event, like a really weird one that you were excited for?
For me, it was the, I think, direct -to -TV sequel for Revenge of the Nerds that was going to be in 3D.
Oh my God. And you could go to 7 -Eleven and get the 3D glasses and it would like, you put on the glasses and they were just using this effect where they would like pan to the left and they would play at a high frame rate and it just kind of exactly looked 3D.
It was so weird. They did that with an ABC block on like a Wednesday night when it was like Drew Carey's show and like I'd never really watched the Drew Carey show but it's like all four of our shows this night are going to be in 3D and you could like go to grocery stores and like in Entertainment Weekly's they would have the glasses or something.
They did this for nickelodeon they they call them noggle goggles oh that's amazing right and all it was it was color code for nickelodeon like the reds would just show up like closer to you than like the blues or something so all the shows were just kind of made like that it was i remember a hey arnold scene yeah helga was having a nightmare and there was like a tunnel and like the like the hearts closer in the tunnel were red is a weird effect i have like four blank tapes that i filled with 9 -11 footage on actual 9 -11 i don't know why it's weird every time i'm looking it's like oh here's all
my old like d generation x and definitely have divas and then 911 footage jesus christ we all cope differently dan it's okay i should probably be taping this this seems historic i mean you're not wrong no yeah i don't want to watch it though i've seen it yeah god i just looked what if people forget you don't think they will ever i looked at facebook marketplace and there are several people just giving out boxes of vhs yeah oh it's easy to find if you You want to go that route, yeah.
Okay, question for y 'all.
Okay, Mike, I know that generally the Disney tapes had like the plastic sleeve book around it.
Do y 'all prefer that or like the paper sleeves?
I love the paper sleeves, personally.
Yeah, the plastic ones kept better.
Well, the plastic ones, I feel like when you bought them, they would always be the cardboard ones, right?
I feel like if you went to Blockbuster, you're talking like the clamshell plastic?
Disney did the big clamshell.
Oh, those are so much better.
That seems like so much better, but I know what you're talking about.
My friends would have those.
And there's just the big wasted plastic, like the white cases.
Like, no, fuck that.
I mean, those kept better.
They're nice in their own way.
Come on. It's like the cardboard boxes for the Super Nintendo games now as opposed to having the Genesis clamshell.
I like, oh man, every once in a while I see like an Earthworm Jim 2 or a Vector Man.
I'm like, ooh, I remember hating these cardboard boxes.
Yeah. The big puffy boxes for the Disney movies always just looked like they were afraid the movies were going to hurt themselves or something.
It was like protective padding.
It was weird. Sure, sure.
sure uh all right i can't call me it was so normalized to me i'll have to take your word if it's weird to me that's like that's just one of the two ways they came in uh all right we got a bunch of lovely fantastic emails thank you everyone to writing into the show uh we'll read two more um first or second last one comes from jeff from rhode island hey dudes what the fuck does shoot mean i came back to the podcast after a small break and i've I've been listening to you guys use the word shoot as an adjective and have no idea what it means.
Anytime I think I figure it out with context clues, it's used in another context that confuses me again.
Please help me. Jeff from Rhode Island.
You can watch the Jeff Jarrett voicemail dump truck where we talk about it.
He gave us his full blessing.
Acclaimed Jeff Jarrett gave us his blessing to say shoot and work in other carny terms. It's a straight shooter.
Shoot means real. Yep.
It's just like you're a straight shooter, so you are talking real.
It means real. real yep it kind of just goes all in all up and down that like context so it could just mean this thing is real or it can mean i'm going to be real with you yeah but it's always in the context of like a straight shooter that's where the term comes from yep and if i'm working you i'm putting on an act or i'm trolling you or yeah i it uh you know like sean uses shoot all the time now and stuff like that it's fully integrated with us read nicky grayson's uh newsletter and they use shoot in it yeah yes yes yeah I want to talk yes yeah when I was going into the office to help with like
the studio build and just hanging with the game spot crew I was holding back and then I decided fuck this no I need to be a straight shooter here and I'm happy that I don't have to code switch anymore amongst my co -workers yeah there you go I can I can live how I want to live alright last email of the show comes It comes from Pete.
Pete writes in, Hey Bombcast, in light of Dan's decision to rank Tony Hawk above Final Fantasy, Not just me!
I wanted your thoughts on some more arbitrary comparisons.
What's better? Donkey Kong 94 versus all Pokemon games?
Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong 94.
Probably Donkey Kong 94.
I don't know. Pokemon like HeartGold, SoulSilver, and the black and white games are probably pretty close.
i'm gonna say pokemon uh metroid prime versus mario 64 mario 64 this one's very close metro prime kicks ass but it's mario 64 yeah i was just actually listening to where metroid prime got knocked off your bracket on the fire escape 100 and i was a bit sad it didn't go a little do you remember what it got knocked off by i can't remember gosh there's a lot of games that get talked about in that thing yeah i did remember thinking like because jeff and i did a similar similar thing figuring out what the best video game ever was i think we decided on super metroid i don't even think that was on like
your bracket at all i tried yeah i appreciate it it's tough for me i got i let's just try it i'm gonna say metroid prime and see if i no that feels right to me i'm gonna say metroid prime i mean it's not like a crazy thing it's like oh let me look at my my top 100 what did i say yeah i have metroid i have metroid prime right above mario 64 metroid prime at seven mario 64 at eight so it's like as close as it could be but i guess i'll say metroid prime yep that's a tough one for me all right uh next comparison ice cold drinks versus salt what the fuck oh man i love salt so much i love both a lot
ice cold drinks but you need salt are we saying we can't have like no no no you're just saying which one is better we're just saying yeah it's i think it's salt i think it's salt wait and they're saying ice cold oh it's ice slash cold drinks shit i was gonna say i could take just normal cold not ice cold yeah just fine yeah i don't even use i don't i never pour my drinks into a glass of ice honestly like refrigerator cold is plenty cold if i have a 12 pack in the cabinet but it's It's not like I don't have any sodas in the fridge, then I will pour some in ice, but I won't drink it.
Yeah, but, like, salt has saved so much mid -food for me.
Yeah, it does. Yeah, I mean, I would probably, like, if it were a situation where I could only have one or the other, I probably would regret going with cold because salt, you just need in food.
You need salt. I'm going with salt.
Yeah, okay. Now we have a couple comparisons as what's worse, a paper cut or stubbing your toe.
Paper cut. Paper cut.
No doubt. I would rather watch a character in a movie we get their arm ripped off then watch them get a paper cut yeah i've been thinking about that uh the wrestler thing since you brought it up with mickey rourke uh the daily scene oh that's in that place in my head and it terrifies me every time it does i stub my toe eight times a day um and it's just fine i'm mad for two seconds but then like a paper cut is just like that's the thing about stubbing the toe it's like it like for me it's like i'll stub my toe and it's like so much pain for like you know a handful of seconds and then it's like
well that just doesn't hurt anymore yeah and so i i'm like used to that now yep so yeah paper cut it's like once you have it you notice it and it's like there and it like stays with you even if it doesn't hurt as much anymore it still feels if you bend your finger if it's on your finger you feel it every time yeah yeah it sucks i i feel like i can stomach most of the jackass shenanigans from the movies and the show um except when they did the paper cut bit that sucked i did hate that yeah yeah yeah um All right.
Continuing what's worse, getting three hours of sleep for being hung over.
I mean, a lot of times it's both, you know, because like if you're hung over, it means you've been out late, like at the bars and stuff.
It's like, oh, shit, I got to set an alarm for nine o 'clock tomorrow.
And it's like, that's the worst. I think being hung over sticks with you a little longer, though.
Yeah. Being hung over like it's worse now.
Like when I was younger, being hung over suck.
Like now being hung over is devastating.
Yeah, but same with three hours of sleep, right?
Three hours of sleep is more of a lazy, sleepy thing where it's like a hangover and misery.
But it's worse now than it was when I was in my 20s.
It is worse now, but it's still not as bad.
No, I agree. I 100 % agree with that.
Yeah, because I think three hours of sleep is still three hours of sleep.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like when your health bar in a game is reduced down.
Yeah, where you can actively damage yourself.
Your stamina bar could use a recharge.
Yeah. yeah hung being hung over is like oh you you're debuffed for a while and it's mysterious it sucks yeah uh all right what's worse metal gear solid four legend of zelda or legend of zelda skyward sword oh oh dan's looking very oh dan's not upset dan is very upset that i have to think about this they're two kind of like lesser entries in their very good franchises let's be clear they are they're both still good they're both still good but anybody who's like this is my favorite one in that series even you wouldn't dan you would never say metal gear solid 4 is catch me on the right day i might yeah
weird day that's a weird day skyward sword has very good dungeons it has very good and i like the motion control skyward sword got a 10 from from Game Informer while I was there.
That's a little high.
Yeah. That's a little high.
You think? I'm not going to answer.
You know the answer.
Yeah, Metal Gear Solid 4 is, I wish there was twice as many gameplay sequences in it as there are.
It's not even that I think there's too much story, whatever.
Like, I can be into it's a goofy story.
I think the end stuff works.
I just wish it was buffered with more gameplay segments.
it also it does not look great right it's one of those games that you know in that ps3 era they're pushing a lot of things it was very ambitious and the ps3 is sort of struggling to keep up in a lot of ways ah jeff what do you think i've never played metal gear solid 4 oh that's right um am i the only other person here who's played both of these games to completion i've i i haven't completed skyward sword i definitely have beaten both and i do not like like skyward sword it's the second wait i think it's the worst still yeah i think i'm just like no second word spirit tracks nope ds ones are middle
of the pack they're both better than links awakening no wait no no i'm sorry no spirit tracks the worst one phantom hourglass is like middle of the pack and they're probably both on the bottom of mine um i think that they're both fine they're probably close i'll go ahead and say if you ask me right now i'd probably rather play mulligan it's all for okay okay all right all right that about does it for emails this week bombcast a giant bomb calm is the email address to send your lovely emails to thank you so much for everyone for writing into the show I deeply appreciate it and I'm rescuing them
out of the spam folder actually you know what I believe in rehabilitation I believe that in second chances restorative justice this exactly grading for equity um i'm gonna i'm gonna extend this to you travis and don't you break my heart god don't don't you do this to me travis instead of reading your rapid fire emails we're gonna read one of them and if i hear through the podcast jungle that one of your emails has made it to another video game podcast that's it we're done all right you don't get a second chance like Corey did after he kissed Lauren in the ski lodge in Boy Meets World, all right?
It's a pango that was very high of her to do that, all right?
Natalie Ward's a porn actress, right?
Yes. Okay. I was just making sure.
I'm like, that name sounds familiar.
I didn't know that.
Travis writes in, Travis from Fargo, What dessert do you always have room for?
With love, Travis in Fargo.
Anything cookies and cream.
oh good call it's not the flavor it's because so many desserts are too filling and they give you too much of them and i already just ate a meal like i like cheesecake but i can never eat a whole cheesecake creme brulee though creme brulee i always got a little room for creme brulee that nice little cracker sugar thing on top that nice little smooth custard it's not too filling it's It's never too big of a portion.
I don't usually get dessert, but when I'm on vacations and you know where, they'll usually have a creme brulee on the menu.
I'll get a creme brulee because I can sit here and enjoy myself longer.
I just don't like how the crust sticks to my teeth sometimes.
Oh, it's a little sticky, but that's okay.
Because that brown, where the sugar gets burnt a bit, that's such a good flavor.
That burnt sugar flavor.
Ooh, love it. I like this comment when Mike said creme brulee.
We just got a comment that says, rich ass motherfucker oh come on he is the one percenter oh my god I'm sorry I said a French word yeah that's definitely the Mike Mahardy of the giant bomb I always have room for pumpkin pie that's a real salt of the earth dessert right there I do have to admit that's a good gourd I'm going to grab two of those free mints on the way out the door wait what's what's a like a chocolate mousse is that just a way of saying it's like kind of like a whipped dessert or whatever it's like fancy pudding that's like basically eating air so i probably always have room for that uh
tiramisu yeah oh i haven't had a tiramisu in a while with some good lady fingers in there holy shit let's get a tiramisu baby um all right right bombcast .johnbomb .com is the email address Travis don't make me regret this alright I'm looking and I'm talking to you right now okay this week on the website uh we're going to continue streaming pretty much around the clock non -stop just just blocks of programming uh so stay tuned to johnbomb .com as well as uh game spots youtube game spots twitch uh as well as our twitch and our youtube tube uh gay mess morning soon to be renamed popping off for the rest
of the week crack grub that's right we'll be back uh for the rest of the week and remember the new time noon eastern 9 a .m pacific yes mond uh wednesday thursday friday for the rest of the week uh we're gonna have another grub block and then tomorrow jeff grub you're gonna beat it right you're gonna beat it i'll beat it yeah i'm gonna beat it for everybody tomorrow absolutely the finale of brothers 2000 will be out of my life unless i decide to speed run it which is would be an insane thing to do why why would you do that who would you do that yeah why would you do that who who could ever be sure
um and then a voicemail dump truck i believe tam and lucy are going to be playing through a little bit of spliction on thursday that should be at like 10 pacific am I believe so that's what this calendar says Lucy's got to play as the British lady right both of them could play as the British person are they siblings no I haven't played the game guys I just assumed they were sisters they don't even know or like each other no remember one's a big city girl and the other one's a country gal they do that with sisters every once in a while yeah right i've i've seen the parent trap um yeah see we're
going to have a power bombcast to discuss the fallout of the elimination chamber and uh all the other stuff that's probably going to pop off this week uh upf still up in the air as to what we're playing but there is a tentative thing i might be able to confirm here i do have w2k25 and it will be out on friday so i could stream some of that and i will uh i'll have it by then as well maybe we could do some multiplayer i would like to yeah let's check out some of the single player stuff then we'll do some matches against each other yes yes yes and then uh after that uh to cap off the friday uh the game
spot crew will be doing a live episode of game spot spot after dark uh we may have some of the game spot homies popping off uh on gb stuff throughout the week as well if you're watching and listening live to the podcast stay tuned shortly Tom is going to pick up and play through some GTA 5 stuff that PC enhanced edition that PC edition folks you all get 7 podcast points today I want 8 Mike take one away I rap on the spot I got a bunch for something take points away from him I got it for knowing symbolism capitalism minus eight podcast points this is what you get for demanding from you didn't say
please yeah no you i'll say you really are from ohio i don't get it's political you wear a mega man shirt to this podcast yeah where's your suit it's a mega man disney shirt isn't it perfect for me okay basically it's a suit then never mind to update the podcast point standings we are all net positive JD Vance Travis Scott obliterated I can't say like say please anymore that's that's bad what a dweeb and we don't giant bob is a welcoming place except to dweebs like that no dweebs not a nerd folks we'll see you next week for another episode of the Johnny Palmcast. He's been Mike.
He's been Dan. He's been Jeff.
I've been Jan. And you at home have been doing work.
Go drink some water today.
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