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tuesday may 20th 2025 welcome to the giant bomb cast episode 891 i am your host jan ochoa joining me co -captain of the ship he's a master of improv and he's training to be a mime as we speak but he's going to break his vow of silence to deliver the news co -captain of the ship jeff grubb jane you're really good at timing out that youtube bang it faded in perfectly i'm really impressed good job buddy thank you so much speaking about timing he's the master of all all time he wears 12 watches but you can't see them guess where he's hiding him dan reichert i usually wear one watch but i'm not now because this is when i
charge it that's a fun little anecdote for folks speaking about charging up he's constantly charging up because he's constantly low battery mode but he's exceeding the battery limit that your phone automatically sets you to master of energizers energizer batteries he's our own bunny of the team jeff bacalar oh that's me me i'm the battery guy energy guy that's the funny part of the intro is that why do you put why do you charge your watch during the waking hours um because it does the sleep tracking thing now so it's like i didn't i used to do it when i slept but then it's like you do it when you're
awake now uh so it can track your sleep ram and all that apple's position is like there's gonna be a point where you can't use this and that sucks i mean you're gonna sit down at some point during the day and i don't want to charge it when i'm up and moving around i'm missing steps that should be tracking you know that's fair yeah thanks jan glad to be here bud and i'm glad that he's here and that he's on our team now he's the bad boy of games media he's overcome with the power of music and anarchy mike minotti speaking of bunnies give me a moment the zootopia 2 teaser trailer dropped i'm watching
this there's a snake now no i think the cops are bad in this one they're chasing they're chasing the fox and the bunny girl oh never mind now i'm into it um mike uh leo and stitch update i heard the live action movie's good oh good because i have to see it anyway so that's great that it might actually be good have um you know what i'm gonna say yes i think i have to i think have to is the word is a gun to your head situation um no but like Like, the nephew and nieces want to.
I do like Lilo and Stitch. Like, you make a live -action Snow White.
It's like, well, that's not even real to me.
Elaborate. Please elaborate.
What do you mean it's not real to you?
That's, like, just not a real thing, actually.
The cartoon is? No, the cartoon is hugely real and incredibly important.
It's never been more real.
Yeah, yeah. But I don't, like, that's not a part of my personality, the way maybe Lilo and Stitch is.
God, that sounds like a bad thing to say.
but true nonetheless.
Hey, Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind.
I had breakfast with Fleelo and Stitch at Disney World and it was great.
I'm not attacking you.
I'm trying to be on your side.
I'm just excited about the sausages I had at Ohana.
Which means family.
If only someone forgot I'm left behind.
I'm sorry. I think we should start a movement to just transport all of games media events to Hawaii oh sure I never been oh there's a Disney hotel there hey wait you've never been to Hawaii no yeah I've never been no well no Jeff I understand but Mike finds himself at Disney 11 times a year and I'm like man that's why he hasn't been to Hawaii they just go to Disney every time yeah they see more things than just one go west go west more between a couple trip trip things that have come up recently i'm learning about his very specific travel requirements lately like because i won't go see the juggalos
now i'm thinking of three different trips it's three different trips where he's like actually no i have some housekeeping um i want to bring it up so first of all obviously the biggest of thanks to everyone who's who's gotten uh um up and supported what we're trying to do here no No. What do you mean?
I was just making a joke about you saying nice things and I pretended to be stupid.
Oh, God, I got it. I got it.
I got it. My bad. We could try that again later on the podcast. We'll circle back.
So I've been messing around it up in the guts, as it were, of our payment systems, whatnot.
If you are in the unique situation out there, you're listening to the podcast and you're like, man, I tried to fucking support these guys.
And I like tried to do it through PayPal and I'm getting PayPal decline payments or whatever it is.
We figured out what's wrong and we figured out a way to fix it.
You should have gotten an email from, uh, us at some point in the last 72 hours.
Check those spam folders, shake out all the dust, make sure all the quarters and coins and paperclips fall out of those pockets.
And then you're going to want to go and re attach your PayPal information to our site in the billing section.
If you don't know how to do that, reach out directly.
We can tell you how, but we've – for the people who are affected by this, we've gone ahead and removed the connection.
So all you got to do is get back on, go to the billing section, re -add your PayPal credentials, and you should be all set.
I know that sounds like a lot, but if you are confused still, you can always email us, support at giantbomb .com, and we will get you sorted out.
That is the housekeeping PSA for the day.
Take it away, Jan. Thank you for keeping the house Mr. Baklar that's right he keeps the lights running that's why he's the battery it's all full circle yeah how's everyone doing how are things was yesterday a three day weekend or am I imagining that next week maybe I guess we don't know you worked the whole day yesterday Jan I know I was here sitting at my desk yeah what the fuck's a weekend jan you'll have to explain yeah i don't know what those are either it turns out looking for uh new apartments uh in san francisco is a dog shit you're moving that doesn't seem fun well you know how is housing
is tied to someone's employment not my own otherwise i wouldn't have one uh uh so yeah i got to figure out how to move all this shit that I've accumulated, and this couch. It's great.
Is it heavy? It's heavy, and also, it's missing the footy pad thing for one of the legs.
Oh, that's faster to make it so you can move?
Yeah. Do they have furniture repairmen?
Sure. Yeah? Yeah. There's a repairman for just about anything.
We're going to look up in the Yellow Pages for that.
Reupholster? Yeah, you probably just look up furniture, and I bet furniture repairman will be right there, but yeah.
Carpenter. It will fix things, if that's the question.
Well, yeah, actually that dovetails directly into something I was about to think about was that my cat has been very good, not destructive or anything, but despite the fact that we put big -ass scratch posts and stuff right next to this nice couch we have in the living room, it really likes scratching the nice couch. And so, like, what happens if it just rips up the back of the couch?
What do you do? Yes.
It just does. You own a cat now.
There are things to do there, but you gotta try things.
You gotta try a bunch of different things before you find out what the cat likes more than the couch okay shit yeah okay yeah that's that's the one complaint otherwise been delightful yeah um if you yes for that sort of thing you can definitely get something reupholstered if that if that's the concern or whatever yeah you can fix furniture that way just add like is like like stem cells where there's like just furniture cells that will like spread and just form whatever like the machines no it's just cloth oh you can just that will match the the previous cloth well they might have to reupholster
the whole thing i don't know okay it's it's it's gonna depend i i don't care about this anymore i've watched minecraft five times in the last oh no wow or the movie the movie yeah one big important question do you resent your children this is like one of the ones where i'm beginning to get there yeah i've got pretty high tolerance for most of their bullshit in fact i end up liking most of it even like the dumbass YouTube videos that's just nonsense or created by a computer somewhere I'm like yeah this is like sort of a punk rock version of YouTube I'll watch this this is getting to be a bit much
it's Jack Black I like Jack Black or have in the past it's too much Jack Black I want to paraphrase this tweet or not paraphrase I'm just going to quote the first five words from Jeff Gersman on Blue Sky after seeing Minecraft craft it isn't a bad movie do you disagree i i think it's um it's so forgettable forgettable that it might as well be bad uh like it's just nothing matters and then the only times the only time anything happens that like the kids are quoting it's just jack black sort of yelling something or singing a song that's his thing this feels very much like the pixels movie right
like Yeah, that's right.
Yes, that's a good analog game.
Free guy? Yeah, although I think there are people who like free guy.
That's not free guy, it's fine.
Yeah, where like I don't think you would call pixels fine.
I haven't seen pixels, no. Right?
That's Sandler, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Kevin James fucks Pac -Man or something like that, what is it?
It's Q -Bert, that's most Kevin James movies.
You can't fuck Pac -Man.
Not with that attitude.
dude i mean there are things you can do but not fuck okay he has a son there's a pack junior how you think that happens i'm saying a human person couldn't fuck back man i why well you know it's terrible that mythbusters ended right so like we couldn't check this out i'm just thinking about that show the studio where they're talking about fucking the kool -aid guy is that oh no no that's on apple we cannot go back into the kool -aid man discourse because i still haven't been able to get head over is the kool -aid man the kool -aid or is he the pitcher he's the pitcher i think i mean honestly okay i
mean that's like the same thing with the regular show like is benson gumbo a gumball machine or is like he's a gumball machine sure okay so why can't you apply the same logic to the kool -aid man we did we got there eventually no because like like you the kool -aid man you shouldn't he be called like the pitcher man i bet you are just splitting hairs here your brother that i am not okay with like film with whatever yeah that's true it's fun to see what the auto mod catches when we're doing this podcast uh dan sale yelling uh you can't a human can't fuck pac -man and cat powered and chet says yeah
because you have to make love to pac -man they did not let that through wow wow anti -romance youtube here yeah my office door closed on me so that's the kind of podcast it's been so far here you know my favorite thing about pac -man to make this about video games again is that they made all these weird pac -man spinoffs like miss pac -man professor pac -man like super pac -man or whatever and none of them were called pac -man 2 then they made this weird game for the super nintendo and genesis where you kind of like poke pac -man around a slingshot to make him solve puzzles and that's called pac -man 2
and that is one of my favorite things in video games the whole pac -man lineage is real fucked up because he had a very clear you you know pac -man and miss pac -man and you have all the 3d adventures you have these weird side scrollers it's just all over the place there is like a segment of video games especially the earlier ones where it's like the idea of one like called like two is weird like tetris 2 is like a really strange idea like puzzle type games you know like which i would kind of throw packing i guess it's just more of an arcade game but it's a maze game right yeah but tetris 2 is a a very
weird one yeah it's like a concept you can't have a sequel to a concept you know yeah yeah that's right exactly tetris is like a set of rules that make a game just to have like never change is that all the bombs added to it it's just not tetris i mean it's tetris but not as good and it's really not tetris 2 right yeah give me tetris attack which is actually just paneled upon tetris sphere oh we can't talk about this we can't talk about this sphere anymore I'll throw my dick in a blender for Tetrasphere and that stuff you can catch if you watch live that was on the pre -show I guess it comes way
out of place if you didn't hear the pre -show I like Tetrasphere so much alright I guess let's just go ahead and talk about video games oh shit Tetrasphere is like coming with a pussy see true carry said that that's a drew carry tweet it's from holy shit yeah that's that's that's a drew carry oh gosh on the box speaking about twos capcom fighting collection 2 came out last week we did a quick look of it and a upf where we played a lot of power stone 2 uh gents i understand that a bunch of you have played this how are you are you digging the collection i love it it's a bunch of bangers it's like
there's a ton of good games in there and they did a great job of making sure that they're easy to play get in there and have fun and that upf where we were bouncing around between a bunch of games was a really good time which is like there have been some uh aspersions cast upon power stone and its ability to convey fun what is happening what's this anti -power stone contingent coming out of nowhere what what what Wait, wait, wait.
I gotta ask. Is this, like, the Smash community, like, hating on Power Stone?
I'll say it now. Power Stone is more fun than Smash Brothers.
Okay, to be clear, you don't have to say that, because it's not the Smash community, so calm down.
I'm just saying, if we're talking about that.
He's ready to disperse, Mike, all right?
I do think, like, Power Stone is not a game that you're going to be playing for eight hours the entire night you're hanging out with your friends uninterrupted.
But the fact that it's part of this compilation where you can bounce back and then it's like, all right, now let's go play more Power Stone.
i think it's like the perfect vehicle for a game like that where it's like okay like we've had our time doing a one -on -one fighter where one person's playing against one other person but we're all kind of sitting here let's get all four people involved again let's go back to power stone it's kind of a good balance i'm the whole package works really well it's like power so two is the four player one but power stone one is still 1v1 so you know if you if you need to have that it's there too yeah and if you want to have the sweaty fighting game experience there's games Games like that here still.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 is just one of the best kind of pure pixel 2D fighting games.
In that, like, original Street Fighter 2 lineage of games kind of like that, it might be my favorite one up there with Third Strike, right?
It's still so good.
I've been playing a ton of it.
I've been doing ranked matches and mostly losing, but still having a great time because the game just feels so good to play.
All the different grooves, like the different ways you can kind of play the game.
And the different ways you can even set up your team where you could have just one character who has a ton of health and power.
Or you could have three where it's spread out more.
So I'm just fighting all sorts of interesting teams. It is an old game, so there is a meta figured out.
So sometimes you're going to come across people who are just doing, like, Sagat and Blanka and, you know, Bison or Kami or whoever else is supposed to be very good.
But generally people are kind of messing around a lot, I think.
and playing more interesting characters, doing silly things like a level four Shin Akuma, stuff like that.
It's been really fun playing online.
I was surprised by, was it Project Justice?
And what was the other one?
Project Justice and Plasma Sword. Yeah, and they were both Dreamcast, right?
They were arcade, but almost all of these games were on Dreamcast eventually.
Okay, it made me think that Soul Calibur is my most played game ever, the original Dreamcast one.
And it makes me think, man, Man, if I would have branched out and got some more fighting games on Dreamcast, I probably would have been, like, all about those games.
Oh, yeah. I mean, what a good system for fighting games.
Absolutely. Yeah, those got surprisingly fun.
Like, it's just, oh, yeah, Capcom had been making fighting games for some time at this point.
So even when they were experimenting, even when they were going 3D, they were really kind of crushing it across the board. Yeah, I want to play more of all those games.
Yeah, and Plasma Sword is a really easy kind of pick -up -and -play, kind of like Soul Calibur in that sense where you can't kind of mash around and cool stuff's gonna happen project justice is a little bit more complicated but it's very silly also it's all like high school students and their teachers beating up each other there's these really silly team -up attacks like one of the characters is the school's nurse she has all these like chiropractor moves that she's doing with grapples and her specials the guy who plays like ryu looks like a middle -aged math teacher So that's fantastic.
Oh, the guy with the shoulder pauldrons and everything?
Yes, I love pauldrons.
What's the one with the Star Wars Voldos?
There's two of them.
That was Plasma Sword. Oh, that was great.
I like that. Prince and Saturn?
Saturn and Prince. And yeah, they were just big sillies.
And that's the game, too, where the lineage goes back to it maybe being a Star Wars series, and then that didn't happen.
Right. Post -Terikasi, they were going to try it again?
Yes, I think Terikasi happened instead of their attacks.
oh it was ps1 i'm trying to think timeline but there was a there was a game before so this is a sequel to a game called star gladiator and that's the one that was going to be star wars and that's a ps1 game got it got it um i for whatever reason the first street fighter game i ever played was on the ps1 and it was alpha 3 and my main was rolento the guy with a pipe oh yeah yeah like he rolled around throwing grenades yeah yeah yeah yeah what's he from is he from i I think he's from Alpha, isn't he?
I thought he was just from Alpha.
He's not from like Final Fight or something like that or whatever.
OK, you know what I just wrote?
I'm looking at images right now of the first Street Fighter.
I don't think I've ever played this game.
Is there a more forgotten original game?
Oh, yeah, I think that's right.
Like it's never in these collections.
It feels like like it's a completely different kind of game in a lot of ways.
It's like you only play as Ryu and and you kind of go through a couple of.
It's real. You can be Ryo and Ken, and it's basically a boss rush.
And you can 1v1 those two characters.
the physics are really weird it's not a pretty game it um it is in the street fighter 30th anniversary collection okay yeah it's uh it's not fun to play now no it was uh street fighter 2 is one of the it is the all -time best sequel leap ever it's it's like in any medium like anywhere like any the gap between street fighter 2 and street fighter 1 is like you could fit the rest of the world inside of that i was about to argue terminator 2 being but here's is like Terminator 2 is the best sequel but Terminator 1 is still really fucking good the chasm isn't as deep it's a different thing yes um Street
Fighter 1 I think I've only ever played uh on a DOS version on my computer 30 years ago uh or something like that so I I want I should track down like the actual like arcade cab it's weird because it's not this good game but it has this really interesting lineage because all the people who made that quit went to SNK and made Fatal Fury the first actual sequel to it is Final Fight, like Final Fight was I think maybe going to be called Street Fighter 2 at some point, and then you actually had Street Fighter 2 after Final Fight.
So it's this bad game that just like spawned all this great stuff.
I didn't know that.
I didn't know the Final Fight thing.
But Rolinto actually is from Final Fight.
Oh, okay. Yeah, a lot of those Final Fight because Final Fight's in the same universe, so a lot of those Final Fight characters eventually show up in Street Fighter Alpha and 4 and other games.
Oh, Mike, we have have so much to talk about yeah you can explain the whole history you've got all this time now street fighter alpha 3 uh was also awesome like yeah i was just really enjoying that upper yeah i did run into the problem as a kid and then we kind of like uh buffed up against it in the quick look of like all the isms in in uh those games are just like we're super confusing the same but yeah like you got to just kind of ignore it until you understand it right because it doesn't like like for the way that we're playing it it doesn't actually change all that much at least that seems
to be my interaction with it so far so i kind of just like pretend it doesn't exist for the most part it's intimidating at first if i had had like a friend that was really into it and could just have told me that back then i bet i would have like been really into it because like i loved fighting games a ton as a kid but then yeah the isms and the grooves and all that i'd see that i'd be like what the fuck i don't understand what i'm doing here yeah and catcom versus sk2 too is intimidating that because it's like immediately here's six grooves here's 30 characters pick one or three of them now
pick the ratios for them it's like what is happening i want to just do a hadouken yep yep exactly uh speaking about doing a hadouken uh and the grooves the roads generally have a lot of grooves there's nothing with a hadouken there actually no no you got the grooves though the groove is in the heart uh just as well as roadcraft seems to be in jeff grubb's heart yeah yeah so i've spent some more time with this uh this is the game that is making me continue to think that my cpu is fried i did update my bios and everything and it just won't work until i restarted my computer today but whatever uh
it is that there's a lot of cool stuff going on in this game so as a reminder i talked about it last week it's a construction game you you control a bunch of different vehicles but it does some cool stuff where it's like it's not all on you uh part of it is like you can set up some routes for computer controlled trucks to like take some other stuff while you're working on either something else or maybe to clear the way for them as they're coming down the road although there could be something in the way and that means that gives you a lot of reasons to be in the cool vehicles it's not just about like
you hauling stuff the way that uh mudrunners or snowrunners was it's like no that stuff is being hauled right now and if you don't go over there and like open the fence at the easy side or clear off all this debris on the more difficult side they're just going to get stuck and you're not going to be able to complete this mission so it's like okay great uh that means i'm going to get back in this bulldozer and i'm going to use that to clear all this stuff off the road again and that's like the game finding a way to ensure you're in the most fun vehicles most of the time it also like I think it
strikes the right balance of making sure that you're doing all of the stuff required to to build a road versus um you know like bypassing that to make sure you're getting back to the fun as quickly as possible uh for example uh there is a segment where you play as a truck with the crane and you got to pick up pick up all these big heavy slabs and I started doing that last week and I finished it this week and it was cool because it's like okay I actually do get to control the crane move it over i can lift it up i can put it down move it left or right laterally i can extend it i can drop the rope
i can control the length of the rope so i have full control over this crane and i'm going to pick up these slabs and i just kind of had to drive them across the street put them in the my base and now that they're in the base they can at that point magically teleport to all your other bases so it's like okay i got to do some fun stuff and now Now, the game's going to make it also pretty convenient for me to re -access those resources when I get to the other side of the map and it's like, shit, I wish I had that stuff.
Well, now I do. So it's pretty wisely designed in terms of that stuff.
And then I'm like, I keep playing the game and I'm like, this would be pretty fun multiplayer because there's just like everyone could be doing their own thing and working towards a common goal.
And I think they really emphasize that with this one.
So I'm kind of excited to see how that works.
So that means I'm going to make you all play at some point.
Okay. I'm looking at screenshots of it, and I might as well have just typed, make a Jeff Grubb game into Chat TV.
Oh, boy, yes. It really super is.
And it's like, you know, I do like big trucks, I found out, sure, yeah.
But it's really the physics.
Like anytime you have a big vehicle that has to like move through mud and get around trees and things like that, and I could see how the tires are sort of like slipping and sliding and then catching the mud and how the mud gets deformed because of the tire interacting with it that's just my shit and this game is just all of that yeah i can make it i can make it sound more sensual i mean there was something that triggered me i was reading an email and then all of a sudden i heard you going off on mud in a way that any of these games yet uh somehow i want to play this one i did really like that one
part in in uncharted 4 where i had to like winch a jeep so do you think based off of that i'll have a good time here that is based off that part of the game yes interesting yeah of course they basically just took that and made that a video game yeah you you are gonna winch so much shit in this game oh my god going vertical for when you know i i feel like we we've made it a point and a goal to try and make some of mike minotti's dreams happen like being a skipper on like the jungle Jungle Cruise.
Jeff Grubb, do you want to drive a big ass tow truck?
Yes. You should do that cross country to get out to SGF.
You should start driving now.
Can we get one of those ones that looks like Mater from Cars for him?
I would do that. I'm fine with that.
As long as there's a little tow truck crane on it.
Yeah, please. When I was 18, I made a commercial for a tow truck big rig company and I was supposed to go out to this truck lot and we had to get three trucks together to have them all do this thing for the commercial and two of the trucks didn't show up so I just had to sit in a big rig for like three hours while the driver listened to Christian Rock Radio and talked to me about Jesus No fun And that's why some tow trucks have like a crucifix in the back Exactly Speaking about driving a couple of us have played Deliver at All Costs quick look now on the site there's a winch you can do a winch
there's plenty of winch in there is yeah you haven't got the you unlock a winch got to get a blueprint for it and build it um yes Janice I'm like the doors the door thing that's where I'm at I think I unlocked one more thing since then but that's the first thing I unlocked and I'm like oh I get it now this game's gonna be fun like it just does fun stuff the door thing's hilarious because like yeah that's the first thing you unlock and I've yet to find an actual use for it by the way this is delivered on all costs the the quick look is up now you're driving around you're delivering stuff kind of like
isometric almost like gta style uh you know it's very very fun with a ton of destructibility oh just driving straight through buildings that's the moment i saw that i'm like i'm gonna like this game yeah it feels so good but the door thing yeah you unlock a thing where on your company car if you hit circle it opens up both the doors and the hood and your hood and the only thing i found to do with that is like if i'm driving by a sidewalk and someone's walking i was like door check second it's like hitting them with a seven iron they just go flying which it rules there's if they watch the quick
look there's a there's a mission where i have to deliver a bunch of stinky watermelons and keep a bunch of them in the truck and i went back to it when i had upgrades and so i had spike wheels and things like that oh right and i don't know how many fucking times in this quick look i would just go up to a car with my truck full of watermelons and shear the edge off the car and the driver's like corpse would fly into the bed of my stinky watermelon truck.
I don't think they're supposed to die.
They're supposed to stand back up, but since they were rolling around with all these watermelons, there's just these bodies freaking out in the watermelon.
It was incredible. Watch the quick look just for that.
It's a very good quick look.
You see me get bombed a million times while trying to deliver a trampoline to a Navy base, I think.
It's just a bunch of really wacky delivery missions where it's like the melon one is, oh, this guy's trying to sell these stinky, shitty watermelons to a tiki bar.
They're like, we don't want these.
They're stinky. So you take it, you spray them with pesticides to get all the bugs off them, and then you paint them green and then you drive them back.
And then there's another one where it's like a guy wants to impress a girl with a fish he caught.
And so there's this giant swordfish.
And then you also paint the swordfish alive on the back of your truck.
So there's painted swordfishes on the back of your truck just flopping around like crazy.
And you have to drive through like stinky fish barrels to feed it so it doesn't die or whatever.
Because it's alive in your truck bed.
yeah it's just freaking out in your truck um oh man it's just so silly and fun the destructibility is great like i always hate it in games where it's like any driving game where it was like you know one of the gtas where you hit a light post or something and the physics are too realistic and it's like i gotta get back up to speed and all that this is you're just plowing through shit like crazy it makes me think of like geomod red faction stuff or uh i mean blast core i mean last year mike brought that up on the quick look yeah it's totally that um but yeah super super goofy I mean, if there's
criticism I'd give is that like there's some pacing stuff like I'm pretty far in the game now.
I'm eight or nine hours in and there's like a lot of story stuff.
And it's like the game is quirky.
I like the whole presentation, but I don't like the story enough to dedicate this much time to it.
You know, that was gonna be my question, Dan.
Like it starts off with quite a bit of story.
Like once you're in the game and you're driving around, it's the game and you're driving around.
But there are the segments in between some of these missions where it's like we're going to you're the character is going to be talking and he's going to tell you what's going on.
you're gonna have to go talk to other people as well and i'm like so that doesn't sort of like fade away it kind of maintains at that level if anything it's kind of been doing more of that uh to the point where i have started playing it a little more as like a podcast game you know where it's like i'm listening to something or watching something in the background because like i don't know the the presentation i like the story i'm not super into it is like a quirky 60s you know like some alien stuff some like you know paranoia government agent type stuff but it's i don't know it it's not the strength
of the game the strength of the game it all doesn't matter right it's all very silly to the point where it's obvious that none of the story matters yeah it's just where every to every mission the fun part is like okay what is the gimmick here like yeah yeah but parentheses positive so it's like okay delivering a fish getting bombed on a golf course um you know just good like having to drive this car into a volcano that type of shit you know yeah the goofiness kind of reminds me of like thug one and thug two of like hey this is a very off -kilter mission um and then i i do enjoy the driving uh mike
you said something interesting about like it being isometric and like kind of enjoying that view more because you see more and i guess that's never clicked with me with like isometric driving games i haven't really like clicked with them in the past but for whatever reason maybe it's because i can crash through everything in this game uh and not get really penalized it's it's great right right you oh go ahead mike sorry what about you know like isometric it's like it has that vibe but really it's more of a top -down think it's like the old gtas right it's in between right it's kind of in between because there's
a bit of a slant to it where yeah there's an angle it's like you squint and it's yeah it's it's rc pro am if you squint at it right you can you can choose if you want to do like kind of like tank perspective controls or you know just like yes i'm gonna ask the direction what are you guys doing default tank controls i mean i'm i've loved the old gtas the top ones i'm you i like rc pro am I'm used to that.
Are any of those original GTAs worth revisiting?
I never checked them out.
I would just play Chinatown Wars.
That's good. Because that's one where they kind of were informed by all the stuff they did with, like, 3 and Vice City and San Andreas.
But it goes back to that top -down perspective, and it's got just a lot more going on.
It's awesome. I think it's one of my favorite GTAs.
I never played those Hotline Miami games that are, again, more inspired by the original GTA.
It's a little different because those are just like straight -up action games, right?
right? Yeah, it's not driving around.
GTA 1 and 2 were transformative for me.
I mean, just the openness of it, and just the tone, and it had a fart button.
I was in. Very transformative.
I remember GTA 2 and just being like, this is awesome, and then me and my friends have been like, I can't wait for them to make this into 3D, and we basically described GTA 3 to each other, and it was like, then they delivered.
It was awesome. There are some other GTA -inspired games that have come out recently.
American Fugitive, and Grand Theft, I think I just call it grand theft horse but i don't think it's actually called grand theft horse but there's a red dead redemption yeah there it is yeah exactly uh there's another top -down one like that that are pretty good i think it's from the american fugitive people so i'll look it up oh i might check out chinatown wars it's solid it's so good i remember playing that play it on a real three like 3ds or ds because like you do need to use the stylus a lot for like some like diffusing games and stuff what yeah what was the psp version stories and vice city
stories no but But they ported Chinatown Wars to PSP.
Did they? Oh, wow. And I don't think it's the ideal way to play that game.
Yeah, probably not.
I like it on DS. Yeah.
I played a ton on DS, yeah.
All right. All right.
I'll go dig out my DS.
Speaking about quick looks that we did for games recently, we also did a quick look for Doom the Dark Ages.
Mike Minotti, I understand that you have now been playing Doom the Dark Ages.
Yeah, I have been. I played Doom Eternal not too long ago, just about a month ago, getting ready for this.
and it is so nice that this isn't just Doom Eternal 2, and I like Doom Eternal quite a bit, but I love that the mechanics here are different, that you get the shield, and it's not just a gimmick, parentheses negative, it is a core part of the experience, doing the shield dashing, blocking stuff, and parrying stuff, and I get like some people are being a bit snarky, like, oh, I guess we're just going to put parries into more games and make them better, and I'm like, eh, kind of, I don't have a problem with it, all right give me a parry and burnout especially when it's very generous in doom the dark
at least on the default that parry is easy to hit you can even like there's a slider for the parry timing you can even just mess around with it but yeah it's very generous it's not necessarily about the hardcore there's that one enemy in doom uh eternal that like was one of the few that had this parry window was like the only way to really attack him and it was pretty rough it was kind of unforgiving it was a tough fight i liked it but i think it it ruffled a lot people's feathers because it was very difficult and it was very rigid with the way you had to fight this guy but doom eternal had a bit
of that where the specific ways you had to attack certain enemies was very rigid like even those those flying orb guys it's like you're supposed to shoot a rocket in their mouth and that kind of gets them in one hit and the glory kill thing which was cool that was so much of doom eternal like glory kills are almost omnipresent almost oppressive just how much you were depending on that to stay alive and here at least you know i'm like in the first seven levels i just did that first big dragon riding one i feel like i there's a bit more jazz in the way i can play it a bit more freeform and by the way
flying around on a dragon in that level is really cool i liked it a lot there's some rigidity there with like oh there's an invisible wall or when you like lock onto an enemy he sort of just like somewhat awkwardly snap into place facing them i also didn't really care because it looked really cool and it was really fun do you uh guys find like the dragon and like the kaiju segments uh does it does it break up the pacing too much or is it i like how it breaks it up yeah the pacing needs breaking up yeah because you know uh mike i was watching your stream when you were talking about doom eternal
getting some flack for like the super long levels and i do feel like like when i get to like that atlan like that mech level it's just like okay last one i did was a big you know scouring all the environments for every hidden thing and everything whereas the atlan one is like i'm just gonna step on everything and shoot everything with a giant turret like it did feel like it broke up the base in a good way yeah uh mike i understand you have also been playing doom is this the 2018 or the original original this is the og doom um first time or not first time i played it you know back then for sure
and you know it's been ported to everything thing but i realized i don't think i've ever actually played through doom and i've played other these retro shooters getting remastered on my switch i did uh quake that way i did all truck one that way are you doing the the new releases the doom one and two uh i can't remember they have a subtitle it's just doom one plus two i think yeah so like recently they like re -remastered these games on everything and it's awesome it's not very expensive and it has doom one due to in all sorts of these other episodes that got released for it i'm like yeah let's
play doom one on my switch that would be a kind of a nice i'm looking for something to play while i'm watching youtube in bed at night right um this is something that i know is relatively breezy it's not gonna have a lot of story that i need to listen to doom one still is a ton of fun and these remasters are uh great i i love these things and i love just being like i'm gonna map quicksafe to up on the d -pad and quickload to down on the d -pad and like i'm gonna save scum like crazy and just play through as much of this game as possible because who cares i'm having a good time yeah i i i heard nothing
but good things about that doom one plus two i played a little bit of it was like yeah this is impressive it it is night dive right that i think night i did those yeah updated those yeah that's just solid work from them as always right and again like i'm like gone the third chapter of Doom which I think was like there were three chapters originally I think there's a fourth bonus one I might play too then there's all of Doom 2 and then all this other stuff.
So like Final Doom and stuff on there or whatever?
I think it has the chapters that comprised Final Doom Final Doom was like a fan thing right?
Yeah it was originally actually It was like a mod thing that got turned into an official thing but there was like two times where John Romero came back and made more level packs for like a 20th anniversary and then a 30th anniversary or whatever and those are in here so there's just a ton of doom but even like the old stuff like these og levels are still really fun you know there was something about just playing this game like man this was important wasn't it you kind of get it there's even a part of me that because you know back then they ported doom to everything and all the ports had these
caveats and blah blah blah and we joke now about oh this thing can run doom but there's still a part of me that's like wow this thing is is running Doom perfectly.
I shouldn't think like that.
I remember how bad the Super Nintendo port was, like the 32X.
I thought people liked the 32X one, didn't they?
The 32X was pretty good, but there still are caveats.
It's interesting, yeah.
The 3DO one was terrible, and you would have thought that would be amazing, and it sucked.
The GBA one is kind of weirdly good, but still a bunch of those caveats, yeah.
I just downloaded OnePlus 2.
I forgot the Night Dive did that.
That sounds awesome.
It's awesome. it's great and these games are still fun to play and they're just kind of breezy and still interesting and obviously historically important i think everybody should play them yeah um i in my basement after emptying out my childhood home i got that i found that cd did i tell you guys about that the cd with all the wads on it no so i had i i guess from like eb games or babbage's or one of those simpsons wad or whatever like what you have on there no No, it was like a retail thing that I guess back then you could just get away with selling at a store and no one would really say boo.
There were no rules in the 90s.
Yeah, it was the Wild West back then.
We were all kids. We were all just kids back then.
Innocent men. Literally.
Exactly. I wasn't born yet.
Exactly. Well, now you get it.
And I found the CD and it was like this really weird cover jewel case with this skull on it.
And out of the skull was the logo Doom.
doom and it was just like hey bud how would you like 10 000 wads for doom and you're like you know i guess i'm like maybe 10 or 12 at the time and i'm just like fuck whatever this is i need it and uh i found the cd and it's that it's in the basement now with all the other um personal effects we should do a stream where we go through like some of those right i'll need a cd drive you can get like a usb cd drive for like 10 bucks on for 58 cents i bet yeah it's crazy what's the wads i remember like i think this is the first kind of form of rebellion most people from my generation had was just wads
or aol flash games where you killed barney the dinosaur sure it was like it was our way of being like i'm not a child anymore this is what i for kids and everyone's like yeah we know what's your problem well he should die i was like are you okay it's like no give me like 10 years and then i'll be okay right this is weird that was not an an autobiography right now i swear no we all did it we all were like i did not i never turned my back on barney god damn it i was thinking i always bemoan the fact that i never got to grow up with pc games and i missed you know half -life and all this stuff when it
was hot and now i'm thinking like i wonder if i am kind of to blame for that because i never had a computer that could play anything my stepdad had an old packard bell that was not like powerful but it would have been able to play I had a CD -ROM I should have been able to play Half -Life on it but he never trusted me with the computer because he's always gonna get a virus gonna get a virus can't put computer no games on it'll get a virus and then I used to always think of it like oh man what he didn't know anything about games it's not going to be a virus what's wrong with him but then I realized
the first thing I think I did with his computer when I got it when I was allowed to use it was I went into Microsoft Paint and I made like a triangle like warning symbol thing with a skull on it and i typed like warning warning serious virus detected you know contact whatever immediately and then i made it the desktop wallpaper i got home from school and the geek squad was there and they were like it's a wallpaper like i think something you made in pain yeah look it was like 1995 this is the greatest prank you can play on a boomer ever word he was like oh god i can't touch it i gotta call the experts
oh boy geek squad do you think your stepdad ever realized when they're like it's a wallpaper that it's like oh this was a prank or did he just no i think he realized that i was like screwing with him or something it was like well he can't touch the computer anymore okay yeah yeah and then you switch it to a star wars first contact borg screensaver that he bought okay yeah i wonder what the first reaction was when when told it was a wallpaper he was like okay and yeah yeah maybe i am to blame for that no no no no not at all no no it's me hi yeah i'm the problem it's me okay uh games are getting
weird again and i am so excited for that because dan and i have checked out a demo for two uh t tell me about out there so i'm so excited i hope it's good this starts with one of the best opening songs of a game and i realize that's not a common thing in games but all games should have like a sitcom style opening yeah um the premise of this game is you are a teen uh you just turned 13 years old and your arms are permanently stuck in a t -pose like position and that uh opens you up to a bunch of moments of hilarity and embarrassment like for instance your mom has to make you a very special long
spoon so you can eat cereal and how the game works is or for most of it at least in the demo is you will use both analog sticks to control different appendages in the initial game you were kind of just like using your arms to like pour a bowl of cereal so there's also kind of hilarity that ensues because this is from the katamari guy as well right keita takahashi yes keita takahashi and this has his dna all over it parentheses positive um because god it's so fucking charming and it's so fucking fun i want to befriend the dog in this game the dog is so helpful the dog helps you go to the bathroom
because you can't wipe yourself wait what does he do um the door shuts and you can't uh you just kind of press buttons to make bathroom sounds and stuff and does that bring your shorts in i can't remember what it does like a plate of spaghetti no i think something more friendly than the most artful way you could ask that question mike i appreciate it thank you i'm getting octodad vibes from what you're describing that's okay okay i'm gonna go rare fuddy duddy here um i like octodad because i it's got this kind of of goofy physics thing going on with challenges tied around it and everything and i
love katamari i just love the actual act of the rolling the ball around and the personality obviously and the music yeah this game the demo you know had like the personality it's got this great song and stuff it's got this great look and everything i just feel like the gameplay itself is very simple in a way that like did not like after like the fourth or fifth little vignette of like Like, okay, move the analog stick to move your face towards the water.
Move the spoon towards your mouth.
It's like, okay, is this just going to shuffle me from just, like, goofy vignette to vignette?
I love that in WarioWare when there's, like, a challenge and a speed to it.
And, like, I just feel like the game part of it was not really grabbing me from what I played.
I love the tone. Love everything.
It seems like it would be good for kids for sure.
It's just I didn't feel any kind of, like, gaminess or challenge or anything.
thing yeah I wonder if it opens up uh more game elements later because like can you guys describe like just a little bit more what the gameplay actually is so it's like let's say when you're making cereal it's like okay so the box is over here the spoon is over here and so like each analog stick controls an arm and then like I think it's the bumpers are like grip so like you move the left arm to the cereal you hit lb to grab the thing and then you're analog sticking like pouring the cereal in the bowl and then you're that like as you're doing is like something something with one arm, it's affecting
the other arm because it's kind of like T -posing.
That's the thing. It's not really like, you know, when I think of like Octodad, it was using the physics and stuff to like, there were real challenges.
Like, how do I get this thing over this thing?
How do I get over there?
This just feels very, it almost feels like quick time events in a way where it's just like, now I do the thing with the left arm and now I'm doing the thing with the right arm and there's no real, I didn't see any real fail states or anything.
I'm just kind of like kind of interacting with this kid as he's trying to eat cereal.
You know, it's like, I love the concept and everything.
I just didn't find it that fun to play you know okay yeah it uh and we're all anime experts here but it does feel like a slice of life anime uh type of dealio where you're kind of just like inserted in this kid's uh day it is stupid charming though uh i accidentally looks really nice i accidentally put a hat on my dog and now i just want hats on all dogs uh to be honest um yeah the the demo is pretty light in terms of gameplay uh dan did you figure out what the coins you were collecting do no okay all right no no i have not there are definitely like other like outfits and stuff that you can unlock
but i didn't really play enough to get those yeah the game game's called and it's out may 28th is that you guys does that really state sound right to you that sounds about about right.
Yeah, there's currently a demo out on Steam right now.
It's one of those Delios where your progress carries over.
Awesome. Oh, good. You think you eventually unlock S or P?
How do you S pose? Do you rest S?
It's like the Egyptian thing.
He's doing the Egyptian thing.
That's offensive. Mike, it's not even a week, bud.
No, that's bad, though.
Oh, God. You get 25 % each, boys.
No! People can't see what I was doing with this bottom arm.
That was, it was, it was more like a C I was doing.
Mike, you were just tutting, right?
The, the hit dance.
Last stand, Minotti.
Okay. I can't believe, I can't believe this is what takes him down.
Oh, my God. Oh, now I want to see that.
No. Who's that channel?
No, no, no. What a disappointment.
It's the Egyptian dance.
okay yeah we'll we'll wait for you to figure out if it's offensive betrayal what ai says whether egyptian dance particularly belly dancing is offensive is a complex issue with very perspectives that's not what i bet no he wasn't dancing so you would all be happier if i was belly dancing yeah yeah yeah 100 % happier is happier the word yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a different emotion, isn't it?
And that's why I'm continuing to make the argument we should sell crop tops in the giant bomb store.
Agreed, agreed. I have heard that that would be a smart idea to make good crop tops for our stuff.
Fantastic, fantastic.
Speaking about weird games, I've been playing a little bit of this, not enough to be able to talk about it on the podcast, but I picked up Promise Mascot Agency.
I tried that. Yeah, it's made by the developers of Paradise Killer, which was like a sleeper hit from a couple years ago banger of a soundtrack gang um and from the early bits that I played of it it seems like it is uh kind of like Shenmue in the sense that you were just doing miscellaneous chores in a zootopia like town but instead of animals they're all mascots for various things I was unprepared for like I watched the trailer and it looked like like I am a big mark for mascots I think mascots are just the funniest greatest thing and then and it's just like you're driving around.
It looks like this open -world, silly delivery game, like Delivered at All Costs with mascots and stuff.
And I played it. It felt like a visual novel.
Yes. There was a lot going on story -wise.
This is where the path split, where Dan may be less interested, and then the freak in me is like, all right, give me some more text.
Yeah, I played like 20 minutes on a flight, and I was just like, when does the game start?
And then I eventually just gave up on it.
Yeah, I'll dig deeper, because I kind of want to do a quick look for this.
Yeah, I've heard good things about it, it, but I also heard maybe it's not for me.
I mean, it's overwhelmingly positive on Steam.
People seem to love it.
I was like trying to figure out what it was from some trailers.
I'm like, is it like a physics thing where you're driving around with these mascots and they're bouncing around?
That's what I want to know.
Also, I wonder, when we're saying mascots, do you think that's something universally understood?
Do they have mascots in Europe?
Surely. Yeah. Mascots that dress up for football games.
A man in a suit is what we're talking about.
Shooting t -shirts out of a cannon.
right maybe not as you didn't land in uh paris they know it's not but they don't call mascots yeah that's not we're talking like a sports team right yeah yeah like that simpsons where homer becomes the isotopes yeah i don't know if football teams have mascots no like soccer the real football the real football yeah yeah you should though yeah i know we should lend them slider ryan reynolds just a big mascot ryan reynolds i feel like i've seen that creepy fry dude in europe like twice now love that yeah the the palm freaks guy yeah like stone fucked up fry dude yeah he's like give me some fries
man i love that dude yeah japan has tons of them yeah i was just like i'm like i just like want to see some fun mascots so i just googled japanese mascots and i'm not disappointed it's like it's incredible famously european country japan there is there is a really fucked up poutine guy uh that i saw in montreal this is a please describe this describe this for the audio listeners please because this i'm normally a big fan of these guys but what's happening here is that a sumo man he's got like he's like crying tomatoes he's got like a hot dog belt his mouth is like he's got got like a french fry
beard um delicious lettuce and cheese are coming out between his eyes and mouth yeah it looks like nonsense he looks like he's like the best canada can do honestly oh no how dare you hate america right now let's go everybody come on all right uh and uh last game on the docket here speaking about weird games uh dan you've been been playing skin deep yeah this is a game that i i think i had a similar feeling as i do with like promise mascot agency where it's no no this is more my problem is more that i suck at this one um because like i heard it was like a funny immersive sim which that's that triggered
something my brain where it's like oh i really enjoy like you know dishonored or the newer prey uh like i i think that's really cool and the idea of that with like comedic elements was really cool cool to me and i believe that it's in there i think that like i can see enough of that game i played like maybe a couple hours of it and you can see like all right it's giving you a bunch of tools and locations and kind of setting up the dominoes where you could make some funny stuff happen but i suck so much at it because i mean there's definitely a stealth component and i suck at that so i feel like
nine times out of ten my encounters with enemies would be like oh they see me and i throw pepper in their face and while they're coughing i try to hit them with a stick or jump on them and subdue them you know but like i think that's a meat problem i i think there's really interesting things like to kill them uh properly you have to like take their heads off and like shoot them out of an airlock or throw it in the trash like basically send their heads into outer space otherwise they were like like suck back in and come back to life um but yeah all the levels i played were like you're trying to
get these keys and save these cats and there are definitely a lot of tools and stuff where it's like um oh this uh soap dispenser thing you can activate and it'll like cause a cloud of flammable gas and then you can wait for someone to run by it and you can throw a lighter at it and it explodes like it just seems like all the tools are in place for someone with more patience and skill and stealth mind than me you know um i just myself just kept getting caught and getting frustrated i get this uh immersive sims are definitely the genre that often make me feel like oh i'm not creative sometimes
i'm just like doing the most basic stuff every time and uh and that's like not a great feeling when you're like oh oh, obviously there are all these tools here I could be using, but for some reason I'm just not making the leap to use them in the moment.
This one has been enabling me to do a little bit more of that just because it's like, well, it's pretty clear, and I'm a little bit better at stealth, so that has opened up some possibilities for me where it's like I can take my time, and I think I just like the way it presents itself as here are some really fast, quick levels, and we're not going to put you in a level for forever, so if you came up with an idea last time, we're gonna give you a lot of the same tools this time go ahead and try it on this round instead and that's worked for me i want to uh spend some time in skin deep uh just because i
just like how the presentation is when you save a cat and it's just yo yeah i do like that yes they're cool cats for sure yeah this might get me to convert to being a cat person or not completely a cat person but like yeah just show the team a little bit chill bud dan the the humor is not like a turn enough for you because i don't think it's like wacky internet humor but maybe it's adjacent to that i was worried it's not you know like oh i can't ask cheeseburger it's not that it's so funny no i think that's a thing again with kids by the way no no we buried that we buried cheeseburger cat i thought
we cut off its head and separated it from its body and put it in the desert yeah nope nope we did not bury it it is alive and well yeah because uh what the kids are into now is brain rot and brain rot and uh i can has cheeseburger the venn diagram is almost it was the original skibbity toilet wasn't it when you think about describe describe that was probably sure a brain rot sort of is a catch -off uh descriptor for like basically uh memes that people you know age six to like 20 like so like if you said brain rot to dib would he know yes Yes, 100%.
That's just a phrase that kids know now?
He said something about Italian brain rot, which I thought was sick.
Yeah, someone in chat just said, I Googled it.
Italian brain rot is a viral meme.
Ballerina, cappuccino, stuff like that.
Characterized by absurdist humor.
This is not very helpful.
No, it's like they all realized Italian, a lot of Italian ends in vowels, and they're all just sort of doing like, cappuccino, ballerina.
Is that like when I say the video game Killzone is pronounced Killzone?
okay why did i get in trouble for the egypt thing look look sometimes honestly sometimes he'll come home and he'll say something and i you know what it's funny it's funny okay it's funny sometimes it's funny a lot of times it's like eye roll inducing and i'm just like dumb as shit ever yeah i'm like you know what i'm glad you motherfuckers never going to own a house like i'm you know i'm happy about it i'm in with that group yeah sorry jane you got the short end of the stick on that generational divide what can i tell you jan come to us uh no it's it's funny like you know i think it comes from it
doesn't come from a bad place right i think it's just you know compared to like what we were doing like it's like oh everyone's gonna go to school and quote austin powers like that's what yeah there was no there was no jokes right yeah the thing thing with the kids is like i mean it was on kind of like rapid fire for us too but for for for dibs like age group right now it is like four day intervals and it's gone forever we had a good six months of doing crotch chops and sockets right it's all we had yeah i think it went longer than that it was a few years actually and then again in 06 and 09 but yeah
we quoted we had a freaking ace attorney pet detective and we're saying all right i'm sorry mike what was that i'm sorry mike What was that?
Can you repeat that?
Wait, do you see me rewind in my brain?
You have to watch yourself do it in your own brain.
Wait, you've conflated Ace Attorney and Ace Ventura.
That's right. No, no, no. That's the game.
That's the game. And the movie.
He's supposed to be a detective.
Okay, someone needs to make the collab we never knew we needed.
Ace Attorney by Detective.
It came out, and I was like, I think that's not right.
Then I finished, and I'm like, no, I got it.
Then I was gone. Dan!
You could just slip that by, huh?
Dan scared me. I was like, shit, rewind.
What did I actually say?
That's so funny. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Oh, God.
Oh, God. Okay, I got this.
Broadcasting. That first Ace Attorney had a really problematic ending.
That's a big problem.
Even when I saw that when I was 12, i was like this ain't gonna age at all yeah what is this thing but it's edgeworth yeah but all right chicken jockey i'm sorry my kids have been saying that non -stop for the last week yeah we might have to explain to them that that actually isn't a joke but that's not gonna help this is gonna make no more no it's not gonna help because again like half the things we were quoting for movies was just like jim carrey said something fun in a funny way he said it wasn't actually a joke.
Alrighty then. And that's still harmless.
I don't think kids today will understand the power Jim Carrey in 1994 had.
No, but they're exposed to him in Sonic, so that's the onboarding.
Sure, but I mean, has there ever been an example of an actor in our lifetime that dominated, like, a period of time more than he did?
In our lifetime? Specifically 1994 Jim Carrey.
Well, like, Will Smith had a real good run there for a bit.
Okay, 1994 was Ace Ventura at the mask and Dumb and Dumber.
And then, like, the next year was freaking Batman Forever forever right so it was just unstoppable for a bit there you're right it's the it's the top nothing beats it yes uh folks that about does it for game talk uh look forward to a couple more quick looks popping off later this week in the meantime we're gonna go take a quick bricky break and we will be back with the news 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
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Wait, what? Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois.
I feel a yearning. a yearning to sit in some bleachers drink an alcoholic beverage and down some glizzies perhaps not nine of them but I also have a yearning for the news I also have a yearning to know how much Deliver at All costs is Dan yes I forgot to mention in the quick look and during the conversation earlier that it is free at launch I saw the chat saying so on the Epic Games Store if you want to check it out it should be free on Epic Games Store for like a week yes check it out now seems like a good one to check out for free that's a apparently did that before uh so that's that's pretty
cool um that they returned to do that that's like the kind of thing where it's like here's a free game that came out a long time ago i'm like i'm probably not going to go track down epic for that but in this like moment where it's like free in that first week where it's like oh i should act or else i'm gonna lose the chance that actually does make me more likely to go there and get that yes you should um mike minotti uh randy pitchford correspondent can you please tell us what's happening on the streets yeah i was like in 30 break like you're gonna talk about the randy pittford thing right and you
guys didn't know what i was talking about uh randy may have had his uh don't you have phones moment here oh it's funny you have phones what was that that was when everybody was really mad when blizzard announced diablo immortal because uh they did not announce diablo 4 yet and people did not want to phone diablo game then the guy was like oh you all don't you have phones gotcha okay oh that's or what was the uh the adamorth microsoft like deal with it thing do you remember that yeah yeah he got he got kind of like reamed for that and that was a real unfortunate thing you know the uh whole like
we have a we have a system for um for our broke gamers it's the xbox one right or the xbox 360 people could use more media training it turns yes well so randy's right it was interesting that like he this tweet happened a week ago but it's just picking up now where he was like promoting borderlands 4 then some some person's just like hey randy this game game better not be eighty dollars don't take that risk blah blah blah and randy responds a not my call b if you're a real fan you'll find a way to make it happen oh god why don't you say anything then he starts doing like a whole back in my day
i paid eighty dollars for starfly for sega genesis and worked you know five jobs and walked 15 miles in the snow you know that thing so um again it's It's, like, happened a week ago, but everybody's dosing now, and it's getting out there, and it's just not a great look, let's say.
I mean, because, like, $80 price tag, we were talking about this somewhere else.
Maybe it was Game Pass Mornings or whatever.
But it's, like, every single one of these $80 games are going to be under even more scrutiny because people are going to be looking for reasons to be, like, you know, tell me why this thing's worth $80.
And so if you give them a reason, it's, like, to be mad instead, that's just going to, like, poison everything for you.
So, like, these things that could be small or be ignored in other circumstances, in a moment where it's like now you're charging $80 for your game, people are going to make a big stink about it because they're mad.
You are bringing the impulse buyification as close to zero as possible.
And that's not great.
And there's something really toxic and maybe even problematic about trying to leverage a person's perspective of themselves as a fan with their ability, like how much they're going to pay for something.
thing no true scotsman would miss out on borderlands 4 uh i you know i don't i i don't like commenting on anyone's appearance or body shaming here oh but but but you'll go ahead and do it i'll do it here the photo floating around with this quote of uh if you're a real fan you'll find a way to make it happen someone someone in his camp needs to fucking fix his suits dog like like, I hate to be the menswear guy on, like, Blue Sky and Twitter, but, like, homie, fucking unbun your shit.
Stop looking... I know that he wants to look like a magician, but stop looking like a magician that does cocaine.
He's looking like John Goodman in season 4 of Righteous Gemstones.
Ha ha ha ha! And, like, the thing is, John Goodman pulls that shit off!
100%. Randy here...
40 years older than him.
Oh. They got the baccalaureate.
He looks like Brother Love.
and again brother love pulls that shit off it's like he doesn't know he's wearing a gimmick no he doesn't yeah and he lives it brother so yeah of course he's not wearing a gimmick that just is his life the bruce pritchard of the games industry all right back to body positivity yeah there we go uh other news nintendo has filed a new trademark for uh singh's 2007 ds adventure game yo hotel dusk room 215 oh my god so nintendo nintendo filed a new trademark for hotel dusk to room 215 in japan which is raising speculation about a potential remake uh as whatever these like trademark things happen i
always point out like you know sometimes there's just a lawyer sitting in a room going through paperwork and being like i should take a look at things we should renew trademarks on it's been it's been a long time and we like have to do that we have to be on top of trademarks because that's one if like you don't use it you lose it so uh a lot of times that's what happens but hotel dusk does feel like one where it's like i bet they wouldn't take the time to do that one unless something was actually happening can you just lie to me i'm gonna get my games coming like uh the game's coming back laura yeah
yeah absolutely i um thank you i hope last windows with it because i never actually played that the sequel so although because these were the games where you played on your ds like a book and i really like that aspect of it and you can't replicate that on a switch or whatever but still well i guess i'll take it yeah i wonder if they would just like do a side by side on the horizontal screen you're right it'd be weird there's that one puzzle where you had to close the ds and like i didn't realize it and i was stuck for a very long time yeah i we should do a some sort of retrospective on that kind
of thing, or like hitting the reset button on X -Men, on the Genesis when they're like, you have to reset the machine in the game, that's all they tell you, but you're actually supposed to hit reset on your actual Genesis to make it go forward. I feel like there's like 10 from Metal Gear Solid we could do between the controllers.
I love that bullshit.
Either way, so maybe a little bit more smoke here, is that Xing, the developer, C -I -N -G, has recently recently worked with Nintendo to bring back some other games, which is its dual collection of another code, and that's another code recollection, which was two games they released like last year, I think, and those were also, like, were those DS games?
Were those Wii? Wii, okay.
Well, either way, they've worked together before to bring some other games back.
There's a possibility here that maybe this is just Hotel Dusk getting re -released.
Those are DS games, my bad.
So, yep, they're also DS.
Alright, so yeah, there's some evidence here that they've done this process before with the studio with one of their games so i think it's worth getting your hopes up for at least a re -release a new hotel dusk we'll have to see another update the first another code was ds the second one was wii so okay there we go so both right yeah all right we got we got a whole uh parade of nintendo stuff here and then we'll get into some sony news after that uh nintendo taps samsung to make switch two chips and a move that could ramp up production production really this is just uh notable for two reasons one
by going with samsung as opposed to what everyone else does which is tsmc the taiwan taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company everyone else kind of does their chips for them because they have they do have the best technology uh by going with samsung they are probably going to be first in line have most of that production capability dedicated to the switch to which is why because of this uh people are predicting and they're gonna have 20 million units by March of 2026, they should be able to get to that huge number pretty easily because of that.
Also, Samsung's technology being a little bit behind does indicate here that there is a lot of room for an improved Switch 2 at some point.
So if people are the kind of people that are waiting on the sideline because you're like, I know they're gonna do a Switch 2 upgrade or one with a better screen or an OLED.
I think an OLED with a smaller nanometer process, process all that matters is it's more efficient so it'd have better battery life that's all anyone needs to know about that uh that seems very likely at this point so uh yeah if you want to wait on the sideline until there's a ton of switch to games and you're going to get an even better version i bet that happens within like two two and a half three years uh before we get something like that uh all right nintendo confirms previously expected switch to feature won't be available at at launch. Uh, in its, uh, uh, early documentation, Nintendo said
the switch to would support VRR variable refresh rate on, uh, on, uh, on TVs on displays when it's docked, they have removed all references to that and have confirmed that that feature will not be in the switch to at launch. When asked if it would come later, they said we have nothing to announce.
So maybe they could update it.
There are some concerns that the way that the, um, the doc actually works, some of the components that are in there can't handle VRR for some reason, that seems possible, so maybe it never comes to the docked situation, it does still work in handheld mode, so this is like the equivalent of G -Sync or FreeSync, if those are terms that are more familiar to you, basically just makes your screen update at the same rate as your GPU, so the tearing and the jittering that you get from a lot of games running at bad frame rates isn't quite as bad, in fact, it's significantly improved um i don't know do
you guys do any of you guys even know if your tv support vrr i think mine does but it's just like every time i go into an options menu now there's an ever increasing amount of features that i don't know if i'm supposed to turn on or not it's like frame generation and all this like vrr free sync like i just don't know what's good what's bad what's taxing what's for lower end computers what's for higher end computers like i have no fucking idea i just keep thinking of the uh indian movie or bollywood movie from a couple years ago but that's rrr oh yeah that's universally good yes yes one more refresh
yep um yeah so i i like vrr is one if like you can support it or if you do have you should use it it's it's pretty cool but a lot of times on tvs like you turn on one option and it makes another option that doesn't work because it's like hdmi 2 .0 or whatever so it's like you can't have 4k with dolby vision and vrr on at the same time it's like well why the hell not but then it's i think it was doom or something i was trying to play recently and it's like you know okay ultra performance performance uh balance quality i get that and then like above quality there was like dlaa or something and it's
like is that better than quality because that's like i don't know what that is and then yeah it's very confusing it is silly that all these years everyone all those menus just assume like everyone's a developer yeah yeah it's kind of For the longest time.
It's like, you know what SLR 3 V2 is, right?
Oh, no, just V1. Sorry.
You're out of date.
It's crazy. I agree.
It is now. Yeah, it's a real thing now.
Yeah, those graphics options have gotten kind of out of hand.
But, you know, frame generation, if you're on a high refresh rate monitor, you should use that.
I think it's pretty cool.
So it's a good thing.
Okay. What's high refresh rate?
Is 60 high or not high enough?
Anything above 60, pretty much. So yeah, probably 120 and above would be really good.
If you're getting those kinds of frames, anyhow, if you're getting like 60 to 90 turn on frame generation, you can get 145.
And it's pretty cool.
Is there ever a reason to not have like DLSS on?
Cause my understanding is that it's just something that like, oh, it can allow like lower end computers to run things at decent frame rates.
But if I have a higher end computer, do I turn on DLSS still?
Or does that degrade the quality?
Well, no, if you're using DLSS in quality mode, you're gonna have an image quality that is basically indistinguishable from running in native 4K or sometimes it's even better because it's using data from a 16K version of that game.
That's the way they at least did it at the beginning.
It might be different now, but they would just train the way the game should look at 16K.
And so it has all of this like metadata about what it needs to do to get to that point.
And it could sometimes take stuff from like a 1080p image and reproduce it in a way that's even better than native 4k sometimes you know my day i bought star flight for sega genesis for 80 dollars i'm gonna have to wait for an update or worry about this uh nintendo will be attending gamescom 2025 uh that's uh you know i guess maybe i'm asking this because are you guys ready to go back to gamescom i think it might be the same time as the gathering so we'll see okay Okay, well, obviously we've got to keep our priorities straight there, yeah.
I'm up for either. Nintendo, I think, will be at the Gathering of the Juggalos as well, I'm sure, though.
I'll be fine. Nintendo wasn't at Gamescom last year.
They'll be here this year.
Obviously, they've got to switch to to sell, so I guess the other question would be, do you think as we get later into the year, Nintendo does have any other, like, one more game left for 2025?
Do you think it could just be Metroid, right?
Anything that's unannounced.
There will be at least one exciting thing, I think, that is coming out of the holiday.
I don't know if it's Mario time yet.
I think maybe next year is Mario time.
Don't forget, they're going to have Pokemon ZA Legends or whatever for мех.
I mean, in my brain it's not, so it doesn't count.
It's very big, Dan.
Not anymore. It's like 1998.
No, it's arguably one of their biggest things.
No one's heard of it.
He could choose a bigger mouse than Mickey Mouse sometimes Dan will it hurt you if like every month I tell you how many more copies Pokemon Legends EA sells than Donkey Kong well I believe it I just don't care well now wait a second first it's not real now you don't care what other mental gymnastics do you perform to keep perfect Dan world going the Riker DNA is strong in my brain don't worry it all works up here yes that being said I would love to go back to gamescom I would too gamescom if you're listening I would go to Gamescom I wouldn't want to do like we did Gamescom straight to London I
came home for three days then went to Seattle and at the end of that I was feeling kind of rough I did all that but right before that I was also in Japan no right after that I went to Japan yeah didn't you guys like watch wrestling in London or something yeah I went to Wembley yeah on the way back from Gamescom they're all fantastic trips and I wouldn't change it but it was it was a lot of traveling you wouldn't change anything about the Germany trip Mike huh even your racist outburst oh give me a break racist outbursts my goodness talking about how a woman's form is similar to a soda bottle there
were numerous things that led to him being it wasn't about her form at all it was about the colors of her clothes of being misconstrued in here could it ever be read that way mike right exactly it was red it was just the red dress it just reminded me of a Coca -Cola bottle look walk Bailey on the dump truck we'll hash this what's it for all i'm sure red red dead redemption 2 is reportedly coming to switch to his commits to nintendo there it is red right there looks that's a game that looks like a coke bottle take two committing to the to the nintendo switch to uh that sounds great that obviously
doesn't mean gta 6 it means everything else right like gta 6 is not gonna run on no shot is there any world in which some rock star social club thing will let my pc save of red dead 2 go to switch because I do want to keep going with that at some point.
I think that sounds like something that does.
I would like that. Yeah.
I've been meaning to go back to that once there's a lull.
Yeah, I think that would probably make a lot of sense.
I'm just glad that I have Dan on team Red Dead Redemption 2 is good now.
I mean, I'm not suddenly, you know, waving the flag.
I think he says it's a good game.
I think he still has a lot of like issues.
All of my frustration stands still.
I'm just like, I've made peace with it in a way that I wasn't at launch, you know?
And I do enjoy it more than I enjoyed it at launch You admit it's a good game, that's the important thing It's a well made game We'll see I think really this is just indicative of a lot of third parties Being like, we should at least be testing the waters With the Switch 2 to see how things do Third party games will probably do better on the Switch 2 Than they even did on Switch 1 At least out of the gate I would think so Because some of them are just going to run really well With the Switch 1 There were a lot of ports that weren't great.
Even sometimes then, they would still sell well, like Mortal Kombat 11, right, did really well on the Switch, even though the game looked like ass on there.
And here, that shouldn't be a problem.
I'm just going to be curious to see which of these right away do well, because you can see Cyberpunk especially.
Cyberpunk's going to crush.
And Cyberpunk's going to probably do very well.
I hope Hitman gets a little bit more juicier, but Split Fiction immediately does very well also.
So it's going to be interesting to see just how quickly those floodgates open.
Like, I'm almost a little bit surprised it's not more right away at launch, even though it is a pretty good amount.
Yep. Yeah, I think a lot of developers are probably like, man, had we been here for this launch, we probably would get a lot of shine.
And I think the ones that are going to be there are going to do very well.
All right, so let's shift over to some...
Well, God, I'm not doing that on purpose.
Let's shift over to news from Shift Up.
uh stellar blade sequel quietly revealed by developer shift up uh stellar blade has sold over 1 million units and shift up uh may have already revealed plans for a sequel the developer's recent presentation hinted at stellar blade 2 slated for release before 2027 alongside a pc release and platform expansion for the original game so we're gonna do a lot of stuff with that i still that stellar blade game i played about i don't three or four hours i thought it was pretty okay it's pretty okay indeed yeah yeah quite a bit of fun so i'm once this pc version hits i'm probably gonna really play it on there
and then i'll be ready for a sequel sure why not that i i'm i want more character action games to just keep thriving over there while all the um everyone else seems to be moving in the direction of from soft like i'm i'm very happy about that i love from soft and from soft style games uh but character action games should not be deprecated because of that so i'm glad shift up is keeping yeah it's a lot of work to uh look cool and in in a souls game but in a character action game like this you just look you just can't help it yeah yeah i'm still a little weirded out by stellar blade i like dude
like it's right but there's it's not even even though it's out all of you know that discourse that happened which was mostly stupid i can ignore it there is still something just when i look at this game i look at this character it's still a little weird i have to admit i look at this character i look at this game and i have no problems i'm definitely uh with you mike where it's like okay like it's so in your face but i mean i'm so used to that from games for my entire life that i built this thing where it's like i'm just gonna put that over there that doesn't matter whatever they're being like
egregious about it yeah that's video game no it's fine like i played plenty of sexy any i'm sorry for even bringing this discourse up again i guess there's something if it's the weird weird way that the cape doesn't act like this character is uh like the most beautiful person in the world that is the weird part about it i suppose i don't know yeah there's not like that laura croft level of like mild self -awareness and winking at the camera even i don't know no there's there's absolutely zero self -awareness you're right that's that's this is them being like this is what video game characters should look
like and not acknowledging that in any way yeah here's my my pitch they should call the sequel stellar blades and have a stylized two as an s okay i'm okay with that i'll allow it thank you thank you uh all right uh so that was a uh a game that was you know exclusive to ps5 for a little bit uh let's get over some other playstation and sony news bungee pulls marathon gameplay after art plagiarism plagiarism storm and says it's reviewing doing all art so uh things have kind of gone south for bungie in a pretty hard way since all this marathon stuff happened first the game was received coolly like
i mean lukewarm like yeah just like there was a cool reception is what i'm trying to get the opposite of hot cool cool is better than luke cool is better than lukewarm right uh i would because lukewarm means it's kind of cool cool cool no one likes lukewarm stuff though like a cool thing like a cool that's what i'm saying it's good yeah lukewarm is always like bad yeah okay well that's the noise i think people were making for marathon room temp room temp that works that works i mean but wait people like rooms to be room temp people are non -plussed about the uh one of the most the negative of them
oops what's that little what was that goblin laugh i don't know now i'm freaking out guys Guys, I'm so glad you heard that, too.
There's the Green Goblin here.
There we go. Either way, people were not happy.
Listen, they weren't disgusted by Marathon, but no one seemed that excited about it.
Then there was this problem with the art where someone, an artist on Blue Sky, was like, hey, it looks like they're using art that I made several years ago.
and here are several elements that I put in there as signatures including the comic loss from Control Alt Delete as evidence that this is my stuff and Bungie was like, yes you're right.
We have stolen your art we're apologizing, we're taking it out and we're going to do a full review of all of the art in the game and while this is happening people are also hearing that this is destroying morale at Bungie, a place where morale was already pretty low, because now this is all people are talking about.
No one's really talking about the game itself and when people do talk about the game they often say something like oh yeah but i'm gonna play ark raiders instead that looks like more fun and this is a game that has to do well for bungie it just has to that's where they're at so this is rough it's so rough with these free to play free to play live service games this game's gonna cost 40 it's it's hard because people do just kind of look for a reason to not have to care because they can be big time investments they can be big monetary investments and there's already so many games like this you can just
play fortnite like you know what concord is like the moment people are like the narrative of oh this is this looks like you know a poor clone of guardians of the galaxy well that took off and it became a joke and it's like yeah and even when people play that game like yeah the game's not that bad but i don't know the vibes are off and this feels like you know the test being receiving received kind of a lukewarm whatever we said is one thing but now like the stolen art thing bad vibes reports of the culture and like just like again everybody they're feeling kind of weird it's just you hear marathon right
now and you're not thinking about excitement even like you know i always thought that this game was probably gonna do well because it's a bungee and shooting in a bungee game feels so good even that isn't really giving it much juice people like yeah i guess i guess this shooting feels good but you're not doing a ton of it it It doesn't feel as good as maybe you would hope for a Bungie game.
It seems like we're maybe overreacting.
We kind of maybe are approaching a disaster here.
Yeah, like, I like the art style, and I've really liked, you know, the feel of Bungie games, and, you know, from Halo to Destiny and everything, but, like, when I see it's PvP, it's like, well, I'm just not interested.
You know, like, I'll try it, but, like, I am not interested.
You know, I never played the Crucible, you know?
It's even a weird PvP thing, because this was the first time I played an instruction shooter when i did it so i don't know i guess i thought they would be more fun but i'm just running around weird picking junk up fighting a lot of kind of easy battles against computer opponents and there'd maybe be one team fight in a round you know and that's gonna go however that's gonna go and then it's over and i'm supposed to do it again and i just you know did not get the loop oh yeah that's i was trying to think of which ones i've actually played in like exo primal was one right well no it's not okay then
what i don't think it's an extraction what extraction shooter would i park off did you probably have not played an extraction shooter did you play uh what was the call of duty one call was that the dmz mode yes yeah i think i tried that once or twice it's like i don't enjoy this yeah that that would be the one now you probably haven't played uh hunter what's the what's that called um hunter the reckoning yeah no but i was legit getting that set up on my fucking parsec machine the other day so that we could play hunter the reckoning what the hell there we go hunt showdown hunt showdown yeah that's
the one so those are like the big ones that and tarkov so you probably not probably have not played those um there was one other thing uh some a former artist i think i think they worked as an artist uh at least they claim to be on social media with saying things like as a former bungie employee who's worked on marathon i feel for those still at the studio but working with engineering and marathon leadership was extremely toxic and humiliating i won't speak about the rest but bungee leadership needs to be gutted completely it's like i you know can we corroborate exactly what this person is saying
not necessarily but this is the conversation that is happening around this game instead of hey what about that marathon so it's just a huge uphill climb for a game that just cannot afford to have an uphill climb everything has to be going in its way for bungee to kind of keep operating as it is and this does not feel like that's happening going free to play at launch help it at all it won't help i don't think so maybe a little bit but maybe but like you know it just sounds like as an extraction shooter that would be a hard thing to pull off so and gosh i forget where i saw this but i saw floating
around there maybe this isn't true at all like but for marathon to be considered a success has to be one of the top five best best -selling games of the year, or something like that.
Oh, boy. And like, ooh, don't know about that.
That feels like a tough thing to pull off.
Correct me, please.
There's absolutely no single player.
You're constantly dropping in a squad of three, right?
Right, right. And to say this thing where it's like maybe when they greenlit this game at the time, it made sense because it seemed like Extraction Shooter was just gonna be like a Fortnite thing where the battle royales are taken off and there's gonna maybe be five of those that make a lot of money, so let's be one of the Extraction Shooters that makes a lot of money.
and maybe that pool is even smaller than that Battle Royale pool was, and you're also still coming at it too late.
But what happens if this game doesn't do well?
It's not like they can just pivot and make a Destiny 3, because that is going to be such a hard thing to do.
This is the pivot. Like, this is it.
This is the pivot? Yeah, I think this is...
We're in the moment of the pivot, right?
Because Bungie is also pulled away from doing Destiny updates the way it was doing for Destiny 2.
It pivoted away from that, and they're doing more frequent ones, frequent ones but they're smaller um so overall there's less content they're trying to like still make it feel like it's alive and that's something that they're maybe they're pulling out pulling that off maybe they're not but it's not like turning destiny 2 and some into some big thing again and then it's like okay well while we're doing that let's get marathon ready and that'll kind of pick up the torch and carry us forward um the reality is though what i've heard is if these two things do not do as well as they possibly can for bungee
bungee's in a lot of of trouble and what what exactly that means i mean i think i think sony playstation studios maybe kind of brings it more into the fold and takes it over completely in some ways which i don't know maybe long term that could help i have no idea uh i'm seeing now real quick grab i didn't realize that arc raiders was made by the same team or similar team as the folks that made the finals and now i'm in uh even more interested in it yeah yeah that's uh embark yes embark but i can't remember the guy he was the former chief technology officer at ea he came up through dice and was i
think he's like primarily one of the people primarily responsible for the frostbite engine um and he's the guy that made the choice that all ea games have to use the frostbite engine because they own that engine right so it's very funny that he got to leave and go work and make a game in the unreal engine instead and everyone got stuck with his decision um but yes so like there's a lot of like strong like technology like our technology technological background at that studio because it's a lot of like former dice swedish devs that just know that technology backward and forward so their games look
cool and can play really good i'm excited to check out arc raiders myself the finals had one of the best grappling hooks then it's a good one yeah uh all right sticking with playstation for for a couple more stories here.
Neil Druckmann is working on a second unannounced game at Naughty Dog.
Okay, buddy. Yeah, well, exactly.
Neil Druckmann revealed he is working on a second unannounced project on Naughty Dog in addition to Intergalactic, confirming the studio is developing multiple games.
Despite past struggles with managing multiple large -scale projects simultaneously, Naughty Dog now has several directors on Intergalactic and Druckmann is taking a producer role on another game.
Basically, he just said that he's gonna be mentoring and producing on this one.
He's kind of, you know, the way Miyamoto kind of oversees Zelda still from like way far away.
No Miyamoto, but he's definitely trying to take that role.
And that lines up with what I've, you know, kind of expected and kind of heard from him the way he's talking.
To me, he sounds like he does not have another long -term game that he is fully responsible for directing in him.
Yeah, because he's like, you know how quick you can make a season of prestige television?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
I think he's got a taste of that, and he's like, this pays really well.
And it was way easier.
And when I mess things up, there isn't a concerted effort of people trying to track me down.
They just go complain on message boards over there.
So it's got to look pretty appealing.
But this is probably Last of Us Part III, because even if he's not directing that, they definitely have to attach his name to it, and they definitely have to get kind of going on that by now, right?
I think it's Uncharted.
oh i would prefer an uncharted at this point or something new yeah give me jack and daxter again no it's not happening it's not happening jan like please what do you mean i said please oh well this is the real world you know nuts i i think it's uncharted because like that would be one where it's like sure i can like oversee some other people actually making that game there was also that time when Uncharted was maybe going to get taken over by another studio at PlayStation and then Naughty Dog stepped in like no thanks we want to do that so there is still some desire to have Uncharted be overseen
by Naughty Dog and this would make this would sounds like the way to do it to me but I don't know I guess we'll see.
Have any of y 'all been watching the newest season of The Last of Us show?
No. I haven't watched any season.
Neither have I. I can't do it I can't watch it.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah people love it but i i just i can't do it before i get it yeah yeah i i i've just noticed a very vast difference in opinions versus uh games media people and then just like general media people covering describe that how are people reacting because i'm curious uh people in like you know that just normally only cover gay or not games uh movies tv shows and stuff they're all all very positive on it they like it a lot they like it a lot while a lot of uh people in games media are like kind of very down on it uh right so that's probably like the people who have like played those
games versus the people that haven't you think that's what that is well gonna assume that's what it might be man i know some people doing some fucked up timeline with this stuff man they're they're like well i played the first one i watched the second season then i'm gonna go back and play the second game i'm like hey whatever you do you you little freak i'm not gonna stand in the way i'm not gonna tell you anything um but but jay so jay you're saying you notice that like games media people are less hot on it is what you're saying more critical yeah more more critical and yeah yeah picking it
somewhat capacity though are they like are is it is it a criticism that like i think the p go ahead no you go ahead is the criticism is more like oh it is off from the scale of like a prestige television show or is it a failure to adapt to their liking like what is exactly the the criticism coming from i think it's more so the latter in that it's like a failure to adapt the existing source material um and and i mean like gang you know we we it's completely different timelines where you can only cover so much in a a 7 -8 season of a show, versus a 30 -40 hour game.
I don't know if it's a game of trying to please too many masters, or perhaps games media people may not like TV.
I don't. There's some nitpicking that is probably just happening because people have an idea of the way it should go.
It's like what happened with Lord of the Rings.
there were some people who were like no this isn't my lord of the rings where's tom bombadil well yes everyone should just watch the rehearsal just watch that yeah for sure but i've not met a normie who has seen the last of us on hbo and been like meh like yeah i just love it universal acclaim from the normies you know but the normies like we're still halfway through season two right season two over no one episode left i think did they do that it's almost over oh yeah that's like Like, that happened right away.
What do you mean? No, the thing thing?
Like, from two? The game?
Yeah. Yes. We know what the thing is.
Oh, the thing. Okay.
I didn't know they got there in the show.
Yeah. That happened pretty early in the game, Dan, remember?
Oh, they're in game two now at this point.
People love... People could...
I mean, to see people pop from that, from only absorbing the narrative through the TV show has been very enjoyable.
I'm not saying that the normies that are watching the TV show are any less toxic than - Say it, they're beneath you.
They're beneath you.
No, no, no, no, no. They're not even people.
What I'm saying is when The Last of Us 2 came out and then the thing happened and then the internet was digesting the character of Abby from The Last of Us Part 2, there was nothing but vitriol and venom for what felt like years, even though it was like a couple months of discourse.
course here the thing happens and everyone's like man i really like caitlyn deaver she's great oh so there's not the backlash against it yeah because the game is very mad about that there is but like it's more so people are like oh i'm sad that actors may not come back oh sure yeah but the tv show you don't have to play as the woman like when like that's that's the difference there in the video game they're like no i have to play as a girl now You also had to do that in the first game But yeah Without looking what year was Uncharted 4 Go Oh wait 2016 I know because it was the year Overwatch came
out What I said 2016 It's 2016 That's the year Overwatch came out And I was very conflicted because I like both those games a lot And I had to pick a game of the year I think I reviewed it for this website I can't believe it's almost 10 years That is wild wild insane because that game still looks very good oh i reviewed it i gave it five stars nine years to the day almost nine years to the day that is banana i always say it's underrated somehow i think i tried it yeah i agree it's really good i maintain 2016 is the year that video game graphics ended like that is the year where it's like it doesn't need
to be any better than this and all the developers are like yeah we agree because if it gets better than this it's just going to be more expensive and that's it that's the only difference was this the one that jeff Jeff Keighley took Kanye West to play?
I think it was. I don't remember that at all.
Is that where he blamed George Bush for killing black people?
No, that's Hurricane Katrina.
No, this is the E3 where everyone found out Keighley was taking Kanye around and took him into the Sony thing.
And so once that got tweeted out, because it was right across from our war room, and every fucking games media person on the planet crowded around outside the Sony room to see Kanye West and Jeff Keighley.
Cool. 2016 might have been the same year weird that kanye west should have ended yeah probably and he did in a lot of ways uh all right jade raymond has left haven studios the playstation owned studio that she founded they were making fair games uh that once had a dollar sign at the end of its word now they've changed that to just an s smart because they're cowards uh they don't don't believe in what they're doing over there uh so we don't really know exactly what happened here but there is a bit of a timeline that has Has caused some speculation.
This game had some, like, external tests done in recent weeks, and then she left the studio a few weeks later.
Okay. So people are trying to put two and two together there.
It's like maybe Sony's not happy with this game that, you know, it bought the studio for, and maybe she's leaving because she's like, okay, well, do you want different leadership?
Here you go. Jade Raymond is, you know, she worked at Stadia.
Never shipped a game there.
she has not shipped a game since like assassin's creed brotherhood or something like that she she came to game informer back then she was with splinter cell conviction so i don't know if she was actually okay that's right or just kind of representing what she was in some ways yeah totally um so yeah this is just weird but like fair games what do we think the fate of that is boy we're not sure about marathon um look and these games can somehow be a big surprise hit it if they come out and people really fall in love with them they're they're actually good games all that stuff fair game seems to
have a lot going against it yeah um i guess do you guys have like when i say fair games does anything come to mind do you like see any screenshots or gameplay it reminds me i for some reason i keep thinking of radical heights every time he's that's 100 it doesn't look like radical heights but it is what i think of when i hear fair games it's the dollar sign it's the dollar side i think what was the other lawbreakers was okay i'm sorry it's sure all right god and lawbreakers wow we should study lawbreakers and fucking played on upf what why did sony think it was a good idea to make like three or four
of the same game well that was their whole strategy now because you know for a while the strategy was a charter two is a big hit let's just kind of make all of our games like that and that works for a while but But those games keep getting more and more expensive to make, and the returns aren't that great.
And all the real money was being made by Fortnite.
So the strategy was now let's just make a lot of live service games, and then some of those are going to hit, and that's going to pay for everything else.
And it seemed like a bad idea, but at the start, Helldivers 2 came out, was a pretty big hit.
It's like, okay, here we go.
And then Concord was such a flop that it undid the goodwill of Helldivers 2 and then some.
and you know then the stuff's getting canceled like the last of us factions so you know desperate for money is why they're doing it uh and it was just kind of a shotgun blast let's see which of these hit but the bullets seem like duds in the chamber right now yes isn't it just insane and i i feel like everyone sort of knows this but maybe doesn't say it out loud where like these three to Does seven 10 year roadmap decisions get made at a time where like you can't make that decision because you don't know what is going to happen next month, let alone the next decade.
So like I would normally agree, but I disagree in the case of the next news story, which I'm fine waiting for.
Well, I think like an individual developer's case, it's not such a problem.
like so when hideo kojima says his next uh espionage game fizzant is five to six years away it's like yeah yeah you probably should make another one of those and this is his like i'm very much going back to metal gear that's and that's not the business i'm describing i'm describing about like jim jim ryan in charge of playstation exactly look look going to all his heads of departments and saying let's come up with a plan for what what the future playstation is going to be so we can grow it beyond where we are right like okay well let's keep everything that we have the way it is the new strategy
is well this trend of live service games looks like it's really good let's throw everything into that and then by the time they execute on it here we are five to seven years later and it looks absurd it looks complete and it's like that's gaming's biggest problem right now is uh well there's a lot of big problems but one of its biggest problems right now is it's really hard to plan for the future because we are a fickle audience it does tend to spend a lot of money but uh there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to capture that even if you put all of your best efforts into it and make
a good game like say a concord go ahead no no you please please and meanwhile like the games that actually are hits is the french inspired by jrpg's turn -based game with single player there's too many of those right but which when was incepted i'm sure was like oh you gotta gamble here there's a risk here you know like yeah they're like those those people that were sick of doing stuff like we're describing at ubisoft yeah it's impossible it takes too long to make a game you know people be like well why doesn't other you know like movies and tv have the same issue because you can do that so much
quicker and like there's a there's a novelty aspect of games right where it's like it's it's it's software plus art right like you have to have both those things and that makes it a little bit more challenging then let's just tell a good story and if we tell a good story will be all right like you tell a good story in games you have to do a lot of other things right as well i was gonna ask has there been any consideration uh on if any of these games are fun to play yeah i i mean yeah i don't know i i think that they are uh putting there's a lot of things they're trying to consider i'm sure that's
one thing that a lot of people working on those games do care deeply about of course yeah um but you know all the there maybe is an equal emphasis put on hey what's the business model and maybe that's a distraction maybe that's a problem I kinda want to take all of you and Police lineup style Play the trailers without any logos For Concord Air Games What was that Ubisoft Battle Royale Sure let's throw X -Difiant Watch Dogs 2 Let's throw in some fun ones Hyper Scape 5 second clips We should be able to know If this was a game we played Concord would be easy because it's all crazy aliens aliens and stuff
but if you show just like a clip of gameplay i might not know if it's fair i might sneak in some zootopia in there guys okay just for my case is it the nudist colony scene what from zootopia the nudist colony yeah there's a nudist colony in zootopia the animals don't wear clothes in that one either way phison's coming out in five to six years according according to hideo kojima uh he's done pretty good job at like sticking to around that time time frame for his games now i mean you know we don't have a large sample size between death stranding death stranding two but five to six years seems to
be something he can stick i mean the metal gears tended to be about three years apart it was like 98 01 04 and 08 uh and then bigger gap for five but uh yeah death stranding is is a bit more spaced out how much of a real game is his xbox weird project no idea yeah i don't know there was that leaked thing a while while ago of just like and it looked like you were just selecting options no no there was a fuck remember that leaked like ipad thing where there's like in the reflection you could see like some dude in his boxers like watching this and it was uh like margaret quali walking around with a flashlight
and it was like clearly like a survival horror thing yeah oh okay okay yes yes that leaked and that was out there for a little bit and it looked like a real like survival horror type thing okay yeah well maybe it's a real game yeah he's making that as well that that's got to come out between now and fizzing though so i want him to keep making games i like uh i like his games that's like he as part of this he talked about like hey would you ever do a movie he's like yeah maybe someday i would direct a movie it's like clearly he's still just focused on a movie that he says would be like an homage
to cinema would be like that mike really liked that where he was like on the columbia set and like he's like oh i'm gonna bring in cinematic elements to my game.
Really? He's talking about his notebook full of ideas that he's going to give to his studio after he dies so that they can do nothing but make his ideas because no one else has ideas.
Hideo Kojima has a USB stick of game ideas that he's going to give to his studio after he dies because he doesn't want Kojima Productions to fall into disrepair without his big brain.
Did you not see that, Mike?
Did you not see the next story, Mike?
I didn't know it was on this list. That's actually the last story.
There was one between that.
We'll go back around.
Does it mean he sucks a little bit?
His games are good.
No, I refuse to. He sucks in a way that I love.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, sure.
Wait, no, I want to get on board with this, Mike.
I think it's about time that you and I colluded on something.
Yeah. I feel like we're like the always sunny bunch, and now we have to like go against the other people here.
It's a five vote system now.
So, Jay, I'm just going to come down to you saying whether or not he sucks.
A little bit. Just a little bit.
We cannot vote on opinions, number one.
We're not canceling him.
We're not canceling him.
I'm not canceling him.
I'm with Mike. If he sucks, it's in a way that I want people to suck.
It's a coward's way out, number one.
Number two, like, yeah, Mike, I'm with you.
There is something inherently kind of annoying about him.
It's getting annoying.
It was cute for a long time, and sometimes it wasn't cute.
Like, with the whole quiet has to be naked because she's a plant thing.
Now you lost me. I don't even know what the fuck that is.
you're ashamed of your words and deeds exactly yeah so it's just sometimes he kind of sucks and I just think video games would be worse without him I'm not saying we should cancel him he could keep making games and they're probably gonna be good but he does have to come out and like step in shit and show in our face and we all have to be like this is great too if he couldn't back it up it would be obnoxious but he backed it up I wanted to hear more of Bacalar yeah because the irony of Mike like you know saying we shouldn't worship false idols is just real this bitch loves false idols yeah he prays
to the mouse does he not um which is a which is an inherently contradictory sort of philosophy that you maintain so you'll have to just deal with that on your own time um yeah i i'm with you like look could you i with i agree with what you said grub without him games would be a a much worse place, a much less weird place.
The thing I like about him the most is that everything is just so weird. And the fact that the weirdness has permeated mainstream gaming in such a way, I think a lot of that is to be celebrated.
At the same time, this whole, like, I am video games is very annoying.
And I don't like that.
Okay, all right, all right.
Here's a reach here, and this is where I stand on the, On the subject of Kojima.
I think Kojima is the Tom Cruise of video games.
Go on, I get it. Yes, I get this.
Go on, I want you to unpack this.
Where he is annoying, and there are things of like, okay, yeah, we get it.
You stand for cinema, you stand for this.
But Tom Cruise is movies.
Yes. It's true. I would argue Tom Cruise is more movies than Kojima is more video games.
We're forgetting the other thing recently, where he was talking about how great rate the early reviews like the internal reviews for death stranding 2r it was like bemoaning it like i feel like i may be failed as a creator because too many people like this now i'm gonna go on a world tour promoting the game so everyone can tell me how great i am mike mike don't you see this is the best thing you have to offer is this like this i'm eating this up i'm subscribing subscribing i'm going to join bomb .com slash join this is amazing i love this for you i was so excited when i got to tell mike the the sentence
he said about uh his movie was going to be an homage to cinema because i knew it was just like yeah that's because it's insane for him it's like a movie no one should gaze their navel in a way i feel like tarantino would say that yeah there's tarantino syndrome all over my man for sure it would be like a parody of tarantino know is what i like more than i like tarantino and i like tarantino i think the tarantino comparison is great because tarantino makes a lot of very good stuff and i also think he kind of sucks a lot way more unsufferable than kojima like if i was in a room with uh tarantino i'd
probably be so annoyed so quickly uh with kojima it's like hey that's hell yeah that's kojima all right is this blasphemous to be like, you know what?
It's such a stupid analogy.
This is blasphemous to say that like, I don't understand everything Kojima does, but I'll let him cook in the same way that I don't understand everything David Lynch did, and I'll let him cook.
Yeah, but that's a disservice to David Lynch. I think David Lynch was fucking more hardcore.
I like Kojima more than David Lynch. Kojima would love that you just compared with David Lynch. I like Kojima more than anyone.
filmmaker for sure that's definitely what he's going for um i i think like for me you know four hour cut scenes and all like the navel gazing is just too much it's too much to bear i just can't do it um i i i don't want to travel that far inside of anyone's asshole and um just i'm not built for it i just i want to you know rub up on the surface you know Who else is getting up there other than Kojima?
Druckmann, maybe? He's so far above Druckmann.
It's surface level.
I think we do kind of crave these idols, for lack of a better word, for sure.
We have Miyamoto and that's one of them for sure.
We have people who are desperate to have that themselves, kind of like a Randy Pitchford. It's not gonna happen.
Who also has USB sticks?
good job that was nice good job give me give me a give me a sam lake you know yeah well yeah sam like talk about a nice fucking guy right shit that's the ideal right this guy that clearly does have the chops and then is also just nice and fun and has a sense of humor about himself clearly always taking those pictures with him at the coffee and he's like yes i really like twin peaks i'm not gonna hide it here it is i was trying to make stuff like that it's like yeah yeah this is a down -to -earth guy I love that Sam Lake just shows up everywhere yeah it's the best he's the best good dude what a dude
um oh Sven from Larian also a good call -out cool yeah I think that's only gonna become more and more of a name like right I bet they're gonna really cook with whatever that follow -up to Baldur's Gate 3 is and then Jack's attention says Tommy Tallarico of course Mike I don't even know that bitch what's happening it's so funny why am I blocked I don't know the motherfucker what did you do bitch and Injustice 3 could be in development according to a multiverse data miner.
Probably. This is...
Netherrealm has done two Mortal Kombats in a row for a while there.
They were alternating, so they probably retreat back to Injustice 3, let Mortal Kombat sit on the side for a little bit, and then go back to Mortal Kombat.
That just kind of lines up.
Mortal Kombat 1, I think, did well, but there was kind of, like, almost infinite growth with Mortal Kombat, where they kept getting bigger for a while, and 11 did really, really well.
Yes. And then it plateaued.
And it plateaued a bit with 1.
and some of the decisions they made there weren't super well -received by people so yeah like we don't need to jump right back into Mortal Kombat again go ahead do Injustice those games were very popular it's kind of been a surprisingly long amount of time because again they did do two Mortal Kombat's in a row when was Injustice 2?
2017 I got so bummed both times they announced Injustice's because it's like oh that means it's gonna be so long for Mortal Kombat and I don't care about Injustice well you got two in a row now so there you go take three one for one for you uh all right that does it for the headlines jan the show's back over to you we're gonna go take a quick bricky break and we will be back with some emails right after this 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
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These are the emails for the show.
Emails! BombcasterGiantBomb .com is the email address to send your emails to, and now I can read them again.
So, thank you for all of that.
Random shouts out to Chuck Towski.
Just because. Here's like a...
You know what, Chuck?
Here's 35 podcast points.
I fuck with Chuck! Whoa.
Make the shirt. Yeah, that's what...
We're paying him with podcast points.
That's how that works.
I mean, that's all we're getting...
All of us are getting paid in those for now, anyhow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't seen dollars in a while.
Yeah. Has Wizards of the Coast ever sponsored the Gathering of the Juggalos?
Maybe. Because they could do magic, the Gathering of the Juggalos.
That'd be nice. Actually, you know what?
There's an event diagram there.
Yeah. I'll get in touch with someone.
Maybe we can make that happen.
Will you go to the Gathering then?
Mike, have you done research on the Gathering?
I haven't done research yet.
You said you were going to research. I think you'll be pleased.
They seem nice. So, like, you guys are doing this running gag for a while, and this apartment's like, I need to put my foot down.
this is like a start of a new relationship with us and i gotta make it clear like you know if i say no that means though that's kind of right and then like before anything even happened dan very sincere was like oh michael if you really don't want to do it it's fine i'll drop it and i was like yeah i don't want to they're like yeah me and jeff might still go though and i was like immediately well not without me now that i know you're somewhat interested i would implore you to look it up and i watched several videos of people that like don't know juggalo stuff that showed up and know what's it's
all about and it's like everyone super welcoming and nice and everything like yeah it's gonna be a crazy environment i'm gonna do some research interesting and nice everyone send your positive juggalo stories and video clips to mike monati he's gonna be wrestling there i know willie mac he'll protect us you know like oh uh it's like a three or four hour drive from where i i google mapped it already so it's like i would be on the side of columbus i'm guessing yeah we can just hop in the minivan and just go out and stream the the drive out to the the gathering fuck yeah okay so i'll do a mike tyson run
yeah so i fly to grub's house and then we take a road trip god yes exactly so we fly to cleveland jr and then we go to the gathering yeah all right okay yeah like i feel like backlars is not even acknowledging when we talk about this honestly backlar can we put like some incentive on one of these things where if we reach a certain threshold you have to go to the juggalo i'm sorry there's i'm just being business dracula at the the moment okay that's what it is all right uh he's pretending yeah i'm pretending you're right i've got wordle up on my fucking what what is this no so for the gathering
of juggalos me and jan are gonna fly out to cleveland we're all gonna do a road trip down to the gathering of juggalos and we will do a hell of a fuck like a feature length maybe uh the documentary travelogue of us at the gathering there'll be an homage to cinema yeah Yeah, it's going to be Mike McQuanchy, so we'll have the Quanchy makeup.
Grub will be Wolfpack's thing, and I'll just be straight up Juggalo, and we will infiltrate the gathering of the Juggalos.
We'll do the bomb cast from there.
We'll do voicemail dump truck live.
We'll just have Juggalos ask us questions.
So, like, we're not taking a week off.
We're doing giant bomb from the gathering.
To be determined. We're running with the hatchet now, Backalar.
We only need three votes, Backalar, so.
No, we need a lot. We need thousands and thousands of dollars.
Well, that's your problem.
That's all of our problems. It's not his problem anymore.
It's all of our problems. We got the votes.
We could probably, if we could do this, we got the vote.
That bit sucks. I love it.
That bit sucks, by the way.
We could get a sponsorship from Faygo.
Do we think that bit sucks?
Let's vote. That bit sucks, yes.
I vote the bit sucks.
Yeah, I don't know.
know like uh i've only seen the gathering through the lens of like very disappointing and upsetting documentaries sure and i just feel like i don't know like correct the record yeah like vice went there one year and was like oh buddy you you ain't seen nothing yet let's run a chat poll if it came down to hey we are either going to gamescom or the gathering the juggalos what would our audience that we serve prefer because we listen to you folks you're the guy you know yeah i just want want to send you dan by yourself well i need you in the film oh i gotta end the last poll uh the last poll by the way
is who is pooping that was from the first break uh 15 said bacalar three percent said bacalar four percent said bacalar and 77 said backed up alarm wait you only made me the answer well you were gone a while you're just wondering you know all right well no i wasn't i don't poop afternoon everyone knows that um if anyone from the juggalos is watching we'll do the the dump truck on stage we will do it on stage at the gathering giant bomb at the gathering i'm glad you booked us uh i yeah i mean jan you would go see here's the thing what a confident yes no no no here's the thing is like i i love how
we're asking for like mike if he's okay with it and then it's just an assumption like that i'm I'm just going.
Because Jan, you're game for shit.
Jan is game for shit.
We've established that Mike is a travel baby.
Jan is game. I think I'm just game for shit because it's the only option sometimes.
Jan, you can say no. You have agency here.
Don't give him an option now.
Don't change things now.
Say no, Jan. Jan, I went to tailgating in Philly with you and it was a delight.
We got to have Jan. That's true.
Well, that's actually not that different, I guess.
What did Jekyll and I eat?
Food! Apples. Nothing but apples.
Here's something but funnel cakes.
Funnel cake and apples.
Oh man, the gathering's out to an early large lead.
Yeah, see? We're listening to the audience.
It's growing. Run it on Twitch. Twitch will have our backs.
Twitch is a Gamescom crowd.
VGC will cover Gamescom.
You'll get the news.
We need to go talk to clowns.
Hey, Mike, if it helps, I can send you a video where at the 20 second mark, there's something that appeals to you.
Is it a Mickey Mouse?
No. Is it a Mega Man?
Is it a Mickey Mouse?
It's not a Mega Man.
I will... What if...
Yeah, go ahead. What if we can convince the juggalos to let Mike perform the gamer rap?
Yeah. I mean, I do have one degree of separation from the actual insane clown posse.
I could talk to Willie Mack and get us in touch. You could get in contact with Violet and Jay and chat you two dope.
I could pretty easily get in touch with the insane clown posse.
here's the thing it's like the the trip that really matters to me that i need to do is to see the penguin tolkoto at the el paso zoo i've got i absolutely go with you to that so i gotta make sure that happens and i'll pay my own way to go to this fucking zoo to see my penguin child that i'm very excited about i can post pictures of it now by the way it's got a clear it is a book of health yes yes tolkoto the penguin penguins rule too i'm so happy it's a penguin that's been named after me well you think about how many little juglets could be named tocoda if you go to the gather the juggalos it's
true um i was gonna say i'm a little concerned that i don't see as many brown people but i guess a lot of people are wearing makeup so i don't know that's right yeah that's what it is i had a brown friend that was into the icp that's the first person i knew who was in the icp his name was mattoon okay introduced me to all i'm looking up who's playing and okay so oh the only ones announced so far for the legendary stage or the insane clown posse oh they're they're gonna be there and uh wiji mac he's a magician some call him a magician others call him a madman he speaks from a world beyond oh my
god okay wiji mac seems crazy i don't know guys maybe in my 20s this is oh you're like 29 right come on this is too goddamn but we have to do it I think talking about it is way funnier than it'll be more I disagree it's in Ohio here's the thing it's in Ohio Bacalar what are your thoughts Mrs. Dracula I mean you know what I think are you pro this no in no way no no why are you pro this like what do you expect there in no possible like you don't think this would be good for our website I think if you wanna go I think I'd watch it at least give me a jam And also, it's in Ohio, so they're already
right there. I'm going to go.
What do you mean right there?
We have the votes. No, a three -hour drive for someone in Ohio is nothing.
We do that all the time.
Midwest driving, yeah.
So Mike, Grubb, Jan, and Dan.
Yeah, so me and Jan fly.
And we do all the fucking week's content from there.
You could do it quickly.
Okay, now wait a second.
Let's wait. Let's back up a bit.
A week? How long do you think we're going to be here?
I actually don't know what the date is.
A week? I think we shot the hell up.
We'll go for a day.
I think we can just go for a day.
How about that? Here's a timeline.
An afternoon, maybe.
We're not going to stay for a week.
It's August 13th to August 17th.
So four days. That's too many days.
We're not going for the whole thing.
We need at least one night staying on the Juggalo campus or whatever, like in a tent.
Juggalo campus? You have not gotten a yes from me.
I will stay in a tent.
We will befriend Juggalos and stay in their tents.
I will absolutely not Oh my god, it's the 25th anniversary They're tets Is it a circus tet?
We will find one Hey, I'm Grub you first I googled juggalo campus and the first thing was a reddit post Have any juggalos attended college?
Cloud college Uh, I'm just gonna say this Uh, based off of the parts of the internet That, uh, we all appeal to to, I feel like we'd be some high rollers over there.
I think we'd be welcome with open arms. I mean, I can legit reach out to them and see if they want to have us do a live podcast. Who's them?
The clowns! We're talking about these people.
Think about it. You could do an acoustic version of Send in the Kwans.
Why can't we go to Hellfest?
Why is that not a thing?
Because this is way funnier.
That's true. Thank you.
These are the emails for the show.
You just have to see the vision.
I promise it'll be good.
Oh, I see the vision.
I just don't want to put on the glasses.
He hates the vision.
All right. I think Fargo fun.
We'll go nuts at the gathering.
This is not Fargo, buddy.
This could be better than Fargo.
This could be better than Fargo.
This is not Fargo. It's Fago.
Very good job, Mike.
I heard it. Thank you.
Okay? Appreciate it.
Thank you. yeah you know what i'll go yes yes it's happening i think jen and dan should go can i reach out to the juggalos you can reach out to the juggalos remind me reach out to insane clown posse email the insane clown posse it's a very fun idea i don't know what you're expecting to hear back what if they give us like they don't even have have a lot of announced acts and stuff.
They do comedians. They do, like, let's see if they want to have us do the voicemail dump truck live.
Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. Live mics, Q &A style with Juggalos.
Our second lost episode.
I think that's the kind of news we don't want to be making, Dan.
All right. First email comes from Tonka.
Good afternoon, Dooters.
Tonker toy from uh gloucester england here to say our annual cheese rolling festival is upon us this coming monday youtube it and was wondering if dan likes cheese so much would he chase a wheel of double gloucester down a steep hill i show speed entered last year and ended up in the hospital oh my god also is there any weird annual traditions in your area which you could partake in many thanks love you a long time the gathering of the juggalos uh no i would just buy cheese at the store like a normal person okay you wouldn't roll after it no that sounds dangerous this is like what i want to do
i'm gonna go to the cheese festival not the i'll do that too the juggle send me everywhere with jan and a camera i would love that yeah this is we're gonna have a badanza of a time yeah join fun to sending me around around the world with jan i mean one of those small towns they have like you know like for like the holidays like memorial day we have parades but all the parade is is we get all the kids and like little league teams to walk together and then a bunch of like every fire truck in town yeah goes and blares their sirens and like this is a good time this is nice i'm glad we shut down the roads
for this yeah that's what we pay taxes for parades fire truck parades uh this whole this whole gathering of the juggalos has taken a long, long time.
So we're just going to breeze through some e -mails.
I have an e -mail address for the clowns.
That was fast. I hope we do a voicemail dump truck behind the chicken wire from Blues Brothers when they just, like, throw beer bottles at us.
Oh, boy. That's good.
What do you think it's – Oh, they are smart businessmen.
If you get the ICP VIP experience, if you buy it, you get a VIP experience laminated pass.
an ICP cartoon amulet, an Ice Hatchet Man cooling towel, and a six -inch Hatchet Man magnet.
They're fucking monetizing their magnet bit.
Yeah, of course. Why is it a six -inch magnet?
I don't know, but it's the magnets, how do they work thing.
They've monetized that.
Of course. These clowns.
They know what they're doing.
They're no clowns. Wow.
I think I intro'd Grubb this podcast as a clown.
And here we are at the Gathering of the Juggalos.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. I got more breaking news here.
Thursday night, we have to be there at least because there's the Faygo Armageddon.
It allows you to come on stage during the climactic conclusion of ICP's performance on Thursday night to partake in the childlike euphoria of Faygo Armageddon.
If you have never experienced the chaotic Faygo -fueled madness of hundreds upon hundreds of Faygo bottles being sprayed in all directions during the finale of ICP's show, here's your chance.
Each ninja that purchases the phego -armageddon Will also get a gift bag With a phego -amulet I'm okay, I need a phego -amulet What's the, where's ninja Ninjas are involved?
Okay, alright No, no, no, we can't Let's just back away from that one Don't worry about it, alright They may be using the word ninja In place There's a phego -armageddon Saturday night too So we can go to either Oh no, wait, what are they doing?
yeah I think it just connected the dots there Mikey what if Faygo Armageddon is like that one episode of Rescue Rangers where it's all soda you know the soda cult ninjas no no no no no I hate this so much there's something going on oh no don't worry let's just stop saying both words let's just stop saying both words this doesn't seem problematic it says a ninja is a elite juggalo capable of throwing feigo why would a white rapper want to use the word ninja instead of I'm not killing somebody tell me you got that somebody tell me you got that the most purest oh that was That was, like, Winnie the Pooh
doing something bad.
No. That was great.
It took me a second.
I've never actually heard an ICP song.
God, that's so good.
To be fair, they're not the only white rappers that do that.
A lot of them do. More businessmen, huh, Dan?
Okay. more emails please yeah hurry he's oh he's oh we said we weren't doing any more wrestling slang on this show is that only wrestling or is that just that's like carny carny wrestling oh no that's clowns again god damn it okay um all these other emails are very serious okay you don't have to buy bottled water they have fresh drinking water at bottle fill stations that's great we're not going to talk about the Juggalo's Amor for a bit or Clowns or Fako.
We're going to read some emails.
Mike, if you almost die again like at Gamescom, the Clowns will set you up with medals.
All right. Everyone take a breath and listen to the email.
Clown cooldown. You're on Clown cooldown.
Competitions? Okay.
So funny. Second and last email of the show because of timing and just the length of all the other emails are very serious.
Thank you, everyone, everyone for the love that you're showing um let's see uh the bathroom fabric that looks like a loop is not a loop it's a long towel kind of like an overhead projector old people know yeah but why does it okay i'm sorry you finish it imagine you could use a cloth towel in a public bathroom and be confident that it has never been used by another person that is what the cloth track provide the long towel is removed and washed regularly if you get to the end of the track it It must be reset after removing and washing it.
Use your head. Don't be a Dan.
Wait, well that tracks, but also, where was this from again?
We talked about this last time because they used to be at like schools and I saw one recently at a bar and my brother was confused and just immediately ripped it apart thinking it was like, you know, hand towels that he should throw away and then they had to go get normal air dryers.
So it's just like a comically long towel.
Yeah, i guess i didn't know that i thought i thought it was a very short towel that was getting reused constantly but don't you think that there's okay i guess i thought it was a shorter towel too too but i my assumption now is a lot of places don't actually wash it they just turn it back or whatever i mean come on when when are you the most clean though after you've washed your hands fair all right yeah well it depends when some people wash their hands like what step of the activities you know well i don't think people are coming in wiping their hands on the towel then washing their hands.
Yeah, but someone might not wash their hands but got a little trickle on their fingers and wiped it off on the floor.
Sure. It's a risk. It's certainly a risk.
That's a bathroom. Yep.
All right. Dan's not talking because all he could think about is the jungle.
Don't, don't, don't, don't.
I'm looking at the Faygo Armageddon.
Let him do his thing.
Let him do his thing.
He's fine. He's fine.
Jan, wait. Jan, after this goes off the air, can we have a bonus post -live thing where we watch the commercial for this year's gathering?
Yeah, I guess so. Okay.
I'm excited. We'll all watch it together.
Okay. All right. BobCastGiantBomb .com is the email address to send your emails to.
We normally read all of your emails, or at least a good chunk of them, but we were sidetracked today.
Send them in anyway.
I love them, and if you want to shout someone out specifically, I will try and relay that info to the proper parties.
What do we got going on the rest of this week, boys?
We have hoping to find time to record a demo derby what the hell is that um yes hopefully demo derby going up this week uh we got bailey on the dump truck we have uh we're gonna be mosquitoes for upf uh there is a asymmetric mr mosquito like that's coming out called the mosquito gang that we're gonna play one versus four on friday uh morning mess uh what am i missing here not much yeah like we're gonna get a couple more more quick looks into the can where there's a bunch of games we want to do those for so yeah plenty of stuff happening um as we like yes oh yeah black club like yeah light club
as we go forward we'll be doing more fun some random stuff like maybe some streams during the day right now we are still figuring a lot of stuff out and kind of figuring out what we can do with the capacity that we have so look forward to more yeah yeah uh in the meantime 707 exit flu is the phone number to send your voicemails to you can I don't know call in about Bailey or whatever you want perhaps gang that about wraps it up for the show if you're watching live I guess stay tuned because we'll go watch the gathering of the juggaloo video but until then gang he's been Mike he's been Dan he's
been Jeff he's been Jeff I've been Dan and you went home try Bob .com slash join help us out we're independent we need the monies please Coffee .com slash giantbomb.
Co -fi, whatever it is.
Co -fi. K -O -F -I dot com slash giantbomb.
Send us to the gathering.
And the pool is tied, by the way.
The Gamescom gathering pool.
We lost people. I think we started talking about it more.
We watched the commercial.
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