903: No Souls｜Giant Bombcast

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Hey, everybody. It's Tuesday, August 12th.

2025, happy belated birthday, Mom. Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 903.

I'm your host, Jan. Oh! Chola! That's right, I'm actually part Irish and I've never told anyone I want to welcome everyone in a good old Irish manner.

Have a good old Irish morning. Top of the morning to you.

And top of the morning to co-captain of the ship, Jeff Grubb.

You want to lift your left leg back and your right arm up, and you want to get that crunch. cross body movement.

And that's how you wake up. That's how you get ready to podcast.

Now do it for the other leg and the other arm.

Oh yeah. That's the good stuff. Speaking about the good stuff, he's always basking in it.

He's sharing the good stuff with it because that's just him as a person.

Dan Riker. If you do that horizontal style, that's a broken table pose right there.

You do it down, like get down a yoga mat, get down.

Those are the muscles that I need to stretch.

Yeah, get in a cat-cow position and do the arms and legs gimmick.

Yeah, it's good. Oh, yeah. How about making people uncomfortable?

Speaking about making people uncomfortable.

He doesn't do that because he massages everything.

He zhuzhes everything. He's a little bit.

He's a skosh that makes us go. That's right.

He's still going because he's going so fast. back on the podcast.

Turbo, Sean, Sean McDowell. Is that like a cross breeze that you're going for there, Jeff, when you get the cross cross wave thing going on there it's like yeah when you open the window on one side of the house and the other side of the house you're doing that for my entire human body and existence See, you're very dad.

So I was just checking if you need like dad for all your things in life.

You spoke my language. 100% there, Sean.

I got to say, really appreciate it. Maybe this speaks to the size of TikTok that I wind up on, but I see a lot of...

I don't know if this is hokey stuff, so forgive me, folks.

Somatic therapy? And then people talking about how doing the frog pose stretch makes them emotional.

And then I just want to do a frog pose stretch with you and get emotional with you guys.

Speaking about... Can we describe the frog pose just real quick before we do the grand finale of introductions here?

Uh, okay, let me just Google what a frog pose looks like again.

Wait, I don't remember. I know dead babies.

Frog pose like this one? What'd he say?

No, no, that's like a butterfly. I think he said he knew dead baby.

We got to move on. No, dead bug. There's happy baby and there's dead bug.

That's two different ones. Child's pose?

Child's pose. No, I know child's pose. That's a fucking starter pose.

That's a jabroni pose. Is that the Chucky movie?

It's a rest pose. Front pose is like... I mean, like my camera won't show me there.

And then Dan, look up a picture of frog pose and then can you do it in the back, please?

Yeah, let me see. You know, we need pigeon pose.

That's my favorite pose. Frog pose. Let me see.

You know, the longer we go without introducing them, the more that.

Yeah. Oh, frog pose. This fucks me up. I'm going to try it.

I'm probably going to fuck up my thighs bad.

Okay, here we go. My gimmick's off. Hang on.

I'm wondering if Dan actually knows anything about yoga or if he's just spitballing.

I feel like he does. He does a lot of yoga.

Okay. Are you sure about that, Jeff? Okay.

That looked like he had never even been aware that he has a pelvic floor.

Now Dan is unrolling a yoga mat, but he's not on it at all anymore because of the frog pose.

Mike won't even laugh until he's introduced.

He's such a professional. Oh, fuck. What is that?

You got to go forward to get out of the frog boat.

It's really going to fuck like my knees are bad.

That hurt because the knees go wide on the frog pose.

They go wide. Yeah, audio listeners, that was Dan ensuring he never has children ever in his life.

Top tier bellow, Dan. Just one of the best bellows I've ever heard. speaking about top tier bellows we've got this fellow on the podcast Jeff Grubb back!

Alright, good captain of the ship, Jeff Grubb!

I'm here! He's jumpy. He's froggy. He's the five-star podcaster.

The Record. Hey, it's me. Let's go. Let's podcast, fellas.

How's it going? All four of us. Sean, I'm going to convince you.

How much do I have to pay you to get a mullet and grow a mustache?

Oh, not possible, Jan. Not even a chance.

There's got to be a number. Because, Sean, you like chicken tendies, right? sure as much as anyone else yeah have you ever been to jail not yet Okay.

All right. All right. Well, uh, bring it around.

Alright, alright. We got head of the table.

That's right. I don't know what's going on in the WWE right now.

We got Jeff Grimes. Yeah! Acknowledge me!

Woo! Cashing in! The heist of a lifetime.

It's Dan Riker. That's me. Look out, grub.

I'm going to get you. Oh, no. He's going to get your waveforms and make them smell, but then make them big.

Turbo Sean, Sean McDowd. Have you guys ever thought about how the brand of Scooby Snacks came about?

Like, was it just like Nabisco dog treats?

And they're just like, man, that... That dog buys so damn much.

We just got to like rebrand the whole thing.

Are there actual things you can buy? They were at one point.

For people or dogs? What are we talking about? about new questions.

Scooby Snacks for Scooby-Doo. Speaking about dog treats.

What have you been playing? Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

Play the game music. Yeah. Let's go. I don't have that loaded yet.

Speaking about dogs, he's got that dog in him.

That's right, everybody. Start revving up your dogs.

He's a bad boy and a bad dog. He's our own snack.

Mike Minotti. Hi. Mike. It's just like Jane hasn't had time.

He's had a busy morning. So I was looking at some of the emails and there was a nice long email from a fellow from Finland.

And he talked about that time. you yodeled on the voicemail dump truck.

Do you remember what the yodel sounded like?

Yeah. Oh, it still hits. I have to ask, Mike, I'm assuming you're basing that on something you saw in a Disney thing.

Is that correct? Home on the Range, the bad guy song.

It's great. The bad guy song? Yeah, that's the...

Really, the only good part of that movie was the Yodel Lady.

Yeah, what's it called? Now, don't take offense to this because you are Italian, but you sounded like spaghetti.

Spaghetti Westerns are the spaghetti yodeling.

You sounded like the sound effect that would happen in a cartoon when someone twists spaghetti into a fork.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. don't ever use scissors around me when you're twirling spaghetti by the way I'll get really upset Everyone cocked their head at you like what the fuck are you talking about?

I know what he's talking about Some people have scissors when they do that.

It's like their utensils. Like, oh, I eat my spaghetti.

Time for my scissors. I just break the spaghetti noodles before I put them in the pan.

What? What? Wait, I'm the weird guy because I had my syrup in the fridge?

To be clear, I'm saying it's a bad thing.

No one should do that, but some people do.

But wait, who's even seen or heard about this?

It's a thing some people do. This happens a lot with Asian soups because Asian noodles are very long.

Okay. You've seen the Sujan? You've seen the Sujan?

Don't be mad at me. I'm just the messenger.

Okay. your side. Okay. Wait, wait. So the spaghetti is so long that you need to cut it once it's on the fork?

You have teeth. I know it's dumb. It's deranged behavior.

I know. I think this. Spoon is completely unnecessary.

You already have a plate. I don't spoon with spaghetti.

No way. Do the twirling in the spoon. Unnecessary.

That's crazy. It's wasteful. What is happening?

You already have a plate. Exactly. Yes, I don't understand why people need the spoon for their twirling.

You don't need a plate. Just throw it in the air.

It's easy. Yeah, yeah. Show off a little.

Just shovel it in your mouth. That's what I do with a big bowl of spaghetti.

Just shove it down your gullet and shut up.

Just loosen the jaw and go to town on that plate.

How's everyone doing? Great. Yeah. Cool.

Two normal nights of sleep and I'm just good to go now.

It's great. Oh, wow. That does explain it.

Penny's been getting up to pee a lot and it's disrupting my sleep.

The only thing I can do about it I can't reason with her.

I can't ask her to pee less in the middle of the night.

She's just old. And every time she gets off the bed, she has to come back up the bed and I know one who can make that happen.

Oh, okay. Does she do the thing where it's like, you know, waiting on the side and like one, whimpering until you help her up?

Exactly, she'll claw it in. I have the pee pad, so it's not like she's making a mess anywhere.

But yeah, at some point I gotta get up and let her up.

And then it's just, sometimes I'll fall right back asleep.

Sometimes it's a 30 minute thing. You know, it's just I'm not getting uninterrupted sleep.

So it's not great for an already... Not a good morning person, Mikey lifestyle.

Mini staircase, he does not like it. I had the staircase out for five years, chat.

Shouldn't trust it. want nothing to do with it.

For a while, I was doing sessions, pushing her up and giving her a treat.

She would be really hesitant. Then finally, like once I like stumble the entire time, I felt like I was torturing her.

Hated it. So, yeah. Wasn't working. You know, for all I've heard about Mike, you know, you yourself have said that you're like a loud sleeper, hard to room with and stuff.

You know, our San Francisco time. We shared a room and no issues, no issues at all.

Two things about that. One, I have the CPAP now, so it's pretty good.

You don't hear much. True. maybe exaggerating to make sure I got my own room in the past.

That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. But now we're all co-owners and no one's taking food off families.

So we're splitting rooms. So I want to take food off of families.

Yes. Yes, for sure. fantastic fantastic Sean you went to my favorite place in the United States That's bad, Jan.

I'm going to maintain that's still bad. Why is it bad?

There's lots of food. There's fun art experience.

Most cities have food. Yes. Cities tend to have food.

Vegas has really good food. Let's not underplay that.

Vegas does have very good food. Yeah, a lot of it's like if you want to spend like $200 though, man. okay no yes but you go to the thai restaurants you can find some good places which we did yes exactly yes so i'll say you're all right i'll say Wasn't that impressed by a lot of them?

Like some of the places that people recommended, it's like, oh, it's just more expensive versions of stuff that I have in the Midwest.

I've never been impressed by Vegas food, but I feel like If I've been to Vegas 12 times, I'd say like nine of them was when I was like... poor and 20 in a dirt bag and was just eating like, you know, shitty buffets and stuff like that.

Right. That's different. But for the wedding, part of the prize package was they sent us to the Gordon Ramsay restaurant and stuff like that.

And your beef Wellington gimmicks and all that stuff.

And like, We'll say it was pretty good, but I'm sure if we had to pay for it, it wouldn't be worth it. was, you know, such a Food Network guy that every Food Network celebrity chef has a restaurant there, so that part was like, ooh, ooh.

One of the best meals of my life was at Bobby Flay's restaurant there, the Mesa Grill, I think it was.

So... But again, maybe I was hyped up. I was just so excited to be eating Bobby Flay food after seeing him be dominant on Iron Chef for so long.

He is the Brock Lesnar of the Food Network.

I'll say it. Wow, buddy. Wow. Not the extra... Well... He's... Okay, anyway.

Sean, you went to Las Vegas. The best food... food i've ever had is is in vegas though i'll give you that um okay the A chili pork soup dumplings at Xiaolong Dumplings off the strip over in Little Chinatown.

Best food I've ever had. Period. Nothing competes.

Las Vegas has a really good Chinatown as a Chinatown enthusiast.

That's where the new Pink Gorilla is. I got to check it out.

It's a small little one. It's just a tiny little one.

But yeah, it was fun to go in there and make up some imports and stuff.

Yeah. Nice little place there. Mike, yes?

I was going to say shout-outs to Picarilla because I was taking a bunch of stickers off of games I had bought before.

And they're always... You know, they're always annoying.

They don't come off easy. They're pinker.

I got to the... Game I got from Pink Gorilla and they deliberately use like very unsticky stickers and it came off really easily right away.

Yeah, I appreciate that. that gorillas fantastic yes i just saw kelsey lewin at the minmex meetup this last weekend it was great Yeah, it was great.

Great turnout. Great folks. So, yeah. Sean, you went to Las Vegas, not just to go to Las Vegas, but you went for Evo.

That's right, yeah. Does he not stand for something?

Like, every violent... It's a short revolution.

The evolution of fighting games. Evo. Yeah. uh yeah i went for quite a bit too i went for like five whole days almost a week in vegas Which that's too long to be in Vegas.

If you're on the strip, at least I've heard, you know, off strip, it's like it's fine it's whatever it's like a our city but on the strip that's too much vegas for me jan i'm sorry Guys, multiple times in the past two, three years, I've thought I could live in Vegas.

I mean, again, like off strip, maybe, but yeah, you're insane.

The weather situation. You'd be okay with that?

I'd just be inside the whole time. He's from the Caribbean.

He's a tropical people. Grub, you sound ignorant. uh well here oh by the way pro tip before i go any further i just want to remember to sneak this in if you ever do go to an event on the strip Or, you know, like if you're going something else like the Final Fantasy 14 conventions there, what CES is still in Vegas, right?

Somewhere on the strip, I think. I think they're at the convention center.

Yeah. If you're... Intending to stay on the strip the whole time, get yourself a monorail pass because those get... if you get multi-day passes.

We got the five-day pass because we were there that long.

It came out to like eight bucks a day. And just, you know, you just go to the station, get a nice air conditioned ride both ways. deeper than Ubering all up and down the strip or like walking.

Especially. That was really nice. And then go to the Target.

That's on a strip because the Target is like price like any other Target. stock up on like water snacks toiletries i think you need there right back to your hotel and It's actually like a reasonable stay here.

I've been to three Evos now. I'm starting to get the strats of how to survive on the Strip.

Did you see the weird or use the weird loop that you lay down in and shoots around the city underground or whatever?

Mary was telling me about that. Okay, so that's not what it is.

Elon Musk's hyperloop. Is that it? it yeah the Vegas loop is yeah it's an underground track that runs around the convention center they can get from one end to the other I don't know if it's all Teslas, but it's like all at least electric cars that they just run around the track underground.

I got to use that last year and it was helpful because I didn't know how to get around as much last year.

But this year it was down because there was construction going on.

So I didn't get to it. But that is convenient.

But yeah, the event itself, it's still a lot of fun.

I put out that video a couple of weeks ago.

You know what it's like to be at EVO. And it just keeps growing and getting better under the new... i guess it would be new owner i don't know if it's new ownership but at least under new management uh the guy who runs combo breaker now runs evo and a lot of his team is owned by Sony, right?

Yeah. It's owned by Sony. It's a pokey mains in there somewhere.

I don't know. I don't remember the full details, but, uh, But yeah, it's they learn from every event and that's great because last year there were some issues. um with like lines being everywhere and getting into sunday finals was a nightmare They fixed a lot of that this year, and it's great because now that's bigger than ever.

This year had more attendees than ever. It's just a big old convention.

Even if you're not super into it, into fighting games, it's still a great convention to go to if it's like a reasonable amount of travel and like you have somewhere to stay or anything like that.

If you can just... If you're in Vegas or you can easily get there and just like hang out with friends, like split a room or... stay with someone who lives there it's a great time because you can do other things like go to the massive arcade and stuff uh That arcade they advertise as being the second biggest in the US.

The arcade that they bring to EVO. which is very funny.

Galloping ghost. Number one. Yeah. I assume they're just saying, cause yeah, galloping ghost is the biggest.

Uh, hilariously though, I probably have a better time just playing at the arcade at Evo because the machines aren't all broken.

Like they're helping go. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're getting a little bad with maintenance over there, unfortunately.

It's a lot of machines. Yeah. But yeah, they have a bunch of cool things, a bunch of machines that you wouldn't normally get to play.

There's like this mech game where you like get in a pilot seat and it's like jerking you around like an amusement park ryan stuff there's all kinds of rhythm games like if you see them on stream at gdq and stuff That's a great way to spare time at Evo.

I like... I... Spent most of the weekend not playing fighting games because they didn't compete this year.

You know, I was doing a little bit of work.

Got interviews going up on the channel, on the site.

And so I just watched, like, top 24 and some top 8s on Sunday, and that's how I interacted with... fighting games for most of the weekend, outside of previewing a couple games, which I'll talk about in a little bit here.

Yeah, it was a really fun time. Got to meet some people I've always wanted to meet.

Always Be Clothing and Merino were out there, so I finally got to meet up with those guys.

Got to meet Susie, the sphere hunter, who was hanging out at a friend's booth in the artist alley.

It was great talking to her for a while.

Can I just say, oh yeah, Jan, I heard the story of you helping her survive E3 2019.

That was a, I don't want to repeat it, but that was Our boy Dan's just always helping people out, isn't he?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's just a fantastic place to be.

I can't emphasize this enough that it keeps getting better.

And Marino knows. He was there last year as well.

And we were talking about it a little bit.

Yeah, they... really did fix a lot of the issues we had with last year.

And that's good to see that they are improving.

Even if it's getting expensive, EVO's not, the convention itself isn't cheap.

That's why I say like find a cheap way to get there if you want to go and like stay and everything.

Because the event itself is now up to like $200 to attend for the three day pass, which is not cheap.

There's a lot to do. There's certainly a lot to do, a lot of freebies, a lot of giveaways and stuff, but yeah.

Do you feel like you see that money when you're walking around?

Like you see where that money is going or does it feel like most of it's going toward management?

It's going to being in Vegas, frankly. I mean, Vegas has got to be cheap relative to a lot of other cities for an event like this.

Uh-uh, man. Where would be cheaper? Because the Vegas Convention Center is pretty affordable.

Anywhere in the Midwest, frankly. that's why combo breakers still like that's going up that's only like 120 come to cleveland Yeah.

OK. Cleveland would be cheaper, I would bet.

You're probably right. Yeah. I think at this point it's just in Vegas for the historical significance at this point.

It's just where it's been for the longest time.

So that's where they're keeping it. Yeah, they are improving it each year.

You do see that. Things like the stage, the final Sunday stage, they have...

They scaled back the bleachers that they had last year in order to get just more chairs there and that's the compromise hey not as like comfy or exciting seating but everybody gets to watch if they want to be in the arena It was a ticketed event, so they made sure that there was the right number of people in there and everything.

They get these big, beautiful screens that you would see at a... a concert or whatever.

It's awesome. It's just fun to watch the hype moments in a top eight happen on gigantic screens and everything.

People popping off and running up and down.

What was the best top eight you saw? Uh, you know, the funny thing is Best Top A Saw might not have been on the grand stage.

It might have been the Killer Instinct one.

Yeah, that was just so it's always a fun game to watch.

There were some fun moments in the Granblue one as well.

Unfortunately, a lot of the games right now are kind of dominated by like the best players and the best characters.

So that was a lot of what we saw on Sunday.

Like, if anyone watched Street Fighter, just watching Meta just absolutely destroy that man on stage with Blanka, that was...

Very dominant. Tekken was Arslan Nash versus Atif.

Just, you know, Pakistan being incredible. at the game, which is great.

Like, it's cool to see that they're so dedicated to it.

Yeah. They're also a little boring to watch because they play it so well in that game.

Right. It's like when I go to watch minor league baseball, it's like, oh, baseball can be super entertaining when they're not quite as good at it.

I like going to high school football for that.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, man, that was like a platter.

I don't think you meant to do that. Yeah, it's like when we compete against other video game websites.

Yeah, right. Everyone's so bored with us because we're so perfect.

Yeah. Yeah, for some games it's a little, yeah, it's not fun to watch.

Guilty Gear, Chad also, Guilty Gear Top 8 was pretty fun to watch.

I like to see that in the arena. I thought I really enjoyed the Capcom versus the K2 Top 8 on the, not on the main stage, but I thought that was great.

That was one of them on side stage. I wish I got to the catch more for that and killer instinct.

Sean, you were talking about that, that being fun.

Were those ones also dominated? Would I expect to see Justin Wong still crushing it at Killer Instinct?

Or is he focusing on other stuff? Or the equivalent. player um no player yeah cvs2 was i believe players that were either new or we haven't seen in a while That was cool to see them come back.

I know I caught the grand finals of Marvel, too. which was like, you know, players from back in the day being really good and just coming back, coming onto the Evo stage and just... playing the game like back in the day.

And that was really cool to see. Yeah. Man, it was just it's always such a fun time to be in the room. as people are popping off for those hype moments to happen.

Right, it doesn't have to be an Evo moment 37 or 38 for it to be fun.

It's like... The possibility of being there for one of those historical moments probably is always enticing, one of the reasons to go.

But you don't like if you didn't have one of those like I heard, you know, the top eights were good, but none of them were super great, but it was still a good time for you.

It sounds like it was fun, anyhow. Is that your opinion of it?

Yeah, and if nothing else, like I said, the event itself, there's so much stuff to do, whether you're competing or not, especially if you're competing though, you know, playing in pools.

My friend almost finally got out of pools, but he was one win shy this year, unfortunately.

But it's just always fun to cheer on your friends and then go get some food, come back, play in the arcade. shop around the artist alley spend way too much goddamn money in the artist alley show off some of the stuff you got i'm sure it's appropriate for stream We'll see why I can scrounge up after the break.

Yeah, it was a fun time. I had a lot of fun.

Like I said, did a little bit of work, so I brought some stuff back with me.

That's slowly going up on the channel. I had an interview.

Really good interview, Sean. Really good interview.

Thank you, Dan. Awesome work. An interview with Ichiro Yamada, who is the producer of the new Virtua Fighter game.

And so I got to Pick his brain a little bit.

Maybe get some answers to some stuff. Uh...

Not as much as we wanted, but some answers.

And that's up on YouTube and giantbomb.com. now and we have more stuff going out throughout the week as i get that edited Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Speaking about things going up on the website, sure, you could go to giantpalm.com.

But that's old shit. That's old shit. If you are a premium member and you've... you know, done the whole rigmarole, giantbomb.com slash join and helping us out, whether you pay for a month or pay for the year.

You have access to the premium site beta if you head to EnormousExplosive.com.

Shouts out to Chuck Towski, gang. Yes. Chuck has shown us the demo a couple times now.

We went through the website as a gang yesterday, and holy smokes, this thing...

You know, we have a ticker. We have a ticker.

We have a ticker. We do have a ticker. Technology has taken us so far.

You know when... I don't know if any one of us have ever done something where you're carrying a backpack and you're walking a very long time. and then you realize, I don't need this fucking backpack.

This has a bunch of useless shit that I don't need in it.

You take it off, and now you're just running for the races.

We're sleek now. We're aerodynamic. We're so fucking efficient now. with this new website.

Again, enormousexplosive.com. The beta is going to be running from today and I think uh Chuck hasn't quite outlined when it's going to end but this does include Full video catalog.

We got all the shows there. Articles. You can leave a comment. on the show page itself, the show in its entirety, versus the individual videos, reviews, Live streams, all of them are ad-free as you would with your normal premium experience.

But hey, you know, go ahead. Go check that shit out.

It's good. You can also see the Bomb 12 proudly displayed on the side there.

What you got to do is you got to use your Giant Bomb email that you signed up with for premium. and also your username so Chuck can link all that stuff.

There's going to be a suggestion box, bug reporting form on there as well.

And as a part of this premium site beta, The Wiki's not on there yet, but once again, like we mentioned last week and across the website, Chuck is still looking for volunteers. uh for the wiki street team which you can find on the giant bomb discord yeah we're trying to save that you should join yeah help us out there We're going to save that thing.

Chuck has been doing an obscene amount of work.

And also... He said he's going to vomit, but dang, it just looks good.

It's real good. It's good barf. Let it out.

Although I can't get the site to load, so... We could not verify that account.

Chuck, what the hell? Oh, man. Chuck sucks!

No, I think, Sean, you may have the same problem that I was having where it turns out I never had a premium account with this account.

Yeah, through Curly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I've never bought premium. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I think the site might be down right now.

I think it's a little overloaded at the moment.

Yeah, we did it, everybody. Good job. Have fun, Chuck.

Chuck. Up, Chuck. Just throw it out. Just throw up.

Just let it out. We're all rubbing your back right now.

You hear this? I'm holding your hair back.

Yeah, that's us rubbing your back. Did you say it's Mr. Miyagi because I'm Asian, Mike?

Mike. Mike. Are we having our yellow Power Ranger moment, Mike?

Oh, come on! Come on, we're better than this.

Got the fire palms. Also, if you want to see a 32-minute travelogue of Mike being mostly not racist, that'll be after this podcast.

We'll do a YouTube commercial. We'll let the audience be the judge.

If you were a... Again, a premium member and also on the Giant Bomb Discord.

You should go to the Behind the Scenes channel.

I was scrubbing through the timeline and the first place I stopped was just Mike going to town on a donut.

Oh, yeah. I initially I edited the travelogue and I initially had the cold open before the stinger be Mike. drunk in a robot car orgasming over a donut yeah at the worst point of the donut eating experience for other people maybe the best point for him Yeah, yeah.

And one of the few feedback edit requests I got was, that's a lot to start with.

You do something different for the cold open.

It wasn't, yeah. We're really throwing him in the deep end with that.

Gotta build up to that moment. Yeah, there's some fun, a lot of fun things in the travelogue.

Very good job, Dan. I didn't have to touch up too many things.

Sean, he went to Evo. We just chatted about that.

And one of the games you got to check out, a few games you played, Invincible Victoria's Secret.

That's what VS stands for. Yes, exactly, Victoria.

See her chat. Invincible versus... I was suddenly interested in Invincible.

I went to the booth and I got an appointment for this one, so I did get to sit down and play with the game's director and...

We just chatted about the game and played for about an hour.

So I got a lot of footage we could like turn into something.

I'd like to turn to something. We'll see what happens there.

But this game is very interesting. It's kind of...

Everything and the kitchen sink, the the tag team fighting game.

Where if you can think of a fighting game mechanic, boy...

It's in there somewhere in some form. Basically everything except... I was very excited to hear this. except for comeback mechanics.

That's the one thing that they're not putting in.

So no X Factor, no sparking, no that stuff.

Does it have the thing from time killers where you can cut off their arm and leg and they keep fighting?

Uh, kind of. They don't keep fighting, but it is invincible.

So people blow up a lot, Dan, from a punch.

They blow up real hard. have the bushido blade thing where you can hit them in the head with a weapon and they die immediately oh if you end the round with that yes their head will explode yes Okay, okay.

Yeah, I don't know if this is the official term they're going to use, but because Invincible, it's a very bloody game. uh blood accumulates both on offense and defense he says that the uh the fist they call them the blood gauntlets because as you punch someone the blood stays on their hands as the fight goes on and then like blood splatters will stay on the opponent and the ground and stuff like that It is in motion.

I don't think streams like the the trailer they showed at what would be in summer game fest or whatever the xbox showcase something yeah um it's xbox x i played it at xbox I played at Xbox's installation at SGF.

Okay. I don't think that shows off the game in motion as well as when you're actually playing it.

Because there's a lot going on in the background.

Not great for bitrate and everything. It looks very clean.

It looks really nice in person. And also, if everything I just mentioned about the blood and everything doesn't do it for you... because it's invincible.

It's going to be there. They did announce that there is a like a streamer mode where you can turn like that stuff off and have a less glorified uh, experience.

Wait, that falls under streamer mode. Why would that be?

Well, because people get demonetized constantly on YouTube for showing excessive gore and like Mortal Kombat and stuff.

Really? Yeah. You can't show a fatality in MK anymore.

Even the x-rays anymore. because that yeah youtube's good enough at detecting like oh there's blood on the screen demonetized and maybe even age restricted to 18 plus though.

Is it getting caught thinking it's like actual violence stuff? or is it specifically trying to crack down on my own games?

MK in particular has gotten good enough that the algorithm thinks you're showing actual uh actual gore that sucks yeah But the game is fun.

It is very much Marvel 3 mixed with Killer Instinct at its core. which makes sense because quarter up quarters up I forget what it is is the developer on this and a lot of them are from uh the former killer double helix double helix back in the day before even iron galaxy took over So a lot of them, they just were like, hey, let's get the band back together.

Let's make a tag team game because that's what we want to make. a lot of those right now, so we'll see how that pans out.

But this one was fun once I started learning all the mechanics and learning how everything works together because it does feel like they are just taking elements All these little things, you know, from different games from the Marvel versus Capcom series. from their own work on killer instinct as the combo meter where you can do anything you want like moves just Blink into other moves until that meter fills up and then they'll pop out the combo if you fill that meter up.

Or you can end the combo early with a super or the right heavy move or something. it's very fun and they do a bunch of cool little things i think will get people in the door with um First of all, the gameplay, it does have like auto combos a little bit.

They're not like great auto combos, which is how it should be being conscious mash buns.

Cool things will happen. You get to see them each use their supers.

The characters are all interacting with each other.

A lot of voices from the show and everything. are back in they have uh one of the artists i i don't know where he's from but he's worked on series before like consulting on all the art and everything like that.

I believe the creator is consulting as well.

And so it's just very authentic. A lot of fan service there for people who want it.

Then they do cool things like, um... stage transitions if you're familiar a lot of fighting games have this where like you knock them into the wall and they'll go to a different part of the stage.

Guilty Gear has it where you go to a really different part of the stage.

This has it where it makes sense because it's invincible.

When you punch them through the stage transition, they go to a different stage.

Like, oh, like, you know, stage select on the stage like screen a different stage.

Wow. OK, cool. which makes sense because yeah, they're like, it's, it's invincible.

They're like fighting around the world and everything like that.

Cause they're superheroes though. Can you punch someone into space?

That's one of the stages. That's a good move.

Yeah, so I think it's randomly picked, but you'll just go to the space stage or whatever.

I think I'd die. I think if any of us, you'd have the best chance of surviving being punched in the space.

Well, that means a lot. Thank you. Yeah, you got it.

Sean, while we're talking about versus games, we might as well get this out of the way as well.

I'm excited to hear about Marvel, Falcon, Fighting Souls, because this is 4v4?

Yeah. 4v4 tag fighting game that weirdly Doesn't much feel like a 4v4 tag fighting game. was a very strange one to play like after my invincible appointment because invincible is very much what you would think. uh like a 3v3 tag fighting game is like i said it's very marvel versus capcom inspired This one, despite being a Marvel fighting game, is not very Marvel versus Capcom inspired because There's an emphasis on the two characters on the screen fighting each other, and then you tag in... a cis.

You don't like... You can switch to other characters, but...

So far, it doesn't feel like that's the focus of the game necessarily.

It's almost more like I can see Chad already says it.

Maybe like Mortal Kombat 1, where, you know, like that has an assist character that you bring in.

Right. Oh. But you wouldn't, that's not a tag game.

You're not switching. It's one health bar for your entire team.

So yeah. It's not like Iron Man gets killed and now Captain America comes in.

Yes, exactly. It's one bar for one health gauge for your entire team.

But even if you are switching between them, you're kind of just getting access to different different move sets and everything.

You're not specifically switching to more a characters and the game even starts.

I didn't know this was the case until I played it.

You only start with two characters. Like it's just you and your first support character, which by the way, The order in which you select your team determines what assist they will use when you call them. oh weird interesting thing that they're doing there uh but yeah when a big moment happens which as far as we know is grabbing or doing that stage transition Like I mentioned that they have stage transitions in here too.

You knock them through the wall. then you get an additional character.

You'll get an additional pip of meter, a little bit of extra health.

But you're not gaining an entirely new character, like entirely new health bar. anything you just basically unlock another assist and the ability to do a little bit more So it feels more like a traditional 1v1 fighting game, even in movement, which concerns me a little bit.

It feels a little slow. It's a little Guilty Gear Strive in that you're not dashing all over the goddamn place.

Which is what you expect on Marvel fighting games.

So yeah, it felt very different. Does that feel like a deliberate choice?

Like they don't want to be one-to-one compared to the previous Marvel games, so they're going for the slower style on purpose?

Yeah, they said in that trailer that they want to do their version of a fighting game.

There was a tag team fighter. And that's what it feels like here, that they are intentionally going out of their way to try new things, to bring something new to tag team fighting games.

And we'll see how it plays out, because I think if nothing else, people are going to get in the door because this game.

Looks incredible. Arc System Works, that's all I do nowadays is make gorgeous fighting games.

Visual showcases, yeah. Yeah. I guess when they announced this, I assumed, oh, this is going to be kind of like their follow-up to Dragon Ball FighterZ because that was very Marvel versus Capcom coded.

Right. But yeah, it seems a little more in the vein of their other games like Guilty Gear.

And then, you know, Guilty Gear even had like an experimental like 3v3 mode recently.

It seems like maybe they were trying some stuff out there to see if they want to implement them in token.

But it was still fun. Maybe it sounds like I'm being a little like... apprehensive like I don't know about this one this seems a little this seems like a little off it's very fun it's just so different than what I think all of us were expecting.

It's just it's going to take time to accept that the next Marvel tag team fighting game does not play Marvel versus Capcom, which is what we know for 25, 30 years at this point.

It's funny, as you were describing picking up new characters for your little roster, it started sounding like Mario Party for a second and then I got scared.

Why are you a party of all things? Yeah, you know.

Get the opportunity to pick up another player.

One of those games did do that. That's right.

Yeah. The Super Mario Party, the first one on Switch, yeah.

Yeah, that's the great one. Sean, do you select a specific character when you get to one of those instances?

No, so it's in order. So on the character selection before the round, yeah, you you you select your point character waiting in the wing right there, like waiting off to the side.

And it is in the order you pick them on character select.

So you pick your point character, like let's say you pick Captain America.

He's your point character. He's who you start with.

And they pick Iron Man as... I forget what the order is, but it's like...

It's like projectile assist and then it's launcher assist and then other assist.

And the other characters you pick, like Iron Man and Ms.

Marvel and whoever. Last one's living a sis.

You get to go to a home. Wow, okay. Nice.

That's what I'm here for, everyone. That's why we took so long to introduce you.

We knew that was going to happen. He was charging.

Before we move on from it, I... I think that sounds cool, actually, being like selecting in order, being the assist that they're going to do, because that makes it very simple for me to think about. completely understand like, OK, I could build a team in this way and whoever I put in the slot when I hit that button to bring them out.

They're going to do that thing. And so I can use all these characters that are disparate in play style or whatever. in effectively the same way no matter how I select them.

That's helpful to me. I bet that's what they're thinking.

I believe so. What happens is, like I said, you can tag between characters during the match.

It's like not emphasized, but you can. So you might think, well, wait, what happens if I like switch this character down to that slot?

Do they do that assist? I believe yes, the assists are always bound to the bun.

Like, even if the person who starts as your projectile assist gets, like, shuffled around because you are switching characters, I believe that...

Anytime you press that button, whoever is in that slot will do a projectile assist.

So these are a little more generic than Marvel versus Capcom as well.

Sure. I didn't have an appointment, so if it sounds like I'm a little scatterbrained, it's because I am.

I only got to go through the line each time.

It wasn't very long. It was like a 20 minute wait.

It was... Oh, good. Yeah, it was doable.

So I didn't get to play with the developers or anything, understand it quite as much.

Hilariously, though, I did get to play next to a developer.

Harada was playing next to me while I was at the station one time.

You just whisper Waffle House to him the whole time?

As much as I would like to. No, it's a very fun game.

I'm interested to see how people react to it.

It's... Gallop a controller soup. I'm curious how casuals react to that because it is like a...

I guess technically seven button fighting game.

It's a little deceptive at first that they've simplified things, but also got some depth to it.

I'm curious to see how it pans out. for them.

Nice, nice. Glad to hear that you got to check out some neat stuff at Evoshan.com Something that we've been meaning to check out or actually check in is our punishment video.

Check in. And folks, remember, Dan Reichert handily...

Destroyed all of us in our Tony Hawk cruise challenge to get to the cruise level first.

Get a high score. play it the real way.

Mike was supposed to be the best gamer in Giant Bomb.

Weird. No, you see what I did with a shotgun in Battlefield 6?

It was bad. Grub tried to embarrass me by posting that clip, but it was awful.

Hey, you motherfucker. I should add that to the list.

But yes, go on. But our punishments and Jeff Grubb, I forget what yours is.

Mike Minotti, yours was Outer Wilds. I beat mine.

Mine was the longest and I finished it first.

You're a good boy, Mikey. We're very proud of you.

You want points? He clearly wants head pats, yes.

I'm glad he did. You know, punishments are serious, and he took it seriously, and he went through the long, good game, and he...

Thought, what about it? Oh, it's amazing.

Yeah! It's an all-timer. Of course. Oh, I love hearing it's an all-timer.

Yeah, I'm so lucky that somehow I had very low that game spoiled to me.

I didn't even know it was a loop. You definitely had it. because I'm sure I told you about it, but it's the kind of game.

No, it just doesn't register. If you don't know what's going on.

Yeah. Like, what does any of this mean? It's so hard to explain to other people, even if they're interested in it.

Yeah, for sure. But yeah, it's fantastic.

I absolutely loved it. I'm such a 2019 apology towards that and something else that I'll be playing.

I can't believe... I didn't check this out at the time.

I don't know what's wrong with me. So thank you, Dan, for forcing me to finally get through.

Thank you, Dan. It's a good one to force people on because like, you know, Maharty did that to me.

I remember we got beers after GB East once and he was like, I know this probably wouldn't be a thing that you'd play normally, but you really need to try."

And he gave me like, a couple little teases of like, oh, it's a planet where it's like based on, you go this time of day, the sand is like this.

And when you go like, it's like the loop, factor and everything.

So like he gave me the hard sell and it became one of my favorite games ever.

So each planet has something weird and different going on there that's even weirder and more different than it appears that way more depth to it than you could ever expect looking at it God, I need to go to the DLC and finally check that out.

I fell right off. Really? It was too, I had no, I spent hours and I was like, I don't understand what the... And that's the point.

I enjoyed that part of the original game of like, I'm going to figure this out by just walking around.

I'm not going to look anything up. I tried the exact same approach to the DLC, and I was like, I'm getting zero anywhere with this.

So, yeah. yeah it's like it's like I had a couple times in the game where I was feeling like that I was getting frustrated I was like I

I don't know what they want me to do. I'm not figuring it out.

It's never going to happen. I don't want to look it up because I'm stubborn, but now I'm starting to feel bad.

Eventually, it did just click, and when it did, it was such this relief and this satisfaction.

It felt amazing. Maybe I'll try it at some point again because, yeah, everyone says it's great.

Jan, your punishment was one that I loaded up actually recently.

Yoshi's Island. Messing around with the CRT and also testing the CRT filter on the SNES on Switch 2, which I heard is pretty good.

And it is pretty good. It's really good.

Yeah, I like it. Yes. So I, I've been playing a little bit of Yoshi's Island, but I've talked plenty about it.

So Jan, what are your thoughts? If there's ever been anything to make me not want to have a child, it is Yoshi's Island.

I'm pretty accurate to the experience. Yeah.

Everyone complains. Are you talking about the crying?

The baby? I just fucking hate baby Mario.

I would have dropped... Dan, I would have dropped him off at a fire station if I could.

Well, here's the thing. He's not a problem if you're playing right. you know like i i almost never issue jan i almost never hear that fucking baby cry So it's like, and you know I hate babies, but in that game, I don't have a problem with it.

This is one of the things we say about you.

Yeah, the children of men feel good movie of the year.

That's one of the best comedies I've ever seen.

Oh God. It's just a delight. Yeah. Well, after I finally got my sea legs on me and kind of acclimated myself to the flow of the game, I'm kind of like kicking myself for not checking this out sooner.

It's also an all-timer, yes. Very first thing that sticks out.

I fucking love the color palette and the look of this game.

It's incredible. Yeah, look what you could do.

Like I remember when we went to the Nintendo park at universal and there was that small section that was Yoshi's Island themed and Dan you were like going goo goo gaga over it I didn't quite have the same reverence, but now seeing and playing through Yoshi's Island.

All that shit is from Yoshi's Island. I'm like, oh shit, this looks great.

I want to live in this world more. And with the rumors that Grubb, you talked about on uh gay mess mornings of a new super mario brothers collection i don't want that at all i'm sorry what They might do a new capital N. Oh.

Everyone does this. I have the same reaction, Dan.

I mean, they're good games, objectively.

Yeah, they're good. The Wii One's very good, yeah.

Are they, though? Yeah. The Wii one, I'll give you.

They're games. The DS one's pretty good.

It's okay. It's fine. But I just want I just want this world.

I just want this color palette. Yeah. And I

Funny enough, I never checked out Yoshi's Island, but I did check out Woolly World or Yoshi's Woolly World.

Yeah. Great look. for the limitations um but like even this just thinking about when this game came out and like all the small little details I love the little like dopey flowers and everything um The boss fight.

Have you gotten the boss fights with the camera coming in and all the warping and stuff?

It's great. It's so good. And it's just like, okay, I can put up with this child when I get hit.

And then Yoshi's just kind of like a G. Just, like, shooting things and, like, quarterback of the year.

You go from one Yoshi and just, like, tosses the baby to the next one.

I love the relay mechanic. It's great. that i'm like a different yoshi in different levels i don't know why like this is a team effort hell yeah As I play it, for the first time ever, I'm playing it to try to get all of the red coins and flowers and stuff.

As a kid, as soon as I beat that the first time, I'm like, I am going back.

That's maybe the first game I really remember 100%ing.

See, I never did that. And I know, aren't there like two levels in each world that are just like exclusive to like, if you get all of the two bonus the two bonuses at the end.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I realized there's like a bunch of levels of Yoshi's Island, one of my favorite games that like I just haven't played.

So like I'm actually going through it And it's a, it's a great 100% or for sure.

Yeah. Ooh, good. Good. Yeah. It just says so much to little character details that I feel like Not necessarily missing from the mainline Mario games, but like little touches.

I love like... when you get to like the stage complete section and it's like that chalkboard That like framey animation of switching between like the fonts kind of jittering around.

Like, I love that. Very cute. Everything's so good.

It makes me think that it's kind of... Nintendo has been sitting on so many things for like forever, right? they could easily pull the Yoshi trigger and capitalize the shit off of that dinosaur.

Like in the next Mario movie or whatever.

He's going to be in the movie, that was the post-credits stinger in the last one, spoilers.

You know, when we had in the end of Mario Odyssey, right, as we beat the game, you can't be a Yoshi and it's like, oh, this this is just a 3d Yoshi move set.

Now this is amazing. I want one of these.

I, I really hope we get a 3D Yoshi game, kind of like how we finally got a 3D Kirby game. we've got another 3d donkey kong game i think they're a little i think they're really beholden to the idea of Yoshi is their entry level series and it's like kind of Which is what Kirby was supposed to be.

It was literally made to be the entry level series. you look at everything they've done with Yoshi since Yoshi's Island, he's starting with Yoshi story.

And they've all just been like, ah, man, like Yoshi's Island is back that like, Babies love Yoshi.

Kids love Yoshi. But I love Yoshi too, damn it!

What about all of us adult men? We need you to do something for me for once.

Won't they think of the 40-year-old men?

It's filling the role for them, right? They need some game in that role and they decide that, yeah, Kirby and Yoshi are what's going to be and Kirby's kind of graduating out of that, but they're leaving Yoshi's Island.

At least we got Yoshi's Island. be multifaceted because like you know kirby we did get star allies was the baby one and it was really bad but you know maybe the babies liked it But then we also got Forgotten Land on Switch.

It wasn't some super difficult game, but it was satisfying for everybody.

Kids played it. Yeah, it was more like a Mario.

Everyone could enjoy that. So, you know, if you want to make some 2D Yoshi game for babies again, that's fine.

Like, yeah, give me a big 3D Yoshi game.

It'd be amazing. Like, it seems like a missed opportunity.

I know the Nintendo Land in Universal Studios LA, or Hollywood, is pretty small but yo you could have like a carousel and it's all just yoshis well so yeah You know the one in Orlando has a Yoshi ride.

Yeah, the one in Japan and Orlando. So the line for Mario Kart...

That line is the line for, I think, Yoshi in the other parts.

Oh, okay. So they wanted to bring some of that here.

That's why we got it. Yeah, in Japan it would now be the Donkey Kong ride, right?

They have that one over there too. So yeah, in Orlando, in Japan, they have the whole Nintendo world experience with the Mario Kart ride, the Yoshi ride, and the Donkey Kong stuff.

It's very short and it's definitely it's the kids ride for sure.

It's very slow. But it's neat and it's very Yoshi's Island themed.

So you can see some of that stuff in there.

Yeah, I really enjoy this punishment. I do kind of want to just beat it.

Yeah. Just finish it. Well, that's part of the punishment.

It's a god of, no spoilers, the best final bosses in Nintendo history.

Yes. It is one I think about all the time.

That'll be worth it, Jan, to see that final boss.

Because it's like, especially if you put your mindset or put your head in the mindset of this happened on the Super Nintendo.

Yeah, I don't need to buy a PlayStation.

This can do it just fine. I'm thinking about that a lot.

I'm like, wow, this is on the Super Nintendo.

Holy crap. Donkey Kong has advanced computer modeling, ACM.

You want to talk to me about ACM? I'll talk to you about ACM.

We're fine. I never have to get anything but a supernatural.

Nintendo, I'm set forever. Super Nintendo had some great late games like this and Mario RPG.

That's a good one. Which system had the best, like, last year of its life?

Well, that's fun, yeah. Super Nintendo's probably it.

Fantastic there, yeah. Ooh. I gotta ask, since we talked about the post-credits stinger in the Mario Brothers movie, Do you think they either A, redesign Yoshi or B, give Yoshi like a voice?

Or is Yoshi kind of be like the droids in Star Wars?

Don't have him talk. He can't talk. Oh, no.

He'll be like, he'll be like the minions, you know, just like gibberish.

Yeah, by everyone that understands him. He makes noises.

Like when he does the butt stomp in Yoshi's Island.

Like that little thing. He can make those noises and stuff.

That's fine. Yeah. Don't talk. No. It can be like R2D2, just squeaks and squawks.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. It doesn't need to be, I don't know who's popular.

Travis Kelsey. Yeah. Travis Kelsey as Yoshi.

Travis Kelsey as Yoshi. Baby Yoshi. I love how stupid Baby Yoshi looks, by the way.

You don't get that in Island. That's Mario World.

But I love that stupid, tiny, blubber baby. uh you know what i love aquafina but it's gonna be yoshi's gonna be voiced by aquafina I only know Awkwafina from being in too many animated movies, so I don't love her.

I'm very tired. I'm sorry. And Grubb, you have 007?

007, everything or nothing. or nothing which i played through uh probably about a third of on stream and then that was on the computer And I have since restarted it on Steam Deck so I could play it more conveniently.

And I got up to the same point. And I am enjoying that game quite a bit.

It is, you know... you always have to reacclimate yourself to third person shooters before, you know, Resident Evil to or for and a bunch of other stuff kind of like really solidified solidified what that genre was going to be.

But. once you do, it's like, oh no, a lot of that stuff was already here and they have It's just a really good series of set pieces where James Bond's doing very James Bond stuff.

Even with the product placement, like the Porsche Cayenne, like when it was first coming out, that's his car in this game. them like kind of putting that front and center.

It's hokey in the way you want James Bond to be hokey.

And I've been enjoying that. And, you know, there's the occasional like, what is this game trying to get me to do?

Okay, all right, I guess I'll try to make, see if that works.

And then it does. It's like, okay, they were still trying to figure out how to exactly convey to the player like, OK, we're going to get you to this point and then we're going to take over control so we can do our fun, big splashy sequence.

But that's only happened a couple of times where I kind of felt lost about what it wanted from me.

The rest of the time, I'm kind of blasting my way through levels.

The gunplay is actually pretty fun. The game looks fantastic.

I've been... Did play it some on the shoot hardware.

Obviously, it looks good on Dolphin because of the up res.

The underlying character model for Pierce Brosnan, that's his name, right?

Looks so good. Like his face model looks so realistic that it's still really impressive.

Awesome. And then the rest of the time, it's just like it really has a nice, realistic setting to it where I really feel like, oh, yeah, they kind of got the cinematic quality that they were going for even on the GameCube.

That is the generation where 3D graphics really got figured out.

But also it does a couple of things that I remember like that came out in 04 and like, you know, it does a couple of things that I remember experiencing kind of for the first time with that game that I think other games kind of get credit for like the cover based shooting you know there is you know you can Like Metal Gear 2, you could do the thing where you go against the wall and just kind of pop out and shoot.

But like this, you could like target stuff a lot better.

It had kind of that Hitman vision thing, if I remember right, where you can kind of see- Bond vision, yep.

Bond vision. Yeah. It's like that type of stuff that like, I remember for the first time, like that really good third person, you know, cover based stuff and the bond vision.

I've been surprised by how many of those things are there.

Yes. They really did figure out a lot. I mean, this was... made a lot of these Bond games.

Was this the third one or the second one?

This is the third one. It was the third one.

Third one. Yeah. You had Agent Under Fire, Nightfire, this, and then Russia with Luck.

Yeah, this does feel like the third one where back then that would have been The first two were really successful.

They keep making more money so we can put even more money into this one.

And they probably got diminishing returns starting around here and then going into the fourth one. that they could put a lot of effort in there and it shows.

Like it really does show up in the game. where they believed that they had also figured out a lot of the problems that might have happened in the first game.

Yeah, just really enjoying it. And lastly, a really cool idea that it's like, it's not based on a movie.

They just made a whole, they got wonderful. and Heidi Klum and Shannon Elizabeth and, you know, like a whole new story.

Maya does the song. You got Jaws coming back and stuff.

It's just like it was a very ambitious, cool thing at the like I'm playing it and I'm like I'm like I'm pretty sure this wasn't a movie but it just feels like this cast that's Willem Dafoe like how is he in It just is kind of amazing.

Speaking of the other games, I was curious why you recommend this one specifically, Dan, Cause the other ones are like pretty solid games too.

And pretty well regard for people who played them.

Like Age Under Fire, I remember being like solid, but kind of all right.

But Nightfire, I think, is the one that like everyone really likes, including myself.

People like Nightfire. I remember I tried, I was so hot on Goldeneye obviously, but then like, you know, when they switched Developers and stuff like World's Not Enough and Tomorrow Never Dies, I didn't love.

So I kind of fell off Bond. until when I was in college, I was in college in 02 to 07.

And so this was right in the heart of that where EA would come to my campus and to our dorms oh and they would set up little kiosks and they would just like in the like lobby of the dorm and it'd be like oh here's you know my first time playing burnout was at one of these things.

You know, so it's like these, it was actually very effective.

It was like several games, like this was one of them.

And I was like, oh shit, this game's actually great.

I'm going to GameStop right now and buying this thing, you know?

Yeah, man. EA was like pretty good at movie license games back in that time that the Lord of the Rings games were actually really good.

That GameCube game was really good. The Third Age.

Yeah, they did the same thing there where they made another one after that first batch of three.

It's just so wild. That was like a five, maybe six year console generation.

There was four James Bond games and they're all pretty good.

Yeah. Yeah. Not like that anymore. No, no, no, no.

Semi-related question, I guess. I've always been curious about this.

How was Pierce Brosnan received as Bond?

Because... When I was growing up, he was just Bond for me.

I remember when it was like, oh my God, Bond's back.

Because Goldeneye was like... 96, I want to say.

And at that point, it had been like a while because they did a couple Dalton ones.

And then... As a kid, I always thought Bond was like an old movie franchise.

I didn't know it it was a current thing that they were still, so like, to me, it's like, it almost felt like a legacy sequel before that was the term. especially because you know we're all older and we grew up with that he's looked back on favorably even though I think most people are like Yeah, the first movie was great, and there's other ones.

GoldenEye's great. Some people stand by Tomorrow Never Dies.

World's Not Enough has the Christmas only comes once a year line, which is great.

And then Die Another Day is unbelievably fucking...

Yeah, it's so dumb, it is kind of fun. It...

It was so obviously, all right, we've gone too far this direction.

You can see why we got a Casino Royale after.

Mm-hmm. It was necessary at that point.

But it was kind of fun to see how stupid it got.

Yes. Folks, we've been going for a little bit.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll continue talking about video games.

Maybe we'll take another break and then talk about the news.

We'll see you on the other side of this.

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And we're back. We're still talking about video games.

Here's a little bit of that music. That was a little bit of that music.

Okay, yeah. I was thinking about this...

As you were talking about your punishment grub, and Mike, you were talking about getting a 3D Yoshi, but like, All these indie games that I've been enjoying, like Big Hops Grub and all this other stuff, this could just be a Yoshi game.

Yeah. You're not wrong. God, big hops really could be.

Yoshi got that tongue. Yoshi got an arm on him.

He got what that tongue do, for sure. You don't have to say it like that.

Well, but you can. That's what's fun about podcasting.

Like, you know, if I had a tongue that was like one of those sticky hands that you like throw.

Yeah. Those are great. I don't know what I would do with it, but I do stuff with it.

The party trick thing. Yeah. While we're checking in about games, Grub, you have another check-in from Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Yeah, yeah. I've decided I don't like the term post-game content because you can put the credits wherever you want, right?

Yeah. They just fucking were like, we're gonna put it in the middle of our game and don't tell anybody, but it keeps going after that. it's still really good, and it's still that video game, and it actually kind of gets interesting in some different, I don't know, the challenges are more in line with... Yeah, more challenging than letting you use your powers in ways that are, like, cool and...

Yeah, and fresh. So I've been enjoying experiencing that.

And it's like it did remind me, it's like, Yeah, maybe Nintendo does that a little bit now.

Every once in a while, there's been some other games.

They kind of just have the credits here, and then you can kind of keep playing the game.

It's in-game stuff, I guess, but... Yeah, I've been continuing to play that and kind of figuring out what it wants me to do after the credits. was fun.

And now it's like, okay, these challenges are very good.

And then that gives me an excuse to keep exploring.

And then I am still 100% in some levels.

I am at a point now where it's like, this is a lot.

There's so much in this game. I'm like, this might be something I slowly do over time. the next year or something like that and not try to force it all right now because that would take up all my time.

But yeah, it's like pretty interesting to see them be like, yeah, no, you've beat the game.

Sure. And then if you want to keep playing, there's more there.

And it's like, no, everyone should probably keep playing the game at least a little bit because they really did save some of their best stuff for after those crowds.

How many banana do you have? I'm at like around, I'm almost at 600, I think.

Okay. I'm in like the high fives. Okay. So we're probably around the same spot and grab, I, we haven't even talked about this, but I have the exact same thought of like, You know, I spent a lot of time playing this game.

It's been my main game for a few weeks and now it's like, I don't think it's going to be one that's hard to pick up again.

No. You know, I think it's going to be one that like if I'm on a flight a month from now.

Oh, yeah. yeah, don't care. Let's get a few bananas, you know?

So like that is exactly how I'm viewing it.

I'm moving on to other things right now, but, um, It's going to be nice to have that in the back pocket because that team's post-game quote-unquote stuff, like Odyssey and all that stuff, I always love that shit.

So I did see chat here say that Pikmin 4 gets amazing after the credits.

And I do remember that because I 100%ed Pikmin 4 yesterday.

I forgot what it specifically did. If it let you do it again with a time limit on the days or...

Was that when the... The Olimar thing? The Olimar stuff happened?

Was that post-Credits? I feel like you could do that even before Credits, but yeah.

I feel like you could do that before. I can't remember.

I do remember 100% in that game. I think we all did, the ones of us that have played it.

And I think we all really liked that. I loved it.

Yeah. Cause I remember telling Kayla, cause yeah, I remember Kayla got to like credit.

And I was like, all right, now you get another real stuff.

But I forgot how it does that, you know?

Man, Pikmin 4 kicked ass. I got a Pikmin pen at the Nintendo store.

It's good. You were complaining about that pen yesterday.

It's not a great writing utensil, but it's pretty.

So the main thing it is for, not that great.

Shut up, Jan. This main thing is looking cute.

I'm sorry, Mike. You guys got me thinking about my banana count.

And I was like, where the hell do I even find that?

And then, okay, just on the menu. To give you an idea of how I'm playing the game, I'm at 546 and I'm on sub level 1400.

You gotta stop. That's wild. That's how I play these games, man.

I just see a thing. I gotta go do the thing.

There's a lot of things. So many things, though.

The complaint that I had when we first talked about this of they separate out the... the destruction and the platforming too much for my taste it gets better about that as the game goes on right I think they trust you more as you play the game longer and that continues after the credits again.

Right. Yeah. So that's kind of like you guys were getting at the Nintendo thing that they do nowadays.

They know. freaks like us will just play like all that this game has to offer.

So they do lock a lot of that harder stuff behind the like And I think people also feel better if they feel like, oh, I beat a game.

So I feel better about this thing. I think it's a mental trick that they're playing.

Exactly. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's always kind of been the case though.

Like think of like Mario 64 or even Super Mario World.

Like you can beat that game and doing like less than half the levels.

And then if you're a sicko, you can go back and, you know, do all of them.

Like literally Mario world had that, you know?

Yep. Good point. Yeah. Which I like that.

It's great. While we're checking in about Nintendo games...

Dan, this is a surprising thing to see on the list, but you put on Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.

What's that? Yeah, I'm at the spot where it's like, you know, I'm doing what I'm doing with Bonanza, but I do want to move on to something else right now as my main thing and It's like, what is coming out soon?

It's like I know Borderlands 4 is coming out.

I beat Snake Eater, but I can't talk about that for a little bit.

So I decided like I've been wanting to check out either Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom since the Switch 2 came out.

And I was going back and forth forever, and I landed on Breath of the Wild.

And now that I'm... playing it and enjoying it more than I expected in the last few days.

I think I am confident now in my thought that I do prefer this over Tears of the Kingdom.

And I do think Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best games of all time.

I think it has better abilities overall, like the runes and stuff like that.

But as I play Breath of the Wild, I'm really appreciating kind of how focused it is.

Because like Tears of the Kingdom lets you do a lot of stuff.

But it also is stuff that kind of slows things down.

It's a lot of fiddling with stuff, creating the things. going through menus, attaching items to arrows.

And like, there's so much you can do. It's incredibly impressive.

But Breath of the Wild as I'm playing it, it is just kind of like beautifully...

Like simple is not the word. It's balanced, right?

Yeah. It's just focused. It's just like, okay, I'm just like, you know, I'm getting to the top of a new tower.

I'm like, oh, I see those shrines over there.

Like, it's like, there's less stuff you can do but it does feel like more of a kind of straightforward adventure and it's I thought that like, because I played the shit out of it 100% of it originally, I thought that it would just be like kind of retreading that and I wouldn't have that sense of discovery.

But it's such a big world and there's so much shit in it that I am finding that like, oh, even my path... here is different than it was the first time.

As I'm just stumbling upon different parts of the world and deciding what order to do things in, It is feeling fresher than I expected it to be, but I guess it's been eight years or so.

Yeah. Does the Zelda notes app work, do anything in breath of the wild?

Thank you. Yes, it does. So it doesn't do anything like obviously like with tiers, you can do the QR code, like bring in the constructions and stuff, but you can do all the like GPS stuff in it.

I haven't really messed with it. I've looked at the navigation map and it is cool that you can kind of filter like, oh, if I just need to beat a Hinox for something, I can just kind of tap that.

Or if I'm looking for Korok seeds in the area, I can just pop all that up on the map.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. I haven't done the like turn by turn direction type stuff or anything yet.

I'm kind of just doing it in game like normal, but, uh, Yeah, I've kind of fiddled with it.

It does seem like a cool little gimmick.

Is there the Zelda commentary stuff where she talks about stuff in the world?

Or is that just Tears of the Kingdom? I bet it's Tears of the Kingdom.

No, I think it's got the like Zelda memories thing or something.

I don't really care about that. I remember seeing it and tears came to me like, all right, that's.

It was just so weird. I have this director's commentary from a fictional character talking about their kayfabe.

It was just weird. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's like I'm not really using the notes app, but it is there.

There's like a weird, like I don't understand the point of this.

It seems like there's like an item box type thing where you can like put things in an item box and retrieve it later or something but I don't know why I would need to do that like most of the items you can just kind of have infinite maybe weapons and stuff where you're more limited and initially.

But no, it's all to say that I am liking it a lot more than I expected.

I thought I might just mess around with it for a little bit to see how you know, runs on switch to, which by the way it is.

Oh my God. It runs so much better. I'm playing on the hundreds. bench and so like the fucking resolution boost and the fucking frame rate and like that game is beautiful on a big ass screen.

I am loving it, loving it. So like, yeah, I'm more into it than I thought the second time around.

I was like, you're definitely among friends here, Dan, because me and Grub have always felt this way.

Breath of the Wild is kind of more of a focused puzzle game in a lot of ways, whereas Tears of the Kingdom is that more like free open Minecraft.

Sandbox-y, a little bit sandbox-y. Like a toy you can fiddle with.

I think both are very, very good, and it's more...

It's just a preference thing. I don't think one invalidates the other.

I like going back to Breath the wild which i have done a couple times just because i do like solving the shrines with constraints i think it they were very smart about that.

I always think about, I think I've brought it up before, but listening to Nintendo voice chat back in the day and hearing Jose talk about how he thought...

Wait, there's electricity puzzle and you're supposed to move metal blocks, but I have a ton of claymores in my inventory.

What if I just line these suckers up yeah and it works i think that type of revelation is still so much fun in breath of wild whereas tears you can You can really like cheese the system a lot of ways, which is certainly fun.

I just prefer the constraints that they were working with in Breath of the Wild.

Yep, totally agreed. So yeah, no shade on Tears of the Kingdom, one of the best games of all time, but I think I definitively now think I prefer Breath of the Wild.

Yep, yep. That's where I've been. And Tears of the Kingdom has a better like story and like, yeah.

Oh, an ending? is incredible and like the dungeons are better than the divine beast for sure i'll give that Yeah, and it nails its ending in a way that Breath of the Wild doesn't.

But I still prefer Breath of the Wild. Yeah, and I think when it came out, I think I did say like, oh, if you're playing for the first time, this does everything Breath of the Wild did and more and better.

But more isn't necessary. So I am kind of like backtracking a bit on that.

And it's better because we still have Breath of the Wild, right?

Like this is what Tears of the Kingdom should have been.

It should not have tried to recreate the exact magic of Breath of the Wild.

It should do its own thing, and it did. It's just... this can exist because I already have Breath of the Wild and I don't need them to necessarily do that exactly again.

So it's kind of this awesome best of both worlds.

A survival game versus an open world sandbox in a traditional sense.

I like both. Yeah. I think I might still be Team Tears of the Kingdom.

I don't know. It's very close. I'm with you, Mikey.

I think for me, it's the story that edges it over.

Sure. I think Tears is really good at giving you fun stuff to do.

And if you're trying to find the fun stuff, Tears the King is going to throw that in your face.

It's a great duology. Yep. I'm seeing all these little moments that I remember where it's like, oh, I'm just trying to like... sneak by like a bokoblin camp in a tree and they see me and I'm like, oh shit.

But then one of them fucking throws an exploding barrel in the wrong way.

And I just see like four flaming bokoblin corpses flying over a hill and it's so funny.

And it's just, even when like big things like that happen now, it's like perfect frame rate and everything.

It's just like, Ooh, this is. It's so wild that that was supposed to be a Wii U game, right?

There's a world where that's all that ever was. yeah it runs like it's 720p doesn't maintain the frame rate but it works yeah no it's wild moving on to some newer games Dan and Grubb you two have been checking out Ninja Gaiden Ragebound Dan, I talked about this a little bit last week, so I'm curious to hear your opinion on it.

Yeah, I'm on like Act 4, so I'm not sure where you're at.

I think I'm around there. I think I'm at the end of Act 4, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's very, very good. I'm surprised by how much it is not playing on nostalgia, I guess, because at times it reminds me more of a strike.

Yeah, I feel that. It's got the music and everything.

It's got a few of the callback weapons and things like that.

It's not like, the music isn't exactly the same, yeah.

It's more like in between the like that type, between levels they'll play that right and it's like it's familiar but it's not the exact it doesn't sound exactly the same so i'm almost it's not even playing on nostalgia in all the ways it could be It's funny in the quick look when the second that Jeff says, yeah, the music's not that great.

This like sick guitar riff starts. Yeah, that's.

You sleepy idiot. It's interesting because a lot of throwbacks to when you talk about the Mega Man 9, Mega Man 10 type approach of like, This is just like the ones you remember.

This does not look anything like an NES game.

It looks like, you know, if you made badass, you know, 2D sprite based games on like If the PlayStation and Saturn kept doing it.

Yeah, and it looks fucking gorgeous. It kind of fixes all the stuff about...

Blasphemous. I enjoyed the art style a lot.

I thought it was gorgeous, but like I'm not big on the like kind of peri from type stuff all the time.

And I didn't necessarily want that in that game here.

It's like, okay, fast paced, challenging any style action game. with that incredible, like, you know, Sprite graphics and stuff.

So, and then you got the messenger stuff where you're kind of the guillotine boost hopping off projectiles and stuff like that.

It's a, very, very cool. So I am enjoying it quite a bit.

I will probably finish it. I think you grab.

How are you feeling? Yeah, I'm going to finish it.

Yeah, I had the Act 4 boss last night, the last one of that. pretty tough, like probably like five tries.

And most are like in the two to three range.

And so it's like, okay, yeah, this one I'm really gonna have to buck down here and like really figure out its patterns.

And that is, that still continues to be so fun every time I do it.

Then I'm like, oh, I kind of can't wait to see the next boss.

So that's where I'm at with the game right now, where it's like it's got me in its grasp with just the way it's presented itself and then you know the levels are long And yet, usually that bothers me.

I'm like, come on, get in there, get in, get out.

Brevity is the soul of wit and all that stuff.

And it's like, no, these levels have a good pacing to them, even despite being...

I don't know, 20 minutes long sometimes, which is a long time for a 2D running gun, running slash platformer.

Um, but yeah, they do a good job of like having a lot of different things in there.

There was a train level that I thought was just so good.

They really made that feel great. level I'm playing I'm like I should tell Mike about this I bet he'll be into it and it's like it's not just there for the setting or the look like It plays into the style of play, but not in a way that's annoying the way some moving levels can be.

It's just, I don't know, they made everything fun. and made everything the right level of challenge so that I always feel like I'm accomplishing something and then I look cool the entire time I'm doing it.

So yeah, just still super into Ragebound.

Also, I think it's maybe the first game after many, many, many years of CRT filters where I've gone back and forth a bunch of times and then been like, no, I think the CRT filter makes us look better.

CRQ filters are improving like constantly and they're at a point right now.

Which stuff is good? Yeah, and the Ninja Gaiden one is good too.

And the people working at these studios now understand that.

There's people that they probably hired that get these things.

Right. You can't just slap scam lines on and call it a day.

You got to go a little bit further and they're getting better at doing that.

And it's hard to like show it off because it never looks right on stream.

So people are never going to believe it until they see it themselves. uh you did bring up challenge i'm curious did you have a chance to play hard mode at all yet No, I've not.

I'm playing on the standard. I've still only played the demo because I haven't haven't gotten around to the full game i picked it up but i've been playing so much donkey kong But when the demo came out, I replayed the demo on hard mode because...

It has a really cool hard mode where they genuinely like add unique enemies and enemy patterns. and actually make you think about the level a bit differently and getting around the enemies in a different way which I appreciate so much more than so many games just, you know, adding extra health, deal extra damage and stuff.

I... At least from the demo, it seemed like they were really putting thought into the hard mode, which I think for something like Ninja Gaiden... goes a long way because people playing that kind of game want that challenge you know Yeah, and you could kind of see how it would make a lot of sense with the way that they do the hyper charge attack.

Where it's like a little bit of a puzzle in every encounter.

And you got to make sure you're like, oh, the one back there has got the energy inside of him. slash him I'll be able to get the big sword attack so I can take out the big enemy in one hit and just just kind of always being able to think about that.

It's like, if they could just add one more layer of complication on top of that, that would be a good hard road.

And that's what they do. It's kind of like what Donkey Kong Country having the Kremlings be the green guys by default and that's what the red guys are more difficult ones.

They kind of do something like that where they just like make a more difficult version of the enemy.

It's pretty neat. Sick, sick, sick. Going from Ninja Gaiden Ragebound to...

Well, back to Mike's tour of older games.

Control. Yes, this is the 2019 Apology Tour continued.

We're rephrasing it Revenge Tour, Mike. Oh, my revenge.

I don't know. I think I need to apologize.

2019 is getting revenge on Mikey. Yeah, because, gosh.

With the time we did Game of the Year 2019, I had not played Resident Evil...

2 remake I hadn't played Sekiro I hadn't played the Outer Wilds and I hadn't actually play through control.

What did you play this year? Where am I?

Everyone calm down. Okay. I had a good game of the year with this asshole.

Mike Minotti, what was your game of the year?

It was Fire Emblem Three Houses, which was a good game.

That's a good game. God damn. What was your number two game?

There's too much shit in between the missions.

What was your number two game? A great question.

You know what? Maybe it was Kingdom Hearts 3.

Let's go! I'm on your side again. I'm on your side.

It's not even on the top 10 when you're done with it.

The game that made Tim Geddes hate Kingdom Hearts is this man's top two.

Jesus Christ. Oh, um, day control's really fun.

I like that a lot. That, uh... I know it's kind of more about the setting and the... the kind of weirdness, but just the mechanics feel really good.

It's really nice shooting. I love the way that... that gun looks, the way it's always kind of shifting around and looking weird.

The metroidvania aspects of it of getting these new powers and abilities is cool.

Back in the day, I did bounce off it. Because I actually didn't love the kind of Twilight zoniness of all of it.

I think I'm a bit more proud. Yeah, I'm not a big Twin Peaks guy.

I think I'm more receptive to that now. I think at the time...

I was kind of like, well, if anything can happen, I guess you can just do anything.

And that's a little lazy and lame. And now I'm like, I guess that's also kind of fun.

I'm just trying to open up my heart to that stuff a bit more, and I am enjoying it.

Was that a criticism of the entirety of fiction?

I was like, I think I do like... my fiction and even my like kind of more fantasy stuff to kind of have a code of rules right there should be a logic to wits right uh some of that lore stuff and you know in control it's like up it's it's weird Yeah, but there's rules that you'll learn to it.

Yeah, so it gets there. I think that's why FBC Firebreak was a little bit disappointing to me because, like...

This is set in the Control Universe. But it was just kind of...

It felt like it was being weird for the sake of being weird rather than like, oh, this... ties into a bigger thing that we're trying to keep under control.

And this is all funky. And I think that's like, That was the stick up my ass the first time.

I was like, I think this game's just being weird.

And now I'm like, yeah, I don't know why I was... like that.

It's weird and interesting and fun ways.

Every time I found out what a new object of power was, I was like, hell yeah.

You know me, though. I'm like, look at all these dead people.

That's sad. There's so many office workers, corpses hanging up.

And I'm like, well, no one seems even very bothered by this.

This is kind of sad. I don't know You have too much empathy Mike Minotti I have too much empathy for vegan characters who don't have real souls But yeah, I'm having a very good time with the game.

It's like pretty breezy to play through.

It does have very good collectibles and things to read.

I don't dive super deep in that stuff, but I like it.

And the weird TV stuff, Remedy is so good at that.

There's like those weird, scary puppets uh chat will remind me of their name but i love whenever i see those guys and there's like waldorf Yes, I heard Waldorf.

There's the kind of like Mr. Science guy who haven't actually met yet in all of his little videos.

Threshold Kid. Threshold kids. That's the puppets, yeah.

The setting... Gameplay. It's all very good stuff.

I am enjoying it. And, you know, Audie. Audie's a bro.

We love Audie. Yeah, we do. Speaking about DLC again, I never checked out the DLC for Control.

I'm trying to circle back to that. It's supposed to be good.

I know Alan Wake shows up in one of them, right?

And it was kind of like... The AWE, yeah.

Yeah, it's like the teaser for Alan Wake 2, so that's interesting.

I haven't done the Alan Wake 2 DLC either.

I'm not much of a DLC guy. That's why one thing we're playing playing this in Outer Wilds.

It's like, you know, people are always like, you know what I mean?

You gotta play the DLC. I kind of like, look, I'll play it if I want to.

You leave me alone. Mike, I'm with you. I don't really do DLC.

I don't do it. I very rarely do it. No. Even like Breath of the Wild, I never did.

Yeah, Breath of the Wild DLC, I don't care.

Whoa, you get the motorcycle. You get a motorcycle.

I never did it either. It's pretty sick.

I say it, the motorcycle in Breath of the Wild, it's a few degrees away from Law So Random.

Foddy Doddy. Yeah. This gigantic mechanical elephant.

That's cool. Motorcycle. Yeah. Speaking about people with no souls, Mike Minotti, you have also been playing Heretic.

Hexen. Heretic in Hexen. This is the new Night Dive remastered joint that they announced at QuakeCon, I have loved what they are doing with all of these classic shooters.

Not too long ago, I played through their Doom 1 and 2 remasters that they did, I believe Last year, I've gone on about how amazing I think PowerSlave Exhumed is.

Heretic was kind of like the first great Doom clone.

It's basically just Doom, but with more of a medieval... kind of fantasy setting, but like a dark fantasy.

It's not that removed from what Doom is doing, honestly.

But it definitely has a bit more of that dirty fantasy flavor there.

But, you know, instead of a shotgun, you have like a crossbow and it shoots like a bunch of green arrows out.

And you even have an inventory of items that you can select from to restore health or buff all your weapons or make you invulnerable for a little bit.

So Heretic is just a really fun, mild twist on Doom.

And somebody who's really been enjoying playing those old school shooters, that's great.

Hexen is interesting even today. It's just a little bit later, and it has so much of the bones of Heretic in it. but there's kind of a lot more going on.

You can choose between three different characters that have access to different weapons.

The fighter, they're doing a lot of melee stuff.

The mage, and they have a lot more magic and ranged things, and the cleric is sort of in between there.

Even the level structure is different. It's not just episodes and levels.

There's kind of hub worlds and things like that.

The presentation's even kicked up a notch.

There's a CG intro to Hexen, right? Yeah.

And they also had some neat stuff in this collection, like all the quality of life stuff.

Sure, but in Hexen, I don't think this is in the original game, between characters at certain kind of podiums in the levels.

Whereas before you kind of picked one, I think you were stuck with it.

The map. Oh, it's a DK 16. It's a DK64 like now.

I was just thinking that. Mike's just getting ready.

The in-game map will have markers on it to kind of show you where you should go because sometimes it's a little obtuse before.

Things like that. So yeah, I've been just checking out all the old content, because there are also some new levels added in here from Night Dive, and they always do that sort of stuff, I think.

That's fantastic as well. But yeah, just got another great one of these.

I've been playing it on my Switch too. It's a fantastic way.

Oh. to play these games. I'm pretty sure both of them were originally not vertical, look up and down.

You can do that in these. Right. It's the Doom 1, Doom 2 style of thing.

So you don't really need mouse and keyboard to be super efficient in this.

So yeah, I actually like playing with Switch.

But it's fun and it feels good. I played some Heretic with mouse and keyboard, and I was like, this still just feels so good.

Honestly, it feels better now. Night Dive.

Night dive does great work. And every time they do anything, I'm just going to be all over that for sure.

I know this is Bethesda and Microsoft, but I think about it as like a night dive game and Microsoft BDS movement, they're complicit in that. of course, but boy, I just like, I can't help but be excited about anything Night Dive touches.

Yeah, I hope they touch more things. I want to see them get on even more Raven games.

This is Raven. Raven did so many other good games with...

Cast in. Star Trek Elite Force is my dream one.

I love Star Trek Elite Force, so I'd pop off.

Raven, top five Wisconsin-based developers.

100%. Yeah. Okay. Barely, but yeah. I'm familiar with the societal blowback from Doom when that came out, just hearing that while I was growing up.

Did Harry and Hexen, did that have any blowback or pushback?

I think it got mixed up. Doom was so much bigger, though.

It was massive. Doom already had it and then Columbine and the like media misreporting like blew that stuff out of proportion specifically for Doom.

Okay. Yeah. Fantastic. Gang, you know...

I was going to talk about this earlier when Sean was talking about Vegas.

Uh, but I've been playing another game as, uh, Thankfully, it's just a demo.

But last time I got really invested in a demo and put like maybe 20 plus hours, it turned out turned into Bellatro.

When's this coming out? Can I add to my fantasy critic?

Oh, you son of a bitch. I haven't been checking that.

How can we check in? I think the league is done this year because we have two players that can't participate.

And Metroid's not coming out. But Dice a Million, there is a demo for this now, and I think I talked about this very briefly on Game Miss Mornings, but that if there is any game that has pulled stuff from Bellagio, it is this game because it has the warbly background Bellatro has in the title menu.

I like Warbly. But... Your general goal is to get to a certain amount in a certain number of dice rolls.

So... uh let's say you have to get to the number uh 40 given uh and you're using five dice and you have three rolls to get there and of course in bellatro fashion you're as you go through each round you're picking up new different kinds of dice so Maybe it looks like a D20.

It looks like a D6 or whatever type of dice.

And then it gets really... really funky from there because, like, hey, this dice, if you roll it one way, it's just two dice stuck together, and then it... adds up the value.

So if it lands on like a 2-3, it's actually a 23 instead of like a 5 or whatever.

Whoa, okay. Oh, that sounds fun. I like that.

And it quickly starts ramping up in the zaniness and...

You know how like in a bullet hell shooter or shmup you get to that point near the end where it just like it's just numbers and it just sprites numbers. yeah everywhere late game in dice a million from the demo of course uh still limited It got to a point where it was just numbers like jumping up at me at the end of my rolls.

The thing that kind of replaces the Joker mechanic in Bellatro is you have these different rings.

And these rings will do similar stuff as, like, Jokers do in Bellatra, where... okay, this is a multiplier or even numbers get bonuses or whatever.

Dice a Million, very, very lovely demo because you can fucking lose yourself in it.

Like I have. No release date just yet, but plan for 2025.

I am interested in everything you're saying.

And as you were describing this, I realized like, wait a minute.

I've talked so much about how I don't like dice in video games and I get angry as soon as I see a dice show up, but I just realized I don't like it in like a Baldur's Gate or something where it's like... These are...

Dude's fighting with swords. Why would dice show up?

But I like it in like a Mario Party board game thing or a casino themed thing.

So I think I only like it when it's Diegetic.

Diegetic, you bastard. What the fuck's wrong with you?

Die is the plural. Grab it worked. Oh, okay.

No dice is the plural. Funny! Everyone gets this wrong.

Die is singular. Dice is plural. Christ.

I didn't want to correct Jan, but it annoys me so much.

I'm sorry. No, I like it when dice should be there.

It should be there in gambling. It should be there in a board game.

It should be there in medieval warfare. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. How long ago did you think of that joke?

It felt like five minutes ago. Halfway through Jan describing me.

I saw the lights click into your head and I don't know if you were just like... these dice are messed up man there's like a giraffe die like how does that work i saw a peanut yeah there's i haven't gotten to all like the funky ones but um god what's the uh a jack you get a jack as like one of your dice.

Like the jacks. Oh, okay. and oh it you go through like a tree kind of like a slay the spire of like oh do I go do this next round of rolling for dice or do I go for like an artifact and an artifact is like a, you know. you can get another bonus card or another ring for your fingies.

What's up with the rings? Sorry, did you mention that?

Yeah, the rings are kind of like your jokers in Bellatro.

They just affect the different die or how the dice add up to each other. god this is going to be terrible for me this is a good look it looks slick it would be really cool on mobile If you just shake your phone to throw your dice.

Of course. There you go. Yeah. oh yeah oh hd rumble yeah yeah my biggest complaint about blotcher on i know you can keep going mikey uh biggest complaint for bellatro on phones is i wish they did have like a vertical mode versus just always playing in horror yeah sure totally yeah very minor that being added right what I could see that being added.

Right. I could see them doing that. Um, yeah, yeah.

Uh, all right. He doesn't make the game.

He just promotes it. Call a guy. Jeff Grubb, you did a stream of this game last week and you didn't get to any of the actual criming around.

Because you played Mafia, the old country, and it looked like you were just in a mine or a cave the whole time.

It's Minecraft, like, yeah. It's an isekai?

It's an isekai, of course. In Italy. Isekai!

Yeah, damn. Wow! I'm sorry, Mike. It is.

I think I played like the first night. 90 minutes or so, maybe even like I got around to like two hours.

And yeah, it was all set up. You start off in... You're working in a mine... and you're very low on the totem pole in this mining operation.

And so they tell you to go in there, even though it's obviously going to collapse and like release gas.

And it does that and you escape and then you get in a fight with the big mean boss who tries to get you to work in the dangerous cave. and you slice them in the face and then you run away.

They find you and then a mafia family takes you in and then you start at the bottom And that's where I kind of stopped the game, where I'm beginning my ascent in the ranks of this mafia cartel.

The first thing I was doing there was going into a wine cellar, getting crates of wine and putting on a truck.

And it feels like one of those games where it's like we are going to just be like trying to set the tone through small little gameplay touches throughout.

There was a lot of that stuff in the cave segment.

And then it becomes a big action game, but it's never an open-world action game.

It is always... We have set up an obstacle course for you that's going to have a lot of fun.

Mafia stuff happening off to the side. There's going to be you know, goons with their guns chasing you.

And you just got to you have to try to just outrun them.

And it's all working for me. I thought it was completely fine.

Now, it's not a game that I ever had high expectations for because I knew what it was.

And it also has a reduced scope. compared to the previous Mafia games, that is helping being able to set those expectations low, being like, this is not going to try to do a bunch of stuff it's not going to be good at.

It's just going to stick to telling the story, having like, you know, it's interesting cast of characters. being a pretty decent looking game.

I think it looks really nice. A lot of that is the tech, but most of it is the art style.

And then Alright, we're just going to let you go through that story.

And I think that's probably the right choice for a game like this.

Does that... Do players want that beyond, you know, at all?

I don't know, but I was pretty happy with it.

I think this is a good direction for the series.

I don't know if they're going to be able to support it for future games, but for this one, I'm like, yeah, this is...

He said, I don't even know if I would recommend it to any of you.

It's like, you know, you know if you're in the mood for this or not.

Yeah, I guess I'm most surprised to hear that you're liking, because what you're describing almost sounds like Red Dead Redemption 2, but only the story missions.

No, so it is like the order 1886. Do you not like horses?

Me? Yeah. Oh, I love Red Dead Redemption 2.

No, no, no, not you. Of course. No. I mean, I don't trust them.

Their legs evolved from fingers. How do you feel about Mr. Ed?

Listen, I love a talking horse because I can reason with it.

Angrily yelling that is very funny. Yeah, no, I think it's not like Red Dead Redemption 2 at all because Red Dead Redemption 2 promises the world Right.

And then it's like sometimes it's like, no, you can't do that.

This is like from the beginning. It's like, no, we're setting up the boundaries.

We're not ever going to suggest to you that you have the ability to take control and go do whatever you want.

And it's not like, oh, I can go off the beaten path here and I'm going to fail the mission because there's no reason to want to do that. where that does exist in Red Dead Redemption 2, where I'm like, I'm gonna try this, and the game's like, we're not happy with you.

So it's like by having the understood boundaries between me and the game, I can just mess around with what's in front of me.

And then what's in front of me is... you know, decent to good, and then it looks nice.

It's hard to explain. Like I said, I think it's the expectations.

Not expecting a ton from this game, and they're delivering on what they said they would do.

Before release, you were saying that you expect it to be like an uncharted game.

Is that like at least in terms of scope?

Is that kind of like what we're looking at here?

Yeah, the original Uncharted games. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Like before PS3 game. Yeah, before four, you know, added a more open area and everything, but just sort of. the classic action adventure style.

You go through what is essentially a level.

It's... a little more narrow than games are nowadays, but it's like, yeah, the cinematic moments and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that's... It does... Like, we commented this several times.

Chat said this as well when I was playing. it feels like a PS3 game.

And I think it's specifically those kinds of games.

And yeah, just. Good set pieces can go a long way if that's the kind of game you're trying to make.

And I think they're decent here. It's not like an awesome 8 out of 10.

It's like a pretty good 7 out of 10. We need those.

Yeah. I'm very happy with that. Now, Grubb, as far as I have been able to gleam from watching you play through that, you're just a normal dude, right?

I'm not, yeah, not a superhuman. He's Italian.

That's not normal. I understand I understand how like being an Italian Stalin gives you like a plus five to strength of course yeah Why do you have Italian vision?

You can smell the olive oil, right? I'm not supposed to tell people about the Italian visit.

What? That's supposed to be a secret. Yeah, you can smell the olive oil waves in the air, right?

Oh, no. Yeah, it's just, you know, it comes with these games now.

It's like pre-baked in there. That's just how it goes.

Video game developers, unless your main character is like Batman and you have technology...

Stop adding this. Yeah. Bond vision. Bond.

Hitman vision. He's a trained hitman. Mm hmm. yeah okay you're running the mill dude what's he gonna do like i can't stand here right now and just like think really hard and like Oh, there's someone on the second floor of this building.

I can't do that. I kind of can hear some...

I feel like I can hear people upstairs and know what room they're in, right?

That is a little bit like the vision. That's dad vision, yeah.

Yeah, I might be damaged. I'm like, oh, they're going to break something.

That's a mental illness. It's neurodivergency.

That's mental illness. uh folks and last game of the what you've been playing segment uh is a game that we'll talk about in the news i believe because it's been blowing up.

And not just the buildings, but in the player count.

Mike Minotti, you wrote this here, but I think...

Everyone here has gotten a chance to dip into Battlefield 6?

Yeah. Fuck that. in the middle of that stage where all the snipers go now and it just becomes impossible to play on there.

They gotta do something. It was fun when I figured it out and I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna go ruin their day.

And I just ran in there over and over and killed them.

Or you bring a tank because they got no hiding spots.

Yeah, that's the move. actually clearly it's just like we got to play it more and figure out the obvious you know I think everybody pits Battlefield and Call of Duty against each other, but boy, those are very different kind of games that you need to be playing.

Although, you know, I do get why people are saying this one feels a little bit more like Call of Duty and some other battlefields.

The time to kill is very Call of Duty like.

I feel like I was getting pretty good at Call of Duty from playing Black Ops 6 last year.

And I liked Battlefield very early on. I played a lot of Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam and then kind of checked out.

I didn't even play that much of 3 and 4, but I've been craving Battlefield a bit.

So I was excited to play this and I was enjoying that.

Like, yeah, I'm glad that this is basically just Battlefield or something too crazy.

I am really bad at it. It should be called Battlefield because I'm so awful. and it's uh i don't even know what it is like diegetic's not so bad now Oh, give me a second, Dan.

I'll come up with something worse. I don't know why I'm so bad.

It's like, you know, aiming and shooting things.

I did other games. I'm like, I just can't.

I'm like, I'm pretty rough at it. But still, aside from my skill issue...

Yeah, I think they have something here. The game looks really good.

It seems to run. pretty well even in this beta format um i do like these maps, you know, something flashy, but they generally seem to make sense.

I haven't been able to, like, get in an airplane...

Even piloting tanks, I'm usually like the second guy in the tank, so I'm just using that kind of gun thing, whatever.

But yeah, it seems like they made a really good one of those and people are responding to it.

Yeah, I'm kind of right there with you where I played a lot of 1943 when it came on Xbox Live when I played it.

Yeah. The one on the island, right? Yeah.

Wake Island. A ton of that. That was a good time.

And then I played some three and some four, but not much.

And really, my Battlefield experience is I kind of try to play it like Call of Duty because I would play it a lot of Call of Duty.

So I'd kind of run right at the action. get the idea of like, oh, I'm going to be able to flank this and do something here and just get demolished over and over again.

And then eventually I'll settle into, all right, let's start some of these mid-range skirmishes and see if I can figure that out.

And once I get on its wavelength, it's a little bit, better and it's a it's a good time i like the battlefield games this one it's just like everything else is hitting really well that I kind of want to get on that learning curve and relearn Battlefield once again, because it just feels good to play.

And it looks fantastic. You know, it is still that like if you're going to run in there and try to be an a-hole and lone wolf it, you're going to get hurt.

So, okay, I got to not play that way. And I'm okay to not play that way. again because it's working so well on all the other factors.

Yeah, I'm kind of on the opposite side of things from you guys where I got into Battlefield with Battlefield Battlefield two, my stepbrother was really big into it.

And when we were first getting to know each other, we played that a lot.

And I played that and then three and four were when I was like, in college, like late high school into college.

So I got really into those games for a while there. and I so I do really like the modern like modern day sort of battlefield rather than the World War I or II stuff that they also went back to for a while there.

And so playing this one, it's like, Yeah, I'm back.

Like we're back into what Battlefield as I know it is.

I think we're the height of the series for a lot of people will be.

It's kind of weird to think that This is kinda just more of that.

We haven't had it in a while, but... the continuations kind of the uh like we call duty the modern warfare 2019 thing where oh yeah This is just like the best version of this that they've done in a while.

And it's weird to think that, wow, it's been like...

12 years since we've done that. It's also a weird thing that they have conscious.

You know, we were like, where's Battlefield gone?

They have put out a game roughly every three years since then, which is...

Yeah, that's what most companies are going to do.

But yeah, it's fun to be back into that style of battlefield, not going way back to world war one or two not try to do near future stuff with uh 2042

It is just that more traditional Battlefield experience.

Maybe some Call of Duty-isms in there, like you said, with the time to kill and everything, but...

Yeah, I didn't play much more than what we played on stream the other day, but...

I had a blast with that and then a few matches I played after that.

It's just fun to be back playing Battlefield again.

Yeah, I normally get super overwhelmed anytime I've checked out a battlefield, so I've generally bounced off of them.

And the only... But I've been having an actually good time at this one.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've never really... Call of Duty's never really clicked with me, and... um i really enjoyed gosh uh the finals from a couple years ago right yeah So it's very similar DNA here.

Uh, battlefield people worked on that. Battlefield 6, why don't you just give me a grappling hook and like an air dash?

Just do that. And then I'll fucking be there day one.

Yeah, play 2042 for that. Oh, okay, okay.

But yeah, this has been... Have y'all had any trouble connecting since the beta became open or whatever?

No. I know we had some initial funky business at the top of that stream.

Yeah, there's always a little bit of that with these cross-play things going on.

But now things are going... There was some weirdness with people joining my party in a game and then, like, not being put into the game with me.

It happened with Jeff and Christian when I was playing, so...

I don't know, maybe just a thing there, but it was running well.

Alright gang, that about does it for video games. another quick break, and then we will get to the news.

But before we get to the news and take a quick break, yo, I...

I've been keeping this under wraps, gang.

I haven't been talking about this a lot, but I've been really deep into the Magic the Gathering mind I'm in that phase of learning and playing where I'm still a little too shy to play with actual shoot people.

So I've been kind of like slowly grinding my way through arena.

Um, Hot dang, they're showing off the Avatar The Last Airbender cards That's my main motivation for getting into Magic the Gathering.

Yo, that Sozin card gonna do numbers, gang.

And we'll talk about that eventually. Did you see how much money the Final Fantasy thing made for Magic the Gathering in like a week or whatever, $200 million?

Oh yeah. Yeah, they're gonna be doing a lot more of these, and like, it's kind of the Fortnite-ification of everything.

But, you know, it's like... It's working.

I always like... shake disapproving at it until it's a franchise.

I like, like final fantasy. And I'm like, it was one day, $200 million in one day.

Yeah. Everyone making money off of Final Fantasy but Square Enix.

They should figure that out. Final Fantasy had their own TCG, and it feels like that disappeared.

Oh, yeah. I'm also going to play more fumes, and I'll talk about that next week.

Yeah. Oh, fumes. Gang, we're going to take a quick break.

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This is Jeff Grubb with the news. Jeff Grubb.

Hey, howdy, hello. Got some headlines here for everybody.

Let's get into the news. Microsoft has stopped development on Avalanche Studios.

Contraband, another game that they've canceled.

This is one that we didn't see much of. They showed it off four years ago at a summer game fest, like one of their, um, their summer showcases.

It just had a teaser trailer, Avalanche, the studio that did Just Cause.

And they are now canceling that game as well.

This comes in the wake of them canceling perfectly.

Dark, as well as being part of the 9000 people layoff at all of Microsoft.

Not all of those were Xbox, but a lot were.

And that's on top of the many layoffs that have happened over the years.

Tens of thousands. We said it earlier, but once again, Microsoft under a BDS movement, boycott for, as they say here, perhaps being the most complicit tech company in Israel's illegal occupation, apartheid regime, and ongoing genocide, and Xbox specifically is the target of that boycott. um yeah uh counterbalance game i was interested in because the trailer had a steely dan song in it and that's it it was going to be something like a heist game uh was it was it uh peg it might have been peg oh yeah okay i can't i can't remember it was a while ago um Yeah, it's a great song.

What's it about? You know, pegging. Anyway, it is contraband.

Did anyone have any hopes or dreams for this game?

I like the Just Cause game. So, you know, just the idea of like, yeah, Just Cause kind of under a different name, maybe with co-op in it, maybe doing some of that Heist stuff from GTA 5 or a payday.

I don't know. I guess I just had faith in the developer.

Right. Yeah. Did we really know what this was or kind of just buzzwords at this point?

I think we had buzzwords. Yeah, I think you're right.

We never saw anything else from it. Not a single second.

They never talked about it. I kept getting... Sorry.

Oh, go ahead, Jim. Oh, okay. I kept getting this game confused with Condemned, and I was excited we were making another Condemned.

Ben Beck. Mike got mixed up with Concord the other day.

That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to make a headline for the game of show.

I was like, Concord canceled. Yeah, it was.

Now, that's a market of video game podcasts, just reporting on the news like a year and a half too late.

Yeah, there you go. Good. Yeah. It's a shame.

Microsoft seems bad. Seems bad right now.

Yeah. Yep. Not interested in making games.

And I mentioned this elsewhere. We talked about this before you get sense that like a lot of studios that they were once going to work with or going to like publish their project externally kind of got burned by microsoft over the last several years but that like really culminated in during these last layoffs or that sounds like they just canceled a ton of projects.

So, The cancellations go deeper than just the ones we heard about from Xbox publishing themselves.

But this is one of the bigger ones, even though, again, it was just buzzwords as far as we could tell.

Then why did they buy all those studios?

Yeah, I mean, the Avalanche is not one that they bought, but yes, they did buy a bunch of studios.

It doesn't seem like for any good reason now, Jan, at this point.

Yeah, it feels like there's a lot of... Like internal, I'm trying to think of the right word, but like conflict, kind of like a water and oil thing happening here where there's people who want to make the cool stuff.

But then there's still the fact that it's Microsoft, which from... always, always for history has been one of the most cutthroat companies on the planet.

You know, that's why we're all running Windows.

It's not because we want to. Because they like paid to have deals with companies.

Right. It became the defense. fact, a work operating system.

So now it's what people put on their work laptops and now just on their home computers and stuff. it's how they do everything and it felt like xbox in the early days like You hear people talk about it.

It doesn't sound too different from like PlayStation of like this you know, sort of scrappy upstart team within this like, you know, gigantic bloodthirsty corporation. but like a team that really want to do something cool.

And as they become more and more Microsoft, that's how we see more and more things happen like mass layoffs and like buying a bunch of studios and doing nothing effective with them and then all these games getting canceled, not to mention everything else that Microsoft does as a company.

It just feels like the Microsoft of it all is just like slowly killing what Xbox is or could have been at this point.

I think that's exactly it. Mike keeps recommending these books.

Now I'm reading one about the history of electricity.

And it's like all these early companies that were like Westinghouse and, and, and, um, GE, all these companies that were everywhere, Siemens.

It's like some of them were able to like take their their early wins and turn that into Petrol wins where they are still around today.

Siemens is still like the company to this day that's like making monorails and stuff.

Yes, Siemens, everybody. They were at one point Get over it.

Yeah, see? They're cleaning up for Disney.

They're cleaning up for the giant bomb cast, Siemens.

Anyway, Microsoft is like, I think looks at the history of corporations, it's like, If we want to be relevant, we have to be cutthroat to ourselves and like kind of like lop off anything that's not working or really reduce it.

And we know that we gotta like position ourselves to be behind the next thing.

And we know the next thing is AI and they're in the middle of that right now.

And whether it is or isn't, whether it could be the thing that makes them money in the future, it very well could turn out to be the case.

But it will be because if they are able to capture that, it will be because they gave up on several other things that were working just fine. but they weren't working as well as AI maybe might for them one day.

That's frustrating to see. All right, let's keep going here.

Former Bioware executive producer says EA pitched multiple times to remaster the first three Dragon Age games.

Mark Dara was on Mr. Matty Plays podcast or in a video, kind of just did an interview with him.

And they talked about a bunch of stuff. One of the tidbits that came out of there though is several times, Bioware was like, we would do this.

And EA had a couple of reasons why they didn't want it.

I think the biggest reason it's like, you know, Mass Effect was more important.

They did that first. And it's like, well, maybe we'll get to Dragon Age one day.

But also, Dragon Age is not all just one engine.

Like the third game's on Frostbite. I can't remember what the engine was called before that, but it was a different engine.

None of them are on Unreal where it's like for Mass Effect, they were all on Unreal.

And Mark Dara pointed out, when that happens, first of all, you can make improvements to one game, and a lot of them will carry over.

But also, you can work with outsource companies because they all know Unreal.

And so you could just contract someone to do most of the work, which is what they did with Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

Also, the stories are not linear. It's not like Mass Effect where one is a direct sequel to the one before it.

So they just feel like the juice isn't quite there.

Now, Dragon Age fans are crazy. They probably will get around to doing this one day in a very long time from now, but it's like, You know, Dragon Age is at a low point, right?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know why he didn't at least just do it with Dragon Age Origins.

One. But... Yeah, right. EA is weird, though, because they don't even really like to remaster games that much in...

Legendary Edition is a bit of an outlier.

I think they had a couple remakes like Dead Space, and even then, there wasn't that much use there.

But there's all sorts of games that they... could be remastering that, you know, our beloved like, you know, Burnout and People bring up bad company all the time, right?

Like, oh, we want bad company. They're not going to remaster an old Battlefield game.

Are you crazy? So yeah, it seems like a missed opportunity, especially because Dragon Age 4 could have of used a little bit juice going into there.

I think just counting on people still caring about that franchise as much as they did when Inquisition came out.

It was a pretty big ask. So something, some kind of, again, that has to be the whole trilogy.

Doing something with Dragon Age 1 in that meantime could have helped.

And again, uh... The Mass Effect Collection was a huge hit that did very well.

Yep. And people can still play that now, get it for like five bucks at any moment.

It's going to sell for forever. Okay. Night Dive and id Software have released definitive remasters of first-person classics Heretic and Hexen.

We talked about those games, so we don't have to go into too much.

But they did shadow drop it for $15. It's on Xbox and PC.

I think it's on Switch. I'm playing it on switch it's right there yeah right so night dive so freaking cool yeah oh yes just cool I love you night dive Yeah, we love you, Night Dive.

And they did tease that when we had them on our show.

They're like, we're going to have something at QuakeCon.

And that was it. I can't wait to see what they do next.

Next year's QuakeCon, will they have something else?

Could they do... Some of the later Wolfenstein games, even that would be awesome.

What, Return? to Castle Wolfenstein. You know, Wolfenstein 3D doesn't actually have a great remaster, I think.

Oh, yeah. They should do all Wolfenstein games.

That'd be great. Okay, new Helldivers 2 Xbox trailer seemingly teases a Halo crossover.

They play the saxophone part from Halo ODST in the trailer.

Do you guys think that means we get... some skins that are Halo crossovers for this game.

Sure. That would make a lot of sense. I think it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the Spartans are dumb and they would fit in well with Helldivers.

Now, wait a second. ODST! Those words, Spartans!

Well, I'm thinking of Halo in general. You damn fool!

I'm stupid! But those characters are also dummies, so it works just fine.

Yeah, they're all dumb. Yeah, they said Philly was in that, man, for sure.

Are they dummies or are they ODST crew or are they himbos?

They're definitely himbos. Somewhere in between, yeah.

I think Nathan Fillion's always playing himbos, right?

That's kind of his shtick. Pokemon McDonald's promo ends early in Japan due to extreme demand and wasted food.

Sure. This sounds like- They were throwing the McDonald's away?

Yes. I'm sorry. They were taking the cards out and there was like giant piles of McDonald's in the corner of the McDonald's.

I'm going to make a stand against this. This is unacceptable.

It was very upsetting because there were just happy meals around garbage cans and garbage cans, as people know.

Very hard to come by in Japan. Right. All those fucking fries.

I thought they were well behaved in Japan.

Like, we handled Beanie Babies better than this.

Teeny beanies we were wildly respectful about.

Sean, you're more up to date on the Pokemon TCG right now, right?

Yeah. What what collection or like was this a McDonald's specific one yeah?

Yeah, every time that they basically do it every year at this point, there is just a set of McDonald's stamped cards that they do with Happy Meals.

And it's not like actual fans doing this.

I want to make this very clear. It's the scalpers.

Yeah, because they think they can turn all on eBay.

Yeah, it's because they think they can turn a buck because there's like artificial demand for it's the same thing that's going on with used video games so I'm thinking that they encase Super Mario 64, it's worth a million dollars.

No, it's fucking not. Everyone has Mario 64, don't be stupid.

But that's what's going on here, is that the scalpers come in, They buy up all the stuff, they're incredibly disrespectful to wherever they may be while they're doing this.

That's how we get stuff like, yeah, people wasting food because because they wanted to get the Pikachu card or whatever.

It sucks. I like this comment. From Sad Bastard Poetry Club, I feel like this is one of those things that would have made God destroy a city in the Bible.

Yeah. yeah yeah gamora is happening i'll say at least like you know i i've heard that in the u.s um uh some people were like if your mcdonald's didn't let you just buy the toy individually which I found a lot of them just do that now.

They would at least like give the happy meals to like homeless shelters and stuff.

I'm like, oh, Okay, well, if you're gonna be weird about this whole collection thing, at least that's a better way to go about it.

Yeah. The thing was going to last for three days.

They ended it after one day. Wow. It's like that Szechuan sauce from American Morty.

It's another McDonald's disaster. That doesn't work disrespectful about sauce.

I protested that one. Pretty good sauce.

Okay. We're going to keep going here. Weapons directors, who is apparently...

Just the guy from Whitest Kids You Know?

Oh, you didn't know this girl? I had no idea.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's him and there's the guy from Nirvana, the band, the show.

Yeah. Eric Wareheim's a great guy. Apparently this is the move now is you go direct sketch shows for a while and it gets you ready for a drive.

I haven't seen either of his movies. you haven't seen barbarian i did watch it's on youtube uh they're first movie, his first movie, was the Whitest Kids You Know spinoff, The Civil War on Drugs.

And that movie is like a modern Monte python it's so funny so i'm gonna watch that then i'll be ready for barbarian which i'm sure is very similar in tone Grub Mary gave me the hard sell on Barbarian saying like, don't look up a single thing about it.

Like, do you know anything about it? No, I heard the same spiel.

This is where I learned last night. I was listening to your guys' show.

Yeah. Okay, and I was very, very thankful that she did not tell me anything.

Is it not about barbarians? I would suggest you both just watch that movie.

Mikey, you may not like it. Knowing your tastes.

Whitest Kids You Know is so good. It's so good.

So I love it. all those those uh comedians and uh we want trevor died but getting a chance to like keep up with this guy i'm like yeah i'm gonna do it i will watch barbarian and i'll report back a lot of like 20 people in chat just said that i will not like it He directed Weapons and now his next movie is the untitled Resident Evil movie.

And they're not going to use existing characters because people can quote, can play the games for those stories.

Okay. I kind of get that. I'm good with that.

Yeah, sure. I don't know. It's like, I get that, but it's also like, I don't know.

If I'm seeing the Resident Evil movie, I think I want to see a Joe Valentine or, you know...

He may be a Chris Redfield. Even one of the smaller characters.

Give me a Rebecca Chambers. Don't know I like it when those characters like show up in the plot, but they are not the main characters like the story follows a different story that's happening at the same time as Raccoon City events or something like that.

Because if nothing else... Everyone's going to just compare it to Resident Evil 1 or 2 or whatever you're making an adaptation of.

Remember the OC we got? Well, first off in the other Resident Evil movies, but also in Mortal Kombat, right?

I was just thinking the same thing. I really didn't like that.

It was funny, the Mortal Kombat 2 trailer, which I saw in front of something, it's like, that That guy might have been that trailer.

They sure weren't talking about him. That's a Johnny Cage movie.

You know what? It's better. And I think a lot of people are going to applaud this decision and then we're going to see this movie and maybe be like, Oh, I wish it said that OC it was Leon Kennedy.

I don't know. Yeah, I think there's a way to pull it off, but Mike, I think you're probably right.

I think that this is going to be a thing where, you know, that was an OK movie, but it didn't feel like a Resident Evil movie, or I didn't get a chance to spend time with those characters I really like, which can go a long way.

We'll see. I bet it might end up still being a pretty decent movie.

I see Christians are people like, you know, it's because these are zombie movies, not character based things as much as Mortal Kombat.

There's a difference. I don't know if I agree.

I think Resident Evil, a large part of that is I like those characters a lot, and I kind of get excited.

Sure, but even like Seven was like not even really, like imagine, Seven everyone seemed to love.

And that doesn't really have anyone outside of a cameo or so.

You know, it's a totally original set of characters.

As opposed to like a fighting game movie where fighting games are just the characters.

Mortal Kombat, you know, like there's lore and everything that they have like established over the years.

But those games are just about the characters.

So that's why I don't know. But I think it's somewhere in the middle.

Both of these things can be true where it's like, yes, the Resident Evil games are capable of introducing new characters.

And if it feels like that, if it feels like a succession to just like the storytelling, then that would be good.

But I think that at the same time, I'm like, I think the problem... Real quick comment from Sam O'Nice in the chat.

Mike has seen like two non-animated movies ever.

Why are I've seen plenty of movies. I still see very many.

Disney does live action now. Come on. guys yeah yeah live action Lilo's no Just about Resident Evil 7 and 8, though.

Yeah, you're right. Those are great, but what's everybody's usually least favorite part about it?

It's Ethan Winters, right? It is that main character.

I think the problem here is that so often, like with Resident Evil itself, They haven't pulled off doing their own thing.

So people just look at that and say, oh, well, that's bad because it's bad every time they do it.

What if the movies just didn't suck? What if they just made a good movie?

It is wild that there were like seven or whatever. of those Resident Evil and already a reboot that happened no yeah but also like we love those Go ahead.

No, no, Dan, you first, please. Well, we love those characters, obviously, but they work in a video game.

They're not exactly like masterpieces of writing or storytelling.

And, and they've done some of the like fan service.

Like I, I, Me and Tim Turi watched one of the recent Resident Evil, which was very much.

Yeah. like a fan service you like remember when this happened in the games and like it kind of sucked you know like I'm fine with to make a real movie you know Yeah, I was going to talk about that movie.

It's a 2021 Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's one of the only movies I've ever walked out of.

Wow. Such dog shit. He was just so bad and trying so hard to do what you said, Dan, of like...

Hey, this is from the games! You know what this is!

Ha ha ha! It's like no original idea at all.

And just felt like they were trying to ham fist every single thread from like one and two into the, movie.

It's why I don't need a Metal Gear movie.

I don't need a huge Metal Gear fan. I don't need...

Oscar Isaac looking at the camera and saying, oh, kept you waiting, huh?

Like, I don't need that. You know, I've got the games. this new game should try or new movie should try to do thing where it's like, well, we'll start with a familiar character, but we'll kill him early and should be Chris Redfield.

And he tries to punch a boulder and and just runs him over and kills him.

I will say, it sounds like this director's made good movies.

I bet that there will... Oh, I trust this guy more so than the last director.

He was also a whitest kid, you know. So there you go.

All right. Nintendo Indie World Showcase happened last week.

UFO 50 is out on Switch now. A bunch of other stuff worth calling out.

Mina the Dweller is a different game. That's Well Dweller.

Is this seat taken? Little Kitty Big City is getting a free update.

Ultimate Sheep Raccoon. That game looks so much fun.

Yes, the Hurdling game. Yes, Hurdling. Let's see, anything else?

Yeah, Ball Pit and Go-Go Town, which just looks like a straight-up Animal Crossing game.

Was Number Way the kind of creepy-looking stardew-like I think so, yes.

Yeah, that's the one that you popped for that.

Yeah, I thought that one looked neat. Yeah. you know, play of interesting games here.

I think if you were if you were if you thought this is where we were going to get Silksong, You were horribly mistaken, for sure, but that was a good little showcase.

Yep, definitely. I thought they did a pretty good job.

And I have meant to go back to UFO 50. Maybe I'll do it on this.

I downloaded it on the Switch, and I started it again, and it's like, oh, yep, this will be a nice thing to have on the Switch on the go.

Excellent. Nintendo announces My Mario, a range of products for young children, including amiibo building blocks.

Nintendo has unveiled My Mario. It is for very young kids, toddlers and maybe even younger.

It's launching in Japan this month on the 26th with a select few items going internationally next year.

The collection includes a Super Mario woodblock set with characters blocks like Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi. they all also function as amiibo so it's like start when you're young get them and then you have them when you start playing games and you can slap on on your games do you think there be any like bespoke stuff i guess there is also the um it's me mario Not even it's a me.

It's me, Mario, like a stop motion animation stuff and then a Hello Mario game. where you can kind of poke and prod at Mario's face.

And that's going to be on the Switch as well as on mobile.

Maybe the... Amiibo blocks do something on there.

I don't know. But I think this is neat, but also a very transparent get them while they're young tech.

These faces, Dan. Are you upset about that?

It was like a weird yawn, but I was trying not to make it seem like I was yawning when you called attention to it.

Now everyone is. I know you don't like kids, but come on, it's okay if they have some Mario toys.

No, I like the idea of monetizing the kids early.

Of course. Oh, that's why we gotta get our plushies going, right?

Yeah, extract value from the children. When you say something bespoke, do you mean like a game in this line?

Is that what you're looking for? Just a game that recognizes that you are putting the building block amiibo on there, and it's like, oh, that's the building block amiibo.

And we're acknowledging that. Yeah, Mario Maker for kids.

Okay. Actually, I would give my kids that.

That'd be fantastic. Last couple of stories here.

Sony CFO says its live service shift is not entirely going smoothly.

Gang, I think I could be a CFO then. I think so too, yeah, because we could have told you that.

They also pledged to carry on and learn from mistakes.

They pointed out they have had successes despite problems like, been studios game getting canceled blue point games apparently god of war live service game getting canceled Concord launching and then getting canceled.

The destiny or not destiny to a marathon getting delayed till next year.

But despite all that, they point to stuff like Gran Turismo 7, MLB The Show, Helldivers 2, and Destiny 2. successes and and the fact that apparently now live service spending from their first party game accounts for something like 40% of the money they make.

Most that's got to be destiny, I assume.

Now, hang on. because three out of those four things just existed before this big push you can't take credit for that No, right.

That's why it's the CFO saying it'd be like, look, I don't know where the money comes from, but the money's coming from these games.

Where it comes from? She doesn't know the fact that...

Are they responsible for generating the value in the first place?

No. But are they getting that money now?

Yeah, that's the reason that they would do a Helldivers is basically what they're pointing towards is like, Hey, live service is where a lot of our money comes from.

Let's lean into that or try to justify it.

Yep. So they're going to keep doing this stuff.

And yeah, I I guess maybe it's like a hard to turn a ship around sort of situation where they have continued funding their first party traditional style games at the same rate that they had been So we can kind of just keep expecting that.

And maybe they're not ready to be like, OK, we're going completely back in that direction because that's expensive to start up a new studio.

Or to take a Naughty Dog and be like, hey, spin up a new team.

You can't just do that overnight. So... I think this is them being like, look, let's just try to stick it out with live service.

Maybe we had a couple of strikes in a row.

But it's fine because fair games is coming soon.

Fair game's also a problem. Jade Raymond has left the studio responsible for that company.

Yeah. I think I go back to my default stance on live service games, which is... no one ever learns from mistakes and you have to go through it yourself that's the only mistake you ever learn from is that the team did it themselves And now they know not to do that anymore.

They found out the stove is hot. So, yeah.

All right. Marathon is still coming this fiscal year, though.

Got delayed till next year. It's still going to come out before March, according to that CFO.

Yeah. Not a ton of time to change up what that game is, so... to still be the extraction shooter they always promised to be which they never said they were going to change but I think I had hopes that they would try to do something more with An extra six months probably isn't enough time to do that something.

Enough time to erase all of the art you stole, maybe.

Maybe. Yeah. It's just going to be one of the most interesting games to watch because...

What happens if it's not a hit? And it just, like, you know, you don't discount it entirely yet.

It's not like a fair games thing where I'm gonna be shocked if that thing's late.

Marathon still has a shot. But boy, it seems like there is very much a world where this doesn't find an audience anywhere.

At all and then what? Yep. All right, that is going to do it for the news.

Other than you should go to enormous explosive dot com if you have a problem. premium membership, you can partake in our beta for the new website.

What we want you to do is go to that website, start using it, and then when you say to yourself, man, I wish it did this...

I wish it had that. There is a suggestion box.

Go in there and say exactly that. Like any little thought.

You can overload Chuck's inbox with messages like that because we want to get this site.

He's begging for it. He's begging for it, and we want the site to be the best it can when it officially launches, whenever that may be.

Anything else we should mention on that front, Jan?

Um, no, if you're having troubles connecting to the beta, um, There may be ways to get into contact with Chuck to help get that thing going.

But yeah, use it. We're trying to use it more also.

I'm in now and it's real good. I like highlighting.

These video thumbnails and that fun little box goes over them.

I like the ticker and the bomb 12. This is good stuff.

I liked when Chuck asked for help finding another accent color besides just the... you know, the white and the black and the yellow that we use.

And as always, I just default to pick a color from the GameCube controller.

One of these will do. A purple, maybe this...

Was this indigo? Was this indigo purple?

Yeah, this is their indigo. All the GameCube colors are just so freaking good.

Oh, yeah. So nice. Okay, all right. We're going to give Mikey some alone time with the GameCube controller, and we will be back with emails. in super chats right after this.

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Mm hmm. These are the emails for the show.

Hot dogs, bomb castagiantbomb.com is the email address to send your emails to.

Write in about any and everything. You want to avoid a social... interaction by awkwardly looking at your phone email us you got a fun quiz email us you got some kind words to the show email us bombcastgiantbomb.com is the email address first email comes from Andrew in North Carolina Dan has mentioned several times in the past that Pizza Hut is the number one pizza in America as if it is common knowledge.

What? Is Dan 3.0 ready to accept that this isn't true?

It is dominoes by a large margin. He can look it up.

It's not an opinion. It's fact. Yes. You know, growing up in Kansas City, I've seemed like Pizza Hut was the most you know, visible and heavily marketed and eaten like it was the default.

If you're saying, hey, let's order a pizza, whether it's my house, a friend's house or anything, it was always Pizza Hut, 648-8888.

That was the number. Like that was the thing.

Like I don't ever remember getting dominoes as a kid.

Even though it was around, it always seemed like a distant number two, like a RC Cola to Pizza Hut's Coca-Cola.

As I have gotten older and I've now lived in a lot of different areas, I do find that there is a much bigger prevalence of dominoes.

And I'll say it, I prefer it. I am within a Pizza Hut delivery zone now.

I have not ordered it once. I've had Domino's 20 times since I've been back.

Domino's is like... You shouldn't eat pizza every day, but it's an everyday pizza.

Pizza Hut is like, I'm going to get pizza.

Like that is where I, I put it where I like, I have to decide I'm in the mood for pizza.

If I do just say pizza and someone's like, well, we're getting dominoes of it.

Yep. Makes perfect sense. Yeah, let's go.

I think Pizza Hut was ahead on the gimmick game in the 90s.

I think between the Bigfoot and the Triple Decker.

And they still try, but it's like... what if the crust was like toes?

And it's like, what? That's weird. So what if I don't care for that?

Yeah, you guys, you know, being Just a little bit older, you have more vivid memories of this time period.

Help me out here, because this is how I think of it.

Pizza Hut seemed to be better back then.

And maybe that's just my memory because I was younger.

It's hard to say if it was better, but...

It definitely seemed like the most prominent.

Plus it had like the fun dining stuff. Book it, yeah.

Got my free pizza every month, yeah. It's the thing where you pretend to read books and you get free pizza?

It was fucking great. I like Papa John's.

Papa John's is good. You're just a big fan of the former owner, though.

That's what you love. I'm a Shaq guy. yeah that's actually the great things for pizza or papa john's yeah y'all you'll have round tables where you're at right I've had it before.

No, I've never heard of that. The closest one to me is in Chicago.

Never heard of roundtables. Okay. I am going to get Jets, though.

I'm getting Turbo Crust. That goes for everybody.

Try Jets. Get the eight corner. Get the or.

Hungry Howies, if you have one of those, that's another prominent one.

We used to. Hungry Howies is basically like a Papa John's, but with a lot of flavored crust options.

Those are pretty good. Yeah. The Hunger House, I think, also started in Detroit, I think.

We had a Romeo's for a hot moment here, and it was way too sweet, the sauce.

I didn't like Romeo's. Me and Chuck just decided we're going to franchise a Jets.

Giant Bomb should own a fast food franchise of some sort.

That would be great. On a heartbeat. I like it.

Roundtable is the one that's only in California. oh okay i've always heard about it from yeah people living in like uh i think so and stuff Got it.

People bring up CC's. Yeah, I used to go to CC's a lot in college.

It was $1.99 pizza buffet Mondays in Lawrence, Kansas.

And I would eat until I got there. I almost puked every time.

I definitely told you all that I got kicked out of Assisi's, right?

No. No? But we knew just by looking at it.

You whipped it out, right? That's why? We're like, this guy has the CCTV. energy right there.

It's like me and my friends graduation thing.

We were going to go to a CC's and we were like, it's all you can eat.

We're going to just stay there all day. It's the Homer thing.

It's literally a Simpsons thing. Yeah, it's literally a Simpsons thing.

And he gets kicked out. I think after eight hours, they're like, if you guys want to stay, you paid for lunch, and now you have to pay for dinner.

I was just like, all right, I'm out. But like some of my friends are trying to put up a fight.

Like the sign says all you can eat and I haven't had enough.

Although my one friend did have like a gripe, but as we were getting kicked out and out of the door, he turned around.

I was like, see you later. Mikey hates breaking the law.

I think I do have footage of him. It's true, it's true.

I felt very guilty that a person An authority, even if that authority is assistant manager at a CC's was upset at me.

Yeah. Roundtable is a regional chain, I guess, in California, but they have a lunch buffet, and I've told...

All of my friends, I've told every romantic partner that I've had in the past 20 years, All I want for my birthday is to go to the lunch buffet at a round table so I can have a bunch of salad and pizza.

That's all I want. I don't want many things in life.

And no one takes me fucking seriously. No.

Everyone's like, ah, funny goof. And then like, we'll have birthday plans and it's not what I fucking want.

I really I think we have one of those nostalgia Pizza Hut's near me.

I got to go to it. Next email comes from Jez from Western Australia, kangaroo emoji.

Greetings to the duders I really recently started the Metal Gear series playing through both Metal Gear Solid 1 and and two over the last two weekends on my Switch 2.

And man, what incredible games. Thank you to Dan for his diehard love of the series and finally motivating me to start them.

My question is... Should I start Snake Eater on my Switch 2 or wait for Delta?

And bonus, what's everyone's favorite stupid name for Kojima's entire oof?

Parentheses got to give it to Vamp who is named Vamp only because he's bisexual.

Nothing to do with blood drinking or supernatural powers.

That is true. It is canonical. It is said in the game, Vamp is bisexual.

That's why his name is Vamp. I believe he had a relationship with the Army guy Scott Dolph that's on the Tanker, who is, I think, also fortunate.

Dad, maybe? Right. They seem like very different people, those two, I have to say.

Very different folks. But yes, that is why.

Yes, Grubb, what's up? You guys keep saying he's bi, that's why he's named Vamp.

I don't get it either. He is also a vampire, but that's a coincidence.

What does the word vamp have to do with bisexuality?

I don't know. Yeah. I also don't understand when people say bisexual lighting or when they call Damien Priest bisexual undertaker.

I don't really know what that means. I just nod my head.

Don't worry. You just keep nodding. You'll be fine.

You'll be safe. This person should just...

Probably wait for Delta. It's coming out very soon.

It is a one to one remake. So, you know, yeah, I would I would say just wait.

Well, based solely on what I played at a preview event last year, I would say just go ahead and wait for Delta.

There was a lot of bisexual lighting in Donkey Kong Bonanza.

What is bisexual? Is it just two different colors?

Yeah, I think it's purple and blue. Is your lighting bisexual?

I've read. There's probably some bisexual lighting in here.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sunlight and red, that's different.

That's not, I wish that was bisexual lighting.

Sunlight does not count as, okay, I see, I see, okay.

This isn't a Kojima thing. I did have to stop and roll my eyes.

Pretty hard when I was playing Control, when the main character, I was like, yeah, I'm from a town that's called Ordinary.

I literally had to pause the game and be like, okay. look, he's Finnish, all right?

He's got his way of telling stories and we love him for it.

Yeah. Because, you know, it's interesting, Jeff, because I bet the town wasn't ordinary. a sip go i'll do it i'll do it Putty Duddy.

Thank you. Stop policing Putty Duddy. I don't know.

Die Hard Man just sounds hilarious. And that's a Kojima person. um i i i don't what the is the question is like what the name favorite stupid Hot Cold Man might be a frontrunner.

You guys, it is that Die Hard Man is the bet.

It's the answer for this because the character's actual name is fucking John McClane.

Die Hard Man, whose real name is John McClane.

Yeah. Die Hard Man, whose name is John...

McClane. But do you get it? Yeah. I don't know if you get it.

I don't know if I do get it. It's just stupid.

I don't think it's stupid. Let's just say Big Boss...

Also a stupid name. It is. It is. It sounds good, though.

It rolls off the tongue. It's awesome. I love it, but it's like... It is...

Objectively stupid when Lyndon B. Johnson is like, I hereby give you the title of big and it's like question is this an honorary title like what do you mean no What are my responsibilities and duties as Big Boss?

I mean, he graduated from Naked Snake to Big...

Big boss. He killed a person named Boss.

That was a snake eater, right, Dan, where that happened?

Yeah. Okay. That's where the series jumped the shark for me when they started really, really taking this stuff seriously, I think, like storytelling.

It's when I started loving it more. Yeah, that really does.

Yeah. I posted this on Blue Sky, my favorite Kojima thing ever. is when he put the olive wreaths around the DLC pre-order bonuses.

That is good. For the PC version of whatchamacallit, the Building Bridges game, Death Stranding.

Yeah, that is just an insane. Congratulations to you for giving me money.

I just like the thought process of that is just so mesmerizing to me. he's got a beautiful brain to be clear it's very funny parentheses negative for Kojima.

Right? Oh, Oh, wait, how about this? We're talking genius.

On parentheses positive. Solidus Snake, the former president of the United States... has two katanas, and they're named Republican and Democrat.

Okay, I like that. You know what? It is grenade launcher Nader.

Yeah, right. Where's the green party? That's a Ralph Nader joke.

Calling your noob tube Ralph would be really good, actually. oh mike for me i think it's like sometimes it's negative sometimes it's positive the overwhelming emotion is though that's like that could never be me i couldn't I would never do what Coachma does.

I would never want to, I would be too ashamed or embarrassed.

So I'm glad he exists and is out there doing his thing.

Because I never could. If Randy Pitchford had the freaking, like, olive tree things around a pre-order.

I wish we would run out of town. I would beat his ass.

What a dumbass. I don't know. Norman Reedus sounds like a Kojima character, but that's just a guy.

Sure. Yeah, no, he's a porter that brings things across bridges, so his name is Sam Porter Bridges.

Hey, I wonder what gun Revolver Ocelot uses a lot.

That's a spoiler too. Does Revolver Ocelot have any cat-like features?

I mean, he acts like a cat. I'll tell you what.

I thought it was, as much as I like three, he hasn't played these games.

As much as I like three, that sound was really stupid.

That's one of the most amazing things about Ocelot in three is like he's like the ultimate badass Lee Van Cleef cowboy in the later games and that came out earlier.

So to see him as like a shithead little 20 year old that's like trying shit out.

He's like trying to figure out his gimmicks.

And he's like, I'm an ocelot. And he summons his dudes.

He's just a fucking dork in three. I love it. has a revolver and he meows like a cat.

No, he doesn't have a revolver at first until big boss is like, Hey, pussy, you should get a revolver.

And the next time you see him, he's like, I got a revolver. i can't wait to play this it's awesome yeah grub i think you need to play through all of it yeah i will i will yeah uh all right next email comes from ken from upstate new york uh mike yeah I went to a rainforest cafe for the first time.

Did you jerk off in it? This is what greeted me in the bathroom.

I don't get it. I understand now. also when you did was it during one of the thunderstorms so everyone was distracted For the other dudes, what was one of the most inappropriate things you've seen or experienced at a chain restaurant?

Let me go find this image and show y'all.

Never. Did that. I can't even say it more because I don't want to edit it.

To be clear, it's a joke, everyone. Yes, Dan.

When I was 14 and my first job was at a McDonald's, we had a guy there named Ofer.

And I remember on at least one occasion, because I remember we were all pretty horrified.

He was in the bathroom for a long time, like during a rush, and we're like, where the fuck is Ofer?

And then he comes out and he was a real character.

And he goes like, I was just jacking off.

And then he rubbed his hands all over all the fries.

Man, I guess... Could have been even worse than that, but man.

And we don't think he was joking about the whacking off.

Yeah, I didn't think Oprah would joke about such a thing.

That was a real Ofer move, yeah. Classic Ofer.

Yeah, maybe. Oh, God. Anyway, the picture in question, I'm still trying to look for it, but it was, you could see the nipples on a monkey.

Yeah, that's fine. But for that to be the first thing to greet you.

Did it get you going? Like, what's the problem?

That's what they're saying. Yeah. I get it.

I get why you jerked off in Rainforest Cafe because I saw this.

Right. the monkey nipples if you guys go look at the email doc or the run of show doc oh no I have just pasted the picture there.

Okay. Very bosomy monkey. Let's see. All right.

Oh, yeah. Come on now. Stacked. It's more...

Yeah, it's more than I was expecting. Like quantity?

I don't know. I can't explain myself because I was thinking more what?

I'm not sure. Just more. Just more. Okay.

All right. Next one comes from Pope. Hi, Bombers.

Love listening to the podcast. while working in the lab and commuting.

I'm interested in getting your advice on what to do at Gamescom.

Me and my friend are going and it will be my first con of any type.

What do you suggest we get up to? Is it just a lot of entertaining yourself in long lines for things?

Unfortunately, the only day we're able to be in Germany is Wednesday when the con is more expensive for non-industry people.

So I want to make sure we get the most out of it.

Are things typically more busy for non-press on that Wednesday?

Thank you, and I hope any of you going to Gamescom have a great time.

Hope. It's going to be very busy. I like incoms, but it's one... It's a very, very big conference.

And it's a very... A lot of those crowds are going to be concentrated in those big booths where your Capcoms are.

So if there's some big game you really want to play, that might take up a big chunk of your time you're going to have to decide how much you really want to do that it might be worth it I actually thought a lot of the vendor booth areas were pretty cool, though.

I bought a lot of vinyls, like Disney Orkana had a booth there that wasn't crazy crowded, so that was neat for me.

So it is so big that you're going to still be able to find...

Some areas that aren't super crazy crowded or wild, but just...

Factor in the time if you do want to go to one of those big booths and factor in the time.

The things you want to do are very far apart from each other.

Just look at the maps because those hallways get crowded and it can be difficult just navigating.

Also, there's multiple floors for some of like the buildings where there's like, Capcom will have a booth up top, but if you go down below, there's a bunch of indie games or different activations for stuff.

Yeah. See if DJ Astitz is playing. Yes. Yeah.

I was just going to Google it to see if DJ Astitz was playing.

Maybe if you go into a bar, don't yell English.

Perhaps. No. Forget these jokers. Actual tips.

Try to eat your lunch and dinners at off hours because all those...

Food trucks and whatnot are going to be real busy right at noon.

That's a theme park tip also, by the way.

Yeah, fuck up your body to avoid lawns. It'll be fine.

Go to that cheese. That cheese shop is great.

They give you all sorts of samples. Yeah. go watch learn about world war ii before you go to the chocolate museum perhaps yes Go watch the Germany travelogue we did.

That was a lot of fun. I would love to go back to Gamescom.

I had a wonderful time. It's from Beans. chocolate yes yes they make it from beans yeah oh uh If you're at a restaurant or a bar and you're ordering Kolsch, the little dude beers, so good and refreshing.

If you put your coaster over the beer, that is a sign that you're done.

You don't want it anymore. You want to do that because otherwise they'll just keep giving you quotes and charging you for it until you do that.

Yes. It is not like, hey, we're going to kindly refill it for you.

We're going to refill it for you and charge you.

Okay, last two emails here. Lexi says they'll be there.

Say hi to her and ask her for help on her Discord.

Yes, yes. Go reach out to Lexi. Lexi will be there at Gamescom.

This second to last email comes from Travis and Fargo, and they've written in five questions.

We're going to speed through them. Number one, have you ever been genuinely addicted to a video game to the extent you had to delete it or don't let yourself play it so you don't get sucked in again?

I mean, I played MMOs, and I probably played a lot of them.

I don't know if I ever felt like, this is too much, this is a problem.

I have not... ever installed a game to kick a habit or something like that.

Marvel Snap. I had to delete it. Fair. Two, what's the godfather of video games?

And should I see the godfather? Yeah. Metal Gear Solid 3, Snake Eater, and yes, watch The Godfather.

What about in the sense of it insists upon itself?

What if that's what we mean? Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake.

Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. Yeah, Red Dead.

Yeah, Metal Gear earns it better. Three, I'm a firm believer that we need more edible food in drink containers, like the humble bread bowl.

My top idea is a leak-proof waffle cone cup for hot beverages.

What would you want? I've always wanted the... I thought this was a real thing because of The Simpsons, and I've always tried to find it.

It's just when Homer had the tortilla hat... where it had the nacho cheese bowl on the top and you would break it off and dip it.

Oh, that's so good. That was just a thing you could order and it's just never on a menu.

I think edible straws, like red vines, we should just have those be the thing.

Yeah. yeah i mean the bread bowl is kind of perfect like it doesn't get better than that so i don't know um Just variations on the bread bowl.

Give me more fun versions. Are edible panties real?

Yeah. They're just like fruit roll. They're not good.

Bad fruit roll up. Are they like a bad for Rob?

Okay. Yeah. Uh, Disney, he invented the hand which at Epcot and that's just kind of a bread cone thing the hand which which so like a wrap Kind of, but it looks more like a cone.

You kind of hold it. They kind of brought it back for Cars Land and California Adventure.

Oh, okay. Back in cheese in it. Yeah. Yeah.

Cultural appropriation. Got it, got it, got it.

Number four, will we ever get another Star Fox 2 situation?

Meaning... An old finished but unreleased game from a major publisher they decide to drop several years slash console generations later.

We just got another one. Shantae Advance is happening or happened.

So yeah, we actually just got that one. There'll be some other reason one day or another, I hope. there will be a uh because harada just said this i didn't put this in the story i don't know why was this his game tekken cross street fighter i thought that was the captain com one but no whichever name is first is who it is so like street fire cross teching came out teching cross street fire did not Okay, so it was his game then.

And Harada said he would like to show off the 30% completed game one day.

That'd be cool. Put that in a collection one day.

I think they were like two screenshots. I feel like I've seen like Ryu and like a Tekken engine or something.

Yeah, they did that. They showed that off.

Yeah. make a Tekken collection Jesus Christ make a Tekken collection and add that in there as a bonus I asked them about that last year, by the way, when I got to talk to them, and they were just like, huh.

Hey, we should do that. And I'm like, yeah, you really should.

So people brought up StarCraft Ghosts, and that's interesting, but Blizzard, like, they actually had to complete its Warcraft Adventures, that point-click adventure game.

You can't just find it and play it. It's basically a full game.

But hey, someday they'll just actually release it themselves too.

Why not? And last question from Travis in Fargo.

What movie have you seen the most times in your life?

By a very large margin, MacGruber. Fellowship of the Ring.

Fellowship of the Ring. Surf Ninjas or TMNT 2 Secret of the Ooze Die Hard 1

I might be like Ghostbusters or something something like that what do you think is high up there for me for sure What do you think Bacalar's most watched movie is?

Wayne's World. Nick Lebowski. Oh, these are genuine answers.

Okay, cool. Slapshot. The goon. Yeah, he's a great movie.

He's a big Sean William Scott fan Who are?

I mean, who amongst us, right? Role models.

Green Hornet because it's Seth Rogen. There we go.

Okay, last email of the show comes from Luke in Newmarket, England.

It's sent from... outlook for android hey bombers i found a vhs tape in my attic labeled the smallest man I have no idea what is on this tape and who left it there.

The previous tenant was my mom and she has no idea what this is.

There's no movie or TV show that I could find called The Smallest Man.

So what do you think is on the tape? i've yet to find a vhs player to check regards luke newmarket england luke luke I have a VCR and a CRT right there.

We can do a live... Don't do a lot. We will not.

I could do a very quick vet. Half bonk watch it first or something.

Luke, I regret to inform you, you just found your mom's porn.

If you want to say that's on you, but I toss it in Luke.

I think what this is, is like, uh, an episode of Sally, Jesse, Raphael, uh, barrier viewing the world's smallest man and for some reason someone got like just really captivated about this and wanted to record it so they could watch when they got home from working at No, I think Sean's right.

It's a dude with a small dick. All right, that too.

Wouldn't it just be called the smallest dick?

Well, he's like the smallest man. that'd be subtle classy porn about small dicks okay sure sure okay No, Luke, seriously, send it.

I'll check it out. I'll vet it and air it on the site if need be.

Sign an NDA in case it's part of your mom.

Yeah, we won't show that. We probably don't want to see that.

You're a journalist. alright that does it for emails once again bombcast at giantbomb.com is email address to send your emails to.

Thank you for everyone for sending your emails.

We've been getting a lot, so it's been hard to include all of them in the show, but I do appreciate y'all for writing in.

Mike Minotti, please hit me with some super chats if we got any.

We got quite a bunch here. Thank you, everybody.

First up from Idiot Box. Firescape was on in the background at work, and someone heard Dan screaming about musicals.

She said, Man... Someone getting angry about something they don't understand is the whitest thing ever.

Yep. No, I think that was Mike. Or actually might have been Mary because she was a coward and would not admit that she also did not like Hamilton.

But yeah. Oh, you guys are all cool. Willie Dunkler says, enjoy that Thunderfolk stream.

You have things Dan likes and appreciates and understands.

Number one. Will you guys continue it? There's a lot more you all haven't seen, including some found family for Jan.

I was enjoying the game. Yeah. Maybe we should do one more stream of it.

Kind of have one more go. Yeah, because maybe there's some more complexities there.

We were doing pretty good. I liked being my giant polar bear tank guy.

Fire and ice, baby. Jan was so strong as that fire lizard.

Dan, you could have been a strong fire lizard, but you were scared because of fantasy or something.

It was a lot of things I didn't like. You know, Jake says...

Jan, check Venmo memos. Super Chat isn't sending a law.

Now they sent us in a super chat. Yeah, something doesn't seem right here.

Well, I think it's because of their original message.

But Jake wrote on Saturday, 816, 10 a.m.

Eastern. I'll be streaming Clone Hero for 24 hours to raise money for Gaza through PCRF. tinyearl.com slash woke gaza ghoul boy uh i'll drop those links in a second folks in a twitch stream is at twitch.tv pseudo space j l I wonder which word in there YouTube didn't like.

Much love, Jake from Boston, a.k.a. WokeGabagooble.

Well, Gaza Ghoul is funny. That's good. Yeah, that's good stuff.

Yeah. Zombie Porn says, does Jan still call Turbo Sean old?

Yes. Yeah, what the hell? I still never went back.

What are you doing here, Dan? You turned 30 and he pounced.

He pounced. Sean, I tried to stop him. I said, that's not very nice.

Sean's still younger than you actually. And he's like, shut up, Mike.

He punched me and he grabbed my arm. I was like, Jan, stop that.

And he just wouldn't stop. Oh, classic, classic, rude.

I can't believe it. And then and then Dan like Neil did the frog pose behind Mike.

And then we schoolboyed him. Yeah. That's exactly how it went down.

I hope that was in good HD on the stream because I just need to cut that out and put that everywhere.

I don't know where I'm going to put it. I just need to put Dan doing that everywhere. and he's still hurt and says hey thanks for doing the podcast on my birthday happy birthday Hello, Gann.

HPD. Yep. And then Dumb Dumb Banjo says, by culture mentioned.

There you go. Here we go. Hearts for all of our bi friends.

Absolutely. There we go. That's right. Perfect, Dan.

No notes. That's an apple. Get it away before Mike sees.

You can't even make a heart. I did it. I'm younger.

Yeah, you're a real ally, Dan. the young way to do heart now you got to do it like no this is the young way to do hearts this is the young way But younger than me anyhow.

I tried to get Vinny to do this and he thought it was like a racist thing and he didn't want to partake.

Wait, that's the heart? It's a nitty-bitty little heart.

We did get a raid from Mixland earlier. Right after they finished watching, I'm in love with your dead grandmother.

Are we still friends? I wonder if any of them broke as hard as I did when the grandmother came back to life only to get shot.

The funniest thing I've ever seen. Is that it for Super Chats?

That is it for Super Chats. Thank you so much everybody.

Back to you Jan. Thank you so much, everyone.

We got a stacked and packed week. We got Game Miss Mornings popping off for the rest of the week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Today, we got a bunch of stuff going on because the SF Travelog is dropping fairly soon right after this podcast, My Slow Pipes. gonna take a hot second to upload that but we'll do it as a premiere so we can all hang out in the YouTube chat and comment and and laugh and cry at the horrors in hilarity I got to find out, Chuck Towski said that someone in Discord reached out to him saying that they might have been directly responsible for us almost dying in the Waymo during the fire truck.

So curious if you're listening, love to hear happened there yeah you're gonna see a lot of the waybo uh it almost killing us a lot of A lot of highs and lows.

Interesting. You're going to see me drunker than I've ever been on content for sure.

Dan talks to the Waymo like a dog and you're all gonna be very upset by it.

Just get used to it now. Mike's definitely worse here.

Yeah, it has a very fantastic cold open.

Not saying that the first cold open was going to be bad.

It just was a lot. It was the most. It's still in there.

You included all the footage from the Disney Museum that I sent you, right?

I did. It's in there. I'm excited for people to see that.

And after that, we also have... Shouts out to Derek Stone, Derek...

Put together the best of for Pimp My Reichert, which wrapped last week. leading into Grub's shift on Blake Club.

It's trespasser Eve! Get past their immunity.

Oh, it's going to be so good. He has no idea.

I can't wait. Oh, I know that game. I know that game very well, yes.

Jeff just found out that it's first person.

Oh, wow. There's so much more. He is not ready for what type of game that is, I think.

Yeah, I don't think this game existed before or after.

Oh, no. The type of game. Jeff, I think I said this once to you.

It's the kind of game that could have been really cool if they didn't completely bungle it.

So there's ideas. All right. Okay. I like ideas, but Daikatana also had ideas.

Exactly. It sure did. Again, don't look anything up or look at the chat, but Grubb, do you even know about the health system in the game?

No, I don't know. Like literally what I thought it was was like an interactive CD-ROM like point-and-click Like a virtual springfield.

That's the Sega CD Jurassic Park game. Oh.

Okay. That's probably what I was thinking of then. oh I'm so so excited about tomorrow I've been thinking about tomorrow for a long time and I'm so excited Alright, Annie, shit.

What is this game? Oh, yeah. The health bar is awesome.

The fucked up thing is that's a grub game.

That's a bad game. That's a bad grub game. pay for my sins okay uh so folks uh tune in live for that new season of light club jurassic grub jeff passer Although the game doesn't even actually technically have Jurassic Park in the title.

It's just called Trespasser. But it's a fucking Jurassic Park game. game why didn't they put that in the title yeah weird great great uh Thursday, Game Us Mornings, as well as an episode of Voicemail Dump Truck Dumpers.

Go get your calls in. Friday is going to be another packed day because we are going to be doing a game this morning as well as a license to thrill some fast food games.

Yummy. And then UPF, we're going to try and do drag and drive.

Try our hardest for that. A bunch of other stuff popping up on the website.

Yesterday, Sean dropped an Evo interview for the new Virtua Fighter project.

Sean's got a bunch more loaded up, ready to drop throughout the week.

You boys, the Blight crew, did some guest commentary over Evil Uno. wrestling comedy wrestling mystery wrestling stuff yesterday that was a lot of fun That was a blast, yes.

That stream kept getting even more fun after we left.

In the middle of the match, they had a poker segment. just playing poker for a long time.

It was great. They just hosted a seminar.

They were playing Evil Uno. Oh! Oh, cute.

I get that. I get that. Yeah, that was a great time.

Perhaps... A Heretic Hexen quick look later this week as well.

Jeff and I are going to record that. Get some food into this, Jeff, but then we can maybe record that before a meeting.

All right. Yeah, a lot of busy stuff popping off.

It's another busy week. Again, if you are a premium member, if we haven't You haven't heard this yet.

We're having a premium beta of the new website.

Shouts out to Chuck. We fuck with Chuck. enormousexplosive.com.

If you're an existing premium member, you can go ahead and use your email address and your username that you have.

On the current website, that'll carry over.

You can test all the things. Admittedly, There are a couple videos that are missing from the library.

I'm working with my slow pipes to go ahead and get those uploaded.

But gang! Anything else before we get out of here?

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. Yeah, what can I do for you, bud?

You're a premium beta. All right, let's end the podcast.

All right. That about does it for the Giant Bombcast, I guess.

We'll be back next week. Somehow. Got him, Sean.

He's been Jeff. He's been Mike. He's been Dan.

I've been Chan. We fuck with Chuck. Let me see some FWCs.

We'll see you next week for another episode of the Tribe Bombcast.

Until then, I love you. Goodbye. Happy birthday again, mom.

I love you. I better be your favorite child because I'm the only one.

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[Giant Bombcast 903화: EVO 현장 리포트, 신규 웹사이트 베타, 그리고 게임 리뷰]-[903: No Souls]

📋 Summary

Giant Bombcast 903화 요약

EVO 2025 현장 분위기와 경험

기대작: 'Invincible'과 'Marvel vs. Capcom' 스타일 신작

게임 체크인: 'Donkey Kong Bonanza', 'Breath of the Wild' 등

Giant Bomb 신규 웹사이트 베타 오픈

뉴스 및 기타

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Giant Bombcast 903화: EVO 현장 리포트, 신규 웹사이트 베타, 그리고 게임 리뷰]-[903: No Souls]

📋 Summary

Giant Bombcast 903화 요약

EVO 2025 현장 분위기와 경험

기대작: 'Invincible'과 'Marvel vs. Capcom' 스타일 신작

게임 체크인: 'Donkey Kong Bonanza', 'Breath of the Wild' 등

Giant Bomb 신규 웹사이트 베타 오픈

뉴스 및 기타

ListenLeap으로 딥러닝 학습

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