Tuesday, November 25th, 2025.
Holy smokes.
Welcome to the Giant Bombcast presented to you by Deku Deals.
I am your host, Jan Ochoa.
Joining me, co-captain of the ship.
That's right.
He's given you several reminders at this point to defrost your turkey five days ago.
Our own big bird of the show, Jeff Grubb.
I'm not a chicken.
You're a turkey.
That's right.
Reminding us constantly of anti-drug commercials from the late 80s to 90s.
Our own spokesperson, our own Scruff McGruff, Dan Reichert.
Tobacco is wacko if you're a teen.
That's right.
But only if you're a teen.
If you're above or below, it's fine.
It's fine, yeah.
Do whatever you want.
And the king of doing whatever you want and encouraging you to do whatever you want, Jeff Bacalar.
Hello, hello, smoke drugs.
And speaking about smoking drugs, he's smoking drugs.
He's smoking games.
He's the bad boy of games media because he's smoking himself.
That's right.
He had to take his glasses off because he's producing too much body hate.
Mike Minotti.
Smoking is the lead cause of lung cancer.
All right.
I meant vape drugs.
Sorry.
That's right.
Vape drugs.
It's a short week here at GiantBombcom, Thanksgiving weekend over here in the states, so excuse us, folks if we're starting the podcast at skosh earlier to accommodate for all the things going on, uh.
But i also just wanted to give another special shout out to everyone that helped out during extra life the first weekend, the last weekend and everyone that's going to continue streaming on for extra life.
Shouts out to our dear friends at next lander uh alex, just be drumming away, just smashing at them.
He crushed it.
Yeah, So hard in fact that YouTube was like no, we got to clap.
We got to stop this music.
We got to footloose them.
But shouts out to the Nexlander crew.
Love y'all.
Kisses on the mouth.
Shouts out to Team Giant Bomb, number four in the world.
That's right, baby.
Let's go.
Wow.
That was great.
That's a highlight every year.
I really love it.
It's fun to do, and the fact that it's for a great cause is just a huge bonus.
So, yeah, love doing that.
Also, and next year we could be in the top three.
We're not that far behind Studio Wildcard, actually.
Yeah, you hear that, Studio Wildcard?
We're coming for you.
We're going to help kids.
Put out Arc 2.
Much better than you, you pieces of shit.
Hide Vin Diesel.
We're coming for him.
Wait, is Vin Diesel streaming now?
He's in Arc 2, apparently.
Oh.
Oh, right.
Right, right, right.
That's a real video game, sure.
Uh-huh. uh also what is it about studio wildcard that they like love extra life like what is the deal i think it's represent i think it's laundering yeah you can get some sort of embezzlement yeah they're probably stealing from the kids honestly listed right now and just put us at three yeah we're calling you out arc people who's one and two magic the gathering number one with a little bit over two million uh number two is wizards of the coast dungeons and dragons they've raised a half million and studio wildcard at 187 000 these no names these no names isn't the same as magic the gathering i thought that was the company that no that's that's that's uh um dungeons and dragons is okay i'm the same boat yeah yeah but the boat doesn't care about people audio listeners need to understand the hand gesture he made very dismissive not dismissive but close very close vaguely gesturing things that make my brain leave my my body when i hear the phrase yes good for them Hey, I'm going to my high school 20th reunion tomorrow.
Oh, cool.
I did one of those recently.
We're not done going through the plugs yet, all right?
Have I opened the floor yet?
No, Mikey's always on plug Mikey mode.
Come on.
It's always plug time with Mikey.
It's always plug time with Mikey, all right?
I thought we had moved on, too, so I'm with you, bud.
I'm sorry.
For the record, we listed an embargo for a game yesterday in Discord and Mikey came in on a private conversation and was still like That's my birthday.
It's not just for show.
It's not just on the air.
All right.
Okay.
You know, also, the show is presented by DQ Deals.
Shout out to our friends at DQ Deals.
DQDeals.com slash Giant Bomb.
We played Just Dance last week.
At least some of us did.
So maybe we're going to make...
Maybe we've got to make good on the other two.
I got it.
I still have Just Dance Plus.
I have not canceled it yet.
You know, and then there's the subscription service for dancing.
Of course.
Oh, yeah.
Fuck.
Yeah.
And then there's the other other two that should have been dancing as well.
Because what is Chuck doing?
Building a website?
What is Sean doing?
Editing the podcast?
Everyone shut up and just dance.
But I think Chuck's in the easy mode of the website stuff.
Don't they say the last couple weeks before a website launch is usually the easiest?
You can just sleep through it.
Yeah, that's what they usually do.
Speaking about the site, the site is going on a freeze next week.
I can feel Chuck just vibrating through the internet right now.
He goes, oh, fuck you in the chat.
Get to work!
So Chuck is hardcore, lovingly, painstakingly been working on the new website for GiantBomb.com.
It's going to be great.
It's going to be fantastic.
We sent out a little kind of like a newsletter, an update going on and what to expect over there.
But the site will be frozen next week.
But if you are subscribed to the RSS feeds, don't worry.
Yes, just like Frozen.
You will still be able to get all of your premium content heading straight to your internet pipes.
Speaking about internet pipes, Jeff Krupp, how can the folks at home keep the internet pipes clear and the house warm for us?
Direct your internet pipes over to giantbombcom slash.
Join, become AP premium member.
Uh, we've noticed a lot of people have done that and we appreciate it.
It means the world to us.
It enables us.
Enables us to continue doing the things that we love doing over here that you all want to see.
Your support goes a long way to ensuring we can remain independent games media out here on our own without having to worry about what's happening anywhere else and it's as volatile as ever.
So you showing up to do that shows that you guys really care about this, and this could still be a vibrant space and we want to represent that here.
So thank you again.
Gets you Ad-free versions of the episodes.
It's going to get you a lot of extra goodies in 2026 as we begin delivering on our Bombathon promises.
So look out for that.
But go over to GiantBomb.com slash join.
Become a premium member.
Also, we are able to run the show because of our friends at Main Gear.
Shouts out to Main Gear.
MainGear.com slash Giant Bomb.
Hey, you know, holidays are coming up.
Go buy yourself a PC or go buy yourself a faceplate that we made.
Don't buy Mike's, though.
Buy everyone else's. buy one you would want yes yes i'm just you're all lucky my dog didn't actually die the other week it felt really bad about that oh that's why she's on there okay yeah all right all right mike you can buy a plate fine all right second one uh holy smokes what else we got all right i think now it's time I've been reeling since Dan pointed out the fact that I have a paid subscription to dancing.
That sucks.
I don't like the thought of it.
I don't dance, but it does seem like it's traditionally been a free activity.
Well, certain dances.
Right.
It's so famously free.
Free your mind and your ass will follow?
Or is it the opposite?
Free your ass and your mind will follow?
Free your mind and your ass will follow.
Grub, I blue skied you to cancel it.
And I don't... Yes, I appreciate that.
Yes, I still see it.
I'm going to do it, but I like the idea of making... Yeah, it's funny if you don't.
It'd be funny.
We both forgot to cancel Fortnite Crew for however long.
A few dozens of months.
My kids did get to Just Dance a little bit, so maybe we'll see.
They were playing some of the paid ones.
I don't know.
I got Fortnite Crew again.
I'm back in the crew.
I'm getting those V-Bucks every month.
I don't care what everyone else is doing.
I want to hear what Mike wanted to talk about with his high school.
I almost spent $30 on Scratchy.
Mike, so tomorrow's your high school reunion?
$30 on Scratchy.
I'm sorry.
No, I want to talk about my thing instead.
If he follows you around.
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess Scratchy makes the most sense.
He's the one who would actually be working on it.
To talk about the stuff he wants to talk about.
Oh, Jan's mad at me again.
You can do it really very easily.
My bad.
My 20th high school reunion's tomorrow.
Wow, you're old.
Wow, I'm sure I'm old, everyone.
20 years ago is when I graduated high school.
20 years is some change.
Yeah, I just did my 25th.
Oh, i didn't do my 20th because it's like i think people just do facebook for the organizing now and i'm not on facebook, so that's why you keep facebook all.
No, you don't.
That's well.
If you want to do things like this deep love of suck like that for the two reasons, the only organizational tool that anybody over the age of 35 uses, though it just is, that's not true.
I i, i don't know.
Mike again, I'm on your side with this.
Maybe this is a Midwest thing, but everyone that does any of that stuff is on Facebook these days.
I misheard you.
Yeah, there is some.
Yeah, I only found out about that through someone who had a Facebook account.
Yeah, you're right.
It's the only organizational tool people use for these things.
I mean, I guess what are they going to do otherwise?
Call everyone?
No, but I think it makes sense because when Facebook was popular among our generation, that's when the sort of roots were, the seeds were planted, the roots were sort of established, so you have the best chance of casting a net and catching you know as many fish if you stay there.
I'm with you there.
It makes sense, fuck facebook, but yes, it makes.
Oh yeah, this is not.
Yeah, this is not an endorsement of facebook.
Sounds like it is.
I'm just keeping the record clean here.
Leadership sponsored by meta.
But yeah, like i just you know It's at a brewery though.
It's at that brewery with all the pinball machines back, Lars.
Oh, can I come to your fucking... Yeah, you should come.
They have Jaws and D&D, and the weird avatar one that takes your picture.
They show all the pictures and every picture.
That is somebody looking very confused because the game suddenly told them it's going to take their picture.
You can opt out of that at the start of your game.
I just want you to know that.
Does it make you blue?
The pictures, do they... Oh, that would be funny.
What's the point of them?
Maybe they do.
I'll report back to you.
Yeah, okay.
I need some on-the-ground reporting about whether or not you get blued.
We did get our Avatar tickets for the new one.
They were almost selling out, apparently.
We have great memories of going to the theater for the first one.
We went to Cheesecake Factory, got very high and drunk and really had a good time for like four hours.
So we're doing the exact same thing this year.
There's a Cheesecake Factory in the mall.
We have tickets, a big Dolby Digital, IMAX, whatever.
Perfect day you're describing, Dan.
Just a perfect day.
Take the edibles at the Cheesecake Factory, get a bunch of bullshit cocktails, sneak some shit into the theater and you're just sunk in that chair reclining for like four hours while a bunch of horse shit you're going to forget immediately.
It's just like Jim do his thing.
Yeah, but it's just going to be a great time for like four hours.
Will we be with each other the night before?
That's why when we were doing our timing, I was like, I got to be back for the 19th.
We got plans.
It's not going to be on the 18th?
Or 18th.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
We could like maybe see if there's like an early showing that we could somehow talk our way into, or something like that.
It's going to be, like, four hours long.
It's a big chunk of our day.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Good point.
Yeah.
Speaking about movies, y'all know me.
I'm a theater kid in high school.
Love musicals.
Holy fucking shit.
I saw Wicked 2 for good, or Wicked for good, and it might be the worst movie I've ever seen.
Oh, no.
I'm hearing vastly different things, opinions about this movie.
It is so unnecessary of a movie.
I understand that act two is definitely the weaker of the two acts.
Yeah, people don't like act two, right?
Was it more focused on Rum Tum Tugger or what?
No, and they still weren't brave enough to show buttholes.
Yeah okay, whole wicked cut.
My nieces who are playing yeah, my nieces who are 10 didn't like it.
And i'm curious like that's weird.
I don't remember ever saying i disliked the movie when i was 10.
So i, calling car 54 or whatever, it was that really bad, like remake of the old tv show.
We went to go see that with my family and me my brother came out being like that was amazing.
My family looked shell-shocked.
They were like they just been through nom um, my.
So tomorrow i'm gonna be in virginia and um, they're all going to see it, and me and dib are like gonna go bowling or something instead.
And my mother-in-law is like the largest wizard of oz freak on earth.
It's her defining characteristic, the only thing i can like communicate successfully to with her.
Uh, Does she know that Ted Lasso is an adaptation of The Wizard of Oz?
This is something I learned recently.
What?
Really?
Is that an isekai?
Well, Ted Lasso is... Is The Wizard of Oz an isekai?
Wizard of Oz is definitely an isekai.
Yeah, of course that is.
Ted Lasso is kind of a diet isekai.
Yeah, a little bit.
So, okay.
Give me the quick pitch here.
I mean...
I think the one guy who's mean, he needs to get his heart.
There's a whole bunch of things.
He always says, I'm not in Kansas anymore.
He's from Kansas.
He's in a land that is unfamiliar to him.
Brett Goldstein, who plays the mean soccer player, he explained all this.
He's like, no, I definitely was just adapting The Wizard of Oz.
This character's that.
I didn't look all that deep into it.
Yeah, but if you want to like...
Like bridge a new conversation with her.
There you go.
That's a free one from me to you back.
Interesting.
I don't want to talk more than I have to.
Sure.
Emergency in the pocket in case you need it.
I'll bring that up during my reunion, although I haven't seen Ted Lasso.
So I might not be able to hold that conversation.
I think that's better, though.
I think that'll be even more fun.
You'd be like.
You know how Brett Goldstein's character.
I haven't seen this, but you know how Brett Goldstein's character is.
I can see you're right.
Mike has some Ted Lasso energy.
If I was going to have to watch a TV show today, I think Ted Lasso would definitely be like one of the first round picks.
I think Ted Lasso is very sweet.
Only the first season.
I feel like the first season, there was a specific scene during the second I just had to tap out.
Do you remember there was like singing during a funeral?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I stopped watching during the second season as well.
The first season was worth it, yeah.
Yeah.
I thought the third was pretty bad.
I hope I outlived Dan.
I just like could sing at his funeral.
Oh, no.
I will have armed guards.
He can't get from the grave.
The singing heist at Dan's funeral.
We sneak you in.
No.
What should I sing?
What should I sing at his funeral?
Probably when you wish upon a star or something.
Yeah.
My one wicked association is when I lived in New York.
The bar across from the Wicked Theater was is where me and Alex Boniello and friends would always go to watch pay-per-views.
So like I remember, like those first AEW pay-per-views, like that first Double or Nothing and stuff, just being like super into Cody versus Goldust and also just surrounded by people in Wicked cosplay
Like, people dressed as the Wicked Witch, full green faces and all that stuff.
I felt so bad really not enjoying this movie because there were so many people like faces painted green, pink dresses.
Did the audience like it?
I don't know.
Like you normally can kind of tell when there's like a positive swelling of something happening.
And sure.
Sure.
It just fell flat for me.
Now, Jan, I mean, I'm sorry.
And like I probably don't have a leg to stand on here because I didn't see this movie, but I'm still suspect of your movie opinions after you said you kind of liked that last Jurassic World thing.
My dad texted me.
He liked that a lot.
He liked it.
Scar Jo in an action film.
Jonathan Bailey, the hottest man in America or in the world.
My dad texted me to tell me he liked Jurassic World Dominion a lot and then he followed it up with the most dad joke.
I could imagine where he's like Yeah, it was really good, although you know, with Scarlet in it I was hoping to see a topless-a-saurus.
Jesus.
Okay.
It's like, boy, that's below your standards, Dad.
I wasn't ready.
But that's usually genuinely funny, that one.
I wasn't ready to get to games yet, but... Topless-a-saurus.
I mean, he should be put in jail temporarily, I feel like.
I think all dinosaurs are topless.
I guess that's what it means.
Okay.
Video games, huh?
We'll talk about those now.
Speaking about... Oh, that's not on here.
Never mind.
Speaking... Oh, no, no, no.
There we go.
Speaking about topless, several characters in this video game will occasionally take off their top.
Jeff Grubb, I'm talking about Dispatch, which you finished today.
Yeah, yeah, I finished the last episode of the first season today.
I made a lot of choices.
I'll say like I remember in older Telltale games being confronted with like really tough choices, maybe a little bit more frequently than happened in Dispatch.
There were still quite a few, but a lot of times it was like, you know, choose this character or that character and it wasn't like oh, choose this person to live or this person to live and the other one will die.
There's some of that, but it's maybe a little bit less frequently and i think that's probably to the game's benefit, where it's like you you're not feeling like you're put into a corner by the game, you just feel like you're becoming part of the team and making choices and uh, that it really all comes together in that last episode where they're really good at making their superhero action bullshit look phenomenal.
It looks really cinematic, really well done, like a high budget tv show, and and then uh, that that like closes the deal on a series that already had very great characters that are very easy to get attached to.
And again, because you are making choices and they make, like their emotional states can kind of live in your head a little bit.
I think you get a little bit more attached to them And yeah, it really delivered.
I don't know if I did the right thing, but I definitely made all the choices I wanted to make and will live with them.
And it's one of those games where it's like I know that there are other paths and I'm like academically interested to to understand like how it was put together, how the designers like decided like what would factor into any of the endings you might get and stuff like that.
But I don't want to replay the game.
Because I played the game and that's my story and those are my choices and I'm like super happy to live with those consequences.
Very curious to see how they continue some of the threads from the very end into what is inevitably going to be a next game, because this is a very successful game.
It's like, oh, is there going to be a canonical choice?
I don't think so.
I think they're going to have to deal with.
Oh, there's these two things that happen here at the end.
I bet they'll have some cute way of dealing with that so it doesn't get too complicated.
Sure.
But there's definitely some questions up in the air.
To see the Mass Effect 2 comic thing again, right?
Yes.
Just clean it all up in there.
Grub, I'm interested to when we get to Game of the Year because I want to hear about your thought process when it comes to the choices.
I haven't peeped the last two episodes of you playing through this, but I do want to see the commonalities of where our brain is may potentially go.
Cause there was times in that game where I thought I'm making very good choices and then things went to shit.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
Um, God, uh, dispatch.
If we haven't already talked about the performances of the voice acting cast, it really, really shines in those last two episodes.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
And I, I see someone in chat say, Oh, a comment on like some of the criticism.
It's, it seems, cynically designed to tap in the the that we have violence and hot characters and you fuck.
And it's like, yeah, but they do it all pretty well.
And it's like um, I don't have, not all of my art needs to be uh, like um high minded uh, And it doesn't all need to be oh, so well thought out.
Like, oh, they're not going to our base instincts.
Sometimes delivering on my base instincts is a positive.
And I think they all are here because the characters are hot.
The violence is fantastic.
It's very enthralling.
And the characters do fuck.
And there's just nothing wrong with that.
I think this is a really solid one of those maybe cynically designed ones.
It's done by people... who know what they're doing.
This is why I think sinners really work this year because yes, of course there's violence.
It's a fantastical situation where there are vampires invading a small town, but also people just want to fuck.
All right.
Yeah.
Jan, that movie, you know how I famously didn't pick up on like horny vibes in certain movies.
Yes.
I watched sinners and I was like, this is a horny vampire.
Good job.
Thank you.
Noticeably horny.
Is it when she spit in his mouth?
Did that tip you off?
And all the fucking... Yeah.
Yeah.
Kick it past Danny.
Jeff, do you think I'll Like you know I don't really usually go for like Invincible or The Boys
Like, I... Yeah.
I don't have to be paying money to watch The Boys.
Like, yeah, okay, that's fair.
But you haven't watched those things, right?
So it's like, these are opinions based on, like, how you feel about that genre as a whole.
I mean, see, I've seen things, like, yeah, out of context.
So it's absolutely not like I don't have like a fair critique of it, but I just, you know, I look at it like boy.
That's not for me is my.
I'm certainly gonna try this, at least i think.
Of all three of those, this is the one that i think would most likely win you over and i don't think it'll be that.
I don't think i'll have a tough time doing so.
I have heard the boys is good and that i would like bonk.
Bonk knows my taste very well and she knows i hate she hates superhero stuff too.
But she told me to watch peacemaker.
I like that.
And then she watched the boys and she's like it's actually really good.
You would like it like, would i like the boys?
I mean yeah, you would like peacemaker.
There's a strong chance.
Yeah, maybe not but, Like you know, it's a little bit like Carl Urban almost winking at the camera with how like oh, I'm a shitty little guy.
And but I don't know.
I think it would probably win you over.
I saw a clip where the mean guy was like told people, we can't save these children from crashing airplanes.
Bad PR.
Then I saw a clip where that mean guy laser a guy through his penis and he slowly died out and rise on the floor.
They saw one where the mean guy made a guy go into an oven and cooked him alive.
He's a bad guy.
Yeah.
He's the villain.
Yeah.
But I don't like, want to, I don't want to watch villains torture people constantly.
Yeah, i mean, that's not night, you know that how that stuff happens, where people share the most shocking thing, like that's not 99 of the show, but i get it.
Uh, i think this one will not have that sort of feeling for you.
No, i know they're definitely mean guys, but you are focused on building the z team the, the motley crew, which you know it's a suicide squad.
Again again, i think these are things that when you hear them on paper it's like, oh gross, but is it really called the z team?
Yeah yes, i think that was a weird localization thing in dragon ball z where, like they were, like they tried to name like the squad, the z team or something like that.
You could tell it was the most added and post thing ever.
Like they were the fucking power rangers, the z fighters.
That's it, the z fighters.
Like go, i was like i'm part of the z fighters.
I mean, who?
Who calls them the z fighters?
What are you talking about?
They're trying to justify why it's called dragon ball z.
Where did this Z come from?
What's the Z mean?
They never answer.
We'll never know.
Gohan died in that one timeline.
So who knows?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dispatch.
Jesus Christ.
I was not expecting it to immediately rise up the ranks of my personal top 10, but it is hovering around the very tippy top.
It's good.
It's very good.
Jesus Christ. don't want to spoil anything for anyone.
Go check it out.
It's an easy thing to just zip through in a day.
I was surprised like chat was like, oh, there's a man.
This is when it played out completely differently to the point where it's like in the gameplay sections where again you're sending out these heroes on calls and managing stuff kind of similar to a souped up Assassin's Creed Brotherhood mechanics.
God, that game's really old.
I don't know why is that my touchstone, but just that's what I go to.
I know what you mean though.
Yeah, like every game had that for a while because of that.
Right.
But it's like even there I was like doing something and it's like everyone was like that played out way differently for me.
Like someone else showed up and you didn't even see them at all.
It's like, oh, okay, cool.
And again, I'm curious to see how that stuff has worked, how that works or how that's decided upon by the game.
But again, I just love owning my story in these kinds of games.
I'm like nope, these are my characters and this is how it played out and I'm going to take that to the next one.
Grab on a curious... Backlar, please, go ahead.
I was going to say, the gameplay stuff is just still not hitting with me.
I just am not... I got into it.
By the end, I was pretty into it, but I get it.
It's not.
We'll see how I shake out when I finish the end there, but I love the story so much that it's like It is.
It's one of my stories too.
Okay.
So like it'll get more complicated and you'll definitely be overwhelmed where it's like oh, I actually don't have enough heroes to send out on all these calls.
So I need to start triaging this stuff.
And I think it gets more interesting the more times they do that sort of thing.
Yeah, i mean, i guess maybe i'm uh, i'm trying, i'm trying to just predict like, where the complexity is going to go with that sort of thing, and i'm just like i don't even want to see it.
I'm just being i guess i'm being a bit of a fuddy-duddy with that but um, but yeah, i'm not.
You know, i wonder if they would like they don't give you an option to skip that part, do they?
No right no no No, it's because a lot of story happens in there.
Yeah.
I would stick with at least through the third episode and see.
Yeah, I'm going to finish.
I want to see how this ends.
So I'm absolutely going to finish.
Yeah.
Again.
I think I alluded to this either last week or the week before, but if you are at all a fan of Doctor Doom and villains wearing an iron mask, you need to at least see the end of, because of Matt Mercer's character.
Holy smokes, that guy.
He really chewed up the scenery in that last episode for sure.
Freaking knows how to act, huh?
He turned it on.
Mike, you brought up Dragon Ball, and Dragon Ball always reminds me of Dragon Quest, and you've been playing Dragon Quest 1 HD, 2D.
They have the same artist, man.
Yeah, actually I finished Dragon Quest 1, which is part of the Dragon Quest 1 plus 2 HD series 2d collection, and that was a uh, a really fun romp.
It's nice to like you can see why, like they bundle these two games together, because just playing through the first games 15 hours so pretty, you know, fast paced for one these but still felt like a full game on its own for sure, and i never played the original, but it's been fun.
I've been going back and watching old playthroughs of it, getting a sense what has changed and kind of like you know it, the biggest things uh, even though you're still just one dude in this game you don't have a party.
In the original game you always fought against one monster also, and here it could be a whole party of monsters, so you still have to worry about things like aoe attacks and it kind of complicates things uh, as that dimension to it.
The other thing too, is like they do more here to connect this game like it's part of a trilogy.
It makes a lot of references to dragon quest three, which actually takes place before this.
And it clearly leads up to dragon quest two, which is, you know, part of the same package.
So seeing them kind of like trilogy lies, is that a word?
They trilogy lies things more.
I'm a fan of that.
People watching the old playthroughs and being like wow this.
Yeah, this looks even older than I thought.
Right.
Cause even looks kind of older than a final fantasy one.
Cause it's a little bit before that.
Yeah.
Right.
When you're like they're in the castle, I'm like oh, that's the same layout of the gorgeous place I'm in.
That's interesting seeing this stuff still translated relatively faithfully, even though they added a lot of story stuff.
They added some other kind of sequences and events.
So I think it's a really fun way to do that remake, where I'm still kind of curious to go back and play the original and see what's that that's like.
But i'm also glad i got to experience it in the way i did.
You uh you, this is one still right, you're talking about yeah, are you going right into two?
You're gonna do some other stuff, probably not going right into two.
I think i think i could use a little bit of an rpg break.
Plus, like metroid is soon and i'm gonna be on vacation, so i'm definitely not gonna have time to play through another rpg and i hate like stopping midway through a game and i know that once metroid prime 4 is out, like that's the game i'm gonna play.
So i'm just gonna probably futz around with some other bs, maybe even just play super metroid again or metroid prime again, i don't know.
Uh mikey, i have a hankering to play through another jrpg before the year ends.
Do you think i should try dragon quest one i?
I Can I recommend one instead.
Sure.
Because it's one I'm curious to hear you guys talk about.
I think it's... Chet, you can help me out here.
It's like Waste of Dump.
It's this Earthbound... Oh, King of Dump.
Yeah, King of Waste, King of Dump, or something like that.
We should sue them, first of all.
But it's basically an Earthbound-inspired RPG where you play as a trash can man.
Kingdom of Dump, yes.
Several people have recommended this to me.
Kingdom of the Dump.
Thank you, yes.
Have you been interested in?
Uh, chosen the sky at all?
Jan i, i i'd have the um the remake remaster uh, and i played through maybe like two, three hours and i think maybe the dialogue kind of is is a little much for me.
It's a little much.
Yeah um, and i, i don't know, like i normally have a very high tolerance.
You know what i should go check out?
Demon school folks are right.
Um, that has tiles and everything.
But i do want to check out kingdom of dump, a here that is also kind of adjacent to a chrono trigger.
I tried to go see that on Steam and I opened my Steam and I still had the thigh-crushing game that you sent me, Jan.
What the hell?
I'm not sending anyone that.
I'm throwing you onto the bus, the thigh bus.
Oh, Kingdom of Dump is cheap, too.
Look at that.
My day, you want a thigh-crushing, you just watch Goldeneye.
That's right.
But this one's rhythm-based.
Good old-fashioned thigh-crushing.
Rhythm-based Xenia on a top?
My goodness.
Another game that I have lost a good chunk of time to and this continues the games I'm researching for Casino Week in 2026 is Slots and Daggers.
This is a roguelike slot machine game.
Very different than, gosh, what was the, was it Buckshot Roulette?
The other?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, yes.
Slots and Daggers.
It is a roguelike slot machine game where you pick three of your tiles that will show up on the slot machine.
And they can be an offense weapon that does physical damage, one that does magic damage, something that heals you, gives you coins or gives you an overshield type of dealio.
And you go from encounter to encounter in a rapid fashion where you are just kind of like spinning to win anything.
And some of the tiles will have a skill check.
So the crossbow in it, the target will be moving around.
And as soon as it hits the center, that's when you want to click to get critical damage and the most damage.
There will be like a gigantic berserker buster sword where, as soon as a meter reaches the very top, that's when you do the most damage.
I wound up completing a full run of it within like the span of maybe like three hours, and that comes from getting leveling up, because from each run there is a greater currency of chips that you can use to unlock boon like power-ups that persist from run to run.
So you'll have one that is kind of like will revive you if your HP reaches zero and and another one that will give you damage reduction from physical attacks or magical attacks.
It's a very fast-paced game and, I think, a better one of the ones that have attempted to incorporate a slot machine mechanic.
Because later on you start with three slots or whatever, and then you can buy upgrades to open it up to a full five of slot machine stuff.
In that situation, do you still just need to make a line of three?
Three or four.
Three or four.
Okay.
Like right next to each other.
It's only like one lane.
So it's not like a full slot machine where you have like three different lanes of like top mid, bottom.
It's just the singular one.
It's a very rapid paced game.
And I think if you set this game to the fastest speed possible and turn your brain off, you can just kind of like rinse through it.
Some of the encounters get a little bit more challenging, because they will do.
You'll be setting up a build where you have so much shield, but the shield only negates physical damage.
And then you come across someone that is doing nothing but magic.
So you kind of just wind up getting rinsed.
I had a very broken build at the very end of my the run that I completed, where I would do physical and magical damage with a hammer and but because I'd be maxing out so much, I would wind up bonking them on the head, so the enemy would be stunned, so they wouldn't be able to do anything.
And then my life regen also was maximized in such a way where, even if I did get hurt, I'd recover everything the next turn.
Slots and Daggers, really fun, quick, small game.
Um...
Can I recommend one more game for you to try out, Jan?
Maybe that might be similar to these.
It's called Side Effects.
Have you seen this?
Side Effects.
Yeah.
Is that the weird pill game?
Yes.
It's like a bunch of guys who look like they might be locked in a hospital and they are playing a pill roulette game where they're wagering their pills, their medications.
What do you guys think of me?
It has four-player PvP.
And I think this looks like something we should look into.
Oh, do you just only flip a coin, though?
Because Jan might not be interested otherwise.
No, what are you talking about?
There's other luck-based things he'll be into.
Yeah, roulette's close.
Yeah, don't read too much into this recommendation, Jan.
Oh, yeah, yeah, it was completely random.
This is just exactly what we think of you.
Clover Pit is the game that I was thinking of originally.
Oh, right, right, right.
God, so many casino games.
What's the next casino game?
You think we're going to get like a hot bingo one?
I think the American Healthcare System.
This is Vegas by Midway.
Bring it back.
This is Vegas by Midway looked incredible.
Imagine Midway making an open world casino action adventure game.
There's many reasons I hate the death of Midway.
This is maybe number one.
Game and Farster should do a new preview of that in April, because there were so many previews of this.
Is Vegas, I remember in magazines.
Oh yeah man, that looks so cool.
I want to say this it feels bad, the gambling sure, mostly for you Jan, I think you know, like I don't.
I think you you you you, you always joke about it, but it's like we're trying to fix you, we're trying to fix your gaming.
You know, stay broken brother.
That is actually the city slogan of Las Vegas.
Stay broken, brother.
I feel, like every friend I'm trying to convince them to find an excuse to go to Vegas with me.
Like I realized that F1 was in Vegas this past weekend and I was talking to Nikki, like why didn't you tell me we could have went, we could have gone to Vegas and watched F1 and then done other things in Vegas?
Um, stay broken, that's right, i will continue to stay broken, jeff grubb, just like broken as you, as you want to be, before your.
Your segue here.
Uh, i wanted you to hear this first.
I don't know, is this an intervention?
Mahjong, mahjong is becoming a big deal in my town and all the ladies they're getting together, they're drinking their wine, they're betting their quarters and times and times and they're playing mahjong.
Do they have those mahjong dealer tables that like automatically deal out the, the bricks, and they like come out of the, the ground or whatever you're describing what sounds like?
Ai jeff, i don't want to hear any of this.
This is the future mahjong.
I almost bought one of these tables.
What's that?
What's that jen, i almost bought one of these tables that like auto shuffles your tiles.
Yeah, i've seen them.
They look cool.
I think uh no, they're gonna go lo-fi with this.
But uh, I actually have a porcelain Mahjong set that my mother used to use, I guess in her 40s and 50s and whatnot.
We're going to pass it down from one generation to the next.
I don't know if they've got the current cards.
I know you have to subscribe to the International Mahjong Council and you get your play cards.
You find out how the rules have evolved.
You're, you're fully aware of this gen.
Yes yeah, there's a.
There's new kickoff rules this season actually.
Yeah, they added a pitch timer.
I get it.
Yeah yeah, it's porcelain.
Is porcelain mahjong?
Good, i thought supposed to be made from bones or something.
I made up the word porcelain.
It could be made up of anything.
It's made out of elephant ivory.
He is a criminal.
Which which one of us would we die?
Should we turn it to mahjong this i don't know my bones into imjong please?
Don't know uh, the origin, but this shit, this set is super old, so it's entirely possible it's made from some sort of uh, taboo bone um, but yeah they're, they're bringing it back and jan, you are more than welcome to sit in on a couple gab fests.
I i'm sure i may or may not have uh, uh accosted a friend asking her why she didn't invite me to bingo night because i wanted to go to bingo night.
So now i may just go to jersey to play mahjong with the lovely ladies of jersey.
Is that the right pronunciation?
Mahjong mahjong, i don't know.
Okay, it's just so different every time.
That's what i'm doing.
Yeah dan, we bring you out to minnesota.
Finally, i'm taking you to a meat raffle.
This is like i thought you guys wanted to help me.
It feels like you're just throwing me a healthy way to get your kicks.
That's fine.
It can be if you're taking home a metric ton of bacon.
Yeah.
There may have been a time at my underground Mahjong games where Honestly, of all the poses to get frozen, That's a good one.
That's like top tier one.
Am I frozen for you?
Oh, you're back.
You're back.
Oh, okay.
You're back.
I may... One of the nights...
Maybe a little bit too much alcohol flowing through the systems that instead of playing, we spent a solid hour practicing how to reveal a winning tile set and just slamming it on the ground, and just doing it with the most flair.
Love it.
Jan, I want to play this with you because my only experience is...
I can't remember what game it was.
Maybe it was just Windows that had the fucking Mahjong thing where it was like... Solitaire.
Yeah, it was stacked up, and you just got to pick the one on the edges that matched.
And my understanding is, I think thanks to Yakuza or Shenmue, is you sit down to play actual Mahjong and it's like oh, this is not what I was told Mahjong is.
It's kind of like poker.
Okay, I would like to play it.
Yeah, so if you all know the basics of poker, you can pick up on Mahjong very fast, or at least the kind that I play.
I know that there are different rules and regulations depending on the style but, like yo, they got a tile that's like dragon of the north and that shit just sounds cool, right.
East, west, bam, crack, right?
Yeah.
It's the same thing.
He knows his things.
It's making me feel some type of way, just like And Roger last week made me feel some type of way.
And Dan Riker, you have since checked it out.
I played it.
I beat it.
Like you, I don't want to say too much.
I think you said it well, like tease kind of what it's about.
And yeah, it's between this and Consume Me.
I guess this was the year that it's like oh man, I actually tried out some of these like kind of personal Games for impact.
Yeah, you got impacted.
Yeah, yeah.
You got that dragon cancered.
Yes yes, absolutely um.
But yeah, i've never had a child with cancer, but i have had an elderly relative with dementia, so i was able to relate to this and uh yeah, it's uh, it was very effective and it it got across what it was trying to get across in a way that only a video game could because, and what it's trying to convey about memory and, you know, dementia and things like that, it's like the gamification for lack of a better word was necessary for the way they were telling the story.
So yes, very, very effective.
Like you said, Jan, it was like less than an hour, maybe closer to 45 minutes.
Jan, you made Bonk cry.
I'm never going to forgive you.
Aw, Jan.
Piece of shit.
Fuck.
Fuck you, Jan.
God damn it.
Damn it.
I'm on the shit list.
You're out of control.
I've been, Mikey.
I doubt it.
I'm going to hurt you, Jan.
Nothing can.
I've already done it.
Again, Dan, I'm happy that you checked it out.
If folks out there are curious, I still highly suggest it.
It is less than an hour.
Complete content warning, though.
If you are a father, if you have a family member that suffers from dementia Alzheimer's, tread very, very lightly, because it will quickly pull on all of those heartstrings incredibly fast, just like Mike Minotti tried to pull a tablecloth from underneath someone's table set at dinner one time.
It almost worked, except for all the stuff falling.
Oh, man.
Someone should do something about that stuff.
Oh, no.
Mikey, you've also been playing Metroid Prime 2 Echoes.
Yeah, I...
I am deeply ashamed for as much as I like Metroid.
I never actually beat Metroid Prime 2 or 3.
And I kept just waiting for them to release these games on the Switch, like they did with the Prime 1.
Like, I did give up hope until basically this month.
Like, well, they aren't doing that, huh?
So, finally just decided to play Metroid Prime 2 at least on my own.
To be clear, I'm not going to have time to do 3 as well, unfortunately.
But Metroid Prime 2 has been great. very fun time.
It's wild because I like Metroid Prime 1 so much and it's like well look, they made another one, didn't they?
They sure did.
Yeah, they added a bunch of stuff to it that makes it not quite as fun of an experience.
It's not quite as fun, and the big thing and this was the conversation at the time is oh, they added Link to the Pastile Light World, Dark World, which is a good idea.
The problem is they made the Dark World push back quite a bit and that you're always sort of taking damage unless you're in these bubbles.
And in my mind I was like, oh so like, eventually I'm gonna get the armor where I don't take much damage from this.
I got armor at one point and it was like, now you take less damage in there.
I'm like oh, so it's still kind of like, you know, you see, the portal of the dark world, instead of being like wow, I'm gonna go in the dark world.
It's like, ah, shit, I'm gonna do some stuff in the dark world.
And like only now, some 15 hours in, that I get the shield.
And it's basically, I'm at the key hunt now.
I'm at the end of the game.
And now it's like hey, now you have the light shield and you don't have to worry about the ticking damage.
Even though at this point, with all my energy canisters.
Right, and you're fine.
You're right though, though.
You still, the whole idea of Metroid is eventually you just become, you overpower everything.
And that means you don't have to think about it again.
And even just having to think about it feels a little bit, I don't know.
On Metroid.
Right.
It's, like, both, like... Well, he really said that thing, but it's not some huge deal.
But you know, even like the Light World, Dark World stuff it doesn't feel quite as linked to the pasty good.
Like, oh, the thing I did here impacts what happens in the other one.
There's a bit of that.
Mostly, it's just kind of like there's two maps that are similar but different and you kind of bounce back and forth between them.
Now, like...
The map itself, like, the areas are really cool.
Like the third main one I was at is kind of like this sky temple thing and it was a lot more sort of like space station-y looking and very kind of like sci-fi electronic.
Like, you know, Metroid Prime 1, I think about the organic stuff, right?
Sure.
And that's what looks cool.
And here I was like, oh, this is a different vibe, and I'm definitely into that.
So, like, the game still just looks amazing.
The areas... are super cool.
The music is fantastic.
It might even be a better soundtrack than Metroid Prime 1.
There's tons of amazing tracks.
It's mostly still that game, but it is interesting.
It's like 95 of the way there, and that last 5 is the difference between a very good video game and a video game that a lot of people are going to be like.
That's the best game ever.
May I ask why it's taken a while for you two to kind of circle back to the rest of the Metroid Prime series?
It is a bit of that where it's like, they just aren't quite as good as Prime 1 a lot of times.
Even though I haven't beaten 2 or 3, I'll be like, I'm going to play Prime 1 again, actually.
Prime 1 it is.
Damn near perfect.
Outside of some backtracking near the end and everything.
But even then, just going around.
Even then, I don't mind that because it's like, you have all the upgrades.
You have all the upgrades.
You're the master of the world.
Yep.
I was actually somewhat surprised that this game does the same thing with the key hunt, because I was worried they would have taken that criticism and be like oh, we shouldn't do that.
I like that.
I like that it's the end of the game.
Now go explore that entire world you've opened up with all your upgrades and find these keys.
And as you do that...
You're going to find energy canisters.
You're going to find missile upgrades and all this other stuff.
I think it's actually kind of a neat part of the equation.
Let me ask you a question, fellow Metroid fans here.
I've been thinking a lot about Metroid lately and I want to find some common ground here, because we've had our fights about Mario and what's mainline.
Oh, no.
What are you doing?
Let me just throw this out.
I've never vocalized this in my life, and I just want to see if this is okay.
Oh, boy.
Mainline Metroid...
Let me name this and you tell me if we're all in agreement here.
I think we might be able to, because there's a lot of side you know, side off, you know all in hunters and stuff.
Okay.
Metroid one.
And I'm also going to do a slash zero mission on that.
Okay.
Okay.
Two slash returns.
I did the Game Boy one.
I will say returns.
Okay.
So you include the remake slash returns.
I guess slash returns.
Sure.
It's a remake.
Super.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fusion.
Yes.
Dread.
Yeah.
Prime 1, 2, 3, 4.
I mean, look, I know people don't like... No other M. Why?
Because you don't like it?
No, because it's not... It's just a weird other thing.
It's another M. It's not.
When you beat Metroid Dread and it gives you like, the pictures from other games.
One of the ones you get is for other M Really.
Yeah.
My God, I think I'm on your side, Dan.
Yes!
Guys, I'm sorry.
It's mainline.
Other M is not mainline.
No, that was a weird side thing.
We're going to give it to Team Ninja and see what the fuck they do with it.
It's a totally different type of game.
Let's get some developer work done on it.
You think, like, Mr. Nintendo made Metroid Dread?
No, it was what's it called?
Wait, but also, Chad here says Dread isn't mainline.
What the fuck are you talking about?
How is Dread not mainline?
It says Metroid 5 at the beginning.
Other M not mainline hunters is mainline also.
No, why not?
Because it's not a metroidvania right, is it?
Yeah metroidvania yeah, but is it isn't?
Don't you just go in there and like into arenas and shoot?
No, it's more than that.
It's more, it's more than that.
I can't remember.
I just i played so much multiplayer, multiplayer ds one.
Yeah, that's one of the ones i played yeah yeah, but it had a whole single player campaign thing.
Yeah, i mean, but was it?
Was it a metroidvania style campaign?
It had elements.
It wasn't as Metroid-looking.
I think, frankly, to me, the only ones that aren't mainline are Federation Force and Pinball.
Oh, my God.
Stop besmirching the Pinball.
It's great.
It's fantastic.
I'm not saying it's bad.
It's just saying it's not mainline.
I don't care.
Oh, yeah.
And that's the more respectable opinion, for sure.
So either I'm just canon, but not mainline.
I don't understand why...
Other is not mainline, except that people don't like it.
Yeah, that's a big part of it.
I'm sorry that that's affecting it.
But also, it's just it feels so different than the rest.
I'm in between on it.
I think I would lean towards it not being canon or mainline, I should say.
It's obviously canon, but whatever.
I beat Metroid Prime 2 when it came out.
Right.
Yeah, there you go.
That's a better way to put it.
As soon as Metroid Prime 2 came out, I beat it then.
And then Metroid Prime 3 was a weird one, where it's like I was just playing the Wii so much less at that time and hearing it's like oh, and they got a bunch of these Federation goons here who are going to be talking you up.
And I just was not in the mood for it in that moment.
And then the time passed and it's like, oh, I should go back to that.
Do I want to get the Wii out?
And now it's like I don't know.
I should have played it when it was available on Prime Hacks, like right away.
But then I did the same thing Mike did where I was like I'll just wait until it comes out on Switch.
And here we are.
It's still not on Switch.
I remember it being... I haven't played it since, what, 2008 or whatever, but I remember liking it.
I didn't love the motion gimmicks, but it's a good Metroid game.
Okay.
Prime 2, not my favorite.
Speaking about Prime 2 and Metroid Prime in general, two of these hooligans went to a physical store to check out the store demo of Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.
I went to Target because I'm a fancy.
I'm a fancy bitch.
I went to Walmart because I'm a man of the people side of the earth.
So what is the demo?
It's just the beginning of the game.
So it's like what I played in New York.
Yeah, Go ahead, describe what we did in the mic so he can like, because he played it.
He could tell us.
Well, I liked how fast it was.
There was, like, a little bit of dialogue.
It was like, oh, there's a war.
And then I immediately landed on a planet.
And it was almost, it was like a little bit Halo-y.
Like, oh, these two sides are already fighting, and I'm kind of joining the fight.
And there was, like, a bit of people being like, wow, Samus is here.
And it was yeah, a pretty combat-heavy section, but also it was clearly like the cinematic opening.
And it was very exciting.
And, oh, my God.
This is like the first time since, like the GameCube era, when I'm like wow, one of the best looking console games out, there is actually a Nintendo game.
I can't believe how stunning this thing looks.
It's the Switch 2 version.
It's the art and the tech this time.
It's like the tech is really good.
It runs so smooth.
It looks just fantastic.
Definitely the best looking game on the console, right?
Oh, easily.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's the best-looking Nintendo game we've ever seen.
It's just.
I mean, you know, in terms of like the graphical fidelity.
There's other games that like use the art to make up for that.
The design, too.
The design is incredible.
That's where it just looks.
The art as well, yeah.
It looks cool as shit, yeah.
And just like it's funny because I am playing so much Metroid Prime 2, just some of the differences like oh, going in and out of the morph ball is really snappy in this one, even compared to the original games.
Like, you don't even really lose your... It's always snappy, but it's really snappy.
Yeah, but you don't even, like, lose as much of your momentum.
You kind of, like, keep walking as you're coming in and out of it.
Like even, you know, you still lock on, but the boss is like the big boss you fight at the end.
He has these weak points.
You have to sort of move your reticle within the lock on still.
Kind of like the Wii game, yeah.
Kind of like Metroid Prime 3, yeah.
Yeah, so it was just a really slick demo.
You fight up until that kind of big mech mini-boss.
And it gets Metroid-ed.
There's Metroids in this Metroid game, apparently.
Yeah, they just show up.
I was actually surprised to see that so early in the demo.
It sounds like the demo, Jan, that we saw in New York.
You go through the battle and then there's that boss fight.
That's what I was assuming, yeah.
They had the setup where you could do the mouse mode thing.
I don't know if you guys read that.
No, I was just using a pro controller and it felt really good.
But if there's the boss where there's specific spots you need to hit.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's got kind of four spots.
And that Stilex guy showed up and they were like oh, and that's like something.
There's a whole beam thing.
But oh, it was weird to like excited for a store demo again.
It felt very 2003 nostalgia.
Yeah, not done that in a long time.
I used to love going to kiosks at stores and playing games before they were out right, not done that in a minute.
Did you get anything else while y'all were at the store or did you just go batteries to replace in my uh, my smoke detectors?
Yeah yeah i, i got a new shirt for the reunion actually.
Uh, They want to look like a schlub.
Yeah.
And then I had to get some Christmas lights because, of course, all my ones from last year aren't working, the outdoor ones.
And they barely had any, but they had enough.
And I didn't put them up yesterday.
And now, of course, it's raining today.
God damn it.
What a day for Mikey's.
What a day for Mikey's.
Going from what y'all are saying is a very maybe arguably the prettiest game on the Switch to another visually overstimulating game.
Jeff Grubb, you've been playing Sectori.
Yeah, yeah.
This is the Geometry Wars-like roguelite game that is fantastic.
It's really well done.
It's made by former Housemarque people and, And so like what are some of the they did, like Stardust, Super Stardust HD and a bunch of other of those PlayStation arcade-y style games.
And that lineage is obvious here, because they fully understand what makes one of these shooters really good.
They understand what makes Geometry Wars good in terms of like, the different kinds of enemies you face and them having different behaviors, and how, those how you get like maybe three types of enemies on the screen at the same time.
And one of them is just moving around randomly.
Another one will go right at you.
Another one will be repelled by your bullets or whatever.
So you have to constantly be adjusting and moving around.
And then it has boss fights.
So it goes from Geometry Wars into something that feels a little bit more like a bullet hell game.
And no matter what, in either sort of mode, it feels fantastic to just get in the groove and lose yourself in the game and begin just moving your guy around so you can avoid all the damage and doing your best to collect the little giblets you get from blowing up an enemy so you can upgrade your character and take on even bigger bosses.
Um, i'm super into it's got, really it's obviously.
It obviously has super like depth to it in terms of the strategy.
You kind of learn something new each round that you try to apply the next go around.
Uh, and that isn't just about like oh, when the game sets you up in the tutorial, it tells you the basics and then there's other things like how does this upgrade system work?
Or um, What happens when I get all the letters for this word on the bottom right of the screen?
It doesn't tell you that stuff.
So, yeah, you're learning those basic fundamentals of how the game works.
But you're also just again learning those enemy behaviors and learning ways to keep yourself safe and kind of recognizing the patterns of how the world changes.
That's one of the things it does different than Geometry Wars.
At least I think I don't remember Geometry Wars doing this, where the map will be like a diamond to start.
And then all of a sudden it'll be like, okay, we're going to open up and it pops open.
And then another part of it will turn red.
And in a few seconds, that part of the map will go away.
And if you're in that part of the map, you just instantly die.
So you're like, okay, I got to get out of there.
Or if there was a pickup over there, it's going to now be shot to the other side of the map.
And you begin learning all these things and beginning to recognize all the indicators the game gives you of like oh, there is a power up over here.
There's a little bomb on the ground over there.
Go kind of swoop around, go get that, get your upgrade, come back over here and while you're doing that, try to kite the enemies so they begin to kind of curl around you.
So then you can swoop back around into the bomb and hit the bulk of the enemies with the like right where the bomb is exploding, so you can get the most damage all at once.
And i'm just i keep playing it over and over runs great on the steam deck.
It looks fantastic when you play it on a real pc with a big monitor as well, And it's one of those ones I think I'll probably be playing daily through the end of the year.
Is the draw to keep playing?
For me, Geometry Wars is very much one of those.
Okay, everyone has this game, everyone's on the leaderboard.
Are you just doing a marathon mode type thing and trying to get a high score?
Is that the deal?
Yeah, right now I'm trying to get through the game because there's levels, it seems like.
Although each time you go in there there seems like a random possible, like a random draw of bosses you face the first time around.
So it's not like oh, here's a set boss that you're going through excuse me, going through like in a typical roguelite.
But i want to like progress past all that stuff and kind of see what's the next boss and like how do things get complicated, more complicated from there?
So i'm still playing it a little bit like a roguelite.
There is a scoring mechanic.
I've not seen the leaderboards yet, although i think there probably will be one if you actually complete the run and i will be interested to see like oh, I completely missed this whole concept that someone else was doing that enabled them to get four times my score, or something like that.
And I'll be interested to see at that point if I'm like, okay, a run is, let's say, 40 minutes.
Can I justify doing that over and over again to kind of do that score competition, which is something that I really love?
That's why I play Geometry Wars as well.
We'll see.
Just from watching you play it, I wonder if you feel this at all.
Do you feel like our old...
Men eyes having a little bit more trouble with these kind of games, keeping track of it and seeing everything.
Not me, baby.
I think it took me a little bit more time to get my sea legs for this kind of game than it would have in the past, I think
Yeah.
I mean, again, once I understood everything, it's like, now I know what I'm looking at.
I think in the past, I would have grokked that a little bit quicker, a little bit faster.
So, yeah, it's overwhelming, but in a really good way.
So it's like, yeah, I kind of want to be overwhelmed visually by a game like this.
For the font pervs out there, this is, I maybe think, typefaces of the week in terms of games.
Oh, Jacob Geller's number five in the world.
Sorry, Jim.
Jesus, really.
Yep, all right well, there we go.
I'm gonna go after oh, i should, i should get in there oh okay yeah, i like the as you transition stages or as, like the boss is about to come up, the warning signs that flash underneath the battlefield grub, i think that's really a nice touch.
I mean, that's house mark uh, house style really, and you know they're out of there now it's a different company but uh, They still bring a lot of that Finnish arcade style to it and it just looks phenomenal.
I think I'd be so fine with title cards popping up in my real life.
Yeah.
To mark or denote important things of like, all right, podcast and other things.
Hangover.
Yeah.
Poop.
I just want stings in my real life.
Mike Minotti, last night on Mega Man you checked out Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and I need to know if this is something I should check out before the end of the year.
Yeah, where do you fall on the Red Dead Redemption 2 debate?
I'm with these hooligans.
Man, I'm the only one here who likes Red Dead Redemption 2.
No, I really, really like it too.
Dan came around on it a little bit.
I don't hate it, but the stuff that I didn't like.
I know where you're going with this Mike, with the Kingdom Come Deliverance thing.
The reason I will never try this game is I've heard hey, you know all the stuff you hated about Red Dead Redemption 2.
It's like that, but 10 times worse in Kingdom Come Deliverance.
I guess.
I don't know if it's worse, but it's definitely.
It's a slow intro that's very story and character heavy.
Yeah.
But I really enjoyed it.
Like, they do a good job with the characters.
I'm kind of stunned how pretty the game in the world is, too.
I guess I kept thinking, like, oh, people are making a realistic kind of medieval times, 1400s game.
It's going to be so kind of drab and gray.
I'm like, oh, these fields are pretty.
There's lots of colorful flowers and grass and everything. just in general, very good-looking game.
Like, the character faces and the facial animations, really well done.
So, yeah, something about it being visually interesting kept my attention.
Again, I'm already, even though this is a direct sequel to that last game that I did not play.
Oh, you don't need to play it.
Yeah, I'm getting invested.
I mean, there's part of me that wished I did, because it is telling me what happened in the game and I'm getting an idea for it.
But part of me like wishes I was there and maybe really saw all that stuff.
You know like The idea of like hey, this is like an Elder Scrolls game, that's maybe less like RPG and more story-focused.
I see why people are into that.
You know, there's elements where I had to make a potion early on.
Yeah, because you do the apothecary stuff.
Right, I was like oh, so I'm going to, like you know, go in my menu and like, click a couple buttons.
Like, no!
No!
I went to a hut and had to lower the pot onto the fire and bellow the fire and grind the sage into the thing.
I'm like, oh, some people aren't going to like this.
I think it's kind of neat, though.
I think it is immersive.
It is interesting.
I've crafted things in menus a million times.
I like that I added this.
One of the things you can craft is a save potion.
This game has ink ribbons uh, and like it'll, it'll save for you when you quit the game always, and it'll save whenever you go to sleep or there's certain story beats.
But you can't really save scum unless you have these potions.
So i'm like oh, that's kind of interesting.
So it's all these different things, and i know that there's a part where the game really does open up and you can get off the main story path if you want to.
I wasn't there and i don't even know if i'm close to that, But just doing this main story stuff, I was enjoying myself.
Did you start?
Did you get to the point where it's like Henry was like working, like kind of trying to get a job in a newish town to him and there was a big wedding happening that he's trying to like okay?
I think after that is when it opens up.
That's where I'm at.
That's where I stopped playing.
And it's like I kind of am interested because there's like this concept of like you need to get into this wedding.
And now it's like, I think you have a bunch of choices about how you accomplish that.
And it's like this big, a royal wedding, essentially.
And I'm like, very interesting concept.
It's like, yeah, because the guy got shit thrown on him and we're like, we shit.
We smell like shit and stink and no one takes us seriously.
We need money.
That's where I am.
Yes.
OK, so you were you're going right to that then.
OK, you're basically around the precipice of that.
Something I thought was interesting is just I was watching Bonk play some of this and it's like she did the main story up to a point and then she got to like the potion crafting stuff.
Yes.
And it was so, I heard that made me want to play it.
Yeah.
It was so in depth, like all the potion stuff, that she basically at that point stopped playing it as like a single player story based game.
And just, it was a potion crafting simulator.
Like she ran a potion store.
And so I, every time I walked by the screen, she was just like mixing potions.
She's putting stuff for sale and she's turning it into like a shop simulator.
And in the midst of this larger adventure, single-player game.
That was cool that you can even do that.
That's cool.
That's the kind of thing where it's like.
That doesn't sound too much like Red Dead Redemption 2 to me.
This is the kind of thing where it's like you can pick a system and get lost in it and the game will accommodate you a little bit.
So I might go back and just play a little bit more and see if it clicks a little bit more for me.
It did not unclick.
It was not something that repelled me.
I was into most of what it was doing.
Okay.
Yeah, I think I want to go back to it.
I think I want to actually keep playing for a bit.
It definitely isn't exactly what I thought it was going to be.
I'm a little bit surprised by it.
And it really does just kind of have quality.
You know, Red Dead Redemption 2, if you don't like it, it's like, oh, there's a lot of quality here.
Maybe it's in a way that's maybe like the jigsaw puzzles and put in the way that you care for this is well crafted okay alright, thank you, Mr Minotti.
Last game we have here arguably is the most game and the most confusing thing out of everything I've played this year.
We have a quick look up for it now on the website.
I'm talking about Kirby Air Riders.
What the fuck?
I think you just came back from NOM.
It's just like high tolerance, My tolerance for just like Nintendo horse shit is.
It's not just tolerance.
It's like embracing and loving.
I love wacky Nintendo horse shit.
Or even just like games that are just bombarding you with stuff all the time.
I like it.
This was the one where I found the line, I think.
And like... The thing is...
The more I play it, the more I'm kind of like, wait, am I starting to like this?
It's good.
It's good.
So I haven't really played much of the first one.
So tell me like how much it tracks.
Well, calling it a slow burn isn't accurate, because it's just like I don't know, a raging wildfire that occasionally catches you.
Right, it's a ragey wildfire that will eventually, like, catch a city on fire.
Yeah.
A whole city trials on fire, right.
I haven't played the original one from the GameCube, so I can't speak to that.
I mean like it's very similar in terms of mechanics to the first one.
But then all the insane accoutrement that Sakurai has added into his games, like through all the Smash Bros games.
All that stuff is basically here as well.
You're constantly unlocking stuff, you're constantly earning some currency or some other thing.
And there's gummies like there's a whole section for gummies.
That's the point.
What the fuck?
It's just a mode where i look at gummies.
You can swing them around with your sword, i know you can suck them in, you can zoom in, you can just like i guess this is just the gummy mode.
Yeah, and it's.
That's all there is to that one.
I think, sure it.
It is the kind of thing where it's like I think City Trials is so overwhelming visually that it feels more complicated than it is.
And the fact that I think it might be extremely simple always confuses me.
It's like, there's so much going on.
I must be missing something.
It's like no, I think you actually have a full grasp, upgrade your machine and your character and go play a mini game.
But then the mini games are like you're either gonna like eat a bunch of pngs of, like pasta hell yeah, hell yeah, that's thumbs up.
We love that.
Just race straight ahead and don't turn like so it's like i don't know like drag race.
Are you just trying to?
Is there any strategy to the upgrades?
You're getting in city, trial everything and get everything okay, and then and then the game will be like recommend a um, A minigame that your build is probably best for.
But then you're just putting it in the slot machine there, right?
Like it's not even like a, you might get something totally different.
There's like boss fights and weird races and there's like a melee fighting mode.
And it's like the amount of, I thought this was a racing game.
And the amount of times it was just like, yeah, here's just like arena boss fight or something.
What the fuck are we doing here?
Like not in a bad way.
Parentheses, maybe positive question mark.
Parentheses confused.
Yeah, i enjoyed the road trip mode, mostly because it's like hearing jan.
You played through it.
You said it was like a three, four hours, maybe two hours tops two.
Okay, i must be getting right near the end of it.
I'm like level three or whatever.
Um oh no, no then, because i suppose i've played for at least like an hour and a half.
I thought maybe um, are you talking about the levels in terms of, like the new biomes that pop up after you complete like uh, i guess, the map it goes to 11?
Yes Oh, okay then.
All right.
Well, either way, I'm enjoying it because it's like there's all these mini games that I probably would not go select from a menu, but when they're served up as an option in the road trip mode, which is just like Kirby goes forward on the road, there's three characters in front of you on the road.
You pick one that you want to run into and they will give you an option of like this will be a race, or this will be the png food eating game, or this will be the rc pro am mode.
There's that in this game as well yeah, and it's okay.
Well, i want to do rc pro am and you go select that and it's like great, now i'm playing this mode that i probably would not have interacted with too much otherwise, and if it doesn't overstay, it's well, welcome.
I'm like oh, this is a pretty good way to get in this game and try all the stuff it has to offer.
Grub, grub.
I think this might be a telling thing about age here.
Okay, so the rc pro am mode the, the top right or whatever it's called, what is it?
The one where it's like top down?
Yeah yeah, top race.
Yeah grub, what control method did you pick?
I chose so that left always turns my cart left.
It's not direct control, right?
That's what i was gonna test.
Jan was revolted and this is the.
It's the rc pro am difference, isn't it?
Yep, The RC Pro-Am difference.
You can only find that on GiantBomb.com.
Guys old enough to talk about RC Pro-Am.
I guess I'll go fix myself now or something.
Biker mice from Mars for Super Nintendo.
Super Off-Road, hell yeah, oh i love super awful.
That's a sign that you're gonna die in a few years.
In a few years, that's how old you are.
If you like that one, i'm afraid i don't make the rules.
I just have good like arcade cabinet, three wheel, kind of sure pizza hut, you know?
Yeah, spamming the nitro button.
I'm really glad nintendo made this game.
I think it's fun, it is, It's ridiculous.
The fact that this game got a sequel, it's like, boy, anything could get a sequel, huh?
Sure.
At any moment, you just never know.
If anything, this game raises more questions about Sakurai as a person.
And I'm wondering, what kind of cars is he going into?
How is he driving?
And then what is his experience like going into a...
Oh, okay.
What is it like for him to just walk into a normal city?
Like, what is he doing?
What are his trials?
He wants a raid trip.
He wants to get him on a raid trip.
Yeah, all right.
Because every time I pop into city trials, every different instance is vastly different than the previous run I had done because
The game will just be something completely different.
Of like now there's a gigantic chicken in here.
That's a robot.
Go attack it.
Or there'll be one where there's a giant mothership or a UFO floating around.
Get to somewhere very high so you can jump on it.
And other times I'll just be running around as Rick just collecting a bunch of power-ups, only to eat a bunch of PNGs later.
And I think I'm having fun, i think i'm starting to.
It's the sheer amount of stuff that you're unlocking and doing and seeing.
It's like impossible to get bored.
But it also just throws me for a loop because, like i've played a lot of racing games, i've played a lot of arcade kart racing games and stuff, and it just speaks a language that i don't know where.
It's like i finally started to like come to grips with the like okay, there's not a gas button.
I'm used to that.
Now this is how i drift around turns and stuff.
And then you like unlock a new car and it's like Hey, none of that shit happens with this car.
I'm like, what?
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
I love how like the second most recommended machine, of course, they're not called carts here.
No machines.
Yeah.
Like the warp store, is the one, the default one, you start with, that teaches you all the mechanics.
But the one that i've gravitated to is the washing machine, looking one, i think the wagon star that doesn't boost right, it doesn't boost, which is one of the major mechanics of the game.
And then other some of the other machines will be like hey, this will transform if you wiggle it, so be selective with how you like do the quick spin stuff.
That's the thing i'm still confused.
I played a few hours of this game now and it's like i don't know.
Like Do I spin?
Do I suck?
What do I like?
What does what?
Hop on that bang as much as you do, dude.
I'm glad Mike made that joke.
Hell yeah.
I know if I do the wiggle, it'll like knock people off.
But then it's like there's things where it's like I'll just see a bunch of icons of fucking, like there's six mushrooms above my head.
Are those items I can use?
And then there are ones that like a copy.
Is this a copy ability or is this just showing me a picture of a thing I killed?
Like, I don't really know what's happening.
So it'll have like an icon over it.
And folks, that's how it is to live in your 30s, but there's an icon that will show if it is a power-up.
But generally, just hit everything.
So I'm constantly trying to quick-spin into everything because it just gives you that little boost.
But here's the thing.
It's very obvious.
When you have a special, because you have the blinking bar, you hit Y and it does the big sword thing or whatever.
But then there's stuff where it's like the copy abilities, where it's like okay, so wait, if I just pass.
Like, how am I getting copy abilities from other racers?
No, from the enemies, from the normal enemies.
Because the game I get confused, because the game's too simple.
Again because there's only one button.
You're supposed to hit the same button that you use to break and boost.
When you go up to an enemy, I think you hit that and that sucks them in.
And then once you have them sucked in, you hit that same button again.
To use that power sometimes.
If I want to suck, I have to slow down?
Well, just tap it for a moment.
You just tap it.
You gotta do like a quick suck.
Just a quick little suck.
I think you guys need another hour-long direct explaining the... No, we understand.
We understand.
107 minutes of directs for this game.
And you guys still don't know how to play it.
I'm still lost on a lot of it at any point.
Is there like okay, mario kart, i have a red shell.
It's floating above my head.
Is that ever the case?
Or is it like because some of them?
I looked up all the icons, i looked at the legend where it's like this is the sword, one this, but each one of them seems to have different rules.
Yeah Oh, if you're breaking and you hold back on the analog stick, you'll shoot a ball or something.
That's true.
And this one, it's automatic fire whenever you pass something.
That's true.
How the fuck am I supposed to know any of this?
Just keep playing it, I guess.
You just got to enter in a flow state, Dan.
Just keep going.
This is the opposite of a flow state.
You just got to keep spinning and sucking.
That's the Sakurai MO.
All this stuff is the reason that I think so many young people like the original, because it is like candy, it looks like candy, it kind of plays like candy and then there's this insane language that it speaks that you can become the master of if you and the kids love that shit.
They love to be like.
I understand this thing that when my parents walk in the room they're like what is even happening?
I don't know the first thing about what is happening on the screen, let alone like it how my kids were.
They're interested in it.
They're kind of They're still not sure about it, I think, but they're interested.
They started playing Fast Fusion, the Switch 2 launch game that's got like an F-Zero clone.
So they're playing a lot of Fast Fusion right now.
The kids can't get enough.
Yeah.
I think the more that I talk about this game with other people, I think, the more that I like it a bunch.
We had fun just, like, hanging out in, like, the lobby of friends that, like, come there.
You could do a race, or you can just play one of those mini-games real quick.
Yeah, that's cool.
I'm like, yeah, it's fun.
Now, did Saturn make the original Kirby's?
Yes.
He was involved.
Then he's just been insane the entire time.
Oh, yeah.
I've always struggled with just basic ass, Kirby controls, because every single thing you suck up has different
I always have to pause and look at the thing like okay, BF does that and like Smash Brothers had the same thing, where it's like there's just so many contextual things with like a couple different buttons that don't speak the language of other games in their genres.
Like, old Kirby games don't speak normal platformer rules.
Smash Brothers doesn't speak normal fighting rules, and Air Riders doesn't speak racing rules.
Like, this guy just... But they all speak... similar to each other.
He's in his own language.
He's in his own lane, and I love it.
He's a little freak.
The menu being so, Smash Brothers down to the announcer and then it cracks me up every time I pick the like what's the La Boo Boo and La Baba?
That's very similar to the first game, because the first game's menus and all that were melee it was exactly like the same style smash bros melee so now this all looking like smash brothers ultimate uh it tracks it's consistent i'm only familiar with like the i guess the bigger curvy characters so like the deeper cuts that this game has i'm like you don't know about rick no no i know about i know about rick it's just like labubu and lala gooey i didn't know about those are like proto kirby because they were like from before right that was like an early how game they got co-opted in who's like the dragon ball kirby knockoff he's like gooey no fighting joe fighter joe knuckle joe no it's just one of the enemies you can copy from to get the fighter ability i think at first in kirby superstar i don't think fighter was in kirby's adventure okay uh yeah we like knuckle joe knuckle joe looks like a fucking freak i don't want to process i said we like knuckle joe y'all can like knuckle joe i ain't about knuckle joe where's my words i believe i do i really like all the pngs of food there's so many here's like a blue tropical drink and here's some pasta and here's like some rice here's some nigiri so many yeah i just gobble that shit up it's great yeah get it i'll eat 60 of them i don't give a shit yeah sure yeah we gotta have like either a tnt or a upf where we just go balls to the wall let's open our paddock let's open up i'll get back in there i i'm appreciating this game but like i i think like i i don't quite understand sakurai i've never gone into smash just because i'm not like a fighting game person but maybe oh that's why i like this maybe a bit more right away it's because i i speak his language more because i please i think so yeah But I love his brain because why the fuck would you make Kirby, which doesn't really quite make sense when you think about it, and then a penguin with a gigantic hammer, and then you have Labubu and Lala like Dan mentioned.
But also, hey, here's just a fucking hamster.
Yeah, it's just Rick.
Shout out to Rick.
Shout out to Rick.
I like the fish too.
Yeah.
There's a lot of good stuff.
There's a fish from Kirby's Dream Land 2 as well.
I think the fish and Rick, and then there was a third animal.
An octopus, or was that two?
That was three out of the octopus.
And then there's like a weird, like I think it's a Japanese demon, but he, excuse me, he chibi'd it up.
It's like a green duck with a bald spot.
I don't remember.
Also, sometimes you just turn into a duck.
You'll just turn into a UFO and have no idea why.
That's like the boy Bill ability, I think, from Mario Kart.
How do I get that?
Oh, okay.
Is it like the part-time UFO character because Hal Laboratory made that.
I wonder if he's bringing that into the game.
I don't know.
It was a copy ability in the game.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah, you're right.
UFO's been in a bunch.
I also love how seriously the story mode, the road trip mode, takes itself.
Yeah, that's a CG opening scene.
That's...
The thing, too is, whenever you boot up Smash, Ultimate or whatever, and there's this huge anime-ass cutscene, it's like wait, no one's taking this seriously, right.
It's like, wait, no, I think the whole development team took this seriously.
It was so funny, Dave, when you were watching me and Kayla play the game without Smash Bros.
Ultimate without items.
I had never watched someone, like, I've never pressed the block button in my life in Smash Brothers.
I've played thousands of hours, probably Smash Brothers.
I've never played with items off.
I've never seen anyone play with items off.
And I've never seen anyone use the block button.
And you guys played it like it was a completely different game.
It blew my mind.
What kind of fun?
Love it.
Love it.
Love it.
All right, folks.
That about does it for video games.
We're going to take a quick break, bricky break, and we will be back with the news.
Uh, in the meantime go, if you're feeling a little famished, just go look at some food pngs.
We'll see on the other side of this break.
Print them out and eat them.
Print them out and eat them.
Jan, you taught me to overcome my fear of sharp objects.
I want to teach you how to overcome your fear of saving money.
No, I don't wanna.
I will only ever pay the manufactured suggested retail price.
Stop.
You don't have to live this way because now there's Deku Deals.
The double D?
That's right.
Deku Deals is the best way to find deals on any major gaming platform or store.
I don't want no bunk out-of-date coupon code grub.
It's nothing like that.
Deku Deals has both the hottest and the freshest deals updated constantly.
It's also just added Steam support with a super simple page to find bundles for Steam code.
Ooh, I just found the Myst and Riven Complete collection for 8 on Humble using Deku Deals right now.
I also use DekuDeals to build and add and share wish lists.
You can even use it to keep track of your collection.
You know what?
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And if listeners go to DekuDealscom slash Giant Bomb, they can vote to make us play a game on the November 21st episode of Unprofessional Fridays.
Learn more at DekuDeals.com slash Giant Bomb.
This is Jeff Grubb with the news.
Jeff Grubb.
Howdy everybody, I have news for you.
Let's get into it.
An entire PS5 now costs less than 64 gigabytes of DDR5 memory, even after a discount.
The rise of AI is causing a massive surge in prices for PC components like DDR5 RAM, due to increased demand for memory and storage.
We've talked about this a bunch on various shows, but the price keeps going up and the expectation is it will be even more expensive next year.
This is worth bringing up because hey, the PS5 uses DDR5 memory, as does the Xbox Series X and Switch 2.
That's the memory.
That is like for the main system memory.
GPUs would use even faster memory, which is also affected by this frankly,
This caused a lot of speculation recently and some you know maybe you know iffy reporting on like oh, Xbox doesn't have a lot of memory in stock, like on their shelves, ready to be used for their production, while PlayStation has a few months supply.
So the Xbox could go up in price again very soon.
You know, Jess Gordon over at Windows Central reported that they said they're good for now.
They didn't provide a timeline.
I'm probably thinking that, either way, Both these companies probably don't have enough stock to get them through next year.
So they're probably going to be hit by these prices and whether or not they eat those costs.
Man, memory got real expensive real fast.
This is like doubling in price.
And in a lot of cases, it's even more than that.
We're expecting it could double again by the end of 2026.
So the reasoning for this continues to be AI, just like all the world's ales are because of ai.
Right now it seems like and um, that's not going to go away.
Even if the bubble bursts like that, demand is probably still going to be there for a little bit.
Oh man, you uh friend of the site, ed zitron, had an interview with the choppo boys about ai and i just got it is like two hours of the of the most sort of like forehead slapping white, knuckling nails on a chalkboard analysis of our current uh, you know, psychotic infatuation with this.
Man didn't listen to that, did they like?
Was there anything that really stuck out to you?
Because there's some things i learned, like in the last week that's like oh, this is why it's definitely a bubble, but i don't know maybe well, i mean it's a, you know, i think the bubble part uh, i think, is very sort of like surface level at this point.
Right, i think uh, The thing that he was talking a lot about is just the psychotic pace in which these data centers are being constructed, the environmental implications of it, the community implications of it, and just how there seems to be so many checks being written that will never be able to be cashed in a way that is certainly troubling, you know, I don't know.
We've been saying this for like over a year now.
And now I feel like the, the, well, this won't be bailed out.
The headlines are starting to come out and it's just like the one guy said that in the government was already like well, we just can't let this collapse though.
So what are we going to do?
It's a good listen.
It's pretty long, but you know Ed's real good at uh, you know, watering it down and kind of you know, communicating and yeah it's, it's nuts man.
Oh, boy.
The thing that really hit me was, so these companies have to report, like, things to investors.
Like, the investments they make in their technology and how that's depreciating over time.
Like what value are you still getting from a GPU that you bought from NVIDIA like three or four years ago?
And one of the things that they're doing is, like, no, we're still using those.
And like we're going to depreciate them at like a normal rate, as if it's like a forklift that will last for 20 years.
Right.
When in reality, those GPUs that cost 6000 a couple years ago you can now get on eBay for like 100, because Nvidia is just putting out new ones that are so much more efficient and so much faster and they've increased the cadence at which they're releasing those things.
So effectively?
If all of that is true, these companies that are saying hey, these things are depreciating at a normal rate are lying to investors in a really kind of negative way, where it's like oh, their heads should roll at the end of this, because this is now fraud.
But all the companies are doing it across the board.
Yeah, he talked a little bit about depreciation, for sure, but also talked about how all of these highly specialized GPUs that are just like once they aren't being used for what they're being used for, they just become almost worthless right, and then it's like yes, and then it's like a year or two yeah, and then it's like then what?
Then you have all this silicon, all this stuff that is just like waste, like i, i the, the sort of the just, you know, completely unadulterated unregulated uh, wild rush to build and construct a with no regard for humanity or human life or any like fuck, all the consequences.
It's just so short-sighted and wildly frustrating in a way where it's like no, we will never have nice things going this way.
Like it's just- We don't learn anything.
Yeah.
It's just rinse and repeat and who the fuck cares?
And it's the next generation's problem.
What do I give a shit about?
I think I saw Nikki shared a-
Somebody's making the AI grill, the brisk it.
AI is going to cook our meat, everybody.
You're going to be a spokesperson?
Yeah.
Your joke has been replaced.
Now I feel like a joke.
You're obsolete.
We were all joking about our fridges don't need Bluetooth and how quaint we had it.
Oh, God, yeah, that was the worst part.
It was the stupid fucking Internet of Things.
That bullshit.
Oh, God, I'd kill for it now.
I was at dinner with friends last night and the topic came up of.
Hey remember War of the Worlds came out this year.
I'll never forget.
The only good thing that happened this year.
I cannot wait for the Chris Pratt version of that.
Amazon's got another one where Chris Pratt's just sitting in front of a screen for the whole movie.
They're making another one?
Yeah, that's right.
I saw the trailer for it.
I saw the trailer for it.
It's not a sequel.
It's not related to War of the Worlds.
It's just the exact same style of movie where he's like there's a lady on the other side of a phone call and he's sitting in a room and he's kind of being like tortured or interrogated.
It's a trial.
It's a trial.
That's right, yeah.
If I can prove his innocence, he's, like, basically...
Imagine if someone put you on a computer and was like use the internet to prove your innocence for this murder or we'll kill you in an hour.
I think the internet would prove my guilt in a lot of things.
We got this, Dan.
You just sit back.
Oh, he's dead now.
All right.
Next up, Vampire Crawlers, a first-person deck-building vampire survivor spinoff is coming next year.
This is one of the things announced at that Xbox partner preview that happened last week.
Ponkle has announced Vampire Crawlers, a first-person card game and spinoff of Vampire Survivors, set for release in 2026 on a bunch of the platforms.
It'll be day one available on Game Pass.
They basically said we want to take the idea of the core pillars of Vampire Survivors they would describe those as accessibility immediacy, affordability and replayability and apply those to other pre-existing genres.
In this case it's a dungeon crawler, but with card modifiers and then a bunch of other stuff.
It looks pretty cool.
A trailer that sounds very good.
That's how we get down to dungeon crawling.
Yeah, i think i'm fine with dungeon crawling.
I'm not like diablo is a dungeon crawler right, it's a little bit different than that.
What is like the dungeon crawler um?
Atrian odyssey, a wizardry?
Wizardry yeah okay, maybe i'm not an attention crawling.
Um, I think Jessica Cogswell over at GameSpot did a preview.
I think she got to play it and it seemed like she liked it.
Oh, I like the look of this a lot.
It's got a fantastic look.
Okay.
Yes, I will definitely play this.
I will play it too.
Other things announced as part of that partner preview included.
Eminem will hire Agent 47 to kill Slim Shady in Hitman's next elusive target mission.
Wasn't this his whole concept of his last album that came out like six months ago or something?
I think so, yeah.
He knows he's Slim Shady though, right?
Well, no, you see Slim Shady's the kayfabe, brother.
You see, well, there's three.
He's got three kayfabes.
If you die in kayfabe, you die in real life.
Exactly, yeah.
I'm confused by what's the difference between like I know, Slim Shady is the like wacky pop single version of him.
But then what's the difference?
Marshall Mathers is his suit name.
Then who's Eminem?
That's just his MC handle, right?
Okay, so normal MC Eminem, but then wacky, real Slim Shady.
Right, and then dad is Marshall Mathers.
Right, the dad who wants to kill his ex-wife.
Is Agent 47 just a hitman for hire?
I thought he, like you know, worked for government.
I thought he was on the up and up.
You got enough money mikey, you can hire anyone.
No, the government does not employ any hitmen.
Uh no, there are.
No, that's not an official job in the military.
He was always a contract killer uh yeah, but like okay, but like i mean, if i went up to the reports i was like hey, i need you to kill this.
Nun like, is he just gonna do it?
Are you calling bin laden a?
Nun No,
No, Dan, that's a separate conversation thread.
It just seemed like a funny sentence to say.
I mean, I think they probably justified it by saying he's probably got a code like no women and children, that sort of thing.
Like Omar from The Wire.
He definitely has killed... Yeah, like Omar from The Wire, exactly.
I want an Omar game.
Oh, yeah.
In the video games I played, all the people I killed seemed to be bad.
Right.
Right.
But it is.
But he was like a hired contract killer.
That's part of this organization that is essentially like a shadow CIA.
So you're not too far off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like, didn't we try to kill Castro with like exploding cigars and shit?
Like, don't we do?
We do.
We have assassins.
Yeah.
But you wouldn't call them hitmen because that's the difference.
A freelancer.
A hitman is a freelancer who's kind of like hired a contract killer.
Yeah.
So illegal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
But if the price is 99 and everything.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Exactly.
OK.
OK.
Either way, I think this elusive target is popping off soon.
Let's see here.
A paid cosmetic pack.
The Eminem versus Slim Shady Pack will also be released the same day for five dollars.
So there you go.
Now, I don't want Eminem to release a diss track on me, but maybe I do.
Maybe.
Why?
Like, no offense to him.
No, these are weird partnerships.
Yes, you're right.
I don't get it.
I don't want to talk about... And also, why is it... This is weird timing.
If it was like a week before the album came out or something, that's one thing.
Sure.
It was the whole concept.
Who knows?
Who knows how these things come together?
Yeah, making games is probably just hard, and so it probably took a little bit longer than they were thinking.
Just go eat hot wings with the bald guy instead.
You don't have to make a video game thing.
Has he not done that yet?
I don't think so.
Okay.
There's got to be some people who just, like, I couldn't do it.
There's got to be some celebrities like, I can't eat spicy food.
That's not an option for me.
So make me a hitman level.
Yeah, that's the second step.
You think Slim Shady has Crohn's?
Maybe that's why he's so angry.
Marshall doesn't.
I think this whole beard era of Eminem is weird.
He's got like a Hollywood Hogan beard and it's just a weird look.
I'm sorry wait, Mike.
Do all your people in your life that have Crohn's.
They're your butt brothers.
No, just my one guy's, my one friend's dad who has Crohn's calls me that.
He's really problematic, though.
Does he think you and your friend are more than friends?
That's why he's also calling you guys butt brothers?
No, he would not talk to my friend anymore.
That is real problematic.
A Far Cry TV series starring Always Sunny's Rob McElhinney.
No!
It's Mac!
I guess, has been.
Is there stories out there his wife and kids didn't want him to change his name?
Whatever.
I don't know.
My assumption is that everyone was butchering the pronunciation of his name.
Yeah, that's what he said.
A lot of people have names like that.
Is that what he said?
I didn't know that's what he said.
Yeah, that's what he said.
Makes sense.
Because it's not written out in a way where you would immediately go, oh, that's just McElhinney.
It's 20 years too late, but it makes sense, you know?
Exactly.
Either way, he's working with FX.
They have ordered an anthology TV series based off Ubisoft's Far Cry video game franchise.
The show, which will stream on Hulu in the US and Disney Plus internationally, will be produced by Rob Mack, via More Better Productions, and Noah Hawley, who stunned Fargo and Alien Earth, via 26 keys.
Mac has also set the star in the series.
Both producers praised the Far Cry franchise's existing anthology blah blah, blah nature and how it's worked.
I like the Fargo guy.
Yeah.
Me too.
Noah Hawley's great.
Alien Earth was an okay first two episodes.
Yeah, I've not watched it, but I've heard mixed things, but a lot of good things.
But Fargo's great.
I assume they just adapt Far Cry 3 first.
Right probably, who knows?
I mean, you just get that guy right.
You just go get that actor, uh nacho whatever, from a better call it.
Better call jack black, nacho libre.
That's what i was thinking.
Jack black would uh have himself a time as a firecracker and it would probably be insufferable.
Oh yeah, that's gonna happen eventually.
We can see it.
We've been safe from Far Cry.
Hashtag safe for a while.
No, but Jack Black has been a menace.
His powers have only increased.
Far Cry, they haven't had to deal with that for a while, Phil.
It seems like Far Cry 6, and I assume whatever its expand alone was, were wild now.
Yeah, what was the expand alone for 6?
Did they do one?
They always do.
Did they just not that time?
Yeah, I don't know.
But we are overdue for a new one.
That probably pops up soon.
It is part of the Vantage thing.
Far Cry 6 is 2021.
Okay, interesting.
Was that the cult one?
No, that was 5.
5 was the Jared Leto one.
6 is Gus from Breaking Bad.
Wait, was it Jared Leto?
I don't know.
No, it's just everyone seems like Jared Leto.
Or Kings of Leons.
Yeah, one or the other.
I guess they didn't expand alone.
30 seconds to Mars.
Do not besmirch the Kings of Leon.
No no, I'm saying the characters in that game look like the Kings of Leon were a cult, or more of a cult, I should say.
All right.
There is no longer a need to protect her.
Pharah may be stronger in Prince of Persia the Sands of Time remake, leak suggests.
That previous part was a quote.
A leaked internal Ubisoft presentation suggests that the upcoming remake of Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time, which is apparently going to launch early next year we might see it at the Game Awards will significantly enhance the character of Princess Pharah, making her a true ally who can fight independently.
Unlike the original 2003 game, where players had to protect Pharah, the remake will modernize the combat and allow Pharah to fight on her own with her bow, eliminating the need to protect her.
I'm all for that.
Sam's Time is like, like one of my favorite games.
I love Sam's Time.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
This is a game that I kind of hold holy.
This doesn't, This doesn't bother me at all.
I think this is probably going to be a positive change for that game.
I mean any game where they remove a thing, where you have to protect another character.
I'll never be upset about that.
Yep.
So it's like, okay, cool.
They're making some edits here, probably some smart choices.
It seems like they understand the game that they have.
I hope we see that game soon.
I would love to see that at the Game Awards.
I want to see it soon, selfishly so.
It opens up the door to a Warrior Within remake.
Just so I can hear that.
Just so I can hear that God Smack song.
Walk alone.
Walk alone.
Was it just Okay?
In my head it was like every time that thing is chasing you, or is it just the commercial?
And I'm thinking It was definitely the commercial, but I think it was the game too.
Yeah.
Dohaka?
I know because my friend would always... yell it at me because i would tell him how i don't approve of that warrior within game he's like it's cool because metal's in it and then he would just scream the name of the monster that chased you and i think like throw up the horns like get in my face and scream and make me uncomfortable and wear a metallica shirt i'm going with him to the reunion i'm i'm a little worried is he the butt brother yeah no city this is no this is fixer i have a question Yeah, I got questions too.
So the person you're describing is like the fucking villain in a nightmare.
Yeah, he's like a sleep paralysis demon.
And you're like, hey, buddy.
Hey, nightmare buddy.
Want to go to the reunion together?
No, he asked me and I'm not going to say no.
He's my friend.
I'll go with him.
The Fixer?
It sounds like Harvey Keitel in Pitt Fiction.
Yeah, The Fixer.
That's right, actually.
We do call him The Fixer.
That is his full name.
I love it.
And it's...
Capital X, lowercase X, highercase X, lowercase X. Two Xs?
Is it two Xs?
Three Xs, like in that movie.
Fuck, okay.
X, big X, X. It's a song name fixer that Metallica does.
Ever since you guys said Duhok, I think of Duhokmish by Rammstein.
Yeah, that's the only thing I'm thinking of.
Oh, he likes them too.
Good, good guy.
Uh...
All right, so Prince of Persia might be improved.
Valve confirms Steam Machine will be priced like a PC with the same level of performance.
We did talk about this a little bit last week.
This is a little bit of a focal point ongoing from the announcement of this.
Every time it comes up.
Price is now the first and only real question anyone continues to talk about.
We are getting trickling information about this of hey, it's not going to be priced like a console, it's going to be priced like a pc, something that you know valve told you guys, i think to your face right, jan and dan.
They kind of basically said like this is a pc, you should think of it as a pc.
They continue to say that now they're like getting maybe a little bit more specific.
Although we certainly cannot glean a price from this, they said, if you were to build a pc with similar performance, this is going to be priced like that.
Uh so sir, Starting to wonder my my early thoughts on the, you know, 512 slash, two terabyte versions being 650 and 800, might be a little.
I'm going up to I am also going up.
And I was between 600, 800.
I think now I'm like, yeah, 800 to 1000 is kind of where I'm at now.
Yeah, it's like you could see why it might cost a thousand.
But boy, it just seems like we're taught like the market penetration is going to be pretty limited at four figures.
Right.
Yeah, I'm trying to think like a laptop with similar specs.
Those are probably like $1,200 to $1,400, right?
So I think you start taking out some of the miniaturization.
Obviously, they are still miniaturized with this thing.
It's really small, but they're not going to have their costs skyrocket because of that.
They probably thought about that.
Take out the screen, take out the battery, save some money here or there.
We're probably talking about 800 if we're lucky.
So we'll see.
We'll probably get information on that here relatively soon, but they probably come in the new year and talk about the price then, right?
We're not going to get enough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At least the Ram's real cheap these days.
Yeah.
Yep.
They pre-bought it.
They pre-bought all the Ram.
They will at least be able to command large orders where they could save some money on their components.
They're going to be a big vendor for whoever they work with, but that's not going to do enough to push those RAM prices down.
Okay, let's see here.
Nintendo starts removing player-made Bikini Chef from Kirby Air Riders.
I can't believe Nintendo is censoring the players.
Nintendo's woke!
Actively removing player-created machine designs from the Kirby Air Riders machine market.
Something we didn't talk about at all, but there's a market where people can make their own machines and sell them to each other with in-game currency.
That depict the character Chef Kawasaki in a bikini.
The meme originated from 2020 fan art and players quickly used the My Machines mode, which allows for creative asset manipulation, to upload their own Bikini.
Chef Kawasaki.
I thought Mike's nipple design was even more risque.
Yeah, right.
I put on the market.
I'm not stupid.
That's right.
You're not attempting fate there.
Yeah.
Honestly, I think it's not even that lewd.
It's just funny.
Come on Nintendo.
Why?
Why is uh nintendo trying to body shame chef kawasaki?
Yeah, that's a good point.
Why are they evil?
Yeah, i think there was.
There was a multiple variations on this.
Early on, there was one in a micro bikini that was very skinny.
I think they got rid of that one.
I think the one in the normal size bikini is still on the store, and then, of course, since then, people have added a bunch more.
Um, there's a gold rush now on bikini.
Chef kawasaki.
Yeah uh, Nearly half of US kids want in-game currency this Christmas.
I was going to ask you guys, if someone got you like V-Bucks, would you be upset or would you be excited?
As an adult man?
As an adult man.
I'd be into it.
I'd be into it.
I guess, I mean, there's worse gifts.
I don't have those at Robux.
Yeah, I don't want Robux.
Scratchy's like fucking 30 bucks.
I'm still looking at Scratchy in that store every day.
That is insane just how much I care.
It's like 26, 27 or something like that.
It might as well be 30.
Scratchy comes with Itchy as a little companion and he follows you around and you get the axe.
Um, if it was poochie, we'd be having a different conversation.
I would get poochie immediately, i'd be, i'd be right there.
I didn't get mo.
Like look, i bought the battle pass and i, which was basically like buying missions and games so i could unlock the things i was.
I did that.
I got my homer like i gotta stop there.
I looked at mo and they did the thing, because of course i have, of course i have some v bucks left over from when i had to buy the thing.
Well, If I just buy a bit more, I can get Moe.
Stop, stop.
I don't need Moe into Fortnite.
And you got, you got sexy Flanders now, right?
I got sexy Flanders.
I got normal Flanders.
I got Marge.
Yep.
I've got the like Simpsons version of the banana and the fish guy.
Oh, the professor Frank, uh, banana.
No, that, it's like missions.
That's a different thing.
I don't know.
Oh, the blinky, the blinky as a person.
Yeah.
God actually might be close to professor fake.
Maybe I should look at that.
I don't know.
Uh, make a laugh and make you think.
Yeah, all that to say, yeah, I guess I'd be okay with that.
I mean, that is the currency, though, if we're being honest.
I want to know how much of this percentage of kids want V-Bucks, right?
That, to me, is what they do.
I think they do, because I know my NFC nieces like it.
I find it a little sad.
If I was a kid, and even if I was a kid and somebody got me a gift card, a gift card to toys r us, i think that's kind of i don't know like for kids now, like that's like the main thing.
More than half kids want this.
This is, this is one of the things they are asking for.
Yeah, we do, and i think that's i.
I think it's a shame.
Well, i'm over with you, yeah.
Yeah, i mean, like you know, i think you just you just sort of shovel all that under the video game category is how i'm sort of rationalizing it.
Yeah, for me, like the, the the disconnect would have been like cosmetics in a game will never mean as much to me as a new experience or a new game.
So it's like ah yeah, I want all that money or that gift capital to be put towards getting a new thing.
But kids feel differently now.
They want to show off in the game they're playing the most.
They're just not the same person that I am.
They feel different and I think they are probably getting that same dopamine boost thing you're describing through that mechanism as well, i mean.
But i also, you know he had his birthday back in april and the kid got almost like 20 000 vbucks as a result of it and i was just like okay, this is too much, this is insane.
It's dicks, gift cards and vbucks.
That's the only thing kids get for their birthday, as far as I'm aware.
But no, like, you know, he wants new shoulder pads.
He wants to get a new stick.
Like, there are other things outside of that that are like, oh, okay, that's expensive and cool.
It's like a good stocking stuffer to me.
Like, throw some V-Bucks in there.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I probably will do exactly that.
The kids play, it'll get them Minecoins or whatever, Minecraft.
So I'll get them that.
What does a currency in Minecraft do for you?
Well, there's – so there is a store where you can buy a lot of cosmetics that the Minecraft company Mojang or Mojang, I don't know how to say it that they will make.
But also there is a – it's similar to Roblox where there is a custom store where the community can create their own stuff and sell it in the store.
Yes.
Access to it, yeah.
Variations on the games.
There's mods that completely change how everything works.
There's a bunch of other creative character stuff.
But then you can also download the stuff off the internet for free and install it in the game yourself.
So that's still going in parallel to all this.
Okay.
But the kids want to get Minecoins to buy that.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering, because the version of Minecraft I have in my head is just super duper open.
You just find a map or a mode.
You probably played the Java version, right?
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the kids these days usually are playing bedrock.
But then one of the reasons I talked about recently I'm building a PC for Emmy is I want to get her over to Java so that I can uh, we could just use mods and just do all the stuff.
Get all the skins. get all the skins that way.
She, too, can fight 199 Spaniards.
And befriend Chibidoki, my good friend.
All right, last story here.
Hideo Kojima pays tribute to late actor Udo Kier.
Rest in peace to Udo Kier, who passed away this past week.
The German actor Udo Kier known to video game fans as the villain Yuri in Command & Red Alert, has died at age 81.
Kier was supposed to be an OD.
They were gonna film that next year after some delays.
Not going to be able to do that.
A real shame.
Udo Kier is one of those character actors that every time he pops up, he's got that voice, right?
And that accent.
He's the asshole rich guy in Ace Ventura.
And Ace Ventura, do not go in there.
Like that guy.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Like iconic moments that you instantly recognize when you see him.
So just real rest in peace, restful trails to Udo Kier.
All right.
That does it for the headlines.
Jan, the show's back over to you.
While I was scanning through Udo Kier's IMDb, I learned that there was a Pitch Perfect spinoff TV series, and I don't know what to do with that information.
I'm just going to have to go take a quick breaky break, and then I'll be back.
Watch it all and ready to talk?
It's only six episodes.
I'll be ready to talk about emails.
Forget about me, jen.
Let's start on acapella group.
All right, when i came back from break uh before in the last break none of you were here and mike was here and as i walked up his eyes were closed so he didn't see me walk up and he was singing a song about uh, how he was all alone on the call and it was just mike.
Hey, mikey.
Mikey, you're never alone.
You're never alone.
Yeah, we're always with you.
Just like that song from Final Fantasy IX.
Exactly.
That's what I was going for.
Folks, we'll see you on the other side of this break.
Bombcast at GiantBomb.com is the email address to send your emails to.
Write in about any and everything.
You got some kind words.
You want to tell us more things about Vermont?
By all means, write away.
Bombcast at GiantBomb.com.
First email of the show comes from Tommy from Virginia.
Hey, Bombcast.
When The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom first came out, I bounced off it after a few hours.
I could tell it was a great game overall, but I couldn't get into it.
I recently got a Switch 2, though, and decided to give it another go.
I'm now over 40 hours in and having a blast.
Are there any games that you struggled to get into but eventually loved after trying again?
Sincerely, Tommy from Virginia.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, Tommy from Virginia.
Fallout 3.
Oh, really?
Yeah, Fallout 3.
That was like my first Fallout and I tried it when I got it And then it just wasn't speaking to me.
And then all of a sudden I was just like, you know what?
I'm an adult now.
I can try a thing again.
And I did.
And I finished the game.
And that got me really, uh, all, you know, caught up in the fallout business.
If it wasn't for just me being an adult and being mature about the situation, I'd never play another fallout game.
That you go romance.
Yeah.
That's stranding for me.
That's the one.
Um, all right.
Yep.
I, I tried earthbound so many times before i finally got into it.
Like i played it back when it was like a newer game.
I rented it, like on the e-shop, i think i got it.
Uh, you know yeah, on the snes classics, basically every time i had access to that game i would try it again because i thought it was a game i should like.
For some reason, i always get like a couple hours and it would fall off it and just gosh.
Sometime within the last year on nso i finally was like no, i want to play through this game.
So I did and it just totally got me this time, just absolutely hooked me, and now I am like one of those people who's like yeah, that's one of the best SNES games.
It's one of the best RPGs.
It's timeless.
It's fantastic.
It's like so much more fun to be a person who loves EarthBound instead of being a person who's like I don't quite get EarthBound.
But, yeah, it just took decades to get there.
I think... Yeah, go ahead, Jim.
It was dead cells for me.
Like, I really...
I remember Jason A. Stryker waxing poetically about Dead Cells so much.
And then, when I eventually checked it out, I could not initially like really parse out, or it just didn't feel good initially.
And then, I think a couple months later, I just it came out for the switch or I picked it up on the switch is what happened.
And then it for whatever reason, it just start to fall into place and click with me.
And I spent an obscene amount of hours in that game.
I think this happens pretty frequently, so much so that it just feels like a normal process.
So there's maybe a lot of games, but the one that maybe comes to mind is Guardians of the Galaxy, where it's like I tried it right when it came out and was like ah, it's so rote and familiar.
I don't know if I'm going to get into it.
And then I feel like later in the year not that much later though, but I gave it another try and was like you know, I just like some of these characters a little bit.
Let me see where it's going to go.
And by the end, it's like, oh, I really fell in love with that game.
Mm-hmm.
Lovely.
Fantastic.
Something that popped up last week on the podcast was Mikey talking about how we are all coated in the goat sauce.
And folks, several people have emailed in about goat sauce.
Email comes from anonymous.
Hey, bombers.
Once a week, I'm charged with the duties of transporting goat sauce.
No, not that goat sauce.
The other goat sauce milk every now and then.
I will fudge my math or get distracted by a certain podcast, and this will lead to me overflowing a tank and me being in the splash zone, literally getting coated in raw goat sauce.
I am really writing in to thank you for one of the funniest ongoing parts of my week.
At some point in July 2024, I was driving in this truck worth more than my house, transporting a volume of goat milk worth more than my car, listening to Mikey talk about his mouse mingle account on the dump truck when Bailey dropped a, you couldn't waterboard that out of me.
I was laughing so fucking hard I had to pull over until I could breathe.
When I was in a condition that I could drive safely again, I noticed I was in front of a local landmark, and now every week I can't help but chuckle when I pass it.
My question to you all do you have a unique landmark smell sound, etc.
That is a trigger for a positive memory.
Thank you for being legendary, sick cunnies.
Oh, shit.
Can I say that?
Australian parentheses positive.
Okay, cool.
Please keep me anonymous.
All right, you sick cunny.
You got a hall pass from Australia.
You're allowed to do it.
I've never heard that from an Australian.
Is that just like cunny?
It's too close to cummies.
We know it's too close to cummies.
Yeah uh, smells i.
Yeah, i definitely have this.
Um, there's like uh, like lotions that i'll like smell.
It's like be like oh, that reminds me of, like you know, the uh perfumes or whatever that steph wears, or something like that, and they'll be like set me off, be like okay yeah, that's positive.
I have a loving family.
That's pretty.
Yeah, that's the one thing you guys should know about me is my family loves me.
It's pretty sure.
Yeah, i uh, When I go to AMC now that's usually where I see movies.
It's like that smell of the concession.
When I worked there, it's like the same smell from 1999 when I was working there to now.
So it's like, oh, it brings me back to those memories of just working at the movies with my friends.
I can't think of a positive memory.
I only have a negative association with the smell of cream cheese frosting of when I used to work at a cupcake shop that I swear was haunted.
Oh, okay.
That's a good gimmick for a cupcake shop.
Their favorite gimmick was unfair employee practices and safety.
And also perhaps hazing new employees and pretending to be a secret shopper or a very disgruntled customer.
Fun stuff.
I hate hazing.
Everything about hazing, the concept of it, the execution of it.
I think it's one of the worst constructs that humanity has ever created.
It's real dumb.
Do you have firsthand experience or what?
No, I don't think I've ever even done any hazing or been a part of it.
If I got a whiff that something involved hazing, I would.
Yeah, exactly.
It's part of the reason where it's like there's a million reasons why I just like.
As soon as I went to college, I was like I'm not a frat guy.
I want nothing to like.
I would actively if I had a friend in the dorms that was like rushing or pledging or whatever for a frat.
I'd be like oh, I think less of you know like, it just seems like the dumbest shit.
It is like stuff, the whole culture.
You know, people like I have agreed to let these people humiliate in the, you know, demean me for their pleasure so that I can be in their club.
And then eventually do that to others.
That's the thing.
It's like, well, someday I'll get to be the one who pretends they're better than other people.
I'm like, cool.
You have fun with that.
Mike Minotti, do you have the email or the run of show in front of you?
This is one you're highlighting right now.
Would you like for me to read?
I put my glasses on.
I think I'm done emanating so much body heat that I fogged them up.
I would like you to read it.
And this is the last email of the show.
Yeah, another Australian.
Hi, guys.
I was really excited for Hades 2, hoping for a deep dive into some of the more obscure characters from Greek mythology, which the game has definitely excelled at.
But unfortunately, they completely looked over one of my personal favorites.
It's not mentioned much, but Achilles actually had a younger brother named Baphatis.
And like his older brother, their mother dipped him in the river Styx as well.
She held Achilles by the ankle, but Bafadi's was held around the groin, so that's where his weakness was.
That's everyone's weakness.
Everybody's heard about Achilles' heel, but I bet none of you know about Bafadi's nuts.
Oh, oh.
That's pretty good.
Instantly a better joke.
LMAO, gotcha.
Lots of love from Stefan in South Australia.
Thank you, Mike, for reading that email.
Oh, man.
It wouldn't have hit the same because I read it before.
Right.
No, I get it.
I know we had to do that.
I did not see it coming.
That is not an example of hazing.
No.
No, that's friends, like, prodding one another, which is fun.
No, that's the good stuff.
There's a difference.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shout out to Australia.
Bombcastagiantbomb.com. is the email address to send your emails to.
Thank you to everyone.
We've been getting a lot more emails as the weeks progress, and I feel like that is a sign of good vibes.
So I hope you are enjoying the podcast out there.
It means a bunch to me specifically because, gosh, it weighs on me.
Mr. Minotti, hit me with some YouTube Super Chats if we got any.
Oh, that's a thing that I do too.
Yeah, I do read those.
Absolutely.
I have got those ready to go.
They're right here.
I'm so excited staring at them instead of reading them for a moment.
You're not stalling at all.
BoatNight2346 says, Are Resident Evil games Metroidvanias?
I mean, not really.
It's like Zelda games Metroidvanias, right?
They're similar.
There's other games that have backtracking and keys, but they're not quite Metroidvanias.
I don't even know if I can articulate that.
Here, right?
I think it's because there's no platforming.
I think you gotta have platforming.
That's the difference between the Zelda and Resident Evil.
Are there weapon keys in Resident Evil?
Like, weapons that unlock?
I think, no, that's the issue, right, is that it's just keys.
Although that's a bit of a problem.
Another problem I was having with Metroid Prime 2 is that almost all of the upgrades I got felt more like keys essentially, than like the other.
They have to balance it.
They have to be both right.
Yeah, it's like okay.
Yes, it's like okay.
Yes, this dark beam uh, is a weapon, but also the most important thing is that it opens up the dark doors.
That's why it actually matters.
Um, i mean, the super bombs are always kind of like that, like who uses super bombs in combat?
You use them to open up the super bomb exploration.
Yeah uh, on drace R305Miami says disappointed in Dan and Jer for running away from the grind and missing quote unquote the dance stream.
Still love you.
Cowards!
Also when you put out your Xmas tree or, in Jeff's case, your 20 Xmas trees.
Mine's going up right now.
But yeah, you two are cowards.
It's okay.
I still love you, but you know, you're cowardly.
You disappointed us.
For what it's worth, I do dance at Alex's house.
Oh okay, that's not the same though, because did you dance?
It did?
Did alex put on sexy?
And i know it?
No, but there was just like a lot of like europop, heavy metal, like i was, i was moving for five hours like, for sure, dance if you pay you.
I was just, i was, i was going to go back.
Oh well, i don't.
I think the archive there is no archive.
We're working on that actually, but yeah, we're working on a solution.
Maybe Yeah, you could see me moving.
I'm moving for five hours.
So you guys got to catch up to me.
I'm just saying there will be an opportunity where all of us will be together in person.
So maybe we just dance.
And there's an opportunity that I won't cancel Just Dance Plus.
More so that he'll forget about it.
But... Accumulatively in my life, I wonder if I've danced more than one hour.
In your entire life?
I don't think I have.
Like...
Like a wedding?
It's my mic.
Can you hear all this?
I'm just going to stop talking.
Alright, let's talk about Dan even though he can't talk.
Yeah, this is great.
For an hour?
There's just no way, man.
There's just no way.
That's crazy.
I didn't dance at all until probably my first time dancing was at a wedding.
I think my sister's wedding in like 2019.
The first time I ever danced.
And it's only been at weddings, and it's been like five times for maybe like a song or two, I think.
So I think probably less than an hour.
I guess what we need to do is find out what qualifies as dancing.
Sure.
Sure.
I mean, this, right?
It is like you know that's.
I don't know what to do with this information.
I just think it's a little.
I think i don't know.
I just feel like you just say kansas, move on, right?
No, people don't know, because in college, like people would always go to the clubs and go to the dance floor isn't footloose a kansas story.
Yeah, but it was illegal to dance there.
Yeah, but that was the whole overcoming the problem, right.
I just don't know what to do.
I just don't, like everyone else goes out there and they're doing all these crazy moves and stuff.
It's like, how did you like, how do you know what to do?
Oh, you mean like the line dancing?
You just go to the bars and... No, not line dancing.
This is like the same thing that he says about D&D.
It's like, you're allowed to just do your own thing.
Like, yeah.
Here's the thing.
I'm a terrible... I would be awful at improv.
I...
I just know I would be fucking terrible.
I doubt that.
No, no.
Yeah.
I don't agree with that either.
I think you're wrong about that too.
No, we tried like a, an episode of replay.
Once a game informer was like a gimmick episode where it was like us in the future.
So it was like replay 2050 or whatever.
And we're just like kind of play future versions of ourselves.
And I just deer in headlights, had no idea what to do, like i can be funny just being myself on a thing.
That was then dan, you're a new hole, you're a brand new dan.
Now i kind of i don't think i can do improv.
No way.
I've never.
I've never danced.
I like dancing.
It was fun, we had a good time.
When we got done i, i think all three of us were like we feel better, we felt good because you Feels good.
Dancing feels good.
Yeah, to move around.
Natural.
Listen, I love dancing.
All right?
Honey, I love dance.
Any and every opportunity I get to dance, I'll dance.
Just dance, baby.
I can't not dance sometimes.
I wish I could.
It seems fun.
People seem like they're having a good time.
Yeah.
The only thing about me is the way I walk.
Exactly.
Yeah.
When I hear a sort of... Oh, yeah.
I can confirm.
I was dancing.
We danced up a storm at Chuck's wedding.
Yes.
Dancing.
I believe.
You can't... If I hear some sort of beat in the distance, I cannot not bop my head to it.
It has to happen.
I'll do that, but that doesn't count.
Like, I'll do some of this, you know?
It's rhythmic.
It's the early signs of dancing.
Like...
If you're capable, the hips got to get involved.
Get those hips going, man.
Get them going.
All right.
This is going on the timer, Dan.
We saw that.
Start it.
All right.
Kono.
Five more seconds of dancing.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
He's hitting the floss, everyone.
Oh, yeah.
You just keep dancing there, buddy.
You look like a bad Frankenstein.
He looks like the Chef Kawasaki star, actually.
Yeah.
Yeah, our next super chat.
Conan Kosama says Jan Jonathan Bailey voices a character in Final Fantasy XIV.
That's true, he's Garahatia.
I love that.
Oh, he's good.
Yeah, yeah, that's a good character.
I love Jonathan Bailey.
Yeah, yeah, I'm glad he has success because he will always be Garahatia to me.
I discovered that Waterboy in Dispatch is the guy that did that funny Lanky Kong video where Lanky Kong listens to the DK rap for the first time.
That's one of my favorites.
And so, yeah, it was people like Joe Hever.
I'm like, I recognize that name.
And then I looked it up.
I'm going to watch this again.
That's a funny bit.
What a funny idea.
I just love how positive this is.
Everyone's favorite traits.
All right, let's listen to my part.
That's so true, man.
He's the leader without leaving nothing.
Oh, man.
By the way, we graduated from my mic not working to now.
It's just doing a high pitched sounds into my ears directly.
I think the government is attacking day with like electric beams.
The Democrat clouds are right over his house right now.
The woodpeckers have begun their next stage.
Yeah, you thought they were always on my roof.
All right, once again, we got one more here.
Zombie Porn says, shout out Jan, Mike, and Grubb for just dance TMing last CPF.
You guys showed the world that there are three people at Giant Bomb who have rhythm.
Oh, we have rhythm.
Oh, thank God.
Rhythm.
I thought he was going to say we didn't.
Yeah, no, we're good.
We're good.
We're set.
We're heroes.
Fantastic.
Thank you, everyone, for the YouTube Super Chats.
What we got going on the rest of this week, boys?
Nothing is what we got.
That's not true.
That's not true.
We're doing a play club.
I know.
This is a whole thing.
I have it all prepared.
Come on.
You're a liar.
You're a fucking liar, Jim.
How dare you say nothing's happening?
Because then this is where we build it up and it's like...
But after this, a little after this, we have a Tuesday Blight Club Tuesday.
That's right.
Before Mr Minotti leaves for his little vacay, he's going to hit the Hollywood back lots and hit some Hollywood back behind the scenes.
It's not.
Cunnies no, you can't say you're not australian, you don't have permission.
He said it like five times and no one batted an eye.
I thought he would.
Just i thought he would understand why he can't say it more.
The more he said i thought it would feel bad to him.
But he can't call anyone, that he can't use it against someone.
But i think if he's just stating the word out loud, jan can get away with it.
I'm gonna start whenever we're in person together, i'm gonna start entering a room and I'm going to start saying where the Connie's at.
Stop it.
No, you're not going to say that.
Yeah, Jan, do it.
Oh, my God, Dan.
What is happening?
Dan, just.
He's derezzing.
All right, Dan.
We should just kick Dan.
No, don't leave the call.
Just mute yourself.
We'll finish the show.
Mute yourself.
He's getting derezzed.
Everyone.
And Tomorowska super chat real quick says, yeah, Grub Mike and Jay kick ass.
Thank you so much, Antonio.
Shouts out to Antonio.
Wednesday in place since we're doing it.
Dan, you don't have to floss, okay?
He has to floss.
We have a Best of Darkest of Dance popping off, edited by Derek Stone.
Thank you, Derek.
Popping off on Wednesday.
Because we are taking Thursday off, we're going to be rebroadcasting an older episode of The Dump Truck.
Which one it'll be?
It'll be a surprise.
The re-dump.
The re-dump.
And then also this week, we got a couple of fun little vids popping off.
Cut together this stuff from grub snatch.
That is going to be a premium video for the premium members out there.
It's going to be a little thing.
It's going to be a silly, silly little thing.
Not a full-on video uh, just like a little horror trailer i cut together and then later in the week friday two things popping off on friday the new york vlog of our time together hanging out, hanging and clanging in new york.
Uh, eating some za, doing some other miscellaneous things.
We're Going to finally pop off in New York as well.
Mike Minotti, tell me about store.giantbomb.com this Friday.
Yeah, keep an eye out starting tomorrow, everybody.
We are going to be doing a Black Friday sale on the store, store.giantbomb.com.
So there will be a store-wide discount, but there will also be some items that will be more heavily discounted.
Discounted some inventory clearing that we are trying to do there.
There's also going to be one new item.
One new item that's going to go up to sale.
Something that we've actually had ready to go there.
And now's the time we're going to show that one off.
So keep an eye out.
Should be some exciting stuff.
Going to be some good discounts.
So this will be your time to stock up on your mugs or your aprons or your shirts.
You know All the fun new stuff and a lot of the old stuff too.
So plenty of sales.
Keep an eye out.
Store.giantbomb.com.
Probably going to run through until Monday, everybody.
And folks, again we are having a site freeze next week as Chuck migrates everything over and does the finishing touches on the new website, as we punt the old website into the stratosphere.
So again, a site freeze will be happening next week.
If you're subscribed to the RSS feeds, you're a premium member there, don't worry.
You'll still be able to get all your hot audio of premium free stuff.
Gang, Thanksgiving this week.
Am I forgetting anything, by the way?
That sounded pretty comprehensive.
There was maybe another video we were working on, but maybe you don't want to announce that yet.
Or maybe you did say that.
I can't remember.
Maybe it's true.
Yeah, new york.
Okay, i heard you say that.
Okay, i heard it.
I was uh paying attention to something else more important, my bad.
Oh yeah, you fixed it way better.
That's actually what i was looking at.
It was like dan was in chat saying that happened.
I'm like what?
Okay, it's just maybe some electronic interference there.
It's probably usb weirdness, because usb is power.
Yeah, Yeah.
Antonio Morales from the Super Chat says, Merge Master, can I get some tall clothing?
I don't know.
I'll look into it.
Mike only respects shorties.
Sorry, buddy.
Shouts out to my short kings, queens, and NBs out there.
And short grandmas out there.
Holler.
Anti-water club.
Anti-water drinking grandma.
Anti-water club.
Anti-water water club.
All right, folks.
Well, hey.
Happy Thanksgiving to those that are celebrating that in the States.
And I will speak for all of us here that we are thankful for you listening at home.
Premium members, non-premium members, for however long you've been rocking with us, we are deeply, deeply appreciative for all y'all.
Shouts out to Chuck.
Shouts out to Sean.
Shouts out to Will Crosby doing our social stuff.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Mike.
He's been Dan.
He's You at home have been absolutely gorgeous.
And maybe I'll stop saying the Australian word.
You should.
I think I might.
We'll see you next week for another episode.
Thanks for being so brave.
I love you.
Goodbye.
