Everybody, it's Tuesday, January 27th, 2026.
Welcome to the Giant Bombcast, episode 925.
I'm your host, Jan Ochoa.
Joining me, co-captain of the ship, Jeff Grubb.
I just got a terrible feeling.
Dan's been in a really good mood going into the podcast.
He's been sharp.
Dan, you've been very funny so far.
Thank you.
This is going to be a good show for you.
I just realized there's a strong chance that, like since yesterday, he beat my score in sectarian and that's going to ruin my life.
So, okay, I got chills over here.
Let's just see what happens.
I wish that was the case, Grubb.
I'll tell you now.
You got nothing to worry about.
I tried.
Okay, shwoo.
All right.
Thank you.
For now.
We will talk about something in a bit that maybe could change things, but we'll see.
That's right.
You heard him just now, folks.
He is the looming threat to all of your high scores and your best times.
Dan Reichert.
That's me.
Hello.
Hi.
The human ramekin.
That's right.
The holder of all things.
Jeff Bacalar.
Oh, Jan.
What an intro.
The human ramekin.
What's a ramekin?
What's a ramekin with you?
I believe a ramekin is just like a small condiment container.
I don't really know.
That's the definition.
That's just what I've extracted.
So you're saying I should Google it.
Okay.
I was thinking of Rummikub, which can't be what you mean.
Ooh, Rummikub.
No, Rummikub.
Rummikub.
You know the game?
No.
The little domino things with the colors and the numbers on them?
Rummikub.
Oh, no.
I think I'm right.
K-U-B?
You're right.
A ramekin sounds like someone's last name more than it sounds like a fancy little ball.
Hey, I'm Josh Ramekin.
I'm the star of the new Spider-Man.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh, I went to high school with Barry Ramekin.
Oh, how's he doing?
Oh, he died?
Oh, that sweet little ramekin?
Oh, he's such a good boy.
Oh, the ramekins.
And speaking about sweet, good little boys, he's not one, because he's the bad boy of games media, Mike Minotti.
Hi, I'm Mike Minotti.
It's still snowing.
I'll choke the chicken.
Oh, all right, Mike.
Nice, nice, the soundboard's back.
That's how you pass the time in the snowstorm.
Listen, calling for another fucking storm boys really, really.
What does that mean for all of us?
For me, that's okay.
Sure, that sounds like a sin being punished or something.
I don't know.
It's a hyper specific forecast, but i trust it nonetheless.
How are y'all doing with like the snow is?
Are y'all okay?
I haven't left the house in days.
Like, yeah, I'd like to.
I'd like to go out there.
But it's not just a lot of snow.
It is also like four degrees now.
Like it is as cold as it's going to get.
It's weird hearing you guys maybe having it worse weather-wise than we do right now.
We were like in the like negatives and stuff, but it's not that crazy this time of year, uh for that.
But like you guys have the snow that missed us, that went south of us.
Oh really yeah, we got.
It was a huge band like that kind of went like from the, the texas up through the northeast and it kind of missed minnesota for the most part.
Yeah yeah yeah, i had some neighborhood kids shovel my driveway yesterday so that was good and i'm like, well now uh, I don't want to brag or get yelled at for overpaying.
I don't know.
There's like three of them.
They asked for 45 and I was like, that's ridiculous.
I get, yeah, I gave them 80.
I was like 45.
Mikey, good for you.
Actually, I got a question, right?
Hell yeah.
Like maybe the nineties, maybe early two thousands.
If you ask kids to run errands for you like that, I know you'd give them cash.
Did you like for Bob Cratchit?
Is that kind of what we're talking about here?
Yeah, but Mike, how did you pay them?
Is there a person in your life that you know that has more cash on him than Mike Minotti?
No, never.
Mike's flush.
He's ready to go.
I have some money.
He's ready to go.
I could also see you giving out, like, Sacagawea coins, too.
And being, like, the fucking asshole.
When my neighbor kids kind of started, like, shoveling mine, I wasn't even really asking.
They just kind of started doing it.
That's fine.
I was like, well, I don't have cash.
Can I Venmo you guys?
And they didn't have that.
So I had to go to the store and go to the ATM and get cash for them.
And just to make it clear that no good deed goes unpunished, and I've been thinking about this too.
Someone's chat did mention that 80 isn't divisible by three.
Well, they can fight about that themselves.
Exactly.
No, you create an opportunity for them to.
They're doing a bunch of driveways.
There's going to be a haul at the end.
They're going to divide by themselves.
So it's fine.
You're like, thanks for solving my problem.
Here's a problem of your own.
Yeah, exactly.
There's going to be disagreements in a business.
They got to figure this out now.
That's great.
Two of them killed the other one.
Mikey, were these siblings or just a collection of kids?
And to be clear, more like teenagers.
I think it was, I think they were friends.
Because I just felt like, because randomly on Facebook of all things, there's someone just like hey, my kid and his friend is out shoveling driveways.
Message me if you want them to do your driveway.
I was like, okay, I'll do that.
And then like, sure enough, they just show up at my door.
I'm like, all right, I'll get to it.
What do you mean Facebook?
What are you talking about?
There's like organization stuff on Facebook.
How old are you?
I mean to be fair.
If you want to, if you want to do something in your town, the facebook groups for your time are better than just about anything else.
So yeah, is that it was like uh, a fake, like your, your town group or something?
Yeah, there's like a town group in facebook and there are sometimes some permanent, pertinent information in there that look, i don't like it.
But yeah uh, stuff can be organized in there and there's like it's weird because there's like I wonder if every town's like this.
There's like a couple people who have somehow become almost more important than the mayor because they're in charge of the Facebook group for the small town.
And they wield an unbelievable amount of power now, right?
Like they're always talking about social issues and like oh, we're going to have to maybe call some numbers and whatnot.
And I think people fear them in government.
It's interesting.
That's funny.
Oh, man.
Movies that reflect small town culture of this time is going to be very weird when they have to include the Facebook group.
It'll all be like War of the Worlds.
The Ice Cube one, right?
Of course.
The only one that matters.
Was that last year?
Wait, was that last year?
Yes, I think so.
Oh, boy.
Wow.
Have you guys tried using Amazon drones to get you stuff?
No, not yet, and i will.
When i do, i will definitely try to hack them, but uh, we are mere minutes away, i think, from the chris pratt like reprise of that whole idea.
I felt bad for rebecca ferguson being in that.
I saw her in the trailer.
You are better than this rebecca ferguson.
She had just like taking a check during the pandemic.
Right, that had to be what that is.
So yeah, in which case.
Yeah, good for her.
But yeah yeah, is she the voice of the ai?
She is the ai.
Yeah Yeah, yeah.
She's very good in Glow.
I've liked everything she's been in.
Yeah, she's fantastic.
All right, folks, we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on this.
I know that we're a video game podcast, but there are real things happening in the world.
I know that we're all upset.
We're angry.
We're scared.
I'm terribly angry about what's going on in America.
And I know that we all feel lost, so lost, when people are being persecuted and outright murdered for exercising their rights as Americans to protect their neighbors.
I myself, I'm a child of immigrants.
I live in an area that is densely populated with immigrants and people of color.
And I'm not going to lie when there is a fear in the back of my head where something could happen to my parents, my neighbors or even myself.
But the thing that I hold on to is hope and the knowledge that there are more of us than there are of them.
I know that we are stronger together.
We've seen our friends and our peers across the industry do what they can to support the folks in Minnesota and other organizations mobilizing to help all of those affected.
So we are also joining that with our friends over at MinMax.
And Dan, if you could let the folks know at home how we are going to collab and team up with their dear friends over there.
Well, speaking of mobilizing, Jeff Grubb, how would you feel about getting on a plane on Friday?
I'm feeling pretty mobile.
Yeah, let's do it.
I can blow up a mattress for you.
You'll stay here.
And at 5 p.m.
Central on Friday, Grubb and I are going to go over to MinMax's studio.
And we're going to join up in the same room, me, Jeff Grubb, Ben Hanson, and Jacob Geller.
And we are going to do the Giant Bomb Cross MinMax Ice Out charity stream.
We're going to be going for a while.
We got some plans here.
We're going to raise money for those affected by what's happening here in Minneapolis and Minnesota.
And by the way, you should definitely take seven minutes.
Watch the video that Hanson made and put up on it.
Incredible.
If you just need like a concise video, that's just kind of straightforward.
There's not a lot like, you know, he's not narrating over it.
He's just kind of showing what's happening to maybe send to family members or friends who don't really understand the severity of what's happening here in Minnesota.
Check that out.
Share that.
It's a fantastic video.
So we got some plans.
It's all coming together hot here.
You know, got a group chat going on with Geller and Grubb and Hanson.
Got some plans.
Look, Grubb, this is Hanson's idea.
This was not mine.
You're just going to get a full blight.
Uh, that's the plan.
You're just going to play a full blight while we're at the MedMac studio.
Do you know what it is?
I don't know.
And he won't tell me.
I talked to him this morning and I said, uh, Hey, you know, we got to do a costume.
Like that's an important part of like, way ahead of you.
So he's already got a costume for you.
I don't know.
I know the console.
I'm not going to say that.
Um, but, uh, I look forward to that.
And also, I teased the Sektori thing earlier.
I mean, hell, the nucleus of the score war of Sektori has been me, Grub, and Geller.
We'll all be in the same room together.
We'll let Hanson play, too.
That'll be nice.
Let him embarrass himself.
Sure, yeah.
Yes, yes.
So the plan is and we're working out all the details and everything it should be simulcast on MinMax, on Giant Bomb, on all the channels and everything.
Jan, you're going to chat with Hanson about that, get that all going and everything.
But yeah, multiplayer stuff, incentives, things like that.
We're going to be raising money for a good cause.
And please tune in and help.
Again, that's the Giant Bomb and MinMax Ice Out charity stream.
That's Friday, 5 p.m.
Central on MinMax and Giant Bomb's channels.
Yes, shouts out to Ben Hanson.
I have always loved the whole crew over at MinMax and that video concisely explains the situation that is happening.
And also share that with folks maybe that are outside of video games, because I feel like Ben took that into account when he made that.
Now the impossible pivot about talking about video games.
I might...
I might have a Blight Club overture to start off first, since we're a little bit on the topic of Blight Club.
But uh, you know yeah, impossible.
Pivot fuck ice, by the way, and everything, absolutely so.
Um yes thank, thank you, dan and jeff, for representing us out there.
But speaking of blight club uh i, i don't suppose i could persuade you boys to just tell me what platform this thing is on.
I, i am struggling a bit mightily with emulators.
So far the only one i got working is the pc engine cd.
I don't suppose it's that one.
I mean, do we just tell him the console?
I don't want him to know the game.
Dan, I always thought we should just tell him the console.
I don't think it matters.
It's 3DO.
It's 3DO.
Oh, that's the hard one.
No, I got to work it in like two seconds.
Okay.
Really?
All right.
What are you using?
Yeah.
Well, because RetroArch, it's not just one of the.
I can't get Opera or whatever it's called, just to work and download from Retro.
You don't need that.
I just ran it from RetroArch.
There's like... Talk to me.
Is Opera the core?
Yeah.
Or the emulator, I thought.
You need BIOS.
I think I have bias.
Talk to me.
You know, I have 3DS.
I have 3DS.
No, we looked up the cost of this game.
Keep in mind, it's a game none of us have heard of before.
My brother-in-law told me about this.
Like several meals off of families.
Wow, we're getting cheap now.
You would understand.
We can't just throw around Cuba for money, all right?
Come on.
It's more than Cuba for money.
It's more than Cuba for money.
All right.
I mean, look, I always assumed it was 3DO, honestly.
MSX.
You only know what the MSX is because of Metal Gear.
Yeah.
Yes, of course.
The only reason anybody knows about that thing.
Well, whatever.
Now I can play Rondo of Blood whenever I want to.
Good yeah, talk to me, i'll get you set up and then we'll get some games working out.
Yeah yeah, you'll you.
But but mikey, the only inside info that i have is that you're gonna look so freaking cool.
Gotta look real cool, great.
Where have they led you astray with that?
You look so cool.
Looking cool does not matter, it's still a pain in the ass.
I don't care how i look, I'm wearing a Coca-Cola shirt.
You think I care how I look?
I like, you know, I have to use this.
There is an optional, like I'm a nice guy.
I'm like there is a part of this costume that's optional that I just think would be pretty cool if you did.
But you know we can't force anything.
Do you know what part I'm talking about?
I'm just like, there's no way he does it, but it would be cool.
I think it'd be cool.
I just don't... I don't know.
And I think he puts on the whole costume before we even say the game, because even with the costume you won't recognize what you're about to play.
Oh, yeah, of course.
There's no fucking way.
Uh-huh.
Is he playing Madden?
Oh, man.
I saw this thing.
This is awesome.
It's gonna be great.
I, uh... Yay.
It's tomorrow.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, look, this... The reason...
We do this is for this reaction, Mike.
So come on.
Yeah.
Why do you want me to stonewall it?
I can't.
I'm an emotive man.
Right.
It doesn't matter what you say.
Well, that's why you're getting emotional, dog.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, OK.
All right.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Why was it okay?
Now i gotta ask, why was it with me?
Suddenly all yours four consoles you have to guess from, instead of the usual?
Because there's not that many 3do games, right?
I don't think.
Oh no see, so the assumption is i would have figured it out if you said it was 3do.
Yeah, just don't be looking through like the game library, the 3d, i won't.
I know more about the 3do than most people and i still don't know what it is.
Keep knowing less.
Um, what did 3do go from being like a console, uh platform, to like a publisher?
Was that like a quick pivot or was that like a?
It was always kind of a little bit of both, because the like the 3do, the idea behind it, and i vaguely remember, is that uh, ea wanted to like, have like an open-ish platform that was separate from nintendo and then the rest of them nintendo and sega, and so 3do was going to sort of be this spin-off thing that the guy that created ea was going to have, And but they were always going to also publish games, I think.
So yeah, because my knowledge of 3DO is of them publishing very shitty PS2 games that I bought from Costco.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Battle Tanks is not terrible.
I like Battle Tanks.
Hey, I like War Jets.
I think that's what it was called.
Somehow there are 246 3DO games.
That's like almost as many as the N64.
I almost don't believe that.
Yeah, it's a little bit more than half of what the N64 has.
That's crazy.
Are those army men games bad?
No.
They're not great.
There's a couple of okay ones, yeah.
It led to Portal Runner, which everyone still talks about.
Of course.
It took over two months.
The streets are rampant with Portal Runners.
Yes, yes.
All right, moving on along.
Last week I had a promise from Grubb that this would be the last time he'd talk about Sektori for a while.
And now that promise is brought to my feet again...
This time by Dan.
Dan, what is this Hectoria update?
It is the last update, I promise.
Actually, it's not.
We're lying.
I got 15 million points now.
I saw that.
I'm upset about it.
I played a lot this weekend and did poorly.
You all have been hearing about this game a lot from us, and we want more people playing it.
We want more people gunning for our scores.
So we have 200 codes for Sectory on Steam for the next 200 new Giant Bomb Premium subscribers.
That is monthly or annual from this moment.
Let's mark the timestamp.
If you are a new subscriber to Giant Bomb, the next 200, and we'll let you know when they're gone, you will get a code for Sectory in your inbox.
Lovely.
Yes.
Good job.
And if you do that, hit me on the sub on the forums.
We'll make a thread.
And if you've got a better score than me, let me know.
And I'll come back and try to beat your score because I want more people playing this game.
Yes, absolutely.
Oh, you'll beat my score because it's bad.
Same.
You'll beat me real fast.
But I like that game with great.
It's really good.
Okay, i thought you were gonna say you like being beat like that um, and i didn't want to judge.
Hey, that's my kink.
Uh, i'm getting beaten at sectory.
That's it.
Step on me, sectory.
There you go.
That's the sound clip put on the box.
Step on me, sectory.
Uh very, very cool.
Dot com slash join.
Yes, go there, sign up.
Get your code.
Yes, we mark the timestamp for ourselves.
1223 Eastern, moving forward, 924 AM Pacific.
Chuck, no.
The thing you just said.
Also, shout out to Kimo, the developer of Sektori, for providing that.
Very, very kind of him.
And again, killer game.
We want more people playing it.
Were they impressed by my score?
Did they talk about my score?
No.
Sorry.
Didn't come up.
Somehow didn't come up.
They must have just been busy.
Okay.
Sorry.
Dan, you have been playing another game that I feel like has occupied a lot of your time, just like Sektori and going from Sektori to Sekiro.
Dan, you've been climbing the mountain.
You've been fighting guys on kites, people summoning lightning.
It is doing things to me I have never felt a game do to me before.
Like, when I beat... That was a weird way to put it, but... We get it.
A lot of people think that way about this game, including me.
Step on me, Sekiro.
Yes.
Genichiro, yes.
Mike, you were trying to phonetically spell it out in my chat last night.
Is it Genichiro?
Genichiro.
Yeah, there you go, Genichiro.
There we go.
That fight...
I've been loving this game from the beginning.
Actually, no, it's been such a process from the beginning of just like the beginning.
Okay, I'm giving it a college try, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, this is too hard.
I'm just going to try to run past everyone to like, you know, learning it, learning it, learning it.
Now I'm actually starting to get confidence in it.
And then running into things that I'm hearing are like real skill checks and things like that.
Like the Genichiro fight, the one with the lightning on top of the tower.
It's just fucking incredible.
I spent almost two hours on that boss fight just getting roasted time and time and time again.
But every time it's like, okay, I'm a little further, a little further.
Ooh, I beat phase one.
Ooh, phase two's pretty rough.
Oh, he changes that up.
Okay, when he does that, sometimes he does the sweep now and now I can jump.
Oh, I got that.
And then like, oh, I can peek into the third thing.
Oh, there's this mechanic with the lightning.
I can't figure this out.
This is crazy.
And then you figure it out and you feel like a god, like i fucking love this game.
I'm thinking about it all the time.
I'm probably like what 12, 14 hours in, or something like that.
I feel like i've got quite a ways to go.
I think i'm about to fight the monkey.
I think that's where i'm heading but um, i beat uh, i beat what?
Oh, the monkey.
I love the monkey.
I know the gimmick with the monkey, so i'm okay.
But i have been surprised, like the kite guy surprised me.
Um, but even like some of the fights that i heard were like early on, difficult things like uh, lady marmalade, i beat her without too much trouble.
You mean, madame butterfly yes, that's the one they think that's a paddington character.
No, that's a little something else.
Yeah, I think I used the Snapseed once.
I didn't even really find it that necessary.
I'm just getting.
It is exactly what I wanted when I decided to play this, where it's like okay, I want it to feel like a modern punch out.
And that is what it feels like in the best possible way.
I fought that night guy on the bridge last night and like I knew there was a gimmick to it and I was, you know, normally like with my chat and stuff.
I'm saying like, oh you, I'm not worried about spoilers here.
I know about the monkey, I know about all this stuff.
But then there's like, oh wait, I can tell there's a gimmick with this guy here.
I would like to figure it out myself.
And it's just so satisfying when you figure it out.
Um, I mean this, I really want to beat this game.
I'm not promising I'm gonna beat it yet, but like I think it's well on track to being one of my favorite games ever and I think it's wow, maybe definitely my favorite From game, or I could see it heading that way.
Like I love Elden Ring, but I never got good at it.
So like I've never had that feeling in a game where it's like, oh, I'm good at this game.
You know, I I just eat through and cheese through.
But like now I'm like I'm learning it and I'm playing it right.
And it's it's just amazing.
Did you ever play Lies of Peace?
I did not, but, like, this might, this feeling might start turning me into a sicko with this stuff.
Like, I'm curious about Liza P. I'm curious about Neo.
You know like Kayla plays a ton of this stuff and so you know I might ask her like some of her favorites.
So it's just yeah, the Genichiro fight is a real like.
That's the highlight for me, where it's like that feeling I had when I killed him and I'm like there's that moment before you're celebrating too much because it's like okay, there could be some bullshit and he comes back to life for one last gasp.
But then you see it like boom and it's like Shinobi execution and I just felt I don't know, it wasn't even goosebumps, it was just a wave of just like ah, like relief, you know, coming over me.
It's just it.
There's nothing like it.
I, i adore that game.
Amazing gosh, it's uh.
I just watching you play it, i kind of miss it.
It is the best, it's the best melee action game ever.
Just absolutely.
It feels so freaking good.
Nothing has felt quite like that since it has.
For me it's a little bit sick.
I'm gonna be playing liza p very soon probably Ooh, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
I am kind of just craving this feeling.
I got a little bit of it from Nine Souls for sure, a bit more than a little bit.
Nine Souls gave me that feeling pretty well, even though that was the game that I wish was more boss fights, even less Metroidvania.
As much as I usually love Metroidvania, in that game specifically I'm like oh no no, give me more boss fights.
Give me more two, three-phase fights.
Like you said, I love that feeling of kind of crawling and inching closer to victory and at first it seems insurmountable and you keep getting a little bit better and then when you finally climb that mountain, it feels so freaking good.
I think you can beat this game.
Um, a lot of people say this if you can beat konichiro, you can beat any boss in this game.
Uh, it's just it's, it's a matter of persistence.
You know You have to enjoy that feeling that we're talking about.
I do.
Oh, something is difficult and you get better at it.
If you're somebody that gets really frustrated at that or it kind of becomes a slog to you, then it's not for you.
But I love that kind of just learning process and that improving.
And this game doesn't have like run backs or kind of other things like some of the other Souls games either.
Yeah, i kind of get both of what you describe.
Like i get the frustration but i also genuinely enjoy the getting better thing and like it makes me feel good that, like you know, several people have told me now that like based on how i'm playing and progressing, i will be able to beat this game.
I think the thing in my head that makes me think that i i've thought for a long time that i can't beat it is watching kayla attempt the last boss fight a million times and fail at it because i know she's so good and she's like i just can't beat this boss.
But now that I know she was playing that entire game with like six full seconds of input lag, I'm pretty sure it's not as hard as it was looking.
Like man, we got to put Kayla in something because, like that level of time dilation, she's prepared for something.
I don't know.
I think we have to keep the weights on her a little bit.
She'll be too powerful otherwise.
Watch.
Expedition 33 now, and just every one of those like chromatic bosses or bosses that like oh, we recommend level 60 party for this.
She's beating like level 18.
It's just like so.
Now I put game mode on her TV and she's like oh, that immediately feels way better.
And now she's just a nice cooking every game.
Yes.
Damn.
I always knew that she was the Rock Lee of the extended giant universe.
Yes.
God, now I want to pick up Sekiro again.
I kind of want to just play it again.
He never hasn't beat it.
I've not been, I've played a good amount of it, maybe like eight hours.
And then I was just like, just stopped.
I know I like it, but my memory of it is that it's a lot more manageable than the other from games, right?
Where it's like where I I, I found a lot of the other ones just sort of I don't know.
You don't have to like build a character in this one, so it's like you don't have to worry about like getting the right build, or like you're not worried about am I failing this because I'm under leveled?
Am I failing this because I don't have the right?
You know, I'm not using my build correctly.
It's like no, your character is the character.
So then that from that point of view, I would call this more manageable.
Yeah, Now that we know that Backbar is going to be the only one who hasn't beaten it, I'm excited to announce our new feature, Back Hero, which will be starting this summer.
Back Hero.
It's more linear, right?
I wouldn't call it linear necessarily.
There's a couple, there's a yeah, i don't know, there's a couple split paths, but it really is.
It is that whole like okay, you're not going to get somewhere, maybe you shouldn't be.
There could be a little bit of that.
There's some things that level you up, like you could go find more gourd seeds so you have more heels and you can maybe unlock like a new, even even like the like the special arts and whatnot.
None of that is as important as just getting good at parrying.
I mean, as far as the linearity thing, you know, the thing that kind of overwhelms me at times, like last night.
You know I'm going into a new area after the Genichiro fight.
And it's like, okay, well, there's that path there I don't recognize.
And here's this path down there with a monkey hanging on a tree.
And here's this tower there.
So it's like, I kind of have that, like, it's like, oh, which way do I go here?
Like, I want to do all this side stuff.
So it's like it is a little bit overwhelming to try to like okay, I got to remember that that path was there.
I'm going this way.
I don't want to forget about that because that might be important.
So like that's a little tough for me with the game with no map and no quest log or anything like that.
I just don't trust my own like memory.
And so I'm afraid I'm missing stuff.
That's the only thing that I'm kind of overwhelmed with.
The other great thing about Sekiro, you got that grappling hook.
Grappling hook.
Just sick as hell.
All right, gang.
Moving on to another game that I feel like is going to be occupying a lot of time.
Yesterday, we published a little preview of Hands-On Time with Resident Evil Requiem.
We got some Hands-On Time a couple weeks ago.
Go check out that video.
Grubb and I kind of get into the game and my thoughts and feelings on it.
But boys, I just wanted to just bring it up again.
This game is going to bang so fucking hard.
Yeah.
It's going to be so fucking cool.
If folks haven't seen the video, just real quick.
They are basically mashing up RE4 remake with Village.
Fuck.
When you were playing as Leon S Kennedy.
You feel emboldened in such a way, in such a fucking badass.
Because...
This motherfucker traded in his knife for a Porsche, a Hamilton watch, and a hatchet.
That's a pretty good deal.
All three things which were prominently featured and displayed in my little demo.
Is the hatchet branded as well, like the watch and the Porsche?
It is not.
Supreme.
Yeah.
ICPs.
I'm glad we all had our own joke for that.
We all tried.
Chat, whose was your favorite?
I was the one who said REI.
Vote now.
Hit star seven.
Vote for Gary Paulson.
I did like Bacalar's Supreme Hatchet.
That would be pretty kind of sick.
Yeah, that would roll yeah um, but yeah, you are.
You can parry as leon, you can sneak up and do stealth kills as leon.
Um, and like we showed off in the video, a lot of the kills that leon can do are like context sensitive.
So if you like Boop someone, if you shoot someone and they wind up kind of staggering across like like a wall, a corner, a pillar, and you get the melee prompt to finish them off or to do a melee kill, you'll take advantage of whatever they are like stuck on.
And the thing that we've brought up several times now is in the showcase.
We saw that there was a zombie doctor wielding a chainsaw.
In my demo.
When I shot the dude, he dropped the chainsaw, but the chainsaw was still on and whirring.
So it was just circling around the floor going crazy.
I tried to pick it up at first and it cut Leon's ankles and hurt me.
But then another zombie picked it up.
And as she was about to swing at Leon, as she like arcs back, the chainsaw gets stuck in a different zombie.
This game is going to be so freaking crazy, y'all.
Yeah, that segment right there just is the thing that keeps sticking with me.
It's like oh, there's so much programmatically happening with the physics and the weapons and the zombies that that you could see why they wanted Leon in there as well.
They didn't want to just do one or the other.
It's like we need the kind of action stuff to show off all these systems that we're building.
And that's exciting.
Yeah, and for folks that would miss the RE7 RE Village gameplay that is all prominently featured with Grace.
That is all first-person, but you can't switch to third-person.
In Grace's gameplay, you're going to get a bunch of puzzles.
She isn't as kitted out at least to start, maybe as Leon is.
So you do have to be a little bit more precious with ammo.
But...
Grace has this mechanic where she has these syringes that she can suck up infected blood, and I don't know how the science is.
She just does science, though.
Bullets and health and these injector thingies out of blood.
How that works, I don't know.
But it's fun.
It's cool.
I don't know if every environment is going to be shared, but at least in that opening segment, at the psych ward, mansion place, it is a shared environment that Grace and Leon are traversing together.
So whatever Grace doesn't take care of, Leon is there as the janitor to clean it all up.
Yeah.
It's interesting to see like, just how much they are committed to the two different play styles, to the point where like, Grace has more like the again Resident Evil 7 and 8 inventory system and Leon just has the Resident Evil 4 inventory.
I find that almost, that's kind of fascinating.
Does all that still feel cool and like it's fun switching, or is it a little strange like oh, there's two games in one here?
It's kind of weird to switch between them.
I think tonally, the way that they're doing it makes sense where, like the characters, Because we've come to learn at this point that, like Leon, is just a badass right.
And coming off of Seven and Village, we're kind of just attuned to how those Resident Evil games play.
And I don't think it's...
I don't think they clash at all.
I think it's a good mix, at least how it's been paced so far.
Because at the end of Grace's segments I was kind of feeling a little bit like tired at how scared I was and how tense I was.
And all of that gets solved because then you get like a bombastic Leon section afterwards.
You can see it in the video we put out, but there is like this gigantic blobby, big boy, goopy dude that is roaming the halls and with some of these bigger enemies they're not just static, so you may encounter a big boy as grace in one part of the map, but that guy is roaming around, he is like constantly moving around, so you may see him occupy a different hallway, be in another room doing his own thing.
And you can't really do anything to him as Grace.
You just got to run the other way or just stealth your way out of it.
But then you encounter that big boy again as Leon, and from the fucking top rope Leon just throws a hatchet straight into that dude's noggin and it is just absolutely satisfying.
This game's out in, what, three weeks?
I think a month.
A month?
Basically a month.
It's February 27th, a month from today.
Literally a month.
I cannot wait.
What?
My other question is kind of about like the setting.
You're in like a hotel, at least in what you were playing.
Is that right?
Yeah, it's like.
It feels like it's a psych ward that also doubles as like a fancy mansion, because some of the zombies you come across are like doctors nurses patients, and then like what looks like hotel guests or something.
Yeah.
I don't know if this is the only say in the game, but is the setting kind of working for you?
Does it seem like it might have as much juice as the Raccoon City Police Department or the Spencer Mansion or the castle in Resident Evil 4?
I'm getting the vibe that this isn't the main location that we're going to be at the whole game.
Because at the end of my demo segment, I had already explored the whole map that was presented.
So I'm assuming that we're going to shift locations or at least another part will be unlocked.
But yeah, I didn't get the vibe that this was like, oh, we're still here.
This place is boring.
It was great.
It was very captivating the whole time.
Cool.
Speaking about Resident Evil, Mikey, you've been playing Resident Evil 7.
Yeah, I played through that game this weekend.
Had a good time.
I did not play this one back when it came out.
Well, I played it once at the E3 it was at, and only in the VR demo.
And I was so scared that the poor booth attendants there basically had to hold my hand the entire time.
And I think when the game came out, there was a lot of hype about how scary it was.
I was just like, nope, not going to do it.
I don't know.
I'm a lot better with scary games now.
I don't find them as scary.
Yeah, there are some things in your life not many, but there are some things where it is almost as easy as a switch.
You can't tell yourself to stop being like.
You say this thing about yourself so much that it must be true.
You think you're afraid of scary games.
Then I play scary games and I'm like, That's a video game still, really.
It's fine.
Especially if I'm streaming and I don't know.
Something about that.
I bet it's the same if you're playing it with somebody else in the room.
It's not quite as scary.
You can get through it.
And you know, this is definitely probably the scariest Resident Evil game I've played.
But even still, it was mostly playing a video game.
And the stuff that made it scary was fun.
Even jump scares used to be like well, it can be scary, but it better not have any jump scares.
And now jump scares are sort of fun too.
There's like one moment where i really let my guard down.
It was where i was in the house where the mother is, and i'm like ah, she's over, i know where she is.
She's on the other side.
I'm fine, i'm like walking around, i'm talking to chat.
I go upstairs, he just she just jumps out in front of me and i legitimately just screamed.
I reflexively paused the game and I was just like oh,
But yeah, it was fun.
My heart was racing a bit.
I was caught off guard, and you know, it was funny how the game got me like that.
I was watching and it's like we talk a lot about how Mike is, just it's.
It's a shame that it's just so funny when he gets mad, but it's also very funny when he's scared.
So it's just like Mike emoting strongly is always very funny.
Um, but the reflexive positive thing, it brings me back to like the old PlayStation ones.
I used to go and have a sleepovers at my friend's place and we're in like junior high or whatever.
And he would literally play like, you know, if like RE2 came out or whatever, we'd rent it.
And then he'd be playing with the PlayStation in his lap.
We would play in the basement with the lights off, but he would have it in his lap.
And then like a jump scare would happen and he would literally just hit the power button.
No safer.
It's just reflexively.
Yeah, yeah.
You gotta be careful.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, it was as recent as Resident Evil 8 came out, when I was like oh, I don't play Resident Evil games, I'm afraid.
And then I had to review that one.
So playing that one, and then I think, you know, like Resident Evil 4 remake, obviously I love that.
And since then, I played a lot of these.
Now I played 2 and 3 remake.
Both good.
2 remake is just absolutely fantastic.
And I was curious how this one would stack up and, like, really favorably.
There's a lot here that's super neat, especially the setting, the whole kind of bayou, creepy family and house thing.
Resident Evil has a lot of the, oh, this enemy's chasing you thing, but Daddy really stands out.
The moment where he breaks through that wall.
Super neat stuff.
You know, everyone's talked about the boats and that didn't bother me a ton.
But the first half of the game, where you're running from daddy and the mother, is certainly stronger than the back half, with the kind of saw room moment and the boat and all that stuff.
But it's not terrible or anything.
It's just it's more interesting when you're dealing with the house of horrors and all of that stuff.
But boy, it's just.
It still is like historically interesting to knowing that this franchise was that Resident Evil six.
And then there was this and it was so back to basics.
It feels so much more like Resident Evil one.
It's kind of almost a smaller scale in a way that's really pleasant.
You are worried about things like inventory management and ammo feels like an actual survival horror game.
It's, you know. being about 10 hours long.
It's just a very fun weekend.
That's good.
Yeah.
They're, uh, tuned difficulty wise.
So, so well.
And it's like yeah, you know, there was that.
Uh, whatever they call their director whatever, a couple of weeks ago.
And then between that and watching Mike play, it's like I'm so in the mood and so ready for Requiem.
It's like, I'm setting rules for myself on this one.
It's like, Not watching any videos or gameplay of this thing.
I'm not going to stream while I'm playing this game.
I'm not going to play it on Steam Deck.
This is going to be like I play at night and the best case, you know audio and best TV.
I got lights out, you know like just I really want to get all the way into it, the way it was intended.
I'm just so excited for it.
Mike, what was your favorite weapon?
Was it the Magnum?
Yeah, there's like a system in this game where you find these collectible coins and then you go to this trailer and there's these bird cages with numbers on them.
Like, oh, I can get things with the coins.
Of course, the most expensive one for nine coins is the Magnum.
So I was saving all my coins.
I wasn't getting any of these other upgrades.
And I get the ninth coin.
I'm like, oh, great.
I got my ninth coin.
I'm not going to go back to the trailer right now, though.
I'll push ahead a little bit.
Then I immediately did a boss fight.
Then after that, it was like... oh, you're kind of a point of no return now.
And I was so mad and I was playing as a different character in a boat for three hours.
I was grumbling the whole time, only to realize that I basically had like no time left to play as Ethan anyways.
And also, once I did, they brought the cages back and I bought my magnum and I had two whole bullets for it that I used on the final boss.
I'll tell you what, it felt amazing.
I bet that was two great bullets. all right fantastic chat says uh mike goes and i quote oh i don't need the magnum right now just like i'll get that later was that the was this the one with like the the labyrinth and the marble maze stuff no wait marble maze i don't think i know what you mean the ones you rotate and a little marble yeah which one was that was that for a remake Now I'm not sure.
Oh, that's eight.
I think it's eight.
Can we get a game just of that?
I would like that.
Can we do that, Capcom?
They make those.
You ever seen a Perplexus?
No, but I want it, like, just in a creepy house.
What about a Cracker Barrel?
You can probably get one there.
Oh, I can't imagine those being challenging.
That's a pretty creepy house.
I wish the game did have more puzzles, actually.
I kind of like when there's a good amount of those in this game.
Even every once in a while.
Here there's this shadow puzzle thing where you had to move an object so it looked like a bird or something.
That was in the beginning, right?
Yeah, there's a few of them throughout.
And it's easy, but it's fun.
I could have... Oh, excuse me.
I caught Jeff's sneeze.
Traveled all the way over here.
What a cute sneeze.
Oh, my gosh.
What a horrible sneeze.
Oh, it came out of nowhere.
Thank you.
But yeah, a few more puzzles would have been nice for sure.
But yeah, very, very fun playthrough.
Gosh, I'm at a point now where I'm like, which Resident Evil have I not played?
Because I haven't done Zero, Code Veronica.
Yeah, original two, which is so supposed to be great, and six I mean, I know I don't know when, but there's still a part of it just wants to do this six playthrough before nine comes out, which is again literally a month.
So I don't know.
But boy, something about six and it's terribleness is calling to me.
It might be a play club sickness.
I've never played six and i i want to and i feel like i need to play.
No no, you don't want it's.
I played kayla and i went through all the five together and had a good time, even though five is definitely a flawed game.
Yeah, let's move on to six.
Co-ops always fun, you know and we started playing it and like there's four whole ass campaigns and we intended on doing it and like we did one of them and it was like you did silver the hedgehog.
Yeah, we did the silver one together.
Yeah yeah, uh.
And then we're just like we're, we're good, we don't like I've played all of these fucking games.
That is just the one where it's so long and it's so bad that it's hard to do.
What was happening at Capcom that led to 6?
Weird Xbox 360 era pivot to western market sensibilities and studios and They just kind of got really overboard with everything.
Should kind of be like a Michael Bay movie.
It was kind of their style at the time, like tying an onion to your belt.
So yeah, they lost their way there.
Which I mean Seven was kind of wasn't even just a pivot for resident evil, it seemed like a pivot for capcom in general.
Right, it was a big part of yeah, like let's get back in our bullshit.
Yeah, they were like the switch to hd was really expensive.
So like we gotta make, we gotta have bigger games, and the bigger games mean make western american style games, and no one wanted that.
Uh, all right, gang.
Well, moving from two spooky games to possibly another spooky game, mr bacalar, you checked out the re-animal demo.
It's pretty cool that, like I don't know.
It's cool.
Like scary games come out all the time.
It's not just Halloween.
Like it's great.
You know, I get it.
Your game's ready when it's ready.
And, uh, I played through the re animal demo.
So this is, um, Tarsier or Tarsier, the developer.
They, uh, Sure, however you want to pronounce it.
I'm assuming one way is the right way.
They're a Swedish developer behind the first two Little Nightmares games, which I enjoy.
And it's very much the same vibe.
I don't know the politics of how three separated off and these guys went their own way.
I don't know if you know the story there.
I know people didn't really like three, though, that much, apparently.
At least compared to the other two.
Yeah. three definitely feels like it was not made by them.
Uh, you know, so take that for, for what you will.
But, uh, this is, this one is very much in the same vein as, you know, OG, uh, little nightmares.
It is uh, it is just a sort of like silent, very black and white noir, like scary.
You know kind of um tag along, you know uh, what's the name when you know like like, what i go was right where you're just like uh, it's kind of like an escorting yeah, like a cinematic platformer hashtag or you know a parenthesis 3d, i think yeah, i mean, that's what you're getting here and there there's a really satisfying level of creepiness.
These you are.
You start off sort of wandering the ocean side.
You dock at this rocky sort of area and you just enter this abandoned weird, fucked up factory and you start to explore and you start to find these like skin suits of very upsetting looking creatures and before you know it, you're being chased by one, and that's kind of the extent of the demo.
I really dig it.
It's uh, i you know I don't think this is going to break the mold of what you have come to expect with these kinds of games.
And through another prism of the limbo and the inside games.
I think they're all related in some capacity.
But this felt good.
This seems to have a really solid mix of stealth and a little bit of puzzle solving.
And just the right amount of fucked up visuals that I'm.
This is now more substantially on my radar than uh, it was before.
Um yeah, i uh, and you know, i like i just don't think it's interesting.
Right like this is not departing that much from little nightmares in a way where you're just sort of like is this little nightmares three?
I think for a lot of people, this is going to be the real little nightmares three absolutely yeah, You know.
But um yeah, I uh, there's a really satisfying.
I think.
The thing here is like this is like a super sad.
They do this.
You know all their games are like little people with like oversized bosses and like oversized creepy looking deformed kind of humans.
And they're already doing that.
Uh, in like, I think this, this demo was maybe a half hour, 45 minutes tops.
Yeah, I dug it.
It's on my radar.
Re-animal.
Let's go.
I'm excited.
Full game out February 13th.
Oh, very, very soon.
While going from something with nightmarish looks to it to something that looks like it's straight out of a cartoon.
Jeff Grubb, you've been checking out Escape from Ever After.
Yeah this uh, this kind of you know, sometimes i'll open up the steam deck and i did like kind of get sector to a place where i could put it down so i'm like i should play a different video game.
And i uh went to the steam store and i saw this thing and it is like, very quickly, you can kind of clock it as oh, that is trying to be not just paper mario but specifically the thousand year door.
And uh, you know, my first initial thought is I've seen this before.
What I usually expect to happen is for a developer to be like we want to make our favorite game and we're going to spend a lot of time on it.
And I think what often happens is they spend so much time like creating all the assets and creating these settings and these characters that they don't worry about the pacing too much.
What they do is like, we just want to luxuriate in this world with our characters.
And I get that.
But it often gets to a point where it's like I am losing interest because the story or the propulsion of the gameplay is not really moving forward all that fast.
This game does not have that problem.
It just goes and goes and goes and it spends a hot like couple of minutes setting up just the story.
And then you're on to like the first main area.
And the game seems like it's going to be set up like a thousand year door where it's these vignettes you go from one little town that has a problem that you're going to get involved with to the next.
And I'm still early on, but I could just tell that this game, it has it.
It has the stuff.
It has the juice.
It has all of it.
And it looks great.
Like, they really nailed the Paper Mario vibes.
I think the characters, while looking generic because they are all fairy tale characters, like you are a prince who goes to kill a dragon.
And the dragon, of course, gets shrunk down and joins your team and has all the Bowser joining your team energy that you often get from a Mario RPG game.
Yeah, they're just really nailing all of the fundamentals here and kind of making me want to play like i don't want to put it down.
I'm very like, stuck to the game, which is not something i usually expect to feel from one of these indie homages to their favorite game.
Uh well, speaking about indie homages, you've also been like mike.
You were like we tried to say something, you were muted.
I am muted.
My bad.
I thought I was going to sneeze again at one point is why I was muted.
Sorry.
I was going to say, I love Thousand Year Door, so I'm curious to see this.
I think we're going to do a quick look at this one, right, Jeff, so you can show me this one.
That'll be fun.
Yeah, I think it's worth people seeing in person.
We'll talk it through.
It's really good.
Did you play Bug Fables?
Because I think that's the most popular of the Paper Mario likes, and it is good.
I didn't finish it, but I was enjoying that one.
Yeah, same.
I played it, was enjoying it, didn't finish it.
It was, you know, it just kind of got lost in the sauce a little bit, I think.
I think it had that exact problem, and it's not too much of a problem, because there's people who want that for a game, just to spend time steeping in all of its most familiar elements.
But this game's not doing that, and that's keeping me attached to it a little bit more, I think.
Grub going from one homage to another.
You've also been checking out Cleared Hot.
And I'm glad you said the name because I cannot remember that name.
Every single time I try to think about this game, I'm like, it's the helicopter one.
What's it called?
You wrote it down.
I know.
I did.
I had to look it up before I wrote it down.
This is the Desert Strike-like.
This is the Desert Strike-like.
Yes.
There used to be four genres, right?
There was Mario, sports, double dragon, and nuclear strike slash desert strike.
And like anticipation, like bad game shows.
Yeah, exactly.
And this was just like one of those games that was just always there.
EA always put out one of these third person isometric helicopter arcade attack action games.
And then they just went away because, you know, they kind of ran their course and they couldn't figure out how to build on top of that fundamental gameplay to keep them complex enough for modern games. this is somewhere in between where it's like it's not trying to be a full-on modern game it's trying to be like a desert strike but there are a handful of other elements to add to that complexity to keep you interested in what's going on a big part of it is uh like just a little bit of physics and a rope system so you can drop your rope and pick up uh your friendlies and they can get on the the a helicopter unless your helicopters full in which case you could pick up you know like eight people have them sit in the helicopter and then you could still pick up one more on the rope and then you kind of have to fly them back to the base but not don't fly so fast that the rope flies up into the propellers and kills your friend oh it's that sort of thing where it's like you can just pick up a truck and fly at the enemies, like stop and then let go of the truck and it'll just fly into the enemies and sort of like roll like a bowling ball through them.
It's that and that stuff is adding very much to my enjoyment of this.
I liked the Desert Strike games like they were OK.
I always wanted to play them more than I actually enjoy playing them.
This is actually hailing like in a way I always wanted those games to hit.
I consider this an unk game, mostly because my uncle commandeered my PS1 that he got me for my birthday so he could play those Desert Strike games.
Or I don't know if they were the Desert Strike games, but something similar on the PS1.
There was a PS1.
That wasn't Jungle Strike.
What were they striking on the PS1?
Now I got to look it up.
It could have been Jungle Strike.
Jungle or Soviet?
Soviet was one.
It wasn't Soviet.
Soviet Strike sounds right to me now, because I think Jungle Strike was still a Genesis game.
Jungle was Genesis, yeah.
Nuclear Strike?
Oh, Nuclear Strike won.
Nuclear Strike.
Nuclear Strike's on N64, so it must be PlayStation, yeah.
Yes, it was Nuclear Strike.
God, I remember seeing this box and hating it because I couldn't play my own games, because my uncle was playing Nuclear Strike.
That's right.
So the order was Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, Urban Strike, Soviet Strike, which is also on the PlayStation, and then Nuclear Strike which, yeah.
And that was it.
Then it just ended.
Huh?
That's too bad.
I did not play Megacopter.
Is this like a back-in-the-day PC version of this?
Yeah.
Oh, no.
Yeah, this looks like it's on Steam.
I'll check it out.
Well, speaking about the PS1, Mike Minotti's been playing a game that looks like it is ripped straight from the PlayStation 1.
You checked out Vital Shell last night on Mega Man.
Yeah, Jim, was it you who brought this one up last week?
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, so this is the game that looks like a PS1 or even Sega Saturn game with, you know, mechs and a little bit Armor Core 1-y, a little bit even virtual.
On, I'll say
The gameplay is very much the vampire survivors thing that we are walking around.
You're automatically shooting your guns.
You can aim them, but generally you let them go.
And you kill enemies.
They drop a currency that helps you level up and you get new guns and abilities and stat upgrades.
You know I'm not as much of a sicko for the vampire survivors as some of you all are, but I was still enjoying this quite a bit for that playthrough.
One thing I just, I love that early PS1 vibe.
They have the music that goes along with it too, right?
The weird kind of what people call like jungle vibes music, kind of jungle beats, kind of yeah yeah, it's just, it's just, it's so.
It's very drum and bass.
Yeah, very drum and bassy.
It was like mixed with like a piano being oddly like uh calming, so the vibes were just absolutely immaculate.
With that and all the chunky graphics and everything.
The menu looks straight out of ps1, where you have like the icons and it's on a like a route You're just rotating to look at a memory card for your save files and things like that.
And, you know, the mechs were a bit different.
Like the first one was somewhat standard, but he had a shield.
So he had a bit more defense than the other one.
It was like, oh, every time he reloads, it's a good thing.
So you're doing builds where you can reload as much as possible.
Then the third one was more of a mage.
And when he dashed, he left behind a fire trail, stuff like that.
What I really liked were the bosses actually, because at the end of each run you would fight a mech that you would then unlock.
And I thought that was actually kind of interesting.
Instead of just doing the typical, I'm running in circles around this group of enemies, now there's a boss, and it becomes a little bullet-hell-y, even as you're dodging their attacks.
So that has a nice spin to it.
So yeah, if you're looking for one of those and you have an affinity for that era of gaming, like I do, I think Vital Shell's a pretty easy recommendation.
Yes, yes, yes.
Something that is kind of a.
I don't know whether or not to recommend it, but we did celebrate it yesterday because yesterday was High Guard Day.
Hello, my fellow High Guardians.
What's up, High Guardians?
We're the High Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oh, I don't want to be that.
We can't go on your ride.
No, you're right, scares me, it's no.
But you can summon your bear, your panther, your horse out anywhere as long as there's space.
Dan grub, mikey and myself uh, attempted our best to play high guard.
It's one of those games it seems to be a whole genre now where you play with a bunch of people online and you do a bunch of boring chores and then you die.
I don't know why this is a popular genre.
I don't like it, and I uninstalled it immediately.
I was like there's something here in terms of the movement and I don't even dislike the characters.
But playing the game, I don't like that it is so empty.
The 3v3.
I'm surprised that the team that did Titanfall wouldn't have had just mobs for you to clean up while you're on your way to one of these chores that you're supposed to do.
Like, just give me a few like stupid things to shoot that i can also get crystals from, other than just hitting these crystals.
Yeah, keep your voice down with the crystals, okay.
Yeah, it's just a little, I don't know.
Maybe if I really stuck with the game, I would like enjoy this loop a bit.
It seemed a little fussy to me, especially like there's like this whole like defend your base phase in the beginning, reinforce the walls.
I'm kind of like, why don't you just do that?
Why don't you just reinforce the walls that you think should be reinforced?
Are these really interesting decisions that I'm making on which walls to reinforce?
It is in Siege, but it wasn't here. it's not here at all siege it's like a smaller contained environment right and like the phases in between matter versus here you have that defense because it's smaller you like funnel the enemies into a certain way and like you want them to come in this direction and you want to put up a a path that is resistive to them so they come the way you want and here that there's so much openness and all these different directions they can come from it's it's not the same The map doesn't feel like it... The map is huge, but it also feels like it doesn't quite matter because the gathering phase of loot and then waiting for the Shieldbreaker to spawn, most of the time, in our experience, the Shieldbreaker was somewhere inside.
So it's not like you can camp somewhere and snipe someone.
Yeah.
I wasn't like... When we were in that gathering phase...
It's not like I ever saw an enemy.
Yeah.
I was always able to just walk up to any treasure chest I saw, go get it, without any pushback whatsoever.
So why not?
I guess that is just like who's going to get on their mount and run around fast enough to upgrade their character and get a little bit of an advantage.
That's not super interesting.
I want to like that should be there should be a little bit more pushback there.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I mean, it's just – it's hard to get a sense of.
Is this a me thing that I'm just not interested in this kind of game?
Are there actual design problems here?
You know, part of me wants to be generous and think it's more of the former.
If I want to play one of these, I will play an Overwatch or a Marvel –
If I'm going to play something that's kind of hero shooter elements, I'd rather it feel more like a hero shooter.
Yeah.
Other games like this, even Apex Legends a bit, where you have a hero and they have like an ability and an alt.
And those don't even seem necessarily that important.
They kind of come up so infrequently.
It is mostly just, you know, you shoot people and you shoot people in these very specific situations situations uh yeah, i don't know.
I just i wasn't quite understanding the flow and i don't know if i felt so intrigued like, oh no, there's something here, i just gotta push through it, to want to push through it, like it feels fine, it looks great.
Oh yeah yeah uh, it can.
Like i, there's some light mantling there.
There's definitely dna from apex legends in there.
Um yeah, i didn't feel like the abilities really mattered.
I think it may have hindered sometimes.
Maybe that was just me throwing a defensive ice wall in front of myself when i meant to be pushing forward.
Um, but i think a lot of us were forgetting like, oh right, we have abilities yeah yeah, which you know.
When i had my like, knife ability, as the the kind of girl looking invisible, it's like oh, it's fun to shoot the knives out at people.
Uh, for sure, but uh, but I.
I can't imagine playing this game with randoms though, especially when the squads are only three people, because then it's it highlights instantly if you are dropping the ball or if someone's kind of like a jerk on your team.
Yeah.
It's going to be pretty obvious, like the, where the weaknesses is at.
And that's uh, I think it's going to turn off a lot of people who just want to have fun with these games.
It's free to play.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it was, you know.
I mean, there was of course a tutorial, and the tutorial was probably a little long.
You know, there is so much going on, because it's not just...
It's not just something we're talking about.
Also yeah, go get the crystals and then sell them to a guy at a shop for other things and get shields.
And you lose the shields, but you can buy more shields and upgrade your weapons.
And after the one attack phase, you can buy better shields.
Some people crave that complexity.
There's a reason why the Dota 2s of the world are super popular.
And maybe this will find a similar audience.
But that kind of thing has not really ever been my thing.
I don't know.
We're talking about trying to do Deadlock this Friday for UPF and I dipped into it and there's a lot of stuff going on in Deadlock as well, but I feel like there are different things to engage with each step of the way, much like a MOBA versus here.
There are different phases, but it's not like there's anything uh, half like major happening, uh you're, it's just like a lot of waiting right like grub i.
I didn't even think about how this game would be improved if there were just like little mobs to shoot in in between um, and by the time we were done with our time with high guard, it felt like it was more useful to actually just go mine for the crystals or vesper, whatever it was called, and rather than actually looking for different items in the chests.
I'll put it this way.
This game just had a control point mode, right?
That's something we played more like Overwatch 2.
I would probably rather play that mode.
Yeah, I agree.
I think I'm just a little bit confused early on by what the game wants me to be doing to have the most fun with it.
If it was putting us in close proximity and creating opportunities for us to use our ultimate frequently and getting a lot of juice out of that.
Like I had one character where it's like she was supposed to go forward and do recon and she has one cool special ability.
Where it's like you throw the eagle up and if people move around you, you're going to spot them and you'll be able to see them through walls.
That's fine.
Her ultimate was the eagle goes up and now you take control of it, like Assassin's Creed, and then you fire down these slow-moving shots.
I'm like, okay.
It took me a while to be like okay, I'm going to only really be able to take advantage of that in very obvious long, prolonged team fights, because if i try to use in any other situation, they're just going to run away and they'll get out of my range and the eagle moves very slowly and the shots move very slowly.
So it's like okay, this is very situational, which is fine in a lot of these games, but there's not a ton of characters and even then there wasn't like a lot of like oh, this is the obvious character you're going to go to.
If you want to feel this in the game, i was going to maybe need to spend a lot more time with it to figure that out and i just wasn't feeling the desire to do that.
Yeah, that ability in particular, i feel like is kind of hard to pull off when there are just three opponents yeah, but you want to like have them clump together and try to do the damage that way and it's yeah, that's usually not going to happen in this game.
Yeah i, i don't know it's, it feels perfectly fine, it looks yeah, i just don't think.
I also uninstalled it afterwards.
It is kind of crazy that, like A lot of these kinds of games now, they just have a very finite, limited amount of time to make that impression.
Yeah.
And then if they don't make the impression, they're kind of cooked, right?
Like, you know, it's, I don't know what to make of that.
I just think it's kind of the reality for these things, right?
I mean.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, it's rough out there, and there's a lot of discourse.
Some people are like everyone was just judging this game because they're mean and like oh, it should be given a chance and actually it's good.
I don't know.
I think there's definitely going to be some of that.
I think ultimately people are going to just react to the game based on how they feel about the game.
This game might have an audience, but I just don't know if this thing is going to appeal to a ton of people.
It might.
It might, but yeah, put the whole last thing at the Game Awards.
What did that do for this game?
Was it a good thing that it got that many eyes, or was the expectation thrust upon it unfair?
Was it a bad situation?
We'll never see the alternate reality where the other thing happened.
Is there a world where this game could be a giant hit?
I don't know.
No, I think the last thing in the Game Awards gave it the attention to give it almost 100000 concurrence at the start.
And perhaps without that exposure, it doesn't have that.
I don't think people...
I don't think people sour on it more easily because of that.
I think it had benefited from an initial sort of like attention, but I don't think it would have shaken out any differently.
I mean, I do think that the rush to be one of the reviewers for this game on Steam happens because people want to express their displeasure with it being the last thing in the Game Awards.
I think that is affecting its initial reviews.
But yeah, I don't think its fate would be all that different in any other situation.
I don't know if we as a collective would have played it.
It's not for us.
I don't think it's for any of us.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm curious to see if folks that are super into Rainbow Six Siege if like this is like tickling any of those juices.
You don't tickle juice.
What am I saying?
You can tickle juice.
All right.
Cool.
Um, if it's like scratching that itch, right.
Because I know as like siege players have been kind of upset over the last like year.
Yeah.
It's in a weird place.
I haven't played it in forever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, all right.
Well, happy high guard day to those that celebrated.
Uh, we hope you had a good day yesterday, folks.
We're going to take a quick bricky break and we will be back with the news right after this.
This is Jeff Rob.
He's got some news to share with you.
Jeff Rob.
Hello, everybody.
Let's do some news.
Let's start with a couple smaller things, just kind of quick updates from things we talked about elsewhere.
They had that Mario movie direct over the weekend and Yoshi and Birdo were both featuring in the trailer.
It was about Yoshi.
Birdo was in there.
Mouser was also in there?
Mouser?
Did it look like from Mario 2?
From Mario 2 with the glasses and everything.
Oh, I got to see this.
Wait.
Oh.
You don't remember Bowser and Fry Guy?
He's a cool dude.
Yeah.
Hold on.
With his sunglasses and his bombs?
Sunglasses and the bombs.
He was basically the Mario Universe's Unabomber.
He was very cool.
Okay, I don't know what I'm trying to connect here yet, but one of the Safdie brothers is in this movie, correct?
Yes, benny safty's bowser jr.
Of course, the other safty brother made marty supreme, and that character's full name was marty mauser.
Oh shit okay, have the hints been here this whole time?
I don't know what.
I'm trying to connect the universe.
Now i see it is this the odyssey dinosaur?
Yes yeah yeah, yeah.
Where the fuck is mauser?
Oh, just google it, okay.
Yeah, I don't see him.
Okay, I'll Google it.
Just Google Mouser in the trailer.
What I like about this trailer is that if you only saw this trailer and then were asked to name what you think this movie is called, Mario Galaxy is not what would come up.
I'd be like, oh, this is the Mario Odyssey movie.
It's the Super Mario Brothers 2 USA movie.
Shy Guys.
I see a Shy Guy in the background here.
There's a lot of 2 stuff.
I mean, there's a lot of World.
There's a lot of Odyssey.
You even have BB Mario and BB Luigi showing up for a frame.
They are holding so few things back that at this point I'm like oh, Wario is definitely, if he's in this, only the Stinger or he's the setup for the next one.
Yeah.
So there has to be something for that at this point.
Yeah, we talked about that yesterday.
Do y'all think they avoided the Odyssey name because of the Christopher Nolan flick later in the year?
I mean, that's funny.
Incredibly good chance the next one is just called Super Mario Odyssey at this point.
You can't do World after you've done freaking Galaxy, right?
That's going back.
That's smaller.
Uh...
Backyard, you have pain.
I'm just grimacing in my seat.
I'm not exactly sure why.
I just...
You know, I don't know.
I feel like Nintendo's spending too much.
They're wasting their money.
They're wasting their money spending time on this.
Everyone's going to see it's going to make $8 billion.
Just shut up.
I don't care.
I feel like they're probably paying a minimal amount.
They're letting the Hollywood studio that is desperate to continue working with them handle most of those costs.
I bet.
You know, like...
It's fine.
I was perfectly whelmed by the first one, and I'm sure I'll be perfectly whelmed by this one.
At this point, I am just going to show up for the references.
Yeah.
Show me.
If you're going to put Mouser in there, you got me.
I want to see.
Is Wart going to be in here?
Please.
Let's do it.
That's what that first movie was.
I remember seeing all the punch-out stuff in the pizzeria at the beginning.
I was like, alright, this is made by people who have played video games before.
It was kind of like playing that Simpsons Fortnite season, right?
Running around and being like, I remember that episode.
I remember this video game.
I mean...
There's some stuff here story-wise.
I like the idea of Toad being jealous of Yoshi.
I think that's kind of funny.
That makes sense.
Like, oh, who's this new wacky sidekick?
Oh, he's just part of the group now?
You know what?
Let's do this exercise.
Is there anything predominantly in the first one that you would, that you would hope that they like, learned maybe a lesson and and and correct a little bit in this second go around i saw someone in chat say uh, stop with the 80s music.
There's no way they're gonna stop doing that.
No, kids like it.
But yeah, i don't think kids like it because i don't think kids know it.
I think it's No.
No, my kids are like when they hear one of the Mario movie songs.
I can't think of an example.
They're like, oh, this is from Mario.
It drives me crazy.
Yeah, I need a hero, right?
Yeah, I need a hero.
That's from Mario, guys.
No, that's from Saints Row the Third.
It's from Shrek, too, damn it.
Yes, Mike.
Oh okay, trek 2 is so spoken for that one.
I was kind of aghast that they dare use i need a hero yeah um, the worst was, i think in the soundtrack you can hear the composer made this really cool medley of donkey cut country music for the sequence where they enter the kong land.
Then of course that got replaced by take on me or whatever, and it's it's it's it's, it's cringy, but uh, take on me is the one that they definitely say.
That's from mario, That's a Mario song.
Koji Kondo wrote Take On Me.
Well, at least it's not from the last of us.
Show them the music video.
I like that better.
Koji Kondo was sketching pencil.
In terms of the story, I don't know.
What are you going to do?
I don't care about that.
I want some pathos.
Just make the characters grow and change in a satisfying way.
They did in the first one, but it was so rote that I don't know.
Kill Donkey Kong.
Kill Donkey Kong.
I want to see some kind of commitment or clarification of the Mario and Peach relationship one way or the other.
I either want him to be specifically Fred Zone or I want it to move to the next step finally.
This weird no man's land that it's been in for the last 40 years.
It's too much.
You need that release.
Phone on screen for Mike Minotti.
I'll choke the chicken.
You need sweet release from their sexual tension is what you're saying.
Is it sexual tension?
No, it's not.
It's kiss tension.
It's kiss tension, whatever you want to call that.
Oh, it's barely peck on the cheek tension.
I mean, what are we talking about?
It is tension, though.
Hand-holding tension.
It's going to be like arm around Mario and then like, ah, noogie.
This isn't the end of Mario World and there's fireworks with hearts.
Yeah, but it's always like this is your reward.
It's never just like I want to kiss you because I have an attraction to you right now, because that's how I feel about you.
I did enjoy Mario's family digging on him.
I'd love the family.
I'd like more of that.
Give me more of the family.
Yeah.
That was the best thing that they added that wasn't from the game.
It's because it was Charles Martinet.
This guy.
He can't voice, act and do regular voices, and then he does most of the voices in the movie.
Yeah, that's insane.
Um, you'll do everything else i want.
I'm okay, not i want.
I'm gonna predict the end.
Stinger is wario.
Uh, he's sitting on a throne.
They're just gonna rip off the whole thanos reveal in the mcu, but as he gets up to like walk towards the camera, he's gonna fart.
Yeah yeah, don't you think they'll?
That's actually really funny.
Other uh, nintendo.
I feel like kirby will just like show up.
I think if they start doing that, they're going to have to go towards like a Smash Brothers, like connected universe.
And they could, but I don't know if they're ready for that yet.
I think Falcon would be fun.
Yeah, and Kirby can't hold a movie by himself.
We're all in agreement.
He can barely hold a game by himself.
Yeah, exactly.
Shut the hell up.
You're right.
It's true.
You too.
Oh, my God.
Oh, yeah, right.
He had a long-running television show where he did not talk, actually.
Kirby did?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It had a sick theme song.
Yeah.
King Dedede sounded like Colonel Sanders.
And there was a villain named Escargoon and guess what he was?
A snail.
That's pretty sick.
That's really good.
Uh hey, we talked about that rayman.
I think somewhere mike, i might have mentioned to you like they, instead of doing a rayman, uh remaster of, like the older games, they were going to do one for rayman legends.
That is probably still happening, but there's also rayman 30th anniversary.
That got rated, i think, by the australian rating board.
I i didn't write it down here uh, atari is listed as a publisher and developer, which means that would probably be digital eclipse doing like a collection or maybe like one of their gold master series things for Rayman.
And then, and the name Rayman 30th anniversary suggests it's probably like a look back like that.
So yeah, pretty cool.
That'd be great.
Rayman 1 is such a pretty game.
It has a lot going for it.
It's way too hard and that's something you can adjust relatively easily with the remaster package by just adding some checkpoints and getting rid of lives and things like that, adding a rewind feature.
Rayman 2 is actually one of the best 3D platformers for that era.
And you could like play the N64 version of that on NSO, but that's not the version you want.
You want something based off the Dreamcast version with the voice acted, cut scenes and things like that.
There's even some of the portable games from that era as well.
So yeah, I would love a Rayman collection of some kind actually.
That'd be awesome.
I I never played the Rayman games and I don't know if it's because, like they, didn't like review any of them.
Once we got to, like, Legends and Origins.
Those are the only ones I played.
I never played any of the original ones.
And, like, I feel like they probably got, like, in the sevens and eights in reviews.
Rayman 2 was reviewed very well.
Then I'm thinking, like, I think I just always thought he looked stupid.
Yeah, I bet you probably thought.
Yeah, he looks dumb.
I love how stupid he looks.
I think it's bad stupid.
No, it's good.
I always loved this dude winding up his fist and building momentum, but he doesn't have an arm to actually build up the momentum.
I don't find him like immediately appealing, but I also just I do like the way he moves around and he's charming.
I like him over time because of his origins and legends were really good, I thought because of Rayman I always thought I could use my hair as a helicopter.
I think you still can.
I remember when his auto runner was like the one mobile game a lot of people liked right uh, whatever jungle run or something.
Everybody really liked that Rayman auto runner for a while.
Right yeah uh OK, let's see here.
Next story.
Grand Theft Auto six may not have a physical version on day one.
The excuse here is to avoid leaks.
Take two and Rockstar may delay the physical release of Grand Theft Auto six to prevent spoilers and leaks.
According to a report citing an insider, the insider claims take two has no current plans for a physical edition at launch today, suggesting it will debut digitally first.
The physical version could follow a few weeks later or as far out as early 2027.
This is likely due to this game leaking and then trying to avoid that.
Yeah, it also helps with like preventing a huge number of people selling their game when they're done playing it.
Like, it will put a huge dent into the secondhand market for this game all in one go.
Yeah.
And I will say, if any game can get away with this, it is certainly Grand Theft Auto 6.
So why wouldn't they?
This also says to me if they're thinking hey, we can get away with this, they can obviously get away with 100.
This game's going to be expensive and digital only at launch.
Do you think part of it is to like if people own it digitally, they will be more prone to jump into online over the years?
I mean, that way they'll always just have it.
Yeah, it's already there.
Exactly, yeah.
They don't want people to have to, like, go find their disc and put it into the system.
Or if they sold it, they can't access it and spend money in the game, yeah.
Exactly, yeah.
It's got a bunch of benefits for them, and it stinks, yeah.
It's like a little bit surprising, just because you would think they would want this game on Walmart store shelves for like Christmas right.
Like, that is a lot that would sell around then.
But, yeah, they probably can still just get away with it.
Do you think that if it was going to be physical day one, that there would be a market for people trying to perhaps rob Walmarts and other brick and mortar stores to get the game early?
I mean, I think that this if there was a game that was going to encourage people to go to extreme lengths to get it before anyone else, it is this game.
But I just don't, I don't think that's what's motivating Rockstar.
I know, that's not the major thing.
Back in the day, I would definitely go to Walmart's in the middle of the night before games came out.
Not Rob, but I would try to like socially engineer my way into getting a game.
Oh, sure.
I would go like 3 a.m. because that's when people that super don't give a shit are there.
Oh, like a 24-hour Walmart.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
They were all 24 hours back in the day.
So like if a game was coming out on Tuesday but I knew like Monday the shipments were coming in, I'd go in and I'd ask someone at like 3 am, be like you know, like two nights before, be like Hey yeah no, I heard they're selling those.
I saw a lot of reports online that people were like, you know, they're in the back.
They're just not on the store.
Like, can I buy one of those?
Sure.
Try to get one that way.
I respect that.
I've done that a couple of times.
Yeah, I think it only worked for me once at a Walmart.
But yeah, it was fun.
Uh yep, so we'll see grand theft auto 6.
Still a lot to be said.
That game is now it's later this year.
Right, it's not may anymore.
When was it?
Like november it's, it's fall now.
I think the one walmart game i got like that, like they just kind of put it out a day early, was mario galaxy and it was amazing.
So that's, that's a good one.
Uh yeah, november 19th 2026, we'll see who got that pvc critic Baccalaureate.
I did.
Oh, okay.
That could pay off or hurt you.
I bet you're going to be fine.
That's the only two ways it can go.
Fine.
But I don't know.
I was pretty confident it was going to come out last year, too.
I'm like, yeah, of course they did.
I was an idiot. towards the effort of correcting things and updating things.
I talked about PlayStation maybe having a state of play in February.
I said February 12th and then I said the week of February 12th, because then I looked at the calendar and February 12th was a Monday.
Then I looked again.
No, February 12th is a Thursday, so it probably is that day, but let's keep saying the week of February 12th.
They do have to kind of update us on a bunch of their games that we already know about, and I would expect that to be the big bulk of this.
That could be...
Soros, but it's probably also Tocon and probably also Marathon.
Marathon's so close, they probably do update us about that here.
I would expect surprises as well, but we'll see.
We're at that time of the year where They probably want to set up some things for 2026.
But even the big things
I don't think Wolverine shows up here as well.
They had a thing about Wolverine last year.
We probably don't get that again until later in the year when they're much closer to releasing it.
I feel like that would be a pretty dedicated Wolverine one, right?
I would expect so.
That's a big heavy hitter.
Yes.
I mean, there's always the chance they throw it into, like you know, the first initial trailer into a regular state of play to attract a lot of eyeballs to a state of play.
But then, yes, that thing gets its own dedicated thing as well down the line.
Yeah.
There's that 2D Metroidvania God of War that we all still want to hear about.
There's a couple of Square Enix games that are very PlayStation-affiliated.
Final Fantasy VII Remake Part III and, of course, Kingdom Hearts IV.
And Kingdom Hearts IV has to come out of its hibernation at some point here and show us something again soon.
And, you know, they'll probably still even be like, yeah, don't forget about Resident Evil Requiem.
That's, you know, played that on PlayStation.
Yeah, good point.
Yeah.
Some new things, hopefully, that we're not expecting as well, because it is a little bit right now.
Like, yeah, Soros.
I mean, there's Tokon as well.
There are things happening, but I want more.
Is there anything else from, like, Kojima's side that, like, could be coming out?
Pissant.
Yes.
Pissant is the Kojima's.
That's far away.
He also has OD.
He's working on with Microsoft, so that wouldn't be here.
Okay.
I don't know.
Probably not.
Yeah.
It's too soon for a director's cut of whatchamacallit, right?
Death Stranding 2?
I mean, what was it, a year after the first one?
I feel like it was a couple years.
Why would he have to...
He's the director.
He cut it.
Why would he have to uncut it?
He doesn't have any power there.
That's the thing.
I assumed he cut it for a good reason.
It's like the studio metal.
Like, what's wrong?
He already cut it.
That was the director's cut.
Oh, chat is pointing out Ghost of Yotei multiplayer could be introduced.
That'd be cool.
They did do that later with Sushi.
Oh, yeah.
They did promise that, right?
That is for sure coming.
So, yeah, that probably does show up here.
Maybe another PC port of something now.
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, that's going to be happening, what is that, two weeks from now?
My bold prediction, we're going to get an Ape Escape game.
I would like that.
Based off of nothing.
Based off of nothing.
Who's going to make it, Jan?
Karami!
All right, let's see here.
PlayStation will report.
Oh, no, it's the one I just did.
Two unreleased Virtual Boy games are coming to Nintendo Switch as part of the Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack.
Nintendo announced the initial launch lineup of the Virtual Boy games coming to Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on February 17th.
I still have not gotten my little plastic holster yet.
Hopefully it's on its way.
Let's see here.
That was 100, of course, and that's what you need to play these games on your Nintendo Switch device.
Switch to that.
You pop into this virtual boy thing.
Anyway, they're gonna have two unreleased games uh, including let's see here what are they, the um?
Uh well, they had the ones that were previously released teleroboxer galactic pinball, red alarm golf, virtual boy, warrior land, and then 3d tetris and the mansion of insmith, and all of those will be there at launch.
Uh, and i think are those the unreleased ones, the mansion and 3d tetris.
Uh no, one of them has to be bound high, because i one was like a racing game.
I think okay yeah, it's gotta be bound high, because that's a game that they finished and i played it like people just have it floating around.
I played it at a gdc or something.
I was like oh, this is cool.
Uh, a zero racer and d hopper.
Zero racers and d hopper.
You know what d hopper is?
No, it looks, i'm gonna resist.
Oh, my goodness.
What's that?
It looks a lot like... No, no, no.
We're having a good time today.
Just think about it.
It looks a lot like... What's the bunny robot jumping game for PlayStation?
Jumping Flash.
Jumping Flash.
It looks like a top-down jumping Flash.
But you can have 3D effects.
Do you guys know how the screen on the Virtual Boy works?
I learned this in the last week or two because the slow-mo guys did a video about it.
Do you know how this fucking thing... Guess what the resolution is of a Virtual Boy screen.
Oh, 320x280.
One of those numbers is way too high.
The horizontal.
Okay, so way too high.
You said 80?
Less than that.
Yeah, I said 80 by 60.
Keep saying a number until you guys get it.
40 by 20.
I don't know.
4 is too high.
Keep going lower.
30 by 20?
Lower than 4.
The horizontal number of pixels.
It's fucking 1.
It's one pixel wide.
Now, do you know how that's... What?
What are you talking about?
I know.
It's one pixel wide.
It's a straight line of pixels that flashes like a million times a second isn't an exaggeration.
It's like one of those stroby things right, it's a stroby thing.
And then there's a mirror in there that oscillates back and forth, like like several times a second like, and then what that does is it shoots the beam at your eye and creates that wobbly back and forth, and it does it so fast it completes one actual image, So it's like a periscope.
Gunpei Yokoi was a mad scientist.
This seems like too much effort.
I know.
He had to leave the company after creating this beautiful monster.
Wait, it's like a zoetrope?
A very similar effect.
What is that?
Persistence of vision.
The persistence of vision sort of optical illusion.
They do that.
Yes.
It's incredible.
That is incredible.
One of the unreleased games is Not Bound High, the already leaked, completely done Virtual Boy game that's floating out there.
Really?
That's right.
It's Zero Racers and Dehopper.
Yeah.
Okay.
Zero Racers is like a kind of an aero gauge or something.
An F-Zero, but you're flying around.
So, yeah.
They're going to release a bunch more games throughout the year though, so it won't be every Virtual Boy game.
I want Bound High eventually.
One pixel.
One pixel wide.
Just changing a lot.
Really fast.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Changing like they were.
Like, the Virtual Boy has a frame rate of like 175 million frames per second.
Technically,
How come?
It's amazing it didn't, like, kill anyone.
Or, like, give them, like, epilepsy.
No wonder people, like, just assumed it was giving them cancer, right?
Yeah, right.
Probably still is.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean like, how did they test this without like making people flop around on the floor and stuff?
I don't know.
They chose the right people.
Mm-hmm.
Gumpo Yokoi just knows.
He knows this is safe.
Dude, and this was like the late 80s.
No, this is uh, mid 90s.
Yeah, mid 90s was still basically look, eight dollars is five dollars.
The mid 90s is also the 80s.
Okay, i didn't really start until like 95.
Yeah, come on.
I remember seeing a virtual boy at my local toys r us and wanting to try out like the little kiosk station.
Yeah, this is the one time my mom was like no, that is going to murder your eyeballs.
I played that.
Was it Mario Blast?
Was that the one where he's throwing stuff?
Mario Clash.
Mario Clash.
They had that at Funkoland and I played like 90 seconds of it and felt terrible.
How do you guys feel about?
I was at a Dave and Buster's a couple of weeks ago and you know they've got these communal like meta headset VR.
Oh yeah.
There's a lot of those.
Those are everywhere.
There's in halls.
They got them everywhere.
It sucks.
His whole hockey team was there.
Where did they, they're not going to play it.
So they're all just like face swapping.
I just made it.
It's not great.
They swapped while they were there from one person to the next.
I always think it's like, oh, someone has used this previous in the day.
Someone cleans it really well and they put on a new sheet.
Who's cleaning it?
I'm thinking of like those like 3d, like ghostbuster, uh installations or whatever.
Is this no no, it's more like a bad arcade machine that happens to have a headset on it.
You just walk up to it.
Oh no yeah, don't do that.
Yeah well yeah, i mean, it's just, it's so good.
I just, I obviously have an overly irrational reaction to that sort of stuff.
This one's rough.
I just, I can't handle it.
And they're all, they all just do it.
And then they just, they hand it over to the next person.
They're sweating.
It's disgusting.
Yeah.
At my local Dave and Buster's.
Next to those arcade machines with the VR helmets, they'll have the saddest pile of Lysol wipes.
And one time I swear to God they were out of the little plastic baggy container that they're in to keep them moist.
So they were all just sopping on the table they were next to.
It was good stuff.
It's not the best.
What is the best is Walmart, right?
Everybody loves Walmart.
They could have leaked Nintendo Switch Online's next GameCube games.
The retailer Walmart has potentially leaked the GameCube classics Metroid Prime 2 and Pikmin 2 that has been added to Nintendo Switch Online service for Switch 2 users, as an image on their website showed the unannounced games on the NSO roster.
I've been wanting to play it too.
Well, but Pikmin 2's on the Switch already, and they kind of like single-handedly ported it over, which I imagine has some accoutrements in it that this, you know, just emulated version of Pikmin 2 won't have.
That's right.
Metroid Prime 2 again, like well, it's just going to be ported there, so you're not going to get a, you know.
Not that I was ever expecting this game to get a graphical makeover like Metroid Prime Remastered got.
But some of the other stuff, like you know, having the normal dual stick control set up instead of the tank control thing,
Yeah, the tank control is huge, actually.
And, you know, I can handle the tank control stuff in Metroid Prime 1 and 2 still.
I bet a lot of people, there's no going back for them on that one.
So, yeah, I wish.
These two are two game games that don't excite me a ton seeing them coming.
I'm excited about 2 because I've been thinking about it for a while and I didn't know if they were going to do a remaster or something, but this is a good excuse to play it.
I played it recently and it's fantastic.
I just don't know if this is the way to play Primax.
Yeah, just Primax that.
Uh yeah damn, do primax.
Uh yeah, so that's that we could expect those probably.
This usually works out.
It's just weird.
I don't know how nintendo decides to hey that they were.
They had those metroid prime two and three games that they worked on to some degree.
Uh, following metroid prime one, one remaster, how do they decide, like it's more effective for them to put it in nso versus selling those games separately?
It's weird.
I don't know how they make their decisions.
OK, a Nintendo direct dedicated to Tomodachi life living the dream is coming this week.
I woke up today.
I'm like, oh, my God, I missed it.
It's Thursday.
It's happening on Thursday.
So I did not miss that.
I just had a bad dream.
There is no way that's not going to be a hilarious direct.
I bet there's going to be so much dumb shit in there.
I cannot wait.
And we'll talk over it.
That's 9 a.m.
Eastern time.
So we'll get up, get on that.
Looking forward to it.
Y'all handle that one.
Geez.
Yeah, we're on it.
No problem.
You can just say that.
You all handle that one.
You all handle that one.
There you go.
All right.
They did say no.
Good.
You guys have.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
It's 9 a.m., Mike.
You could do it one day.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Mike, I start my day at 7 o'clock my time.
And that's like on a late morning for Dan.
7 o'clock is 7 o'clock.
That's awful.
Why would anyone do that?
You get some stuff done.
Yeah, I get nothing done before work.
No, the first thing I'm doing every day is when you guys see me, that is for sure.
What do you um?
Hmm, how can i put this without sounding like a total fucking?
I get it.
No, i just wonder, like wonder for you.
Uh, i don't know, maybe trying some sort of like adjustment would uh, benefit you and your sort of lifestyle.
Maybe you feel better.
As i went to bed at 11 last night, guess when i fell asleep wow, what time.
Uh three i yeah four eight four, thirty am finally fell asleep.
You laid in bed for five and a half hours before sleeping stuff.
Every time it wasn't taking, i would play a game or watch a video.
Maybe that's the problem it wasn't taking, it wasn't taking.
Are you one of these people who's like sleep just happens to me?
I don't know where it comes from.
Maybe the overstimulus is keeping you from sleeping.
I have no judgment of your lifestyle.
I haven't had screens in the bedroom for like 15 years.
But I love my screens in the bedroom.
That's the best screen time.
Don't do that.
I'm not trying to... Yeah, again, like, I just wonder.
I'm just... I'm hopefully wondering, right?
Like, maybe this kind of changes.
Not that you lead a bad lifestyle.
No one's accusing you of that.
I just wonder, you know, maybe there's something that changes for the better and you find you know.
Mike, I don't want to change you at all.
I'm happy with the way you are.
You show up to work.
The first thing you do each day is to see us.
That's fantastic.
As far as I can do, I got to have a morning shower.
I don't feel like I'm ready to take the day off.
Well, I don't know if it's morning when you're showering.
Fair enough.
Fair enough, actually.
I guards doing okay.
It had a hundred thousand concurrent players on day one, uh, 13,000 negative refuse though.
Uh yeah, we definitely think people kind of just rushed out to, you know, maybe punish the game one for one reason or the other.
I think a lot of people genuinely don't like this game.
Uh, a hundred thousand times real quick.
I read one time, I'm sorry, I'm taking this back.
I think this is what, I think this is all it is.
I read once that genetically some people are predisposed to be night people because back when we lived in caves it was more efficient for the group to have people who are wired to stay up later, so then they can warn people about predators.
Is that what you're doing?
Yes.
Who are you warning?
He's called me sometimes at night to be like, hey, I think something bad's coming your way.
Watch out.
If you want us to call you a head troglodyte, we could do that.
That would be fun.
You can change your title.
It's fine.
I would like that.
Yeah.
So I've just descended from that branch of the humans who are the night watch.
I'm a night watch.
I'm a night guy too.
You think I go out in the sunshine?
What are you talking about?
Come on.
I'm a night man.
Night time's the right time.
Night guy, day man.
If I had like no external, like scaffolding of a life upon which I had to like have responsibilities, I would sort of like form like water into a puddle, into a shape that would be like someone who wakes up at noon and goes to sleep at 4am.
Same like that, That would be my natural state.
Do you know how many people can possibly want something from me at 2 a.m.?
It's nobody.
It's great.
Yeah, that's good.
It's all Mikey time.
Okay.
He's selling me on it.
But what if you move Mikey time to waking up every day at 5 a.m.?
Yeah, what if you moved Mikey time to everyone else on Earth time?
It feels amazing.
Then all those people are up and they're going to want to bother me.
No, no, no, no.
You do a thing.
No, no.
I set my phone to like between like 6 a.m. and like 9.30 a.m.
It's all on a focus mode where I don't get any notifications.
That's just time where it's like I can get up, I can work out, I can eat, I can have my coffee, I can shower and all that stuff.
And then it's just like the rest of the day, you're like, you're done.
You've done all the productive stuff for yourself.
Then you can just focus on the other stuff.
Doesn't that sound appealing?
No, that sounds really that sounds cool.
But I personally get more done.
If I start a project at 9 p.m., I'm going to get more done on it than if I started it at 9 a.m.
My brain works better at night.
So if I'm going to work on stuff for me, that's important to me.
I'm going to do it into the night.
Only thing is, if I'm working on something late at night and I'm really into it and everything it's like, it's hard to turn it off and wind down.
Sure.
There's problems with everything.
Yeah, absolutely.
There is also – there is just the aspect of I never feel like I got enough sleep almost.
Every time it is still got to really drag myself out of the bed no matter what time it is almost.
Even with the CPAP.
Same.
That aspect has not – like, I'm definitely getting better sleep, but I still am like – question for you as a fellow CPAPI.
Do you throw it on as soon as you get in bed or as you're trailing off to Snoozy Town?
It's got to be when I think I'm actually going to fall asleep, I think, or if I'm really going to give it a good try, because
The CPAP ramps up, and if that thing's been on my face for an hour and I haven't actually fallen asleep, it's kind of intense at that point.
It thinks I should be asleep, so it's really blasting me with the nose oxygen.
It's kind of uncomfortable.
High guard.
So high guard.
Yeah, whatever.
High guard.
Blizzard announces four showcases over the next two weeks for World of Warcraft Overwatch, Hearthstone and Diablo.
Okay.
Mike, you're our Blizzard correspondent.
What are you expecting from all this?
I think this is kind of their way to highlight and talk about stuff that's going to happen to these games before BlizzCon happens later this year, where we're going to get kind of probably new game announcements, new major expansion announcements.
World of Warcraft has its Midnight expansion coming up.
Pretty soon.
Overwatch, they'll always have heroes popping off.
Hearthstone will always have an expansion.
And then Diablo also has a big expansion coming out as well.
And we had like one new character come out for that with the Paladin.
We know there's going to be another class that's going to be a part of the Lord of Hatred expansion.
So they might announce what that class is here.
So yeah, there will be interesting stuff there.
These won't be huge, giant, you know, earth-shattering news things.
Although, Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight, they have not remastered Diablo 1 officially.
There's some fan mods and things like that, so...
If I was like to really hope for something.
Maybe Diablo 1 will get the same treatment that Diablo 2 got.
I thought the Diablo 2 remake was actually fantastic, super good.
So I would love to see something happen with the first Diablo, which is a little rough to play right now with the original.
There are some fan mods, but even then there's some caveats.
So, yeah, I'd like to see something there.
And also, yeah, Diablo 2 Resurrection could get a Switch 2 update.
That'd be great.
I've been wanting to play Diablo for a bit now.
I don't know why I suddenly have that itch.
Maybe I just want to point and click at things.
Yeah, if you just want to do point and click, I think starting up Diablo 4 and playing as the Paladin the new class that's fun.
I did that, and I finally made my way through the campaign of the last expansion while doing that.
I almost wish it was like actually a little bit more to it.
The game even like when you're trying to play on whatever high difficulty you wanted to, unless you're doing the riffs or whatever the game kind of feels a little autopilot, a lot.
It's like giant, huge explosions happening every two seconds, and some of it is not necessarily making me feel things as much as diablo 2, where it looks more boring, it looks like i'm just swinging a sword mostly, but for some reason it meant something.
Um, these four games uh, do you feel like they're they?
They need to be the focus of the of blizzard before they get back to something like figuring out what the future starcraft is.
Yeah, like i said like yeah absolutely, i mean, these are their games.
Right now, I wonder how many people were playing Hearthstone.
It seems like it's been so long since that thing had its big moment.
But World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch still all have tons of players.
Not much else happening for them right now.
But yeah, pretty soon it's going to change.
There's rumors that there might even be a Starcraft shooter coming.
There could be something else completely new as well.
You know, with World of Warcraft it's never just the, the new expansion cycle, there's always what is classic, up to right.
Right.
So I think Legion Classic's been happening, which to me is weird, because Legion still feels like something newer.
Maybe it's Mr. Pandaria Classic is what they're actually at right now.
Yeah.
Which is strange.
Yes, I think so.
Yeah, they did Legion Remix, so Mists of Pandaria Classic, which is weird because it's in our situation where the next expansion is Warlords of Draenor, an expansion that people didn't like, but it's the next one in the cycle, so now you have to do freaking Warlords of Draenor Classic.
That's so weird to have to be stuck in that reality where it's like we have to relive this moment of people hating this, but we have to release it because that's just what's next for this old game.
Yeah, get back to your garrison.
Bizarre.
Mikey, since Grubb and Dan are going to be out and Deadlock does take a lot to get into, do you want to maybe perhaps try to get back into Overwatch this Friday?
Oh, I'd be super happy to play Overwatch for sure, for sure, for sure.
Yeah, I've been wanting to check out.
There's been a lot of newer characters that I haven't gotten to play as yet.
It's so weird to me because Overwatch is a game that I was playing constantly.
All of these actually at one point were games I was playing every day for a period of years.
So it's kind of weird to see them sort of go on without me in a way.
Although I definitely want to jump back into World of Warcraft once Midnight is out.
Last thing here, Banjo recompiled.
Banjo-Kazooie was decompiled so that it could be then recompiled for PC.
That work has been done and now, if you have your own backup of the game, you have to have the copyrighted material yourself.
Bring that to this thing.
You can now get on GitHub.
You inject that ROM, your backed up ROM, into this thing and you can play through Banjo-Kazooie in widescreen and with all kinds of other bells and whistles on PC.
And this will open it up to all kinds of mods and stuff.
Like we did that Super Mario 64 thing a little bit ago, where that enabled us to, we could play that co-op multiplayer game, all because someone did the decompiling and recompiling.
And now Banjo will get the same treatment.
So this looks pretty cool.
People have been playing this.
It looks really nice.
The 64 decompiled stuff has been great.
It's been awesome.
Ocarina of Time, the Ship of Harkinian thing is fantastic.
They've done a ton with Mario 64, obviously.
The Rare Replay version of Banjo is good, but I bet this is way, way better. oh yeah and uh yeah this is like such an obvious one of these to do so it's uh very nice to see badge kazooie still a fun game yep all right that does it for the headlines i have over here jan i'm handing the show back over to you fantastic grub thank you so much we're gonna go take another quick bricky break and we will be back with some emails and super chats if we have them see These are the emails for the show.
Emails.
I'll take it.
And shout out to everyone for emailing in.
We've actually been getting a lot of emails into the podcast that aren't just spam, actually fun things.
So apologies, folks, if we don't get to your email today, next week or last week.
Starting off this week with Dirty Hippie Chris from Parts Unknown.
Hey dudes.
First time long time, Jeff and Jan briefly talking about Papa Murphy's on Game Mess Mornings inspired me to write in.
For those of you that don't know, Papa Murphy's is a take and bake pizza, meaning you buy an uncooked pizza and then take it home, where you have to cook it yourself.
The pizzas still cost $10 to $20.
Because of this, when my wife and I lived out west, we were certain it was a money laundering scheme, as it's more expensive than Domino's or Little Caesars without any benefits.
We also discussed it with several friends and the consensus was no one has ever gotten a pizza there.
But there's numerous locations.
Only question to you is what businesses are you certain are money laundering fronts and why?
Thanks, Dirty Hippie Chris.
So you buy an uncooked pizza.
Yes.
Frozen pizza, basically.
It's like in a fridge, so it's a little bit fresher than frozen.
It would be one of the benefits that they would tout as a reason it's more expensive.
Yeah, they make it there, right?
Like in-house and then freeze it.
It's not like shipped to a target or something.
That's right.
I think so.
It's like not quite rock hard frozen, but it's almost there.
I've had it once.
Am I the only one who's had it?
I've had it.
I've never heard of it.
I think I've had it.
I got it once, like in college, and I was like okay, this is like a good frozen pizza, but it's like you still you drive to a place, you're spending more and you still got to cook it.
It's like, it's just kind of a confusing business model.
It's I don't like.
If you handed me a Papa Murphy's pizza right now, coaching ready to go, I'd eat it and it would be good.
But like I'm, I'm either going to get like jets delivery or I'm going to buy some tombstones or whatever you know frozen.
I've gotten yelled at before.
I don't even get it with frozen pizzas.
It's like the one food that you can't just call somebody and be like, hey, can you get me one?
And they'll bring it to you.
You can do that with all food now, it's true, but even a while it was like the one frozen pizzas i've gotten really good in there and they're much cheaper than delivery.
Uh yeah, i got, i got a feed a family.
I'm doing frozen pizzas all the time, i don't know sure wow, i can't believe you don't love your family enough to buy them a fresh pizza.
Oh no, fuck them kids man, no way.
Do you hear how much i gave those kids to shovel my driveway?
That's a lot of pizzas.
That's a lot of and they better not be spending on no tombstone red baron bullshit.
I mean, they're still good.
Red baron bullshit.
That's like the thing with like dive bars around here is Hedgie's pizza, where it's just frozen pizzas that like every bar has and they'll just like throw, even like bars that don't really have food menus or whatever.
It's like, yeah, well, we got an oven.
We'll make you Hedgie's and it's good as hell.
Uh, people in chat were bringing up an interesting point.
Uh, because papa murphy's isn't frozen and because it's not prepared, they could sell it in grocery stores, and people can apparently use their snap benefits to purchase it.
So it's like okay, it's like this one way to like get a decent pizza without having like, you can't use your snap benefits at domino's, i guess i i don't know.
I'm trying to look up and see if this is all right, but people seem to be under the impression that that's one of the reasons this exists.
Does anyone have an answer for the question, though?
It's like, what's a big problem?
There's a place in Minnesota I've seen that like it's just a claw machine place.
And it's like literally just claw machines.
You go in here and here's a bunch of like off-brand Pikachus in one.
And then here's some with some shitty candy in another.
It's like one of the Japanese ones.
It's all the Japanese claw machines.
Not even that.
It's just like, no, it's just like 50 normal claw machines that you'd see anywhere else.
And there's never anyone in there.
And like that seems like it might be up front.
Yeah.
Just a cash business because you just put in dollar bills into those things.
Anyone come by and do that.
OK.
There's a lot of.
I don't know if it's like this for y'all, but there's a lot of carpet and rug stores around me.
Yeah.
How many rugs do people need?
The only time I ever got a rug was because somebody forced it on me.
It was fantastic.
It's great.
It's a good rug.
Everybody keeps seeing this rug.
They're all so impressed, everybody.
The houses really come together.
But there was a place in my town that was a curtain store, and it looked really scary.
It was on a corner.
And I was like, I think that's a front.
I've never seen anybody in there.
I think the mafia is there.
And then when it changed businesses-
It became literally a fucking tombstone store.
Not the pizza.
I mean, for dead people.
Gravestones.
Yeah.
That's weird.
Dead people can enjoy tombstone pizza, Mike.
I mean, that's how we can train like Ricky O.
Oh, yes.
Smile, man.
Disrespectful.
Jan, you have to.
You have to watch it, Jan.
I'm going to watch that movie and then time out my own audio recording to sync up with y'all.
You should do a film in 40s for our film in 40s.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, that was a good joke, Mike.
All right.
Moving on.
Travis and Fargo writes in.
Travis writes in with five questions.
I pick one of them.
Travis writes in this week.
I just became a Dutch oven guy.
What kind of person have you become lately?
Now, do you think by Dutch oven guy, he means the oven.
I think he means the oven.
You don't just suddenly become the kind of guy who puts a person's head under the covers and farts.
I think you can be that guy.
Maybe it's his kids.
I feel like the Dutch really took one on the chin there with that joke, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the Dutch can take it.
If it helps, I still don't know what you're talking about.
I just know the cooking thing.
I think that's good to keep it that way.
The fart thing.
You have to fart and you're in bed with someone and you put their heads under the covers and then you fart under the covers.
Sort of like you have to put a Dutch oven into a hole in the ground with coal and cook it that way.
I see.
That's funny.
You guys ever have a Dutch baby?
That's like a fat pancake, right?
It is.
That sounds delicious.
Grub you'd like.
The gimmicks would especially like it.
But Dutch Baby?
Dutch Baby.
Speaking of unfortunate names like that, I said in between a break here that I saw people were making stories from the Nuremberg Toy Fair.
I was like, I don't think you can do anything.
I'm sorry.
I know it's still in town and things have to happen there.
Your brand is very strong.
Yeah, but Nuremberg Toy Fair.
I just can't take that seriously.
I know what kind of guy i've become lately.
I've become a running guy and i don't know how to act.
Uh because, like i was on strava and then our dear friend alex boniello told me no, go get on runna, but run is owned by strava.
I'm looking at all these different watches to try and like find out which is the best one to track my running.
I got fitted for shoes.
I have this like running belt.
Now i have shorts with your, your yep, you got one of the the waist belts, put your phone in and stuff like that.
Yep yeah, i bonilla tried to get me on run into strava's.
Fine okay okay yeah, you're on the hoka train hoka's great, stick with the hoka train.
I felt like i disappointed the guy at the running store with how flat and wide my feet were.
Now i got shorts with tights in them.
I'm so aerodynamic.
Do you have an Apple watch?
What kind of watch situation?
I haven't figured out the watch situation.
It's a big choice.
It's a big choice.
There's a lot of options for it.
It's like the square screen of the Apple one though.
Come on.
Yeah.
I don't like square faces.
Oh, right.
A lot of marathon runners love the Garmin watches and they're circular.
Okay.
Uh, here's my thing.
I think, uh, all running shoes should have flames painted onto them.
Like prime in the, uh, Michael Bay movies.
Yes, because I think that is like a natural placebo effect of like okay, if my feet are on fire, I think I'm going to run faster.
Running shoes are fun because you can just get wacky with them.
They're all neon and crazy colors and stuff.
It's fun, yeah.
It's bullshit that like, okay, you see fire, that's fast.
You see lightning and that's fast.
You see ice and you assume slow.
Ice can go pretty fast.
It's real slippery.
I don't think slow.
Is the ice going fast?
What makes fire so fast?
Fire doesn't move.
No, i you know.
I don't disagree with you about the flames coming from behind it and stuff, but then the fire is a byproduct.
Yeah, i get it.
Okay, it's from.
You're going so fast that you're producing flames behind you.
You start freezing.
I do want mike to appreciate that none of us are making jokes about how he's defending a certain uh state of water right now.
Yeah yeah, they're not fast at anything except the violating human rights and being a piece of shit.
Call of duty.
Cosplay pieces, sons of bitches.
Yeah Jan, you were going to say something.
Jan.
So the next decision you're going to have to make if you're training is, once you get those real long runs, you got to decide hydration or you can get bonk breakers, which are like little gel things that give you electrolytes and stuff.
They're tasty, but you keep them in that little waste thing and every few miles or wherever you pop a bonk breaker.
Please, utility belt.
Just call it a utility belt.
That's what it is.
It's just a little like waistband thing.
Yeah.
It's a Batman's utility belt.
I get it.
Yeah.
And then you got to decide, are you going to be a vest hydration guy?
Or are you going to be a guy that has like, the super utility belt, with the tiny little water bottles that go in there?
I got the backpack and you got hoses that come over.
I got one that has a pouch and a pouch of water.
So I do like, like a electrolyte thing here.
And then just normal water here.
Dual straws going to town oh that, that sounds nice.
I have a friend that's a runner and in his like, because he has one of those vests uh, he just fills it with celsius and that sounds insane.
Oh, that's an energy drink.
Yes yeah, that's a bad.
Don't do that.
Yeah no, i wasn't gonna do that.
It's tough because, like on a long run you, if you, it sloshes around and it weighs you down a little bit.
So there's an inclination like I want to drink as much as possible.
So I feel lighter.
But then it's just in your bladder and you have to pee by like you didn't actually get rid of the way.
I know, but it's not sloshing around as bad.
Yeah.
Now it's sloshing in you.
All right.
Next, I think I'm a fish sauce guy, oh hell.
Yeah mikey, let's go.
Yeah, i didn't understand what he said.
What brand?
I'm a fish sauce guy.
Fish sauce okay yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it adds some umami to it yeah, but not yeah umami, and i've just been a little dash of that here and there and things, especially my, my asian food isn't good.
Uh, have you all become any other type of guy lately?
No, I might have settled into the type of guy I am.
I don't think there's any more new guys in my future.
Baccalaureate drinking wine?
I'm drinking more wine, yeah.
That's about it.
I do want to be a bouldering guy.
I did.
I have been Alex Arnold climbed that stupid fucking building.
And I know that, I know.
Like for him that was probably like he was just playing that up, because it just looked like he was treating that shit like a ladder.
Yeah.
And just went straight to the top.
He had no issues whatsoever.
But I was, oh, cool.
Climbing looks great.
I don't want to go to a climbing place where i have to be like on belay and have someone hold the rope for me.
My understanding is i could just boulder and that is climbing a weird thing, like five feet off the ground.
So if i fall, i fall on a soft little pad.
Yeah, it's angled weird and you got the pads.
Have you tried it before?
I've done it.
Yes, I've definitely done it before.
I guess I don't have super strong forearms or anything.
I don't know your situation, but it's fucking hard.
Yeah.
There's climbing gyms.
I'd like to be hard.
Yeah.
You go to a climbing gym.
Those are cool.
Grub, I've seen a bunch of my friends are into bouldering and then one of them works out at a climbing gym that has a bouldering treadmill.
Oh.
Oh, that's cool.
Man, I want one of those in my house.
It's like a vertical wall with like the climbing pegs that is just constantly like spinning.
Yeah.
So he has to like change his grip and stuff.
That sounds like DK King of Swing on GBA.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes, actually.
Sure.
All right.
Rich writes in.
Hey guys, I don't know if it's too late to make this request, but my daughter's birthday is on January 30th.
Mine, too, for that matter.
But she stole it from me being born six weeks early.
She's 14 now and thinks Mike is really funny.
Can Mike sing happy birthday to Karis, please?
Thanks for all.
Thank you all.
Have a good week.
Rich, it's also Travis and Fargo's birthday today.
I'll do you one better here.
Here we go.
Listen up.
Oh, gosh.
I hope this comes.
I'm going to.
It should.
I think you turned all this stuff off.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Get a little bit closer, Mikey.
A little bit closer.
There you go.
Happy birthday, Karis.
You put some stank on the end of that.
Have you guys seen the cute thing going around where everyone's texting their partner?
I want a half a coconut bitch.
Yeah, they're bringing couples together.
That was adorable.
It's all the rage this Valentine's Day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, instead of Mike can we sell necklaces on the store.
That instead of those like broken hearts that you combine with someone,
Yes.
Can you be my half a coconut bitch?
We gotta get this done by valentine's day.
You have a 3d printer.
After you're done printing dragons, get to work.
There you go, there you go.
There's so many dragons in the queue.
You're getting a dollar.
A dragon right me?
I personally am.
Yeah, he's getting four, i'm getting one.
You paid for the printer, though.
That's the deal.
You got to renegotiate with that kid.
That's the deal.
Those are the terms I agreed to.
All right.
Let's read two more emails here.
Three more.
This one comes from Levi in Utah.
Hey, GB.
This is for you, Jan.
You talked about wanting a small truck and I think you should get an 80s Subaru Brat.
Throw some big wheels on it, get those backwards-facing seats installed and you'll have the coolest car in the crew.
Levi from Utah.
Man, speaking of trucks, after those teenagers shoveled my driveway, I was like, I need to go out.
I've been in this house literally this entire weekend.
It's a weird feeling.
I was going to go eat somewhere.
I was going to go to Subway, and as I was waiting to turn into it, a camo cyber truck pulled in.
And I was literally like, I'm not going.
Shut up.
I was just like, I'm not going to Subway anymore.
And I went to Arby's and it was a good choice.
Outlawed Dr Minotti.
He definitely has a truck that he's proud of, but it's not a fucking cyber truck, at least well, it prevented you from going.
I just like i'm not going, i'm not gonna be in, i'm not gonna be the only other guy in here besides from the man who owns a camo cyber truck.
I just can't.
I couldn't handle it.
But what if he like, stole it?
What if he stole it from some douchebag?
There's no way.
I bet that was the registered owner of that vehicle.
Dan, this air trucking in value so much, it's so insane.
Oh, yeah.
They started charging for some of the features they were giving away for a long time.
They started charging $99 a year for that or something.
Everyone's like, oh, those sales projections for next year are going to be real bad, aren't they?
It wasn't even just a cyber truck.
He's like, I've camoed it out.
You live in an Ohio suburb.
You idiot, when you get one of those you kind of have to, I think you kind of have to go all in on the madness.
I think you're allowed to just keep chasing that dragon.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Seth Rollins talking about a cyber truck.
No, no.
So he's, he's got one and he talks about like him and Becky Lynch, like driving their kids to school and stuff.
And people will like drive by on the freeways and flip them off.
And he will like pull over and get out of the car and be like, I don't agree with this politics.
I just like the brand.
Yeah.
Sorry, bud.
That's a lot of work, man.
They're like a pretty liberal couple, but he just likes Cybertrucks and he will just confront people.
Seth Rollins confronts you on the road over his Cybertruck.
If I ever see him, I definitely am going to flip him off so I can get that.
I want that show.
I know two people with one and they are mostly normal and I don't get it.
Mostly.
They're pushing a boulder up a hill.
They are just not, you know, it's not easy.
Hey, they lost a lot of money on that thing.
So, hey, congratulations.
It depreciates like $10,000 a day.
Whoops.
Dan sent me a picture of the Subaru Brat, and this thing looks nice.
Yeah, the Brat's cool.
It's like, Jan, I want to drive to a marathon with you.
You drive me, and I'll get in one of those back-facing seats there.
It's like an El Camino, right?
What is it, the bed?
What's that?
It's like an El Camino.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I get.
OK.
All right.
Last email of the show.
And we were actually asking for this.
This one comes from one Peyton.
Hey, guys.
I was listening to last week's bomb cast when Mike mentioned my secret ranking list of GB members.
What the fuck?
Some of y'all wanted to hear it, so I figured I'd share.
Contrary to what Mike said, this is just based on how much I've interacted with y'all.
Why judge based on online personalities?
I've watched over the years when I can judge you on our very limited interactions IRL.
Yeah.
Number.
I've been picking those up.
In the last week, after Mike said something like, I've been getting in the trenches and doing some likes on Instagram.
What?
Starting at number one.
Chuck.
Chuck!
Top of the list.
That's unfair.
We had dinner with Chuck.
Yeah, with Chuck and his wife.
So yeah, I made a fool of myself for that dinner.
I was like, I had to go to the bathroom, but you better let me pay or at least pay half.
And then I left my grocery store discount card.
That is an all-time story, and I'm never going to get sick of hearing it.
As I got back in the chair, my ass scraped the tablecloth next to our table.
It almost took the entire thing out with it.
It was rough.
I still can't get over that.
What is less like an actual credit card?
They're both bluish.
That's all it is.
Like a library card.
I don't understand.
Look, I'm not going to defend it.
I'm not going to defend it.
I'm sorry.
Top of the list for that alone, but is also a great guy.
10 out of 10.
Him and his wife are lovely.
It's just not fair.
Yeah, yeah.
That's like a buff, you know?
Number two.
Me.
Shit.
No need to worry.
You're second.
Follow each other on IG.
Has liked my post.
Pro buzz ball.
Bonus points for Scout.
Ooh, I guess I have the Scout buff as well.
Yeah, that really helps.
Number three.
Grub.
Oh, shoo.
Okay.
I got to say, I do go to be, I try to be the bronze medal of friends.
Never above that.
This list is under protest, Peyton.
IG follow and has liked my posts as well.
Did tell Mike to get rid of me once on Blake Club.
Was looking out for his bro so fair.
Later, publicly apologized.
So we're cool.
Okay.
Really?
That's good enough for third?
Yeah, I apologized.
Number four, Bacalar.
Biggest change this week.
Started following me, automatically jumped up two spots.
So you can be bought.
I like the Mikey voice, but he has bad LaCroix takes.
Oh, the limoncello.
I got one right now, babe.
Limoncello.
You introduced me to it.
See, look.
It's not open.
It's not even open.
Oh, it's open metal.
Look at the hole.
It's open.
Number five, Sean.
Not even sure if he has an IG, but he does tease Mike about me, which I enjoy.
And number six, Dan.
No social media follow.
Demanded Mike to ask me what I think of him once already, along with a stern photo of him.
He does speak highly of New Orleans, so he'd probably do better if he met my silly criteria.
Anyway, thanks for all you do from a longtime fan.
Hope this was fun, if not, oh well.
Best out, Jayden.
I'm back on board.
I think he might have gone down a slot.
I think he just said New Orleans, and she does not like that.
Oh, New Orleans.
Hello, third place.
Jayden, how do you say the nut that starts with a P that's not a peanut?
It's P-R.
What?
Wait, not pistachio?
Pralines.
Oh, you're fucked, Jayden.
She's from New Orleans.
It's not Pralines.
Is it Pralines?
It's Pralines.
It's my West Coast sensibilities.
I can't change myself.
Move me up.
I know how to say Pralines.
Nah, I kind of like the list as is, I think.
How do you say, you know, Dan, Nala, how do you say it?
I mean, I just say New Orleans.
She just wants the Ns, not Lens.
Someone said New Orleans.
I'm not going to do the N apostrophe.
You're not doing the Nolens.
The Lens don't justify the Lens here.
All right, Mike.
Mike moves down now, right?
Where's Mike on this list, by the way?
I'm going to assume that I am presumed to be on the top of that list.
There is a one.
There is a one.
All right, Mikey, hit me with some super chats if there are any.
Yeah, that's a thing that I do.
Yeah, yeah.
Super chats for sure.
God.
Should I have Steph write a ranking of you guys?
Yeah, that'd be fun.
Yeah, i think it's totally fair now.
Uh, all right fair, mikey's probably at the top, we'll see.
All right.
Migzi says dan is the mostly hot wait, dan is the monthly highly paid wall.
Uh, pick dead.
Yeah yeah, we uh the uh caught kofi thing.
We were looking at different ways to do different things when we went independent.
And that was one that, like it's nice when people bring it in, but just like logistically and everything we were going to buy screens and put it behind us and have it be like physically.
You can't rely on the cameras to pick it up and stuff like that.
We got one and tried it and it didn't really work.
So it's just like yeah, I mean the Kofi is still active and we very much appreciate when people contribute there.
But yeah, that's just not, we're not doing that.
Tyrant false said.
Randomly heard an old deadlock podcast.
Talk about how bad Dan's SNES game tastes were.
Dan, can you now pick Final Fantasy three slash six cart out of the lineup?
What?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I know exactly what they're talking about.
There was a picture of Chris Saban on a TNA episode they were talking about.
And it's him as a kid.
And in the background, you can see there's a SNES with a game in there.
I didn't realize it was Chris Saban at first.
And they couldn't figure out what the game was.
So Johnny messaged me the blurry picture.
And I was like oh, I don't know if that's NBA Jam or if that's American Gladiators, because in the picture the kid had a bunch of sports trophies and I thought it might be a sports game.
So I had some really good choices there.
And then when I heard it was Chris Saban, I know he's a JRPG dork.
And instantly I was able to recognize Secret of Evermore and send it to him, and Johnny was very impressed.
So actually, I super know what the fuck I'm talking about.
There you go.
There you go.
Secret Evermore was made in the West, so it doesn't have the stank of all those nerdy JRPGs necessarily.
I also hated it.
My cousin tried to get me into it.
Mixie's back.
It says Bacalar and Breakfast.
There you go.
After this dragon thing has run out, Bacalar, that could be your next family enterprise.
Bacalar and Breakfast.
Or I can't print that.
You can print Breakfast.
You kind of can with, like, pancake batter.
That's basically a 3D printer.
Yeah, that's pretty close to printing.
Yeah.
It is.
I'm surprised there's not one now that you've said it.
I want pancakes.
Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
I do like the people who can make fun art with the dyed batter.
Yeah, that rules.
Do you guys prefer, like, the fluffy pancakes?
Or do you like the kind of I kind of like mine when they're a little texture in there, i don't know what you call, a little toothsome, i don't know, a little.
I don't want to say gritty, but like i don't know what you're saying substantial, i think i mostly like i can go either way.
I like all pancakes for the most part, but i think i i lean fluffy, i think.
Go have a dutch baby.
I'm telling you, have a dutch baby.
It's going to change your life.
Well baccalaureate, is that like?
You've been to aruba?
Is that like the dutch pancakes in aruba?
That's a big thing there.
Yes, they do offer that.
They're good as hell.
They're almost crepe adjacent.
But the Dutch baby is cooked in the oven like a bowl.
It's like a pancake bowl.
Really good stuff.
I really have become more of a waffle guy as I get older.
I got to have those crispy edges.
Viv Reen says, during the bomb-a-thon, I asked you all to do a Mexican wave, and Sean was offended.
In the UK, it is when you go around a stadium and raise your hands.
Yeah, we just call that the wave over here.
Oh, that one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that one.
It's just that way.
Sometimes I get mad about the wave.
Sometimes I'll be, yeah.
Well, sometimes I get it if not much is going on.
Sometimes I'm watching a baseball game and it's a close game.
It's interesting.
I feel like the crowd's just trying to entertain themselves.
So it's like the beach ball era.
It's the beach ball era of wrestling crowds.
Yeah.
Is that what you're saying?
Like that type of thing?
Yes, it is.
Mike, I don't know why I am relating to you on this on such a deep level.
I cannot begin to describe to you how aligned I am with the way you feel about the wave.
Whenever I see a wave, I think the crowd is stupid.
I think everyone in the crowd is just dumb.
They've lost interest in the sport that they've paid money to go see, and they'd rather do this bullshit.
I could not agree with you more, Mike.
The one appropriate time to do the wave is if you're at a concert or something and the act is 30 minutes late, because of course they are, and then you're bored.
Yeah, let's see if we can do the wave right now.
Not at the bottom of the ninth, everybody, please.
If I saw them do a wave at a Devils game, I'd leave.
There you go.
You'd leave like a camouflaged cyber truck just pulled in.
Exactly.
I have participated in every wave I've ever seen.
When I was a child, I waved as a child, but now I am a man.
I've waved as a man.
Yeah, I'll do the wave.
It's never distracted me.
But also, there's a time.
I've never seen it done at the bottom of the ninth, but I haven't been to that many baseball games.
Bottom of the ninth is exaggerating, but you know.
Yeah.
Zombie Porn says, when you're all putting bacalar in a boat, boat calar.
He's a skipper.
I actually am a fan of boat stuff.
I do like that.
Let's get more boat stuff together.
Boat stuff and wine now.
You're turning into Irma Hardy yeah yeah, i mean, he was always most in danger of that happening.
I just in danger of becoming my hearty.
I feel like scary.
No, like i, i hate cruises.
I'm not gonna do cruise stuff, but i do like uh, you know, i have a friend who has a, has a boat uh, on the jersey shore we do that a couple times.
I like that it's fun, it's nice cool, it's nice to have a friend with a boat.
I think yeah yeah, i would never want one for myself.
Ever too much work, too much stuff brings it up and i'm like, if you take care of it and do all the work for it right, it's another job.
Like when i hang out with them, half the time we're on the boat, half the time they're like cleaning up because of the boat.
It's terrible, you don't want to do.
It's too much work, No.
Crispy Tortilla says, can't wait for y'all's charity stream.
Fuck ice.
Thank you, Crispy Tortilla.
I'm looking forward to it.
It's going to be a good time.
It's going to be great.
Do you want to drop those deets again?
What, Jeff, you're heading out on Friday?
I'm at it on Friday.
5 p.m.
Central.
Yes.
That's right.
5 p.m.
Central time.
That's 6 p.m.
Eastern.
Yes, we'll be doing it.
It'll be on.
Just go to GiantBomb.com.
You'll see it there.
You'll see some posts.
We're still like, this is coming in hot.
We're getting stuff all organized and stuff.
We're researching charities, all this stuff.
I bought a flight yesterday for my flight on Friday.
Keep an eye on our socials, on MinMax's socials.
Details will come, but like Friday, 5 p.m.
Central is the plan.
Casey Jones says, when is fishing week?
Making art for it now.
We had a general idea, but like I don't want to say any because the year is going to be so malleable, because we have so many other things happening that we'll let you know as we get closer.
But we are trying to get everything like that that came out of the Bombathon done in like the first half of the year.
So soonish, we'll let you know.
Yes.
And I have flights booked for one of our excursions.
So you have some trips coming up.
Yeah.
I forgot about that plane ticket.
Yeah.
Making plans to start recording the endurance run.
Hopefully pretty soon here as well.
Yep.
Real soon.
Yep.
Yep.
I got to go get on a train then.
There you go again.
And then JD camp says it's wiener week in Portland.
Should I get a Korean corn cheese dog or a dog?
How many hot dogs should I eat this week?
Seven.
I like the first one.
It's so smart that it lasts a week.
So like you don't have to like try to plan your whole day around eating 15 different hot dogs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I would try to eat as many as I could, though.
That sounds great.
On the Taco Bell subreddit.
Somebody put a hot dog inside of a chili cheese burrito from Taco Bell and that just sounds real fucking good.
There's nothing wrong with that.
All those things are in the Bible, yeah.
I'm not going to lie.
I'd probably pass.
I'd probably pass.
Although I did have my first Korean corn cheese dog in LA within the last few years, and boy, that was good.
I liked that.
Didn't we have one in Germany?
Germany was good as hell, yeah.
Yeah.
It's on video.
I think I had one in LA before that even.
Yeah, that's right.
There was a place in Germany right by our hotel where we did that.
Yeah, not too far from where we met DJ Ass Tits.
I hope she's doing well.
Yes, I hope she's doing well.
I follow her on Instagram.
She seems like she's doing well.
She's doing a lot of EDM it turns out.
Yeah.
DJ Ass Tits, email in your ranking of everyone, please.
Mikey, any more Super Chats or is that it?
That's it.
Thank you, everybody.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right, everybody.
Boys, what do we got going on the rest of this week?
We mentioned the collab charity stream that we're doing this Friday, 5 p.m.
Central, with our dear friends over at MinMax.
Dan and Grubb are going to be at MinMax HQ doing all sorts of things.
Yes, jacob geller will be there together.
I'll be there.
Yeah, y'all think you're gonna get into any like in-person sectory shenanigans i've.
I brought it up immediately.
It's like we're all gonna be in the same room, we?
Yeah, we got to do a thing where we each get like five runs and stuff and everyone be nice to hansen.
Um, what if he's a ringer?
What if he's a secret ringer?
He's not.
I would love that.
Oh yeah super, not.
No, he doesn't know what a controller is.
Yeah, it's.
We were talking about the blight thing and I brought up the idea of maybe Hanson getting blighted as an incentive.
And he was like this would not be fun to watch, even on a like he's like I am terrible at good games that are well-designed.
It would not be fun to watch me play a bad game.
So I grew up getting blighted.
After today, Greb, you're right.
The Mistbusters return for Monday Morning's Mist with Mitch on a Tuesday.
We can't get enough.
It's been a while since we've done one on a Monday, actually.
And then Mikey is also, it's his turn at the wheel for another Blightning Round.
Oh, man, that's right.
It's going to look so cool.
It's going to look so cool tomorrow.
Tomorrow, you'll bite me tomorrow, it's only a day away.
Uh, voicemail dump truck.
On thursday uh, upf.
On friday, we're probably still gonna play deadlock, but if we're not having fun we may pivot uh and then game this morning's popping off.
Wednesday thursday friday, right grib.
Uh Yeah, I should be able to do it Friday, maybe before I leave for my flight.
Let me double check.
I'll let you know.
Don't push yourself to do that.
Don't want you to miss a flight.
I think it should be okay, but we'll see.
Maybe we can figure something out.
There is a Resident Evil hands-on preview on the site.
Another quick look should be dropping after the podcast today for From the Top.
That is the Beyblade roguelike game.
Oh also, the film in 40s is dropping this Friday, friday.
We're going to drop it friday morning for you folks at home so you can prepare your weekend plans.
Audio track, as always.
Uh, so if you find a way to stream the story of ricky, perhaps on any internet sites that archive movies and things like that, that you can stream yeah, you can find it.
Make sure you're watching the english dub.
That is a critical element of the story of ricky.
It's very important.
Interesting.
First of all, eat shit.
Gang, anything else we got going on this week that we forgot about?
No, it's more fun stuff that we've been preparing that's going to be coming out even next week, I think as well.
Another plan.
Stay tuned, everybody.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Well, that about does it for the show, gang.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Jeff.
He's been Mike.
He's been Dan.
I've been Jan.
We'll see you next week for another episode of the Giant Bobcast.
Until then, fuck ice.
Goodbye.
Bye.
