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0:32

morning, video games. Dropping in at

0:34

the start of the episode to

0:37

let you know that we are

0:39

doing three live shows in Melbourne

0:41

in April as part of the

0:43

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. That's right.

0:45

You might not associate us with comedy, but

0:47

we're trying it out three times

0:50

in the month of April. We're talking video games. We're

0:52

going to have some guests. We're going to do some

0:55

fun live stuff in the room only. So

0:57

if you can get to Melbourne or you

0:59

will be here for the festival, come along

1:01

and watch us. Those dates will be

1:03

Sunday the 7th, Sunday the 14th and Sunday the 21st of

1:05

April. As

1:09

we invite all of you, our uni friends, to come

1:11

to our improv night. No,

1:13

they'll be good shows. And like Ben says, they will be

1:16

each different and each exclusive to

1:18

that particular live moment in time.

1:22

You can come to any one of them. 25 is

1:24

the ticket. Or if you want

1:26

to come to all three, you get like

1:28

a season pass. We've monetized it like video

1:30

games. Yeah. And that will reduce the price.

1:32

That's right. Come to all three. 3 p.m.

1:34

at the Coopers Inn. Those dates

1:36

that you mentioned. Come along and see us. It'll be great fun.

1:39

Tickets at comedy festival.com dot au.

1:42

We'll see you there. There's a link in the

1:44

description, too. We'll see you there. We'll see you

1:46

there. So

1:49

that's it. What? We some kind of suicide

1:53

squad. Good

2:03

morning, video games. Welcome to Filthy

2:05

Casuals, a podcast about video games

2:07

hosted by three very kind and extremely

2:09

knowledgeable boys. Thank you very much for

2:12

joining us. My name is Tommy Dassler.

2:14

I'm with me as always. Ben Vanell

2:16

here. Rumors abound in

2:18

the video game sphere. But

2:20

this week we're talking about actual stuff

2:22

that we've done and played and seen

2:25

with our own eyes. Not me. I'm

2:27

here to address the rumors. Okay. It's

2:29

official. I'm exiting the console business. I

2:31

will no longer be offering any

2:35

help to friends going through hard times. No

2:37

consoling from me anymore. That's the

2:39

end of it. If you tell me about a problem you've

2:41

had, I'm going to make it worse. That's

2:44

my business now. Software only. There has

2:46

been speculation about that for a long

2:48

time. Look, I've got a business presentation

2:50

next week and my business is keep

2:53

your business to yourself. I

2:55

am not emotionally bandwidth heavy

2:57

enough. It is a

2:59

great time to be reading the video game news

3:01

because on one hand you've got all the rumors.

3:04

They've gone into production of the LCD

3:06

screens for the Switch 2 and then you

3:09

scroll down and it's like this big

3:11

console giant might be going under

3:13

and not making hardware anymore. Like it's

3:15

all over the place. There's lots of

3:18

stuff going on. I was getting very

3:20

worried that you were intimating

3:22

you were going out of the

3:24

console business aka the infinity machine.

3:27

But that will never happen. No,

3:30

I don't care how much money our business loses

3:32

to that particular endeavor. It is a

3:35

loss leader. Yeah, sure. Out of making

3:37

the decision to make the infinity machine

3:39

cloud only, we really go against everything

3:41

that the infinity machine stands for.

3:43

However, it makes the most sense and

3:46

is possible. Yes, it already exists. Yeah,

3:48

it's the smart business decision. No, no,

3:50

no, this is the long term play

3:53

for after the world falls. I'll

3:55

be able to get a generator and still

3:57

have every video game before three days after

4:00

Whatever event takes place. I'm clubbed in the

4:02

head for water. Yeah, the radiation gets you

4:04

or whatever Yeah, in case you don't know

4:06

what we're talking about radiation of my infinity

4:08

machine I'm the number of consoles about running

4:10

at the one time. It was not a

4:12

nuclear event If

4:16

you don't know what we're talking about the yeah,

4:18

there's been big rumors this week about Microsoft

4:21

and Xbox the stuff of it like

4:23

a whole a big room Oh

4:28

look at the size of this room. There's

4:31

a yeah been big rumors about well,

4:33

first of all, it was that high-fi rush and

4:37

See a stars might be coming to

4:39

switch and play field is the big

4:41

one. Well that one later It was

4:43

half high-fi Russian sea of thieves see

4:45

if they sorry coming to Switch

4:48

and PlayStation and then switch it first

4:50

and then I would but also this

4:52

timeline so convoluted You've got to stop

4:54

trying to get it right.

4:56

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. So Yeah,

4:58

it was that that was like the initial

5:00

rumor and then Starfield was its own sort

5:03

of Reported on rumors that that was going

5:05

to be coming to PS 5 and then

5:07

the most recent update is that

5:09

there's going to be a business update

5:13

this week or next week Read

5:16

even further beyond that where like so these rumors

5:18

as well weren't Like there are

5:20

a lot of bullshit things on Twitter and people

5:23

are saying every single possible option so that they'll

5:25

be right Whatever happens by the thing if high-fi

5:27

rush coming to switch has been sort of being

5:29

floated around for like six months or so At

5:31

least a few weeks heavily too and that wasn't

5:33

that interesting because they've sort of done that

5:36

before with like Ori those games Exactly,

5:39

so like data minded as well and found

5:41

some like new t-shirt in there. That's like

5:43

the switch Oh, sure colors or something.

5:46

I think we talked about it on here and like

5:48

it wasn't that interesting. Yeah for

5:50

the first time on But

5:52

uh, but so it

5:55

was Starfield then like you said

5:57

and then gears of war

5:59

and Halo were being floated in... Oh, I

6:01

didn't hear, hey, hello. Yeah, fuck. And

6:05

these are like from people who say

6:07

they have sources who are journalists, some

6:09

of these things. So they're not just

6:11

like rumors of like, you know, fucking

6:14

Pikachu's gonna suck my dick or

6:17

whatever. Like the thought of rumors you normally get

6:19

on Twitter if you have the

6:21

algorithm that I have. There's sort of websites too,

6:23

where once they're reporting on it, it

6:25

does become a real weather to smoke this

6:28

fire. It's like there's something in this. Maybe

6:30

it's not quite to the extent that people

6:32

are getting carried away and speculating, but something

6:34

is happening. The amount

6:36

of leaks that come out of

6:38

Microsoft in particular too leads to

6:40

these pretty crazy levels of, like

6:43

internally they were having discussions about whether

6:45

they could buy Nintendo. It's not that weird,

6:47

but it's crazy for it to get out

6:49

to the degree that it did, because once

6:52

something reaches the public in that way, it

6:54

becomes, anyway, so yeah, it was, then

6:58

all of their first party games might

7:01

be published on other consoles being the

7:03

PlayStation and the next Switch. And

7:06

then it was people talking about

7:08

them exiting the hardware business. There's

7:11

also been rumors about them just

7:13

having recently decided to make

7:15

a handheld machine, so they're

7:17

making more hardware is possibly it. Like

7:21

things about maybe Game Pass will

7:23

shift gears and not have day

7:25

one releases or bring

7:27

in more tiers and like the Call of Duty games

7:29

will be on the higher ones and so on. Yeah, because

7:31

also the fact that they, there were recently those

7:34

layoffs in there, so then you kind

7:36

of tie that into it. So it's

7:38

like, well, why would they let, you

7:40

know, if they, if maybe if they

7:42

weren't manufacturing hardware anymore, they wouldn't need

7:44

those, was it like 1900 people or

7:46

something? Yeah, retail business people, physical media

7:48

people. So people are connecting the dots,

7:50

I guess. So then all of these

7:52

things are swirling. Phil Spencer tweeted that

7:56

they hear everyone and

7:58

there will be a presence. a presentation

8:00

next week, a business update, some

8:03

words like that that are used. The

8:05

direction, the future direction of Xbox. Peculiar

8:07

with the nature of what a lot

8:09

of these rumors are that they're reaching

8:12

the point of are they gonna stop making Xboxes

8:14

at all to

8:16

not more directly address it

8:18

and sooner? Yeah,

8:21

they also are in such a

8:23

weird position with kind of what they do

8:25

that that gives so much

8:27

feel to any version of

8:29

this rumor. Like if this was something

8:31

about Sony or Nintendo, it

8:34

really could only be one thing, which is

8:37

they're gonna stop making consoles and just publish

8:39

their games on other platforms, right? Whereas, but

8:41

because Microsoft has the ecosystem of Game Pass,

8:43

like it does, you know what I mean?

8:45

Like there are so many more different areas

8:48

for there to move in, it's not as

8:50

like... And X-Cloud being like a real workable

8:52

thing that people outside of Australia can use.

8:54

But then at the same time, all of

8:56

those things having not made

8:59

money for ages, real reports. So like...

9:01

And they seem to have put a lot

9:03

of stock into like just getting you to

9:05

sign up to Game Pass. And they don't really care.

9:08

They seem to not really mind where that is,

9:10

whether it's through the cloud and it's just on

9:12

your phone or whether it's on your PC or

9:14

whether it's on an Xbox. They're not so focused

9:16

on you just owning an Xbox. So they've sort

9:18

of been like, we've said this before

9:20

that it's like, it feels like, you

9:23

know, in maybe it'd take 10, 15 years, but

9:25

you could get to a point where people

9:28

don't own consoles anymore. Like everything is just

9:30

streaming from the cloud and there is no

9:32

hardware. It sort of seems like

9:34

they are the ones being forward thinking about

9:36

sort of starting to action that way they

9:38

can. Which again would make sense if

9:40

they were to just go, you know what,

9:42

the overheads of making these machines, we

9:44

can do without it and we can publish

9:46

Starfield on the PlayStation 5 and make...

9:50

Start to make some of that money back that

9:52

we spend on the acquisition of Bethesda.

9:55

It's also like, so firstly,

9:57

it makes sense that there would maybe...

10:00

be big changes happening that were brought

10:02

from above the Xbox division because they've

10:04

just spent so much money, so publicly

10:06

had this big thing about why they're

10:09

spending so much money. Yep. Well

10:12

known to not be necessarily making that money

10:14

back. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes sense that

10:17

someone higher up will go, hey, fucking

10:19

come on. Well, I think in the

10:21

chat after we all collectively

10:24

speculated about every possible option- Kick out Jaws

10:26

up from the floor. I've

10:28

just seen a hot cartoon woman who are- Yeah, yeah,

10:31

yeah. That's where I get my news from. A

10:33

Wulgan News. But

10:36

I think the most likely and the least

10:41

disruptive option

10:44

is that they just start selling their games on

10:46

PlayStation and Nintendo more. I really feel like the announcement is

10:49

just going to be- Yeah, we need to make more money,

10:51

so that's the easiest way to do it. They've spent

10:53

so much money and they also have

10:55

that rare thing of like, there is

10:57

something there that's relatively

10:59

easy- Yeah. Where they know they can get some money

11:02

back and that is like, you

11:04

acquired Bethesda, a company

11:06

that has a huge fan base, this game

11:08

came out that was like, how did it's

11:10

been this really big thing. You could tomorrow

11:12

just go, it's out on PlayStation 5

11:14

and make a bunch of money from that. Yeah.

11:17

You know what I mean? Like, it's rare to have such an

11:19

easy- not easy, but you

11:21

know, like a simple- It's a solution there where

11:23

you just go, we can push this- okay, we

11:25

thought we would be able to bring those people

11:27

over into our ecosystem, it hasn't worked, worked. We've

11:29

paid a lot of money for this game. All

11:32

right, easy. We can just sell it to all the

11:34

people who want it and that we own this thing

11:36

and we can just get some of that money back.

11:39

It's rare to have that, like, a

11:41

button like that that you can push. And

11:43

they've specifically been saying that's their plan for

11:47

Call of Duty and stuff that they picked up in the Activision

11:49

acquisition. So why wouldn't

11:51

that plan then also make sense for everything that

11:53

they do? If as well, I think it could

11:55

be combined with- I'd be very surprised if they

11:57

were getting out of the hardware business. completely.

12:00

However, I could see a pivot to

12:02

like we make what

12:04

like the steam machine was going

12:07

to be like computers that are

12:09

console computers that are a living

12:11

room box because like they've

12:13

wanted that for ages since the Xbox One

12:16

and it's what people initially got

12:18

their hackles up about was that it was

12:20

the everything box in your living room which

12:22

people now want a lot more than they

12:24

did 10 plus years ago. Totally. Yeah. So

12:26

yeah. I would be surprised if this announced

12:29

like they announced if they were getting out

12:31

of the hardware business

12:34

I would be surprised if they said that

12:36

now like kind of sort of

12:38

like mid life cycle would be. Yeah

12:40

they still got boxes to sell. Yeah

12:43

if it was going to happen it seems more

12:45

likely that it would be a thing end of the

12:47

life cycle they go hey look no new announcement from

12:49

us wear out maybe while you've still

12:51

got the stock to get through just seems

12:53

like now would not be the time if they

12:55

were thinking it now would not be the time

12:57

to announce the most like front

13:00

of mind example for people is the

13:02

Dreamcast of and that happened really quickly

13:04

at the time right but the difference

13:06

being that Sega would have not

13:09

existed if they hadn't have done that. Yeah they

13:11

were running out of money. Yeah so like had

13:13

to do that Microsoft has money so

13:15

they don't they don't need to pull a

13:17

rip cord that hard I don't think but

13:19

I don't know what their view of it

13:21

or what they're set up internally is in

13:24

terms of like if yeah if do we

13:26

cut this division are they like I don't

13:28

know much about Microsoft's more

13:30

businessy business and whether they cut products in

13:32

the fashion that Google kind of does yeah

13:34

right if this isn't what Castadia I guess

13:36

was the most recent nah fuck this yeah

13:38

no one liked it yeah they gave that

13:40

like a year yeah that was all the

13:42

cloud stuff that I still don't think people

13:45

are ready for or that the technology is

13:47

caught up to yeah it's the yeah that's

13:49

the main thing right it's just the tech

13:51

isn't quite there so it there's no telling

13:53

properly what it is because of course

13:55

they haven't said anything those leaks that

13:57

came out about them planning another like

14:01

mid-gen refresh console thing, I could see

14:03

that happening with a re-gearing

14:05

of what the Xbox is. Going forward,

14:07

we've got this new digital only, it's

14:09

your home thing Xbox. Right. We get

14:11

rid of the X and the S,

14:14

they stop getting made because they put

14:16

the, both of those on like pretty

14:18

big discounts over the last year. And

14:20

apparently those haven't been selling through,

14:22

but they just can't sell

14:24

what they've got. Make

14:26

the new thing. Here's the Xbox. This is

14:28

the only Xbox going forward. We're stopping making

14:30

the X and the S. This

14:32

one's in the middle of them or whatever, and it's all

14:34

digital and it's all game pass focus. And

14:38

sort of like Sony does with

14:40

PC releases, every PlayStation exclusive other

14:42

than a few comes out

14:44

on the PC a year later or whatever.

14:46

So it's the reverse of that. Cause

14:49

they sort of, yeah, they clearly view it as like,

14:51

okay, we own this product. People come to us

14:53

for it. But also at the end of the

14:56

day, if we put it on something else, those

14:58

people were never going to come over anyway. And

15:00

we just still get a bit of revenue from

15:02

it. Yeah. And they have to

15:05

change what they're doing because their plan

15:07

to recover from the Xbox one was

15:09

we need good exclusives again, we're going

15:11

to require these studios and have good

15:13

Xbox exclusive, blah, blah, blah. And they

15:15

haven't for like a decade had good

15:17

exclusives because like every Halo game

15:19

has been a disappointment. And those were the

15:21

reason that the Xbox existed in the first

15:23

place. And the Gears of War franchise certainly

15:26

did not maintain its popularity. And then they

15:28

stopped putting them out for a

15:30

long time. Like Forza didn't do it. Uh,

15:33

Sky Starfield was a

15:36

flop essentially, at least in terms of its

15:38

reception. And I don't think it sold to

15:41

what they projected. I guess that's the thing.

15:45

If you, if you, if you were someone who

15:47

was interested in Starfield, uh, you

15:49

could get game pass for a month and try

15:51

it. And if you didn't like it, you jump

15:53

off. And people who did do that did it

15:55

on a PC as well. They did like, I

15:57

don't, it doesn't seem as though they sold a

16:00

bunch. to Xbox is off the back of Starfield.

16:02

And I think maybe the response to it was

16:04

sort of like neutered by

16:07

Microsoft involvement in it and them having to

16:09

push it and make it out that it

16:11

was gonna be the greatest thing that had

16:13

ever existed because they really needed it to

16:16

be a win to sort of justify

16:18

this acquisition. Like a world where Bethesda

16:20

are a bit more in charge of

16:22

like how it comes out on the

16:24

marketing and everything and it comes out

16:26

on everything. Maybe it gets received a

16:28

little better without having Microsoft do these

16:31

presentations where they're like this game is gonna revolutionize

16:33

the RPG. Like yeah. I think they would have done

16:35

that shit anyway and if it had come out of

16:37

the PlayStation it still would have gone the same. Cause

16:39

then the other ones are like Indiana Jones. Oh

16:42

yeah. Later this year that was the other one being floated

16:45

for PlayStation release. And like

16:47

it's similar to what I was saying before about

16:49

the how the of course they talked about by

16:52

Nintendo. Of course they're talking about what they should

16:54

do with all these games. Yes. I,

16:56

that being said I doubt Nintendo or Sony are

16:59

talking about that very often. No. I mean

17:01

this is the thing with Microsoft. Like

17:04

everything that they do in the last few years

17:06

seems to be, it's

17:08

just all these, they just, the

17:10

impression that you get as a consumer

17:12

is that they're sort

17:15

of all over the place. They seem to be

17:17

very reactionary. These things kind of get leaked and

17:19

it just gives an impression in there that there's

17:21

no like solid like, yeah Nintendo and Sony for

17:23

better or worse even if you don't love their

17:26

output or agree with their decisions. It's like they

17:28

seem to kind of like know what they're doing

17:30

and they say they stick to their guns. They

17:32

seem to have set a strategy at the start

17:34

of their console generation and they stick to it.

17:37

Right and with this, with them it's like even

17:39

the thing of going everything is gonna,

17:42

if you get a series S everything's gonna come out

17:44

on it. Don't worry about it. You're not gonna be, you know,

17:46

you're not gonna be, you know, having

17:48

this slightly less powered console. And

17:52

then they end up having to go back on that for

17:55

Baldur's Gate because it's like the biggest game of

17:57

the year and they, you know, it's like, well.

17:59

It's kind of. on it.

18:02

It's have it on the X only or not have

18:04

it at all if that's going to be your rule.

18:06

There's all these kinds of things they sort of are

18:09

so, yeah, they seem sort of

18:11

so reactionary on things leaking and then they

18:13

respond to that and rather than just going

18:15

gung-ho and going here's the plan. They're big,

18:17

but and they had a gung-ho plan. They

18:19

said they announced all these games. So like

18:21

we're making a new perfect Dark. We've got

18:23

a Vowed, which is still coming. We've got

18:26

this fable game and all of that and

18:28

then they just fucking vanish into vapor. Yeah.

18:31

Like that perfect Dark one. There were reports

18:33

of that getting fucked up and it's been

18:35

rebooted and it might not come out and

18:37

fable. We've seen snippets of

18:39

but it doesn't seem to exist. And

18:42

then yeah, acquiring all these like good new

18:44

developers who, you know, released a game that

18:46

broke through and then you don't hear anything

18:49

from them for like six years. And it's

18:51

been years and years and like, you know,

18:53

like it's two different arcades, but it's both

18:55

arcane. They put out Deathloop that's on the

18:57

PS5 too. And then their first Xbox only

18:59

game. Again, I know it's a different studio

19:01

technically, but it's Redfall. Oh, yeah.

19:03

And like that the

19:06

strategy that they did have that they've been talking

19:08

about for years

19:10

hasn't actually fucking happened. Yeah. They put

19:12

out a bad Halo game that people

19:14

didn't like. They've put out like another

19:16

game that who cares? Like it's not

19:18

enough to carry it. Yeah. Yeah. Like

19:20

like simulator didn't sell Xboxes. Right. People

19:22

are just going in on Forza and

19:24

Flight Simulator on Game Pass because that's

19:26

like if you have that stuff already.

19:28

Crucially as well. Like Game Pass, they're

19:30

making their money if people are buying

19:32

an Xbox and getting Game Pass and

19:34

keeping it like that was what they

19:36

wanted people to do. Yeah. If they're

19:38

having to pivot, which again, we don't even know if

19:41

they are. But of course it seems

19:43

like it. Right. And it's because that's

19:45

not working. And like there's

19:47

rumors in every single direction. So it's kind

19:50

of hard to know which pellet of the

19:52

shotgun blast to look at. But

19:54

it's probably it's most likely like

19:57

it's most likely that they're just going been

20:00

talking about selling their games on other platforms.

20:03

And like with

20:05

what happened with something else, maybe

20:07

Cyberpunk, maybe, uh,

20:09

I can't remember what was another game, but, uh, the

20:12

people on the inside who weren't happy

20:14

with these discussions, you know, the

20:16

potential strategy, they're leaking that

20:18

because they're like, well, I thought our plan

20:20

was to have exclusive

20:22

games and, and, you

20:24

know, foster smaller development

20:26

companies making games for

20:28

Xboxes. Yeah. It's,

20:30

um, uh, my guess would

20:32

be they are making

20:35

new hardware, but different hardware

20:37

that is a little more

20:39

focused or, uh, I guess

20:42

a little less focused, if anything, that

20:44

is essentially different formats of computer. Yeah.

20:46

And there will be a living room

20:48

computer and a handheld computer, because the

20:50

theme deck's done real well. Yeah. Yeah.

20:52

People want their like fucking

20:54

Roku boxes and shit. And

20:56

if you can imagine that they'd be announcing this

20:58

though, like this may be a plan, but you're

21:01

not going to announce this just because some people have

21:03

tweeted about they

21:06

were planning to do this, but in three weeks

21:08

rather than next week, this like business event thing.

21:10

So it's not that their hand has been forced

21:12

necessarily by rumors other than bringing it up a

21:15

bit. Yeah. Yeah. I think what's happened. I think

21:17

that I honestly think like the biggest thing of

21:19

the announcement in a week is just going to

21:21

end up being, yeah, star fields out on the

21:23

PS five in July, which isn't that explosive of

21:25

a, of a concept. Like it's,

21:27

it's weird that it's like, like even just

21:29

that as an idea gets kind of turned

21:32

into this, like it's explosive. If you're one

21:34

of the people who, uh, love Xbox and

21:36

tweet it Sony. And every time Sony tweets

21:38

and is like PS five sucks, you

21:41

know, a lot of those people on the internet

21:43

and this is where these rumors have been circulated.

21:45

And I mean, that's yeah, everyone kind of wants

21:47

to be, every company wants to

21:49

have like the cult of something like an

21:51

Nintendo where it's like their brands are so

21:53

clear and that's the only place you can

21:55

get them. So I guess if you're,

21:58

if you're someone who's like a real diehard, to the

22:00

Xbox ecosystem. You want that. You want

22:03

your IP that exists just for you

22:05

and that people have

22:07

to buy into that world to be

22:09

able to experience. Yeah. I think really simply too,

22:11

there's a lot more people who are like, oh,

22:13

I bought an Xbox, but the PlayStation seems better.

22:15

Totally. I

22:18

can just play this over there now. Yeah. You

22:20

could have been on the fence and the Bethesda

22:22

thing happened and you're like, well, I like those

22:24

games. So yeah, I guess I'll get an Xbox

22:26

and I've been waiting. And I had to like

22:29

shift over my account. Yeah. Now I've got like

22:31

all the games, you know, I was an ex

22:33

a PlayStation person. I got all these games tied

22:35

to that account. Yeah. That were third party that

22:37

I can't now play on this thing. Well,

22:39

you're a PC person and you're like,

22:42

oh, OK, I thought that. I

22:45

mean, it just means that you unsubscribe to

22:47

Game of

22:57

Thrones and you're like, oh, I'm not

22:59

going to do that. I mean, I think it's a pretty good

23:01

strategy. I mean, I think that's a good strategy. I mean, I

23:03

think that's a good strategy. I think that's

23:05

a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy. I think

23:08

that's a good strategy. I think that's a good strategy. I

23:10

don't know if that would happen. I mean, that is what

23:12

I call the Netflix's and shit have been doing. Oh, yeah.

23:14

Yeah. The Netflix example is not necessarily a

23:16

successful one to follow. So

23:19

I think they're making plenty of money still,

23:21

though, is my understanding. I feel like Netflix

23:23

is one of those ones like Uber, where

23:25

they're propped up by Netflix is a is

23:27

a is a money loser. I

23:29

mean, I'm about to get rid of Game

23:32

Pass, I think, because I've started just buying

23:34

stuff that's on there on the right because

23:36

I've got the steam deck now. And

23:38

I know you can set up Game Pass on a steam deck,

23:41

but it's still only it's only you've

23:43

still got to be on the Internet to play the stuff.

23:45

Like, I want to be able to play the games natively

23:47

on the same deck. It just makes more sense to me.

23:49

And, you know, I would imagine that's like

23:51

a fairly common feeling as

23:54

we Move into the era of the steam

23:56

deck and the switch and being able to take

23:58

your games with you. All of those. Than

24:00

a Lenovo one and of this a higher

24:02

to those think so. what if Microsoft goes

24:04

well we've got one ill or if they

24:06

win you know game party's gonna run natively

24:09

on the same deck. You know you can

24:11

get it from the same store and you

24:13

can download and play the stuff online for

24:15

when you're on the guy. Even just that

24:18

is a move would make so might when

24:20

you go to leave people that a now

24:22

in the ecosystem of the portable machine making

24:24

making your service a little more. palatable,

24:27

An easy to use them even does that

24:29

is a short sensing would make a lot

24:32

of sense. I I think because I can't

24:34

say game cross show and up on Playstation

24:36

or a sweatshirt I synthetic as an alien

24:38

to assess the i just wanted to fact

24:41

check myself there are so Netflix has. A

24:43

to about one hundred and fifty billion dollars

24:45

debt and I make about seven million dollars

24:48

he said thought this subscription model. Is.

24:50

Not. Profitable. not

24:52

for another the the but com

24:55

twenty twenty five years as a

24:57

says. You know it's we To is like talking about

24:59

how. These these

25:01

decisions that Microsoft make in the

25:03

the. Forward. thinking. Capacities.

25:07

Of them that they're on

25:09

big presentation. Last year that

25:11

we all watched. Well I think

25:13

we all thought was like one of the better ones of

25:15

the year year that I had like. Ah, What

25:17

was the one he kicked off with like a little

25:19

bit of Seibel at had the and wouldn't athena. Another

25:21

lot of this stuff is like a lot of these

25:23

presentations. It's stuff that is is games. That are going

25:26

to come out on everything That as to why.

25:28

It with pies the stuff that was in their

25:30

remember we all came away from it and will

25:32

like that was one of the bed a structured

25:34

and place that had that cool looking yom. That.

25:36

Real like Louisiana by oh he said a

25:38

game at the start of it like I

25:40

remember. That now next week. Yeah, Ryan at the

25:42

White. Maybe I'm thinking different. I am singing threat

25:44

but they are just remembered. that that we we kind of

25:47

will come when when or the other go to bit of an

25:49

idea of what they doing. A lot of this stuff looks really.

25:51

cool but gap in the problem is that that's happened

25:53

for years and a good at at the promise game

25:55

yeah and then that stuff doesn't really show up were

25:57

like but then at the same time it is also

25:59

just a person thing and to some

26:01

degree because like all of the PlayStation

26:03

5 exclusives, there kind

26:05

of aren't any. There's like the Demon's

26:07

Souls remake hasn't come out on anything else

26:10

other than the PS3 in 2009 and

26:13

like the DLC for God of War

26:15

Ragnarok which will come out probably. Horizons

26:17

on PC now, Last of Us 2

26:19

isn't yet but that's on a PS4.

26:26

Spider-Man 2 isn't yet but it will. Their

26:28

strategy has been to put all of their

26:30

stuff on the PC eventually. So

26:33

it's not like there are actually that many

26:36

differences in the games available on a

26:39

PC. Yeah. But on

26:42

an actual Xbox you can't get those

26:44

games so it does devalue that console

26:46

slightly. Yeah. So anyway we'll know in

26:48

a week

26:51

or whatever and I'll be interested

26:53

to see like what

26:56

it is but yeah I could see it being

26:58

not as much as people are chatting about

27:00

right now but then also it would

27:03

make complete sense if it was like

27:05

hey here's a big title shift.

27:08

Yeah. Like what we're doing

27:10

clearly isn't working that way. So

27:12

why not just go yeah. Yeah

27:15

why not change. Why not keep

27:17

throwing money into a furnace. It

27:19

depends which direction Microsoft wants to

27:21

throw their money because I think

27:23

it's it seems as though they've

27:25

gotten involved. Yeah. The higher-ups above

27:27

the Xbox division to some extent.

27:30

Yeah. You can't keep fucking around

27:32

and losing money. So it's either

27:34

is the strategy like. You gotta

27:36

come into the office boys. Yeah. Sit down. Some fan

27:38

counter coming in and going like what the hell is

27:40

going on in here. It's just like drawing the fan

27:43

John Kazooie on the wall. What the fuck are

27:45

you doing in here. Well

27:47

like fucking 20 years

27:49

ago. The it'll

27:52

be whether or not it's pull back.

27:54

This is a waste or invest

27:57

more in this better direction. Yeah. Because

27:59

I think. When we've been

28:01

talking about sort of overall, you know,

28:03

the industry and where it makes sense for like

28:06

technology to go and stuff, the

28:09

Game Pass philosophy and the cloud philosophy

28:11

makes the most sense. It seems like

28:13

where everything's going to end up anyway.

28:15

Every company has some version of it

28:17

at the moment. It could be such

28:19

an on paper thing though, because maybe

28:21

it just isn't actually playing out that

28:23

way. These are a weirdly outlier thing

28:25

in tech too where

28:27

like when the PS5 and

28:30

this generation of consoles are coming out, people were

28:32

like, well, this is pointless. People

28:34

don't want to play games on these anymore. In Japan

28:36

in particular, they were like, people are done with this.

28:38

It's all phones. Right. And then

28:40

they sold crazy because it wasn't correct.

28:43

Nintendo have dabbled in having like a

28:45

handful of current gen PS5 stuff like

28:47

on the cloud because you can get

28:51

a good enough Wi-Fi signal on the train over there to be

28:53

able to play Resident Evil 7. Games get

28:56

like lumped in with the tech industry

28:58

and like it's different to fitness apps

29:00

and shit and the trends that happen

29:02

with those and people projected along the

29:05

same lines sometimes, but it's like Blu-ray

29:07

shouldn't exist. Yeah, they do because people

29:09

have stupid preferences and like not stupid,

29:12

but like they want a fidelity that

29:14

people don't think they want. Yeah, this

29:16

is like entertainment. These are the luxury

29:18

items in the first place. And so

29:21

people are going to want to experience them in

29:23

certain ways. Yeah. And they

29:25

don't want to pay

29:27

subscriptions. People are getting

29:29

absolutely fucking sick of subscriptions, myself

29:31

included. Yeah. Everything

29:33

is like that. So it could even

29:36

be that just the subscription model doesn't

29:38

work for a group who tends to

29:40

be on the forward fringes of tech

29:42

stuff as well. And

29:45

so, you know, the other game people tend to be early adopters of shit

29:47

and like very opinionated

29:51

isn't the right word, but like particular about

29:53

the stuff that they want and you can't

29:56

kind of sell them on shit

29:58

that they don't actually. Really one?

30:00

I dunno man. yeah we talked it again. When

30:02

there is like a the it feels like a

30:05

lot of stuff is going the other direction. Where?

30:08

Are you know physical media? Was sort

30:10

of look like it was dying often and all the

30:12

sudden like bottles. Come back in a big way

30:14

which is like ersatz your physic like it's they

30:16

so big, like they take up so much space

30:18

but Paypal put a lot of stock into them

30:20

and like you know a lot more like small

30:23

a game thing able to be released digitally only

30:25

which is which makes them possible to be brought

30:27

out but then. If. A small indies

30:29

popular enough. There's like limited run games. will

30:31

clinic go the other direction. A guy like.

30:34

Now we make it a big physical version. Of this

30:36

thing that where on earth regional thing

30:38

like that's the other side of videogame

30:40

stuff. Is that like yes, it's ordered

30:42

like savvy shit on one side but

30:44

then also the video game industry campaigns,

30:46

consumers who are some of the biggest

30:48

fucking like marks in rile up at

30:50

will. Yeah, absolutely. Gobble up. Dog ship

30:52

bought dill only. do it one out

30:54

of every fifty times. Yeah. And so

30:56

if you're lucky enough to beat up

30:58

our world order to be the against

31:00

an impact will be the Us. Not

31:02

that these things don't have some elements

31:04

of quality, I'm just. Saying this things

31:06

that. There's. A lot more

31:08

yeah my. No indication of industry trends necessarily

31:10

like they can be outliers more often than

31:13

on if you buy some business around that

31:15

which they didn't they based around exclusives which

31:17

a bankable cause Playstation did. it's even though

31:19

technically they didn't have them he has a

31:21

marketing is lady previously say it I had

31:24

a they do for a few months and

31:26

I don't have a great Pc. it's the

31:28

cheapest what like it and mans they really

31:30

good games. They've got game that has if

31:33

that's the big difference is that I know

31:35

we only did. they know much about life.

31:37

Guess what the fuck a problem is a

31:39

site simulators your best guy Finally I thought

31:41

it doesn't matter why it without loss of

31:43

us to on the Pc eventually he later

31:45

and and gotta warn Spiderman. It's like you're

31:48

already saying it, like when they those

31:50

let that like fuckin Tom Playstation. Studios

31:52

logo that was at the start of the Uncharted May

31:54

the it's like. Giving your they said

31:56

with past all these characters in it reminds you

31:59

like oh yes I do have yeah they are

32:01

getting into that sort of like Nintendo. Space Of

32:03

like they've got a little realm of

32:05

these. recognizable. Characters and it doesn't matter if

32:07

that's also out on the Pc. Yeah, when you

32:09

say Ratchet and Clank like you first thought is

32:11

like oh that's one of the really good Playstation

32:14

games without I don't like It looks fun alleged

32:16

like. Sit. There is

32:18

a specific mean are I experienced the

32:20

you get from playing a console game.

32:22

Sitting on a couch playing a really

32:25

good game is a different experience. Is

32:27

sitting at your pace a yeah. like

32:29

it may seem trivial, but it's like.

32:32

That. As a reason that people prefer it and

32:34

I for definitely unlucky. So yep, the games good

32:36

enough. I'm getting it on that console. I'm not

32:39

waiting a year until it comes out on pieces.

32:41

And there's also something to be said for just also

32:43

the you know talking. About the place they

32:45

since studios thing. Buried says

32:47

something about their their roster.

32:50

Of exclusives which even

32:52

though he does. A

32:54

lot of them a developed by different people they

32:56

do said does. It there is

32:58

like a bit of a feeling of cohesion.

33:01

they do honda feel like they all you

33:03

know there is so to the a feeling

33:05

of game where you go that the Playstation

33:07

studios you know that the Playstation exclusive Spring

33:10

and Microsoft I can really has enough to

33:12

ease this kind of like it's hodgepodge of

33:14

acquisitions of like oh now what's on the

33:16

rail, what's under our umbrella. Flight

33:19

Simulator forza ah,

33:21

star fields, some.

33:23

They'll automatically and I read full. There's

33:25

no like there's no unifying kind of

33:27

feeling to what they put out by.

33:30

Had it twice and the hit with

33:32

Halo in Gears of War? Yeah, and.

33:34

Very. Kind of. Since.

33:37

Those games stop being. Of

33:40

the level of quality or like cultural

33:42

impact that they were in the two

33:44

thousands. The. business has directly

33:46

followed the wine that their releases had

33:48

a me it makes sense right if

33:50

you're a games companies yeah it's it

33:52

is so crazy it over analyze it

33:54

where it's like all what went wrong

33:56

with the x box one day it

33:59

launched with rise is Son of

34:01

Roy and then Sunset Overdrive. Not that they're

34:03

necessarily the worst things, but who cares? Yeah,

34:05

and the PlayStation had the order 1886 and

34:07

whatever, but

34:10

eventually it had Bloodborne and then by the end of it, it had

34:12

all this, it really used to be a

34:14

good thing. I mean, there's so much importance in having a

34:16

mascot, having a recognizable,

34:18

this is what

34:21

this company is. And when your biggest game

34:23

of the year was a game where the

34:25

protagonist is someone who is designed by you,

34:27

the player, that makes it impossible

34:29

to have an hour with like, this

34:32

is Microsoft. And Skyrim's the same though,

34:35

and people love that game. It

34:37

is just the quality of it. People

34:39

didn't enjoy Starfield and they're right. It's

34:42

not good enough to be

34:44

your only thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

34:46

yeah. And Halo wasn't before that.

34:48

And if it was one out

34:50

of three in the year or whatever, then

34:53

maybe you get away with it, but they've

34:55

not gotten away with it many times. And

34:57

that's why I predict the Xbox Two is

34:59

coming tomorrow. Whoa! Well, hey,

35:01

enough about speculative rumors of things

35:03

that might be happening over at

35:05

Microsoft, because last week we were

35:07

treated to a presentation of things

35:09

that are definitely happening over there

35:11

at Sony. They had

35:13

a state of play just after we

35:16

recorded last week's episode and just before

35:18

we uploaded it, very convenient stuff.

35:21

But yeah, 45 minutes state of play. 43

35:26

of which was Death Stranding 2 On the

35:29

Beach. Yeah, you can start with that.

35:31

On the Beach. On the Beach. What

35:33

a bad name. On the Beach. I

35:35

love it. It's very funny. I love

35:37

it. Sounds like a 1940s movie

35:40

about someone waiting at home for their husband

35:42

to get back from the war. I love

35:44

it. On the Beach. Any... I

35:46

think of The Beach that makes you old.

35:48

Oh, yeah. Because the rain makes you old

35:50

in it too, and The Beach is where

35:52

the rain is. That's true. I don't really

35:54

remember the story of Death Stranding. I realized as

35:56

I watched this trailer... And of course Kojima would be

35:58

a big... powering everything that

36:01

M Night Shyamalan talked about. I

36:04

watched the trailer not

36:06

live after the fact, so I knew what the

36:08

title was already. And it was very funny to

36:10

me, the little teasers all

36:12

through the trailer where it's like on the

36:15

drawbridge. It's constantly bringing up

36:17

on the, which was just a

36:19

little funny, no, no, no, no,

36:21

no, no, no, it's on the beach. Yeah,

36:23

which might be the weakest one. They

36:27

could've gone full infinite wealth. Have

36:30

Sam poured a Bridget washing

36:32

up completely nude. I

36:35

mean, close enough. Yeah, yeah. He

36:37

sent babies back and he coughed up the fucking

36:39

magic school bus that had been roaming around inside

36:42

his body. And the little ship

36:44

that you're in, you seem to be going

36:46

to the rest of the world now in

36:48

a ship to connect more people. Sam, you

36:50

saved the United States, but you gotta save

36:52

the world. I loved the beginning of

36:54

this trailer just seems to be like just a

36:57

big slice of like the tutorial of the game, where

36:59

it's her like going, now here's the ship where

37:01

you'll have your base of operations and you can get your

37:04

weapons over there. And feel free to walk around and talk

37:06

to some of the other people who are in their rooms.

37:08

It's like, why is this in the first look

37:10

trailer? Oh, Dan. I

37:14

don't think had those little hands on

37:16

her shoulders. No, they knew. They knew.

37:18

And also has a low frame rate,

37:21

a live puppet. I love this guy.

37:23

Oh yeah. He's pretty cool. Little Pinocchio

37:25

ass. I was a

37:27

bit disappointed. Kojima obviously predicted COVID, but now

37:29

he's reacting to it because she has the

37:31

hands are like a little mask. They're a

37:34

little surgical mask. I love it. They're

37:36

like, they're lighting a diary for her. I love that.

37:39

Yeah, that's cool. I want some. Little

37:41

puppet, I love little puppet. Again, that's

37:43

such a classic like weird

37:45

Kojima. Why does he move like that?

37:47

It doesn't make sense. The fact that

37:49

there will be some explanation is

37:52

sick. Like they

37:54

set him up like, well, he's pretty dumb now, but he'll learn

37:56

it. So he's like kind of a little AI thing, but

37:58

then he's pretty dumb. Sam

38:00

goes to put him on his little belt loop like in the

38:02

back and he's like, don't put me on your, hey,

38:05

not on the, not on the air. I

38:08

want to ride shotgun. Yeah. Uh,

38:11

it reminded me how much I fucking love

38:13

the visual design of, of the, of Death

38:15

Stranding. Like this is the same thing where

38:17

I think all of this is bad and

38:19

I love it. Right. Like it's, I

38:21

really liked Death Stranding one and

38:23

I don't know why

38:25

because so much, it's not bad, it's just

38:27

that it's so goofy and such

38:30

poor decisions of like, why is this so

38:32

long? Why is this so slow

38:34

and boring? Why does this make no sense?

38:36

You know, it's just like a random studio

38:38

and it showed up in an Xbox presentation

38:41

with the like, what the fuck is this

38:43

little puppet man? Get the fuck out of

38:45

here. So George

38:47

Miller is the next director Hideo Kojima

38:49

is trying to fuck. Yep. He's in

38:52

it with an Australian accent. Loved hearing

38:54

that. It'll be interesting to see because

38:56

there has been so much action

38:58

over the last like year or two

39:01

of people being in Japan and popping

39:03

into Kojima's videos for little photo ops.

39:05

Getting their scan. Yeah. It's that exciting

39:07

thing to know how many of them

39:09

are just like mutual appreciation, jackoff sessions

39:11

and how many of them are in

39:14

the game. So, uh, Timothy Chalamet, he

39:16

popped up at Kojima Studios. Yeah. Oh,

39:18

at the studio. At the studio. Uh,

39:20

Australian rapper, Bricks. Oh yeah. Popped

39:23

in there and got a photo with Kojima. Yeah.

39:25

I know there's, yeah, Jordan Peele, he's been hanging

39:27

out with. L. L. Fanning is in

39:29

the game. Jordan Peele is that other game that

39:31

he is making for Xbox. Oh yeah. What was

39:33

it called? It that looked sick. Uh,

39:35

something started with an O maybe. Don't

39:38

remember. Yeah. The sort of cloud

39:40

one weird horror first person. The

39:42

close up faces. Troy Baker's back

39:44

in this one and he's

39:47

the Joker now. He's the Joker. Yeah. Got

39:49

the Mad Max guitar as well, which is

39:51

very rich to bring George Miller in and

39:53

go, can I also get the guitar from

39:55

Mad Max? Yeah. Yeah. There's some other reference

39:57

that it's through that I hadn't seen, but someone

39:59

pointed it out. It was like a very direct

40:02

some comic book or something has like

40:04

that that guitar is a weapon. I

40:07

forget what it is. Anyway, there were a

40:09

lot of long seemingly just pulled from

40:11

the game intro trailer and then little

40:14

snippets of gameplay stuff and all of

40:16

those I was like, fuck yes, it

40:18

was so fun to play that game.

40:20

Yeah. There's something that is

40:22

like, you know, pretty, pretty hyped, like

40:24

a lot of expectation of I loved

40:26

rolling out a 10 minute trailer where

40:28

you get a bit of everything. You

40:30

get a bit of, you know, generally

40:32

you would think the way this would go

40:34

would be two and a half minute tease

40:37

where it's not really clear. You know, it's

40:39

a real cinematic, it doesn't really give you

40:41

any idea of what it is. But like,

40:43

I loved getting such and even like the

40:45

little bits of story were like these long

40:47

scenes like it wasn't just these like random

40:49

cutaways. I just yeah, I love just the

40:52

acknowledgement of like, we know people are excited

40:54

for this. We know people want to know

40:56

what it is. So why

40:58

thread this out over a year? Let's just

41:00

give you a huge 10 minute slab right

41:02

now. I will say I don't think that

41:04

was a lot of people's response to being

41:06

told, hey, we'll have a 43 minute trailer

41:08

for you. And then like 11 of it

41:10

is Death Stranding. People like fuck off. Right.

41:13

But they are like that about everything. So

41:16

that that showed and that's 2025. And

41:19

at the end of that little section

41:21

with Kojima, they were like, and also,

41:23

well, you have to do anything else. And

41:25

he said he's making a new tactical espionage

41:27

stealth game. It

41:30

was called Sysint or

41:32

something fizzing. They like

41:34

pull back at the end and the name

41:36

was there. Oh, yeah. No details

41:39

about that. And that'll be years and years from

41:41

now because he's already working on this and another

41:43

game. Right. But he's doing

41:45

another. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

41:49

We also saw a bit of Silent Hill 2. Oh, yes.

41:51

Yeah. And a surprise

41:53

drop of a little mini mini

41:56

game. Mini

41:58

experience. Silent Hill the short messy. came

42:01

out pretty much straight away right? PT. Yeah.

42:04

And PT was Silent Hill so it's

42:06

not like they're stealing. But they've

42:08

done that. I haven't played

42:11

that and for some reason don't care.

42:13

I don't care about this, I don't care

42:15

about Silent Hill 2. I don't know why,

42:17

they just are not something. I've never played

42:19

a Silent Hill game. Me either. I

42:22

played the first one a bit. Right, I

42:24

think. So you're the primary audience. You're the

42:26

prime audience. I'm the guy and I don't

42:28

give a shit. I

42:30

don't know, it's just not, apart

42:33

from sort of like Resident Evil, I've never

42:35

been a huge survival horror fan. So I

42:37

don't know, yeah. But I'll

42:39

give it a crack when it comes

42:41

out. Maybe it'll convert me. Who knows?

42:43

Rise of the Ronin, so a bit

42:45

more of that. Not interested. Soonish. Yeah.

42:47

Unfortunately. Yeah. Looked quite stiff

42:49

in the way I didn't

42:51

enjoy Wo Long being. Yeah.

42:55

And it is them again. Yeah. I

42:57

just don't think I'm a fan of them. You

43:00

know, like they have

43:02

enough fans. They don't need one. Yeah,

43:04

I don't know. It was weird because

43:06

it's very Ghost of Tsushima slash Assassin's

43:09

Creed looking from like the traversal stuff

43:11

they showed with like the wingsuit thing

43:13

that you kind of get at the

43:15

end of Assassin's Creed 2 or whatever

43:17

it was. Yep. And then, yeah, that

43:20

really like stiff kind of thin

43:23

looking combat that I didn't. But

43:26

also incredibly hard to tell from a trailer

43:28

how something will actually feel. But we'll see.

43:30

That's out in March. Yeah. Also,

43:33

Dragon's Dogma 2. A little

43:35

bit more of that. I'm looking

43:37

forward to that game. It only

43:39

runs at 30 frames per second

43:41

target on the new consoles. Interesting.

43:43

How very dare they. Interesting. Retro.

43:45

But I'm stoked to play that

43:47

one. It looks great to me. Yeah. A

43:50

remaster of Until Dawn. Oh,

43:52

yeah. Yeah, that was a surprise. That was one of

43:54

those ones where, you know, in the back of

43:56

your head, you're like, no, I'm 25 still. Yeah.

43:59

Yeah. It's

44:01

no understanding of like, no that

44:03

game's nine years old now. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

44:05

yeah. A remaster

44:08

of Sonic Generations featuring

44:11

everyone's favourite character, Shadow.

44:13

Yeah. You interested

44:15

in that, Tommy? Not really. Okay, well then

44:18

no one is. I hear Generations

44:20

is one of the good Sonic. Okay. And I

44:22

feel like every time they go, oh we're re-releasing

44:24

one of the good Sonics, I play it and go,

44:26

this is shit. Yeah. This sucks. The

44:29

Sonic treadmill has never changed. The impression

44:31

I got of Generations was that people

44:33

really liked that it had those like

44:35

old school 2D bits, but then they've

44:37

done Mania and Superstars since then.

44:40

That's the thing. It came out a while

44:42

before them and was their first kind of,

44:44

we're going back to the Sonic you liked. Yeah.

44:46

So I think it got a lot of, a

44:49

bit of appreciation for that. Yeah. Yeah. Foamstars,

44:52

guys. Oh, it's out today. Yeah. Stars

44:54

is out today. It's free on PlayStation

44:56

Plus, right? It's like the monthly game,

44:58

I think. Oh yeah. Yeah. For

45:00

that. Roll the drum and free on there at

45:03

the moment too, which if you haven't played the

45:05

game, get around that. Great. You got PS Plus.

45:07

Right. Yeah. Foamstars does not appeal

45:09

either. So maybe PlayStation

45:12

should also get out of the console. It is.

45:16

Metro Awakening, let me finish

45:18

VR. VR. I

45:21

can't do that thing where you slap your fingers together.

45:23

No, I just click like I'm at a theater poetry

45:26

reading. Yeah. Yeah. This is

45:29

one of two VR games. Can you please

45:31

deliver your response in slam poetry? They had

45:33

two VR games. Dad! Why?

45:37

One of them looked like shit. The

45:40

Morrowind looking one that was just some medieval

45:42

combat game. Ignore that one. But then, yeah,

45:44

this is a new Metro game. Yeah, right.

45:47

Not a VR adaptation of one of the

45:49

existing ones. It's a full game. It is

45:51

a VR game coming out for

45:53

the PS VR too. Yep. Oh.

45:57

How do you feel being so wrong? Have

46:00

you played that Resident Evil 4 VR

46:02

mode yet? Don't ask me about my personal life.

46:04

Have you played a Metro game before? A

46:07

little bit of 2033 years ago and I didn't go that far in. I've

46:12

tried Exodus. I

46:14

think that was the one that was on the PS4. And

46:17

it's good. Weirdly,

46:20

last week's bonus episode, I talk about the movie Stalker.

46:22

Metro and the Stalker games are both

46:25

inspired by that. And it's like Russian

46:27

survival, first person RPG-ish.

46:31

Hey, enjoy. I'm

46:34

curious to hear about it. Yeah, a

46:36

VR shooting game can work really well.

46:38

Half-Life Alyx is one of the best

46:40

games that there is. So

46:44

I'll be holding it to that unreachable stand. Judas.

46:50

Oh, yeah. Yeah. More

46:52

story, still looks

46:55

like Bioshock. Some extremely, because I don't remember

46:57

from that first trailer, which is, I think,

46:59

the only one we had until now. How

47:02

much of the actual first-person gameplay look

47:04

and stuff was in that? Maybe none.

47:06

Yeah, I don't think there was any.

47:08

Because this really had the, like, I've

47:10

got a big, thick gun in one

47:12

hand and my left hand has electricity

47:14

on it. Yep. Proper

47:17

Bioshock looking stuff. But

47:20

that could still be cool. This kind

47:22

of made Bioshock. Exactly, yeah. So he's allowed.

47:24

But here's the thing. He made Bioshock 20

47:26

years ago, nearly. Uh-oh. Hopefully,

47:29

this is not

47:33

a full retread of progression.

47:35

I'm one of the four

47:38

people who still rate

47:40

Bioshock Infinite. Because I did get a lot of

47:42

hype at the time. And then people, like, a

47:44

year later were like, wait, I hated it. But

47:47

I love it. It's one of my favorite games. And

47:50

this is one of the few games that I'm

47:52

allowing myself to get hyped up. I mean, it's

47:54

been a long time coming. So yeah, it's

47:57

cool to see it come to fruition and learn a bit more about

47:59

what it is. What is? Go

48:01

Roman on it. Be a big Judas apologist. Oh. Nice.

48:05

Now I can't remember Haydn or Hare

48:07

of the rest of these ones that I haven't read out

48:09

yet so I'll just rip through them and you guys stop

48:11

me if you have any interest in the likes

48:14

of Helldivers 2. No. That's

48:17

it. That's it. That's

48:19

it. That's it. That's it. That's

48:21

it. That's it. That's

48:24

it. That's it. That's it. That's

48:26

it. That's it. That's

48:29

it. That's what I'm going to talk about later.

48:31

I don't know if I care about third person

48:33

shooters very much. Right, yeah co-op multiplayer. Yeah,

48:35

it might be. It might be alright. I don't

48:37

know but yeah not, not, not, not, I'm

48:39

not salivating. Stellar Blade. Oh

48:42

yeah, this I'm kind of interested in. Maybe. This

48:45

is sort of like yeah, Japanese action.

48:47

Korean I think it is. Yeah right,

48:49

right. Um, I don't know. Yeah,

48:51

I don't know. I think I need to see more. Yep. Yeah.

48:55

Yeah, exactly. Like third person sort of like

49:00

quick moving like Vanquish type of shooter

49:02

action game sort of thing. Um, with

49:04

skimpy outfits. So according to Hubba Hubba

49:06

news or whatever it is you read.

49:09

A wugga.com. Oh yeah. It

49:11

looked like Nier Automata without the

49:14

irony. Sort of, yeah. Without the

49:16

self-awareness. Yeah. Like, uh,

49:18

I forget what I'm saying. Another game?

49:20

Yeah, yeah. Similar to Code Vein.

49:22

Oh yeah. But

49:24

I don't think it'll play like that. But it might be alright.

49:26

No, no, no opinions. Uh, this is

49:28

cool. A little crossover between Dredge and David

49:30

the Diver. Mm hmm. And I think there's

49:32

also some Godzilla shit is showing up in

49:35

David the Diver. But Dredge and David Diver

49:37

stuff had already happened a bit ago. Yeah.

49:40

I think David the Diver was maybe like new

49:42

to PS5 or something was why it was in

49:44

there. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah,

49:46

yeah. I think that is it. And you're right though. And

49:48

the Godzilla stuff was in there. Yeah. And

49:51

I think it's a little different to that like, Pharaoh Munch song

49:53

is what I think of it as. Oh

49:55

yeah. It's the Godzilla theme. Every time they play that

49:57

I'm like, ooh, a needle drop. That

50:00

is a good song. He hasn't listened to that in such a

50:02

good song. 15 years I reckon. I saw him do that live

50:04

at Meredith. And as is

50:06

the case with a lot of people with only one hit

50:09

playing a festival, he ripped it out about

50:11

three times. Daryl Braithwaite

50:13

style. Good on him. The same one. Good

50:16

on him. Whatever man. Fuck that

50:18

rule. He played three great songs. V

50:20

Rising. Oh yeah, that's

50:22

out in early access already I

50:24

think. Okay. Isometric. Oh

50:28

the Diablo book and art. Yeah. And

50:30

Legendary Tales. That was the Morrowind look

50:33

at. I can't say Morrowind because it

50:35

looks as bad as Morrowind does today.

50:37

That's about Feb 8. That looked like

50:39

just absolute fucking shovelware

50:42

VR bullshit. Yeah. Of

50:44

like, oh wow, combat in first person.

50:46

Dude, can I, what are

50:49

you smoking? So hang on, now you're saying there's

50:51

too many VR games. No,

50:53

I'm consistent there's too many

50:55

bad ones. Right. No,

50:57

I agree with that. Well,

51:00

that's enough about games that are coming up

51:02

in the future. There was also a little Final

51:04

Fantasy one announced for the week after. Oh

51:07

yes. That is on like as

51:09

we're recording this and there's a demo for

51:11

rebirth. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the phone dedicated state

51:13

of play thingy. Yeah, state of play. Which

51:15

is cool. Yeah, another PlayStation thing

51:17

that they put out as well that I'll just talk

51:19

about real quick. I watched the documentary about

51:22

the making of The Last of Us 2. It's

51:24

called Grounded 2. Ah

51:26

ha honey. Ground

51:28

2. It's fine.

51:34

It's on YouTube, right? It is on YouTube.

51:36

It is on the Naughty Dog YouTube channel

51:38

and the GameSpot Trailers YouTube channel. Oh, hell

51:40

yeah. And I like. I'll be damned if

51:42

I'm giving any views to those snacks over

51:45

at Naughty Dog. It's like two hours

51:47

long. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't watch it all in

51:49

one go. And going between different

51:51

devices you can watch YouTube on, I kept clicking

51:54

on the other one when I go to keep

51:56

watching it. Oh. So

51:58

I kept. I've watched

52:00

about four hours of this two hour documentary because

52:02

I kept going back 10 minutes and being like,

52:04

this is repetitive. This

52:06

truly is the comedy festival review being like, yeah, it

52:09

took me ages to find a park outside the venue.

52:11

One star. It's pretty landish

52:14

sort of, you know, very marketing

52:16

material. Right. Yeah, right. But there's

52:19

some stuff in there that was interesting such as, like

52:23

it was cool to have some pretty

52:25

honest looking back from the

52:28

people involved at the reception

52:31

to that game, the negative reception from certain

52:33

people at the time. That was interesting. Like

52:35

some crazy shit I've forgotten all about, like

52:37

the leaks and stuff myself. And that that

52:39

contributed to people being fucking mad at the

52:42

game before it even came. It's a wee

52:44

thing to fucking fucking talk to. Yeah. Like

52:46

gathering up everyone in the office being like,

52:48

hey guys, let's really leave that trauma. Well,

52:50

because like, like Laura Bailey who plays Abby

52:53

was talking in it about like they sent

52:55

death threats to her newborn son and

52:57

like the people who

52:59

fucking hate that game. A newborn can't

53:02

even read. What a waste. I

53:04

was going to say the real crime is

53:06

giving an iPad to a newborn. Reading

53:09

them out to him at bedtime. Kill

53:13

yourself, you little shithead. Anyway, I've been

53:15

crying all night. That

53:19

was awful. Fucking absurd behaviour. Yeah. And I

53:21

remember because like we were deep in a

53:23

lockdown. Right. I think I kind of forgotten

53:25

all that just because it was like, oh

53:27

well, everything. Yeah. Everything's going

53:29

to shit. So yeah, such a negative

53:32

time. But yeah, because they indefinitely delayed

53:34

the game because of the pandemic and

53:36

then it released in June or something.

53:38

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because

53:40

yeah, the leaks, the people were like,

53:42

they were seeing sort of like bullet

53:44

points and getting angry at like, there's

53:46

a trans character. Yeah. There obviously spoilers

53:48

for Last of Us 2, but like

53:50

people just seeing that Joel dies with,

53:53

you know, like people just freaking out

53:55

and going in a negative. Actual lunatics

53:57

about it. And there is still a.

54:00

contingency of the fucking, the guy who

54:02

lived in the jungle after World War

54:04

II, most of us two haters, like

54:06

actively running sub-redits about like, oh, I

54:09

fucking hate it. Yeah. And like, I

54:11

remember at the time being like, oh,

54:13

the story's a little disjointed because it's

54:16

sort of lots of flashbacks.

54:18

So I felt that that took me out of it sometimes.

54:21

And then like, being

54:23

like, oh, people are criticizing it? Interesting. I wonder if

54:25

it's the same and then reading it and then like

54:27

fucking 2001 a space

54:29

on and see all these comments saying everyone

54:31

should die. Like, nah, dude, it's fine. And

54:33

also, once you know the story

54:35

and you played a second time, I actually think

54:38

it's really well laid out. But it did turn

54:40

into that thing where, yeah, having your initial thoughts

54:42

about it, you felt like it was

54:44

hard to have any kind

54:46

of even like mild criticism of your

54:48

experience. Yeah. Yeah. Then you were in

54:51

that, because I definitely felt on my

54:53

first playthrough, I initially

54:55

didn't like that I had made

54:58

all this progress and built all this stuff up

55:00

with one character and then all of a sudden

55:02

I'm like, wait, I'm starting over again? Yeah. Why

55:04

did I invest all this time and, you

55:06

know, like resources into powering up that

55:08

weapon and everything? I think it kind of makes

55:10

it so interesting and powerful. I mean, there were fair

55:13

criticisms. I don't think you guys should have sent

55:15

it to the newborn baby though. That was a little,

55:17

who else? A little

55:19

over the line. The next generation needs to

55:21

know what we want. Who

55:24

else am I meant to discuss it with, if not

55:26

my intellectual peers? Okay. But

55:30

yeah, like a lot of that stuff

55:32

though, kind of on reflection, it's

55:35

just the sort of game that doesn't happen very

55:37

often where like it's made with

55:40

like some short term, I think

55:43

it's short term like difficulties to...

55:46

Challenges, right, yeah. Approachability

55:49

that are necessary for the overall story. Yeah, because

55:51

it's a lot like hearing them talk about it

55:54

and someone describing it as that

55:56

so often in games, the challenge is just, it's there

55:58

on the screen, it's mechanical. and this

56:00

game having a big part

56:03

of the challenge being all like

56:05

mentally in your head having to

56:08

Play as this person and want this

56:10

person to survive who has been the

56:12

antagonist towards you for most of the

56:14

game Yeah, like that is so interesting

56:16

a challenge that is happening like off

56:18

the screen and outside of the game

56:21

Like yeah, it's such a it's such

56:23

a ballsy idea. And yeah, I think

56:25

they totally pulled it off. Yeah And

56:29

you know everyone in that character should be male. Let

56:31

me make it clear in that

56:34

game. I mean not in that character But

56:37

anyway, so then towards the end Neil

56:40

Druckmann says some stuff about the future and

56:42

I was like, oh it's we're not working

56:44

on the third part yet But

56:47

I've had a clear idea of what I

56:49

think it should be and it needs to

56:51

be made in the same way that the

56:53

first But I think in that part of

56:55

the documentary that stuff was recorded last April

56:57

or something Okay, so he could have been

56:59

talking about the multiplayer game that has since

57:01

been cancelled That was the sort

57:03

of in-between thing so unclear where the last of

57:05

us three is the next thing or

57:07

there is actually another another game Yeah, cuz

57:09

I did see some headlines. I

57:12

didn't watch the two-hour documentary, but I saw

57:14

some headlines Yeah, you can read the articles

57:17

that said please let's have your input

57:20

They said like they

57:22

was Naughty dog

57:25

is not working on the last of us three for

57:27

as its next game. So yeah, I think that was

57:29

a My

57:32

understanding of watching it was a misinterpretation when

57:34

that was filmed. Yeah, but I also could

57:36

be wrong Anyway, it was alright and it

57:38

was interesting seeing some of the behind the

57:40

scenes filming stuff. I love that sort of

57:42

thing Yeah, yeah, mocap and shit. Oh, yeah,

57:44

they're all pretty good actors man. Yeah, it's

57:46

cool to watch him watch him

57:48

leave I Watch

57:51

them work down that Troy Baker. Yeah,

57:53

yeah, he did everything. He's job. Oh,

57:55

yeah, he's job. Good And

57:59

it's episode So to Filthy Casuals is of

58:01

course brought to you by the

58:03

fine folks at Manscaped.

58:06

Valentine's Day is here. Valentine's Day

58:09

is near. Valentine's Day is time

58:11

to get yourself clear

58:13

of hair. Yeah, I did it.

58:15

Pity yourself up for your boo.

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mentioned they have one, but... manscaped.com surely.

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yeah. You can't use yourself to be in

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just, come on. Just show your partner your computer. I'm

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1:01:11

speaking of good acting, I've

1:01:13

been sinking my teeth into

1:01:16

a brand new game. Wait,

1:01:18

what? I've

1:01:22

been playing Persona 3 reloads. It's

1:01:25

not a new game. That's an old game.

1:01:27

A full remake of 2000 and I'm not

1:01:29

sure. I've

1:01:32

maybe five or six. I'm like

1:01:34

that four was like super nerd.

1:01:37

I win the game. Super

1:01:41

nerd like running down that board and punching

1:01:43

you in the face. No,

1:01:46

I've come up with a good segment idea

1:01:48

for our live shows. It's called

1:01:50

The Chase starring Adam. Yeah. You

1:01:53

came up with that. Yeah, I came

1:01:55

up with wheel of fortune. I overheard

1:01:57

why I overheard I listened to Tommy

1:01:59

say. something. Yeah. No, you can

1:02:01

compete in the chase against the

1:02:04

super Adam. Yeah. Good artists create

1:02:06

great artists steal. Amazing artists admit

1:02:08

to stealing. And God

1:02:10

rank artists take art that they made 20

1:02:12

years ago and give it a big old

1:02:16

spit and polish to make it look more like

1:02:18

a piece of art that they made five, six

1:02:22

years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:24

That's how it goes. Persona three reload.

1:02:27

Yeah. A full, full remake

1:02:30

of, of Persona three, bringing

1:02:33

it more in line sort of stylistically

1:02:35

with the, with all of the kind

1:02:37

of visual flourishes of Persona five. It's

1:02:40

got all the same. It's not quite

1:02:43

to the same extent, not quite as

1:02:45

stylized, but definitely the yeah, it's got

1:02:47

your cool menus and your, your all

1:02:49

out attacks. And yeah, it's

1:02:51

a, it's so it's all of

1:02:54

the, yeah, it's, have you

1:02:56

ever played the original Adam? No. I,

1:02:58

this is all new to me and yeah,

1:03:01

I'm having a great time

1:03:03

with it. All right. Persona five. Yeah.

1:03:06

It's such a cool idea to sort

1:03:08

of bring this one up to more

1:03:10

modern standards and especially to, it feels

1:03:13

like five was like the big point that a

1:03:15

lot of people got in on Persona. So sort

1:03:18

of, yeah, bringing it more in line with that.

1:03:20

I think this is, I might be

1:03:22

wrong, the same or a lot of the

1:03:24

same team who did five as well. I

1:03:26

could be wrong about that. But I think

1:03:28

it's. As in the

1:03:30

original game or the remake? The

1:03:33

remake is the five people doing the remake

1:03:35

or some of their own style. And I

1:03:37

think that's why it's slightly more like that.

1:03:40

It's because it's those people going to make

1:03:42

them. I mean, you do very much early

1:03:44

on, like you may. I could be wrong.

1:03:46

You're like best, you're like best mate that

1:03:49

you meet first day of school is like

1:03:51

so similar to Ryuji. Like he's almost the

1:03:53

same guy. Big loud mouth, like goofball, dickhead,

1:03:55

like let's just go in there and kill

1:03:58

them all. Yeah. And yeah,

1:04:00

so the set up of this one is that you,

1:04:02

yeah, similar to five, you've

1:04:05

moved to a new school, new town, your

1:04:07

school is on this little island and you're

1:04:09

living in like a student dorm and

1:04:12

every night after midnight, there's

1:04:14

a secret 13th hour of

1:04:16

the day where most... I'd

1:04:19

notice. Well, you

1:04:21

would be a party member in this game

1:04:23

in that case. Oh. Because all the population

1:04:25

get frozen into these coffins and

1:04:28

there's an hour of the day where the

1:04:30

shadows kind of roam around, mysterious

1:04:32

stuff happens, you

1:04:35

quickly realize that you are

1:04:37

part of an exclusive group of

1:04:40

people who are immune

1:04:42

to being frozen in this 13th hour of

1:04:44

the day and you're kind of free to roam around

1:04:47

and you're trying to work out what's causing

1:04:49

this, what's going on in this other... I

1:04:52

call it the dark hour because

1:04:54

simultaneously during the days, there

1:04:57

is this outbreak of

1:04:59

something called apathy syndrome where... Brother,

1:05:02

that's happening in the real world. I

1:05:06

don't want to look into it. It was probably happening in the real

1:05:08

world around 2002 maybe when... Sure.

1:05:11

So yeah, people all of a sudden wake

1:05:13

up, they've lost all their enthusiasm, all their energy,

1:05:15

all their... and there's like no explanation

1:05:18

for it. So your little team of...

1:05:20

you are recruited to go live at this dorm and then

1:05:22

you quickly find out that everyone else who lives at the

1:05:24

dorm is part of this group that

1:05:26

can walk freely around during the dark

1:05:29

hour. Right, at Hogwarts. Yeah,

1:05:31

you're trying to work out what the

1:05:33

link is between the dark hour and

1:05:35

this apathy syndrome. Okay. And

1:05:37

there's a big... it's not kind

1:05:39

of split up like Persona 5 is

1:05:41

where you've got all the different dungeons and you

1:05:43

go into different areas. This is all...

1:05:46

your sort of dungeons are taking place in

1:05:48

the dark hour your school transforms into this

1:05:50

huge tower. And you're basically

1:05:52

going up floors of the tower, fighting

1:05:54

enemies, getting to sort of like a

1:05:56

mid-boss and then you'll kind of hit a

1:05:58

point where... You're like blocked

1:06:01

off and it's like we can't go up any

1:06:03

further We got

1:06:05

to wait for something to maybe happen in the

1:06:07

real world That'll you know open this gate and

1:06:10

so then you're in the next section and

1:06:12

there and it's all kind of visually different

1:06:14

Which right each like I think it's 20

1:06:16

ish floors, right? Cuz I the

1:06:18

stuff I know about this is the people

1:06:22

Disproper this is it Santa

1:06:24

toast it's called hard Tartarus.

1:06:26

Oh, yeah that thought Fottest

1:06:31

that Because

1:06:34

it's sort of like mementos And

1:06:38

that that being the main dungeon thing I've seen

1:06:40

people criticize that rather than the unique dungeons of

1:06:42

the son of hyper I mean that is the

1:06:44

cool thing sort of saying that as I

1:06:46

understand it This is the this is the

1:06:48

one three is the one where they kind of

1:06:50

really start to zero in on The

1:06:52

persona formula that you then see carried

1:06:54

into four and and and really really

1:06:57

implemented in five This

1:06:59

thing of the the combination of the social links

1:07:01

and everything and yeah I mean it makes sense

1:07:04

because it is on significantly older hardware that it

1:07:06

doesn't have the same sort of range

1:07:08

and and yet so much of the fun of

1:07:10

persona five is Finding

1:07:13

this kind of evil adults in the real

1:07:15

world and being like oh, well, what's there?

1:07:18

What's their mind palace gonna manifest as and like

1:07:20

the kind of visual stuff that they do with

1:07:22

that is so interesting Except for that one where

1:07:24

it's like my mind palace is space No,

1:07:27

yeah, I'm on the spaceship minds a boat

1:07:31

I'm in Egypt in my head Yeah,

1:07:35

I mean I bet again. It's like that. You know,

1:07:37

they do so much with those like Yeah,

1:07:40

this is just more. Yeah, you're scaling

1:07:42

this tower and it's and it's they

1:07:45

they The the sections look

1:07:47

different that there's no there's

1:07:49

no like great thing to them. They're

1:07:51

just visually a bit different right, I

1:07:53

was surprised by how quickly

1:07:56

it gets you in there as compared to

1:07:58

persona five I felt like

1:08:00

it put you into that first

1:08:02

dungeon, did a little bit of tutorial, then takes

1:08:04

you out and gives you heaps of story. This

1:08:07

is a good maybe hour of

1:08:10

setup and cutscenes and stuff. But then

1:08:12

the first time it drops you into

1:08:14

Tartarus, you, I was

1:08:16

able to get up to the bit where it

1:08:19

blocks you off, on my first

1:08:21

go. So I was able to just go and do

1:08:23

a full 20 floors. And

1:08:25

it is doing little bits of tutorial, but it's not kicking

1:08:28

you back out. To the point where there's

1:08:30

still not, I haven't really seen a ton of story

1:08:32

other than just, you've sort of

1:08:34

got your three party members to start

1:08:37

with, your, there's

1:08:39

like one other fight that

1:08:41

I've sort of done outside of Tartarus, like

1:08:44

in between the sections. And

1:08:46

then yeah, you're doing your, during the days you're getting

1:08:48

a job to earn money and build

1:08:50

up your stats and you're forming your

1:08:53

social links with all the different people

1:08:55

around town. And just like getting, I

1:08:57

kind of really felt like this coming

1:08:59

out right after, like a dragon would

1:09:01

be, we'd kind of like suffer in

1:09:04

comparison, cause it's sort of, you know,

1:09:06

similar-ish enough. Yeah. But

1:09:08

they, I just forgot, they are so different. Like that

1:09:10

loop of persona of like

1:09:12

how you divvy up your time during the days

1:09:15

and just the visual style of it

1:09:17

and the mechanics of the combat, the

1:09:19

like knocking people down, knocking enemies down,

1:09:21

doing your all out attacks, knocking someone

1:09:23

down and then being able to like

1:09:25

pass the turn off to someone

1:09:27

else on your party that might have the

1:09:30

elemental advantage over the enemy,

1:09:32

all of that stuff. It's just, it's so

1:09:35

slick. It looks great. It is, yeah, I

1:09:37

really recommend it if you've enjoyed Persona 5.

1:09:40

I also think this would be a good jumping in point

1:09:42

if you've not played a Persona and you like a JRPG.

1:09:45

Yeah, I'm loving it. The music is great. The,

1:09:47

it looks

1:09:49

amazing. The voice acting in English

1:09:52

is all great. Yeah, I

1:09:54

sort of really felt like I would play a little

1:09:56

bit of it and then it would end up taking

1:09:58

a backseat to Yakuza, but I'm... feeling myself

1:10:00

just like, yeah, really drawn into

1:10:02

the, it's just a cool

1:10:04

setup. Group of

1:10:06

school kids, there's some paranormal,

1:10:11

into whatever you wanna call

1:10:13

it, not dimensional, but mystery

1:10:16

that you're all trying to solve. It's just, it's such

1:10:18

a good hook. And it's like, yeah,

1:10:20

I almost, yeah, I really like

1:10:22

this. Again, I felt like it

1:10:24

might suffer from playing it in

1:10:27

the shadow of five, like something that has come

1:10:29

so many years after and

1:10:32

they've clearly tightened it and been able to

1:10:34

do a bit more with the story. But

1:10:36

yeah, it's a cool setup. The secret

1:10:38

hour of the day where some weird,

1:10:40

evil shit is happening, what's going on?

1:10:42

You've got your little, one of your teachers

1:10:44

is in your party and he's in a control

1:10:46

room kind of like talking you through

1:10:49

what's going on, sort of like helping you, like

1:10:51

kind of helping you solve the mystery. Yeah,

1:10:54

it's great. I'm really, really having a good

1:10:56

time of it. Like I think about, yeah,

1:10:59

nine hours in or so. And yeah,

1:11:01

once you're, it is that repetitive thing of,

1:11:03

you know, you're running around a dungeon, you're

1:11:06

doing a lot of the same stuff, but it's

1:11:08

similar to like a dragon where, you know,

1:11:10

it is very much a loop of the same

1:11:12

kind of, you know, you go do this,

1:11:14

then of course this comes up. But when

1:11:17

it looks great and feels good and

1:11:19

is just such a moreish combat, it's,

1:11:21

yeah, it's really, really

1:11:23

fun. I'm really, really enjoying it. Big

1:11:26

thumbs up. I wanna

1:11:28

play it. Well, Buffy, Buffy the video

1:11:30

game, basically. Yeah. Well, speaking

1:11:32

of Infinite Wealth, I've been playing a lot more of that. That,

1:11:36

the Dondoko Island. I feel like we

1:11:38

could almost do a whole like new

1:11:40

review segment on just Dondoko Island. Yes.

1:11:43

But honestly, we could just say it's

1:11:46

Animal Crossing because it really, it, I

1:11:49

assumed that philosophically it would be, you

1:11:51

know, taking that style of game and

1:11:54

it's a little mini game separate from

1:11:56

the running around doing combat, but it

1:11:58

is like, it's literally. literally animal

1:12:01

crossing. Like you press down

1:12:03

for, I mean you have a baseball

1:12:05

bat, not an axe, but like down

1:12:07

for that, right for your

1:12:10

bug catching thing, left for your

1:12:13

fishing pole, like it's like

1:12:15

the same. This is kind of like what we were talking about

1:12:17

with Power World, how I felt like it was so egregious in

1:12:19

its visual design. Right.

1:12:22

And this is like, yeah, this is, you

1:12:25

know, they do this a lot in the

1:12:27

Yakima games. It is doing mechanically, just ripping

1:12:30

off another game. More Pokemon's in there too.

1:12:32

Exactly, but it's doing it with its own,

1:12:35

you know, its own flair and its own justification

1:12:37

for in the world where you're like, it

1:12:39

comes off as more of like a loving, you know,

1:12:41

the people who made the game, they're like, we love

1:12:43

animal crossing and wouldn't it be funny if in

1:12:46

the middle of trying to bring

1:12:48

down an international crime ring, you

1:12:50

end up meeting a dolphin who takes

1:12:53

you to a little island where you're smashing

1:12:55

up bits of rubbish and then you're like, oh, that's

1:12:57

a baseball bat. Yeah. But

1:13:00

it's super, super fun. I'd heard, you

1:13:02

know, a bunch of reviews mentioned like,

1:13:06

people got lost in that part of it. Like

1:13:08

they spent like 10 hours just playing on

1:13:11

Doko Island and I didn't get that. Like

1:13:14

I enjoyed it, but it is as repetitive as

1:13:17

animal crossing is as well. I think

1:13:19

I'm enjoying the story so much that I sort of, I

1:13:22

can see myself coming back to it eventually when

1:13:25

I hit a bit of a wall with the story or whatever, but

1:13:28

I think it's really interesting to just keep sort of

1:13:30

for the moment pushing on. It is annoying to me,

1:13:32

I don't think this is a fault of it, but

1:13:34

I got up to this bit and Lauren famously

1:13:37

sunk days

1:13:40

of her life into animal crossing. And

1:13:42

I wish that you could just boot up Don Donco Island as

1:13:45

its own like separate thing. So

1:13:48

I could like, I wish I could like start her her own save file

1:13:50

that is like just Don Donco Island because

1:13:52

I don't think she has any interest in the rest of the game, yeah,

1:13:54

cause you do get a lot more like real

1:13:58

world items. to

1:14:01

build in your, you're

1:14:03

trying to build up a resort. Exactly

1:14:06

and I do like that specific

1:14:08

goal of it more than Animal

1:14:10

Crossing, which I haven't

1:14:12

played all of them but it seems

1:14:14

to always just be like, yeah, you've

1:14:16

moved here and now you're helping build up

1:14:19

the town. But this is- The early days

1:14:21

you get a couple of tasks but this

1:14:23

does seem to be kind of leading you

1:14:25

through it a little bit more. Yeah, and

1:14:27

having that goal of like, yeah, it's like

1:14:29

a theme park sim or whatever or a

1:14:32

zoo tycoon. Like you're building this up and you're

1:14:34

trying to increase the popularity and the appeal and-

1:14:37

The set up, if you get over there and

1:14:39

it's like a down on its luck resort that's

1:14:41

just gone to ruin. Yeah, because

1:14:43

the pirates keep dumping waste there. They keep

1:14:45

putting their rubbish there. So you have to

1:14:47

clean up the rubbish and then also kill the pirates

1:14:49

when they show up to dump more rubbish. Yeah, yeah,

1:14:52

yeah, yeah, great set up. But mechanically

1:14:54

it's great. I actually kind of think it's

1:14:56

more to my taste than

1:14:59

Animal Crossing in terms of like the menu system

1:15:01

and the resource collection and all of that stuff.

1:15:03

And just visually, I think I prefer it. It's

1:15:06

great too that it's funny. It's kind of all changed when you're

1:15:08

on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like your combat is real time when

1:15:11

you're fighting the pirates, like you're not on the turn based stuff.

1:15:14

It is weird that, yeah, I hope they make

1:15:16

it like a little separate like download of

1:15:18

it that you can get. Like how inscription

1:15:20

had the card game as its own thing.

1:15:23

But also they've always done like massive

1:15:25

mini games within the Yakuza games. And

1:15:27

you know, but I've also proceeded through

1:15:29

the story a little bit and it's

1:15:31

still good. And it's still

1:15:33

weird and quirky and has

1:15:36

a strange emotional hook that is legitimate.

1:15:38

I've changed classes. I'm

1:15:40

now smashing people up with a surfboard. Yeah, me too.

1:15:43

Yeah. I

1:15:45

haven't played anymore since

1:15:47

last week. It's fucking great. I reckon

1:15:49

like I've dipped into some other stuff.

1:15:53

It's not something that's like fully got my

1:15:55

attention, I guess, because I know

1:15:57

it's so big and it's gonna be such a

1:15:59

long gameplay. experience, but I

1:16:01

will, I'm sure I'll finish it by the end of the year. It

1:16:04

is a nice little under the sign of, I

1:16:06

feel like anything turn-based is a

1:16:08

lot easier to kind of come and go from

1:16:10

because there's no like, oh what's, I feel like

1:16:12

the Spiderman games anytime I've left them and then

1:16:14

come back, it's like what fucking combo of buttons

1:16:16

do I push to put

1:16:18

this guy into a web where it's like,

1:16:21

yeah, you can give it a month in

1:16:23

between persona sessions and be like, oh yeah,

1:16:25

just select this guy and yep, dah, dah,

1:16:28

dah. Oh, high school, that's right. Oh, right.

1:16:30

Oh, yeah. Oh, right. Girls

1:16:32

are hot. It's

1:16:34

funny that, yeah, it's persona, you're playing persona,

1:16:37

which is like, it sounds like

1:16:39

a pretty traditional,

1:16:41

like as much as persona

1:16:44

five was like a twist on traditional

1:16:46

JRPG stuff. And

1:16:48

then you get to go back into

1:16:50

Yakuza, or sorry, like a dragon, which

1:16:52

I really do like the change

1:16:55

up of the gameplay to be more about positioning.

1:16:57

And you can like, like I'm noticing a lot

1:16:59

with like the the boss battles and stuff like

1:17:02

if you can knock a

1:17:04

guy back into one of your other

1:17:06

team, getting that extra attack, and

1:17:08

lining it up, special abilities

1:17:10

are like, go through, you know,

1:17:12

if you can position yourself right, take down five

1:17:15

people at the same time. Yeah, if you line

1:17:17

up a thing where you, yeah, you

1:17:19

get to like, yeah, hit, hit

1:17:21

someone into another enemy. Yeah, yeah. Oh, just

1:17:24

feeling like and that that is the funny

1:17:26

thing about getting so used

1:17:28

to that doing I think I was like 13

1:17:30

hours in and then starting up persona. And

1:17:33

immediately, the fact that in

1:17:35

persona, you have no option of you've

1:17:37

got like a guard button in in

1:17:39

Yakuza, or if you like time a

1:17:42

button press, you like significantly reduce your

1:17:44

damage. Not having that in persona,

1:17:46

right, is driving me crazy. Because I feel like

1:17:48

I'm fucking up every time I get hit. I

1:17:50

was like, No, no, I just got to remember

1:17:53

I didn't have the option of doing anything here.

1:17:55

Yeah, this isn't a failure on my part. This

1:17:57

is how the game is structured, but it's I'm

1:17:59

still instinctively like as they're coming for me I'm

1:18:02

still I want to keep that muscle memory intact

1:18:04

when I go back to Yakka so I'm just... You're just

1:18:06

backing out of the game every time. I'm

1:18:08

fleeing every battle. Yeah. Getting

1:18:11

no experience points whatsoever.

1:18:15

But yeah, I

1:18:17

have been playing some demos. Steam Next

1:18:19

Fest launched a couple of days ago

1:18:21

and... Did they do this?

1:18:24

Like twice a year. Maybe twice

1:18:26

a year. It feels like it's regular.

1:18:28

Yeah, definitely. Maybe, yeah, it's

1:18:30

maybe a seasonal thing but

1:18:33

yeah, I always try and go in on the ones

1:18:35

that I've heard of and then like

1:18:38

just scroll through because there's fucking like there's hundreds.

1:18:40

They always put up hundreds. And

1:18:42

just any of them that take my eye or some

1:18:44

of the more popular ones. More than ever now as

1:18:47

well with like Sex Detective 5 and

1:18:49

all of that sort of shit that's on Steam now.

1:18:51

Yeah, yes. I'll

1:18:53

check Steam most days and yeah, like

1:18:55

just the top selling. I can't...

1:18:57

This is... What am I looking

1:18:59

at here? Horny Baker. A bunch of hentai.

1:19:01

Yeah, nothing worse than like... My

1:19:04

octopus teacher. Yeah, recommended for

1:19:06

you. Yeah. Handy Simulator.

1:19:08

It's like, oh right, just because

1:19:10

I've downloaded two JRPGs in the face

1:19:12

of a week. But

1:19:14

this is sick. Like this is

1:19:17

that sort of indie

1:19:19

highlight space that it's

1:19:21

gotten so fragmented and hard to find. You

1:19:24

know, great games. Certainly, I don't

1:19:26

think the game's media is doing as good a

1:19:29

job as it used to. I kind of think

1:19:31

it's a shame that this... We're them. Well, yeah.

1:19:33

It's a shame that this only exists on something

1:19:35

like Steam. Like it would be great if every

1:19:37

storefront had their own version of

1:19:40

this of just like, hey, here's a week where we're just

1:19:42

going to flood you with demos of cool stuff that's coming

1:19:44

out. Xbox has at least done that in the past. I

1:19:46

don't know if they did it. They have had their like

1:19:48

indie showcase stuff. I was going to

1:19:50

say that like in early days Xbox was a big champion

1:19:53

of digital only indie games. 360

1:19:55

era. Yeah. Get some absolute dog

1:19:57

shit on there. I

1:19:59

guess the week... did as well. But anyway, I

1:20:01

feel like this is the place to find

1:20:03

stuff now. It is very

1:20:05

like intoxicating being able to scroll

1:20:07

through a big list and just

1:20:10

be able to go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,

1:20:12

and get whatever you want. It's cool. And

1:20:15

there's stuff that I've already, yeah, stuff that I had heard of that

1:20:17

you're just like, well, fuck yeah, I'm going to play a demo of

1:20:19

this. But I played some stuff

1:20:21

that I had not heard of just going off how it

1:20:23

looked. I played a great city

1:20:26

building game called Synergy, which I mentioned

1:20:28

to you guys before, has the worst

1:20:31

name of any game. It's so fucking

1:20:33

bland. Yeah. Yeah. Synergy. Yeah. It's

1:20:35

a, it's a cell, it's a kind of like

1:20:37

a sable looking yeah,

1:20:39

illustrated cell shadedy kind of a

1:20:41

city, city builder, city builder thing.

1:20:43

You're on some sort of alien

1:20:46

planet. And

1:20:48

I get it makes sense because the sort

1:20:50

of ethos of the

1:20:52

game is live in harmony with

1:20:54

the environment, live with Synergy.

1:20:56

What if Synergy was spelled S I N?

1:20:58

Oh, dude. Brother, that'd be

1:21:00

a program for me. What if it

1:21:02

was called fuck doctor? Oh, I've already

1:21:04

downloaded that one. That's getting all those

1:21:07

recommendations. But yeah, it's a

1:21:09

pretty classic one. You know, you start off

1:21:11

with a few people. You got to

1:21:13

like, treat some of the water, desalinate

1:21:16

it, detoxify it. You got your little

1:21:18

water tower. You got your little, oh,

1:21:21

here's some plants. You got to, but it's,

1:21:23

it's less like set up a farm,

1:21:25

you know, like very traditional

1:21:27

style. It's more like, decide

1:21:30

how often you want to pick berries because

1:21:32

the berries will regrow if you don't fully,

1:21:36

you know, strip

1:21:38

it bare, but you can strip

1:21:40

a bear and you get more resources, but

1:21:42

only in the short term. That's why it's

1:21:44

called simpatico. That's combined

1:21:47

your efforts with nature. Okay.

1:21:50

Get it? Okay. Yeah. I'd

1:21:53

call it tongue comer.

1:21:57

I'd probably have been more interested. And

1:22:01

it's like, oh, it's a nice cute city builder.

1:22:03

Cool. All right. Well, you can see it like

1:22:05

you can see that it's going to launch and

1:22:07

it doesn't matter how good it is and how

1:22:09

many how much, you know, how much good press

1:22:11

it gets. Yeah. Just if it's

1:22:15

not a grabbing title, then you can just

1:22:17

sort of see the future and like it's

1:22:19

going to just pass people by. Yeah. And

1:22:21

it's like sure

1:22:23

you want to emphasize that point, but it's

1:22:26

just boring like surviving Mars or something like

1:22:28

that. Like that's a similar game and it

1:22:30

has a more interesting title, but Richie Rich.

1:22:34

That's a good-ass name. You remember

1:22:36

it. Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah,

1:22:38

the Sandlot Kids. Yeah. Mr.

1:22:41

Deeds. Okay. What's he

1:22:43

about? Big Daddy. But

1:22:46

I love it. Like it's good. The loop is really

1:22:48

cool. It's fun. It's

1:22:50

like a relaxing calm looking and feeling

1:22:52

game, but they've thought everything out really

1:22:55

really well and you like assigning certain

1:22:57

people to things and built. It's like

1:23:00

the loop, the interconnected sort

1:23:02

of gameplay stuff is great.

1:23:04

Yeah, I'm going to buy this game and play it.

1:23:06

It's really really fun. So that

1:23:08

was my first one that I had to dip in on. Not

1:23:11

something for everyone. However,

1:23:13

this other game I

1:23:15

played, Balatro. Now

1:23:17

we're talking now. We're talking

1:23:20

title. Yeah. B-A-L-A-T-R-O. Balatro. Balatro.

1:23:22

Balatro. Weird name though, because

1:23:25

basically it's like what if

1:23:27

poker was gamified? Right.

1:23:30

Is this an existing like type of card

1:23:32

game or whatever? It does sound like one

1:23:34

of those names like Ronnie Cobble. No. Whatever.

1:23:36

No, no, no. Well, I mean it can't

1:23:39

have unless it was a video game because

1:23:41

this is like you're

1:23:44

not playing against someone you're playing to

1:23:46

hit a certain score. You're playing against

1:23:48

the house. You are playing against the house. M-D.

1:23:52

House M-D. House my dick. Yeah.

1:23:54

Okay. Pretty good. Thank you for asking. You

1:23:58

get... You get dealt

1:24:01

heaps of cards, like eight cards. I

1:24:05

definitely expected a way to get up

1:24:07

and then I gave. I was thinking

1:24:10

I was wanting double digits minimum. Oh,

1:24:12

okay. Minimum. I really thought we

1:24:14

were talking like 30. Dude,

1:24:16

you get dealt finding an unmanageable

1:24:18

number of cards. Fucking

1:24:21

high temperature today. I'm boiling. Shit,

1:24:23

I'm gonna have to count all

1:24:25

these easily on my fingers. Well,

1:24:27

it's bigger than a poker hand.

1:24:30

Okay, sure. Yeah, it is. Sure.

1:24:33

You get dealt something like that and

1:24:35

you, but you are tasked

1:24:38

with choosing a five card hand. Yeah.

1:24:41

And sort of at the start, it's very simple. You've

1:24:43

got a goal of like $200 or whatever, 200 points. Each

1:24:48

card is worth a different number of points. And

1:24:50

then if you pick a hand with,

1:24:52

you know, like a three of a kind or

1:24:55

two pair or a full house, you

1:24:57

get more points and like multipliers and

1:24:59

stuff. Yeah. Okay. And

1:25:02

so this is like, it's a dice one. Yahtzee? Yeah.

1:25:05

Yeah. A little bit like Yahtzee.

1:25:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a little bit like

1:25:10

poker. And so you

1:25:12

will have a certain number of hands that you

1:25:14

have got, are allowed to play

1:25:16

to try and hit this total and

1:25:19

you'll have a certain number of discards. So

1:25:21

you can, as

1:25:23

in like a round of discards. So if you got

1:25:26

your eight or nine cards and you're trying to get,

1:25:28

you've got like two and maybe you want to try

1:25:30

and get a three of a kind or whatever, whatever

1:25:32

it is, you can discard a bunch of cards and

1:25:35

that counts as like one discard and you get

1:25:37

maybe like three in the whole

1:25:39

round. Yeah. And

1:25:41

yeah, you just basically go trying

1:25:43

to choose your good hands. You put it

1:25:46

up, you play, it goes bing,

1:25:48

bang, boom, calculates your points, adds

1:25:50

that to the tally and you're trying to hit, you know,

1:25:52

your total. And then you'll

1:25:54

finish a round and if you succeed,

1:25:56

you'll get some money. It'll

1:26:00

be like how many rounds

1:26:02

spare you had, you

1:26:05

know, having hit the total, you get like a

1:26:07

dollar, two dollars, three dollars, whatever. And

1:26:10

then it'll show you like a little deck building

1:26:12

marketplace where it's like you can buy a Joker

1:26:14

card and this Joker card will sit up in

1:26:16

the top permanently and it'll apply some

1:26:19

persistent like multiplier for

1:26:22

hands that contain hearts or

1:26:24

whatever like that. Do

1:26:26

I need to buy the Joker card

1:26:29

if I already am somewhat like the

1:26:31

man himself? Adam, would you stop being

1:26:33

so serious and explain why? Well, my

1:26:35

father was a dumber. Okay. But

1:26:38

yeah, it has that sort of Slay

1:26:41

the Spire inscription deck building thing of

1:26:43

like acquiring these special cards and these

1:26:45

multipliers and stuff like that. And

1:26:48

then yeah, just like the tallies, you got

1:26:50

to hit get higher and higher. I

1:26:53

got up to a point where like it's

1:26:55

like a boss and it's like the first your

1:26:58

first like nine cards or whatever are dealt

1:27:01

to you face down. So you're

1:27:03

like, okay, well, shit, I'm going to just randomly choose

1:27:05

some. And then if you play some, the next ones

1:27:07

you get a face up and you're

1:27:09

dealing with these sort of challenges as you go. And

1:27:12

it's it's very addictive. You

1:27:15

only have to know the basic mechanics

1:27:17

of poker to be able to get

1:27:19

involved. And yeah, you're sort

1:27:22

of like strategically choosing what you buy in

1:27:24

the marketplace. I love that

1:27:26

I'm going to play the hell out when it comes

1:27:28

out. Yeah, it sounds cool. Yeah. I

1:27:30

like the Bellatro. Bellatro. Bellatro.

1:27:33

Don't know what the name means. It sounds like

1:27:35

one of those names that you like very 80s

1:27:37

board game type of thing where they just called

1:27:40

them like Gibapas. Yeah. You want to play Gibapas?

1:27:42

Like what the fuck is that? I actually would

1:27:44

love to play Gibapas. Gibapas sounds

1:27:46

like a name of a game that

1:27:48

George's dad would have invented on science. Oh, yeah.

1:27:51

We're playing Gibapas. Something in the middle pops up at

1:27:53

some point. Yeah.

1:27:56

So Bellatro. And yet these

1:27:58

are all obviously on Steam and. and the

1:28:00

demos are free and check them out if

1:28:03

you want to. I played another game that

1:28:05

had, I think, I

1:28:07

don't know if this was part of some

1:28:10

showcase or they, I just saw the trailer

1:28:12

on Reddit or whatever. Indica,

1:28:15

it's like a scary nun game. Okay,

1:28:18

and the trailer is very like surreal and

1:28:20

there's like little people jumping out of people's

1:28:22

mouths and shit. Oh no. But

1:28:25

the demo was not very good. It

1:28:27

drops you into just like a slice of the

1:28:29

game. You're

1:28:32

like leading some guy around, he's like got

1:28:34

a sore arm, you're a nun. And

1:28:37

it's like as in the

1:28:39

tool, a sore, or

1:28:41

his arm is in pain. His arm is in pain.

1:28:44

Right. He's got, she's the

1:28:46

nun, it's like starts with a cut scene and

1:28:48

he's like lying on the ground and he's like,

1:28:50

oh my arm hurts and she's like, yeah, might

1:28:52

have to cut it off, here's a needle. And

1:28:54

she pops in. So the world

1:28:56

is kind of interesting. You're

1:28:58

like riding around on this steam powered motorbike.

1:29:01

And he, this guy's just like, I need to

1:29:03

get help. And you're like, yeah, okay, I'll

1:29:07

take you to some help. And it's

1:29:09

all very like, it's unreal five, but

1:29:11

it's very low polygon, like PlayStation 2 era

1:29:14

looking kind of game, third person.

1:29:16

And it feels sort of like a Resident Evil.

1:29:19

You're looking in like shacks and stuff

1:29:21

and you're trying to interact here. Oh,

1:29:24

open this cupboard. Is

1:29:26

there a key? Is there a thing? I'm gonna light

1:29:28

this with my torch. But I also

1:29:30

just like, I think it is fucking

1:29:32

bugged out or something. I got stuck standing in

1:29:34

one position and I couldn't move and I couldn't

1:29:36

do anything. So

1:29:39

it has the feel of like a,

1:29:41

or like a more towel or like

1:29:43

a, yeah, like indie

1:29:45

low budget, horror

1:29:47

exploration sort of survival thing.

1:29:49

But the demo just didn't

1:29:51

work. No, right. I

1:29:53

feel like there's a lot of that type of game too.

1:29:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was taken in by

1:29:58

that trailer. It was a pretty cool, well edited.

1:30:00

the trailer and maybe I'll give

1:30:02

this another crack and it'll not fucking

1:30:04

shit itself on me but yeah

1:30:07

I was kind of disappointed by that. I

1:30:09

also downloaded the Pacific Drive demo but

1:30:13

that is out soon and I'm definitely going to buy

1:30:15

it and play it so yeah I don't know. Yeah

1:30:17

that looks cool as hell. Speaking

1:30:20

of things that look really

1:30:23

cool. Well I mentioned

1:30:25

before that I'm a pretty twisted

1:30:27

guy. Somewhat of

1:30:29

a jester. A

1:30:32

guy who is dead from the

1:30:35

previous games of the Rocksteady

1:30:37

Batmanverse the latest of

1:30:39

which is Suicide Squad

1:30:41

Kill the Justice League

1:30:44

which we got codes from Warner Brothers 4 for

1:30:48

full disclosure and here's some more disclosure. It's

1:30:50

boring. Here's even

1:30:53

more disclosure I didn't even open my email

1:30:55

that had the code in it. I noticed

1:30:57

that that email was quite bold. I

1:30:59

just yeah I was like even we were talking

1:31:02

about it last week then and you were like

1:31:04

yeah you know what getting it for free is

1:31:06

good because that's the only way I'm going to

1:31:08

engage in it that even that wasn't enough for

1:31:10

me because you know what time is valuable. Well

1:31:12

yeah you had a game you want to play.

1:31:14

Thinking an hour into something that I'm not going

1:31:16

to enjoy. I don't know I'm just I'm

1:31:19

ready for this game to be out of the

1:31:21

fucking news cycle honestly. Well I think

1:31:23

you're hearing about it. This

1:31:26

performance review has maybe

1:31:28

called up a couple of things that we need

1:31:30

to talk about at another day. No after today

1:31:32

after this segment. Yeah

1:31:35

it is that that is my

1:31:38

feeling about it at this point I haven't played

1:31:40

the whole way through the story or anything but

1:31:42

in that time thing that that is

1:31:44

this. There are a lot of games that are like

1:31:46

this so it is

1:31:48

a third person squad based shooter

1:31:51

yes with multiplayer capabilities that is

1:31:53

positioned to be an ongoing concern

1:31:55

for them. That being said there

1:31:57

is a pretty.

1:32:00

normal kind of single

1:32:02

player narrative story with

1:32:05

main missions and shit throughout. I haven't

1:32:07

gotten to the end of that and

1:32:09

I'm under the understanding that it maybe

1:32:11

doesn't end satisfyingly due to it being

1:32:13

a live service type of thing in

1:32:15

the future. I'd read sort of, I

1:32:17

guess this is true that people were

1:32:19

like, oh it's like always online and

1:32:21

stuff like that. You don't need, so

1:32:24

I had apparently let

1:32:26

my PlayStation Plus subscription lapse.

1:32:28

You don't need that to

1:32:30

just play this game. You

1:32:32

can play it with bots, with AI

1:32:35

companions and you don't have to be

1:32:37

tied to any of that stuff. Yeah,

1:32:39

I haven't played it online with people at all,

1:32:41

but you've got all four of you in the

1:32:44

squad at all times, which is Harley Quinn, Deadshot,

1:32:47

King Shark and the worst fucking character

1:32:49

I've ever seen in my life, Captain

1:32:51

Boomerang. Why do they keep putting him

1:32:53

in the Suicide Squad? I actually like

1:32:55

what they did in that James Gunn

1:32:58

movie. I hate this kind of thing.

1:33:00

I fucking hate it. I really, really

1:33:02

don't like a goddamn thing about him.

1:33:04

I'm going to throw my Boomerang at

1:33:06

this thing because I'm a bloody Australian.

1:33:09

Every time he's like, oh I owe the penguin a

1:33:11

tinny. Fuck up cunt. It's

1:33:14

a bad, it's an annoying voice

1:33:17

regardless of... I hate the performance. As you guys

1:33:19

are talking, I'm just picturing that email still being

1:33:21

involved and feeling that, hell yeah. I hate the

1:33:23

performance. I'm saying this

1:33:26

because I am surprised by how

1:33:28

fine a lot of it is.

1:33:30

Yeah, this is my, what's the

1:33:32

word? My

1:33:34

most surprising game of the year?

1:33:37

My least disappointing game of the

1:33:39

year. I expected it to be

1:33:41

bad and shitty and

1:33:43

not fun and hollow and I

1:33:45

actually really enjoy playing it despite

1:33:48

myself. I think it's maybe

1:33:50

you're having the thing I have with Gotham

1:33:52

Knight. Because

1:33:54

I don't think this game is good. I'm

1:33:57

not having fun playing it because the... It's

1:34:00

a third-person shooter. Each of the characters

1:34:02

sort of plays somewhat differently, mainly in

1:34:05

the way that they move around. Yes.

1:34:07

They've got different types of either

1:34:09

swinging or jetpack or whatever to

1:34:12

be a little anthemy

1:34:14

type of movement where you can

1:34:16

kind of go in three dimensions.

1:34:19

I don't like the way that stuff

1:34:21

controls for any of the characters, though,

1:34:24

really. I like Deadshot. And I will

1:34:26

say I only like playing as Deadshot.

1:34:28

I like King Shark. Right. Because his

1:34:31

is fairly simple. You can jump up with... So

1:34:33

they all use a combination of L1 and R1.

1:34:36

Like Harley's is like R1

1:34:39

will swing on like this Batman's

1:34:41

thing that she stole. Yep. And

1:34:43

you can do it once and

1:34:45

then you get a meter

1:34:48

recharging unless you dive towards the ground and then it'll

1:34:50

recharge quicker. And then you can do it a second

1:34:52

time and it'll get slower recharge after that one. So

1:34:54

you can only really do it twice. But

1:34:57

then the L1 is a grappling hook as

1:34:59

well. And it's all just switching

1:35:01

between them isn't fun. I've only

1:35:03

played for like a few hours,

1:35:06

but because you're... They

1:35:08

control similarly enough that they don't feel fun

1:35:11

and different in a fun way. Right. But

1:35:13

they control differently enough that they feel confusing

1:35:15

in an irritating way. Yeah. I've not enjoyed

1:35:17

that. I definitely... I mean, I chose and

1:35:19

stuck with one because I just dislike the

1:35:21

others. But I guess

1:35:24

if you are playing it in a group with

1:35:26

people, you will have your assigned character and you

1:35:28

won't change. But I don't think

1:35:30

it makes sense to

1:35:32

be changing character. Which is

1:35:35

disappointing. Like that was the big thing about

1:35:37

this game that became clear

1:35:39

that they were going in the wrong direction with

1:35:42

the opportunities that making a

1:35:44

Suicide Squad game presents. Where

1:35:46

like why other than the multiplayer aspect

1:35:48

even have these four different characters if they're...

1:35:50

Because the main stuff you're doing with all

1:35:52

of them is just regular third

1:35:55

person shooting. Yeah, big open world. Vague

1:35:58

story of like... like the

1:36:00

Justice League have gone bad because of Brainiac

1:36:03

Man has captured their brain. The same thing

1:36:05

from Injustice 2. Yeah. Yeah,

1:36:07

you've got the Evil Justice League who run the mind

1:36:10

control which makes them, I don't know how it works

1:36:12

in like the comic stories of Brainiac and stuff but

1:36:14

I am finding that like the story, well we'll get

1:36:16

to that in a second but one thing I'm not

1:36:18

loving about the story, it's like Green Lantern and Batman

1:36:20

and all of them but because

1:36:23

they're evil now, they're not themselves, they're

1:36:25

kind of like douchebag versions of themselves.

1:36:27

They haven't had a Snickers yet. I

1:36:29

guess. Yeah. You could

1:36:31

put it that way. Yeah, they're hangry. Well, you

1:36:33

say the ending's unsatisfying. Exactly. You have to

1:36:35

speed him to Snickers. There's plenty of

1:36:37

games where Batman talks to villains and he's

1:36:39

like, Harley you

1:36:42

loser, whatever he says, you

1:36:44

know. I understand the character

1:36:46

of Batman so well and

1:36:48

you can tell that I can make this comic but like there's

1:36:50

this weird smugness to all of them because they're

1:36:53

villains that is odd. Yeah.

1:36:56

Anyway, so one

1:36:59

thing I was going to say about the switching between

1:37:01

characters in different missions, one of them will have a

1:37:03

like, let me do this mission. So it'll give you

1:37:05

a little incentive if you're playing on your own to

1:37:07

switch between them but yeah, I've just found that not

1:37:10

controlling well because the main third person shooting is

1:37:14

really, I don't

1:37:17

like it. Everything

1:37:19

is so small and distant. Everything

1:37:22

is, all the enemies you're fighting are

1:37:24

so similar and dull. Everything

1:37:27

that you're doing is so like rote that

1:37:30

you just have played a ton

1:37:32

of games like this that do everything this game

1:37:34

is doing better. So like, what's the

1:37:37

point of this one? Is like the ultimate feeling for

1:37:39

me. Yeah, I said in

1:37:41

the chat, I think as well, like

1:37:43

it's a bang average game

1:37:45

but it is such a

1:37:48

wasted opportunity or it's

1:37:50

just wasted potential from a company that

1:37:53

made some of the best games ever.

1:37:55

Because there are flashes of that, excuse

1:37:57

the pun, of that there too.

1:38:00

You get little green lanterns of it

1:38:02

every now and again, where there's moments

1:38:04

in the story and there's bits of

1:38:06

the cut scenes and the technical look

1:38:08

of it is good. It

1:38:10

looks good, but then all of the purple little

1:38:12

enemies with numbers flying off them, I'm just not

1:38:14

loving that. I

1:38:17

don't think the shooting feels especially bad, but

1:38:19

it also doesn't feel good. There's

1:38:22

weird stuff where your shields are

1:38:24

regenerated by, it's sort of like

1:38:26

Doom Eternal a little bit, where

1:38:28

you shoot the kneecaps out of enemies

1:38:31

and then go up and melee them and

1:38:33

you'll regain shields. So it's

1:38:35