Physical Games Are Turning Into Download Keys

A Star Wars coffee mug somehow turns into a full-on conversation about what we’re losing as gaming goes all-digital. We love the look of a shelf full of cases and collector’s editions, but we also admit the truth: modern “physical games” often behave like a license key with extra steps. You still download the install, you still need patches, and the disc starts to feel more like decor than ownership. That tension between nostalgia and convenience sits at the center of everything we talk about.

From there we get practical. We compare household gaming setups like Steam Deck and PlayStation Portal with cloud gaming on a phone controller, including the stuff nobody puts on the box: heat, battery drain, and ping that can wreck timing in action games. We also get honest about difficulty settings, story mode, and whether dropping a game to easy is “cheating” or just smart time management. The trophy mindset shows up too, with a real look at hard mode planning, New Game Plus, and why some challenges feel skill-based while others feel like pure math.

Then we bounce into what we’re playing and watching right now, including Tomb Raider homework, a new Sword Art Online game, and the wild appeal of a permadeath rule you choose to follow. We even hit the modern reality of subscription overload and why it’s so easy to end up paying for everything without noticing. If you’re into gaming nostalgia, Steam Deck life, physical media debates, JRPG grinds, and the culture around anime and games, this one is for you.

Subscribe for more, share this with a friend who still buys discs, and leave a review if you want us to keep going. What’s one gaming habit you miss the most?

Transcript

Star Wars Mugs And Collectibles

SPEAKER_00 0:14

I'm representing Han Solo today. Oh, I thought that was Jan Solo. Why? Does he look tired? It's a good mug. I think I have that one. Really? Boba Fit on the other side? Yes. These are the artwork from the Unleashed series of action figures on Coffee Mug. When you say unleashed, you mean like the video game Unleashed? No, there's a series of really cool action figures. I actually own 20 of these figures. They're all in the box. And they were a series that was made around the time the prequel trilogy was coming out with new movies. And they're not action figures in the sense that you move their arms and legs for poses. They're posed in an action moment, all of them. Anakin and Obi-Wan from Revenge of the Sith have lava coming up around their shoulders and under their arms, and they're like in the middle of a big swing at each other. That's a two-character set that is meant to sit next to each other. Vader is at the post that's cut in half and Vespin with his hand out at the moment where he says, I'm your father. Lord Vader. That kind of stuff. Love it. Love it. The artwork that goes on the cards for those are timeless. In fact, you've seen those artworks repurposed in the last decade. And every time I see them, it's like I know where that came from.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Yeah. Hearing you talk about these toys, so I have every single Star Wars Episode one toy action figure that was released when episode one came out. Every single one sitting in a box, brand new. And I've been asked many times when am I going to sell them? And I said never. But I was so we did the great purge of our garage and our basement and everything as we're doing some remodeling and blah blah blah. And I found two brand new copies of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. You know the brand limited run? I got, I don't even remember buying them, but I have two brand new copies of that game, and it's for the Switch. It's like an actual physical copy. Yeah. Wow. Like this cool like black box. I don't know where the hell I put it. I gotta find it. I'll show you.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I'll take a picture and send it to you guys. What's a physical video game, Marcus? Who shots fired? I'm really proud of myself for connecting that one. Can we just celebrate how that was that that's that that's yeah?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

I wish I had one of those sound bars where it could be like the get the the audience

Why Discs Feel Pointless Now

SPEAKER_01 3:00

clapping. All the cheers and the audience clapping. Yeah, it's hard. I'm indifferent, right? Because part of me remembers oh, you can't probably see it because of my camera, but I have a ton of physical copies of old games here. So part of me says, Yeah, it sucks. But the other part is so I have disc versions of the PlayStation, and I bought a lot of disc copies of the game, but for a while now, you buy the disc and you put it in the system. You can't just put it in like you did with your Xbox 360, or if you're one of those crazy people that had a PlayStation 3, why who knows? But you actually put it in there and it just played, right? It might update, but it played. Where now you still put the disc in and it has to download to your system in order to play. So the physical disc is over.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Anyway, yeah, that's true. I mean, I haven't bought a physical game in years. I guess I'm part of the problem.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

I've known Doritos years now. Doritos, since I've known Doritos, he's been a PC gamer. Yeah. When was the last time you bought a physical copy for your computer?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Probably 10 years ago. Give or take? Oh, I bet more than that.

SPEAKER_03 4:31

No?

SPEAKER_02 4:32

2016? I don't remember the last actual physical copy of a game. Oh god, it was pre-Steam.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

When did Star Wars the Old Republic come out? 2011 or 2010? 11. 11. That was the last the actual disc version of a game that I bought.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Oh, yeah. That would have been mine too. I was thinking it was Knights of the Old Republic 2. And then I thought maybe it was Bioshock. And then I thought maybe it was Harry Potter, Quidditch World Cup. But no, it's Sotor, it's Star Wars, the Old Republic. Yeah, all of our computers.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Do you guys have disc drives on your computers? I do. Not this one, but I still have 96.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

My computer's. Well, I have one that's got my my uh three and a half floppy on it, and one that's got my zip drive on it. So yeah, I still have one. I've got two of them with optical drives. I still have the old stuff. Wow. And you still run them? No.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Not anymore. The one with the optical drive I can I can run. How could we refer to the PC graveyard to like a Toy Story, the toys that don't get played with anymore?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Oh man, can you wait until Toy Story 8, where the screens are the ones getting forgotten? Because we just had the one where the screens took over the playtime. But inevitably, there's gotta be a sequel where that iPad has bad battery life and has to get swapped out for a better one, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

But to the disc thing, the people that are holding on to the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, original Xbox, the those days are gone. I like I said, I've bought some disc copies of games, but you don't really need to. Because I thought if you buy the disc copy of the game, it downloads less on your hard drive, and it's not, it's the the entire game. You just have a disc and it goes in there, and that's basically all the disc does. Excuse me, the disc does what does the disc, not dick. All the disc does is it's basically the the game license. Yeah, it's like a key to let you play. You don't need it anymore. So is it hard for you to hear? Because the funny story is a few years back, Xbox announced this and PlayStation for the PlayStation 5. They said, No, whoa, don't worry, everybody. We're keeping discs in Xbox back that train up with their Xbox Series X, and they're like, We'll have discs too. But now that PlayStation physical copies of stuff is over. But I play on Steam. I can't even tell you the last time I bought it. I bought a game. No, it's 2011. I think I have hold on.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

While he's looking for that, I just want to throw out the question of does it even change anything? Does it matter?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

No, look at I have Jedi Fallen Order I got for free at PAX. It's a game code, right? It's just I got Doom, the collector's edition for the PC. Pretty sure this is a PC. Yeah, there's a disc, but I didn't pay for it. But I don't even have a disk drive, but it has the game code in it, and then I have a brand new copy

Nostalgia Shelves And DIY Box Art

SPEAKER_01 8:20

of Borderlands 2 that has a disc. But I didn't pay for these. There's a force unleashed somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

I think it's just you're gonna get the heightened emotion from people when something that was a little comfort, even if it didn't serve a functional purpose, it was a comfort. I can get some enjoyment when I'm not playing my games, seeing them lined up on a shelf. The way that I have books behind me, and there will come a time very soon where that's not a way we decorate our shelves for anybody, unless you create a niche kind of hobby of I love this game so much, I'm gonna create my own game box for it. And people have started doing that. Yeah, if you go to Etsy, they people have that. Yeah, I know. I've seen it for Star Wars, I've seen it for when I was in college. This is 22 years ago, I loved the anime Full Metal Alchemist so much, but I was a broke college kid, and the only way to have these on DVD was to buy them from Walden Books or Barnes and Noble, and they wanted $45 for a DVD that had three episodes, and I didn't have that kind of money, so I would burn them onto my own DVDs, buy a bunch of blank DVD boxes, and print my own covers with the punch paper. And like I I had them on my shelf, and unless you looked really close, people didn't even realize they weren't the official product. And I spent my time doing that because I wanted full metal alchemist on my shelf. So if that's how I was 22 years ago, with the technology the way it is, and things are so expensive back then to do something like that compared to now, people are definitely gonna that's gonna be what their little online stores are all about. You love this these five games that came out this year, buy your boxes.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

I agree, and I know myself having the box, even the switch boxes, all those games are in this little pile, like this one box that holds all the little cartridges. So all these are pretty much just empty boxes.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

And look how look how the evolution of the cartridges they went from the good old Atari Odyssey NES cartridges to now, and those are that much storage to what multi-gig flash drives. You're right, Doritos.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

You are so right. I'm an old VAR, it's okay. No, and you something that popped into my head with you saying that. The I think for me, the nostalgia is remembering when you had to go to GameStop or West Coast video or whatever game store or revolutionary gamer. There was a store there, right? There was stores for me where you had to go there and say, Hey, do you have pre-orders available for Mass Effect three or Mass Effect 2? And I remember going to GameStop and they said, We hit our max, you can't pre-order anymore. We have no copies to give on day one. And you're like, What? And they're like, Let me call this other store. Hey, do you have any copies? We have five more, but we're not holding any spots. Okay. And you would, but then the midnight release of them was that was a cool experience.

unknown 12:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

And you play for an hour and fall asleep in your chair because you've got to go to school the next day or whatever. Because games always came out on a Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah. Oh, Tuesday.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

And then my friend had a video game store, and that's where I got the cheat code because he would get the game Saturday, and he would give us the copies of the game on Saturday. So we were playing, I remember Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 before it was even released. It was awesome. You felt like you were on top of the world. But now they lock the games, huh? That's so unfair. I know, but that was like back then. What I what was shitty is I remember he would get the copies early, and if he had them early and somebody wanted, he charged an extra 10 bucks to get them days early. Because he could. When he's looking, I'm a small business. If I sell 10 copies at $10, I made $100 because I'm taking a chance that I'm not gonna be able to release games early. But

Steam Deck And Gaming Around Home

SPEAKER_01 13:20

again, bringing it back, those days are gone. I went from console standing in line to playing games to playing on my computer to now mainly playing on a Steam Deck.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah, I mostly play either right here on my computer because I'm streaming or I'm trying to record something for content. But if it's just me playing for fun, half of my playtime is on a PlayStation portal, just sitting anywhere in the house. Just I like it that way. Semi-mobile gaming, household gaming? Yeah, it's household gaming. I have not tried to play the portal anywhere that's through the internet connecting to my house from afar. I just can't imagine that would be worth my time.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

No, yeah, because if you had like shitty internet and it like glitches and you die, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yeah, but you you can stream PlayStation Plus games now, and that was not the way it was when I first got my portal. So that at least removes your PlayStation as the middleman for the game signal. So maybe that works better, like cloud gaming on the Switch, like certain games on the Switch one. I um what's that controller?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Hold on, it'll come to my mind. The backbone controller hooks onto your phone, it clicks into the slot here, into like the charge port, and it goes on, and it's an Xbox controller because it's the greatest controller ever. And you I use the game pass with the cloud gaming. When I ripped my bicep off my arm, that's how I gamed because I couldn't move. I just put it on my belly and just played, and it worked really well. The phone got really hot, really hot. The really, really hot. The one issue I had with it, and even the Steam Deck, is if you're playing a pretty demanding game, it gets really warm. You know what I mean? And the phone was on fire, it wouldn't even charge because it was so hot. The other thing is I found that anything that ping matters, where if you were playing Elden Ring and timing matters, or a shooter game, or something like where that matters, or even a fighting game, it didn't play well.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, I tried to play God of War Ragnarok with my PlayStation themed backbone that I got as a Christmas gift that year when Ragnarok was new, and it was torching my phone. And I the difficulty, I started that game on the highest difficulty, and I got to just a mini boss, just a guy blocking a bridge, wasn't even a real boss fight, and I couldn't take him down, and I did blame Ping, and then I lowered the difficulty and just enjoyed the rest of the game on story on my P or on my on my PS5 with a controller because I just abandoned everything about the way I started the game. No backbone, no hard difficulty. I regret it a little bit, not the backbone, but I do wish

Easy Mode Shame And Hard Mode Goals

SPEAKER_00 16:40

that I had let myself struggle a little more with that game and enjoy it.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

But it brings up a great topic. Do you guys feel bad if you download a game and you want to enjoy your experience with a game? And do you feel bad of putting it on easy just so you can enjoy the game and not be stressed out? You just want to enjoy the story and enjoy the game versus going in and playing it on normal or hard right away.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

No, no, because I don't ever play it on easy. Oh, superiority complex from Doritos.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

No, I can understand, but for me, the hell did I I played Metaphor Refantasio and I played it on normal for a while, and then I got to this boss, and I don't know if I wasn't leveled high enough, but I had no idea how to grind because there was nowhere really to grind. And I just maybe I was just terrible at the game, I could not beat this boss, and it said, and I wanted to lower the difficulty for the boss, but they said once you lower the difficulty, you cannot bring it back up. And so I played it and I lost interest, it was just way too much talking. And and I for coming from a guy who loves to talk, but yeah, it all right. So Doritos doesn't turn it down, but I know you do, doc.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah, I usually like to play the games multiple times, so I don't mind doing the lowest difficulty as a leveling up, collecting weapons, and then if there's a new game plus going through on the higher difficulties, but you have stuff that you collected the first time. And the last game where I tried to go straight to hard mode when I wasn't max level and ready for it, was Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. And I streamed it, I struggled really hard on chapter one, which is a tutorial level, because you're Cloud and Sephiroth in a party, and Sephiroth is the villain, he's not a permanent member of your party. The bosses in that chapter, with me not being level 70 on hard difficulty, took a very long time to figure out, and I had to be perfect to bring them down. And then the boss at the end of chapter two, when you have Cloud Tifa, Barrett, and Aerith, it was insane to the point where there are undodgeable little attacks that chip damage you, but because you're not max level, the chip damage is 10% of your health, machine gun bullets. So you're gonna get hit by more than 10 of them. And I concluded that this is a mathematical equation, and I don't have what it takes to be above zero at the end of that move. Because instead of being level 70, I'm level 59. Because that's how high, that's how I high I made it on my easy mode playthrough. When I came back at level 70, I beat that boss on the first try. So I think that for me, could I have played my first playthrough on normal? I absolutely could have. And maybe my first attempt at hard mode would have been more successful if I had done that. But I just I like getting platinum trophies, but I also love just obliterating things. I love if it's a game I've beaten already, I love walking into the room and just killing everything in one hit because I decided that's what I want to do. In fact, going back to Korraban in Star Wars The Old Republic as a level 50 character back before level sync was my favorite thing because it's like I'm the Sith Master now. You core slugs are dead, right? You just breathe out of them and they're dead. I love that because it it tells a story of like when I left you, I was but the learner, but now I am the doctor. So yeah, I love both sides. I love struggle, I love beating Elden Ring. I I love getting platinum trophies for I love getting that achievement for beating the whole game on hard, but I also love the fact that I earned everything in this game and I get to just kill things because I feel like it.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

So it's funny you bring up Elden Ring. Elden Ring is a game that I don't I'm happy there's no difficulty mode. Because I believe that if you beat that game, and I'm gonna this is gonna be a hard one for me to say. If even if you use summons, you still beat the game. That game is not easy at all. The Crucible Knights are the hardest bosses ever. Say that again, Doritos. Oh no, that is Marx's opinion. He's entitled to it. Yeah, that and the stupid putrid avat Erd Tree Avatar asshole. I hate that thing. It's spitzel. Stupid. Stand in the spittle. I it's hard for me not to stand in the stuff, Doritos. Marcus, you're standing in the stuff. I know. I got three seconds.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

I miss the nights back when we were first to trio together on this show, figuring out what we're doing. And every week we would watch Marcus play Elden Ring on Discord while I'm grading papers. And that's like a that's a that's something that's missing in my life.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

If we finish a show early enough, I'll load up Elden Ring because I'm still on that same boss that I can't beat. And you can just make fun of me.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Then we get to hear about how terrible the 35-minute run back is. No, it's actually easy.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

You just jump off the cliff and fall in a hole of water. It's really easy. Minecraft mechanics, jump in the water, saves you. Yes. Yep. This boss is awesome. It's an awesome boss, but I just yeah. But coming to that, I believe that difficulty level in a game like Elden Ring needs to it needs to be one difficulty because the whole point of that game is to figure it out and grind. And it's meant to be punishing. Where Finasy VII Rebirth isn't meant to be punishing. It's meant to tell you a story. So putting a story mode in it is okay for the people who just want to play the game and get the story that don't want to get all stressed out, right? Or another game, like I still need to play a Jedi. What's the second Jedi game? Not Jedi Survivor. I haven't played the second one. Me neither. The first one I played on normal, where you had to do some parrying to do it, but not, it wasn't over the top. A couple of the bosses were hard, right? The walker fight was tough. But in the new one, I want to do Grand Master because there's no way that game is harder than Elden Ring. Zero chance on their hardest difficulty.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

But I've only played yeah, I've only played for five hours. But the first time that I died, it it clicked in my head what it is I'm playing. I'm playing Elden Ring with anime girl with a sword. Like for the whole, like okay, that's true. I'm sure there's defensive properties or a reason for that, Marcus. Like it's like the dead or alive games back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Would you rather play with uh as a girl that's wearing like a full body suit that you can't is baggy, or a girl that has giant knockers and she's bad to the bone? Like it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

That is not exactly the reason that I started playing Stellar Blade. I was I didn't say you, I'm just saying general. Well, I love Devil May Cry, I love Elden Ring, and I was reading a blog post about if you like Devil May Cry, here's the next five games you should play. And Stellar Blade was in there, and so I already had it in my PlayStation account from their stars program. I got it for free because I had all these points on my PlayStation Plus account, and I never played it, so I started playing it and I died and had to run back. And I was like, oh my gosh, all the enemies have respawned. This is basically just Elden Ring, and I don't have magic spells. So for me, it's harder than Elden Ring was, but I'll get better at it. I think Jedi fall in order. I remember it being the same. You have sites of grace, they're just the places where you meditate, and that's where you spend your runes or your your Jedi experience points. And I think it's a good formula, but when we look back on 2015 to 2025 era games, that's a thing. It's a whole structure. Game developers all went to school at the same time, got their jobs, and decided this is how we make a good game.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I find myself, if I'm if there's a female protagonist, I'd much rather pay attention to somebody that's hot than not.

Choosing Game Heroes To Write

SPEAKER_00 27:02

There is something to be said about character creation too. I enjoyed female characters. Oh my gosh! You just said I just submitted a whole slew of new chapters that I'm gonna be writing. And for the psychology of heroes, I had to decide what hero do I want to write a chapter about because in psychology of villains, I wrote about Darth Vader. So you wrote about Luke Skywalker? No, because that's not interesting. Luke Skywalker is just he's amazing, but not what I want to write about. Okay, so I was thinking video games because I'm Dr. Gamology, and Darth Vader is a little bit of a departure because he's not strictly a video game character at all, but he means a lot to me. He means a lot to everybody.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

So I decided to be the author of an award-winning book.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

That's true. Wrote a book? I did. And so for these book chapters, I submitted four options to Ley Line Publishing today, and I put them in order of what I want to do. My number one choice was Lara Croft, and then my second choice was Cloud, and then Kratos, and then Sora from Kingdom Hearts.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

But is Kratos really a good guy? He's a protagonist, yeah. But he's not really a good guy.

SPEAKER_02 28:33

Good as perspective, though, right? You're playing through the hero's journey, so you are playing a demigod of chaos, but you're still the hero of that storyline.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

And my chapter is located in the Norse duology, not the Greek trilogy with two side or three side games. So it's after he is a father. That's the perspective of the chapter. But I don't think they're gonna pick that one. I think they're gonna pick Tomb Raider. I really do. And I've never played the middle one, and I've never finished the third one, so that gives me so much streaming homework that I need to do. When you say the third one, you mean like the Rise, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Or Shadow, Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I never played Rise. But you have what?

SPEAKER_02 29:25

Tomb Raider, Rise, and the Shadow, and now you have Legacies of Atlantis coming out next year. So yeah, so you have Tomb Raider, then it's Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Yes, are the boots and then you've got I think what Catalyst is the mobile game coming out, and Legacy of Atlantis, or yeah, Legacy of Atlantis is the official reboot of the original franchise.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Which one don't you have, Doc?

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Oh no, I have all of them. I just never played the second one in the trilogy.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

It's too bad that by the time everybody listens to this, they won't be on sale, but you can get Tomb Raider 299, Rise of the Tomb Raider 449, Shadow of the Tomb Raider 599 on sale right now. Yeah, because it's the last day of the summer sale. The summer sale's over. This is just what's on sale.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Ends on the 9th at 1 p.m. You guys, I have so many Tomb Raider games in my Steam library. So many. I have everything I need to write this chapter. I just need to play them. That's why I'm saying. I might have a Twitch revival after I get back from my trip where all I do is play Tomb Raider for a while. I love that. You go stream it?

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yeah, why not? The game is incredible. I watched Doritos play it. I enjoyed all three of them. I I get to watch, I get to whenever Doritos plays a game, uh, it's Horizon or even Tomb Raider. Like, I got to watch him play those because I didn't I don't I didn't play them. Oops.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

They're they aren't necessarily your jam, and that's all good. Well, no, they're amazing. It's just time, right? What's time but a construct in your head?

Free Game Keys And Media Habits

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Yeah, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

The thing that I do not have enough of every single day of my life.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

Speaking of free games, if you go over to my Discord in the announcements, I've been posting a ton of just random keys. I don't know if people have been accepting them or not. So there, you could get a really sweet game for nothing. There's a ton in the announcement channel. That's awesome. And first come, first serve. You're like the video game Santa Claus. That G2A site, it's almost like gambling where you get where you get like you pay five bucks and you get five keys for triple A games. And I'm like, sure, I'll take a chance. There's a few of those games that I would actually want. And like I got Lords of the Fallen Game of the Year edition for $5.99, but I got four other keys, so I posted the keys in the Discord. Hey, anybody wants these games? I can have them for free. It's great. But my point about characters is I find myself that I even like in a book, my new thing is I'll listen to the first chapter of a book on Audible before I buy the book to read it. Because if I can't get into it in the audio version, I definitely am not going to get into it in the reading version. And I have so many of those. Yeah, and there's this vampire series, it's like Castlevania. It's amazing. I'm reading the first book, and about halfway through, it's called Enter the Vampire. You don't like vampires, it's not for you. But it's crazy. And I just wanted I'm just trying to figure out where'd the sun go?

unknown 33:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

It's interesting you brought up vampires because yesterday I had a whole supervision meeting where we ended up talking about Twilight for about 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Twilight really vampires though? Vampires to me is like Castlevania shit.

unknown 33:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Like dark, dirty, like where Twilight is like, ooh, I'm a vampire. I'm gonna bite you. Because you're hot. We might have stepped outside of our scope. No, we never do. The day you asked me to join this show was the day that you knew

Sword Art Online And Permadeath Rules

SPEAKER_01 34:05

the road was gonna fork. But all seriousness, took it. Have you guys heard about the new Square Enix game called The Adventures of Elliot? The Adventures of Elliot? Oh my god, you guys, do you guys like The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past? Yeah. It is a open world exploring, straight up Zelda clone. It's incredible. I've played, I think I'm 12 hours into the game. I love it. Boomerang bombs, boss mechanics are wild. Upgrades for what you upgrade your weapons, you don't get new weapons. It's just upgrades. You have your basic sword, spear, shield, boomerang stuff. That's cool. Oh, it's awesome. But and I'm bringing it back to the Steam Deck. I think my saving grace, where me having the time to sit here in front of the computer is less every day. But with the Steam Deck, I'll pull it out and I'll play it, even if it's for 10 minutes, and I just hit the button and it freezes the game. And nothing happens. And then when I hit the button again, it turns right back to where I was and I pick up where I left off. It's the most convenient way for me to game. I don't know what you guys called it earlier. Household gaming. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Because you take it wherever you go in the house, wherever you want to lax, that's where you're gonna game. Do you have a handheld Doritos? Nope. My my mobile, that's all I got. Oh, your phone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

What do you play on your phone?

SPEAKER_02 35:54

I play the the Star Wars Legacy Heroes or Galaxy of Heroes. That's what that one is. Is that the turn-based combat one? Yeah, it's the card collecting turn-based combat one. I love it. And then I've got I got a word scramble game that I do. And a couple other puzzle games that I do just to like Candy Crush kind of puzzle game? No, more like Sudoku style puzzle game. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Alright. What about you, Doc? You play anything on your phone?

SPEAKER_00 36:29

I've done Wordle every day for three weeks now.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Okay. I play a man. It's I play a card game. It's called WWE Supercard.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Oh, I played that for a little while a couple maybe not the same game, but I played a game like it a couple years ago. I just sort of I stopped. Everything you just mentioned, both of you, I've played at some point in my life. But right now, the only things I'm playing are if you see me streaming or games that I've mentioned. I have playthrough that is just floating in the middle of Persona 3 that someday I hope I finish it. I did Platinum Trophy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Probably that happened since the last podcast episode, but we've had a little break, so I forgot to celebrate that with both of you, but that's done. So I'm waiting for revelation now. Oh boy. Just just so many other people. I'm really excited to see how they wrap up the trilogy because it should be just super epic. And I love those characters in that world so much. It is serious. Final Fantasy VII seriously is my favorite video game of all time. I have Peter Tattered back and forth on that on the show since starting it years ago. I think it's obvious.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yeah. You talk about it a lot. He plays it a lot. Yeah, that's but there's nothing, but again, there's nothing wrong with that. If you love a game, play it. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Yeah, exactly. That's what platinum trophies are for. I think I played Elden Ring. Man, it must be close to 300 hours, but to Platinum Trophy Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it was 190 hours for me. Wow. It was awful. I had fun during a lot of it, but the last real thing that was in my way was a perfect run on the chocobo gliding track on hard track difficulty. I did that for two hours of my life straight. I failed the track at least 50 times, and it's playing the chocobo theme the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

So chocobos glide, they don't fly. Got it.

SPEAKER_03 39:18

Not when they're on this track. On card? I'll share this to you guys.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

So it looks like somehow all of my games that are on my wish list on Steam, zero of them are on sale right now.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Look at the chat inside descript. I just linked you guys a game. It just came out today. Looks good.

SPEAKER_02 39:45

Yes, the SIO one reads. No, the Sword Art Online, the whole like you get to play in Ironcrad. If you're an anime fan, I love Sword Art Online. If you are an anime fan, or so Sword Art Online, it's oh geez, what it's seven, eight years old now. So this game is built on the original premise where you are actually going into Ironcrad and playing through the levels of Ironcrad. What is Ironcrad?

SPEAKER_00 40:15

So if you die, are you done? Is it a permadeath game?

SPEAKER_02 40:19

I don't know if the permadeath thing it is a single-player JRPG, just from what I was reading on it. Yeah, I was super stoked when I saw that game coming out. I'm like, oh wait till you put a pre-order character in this.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah, I believe it's got a character creation setup. So, Marcus, do you know what the anime is about? No, I've never seen it. Okay, so in our world, a technology comes out that's I don't know, it's like a neural gear. It's like a like ready player one. Yes. And you go into the game, and everyone thinks that they're joining this brand new MMO. And when they're in, the person who creates the game says, You can't log out, you're stuck here forever, unless you get to the top floor of the final boss, then you can leave. But if you die in here, you're dead. I will send a signal into your brain and you die. What? So everyone who signed in everyone who signed into this game on day one or after, if you're because the real world finds out very quickly that nobody is leaving the game. And in the real world, these people are stuck in these headsets on IVs and stuff, basically being treated like coma patients because they're stuck in the game. But the people in the real world don't know that, they don't know the details. But the but we are watching the anime episodes of basically the main guy and there's a main girl, and there's some other main supportive characters, but they have to create raid teams and go into these boss fights blind and somehow win because nobody knows the strats for any fights. Because if you die, and so it's this whole thing of like how do we level up, how do we get our weapons? How do we eat and stay healthy in this world? Like, how do we get ready for fights we don't know what we're walking into? It's fascinating, and that's just season one. Season two, they have a gun game that they're like trying to do. See, there is an amazing storyline that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

Yeah, it's uh where do you watch it? Um she's got it, I think. Like Hulu or anything like that have it. I think Hulu does. I'm not sure if Netflix does or not.

SPEAKER_00 42:37

It's seriously in my top three anime series of all time, Marcus. If you watch this, we have so much more content for the gaming persona.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Okay, so this product is not an is an account, not a digital code. Oh fuck that.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Yeah, I saw that echo the echoes of Ironcrack coming out, so it's very cool. So it's because what they did in, I think was it season end of season three, season four of Sword Art Online, they went back and rebuilt the server so they could go back and actually play the game without being trapped in it. So I think this harkens back to that point in the anime history.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

Okay. We can always mod it ourselves and make it permadeath. All you gotta do is establish the rule and hold to it. Like the Nuzlocke in Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

My son's been all about nuzlo doing a nuzlocke in Pokemon right now. We should all do Elden Ring that way and just see who gets the farthest. That would be a fun episode of the show. We all create characters, but we can't be picky. We get a 10-minute timer to create characters, and then we all start the game at the same time. And then we only get one life and just see what happens. We both know I'm gonna lose first. With that attitude, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Oh, I I died a soldier of Roderick or whatever his name is. The tutorial guy. You died the tutorial section also. It's funny. This game looks incredible. I actually watched a couple videos on it today. The Ancred game and the Echoes game. But here's the turnoff. Steam Deck compatibility. Unsupported. It's out.

SPEAKER_02 44:56

But is it unsupported because it's not been tested yet on it?

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Or they just not to be some of this game, some of this game currently doesn't function on Steam Deck. The game's graphic settings cannot be configured to run well on Steam Deck.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Okay, so they just don't have a they haven't been able to adjust the graphic settings. But it's 70 bucks, so I won't be buying it anyway. Me neither. We'll wait for it to go on sale again. Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

Oh, game downloaded. Anyway. Yeah, I got the boo-boo. To play the game. I'm gonna have to watch it. I'm gonna see if it's on Hulu

Subscription Overload Anime Talk Closing

SPEAKER_01 45:40

or something. Because my son has been begging me to re-down. So Carrie, probably two years ago now, canceled our Crunchyroll. Because we my son and I loved My Hero Academia. Loved it. Oh, yeah. But then she canceled Crunchyroll and we argued with her, but haven't re-argued about it. And maybe it's time to get it back. But you also have to be careful now. Yeah, because as you guys know, it's really easy to sign up for this subscription and that subscription and this subscription. Next thing you know, you're spending $150 a month on subscriptions, and you don't even know what you're buying anymore. Did this thing to check her email for subscriptions or something? She was paying for every streaming service possible. She didn't realize it. Because it all comes out on different days and all these things where I get it.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Yes, SAO is on Hulu. I wonder if the first episode is on. Yeah, I'm looking at episode one, season one, episode one, dubbed. All right. Oh, dubed two, three, two.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Do you do subtitles? I feel like the Japanese version is better. Unless they did a good job with the English dub.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

This one they actually did a pretty good job. Was it Bryce Pembroke is the voice actor that does the main character? Awesome. He he does a lot of characters.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

Now you're making me regret that I didn't submit a chapter to do Kirito.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Because Bryce Pembroke also does Enoske on Demon Slayer and shoot, I can't remember who he does who he does in My Hero. I've got to look it up. But yeah, it's a it speaking of anime.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

Did you guys watch the Castlevanias on Netflix? I have not yet. They're really good and really like man, they're not like Twilight. No, definitely not like Twilight. If we were off air, I would be calling it something else, but we are live, so I'm gonna restrain myself and say what I really feel. But it's really graphic, and if this is the way it was back in like those days, man, like the people of religion will just call it back then, they're fucking evil.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

Oh, like in Hunchback of Notre Dame, yeah, yeah. Religion has been weaponized consistently throughout human history.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Oh, of course. No, I'm just talking about this Castlevania thing, the shit they're doing. In in in their mind, they're like, She's a witch, burn her to the ground, but she's not really a witch, she's just her husband's Dracula, and she's bad to the bone.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

I'm afraid of her. Hey, sorry, I'm wrong. He wasn't uh Bryce Pennenbrooke didn't do uh voicing my hero, he did Aaron Yeager in Attack on Titan.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

I love Attack on Titan. Yeah, that I've watched like three episodes of that. That's a really good show.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yeah, Erin Yeager's voiced by Bryce Pen and Pippenbrook. I'll get his name right in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 48:56

All right, can we cut this show over? I'm gonna go upstairs and watch Hulu and uh watch SOA.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

It's that's absolutely fine. Everybody, I hope you're enjoying it. No, no, I have something else to say.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

No, do not say those words. Do not do it. I'm gonna be really mad if you say continue the journey. Don't do it.