Almost Gamers
Join us in a casual conversation with friends about gaming. It's a humorous journey into what we are currently playing, sometimes poorly and not usually on trend. We also talk new and upcoming releases, gaming news, best of lists, and are never afraid to go off on crazy tangents.
Almost Gamers
Episode 22: The Saga Continues
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The boys are back and ready for more adventures! It's been a while since the party was assembled, so there's a lot of catching up to do. Matt gives an in depth look at The Outer Worlds 2 while Andy...digs a hole. They hop back into the Emporium to get historical about video game consoles. Then they talk about Xbox blunders, frickin laser beams, and almost give news about the God Of War show.
You know you missed them, come and say hi.
So ma'am. Season two. I got a couple inflamed stories. Okay. And not what you think. Okay. But I'm only gonna share one. Right now. Right, alright. What because I don't this is a cold open, so we don't wanna bore people. But the second one's a little risque. I'll wait in a couple episodes, because we might get canceled if I that one. Wow, I'm excited. Yes. That's a little teaser. Uh so the other day I had a a dream. And uh it it wasn't there wasn't anything crazy about it, but I the the cool thing was is I end up playing guitar within flames. Okay. Reasonable. They they do have been changing out members quite a bit lately. So which was, you know, it should be everybody's, you know, well, everybody who likes in flames. That'd be pretty cool. Ultimate dream. Yeah. But actually afterwards, um, well, Bjorn and Anders both looked at me with this grave face and said, You're not very good. So quickly turned into a nightmare. Oh my god! That is and uh, you know, I was pretty depressed as I told my wife about it. She's like, figures you you have like the ultimate dream for somebody like you, and uh it turns into a shit show.
SPEAKER_02Even in your dreams, you don't have confidence in your playing ability. So there you go. Thanks in flames. I guess you're uh almost guitarist.
Intro
SPEAKER_02Welcome to season two! Can you believe it? We're gonna ramp it up. That's right, season two is gonna be bigger, batter, bolder, and more naked. Woo! You cut me out surprised, huh? That's the plan. So, yeah, it's been been a little been a little while since we took a little break, but only from the podcasting, we have been busy building up our YouTube channel.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02I've been doing some Matty Flames plays, which is where I'm highly recommended. Yeah, thank you. You're very good at it. You can uh watch me stump yeah, yeah. Watch me very much stumble through some uh playthroughs of various games. I try to keep them kind of short, you know, nothing like a four-hour thing. Just, you know, me uh Keller commentating as I uh uh actually kind of almost kick some ass and hate it. You do. I beat the bosses, beat the bosses. Although, you know, I had gone mode on. That's alright.
SPEAKER_01What's gone mode again?
SPEAKER_02Uh just increases, decreases the damage against you. So it makes it a little easier, which I need because I suck. But I have fun. That's all that matters when it comes to the game. Fun. Fun first. And also, hopefully, by the time this episode airs, we should have uh a new segment called Couchable, which is me and the An Man uh sitting on a couch and doing some co-op gaming. So so look for that. If not up, it'll be up soon. And then I have a uh super, super, super secret episode that I'm working on that even An-Man doesn't know about. It might rhyme with call foult groomangus. Alright, anyway, so yeah, please go over to our YouTube channel. You can find this and other videos uh in full animatronic motion right here. Woo! If you notice this season, uh by Andy's suggestion, we're gonna learn more mood lighting. I think I like it. Yeah, I was going to the sterile like uh dentist office before because I thought that was just easiest. Now I'm getting a little more confident in our uh videoing and uh I feel like this is uh this is a little cooler. This is more how we hang. Yeah, this is kind of our vibe. Yeah, this is our vibe, nice and dark. Yeah. I like moody. But if you don't like it, tell us. Yeah, let us know. Pick a color. We have uh, you know, we go on our Reddit thread, I'll throw up another poll that no one will respond to, and you can pick the uh lighting scheme of our next episode. Yeah, yeah, right. Fun for everyone.
SPEAKER_00It's great.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of Reddit, please go to our Reddit, check us out, join us in the community. Not just Steve Miller! Yeah, not just I mean, we love you, Steve Miller. Thank you for being our one and only who joined us there. Super fan. Uh, but uh yeah, uh yeah, hang out with us. We we we like friends. Woo! Let's get let's give the first ever of season two. Moving on.
What Yinz Playin
SPEAKER_02What Ian's playing! Okay, and we're back with the uh segment of What Ian's playing. And you notice for this segment we are full voiced. Yeah, believe it or not, we fucked up the first part. May have forgot to record it off the microphones, but you know what? It's fine. You can't, you gotta start, you gotta grow as the season builds. You can't just start off with magic. Start off to, you know. We're sophomores, right? You can't find your way to the clan. Sophomore album always sucks. All right. Okay. So it's been a while, so I feel like we both have a bunch of y's been playing. Yeah. Um, I'm even gonna, I'm I'm gonna I I might even leave off some so I have room for next time. Because uh I've been busy gaming because I haven't been busy doing anything else. Um that's all right. It's for you. If you subscribe, you can stay. Yes, that's right. That's right, people. Keep me uh keep me on that couch. Um right, Andrew. Do you want do you want to start? You want me to start? Uh you can start. I'll start. I'll start with an easy one. Okay. I played it as you obviously know now because I have a Matty Flames plays video up. I played Ender Magnolia. I was happy to see that. I'm I'm I love it, man. It is it is so this one has a difficulty slider. I don't know if you realize on that. You probably just played it. I just played it. So you can kind of put it on easy, easy mode. You can actually adjust every you can fine-tune like how much damage the enemies do. Oh, wow. Or how much they do to you, or how much the um, you know, when you kind of hit stun, how long the stun lasts. So you can tweak all that. I have to admit, so uh kind of what I've been doing is just playing it on the normal easy, and if there's a boss that pisses me off too long, I'll make it even easier. Wow. Um, but that's what I need. That's what stopped me from playing the first game.
SPEAKER_01Well that that's why I like it. Well, I couldn't fight for that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02Because I couldn't get past a boss, and I just so now I can, and it has not ruined my enjoyment. It's absolutely increased my it's not the reason I'm playing the game. Right. So I love it. Well, I'm glad then. You know, for you. Yeah, I'll keep going. Oh, I guess we so this is Ender uh Ender Magnolia. Um there a subtitle. Yeah, there is. I can't. Uh it's the sequel to Ender Lilies. Yeah, Ender Lilies. And uh Ender Lilies was Quietest of the Night. Yeah, quietest of the night. And Magnolia was something else. But a good game. You've you've beaten it, as I recall. So uh I hope to maybe get there someday. I hope you do. But I'm joining the aesthetic, the music, you love it. Fantastic. Good Castlevania. Yeah, very Metroidvania. Metroidvania, thank you. Castlevania too. So yeah, uh, there you go.
SPEAKER_01That's my first one. Yeah, that's your first one. Uh when we left off, for me, I I played I've been playing quite a little bit uh Doom. Oh yeah, yeah. What is it called? Uh Dark Ages.
SPEAKER_02I said eternal. It's wrong. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh I love it. Doesn't nothing's changed. I just I haven't been quite in the mood for it. I bought it because it was on sale and I've been trying to force it a little. So I I haven't but everything about it is amazing. And every m every time I play it, I love it. I just I've been really in the mood for looting and collecting loot. Okay. Like that classic La Diablo game.
SPEAKER_02I I I agree that um like I I haven't been in the mood for Doom in a while. I love the game. Yeah, the game that you have to be in the mood for that type of a game. It's very kind of specific pitch that it scratches.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I just haven't been in it. So I I Lately, this is lately. Um I we're gonna have to speed up because I can't remember a couple months ago what I was doing. But this most recently I I haven't but I've played probably like 20 hours, and I I it's it's absolutely worth the money. It it it's one of the best dooms, and uh that that I mean there's not much more to say about we've talked about it, so it's not right, yeah. But yeah, that that was one of the games, and then there's one other one for me. So if you want to keep going.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I uh we'll have a nice in-depth one here.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um, also no surprise because it was on uh Matty Flames place, but uh the Outer Worlds. Yeah, so this is Obsidian's follow-up to Outer Worlds 1, obviously. Yeah. Um though it is kind of sad. I don't know if you heard in the news recently, they decided that uh they're not gonna move forward with this series. Oh, I didn't hear that. Yeah, at least for the time being, this this is it. Yeah, it hasn't met expectations. Um, the more likely they're gonna move forward with Avowed, which also came out this year. It's weird that those two games both came out, not this year, 2025. Right. Um, but you know, whatever. I am yes. Overall, I'm enjoying it. Um, I played a lot. I wish I knew the hour count. I bet I'm well over 40 hours into this game. Yeah. I maybe have like a third of it left to go, but then I got sidetracked with uh the unnamed project. Um but I hope to get back to it. I definitely will beat this game. I just don't know when I'll get back to it. But um all right, let's go down. Here's here's been a while. Dude, I got I got like two and a half minutes.
SPEAKER_01I'll sit bang.
SPEAKER_02So um this uh The Outer Worlds 2 is available on all the systems you see listed right down here. It's a long list. I completely forgot to write that down. Um I know it is a um it's on Game Pass. Um so I have a feeling it might be an Xbox exclusive for the time being, but I am not sure.
SPEAKER_01That's gonna be news stuff, right?
SPEAKER_02Um, yeah, yeah. Um so it uh alright, it does have ultra-wide support. I always like to talk about that. Right. Um, and there aren't any options on the HUD to change it. Some some let you decide if you you know have the HUD just like where it would be nor for normal screen, and the other just excess thing. It's weird. I've noticed now most games don't do that anymore. They just throw the HUD to the far corners, which I like, especially because with the curved screen, again, we said it before, it feels like an actual what a HUD would be like in real life. Yeah. Like the the heads-up display stuff is in your periphery and just the actions front and center. I I like that. Like you just got to shoot, shoot and gun if you're oh, what's my health at? You can just kind of glance in the corner of your eye. I like it that way. Um, I am playing it on GForce now. Uh, as I have been playing, you know, a lot of games like that. I do recommend it runs very smooth if you turn on DLSS and frame generation. Uh just a little tip. Some people there's a whole argument about that, but it runs smooth and looks great if you do that. Um again, if you're someone using GForce now and is curious, some of the games. So these all run on servers. Some of the servers are the old style where they're using like the 4000 series of um NVIDIA cards. Some are using the 5000 series, they're kind of switching them all over. Only a few games now do it. Uh, Borderlands is one of the one of the first ones to use the 5000 series. This is another one now does run on that. So, meaning you're you're running the the shit. Oh I'm running about a hundred to a hundred and fifty fps I'm hitting on this game consistently. So, yeah, it's smooth as shit. Yeah, looks fantastic running. I haven't had run really any any issues on that. So, and that way, game runs smooth, which is important because remember, game don't run smooth. Yeah, game runs terrible. I'd stop playing that game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, that's the key right there, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, sir. This is a role-playing game. Obviously, it's a first-person shooter, but in its heart, there's like a lot of obsidian games. It is an RPG. And by that I mean, more than any other game I've ever played, you have to role-play. And I guess I should kind of explain that a little bit. So a lot of RPGs the whole I the whole fantasy thing is you kind of you pick a character and you're supposed to be that character. Right. A lot of times, though, you can just whatever, you're just generic too. Like think, think about the Witcher, you know, it's an RPG, but you're Geralt. Yeah, you're gonna. You know, you you're not limited, you know, you're do with a sword, but fighting sword and using magic. Yeah. You have a little control over the armor and kind of the skills. For the most part, you're a Geralt. Yeah. Um Geralt. Geralt? Geralt. Geralt. Geralt. Yeah, wow. Woo! That kind of a day, folks. Anyways, but for a lot of RPGs, I've noticed, I mean, think about your skills. You're like, all right, all right, this I'm gonna start off. I'm gonna be like a sneaky archer, or I'm gonna be like a mage. But in general, though, you kind of spread your skills around everywhere and have a little bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. And that's the way most RPGs go.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02So for this, you are very limited in your skill points. You can't do that. Or if you do try to do that, you're gonna it's gonna be miserable. So you have to pick uh three to five skills uh to put your points into. Five is even pushing it.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02And for a lot of people, I can see that's gonna be limiting. Oh, you're not gonna like it. It means like, all right, so if I don't, you know, so it means I can't put any in the if I want to be like a gunning guy who uses explosives and uh really hard in science, which is what I picked, I can't book any skills into lockpicking at all or speech at all. And it's uh interesting, but it works. I'm telling you, if you're gonna play this game, do that. Pick three three, four, maybe five skills and just do them and pick your character. So I kind of went with uh Indiana Jones type again. That's why I went for the I don't know where where explosives came from. I never hear explosive video games, you know that. But I decided dangerous. But I did guns in science and uh teamwork. So I'm all like, you know, this belongs in a museum. Uh and it has made it so much more fun and just works with the way this game kind of works. So typically you, you know, think about like Skyrim and stuff. Like there's a door, right? And you know, you can either lock pick your way in, or uh maybe hack the door, or maybe even punch the door, or whatnot. Yeah. So there's always like one alternative.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And this not always. There's gonna be some spaces you're not gonna be able to enter at all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And just kind of kind of live with it. I mean, that's the way kind of life is. Yeah. Or there might be a person like uh that you think, well, obviously the way I'd want to do this would be to speech my way through it. Conversely, if you have high speech, that person might not be able to be talked out of it. There might be no option for that. And so because you're unlimited, you only have like three or four ways out of situations, you know, lock pick, hack, or speech. If none of those work, maybe your only option is to just shoot the shoot the motherfucker in the head. And it seems weird, but that's you know, if that's your character because you're like a gun and shoot guy, then that's it makes sense in the role-playing thing, and that's yeah what you kind of have to do in the game. So I made a lot of choices I wouldn't have normally done in video guns, I preferred to sneak and whatnot, because I didn't have the sneak and the lockput skill. I had to just like run in gun like my way through it. And it was it's weird, but it's like, yeah, you have to like stick to that character. Now I never did a whole lot of murder like that, um, except for the kind of like bad guys, right? But it's still it was it's very neat, but it it forces you into choices that you should make if you're role-playing, but you wouldn't normally made if you're just doing it. Right, it's a true role-playing. So uh, yeah, yeah. Let me uh let me get into all that a little bit. Um there are also on that, there are I don't know if you've heard about there's flaws in this game. Yeah, I thought that was really neat. The flaw system's pretty neat. So what happens is you don't really know when they're gonna trigger trigger. But if you do a whole bunch of things, like if you steal a whole bunch of stuff, then it'll pop up. Oh, do you want to take the kleptomaniac I think that's what it called uh flaw. What what happens here is you automatically steal everything without even having a choice about it. Um but it gives you a bonus. I care what that is. So it's kind of like but you can either decide to take it or not. You don't have to take that. So it's very interesting. One of the big ones I picked was um oh I didn't write it down. Was it oh yeah, over over it's over prepared. If you like I do in every single shooting game that I play, shoot a couple bullets, reload. Shoot a couple bullets, reload. It pops up. And what happens is if you take this flaw, you have an increased magazine slot size, but you get a minus 40% uh damage reduction for eight seconds if you ever empty a mag. So it kind of like leans you into that play style even more. So if you are one who constantly reloads and you take that flaw, you have to there on constant reload. That's cool. It is, it was really neat. So you never there's a f people complain about the flaws, but you don't have to you don't have to take them, you just ignore them. Right. Except if you take the flaw that makes you mandatorily automatically take all the flaws. There's one of those. But it even says when a pop when this flaw pops up, it says, Don't take this for your first playthrough. It's gonna make the game very hard. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. Yeah, it's I like it. I like that idea. It's it's pretty damn cool. Now, when you're starting off this, so think about all this stuff when you're starting off playing your character. You kind of have to like do some research, look at all, see, figure out what is you what you want to pick. Like I said, I went for the professor again. Um you can pick your background, I went for the professor. Um you can pick two, you can pick one trait or two traits and a disadvantaged trait, which I ended up doing. Um again, it's all because I kind of wanted to really rule it. I went with brilliant, lucky, and sickly. Sickly was the bad thing.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02But the what the game doesn't tell you, and I want to impart this to everyone, is that all of these things, including your background and your traits, even the bad ones, can affect shit as it happens in the game. Like your choices. Like some so my sickly is I have uh um reduced maxed health. But because I picked that, I got to pick a different, I got to pick lucky too. So what will happen is in the game, some unique dialogue choices will pop up because I'm sickly. But there was an instance in the game where I had to pick between two terrible choices. I didn't want to do one or the other, but I was stuck that because I didn't have the hacking or the speech skills. So I was as a role-playing guy, you know, I I couldn't, I'm like, shit, this this sucks. But I had the lucky trait. So I had a third option of just try hitting random buttons, which I did. I ended up getting like the best outcome possible. Wow. And I'm like, that's really cool. Yeah. Wow. They're yeah, yeah, they're they're neat for stories, choices, and and I feel like and I I kind of rolled with everything. I try not scave scum a whole lot. I just went with all these. Yeah. Um, it was it was pretty, pretty cool. That sounds good. Um, exploration was fun. They're not huge environments, but they're they're pretty bad. They remind me about uh a lot about. Avowed size. Avowed size. You go to these like biomes, like this planet, and you can explore that planet. You can then you go to a space station and you go to another planet. It's open world, but in smaller space buttons. Kind of like Borderlands, but worth exploring a little more. It is worth exploring. There's a lot of places that are uh their own side quest. Like if you go over here and find this thing that'll spin you off that's a self-contained side quest in that area. Again, I I kind of like that. Um I also want to I don't know if you played the first one, right? I I played a like 20 minutes maybe. So a big thing with that, it had the um the time dilation device, which kind of was a bullet time and made things slow down.
SPEAKER_01I remember that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But in this game, there's other gadgets, they call them gadgets. There's other things like that as well. Um I completely forgot about the gadgets. Uh I was about 13 hours in and I realized, oh, I forgot I have this shit. Right. Mainly because I wasn't a huge fan of the time dilation device, and because of my skill set, it wasn't very long or powerful. But I forgot I had this thing that I thought was just a shield against this poison. But no, it was also a shield against damage. So I played a large chunk of this game ignoring one of the main mechanics. That'll do. But I feel like it made me better at the game because I had to like try harder. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_02So uh use your gadgets, folks. Use them. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that's like the dumbest knowledge I could possibly impart, is like, you know, use shit, but there you go. Nice. Use your shit. I mean more. Oh, another thing that's interesting is it definitely it does some RPG things that you wouldn't normally think. So typically, like, if you're trying to play like the good guy, you're always a good guy. You know, those all the times you'll do a quest and it'll be like, well, if you're playing the bad guy, you can ask for more money. Right. You're playing the good guy, you can be like, oh no, don't pay me anyway. Right. That's a classic. Some of the NPCs get mad and suspicious of you if you do that. Nice. Because think of the real world if you're like, oh yeah, what do you really want, guys? So again, you have to keep your character and kind of think about who you're talking to. So if they're like part of like the uh the thief gang, yeah, you know, ask for money, they'll they'll be fine with that. If you don't ask for money, they're not gonna like that. I thought that was really neat. That sounded very different. Um my one complaint though is about the weapons. It well, not really. There's a lot of mods you can make to the weapons, and with your skills and your perks, yes, perks just like Fallout games, and it can make it kind of complicated to figure out. There is a range you can go to to try out your different guns. You know, I would like save, add some things, put on a perk, put on a mod, try the gun out the range. But if as I realized the range doesn't actually work, like the damage numbers that pop up aren't the same as the real world numbers you went out the a real enemy. Okay, and I don't know why. Um what I recommend is Reddit is your friend, and uh maybe do some research there because they have worked out the math and the things because the game the game just doesn't really explain a whole lot of that shit, and I've I'm very confused. So that that so you know, sometimes the day and age we live up, you gotta kinda look up shit if you want to. You know, me, I'm that that's you know, I like to min-max and just figure out my shit and but you don't have to, obviously. You can just get a gun if you like it, fucking use it. That's how I do it. What I call it, some of it is just too unknowable.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, and again, yeah, so and that goes right into the whole hey role play thing, and don't think about it. Like, hey, you're a brawler, use a shotgun, bring it in your fists, and be done with it. Don't think about anything else. Yeah, that's that's a good way to go. Uh there was a time when I was able to actually talk myself out of a boss battle, which I was surprised at. And usually in a game, if you do that, cool, you don't have to fight the guy. You usually get the XP, though. I did get the XP, but you don't get the gear. You know, if you kill a guy, you get his gear. Right, right, right. In this game, he dropped it. So I still got the gear, which is neat, because that's a lot of times why I don't like to talk my way out of situations. Yeah, either you don't get the XP or you don't get the gear. In that case, I got them both. And that's a nice, that's a nice thing they did there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, makes it worth talking charisma, as we say.
SPEAKER_02Yep, yep, yep. And oh, one other shout-outs. Uh, one of the voiceovers. Um, you know, you I call a clock up and I'm walk walk talking to the guy, and I'm like, he sounds familiar. I don't know. Let's know more, and I'm like, it's Dr. Venture from the Venture Brothers. And I looked it up, and it was uh Jay's James Urbanic, who does uh a lot of voices for The Venture Brothers, but mainly he plays uh uh Dr. Rusty Venture. So it was really I know you don't care, but there is at least six other people in the world that are very excited.
SPEAKER_01One of those six people probably listening to this right now.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I bet it's our Singaporean friends. All right. Thank you. So that that's kind of it. I know I rambled a bit there, but uh I wanted to give my. It is an all through and through a good game. I will. I will. Are you close to finishing? I I think I said I think I only have about a third left of the game. Nice. Um what's your review and progress?
SPEAKER_01Eight and a half. Out of ten? Yeah, out of ten. Nice. Yeah, I think so. That's a that's a solid review. I feel like it would be fun, but I'll never play it. But it sounds fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh uh weight and inventory, I should have mentioned, not even a thing.
SPEAKER_01When games do that, it's nice.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it's just like a vowed in that way. There's there's not a whole lot to think about.
SPEAKER_01Do we really need to get I mean everything is either six guns or twenty guns.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, everything is either a weapon uh ammo for that weapon or junk, more or less, or like a key. I don't know something. Obviously there's no there is a crafting mechanic, right? Yeah. Um, but that doesn't use it just uses money and blueprints. So yeah, it's simple inventory. Yeah, that's nice. Again, I like other games that have a more involved thing. This is not that game, and it's fine.
SPEAKER_01That's what I mean. It's something it just it works and it's nice in that way. Yes, yes. All right. Cool. Very cool.
SPEAKER_02World two maps play. All right. Alright, I think you had another one.
SPEAKER_01Well, actually, I I remembered while we were talking and I wrote it down. I did play a random ass game on what? That's fun. Oh, I thought okay. I thought you said something smart. That's right. I was gonna leave his podcast and be done. But now we're cool. Um no, uh, I played a random game on Game Pass. My wife still owns it. Still season two.
SPEAKER_02Wait, but you you but you bought um Doom?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know that's on Game Pass. Ah, but I wanted to give them the money. Good for you. I wanted to support them. My asshole out here. Like, dude, you could have gotten them for free. Yeah, I believe me, I knew that, but I wanted to give them the money because I love GameMaker, even with their we've talked about in the past with the creator of the music issue. But I still support the company overall. I ID.
SPEAKER_02Id and and Bethesda.
SPEAKER_01And Bethesda. So I wanted to give them a little bit of money, but I want to give them all my money. Cool, good for you. Um but yeah, so but she downgraded to the lower game pass. So there's some things she can't get. Got it. So she finally did that. That was her move. She said, I'm gonna give it away. You don't get day one release. Exactly. Like in some really amazing games. But for the most part, everything is uh it seems like everything's available. I haven't found too many games. And so one of the random games and I convinced my daughter to play with me was called Digging a Hole. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Sounds uh sounds fun.
SPEAKER_01And if you are planning to play this, I'm gonna spoil a little bit for you. Oh no. So you turn off your radios, woo! Anyway, uh digging a hole, Matt. What do you think that involves?
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna guess you just dig a hole. Exactly. Yeah, is there like just one button you press? Pretty much. Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01So you dig a hole, kind of like Minecraft, so it's kind of Minecraft adjacent. Okay. And then you collect, as you're digging, your hole in your backyard. So the the premise of the story is you Wait, wait, I'm sorry, there's a story. There's a story. Wow. That's why I'm gonna ruin it for everybody. So you buy a house. Well, there's a house for sale, and it says if you buy this house, there's a big treasure in the backyard. Oh, okay. And so you buy the house thinking you're gonna get this massive treasure. Right. So you start digging a hole. And as you're digging, you you have different parameters you have to keep track of. Like there's a bat, like you buy this shovel, which is called it, I forget what it's called, but it has a battery. So you can run out of battery juice.
SPEAKER_02Your shovel can run out of battery.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it runs on battery. Yep. And so then you gotta make money to upgrade your shovel. And then there's uh there's some other things you can upgrade. Oh, yeah, you're like your backpack, and uh, and then you eventually get a rocket pack to because your hole gets so deep you gotta fly out of it. Yes, okay. That so you gotta upgrade your rocket. All makes sense. So to earn money, you eventually run into like coal. Early on, you run into coal and some other stone, and they're cheap, but you you sell them, but all you have to do is go to your computer in your house and you sell your shit. Online. Yeah, it's instantaneous. You get your money, so you keep digging. Okay, you keep digging. Eventually you get to like better stuff like copper, let uh iron, similar to like I said, Minecraft. Um and you keep digging, and you can find some cool shit. There's like this one tunnel that led to a minor treasure chest with good stuff like money to keep funding your dig.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01So it turns out, I'll just kind of speed this up, but turns out you can dig all the way down, and then eventually you you get to this area where there's tunnels, and you find these giant moles. Oh. Okay. And so it becomes kind of a horror game. Oh, okay. Because these giant moles are creepy as shit. How how into the game? Like ten minutes, an hour? I think I beat the game. I beat the game. Okay. And it took me all of probably like one day of like I I played quite a bit. So we'll we'll just say maybe like four or five hours. Okay. Um so I dug all the way, I kept digging, and I was like, I'm gonna get to the bottom of this shit. So I got to the bottom. You get into this. Is Liana, your daughter, playing this with you?
SPEAKER_02Not at this point. She's gone at this point. But yeah, dad, dad, folks.
SPEAKER_01She played it and she kind of got bored of it. Reasonable. Right, right. I played it while she was at school because I was like, I want to see where this goes. Okay. I'm curious. And so that's when I then one day I was like, I'm just gonna play this pretty much the whole time she's at school like a good dad.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_01Um, you're both learning. Yeah. And so I dug and I got to this area, and it's like a cave system, and there's these giant moles, probably like it's first person. So it's hard to say how big they are, but they're kind of like the size of maybe or like an elephant. Okay.
SPEAKER_02If you're if you're keep tabs, go keep going, but I gotta look up because I I need to see the visuals here.
SPEAKER_01So the moles are stupid and they just walk around, but you gotta dodge the moles to get to the treasure, right? So I dodge the first mole, and I'm like, cool. I'm like, wow, I got past him. It's pretty intimidating because you hear he sounds a lot like the Balrog. Balrog. Balrog. From Lord of the Rings. Look it up if you don't know. Now this is less Minecrafty visual than I thought. Yeah, it's not like looks like Minecraft, but you dig, and it's shit. All right. So you gotta then there's another mole. I hear another mole, so I gotta dodge that mole. And then you keep dodging them. You know, and I a couple times I I did die one time, but then you start back over at the top, and then you can kick back down. I think you lose your money or whatever. No, but you're you're you don't have to redig the hole. No. The hole's still there. So I've eventually I get to the treasure, and it turns out I open the treasure. You can guess what's inside the treasure. Another hole? No. That's an interesting guess. Nothing. So then you turn around and the moles are all surrounded you and eat you, essentially. Okay. So the the the whole premise is is they're feeding the moles. And so they convince people to look for this treasure. Wow. To go down there and get eaten by moles.
SPEAKER_02And that was the end? That was the end. I would not expect a game like that to have a twist ending. So there you go. So there you go. You ruined uh the game. I told you to turn this off if you wanted to play that. No one listening right now has any interest in playing that game, I assure you. Um I don't have interest in it.
SPEAKER_01That but you were not expecting that, huh? I was not. Yeah. And I actually had to look it up because I was like, what the fuck happened? That is on that. Exactly. Yeah. And it was on a Reddit.
SPEAKER_02I think somebody explain the whole thing. Hey, hey. If you haven't gathered yet, um I'm a little mad at Ann Man because he is not. He he has no idea how to join Reddit. He has not joined Reddit. He has not contributed, obviously, to our own Reddit thread. But uh, we'll get there someday. We'll learn him the internets.
SPEAKER_01After this, I'm gonna I'm gonna contribute something. Yeah, he's gonna tell you what.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Might be dirty. Well, speaking of holes, I played ball X Pit, or however you say it, ball pit. Did you figure that out? It's interesting. Did you figure it's interesting you say that because I didn't at first. Yeah. Okay. You said something about Japan. What? No. Japan? Yeah, you said Japan likes the X. Oh, you mean you mean did I figure out how to say the name of the game? I thought you meant that I figured out how to play the game.
SPEAKER_00Jeez.
SPEAKER_02Yes, okay. Sorry. Yeah. Woo! No, I did not figure it out. I meant to look it up. But no, I haven't figured out how to say the X. Yeah. If it is just ball ball verse pit or just ball pit. I don't know. But um so believe it or not, that game actually has ultra-wide support, which you wouldn't suspect. Although it doesn't really take up the whole screen because the way, but it has it kind of uses the whole screen. Though some of the modifiers are on the edge, it's neat. Um my one thing is you can change the font between the 16-bit, which is the natural, or turn it to HD. I don't know if you noticed that, but I could not read that fucking original font. It was very granular and it bothered me. Whatever. So I played that game. I was playing it for about an hour. It's neat. So it is kind of a combination between city builder and what you had said, pinball plus vampire survivors. Is that how you described it? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. You use the word pinball. Yeah, pinball. I did use pinball. I didn't understand. I'm like, what the fuck is he talking about? Oh, really? And I struggled for like an hour. I'm like, was incrementally getting a little bit stronger. I couldn't afford anything in my town. So I was very slowly buying money. Yeah. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And then I accidentally turned and realized you can aim your ball not just forward, but yeah, I know it's the main premise of the fucking game. And I didn't realize that for an hour, dude.
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02Like you can even so none realize, oh, you can go up in and have the ball bounce around kind of an alleyway. Right. Yeah, and that's the whole fucking point. Yeah, dude. I didn't know that at first. I was just going left and right, side to side, like it'd only strafe. I didn't realize you could. Yeah. Yeah. Change the whole dynamic. Yes, it really did. Did you play more? I played a lot more. Um I enjoyed it. It's been a while since I went back to it.
SPEAKER_01It's a good, just quick, fun, easy game. Actually, that's one of the few games that wasn't accessible anymore. I I was gonna play a little more myself. Oh, really? That one uh either it left Game Pass or it wasn't accessible. But I was sad because I was one day I was like, I'm gonna go back to that a little bit. It can't be. It'd be like a five dollar game. I I might buy it on Steam because I it's on my Steam list. I'm not that far. I mean, I we didn't do me and Liana didn't do much. But she actually wanted to play Oddly enough, she wanted to play it. Oh, really? And I told her. Did she figure?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, obviously she figured she dominated. I don't know why, man. I but yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01That's why we're almost gamers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_02We kind of almost I kind of wish that that moment had been on camera. That would have been funny.
SPEAKER_01Like you gotta start filming yourself more, mate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People want to see ya.
SPEAKER_02So that reminds me, I don't know if you remember, of a uh people can fly game, um Outriders. Oh. Remember, you went through a very large part of that game without knowing there was like that ground pound mechanic. Yes. It was like a whole ability class that you just didn't know. I remember, yeah. I did not know. So, you know, it happens all the time. Yes. That happens quite a bit. Absolutely. All right. All right, all right. So uh back to you. What else? I think you got one more for us.
SPEAKER_01Just one one quickish one because it's there's not much to talk about. So I told you I don't know when, but I told you I was in the looter type mood.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you were. And I was desperate.
SPEAKER_01Yep. I was uh desperately looking, and something came on Game Pass recently, and I said, All right, I'll bite a little bit. Diablo 2 speaking of Diablo games, uh resurrected. Oh you know, they did the remake or whatever they call them.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't You don't remember that? I forgot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They just updated all the graphics, yeah. Some quality of life thing, kind of like Oblivion. Okay, cool. But before Oblivion happened. Yeah. Um so I was just like I remember playing a little bit of it, and I remember loving the necromancer class because it was I thought it was so cool to like raise later was that an expansion, I think.
SPEAKER_02No, I think necromancer was on the original. I think it was, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think it was Diablo 4, it was an expansion because people wanted it so much. Yeah, you know, I think you're right, yeah. Uh but and I love it, but I it was hard to get into because the same reason I didn't get into Oblivion, I I tried Oblivion a little bit, but then I remember like, oh, this is why you know it's not all about graphics. It's like sometimes it's just like this is why I loved Skyrim better than Oblivion.
SPEAKER_02Like it kind of reminded me of that quality of life, just yeah, like combat was a little bit more than a lot of people. Sometimes it's hard to go back to old games. You might need to mod them, wink wink, see a certain maybe video coming out soon. Ooh. Ooh.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, I um oh I think I know what you're gonna.
SPEAKER_02I think I figured out your little light bulb. I'm gonna I'm gonna make a light bulb on your head right here.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, um, there's an element of I'm not super invested, but I I just there's nothing. I I wanted to play, there was another one that got really high reviews, but they were bought out by somebody and they said they weren't gonna do any transactions, but now they're starting to do transactions. Do you know? Does that sound familiar? What Diablo style game came out recently. I should have Pillars of Eternity or not Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile. No, similar. It's like Arcana, no, uh yeah, whatever. But there was a couple games, and then I was just like, I have to pay good money, and was like, well, it's on Game Pass. So anyway, not not the greatest review for Diablo 2, but it does hold up. It's still pretty fantastic. It's old. And I almost went back to Diablo 4. But I think I'm going to hold it. I might go back.
SPEAKER_02Was their news expansion out?
SPEAKER_01No, I think I'm going to wait. That's in March. Okay. So I might go back. Maybe maybe we should uh coucher bowl it. Yeah, that might be cool, huh? Yeah. All right. I was thinking. Maybe we'll spend the money and get the expansion because that the paladin's coming out. Yeah. That's the new class. So I I don't know. But Diablo 2 is still fun. I'm having a little bit of fun. Yeah. It's scratching at you a little bit. Loot is pretty stingy in there. You're surprised how stingy loot is. Like there's not a lot of fun loot early on. It's like Borderlands 3 situation. Or no, wait, no.
SPEAKER_02No, opposite.
SPEAKER_01Borderlands 3 had too much. Too much loot. I don't know. Either way, it's it's a little different, but the graphic I I'll say they did a fantastic. It plays like a new game. I mean, it looks like a new game, I should say, graphically. Oh, okay. Which is nice. Yeah. That was a big reason.
SPEAKER_02I I've I no idea when this uh yeah. It'll say right here. Yeah, it'll say it right there. Oh, yeah. Well, it would have said it earlier. Yeah. I'll throw it up again now. Yeah. Man, I gotta watch this whole video to find these little damn edits I gotta make. Good job, stuff, man. Um people just listening are like, nah, I don't give a fuck. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you listen to the podcast, you don't give a shit about all these stupid little graphics. Uh yeah. So I actually own Diablo 2 technically on Steam. And I've gone back and tried to play, but the graphics are a little rough. And I I mean, like, they're not and clearly they're not the most important thing, but sometimes it does take you out of the game a little bit. Yeah. So I but I'm enjoying it. And that's what I've been actually I played it right before I came over a little bit. Nice. Yeah, I was I'm in an act two. I don't know how many acts there are. Yeah, I'm definitely right.
SPEAKER_02Did you beat? I don't know that I ever beat two. I know you beat one you beat, right? Uh yeah. Right. You you can. Like it is beatable. I think you eventually still though, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I never beat one. The only ones I beat were three and four. Did you beat four? Didn't we beat it together? Did we? Oh well, whatever. That's all I got. All right. I gotta look up that game while you're talking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Uh I got a quickie here.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So this was also on Game Pass. I was just looking for something different to play. And I alert heard a lot of good things about Pacific Drive. Okay. Uh have you heard about this car? You're basically you're driving. You're in like an old beat-up station wagon. Okay. You kind of fix it up. There's a lot of paranormal stuff going on. Almost has like a Ghostbusters feel to it. Um this also has ultra-wide support. I tried playing it on just my laptop. Okay. Um, but it was running so poorly. It was under like 30 FPS, and I was getting motion sickness out of it. So I ended up just doing it on um Yeah, I'm pretty I'm I'm 90% sure I played a game, passing it right down, but I know I I couldn't do it on my lappy. So anyways. I don't think it's a fault of the developer. Just my uh it's it's a pretty high fidelity game, and my laptop's getting getting odd in years. I don't want to put it in a home, but um well, no, I can't get a new one because as we discussed, uh woo! Text expensive yeah, new lappies are like in the thousands of dollars. Wow. So I'll stick with my game pad or uh G4 style subscription. Thank you very much. So the game kind of has a slow start, um mainly because there's like a whole large tutorial section, but it does kind of help build up the atmosphere of the game. Uh it is skippable. So this is one of those games where you want to restart and you want to you can skip that whole first section if you want. I like that in games. It is I love the atmosphere, I love the kind of the music, the whole vibe of the game. I was really liking, but it is very detailed, it is very complex systems, it's almost a sim, and it's very much so a survival kind of type game where you go out, find resources, don't want to go too far because you might die, then go back to home base, build up your shit, go back out, find more recesses. It's kind of that kind of a loop. And that is um not my kind of a game. It w you know, it was neat. I I kind of I yeah, I just I I can see it's for a lot of people, but I just it wasn't it wasn't for me. Um I wish it kind of was because I really liked a lot about it, uh the whole vibe and feel. But uh yeah, it just didn't click. Yeah, it didn't click with me, so I gave up on it. But um if that kind of uh appeals to you, please check it out. That is specific drive. And it is available on at least Xbox and definitely on Game Pass currently. So uh and other systems, which will be yet again, as we say, popped up there. We'll do better next time, we swear, folks. We won't.
SPEAKER_01And uh real quick, the game I was thinking of before so we don't have to do a respawn on it. Thankfully.
SPEAKER_02Live action respawn! Yeah, right. We last epoch. Oh, that sounds familiar. Oh, yes. Um I wanna say Scott, Pen Scott, who I've told him he is Pen Scott. Oh, and and I Is he gonna make us a custom pen? I told him that I lost the pen. He was a little sad, but he's he's gonna make me a new one. Oh. But he's in a transitional period, he's moving houses, so we gotta wait. Oh, his pen factory. Yes, and I might be the one having to help him move the lathe, um which he uses to make these pens. How much does that weigh? A lot. I'm thinking a lot. It's funny because now I'm just thinking about it. It's like, well, we're not moving the fridge or the wash machine. I'm like, cool, but I just realized, oh, but he's probably gonna take that lathe with him. Yeah. Damn it, Scott. You better make a good ass pen. Anyways, where were we? Last C P. Oh, yes. I remember him talking about that game a lot. Yeah. And I don't remember if it was favorable or unfavorable. I cannot remember.
SPEAKER_01Well, the reviews So basically, I'm on Steam right now. And overall, it's very positive. I thought I thought he really liked it. Is it but the most recent is mixed because if you and I read a lot of them, like I said, they were bought bought out by a company that is slowly transitioning. They started it as an AARPG. Or not AA. Just ARPG.
SPEAKER_02Now, was it fully released on beta?
SPEAKER_01I think it was fully released. Okay. But I think they released, and their whole thing was a love letter, Diablo fans, like a very nice no transactions, just a good classic experience. But now I guess the company that bought them is is starting to introduce those transactions. And people are pissed because they started the whole vibe was to be not that in the cosmetic transactions, but well, I think mostly maybe. I don't know. You'd probably have to read the reviews. I don't know. It might be something in the research. But I I gathered it sounded like it could just be just any transaction sounded like they're just turning over a new leaf, and it's not the one people thought it was gonna be. So and it could just also be review bombing. I don't know. Maybe they hate them just to hate them. Maybe it's not that bad.
SPEAKER_02Right, and people don't like change. Yeah, but a big company.
SPEAKER_01And I was a little skeptical when it's still full price, and I was like, I'm not gonna spend.
SPEAKER_02Let's uh let's research a bit. Maybe ask Scotty too hoty. Yeah, see if he maybe get him on here. Yeah, Scott. Well, maybe this season we should have some more uh some more guests. Maybe now that we're uh big and famous.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm sure people are itching worldwide to get on this show. Right? Yeah, well, I'm interested to hear a real person talk about it. Not some review bomb as fucker.
SPEAKER_02That was right. We bring you, we bring you truth. All right, so I think that's it for uh what you've been playing, huh? A long one. Okay, so in lieu of an actual boss battle today, we are gonna send you to a brand new video in which I am going to be what exactly am I gonna be doing there, Andrew?
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess the best way to say it is you're taking a tour slash reacting to the castle. I've talked about in season one quite a bit. The very early in season one, even. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02The castle that I have built in Minecraft. Are there gonna be turtles, Andy? Could be. We've been asking the questions. Episode three. Yeah. Are turtles? Are there turtles? Right. We'll find out, maybe. So, folks, to see about that, go ahead and check out our YouTube channel.
Matthew's Equipment Emporium
SPEAKER_01I'm ready. I ready. Why are you a vampire? This is a official cloak.
SPEAKER_02Well, there was there was a previous episode where that said I should be wearing a cape. Uh because I'm evil. For some reason, we decided. Okay. And uh and Andy, today, we're gonna talk a little bit about history of video gaming. And what kind of history? That's why I'm wearing the glasses. Oh, you do look smarter. That's right. I'm very smart today. So, one thing gets thrown around a lot is console generations. Oh. Do you know what current console generations? I'll answer that. No. It's funny because I I I always forget it, I always have to look it up. Yeah. So today's current console generation, if you will. Okay. Uh, we say we're on the ninth. So that is the Xbox Series X slash S or the PlayStation 5. The way I think about console generations is that the Xbox um deb not the Xbox, I'm sorry, the PlayStation debuted in the fifth. So count the PlayStation numbers, add four. An easy way to figure it out. So, folks, we're gonna talk about console generations. Okay. So usually when we talk about generations, it's it's you know, not a hard and fast thing, but it's kind of a an established thing. So the gaming consoles, not PCs or handhelds, they tend to follow generational um improvements, if you will. So we're gonna go through the history of those from number one to number nine. Wow. And just kind of, you know, talk about how hardware has um generated uh since the olden days. Ooh, get ready. So one of the reasons I I um, you know, I try to count backwards or forwards and try to figure out where we're at, but it's the first generation that I never remember because these are old, old school. We're talking like what's the first console think about? What's what's the first video game console you think about when you think about your head?
SPEAKER_01First one for me would be Atari.
SPEAKER_02Specifically the Atari 2600. Probably that was the one that uh looked like wood grain. Yeah, the wood grain. That one, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that to me too, but there actually was a whole generation before that. Yeah. And that was the Odyssey, uh, the Clico Telstar, not the Clico you're thinking of. Um these are pre- Yeah, these are pre-pre. Like the the Magnavox Odyssey, the here's the here's the controller here. It looks like a box. That's pretty cool. Like with a two knobs on it. And it had a couple of games, but one of its um most famous games, if you will, is uh like yeah, here you his is kind of funny. So it wasn't Pong, though. Oh, this is early Pong. Well, Pong, believe it or not, eventually got copyrighted and was released by Atari as its own console. Right. Like you bought a console by Atari just to play Pong. This is that you don't know, and you're too young. Fuck you. First of all. I mean, we're even too young to know that. Yeah. Um it's just, I'll throw it up on screen. It's basically two blocks going back, going back and forth between two lines. Yeah. That's all there is to it. The Odyssey's version of it, I believe, was called tabletop tennis. Yeah. Yes. So, but it was basically Pong. Yeah. So that's that's the early. That is the first generation or games that were barely games. But at the time, obviously, they were groundbreaking. And these are in the late 70s.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Got it. So enter the second generation of games, which is also um, so the Atari 2600 is the big one.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02This also includes the Odyssey 2 and then the Intellivision and the ColecoVision. Those are kind of the competitors to the Atari that never made any farther and they went under there. Right. So the Atari 2600, as I said, it was the wood grain thing, had your stereotypical joystick. Yeah. Square with a red button and a stick in the center. Oh, yeah. That was it. That's it. That's all you needed. And it had your classic when you think Atari games, it had Space Invaders, it had Pac-Man, it had um the Nebulous uh ET.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, the E.T.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, you're talking about classic, classic games. Yeah, that's your and this was um actually the Atari 2600 was released in 1982.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I wasn't even really um born technically. Oh yeah, yeah. I was I was I was you were uh at the end of the year I was born. Okay. So you were I was basically it was 83. I bet you four days before somehow you got a constant there in the womb, just like pushing. I was a gamer early on, that's for sure. I re I as far as I can remember, I loved games. There you go.
SPEAKER_02Do you have any so you have some memories with the uh the old Atari?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. Me and my brother, we used to play um Space Invaders. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, no way.
SPEAKER_01My brother and I would play Space Invaders, and I remember if we beat a level, we'd hug each other. I don't know why. We would just be like, Yeah. It was one of my one of my nice memories. Me and my brother, we would play, and then like we beat a level, and those little fuckers would come down. But we'd beat it and then we'd hug.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got all the good memories. Um me and Haley talked about uh when she was a guest on the thing that um you know those early console generations, um, we didn't own one, but there was a member of the family that was like, you know, well. The one person that's money. And I'm pretty sure that was my uh oh my cousin Mikey. R.I.P. bud. Miss you. Um sorry, dude. Who had the Atari 2600? Drink one for Uncle Is it Uncle?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_02No, he'd be just cousin. He's just cousin, Mikey's cousin. Cousin Mikey. Cousin Mikey. Um I'm in uh sorry. As I'm saying this out loud though, was it him or was it well, I'm pretty sure he had one. Yeah. Eh, we'll go with it. Yeah, either way. Missy bud. Yeah, either way. All right, um. So, all right, let's jump forward a little bit into the 1980s, the middle. That's where it starts. Now, this is where this really starts. This is the third generation of consoles. And when people think about consoles, this is really where I think it starts. So this is includes the Nintendo Entertainment System. Which everybody known in Japan as the Famicon. Really? Yeah, for these a lot of these generations, they're very different names around the world, actually, depending on whether in Europe or America or Japan, what they were called.
SPEAKER_01And what do they they said? Ness, right? Ness was how they said in the rap remember. Season one.
SPEAKER_02Season one. Uh this was the Atari 7800, which uh had like the paddle controller. I kind of remember the. Oh, yeah, I do remember that, but I never remember that. No, I don't even know when they had that. This is where uh Atari started the tank. And the other, so this is also known as the 8-bit generation. Okay. I remember the 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit. Now, it was interesting to me because that number doesn't actually mean anything. Okay, you know, I was wondering, like, well, 8-bits of what? It's nothing. It's just kind of a um a standard colloquial, if you will, like a rating system. These were 8-bit games. Gotcha. It kind of builds off of the whole 8-bits is a bite, you know, it's it's computer jargon, but really it was just kind of like a ranking system. Right. So 16-bit was double the eight-bit. Not really, it was just the next generation. Right. I guess that's what that really means. Um, but in in this is also the master system. Yes, you gave me that look because the master system was technically the first Sega system. I know. That's funny, yeah, because most people think about Sega Genesis. Yeah. Which is, you know, kind of weird. But what happened there was the Sega, even though it came out in Japan a lot earlier, it didn't come to the US until 86. And like just about two years later, the the the next console generation released, and so did the Sega Genesis. So most people don't even like I I don't even remember the Sega Master system. You can take a look at it. Yeah, no, I don't know. Anyone has it, I wasn't even aware of it. I didn't even realize the Sega Genesis was a second thing. Like I thought it was just bam, Sega Canva Nowhere. Yeah, I thought it reached the Genesis. No, they had a whole thing before it. Makes kind of sense to be honest. Yeah, yeah. So that brings us to the fourth generation. This is in the late 80s, and this is where shit got real. This was the 16-bit, this was the original console wars, man. It really was where shit happened. Oh, yeah. So you obviously had the aforementioned Genesis by Sega, which was also known as the Sega Mega Drive, um, basically anywhere that wasn't the US. Right. And then we have the Super Nintendo or the Super NES, Super NES, SNES. SNES, yeah. SNES. And then you also have things like the TurboGraphics 16 and the Neo Geo. I remember that. Which I yeah, I kind of remember.
SPEAKER_01And I don't know anybody who either.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, they were very interesting. Um, so I don't know if you know much. I j I don't I I I think I knew a friend of a friend that had a TurboGraphics 16. So these were all ROM-based games. I it's hard to describe to people what these game cartridges. Yeah. If you've ever seen a Super Nintendo or Nintendo, they have this big ass plastic thing that you they plugged it and shoved it into the top. Right. That's how the game worked. The advantage of that as opposed to what we use nowadays, even software-wise, is they were very fast. Yeah. So they just loaded up real quick. Um, so yeah, I knew someone had a TurboGraphics 16 around them kind of looking like um they look like RAM chips now. Uh-huh. A RAM chip looks now. Around this was a turbo graphics game. Oh, neat. I had never seen a Neo Geo cartridge until a few years ago. Okay. Um, because I watched the whole kind of history of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so the whole thing with the Neo Geo was it was basically arcade games. Oh, yeah. You could play at home. Now, this is funny because back in the day, like the arcade games were huge, powerful machines, yeah, and they're always better graphics. Right. And when they ported them to these even 16-bit systems, it kind of sucked. Like Street Fighter and Street Fighter, Super Street Fighter Turbo. Right, right. Wasn't as good on the Nintendo on the SNES, even. But the Neo Geo, they were as good. The reason being they took the entire motherboard of the arcade game and made it into a cartridge and put it, and that's what the games were. Dude, they were huge. They were apparently like a foot by a foot and a half. Wow. They were like these. It was like they it was basically plugging a motherboard in that's picture a motherboard. Yeah. That was the cartridge for a Neo G that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01That is insane.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, they were an insanely priced. Like yeah, I nah waited.
SPEAKER_01I didn't have any There's a guy on YouTube and I don't remember his name, but he repairs stuff and I like watching it because he repairs a lot of old video game systems. Oh, neat, neat. And he did it, I forgot, he did do a neo what is a Neo Geo Neo Geo. Neo Geo and he did a because it's very rare and he repaired it. And I remember the cartridge is massive and and he repaired like I forget, but he ended up making it work new caps and shit. Yeah, it but it was interesting. But yeah, I forgot about that. That is crazy.
SPEAKER_02All right. So yeah, there there that was your 16-bit generation. That was an intense generation. Yes, yes, it was. Now let's move up to the fifth, which is sometimes called 32-bit, but by that point we kind of stopped using that. Yeah. Now I should say between these generations, there was those weird in-betweener stuff, like the because now we're starting to get into the optical media. So things were gonna go into the game cards. They start to use CDs, and there's a Sega CD. And remember the Sega 32X? Yeah. So basically they're waiting. No, no, that's great. A little bit later. No, yeah, it's a little bit later. Okay. So these were ways for these old consoles to kind of upgrade without upgrading. Right. But it costs so much that Was there a Jaguar? So that's the Jaguar is technically the whole fifth generation. Fifth generation is a Jaguar. Sorry. The uh Sega Saturn. Oh, sorry. Saturn is the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Saturn, the Nintendo 64. Right. Which is weird because this is uh technically 32-bit. Was it Nintendo actually 64-bit? I guess it was 64, yeah. And uh the 3DO, which you know it doesn't matter. That was a I heard of it, but yeah, that was CD-based. Yeah, it doesn't matter. And more importantly, the new boy on the block, Sony and the PlayStation. Now, there is a very interesting story of why Sony busted out on their own as opposed to they originally were just going to release as a CD add-on to at first Nintendo and later uh Sega. Um, I'm not going into that, but please check out Norm in the video game historian. I will link it below. He gives a fantastic history about it. It is fucked up yet funny. That it's crazy the way that the console wars were like were going on here. It was cutthroat, man. There was billions of dollars up stake, and they were not playing nice.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02So yes. Um now I remember the the Atari Jaguar was supposedly like the shit.
SPEAKER_01That's all I remember hearing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because it was, it was, it was like the the definition of a 64-bit system. That's right. So the other ones are only technically 32. But it was, as I recall, uh, for that reason, exceed extremely expensive.
SPEAKER_01Like yeah, that was the whole thing too.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um, I don't remember today's money. The Atari Jaguar launched at $250 at the time, which would be about $500 now. Wow. Now it's funny because that's what consoles cost now. But at the day, you know, for comparison, the other thing, other consoles were like $100 to $150. So it was about almost double the price.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do remember like that price, actually, to be honest. I was like holy, when I was a kid, I was like, holy shit, that's expensive.
SPEAKER_02It is fine to look back on that's not that expensive and relatively not yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, at the time, just yeah, competition that that's I mean, gaming wasn't near what it is today either. Sounds like people are willing to play more games. Uh and uh do you remember the Sega Saturn at all? Oh yeah. That the Sega Saturn I think was like the first system I think I can remember that came with Virtual Fighter. Oh, it might have. I think I I don't know, you could probably research this and I maybe I got it wrong, but I think it was the first system to play a virtual fighter at home versus going to an arcade and that I was kind of obsessed with but I I never owned one. So that was kind of sad. But Virtual Fighter is probably my f favorite arcade game of all time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I I know that. Well what wait. What was the game that you bought and you walked Virtual Fighter? Virtual Fighter 4.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I walked I walked four miles one way. So I walked eight miles to a Walmart to buy a Virtual Fighter 4. That you that was play, right? No, I didn't I well yeah, I was at college and I didn't my PlayStation 2 was at home, which wasn't at college. So I just I just had to have it. So I I walked, bought it, and just stared at it for like a week until I went home to play it.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. That makes if you know Andy, that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_01I don't it just it blew my mind that Virtual Fighter came back to the point where it was on consoles because it kind of disappeared. Like like I said, that console was the only time I ever saw it on a console other than in an arcade, and I swore to myself I would own that game if it ever came in.
SPEAKER_02This was the point where like arcade and PC stuff were rivaled by consoles. Yeah. Before consoles were always behind it. Right. And now you could be like, oh my well, I can do this on a console. Oh my. Yeah, I don't know. Now I uh real quick, I remember no, I don't remember. Well, maybe I kind of remember. So the Sega Saturn, this was this was the downfall start of Sega. And I need and give a little back. We always talked about like games were systems and everything was very different between like Japan and that whole market in the US. Typically everything would release in Japan earlier, sometimes years earlier. And it would eventually go through the thing and the marketing. I I don't really know why. That was just kind of the times, and it would end up in the US. Yeah. So the Sega Saturn came out, it was already developed, obviously, fully functional in Japan. Yeah. And it was scheduled for a much later release in the US. But for some reason, Sega bumped it up by several months with no marketing, no nothing. They basically pulled a shadow drop. Like, hey, guess what? Sega Saturn's out today. Go buy it. Wow. And when you're releasing a new console, not a good idea. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01That's not quite the same.
SPEAKER_02No, it was, it was, yeah, everyone points to that being that was the beginning of the end.
SPEAKER_01Unfortunately, yeah, Sega was done.
SPEAKER_02But it was not their actual end. Because they did venture on through the next generation into the sixth. Atari, however, did not. They did not make it. Jaguar was the final console for Atari. Obviously, the uh 3DO did not go. I think that was Phillips, I think. Umbody knows what 3DO. You know what? It does not matter. Actually, it was Electronic Arts. That's right. It was them. That's right. They had a console. Doesn't matter. Moving on. All right. So sixth generation. This is, we'll start with the ones people know, is the PlayStation 2. Nice. The Nintendo GameCube. The Sega Dreamcast. Wow. Which was barely hanging on at this point. Yeah, very good. And then now another new player, Microsoft, jumps into the world with the largest console controller ever and the Xbox. You didn't own the original Xbox. You know what? I bought one. I bought an original Xbox. Did you? Well after the Xbox 360 came out. Because remember, I just graduated college. I had money to burn, and I wanted to play Halo with you guys. Multiplayer. Yes, that's all it was. I literally bought an Xbox. Just for Halo. I owned one for like three months. Yeah. Just so if we guys so we can play original for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Now this is the period where Matt was. Might have been Halo 2.
SPEAKER_02Might have been Halo 2.
SPEAKER_01You were in your glory. Matt, you had everything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I had all the one for the longest time I had all three of the major players. I had a Microsoft product, a PlayStation product, a Sony product, and a Nintendo product.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you were killing it.
SPEAKER_02I did. Never own the Dreamcast, though. Did you did you ever play the Dreamcast?
SPEAKER_01In a a demo in like GameStop.
SPEAKER_02Remember they had like the fishing controller. Yeah. That was like all those like weird controllers. And their May controller had like you'd plug in like a little Tamagotchi or almost. It was like a virtual pet. Yeah. I'm not even gonna explain any of this, folks. Just yeah, you do your own research.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you really care about it. You probably could find one if you really want to.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So yeah, so that was the end of uh of uh Sega. And from here on out, it's just the three. It's funny because it's more of a recent thing that became green, blue, and red. Oh really? Yeah. I I don't know if that was came out of like an E3, whatever, but now we always know as Xbox is Team Green, PlayStation is blue, and uh Nintendo's red. Damn, Mario's red, yeah. Yeah, but just like their colors that's used for the customers. Yeah, right, and all the coloring. Yeah. All right, so we're gonna jump ahead now. Now we're in the modern times. Right. Seventh generation is Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and the Wii. Yeah, I own all those. You know, yeah. Say what you will, they were pretty on equal footing, except for the Wii. This is where Nintendo went less graphically intense, less powerful hardware, but went kind of niche. Yeah. And well, as we know now, it worked out for them. Yeah, they don't they don't need it. I remember my problem with the Wii was like it was still using component or at best S video cables. Yeah. Right. Like there's or I'm sorry, composite at best S Vio. There's no component or HDMI. I don't even know if HDI was much of a thing. No, it was. HDMI was a thing, but nope. They don't need a shit for Nintendo. Nintendo just does whatever they want. And then we go to 8th gen. We're talking the Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. Uh yeah, yeah, again, it's the these these three companies just chugging along, chugging along. And now it brings us to today, which is the PlayStation 5. Nice and easy to understand. And the Xbox Series. Yeah, I guess technically just the Xbox Series. Yeah, because the flavor of the X or the S. So the current gen is just the Xbox Series? I don't think Yeah. Ah, Microsoft, what are you doing? And oh, I guess now Nintendo Switch 2? Yeah, that's I don't know. I guess I'd be considered the ninth generation. I don't know. Yeah. So that was a trip down memory lane for some of you. A boring history lesson for That's why I had the glasses. Most of you had the glasses. If you didn't realize I don't know, uh, you know, throw down. What's your favorite? What is your favorite? What do you have the most fond memories of? Which one did you remember spending all of your allowance and buying? I don't know, but just PlayStation 2 jumps out of me. Oh, I just remember, I remember pre-ordering the PlayStation one at uh not Babbage's. What was the other one? Oh shit. Oh man, it's gonna bother me. I remember I remember pre-ordering at Century 3 Mall also R I P. Uh yeah. And I remember pre-ordering No, I I bought no, I'm sorry. I bought the PlayStation and pre-ordered Final Fantasy VII. Oh yeah. And that was it. No games. So I I walked out of there with the console, but no games to play on it. And the guy, I remember the the uh the owner or the the guy that was checking me out, I was like, wait, did you just buy this PlayStation so you could eventually play Final Fantasy VII and that's it? And I'm like, yes. And I remember my mom just giving me like an unapproved like shake of her head and the guy at the register being like, awesome. I literally spent like, you know, 150 bucks, all of my money, to hopefully in a couple months play a game. There you go. That's a dedicated. I did I did though walk out, I remember with a demo disc, which I played the shit out of. Nice. I think it had like oh bloody roar or something. Oh yeah. Who knows, folks? So yeah. Times were different, and times they keep a changing. Yeah, we'll see what happens because they're already talking future consoles, right? Oh, yeah. Might have a little bit talk about that in the upcoming news segment. Right. Well, Andrew, thank you for coming to my historical empire.
SPEAKER_01I think we need to get you a real cloak. Oh, that was a weird, weird voice that kind of hurt my throat. Thank you all.
Respawn
SPEAKER_01So, if you are following our podcast at this point, we left off on a I had a plan one. I don't know if you remember.
SPEAKER_02Oh, the inflamed plan one. Nice. You remember. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So we were talking about it, and it was a little embarrassing, and I hope Kurt didn't well, I think Kurt dropped off. Well, he I don't think he really listens. My sister hasn't listened to any of our new podcasts. But so, but anyway, I was a little embarrassed. So we talked about I talked about the little thing, and then there was an album picture on the tag, and you said subterranean was the album, and I agreed with you. But technically the album is called Lunar Strain. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the little bit of like you weren't exactly wrong. So they re-released it. I don't know you can go if you want to Google it all, but they re-released Lunar Strain with Subterranean. Subterranean was an EP that happened shortly it happened between Lunar Strain and Gesters Race. So they released them together. So it was Lunar Strain and Subterranean. And we we said it was Subterranean, and I felt bad. I was like, the actual album's called Lunar Strain. So that was um clearing that up. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Another Inflames. This is an Inflames. I like it, man. The world needs some more Inflames episodes. Oh, I can talk a little more about them, but we're not gonna talk about that. Right, right. We don't get cancelled, apparently.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, well, that's another thing. Anyway, uh, and then the one little thing, this isn't really a respawn, but I didn't know where to put it. But you've been playing Hades 2 a lot, right? Yes, I have. Have you heard about the Easter egg that you know you're facing the the sirens and there's a clam lady.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01If you go in-game to the settings and pause it and turn the volume down on the music, there's a special dialogue, and she gets pissed at you.
SPEAKER_02Oh neat! Because it's all about yeah, her singing and whatnot. Oh, that's funny.
SPEAKER_01Somebody did that, and I saw it on a reel, and I did it, and she does. It's true, it's not like AI or some shit. Yeah, that's fun. All right. So I thought that'd be fun for you. Yeah, I'll check that out. Yeah, just turn the volume game music volume. Music volume music down. Okay. Aww. Anyway, so I think that's all my response. Lunar strain, slash, subterranean. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a slash. Yeah, I remember that now. I remember that. It's not an album. Mm-mm. Alright, so that's all I got. Until boss, the secret boss. I got it. Oh, wait.
SPEAKER_02I left season one behind. I'm moving on. Yeah. What's up? What do you got there? Well, I don't know where to put this. Uh, I think is that a news? News. We've got news. Yeah, it's the news. Sorry, folks. Moving on.
News
SPEAKER_02Now it's time for the news. Newsy time. Now I know it has been oof a long time. Well, not really. I mean like a month, month and a half since we've been together. Yeah. Probably got a lot of news built up, but I just I don't want to go like real deep, but I got a couple points I want to make. Okay. And I know Andrew wants to make uh some points, and he has a visual aid with him too, which is exciting. Yeah. For you podcasters at home. But uh for me, it's fantastic. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01So my uh I think it was a Christmas gift or a uh birthday gift. They're around the same time. It's a little confusing for you. Yeah. Uh so this is uh Game Informer and unphysical magazine. You can hold this shit. So well, like you can tell. It's just quality. So I'm excited for Game Informer. I'm glad they're back.
SPEAKER_02Matt, maybe. Yeah, I keep meaning, I keep meaning to uh to join. Uh, but it looks like so, those are like nice high-quality pages there, not like your typical like shitty newspaper print.
SPEAKER_01Oh, they're like this is my third high gloss. High gloss. You can tell.
SPEAKER_02They went all quality. And it makes sense. Like the people that you know you so you can still subscribe and read online, right? Or have the option of getting the physical copy. Yeah. So I'm assuming costs a good premium. Yeah. But the people that want that want that. Like they're not one of shitty, they want like a collector's. I I kind of feel like people that are buy a CD or a vinyl.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's what I was just about to say. Is like they're I think they're banking on people who like vinyls, are gonna want to get back into the middle. A little nostalgia and a little tactile, missing. I don't know. For me, holding something, having something sometimes is just yeah, but we're aware of it.
SPEAKER_02I think it's a great idea. I I'm I'm very happy they did it. I hope it works. I should definitely subscribe as well.
SPEAKER_01I think you probably will. Yeah, I definitely will. Uh just yeah. We know, we know financially we gotta get things tracked. Help me be able to afford game informer. This man. It's not a Kickstarter, but help them. Not quite a game. We should do a Kickstarter. Maybe we'll do a Kickstarter if you guys don't fucking subscribe.
SPEAKER_02Like tier one is ten cents.
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ, help this poor fucker out. All right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Are we on the news table? Yeah, I don't even know. Where are we getting lost? Oh, we're a news tune. Longest podcast. We should not take a couple months off.
SPEAKER_02Well, I know. Like we completely forgot how to do this. Well, not that we're ever, you know, we the best at it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We're we're something.
SPEAKER_02I uh I do have something real quick. I want to just go. Oh, oh, oh, okay. So we're talking about Game Pass, and uh, I don't know if what you have in the news, if anything is talking about whole um Xbox um Yeah, that was one of the ones. Imploding.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I didn't have imploding, I just they find one he was stepped down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, Phil Spencer. Um, so I will I will I I will I will preempt that with you know, this is pre-Phil Spencer leaving. So we you know, we've uh we've always yeah, like your wife cut down on the the Game Pass subscription because it went so expensive. Yeah, but I said, you know, the Game Pass for PC is actually much cheaper. Right. And Xbox confirms highly anticipated zombies game is coming to Game Pass next week. Sounds like a great oh cool, I have Game Pass. Great. Now, this game isn't anything I really know of. It's called Quarantine Zone, it sounds fine. But the fun part is it's not available on consoles, it's a PC only game. Okay, so yet again, someone like me who doesn't buy into the ecosystem of Xbox, I can play it for cheaper than someone that owns an Xbox console and pays much more for Game Pass cannot play this game. They're not thinking. So yeah, something's not quite going on right, and that may lead into Mr. Spencer, dude. He's been Phil Spencer has been head of Xbox for like as long as I was there anyone else? I don't know. I don't know. I think it was just him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like he's synonymous, yeah. He's not synonymous. It doesn't matter. He's your mom. So yeah, that's quite a shake up. Um and also the president then quit right after he. Oh, I didn't hear that. Yeah, yeah. The whole like everyone's just kind of shifting around, and then the the new person taking over was in charge of. Uh AI for Microsoft. So that doesn't sit well with a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I saw a lot of people being upset. And she has no background in gaming. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which is common for these types of things. And like CEOs, like, you know, they're they're they're they're in charge people. They're not they don't have anything to do with the brand itself. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's what I always like. Me and Haley, my wife were talking. I was like, it's just amazing. Like CEOs are just like, you didn't work here, go over there. See what happens.
unknownI know.
SPEAKER_01It's like and they get paid to leave, they get paid to fail. Yeah, like you blew up this company, that's all right. You get a couple million dollars, and then you get hired somewhere else. Yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting vibe of they're they're so-called needed, but yet I don't know. Yeah. I I'm not I'm not real confident in it. But it, you know, that's it's interesting as a woman. Maybe that's something, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and maybe she maybe she is a shakeup they need. Yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_01Because they obviously need a shake up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like they're like you said, like a dying ship a little bit. I mean, uh yeah, they need to do something. Again, I think we hate on Xbox a lot, but first of all, it's not unwarranted. And the second who I mean, think about like we we kind of love on PlayStation, but uh we just discussed, like, me and you don't actually do PlayStation. Not anymore. Or basically PC guys. So I don't know. I I I don't I don't it's not that I don't care. I don't hate any of these consoles, any of these makers. I think competition is good. I don't I actually very much so don't want Xbox to go away. Yeah, because that will small in the market and that ain't good for any of us. No, no. So I want them to stay, but they gotta they gotta do something. Because this ain't working what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01Do something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the biggest news, I guess. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Anyway.
SPEAKER_02Uh what else you got?
SPEAKER_01Well, I got so much news. Uh I'm gonna try to be quick about it so we don't waste our lives. Let's see. Here's a title. Oh, Kingdom come to studio cut this feature because it was too bizarre and too much work.
SPEAKER_02Wait, wait. All right, too bizarre and too much work. Okay, I cannot wait to hear what from this game, which was too much work.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Oh, all right. I vaguely remember this. Nice. So I didn't fully read this, but I guess the gist of it is be weight management. They decided that weight management, like he could get too fat or too Oh, not wait, carry weight, but No, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, like weight of the like uh you know, I guess San Andreas GTA did it, like where you could get a little too fat or too muscular. I mean not too muscular, but you could be muscular or too fat.
SPEAKER_02So you know, I'm not worried about my weight in real life. That's why I really want to worry about how fat my avatar is. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01So I guess they cut that. Thank God. You never played it. You might not say that. You might have been like, this is all the game needed. I just wanted to fucking do push-ups.
SPEAKER_02You're right, you're right. I shouldn't judge a game that I have not played. Oh my god. So there you go.
SPEAKER_01So no worrying about your fucking weight. In at least in Kingdom Come. That's that is something. And we're talking about your actual physical weight of the person. Right. So there was a cancellation apparently of a new Bethesda MMO. This is the headline. Now I'm I'm reading these and figuring it out in time. The game was called Project Blackbird.
SPEAKER_02This all sounds a little bit familiar, but you know, I got a lot of video games all just rattling around in my head, and I can't keep it all straight.
SPEAKER_01So there was something like that. Alright, so that's it. Figure it out. Alright.
SPEAKER_02I got a I got a I got a kind of a a weird, a funny one. Okay, weird, funny one. So, and man, and man. Um, here's what I want you to to guess for me.
SPEAKER_01Oh, a little fun trivia.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So, according to user score, right? Okay, okay, the number one game on Metacritic is Claire Obscure with a 9.5. Wow. Which is really high because you know, users hate everything. Yeah, hate everything. But there is a whole bunch of games in the 9.3 category, including Metagar Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill 2, The Witcher 3, Warcraft 3. Um, some good stuff. Yeah, yeah. So some things of that. And if you go down the list, we're talking about like Grand Turisma 4 is like 9.2, so it's tough because a lot of games are really, really click, you know, close. Yeah. But there is one game that has just risen between the 9.5 of Claire Obscure, which everyone says will never be beaten because it just got love bombed, if you will. And uh the 9.3 of those other games. So there is another game that has just risen to the title of 9.4. Can you guess that game? Love bomb. The answer is fucking no. I'm not even gonna have you guess because there's no chance. We're not gonna waste time. No, we're not gonna waste time. The game is Disney's Corey in the House. I'm sorry, technically, no, I'm sorry. It's a tie-in game to the series Corey in the House. What? Yes, I know that there's a lot of what's, and I believe, yeah, it's a Nintendo DS game, even more throwing to obscure. It was released on April 14th, 2008. What? Yes, okay. That's when I got on my job. So I guess this game the this the show in general has been subject of a lot of memes. It wasn't a good show to begin with, and the game itself is apparently abysmal and terrible. But for some reason, just because of think about like the whole game stalk, game stop stocks thing. Yeah, just yeah. The internet decided to just throw a bunch of love, right? Which is weird.
SPEAKER_01But and that's how it works. That is how it works. Like, I don't You could do that for us. You could love bomb us.
SPEAKER_02Love bomb us and just for no reason make us the number two game in history.
SPEAKER_01What about if we beat Joe Rogan, you know, like for like one day. I know.
SPEAKER_02Just one day let us beat Joe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Come on. If Corey in the house, come on. That's a no-brainer. I just uh I mean I it's it but it's nice to see if something got pushed up rather than like review bombed. Yeah. So that's nice.
SPEAKER_01Well, speaking of review bombing, did you hear so you've been you've been involved in um the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, correct? No, I haven't watched it yet. Oh, you haven't watched it?
SPEAKER_02Okay, I kind of want to wait maybe watch it with you guys.
SPEAKER_01And it's on our new LG TV. Oh, might be something. We're doing it. But anyway, um, so there was this crazy little battle, we'll just call it. Um so you realize you you've watched uh Breaking Bad, right? Yes. So the last episode's called like Oziomosis Ozzie Motos. Osmandius. Osmandius. Yes. It's got a perfect ten out of ten on IMDB, which their fan base like crowded and and and deemed it worthy. Well, the l one of the episodes of Knight of Seven Kingdoms, because fans were so excited that I started reviewing it even before it was out as a ten out of ten. And then when it was released, I guess they kept really anyway, it was kind of in the 10 out of 10 category. So believe it or not, the Breaking Bad fans didn't like something else occupying the same territory as a 10 out of 10. So they review bombed the whole episode to knock it down from 10 out of 10. So then Game of Thrones or Knight of the Seven Kingdoms fans re returned the favor and knocked that move or that sh episode specifically out of 10 out of 10. So now it's sitting at a nine point like eight.
SPEAKER_02See, this is why I don't care about reviews exactly. Nothing. I just I don't know.
SPEAKER_01But they earned it, and it's funny because it was like a 13-year record of them being that episode being a ten out of ten.
SPEAKER_02It's funny they attacked as much as they could and it only got down by the eight. Yeah, it was nothing.
SPEAKER_01It was I mean, you know, IMDB has their own thing. But anyway, they earned it. I guess if you're gonna fuck with somebody else's IP. Yeah. Like I used to be that way with music. I'd be like, oh, my band is better than your band. But at the end of the day, who gives a shit? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We just enjoy like what you like, man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like, why does something else occupying the same territory? Yeah, why does something else lessen what you like? Yeah. I don't get that whole but anyway. I agree, buddy. I have no clue where we are in this episode. Some more news. Oh yeah, we're going back in the news. What else?
SPEAKER_02What's what what's next?
SPEAKER_01Alright, I got some more news. Let's see. Um yeah, there's uh this is a headline. I'm gonna read it to you, and maybe you'll decipher for me. Claire Obscure still in headlines, Expedition 33, developers hid the meetings meanings behind dozens of characters and enemy names within the game's code. Did you hear about that? I have not. Does that do anything for you?
SPEAKER_02Um, I don't know. Maybe I know that well well maybe because there's a lot of uh how would you see the game code without duging into the digging into the game code, right? You have to all right. So it's just saying they hid spoilers there. Yeah. Yeah, so interesting, but I wouldn't want to talk about it because that game is very it's yeah. Spoiler. It's spoilerable. Yeah. But yeah. So here's here's the thing with that game. Like, I could spoil it for someone who hasn't who's halfway through the game, they'd be pissed at me. I could spoil it for someone who will never play the game like you, and I did, and it has no impact whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01Oh, really? You spoil it for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Fuck you. I did. The one day you're like, I don't understand. I yeah, you we might have been drinking a little bit. So it's it's weird because you can't you you shouldn't spoil it for likes or fun. It's doesn't make good content because it it if you don't under if you're not in it, it means it's so meaningless. I gotcha. That's interesting. Yeah, it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01Sounds like a game you should play.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Here's another one. HyperX. And you have their headphones.
SPEAKER_02You have their headphones as well.
SPEAKER_01I do. They're not here with me. Uh they're making a neuroble or trying to make your brain or your brain better at gaming. So like I I did read this article, and it sounds like it's like a brain, like somehow the headphones make your brain better. We'll go with that. I'm not gonna fucking go with it. What it's it's like it's kind of like when cars show off like the most advanced technology, but it's not gonna be available for like fifty years later. But they just try to create the most absurd thing. I guess that's the equivalent. So they I guess they created headphones that could help improve your brain. Okay, okay. Seems a little so I think it's good for like Alzheimer's and dementia and shit like that eventually.
SPEAKER_02A little sci-fi, a little bit of gaming, a little bit of technology. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Again, I read that probably two months ago, and I'm not gonna reread it just in real time for you. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I'm gonna throw a little bit of sci-fi at you. I don't know if you saw this headline, but the UK Ministry of Defense has announced the high-power laser system Dragonfire. Oh, successfully shot down drones traveling at speeds up to 403 miles per hour. So it's easy, whatever. So literally, dude, they invented turbo lasers. Like, this is a laser gun. It's a big, it's a fucking laser gun. We're done. They're done. I know it's Star Wars, bam, done. That's it. We don't need to produce anything else ever in the world. We got lasers, everybody. We have freaking lasers.
SPEAKER_01We got freaking lasers, and we just need a sword. That's a laser, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we just need a lightsaber, and signs can stop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, if you do design a lightsaber, is there anything else you need to do? That's a good point, man. All right. Let's keep going through headline, random headlines. Oh, there's a I I guess I won't go over this because we've gone we're we're pretty long. But there's been a lot of actors named because God of War.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01And I saved a bunch of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so what do you what do you yeah? What do you think? Let's let's let's just go through it. Do you have them?
SPEAKER_01I have well Ryan Hearst. I have this one. This article talks about Ryan Hearst as Kratos.
SPEAKER_02What do you think about that?
SPEAKER_01Didn't like it.
SPEAKER_02Ooh. Sorry. I found it crazy because he was in the game. Was he? Yeah. Ryan Hearst voiced Thor in the video game. Wow, I didn't know that. Why I didn't play the second one. Oh, you didn't? That's right. So it's crazy, like he was already involved in the games and they cast him as the main character.
SPEAKER_01I I don't I have no issues. I mean, I'm sure he'll do a fine job.
SPEAKER_02I just I don't know him at all.
SPEAKER_01Except from the only reason I know him is from Remember the Titans. Did you see that? Yes, but I don't remember. Remember the clue. Um yeah, he was in and I just thought his acting was so Okay.
SPEAKER_02So I'll I'll I will He was amazing as Thor. Was he? He did a very good job.
SPEAKER_01And that's what I mean. Like he's probably like that was he he was super young and remember the Titans because it's like it was they were supposed to be high school kids, even though they were probably like in their twenties and thirties. But so he was pretty young considering his career. So I I watch it just to see, but I I just he I did not picture him being Kratos.
SPEAKER_02I so I didn't, but he was very much in the fr a lot of people did. A lot of people um thought he was gonna get the part. Oh really? Yes, which is weird to me and that he did get it. I'm like, oh shit, I guess I guess I wasn't the only person.
SPEAKER_01But he's gotta be like the thing is I hope they do justice. You know, like I like Star Wars and all, but kind of like with Obi-Wan and from the prequels from and and Anakin, yeah, like they they weren't fighters, but they learned how to freaking fight for those movies. Say what you want about the prequels, but like he's gotta learn to be physical.
SPEAKER_02Physical. And is is he not?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I'm just saying, like, he's better be like I hope he takes it seriously and he I I don't know who I don't know if he maybe he is already a master at whatever. Now which you gotta be able to fight the Kratos. Yeah, right, right. Like I don't want to see it look like a CGI or a stage.
SPEAKER_02I'm just saying, yeah, you gotta be a badass physician.
SPEAKER_01Like, I would hope that's where they're going with it.
SPEAKER_02It's it has to be. I can't imagine they not. Yeah. That's what I hope. Now, who who would you have preferred? Hmm. Do you have a you have a I mean I would have loved him? Jackie Chan. I would have loved it. I think a lot of people would have loved him when Christopher Judge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I heard that.
SPEAKER_02But he's just everyone says he's too old, he can't have that physicality anymore.
SPEAKER_01Again, I you know, like if he's capable, I just you gotta be able to like fight. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I mean I'm assuming so his big role was um prison fighting, right? Yeah, what what was that? That's not on no. Um I don't know. Oh my god, we are so terrible. We're almost something. Yeah. Anyways, I think he fought a lot in that show. All right. Well, Sons of Anarchy. Oh yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01Never seen it. Anyway. So let's see if I can find my other actors who are in the rest.
SPEAKER_02I was very excited about the rest of the cast, I think.
SPEAKER_01But um here's the God of War, live action. Odin.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, Odin is um seems fine. I I like that, like, like that pick.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, the uh dude from um Princess Bride, probably a lot of people know him from. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know him from Homeland. Did you ever see Homeland?
SPEAKER_02No, I never did see Homeland. But I think the the big pick I know everyone, everyone wanted to play Thor. Uh, the guy that got the part to play Thor. Oh yeah, I think it says I can't remember. Yeah, he's uh big ass guy. He was in um uh Olafor Dar E Olaf Sunday. Yes, he was in Severance. I didn't see I didn't see the latest season. Oh yeah, he was in, but I think he was the first season, definitely the second season. He is a big dude. He looks like Thor in the actual pick um you know um Disney Thor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not that motherfucker. Let's see. Anything uh God of War Sif.
SPEAKER_02Sif, I'm excited for our Teresa Palmer. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's another actor.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, looks looks a lot like Sif, I felt like. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So far been good. Matt's happy. Yeah, I hope. You officially are God of War.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I wish I would have had them all up here, but I don't know, even the whoever they got to play Atreus seemed fine. I know another person I didn't really know. So But it's it's moving. It's moving.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm I'm excited. Okay.
unknownCome alright.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure there'll be a lot of follow-up. I bet you there'll be a lot of dick slapping in the wind. Wait, is it HPO? Yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Oh who the fuck knows? Wow, it's your news story. You're supposed to know. I don't know. Oh my god, this was like the This is season two. You're like a god of war. I guess this is that one guy. I don't remember his name. Yeah. Oh right. You don't come here to hear the news. You can find that on the internet anywhere. You're gonna hear vague descriptions.
SPEAKER_01You will. You'll hear a lot of shit. You'll you'll regret it.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. And a lot of uh wait, wait, what was that one? What's why we get the big bucks, folks. Yep. All right, amenity.
SPEAKER_01There's a couple concrete news, maybe? There's nothing concrete here. All right. Uh, did you watch um that's a that's a f we'll we'll we'll save that for future quests. Um let's see. Here's a headline. I I I have some sad stuff. I'm gonna ex out the sad stuff because we're feeling happy.
SPEAKER_02Some people got laid off. Yeah, I had oh my god, I had so many of those. Yeah, let's not. I know it's sad, it sucks. I'm sorry for you guys, but let's uh let's keep it up. Let's keep it up.
SPEAKER_01Let's just be happy for a second. Oh yeah, this was uh this might be future. I'll I'll say that future future. This is another movie. A movie news. So this is news. Hell Divers is becoming a movie. Did you know that?
SPEAKER_02I think maybe yes. Because yeah, so remember hearing Helldivers becoming a movie, and they were also gonna bring back um Star. Starship Troopers is a movie. But for Starship Troopers, they're gonna go more of serious rather than a parody. Okay. So that the the Helldivers movie is gonna actually be more Star Troopers movie.
SPEAKER_01But Jason Momoa. He's been signed on to handle something. Whatever the fuck. And we like him.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. I liked him ever since. Oh wow, even further back. Way further back. Ooh, Matt's old. So let's see. What else? Oh yeah, Diablo has introduced the warlock. That's a like a little subtle, like kind of almost out of nowhere. Do you remember Diablo? Warlock? I don't know. Anyway. Adam Warlock? No, like a Warlock? Like a wizard? Yeah. That's a new update.
SPEAKER_02Like a new class you could be?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and like they just toss it in with Diablo 4, and now it's in Diablo 2 Resurrection, but I think you have to pay for it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's the back? Wow, that was crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like it's now in that as well as Diablo 4.
SPEAKER_02That's fun. I did not know that.
SPEAKER_01So there's a and I looked, and it sounds pretty cool, but you have to pay for it. Baldur's Gate TV series is set for HBO.
SPEAKER_02I did I saw that. That's interesting because so it's it's supposedly a sequel to the game. Yet has nothing to do with the game. Oh, I didn't see all that. Obviously, Larian Larian is not involved at all. So for those of us that maybe never beat the game might be a little confused. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01You never beat the goddamn realm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm just saying. We're not in that realm. All right. Uh the last thing I guess. You know what? I I'm I'll I know I'll pop in there. Oh you brought up Baldur's Gate 3. So quote, and this was the beginning of an article from uh PC Gamer. Uh it says child labor is unbeatable. Jesus. Wow. Do you want to be the bad guy in the next video game? That's you. It's not where you think. So this is a this is a a trick that uses an exploit. Um basically using transmog and morph. So what you do is you basically find a kid in the game and you transmog them into a sheep, more or less. Or you have to have one of your one of your characters that can do that do that. Okay. There's a whole whole thing where you have to whatever. Right. You basically have to go through all these processes and kind of go through like a glitch of like a save game real quick. Basically, you can make all these kids companions of your companion. Oh now that's part one. Part two is because of a German law that uh they decide rather than just making a localization, they made it a general rule that kids in the game can't be killed.
unknownOh, yeah, true.
SPEAKER_02So essentially, your companion has an unkillable army of children. You could just go through the game and have an unbeatable army of child slaves. Wow. Which, hey, that's Baldur's Gate is all about.
SPEAKER_01That's what I was looking for. I I didn't know it. So that's a playthrough that you could uh go for. That game is insane. I really I can't believe it. And then like local news, Pittsburgh news, and real quick. Oh sorry, I wanted to just there is a former Pittsburgh church reopening as an arcade. Yes, yes, I'd heard of that as well. And Duquesne. I don't know much about it. I can't speak on it. But we will maybe we'll do a video there. Maybe we'll do something. Yeah, we'll check out the church. It seems like a better use of a church.
SPEAKER_02Oh, but now yeah, let's let's yeah, why don't we plan a little something, something there? Yeah. We'll bring uh borrow some GoPros from your brother-in-law.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Maybe we'll bring my brother-in-law, and we can meet the guy who can maybe teleport. We already figured that out.
SPEAKER_02That's how these are like YouTube channels are those. Like they they they they like they they bring like a friend to make them be the good cameraman. Cameraman. Or if school's not in, your nephew. Oh, Alex. Yeah, he'd probably be a good camera.
SPEAKER_01He's a good cameraman.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think he does that shit, right? He used to. Yeah, I don't know. College kids. I mean, they do whatever. They bounce around between 400 things.
SPEAKER_01I think he is actually a bouncer, speaking of bouncing. Yes, which was uh But he's not like a bouncer bouncer because he he leaves the the true like bouncing to some other guy because he's not he's more of a hey, that guy's calling true. Yeah, kind of that one bouncer. He's more of a uh yeah, whatever. I don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_02All right, that's the news. That was the new season two news
Future Quests
SPEAKER_02quests. Right. Get out your nostramas uh Andrew Sostramus. Okay. And uh what are you uh coming up? What are you gonna be playing?
SPEAKER_01What are you are you gonna be playing? Well, I before we get in maybe what I'm gonna play, I just wanted to talk a this could have been in the news and I mentioned it a little bit if you were listening the whole time, but there's a new Castlevania game. Yes, there is Dead Cells creators. Yeah, what do you what are you thinking about that? I'm a little nervous, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02Uh you see you saw a little bit of it. It looks like a um I actually didn't see any of it. Oh. Well, maybe we watched it. No, no, we didn't. Uh I just saw something. It kind of it it reminds me of uh Bloodstain Bloodstained. Okay. Um, which is funny. It's almost like they're copying the game that's copying them. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't I I just Dead Souls, I love Dead Souls to be honest. Um but it just was hard.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, well yeah, that was no no, that came that game was not for me.
SPEAKER_01And I um I d I don't know. Like if this game is that difficult I will play it. I just don't know if I'll stick with it after like one player. Because like those games are like they they've I I've read enough that said they're not gonna do the roguelight or rogue whatever.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But I've I've seen that. It's just with Dead Souls, like you really had to play through the levels a lot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't think this is yeah, that it seems like a true to what is it? It's uh what's the name of the game?
SPEAKER_01I didn't see the name. I didn't know there was a name.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_02It doesn't matter. I guess I'll pop it up under. Um yeah, um well, okay. That's not what I expected you to say. Um I assumed it was gonna be. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm I'm excited.
SPEAKER_01I just I don't know. Belmont's curse?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Is that really what's called? Yeah, Belmont's Curse. Okay. I'm in. I'm in, I'm coming. Like, think on combat though. And if you said it's not gonna be exactly like a Dead of Souls game.
SPEAKER_02I didn't from what I gathered from the it didn't look like it. Look like it was gonna be your typical Metroidvania game.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I'm in then. Alright. Yeah, so cool. I actually had one more, but I guess I exited out of it. So go ahead, Matty.
SPEAKER_02I am probably just going to I should definitely get back to Ender Magnolia. Um that's one game I regret then over the past couple weeks. I've been very busy. Um I'd like to get back to that one. Um I will absolutely get back to the game that shall not be named. Um not the co-ochable. Co-ouchable. Coachable?
SPEAKER_01Couchable.
SPEAKER_02Couchable, not that not that game. The game that I'm making the video on. Um I'm definitely gonna get back to that.
SPEAKER_01Are you loving it?
SPEAKER_02I am.
SPEAKER_01I am so far. Without spoiling it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I am, and I really, really want to I've been wanting to just spend an entire day just playing the game, unfortunately. Really? Making the video for it is uh not allowing me to enjoy it so much. See this. This man's in pain. For you guys. Um, that's all. I guess I should finish Hades, just like you. I got a little burned out on it. I'm like five runs through both top and bottom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I saw you beat um the upper world guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, you saw in the video. But yeah, I think I've done them both about five times equally.
SPEAKER_01I can't believe it. I didn't watch the end because I haven't beat the dude up top. At all? No. Oh. That's where I quit. I almost beat him and then he killed me in the last second. And I said, I'm kind of down here. Yeah, he's he's kind of annoying.
SPEAKER_02He is. You I think all these you need a certain build. Like, yeah, there is like I th I'm pretty strong with the axe build, that one other axe uh but anyways, yeah. It's just they're not yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01It gets it, it just gets tiring. It does.
SPEAKER_02But I want to beat it because I gotta beat it. I've never not beaten a super giant game, so I have to do it. But that's my only goals for right now. Probably a little more ball pit just for a little bit of drunken fun. Ball pit. Um and I don't know, I'll I'll have to try something else out to do uh Maddie Maddie Flynn's plays.
SPEAKER_01Um it's kind of maybe with news, but Starfield it sounds like it's imminent. Some new stuff from Starfield.
SPEAKER_02Yes, a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01Uh Todd Howard talked about for people who care, Elder Scrolls. That was kind of newsy. But he said uh they're going back to their tried and true formula and people freaking out because they're like, oh well, we knew from Starfield your formula sucks. But I think he just meant like it's not gonna Starfield was a little more you know, it wasn't as explory heavy. It was more and I think that's all he meant was like it's gonna be exploring heavy. But anyway, there's a lot of drama.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I yeah, I don't know. I'm excited for whatever. Bethesda does. I'm in it. I'm in it to win it. Alright. Cool.
SPEAKER_01So are you gonna dig a hole? I um no. Unless it is your grave.
SPEAKER_02Unless it's my grave or the ball pit. Okay. So it involves that.
SPEAKER_01I think I was a successful podcast.
SPEAKER_02Yes, so thank you guys for joining us yet again. This is year two, season two. Can you believe it? I can't thank you again for all your support.
SPEAKER_01Don't don't forget, go to our YouTube and watch the boss battle, Matt. Oh, yes. Explore a castle, castle, a whole entire castle built in Minecraft. Could be something.
SPEAKER_02That's right. So uh thank you guys. Yes, yes, yet again for joining us. I'm Maddie Flames, Andrew Wiles. And remember, if you can't equip it, sell it.