ABTS-418: Humanoid Androids Next Year!

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Almost Better Than Silence. I'm your host Doug Coleman, and I'm here today with the other co host, Brendan McCullough. How's it going, Bren?

I started in a TTRPG. It's like four now.

No way.

It's too many. But it's addicting, apparently.

Are you DMing again?

No, this one's different. It's a buddy of mine who we actually were doing a DND campaign before the pandemic and then most of us fell off because everyone hated it, doing it online. And he's like, I want to do it again, but I'm not crazy about DND. It's a little too mechanical for me. It's just kind of unnecessarily complicated. So he found this one called Orbital Blues, which is a more narrative heavy. So DND, like everyone knows it's got combat, you got like, maps, you got grids, you got little tokens and stuff. And it's all mechanical. Like, I can move this many spaces on, turn in and do this. A lot of mechanical features to Ttrbg. Orbital Blues is very much more narrative of, like, you're building the story. It's all about the story. So it's pretty loose mechanics wise in theory. Easy to learn, but there are some weird mechanics for it. But it's effectively a sad cowboy in space game.

I was going to say. Is this cowboy beebop?

Basically, yes. You play characters there's like, the space frontier, like you're playing as an outlaw that's, you know, you don't really have a choice in that. And then you build your story based on, like, how you got there, this and that. You get nicknames and then there's like 40 nicknames you can choose from. So you pick which one you are of the crew, like the Face, the arm, the money, this guy, the fixer, the kid, and all these different stuff. And yeah, it's kind of cool. From what I could tell you, you basically only use two dies, like 2D sixes or regular six sided die. And that kind of is like, for most stuff, and you have different stats and stuff, but they're very minimal, so it's easier to follow. And it's really more about just collectively telling the story with the group of people you're playing with rather than like, we're going into treasure, we're fighting a dragon and we're killing God. It's not that big. It's more of like the weird thing is the sad part is built in.

That'S a mechanic and being a space outlaw is too.

Yeah. So that's kind of just the world and setting and what your characters are, so you just fit in with that. But a mechanic is you have health like you would in any other game, but then you have blues, which are stuff you keep track of. And anytime you encounter one of your blues or like the sad scenario from your backstory you've made up or it gives you a bunch of examples you can pick from some of those. So like family issues or like work related issues or like vices, like if you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or this or that. When you encounter one of them, the DM starts playing or the game master starts playing music. We haven't done it yet with session zeros tomorrow, so we're still figuring shit out. Okay, but from what I can tell, music is played throughout the whole session. And when one of your blues comes up, one of your sad things, your character's sad about one of your songs comes on. So it'll just like, automatically the game master will automatically play one of your songs. And that's kind of a hint to you of like, is your time to shine. Like, let's get sad and mopey in your spotlight and you have to roll to see if you can overcome the blues. And if you do, you get a point for your blues, which you can use for other things to do, like certain abilities and skills. And if you don't roll high enough, you don't get a point. It's basically deciding, like, you're getting sad. Are you going to power through it and use that power to gain an advantage later on, or are you going to get sad and you're going to succumb to that and have a depressive episode and do nothing for this period?

Right.

So it's kind of interesting that that's a built in game mechanic of like yes. It's not just thematically sad speeds cowboys, it's mechanically sad space cowboys, too.

That's ridiculous.

You're going to be sad. So, yeah, we're making playlists and stuff for our own characters and figuring out what song is going to play when and stuff. It's interesting.

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. It adds a whole new twist or something. Like, I never would have thought of, like, I need to bring a playlist to my DND session tonight.

Yeah. So for me, DM and stuff, I just have ambient city, like, fantasy city music or like, noises for when we're playing. And then I have combat and that's pretty much it. But yes, some people have specific curated playlist for their own characters, or a DM will be really meticulous with the music that they're playing during a session.

Okay, so you can't just troll them super hard with, like, K pop and just be like, yeah, I'm sad.

I don't know. Like I said, we haven't played it. But I give Leeway to the game master. I picked out my playlist of my songs. I gave it to him. I was like, you can pick and choose what does and doesn't fit thematically in this song.

Okay.

I have rise against him there. He's like, nah, this is kind of too, like, punk metal, like aggressive. We want more sadder stuff. So I'll take that one out. I was like, fair enough.

Yeah. I understand they're going for the sad space vibes.

Yeah. So there's definitely a theme and a style that they're going for, like, hey.

Never going to give you.

Maybe it's possible you can find some sad K pop. I'm sure it's out there, but yeah, you could do a lot of stuff. And it's interesting to see both depressive nature being sad and both the music being built into tabletop RPG system and stuff. It's kind of neat. So I'm looking forward to playing that. But God help me, that's just another week.

Yeah. Like you need more TT RPGs in your life.

It's four now.

That is wild. No, that's a cool way to start this one off, that is. I like the interesting mechanics of it all. I know I've been going off with all the different card games and stuff. In Metazu, they have like this fourth wall mechanic where if you play certain terra cards or whatever, it affects the Beasties. So that being said, there's also like this I think they have the next set coming out in October. It's called Nightfall, and a lot of those Beasties are only able to be contracted in the month of October. So I'm like, man, this game is just so bizarre. But it'll be interesting. Yeah, exactly. Super Halloween themes and people that are playing this game, if you're in the month of October, you can have a whole new deck or something. I don't know. Seems pretty exciting, but all right. This is more or less a video game podcast, though, not table top RPG stuff. I don't know, we've been delving into that a lot recently. Yeah, it's a game podcast. We talk about games. Right. But no, let's go around table. You know what I mean by that. Back and forth with the games we've been playing. Brent, have you been playing anything new? I actually have a new game to talk about, but I didn't get to play it very much yet.

Okay. I got some Isaac still just running through there because I don't know, it's my Zen game. It's just if I don't need to think it's good for multitasking. Still playing Knockout City? A bunch. Not as much as my one friend. My one friend is like the team captain, basically. Like, come on, guys, we got to keep training. You guys getting the runs and stuff. And me and my other buddy, yeah, we'll play as the group, but I don't think either me and my other friend will play ourselves much.

Yeah, that makes sense because it's just random and stuff.

And it's more fun when you have a team you could work with and friends to play with and stuff. Totally still dipping in, but that's definitely winding now for me. Same with Pokemon unit. I'm still playing it, but even the friends I played that with, I'm seeing like, oh, so and so was last online three days ago, so it was last online a week ago and stuff. They're both still fun, but they're both still the same thing. Yeah, there hasn't been anything too new to really shake stuff up. Pokemon Unite for me, will definitely be more interesting once there's a new map because I've said it before the default ranked matches and like regular casual matches and even some of the quick matches are all the same map. And then there's three maps for the quick matches. One of them is the same as all the other maps, and then two of them are different, so those are fun, but it's basically a different mode of playstyle altogether. It's kind of a different game entirely. It feels like those quicker matches because it's less like, oh, we got to fight and defend our lane and more just get as many points as you can and dunk as many points as you can and that's it. If you happen to fight the enemy team while you're doing that, sure, but it's not worth your time to stall your team from gaining points by fighting the enemy team.

Right.

It's better to just run a gun and grab points where you can. Those are fun, but I think yeah, once a new map comes out, that will really change it up a bit and probably grab my interest more. Still fun. They added Blissy, which is the evolved form of Chancy recently. Big support character does a little bit of damage, but mostly just healing and buffing the team. They're ally team members. So yeah, it's not a character you could really solo well with, but if you have an ally working with you in your land or something really beneficial because just a lot of heels nice, but yeah, Pokemon, it's still fun, but I think I'm hitting the wall of the pay to winners of using their items. That's right, because it's still a free game and that's still really the only pay to win element is the items people use. And sometimes it's hard to tell whether an item is doing it or whether the player is just better. So, for instance, when you score points in the game, you have to go to an area, hold down a button, and you score your points. The more points you have, the longer it is to hold down the button and score it. So it gives the enemies, the enemy team time to run in and interrupt you from doing that.

Yeah.

One of the abilities is while you're scoring points, while you're holding down the button, you'll gain a shield. As long as that shield is still up, you can't be interrupted, but if they break through that shield, then it can be interrupted.

Okay.

I'm seeing that item be used a lot more, so that way people can just run in with however many points they have, dunk it, and unless your whole team is there, you can't really break through that shield fast enough.

Right.

So stuff like that is like that person is clearly using that item and if it's maxed out, it's pretty much impossible to break through. So in regards to that, I think I'm kind of hitting a stall point because the items you can level up, you start at level one and go to level 20 to maximize, and at level ten, it gets, like, a boost. I got all my items to level ten, but now I'm running out of currency or resources to level them up. Beyond that, the increase in prices to upgrade them is a big, steep incline to get them past level ten. So I think that's where the difference of, like, people who paid to upgrade those are really coming in clutch because they can go beyond level ten into, like, the teens and up to level 20. Everyone else is playing for free or not paying for it is kind of stalling at or around the ten mark. Yeah, but like I said, some items are very clear that they're being used and some aren't. Some are just, like, boost. Like, you get more health or you get more damage, and it's not super clear. So it's not ruining the game by any means. I wouldn't say it's like, yeah, this guy's paid to win. Fuck this guy. He bought a costume.

Yeah, but it gives, like, invisible advantages that you're unaware of, at least. I would almost prefer it's like, oh, that guy's got the power hat on. You know what I mean? It's, like, very obvious they're using this item.

Yeah. I mean, if they're wearing a cosmetic I got one free cosmetic outfit for my Venosaur. It just randomly gave it to me with a certain level I hit. So I think everyone gets one free outfit. But yeah, if you see a guy running around in a golden Mr. Mimes, like tuxedo, it's like, yeah, that guy's spend money on this game. Because all the cosmetic stuff you have to pay for, but it's because they don't do anything. I would be curious to see if there's a way, I think in the match, if you go to the character profile, you can see what items are using, but there's so much crap happening all the time. You would never waste time and a match doing that.

Right.

So it'd be interesting if they had a wave indicating, like, oh, you can see the items the person is wearing on their Pokemon, like, they're carrying around those three items or something else like that.

If they have a boost effect on them, they glow a little bit more than everyone else or something. It's just like, oh, okay, clearly they have an advantage.

Yeah. There's no clear indicator of like, there are some if you attack some Pokemon in the field, you get a boost, and it has, like, an orange or purple light circling your feet. Okay, so I think the purple one is like, a little defense buff, and then there's, like, one Pokemon where if you defeat them, you get a shield or you get, like, a temporary shield. You can see those. But items no, I don't think there's a real indicator of who's using what items until the end of the match when you look at them.

Okay.

But it's also kind of tough. It's with MOBAs, you got the meta, like the most efficient tactic. Action. It's an abbreviation for something, but yeah. So if you go to items, you can pick up Pokemon and you can go to see what's the recommended item set for them. And it gives you recommended item set for healing or attacking or scoring points, whichever your Pokemon type is best at.

Yeah.

And then it gives you four more recommendations on what the master ranked players are using.

Oh, wow.

This is the number one Mr. Mine player in the world. He's using these items. This is the number one slow bro player in the world. She's using these items. It says it shows you what they're using so you can just copy them, which is great. It's very convenient, but I think most people are probably using that. So it does to give leeway to everyone's using the same items for the same Pokemon sort of thing.

Yeah.

Not a lot of experimentation but still fun. But I kind of burning out on a little bit. But I'm keeping my eye on it to see what changes are making. Like I said, they've already added guardovar and Blissy and the game came out like a month ago or something. So they're doing pretty well, at least putting in new stuff. But yeah, some of them just feel real. Pikachu feels like Pikachu and Charles are just feel like the favorites. They're good in every game just because they're like the mascots. And it's just like whenever you're fighting one of them, it's just like, god damn it. All right, let's fucking go. A slog.

Makes sense. Fingers crossed for that new map, though.

Yeah, I think that'll keep my interest at least a lot more because the game is different every time you played. Every match is different because it's different team members and all that stuff and different enemies. But you're just looking at the same map every single time. Just kind of visually gets dull.

That makes sense.

So that'll shake it up. And I think it's on switch now. And I think it's going to be coming to mobile phones in September at some time. And there's going to be cross play. And I think that's going to get real messy because it's kind of tricky enough to play on the phone as it is or playing on the switch as it is. Playing it on the phone with less controls.

Yeah.

One thing I noticed that's a real problem is when you're using some of your abilities to attack, you use the right joystick on the switch, the right joy con, and that will kind of direct where your attack is going. That is also tied to what enemy you're targeting. So if you're fighting a group of enemies and you want to target the weaker one instead of just feeding into the tank and just wasting your tax on the defense character, you can specifically target Pikachu instead of Snorlax, but you use the right joy, con joystick to do that as well.

Right.

So with some moves, like Slow Bro, he has a surf move where he moves with the ability, so it's good for escaping. Like a big tidal wave comes and pushes him forward in the direction you're facing. And you can use that to help escape sometimes. And there's a few moves like that, but if you're running from somebody and you're directing it to the left and then there's also enemy teams attacking you, the JoyCon is going to read it as you're targeting the left character in your little wheel of enemy characters to target.

Right.

Which is bad because there's an auto attack thing. So you're going to automatically attack enemies in your vicinity in your range. So if I'm holding the left JoyCon or the right JoyCon to the left trying to escape and it's locking on pikachu as soon as I let go of like the run as soon as I move my thumb to a different control. My character is automatically going to turn around to try to attack that pikachu instead of just doing the ability to get out of there.

Interesting.

Yeah. There's a few times where I'm running away and then my character almost gets yanked back because I accidentally targeted character with the JoyCon that is to direct my abilities.

Yeah. I feel like that's something they're going to polish. I don't know. That's obviously not what they intended, but also that's kind of a hard problem to solve when yeah, I don't really.

Know of a good solution because the targeted thing is necessary.

Right?

Because otherwise you're just going to be feeding into the tank and not doing any real damage instead of taking off a weaker one, like a support character. So it's needed, but I don't know if there's a great way to swap out like the ability joystick and the targeting joystick because the other joysticks being used for movement. So like, I don't know, it's kind of tough. Maybe the DPAD maybe do that. So, yeah, I don't have a good solution, but that's definitely a problem I've had where I died a few times because I got yanked back because my guy auto attacked the enemy as I.

Was running away from that sucks.

Yeah. So still fun. We'll be interested to see what the updates have. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes more pay to win and at a certain point it's just like unless you're willing to spend money on it, you really can't compete. I wouldn't be surprised if we get there considering it's a free game. Like they got to make their money somewhere. Yeah, so we'll see. That's primarily what I've been playing I also recently got the game, Road 96.

We talked about that, right?

Yeah, it was shown off at E Three and we talked about a bit like with different trailers that came out. I was saying it looks like a good life is strange. I like, Life is strange. I like, the first life is strange. The rest I don't quite care for. I don't think they planned out fucking what's her name? Ashley?

No. Fuck chloe. No, I know you're talking about Rachel. Rachel?

Rachel Amber? Yeah. I don't think they played out Rachel Amber. Well, they did it for the first game as like a sacrificial pawn and then by doing a freak because they're like, shit, we have to make a career. I'm like, why is everyone obsessed with this girl? She kind of sucks. She doesn't care. Anyway, I'm not here to bitch about life. The games I didn't play, that's fair. But yeah, Route 96 is after playing it, it's kind of more of a telltale game. Okay, it's Episodic, but it's not released in an Episodic format. It's not like, oh, you get the first episode here, you get the next episode in three months. It's all done, it's all out, it's done, it's finished game. But you play it. You play as teenagers trying to escape a country in political turmoil. And every time you do it, it's a different episode, it's a different teenager. You're playing in this sort of thing. So the first one I played as, I started off on some roadside in the desert, and there's like a big concert rave going on. And you find out it's a political fundraising party for this one guy who's running for re election of the country. And it's pretty much a party for his sponsors and stuff and the people who donated to his funds and stuff. And whenever you do something, you see like, oh, everything you do has consequences, or you see a poster of the Good and you can graffiti it and it's like, this will have an impact in the story. And it's like, okay, kind of teaching. You can't just run around doing chaos. Watch your ass.

Well, you can, but you can.

But it's going to bite you in the ass.

Yeah.

And right when you start the game, it's just like, oh, what do you feel like when you're on the road trip? Do you like listening to music? Do you like talking? Do you like driving in silence? If you were in a political heightened political situation within your country, what would you do? Like vote rebel? Like, nothing. Lean into the party, leaning to the system and stuff like that. So it asks you questions from the very beginning. That kind of sets up the tone for the rest of the game. Or I guess it sets up factors, but I haven't seen them yet. Is that clear cut?

Okay.

But yeah, he just plays his character. You run around, you interact with stuff, and you're just trying to get to the border of your country and escape. Because it's very clear that the current president and who's likely going to win the election is kind of a pseudo dictator who's taking control of the country and is doing whatever he wants.

Right.

There's rumors that teenagers that are caught trying to flee the border get arrested and are taken to the iron pits as kind of alluded to it. That yeah, it's a very politically heavy game, which I wasn't expecting. I don't mind that you couldn't tell that from the advertisement.

Oh, sure, yeah.

So, yeah, I go to this rave sort of thing. I walk around. I don't have much money. They're like, oh, do you want to steal this guy's backpack? He's sleeping right here. It's like, no, I played enough telltale games to be like, no, there's going to be a consequence for this. I won't touch it.

That'll be like real shit later.

It's like, you need money. It's like, yeah, but he's going to hunt me down with a gun or something later. I know enough to plan ahead. There was like a little arcade area where you can play the games, which are kind of neat.

Yes. This is what caught my eye in the trailer. I'm like, man, the air hockey table.

Yeah, so you can play air hockey table against the guy who's just like working there. And then when you turn around, there's a bunch of arcade cabinets, like video games. The only video game you could play on the arc cabinet was Pong or Pong as they wrote it, which is also air hockey. It's just weird that the two games there were just both air hockey.

That's funny. Three games.

Yeah. Kind of like, oh, weird. You didn't change it up at all. Okay. I'll say it's very clear that this is a small indie team. A lot of the models and physical assets of characters are reused very frequently to the point where I saw two women with the exact same bodies, like the exact same bodies and outfits in the same area, and the only thing different was their heads models.

Right.

I saw some people complaining of like, oh, it really ruins the immersion in this. They got a small team here, man. I don't know how to make characters. I'm sure it's not easy. So it definitely is kind of a bit of a point against them. But it's like you will kind of see the same, like five people over and over again, recycled.

That's fair. And at the end of the day, it's a $20 game, so they're not like, yeah, I think that's fine.

It's not AAAA studio.

Yeah.

One thing that's kind of tough is it kind of moves like a PlayStation one sort of cut scene. So kind of like early Wretched and Clank with characters moving around and talking. They feel like kind of weird. Mannequins yeah, it's not polished. Like I said, you can tell it's a small indie team. They're definitely doing something neat here. I like the telltale style. I like that it's not telltale. Someone else is trying this. And they definitely do some interesting stuff with it. There's a lot of minigames. There's a lot of little things that you only do it once. There's a segment where you play music with, like, a trombone, and you have to match the notes with your mouse going up and down on a sliding scale and stuff. I was like, oh, that's kind of neat. I doubt I'll do that ever again. But another is you're assembling like a radio and getting the frequencies right and matching the hertz to power and stuff. So it's like a bunch of little things that are really neat. But yeah, for something that's a lot of dialogue and a lot of interactions with characters, they kind of just feel like loose early PC character, like mannequins, where it's like, oh, you're not I can't really tell what you're looking at right now. I assume you're talking to me, but it's hard to figure out what's happening right now.

Right?

But, yeah, there's a lot of stuff of running around, interacting with characters, doing this and that, deciding a lot of conversation based. You got a stress meter for the taxi cab driver. You got to keep him calm or something will happen. So you try and do this. It's like, okay, that comes and down. It's like, I do this. That actually angered them more. And this and that. So it's pretty fun for the most part, pretty simple. There's not a lot to explore. There's little trinkets here and there. But it's very clear. Like, each setting, each scenario, each place you're at has one main thing, and then once you're done, you just move on to the next. Um, so it's deciding how you do it. Like, I want a lot of money. In one of the games, I had, like, $90. It was great. And like, all right, how are you going to get out of here? Are you going to hitchhike for free? Are you going to just walk along the road? Are you going to take the bus for $7? Are you going to take the taxi? Calling him for $1, taking the taxis $12.

So, right.

Kind of clear of like, ah, I have to save my money for food and travel and all this stuff. I can't just burn it on the taxi right away. You got to piece it out. You'll progress further towards the border if you take a bus or a taxi.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Stuff like that. It's kind of tough in some parts because it's not always clear what the answer is. Skip right to the end of my scenario. I was walking around at the border trying to get over, and you hear of a few different ways to get across the border and. I had enough health and money where I was like, oh, I might be able to just physically climb the mountains, which is very taxing on your body, but I was a full health, so I would have enough to get through in theory.

Yeah.

And then as I was walking around exploring, I found, like, a bunch of smugglers who were like, hey, we'll sneak you across the border. And immediately talked to the first lady just to see what her deal is. And she said, hey, I'm not doing it for free. What do you got? And it's like, I can give you money. I can give you this credit card I found of someone on the ground, or I could walk away. I was like, oh, maybe I can say, like, hey, I'll pay you with a credit card, and then we'll do that later that night, and I'll keep exploring. So I picked that one. I was like, I'll pay you with a credit card. She's like, Cool, I'll take that. Immediately cut to us trying to sneak over the board. I was like, no, I didn't explore to the rest of the camp. I wanted to see what the rest of my options were. So it wasn't clear that it was like, hey, this is we'll put rest to the next scene.

Yeah. I like when games are very obvious, where it's like, at this point, this is your last chance to save or something before moving on.

Yeah. So, like, with the hitchhiking, the taking a cab, taking a bus, or just walking on the road, in the first scenario, that was very clear. The closer you walked to the road, the more that icon lit up. And when you were close to it, it popped up with text being like, hey, you're about to go on the road. Are you sure you want to do this? Yeah, anytime. I was talking with a character that wasn't clear what would progress the story. And back to the woman that was smuggling me. I paid her with a credit card. She's like, Cool, we'll do that. Cut to us sneaking across the border. She's like, all right, I need my payment. I want to go pay her with the credit card. I didn't have the credit card anymore. It showed it in the choice option as a credit card, but it was red, and I didn't have it anymore.

Oh, shit. So you lied to her?

No, because I had the credit card. I never used it for anything else, and as far as I know, I didn't get it stolen or lose it. If I did that, it wasn't clear.

Yeah, so that might have been glitch or something.

I'm not sure, because at one point, you do get kind of, like, kidnapped, sort of, or tied up by robbers, and they take your money, but then when you help them out, they give you your money back. So I might have lost it with them, but they gave me all the money back. So I don't know why they wouldn't have given me my credit card back.

Well, I thought it was going to be one of those scenarios. It's like, yeah, here's this credit card I found. And then she's, like, tries to use it and it doesn't work.

It's like, that's what I thought. Because you just find it on the ground somewhere. You don't know whose it is, right? Yeah, cash. It's probably blank or out of service. Who knows? But I wasn't sure if I lost the credit card between those two, where I offered it and where I have to give it. So I was like, well, shit, I don't know if that was a glitch or not, or if that was like, yeah, you lost the card somewhere. That's part of the story. But either way, it wasn't made clear to me.

Interesting.

So then when I did have the credit card, I had to pay it with the money I had. And I had a lot of money, but I didn't have enough because it's one of those things where like, all right, you have to pay me $50 up front. Cool. And then you get like halfway. She's like, all right, I need more money. It's like, all right, cool. And then you get to the very board. It's like, all right, I need, like 50 more dollars. You drink. Me drink. Like, oh, well. And they kind of fuck you over that way through, like, forced storytelling.

Okay.

So it really kind of came to a crashing mess at the end when I was trying to cross the border because it forced me ahead into a new scenario in the story. I lost a credit card. But I wasn't sure if that's part of the story or not because I lost it. I had to spend all the money. But because I thought I was going to pay with the credit card, I spent money on other stuff, like food and, like, sleeping somewhere. So, like, they kind of screwed me over with that, with the miscommunication, because I don't have enough money for the guard. When I get to the guard post, he just calls other guards on me and gets me arrested. And up until this point, there's no real quick time events. It's not like, oh, you have to jump over this hurdle and dive under here and escape from the watchdogs in here and there. But when you're crossing the border because they panicked and they called the guards on me, it became quick time events. So I ran up to, like, the wall, and I was like, oh, you have a 16% chance of getting over this wall. And I'm like, I haven't had to do chances or probability really, until now.

Right?

So I did it. And you get arrested and I get thrown in the iron pits. That's episode one. And I haven't started the next section yet. So I'm just like the last part of it really threw a lot of shit at me that wasn't in the game previously. And I don't know if that's because I avoided it, like, by my choices, or if that's just not an option in the game up to this point. Or if you're if it's episode one and you're supposed to get caught sort of thing, right? Because it's the first one, no matter what I did, I was going to get caught.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure because like I said, it's a small indie game. It's entirely possible to just be buggy and glitchy and it just kind of bugged out at the end there. Or it wasn't well designed at the end. Or it's like, no, this is a narrative illusion of choice sort of thing, like a lot of telltale games do, where it's like, you do this or this, either way you're going to get the same result, but just a different way of getting there. It's still neat. It's still cool. You get a few cool character moments with some people, but it's all very small. What's the word I'm looking at? Venuets. Very small segments of like you go to a trailer park, you hang out this cool, like, punk girl, she's got a trombone. You have a little moment with her and then you move on. Don't think too much because you probably won't see those characters again. Or at least not as your character. If you play it again, you play as a different team, run away. It's weird for like one example is I keep seeing posters on like, if you find a stolen military equipment, make sure you call this number for a reward. I was like, cool, that's easy money. I see a cab driver who has that stolen military equipment. I was like, cool, now I just have to get to a phone, like a pay phone and call them because it's like 1996 and it's like fictional country phones. So I was like, cool, now that I know where the equipment is, I just have to call that number. Once I got into the cab, I never saw another Payphone ever again. So I wasn't sure if that was just my choices led me down that way or there was never actually a chance for it, or if I'm supposed to use that meta knowledge for the next character who doesn't know that the cab driver has that military equipment. But I do as the player so that I call the military on the cab driver next time I play. I'm not sure. Yeah, so it's definitely interesting. Like you said, it's $20, so it's not a huge loss if you're not thrilled about it. But I think you can get through the whole first episode within under 3 hours. And that's the refund policy for Steam. You have to play a game for less than 3 hours.

Yeah.

So I would definitely say if you're curious about it or if it sounds like if you want, like, a telltale game experience, but not by telltale, definitely check it out. $20. You can play the first section in under 3 hours. If you don't like it after the first section, you can refund it, maybe. But it's an indie studio, so maybe don't.

Don't exactly. I agree with that. It seems up my alley for sure. I'm interested. I'll probably get around to playing at one of these days, but I have a lot of games on my backlog.

Yeah, it's definitely neat. And if you like Life is Strange, you like these games. I have the choices. I have consequences later on. The story definitely up that alley. But yeah, keep very much in mind. It is a small indie team because it's not very well polished. It's kind of janky at times, but that's also a bit of a charm to it. So it's interesting. I'll keep playing it, but I can see some complaints about it. But overall, it's a neat idea. I want it to do well because I want to see what the studio can do with more time and funding and stuff because I think they're definitely onto something.

Definitely.

Yeah.

That's exciting. Very cool. I'm glad you got around to playing that me. Unlike you, I'm still just doing all the same shit. Fall. Guys. Pokemon sword. You guys know the deal. But I did today pick up a copy of Mario Golf Super Rush. I've been meaning to do this for the longest time. $50. Did pick it up physically because I do just want to have this beautiful case. Mario looks so cute in his little golf clothes. God damn it. But yeah, this game looks so good. I didn't get around to playing it very much. I was starting off a tutorial and stuff and then fell asleep. So I was like, all right, I got to get some rest, and then I'll give this a go. I'm probably going to be streaming this a little bit later on the Twitch Channel, so if you're interested, stop in for that. But man, this game has so much to it. I remember the trailer was just, like, instantly selling me all the different game modes battle Golf, Speed golf for all this stuff and the different Mario cast of characters. I'm very much excited to get into this game and start playing it. I know the way it works, at least when you first start playing the game, is if you're trying to learn how to play the game, you can play as your me character in the whole Nintendo universe. But then if you're trying to play just, like, the regular game with friends and stuff, you can log in and do the various Mario characters. But yeah, this game looks so goddamn good. Yeah. Who the hell is that? Where did he come from? I don't even recognize him.

Super Mario World. Like, the SMS game. He's the last player, one that would charge you at the end of the level and you'd hop on his head. But he's got a helmet so you don't kill him. He just is super annoying. You kill he's an old school character.

I was going to say that sounds old school. No wonder. I might have missed that one.

Of new ones because he's more of a side scrolling like enemy.

But that's cool. They're representing even the older cast of characters and stuff. But yeah, I love me some golf games. I'm very much excited to diving further into this. I know for a while there I was really into everybody's golf. So I'm hoping this is going to be at least mechanically a little bit more easy to follow. I know this game boasts like you can do like spin shots and all these special moves. So I'm going to have to wrap my head around how to do that in this game versus everybody's golf. Because even that had its own little nuances and stuff.

Yeah, this is definitely a more complex Mario golf game than we've seen before. From what I've seen, you can put top spin and backspin on the ball. You can put like super backspin or super top spin. The difference is when you're going to putt, you hit like A to start the swing and then like A again to set your power. And then you'll swing it. See if they hit it twice. Yeah, this is that. You hit A to start the swing. If you hit A twice when you're going to set the power. If you hit A twice, that'll put top spin on it. If you hit A and then you hit B to set your power, that'll put backspin. If you hit B twice, that will do like a super backspin.

Yeah.

So they're interesting ideas that are seen once you understand it's implemented pretty seamlessly. Easy enough to understand.

Similarly, it's like with the spins, like you said, not like necessarily putting. You don't have to hit A twice, but when you're just like sending the ball flying, like for the initial shot, you do this twice. But that's the neat thing about the adding a spin to your ball is like you hit the initial A and it is like the power level. And then on the second time, once you hit it before Mario actually hits the ball with the club. If you hit on the left analog stick like a direction, it will then spin the ball in that direction. So there's a lot of fucking little you're going to have to get used to this game in order to really fine tune your shots and stuff. But again, they also have just like cool different modes and stuff. I'm excited to play with my wife multiplayer and everything. But yeah, this game looks super fun.

I know they took away the potting part. You still put, you still putt when you're on the green, but if you're within a yard of it or like a foot of it, something real short. They pretty much take away everything and it's just, like, hit a twice.

Yes, there's a tap in option. Yes, definitely.

So I know some people were annoyed by that because it was really funny.

Watching your I appreciate that. Honestly, why make you like that's the thing in everybody's golf, I would be like 2ft away or not even 2ft less than 2ft away from the hole. And it is just like, why can't I just tap this in? And then I'll accidentally do 100% on the power bar and it's like, what the hell? And it's just gone. It's like, oh, my God.

But yeah, I'm curious to see how you like the Speed golf and the Battle golf mode. Yes, because it seems with everyone I've seen playing it or streaming it or reviewing it, it's a real love it or hate it. You either love that mode or it's like this game is chaotic and it's stupid. It shouldn't exist in golf.

Well, and that's why I like that they give you those options. Hopefully we'll probably just play like, the casual mode the most, but those will just be like, fun, like, spice it up options. But yeah, Mario fucking playing golf. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. The trailer sold me all those many months ago. So glad to get my hands on that. And yeah, if you're interested in seeing some of that gameplay, head over to our Twitch channel. I'll be playing a lot of that. I feel like this is going to be the fall guys replacement. Not necessarily, but it's going to be 50 50 fall guys. 50 50. Mario golf.

I don't know if you'll ever find a fall guys replacement.

No, I don't either. It's just too good. And that's one thing. Okay, I will talk about fall guys replacement.

Here we go.

It's this weekend only, so you probably already missed your chance at this, but I think the Devs even said if you missed your chance at this, we're going to bring it back for those people. There's like the special events event called fuck, I forget. It's something like the golden Glitzy. I don't know what glitzy even is. Apparently that's like slang for hot dog. Where did that come from?

I heard it's like a Washington DC sort of thing. I've been to Washington. I mean, I haven't lived down there. I haven't hung out down there. But I've never heard anyone call it a glitzy until I was out here on the West Coast and someone was like, oh yeah, back east they say this, do they? No, they do not know. What are you talking about?

The fall guys devs thinks it's a good idea to make a golden hot dog outfit. And the only way you can achieve it is if you meet the certain criteria. So one of them is like, you have to win a main show, you have to win a Squad's duo show, you have to win a squad show. And there's like a bunch of other little dislike criteria. Things like, oh, get this many experience points, and if you cross all the dots, you get the golden hot dog. I went into this thinking I'll be able to do this right, and I haven't made much progress at all. So I'm either going to be streaming that tonight, really just grinding for the golden hot dog. But like the Dev said, don't lose sleep if you can't do it in time. They're going to bring this event back in the future, but I think it would be cool to see if I can't get it in time. I think I saw one of the fall guys streamers. I regularly watched they were streaming one and they named it like the Golden Glitzy Speed Run. So they were trying to get it as fast as possible.

Yeah. Devs, you can tell everyone you want to be like, hey, don't ruin your lives for this fucking video game. It's just a game. They'll still do it.

People already have it instantly.

Yeah. Immediately. I saw a thing of Final Fantasy 14th is the biggest MMO of all time, apparently. I feel like I'm the last person I know on the internet who's not playing that game because I can't lose myself to an MMO. I know if I start, I'll just go in too deep and that's all I'll do. But for File Fantasy 14, they're like, oh, for our East Asian servers, we're going to do some downtime. We're going to get some data collection. We're going to be doing some like maintenance and this and that and stuff. Basically like trying to analyze all the data they've gotten, all the players, and see how to make it better and what's. Like the highest traffic times for servers and all that. And they did like a follow up tweet saying, we're not doing this for the North American servers because we already have too much goddamn data on all. You fucking basically saying everyone's playing so fucking much, they already have enough data. They don't have to shut it down to gather data. And it's just like, god, people really just live in that game.

Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I'm not looking for any MMOs myself, but no. New World is at least one of the ones that has my eye. But again, I'm not playing computers. Yeah. Oh, that too. Oh, man. Speaking which, I'm in the market for a new gaming PC. We'll see if I ever end up getting one before the show ends, but.

We'Ll see if you want. Mark helped me build my last computer and it worked pretty great. It was pretty high ends at the time. It was a lot of fucking problems though. I took my thing back to Microsoft like 20 different times, right?

And that's the thing. I'm very much the I have money. Let me just buy it already pre built. But even in that, I was looking at certain reviews on Best Buy and people were like, I bought this $2,000 machine fresh out of the box that they built for me, and it doesn't work. Well, yeah, it makes me nervous that people that are building those for Best Buy don't fucking know what they're doing. And it's like, cool, let me put all these hardware pieces together that actually don't mesh.

I mean, it's the same thing with, like, a car. Like, you can get it more optimized and cheaper if you do it all yourself. But that requires, you know, what all that shit is if you don't know what it is. And yeah, I just bought my last one. It was like $2,000 or something. I just paid out. It's been working great. The only complaint I have is got that RGB light system that I can't turn off.

I don't need so many of them. Just have that built in design. And I'm like, I don't care about that whatsoever. And in fact, if anything, almost all of the ones I've been looking at all have fan systems. And I'm like, I would love a liquid cooling because I just don't want it to sound like a goddamn jet engine.

I'll say depending on the system you get, depending on Peter, my computer has the fan system. It's quiet. It's so quiet.

Okay, well, that's good.

Then again, I'm in a studio apartment, and I got the refrigerator blaring out next to me, so maybe I just can't hear the fans. There are some pre built computers that have liquid cooling, I'm sure, but they're definitely going to be much more expensive because of that. And you could definitely do it on your own. The benefit of having the pre built thing is a, you don't need to know how everything works and saves you time and stuff and all that energy. The main benefit for me is if there is ever a problem with this pre built computer, the specs are already there. I can just go to the page where I bought it and it has all the specs and go, these are the specs, as opposed to me keeping all the receipts and figuring out which every individual piece the computer is, because I don't remember any of those. So for like, the one me and Mark built, there was a problem with the cooling element on my computer, and the guy was like, oh, yeah, this uses, like, Prongs. This part of the machine hasn't used Prongs in years. It's just a really weird, outdated one. We might be able to get it to work, but it's a real crap shoot. I was like, fuck elements like that where individual stuff is more likely to go wrong, but it's easier to replace. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are like, never buy pre built, but fuck it, you have the money, you're paying for the effort, so go for it. It all has the information in one place. And if it doesn't work, it's someone else's fault.

Exactly.

Return it. Get a new one. It's like the JoyCon drift. Yeah. It's broken. But I might lose the switch for a week while they're repairing it. But they're going to be repairing it for free because someone's fucked up on their end.

Right.

As opposed to a PC you built. If you fuck up, that's on you.

Totally.

It's a little more extra insurance.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's something on the horizon here. We'll see if that takes away that's also all I've really been playing these days. I do have to get more into Mario Golf, but let's see if there's anything going on in the show topics before wrapping this one up.

Anything going on you talked about before? I forget his name. The guy from Jesse Radio, the main character.

Oh, beat.

Beat. He was announced to be in Super Monkey Ball. Banana Mania. The new super monkey ball game coming out.

Yes.

Apparently they introduced a new character. Apparently this is now Super Smash Brothers because they just have a weird cameo character.

Yeah. Wait, what?

So they introduce Kiriu from Yakuza.

No way. I'm looking at the picture right now. What the hell?

Yeah, because he's a Yakuza member and he got a big head. He's in like a suit. And it's just really funny seeing a cheebe Kiryu and just a little plastic ball, like rolling around. It's funny.

Pissed off looking. That's awesome.

Yeah. I only played yakuza zero. I don't think that's a franchise I'm going to fall into and play all of them. But with Yakuza Zero is like the origin point for all of them. And then Yakuza Kawami are kind of remasters of like one, two, and I think three is now.

Yeah.

So if you want to get in Yakuza, it's the best time to because they're remastering all the old ones and apparently they're all tied together. But yeah, it's funny seeing Yakiru in it because he's a very good natured person, despite being Yakuza, but he's just a solemn, quiet man. But then Yakuza is also silly, where you can do karaoke and RC racing and you're doing all these weird little minigames. So it's also appropriate for Kiryu. But it's all Sega, too. So there's all Sega characters, but it's just funny to see.

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I'm glad. Super monkey balls is like, fuck it. We're going to have fun with this.

Yeah, why not? It's a game about little monkeys rolling around on the track.

Fantastic. Yeah.

Doing us. What else is there? Skyrim. They're fucking doing it again.

Fuck. Why?

Xbox series X and S are getting Skyrim ports with fishing. You can fish in Skyrim now.

I don't care. Actually, I'm the guy that's all about fishing minigames in any game. I'm so excited. They've literally broken us. I think there was one of these memes where it's like a very common meme format, where it's like these women fighting. And in the background there's like this man, like smoking a bong or whatever. And the text over the women fighting was people being mad at rockstar for stretching Grand Theft Auto Five from PS Three to PS Five. And then it's like in the background is like, that dude smoking the bong. And it's like Bethesda planning skyrim for PS Seven. It's like, no shit. What the fuck? I hate Bethesda. Just fuck off already. They should have been working on the Elder Scrolls Six. I'm sure they claim they are, but that should have been something for PS Five, like a day one launch title to get everyone hyped up on the system. Or actually, no, Bethesda was bought by Xbox, so we know there's going to be no more PlayStation Elder Scrolls ever again. So fuck that whole noise at this point. It was honestly a meme five years ago and they're still doing it.

Hey, Doug, we played Scarring in high school.

Yeah, I know.

That was over a decade ago.

That's disturbing.

I'm both on board with you because it's like, fucking really? Come on. It's like, yeah, what else are they going to do? But if it keeps making them money, why wouldn't they?

I get easy money.

I understand why they're doing it. I'm more upset with the people who keep buying it because I've seen people be like, am I really going to buy Skyrim for a fifth time? I'm like, you shouldn't have bought Skyrim for a second time. You should buy the game once. Why do you buy it on every console in every generation? Why do you encourage this behavior from companies? Because they wouldn't do it if it didn't work.

Right.

So it's going to work again. People are going to try and mod it again. And we're going to get a lot of video compilations of people just fishing in Skyrim because they're like, isn't this great? It's like, no, you paid $360 for the same game every two years. That's not good.

No, stop it.

What else is going on? Good news. Probably just for me. I don't know anyone else who still keeps track of it. Adventure Time is getting a spin off series.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's way after the series has already ended and they're still doing, like, miniseries on HBO. Max I think they have one more miniseries coming out. But yeah, they announced they're like, hey, remember that time we made Fiona and Cake the gender bent versions of Finn and Jake? Now that's getting a full series.

Wow.

I'm aboard. I fucking love Adventure Time. I still love it. It's still one of the best shows I've ever seen, but anyone who wants more of that there you go.

That's nice.

Pokemon did a big. Direct sort of thing. Big presentation, showing off all their new projects and stuff. So that's where some of the Pokemon Unite news came from, where they introduced Blissy and stuff. They got Pokemon Cafe remix coming out. It was like the Pokemon Cafe is like the mobile game they have which is really just moving around a bunch of little Pokemon Tokens around and matching them. It's like a Match Three, but you're not restricted to a grid. So it's like 1000% easier than Match Three games. So I don't know, it was kind of a weird thing, but I guess it's popular enough to remaster it. But the big things they were announcing were brilliant. Diamond and Shining Pearl. The Remasters for Pokemon. Diamond and Pearl. So they're showcasing that stuff a bit as well as Pokemon Legends name Archaeus. Yeah. The Jesus Pokemon. That is the creator of all the Pokemon universe that you can capture in a tiny ball. Yeah, but Pokemon Legends is like the ancient version of Pokemon where it's like ancient feudal Japan sort of era of Pokemon where you can play as Cinequil Rowlett or Oslotte as your starters from different generations. So they're showcasing that a lot because we haven't seen a ton about it yet so far. And they're showcasing gameplay. It's not just turn based battles. It's more of like Kingdom hearts, kind of like later final fantasies, open battles where you were actually fighting the Pokemon again in real time and not turn based. And some of the more agile Pokemon. It's like the Final Fantasy where you have the meter and when the meter builds up, that's what you can do in action. And some people's meters build up faster than others so they can get in multiple actions before slower characters. Yeah, so it looks like it's kind of going into that sort of combat style, which is a big branch from the rest of Pokemon. A big deviation from that, but it's neat. Some people are kind of complaining about the graphics of like, look at everything Breath of the Wild can do and then look at this game and it's kind of like sad in comparison. So I don't know. I don't know if they got the same technology. I don't know if Game Freak has the same resources or not. They're definitely making enough money, but who knows how much they're funneling back into the game productions of it. But they also showed off new variants because it's like ancient Japan sort of. They have different variants of Pokemon like they do with a lot of the recent Pokemon Games. So they got like a vault form of God. What's? The Deer pokemon. I know no one cares about this. Who's listening?

Yeah. Shit.

Stantler. So everyone's favorite from Gen Two. That weird beaked. Deer as hell. But it's got like a new form where it's got bigger antlers and like a white coat and stuff. Hyceon, which is like the region HYCON bravery, which is like the America burn where it's like red, white, blue eagle. It's kind of funny thing to get a localized regional variation because it's just very Americanized. Hacion Growlith, who is just very fluffy and has taken the internet by storm. I see everyone to Rolling haseon Growlith because it's just a big old fluffy dog and I think it's going to evolve into like a lion dog or lion guardian sort of Growlith like those big Chinese lion dog statues we've seen or I think that'll be an arkanine, rather. Sorry, arkanine will be like that, so that'll be cool to see. And the one I mostly want to talk about was fucking Pokemon names, man. When did they get so hard to read? I can't even find a pronunciation on this thing. Bascolleon. Basco legion.

Yeah, that seems right.

Sure. Yeah, let's go with that. It's a fish from like Gen Seven that I didn't play, so we'll just go with that. It's basically just this big, like, barracuda looking asshole from Pokemon. The localized reason for this is it's like a it's like a spirit of the dead fish. Like the lore for it is like all the other fish in its school of fish died and empowered this one single fish with the power of like 100 dead fish or something. And it's like Chiron the fairy man between the world living and dead, but as a Pokemon. And it's like one of those like god, every time they got like a ghost Pokemon, they just make it super fucking weird. And this is a new one and it's fucking so weird. I love it. It's a cool design and it's really fitting for the setting, but just like the ingame lore reason for it.

Yeah, the background.

Yeah. Like there's one Pokemon where it's like a ghost tree sort of thing, and it's like, oh, this Pokemon is formed by children who get lost in the woods and die. And then there's spirits and Jesus Christ possess a nearby tree where its body was found. It's like, okay, cool. And as you captured in a tiny ball and enslaved it. Yeah, okay. It's just so weird.

God damn it.

Yeah. I love ghost Pokemon. Lord. Because it's always so morbidous. I mean, how is it not morbid when it's a ghost? But it's just always funny to me. That is Pokemon Legions looks like a cool open world deviation that people were hoping for. It doesn't seem perfect. Seems like people stop playing complaints about it. But this might be an interesting way to see a new new line of Pokemon.

James going, nice, exciting. And then I guess the last thing I'll end the episode on is Elon Musk says tesla will release humanoid robots next year. We need that. Yeah. And dude, the funny thing about it is that Tesla had to make a statement that these humanoid bots will only be five foot eight inches, weigh approximately £125. So that for anybody that's afraid of them can run away from it and most likely overpower it.

Five foot eight inches is about the average height of humans in the world. That's not small.

I was going to say there's probably plenty of shorter people that probably still would be terrified of these things. And anybody buying this is just contributing to the robot uprising.

Well, he is also like, oh, we need to support universal basic income because labor jobs in the future will be outsourced to robots and like, automation like this. Hey, one of a good way to avoid outsourcing jobs to robots don't build the fucking robot.

Exactly. And these things seem like the most needless things ever. It's like, why would you want one of these? It's like, oh, you know, to take the groceries from your car to the inside of your house. Or it might be able to tighten a nut or something with a wrench. It's like, cool, I could do that myself.

I think this is definitely more for industrial work rather than personal devsy. The robot made from the jetsons.

I don't know. We'll see.

We'll see. I mean, who knows? It might be Tesla fucking you get an automated car that can drive itself. You can do that. You can purchase that yourself.

It's a lot of the same technology, believe it or not. It's weird.

I do believe it, and I do not trust it.

Elon yeah, exactly.

Sociopath. He's like the worst case like SALUTA we could have ever done. His dad made his fortune from running an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa. All Elon's doing is now taking the unethical element and just turning the workers into robots.

But can you imagine at the beginning of this podcast saying to yourself, like, oh yeah, seven years later, down the road, we're going to have humanoid robots?

I mean, we're still seeing stuff. Mega man, 20 X of like, the super. It's the year 2020. We got flying cars, so we still see old media that does that. And just like, if anyone's seen the movie on Netflix, the Mitchells versus the Machines, hey, it's a very good movie. It's very entertaining, very colorful and funny. They look exactly like the robots from that movie.

God damn it.

Take over the world. So it's not even a joke of like, ha ha. But what if it's like, no, it Will. I don't trust Elon Musk.

I was going to say, has he seen a robot? I don't know. With Will Smith specifically?

I mean, is that the one you want to fair? There's some good moments, though. But either way, Elon Musk can't be trusted to name his own child Jesus.

Yeah. What the hell did he it's not even pronounceable anyway.

No, it's not.

Let's wrap this one up in decent plugs. Thanks for listening, listener. Bren, where can our listeners find you on the Internet?

You can find me on Twitter. ABTS. Brandon I really don't use it much. Don't recommend it. Twitter sucks in general. But you can find me on another podcast for anime where we watch three episodes of an anime or a movie. Give it a recap, give our opinions on it. It's a good sample or platter of anime. If you want to see if you'd be interested, listen to the episode and then dig into the anime yourself. Or if you just want to hear shit all over an anime like we did with Future Diary, that shows garbage.

Damn.

But it's like hot garbage where it's like, this is hilarious to watch it so bad.

That's fair. Yeah. Laugh along with that listener. And if you like our show, give us a, like, follow subscribe refinable at all the places at Abt Silence, specifically Twitch TVT Silence, where you can find me. Streaming a lot of fall guys coming up, some Mario Golf, all that kind of stuff. And I have a record label. It's Missed Out Records.com, if you want to see what vinyl and cassettes are available for sale over there. And the band that does our intro in natural music is a band called Kind of All Right. Head over to Kind of All Right Bandcamp.com for more music from them. But that's going to do it for this week. Thanks so much for listening. See you guys next time. Bye.