ABTS-415: Gaming By Numbers

Subscribe hey, everyone. Welcome back. It's 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, Brent?

It's going all right. Got a little bit this weekend, so that's nice. It's just perpetually on fire, as is LA's tradition.

Oh, man.

It's just so hot. I can't hyperbolically say it's on fire as an exaggeration because it is actually on fire. Fire a lot of the time, but it's just very warm. It's just been tapping out at 98 all month.

Oh, man. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, it's pretty nice. I feel like if it's not raining, it's like, pretty gorgeous out. So, yeah, my wife and I got a chance to go to a local fair, and it was just like, oh, my God. Social interaction again. It was like, wow. But it was very nice. And the food was incredible. Oh, my gosh. We both got to try deep fried oreos for the first time. And I was like, I've heard all about them, and I honestly didn't know what to expect. It's basically just funnel cake, but there's a molten oreo inside. And yeah, it was delicious. I think it was you, though, that said on this podcast, it was like, it takes years off your life. And I was like, yeah, makes sense.

I can't imagine it's good. I can't imagine it's really boosting you up. And marathon runners are chowing down. I mean, they money. That's a lot of calories.

You never know. But yeah, it was tasty. Didn't go on any rides or doing any the Scam games, but it was just nice walking around and seeing the community.

I remember going to a little fair nearby with an old coworker, like a buddy of mine, because he's from Japan. So he's like, oh, I've never been to an American county fair. I'm interested. A few of us went. He saw all the rides. He's like, oh, it's kind of, like, dangerous. He's like, he saw the games. He's like, this kind of looks like cheap toys and fall apart the second you actually get them, if you actually win. I was like, yeah, that's a county fair.

Yeah.

He was like the disillusioned real quick. I was like, yeah, you nailed it. That's exactly what it is.

Yeah. Over here is the tractors, the best plants. Actually, some of the things that were on display was, I'm guessing younger people's artwork. And some of it was super impressive. I think there was a theme of, like, just like, Asian art, and there was, like, some really cool anime characters and stuff. I was just blown away by some of the talent there. Yeah, it was great.

I'm fine with having younger people be like, a better athlete physically than me, but if you just see, like, artwork, it's like, oh, this was done by a six year old, and it's this fucking gorgeous beast.

Master beast, for sure. It was like that someone did a watercolor painting of Ore in the Blind Forest. And I was like, Can I buy this? I'm like, God, that's how good this was. I was like, talented people around here.

Yeah, it's always as inspiring as it is down. troding is like just seeing like, god, their talent is so young.

Yeah, I wish I had that kind of talent. That's why we're podcasting. But no, that's not too real. This is a video game podcast for anybody new. Let's talk about the games we've been playing. I have a little bit of an update. Maybe I'll start it off with that. I was seeing our browsing the PlayStation Network and there was like a 70% off sale going on. It might still be around. So as you're listening, if you're interested, check this out. But I was looking for a deal that might catch my eye. And what did was the Harry Potter Lego games. I had always wanted to play a Lego game I never really have other than, like, I don't know, what was it back in the 90s, lego island, the one where you're delivering pizzas and that whole thing. So other than that, no real Lego game experience. Maybe I played a demo here and there, but I love the Harry Potter franchise. As everybody knows, I have that other podcast. But that's the thing. It was both games. Each one, I think, is years one through four, and then the other game is years five through seven. Both were bundled together in a collection for $5. I was like, all right, I cannot pass this up. I feel like I got to just play through these games and see how they go. I've heard nothing but praise for the Lego games in particular. So got around to trying it out just a little bit. Haven't gotten too far into it. I'm still on year one, but yeah, it's a lot of fun. It feels very much just like a game where if I don't want to take things too seriously, maybe even a game I could stream and just hang out with people in the chat and then gather all the coins and do all the spells. Yeah, exactly. So it seems pretty fun, but also very kind of like chore based. It's just like do all this stuff that's games where you go, God damn it.

Especially collect the thons. Like if you were doing the older games with the banjo Kazoos and stuff, where it's like, yeah, it's just a lot of running around, finding every little secret, collecting every little currency piece and unlocking all of it. So it's easy to do and some to occupy your brain while you're talking to someone else.

Exactly. It's like you could be doing the dishes, the laundry, and cleaning your house, or you could have collected all the chocolate frogs. It's like, all right, I've gone to all those frogs.

He doesn't have that good platforming.

I still think I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. For $5, I couldn't turn up that, so I'm glad to finally dip my toes into a Lego game. Have you played any Lego games yourself?

I remember actually having the Harry Potter Lego game, but I think it was before the Lego games kind of got an idea of what they wanted to be because they all started following, like, a similar style and writing and sense of humor and stuff between the Star Wars and the end of James the Harry Potter. So I don't know which one was first, but I think one of those set pace what the leg games would be. So they sort of thought me that. So I think that's the one you have. I think the one I had was more of like because it was for the computer back in 2002 or something, right. I think it was more of like a diorama builder, like a virtual Lego set where you could build it and they'd animate and stuff, but you didn't, like, play it, I think, because I remember I remember starting it up, not understanding how to play it and then never touching it again. I remember it was like building the scene, sort of rather than running around playing the movie, but in Lego version.

Oh, wow. I had no idea. That's interesting. Yeah, I'm glad that they're bundling them together. But yeah, that's the thing. I've never played any other Lego game. I've heard the ones that are the best are the Marvel ones from a few people. Yeah, but again, I'm not that big into the superhero universe, so I'd have to watch all the movies. That's the thing. Brent, have you seen all the Marvel movies? Do you recommend going down that rabbit hole?

All of them? No, I think I missed Dr. Strange and then I started missing pretty much all of them since Endgame Happens, I was like, yeah, all right, that's the book end I needed. I'm out.

Right?

Because the Black Widow, I haven't seen that. Honestly, probably the last three that came out. I don't even know what they are anymore. I probably haven't seen those. But, like, Endgame was pretty much like, all right, I'm done. I'm chicken out of this universe. It's already messy as it is.

Fair enough. But yeah, so that's me enjoying a new game. Other than that, still just playing fall guys like crazy, streaming it, having a lot of fun with that. Got some crowns recently on Saturday Night Stream, so that was a blast. But yeah. Oh, wait, that's the thing. It's not even worth bringing up. But I tried doing some mobile games because I was like, I don't know, back in the day we talked about phone games, right. And fuck, I think I already uninstalled them. I don't even remember what they are. But no, I think one was called Adorable Home or something. And I was like, okay, I want to give that a try. It just didn't captivate me. I feel like I also maybe wasn't in the right mindset going into them. I was just like, very just like, let's see if this is going to be entertaining. And it was just like a very tedious click here, click here, click here, click here. Tutorial. And it's just like, oh, God damn it, I want something more than that. But it's like, then again, I am just playing a free mobile game. Exactly. So, yeah, actually, nothing to report there. How about you, Bread?

Maybe there's a reason we stopped talking about mobile games as much. Similar boat playing knockout city still. They did a new update, a new season for that. So there's a new stage where it's like it's like a hollowdeck sort of stage where every round of the stage is a different level.

Nice.

The premise is, like, you're at the movies and you're supposed to be on stage for the movie. And it's like the different scenes of like a movie of like a warehouse of a castle, something else, like a fairy princess one or something. So it changes per round, which is neat.

That is.

It takes a while to get used to. Where am I? Because he kind of memorized the maps. So it's like, oh, this one's throwing me off.

Yeah, definitely.

As well as that, they've introduced a new ball, which is like the soda ball, which is basically just the squid from Mario Kart. Like, it just blinds you, but with Mario Kart, where you can kind of see around the edges and still have an idea where you're going. This one just covers the entire screen with soda and you can't see anything.

Damn, you can't see a thing.

It's nasty. And then, yeah, they got a few new games and stuff. It's cool. It's still buggy as hell. So when me and my friends were playing it one round, my screen was just black. It was just like black. And I had the loading symbol in the corner and that was it. But we were playing. I was in the match, but I just couldn't see anything, right? So I kept just being in a chat with my friends. I kept going to ball form whenever they were nearby so they could use me as a ball.

Oh, that's all right.

Because I had no idea what to do and they could throw for me. You got to trust your teammates because if they mess up, then you're dead and you don't even know it. I was surprised how much I could tell was happening just from sound cues alone. Without seeing it, I could tell when a ball was coming near me and when I could catch it even without seeing it. So that was impressive. But then in that same match, one of the players in the enemy team was straight up just invisible because of a similar glitch.

Oh, wow.

So it was for that one round. Once we were done that round, we could see that other character and then I could see anything. But then that happened again in another match with my other team, with my teammate. This time she couldn't see anything. So once again, I got City. It's cool. It's neat. I'm sure it's a small team working on it. It's real buggy. Still. Every update feels like two steps back with new bugs and glitches and stuff. So it's fun. They got clear, dedicated user base for it. And they're making the challenges harder, I think. So people can't beat them as quickly every week, but it's just tough to play sometimes.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So unless you got like a good group of people you want to play with regularly, I'd be surprised if it retains anyone because of that stuff of like, you know what, fuck this. It just keeps breaking. I'm not going to play this game. It's cool.

They're updating it though, with the new season of exciting stuff.

Yeah. It's clearly have an idea of how they're going to do this and keep this as an ongoing sports game and stuff. I just wish some of the shit was more stable because Lag is not even that big of an issue. Like people from different areas are with shitty or internet glitching out. I haven't seen too much of that every now and then, but just the game itself breaking while I'm playing it is pretty common at this point. Yeah, that's unfortunate.

Totally.

And the other thing I played was a death store. I beat that.

Oh, nice.

The little Isometric top down Zelda game where you're a little rare. Your little crow. With that, I was like on my way to beat it and I was at like 87% completion. I was like, scared. I'm close enough. Let me go for 100. So I just opened up a guide, like a walk through just to tell me wherever the collectible stuff is because there are seeds that you find and then you have to find a pot and plant them. And then with that plant that's health to replenish if you ever lose it.

Right.

So you have to get all 100 of those of those seeds. And then you find like shiny things because you're a crow, you find like shiny things which are just little shrinkage and items around the world. I think there's like 20 of those or so. And some of them help with world building. Some of them actually have purpose. Like there's a rusty garden shovel that will glow if you're in a level where seeds are still available. If you're in an area where there are no seeds, it won't glow. So little stuff like that or one is a picture as a puzzle formula on the back of it. So some of the trinkets actually do stuff. And then when you beat the game, there's like a new game plus where you can get, like, the true ending and do like night mode, like where you change it from day to night and that unlocks a whole bunch of other secrets. Really cool stuff, really great game, decent combat. Like I said, it's tough with fighting because there's no way of healing in combat. You can only heal from those plants after you find them running around, right? So I went around doing the completion, doing 100%. I got all the health and power upgrades or energy upgrades, and there's only two more than from when you start. You start the game with four of each health and energy and then you can get up to six and that's it. So in every combat encounter, you can't get hit more than four or six times at most. So it's kind of brutal in that regard, but none of the ball. I was able to beat it all and without choosing it. Really cool stylized style game, good mechanics, cool world, all that stuff. My biggest complaint is they're not clear with a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things they just don't tell you. Some of it is secrets and I can understand, but not revealing this, some of it just feels like basic mechanics that should very much be addressed. Like the trinkets that could actually be used in the world. If you, like, look at the trinket and read the description, you might be able to figure it out. But it's never clear. There's no obvious example of like, hey, this trinket in your inventory can pay off in the real world, right? Those two examples I gave you of the map and the shovel trial, those are the only two, only times that happens. So there's never one where it's like, oh, we've established this can be used in the real world earlier in the game. Another thing is there are manhole covers around the world and if you walk above them and slam down, you'll do like a drop down attack and you can shoot through the manhole covers, like in Mario and run around underneath the sewers and then jump up somewhere else in another Manhole. That's never introduced in the game. They'd never tell you that.

You just get lucky or don't.

I found out because I was watching another streamer and she did it and she's like, she was playing new Game Plus. She's like, I never knew that was an option. So you can beat the game without doing it. It's not required to find story progression behind it, right? So she was able to be the game and it figured out in the Game Plus. I was like, oh, shit, I'm still playing it. I didn't know that. But to get all the secrets, to get 100% of the stuff, you do need to know how to do that. And I feel like that's really bad to miss, even if you just did it once somewhere for either a store progressive item or just a checkpoint, or made it very clear of, like, this is how you open the manhole covers. Here's how you travel through the sewers. There might be secrets in here sometimes because that's never intrudes at any point in the game. I feel like there's a big oversight of, like, how would we ever know this design?

I feel like even if they're arguing, like, oh, we want to be mysterious, and the player has to figure that out, then put it in, like, a deep menu where it's like, I pull up the menu, it's like, what are the actual controls? And you don't know, sift through and be like, oh, I can't actually do that. I wouldn't have known unless I opened up this menu and read this shit.

Yeah, like, if they had a very narrow alley and it came to a dead end and at the end of it, it was, like, alleged with the manual.

That's perfect. Yeah.

But then if they put, like, an enemy on there, that way it teaches you, hey, if you do the drop down attack from above, it'll go through the manhole cover and you'll be in the sewers. Like a way that forces you to do it at least once in the game. That way you know it's possible because unless I was watching that streamer, I would never have known that's how you did it. So I was like, oh, there's a lot of stuff in there. So what else is another example for the final boss? It's not huge spoiler for anyone to worry about the game. For the final boss, they have one move where they slow you down and you're not fast and you can't roll, which is what you would do to dodge stuff when you're slowed down. And then while you're slowed down, they'll just jump up and then slam down on you and hit you. And it got me every single fucking time. And like I said, you can only get hit six times at most. So if the file boss did that six times, I was dead every time. I couldn't avoid it, right? Anyway, there was no way to roll out of it. You could be faster than there's, no quick dodge or anything. So it's just so infuriating every fucking time and looking it up. I'm like, the strategy guys. Don't say anything about this specific move, like the walk throughs and stuff. I was like, there's got to be a strategy. I just don't know what it is. Once again, watching a playthrough of it, I saw if you try to roll while you're slowed, the slow down symbol on you kind of expands and then shrinks back down. If you spam the roll move, the symbol goes bigger, bigger, bigger, and then it'll pop and you can get rid of it yourself.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

But once again, that's never told to you there was a previous section of that boss fight where it teaches you the individual mechanics of the boss fight and then the final fight, the boss uses them all at once. I was able to just run out of the way of his attacks before when he did the slowdown attack because it wasn't as honed in on me, it wasn't as targeted. So I never needed to roll out of the way like mash the roll bunt to break the slow spell before, right? So that was another one where it's like, you didn't need to do that to get to this point. So I never taught you how to do that. And once I knew that, I beat the boss immediately on my first try after learning that, the rest of the fight was easy enough. But that one move kept killing me over and over. And they never taught you how to break out of it. So there's stuff like that where it's like I feel like the onus is kind of on you to tell the players what can and can't be done in this game. Because that one, for instance, is so situational. You never have another enemy at any point in the game do that to you. Or like I said, I could always avoid the attached valve slowed down before then, right?

Just like a little bit of text on the screen that comes up and goes mashax or something. It's just like, I don't know, something.

Yeah, because it wasn't clear of like, oh, if I did it, the simply gets bigger. It's like, oh, I keep doing it, it keeps getting bigger, and it will eventually break. That's not clear to me. I did it a few times to go, oh, I guess I can't roll. And then I stopped doing it forever. So it's a great game. I do recommend it. It's $20. It's a fun little Zelda esque Metrovania Isometric, but there are a few instances where I'm like, I'm pulling up a walk through, I'm pulling up a guide, I don't give a shit, and I'm figuring this out. So that's kind of why I do like the last stuff and the collectible stuff in the game. The true secret ending.

I'm sure I'm going to be doing that with the Lego Harry Potter shit for sure.

Because at a certain point, it's like, oh yeah, I guess I could have figured this out if I played around with it for like ten more minutes or something. And then there's so many other ones where it's like, no, I would never have found this. And I'm not afraid to admit I would not have thought of this or I just didn't care enough about this, right? That's why I walk through and guides are perfect for that. I'm just like, fuck it. I'm not going to spend another 20 hours in this game trying to find the one seed I missed and the one level because it's a Metro venue where you unlock something, you go back to previous areas to unlock new things with your new abilities. The maps are kind of decently sized, but there's no real easy way to travel around. And it's kind of a bitch. So one of them is like, I went through a full area, I found the sear and I got to the end. You needed this NPC companion with. You ran back at this NPC companion. Got him. I couldn't quit travel with him. So I had to run through the three different worlds that were all connected to get back to that place I was just at and go through the whole maze of the puzzle again with that companion. I was like, this sucked. This is just very long. So there are a few annoyances and stuff like that. But I'd say overall easy. Like 80 out of 100 game.

Nice.

B plus a minus maybe. So real fun, real good game. The boss fights were boss fights were a little easy. Some were decently, challenging and some were just like big minions out in the world. They weren't. There were like a mini boss, maybe. The mini bosses seem to be harder than the bosses typically, but interesting. Yeah, it's real fun game. It's not a ton of high stress, but like like I said, those secrets are just like, fuck it, let me just find out where this thing is. Because I had like I probably had like 18 out of the 20 shiny items by the end of it. So I was just like, escrow, let me just find these, like last few. But it's a neat little story. Fun little game that I recommend.

Very cool. Yeah, I wouldn't feel bad about using walk throughs either. I feel like it's all about having fun and it's better than getting frustrated and turning the game off and be like, I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do. I don't know. It's kind of like the equivalent of painting by numbers. It's like, I can do this, but.

I need I could paint on my own without the numbers. But boy, howdy do I not care enough to do that?

Gaming by numbers. There we go.

Because I mean, before stuff like that, secrets. Like I remember on Xbox, the original Xbox, you would get scores based on like the achievements you got and stuff. So I remember people were like really achievement hunting back then because they're like, oh, it affects your gamer score. But on stuff like this, I think I have all the achievements in Dust Store except for three, which in order to get those, I'd have to replay the whole game, which I don't really care to do. So I'm not going to like restart the game just to get those three achievements. But all the secrets in the game I got because they were so close to it already. But yeah, it doesn't matter. Especially for a single player. Game if someone cheats and uses a walk through to find all these secrets of a collective on because some of them are cryptic and Vegas fuck. And I'm not ashamed to admit I wouldn't figure it out, but I still wanted to see what the true ending was, which any kind of spoiler for Death Sword. There's a true ending and like, I don't know, it's just another ending. It wasn't like, now I understand the game.

Your mind wasn't blown.

Yeah, you honestly could take the true ending out and it would still be perfect sense. If not maybe a little more sense. The true ending kind of confuses shit more. What? But I don't know, maybe they're setting up sequels or something.

Probably.

Recommend it.

Nice. Let's see. Is there anything going on in the news we might want to talk about before wrapping this episode up? This might be a shorter one. I'm trying to think, what was it that I saw recently? It wasn't video game related. It was actually more tabletop related. So I feel like it might be up your alley since you've been playing a lot more DND and stuff lately, but a former coworker sent me this in a Facebook message. It's a game called and it's actually on itch IO. It's called icon. It's a play test by Massive Press. So I'm going to spell this for anybody that might be interested. In case you're not getting this link from our show notes, but M-A-S-S-I-F-P-R-E-S-S-H Ioikon the word icon. And man, this game looks cool. I remember the reason they reached out to me was they said, I saw on a reddit thread somewhere. They were like, I wasn't sure I would like it. And then I saw that a gun slinger paladin can summon an Astral Guardian and ricochet bullets off of it. I'm like, okay, that sounds interesting enough. And yeah, the artwork has a very strong square enix vibe, the whole visual design, but man, this game looks very interesting for all you DND nerds out there, but it's from the co creator of Lancer and the creator of Kill 6 Billion Demons. I'm unfamiliar with both, unfortunately. But, yeah, a new mythic fantasy role playing game takes the stage. And it looks pretty neat. I definitely recommend you guys checking it out artwork. Oh, my God. So good. These characters look ridiculous. Yeah, I love the cat oh, my God smell coming out of his mouth or something.

Mystic cat looking figure. Yeah, this looks cool. Yeah, he got, like a teeth flank paladin sort of looking at the top kind of, but it's funny for anyone who's not familiar, teethlings are, like, demon characters. Like, half demons.

Yes.

And the books, officially, the book always says, like, they could be any skin tone or red, like any variations of those colors, and almost everyone just like, hey, what if this tie floor is fucking. Blue or purple or green or any other color the book says they're not, and it's pretty widely accepted. Yeah, it doesn't matter, just do whatever. So when I see a skin tone tiefling, I always kind of get thrown off like, what the fuck? That's what they're supposed to be. But I'm just like every time.

Yeah, no, it also just kind of blends in with their horns there, so it's just like, oh, gosh, is that skinned horns?

Yeah, there's no separation like hellboy or.

Anything, but it reads you take the role of an icon, a larger than life hero caught between the turning of two ages. Long ago, the cruel and prosperous arkan empire ruled the land until it fell to the doom. Over time, the land healed and the idyllic pastoral green age came to pass. Now, however, that peace is threatened by the coming of the churning age. With dungeons literally erupting from the earth and monsters pouring out of its great blights can increasingly turn their hearts to plundering their depths for riches and power and their hands to their sword hilts. Will you have the strength to resist this age? Or will you claim it's terrible power for yourself? So? Yeah. I don't know. Sounds interesting enough. Check it out. If you're a tabletop fan, it's currently a free play test for a future project.

Interesting.

Yeah. Typically what we talked about on the.

Show, but hey, who are you telling.

Us how to do? I'm kidding.

Yeah. And if you do the play test stuff, you can be that small. Guyshole, that says back when they were doing the beta of this, this is a lot better.

Exactly. They had skin colored tee flings now.

Back in my day. Yeah, that's neat.

Yeah. And another show topic I have, which isn't really super gaming related, but it's twitch related. This twitch streamer. Ray naves jr. I hope I'm not mispronouncing the name naveas. They basically were doing some pokemon unboxings and the one pack they opened had five wheels in a row. I think that is an actual record because people say, I think there's five or six commons per pack and it's just like impossible to draw more than that number in a row. And I'm just like, man, that's just unheard of. And his reaction was priceless. Yeah, if you haven't seen it, just google that. Man draws five wheedles in a row.

God, it had to be weird. It could have been something useful.

No? Yeah, super upsetting.

Also playing a lot of pokemon unites still.

Oh, nice. How's that going?

Good. It's real hit or miss. I got buddies who are doing the ranked play, so it's like you go from rank, which is like beginner, to great rank, to expert rank, to veteran rank, to master rank. And I got some buddies of mine who are already an expert in veteran rank and I don't know. Damn, because if you win around, you go up a point in your rank. If you lose around you go down a point in your rank. I don't know how they're consistently winning matches because anytime I joined with random people, it's a crapshoot of like, hey, this team is pretty good and knows how to play this game and hey, this team is actual toddlers who have no idea how they got here and are so bad at this game, right? And it's fine for free for casual playwater, but ranked I'm in. What is it? It's great. So it's beginner and great. So like the second rank. It's the second rank. You at least had to win a few. You have to understand how to play to get here. I'm not saying you have to be good, but you have to at least understand how the game works. And I still see people just running head first into like four enemies and dying and then doing it over and over and over again. It's like what's happening? So I don't know how you win consecutively in that game, but something domaining Mr. Mime, though not as much, I got a few other ones, but because the way I play Mr. Mime, he is still support but he's mostly attack with the guard swap psychic combo because he's mostly just doing the damage. So it's still good. But then there's other people like Cinese which is the fire bunny from Sword and Shield spinal form. He's just broken and you genuinely feel like you're bullying people when you play as him because it's so busted. He has so much damage and he's so far range or gang guard. I saw a video of a gang guard, one gang guard taking on four other people on the enemy team by itself and winning and it's just like, oh, that's genuinely broken, that's busted as fuck. So there is some janky unbalancing elements to it. Talking to a friend of mine that plays league legends all the time. That's kind of the nature of MOBA. It never is balanced. There's always going to be someone who's op and someone had gotten nerfed to hell and is useless now and then. I have seen people who are like a shitty gang or like a bad snorlax. But genuinely some of the Pokemon are easier and better to play than others. But they just added a guardovar. It's the newest addition. Okay, but there was no big song and dance. Like we're revealing a new champion. So it seems like they might just be casually dropping new Pokemon like left and right.

Oh yeah, they could do a shit load.

Yeah, you got finally 890 some Pokemon to choose from. One downside is you can get cosmetics, which are fine because you have to pay real money to get them, but it's just cosmetic with the items you can have. You can have held items up to three of them and you can swap them out for what's your better build. The downside is you can pay money to get the material to upgrade those items and the more you upgrade, the stronger they get. So there is kind of a pay to win element of you can buy all of the heroes if you want. So you always have always have a Pokemon to use in a good situation. But you can also buy held items and upgrade all of them to their max and that will have in game results.

Right.

So it's a kind of pay to win in that element. And some people are starting noticing like, hey, this game guard touched me briefly and took out three fourths of my health bar. What the hell? And it's because these items are maxed out and built for that exact build. So kind of tough in that regard. Still fun. It's still early on, though. But I wouldn't be surprised if with that pay to win element, if it kind of gets beyond unbalanced. So it becomes unplayable unless you also pay to win.

Yeah. Hopefully everyone just refuses to pay and it just remains a normal game.

No, not happening.

God damn it. Yeah, but that's the thing. I never was interested in mobile before. Now that they're just dropping Pokemon in there, it's like, you almost got me. I don't know. Yeah, but I don't think I'm going to be playing this.

I had a vague passing interest. I played league in high school and college for a hot minute and seeing some other people playing it who are good at wow, it's pretty interesting, but Pokemon is kind of there. It's kind of like, yeah, this is fun, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I just drop it at some point and never go back.

Sure.

Because it is so, like I said, a crapshoot of like, hey, I'm doing really well. Too bad the other four players on my team are garbage. And we lost a big screenshot of some of the most polarizing scores. I think the highest I ever got was my team got like 931 points and the enemy team had like 75. So there are matches like that where it's just like, good Christ. It was a blowout.

Yeah.

And then another match I played last night, we won by literally two points. So it's impressive how close you can get and how one signed it to give you two at the same time.

Super cool.

Good game for now. We'll see how it goes. It is a mobile.

Yeah, it is brand new, so we'll.

See what else is going on. We got a few was it four minutes of gameplay trailer for Stray, that cat game?

Oh, yes.

Oh, my goodness.

I don't think I got around to watching this gameplay is it cool?

It's neat. I mean, you're playing as a cat, you're just like interacting with stuff and walk around. It didn't seem like much, but it's like there's robots all over the place and stuff, so it is a weird setting, but gameplay wise it's like, yeah, you're playing as a cat. I don't know what you expect.

Fuck yeah.

I can't say the gameplay is compelling, but the world certainly is.

Yeah. No, I'd know a perfect streamer that would enjoy playing this game on their stream. I am Mosho the Cat rapper.

There you go. What else is going on? The team from Hyper Light Drifter is making a new game called Solar Ash and very much has Hyper Late Drifter vibes to it. So anyone who is looking for more of that game, keep your eyes out on this one. It's 3D. So hyper late drifter was top down. 2d this is going to be three D. Oh, wow.

Now I'm super excited for this because the visual style of Hyper Light Drifter was interesting for a 2D style. But man, for that team to go now to can't wait to see what Solar Ash looks like.

It looks real cool. I never got around to hyper light drifter. I think it came out where people were like, oh, this game is super challenging and really hard to get the pinpoint percent. I was like, that sounds like a lot of work on my time. I don't need that right now. I think I was in college, I was like, I'm stressed enough, but visually, yeah, they look amazing. So seeing this in the 3D space is really cool.

Oh, yeah. Looking at the trailer now. Wow.

Yeah, that's stunning. Keep an eye out. Stylized action platformer coming out. PC, PS four and PS five. But I don't think they in October actually. There you go. Sooner than I thought.

Hell yeah.

In order to avoid ending on a bummer, I'll go with this one, actually. So all the news going on with Activision of Blizzard. There was a protest of Blizzard where people were trying to boycott their products during the day. And all the employees came out and did a walk out for Blizzard and activision in their studios. Good, because all this horrid harassment shit is coming out and it just keeps coming out. There's a lot of stories and a lot of people. Executives in Blizzard had a Bill Cosby suite, which, whether you named it before all the allegations and charges came out about Bill Cosby, the fact that they kept it around after that also speaks a lot. Yes, but also Blizzard has been seen hiring a law firm that is quite notorious for busting unions. So this is a law firm, I think, that worked against Amazon to break up the people that were trying to organize a union for Amazon workers. This is a law firm that is what's the word, shitty. Super shitty. Known for being a real shit peace company. Because this is kind of the bread and butter for breaking up unions. And people are seeing like, hey, that's kind of interesting that Blizzard is worried about their employees unionizing and trying to get some of their employer rights back instead of dealing with these horrid sexual harassment claims. You think they would just fire the people that were being accused of being sexual harassers and assaulters. But instead Blizzard is focusing on unions. Interesting. That's interesting. They're more concerned with that deflecting. Yeah. And kind of hoping that people will notice with one big news story going on, you're hoping you could do with some other shit and get away with it. Good to see where Blizzard's money is at right now.

Yeah.

And then on a less shitty note, the only Blizzard game I actively played was Overwatch, and I haven't touched it in years. So easy enough for me to boycott it.

Yeah, same here. I was only ever really playing the Diablo games and even that was very loose.

Yeah, but so we don't end on a bummer. We got good news. Outer wilds. DLC got announced. All right, so that's coming out September. It's called Echoes of the Eye and talked about it nausea before Outer Wild. Fucking phenomenal game. It's so cool. An amazing space exploration game.

Yeah, I love the concept.

Yeah, it's like stylized and you just go around in a small solar system. It kind of takes a bit to load the beginning, but it's because it's loading the entire solar system every time it doesn't load in the world as you get closer to it. There's not like progressive loading. It loads it all at once. So it's cool because that just allows you to go anywhere at any time. And it's just so fun for exploring. And a lot of the news about the DLC looks like you see the sun in the center of the solar system being eclipsed by something and kind of like seems like darkness is a big theme of it, of not as much light and finding a secret that maybe you didn't find. In Outer Wilds. There is a story to it. There is kind of like a main plot to it so it doesn't fully wrap everything up. So it looks like this was intentional, that they were always going to do this eventually. So it's cool to see them expanding on it after it's been so long. But it's also very cryptic of like, we'll tell you this is the first and only expansion for Outer Wilds and you're going to have to get used to the darkness. And we'll leave it as vague as that. They're kind of intentionally being like, no, we don't want to tell you anything. If you like Outer Wilds, you'll want to play more of it.

God damn it. I want Mickey Mouse to pop out of nowhere. Just like Kingdom Hearts tie in. No, I'm drawing.

It is really fun because it is this kind of got ahead of the very big trend I've been noticing now of just the live, die, repeat sort of genre of stuff. Now for an anime fan, there's ReZero, which got very popular, that premise of a show. There's a few other ones that come out since there's the Tom Cruise movie of Edge of Tomorrow, which got rebranded as Lived, I repeat, because that was a catchier title for everyone. But there's like four TV shows that are doing this now of the premise of some new dies and God has to learn his mistakes and he relives the same day over and over again. Like crowntalk day.

Yeah.

So it's kind of a weird trend of like I'm seeing that a lot in Sci-Fi and stuff now. Right now it's definitely exhausted at this point, but I remember Outer Wilds kind of being one of the earlier ones to do that premise. And that's not a big spoiler. That happens really early on.

Yeah, it's the premise, pretty much.

But it was fun watching. I saw another streamer finally get around to it. Adelaide was on the recommended list for years and they finally got around to it. And it was funny seeing the different reaction to the space exploration because the whole time I was like, oh, wow, this is cool. And even though I couldn't handle the ship most of the time, control wise, I was still having fun bouncing around and being like, I drifted into the sun by mistake. I turned too close. And then seeing the streamer play it and kind of losing our mind, freaking out, like, this is too stressful. I don't know what's happening. The biggest thing is like, momentum in space. If you're flying towards a planet and miss it, it's not a car. You can't just stop, turn around and go back. The momentum will carry you for a good long while until you can use your momentum, go to the other trajectory, slow it down and then turn around. It's funny seeing them, like, miss a planet and then just collide into another planet behind it because the speed was too high and she just flew past it. Or on the one planet. Like she landed the ship to repair. As meteorites were hitting the planet. She was kind of getting freaked out, like, oh God, am I going to hit one of these? And then the ground just collapses out from under her because it's like a dying planet where it's hollowed out from the inside. There's a black hole inside of the core of the planet, so it just absorbs the planet every rotation. It's crazy. Adorable is fucking nuts. It's just really cool. That's another one where I had a walkthrough. I was just like, Fuck it, I'm sick of these secrets. I'm too dumb to figure these out on my own. Give me a walkthrough.

Fair enough.

I'm happier for it. I'm like, I'm glad I solved the secrets, but no, I never would have done that on my own. So cryptic and vague puzzles. But God, that's a fun exploration game. Especially if you want space, like goofy, stylized sort of space hell yeah. You're in, like, a wooden ship. So yeah, it's fun. It's really cool.

Cool.

Excited for more DLC.

I know you wanted to end on a positive or not a negative note, but I'm going to bring it back to negative. No, it's also kind of related because we're in space and stuff, but rapper Lil Uzi Vert is trying to buy a planet larger than Jupiter. And I'm thinking to myself, that's depressing because first and foremost, couldn't that money be spent on something better? Second of all, who are you buying this planet from? And if it's a gas planet like Jupiter, you can't even go land on it. What's the point of this purchase, little Oozy Vert?

I'll sell them a planet. Yeah, I got six planets I can sell them.

Exactly. That sounds like the easiest scam in the world. It's like, yeah, that's your planet. Just give me whatever you are thinking it costs.

I mean, people are buying stars for a hot minute back a few years ago. Oh, yeah, for your birthday, I bought a star for you up there. That's your star. It's like, cool, prove it. Who did you buy this from?

Exactly?

Can I go to that star? No. Is it real? Maybe not. Maybe it's millions of light years away. By the time the light gets to us, it's already destroyed.

I purchased the sun and named it Zunkey. Now, all of you must refer to it as such.

Yeah. How do you enforce that rule? So I don't even know who a little oozy for it is low on me either.

I was going to say, could you name a single song of his? I was hoping you could because I'm so out of touch.

Oh, God. I was driving somewhere the other day, and there's the lineup for Lola Paluza, and I knew two of the 30 musicians they named. I was like, fuck, I'm old.

Yeah. A name like Will Uzi Vert, though, makes me think of someone skateboarding with a machine gun. So that's pretty cool. Nice. Anyway, we can wrap this episode up. Let's do some plugs. Brandon, you have another podcast. Tell our listeners about it.

Another podcast called Rweeb Theory, where we watch three episodes of an anime or a movie and give a recap of it with our opinions and takes on it. It's usually a good way of just getting a sampler pack of anime, being like, yeah, I'm a little interested. Let me hear what this show is about before I commit to watching it. Recently we did Blood Blockade Battlefront, which was a goddamn nightmare. We did Fair Retail, I think on the most recent episode, which I'll apologize up front right now about my energy on that episode, it got weird. I have no excuse for it, but I was punchy that day. I don't know why shit happens. Fairytales got real weird. Like, the show is fine. It's a standard showing. You have already watched it if you thought you would be interested in it. But I don't know. Recapping that made me a fucking lunatic. It just got weird. But, yeah, you find me there.

Sweet and listener, if you like our show, give us a, like, fall subscribe we're findable at all the places at Abt Silence. Specifically, Twitch Tvtsilence is where I'm streaming a lot of games. When I say a lot, mainly Fall guys. But you never know, you might Lego Harry Potter or some Pokemon sword and stuff. We'll see. But other than that, I also have a record label, Missed Out Records.com, to see what vinyl and cassettes are available for sale over there. Got some new records in, so definitely check that out. And the band that does our music is a band called Kind Of All Right. Head over to kind of all right bandcamp.com for more music from them. But thanks for listening, guys. We'll be back next week. See you.

See you. You.