ABTS-414: Birds With Swords

Subscribe hey, 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 cohost, Brendan McCullough. How's it going, Brad?

It's going all right. It's it's cooling off a little out here in La. Instead of 97 degrees, it's 94 degrees. It's real nice.

It's not.

It's still real balls hot.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I was gonna say oh, you're lying to me.

Yes, I'm a liar. That's why I'm in La.

GoDaddy mean, that makes sense.

It's just been like I think in early June, it was like it's a bit of heat wave. We're going up to like 100. And almost all of July has been like 98 degrees as a high, like the entire month. I was like, man, this sucks.

God, wasn't there a boy band called 98 Degrees?

Oh, there was.

Yeah.

And then the one guy married Jessica Simpson.

Did he really?

Oh, great.

Oh my God. And they had a TV show. My sister was a big fan of it.

It's one of those things where it's like, why is this the show? And why are people, like, fanatical for it? But like, some people were really into it.

She was. She had the DVDs and everything.

Wow.

I don't know. And she has a picture where she met her. I'm like, that's fun. But yeah, that's how this episode is starting.

Did you expect Coherent thought by now?

Yeah, I know. I never know what to expect when we hit record. But that's the thing. This is a video game podcast for anybody new. There is some pretty cool stuff going on. Brendan, do you want to maybe start this one off? Is there anything jumping out at you before we get to the show? Topics and stuff?

Biggest thing for me I'll say it's for me because I don't know anyone else who's actually played this game personally, but there's making of the Spirit Fairer documentary out about game. Spirit Fairer. And they premiered it on the Escapist YouTube channel, which I believe the Escapist helped produce it. Produce it and publish it. So they're the ones, like hosting it. But yeah, it's about like an hour long documentary about the video game Spearfare. And it's much like the video game, it's very good, and I very much enjoyed watching it. So anyone who was curious about Spearfare or wanted to see how stuff went on behind the scenes, highly encouraged watching it. It's really good. And God damn it, that game is very good. And an emotional kick to the nads.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it was really cool singing because I remember playing it, they say in the credits, like, Odd, this character was kind of inspired by this person in my life where I said how the developers use people they knew as the spirits in the game. And it was cool seeing the people that made those characters and talk about like, Odd, this person was based off my uncle, who was really, like, really fighted for union rights and worked with his coworkers a ton and saw him all his family is really good. He was a great, generous guy. He loved cooking, he was a hard worker, and then he just disappeared out of my life one day and I've never really gotten closure. It's like, oh, man. Yeah, so it's cool being able to put a face to, like, the developers and stuff. And yeah. Thunder Loaded Studios. They made Johten spearfare thundered like three three games. Ten out of ten. They're all fantastic games. Yoton is a boss. Rush sundered is like a platform or castlevania or metrovania.

Yeah, I think we covered all of them over the course of this podcast. Definitely yton comes to mind.

I played them all and they're all fantastic. I genuinely believe every game they've made is, if not perfect, like, way up there. So small studio that's just killing it every time they make something. And it's really cool seeing them get their recognition, I think.

Yeah, definitely. This is definitely deserving of a documentary, for sure. That's so cool. I like to imagine this story going untold. I'm glad they covered this stuff.

Yeah, especially with a game like this, where there is so much, like, emotional weight to it, especially with the person investment into it. It's great hearing more about it rather than Limbo or it's like, hey, Limbo is a great game. Not knocking that, but it's like I can't imagine there's a ton of personal investment of the developer's history in the game, and Spirit Fair has that, like, extra layer of it and stuff. And there's still more content being put out for Spearfare DLC currently. And I think there's two more spirits they're making for it. So I'll probably go back to it once all of it's out. It's still a phenomenal game, and I definitely highly recommend anyone playing it. It's great for people who aren't really into video games that much because there's no pressure, there's no time limits, there's no rush. It's really like the platforming can kind of get a little tricky, but even the platforming is not essential to the plot. It's more of, like, for extra bonus stuff. If you want to do all the platforming puzzles to get this bonus secret thing, you can. But if you want to just play the story, there's not really that much challenge to it, right? But it's just a very chill, grounded, relaxing game and it's great seeing more information about it. Cool.

Yeah, that's awesome. Good thing to shout that out. Well, as far as the games we've been playing, I guess I'll start off with Me because it's not too much, but I did do the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 any percent speedrun Challenge for my Twitch Channel the other day. And that went very well, surprisingly. I remember when I first started out, I was thinking to myself, it's like my goal is to be under 5 hours. It would be even cooler to be under four. And I was thinking, that's really unrealistic. But we'll see. Turns out I was under four. My end time was 3 hours and 43 minutes. And I was like, damn, I'm really happy with that. So, yeah, it went really smoothly. There was a few hang ups, of course, things that I was expecting to get stuck on, but not too long. I guess it was riku one or not riku one, riku two and fuck, what was the anthem? Two. I was getting hung up on and it was just like, God damn it. But I was having a lot of fun. And the people in Chat were very encouraging. There were like, at the one moment, oh my God, the way the stream started too. There's a there's two or three, I think three or like two and a half really unsippable cutscenes that you can't do anything about. One of them being the very opening of the game. And during that, my one viewer nostalgia collectible decided to spend the thousand bits to play the five minute long clip of Donald Duck singing simple and Clean. And what was interesting is it actually I muted the game audio. Yeah, I muted the game audio for the viewers, but I was seeing how it synced up and it was pretty spot on. I was like, blown away. And it was just a really bizarre experience. That's how we started the speedrun with Donald singing it instead. And most of my viewers are used to that at this point because it's just like a common occurrence at this point because they're crazy. But yeah, it was really fun. And I think at one point someone also did do the goofy singing Evanescence Bring Me to Life. And I was like, God damn it, we don't need this either. And it was insane trying to focus during both of those moments because it's like, I'm trying to not fuck anything up here. But no, it was a lot of fun. And I overall look back on it as a success and never doing that again. But I can say I did it.

You checked it out. Was there one world or level that was, like, particularly like, God damn it. When you the Pooh, you got to speed this up a little faster because I know the bosses always suck.

I think most people would instant think of, like, Monstro the whale and stuff. But no, honestly, that was a breeze. I flew through that. I'm trying to think where I struggled the most. Let's see. You know what it is, honestly, I skip Little Mermaid and the Coliseum in my run. Since it's any percent. There's a couple of worlds that I skip. Those two specifically, the world that bothers me the most is the most challenging time sync, in my opinion, is agriba because some of the bosses specifically fuck what's his name jafar, jafar. The first time you face him before he becomes a genie, there's this moment where he can just fly across the map anywhere he wants. And as a speedrunner, it's so infuriating. I've seen a few strats where you can kind of just lock him down and just get him in the loop where he doesn't go anywhere. But I'm not that skilled yet, so I was just like, I'm just going to have to take him out the long way. And boy, it's so frustrating because he will literally talk to you, be like, as you're approaching him on this one platform. As you get there, he flies to the opposite side of the mat and he goes over here. And I'm like, bitch, I'm trying to beat you as quick as possible, and you're making this like, a really long accord. So, yeah, that is frustrating. And then just like, some of the navigation in that area too. It's like, oh, go here, unlock this thing, go to Aladdin's house, trigger this. And then once you get to the Cave of Wonders, it's like, oh, you got to navigate through these areas. I have it pretty down pat through the back of my hand, but for anybody getting into it, I could see that being very daunting. So, yeah, Agrabah is a bitch. I don't think Halloween Town is too bad because it's very much just back and forth between Finkelstein's Lab and the cemetery. You go like, you do a couple of fetch quests, and then the most challenging thing is actually well, it's not challenging, but it's a pain in the Dick Oogie Boogie fight. That one sucks because that's another RNG that just takes up a lot of time, and he trolls you the whole time. And then after that, you have to take out these orbs throughout the house. Like, you're kind of destroying the entire Oogie Boogie's manner. And there is, like, a strategic way to go up the house in order to take them all out at once. And if you know that, it's not that bad. But yeah, again, it's definitely challenging. And it was daunting. I remember when I just first said it in passing, like, kingdom Hearts speedrun. That sounds fun, right? And it's like, oh, wait, what does that all entail? And it's like, Well, I did it, and it was really not a bad run, all things considered. Even when I looked it up on how long to Beat.com, it was like, oh, like rushed 17 hours or something. I was like, what? I guess. And that's like, obviously people aren't skipping cutscenes and everything, but like, even still, something felt wrong about that, maybe. I don't know.

I think that's like 100% sort of because how long to beat is like, how long to beat and get all the collectibles and do all the bonus stuff. It doesn't really account for speed runs in particular.

Yeah, I wish they should add that too, as a little category or something.

But yeah, I'm sure there's a speed run, like website specifically dedicated to speed runs.

Yeah, I think I saw one on YouTube somewhere. Someone was like 2 hours and ten minutes for Kingdom Hearts or something. I'm like, God, how just actually how.

Some people find it. We're talking about those little small incremental things where it's like, oh, this saved me like half a second. They add up. And you got to do all of them.

Perfectly efficient.

Yeah. And it eventually adds up and will shave like ten whole seconds off your time. Time.

Yes, definitely. And there was a few of those that I opted out of. Like I didn't even fuck with dumbo. This summoned because there's a few areas you can use him to fly to different areas. And I'm like, no, I'm just going to go the long way because I'm going to fuck it up.

You risk spending more time if he messes up.

Exactly, for sure. But yeah. So I'm considering that a success. And it was a lot of fun. We'll see if I ever attempt another speed run before. That. All I ever really fucked around with with speed runs was Mario 64. Yeah. So that was a fun little experience. And it was all thanks to the twitch community I have. So thanks to you guys.

Nice.

Yeah.

Was it really different playing more modern game with King Martin like Mario 64 or you speed run by Abusing the Glitches and like yeah, it was just.

Weird playing an RPG in general because it's like, oh, and now I have like I have to go to this shop and sell this item and buy that item. There's honestly very little shopping, which was surprising considering how RPGs are. But then the other thing was just like menu management of just like I got to quickly go through the menu. That's another thing with the gummy ship. It's like I had to delete my gummy ship entirely to remove all armor because the armor actually slows you down. And then you just put down just a cockpit, just an engine, and maybe a gun if you're feeling spicy. Honestly, by the end of the game you're going to need the gun. But early on you could just dodge shit. But yeah. And as a Kingdom Hearts player, I never fucked with a gummy ship menu ever. I would just go default the entire game because I'm like, this isn't for me. It's like perfect for people that love customizing things. In fact, some people on Chat were like, oh, growing up, my friends were all about having the most decked out gummy ships and shit. I'm like, man, makes me feel like I missed out on something. Fuck, I should have just done that. I don't know exactly. It's just like a goofy little if you want that, it's there for you. But yeah, it's funny how you do benefit from speed if you get rid of all the armor and start with just a cockpit and an engine. So I was like, all right, I'm going to do that for the run. And it did seem to work. So yeah, all in all had fun.

Nice. I mean, that's what matters. But yeah. King of Hearts. Yeah, that's a game to do it for.

Exactly. I have no other reason to play that ever again. But how about you, Brent?

You'll get wistfully nostalgic for it and just play through all of them all over again?

No, you know what? I'll do. I think I saw you Song, former guest of the podcast. He's also a streamer. He was playing, I think, a level one run of kingdom hearts where it's just like you never level up past level one and try to beat the game. And he was on riku fight one or riku fight two. And I'm just like thinking to myself how.

I remember a buddy of mine did that back with Fable, the original Fable, back on the original Xbox. Because me and my friends got really into that game series for a while. And he beat all of Fable with just the stick you get as a kid in the tutorial area. That just pisses me off how he still had magic, I think because some boss fights require ranged weapons, right? So he had like chain lightning but like a level one or something as minimal as he could. And he beat the boss of the game. Jack of blades.

Yeah, that's it.

With just a stick. I'm just like, why dude?

You know that fight had to take like 3 hours of just like yeah, hacking away of the the health of it and just like dodging. And even if you have the skill.

To do it, the weapons aren't meant to do that. Like the stick does one damage or something. Like it does so little damage you have to hit them like a thousand times. So yeah, it's just the patience to do it. I'm just like, no man.

Never in a million years. Oh my god, that's Fable is great.

I don't have the patience for it to play that much though.

But that's the thing, there's no real achievement for that other than just bragging.

Right. And you can't prove it. So you could easily just be lying.

True. That's how I beat Dark Cloud. Everybody with the dagger.

Could my friend have actually done that? Sure, possibly. I'm sure it's possible to do that. I don't know why the hell you would though. Yeah, I'm sure it's possible.

Much easier to lie.

Yeah. There you go.

Anyway. But yeah, that's really all I've been playing. I've been playing some fall guys, but honestly been fucking up. Haven't been getting crowns. The new season is lit. I think we already talked about it. But yeah, the new final is a lot of fun. But again, just lots of RNG with the maze and everything. Yeah, but how about you?

I've actually been cracking open some new stuff. Listeners might remember how I talked about playing Devil May Cry Five for the longest time?

Yes.

Still not playing that.

Where did that go from?

Got you. Because I just remember I keep saying, like, I'll get into that someday and then I'm picking up new games and not playing it.

That's funny.

Playing Knockout City still, there's a new season coming out. They're kind of doing like a send off for the first season where it's like night mode, where all the levels are at night and there's a lot of holographic images and stuff on all the buildings and stuff, like lit up and moving. And it's double XP for the remainder of the season. So if you just want to hop in and grind easy XP, you can do that now.

Nice.

It's a cool little send off. It's cool. What's the word I'm looking for? They're tweaking stuff, they're adjusting stuff, they're changing stuff constantly. There's like a two V, two V, two mode. Now there's like a one on one mode. There's modes where it's all special balls, no regular balls. And they keep it fresh. Like it changes, like, every week. And they give you new challenges and stuff. And apartment crew, so we're trying to do those and stuff. It seems like there's always one challenge that's way harder than anything else. So one of the challenges was, like, with teammates or with crewmates, die fewer than four times in a match and each match goes to ten points. So it's pretty rough with three people at various skill levels to die less than four times in a match total. Right. But then we did that. We were able to get all those done and then the new contract came out. And one of the new challenges is in ball form. So anyone doesn't know you can ball up yourself and a teammate can throw you as a ball and it's more powerful. But if the enemy catches you in ball form, you're trapped in there. So it's a risky play.

Right.

One of the new challenges is in ball form. Travel a million feet.

Wow, that is a lot.

So it's between the whole crew, so everyone that does it contributes to it.

So it's not okay, well, that even that's what I'm trying to say. A million. That's a lot of zeros.

Yeah. So we're like, okay, maybe we move around a lot more than we realized. I played a game with a crewmate, so I was getting the points for it, and I was actively trying to do that. So anytime I was rolling around and I wasn't at risk of being captured by the enemy, I would be in the ball form to try and just get those points, get the mileage. I got maybe 1000ft in a rounds. In one full round, I got maybe 1000ft out of a million. I'm just like, we only got like until Tuesday to do. We only got like four more days. This one's not happening. You would have to just throw your match and only be in ball form with two other crewmates the entire time for all three rounds. I don't know how people will do that one. So there always seems to be one challenge that just stands out as way harder than the rest.

Yeah, that's crazy. That's a big ask.

Yeah. But they also did a stream where they previewed what's going to happen next season. They're having a new stage where it's like at the movies and it's basically the hollow deck of Star Trek where it's just like a flat level and the stage will change throughout. So it'll go to like a haunted castle, a zombie apocalypse, like a spy, like big corporate building sort of thing. So the level will change around you as it builds up and it goes down and builds up and it goes down. So that's an interesting idea. That's going to be one that will take a while to get used to. And then they have a new dodge ball they're introduced where it's like a soda ball, where it's like the squids from Mario cart, where it will blind the character on screen for a few seconds.

Nice.

So it's cool seeing them doing new stuff and introducing new balls and stuff and new modes. It's real fun. It's really fun with other teammates and stuff. I have one friend who's really into it, so she's kind of dragging us into it and stuff. It's really fun. But good God, is it buggy. Even this far out of launch, it's still really buggy. And it's like, oh, my game crashed and it can't open up. My game crashed and it's still running, but it's frozen and I can't close it now. And now I have to restart Steam or my whole computer. So it happens pretty frequently. Or like you'll get into a match and it has in the corner, like looking for a match. You'll join a match, get into the match, play a few seconds of the match, and then the thing at the bottom says, like, looking for a match will say match found. And it'll yank you out of that match. It threw you into a new match.

Oh, yikes.

And that's happened multiple times. Or my friend playing the other day, everyone was default skins and default, like taunt animations and default, like everything, including me for the whole match. But I was fine. So it's a really fun game. It's really not polished, though. There's a lot of game breaking bugs in it that are I thought would have been fixed. But it seems like with every update they're fixing a few bucks and then.

Introducing making bugs that's always with updates and this new model that games are experiencing, it's just like, oh, just patch it. It's like that patch broke more. That's just how things work in a development environment. But also, I don't know, I just feel like this is also the same game that was the model free for a time, and then once you get to a certain area, you have to pay for it. Then you're paying for a broken game. That's insane.

Yeah, it's free up to like level 25. I don't know if that's still happening or if that was like a temporary thing to get people into it.

Oh, sure.

But yeah, it's pretty janky, and I'm surprised by the level of because it is like a third party studio and it's being published by EA in origin. So I don't think they're actually working on the development side of it. I think they're just the ones getting people into it and using their platform to get people into the game to promote it. But it's real change. It's not getting better. It's been a few months or maybe a month. I don't know how time it works anymore. It's been a few weeks and they're still pretty regularly I'll jump into a game, it'll say something like error net code thing. Like, okay, that doesn't matter. Nothing's broken so far. I'll play a match and then when it queues me up for my next match, it bugs out and breaks. And that's what the error was for, right? And yeah, there's plenty of times where it's like, oop, it crashed. All right, let me start. Open. Crashed again. It's crashed again. Let me roll back to the previous update because literally, this one's not ringing. Like, it's pretty jacky.

That sucks.

Yeah. So it is fun if there's anything that's going to hold it back, because like I said before, when I first started playing, it's very quick to understand how the game works and it's very quick to, like, be pretty competent with the mechanics. At the end of the day, it just becomes reaction time. So that's the only real skill necessary. You have to really focus on. And there's different tactics. You can curve balls, lob shots, all this different stuff. And teammate ball. There is a strategy to it, totally. It's very quick to understand. After three matches, you'll get it. If there's anything holding this game back from becoming really popular and potentially an esport, it'd be weird if it does, but I'm sure someone's trying because everyone's trying to do it because that's the moneymaker. Now. If there's anything holding it back from that, it's the jank, it's the bugs and the unpolishedness, where it's just crashing constantly.

Well, you know what? It's almost like I'm curious. Once Epic is done with fall guys and it's got them boosted up and it's like, okay, new servers, we got Xbox and Switch players in. It's like, let's buy a knockout city and give it the old treatment to kind of give it better servers, fix the bugs, open the door to all platforms. Actually, that already might be, and maybe that's part of their problem. If they're having trouble keeping up with that, I'm not really sure.

Yeah, it is cross platform, but I don't know if that's necessarily what's doing it.

Right.

Yeah, I'm not sure. It's a smaller team, it's a small studio. It's incredible what they've accomplished with it, but a real overhaul on some of this net code stuff because it's not holding up well.

I would hope some bigger producer, or publisher rather, would be able to buy them up and be like, let's give this game the justice it deserves. But we'll see. Time will tell. I have a feeling it's definitely turning heads and that's what everybody wants, like you're saying as a player of the game.

Yeah, it's fun. It's definitely a great game. But yeah, we got like three matches into it and then my game just continued to crash. I guess I'm done. I guess I can't play anymore tonight, guys. And I had to step out because I couldn't get it to load.

Yeah, that sucks.

Yeah. I definitely expected that at lunch. I expected it to be kind of fine tuned by this point, but it seems like I said with every update, there's another one that's breaking something. So it seems like it's just in flux of stability.

Right.

That's a rough go of it. Besides that, played a little more Hollow Knight. I think I'm pulling back on holiday just so I have something. I felt like I was progressing a little too fast because even in my original run of Hollow Knight, I only had 35 hours in it and there was still plenty I could have done. But I beat the game. I beat the main story of it within 35 hours.

Yeah.

So I think I was progressing to throw them. Like, you know what, let me save something for myself when I have to fly back on the plane because it's a single player game, I can play without the Internet and on the plane. That's the one I'll probably be using when I'm flying back.

Good airplane choice.

Yeah. So I'm like, let me pull back on this just so I don't spoil myself. And I still have stuff to play by that point. But I made a good crystal mines, I think is where I left off, but good God, the fucking holiday is so good. So good. I love that game so much.

Hell yeah.

There's one with the crystal mines. You get to that area early on, but you can't progress through it. Like in Metrovania, you need a certain ability to get through further. So you just kind of stop there. But you see one little bug that's like mining away and singing a little song and say, oh, you're a friendly old fellow. You go away and come back with the ability to get through and the corruption, the infection that's kind of destroying all of Hollow Nest in Holloway. You see the little bug binders. Not digging anymore. She broke through the other side. She's just standing there, not moving. And you see a little orange tinge in her eyes as she's not moving. And then we get further into the mines. You see all the other minors like her are already corrupted and possessed. It's this character that's got maybe five lines of dialogue the whole game just hums this little noise when you first see her. And then she gets possessed and you never really want to see her again. And the second time I played, it fucking broke my heart.

Dude, that's crazy. Yeah.

She's just this little inconsequential little NPC where it's like, I'm just doing what I'm doing. I'm minding that crystal. I love my job. And you come back and she's just like a zombie. It's like, no.

Yeah, that sucks.

So bummed. At the second play through, now that I know the story, it's just like I don't know, it hit harder now because I'm just like, no, it's just a little pillblog. Let her be happy.

I love when you revisit something and it means something new. That's great.

Yeah. It carries more weight once.

Exactly. That's a better way to say it. Yeah.

And now with all the cryptic messages now that I know the story I'm seeing all the cryptic messages. I'm like, that's what this is alluding to. They were hinting at this from the very beginning. Makes sense. They knew the story. But it's just like good story writing, good world building, good game, good God. It's a good game.

Hell yeah.

So that's still great. But yeah, kind of shelving that a bit just for myself. Besides that, I got a Death store which we talked a bit about way back before it released. So that came out, I think, a few days back. Yeah, five days ago. This is being published by Digital Developer, who have a good track record by me. Love a lot of their games.

Oh, digital, Devolver. Yeah. What else have they done? A boatload.

Enter the gungeon. It's a big one that I got real into. A few other ones. Can I see the studio? And now I'm forgetting who the studio is. Bring up the store page. Because he had digital Publisher studio is acid nerve. And so I think this might be the first game they've done. No, they did. Titan souls. That's right.

Oh, hell yeah. That game rocks.

Yeah. So these are the same developers as Titan Souls and it's being published by Digital Evolver. So I got maybe like 7 hours into that game and last night checked. Last time I played I was like 20% of the way through. But that was like when I was like 3 hours into it or something, or maybe 4 hours. So it doesn't seem like that long of a game. And it's very kind of Zelda esque. It's isometric top down, sort of like Bastion Combat and like Hades and stuff like that. Yeah. And it sets it out very early of, like, you're this little crow. You're a reaper of souls, reaping souls. It's just bureaucratic pushing paper stuff. So it's just very boring and mundane. But it's like, hey, you got to punch the clock. You got to reap those souls. And early on, you get a big soul. You fight this boss. It's like the tutorial boss is pretty easy and then ready to go to collect it. You get bopped on the hip by a bigger crow who steals the soul from you. And then when you go to chase it down, he takes the soul and pushes it through death's door, which is, like, locked away, and he can't get it through, and he's like, oh, I stole your giant soul because I thought a giant soul would open it because the creature I'm hunting, the creature I was tasked to reap, went through that door. And I can't open that door until we have enough souls. So I put yours in there hoping to get through, but it didn't open. So now we're in the same boat. So now you have to go and get these three other giant souls to try and open death door to then get your soul back. And then he'll get his soul back or the soul they're trying to reach, not their souls.

Okay?

And that's kind of the main plot of it. So it's like, okay, cool. You go to these three areas here. There's kind of a middle hub world that kind of connects them all that you can travel around and get puzzles with as the basic layout. It's like very Zelda ask kind of a dungeon crawler stuff. Immediately, though, with that plum, hey, fuck this big crow. Fuck this guy. Because he basically said it's basically like, hey, I'm trying to get into my apartment building, but my key is locked inside. So I stole your key and decided to get my key, and now both of our keys are locked inside. It's like, well, what the fuck? Yeah, I wasn't doing anything. Why do you drag me into this? They portrayed us like, oh, it's this wise and old crow who's been on the force for a long time, and he'll kind of give you a hints on. I was like, no, fuck this guy. Fuck him and everything he stands for. I'm so mad at this guy because he has no reason to have done what he did, and he just drags you into this. One thing I love is playing as a little crow is you're basically just a bird with a sword. Like, you're a link where you don't speak at all, you don't really emote at all. You're kind of just this generic JRPG sort of character, but you're just a little crow. And anytime someone's talking to you, his head twerking and, like, not twerking.

Twitching.

Yeah, he says, twitching and bobbing around and going back and forth. And he's just, like, fidgeting around like a crow. Like, it seems like all the other crows in this establishment are Cynthia beings who have established a society and worked. And it seems like you're just a literal crow. You're just a real ass bird who just happens to have a sword.

Basically just a bird with a sword. I love that.

Yeah. At one point you get food and it's like Ramen. So he has, like, chopsticks and the soup bowl, and you see him just throw the chopsticks away and just start pecking at it like a bird. I was like, this is just a feral animal. This isn't a person. And I kind of love that there's very little real interaction beyond just those two instances, but I think it's just a lot funnier. Like, all these other people being very well spoken and sentient beings. It's like you're just a crow that happens to have arms and legs. That's it. You're not a person. But, yeah, there's a ton of little characters in it that are really fun. The guy that serves you, Ramen, is a sea captain. Wink, wink. He's clearly a dead body being puppeted by a squid. And he's like, yes, let me give you the soup with my human mammalian digital fingers.

Here you go.

And it's just, like, very obviously being just puppeting a corpse, which is very macabre and funny, though. Yeah, it's a great little world. It's really stylized. You have to hunt down, like, three bosses. One of the bosses I beat was the Earn witch, who's got different Earns and Vases on people's heads. She says if you wear Earn on your head, death doesn't see you. And that's how she's avoided Death this whole time. So you have to kind of collect her soul to find the laws of nature.

Okay.

And she's got a real studio ghibli. Spirited away. Witch. Five, two. Yeah, definitely real big, wide character. And hey, that design works. People love that design for a reason, for sure. Use that. It's really charming gameplay wise. There's not a ton. There is some collectibles, but not a ton. It's kind of linear because, like, it's metrovania in the sense of like, you get upgraded and you come back to areas, but you're not going to be pulling your hair out trying to 100% perfect run of this game and get every little collectible because there's not a ton. I think I'm probably about halfway through, and you find different crystals to upgrade your health and your energy level. Like, your power level. You find four of those, and they give you another slot in either of those categories. I'm probably about halfway through, and I've only gotten one health upgrade, and I got three out of the four crystals for my energy levels, and I'm halfway through.

Yeah.

You don't get a ton of health. That's one thing with this. I don't really think Dark Souls combat because it's evolved out beyond that point we can't just pinpoint it to Dark Souls.

Sure.

But it's very much just low HP bob and weave. You got to be real precise with your attacks and just hope for the best, because you start the game with four hearts, four health, and four energy bars. And about how I did the game, I got five hearts or five health and four energy bars. So the way you healing this is if you get, like, a seed, you plant it in a pot and a girl flower, and you take that flower, and I'll heal you, but you can't take it with you. You can't carry it with you. So if you're ever in a fight, you just have to survive with whatever health you have. So every boss fight, you have four health, right? And you just can't get hit four times. You can't heal mid combat. You can't take a potion out, you can't take the flower out. So it's pretty rough because it's just like, you have this limited amount of health, and that never upgrades, and you can't heal mid battle, you can heal after. So it's pretty challenging in that regard, but you learn the tactics. It's not Dark Souls challenging. You learn the tactics. You can get around them pretty quick. It's simple enough.

Yeah, it's like Titan souls. It sounds like the spiritual successor.

Yeah, very much so. Yeah, it's really stylized. It's fun. It's very cute. The writing is charming. There's signs pointing, like, this way to the Forest Temple, and you cut the sign in half like in Zelda. And then when you read the sign, it says the letters are cut in half because you've cut the sign in half.

That's funny.

So it's, like, charming in ways like that. After I got a little spoiler, after I beat the Earn witch, I got her soul. I ended up running into the big boss of the company, and he's like, oh, you're a burp? Like, oh, you came to my office directly. I didn't expect that. I haven't seen a crow in a long time. And he seemed just, like, sitting there, like, drinking like, a cup of tea. He's like beeks, huh? What are they about? Weird, right? And it's just kind of like the dialogue is very casual, but kind of, like, witty and funny, and he's like, you brought me a giant soul. You want your reward? Here you go. And he just gives, like, a golf clap. He's like, well done. Congratulations. You did great. Get the hell out of my office. So it's pretty funny and charming a lot. Regards.

Nice.

My biggest complaint would be you kill a bunch of enemies, you get souls, and you can upgrade your abilities, so you can upgrade your strength, your speed, your kind of dexterity for ranged attacks. So you get a bow and arrow. You get different spells so you can do those faster, or you can upgrade your spells themselves so you have four categories you can upgrade. They don't seem to do anything. I haven't noticed a marketable difference. Whenever I upgrade them, one of them is speed. So you can attack faster. I can see that I'm attacking a little faster than when I started, but I have four upgrades in the speed, and it's, like, barely noticeable.

That sucks.

With strength, you can get different weapons. So I just got, like, a big lightning hammer recently. My sword does a base of, like, one times the damage. The hammer does 1.25 times the damage with some enemies. When I first started, the sword took three hits on the basic enemy to kill them. With the hammer, it takes three hits. With the base attack to kill, I've upgraded my strength to do more damage three times. Now it takes three hits to kill all these enemies.

Wow.

Maybe the lower enemies. With the hammer, it'll take two now, but that's kind of it.

That's bizarre.

Yeah. So with these upgrades, I don't see a difference and I don't have anything else to spend the souls on. I can't buy items or consumables. Yeah, but there's no noticeable difference. I would kill an enemy in three attacks. I'd go get a strength upgrade, attack the hammer, that does a little more damage, and then it would still take three attacks to kill that enemy. So I'm just like, what?

Yeah, what did that do?

So that's kind of my biggest complaint. And like I said, you can still play the game. I still beat the bosses and stuff. I'm two bosses into it, and I think there's probably, like, a third and fourth boss. You can still play it. It's not like it's stopping you from playing, but it's just like, why are these upgrades here? They don't seem to be doing anything. So, like, wow.

Right?

It kind of feels like an afterthought of like it feels like there's no progression. Let's put a progression system in there. It's like, oh, well, that'll change the mechanics of the game. It's like, no, just put the progression system in, but don't tie to anything. It's like, okay, so it just feels like a placebo of, like, an upgrade tree.

Right.

I'm upgrading stuff, but nothing's happening.

That sucks. Hopefully they fix that.

I don't know if it's intentional. I don't know if it's just, like, so minuscule that I can't really notice. I can shoot and draw my bow and arrow back pretty fast now. That's the most noticeable one I've noticed, but, like, damage and actual speed of my tax really slightly.

Maybe that's the joke, though. You're just a bird, though, so just like, maybe no, I'm teasing.

Maybe the actual hero is being upgraded somewhere off camera and yeah, I'm just the bird, who knows? But yeah, that's probably been my biggest gripe with this.

That's reasonable.

With the health. They make it a point of saying, like, you're a reaper of souls, you're immortal, but when you're going out to get a soul. When you're out, like, the material world, you're immortal again, so you can die, so be careful. I was like, it's like a rogue. Like, I die. I had to go collect my souls again. I come back. No, if you die, you reset at the door. You came through last, and then you just do it again. There's really no punishment for dying other than you just have to run back to where you were last.

Interesting.

So, like, that's not that big of a deal. If I'm dying on a puzzle or I'm just dying against a horde of minions or something, I'll die, I'll respawn, I'll run back and just do it again. It's fine. There's no real consequence to death, despite it being a big part of the game.

Well, that's, like, kind of chill it's.

It's nice because it's not brutally punishing, and it's nice to play. Like, the game is only $20, so I don't imagine it's much longer than what I've already played, but it is very cute. It's very charming, well written. The mechanics, it works well. I haven't noticed any bugs or anything. Like, nothing glitching through stuff. It's a little cryptic at times. I don't know if there's certain areas that are puzzles or not puzzles, and I know there are secrets in the game, so there's an area, a bunch of pots sitting around, and I break them, and they'll reform themselves after a few seconds. And I don't know if that's a puzzle, if I break them all in time, if I find a secret, or if that's just environmental set dressing. So it's kind of vague in regards to at times, but, yeah, it's fun. It's great. Definitely recommend it. But, yeah, my biggest complaint would be just the upgrade tree. Seems pointless, but like I said, you do the rest of the game without it, it feels pointless. But I'm still progressing through the game without any real issues, so I guess it's not a bad thing. It's not like it's holding the game back and I'm too weak to progress, but it does just feel kind of weird and vague. And another thing of, like, being a bird, you just find trinkets around the level, and you find little knickknacks, and when you come back to the hub world, they're piled up on your desk and in your items. It doesn't call them trinkets. It calls them shiny things. So it really makes me think I'm just a bird. I really think I'm just a bird.

That's awesome.

Yeah. But yes, I'm enjoying that. Like I said, it's $20. Definitely recommend it. It's very charming. It's very fun. It's you know, it's a little challenging if it's this kind of if it's your kind of game, if you like being challenged, like Dark Souls, it might be a little underwhelming for you if you want to chill sort of Zelda esque kind of dungeon crawler and just a very cute world. Yeah, this is great. Good game so far. Death Store was the name of it.

Yeah, sounds amazing. I'm excited about that one.

Yeah. And then the other thing I've been playing a lot of, put Holland Night down. I picked this up on the switch was Pokemon Unite.

Oh, that's right. I did see that. I was going to at least mention it in our show Topics. I know nothing about it other than I've seen a few streamers play it. It's a MOBA and it's free.

Yeah. So for anyone to know, MOBA is I'm going to look this up right now, just like you.

Mobile online battle arena. Right?

There it is. Yeah. Mobile online battle arena. So that's akin to League of Legends, Dota two here's, the Storm, Smite, all those kinds of games where it's just team of five e five Pokemon, or depending on the match, it's different. Teams go into an arena, they fight, you fight minions to get points. Pretty standard stuff for a mobile, or.

Actually multiplayer, maybe not mobile.

But yeah. The caveat with this is it's Pokemon. The downside of it is I noticed right when it start, it was made by Ten Cent and Timid Games, which is a studio owned by Tencent. Tencent is the parent company, two League of Legends and like a thousand other game studios, and unfortunately have a lot of game studios under the belt. So I'm not thrilled about playing one of their games because they're kind of monopolizing a lot of this stuff and they're not great. So I'm not thrilled about that.

You know, there was a deal behind the scenes that allowed them to do this Pokemon thing and yeah, it's going to take off.

Yeah, it wasn't like legalized. It's very much the parent company of Ten Cent being like, hey, Nintendo, trust us with it because we have four other mobile games, we know the formula, and we're also gigantic enough where no one can beat us in this market. We own a monopoly. Let's go and say, all right, fair enough. So Pokemon gives them the IP.

Totally.

Yeah. So that's unfortunate right off the bat, but it is a good beginner game. Well, it's a good beginner game because everyone's starting off and there's no professional mobile players that are dominating the scene quite yet. That's already gone. They're already there. It's already a ton of them.

Oh, of course it's going to happen within the first week.

It already happened. It's already here. Yeah. I don't know if it is a good one, though, because it's a good beginner MOBA if anyone wants to try it and not be in League of Legends and all that hellscape, because it just settles you in. And it is for mobile in September, I think it's coming out on mobile, but right now it's just a switch and it's pretty limited in what you can and can't do. And it teaches you a lot. There's a lot of information in it, and then there's a lot of information not in it that should be in it. So, for example, if you play a match, you finish it, you see your scores and rankings. Some people get medals, like, different medals, depending on how well they did most damage, most healing, most assists, most scoring, all this stuff. Those medals aren't anywhere in the game. They don't tell you what those are. Me and my friends who are playing it had to find a third party website online to tell us what those medals represented because no one knows. And if you go into your items, you can buy different items to help improve your abilities. You can upgrade those items to get them stronger. We found out there's a little recommendation page where it recommends, like, what the game recommends you item builds you do for a character, and what, like, the master ranked players are using for their item builds for this character. I didn't find that until, like, last night. I've been playing for, like, a week now. There's a good amount of information that it doesn't tell you. One item, for example, is it increases your Special Attack damage for a Pokemon. Do you know what your Special Attack damage is for that Pokemon? No. It's not in the game. It doesn't tell you that anywhere. Yeah, so I'm just like, mr. Mine focuses on special attacks, while Machamp focuses on physical attacks. I had to once again find that on a third party website because it's not in the game, telling me that anywhere.

Yeah, that's annoying.

So there's a good amount of information in here to tell you how to play the game. There's a lot of in depth information that tells you how to master to the game and get better at it that's not in the game, which is kind of frustrating.

It relies you on being a hardcore Pokemon fan. It's like, well, clearly this Pokemon has this, and it's like but even that.

Doesn'T matter because, like, typing advantage, like fire being weak to water, that doesn't matter. So some of the stuff you know about Pokemon doesn't matter, and some of the things you do know about Pokemon does matter, right?

That's what yeah, that's confusing vague.

It is fun, though. It's broken up into different categories of, like, support class speedster, class, offense class, defense class, all around class. Like, for the different Pokemon, like I said, you got Mr. Mime. You got pikachu. You got Machamp. Some of the classics venus or Chars aren't yeah, Mr.

Mime everyone's favorite.

I, unironically am in a Mr. Mine main.

God damn it.

So here's the thing with Mr. Mine, he's support. He start off when you're starting the game, you get two abilities sorry, thing. You start playing the game. As you progress, you level up in the game, and at different levels, you get abilities, and you can upgrade those abilities.

Okay?

So when you start off Mr. Mike, he gets fake out, which is like a clap. And then you get a little stronger and you get barrier, which he puts up walls, which is his main support. So if you're being attacked by an enemy, you can put up a wall to give yourself some distance and run away. And then as you level up, you get tempered abilities. You can get Confusion or psychic, and then you can get light screen or Guard swap. So those are the different abilities you can branch into. Light screen is just a stronger barrier, same thing. But now you can stack them and have multiple light screens ready to throw out at any time. Confusion is just like a beam. It'll hit the enemy, stun them for a bit, and do some decent damage. The trick is with Mr. Mine, you get Guard Swap, which swaps your defense, a special defense with the enemy you hit and it'll slow them down as well. And then if you hit an ally with Guard Swap, it'll just speed both of you up. So it'll take a boost for you and a teammate and a deep off for an enemy.

Oh, nice.

Hit an enemy with Guard Swap and then hit them with psychic it combos and you take out like a third of their health. Guaranteed. It does massive damage.

Damn.

I don't know if people aren't aware of it or if they're not ready for it, but like, I'll be in the thick of it.

You're not ready for the truth.

Hey. Ready for Mr. Mime? Tip these hands, bitch. Yeah. I'll go at it with like a Machamp and he's like, oh, I'm going to dominate this guy. And he's doing big damage. I'll hit guard Swap and sick and take out like half of his health instantly. And you see the panic of them go, oh, fuck. Like oh, no. And then they try to run away. Get him a guard. Swap again. They're slower now. You catch up to them. You just hunt them down. Mr. Mime is terrifying.

Yeah, he really is.

And then you always have an ultimate move as well. So it's a fun game. It's a mobile. I don't play MOBAs a lot, so this is a fun learning experience for me, getting involved. The two friends I'm playing with that are big into MOBAs, so they know the strategies. Big differences between this and City Heroes is city Heroes, I would jump into a throng of people going out of the cluster and just tear shit up with a reinhardt something. MOBAs are different. Mobus is all about poking. You have to run in, poke the enemy, and then run back. Run in, poke the enemy, and then run back. You don't want to get caught in all of that. So that's a very different strategy. I think it used to and it's really tough to play.

Got to poke some Pokemon, pretty much.

It is fun it is fun. There's clearly some Pokemon that are just way stronger than others. Cinder Ace has massive range of damage. Camera Ant, which is just this bird that shoots fish at you, is currently the meta because it does so much damage and has so much crowd control and range that you can never escape from it and it will hunt you down like a goddamn nightmare. I hate that bird. That horrible. Birds ruining the game.

Damn.

There's already articles saying like this dumb fucking birds ruining Pokemon. People are already tilted because it's so strong. So there's definitely going to be balancing issues they're going to have to address.

Sure.

My biggest complaint though is something I got pointed out recently by a friend is during the game, during the last two minutes of the game, zaptos appears in the center of the map. And if your team teams up, no one can defeat Zaptos by itself. Or you shouldn't be able to. If you're strong enough to do that, you got fed like crazy. So a team is supposed to go into the center to feed Zaptos. If it feeds aptos, you can go to the enemy's bases and throw your points in to kind of destroy them. Normally when you're throwing your points in to destroy the base, you have to charge it up. And if you get hit, you're interrupted by it. With the Zaptos buff, you can just do it instantly. You don't have to charge up at all.

Right.

And then when you do it, it doubles the points you throw in.

Oh wow.

It's easier to destroy the bases that only have like 80 HP. You throw in 40 points, you take it out instantly.

Right.

So the thing is, Zaptos is essentially the golden snitch of Pokemon unit.

That's a good yeah, that makes sense.

Because once you get this, you win. That's not a for debate. That's an objective fact of do whatever you want for the first eight minutes of this game. You can fuck around, you can die all you want, it does not matter. You get Zapdos, you win, your team wins every time. And that's what the Meta is. That's the most effective tactic I have. Here what meta means. It's an abbreviation, but that's the best thing to do. And there's casual matches, there's like fond side matches, and then there's ranked match already. And that's what every single ranked match is.

It's just defeat Zaptos.

Everyone's just doing whatever for eight minutes. And then when Zapdos appears, everyone's either attacking Zaptos or stopping the other team from attacking Zaptos. Their team is doing it behind them. That's all it is. Because that's how you win every single game.

Well, that's the thing. It's such a brand new game. I'm sure they're going to introduce new modes and stuff like maybe a multi's map or something. But even with that, it should vary.

Yeah, so they already got new Pokemon. They're going to introduce. I think Blissy is rumored to be the next one for sporting character. Yeah. So I'm sure they're going to introduce new stuff. There's only one map right now for the basic match, so yeah, they're going to introduce more stuff as it goes out and they'll have to rebalance and address different stuff. But yeah, right now it just gives up to some win. And as soon as my friends pointed out that to me and I saw it in action, I lost a lot of interest in the game because it's just a golden snitch where it makes the rest of the game pointless. I'm just wasting eight minutes until this big lightning part appears and then we're just dog piling on it to see who gets it first. And that's the game. That's not fun anymore for me. So I do hope they kind of rework the legendary bird mechanic. And if they keep it, if they do something different with it, if they just take it entirely, I'd be fine with that.

Maybe it just doesn't need to double the points you're scoring on the enemy base because that would literally just balance it instantly. I don't know. But it could still give you the benefit of doing that instantly. Exactly. It's some edge, but not like an insane edge.

That's the thing. The fact that it does both.

Yeah, exactly.

There's Rotom up at the top, who's another Pokemon you can attack, who's a little bit tougher, but you can take him on. If he makes his way to one of the bases, the enemy team can intercept him and stop him before he gets there. But if you get him, he'll join your side, go to the enemy base and make it so you can do the instant dunk where you can just you don't have to charge up anymore. You can instantly do it, but it's not double. So there is that mechanic with another Pokemon.

Interesting.

The fact that Zaptos gets both, where you get instant dunks and double the points for it.

Yeah. That's insane.

You just clear out whatever bases are left and then you storm the center, one that can't be destroyed. It's nuts. And I understand they wanted to be big and powerful and that's the incentive to get it, but it's too big and powerful.

Right. They'll balance it in the future, I'm almost certain.

Yeah, I'm certainly they're going to do something with it. Like I said, I'd be fine if they just take it out entirely and give you some other buff or boost for defeating Zaptos.

Yeah, it makes sense to walk away until they correct it or something in the meantime. But it seems like a fun game and people are losing their shit over a free Pokemon game.

That's the thing. It's like free to start and all that stuff. It's free to play. I've been playing it for a while now. I'm like level 13 or something. No problems. It's just microtransactions that are in there. So, like, all these games with microtransactions, there's in game currency of, like, four values, and you can spend money to get those quicker, so you can upgrade your items faster. You can buy all the Pokemon. You only have certain Pokemon. You unlock them different ways, but you can buy them with money. So there's that incentive of, like, it's pretty much pay to win in some regard because you can buy items and upgrade them really high. The only thing I noticed that is exclusively purchasable that you can't get in game is the cosmetics. Some Pokemon at different costumes. Like, I got one for free where my Venous or is in, like, a Hawaiian shirt and, like, a scuba mask. Mr. Mime has, like, a golden tuxedo and a top hat. If you want to buy those, that's real money you have to buy to get them.

Okay?

Everything else is like, that in game currency where it's like, yes, you can farm it for, like, five months to buy one thing, or you can just drop $5 and buy ten of them right away. So other than that, though, it is free, so I expect it to be worse. I expect to be like Knockout City, where play up to level ten. Then you have to purchase the game. But no, it seems to be just full of microtransactions, which suck, but I don't think it's paid to win enough yet. Zappa is kind of the biggest thing right now, so once they balance that stuff out, maybe the pay to win items will be more of a problem. But like we said, it's new. It came out, like, this week or something, so it's still real fresh.

Yeah, time will tell.

Yes, it is fun, though. And it's free. You can dabble in it. There's other smaller modes if you don't want to do ranked. Ranked is the competitive one where everyone dog piles and zaptos. I do the casual just free to play or free modes where it's not as strategic and it's still fun to play. So, yeah, anyone who's interested in it, it's definitely fun if you want to learn what a MOBA is, you can do with us. It's very much a particular game, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't capture anyone new who's not already interested in MOBAs.

Sure, that makes sense.

Yeah.

Very cool. Well, I guess we can maybe wrap this episode up and do some well, actually, before the plugs, let's see if there's anything in the show topics. I don't have hardly anything. I did just want to shout out that Jeff Bezos flew off in a rocket ship that looked very phallic shaped, and there was all these Austin Power memes going around, and, man, it's just insane how Dr. Evil and him look very similar. And yeah, the dick shaped rocket joke that was in that movie, it's like, what timeline are we living in?

Brin the capitalism one. Yeah, the bad one.

The one with a literal Dr. Evil flying a space dick.

Yeah. It's weird how all these billionaires are trying to get off this planet instead of spending the money to try and save it.

Yeah, that's disgusting. I saw that meme where it was like, yeah, the guy's sweating and trying to decide between a button and what was it? Yeah, spend ten minutes in space or end world hunger. It's like, God damn it.

It's fully possible to do it. They're just choosing not to.

Exactly. And then the other one that I had is another real kind of just like goofy one. Snoop Dogg's been twitch streaming recently and it's like, oh, it sounds like, yeah, I want to go check that out. Right? Well, maybe not. He's been muted the whole time, like for at least three streams. And the problem there is I feel like he probably is like confident in just like going in being like, I'm just going to turn off the chat feature because of all the trolls and shit. And that way I can just be me and do my thing and stream stream for everybody. The problem is you're not getting any live feedback from everyone being like, bro, you're muted. And it's been consistent for a while that people are writing articles about it being like, we're watching his streams and it's like fun and everything, but we can't hear a damn thing he's saying. Hopefully he's getting this feedback some way or another.

So it's like his mic is muted, not like DMCA where he's playing his own music and the stream is being muted in the VOD later.

It's his mic. Yeah. It's just insanely. Crazy. And what's another thing that happened? He's also famous for kind of antics like this, where he ended a stream and walked away and was live for another like 8 hours of just streaming his chair because he didn't realize he didn't. And then when he comes back, he has like this moment where he's just like, oh, I'm still alive.

Yeah.

So. Yeah, poor Snoop Dogg.

I mean, I'm not surprised he struggled a little bit. I also don't think he gives a shit.

No, not at all.

That's what makes him Snoop Dogg.

Exactly. I feel like he probably got all sorts of subs and shit. Just a muted stream. But you had the shaped out.

I saw a streamer. You get locked out of his office, like while he was streaming for like 6 hours. And yeah, sure enough, there was a massive substrate. People were gifting something crazy and stuff as a joke. It's like, hey, that worked out great. I'll do that more often.

Right? Oh, man. Anything from you, though, before we wrap this up?

Yeah, real quick. So EVGA, I don't know if you're supposed to say that their video cards apparently being burnt out and destroyed. This is clearly a hardware issue, but it seems like the game that's stressing them the most, that is reporting the most cases of these games, of these cards being burnt out is New World from Amazon studio is that we talked about a bit. The beta is out for it right now. So I know some people in the bait. I think Doves is actually in the beta. I saw him on Steam playing it.

I am myself, I could be playing it, but I'm not. I don't have a computer. That's good enough and maybe it's good or not. Yeah. Wow.

It's clearly a hardware issue that game alone. No game should be burning out graphics cards by themselves. That's clearly a hardware issue with the card itself. But apparently it's pretty common with New World of like, stressing it to a breaking point.

So that's wow, that's crazy. Yeah, look out for that listener. Yikes. And those aren't cheap. The RTX 30 90s, those are the most recent ones. Yeah.

So it's clearly like, hey, that money was not well spent. That's got to go back in and get some tune ups. As is tradition ending on a depressing note.

God damn it.

It's a big enough story we're really addressing, but we're not nearly close enough to professional journalism to go in depth about it. The state of California is suing Activision and Blizzard for inhospitable workplace environments. This isn't just like a flippant. Like, this isn't like Naughty Dog where the people were overworked stressed and harassed and all this stuff, which is very valid and bad and shitty. And Naughty Dogs definitely does have a problem with that, that's for sure. This isn't a former employer suing an old company. This is the state of California had a two year investigation into Blizzard for harassment and poor working conditions and they are suing them. And they have lots of material that they put online. You can read the deposition of all of the things they are suing them for. It is horrific of male workers being just aggressively drunk at work and having females crawl on their hands and knees between their desk as they parade them around like a frat house. And just a lot of various degrees of assault, but emotional, physical and sexual assault, it's real fucking bad. So Blizzard, remember a few weeks ago when I said Blizzard sucks ass? Here's definitive proof.

Yeah, no, for sure. Omega Yikes doesn't even cut it. That's the thing. I was in a while of all places and I heard some guy loudly talking on the phone being like, yeah, it's Blizzard men who are talking about this exact same thing. I'm like, I can't blame you for being upset. He's probably like a huge Blizzard fanboy. And then it's just like, yeah, the way they treated women was absolutely atrocious. And I'm like, dude, as any fan of anything, it's just like you can't support that kind of behavior. So I'm glad what goes around comes around. At the end of the day. I do wholeheartedly believe in karma. The problem is sometimes karma doesn't fully get delivered and it's the full state coming at you, you know you fucked up. So I think it's going to be interesting. Yeah.

And there's a lot of people coming out, especially a lot of women saying like, hey, Blizzard is horrific and definitely like one of the worst of this. But there's plenty if not every game studio has done that. I've heard stuff about that.

It's so sad. Our industry is just plagued with this problem. It's just disgusting.

It's super shitty. So if anything, hopefully Blizzard gets nailed with this and that'll change the tone of like, yeah, hey, Blizzard is one of the biggest. They're not safe from this bullshit. So instead of slapping the wrists on the perpetrators or firing the people that report the issues, maybe just fire the people that are doing the issues and stop protecting them because no one's good enough to be able to get away with sexual assault. No, it's insane. But it's so unfortunately prevalent. Not even very much a video game.

Industry, but other industry, music industry, TV and film. Oh my god. Yeah, all of it.

So it's super shitty. But that's probably a news story you'll be hearing a lot about for the oncoming few weeks.

Yeah, that's huge. I'm glad that's our coverage of it.

That's as much as we'll do with it because we are not professional enough to touch that.

Yeah. That being said, I think we're about at time. Let's wrap this episode up and do some plugs. Brand, you have another podcast. Let's tell our listeners about it.

Yeah, I got a podcast called Rweeb there yet where we watch three episodes of an anime or a movie and give a recap of it with our opinion. It's a good jumping end point for different animes if you're interested and want to hear a brief summary of what they're about, if they're really good or not. We've done a few. We've done. I think the one that coming out today is Blood Blockade Battlefront. And I'll give you a little hint listeners. I watched the whole first season of that show after doing that podcast and I don't know what the fuck that show is about. It is objectively confusing as shit and.

Not good anime for you sometimes.

Yeah, we found some good ones that are really good and then there's a lot of just how did this get made? What is this?

Yes. I love that. And listener, if you like our show, thank you. But if you want to find us on anywhere we're findable at all the places at Abt Silence, tell a family member, tell a friend. I'm also streaming at Twitch Tvtsilence. Lots of variety fall guys. I did just do a speed run of Kingdom Hearts just to say I could do it. And then I'm trying to think if there's anything else on the horizon. I'll probably be finishing Pokemon Sword relatively soon. So, yeah, stop by and say hi and then yeah. I also have a record label. It's missed out records.com. If you want to see what tapes and vinyl are available for sale over there. And the band that does our intro and Outro 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'll do it for this week. Hope to see you guys next time. See you. See.