ABTS-417: Sexy Knuckles

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 co host, Brendan McCullough. And I finally finished painting the basement. I don't know if that's the thing I should bring up on this show or not, but here's the game.

That's what we're starting on. Goddamn cool characters.

I've been talking about it enough on this podcast for, like, the past year or whatever. I'm such a lazy fuck, and it takes forever to just slowly section off parts of this basement and do ceilings and walls, but it's done. We had family over. They stayed in the guest room. So all in all, it's just been a giant we've finally accomplished this thing that's been weighing over us for so long. Maybe I can play games now.

Well, you're still actively using the basement. That's where you stream from, right?

Yes, my stream room is in the basement.

Yeah. It wasn't just like a black room where it's like, oh, we can knock this out in the weekend. It's like, we got to like it's so much worse once there's shit inside the room.

And what we've saved for last with the stairwell and the ceiling of the stairwell, it's just like, oh, my God. Approaching that. Luckily, I'm tall enough that I could do it, but it was still like, I'm on my tippy toes on stairs. It's like, God damn it. So that was not great. But hey, it's all done, and I can play video games for anybody new. I'm sorry. This is not about me painting my house.

It was a very game podcast. Podcast?

Yeah, the podcast that you guys tune in for, my Home Improvement. But no, we've had Mark home in the past. He's talked about home improvement before, right? Or no gardening. That's his whole stick. Hopefully we'll hear from him again in the future, but who knows? He's a parent. You know how it is.

I'm in La. I can't afford a house ever.

Poor brand. Are you going to stay there forever?

You think I know what I'm doing next month? What do you mean? I'm going to stay here?

Do I know what I ate for breakfast? No.

I got a six month lease. That's as far as ahead as I'm planning ever in my life.

That's fair. Yeah. What an insane question to ask you. But no. What have you been playing, Brent?

Speaking of insane questions yeah, we got.

To start off with the actual show now.

Let's see. I kind of relapsed into Isaac for a hot minute just because I have something mindless to just jump into playing a lot of Knockout City. Still, new season, new stage, new rules. There's a new mode going on right now where it's like it's like random mode or something. I don't know what they're doing. There's a new stage and the premises, it's like a drive in movie theater and the stage is just a blank slate that changes depending on what movie it is. So there's like a bridge over a river with like, flower petals everywhere for like a rom.com. And then there's like a haunted mansion sort of looking one. And then there's like a pyramid. It's supposed to be like Indiana Jones, tomb Raider. So the stage changes during the match, okay? And I guess they really want to sell it to people and they really want people to play this new stage because the new mode is it's a randomized mode where every match you play is going to be a different game mode they've had so far. So either like a free for all, a permanent elimination, so when you get knocked out, you're out for the whole round. Three V. Three a two V. Two. It changes what game mode it is every match.

Right?

The caveat being they're always located at this movie theater stage, this new stage.

Okay?

So I don't get it. I don't get why it has to be that new stage if the whole mode is changing randomly, right? And especially because this new stage, it changes as the match goes on, but it's just one big cube area that changes, okay? And it's pretty small, like, compared to how some of the stages are. When the map is changing, everything goes down and it's just a big square, flat area. And I don't know if it's just because of that, because you can see the whole map at once or if it is actually much smaller than all the other maps in the game so far, but it just feels real small. It's not good for certain game modes. So I've talked about before knockouts, it's just very chaotic, very high speed, like high energy. You can get knocked out pretty easily. And, like, the fun of the game is you get knocked out, you come back in 5 seconds, you go again when it's the permanent elimination mode where you get knocked out and you're out into your whole team's out sort of mode that sucks when the stage is so small and you get just bombarded by whatever team state cluster together the most.

Right?

So some of the game modes really aren't beneficial for that stage. And it's weird that they make it all that state. It does it they're trying to sell you on a new product, but like, hey, why don't you buy the movie stage level? I play randomly. You go through the stages randomly already in game modes. So it's like, why are you trying to like, you're trying to sell us on this one? I can't choose which stage I go to. So why are you trying to force this one on us more? It's kind of weird. I don't get really what they're doing besides just trying to showcase a new thing more than everything else.

And that's just part of the new season.

Yeah, that's just like the new season, okay, that's like the default game mode instead of like a straight ball, which is just a three V three regular match. Like the default that's the new default is this randomized mode.

Got you.

And I was like, oh, this sucks. I'd rather just play a regular match. One of the oddball modes that are usually something weird, like free for all or something that's now become just default three V three. They just put it somewhere else. So it threw me off for a second. But like, yeah, so you can still play a regular match. You can still play like, ranked matches. You can still play like four V four or something weird. As well as this randomized mode, there's always three modes you can do. And they change it out, I think, every week. But this season, like this season of the ranked matches, they're really focusing on it because it's the first and latest update. But I don't know. I don't like the randomized mode because like I said, some of the matches just aren't really good. And if you go into a match being like, all right, we're going to do a free for all mode and it's randomized and you end up getting like the permanent elimination mode, you might not be ready for that and you might get knocked out immediately and be like, well, shit, all right, I guess I'm out.

Right?

So it kind of messes you up not knowing what mode you're really going into. But yeah, I'm still playing that with some friends. They have the weekly contracts and stuff. And now there's like a new seasonal thing. I don't know, there's a lot going on in Knockout City already. Games new.

What level are you?

My street rank is street rank.

Damn.

So street rank is just like the regular rank. Like you just play, you get ranked up. It really says nothing more than how much time you've played.

Okay.

Then there's the ranked matches of the league, which is like the competitive mode. So with that, I am sapphire. I just got the sapphire with some friends. So I said it before. You start out like, you start out like wood or whatever, like nothing. Then you have bronze, silver, gold, and then sapphire, emerald, ruby, and then diamonds or platinum maybe. Maybe both, I think. So I'm pretty much right in the middle of ranked leak matches. I'm like midway up the tier.

Okay.

And then as for the street rank, which is just like how much you've played, you get different levels and stuff, but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't match you. Based on that. I just got into silver. So every time you get to 100, it puts you up into the next rank. So you're like, you're nothing. You start out, you get to 100. Then you go into bronze, and then the level starts over again. So you go to 100 and bronze, you become silver go to 100, and Silver you go. Gold.

Got you.

And the street rank is really just nothing more than the amount of time you've played so far, I see. Yeah. It's still fun. You get different, like, cosmetic outfits and stuff. And you get style chips, which allow you to change the cosmetics that you have into four alternate, like, colors or skins or styles of them. So it's like, oh, I like this one outfit, but I don't like the color scheme of it. You can change it to, like, three other options with a style chip.

That's cool.

I got a lot of style chips. You only can wear one outfit at a time. So I'm just like I like this outfit. Why would I change it? And I'm just, like, overflowing with style chips because I'm not going to change the other outfits because I don't give a shit about the other outfits. I'm not going to change the overall outfits because I'm never going to wear the overall outfit. So I'm not going to just waste style chips on those. So that's a weird thing I've noticed of I got a lot of, like, the ingame currency things because I never use it on anything else than the one I already have in, like right. That's a weird, spoiled sort of thing of, like, nice spoiled, but need this. It's like all the coupons you get in the mail. It's like, I don't even go to the store right. I don't need these coupons.

I get flooded with them.

Yeah, I love the supermarket. It's like, oh, we're trying to be green. You should bring your own bag so we can cut down on plastic waste of bags. I said, Cool, here's a way to cut down on waste and be environmentally friendly. Stop sending me paper coupons every goddamn day in the mail that I don't use. Ralph's trader Joe's. Kmart. So you got a lot of style of chips in Knockout City, but like I said, you kind of pick your one outfit. Yeah, you can swap an alpha, so this is fun, but you probably never have more than, like, three or four outfits per character, and you already have three characters to swap from for different outfits. So it's like I don't know. It's kind of weird. I got all these incentives to change dress cosmetics, but it's just cosmetic. I pick the one I like, and I stick with it.

That makes sense to me. I don't know. My only thing that I can relate with is fall guys and all the cosmetics there. It's just cosmetics. It doesn't affect the gameplay. I was very much like a conspiracy theorist early on in the days of fall guys saying some of the bigger outfits that you can wear, like, I don't know, say, like, a tomato or something that just makes you, like, a big bulbous bean would have adverse effects on your gameplay. I don't think it actually does affect speed whatsoever. But the thing that it does affect is if certain obstacles are hitting your bean, it's just more surface area. Yeah, you do have a larger hitbox. Whether people want to admit that or not, I don't know. I've seen it where it will scrape the top of a tomato and it doesn't hit somebody else or something, for instance. It's like, well, if you weren't wearing that outfit, you might have avoided that. I don't know.

It's tough because you could easily just make it all cosmetics where it's like, oh, the hitbox is just identical to the default character. So stuff would just clip through you. But then say if someone in fallout or fall guys. Say if someone in Fallout trying to trigger and fall guys, if someone's trying to jump at you and try and pull you or knock you over or grab you away from something and they ear a big round tomato and their hands clip through you, that would throw off their timing and fuck them up. So it has to be a physical costume that can interact with your environment or else it's going to miss. Other players are going to misjudge it, thinking you're bigger than you are. The downside of that is if your hitbox is bigger than what you are yeah. You're going to get cliff by different obstacles. Not because your character got hit by it, but because your costume got hit by there's a problem with both sides of it.

That's the thing. I think the hitboxes probably are identical, and that's how they get away with it. The fall guys. Devs has probably said this till they're blue in the face. There's absolutely no difference in if you wear the tomato or not. But I just feel like I've seen it. So it's just like a personal thing where I'd like, I don't know. Just pick your favorite. And if you're a tomato, good luck.

Good luck. Yeah. With Knockout City, it's so fast, and you never get clipped by like my hand clipped the Dodgeball and I got out. It's like no, it hits you square in the chest. The crosshairs kind of like auto locks in on characters when you're close enough to them, which kind of sucks. But it's also pretty good at times. And if they throw it yeah, it's either like pelting you straight on the head or like right in the chest. There's no real, like, I clicked my costume, not me, like, question about it.

Right.

But I do remember Overwatch had that for a hot minute with certain costumes because they have a lot of cosmetics for all their characters. And some of them give different costumes. Like every update. Fucking Tracers got probably 15 costumes by now. And then Zari's got like three. So clearly some are favorited more than others. And someone who maintains most of the tanks and all the tanks have shit costumes. I can't say I'm thrilled. I haven't played overwatch in like four years. But yeah, I remember for a while some of their costumes would be like big and awesome tanks or just ridiculous and exaggerated are fun and that's a lot of the charm of it. But some of them did change the hit boxes to either being they would be hit by that part of the costume would get hit, or it would misdirect the enemies into thinking their target is bigger than what they are. And then the bullets would clip through part of the costume and be a false pretense. Sort of like idea. So it kind of sucks. You I guess for developers, you kind of got to figure out which one you're going to stick with and just stick with that. Yeah, because either way someone's going to be pissed because they got unfairly hit or they unfairly didn't get hit.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Yeah. But yeah, a little bit of bonding. Isaac I'm not doing better. I got all the alternate characters, but I don't think there's anything to unlock with them. So I don't know, I'm just wasting time. I really should be playing different games. There's no progression in this anymore. And Nagas city is primarily it pokemon unite. Still playing that a lot. It's on my switch, so it's not right in front of me, so I forget I play it. Still playing that a lot. It's infuriating playing that. And that also has a ranked mode. So there's like the casual matches, there's quick matches for like five minute matches and then there's like the ranked match for people who want to get competitive and toxic as shit as the MOBAs tend to do it's infuriating. Because it's a team based game and there's a lot of times where it's like, hey, your teammates just not playing like that team is just gone, you lost. Like there's nothing you can do about it. There was a game where I was playing where we like my lane, the top lane. I was playing with another player. For anyone who doesn't know, the map basically breaks up with the three parts. The top lane, the bottom lane, and then kind of a middling lane where one person can go and that's usually two on top and two on bottom. Yeah, so I was playing top lane and play slow, bro most of the time. And me and the score bunny player, we're doing good. We're pretty much dominating our lane and like, we already got the first base already cleared out like three minutes and we're doing great. And I look, the bottom lane is dog shit and the middle, the jungler to the center player is not even.

There, like their AFK or so oh my God.

And I'm just like, we're doing so good in our spot and then the rest of the team like single handling. I mean, not even single handling. Three of them fucked it up for us, but I was just like, God damn it, that sucks. And there is a feature where, because it's on the switch, you can just turn off the screen to your switch and turn it back on and you'll still be in the match. Or even if you give it to the home screen on the switch and then go back into Pokemon Unite, it'll still be in that game you're playing.

Oh, wow.

And it doesn't really kick you out unless you close the game or unless you're idle for like five minutes. But the matches are only ten minutes long, so five minutes is a long time in that.

Yeah.

And if you do eventually leave the match, it would give the other players control of your character of saying either tell them to stay at one of the bases for defense or tell them to just tag along with you and kind of go on autopilot as like a secondary backup. But that's not great either, because there's a lot of nuance with MOBAs. It's a lot of, like, poking and running back. Like you run in, you attack them a little bit and you run away. You don't stay in the fight till the death. And so having an AI character just tagging along, not really like just firing at any enemies nearby and not really having any strategy isn't really helpful either, because they can get picked up very easily by the enemy and you're down a character. So there's no real good solution for when a party member or a team member leaves because you're just kind of screwed no matter what.

Yeah.

And it happens so frequently, it's almost.

Like the solution is if somebody else is looking for a game, you could join that game as the person that just launch.

Yeah, I know Knockout Cities had that problem where I've had friends join my group, and if we're down a player, we're down a player for that round. But as soon as that round is over, a new person can enjoy it fills.

Oh, that's cool.

With Pokemon Unit, though, they don't have anything like that. They have kind of a fair play system, they call it where it's point based, where if you have 100 points for playing the game, and if you're just a good player or you're just not a shit lord, you'll keep those 100 points, you'll keep your fair points up, and you get a little rewarding. You get a little in game currency for keeping it that high.

Yeah.

Anytime you leave a match early, it'll drop down.

It's like a little credit system, basically.

It's pretty much like a good player credit system.

Yes.

So if you leave a match early, it'll drop down. If you drop down below 80 points, you can't play ranked matches anymore. If it drops below 60 points, you can't play, like, any matches anymore. Like, you can't play, like, at all. I think.

Yeah. That's like also similar to, like, a strike based system, certain number of strikes, strikes and you're out.

Yeah. And then if you play, like if you lose some points, you play regular match and you stay the whole time, you'll get those points back. It's easy enough to get them back.

That's good.

But it makes me wonder, I'm like, if the cut off is like 60, why you can go to 100? Why not just have 50 exactly, like, just inflating the numbers. But I'm also not sure how effective that is because like I said, it happens a lot. Especially if it's a casual game and a teammate leaves. Like, that sucks. But whatever, it's ten minutes and we're back in here. We can go again. Sometimes your team is all there and you play an earnest match and you all try your best and you still get just stomped on by really good players. So sometimes it doesn't even matter if everyone is even there playing.

Sure, yeah.

But with the rank matches, it seems to happen so frequently where it's like, cool, I guess my rank is going down because two of my teammates just left mid match and this is the third time it happens. And it's just like there's the ranks of beginner, expert, veteran, master, I think legend, maybe there's like five ranks to the rank system and one buddy's at the top. He's like master rank. He's way up there because he loves League of Legends, so he's already used to MOBAs and he loves Pokemon, so this is crack cocaine for him. But I asked him, I'm like, how the hell do you even get there? Because every time I win one match in ranked, I'll lose like two or something. So it's just like I don't even know because you have to consistently win to go up and ranks. I'm just like, how? Because you're still relying on the other team members. So, I mean, I'm not competitive or I was like, God damn, that cost me a magic rip. My switch in half, right? I don't care. But it's just like man, when you're earnestly trying, it's like, oh, that's a bummer.

Yes. Super relatable. With me playing Rocket League, people would just quit and at least like I said, they had a system there where they would like, yeah, if you quit mid ranked match, you couldn't join a ranked match for the next five minutes, which honestly, that's more or less a slap on the wrist.

But if you're joining a match and you have to leave mid match because say you have to run off somewhere, there's an emergency, that penalty doesn't matter because you're not going to be back in five minutes to play the game anyway.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's plenty of games that have some sort of like penalty system for being either throwing a game or being a toxic player or like just leaving mid match and like leaving a team hanging. Yeah, I don't know any that really have it one nailed downwards. Like, this is the definitive system. Every other game should be copying this one because it works the best.

Not yet at least.

So I don't have a solution, but it's just like, man, I wish there was a way to track how many people leave like mid match and instead of penalizing, like, taking points away and if you lose something, it just keeps a record of you. Like, we've seen you've left mid match seven times this week alone. You're not going to be allowed to play ranked anymore. You can do casual, you can do the quick match, you can do everything else with friends, like a private match. You can't do ranked where people actually want to try and put effort into it.

I think that's what you proposed as a possible solution, but yeah, to implement that is another story.

Yeah, we're not giving ourselves I don't know how hard that would actually be.

To it doesn't sound that bad, honestly. But again, I don't fucking know.

I mean, I know a lot of people who are like, hey, dubbing is easy, it's super simple. Why don't they just do this bitch? Nothing's easy. So I'm sure there's 1000 complications to it. But, yeah, it's just kind of a bummer. Because like I said, it is a ten minute match. And when the match starts and three your teammates all run out to the match AC two other ones lingering at base because they're AFK. It's like, well, I guess we're locked into this for ten minutes. You can surrender in the game and there's like different timers and stuff, so you can't surrender right away or spam it okay. In a casual match, if you surrender, you surrender, you don't get as much experience to level up. You get a little chop skis or in game currency and stuff. So you might not get as much experience to level up if you surrender in a casual match, but that's about it. If you surrender in a ranked match, you lose so much points. So there's a secondary experience system in ranked matches where it's like every match you play and finish, you get up to 25 points and then once you get up to 200 points, you'll automatically go to rank up. You need three wins in a row to rank up. Okay, so if you get to 200 of these ranked points, it will automatically give you one win, like one of those little notches to help you get to the next rank. So some way to kind of encourage, hey, you keep playing even if you're not winning, you can still get these little experience points, things that will help you get those wins and make oh, wow. Okay, so every match you play, you get like 25, let's say out of 200. If you surrender in a ranked match, you lose like 70 of those points. It pretty much depletes that XP bar entirely. If you surrender in a ranked like once.

Yeah.

So when I'm playing ranked and half my team is just AFK or actively throwing, I want to stop it.

Clearly you want to surrender and just screw it.

But then you get punished for surrendering.

For every carry it out and get the minimal experience points. Yikes.

No, it's kind of just a shitty situation of like I understand why they don't want to do the surrender easier in ranked matches, but just surrender. You need four out of five people to vote yes to surrender.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So even if the pit players are like AFK, it's like if two of them are AFK, I can't surrender anyway because they're holding me hostage here. So it's just kind of a shitty situation. I guess I just have to knowingly lose this battle and I don't know, put some effort into it or not. I don't know.

Yeah, at that point it's like I'll get some practice in, I guess.

Yeah, try and find but then because it's a momentum based game, the other team, if they have a little bit of momentum, I'm going in the beginning, it's going to just dominate through the rest of the match. It's like I can't even practice how I would fight against the Snorlax because he's so beefed up right now. He just stops me out in one move. And he's a defender. He's not even supposed to be doing this much damage. But MOBAs are like about momentum. So once another team starts getting into momentum, it's really hard to stop him. So if they get that momentum right off the bat, it's just like, well shit that game. And I'm just going to get curvestopped for the next ten years.

This is a weird solution to the problem and I doubt will ever be what they ever end up doing. But it's almost like if they recognize that situation where these players are either AFK or just completely not contributing left to match, whatever either. I don't want to say handicap the other team, but maybe you give your players some kind of like special not special ability, but you know what I mean? Like beef them up some kind of boost.

Literally.

At least one of these Pokemon can put the team on their back in some way to at least stand a chance. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like kind of like oh, instead of a player left the match, instead of you haphazardly kind of controlling them. You don't even control them. They just follow around you like a puppy. So it's like instead of doing that, maybe just take that character out and then maybe give everyone else like a 10% damage increase or something.

Exactly.

Something where it's like the experience this person because in the mobile there's like random little enemies throughout that you can fight like neutral enemies that both you and the enemy team fight to get experience. And that. Experience is distributed across the team. So depending on how many enemies your whole team kills is how quickly you all level up, and then there's individual, like, how many you do personally. But maybe if AFK member teammate leaves, it gives you some sort of like, here's how much experience they had or should have gotten based on how long this match has gone. Or maybe just level everyone up once immediately. Yeah, maybe there should be some sort of buff instead of having just this blank slate AI character running around following you, who's probably more of a hindrance than help at that point. Yeah, maybe there's just a way of like, hey, everyone just gets one free level because you lost a teammate, and now hopefully that'll bounce out because there's some matches where, like, I'm a level four slow poke and we're three minutes in a match, and the other team's level seven or level eight. I don't know how they got there, but they're clearly doing way better than us. There's just no way to get that momentum back. We're losing that match.

Makes sense.

It's MOBAs. This has always kind of been a problem with MOBAs because even Overwatch isn't a mobile, but it's a very team based game, and when you have one AFK player, it just ruins everything.

Oh, yeah.

So it's probably just team based games in general. But that's why with Knockout City, I usually just play with my two other friends and we just do the three V three matches.

Perfect.

That way if someone fucks up, I can yell at them directly. I guess it's a rando like. Oh, well, that's funny. I'm playing surprisingly, like, a lot of competitive games right now.

Yeah, that's awesome.

It's mostly because my friend a friend of mine who plays Knockout City is also the one playing Pokemon. It's dragging me around to both of them, and it is fun, but it's also like, man, I'm really not a competitive person. I guess playing Overwatch with AJ and Mark really shouldn't be like, man, I truly don't give a shit about these games because there's so much shit out of our control. But it is fun, actually. Pokemon is a game where I'm surprised by it's fun playing the casual mode, and it is fun playing the rank mode of like, oh, I actually have to do strategy now. I have to plan out. Like, I have to run in here, pick off this neutral enemy before the enemy team gets it and stuff like that and strategizing more. So I am seeing the appeal of mobile MOBAs through Pokemonite more than like League of Legends or Smite or something. Yeah, but yeah, I'm not a competitive person, and it's like, it's a game. I'm doing this in my free time to relax and enjoy myself. If this is making me angry, I'm just not going to do it anymore.

Yeah, exactly, man, I'm half competitive, half not. So I was very much like when I started playing Rocket League. It's like, of course I want to try to see how I hold up against all these other people, but then just the toxicity of the whole scene was just very much a turn off in many ways of just like they had plenty of problems with people. Just like, avoiding the censorship in the chat and like saying there's always bad things. Yeah, exactly. So stuff like that and people telling other people to kill themselves and stuff. It's like, okay, I do not need this. I just want to play the game. And that's when I started playing casual. That's also when I had the realization it's like, I can play games on easy mode. Holy shit, I'm actually enjoying this so much more. I'm going to do this story and it's easy. I don't know, as I grow older, I find myself wanting to put myself in less stressful situations. Especially when I'm finding myself gaming to unwind.

Yeah. And I think we see a lot of that with kids because we play games as kids a lot because we have all the free time in the world. And I'm not going to say kids don't have stress. There's a lot of very stressed out child, but there's like less stresses or the stresses are less long lasting. Yeah. As a kid, you don't have to worry about a twelve year lease on your house. Like, you know, you don't have to worry that far ahead of time. So for some stuff it's like, yeah, I got nothing else going on as a kid. Let me just put everything into this and it's like, oh, it's a challenge. I want to beat it and overcome it as an adult. Yeah. I'm going to give a shit about easy or difficulty levels on a single player narrative game like Near Automata, where I don't interact with anyone else and it's just a story mission. And there's the insanity mode where it's one hit kill for everything. No. Why the fuck did I ever do that? Yeah.

Unless it's like a franchise I've been a die hard for, maybe I'd consider it like, I don't know, kingdom did that speed run and shit. I did not need to do that. But it was fun.

I mean, even Death Thor, I got 100% of the collectibles in the game because by the time I finished it, I was at like 82% or something. So I'm like, I'm already close. Why not? There's still like four achievements. I didn't get on Steam because it would require me to play it again.

I don't care.

I'm not doing that. It was a fun game, but I don't care enough to get those achievements and stuff. Yeah. So I want a game to be challenging enough to keep my attention of like, oh, I actually have to focus. I can't just zone out and play like a zombie. But also I'm not going to be playing those, like, unruly super permanent Death, Fire Emblem Three Houses. I did it where I was like, do you want to play with Perma Death, where if one of your characters dies in a match in a combat scenario, they're out of the game entirely? I guess that's how you're supposed to play these games. Apparently, that's the default setting on the old games. So let me try that out. I lost a character in the tutorial match in the tutorial combat, and he was out of the rest of the game for me. Luckily, you can turn that off at any time, so I turned it off right away. Yeah. But it was a character who died immediately, so I don't know any of his story. I don't know any of his interactions. This especially a dude I used to intern with was the voice of that character. So I was like, I don't know what I don't know who you are in Fire Emblem Love Three Houses because your dude died fucking immediately.

That is wild.

But yeah, it's like people are like, oh, permanent Death is the real way to play Fire Emblem. It's like, I'm playing like, I like these characters now. I like the story. I don't care if in battle they die forever or if they just go, I got a retreat for a little bit, and then I can keep playing the game with them. Anyone who says, like, this is the true way to play the game can eat my full asshole. I don't care.

It's just for people that want that. I just watched the streamer do a nuzlock of Pokemon. Oh, my God. Yeah. I didn't even know what that term meant. And apparently the only Pokemon you can get are in certain areas of the early game, you have to go the first ones you catch. And if they die, they die. And it's just like, oh, wow.

There's a lot of nuzzlock became this thing of people were doing with Souls Games where people make it harder on themselves. It's different. No weapon runs of a soul like Dark Souls Three or all of those, like, shit stat runs and stuff. Nuzlock. Was that for Pokemon? Is it a way for people to artificially make it harder on themselves, to give it a challenge? Because Pokemon is real mindless. Once you know the basics, you can pretty much just smash a it's a game for kids. It's a game for kids. Yeah. We all grew up with it. We all love it. There's plenty of adults who still love playing Pokemon United same, but it is a game for children. The base game is for kids. It's not that challenging. Nuzlocks. The rules vary depending on which nuzlock people are doing because it's all artificially imposed rules. Or you can choose which ones you do. But yeah, the standard array of nuzlock is if a Pokemon faints, they die. So you have to release them from the computer entirely.

So you can never say.

The standard rules for nuzlock is you catch one Pokemon per area on the map in Pokemon Games, it'll say, like, this is Route 15. This is Route 17th. This is the city. This is this cave. And anytime it's a new map, that's a new area, and you catch the first Pokemon you encounter in that area and nothing else.

Exactly. So you're almost looking for a special spot, being like, maybe this will have something better. And then I think the guy I was watching as they got their first Pokemon, it was something really underwhelming, like, the squirrel looking guy. I don't remember their name, but God damn it, this is like, the last Pokemon they wanted out of all the options. Exactly.

Some areas are like, water. Pokemon will be around water of a map. So it's like, if you want to try and bend your chances, you go to specific areas of a map. But even still, you catch the first Pokemon encounter. If you happen to accidentally kill that Pokemon, tough shit. You don't have a Pokemon now. You can't catch anything else in that area now, unreal. And then there's plenty of other rules people customize. Like, beyond that. I saw a lot of streamers doing a randomized nuzlock of I think it was Pokemon black and white.

Okay.

And it was where every Pokemon was randomized. So they didn't spawn in certain areas, like ponytails spawn in, like, Route 15. No, it could be anything. There's. No, that's cool. No clue. And then there are abilities. So Pokemon has different abilities now in later generations, like, innate abilities to a specific Pokemon. That's where a lot of the breeding comes in. So one of them is like, I think it's like Hydrate, where it's like, if this Pokemon gets hit by a water attack, it boosts their attack further.

Yeah, I've seen that.

Plant types. Yeah. So those were randomized as well as the Pokemon's moves. Like, all of the moves every Pokemon had was also randomized, as well as the evolutions. So when a Pokemon evolved, it could evolve into anything that was insane. So it was all randomized. And that's one where it's like, oh, this is stressful and harder. And despite what I just said about not playing stressful games, I'm too old for that shit. This looked fun as hell.

Oh, yeah, that's wild and crazy. Like, you have, like, a friggin Wheedle that turns into a jazz art. It's like, whoa.

Yeah.

I don't know. That sounds really fun.

The fun thing that I saw the most, though, is it's doing it with other people. So you can all share in that pain, because if it's just you by yourself, you're just torturing yourself. But if you're doing this with a group of friends, it can be really fun. I'm, like, so close and, like, this fucked up the streamer I was watching, playing it. It's funny you mentioned wheedle. He had a wheel. It evolved very early, so he was pumped. He's like, cool. This evolves, it could turn into anything. It could turn into any of the 875 Pokemon that were out at that point.

That is so cool.

So he's like, this could be anything. It evolved really early on, evolved into Kakuna. He's like, he lost his mind.

Randomizers are the best. I actually really love that. I was going to say it would have been extra funny if it evolved into a weedle. I'd have been like, Wait, what?

I don't think that's possible.

Okay.

The thing is, with all the randomizers and stuff and nuzlock, it's all custom code, so there's chances the code just fucked up because it's a random person doing it. But these people generally know what they're doing.

Yeah, that's the first part of that line of code, is and make sure.

That it's this Pokemon from but because it's randomized, there's plenty of times where a Pokemon would evolve into a new form that couldn't evolve any further. Like into a charizard, where it's like, that's the end of the line. Or elect a buzzwords. Like, shit, that's it. It can't go further than that. And it's a shitty evolution. It's like, I guess this guy I spent 15 hours trying to evolve is useless now. Or at one point, they went into a cave in black and white. It was just like a cave area. And there was like, in this guy's specific run, all those streamers I was watching, doing this collectively, all had different versions of the game, so it varied between all of them. This guy's in particular, the cave, was full of, like, seven different legendary Pokemon.

Damn.

And even though their moves were randomized and their levels were like, oh, it's a Kyoga, but it's level seven. It still has those in game stats of a legendary Pokemon. So he lost, like, so many Pokemon because he just kept running into legendary after legendary after legendary. And he couldn't catch them because he only caught that first one.

That's right.

And he's like, I'm so fucked. Like, half my party's dead after that cave. It's like, oops. That's the randomized element.

Yeah. They're not all going to be winners.

Yeah. After watching that, I really wanted to do, like, a randomized mouse lock with some friends because it looks real fun. But also, like I said, it's one of those shared pain games where we're all suffering together. That's what the fun is.

Makes sense to me. No, that does sound like a lot of fun. I especially love the idea of just like, as you're walking throughout the Pokemon world, they could be any Pokemon encounter. I would just turn that on and just play the game. Normally there's a Zapdos in fucking Palate town. What the fuck?

Yeah, just that mode alone. I think one guy walked around and he's like, oh, I found a diglet. And then the other streamer on his same screen, same spot, same field, exact same encounter. He's like, oh, I found a mewtwo y version. Like a mega evolved mewtwo y. And he's like, let's go. All right, I guess you got the better one then, right?

That's sick.

It's crazy. Yeah, if they did, like because there's plenty of games that have hacks and mods. Like built in systems like XCOM allow you to put mods in from the beginning. They're open source for mods. They allow you to do that. Plus putting other games. You have to break them kind of to do that. It would be great if Pokemon allowed just like randomized modes, like for just random encounters. That would be so much fun moving forward.

They should really lean into what their audience clearly wants and would utilize.

No, they would never do that.

Yeah, true. They're not that smart.

Nintendo shut down a Smash Brothers tournament because their online net code is so shit, the tournament had to use a third party support and then they shut them down because of it. So no, they will never do that.

Fair enough.

Yeah, a randomizer nuzlock run sounds so fun to me.

Same. I got to get back into Pokemon. Okay, I guess I'll talk about the games I've been playing. That's the thing. Not too much. A little bit more of Pokemon sword. I think I've said shield earlier. I meant sword. Loving that game. I think I have one more badge. That's going to be fun wrapping that up on stream. Speaking of the stream, on Saturday, I had a really fun one. People were going crazy just hanging out, chatting. And the first attempt of the stream, I was playing Fall guys. Go figure. I got a crown on the first go round. It was so cool. The final was lost. Temple one of the new new final of season five. And that one is very much just like a giant labyrinth. You got to just kind of get lucky with the path you're taking. And yeah, there's a clip of it if you guys want to check it out. But it was a very glorious win. The guy was leading the way to the crown, and I'm just like, well, he's going to win. Fuck me. And I'm thinking to myself, I think I even said it on stream. I was just like, well, if he misses, it's ours. And he missed. And I was like, let's go. So it's definitely a lucky situation. Not skilled. Yeah, exactly. So that was cool. Still loving fall, guys. God, I can't get enough of that.

Game, if I'm being real.

They did have recently a Ratchet and clank like crossover event. So there was a week or two ago, the Ratchet event, which you had to do certain events in game in order to accomplish that. You could unlock a skin and like an emo and stuff. And then this week was the clank event, and then the cool thing is if you accomplish both of them, you get like a Rivet nameplate. So for people who are aware of the Ratcheting Clank series, rivet is I think that's her name, Gosh. Anyway, the new character from the girl character in Ratcheting Clank, the newest one. So that's all cool. I like seeing that. It feels weird to me like that this is the crossover event for season five. Like, season five is very much jungle theme. And we're going again back to like Ratchet and Clank, which is more like a space futuristic theme, which was more or less like season four. So to me, I would expect a crossover with like, I don't know, not Tarzan or anything. Like when was the last time he was relevant, but something like jungle related.

Indiana Jones, right?

Something like that. But we'll see if they ever once this event wraps up. In fact, actually, I think you listeners might have run out of time to get the emote and skin, but it's pretty nice. I'm rocking it for a couple of rounds and stuff. But yeah, I do like how they just are constantly updating the game with cool things. The one emote I got in the I don't want to say battle pass, but as you level up during the season, there's like 50 tiers I'm on level 44, you get this mummy walk emote. And I've been wanting it for so long and I finally got that. So it's really cool seeing do a mummy walk. But that's what I mean. It's all just goofy cosmetics and emotes. So nothing that really affects gameplay whatsoever. But this game still has a tremendous amount of glitches and stuff. That's one thing that happened to me over actually. Yeah, it was this weekend. I had a game I wasn't streaming, and I wish I was because I would have clipped the shit out of this. I was all by my lonesome, which probably should have told me the game is lagging or something's wrong. And I'm running up and I literally had like a god run in a fall mountain where you're trying to get to the top of the mountain and grab the crown. I'm completely by myself, at least from my perspective of the game. And I jump up, grab the crown, I see my beam gripping it. I'm already exclaiming, like I'm just celebrating preemptively. And then the screen says, eliminated, actually. How so? When the game does stuff like that and there's real bad D sync issues, I understand when people get really upset at the game, but again, I'm not super competitive. So I did get annoyed, but I just moved on and like, that's just how this game is. But I'm hoping the Epic acquisition will really give them better resources for their servers and stuff. Again, we still have yet to see them introduce Xbox and Nintendo Switch players to this game, so it's going to be interesting. Clearly, there's a whole new audience to be brought in, but how the server is going to handle it, all of cross play and everything. It's going to be interesting to see how Fallguys handles all that moving forward, but I'm hopeful that those kind of issues get resolved once we're all past that.

I mean, fingers crossed. I can't imagine adding new platforms and.

More people makes it easier.

Yeah, fingers crossed.

Exactly. So that's where I'm at. With Fog still streaming it, still having a lot of fun with it and I don't think I've had much time to play anything else. I had some family over, so it was fun seeing some family from out of state. But yeah, not gaming too much. Is there anything going on in the news? Maybe we could just talk about stuff in the news before wrapping this one up.

Yeah, we can give this one short. Not much going on. There was like an indie game showcase for the Switch. So Indie World is the indie game focus for all Nintendo stuff. So definitely check that out if you got a Switch or if you're just interested in indie games. They announced a lot of new games coming out, like Road 96, which I've talked about is kind of like, life is Strange, but It Feels Good and stuff like that. So new games like that as well. As for a Switch, just a ton of games being ported over to it. Very nice if you were ever interested in the game being like, odd. The only console I have is a Switch and that game is not on there. Definitely check out the Indie world showcase. There's a ton of games that were being ported over recently and a lot of people were a little pissy, little acting like little entitled shits as we know gamers to do. Nothing was announced about Hollandite Silk Song and people were all annoyed. This was supposed to be announced. No, they didn't promise anything. They never told you when they would announce.

It'll happen when it happens.

When it's like being made by three dudes, relax. So I am very much excited for that. But also, yeah, it'll happen when it happens.

Two already have my Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which we've talked about many times on this podcast. But man, more like screenshots and everything. This game, the art direction, the music direction. I am ready. I've been wanting this since literally a decade ago. I'm so fucking ready for this game. And then Axiom Verge, too. Axiom Verge was a fucking fantastic metroidvania. I'm not sure. Did you ever get around to playing that?

No, I'm really good playing it for a long time.

That was one of the first games I streamed on our channel. And I mean, that was, man, way long ago.

Weird.

Yeah.

There's also Skatebird, which we've talked about, which is just a bird skating escape.

Bird. Oh, my God. Yes. We've been waiting for that for a long time, too.

That's still TBD. So, you know, it'll be done when it's done. Yeah, oxenfree lost signals is yeah, oxygen free too. So I'm excited for that one. That's 2021. So we're in the latter half of 2021. So it should be coming out sometime. But probably around Christmas, probably around the holiday season.

Yeah.

So a lot of games announced that indie world that are either new games or games that are just being new to the switch being ported over.

Right.

So plan to check out there and I don't know. I guess the other news is fucking interest. Alba is going to be Knuckles in the Sonic sequel movie.

Yeah, I did see Twitter losing its mind over that. That's cool. Makes sense. Sonic movies getting a sequel. It was pretty successful, right?

I thought you were going to say it makes sense. It yourself is not at all hard to agree with.

But hey, I don't know. It's going to be interesting hearing that rendition.

I still haven't even seen the Sonic movie, so I don't know how good it is. I assume it's mediocre, like all of those cartoon characters brought to the real world movies like Yogi Bear and Woody Woodpecker and all those. Except it's just got a lot of video game references and Jim Carrey losing his goddamn minds. So I don't know how good it is. But hey, it's going to be weird with it yourself. Listen, it yourself has also been in plenty of stinkers, too. He's a very busy man, so not all of them are winners. But it's going to just be so weird because he's a great actor. He's a phenomenal actor. He's got a very velvety, smooth bassy voice. And it's like I think it's safe to say he's got a very sexy voice. It's going to be weird hearing that from Knuckles.

Yeah, that's honestly all the I don't know. Knuckles has a really strange fan base. So they probably want a sexy Knuckles.

Listen, Sonic's got a very horny fan base. We all do this. But just like it's going to be weird hearing it. Like Knuckles have this deep, basic voice. Like Ben Schwartz's song that works. I get that. He's got like the young, energetic sort of voice. Like, it's going to be weird, I guess. Sexy knuckle. I don't know, man. It's going to be weird. Yeah, we'll see that.

Definitely. No, that's a good one to end on because I was going to say I'm also looking at his IMDb and I'm like, man, I haven't seen any of these movies. I think I saw The Dark Tower in theaters and I don't remember a single.

As a bold choice to see in theaters.

Doug yeah, it was definitely taking a leap. But speaking of taking a leap, thanks for listening to this episode. Let's wrap this one up and do some plugs. Brendan, where can our listeners find you on the Internet?

Find me on Twitter. ABTS brendan. It's mostly me. Just retweeting my other podcast, which is called are We There Yet? Where we watched three episodes of an anime or a movie. Give a recap of it with our opinions. It's a good sampler platter of anime if you don't want to jump into it too quick or if you just don't want to watch shit anime yourselves and you want to hear someone react to it and have a horrible time. Like when we watch Gantz. Oh, good Christ. Was that an episode? I don't apologize for any of that. That was entertaining as hell for me. But wow, that dance sucks on, like, so many levels.

Damn it. Fair enough. But yeah, listeners, go check that out. Also, if you like our show, please give us a, like, follow subscribe we're findable at all the places at Abt Silence. Specifically, Twitch Tvsilence is where I'm streaming a variety of games. By variety, I mean Fall guys, but there's a couple of others in there. Pokemon, Harry Potter, Lego and stuff. And speaking of Harry Potter, I have a Harry Potter trading card game podcast. Super niche. It's called renovate. Check that out if you want. There'll be links in the show notes. And our music is done by a band called Kind Of All Right. Head over to Kind Of All Right Bandcamp.com for more music from them, but that's going to do it for this week. Thanks for tuning in. See you guys next time. Bye.

See you.