Episode Three: Character Creator

This episode Andrew discusses the benefits/hardships of gaming with a 6 year old daughter. Matt gushes over Assassin's Creed Shadows and how distracted he gets from a good looking vista. They delve into the history of licensed games and Matt's weird beef with a Marvel IP. From there it's steering wheels, hot dog buns, and dragon riding. You know, typical topics you've been beggin for.

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So you're going to get a little gaming notebook to compete with my Assassin's Creed notebook? Nobody can compete with that notebook. What I really want is one that's a leather-bound one that, like, lock. You know, with, like, the strap. Matt always likes a strap on. A strap on, yeah. Welcome, welcome, welcome to episode three, cannot believe it, of the Almost Gamers podcast. I, as always, am your host, Matt Furyk, a.k.a. Matty Flames. And sitting across from me is the always, always on point, always ready to rock your socks off, the Ant-Man, Andrew Wilds. Say hi, Andy. Hello, hello. And this is it, man. Can you believe we're back here again? No. Yeah, I know. We never thought we'd... We would have thought we'd have lost interest by this point.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, I definitely thought that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yet here we are. Gin can do a lot. Yes, yes. Speaking of not losing interest, how about we delve right into what you're still playing, Mr. Andrew?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, we already talked quite a bit before this started. Yeah. Still playing Minecraft. But my daughter's actually a little more into the survival world we've created, so that's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Is she playing in your world? Is that what that means?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, it's kind of complicated, so let's get into it. Okay. So Minecraft is obviously multiplayer, but... There's a thing called realms, and realms is a way for everybody to play a certain world at any time. Because if you play multiplayer, you have to invite people to your world. But a realm is available to X amount of people at any time. So she could technically sign on to the realm and play it, even if I'm not in the realm. Does that make sense? Can she do

SPEAKER_00 2:09

stuff to your

SPEAKER_01 2:09

realm, though? Yes. Oh. Yeah, so... It's kind of the upside-down side to playing with a six-year-old. She can do anything she wants to the world.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Kind of like your house in real

SPEAKER_01 2:20

life. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So,

SPEAKER_01 2:22

yeah,

SPEAKER_00 2:23

absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

You

SPEAKER_00 2:25

never know when your furniture's going to get rearranged or your cat's going to get a haircut. I

SPEAKER_01 2:29

always tell Haley, my wife, I always tell her it's always funny to walk into a room and find– just a random pumpkin or random blocks everywhere or something I took a couple hours building is semi-destroyed. But she's not real into survival mode because there's a lot of potential death.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

And I said in the previous podcast, she does servers, which is their version of online. Is that PVE, PVE? Yeah, a lot of PVE. Okay. And she loves it and also hates it. She's more into the competitive nature of it than even I am, and she gets really frustrated. And it's funny, but also a little sad when she loses. But that's what she's into. But she just got really into potions because, well, if we're getting really into Minecraft, potions are really difficult. You'd think, based on a lot of video games, if you get potions, you just kind of create them. They're

SPEAKER_00 3:35

easy. Two herbs and some spiritual water.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Minecraft, I thought the same. But Minecraft, it's brutal. You can create a potion, but it's useless. The only way to get potions that are actually kind of helpful within the game... It's been a while since you played, so you probably don't know much of this. You have to go to this place called the Netherrealm. I want to call it the Netherrealm.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

It's basically... Our on-point fact checkers will check that out and re-dub in the correct word if it was

SPEAKER_01 4:13

incorrect. Exactly. Edit it all out, and you'll hear some person with a crazy accent say the right word.

UNKNOWN 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, so it's called the Netherrealm, I think. And you go there, and it's kind of their version of, I would kind of call it their hell. Oh. Or the Dark Souls, if you're into Dark Souls. But everything is aggro, and there's all these crazy, weird monsters and terrible things that will kill you at any moment. Yeah. On top of that, everything, instead of water, as the overworld is called, the normal world, it's lava, all lava. And lava is basically terrible because not only does it kill you, but it burns all your gear. So if you die, you lose all your equipment and it burns up. Oh. And so you have to go there. Permadeath. Yeah, basically. If you go there, you might find something, but usually if it lands in lava, it's done. So you kind of have to go in there knowing that. And then on top of that, you have to find these areas called fortresses. And the fortress is just this super mob area for people who don't play video games. Mob is a person. It's like an enemy, a bad guy. And they're just loaded with bad guys, and they're really hard to find. It's very rare you find it. And you have to really explore the nether realm, which is terrible to explore for reasons I mentioned earlier. And all that. And you have to find this certain... It's a mushroom. And all these mushrooms make your potions powerful. And you make all these good potions. So I decided to do this on a Saturday morning when I'm a little bit hungover. And... My daughter decides for the first time she's going to join me on one of these expositions. So

SPEAKER_00 6:16

you're playing together at the same time? I

SPEAKER_01 6:19

was doing this Friday night, or maybe it was Saturday night, and I was drinking a little bit, having a good time, and then I died a bunch of times, probably seven times. And then I woke up and I said, I really got to get back and find that ward. I think I was close. I actually found a fortress by the end of the night, which was crazy. And then my daughter decided to... Joined me that Sunday morning, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

It was Saturday. Is that like you on the PC, her on her tablet? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Okay. Well, she's not on a tablet, but she plays on the Xbox. Okay. And I play on my PC. Cross-player. Yeah. The cross-play is fun. It's worth it. So she joined me. And I'll be honest, you don't know stress until you're trying to go through the nether with a six-year-old. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. But we did it, and we actually found the mushrooms. I mean, I do know. I play with Steve. Steve is a six-year-old. I do have to talk about Steve, but we'll talk about it later. But yeah, so we got these mushrooms. It was a big find. And then she just blew up with like, I want to make every potion ever. I don't know why, but potions unlock something. So now we've been playing a lot more together versus her doing the service. So that was a long way of saying that was an epic moment in our Minecraft little history.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Nice. Daddy-daughter potion making.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Yeah. And then I built a church and... And it's a church. And sorry, mom and dad. Well, my dad doesn't give a shit. But my mom's still religious. I'm not very religious. So my church, it looks like a church, but it's the Church of Leon because it's my daughter. And it's all about happiness. Everything is rainbows because her favorite color is rainbow.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Wow, that is not direction. I assumed it was going to be like a black church.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

It's an inviting church. It's like a church that you'd actually want to go to maybe. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Sorry. So not a Norwegian death cult church. No. Which is not what I was expecting.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Okay. But I learned, I basically followed a build and I wanted to mention him in case someday this happens. This takes off for no apparent reason. Not from us, maybe. But anyway, his name is Blue Nerd. Follow him on YouTube. I wanted to shout out to him. He taught me so much about Minecraft. And if you're into Minecraft, go to Blue Nerd's YouTube. And he's... Somebody said in the comments, and I kind of agree, he's kind of the Bob Ross. Oh, okay. And it's fun. I'll just load up a video and maybe do some exercise and watch it on TV because it's pretty amazing what this guy does. I don't know whether he's learned things over from other people. He doesn't really credit anybody else. So if he figured this all out on his own, he's a genius if he has. So check out his YouTube. All right. Nowadays, he does more like, you can see where, like I've watched a lot of videos from him and they're like five years old. But in the last, like the newest ones are always like, I survived a thousand days and here's how you can. It's all like clickbaity. Like before it was just like tutorial, how to build a cool church. You got to do what you got to do. And he survived and he's doing well. Good for him. Good for him. Sorry. But I just wanted to shout him out.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

All right. Well, thank you for what's apparently going to be a weekly update on Andy's Minecraft. Well, I'm building a

SPEAKER_01 9:45

city if you listened to the last episode.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So there's going

SPEAKER_01 9:48

to be a ton of

SPEAKER_00 9:50

updates. We can all visit. I

SPEAKER_01 9:51

can talk next time about my turtle. situation but I'll save

SPEAKER_00 9:56

that you'll have to wait I already talked way too much you'll have to subscribe by the way so throw that in there if you want and help support us if you're enjoying this show we are on Buzzsprout if you follow the link and find Almost Gamers you can subscribe and help us out and maybe maybe we'll keep going and you guys can find out what happened to Andy's turtle yes turtles if not the turtle will die

SPEAKER_01 10:19

the turtle will die it's on you you will live that with this

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Anyways, moving on. Moving on. Let's talk about something we've both played, and we've talked about it on here, which is kind of the point of all these nights, is Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2. Wow, that's a lot, but it's all needed to explain it. Now, I actually want to start this off by talking about our... actual, we should say, inexperience with the whole Warhammer franchise. Yes. Kind of before this. So my first real walk into the Warhammer world was when me and you both played Vermintide 2. I think that's my very first any Warhammer experience. Is that your first? Did you do anything before that? That was my first.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

I played one other game and it was their take on Diablo. And I think that was after. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

That was my first, I believe.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

And then we both also played Darktide, right? Warhammer Darktide.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Oh, yeah, we did

SPEAKER_00 11:27

play that. Yeah, we played it one night and very drunk, and we don't really remember anything. We had a good time. We were always having a great time. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 11:34

that was like a top-down, but, yeah, you were like a shooter.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

No, just like Vermintide, but it was in the 40K realm instead of the Age of Sigmund realm. Oh, really? Yeah. Yep. Yeah, you don't remember. All right. For those of you who don't know, the Warhammer mythos is insane. How many books are there, Ant-Man?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Didn't you look it up? I did at one time. I believe it's 100 at least.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Yeah, it's in the hundreds. It started off as a tabletop RPG. That's what I figured. Like a lot of model building. People

SPEAKER_01 12:12

paint them. If you know Henry Cavill or Cavill, whatever you say it is. He goes both ways. Does he? Yeah. But yeah, he paints them quite a bit.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

It's a fascinating universe, basically split into two things. There's the Age of Sigmund, which is like the medieval kind of stuff. Yeah, you explain this. And then there's the 40K stuff, which is, well, 40,000 years in the future, if you even want to think about it. And it's just a unique aesthetic. Like playing Space Marine 2, it was neat because it's like... Imagine if we stayed medieval, but now we're exploring space and it's kind of like the feeling, like there's a lot of priests.

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

There's a lot of like ceremonial stuff on your garb and like it's in like the mega ships are like basically floating churches.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Certainly amazing to look at from the grandiosity or the massive.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yeah. I mean, we always say I just like to walk around and just look at shit. But this game is hard not to.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

As Skillop always says. But you can

SPEAKER_01 13:16

definitely see there's like that medieval-ish but very future. So I would agree that's an accurate assessment.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

That's neat. That's the world I want to play and the world I want to learn more about is just– Where do you start when there's that much mythos? So we're trying to not get into that too much and just enjoy the game. And we are. It looks great. It plays very solid. It's like a Gears of War meets... I think I had something for this and I do not remember.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, Gears of War is accurate because there's a very visceral, up-close combat... With a little bit of skill-based, you kind of have to know some moves, dodge.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah, there are some combos. Combos? That's nice. The melee part is combo-based, which adds a little something-something to it. Right. Yeah. It's not just a mindless... It's a third-person game.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yeah. Oddly, I just talked to somebody who's a huge Warhammer fan, and he still... even though he's a huge fan of Warhammer, he hates the fact that it's not Helldivers. He's a Helldiver guy, and we were both kind of... Oh, yeah, he has a Helldiver kind of... Yeah, and I liked Helldivers. I mean, actually, I really enjoyed it. I just... I guess the thing that lost me on Helldivers was the fact that you needed four players to really experience the game. I felt like it wasn't dumbed down enough for two players.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

And there's only two of us. There is a story-ish. It's like the whole community makes a story, which is neat. But you can't just go in and play a campaign.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

There's no campaign. There's no

SPEAKER_01 14:54

campaign. But he says he wishes Marine 2 had the combat. He wishes the combat was the same as Helldivers.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

He loves the fact that there's... The way he explained it and the way I understood it was he liked the way there's friendly fire. There was consequences for blowing your friends

SPEAKER_00 15:16

up. Well, if you're stuck playing with someone like me, who is a general rule for several decades now, if there's friendly fire, I am not allowed to use grenades.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah. But yeah, so I... I'm trying to– and he's not the first person to say they didn't like it, but I kind of find the combat refreshing, but that's me. Yeah. It's visceral. It's what you'd expect, but it's kind of for us a drinking game, so maybe we don't want to put too much thought into it.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, which you need, though. You need that kind of a game. It reminds me a little bit of, in that regard– Bulletstorm.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Oh, yeah. Bulletstorm

SPEAKER_00 15:55

is classic. That was just mindless fun. Yeah. Big guys shooting guns and doing stupid shit. Right. Yeah. It was tons of fun. Yep. Absolutely. So hopefully we'll play some more Warhammer tonight. That's the goal. So far, we've played like a whole two hours. Maybe. Maybe by the end of this podcast lifetime, we'll have beaten that game.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Maybe. Probably not.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Do you have anything else for us before I jump into the big one? I

SPEAKER_01 16:26

think I've bored our five fans with Minecraft, useless Minecraft. Hey, I'll tell you what. My daughter someday is going to be on this, and she's going to talk Minecraft too. That's right. It's the only game she plays. All right. Go ahead, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Okay, so the big one, the one I've been waiting for for technically a couple of years now is Assassin's Creed Shadows. So, yes, this is the big one I've been worried about for years because, look, I am diehard Assassin's Creed. I will play it no matter what. I was going to play Shadows no matter what. It's been up and down over the years. There's been a few... I've sat out. But for the most part, I've played them all. I love the lore. I love the modern-day shit, which a lot of people hate. But I think that is quintessential to the series, and you can't separate the modern from the historical stuff. But I digress. Overall, so I basically marathoned. I got about 20 hours in an Assassin's Creed over the course of two and a half days. I have a lot more to go, but I will have to say, overall, Amazing. Just amazing. I am having so much fun. It's just, first of all, it's funny because I feel like every time I come on here, I talk about, this is the best looking game ever. I'm going to say it again. This is like the best looking game ever. In other graphics. In graphics. This is one of the very first games to actually require ray tracing, like on the PC. Usually you can opt out of it. Are you playing on the PC? I'm not. I'm playing on PS5. That's where I play them all. So that's kind of keeping it going. But you can tell it's baked in there. Everything's all about the lighting and the shadows, believe it or not, play an important part. Matt

SPEAKER_01 18:26

has so many weird lights in his house. I swear he'll clap and like 50 lights will change.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yes, I'm smart lighted out in here. It's because in case I need to assassinate someone in my living room, I'm ready to go. Mothman was his favorite.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

I, there are, this game was obviously had a lot of controversies, which I don't really want to get into, but I feel like if this game would have just released in a vacuum, none of these would have been an issue because it's not, if you just play the game, most of the complaints, it's, it all works out and it works very well. I don't know if you know, and for those of you who don't know, you, you, you're, You play as two different protagonists, Yasuke, who is a samurai, and Naoe, who is a shinobi or ninja. You start the game off playing as Yasuke for like an hour or so, and then I still haven't gone back to him. The way it looks to me, like 70% of the game is Yaoe. Naoe, geez, sorry.

UNKNOWN 19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

And there's a reason for that. It's kind of a plot device, how Yasuke works in. I don't want to give any spoilers to this because it's such a new game, but it's very neat. It reminds me a lot of Shogun, the FX series, Hulu series. I don't know if you've seen that. Yeah, it was a very good series, yeah. It's like that. Yasuke is an outsider among outsiders. He's an African slave person. from taken by the Portuguese and then basically thrown into Japan. So it's a neat framing device as a plot device and it just works very, very well. but it's, it's so the weather effects are amazing. There's a rainstorm. You can tell it's coming. Like it gets that, you know, like in real life, there's like that odd silence and the wind starts to pick up right before a thunderstorm. That's how this game, and it's just, it's so cool. And then the water, the puddle effects, uh, the seasons change. Uh, you go actually go through like all four seasons slowly as the game.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

That sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah. It's, it's really cool. Um, Again, the ray tracing. The music is very good. It is not our boy Jesper Kidd. That's sad. There's a couple different groups doing the soundtrack, as a lot of the recent games have been because they're so massive. But one of the groups, it's a duo. They go by The Flight. They worked on Odyssey a little bit. They also did a lot of the work for Horizon Zero Dawn. which was a really good soundtrack.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah, so far I'm really enjoying it. You know, they do the whole Ezio's family theme, but basically with a koto. So it sounds, you know. But they have their own theme for this game specifically. It's not an ocarina. I don't remember the name, but it's the Japanese version of an ocarina. But it's really cool. So soundtrack great, looks great, visual, voice acting. Is very good. Okay. Except I ran into this problem with Odyssey. where it sounds compressed, like it's a low bit rate, especially with the main character. For some reason, Naue sounds like it's a bad MP3 at times. And I know no one notices that but me. But it was definitely a problem. It bugged the shit out of me on Odyssey. Not Odyssey, I'm sorry, Origins. Origins, Hayek sounded like he was an MP3 from the 1990s. Again, I'm the only one that seemed to notice. And it's not all the time. It's certain. I don't understand it. It's just a weird Foley issue, maybe. I don't know. But that bothered me. Okay. So far, it's not as bloated as the other ones. The parkour is best ever in the series.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I always hated the parkour.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah, this one's a lot less frustrating. she does what you want her to do, like, all the time. Oh, yeah. Now I'm interested. There it is. There it is. And I've only had a crash once, so it's not too buggy. There was a point, though, where a guy was playing a flute from his forehead. Instead of holding it up to his mouth, it was like here. Well, maybe. Maybe? I don't know how they played the flute back then. You're right. I've never seen a person play a flute from ancient Japan. You're very much so right. I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

So we'll get back on that. Maybe people played from

SPEAKER_00 23:10

their foreheads at some point. The only complaint... I have, and it's my own fault, is it's pretty hard and very different from the other games. Oh, really? So combat takes a while getting used to, and I actually tried it on Expert at first because I thought... You know, I'm pretty good. And he realized he wasn't. Yeah, yeah. And everyone told me, too, like, Naue is not meant– she's not a samurai. She's small. She's a ninja. She's supposed to act from stealth. She can't take on too many enemies. But, you know, I'm like, well, I can do it, though, right? Can she take on a

SPEAKER_01 23:42

lot of friends, if you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

No. No. Okay. So, yeah, I was just– I wasn't getting the combat, but once I got the combat, everything started to click. Yes, baby. Nice. It's old school. You remember Assassin's Creed 2? I think you've played 2? Maybe. Maybe. There was a parry... counter system that where if you paired correctly you would basically like stab the guy in the neck or the head or the chest or cut his head off or something like that I'm already in I want it yeah and has a lot of that and it's just it's so satisfying every time just do it a

SPEAKER_01 24:18

good parry system is amazing

SPEAKER_00 24:20

yeah so there's a lot more obviously you need to go through but so far I'm looking at the story already how many hours do you think you're in almost 20 hours I'd say

SPEAKER_01 24:30

okay based on 20 hours what score would you give it on a 1 to 10 9 Really? Yeah, I'm already

SPEAKER_00 24:37

at nine.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Ten being the worst game you've ever played. No, I'm just

SPEAKER_00 24:41

kidding. Ten being the best. I'm already at nine. So unless they fuck up, it won't go down, and I have a feeling it's going to go up once I get Yasuke back.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Well,

SPEAKER_00 24:49

I'm glad you're enjoying it. I recommend it, and I'll keep you updated as I assassinate my way through

SPEAKER_01 24:55

feudal Japan. Absolutely. Cut some heads off for us, man.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Speaking of decapitation, I've also been playing Marvel Rivals, which... Sadly enough, it doesn't have any decapitation. I just really wanted to use that segue.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Interesting that it doesn't? Interesting that I'm playing it. Well,

SPEAKER_01 25:16

there's a lot of swords and sharp weapons. No decapitation. No, it's

SPEAKER_00 25:20

very kid. It's Fortnite-y. Well, I guess more appropriately, it's... What's that, Blizzard?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Overwatch?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Overwatch. It's very Overwatch-y. Not really having played Overwatch much. I never played it. Yeah. Oh, maybe I played a little. Like there's damage indicators and people fall over, but there's no blood or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

So what kind of... Explain to me this game. I don't know anything about

SPEAKER_00 25:43

it. It's like Overwatch. I don't... What are they? Are these... Now, did you play

SPEAKER_01 25:49

with somebody?

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Yes. The only reason I'm playing is I have friends that are into those sort of things. The only reason I play Fortnite is with these people. Mm-hmm. And I enjoy it. For the most part, it's just fun to hang out with friends online. It's no mud. No, no. It is not a mud. You can't lick each other, can you? Which, for those of you who don't know, is a multi-user dungeon, which is an old, old-school type of game. It's usually text-based. It's truly the way to play. Says you. Marvel Rivals is like a four-verse, four-PVP. Mm-hmm. There's different modes, a lot of like capture the king of the hill, protect the base, kind of those sorts of things. Yeah, classic. It's a typical online battle game. It's fun. It actually is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. It's free to play, and those can get a little dangerous. But just like Fortnite, you don't have to spend any money at all. All the money is on cosmetic stuff. Is there any building? There's no building. I've never tried. I've never done a building mode on Fortnite. I've done non-build mode only. Me too.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

I actually... I did enjoy Fortnite for a while.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Then you might enjoy Marvel's. It's done very well. What's interesting, there's a huge cast of characters. It's always a little overwhelming. And they all play quite differently. I started off Moon Knight. I like that show, by the way. I do like the show, and I really like that character to play as. I was actually kicking some ass playing as Moon Knight. And then I also did Luna Snow. who is, I want to say, an X-Men character that I've never heard of. No, never heard of. She's neat. She's kind of like a healing class. Okay. And, you know, it helps to have someone in your party as a healer. It's like, all right, I'll be the healer. But I kind of really enjoyed her. And she actually might make my list of crushes, which is going to be an upcoming segment in a couple episodes. We're going to do a video game, Crushes.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Well, yeah, it's... I'm enjoying it. It's fun. It's a good multiplayer game. I only play it once or twice on my own just to kind of practice. Not on my own. You kind of have to play with randos if you don't have a full group. Right. But, yeah, it's good, even though that– so this will lead us into– Didn't they get

SPEAKER_01 28:03

fired? A lot of people got fired off

SPEAKER_00 28:05

this? Yes, right after they announced how good they were doing. They laid off most of the U.S.-based staff.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

That's impressive.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

But that's how it's been this year and last year. Lay off, lay off, lay off. Poor gamer. Yeah, poor gaming industry. That's why we're only

SPEAKER_01 28:19

almost,

Licensed Games

SPEAKER_00 28:20

because we don't want to be late on our own podcast. Right. That'd be great. That really leads us into, though, licensed games and the whole sordid history. So a licensed game, if you don't quite know... Aladdin. Everybody knows Aladdin. Yeah, it's a game that's based off of a pre-existing property. Right. So any Marvel thing is going to be a licensed game. And those have been... Up and down over the years. There's that Avengers game that so many people kind of liked. A few people loved. Most people hated it. Yeah. I played it. Nothing then. I don't know. What is the earliest licensed game you played? So when we grew up... Every licensed game was guaranteed terrible. Terrible. The whole point was, though, our parents didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00 29:17

and they would just buy it. Yeah, they saw, oh, my kid loves this Disney movie. This game must be great.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Wow, I said it. I think Aladdin, Sega. I don't think that was terrible, though, was it? Oh, are we talking about terrible games?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

No, I just meant, so what is your earliest opinion on licensed games that you can think of?

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Well, I just remember Aladdin being terrible. Absolutely amazing, except difficult, as all games were pretty much back then, by today's standards. Right. I'm trying to think, like, Nintendo, did I? I know, like, E.T. gets a lot of flack because it's the worst game of ever, and they buried it, but I never played that. I think I did. I don't remember. I

SPEAKER_00 30:01

guess in that era, they were okay. I think that's what allowed them to propagate over the years is because the 8-bit era, they did okay. 16-bit era, Aladdin was probably 16-bit. Jurassic

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Park was another second game. Did

SPEAKER_00 30:15

you ever play that? No, I did not. You never played Jurassic Park? That was the one with the arm and the boob health. So there's a Jurassic Park game. I'm pretty sure it was Dreamcast. Oh, yeah. Where they try to do accurate hand physics. Oh, no. Yes, and most of the game was this arm, and to check your health, you would look down, and you had a tattoo on your upper breast. You were a girl, and as the tattoo got filled in, or unfilled in, you were dying.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

We could

SPEAKER_01 30:47

do some stuff on

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Sega Dreamcast, but... No, I don't know what game you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Well, no, there was a... You sang, well, not the Dreamcast, but Sega CD. Oh. Do you remember Sega CD at all? I remember Sega CD, yes. I didn't own it, but my friend Sean, another should-be gamer, but I guess he died off when he became a dad. But hopefully, maybe he'll come around and maybe even be on the podcast. We can talk wizardry. Ooh. Now we're talking. He had every system possible. Up until when he was like 20, 20 years old, he had every system basically when it came out. Well, from Nintendo on, we'll say, like the original NES. But he had a Sega CD. No one had a Sega CD. Yeah, Jurassic Park, they had a Sega CD game. I don't know if you ever played that. I guess I wouldn't have because I didn't

SPEAKER_00 31:42

know anyone had a Sega CD.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

And it was pretty unique. It was kind of a puzzle game, but... there was a time limit. So basically bad guys were coming to the island and they were going to steal all the eggs. And I just remember that. So there was a timer and a puzzle element. So you had to go find all the eggs or something like that. And then you had to get them into the incubator in time and take off on that helicopter before the bad guys showed up. So that was probably obviously after Jurassic Park. So probably 93, 94. 94. 94. I'm

SPEAKER_00 32:24

looking. I'm just making sure we're not talking. Oh, yeah. So this is, okay. No, I know the game you're talking about. No, I've never played it. But it looks kind

SPEAKER_01 32:30

of cool. It was pretty cool for the day. And Sega CD was one of those systems that had the old classic, like it was trying to capture real people in camera.

UNKNOWN 32:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

So it had that realistic edge. I don't know what that was, that technology.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Oh, like the FMV? Is that what it is? Did it actually have full motion video? Full motion video. Yes, that was in that weird moment in history when we thought that was the future of games. It was all blocky and

SPEAKER_01 33:00

glitchy looking, but you saw a real person. So you're like, whoa, this is where we're at in games. Oh, that era. So maybe that would be one of the earlier licensed games. And actually, that was a pretty good

SPEAKER_00 33:13

one. Okay, so I guess right up there, then they started to be crap. Yeah, I mean, think of every superhero movie that came out like Batman, every Batman that came out back in the day. Oh, I

SPEAKER_01 33:24

remember the Batman for the Nintendo game or Sega. But

SPEAKER_00 33:29

yeah, they weren't great. No, the only one I think an exception was, I believe... Well, Superman. Remember Superman 64? Superman 64. That was the classic. The classic. I never really played it. I saw a video. Yeah, I think me and Miller, I want to say, played it. Another name. Yeah, that was... That's the Superman with the rings, if those of you don't know. I remember seeing videos of the rings. 90% of the gameplay is you have to fly through these rings. Yeah. But then there was the exceptions. I remember Sean, actually, I remember playing with Sean. Williamson? Yes. The Matrix, the Matrix game, what actually took place between the two movies, I think. Oh, yeah. He was so into that. Yes, it was literally a tie-in.

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Man, I forgot how much of a gamer

SPEAKER_00 34:16

he was. Yeah, man. And then another big one was the Pitch Black game.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

I

SPEAKER_00 34:22

never played that. Escape from Butcher Bay. Yeah, that was another one. I think it was a prequel to the movie Pitch Black. Oh, okay. And apparently it was really good. It was one of the first games that had a stealth mechanic and they built in lighting and dark where you could actually shoot out the lights to sneak around people and stuff like that, which is a big part of Assassin's Creed Shadows. It's the shadows mechanic, believe it or not. But yeah, for every good one, there was... A lot of bad ones, just like video game movies. There's so many of them. Any movie you'd think of that was slightly geared toward kids would have a game based on it. Oh, yeah. That was like Home Alone for some reason.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Oh, that might have been one of the early ones. I played Home Alone for Game Boy.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Oh, yeah. For like six hours, that fucking song

SPEAKER_01 35:10

played.

UNKNOWN 35:10

Oh, gosh.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

That wasn't fun. That

SPEAKER_00 35:13

was John Williams. Well, the song was fine. The actual movie, but yeah. The game

SPEAKER_01 35:21

itself? I think I beat it. There

SPEAKER_00 35:25

was no one that was really, really fucking hard. They had no idea what to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Nintendo Game Boy was amazing. Kids nowadays have no clue, but Game Boy was great because it ran on batteries so you could take it on

SPEAKER_00 35:37

a road trip. 4AA, baby.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

But guess what? The screen going in the dark when you're driving, it was just, well, you couldn't see the damn screen, so you were screwed.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

It was too dark or too light. You couldn't see the screen. You couldn't see the shit. You had to be just right. Nowadays. Well, I had the light that you would clip on that took another four double A's. So yeah, we were looking at like, it was like basically six bucks an hour to play that game. Not

SPEAKER_01 36:05

worth it. And then it wasn't a very good game. No.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

So where are we going? Licensed games. Oh. Terrible. Terrible. But some are just... Because it's tough for the company itself because... They're either forced into playing this game because a lot of times, at least back in the day, they weren't meant to make money. They were just another way to promote the movie or promote the product to begin with. Things have switched now because I want to say the very first licensed good superhero game was Batman Arkham Asylum. Oh, that was a good game. That kind of changed the game where people were like, oh– licensed superhero games can be good and can make money.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

And yet, it lived long enough to become the enemy, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

Yes. Exactly, because look at Suicide. Yeah. Justice League, Suicide, wait, killed the Justice League Suicide Squad. Yeah. Which... Destroyed. Yeah. Yeah, it was not good.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

There was a lot of shit over

SPEAKER_00 37:13

there. I'm hoping Rocksteady can survive after that. Yeah, me too. But what I really wanted to get into was, yeah, that whole thing, like some games are like shoved into that. And if it doesn't work out, they're doubly screwed because A– They're out all that money for development, but B, even if they do make money, a certain percentage goes towards the right holders. That's why I know the people behind Baldur's Gate 3, Larian, they don't want to do it again because they have to pay like 20% of their profits goes toward Wizards of the Coast, D&D. So it's like a double-edged sword there for a while because they were really popping off, making a lot of money, but you have to pay a percentage. And then now they're not even working out. So it's tough. But the one I really wanted to talk about was Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, the game.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Yeah, I never played. Really didn't even hear about it.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Yeah, it kind of flew a little bit under the radar. I wanted to hate that game. I hated that game before it even came out, but for an odd reason. The reason was this is right at the height when the Marvel video game games were just like printing money. Like they were just guaranteed hits or whatever. So they shifted IOTUS Montreal from making the third game in the Deus Ex trilogy, the new reboot.

UNKNOWN 38:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

to making this Guardians of the Galaxy game. And I'm like, ah, because you tell, like, I know they wanted to make it, but they're like, no, Square Enix, who owned them, was like, no, you need to make this game instead. And I'm like, fuck. So I was mad at this game from the inception just because it was taking away from what I wanted to play. But I ended up playing it. It was a really good game. It really was a lot of fun. I do enjoy the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. They're just fun. But this game, they didn't use any of the cast from the movies, which I think is better, for the better of it. I didn't expect that. They used a lot of big video game voices for it. It was really, really good. I'm, you know how there's always like banter in the background when you're walking around with the crew or like during a fight, people always say shit. It never repeated.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Really?

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yes. The amount of dialogue they had to record for this game. blows my mind. I never heard the same banter through any of the stage. People just randomly walking around through all these fights, all their little tag lines and stuff. It was always different. That never happens. Usually, 30 hours into the game, you're like, yes, I've heard you say that one line or 90 times. Please shut the fuck up. That just didn't really happen. It was very impressive. It was a very single-player... game you know not open world just level after level after level and it was it was a game you want to be like a game game game and it was great I recommend it actually you probably get for pretty cheap now and I bet it probably isn't you what system I'm pretty sure all of them I played on the PS5

SPEAKER_01 40:51

okay so yeah you can play it on a PS5

SPEAKER_00 40:53

yeah you probably get for not much now and I bet it actually isn't even 30 hours but even me probably spend about 30 hours on it wow yeah

SPEAKER_01 41:00

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah. So it means it's probably a lot shorter than that. But yeah, I recommend it even though, you know, licensed

SPEAKER_01 41:09

games. You just drew a memory from me. Oh, yeah? Of a licensed game that disappeared because another company that grew so big, it eventually failed. And it was one of the best licensed games I have ever played. And honestly, this just came to me right now. Was... Game of Thrones by the company. Oh, the Telltale Games. Yes. Yes. You know, and I'm going to name drop. Joe Welsh introduced me to it back when we worked together. And I played it. It was the first time I ever played one of their games where people, I'll remember that. And it was tied in with the actual show slash books episode. depending on where you're coming from. It was a family that you didn't know. Entirely their own story. Yeah, but they worked within the families that you knew. It was so amazing that I bought into their whole product. I played other ones. Tales of the Borderlands. Tales of the Borderlands is still one of the best games I've played. Yeah, yeah. But that one, I think, was still better because I'm a Game of Thrones nut. By the way, my daughter's name is Liana. Figure that out. But yeah, that was an amazing licensed game, and then it disappeared. It ended on basically a cliffhanger.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Telltale Games blew up.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Very unfortunately. And then they got re-bought, and they technically still exist.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

I think they made

SPEAKER_01 42:47

something.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

I think The Wolf Among Us Season 2. Or it's coming out. It's coming out, yeah. We'll see. Hopefully they survive. Actually,

Matt's Hardware Emporium

SPEAKER_01 42:53

my wife bought me the first one, and it's still plastic wrapped. But she's pretty mad at me. She knows. Someday. Eh, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

All right, welcome back, all ye faithful, to Matt's Hardware Emporium. It's hard. And it's aware. It's aware that it's hard. Speaking of that, let's talk about the Thrustmaster.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Thrustmaster?

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Thrustmaster. Thrustmaster? Thrustmaster. I trust that you'll thrust. The T300RS racing wheel. Now, Andrew, we've used racing wheels and loved racing wheels for at least a decade or so now.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

Yeah, that's a standard for Matt. He needs

SPEAKER_00 43:41

one. The first one I got was... I want to say... The

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Xbox,

SPEAKER_00 43:48

right? No, no. Well, no. It was for the PS3 maybe-ish. I don't know. But I bought it with Burnout to play Burnout with. Yes,

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Burnout.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

Classic game. God, talk about games that need to come back. They haven't actually fulfilled it. But that on the wheel was just so much fun. It was. So many memories of that wheel.

UNKNOWN 44:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

and just how you had that force feedback. So the wheel fought you a little bit. And they've all gotten better over the years. Like the one I have now, this Thrustmaster one, it's a belt-driven, as they call it. So it really, I mean, you remember this one is like, if you're stuck on a rough turn, it's hard to turn the wheel. It's really cool. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 44:32

a lot of good

SPEAKER_00 44:33

feedback. But lamenting, there's not a lot of games that are compatible with it, except for like Gran Turismo.

UNKNOWN 44:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

And there's no arcade-y games. There's not a lot of arcade racers out anymore. And it makes it very sad. Because that was such fun. We'd take turns trying to beat levels on these gaming wheels. And it was just fun. It makes it harder to play, by far. But it's so much more fun having the pedals and the steering wheel. I remember a lot of times, so many hours playing the crash mode, even with Steve's mom. I remember her trying to use this wheel. Steve. But do you remember the Xbox version of it? Probably not. It had no resistance whatsoever. Oh, that was the worst wheel we've ever played. It was such garbage. I mean, it was a step up. It was a step lateral with the Wii remote. Remember when you could shove the Wii into a fake steering wheel and use it? They still do that.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

And I'm like, you just

SPEAKER_00 45:38

turn it. It had no resistance. It was so dumb. It was so dumb. I

SPEAKER_01 45:41

mean, when you're driving a real vehicle, you feel something. That's... Just to feel air.

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Yeah, I never understood that one. Have racing wheels evolved? Very much so. Like, what I have is a belt-driven. Right. I don't know what the older ones were. Right. But this is, like, the step-up. Okay. But it's still the cheap version. You know, this thing was, like,$300,$400 when I bought it. Okay. Now they have direct-drive ones that basically use the same steering column that, like, a car uses. Like, I've heard you can almost hurt yourself on it if you're, you know, not... Yeah. So you can

SPEAKER_01 46:14

crash on

SPEAKER_00 46:14

the bike. Yeah, I mean, they have ones that have, like... switchable, swappable racing... Like the actual wheel itself, you can pop off depending on whether you're in a Ferrari or like, you know, it's insane. You can spend thousands and thousands of dollars. It's very realistic. And they all have like crazy shifters or pedals where you can change the springs out on depending on how much resistance you want. So the wheel technology has increased a lot. Okay. It's just now they're all geared towards simulators.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Right. And like how do you even begin to look for these wheels? Are they all custom made?

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Yeah, directly. for the manufacturer for the most part. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

And there's like these companies that just make wheels?

SPEAKER_00 46:55

Yeah. Well, Thrustmaster makes some higher end ones and I cannot remember the name off the top of my head of the company that makes the more expensive ones. Don't worry about it. Yeah, I'm not going to. But you just Google like high end racing wheels. But

SPEAKER_01 47:08

these are just companies that just make... Custom wheels. Yes. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

And it's cool. I want to get into it, but I like, yeah, Gran Turismo just, I mean, if I want to be frustrated for several hours, I'll just go drive in traffic down the parkway. I don't need a game. Yeah, I don't need a game. I get it, though. If you're into that, awesome. I wish I could. Yeah. We want arcade-y. You need those arcade-y games just for fun, and they just don't exist anymore. Right. And I don't understand it. It drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

Ha-ha.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Well, Matt's that corner and we have nothing to touch.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Yeah. I have a wheel sitting in the corner of that living room. Yeah. And we haven't used it in at least a year. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Because there's really no good games.

SPEAKER_00 47:51

No. Need for Speed Heat was the last one we played on it.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Yeah. It was fine. It was all right. It

News

SPEAKER_00 47:56

was fine. Yeah. So, you know. Memory. Give us burnout. Let's move into news. Oh, we're going right to news. Right to news. What do you got there, man? Because I have nada. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

These aren't technically newsworthy-ish, but I think they're fun stories. I'm sorry if there's a little pause because I have them saved on my phone. I think one Matt will enjoy is the Assassin's Creed because you're playing Assassin's Creed. Did you hear anything about their newsy-nish stories? I don't think. Okay. Apparently they just– this is kind of dumb, but it's funny. They got in a little Twitter beef with the hot

SPEAKER_00 48:45

person. No, I did, and I am all for it. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

So I guess Elon called out a streamer. I guess a streamer decided to– I guess– whatever, take money from Ubisoft to be, you know, whatever, make some money off of them. And then, because I was researching this very quickly before, so I don't know the whole detail, but Elon basically calling out Ubisoft in his tweet. He said, sellout would be more accurate. Objectively, he is promoting a terrible game just for the money. But then they said, this is...

SPEAKER_00 49:26

Ubisoft's official Twitter account response, correct?

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Assassin's Creed official. Right, right. Which is obviously a part of Ubisoft. And they responded to Elon Musk. And they said, is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you? Which is... Chef's kiss. I know.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

I mean, I saw it and I'm like, holy shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

I saw that and I thought of you. And granted, Ubisoft slash Assassin's

SPEAKER_00 49:56

Creed has been under the. And if you don't know, they've been on a social media lockdown. Yeah. When this game released. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Because of all the hate, they didn't want any death threats against any of their employees. Wow. So like everyone stay off social media. Right. while this game first comes out.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

And yet their official account did that shit. I'm like,

SPEAKER_01 50:19

good for them. Which is, you know, and we're going to avoid a lot

SPEAKER_00 50:25

of the politics. This is just video games. This is just Elon and video games.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

It blows my mind that this man, from all things that I've seen, he looks like he's trying to be a guy. An almost gamer. Yes, yes. So why would he make this attack?

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Yes. He

SPEAKER_01 50:44

opened himself up to this. But anyway. That was kind

SPEAKER_00 50:48

of fun. Yeah, that was pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 50:51

Did you have anything, Matt, or should I go right into my next story?

SPEAKER_00 50:55

I don't think I do, so go into your next one.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

All right. I just have written down Oblivion. Oh, yeah, what's up? We talked about it last episode. Anything new? So, all these insiders. And by the way, none of them, I looked into it, none of them are Jason Stratham. Well, at least if he is behind it, he's not going by his name. So we don't know. I forgot. He's not part of this.

SPEAKER_00 51:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

Good to know that. But the latest, if you're interested in, which I am, is April 21st. which is after, I guess they're doing a ESO, Elder Scrolls Online. Like they're doing a week of, I don't know. This was just

SPEAKER_00 51:48

something. You've never played that, have you?

SPEAKER_01 51:49

I played a demo. It's obviously very much like Skyrim in some ways, but it's online and the game mechanics aren't quite as fluid because it's online. More

SPEAKER_00 52:03

like any MMORPG.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

It's like it's not as, I don't know. The combat isn't as snappy. Jinx! We're getting to know each other. Believe it or not, we just met based on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

He's

SPEAKER_01 52:18

wandering

SPEAKER_00 52:19

into my kitchen with a bottle of gin. I had some microphones sitting up.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

We're like, let's start a podcast, bro. But yeah, Oblivion is slated to come out. And I saw one guy and was kind of freaking out about it. And I think his Twitter handle name was Synth Potato. The only reason I know him is because our buddy... What's the game guy we both follow? Paul Tassi? Paul Tassi. He mentioned him, and I looked on his Twitter, and he was freaking out a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 52:52

Is that like a synthetic potato or the sounds that a potato would make in 8-bit?

SPEAKER_01 53:01

I think 8-bit. I want to hear a potato make an album in 8-bit. That's what I dream of someday. Especially. I'm

SPEAKER_00 53:12

thinking Portal 2.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

Golden Potatoes.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Sorry

SPEAKER_01 53:14

for all of that. They have good music. He was freaking out, but some people started some stuff. Again, comments. Who knows? They said, because I talked, I don't know. I may have edited out of this part, but we talked about Oblivion, and they said they were using... The remake is going to be... Unreal Engine. Unreal. Yeah. Somebody said they're going to use Unreal for, I guess, like the image textures. It's going to recall all that. I guess they have to load all the images. The meshes. Yeah, all that. Whatever that shit means. But it's going to still be the Bethesda... Okay,

SPEAKER_00 54:01

so it kind of like put a new paint coat on it. Okay. And so they said this could be pretty cool. Neither one of us being programmers, but we kind of understand sort of some of this shit. Yeah, that could be neat. That could be neat. Yeah, so that's the latest. You might have to edit, because if this podcast comes out in, you know, June and the game's already out.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

Yeah, I guess technically. Well, the first one was released. I guess. So we're on pace. We're on pace. But yeah, we're well behind when we actually record them.

SPEAKER_00 54:34

I mean, I might. Matt may have disappeared. Yeah, I know. I could be living in a Hobbitville.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Yeah, we don't know. So, Oblivion. It's still getting a lot of people. Hasn't been verified from Bethesda. I'm excited. Matt's creating an Oblivion song on the spot. It sounds nothing like the actual game. No, nothing to do with Jeremy at all. But we don't care about Jeremy. We care about his music, but not him, guys. All right. Anything else from you, Matt? No, I had no news. Jesus, Matt. I know. Sorry. You came to the gunfight with a penis. All right.

SPEAKER_00 55:23

It's what I had on.

SPEAKER_01 55:26

Last piece of news I have, and I think this is one that everybody would be on board with, is... Conan O'Brien. Oh, Clueless Gamer himself. Clueless Gamer is doing a Clueless Gamer with Borderlands 4. Really?

SPEAKER_00 55:43

For Cherry. Oh,

SPEAKER_01 55:45

cool, cool, cool. With Randy Pitchford himself, maybe? I don't know. I don't know the details, but right now, I think it closes on April 14th. You can... Donate your money to the cause. Is this

SPEAKER_00 55:59

to produce the episode, basically?

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Yeah, well, let's see. Charity buzz.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

News might be one segment where we should get shit right. Especially when it's charity. They just

SPEAKER_01 56:10

talk about the rules.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

So he hasn't made it yet. He's going to make it.

SPEAKER_01 56:15

Yeah, so this is just you have to pay to support it. And it'll be released on YouTube. But that's kind of neat. Oh, it's for autism. Oh, good, good. Yeah, that's great. The charity is called Next for Autism. So it's a good cause. Good. I love Conan.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Yeah, we all

SPEAKER_01 56:39

do. And I love Borderlands. And it's probably a sneak peek at this point if it gets released before.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Yeah, so it'll be fun to check out. We'll see. I'll watch that guy try to play that game.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Yeah, so that's as far as news. Also, this doesn't fit into anything. We're getting into the tangent realm. Always good. I talked about Tess, Steve's mom, last episode. And

SPEAKER_00 57:12

you have to listen to this. We actually mentioned her earlier in this podcast. Wow, she comes up a lot.

SPEAKER_01 57:17

She's integral. And Steve. We're going to have Steve on. Definitely. Steve. Well, Steve Hotch. Because there's two Steves. I'd love to have Miller on too. There's too many Steves. You could say it's full Steve capacity. Oh. Oh, the Steve episode? How good would that be? Yes. We need a full Steve capacity episode. I mentioned how she had no hot dog buns growing up.

SPEAKER_00 57:42

Well, not always, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

I feel kind of bad because she probably did have hot dog buns. And I just want

SPEAKER_00 57:50

to get off my chest. If we asked her to, she will listen to this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 57:53

Yeah, and I feel like she's probably going to be sad if I did say that. And she probably did have hot dog buns at one point or another. Either way, if she didn't or she did, always a gracious host. Yes, yes. And I had so many good memories. And I didn't mean to make it as a criticism.

SPEAKER_00 58:10

Yes, to be fair to her, there would always be four random teenage boys would just show up to her house. Parties all the time. All the time. And she was on board. She would

SPEAKER_01 58:20

give us chips and pretzels. And Steve knew how to make a classic iced tea. And he'll talk about his recipe. future episodes. His epic iced tea. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. I didn't mean it as a negative.

SPEAKER_00 58:39

No, I think that was all of our Lincoln Place parents in general couldn't always afford all the niceties in the world. You know what, though? I will take a slice of bread folded in half over a frozen hot dog bun. God bless my mom. She

SPEAKER_01 58:58

did it all the time. Yeah, my mom loves freezing shit. She still loves freezing shit.

Future Quests

SPEAKER_00 59:03

You can't freeze cheap bread. You can just Why? Love you, Mom, but no. We do love you. All right. Let's move on to our final segment. Are we ready for future quests? Future. So I have one that's actually a continuation on what we talked about last time. Right. Doom Eternal. Okay. Which is getting closer to coming out.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

Yeah. I didn't realize how... technically far away it

SPEAKER_00 59:34

was

SPEAKER_01 59:35

is it may i

SPEAKER_00 59:36

think it's oh okay

SPEAKER_01 59:38

it's not far but

SPEAKER_00 59:39

yeah i actually thought it was later yeah okay um but um our boy skill up did a preview on it so i didn't realize so i never played doom eternal i didn't realize how different apparently doom eternal was from the the doom right before it

SPEAKER_01 59:56

yes

SPEAKER_00 59:56

yeah so they are quite different the way they play

SPEAKER_01 59:59

Yeah, it's similar in some levels, but it's very ramped up, jumping. Yeah, here's a lot more jumping, movement, weapon swapping is a huge thing. That's why my hand was like, holy shit, because

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

I'm not used to keyboard. I can't imagine. So this next one does the same thing. It's also very different. He described it as a 3D bullet hell game.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:25

A lot of parrying, a lot of blocking, which I was not expecting.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

Yeah, they went back to roots a little

SPEAKER_00 1:00:31

bit. Oh, yeah, because there was a lot of strafing, dodging. Yeah, strafing is a big part of it. And original Doom with a shotgun. And at first, I'm like, nope, not for me. But now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, that'd actually be kind of cool. Although I hear the dragging, rioting sections, which sounds badass. It

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

does,

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

yeah. They're terrible. Really? Yeah. I didn't see that part. Dragon Riding is like... It's just cursed in video games. You remember Lair? Did you ever play Lair?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:59

No, never

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

heard of it. One of the worst games ever. Really? Yes. Me and Miller rented it, and we couldn't get past the opening level. It was bad, and it incorporated the six. It was the first six-axis game, so you had to use the motion controls. Oh, I remember something about that, yeah. Oh, my God, did not work. There was a Nintendo game. There was a

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Dragon Nintendo game.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:23

Spyro?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

No, not Spyro. I'll have to research it. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

Oh, I think I do know what you mean. Not bad. Not Dragon Guard, but Drakken, Drakken, Drakken. Like I said,

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

it was a long time ago. I talked in previous podcasts. I underestimate how many games I own, but I own probably like 20 games, and you had to play them over and over again. I think I said eight, which was fine. More for comedy effect. But one of them was this dragon game, and you jumped into a dragon. You played as a human on half the levels, and then you jumped into this robotic dragon.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

Panzer Dragoon? No. That was a tank game, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Yeah, it wasn't a tank game. You were a dragon, and you jumped in its head, and you flew it around.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

And it was like your

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

classic... You'd shoot pellets, and you'd get upgrades, and then you'd land, and then you played as the human. I

SPEAKER_00 1:02:23

think you made that up. Probably. That sounds like a fever dream version of Joust.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:32

Okay. Well, maybe if you tune in next week. No. How many weeks? Three weeks. Yeah. You'll

SPEAKER_00 1:02:40

find the answer to what the fuck he was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

If it was

SPEAKER_00 1:02:44

a real game. All right, I got one more, but you got any?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Oh, are we talking about future games? Yeah, future games. We're on future games. The only future game, and it just jumped on my list, was Blueprints. Did you hear anything about Blueprints yet? Like

SPEAKER_00 1:03:02

Prince or Prince? Like fingerprints? Oh, Prince. Like the musician. Like the musician, okay.

UNKNOWN 1:03:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

Yeah. Did you hear anything about it? No, I don't know anything about this. Me either. Our buddy, Paul Tassi, we follow him. Me and Matt both follow him. And maybe he'll be on the podcast. He's from Cincinnati, so we could probably drive and meet him. He... He talked about this game, so I always kind of piggyback off of whatever he says. But it's a puzzle game, and I think you'd be interested in it. And so far, it's getting rave reviews. All right, all right. And it's kind of, he's calling it, is it Balatro?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:46

Balatro? Oh, you know what? I just saw in an article, the headline was, you're pronouncing this game wrong. Okay, okay. I didn't bother clicking

SPEAKER_01 1:03:56

on it. Well, we don't know how to pronounce it, but it was 2024's game of the year, I guess. Oh, so it's out? Yeah. Well, I don't know if it's... Full out, early access. I don't know what any... It's not hard anymore. Yeah, it's hard to know. But it's a puzzle game, and as far as I know, it's like one of those games you have to play to enjoy, and it sounds really neat. Okay. I don't

SPEAKER_00 1:04:23

have one. I haven't done a good puzzle game in a while.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

Yeah. The last great puzzle game I played was Witness, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:32

Wow. I was just thinking it might have been mine, too.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:34

Because I've played some puzzle games, and I wanted to get into them. There was one by the actual Myst creators, but I forget what it was called. It started with an O, I think, and I just couldn't get into it. It was very Myst-like. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you just walked over it. Learn to count? Yeah, you just walked over the same spots a thousand times, and you're just like, I don't know what I'm doing. But Witness, there was always an element I couldn't... It would just, right at the right moment, I'd figure out the right thing, and I'd

SPEAKER_00 1:05:07

keep moving on. You always seem to figure out before you... Get quit. Quit, rage quit, yeah. Yeah. He was very good at that.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:13

Yeah, and I... Myst wasn't that way. It was like, if you don't figure it out, go home and

SPEAKER_00 1:05:19

cry. Oh, yeah. Don't I know. Don't I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:21

So anyway, yeah, that was– that's it for news for me, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:27

Yeah, upcoming. Oh, I'm sorry. We're on upcoming. Or games. We should say a game you're looking forward to play. Yeah. Because mine, it's already out, but I haven't played it yet or have ever played. Have you ever played any of the Legacy of Kain games?

UNKNOWN 1:05:43

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

I've heard of that. Yeah, no, I haven't played them, so I haven't played them, but I've heard of them.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

I haven't either. And then the Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver, which is kind of a spinoff. It's very complicated. But the Soul Reaver 1 and 2 recently got re-released, remastered, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

Yeah, I was wondering if you ever played them. Is that with that weird little creature-looking guy? The guy kind of looks like he's wearing a scarf. Because he doesn't have a lower half of his jaw. So he has a scarf around his lower half of his face. I have no clue. Yeah, it's... Okay. Yeah, so neither one of us have played it. So I was really hoping you're like, oh, I love those games. Let's get back into it. But no, no, no good. No. It looks interesting. I knew nothing about the whole series. I did watch a no-clip documentary about it with Danny O'Dwyer. And if you watch any of their stuff on YouTube, it's fantastic. It's great video game documentary stuff. They go into the whole thing. But what's neat about it is we've kind of touched on this before. It was one of those games that had a cult following for years and years and years. They've just been dying for a new game. This doesn't look like it's going to happen. Now with the remaster out, everyone's like, usually when a remaster comes along, it's because they're going to revive the series. But there was already a fan, we've talked about this before, a fan remake of a lot of these games. Fans have gone in and remastered and whatnot. And this is a case where one of the most instrumental fans They ended up hiring her to do the official remake. So it's pretty cool. She spent all this time making on her own, making these new textures and updating all these HD graphics. And they hired her and she brought all that work that she'd already spent her time on. She actually got paid for it. So it's pretty damn cool. Good for her. Good for her. Good for the company for doing it. Legacy of Kain, Soul Reaver. Don't know. Can't recommend it because I've never played them. But it exists, and that's what we're all about here, telling you things that probably exist.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

Is there anything else there, Andrew, on your up-and-coming list? No. More

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

Minecraft.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:02

More Minecraft. So, yeah, what are you actually going to play between now and the next podcast? Probably just Minecraft.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:09

Well... Minecraft.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:11

Yeah, I'm just going to play Assassin's Creed. Maybe some more Avowed. Maybe I will surprise you and beat Baldur's Gate.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:20

No, we could talk about that. That'd be fun. Not going to happen. Now that he's on Assassin's Creed. Are we going to stream any games soon or are we still behind technology?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:32

We're going to give that a pause until I figure shit out and we learn how to live.

UNKNOWN 1:08:38

Yeah, learn how to.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:40

Love, laugh,

SPEAKER_00 1:08:42

and game. All right, folks. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I am Matty Flames. Andrew Wilds. And thank you for joining us on Almost Gamers Podcast. Good night. Drive safe. Have a good day.

UNKNOWN 1:09:11

Thank you.