Hot Takes 2: Obscure Games / The Hills We Die On

In this episode, the hosts dive into a variety of obscure and controversial games, sharing their personal favorites and hot takes. They discuss the impact of popular culture on gaming, the state of major gaming companies, and the nostalgia associated with lesser-known titles. The conversation flows from a love for Danny DeVito to in-depth reviews of games like Dark Watch, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, Total Overdose, and more, highlighting the unique aspects that make these games special. In this engaging conversation, the hosts explore various themes in gaming, from the joy of deck building and nostalgia for classic multiplayer experiences to the thrill of discovering hidden gems and the fun of ridiculous sports games. They also share hot takes on popular franchises like Far Cry and the oversaturation of open-world games, emphasizing the importance of unique gameplay experiences. In this conversation, the hosts delve into various aspects of gaming, discussing the evolution of game design, the impact of trends in the industry, and their critical views on gaming podcasts. They explore the balance between realism and entertainment in games, and engage in a spirited debate about the power scaling between characters Azura and Kratos. The discussion is filled with hot takes and personal opinions, providing a candid look at the gaming landscape.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Apparently I'm supposed to shut my fucking whore mouth,

(00:02):
but you know me, I don't do that,
so I'm just gonna start by saying,
she's got-
Shut your fucking whore mouth.
No, I want my whore mouth open, wedding for dick.
Have you ever watched Always Sunny?
Oh yeah.
It's been a while.
I love it when Danny DeVito just starts going,

(00:23):
your mother's a dirty rotten whore.
The way he says whore, it's just so fucking funny.
That's true.
God, I love Danny DeVito so much.
That guy is so fucking funny.
Oh, he really is though.
Yeah, I'd love to meet him,
although he's like 80 years old now.
I know, but it's still be cool.
I feel like he's such,
one of those guys that's actually really cool,

(00:45):
especially for being a comedian,
because a lot of comedians can be kind of dickish, but-
Yeah, true.
I mean, he's not really a comedian.
He's more just, he's just an actor.
Well, I guess, yeah, he is more,
but he's a comedic actor.
Most of his roles are comedic roles.
Like, it's just, it's amazing.
You know, you don't think about this,
but he's like 4'11", I think, or 4'10".
Yeah, he's pretty short.

(01:06):
Yeah.
And you, like, that person having such a giant atmosphere
around him, I'm sure if we met him,
he'd be like 100 feet tall, right?
Oh yeah.
Well, I mean, it's just crazy.
Like, I love that he's Phil Atiti's
in the Disney Hercules movie.
Yeah, yeah.
That role just always, like, that's just him.

(01:27):
Yep, yep.
Like, not a satyr, obviously, but that's just him.
That's just him.
All right, well guys, welcome back.
Sorry about a little tangent.
We love Danny DeVito.
We do.
This week, we're doing another hot take.
Conversations about gaming.
So we're talking about the secure games
and controversial takes.
Yeah.

(01:48):
We talk, we'll call them hot take episodes.
Okay, sounds good.
Hot takes!
I liked last week episode.
Which was something, which I'm not gonna remember,
because this is not a regular episode,
so fuck last week's episode!
Yay!
It had all of, like, I think I checked before we got on.
It had all of, like, two downloads,
so I don't think I'm gonna listen to it anyway.
That was Stray Gods, I'm pretty sure,

(02:08):
so that doesn't surprise me.
That was not a popular game.
No, and it honestly wasn't very good.
We're doing pretty much all popular games
for the next, like, 10 to 15 games now,
so we better get some listeners.
Okay guys, so you'll love that.
So, this week, we are discussing
two things, A, controversial views,
things that might not be super popular in gaming,

(02:29):
but we have them, and games, kind of,
that are pushed to the wayside?
Yeah.
Kind of deal?
Yeah, kind of the obscure titles that we really love,
but that aren't in the mainstream.
Yeah, yeah, and people may have heard of them,
but may have never touched them,
or you might not have heard of them at all.
Because a shit ton of games get released,

(02:50):
and a lot of them go by the wayside.
Oh yeah.
And EA then releases, like, one shitty game every...
Yeah, EA releases one shitty game every fucking year,
and that, for some reason, that game gets all the publicity,
even though it's a shit fucking game.
Yeah, that's very true.
Yeah, yeah, I heard that Dragon Age is dead.

(03:10):
Yeah, pretty much.
The devs have, like, said there's,
the dev, the lead developer literally went online
and said goodbye in Elvish,
which makes me think, like, it's super dead.
Like, they don't do that shit for no reason.
Yeah.
So, and then I just read that they were starting Mass Effect,
but BioWare can't get it done, Mass Effect 5,

(03:32):
because EA has literally the BioWare team
spread between like 15 games.
Yeah.
So, they haven't even started the fucking game yet,
and its initial release date is now pushed to 2030.
Oh damn.
Yep.
And I'm like, you are being really brave, EA,
thinking you're gonna be around in 2030.

(03:54):
I mean, I doubt that they'll be gone by then, but.
Dude, you never, they are releasing shit.
I mean, you never know, but also,
a lot of these big companies are almost like too big to fail.
Like, someone will come in and swoop them up,
someone will buy them out,
or save them in some capacity.
Bethesda.
Yeah.
But let's start with our hot take on games.

(04:17):
What games have you played that you really liked,
but no one else has ever fucking heard of?
So yeah, I'll start out with a really interesting one for me.
Actually, this one is called Dark Watch.
Dark Watch.
This one, oh gosh, I'm trying to remember,
I had this pulled up, sorry.
Dark Watch was-

(04:38):
It's like, I don't know the game,
I've never actually played it, but here's Dark Watch.
No, I actually, I own this, I've played it,
it's called Dark Watch, Curse of the West.
I wanted to get the name of the title,
and then the year came out.
It came out in 2005 on PlayStation 2 and original Xbox,
and this game, it takes place in the late 1800s,
and it's a vampire western.

(04:59):
It came out around the same time as Van Helsing,
and it's very much Van Helsing,
but your name's like Chris Jericho,
instead of obviously Van Helsing,
but you become a vampire.
You're an outlaw who is robbing a train,
you unleash a vampire named Lazarus
that makes all dead appear all over the West,
and you have to go to stop Lazarus now,

(05:19):
but you're now a vampire.
Interesting.
It's so random, it's not the greatest of games,
it's pretty short, but to the same extent,
it's something that I really loved playing back in the day,
and especially around the time that Van Helsing came out,
I was so obsessed with vampires and gunslinging
and anything western and stuff like that was just so cool.

(05:41):
So I just really love this game, it's very out there,
but it's really cool.
All right, all right, interesting.
Never heard of it before, clearly.
I'll raise you one.
It's a Capcom and Ubisoft game.
Nice, I'll raise you one.
What's that?
Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.

(06:02):
Oh.
So this game, so what's interesting about this game
is it's technically popular.
It's like following popular now, right?
Yeah, but it's not like,
I think nowadays people have probably heard of it
if they have heard of it,
but have never seen it or played it.
Yeah.

(06:22):
You know what I mean?
It's like a tabletop RPG before a video game, right?
Yep, yep, tabletop RPG before a video game.
The game's actually really fucking fun.
We played it in the last iteration of our podcast,
and that game is like incredibly fun,
and I was pushing Steven for a long time to be like,
we need to play this fucking game.
Like it's insane, like it's crazy, it's a fucking,

(06:43):
it's got a cool RPG system,
it's a little like hard towards the end of the game,
I will say. Yeah, that's true.
I remember having to use cheat codes at the end of the game
just to not die every two seconds.
That's fair.
But I'm sure like when you learn actual,
like the combat system a little bit better, it gets easier.

(07:05):
It's probably like Morrowind where you like,
you can fucking break the game with just stats, you know?
True, true.
The game is intense, like it is crazy good.
It's got some weird fucking like storylines,
it's got a, it's a crazy, like you could literally
play this game for two minutes,
and everyone could be against you.

(07:27):
You literally could be on the street,
and everyone just tried to kill you at any single moment.
Crazy.
Yeah, it's insane, like it is a crazy fucking game.
It was definitely very like interesting to go through,
and of RPGs, like especially like large scale RPGs,
Yeah.
which I mean, a lot of newer PCs,
you need a mod to play it.

(07:47):
I will say that.
Yeah.
But a lot of newer, honestly, a lot of games,
you need mods to play it now.
Like.
That's pretty much true.
I remember the Dragon Age,
I think I just talked about this.
I had to download a mod to up it from,
cause they limit it to two gigabytes of refresh rate
for the graphics card, but like ideally you wanted

(08:09):
at least four for newer PCs,
because they're so much fucking faster.
Fair.
So it's just old games need to get modded,
otherwise you cannot play,
you will fucking crash all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I mean, it definitely was like an interesting game,
and there's not been any games,
like especially the good like vampire games.
There's hardly any,

(08:30):
and it's kind of funny that we both bring up
a vampire game for our first game.
Yeah, cause honestly, like for me,
this game was like everything I would have wanted in a game.
The only thing I want more is for them to remake it.
Dude, seriously, like there's so many games like this one,
and I know there's like a vampire masquerade
or something that came out a few years back,

(08:51):
and I know it did not do very well review wise.
Did it come out?
I was actually wondering if it did,
cause I remember hearing it was going to,
but then I don't know if it ever did.
I think it did.
Pretty sure you can double check.
Like Bloodlines 2, right?
Well, I don't know, Bloodlines 2 came out,
but there was like a Bloodline,
there was something that came out
like a couple of years back, I thought.

(09:13):
Oh, I don't know.
I was thinking Bloodlines 2.
It looks like Bloodlines 2 is now,
cause it was slated for release, remember?
Around the time we did that episode,
which was well over a year ago,
but now it's slated for 2025.
So it's gonna get pushed back more,
but it's gonna be 2027.

(09:33):
Probably.
It's just these games, like it sucks,
cause a lot of these cool games that we really like,
they're just dead, they're gone.
And if the people decide they wanna remaster them,
someone has to buy the IP in order for that to happen.
It's just not gonna happen.
Yeah, that's fair.
It's like, I just watched a video
on how Banjo-Kazooie is dead.
So Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie are the only two games

(09:57):
that were ever released for the Banjo series, right?
Well, there was Nuts and Bolts.
I don't know what Nuts and Bolts is.
Is that three?
It's the third one of the series.
It was the one that Xbox, or Microsoft Studios did, I think.
Okay, yeah, so it's not by Rare.
No, I don't think it is.
Rare only released the two, so people really,
yeah, that's probably why this guy didn't count it

(10:18):
as a real Banjo game.
Yeah, that's fair.
Cause I'm guessing everyone hated Nuts and Bolts.
Yeah, it was pretty universally hated.
Yeah, yeah.
So Rare never followed up on this,
and Rare still has the IP, and you could argue that,
who did the Spyro remake?
Toys for Bob.
Toys for Bob, like a company like Toys for Bob

(10:39):
could go in and buy the IP and remake the game,
but there's so little love for these old games anymore
that nobody's gonna do that.
You have to be really a popular IP
for someone to wanna fucking buy it,
cause that's really expensive too.
Like, Toys for Bob probably spent a shit ton
of money on that, you know?
Oh, I'm sure they did.
And hopefully they made it back,

(11:00):
but odds are they didn't, because remake games
do not make a lot of money,
unless they're really fucking good.
Like Resident Evil 2 and 4.
Yeah, well, those are so different.
And they were remade by Square Enix, right?
Yeah.
Square Enix paid a company to remake them for them.
So it's just that idea, I don't know.

(11:20):
All right, well, let's go on to the next game.
Yeah, so actually I have another gun slinging game.
Oh, I thought you were gonna say another vampire game.
No, this one's not a vampire.
This is an undercover DEA agent
doing a drug smuggling ring in Mexico.
It's called Total Overdose, a Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico.

(11:42):
This is basically Max Payne meets Machete,
or not Machete.
Machete.
Yeah, kind of Machete.
Oh, Max Payne meets a. Machete.
Not Machete, oh, what was I thinking?
The Mariachi movies.
It's very over the top Spanish culture.
The music is so amazing.

(12:02):
The gunplay is really fun.
The story and graphics are absolutely terrible.
It is dog shit, but God damn it is the gunplay
like so much fun because it's very much
Max Payne bullet time style.
But you also get these like special moves and stuff.
Like I remember at one point you have these like
guitar cases that are machine guns
and you can just like do a tornado attack

(12:24):
and you can like spin around in circles and boom.
Oh, that's cool.
Have you ever watched Trigun?
It's so fun.
I never watched it, no.
Trigun's an awesome anime.
And it's based on a manga that I've never read,
but maybe I jump into it at some point.
But I know the anime is a little bit different
from the manga, but essentially there's a dude
who has a giant fucking like this huge gun

(12:48):
that's basically a cross.
Oh, okay.
So it looks like he's a preacher,
but then the cross turns out just to be
this giant fucking gun.
Nice.
Yeah, it's so cool.
Well, I mean, the Mariachi movies,
they didn't start out with Antonio Banderas,
but he took over for the second and third movie.
But in those movies, he's a Mariachi

(13:09):
that always carries his guns in a guitar case.
And so he'll show up to play guitar
and like he does have actually have a guitar
and he actually is a Mariachi singer and player.
So he's actually really incredible at that.
But then also like he'll like do a performance
and then kill everybody in the room.
It's so over the top, but it's so cool.
It's like, I love music.

(13:29):
It's Robert Rodriguez did those movies.
He also did Machete.
He also did a lot of like spy kids.
Machete.
Yeah.
Machete, is that, oh, what's his name?
Yeah, yeah, Trejo.
That guy's cool, I love that guy.
Which he's in the Mariachi series as well.
Nice.
The main three people in that is Antonio Banderas,

(13:52):
Sandra Bullock and Danny Trejo.
I was not expecting you to say Sandra Bullock.
Not Sandra Bullock, God damn it.
Why did I say Sandra Bullock?
Oh my God, that is not even close.
Oh my God, that is awful.
You wanna say there's literally no way
the person you're thinking of is Sandra Bullock.
Why did I say Sandra?
I was, I don't know why I said Sandra Bullock.
Hot take.

(14:13):
That was the, Selma Hayek.
Selma Hayek.
Selma, that makes a lot more sense.
That makes a lot more sense.
I'm so sorry to both Sandra Bullock and Selma Hayek
because you guys are not even close
to the same person in the slightest.
Selma Hayek is so much fucking hotter.
Oh, Selma Hayek, way hotter.
Oh my God.
Selma Hayek is my first Latina love.
She doesn't look like she's had 50 million

(14:35):
plastic surgeries since her 20s,
and she still looks gorgeous.
Dude, she will always look gorgeous.
God, she's so, God.
I don't know how she does it, but she's phenomenal.
All right, my next game.
I'm gonna, you might have played it.
Some of you might have.
It's from a famous series,
but it's one of the games in the series

(14:56):
that's not super popular.
It's Sims.
Herb, Sims in the City.
No, no, I never played this.
So this was an exclusive for Console Sims game.
I think I remember that, yeah.
This is, I know GameCube had it for sure
because that's what I had it on,
but I think Xbox might have also had it,

(15:18):
and PlayStation then probably had it too,
because I think they were trying to expand
out of the PC realm because they knew most people.
You know, if you're a kid in your game,
you likely own a console of some kind.
Yeah, I'm sure.
And I'm sure they were trying to expand out,
and I don't think this game got nearly enough love
because this game was fucking awesome when I was a kid.
I had so much fun.

(15:39):
This is my first venture into the Sims.
You got to customize your house,
and as a poor kid, when you're poor,
you love games like this.
Oh, seriously though.
Because you're like, oh, I could never afford that.
I could never afford that.
That's fucking sweet.
I'm putting that in there.
I could never afford that.
So it's one of those games that when you're poor,
it's so much fucking more fun to play.

(16:00):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it didn't have amazing shit.
It's not a ground breaker game,
but it's more like, it was like teenagers
essentially living together, not like a mom and a dad
and a baby and all that shit.
So it's less house and more like just suburban.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It was so much fucking fun guys back in the day.

(16:23):
That was the shit.
And I would give,
I don't know if I'd pay big money to get it again.
I don't even know if it's worth that much honestly.
It's probably still, because it's a fucking GameCube game.
It's probably worth over $80
because everything on GameCube for some reason
costs a million fucking dollars.
But if you're gonna play it, don't buy it.

(16:43):
You know, do the other thing that I'm not allowed to say
because Nintendo gets mad at me.
I mean, one of the things I've been doing recently
is like that really awesome website
where they try to preserve a lot of games
and you get to own all the places for GOG.
GOG actually had like total overdose.
They just added recently.

(17:04):
So I actually bought it again.
It was only like seven bucks or 10 bucks
or something like that.
I was like, it's totally worth it for 10 bucks
for me to play through that again.
Like I don't know fuck how bad it is.
I'm so excited to play that again.
All right, you got another game?
Yeah.
Hot take.
So this one was one of my first real-time strategy games.
This is called Populous the Beginning.

(17:27):
This one originated, the series started out I think
on Super Nintendo and then it ended up getting a PC game
that was basically a- PC game?
Yeah, it was a PC game
and it was a, I think it was a prequel
to like the Populous game,
cause this was the beginning.

(17:48):
But this one is about like a,
I wanna say almost like Native American culture
kind of style and it had to deal with shamans
and gods or goddesses.
Like your shaman leader would have all these mystical
witch powers and you would take over other factions
or other groups and like you can create your own cities

(18:11):
and like you could have monks that convert other,
their siblings into like your tribe members
or you could have like spies that would go
and like start fires in their houses
and other people's towns.
Dude, this game sounds like Scientology.
You could also just have warriors
and you could have like firebenders.

(18:31):
You could have like all these different like things.
Okay, now it's sounding less like Scientology.
Yeah.
You gotta expand on the universe a little bit more
than Scientology will.
The progress of the game, it actually had a story mode
and the progress of the game,
after doing all these different challenges and stuff,
your shaman became a god at the end of the game.
This sounds like Scientology.

(18:53):
Like what are the coolest spells you could learn
if you don't get to learn it
until like very end of the game.
It's just called Armageddon.
And what it is, is no matter where you're at,
no matter what's happening in the game,
everyone, like it creates an arena
in the middle of the field and everyone's entire army,
entire villagers, entire everything,
all gets transported to this center island

(19:14):
and it's just an all out free for all
till the bitter end of who survives.
And it's the coolest fucking spell I've ever seen in a game
just because it's like, all right, this game ends now.
Let's see what happens.
Fuck these people, I built up so much.
So you just build up your army as fast as possible
and then all of a sudden you hit that Armageddon spell
and then you just watch this massive battle happen.
It was so cool. That's cool.

(19:35):
That's nice. Is it like an RTS style game?
Yeah, it definitely is, yeah.
Okay, okay, nice. I like it.
Yeah, but it's not like turn-based like Civ.
It's more like age vampires kind of that style.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like normal, normal RTS.
Normal RTS. Yeah.
All right. What about you?
I'm gonna come at you with something a little bit...
Like a spider man.
Again, it's part of a popular series

(19:57):
but is not a popular game in the series.
In fact, the series itself is popular.
That's like your favorite genres.
Yeah, well, it's like it's a popular series kind of,
like Asterix. Okay.
People have played it
but I guarantee it's less than we think.
All right.
The Yu-Gi-Oh series.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like the Yu-Gi-Oh series is not the most...
Not everyone has touched a Yu-Gi-Oh game in their life.
I mean, a lot of the anime inspired games series,

(20:19):
like anime inspired games,
a lot of those aren't very popular.
There's very few that are really, really incredible.
I'm gonna go back to 2001
and we're gonna talk about Yu-Gi-Oh, the Sacred Cards.
The other one we played for the old edition of the podcast.
I forced Steven to play this one
because he had no idea this game existed
and most people don't.
This game is really interesting

(20:40):
where it doesn't even follow the basic structure
of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game.
I was gonna say, that's the weirdest thing about it.
Yeah, it loosely follows the story of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game
but it's more inspired by the manga
and less inspired by the actual like card game itself.
But it was such a fun game to get into.
It's got some like very charmful things about it.

(21:02):
Like when you can build your decks
and you can match them with like unique things,
like it makes you level up your card deck power.
So if you, like you have to constantly duel
to level up this power.
And if you wanna be like the best duelist,
you wanna get the best deck
but you have to have a high deck level and to do that,
you have to duel a lot of fucking people.

(21:23):
Yeah.
I read somewhere online,
like there's forums of people who played this game
and there's like three people in the forum,
which is really funny.
That's fair.
But they're all like,
how could this game go by the wayside?
It's so fucking good.
It really was good.
Like I do have to admit that
like as much as you forced me into it.
Yeah, it's so fucking good.

(21:43):
The deck building is really fun.
Any sort of game that has really good deck building,
I am all for.
Yeah, and honestly, there's so much to this game.
Like they tried really hard
but I'm sure that they only took like a week
to make the fucking game itself.
So.
The worst part about the game for me
is just that it is grindy.
Like you have to grind quite a bit.

(22:05):
Like that's the only downfall of that game for me.
Otherwise like that,
that would be another one
that would be a really good one to remake
and just like balance it better
and not have as much grind.
They would never remake that one.
There's no fucking way.
But if they did something like that,
I'd be down, I'd be down.
I'm not saying what these are for mostly
but that's for the Game Boy Advance.
Yes, yes, yes.
I actually have a physical copy of it.

(22:27):
Yeah, I don't.
I play it, I play it often, honestly.
Every once in a while when I'm bored.
Jump on there, jump in my fucking 10,000 combat power deck.
Damn.
Because I've put 160 hours into that fucking game
and I'm not gonna put it down.
Yeah.
I mean, that's fair.

(22:47):
Do you wanna do one or two more of these
or do you wanna go to the next topic?
Let's do one or two more.
All right.
So I'm gonna go kind of all online.
So you've been going with popular franchise
but more of an obscure title of the series.
Yeah, something that got buried.
Maybe not as much.
I'm gonna go with 007, Agent Under Fire.

(23:10):
Oh, I totally thought you were gonna say Nightfire.
I almost did but I remembered Agent Under Fire
for one specific reason.
I love the multiplayer way more.
Nightfire was probably my favorite.
I love Nightfire too much.
The multiplayer is even amazing in it.
Nightfire is amazing but I remembered in Agent Under Fire,
me and my friends at the time,

(23:31):
we would go into the multiplayer,
we would get everyone the Q-claw,
which was this phone attachment
where it was a grappling hook that you could launch yourself
and Spider-man yourself across the map.
The fucking funnest thing ever.
And I think it's only in Agent Under Fire.
No, you can do it in Nightfire.
Oh, was it Nightfire too?
Okay then, nevermind.
I'm bringing up Nightfire.
Nightfire has grappling hooks

(23:52):
so you can only grapple onto the hooks.
Okay, okay.
That makes sense.
So, Agent Under Fire, you could do it anywhere.
Nightfire was specific locations?
Yes.
Okay, so yeah, I was thinking of Agent Under Fire then.
So we would do Q-claws and golden guns
and just Spider-man across the maps
and just one-shot kills and it was the fucking funny.

(24:12):
And we put the speed on like 300% or something like that.
Oh, nice.
So we would do like the most batshit crazy shit
in that game or we would each get like a handful
of trip mines and place them all over the map
and put the speed at 300% and just see who could survive
going through like these minefields of lasers.
So we would just do the most crazy bonkers shit.
And that's something I miss in a lot of games.

(24:32):
It's just how much people would change the multiplayer.
Like, I mean, even like Halo,
Griffball was created in multiplayer.
Yep, yep.
Like a lot of these multiplayer games
are just created out of nothing.
Like, I mean, zombies.
Zombies, yep, zombies in Halo.
There's so many of these things.
I just really miss a lot of these old games
that like people created these game types

(24:54):
that became popular and then eventually
it became game types themselves.
But I just really miss that kind of aspect
of like multiplayer of like just sitting on the same screen
with all of your friends and just putting out
the most ridiculous rules and just seeing what happens.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
One of my buddies, I just mentioned SWAT,
but one of my buddies says he and his friends created SWAT.

(25:16):
Likely says no.
Likely says a bunch of people probably came up
with the same idea for battle rifles and no shields.
Because it's not that unique of an idea.
As soon as the Golden Gun was released,
everyone in every game series was like,
what if we did one shot kills?
Yeah, yeah, like they say like,
well, we have a SWAT game saved from this date.

(25:40):
And I'm like, okay, well, that doesn't,
I don't know what SWAT came about.
That doesn't necessarily mean
you were the first one to do it.
Yeah, they are very insistent
that they were the first ones.
I also had a friend and I who said we swore
that we created the s'mores blizzard at Dairy Queen,
but we didn't.
Yeah, yeah.
Every, a hundred people, if you had an idea,
just know that a million other people

(26:01):
had that fucking same idea.
There's a reason that scientists say
there's no such thing as an original thought anymore.
Yeah, yeah, not even close.
All right, all right, I like that one.
Let me send you one that I don't think
you've probably ever heard of before.
Ooh, I'm thankful for this one.
Project Sylphied.
No, I don't think I have.

(26:21):
This was one of my favorite flight simulator games.
Oh, interesting.
So it's like a anime inspired flight simulator.
You do a lot of cool shit in it.
Really like the coolest thing you do
is you're not only fighting like one-on-one battles
with other people flying, like other tiny ships.
You fight those in addition to like giant

(26:42):
fucking destroyer ships and all this shit.
And you can destroy them fairly easily.
Like it is, it's an interesting game.
There's a whole mission where it's literally
a space battle between like thousands of ships.
And you're just fucking destroying ships left and right.
It's a sweet game.
It probably fell so deep under the radar

(27:02):
it's not even funny.
I don't know what studio made it.
I don't know.
I know it wasn't re-released.
I know it wasn't backwards compatible
for any of the other Xboxes.
It is an Xbox 360 only game.
So you can't even, I tried to emulate it
but the problem with Xbox is their emulation stuff
is really fucking hard.
It's bad.
Yeah.

(27:22):
Like Sony, because they're so open about their code
they allow everyone to emulate as long as you have your bios
which is just, you could pull it from your own PlayStation
if you wanted to.
You could copy and paste it kind of
so you can play anything on the computer.
But Xbox does not do that.
So it's really hard to play Xbox like original games.
Unfortunately.
No, okay.

(27:43):
But this game was so cool.
You could probably find it somewhere for cheap.
Again, I cannot imagine it's expensive.
It's a 360 game.
So you know what I mean?
Yeah, a lot of 360 games
unless they were like extremely popular and really obscure
and only a few copies left, they're not too expensive.
Yeah, yeah, really.
Like you have to be like super fucking,

(28:03):
I remember going to the bargain bin
because I picked up two worlds and two worlds too
and I think I paid like 30 cents for each.
Oh, damn.
Yeah, because it was like.
That's crazy.
And that's like in 2015 I think or 2014.
You know, it's not that long ago, 10 years ago.
So I assume they'd be like 60 cents each now, you know?
I mean, part of the reason why I was able to collect

(28:23):
as many games as I used to collect
was because Xbox games were so cheap.
Right?
Bargain bins were the thing.
Bargain bins were great.
I love those things.
I love going to GameStop and they'll just be like,
every game in here cost a nickel.
Yep.
Dig through it.
They all suck.
Good luck.
Yep.
This is the dollar bin.
What?
All these games are a dollar.

(28:44):
That was the best part about Blockbuster closing
all its stores is they had a huge fucking sale.
And we went and just bought out all their fucking games
for like a dollar.
Did the same thing with Hastings,
did the same thing with TradeSmart.
Yep.
Oh, and Game Crazy, when Game Crazy closed down,
that was a great, because they were doing like,
buy one game over $60, get four games free,

(29:05):
equal or lesser value.
And I'm like, oh my God, fuck you guys.
Yes, please.
And you would just like, you'd buy one $60 game
and then get four other $60 games free.
Yep.
That's exactly how I do those sales every time.
Mm-hmm.
But yeah, do you got another one
or do you want to go to the next topic?

(29:25):
Well, let me see.
Let me see.
I have one more.
Okay.
I'll do one more. You got one more?
Yeah.
All right, go ahead.
So this is kind of a combo.
I want, I really, really love the NBA and NFL Street games.

(29:47):
NBA, like it was like V1, V2, V3.
Oh, please say what I think you're gonna say.
What?
I hope you're gonna say what I think you're gonna say.
They're dead now,
but they're some of my favorite sports games.
They are some of my favorite sports games of all time.
The 3v3 aspect and just how ridiculous they are.
Oh no, so I thought you were using those to like,
I love these games and this game is just like them.

(30:08):
I thought you were gonna say backyard basketball.
No, that's another fun one.
I love the backyard games so much.
The backyard games are cool,
but I really love the street games.
I just loved how like early 2000s or late 90s they were,
whatever it was.
Well, weren't they inspired by that dude
from fucking New York?

(30:29):
I don't remember.
He was like a great street baller.
Then he got drafted into the NBA and fucking blew.
And then he's like, I should play NBA ball.
But I just like remember how like ridiculous the games were,
especially like the NBA street games.
Like I think the Beastie Boys were a team
that you could unlock in that.
And then you could play as all the Beastie Boys
and like play as Mike D.
The movesets in them,

(30:50):
it was all just like street basketball moves.
So there was like movers like dropping dimes
and you'd drop backwards
and bounce the ball between your legs like from behind.
And you could do all these like crazy alley loops.
Like you'd like alley loop it four times between each other
and then have the last person dunk.
You could do all these like wall running stuff
and then jump off the walls.
Like it was the most ridiculous,
like arena style gameplay.

(31:10):
And it was only three V3s,
but they were just, it was so much fun.
And I just miss like,
I miss like sports games
that didn't take themselves seriously.
Like I hate that like all the sports games now
are just like, it's just Madden and it's just FIFA.
And we're just gonna drill that shit into the ground.
It's two NBA, two K or whatever.
Yeah.
And I'm just like,

(31:31):
I miss like the more random ass sports games
that just no exist anymore.
And I go back to the-
Backyard basketball.
Yep.
God, those backyard games are good.
I wanna try to find those.
They were computer games, I think back in the day.
Yeah, they were.
I think they were on consoles.
I think they're probably on Steam, I have to imagine.
I gotta find them and actually play them.
Or I can probably find them online somewhere.

(31:52):
I'm sure someone's modded the fuck out of them
so they're playable.
Oh yeah.
All right.
My last game.
Hold on, I had it on my list.
Hold on.
Backyard baseball and backyard soccer are on Steam.
Oh nice.
Backyard baseball 97, backyard soccer 98.
Okay.

(32:14):
All right, my game.
Yes.
Brute Force.
I don't know if I ever played this one,
but I know what this, I know what it is a little bit.
Yes, this is a cool third person shooter game.
Like back on the original Xbox,
I think it was on GameCube
and I'm almost certain it's on PlayStation 2
if it's on Xbox.
And it was just so good.

(32:35):
It's got this cool story.
It's basically a squad game.
You could play with up to four people online
and you're just a squad of these four individuals.
One's a giant lizard guy, one's a regular dude,
one's a regular girl, and I can't remember the fourth one,
but it's been a while since I played it.
So it might've been just those three.
But it was such a fun fucking game.
Like the gunplay was really fun, the maps were giant,

(33:00):
the story was really good,
like it had a cool multiplayer aspect to it.
It was just a game that it was there and then it's gone.
Oh, okay.
Like it's literally, it's there, you're playing it,
and then you forget about it and you never touch it again.
Oh, one of those, okay.
Yep, yep.
And then I don't know like how popular that game was

(33:20):
back then, because I didn't, you know, back in the day,
they didn't have commercials for games.
Like they did, but they didn't, only for the huge games.
So you'll miss out on these like little games
that people release like Root Force.
And I don't know, I don't think a lot of people
have played that game for sure.
I think it's a hidden gem somewhere
in the confines of history.
True.
But if you guys have never played any of these games,

(33:42):
seriously, go out there and give them a try.
If you can emulate most of them,
probably just not the 360 ones.
You can emulate the 360 ones,
it's just pain in the fucking ass.
Yeah, tell us if you have played any of these games
or if you agree that they are hidden gem games
or if you think they're total trash.
And let us know what games you think are hidden gem games.
Probably some bullshit.
Probably some bullshit.

(34:03):
But I wanna hear your bullshit,
because I know my shit's bullshit, so.
All right, so we're getting to our last.
Hot takes.
Hot takes.
These are our controversial takes in gaming.
I guess I will start this out,
because this one's a fun one of mine.
So games like Far Cry series get a lot of shit

(34:23):
for being the same game over and over again.
But then we shit on games like Assassin's Creed
for changing the style.
Far Cry is the fast and the furious of gaming.
It is simple, it is dumb, it is entertaining,
it is over the top in all the best ways
and it is one of my favorite franchises.
I think we need to quit giving shit to games like Far Cry

(34:44):
for being the same thing over and over again,
because we love the same thing over and over again.
And every time there's a remake
or every time there's a reboot or anything, we're like,
oh, why'd they change this?
Oh, why'd they change that?
Well, because they always change the wrong thing, right?
I know they do.
That's the thing about those changes
is they never change the thing we all want.
They change the thing that was so much fucking fun

(35:05):
about the previous one.
Yes.
God, it's so annoying.
It is totally true every time,
but I don't know why I get so much hate,
because it's just the same thing.
Well, I'm like, it is, but it's so good.
The gun plays its food. It is, but it's not, right?
Yeah.
Of course it is.
It's a formula that has clearly fucking worked
as far as Far Cry has been around.

(35:26):
Yeah.
I mean, same with the Fast and Furious franchise.
We know it's dumb.
We know it's over the top.
We know it's stupid.
I don't agree with that one.
I just think they just,
like the original Fast and the Furiouses were kind of good,
and now they've just gotten over the top.
I think they've changed so much
to be too far over the top, you know?
I agree, but I also still love it.
Like, I still, I own all of the movies.

(35:48):
I love them all. Of course you do.
Of course you do.
They're amazing.
They're not.
Like, hey, I'm sometimes a basic bitch,
and these are my basic bitch takes.
I remember a friend of ours, so what's his, who died?
Something Walker?
Paul Walker, yeah.
Paul Walker.
So Paul Walker dies, and a friend of ours starts, like,

(36:09):
just hysterically crying that day.
Yeah.
Because she loved Paul Walker so much.
And I'm like, that's really weird
that you're crying for someone
you've never fucking met before.
Yeah.
Who died because they were driving like an asshole.
Well, they were in the passenger seat, yeah.
I don't give a shit where they were.
Somebody in that car was driving like an asshole,
and both people have the power to say,

(36:30):
stop driving like an asshole.
I agree.
It's still a horrible, tragic thing.
Sure, but it's funny because-
I don't think, I don't understand,
like, when people get way over, like,
but sometimes, like, they connect with these people
on such an emotional level
that it's hard not to feel these things.
No, they connect not with the people
with their fake fucking characters.
I guess that's true.

(36:50):
Yeah, that is true.
It's always their characters.
You don't really love Paul Walker.
You love Brian.
Yeah, you have no idea what Paul Walker's
favorite fucking breakfast cereal is,
but apparently you're crying at his fucking funeral.
Yeah, she also cried during the movie and after the movie,
and it took her like 10 minutes to get her out of the theater
after the movie was done.
Oh my God, what a-
Because, like, See You Again song came on,
and then she just, it was a lot.

(37:12):
Oh my God.
But I was there.
I comforted her. Emotional support bitch.
I was being the nice person.
I remember, you know, every day I drive,
I drive and someone does something stupid to me,
like cuts me off or like this driving on my ass.
I'm like, I hope you get into a fucking car wreck and die.
And I have to picture that somebody probably said that

(37:32):
right before Paul Walker's car wreck.
I know what I mean.
Like, I have to picture that.
Because when you're driving like an asshole,
I don't think there's anyone out there who doesn't say,
I hope you get into a fucking car wreck and you die, you know?
He was in a parking lot, if I remember right.
No, he hit a tree.
He hit a tree off of a-
I think they were doing like donuts and shit

(37:53):
in a parking lot.
Or wasn't he doing some crazy like-
No, no, no.
It was like-
In a parking lot or something?
I think I remember this because they were like,
it was overlooking a hilltop.
So they were going around a road
because they were saying like it was like a speeds
of high fucking intensity speeds.
And that's why he died because they hit the tree
with such force.
If you look at the car, it's like fucking destroyed.

(38:14):
Yeah.
So I think he was driving like an asshole.
All right, I got a hot take for you.
What's yours?
All right.
I fucking hate-
I'm just joking.
I was like, that's bullshit.
That's utter bullshit.
I'd be fucked up if I just come out like,
and fuck mass effect and fuck, you know what I mean?

(38:37):
I had it in my head.
I don't know why I lost it now.
God, I should just write my shit down.
I don't know why.
That's gonna say, do you need a second?
I get to go another one if you want.
They do another one.
Sorry, my brain, I literally had it.
I'm like, oh yeah, I'll say that.
And then I just completely forgot what it was.
Okay, this one's another fun one.
And I know people who know me are gonna hate this,

(38:57):
especially like my brother-in-laws,
they're gonna hate this,
but Dead or Alive is the best fighting game series
of all time and has the best-
Shut the fuck up.
It is not.
And has the best live action movie by far.
You love tits, that's all you love.
There's no tits in the movie.

(39:18):
I like how you have, in the movie, there's no tits.
I mean, they're famous for jiggle physics.
I can't say there's no tits in the game.
Yeah, they are very famous for jiggle physics.
Super famous for jiggle physics.
Honestly, it's not that.
It's the fluidity and the speed of the fighting.
I used to play a shit ton of Dead or Alive back in like,
I wanna say like early-

(39:38):
Before Dead or Alive 4.
Dead or Alive 1 through 4 by far.
I think-
Was Dead or Alive 4 like 2003, 2004?
Dead or Alive 4, I think was like closer to 2006, I think.
Dead or Alive 2 and 3, I think were 2001 or 2002.
Okay, so I probably played the original Dead or Alives
because a buddy of mine had it
and we would go over there and play, and we were kids,

(40:00):
I'm barely like 12 or 11.
I'm barely starting to get those feelings down on my pants.
So, for the most part, we didn't know what was,
we just thought it was a cool fighting game
and women were in bikinis
and the dad would come out and be like,
why did I buy you this game?
But I mean, even some of the moves in it,
there's this character,

(40:21):
I can't remember if it's Bass or Bass, but it's just B-A-S-S,
but he was this American wrestler
and he does these stupid ass moves
where he just tackles you
and then while you're lying on the ground,
he rubs his balls in your face
while flipping you off in Japanese.
I'm like, that's so fucking funny.
It's so stupid, but it's so good.
And just like, well, it also had a,
I really loved the Ninja Gaiden series

(40:42):
and one of the main characters in Dead or Alive
is Ryuhei Ibusa,
which I just, I love his character too.
I love Ayane, who's also in the Ninja Gaiden series.
So it incorporated a lot of things
that I love from other series and just, I just,
like I said, the speed of it all was just like so cool.
And obviously, of course, yes, the women being attractive

(41:04):
didn't hurt that I love the game,
but it wasn't the main pull for me.
All right, I've got a pretty hot, hot take.
Okay, give it to us.
I think games companies need to stop
making fucking open world games.
Ooh, agreed.
So this is getting really fucking obnoxious.
Not fully, but yeah.
Like almost every game that comes out

(41:25):
is this giant fucking game.
You know you're gonna spend way too much time in it.
You know you're gonna wanna explore everything.
You know, you missed the days of the level design
where like each level had to matter.
Yeah.
And like now it's just like, they make this open world,
half the buildings in the open world aren't accessible.
So they're literally just there for fucking shits
and giggles essentially, right?

(41:49):
And then the buildings are their separate levels.
So they don't, you go into the building,
but it's like a different level.
You have a loading screen in between getting in the building
and getting out of the building.
You know, certain games, it's awesome.
I love open world concept games,
but I'm tired of every game having to be that.
No, that's fair.
I will say at least like the,
for the game awards this last year,

(42:09):
almost every one of the game award games listed,
none of them were open world.
Nice.
They were all very linear, like Space Marine 2,
very linear.
Stellar Blade, very linear.
Yep.
Black Myth Wukong, very linear.
None of those are open world.
And they all were nominated for a game of the year.
I think they're all incredible games.

(42:32):
But yeah.
But we think of Pacific Drive,
which we played not too long ago.
And that game's kind of like a pseudo open world.
Like I really like the restrictiveness of that game
because you don't feel like you have to explore
so fucking much.
Like, go to a level.
Yes.
Well, and it also gives you a time limit
so not explore too much.
Like you have to be worried about that.
Yeah.
Yeah, which is nice.

(42:52):
It kind of restricts the amount of time you spend in areas
because you could literally dive into an area
and not leave for six hours.
Yeah.
And that's annoying with certain things.
Yeah.
And honestly, games are just doing this now
because everyone, they think everybody wants them.
Which I think is so fucking strange.
Honestly, I think that just came by a product
of everyone being like, well, money for my value.
I'm not paying $70 for a game I can finish in seven hours.

(43:16):
That's $10 an hour for your entertainment.
That's cheaper than most anything you can do out there.
Like fuck you.
And fuck all you guys for saying that shit.
Like honestly, like if I get an incredible seven hours
that I can replay over and over again for 70 bucks,
I will gladly spend that money on it.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
And again, I like certain open world concepts.

(43:36):
Like I know if I played Starfield,
if I actually sat down and actually tried it,
I'm sure I'd love it.
There's no doubt in my mind I'd love that game.
I really like Grounded.
Like I really like Minecraft.
Like those open world games are fun.
They're built on something different.
But when everyone is like a fucking first person shooter
game, no RPG element at all,

(43:57):
but for some reason it's open world.
Halo 5 or I think Halo 5 was open world, wasn't it?
Yeah, I think it was, yeah.
Why?
Why did that have to be open world?
A game that is historically level based
now is an open world fucking concept.
Well, I mean, Suicide Squad,
that was another open world game
that just didn't need to be open world.

(44:17):
I get it, like the open city kind of stuff,
but it's just not, yeah.
Like there's games where it works.
You know, GTA makes it fun
because they do so many fucking things outside the norm
that these games would never do.
I mean, their game has been around since what?
Fucking 2012, 2013, and it's still fucking going strong.
Like just, again, you can't be GTA,

(44:39):
stop trying to fucking do it.
Yeah, well, just, again, any gaming trends,
like Battle Royale is when those are a big trend.
Everyone made a Battle Royale game.
When a live service game became a trend,
everyone was creating a live service game.
Like I wish the gaming industry wouldn't rely
so much on trends, especially because the trends,
usually shift before the next set of games come out.

(45:00):
Like two open world games will come out
and everyone will love those.
And so then 10 companies will work on 10 more open world
games that comes out two years down the road,
but we're already done with open world.
We're already on the next trend.
All right, another hot take for me.
Lies of P is a top three souls light game.

(45:21):
Nope, garbage.
You're garbage.
To have been or in contention with Elden Ring
and Dark Souls 3.
Nope, garbage.
What?
What?
Have you even played Lies of P?
Shut the fuck up.
I've never played any of them.
I know.
Lies of P, it has no business being as good as it is,

(45:43):
honestly, like for a Pinocchio game,
no one would have ever thought a game about Pinocchio
would be anywhere near as cool and as atmospheric.
I said it all along.
Awesome.
I've been saying it for 30 years.
Oh yeah, you've been saying Steampunk,
Steampunk, Dark Souls, Pinocchio is gonna be the future.

(46:04):
My exact words actually.
Oh, good to know.
I know I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this.
A lot of people are gonna be like,
oh, what about Sekiro, what about Bloodborne?
I thought Lies of P was really popular.
It is pretty popular, but a lot of people still say like,
it's up there with a lot of the From Software games,
but a lot of people will say like, yeah, yeah.

(46:25):
So that's my controversial take,
that it beats Bloodborne, it beats Sekiro,
it beats a lot of these other ones.
Well, for sure beats fucking Sekiro.
You say that to some of the Sekiro fans, man,
they'll fucking stab you.
Fuck those Sekiro guys, fuck you.
But yeah, it's not like the biggest of hot takes,
but you know, it's a mild one, it's a mild one.

(46:46):
Yeah.
All right, I got one.
All right.
This is one that really fucking irks me,
and it's not about games in particular,
but the community around games.
Ooh, okay.
Gaming podcasts are bullshit.
And I'm not talking about ours.
Ours is like nice, it's fluid.
Like, if you hear any other gaming podcast out there,

(47:07):
it's always the same formula.
Get this awkward ex guy, get this awkward ex girl,
get one awkward ex third person to be kind of awkward ex
in the fucking middle,
and then put them all in an awkward studio.
Like, that's all it fucking is.
Have these people be their awkward selves,
and for some reason get fucking views and listens.
That shit drives me crazy.
I listen to it, I'm like, you're not fucking funny.

(47:29):
And then they're like, I tried to talk to a girl,
and I couldn't, and it's like,
they think that's a fucking joke,
and I'm like, that's not fucking funny.
You're not fucking funny.
You're not even entertaining.
You're not saying anything.
Like, it's just, it's nerds who have a following
at something else they do.
Like, that's clearly what it is.
And that's all they do.

(47:50):
And I'm gonna expand it.
I'll say, like, I hate celebrity podcasts too,
because I feel like everyone's just doing it
because they have name recognition.
Yeah.
That became way too, and it's really annoying,
because it's like, you're already celebrities.
We already fucking watch everything you do
and all this other shit,
and then you gotta come in and take over all podcasts,
and no one who's a celebrity can even become famous anymore.

(48:11):
Yep.
It's so hard.
It's so frustrating.
It's annoying.
Oh, and it makes gaming podcasts annoying,
because again, ours is like outside the realm of anything
that these fucking people do.
They all just basically talk awkwardly
and make shitty fucking sexual jokes, which we do.
But like, we do it in a way that's at least a little funny,
at least a little brash,

(48:31):
at least a little in your fucking face.
And these people are out there just like,
I'm so awkward, and I'm a girl.
Look at me.
And I'm just like, okay, you're doing what's the fucking,
the Hall and Oates, Garfunkel and Oates,
I think it's called, the two girls.
That one girl who acts like the awkward girl,
that's what they're doing.
They're being her.

(48:52):
Yeah.
Like that's all they're fucking doing.
And I don't know, I'm just, I'm over it.
I'm over the whole gaming podcast bullshit.
It's bullshit if you listen to any gaming podcast,
it's the same formula.
We're the only ones breaking out of that formula,
because I'm not gonna fucking do that shit.
We're not gonna pander to the audiences
the way everyone else has to pander.
And that's the thing that's the hardest thing
about social media anymore nowadays,

(49:13):
is how much you have to be like, come here, watch me.
I'm so interactive.
I'm doing literally what everyone else is doing.
Do I need to put a bar on the screen
that says leave a comment here for you to leave a comment?
I do, don't I?
Cause you're all too fucking stupid.
No, yeah, it's so stupid.
And then I hate it too, cause the social media thing,
if you guys ever watch those videos,

(49:35):
cause they happen all the time, it's like,
hey, can I ask you a question?
And then they ask the question.
And it's always a fucking like, would you rate my outfit?
Would you rate my face?
Would you date me?
And it's like, they always pick like the weirdest
fucking things and they're always fucking stupid.
And I watched a video that was like,
and the reality of it, like you're supposed to feel bad
for them as people that they're asking,
they're bothering people on the fucking street.
Like, hey, can I ask you a question?

(49:57):
And people are like, no, fuck off.
That's who I would be like a hundred percent like,
no, fuck off, get away from me.
I don't fucking know you.
I don't have to answer your fucking question.
Yeah.
I just hate this new-
But if you do answer their question,
you can become the next hoctua girl.
Yeah, wonderful.
Fuck those people.
God, fucking bullshit fame for no reason.
That's the kind of bullshit I get mad about.

(50:18):
Someone makes a funny comment one time
and can create an entire lifestyle based off of it.
I'll give the hoctua girl this.
She donates a shit ton of her money to animal shelters.
I'm not saying that she doesn't do great things
with her money.
I'm not saying that she's a good or a bad person.
I'm just saying the funniest thing of just like,
she was drunk and said something stupid one night
and became so famous because of that one thing

(50:40):
that she started a podcast, an entire clothing line,
like entire this.
I'm like, what the fuck?
Got featured on a bunch of shit.
Like she's not even-
I will say that the name of her podcast is hilarious.
Talk toa.
What is it?
Talk toa?
Yeah, instead of hoctua.
Cause she, you gotta talk to her.
Talk to her, yeah.
Talk toa, that's actually good, that's good.

(51:00):
It's really fucking funny.
I'll give you props.
Like it's stupid.
I like it, I like it.
It's fucking funny.
She leaned heavily on it.
I mean, I get why.
Cause obviously if I said something that famous,
I would too, but-
Yeah.
Yeah, I just, I'm tired of the fucking gaming podcast
world, man.
I try to listen to them and then I'm just like, okay,
well this is just fucking bullshit.
You guys are talking about literally nothing

(51:23):
and just being awkward.
So way to go, you win.
You get 30 million views for that.
I've got another, this is another probably bigger hot take.
Games that are too realistic are boring as fucking shit.
I agree, I agree.

(51:44):
And it just depends on the realism.
You know what's funny?
It does.
I'll play the trading card simulator and I won't mind
sitting at the cash register taking people's orders.
Yes.
I will not mind.
Yeah.
Like it depends on your mood for the realism
because the realism is engrossed in something
you'd actually wanna do.
Like it can be a lot of fun.
Yeah, well I mean there's even not a lot of realism

(52:04):
to trading cards, really.
It's kind of real-orients but like you don't have
to actually spend money. It's just that one aspect.
You don't have to worry about people coming into your shop.
You don't have to worry about marketing or advertising.
You don't have to worry about a lot of,
it's just the singular aspects inside the shop.
So the game that brought this to my attention for me
was Red Dead Redemption 2.

(52:27):
I didn't really play Red Dead Redemption 1.
I love Red Dead Redemption 2.
I really wanted to go back and play it.
It's such a good fucking game.
Oh you'd love it dude.
It's incredible.
It's so fucking good.
I tried playing Red Dead Redemption 2.
It's so slow to do any goddamn thing in that game.
The fast travel in the game is abysmal, rarely exist.
Yeah.

(52:48):
And it just, to travel anywhere on horseback
on a 22 square mile map is so ridiculously slow.
Like if I have an hour to play and it takes me 45 minutes
to get to where I need to on the fucking map,
that's annoying.
It's boring.
I don't want to deal with that.
Well imagine like Spider-Man where you had to walk
from one end of New York from Long Island to the other end

(53:12):
and how long that would fucking take.
Nobody wants to do that shit, right?
Well in the Spider-Man game you can get across the map
in like four seconds.
Exactly.
Well and they, I think it's not to size.
Yeah it's not to size, right?
It's not actually the size of New York.
They shorten it a little bit or they,
cause that's, you know, they know that people
don't want to fucking spend all that time traveling.

(53:33):
Cause traveling is boring as shit.
I mean that was like the, as much as I love GTA V,
the size of the map, going from one end of the map
to the other end was so huge.
Remember the difference is they give you a bunch
of cool vehicles.
Yes, exactly.
And now you can like travel in different ways
and you feel like you're having fun at least.
When you're on a fucking horse, that is not fun.
Exactly, no.
And that's the part of the problem for me.

(53:54):
It's just like a lot of these games that are just
too engrossed in trying to make this real thing
feel as real as possible.
Like there is some cool aspects to it, don't get me wrong,
but it's just not for me.
And I just think they're too boring.
I agree.
I'm with you on that one.
All right.
What do you got?
Or do you have any more?
I think that's all my hot takes for now.

(54:14):
I don't have too many like controversial ones.
So go for it.
What's your last one?
So this one is based off of the death battle
that just came out today.
February 2nd for those wondering.
It was Azura versus Kratos.
Barely.
Because I was going to say Rooster Teeth got shut down
and they were owned by Rooster Teeth.
Yeah.

(54:34):
They're still fighting to keep alive.
So they did Azura from Azura's Wrath
versus Kratos from God of War.
Yeah.
This is something I've argued religiously
about on the internet.
I think Azura would win, wouldn't he?
With so many people.
What?
Wouldn't Azura win?
That's my take.
So.
Because he literally like had planets thrown at him

(54:55):
and he dodged them.
Here's the thing that I get mad about with death battle.
I love death battle.
Don't get me wrong.
Great company.
They do some really awesome videos.
Yeah, they're fun.
I've met the guys.
They're so fucking cool.
They're awesome.
Like don't get me wrong.
I love you guys so much.
But I hate these takes in games.
So the reason Kratos wins because on screen feats

(55:18):
Azura mops the floor with Kratos.
Yeah.
But here is what the arguments that I get from everybody
every time I bring up Azura beating Kratos.
But he defeated this guy that defeated this guy.
So which means he's that fast.
If this guy was that fast and he defeated him,
that means he's faster than both of them.

(55:39):
Or he fought Atlas, which was a Titan
that was holding up the universe
and he had to hold it up for like a day.
And he did hold it with one hand for one segment.
So that means he can hold the universe.
And I'm like, okay, yeah, but he's good for like.
But they're and they're thinking very,
because remember the universe when that mythology was made
was very much smaller than what we imagine it to be now.

(56:02):
Yeah, but now they're saying because in Ragnarok
that an attack shook the world tree that he survived.
That because the world tree is connected to all universes,
he's able to withstand something that's nine billion times
the amount of force needed to destroy the entirety
of all universes.

(56:23):
And I'm like, oh God, no, fuck off.
Like it's so frustrating that your feet
are not on screen feet.
It's so limited because it's the world tree
rather than what is.
Yes, it's nothing about what Kratos can do.
It's nothing like we've seen Kratos do.
We've never seen Kratos move at those speeds.
We've never seen Kratos fight with those levels of feats.
We've never seen Kratos punch a mountain and destroy it.

(56:45):
We've never seen anything like that.
Yeah, we've seen him kill people who can do those things,
but you know, those.
That doesn't make him.
You don't know the situation behind it.
Right?
Like Din was kind of like,
she's like kind of like laughing at me and she's like,
but I mean like it kind of means that in some way.
I'm like, no, like if I shoot, if Usain Bolt,
who's the fastest guy in the world runs at like 29 miles

(57:08):
an hour, if I shoot him in the fucking face,
that does not mean that I could run 30 miles an hour.
No.
And you think about the same thing with the flash, right?
If a stray bullet kills the flash,
did the person who killed the flash run just as fast
in order to beat him or was a stray bullet.
Faster than him?
No.
No, no, no.
It's like literally just luck, right?

(57:28):
Luck of the draw.
And they don't take into account luck of the draw
because they just think, okay, well,
strength equals strength.
So strength, if this person's stronger,
their strength equals greater than their strength.
So.
I think with anything like Death Battle
or any of those things,
there should be only on screen or on like,
I don't care if it's necessarily on screen.
I don't like, if there's a book that says it specifically,

(57:48):
you can use it.
If it's a comic that says it like in the Sonic comics.
I'm gonna write the guys who created Kratos and say,
hey, can you print out that he could beat us around?
Sure, I will believe it then.
And then I'll show you the book
and you'll be like, fuck you, Scott.
But I just, I wish that was only about on screen feats
and not features of people that he's defeated.

(58:09):
Yeah, cause you know, a lot of the time it's like,
it will be that, it'll be like, well, this guy beat the flash
so clearly he can run from one end of the universe
to the other in less than 12 minutes.
It's like, no, that's not fucking what that means.
Fuck you.
Well, like that was the argument for-
Didn't boomerang beat the flash at one point?
Yeah, he did.
So like the speed argument was that Azura

(58:33):
could dodge planets and universes being thrown at him,
which is insanely how fast he needs to be for that.
Yeah, the kinetic speed would be insane.
But then like Kratos defeated Hilead or Hileos or whatever,
who is the fastest. Who is rumored.
Yeah, who is the fastest god ever to live.
And so I'm like, so he defeated the fastest god,

(58:55):
but he wasn't faster than the, God fucking dammit.
No, you can't say he's faster.
I just love the, cause fucking Azura also lifted
that giant fucking guy who was literally bigger
than the planet.
Yes.
And threw him.
And even the Titans were never planetary scale
or universe scale.

(59:16):
It doesn't matter.
They were fit on earth.
Yeah, the problem is the level of detail in that game.
So the level of detail in Azura's Wrath is so much greater
than the level of detail in any of the God of War games.
Well, and the other thing was too,
and the other thing, the only reason I also think
that he won was because God of War has 10 games,
Azura's Wrath has one.

(59:36):
Yeah.
They used every weapon from all 10 of the games
and several of those weapons can have
like God draining weapons.
But Azura's not really a God.
I know, but they're saying that mantra is basically
the same thing as the energy he's draining from gods.
And I'm like, God, no, you can't just say it's,

(59:56):
you can't just yada yada, it's the same.
Which is annoying because like when they did a Deku
from My Hero against Asta from Black Clover,
his anti-magic didn't work against Quirks
because it's like, Quirks are actually a biological thing.
They're not magic.
So he can't cancel out his stuff because it's not magic.
But he does have a sword that he can cut whatever he wants.

(01:00:18):
So that sword could cut through his Quirks,
but not his anti-magic swords.
And I'm like, that makes sense.
You did a lot of thought for that.
But then they do the exact opposite
for Kratos versus Azura.
And I'm like, no, fuck you.
Fuck you.
And then, and just to spite us,
they threw an alternate ending at the end of the video
where they have Azura win and they make it a fucking
quick time event button mashing thing.

(01:00:39):
And I'm like, oh, fuck off.
I mean, it's true though.
I know, but like.
That's exactly how you'd win in a stupid Azura's rat.
But it was just like one punch.
It was just like, it was so dumb after all that giant fight.
And I'm like, no.
Well, it's like when they did fucking Popeye the sailor man
versus one punch man.

(01:01:01):
It's just like, well, yeah, you picked a guy
who literally does not have limitations in Popeye
because he's literally a cartoon fucking character
who has never had to bleed or die before.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know.
It's like, it doesn't seem like a fair comparison to make.
Oh yeah, sometimes the battles are really unfair.
Like a lot of the Dragon Ball Z fights
are typically really unfair.

(01:01:24):
They either are one way or the other,
like Goku versus Superman, super unfair towards Superman.
But then when they bring something in new for Goku,
they're like, well still, Superman can do this.
I'm like, okay, well.
Goku's essentially.
Which they've had that fight I think three times now.
Yeah, Superman's won every single one.
The one that I remember that was the biggest gap
was it was Master Roshi versus Master Jiraiya.

(01:01:47):
Yeah.
And I was like, oh, this would be a fun one.
And I'm like, oh, nope,
Dragon Ball scaling is way too ridiculous.
Master Roshi is off the floor.
Well, and it's stupid because Master Roshi,
he just recently got a huge power bump.
Like very fucking recently.
Like he did not used to be, they read their power levels.
He has not done any training.
He has not done anything extra.
At the time, he was a little bit weaker than Krillin was.

(01:02:10):
And this is before Goku hit 9,000 by the way.
Oh wow, yeah.
Or sorry, just after Goku hit 9,000.
When he fought Frieza, his power level was over a million.
Yeah.
Okay, so in between 9,000 and a million,
somehow Master Roshi went from 250 all the way up
to able to beat people who can literally use like God shit.

(01:02:33):
Yeah, it's so ridiculous.
But I'm like, there's some of those things
with power scaling.
I'm like, put them at the same league as each other.
Like I get, you're like, oh, one master,
one pervy master versus another pervy master.
Like, yeah, I get it.
It's funny, but they're not in the same power scaling at all.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just crazy.
Yeah.

(01:02:54):
All right, that was it.
That was Hot Takes.
Hot Takes part two.
Yeah.
So yeah, tell us what your hot takes are.
If you have any-
Yeah, tell us if you like other gaming podcasts out there
that are fucking what I just said they are.
Tell us if there's any good ones.
I'll let you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll let you know if it's fucking good or not.
That's what it is.

(01:03:14):
All right, guys, we'll catch you on the next episode
next week.
Bye.
Yeah, which is gonna be a hat in time.
No, I said bye already.
We bye now.
Okay, bye.
I love you, bye.
I love you, bye.