The Giant Beastcast: Episode 304

This week we're joined by Jeff Gerstmann while we loop back into Loop Hero and take a dip into Mundaun. More content coming to Game Pass, new PS VR Controllers, and some hot breaking acquisitions! It's knife or death type of episode!

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Hello, Welcome to the Giant BeastCast. My name is Jeff Baccalar.
It is what is it? It'sit's Thursday, it's Friday. It's March
eighteenth ish. Just finishing up mySat Patrick's Day celebration. I don't know
about you, guys. Welcome tothe show, the greatest show this side

(00:36):
of the Internet. Joining me today, Sir Alex Navarro. Yes, I
am joining you on this side ofthe Internet, the East Coast of the
Internet. I'm here with you.It's the best side of the Internet.
Everyone knows that special guest today,mister Jeffrey Gerstman. Sir, how are
you Bast Coast Online? I actuallyused to subscribe to an I he that

(01:00):
was literally WCO West Coast Online.Remember I got that. I got that
West Coast Internet. I want tosee that Comcast. I bet that logo
was dope as hell. No,they didn't really, I don't know if
they have would, but I didhave. It was just straight up WCO
dot com. It was just likeand then then actually I think Comcast bought

(01:21):
them and it became a nightmare.But that's right. I'm here from the
West Coast. Here from the WestCoast we figured out the technology to create
such a situation. Jane Show isproducing the show. Thank you, Jen,
appreciate that, Sir. Is hehere? There? He is?
Who? Right? Uh? VinnyCaravella is is not with us today.

(01:45):
I hear he is around. We'veheard mutterings about his slack. Yeah.
Right, his little green dot showedup. I don't know what that means.
And then it went to the Zand I thought, well, maybe
he's he's here, but he's nothere. But Jeff, thank you so
much for being in his place today. It means a lot to us.

(02:07):
Great. Yeah, I'm happy tobe here. And uh, you know,
especially on such an auspicious day ofyou know, square announcements. Certainly,
certainly we'll get to we'll get toall that in just a second.
I am hearing that Vinny has puttogether some sort of situation where he is

(02:28):
able to join us temporarily, ifI understand that correctly. Breaking news is
this put the finger to the ear? Oh what why? What is this?
The Giant bees cast lou War forInner John still function. Vinny,

(02:53):
you've been away narrating the beginning offall Out five? What what? What?
What exactly is going on? Him? I'm here, yes. Now.
Now, the first thing I'm noticing. The first thing I'm noticing,
yes, is that you're wearing adifferent shirt. I am wearing a shirt.

(03:15):
We're in the track suit that hasa full color on it because I
had a fun surgery on Monday wherethey had to go in through the front
the old neck there. So ifyou've been following the tales of the Beast
Cast and the other Giant Bomb ExtendedUniverse, probably heard me talk about MRI
eyes other other other points of hospitalvisits. You may have watched the Hotspot

(03:40):
where I got a call from theinsurance company live on the air, something
loose, and so yeah, Ihad to go in. I had Welcome
to the body horror portion of theshow. Let's just first say the surgery.
You made a promise. I wantto just preface this. They had
a promise we wouldn't enter that,but I had. I had. I

(04:01):
had a herniated disk that was pressingagainst my spinal cord in my neck and
that needed to go away, andthat has that has question. Yes,
I'm very happy it went away,but what did they change your voice in
the process. I don't understand.Was there you can you can do some
upgrades while you're there if you want. Yeah, ripper docs. We got

(04:24):
a ripper doc. I see.So I was funny. I talked to
back Lard. I talked to youon Monday after the surgery, and I
was like, this is great.I feel fine, and you were like,
you sound fine. I was like, let's I was. I was
almost I was almost in shock asto how normally fine you sounded. You
didn't even sound high, like you'reon drugs or anything, which you know,

(04:45):
Hey, but uh, turn itturns out it's not always messed up.
It turns out things swell up aftersurgery. And uh, Tuesday was
a bad day. It was abad date for me, and then today
today not so bad. But yeah, it's like I have a bad cold
now it's hard to swallow. Thereis but you know, I just want

(05:08):
to say hi to everybody and missyou all. I'm gonna probably be out
for a bit, Alex. I'mgoing to see you on Tuesday as I
talk to things and you pick stuffup in the office as we have to
still get that thing cleaned out.So well, if I ever figure out
how to get logged into that COVIDwebsite, that they want us to sign
up for Yes, I'll see youon Tuesday. Yes, the the the

(05:30):
You are not sick with COVID,you promise website. Yes. Yeah,
I probably sound worse than I feelright now, but that's not your ally.
You look great, Thank you verymuch. Yeah, I feel great.
I've been playing. I've been playingsome story of seasons, which I'll
probably talk about next week if Iif I am back in it. I

(05:51):
can't talk too long now. I'veonly got I've got a limited time run
here and some other stuff. ButI will see you all soon. GM.
Thank you so much for handling theproduction end of the show, and
thanks everybody else for covering for me. I really appreciate it. And to
the audience, thank you very muchfor for suffering these fools on the show.

(06:13):
I know it is just not thesame. It's just I just wanted
to say, let's everybody know I'mdoing great. All right, We'll let
you I'm gonna go, but enjoythe show and let's see you everyone,
all right. Feel bet everybuddy.Thanks bye, I love you all.
See up. By sliding away andthere he goes, sliding back into prescription
painkiller drugs and nobody is gone andthe morons are running the podcast yet again.

(06:41):
Yeah, I love it. Yeah, all right, here's part of
the show where were talking about whatwe've been playing, ladies and gentlemen.
And I want to tell you peoplethat I am very much invested in a
game called lou Pierro. I'm playingthat much more than I thought i'd be
playing a week after I started it. I know. Last week talked a

(07:03):
little bit about how I had notdied in that game yet, and that
was a dumbass thing to say,because now all I seem to be good
at is dying, and I'm havinga strange sort of time with understanding when
I need to pull out of theloop and when I need to keep going

(07:23):
and face the boss. We talkeda lot about this last week, how
the game, uh, you know, is juggling a lot of different things,
but you are tasked with essentially,you know, simcitying, creating and
establishing the map and all the pieceson this map, and when you do
enough of that tile placement, youfill up that bar. In this game,

(07:46):
you fight the boss and I can't. I can't do the boss thing
yet, and I feel like Idon't understand sometimes what cards do and how
they benefit me. But I feellike I'm learning at a very steady pace
and I'm still really enjoying it.I think the fun thing about this game
is that even if you're a disasterat it, which I feel like I'm

(08:09):
flirting with that title, I feellike I'm flirting with like being a disaster
at this game, it was stilltotally It's still rewards you in a way
that is uh, you know,a progression forward, right, Like you
still create uh and and get tokeep a lot of the resources and assets
that you obtain in your playthrough.So you go back to your camp,

(08:31):
you level up, you, youimprove your your situation over there, and
then hopefully that prepares you to maybemake it around in the expedition and finally
eat and finish the boss there.But have you guys been playing any of
this their loop hero? Yeah?Yeah, I have, uh and I've

(08:52):
been. I've been playing it reallysafe, Like when it comes to the
loop, I will pull out earlyand just like shoot all the resources into
my base and then kind of getback in there and and give it another
go because I feel like I wantto get a couple more upgrades before I
really start, you know, stayingin there and trying to get to the
boss. But yeah, like that, you're right about it. Just the

(09:16):
there's a lot of stuff that theydon't necessarily talk about, uh when it
comes to like adjacent tiles and youknow, like how you can obliterate stuff
and and putting after it's kind ofall of its usefulness is used up and
and all of that. Like it'sit's a pretty while Yeah, I love
the look of it that kind oflike VGA era PC game, Like just

(09:41):
yeah, there's so much about itthat they just nail. It's super not
a game that I thought I wasgonna get into because I think people kept
describing it as like it's a deckbuilder and but it's an idle game,
but it's this, but it's this, but it's it's like it's it's really
none of that. I'm it's hardto I feel like a lot of the

(10:01):
comparative descriptions of Lupiro really do itat disservice because like, I feel like
half the stuff I heard about itwas like, oh, that's probably not
a game I'm gonna be into,but uh, you know, it's not
really a tower defense game either,and it's not really a deck builder and
all this other stuff. I thinkit's a it's a lot of fun and
and you know, it's very activebecause you're constantly kind of swapping in your

(10:24):
your different gear and looking at thecards that you do have and deciding when
to lay down your land and allthat other stuff and building sick ass mountains
into peaks and all of that.Like it's, uh, it's cool.
There's a ton of stuff going on. So it's not an idol game either
and and all that. But yeah, it's I've been having a really good
time with it. But I amalso very early on and having beat that

(10:46):
first boss, so like I'm stillI still feel like I'm just kind of
trying to build up my camp asmuch as possible. Yeah, the way
I'm playing it, I'm almost likethere's only one boss and and I'm just
like leading up towards that. Haveyou started, Alex, I have not
started it yet. I did downloadit, but I have not started it
yet. You know, it's interestingthey we talked about this a little bit

(11:09):
last week too, but it's you'reright, Jeff, It's like there's not
really a way to describe this game. So I'm just not gonna fall into
any of those you know sort ofgenre you know, busting sort of things
that everyone's thrown out about this game. I think that's honestly if I feel
like if I had gotten that description, I probably would have just glossed over

(11:31):
this one. And I think,you know, for me, it is
something that I'm I'm I'm rediscovering newthings that this game actually is the more
I play it. So I thinkthat's a really that's a really cool thing
that's coming out of this you know, you you juggle so many uh you
know, specs and and and andand abilities and weapons and wearable junk in

(11:54):
this game. And the Swing it'swild because every time you complete the loop,
you are rewarded with like pass andgo, you get a bunch of
HP, and you know, likea spider spawns out of the thing,
and you know, there's all thesedifferent effects that happen when the day turns
over. But I feel like,man, I've hit some swings where I'm
just like, I'm like Regent inlike fifteen health a second and all of

(12:18):
a sudden, I decide to likewear a different ring, and I'm just
like this busted fucking soldier that isincapable of the simplest tasks, and they
really are. It's I found myselflike hanging on to like armor that is
theoretically better and not equipping it becauselike, oh, well, I want
to have the like this VAMPIRESM shieldor whatever it is, and I don't

(12:43):
want to replace it yet because it'sthe minute you replace it, people haven't
played it. Your your old armordisintegrates. You don't get to swap back
and forth or anything like that.You kind of drag it into the spot
the old item is destroyed and youkind of move forward and and so yeah,
it's definitely I think of like I'mnot sure how these stats pan out,
Like evasion seems like it'd be reallygood, but I do like getting

(13:03):
HP back, uh, and thenyou swap out for evasion and go like,
oh, I'm screwed now. I'velike I'm halfway through this loop and
I'm just not gonna make it,like unless yeah, I get a lucky
drop that that gets that stat backup real quick. Yeah that scary.
Sometimes it's weird. It's weird youplay like, uh, you know,
there's there's all these different enemies andsome of them are way better at evading

(13:26):
or countering than others, and youknow, you you see you kind of
level up after each you know cycle, they level up, and it really
is this fun sort of you know, uh kind of you know, whack
them all situation where you're constantly figuringout the right move and I feel like
I've oh, man, I probablyI probably done like twenty five loops now,

(13:48):
and I just cannot There's never likea thing that pops up where I'm
like, oh, that's the thing. I gotta go back and get the
thing. You know. There's allthese like sort of generic uh not generic,
but sort of like you know,these little sprite icons that that show
you what you have. But I'veyet to really discern a pattern where I'm
like, oh, I gotta waitfor like the blue sword or the green

(14:09):
shield or something like that. Eitherway, I'm digging it. That's Loup
Hero for me this week. Igotta say. I just want everyone to
know that I'm gonna have to saygoodbye to a pimball machine next week.
What why I just going on?You know, look, look, look

(14:31):
it's nothing, no one did anything. I'm sitting on apparently a very hot
and in demand game. That's right. Guns and Roses unfortunately is going to
have to get on out of theback of our household. It's uh,
it's gonna be a sad day.But I am going to stream it one

(14:52):
more time. I'm going to dodgethe DMCA one last time on on twitch
and we'll do one more stream.But yeah, it sucks. I gotta
give it. Apparently there's like noneof these games. Apparently, you know,
this is obviously a marketing sort ofsample and they got to get it
to someone else to check it out. And the Jersey Jack people have been
super cool with the with their loaner. Sorry, so this is a new

(15:16):
Guns n' Roses machine, It mostcertainly is, my friends, Okay,
wow, Like I thought you're talkingabout the existing one, and I was
like, it's how are you gettingIt's just Chinese democracy, none of the
other stuff. Can you believe it? So speaking speaking, I could,
I honestly I could believe that thatlike Axel or somebody would be like,
no, you need the new stuff, and then you get the buckethead bonus

(15:37):
and then like that, it willbe a whole table based around that.
Do you like? It's up toyou if you want to watch like ten
minutes of this thing and see whatthis game is all about. Just from
a production value standpoint, I promiseyou will be like, oh wow,
that's that's something I didn't expect.Like, granted, all the concert footage
that they're using from this is probablyfrom like four years ago. Starry Win's

(15:58):
a little older, maybe not movingaround as much as they used to.
I'm not really sure who that drummeris. They kind of go through drummers,
you know, the way a lotof these bands do. I think
it's I think his name is FrankFerreira. Is maybe his name right now?
Anyway, Yeah, but uh,it's I mean, it's such a

(16:23):
good game, and I actually Idon't know what the hell I was waiting
for, but it has this parentaladvisory family mode where there's like a couple
of songs off that first album thatjust pop up when you turn off the
filter. Don't like what the hellI've been doing? I mean, yeah,
every now and then the game willbe like, no, he's fucking
shut. But other than that,you know, you can't really tell they're

(16:45):
cursing in the game, so it'slike, what's the problem either way?
Uh, everyone knows how jazz Iam about this game. Gonna stream me
one more time and then it's gonnago by by, and I'm a little
upset about it, and I justwant to get it out there and talk
about it. Was I was worried, but this was one of your like
prize possession ones that was actually yours. You're having to say goodbye to it

(17:06):
for some reason, as opposed toone that was on loan from the Jersey
Jack collection. Yeah, I mean, and those guys only make a game
a year, so you know,their their production is not as mass as
like a Stern. So you know, I get it. I've had it
for a while and uh and andit's definitely due back, but uh but

(17:26):
yeah, all the ones that aremine are staying there, not going anywhere,
And thank you, Jan farewell gunsn' Roses. It's uh, it's
been something else. But yeah,all anything fitting new out there that you're
looking to, like, get inand take a look at, like what's
the what's the newest latest, likea Stern put anything out lately or Yeah,
so they put out about four orfive a year, and they just

(17:49):
put out a led Zeppelin game thatI had for about a month before that
one had to go back as well, because, like I said, I
either get when I when I youknow, when they send them out,
I either get like a prototype orlike a first run kind of thing,
and then they're just like, we'regoing to need that back and I'm like,
hey, you know, no problem. There's like rumors about their next

(18:11):
game. A lot of rumors saythat the next one's gonna be Godzilla from
Stern. So you know, Idon't look like for me, the theme
and the and the playability and likeall the gimmicks and toys in the game
are sort of one to one whereit's like, hey, I'll play this
you know whatever, you know,themed game as long as it's good like

(18:33):
for you know, there's there's tonsof games that are just like, oh,
really that theme wound up being thisamazingly playable you know thing, and
it and it works in the inthe reverse way too, right where you
have this like amazing theme, butthey but they fumbled the sort of gameplay.
So it's weird how that relationship exists. But in terms of like the
one that I'm really looking forward to, yeah, there's really not there's really

(18:55):
not anything on the Horizon immediately thatI that I'm jazzed about. But Stern
will they'll have a new one prettysoon. And then, uh, you
know some of the indie guys.There's so there's like this one indie pinball
company called Deep Root, and theyare coming out with a game that has
an LCD screen in the lock bar, so like basically in between the flippers

(19:17):
and apparent apparent. I think Icould be wrong about this, but I
do think it might also be touchscreen so you can like interact with the
game in that way. Uh.It's just really you know all these indie
outfits that you know, they'll they'lldo a run of like a thousand games,
and then there's a collectors that'll likethey'll show up to pay seven grand
for it or something like that.It's not like it's not like you know,

(19:41):
Ken who runs the Bowling Alley isshowing up and going like, I
don't know my locations can support,you know, because they're out there in
the field getting dinged up. Soat that point do whatever? Really totally,
I mean, you will have thesethese sort of like bespoke collectors,
Like the most famous one on theEast Coast is probably Sunshine laundromat which is
in Brooklyn. Have you been there, Alex, I don't think I know

(20:03):
what it is. It's basically likejust basically like a laundromat turned into like
a bar pinball arcade, and theowners like very meticulous. I mean,
you know, the way like youknow you would treat you know, you're
some fancy car. This guy's liketaking care of all this stuff. So
so guys like that where they runthese sort of like almost museums in a
way, they'll pick them up.And home ownership now is like gigantic in

(20:26):
a way that you know, Ithink a lot of it to due to
the pandemic, but homeownership is upin such a fanatical way that the majority
of the sales now, at leastfrom the guys that I talked to,
is for homeowners, which is you'reto hold of a pie chart and just
be like, well, statistics inthe last quarter. Yeah, forget bitcoin,

(20:48):
I'm all in on pinball. Butyeah, that's uh, that's that's
the deal. But other video gamesthat I've been playing, I can't talk
about it just yet, but itis a I am playing a very unique
co op game that I'm very jazzedabout and we'll be able to talk about
next week. And that's been takenup my time. Mister mister Navarro.

(21:11):
What about you, sir? Whathave you been playing? I've got a
few things this week. I willbriefly say that I am still playing a
lot of fights in tight spaces.This has officially become my into the Breach
of twenty twenty one. It ishitting that same pleasure center of my brain
where I just want, like,I finish a run and I'm like,
no, you know what, Ishould start over and just do another one

(21:33):
right now, which I don't getwith a lot of those games. It's
this one, it's and it's I'malso having the exact same build up with
this one, where it's now atthe point where the opening chapter I can
basically just blitz through, and thenas soon as I start getting to the
later ones, that's when I startrunning into problems or I start making dumb
decisions things like that. So it'sit's basically hitting that exact same spot for

(21:56):
me, even though it is Iguess not done, like it's technically in
early access, but it feels prettyclose to it, at least from a
game play perspective pretty close to done. But other than that, I have
been playing a couple of other things. So I did decide to dig into
Little Nightmares too after So. Iliked the original Little Nightmares, but I

(22:21):
didn't love it. I am likingthis one a little bit better. But
I am so like atmospherically, Ilove what those games are going for.
The vibe of them is exactly mylevel of like creepy but not just like
disgusting, you know, like it'sjust it's just weird, unsettling horror,

(22:42):
not necessarily like you know, righteouslyviolent horror, which I like that too,
but in this case, I thinkit works for what they're trying to
do. I think I might justbe hitting a little bit of a wall
with that style of atmospheric kind oflike Sidescrow platformer. As you know.
I love the you know, theplay Dead like the Inside and what have

(23:06):
you. I love those games.I didn't love the original Little Nightmares.
I just I think it was justa little too slight in terms of like
the puzzle solving and the gameplay.This one, I'm like a little more
engaged with it, but I haven'treally been thinking much about again, It's
like the gameplay is not a thingI'm really thinking about very much. It's
just kind of happening while I amdrinking in the visuals and the music and

(23:29):
what have you. And you know, that's fine. Like I'm totally fine
with the game that I'm just like, I can appreciate the aesthetics and the
vibes of more than the gameplay.But I think, just like with those
kinds of games, like I maybejust want something a little bit different now,
because it feels like a lot ofgames that have kind of tried to
do that thing have felt very ofa kind and like, I don't know

(23:51):
that this one feels like it's reallydoing anything to kind of stand out from
that style of atmospheric platformer. It'sjust it's doing another one of those pretty
well, yeah, it's it is. I am definitely having the same experience
with that game. I haven't playedin the last week, but what I
from what I have played of it, like you said, it is this
sort of you know, uh Burtanydiorama kind of thing, and you're just

(24:14):
sort of like living there, youknow, for for better or worse.
It isn't necessarily this memorable kind ofthing, right I feel. I guess
you're kind of getting that right whereyou just go through this thing you enjoy
being there. But what I wantto ask you, I'm curious, what
do you think is like what becauseI agree with you right like I'm there
with you, I want something elsewhat I want out of it? I

(24:36):
don't know, Like what what couldyou put in this thing to to move
it? For you? It's Idon't know. There's like a couple of
things I can think of, Likeall of those games have like kind of
a similar feel to them, whichis to say that the characters feel a
little bit floaty, a little bitlike the platforming itself is simplified to a
degree because the character movement is notreally meant for like serious precision. And

(25:00):
I don't it doesn't need to becomelike Super Meat Boy or anything like that.
Like, but I just I thinkthat I would like to see a
different take on that kind of physicsand that kind of like you know,
the puzzles that you build around that, because I think they all just kind
of start to feel like the samefloat when I'm playing them, and just
maybe just a different approach to someof the puzzle solving because a lot of

(25:22):
them are just kind of semi environmentalpuzzles that don't really change that much.
Like none of the stuff that I'mplaying in Little Nightmares two feels and granted
it's been a long time since Iplayed the first one, but none of
it feels really that different from thekinds of stuff that I was doing in
Little Nightmares one, and that stufffelt very similar to the kinds of stuff
you would do, maybe less soin an Inside, because that one did

(25:44):
involve some let's just say, somesome meat ball rolling that was a little
different than than maybe some of theother stuff. But like you go back
to like their first game, likeI just feel like it limbo. Yeah,
Like it's just a lot of gameshave kind of been chasing that limbo
thing, and that's that that feelsto me, like they just it's a
very different visual style, but likethe gameplay is just not really hitting for

(26:07):
me in a way that I wantedto. I don't know, I think
that stuff, I just that thatstuff I don't. I can't. I
can't get into it. Uh LikeI thought Inside was okay, And you
know, people coming back after playingInside talking about how it was this amazing
things like I don't I don't likesure, okay, the ending is like

(26:30):
a fun little weird twist and likelike you do some goofy shit for sure,
but like even Limbo, like Iwasn't like a huge fan of I
think for the reasons you're saying,like, you know, like this very
floaty movement and just it's there's nothingimmediate about any of it. It really
is just like, Okay, nowwalk to this next puzzle and stare at

(26:52):
it for a while and at somepoint if it is just and in a
lot of cases you would solve thepuzzle in your head immediately and then go,
yeah, but the movement speed isso slow. Now I have to
drag this fucking box all the wayover a year to block the sea saw,
to do this, to do that, and just like that stuff kills
me when when you know exactly whatyou need to do and the game is

(27:15):
just like taking forever to get youin position to just move forward. I
almost wish it was just like justtake the platform out of it and let
me just drag a mouse around,like just you know, make a fun
physics puzzle game that I play witha mouse or something. I don't know
it doesn't. Yeah, like Ilike platform and stuff just seems crammed into
it almost like I do love Insidea lot. But I think that it

(27:36):
just in the ensuing years, Ihave not seen too many like really novel
spins on what you know play Deadwas doing with those games, And like,
I think that Little Nightmares maybe getsthe closest, you know, as
a series to that stuff, butit just doesn't other than the visuals and
the atmosphere, I just don't feellike it it really grabs me in the
same way that that other stuff does. And I think it I just want

(28:00):
a more novel, a more differentspin on that kind of stuff. And
some of it is like I said, like the physics and whatnot, but
like I think you can do thosekinds of physics puzzles well, even with
a very kind of floaty game feel. It's just that what they're doing is
not really that inventive from what I'veplayed, And you know, it's like
and like you said, like there'sit gets frustrating sometimes when it's just like

(28:22):
Okay, I know the exact sequenceof events I need to do, and
it's literally I am pressing this jumpbutton like a half second too slow,
over and over and over again,because I can't quite judge the level of
jump I need to be doing basedon these physics. And you know,
it's not that hard of a game. It's not that frustrating. It's just
that when you do run into thoselittle walls, it feels like this just
could have been tweaked, Like thisisn't even really like a hard thing.

(28:45):
It just doesn't feel right. Yeah. I definitely think the whole trial and
error thing that happens in a lotof those, especially this game and the
play Dad games can get, youknow, little a little tire. Some
what is play is play Dead doingsomething else? Do we know if they're
doing another game? I'm gonna saythey're probably doing something else. But didn't

(29:07):
they change like a lot of personnelor something. I think say they may
have gotten bought, but I don'tremember. It's been so long since the
last time I heard them even likeannounce something some like Vampire bought them.
Yeah, but yeah, so that'sthat's little nightmares. You know, I'm
liking it, and I will Iwill probably continue playing through it, but

(29:30):
I feel like I'm gonna end upin the same place kind of I did
with original Little Nightmares is I willplay it, I will enjoy it,
and then I probably won't think aboutit too much again after that. Yeah,
thankfully they're not super long games fromwhat I understand, No for sure,
what what what else? What else? You're playing? The other thing
I tried out this week, whichI have not gotten very far in yet,
but I am. I am atleast digging the initial hour or two

(29:52):
of it. Is this game calledand I'm probably gonna butcher this this pronunciation,
I apologize to the Swiss. Itis called mun Dawn, and it
is a first person horror game thatis now out on PC and on consoles,
and the style of it is veryfull horror in the sense of you

(30:15):
are a person returning to this remotemountain village in the Swiss Alps. You
are there because your grandfather has passedaway in a tragic accident and you were
trying to find out what happened,and almost instantly shit starts getting real weird
when you get there. And thestyle of the game is this pencil drawn

(30:36):
kind of not exactly black and white, but sort of like black, white,
gray and a little bit of brown, kind of little cpia. Yeah,
but it's it's all supposed to belike pencil drawn, is the way
they're they're they're framing it, andyou know what they are doing with that
effect, you know, I thinkis pretty effective. Everything looks like a
little bit grotesque, but not ina way that looks like, you know,

(31:00):
ugly necessarily, Like there is anartistic miserableness to the whole thing,
but it's got a it's got areal cool vibe to it. And you
know, the like the early goingsof that game, you're not doing a
whole lot other than just kind ofwalking around the town kind of getting a
feel for what the hell has gonewrong here? But what is gone wrong?

(31:21):
It seems novel and interesting and uh, it's so all the voice acting
is in I forget what the nativelanguage of Switzerland is. I don't remember
if it's German or if it's adifferent dialect, but uh, you know,
it's all in native tongue. Andthen you know, subtitled and that
you know it kind of like Ithink that's a good choice. Like I

(31:41):
don't think it needed to have Englishvoice acting necessarily, but yeah, I
don't know, Like it's a lotof horror stuff. I tend not to
get into in games because it justrelies that stuff, tends to rely too
much on jump scares, less onyou know, menace and dread and more
on just here's the thing screaming atyou. And this is a This feels,

(32:01):
at least in the early goings,a little bit more atmospheric and a
little bit more just like, hey, there's a lot of weird shit happening
here, and you can just kindof drink that in as opposed to monsters
chasing you and things, you know, like just horrible, grotesque violence happening
around you constantly. So I don'tknow, like I'm I'm vibing with it

(32:21):
kind of right out of the gate. Yeah, I like the look of
it. I uh, you didthis to me before you did it to
me again, I'm gonna have toplay the thing that you are playing.
Thank you. I'm sorry. I'msorry that I would ever recommend a video
game to you. Wait, whatwas the last to yourself? Yeah,
you are a bead friend. Whatwas the last one? I don't remember,

(32:43):
but you do it all the time. I feel like, oh,
okay, well it's NHL series.Oh now, I would never keep talking
about that. Yeah, it wasyou. You made me get five pinball
machines. What else is that?It? That's that's, that's mostly it.
Yeah, I want to play moreof Mondon. I'm a little less
jazz to dig into little nightmares,but I will probably play more of it.

(33:04):
And then you know, my nightlyfights and tight Spaces runs are still
running. My life nights and tights. I like that. Okay, mister
Gerstman, Hi, welcome to theshop. Keeping with the horror theme,
I have also been playing a horrorthemed video game. Uh full of you

(33:27):
know, dread and fright and anda lot of really horrible played stubs The
Zombie ah Yes, and Rebel Withouta Pulse, which is back out baby.
They re released it on PlayStation four, Xbox one, Switch, and
PC for twenty bucks. And thisis the two thousand and five game that

(33:51):
originally came out on the Xbox andruns on the Halo engine, which is
weird. So all that, allthose details just lowing back to me.
Now, did you you played itthe first time it was out? Yeah?
I did. Yeah, I reviewedit back then and remember it being
a charming video game and it stillhas some parts of that, but boy,

(34:13):
it is it's a two thousand andfive video game in some of in
some bad ways. There are definitelygames from that era that I think hold
up. This one. It justthere's it's empty in a lot of ways
that there are. It's kind ofit's almost shocking, like how infrequently things
happen in this game and how muchof it is You're just like running down

(34:35):
a city street and seeing like there'stwo cops down there at the other end,
and I'm just gonna keep shambling inthat direction and eventually get to them
and eat their brains. It's abizarre video game to bring back and the
other things. So this Alex andI recorded a quick look that then for
some reason the video died on myend and was this Jerry mess. So

(34:57):
I ended up rerecording it myself.So I I've played a lot of this
specific chunk of stubs, rerecording itover and over again. But yeah,
it's uh, it's got a charmto it. They're trying to have a
sense of humor about the whole zombiething mixed with the like retrofuturistic fifties city

(35:22):
of the future thing like built byh Nazi scientists that have changed sides.
Yeah, that's the kind of thevibe they're going for, the the style
of jokes they're going for, Andit's like interesting to go back and look
at that stuff because you're like,oh, this isn't how you kind of
just don't make just don't make stufflike this anymore really, and uh,

(35:45):
that's probably the most interesting thing aboutit. But it doesn't hold up very
well at all, Like I wouldn'tlike it's a it's interesting curiosity, but
I'm not going to sit here andbe like this is still a really fun
game, Like it's got its moments, but it's it's also just really boring.
I also, I think I brokeit a couple of times when I
was rerecording the quick look where onetime it did there was a guy stuck

(36:06):
in a like a counter top orsomething or like a display case. A
zombie zombie was stuck in there,and I ran up and just started hitting
him and on the second hit,thinking I would knock him out and free
him from being clipped through geometry.Instead the game just crashed. I was
just like, no, we can'thandle this man. And then in that
same area in the mall, there'sa boss fight against the big guy with

(36:28):
a chainsaw, and you have fourabilities, like you can fart, you
can yeah, it'll stun guys,and so you can just like run around
and eat all their brains, soyou can possess a human with your hand,
and then you run around and shootguns at them at other humans.
But the last ability you get isthe ability to like roll your head like

(36:49):
a bowling ball. And so Idid that to this boss, and the
boss seems to have just vanished,but like the music, like all the
other stuff there, ye like likeno part of the encounter seemed to end.
And so I ran around for awhile trying to figure out, like
what the heck's going on here?Uh, and and just never never figured

(37:13):
it out, and then not wantingto do that boss fight again, I
was like, you know what,maybe I'm good. Yeah. When we
even talked about yeah, go ahead, Alex, I would say, even
in two thousand and five, likeStubbs was a kind of neat game,
but it was not necessarily a gamethat I would say was like a huge
stand out of that year, ofthat platform, of any of the things

(37:36):
you know that you would to associatewith that it's a game that I remember
for whatever reason, like I alwayswould think about like, oh, yes,
Stubbs the Zombie, that game wasall right, it's a Halo itch
and that's weird. It was justlike like those idiotic little facts about it
just stuck with me. So like, on some weird level, I'm excited
that they brought it back, andI'm not having a terrible time with it.

(37:57):
But it's not a it's not agame it was. It was all
right in its day, but alot of that was its soundtrack, which
is used horribly in the game,Like the game is largely silent, and
this version they put out, they'regoing back to the old, the old
processed vo that was in the originalgame, so it sounds tinny as hell.

(38:20):
They would they weren't able to ordidn't or whatever. They didn't go
back to the original recordings and saylike, oh, let's put these in
and have like nice old fidelity voicework or anything like that. And so
you've got this like highly repetitive dialoguelike every time you eat a brain,
there's like three voice clips or somethinglike that, and one of them is
just this really long scream. Itis just it's so it's so long,

(38:45):
so long, and it happens sooften there's like why why, and so
like all that stuff stands out,But it has this like really interesting licensed
soundtrack of indie bands of that eradoing covers of fifties songs like Lollipop and
Mister Sandman and crap like that myBoyfriend's back, you know, and and

(39:08):
so it's like it's in it's daylike that was probably the reason that I
remember that game at all is becausethat soundtrack was pretty good and I had
it separately in an era when theydidn't sell a lot of soundtracks separately.
And and it's not used really inthe game. It's only really used in
this one boss fight, and maybethey use it. I'm sure they must

(39:30):
lean on it again a little bitlater in the game, and I just
haven't gotten to it. But sofar, playing through about half of the
available chapters, the songs have comeup once and it's during this really bad
rhythm game boss fight, and sothe rest of the game has no music
at all. Generally speaking, you'relike, why, it's such a bizarre
choice to have gone out and doneall the work for this, like kind
of like it's it's a it's abullet point, like the soundtrack should be

(39:52):
like a bullet point, like,Hey, check out this cool thing.
And it's just so ill used weird. It's weird. Well that the whole
thing is weird because I remember thegame. I played the game. I
don't know if I don't remember ifI finished it, but I remember thinking
of the game as like, Oh, it's like a sci Fi Channel movie,

(40:13):
you know, like it's it's thatit's it's that Fi channel like like
and and when we uh talked aboutuh coming back on these guys a couple
of weeks ago, I just rememberbeing like why, like but why,
like what like what are what arethe chain of events that occurred where it's

(40:35):
like, here we have a twentytwenty one release of this game. It's
got to be some there's like somegraph chart of like cost to develop ports,
like number of sales we think wecould get for twenty dollars. Like
it just some line on some chartmet and they went do it, Like
so here's the crazy you really wantto have your mind blown. They're taking
pre orders or a physical collectors editionthat do out in the fall, or

(41:00):
one hundred and fifty dollars see thatcome to the head, and all of
a sudden, it's like someone's gonnago. Someone's out there going like,
I want to stop Stubbs the Zombie. I love that guy. I need
a Stubbs Heads here in my nextto my scorpions. So it's better than
the Dead Island torso, but likenot that much better. Someone somewhere in

(41:24):
their group chat was like thinking aboutpulling the trigger on us. That's like
all speculative, Like that's got tobe someone who's going like, I gotta
get this because I want to collecta full set of physical switch game,
you know, or whatever it is. It's got to be some nut that
is doing it for like weird collectorreasons and not for like well, I

(41:47):
guess it's a collector's edition, right, but I just it's got to be
someone who's thinking they're gonna hang ontothis and sell it for more money later
or something insane like that. Wellthat's where you're you're you're common about,
like you know, uh, someoneyou know saw the graph and like it
landed on Stubs the Zombie and they'relike, this is what the computer spit
out. This is this is it. This is the one to do it.

(42:10):
I don't know, we just listenedto it and we do what it
says. Yea, so weird.And they're doing pre orders, so I
assume that means that, like they'reable to do a low enough run of
these two not end up with awarehouse full of them. But also they
probably have to press up a minimumnumber of I guess that that number is
probably way lower than it used tobe. But but yeah, they're they're

(42:32):
doing it as a pre order thingfor fall release, so I assume that
gives them the ability to say,all right, we got seven hundred pre
orders, so we're gonna make eighthundred of them and then we won't lose
any money on it. So maybeit's a pretty safe thing for them to
do, which then then you startrunning through that you're like, maybe this
is going to be worth money atsome point, Like all those about it's

(42:54):
not going to be a huge run. They there's no way it's gonna be
a huge run of these things,because who would do at these are rare.
Got to get it to sit onit for twenty years. I'm gonna
put my keepe. Yeah, isthere anything else you've been playing? Or
is that it Stubb that loop Herothat's pretty much it. Like I'm gonna

(43:19):
check back in. I don't knowwhy, why, but the next gen
or the current gen versions of AvengersI think launched today, so I'm gonna
I'm gonna give that a look andsee what they have done. All the
talk about what they have changed froma gameplay perspective, sounds like it might
be making the game more of agrind, which seems like an interesting choice.

(43:42):
But I just want to see ifthat how much better that game runs
or feels or anything like that nowthat they've put those those new versions out
or are putting those versions out.I'm not sure what the timetable is for
it, but supposed to be today. Interesting. Okay, Yeah, that's
really it for for games. Iyou know, I have been watching We
haven't talked about this in a while, but I've been I found a new

(44:05):
show that has taken up my myevenings in a way that has not happened
since we blew Through Dark, thatthat German time travel sci fi show on
Netflix. But now my wife andI are just destroying all four seasons of
Search Party. Have you guys,Have you guys heard about Search Party?

(44:28):
I've not heard of Okay, wellI don't I don't know if I want
if you want me to like tellyou about it or will give the really
basic logline that you would get fromjust watching the early goings of the pilot.
So in this this is the reasonwe heard about this, uh was
through I had heard about it.I didn't know anything about it. The

(44:51):
show Stacy's working on right now.One of the producers was a producer on
this show, and that's how westarted watching it. So and one of
the people all so whose EP onthe show was Michael Showalter, which which
really does nothing to set the tonefor this. It's just a fact he's
in the He's in it also witha with a small part. So if
you're a fan of that guy,you get to sort of laughter yourself a

(45:15):
couple of times this season. Butit is about and and it goes places.
I mean, each season is almostlike a completely new show. But
the starting off point is about agirl and and and by and large her
group of friends who are trying totrack down a girl that they knew in

(45:38):
college that they were like sort offriends with but not really. She goes
missing and they essentially led by themain character fall down this rabbit hole of
trying to find her. Okay,and that's the show, and then it's
just a roller coaster with really outa track and it's sort of all over

(45:59):
the place. But I definitely definitelyrecommend checking it out. You said there's
four seasons of this. I believethey just released the fourth season. I
don't know if it's the last one. But they're twenty two minutes shows,
so we do like we do likethree and night without even blinking, so
you really make your way, uhthrough it kind of quick. Definitely a

(46:19):
dark comedy, but a lot offun. So here you go. You
should drop that and start watching oldepisodes of Knife or Death, which is
it's a game reality Okay. Youknow those YouTube videos of dudes in driveways
with knives, cutting ropes and stabishstuff on a on a timer. Okay,

(46:42):
yes, what if that was alike dark looking game show reality show
filmed in a warehouse and hosted byBill Goldberg? Oh that's that show?
Okay. Yes, So it's likeit's like different guys coming in with different
knives that there's and a guy hasto like look at the knife and go,
yes, this knife is safe touse and they try to and it's

(47:05):
fucking terrible. Oh yeah, I'veonly watched like an episode and a half
of this, and I might notwatch any more of it because honestly,
once you've seen it once, youyeah, all right. And Bill Goldberg's
looking like he's pushing out a terriblefart in that first little clip of him
there, Yes, that is.It is definitely like and it's like he's
far away, like he rarely,I don't think you in the episode,

(47:27):
I don't know that I ever sawhim interacting with any of the contestants until
like the very end or something.It's like him and some other dudes sitting
up in the rafters just looking atit goal like he's got to cut through
this meat wall. Now. Sohere's a question I have about this.
We live several, but I'll startwith this one. Bill Goldberg not really
known in his wrestling gimmick or forwhat I know of his personal life,

(47:52):
for being a big knife guy.Did they ever illuminate why he's the host
of that show? Does he everexpress it any real love for knife sports?
Because because knives can't kill him?Yeah, yeah, I mean no,
it's like the only thing can killhim is punching through car windows.

(48:13):
No, I don't. I don'tknow, but I feel like there's some
dark undercurrent, like I don't keepup with what the fuck is happening with
television. Uh, but I dounderstand that Bill Goldberg has hosted multiple TV
shows over the years, and uh, and this just seems like probably another
opportunity for him to get a checkor something. I feel like most of

(48:37):
them were about cars, and theywould be like Bill Goldberg loves cars.
But I don't know if they evercame out and said Bill Goldberg loves knives.
Okay, but it's like guys cominglike different knives and sometimes the knives
are bad, and sometimes comes andcomes with a knife that's like this isn't
like for the course, for thecourse that they're gonna have to run through.
This knife is like too thick tomake the cuts you're gonna have to

(48:59):
make. And one of them,it's just like you gotta there's we hung
a chicken from a thing, andyou got one chance to cut through the
chicken all the way and if youdon't, well you get a time penalty
or whatever. And it's just reallystupid, like you gotta cut a part
of a wooden box enough to empty, like they feel it full of grain
or something. And so it's justlike dudes just packing it blocks of ice

(49:22):
or wooden blocks or something with thesebig dumb knives, and they're getting so
tired out sometimes like oh oh,and watching these fuckers see grew like Texas
blade sports, you know, YouTubevideos and what have you, and and
maybe the chintziness of those courses,there is a precision to what they are

(49:45):
doing in those and there is adetermination of like, yes, this is
the optimal blade for the course thatI am working on, and there is
a purity to that that I respect. I don't know that you can turn
that into a big stupid reality showin a way that that captures the ramshackle
spirit of what's great about blade sports. What if I told you at the

(50:07):
end of it they have to liketrudge up a flight of stairs and like
hit stick the knife in a buttonor something to stop the timer, and
there's like fire shooting out around it. I just think that's a lot of
pageantry for no reason. Man,I'm really blades. It's no like christ

(50:28):
up like a guy walking forward witha knife and cutting stuff to be like
I don't know what if we putwhat do we put some pirate? What
we could we do something like that, like to make it pretty it up
a little dude. I mean,but that's what's amazing is like the some
dickhead saw a video on YouTube.It was just like three seasons out of
this, yeah, you know,like and that's the that's the like,

(50:50):
the truly crazy part about it isthat, like I think, yes,
the YouTube videos of guys that haveset up courses in their driveway for that
type of blade sports, I thinkthat is way more engaging. But the
way they try to dress it upfor this thing and be like this guy
when he's not doing this, he'sdoing fucking Scottish War reenactment, so you
know, whatever they're doing, youknow, just like like they always have

(51:12):
to get into the contestant background justa little bit to kind of dress it
up in that reality show way,and it's just fucking I mean, we're
watching the promo, I mean itlooks way cooler than what you're describing though,
right, Like they're kind of chickenthough. It's just insane. It's

(51:34):
just insane. I'm a purist.If it is not a bunch of board
Texas dads in a driveway. I'mnot interested. Yeah, I think they
should have gotten some way. Well, I don't know. I haven't seen
the show, but I can't seethese contestants, deeply put upon wives sitting
off to the side in lawn chairsjust being like, oh yeah, no,

(51:55):
Gary, he's doing his knife competitionagain. Been talking about this goddamn
knife tournament for a month and ahalf and now here we go, like,
yeah, it's if I cannot seespouses humoring these people off to the
side. I'm not interested, Jesus, it's like breathe smoke. I don't
understand what assisted his contracts. It'swhat you gotta do. But like they

(52:20):
dress these things up like you know, every single one is like them walking
into a warehouse like it's a Fastand the Furious heist set up. But
it's but but it's Bill Goldberg insteadof in Diesel telling all these people like
Okay, we're gonna go do this. Like it's just it's such an elaborate
like they over they make everything soover elaborate to try to dress it up
for television in a way that,uh, you just you're just like watching

(52:45):
money be set on fire. Butit's like, I don't know. At
the end of the day, it'suh, someone who doesn't watch much television.
That is the only television I've seenlately. Dude, I'm just so
glad you brought that up. Ohmy gosh. All right, we're gonna
take a break. Okay, we'llget to the news when we come back,

(53:06):
So stick around. We'll see youafter the work. Well, hello,
welcome back to the show. Itis the news portion of our program
right now. And I gotta say, you, guys, how are we

(53:28):
feeling about round two of PSVR?M M. They should do it one,
Yeah, they should do that.That's what I think. The news
out this morning is a reveal ofthe PlayStation VR controllers for PlayStation five.

(53:53):
They are not move controllers. No, they just ran out of USB.
Uh that whatever the fuck interface thatwas. Yeah, so they're just like
all the batteries in them stop holdingcharges so that they're just like, well,
I gotta warehouse folded junk now again. So they actually look like I

(54:16):
want to say, the not thevibe, but like the the way Occulus
controllers, Yeah, the way Oculusevolved into the separation and sort of like
the grippy finger tracking kind of uhyou know, orbs around each one of
your hands, if that makes sense. Yeah, why is the hand orb

(54:37):
but now the determinated like that isthe style of the our controller. What
is it about the hand orb thatis u vital to that? So the
rings on the ring on the controller, So they're doing an inside out tracking,
so the tracking will come from theheadset itself, and so those rings
are used for part of the tracking. Okay, Uh so it's like it's

(55:00):
easier to see that guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there they look
like Oculus, like they have thesame kind of button configuration. I think
the main difference is that they'll havehaptic feedback in the triggers, the index
finger triggers specifically. I don't knowif the grip the grip triggers will also
have it. It didn't sound likeit would, but but on the the

(55:21):
index fingers, you'll be able tohave the same type of triggers you get
on a PlayStation five dual sense controller. Yeah, so yeah, I need
to Oh there you go. Soit's like, well, they're they're they're
definitely leaning into like haptic feedback,the finger touch detection, which I don't

(55:43):
know if that's the same as isn'tOculus all about the finger tracking, right
and not? Yeah? So theywill, they will. They will kind
of be able to track an indexfinger in a few different positions. Is
kind of how some of that stuffworks. It's not like a pure one
to one finger tracking, but itseems like they will and I don't actually

(56:04):
know how they do it, honestly, but they will detect when your fingers
like resting on the trigger versus pointedout and be able to do some stuff
around that. So I assume thiswill be pretty similar. That looks like,
Okay, that's the same the imagethat we have up on screen here.
Okay, I just wasn't sure ifthe buttons were gonna be on the
same side as they are on theOuculus controller, if it was like the
other end. But yeah, itlooks like it's on the inner edges of

(56:24):
it. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly the same as
the Oculus configuration. Basically, they'vegot a couple of extra buttons there for
what appeared to be like an optionsbutton and like a share button or something
like that, but and then thesame I feel like most people, I
mean I've used them a couple oftimes. I can't really say I don't

(56:46):
like them. I feel like theywork pretty fine. You like that Oculus
style of controller for the types ofgames that Oculus tends to put out,
it's fine, like it. Idon't think it's as refined as like the
the Index controllers and some of theother stuff out there. But I think
if you're looking at this as hey, you're maybe going to play more seated

(57:06):
experiences because it's a console or youknow, just like some of the other
stuff that that isn't necessarily trying todo that full on room scale. I
think the Oculus controllers are really good, but yeah, like if you're if
you're just after like I want fullfidelity, as much tracking as possible for
this kind of room scale sort ofexperience. I think the Vibe and some

(57:27):
of the newer stuff on that endof things, I think does a better
job with that than the Oculus controllersdo. Yeah, I mean this news
is not necessarily thorough in a lotof ways. It's more of just like,
hey, here's the controllers. There'sgoing to be a new hardware,

(57:47):
you know for the PS five.I guess for me, like the biggest
sort of okay a news is thatit's only gonna need one wire to connect
to the psive instead of like thepredator you know thing going on and like
all the path through breakout box stuffof the original PSVR. I think they're

(58:08):
they at least seem to be settingit up for more like, hey,
you will just plug this into theUSBC port on the front of the console.
Is it what I'm guessing? Butyeah, I mean this is telling
though, right, because like they'regoing to the trouble of manufacturing a new
controller style as opposed to repurposing old, existing unsold hardware. They are,
you know, it seems like theyare refining some of the aspects of that

(58:30):
design for you know, and notjust for the power of the PS five,
but just for the overall user experience. Kind of sounds like they're actually
committing to doing this in a waythat maybe we weren't sure for a while
they were really serious about. Yeah. The thing to note here in the
blog post that they ran is thelike near the bottom, like this sounds

(58:52):
like this isn't them announcing it tosay like, hey, it's coming out
soon. This is them announcing itbecause they're about to send out dev kits,
and they know they're just a leak, So rather than have a shot
of a controller leak out from somedeveloper ending up on some blog somewhere,
there's like, okay, let's justlet's just put that out this announcement ourselves,
and that'll be that. And alsoI think this, you know,

(59:14):
if you think about like they,this puts them closer to the Oculus standards.
So devs that are already doing workto support those controllers, I guess
is that a lot of that workor a lot of the you know what
comes to how do you want yourbuttons to do? What? And all
that, like, a lot ofthat will probably carry over, and that's
probably good to the move controllers werejust such weird things or you know,

(59:36):
if they could approximate a lot ofthe same type of things that the original
vibe wands would do, right,it's a it's a much easier uh,
it's a much more reasonable port thanthan whatever they you know, do they
There are a couple of games thatmade the jump the first PSBR, but
this seems like the path to thatport now with a similar kind of like

(59:59):
you know, I where it's likenot shoe very obviously shoehorned in at the
end of a generation. Uh yeah, it maybe makes more sense. I
don't know. I'm kind of withyou, Alex, where it's like I
didn't necessarily know that they were goingto do this. I always yeah,
I always felt they had left enoughroom for them to just be like,

(01:00:19):
yeah, yeah, we're not.Yeah, it's like PSBR was a reasonably
successful thing, but it wasn't likeit was, you know, really ever
a draw that brought in like ahuge number of like new PS four users.
Like it was just like if youhad a PS four and you wanted
a VR experience that you know wassolid, that's totally what it was.
And you know, it's just Microsoftnever really got in on the VR thing

(01:00:44):
all the way, Like they talkedabout it for a while, and they
seem to have kind of backed offof that. Nintendo obviously doesn't give a
fuck. So it's just interesting tosee Sony be like, well, you
know, we made our initial inroads, let's go further. Yeah, it's
a different market now. So Ithink when PSBR came out originally, I
think you had a lot of moneybeing thrown around at studios forming to make

(01:01:06):
VR like they're just funding available toget those studios off the ground and going,
and I don't get the impression thatthe market is like that anymore.
So if nothing else, this givesexisting VR devs that have committed to that
space like a new install base toplay with, Like, you know,
this will be supported just fine,because if you're making a VR game and
you're not exclusive to a platform becauseFacebook paid you off, then you're like,

(01:01:29):
great, no more people that Ican get, Like maybe recoup these
costs from that would be awesome.I would love to be able to sell
this to a new audience. Soyou know, I'm sure the dev community
has to be excited that that Sony'sgoing to give it another go, because
they did pretty well building a baselast time out, and you know,

(01:01:50):
I think in a lot of waysthey still had the most comfortable headset.
I hope they don't like lose someof that along the way, that that
PSBR set was like very easy toput on, very comfortable to wear,
and all the other stuffily yeah,especially that updated one with the better earphone
things like pretty good. Yeah,I have a valve index in the house

(01:02:15):
that made me ill and I haven'tplayed it since and I'm now scared of
it, but I did always wantto get back to finishing astrobot. So
man, I mean I just forme, it's like, okay, no,
I know. For me, I'mtrying to think about how this thing's
gonna connect and presumably or is itjust like going to be like a USB

(01:02:38):
three situation, Like how I betit is. Yeah, that's how a
quest connects to a PC. Nowis just over you know, over USBC.
So I imagine that they will dosomething because they did tout like a
single cable solution, and I'm guessingit's that it's not going to be some
breakout box and HDM I passed throughand all that other crap. It'll probably

(01:02:59):
just be like yep, it willgo. I had it. It has
to be. It has to be. Do you do you remember all the
fucking nonsense with like this box isthe Gen one box, it can't pass
through HDR, so you'll want thisscute and then like look, we know
you guys shoehorned this in at theend of the generally, but man,
that was just no fun. Yeah, it was. It was a bad

(01:03:21):
situation. Like so I ended upnot buying one for home until that updated
model came out that did come withthe box that could pass HDR, and
then I remember bringing it into theoffice at some point, and I think
it's still there somewhere. So Idon't even know where my where my PSVR
is. I'll be curious. Ibet it won't. But I wonder if

(01:03:42):
there will be any kind of pathfor PlayStation four PSVR games to support the
new headset and tracking and all thatother stuff. I imagine that's probably too
much dev work to be worth itor to happen automatically. Probably is a
no go because just because now thetracking is so front. But that would
be cool if that stuff worked,because right now, like doing VR on

(01:04:05):
a PlayStation five is dumb. Youhave to get an adapter from them through
the mail and then hook up theold camera because the new PS five camera
won't work with it, and alllike it's you just basically have to keep
all your PS four stuff plus theiradapter. And that's not that's not it's
not the way. I'm not goingto do that. I'm not gonna do

(01:04:27):
someone who doesn't know where his PSVRis. I'm not going to do that.
I don't want that I don't wantthat, man, but I do
want I want I want to expandmy storage immediately. Uh, I need
that list. I don't know whatthe hell it is. Is it a
list that's coming out that they're justgonna be like this one and this and
and and the and something like whatwhat let's do that? Friends? It's

(01:04:51):
it's March, right, when didyou supposed to be summer? It's supposed
to be summer? Was the theleak that wasn't official info, but you
know, said that the they wouldbe working on that stuff and having for
more updates by summer. But thatseems like that. It's it's a problem
that only gets worse as more gamescome out, So you would like to
think that they might try to tackleit sooner than that, but you know,

(01:05:15):
things move slow the weird time.It's also a problem because I'm starting
to think, I don't know whenI first used an NVM drive, it
just sort of popped in this motherboardand it was fine, and like I
didn't you know, and I gotout like someone was. I was testing
out a PC at the end oflast year and the NVMME was in this

(01:05:39):
like cooling chamber and I was like, Okay, I guess these things tend
to heat up now, so wegotta we gotta keep them cold, keep
them cool. And I'm worrying.Is there a situation where like I gotta
start putting thermal paste on my PSfive? Nvmme. I think one of
the other things they said my comewith some of that summer firmware was additional

(01:06:01):
fan profiles, so they another fanYeah there, no, I so it.
So they may be h they maybe running into some normal issues there
along the way. Uh yeah,I don't know. No, I don't
know how that how that ends up. Yeah, those things, those things

(01:06:25):
can run pretty hot. H It'snot like because if you I think,
if you bust open that PS fiveto get a look at where you plug
it in, it's not necessarily insidesome kind of eat sync lined chamber or
anything like that like it. Youknow, So, I don't know,
PCB wasteland right there, and you'rejust like, yeah, man, yeah,
I mean they have to certifile thosedrives for speed, and I wonder

(01:06:46):
if you'll eventually get to it.I wonder if you can get to a
point where people are like, thisdrive works, but you have to flash
this custom firm where I wrote forit to get it to act like this
other drive that is on the approvedlist, and then you can put it
in and it sort of works,Like will there be some kind of weird
you know, like back when youhad to bless a TiVo drive to get
it to be recognized by a Tvoor all the other weird ship you had

(01:07:11):
to do to expand an Xbox threesixty hard drive and like all that weird
nightmare scenarios. I wonderful it'sn't endup in that, or maybe they'll go
the other route and it's like,oh, actually this class of drive works,
and there's a bunch of them,but they're all too expensive because they're
just all the newest latest. Wasit like Pace five Expressive or whatever it
is? Yea, yeah, Icould just oh man, I just I'm

(01:07:32):
picturing it now like the remember whenthe PS five was like quiet right,
yeah, and then like a bunchof dust collected on the ards to cause
it to run hotter because it's beensitting in your dust zone for a year.
And then you put another drive init and they did these firmware updates,
you like, yeah, are wejust going to be back in like
Jet Engine Land in another six totwelve months, Like, I don't know.

(01:07:57):
Yeah, that's pretty wild. Allright, let's be of a long
game Pass is finally welcoming EA Playon PC, and so Ultimate members are
going to have access to EA Playthat is neat That starts actually on the
day of this recording, Thursday theeighteenth, at five o'clock Eastern Game Pass

(01:08:18):
on PCO of access to the fulllibrary of EA play games for no additional
charge. That's like sixty games.That's the baseline. Yeah, that's the
the vault and the because they doa higher tier for all the day one
releases over at EA. But yes, I think it just gets you anthem.

(01:08:39):
No, it's actually it's more,it's more than anthems. But yes,
yeah, this has kind of gotdelayed a little bit, right,
This seemed like it was supposed tohappen sooner. And is this happening in
conjunction with the release of the EAdesktop app. It sounds like it is.
Yeah, I wonder if there wasjust a problem on the EA side
where they weren't able to jest yourXbox Game Pass predentials properly or something.

(01:09:05):
Yeah, there's gonna have to besome sort of handshaking with the with the
desktop app for PC players, Soenjoy having that program as well. You're
gonna need that. But yeah,game Pass continuing to refuse to be a
bad deal pretty indisputable at this pointas far as I'm concerned. Yeah,

(01:09:28):
that Outrider's one. It's it's like, I don't not that Outriders looks like
some amazing video game, but itlooks like the perfect Game Pass video game
in terms of like, this isa game I would not I probably would
totally pass on or sixty dollars,but boy, I'll happily play it as
a thing I just get for thisthing I'm already subscribed to. Certainly.

(01:09:55):
Also in the news in the worldof like I don't know, downloadable streaming
nonsense, g Force now is doublingits price. It's gonna cost ten bucks
a month or one hundred dollars ayear, and video has announced in a
blog post. So the thing thatI personally, I don't know anyone who's
really a big user of that,I've I've actually had pretty damn good experience

(01:10:15):
with it when I've played around withit. I don't actively use it,
but it's more expensive now. Ithink I know one person that has been
using it, and it sounds likeit's pretty good at doing what it says
it's going to do. Yeah,and this, and them announcing it this
way of like if you had anaccount as of yesterday, you're grandfathered into

(01:10:39):
the founder pricing. But if yousigned it today, too bad. Like
I don't love that kind of wishI would have signed up for it now.
It's the thing that I would neveruse. But I'm like, ah,
damn it. Priority access to cloudservers, which I don't know.
Is that is that just the thingthat I guess was was a problem.

(01:11:02):
I don't know, But it differentiatesthem from the free tier because on the
free tier you might hit a queue. I think it's the idea there.
So if you are paying them,then you are, you know, not
going to hit that queue or hitit weight No. Yeah, I don't
want to click a button and belike, all right to come back in
half an hour. You know,Joe in Texas is too busy. Yeah,

(01:11:29):
yeah, but those free users,I think are limited to one hour
sessions. Anyway. I think Ithink we're starting to get more and more
often cloud queue with the PlayStation Now, I know this is not a popular
service, but my son really enjoysthe Lego Movie game, and that seemed
to be the easiest way to playit. Uh, and yeah, sometimes

(01:11:54):
he's waiting, you know, sixtyseconds to pop in. Not terrible,
but yeah interesting and the more downloadablestuff to that, Like, yeah,
it's just the last time I lookedat it. The last time I looked
at it, it was all cloudstuff and it was all like just the
dregs of downloadable PS three games.Just like, here's this weird Call of
Duty knockoff that came out for eightbucks nine years ago. I don't hear

(01:12:18):
wants to play that. Yeah,uh, pretty strange. This is This
is pretty odd because I assumed thatthe new Xbox consoles were actually doing a
really good job with download speeds.But apparently there's a feature coming out that's
in the insider, you know,testing realm now and will presumably be rolled

(01:12:44):
out. But there's a feature nowthat will allow Xbox users to suspend your
game that I guess is running inthe background in order to improve download speeds.
So I guess the idea is that, you know, it frees up
some sort of resource that it canthen redirect and devote towards the downloading of

(01:13:06):
a game to improve speed. Butlike I just said, I mean I
had not noticed any if anything,I saw a tangible improvement, uh generationally,
So oh yeah, there's there's abusiness difference for sure. But I
have noticed sometimes even on the seriesX, like if it starts trying to
download updates in the background, likegames will sometimes like load up slower,

(01:13:31):
uh you know, not a sortof like the game itself runs bad,
but it takes a while for it, like for it to actually boot up
correctly. I've also just had likeweird stuff occasionally with the series X,
and like games booting and then justbeing like nope, going back to the
home menu. Okay, boot up, going back to the home menu,
and then I end up having tolike restart the system before it'll actually do
it. Yeah. Yeah, Imy Xbox had had come unplugged and so

(01:13:59):
it was not lading updates in thebackground, and I plugged it back in
last night after I probably hadn't turnedit on in a week or so,
and it just went to download likefourteen things, and I just started playing
a game and it was popping himpretty fast, like while I was playing,
I was like, hey, thisis download, this is downloaded,
Like it racked him up. Soyeah, I don't know that I had
any problems with the download speed onthe Xbox generally speaking, but more speed

(01:14:21):
is almost always better. Yeah,I feel like all my download speed stuff
has been on the PlayStation side,where it is a much faster download,
but it still does that thing thatthe PS four patches did of now we're
copying it, and so if you'relike trying to play APEX right now and
you're sitting there watching it copy,and it's going like all right, come

(01:14:41):
on, it does copy faster,but it is still copying faster. Yes,
absolutely faster, but it is stillsome arcane patch process that seems like
it shouldn't have to be this way. And also not to just talk about
the storage stuff more, but thething I keep running into on the PS
five is I have an external drivefor my PS four games, and if

(01:15:01):
I don't keep enough free space onthe internal drive, those patches for PS
four games will fail. Like Ialmost need like it seems like it needs
to download it to the internal driveand then copy it to the external And
so if I've got the internal drivejam fucking packed because it's like I don't
know, one hundred and fifty megswhatever, you know, whatever, however

(01:15:23):
big that thing is, it wasalways full. I had to go like
delete extra games and just go like, well, I guess I can't build
this space anymore because I thought otherwisethe Division patch won't ever download or you
know this other stuff. It's justyeah, should automated stuff that it should
it should reserve that space, andjust say like no, that space isn't
even real. That's that isn't realspace. We need that for patches,

(01:15:45):
Like you can't really use it.It's just yeah, I'm you know,
I don't know. Maybe that's thething they could they could patch in,
but you would think that like whatlike you know, we don't know how
it actually works. But the butwhat that forces you to believe is that
the game doesn't have a direct pipelineof the OS doesn't have a direct pipeline

(01:16:05):
to access that drive straight from adownload. Right, So you're in this
and I can't use an external driveas like scratch space for downloads or something
like that, like it can onlyuse and it's weird because like the PS
five does reserve quite a bit ofspace for OS and OS related activities,
so I would think that this wouldbe included in that. But I've had
too many of those patches fail nowto think it could be anything else,

(01:16:29):
because when I go, dude,go like I uninstalled the black ops campaign
and sure enough, all those PSfour patches started flowing just fine. So
yeah, yeah, I'm kind ofat the point where I'm not trying to
use and still an external drive onthat thing, just keeping my PS four
pro attached to the TV. ButI'll say this, like, what do

(01:16:51):
we six six months since these consolescame out, and the fact that the
the headache of all of this fromthe from the especially in the you know,
second half of the generation for PSfour and Xbox one, they're all
those those things are already popping upin a way that is a bit upsetting.

(01:17:15):
And I feel like if we're alreadyhere six months in, I don't
know, maybe it gets better,maybe it's I just don't know. It's
it's tough to be out six months. It's been like four five four.
Yeah. Yeah, it's not thatstuff's not great, it's it's absolutely not
great. And I think, youknow, Xbox stuff will run into Uh.

(01:17:39):
I think Xbox generally speaking, handlesit better, right. I mean,
the PlayStation five stuff is a newlevel of bad in comparison. But
I've had, I definitely have hadto do a lot of file management on
the Series X, and like that'sthey're in a position where more users are
more likely to have access to moregames because of game Pass. Like sometimes
you look at this stuff and golike, well, you know, I've

(01:18:00):
got eight hundred games in my library, and I've got two hundred of them
installed on this Xbox. So ofcourse I'm going to run into more stuff
than the person who's playing one ortwo games at a time will. But
some of this stuff, just byvirtue of like game Pass giving people access
to a whole lot of games,they'll see some of this stuff too.
And Xbox stuff isn't particularly bad.But it's like I have the external I

(01:18:24):
have the official like plug in addon that you can use for Series X
games, and I have an externaldrive hooked up or old Xbox games,
and you still have to like navigate, like where do I want to copy
this game? What do I wantit to be on? The internal internal
or the external internal or the externalexternal and that I wish I didn't have

(01:18:45):
to think about that stuff at all. The nice thing the PlayStation five does
is as that toggle that you cantoggle on to say, hey, always
download PS four games to this externaldrive. Yeah, like, don't install
it here and then make me offlater. Let me set default paths for
each type of game. I thinkthat's a good They did good there at

(01:19:06):
least, but yeah, it's aweird across the board. Yeah, man,
And I feel like we're all nowI think insensus of like maybe you
didn't need to change the UI.Maybe maybe not. I'm PS five.
Maybe I think at this point wecan all comfortably say like, yeah,
that was well done there. Idon't know about that. I like,

(01:19:29):
I don't think it's a you shouldjust go back to PS four because that
thing was fine. It's like itwas fine, but it wasn't the best
interface. And I just feel likesome of the decisions they tried to make
to improve it just weren't. Theyjust didn't get there, And I feel
like they still should try to makeit better. Yeah, definitely, there
are features. There are features therethe developers aren't using, you know,

(01:19:50):
the whole like activity system and allof this like a lot of third parties
just aren't using it, and I'msure that's because you know, hey,
they probably worked on these games alot before the system even came out,
and so they didn't have a lotof great intel about how to use it.
And now that Astro is out andsome of this other stuff, hopefully
they're looking at it and go like, oh, here are some cool ways

(01:20:11):
we could use this and and streamlinethese processes to take advantage of this stuff.
So we'll see in a year,I guess. But all of the
yes, the the bottom bar stuff, the like the part like how to
turn the console off, like allof those things I think is like noticeably
where like the trophy like the likelooking through the list of trophies for a
game on PS five while you're runningthe game, I think is terrible.

(01:20:38):
It's way worse than it was onPS four. And yeah, Marino and
the chat points out, Yeah,I also still hold down the PlayStation button
trying to turn the console off.It doesn't do anything. Why just do
it? Do it? Patch thatin? They should do that and they
probably will, right. That's theimpression is like all of that stuff probably

(01:20:58):
came in I think, especially onthe PlayStation side because they changed more came
in just ultra hot, ultra hotlast minute stuff. So you know,
hopefully they will once they get onthe other side of you know, getting
the drive support in and some ofthe other stuff that is just like,
hey, this is a kind ofa deal breaker. That'll give them time
be like, Okay, now we'regoing to work really hard on our full

(01:21:19):
to UI pass and actually make thisthing functional. Yeah, right, be
nice. Speaking of that great Activisionearlier this week announced they're laying off about
fifty employees and they're kind of pinningit on the complexities. Are that arose
from covid in the esports category.Well, so it's a couple of things

(01:21:44):
here. One, I think theactual number ended up being closer to like
one hundred and ninety people. Theyquoted that acting number initially, but that
that was just from their esports division. It sounds like there's other people from
around other activision areas that they arealso laying off around time. And this
news is also hitting around the sametime that we are finding out that Bobby
Cottick is getting about two hundred milliondollars in stock bonuses for the company's various

(01:22:11):
performances over the last few years.So this is all just a lot of
not I mean, it's bad justfor the layoffs, but the timing of
it also could not fucking possibly beworse, because it's just like, here's
another instance of CEO doing very welland employees getting absolutely none of that.

(01:22:32):
Yeah, not great, not great, not great. And they they gave
like part of the severance package includedapparently two hundred dollars Battlemet gift cards like
what it to be clear, theywere also getting three months severance and it
has like months of health insurance.That's not the only thing they're getting.

(01:22:53):
But yes, that doesn't sound terribleall told. It's just like a weird
other thing to tack on it.That, right, it's just because of
because of the optics of that,like that's the thing. We don't want
you to work here anymore, butwe do want to keep you in our
ecosystem if we can't. Yeah,it's just like just don't do that.

(01:23:15):
Yeah. Yeah, So I guesslike, yeah, the the the esports
and live event layoffs, like Ithink that, yes, naturally, like
they're they're not going to be eventsto that degree happening this year and so
it probably makes sense to like turnfocus away from those divisions and you know,

(01:23:38):
hey, revisit that concept at alater date when you get a better
sense of like, hey, arepeople gonna want to get together once more
people are vaccinated? Like when dowe get there is another year, two
years and all that sort of stuff. Like, I get why you would
probably make cuts or shut down wholedivisions in the wake of what's been going

(01:23:58):
on. Yeah, the I'm alsothey were also throwing an astronomical amount of
money at Overwatch League for a whilethere, Like just this sheer amount of
production they were throwing into that thingwas ridiculous. It seemed like for the
actual return they were getting. Soyou know, I mean, I'm sure,

(01:24:19):
yes, Covid once again hastened thingsalong, but I wonder if maybe
the investment they were having and someof this esports stuff was maybe a little
overwrought compared to what they were actuallygetting out of it. Yeah, Overwatch
or overat I get it, you'reright headlines over there. Wow. Yeah,
And I mean, Alex, Ithink you probably are one of the

(01:24:41):
few people I know that well Idon't do. Are you still playing Overwatch?
Do you think that they have madethe game too. Like the thing
I hear a lot from players isthat they have focused so much on esports
ng the actual game, the competitivenature of it in such a way that
it has turned off a lot ofcasual players. And it seems like those
casual players would be the ones thatyou would get to watch any like,

(01:25:03):
you know, an Overwatch league inhopes of getting better or something like that.
So I just wonder, Yeah,where's the game at? When did
you play it at all? SoI stopped. I went I was on
another big kick on it up throughabout the summer last year, and then
I stopped again. And you know, look, I think a lot of
the balance changes they've done over thelast couple of years and that in that

(01:25:27):
game have been more or less whatyou said, like they are trying to
tune it for their competitive, youknow, arena experience as opposed to just
leaving the game in a in afun state. Necessarily. It never bothered
me that much because I could stillrun in with the characters that I liked
playing, and I could still employroughly the same strategies, you know,

(01:25:48):
and tweak some things here and there. It was never like it never felt
out of the realm of understanding.But right, I also feel like they
have not for a long time completelyunder stood what is actually fun about that
game, and or if they didunderstand it, they had kind of thrown
that to the side, like yousaid, in favor of trying to make
this into you know, a bannere sport in a way that I just

(01:26:13):
don't think that game works. LikeOverwatch League can be fun, but even
as someone who has played like hundredsof hours of that game, I do
not find the experience of watching OverwatchLeague enjoyable in the slightest, Like it's
just not it doesn't translate well thething you always hear or you know,
maybe this is not the case thesedays, but I feel like there was

(01:26:35):
the kind of conventional wisdom was thefirst person games. First person shooters oftentimes
did not work as spectator sports becausethey often required the viewers to just know
too much about it, as tolike, this is this part of the
map, This is it right,you know, because you're just looking at
there, you know, lookally ina gameplay feed, and they didn't always

(01:26:56):
build enough tools to give you likethe view of like the whole field,
if you will, And so insome ways, it just feels like the
like MOBI model of you know,here's this top down view and you can
really get a sense of where anyoneis at a given time, that that
just works better as a spectator experience. So it always felt weird to me
that, like the activision was pushingso hard on Overwatch and and Call of

(01:27:19):
Duty. I mean, they stilldo that obviously, because it just always
felt like this weird uphill battle whereyou've got these really popular games, but
it's like the spectator stuff never feltlike it was there the way it needed
to be, and Treyer always triedto do. It's like, oh,
we got cod casters and all this, like they were the studio that was
putting an extra work to try tomake that viewing experience a little bit better.

(01:27:41):
But even then, when I thinkabout like a mainstream audience that isn't
playing the game at all, thatwould want to come in and just watch
it because it's like a sport,like, it just doesn't seem like that
works. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, look, it's they're
obviously not divesting themselves entirely of this, like Overwatch League will seemingly continue on,
but you know, I just Ifeel like the investment they tried to
throw at it initially was overblown forwhat that game really was and how translatable

(01:28:08):
that like, even compared to Callof Duty. I just don't think like
they add a spectator camera for alot of those broadcasts, you know,
you are seeing kind of an overheadview of the action, and it is
no more discernible than it is whenyou are in first person, Like it
just looks like clusters of cartoons bumpingup against each other and occasionally exploding.
Like it's not it's not fun towatch that way, and it's a bummer

(01:28:30):
because I really want to enjoy watchingother people play that game, and there
are plenty of games I do enjoywatching on that level and maybe even more
so than actually playing them, Butlike Overwatch has been totally the opposite experience
for me the whole way through,and like the further off they push Overwatch
two and the less and less theyseem to want to really talk about that
thing, like the less interested,and I am in even really fucking with

(01:28:54):
that going forward, Like I justdon't know if I even care. Yeah,
yeah, I mean you have toimagine that activision through all this money
it Overwatch League because the money wascoming in right, like the total it
was like twitch Twitch paid them someinsane amount of money for the rights to
broadcast that stuff like that. Andalso it wasn't just Activision just it was

(01:29:14):
just very popular for a long time, like that game was making money hand
over fist totally totally. So yeah, it just you know, I wonder,
you know, obviously, like thelack of in person events is going
to have a huge effect on justesports in general. But you've seen a
lot of people, like over thelast year trying to talk about like this
is the breakout time for esports becauseno one can leave the house and so

(01:29:35):
there's no real sports, so everyone'swatching esports, to which I just want
to look at it like no,they're not like like, yes, your
numbers are up, But that seemslike one of those things that like,
oh, hey a lot of peoplewatching Netflix nowadays. You're like, yeah,
that's not going to necessarily stick atthat level when everyone has to go
back to work. Yeah, Alsoa few sports stuff still seems like it

(01:29:58):
yeah right, Yeah, like afew into the pandemic, like real sports
brute forced their way out of thatproblem, like They did not all do
it in a particularly elegant or safeway, but they did it. They
made sure that there were sports onyour television because they were not going to
miss out on that revenue. Yeah, so I just wonder like, will
this you know, I think alot of people were like, oh,

(01:30:18):
coming out the other end of this, there's just so many more people who
will have been exposed to esports thatit is just gonna be a mainstream thing.
It just looks at it. Ilook at it now. It's like
this seems like a bubble that islike was maybe going to burst anyway,
because that's just how esports has lookedfor a long time, and then the
last year maybe kind of just pushedit a little bit in that direction.

(01:30:40):
We'll see. I don't know,it's always going to be there in some
form, but yeah, but Ifeel like the popularity obviously has never been
over here, right, Like thebig popularity has been abroad, and I
just feel like, what do youI don't think that's necessarily true of its
international appeal. I don't think,you know, I think for here I

(01:31:02):
would definitely agree. I think there'sa very small amount of esports that is
truly popular in the US, butI don't know if that's changed worldwide though,
what do you think? Yeah,you might be right, I mean,
yes, I mean the track Maniascene, I hope is still booming
track MANI esports scene, but withoutwithout a dream hack, what will we

(01:31:23):
do? But yeah, yeah,you're you're probably right in the Internationally that
stuff is probably you know, kindof keeping pace. But yeah, I
felt like I was getting like aton of press releases there for a while
from a very variety of companies tryingto like kind of glom onto this sudden
esports, as if as if,like esports was not already a thing,

(01:31:45):
a bunch of sleazy companies were tryingto glom onto like it was like a
new level of like esports is thebiggest thing in the world. You gotta
get in on this. I waslike, yeah, it sounds sounds like
NFTs at some point. Yeah,I feel and I don't know, since
uh, since you know, thepandemic started, I feel like most of
the stuff that I'm watching again,I'm I'm maybe not the prime demo for

(01:32:09):
an e sports viewer, but mostof the spectating, the watching that I've
been doing has just been kind ofnon competitive, and you know, for
me, like I, I don'twatch this a lot. I talk about
it because I'm mostly fascinated with it, But like the GTA role playing stuff,

(01:32:30):
I think, while in long spurtsis horrifically boring. Uh, there
are kind of amazing moments here andthere that are genuine comedy and uh,
you know, I am kind ofI'm kind of blown away by that in
a lot of ways where I'm justlike, oh wow, some of the
stuff is really good. Uh,and I feel like maybe that stuff might

(01:32:55):
hit in a way that we're notexpecting, but competitive outside of like Rocket
League, which I still think isjust is like maybe the exception to the
rule. Uh yeah, I thinkthat's where we're at. Yeah, I
think, yeah, that's probably.I mean, yeah, like the GTA
role playing stuff probably, I mean, because it's GTA, it definitely has

(01:33:17):
a greater chance of catching on thanlike the the Altest Life mod for Arma
three. I remember watching some videoslike there were just people out there streaming
that and just getting up to weirdrole playing high jinks in a way that
just you didn't see in a lotof other games, and it was just
so much fun to watch people justdo questionable improv on a stream. Yeah,

(01:33:41):
Like some of that stuff can bereally good, Like it's best watched
in a highlight form, yes,yea, if you can cut out the
hour of people driving and trying toperfect their accent as they go and get
to the good stuff at the end. Like, yeah, there's some pretty
amazing moments. Man, some ofthese accents are believe well, some of
these uh people are really it reallyis just you know, it is kind

(01:34:04):
of this like amazing improv thing tooin a lot of ways, And I
think that's kind of fascinating. Butyeah, I I but again, like
you know, one of the oneof the streamers that I try and catch
every now and then, like youknow, he'll, he'll, he's very
much into the GCA thing right now. I think like it's having a moment
right now. And before that itwas like rust and I was just like

(01:34:26):
I just can't, I just can'twatch this. I can't, I can't
do this. Uh. Gta iscan be like a slapstick sopranos in a
lot of way, and I thinkthat's kind of amazing. But yeah,
man, it's it's wild how likesome of these guys will go show all
in on this game for like thirtyeight days straight and then just be like

(01:34:48):
I'm done. We're done with that. Now we're gonna play Frogger Competitive Frog
and just see you know where thatgo. It's like all right, cool,
all right. So that's why Ijust stay ahead of the curve and
I just stick to Frog. Iwas always the same, always safe,
bet the always safe, right,real money is made? Hell yeah?

(01:35:09):
All right. Before we head outof this section, the folks at Square
Enix put on a digital showcase today, one about forty minutes. A bunch
of games coming out of that,headlined by Life is Strange True Colors,
which will be hitting on September tenth. I'm just really going through this Polygon
story right here. September tenth.It will be out on basically everything,

(01:35:34):
and it is the sequel to Lifeis Strange two, and it's going to
again, I'm reading right from thePolygon story, pull back from its predecessor's
episodic format and release its full storyon the same date, so you can
binge right through. It is probablythe word they want me to use.

(01:35:56):
So there you have it. There'sso Life Is Strange remasters, including the
twenty fifteen original and then'll be remasteredfor new consoles. So there you go.
And both of these are being donenot in house at don't not right,
it's another studio that is actually doingthe development work, I think,

(01:36:16):
on both the remaster and on theTrue Colors, which is the new thing.
The Deck nine is doing the remasters, and I don't know if for
sure if they're doing the new thingor not. I think they are,
okay, I will just believe Decknine is also doing True Colors. Yes,
that is true, So I think, don't not have some other project

(01:36:38):
in the works. I don't remember. Yes, that sounds familiar. What
the hell is they've talked about itall yet? Yeah, I can't tell
if they did or if it showedup at one of those summer you know
showpise things. Yeah, other stuffhere like they you know a lot of

(01:37:00):
this stuff is already out. Imean, we talked about Marvel's Avengers,
like the new console versions of thatare out. So they said, hey,
Black Panthers coming, you know,And then they put on a new
trailer for Baalond wonder World game cannedyyour contender Balond wonder World. They're committed
they're gonna put that thing out.Yeah, you know, like a just
Cause mobile game. Uh, BubbleBubble for Friends, which is a game

(01:37:23):
I found to be bysible on theSwitch. Yeah, is coming to Steam.
I'm looking at the Kataku story.This is the Kataka. It's the
twenty fifth anniversary of tomb Raider,and Square Nix is bringing craft Manner to
Fortnite on March twenty three to celebrate. What a disservice is that what you're

(01:37:45):
saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I for say what
you will about the tomb Raider franchise, and you know that you know kind
of maybe petered out there this reboot, but Lara Croft and tomb Raider deserves
better. Or it's twenty fifth anniversarythan we're bringing the Mansion to Fortnite.

(01:38:06):
Maybe it doesn't. Maybe that's honestly, maybe that's the thing that's going to
expose tumb Rador to a whole newgeneration. Well, well that's the thinking,
is what I'm leaning towards. Right, Like, I'm not sorry that
it's like somewhat disrespectful, but I'malso thinking on it, and I'm like
Idos Interactive would have done the exactsame thing. Yeah, no, no
shepherd of this franchise would have donebetter. Yeah, you're you're probably right,

(01:38:30):
will Okay, I guess. Butthe question there is, like do
Fortnite players play other games or arethey kind of an industry some but are
they you know, how many?What's the what's the percentage of players that
are playing that game that don't reallymess with other stuff or only messing with
free to play games and such ina way that like doing this in a

(01:38:53):
way to then market like a sixtydollars like remake of tomb Rator one or
something like that, or a remakeof that last trilogy of games or something.
I mean, how many of themare going to look at this and
go, I gotta buy that tombRaider thing? Or how many of them
are gonna like, I need morevbucks for the next thing, Like it's
there's there's a deck out there somewherein the in the within the walls of

(01:39:15):
epic and uh all the informations there. I mean, I genuinely would like
to know the answer to that firstquestion of like how much is Fortnite a
part of like an average gaming anaverage player's portfolio, right, Like how
much of it is Fortnite and whatis everything else? And I would love
to see a series of charts andlines to help understand that. Yeah,

(01:39:41):
I think that was something that Ithink the industry as a whole was really
afraid of a handful of years agowhen it was but it was Minecraft then,
yeah it wasn't Fortnite. You know, there was this aspect of it
of like, Okay, it's reallyawesome that like all these new players are
coming in and they're playing Minecraft anddoing all this stuff. But there was
this worry of just like, well, we need to green light a bunch

(01:40:01):
of Minecraft clones to try and peelthem off, or are they never gonna
or do we need to be greenlighting games that are nothing like that because
they've got that sewn up. Ithink that happened all over again when Fortnite
got huge, and you saw thisrun of Battle Royale games, and now
you don't see so many of themanymore, or you don't see so many

(01:40:23):
of them launching anymore. I guessI should say yea, and yeah,
so I think the industry, Ithink the traditional video game industry oftentimes does
not know how to react to likea game that just comes and sucks up,
like in entire age groups like FreeTime or something like that. They're
like, Oh, these are theplayers we were counting on aging into spending

(01:40:44):
seventy dollars on another God of Wargame someday. So I guess maybe we
should put Kratos in the Fortnite?Is that how we do that? I
don't know. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's also a little bit different.
Depends a little bit different when thepeople making that age group sucking up game
also make an engine that a wholelot of other video games run on.

(01:41:06):
So you know, maybe there's notas much a desire to potentially piss off
that company as there might be withsome other indie darling that pops up and
sort of takes over everything. Yeah. You like a game engine, don't
you. Yeah? Yeah, youwouldn't want anything to uh happen through it,
would you. You saw what happenedthrough uh Dennis Dyak? Right?

(01:41:28):
So what is a real shame,real shame what happened through the two human
man? Huh? The terrible thing. For it to happen again, they
had to they had to bury awhole lot of that X men, and
we can bury you too, easily. It's unreal what we could do to
you. We got a whole shoppingmall in North Carolina. Put you in

(01:41:50):
a concrete block. No one'll know. I think anyone will miss you underneath
a Chick fil A, gonna buryyou under a zoomis. We've made the
art department. All right, We'lldo a whole role playing thing later.
How about what happens to people whopiss off? And then there was an

(01:42:12):
announcement that they named the Project Atheagame that debuted at PlayStation's June twenty twenty
event. It's now called for Spoken, which I'm not sure as a word
it is now Yeah, like Ihave to like what you have for spoken
it into existence? Can you dothat? You just did? It's in
it. I just looked it upand it's not the Collins Dictionary. So

(01:42:36):
it's a Harper Harper Collins Dictionary.Show me Websters, show me Oxford.
Is it for spake? It is? Uh. It's Scottish archaic. To
bewitch is to forespeak. Yeah,but jen jen, it's not even an
e in the beginning there. It'sjust fo r f R S p O

(01:42:59):
K E N. No. Thatcan't be right. Yes, the number
four. There you go. Yeah, okay, all right, I mean
I uh, I was like intriguedfrom that teaser and I don't think about
this game, but all right,you know I remember, I remember it.
It left somewhat of a mark,but yeah, it'll launch. They

(01:43:23):
got a name at some time,and uh, sure it we have for
spoken. I think that's all Ihave in my list of news things.
Gentlemen, do you have anything else? Or are we going to head into
our final break here? I thinkit's time. All right, we'll get
some emails and maybe a correction afterthe break. Wow, I'm ready for

(01:44:01):
some emails. But before we dothat, some late breaking Avengers news.
Jeff Gersman, what's happening? SoI think that this would be We talked
about some of the PlayStation five stuffthat needs to be fixed. Here's another
one the Avengers Twitter account. Howto get out there and post multiple tweets

(01:44:23):
about how to migrate your save datafrom the PS four version of the PS
five version, because none of that'sautomated. So if you were like,
oh, I need to uninstall thePS four version to make room for the
PS five version, you're boned becauseyou have to fully patch the PS four
version, then launch it, thenupload your save to some mystical other cloud
and then you can get the PSfive version and then hit download save from

(01:44:46):
the mythical all cloud and to migrateyour save. That stuff does not happen
automatically. That is another one ofthose things I don't It's like one of
those things. It's like playing theconsoles against each other is a dumb thing,
but it's just this is another oneof those things that you just look
at it go like on Xbox thisjust works. Yeah. Uh, you

(01:45:06):
know, here's what I don't get. And I don't claim to know every
last detail about the back end ofall these things. But there are games,
are there? Not PS games PlayStationgames that do this without the runaround?
Are there any games that do itseamlessly? Call of Duty would probably

(01:45:30):
do it because it's cross play andit's all server side stuff, so you
have situations where like your multiplayer progressand that sort of stuff is gonna come
in. But like it's weird becauseAvengers is a live game, like Destiny
did not need this because all ofthat stuff is server side as well.
So this is Avengers did have alocal save because I was reading back when
that game first came out, thereare people that like take PlayStation four saves

(01:45:55):
and put them on their PC andresign that like basically cheat. They basically
are like save hacking and stuff likethat. And so there was a scene
of people doing that for Avengers PSfour saves. So it looked like even
though it was a live game,they weren't start storing that stuff on the
server, which just seems like itopens you up to that type of save
acking. But yeah, this wassomething that I had to do a lot

(01:46:18):
around launch where it was like,oh, I deleted Borderlands and I want
to try out the updated borderline.Oh wait, I need to go redownload
PS four Borderlands because I need todownload my save from the PlayStation cloud and
then re upload it to the Borderlandscloud and then pull it out of the
border cloud. Like just dumb,just dumb, Like you look at this

(01:46:38):
stuff and the way they handle likethe EPs four to PS five transition compared
to again compared to out you know, the Xbox handles it. It's just
funny that like for all the timewe spent clouding on the term smart delivery
for it being like, oh,you're just going to download the game.
Congratulations genius. Like, oh wait, apparently that's not as fucking automatic as

(01:46:58):
it seems, because you see whatthis looks like over on the other end,
it's almost like they knew something.It's almost like someone tipped them off
where it's like, hey, it'slike, hey, I don't know if
you know this, but it's aship show over there. Like we weren't
gonna call it anything. We werejust gonna say it works. No,
call it something thing, make ita thing, put a bullet in front

(01:47:23):
of it. Uh, all right, let's let's pivot into the emails.
This week's emails are brought to usby Alex Navarro. If you want to
email the show, it's beastcast atgiant bomb dot com. That's Beastcast at
giant bomb dot com. Alex,thank you for sorting all this today.

(01:47:44):
Where are we starting here? Uhwell, mister Bacalar, I'm gonna refer
to you by your last names becausethat's just gonna be faster. Why don't
you take this first one here?From Terrence? All right, dear b
screw, it's once again my birthday, so I'm once again connecting with you,
fine folks. Best we spoke lockdownwas a new concept, and I

(01:48:08):
asked what you were enjoying about beinghome much of a time, trying to
keep the mood light in the faceof this challenging event. I have some
new questions. What have you learnedabout yourself after spending a year indoors?
It's not entirely true, but okay, I get it. What have you
learned about your partners and or kidsand or pets now that you're with them?

(01:48:30):
Twenty four seven? How has yourrelationship with video games been impacted?
Thank you, Terrence. You know, I feel like I'm right down the
middle in the pros and cons departmentwith just in general of what I've what
I've learned, and Terrence, wehave similar birthdays. It's looking like,
so this all started right before mybirthday, and to have it now be

(01:48:55):
like the second one, you know, is sisible, it's it's it's a
lot to take in, it's alot to seek in because you really have
the most measured and lucid understanding ofwhat an actual year length of time is.
I think more so in any otherway for me at least, That's

(01:49:17):
how I'm kind of digesting this wholething. It's like that is what a
year feels like, and you canalmost feel it, like you can almost
tangibly like understand it in a waythat you know, in the rest of
our lifetimes. I just don't thinkyou can actually, you know, put
it together unless you were just youknow, uh, you know, in
home isolation for a year for anotherreason. But I think what I've learned

(01:49:42):
about myself is that I need socialinteraction and I and I and I think
my mental health has absolutely deteriorated overthe year because I just know this.
I I've had anxiety in ways I'venot had in the last year. Happened
in my life. I think alot of things bubbled up to the surface

(01:50:06):
that I was not expecting, youknow. At the same time, you
know, the question asks about,you know, if you have kids or
your pet. Spending a year withmy son, I've basically turned him into
a clone of myself, and heis me and Alex you pointed this out
the other day, Like he talkslike me, he acts like me,

(01:50:29):
And is that good? I don'tknow, probably not, probably not great.
I mean it's funny where he justlike walks around and he's just like
we gotta go and play pinblow andwatch hogging. I'm like, yeah,
we do me, you know.So that's weird. I learned that my
dog has now separation anxiety because ifwe leave for more than a half hour,

(01:50:49):
he loses his shit in a waywhere he was just like, don't
let the door hitch on the asson the way out. Now he's like,
where are you? So that's wild, And you know, the best
The best thing, though, isis as I do believe it has,
you know, obviously strengthened my familyas a core. My wife and I,

(01:51:10):
uh, you know, never beenstronger together, and I think that
has been a testament to you know, our relationship. I'm very proud and
and and happy about that. Butyeah, you know, I know obviously
the way things are in the restof the world, it could be a
lot worse. So I'm very thankfulfor what the year has, you know,
what we've been able to make outof that year. But that's that's

(01:51:33):
the best I can answer that question. I hope that was thorough enough,
I think. So what about you, mister, Yeah, it's been it's
yeah, I mean, yes,a lot of that, a lot of
that same stuff. I think,like mentally, it's been a real mess.
I've been in pretty I haven't beenup and down, but but definitely

(01:51:57):
down generally. Uh. And forme, I think a lot of that
culminated last summer or late summer whenthe fires came back and we went through
the fire season. Not that youknow this house was going to burn down,
but it was like there were firesclose by and the house had gotten
to a point where it was toosmoky for me to feel good about having

(01:52:20):
a baby here. And suddenly thishouse that has been like the thing that
has been like Okay, this iswhat's going to keep us safe from the
murder disease. It was like,Okay, now we have to find a
way to venture out of this ata time when a lot of other people
are evacuating and a lot of otherstuff is going on, and what the
fuck do we do? I hadat a pretty yeah, at a pretty

(01:52:45):
rotten time through that whole thing,and my wife and the baby ended up
going stay with her with one ofher parents for like the worst of the
smoke and stuff like that, andso it was just like, yeah,
I had I had a really badtime. We lost we lost a pet
recently, and so it's just it'sbeen fucked at the same time, you

(01:53:11):
know, like I get to spenda ton of time with this now toddler.
And you know, when this allstarted last year, she was still
in a like a hip race orlike hip displaysia and we had to go
get X rays and they were like, yeah, look the angles look good
now, so you can take herout of it. And so and now
she's walking and running around the houseand doing all this stuff. And we're
taking her to the park and she'srunning around, but it's still that thing

(01:53:32):
of like she wants there are otherkids there sometimes, and she is very
curious about what other kids might belike because she hasn't had that experience ever.
And it's like this constant thing oflike, no, we have to
keep her away from these other kidsbecause of just how stuff is. And
so watching her grow up and getmore curious about that stuff and then have

(01:53:54):
to be like, no, wecan't can't do any of this stuff.
We have to go back into thelock ourselves back in here. It's it's
fucking crazy. It's been it's beena bad time, yeah, generally,
but also amazing in other ways.But like on the whole, yeah,
rough yeah. I mean, youknow, I haven't had the experience of

(01:54:17):
trying to raise a young child duringall of this, which I know for
a fact would have caused my brainto completely melt down if I had had
to deal with that level of responsibilityamid all of this. So you know,
by and large, I've considered howI have ended up in all of
this relatively lucky all things considered.You know, I'm already a pretty solitary

(01:54:40):
person, So the idea of beingyou know, kind of removed from people
for a while does not completely destroymy mental health, but it is also
put into stark relief just what thelimits of that are for me, because
yeah, solitary for a while isnice, and then after a while it
becomes omnipresent and aided and just kindof pushes down on me in a way

(01:55:02):
that makes me just like, Idesperately want to talk to a person in
front of me, not just overa fucking video call or you know,
from six feet away hollering through amask. Like it's just not the same
experience. And you know, II go back and forth on how much
in human interaction I really feel likeI need in my life, and now
I'm coming to realize I actually doneed a fair amount of it to stay

(01:55:26):
somewhat normal and adjusted in you know, my day to day life. So
you know, I have come tomiss that quite a bit. But you
know, look, I we allwent through some measure I think of lost
last year, and I'm just happyto still be here and still be employed
and still you know, functioning allthings considered. But you know, I

(01:55:48):
think it's it's kind of but nothingelse. If it has taught me anything,
it has taught me what my limitsare as far as you know,
my needs and what I need asfar as like social interaction with other people
goes, and you know, asfar as my relationship with video games is
concerned about what little attention span Ionce had as all bit been demolished.
At this point, I barely havetime like whatever heavy ideas I had about

(01:56:12):
being like, oh this is gonnabe the time I started digging into my
backlog, I'm gonna start playing allthese games. The second something doesn't hit
from me, I just I moveon, like I don't have Like I
don't have the ability to concentrate onthings I don't care about right now.
And you know, some of thatis already the inherent ADHD in my brain.
But some of that is also justlike I just can't concentrate on anything
if it isn't grabbing me right away, because everything just feels like such a

(01:56:36):
weird haze all the time. Yeah, it's the game playing stuff has been
weird for me because you know,so like I kind of split my day
in half to a certain extent becausethe the my kid goes to sleep now
an hour later because the daylight savingsand all the other stuff. But like

(01:56:56):
you know, she goes to sleep, and then the house has to kind
of be quiet. So like I'mkind of doing the streaming stuff, the
recording stuff during the day and thenat night ostensibly is the like Okay,
now I can have time to likeactually look at an email or you know,
you know, talk to somebody,or you know, like like get
back to somebody, or play somevideo games. The thing I'm finding is
it's not all the time, butthere are definitely days where it's like,

(01:57:19):
Okay, I gotta I gotta getokay, after once it's hits six o'clock
and you'll put in solid four hourson this game, and I get to
that point in the day and I'mjust too wiped out to even do that.
And it's just like I need tod and need to like get away
from everything and stare at nothing fora while, and I can't even Like
it's it's weird. Yeah, Iwould have thought that it would have definitely

(01:57:40):
been like, oh, I've gotall this time to play games and all
the other stuff, but it's justnot working out that way. So it's
been weird. There was a quoteI saw in a New York Times interview
with I forget who it was with, but it was someone that works in
like the theater and you know,like production community, and they asked them,
what, you know, like,what have you been creating over the

(01:58:00):
last year, what have you beenmaking? What have you been doing?
And they were just like, nothing, I've done jack shit. Like I've
tried a few things here and there, but like you know, every time
I've tried to set aside time towrite to you know, to put things
together creatively, just nothing, Likeeverything about my creative output is you know,

(01:58:21):
predicated upon my ability to interact withothers, my ability to actually be
in a live theater environment, andyou know, it's just this year was
essentially a wash because I was ableto experience none of that, and trying
to do it remotely has just,you know, it is not conducive to
my ability to make anything. AndI, you know, I felt that

(01:58:44):
in a way of just like,yeah, being here and being stuck in
here and not being in the roomwith you guys, and not being able
to just sort of like, youknow, play off things the way that
we normally do, and just notbeing able to concentrate on things the way
I normally would. It's just Ijust feel like this year just wiped out
a lot of my ability to focuson anything. And hopefully when things,

(01:59:10):
if things shift back in another way, I'll be able to regain some of
that. But I do feel likeI just I just lost the fucking plot,
man, I just lost the path. Yeah, I wonder what that
will like. I I you know, it's the fact that I could see
three people you know, in frontof you know, just sort of regurgitating

(01:59:31):
the same dreadness. You know,that same dread that is sort of like
this icky, murky kind of dunkI will I would be lying if I
said at the beginning that I wasnot the least bit kind of almost excited,
right, excited about the It's almostlike that Twilight Zone episode right where

(01:59:54):
like the world's destroyed. But youknow what's his face, Meredith Burg just
can like read all these books rightright, and uh, but like the
tragedy is that the world, itwas, what the world and continues to
be, is going on and thereis no balance right like the like I

(02:00:14):
think for you know, like youtalked about the the the outlets for creativity
and the normal sort of balance thatyour human interactive life has was disrupted in
a way that it was just completelyfucked up and you couldn't really couldn't carpet
you know, compartmentalize like these thingsappropriately. So like Jeff, when you
talk about like the end of theday coming and being like, ah,

(02:00:36):
I can, it's like, no, it just doesn't compute. It doesn't
work like that. We are weare out of our normal orbit and uh
yeah, it's we are not weare not working from home, we are
living at work. Yeah yeah,well yeah, it's I think for me
it's different with you know, thewith with my daughter here and stuff like

(02:00:59):
that, Like it's it's it's justa lot of just jumping into random contexts
from one to the thing, oror like, uh, it's it's there's
no decompression time, there's no liketransition from one to the other. So
it's like I'm here, something happens, I get mega piste off about it,
and then it's like, Okay,now I gotta go out here and
feed pasta to this child. Ohgod, okay, all right, like

(02:01:24):
bury that ship. You don't havetime for it now, and then get
to the end of the day andbe mad about it then. And yeah,
that sort of stuff. But youknow, I do have two directories
on my desktop for you know,a a or video mixtape that I would
like to make some day. UhSo I'm at least assembling clips for that
if nothing else. So maybe oneof these days are slapping some of that

(02:01:47):
stuff together. But yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, all well,
we'll take one pivot, yeah Iwould. I let's just take one
more quick one here, Uh,mister Gershman, will you read this one
here from Nathan No No one sentme the emails. Okay, here,

(02:02:08):
I'll take it. Then, Uh, Hi, what's your favorite comedy troop
all time? All time? Ifeel like this is gonna just date me
because I'm not really aware of likemodern troops, right, I mean it
doesn't matter. It's a fine youknow, it's okay, no, yeah,

(02:02:32):
I know. And yeah, butlike the uh, you know,
the people from like that State familyis definitely one that state family of brands,
the Stella's, Yeah, your wethots and your American summers. Uh
yeah, I mean I I actuallykind of just watched all four seasons of

(02:02:55):
the State again, as like,how's that hold up? Did you and
and did you watch the DVDs withthe replaced soundtrack or did you dig up
the real shit? Oh? Igot the real shit baby, Okay,
yeah, I don't know how II've owned it for a very long time.
From part they're from parts unknown andI, uh, you're talking about

(02:03:17):
like the intro music, like theBulls. It was MTV, so it
was yeah, it was MTV,so they had a bunch of licensed music
throughout the shows that they then out. Yeah, this is definitely yeah,
this is definitely the originals. Ithink it got. I think it actually
got really a lot a lot betteras it went on. I think season

(02:03:39):
four is is pretty good and it'sstill kind of funny. I think a
lot of you know, same aslike Kids in the Hall. I kind
of put that together in the sameera just because I know Kids in Hall
predates The State, but Comedy Centralwas definitely re airing Kids in the Hall.
I feel like around the same time. Maybe the State was debuting,

(02:03:59):
or maybe was a little after,but yeah, I think Kids in the
Hall was a little more like Idon't know, it's definitely yeah, I
mean that's the obvious thing. Butyeah, like I was saying, like
this thing does later in that series, does, I think, hold up?
And it's still funny and I'll stilllaugh watching some of that stuff,

(02:04:21):
But I think a lot of itearly on is really hit or miss.
But I mean, you know,when you'd look at like later on,
what those what the whole crew andextended crew is done with, you know,
Wet Hot and stuff. I meanI still Wet Hot is still in
a place for me that very fewcomedies are. So yeah, yeah,

(02:04:42):
I think I went. I wasgoing back and watching some of like the
Stella shorts recently. Yeah, it'sabout to say the Stella shorts are all
fucking amazing. They're all amazing.Like a lot of late nineties and early
alts Ault comedy, some of itholds up better than others. You know,
there's something for sure that's just Idon't know about that, but you
know, nonetheless, it was daringin a way that a lot of other

(02:05:03):
stuff wasn't back then. Yeah,you know, I I think mister Show
is up there relevant all over againin a brand new way these days.
And uh yeah, I don't know, Like I think if you look at
like the casts and stuff like that, I think the cast of SETV obviously

(02:05:26):
went on to do a billion amazingthings, but I think SETV itself was
kind of hit and miss in waysthat are like really interesting, yeah,
but maybe not incredible on its own. But when SETV was good, it
was it was goddamn good. HuhYeah, I guess I would probably have

(02:05:48):
I'd probably have to say mister Showthat probably have to say mister Show there
it's like that, or Kids inthe Hall are probably the one of the
frantics for on the floor. Mineis very firmly Kids in the Like,
I still rewatch that show all thefucking time. It's just I don't know,
like it hit for me at atthe right time in my life.

(02:06:09):
But I also like even continuing togo back and rewatch it over and over
and over again, Like it's kindof surprising how much of it holds up,
considering it's like a hundred episodes oftelevision in the early nineties, you
could see a lot of that shitaging like milk, but other than a
couple of very specific bits that generallyinvolved blackface, beyond that, Like,

(02:06:32):
I'm actually genuinely heartened that the vastmajority of that comedy, I feel like,
really holds up. And you know, I mean for it's time,
Like, I feel like Scott Thompsonwas really kind of my introduction in a
lot of ways to you know,queer comedy, queer art, you know,
like the kind of subversive elements ofpresenting that stuff on a mainstream you

(02:06:55):
know, comedy sketch show was nota thing you really saw, certainly in
the United States and at around thattime, and so it kind of introduced
me to a whole other avenue thatI feel like I just had not experienced
up to that point. Did Iever tell you the Scott Thompson story I
might have was like a weird Ihave an interesting probably, I mean,

(02:07:19):
I know it has to be unique. So when I was out of college
and I was interning for that producer. Ever tell you I've told you told
me about it. Yeah. SoI interned for Bob Balaban for four for
three summers in a row, andhe would get he had a production company,

(02:07:41):
and when I joined him as anintern, he was doing a movie
called Gosford Park, which was likea Robert Altman directed I think it won
a few awards and I feel likeit was kind of like a precursor to
Downton Abbey in a lot of ways. He would get all these scripts in

(02:08:01):
right, like, you know,people would submit and I would read a
lot of them, and I wouldI would basically what I did from it
was I would basically do script coverage, which is you would read a script
and you would give notes what youthought about it, and then like sometimes
he would be like who do youthink could be this the main actor?
And I would just be like,Oh, that's so sweet of you asking

(02:08:24):
a fucking you know, eighteen yearold or nine year old what they think
of Oh, it was gonna castthis fucking movie anyway. I read a
script that Scott Thompson wrote and itwas about I feel like I'm probably breaking
an idea that I never signed,but it was about the like a Canadian
school shooting, and also the maincharacter sort of like understanding again I read

(02:08:46):
this like twenty years ago, butlike it was about a Canadian school shooting
and it's seen. I don't Iknow, I don't know if it was
based on something in reality. Itprobably was, but it was predated a
lot of American you know, onviolence issues. And it was also and
and I think he might have likeworked into the main character part, uh,
you know who was sort of likewatching this happen and going through his

(02:09:09):
you know, childhood and upbringing andand and you know, dealing with you
know, his you know, maybehis his insecurity is wherever the main character
was. You could tell it wassort of like a story that that felt
very close. And I just rememberbeing so invested and engrossed in this,
in this thing. It was likethis wild, wild uh read. And

(02:09:33):
of course, you know nothing ever, you know, there was never a
movie. You never wound up beinga movie. But I just always remember
being like I didn't discover it washim until maybe a couple of weeks later,
and being like, oh my god, that that's the guy. That's
the guy I heard it's wild,really wild story. And then he went
on to go be a main playeron Hannibal. Really yeah, Scott Thompson

(02:09:54):
was on Hannibal. Has he hashe gotten like a lot of work?
Is that outside of that? Idon't I I don't know that he has.
I think he's gotten like, youknow, some and television gigs here
and there, and he does likeyou know, I mean, they do
those kids in the Hall tours.But I think he was also doing like
one man shows and other like comedythings in Canada for a number of years.
But I don't know, I don'tthink he got like he never got

(02:10:16):
like super mainstream famous. He wason the Larry Sanders Show too, wasn't
he for a while. Yeah?Yeah, so you know he's had those
kinds of gigs, but like youknow, it's no one, no one
has offered Scott Thompson that that bigstarring role since then. Interest not like
Kevin McDonald and National Lampoon, SeniorTrip, you know, those big,

(02:10:37):
those big roles. Yeah, well, I feel like, who do you
see the most loved Senior Trip?Yeah? You see? Did do you
really? Seniors? Pretty good?Seniorship is pretty good. I don't know
if I ever, like, Idon't know if I remember that. Someone
will, Oh, they are bringingback his off for Amazon. Someone just
reminded me in the chat. Yeahthey were. They were talking about that.
I wasn't sure if that had wasone of those projects that they announced

(02:10:58):
and then got pushed off because COVID, But I remember the announcing that.
Huh. I have high hopes forthat, but I you know, that
was one of those things, likethe The Mister Show stuff, when they
did the like that short with Boband David show it was all right,
I think, yeah it was.Yeah, it was. It was like

(02:11:18):
here's our shingy joke and you're like, I don't need this, Like this
isn't it's like a weird parody ofit. Yeah, I don't know,
but I guess it's the thing likeMister Show, I think doesn't hold up
nearly as well as Kids in theHall does because it's so of its time,
But I think it nailed its timeso so well. Like going back
to it now, it's hard toexplain to someone who was not in that

(02:11:41):
same age bracket at that time tobe like, well this is okay,
here's why this wasn't like a GeorgeBush thing and this and that is just
it doesn't it's it's sometimes hard tokind of convey the context people. Yeah,
all right, well those are goingto be I think the MAINI mails.
But for once, believe it ornot, now that Vinnie's not here

(02:12:03):
picking the emails, we actually havea couple of corrections this week. I
can't believe it. We're actually areyou giving them? You're giving them?
Uh, you're giving them? Isit time? Are we gonna actually get
the corrections music? Correction? Ibelieve in you, Jan, I believe

(02:12:24):
in you. Four in a correctionfor the corrections. He no, you
know what. That's that's it.That's it. That's what we have.
That's the new corrections music. Wehave prices right there. That's part of
the sale. We actually got theprices right. Music weirdly enough came with

(02:12:48):
us. Sohow in the divorce wegot it? U, you've got a
correction apparently you haven't had one ina really long time. But if you
do, what is the corrections atthat's it. It's the same dayn email
address. It's just been a reallylong time. Alright, alright, with

(02:13:09):
one of these is a correction.One is a correction one is more of
a clarification. I'm going to haveyou do this first one, mister Baklar
from Rick, Will you please takeit away? Yes, of course,
the known apple fruit influencer will takethe apple of the beast cast. During
your discussion on the cosmic crisp apple, you were unsure of the exact process

(02:13:35):
by which it was made. Ijust want to butt in real quick.
I had there is a there isa apple the fruit Twitter out there,
and I heard from him, andI heard from him in cosmic crisp apple.
Jeff, is that a thing?It is? Now? Just check
it out. This weed it's weirdstoner weed apples? Is this No?

(02:13:56):
But it is like a hybrid.Man Like, I'm just saying, you
like a one Graham dab out ofthis apple. I was just saying,
if you are an apple fan,I love apples a lot. I love
honey crisp apples, and the cosmiccrisp is a hybrid of honey crisp and
another thing. Okay, so ifyou like that, eat that is the
other thing is the other thing weedwheat. It's wheat. The other thing

(02:14:20):
is uh white widow and seem tobe confusing selective breeding with genetic modification.
I tend to do that. Cosmiccrisp apples are not engineered with crisper Jean
splicing, what you would think ofis GMOs. Instead, they are bred
the old fashioned way apples fucking nothe old flesh, by finding the plants

(02:14:41):
that exhibit the qualities you want,breeding them together, and choosing the offspring
that are closest to what you want, and continuing the process until you have
the organism you want, which islike sort of explained but in a very
poor way. This isn't a newtechnique. It has been done to literally
every plant you eat. For example, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale,

(02:15:03):
broccoli, and cauliflower are all bredfrom the same mustard plant. Gene splicing
is used to speed up this process, editing the genome instantly instead of needing
to go through the breeding process.But they are all GMOs. Bonus fun
fact, ruby red grapefruits exist becausesomeone grew grapefruits in radiation, mutating the

(02:15:24):
fruit into something sweeter and redder thanbefore, and yet we eat this.
I grew up on a farm thatuses GMOs, so I got pretty protective
of people misusing the term and beingafraid of food. Of the food we've
packed extra science into all right.So thank you Rick for explaining that.
I feel a lot better now.Yeah. So you know, it's just

(02:15:45):
they made the apples fuck, andthey picked the right apple children to then
make them fuck so that the rightapples would then grow in masks. They're
the They're the lanisters of apples,is what you're trying to say. It's
like what we did dogs. Yeah, apple fucking yeah, nice, thank
you. Hey, that's the Yeah, it's about time, all right,

(02:16:07):
Alex. We got one more here. This is just a quickie from James.
I'll read this one. Hey,guys, I'm sure you don't give
a damn because this doesn't matter atall. But I actually worked at the
Icy Company between two thousand and sevenand twenty eleven, so I could speak
to the differences between an icy anda slushy. Basically, an icy is
identical to a slurpie at seven eleven. They are made in the same kinds

(02:16:28):
of machines, using the same kindsof syrups, and have the same consistency.
The only difference is being the brandingwho owns each ip and the flavors
available. A slushy is a morewatery, neutral base with thousands of tiny
ice crystals. People typically pump aflavored syrup in their cup before spencing the
ice base and then mix it alltogether, and icy is already pre mixed.

(02:16:52):
You can google slush puppy to seean example of what a slushy looks
like. Anyways, I don't blameyou if you didn't even read that,
but we did, so thank you, James. We had to make sure
we clarified that. I've had asup to be able to. Yeah,
I used to be able to getslush puppies from the gas station, and
it was nice to be able tojust pump like ten times as much syrup
as you're supposed to into that thing. I remember benefit of a slushuppy.

(02:17:15):
Slut puppies were trash. Other thanthat they were they were garbage here,
but they also am I right insaying they didn't have colored syrup. They
were all like clear, they wereI remember pumping. I mean I was
in junior high so maybe there wasa ladder model of slush puppy machine that
did not have the colors, butbut yeah, it was it was like

(02:17:37):
a cherry was read all that sortof stuff. Guys, Yeah, I
got some breaking news here. Weird, right, isn't this? This is
a weird one. This is superfucking weird breaking news. EVO, the
Fighting Game Championship we all know andlove has been acquired by a new esports

(02:18:01):
venture called RTS and PlayStation. Theysaid they bought it together. Yes,
it's a joint venture. I don'tknow the the url is broken, the
like the Sony Interactive Entertainment. Lookslike this is a separate blog. Maybe

(02:18:22):
it's not on the PlayStation blog.Let me see if they've got to post
there now. Yeah, this ison the actual SIE like business as Business
blog, not PlayStation dot com.Huh and uh, And that's website is
currently down, so I can't getthe what is this do for? That
are not PlayStation They're okay. Sohere's the thing. Like, generally speaking,

(02:18:46):
because most tournament organizers don't want tobring a bunch of different consoles to
a tournament, like, PlayStation kindof became the de facto place to play
fighting games because that was where thetournaments were going to be happening, and
when with the platforms they would beheld on at least throughout the PS four.
Okay, let me rephrase that question, what happens to Smash? Okay,

(02:19:09):
Yeah, then I would imagine thatbecause this is coming from the Sony
Interactive entertainment level and not the PlayStationlevel. Yeah, that nothing changes.
Yeah, I was gonna say SmashSmash can stay. I'm gonna We're gonna
say it right now. All right, that's make it so it's wild?
Well all right? Yeah, wellso so they they ran into some the

(02:19:33):
exact nature of it, but itwas was it one of the cannons?
No, is it the mister MattIt was the some some shitty people were
in the seats of power U atEVO, and so that led to the
last one being mister Wizard I believe. Yeah, that guy had done some

(02:19:56):
stuff that led to EVO getting cannedand then obviously OVID led to some other
stuff. So some change needed tohappen at the top of this thing also,
and the cannons are still led Riot, right, I mean they they
did. I lost track. Theygot bought along with Seth, Gillian and
them when uh, when that gamethat they were working on got picked up

(02:20:18):
by Riot, their studio got bought, so maybe they just don't have time
to run it as a result ofthat or something like that. I don't
know, I don't know. It'sa weird one we acquired. That is
wild. That is wild. Imean again, it's not I'm not surprised
that some some entity would come inand acquire Evo if that's where things were
headed. It is just shocking tome that like PlayStation is bringing Sony Interactive

(02:20:41):
is bringing this in like that's justmark Man. Mark Man says that all
platforms are still welcome. All right, there you go, so we made
that happen. He's been Yeah,what a thing. Congratulations, there we
go. Well that is going todo it for another fine episode of the
Beast Cast. Big thanks goes outto mister Jeff Gersman. Thank you for

(02:21:05):
being here and filling in for Vinnie. Thanks for having me. It is
our damn pleasure. Also, anequally big thanks to Jane Cho for producing
our fine program today and bringing somereal fancy tiling and live stuff that I
just felt. I just felt realspecial. I just want you to know
that, Jane, So thank youfor making me feel special. That was

(02:21:26):
dope. There you go, there'sa confirmation and thank you as always,
Alex Navarro, thank you for mypleasure. My pleasure. Will see if
Vinnie makes it back next week.I don't know. Flip a coin.
There's your answer. We'll see hopefullyyes, but if he can't, that's
quite all right. Also, that'sit, guys. So this is the

(02:21:50):
part where he like stretches a littlebit. You say, oh, if
it's your birthday, my birthdays nextweek, wish me a happy birthday.
And then you know, we seegoodbye. See yah h