0:00

What did they fuck? Every day

0:02

on the road Is

0:05

nothing good on the radio

0:08

What's the game gonna do?

0:11

Who should I turn to? The

0:15

Rebel of M The

0:18

Rebel of M The

0:22

Rebel of M Hello.

0:26

Welcome to Rebel of M, episode 637. For

0:30

the people that are listening to the show, you don't know this,

0:32

but I had a big gap between

0:34

when Arthur said we could start courting and when I said

0:37

that I'm Anthony Ayer, I was joined by Arthur

0:39

Giesemasche. I was wondering if I was gonna have to like, nudge

0:42

you. No, no, no. I was trying to think of how long it

0:44

was until we get to 666. And

0:46

so my brain was briefly doing mental math. 29

0:51

weeks at least. Exactly. And briefly I

0:53

was like, wait, it'd be awesome if it was at the

0:55

election. I was like, nah, it's not the election at all.

0:57

Is it close to the inauguration? Anyways,

1:03

that's where my brain, that's where my

1:05

brain train went to. Why did your brain want you

1:07

to go to 666? Oh,

1:11

just because I think it's hilarious. Because the devil's got

1:13

him. And

1:17

just that now it's within sight, you know?

1:21

Yeah, sure. Yeah, why not?

1:23

Yeah. I mean,

1:25

it's the closest we've ever been. Just

1:28

like last week in 100 episodes, we're the closest we've

1:30

ever been. Shut up. Video

1:35

games. Video games. They

1:38

keep coming out now. Yep,

1:41

they keep coming out and they keep

1:43

coming out to both aplomb

1:46

and bombs. Aplomb?

1:50

Aplomb and bombs. Yeah.

1:55

Speaking of applause, I finished Astrobot. I

1:57

thought the game was really cute. And the back half. of

2:00

it was better than the front half of it and the

2:02

front half's good. Really interesting. But I like the back half. I

2:05

thought the levels were really fun. The

2:07

one thing I think that I disliked about

2:09

the back half was that the front half of

2:11

the game introduces new suits for Astrobot and new

2:13

gear and then the back half largely

2:16

is like it's that again. And

2:20

I was hoping we'd keep getting the equivalent of new hats.

2:24

I feel like that's what you know, that's

2:27

what Mario games do. Oh

2:29

yeah, I just thought this would be a little different. I

2:31

thought we were just going to keep getting different tools for

2:33

different levels. I totally get the reuse. But

2:37

I still think that that game does

2:39

a good job with like, you

2:42

know, fun bits of physics that they

2:44

can do by virtue of the fact that there's

2:46

not a ton going on on the screen. Otherwise,

2:48

like you know, you have these floating island levels

2:50

and stuff which helps you not have,

2:53

you freeze up a lot of space and cycles

2:55

for you to do things like gems falling from

2:58

the sky like there's a lot of physics driven

3:00

objects and you can run through them and spin

3:02

and gems go flying and you're like, this is

3:04

fun. But

3:06

more than that, the platforming in game itself

3:08

is good and I think the challenge gets

3:10

pretty good and the checkpoints are extremely forgiving.

3:14

And all those things make it like a perfect Mario

3:17

esque game. It reminds me a lot more of

3:19

a rare game to me than it does a

3:22

Mario game, but I can see that. 3D

3:24

platformer. Just because it's much

3:27

more of a I think

3:29

of that game like like Mario games

3:31

are still collectathon. It's often about getting

3:33

to the end of the level to

3:35

get a thing. But this game feels

3:37

even more like a collectathon in the

3:39

traditional sense because you're finding things constantly

3:41

throughout the level. I think that rares

3:44

platformer sort of pedigree sits

3:46

kind of between Nintendo and Sega.

3:49

Yeah, I'd say this fits right in there too.

3:51

Yeah. Nintendo is

3:53

like a lot of substance over

3:56

style and Sega is

3:58

like way more style over substance. and

4:00

rare sort of between those two things where

4:03

it's like I see there's more style than

4:05

Nintendo stuff But it's kind of gaudy so

4:07

it's not as cool as Sega's But

4:10

I think that the the design the ultimate

4:12

sort of like design of the levels is

4:16

better than Sega's platformers Yes,

4:19

thank God knows. It's been a while since we've consistently gotten

4:21

this So

4:23

yeah, I think that a rare the rare comparison

4:26

makes a lot of sense But also I didn't

4:28

really care for many of rarest platformers. So yeah,

4:30

I mean I like me either I liked

4:33

Banjo Kazooie and Which

4:36

probably doesn't hold up especially well conquer

4:38

bad for a day nuts and bolts does okay

4:41

nuts and bolts is fine Yeah, that's a lot more recent and

4:44

obviously the original Donkey Kong country. I

4:46

actually just beat that recently again Really?

4:50

Yeah, I made you go back to that It

4:53

was just simply that I was with my wife and she was like,

4:55

you know I'd play an old Donkey Kong game and

4:57

then I was like I don't feel like hooking

4:59

up an emulator, but I bet it's on the

5:01

Nintendo subscription thing and it was That's

5:04

right. Yeah, and so it was even easier

5:06

because now It was like oh if

5:08

we get really far into a level and we die and we don't want

5:10

to redo it There's a rewind feature.

5:12

Yeah But

5:15

yeah, I asked her about still really good I

5:20

don't I think that's gonna be yet another game that

5:22

struggles to probably Maybe

5:24

make considerable amount of money

5:26

despite the praise but it will break

5:28

even Although

5:32

I think we talked about this I don't know if we

5:34

talked about this last week I think that The

5:37

PS5 pros release could be a

5:40

problem in that respect because

5:42

I think that that's diverting a lot of money

5:44

away from people Who would buy games? Yeah

5:49

Yeah, Astrobot gets you like one Seventh

5:52

of the way there No

5:55

Astrobot gets you 114 point a there oh my

5:57

bad So,

6:00

and the extra buy is a $60. Oh,

6:05

okay. So like one, one 12th. Okay.

6:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The

6:13

game's good. The game is good.

6:17

I have a, I have a confession. Yeah.

6:19

It's not as related. I really

6:21

want that PlayStation anniversary PS5 Pro. The

6:26

one that comes with like the PlayStation one

6:28

fake USB C input and stuff. That's cute.

6:31

I, it's just, it's like the, it's

6:33

honestly the closest to a not ugly

6:35

PS5. I think they've released.

6:41

That's totally fair. Like

6:43

I hate the piano, the cheap

6:45

piano black gloss on all

6:48

of the PS5 models. I think it looks

6:50

terrible. And

6:52

also attract scratches incredibly easily.

6:54

Yeah. Yeah. The

6:57

other controllers look nice. Yeah. Are

7:01

they releasing those controllers outside of that thing? I

7:03

wonder. Yes. Okay.

7:06

The controller. I'm

7:08

like, Oh, also the PlayStation 30th logo looks like

7:11

it says X-Box, which is funny. Everyone's noticing that

7:13

in the last day or so. Um,

7:19

but yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like I, I

7:21

don't know that I'll ever actually play all the way

7:24

through astrobot. My partner is making their way through it

7:26

and is obsessed with it. Yeah.

7:29

For me, it was just a simple thing that I could

7:31

do like, you know, two levels a night and then three

7:33

levels a night. And then some days we'd do five and

7:35

it was pretty

7:37

easy to mainline it. I don't think I'm

7:39

going to be like a hundred percent completionist or anything like

7:42

that. Yeah. But

7:44

I, I very rarely am that guy in

7:47

anything. Yeah. That's neither. The

7:50

rest of the games I played were decidedly smaller

7:53

and less production. Interesting.

7:56

Um, well, maybe that's not true. The

7:58

one game I played that was actually. really well done.

8:01

It's a game called Five

8:03

Nights at Freddy's Into the Pit. I

8:05

was only curious about this one. I'm

8:07

not a Five Nights at Freddy's person. I was

8:10

told by people that were watching me play that there was a

8:12

lot of lore that was going way over my head, but I

8:15

was interested in this one because it

8:17

has 7,000 reviews and it's overwhelmingly positive.

8:20

And it's like it's from a game

8:22

studio called Mega Cat out of Pittsburgh and

8:25

they do a lot of like 2D pixel

8:28

art like throwback games. So

8:32

like they do a ton of games that end

8:34

up, you can buy off their website that are

8:36

put on Sega carts, put on Nintendo carts, put

8:38

on GBA carts that are like... So

8:40

they do a lot of these games that are

8:43

for people that are looking for new shit to

8:45

play on old hardware. And

8:48

they do really good pixel art. And

8:51

this is a 2D side-scrolling

8:54

pixel art game set

8:56

in the Five Nights at Freddy's universe. That's

9:00

kind of like an interesting stealth-based

9:03

horror game where you're like you

9:06

have to actually like watch your audio meter and

9:08

when you run and when you're carrying stuff

9:10

the audio that it's making and it tells the story

9:12

of this kid whose dad

9:14

is basically pulled back in

9:16

time to like an old

9:18

Five Nights or old Freddy's pizza

9:20

place. And he's like trying and his dad is

9:22

replaced by a monster who comes alive at night and hunts

9:25

him in their own house and their mom doesn't believe him.

9:28

Jesus. And so

9:30

yeah mom's like go have breakfast with your dad

9:32

and he's like oh my god dad's been replaced

9:34

and everyone just thinks he's a psychopath. Christian's a

9:36

weird man. And then at night his dad

9:38

comes to life to try and like kill

9:40

him. And it's

9:42

good. Really solid audio design.

9:45

Is this from the original creator of Five Nights

9:47

at Freddy's? No no no this is

9:49

developed and published by a studio called Mega Cat.

9:53

But I mean his name's attached to it

9:55

because he's a license holder or whatever. But

9:59

it's it's just a pretty solid horror

10:01

game that does a lot without ever

10:03

being gory too, unsurprisingly given the guy's

10:05

background. You

10:07

know that it's a lot of like body

10:09

horror stuff, but it's all implied. And

10:15

it just does, it's one thing that I

10:17

took away from it when I was playing. I was like,

10:19

this is actually a really interesting way to do like, what

10:23

was the horror game that Outlast,

10:26

it's like Outlast, but

10:29

from a side scrolling like

10:32

2D point of view. I

10:34

mean it is three-dimensional in the sense that your character can move up

10:36

and down planes, but it's like a 3D 2D game in

10:40

terms of art. And you could still

10:42

have to like, you know, run and hide under a

10:44

table, getting to pull yourself into a cabinet, that type

10:46

of thing. And even though

10:48

it is in 2D, there's really good 3D audio so

10:50

that you understand if I move up in the house

10:53

and to the right, I can hear them when they're

10:55

up and to the right in my headphones and understand

10:57

where they are in the level. Just

11:01

some really interesting, really well

11:04

done mechanics. Although I ultimately

11:06

don't think it's really for me, I think a lot of

11:08

it's going way over my head because it's made for like

11:12

the people who are into it, into the story

11:14

and the lore. Yeah, like I think it's an

11:16

okay horror game on its own. But

11:18

like I feel like this is a game

11:20

that the people who made it must have

11:22

immersed themselves into like the other fucking 30

11:25

games at this point. And

11:28

we're like, we're gonna hit the brief of Five Nights

11:30

at Freddy's and understanding like

11:32

the lore. And did you know there's like 15

11:35

books about Five Nights at Freddy's at this

11:37

point? Like not a whole lot of that many, but I'm not

11:39

surprised. So it's just all the shit

11:41

that this is like wrapped up in and

11:43

making good on. So like that

11:46

overwhelmingly positive is all these people that grew

11:48

up with Five Nights at Freddy's game. It's a weird thing

11:50

to say, but those games are like 11 years or 12

11:52

years old at this point. And now

11:56

they're adults and they're playing this and they're like, holy shit,

11:58

all the lore and everything. that I grew up with

12:01

is all there. The

12:03

response to the movie seemed pretty positive. Yeah.

12:07

Yeah. I just

12:10

think it's just a surprisingly well done little horror game.

12:12

And if it didn't have anything to do with Fighting

12:14

It to Freddy's, it would be kind of cool on

12:16

its own. And

12:18

it's, you know, I don't

12:21

know. It's

12:24

$25, which is like probably on the more expensive end for

12:26

a lot of horror games. But

12:30

I just think the atmosphere and the audio

12:32

design in it and the

12:34

art, even the art, just really solid art.

12:38

When you are existing in this 2D world and like

12:40

an SNES game walking your character around on the screen,

12:42

when you hide in a cabinet and the monster comes,

12:45

there's usually a mini game and they do a

12:47

really good job with the monster looking in the

12:49

cabinet and breathing in your face and stuff.

12:52

If I wasn't a broken person, it would actually probably

12:54

be scary. But

12:58

it seems to scare a lot of people. It did not scare me at all. I'm

13:00

just like dead inside. I guess I shouldn't be

13:03

surprised that this has so many Steam

13:05

reviews. Yeah,

13:07

that's why I checked it out because I was like, it's got 7000

13:09

reviews, over when we pause it, but I was like, I

13:12

feel like duty bound to look at this a little bit. Just

13:16

to understand why people are so into it. Yeah,

13:18

people fucking love it. I don't know.

13:22

I was surprised, but you're right. In hindsight, should

13:24

I be surprised? No. At

13:28

this point, I'm scared

13:30

to look up Five Nights at Freddy's, but I'll

13:33

do it. Because

13:38

on Steam, Five

13:40

Nights at Freddy's brings up 100 search

13:43

results. Granted, a lot

13:45

of these. Okay.

13:48

Like 10 games down, when I look up Five Nights at

13:50

Freddy's, it's five nights at Stalin. So

13:54

there's a lot of really

13:56

shitty clones. This

14:00

is the studio that made Wrestle Quest, apparently.

14:02

Yeah, and they also made that Renfield,

14:05

like, SNES style game recently. So,

14:11

yeah, I guess the original Five Nights at Freddy's is actually on

14:13

Steam at 2014, so 10 years at

14:15

this point. But

14:20

yeah, the last couple games they put

14:22

out in the franchise has done really well. Probably

14:25

one of the best-selling VR games is the Five

14:27

Nights at Freddy's VR game. Yeah.

14:31

I don't know. I was just curious

14:33

about it, just because that's a franchise that I

14:37

feel like spawned a lot of clones. And

14:40

I just... I

14:42

get it, but at the same time I don't get it. I

14:47

want to understand it more. I

14:50

feel like I want to understand it too,

14:52

but I've had a couple people in my

14:54

life who have tried to educate

14:56

me about the allure and appeal of Five Nights

14:58

at Freddy's, and I just I don't fucking get

15:01

it. I'm the wrong

15:03

generation, I think. Yeah, I think it

15:05

just comes down to the fact that it's

15:07

fun to get got and avoiding...

15:10

It's like tag, you know? It's fun to

15:12

run away and try and not get tagged. Yeah,

15:15

I guess that's true. I think it's also... It's just...

15:18

Like, it's like very peak internet culture from

15:20

a very specific moment, which is like

15:22

peak Tumblr,

15:25

peak Reddit, like sort of

15:27

like Creepypasta era shit. And

15:30

that is a thing that is

15:32

impossible to replicate now. Yeah,

15:35

and it also ran on everything.

15:38

Yes. The shittiest computer at the

15:40

time. Because the person making it was making it on a

15:43

piece of art. Terrible art. Yeah.

15:46

And it was low priced, you know? It was just... Yeah.

15:49

It was a really interesting choices made. So

15:54

I can't begrudge them their success. I'm just like...

15:56

No, me either. Definitely not.

15:58

More power to them. a little something,

16:02

but what are you gonna do? But

16:07

it's interesting to have a horror game that is geared

16:09

towards children without the gore and stuff like that, and

16:12

what you can do with that. Yeah,

16:16

I don't know, it's interesting. So

16:20

yeah, I played that. I don't know if I'll

16:22

finish it. I was definitely like, that was one of the

16:24

ones where I was like, start the clock on this one. I

16:26

don't want that two hour mark. Because

16:30

I don't think this is gonna be for me. Then

16:33

you ended up actually enjoying it. Yeah,

16:35

I think it's pretty well done. I still don't know if

16:37

it's something that I'm like, oh, this is something I'm interested

16:40

in long term, but I'm like, man, a

16:42

lot of the mechanics and just polish

16:44

and systems they'd made, I'm like, yeah,

16:47

these people are pretty good. Now I

16:49

was like, how come I've never heard of the studio? Because

16:52

I went to their website and stuff, and based

16:55

out of the, the reason we looked them up, actually, was because

16:57

when I looked at the credits, there was

16:59

such a diversity of last names that

17:01

I was, I couldn't figure out what country they were from. So

17:04

I was like, I was like, oh, am I gonna see

17:06

like a bunch of Russian or Polish or like Spanish? And

17:08

then it was such names, I was like, where are they

17:10

from? And I was like, oh, America, okay, melting pot, sure.

17:13

In a big city. They actually got people

17:15

from, you know, everywhere. That's

17:18

pretty funny. And I was like, looking

17:20

them up, and I was like, dude, they've made

17:22

like 45 games in the last 10 years. Like

17:24

they are super prolific. The

17:26

final, the Into the Pit Devs? Yeah,

17:29

the Into the Pit Devs. They just

17:31

make tons of these little like SNES,

17:33

GBA, Sega style games. And

17:36

some of them are interesting because some of them

17:38

go from, range

17:40

from like full on platformer to

17:43

art piece. Like there's one that's like

17:45

an NES cartridge that's a

17:47

celebration of the guy dancing with the

17:49

pumpkin mask. And it's like an EP

17:52

of some band that just plays while that

17:54

guy dances and you put it near NES and it plays. And

17:57

it's like a way to play music. Of these

17:59

games. are like somebody put

18:01

Maniac Mansion on the Neo Geo.

18:05

That's a great way of putting it,

18:07

yes. It's like super way higher frame

18:09

rate, way better animations, way crisper, but

18:11

still looks classic. Like an

18:14

adventure game almost. Yeah.

18:17

Just really interesting. I just hadn't

18:20

heard of them at all and I thought that was weird how

18:22

that came out. So many games,

18:24

man. Yes, that's what I'm saying,

18:26

so many fucking games. I

18:30

also played this game that just came out called Lauren's Lure. It's

18:34

getting pretty positive reviews. That's the hardcore,

18:36

decent one, right? Right, so it's

18:38

like you have climbing

18:40

hooks and you're trying to get down.

18:42

I saw the trailer. Like this nearly

18:45

endless sort of shaft.

18:49

And the way you do that, I thought

18:51

it was gonna be a lot faster paced. Like it was

18:53

like you're doing crazy big jumps and doing all the, it's

18:56

not that, there are times that it moves really

18:58

fast and you're like sliding down like a mega

19:00

scaled fucking piece of cement

19:02

or something like that. But it

19:05

is much closer to like something

19:07

like the Legend of Zelda because you

19:09

have a limited stamina bar and

19:12

only certain surfaces allow your hooks to go into

19:14

them. So it's much more like I'm

19:16

planning out, I'm gonna slide off this thing, land on

19:18

this pipe, jump off the pipe and hook into something.

19:21

And then I know that I'm gonna have just enough

19:23

stamina climbing with my hooks to like drop onto the

19:25

next pipe and then figure out from there, I'm gonna

19:27

jump onto this and hook. And then you

19:30

can't do like, you have to worry about

19:32

velocity because it'll kill you. So

19:36

it really is more of a puzzle game of

19:38

I see where I need to get to, but I don't

19:40

understand how I'm gonna get there. And

19:43

the trial and error that comes from trying

19:45

to figure out how to effectively climb. It's

19:47

interesting because as a sci-fi setup

19:49

to it where you're like this Android and

19:52

often you're going past like human huts that are like

19:55

500 years old or something like that. But

19:57

really, at

20:00

its core, it could be

20:02

set on like a mountain and

20:04

you're just trying to figure out how to descend

20:06

a mountain without breaking your ankles or something like

20:08

that. And I think

20:12

that that's an interesting take on a puzzle

20:14

game, but it's just

20:16

like it's only that, you know, whereas like in

20:18

Zelda, I liked figuring out how to

20:20

climb up stuff that was part of it, but that was

20:22

just like one smaller part of the game. So

20:25

I don't know if this

20:27

is going to have the sort of like

20:29

staying power that I

20:31

would hope it would have. But

20:34

the game itself is doing pretty

20:36

well for an indie game. It's

20:39

that like, I mean, doesn't have a ton of reviews.

20:42

It only came out yesterday, but it's

20:44

got like 250, it's 90 something

20:46

percent. People seem to love it. And

20:48

I think it'll be one of those games

20:50

that'll like be like a really insane speed runner game.

20:54

Oh, yeah. Because some of

20:56

the later platforming looks crazy

20:58

where you're having to like do really

21:00

precise like jump, jump, jump, jump, jump,

21:02

hook, slide, jump, hook, slide, jump. And

21:05

it's like, you're just

21:07

like, is it the kind of thing where

21:10

if you were a speed runner, you could like

21:13

figure out a way to jump

21:15

and fall like through and through like half

21:17

the stage and then like find the exact

21:19

thing and like just slide the slide enough

21:21

on the ground to like not make your

21:23

velocity build up too much or something. Yeah.

21:25

So I think that's where it'll be interesting

21:28

is seeing like what people do with it.

21:32

I mean, I like precision platformers like this. I

21:34

think it feels I know

21:37

it gets tagged a lot with like a

21:39

parkour thing. It feels a little less parkour to me

21:41

because other than like

21:43

sliding and jumping and doing it's more of it's more

21:45

of a climbing game to me than it is about

21:49

parkour because you're not doing like, you're

21:51

not so far, at least what I've seen. It's

21:53

like you're like doing like, you can't wall run.

21:55

You can't like, do

21:57

like a jump to the wall and do like a flip off

21:59

of it. There's not like the things that

22:01

I often associate with parkour necessarily. There's

22:03

a couple of wall running things in the trailer that I

22:05

was just looking at. Okay, well this

22:07

is lighting. At least they don't like wall run things. Honestly,

22:10

looking at this game. Maybe just

22:13

sliding by. Looking at this game on Steam, it looks like a

22:15

VR game. It

22:17

kinda does. Yeah,

22:20

it would be cool as a VR game if I could

22:22

choose to like use one hook and then, you know, or

22:24

use the hooks in interesting ways. There'd be a cool VR

22:27

thing for this. It's

22:29

probably good that it's not. Cause like I

22:31

played VR games and yeah, it was not

22:33

like the Horizon VR game. It was a

22:35

climbing game. The Horizon VR game was a

22:37

challenge. Yeah. Why

22:40

was it a challenge? I haven't played it. Any

22:42

games where, because that often has Horizon

22:44

style claiming where you're hitting

22:47

a hand and then pulling yourself up in

22:49

that pulling motion. That's like

22:51

the majority of the game is that. Yeah,

22:54

so there'd be times I'd be fine and there'd be times where

22:56

I would have to close my eyes and

22:59

just like grab and hope that I was grabbing

23:01

things because it was making me sick. Gotcha.

23:04

I didn't realize that the climbing thing could make people

23:06

sick. Yeah, anything where I'm

23:08

not in control of the motion. Like it feels like

23:12

my physical form is not sliding with it.

23:15

Yeah, yeah. And it's specifically things that slide.

23:17

Like I can fly ships in VR, but

23:20

there's a thing where I understand that my form,

23:22

my human form is supposed to be pulled along.

23:25

That for some reason, because of VR, activates

23:28

something in my brain that says, wait, we're

23:31

moving, but we're not moving. And my equilibrium is

23:33

like, oh, fuck. So, but

23:36

yeah. Yeah,

23:39

okay. I mean, as a demo, if

23:42

you're interested in like a climbing game, yeah,

23:45

in the demo, I think we'll show you what you need

23:47

to see if you're like actually interested in this. Pretty

23:52

simple, pretty clean. The

23:57

last thing I played that I want to talk about was a game called Fusion.

24:00

future race for 2000. This was

24:02

a horror game recommended to me by a coworker, Kimberly,

24:04

who's like, she does not

24:06

herself play horror games. But

24:09

she watches a lot of people play horror games,

24:12

which seems to be a lot of ways

24:14

people that don't like to are a little scared of horror

24:16

games experience them. Yeah, we talked

24:18

about this a little bit because I was saying I watched you

24:20

play some of it on stream where

24:22

you were like in the apartment building and stuff

24:24

like that, right? Yeah, so the premise

24:26

of the game is that you exist this woman

24:30

in an apartment building that

24:33

is under quarantine, kind of like that

24:35

movie. It's

24:39

just called quarantine, where it's like, there's

24:41

a special Spanish and then they made an American

24:43

one where it's like, there's like an outbreak and

24:45

they're like. It was wreck in Spanish, right? Okay,

24:48

yeah, and we'll shoot you if you leave. So

24:51

you exist in a building where no one's allowed

24:53

to leave. It's like some type of virus that

24:55

comes from octopuses or something like that, but

24:57

it's spreading through humans. And so you're

24:59

not supposed to talk to anyone in your building, no one

25:02

wants to talk to you. And

25:05

then what ends up happening is you get like a shipment

25:07

from the city of these video game consoles that are going

25:09

out to people. And these video

25:11

game consoles only play one game, future race of 2000.

25:15

And it starts to make people increasingly

25:17

more obsessed with it and hallucinate. And

25:19

so as things

25:21

start showing up and monster sharks showing up,

25:24

it's unclear if it's a

25:26

hallucination or if it's future race or

25:28

2000 causing this. And

25:32

it's really hard to talk about it without spoiling because it's

25:34

not a particularly long game. But

25:37

I did think that in the terms of like psychological

25:40

horror, it's a pretty good

25:42

one of those, especially

25:44

given like the limited sort of interactions that

25:46

you can do. And

25:49

it does a really good job with the idea of

25:51

like lurking monsters with that ever being, if this all

25:53

sounds like something you're interested in, but you're like, I

25:55

hate being chased. It is not a

25:57

game that pretty much ever really has like intense. chase

26:00

scenes or anything like that. It's not about that.

26:03

It's about the idea, it's

26:06

much more of a game that's about like the

26:08

power went out to the building and you have to go to

26:10

the basement to reset the breaker. That

26:12

feels scary. I hate

26:14

going into Dark Breaker Place and it's more about

26:17

that. But

26:21

set with this weird sci-fi-ish

26:24

background that gets really fucking out there as

26:27

you go along and keep getting obsessed with this

26:29

console. I don't know. Gotcha.

26:31

It's like $5. And

26:35

doesn't the game force you to play

26:38

Future Racer 2000 on your console in

26:40

the apartment in order to progress or

26:42

something like that? Yeah, there are times

26:44

that you literally can't not play Future Racer

26:46

2000. Because

26:49

it's like your character. And that's the thing, I think the

26:52

game's trying to play with this idea of like, are

26:54

you in control of your own will or

26:56

is this thing actually taking over? It

27:01

took me, looking at Steam, it took me 53 minutes to

27:03

finish it, it's 4.99. That's

27:06

worth it. Yeah, to

27:08

me it was like, and there's a lot of horror games

27:10

that I'm really appreciating them being short because

27:14

there are a certain degree that a

27:16

story and a mechanics can support time.

27:19

And sometimes I feel like there's a lot of games that

27:21

really try and be like, we'll just repeat it over and

27:23

over again and you're like, oh, that actually sucks to be

27:25

that long. But doing it in

27:27

a short format thing, almost like a horror short that

27:29

you'd see on Vimeo or something like that actually

27:32

feels pretty good. So

27:35

I appreciate it for that. All

27:39

right, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. That's

27:41

my weekly video game book report. Not

27:46

actually. That's basically the whole show. Well,

27:48

speaking of video game book reports though,

27:50

I wanna know Arthur, you played UFO 50. That's

27:53

something I've looked at because I'm like, it's

27:55

a bunch of small games. And I'm like, that could

27:57

be cool. But I have to pull the trigger yet.

28:00

the Day of the Devs Summer Showcase

28:02

this year, so we edited a segment on it and put

28:04

that in the show, and that made me really curious about

28:06

it, because they talk about, at least in the

28:08

Day of the Devs segment, about this

28:11

is not just like, it's

28:14

not like a WarioWare or something like that,

28:17

where it's a ton of little mini games.

28:19

These are actually full games

28:21

that are on this fictitious console

28:23

that you can play, as

28:25

though you discovered this old library, a

28:27

nostalgic library for an old console that

28:29

never existed. And it's like it's actually

28:31

50 full game

28:34

experiences on this fictitious

28:36

console. Does that hold up when

28:38

you actually play it? Does

28:41

that sound like kind of an incredible achievement? If so.

28:43

I think it's, okay. It's

28:47

weird. The

28:50

people who are talking the most about this game

28:52

are very online in a specific

28:55

way. They're

28:57

the people that are like the game

28:59

preservation people, like the indie game people,

29:01

the itch people, who

29:04

are like, oh my God, it's so fucking cool

29:06

that we've done this thing. The amount

29:08

of work that it took to get all these people to get on

29:10

the same page is an

29:12

achievement that everyone should respect. And I

29:15

agree. I

29:19

think that most people will

29:22

probably blast through six

29:25

or seven of these games and find them

29:27

incredibly boring. I

29:31

think that I've dug through nine at this point, because I'm just

29:33

going through and trying them all. It

29:38

actually leaves me with a very, it

29:41

reminds me of a very specific kind

29:43

of eight bit memory that

29:47

not everybody has, but I think might be

29:49

more familiar now. I don't know if you

29:51

ever had the friend,

29:53

most people when they were playing eight bit games,

29:55

like in the NES or even the Atari area

29:57

or Commodore 64 era, like had a...

30:00

few games and they

30:02

go to a friend's friend's place and they

30:04

would have a few games and like, you

30:06

would, your options would be limited. And so

30:08

that would force you to sort of invest

30:10

time and effort and energy into what they

30:13

had. Like, you were sort of tied to

30:15

that. No matter what it was. Yes.

30:19

Sometimes some

30:21

people might have a friend who

30:23

had like the big tub

30:26

full of games. And

30:31

you would start putting in games. And

30:33

if something didn't grab you right away, if it wasn't

30:35

like awesome, if it was at all boring, it was

30:37

like, Oh, well fuck this onto the next one. Even

30:42

if like a game might be good, you just didn't give

30:44

it a chance. And I

30:46

think this to me so

30:48

far feels much more like the

30:51

tub of games. There

30:55

have been a couple so far that I've played that

30:57

I've thought have been better than others. There's

31:00

ironically this one that's like paint called paint racer

31:02

or something like that where

31:05

you are controlling like what

31:07

it looks like an F one car that drags paint

31:09

behind it. And you were trying to

31:11

like, it's kind of like Splatoon honestly. And

31:13

that one, you have a limited amount of time

31:15

to paint a percentage of the level with the

31:19

paint that your car leaves behind. But

31:21

there are enemies on the map that

31:23

are also painting the map and some of

31:25

them you can destroy from certain angles

31:27

or in certain ways and others you can't.

31:33

And the other one that I've played so far that

31:35

I that I actually kind of like is

31:38

called let me

31:40

double check this. I

31:43

think it's mortal. It's

31:45

what is what it's called. It's like it's

31:48

like this future space, the society where

31:51

these monsters invade and you are part

31:53

of a crew that have to sacrifice

31:55

yourselves to defeat them. And

31:58

so you start with this ship full of. 20 people

32:00

and like you have

32:02

three different things that each crew person

32:05

can do. And

32:08

it should like walking around and jumping around, like they can

32:10

walk around and jump around, but you

32:13

can turn yourself into a stone

32:15

block, which kills you. Okay.

32:19

You can launch yourself horizontally across

32:21

any gap until you

32:23

collide with the wall, which also kills

32:25

you, but turns you into a platform

32:27

that can be jumped on. Or you

32:29

can blow yourself up. Okay.

32:32

Which, you know, destroys some

32:35

enemies and some bricks and stuff like that. Yeah.

32:37

Basically you are trying to make it to the

32:39

end of the level without expending all of your

32:42

crew. Like, gotcha.

32:46

And does it then move on to like the

32:48

next level or something? Yes, but you don't get

32:50

all your crew back. Oh,

32:52

wow. Okay. And as you move through the levels,

32:54

you'll like see pickups of like

32:56

three or five or even 10 additional

32:59

crew. And sometimes if you kill

33:01

enough enemies, like you'll get another one. Um,

33:04

but like you will virtually

33:07

always have to sacrifice crew to

33:09

get to that. Yeah. Number

33:12

bump. Um, you

33:15

know, it's like lemmings like solar jet man, like

33:17

that kind of stuff. It's like, it's a very

33:19

much, it feels very

33:22

much like a UK Nintendo game. Um,

33:25

which is kind of a contradiction in terms, because there

33:28

weren't really any serious

33:30

UK developed Nintendo games. The exceptions are rare

33:32

did. Yeah. Cause

33:34

everyone was developing for the Commodore 64 Commodore.

33:38

And yeah, yeah. Oh my God. Um,

33:40

or the spectrum, the

33:42

spectrum, the spectrum ZX.

33:44

Yeah. Um, so

33:47

that that's fun. And then there's other stuff that

33:49

I haven't gotten to yet. That's like much more

33:51

advanced because like it's basically as you progress through

33:53

the games, the year of the game is changing.

33:56

So like it starts with like an 82 and

33:58

I think I'm at like 85. or

34:00

86. The games get more advanced. And

34:02

also there are apparently, there's a lot of stuff hidden

34:17

in it. And the more that I, the more

34:19

that I'm seeing people dig into it online, the more that

34:22

it's seeming like, like

34:24

a frog fractions kind of situation where people

34:26

are finding more and more hidden stuff. Okay.

34:29

I'm interested now. And like all the games, like

34:31

not all of the games, all the games don't

34:33

tie to every one of the other games. So

34:36

like lots of games tied to other games. There's

34:39

like a war and sort of like a

34:41

story behind all that. And so there's a

34:43

meta game there for sure. Um, And

34:47

is there like a, a lore embedded

34:49

in the games to like the

34:53

UFO console and stuff like

34:55

that about like, yeah, I

34:59

probably, I would assume so. Um,

35:02

but it's like very much, it's like

35:05

a love letter to

35:07

an era of gaming. It's a

35:10

love letter to a specific kind of

35:12

culture around gaming, like a schoolyard culture

35:14

around gaming, honestly, or even dare

35:16

I say a Nintendo power culture

35:19

around gaming. Um, right.

35:22

And, and also to meta

35:25

games and secrets and like

35:28

almost like a lost style

35:30

deep war kind of thing.

35:33

Um, and you know,

35:35

that's all fine and good. And I think that it's

35:37

interesting, but I also think that at a certain point,

35:39

you

35:41

know, it would be nice that the games were all good and

35:43

they are not all fun. Yeah,

35:46

that was my feeling about it. Why I didn't check it

35:48

out initially was I was like, am

35:51

I basically like paying to check out someone's

35:53

like abandoned prototypes? You know, like

35:55

something, the games that were like, uh,

35:57

school. And I'm not saying that badly. everyone

36:00

has those, but it's like, you know, you

36:02

like you have a developed idea and you're like,

36:05

and so it's a bunch of things you were like about,

36:07

you know, I'll just say there's like a

36:09

video when you go to the store page and like

36:11

the games that it shows are

36:13

not like

36:16

the first sort

36:18

of games. Like I think you might

36:20

have more fun if you sort of like

36:22

bounce around between like the different eras

36:24

more than I am, but I'm like

36:26

going chronologically through. I see. And

36:29

some of this stuff very much feels like a

36:31

game jam, like itch.io stuff. And some stuff feels

36:33

far more fleshed out. And

36:36

so to say that it's

36:39

a bunch of prototypes isn't totally fair. Like

36:41

not all of them are. That's right. I

36:44

mean, that's just me speaking ignorantly. I don't know shit about it.

36:46

No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm

36:48

not, you know, shitting on you. I'm just, you know, it

36:50

just varies. But

36:53

there's some neat stuff in there. I'm playing,

36:55

I'm also playing on my ally, which kind of feels

36:57

like the right place for

37:00

it. Yeah. Yes.

37:03

Yes. You can use

37:05

a controller. Yeah. Yeah. That

37:08

makes sense. It

37:11

does seem like it would be a good steam deck game. Slash

37:15

games. I'll be curious to see how

37:17

it does. Like it's got like a decent amount

37:19

of reviews. It's got like

37:21

just under 600 very positive

37:23

reviews, which

37:26

isn't bad, but I, you know, I

37:30

don't know. We'll see. I think that this is

37:32

for a very specific kind of weirdo. Yeah.

37:35

Like Jeff Gershman. It's for

37:37

Jeff Gershman. It's for Jeff

37:40

Gershman. Well, another thing that might

37:42

have people that might get people interested

37:44

is that the developer and publishers listed

37:46

as Mossmouth of Spelunky

37:49

fame. So, but it's not just, it's

37:51

not, it's, it's not, it is

37:53

not him making all of these games. No, it's

37:55

like lots of people making games. Interesting.

38:00

So, you know, I wouldn't look

38:02

to that as like, oh man, well that guy is

38:04

like awesome in making games. Like I'm

38:06

sure all these games are up to that standard. It's like, oh no, a lot

38:08

of these games are like concepts

38:11

that are not in keeping with what you would

38:13

expect from him. So I

38:16

don't know. It's hard to say it's

38:19

not worth $25 because there's a lot of

38:21

game here. But

38:24

it is, it's either

38:26

for olds or people who are kind of

38:28

obsessed with 8-bit games. Okay.

38:30

Yeah. Yeah.

38:34

And I don't feel like either of those things,

38:36

but it does draw to

38:38

a lot of my like very

38:40

specific experiences on my 8-bit

38:42

video game journey growing up. Yeah, that's fair. I

38:45

think I, part of me is just wondering if

38:47

I'm gonna end up playing it and being like

38:49

the type of person that's like played something for

38:51

five, like 60 seconds is like, nah,

38:54

move on. I think you will know within the

38:56

two hour window whether or not it's something you want to keep. Okay.

38:59

Because I definitely find like when I open

39:01

the Nintendo store, like let's say I have

39:03

an emulator right in

39:06

front of my face that has every Nintendo game

39:08

on it. I often find that I play one

39:10

for like two minutes and I'm like, oh God,

39:12

move on. Oh God, move on. I'm

39:14

just like, I'm not actually like sitting there

39:16

playing those things. Well,

39:21

I think it's also worth pointing out that

39:23

it's not 50 different developers either.

39:25

It's six people, at least according to

39:27

their website. So it's

39:29

not like it was a whole bunch of different

39:32

teams putting this together. No,

39:34

they're working together, but it's not. Yeah.

39:37

There's not like a unifying theory of game design

39:39

behind it. No way that you might expect if

39:41

someone said, oh, it's from the guy who did

39:43

Spelunky because with Spelunky it's like the guy who

39:46

did Spelunky. That's how people think of Spelunky. Yeah.

39:49

Yeah. Yeah. So

39:51

did you have anything more to say about UFO 50? No,

39:54

I think that that's

39:56

all I've got to say about UFO 50 for now. I

40:00

will continue to play it. I'm only,

40:02

you know, again, I'm like 10. I'm like

40:04

nine or 10 games into 50. And

40:07

seeing the trailer on the Steam page is

40:09

like a bunch of games that I not

40:11

only have I not seen, but that like

40:13

are way more graphically intensive than anything I've

40:16

played so far. So, yeah, you know. My

40:19

journey is not done. So,

40:24

you know. Well,

40:29

well, OK, then. Someone

40:32

wrote in an email. Yeah. And

40:36

it said, I've been listening to your podcast

40:38

since I was five and now I'm 20. Just

40:40

kidding. I'm in my mid 40s. They didn't want to

40:42

say. So

40:45

I'm a big fan of Eternal Darkness and

40:48

some of us fans on Reddit are really hoping

40:50

for a remake or remaster on the

40:52

Switch or any other platform. Do you

40:54

have any advice on how we could go about motivating

40:56

Nintendo to make this happen? And I thought this

40:58

was just an interesting. Email

41:01

because remakes just keep happening. But

41:04

I don't know how you motivate Nintendo to me happen because

41:06

I don't even know if Nintendo has the

41:09

ability to make that happen, not on their own. I'm

41:12

sure that that's they got to go

41:14

talk to whatever is Silicon Knight's holding.

41:18

Yeah, whoever has the IP

41:20

for that, which might be epic, honestly. Oh,

41:24

geez. Why

41:26

would Epic own it? Because Epic

41:28

sues Silicon Knight. Epic. Oh,

41:31

they did. Don't ask a

41:33

question, then talk over me when I'm answering it.

41:39

Epic sues Silicon Knight's because

41:42

Silicon Knight's tried to weasel out

41:44

of paying them any royalties for

41:46

too human because they said that

41:48

Unreal Engine was not what

41:50

was promised and they had to make their

41:52

own engine, which was actually a hacked version

41:54

of Unreal Engine 3, which

41:56

turned into a lawsuit and. Uh,

42:02

all like

42:04

basically all copies of two human on

42:06

store shelves had to be like confiscated.

42:10

And then I think Microsoft got, got the

42:12

rights and gave it away. Yeah.

42:15

See that's what I'm saying. I don't know who owns the rights to any

42:17

of this stuff anymore. Um, but

42:20

you would need to negotiate with us. You would need to know.

42:23

Okay. So, uh, how

42:27

would you get them to make it? I don't know. They'd have to

42:29

be proven that there's a market that makes it worth their while.

42:32

I don't know that. Yeah. Or someone would have to

42:34

approach them and say, Hey, we'll do it for

42:37

no development cost to you and just pay you out this

42:39

percent and they would love it. I don't

42:41

know. Um,

42:44

they refiled the, the,

42:47

the trademark in 2020, but a

42:50

lot of that is probably just

42:52

because they didn't want to lose it. Yeah.

42:56

So. But remakes are a thing to

42:58

keep happening. A lot.

43:01

It's like, I mean, it's been the, it's

43:03

not, it's not like remakes or anything new. They've been doing them

43:05

for a while, but

43:07

it does seem like, especially

43:10

with like THQ Nordic and these, some of

43:12

these other companies that companies

43:14

are going ham. I'm trying to figure out

43:16

ways to sell their shit a second

43:18

time. Um, was there

43:21

an email that you wanted to read in that pain,

43:23

Anthony? Well, that was the, this was the remake one

43:25

that I want to talk about because I was

43:28

like, well, even like what you've been playing, right? Dead

43:30

rising is like a game that's getting a

43:32

remake. That's really cute. Dead rising is

43:34

getting a remake. Uh, you

43:37

know, it's been a, it's been, oh

43:40

Jesus Christ. I was like, it's

43:42

going to be 18 years. I was about to say it's been

43:44

10 years. And then I was like, wait a second. I

43:48

was living. Dead rising is old enough to vote as of

43:50

last month. As

43:55

Anthony rocks himself back and forth. with

44:00

that. What does the email say? Well,

44:03

it was the email asking about Eternal Darkness and how

44:05

do you motivate, how do you

44:07

make remakes happen? And I think there's an interesting

44:10

conversation there to have more broadly about how

44:13

do they decide when to do remakes? Like,

44:15

you know, 18 years or sometimes two years

44:17

later. So for

44:19

Eternal Darkness, I think it's tough

44:23

because so much of Eternal Darkness

44:25

was rooted in a specific era

44:27

of media presentation. Like,

44:31

a lot of what that game did was play with

44:33

your, the

44:35

sort of non-diegetic

44:39

elements of presentation,

44:42

right? Like TV stuff and like

44:44

playing with save game stuff. Yeah.

44:47

And a lot of stuff that just wouldn't work

44:49

in a modern context. And

44:54

also, you know, it's not like Eternal Darkness sold

44:56

that well. So

45:00

you know, like, demand is

45:02

like one of the first things that

45:04

come to mind. Like, is there demand

45:07

for a thing? Is

45:09

there like a good reason to do it?

45:11

I think is like the best place to

45:13

start and that can mean a lot of

45:15

different things. Yeah.

45:17

Ideally, if Eternal Darkness had had like a

45:20

successful franchise and made like three games, they

45:22

could have justified doing like a bundle or

45:24

something. But yeah,

45:26

I don't know. That feels like a really tough one for both

45:30

for is there enough of a market

45:32

there, but also for what Arthur said,

45:34

because a remake would actually have to account for

45:36

and either remove certain instances of

45:38

the psychosis stuff that did

45:41

things like restart the GameCube logo, or

45:43

you would have to like change them. So you couldn't just or

45:46

the volume thing on screen or, you know, right.

45:51

So there's a lot of things that just wouldn't

45:53

work. Yeah, damn.

45:56

I as for

45:58

other games, it just depends on the game.

46:03

But like, it's almost always,

46:05

is there an opportunity here? Or

46:08

can this create an

46:10

opportunity for us like,

46:13

you know, just going down the list, like

46:16

the Dead Space Remake as an example

46:18

was a desire

46:20

to capitalize on an IP

46:24

with some affection behind it with like

46:26

some nostalgia and name recognition behind it,

46:29

as well as to hopefully

46:31

onboard an entirely new team

46:35

about what made that game

46:37

special in the first place. Like,

46:41

how do you teach a

46:43

new developer that had nothing to do

46:45

with a game how to make that

46:47

game? Like, that's what

46:51

Gears of War Ultimate Edition was.

46:53

That was how can the Coalition learn

46:56

to make a Gears of War game?

47:00

Like a game that feels right, a game that the community

47:02

will accept. And

47:04

the easiest answer was

47:06

to go back and study

47:09

literally everything that made the original game

47:11

function and make it prettier. And,

47:16

you know, like, sometimes

47:19

it's a matter of this,

47:23

this, you know, I

47:27

think it gets complicated when you start going to

47:29

Sony's remakes. Because

47:31

there are some good reasons to do it

47:33

and some not. Like,

47:35

I know that The Last of Us gets a lot of shit,

47:37

but that's an example of a remake that actually made sense to

47:39

me. Going from PS3 to PS4? No,

47:44

because that was that was like a essentially

47:46

just like an upresed re-release. Are

47:49

you talking about the one that they did recently?

47:51

I'm talking about the PlayStation 5 and PC Last

47:54

of Us. Technical

47:56

problems notwithstanding, like that

47:58

is a game where The original

48:00

was 10 years old, right? It

48:06

was on two generations older hardware,

48:10

and it had not

48:12

held up in a particularly strong

48:14

way against both Last

48:16

of Us Part II and also as

48:18

a product for people who

48:20

see the show and get interested in the games to

48:22

go back to. Like,

48:25

it's a bad place to jump into those games.

48:28

You know, and also,

48:31

once again, the development process of

48:35

The Last of Us Part II was

48:37

so arduous and so long and

48:40

so fraught that a lot of

48:43

that studio left over the course of the development

48:45

of that game. Like, an

48:47

enormous amount of talent left Naughty Dog

48:49

during the making of Last

48:51

of Us Part II. And

48:55

a lot of people left while

48:58

they were finishing Uncharted 4. The

49:02

development environment at Naughty Dog was such

49:04

that they were hemorrhaging talent, and by

49:06

the time they were trying to ship The Last

49:09

of Us Part II and, you know, I don't know how

49:11

much of this you can confirm or deny or dispute

49:13

or agree with, Matt. Like, they were

49:15

hiring people from outside of the video game industry,

49:17

because that's all that was left to

49:19

hire to finish that game. And,

49:24

you know, at

49:26

a certain point, once the game ships,

49:29

then even more people leave. So,

49:34

you know, like, you have this core

49:36

of people that maybe have worked on a Naughty Dog game, that

49:38

have worked on a Last of Us game, but

49:40

you have so many new people to fill

49:42

that studio who

49:45

have no experience making a Naughty Dog product.

49:48

And in

49:50

some ways, it's also a sign

49:52

of sort of dysfunction at

49:54

Sony, because the word on the street was that

49:56

it was originally like Sony Bend that was gonna

49:58

work on that. So

50:01

that Naughty Dog as a studio could work

50:03

on something that wasn't uncharted to the last

50:05

of us. And then people at Naughty Dog

50:07

kind of flipped out and said, we

50:10

don't want other people to touch our toys. We

50:13

want to do it. And so they plucked it away. And,

50:18

you know, that

50:22

is stupid because if you've got to let go at a

50:24

certain point, either you're making

50:26

these games forever or someone else is going to make

50:28

new ones of it while you get to do something

50:30

new. You don't get

50:32

to hold on to everything. Just

50:34

like the game that I

50:37

would I honestly would

50:39

be surprised isn't getting a remaster

50:41

is uncharted. Because

50:45

that is a now fairly more series.

50:48

Yeah, the original uncharted. That's

50:50

like a more than series or like a soft

50:52

reboot from a different team. Because

50:56

there's not that that uncharted brain trust

50:58

isn't there anymore. Yeah. And

51:01

uncharted never sold as well as last of us

51:03

did. So, you know,

51:06

what do you do with that? But

51:10

then, you know, like

51:13

there's other stuff where sometimes these games just don't

51:15

make enough money. And.

51:20

I think that the Last of Us Part Two remake. Or

51:25

remastered is as a prime example of that.

51:28

That's a game that shouldn't have needed a remaster,

51:30

but got one. And

51:34

I think it's because Sony has put themselves

51:36

in a situation where selling 10 million of

51:39

something isn't enough. And

51:42

that that's a dangerous place to be in. And

51:47

when you're not watching on PC, like the. You

51:50

know. I

51:52

think you're putting yourself in a position where you

51:54

have to start scrambling, looking for ways to make

51:57

money on development stuff that you've done already. Yeah,

52:00

I think to one of the things that

52:02

I I think people get drawn into the

52:04

idea of remasters, too is If

52:07

it was something you skip the first time around

52:09

because maybe you heard word of mouth about bugs

52:12

Or you heard word of mouth about like

52:14

other DLC was the best part Sometimes those

52:16

remasters include everything and so you're like,

52:18

oh I'm getting the best experience. It's now finally the

52:20

time and That may not always be

52:22

true, but that's like the mindset. I think that draws a lot

52:25

of people It definitely works on me sometimes or I'm like, oh,

52:27

yeah I should go back and play that because it's the

52:29

it's the the final version or whatever. I'm

52:31

like, oh perfect. Yeah, you know Yeah,

52:34

I'm being rewarded for waiting in a way Or

52:38

this is how the game was always supposed to

52:40

be it's a director's cut man exactly Yes, it

52:43

feels like I'm getting the director's cut. Yeah, and

52:45

they will sometimes beauty with all the time. They didn't

52:47

have and yes Well,

52:50

sometimes a remake or a remaster is

52:52

Kind of

52:55

like playing the version the way that you remember

52:57

it in your head. Yeah You

53:00

know It's like because it looked a lot prettier back when

53:02

you played it in the time and like you play you

53:04

go back and you Play sometimes you you know We've all

53:06

had this experience where you go and you play back an

53:08

old game and you play an old game that you May

53:11

or may not have fond memories of but you know the

53:13

ones you have fond memories of you know Like you tend

53:15

to be like, oh, okay I remember it being this way

53:17

and feeling this way and it felt so good to play

53:19

and it looked so pretty then you go Backing a plane

53:22

and like yeah, this isn't what

53:24

I remember But the remaster might give you the

53:26

opportunity to have that same kind of experience as

53:29

you remember it as opposed to how it actually was

53:32

Yeah, and I and I

53:34

think thus far we've had a lot of

53:36

that like with Gears Ultimate and with like

53:38

the Last of Us Part 1 remastered and

53:41

also Dead Rising Deluxe

53:45

remaster I think that that's

53:47

all true and Also

53:49

Dead Rising Deluxe remaster means that it gets to

53:51

be a doctor doctor But

53:56

I do there are rumors this

53:58

week of so near Masters where I

54:00

just don't think that that's going to be the case. I

54:04

think that there is like a

54:07

a dwindling return on investment for

54:10

increased graphical fidelity, especially with Sony

54:12

first party stuff, because like the

54:15

Sony first party secret for

54:17

the PS4 era was that

54:20

everything was really expensive. And

54:22

it turns out that the best way to make a

54:25

game look really good is to spend a lot of

54:27

fucking money and time going

54:29

over every inch of it to like make

54:31

a bunch of bespoke assets and

54:34

make sure that everything is perfect.

54:37

Yeah, that does make it play better, but it does make it

54:39

look better. But the thing is

54:41

when you like manually light everything that way,

54:44

which is how Last of Us Part Two

54:46

was lit, everything was manually lit. When

54:50

you go back and say, but now we've added real time

54:52

lighting and real time shadows and all this other stuff on

54:54

top of it's like it doesn't

54:56

look better. It already

54:59

looked as perfect as hundreds of millions of

55:01

dollars could make it look like you

55:04

did it. And we already

55:06

did the thing. The

55:10

rumor this week, like the most reliable rumor, the

55:12

one that's been floating around for a long time

55:14

is that we're getting a Horizon Zero Dawn remake,

55:17

which that

55:20

is a 2016 game or 2017 game. I

55:27

think that's a 2017 game. That

55:30

is very recent for

55:33

a remaster, like a seven year old game. Forbidden

55:37

West. I'm

55:39

looking this up just so that. Sorry,

55:43

no, I'm looking up Zero Dawn because Forbidden West

55:45

was the second one. Zero Dawn was

55:48

February 28, 2017. Like we're seven years

55:50

out from that. That is like a

55:52

really, that's

55:54

like really soon. And that game also

55:56

got a PC version that was kind

55:59

of remastery. Yeah, as

56:01

well as like a PlayStation

56:03

5 patch that was

56:05

a little remastery. And

56:08

then the other thing that surfaced this week

56:11

in part because like,

56:15

Astro Bot is full of references to

56:17

other PlayStation games and one of the

56:19

bots is... Aloy. Well,

56:23

yes, but also the dude from

56:25

Days Gone. Oh, yeah. Don't

56:28

remember his name. I don't either. Sam

56:31

Whitworth is the guy that acted him, but is

56:33

it Deke? Deacon. Good

56:38

job, Arthur. The

56:42

original producer on that game, the one who

56:44

got who got canceled because he's a fucking

56:47

dumb ass, was complaining

56:49

on Twitter that that

56:51

game has been forgotten by Sony except to have

56:53

a bot dressed like him in the

56:55

game and how disrespectful that is, which

56:59

got people talking again. And then another rumor sort

57:01

of sprang up and started gaining some heat that

57:03

the other game that Sony has a remaster for

57:05

in development is Days Gone. Which

57:09

was a 2018 title, if I remember correctly.

57:12

I feel like it necessarily needs one. It still looks pretty good. I

57:15

mean, it looks pretty good playing it. 2019.

57:19

That game is five years

57:21

old. Wow.

57:25

And with these, it feels different. These

57:27

feel different. And with

57:31

Days Gone, I think more obviously, that is

57:33

a game that didn't sell well. Like,

57:37

eventually it moved up to nine million players,

57:39

but like they gave that game away really

57:41

fast. I played that game for free because

57:44

it was like a PlayStation, buy a PlayStation

57:46

5 and it

57:48

just came. Yeah, it was like part

57:50

of the like before the PlayStation Plus subscription stuff,

57:52

there was like a whole catalog of PS4

57:55

games that were just free when you had a PlayStation 5.

57:57

And it was also a PS Plus game. Right.

58:01

Yeah. D.K. Is the name

58:03

of the main character Deacon St. John, which wow.

58:06

I remembered his friend's name, Bozer. Bozer,

58:09

man. That

58:12

game went on sale really fast. It went on PS

58:14

Plus really fast. That was a game that was in

58:16

development for a really long time that did not sell

58:18

well. And

58:21

you know, again, it's another game where

58:23

they clearly spent a lot of time and money on

58:25

making that game look good. But

58:28

it went on PS4. Like it looked great. But

58:31

that wasn't it looked very generic. And

58:36

I apologize for anyone whose feelings I hurt with

58:38

it. But what I was calling it was the

58:40

least of us. But

58:44

you know, like not for lack of trying. Yeah,

58:47

I think that game has some really

58:49

cool horde mechanics that made it cool. But

58:53

it was a commercial failure. It was. And

58:57

it like crippled that studio. So

58:59

you know, like wanting to actually get a

59:01

return on investment from that, I guess, makes

59:03

sense. And PlayStation audiences have

59:06

demonstrated at least some willingness to

59:10

buy those games. And

59:12

I'm going to be honest and say

59:14

something that will not happen. And that

59:16

will make PlayStation fans angry. But

59:19

it's true. If they released a

59:21

days gone remaster on every system, including Xbox,

59:23

I think they might actually make their money

59:25

back. That's

59:28

not going to happen. But yeah. But

59:31

the other rumor, you know, Horizon

59:34

Zero Dawn as a

59:36

remake, like one

59:38

of the funniest things I've ever heard about that

59:41

game is that it is the video game industry

59:43

equivalent of an industry plant. I

59:47

don't get it that term. An

59:49

industry plant in the music business

59:51

is a apparently independent artist that

59:54

actually is like

59:57

a record label, like sort of

59:59

manufactured success. Yeah,

1:00:01

they like they like pay

1:00:03

for promotion and basically like make it

1:00:05

a success. And

1:00:10

that that is like the thing that people

1:00:13

say about Horizon like Horizon is an industry

1:00:15

plant. I mean, how can it be a

1:00:17

plant though and it's only first party? I don't know. Yeah.

1:00:20

I have to wait is that

1:00:23

it seems like Sony is so desperately

1:00:25

trying to make Horizon like this big

1:00:27

pop culture thing. And

1:00:30

it just like it never has been.

1:00:36

Like it's always it's always been a little

1:00:38

weird how hard Sony pushes Horizon as a

1:00:40

game that like there's something

1:00:42

about that game that doesn't to me doesn't

1:00:45

sort of register that way. And

1:00:48

I played all of them. Yeah.

1:00:55

Retelling the fucking Lego Horizon game like I

1:00:57

don't I'm not generally a

1:00:59

who asked for this kind of guy, but like I

1:01:01

don't know. I

1:01:03

would like to be in the room when someone green lit

1:01:05

a Lego Horizon game. Yeah.

1:01:10

Retelling the beloved story of the

1:01:12

first Horizons game. I don't

1:01:14

I don't understand. I

1:01:19

somebody was somebody who's really good in their

1:01:21

pitch meeting. I

1:01:23

don't think Horizon has ever been as successful

1:01:25

as Sony wanted to not organically because that's

1:01:27

another game that went on sale kind of

1:01:29

fast that they

1:01:31

gave away on PS Plus that

1:01:35

they also just took off of PlayStation

1:01:37

Plus whatever

1:01:39

the subscription library

1:01:41

I think I forget what they

1:01:43

called that. I know. Yeah. But

1:01:46

that makes me think that that's going to get

1:01:48

announced and happen probably pretty and

1:01:51

it got rated. So.

1:01:55

So in that case, I think that it comes down to

1:01:57

those games never having made the money that Sony wanted. to

1:02:00

and them wanting to. Like

1:02:03

add to their bottom line without having

1:02:05

to greenlight a new five year project.

1:02:08

Yeah. And I think

1:02:10

that that's going to be very

1:02:12

important for Sony moving forward, because.

1:02:14

Every every wave of

1:02:16

Sony titles, like another year has been added

1:02:19

onto their development time. Like.

1:02:24

God of War Ragnarok was a four year game

1:02:26

after God of War was a three year game.

1:02:29

Yeah. Forbidden West was

1:02:31

a four. It was a four. It was

1:02:33

a five year game. After

1:02:36

Zero Dawn was like a three and a

1:02:38

half year game. You

1:02:40

know, like it was four

1:02:42

years between the release of The Last of Us Part Two

1:02:44

and. No,

1:02:47

like three and a half years between The Last of Us

1:02:49

Part Two and a remake of The Last of Us. So

1:02:56

we're just hitting a point where it's taking them too long to

1:02:58

make these games like we're. We're

1:03:01

for we're more than four years since Ghost

1:03:03

of Tsushima. As

1:03:06

an example, and all the rumors are that

1:03:08

Ghost of Tsushima is their next game. So

1:03:11

I mean, everybody should just start

1:03:14

using AI to make all their

1:03:16

assets and save all the development

1:03:18

time. Problem solved. Cut

1:03:20

me a check. I just consulted you into

1:03:23

a profitable video game business. Yeah,

1:03:25

asset creation isn't what's making these games take

1:03:27

too long. You

1:03:30

don't think so? No, I think it's

1:03:32

constant change is a direction. I

1:03:34

think it's asset creation as well. Asset

1:03:36

creation is incredibly

1:03:39

time consuming compared to where it was even

1:03:41

like 10 years ago. I

1:03:43

but you look at something like

1:03:45

The Last of Us Part Two, which has a

1:03:47

ton of bespoke assets, but they like threw away

1:03:49

like half a game. Oh, sure. I'm not saying

1:03:51

there isn't a direction issue that causes as well,

1:03:53

but games definitely take longer because of art fidelity.

1:03:57

I I think project management is

1:03:59

the single. biggest problem.

1:04:02

And I would point to Jedi Survivor

1:04:04

as like the counter example of a

1:04:07

game that had an enormous variety of

1:04:09

assets and was a

1:04:12

huge game and successful and took three and a

1:04:14

half years. Yeah, which is helpful when you're making

1:04:16

a sequel and you know exactly what it is.

1:04:19

I agree. But I but I but

1:04:21

all of these games are sequels that

1:04:23

are not particularly different from their predecessors

1:04:25

like the last of us part two

1:04:29

is the last of us. Forbidden

1:04:31

West is more horizon like God of

1:04:33

War Ragnarok is God of War 2018.

1:04:35

Like these are not games that like

1:04:37

really blow it out with like bold

1:04:39

new mechanics or new directions like they're

1:04:41

more and they're taking

1:04:43

longer. Yeah. And I

1:04:45

think some of that's because there's probably a lot

1:04:47

more varied environments and like number

1:04:50

of rocks they use and all these things

1:04:52

like assets

1:04:54

take for fucking ever. Which

1:04:57

is why I don't know how many people. I

1:05:00

also think that Sony's first party games are too

1:05:02

long. Like

1:05:06

they're they're all too long like God of War

1:05:08

Ragnarok is both too long and not long enough

1:05:10

for the story they try to tell because they

1:05:12

didn't want to make two games. Yeah.

1:05:17

Yeah. I was thinking that like you know Space Marine probably

1:05:19

took me eight hours to beat right

1:05:21

around there. And I was like that was good. I'm

1:05:24

glad that game didn't go on for. Yeah.

1:05:26

Same. You know like a ton much more

1:05:29

longer. That felt like the length

1:05:31

that felt good for that. I

1:05:33

honestly I would have made that game like an

1:05:35

hour shorter but I understand why they didn't. Sure.

1:05:38

I'm just I just mean the sense that it

1:05:40

was like you know like for instance when I

1:05:42

played alien isolation that was the game where

1:05:44

I got like nine hours in and I was like dude

1:05:46

what's got to be near the end right. Matter

1:05:51

of fact you were about the halfway mark.

1:05:53

Exactly. I was like that was so hard

1:05:55

for me. Yeah.

1:05:57

I was actually for some reason I was

1:05:59

rereading. a re-review of that game

1:06:01

at Kotaku, like that Luke

1:06:04

Plunkett, right? And I, and I don't, I'm

1:06:06

not like a Luke Plunkett

1:06:08

and I don't agree on a lot, but

1:06:12

his re-review of his like, man, how did I sleep on

1:06:14

this? Like the tone is so good. The graphics are great.

1:06:16

Like the vibe is so strong. And then he got like

1:06:18

halfway into it and he was like, why the fuck is

1:06:21

this game still going? And he was like, hitting it by

1:06:23

the end. And I was like, that

1:06:26

is exactly what happened with that game. Yep.

1:06:30

It goes from an alien game to an

1:06:33

aliens game, but without any guns. Yeah.

1:06:37

Yeah. Yeah.

1:06:39

I didn't get to the aliens part.

1:06:41

I was still just engaging with alien

1:06:43

and androids, but

1:06:46

yeah, I don't know. Like some

1:06:50

remakes are there to try to revive

1:06:52

an IP and also to teach new

1:06:55

people, either at the same studio or at another studio, how

1:06:57

to make it. Um,

1:07:01

and some are there to take

1:07:03

advantage of development work. That's already

1:07:05

been done to try to break

1:07:07

even or like boost a publisher's

1:07:09

bottom line,

1:07:14

like that's, that's kind of it,

1:07:17

right? Yeah. Yeah. And

1:07:19

then sometimes it's

1:07:22

to modernize

1:07:24

or make make available

1:07:27

and appreciable by modern audiences

1:07:29

and old game. And that's

1:07:31

what, um, night

1:07:33

dive does basically with

1:07:38

like quake and dark forces and system

1:07:40

shock and that stuff. That's like, how

1:07:42

can modern audiences appreciate this old thing?

1:07:45

Yeah. Yeah. Hmm.

1:07:49

Yeah. Just

1:07:52

don't only like new things. That's

1:07:54

the way new

1:07:57

things are always original. Old things are. nostalgia

1:08:00

for anything? No, no, no, especially

1:08:02

if it's at least, if it's like ancient, like came

1:08:04

from the 90s. I

1:08:08

saw a video recently that was like kids talking about

1:08:10

what they think is old. And

1:08:12

it was like, oh my God, don't do

1:08:15

that yourself. And they were like, definitely anything

1:08:17

before the year 2000, like what the hell?

1:08:20

And I was like, and as they

1:08:22

were talking, I just felt like I was like, that

1:08:25

scene in Terminator where there

1:08:27

it gets blown up by the nuclear bomb

1:08:29

and their skeleton. That's what I felt like

1:08:31

was happening to me as I kept

1:08:33

on going. I was like, oh no. Well,

1:08:36

when you think about it, it makes sense because like

1:08:39

I, you know, when I was a kid in the

1:08:41

eighties and nineties, I thought anything from the seventies and

1:08:43

sixties was old. Totally. So we

1:08:45

use to have flashback dances and the flashback

1:08:47

dances were all 70s stuff, you know, dress

1:08:50

up like disco, so yep.

1:08:55

And it worked because you could go to your dad and be like,

1:08:57

dad, I want that old shirt that you have hanging in the

1:08:59

closet. It's like really gross.

1:09:01

That's not old. That's my favorite shirt. I

1:09:03

know. Yeah, that's

1:09:05

where we're at. But

1:09:09

Arthur, did you like Dead Rising? All that

1:09:11

to say. Dead Rising

1:09:13

Deluxe Remaster. Yeah. Did

1:09:15

you like Dead Rising when it came out? I

1:09:17

did, but I hated the save

1:09:19

system so much. Okay.

1:09:22

Same. Same. And

1:09:24

like speaking of a game that went on too long. So

1:09:28

in Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, it saves every

1:09:30

time you load into a new zone. Like

1:09:32

it almost saves. Oh my God. Okay, well

1:09:35

that actually might make that game finally playable.

1:09:37

Yeah. There's also

1:09:39

a control, like a

1:09:42

more modern control thing where you can move while you're

1:09:44

aiming. Okay. But

1:09:46

when you fire a gun, like you can't move for a

1:09:48

second. So like

1:09:50

you can't like slowly sidestep

1:09:54

and shoot, but

1:09:56

you can move, then shoot, then move. I

1:10:04

mostly I'm enjoying it. I find that

1:10:06

that save system does sort of allow

1:10:08

for a lot more margin for error.

1:10:14

And you know, I've been careful and

1:10:16

methodical and have generally sort of like

1:10:18

just like blasted through it, like

1:10:22

without a lot of problems. But

1:10:26

there is a point I think in that game

1:10:28

where it like starts like piling

1:10:30

optional cases on top of you and

1:10:34

very close proximity with like a very limited amount

1:10:36

of time. And

1:10:39

I have trapped myself in a situation

1:10:41

where I have like eight fucking people

1:10:43

with me. And

1:10:47

I can either go outside in the courtyard

1:10:49

where there are convicts driving a Jeep with

1:10:51

a fucking machine gun. Oh, that thing. That's

1:10:53

the fight that made me quit that game.

1:10:56

Yeah. Or I can

1:10:59

try to go through the crowded

1:11:01

open air area next to like

1:11:03

the hardware store that is full

1:11:05

of a ton of zombies and also a

1:11:07

cult of psycho humans and

1:11:11

try to get your eight people lose

1:11:13

all of these people. Yeah. Or

1:11:16

I can reload and

1:11:18

just avoid any of it. Yeah.

1:11:22

But I have to make that decision now because I was

1:11:25

like beating my head against that for like 45 minutes

1:11:27

trying to figure out how

1:11:29

to do it. And it just wasn't it wasn't

1:11:31

working. And part of this is because there's

1:11:34

a boss you fight this like crazy police

1:11:36

woman that has like four people or five

1:11:38

people chained up in like

1:11:40

a jewelry store. And

1:11:42

when you defeat her, then

1:11:44

you have to go around and free all of

1:11:47

these people. But then you have fucking five

1:11:49

people, none of whom can carry a

1:11:51

gun because Capcom was sexist and

1:11:54

they're all like scared women who can't

1:11:56

carry weapons. 18

1:12:01

years ago. Not everyone you find is like that, but yes,

1:12:03

it is an 18 year old video game. Um,

1:12:05

18 years here, it doesn't

1:12:07

seem like that long, doesn't seem like that age. It

1:12:09

doesn't, but that was, if we go back now, we'd

1:12:11

look at the magazine ads and stuff of that era

1:12:14

and be like, Jesus Christ. Yeah.

1:12:16

This was the era of like

1:12:18

the, the mostly naked victim

1:12:21

in a hit man blood money ad. Yeah.

1:12:24

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and

1:12:27

also if I recall the one

1:12:29

up show conversation about Tomb Raider,

1:12:33

the Tomb Raider game that came out in 2006 where

1:12:35

people were complaining about her ass or

1:12:40

people complaining about people complaining about her ass.

1:12:42

So it was a different time. Yeah,

1:12:44

it was. There was a one up

1:12:46

show episode about it. I

1:12:49

wasn't on that one. No, I think that

1:12:51

was right before your time. That was before

1:12:54

my time. Um,

1:12:56

I don't know, it plays better. It

1:12:58

looks pretty good. Like it's not

1:13:00

like perfect, but it looks pretty good. Um,

1:13:02

it's still, I think

1:13:05

that they were still sort of like struggling

1:13:07

with tone a little bit on that because

1:13:09

they're like just totally ridiculous things and like

1:13:11

deadly serious things. Um,

1:13:14

and I think that they got much better about that

1:13:16

and dead rising too. Um,

1:13:20

but part of this also to me seems like

1:13:22

an experiment a little bit with the, the, RE

1:13:26

engine. Oh, it

1:13:28

was just done in the, oh, interesting. Yeah. Huh?

1:13:31

That's a true remake. I thought it was just going to be

1:13:34

like a up-resing, but yeah.

1:13:36

Yeah. Let me double

1:13:38

check just to make sure a dead rising. I

1:13:40

mean, it wouldn't surprise me. Capcom's been using

1:13:42

that for everything. ReMaster. Yeah. Engine.

1:13:45

I got to wonder if the, uh, the dual

1:13:47

change saws after you beat the clown, is that

1:13:49

still like the, the nuclear weapon that like, cause

1:13:51

basically once I beat the clown and I got

1:13:54

the dual change saws, that was the only weapon

1:13:56

I used for the rest of that game. You

1:14:00

have to beat him to be able to do that? Yes.

1:14:03

Okay. You have to beat the killer clown to get the

1:14:05

dual chainsaws. Yeah,

1:14:08

I didn't fight the clown because fuck that guy.

1:14:12

Yeah, it's a very engine. And

1:14:14

in this case, it seems like both

1:14:16

an opportunity to try to like reboot

1:14:18

the residue or the Dead Rising franchise

1:14:20

and see if people have any interest.

1:14:22

And also this seems like a technical

1:14:25

experiment, which I think a lot

1:14:27

of Capcom stuff actually is doing

1:14:29

because it's like this is the first time with the

1:14:31

RE engine that I've seen this many things on screen at

1:14:33

once. That's what I was thinking. A

1:14:35

lot of it feels like sometimes they do these remakes to

1:14:37

determine if this is like a

1:14:39

viable tech exercises, viable business platform like RE2.

1:14:42

They're like, great. Now here's RE3. And

1:14:45

should we keep doing these other ones? I don't know. You

1:14:47

know, Veronica. Oh, geez. I,

1:14:51

I will be amazed if Code Veronica ever

1:14:53

gets a remaster. That game is so long

1:14:55

and so much bigger than the other games. There's

1:14:58

also a very, very tricky

1:15:01

trans slash gender

1:15:05

storyline in that game. I believe you. And

1:15:07

I played the entire game. I have no

1:15:09

memory of that whatsoever. My

1:15:12

brother, my sister, my brother, my sister.

1:15:14

Nope. Don't remember that. I

1:15:16

believe you. The

1:15:18

main villain in that game is like

1:15:20

a dude is like a like a

1:15:22

aristocrat dude who also I think is

1:15:25

like cosplaying as his sister. Yeah,

1:15:28

I guess I don't, I don't remember that at all. I

1:15:30

mean, I think I played Code Veronica like, like

1:15:32

my second year in college. It's been a

1:15:35

long time. So and

1:15:38

you are high the entire time. No, if I

1:15:40

definitely was not, I know. I

1:15:45

have no idea that honestly. So here's a little

1:15:47

thing. Right. Other than of all

1:15:49

the classic Resident Evil games, that's the only one I've played

1:15:51

from start to finish. I've never played RE1 from

1:15:53

start to finish, RE2, RE3. Just

1:15:56

Code Veronica. Me either. Weird. Okay.

1:16:00

Why that one just because it was the one that

1:16:02

was available? It was that I think at the time,

1:16:04

if I remember, Code Veronica came to me. Somebody had

1:16:06

a Saturn or somebody had a Dreamcast? It came to

1:16:08

the original Xbox, if I remember right. And

1:16:13

my roommate, Joe, had an original Xbox and had bought it.

1:16:15

And so I started playing it and I was like, yeah,

1:16:17

I guess I'm gonna finish this. That was why

1:16:19

I ended up playing a lot of games like Shenmue 2. That

1:16:22

was another one that came out to original Xbox and

1:16:24

so I started playing it because

1:16:27

I was curious about Xbox games and there

1:16:29

you go. Yeah. Whatever

1:16:32

the zombie one, zombies. What's

1:16:35

that one, Arthur? The zombie, the only other game made in

1:16:37

the Halo engine ever. Stubbs,

1:16:40

the zombie. Stubbs, yeah. Oh.

1:16:44

That was made in the Halo engine? Yep. Mm-hmm.

1:16:47

Code Veronica came out on the PlayStation 2. Oh,

1:16:51

okay. So maybe someone just had the PlayStation 2

1:16:53

version in our house. Huh, yeah. Okay,

1:16:55

that's where I played it then. Because

1:16:58

it was the only, well, no, it was like the

1:17:00

second Resident Evil game that didn't

1:17:02

launch on PlayStation, the first one being Zero. Oh,

1:17:05

wow. Yeah, Zero was-

1:17:07

That was a Nintendo 64 game. Yeah.

1:17:13

But the rumor is that there

1:17:15

is development happening on a Code Veronica remake. I

1:17:17

just don't know how the fuck they

1:17:20

would do that. Huh. And

1:17:23

also possibly Zero. Zero

1:17:27

is a game that I completely forgot existed. Yes.

1:17:30

I mean, they're running out of Resident Evil games to make.

1:17:34

Yeah. Because like, what are they? Like,

1:17:36

they remake Five. Five is

1:17:38

also tricky. Five's,

1:17:41

yeah, it is tricky, but it has been

1:17:43

long enough that I would say Five. Sure.

1:17:46

They could make it visually quite different.

1:17:50

But then you got six. Let's

1:17:52

just, let's just- Nah,

1:17:55

do that. Let's not do that. That

1:17:57

game is such an enigma. I would

1:17:59

love to see- Jason Schreier, I write a

1:18:01

book about that. How did that happen after RE4 and

1:18:03

5? How did they make 6? So

1:18:06

bad. Was like a post- it was a

1:18:08

post- uncharted world, right? Yeah.

1:18:10

Just... I

1:18:13

guess, but still. Just a horrific piece

1:18:15

of shit. I don't know. I-

1:18:18

to go back to Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster for

1:18:20

a second, I- it like- it changes enough stuff,

1:18:22

or like adds enough quality of life stuff that

1:18:24

I think that like, it

1:18:26

is more accessible and playable than it's

1:18:28

ever been. While not

1:18:31

getting rid of a lot of the bullshit in that

1:18:33

game that is frustrating from a playing

1:18:35

it point of view. Right. I

1:18:40

think it's neat. I think that like people were probably more

1:18:42

primed in 2024 to appreciate that

1:18:44

game than in 2006. Yeah.

1:18:49

I would like it if they did- honestly,

1:18:51

I'd like it if they did Dead Rising 2 as well. I

1:18:56

knew Dead Rising 2, I fell off pretty hard.

1:18:58

I remember being super excited because I did

1:19:01

power through all of the shit

1:19:03

that I hated about Dead Rising 1 and I beat it, and

1:19:05

Dead Rising 2 came out and I jumped in and I think

1:19:07

I played it for a total of maybe five or six hours

1:19:09

and never went back. The

1:19:11

funny thing is Dead Rising 2 is what like a lot

1:19:13

of people know the series for, because it had the weapon

1:19:16

crafting. And also you had

1:19:18

that really excellent like free Xbox

1:19:21

Live thing. Demo. The K-Zero

1:19:23

thing they did. Yeah. There was like

1:19:25

the prelude. That thing was rad. It was so

1:19:27

good. And

1:19:30

then Dead Rising 3 I actually thought was

1:19:32

an incredibly visually impressive game, and

1:19:34

actually like probably my favorite Xbox

1:19:36

One launch game. But

1:19:40

that's when people started shitting on Dead Rising, and I

1:19:42

think that that has no small- isn't

1:19:45

no small part due to the fact

1:19:47

that that's when Xbox started paying for

1:19:49

the development of those games. Oh.

1:19:51

I didn't realize that. What do you

1:19:54

mean? I guess that makes sense because it wasn't a four. It

1:19:56

was the one that was like very Xbox. So,

1:20:02

Dead Rising 2 was Blue

1:20:04

Castle, like the Canadian, the

1:20:06

Vancouver team for Capcom that made

1:20:08

it. And then Dead

1:20:10

Rising 2 did OK but not amazing. And

1:20:14

so, for Dead Rising 3, Microsoft paid

1:20:16

for all of it. And

1:20:20

you know, it launched as an Xbox One launch game, and same

1:20:23

thing with Dead Rising 4. They paid

1:20:25

for all of it. And then when Microsoft

1:20:28

stopped paying for Dead Rising games is when

1:20:30

Blue Castle got shut down. So,

1:20:37

I would like to see a Dead Rising

1:20:40

2 remake as well if we're doing these,

1:20:42

but we'll see what happens. Let's

1:20:46

see how well this one does, I guess. How

1:20:51

satisfactory 1.0, Matt. Yeah,

1:20:54

I haven't played in a long time and I'm like,

1:20:56

oh geez, do I have time for this? I

1:20:58

don't know. I hadn't played in a long time either.

1:21:02

But you know, we brought it up in

1:21:04

my other friend group because

1:21:06

my buddy Chris, who passed away, I've talked about

1:21:09

several times, that was a game that he loved

1:21:11

to death and that we all played together a

1:21:13

ton. And so,

1:21:16

we were kind of like, we have to play this, right?

1:21:19

Like those of us who did play were like, yeah, I

1:21:21

think we have to. So I went and I rented a

1:21:23

dedicated server and yeah, we hadn't

1:21:26

played in, I want to say four

1:21:29

or five years, maybe longer. No,

1:21:32

because it's been in development. It's been in development

1:21:34

for like five, six years, right? So it hasn't

1:21:37

been out that long. I

1:21:39

think the last one we played was like beta

1:21:42

seven, something like

1:21:44

that. But anyway,

1:21:48

I honestly think that that is

1:21:50

one of the all time great

1:21:53

names of a video game ever satisfactory

1:21:58

because it's a

1:22:00

game. about building satisfying factories

1:22:02

and it is incredibly satisfying

1:22:04

when you get your production

1:22:07

pipelines in order and everything

1:22:09

is running at maximum efficiency and you take

1:22:11

advantage of all the things that that game

1:22:14

can do and the 1.0

1:22:16

release is it it's

1:22:20

it is a true 1.0 release you know

1:22:22

it's not like they it's

1:22:24

not like they released it early and called at 1.0 it's

1:22:27

like it's been in early access

1:22:29

forever and the game

1:22:31

engine feels incredibly solid the

1:22:34

it feels like they've got the

1:22:36

tech figured out now you know

1:22:38

I haven't like we

1:22:40

haven't gotten to a point where we've

1:22:43

run like such a massive factory that

1:22:46

you know it's like we're trying to

1:22:48

see if we can break the server

1:22:50

with the amount of conveyor belts we're

1:22:52

running everywhere but sure the just everything

1:22:54

seems to run better in general and

1:22:58

you know I rented a dedicated server through you

1:23:00

know one of those one of those hosting companies

1:23:02

that I have that now because that means that

1:23:05

you know there was definitely times that people wanted

1:23:07

to keep playing before and I would just be

1:23:09

like well I'm gonna leave my

1:23:11

computer on and leave me yeah and I

1:23:13

woke up one time and they're

1:23:15

like sorry when you logged back in we built the factory

1:23:17

around you because you ended up standing in a place that

1:23:20

we needed and so like I

1:23:22

became like an obstruction for building

1:23:24

that's cool that

1:23:28

actually is interesting to me because dedicated server

1:23:30

costs are usually pretty minimal yeah

1:23:33

exactly I think the service I'm paying for

1:23:35

is like 12 bucks a month

1:23:37

and like eight people can connect simultaneously which

1:23:39

is more than we usually have

1:23:41

on it in one time and

1:23:45

like we started in a new area that none of

1:23:47

us had played which is the grasslands biome which I

1:23:49

guess is like it's the biome that they recommend like

1:23:52

you start in that and the other desert biome or

1:23:54

the two places they recommend you start in but I

1:23:56

don't think any of us had ever actually started in

1:23:58

the grasslands before So that's

1:24:00

been really cool. They've done

1:24:02

a ton of tuning of

1:24:05

where nodes are placed and the value

1:24:07

in those nodes. And so

1:24:11

one really interesting thing with the development of Satisfactory

1:24:13

is that I can't remember what beta version or

1:24:15

what early access version, but at some point they

1:24:17

decided that they were no longer going to break

1:24:19

your saves. Like a

1:24:22

new version would come out and your old factory would

1:24:24

still load in and it would still do everything that

1:24:26

it was doing. With

1:24:29

the 1.0 release, they're like, OK, we did move some

1:24:31

nodes around. We changed the values on some of the

1:24:33

nodes that you have to put your miners on. And

1:24:36

the way the game works is there's miners

1:24:38

which will, there's mining nodes that you can

1:24:40

put a miner on and they will essentially

1:24:42

just mine infinite resources. Like it's

1:24:44

not limited like it is in some games. Like

1:24:46

there will be, it's a fully

1:24:49

realized open world 3D game and it'll

1:24:51

have these places on the ground that

1:24:53

you find where resources are and you

1:24:55

have to build some kind of extraction

1:24:57

device on those resources. But those resources

1:24:59

are then infinite. And then the

1:25:01

game isn't about like resource

1:25:04

management. So much as it is a

1:25:06

game about logistics and logistics management, like

1:25:09

building your power supplies. Like you start out

1:25:11

with bio reactors where you have to like

1:25:13

literally running around chopping trees and gathering leaves

1:25:16

and feeding them into machines to like burn

1:25:18

and generate power. And then you move on to coal

1:25:20

and then you move on to oil. And

1:25:23

like the whole

1:25:26

thing about this game is that it has

1:25:28

a very cool art style that fits in with

1:25:30

the whole vibe of like being a

1:25:33

science fiction quest on a

1:25:36

planet that's out there in the

1:25:38

universe. You're ostensibly trying to save humanity and you

1:25:40

go down as workers to exploit the resources on

1:25:42

this ADM planet and send them back

1:25:44

up on a space elevator. And in the

1:25:46

1.0 release, I don't know if they had this

1:25:48

in later beta versions, but on the 1.0 release you

1:25:50

send up the space elevator and you can see a

1:25:53

space station in the sky. And so like

1:25:55

every time you see. Yeah, that wasn't in

1:25:57

like past versions. I don't know if they added it

1:25:59

in like beta. to eight or nine or something like that, but

1:26:01

this is the first time we've seen it. And

1:26:03

the goal is the way you

1:26:05

unlock certain phases of tech is

1:26:09

that you have to build, you have to

1:26:11

use your factories and your production pipelines to

1:26:14

build enough of certain items that you then load

1:26:16

into the space elevator and you send up the

1:26:18

space elevator. And now when you send those loads

1:26:20

up to the space elevator, which unlocks new phases

1:26:22

of tech, the space station way

1:26:24

up in the sky expands and

1:26:27

it starts building itself out. So it's like you're

1:26:29

gradually building a space station by the stuff that

1:26:31

you send up there. Yeah, none of that. That

1:26:33

was just sending stuff up to the space elevator

1:26:35

before it was just like sending it to God.

1:26:38

Who knows what? Yeah, exactly. Yep. And

1:26:42

it looks so cool that last night when

1:26:44

we moved on to phase two to

1:26:48

send up the space elevator, like I said, okay,

1:26:50

phase two is ready to go. Let's all get

1:26:52

on at the same time so we can watch

1:26:54

it happen. Because it's actually an event now. Because

1:26:57

it goes up there and you can just see

1:26:59

the space station just building out there like way

1:27:01

above the atmosphere. And it's incredibly cool looking. It's

1:27:03

a really fun animation. And I

1:27:05

would say that's another thing I've noticed about this game

1:27:07

is that the animations seem like they've improved across the

1:27:09

board. Like your assemblers, the way

1:27:11

that they're assembling things, it always did that.

1:27:14

Your extractors, it always did that. There's

1:27:16

additional supplies that you can send off

1:27:19

from your hub, your logistics hub, which

1:27:21

is like kind of your home-based starting

1:27:23

point. That's how you also

1:27:25

unlock some other tech is there's resources that you

1:27:27

put in that and you send that off. And

1:27:30

then there's a little ship that like launches from

1:27:32

your resource hub and goes up to the space

1:27:34

station. That animation and the sound effects

1:27:36

with it are really cool the way that it comes

1:27:38

in. It comes back through the atmosphere and there's a sonic

1:27:40

boom and then it comes and like lands down. And

1:27:43

like, I feel like every

1:27:46

single animation basically for all this stuff

1:27:48

has been improved across the board. That

1:27:50

makes sense. There's, yeah. The

1:27:54

game itself, just it's

1:27:57

tuned to, Over

1:28:00

the course of its development and its early access, it's

1:28:02

just been tuned and tuned and tuned and tuned and

1:28:04

it has that feeling to it. It's

1:28:06

a very crisp, very pun intended,

1:28:10

satisfying experience just to play the

1:28:12

game before you're even doing any

1:28:14

of the factory stuff. And

1:28:17

they've done quality of life improvements

1:28:19

that are related to tech upgrades now

1:28:22

too. So it's like there's stuff

1:28:24

that they'd added in the past. They've added

1:28:27

in trucks for transports, train system for transports,

1:28:30

things that improve your run and jump speed, the

1:28:32

ability to zip line along power lines. There's

1:28:36

human transport tubes that are ways to zip

1:28:38

around the environment where it's like Futurama style.

1:28:40

You go into a tube and it goes

1:28:42

voom, and you just go through a

1:28:44

tube and get shot

1:28:47

out somewhere else wherever you built the tube at

1:28:49

the other end. But

1:28:51

a really big quality of life improvement that they put

1:28:53

in the 1.0 release is dimensional storage.

1:28:59

So you can eventually unlock

1:29:01

a thing where you can upload

1:29:04

one stack of a resource into dimensional storage.

1:29:06

So if a stack is like 200 iron

1:29:09

plates, you can upload 200 iron

1:29:11

plates to your dimensional storage and then

1:29:13

whenever you're doing any crafting, it'll pull

1:29:16

from your player inventory and it'll pull

1:29:18

from dimensional storage and anybody can pull

1:29:20

from dimensional storage. And then you can

1:29:22

eventually unlock more stacks of

1:29:24

items in your dimensional storage. So

1:29:26

it's just another way. It's

1:29:29

just a quality of life improvement

1:29:31

that feels in world to

1:29:33

the game because your personal storage, your

1:29:35

personal inventory storage, the reason why you

1:29:37

can carry like 8,000 concrete on

1:29:40

you is because you have a dimensional pocket

1:29:43

as the worker. And so like

1:29:45

this is dimensional storage, dimensional pocket,

1:29:48

you know, it's all in world

1:29:50

related and they've every time

1:29:52

you unlock a tech or unlock a

1:29:54

phase, beta, the computer has a lot of

1:29:56

really well written, very funny lines that are

1:29:58

all in world because A

1:30:01

little bit like helldivers, you

1:30:03

know has tongue-in-cheek fascism. This

1:30:05

game is like tongue-in-cheek

1:30:08

indentured servitude. Yeah,

1:30:10

and it has that vibe throughout the

1:30:12

whole thing The

1:30:17

the one of the really cool things about the game

1:30:19

is you can played in a couple different ways to

1:30:21

like My buddy Chris and I were

1:30:23

always the factory builders Chris was the master at it

1:30:25

I'm okay at it, but Chris was the frickin master

1:30:28

And like I learned a lot just

1:30:30

by like being in games with him And so I'm

1:30:33

I'm mostly the one building out the factories this time

1:30:35

my little brother Unlocked

1:30:38

the concrete Pieces

1:30:40

and like the half-pipe and curved pieces and he made a

1:30:42

skate park That you can

1:30:44

drive the little factory Chuck around and it like

1:30:46

he made a Like jumps where

1:30:49

you can literally like jump it up a half

1:30:51

pipe wall and like land on another jump to

1:30:53

jump up another one Cuz that was fun for

1:30:55

him My buddies

1:30:57

Josh and Gordon love running around

1:30:59

the world like killing animals and

1:31:01

like finding Like

1:31:03

the Mercer spheres and these other things and then

1:31:05

upgrading all of our tech through the research stations

1:31:07

and everything That's where they find the most fun

1:31:11

So there's a lot of different ways that you can play the

1:31:13

game as a team Like if you're not if you don't want

1:31:15

to build the factories Just let other

1:31:17

people build the factories and you can be

1:31:20

the resource tracker Exactly. Yeah, you can also

1:31:22

go out and find the electrical slugs or

1:31:24

you know, there's a reasons to explore

1:31:26

the world To which

1:31:28

is nice. Exactly. Yep big reasons and it's

1:31:31

a very very vast world

1:31:33

that is 3d open world But it's not

1:31:35

procedure at all. They have the whole thing

1:31:37

is entirely handcrafted. So, you know,

1:31:39

I don't know if that like that

1:31:42

might limit replayability in some people's minds,

1:31:44

but the world is so vast and

1:31:48

You can try different starting points like it you

1:31:51

could play this game for literally hundreds of hours

1:31:53

and you would never get to Everything that's in

1:31:55

the world Yeah,

1:31:58

so anyway, it's really It's really good. Satisfactory

1:32:02

is a very, very fun game.

1:32:04

I'm glad they've hit their 1.0 release. I

1:32:07

think they knocked it out of the park and we're

1:32:09

having a lot of fun with it. If

1:32:11

you want, Anthony, I'll just send you the invite to our

1:32:13

dedicated server because we have plenty of player slots. Yeah,

1:32:16

I could help out. I won't build

1:32:18

anything because I tend to build things

1:32:21

in a like, this is fine sort

1:32:23

of way. We'll make it work. And so my efficiency score

1:32:26

is probably pretty low. Like

1:32:29

we always hit our goals in the old game that

1:32:31

we played, but like at the end, our factory looked

1:32:33

like something out of like a Dr. Seuss book. It

1:32:35

did not look sensical. It

1:32:38

was like, no, we just built, well, we don't want

1:32:40

to redo this line. So just build the new one

1:32:42

up and over it. And it's like, so inefficient, you

1:32:45

know? There are many

1:32:47

nights that I love that game running overnight because I

1:32:49

was like, I just needed to accrue. So

1:32:51

I'm just gonna set my computer on and leave it. Yep,

1:32:55

we have the dedicated server set

1:32:57

to currently pause if

1:32:59

nobody's online, but I think I

1:33:02

may change that to like just run while people

1:33:04

aren't online because there's not enough of us building

1:33:06

out crazy factories. And once you

1:33:08

get into the later texts, like you're building,

1:33:10

you know, you're extracting iron to

1:33:13

build screws, to build plates, to build stators, to go into

1:33:15

motors, to go into these things, to go into, and like

1:33:17

by the time you get to the end of it, you're

1:33:19

creating like one of this

1:33:21

thing every five minutes. And

1:33:23

you have to have like 500 of those, you know, to

1:33:26

like upload for the like the phase eight or phase

1:33:28

nine. And like, at some point it's like,

1:33:31

I don't really want to be online. I don't want to have

1:33:33

to be online to waiting for all that stuff. So

1:33:36

I'll probably turn the, the

1:33:39

server will just stay on and the factories will stay running

1:33:41

even when we're not online. But

1:33:43

the other thing is this world is so big that like,

1:33:46

you know, maybe I'm over there trying to

1:33:48

build like my ultimate, you

1:33:51

know, like maximize deficiency factory,

1:33:54

but you can walk, you can walk,

1:33:56

you know, a couple of hundred meters away to

1:33:58

a different node and build whatever. Whatever the fuck

1:34:00

you want. It doesn't matter, you know, like because

1:34:02

there's so much space that you're not going to

1:34:04

interfere with things It doesn't matter like who builds

1:34:06

what where you can kind of just do whatever

1:34:08

you want Yeah

1:34:13

Uh, I don't have time to go back but I should It's

1:34:17

a good game Well, just jump into our

1:34:19

server that way you don't even have to bother

1:34:21

with like the tier one two and three stuff

1:34:23

Okay, you can just like kind of have fun.

1:34:25

Like we have we have like the the upgrade

1:34:27

We have like a bunch of the movement upgrades

1:34:29

unlocked We just unlocked gas masks so you can

1:34:31

go into the poison areas, you know Okay, so the

1:34:33

lot of the initial busy work has

1:34:35

been done. Yeah, perfect a lot of

1:34:38

the initial busy work Yeah, and like the first

1:34:40

manager. Yeah, there you go Now

1:34:44

look at the first good job The

1:34:48

first tier that's really tedious

1:34:50

is tier 4 tier

1:34:52

4 is where a lot of people like quit

1:34:54

the game because there's these Things you

1:34:57

have to make called versatile frameworks and

1:34:59

the versatile frameworks Create

1:35:01

a have a pretty long production pipeline I

1:35:03

like and I've seen online people

1:35:05

say like yeah tier 4 like after tier 4

1:35:07

like I'm able to like kind of make things

1:35:09

Work, but getting stuff to work for tier 4

1:35:11

was hard and we just got past

1:35:13

here for so you don't even have to go Through the

1:35:15

tedious part Right

1:35:18

now I tore apart all our original factory stuff

1:35:20

that's close to the base and I'm rebuilding all

1:35:22

that out And

1:35:24

bringing in a new source of coal

1:35:27

because I've maximized our available coal into

1:35:29

the power plants that we have Because

1:35:33

there's a lot of stuff that I need to build out so

1:35:35

I can build out motors because motors are the next The

1:35:39

next manufactured item that we need a lot of

1:35:41

to like really upgrade our shit

1:35:44

and like get to the get moving again They

1:35:48

Did a lot of tearing down of stuff like

1:35:51

found a new resource and then I

1:35:53

like that I really like the building in this game

1:35:55

too because it's Minecraft style where stuff can just be

1:35:57

floating in the sky You don't have to worry about

1:35:59

structural support or any of that nonsense

1:36:01

like in Valheim, you

1:36:03

can just like build the wackiest shit.

1:36:06

Like I built, since you

1:36:08

can zip line along power lines, I built

1:36:10

a power line that goes from our hub.

1:36:12

Oh, that's cool, that didn't exist before. That's

1:36:14

awesome. Yeah, yeah, it's really fun. I

1:36:19

built a power line that goes from our hub, which

1:36:21

is up on a cliff, and there's just

1:36:23

power line that's just floating in the sky. Like I

1:36:25

built a bunch of foundations, like a bridge all through

1:36:28

the sky to this other area where I was like

1:36:30

creating a whole big steel works and everything, so I

1:36:33

built a bunch of foundations, hung a

1:36:35

bunch of power lines on the foundations, and then

1:36:37

deleted all the foundations. So you're

1:36:39

just like flying through the sky on this

1:36:41

cable. Yeah, see the game definitely

1:36:43

is like fine with breaking reality, which I

1:36:45

appreciate. They don't make it so like, they're

1:36:49

not like, oh, this foundation doesn't have structural integrity

1:36:51

or anything, they're like, fuck it, who cares? Yep,

1:36:54

exactly. It'll

1:36:57

be like you can build this power, I can't build

1:36:59

this power plant because the ground is too uneven. So

1:37:01

I'll build a bunch of foundations, build the

1:37:03

power plant, and then I can just delete all the

1:37:05

foundations and the game doesn't care. I think there's like

1:37:07

a metric for how

1:37:09

serious people are when they play this game, and

1:37:12

it's, is your factory a single

1:37:14

floor, or is it multi-floored? Yep.

1:37:19

Well, what is your factory? Is it single floor?

1:37:21

Oh, no, it's multi-floored.

1:37:23

Okay, so that's- I mean like I have multi-floored

1:37:25

factories and like the starting area that we're all

1:37:27

like stuff just put on the ground, that's the

1:37:29

stuff that I just deleted so that I can

1:37:32

build a more efficient version now that I've unlocked

1:37:34

a new tier of stuff. Exactly, so like me,

1:37:36

our factory was one sprawling one

1:37:38

floor thing where things were having to like get

1:37:40

carted like 800 feet over to the thing that

1:37:42

would process them. And real people will like

1:37:44

redo it to where it's like, you know, we

1:37:48

funnel resources up to the top floor and it

1:37:50

all comes back down or something, you know. Uh-huh.

1:37:52

And I'm like, okay, that's like, that's like

1:37:54

real planning, you

1:37:57

know. Yep. Yep.

1:38:00

And I have a lot of fun with

1:38:02

trying to make efficient, compact factories and multi

1:38:04

floors and stuff like that. Of course, that's

1:38:06

why that part of it is made for

1:38:08

you. Yep.

1:38:10

Yep. And the

1:38:13

thing that was really nice about playing with Chris

1:38:15

is that not only was he better at the

1:38:17

factories than I was, but that gave

1:38:19

me more free time where I could do the

1:38:22

other part of the game that I love is

1:38:24

building stuff and building things to make

1:38:26

them look cosmetically beautiful, which

1:38:29

this time I've just been focusing on. But building

1:38:31

the factories, I haven't put up

1:38:33

walls and made things look like they have realistic

1:38:36

supports and all that kind of stuff like I

1:38:38

normally do. Yeah. But

1:38:41

yeah, the beautification stuff was the thing

1:38:43

that Chris was never really interested in

1:38:45

that. So we kind of were a

1:38:48

good team because we would both build factories, but he

1:38:50

would build more factories and I would focus more on

1:38:52

civic beautification. Okay. Now

1:38:54

I'm just, I'm factory guy this time. Yeah,

1:38:58

it's good stuff. It's a lot of fun. I'm

1:39:01

right there with Chris. Let's make it

1:39:03

functional and move the fuck on. Yep.

1:39:08

I appreciate beauty. I'm too lazy to do

1:39:10

it. Sure. That's really what it comes

1:39:12

down to. Yep. Yeah. Well,

1:39:15

it's about like having enough people on to like

1:39:17

handle all the different jobs because that's the thing

1:39:19

is like this game, I can't imagine playing this

1:39:21

game single player. It would get so fucking tedious.

1:39:24

Yeah. Like, like I

1:39:26

have a lot of fun with Minecraft and single player. I

1:39:28

don't think I could do this game single player. Yeah,

1:39:32

I've tried. It's

1:39:34

a, it's not for me either. Too

1:39:37

much. Um, Arthur, you've been kind of on

1:39:40

a trip for the olds. It feels like you played

1:39:42

that UFO fifties for the old. Then you

1:39:44

went and saw Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which I feel like is also

1:39:46

for the olds. I

1:39:49

think that that movie has done enough business that it

1:39:51

is not strictly for the olds. You don't think it's

1:39:53

just a bunch of the olds going to see it

1:39:55

because they have money and time. No,

1:39:58

there were a lot of younger people. when I'm in general

1:40:01

or Tigger has a big draw. No,

1:40:04

they were there without their parents. Um,

1:40:08

wow. I mean, that's insulting. Thanks,

1:40:10

Anthony. Hey, I'm right there with you. We're

1:40:14

pretty much the same age group. Yes.

1:40:16

So, you know. It

1:40:20

is funny to me that one half of your mustache is

1:40:23

grayer than the other half. Oh, yeah.

1:40:25

And dude, when I think it's awesome. When I'm

1:40:27

like hanging out at the skate park, I think people have an

1:40:29

idea of me being one age and then I take my helmet

1:40:31

off and they're like, oh, okay.

1:40:38

Yeah. You can't tell, but this eyebrow has a

1:40:40

whole bunch of gray hair in it and my

1:40:43

right eyebrow does not. Yeah, I also I also

1:40:45

have those. Oh, you can't tell my eyebrows that

1:40:47

grow like. Oh,

1:40:50

wild and crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And really long

1:40:52

and my wife goes, oh, I can't. And

1:40:54

she just grabs it and rips it out.

1:40:56

Like, I just can't. Oh, I

1:40:58

can't. No, dude, just go to a barber that like,

1:41:00

you know, knows how to trim those things. It's

1:41:02

fine. Or you could just trim it. Oh,

1:41:05

I just never notice it. And then she's like,

1:41:07

Jesus. Yeah. So anyways,

1:41:11

my fucking ear hair. I hate it. This is

1:41:14

one of the few movies that I think we're going to try and make an

1:41:16

effort to go to the movie theater to see. Right

1:41:19

on. I.

1:41:22

Despite that. Despite the. I

1:41:29

think that the second half of the movie

1:41:31

is a little bit stronger than the first half, but there's

1:41:33

it's. There

1:41:35

are way too many fucking plot lines and

1:41:37

it doesn't really do any of them justice.

1:41:41

And in a way,

1:41:43

it's not that different from the original

1:41:45

Beetlejuice that way, because the first Beetlejuice is

1:41:47

way more of a vibes movie than it

1:41:49

is like a plot movie. Yeah.

1:41:54

But in the original Beetlejuice, they're like,

1:41:57

essentially. There

1:42:00

are two core sets of characters

1:42:04

and Beetlejuice as like a side character.

1:42:07

Yeah. Um, and in this, and

1:42:09

so that basically means there's like two to

1:42:12

three subplots, you know, and they all like

1:42:14

interweave with one another. And in

1:42:17

this there's like seven or

1:42:19

eight subplots that mostly exist separately

1:42:22

from one another and occasionally

1:42:24

intersect, but in a way

1:42:26

that feels very clumsy. And in

1:42:28

a way that just doesn't give

1:42:30

anybody much time. This felt like some of

1:42:33

the problems I had with some of the modern

1:42:35

Ghostbusters movies as well. They had too many

1:42:37

things going on to try and make them work.

1:42:40

I liked the last Ghostbusters

1:42:43

reboot with the kids more

1:42:45

than the most recent Ghostbusters movie with

1:42:47

the kids. Cause that one felt to

1:42:49

me like a pilot for a TV

1:42:51

show. That's fair. Yeah.

1:42:54

Um, with this, it's like, you

1:42:56

know, Monica Belucci is fairly

1:42:58

heavily featured in the trailers. She's

1:43:01

barely in it. Oh, she's

1:43:03

like barely, barely in it. She's more like,

1:43:07

she's more like a plot MacGuffin,

1:43:09

honestly than anything. Um,

1:43:13

and yeah, it's

1:43:15

just, I dunno, it's really.

1:43:19

Sounds like it's pretty mediocre for you. Yeah.

1:43:23

Okay. Here's my thing. The tone of

1:43:25

this movie vacillates pretty wildly between

1:43:27

like something that

1:43:31

is that

1:43:33

is easy to invest in on a human level, like

1:43:35

a big fish versus

1:43:38

fucking Mars attacks. Yeah. Like

1:43:41

it feels often much more like,

1:43:43

like Tim Burton's view of people

1:43:45

in Mars attacks than Tim Burton's

1:43:47

view of people in Beetlejuice or

1:43:50

some of the other stuff. He's done. I

1:43:52

see. And

1:43:54

so, I dunno, like the,

1:43:57

I think that the actors often save it.

1:44:00

Like I think Winona Ryder is interesting in

1:44:02

it. Jenna Ortega is great in

1:44:04

it. Michael

1:44:06

Keaton is good in pretty much anything Michael

1:44:08

Keaton is in. He's just like, I don't

1:44:10

think, I

1:44:12

think Beetlejuice is like a less interesting character

1:44:14

in this than he was. Like he was

1:44:17

much more of a direct antagonist in

1:44:20

the first movie. And in this, I

1:44:22

think that it tries way too hard to make

1:44:24

him someone whose

1:44:27

side you wanna take. Yeah,

1:44:30

no, the first movie he was just a poltergeist. I

1:44:32

mean, he's bad. Yeah. It

1:44:36

wasn't even that like he was explicitly

1:44:39

evil. He was just like- He's a

1:44:41

nuisance. He's like a gremlin. He's a

1:44:43

nuisance, yeah, yeah. And

1:44:47

the funny thing is that like there is a

1:44:50

sort of core like emotional

1:44:52

idea behind this movie, which is like grief.

1:44:57

The ways that people like

1:45:00

deal with grief or avoid dealing with

1:45:02

grief. And in

1:45:04

a way, like that's kind of how

1:45:06

what the first movie was about. Although the first movie

1:45:08

I think was more about like not

1:45:11

wanting to deal with mortality, like refusing

1:45:13

to deal with mortality rather

1:45:16

than to accept that

1:45:18

sort of like logical end point for

1:45:20

everyone. Yeah. I

1:45:24

don't know. There's just

1:45:27

too much happening. And

1:45:29

it all wraps up in a way that

1:45:31

just does it, that feels a little forced.

1:45:33

And there's another musical number in this

1:45:35

that personally I think just is in

1:45:38

no way, shape or form nearly as

1:45:40

creative as the original. Sure. It

1:45:45

is- How about the practical effects? They've talked

1:45:47

about that. So I'm like, you know. I

1:45:49

think the practical effects are pretty good. I

1:45:52

think that like some of the waiting room ghosts in it are

1:45:54

a lot of fun. Like looking at the movie is often fun.

1:46:00

There's one waiting room ghost in particular

1:46:02

that I like, but I won't spoil it. But

1:46:09

there's one actor in this movie

1:46:11

that is like very, very

1:46:14

noticeably absent. Well,

1:46:16

despite the fact that his character is present,

1:46:18

who is Jeffrey Jones. Uh,

1:46:21

was that the dad? Yeah,

1:46:24

Jeffrey Jones was the dad. Well, yeah. And Beetlejuice.

1:46:26

So I got arrested for like child sexual.

1:46:29

Yes. Yeah. Child

1:46:31

sexual content. I guess they didn't know that.

1:46:33

Oh, fuck. Yes. I thought he was dead.

1:46:35

And then someone was like, no, it's worse

1:46:37

than that. Yeah.

1:46:43

Yeah. It really changes the feeling of going

1:46:45

back and watching the like Ferris Beeler's day

1:46:47

off, you know? It

1:46:50

does. Yeah. Now that you mention it.

1:46:52

So yeah, that's unfortunate. Um,

1:46:56

I don't know. It just, it, the movie wants to do

1:46:58

to go in too many different

1:47:00

directions. I, as a business

1:47:02

exercise, I think it's fascinating. Um,

1:47:04

and I respect it in particular, like

1:47:07

the fact that Tim Burton was adamant that it

1:47:09

not be a direct to streaming movie.

1:47:12

Yeah. Um, and the

1:47:14

decisions that he and like the

1:47:16

key players made to make sure

1:47:18

that it got a theatrical release,

1:47:20

yeah, are interesting. Um, and hopefully

1:47:22

like a sign, like a positive sign

1:47:24

for the future of the theater business

1:47:26

and movies, um, it's been

1:47:28

incredibly successful. Well, between that and alien, right?

1:47:30

Alien was going to be a streaming thing

1:47:33

and then it wasn't. And it's made them

1:47:35

plenty of money. Um,

1:47:38

yes. And that's, you know, which

1:47:40

is great. And I think that I'm

1:47:43

glad when, when, you know,

1:47:45

things went out that way, it's like, it's almost $300 million.

1:47:48

Yeah. On

1:47:52

a budget of 80 something. Yeah.

1:47:55

It's almost like you can make okay movies for reasonable

1:47:57

budgets. Like you used to be able to. I

1:48:00

don't know, it's like so many movies these days are

1:48:02

like we spent 400 million, but we're

1:48:04

expecting over a billion. Just

1:48:06

like dude. And in a way like that, that

1:48:08

feels like it should be kind of where things

1:48:10

are going and like that

1:48:13