#409 | Truth or Consequence, Say It Aloud

20:15Dustin Furman:that's a good one you know what i was thinking of too we always talk about the like trump being endlessly funny and memeable and the things he does did you see the b one i did not see the b

20:24Colin Moriarty:yeah oh my god well he got back to back because he had the b thing and then he had the guy he's like this guy he hears everything his ears and he zoomed in on his ears yeah that zoom in was

20:36Chris Santis:good that cameraman is the is the comedian and that is the real comedian in that in that story

20:41Dustin Furman:but the ear thing was i'm yeah like he dude i got can you find the picture it doesn't find it he uh he king charles and queen camilla are at the white house so this makes it even funnier and they're all gathered around for some reason like a you know like a beehive like one of those things you pull i guess you know like the trays my sister does it like the uh and i guess it's like a honey thing i don't know if they're just showing local you know local crafts or whatever and it's just a picture of Trump with a B in his hand. And he's looking at the B and everyone else is horrified around him. Like the king.

21:19Dustin Furman:So funny. I was like, dude, that picture is awesome. I didn't see that. That picture is wonderful.

21:23Colin Moriarty:I found it. It's a stupid Instagram link, but yeah. Oh, it's actually Fox news. Fox news was pumped about this.

21:30Chris Santis:Oh yeah.

21:30Colin Moriarty:They loved it. Like something that we can celebrate and not have to weirdly defend.

21:37Chris Santis:is that awesome i can't god damn it i can't see it i gotta log an instagram oh never mind whatever it's yeah i'll find it at some point it's so funny i thought it'd be what i saw because i'm

21:46Dustin Furman:like oh chris is gonna love that all right let's get into some topics of discussion and spread our legs some people don't like that we say they don't say that anymore i don't want to be too vulgar gotta come out of nowhere with it something really vulgar yeah right but not yet yeah not offensive but we don't want to be predictable like you know all the time and stretching our legs is fine yeah did we intro the show with aids right that's right yeah is that not enough for you give me a break i'm not trying to i'm not trying to go crazy with it all right

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22:49Justin Herth wrote in and said, salutations to the last stand crew.

22:54Dustin Furman:I'm a longtime constituent, having followed your work since the early podcast beyond days. I'm writing this while on a meritorious mission to evangelize the gospel of Publix to the people of greater Virginia. As I work in real estate for the company, I'm essentially the vanguard for the pub sub invasion of the Commonwealth. I'm writing because of a misconnection on my flight from Tampa to Dulles. Now, if this is true, and I don't see why a man who works at Publix will lie to us, you really dropped the ball here. I looked over and saw the girl in the seat next to me pull up the sacred symbols thumbnail on her phone.

23:26Dustin Furman:My stand down instincts nearly forced me to shout a greeting, but I value the social contract far too much to be the guy who interrupts a stranger's flight to talk about the Vita's legacy or the nuances of physical media. To the fellow passenger, I stayed silent and let you listen in peace. But if you're hearing this, just know a fellow listener was sitting right there, quietly respecting your space while internally celebrating the fact that we exist in the wild. This could have been your wife. For all the divorces that we've caused, of which there are several. And all the family family tumult that we've introduced into the world that could have been your moment you blew it i'm just letting you know

24:08Dustin Furman:you blew it and it's too bad now you gotta get a craigslist and you gotta do a misconnection yeah but i know this is what that is of course but yeah it's unfortunate did it really happen

24:17Colin Moriarty:that's the question yeah i was gonna say a a female a woman listening to sacred symbols

24:24Dustin Furman:impossible it's astronomical right like to have seen it and to seen it in person yeah i think i told you right it's like four percent of our audience is women i think so so you're out there i mean that's what the the data says i don't know i would like more women to listen to the show maybe it's because we talk about aids that you don't um but if that was true that's such a and so literally that's you have 20 times if that's true right four percent you have a 20 25 percent or 25 times chance of seeing a male in person that would be doing that. I just feel like that's such a unique situation. You should have said something.

24:58Dustin Furman:Now, maybe you're married or in a relationship and you don't want to go down that road. I respect that completely, but I feel like you should have said something, you know, you should have said something.

25:09Chris Santis:Yeah. Maybe there's also the thing too. It's like, do you, yeah, I don't know. Cause I'm trying to think about like, if I was listening to a podcast that I, that I enjoyed, that I was like, oh yeah, this is my show. I'm going to buckle in for a flight. And I start it up and then some guy goes, hey, I listened to that too. I'm like, oh great. Is this going to have to be a conversation now? Is now the next three hours of my flight or whatever, however long it is, it's like now I have to kind of be considerate of whether or not this guy wants to talk. I get it. I would have said something maybe at the end of the flight or something.

25:50Chris Santis:sure but maybe that's maybe that's maybe that's even weirder because it's like hey i was i've been watching i've been watching you and i wanted to wait i've been watching you the whole time

26:00Dustin Furman:very interesting just now um now he works for publics now i'm a little confused about the public's invasion i live in virginia yet we're here publics is i mean i've i've my family has been down here for 25 years. I've had family here, so I've been visiting. Publix has always been present here. And in fact, I feel like there are too many of them, if I'm being honest with you. There are just Justin, why are there two Publix near me, probably three miles away from each other? What we need right now, and I love Publix. Don't get me wrong. Publix is awesome. But what we need is maybe a Kroger nearby, which would be nice.

26:42Dustin Furman:But I'm trying to think, Michael wants Wegmans nearby. Oh, Wegmans.

26:49Colin Moriarty:Wegmans. Okay.

26:53Colin Moriarty:I used to go to Wegmans when I would go to my parents' house because they had a great six-pack pick-your-own beer section.

27:01Dustin Furman:Oh, like you can make your own? Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Like you can do it at a packy.

27:06Chris Santis:Raising the stupid joke that me and my friend Jalen had where we would call any building regardless of what the purpose was, a Wegmans. A Wegmans? oh it's like oh it's over by the Wegmans on 34th and it's like there's no Wegmans like no you know

27:18Colin Moriarty:what I mean the Wegmans in Alexandria Virginia had a bar in it and I'd always joke to my dad I was like let's get fucked up at the Wegmans bar dude oh yeah dude that'd be awesome like that's a step better than like getting fucked up at the Applebee's bar right right like dude I got in a fist

27:33Chris Santis:fight at the Wegmans at the grocery store dude there's a place like that in Manhattan that I went to I went on a date there where like she it was her suggestion where she was like let's let's go to this bar it's connected to a grocery store and i can't remember what the name it was maybe somebody in manhattan if they listen if they listen to the show and they live in manhattan they know what it is it's like kind of like by saint mark's area or like by columbus circle kind of that area but it was literally like a grocery store and then they had like uh oh my god you know those like plastic sheet doors where it's like plastic sheets they usually have them in like freezers dustin they're in marathon a lot like the oh the flaps the flap yeah the plastic audio cue the flaps so it would be like that and that was separating a like full-on speakeasy type bar from like a just a really brightly lit fluorescently lit grocery store it was like a really weird i just i didn't i don't really understand why that would be a choice but it's interesting it's a story at a premium in new york you know that is true that is true oh boy i'll tell you justin be well thank you for writing in i feel like you blew it but

28:46Dustin Furman:who am i to tell you if you blew it or not what a loser what he lost out on eternal happiness

28:59Dustin Furman:Cameron James wrote in you think that's really his name

29:03Colin Moriarty:oh it's possible James

29:07Dustin Furman:I don't know maybe he was uh maybe he was conceived uh after a after seeing Titanic his parents were dating at the time they got in the back of the car they recreated the you know that famous scene of the hand going down the window the steam I remember that so well because Titanic came out when I was in eighth grade so like everyone was obsessed with it and it was in theaters forever that was when things stayed in the like I want to say it was in theaters for a year um and uh because I saw it like a few times for some reason um and that's the thing I remember most about the movie in eighth grade I was like and it's not even the sexual part of it because I wasn't really even that like it's a little late of a late bloomer you know a lot of eighth grade boys are like i probably getting into the you know girls and stuff like that but me i was just more like that's so that's perverse it's perverse

30:05Dustin Furman:who's having sex with the rooster all right they're all having sex

30:13Dustin Furman:i love that scene in seinfeld so much that's like one of the low-key best scenes when the Costanzas and the Jerry Jerry Stiller

30:19Chris Santis:is a is a great comedic actor and that scene is who's having sex with the hen the hands

30:30Dustin Furman:at dinner saying all this it's so funny I love that show so much all right Cameron James says what's going on fats we often hear from people writing in to tell about the times they played sacred symbols to an unsuspecting guest in the car the gang would of course say something inappropriate and the writer would have to meekly explain to their guests about the nature of the podcast in an embarrassing way, but I want to hear from you all. Would any of you actually play one of your podcasts while in the car with someone else? Personally, I couldn't think of anything more embarrassing. I experienced this on a road trip over the Anzac Day long weekend.

31:01Dustin Furman:This is a, I looked this up. Commemorates the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landing in Gallipoli in 1915, honoring all those who served and died in the military operation. When me and a couple of guy friends drove from Canberra to Broken Hill, It's a fair drive. I drove the whole way and one of my friends insisted on plugging in to take over the aux cord. I let him, assuming he'd play music or a radio show to my horror. He played one of his cringy comedy podcasts, expecting us to laugh along to the horrible comedians trying to be funny. I thought it was embarrassing, but remained silent and kept driving.

31:31Dustin Furman:What do you guys think? Would you ever play one of your podcasts in the car with a guest? Do you think it's fine or are your favorite podcasts something you should keep to yourself? So to be clear, he's not talking about playing our own shows. He's talking about playing the podcast we would listen to. And to me, I feel like listening to podcasts is generally an independent endeavor and activity and shouldn't subject other people to it

31:50Chris Santis:yeah it's too long of a like i think you can you can get away with like a mixtape on like a road trip like a bunch of different songs like you're passing around the ox because the the time commitment there is like maybe maximum if you're egregious with it if you're playing like jesus of suburbia which is like an obnoxious i love that song it's an obnoxious song yeah to play in a road trip you know like you can't have like a seven minute max about like four minutes that's that's the math maybe maybe 4 30 if it's like a you if it's a universal banger that everybody's gonna you know be along with but a podcast that's that's such an obnoxious thing to like presume upon other people you know even if you think it's great that's just no no the time commitment it's insane you can turn your brain off and like maybe like make your way through a song that you're not really feeling that well for like two minutes three minutes but like an hour

32:45Dustin Furman:what are you doing that's inconsiderate yeah that's the big thing is that it's because even playing music like then you have to be i've always been very sensitive about that like you don't want to play the wrong thing or ice alienate people and stuff like that so then you go into like the softer things or whatever you're looking for i don't know man i curate like whenever i like i

33:05Chris Santis:whenever I would like drive my, my parents around, I would curate. Cause I can't drive without music. I need, I need something. Um, and I actually need it. Like I blast my music so loud. It's, it's to the point where it like sounds really low to me, but like my parents, I'll put it on like 12 out of a hundred and they'll be like, it's so loud in here. But, but, uh, I'll curate based on like who I'm riding in the car with. And I was like, Oh, I know they like this. So like, I'll have one of mine, one for them, one for me kind of thing, or some for both of us. Um, so like when people are so when people are extra inconsiderate about that stuff like i notice and i was like man really really obnoxious i can't even the first interpretation i had of this question was like would you play your own shows which is yeah yeah i would never listen to

33:54Colin Moriarty:check this shit out

33:59Chris Santis:actually psychotic behavior like that would be awesome you should you should qualify for

34:03Dustin Furman:antipsychotics like sight unseen that's funny as fuck i love that yeah i the only time i've

34:11Colin Moriarty:done this first of all if you're in a group road trip setting absolutely not you know a couple times driving to and from my parents house with holly where she's reading a book playing her switch probably has her own earbuds in i'll throw on my own podcast no problem but that's you know she's my wife it's a little different but if it was like me and the boys going somewhere and i'm like hey listen let's listen to this show where we all have to sit and be silent and listen it's like no yeah we're hanging we're a podcast means you're not talking in the car really right yeah that

34:49Chris Santis:sucks and your wife is like your wife you're married like your wife is kind of contractually obligated to suffer through your inadequacies you know what i mean like it's kind of like and and vice versa like you're kind of like all right we're listening to the k-pop for the next hour i'll zone out k-pop god damn i hate that shit too foreign it's way too foreign it's way too foreign you kidding come on i like some of it but not enough to to put it on a playlist you know i mean there's some songs that i hear and i'm like i don't mind hearing this

35:22Dustin Furman:yeah like i don't i don't i don't even know i actually see more of the uh the performance and nature of it it bothers me a lot more like i've never really just sat and listen to it you see it's all part of the same thing like it's a very theatrical it's it's like

35:36Chris Santis:part of like the the actual performance is part more part of it than it is for other things um there's some people who do fine stuff there's a song with like bruno mars that was like a k-pop song that i kind of liked that i added but like it's not it's not very it's not very often and even in that song there's a part of it that i hate so it's like but that's that's the nature

35:56Colin Moriarty:songs i guess i think my mom is going to see bts this year oh interesting that is fascinating yeah her so there's currently a friend of the families that's living at my parents house uh for a bit while she's in college and she is super into bts because she lived in korea for like seven years oh wow she got her into bts and now they're going together

36:21Chris Santis:that's actually way more interesting than i assumed it was going to be yeah it's uh i thought i thought it was just that she found you know what i mean like it's popular and she found it but like no being introduced in that way is probably a lot more interesting now i do think

36:35Colin Moriarty:about the k-pop and bts and stuff is like this was kind of our thing you know as americans we i mean there was the beatles before that but they weren't really a boy band but i was like you know backstreet boys and sync we kind of lost we gave it up to asia and i'm like we we gotta we gotta get the boys back in yeah get the boys back in yeah because i mean backstreet boys they're still

36:59Chris Santis:kind of floating around but they're floating around like like amoebas on the surface of your

37:05Colin Moriarty:eye that you catch every now and again there's like a bunch of drama with the one guy in his beach there's like video of him calling a guy a pussy because he was on his private beach

37:16Dustin Furman:i don't know that's awesome oh boy i'm gonna tell you well teach their own yeah of course one of the things i like is that like occasionally you see that uh the one of the south korean pop stars gets drafted into the military oh i'll like half of bts did yeah they all have to go

37:35Colin Moriarty:serve right which i think is back now to their their credit set to south korean government's

37:40Dustin Furman:credit they're like no one's immune you know like yeah which i think it's kind of cool because it

37:44Chris Santis:would be very i think simple to be like well it's a military export it's a military asset though also because it's like you figure like you're on you're on the battlefield it's it's it's like a if you're on the battlefield opposing korea for whatever reason and you're like a lot you're looking up through your iron sights or whatever and you see a guy from bts you're like is that is that and it's just enough time for them to clock you you know right right right in the head

38:11Dustin Furman:it's just enough to give you a little bit of pause so the sniper can finish the job it must be a distraction like i remember thinking about that when um like famously prince harry was like in the uk military and he i think he even deployed to afghanistan and i'm like isn't that a problem like it's cool i appreciate it but there's no way they're really putting you in harm's way right like and there's no way they're gonna let you get captured or something right like or something

38:39Chris Santis:you know like like they're putting them at like a it's like i've been to mexico but it's like the like the resort right right exactly i've been the i've been the cabo now driving to the resort a little scary but once you're in the resort it's fine everything's fine right it's like i went to

38:55Dustin Furman:the resort in afghanistan right right why was your thought that not to like diminish his his service but rather to say like i don't feel like you should be here like you getting killed or injured is going to be a big deal and you getting captured is going to be like a fucking disaster and they know they must know you're there right like at some point they see so i don't know i'm like so the bts guy is the same thing it's like you your platoon or whatever is probably distracted

39:20Chris Santis:because you're famous maybe you shouldn't be here you know there's not a lot of real war fighting going on right now and that with with those militaries anyway and by and to be fair like there's far worse reasons for prince harry to be in the news so that's true that's true that's a

39:35Dustin Furman:good point um we're in north korean soldiers turning up in uh ukraine i'm pretty sure that

39:42Colin Moriarty:that's i don't know yeah i remember something about that maybe i don't know jesus christ

39:46Dustin Furman:there's fight these guys got their own proxy war they got their own this is north korea's vietnam uh-oh it's gonna work out well hungry hungry hansen wrote in said boys can we start a last day media gambling ring no sacred bets but the audience is actually speaking with their wallet instead of listening to you dunderheads drone on and on with Colin taking a 50 % cut naturally. I put$1 ,000 on Dustin Killing, Compiler, and Cryo Archive before Chris. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That's a big bet.

40:15Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah, I don't know about that bet because the plan is for Chris and I to fight Compiler together. We've lightly, well, I think it was mostly off air that we discussed this possibility. So, but the gambling ring. yeah i'm not big on the gambling ring i gotta be real you guys don't like gambling gambling i don't

40:36Chris Santis:like it in this in in the way that i've seen it it's too pervasive in like modern culture in a way that i kind of find a little bit a little bit dubious like it's wild that like the white house is doing steak ads like i don't know about i know like that's like that's actually like like politics aside that's crazy and like i just i feel like it's just everywhere like everything's sponsored by like some crazy gambling ring there's like it's too it's too much of this like i i appreciated it when it was like the occasional commercial for like a casino on like network tv tv you know what i mean like the foxwoods commercials that were on when i was a kid right so like they had that nice like song and i was like okay cool but then that was all that i ever saw about gambling now it's like brought to you by steak draft kings it's just like oh my god

41:23Dustin Furman:shut the fuck up yeah have we ever been just i think we were sponsored by draft kings at one point we're sponsored by prize picks sometimes now which i actually you guys aren't and this is not a to make anyone feel like oh this is a good good sponsor whatever i like that that the idea of that game because it's different than a lot of the other ones if people look into it like you're creating a team of players yeah i don't know anything about it i don't know anything about it

41:46Chris Santis:i just know that like i've seen so much more of it in the last like four years than i have at any point.

41:53Dustin Furman:Oh yeah, because it's legal now because the, you know, sports betting was totally illegal. Right. Outside of certain, you got to go to Vegas and obviously there were bookies everywhere that would do it. But yeah, it's interesting just because I like gambling and I'm not really much of a gambler, but I, I like the idea of, you know, when I go to Vegas or I play or I play fantasy sports and occasionally bet on something or whatever, I think the major problem and I'm glad that it's legal like widely legal now I think the pervasiveness of it is fine I think what I'm more disappointed in is people's inability to be responsible that's why when I like write the ads for prize picks I often put in like not a like be responsible please be responsible but I always say something like for responsible players you know try to like set the cadence of like don't get crazy with it it's fun it's just a way to kind of spice up or season your experience of watching a game or something like that yeah I don't there are professional gamblers obviously but ultimately if you stick around long enough two things are going to happen like the house will win or you will play too well and they won't let you play anymore and that to me is unfair that happens more in vegas than on the apps i think like if you're running a bit like a blackjack table for a few hours like they'll come up to you and be like you're out yeah and yeah and i don't think that that should be really allowed although a lot of these guys are counting cards and doing all that kind of stuff which is a really incredible skill when you're dealing with like 12 decks at a time yeah i don't i kind of don't oh you can't count cards like that's just being good at this

43:22Chris Santis:is being good at this like i don't know like it's not illegal if you have to if you have to if something makes you stop playing because you're too good at it that kind of inherently is a sign that it's very untoward and very not let's say not holistically great yeah you know that's kind of that always struck me as like a wild a wild thing it's like oh you can't win too much and it's like well what yeah it's it's not it's not really nothing else that works that way

43:54Dustin Furman:yeah i don't i don't like that either the only thing i've said this before on the show i think in some other context but the only experience i ever had gambling where i was like i thought it was really unsavory and fucked up was i was at i don't know so i was like the flamingo or something i don't know some like random vegas you know casino because i used to go to vegas pretty often when I lived in California and I was playing blackjack in like the middle of the night. I always I never played high stakes. Like I always like took a few hundred dollars and played like twenty dollar hands or something and just drink and meet people.

44:21Dustin Furman:And this fucking totally trashed, like absolutely trashed chick was playing at our table and they just kept like she kept getting up to go to like the ATM to get more and more money. And I remember saying like the pit boss at something or something to be like, she's like. This feel and he's like, like they don't give a shit so like they'll they'll they'll they'll take like whatever they want like whatever that's all on camera so like that's fine to me yeah like to me i i that bothered the fuck out of me where i was like dude like this chick doesn't know what she's doing you know

44:53Chris Santis:um yeah but that's kind of that's that's one of those like you got yourself into this i don't know man you learn a lesson from this i guess you know what are you doing being shit-faced gambling yeah it's insane it's just and then i i brought it up before too dude i'll never ever forget

45:09Dustin Furman:being at a blackjack table and a dude walking up with a tray of chips it was like probably 10 or 15 000 totally drunk walked awesome put it down put it all or bet it all on a hand of blackjack one doubled his money and then left and i never saw that guy ever again and i was like damn that's awesome you know that's bald i like how you that's the thing about gambling and wild never be a good gambler especially in games like blackjack and i like poker as well as like you have to bet big money to win like ultimately you have to like take a chance like a real chance or you're just gonna stick in this like low-end cycle you to win you have to make a move that's very difficult for me to do yeah i'm going all in on this on the hand i like i do like the vibe of a casino i don't i'm not a gambler but i do like i do like understanding that there is

46:02Chris Santis:a snapshot of me walking through it through a casino with like sunglasses and a cigar you know what i mean i like that that period where you're walking through it feels nice smoking in there is the best there's no light no natural light at all but it's like it doesn't feel like depressing i don't know it's weird it's a weird uh weird vibe someone out there that

46:22Colin Moriarty:either codes websites or I don't know uses Claude or something you could make what if there was a community game we don't use money because we don't want to get into the legality of that that is like polymarket but all the bets like if you sign up for an account you get like a hundred dollars you know fake dollars we could create a whole

46:41Dustin Furman:game around this yeah there is there is like fake shit like that I think or it did exist I don't know if people are really into it anymore now that they don't have to now they don't have to pretend yeah um because it's like i remember in high school you guys probably did a similar thing where you'd like choose stocks and like an economics class and then you would like follow the trajectory of them but not with real money obviously um just to teach you how that works i guess we're teaching kids how to like how to how to buy stock but not how to pay their taxes it's fucking insane we love that america so yeah we can get i mean get an lsm gambling ring sounds wonderful i love that get let's get some high volume going on calci and polymarket good lord will chris wear glasses next week 500 000 volume bet let's do it 47 yes

47:37Dustin Furman:and i get half he says i get half that's great that's a crazy cut that's like i'm like some sort of mobster but i'm like wart in the mario galaxy movie

47:48Dustin Furman:Kyle Day wrote in said Sacred Boys regarding McNugget Gate is it possible or likely that Micah knows Colin cannot eat 100 nuggets so she is forbidding his participation to save his pride what say you Dustin

48:01Colin Moriarty:I don't think this is true only because I remember a long time ago editing early much earlier Sacred Symbols episodes and hearing about Colin's five guys order and that's what gives me confidence that you could do this if you were truly eating two burgers the hot dog and the largest size fry i really was that i i think you could do the 100 nug challenge now what is compelling micah to do this is it that she has experience that if if colin has a little tummy ache that you collapse she doesn't want to deal with me she doesn't want to deal with you that's what i was going to say like what what don't we know about colin that when he is you know not well what does he turn into does she need to not want to take care of you in that moment of sickness you know that's because that's

48:56Dustin Furman:breaking a vow well i that's that is true that is true i um i am well everyone i think the audience knows this for a long time it's like i have a fucked up stomach like i have ibs and um people I've gotten tested for like, you know, celiac and Crohn's and longtime listeners will remember the like from podcast beyond. I remember my fake celiac diagnosis or my false fake celiac diagnosis. How to ruin my life. I started crying at E3. It's awesome.

49:26Dustin Furman:So I'll never forget that as long as I was. Scott Bromley was there, my old roommate. So I've been going through it. My stomach's totally fucked up, and I think she's maybe aware of that. but she could be trying to save like allow me to save face i appreciate that that's the subtle thing a wife would do for you now would my wife do that for me i don't know yeah i don't know i like how it's not even i like how it's not even a considerate like the first consideration is like

49:56Chris Santis:she just doesn't want to deal with you right exactly it's all about her yeah there's no there's no like oh i want colin to live a long healthy life that isn't shortened by the ingestion of 100 chicken nuggets in a row in a short amount of time that will definitely manifest in at least one at least a year off your tombstone you know that's a lot of that type of food at once it is it's a big it's a big ask maybe too big tyler garrett wrote in said hey sacred saints last

50:29Dustin Furman:Last week, there was a talk of terrible remake and remaster names and the talk of Echo the Dolphin. To add to the shitty names, I think it should be called Echo the Dolphin Reporposed. I know dolphins aren't porpoises, but they are close. No write-ins, please. Thank you for all that you'll do. Have a great week. I like that. Now, I love this idea. Porpoises aren't dolphins, but they are cetaceans, which are the mammalian clade that has dolphins, whales, and so on and so forth. I love it. Yeah.

50:56Chris Santis:Reporposed. I got to admit I like that one yeah I like it it's it's it's clever it's clever enough that I'm like I wouldn't have thought of that you know what I mean and I appreciate things that I can I know that I wouldn't have thought of remastered is something I would have joked about because it

51:14Dustin Furman:sucks yeah remastered is I think it's funny it's just it's bad it's you have to know that it's funny and it's bad if you're willing to understand that it's bad then I think you can do it this is

51:24Chris Santis:funny bad and clever though yeah which is a rare it like that's a rare combination of things i go the dolphin repurposed that's got my seal of approval i think i would love that

51:36Dustin Furman:all right i love it yeah well done you guys can echo the dolphin people we talked about you last week you can take that yeah free me from tyler garrett finally patrick feeney wrote and said hello gentlemen to continue the unending scored versus no scored discussions why not go back to how IGN used to do it you would have an overall score than specific and these by the way this is a reference to last week we're getting kind of into that you have an overall score that's that specific scores for gameplay graphics story etc I miss the days of your of your I think you mean he says while you are but you mean why are you on IGN64.com and even more recently if I recall when it was done this way better discussion and if you're more of a story focused gamer you may see something in the review score that interests you when the gameplay may out of it first.

52:17Dustin Furman:Thanks all. Do you guys know why we didn't do this at IGN after a while? No. Think. It's so obvious if you think about it. And it's that, you know, because I was at, I used to give scores like this at IGN. We got rid of this long after IGN 64. I think it was 2010, 2012, something like that. We stopped doing that. It's because everyone thought it was an average and even though it would say not an average in parentheses next to the score it was a constant battle with the audience you gave sound a seven story in eight gameplay a seven and yet you gave it this is the average of those numbers is whatever 7.7 but you gave it an eight and it's like because it's not an average they're weighted differently it's just and so we got rid of it that's the reason there you go patrick to me the obvious reason would be that just it's

53:10Chris Santis:to me it just seemed convoluted it was i remember i remember reading it i remember reading those reviews a long time ago and i remember being like what is what is that what does seven out of ten sound mean like what the fuck does that like what does that actually mean like i had no idea like it made no sense to me i hated at a certain at a certain point like they stopped doing then i was

53:31Dustin Furman:like okay good you know i didn't even think twice about it i'm gonna let you guys on a little secret when when you there you know you're going in the igm back end used to be called network in a box i've talked about this before nib and um there would be fields you'd go into the review and then there would be fields and i wouldn't figure out whatever any of those fields were until i was until i was putting the review in the back end because like i would give it a score and then i'd be like i don't

53:53Chris Santis:know it's like it's like seven yeah whatever i mean that that's what it seems like it would be you know you'd go through your thoughts on the game and you're like what's i don't even know what do you what do you think of the the game feel it's like i don't like i don't

54:09Dustin Furman:know i don't fucking know and then you have to write a little blurb sounds great sounds good i wonder i should find an older like what would be an old an overview old enough i did like megaman star force igian review colin

54:30Dustin Furman:pegasus i don't oh my god i did review this in 2012 no this is too new like what did they stop doing that like 09 or something like yeah i was there but it was early like what would be another one megaman star force megaman 10 review i jam maybe i feel you know what these these have been updated after like this was this is updated in May 2012. So I was still there, but that was years after the game came out. So I wonder if all the boxes just went away. Probably. GTA, I didn't review this, but GTA 3 IGN review. First of all, it's going to be like 25 pages long. Let's see. Yeah, the boxes just don't exist anymore because this definitely would have it.

55:17Chris Santis:Yeah, they probably just were just like, let's get rid of this. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.

55:22Dustin Furman:It's irrelevant, really, if you're reading the review. Dude, the reviews we i have i we have definitely discussed in the past the reviews at ign used to be so long that it was insane how long they were because it was that web 1.0 mentality of like we don't have a 200 word 200 character word count or whatever anymore because we're not in a magazine so we could say whatever the fuck we want and it's like guys this is so insane how fucking big this review is um i loved reading those reviews to be honest with you though like i think they were

55:50Chris Santis:uh they're more tailored to the people who like really cared i guess i don't know

55:55Dustin Furman:i was a lot more into it i loved uh yeah i just i i mean i remember going at the end just seeing like whatever all the scores were and it was it was it was an exciting web 1.0 was so fucking special man it we can never go back all right what's web 2.0 is that apps yeah i think web 2.0 is like the video and stuff like that and and like high speed internet sure you know i miss the days of web 1.0 like frames remember frames on websites yeah like frames were like the idea that you would put all the stuff on the side so like all the oh yeah like that right i said and then everything started going to a masthead and i was talking to pair about it on twitter it's not too long ago pair schneider who founded ign where i was like i remember when we got rid of frames and i freaked out i was like you can't get rid of like we started looking at the new website i'm like no one's gonna know how to use this fucking thing and it was all and i'm so old i'm so old we're like i didn't want anything to ever change dude i remember masthead stuff was like what it all went to after i remember that

57:00Chris Santis:happening with youtube and like where that when they like did their first revision like their first big change in 2009 i was like this sucks to be fair i think it really did yeah i think youtube's just gotten worse to be honest yeah the thing that bothers me about youtube is

57:15Dustin Furman:... It's very convoluted. Like, yes, you can't talk to a person. It almost feels like no one works there. Like it's all run by algorithms. And I'm like, I don't know that that's fair. No, like your creators, like when a creator is like, I got demonetized or like I got copyright struck or like and it's like, sorry, dude, the only way that I could the only way that

57:42Chris Santis:i ever got anything fixed was by making a stink about it on twitter and like tagging at team youtube that was the only way you couldn't file like a claim you couldn't like i remember at a certain point they got rid of inboxes um on youtube which is a bummer because i had some like really hilarious uh interactions with people that like i would love to see again but they're gone um but that was the only way to fix it if you had like some bullshit video or if you had like a thing where it's just like oh this is blocked or whatever and it's like why you'd have to at them and then like get a lot of people to to complain with you and then and then you'd be

58:18Dustin Furman:like oh sorry it's like wild it's preposterous like it really it actually really is preposterous that like you could just something can happen to a person's business basically on youtube and they're like yeah sorry there's no recourse for you do you have any idea like how crestfallen that like how devastating that must be like to i assume you could probably i don't want to say serve them but you could probably get lawyers involved to try to prod of them but like that's expensive and it's probably in the eula that they don't owe you anything anyway i just it's just it's that's i love youtube i think youtube is awesome i use youtube all the time but it's like i that bothers the fuck out of me yeah not for me we're not doing it like doing anything crazy but like it's like we've had no problems i'm just saying like based on all the experiences and stories i've seen other people i'm like that's so crazy that like you can just kind of lose it and that they don't owe you anything they don't say anything to you they

59:09Chris Santis:don't communicate with you and the fact that the functionality like barely works sometimes too it's like that's one of the reasons i've kind of fallen a little bit away from it is because i remember like i remember posting a video once and then it just got like zero views for like hours i was like this simply can't possibly and i remember i looked at i like said i i got in contact with somebody somehow and they're like oh yeah just re-upload it sorry i'm just like what

59:37Dustin Furman:how can i take this seriously yeah it's like it i don't know it reminds me of when you like you getting shadow banned on twitter from search or whatever yeah it's like why and why why is that just not that can't be reversed of course it can you know like that's like that's the thing that's it's like you don't owe anything to anyone, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. A little strange. I don't know. Strange way to run a business. Yeah. Oh, man. Crazy times. All right. Let's get into the news. Dustin, I'm going to need you with this first one, but I'll introduce it first. This is the big story of the last week, and it's a much ado about nothing.

1:00:18Dustin Furman:We go to GameSpot, which we almost never do. GameSpot used to be IGN's rival, and we wanted to kill them, and then we did. PlayStation users report new online license checks, but Sony quells concern, they write. It says here, quote, a new quirk has begun affecting PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners with digital game purchases. It appears the system's latest updates have introduced a 30-day online license check for digital games, leaving those who have extended internet outages without access to certain games. However, Sony has clarified exactly how it works, and it seems like most players have nothing to worry about.

1:00:48Dustin Furman:Several users, including the game accessibility Twitter account Does It Play, have reported that all new PlayStation Store purchases, those made before March 2026 appear to be unaffected, feature a 30-day timer that shows when you will need to connect to the Internet again before losing access. This timer doesn't appear to be visible on the PS5, but according to Does It Play, it is still being tracked in the background. While unlikely to be a tangible issue for most players, there are definitely use cases that could see a PS4 or PS5 disconnected from the Internet for extended periods of time. According to a statement, Does It Play gave to Kotaku, the license checks may have been introduced to combat refund scams, but were designed to convert into unlimited licenses afterwards.

1:01:23Dustin Furman:This appears to be the case, with an SIE spokesperson telling GameSpot the following, quote, Players can continue to access and play their purchased games as usual. A one-time online check is required to confirm the game's license. Afterwards, no further check-ins are required, end quote. Man, people spent a lot of time crying about this. um i didn't say anything about it for like on social media or even behind the scenes because i'm like there's actually i did say one thing i think it was on lily mo's private discord where i'm like i think i said verbatim there's no way this is true and that was that was the only thing i said and then several days later i was like yeah it's not not a thing um but it was this is the big playstation news of the week and man people were annoying about it now dustin is this how you understand the situation to being a more technically minded person?

1:02:10Dustin Furman:Were you tracking this situation and, and what do you make of it?

1:02:13Colin Moriarty:Yes. I was monitoring the situation all week, uh, for my couch where I was, uh, surviving. And I was like you calling where I was hesitant to say anything because we've had these situations pop up where it seems like something weird is going on with drm uh and then it ends up not really being anything it's definitely did appear concerning at first and i do find it funny i don't know if you saw spawn waves video which i thought was very fair where he was just yeah and dude saint slayer was like front and center and that's the one of the main videos that took off i think his video is very fair because he was just kind of showing what the situation was and like okay what's going on here we got to find out more and it does seem to be a new thing in order to combat the refund scam so for people don't know what this is is that which i find it surprising that people do this on playstation like i feel like there's some kind of missing information because i've heard about this on steam where you buy a game on steam you request a refund and before the refund comes through you go offline and then you can play the entire game.

1:03:29Colin Moriarty:The refund comes through. You go back online and you no longer have access to the game, but you've played it.

1:03:34Dustin Furman:Imagine being so broke that you would do something like that.

1:03:37Colin Moriarty:Yeah. So apparently this also is possible on PlayStation, but PlayStation is notorious for not giving refunds unless it's unplayed. So maybe there's a thing like buying a game, not playing it, requesting the refund, then going offline, something like that. I don't know. So it has it is a big uh much to do about nothing but i think it is worth pointing out that i get why people are skittish about this because people have so much invested in their accounts and sony controls all that so and i know that colin your point is always like they don't want to do anything to upset you because they want you to continue to spend money and that's true but uh you have a lot more security with a physical game and i understand maybe that doesn't matter to everybody but i get it i get the a little bit of fear around it so i'm glad this turned out to be nothing i kind of thought it would be nothing i didn't predict like the 30 day check or anything like that i also could barely think uh for the last few days but um um yeah this has been has blown up quite a bit Chris what's your take on this situation I'm sure you've been watching it on unravel in recent yeah yeah it's been funny I don't know like I mean I

1:05:04Chris Santis:when I first saw it I was like I kind of had the first instinct that you did Colin where I was like there's no like that's such because the stuff that I was seeing was that like oh um they'll revoke the license after 30 days and if you don't check in you'll have to rebuy it or whatever and i'm like there's that seems so suicidal for no real gain that like i can't imagine that that's true um but it did remind me like the whole conversation just reminded me of like the xbox one drm thing which in in fairness that was like that the xbox one drm situation was worse but it was also in my opinion like similarly kind of like you're gonna be online on this thing like That's how I feel, dude.

1:05:48Dustin Furman:I said, I mean, I agree with you 100%. This is, I am, I don't know what world people think is going to exist where you don't have the internet.

1:05:57Chris Santis:I guess if you're on like an aircraft carrier in the, in the, or, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's definitely, we have a letter about this actually from the audience

1:06:03Dustin Furman:that I'll get into. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. I'll read it now. Cause there is an exception, right? Yeah. Roger Yemen has wrote in and said, good afternoon, CDC. I'm writing to you as a submariner in the Navy. I've been a loyal listener and lifelong PlayStation fan, having carried my PS Vita with me through multiple deployments. It was the perfect offline companion as I often won't see an internet connection for 70 plus days at a time. Like many of us, I've been closely following the rumors of Project Canis. I was incredibly excited about the prospect of a true Vita successor, but recent reports regarding a 30-day DRM check-in on digital licenses have completely soured that anticipation.

1:06:33Dustin Furman:This isn't just a me problem. On my boat, it's common to see a dozen or more PS5s being lugged underway by shipmates looking for a way to decompress. If Sony moves forward with this 30-day validity timer, they are effectively bricking every one of those consoles mid-patrol. We are hundreds of feet underwater. there is no checking in with a server do you think sony realizes how much of their loyal base they are alienating with these always online adjacent policies and for a potential ps6 portable to succeed shouldn't a portable device be the one thing that doesn't require an online tether curious to hear your thoughts on this i guess i'll just have to stick the playing magic the gathering underway instead of instead like a giant fucking nerd at least my cards don't need an internet connection the function i'll hang up and listen i'm so fascinated by submariners my stepfather was a submariner i bring him up sometimes because they really are just totally disconnected it's like you just don't you don't communicate with the outside world at all it's really it's really uh and you're under it's just so so scary and you're in like this little tin can there are this reminds me a lot of what roger's saying here reminds me a lot of the conversation around xbox one xbox 360 because as you were saying because at that time the default console for military people was xbox 360 and they would be on bases in iraq or whatever and like wouldn't have an internet connection and then that's where the whole um the whole we have a console for you kind of style thing came in when the xbox one came in and and um and sent on matrick and all the rest so i just uh i know that there are exceptions but i'm generally and maybe maybe i'm just wrong on this but i just don't think i am it's like i don't really know what everyone's so upset or about with this shit i really don't like it just doesn't you think sony's gonna lock you out of your games that you bought, like just arbitrarily on your console.

1:08:14Dustin Furman:Like I just, why would they do that? Why would they want to do that? How could they think they would want to get away with it? Now, I think, um, well, let me read this next inquiry. Cause I think there's more to say here about this. Collins bonus hole wrote in and said, hi, CDC. Can you guys explain what the hell is going on with this whole PlayStation 30 day login controversy? Because reading the discourse around it, I feel like I'm going insane. From what I can tell, this seems to either be a poorly communicated DRM check or maybe something affecting certain newer digital purchases, not the you lose all of your games if you don't log in scenario people are screaming about.

1:08:49Dustin Furman:Yet somehow it's being framed like Sony just pulled a Don Matrick, but I don't see it. Even in a worst case scenario, this sounds more like a periodic license check than an always online requirement. So why is this being treated like a massive betrayal? Is this actually a big deal or just another case of gamers running wild with incomplete information. Curious to hear your thoughts. They're running wild with incomplete information, no doubt about it. But again, I don't understand. You buy a game digitally. You have to be on the Internet to do it. You bring up, you put a game on your console that suddenly the console will never go online again and it will stop you from playing it.

1:09:23Dustin Furman:Perceivably, I guess I'm just confused. Like Roger writes in about this use case, this fringe case, which is interesting and important and relevant. but who's not connecting their playstation to the internet i'm sorry like i don't i i just don't understand like why these drm yeah god if if they're buying digitally yeah that's kind of

1:09:44Chris Santis:the thing right it's like if you're buying digitally and you don't use the internet i know that's kind of like who the fuck is that i think a lot of people are who the fuck

1:09:53Dustin Furman:i think it's like people are like this is what killed the xbox xbox one i'm like yeah 13 years ago 13 years ago there was this controversial thing with what with this console when we were in a digital a different place with digital purchases and all the rest i i will say at the time and there's probably podcast or video that people can go look but i remember at the time with the xbox being like i don't really get it you know even as the guy who covered playstation at the site i was like why is this a big deal to like have some sort of ability to like check the that you own the game.

1:10:31Colin Moriarty:Wasn't wasn't the Xbox version, though, like disc based DRM? Oh, maybe. I don't know. That's why it was extra egregious and why Sony made the the iconic shoe. Hey, Adam, right.

1:10:41Dustin Furman:But then why would it be like that? Because Sony didn't say anything about their physical games at all. Right. You know, right. Yeah. So I think. We're pretty hard on Sony, obviously, on the show. I just don't. And I think that they deserve a lot of shit, but I don't get this. Yeah. Um, maybe it's because I'm a little more sensitive because I brought it up over and over again. Like it was very startling for me to see like the, the, the broke, the jailbroken Vitas would just buy with a storefront of every Vita game, but they're all free. It's like, I don't want people stealing games. And I think people are not, let me back up.

1:11:25Dustin Furman:if we in society, our society is catered around like the bottom five or 10 % of people, right? Like we have laws to stop people from doing things that you and I would never do, right? We have all of these systems to protect you from falling where you and I would never fall and all of the rest. And this is another one of those things that's unfortunately aimed at the people who are going to steal shit. And I feel like you're kind of mad at the wrong people. PlayStation 5 was broken open. And with that, what is it with fucking PS4's version of Star Wars Racer?

1:12:05Colin Moriarty:Star Wars Racer. And it's like, that sucks.

1:12:10Dustin Furman:That ruins it for all of us. And these kinds of things don't exist to stop law-abiding normal people, normal purchasers and consumers from enjoying their games it's to stop the fringe cases from fucking everything up sure and and i think that that's like a it's a worthwhile thing that everyone ignores it sucks that that happened the root key on that disc or whatever like makes it so that it can never be solved and so they have to figure out novel ways to do things and this is one of those things i think you also have to wonder like i mean if you're if you're in the situations where

1:12:48Chris Santis:it is earnestly like like on a submarine right where it is like well you're not a a ne 'er do well you know you're you're a you're an asset to the country and you're being thrown under the ocean with no access to the internet wouldn't you also have like physical games in that you know what i mean like wouldn't wouldn't that be a case where it wouldn't affect you either yeah i guess you could theoretically make the argument like well no we we install things when we come up to save on space you know not have to take the discs everywhere i could see that maybe but like if i was in a position where like i i knew that i was going to be offline for long periods of time and i wanted to play video games i think i would have long been physical media only in the first place um so i'm not yeah even in that situation where it would theoretically affect people underwater on military bases i would i would have to imagine that they would be exempt from that from the sheer fact that they would probably have disc-based games more so than online like i don't know maybe i could maybe i'm wrong that seems rational yeah i i

1:14:06Dustin Furman:you know what i would love too because i think microsoft used to do shit like this not quite this complicated but they were they leaned very much into their association with the military

1:14:12Chris Santis:during that era the xbox 360 they would have like they would have like passes or something like right

1:14:15Dustin Furman:exactly like it would be cool if like they would give something like a dongle to like the milk like to different i know this is crazy it's like what but like some sort of thing that would override it for their people it's like all right we're going on missions here's like a little thing you plug in your PlayStation and it just gives you, you know, it shuts these things off just to take care of them or whatever, because it is a relevant part of the American culture and gaming is, is so intrinsically tied in the military and has been for many, many years. Everyone knows that, that knows people in the military.

1:14:39Dustin Furman:They, they love playing games. So yeah, um, they'll go like, you know, first person shoot in real life and then they'll go first person shoot on their gaming console. Um, just to be clear, the way I think it should work is the way it does work. which is that like you have, you have, I have like four PlayStation fives. Most people don't have that many PlayStation fives, but it's like you have your PlayStation five and on your, your primary, what you will mark as a primary PS five, in my opinion, and I think this is the way it works. You should be able to download anything you want to it. And it should work in perpetuity, even if you're never connected to the PSN again.

1:15:17Dustin Furman:Right. And that is generally the way it works. that the thing where it stops is if you have like a secondary console your secondary console can't play any of your primary consoles games or the user account attached to that unless it's on the internet that makes perfect sense to me that stops you from populating your various consoles with a million different things and then just giving them away or whatever or selling them and then you have this problem and this is what i'm saying is like you're kind of mad at the you're kind of mad at the victim in a way where it's like you have these fucking losers buying games asking for refunds disconnecting from the PSN getting their money back and playing the game they're stealing the game and this is the way that they're dealing with it be mad at them be mad at the people that are ruining this it's the same thing I always think about with like cheaters and games and so it's like be mad at them they're the ones fucking it all up for everybody.

1:16:14Dustin Furman:It's why I'm mad at the developers that fucked up the trophy system. It's why I'm mad at like all these different things. Like, yeah, like. I'm not trying to defend Sony in some staunch way. I'm just saying I look at this and I'm like, I don't know exactly what you think should be happening with your digital games. Like you should you think you should just be able to download your digital game on as many PS5s as you want, and then you never have to connect to the Internet again. Are you kidding? Like, like, what do you think is what do you what do you want? What do you that's like my whole like what do you that's and read i tried to read a bunch of this stuff and i'm like i don't know exactly what you guys want well yeah i don't know if it's devil's advocate necessarily like but the

1:16:52Chris Santis:argument could be made that it's the same thing is not true for any other form of digital media technically like the the same protections don't necessarily exist for like mp3s you know what i mean or like songs or podcasts or movies and tv they have some but like not necessarily you could like rip the office and like sell it um so this is a fairly like more stringent more unique case but i still agree but there is that point it all goes back to like if people just acted normally acted responsibly respectfully honestly we wouldn't have any of these problems

1:17:36Dustin Furman:but unfortunately like all these things have to just like society has to cater towards like the lowest common denominator we could live in the fucking picture with all the sci-fi picture like this is what society looks like if picture that always goes around it's like yeah yeah yeah we could sure 100 and it's the same thing here if like if we didn't have a bunch of fucking losers stealing games yeah there would be no impetus to even put work into researching how to figure out

1:18:02Chris Santis:how to impose these kinds of restrictions that I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they wouldn't. They would rather not spend their time doing that. You know what I mean? Because it's money and time that they could spend elsewhere or just, you know, relaxing. But like the fact that they do have something to combat is unfortunate.

1:18:21Dustin Furman:The level of pride. I've said this before and I'll say it again. The level of pride that people take in stealing games is crazy. And this is a huge problem in the Switch community. it's obviously a massive problem in the pc community and it's been a problem in the pc community forever i mean it was so i remember being a kid like it was trivial to steal games on pc completely trivial like comically trivial should the idea of shareware like you could just take a copy of doom on a fucking series of you know discs and just put it on your console computer and then just do it again and again and again and again and again and it was all based on honesty and it wasn't great a lot of people did it a lot of people didn't but like so i know that's been an ever-present problem in that space but it's like stop stealing shit and there would be no need for drm and you shouldn't be mad at the companies for executing on drm you should be mad at people making it necessary this is a law and order argument dude it's like i'm sorry it's like it's it is what it is like you should you don't you wouldn't steal a car it's like going to the

1:19:20Chris Santis:grocery store and like they have like the shampoo behind like a glass or something yeah

1:19:25Colin Moriarty:Yeah.

1:19:28Dustin Furman:Death is a problem, dude. Like it, and just generally, and like just a lack of honesty, like I would love to see a PlayStation ecosystem that was, that was predicated on, on, on honest brokers dealing with the store and dealing with each other. We don't live in that world. Unfortunately, unfortunately we don't, not my fault, but so, so I, I, I get, I get people's consternation when these things happen. But I feel like people need to look at things a little bit more on and just the objective reality is if you can't connect your PlayStation five to the Internet, because like for some reason, the Internet's down for a long period of time, you have big fucking problems because everything's probably done.

1:20:08Dustin Furman:The Internet's never going anywhere. You'll be able to connect your the I've said this a million times. The PSN will exist in decades. You'll still be able to. I believe it. I believe in 2050 you will be able to go on the PSN and play your PS4 games. I believe it. What about PS3? Hopefully they'll have solid. Did you see that Atari bought that studio? I actually didn't cover that. Atari bought Implicit Conversions, the guys that do the syrup engine that are trying to solve the PS3 thing. So maybe they'll give them more money and be able to sell that once and for all. I love what Atari's doing.

1:20:42Dustin Furman:Like cobbling together like this old school brand of port studios like Night Dive, technical teams like Implicit Conversions, compilation studios like Digital Eclipse. Really cool. Really like it. Shout out to you, Jason Polanski. He listens to the show. He's the senior producer over there. Second favorite Polanski.

1:21:06Chris Santis:Yeah, right, right. I'm going to go turn my air off. It's fucking freezing. Okay, sure.

1:21:12Dustin Furman:Second favorite Polanski. Like that. That's good. So I'm sure some people are going to be mad at my response to this. I'm sure some people were even predicting that I was going to respond like this. But to me, I'm like, I don't know. The bigger question, of course. Oh, you're going to say something, Dustin, please.

1:21:28Colin Moriarty:Well, just the thing that I find interesting about this is people's. I'm always surprised at people learning or realizing that their digital games. Are not as flexible as their physical games. You know, like I, for example, we're going to talk about Soros later. I bought it digitally. I fully understand that I have I am under that game is fully under Sony's control my access to it that's something I sacrificed in order to buy it and play it with early access whatever I just think it's weird when people don't even know the diff like the your physical game and your digital game are like under a different set of rule set so people are when I see people freak out about this i'm like well yeah of course of course they can remove access or things like this can happen um it just depends on whether or not you care about that but a lot of people are just totally unaware so when things like this happen i think people realize like oh i'm not a digital game i mean technically this is true also for physical but it's like you're not buying the game you're buying access to that game on your account right and that comes with all the stipulations the license and if you get banned it's gone totally gone yeah if you have a digital game though or a physical game sorry if you have a physical game sony can't take that away from then again it's like why what are you doing that you would get banned well look at the many people that have written into us that have had situations happen to them that they got hacked or something

1:23:09Dustin Furman:weird with their account right but again these are dishonest brokers you know what i mean like it's it's and this goes back into what i was saying about you're all dishonest no no i'm not saying that people are getting hacked are dishonest i'm saying you're dealing you're again you're catering towards the people that are hacking you right like there are all of these problems because yeah we've dealt a lot with this and this is sony's it like sony needs to solve this issue because it seems like people have right i mean the suggestions are like i don't know what's true and what's not some of the one of the people that were writing about it i think was suggesting like that there are like people on the inside basically that are like yeah which is which is interesting like i don't think that i don't know if that's true i don't want to say i think i don't think one thing or the other i don't really know but the idea that like that's a big problem that these are it's not to say that there aren't going to be problems and there aren't going to be complications of course they're going to be it's not going to say that it's not to say that the psn might not go out one day like it you know not like it did in 2011 or whatever but like it like it did you know for a day or for a half a day and it inconveniences you and it fucks licenses up It's like, yeah, that's just kind of the nature of online functionality.

1:24:08Dustin Furman:And again, I believe that this shouldn't be and isn't going to be a problem for most people that have a single PlayStation. Because again, in my experience, the primary PlayStation, which would be your PlayStation if you only own one, does not need to connect to the internet typically to confirm things. Once you have it on there, it almost operates like the old Wii. We're like, what's on your console is on your console. and to me I just I don't have a problem with with there being checks to make sure that people aren't acting dishonestly as someone who's had his game stolen I don't really appreciate it and as someone who sees people openly flaunting that their their piracy on pc on switch it's elsewhere I think it's fucking lame and it should be combated and it's bad for the industry if you don't want to pay for the games you're buying, you shouldn't be playing games or if you don't want to pay that, that's redundant.

1:25:02Dustin Furman:If you don't want to pay for games too fucking bad, that's my, that's my opinion. Yeah. Wait, wait until a sale. We say it over and over again. You could basically spend nothing or next to nothing. And by the way, you could fruitfully play video games in the modern era and spend no money at all. Easily just bounce between the bajillion free to play games that don't ask you for anything so yeah i'm pretty militant about this because i i and and it reminds me too it's like i also wonder like what do people want to do with their digital games it reminds me of back in the ps4 and xbox like xbox one and ps4 when they were being kind of imagined you might remember game spot was talking about used games and getting into the used game digital used game market and then very quickly people were like what the fuck are you talking about the used like you're gonna you're gonna have a used game digital market with like decaying prices.

1:25:55Dustin Furman:It's like, it doesn't even make any sense. People are trying to fit round pegs into square holes. And these are different things now. So I appreciate people's consternation about this. I don't think this affects most people playing video games. And the bigger thing I think is this Leon's uncle Bobby wrote in said, Hey fellas, I find the latest DRM situation with Sony very frustrating. Why is it so hard for them to say anything to clear up confusion? Why is it up to YouTubers and media personalities to do experiments to figure out what changed? It fortunately looks like the initial fears were overblown, but I feel like this was an unforced error.

1:26:35Dustin Furman:I'm someone who buys a lot of digital games. DRM probably wouldn't have changed that, but at least I want to understand what I'm buying. It just feels kind of shady. Otherwise, I'll hang up and listen. This is a complex one, too, because my assumption is Sony was hoping to get away with this without saying anything and i kind of get it because they probably game planned it behind the scenes you would assume and we're like if we bring this up it exposes to a much wider audience what we're trying to fix and and it's us acknowledging that there's a major problem in the playstation ecosystem that requires yeah does that make any sense to you guys in other where it's like, we're basically telling you 99.99 % of you have no idea that you can, that you can refund games and go offline.

1:27:24Dustin Furman:If we tell you this, right. Then we are potentially telling everyone what the, like exposing the console in a way. And I think that they, they looked at it like the way we just don't, we should just not say anything.

1:27:37Colin Moriarty:And if they do say something and explain it, not only is there net that negative aspect, but so many people are just going to see a tweet or a headline that's like sony introduces new drm online checks and lose their mind not knowing exactly what kind of check it is or how invasive or non-invasive it is they're just going to see more drm bad it's a bad look it's a lose sony and to be fair that happened anyway uh but at least i don't know did it expose also some of the shady behavior, maybe, but maybe only in the bubble as opposed to like a real wide story. The other thing is, is that doesn't Steam operate

1:28:15Dustin Furman:like this? Like, I know for sure that people have like Steam decks that can't access their games if they're not online. Like you have to do like some sort of check when you do. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure. But people can. I've played Steam deck

1:28:29Colin Moriarty:offline many, many, many times. Yeah, there's an offline mode.

1:28:34Dustin Furman:Steam has no check in on

1:28:35Chris Santis:on on if you own the game or not um i'm trying to think like you can definitely run steam offline and just play your games like i don't think i've never we're bad examples because like how long have how long is any of us really gone without like connecting to the internet at some

1:28:56Colin Moriarty:point in the day like so i don't know there are certain games that do online checks maybe on an initial boot up or something like that, like through DeNovo DRM or something. But I don't think there is a steam level DRM for games. Like if you load up your game with steam decks with your steam deck with games and you go on a, a three month cruise that has no internet or you're in like a, you know, some foreign you're in the jungle. I'm pretty sure you can play those as long as they don't have game level DRM, you can play those games indefinitely.

1:29:35Dustin Furman:It says here, Gemini said, I don't know if this drew in. I says, yes, you can play most Steam games offline using Steam's offline mode. To do this, you must first log in while online. Ensure games are fully updated and select Steam go offline. So I. Yeah, you have to buy the game. Well, I know, but I'm saying. Yeah, but it's it seems like it's. It is. Yeah, you have to go. That's true. You have to go. But doesn't that isn't that the same thing? This is this is kind of my why I'm flummoxed. It's like. Why wouldn't you be on the Internet? Again, we're talking about these things, the jungle, the submarine.

1:30:08Dustin Furman:I get that. But otherwise, like for normal consumers, it's like, what are you doing offline? Like, I think people are just searching for problems and there's a little consternation about things that wouldn't affect most people. Like most people even complaining about this will never run into this problem. This is this is the whole thing. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

1:30:24Colin Moriarty:If you have a PlayStation handheld, then that is a little different because like, for example, I think Monster Hunter, not Wilds, the one before that Monster Hunter Rise, I believe had an online DRM because I was on a trip to Cedar Point. And I think I just was like, I was in the hotel and I didn't plug my Steam Deck into Wi-Fi because I'm just playing some quick Monster Hunter. And I couldn't play until I logged onto the Steam Wi-Fi. So if you're on a plane or if you're in a car ride, I mean, I guess you could hotspot your phone to do the DRM check, but a portable device is much more likely to go a set amount of time without internet and a likely time when you might want to play a game such as travel so in a playstation situation there could be more people that are temporarily offline to play their handheld if a bad drm situation happened but that's not the case like i don't think that that's going to be a problem for the playstation

1:31:26Dustin Furman:handout even with this new edition the bigger thing to me here is to this was just a runaway train never coming back because little soul asylum impression for you um because it was just information put out there by people that didn't know any better starting shit where there was none it's just another example of that too but it is what it is dustin how mad is the audience is going to be at me about this.

1:31:56Colin Moriarty:I think that to say there are we're 100 % a lot of bad actors, but I don't think there's any problem with people being like, hmm, something has changed in the DRM and Sony hasn't said anything, so what's going on? Like Spawn Waves video. I don't think he was doing anything wrong. And I think there were a lot of people just asking questions. Now, like, did I see like stupid memes where people are like, now Xbox, this is how you this is how you share games and stuff. And it's like, no, you know what I mean? So yes, there was a runaway trained element, but I think asking questions about the, your digital rights management of purchasing, it's like, uh, it's like Leon's uncle Bobby said, it's like you, if you're an informed consumer, you might want to know like, well, okay, well I might be okay with these changes, but what are they?

1:32:46Dustin Furman:Right. But at the same time, when I saw the story, I knew instinctively that there was no nothing going on that was like, so why didn't like, I'm not saying spawn waiver other people like there. That's a jerk. That's like real journalism. If I'm taking the battery out, I'm going to show you how it works. That's good shit. But I'm more wondering like why the instinct wasn't like Sony didn't just blow up their business. Right. Like, of course they didn't. And in a way they're trying to protect the fringe of it from bad actors. and I think that that's good but yeah I understand that there's going to be people caught in the crossfire again primary console I believe offline once you have a game should be able to keep that game forever and that may or may not be true depending on the game you have and how you have to connect to the internet for all that you know for these various third-party DRMs but that's what I think so so when so that like the games you buy are on the single console and that's totally fine.

1:33:45Dustin Furman:I think that's great. Anything else? And again, blame the bad actors, blame the pirates, blame the people that are refunding games erroneously and all that kind of stuff like shit you would never do or I would never do. We have to unfortunately bear the brunt of that. Very similar to how the criminal justice system in the United States is full of the same, you know, 10 or 20 percent of people and 80 percent of their people go around their life and they never have to deal with it, but they pay for it. They deal with the ramifications. They're victims of it and all the rest. It's the same kind of thing.

1:34:17Dustin Furman:And it sucks. But I don't think. I don't know. It's an interesting story. I'm glad it happened because it gave us something to talk about. There's very little news other than that this week. Anything else to say about this before we move on? Run away, train never coming. All right. Let's see. Who doesn't love a little soul asylum? on a Thursday at 2.30 in the afternoon. MLB The Show Mobile. We talked about this a while ago. It's slowly expanding out. Very exciting stuff. So you can pre-register right now for MLB The Show Mobile. And it is being made by San Diego Studio. It's actually branded as a San Diego Studio game.

1:35:07Dustin Furman:And it's some sort of mixture, as we noted back in the day when we first talked about it, when it entered some sort of regional beta. It's like a card based like mobile game that's accompanying but doesn't connect, unfortunately, to the console versions of the game. I think that would be really cool if it did. So you can go to MLB or I'm sorry, the show mobile dot com, the show mobile dot com. And you can begin signing up and all the rest. Now, the game as of so we talked about the game in December. And that's when it was made available in the Philippines. and in January it became available in Nicaragua and Colombia and then Panama Dominican Republic Australia and then finally in March Mexico and this month Canada so they're slowly rolling out to kind of non-essential but baseball playing places to try to get people going on this game and see what it's all about you can sign up with your pre-registration and get information for MLB The Show mobile when it will be available in your market.

1:36:08Dustin Furman:There is no cross-play support, so it will not connect to MLB The Show on PS5, for instance, and so on and so forth. So I just wanted to throw that out there. It looks pretty cool. I think this game has got potential, actually. Let's remember in March, the biggest game in the United States was MLB The Show. So Dustin, will you be playing MLB The Show mobile on your iPhone?

1:36:33Colin Moriarty:No. but I think it's cool specifically because like in this right up on the website, it says it combines a real on field action with deck building and car tragedy. And so it's like, it has a little bit of that Pokemon mobile to it. That has been huge, huge for Pokemon that the, the card trader game that has been big. You got your monetization built right in there that I'm sure Sony's thrilled about. people who love baseball cards as well could be into this so i think it's neat that it's not just a straight version of uh mlb the show it has this neat card element to it which makes it a tiny bit more attractive to me but uh you know i'm just like ripping packs of things i would be opening a card and not knowing who or what or what it even means but it could be could be neat so yeah what is the oh yeah so it's out in a bunch of other countries he said that's interesting how they do the the smaller markets that first for testing right smaller markets that play baseball

1:37:40Dustin Furman:which i think is cool so like the philippines columbia nicaragua and canada now so they're slowly finding their way to the united states and to japan where and by the way i don't know if you guys saw this e-baseball is coming out which is konami's baseball game for the first time in the United States. And what's cool about that is that that is like MLB, the show for the Japanese league. And I was like, that's kind of, kind of neat that they're, they're finally getting that out here. So I was actually watching the trailer on PSN a couple of nights ago. Chris, will you connect with your Puerto Rican heritage and play MLB, the show mobile?

1:38:15Dustin Furman:Nah, man, I'm good. Yeah.

1:38:18Chris Santis:I'm, I'm, I'm fine. I like, look, I played a little bit of MLB, the show uh years back i thought it was good it's cool it's a nice little experience to me this is like okay it's on mobile and there are cards whoa i can't think of anything that they could have done to this to make it appeal to me less yeah i really hate i really hate card games like i hate i hate cards whenever they whenever they show up arbitrarily i remember this was big with like halo 5 and halo wars do they had like that's a card system i'm like oh my god this sucks i hate this who gives a shit and so it's been fascinating to me to see like the card thing kind of explode and like a lot of people really like it like a vampire crawlers and i think there's like other hearthstone was the big one um i just i don't know man there's something about card video games where it's just like i could just do this i could just play a card game like why am why does it have to be virtual what are we doing what am i doing here yeah i just never understood it so it's so not for me already as like a baseball game on a phone that with that extra thing on top of it it's like yeah no i'm good it's cool that it exists it's smart to do it that way because especially the card game kind of philosophy and design like works really really well for people who like play on mobile um so like i think it's a smart idea but like this is it couldn't be further for further away from my taste if it if it actively tried

1:39:51Dustin Furman:it's interesting because i feel like this is the first time sony has gotten a mobile game going or even announced where i'm like this has a real chance of oh yeah being something and this is the the thing that i'm disappointed about and i i assume they know this and i assume it's something they'll work on is like they got it connected to the game to the real game to the real show and i'm not saying like cross play or anything like that rather the whole pocket station slash vmu thing from the ps1 and dreamcast era where maybe you can do things that will help you later you know like a synergizing kind of thing right like you main game right i'm trying to think of an example like wasn't it in was it like soul caliber or something where you can like upgrade your character on the vmu and then you put it back into the game it was like dreamcast did a lot of cool shit like that.

1:40:40Dustin Furman:And the pocket station did shit like that. Although that was mostly in place in, uh, in Japan, I think it would be imperative for them to eventually do that because making that synergy and keeping people within the MLB ecosystem from March or April through the world series, I think would be a big get for them, whether they're at home or away and like see pardon the pun and seeing, um, MLB the show be the top selling game in the United States for the month last month is like baseball still king man i mean especially this time of year and sony needs to have a i think a robust presence on mobile like it's just essential and the and all their mobile presence should feed back into the normal games again no cross play none i'm not saying any of that i'm saying yeah just make some sort of like you said chris some sort of synergistic thing for the show mobile i am positive because san diego is making the game internally i am positive that they know this and i assume it's something they'll integrate in the future

1:41:33Chris Santis:yeah it's smart it's it's smart to do it this way um and it's a good idea you know people like

1:41:42Dustin Furman:people like their card slot they really do they really do so go to the show mobile.com to pre-register you can pre-register on both ios and android interesting thing that i was reading no tablet versions only phone i wonder why that is probably a resolution issue you would assume maybe yeah tablets i know people still love tablets but like they for me they really came and went like i bought an ipad 2 in 2011 and that was the and i was like yeah this is cool and i never i just don't give a shit about the tablet it was supposed to be like this revolutionary thing that was going to replace laptops and everything i'm like it never happened

1:42:25Chris Santis:yeah not not particularly i use it for photoshop sometimes because i have the it's good with the pen every now and again if you want to get like but that's like it's really like more of like a I just like to do it that way you don't really need it at all

1:42:40Dustin Furman:alright let's see here this is a big piece of news guys the blood of dawn walker from rebel wolves the spinoff or the studio founded by people that spun off of CD project has a release date via publisher bandai Namco the game will launch on September 3rd they released alongside it there was a whole Q &A about it and a new story trailer. I watched the story trailer for like 10 seconds and I'm like, I don't want to see anymore. It's that one trailer sold me of them in the church when the game was announced. Like this looks fucking phenomenal. So you can go to dawnwalkergame.com to learn more about it right now, but it comes out September 3rd on PlayStation 5.

1:43:18Dustin Furman:It's an action RPG. Sounds wonderful. Again, plenty of videos and interviews to watch if you want. I just don't really want to know very much more about it, but this is maybe my most anticipated triple a game actually um chris are you looking forward to blood of dawn walker from rebel wolves and bandai namco i'm curious about it i i do think these

1:43:39Chris Santis:games tend to skew incredibly long uh so this is definitely one of those like i i want to hear the chatter about it because in my experience a lot of really long games kind of run out of interesting gameplay loops to share with you and they kind of like rely on how good the story is to pull you through and that's good in some cases like red dead is kind of one of those things like i think i think red dead is like a red dead 2 in particular it's like it's such a good story that i don't mind that i'm like mashing the x button to to run and like doing the same thing over and over again because the story is that compelling and if if the story can be that compelling again with a game like this then sure but i i i'm a gameplay guy you know like i want i want some cool systems i want good game feel i want it to feel good and i don't i haven't seen enough of what the game is to know or even gauge how well that could be.

1:44:28Chris Santis:But like the production value looks really, really high. I think the premise is really cool. The vibe is right. So I've got my eye on it. But it's I'm curious.

1:44:39Dustin Furman:Dusty boy, will you go to 14th century Europe and deal with the vampiric threat?

1:44:44Colin Moriarty:I got to say, I still don't know about the name blood of Don Walker. Like what if it was just Don Walker? Yeah, Don Walker. Cleaner. Dong Walker. Dong Walker, yeah. Or sure. Dong wanker. The blood of dawn wanker. The blood of dawn wanker. I'm not too particularly interested in this. I think it looks cool, but I'm kind of waiting to see how the review shake out for it. I unpopular take calling. You got hate. We'll get hate earlier. I'll get hate now. I could never finish the Witcher three. Yeah, I never finished it. I have played a lot of it, and I think I was even pretty close the last time. And I think it's cool.

1:45:25Colin Moriarty:I can see I appreciate it. I don't have anything really negative to say other than the combat is kind of in Witcher, in my opinion. But so this game doesn't really do it for me, but I'm willing to be convinced. The gameplay trailers all looked solid. So kind of on a wait and see for it.

1:45:46Dustin Furman:There is a little bit of information on the PlayStation blog. The main character's name is Cohen. So I'll read off a little bit about this to get people a little bit more information about the game, although you can go read it yourself. Our first introduction to the game's protagonist, Cohen, in the demo they write here on PlayStation Blog, is him trying to protect his black death-infected sister, Lunker, from an unjust execution, only to find themselves saved by favorable vampire lord, Brancis, and his deadly undead lieutenant. So that's what we saw in the trailer, and that's all I needed to see.

1:46:13Dustin Furman:After being forced to drink Brancis' blood, Lunker makes a startling recovery, but it signals a new rule of terror as Cohen's Carpathian Mountains village is forced to pay a regular blood tax. Vampiric protection in exchange for their human blood. And the weak or insubordinate are quickly made an example of. Through the disastrous events of the village trying to free itself from princesses rule, Cohen is stricken with the vampire curse and left for dead. His family taken. Cohen only has 30 days and nights to save his kin. For you, that means every major action you take ticks the clock forward.

1:46:41Dustin Furman:Some side quests, certain dialogue choices, and even learning particular abilities to populate his skill tree have a visible time cost. for a game which features a massive world full of caves, mines, settlements, swamps, and hidden paths to explore, as well as interesting people seeking help. The time limit might feel anxiety-inducing, but the dev team has heavily tested the system to ensure it doesn't restrict you. That's one interesting thing. It's like, well, why? Why would you have a time system that didn't restrict you? It's a little strange. That's one thing I read where I'm like, well, that's like saying like, yeah, Majora's Mask, you have 72 hours, but it's not restrictive.

1:47:14Dustin Furman:It's like, it's incredibly restrictive. What the fuck are you talking about? It's like the most restrictive. It's like what the whole game is predicated on. So I'm a little I feel like they probably got feedback that people want to play things completely and you can't be too overburdensome on them. But I wonder if you will be able to do everything in one playthrough remains to be seen. They write here naturally, quote, naturally consequences are a huge part of the blood of Don Walker. This isn't a huge surprise given several members of the now 160 plus strong team or former staffers of CD Projekt Red.

1:47:44Dustin Furman:In the demo, Cohen is given a number of quests to perform. One is to grab healing herbs for his mother's sickness, and another is to help villager Gremla. You can take on many objectives simultaneously or ignore them in favor of quests and other actions. The results of your choices in this particular aspect become clear. Whether it's a minor or major NPC who dies, the game continues, leaving you with its ramifications. Something to take in mind, given Cohen has a blood-hunger meter. If you let it get too low, he's consumed by insatiable hunger. it's black tendrils noticeable even when talking to npcs turning every dialogue option into a juddering red given to the hunger which cannot be refused so there's pretty interesting ideas here going i'm i'm pretty bullish about this game and by the way they say it's 55 to 70 hours um so if that's true it's like each day is two game game hours i guess on average something like that?

1:48:36Dustin Furman:I'm amped about this game, guys. I got to be honest with you. Carpathian Mountains, vampires, 13th century, Collinslop, all of it. You can go to dawnwalkergame.com to learn more about it and you can preorder now on PSN. I actually noticed when I was on there a couple days ago, the wishlist kind of icon came up and was like, this game, a wishlisted game is now available to preorder. So you can do that if you'd like. I will not be doing that. I will preorder it on September 1st, let's say, to get it pre-downloaded. But I am feeling pretty good about this. Bandai Namco also has a pretty good eye, I must say.

1:49:12Dustin Furman:Oh, Mason Mitchell, we had a letter from you. I didn't read it. Now it's getting deleted. That's what we told. We said we weren't going to do that anymore, right? Yeah. Oh, well. I'm sorry about that.

1:49:24Colin Moriarty:Mason's down bad now.

1:49:25Dustin Furman:Sorry about that. I wanted to throw this out here. It's a light news weekend. And also, I know, you know, we're we're millennials. The Rugrats retro rewind collection has been announced. It's coming from a limited run games, unfortunately, and it will revive six 90s classics. I don't know why they call them six 90s classics since some of them come out in the 2000s. But nonetheless, six 90s classics, according to their press release, you can bring preordering shortly and it will come out on May 15th. So it's right around the corner. Are you guys Rugrats fans? so it started before your time but it still goes there's even a new one i think um maybe yeah

1:50:05Chris Santis:yeah yeah the uh i i mean i watched it growing up i liked it but i don't i don't know this isn't it was never like a top thing for me and i think i played like one game i can't remember what the

1:50:24Dustin Furman:hell it was well one of them one of them search for reptar which we'll talk about on ps1 was low key one of playstation one's best-selling games yeah it might have been that one i'm a search for

1:50:36Colin Moriarty:reptar man myself actually oh alan interesting i remember playing that there's like this weird level that you go through a mirror and you have to navigate the house upside down like classic weird ps1 shit where it's like a license thing and then in the game you do something that's completely off the wall yeah that was a good that was Dustin was this the one with the hedge maze

1:50:58Chris Santis:and the goose you know what I'm talking about so familiar dude it's probably that because I remember like going I have a very vague memory of playing a rugrats game a long ass time ago I don't think I owned it I think I like might have borrowed it or it might have been a friend's game or something but like I remember playing a rugrats game where you were going through a hedge maze and it was like a goose it was like a goose jump scare it's search for reptar okay so that's the one that i remember then yeah i have no idea what these other ones are i'm looking at a clip of this goose mini game yeah it's it scared the shit out of me i remember having like a genuine fearful reaction to it but that game sold like million that game sold millions of copies it's very weird like um yeah very odd yeah i mean i i remember it we both me and dustin both remember it so it must have been something but um these other games i have no idea um i i gotta be honest i see this and i'm a little frustrated that like where where are my spider-man games man like where's where's where's where my never saw spider-man yeah that's all wrapped up in like i know it's a licensing thing i get it but like come on rugrats respectfully rugrats has no meaningful impact on video games after this And Spider-Man is still here.

1:52:16Chris Santis:So like, it's crazy. It's crazy to be like, like they could easily, even though like those PS one games are like very, very like low key and very, very, you know, primitive in comparison to the games that we have now. I get, I, I know just based on the, the name Spider-Man, like a Spider-Man retro collection. I just know that that would sell enough that would justify like going back and doing that again. You're not going to make millions and millions on it, but it's probably going to sell more than this. So like, I just don't know what we're doing. Yeah. With the games that we're going back to now.

1:52:49Dustin Furman:It's interesting. Like I was doing a little bit of research because I never played any of the any of the Rugrats games. Rugrats came out when I was in elementary school. Ninety one. It was like amongst the original Nicktoons. So like around the era of Doug and Red and Stimpy. And then later you get like Rocco and later like what was the cat dog and cat dog. I loved Rocco. The wild thornberries. Wild Thornberries and so on. So like it went on. I was never super into Rugrats, but I didn't mind it. It was fine. I thought that it was like way inferior to Doug and especially Red and Stimpy at the time.

1:53:27Dustin Furman:So I think I wasn't super into it from that perspective. But the more interesting thing, in my opinion, and this is what I would love to know more about, like what was going on here is there were no Rugrats games until the mid PS1 era. It's like, where was this? Like, why does this IP so wrapped up? Like you could have even theoretically got an NES game out, but certainly an SNES and Genesis game. And it's interesting that it didn't take off. I'd love to know more about like why they weren't interested in exploring those licenses. It would have been such an obvious win for them during that era.

1:53:58Dustin Furman:But I did do some research about the games that are included. So Search for Reptile is one of them. That's the PS1 game. It's by so THQ is basically the universal THQ was the Rugrats game IP holder, I guess, because they publish all these games. so i guess these after thq went out of business in 2011 the rights to these must have transferred back to someone and i assume they're probably with disney now i don't even i don't even know i have no idea but search for reptile was made by n space and released in 1998 n space is a defunct kind of licensed developer they were making a shit coming games on the ds and 3ds and then they went out of business another game that's included is the rugrats movie this is from software creations that studio came up recently because they did a lot of the marvel license stuff that we were talking about not so long ago um this was released in 1998 on game boy and 1999 on game boy color time travelers rugrats time travelers came to game boy and that's in here game boy color game from 1999 software creations developed ps1 game rugrats studio tour from n space also came out in 1999.

1:55:06Dustin Furman:Now, this is where I'm saying like the 90s classics. So the Paris, the movie Rugrats, Paris Rugrats in Paris, the movie, the game came out in 2000. That was created by Avalanche, interestingly, and N64, PS1 and Game Boy Color. And then the final one is 2001's Castle Caper for Game Boy Advance, which also comes from software creation. So I'm sure people have an affinity for some of these games, but it is that search for Reptar game that was huge. Millions of copies of that game sold. Very peculiar. And I was also looking at some of the games they skipped because I was looking at the order that they were released.

1:55:45Dustin Furman:And I was like, huh, they skip a couple. And so I went and I went and looked. One of them was in 1999 and 64 got Scavengers Hunt, Rugrats Scavengers Hunt from a studio called Real Time Associate. Real Time Associates. It has like a four on Metacritic. and then in 2000 and 2001 a game came to game boy color and then later ps1 called uh totally angelica and that game also has horrible scores so it looks like they went for the games that people actually liked which is nice um so we'll see how that does you can get the physical version on limited run games if you're interested beginning in may and then may 15th the collection comes out just wanted to throw that out there slow news week might as well be thorough and yes I still hate limited run games.

1:56:30Dustin Furman:Dustin, go ahead.

1:56:31Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Chris, did you see in the chat? I posted the video. It is more horrifying. The so the dog spike. Yeah. Yeah. This is the grandpa's dentures. And then the goose picks them up. And he abducts Chucky. And you are running on Spike as Tommy trying to save Chucky.

1:56:51Chris Santis:This looks so psychotic. This is like this is this is such a deeply upsetting. i remember why i remember now why this uh this game had such a upsetting vibe to me because it's uncanny a little bit um yeah but yeah i don't know i mean it's cool i'm glad that we're getting uh just older stuff brought forward because it just kind of it just kind of future proofs a little bit it it allows for more history to be accessible to more people and i think that's always cool and really interesting um i just man i i i yearn for those never soft spider-man games

1:57:34Dustin Furman:man i i would love to have access to this i do wonder what's stopping it like from them from going back because a lot of people like those games like is it sony say like is it something with their like we don't there's we like spider-man games are ours now um yeah i just don't know is it licensing because it seems like disney's fairly willing to license just about

1:57:58Chris Santis:anything at this point um i feel like it's such a no-brainer i i just feel like it's just a slam dunk like for for relatively little effort and get spider-man spider-man to enter electro maybe the first two toby games like any collection with spider-man 2 in it Like, I feel like that would be so huge because that's a historically like important game. So I just don't I just don't know what's taking them. I'm sure I'm sure it's licensing, but I just figure figure it out, man. What are we doing? What's going on?

1:58:34Dustin Furman:They took all of our money and put it in a pot. All right. There's a there's a Mike and I are always citing this this this guy that does Tucker Carlson impressions. Right. Yeah. And the one about the leprechauns. and he's like they were broke because they took all of our money and put it in a pot it's like we always just say the guy does a perfect impression of him there's gold at the end of the rainbow but the rainbow keeps moving yeah right

1:59:02Chris Santis:what are we doing what's going on what's going on all right a couple more things to get through here

1:59:11Dustin Furman:kevin bogues wrote in you put it in the wrong you put that in the chat doesn't well okay Kevin Boggs wrote in St. Colin in a galaxy not so far away where the grime of Mos Eisley rivals even the filthiest jobs in Power Wash Sim, I must ask. Will you embrace your destiny and return to the hose for the Star Wars DLC or has the lingering darkness of somehow Palpatine returned, turned you into a jaded Jedi who refuses the call? As a lot of people have informed me and I saw on social media, I appreciate you guys thinking of me. Star Wars is coming to Power Wash Simulator 2. Now, I am amped for this for one reason.

1:59:41Dustin Furman:This is so great for Future Lab. What a great get for them. I love those guys. They are super talented. They're super fun. This is a huge IP compared to the other ones that they got. And they got some other big ones, you know. But when I saw that, I was just amped for them because I was like, oh, man, this is so great. What a great attention. What a great piece of attention you're getting. You're going to make a lot of money doing this. Now, the Star Wars stuff. A job's a job. Right. I said this on Twitter yesterday. I'm a discrete I practice discretion I work hard I just want to do the job I want to make money I want to be good to the client I want to have repeat customers and I'm not going to ask any questions so whether you're sending me to some corner of earth to do something you're sending me to Tatooine or Hoth the job is the job I'm going to be there I'm going to not ask any questions I'm going to get it done on time I'm going to get it done under budget you're going to be impressed that things are going to be gleaming and it is what it is I'm not I'm just here to work or the answer is yes i still haven't done the adventure time one for power watch simulator too which i've also yeah so we're just kind of stacking all this up yeah colin how uh

2:00:52Chris Santis:how over the moon would you be i i really feel like now would be a perfect time for something like this because of the way that it's awkwardly kind of resurged into popular culture but like dude like a sopranos oh my god that would be so fun dude a sopranos power watch simulator tony's

2:01:07Colin Moriarty:house with the pool.

2:01:09Dustin Furman:By the way, I was a little disappointed. I sent on something on the sacred. Sometimes we send things on the thread we don't answer, but I did you guys see the video I sent you of Tony and Christopher talking about Elden Ring? I think that's like one of the great Sopranos impressions I've seen in recent memory. Oh, it's fucking excellent.

2:01:25Chris Santis:It's great. I've seen that video like a number of times already. So like whenever I see it, I just I watch it again. I'm like and then I send it to someone else. But no, that guy's whoever we've we've joked about this before even on this show but just like the idea of like highly impressionable people like impersonatable people i should say just like knowing a lot about video games is just very funny like the idea of trump knowing who kojima is and understanding like the entire history that goes along with that or like tony soprano being like oh elden ring you know him saying elden ring at all i just like by the way that's convincing is great

2:02:01Dustin Furman:My favorite low-key sentence is when he's, he's talking, Tony's like, Paulie said, I have to beat her. I'm like a bitch basically. And Chris, Chris is like, Tony, Paulie doesn't play souls like games. He doesn't know what he's talking about or whatever. so he doesn't play subtle things about it. It's so funny. Very funny.

2:02:20Chris Santis:Try to get it to, try to get it a second row. You know what I mean? It's like, it's insane. That's a good impression. You did a good impression. The idea I'm working on it, but like the idea of, I just love it. I'm so tickled by it. Every single time. Let me see if I can.

2:02:38Dustin Furman:Just so people know what we're talking about. I think it'll come through. See if I can get it to play. Miyazaki.

2:02:42Colin Moriarty:He's a genius.

2:02:45Dustin Furman:Oh, my God. The Elden Ring would be a nice break from Shaccaro. You said the Elden Ring was more accessible. T, just relax, okay? Just tell me what part you're struggling with. You said freaking play to Michelangelo abroad. I've been trying to beat her all week. You mean Melania. Blade of McKellar? Yeah. Cripple. She's an option. You can keep exploring and come back to her later. Paulie says I'm not a real Soulsborne player if I run away from this fight. He doesn't even play Souls-like games. Paulie's just fucking with you. Jesus Christ. Tell me how to beat this kifuja, Christopher. Now. Okay.

2:03:26Dustin Furman:What's your build? What weapon are you? What's your build? What's your build?

2:03:29Chris Santis:That is the sleeper.

2:03:59Dustin Furman:such a slow weapon but what about when she does that jump in the air thing it's impossible for

2:04:05Chris Santis:me to dodge waterfowl it's impossible for me to dodge just throw a freezing pot at her

2:04:10Dustin Furman:looks like a charm you're my favorite gamer christopher you know that thanks t i gotta get

2:04:16Chris Santis:back to factorial now factorial my favorite thing about that under underappreciated because i feel like it's one of those things that like it's one of those like only if you know you know but like dude the twin peaks music underneath it yeah it's fun twin peaks the twin peaks music just sells everything no matter like it just works it's almost like guile's theme but like in a different way like just goes so well with like dumb conversations because it's so melodramatic

2:04:45Dustin Furman:and like it makes you feel like you're not supposed to be laughing that guy's a great great impressionist just the cadence like getting all the mouth noises of uh and like the breathing of Tony and everything. It's so good. The cripple. The broad. All right. Shout out to that. And shout out to a Star Wars Power Rush Simulator 2 DLC. I don't know if there's a date. There is like a little bit of a like a trailer. I guess it shows maybe one. You'll be on the Death Star at some point or maybe a Star Destroyer or something. I don't know. It doesn't matter. The point is, is it doesn't matter because I'm going to be there and I'm going to do the job professionally.

2:05:23Dustin Furman:And that's all there is to it. I'm excited for a power watch simulator.

2:05:30Dustin Furman:I was thinking that would be fun to play on stream, but then I'm like, would it be? It's like not. It is a very Zen game. In my opinion, it would be easier.

2:05:40Chris Santis:It would be easy to do with the chat, I guess. Yeah, it's yeah. It demands little focus in comparison. That's true. All right.

2:05:50Dustin Furman:Final story of the week, and then we'll get to what we're playing is a new PlayStation Plus games for May. this is for essential so everyone that subscribes to ps plus will get these three games as part of your subscription you can add them to your download list to download them later remember to do that before the month is up these will be available beginning may 5th um so you have till may 4th download your previous games which some of them were good like a tomb raider one through three remaster was one of them yeah so definitely add that to your list lords of the fallen as well as one of them.

2:06:20Dustin Furman:But the three games for this month are pretty big. Nothing for me, but I think these will please a large group of people. The first one is EA Sports FC 26. This will be on both PS5 and PS4. This is, of course, FIFA. And this came out just last September. So this is a fairly new game. People are getting excited here in the States, especially for World Cup soccer in the coming months. So maybe that's designed to lean into that a little bit, ironically, since they're no longer with FIFA. So there's that. Another one is a Wu Chang Fallen Feathers. This is from Lindsay and 505 Games came out last year as well.

2:06:56Dustin Furman:This is a what this kind of game kind of came and went. I feel like as far as the Souls like games.

2:07:02Colin Moriarty:Asia was big. It was big at Summer Game Fest. Everyone was trying to get in to play it and then came out and I didn't hear anything about it. Just a little bit of Asia

2:07:11Dustin Furman:Asia slot. And then finally Nine Souls from Red Candle Games. Argus Forever wrote in and said, Hello, CDC. Hope you are all well. With the May PS Plus lineup now announced, I just wanted to call out Nine Souls as the standout here. It's an incredible Metroidvania that leans heavily into parry-based combat. Very punishing, but extremely rewarding once it clicks. I ended up loving it enough to go for the platinum, and it's easily a top five Metroidvania for me. The gameplay is tight, the boss fights are memorable, and the story genuinely surprised me with how good it is. For anyone jumping in through PS Plus, stick with it.

2:07:43Dustin Furman:It can feel brutal at times, but it absolutely pays off if you persevere. Have either of you checked it out already or either of us? Or does this month's lineup make you more likely to give it a shot? Cheers, boys. And thanks for all that you do. Thank you for writing in. I have not played it. I was I love Metroidvanias. Obviously, I was put off because it was supposed to be very hard. And that just doesn't sound interesting to me. But since it will be free as part of your subscription, I'll add it to my list and we'll see what happens in the future. So some games there to check out. Chris, anything here for you?

2:08:12Chris Santis:Nine Souls is probably like the thing I'm most likely to check out. I'll definitely add that to my library. I don't know if I'll get to it anytime soon, but yeah, that's really the only thing. I'm not playing a football game and Wu Chang like I don't know. It's fine. It's not a bad one.

2:08:28Dustin Furman:Yeah, it's fine. FC is the biggest one. I think we're just not really into it, but I'm sure that's going to be huge for a lot of people. Dustin, anything here for you? You're going to get your druthers with association football.

2:08:39Colin Moriarty:Yeah, you know me. I'll be in there making my team up.

2:08:45Dustin Furman:Right, right, right.

2:08:47Colin Moriarty:Nine Souls is definitely the standout. Who was that? Red Candle?

2:08:51Dustin Furman:Oh, Argus Forever. Yeah, yeah.

2:08:53Colin Moriarty:He's right. That definitely seems like the standout. I'm interested in it. I feel like I played a little bit of it at some point and it didn't really click with me. Maybe it was after I played Shinobi and I was like, I can't do back-to-back style this kind of game. So maybe I'll go back to it on PS5. so pretty cool there's a a spacing error in this playstation blog article on nine souls between the title there there's supposed to be a space right there i missed it oh interesting way to go i've never made that mistake no you're perfect yeah

2:09:33Dustin Furman:all right let's go on to what we're playing all right my friends let's get into what we're playing Chris I guess we'll start with you it says here you're playing Pragmata and the Saboteur

2:09:41Chris Santis:interestingly so let's uh hear from hear from you yeah so I'm still playing Pragmata uh I don't I have no idea how deep into it I am I've just I just hit a point though where I've gotten a new alt for Diana so like I assume I'm kind of getting to the point where it's closing itself out like I don't is it a particularly long game like I don't I don't

2:10:04Dustin Furman:think it was supposed to be like 12 hours 14 hours something like that okay good yeah so I'm

2:10:07Chris Santis:probably i'm probably reaching the end i'm still really enjoying it man i think that gameplay loop is like really novel and interesting um it's just cool what what it's just a very video game video game and i i really appreciate it from that perspective um story's not incredible but it's not like i'm enjoying it i don't know it's a really solid video game and i'm really enjoying it uh looking forward to going through those training simulations I got really kind of transfixed by in a way that I wasn't expecting. It kind of reminded me of those VR missions from old games where you're just the gameplay loop and just go like five, go like three Saret or whatever.

2:10:49Chris Santis:That's a satisfying kind of thing. So I'm expecting to do a little bit more of that, finish that game up in the coming days. And the other game that I'm playing, I was I don't know what provoked this in me but I saw it came to my attention that the Saboteur was on Steam for like $2 and I was like I didn't even realize this game was on Steam I feel like at some point I looked and it wasn't I don't know if they added it again or like maybe it was taken offline and like reinstated I really don't know but I swear to god I would have owned this game already if I knew that it was on Steam but I saw it and it was$2 and I was like well that's a steal like that's basically nothing uh so i jumped into the saboteur and i've been playing it i've played about three hours of it so far which is more than i anticipated i thought it was kind of jump gonna jump into it see how i see how i liked it see if i had any like memories of it and man yeah i like it a lot and for people who don't know this was like the final pandemic studios game from like 2009 this a studio that made Lord of the Rings Conquest, Star Wars Battlefront, Destroy All Humans, Mercenaries, like those types of games, like really sandbox, kind of B-movie, just very fun premise games.

2:12:11Chris Santis:And the idea is like you're an Irishman in 1940s Paris, and you're basically just killing Nazis. And like you're fighting around and like there's the mechanic of the game that I think is like a little bit more novel is that in the nazi occupied districts or areas of the maps there's like basically no color it's just it's black and white with except for like the the red of the of like the the flags and the armbands and like the like car headlights and like some signage and it's very striking i don't know it's very cool um and when you and when you liberate those areas the color kind of comes back and it's uh it's just an interesting early or mid 360 kind of sandbox game it's not particularly polished it's a little glitchy i've seen like cars spawn into other cars and they get flung into the sky and it's like i remember this um but yeah i'm having a fun time like it's a it's a i miss when we used to get 3d games that didn't or 3d games like a bit too simplified like open world third person games that felt i don't know that didn't all feel like they were building off of the same kind of preset and uh it has a feel to it that's very pandemic it's very proprietary and i like it the story is surprisingly fun it's like very caricature it's not like serious or or i guess it's serious but it's not like grounded in a way that like a lot of games are today i will say like what i miss a lot about this era of video game with like you know characters with really strong accents and like borderline stereotypical and you know really over like chewing scenery kind of thing is that like they feel less like film and more like theater to me like it feels like yeah the environments aren't particularly realistic and you can tell like this is this is a prefabricated building or whatever and you know that's a texture and you know the hills in the distance doesn't have any detail it makes it feel like a play or something and it's and it fits kind of the 1940s french kind of burlesque kind of theme this game is horny as hell by the way i did not remember this yeah i don't remember that either i don't remember at all like any of this but like so much of so much of the dialogue is about like you know just getting back to the the burlesque club and like drowning in women like the the opening shot is just on a burlesque like a like not a bear chest but damn near and it's just like it's second dude it's like it's very cool breasts yeah yeah and it's just like oh man okay and then so i tweeted about it i was like damn this game is way hornier than i remember it being because you figure like even in 2009 i'm in high school like i i thought like maybe like i feel like i would remember that but i guess i just didn't care at that time but yeah and people were like yeah this game had like uh i'm pretty sure this people responded to my tweet about like yeah this game's horny as hell and they were saying like didn't it yeah this game had like a season pass or like day one dlc that like basically added boobs to the game that made like the women topless and i was like what and i looked it up and it's real like it's like there's like a like a a midnight pass or something that like that made all the burlesque dancers take their tops off i was like oh my god what a what a time capsule of a video game that is but it's fun it's janky it's clearly like the last pandemic game so you can kind of tell that they're like kind of running out of budget as the game kind of goes along it's like it's not as it's not as polished as some of their other stuff and not to say that their stuff was like exceptionally polished but like you can feel it a little bit but i just i love the premise of of these games where it's just like you're not you're not like a superhero you're not like it's what i love about like games like red dead also or it's just like you're just a guy you can do absurd shit like you can climb like etzio in this uh in 1940s france which is like you don't need it to be explained it's just kind of fun to do and it's cool that you can do it but it's uh yeah it's a it's a fun little little open world gta like that we just kind of don't get anymore and i just love the setting man i just i think 1940s nazi occupied paris is just uh that's a fun idea to to set a game in and to set a gta like in and i think it does a lot of it pretty well not uh not award-winning by any means but i'm having a good time with it and uh it's it's been kind of my nightly rotation of games where like i'll load it up on steam deck and i'll just play for a while and and then I'll head to bed but yeah it's a blast from the past the saboteur I just didn't expect to see it for that cheap and just across my feet at all but I'm glad I'm dipping my toes into it next is Saros when that when that launches I know you guys are playing the pre-release or the early access yeah we didn't get they didn't get me exactly yeah I don't even

2:17:14Dustin Furman:know that I needed to get God I probably would have been fine because I've only played it for a few hours so it's like kind of a waste of money but i'm happy to give house mark a little bit extra cash yeah not that any of it will find its way to them but um okay cool yeah the saboteur i have i have fond memories of as well i never played it very deeply but i have deep memories of like i remember i brought it home and like just remember there being a building you're climbing i mean it's very vague but like and light coming out of the way like you were saying like the um the the play between dark and light or whatever and like uh yeah i just have a very visual memory of that it's

2:17:47Chris Santis:one it's one of these games where like we often get into this trap in this industry and i get it because everything's it's it is about money and about making a financial investment that like will yield some return where we get into the habit of like okay we're gonna remake something that everybody loves already um and just do it slightly better or in some cases potentially worse because it you know you're taking games that are universally beloved and tweaking them in ways that like might ruin some like that one little card in the house of card that makes it so special then like kind of turns it's kind of like the like i would argue like the art style of um the insane trilogy kind of does that where it loses the angularity of like those original ps1 games like obviously it would but like it loses something in that translation i would love for like a game like this to have like a remake or like not a remake but like take this and do it with like a like a bigger like a better budget like flesh it out it's a great idea and it's a great premise and it's fun and you could do so much more with it like i wish that was like more of the school of thought for remakes versus like what's a game that like didn't quite hit like a potential that it that it theoretically could have and let's let's help it reach that this is like a perfect contender for it because like dude like 1940s paris with this like color system and like my in a modern engine i feel like it would be so cool like i love that idea so much i'm infatuated with it's a shame that it was their last game but yeah it's it's interesting because

2:19:20Dustin Furman:um yeah it's pandemic and that was when ea was more fun you know ea is a very well-run very profitable company but like that they would even do a game like the saboteur is is interesting um and mercenaries as well because i think that that was the series that got them involved because they you might remember they bought pandemic and then basically shut them down yeah it was two years yeah so right but it was like destroy all humans so you have a thing for pandemic obviously but a lot of that was with thq but they were like kind of bouncing back and forth because they did battlefront um yeah and full spectrum warrior and shit like that so they were bouncing between publishers and then ea finally like locked them down and they're like ah fuck off so that was a investment on their part yeah um okay dustin this leaves me and you i guess we'll begin with saros i'm curious uh what and then we'll take vampire crawlers um i'll note just for me uh i beat mouse pi for hire i think it's excellent i started replaying it again to get the trophy so there are three trophies that i missed they're all trophies for like finding clues and resolving things whatever so i was like all right i used a guide to try to find these and i went to the first one and it's broken like the trophies are broken so i was really pissed because i wasted like an entire night i'm trying to get these things but i'm just going to put it down for now i'm at 91 trophies and when they confirm that's patch i'll just play through it again and platinum that so that's out of the way so that leads us with saros and vampire crawlers like i said so or as mike and i've been calling it george saros george saros um we call it that like endlessly like like i'm playing george saros i don't know why we find that so funny so what are your thoughts here on house marks newest first party exclusive playstation 5 game pretty

2:21:00Colin Moriarty:rare these days what do you think yeah well i'm gonna bury i'm in danger really because the three games i'm playing saros vampire crawlers and also marathon but we won't talk about that are all just one more run just one more one more go at it and they're very addictive and saros man it's awesome it not to no surprise immediately when i started playing i was like oh yeah uh house mark they got they got the sauce the game feel specifically so good it is my first impression of it which so far i'm on the second world and i've i've gotten to the second boss two or three times uh i dude i had one of those runs last night where i was just he has three health bars and I was on the final health bar and he had this much left.

2:21:53Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I hate that. And I died and I was like, ah, it's the worst. So my, my impression right now is that it is very much Returnal 2 in a lot of ways. It's formatted very similar to Returnal, but also pretty different at the same time. I'm going to have to lean on you, Colin, to remember some Returnal stuff because I was trying to remember certain aspects. probably the biggest new addition is the shield and the shield I didn't understand it quite at first even though it probably laid it out for me I didn't quite get when to use it but the cool thing about the shield is that it when you get hit with blue orbs you use the shield and you can absorb them into your own energy to use your alt attack and once I that finally clicked for me i was like okay this is kind of sick like i'm actually kind of like go ahead man like go ahead shoot those shoot those delicious blue orbs for me to chew up so i can shoot them back at you uh but the main thing that i wanted to ask you colin is about the the difference is that it seems like overall it's going to be a lot easier of a game yeah the way i felt about is like you do a run you get a lot of uh whatever the xp is uh i can't remember aether ether no ether is

2:23:15Dustin Furman:the health the the illuminate or whatever illuminate yeah you get it you gather a bunch

2:23:20Colin Moriarty:of illuminate eventually you're probably gonna die and then in between levels when you're in between and you're like hub station you level up and on every time you level up you're basically lowering the difficulty for your next run and so this works for a roguelike where it's like every time you go out you get a little you level up it makes the next run easier and eventually you it will cap you on how much you can level up and if you can't do it at that point it's like yeah come on man like it's the the first boss i pretty much fully capped out my level and then when I went to do the boss, it was trivial at that point.

2:23:59Colin Moriarty:So it seems like it's probably a more forgiving experience of Returnal. I'm trying to remember exactly like Returnal, I think required you to do a lot more in each run.

2:24:10Dustin Furman:Yeah. The thing about Returnal was, and this is only in my memory because as the audience probably remembers, I recently replayed it and I played Returnal for 140 hours. So I have a lot of experience with it. I platinum that I 100 % of the tower of Sisyphus. so it's definitely in my mind right now and I love it is it is a substantially more difficult game that requires you might remember this is like when you're going for boss runs you can actually start jumping around from biome to biome and like skip things but like part of what makes the game I was talking about this with Brad on a summon sign part of what makes Returnal so interesting I think is the the risk reward of it it's like I'm gonna go fight this boss and I'm going to spend two hours before I go fight the boss running around finding health upgrades getting better weapons getting my proficiency meter higher so I find better weapons and then I'm going to go fight it the thing is is that if you die you know all that time was wasted basically because you get nothing out of it except for like permanent weapon upgrades and stuff but there's really very little permanence in returnal I will say it's funny Dustin like I'm too early in the game to have a real judgment on it one way or the other I think the game's great but like really getting into the nitty gritty.

2:25:17Dustin Furman:I'm going to need many dozens more hours to to like really figure out the game. Part of it's like. Be careful what you ask for, because it feels kind of a little. I don't want to I don't want to right now it's like baby's first returnal or something, you know, and I'm like, that's interesting. I wonder and I appreciate Housemarque's willingness seemingly to respond to all the problems people have with the game and permanent upgrading was a problem. like I was like it because I was I was saying you spend all this time and then you're like what the fuck did I just get out of that nothing like and people will write in and be like oh like the weapon you used the mods on it will now be upgraded permanently and I'm like who gives a shit like really like you want to feel more powerful but then I'm playing this and I'm like like I don't I actually don't know which system is better and maybe that's just because Returnal is so much in my mind right now.

2:26:15Dustin Furman:But it's not to say the game's great. I mean, it's awesome. It's beautiful. Runs awesome. A lot of really interesting gameplay ideas and quirks in it that were not in the original one that I think really enhanced the game and make it difficult in its own way. But that specific aspect of it, I'm like, I wonder. It would be cool to have like Returnal mode in the future. You know, maybe that maybe it'll be like a hard difficulty. And I think there are a bunch of accessibility things in the game that you can trivialize. it if you want anyway, which is not really a thing you could like Returnal truly as someone who just platinum it recently.

2:26:47Dustin Furman:It's like that is a get good game like you there's nothing you can really do and the discovery of what stops a lot of people forgetting the platinum in that game is not beating it, but finding all the sun stones and beating it again and finding all of the collectibles and they've done a nice job in this of cleaning that up to and making it more readable. But anyway, I interrupted you a long time ago.

2:27:09Colin Moriarty:I asked you a question, so it was all good. One of the mechanics that I do think is cool is that you'll play through the level and eventually you need to enter into the eclipse. And that's where you do the same level again, but it's very, very different. The enemies can shoot at you like a corruption that lowers your health bar, but you can get rid of that by using your energy attacks. I always joke with you guys remember a meme a few years ago where it's like you're entering the mega gay zone every time I go into the twilight I'm like Holly I'm entering the mega so but also in the eclipse or the mega gay zone you when you pick up different items it's more of a risk reward where the first side is like you pick up stuff it's just going to be positive it's like you're going to have more health you're going to be able to upgrade your weapons whatever but in the eclipse there's like a risk reward where it's like okay well you'll get this buff but now you take fall damage or now I'm trying to think of some of the other ones like if you get shot you're going to lose the currency right that's right out of the returnal too

2:28:23Dustin Furman:those were parasites in the original returnal

2:28:25Colin Moriarty:yeah so I like that because yeah much like returnal there's certain times I'm like dude I'm almost to the boss fight and there's a debuff that's like you lose you don't do as much damage when you're standing still it's like well i'm never standing still in this game that's an easy debuff that i will gladly take or the fall damage one damage one yeah yeah that's that's the one that creeps up on you you forget that you have fall damage like i just lost all his health because i forgot to not uh do a jump or a pulse ahead so yeah i colin i'm curious what you think too about the i wouldn't call it more it has more cut scenes in it because there are other characters.

2:29:08Colin Moriarty:I believe we have a someone write in about this. One of these about that. Oh yeah. Logan McDaniel wrote in and said hello gentlemen.

2:29:15Dustin Furman:I like you have been playing Saros, George Saros. And after clearing the second area, it's clear to me that this is a superior game. That being said, I can't shake this feeling that the first game had the sauce that I find missing from its sequel so far. With Returnal having an alien and a rival meets Metroid vibe, half of the crew in the first hour of the game are grating and lifeless. The dialogue feels like bog standard sci-fi show stuff and I guess I just expected more immaculate vibes and eeriness from Saros. I hope I'm wrong in time and I hope you're all having fun with it like I am. There is something about the presentation that's a little weird.

2:29:45Dustin Furman:Again, it's too premature for me to be talking about it because I really haven't seen enough of it. I will say that I do miss so far the loneliness of Returnal. That it seems like Saros, again, speaking from a place of ignorance, having having not seen much of the game sarah seems to respond to everything from returnal by doing in many ways the opposite thing so you know what i mean so it's like um we don't have character there's like almost no characters in returnal except for selene and you learn more i won't spoil the story but in this like you had there's npcs you talk to them you have like crazy levels of dialogue they get in touch with you while you're on your mission and on your run i'm like that's interesting the permanent upgrades to non-permanent upgrades they really throttle the weapons as far as like giving you weapon availability at first um in the second world you only have three weapons available to you at the beginning as opposed to having you know a much wider variety of things um so it seems like everything in saros is a reaction and i think that that's good i do wonder though what i don't know i the the gameplay systems seem very deep and almost complex and unintuitive in a lot of ways.

2:31:03Dustin Furman:It's going to take more time for me, like the shielding you were talking about. Or I do like the idea of getting stung by those enemies in the eclipse and so like you start, your health meter goes down and you have to use the special attack and all that. It's all very intertwined and interconnected. But I hope the game, and I doubt it does, but I'd like to think the game doesn't lose its spirit of what it's all about, which is like totally kinetic third-person gameplay. The other thing that I'm a little bummed about, although I'm getting around it is one of the things that I really became very proficient and good at and is like a more high level of eternal player, I guess, at the point that I was at the end as opposed to the beginning was using Celine's lightsaber.

2:31:42Dustin Furman:I used to like I would sometimes go into rooms and not even shoot. You're just like running around, zooming around and slashing people. This new character has like a melee attack, but it's much shorter ranged. and I feel like that also is reaction to but it kind of diminishes the melee shooting in and out the mixture of those kinds of things so again I have a lot of preliminary thoughts but they're just unformed and I really have not seen enough of the game I will say that I think it's great it's been fun to play it is incredibly atmospheric I do think it loses a little bit of its eeriness though because you are with other people the one cool thing about it is going like they're caught on this planet It's got some sort of ruins of a really advanced civilization.

2:32:26Dustin Furman:They have no idea what happened to the civilization and they're just trying to get out. And I think that's kind of cool. And you're learning more and more about it. The other thing I'm curious about, Dustin, and I'm sure people that beat the game, and I wonder what you think about this, but they'll already know is like, do you think they'll connect it to Returnal?

2:32:43Colin Moriarty:I was wondering that. Yeah, because I was thinking I love the look of the game, the UI. particularly the the um uh what's the word the eclipse levels the second level is so cool i absolutely love it i love the contrast between the non-eclipse and the eclipse version of it but i was thinking like it it is a lot so similar to returnal in its themes you're stuck on this abandoned planet there's a old civilization that you don't know anything about it is kind of and it does those like quick camera cuts when you die and when you you know load in and stuff i'm like it's it's kind of feels maybe too similar in some ways but i really like what they're doing so i don't really mind but i could see them connecting it to returnal yeah why not we'll see the other

2:33:39Dustin Furman:thing is you brought up the upgrade tree i think the upgrade tree is really satisfying use different currencies like the um the the i said the name before luminite or whatever the fuck it's called And then you find these purple items that like allow you to get bigger and better upgrades, but there's a finite amount of them. Throttling the upgrade tree to me is weird when I when I because the same thing happened to me where I like got far enough in the tree and then it wouldn't let me upgrade anymore until I beat the boss. And I'm like, like, I don't know how you would deal with this, but this isn't the right way to do it.

2:34:12Dustin Furman:I don't think I know that's pure design and that's tough shit to do. and I don't mean that in a bad way like that's hard but I don't like it throttling like that reminds me of level capping where I'm like I don't think that that's the solution you've got to figure out a different way to do this um but yeah it's really it's it is beautiful I was mesmerized again by the bullet patterns and constantly just looking at the game and and I was saying to Mike uh like it's funny how they figured out a bunch of new bullet patterns again having just played Returnal like a lot of it is fresh and like a lot of it again again i know i've said this a lot recently on the back of eternal but there is something so fascinating to me about the character in the game being mesmerized by the beauty of it and like the bullets are coming at it but it's like such a beautiful thing he just gets overwhelmed and killed by it because he was like struck by the beauty and i love that i think there's something so cool and meta about that to me and the game obviously does a really nice job with that um trying to think of what else yeah i mean for now I just want to continue to sit with the game and play it.

2:35:15Dustin Furman:The same thing happened to me where I, you know, I, I didn't struggle. I'm, I'm probably better than average at the game because I just played returnal, but died on the first boss of a couple of times, beat the second, the first boss. And then the second world, I got to the second boss immediately, like on my first run. And then I died. So that is classic returnal. And that, that level of balance, I think is really important to keep people engaged. Games should crescendo a little bit more and more in difficulty, but giving them a little bit of lull and being like, no, you're good. You can play the game.

2:35:41Dustin Furman:It's a good way of getting people sucked in. And I imagine third world is probably going to be really tough as a result of that. But yeah, it's really nice. Interesting story. The character models are a little weird when you're talking to them. The faces, especially the old white woman face that that NPC, she looks strange. They definitely did try to Sony it up a little bit. I don't know that it is necessary for them to do that. And I think the bigger thing I'm most interested in is how this game does um yeah about my net my nephew um in college messaged me a few days ago he's like what's what's up with this game saros he's he's you know almost done with his school year so he's looking for some things to play and i was like um the cheaper way for you to play saros is you just play returnal and if you like that then you'll maybe you know like just go backwards because they are very very similar the one thing i do regret no rock land lobber for me to completely exploit.

2:36:36Dustin Furman:So I was telling Michael when she was watching my guy at the Rockland Globber here. I'm fucking Globber. I'm killing everything. This is this game is over. I'll beat it in one fucking run. But they don't give you that option. So

2:36:45Colin Moriarty:dude, I hate the pistol. The pistol kind of.

2:36:48Dustin Furman:Yeah, I'm actually not really crazy about any of the weapons so far, like the assault rifle and then you get the shotgun. That's as far as I've gotten.

2:36:55Colin Moriarty:Yeah. Well, there's two assault rifles. There's one that's more automatic like the bullets are more homing so you don't have to worry as much about aiming and I think there's a third assault rifle too because there's like a marker like certain weapons do not auto

2:37:12Dustin Furman:aim. Right, right, right, right. I've noticed that because I got that warning and then I was getting frustrated because I'm like, why isn't like snapping into these enemies? You know, there's one cool perk for some of the guns where you heal after you kill every enemy, which is really useful. It's fun. Chris, I'll be very excited for you to get to George Saros and see what you think. We'll talk about it more next week. And obviously we'll spin up a a spoiler cast and review discussion for it in the weeks to come. I don't know if anyone else in the family is playing it, but Brad may be. We'll play it, but I'm excited to when's it properly out today.

2:37:46Chris Santis:We're recording. Oh, okay. Perfect. Yeah, I just want to I was looking at I was like, do I want to start as like I'm playing three third person shooting games right now? This aperture is like the least important one, but like pragmat. I like I'm so deep into that. I just want to I want to get that done and then but I'm looking forward to it. Like, I mean, I really liked Returnal a lot. And I have no doubts that it's going to, Saros is going to be fun. I would imagine it's just, it just feels tighter.

2:38:14Dustin Furman:That's all you can really ask. Zach Cohen wrote in and said, hey, CDC, I got got by the Saros pre-order, but damn, was it worth it? One quibble though, who would house mark has the tentacle porn fetish? Returnal was full of tentacles, but it fit the meta narrative about the car crash in the water. Okay, fine. But now there are tentacles coming out of every crevice of Carcosa and every time the sun gets obscured a little, they even took the time to make the tentacles squeal and react when you shoot them all it gives i wanted to read this because i noticed that that like they actually react when you shoot at them i don't know if anyone has a tent you know finland's a weird place yeah i feel like they're you know snowy

2:38:48Chris Santis:i don't know man this this kind of feels like a self-report in some ways because like i don't know if i immediately think about pragmata kind of yeah because like i don't immediately like when i see tentacle when i see tentacles I don't immediately think of porn. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I just think of tentacles. I think of like sea creatures or whatever.

2:39:14Dustin Furman:That's good stuff. That's true. That's a good point. And then finally, Vampire Crawlers. Ah, this game. I've been playing it at night on my portal before I go to bed. And, you know, I just like play, do a run. I did a run last night. It's, we did a sacred streaming on it. so you can go watch us play it it's excellent and uh is there a black person here wrote in

2:39:39Chris Santis:what is that from what is that it's definitely some sketch i saw i remember seeing this sketch on twitter i don't remember who did it or like who was in it but like yeah it's just like some guy going into a room it's like is there a black person here and it's like a it's like there's a white person a black person talking it's like is he serious

2:39:58Dustin Furman:he's insane colin i noticed you got bit by the vampire crawlers bug and now you're in a dangerous position will you be able to fight the addiction and keep up with the other games on your plate or is the best way forward simply letting in or giving in and letting crawlers run a train on you until you're broken and discarded like a cheap hooker cheers and keep up the great content that's brutal but it could be possible it is a very addictive game it's on my mind a lot i am trying to just it is a perfect companion game so as long as you don't get sucked into playing it as your main game, I think you'll be okay.

2:40:26Dustin Furman:But I think about it a lot. It's excellent. It really is. There's something so fun and so playable, very similar to Vampire Survivors about this game. Highly recommended. Shit ton of trophies if you're into that. But it's just, there's just something, there's just something about it. It's great. It really is. It's really a wonderful game. I'm really, really enjoying it. It is one of those life ruiners for sure. And I think you got to be very cautious about that although i hear you can get the platinum i'm not even really paying attention to trophies you just earn i have i think i've earned 40 trophies so far just not even so it's not like you really have to go out of your way necessarily but i heard that like it's 20 hours to platinum maybe so i don't know how big the entire game is i don't know if it says chock full of content like vampire survivors is fucking huge but i think it was huge by the time it came to PlayStation, if that makes any sense.

2:41:21Dustin Furman:So like they had updated it a million times and it had all the content. So I do believe that vampire crawlers feel smaller, but I think it's probably bigger than vampire survivors was as a game before they updated it. And since we got it day and date, unlike years later, like we got it on PlayStation, I think that's a reflection of that. So I'm sure they'll add much more to it as time goes on, but it's a highly playable game. It's just fun. It's just fun. You know, it reminds me, I was playing Puzzle Quest 3 or something, you know on my portal some months ago it just reminds me of that and like it's just a game if that makes any sense it's like it's just a game you just play it and there's really no purpose other than just having fun unlocking things getting stronger doing a shit ton of damage breaking it which was a big part of vampire survivors and is a big part of breaking vampire crawlers as well so i am really enjoying it do you have anything you want to add about uh

2:42:12Colin Moriarty:george vampire crawlers george vampire um i've been loving this game i saying on the stream i figured it figured out ways to break it and it gets so satisfying when you do that and yeah holly has already beaten this the other day she was like i well so she has so it is short it is short Yeah, she still has plenty of stuff that she can do. But yeah, it's it's awesome. I recommend it even if you're not into card games. I don't there's not a demo on PlayStation, but there is a demo on Steam you can check out. And I knew within 10 minutes playing that demo. I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to love this.

2:42:54Colin Moriarty:So it's it's really fun. I highly recommend it.

2:42:58Dustin Furman:We were saying on stream, too, for any Vita fans out there, although I should look at because I think they ported it. I was saying I don't play many first person dungeon crawling type games and this isn't really a dungeon crawler per se like a DRPG but it's based on that and yeah it's not so I was saying drink boxes severed was the last time I had played a game with that perspective where you're moving around like that or whatever and I love that fucking game and that was people might remember released exclusively at the time on Vita by drink box. it's on switch so you can go check it out if you've never played severed that's a hell of a game hell of a game feel a sneeze coming oh oh excuse me there it is there you mute this you mute the sneeze but not the farts no the farts are a little more novel i dude i had i i muted it before because someone else was talking about i farted so loud when someone was talking like an hour ago and it would have been a great one but there's lots monday's stream you are flat on something yeah oh man so a lot of good a lot of good games dude i mean there's a lot of just i haven't even gotten a pragmata yet like and i'm really excited to get to that so yeah we slowly get through these

2:44:14Chris Santis:things as they come it's all we can do uh before we switch gears into the final inquiries did you see the uh the trailer for uh resident evil the the no i saw that came out today but i have not watched it yet you so you you saw it oh yeah zach zach craiger's resident evil i'm so stoked i'm so excited about it i can't even tell you zach craiger is like one of the like one of my favorite like new directors like he did he did weapons which i loved barbarian which is also awesome i just think it's it's a great teaser everybody should check it out if you you haven't seen it's like it's doing what i wish most adaptations would do which is just like setting taking place in the world and just not being stuck having to follow established characters.

2:44:59Yeah.

2:45:00Chris Santis:And I'm just stoked about it. It looks so good.

2:45:02Colin Moriarty:I was talking to Jimmy about it this morning and we were, I mean, not arguing. We were just going back and forth a little bit because I was like, I am mixed on this because like you, Chris, I loved weapons. I like Barbarian a lot. And so I'm down for I'm confident this will be at the very least a good movie.

2:45:20Chris Santis:yeah I was thinking like

2:45:23Colin Moriarty:if there was if I had no if someone just presented this trailer in front of me and they removed the title at the end Resident Evil would I know it's a Resident Evil movie at all so I'm hoping that some of the like I'm with you that I would I don't want a movie version of Resident Evil 2 I love this idea of doing something else in the world I'm hoping they're holding like a liquor or some of the other like that's what I was like this just there's already like

2:45:55Chris Santis:in the teaser they show like the inventory like inventory there's like cheeky knots inventory management like him rummaging through drawers and stuff like I think I think there will be I think there will be alright

2:46:09Dustin Furman:I just was scrubbing through it it looks cool I agree like these universes are so big that you don't have to do anything with any anyone or anything which is like Resident Evil like no you don't have to you can disassociate from everything and it could still be exciting I'm not that it's very similar it's kind of similar idea but I've been watching the Handmaid's Tale I'm in the fifth season now show gets kind of bad I gotta be honest but we've come this far so we have to keep going and I'm so fascinated by the world right and I'm like you can just tell so many stories in this world it's so good it doesn't have to be about any of these characters

2:46:48Chris Santis:yeah highly recommended at least i wish it was it looks like they got um the the the and i don't know i didn't fact check this it's just like this is the immediate sense i got but like this guy i think was uh the junkie in weapons and i loved him he was so fucking funny and so good in that movie so like it's it's cool to see him like center stage in this but i just want to bring people's attention to it because i know it's like a it's resident evil it's game oriented but Resident Evil is kind of big now as it has been for a while. But yeah, it's just nice to see a Resident Evil movie trailer that doesn't look like a fucking action movie.

2:47:21Chris Santis:Yeah, it isn't like a Mila Yogovich running around in like a fucking brightly lit lab doing Matrix flips in like black leather. It's good.

2:47:32Dustin Furman:It's good stuff. All right. Now let's get to the six inquiries. Questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas from the audience. Over on Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media. We appreciate you. Remember to submit your inquiries on the threads for the various shows in the news feed on Patreon each week. They are deleted when they are done. Our threads go up for sacred on Wednesday and are deleted on Thursday. So you have about 24 hours to get your inquiries in. You've heard them throughout the show. Here's six more that I thought were interesting. Or Ponderer wrote in, said, hello, CDC. The latest Alinea analytics estimates have many relitigating the viability of Xbox putting games on other platforms.

2:48:07Dustin Furman:Most people online are saying it's probably doing more damage than the sales are worth, but not a lot of people are pointing out that these games are old. Forza 5, Indiana Jones, Gears Reloaded, Sea of Thieves, Starfield, all of these games are years old and saturated in the market on other platforms. If anything, this data is screaming to drop the games day and date to see the massive sales Xbox is hoping for. I suspect this will be tested with Gears E-Day releasing this year. What say you? Is Gears coming out this year? I don't know if that's true. That's what they say, but... I mean, they are...

2:48:34Chris Santis:They're supposed to be like a demo or like a direct or something about that. Yeah. Sometime soon.

2:48:41Colin Moriarty:The Summer Game Fest showcase is like their Xbox showcase plus the Gears of War sideshow or whatever it is.

2:48:51Dustin Furman:Well, this has been the conversation raging about what they're going to do with their exclusivity. And Sony or I'm sorry, Xbox did release their financials and yesterday and they're not good. And they say that things are going to continue to kind of trend downward for a while. but it is bringing up a question within linear analytics. Like he says, our friend Reese over there kind of talking about the game sales of whether the juice is worth the squeeze if we want to quote Sean Layden. So this is a lot for us to think about Dustin. I wonder what you have to say about this. Do you think we'll continue to get these games from Xbox?

2:49:29Dustin Furman:Do you think anything's going to change for them? And what's your outlook?

2:49:33Colin Moriarty:So I think that orb ponder is right that I don't know if we've seen as far as like a big game gears remastered was technically day and date but again that's not really a new

2:49:44Dustin Furman:game that's like the third time xbox people can buy it too right it's it's an old yeah yeah it

2:49:49Chris Santis:took the place of the original gears ultimate edition if i'm not mistaken i think it like updated into gears reloaded um right so it's it didn't really feel and it wasn't i still lament the fact that that wasn't the collection the collection would have been such a so much bigger of a splash it's fucking insane to me that they didn't do it yeah so i think it is worth them

2:50:12Colin Moriarty:seeing how these games do on playstation day and date for a big new game like gears e-day and of course there's the campaign evolved coming out and also fable is one that is i believe confirmed

2:50:25Dustin Furman:for playstation at this point right uh yeah it was yeah okay so the thing that i was thinking

2:50:32Colin Moriarty:about a lot of the people that want them to return to exclusivity is like they are making these very big expensive games for either selling if there's no if it's exclusive then they are selling to people on their console which they don't sell very many copies because of game pass and Game Pass numbers are not great. So where is the money coming from for these games? It doesn't exist. I mean, it's not that they're making no money on a game, but when you see the Xbox financials where things are just continually in decline, you can't make these big exclusive games for that limited audience anymore unless there's some kind of major shift that happens where people suddenly start flocking to Xbox hardware and Xbox Game Pass.

2:51:27Colin Moriarty:And... They're not. They're not. So if you want these games to exist at all, they need to be released in a way that they can actually make money on them. And unfortunately, the Xbox platform has shown that that is not the case. So things would have to be majorly different. And I don't see that happening for a while. So. I can't see them really going back at all. I mean, maybe there's a little bit of shot like if they did. Like for the new Xbox, things would have to be so radically crazy for it's like it's a great price. It's super powerful. And there are, you know, we have all of these amazing exclusives lined up.

2:52:16Colin Moriarty:It's like the stars would need to align in order for the tides to shift. at this point, even just to be to have exclusive be sustainable on the platform. It's not impossible, but highly, highly unlikely, especially with how much money is on the table.

2:52:36Dustin Furman:Yeah, you touch on something interesting, which is like I feel like there's a disconnect with their revenue is down and their hardware revenue is way down and their hardware sales are way down. There's just no reality, in my opinion, where people are going to start buying Xboxes, at least this generation. So we could talk about next generation and how much more tantalizing that will be. And there's a play for them for next generation as far as if they release, I've said this before, they're going to release a PC. If they release a PC that

2:53:08Dustin Furman:is through the economy of scale, the cheapest scaled PC that gets people involved, then people will just buy it by virtue of it being a cheap off the shelf PC at a time when components are really expensive. And that will probably be very attractive to people. So I think there is some possibility that they can make something work next year, or next generation, whenever that begins. It could be next year. But I just don't see the reality where people are going to start buying Xboxes. They've tried a bunch of things. It's not like they've just been sitting and turtling this entire time. And I still believe the Call of Duty thing is like the biggest misstep.

2:53:40Dustin Furman:They should have just never bought Activision. What a stupid, just so stupid. And them taking Call of Duty out of Game Pass, it's like, what are you doing? like at this point it's like that's what you bought it for like it's all cratering in so no I think there's a level of delusion about this although I will say this and Chris I'll throw it over to you is and you guys know this because we've been talking about it for so long I've been authentically surprised by their level of aggression right like showing PS5 logos the Indiana Jones thing the Halo community manager wearing a PlayStation shirt I'm like you don't have to do all that I just so I wonder if Forza Horizon 6 obviously is coming to PlayStation staggered from Xbox.

2:54:26Dustin Furman:I wonder if that's part of the strategy because it simply was not in development for PlayStation and then you need time to port it, which really shouldn't be that much of a lift for them, to be honest. But or if they're kind of doing like we want to sell on our platforms first and then we'll sell on PlayStation later. And I think that is probably the best you can are ever going to get out of Xbox moving forward is like Gears, for instance. I totally see a universe where Gears E-Day comes to PlayStation six months later. But they also have to look at it and say, like, we kind of suffer from that, too.

2:54:56Dustin Furman:Like, it's a it's a. We thought about this with Starfield, right? Starfield would have sold millions of copies on PlayStation if it came day and date. But because there were three years of marinating about how bad it was by the time the game comes out, it's like, well, you'll. so there's a risk reward factor where if you want to get and Chris you and I have talked about this too is like two marketing beats right you can either release the game at the same time and put all go all in or you get a second marketing beat and you risk the upfront sales by getting a second heartbeat towards the game this is what happened with Helldivers so I just don't see like so I guess where I leave it Chris is I've always been shocked by their level of aggression I think they can tamp that aggression down because I don't think they need to go that hard but I think all these games are coming to PlayStation

2:55:44Chris Santis:yeah i just i don't know it's an interesting scenario because like microsoft is one of the few so let's illustrate a picture so if xbox wants to return to exclusivity right and make a compelling case to buy their hard hardware that really is the only way to do that right is like exclusive cell hardware we all know this this is not like a secret this is like the backbone of the industry going back as far as we could really remember. So that's what would need to happen. Microsoft is weirdly uniquely positioned in a way that if they wanted to do something like that, they could probably do that. They're such a uniquely rich corporation that if they really wanted to tank their short-term financials for a long-term and established like a tantalizing machine that people would actually want to buy by virtue of not missing out on some of the cool stuff that they have coming to that platform they could maybe do it will they do that no because if anything has been made clear uh both with the advent of a lot of this ai stuff and just the way corporations have been trending for a while it's short-term short-term profits in in the immediate in the immediate future tend to supersede any long-term well hey let's think about it over the course of however long it's like so many it's it's just not how anything really operates people are not as careful as they used to be people are not as corporations are not as thoughtful as they used to be in that regard they just want to get their money quick and then when everything craters in on themselves they'll just like all right we'll we'll figure that out later let the next guy come in and figure it out uh so i just don't i i don't know in my in the way that i've observed a lot of businesses act they're not going to tank you know so much immediate money from having their game on playstation or any of their games on playstation they're not going to like tank that in the short term to build a reputation of you know exclusivity for for a console that is coming out in the future for like success that that may or may not happen down the line it's just it just doesn't seem like something that they're willing to do i and even if they were to do that let's say that they were to do this thing because i've seen this going around even if they were to kind of recommit themselves to exclusivity xbox has been so mealy-mouthed and so oh we're doing this oh just kidding we're gonna do this now oh never mind they haven't really established themselves in a way that would inspire a lot of confidence for your average well maybe not your average your average consumer is probably not connected but your average hardcore consumer to be like oh games are exclusive to xbox i best i guess i better get an xbox like they've kind of spent a lot of that trust already and i feel like most people are just not going to believe them even if they were to commit to that and they'd probably just wait it out and see like well it's coming to playstation at some point right because so much if if halo and fable and gears are coming to playstation you know in the short term and then they're gonna recommit like oh the next halo game won't it's like do you why would you believe that and again it's just like it's leaving a lot of money on the table i don't know microsoft could do that they are probably one of the few corporations that could you know just completely up and do it and just be like no what we're going back to exclusives our next generation console is going to be the only place that you can get it we're going to suffer some losses in the meantime we're going to be really really down but we're going to establish a you know a compelling case for our machine in the future and it's going to be long-term healthier for the brand maybe but they they're not going to say no to all that money resting on playstation and other consoles and also it's it's it's a pr disaster for them for for what like what they're going to do with game pass and you know how that translates to all these different things like it's just a they've kind of put themselves in a corner that i just don't see them i i don't see exclusives hit coming to xbox again yeah and even the six months later thing like i don't know like that seems to me like you're just kind of having your cake you're trying to have your cake and eat it too like that's that's not really compelling to me um i'm not going to spend six hundred dollars to on a new machine to play gears e-day if the machine i already have can play it um i don't know it just seems like a disaster over there and uh they're that new asha like seems to be doing and saying the right things but like who the hell like what does that even really mean because oh the logo is the logo is the logo is so much cooler and it's like yeah it is but what does the logo represent it represents a a machine that nobody needs it represents games that everybody already has access to and it and it represents a a company that doesn't seem to do what they say they're going to do for more than a couple weeks at a time before switching strategies entirely and um and even when they do a cool thing like oh let's let's bring gears over to playstation the way they do it is like in very lazy like oh here's here's reloaded again and it's like okay and even with campaign evolved it's like here's Halo 1 again it's like oh my god like I don't know it just seems I don't know Xbox is not I'm a big Xbox fan like actually but like all of their capital is kind of gone in my view and the only way to really get that capital back it would be to recommit to exclusives with which I just don't see any financial reality that they're going to do it

3:01:35Colin Moriarty:I think there's an element too, and this is a lot more of a hot take, just my opinion. But I don't think that, I don't want to say Xbox doesn't make good games anymore, because that's not true. But Xbox doesn't make some of the best games anymore. And it's not to say there aren't exceptions of games that the industry absolutely loves, the people love like forza horizon that's clearly huge for them call of duty now it's like well yeah they i mean call of duty is not doing so great currently we'll see what happens with that but like over the over the i mean xbox one in and series generation it there's been so many disappointments or games that just did not live up to what we thought they would be either you know starfield halo infinite which wasn't bad but wasn't great by yeah that was a mishandled standards mishandled game mishandled um are they capable of making exclusive software that is so good that it brings people to buy the console at this point based on their track record

3:02:53Chris Santis:yeah they would have to lose so much money they would have to lose they have to lose a lot of money funding games that are of a quality ceiling that are so great for for a for an audience that's ultimately like not really there that it would be like a massive expense and it would be a massive loss for like years you basically have to spend years spending money like a lot of money developing games that are objectively fantastic for an audience that is very limited in the hopes that they are just so good that they draw people to the machine and it's just No one's that even the people who are capable of doing that are just they're not forward thinking in that way.

3:03:32Chris Santis:And they're just they're going to. Why would you do that when you can just sell it on PlayStation? And what like what would compel them to be the old Xbox that they were if they're poised right now to be the biggest third party publisher ever and make money hand over fist doing that? Like they have a real path forward to success as. As that type of entity. like it's pretty clear for them actually like it's just like there's almost no resistance to it the only resistance would be shedding your weight as a console manufacturer which is also by the way a ton of money r &d all the stuff that they would then not have to worry about what is the benefit of recommitting to the console and then spending years losing money i just i don't know um

3:04:23Chris Santis:they're just kind of in a rock and a hard place that they put themselves in I don't know. I really don't know.

3:04:31Dustin Furman:Sorry about that. Is everything okay? What happened? I had to poop.

3:04:36Colin Moriarty:I was wondering.

3:04:37Dustin Furman:Yeah, I had to go poop.

3:04:38Colin Moriarty:There's something in your step.

3:04:40Dustin Furman:I had a little bit of a skedaddle.

3:04:42Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it was a little skedaddle.

3:04:45Dustin Furman:Yeah. Well, thank you guys for handling. Diamond Hands wrote in. Said, hey, CDC, long time listener, but finally ponied up the shekels for Patreon, not joining the Discord out of fear of being booted. Do you have any investments in video game companies? I have holdings in Sony and most recently added Capcom and Ubisoft. Ubisoft was added after hearing your opinion on the turnaround and the value of the IP. I ask this because I feel like you all, with your vast knowledge of all things video games, would have a major advantage. Take you, for example, Colin. You've spent tens of thousands of dollars over the years given to Sony when you want to own part of what you support.

3:05:17Dustin Furman:Is it a conflict of interest? Do you think the future of video games is bleak? Why not invest in these companies you know so much about? I'm going to go stare at a stock chart from my cuck chair. And listen, thank you, Diamond Hands, for writing in. I think a lot of our listeners know about this, but it's probably something that doesn't come up is like, I don't buy gaming stock because I just I do feel like it is a conflict of interest. It was a meme in my in our community for me to say like I'm a Microsoft shareholder because I said it all the time because I was afraid that it sounded like I was being biased if I didn't let anyone know that.

3:05:47Dustin Furman:And then I finally just sold my microphone, my Microsoft share some years ago. Kind of wish I held on to them, but I did make a nice profit, but I would have made a lot more if I held on to them. But I want to alleviate myself of any of those perceptions. So maybe in like some sort of fucking mutual fund somewhere that I invest in or whatever, there's like gaming stock or tech stock. But I just stay away from that stuff, typically, just to not create any conflicts of interest. And the other honest take is that I don't really want any of this. Like there are some tantalizing stocks out there. I think Take Two would be an interesting company to invest in.

3:06:18Dustin Furman:EA is really kind of going to be off the market now with the Saudi purchase. So there's not even that many safe things to, to, or interesting things to invest in. A lot of the great companies are still private like steam, for instance, that would be a very tempting one. If valve everyone public, but I don't think that's really going to happen. So no, I don't own any stock in there. Do you, do you guys have any investments or are interested in investing in the game industry? That's not a company rule, very similar to not getting codes early or whatever. Like, I don't care. Like I'm not saying like Dustin can buy stock, but it's gotta be in a blind trust kind of shit.

3:06:50Dustin Furman:Like I don't give a shit what you do. And I also don't think that like anyone is doing anything untoward necessarily anyway. Like when I own Microsoft stock, I wasn't like, you know, trying to like talk Microsoft up or anything like that. I just think you want to, I want to make money. I think we were joking about that at the time and be like, why would I want to not make money? So I'm not going to like shit on these things, but that's why you don't want to be involved in that in the first place. So any thoughts here?

3:07:12Colin Moriarty:I, so my, I have a Robin hood account, but I mostly was messing with it pre COVID just as a curiosity. And then I lost a few hundred bucks and I was like, well, I'm kind of done with that. So my investments are through like a Roth IRA for the most part, like my actual investments. I still have some stock on here, like a big hitter for me. I own two shares of AMD, two whole shares, but I bought it at$32 and I'm in a profit of$641. Hell yes. so I'm not investing actual money really like you know people actually invest thousands of dollars in things so at some point I'll probably just sell all that and then have a nice like I don't know thousand bucks between the little bit that I have I don't think I have any gaming I think at one point I bought a little bit of Nintendo before was it switch one or switch two no switch one was seven 2017 maybe it was switch two and I think I lost a little money on it I think Nintendo's down pretty yeah and it wasn't even like it wasn't considerable money it was like curiosity like here's a hundred bucks yeah you can't you can't win or it's like we were saying about gambling

3:08:28Dustin Furman:earlier like you can't win or lose too much in in stock investing unless you put up you know right yeah and that's where the risk comes in it's easy to say like i'm gonna put a thousand dollars into this company it's like all right i mean that's cool that's great maybe it'll turn into five thousand but really the play is people putting in two million you know or something like that like that and obviously like that's not something we would do but i am a very again my financial advisor listens to the show i am very annoyingly conservative like i just don't like fucking around i work so hard for this money it's like i don't i'd rather just make little bits than like keep up with inflation and maybe a little bit more than like really take big swings but he's reminded me i think i might have said this on the show he was like if we did this one big swing i suggested you would have made like two hundred thousand dollars or something like that and i'm like i just can't do it you know i can't i can't do it i i don't want it's like buying a scratch-off ticket you know i don't i don't want to lose what i have i can't i can't get into that so no big swings for calm but diamond hands uh chris do you uh do you invest i have like a roth

3:09:37Chris Santis:just for basic stuff like i i don't like the the environment really like i i think it's i think it's lame to get a lot of money for no work i just like i i can't separate myself from like i've because i've talked to people it's like oh i made all this money from like investing and i i can't like i i know it's not fair necessarily but i immediately think what a fucking loser like and i can't make i can't make myself not think that like it just it's an immediate thing so it's not something that I really think about or do like I dabbled in like uh Robin Hood like pre-COVID like Dustin I made a little bit and I was just like yeah this is not this is it's not even satisfying to win really because it's just like okay I what am I to do with this I mean I

3:10:19Dustin Furman:I like I like winning like that I just think it does add to the we always say this about like the never-ending by owning a stock you become part of the never-ending profit culture of having the of growth like growth culture right yeah but it's necessary for you to get paid i honestly like in this era of like higher rates i'm cool with just buying cds like straight up there's just no there's no risk and it's like yeah all right i'll i'll take a four and a half percent cd that's fine yeah that's perfect yeah and then it's literally it's literally fdic protected like it's it's comical like there's no way to lose unless you take the money out early then you pay a penalty so if you have a five year cd leave it for five years let it gross four percent a year and then you get 20 back basically plus whatever you put in i'm not don't take my financial advice you can do your own financial research and advice but that's my whole play is like i don't want to yeah i would never forgive myself if i lost like a hundred grand or something on the stock market i would like fucking kill myself you know like i just

3:11:20Chris Santis:can't i can't yeah i can't do it so there's yeah but i don't know it's like that's some people's like allowance yeah i mean it's like i guess i'll spend like and it doesn't matter so it's like

3:11:30Dustin Furman:i don't know dude it's just it leaves a bad taste in my mouth i'm also a firm believer especially with how congress people do in on the stock market that the insider trading is so prevalent obviously yeah like look at nancy pelosi's stock portfolio or whatever it's like nancy pelosi stock portfolio like is insane and it's like you can't win like this unless you know things and so like these are the people you're competing with well yeah i mean people that are blatantly insider trading um there's a lot of blatant nonsense it's insane the president

3:12:07Chris Santis:really bothers me because like the president did a crypto scam just before he got in the white house like it's like it's like i don't even like we're such a profit driven culture now it's just it's kind of sad like there's no there's no shame at all i don't even understand the meme coin thing

3:12:25Dustin Furman:it all every one of them seems to be a joke so like what are you buying i don't know crypto chris and i have talked about this ad nauseum over the years we've been doing the show for so long it's like there's something so there's something really novel and interesting about crypto and there's something deeply suspicious about it where it's like there. I'll go with the currency that's backed by like the United States military and the Federal Reserve. You go with the currency that's backed by the blockchain. Have fun with that. I think the funny thing is, is that I was eyeing Bitcoin recently because what is a Bitcoin at now?

3:13:01Dustin Furman:It's been going down, right? Let me see. Bitcoin. Oh, it's up again. 76 ,000. Yeah, it was. Yeah. so it went it fell down from like a hundred and something to 67 and i remember i was saying on the show that if it ever fell at 10 000 i would buy it and i still would but not because i think there's any intrinsic value in it it's because i know i can sell it to someone else that thinks there is in the future and that's kind of it's the name of the game yeah it's like weird it's like you're beating the game almost as opposed to like betting on or like investing in oil futures or like a real company or something.

3:13:37Dustin Furman:At least there's... But then again, you see the stock portfolio with some of these people and you're like, you are absolutely cheating. There's no fucking way that you're not cheating. And that shit pisses me off. So that really dissuades me from being in the market as well.

3:13:53Dustin Furman:Vault 101 guy wrote in. Said sub CDC. With the recent ARC Raiders update significantly nerfing gun durability for lower tier gear and lowering durability loss when engaging a player incentive or loss when engaging a player incentivizing pvp it feels like embark is falling into the same trap they did with the finals constantly over tuning and over complicating systems that were already working why doesn't bark seem so intent on fixing their games into a worse state i'm a 32 year old dad who just wants to grind and have fun without being paranoid about everyone i come across even more is this just a developer lost in the data or are they losing sight of what made the game fun in the first place thanks guys and keep it up dustin i wanted to throw this one to you specifically because this is exactly what i talked about when the game came out and and this comes from an outsider's perspective so i'm very curious as someone who plays both played both the finals and um arc raider is what you think of it but remember i said this i'm like the key to these kinds of games is like finding a balance that encourages people to fight each other but not too much and if you're starting to bend the game towards a certain outcome then the game's design is probably fundamentally broken yeah no i'm not saying that i don't play the game so i can't speak to that for sure but like they're obviously incredibly data-driven and they feel like probably there is not enough pvp and there's not enough danger but then you have to kind of program towards that then it changes the concept of the game then people start getting turned off by it it's very dangerous as opposed to keeping things kind of more static where are you on these two things is embark known for over tinkering i'm not really sure about embark just because i got into

3:15:19Colin Moriarty:the finals very very late uh and i haven't played it in months now um and chris and i are going to have to bring in marathon into this conversation because this is a big conversation to marathon right now is the uh constant updating and and changing what the meta is arc creators though i've been here i haven't played arc creators since last year it's been a very long time oh it's been that long but my impression of arc creators is that it has become something very different in the months I've been away that it has become so PVE focused it's my impression maybe someone can write in and let me know that's currently into it I in hindsight now playing marathon and looking back on our graders it is a very weird position that they made this game PVEP right where it's somewhere in this line where it's like some players never want to PVP some of them just want to pvp and i don't know how much that works anymore because the people that just want to pve are going to have a bad time by the people that want to pvp because they are the ones that are going to be rewarded for it and i really respect marathon in that the game is a pvp game it encourages you to pvp it i don't want to say it highly discourages and do it like being friendly with people but there's an entire faction set up it's a death cult that wants you to go out and murder people and the best loot is on the players that come in so i prefer that that there's no there's very little question of what's going to happen and what's fun about marathon is there has been situations where i'm like well I have gone on voice chat and been like, yo, I have three keys.

3:17:17Colin Moriarty:If you want to come help instead of finding each other, let's just go do this. And it's worked out. And so that little rare moment of teaming up with someone became much more meaningful because of how rare it is. Yeah. As far as tuning, because these are, we're kind of in two different spaces here and we can, and I would love to hear what Chris thinks. And sorry to turn this about marathon, but it can be related in that it is tough where a game that is constantly trying to tune itself to be more fair, I guess, or to change the meta to be more open to more players. This was a big thing in Marathon over the last few weeks because of a double barrel shotgun that could basically insta-kill anyone.

3:18:07Colin Moriarty:and once people started to lean into this meta in a map that's very you know tight quarters like cryo archive it suddenly became if you do not bring this gun in you are at a disadvantage and so they change it they completely nerfed this weapon and it made a lot of people upset that really liked that weapon they've since now rebuffed it uh so it's it's a weird situation and And well, now there's something new to complain about, too, because grenade spam is the new problem. And that seems to be a reoccurring thing with the marathon community is that, oh, I'm dying a lot to this one thing. So Bungie needs to change it.

3:18:46Colin Moriarty:Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. I'm not as much as big on the grenade spam thing as other people. I think it's probably fine. But it is a tough balancing act where if something is too powerful and it's completely ruining the desire to explore other aspects of the game, like the shotgun, then yeah, I think it should be tuned. Because it should never be that one weapon is so dominant that you feel like you have to use it. Right. Yeah. But you also don't want to remove legitimate strategies from the game or things that reward players for being hyper-aggressive players. So in Arc Raiders, I mean, he mentions here lowering durability loss when engaging a player, incentivizing PvP.

3:19:39Colin Moriarty:That's the thing about Arc Raiders is that, again, for my impression being away for many months now, is that the game cannot decide if it wants to push people towards PvE or PvP. And so you have two types of players that are at odds at each other and they're at war on what the game should be. And that's a hard one. I don't really know how to handle that. I feel like if they kind of like set their direction early on and being like, we're going to let people PvP, there will be rewards, but there's also going to be negatives. we're not going to encourage it but it has to be a dynamic part of the game uh maybe that would have been better for them instead of kind of trying to walk this tight rope because i feel like in marathon it works so much better where it's like no this is a pvp primarily where you may have a few situations that you can team up but you are putting it on the line because i have attempted teaming up with people that have stabbed me in the back so i don't do it chris i've talked a lot i'm curious about your thoughts about this and

3:20:48Chris Santis:balancing and metas and arc it's yeah it's it's tricky man because like there is a secret sauce to things even when even when they feel kind of tumultuous like i think i think about i think a lot about how um arrowhead fucked around with them hell divers too and how they like kind of like oh we want to we want it to be more like this and people got upset and then they ended up undoing the changes i like i get it like you want to have the best version of the game that you that you can and i think it's worth like no game is perfectly balanced like the perfectly balanced video game is is completely fiction i know some people would argue like xyz title it's just like no like they settle into that whatever their meta is and people enjoy them but i i would say that you know arc raiders it's it's a tricky game because it like it is successful because it is not punishing like it is successful because it is a game that is more likely to yield social kind of you know friend friendly interactions than other games like that's the reason why it's appealing because like your average dad on like a week a weekday can go on and not be stressed out um a low skill player can go in and get out and they don't find as nearly as much you know friction whereas compared to like literally every other extraction shooter on the market that's just not the case even some of the less successful well like like um hunt showdown and things like that like it's it's more friendly and it's more friendly for a number of reasons i think the third person perspective does a little bit to do that having the gun not be in focus all the time i think is a psychological thing where it's just like it it means it's not your first resort to any interaction i think there's like a psychology to that but arc raiders is popular because of the pve audience and so it is kind of tricky because you have to keep them satisfied really but what where does the satisfaction come from i would argue the tension of like maybe getting into a pvp fight but but maybe not marathon's a different situation because marathon needs to needs to satiate the pvp players and at least they understand like what their audience is and who their audience is and and you know they understand the ballpark that they're playing in but our creators is is kind of in a rough spot where they don't even know what they are and i don't know how you fix that i would argue the aggression-based matchmaking is just a bad idea um i i think that it's just such a such a terrible plan because the whole point is that like it's unpredictable um so i don't know it's worth pointing out i'm i'm glad you

3:23:53Colin Moriarty:said this because i i kind of portrayed it pumped it up as marathon's doing it right and arc raider's doing it wrong that's my opinion about those two games but it's very clear that chris you said like marathon needs to cater to its pvp players because that's who they are and it's like that's true and the people that play marathon fucking love it and put hundreds of hours me and you are two of them right and there's many people in our audience but and they are catering they are attempting to cater to us and often successfully and that's good uh but that

3:24:26Chris Santis:reflects in the player numbers yeah it's a hostile environment like there are days there are days look i love marathon i think it's right now it's my game of the year i think and me too i think it's fantastic i think it's an exceptional shooter that will only age um uh well i guess you can't really say that necessarily because it's always changing but like i think whatever whatever the narrative on on marathon is going to be i think it's going to be a positive one at the end of the day like when all when all the dust settles but it is a hostile game there are days where i'm like i don't really feel like going through this today you know like i just like i don't have i don't have it in me right now i love it but i don't have it in me and yeah they're they're operating they're doing a lot of tweaks and i think they're they're tweaking things i think on the marathon side well because they're they're still catering to pvp like they had the free kit sponsored which is a good way to involve it doesn't make it pve but it makes it so like oh everybody's kind of starting on an equal playing field um there's no kind of it's it's i don't know there's something a little bit more arena shootery about it it's not quite exactly that but like everybody's starting with the same starter kits all you know you got to go find the power weapons it's it's it's like a pseudo halo in in that way um and so at least when they experiment they know the realm in which they should be experimenting which is in pvp and the pve that is there they can choose to push it a little bit more uh push it a little bit less but ultimately like people aren't going to stop fighting each other arc raiders has two disparate audiences already and you got to make a choice at a certain point i would argue get rid of that matchmaking system that you have because i i think that's the whole reason that the game is popular in the first place is that tension you don't want to who the fuck wants to sit there and be like let's all be friends guys like it's already there's already like a sentiment in in in the in the culture that like arc raiders is kind of like weenie hut jr when it comes to uh a lot of these like these extraction shooters it's like it's like babies babies first extraction shooter which to be fair i think it is

3:26:35Colin Moriarty:but that reputation is not fantastic you know yeah i mean i'm so thankful for our creators because it taught me the loop what extraction shooters are in that as mean as it sounds but baby extraction shooter way because it's thanks to that that i love marathon now yeah no for sure

3:26:54Chris Santis:but but it is weird because like the reality is like I I know for a fact I won't play arc Raiders again I liked my time with it but like the the the pure loop there is just not it's not my style the third person I'm just not into it so like they lost me but like they have a huge audience and they would they should focus on whatever the bigger half of that audience is I guess. But you can't forego PvP completely.

3:27:26Dustin Furman:Malevolon Creek PTSD run into us. We haven't heard from this guy in a while. Oh, look at that. This is greeting sacred gents with the unstoppable wave of friend slop games. I'm reminded of the times when I'd stay up till 6 a.m. playing Halo 3 custom games with the boys and drinking so much game game fuel. My kidneys hurt. My question is, were Halo 3 custom games the first instance of friend slop? Thanks for all you do. I'll hang up and listen. Sweet summer child. Come on. No, no. really the first, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but friend slop begins with N64, in my opinion. Now, this is a pretty interesting conversation to be had.

3:28:01Dustin Furman:There were multi taps on SNES and you can play more than two players on Genesis and all the rest, but the N64 is inherent ability to welcome more players. Plus it's directional where a lot of the games were made for multiplayer means that to me, that was the friend slot machine. Like that's the prototype friend slot machine is N64. and that was a major reason why it was so popular um so i think the xbox halo 3 is xbox 360 right so 2007 so that's two generations too late in my opinion for the identification of like what it really was but maybe i'm off base there but that's that's the way i feel i think you're off base hit

3:28:38Colin Moriarty:me here's why any multiplayer game that's fun with friends is not a friend slap game just because I feel like we're getting too broad with the definition of friend slot to me. And maybe there's probably some before this, but like the first friend slot game was lethal company. Cause to me, friend slot is the very specific. You're saying it's way later.

3:29:01Dustin Furman:I think friend slot,

3:29:03Colin Moriarty:if we want to be very particular about what friend slot is, then it is very new. It is a multiplayer game that usually has voice chat. that is very cheap and not very in-depth that is fun for your friends for a few nights

3:29:24Chris Santis:yeah i you know what i can i know what this person is saying because because because there are there is an argument to be made that really until although like you could maybe argue that it's it's more pc like early pc had this going on as well but like i understand the perspective of from a mainstream console stance the stuff that individual users were whipping up with the custom game settings in halo 3 specifically you could argue that that's like proto friend slop for sure like i remember like custom games that you would never see in matchmaking because they were so like hyper specific and they were so like weird and off like off kilter and it wasn't it wasn't just like oh team slayers but team slayer but with rocket launchers it was like you know duck hunt like where you were like you had to like snipe people running through like a 2d maze and stuff like that and like that's that's not its own triple a game but it is kind of like I think you would spend a night doing and then maybe do again in a couple weeks or something.

3:30:37Chris Santis:I know what he means. And there's an argument to be made that I think you're probably right. But I do think holistically yeah Friends Slop started I think with Lethal Company. I understand what he's saying though. Nice.

3:30:53Colin Moriarty:It evokes that feeling.

3:30:54Chris Santis:Yeah it does. It's definitely do you remember like Call of Duty had a little bit of that too in the Call of Duty 4 and Modern Warfare 2 era with like Michael Myers. I remember that was like a game mode that people would go around playing but the custom there's no no there's no doubt that like halo 3 customs was like a place where like a lot of weird i remember i remember there was a there was one in reach i think where it was like a long slope it was like a hallway in a long slope and vehicles would come down and when they got to the end they would teleport back to the beginning so it was like an infinite loop of vehicles coming down you had to like climb and like dodge them i think it was called speed halo or something but that's friend slot but it's not its own game and so like i think you could make the case that like yes this is proto friend slot but really it begins with lethal company in the same way that platformers really platformers really arguably begin with mario like there's there's play there's obviously platformers before there's pitfall right halo 3 customs is pitfall

3:32:02Chris Santis:it's great

3:32:05Dustin Furman:but it's not mario fair enough yeah i like i like where you guys went with that yeah i guess maybe i was being a little too reductive myself yeah because from what you're saying it's like i think

3:32:14Chris Santis:like you're you're considering like mario party or something like that yeah or like golden eyes

3:32:18Dustin Furman:what came to mind for me just a game that was yeah i understand what you're saying though i mean it is different it is differentiated i'm glad we talked that through i love malevolon creek ptsd that's so funny because i still have it yeah rob the butcher wrote in says howdy coal rice and dust as the new steam controller is officially releasing and will go on sale may 4th as of the public release of this episode of sacred symbols it has me thinking i believe we are witnessing a potential first glimpse of next gen controller design not so not so the trad trackpads but specifically with the gyro capabilities and the capacitive sensors side note xbox was reported to working be working on a next-gen controller a few years ago that would wake your console what features would you fellas like to see in the next-gen controllers that from sony and the big x how could sony benefit from adding these features in a dual sense too i personally think the capacitive sensors are a game changer and i'm excited to see where they go it's so funny man maybe i'm maybe people are gonna be popular people too this controller looks like shit oh it's definitely function over totally it's just like what's exactly right i'm like get an industrial designer this is where this is where sony wins right with with their electronics is like not so much a ps5 maybe but the controller certainly is like but it's really what the controller does like you said that really matters but i was i was looking at the website because it's 99 bucks i'm on the store now on steam and uh it's just it's not very attractive but i guess you kind of have to have this bulky messed for those touch those trackpads or whatever i don't know i don't really need them to do much with the new controller and i wonder if they're going to obviously we had the ps1 controller and then dual shock one dual shock two six axis and dual shock three dual shock four and dual sense i assume what we'll get is another dual sense controller and honestly i don't feel like you need to reinvent the wheel here um the dual the dual sense is an excellent controller and I really have no desire like actually playing Saros on it where our first party is really putting their time into the the triggers and the haptics and all the rest it feels awesome so maybe I'm just too complacent with a lot of the technologies we're provided with and people like me would never push anything forward because we're just happy with what we have reminds me when I got my iPhone 4 and I'm like damn this is fucking awesome you know like this is this is amazing but we we move forward so I don't know if they have some sort of major redesign plan or if they're just going to kind of stick with things.

3:34:41Dustin Furman:It's important to note that the DualShock came out in close. Well, first they had like the PS1 dual analog stick controller, and then the actual DualShock that came out somewhat close to PS2, like a couple of years away. So they stuck with that form factor. The PS3 only stuck with that form factor out of sheer necessity, which is what we've talked about in the past. They didn't have time to make a new controller. So they, and I say that for people that don't know, they originally were going to do the boomerang. Everyone hated it. And they're like, oh, no. And so they just put everything into the PS2 controller form.

3:35:19Dustin Furman:They stuck with that. And then DualShock 4 was finally them evolving that. So it could be, Dustin, that maybe they really will make a new controller, like a truly new controller. I just don't think you really have to. I mean, obviously, it's got to be different in some way, but it's it could be the same form factor, do the same thing. So I'll be perfectly happy with it. I think they're in a pretty good place.

3:35:38Colin Moriarty:yeah first of all i gotta address what does he mean xbox was reported to be working on next next gen controller that would wake your console i don't know we look are you telling me the xbox you press the xbox button on the xbox controller and it wakes it up i think he means like if you

3:35:54Chris Santis:picked it up or something that sounds fucking horrible sounds really stupid yeah it's like

3:35:58Colin Moriarty:you go to move your controller off your couch and it wakes up your console every time i don't know what he means by that um okay i'm trying to find but i don't know why you look for that uh as far as the gyro capabilities and the capacitive sensors this is on steam deck and maybe people really like this i like i know the idea is that like when your hand when it can tell when your thumbs are on either the sticks or the buttons and i know the steam controller has sensors to tell for the grips. And so you can use those to trigger the gyro controls on and off. And that sounds kind of interesting, but probably not something I'm all that interested in.

3:36:43Colin Moriarty:The only time I've thought capacitive buttons have been cool are I think they're on the PSVR 2 controllers. And so you can see or maybe it's Oculus controllers. I can't remember, but I know you could see like it made it feel like you could see your hands in the game based on what buttons uh your fingers were on so i'm not really sure if that's something i want in a dual sense 2 but maybe when i get the steam controller and if i start fucking with that then maybe it would be something that i become a believer in but i don't really know what dual sense 2 really even needs like you said colin like it has gyro it has really great rumble the uh adaptive triggers are great they could get the

3:37:31Dustin Furman:battery life yeah the battery life which they've already improved as far as i understand they have improved and then the the weight is nice the weight bothered me at first because it's so heavy compared to any playstation controller even the ps4 controller i would say it's no joke probably twice as heavy as the dual shock 4 um but i like it I think it's kind of perfect actually my only notes

3:37:53Colin Moriarty:are preference and that's I wish that this controller was like 15 % smaller I wish it was more the size of the DualShock 4 you can keep the form factor but for my hands small hands

3:38:07Dustin Furman:I have big palms and small

3:38:09Colin Moriarty:fingers I don't know what that means what is that a Utherment 4 big dick big palms for the grip

3:38:21Dustin Furman:well jesus christ oh good lord you know how it goes yeah i do know how it goes uh chris do we need a new controller probably not for any real reason i think like i don't know man

3:38:33Chris Santis:i i'm i'm perfectly fine at the at the 360 you know what i mean like i did i don't think the adaptive triggers are cool and interesting and the haptic feedback on the dual shack for or on the dual senses is it's it's neat but i largely find it like distracting and unnecessary like like i i turn off adaptive triggers whenever i can um generally it's one of the things that i'm kind of not looking forward to sarah's about because i know i remember returnal was like

3:39:03Dustin Furman:oh yeah they're very very they're important in the game yeah they're very important i remember

3:39:06Chris Santis:that was fine but i remember there was like one thing i was like that's the one thing i kind of I don't like this half trigger is one input or whatever. I do think there's stuff that could be done. I think the sensors to kind of indicate you know the capacitive sensors would be cool. I don't need more though. I'm not wanting for anything in a new controller except for just a new form factor for the sake of feeling fresh. Just because I am a sucker for that stuff. It always bothers me when a new console comes out and things have things have remained like I like the whole thing feeling new um it was one of my biggest issues with series x when that came out and it was just like the xbox one dashboard again and I remember just being like this is lame this is like a lame kind of cop out like I don't like this and I felt a similar way about the ps3 actually because I had the psp first and then when I got the ps3 and it was like the psp media bar on the home screen I know for a lot of people that felt like next gen but to me it felt like oh you're giving me like a gimped handheld ui on my on my main machine that's how it felt to me at the time because my association with it was a handheld and so like i like i like things to be new even if there's no reason like i i would like a new form factor maybe some new bells and whistles on it but i don't i has i can't think of anything that i would specifically ask for one thing that i will say that what is cool about the the steam controller as I understand it is that both of those trackpads uh I think I saw like a review of somebody saying like you can map different key binds and different functions to swipes on each of those trackpads which theoretically gives you like eight extra buttons on the controller if like you really wanted to and it's like that's cool like that's a really neat feature and it's interesting because it's like that they're placed in a better place like you could theoretically do that with the uh the dual sense as well with the trackpad in the middle but it's so out of the way compared to those that like i feel like it's a lot more viable on the steam controller to do shit like that so maybe some customizability in that regard but i don't know if i need really anything what would be cool and it's the only thing that i ask for from sony is doesn't have to be a primary controller or whatever but like give me some offset sticks i would love like a first party playstation controller with offset sticks i think i said day one day one for that i was surprised the edge

3:41:33Dustin Furman:didn't do that i think we were talking about that at the time that like it would be cool to be able to change the d-pad and the stick on the left side of the controller their positions that'd be kind of complex obviously but with like some sort of pad that you would put down and then you would put something over it um yeah some way or something i don't know i just think that'd be cool i just i

3:41:51Chris Santis:just prefer the offset stick so like it's always a bummer um playing a game that i know that i like and knowing that I could like it slightly more if it was just, if it felt truly comfortable for me.

3:42:02Dustin Furman:I would love to see, when I was in Japan, I've told you guys I pressed to see the DualShock 4 prototypes that had the offset sticks, but they wouldn't show me. Because they do exist. Yeah. And it's interesting that they didn't end up going in that direction. I think it's kind of Sony's thing to be like, this is the differentiator of our controllers. We don't do that. I also think it's just a matter of what you're used to at this point, and I'm just really used to the parallel sticks personally yeah all right final inquiry is not really an inquiry i just wanted to read it says mill sauce greetings sexy sacred crew i want to piggyback off a write-in from last week or two weeks ago and share a proud dad moment my four-year-old son is currently obsessed with robots and last week we were browsing youtube when we randomly stumbled across this low-budget megaman cartoon called megaman fully charged the show looks like generic dog shit but he was immediately hooked and completely infatuated with the robot masters his mind was blown when i told him that it was based on a video game series needless to say i installed the legacy collection and megaman 11 and now he asks me to play it every day after preschool i'm doing my part in the struggle to keep the next generation away from roblox thanks and keep on keeping on nothing to really say about this other than i love it i love the story i love what you're doing i love that your kid discovered the shitty megaman fully charged cartoon that turned him on to the robot masters and turn turn him on to the classic megaman games and you are keeping the legacy alive um the kid doesn't need to play roblox doesn't need to play minecraft he doesn't need to play any of that trash fortnight maybe play a little eve online try that out yeah get him on there

3:43:33Colin Moriarty:definitely definitely yeah this this reminded me colin do you see this megaman fitness watch i did yeah i did see it i was like this looks kind of sick i'd look i'd like a call-in review of working out with the megaman my play walk yeah it's cool i i was saying this to mike it's it reminds me of

3:43:50Dustin Furman:what i was what i say about gi joe a lot where it's like all right it's the same fucking shit over and over again like it's always megaman 2 just like it's always duke and it's always you know cobra commander and destro and it's never like anything else or anyone else like this expanded always always starts in the same place and it bothers me and i'm like enough man like enough with the megaman 2 already i love megaman 2 megaman 2 is one of the reasons i play video games, but. And I know you have to start there, you know, it's like I was saying about the figures that Jada toys was doing with Mega Man, where they finally got their Mega Man one and into Mega Man two, and they're like, yeah, I don't like it.

3:44:27Dustin Furman:So like when the next toy line comes out, we're going to do it all over again instead of getting into like the newer shit. So that's a little frustrating. I don't know if I'm going to pick it up or not. It looks cool. But Capcom is very, very aggressive with licensing, which I appreciate. It's a good way to make money. I don't know why you wouldn't do that and no one seems to get tired of it there's so much Mega Man license shit it's not even funny how much shit is out there uh so anyway Millsauce I just wanted to acknowledge your story I thought it was very cute um love to hear that hope he hope you've made a Mega Man fan for life not unlike Dagon's son Graydon who's a Mega Man stan as well from his young years so um keep it up keep him away from Roblox that shit looks like garbage looks like trash can't believe it yeah all right that's it guys this is a nice light episode nothing really to get into apart from this so let's go let's go around the horn say goodbye to everyone chris goodbye to you be well um any plans you'd want to share anything you want

3:45:26Chris Santis:to say before we go no i got nothing going on today man it's one of those days where i think i'm just gonna like try and do as little as possible that sounds wonderful nothing i do want to uh i do want to wrap up pragmata today i feel like i'm close i didn't look up i don't know i don't i didn't look up the percentages or nothing uh but it feels like intuitively you know you get that feeling it's like okay i'm approaching i feel like there's been a rising action i feel like there's been somewhat of a climax we're just getting to the end here um so i'm excited to finish that up tonight maybe and then probably jump into saros tomorrow if all

3:46:05Dustin Furman:things work out correctly cool george outside of that nothing else love it enjoy have a good weekend good luck with your eyes as well yeah it'll be fine i just i just gotta i gotta stop

3:46:20Chris Santis:putting it off i've been meaning to go to the the optometrist for months and just like yeah but now my literal my normal glasses are literally falling apart like the what is it the uh the handle for the eyes are like it's like really wiggly there's like no it's so flaccid i was like okay i gotta go yeah yeah you're in danger zone now all right man we'll be well good to see you dustin you too goodbye be well anything you want to share before we go i'm hoping i feel good enough this weekend

3:46:50Colin Moriarty:to get out of the house a little bit i'm going a little crazy just to you know see people even just hanging out with my parents might be nice just because last weekend holly was sick then this weekend I was sick and so finally hopefully out of that this weekend I'm hoping to do Vault 6 in the Cryo Archive and I'm very scared very very hard so pray for me as I venture into the Archive this weekend and more sorrows of course so yeah fun episode nice and breezy don't complain about the length don't complain delete the comment delete it four hours all we do is give right colin that's all that's

3:47:35Dustin Furman:i can't even say it anymore everyone just takes and all i do is give that's basically it basically all there is do it um all right my friends well be well have a great weekend thank you all out there for your love kindness and support of our show sacred symbols couldn't do without you patreon.com slash last name media for early ad free access last name media.store for merch. We'll see you on Sacred Streaming. I'll be streaming and platinuming our new game, St. Slayer, on Monday. So we'll see you then. And we'll see you on Sacred Symbols Plus as well. I think that's basically it. All right, my friends, be well.

3:48:07Dustin Furman:See you next time. Goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia. The following names are at the producer level on Patreon, our highest tier, and we're grateful for your thoughtful and kind contributions to our independent endeavor.

3:48:52Dustin Furman:Thank you.

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