speaker-0: Welcome back, welcome back.
speaker-1: Let's go in.
speaker-0: All right. So we were just talking about a couple different things, but you're playing control, the first control game. Yeah. In preparation for control resonance.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm like I'm trying to get used to the lore, figure out all the lore about it, because there's so much going on in that game. And so I wanted to know before I play the new one.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's crazy.
speaker-1: I tried to play the first one a long time ago, but this is like a thrill playthrough. I'm actually gonna go through the whole thing and Yeah, get ready for the new one. Yeah.
speaker-0: And so I was asking you, I'm like, I'm like, how much of the first control game have you seen before?
speaker-1: Yeah, it wasn't very much. Maybe a little bit of gameplay snippets here and there, but for the most part, it was just like the gun, the gunplay, the shooting, that kind of stuff. which is a decent portion of the game, but honestly, there's so much more that I didn't even realize was part of it.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. And like I played it too and I kinda I kinda gave up maybe before the first boss or whatever. But like you were saying that you were just totally into it. You're like halfway through the game. You're twelve hours in. That's
speaker-1: I'm seventy percent now.
speaker-0: a lot. Yeah. In few days. Yeah, you barely started a few days ago.
speaker-1: I don't think it's a very long game considering, you know, how long some games are. I think it's kind of a shorter game. Yeah. Compared to some.
speaker-0: Still three days later, you're in it. Okay. Yeah. So I had this like I had this idea where where it's like the less the less you see something like a game, the less you see of it before you play it, the higher the opportunity of it like affecting you in a positive way.
speaker-1: Yeah, I you know, now that I'm thinking about it, because at first I was like, I don't know. But then now that I'm thinking about it, yeah, I think that does have a big part of it. Because this happened to me a couple different times with other stuff. So like First picking up, what was it? Ghost of Tsushima, it was kind of the same thing. I was like, cool, an open world samurai game. Not really sure what this is about. But then you find out, like, it's detailed.
speaker-0: And then it bears in mind.
speaker-1: It's got an amazing story. That happened again with Horizon. I I had like no like real understanding of what Horizon was. At first I thought it was like a dinosaur game, which I mean it kinda sort of is. But it is nowhere near what you'd expect if you hadn't seen anything from it.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought it was like a cyber dinosaur hunter two rock or something.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I thought it was like an online like an online type of deal.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought you had to hunt the dinosaurs. Yeah.
speaker-1: That's what I thought too. I thought it was like arc survival but with robot dinosaurs. That that kind of thing. Yeah. When I first played that. I think I kinda sort of got that too with Death Stranding. The first when I first played the first Death Stranding, no
speaker-0: Kojima
speaker-1: idea what that was about.
speaker-0: and the trailer for the trailer for it, there's no possible way you can understand what that was about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So maybe there's some there's there's something to learn there from Kojima.
speaker-1: Yeah. I think like I don't think Twitch is a bad thing, but you kind of ruin your expectations a little bit.
speaker-0: Well, a few things. Here's here's a few ideas, right? Okay. Expectation. If you're watching a full playthrough, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're yeah, you're running everything.
speaker-1: I'll if if I like look at a Twitch stream and they s they're playing something that is like heavily story based or like something you haven't played and you wanna play it, I'll I'll turn it off just because I wanna experience it for myself.
speaker-0: Yeah. Another thing, another thing would be like, there's just so much so on social media, you go on social media, you go on Instagram, whatever, Facebook, you're like inundated with clips. You're inundated with people's opinions. Yeah. You're inundated with like everything about a game, people getting the game like early, reviewing it, whatever, posting gameplay. You're seeing a you're seeing the whole gamut before it even comes out. Yep. Yeah. And it's like it it really does affect you. Yeah. And I think I I think I know what. Yeah.
speaker-1: I think I think it's funny that we're talking about this hot on the heels of us releasing like gameplay footage of us playing games. But one thing is we're playing games the last couple videos we've done have been older games that everybody's already seen, so it's not a huge deal. But like I don't like the idea of posting spoiler clips for games that have just released.
speaker-0: spoiler clips or like or you know and we're not posting like walkthrough yeah videos or anything like that yeah we're not like spoiling or like revealing some of the stuff yeah of a game right so like okay now earlier today one of our coworkers brought up the word blockbuster yeah yeah right and it was a thing like I don't know we've both been a blockbuster we lived it yeah right You go to Blockbuster, especially the game area. Mm-hmm. You don't know what you're gonna get unless like you don't know what you're gonna get besides what you can read on the back of that Blockbuster case.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: That was it. Yeah.
speaker-1: You just get little screenshots. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yep. Same thing when you go like maybe back in the day you would have a magazine, Game Pro, Nintendo Power, whatever. You get like
speaker-1: Game informer back then?
speaker-0: Game Informer, yeah, Xbox magazine, whatever. That's all you got. You didn't get hundreds of thousands of hours of social media videos that you could browse through and basically form an opinion.
speaker-1: You could watch the entire game online now for anything, even something that's come out day of. What was that one you were looking at that was like the full gameplay?
speaker-0: Well is a
speaker-1: Gears of War. Yeah, Gears of War E Day. We were just looking at clips on YouTube and it was you could watch the entire game.
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like a full thirteen, fourteen hours or yeah.
speaker-1: It's crazy. I don't understand why I mean, I understand why people do it. They want views and they want, you know.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's almost like historical I don't know, this is what I did. This is how I played the game.
speaker-1: It's also it's also like I remember there were times when I wasn't able to purchase a game. Yeah. And I just watched the whole game instead. That's fine. Sad times.
speaker-0: That's fine too. It's like whatever, however you want to watch it or whatever, it's fine. But knowing that, so back in the day, what I'm saying, back in the day, NES, super NES, even before that, probably up to about you know PS3,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: that whole gaming era. 90% of that game, 99% of that game, you discovered while playing it. Yep. You had a discover. There's a discovery aspect. Yeah.
speaker-1: I remember playing Uncharted and that's like one of the best games for that kind of thing. Because those those big action adventure games, they're like, why would you want to spoil this for yourself? Cause it's so you never know what you're gonna see next. It's
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: like you want to find that treasure. It's like a real treasure to you. You want to find it.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's kinda like I I almost wanna be like, don't don't go on like gaming social media. Yeah. Or like so when GTA six comes out, here's a here's a trick.
speaker-1: Yeah. I'm cutting myself off.
speaker-0: It's probably gonna come out earlier to a few people.
speaker-1: yeah, yeah. It's gonna there's gonna be review. I don't know though. Rockstar does kind of play it close to their chest. There's gonna be some like big streamers that have it early, like maybe a day or two early. Or there could be like this huge embargo where nobody has it.
speaker-0: Well, there might be like reviewers. Reviewers are gonna get it before. They're gonna see it, they're gonna talk about it, whatever, right? Here's the challenge. Turn like delete your Facebook, delete Instagram, delete everything.
speaker-1: I'm tempted to, yeah, because I don't wanna I don't want any of that spoiled. Like I feel like the way they released gameplay already, that thirty minute thing. A lot. That was a lot. And like I feel like maybe it would have been better if they didn't do all that.
speaker-0: I mean it would it would be better for the gamer. It
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: wouldn't be better for Rockstar for the
speaker-1: No, no, yeah. I mean, they've been doing a pretty good job playing playing it close to their chest already 'cause like I mean it's gonna be generational. When that game comes out, like there's gonna be so many cool things that you're gonna see and do and yeah, you don't wanna spoil that.
speaker-0: Yeah. But it's not it's not just like spoiling, but it's also like you know, it's it's finding that that new thing. Yeah. Right. So even if you are watching, you know, videos or whatever, there could be something that's happening that it would take you like four hours to get to. And then you experience it. Yeah. But you just kind of already seen it before. You're kinda like, seen it before. Like it it lessens that we're talking about dopamine before. Yeah, yeah. It it lessens that that dopamine reaction. Yeah. Right.
speaker-1: It just doesn't have that that I don't know what you'd call it, like it doesn't have that payout as much. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So that's kinda like that's my that's what I've been thinking about like recently. Cause maybe sometimes I feel like, am I like cynical about gaming? Yeah, you kinda are. Or have I seen too much? And I think I've seen too much.
speaker-1: Too much Instagramming in the game space.
speaker-0: Could be.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Could be. Too much, too much Instagramming, not enough like self discovery.
speaker-1: Yeah, maybe. You need to play more games and watch less games. Yeah. I still think you need to play Cyberpunk. I sent you a thing about Cyberpunk earlier. But the one I sent about have you did you s did you watch the one I sent you about Cyberpunk? For the one for Cyberpunk, it was like just a monologue by Keanu Reeves's character. And
speaker-0: Okay.
speaker-1: it's like that's cool because it's like quotes from the game and like, you know, snippets from their promotional stuff. Yeah that's that's the kind of stuff you that I'm cool with that kind of stuff because you're mostly just seeing the type of like ideas behind the game.
speaker-0: Yeah. Nah, and that's that's okay too. But even then, but even then, okay. Here's here's another thing. It's like back in the nineties, back in eighties and nineties, you got literally nothing. So another game that was announced that we talk about a lot is God of War Lao Fei. Yeah. Right. Back in the nineties, back in two thousands, when the first God of War came out, it was like you got nothing. You just got you saw the commercials. Yeah. Or you saw it in magazines or you got your friends talking about it. And that was all that you had to go off of.
speaker-1: Well, there was talk about the way they did the the preorder announcement or whatever. It was just an article. It was an article with like almost like gifs showing like some of the combat changes and then they for there was a gif for la People
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: were saying like, this is weird. They just did like a blog article about it and then said, Here you go, you can pre order now.
speaker-0: didn't they show like the armor sets and all that?
speaker-1: There's pictures of the armor sets and then there was a couple gifts with the new bow. And I kind of that's closer to how things used to be with just you read this little article and then go and pre order it. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: I feel that's a little bit better than releasing a whole they did release a whole thirty minute it wasn't
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like a fifteen minute.
speaker-1: all gameplay though, it was just a little bit of gameplay and then like I don't know. It was gameplay plus, you know, some story setup.
speaker-0: Yeah. And they introduced all kinds of characters.
speaker-1: Still was a lot less battle. It was still a lot less than what GTA six did.
speaker-0: Yeah. So like, I mean, and that and that's the thing, like, if we went into Lao Fei with none of that, would it be different?
speaker-1: It would be a little more there'd be a little bit more like allure as to what's actually going on. There'd be a big, huge reveal when you find out that she's in the everywend and there's like gods from all kinds of different pantheons there and so now we already know that, so we kind of have a lot more to expect, but you know, we still have a lot to find out.
speaker-0: Yeah. I don't know. I'm just thinking like maybe the best way to the best way to be a gamer is to like return to the nineties.
speaker-1: Yeah. Stop watching.
speaker-0: One yeah, one announcement, either a year before, two years before, whatever.
speaker-1: I still don't know if that's it if I could cut myself off completely. Like I love watching like the game of the year show at the end of the year. Like they do a ton of reveals and stuff on that. So I don't know if I could just completely cut myself off.
speaker-0: that would be the only thing you could watch. The reveals.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'd be cool with that. I would be cool with that. Or or you know, I still like Twitch when it's stuff that I've already played. Like I like to see how other people do things differently. Or this new pod racer game that came out today, came out today. That game looks freaking sick. And it's all racing, so it's like the same thing. You're not really spoiling much. But that's fun to watch too, is the race, the pod racing. Because that game looks really good.
speaker-0: It looks good on a whole different on a few different levels, I would say. One of them is that they take a lot of cues. Apparently there's some developers in the in the studio. I forget the name of the studio. But there's some developers from Criterion Games which made Burnout, the Burnout series. Yeah.
speaker-1: I kept seeing references from like chat about how it it reminds them of Burma.
speaker-0: You got your land speeder taking down other land speeders or pod racers, you know, taking down other cars and stuff. Yeah. I'm like, this is this is the best fusion of Star Wars and burnout and like racing. Yeah. Then I can or if
speaker-1: Boost gets too hot, your speeder will just explode. It's kind of a cool feature.
speaker-0: And yeah. It's like, I don't know, it's just like the perfect fusion and it looks amazing.
speaker-1: I don't know if they have this in this or not, but I was watching gameplay today and I was thinking proximity chat would be insane in Pod Racer. So you're 'cause some of the other racers can like
speaker-0: Just say things, yeah.
speaker-1: so I was imagining like proximity chat would be wild in Podracer. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: That was best part of the first Star Wars episode one racer. You could double tap the right, you know, kinda shoulder button and then your racer says random stuff. Yeah.
speaker-1: That'd be fun.
speaker-0: Yeah. that would be that would be see that'd be a cool mod for the PC.
speaker-1: Yeah. Whatever comes out. Proximity chat. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for Pod Racer. I'm excited for it's just everything about that that game. I think my kids would enjoy the enjoy that too.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, definitely. yes, and that was so Star Wars Galactic Racer. There was very little about it. They showed like it was like a couple months ago. Yeah. They showed the first like trailer for it.
speaker-1: It was it was one of those game shows. I don't remember which one it was. Gamescom or I know. Was it was it Game of the Year? Was it the Game of the Year show I remember?
speaker-0: anything about Galactic Racer back then. It was literally
speaker-1: It was Game of the Year last year.
speaker-0: like four months ago they came out with boop I saw an ad on Facebook. And I'm like, what the heck is this?
speaker-1: No, I remember, I think it was video game video game awards last December. I think that's when they first announced it. Maybe. Because I remember messaging messaging you like, look, Star Wars, they're doing a new racing game. And then they had that other one that they announced. We'll see what that one's all about. Still, we don't have nothing about that one.
speaker-0: Which one?
speaker-1: The one where the she walks into the old crashed spaceship and then it it like shows the lightsaber like flash above her. Face or whatever.
speaker-0: the old re the old republic. Yeah,
speaker-1: Is that what was?
speaker-0: yeah, yeah. Something like that, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I remember that, yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: That's gonna be cool to see too. Star
speaker-0: Yeah, but
speaker-1: Wars making a comeback in the video game space, that's kind of a big deal.
speaker-0: Yeah, there's been a few games.
speaker-1: There's been the Jedi Survivor and Jedi Fallen Order.
speaker-0: No, I mean like since since Jedi Survivor. Since then till now, there's only been like a few.
speaker-1: Yeah, and then there was that that strategy game. That one came out just recently. That one's cool. It's not my it's not my cup of tea, but it looks cool.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like it was like but like with Galactic Racer in particular, okay, you got that first trailer last year, December. And then like one five minute story trailer. Yeah. Like two months ago.
speaker-1: I mean I don't even think I saw that one.
speaker-0: I didn't I tried to watch it, I d I got no story out of it. Yeah. It's I was like this is cool.
speaker-1: Another thing that's cool about this this new Pod Racer game is that it's it's a roguelite. So you get a tournament chip or whatever, and you go until you lose, and then you have to start from the beginning, and you can change how you go about your next run until you get to the next chapter, which is pretty cool. I like that.
speaker-0: Yeah. The mechanics are like new and different and
speaker-1: Yeah. And the playability, there's a lot of playability there because you can take different routes to the next to the end of the chapter, which is cool.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: You can choose different different different vehicles, different mods, that kind of stuff. That's pretty cool.
speaker-0: And I'm down for it.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: so yeah, I think like I think the less you see of a game before it comes out, the more you may like it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's a a pretty solid take. Yeah, because like a flip
speaker-0: Well the flip side was the the Wolverine game. Everybody, everybody have seen like two hours of that game before they even like played it. Yeah.
speaker-1: And that just takes away so much from the experience. Plus, you got all these opinions from different sides, and like the bickering back and forth between if it's good, if it's not good, and you really have no way to form your own opinion. You always have something, you know, talking to you in the back of your mind, like, look for this because somebody said something about this, or that one thing that Sabretooth, what's his name? Sabretooth? yeah, he says that one line, and it's like, my God, I gotta I gotta go through this. So it's like I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna pay for it. Just because, you know, I might I may play it down the line sometime when they when the heat's died off on it, and maybe I forget a bunch of the nonsense that I've heard. It still sounds like it's A pretty bad game, so I don't want to spend money on it anyways. But that's another part of it. It's like
speaker-0: Here but here's the flip side of that. So like, okay, wolverine, right? You heard too much, so you're probably not gonna pay for it. You're gonna wait until you're gonna wait a year or two until it comes out on PlayStation Plus or whatever. Yeah. That's fine. But it's also like if too much I don't know, so like the these game studios, these publishers or whoever, they're like, if we have to show something so people get interested. Right. If you show too much, they're gonna find out they might not like it. Yeah. If we show too little.
speaker-1: That is true, yeah.
speaker-0: We show too little, they're not gonna be that interesting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's like this, like you have to hit this perfect like release.
speaker-1: I will say it's it's good to get some kind of warning about some of the game.
speaker-0: I was gonna say so So people today will not pay for a game unless they hear if it's good or not from somebody else.
speaker-1: Yeah. I mean there are sometimes, you know, that's a good thing in some aspects to like. To get, you know, some credible sources to be like, yeah, this game's worth paying for, or no, this game is not worth paying for. I feel like that's a good reason to have like Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. It's like you already have your money in it. People said this game's not that great. But you know, you're paying for Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, anyways. So give it a shot for yourself. But don't spend full money on something that, you know, sh somebody. worth listening to said it's not worth it.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: 'Cause true there are plenty of voices out there that are not worth listening to. There's plenty of talking heads in the gaming area, us
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: included. But I feel like we're you know, we're pretty credible.
speaker-0: I mean, we're the most I think we're the most even headed and level headed.
speaker-1: Well you get two sides of one coin here.
speaker-0: I know, let's talk about it. Let's talk it. Yeah, I'm the more realist. I'm
speaker-1: Yeah. You're more cynical.
speaker-0: the more I'm the cynical, realist,
speaker-1: Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: pessimist. That's more realist, more realist than pessimist. what?
speaker-1: Sure.
speaker-0: I got the I got you know thirty years of history playing games. More than
speaker-1: I about I got about twenty.
speaker-0: I got thirty five thirty five years of history.
speaker-1: You're Onk and I'm not.
speaker-0: I'm the chopped dunk. Yeah. Am I am I a chop dunk? Yeah.
speaker-1: Am I? I guess it depends on who you ask me subjective.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: But Yeah, where are we going with that?
speaker-0: Well another thing then our differences here is that you don't have that you don't have that history of playing like eight be going from eight bit to sixteen bit to thirty-two to sixty-four.
speaker-1: So when is what is PS two? 'Cause that's where I started.
speaker-0: I don't know. And that's another thing. I don't really care
speaker-1: Played a lot of PST.
speaker-0: or keep track of gaming errors. Like cause people would be like, that's Gen three. Cause like, you know, essentially Gen one would be like like Pong through NES and then Gen two is like Super Nintendo. Gen
speaker-1: PS one.
speaker-0: Gen three would be sixty four sixty four PS1 Xbox. No, not Xbox. And then Gen 4 would be PS2 and all that. Yeah. PS2 Xbox. Dreamcasts. There you go. Okay.
speaker-1: Okay. So I started out in gen three then. I started out with PS two.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you missed out like a few generations of games that you have zero, like almost zero knowledge about and zero experience. Yeah. Okay. And that's why I'm like, you don't even know what they've taken from you.
speaker-1: A little bit.
speaker-0: You don't know what we lost.
speaker-1: 'Cause I remember like the peak of the COD world, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare One, Modern Warfare Two, World at War. I remember that stuff was so good until Warzone came out. Even before Warzone. Warzone was like the the the lowest of lows because like Fortnite had the Battle Royale and then Call of Duty just kind of turned it into I don't even know. Hmm. Cause Fortnite had the best battle royale. It was like the first entry in the battle royale space. That and like would you consider Apex Apex Legends part of too? Because Apex Legends was really good too. It's just like I don't know. It all kinda just went to crap. Microtransactions, all that. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think you bring all this up, you mentioned Fortnite. And like we were talking about dopamine before. And I'm like, what game what game would be considered like the highest dopamine hitting game ever? Like
speaker-1: And now, I think. Fortnite.
speaker-0: I would say it's Fortnite, yeah.
speaker-1: Cause back then when Fortnite was first released and like we first had Fortnite, there was not all that crazy flashy stuff going on.
speaker-0: Yeah, you couldn't you couldn't have Goku, no Peter, Griffin. There's no Superman.
speaker-1: Superpowers Star Wars, no lightsabers, no Thanos.
speaker-0: Yeah. It was really just.
speaker-1: Some goofy looking 3D characters running around with a rocket launcher building a fort. That was it. And then it just became now you got cars, you got pop culture people, you got anime characters. The Godzilla thing. I
speaker-0: Events like Godzilla, the Godzilla
speaker-1: will say the the the the big chapter ending multiverse event thing, that was kind of cool to watch. I kinda wish I would have was a part of that. That was fun. But just the game itself.
speaker-0: Dangerous.
speaker-1: Yeah. I don't know.
speaker-0: So well yeah, so but what I'm saying is like the difference, right? Yeah. Like you you when you started, you grew up in this like era pre Fortnite, but then it came out pretty quick. Yeah. Me, and you had this like that's what I'm saying, like you had you're in this area of like super fast dopamine hits. Your dopamine levels were like up there. Yeah. Me, I'm like struggling, struggling through NES games.
speaker-1: I had trying to I had my fair share of struct struggles too.
speaker-0: No you didn't.
speaker-1: Like GTA San Andreas
speaker-0: It's different.
speaker-1: beating GTA San Andreas was difficult. Do you ever play that game? Like when it first came out? GTA San
speaker-0: We're gonna have we're gonna have to do an episode about difficulty. And we're gonna we're gonna play it on here. We're gonna
speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause like
speaker-0: see wha how fast you give up. GTA
speaker-1: San Andreas was more of like a it had a ton of like weird bugs and shit that made it hard. Like gameplay issues. Yeah,
speaker-0: Game breaking button.
speaker-1: it was that kind of stuff. Or
speaker-0: Can, okay.
speaker-1: that that what was that Vex or whatever? You saw that one. That one was pretty that one was pretty difficult. And that was one of the games I would play constantly.
speaker-0: I would only play that if I paid for it. See, that's another thing. If you buy a game, we're talking about the bait and switch, you know, yeah, issue issues of today is if you bought a game without knowing anything about it, you're like, that my picture looks cool. I'll buy it. Yeah. If you paid 80 bucks for a Vex and take it back.
speaker-1: Back then probably probably forty or fifty.
speaker-0: Which was probably like $200 today in today's money.
speaker-1: Probably yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Crazy inflation. So like you imagine you pay $200 for a game and you and you can't take it back. You can't sell it. Nobody wants to buy it from you. You're like, well, I gotta beat it. Yep. I spent this money, I got I just had to beat it. Yeah.
speaker-1: I still need to go back and be
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Do it. I still gotta beat Elden Ring and Wukong.
speaker-0: Gotta fire up the machine.
speaker-1: They're still on there. I guess just download them whatever.
speaker-0: Yeah, so it's like there's there it's it's a different time. You I think you missed out on a little bit of a different time of gaming. And the
speaker-1: Maybe. Never so much the like Like the struggle, you know.
speaker-0: There was no yeah, well there was no there was no games built for you to struggle back in the day.
speaker-1: Weren't they all struggles? They all seemed to like struggle. I played
speaker-0: They were all strong.
speaker-1: Metal Gear Solid here, and that one was a struggle. That game was a struggle. You saw that. You had you had a struggle too, just in the twenty minutes that we played it.
speaker-0: I almost had a stroke.
speaker-1: I was like, dude, what am I doing wrong?
speaker-0: but then we started figuring out things. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, we it's definitely like there's a meta to it. There's a meta to figure out like what's the right way to go about doing a certain level. You have to sneak and yeah, there's a certain way to do it. It's
speaker-0: Yeah, you start learning
speaker-1: a puzzle. I feel like there's a puzzle there more than anything. Puzzle you have to solve.
speaker-0: Yeah, our other coworker came in. We were playing Metal Gasol and coworker comes in is like they don't they didn't do a lot of hand holding back to us.
speaker-1: No, no, no, no. Yeah. I mean Yeah.
speaker-0: No. And it's true. That's the thing. There's not a lot of hand holding.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I think as gameplay systems have become more complicated, so has hand holding become more prevalent. And I think it's j I f like with Wolverine, that's a whole nother level of hand holding. I don't know what they were thinking with that. But like there are some games that do need a little bit of hand holding, at least a little bit of you know, area pointing. With control though, they do it in a good way. They they do it almost as good as Ghost of Tsushima because the way they do it is it's kind of part of the environment. So there's no like flashy waypoints or anything, but it's like where there would be actual signage in the world, that's how they would do it. So like they would just give you the name of where you need to go, and then there's Like a sign across the wall or something that has it it's not very big. You have to like run up and go and look at the sign like like you're in the mall looking at a a kiosk, that kind of thing. That's how it is.
speaker-0: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. but it's also games back in the day. We're talking about like the dopamine drip. It was a whole lot slower back then.
speaker-1: yeah.
speaker-0: Whole lot slower. You're playing Tetris. Talking about like, you know, healthier, healthier dopamine access. But in gaming, Tetris would be at the at the healthy level. It starts off slow. And yeah, you're gonna fail, you know, it's not that great. But then you get better at it until you're like achieving, you know, crazy crazy speeds of like dropping all those blocks, right? Yes.
speaker-1: Well that's the thing with Fortnite too. There was no dopamine unless you won. Unless you got a victory. I mean you get tiny little bits when you you know, kill one of the other players or whatever. But you got a massive spike when you got a victory. That's the thing how Fortnite was back then.
speaker-0: Well that's yeah, I think I think it's like that, but it's like from a couple of different
speaker-1: You know what though? I think that was kind of like a a a gateway drug though, because then it we saw how the dopamine is now in Fortnite. It's like
speaker-0: Yeah. So I'm talking about
speaker-1: Easy.
speaker-0: That's what I'm talking about. So like yeah, it's it was a different it was a different it was a different era. Right, it was it was the golden age of gaming. So here's another thing that I remembered. So like old old PC games, right? Let's think about like like something like Baldur's Gate, maybe like the old old game, like old Baldur's Gate, like Dark Alliance,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Diablo 1. You know, maybe some of like maybe not as far back as Doom, because Doom was pretty simple. Yeah. Gameplay-wise. if you go back to old like dungeon crawlers, you had a game, you had the box, and they gave you a manual. And like that was it. So it's like if you don't know how to do something in the game, you have to look it up in the manual. Yep. Like that's where they taught you. It what they didn't teach you in the game. So like Where it gets crazy, where it gets like, you know, outside of the norm is when you got the game without the manual. Yeah. And then you really had to figure it out. It was such a cool game. And you're just like learning, trying different things and learning tiny bits of information, not even from a manual, just tiny bits of information from your friends or whoever. Or you go to the game store and the dude working the game store, you talk to that guy. Yeah. And then he helps you out with some info. Like that's the way that's the way that's the way it was. Yeah. That's like the it it it it's like a totally different like reality of today.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's crazy. I remember with there was a game store down the road that we'd go to and like trade in games and stuff. And those times are gone as well.
speaker-0: even do that. Yep. And now all the people working those game stores, they don't know anything. Yep. Yeah. They're not the sage level people working the the stores in the past.
speaker-1: Yep. No. All that's gone now.
speaker-0: And especially PC games back in the day when they were on floppy disks, you would just share that disc with your friend. Like I remember getting a few games back then. And it's like there's no manual, there's no picture on this disc. It's like, you know, I just said game. Yep. And pop that in and started playing.
speaker-1: Yeah, I wasn't around for that that era. That was way before me.
speaker-0: Yeah. That was way before you. I wonder I wonder if any games today will kind of like go back to that. Totally no hand holding, totally no information.
speaker-1: I think I think a little bit of information is fine though. I think a little bit is fine. Like at least, you know, give me a general hint.
speaker-0: But okay, so like the first Super Mario Brothers, I saw some I saw some like documentary or whatever. And he's like World One One of Super Mario Brothers. It wasn't just the level, it was like the tutorial on how to play. Yeah. So everything there, the flashing, the flashing question mark box, it's like, what do you do with that? You walk up to it, what can I do with it? I can go underneath it and jump up. They taught you how to like, you know. Unlock stuff like that. Taught you how to jump. You're like you only have two buttons, of course, but you're pressing it. You're like, whoa, but this one's jumped now. Okay. Yep. I'm there. this is if I hold this one down, I can run faster. okay. So like they taught you, they taught you how play by the first level. And everything else, all the strategies and you know, how to jump when to jump off a block, how to jump out.
speaker-1: Yeah, you figure it all out.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. You figure it out.
speaker-1: I don't know. I I'd because think back then there was only a few buttons. There was the directions and then there was A and B or whatever. Now there's you got four here, you got directions, you got toggle sticks, you got R one R R three and L three, you got L one and two, R one and two, there's so many more. You can even add more buttons too. There's like a ton of different things that can be combined. And you know, I think there needs to be a little bit more like. I also like that it's not all thrown at you all at once and like, you know, there's a hint for this here, hint for something else further down the line. That way, you know, it kind of comes to you when you need it and it's not all at once, and then you forget a bunch of stuff halfway through the game. I don't know. You know?
speaker-0: I think but there's there's been some games where like okay, so back in the day, like Tekken 3, PS1, they showed you a picture of the control in it. And they're like punch, like high punch, high kick, low punch, low kick, throw, and something else. You know, like yeah, sure heavy punch, heavy kick, and then throw. That's all that you get. Yeah. But then there's all kinds of combos and stuff that you could look up if you wanted to. Or you just go into it learning the combo. You figured out the combos yourself. Sure. You figured out the com a eight-hit an eight-button combo by yourself.
speaker-1: I was never I was never good enough for for those those kinds of games.
speaker-0: Yeah, see, that was another thing. It's like I remember that playing Titan 3 or Mortal Kombat, you're like, these combos have a name to them. Yeah. And you're like, what the heck? I've just been doing it button mashing and figuring it out over weeks, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Something like that. So I think so I think like if they give you a basic diagram of controls, but They don't tell you, if you push these two buttons together, it does something else. If they don't tell you that and you discover it, that would be cool.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I it's there's like a experimentation kind of like figure it out on your own aspect, which is cool. But for I mean, the the modern gamers not they don't think like that anymore.
speaker-0: I know, that's what I'm saying.
speaker-1: So that's why a lot of games get that hate online 'cause it's all hand holdy and flashy waypoints and stuff. I feel like some of that can go away, but you know, there should be a little bit of, you know, figuring it out. Kind of a little bit of help.
speaker-0: I just want to see a game just full on no help. Elden Ring was a little bit like that.
speaker-1: I feel like Elden Ring was a lot like that. There
speaker-0: There's a little bit. There's still a map that you can like
speaker-1: was a map and there was little pointers, but that's I feel like that's that's about it. I mean, that's all you need, I guess. I feel like that was the right amount of of hand holding.
speaker-0: There are some games, Metal Gear Solid is one of those games where it's like you can play the game with no with no radar. And that like increases the I don't even know what it increases the difficulty, the experience, like you're hyper focused on what you can see. Yeah. Instead of just looking at the top, the top corner of a screen the whole time.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I think that does change a lot.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I'm cool with no no mini map. Like with control, there's no minimap. There's a big map that you can look at. But for the most part you just figure it out as you go. You look for where the where the you know lights leading you or you know, there's a door over here, you know, that kind of thing. I'm cool with that kind of thing. 'Cause A lot of times you find yourself looking at the minimap more than the actual game.
speaker-0: Yeah. I remember playing Gran Turismo three, just looking at the the map. Yeah. Like you look you look at the map and your peripheral vision can see the rest of the screen. Yeah. So you kinda know what's going on, but then you know like the the future curves and stuff.
speaker-1: Yep. Yeah.
speaker-0: That's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy to think about. I didn't even understand that back then, but
speaker-1: Yeah. Anticipating everything.
speaker-0: Don't live life looking at the minimap.
speaker-1: Stay off Twitch unless you've already played the game as well.
speaker-0: Just shut down everything, uninstall, just a great
speaker-1: Game. Unless somebody says it's horrible. You know, you know, find your your person that's credible, that likes the same games as you. Yeah. That way you know what to spend your money on. Yep.
speaker-0: Yeah. There you go. That's all we got. That's all we got and that's all the time we got. Yeah. Keep it real. Keep it real. All right. See ya.
speaker-1: Let's go in.
speaker-0: All right. So we were just talking about a couple different things, but you're playing control, the first control game. Yeah. In preparation for control resonance.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'm like I'm trying to get used to the lore, figure out all the lore about it, because there's so much going on in that game. And so I wanted to know before I play the new one.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's crazy.
speaker-1: I tried to play the first one a long time ago, but this is like a thrill playthrough. I'm actually gonna go through the whole thing and Yeah, get ready for the new one. Yeah.
speaker-0: And so I was asking you, I'm like, I'm like, how much of the first control game have you seen before?
speaker-1: Yeah, it wasn't very much. Maybe a little bit of gameplay snippets here and there, but for the most part, it was just like the gun, the gunplay, the shooting, that kind of stuff. which is a decent portion of the game, but honestly, there's so much more that I didn't even realize was part of it.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. And like I played it too and I kinda I kinda gave up maybe before the first boss or whatever. But like you were saying that you were just totally into it. You're like halfway through the game. You're twelve hours in. That's
speaker-1: I'm seventy percent now.
speaker-0: a lot. Yeah. In few days. Yeah, you barely started a few days ago.
speaker-1: I don't think it's a very long game considering, you know, how long some games are. I think it's kind of a shorter game. Yeah. Compared to some.
speaker-0: Still three days later, you're in it. Okay. Yeah. So I had this like I had this idea where where it's like the less the less you see something like a game, the less you see of it before you play it, the higher the opportunity of it like affecting you in a positive way.
speaker-1: Yeah, I you know, now that I'm thinking about it, because at first I was like, I don't know. But then now that I'm thinking about it, yeah, I think that does have a big part of it. Because this happened to me a couple different times with other stuff. So like First picking up, what was it? Ghost of Tsushima, it was kind of the same thing. I was like, cool, an open world samurai game. Not really sure what this is about. But then you find out, like, it's detailed.
speaker-0: And then it bears in mind.
speaker-1: It's got an amazing story. That happened again with Horizon. I I had like no like real understanding of what Horizon was. At first I thought it was like a dinosaur game, which I mean it kinda sort of is. But it is nowhere near what you'd expect if you hadn't seen anything from it.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought it was like a cyber dinosaur hunter two rock or something.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I thought it was like an online like an online type of deal.
speaker-0: Yeah, I thought you had to hunt the dinosaurs. Yeah.
speaker-1: That's what I thought too. I thought it was like arc survival but with robot dinosaurs. That that kind of thing. Yeah. When I first played that. I think I kinda sort of got that too with Death Stranding. The first when I first played the first Death Stranding, no
speaker-0: Kojima
speaker-1: idea what that was about.
speaker-0: and the trailer for the trailer for it, there's no possible way you can understand what that was about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So maybe there's some there's there's something to learn there from Kojima.
speaker-1: Yeah. I think like I don't think Twitch is a bad thing, but you kind of ruin your expectations a little bit.
speaker-0: Well, a few things. Here's here's a few ideas, right? Okay. Expectation. If you're watching a full playthrough, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're yeah, you're running everything.
speaker-1: I'll if if I like look at a Twitch stream and they s they're playing something that is like heavily story based or like something you haven't played and you wanna play it, I'll I'll turn it off just because I wanna experience it for myself.
speaker-0: Yeah. Another thing, another thing would be like, there's just so much so on social media, you go on social media, you go on Instagram, whatever, Facebook, you're like inundated with clips. You're inundated with people's opinions. Yeah. You're inundated with like everything about a game, people getting the game like early, reviewing it, whatever, posting gameplay. You're seeing a you're seeing the whole gamut before it even comes out. Yep. Yeah. And it's like it it really does affect you. Yeah. And I think I I think I know what. Yeah.
speaker-1: I think I think it's funny that we're talking about this hot on the heels of us releasing like gameplay footage of us playing games. But one thing is we're playing games the last couple videos we've done have been older games that everybody's already seen, so it's not a huge deal. But like I don't like the idea of posting spoiler clips for games that have just released.
speaker-0: spoiler clips or like or you know and we're not posting like walkthrough yeah videos or anything like that yeah we're not like spoiling or like revealing some of the stuff yeah of a game right so like okay now earlier today one of our coworkers brought up the word blockbuster yeah yeah right and it was a thing like I don't know we've both been a blockbuster we lived it yeah right You go to Blockbuster, especially the game area. Mm-hmm. You don't know what you're gonna get unless like you don't know what you're gonna get besides what you can read on the back of that Blockbuster case.
speaker-1: Yep.
speaker-0: That was it. Yeah.
speaker-1: You just get little screenshots. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yep. Same thing when you go like maybe back in the day you would have a magazine, Game Pro, Nintendo Power, whatever. You get like
speaker-1: Game informer back then?
speaker-0: Game Informer, yeah, Xbox magazine, whatever. That's all you got. You didn't get hundreds of thousands of hours of social media videos that you could browse through and basically form an opinion.
speaker-1: You could watch the entire game online now for anything, even something that's come out day of. What was that one you were looking at that was like the full gameplay?
speaker-0: Well is a
speaker-1: Gears of War. Yeah, Gears of War E Day. We were just looking at clips on YouTube and it was you could watch the entire game.
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like a full thirteen, fourteen hours or yeah.
speaker-1: It's crazy. I don't understand why I mean, I understand why people do it. They want views and they want, you know.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's almost like historical I don't know, this is what I did. This is how I played the game.
speaker-1: It's also it's also like I remember there were times when I wasn't able to purchase a game. Yeah. And I just watched the whole game instead. That's fine. Sad times.
speaker-0: That's fine too. It's like whatever, however you want to watch it or whatever, it's fine. But knowing that, so back in the day, what I'm saying, back in the day, NES, super NES, even before that, probably up to about you know PS3,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: that whole gaming era. 90% of that game, 99% of that game, you discovered while playing it. Yep. You had a discover. There's a discovery aspect. Yeah.
speaker-1: I remember playing Uncharted and that's like one of the best games for that kind of thing. Because those those big action adventure games, they're like, why would you want to spoil this for yourself? Cause it's so you never know what you're gonna see next. It's
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: like you want to find that treasure. It's like a real treasure to you. You want to find it.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's kinda like I I almost wanna be like, don't don't go on like gaming social media. Yeah. Or like so when GTA six comes out, here's a here's a trick.
speaker-1: Yeah. I'm cutting myself off.
speaker-0: It's probably gonna come out earlier to a few people.
speaker-1: yeah, yeah. It's gonna there's gonna be review. I don't know though. Rockstar does kind of play it close to their chest. There's gonna be some like big streamers that have it early, like maybe a day or two early. Or there could be like this huge embargo where nobody has it.
speaker-0: Well, there might be like reviewers. Reviewers are gonna get it before. They're gonna see it, they're gonna talk about it, whatever, right? Here's the challenge. Turn like delete your Facebook, delete Instagram, delete everything.
speaker-1: I'm tempted to, yeah, because I don't wanna I don't want any of that spoiled. Like I feel like the way they released gameplay already, that thirty minute thing. A lot. That was a lot. And like I feel like maybe it would have been better if they didn't do all that.
speaker-0: I mean it would it would be better for the gamer. It
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: wouldn't be better for Rockstar for the
speaker-1: No, no, yeah. I mean, they've been doing a pretty good job playing playing it close to their chest already 'cause like I mean it's gonna be generational. When that game comes out, like there's gonna be so many cool things that you're gonna see and do and yeah, you don't wanna spoil that.
speaker-0: Yeah. But it's not it's not just like spoiling, but it's also like you know, it's it's finding that that new thing. Yeah. Right. So even if you are watching, you know, videos or whatever, there could be something that's happening that it would take you like four hours to get to. And then you experience it. Yeah. But you just kind of already seen it before. You're kinda like, seen it before. Like it it lessens that we're talking about dopamine before. Yeah, yeah. It it lessens that that dopamine reaction. Yeah. Right.
speaker-1: It just doesn't have that that I don't know what you'd call it, like it doesn't have that payout as much. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. So that's kinda like that's my that's what I've been thinking about like recently. Cause maybe sometimes I feel like, am I like cynical about gaming? Yeah, you kinda are. Or have I seen too much? And I think I've seen too much.
speaker-1: Too much Instagramming in the game space.
speaker-0: Could be.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Could be. Too much, too much Instagramming, not enough like self discovery.
speaker-1: Yeah, maybe. You need to play more games and watch less games. Yeah. I still think you need to play Cyberpunk. I sent you a thing about Cyberpunk earlier. But the one I sent about have you did you s did you watch the one I sent you about Cyberpunk? For the one for Cyberpunk, it was like just a monologue by Keanu Reeves's character. And
speaker-0: Okay.
speaker-1: it's like that's cool because it's like quotes from the game and like, you know, snippets from their promotional stuff. Yeah that's that's the kind of stuff you that I'm cool with that kind of stuff because you're mostly just seeing the type of like ideas behind the game.
speaker-0: Yeah. Nah, and that's that's okay too. But even then, but even then, okay. Here's here's another thing. It's like back in the nineties, back in eighties and nineties, you got literally nothing. So another game that was announced that we talk about a lot is God of War Lao Fei. Yeah. Right. Back in the nineties, back in two thousands, when the first God of War came out, it was like you got nothing. You just got you saw the commercials. Yeah. Or you saw it in magazines or you got your friends talking about it. And that was all that you had to go off of.
speaker-1: Well, there was talk about the way they did the the preorder announcement or whatever. It was just an article. It was an article with like almost like gifs showing like some of the combat changes and then they for there was a gif for la People
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: were saying like, this is weird. They just did like a blog article about it and then said, Here you go, you can pre order now.
speaker-0: didn't they show like the armor sets and all that?
speaker-1: There's pictures of the armor sets and then there was a couple gifts with the new bow. And I kind of that's closer to how things used to be with just you read this little article and then go and pre order it. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: I feel that's a little bit better than releasing a whole they did release a whole thirty minute it wasn't
speaker-0: Yeah, it was like a fifteen minute.
speaker-1: all gameplay though, it was just a little bit of gameplay and then like I don't know. It was gameplay plus, you know, some story setup.
speaker-0: Yeah. And they introduced all kinds of characters.
speaker-1: Still was a lot less battle. It was still a lot less than what GTA six did.
speaker-0: Yeah. So like, I mean, and that and that's the thing, like, if we went into Lao Fei with none of that, would it be different?
speaker-1: It would be a little more there'd be a little bit more like allure as to what's actually going on. There'd be a big, huge reveal when you find out that she's in the everywend and there's like gods from all kinds of different pantheons there and so now we already know that, so we kind of have a lot more to expect, but you know, we still have a lot to find out.
speaker-0: Yeah. I don't know. I'm just thinking like maybe the best way to the best way to be a gamer is to like return to the nineties.
speaker-1: Yeah. Stop watching.
speaker-0: One yeah, one announcement, either a year before, two years before, whatever.
speaker-1: I still don't know if that's it if I could cut myself off completely. Like I love watching like the game of the year show at the end of the year. Like they do a ton of reveals and stuff on that. So I don't know if I could just completely cut myself off.
speaker-0: that would be the only thing you could watch. The reveals.
speaker-1: Yeah, I'd be cool with that. I would be cool with that. Or or you know, I still like Twitch when it's stuff that I've already played. Like I like to see how other people do things differently. Or this new pod racer game that came out today, came out today. That game looks freaking sick. And it's all racing, so it's like the same thing. You're not really spoiling much. But that's fun to watch too, is the race, the pod racing. Because that game looks really good.
speaker-0: It looks good on a whole different on a few different levels, I would say. One of them is that they take a lot of cues. Apparently there's some developers in the in the studio. I forget the name of the studio. But there's some developers from Criterion Games which made Burnout, the Burnout series. Yeah.
speaker-1: I kept seeing references from like chat about how it it reminds them of Burma.
speaker-0: You got your land speeder taking down other land speeders or pod racers, you know, taking down other cars and stuff. Yeah. I'm like, this is this is the best fusion of Star Wars and burnout and like racing. Yeah. Then I can or if
speaker-1: Boost gets too hot, your speeder will just explode. It's kind of a cool feature.
speaker-0: And yeah. It's like, I don't know, it's just like the perfect fusion and it looks amazing.
speaker-1: I don't know if they have this in this or not, but I was watching gameplay today and I was thinking proximity chat would be insane in Pod Racer. So you're 'cause some of the other racers can like
speaker-0: Just say things, yeah.
speaker-1: so I was imagining like proximity chat would be wild in Podracer. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-0: That was best part of the first Star Wars episode one racer. You could double tap the right, you know, kinda shoulder button and then your racer says random stuff. Yeah.
speaker-1: That'd be fun.
speaker-0: Yeah. that would be that would be see that'd be a cool mod for the PC.
speaker-1: Yeah. Whatever comes out. Proximity chat. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for Pod Racer. I'm excited for it's just everything about that that game. I think my kids would enjoy the enjoy that too.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, definitely. yes, and that was so Star Wars Galactic Racer. There was very little about it. They showed like it was like a couple months ago. Yeah. They showed the first like trailer for it.
speaker-1: It was it was one of those game shows. I don't remember which one it was. Gamescom or I know. Was it was it Game of the Year? Was it the Game of the Year show I remember?
speaker-0: anything about Galactic Racer back then. It was literally
speaker-1: It was Game of the Year last year.
speaker-0: like four months ago they came out with boop I saw an ad on Facebook. And I'm like, what the heck is this?
speaker-1: No, I remember, I think it was video game video game awards last December. I think that's when they first announced it. Maybe. Because I remember messaging messaging you like, look, Star Wars, they're doing a new racing game. And then they had that other one that they announced. We'll see what that one's all about. Still, we don't have nothing about that one.
speaker-0: Which one?
speaker-1: The one where the she walks into the old crashed spaceship and then it it like shows the lightsaber like flash above her. Face or whatever.
speaker-0: the old re the old republic. Yeah,
speaker-1: Is that what was?
speaker-0: yeah, yeah. Something like that, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I remember that, yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: That's gonna be cool to see too. Star
speaker-0: Yeah, but
speaker-1: Wars making a comeback in the video game space, that's kind of a big deal.
speaker-0: Yeah, there's been a few games.
speaker-1: There's been the Jedi Survivor and Jedi Fallen Order.
speaker-0: No, I mean like since since Jedi Survivor. Since then till now, there's only been like a few.
speaker-1: Yeah, and then there was that that strategy game. That one came out just recently. That one's cool. It's not my it's not my cup of tea, but it looks cool.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like it was like but like with Galactic Racer in particular, okay, you got that first trailer last year, December. And then like one five minute story trailer. Yeah. Like two months ago.
speaker-1: I mean I don't even think I saw that one.
speaker-0: I didn't I tried to watch it, I d I got no story out of it. Yeah. It's I was like this is cool.
speaker-1: Another thing that's cool about this this new Pod Racer game is that it's it's a roguelite. So you get a tournament chip or whatever, and you go until you lose, and then you have to start from the beginning, and you can change how you go about your next run until you get to the next chapter, which is pretty cool. I like that.
speaker-0: Yeah. The mechanics are like new and different and
speaker-1: Yeah. And the playability, there's a lot of playability there because you can take different routes to the next to the end of the chapter, which is cool.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah.
speaker-1: You can choose different different different vehicles, different mods, that kind of stuff. That's pretty cool.
speaker-0: And I'm down for it.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: so yeah, I think like I think the less you see of a game before it comes out, the more you may like it.
speaker-1: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think that's a a pretty solid take. Yeah, because like a flip
speaker-0: Well the flip side was the the Wolverine game. Everybody, everybody have seen like two hours of that game before they even like played it. Yeah.
speaker-1: And that just takes away so much from the experience. Plus, you got all these opinions from different sides, and like the bickering back and forth between if it's good, if it's not good, and you really have no way to form your own opinion. You always have something, you know, talking to you in the back of your mind, like, look for this because somebody said something about this, or that one thing that Sabretooth, what's his name? Sabretooth? yeah, he says that one line, and it's like, my God, I gotta I gotta go through this. So it's like I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna pay for it. Just because, you know, I might I may play it down the line sometime when they when the heat's died off on it, and maybe I forget a bunch of the nonsense that I've heard. It still sounds like it's A pretty bad game, so I don't want to spend money on it anyways. But that's another part of it. It's like
speaker-0: Here but here's the flip side of that. So like, okay, wolverine, right? You heard too much, so you're probably not gonna pay for it. You're gonna wait until you're gonna wait a year or two until it comes out on PlayStation Plus or whatever. Yeah. That's fine. But it's also like if too much I don't know, so like the these game studios, these publishers or whoever, they're like, if we have to show something so people get interested. Right. If you show too much, they're gonna find out they might not like it. Yeah. If we show too little.
speaker-1: That is true, yeah.
speaker-0: We show too little, they're not gonna be that interesting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's like this, like you have to hit this perfect like release.
speaker-1: I will say it's it's good to get some kind of warning about some of the game.
speaker-0: I was gonna say so So people today will not pay for a game unless they hear if it's good or not from somebody else.
speaker-1: Yeah. I mean there are sometimes, you know, that's a good thing in some aspects to like. To get, you know, some credible sources to be like, yeah, this game's worth paying for, or no, this game is not worth paying for. I feel like that's a good reason to have like Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. It's like you already have your money in it. People said this game's not that great. But you know, you're paying for Game Pass or PlayStation Plus, anyways. So give it a shot for yourself. But don't spend full money on something that, you know, sh somebody. worth listening to said it's not worth it.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: 'Cause true there are plenty of voices out there that are not worth listening to. There's plenty of talking heads in the gaming area, us
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: included. But I feel like we're you know, we're pretty credible.
speaker-0: I mean, we're the most I think we're the most even headed and level headed.
speaker-1: Well you get two sides of one coin here.
speaker-0: I know, let's talk about it. Let's talk it. Yeah, I'm the more realist. I'm
speaker-1: Yeah. You're more cynical.
speaker-0: the more I'm the cynical, realist,
speaker-1: Mm-hmm.
speaker-0: pessimist. That's more realist, more realist than pessimist. what?
speaker-1: Sure.
speaker-0: I got the I got you know thirty years of history playing games. More than
speaker-1: I about I got about twenty.
speaker-0: I got thirty five thirty five years of history.
speaker-1: You're Onk and I'm not.
speaker-0: I'm the chopped dunk. Yeah. Am I am I a chop dunk? Yeah.
speaker-1: Am I? I guess it depends on who you ask me subjective.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: But Yeah, where are we going with that?
speaker-0: Well another thing then our differences here is that you don't have that you don't have that history of playing like eight be going from eight bit to sixteen bit to thirty-two to sixty-four.
speaker-1: So when is what is PS two? 'Cause that's where I started.
speaker-0: I don't know. And that's another thing. I don't really care
speaker-1: Played a lot of PST.
speaker-0: or keep track of gaming errors. Like cause people would be like, that's Gen three. Cause like, you know, essentially Gen one would be like like Pong through NES and then Gen two is like Super Nintendo. Gen
speaker-1: PS one.
speaker-0: Gen three would be sixty four sixty four PS1 Xbox. No, not Xbox. And then Gen 4 would be PS2 and all that. Yeah. PS2 Xbox. Dreamcasts. There you go. Okay.
speaker-1: Okay. So I started out in gen three then. I started out with PS two.
speaker-0: Yeah. So you missed out like a few generations of games that you have zero, like almost zero knowledge about and zero experience. Yeah. Okay. And that's why I'm like, you don't even know what they've taken from you.
speaker-1: A little bit.
speaker-0: You don't know what we lost.
speaker-1: 'Cause I remember like the peak of the COD world, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare One, Modern Warfare Two, World at War. I remember that stuff was so good until Warzone came out. Even before Warzone. Warzone was like the the the lowest of lows because like Fortnite had the Battle Royale and then Call of Duty just kind of turned it into I don't even know. Hmm. Cause Fortnite had the best battle royale. It was like the first entry in the battle royale space. That and like would you consider Apex Apex Legends part of too? Because Apex Legends was really good too. It's just like I don't know. It all kinda just went to crap. Microtransactions, all that. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think you bring all this up, you mentioned Fortnite. And like we were talking about dopamine before. And I'm like, what game what game would be considered like the highest dopamine hitting game ever? Like
speaker-1: And now, I think. Fortnite.
speaker-0: I would say it's Fortnite, yeah.
speaker-1: Cause back then when Fortnite was first released and like we first had Fortnite, there was not all that crazy flashy stuff going on.
speaker-0: Yeah, you couldn't you couldn't have Goku, no Peter, Griffin. There's no Superman.
speaker-1: Superpowers Star Wars, no lightsabers, no Thanos.
speaker-0: Yeah. It was really just.
speaker-1: Some goofy looking 3D characters running around with a rocket launcher building a fort. That was it. And then it just became now you got cars, you got pop culture people, you got anime characters. The Godzilla thing. I
speaker-0: Events like Godzilla, the Godzilla
speaker-1: will say the the the the big chapter ending multiverse event thing, that was kind of cool to watch. I kinda wish I would have was a part of that. That was fun. But just the game itself.
speaker-0: Dangerous.
speaker-1: Yeah. I don't know.
speaker-0: So well yeah, so but what I'm saying is like the difference, right? Yeah. Like you you when you started, you grew up in this like era pre Fortnite, but then it came out pretty quick. Yeah. Me, and you had this like that's what I'm saying, like you had you're in this area of like super fast dopamine hits. Your dopamine levels were like up there. Yeah. Me, I'm like struggling, struggling through NES games.
speaker-1: I had trying to I had my fair share of struct struggles too.
speaker-0: No you didn't.
speaker-1: Like GTA San Andreas
speaker-0: It's different.
speaker-1: beating GTA San Andreas was difficult. Do you ever play that game? Like when it first came out? GTA San
speaker-0: We're gonna have we're gonna have to do an episode about difficulty. And we're gonna we're gonna play it on here. We're gonna
speaker-1: Yeah, 'cause like
speaker-0: see wha how fast you give up. GTA
speaker-1: San Andreas was more of like a it had a ton of like weird bugs and shit that made it hard. Like gameplay issues. Yeah,
speaker-0: Game breaking button.
speaker-1: it was that kind of stuff. Or
speaker-0: Can, okay.
speaker-1: that that what was that Vex or whatever? You saw that one. That one was pretty that one was pretty difficult. And that was one of the games I would play constantly.
speaker-0: I would only play that if I paid for it. See, that's another thing. If you buy a game, we're talking about the bait and switch, you know, yeah, issue issues of today is if you bought a game without knowing anything about it, you're like, that my picture looks cool. I'll buy it. Yeah. If you paid 80 bucks for a Vex and take it back.
speaker-1: Back then probably probably forty or fifty.
speaker-0: Which was probably like $200 today in today's money.
speaker-1: Probably yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. Crazy inflation. So like you imagine you pay $200 for a game and you and you can't take it back. You can't sell it. Nobody wants to buy it from you. You're like, well, I gotta beat it. Yep. I spent this money, I got I just had to beat it. Yeah.
speaker-1: I still need to go back and be
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Do it. I still gotta beat Elden Ring and Wukong.
speaker-0: Gotta fire up the machine.
speaker-1: They're still on there. I guess just download them whatever.
speaker-0: Yeah, so it's like there's there it's it's a different time. You I think you missed out on a little bit of a different time of gaming. And the
speaker-1: Maybe. Never so much the like Like the struggle, you know.
speaker-0: There was no yeah, well there was no there was no games built for you to struggle back in the day.
speaker-1: Weren't they all struggles? They all seemed to like struggle. I played
speaker-0: They were all strong.
speaker-1: Metal Gear Solid here, and that one was a struggle. That game was a struggle. You saw that. You had you had a struggle too, just in the twenty minutes that we played it.
speaker-0: I almost had a stroke.
speaker-1: I was like, dude, what am I doing wrong?
speaker-0: but then we started figuring out things. Yeah, yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, we it's definitely like there's a meta to it. There's a meta to figure out like what's the right way to go about doing a certain level. You have to sneak and yeah, there's a certain way to do it. It's
speaker-0: Yeah, you start learning
speaker-1: a puzzle. I feel like there's a puzzle there more than anything. Puzzle you have to solve.
speaker-0: Yeah, our other coworker came in. We were playing Metal Gasol and coworker comes in is like they don't they didn't do a lot of hand holding back to us.
speaker-1: No, no, no, no. Yeah. I mean Yeah.
speaker-0: No. And it's true. That's the thing. There's not a lot of hand holding.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, I think as gameplay systems have become more complicated, so has hand holding become more prevalent. And I think it's j I f like with Wolverine, that's a whole nother level of hand holding. I don't know what they were thinking with that. But like there are some games that do need a little bit of hand holding, at least a little bit of you know, area pointing. With control though, they do it in a good way. They they do it almost as good as Ghost of Tsushima because the way they do it is it's kind of part of the environment. So there's no like flashy waypoints or anything, but it's like where there would be actual signage in the world, that's how they would do it. So like they would just give you the name of where you need to go, and then there's Like a sign across the wall or something that has it it's not very big. You have to like run up and go and look at the sign like like you're in the mall looking at a a kiosk, that kind of thing. That's how it is.
speaker-0: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. but it's also games back in the day. We're talking about like the dopamine drip. It was a whole lot slower back then.
speaker-1: yeah.
speaker-0: Whole lot slower. You're playing Tetris. Talking about like, you know, healthier, healthier dopamine access. But in gaming, Tetris would be at the at the healthy level. It starts off slow. And yeah, you're gonna fail, you know, it's not that great. But then you get better at it until you're like achieving, you know, crazy crazy speeds of like dropping all those blocks, right? Yes.
speaker-1: Well that's the thing with Fortnite too. There was no dopamine unless you won. Unless you got a victory. I mean you get tiny little bits when you you know, kill one of the other players or whatever. But you got a massive spike when you got a victory. That's the thing how Fortnite was back then.
speaker-0: Well that's yeah, I think I think it's like that, but it's like from a couple of different
speaker-1: You know what though? I think that was kind of like a a a gateway drug though, because then it we saw how the dopamine is now in Fortnite. It's like
speaker-0: Yeah. So I'm talking about
speaker-1: Easy.
speaker-0: That's what I'm talking about. So like yeah, it's it was a different it was a different it was a different era. Right, it was it was the golden age of gaming. So here's another thing that I remembered. So like old old PC games, right? Let's think about like like something like Baldur's Gate, maybe like the old old game, like old Baldur's Gate, like Dark Alliance,
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Diablo 1. You know, maybe some of like maybe not as far back as Doom, because Doom was pretty simple. Yeah. Gameplay-wise. if you go back to old like dungeon crawlers, you had a game, you had the box, and they gave you a manual. And like that was it. So it's like if you don't know how to do something in the game, you have to look it up in the manual. Yep. Like that's where they taught you. It what they didn't teach you in the game. So like Where it gets crazy, where it gets like, you know, outside of the norm is when you got the game without the manual. Yeah. And then you really had to figure it out. It was such a cool game. And you're just like learning, trying different things and learning tiny bits of information, not even from a manual, just tiny bits of information from your friends or whoever. Or you go to the game store and the dude working the game store, you talk to that guy. Yeah. And then he helps you out with some info. Like that's the way that's the way that's the way it was. Yeah. That's like the it it it it's like a totally different like reality of today.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's crazy. I remember with there was a game store down the road that we'd go to and like trade in games and stuff. And those times are gone as well.
speaker-0: even do that. Yep. And now all the people working those game stores, they don't know anything. Yep. Yeah. They're not the sage level people working the the stores in the past.
speaker-1: Yep. No. All that's gone now.
speaker-0: And especially PC games back in the day when they were on floppy disks, you would just share that disc with your friend. Like I remember getting a few games back then. And it's like there's no manual, there's no picture on this disc. It's like, you know, I just said game. Yep. And pop that in and started playing.
speaker-1: Yeah, I wasn't around for that that era. That was way before me.
speaker-0: Yeah. That was way before you. I wonder I wonder if any games today will kind of like go back to that. Totally no hand holding, totally no information.
speaker-1: I think I think a little bit of information is fine though. I think a little bit is fine. Like at least, you know, give me a general hint.
speaker-0: But okay, so like the first Super Mario Brothers, I saw some I saw some like documentary or whatever. And he's like World One One of Super Mario Brothers. It wasn't just the level, it was like the tutorial on how to play. Yeah. So everything there, the flashing, the flashing question mark box, it's like, what do you do with that? You walk up to it, what can I do with it? I can go underneath it and jump up. They taught you how to like, you know. Unlock stuff like that. Taught you how to jump. You're like you only have two buttons, of course, but you're pressing it. You're like, whoa, but this one's jumped now. Okay. Yep. I'm there. this is if I hold this one down, I can run faster. okay. So like they taught you, they taught you how play by the first level. And everything else, all the strategies and you know, how to jump when to jump off a block, how to jump out.
speaker-1: Yeah, you figure it all out.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. You figure it out.
speaker-1: I don't know. I I'd because think back then there was only a few buttons. There was the directions and then there was A and B or whatever. Now there's you got four here, you got directions, you got toggle sticks, you got R one R R three and L three, you got L one and two, R one and two, there's so many more. You can even add more buttons too. There's like a ton of different things that can be combined. And you know, I think there needs to be a little bit more like. I also like that it's not all thrown at you all at once and like, you know, there's a hint for this here, hint for something else further down the line. That way, you know, it kind of comes to you when you need it and it's not all at once, and then you forget a bunch of stuff halfway through the game. I don't know. You know?
speaker-0: I think but there's there's been some games where like okay, so back in the day, like Tekken 3, PS1, they showed you a picture of the control in it. And they're like punch, like high punch, high kick, low punch, low kick, throw, and something else. You know, like yeah, sure heavy punch, heavy kick, and then throw. That's all that you get. Yeah. But then there's all kinds of combos and stuff that you could look up if you wanted to. Or you just go into it learning the combo. You figured out the combos yourself. Sure. You figured out the com a eight-hit an eight-button combo by yourself.
speaker-1: I was never I was never good enough for for those those kinds of games.
speaker-0: Yeah, see, that was another thing. It's like I remember that playing Titan 3 or Mortal Kombat, you're like, these combos have a name to them. Yeah. And you're like, what the heck? I've just been doing it button mashing and figuring it out over weeks, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: Something like that. So I think so I think like if they give you a basic diagram of controls, but They don't tell you, if you push these two buttons together, it does something else. If they don't tell you that and you discover it, that would be cool.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean I it's there's like a experimentation kind of like figure it out on your own aspect, which is cool. But for I mean, the the modern gamers not they don't think like that anymore.
speaker-0: I know, that's what I'm saying.
speaker-1: So that's why a lot of games get that hate online 'cause it's all hand holdy and flashy waypoints and stuff. I feel like some of that can go away, but you know, there should be a little bit of, you know, figuring it out. Kind of a little bit of help.
speaker-0: I just want to see a game just full on no help. Elden Ring was a little bit like that.
speaker-1: I feel like Elden Ring was a lot like that. There
speaker-0: There's a little bit. There's still a map that you can like
speaker-1: was a map and there was little pointers, but that's I feel like that's that's about it. I mean, that's all you need, I guess. I feel like that was the right amount of of hand holding.
speaker-0: There are some games, Metal Gear Solid is one of those games where it's like you can play the game with no with no radar. And that like increases the I don't even know what it increases the difficulty, the experience, like you're hyper focused on what you can see. Yeah. Instead of just looking at the top, the top corner of a screen the whole time.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: I think that does change a lot.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I'm cool with no no mini map. Like with control, there's no minimap. There's a big map that you can look at. But for the most part you just figure it out as you go. You look for where the where the you know lights leading you or you know, there's a door over here, you know, that kind of thing. I'm cool with that kind of thing. 'Cause A lot of times you find yourself looking at the minimap more than the actual game.
speaker-0: Yeah. I remember playing Gran Turismo three, just looking at the the map. Yeah. Like you look you look at the map and your peripheral vision can see the rest of the screen. Yeah. So you kinda know what's going on, but then you know like the the future curves and stuff.
speaker-1: Yep. Yeah.
speaker-0: That's crazy. Yeah. It's crazy to think about. I didn't even understand that back then, but
speaker-1: Yeah. Anticipating everything.
speaker-0: Don't live life looking at the minimap.
speaker-1: Stay off Twitch unless you've already played the game as well.
speaker-0: Just shut down everything, uninstall, just a great
speaker-1: Game. Unless somebody says it's horrible. You know, you know, find your your person that's credible, that likes the same games as you. Yeah. That way you know what to spend your money on. Yep.
speaker-0: Yeah. There you go. That's all we got. That's all we got and that's all the time we got. Yeah. Keep it real. Keep it real. All right. See ya.
