Only Up, Jagged Alliance 3, Hall of Torment - Noclip Podcast #136

foreign [Music] [Music] Hello friends and welcome to the noclip podcast episode 136. great job Jeremy just drew a picture of Mario freehand for all of our wonderful Watchers on YouTube and for all you lovely listeners on the podcasts Frank say some nice words in a nice accent uh I'm so I'm so very cautious about doing an accents oh no he's going to be canceled right now choose one within your wheelhouse stand you can go for what's available to you culturally so well like Russia uh oh yeah British people is safe too I feel like I do have British accent all the time and it comes off Australian uh I've been obsessed with this uh Australian wrestler Stephanie de Lander and her whole gimmick is like I'm the baddest [ __ ] that's right I'm the baddest beach in the world that is a I don't know is that a cockney accent that sounded like that's what I'm saying if I do English it comes off Australia if I do Australian comes off British how's yours how's your Irish accent oh man it's uh because mine's terrible mine's good but I'm not willing to do it on this podcast yeah I don't wanna I don't want to offend Danny I the only the only like accent that I regularly slip into is any word that has like an e sound as e for a new zealish accent you just do it has an e sound so like hexagon yeah is it new zealish is that what you say I don't know it sounds right to me New Zealand you believed it I just love this I think that's real how do you say new zealish in a new zealish accent it already sounds you don't have to it's Auto accented it's terrific wow yeah is that like a is that a Flight of the Concords kind of thing is that where you got that one from no I just uh my friends and I were playing gloomhaven and it's a long turn based game right you play for hundreds of hours and watch people just like make tedious decisions and so inevitably we slip into you know Irish accents and new zealish accents and all sorts of [ __ ] I don't I just Googled new zealish I don't know if that's a real thing it is now I think we've just we've just broken it into the Zeitgeist uh thank you all for listening to our terrific podcast here if you didn't know it was terrific welcome you'll know it's terrific by the end uh if you'd like to support us you can do so at patreon.com noclip and we want to give a quick shout out to all of our amazing battle pass holders including a new one battle royale games that's the name I guess I guess the institution the organization of Battle Royale games got together um probably because you keep referring to uh BR games a lot you know you keep saying like oh they should make a br game at a dash every week which is right they should they should keep making VR games so obviously that's where they love us now so thank you Battle Royale games and also thank you to Arno Richard Matheson James Brown Jason Drury Mark Rojas Ryan Cobb Tucker Morgan Crimson cyclist svenhuster Carson Tim Robinson Forest Pruitt Andy vegan Eric Hamilton Schneider Cameron Alex sharp Alex gouche George sakotas Jacob godsurf James Andrew Adams toher tilliev and ricin Talia ricin thank you got some new names in there thank you very much do you guys have icicles uh no is that a rice bicycle oh my god that's way better a rice bicycle no it was uh you know it okay so um you called him Frosted Flakes here right we call them frosties in Europe so frosties as are to corn flakes as icicles were to Rice Krispies okay okay so they were so they were right just Rice Krispies but a different name is that Rice Krispies with sugar on them oh they had sugar on them okay gotcha like you know Ray frosties are basically Corn Flakes with like a little bit of a little bit of sauce there a little bit of sugar a little bit of glaze that's a rice gloves were they don't exist anymore and they had they had like a snap crackle and pop sort of proxy but they were like astronauts like in space out of space aesthetic going on was the idea that they had brought the right the normal Rice Krispies into space and that they in the vacuum of space they froze and that the glaze was like an ice from the vacuum of how cold it is in space that makes sense because like you know something like that or like these are like futuristic like these aren't your mom's Rice Krispies these are like future [ __ ] like we figured out how to how to how to put sugar on That's So futuristic to put sugar on cereal dude uh apparently in according to Wikipedia um on November 30th 17 Cal accidents they would discontinue ricegums as part of a drive to reduce sugar in children's cereals so I wonder if the surface area of a bicycle was such that there was just so much more sugar right because like a cornflake is pretty big but a Rice Krispie is like pretty small so if you're covering every single one of those in sugar that's probably quite a lot also in Mexico apparently it was called Rock and rice which is pretty cool I like that way better uh I I have to give a shout out to the long lineage of bicycle's mascots uh ricegum's mascot was the astronaut Captain Rick who replaced Henry's cat who replaced Tony Jr in the 1980s and naughty in the 1960s wait naughty like the [ __ ] little I know dty Toy Town naughty like he looks like a puppet English uh character first appeared in a book series published in between the 40s and 60s uh yeah he's like a little cop yeah naughty wait no he's driving the car I think he's driving the car he's getting pulled over in this image yeah Nadi was like he lived in toy town did you oh you guys didn't have Nadi man I used to watch Naughty as a baby Nadia was like nadi's best friend was a guy called big ears who was just like uh like a what like what do you call those there's a gnome he's a gardener yeah and there was like a racist character in this show there was a there was a [ __ ] in the show do you know what that is it's like a it's like a it's like it's like this this I had a friend who actually weirdly enough I had a friend she's she's like a an actual she writes books for a living I don't know how anyone figured that one out but she managed to do it but when when we were working together she was in college and she did like a whole uh like Masters or book thing about um racist toys I guess was like the thing that she and the pictures and [ __ ] in it and it was crap the amount of racist toys was like and how like all over the how like pervasive they were everywhere they were was wild to me but this was all [ __ ] in like the 1920s and 30s and 40s right but like in the 1990s there was this TV show called Nadi and they had a character called the [ __ ] and the [ __ ] is like [ __ ] is basically like a racist term in the UK um but uh this this that was the name of a basically like a sword what do you guys call it and all the Jim Crow stuff or like a like a Minstrel is that what it's called so it was kind of like that but it was like a like a doll so like a little black child doll basically and that's what it was called yeah and there was straight up one of these in Toy Town like that's how sort of you know uh I guess ignorant of racism they were they were just blissfully ignorant like and then suddenly that character was gone and I was like oh what happened you know and then it was like oh that was racist and like we even I remember in Ireland we had like an ice cream that had that face on us like literally was chocolate and vanilla yeah yeah yeah okay even even in an age where cultural standards had not progressed enough for people to realize that was [ __ ] up I still am baffled by the person who was like that was the theme for the ice cream that they thought people would want to buy I just don't understand even if you thought that wasn't morally horrible I don't understand why it's good branding nonetheless it doesn't make any sense they were literally called golly bars like that's what we used to yeah it was like a I think it was just vanilla actually am I crazy I can't remember it like but when I was a kid we used to get these they were [ __ ] delicious I didn't know it was like something 19th century racist caricature that they decided to put on because like you know ice creams was just anything we had one called a freaky fish that was like it looked like a foot and you would lick the foot which I see that's also that that makes a little more sense yeah it was Quentin Tarantino's father the entrepreneur behind that um uh Mr plaud was the policeman in Toyland I got a little lore on Mr plot oh yeah Mr plodge yeah he's made a big belly right yeah yeah he's he's he's a real pig uh he has an uneven relationship with naughty who he thinks drives too fast and engages in other unwarranted Behavior he has gone so far as to imprison Nadia at least once threatened it with imprisonment on other occasions his catchphrases Stop in the Name of the plod Stop in the Name of plot man it's this this car or this show sounds uh uh relatively anti-cop I feel like Mr naughty comes out in the intro and it's like [ __ ] 12. Mr uh Mr plug comes out and like chases him around yeah Mr theme of the show Mr plot was kind of I was just like Daniel Tiger but I guess with more racism um and big ears like even big ears isn't like a particularly nice name for someone like the show is mean spirited and naughty was I think he nodded I think he was like a toy like maybe a Jack In The Box he was that's why he was nodding you know what I mean was he was naughty um Tessie bear I'm just looking through all the there was Miss tubby bear um they all thought of fat people this is a show so mean dude yeah it's a bit it's a you know Sami sailor has like the sort of red cheeked glow of like a 40-year alcoholic you know what I mean like they all I love that like there's a bunch of like all this it was all stop motion as well these were all like little you know stop-motion things like there's an era of like British children's stuff which is just deeply [ __ ] like somebody needs to make like a video game with the aesthetic of bagpuss or something backbus was have you ever seen backpacks it's called bag was it bagpuss man okay yeah that sounds reasonable into Google Images just do it one time and tell me that's not the cutest [ __ ] thing you've ever seen safe search off search on uh okay it's cute but it's cute in the way that I I feel like I would have found this in like a riverbed I feel like this is a discarded toy not the star of a television show yeah I think that was the I think that was literally the set the vibe I think so I think that was day out there bagpost yeah bagpost is a lot of yeah there was a little uh talking bird called professor yaffle there was these weird mice that lived on a all right we should probably talk about video games um hello and welcome to noclip thank you to rycin for getting us on that [ __ ] tangent um we play a lot of video games this week it turns out I played a lot of video games uh over uh not over the weekend but when I got back from camping went off camping in the Russian River tried to evade the heat wave here by being close to a river I could dunk myself in which was a good time um who wants to go first I feel like me and Frank have got sort of the the um the murderer's row here as it were considering we just put up the vampires survivors documentary I want to hear a little bit about holes of Torment what is that Frank so Halls of Torment I think this came out in May but I only heard about it this week from three different friends so I don't know if it's like suddenly exploding or I've just been naive to it uh this game is vampire survivors meets Diablo so it's only five dollars it's very much of the this what is the genre survivors like I don't know um but is basically an isometric uh vampire survivors you pick your class you start in a dungeon it has very much like Diablo 2 or Diablo one PS1 Graphics so it's an evolution so because vampire survivors is like beautiful pixel art or kind of crusty pixel art uh and then the halls of Torment is crusty beautiful low ball low poly like PlayStation art he's choking he loves it so much he's choking it actually does it have like Dynamic lighting or something because the screenshots on the steam page make it look like like you said it's kind of crusty looking characters but the light is doing a lot of the work it it looks pretty good it also kind of reminds me of I mean it's not as colorful but it also reminds me of like Gauntlet Legends just that kind of late 90s um but it's uh it's it's very good uh it's it's again similar to vampire survivors where it's um you can even turn on like Auto aiming and Auto shooting so you don't have to be as um uh focused with doing your all your actions oh so so it's not like vampire survivors in that way you actually are deciding to like yeah you pick your spells or so so there's so every time you play uh it's the same way on lock 7 vampire survivors is when you do an achievement you unlock more features of the game and every level is giving you more stuff so at first you just have a swordsman and he attacks in like a cone Direction later you get like an Archer who can do long range you get a cleric who can attack with magic you get someone with a flamethrower which has been my favorite which is like close range but uh constant DPS you also can change your equipment Loadout so there is loot kind of like Diablo when you kill bosses sometimes they'll drop armor uh and then you have to deliver that armor to this guy who will uh fish it out of the dungeon so you can equip it on future runs so it has permanent progression like vampire survivors it has a thing too you can spend your gold on upgrading your different stats uh and uh and then in addition to just doing your melee your melee starting attack man look at she's lost it's just he's getting choked up he just loves this game so much Halls of Torment take a break there Frank I should mention the tormenting him this is it is exactly it's like throat of Torment right now for Frank um what happened man were you like you like I don't know it's extremely hot like it's so miserable it's so miserable in my room so Kyle what's the temperature in LA right now I don't know right now it's 80 it's right I'm gonna I'm gonna look it up Orange County temperature he might be having a heat stroke literally live this is why you tune into the podcast folks coordinates 86 Fahrenheit which is 30 degrees Centigrade uh that's only going to get warmer I think the vampire survivor's devs they're pumping poisonous gas in an attempt to stop him from talking about a new competitor he's a nice guy on the end I didn't want to show his face he's outside your house right now pumping cars wouldn't even know because you've never seen his face um worth mentioning that this is a vampire survivors game in that there are hordes of people coming towards you at all times right yeah yeah and then every seven minutes there's like a new boss that will come and attack you when you kill those bosses they drop like Scrolls that give you spells so that's where you'll get your automatic um magic abilities Auto Magic is good yeah take it off sit back dude get a glass of water are you is it literally so harsh that you're like I don't know yeah all right take your time it's a good thing I've got like 58 games to talk about to be honest I got some weird [ __ ] to talk about too don't worry about it well Frank is hopefully not dying off camera hopefully he's taking care of himself um uh I want to talk to you a little bit about a game called the looker okay that's very evocative it is the looker is Frank just you you just hang out there and sort yourself hey he's got a Lawson she's doing this he's doing his thing just mute your mic and hang out there dude um uh the looker is a game I don't know why I came across I think steam might have just put it in front of my face um the locker is a piss take of the witness oh all right if you look at the steam page for the looker is has uh the the screenshots look like the witness the logo design looks like the witness it is a free game and it has 11 000 reviews and it's at overwhelmingly positive it came out June of last year but I completely missed it um you can complete it in about 50 minutes and it is I I started being like oh great it's gonna be like some shovelware derivative thing it's actually very funny and very smart um I subsequently read an interview with the developer after the fact and uh it's not that I was wondering is this guy just taking the pair set of John Blow is is this like is this a game is this a the witness is pretentious and not that smart so here is my version but actually it's seems like it's more of an ingest sort of deconstruction of the things that make the witness really good it's like a way to basically like game jam out a small version of the witness without having to well also like poking fun at it a little bit so the way the puzzles and the witness work you might remember is all of these like like there's some variations to it but it's a lot of like drawing lines between things and in certain rules being in the case um the lines in this are basically you know those puzzles you get when you're a kid at a restaurant and there's like the start and the end in the Maze and you have to draw the line between the start and the end you know yeah I'm not going crazy at those things yeah yeah it's basically those except the ones of the stars are literally just like start and end like they're so simple to do you just go you draw a line from the start to the end um and then they keep doing different different versions of these there's audio logs like there is in the witness but they're all like very funny like one of them sounds like it's this like you know classic you know classical theology about you know religion or whatever and then it ends up being like a car insurance commercial like it's a lot of stuff like that the um uh yeah and there's not much really more to say about it I actually really enjoyed it I think it's very smart it has a very funny it's got a good ending it's uh some of the puzzles I got stuck on I just looked up a YouTube video of somebody completing it and just got past them because I couldn't um couldn't be asked trying to because you're in the witness if you can't do a puzzle you just go off and do a puzzle somewhere else but this game is pretty small so I just rushed through it but um yes the locker I would uh I would recommend will that be something that's interesting yeah so it's so it's more of a send-up of kind of like the shot like um like Talos principles and the witness and games where you're going around doing puzzles and getting audio logs that are like you know Socrates said that the man's Spirit was like a balloon yeah from like a level design standpoint I think it's Earnest because it's trying to do the thing that the witness does which is get you to play a game without ever telling you what you're meant to be doing which is actually kind of tricky um what from a from an aesthetic point of view it's complete Ripple like intentionally it's a complete like you know send-off of it but then yeah with the sort of um I don't know why you call that aesthetic it's like a it's like sort of fancy Garden it's like rich person's garden or something you know what I mean that whole thing um it's definitely doing a lot of like taking the mech there's one sequence in it which was genuinely terrifying which was very weird like there was like a 30 second part in that game where I was like oh man this just got weird [Music] um but yeah I would uh I'd recommend if it's got an hour to burn it's uh it's definitely better design than I was thinking going into it and it's it's good fun it's very silly that's cool I've been uh I've finished home body the other night okay the puzzles and homebody are nothing to laugh at they are some serious puzzles in that game in fact a few people in the noclip Discord were like I love this game but why are the puzzles so hard um yeah you played a little bit of homebody right it did I did I gotta know what you think because I finished it and I loved it I 100 understand why last week whatever the Heat's cup the Heat's coming oh no it's coming Luca's outside it's like the fog it's coming up slowly making its way invisibly up to Northern California I I totally understand and appreciate why you couldn't really talk about that game much and also why you kind of can't do a demo of it either unless it's like just the starch it's like it yeah that game and I almost don't want to talk about it in that way because like you said it's I it's in it's the the thing that ha the thing that we could talk about that game is really interesting because you don't necessarily know what's going to happen and I think that's what I really enjoy about it um yeah it's good I I find it hard to talk about it without spoiling some of the stuff but there are reasons why that game is challenging to play sometimes um but it has a great atmosphere um and I think once the game started a bit for me it clicked more like I I think the intro kind of like sets up stuff but then there's a lot of talking and things like that it's not necessarily it's not voiced or anything and it feels a little bit like but then I think once the once the once it settles into the actual game part of the game um it's a tough game it's like yeah in more ways than one I think yeah it also I feel like the intro atmosphere is um it's kind of ambiguous because you don't really know and again I won't spoil anything I swear to God uh but the intro atmosphere feels kind of like it's tense and awkward and people aren't really talking like people normally talk to each other and so the first time you're playing it you kind of have no idea the tone of this game or anything right is the is the writing weird or are these people just like they hate each other you don't have the subtext for it and then as it goes on and things get trippier and weirder and more kind of like abstract it it contextualizes sort of the social tension both like diegetically and also sort of in a weird psychological metaphysical way uh but it's like yeah I I could see how it would be a hard thing to get into also like I said last week you know the game gives you enough rope to hang yourself with you have enough freedom to just go around talking to your friends and exhausting every dialogue option that's available in the beginning and you totally do not need to and if you do you'll end up being like so do you like you like pizza they're like yeah pizza's pretty good what is this game about yeah true yeah yeah it's uh yeah it's a it's a in a way like a lot of modern games like we talked about Dave the diver or weeks ago are designed to constantly give you that gratification and dopamine hit and homebody is definitely a game that wants you to it seems like and at least a game that wants you to complete it and then you will you know kind of like signalis or it's not like a game that's like trying to make you really enjoy the first level and you know it's like no no this is like it's more like a movie that wants you to sit down and then experience the totality of it and then sort of come up with how you feel about it um yeah yes I I feel it's a I I think I know why it's a hard game to recommend because you kind of can't talk about it Abyss I know I feel bad because I've I can't imagine marketing a game where just talking about the core game mechanic is a spoiler in some capacity um yeah it's just it's tough I mean that's that is why I felt the need to Champion it on the podcast last week and I'm very heartened that a lot of people have reached out and said that they give it a shot and stuff because uh I mean I think it's like it's probably going to be an end up being my favorite game this year that's nothing Well Baldur's Gate 3 is gonna be bad [ __ ] a bearing home well I don't know man I haven't completed it maybe you can no spoilers maybe you can no spoilers maybe you can um uh holds a torment any final thoughts Frank now that you are hopefully yes not dying in front of our very eyes I had a Ricola throat Lodge and I forgot to say it's great it's it's steam deck uh it's really great on Steam deck so again last summer when I I took a break and just chilled on my bed or couch and played vampire survivors for 30 hours until my eyes hurt uh Halls of tournament has the same effect it's very good like vampire survivors levels are limited to 30 minutes and after 30 minutes a huge boss comes out um every run feels rewarding every run you're unlocking new stuff it's really cool it's also kind of funny this came out the same time of Diablo 4 and all the Steam Reviews are saying I've been playing this more than Diablo 4. oh fun so if you don't want to maybe take the plunge on Diablo 4 I don't want to spend full price for a game like that for five bucks whole performance great if you liked vampire survivors this hits that same itch but it also evolves the genre a bit where I feel like in the wake of vampire survivors there's a ton of uh games that tried to chase that and we're kind of lame this one's pretty good I think this one will stick this one has a bit of a bigger team I think there's like nine people maybe on this one uh it's still in Early Access I think there's five levels right now oh cool but uh but yeah it's I think it's really cool it surprised me I like it and I'm always looking for fun stuff to play on Steam dick like David diver which was mentioned a few weeks ago um so yeah Hall's a tournament I really like it uh so it's good holes of torment and there is a I love doing this I feel like this happens every time we we talk about these games the the team that made it as a studio called chasing carrots which is just a terrific name um who have made a game called space and demons which looks very much like uh Halls of Torment but from The Vampire survivors perspective so more sort of less 45 degree isometric more sort of zero degree I guess um they also made a game called star Survivor which looks like a twin stick shooter so it looks like they've got like priors in this but also there was a nightmare survival bundle which again I think we talked about a couple weeks ago Jeremy was talking about sometimes Indie teams different Indie teams going bundles together and this art style Jesus type in 20 minutes till Dawn I oh I know this game do you notice it's four bucks it came out on June 8th of this year maybe it was internet access before that I don't know but this art style look at that's like a Jeremy Jane ass art stuff ever so yeah yeah no it's gorgeous pixel art um yeah Tony missile Dawn they did a uh I think it's a solo Indie Dev and they did a free version of it that was I think it was like oh I think it had a different name I feel like the free version was 10 minutes till Dawn and the paid version was 20 minutes till dawn it was something like that um but it I it was an incredibly bold strategy as a uh as a solo Indie Dev to make it part of your game give it away for free make people like it and I think it kind of went viral and a bunch of people streamed it on Twitch and stuff and then be like all right you like that here's the actual game and it's whatever five months or something yeah yeah it's another one of these why do we call these things survival roguelites is that what they're they are yeah I've seen people calling them bullet Heavens that's great oh I like that you are the bullet hell 100 yes they are yes it's just how many people you can or zombies or vampires whatever you can destroy yeah that's cool I like that yeah I love genre terms I think it's like I I it's weird I have conflicted feelings because I think genre terms like with homebody it's so hard to place a label on it and I think that turns people away and I wish I wish I wish that uh I mean I personally have been trying to make the change where if I don't understand what a game is I want to give it a shot and try to like experience it and not be like oh it's oh it's one of those oh it's an escape room game oh it's like survival horror just like see it as its own kind of weird thing yeah because like I don't know if you if you think every Soul's like is the same game with a different skin on it I feel like it really it's very reductive it like distills your experience down to this one dimensional thing that's just like oh this is Dark Souls with puppets so this is Dark Souls with Samurai oh Dark Souls I was like what's Dark Souls of Puppets but I was like oh yeah right yeah exactly have you seen that [ __ ] Wonka trailer with Timothy chalamet oh dude he looks like uh he looks like Gonzo in the Muppet Christmas Carol oh my gosh it does you're right he's right on yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's I'm I'm not feeling it I don't need to see that just let Doon 2 come in I don't need to see this weird how do you do that how do you even I guess Gene Wilder is a hard one to follow up but Johnny Depp was also Johnny Depp's Michael Jackson impression that was a weird weird movie um speaking no I got no segment segue there uh sea of Thieves so the Sea of Thieves Monkey Island thing is coming out I believe tomorrow as we're recording this so it should be up uh By the time this is out so I decided to jump in to see a thieves I played the Sea of Thieves i i i sailed the Sea of Thieves um back when that game was first announced when it was in Early Access back then um I don't know if they ever reached out to us maybe they did at some stage but I remember playing that when it first came out and being like oh this is really a game I need to play with other people it's a bit rougher in the edges this is my first time playing it and God knows how long four years or something like that sea of Thieves is terrific like the the onboarding for us just the fun of us I love games where you're exploring I'm just playing on my own at the moment uh I think I played a bunch of Destiny 2 as well over the weekend for the first time in forever um that's a game that's kind of hard to play on your own a bit I imagine the same thing might happen with sea of Thieves where if I'm in like battles it's going to be hard to load the cannon myself and fire it while also you know piloting the ship or whatever but yeah I jumped in because I wanted to kind of get through any tutorial stuff before the Monkey Island single player thing came out um but they have an Explorer uh modes sort of like a free mode in uh see at these but they also have a single player thing that's already in there like single player little campaigny style thing you do so um I haven't jumped into that yet I was mostly just faffing around on the islands uh my ship got destroyed and Merman helped me get it back uh killed a bunch of pigs having a good time game just the game does water and ocean just like the you know climbing up to your crow's nest because the waves are too high to see where the island is and then seeing the island like coming straight at you and like having to run back down and throw the anchor down it's like it's a lot of fun I think that game is super cool and I don't know something about dredge and Dave the diver I'm just in like an ocean mood or something at the moment um and I'm really enjoying it but I mostly just want to jump in and see that Monkey Island stuff which uh I don't know if you have to pay for it because sea of Thieves is free it's either free or it's just Game Pass free I don't know if the Monkey Island thing you gotta pay for or not I kind of think maybe you don't you have any idea uh I swear to God I saw a free update uh when I was just looking for it will be released as three free monthly updates oh so the first part of it is coming out soon okay yes beginning on July 20th yeah July 20th and they don't have any other dates do they for the other ones I don't think so I'll check monthly though so presumably near the end of the month so that's cool I think it's it if it if if the Platinum is to get people to play sea of Thieves well done you got one um another game I played which I was meaning to play is only up which is the oh yeah OEM game which everyone has been playing which temporarily was off steam for a while because of some [ __ ] hausery with stealing 3D assets which I suspect there's a lot of that going on in this game it feels like a game that was kind of thrown together a little bit not to be super reductive about it but this is the game where you are basically climbing up as high as you can guess what's the genre of this there's games like uh getting all was it getting overish yeah with Benefits jump King uh one of the big ones uh bread and Fred is a recent one that's another similar thing it's a two penguins climbing a mountain oh bread and Fred and these are games where you're basically just trying to climb climb climb as high as you can and not fall the whole way back down again yeah because if you fall you can I mean you could be 90 of the way through this game some of these games and fall and lose it all in one Fell Swoop which is kind of that's how a lot of them have marketed as well um I know for like jumping there was a million compilations of like every Big streamer they're going like it's just cutting between them all screaming it is great stream fodder because it's like they could fall at any moment it's like a Skinner box or something right where it's yeah like they could fall at any moment or they don't fall and they get to the top and that's also like a big endorphin rush this is an entire genre based off of Counter-Strike jump maps right like that's that's basically what this is It's gotta be right like I mean every game had this I feel like certain I've heard different terms for this like Halo the maps had a different name for us it was like it's just this like sub-genre but it's sort of been codified in more recent memory um what I will say about only up which I went into this way wanting to sort of be like okay I'll play it like a streamy game like it's supposed to be this you know difficult game I'm playing I'm gonna play it like a hard game like Super Hexagon or something like that that's like supposed to be difficult and hard what I actually found is this game reminds me of my nightmares so I have like somewhat recurring nightmares of being stuck somewhere High and just having to climb out of it like there's no way out of this scenario you just have to walk across the like rope Bridge or you have to like I like my my nightmare version of this is like real [ __ ] up versions like oh yeah we're just like stuck on the outside of this building that's like two miles up and you have to like Edge across like a like a three inch wide pathway and for like 20 feet like just like absolute part you know sweaty Palm you know nervous legs [ __ ] and and the idea that there's no way out of this like you can't go back because back is the same so you just gotta keep going and when I was playing this I didn't even get that high I was like up on like the the first scary part which is these like rounds pipes that are it's just stuff suspended in air for like miles basically you're slowly going up and up and up and up and your character can can jump but they can also sort of like mantle like if hit the edge of anything you basically mantle up but the game is designed in a way to give you jumps that you think you can make and you can't and to give you things that you think are flat but aren't so it's always messing with you a little bit and I cannot tell you I've never experienced that in a game not since like maybe the first time I played Assassin's Creed and I was like climbing on tops of really tall buildings and one and trying not to fall down I have never experienced that like Palm sweaty sensation it's and I've I've really I've kept going back for that reason like I'm edging I'm not like running running running jumping trying to speedrun it I'm just like step by step like how do I do this how do I get past this part um and yeah it like if for that alone it totally works like the sense of height and scale and the way the camera operates and all that sort of stuff it definitely gives me that vibe in a way that a lot of the 2D versions of these never did because you know you can't look straight down and like your you know your eye does that thing where you're like look down where you didn't want to look down yeah you kind of look past the point you're supposed to be looking at and you go oh [ __ ] yeah I think these games are um they're not really by cup of tea in terms of sitting and playing them but I have a large appreciation for kind of what they do because I think they're very uh they're just like they're very fundamentally gamey you know what I mean like something like Super Mario is so simplistic in its mechanics that designing levels around it is more of the you know like he can jump and he can run and there's like these very simple mechanics and then designing levels is kind of the work to make that fun right I mean obviously the jumping and running has to feel good first or whatever but uh but yeah these games are very interesting to me because they're essentially like what if you made a Mario level that just went up forever and you could fall and lose it all and it's like I don't know they're just like very they feel like arcade games to me or something they're very punishing and hard and simple to understand but very difficult and uh there's something appealing to me about that it's there's kind of like a Zen design philosophy where it cuts away all of this complexity it's just like what if I just piled everything in the unity asset store in a big ladder into the sky yeah exactly and I think you know there's the um the the whole idea of these like I these like deconstructed games or these like very very simplistic games like we don't tend to get them very much like conversely I've been playing Destiny which is a game that is so systemic it's all about like missions and loops and and how good the gun feels and yeah there's so many different like levels and layers to it and what I've always liked about these games they're kind of what I like to add 90s gaming in general was that especially first person games was that a lot of the Pizzazz came from simple things like oh here's a different level or oh here's a different gun like and just that alone has this sort of like domino effect as to how everyone plays the game it's also the reason I've been enjoying stunt Derby so much is because similarly we the game the cars just kind of drive and they feel nice to drive and then we have the community making all these levels and there are levels that just completely deconstruct the way you think about what you're supposed to do but ultimately what you're doing is the same thing you're always doing you're just driving and then you know that's it and that was cool about jump maps and like surf Maps it was just like taking the basic thing and like you said using level design to create something completely different um and I'm with you I think one of the things that only up also does and granted I've seen a lot of this from them subsequently watching videos on it is that the biomes let's say the levels you reach a lot of them have like different things going on like they're they're doing a lot of like messing with your expectations and again it's that level design which actually is the thing that gives the I don't know dynamicism to the game it's not like oh you've unlocked a new uh ability you know what I mean which kind of in a lot of games has become the way to show that progression uh I kind of feel like this is this is just a very subjective thing so this is not a objective objective opinion only Jeremy objective Heart Take incoming um I think that I have given a lot of survival crafting games a good shot because they're good co-op they're typically kind of like the most polished co-op games available the last few years to play with my friends and most of my friends live 3000 miles away uh so I I but I kind of get this feeling that like something like stunt Derby is kind of on the opposite end of the design game design Spectrum as something like raft or valheim because I my personal experience is that I I don't derive a lot of pleasure from the like the Gathering and I don't derive a lot of pleasure from taking those elements and converting them into like my my custom boat or like my custom Viking hall or whatever and so for me all of those things are kind of uh they're they're they're like frosting you know what I mean and I'm like okay so what what are all of these what is all of this frosting in support of what's the center of this candy shell and for me I feel feel like like I gave raft a shot with some friends because I had a friend who was begging to play it for years and it was on sale and I just I just hated it like I just felt like and I it's a game I feel no shame talking down on it because it's made 200 million dollars so like people they're the game clearly is yeah they're doing fine I'm a flea on their back um but I I don't know I just feel like it's like at this at you're like okay I've collected all the wood I've collected all this the plastic I've like built the spear I've got the boat now what and the now what is kind of just like using those kind of uninteresting combat mechanics to like go into a place that does have some you know there's like interesting atmosphere and stuff like that but there's no core and valheim similarly once I had done enough of the dungeons to feel like they were all kind of the same building blocks dungeons with I mean it's procedurally generated it just lacked like authorship it felt like there was no core experience to me it felt like it was a bunch of systems built around a hollow center and I feel like something like stunt Derby is kind of the opposite where it's like the the center is the thing like the driving feels good if you just had that car in a totally blank landscape it would still feel good to drive and then ever all of the design around it feels like the frosting but there's something at the center for me that intrigues me and yeah I don't know I've just been every time I play a survival crafting game I'm like I feel like I'm just doing all my homework to like get something that never comes well that's why I liked sons of the forest a [ __ ] because more a bit more than a lot of those because at least there was the central mystery of what's in all these little bunkers do you keep finding or like what's the deal with some of these weirdo like you know lady with four legs who walks up kind of thing right um is it is it ableist to call a lady with four legs weirdo considering there are no four-legged people in reality I don't know I think you're safe on that I think I'm good apologies if you four legs out there um the and then yeah like I feel like I I also feel like the hollow shell existed with some of those games valaheim for me tickled the same thing that like early World of Warcraft did for me which was the discovery of like I didn't know about the different areas you know what I mean I didn't know about the dungeons I knew nothing about that game when I was playing it and every single time like the first time I saw a troll was like Jesus Christ like this whereas like if you've watched a trailer for valheim you don't get any of that now you know what I mean presumably because you've seen a lot of this and and people are those games are made for a lot well not made for a lot of people who play those games expect those games to have hundreds and thousands of hours of content in them and like valheim doesn't you know because it's a small game made by a small amount of people but God the the opening two months of my time of valheim playing on my buddies is about the most fun I've had playing games in about 10 years it was so good yeah no the discovery in valheim is unbelievably good and like seeing all of them I guess it's just one of those games there that like once I had the whole picture of what it was I was a little like okay now there's nothing left for me because I peeling off all of the Monopoly the McDonald's Monopoly pieces and being like I got boardwalkers there's like a snow biome over here that like Discovery the bees are Central yeah yeah making the bees happy um that was kind of like the the core thing for me uh and I I just kind of wished that there was like a little like a story or like something yeah Raph kind of has that like the sons of the forest I just didn't click with it as much so yeah it's a shame I I feel the same way about valheim but also like I got my money's worth from valheimer in a way but I but I'm like you I wish I wish I wanted to love it even more I wanted it to be the best the best one of those games I ever played or you know one of the best games I ever played who knows maybe they'll they'll get around to doing it looks like it's long project for that team and you know I'll I definitely trust them to to to um give it their best shot quickly I want to mention one last game I played Jagged Alliance three so we were talking about crpgs a lot last week and then Commandos came up the jagged Alliance series is right up there with icewinddale and [ __ ] planescape torment and all these games that my eyes just glazed over whenever they were announced I could not tell you anything about them uh Jagged Alliance 2. I wanna say came out in like 1996 or something like that is this 1999 it was in Jagged Alliance K2 came out and that was basically a Fallout looking game uh with and I am I I'm very I don't know anything about this game so please apologies if I sound like an absolute dumbass but like Fallout mixed with like maybe classic x-com like UFO defense I guess as it was known over here uh uh XCOM enemy are known as it was known in um Europe but like in a way that is like it's free form like Fallout and then when you're in combat it goes turn based uh Jagger line three is like that but instead of being locked to isometric and having that 2D Fallout style um camera control it looks more like it has a 3D camera that can be moved around kind of like desperados3 like another game that I was been talking about recently I guess the way in which it's different to those games um desperado's tree is probably the closest to it but like the way in which this feels different is that like when you get into the combat it feels like x-com style combash where you have OverWatch you can you have certain amount of like points that you're able to spend with your crew of mercenaries but in the lead up to that kind of like they added in in XCOM 2 maybe I feel like I can't remember when that one came out but the the way that they you could kind of set yourself up before they knew you were there Dragon Alliance is a big map that you're just like clicking and they're running to the place and clicking they run to the place like any one of these crpgs and then you can set your dudes up and stealth around and then decide to engage them and then it's turn based um the vibe is very different to a lot of these games this was basically a send-up of like action movie tropes where the original Jagged Alliance games uh from what I've learned and from what they literally tell you if the side of Jagger lines three they're like this game there's like a bit stereotypes and like you know the modern game is going to be a little bit like that so you know expect it kind of thing um and this is like that too and what's funny is at the start of the level basically somebody in like a country's dad has been kidnapped by some group of uh you know internal War type thing and you literally hire your team of mercenaries and they're all like they have weird names some of them are idiots some of them are like highly skilled mercs they all cost different money you have to do contract negotiations with them because they're like oh I'm not gonna work for three days when you go on a mission it's not one individual Mission it's like four or five map tiles stuck together and going to each one of them takes time so that maybe three missions in one of the mercenaries is like I'm out of here you wouldn't pay me four days I'm gone and then your team is down they all have different class specs a lot of different like um weapons abilities you're going through the levels it's there's so much going on and it's super interesting and I've never played a game like this it kind of feels like a little bit of a lot of these types of games and there has been a lot of like positive Buzz around it since Akash uh released July 14th so like just at the end of last week um it's got 2500 reviews on Steam very positive it seemed to do well on uh on uh reviews as well um and yeah it's just like I I never played a game like this I've never played jogged Alliance in the past but it seems pretty neat this sounds cool I really I mean you got me with the pitch of like uh 80s action move like stallone-esque action movie but with kind of a uh like a Commandos meets XCOM thing going on that's a really good elevator pitch yeah and and the detail the actual gameplay itself is like I would say it's more there's more depth to it than like x-com in that like XCOM has all the off um I'm talking about the modern day x-com ones right it has all the outside of mission stuff right the base building stuff and I'm not sure how much of that there is because I'm still in the first like map I guess or Mission or whatever you'd call it um but within each level like they're all connected like you're basically you're going you're shooting people but then you're also like going to like a person and having a conversation with them like in a crpg and then you go around there's another combat encounter and it's turn based and then at a certain point you're like oh well let's move to the next area and you go back to like the mission map and click on the next tile in the world and they're like do do and they walk across and the time goes past and then you load into a new map and then it's that all over again it's like story beats and this combating characters and you're collecting stuff and changing your weapons and then like there's also like you make characters and you can decide to like you know crpg style like kill them or befriend them or you know one of your characters is really good and intimidating and you get them to give you information and then four map tiles later that actually becomes useful like there's there's a lot of like um crpg stuff going on in a game that plays like x-com right like and that's super interesting like and I'd never seen that before um so yeah I don't know if fallout's a lot like that or not I don't I don't because Fallout has turn-based combats Fallout one and two but I've never really played those games so in a way it might be like that but yeah it's I if it sounds like a more kind of um systems driven like grander vision of that because in the original follow games it's very segmented where you can like if you're traveling um from point A to point B on the Overworld if you get into a combat encounter It'll like stop you and zoom in like old Final Fantasy and then you'll duke it out on a little grid of of desert of whatever area you're at uh or if you do combat like in a city it like engages the combat in that City but it's not like they're gonna chase you out of the city and then you you know what I mean yes it's not the same yeah yeah it's not it's like a different little world within a world um yeah whereas yeah this is happening all in the same sort of uh their 3D space and that's really cool because you can like you know there are missions where like it's in a city and there's like a balcony and you send someone into that building and try and get the stealth up to the balcony so that they can get in that position so that you can gouge the enemy in One Direction or flank them like it's so it's there's so much like tactical Variety in this like in XCOM I feel like you know generally you would start at one part of the map and then the enemy was ahead of you right it was it was almost like NFL you know what I mean it was like encroaching into their territory and finding out who they are where they are whereas in um original X come back in the day I always felt like the aliens were kind of all around your ship a little bit more when you came out in an isometric one and in this one you're encroaching into their world but you can like stealth in Behind Enemy Lines with like two of your guys that might maybe is also a way in which it's different to fall there right because in Fallout you only ever one character I'm guessing in Fallout one and two yeah you have companions I haven't played them in so long like I don't remember if you control the companions right it's been so long whereas this is definitely like you have a squad of you know if I have four people on this I think you could take fewer I'm not sure you could spend all your money I think on like a really good Mark and not have any left for some of the some of the some of these guys rubbish like some of them are like couldn't hit a [ __ ] back door or a barn with a banjo but like then there's then there's another guy I hired who's like just like cold-blooded killer he'll just like does one guy have any time he gets shot at just like drops to the floor and no one ever hits him and then he's the first person who's like ready to to hit people back and it's cool so when you're hitting them you can aim for like legs torso arm head it'll let you know if they've got like armor um and then with each one of those shots you can decide to spend more action points to increase your accuracy which is very cool because it means game sounds awesome yeah yeah so like if you're going for like I've had moments where I'm like this guy sucks he's a bad shot but he's kind of close I've either got two shots at like imagine in x-com where like you could have two shots I don't think this is a mechanic like two I guess you could you could do a buff on some shots in XCOM that would increase your accuracy but this on a shot by shot basis you can just decide to be more accurate for more AP and if you do that like maybe it's like you can take two shots at like this accuracy or you can just blow it all you'll just try and get the most accurate possible shot and just go for it and see if it hits them um yeah it's nice I'm into it that's awesome it's also Co-op and it's Co-op that's right yeah holy [ __ ] I'm getting this the minute it goes on sale go for yeah 45 bucks at the moment so it's not even uh that's not too bad it's not even full price but this will be uh you're right when this hits sales it'll probably be like 30 20 bucks maybe um yeah it's a cool game I'm excited to see what people think because I think it's slowly Gathering a little bit of uh interest around it and it's certain again like see a thieves monkey and it got me in I'd never never given a it's a [ __ ] I have no way of saying anything except [ __ ] I can't think of any never give up you're gonna say rats ass rats here we go I didn't have a rat's ass about chocolate it's a real like northeast coast of the United States turn of phrase I like it I'll take it yeah but I didn't know anything about this series just complete like eyes glad oh glazed over thing but it's good it's good [ __ ] I'm really enjoying it awesome it's a lot of fun cool Jeremy yes you have been playing games or playing music explaining uh I so I got a cable that is a uh 3.5 millimeter like a normal eighth inch headphone jack um that on the other end is a male XLR uh so now I can I can plug my retroid into my mixer oh yeah um and so uh I I never I don't really talk about this on the podcast because it's just kind of like something I do for myself but I make a lot of music um and in fact some of my music is in some of the no clip dots yeah rocket League doc opens with one of your tracks yeah um and uh so I've been making beats by when I play video games I just plug into my mixer and I'll just like let Ableton run a recording because you know it's I mean you know whatever I can just delete it it's not that much memory right so I'll just let it run for like an hour and then if there's a sound effect in game that's really good then like especially if it's a menu like if it's triggerable so you can be like oh yeah it's like playing games it adds this whole dimension of Sonic space to games where I'm like viscerally aware of how it sounds especially because I've got it coming through the big speakers uh and so I've been evolving my setup and like adding FX chains to it and like looping stuff and making beats out of video game noises so uh I don't know I was just I I wanted to share because I thought it was like a fun kind of like it's a weird different way to play video games where it's it suits my ADHD so well where I'll like play a game then I'll be like oh that'd make a good beat it'll just like pivot and like turn on the synthesizer um but I I feel like uh Frank is a really good rapper I don't know if people know that Frank raps but Frank is like a [ __ ] seriously good rapper and wraps on his streams I feel like Frank if you have any what's a game that you really like the the sonic texture of because I will try to make it I mean the first thing comes to mind is Final Fantasy with all the spell beats like I mean you could do like any seven six even ten like just do all the menu noises and those are really good um yeah okay I'm gonna try to make you a little nobuo umasu beat and uh and if it comes out good you can rap on it how long would the beat be like how long is a loop is it like eight seconds or like 15 seconds or what what do you do uh I mean I could make like typically the way I make beats is um I will find sounds that I like and put them in a four bar Loop and then just kind of like find the right tampo for it and then start mixing and matching sounds around it and once I have kind of a four bar Loop that I like I'll start expanding that out and then uh yeah it's about like adding and taking away elements so you know if if the four bar Loop is very full then you dupe it and then pull out all the drums and see how it sounds with a very stripped down sound and then maybe you add in a synthesizer and just like kind of mixing and matching and building different elements so that uh you know everything has like a little bit of of the other segments in it and it kind of flows seamlessly so um yeah so I could make I mean I could just make a beat that Loops endlessly if Frank wants to Freestyle for the rest of his life stick it on a stream that's the thing have you ever because you freestyle a lot on your streams and I'm always like how the [ __ ] is he doing this um he's really good you're really [ __ ] good you're really good at it um is it is it is like is that that seems like a totally different skill to like writing lyrics and singing them is it like a different expectation there it's because I have it like this this sounds like I have a background in improv like I used to do comedy and improv and I in my I was mentored by someone who is a master improv comedian like and so it's free form it's just Association you just I just pull what's in my head and like just you I will go endlessly like like it's very fun and silly and I think with freestyle same thing as writing you do a lot and then you'll have like one line or one subject that makes you laugh and then you swim in that area for a while um so yeah I mean I really can do it endlessly unless I have like a Halls of Torment moment and I choke but uh no as you just go and I think it's like for me I'm very much like I used to be very active in like internet comedy like that was my whole thing and so I I have no I mean I also love Insane Clown Posse so it's like I have no worries about being a clown on the internet so it's like I'm not worried about like embarrassing embarrassing myself I'm just like trying to find something that makes me laugh and so it's just like trying to find that nugget and if I smile if I crack myself up then I know I'm doing a good job so it's it's it's just kind of also like again with writing you just keep doing it ignore all the things that suck until you find the gold and focus on the gold so yeah 100 dude me and my friends used to sit around in college and we would just like get high and rap and listen to beats and it was so funny because it was just it was like me and a couple of my best friends who you know it's we're not afraid to embarrass ourselves in front of each other and we would just rap or like text each other raps and it's so funny because most of it sucks but when someone has like one good bar everyone's like freaks out like you just like Drop bars like it's it's fun just to Hype each other up and just like do silly [ __ ] one of like the best books I've ever read was the Beastie Boys book and they talk about like that was their process like especially in their early 90s with check your head is they would they had a warehouse in LA with like a skate a skate ramp a basketball court and they would just yeah like get high and just [ __ ] around on music and spend all day just jamming and then yeah when they hit something like oh that's really good they would write their wraps together and then kind of take turns doing it and it's just like I don't know it's very fun yeah it's awesome chipping away at the marble I guess yeah that's the way of doing it yeah also I just I I'm very fascinated by the connection uh between video games and Hip-Hop there are a lot of very good rappers who reference video games and a lot of very good producers who Sample video games there's a lot of games that were the aesthetic as entire like Street Fighter is a game that is 100 since like I don't know since Street Fighter 3 Italy maybe like is is 100 that you know what I mean like what else I guess like there's obvious ones like Def Jam icon and stuff like that but NBA Jam but that's more just basketball but yeah yeah yeah Hi-Fi Rush two of the Beastie Boys consulted on the soundtrack oh you're kidding oh yeah yeah they had like a whole side project and part of the reason why future hasn't come out is like the right ownership of all that stuff is so split across but yeah Kingpin Life Of Crime yeah good old Cypress Hill Checkmate four it's good [ __ ] I wanna I wanna interview I wonder if this would be a good crew video to just like hit up like jpeg Mafia or someone who references video games a lot samples them a lot and then just interview them about video games for a while I think it'd be like uh did you guys saw digging in the cards right the doc Series yeah yeah um yeah that was like one of my favorite things ever and it's just uh it's a doc series of just people like flying a Lotus being like yeah I used to play you know Street Fighter and uh and then talking about like a lot of those people have an insane respect for a lot of the people who do video game music and I feel like that's one of those things where if you're not an active consumer of video game music it is kind of like background is texture uh but if you sit down and you put on like I I that's what I listen to when I work is just like jrpg soundtracks like Yoko shimamura's soundtrack for Super Mario RPG I've probably heard more than like any Wu-Tang album that's awesome um yeah I think it'd be cool I don't know also music is one of those things that's hard to fit into our documentaries because it feels kind of it feels like it's out of step with a lot of the other processes in Dev or something like it feels like it's this separate kind of wing of its own where like a mad genius goes off and makes all the noises and then they put them on the game yeah it's one of the things we've always had trouble with is is like how do you noodle in that area as a as an outsider how do you like get somebody who does that process on their own to vocalize it because they probably don't vocalize it maybe like we had it a bit with the actors where we were like asking him about the process of acting and like getting them to like tell us like technical terms and like ways in which they approach the work and that sort of stuff generally with the game stuff because it's so collaborative you can tell like oh I worked on this part and then I worked with this person to get this bit done and then this went over here and then this one over here but because the audio people the music people in particular are just these like like painters you know what I mean it's like asking someone you can ask them about how they paint but like it doesn't really explain like the skill they have for knowing when something sounds or looks good you know it's it's very difficult to get there like if we talk to the artist if we talk to gen Z about her drawing she'll talk about things like oh we needed to use it the character needed to look like this and this and I this restriction and I needed to do this so this is what I drew it's never this is how I drew this because like she probably can't even talk about how she drew it she's just like well this is just how I draw because I learned this style and I like this artist and I just did it you know I mean I just did the thing like I made the music like it's hard to I don't know like communicate that I guess yeah for sure and it also ends up being kind of like you can like you said you can talk about it kind of reverse engineering the needs of the game and that is you know that conversation is relevant to the game development process but to talk about the process of writing music feels like it's it's pretty separate from video games or something like if we were talking big Gordon and he's like well first I sit down and I have like a cup of coffee and then I you know I think about like texture and I just feel like it's it's an interesting conversation but it feels like such an aside from talking about things like level design and talking about uh development and feel I don't know in a way it almost could be its own documentary that is like a separate adjunct piece or something like how difficult because also like it's different as well where people who experience music and games they're experiencing the emotional like denuma of the whole creative process of that music being made unlike art and gameplay and stuff where they are experiencing the mechanisms of it and so they're familiar with the mechanism of us they're not familiar with the mechanisms of how the game was made or I had the music was made it's a it's really telling to me that like some of the best like behind the scenes on music that has come out in the past couple of years has been some of the Hans Zimmer related um you know videos about like how he produces stuff like the Dune soundtrack and things like that and in all of those what he does is he talks about the overall thing and then he goes and talks to the Musicians about how they added it so the Game Dev version of that is you get the you get them to talk about the sample library that they use you know I mean it just doesn't doesn't work it doesn't have the same you know I I think we did something where maybe it was in the obsidian one or Bethesda maybe where we talked about how stuff was orchestrated I guess with we did it with the Hades I guess um a little bit which that's hard yeah it's an interesting thing it's something that I as someone who makes music I would like to get better at talking to other people about about the process of making music and sound effects for games and doing sound design because um yeah I just think it's like it's a it is a difficult thing to strike a balance with it's also one of those things that the more technical you get with it it may be kind of more representative of the process but alienate a lot of lay people in the process yeah or if they're like yeah you know I'm a big fan of like C minor and then instantly like 80 of the audience is like I don't [ __ ] care like I don't care what notes you use dude I just want to you know what I mean and then if you get yeah if you get away from the technical side then it's like I wanted to like make the player feel like sassy and it's like okay that's like it's hard to have a conversation off the back of that I guess yeah totally um you were talking about digging in the carts and all this old Media stuff um and it reminded me a little bit of uh so in one of the boxes with the tapes I found like a slightly hidden compartments which had maybe like I don't know 40 to 60 um press kits so CDs and DVDs with just like press assets from various e3s that were you know full of goodies right and like I got a CD drive in from Amazon a DVD CD drive external USB thing just like maybe 20 minutes before we went live in the podcast maybe 10 minutes before and I only got to put one in and I was like what are these assets gonna be is going to be like video files is it going to be DVDs that play like DVDs so I'd have to actually capture that video it won't be like a file I can guess the first one I put in opens with a macromedia Flash menu like holy [ __ ] like how do we copy this do I have to make an ISO of it um it also had really annoyingly some sections in there that were like you click on it and then it's like images movie file and it's like a Windows Media Player from 1999 [ __ ] logo documentation it's like the word doc and some of the stuff is on the disks and a lot of it links to websites and it's just really annoying the most annoying one is there's three games on there that just go oh visit this website for The Press kits and it brings you to a URL that are all dead and the three games are World of Warcraft Half-Life 2 and Starcraft ghost oh my God like the console that's amazing Starcraft game so I went from like the highs and lows of this preservation stuff um I am digging in my own carts uh over here well we'll get some more of that stuff up we have the uh Sony 2006 press conference as well to go up which she'll be pretty cool and the last game on the list here is Castlevania Symphony of the Night Frank Howley if uh if you still have the use of your lungs yeah is this first time you played this game or it's so funny this is the Fallout New Vegas situation where when I was going through all my old games and achievement lists I was just looking at like where are all my gaps what are games that I stopped playing for whatever for whatever reason so Symphony of the Night I neglected when it was on Playstation I just never played it um and then when it was released on Xbox 360 on Xbox Live arcade like in 2010 again the same maybe the same year as Fallout New Vegas when I was in college and uh just wasn't that focused on gaming I played the first half of Castlevania Cynthia tonight so you do the whole castle which maybe takes like 10 hours you beat it and then there's like for me it was a Twist setting where the castle goes inverted and now do it all over again and it's harder I think back then I was like no I'm done with this game but but again I've been watching all the action button Tim Rogers videos it's why I also played LA Noire Tim Rogers also said he's gonna be covering Castlevania Rondo of Blood so I'm like oh well I gotta let me study Castlevania and so because there's a so many Castlevania games I want to play and just in the last few years Konami yeah it's still Konami has been very proactive about putting these collections up so there's a Castlevania DS collection a few years ago or a year ago they put up sympathy the night in Rondo of Blood as one collection on PlayStation Network and so I grabbed that and again that sounds so like silly but guys Castlevania simply nice really good um but like the pixel art is amazing the music is amazing I think also I wanted to play Castlevania Cynthia tonight after doing so much gameplay capture for vampire survivors oh yeah because so many of the items are directly from Castlevania like the Bible the holy water things like that uh and uh it looks great playing it nowadays on like the TV in its original aspect ratio I feel like when I played on 360 I think I played it widescreen and like it didn't preserve it it looked so nice playing it like in the still what four by three um and yeah I'm digging it so I finished the first half of the game so now I just started the inverted Castle so now for me finally so many years later I now have brand new Symphony of the Night content to look forward to so uh yeah I'm excited to play more of it and then after Cynthia the night I want to play you know so many of the other games but uh yeah they're they're great what's going on with us it's so weird I don't know what's happening maybe it says something about like modern I don't know what it is but we're all playing these old ass games for me it's definitely burnout of trying to keep up with every single new game and just realizing like man I kind of like there's also a degree older games were simpler and this this sounds very you know old man shouts out clouds whatever it's like I don't know like entire day yeah I don't know Fallout New Vegas doesn't seem intimidating even though there's so many quests or Symphony of the Night seems like I can manage that Wars I think all these other games like I like Street Fighter 6 but there's the Competitive Edge where you're competing against a million other players or right uh I mean even with Eldon ring where it's like oh not all the tricks haven't been figured out yet whereas if I get stuck in Fallout New Vegas there is immediately like boom boom boom this is the answer so I think I like playing games having that support system um but yeah it also feels nice I think what it is too I might have mentioned this on the podcast uh but months ago I finished a book called think again which is about the science of like revisiting old like prejudices or thoughts you formed meant long ago and kind of reapproaching it uh like giving a second take at everything so I think I've been wanting to go back through my game library and like why did I stop playing this game it's been so long I don't remember and kind of playing everything with it with a new lens and appreciating it even more now that I'm older I feel like I'm also way better at games than when I was a kid or a teenager or have the patience or also just know can recognize what I'm truly lost and can go to a guide um and so yeah I know it's been nice like filling the gaps and and giving second spins on genres like even last year I fell in love with Gran Turismo 7 whereas I always hate kind of hated those games they are yeah there's something about its presentation and style that was just like oh this hits perfectly now so I don't know I I kind of like giving game second or third chances and I also even with steam I love that they have the whole over overall thing and then recent reviews so you can see that when games actually get patched or when people come around on games and um I think that's the whole thing like even even what we do here with no clip or or Tim Rogers or just the whole YouTube culture of just everyone is giving second third fourth fifth appraisals of video games and checking how they fit in the Zeitgeist and even like on message boards it's always fun seeing like I don't know people constantly going back to games like even now I'm now like oh I kind of want to play more Monster Hunter just randomly chasing what's interesting to me as opposed to yeah what is what's what's the game of the week now or or whatever it's just kind of playing games for myself but then thank you also for allowing the platform for us to talk about and share but yeah it's kind of nice just I don't know letting go and just playing what I truly want to yeah play some Castlevania how about no bad time apparently to do that and there was one other thing I wanted to talk about really quickly it's not out yet so I can't actually talk about it talk about it but it definitely fits in the sort of like wheel as of some noclip stuff especially with game preservation there's this very bizarre um collection of uh like retro games coming to Xbox and also coming to PC but I think it's only coming to PC via their own um like system I think I'm gonna check if it's on Steam um no it looks like it might also be coming to steam so it's called the ant stream arcade ant s t r eam uh if you go to anstream.com you'll find it and there's a collection of 1470 games 201 of them are Amiga games which you'll be able to play through some sort of emulation thing that is legal I don't know what the [ __ ] this thing is um I think there are two ways to buy it it is I forget exactly how I think one of them is like a year-long access to the library for like 30 bucks or you can pay 60 or 70 bucks for like lifetime access to the library so you're basically just buying the game I guess um but whatever is in this Library might change I guess because of different deals or legal things I don't know this especially cool if there are some specific stuff here which is so alien so Amiga for me is like really big so it's 201 Amiga games on it 35 amstrad games 293 arcade games 28 Atari 8-bish uh 26 Atari 2600 games 11 Atari 78 800 games 358 Commodore 64 games there's five dos games in there which is a bit weird data tentacle Full Throttle I'm not sure if these are games that are in the public domain now so I have no idea there's a couple of Game Boy games uh uh links Genesis MSX NES it's two PS1 games 40 winks and loaded it's quite funny as some snez stuff a lot of ZX Spectrum stuff 351 games there um and a couple of others as well but it seems mostly Commodore 64 Specky and um Amiga I would say and then I guess the arcade games as well but yeah I don't know how the emulation is this thing might run like crap I have no idea but it's it's out it should be out by the time this podcast is up I think it's out tomorrow uh Thursday the 20th as we're recording this I'm definitely gonna check it out and see what the deal is with it but I thought I'd mention it seems pretty crazy the uh the trailer on the steam page for this is um it's a 7000 BC and there's a caveman and he's carving something into a wall oh my God and then you skip ahead and the camera pulls out and he's drawing the original space fall this is insane which is actually I gotta give it to them that's a really good trailer wow if this works on Deck as well that would be pretty cool it looks like it works on mobile Maybe as well I'm not sure they have an Xbox pad here um and then it cuts to a weird old do you see this businessman at the end of it who's playing on his MacBook and he's like old man oh yeah just in case he didn't feel old enough that's actually a really sad image he looks really sad he looks like he just finished a meeting where he like closed a two million dollar deal and it didn't make him feel anything and now he's revisiting his childhood too in an attempt to feel anything at all I need to play some Double Dragon just cut me I need to feel something I need to play some root beer Tapper um yeah so I guess check that out one more time it is called the ant stream arcade no idea why it's called the name I thought the company is probably called Ant stream or something and they just oh yeah and stream limited is the okay I know it's like [ __ ] what was that um what was that fear game they're just trapang Studios which I found quite funny um that's about guys folks I go off hanging out uh go check out our vampire survivors documentary awesome work by Jesse Garcia and Frank Hurley on that one as well um because people seem to really enjoying that documentary and our beautiful publish Luca um like I said more tape stuff coming we will be at Pax West on Saturday September 2nd at 2 30 p.m in the Monarch Theater that is Saturday September 2nd 2 30 Apex West in the Monarch Theater I'll bring some uh I'll bring some tape stuff I might be on the way back from a Euro trip so we might have some exclusives as well uh we're really delighted to hang out and see everyone and uh yeah I'm gonna bring some I think I've still got some Summer Jam lanyards and stickers and stuff I'll bring some of those so we can hang out and hand out some of those things as well if you'd like to support all of our work our tape reservation projects the podcast our documentaries uh no clip crew and loads more um get access to a bunch of exclusive videos and loads more head over to patreon.com noclip and help us sash we have a big anniversary coming up as well year seven coming up in September um and excited to do some and announcements then too plenty of work going on here in the background Dwarf Fortress in the Burger King documentary in production Frank is going to be filming for filming some copies of sneaking this weekend right yeah I'm excited my friend Leroy who's also done hardcore wrestling but yeah 4 000 copies of sneaking excited to talk to him terrific play everyone Frank it's a real journalism right there um all right let's wrap it off thank you all so much for listening and we'll see you next time on the local podcast see you foreign [Music]

Channel: Noclip Podcast

Views: 2,989

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Id: 8hGgPPeiSB0

Length: 78min 18sec (4698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023