Transcript
neocharge: What's up everybody and welcome to Shapes of Gaming, the weekly conversational podcast all about video games that's unedited, unfiltered, and most certainly unhinged. I'm one of your hosts, Matt Stinson, NeoCharge on PSN, and joining me, as always, my brother in arms, we're on episode number 48, not 47, we'll get into that, is the retro gaming encyclopedia, Bob Harriman, Leon Lionheart, Leon, and I'm on PSN.
neocharge: What's going on, man?
Leon Lionheartly: Sorry I'm late. Did you miss me?
neocharge: yeah Yes, always.
Leon Lionheartly: and
neocharge: Every week. Every week. i Yeah, it's been ah it's been good. So we're on episode 48. We thought we were going to hit episode 50 on May 1st, but I don't know. I think my math was off because...
neocharge: ah I mislabeled the last podcast episode. No one caught it. No one told me. So who knows if anyone's listening to this? I don't know. Who cares?
neocharge: ah We're having fun here. But yeah, it was ah episode 47. We had two episode forty seven s or 46s. So we...
Leon Lionheartly: Was it sixes or sevens?
neocharge: Oh my God. No, I... it it that's That's what it... God, I swear I'm cursed by that now. Caleb cursed me Dude, I shit you not. And I sent you guys a group, ah a video on the group. But he was ah joking about something 6-7, a joke in Crimson Desert.
neocharge: And as soon as i was I was watching that video, and then I was listening to a podcast, and the person on the podcast mission mentioned 6-7 too. So I'm like, dude, no, no.
neocharge: Is this like the universal...
Leon Lionheartly: yeah
neocharge: number of the ancient architects. Who knows? I don't like it, but maybe I just have to embrace it. I'm a big fan of see 11-11 a lot. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: honest
neocharge: Yeah. Dude, it was always 69.
Leon Lionheartly: See, that's what you need to do, though, because that that's why I use it as frequently as I do.
neocharge: yeah 69. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: is If you remember back to when you were a child and like you had a cool hip phrase or something and your parents tried to use it, yeah.
neocharge: hey dude it was always sixty nine sixty nine yeah
Leon Lionheartly: And then if your parents tried to use it, it was kind of like, ew. And you got like you stopped wanting to use it as much.
neocharge: mehi Right.
Leon Lionheartly: That's what you do with 6-7. You embrace it.
neocharge: yes
Leon Lionheartly: And I've done it in this house. And now the kids roll their eyes at me, which means six seven is finally dead around here.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Okay. Okay, good. So I don't even know the meaning behind it. Like I know, I clearly know the meaning behind six, nine, and we're not going to get into this podcast. And if you don't know that, go do your fucking research on why 69 is a ah number of the nineties or the seventies, if you will, or eighties, who knows, but six, seven, six or seven,
neocharge: Like that's the the saying. And it means, no, I don't.
Leon Lionheartly: you You know why, right?
neocharge: Why? Teach me.
Leon Lionheartly: that's that's So I asked my oldest on this.
neocharge: Yeah, i have I don't have kids to ask.
Leon Lionheartly: because i was I was like, what the fuck's with do this six seven thing?
neocharge: so Right.
Leon Lionheartly: The point of it is there is no point.
neocharge: No, no, no. That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. No.
Leon Lionheartly: because Because of the reaction you're giving me right now is why the kids started doing it because there was no point and then it would drive adults crazy. So then they just continue to use it.
neocharge: Now, there needs to be logic behind words and phrases. ah they're you know God, I swear to God, these kids are playing too much Fortnite, getting brain rot in Roblox and shit. there There needs to be reasons behind words. That's why we have the English language. Anyway, welcome to Shapes of Gaming.
neocharge: We are ah your hosts here talking about 6'7", Gen Z, everything like that. Drinking some good beers. So what are you drinking, Bob? What's the drink of choice this evening for you?
Leon Lionheartly: Well, I have not, and we'll get into it later, but as you can hear my voice, I have not been drinking beer for the last week, pretty much since you know like we last recorded kind of a situation.
neocharge: Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: So I found in my, because I came straight from work too, I found sitting in the fridge, one last living the dream powder run, and I'm going enjoy that and then go to you to restock for tomorrow.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Ooh.
Leon Lionheartly: tomorrow So and we'll see what we have next week.
neocharge: Yep, yep, we'll hit them the liquor store.
Leon Lionheartly: um
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: But yeah, it's ah this is my first beer in a week.
neocharge: ah
neocharge: Yeah, nice. I saved the the crack for the cast crack as well. ah But yeah, I owe you three six packs. One from Pocopia getting over 80 on Metacritic.
neocharge: Holy shit, it's the highest rated game.
Leon Lionheartly: Did it get over 80? Where is it at?
neocharge: it's Just shut up. it's thought Did I break it? Did I win? It's the highest rated game of the year sitting at 90 on Metacritic. How wrong I was. And I thought Pokemon Champions was going to be the Pokemon game.
neocharge: But seeing that it is a mobile game and free to play and a subscription service, it ain't doing too well in the open critics, Bob. And I dropped this shit like a bad habit about a week and a half ago. So glad I did. And holy crap, I had them backwards. But the other two six packs, because you picked up my ticket for...
neocharge: Bit Brigade. We are going to see Bit Brigade. ah But before we talk about life, I'll talk about my beer. I am drinking the last of the Prairie 12 pack, the variety pack.
neocharge: And this is Transfusion.
Leon Lionheartly: Who
neocharge: So a cocktail-inspired malt beverage with Concord grape, limes, and ginger. Typically, I'm not a big fan of when ginger is in my drinks because it's like a spicy root.
neocharge: Uh, but this is actually pretty good. The, the ginger is not too, uh, like prominent and it's more of a very so like a grape sour.
neocharge: So I'm a big fan of it.
Leon Lionheartly: who who who made that?
neocharge: Uh, prairie, prairie brewing.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay, i might have to check it out. I am a fan of Ginger, personally.
neocharge: Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. The ginger root is very healthy for you. Very gut-friendly, too. ah Yeah, Prairie art Artisan Ales, and it is in McAllister, Oklahoma.
neocharge: So, not Colorado local, but adjacent state, kind of. Not bordering. There's the cast crack, if you will.
Leon Lionheartly: There it is.
neocharge: And I'm drinking out of my Destiny Titan glass. So, I have...
Leon Lionheartly: see.
neocharge: I got these straight from Bungie. They Bungie official. So...
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, that look at that logo on there.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: That's I'm assuming laser
neocharge: Laser etched. I made sure I bought them directly from the Bungie site, and there were four of them. So I have the Warlock symbol, of course. Hunter, Titan, and then the Destiny symbol itself.
neocharge: So the Tricorn, they call it.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, okay.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Ooh, you know, i' I've got to, it's say yeah funny you say for a direct, ah purchase direct, because I have a reminder on my phone right now for next and for next week.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah So that way I can be like, oh shit, I got to stop whatever I'm doing and make sure i i pick that up. ah
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: but we'll We'll save that for it.
neocharge: Yep. So.
Leon Lionheartly: We'll save that for when it arrives. I think i think that'll be a good surprise.
neocharge: Okay. little Little surprise. Maybe we'll do video. Who knows?
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Maybe we might just go.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: We're we're keeping the cast short, as you know. Hey, look at us going right into housekeeping. Just flowing in. I shouldn't even have said anything. No one would have ever known the transition. as I'm drinking Transfusion. ah But yeah, we have been keeping the cast a little shorter. Honestly, we have a lot of games to lot of games to play, and we love talking about video games, drinking beer with you all, but you know we also like playing video games.
neocharge: And Bob and I are trying to finish, probably both of us, two long games ah each. Well, one each, two long games before, man, I think Hades 2 comes out.
neocharge: And that is Tuesday. Or are you you banking on Pragmata? They're three days apart, so...
Leon Lionheartly: i I think I'll end up getting them both, ah if I'm being honest.
neocharge: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm getting them both, but one releases three days, so if you don't get Hades 2, you have three more days to finish what you're playing, which we'll talk about.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, it's going to be a game. It's going to be a decision because I'm really close and it's it's all going to be dependent on how things go. you know For all I know, I get knocked down another week, right?
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. But we're trying to keep the cast short. So on these short casts, when we're like, hey, we're going to do an in and out and we might do video. Who knows? All right. Hey, oh, a quick little in and out.
Leon Lionheartly: don't want to hands off. I don't to.
neocharge: Yeah. So we're going to keep the cast short. Let's see. Might start doing video. Who knows? We'll surprise you all.
Leon Lionheartly: I don't want to.
neocharge: Our friend Alex, the gentleman that does our intro, just dropped a fucking killer album. recently ah called X30.
neocharge: And it ah his artist name is B.A. Select Start. He's on Spotify. He's on YouTube. He's pretty much everywhere. Apple Music. I listen to him on Apple Music. But go check it out.
neocharge: It's ah what I would consider retro trance. So it's very unique. It has some inspirations for sure from a lot of things, but is very unique. And dude, that album is killer. I've listened to it multiple times. It's very fun to drive ah pretty fast to.
Leon Lionheartly: Yes, it is. i i may i may be guilty of that as well.
neocharge: ah ah
neocharge: Heck yeah. But yeah, ah go check it out. Give it a listen. If you want to talk to him about music, he's on the Discord. Oracle Mike on the Discord. But he's such a cool dude. Very talented. And this album, man, he pulled out all the stops. And this is I think this is an evolution for him. So ah he is working actually on a... um evolution to our intro as well. And we're going to have that on episode 50. So look forward to that. Go check out his album. ah Again, B-A, select, start.
neocharge: And the album is called X30. It dropped, what, few days ago? April second
Leon Lionheartly: Second, yeah, so let's send a little less than a week.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. So incredible. Just really cool. Very heavy bass synth. Just fucking rocks, man. So well done, Alex. Well done.
neocharge: And we love what you're doing. Keep it up. And if you want to hear some really cool tunes, all instrumental. Well, there are some lyrics in some of his bonus tracks, but go check it out.
neocharge: Spotify everywhere. So yeah, it's awesome, man.
Leon Lionheartly: Agreed.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: It hits really well, particularly if if you're an old school gamer ah like us.
neocharge: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: you You hear those inspirations kind of a little bit in there and I'm taken back to my early childhood. It's it's fucking wonderful work.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah I'm so glad he finally got off his ass and did this. Pardon the expression, but um it took it took you long enough, buddy.
neocharge: Yeah. Uh, so yeah, we're super happy it's out and yeah, I'm enjoying the album. So check it out. i don't know if it's for sale. It's on all streaming platforms. So yeah. Uh, and it's really cool to talk to him. Cause I mean, nothing, no AI was used. Everything is from scratch. He's doing the piano with his fucking fingers, right? Even the fast parts. So it's really cool to talk to him and be like, dude this is one of my favorite tracks. And he's like, oh, this is how I made it. And he's super passionate about it. We love you, buddy. So ah go check out that album. Super cool. X30 from BA Select Start.
neocharge: So yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: yes sir
neocharge: Yep. ah Let's see. Like I said, we are coming up on our year anniversary. ah We're going to have episode 50. It'll either be 50 or 51. I don't know.
neocharge: I have to do math again and lay out the...
Leon Lionheartly: Well, let's see. This is going to be what?
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: Episode 48, 49.
neocharge: Eight. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: It will be next week. And then the 22nd will be 50.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: Episode 50.
neocharge: So it'll be fifty one
Leon Lionheartly: Yep. So 51 will technically be our next one.
neocharge: be 51.
Leon Lionheartly: Damn.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Close.
neocharge: Yeah. Shapes of Gaming was established ah at Metric Brewing by Bob and I. We just chatted about and we're like, yeah, let's do it. But it was officially established May 1st was our first episode.
neocharge: Hello, world.
Leon Lionheartly: Hello, world. I think I have an idea. If you really want to land ah episode 50 on the first, um let's we can talk after...
neocharge: Okay. Okay.
neocharge: Yeah, let's do it. Live show, call
Leon Lionheartly: No, let's or you think about this. Kick it around. is i Maybe we find some way to kind of miss ah next week, find it some way. um i got a few things I've got a few things, quite frankly, going on that week.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: ah most
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Well, I'm not going to get it out there, but most notably an event in my life next week, so as well as a few other things.
neocharge: Yeah. Oh, gotcha.
Leon Lionheartly: So it might be great to say, hey, we'll see you on it but at the one year on episode 50.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: kind of build up that tension a little bit. Be like, eh, we're going skip one, but we got something special for episode 50 on May 1st, 2026.
Leon Lionheartly: Uh-huh, yeah. Make you miss me. Yeah.
neocharge: So yeah, we're coming up on our one-year anniversary. We'll probably do video for that. Maybe. Who knows? I don't know if Zencaster doesn't fucking shit a brick every time we try. But I mean...
neocharge: to to be fair it To be fair, it was ah like a five-hour episode on video.
Leon Lionheartly: this
neocharge: And i think i I'm pretty sure we broke Zencaster. So that ah that episode will forever be lost. Video. But we... ah Dude, I pulled down the the individual tracks, put it in GarageBand, built it out.
neocharge: Had to cut it into like three ah episodes, but we got it out there for you all. That was the Game Awards episode. So there is a long lost video version of that. that I mean, I have the individual video, but you'll never see it.
neocharge: Maybe. I don't know. B-roll. Who knows? Might put it...
Leon Lionheartly: That'd be kind of cool.
neocharge: Right? Right? So... Yeah. I hope you enjoyed our farce intro last episode. That was fun for us. And we fooled everyone.
neocharge: So been getting a lot of messages about that.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, yeah.
neocharge: they They loved it. So that was fun.
Leon Lionheartly: and you you're You really got me too, or put me on the spot, and Caleb for that matter, because it was like, oh, I'll tell you ahead of time.
neocharge: Good. Good.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm like, no. So that all of all of that, folks, from Caleb and mine's perspective, I don't know about a you, Matt, was all impromptu, like whose line it is it anyway kind of bullshit.
neocharge: Right.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Yeah. No, I, I didn't script any of it. I, I just thought of the, i have a lot of shower thoughts and I thought of the idea and then I was like, okay, I thought of the the model name and that's about it.
neocharge: And then I was like ah feeding off you guys. So that was like a, whose line is it anyway? Event. And we, we went for like seven or eight minutes. That was fun. So Caleb, Caleb broke us when he was like, yeah, my sister helps me.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: And I was like, Oh, I can't do it.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, well played.
neocharge: that's like Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Well played.
neocharge: Well played. Well played. So yeah. Yeah. Thanks everyone so much for listening. And ah we have a discord. We appreciate all of our listeners, all the community there.
neocharge: It sounded like I was ending the show there. Thanks everyone so much for listening. This has been episode.
Leon Lionheartly: April Fool's joke continues.
neocharge: No, but no, exactly, exactly.
Leon Lionheartly: Ha ha.
neocharge: But so yeah, this is, this is the discord shapes, the gaming.com plug. Where, where can people find us if they want to join the community?
Leon Lionheartly: Well, you just said it right there. You go to shape the gaming dot com.
neocharge: I know, exactly. Exactly. That's what
Leon Lionheartly: Pop that into your browser of choice and you'll go to all of our landing pages. It's give you individual URLs for anything that you want to pick and choose of our products. If you want to come and see us on the the the what is it?
neocharge: exactly
Leon Lionheartly: The Twitches? I'm just kidding, folks.
neocharge: ah tweet
Leon Lionheartly: I'm an old man gamer. But yeah, go check us out on Twitch. I'm usually there. i haven't been in the last couple of weeks. It's been... and We'll get into it in life. um Been a little rough. ah But yeah, like go check us out there.
Leon Lionheartly: Come join the Discord while you're out listening to us or... potentially watching in the future, um you know, leave us ah some nice comments, give us the thumbs up hearts, whatever that is, and ah go peruse the socials. Alex is over there running them in between the sessions, jam sessions of building whatever he's doing for his next album. So once again, go say hi at shapesagaming.com.
neocharge: Yep, definitely. ah yeah it's been it's been fun and we're going on a year, like I said. So we've built a pretty awesome community. We're planning on growing even more. We have some ideas and ah yeah, we we ain't stopping anytime soon.
neocharge: So we love this shit. ah Yeah, the the Twitch has been a little quiet, but we're we're saving that more for co-op stuff. So i'm I'm sure we're probably going to get into more Borderlands. April, probably, because there's nothing in April, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, nothing.
neocharge: April's pretty free and clear.
Leon Lionheartly: nothing i My wallet's not, my wallet's saying, please don't spend me. You know, it's fine.
neocharge: ah Wallets hurting a little. April's fucked. We're going to talk about that. i don't know. We'll save it for the news on everything coming out in April that we're excited for. Maybe our quick thoughts on it. So yeah.
neocharge: Other than that, man, how's life been? We're going to bit brigade tomorrow. So that's fucking cool.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. Yes, we are.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. So.
Leon Lionheartly: that was ah That was a little touch and go for a moment there. I'm not going to lie. At least from my perspective, I would given you my ticket and then said, bring a hot chick, you know, just take pictures.
neocharge: Oh yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah But, you know, was as soon as we wrapped up ah recording last week, I felt this little bit of an itch in the back of my throat because Crystal was sick.
neocharge: Mm hmm.
neocharge: Oh.
Leon Lionheartly: She had been coughing up. I thought it was a flu or some kind of sinus infection. um i was like, no, maybe I just strained my voice too much from... you know talking about poop ah and toilets.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: and then i will And then I woke up the next day, which would have been, what, Thursday?
neocharge: Poop is funny.
Leon Lionheartly: And went into work.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: And I was home within two hours. I went home.
neocharge: Damn.
Leon Lionheartly: I i ended up congested. I had all kinds of weird, just like a nasty cough. um Friday, I was like, oh, no big deal. this is I'm feeling a little better.
Leon Lionheartly: i'm I'm great. So I pushed through work. and this And this is going to come important later, okay?
neocharge: Ooh.
Leon Lionheartly: So I pushed through work. And I was like, oh, yeah, that wasn't so bad. It was 24 hours. No big deal. Got home, ate dinner, and immediately broke out into ah ah a ah fever.
Leon Lionheartly: And I'm not talking a small one.
neocharge: Ooh.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm 97.6, 97.5 person. i run lower naturally in my body temperature.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: I was creeping in the 99.6 range. ah
neocharge: Mm.
Leon Lionheartly: So i was I was hurting a little. And then it continued.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And I was like, oh, crap. I don't have stomach issues, but I have everything else. Could this possibly be COVID variant?
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And I was like, eh, maybe not. I tell you, Matt, you know...
neocharge: Did you get tested?
Leon Lionheartly: No, it was the weekend.
neocharge: No.
Leon Lionheartly: And i'm like and they don't have those 24 services anymore.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And I'm not paying but urgent care or prices, whatever, right?
neocharge: Right.
neocharge: Nah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: They're not going to give me anything anyways. I was like, okay, no big deal. And then I saw that and I thought, maybe it it wasn't, maybe it's just something else. And then I woke up, it was Monday or something. And my taste was muted.
neocharge: that's That's the telltale sign when you lose your taste. Parosmia, they call it.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep. Yep. Pros. There you go. See, I learned something pros me up, but yeah, I, I lost it.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: And that's when I was like, crap, which brought me back.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And I ended up reaching out to people. I'm like, dude, I was in on Friday. i was feeling okay, but I'm just letting you know.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And fortunately nobody in my office is sick. We're good to go all that good stuff. But I, let's just say that put me out, uh, out and I'm just now finally on the mend.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Dang. Yeah. ah Do you still have taste issues?
Leon Lionheartly: I wouldn't say taste issues, but it's it's weird.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: like there's this it It's like an augment has been added to my taste.
neocharge: It's yeah. stepish
Leon Lionheartly: It's normal, but it's different at the same time.
neocharge: Yeah. Stuff tastes differently. So when you have a typical cold, the only reason you have a hard time tasting stuff is because you're stuffed up, right? and your sinuses, you taste stuff by smelling it while you're eating it, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep.
neocharge: Parosmia with COVID is different. I had parosmia for about two weeks. and Some people had it for fucking six months. It literally messes with your olfactory sensor sensors in your sinuses.
Leon Lionheartly: Ugh.
neocharge: So it mutes your taste. It's not because you're stuffed up and you can't smell. It fucks with your olfactory senses. So like ah some people, like onions will taste different or meat will taste different.
neocharge: I know for me, like, A1 sauce. I was out and I was eating A1 sauce. I was on the mend, right? This was COVID back in 2021. November 2022, I think. I caught Delta, I believe. Or 2021.
neocharge: I forget. I don't know. But I was eating A1 sauce, and it just tasted completely different. It tastes like shit. I love A1, but it tasted like shit. So it messes. it It fucks with your senses and makes you think you're eating something else. It's fucked up.
neocharge: COVID was gnarly.
Leon Lionheartly: That's
neocharge: Parosmia.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, that is little fucked up. you know I'm going to have to think on that.
neocharge: Parosmia.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm going let you know how long this keeps going. I think it's finally starting to mellow down.
neocharge: Ah,
Leon Lionheartly: But yeah, it's that was my telltale sign. um So needless to say, i had I canceled my trip to the Mario movie. I was going to take the whole family.
neocharge: ah yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: So we got to reschedule that for this coming week. I like it.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: it through And then, of course, I'm sweating bullets trying to finish one particular game so we can prepare for the chaos that is fucking April.
neocharge: Yup.
neocharge: Or the storm, if you will.
Leon Lionheartly: Yes.
neocharge: Yeah. ah Well, I'm glad you're feeling better. And Yeah, keep me updated on the the taste stuff. how's How's beer? Because, dude, beer was even affected with me. And I was like, just, I'm done.
neocharge: um Take me out to the shed. I'm done. But thankfully, it came back. Is it different?
Leon Lionheartly: It is different.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: it's It's delicious. But I just had this last week, so I remember. But it's different. it's oh the Vanilla notes are gone.
neocharge: you Yeah. Okay. Wow. Interesting. Yeah, dude, parosmia. There was like this girl that had parosmia for like six months after COVID and she documented her journey. And I i had it and I just did so much research on And I was like, what the fuck is going on? Dude, COVID felt so synthetic when you have it. It's just like, this is not natural. This is not natural.
neocharge: It's from a lab, but I'm not getting into that.
Leon Lionheartly: you know yeah it's Yeah, no, but it is designed is human design. This is some Resident Evil beta testing ah bullshit, and we're Raccoon City, folks.
neocharge: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
neocharge: Absolutely. Yeah. So when I had it, it just, I've, I've been sick. Uh, when i get sick, I don't usually take anything for it. I just do a lot of water rest and a lot of vitamin C.
neocharge: Even with COVID, I did that and I built an immune system to it.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. Yeah.
neocharge: But when I had COVID, it felt so much different. It felt like, I don't know, man, real synthetic, not natural. So yeah, happy you're on the men, dude.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: Um, lot of gaming time when you're sick. So that's good.
Leon Lionheartly: ah Yeah. ah for the most You do get a lot of gaming time for that. I will i'll admit, ah there was a couple of days where I was like, ah really can't even play games.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: I was just that fucking miserable.
neocharge: Yeah. Damn.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah. Dude, when you have a fever, your body like goes in fight or flight mode and you just get the aches and it feels like you're cooking from the inside. I hate it. I hate it. So, oh, damn. ah Bummer you didn't get to see the Mario Galaxy movie.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, I'll be doing it next week.
neocharge: But guess what?
Leon Lionheartly: But what what's that? Ah...
neocharge: I did.
Leon Lionheartly: a
neocharge: saw it. I saw it on Saturday, two days after we recorded. So, uh, saw it in XD, uh, Cinemark, uh, with a good friend of mine. And, I fucking loved it.
neocharge: It was great. Did I, dude, I, did I go in and expect a engaging, crazy story that has twists and turns on, and it makes you really think philosophically about life? No.
neocharge: I went to see fucking Mario and, and Yoshi and all his friends fuck around in the galaxy. And boy, oh boy, were there are so many Easter eggs. If you're a fan of Mario Galaxy, Mario in general, uh,
neocharge: So many Easter eggs and yeah, so it was fun. It was pretty. I laughed. I teared up a little bit and dude, Fox McCloud was fucking awesome.
Leon Lionheartly: Dude, that is awesome.
neocharge: So yeah, yeah. And ah just to let you know, I'm not going to tell you like the gravity of it, but there is a mid credit scene and a post credit scene. Just letting you know, just letting you know.
Leon Lionheartly: Hmm.
neocharge: ah So yeah, it was it was great, man. ah Just the the the tunes and just Mario Galaxy is my favorite 3D Mario of all time. I kind of see Mario Galaxy, Mario Galaxy 2, kind of the same game. They do a lot of... ah the same but different, right?
neocharge: And Galaxy is is my favorite Mario series. So it was a treat to see the game portrayed on the screen. And oh my God, Rosalina, boy, oh boy, did they do a good job with her model. I'm just saying.
Leon Lionheartly: Good.
neocharge: Man.
Leon Lionheartly: No, that's awesome, man.
neocharge: Oh yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: i'm I'm definitely looking forward to it.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah Galaxy is an amazing ah game. It's not my favorite 3D Mario, but it is definitely...
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, it's probably number two. Who am I kidding?
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah
neocharge: Yeah. What's your favorite? 64?
Leon Lionheartly: yeah there's there's something Yeah, there's something about that game that just...
neocharge: Of course. course. That's a close second for me. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: when When you're talking about games from their generation and you're looking at 10 out of 10 games, because they are, in my eyes, 10 out of 10s, you got to really start like nitpicking the little things and getting a more subjective stuff that can't be brought from the game directly.
neocharge: me
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: And Mario 64 invokes this certain sense of warmness and comfort that Galaxy can't compete with.
neocharge: Yeah, definitely. Unfortunately, Galaxy released on the Wii, so I'm excited to revisit it on the sticks, on the Switch 2.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, yeah.
neocharge: two ah It's got a Switch 1 version, Switch 2 enhanced, ah and I won't buy it physically. I didn't buy it physically because I own Galaxy 1 and 2 on Wii, on their respective systems, but Yeah, I'll check it out. And I'll buy it when I want to check it out because it's never going to go on sale. And thankfully, you can buy them all a cart.
neocharge: So I'll probably just get Galaxy 1 first and then 2. But when the fuck am I going to play these games, Bob?
Leon Lionheartly: i I don't know, man. It's it's it's rough. i'll ah I'll say this. as Part of Galaxy, um just you're going to have to buy it and just get it digitally. that i and that There's a reason I bring that up.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: It's because i a buddy that i we don't talk a lot, but he reached out to me, Zach, and he wanted to ask about some Mario stuff and if I saw the movie. And then he's like, well, should I get... And he's younger. We're talking like 21 years.
neocharge: you Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: young early 20s kind of situation and he's like um well should I get Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 because i you know i i heard those are good games he didn't have them when he was a kid so I was like please go fucking buy it input your go to and NSO import your credit card directly into the Switch and say please Mr.
neocharge: Oh, wow. Dang.
neocharge: ah
Leon Lionheartly: Miyamoto take my money
neocharge: Right. Absolutely. Wow. That's crazy. Dude, they they came out in my
Leon Lionheartly: that's what i'm That's what I'm saying. by though he would He would have been young, but he wouldn't have been like barely just getting started ah if he got started at that early, you know like when I did.
neocharge: Yeah, right.
Leon Lionheartly: so yeah Mario Galaxy, though. Go, dude.
neocharge: Oh, yeah. Incredible game. And the movie ah does it just it it justice. It ends abruptly, so just forewarning. um it is It's a little shorter than I thought it would be. so But yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: That's not what she said.
neocharge: um yeah Exactly. Giggity. ah Yeah. What else? um It's going to rain a lot here, so i'm excited for that. we need We need the rain.
neocharge: And I might try and finally hit the mountain one last time on Wednesday. They're getting snow up there. So might might go up there. Or I mean, I mean, Saturday, definitely on a weekend for sure.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, totally. No, man, I get it.
neocharge: ah
Leon Lionheartly: go Go get your one last ride in, so to speak, before we're in the scorching heat that is summertime here.
neocharge: Yeah. Well, hopefully we have cold nights here, but yeah, if you're in the sun and it's hot, it's it's hot, but it's dry heat, which is good. So ah yeah. What do you say we get into the news?
Leon Lionheartly: Oh shit. Do we got to do that this week? I'm just kidding. Of course we'll get into the news. We've got a couple of small items for you guys this week. Um, we'll save, uh, this is one of our, uh, sad notes for the week.
Leon Lionheartly: This is our sad piece of news.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Um, not as a consumer, but as as a game, as a gamer, uh,
neocharge: Yeah. Damn. yeah la
Leon Lionheartly: well well who um I pulled this from ah Game Informer, but naturally, it's all over the place right now.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: um This came out two days ago from when we're recording, so on the 6th of April. um Double Dragon and the River City franchise is his creator Yoshishia Kishimoto ah passed away suddenly.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: He was 64 years old, and this was announced. and um I don't know about you, he was.
neocharge: He was a young man. Young man.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. I don't know about you but I played the shit out of both the River City and Double Dragon growing up.
neocharge: I did not. ah My experience with Double Dragon was, ironically, Bit Brigade. ah At one of the MAGFests, they did Double Dragon. They played the entire game front to back, performed it on stage, and that was my experience with Double Dragon.
neocharge: Amazing. I know it's a classic, but I never played it, and Yeah, I know they're they're awesome games, so we lost we lost a good one. That's unfortunate.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, dude. And and i and i Double Dragon is obviously the more iconic. um I know that for sure in my heart of hearts. And while those games are amazing, ah do not undersell the River City ah series.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: River City Ransom on the n NES, man, was... Do you like side-scroll and beat-em-ups?
neocharge: Yeah, love them.
Leon Lionheartly: do Do you like to move around freely between maps as a side-scroll and beat-em-ups? So zones?
neocharge: Oh, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: where you collect money and you go to yeah and you go to shops and you upgrade ah your weapons.
neocharge: Yeah. Sounds like TMNT.
Leon Lionheartly: And it's it's a crime game.
neocharge: Heck yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: So we're talking like, you're not a good guy, Grand Theft Auto kind of individual ah team up.
neocharge: Oh, very cool. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: It's so fucking good. At least from a like setting, because n NES games, they had story if you looked hard enough, but definitely go check it out. It's like Double Dragon, but with ah extra features and I fucking love it.
neocharge: Okay. Very cool. Yeah. Never played any of them. I do enjoy side scroller beat them ups. ah but Yeah. Double dragon. and I just had experience with watching it a live show and then no experience with river city or ransom, but I do.
neocharge: I'm very, very ah familiar with the titles and their, their classic ah nature. So yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, definitely. ah Go, but yep, RIP and peace.
neocharge: Damn.
Leon Lionheartly: um And we just did get that River City Girls game.
neocharge: RIP and peace.
Leon Lionheartly: I never got a chance to check it out.
neocharge: and
Leon Lionheartly: I have to go look into that um as ah as a tribute, if you will.
neocharge: Yep. We're not doing anything and else in April. April's fine.
Leon Lionheartly: No, no, I'm completely open.
neocharge: Yeah. Got some time.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: This next one, Brooke today, I know you're fucking super excited about this, dude. This started kind of circulating. um Specifically, this is being reported but over um from Insider Gaming by Tom Henderson.
Leon Lionheartly: um I woke up this morning, as I normally do, or rub the crusties out of my eyes, and I check my messages because, quite frankly, I go to bed and say,
neocharge: know Check all 200 messages.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, and sometimes do you guys go fucking to two in the morning and then I'm looking and playing catch up.
neocharge: Well, just
neocharge: you love it.
Leon Lionheartly: I do. And then I'll check Twitter to see if there's any like, is the world still alive kind of a situation.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: And I saw he posted directly to X um that he just flat out didn't say my sources, none of that. He just said, and I'm quoting, or well, I'm not going to quote. How about that?
Leon Lionheartly: He just said, Blackfrog re-synced will be revealed next week, April 16th, but he doesn't know anything more beyond that. But it's coming, supposedly.
neocharge: That's it.
Leon Lionheartly: And Tom Henderson does this.
neocharge: And who who tweeted? Tom Henderson. Yeah. Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: And he's usually pretty accurate on his stuff. And that's a confident statement.
neocharge: Mm-hmm. Awesome. This was already revealed by... that Well, so the the key art or some sort of art in the name was already revealed directly by Ubisoft.
neocharge: ah They did have a little Assassin's Creed, what we're doing, what the plan is, little presentation. Had a little ah video with it too. Because they've had some shake-ups and mix-up with... ah leadership there.
neocharge: So the new guy, uh, that's in charge of a lot of really good, really classic old Assassin's Creed games. I mean, damn classic. They don't, that, that sounds crazy to say classic Assassin's Creed game when it launched on the three 60 and PS three, maybe not, uh,
neocharge: But the older, i frankly, better Assassin's Creed games, though I love Valhalla, he mentioned that what they're working on, Hexay is still in development, and they showed our boy, Edward Kenway, and they said, yes, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, resynced, is real and is coming.
Leon Lionheartly: Jordan.
neocharge: So, awesome. Sounds like we're getting a release date. And do we want to touch on the other rumor that where it's probably going to be announced? Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah Yeah, that's exactly where I was getting ready to go is in that that smooth transition for you there, buddy. ah
neocharge: Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: But yeah, you're right. you You heard about it as well. ah But so the listeners are talking about Nate to Hate, ah the same gentleman online, Notorious Leaker, that spoke about the recent rumors with Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time and Star Fox games coming.
neocharge: Yes. Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: yes
Leon Lionheartly: He posted on Twitter. Well, let me back up. A couple of days ago, he posted something on Twitter um about a state of play and then people bugged him. So he just came out to today and said, since it's gained unexpected attention and attraction, um I'll share the unconfirmed date I've heard for the next potential state of play, which is but but ah April 16th. So I think Sony gets to carry out the red carpet here, brother.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: Damn, I was waiting on it.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah
neocharge: I hit it and there was a delay. ah Yes, I think so too. ah So the 16th, you said, and the dates line up, right?
Leon Lionheartly: That's a Thursday.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. Thursday, State of Play. And then the set ah then Tom Henderson said we're getting a release date on the 16th. So the dates are completely synced, if you will. Yeah.
neocharge: Holy shit. um First of all, if this is at the state of play, awesome. Second of all, if we're getting another state of play, the last state of play was incredible and amazing.
neocharge: ah So but I got some medium expectations for this one. Not low anymore. Medium. Not high, right? But medium. And Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag is in my top five favorite games of all time. Assassin's Creed...
neocharge: It used to be one of my favorite IPs. It's kind of gone by the wayside, but if they go back and remake that game, it's the best pirate sim ever created.
neocharge: It's an incredible Assassin's Creed game, but the the mechanics and the gameplay do need some work, and if they bring like the RPG elements into it, oh, man. You know what? Someone should draft this because it's gonna it's going to hit. Oh, wait.
neocharge: see
Leon Lionheartly: Motherfucker.
neocharge: I drafted this, what, four months ago? I said, it's coming.
Leon Lionheartly: And the one that was confirmed, old blood confirmed, got fucking canceled. i
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: That's my pen. This is your play catch-up because this is my penance for drafting Pocopia for a dollar.
neocharge: Yep. Yep. I think the original Assassin's Creed Black Flag got like 89. I'm pretty sure. So if they just stay true to the original, maybe add the stuff that was cut ah that would flesh out the story.
neocharge: And I think they said they're going to drop all the modern sequences, which is a good thing because the modern stuff, though, they they should still tell that story in like documents or something or maybe in the menu.
Leon Lionheartly: Thank you.
neocharge: But the gameplay was bad. It went first person. It was not good. And I was just like the whole time I was like, even though it's like my, in my top five favorite games all time, I was like, just let me be a pirate again. So I think they listened to the fan feedback and they're like, yeah, the modern stuff with Abstergo is, uh, it's not going to be in there. So I was happy to hear that.
neocharge: Uh, but they still need to tell that story because it's, it's important. Let's just say that.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: So, yeah, uh, I'm, I'm super excited for this man.
Leon Lionheartly: I mean,
neocharge: So excited.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, I know you are. Hell, I'm excited too.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: It's a great Assassin's Creed game. Don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. I know it's Ubisoft. There's glitches. Um, but you know, I'll say that two things I gotta say is one, I hope with things like, you know what I was, you know what i'm talking about with the Kenway ship or like it would just glitch when and you try to bring it in.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Um, and people could jump in and swim under the water and then it would come up and then they're on the ship already. like Lean into that. Make a reference somehow within the other resync. Play with it.
Leon Lionheartly: you know um And then cutting out the um ah modern day stuff is good. ah I know I'm probably going to get slaughtered on the the the the altar of ah AC fans and gamers.
Leon Lionheartly: But the modern stuff really was, it's not needed. it's It's a good setup and it's a good reason for it. But you don't need to enter, what I mean is you don't need to interwove it throughout the game because it breaks the that literal immersion of being back in time. Set it up.
Leon Lionheartly: Here's the prequel for it. Here's what's happened. And then like do that storytelling through of what other things are going on through dialogue or what have you. You could do it as a ah dialogue when somebody's talking within the Animus. You could have switched it up that way.
Leon Lionheartly: um
neocharge: Yeah, exactly.
Leon Lionheartly: Because I, you're right, I just wanted to get back to being a fucking pirate.
neocharge: Exactly. Yeah, we're ah aligned on that for sure. Yeah, so Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag originally released on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It was a launch title or either a launch window title. I got it for both systems to test it out ah because it was on the heels of AC3.
neocharge: ah no ac sin No, Syndicate was after Black Flag.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: i Yeah, so AC3, and we were all excited for it. It is sitting at 85 on OpenCritic with a 91% Critic recommendation and a 90 player rating.
neocharge: So this is a phenomenal Assassin's Creed game. ah One of the best, the the fan favorite in the IP. So my favorite. For sure.
neocharge: So it's, I mean, Assassin's Creed 2's second favorite. Everyone loves Assassin's Creed 2 as well.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: But 4, man, best ship gameplay ever. They just nailed it. So incredible, huge open world. And it's, you want to be a fucking pirate and like sail the the seas and have sea shanties and drink rum and go like steal shit from plantations for making rum?
neocharge: Be a pirate. It's awesome. Dude, can't wait. I really hope this is announced next week. And guess what? Even though we're recording this on Wednesday, it'll go live Friday because we're going to Bit Brigade tomorrow.
neocharge: We'll be busy in the evening.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep.
neocharge: But that's why we moved our recordings to Thursdays because we're going to have a stay to play.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: but We'll you probably do the state of play right after or the recording right after the state of play if if it winds up or that evening at the most.
Leon Lionheartly: That's
neocharge: But I usually do these state of plays midday. And I'm like, we're fucking working PlayStation. Damn it.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, it's tough. i could I try to clear my calendar as best as I can when that shit happens, but you're you're right.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And if you're excited, I'll give you a little bit of a tease as I haven't reported on it just because it's still very murky. But if you think that announcement is going to perk your interest, um June is is all I'm going to say.
Leon Lionheartly: At a certain event, not the Key League show, though.
neocharge: Your game fest. Not. Oh, Xbox. Xbox's event.
Leon Lionheartly: I've heard some rumors on some things and let's just say July is no longer going to be open.
neocharge: Oh, yeah. July's pretty open right now. Okay. Interesting. Cool. Yeah. Awesome. Stack it up. July's open. ah April's pretty open, too. we don't have anything going on April. Love to see something coming down.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: I just keep plugging it because it's going to be the title of this podcast, as you all have seen. So, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: ah Dude, State Play is always exciting. Have some watch parties. Get some new new shit. So, can't wait.
Leon Lionheartly: And feels good when you can do it in person too with like a group of friends because you're just like you can see who gets excited for what.
neocharge: It does. It does.
neocharge: Exactly.
Leon Lionheartly: at There's something about doing that shit in person and not virtual.
neocharge: Exactly.
neocharge: Yeah, remember when Castlevania was announced? I rolled on the floor, literally, and like weeped.
Leon Lionheartly: know
neocharge: No, i didn't weep. I teared up a little bit, and I was like, oh my god, it's alive! So...
Leon Lionheartly: I jumped for joy when Volume 2 was announced.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm like, yes, let's fucking go finally off the PS3.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So ah maybe in the future, we'll try and do some live reactions for you. But we tried that. Audio is really tough to get. We'll get our boy Alex to jump on that. Maybe. I don't know.
neocharge: Who knows?
Leon Lionheartly: Or are you guys can send me a big fat check for 50 grand to build a nice studio.
neocharge: We'll try.
neocharge: yeah. yeah we'll We'll do a studio.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah oh We're just kidding.
neocharge: We have a Patreon now. ah It's 50. No. This shit is free.
Leon Lionheartly: come Folks, we do this not for money, but for the love of the game.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Exactly. And for the love of you all to keep the conversation on the best damn form of art out there, video games. What's next on the list, Bob?
Leon Lionheartly: All right. Well, moving right into it. This one also came out. Rather, it didn't come out today, but it's hit prominence today um because people have gotten the beta or already starting to see this roll out worldwide.
Leon Lionheartly: um And PlayStation has decided to redesign the home menu by the looks of it.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Nothing officially announced, so this might be a a silent under-the-radar update, um but you can go check it out. It's online. There's a lot of videos because some people in the Spanish countries have gotten their supposedly gotten their hands on it.
Leon Lionheartly: and you can
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: might be if The one thing that everybody's talking about, and I love this, is you can just scroll through the menus by pressing R1 and L1 respectively. Why did it take them this long to get there?
neocharge: Yeah, you could you could do that now, but it just it has two categories, games and video.
Leon Lionheartly: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
neocharge: So all your other apps that aren't game apps are in the video section. And all the other services like PlayStation Store, PS Plus, your fucking library is just bulked in to with the with your games as an app.
neocharge: And it's always been kind of a clusterfuck, right? So they are moving like PlayStation Store and your library, which is awesome. And PS Plus as a new, completely different category above all of your games and apps.
neocharge: And you'll hit R1 and L1 to navigate through those. I love this change. I can't wait. And yeah, I love it. That's ah it's a good step in the right direction for a UI design for PS5.
Leon Lionheartly: I
neocharge: So.
Leon Lionheartly: i agree. and And it always drove me up a wall. Cause like you said, I look at those, that games in the, uh, in the video or whatever they call it, media, that's it. The media, those are your, and i not to be too technical, but those are your top two containers.
neocharge: Yes. Media.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: Um, which is really good when you're organizing objects on a backend. But if you're designing a UI for a user, um you don't want that. like Think about it this way, folks.
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: If you go to Word or your app ah word processing app of choice and you go to the top, there's file, there's view, there's menu, there's this, all these like five or six or seven ah different options, and it's usable.
Leon Lionheartly: Imagine if it just said file and then you had to like scroll the fuck down to find the next thing. Keep it up, PlayStation. I don't know why it took you five years to figure this out.
neocharge: Right. I would love to see a trophy category up there, too. Just its own thing. But, I mean, the trophies are under your profile. So...
Leon Lionheartly: um Yeah, but I was thinking about it this way. Why couldn't you allow for people to custom pin things to the top?
neocharge: maybe Maybe they can. Maybe it's a thing. And we just don't know a lot about it. we've We've gotten the screenshots. We've gotten multiple screenshots from different sources of the same thing. So it's probably real. That's why we're reporting on it. And we know PlayStation has said they are working on a new UI.
neocharge: We're getting glimpses of screenshots of the new UI out in beta form in in Mexico, I believe.
Leon Lionheartly: Yes, sir.
neocharge: So the the southern are countries. So yeah, ah dude, on the store, to get to your wishlist, you go to the store, you hit down, and then you're in the store, and they hide all the options until you hit up again.
neocharge: If you hit down, and if you hit up again, you would say, oh, I'm going back to the actual nested app in the container, right? But nope, it's ah it's a hidden fucking...
Leon Lionheartly: nope
neocharge: pretty much menu bar of shit. It's it's dumb. it's dumb it's It's a dumb design. I'm a fan of the current UI. I mean, they did did their best and it's better than ah some other stuff like the Xbox One grid-based UI, but it does need some work and it sounds like they have listened to player feedback and they are, ah yeah, putting the containers up top.
neocharge: more containers and nesting the apps only and you'll have a game section with just your game apps and your library won't be all the way the fuck to the right anymore so yeah yeah
Leon Lionheartly: yeah I'll say this much. You say this, but I have a player... You say player feedback, but I have a i have a feedback for you. And this doesn't go to Sony, but this goes to a lot of other people who make UI it changes on an app or whatever.
Leon Lionheartly: If it ain't broke, don't fuck with it.
neocharge: yeah right
Leon Lionheartly: Sony, you did not have to redesign the PlayStation 4 layout. That was...
neocharge: Nope.
Leon Lionheartly: That was ah amazing. It was easy to use.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: good to cut You could customize it, add new backgrounds, all kinds of cool shit.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: And then you you, I don't know, lit it on fire, blew a sent it in space and blew it up with an atomic bomb so some UI ah creator can earn his $250,000 a year salary. Get fucking bent. I'm sorry. That shit pisses me off.
neocharge: Dude, it's happening across the board. Like, just people are changing the design of everything. Apple just changed their fucking iOS design, and now I got to relearn that shit. Like, stop. Like, people get familiar with your UI and your layout.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Like, and then, like, stop. So it's it's a problem across. I know Adobe does it all the time. I know fucking Windows is super notorious for it. Thankfully, macOS has stayed pretty consistent throughout the years. They've changed some stuff, but the the anchors are there.
neocharge: So yeah, this is definitely a step in the right direction. I can't wait to see more on it. I can't wait to get my hands on it. I won't be doing the beta because this is my, let's just say, production system.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Maybe. Ooh. Oh.
neocharge: I'm not putting beta. I could put the beta on my secondary though. I have a secondary base PS5. I might do that.
Leon Lionheartly: maybe
neocharge: I get beta invites. I do. So through the, through email and I always act like I copy the code and redeem it just so they know like I'm participating.
Leon Lionheartly: o
neocharge: I never install it, but maybe I'll install it on my base PS5, not my pro. That's my production system.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah oh
neocharge: So Yeah. ah Awesome news. Step in the right direction. Another thing they did recently, I think it's just a silent update, but you know, the welcome screen and that, you know, animated background or static background you can have.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah
neocharge: I have the the chip set with the, the electric signals go on. It's, it's awesome. But now it can, you can set it to fade everything away and have that as a central screensaver on the TV.
neocharge: And you can do a slideshow of your captures too, which is awesome.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh shit, really? don't know.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. So I saw that one time, booting up my PS5, and it said, hey, this is this is it. So but a lot of people just like skipped that, like, I don't fucking care. But I was like, ooh, what's this? I'm always interested in the new things. So, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, let's that's fair.
neocharge: Yeah, check it out.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm going have to go check that out. I'm curious. i I'm just curious how that works with the energy saver, but that's that's for a different conversation.
neocharge: Well, Energy Saver will supersede that.
Leon Lionheartly: Absolutely.
neocharge: So if you have your PS5 or PS5 Pro going into rest mode, it's going to go into rest mode.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay. Yeah.
neocharge: The Screen Saver is there for if your PS5 is idle, not getting any input after 10 minutes or something.
Leon Lionheartly: Cause I,
Leon Lionheartly: Okay. And see, I think I might not see it because I think I have mine set to 10 minutes ah for going to sleep mode.
neocharge: Oh.
neocharge: Damn.
Leon Lionheartly: i When I'm playing games sometimes, or let's say the kid the wife calls me, oh hey, Bob, can you help me with something?
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: And then it turns into a whole fucking thing. I'm not going to leave my game running on the TV for 20, 30 minutes in a pause menu.
neocharge: thanks
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: it's just to Just go into rest mode, save the energy, save the usage. Don't put the miles on there and I'll come back to you later.
neocharge: Yeah. That makes sense. I am rarely distracted when I'm gaming, but that's that's just my lifestyle. So, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, that's good point. we We definitely have different habits.
neocharge: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Good contrast for the cast. So,
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah. ah Yeah. when When this comes ah live or if I get a ah beta code, ah i'll I'll give you my thoughts. i I don't think there's an NDA on it. Probably. I've never had an NDA on beta stuff, but ah yeah. And when it goes live for you all.
neocharge: Check it out. Keep your keep your systems updated, folks. Just keep them updated. you know There's security patches in there and there's a lot of important shit. Everything. All your technology. This is a PSA. Your phones, your technology. i don't know about Samsung.
neocharge: I don't know how often they update their shit. But...
Leon Lionheartly: They update just as often.
neocharge: Okay, just keep your shit updated. Like these these companies sometimes being in bleeding edge day one. with Some companies, that might be a problem. So maybe minus one. I don't know.
neocharge: But yeah, just keep keep your stuff updated, everyone. Technology is important. it's ah It can be extremely vulnerable. And these companies you know patch their products and they do it over software updates. So update your shit.
Leon Lionheartly: Please do it now.
neocharge: Can you tell we're both in IT?
Leon Lionheartly: yeah Oh God. Right. ah Have you turned it off and turned it back on yet? um But yeah, dude, definitely go check that out.
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: um Let's see.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Our last thing. I'm curious to see what you think about this. um ah This, I think it technically broke the day after we recorded last week um because we did the April Fool's thing and this broke out that Thursday.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: um But, uh, This was announced ah late last week. Sony directly he has entered an agreement to acquire machine learning and computer vision company Cinemaverse Labs.
Leon Lionheartly: This is a UK-based firm that specializes in immersive 3D photography and video for virtual and augmented reality.
neocharge: Thank you.
Leon Lionheartly: It will be become part of Sony Interactive Entertainment's Visual Computing Group, a research and and engineering division within SIE. So not a game developer, um but this obviously due to the descriptor is catching the the news here on our side of the pond, man.
neocharge: Yeah, so it's a AI acceleration image enhancement tool, right? So I don't think I was on the...
Leon Lionheartly: Well, that's what they specialize in, should I say.
neocharge: Gotcha. Yeah, I know what they're it for, and i'll I'll tell you what I think. But ah I don't think I went on the record talking about the DLSS stuff, but I stand the same ah with you can use AI to enhance the art already there.
neocharge: If you modify the art in any way, color, shape, form, no, don't do that. Don't modify the art. If you want to enhance it and ah not yassify it or anything like that, but make it clearer, and this is for PSSR.
Leon Lionheartly: Thank you.
neocharge: This is to enhance PSSR. So, ah and PSSR is an AI algorithm that looks at the picture ah and upscales a smaller image and then cleans up.
neocharge: When you upscale us a small, ah very high resolution image, you get a lower resolution image when you upscale it.
Leon Lionheartly: you
neocharge: So AI looks at that and then basically upscales every or cleans up every frame to make it ah look 4K. It's upscaled four k but It's not true 4k. It's not native 4k, but PSSR does a, especially PSSR 2.0 does a really good job with that. So if this is to go in their direction that way, awesome.
neocharge: Keep, keep that up. Clean up the, ah like clean up the resolution. Do not modify the art. Uh, the DLSS and NVIDIA said, we're not modifying the art. We're modifying the lighting, but I'm pretty sure Grace looked like she had lipstick and they were modifying colors.
neocharge: Don't do that.
Leon Lionheartly: No, no, no, no.
neocharge: It's like modifying a painting. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: they Definitely don't do that.
neocharge: Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: youre you're absolutely that's that's ah I try to tell people is if you take one of those little small JPEGs that are like 280 by 180 and then stretch it, it looks like shit. Well, that's what PSSR does.
Leon Lionheartly: It kind of fills in those gaps, but you're right.
neocharge: Exactly.
Leon Lionheartly: Don't modify the pace. Just kind of figure figure it out, upscale it, go, oh, this is the missing piece, put the puzzle together, and it does it so fast.
neocharge: Exactly.
Leon Lionheartly: ah But...
neocharge: lightning fast every frame and you're getting 60 sometimes 120 frames a second so yeah ah and they do that so they can get that frame rate so you're you're rendering a ah like 1k image or maybe even a 720p image ah and then upscaling it so yeah there's some wizardry behind that that video processor and the PS5 man even the PS5 Pro for sure
Leon Lionheartly: Absolutely. you the The most wild thing about that...
neocharge: Mark Sarney is a mage. He's a goddamn wizard.
Leon Lionheartly: ah He is a wizard and he's got such a but a smooth, buttery voice.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: But you know what wildest part of that statement you just made is you said even down to 720p.
neocharge: Yeah, he is.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: i
neocharge: Yeah, me too.
Leon Lionheartly: i was there 3,000 years ago when we had 720p because that was the most amazing thing.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: I was there before that, even in the dark ages of CRT televisions. That's that's wild, dude seventy twenty three is considered bad.
neocharge: Yeah, that was what Wii, PS2, and 360 for 720? Yeah. Yeah. it analog. So they changed where you have your
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And then eventually they released the ability to somehow basically project that and stretch it out to 1080p. Yeah.
neocharge: so they changed it was analog... so they changed it to where you have your analog ah cables that were yellow, white, red.
neocharge: Yellow's video, white is, I don't know, white and red are audio, left and right, right?
Leon Lionheartly: yeah I don't remember which one's which though, but you're right. They're left and right audio.
neocharge: But they did component cables where they separated the video signal into three signals, making it so you could get a mimicked 1080, and they called it component.
neocharge: ah The older ones were called composite.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm, see, look at you.
neocharge: So yeah, yeah, I, uh, I'm a big nerd when it comes to this shit, like audio video technology, dude, you want to know what TV to get, what sound system to get hit me up on discord.
neocharge: I'll talk your ear off on it. So yeah, that was composite and component is because they separated the single video signal to three, uh, video signals in different colors.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: I think it was like green, orange, and light blue, uh, from yellow.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, that sounds right. I just remember there were more things you had to plug in.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: but you said the You said the DLSS.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: i I don't know if you saw this. It was nothing to report on, but it's funny as hell. It is supposedly a... I want to say it's a French YouTuber. Don't get me right. ah ah Quote me on this because i'm not I don't have it written down.
Leon Lionheartly: But the original footage from the DLSS 5, the original images were not... directly created by NVIDIA. So the person who had the RE one with Yassified Grace was like, no, no, no, no. That footage is original. The original is my property. And DMCA struck struck the videos.
neocharge: Oh, good.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm like, damn, that is how...
neocharge: Wow.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, I love it.
neocharge: Yeah, no, you can't go wild, wild west with this shit.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: And like AI is already, it's already skating a line to where like, it's not, okay, let me, let me just give you a little a little brief thing.
Leon Lionheartly: Hmm?
neocharge: It's not artificial intelligence. It's an LLM. It's a large language model. that can reference a near infinite amount of sources on the internet in the blink of an eye.
neocharge: Okay? But it has to reference something that was created by a human. AI does not create. It fills in gaps and it references.
neocharge: Very, very well. Very, very fast. But everything that AI makes was referenced by a something that was created by a human. Now, the the reason AI is getting faster and faster is because it can reference things that it filled in the gaps for that was created by a human. So you you say, give me a picture of a fucking cat riding a bicycle with a cowboy hat on, right?
neocharge: The first AI model references... thousands of sources that have those keywords in them from the prompt, right? And it creates something. Now that piece of content, I won't even call it art. That piece of content can now be referenced by another AI model. And it starts learning off of itself.
neocharge: But every single thing created by AI was once the source of human creation. And here's where it gets a little in the gray area, right? Right.
neocharge: did they give consent for the AI to use their art and were they compensated for it? And is AI referencing maybe storefronts where they sell their art? The answer is yes, AI is doing that and no, they weren't compensated. So it's a little gray, but that's how LLMs work. It's not AI and it's a buzzword. AI is a buzzword.
Leon Lionheartly: it is i have a i've had a thought you won't get this reference so my mass effect fans out there it's not ai in modern day think of it as closer to what they call vi which is out of the ah virtual intelligence out of the mass effect uh series just go fucking play it already matt
neocharge: What? Okay.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: I know. I need to. I'm excited for Exodus. But yeah, AI mimics intelligence. just if you If you don't believe me, just ask your AI, whoever you use, jat chat, GPT, Claude, Grok.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: There's a ton of them. And I use it as an assistant. Sometimes I ask it questions. I don't ask it philosophical or human-based questions. More logic. Keep the logic. But ah ask it.
neocharge: Be like, hey, do you really create art or is it merely referenced? And... Spoiler, I've asked it and it says no. all Everything that any AI creates is referenced by something created from a human.
neocharge: So AI technically, AI, the LLM, technically has not created anything. It does fill in the gaps and it's getting way better at filling in the gaps and learning from that too.
neocharge: But therere it's not created from the source of AI. When AI can be the source of creation, then that's actual true AI. that it's It's sentient as creative personality.
neocharge: So yeah, little triad there or rant on AI.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: I love ai as a tool. It's awesome. I use it all the time. I use it to check things pretty much. right ah And just kind of like a Google search engine, honestly.
neocharge: So it's great. It's great tool. But it is biased towards you. Just know that. It's very biased towards you, and it wants you to keep using it. So if you ask, like I don't know, a personal question or something, it is going to scratch your back and be like, oh, yeah, this is blah, blah. It's going to be biased towards you. So just keep that in mind.
neocharge: it's It's an algorithm, and it wants you to keep using it ah because usage ah turns to like a subscription model and Yeah, just be careful with all that shit and just be vigilant and cautious on what it's telling you.
neocharge: cause
Leon Lionheartly: Yep.
neocharge: And it'll hallucinate. and AI hallucination is a huge thing.
Leon Lionheartly: That's wild.
neocharge: it'll it'll It'll straight up give you wrong, false facts, and it'll sound true because sounds so... ah it sounds so I don't know, just like resolute.
neocharge: Like AI can just tell you a false fact and it sounds true. That's hallucination. So it's a big thing. They're getting better at it, but yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. They're still not there. There's this dude. I don't know if you've seen him. He goes through and does the GPT, like the AI models, but he'll see things to to like make you show how stupid this product still is.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: He'll be like, hey, give me an example.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: um get List all numbers between one and a thousand that have a letter A in them.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: And every time without without fail, they'll be like, oh, it's 80 or eight.
neocharge: Right. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: but And they hallucinate because the enunciation of it. And it's just like, are you sure? Yeah, totally.
neocharge: e ah Why? And then they'll explain why. And it'll be completely false, but it'll sound true. ah I saw one where he's like, how many bees does blueberry have in it? And a I was like, one.
neocharge: And he's like, okay.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah
neocharge: and Okay, spell it out for me. It's like B-L-U-E-E-R-R-Y. One bee. e r r y one b That's, that's blueberry. It's like, no, no, no.
neocharge: Hold on. Say blueberry. And it like, it was just spouting out like, no, I'm sure blueberry has one B in it.
Leon Lionheartly: AI is going to be the ah gaslighter of the near future.
neocharge: No, no,
neocharge: Dude, yes. It's gaslighting, kind of. So, yeah. Just ah use multiple models if you can. And yeah be vigilant. So, we're we're dude, we're in the early stages. The next five years, it's like the it's like Moore's Law.
neocharge: it's going to Like I said, it's going to start teaching itself. It already has. And it'll create agents to then... teach other agents and it just multiplies from there.
neocharge: So, uh, do I think it's going to end the world?
Leon Lionheartly: Yep.
neocharge: but Probably not. I mean, I don't, who knows, right? Don't be scared of it. People were scared of the internet too. Just use it as a tool and realize it's a tool. Can't wait for robot girlfriend.
neocharge: Anyway.
Leon Lionheartly: Anyway, bringing this back.
neocharge: Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, yeah, because Sony bought an organization. um expect You're right.
neocharge: Yes.
Leon Lionheartly: I think that's PSSR. so ah
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: And with that further ado, excuse me as you got my favorite beer taste. We are done with the news this week.
neocharge: Heck yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Quick and easy, man, in and out.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: There are some other leaks, but i read i'm waiting i'm waiting for I'm waiting for more kind concrete proof.
neocharge: Hey, hello.
neocharge: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And we will be reporting right after the state of play. If it's announced, it'll probably be announced either Tuesday or Wednesday of that week.
neocharge: they They don't give a lot of lead up anymore. Maybe that Monday. I don't know. But when it's announced, we'll put the announcement date on the discord and then we'll report right after.
Leon Lionheartly: Thank you.
neocharge: If it's on a Thursday, we'll report and that'll be live the day after. So less than 24 hours, you're going to hear what happened in the state of play and our thoughts later. on it. So, uh, what do you say we quickly go over the clusterfuck of fucking games that are coming out this April and which ones we're most excited for and why we're going to be pulling our hair out trying to play all these games.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, let's to let let me put it to you like this, folks.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Just right now, and this is April 8th, nothing has hit yet that we're interested in, but in the draft alone, um this includes games that aren't drafted, we've got Replaced coming up on the 14th.
Leon Lionheartly: We've got Mouse P.
neocharge: The calm before the storm, if you will, we're in.
Leon Lionheartly: Hiver.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: We got Mouse pi high ah PI for hire next week. We have Pragmata next week. We have Hades 2 coming to PlayStation 5 because fuck it, we can't draft it. ah Saint Slayer, Vampire Crawlers, Diablo, and Seros.
Leon Lionheartly: And that's all that I can think of off the top of my head.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. So the three that stick out to me that I'm excited for Hades to, of course, been waiting on it. i Can't wait. I heard they're not doing a physical on launch and it will probably be September, October.
neocharge: So I'm gonna buy it twice because I'll give super giant my money. I don't give a shit. I'll get it digital, play it day one, April 14th. It releases. And then that's three days before pragmata.
Leon Lionheartly: you
neocharge: comes out April 17th. Uh, and then Saros, April 30th. Those are the three I'm excited for. Pretty tight windows there. Everything's late April. We're in early April.
neocharge: And, uh, Yeah, I think Saros is going to bleed into May. for Well, I mean, it's it's going to bleed into May for everyone because it releases the end of fucking April. So then we have to finish all those before 007 First Light. And I'm excited for Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight. Those are in May, but April's stacked.
neocharge: Thankfully, I don't have as much as you, Bob. What are you going to do?
Leon Lionheartly: there's no way that There's no way I'm getting through all of this before first light.
neocharge: How? How? Pick three. Pick three.
Leon Lionheartly: um So if I... And here's where I'm going with this. I think I'm going to... Pragmata is 100% going to happen.
neocharge: winner
Leon Lionheartly: It's pre-ordered.
neocharge: Same here.
Leon Lionheartly: it's It's there.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: I think I'm going to take Pragmata first, and then I will take a couple of easier, lighter ones ah to kind of bounce between. So I'm thinking I might be able to...
Leon Lionheartly: take Pragmata and then get ah and get Hades at the same time, kind of pick up and play Hades every now and then, and then when I can't play Pragmata.
neocharge: Yeah, I think so.
Leon Lionheartly: And then from there, whenever one of those two drop, like whatever that takes, which I think will be Pragmata, Hades is going to be longer, I'll pick up next one in line. So probably something easier like Saints Lire.
Leon Lionheartly: and start stacking my time my my goal is to do always do a longer game stacked with an easy ah with a shorter game so I can bounce between them and then when one's done I pick up the next one of that category ah because there's like I said mouse pi high ah pi I want pragmata I'm looking forward to saint slayer vampire callers saros I'm fucked oh and by the way thanks for
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. and we When we get to get back, go ahead.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, i was going to say, and by the way, thank you ah to a certain coupon that got pulled within four hours.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: i tell you, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, the deluxe edition, normally an $82 game, cost me $40.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: So I've got ah i've got another 90-hour RPG right there waiting for me.
neocharge: Boom.
neocharge: Yep, yep. And don't forget Ghost, Kronos, Darksiders 2, Silent Hill, F.
Leon Lionheartly: Ha ha ha ha
neocharge: What else? Am I missing any? And when are we going to revisit Borderlands 4? Ha ha ha!
Leon Lionheartly: um Oh, man.
neocharge: Ha ha ha! No, April is stacked. It's good problem to have, Bob. Isn't it?
Leon Lionheartly: It is. This doesn't include the back. you The backlog you mentioned doesn't include the physical backlog I have sitting on my shelf. ah Dude, i'm I'm so...
neocharge: Right. Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: The world could just go dark for the internet, and i mean umm I'm okay, man. or Or something like we could get another COVID for for the next six years, and I probably still could, to be honest.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. Same here. There's a ton of tales games I want to play. Um, I actually, today I did some of the very liberating. I document my backlog. I don't recommend it. Don't ever do that. Uh, I just fucking deleted it.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah yeah
neocharge: I, I, sometimes I go back to it. I'm like, all right, I have some time. What am I going to play? It's been a while since that's happened. Uh, and I'm like, I'd say 90 hours into the current game I'm playing, which we're,
neocharge: going to talk about. And yeah, I just deleted my backlog. I said, I'm not going to document this anymore. Five made the cut, Bob. That's Final Fantasy XII, Persona 5 Royale.
neocharge: ah Let me reference this. I thought I remembered all of them, but apparently I did not.
Leon Lionheartly: He's to name a game he deleted and been like, fuck!
neocharge: I know, I know. Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Tales of Graces F Remastered, And ah finally finished Battle Chasers Night War. Dude, I'm just saying, if you if you liked Ruin King and you like turn-based RPGs, just said Battle Chasers Night War.
Leon Lionheartly: Ooh.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, yeah.
neocharge: April. are you doing in April? You can play that? Play Battle Chasers Night War.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. I'll just start. Yeah, why not? Nothing better to do.
neocharge: aye And Jomad does the art. You know what else Jomad did?
Leon Lionheartly: I know that name, but I don't know where from.
neocharge: Darksiders.
Leon Lionheartly: Ah, there it is. Yep. Okay.
neocharge: Very, very Darksiders, yeah. So, uh, really cool RPG. I think it was a Kickstarter. ah So, yeah, like, turn-based RPG. It has, like, a world map and everything. Really cool.
neocharge: I liked it.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, I know that same team developed Ruin Kangen.
neocharge: Awesome characters.
Leon Lionheartly: Outside of the technical problems, it's a fucking phenomenal game.
neocharge: Yeah. Right.
Leon Lionheartly: Strategy, turn-based RPG kind of thing.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Absolutely go check it out.
neocharge: Yeah. What's your most, uh, uh, hyped up game for April. What are you most excited for? I think we both have.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah Yeah, it's got to be Progbata.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Proc Mata. Yep. Same here. Same here.
Leon Lionheartly: That's my number one in the draft.
neocharge: It it hits it. Yeah. Yeah. You have it drafted. I think, I think we might crack 90, uh, high eighties easily. I think, I don't know. I've, I've stayed pretty dark on it. I played, I played the demo, love the demo.
neocharge: So if they can flesh that out, uh, like build upon that, and add some more mechanics that, I mean, it's going to be an incredible game.
Leon Lionheartly: They're doing something right over there. that they are So you got to generate goodwill with the the community to to like really get big, let's be honest. Or you just come out of the middle of nowhere looking at you, Sandfall.
Leon Lionheartly: And they've been generating a lot of goodwill.
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: The team, the social team, has been doing a lot of good stuff out there. Like the Artemis 2 has been sending us back images, and they sent a really beautiful one of the Earth. And then ah the Pragmatis social team retweeted that with Diana and and said, look!
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: Nice. ah
Leon Lionheartly: look, they're coming to see us. And as you could just see this beautiful shot of the moon from within game and like everything they built, like, dude, this, all this game is, it's going to be something special.
neocharge: Oh, that's awesome.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: I'm telling you, man.
neocharge: Yeah. Artemis 2 calls it Earthrise. And that's just such a crazy concept to me. Like, we have sunrise, right? And we can see the moon. But, like, when there are slingshotting around the moon, the Earth is rising on the horizon.
neocharge: That's fucking nuts. So, I've been following it. ah They're coming back. Mission succeeded. And they're on their way back to Earth.
Leon Lionheartly: Hell yeah.
neocharge: So, we got some incredible images of the moon on the dark side of the moon. So, check them out if you're if you're into the space stuff. So...
Leon Lionheartly: They edited out the um the the giant like spaceship mothership that was there.
neocharge: yeah
neocharge: Yeah, yeah, the mothership that's chilling.
Leon Lionheartly: So don't worry, folks. that's come Yeah, that's coming before GTA 6. Yeah.
neocharge: Yep, yeah, we're going to Alien Invasion before GTA 6 releases. So, yeah. No, Pragmata hits like all three of the the the cool things for me, right? Like, new IP from a well-known AAA dev with a super cool sci-fi story.
neocharge: Fuck yeah. ah I'd say it's up there with Beast of Reincarnation for my most hyped of the year. So I can't wait to play that and everything I've seen. I'm loving.
neocharge: So, Progmata, I'd say a close second. I mean, Hades 2, we all know that's going to be amazing. That's sitting at a 95 on fucking OpenCritic. Finally coming to PlayStation 5. I've been waiting for that since it was released. Get it day one. But like you said, pick up and play, and you can play that with the other games.
neocharge: and i Dude, I'm really excited for Saros. I think they're going to hit it out of the park. Fun fact, Progmata has been cooking for a while because it was announced...
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: when Returnal was announced. So, Housemarque, the developer of Seros and Returnal, is releasing its sequel after five years of Returnal being out, and Returnal was announced with Pragmata. So, Pragmata's been cooking for like seven or eight years, dude.
neocharge: ah I think they have something special. So, we'll we'll see. Very soon. 17th. Holy shit.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, absolutely.
neocharge: So, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: But I'm with you.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: if i You know what's sad? It's not Pragmata. I don't think Pragmata is number two for me.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: It's one for myself.
neocharge: Saros, you mean? Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: I mean, Saros. Yeah, sorry. i don't think Saros is my second most anticipated. I think that's lower down on the list. I am stupid excited. And I know you you're going to be like, oh, God, I'm stupid excited for vampire crawlers.
neocharge: Of course you are. Of course you are. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: There's something about so the aesthetic and everything on that that game.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: like It scratches that ADHD side of my brain, the the the doom scrolling side of my brain. I fucking need that in my life because it's portal 100% a portal game.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: hundred percent a portal name
neocharge: Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. I'm glad you're excited for that. And ah they're releasing, is it a sequel or just kind of like a different game from the same dev of Vampire Survivors?
Leon Lionheartly: It's just the same ah developers day going, hey, let's start do something new and then we'll call it Vampire Crawlers without that.
neocharge: It's a little new.
Leon Lionheartly: Because it's kind of the, in a there's no story in these games. You have to understand that. There's literally no story. So all they're doing is, hey, we're going to release another arcade game and we're going to call it Vampire something because it's a different type of game but uses a lot of the same elements and and and things like that.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah. And it's more of a third-person RPG? Dungeon Crawler?
Leon Lionheartly: it It looks like a third-person dungeon crawler with card mechanics.
neocharge: Yeah. Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: So probably a little bit of the roguelite in there. ah Well, it is a roguelite, technically.
neocharge: Love it.
Leon Lionheartly: um So you're talking third-person dungeon crawling roguelite with card mechanics.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And I know that's a mouthful, but you just got you got to trust the process on this one.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah, ah i'll check I'll check it out. I'll watch. um when When you stream or bring over your portal, we'll we'll check it out for sure. Did you play Inscription?
Leon Lionheartly: right.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: ah Yes. Fucking great game. That's another one that was... oh I could go on about that game. That was good one.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. Card game, roguelike. ah Very fun.
Leon Lionheartly: Hard as fuck though, man.
neocharge: Oh, so hard.
Leon Lionheartly: That game was brutal.
neocharge: I tried platinuming it and i I gave up and I said, I'll get to 75% on the list. And I think I did. I got like 70 something. So yeah, there's some crazy trophies in there. Huge twist in that game that someone was like, it's not what you think. And I was like, whatever, I'll check it out. Mason, shout out to Mason. He said, you got to play inscription. Just play It's not what you think. And I'm like, all right.
neocharge: And I loved the the game that was set up, but then yeah. Not what you think. Go play it. It's awesome. And gorgeous pixel art, too.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, yeah that's that's good point.
neocharge: So it's ah it's a deck-building card game. ah It's really cool. And it it definitely finishes the not the the game you started with. Let's just say that.
Leon Lionheartly: and And you know what?
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: That's the that's the shame. is Vampire Crawlers is a roguelite, and technically Saros is as well.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: So Saros is probably number three because I have discovered in lot...
neocharge: Yeah. And so is fucking Hades, too.
Leon Lionheartly: Yes, I have discovered in the last five years that I am a... Roguelite is at near the top of the list of genres for me.
neocharge: Yeah, love it. We still got to check out that update for Absalom.
Leon Lionheartly: God damn it, that's right.
neocharge: So, i know I know, I know.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: I know, dude, I know. let's ah We'll focus, but yeah. ah I'm a little concerned because Hades 2 and Saros, I might be playing ah Parallel, and they're both roguelikes. And what I saw from late in the marketing of Saros, they took a lot of inspiration from Hades, which makes me excited. Give me Returnal and Hades. Fuck, yeah. But they might blend together a little bit, which...
neocharge: Right. Yeah. So who knows? Super exciting. Love all the games coming out. Can't wait. I have my top three. I'm pretty excited for mouse P, mouse PI for higher too, but I'm not getting to it this month.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: It's, it's going on my wishlist for sure. Boomer shooter with like sixties inspired cartoon animations. Fuck. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah No, this is the 1930s rubber arm ah artwork, black and white.
neocharge: i it 30s. Okay. Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Bendy, ah Mickey, Epic Mickey, Cuphead.
neocharge: Okay. Cuphead.
Leon Lionheartly: Cuphead is the most obvious that people link to it, but this is black and white and not colored. ah
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: But you're right. That's 100% of my wish list. It's a boomer shooter.
neocharge: Yeah. yeah. It's a pervershooter.
Leon Lionheartly: Right.
neocharge: Yeah. you're all You're all in that. And then then Vampire Survivors. I'm pretty excited for Vampire. Or not Vamp. Sorry. Spear of Sacrilege. I don't know why my brain went that.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: ah Because that is a Saint Slayer.
Leon Lionheartly: Saintslayer. Yeah.
neocharge: Spear of Sacrilege. ah very It looks like very heavily inspired by Castlevania. So I definitely have my eye on that one for sure. But the three ah main ones.
neocharge: Hades 2. Pragmata. Saros. so those are my pre-ordered getting day one playing 100 super excited for him so yeah april is fucked
Leon Lionheartly: ah yeah May is fucked as well.
neocharge: right it's true and then yeah lego batman uh dark knight chronicles or whatever dark yeah yeah may yeah
Leon Lionheartly: Might well just include May because you're going at it for a while. Especially with First Light.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, is is that in May as well?
neocharge: ah Lego Batman, Legacy of the Dark Knight. Very excited. Lego Arkham game. give me Give me some more Arkham. And then 007 First Light. so And then, I mean, if Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, I'm kind of interested in that, but probably not.
Leon Lionheartly: You're right.
Leon Lionheartly: Damn, dude, you're right.
neocharge: So, yep.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, five days before First Light. Oh, you know what?
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: You can go you can platinum a Lego game in five days, right?
neocharge: Oh, yeah, sure, sure. It only took me like two years for Skywalker Saga. that The amount of collectibles in that game is astronomical. It's like, I'd say, altogether, 4,000 collectibles.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep, 100%. ah hundred percent du I love that.
neocharge: And I ah got them all.
Leon Lionheartly: ah ah
neocharge: I glad I did. But over time, over time, you yeah I cannot sit with that game for for long because, I mean, Lego games can get repetitive. So... ah The story missions in Skywalker saga were not great, but going to each planet and just doing like free roam on each planet, you name a fucking planet from Star Wars, it's in that game.
Leon Lionheartly: h
neocharge: isn't it Yeah. So Alderaan, Geonosis, fucking Canto Bight.
Leon Lionheartly: and so many small characters that you're like who the hell is this and then you remember and you go oh yeah it's it's a great game I haven't finished I i mean I finished it but I i have not platinum that's a what I think about it
neocharge: Oh, yeah.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Right, right. Yeah. Right. Over 300 playable characters. Any character from Star Wars you can think of. is is Even the obscure ones you can play. Lego form. Lego games are so cool. I'd say they're even cozy. So I'm excited for Lego Batman.
neocharge: But yeah, that's April. It's fucked. We're excited. But what are we playing now, Bob?
Leon Lionheartly: Hmm. Let's see. Uh, well, Bob didn't do much this week. Uh, cause, uh, I was out for the count.
neocharge: The body was hurting.
Leon Lionheartly: not The only thing. yeah Yeah. It, it struggled. There was some times where I was like, there was a couple. of So there was one day in particular that I was like, I can't, I was having so much chest pain. I was like, I got to sit in my computer chair and lean back so I can open up my chest. So I was playing stupid shit on on my computer and then, uh, whatever I could, I'd be in bed and then come out to the couch. So I,
Leon Lionheartly: continue to hammer away, put a lot of time into, uh, legend of Dragoon again. um I am pretty much near the end. I'm at that point in every early RPG where you have a, now you can explore all of your surroundings and go get collectibles and do missions and kind of prepare for that last sprint before the point of no return. I'm in that zone. Um,
Leon Lionheartly: it what I'm doing right now. The last couple of days isn't required for the platinum, but I figure if I grab, uh, these ultimate weapons and finish this collection, uh, collect the thon, it'll get, it'll make me more powerful.
Leon Lionheartly: So that way I can kind of steamroll the last bit of, uh, of the game. and then we'll see where things lie. Maybe I go do some optional bosses. Uh, like not required for the platinum, the super bosses are not, but they're a lot of fun.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And yeah, I gotta say this game is warmed up on me more than I remember. ah highly I really appreciate everything everything they did here. um It's very focused. It's very concise. um It's just overall sluggish because of the generation it's in. um script dis Even in the porting on the PSN, if you go to different areas or do certain things, it'll be like, please insert disc too.
Leon Lionheartly: And then immediately says, please wait. And then you're waiting like 10 seconds to load into the game. So it's a little wonky in that regard.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Uh-huh.
neocharge: And you're playing the digital version, of course, and it still makes you load the discs through the menu. Because I've been ive i've been playing Final Fantasy VII along with like Remake and Rebirth, and it'll like load disc too.
Leon Lionheartly: It's just... Uh-huh.
neocharge: And I'm like, okay. And you have to do it through the menu. It's fun.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, this one didn't do it through the menu. It'll be like, read load disc too. And then it immediately reads it and says it reads the disc, quote unquote, and says, please wait.
neocharge: Oh.
Leon Lionheartly: And then it's like 10.
neocharge: Maybe they fixed that. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, they fixed that, which is cool.
neocharge: Cool.
Leon Lionheartly: Don't get me wrong. um i'm still standing I still stand behind that. This game does timed hits and things like that. It's not the first. So I had to say the standout in this game is definitely the battle music.
Leon Lionheartly: Battle music for everything.
neocharge: Oh, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: And music in general is great, but the battle music is some of the best ah out there. So absolutely, go check it out, folks. It's it's a 40-hour PS1 RPG.
Leon Lionheartly: So if you can find time this April, you know nothing coming out. I definitely would recommend i would definitely recommend recommend this because I know the story.
neocharge: Yeah. Oh, it's clear. Yeah.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: So there's not to be any surprises in this last 10%. This is easily up there in the PlayStation 1 era of RPGs.
neocharge: Oh, yeah. Squaresoft Classic. Like, just incredible.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm. ah No, this wasn't Square. This is what makes this game interesting. You know who developed it?
neocharge: Well, Square Classic?
Leon Lionheartly: No, you know who developed it?
neocharge: Woohoo.
Leon Lionheartly: Sony Interactive Entertainment.
neocharge: Oh, yeah, that's right.
Leon Lionheartly: This is...
neocharge: That one's Square. Oh, jeez.
Leon Lionheartly: this this that Yeah, this one and Legend of Ligaya are SIE made.
neocharge: Yeah, Sony.
neocharge: Yeah, that's right.
Leon Lionheartly: and And I said on the the gluck the the side of Ligaya as the better of the options, but that's a different kind of cover topic.
neocharge: Mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: Uh-huh.
neocharge: Yeah, it's it's on the ah level of any Squaresoft RPG. That's why I had them mixed up. But yeah, Sony.
Leon Lionheartly: and hu
neocharge: Sony made. That's why we were so hopeful for Bluepoint, because Sony owns the IP. We were so hopeful for Bluepoint to remake it, but I guess that's not happening. So maybe PlayStation will still remake it?
neocharge: I don't know. But God, too soon, man. Too soon.
Leon Lionheartly: Too soon.
neocharge: But I'm glad you' i'm glad you're it's growing on you and you're enjoying it. But some of these older games, PS1 era... haven't really aged well.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, some are rough. um This is the one where you can see the age of the PS1 era. ah And they did amazing.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: They're well out of their depth. This is a square level game from a team that's not Square Enix.
neocharge: Right. Right.
Leon Lionheartly: This is not a Final Fantasy 8, 9, 7, Parasite Eve kind of game. But this is definitely up there. This is the media vision, wild arms type ah type of game.
Leon Lionheartly: So I love it. But you're right. Some of them have an age well.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. Especially the 30 frames and you're even having some trouble with the timing there.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah. And it's, it's wonky.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: This is why I can't play that. I i was playing this in the portal, but then I stopped because the, the portal does amazing, but 30 frames trying to do a timed hit over a portal.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Even then there's a latency.
neocharge: Oh, yeah. you Wow.
Leon Lionheartly: There is going to be latency ultimately.
neocharge: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Leon Lionheartly: And it, it was, I felt like I was guessing some, uh, sometimes.
neocharge: Nice. But you said the music has aged well, as it usually does.
Leon Lionheartly: oh Oh, yeah. Dude, that music is...
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Go check it out.
neocharge: Hit.
Leon Lionheartly: it's ah You know what? I'll bring it over sometime or launch it ah when I'm over at your place, dude. It's a fucking...
neocharge: Oh, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: That battle music still hits.
neocharge: Like, yeah. Just share some tracks. I've been sharing some random tracks from ah Tales of Vesperia, which, God, that soundtrack is just goaded. Goaded. Yeah, I'm glad you're enjoying Legend Drag Race. Did you want to say anything else about it?
Leon Lionheartly: No, I think ah go check it out, folks. that's ah That's what I got to say about that one. And I'm going to definitely find, I got to find this track for you well while we talk about your game, ZS multiple you've been playing.
neocharge: Please.
neocharge: I have?
Leon Lionheartly: I don't know. Have you?
neocharge: No, I think I've just been playing mainly Tales of Vesperia. Am I playing anything else? yeah Did I forget that I'm playing something else?
Leon Lionheartly: I don't know. what i don't know what the hell you've been playing.
neocharge: I've been playing Tales of Vesperia.
Leon Lionheartly: I've been out of the loop, man.
neocharge: Oh, okay. Gotcha. No, i've I've been all in on ah Tales of Vesperia. So, yeah. that's And then we touched slightly on Borderlands 4, but yeah, dude. i'm I'm all in on Tales of Vesperia. Remastered.
neocharge: A remaster from the ah classic on 360. Yeah. And boy boy, I'm in Act Three, about 90 hours in.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: And dude, this game is so good. Talk about music. Just every every new area has new music. It all hits. Incredible bass lines.
neocharge: ah Just the character cast is awesome. I've talked about this. All voice acting. And even in battle too. And dude, you know how like you have some ah memorable lines of some party members saying their attack in Legend of Dragoon?
Leon Lionheartly: yeah Harpoon Every fucking time man
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. Those are easy to remember, but in Vesperia, they're also voice acted. And this is, this is pretty impressive too. Cause I mean, I mean, Vesperia is was, was on the heels of Legend of Dragoon, I guess it was next generation. Uh, but it's, uh, every like party member, when they cast a spell, they like,
neocharge: say the incantation. i just want to share, I just want to share some of these with, with you and our listeners.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh shit
neocharge: Cause like, I'll hear this shit and I'll be like, what the fuck did she just say? And like, so Rita is your mage, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: And, they're on auto or you can set shortcuts to trigger specific spells, but you basically give them parameters and then they are on auto. And I have just DPS on everyone because I'm pretty high level. Uh, and Rita just goes all out and she's constantly doing spells.
neocharge: And here's one of her spells. Oh, Oh, beating of the earth, sacrifice thy body to crush my enemies. Ground Dasher.
Leon Lionheartly: That is not a spell. That's a... That's a poem.
neocharge: It's an incantation. ah Come forth, O avarice netherworld, and crush the evil before me. Negative gate.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: I hear this shit constantly. Like, in the in the battle. And, yeah. So, hear my call and arise before me. Ancient catastrophe. This is the fruit of my research.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: what She's giving you a whole Hector Allen Poe poem over there.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: i love it.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: no Those are good.
neocharge: yeah ah right. Oh, righteous will let fall. Thy sword of lightning upon those who bear fault. Thunder blade. It's incredible.
Leon Lionheartly: knew that was a bit thunder. So do they step on each other when they're doing this? Like with audio? How does that sound on a mixing?
neocharge: ah That's a good question. It's all at the same time.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: but there's yeah. And every, every person, when they do an art, every party member, they will, they'll say it. Uh, so sometimes it's a little condensed.
neocharge: So like Raven, if he's doing, cause he's an archer, uh, like fury blast, he'll just be like, I'll fill you full of arrows instead of his whole thing.
neocharge: Uh,
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: But yeah, it works. i I mean, sometimes the battles get a little chatty, but I like it.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: And it's cool, and I love the the VO. So, yeah. And the the more complicated the spell, because you have basic spells, advanced spells, ah altered spells, healing spells, all kinds of shit, right? The more advanced the spell, the longer the incantation.
neocharge: so And then the longer it takes her to cast, right? So, if you use an advanced spell, it takes a little longer, and you're doing that high risk, a high reward, because it takes more to cast, and she's vulnerable during that cast. So you you have free move, and you can hold L2 at any time and go protect her while she's casting.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay, see there you.
neocharge: so And the audio cue is good to have, because you're like, oh, Rita's casting. I see this enemy going on towards her. I got to go ah intervene.
Leon Lionheartly: Make sure she's not interrupted in part of that.
neocharge: Yes, and especially healers because es Estelle is your healer.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: And if you trigger, like if you're getting low on health and you trigger a heal and you hear and then you see an enemy because enemies are smart when they hear that or when you trigger a heal, they'll go and they'll target your healer.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: okay
neocharge: And so you got to go and you got to ah get in between them. or And so, yeah, it's dude. It's such a good game. It was so ahead of its time. ah I think it ran 60 on 360. I know Symphonia, which was the game before this, couple games before this, ran on 60 on GameCube.
neocharge: So, ah yeah, it's 4K60, upscaled 4K60, and beautiful, beautiful game. Runs like butter. The story is next level.
neocharge: Like, there's so much that's going on, and, like, you you wake up, your your mom wakes you up, and you're like, oh, ah go go save this princess and then fight a god, right? Right.
Leon Lionheartly: Hmm.
neocharge: but Do these side quests first, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Yep, yep, that's how it goes.
neocharge: It's your typical JRPG. Yeah. Go fish first, but no, there's not fishing. ah Just an incredible JRPG. I'm having a blast. Second time I've played it. I played a long time ago when it was released.
neocharge: 2011, I believe it was released.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: And then they released a remaster 2019. I started the remaster because I love Vesperia so much, but then I put it down for some reason. And then Ni No Kuni sparked my Tales itch if you will.
neocharge: And I said, but really want to play Graces, but I got to finish Vesperia before I go to Graces. So ah I'm so glad I did. This is probably, i don't know, in my top five for sure. Symphonia is still my favorite. The only reason I haven't played Symphonia Remastered, locked at 30.
neocharge: The original runs at fucking 60, Bob, in 720, of course, but it's cel-shaded.
Leon Lionheartly: Wow.
neocharge: It's cel-shaded art, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: it's yeah it's You don't need like super realistic visuals.
Leon Lionheartly: you
neocharge: And it runs at lock 30, and it's jarring. Right?
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, man. could do it, but now I don't know. On an action RPG, that's a little rough, man.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah. And I do wish there were more quality of life things in Vesperia because ah as you saw and in Bergeria and even Grace's, like you have a waypoint.
neocharge: You have a main mission icon.
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: You don't have it in Vesperia. And sometimes you get fucking lost and you have to go into what's the story so far and read and be like, oh, this is where I'm headed. So ah that was a cool quality of life thing they added to Bergeria and Grace's and Zillia.
neocharge: And another thing, the grade shop. So the big thing about Tails, I've i've said this before, but you earn grade. A very small amount of grade depending on your ah combo, how many FS strikes you've done, your performance in battle.
neocharge: right
Leon Lionheartly: Mm-hmm.
neocharge: And then at the end of the game, you see how much grade you have. And in New Game Plus, you can use this grade to essentially break the game a little bit. And Give yourself five times XP, as you know. ah Make every skill one point when some of them are 10 or 15 or 30. I just unlocked a 30-point skill that will be one when I unlock this is this grade ability. or And then you have to pay grade to carry over shit in New Game Plus. So if you want all your equipment, you've got to pay grade for that.
Leon Lionheartly: Oh, really?
neocharge: So, yeah, yeah. I've been averaging about five grade per battle, which is really fucking good because I'm a combo... fucking fiend with Yuri. And yeah, you you have specific arts that you can chain together and you can only chain them in a specific order. And then you have button maps for each art, A-R-T-E, and you have different types of arts. You have burst arts, arcane arts, altered arts, ah and just basic arts. So just, it's it's got the most in-depth battle system of any Tales. I think, honestly, the best battle system other than Bergeria, because you can swap characters on the fly. I'm just having a blast. I'm about to go play it. So ah i'm I'm around. I'm almost endgame, Act 3, doing some cleanup, about to about to fight God, right? So...
Leon Lionheartly: that's how the those those are the tropes man you always do that start fighting their rats and you end up killing god um and
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah, yeah, you're in a sir fighting rats, and then you're going to fight God to save the world. So, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep. That's how those goes. I'm glad you enjoyed them man. I'd like to get to some more Tales games.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Just a matter of when. Because I know they are chonky boys ah or or gals.
neocharge: yeah Oh, yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: I'm going have 100 plus hours in this after I'm done.
Leon Lionheartly: And I was going to say, I should be good, I think.
neocharge: Easily.
Leon Lionheartly: Right? Because there's nothing coming up next month or this month.
neocharge: Yeah. No, yeah. April's free and clear. You could probably just play Tales of Vesperia if you wanted.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Great game.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Totally get rid that.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: No, I'm glad you enjoyed it, man. It definitely sounds like it's got a lot of good of those action RPG elements i you can learn to appreciate.
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Okay.
neocharge: Yeah. And it, it set up a lot of what tails is today. it did.
Leon Lionheartly: okay
neocharge: ah it It evolved tails very heavily. Cause it's, it's the first one where you do a 3d battlefield and you can go around. Cause in symphonia and the ones before it's just a kind of a 2D, but 3D, 2.5D, if you will. You can go towards the enemy or away from the enemy.
neocharge: And then in Vesperia, it gave you free run, where you can go around the enemy and it puts you in a 3D space. So it was a big evolution of the series and a big stepping stone for what we already have today. So...
neocharge: Yeah. Incredible, incredible game. If you like JRPGs, if you like any anime, Japanese-style humor, ah and storytelling, check out Tales of Vesperia.
Leon Lionheartly: Thank
neocharge: It's probably the the best remaster of the Tales series because you're getting two extra characters. I won't go into that, but if you if you know, you know, and all the and the it's the characters we've always wanted. So when I played the original, I was like, oh, that character's not playable?
neocharge: Oh, fuck. But then they said, well... This character and another one is in the remaster. So you don't usually see that. Like two extra characters making the party size ah big. Let's just say that.
neocharge: It's ah bigger than most JRPGs.
Leon Lionheartly: Wow.
neocharge: So you're typical of it.
Leon Lionheartly: That's impressive, dude. I like that.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: i like an RPG with a good ah large cast. Not necessarily because you're going to use them all, but because now you have options to choose from ah to to really customize your part ah your your preferred adventuring crew.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Exactly.
neocharge: Yep.
neocharge: Exactly. And they're all unique, including your your bestest boy companion, a pipe-smoking dog, Rapide.
Leon Lionheartly: Excuse me, what?
neocharge: Yeah, and he's my thief. He steals everything. So, pipe-smoking dog.
Leon Lionheartly: You said pipe smoking me out dog. That's all I need to hear.
neocharge: He is a pipe. Yep. And he's just an awesome, awesome support character. So... Yeah. And they added the XP share, thankfully. So with nine characters, yeah, it's a skill and it's one point.
neocharge: So I have it on everyone. And that was a quality of life thing they added because before, if I'm not mistaken, either the XP share was new game plus, or it wasn't even available. So ah dude, if you have a lot of party members, then you gotta have some e XP share there and your inactive, uh, party members should be still be getting experience. so I was happy to see that, but yeah. Uh,
neocharge: I'm enjoying the shit out of it. I could talk about it all cast, but yeah, I think, I think that wraps up the cast unless you want to talk about anything else.
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Nope. I want to go finish Dragoon. I could sit here and talk with you all day about it.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: But all I can say is just go fucking check it out, folks. But yeah, let's let's go play some games.
neocharge: Yeah. Yeah. You can get it on ah the PlayStation classics for 10 bucks or if you're a premium member, it's included with your service. So, right.
Leon Lionheartly: yeah it's yeah Yeah, if you have premium subscription, you can just download it and play it if you're one of those people.
neocharge: Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: and Like I said, it's 40 hours. When you compare to Tales or or a Final Fantasy, there' it's a very short.
neocharge: yeah digestible digestible yeah and fun fact if you bought it on ps3 which i did when it launched uh the digital version uh it carries over so i own it on ps5 if i wanted to play it so that was very nice and cool so yeah
Leon Lionheartly: our therapy It's very digestible in that
Leon Lionheartly: Oh shit, really?
neocharge: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: That's fucking dope, man.
neocharge: Because I was... Yeah. when when I mean, it's been in the conversation for a while. And then i got the black label and I got the Japanese black label from Alex. Shout out. I was like, I wonder like if I want to check it out.
neocharge: Can I? bought it on PS3 if I have to buy it on PS5 again. Oh, well, you know, whatever. 20 bucks. Sucks. But nope. Carried it over. I bought it on the PS3 digital store and that license carried over to PS5.
neocharge: I was surprised.
Leon Lionheartly: When was the last time you played that game, man?
neocharge: Yeah.
neocharge: Oh, dude, on the play PlayStation 1, on PS1.
Leon Lionheartly: same Same here.
neocharge: And I know ah never finished it. Yeah, I know. I'm waiting on that remake.
Leon Lionheartly: This game cannot be remastered.
neocharge: I'm waiting on that remake.
Leon Lionheartly: It has to be remade ah full on from the ground up.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: but yeah Dude, it is a phenomenal story.
neocharge: I know. I know. Yeah.
Leon Lionheartly: Fucking amazing.
neocharge: Yeah. No, I've heard... um I got a good chunk of the way. And dude, it was so long ago. But yeah, that's why I wanted you to stream it so I could check out some of it.
Leon Lionheartly: f And and it's got some it's got some weird things that like you wouldn't expect. ah ah How do I put this? is So ah you ah yeah each character, they're Dragoons, right?
Leon Lionheartly: Each character has their Dragoon item that lets them be their Dragoons. You have a party member that you pick up that if you're not paying attention, he just will never get his Dragoon.
neocharge: yeah
neocharge: damn
Leon Lionheartly: ah and you have them in your party the whole time, and the game doesn't tell you, you just got to fucking genuinely know it.
neocharge: That's awesome.
Leon Lionheartly: it This game doesn't touch much tell you shit.
neocharge: And you have to trigger specific things to get his Dragoon or what?
Leon Lionheartly: ah There's a specific person that you have to speak to.
neocharge: Okay.
Leon Lionheartly: um And it's in an area that you had already passed. So you wouldn't think to go back because it's a very linear game up to a certain point when then you can...
neocharge: who
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: JRP trips, right? But it's very linear.
neocharge: Sure.
Leon Lionheartly: so if you don't think about it, you'll never go back and you'll never grab it. And then you'll he'll be... i I don't use them anyways, but then you'll have one person and it bothers the shit out of me because it shows like the different icons, the different elements of the Dragoons.
neocharge: yeah
Leon Lionheartly: And then you know there's one missing out of the inventory slot. and you're like, When do I get this? Where do I get this?
neocharge: Right.
Leon Lionheartly: How do I get this?
neocharge: Damn.
Leon Lionheartly: But, yeah.
neocharge: Dude, there's so many missables in Vesperia. Oh my god. The trophy list is a nightmare. I'm going to attempt 70% and that's it. There's a speedrun for it. There's a speedrun trophy.
neocharge: For completing the game and in in a JRPG that takes about 80 hours to finish, front to back, there's a 15-hour speedrun trophy.
Leon Lionheartly: In an RPG?
Leon Lionheartly: I remember Final Fantasy IX had that.
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: ah
neocharge: on I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to it.
Leon Lionheartly: nope, not me. Don't catch me.
neocharge: I'm not going to do it.
Leon Lionheartly: and are a a ah Resident Evil or a Metal Gear Solid?
neocharge: Yep.
Leon Lionheartly: Maybe, but not a fucking RPG, man.
neocharge: Fine. Yeah, Uncharted 4 had a speedrun trophy that i was fine with, but not a fucking...
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah.
neocharge: Dude, 15-hour speedrun? Like, I'll do a 3, 4, maybe 5, even 10, 15 hours? Like, for a speedrun? That's a lot.
neocharge: So... No. not going to do it. Anyway, that's been episode, uh, 48, right? right so
Leon Lionheartly: Yeah, 48, right?
neocharge: Yeah. Episode 48. And thanks so much for listening. Uh, this has been shapes of gaming, your weekly conversational gaming podcast where your host, Matt and Bob, and we've enjoyed talking games, drinking beer with you all.
neocharge: Uh, thanks for listening and have a great rest of your evening, day, night, whatever the hell it is for you while you're listening.
Leon Lionheartly: Yep. Peace.
