Episode 13 - The World of PC Gaming

Transcript

Speaker: What's up, everybody, and welcome to Shapes of Gaming, the weekly conversational podcast all about video games that's unedited, unfiltered, and unhinged. I'm one of your hosts, Matt Stenson, NeoCharge on PSN, and joining me, as always, for episode number 13 is the Retro Gaming Encyclopedia, Bob Harriman, Leon Leon Hartley on PSN.

Speaker: Also joining us, he did our intro and our outro, the Goatlord himself, Alex Meese, Goatlord on PSN. How's it going, fellas? You can't get rid of me. I'm still here.

Speaker: No, man, it's going good. oh good Just ah living my life as best as I can and playing a lot of good, ah well, playing one video game in particular, but let's get to be honest. It's going to take a while to finish.

Speaker: Dude, that thing is huge, and I can't wait to dive back in. I've been on a little bit of a hiatus. Yeah, that is what she said. ah Alex, how you doing, man? We had you as a guest on the podcast for the Claire Obscure Spoiler Cast, and we have you back for the ah PC-centric episode.

Speaker: How's it going? How's life, dude? up Pretty good. It's actually kind of weird to hear that I'm in a regular podcast now instead of one of the spoiler casts, if I'm being completely honest.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Well, we love having you. And you are ah a big... ah I don't know. you You play a lot of PC. So this is a PC-centric podcast. And we wanted to have you on. and you're you're a friend and a good friend of the show. You did the intro and outro, which we really appreciate. So shout out to that.

Speaker: ah Everyone loves it. We love it. I remember in Metric, we heard it for the first time. So um yeah, thank you so much. The the intro and outro. We love it. And it fits well.

Speaker: with the show So we're happy to have you on ah and happy to have you for the PC-centric episode because we don't know fucking shit about PC. Well, I mean, Bob, you play a little PC, but I don't play PC.

Speaker: I'm mainly on PS5, little bit on my Switch. That's about it. I don't know anything about PC, so we wanted to have someone on that's a PC expert.

Speaker: i wouldn't really call myself an expert and enthusiast. Sure. But not really an expert. Enthusiast, you know, more than us. Uh, cause I mean, I, we had, we had a conversation out on the deck for 4th of July, uh, and you know, your shit.

Speaker: So don't, ah don't sell yourself short, you know, a lot. And, our listeners are going to, uh, be graced with your PC knowledge and the state of the PC, uh, for 2025 and the remainder of the year.

Speaker: So, but before, before that, let's, let's talk about life fellas. How's life going? Anything new, anything exciting? I have made poor financial decisions, Matt. kind of Do we all financial decisions?

Speaker: Uh, yeah, no, uh, I've been hanging out with Alex, uh, a lot lately. And, um, You know, Matt, the Final Fantasy set got me. Oh, no. After 25 years, have finally returned to the Magic the Gathering lands.

Speaker: um And I say poor financial decisions because you you think Pokemon cards are expensive. You haven't seen anything when it comes to these Magic cards. um It's been a lot of fun relearning ah some of the new interactions and some of the new features and like mechanics of the game.

Speaker: ah But outside of that, dude, it's like riding a bicycle. It doesn't feel like I i ah missed anything. um And it's been a lot of fun. I got some decks that I'm putting together. I got a second one built. and you know, maybe, maybe Alex, we get lucky enough and we can catch, get Matt to catch this bug. Cause it's a, it's your kind of thing.

Speaker: You know, it is, you just don't want to admit it. I'll just hand him a deck. He won't have a choice at that point. I mean, i'd be down to try like a loaner deck, ah but man, I can't give you one.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. ah So you crack some new packs. It sounds like, did you pull anything good? Yeah, I've actually been doing pretty good yeah getting a couple more cards to add to the collection, slowly building out that Final Fantasy base set.

Speaker: um I will say I'm a little upset. I went to a card show with my wife um over the weekend. or just far She was looking for her Pokemon, of course. But I was looking for the, at some Final Fantasy, there was a couple of things out there, and there was a box of of magic cards for a dollar a piece. And I'm like, sweet, I'm going just start sorting through.

Speaker: They had and Sin, Spira's punishment, and i don't have it for the collection. So, all right, let's pay a dollar for it. A few minutes later, i buy a single booster pack because I'm there and I'm having fun.

Speaker: Man, I pulled a fucking Sin out of that next pack as well. Yep, that's how it goes. You buy the single, then you crack the pack, and you pull it. I've been impressed with the artwork and ah the breadth of cards in this Final Fantasy set. I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan. Not into Magic the Gathering.

Speaker: ah We do have a Magic the Gathering channel on our Discord, and that's been... um pretty hot. a lot of conversation on there. A lot of good conversation. But yeah, I really like the Final Fantasy art and I've cracked a couple of your packs. I crack cracked a couple of Alex's packs and um it's been enjoyable. I haven't bought any myself. I just can't. I can't do it. I can't do it. I kind of got out of the Pokemon card space ah recently. It's just getting crazy.

Speaker: I do have ah a Black Bolt and... ah flare white flare etb pokemon center etbs on my shelf behind me so i i think that might be the last product i buy for a while yeah so you're lucky there because even myself and as a card shop i can't even get any pokemon product in right you're really lucky with that you did we we should uh we should link up matt because my uh crystal made me uh pre-order some stuff through ah gamers haven uh here in town and uh

Speaker: They actually put on my name. I'm going to pick it up next week. I got two black bolts and a white flare ETB in my name. I just put my name on the list for her and she's that they called me and I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker: I guess if I get a chance, I'm going to take ah an ETB and go you know open some packs with you. Maybe ah maybe in a potential Nintendo Direct coming up.

Speaker: Yeah. um We actually had a ah friend of the show and a listener ah crack a pack, and he pulled the red Victini. Shout out Banana Slurpee, I believe.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. He pulled a red Victini, and that that is going for a lot, and that is an incredible pull. So the cards look cool.

Speaker: I mean, it's just... Man, I just got done ah selling a lot of my sealed collection. I'm kind of minimalizing and you know going through a transition.

Speaker: But i just I think I'm going to get out of it, unfortunately. I think this is my my last product I'm going to do. The only thing that will probably get me back into it is they did the 151, the Pokedex ah organized set, which I love.

Speaker: And if they continue that with Gen 2... I'm in. I'm in. We know the 30th anniversary is coming up. Oh, I know. um Yeah, we we got a great Pokemon Presents.

Speaker: It was awesome. They really celebrated. We're going talk a little bit about that in the news. ah But yeah, other than that, Alex, anything new, anything exciting in your life?

Speaker: Well, aside from watching Bob completely become a degenerate ah and play magic with me, it's so nice. It's, it's nice. Cause like I've had, I've been playing magic forever, like online. Cause I don't have friends I can play with.

Speaker: Cause it's really hard to get like two, three people together and say, Hey, let's bring these four or $500 decks and play magic for six hours. Cause you know, we hate our lives.

Speaker: And ah it was really nice. Like, uh, Literally, I handed him a a Squall, and he built a whole deck around Squall, and he's been here and there, curb-stomping me since.

Speaker: And it's a lot of fun. And I've got my Lightning deck. You know, Lightning's the strongest character in the Final Fantasy universe. I'm not going to argue on this.

Speaker: So, Lightning's best deck. But yeah, got Bob into Magic. Just been dealing with work. I haven't had too much time to do a game lately, unfortunately. um It's just kind of how life is sometimes, but, you know, still managed to get a couple games of League in here and there, still managed to play some Final Fantasy VIII, the remaster I have on Steam. It's lot of fun.

Speaker: awesome. Yeah, i want to hear about that and the what we're playing. um I never never finished Final Fantasy eight, but it's it's definitely on my list. And of course, you built a Squall deck, Bob Leon Lionheart.

Speaker: Yeah, no, he's he's absolutely right. I built I threw this deck together and like I want to say probably like 15 minutes. I just started grabbing random cards, throwing them in there, building synergies.

Speaker: um so A couple of times I'm getting my you know my teeth kicked in, and then there are other times where ah Alex and another friend of ours is who's playing, they all of a sudden go, oh, shit, Bob's the threat at this table.

Speaker: Yeah. I was waiting for it. To give you an example here, Matt, it didn't work out the way I wanted it to, but I still got Alex when he hit me with his lightning. um That was all stacked up. But our buddy Zach, he ah he throws out the Cactar, and I'm waiting for him to attack me with his Cactar. I'm trying to bait him the entire game because i i had a car a response card that says prevent all the damage that's going to be dealt to this creature and then add tokens based on the amount of damage.

Speaker: So I was waiting for him to hit me with 10,000... you know, damage Cactar so I could then turn around and attack my creature and create ah tokens based on the amount of the like strength that card had. So I was going to turn around and bring out 5,000 zombie tokens or 10,000 zombie tokens and then just split it between the two of them and say game over.

Speaker: um It didn't work out that way, but see, this is why it's like a chess game, Matt. I'm telling you, you would love, you would like magic. i'll I'll check it out. um I bet a lot of our... What's that?

Speaker: You will. I'll check it out. Just pick up a fantasy game, I'll build you a deck. ah Seven, all the way. Got you. Yeah. ah And maybe we'll we'll cook some slot dogs and play some magic and drink some beer. Slot dogs, man. Dude, don't knock them until you try them. Have you tried them yet?

Speaker: and I haven't, but I didn't believe it when I heard it in the, and in that podcast. And i was like, there's no way this is a thing. I looked it up. i'm like, Holy shit. It's a ribbed hot dog. Uh-huh. Ribbed for her pleasure or his pleasure.

Speaker: You know, that's go lot jar the slot dog. Yeah. You guys got to try it. I'll make them. Uh, Yeah, I will. I'll play some magic and we'll we'll have some fun.

Speaker: I bet a lot of listeners are like their eyes are glazing over when you're starting to talk like in-depth magic stuff like mine were. So, you know, yeah whatever. A lot of our listeners do drink beer, though.

Speaker: So ah what are we drinking this this fine evening? Well, I'm a repeat from last last week's episode. I still had a couple left. It's good. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm doing Woods Boss Brewing Company, the foothead Foothills Fire Red Ale.

Speaker: um Still delicious. And I've got the last can right here. And I'm going to take a Sharpie. I'm going to write your name on it, Matt, because this one's for you. Excellent. Excellent. you have to bring that over.

Speaker: I want to try that. um Alex, you're drinking a little something more, a little harder this evening. Well, yeah, i've I've had enough beer drinking as of lately, so I decided to ah pull out some bourbon.

Speaker: um This is a horse soldier bourbon. um They're a veteran owned and operated ah distillery um out of.

Speaker: um and don't remember off the top my head, but they were formed ah post 9-11 and started making really good bourbon. And it's actually not expensive. Very cool.

Speaker: Very cool. And speaking of hard liquor, we are ah Bob, you ordered some of that Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag Edward Kenway rum we were talking about. So we have some of that.

Speaker: ah Maybe maybe we'll do you'll you'll have it and we'll do an opening on the next podcast. Who knows? Yeah, absolutely. Let's hope it comes in. I'd have to go looking through my email, but I do know it was on a, what do they call those, estimated shipping dates of July, July 2nd.

Speaker: 24th by the time this podcast hits your ears. So I'm hoping I hear something in the next week or so, but maybe maybe we'll do a special little episode where that we can sit around the table and and drink some rum. because ah Especially if it comes next week. Next week is going to be a wide open week for me.

Speaker: e ah Yeah, we can do that or sit around my fire and drink some rum and look at the mountain. Either way, I'm down to drink rum. You you call, you say it, you bring the bottle, I'll be there.

Speaker: Rum is my favorite hard liquor. So I'm not drinking any hard liquor though right now. I found a really unique beer from Great Divide ah and it is called the Samurai Japanese Lager.

Speaker: And The Great Divide breweries in Great Divide, Colorado, ah and it is delicious. It's very crisp. It's very clean.

Speaker: And it's made with like it's like a Japanese rice lager. ah and And yeah, made here. So, oh, my God, it's delicious. i love it. And it's got a cool can. It's got the samurai with the sun.

Speaker: Oh, I've seen that. How? Oh, I've been meaning to try it. ah It's really good. I'll save you can. I have three more. ah But dude, it's just a ah smooth sipper. You can just drink a lot of them.

Speaker: So but yeah, if if we were on video, you could see the can. Unfortunately, you can't. um It looks cool and it'll probably be the ghost of Yotai beer for me. So, or Yote beer.

Speaker: Yote. i yeah It's funny. You said new beers to try, Matt. we yeah Alex i and I met up last night. We were we're we're looking for another. We tried to go to our new haunt for brewery, but they were just too busy that they were slammed. It was like whatever.

Speaker: Yeah. Or Calkstone. No, Voodoo. So we went were like, all right, let's go to Cogstone. Looked it up. Cogstone's closed on on a Tuesday. All right. well like so let's So we searched and I found the closest thing that had food and beer.

Speaker: A little place. It's in, a it's not quite Manitou. It's old Colorado City. um But ah South Park Brewing or Brewery. I'm telling you, they've got a... I only had a sample because I did not want a 9% beer, but it's a 9% porter called a S'mores.

Speaker: And it is... ah it is very delicious for a heavy beer like that you do not realize how heavy it is because you get the the graham cracker with the cinnamon coming through you can taste the marshmallow you can taste the you get the whole gamut on that of the palate the whole thing is there and it doesn't get washed out by a very high abu so surprised shout out if anybody's been there south park brewery um it's a nice little uh quiet place yeah the food was amazing food was absolutely amazing Beautiful. Beautiful.

Speaker: um My favorite brewery in Old Colorado City is OCC Brewing. Old Colorado City Brewing. ah there are right Old Colorado City is like the original Colorado Springs downtown.

Speaker: It's a little more west, a little closer to the foothills. A lot of really cool old architecture there. lot of cool shops. And yeah, that brewery is awesome. i want to try this brewery.

Speaker: It sounds like that S'mores Porter is amazing. I can't wait to do that. But yeah, to to round up the life stuff, I went and saw a movie, a very big movie right now or last week, and that was Superman.

Speaker: Have you guys seen Superman? No, can't say I have. Not the new one, no. ah Yeah, this is kicking off the actual DCU. um James Gunn is kind of the head of it, like Feige is the head of the MCU, and it's the you know DC Comics universe.

Speaker: ah It was great. It was great. um It's getting a lot of good reviews. I loved it. ah Don't go in expecting any dark, gritty DC stuff like we're used to.

Speaker: If you're a big fan of the Superman comics, you're going to be a big fan of this movie. ah The fight scenes were incredible. the acting was... ah The yeah casting was on point. and man, the the story was a little hard to keep up with.

Speaker: but it follows the comics pretty much to a T and it was a fun wild ride for a Superman movie. um It's in my top three Supermans easily.

Speaker: It's really good movie. I liked it. Interesting. Okay. I don't know. I'm to have to go check that out. I don't, I, I'm not necessarily, I'm just putting it out there as like, I'm not a Superman kind of guy when it comes to the, to the superheroes.

Speaker: But excuse me, but I will say, If it's a good movie, it's a good movie. And that's always, and I'm always down to do that. Oh, yeah. It was a fun time. Fun time. ah Yeah. So, housekeeping. A little bit of housekeeping. We have a we have a correction.

Speaker: I said the Game Informer has like 150 pages. I was like, that sounds high. It doesn't. i'm I'm holding it right here. It has a total of 96 pages. And I was correct in saying there were two total ads.

Speaker: ah One is on the back cover, not even on a page. So 96 pages, two total ads and incredible quality. You're going to get yours soon, Bob.

Speaker: I just want to make that correction. ah Issue 369 and issue 370 is probably coming out later this month. I'm excited for it. And I am very impressed with what they've done.

Speaker: So Alex, are you subscribed to Game Informer? I was back in the day. um Yeah. Like, like Teenage me loved it. Like it was the only way I got to see about games that I was never going to be allowed to play anyway.

Speaker: So yeah, I got my, my parents had game informer. I read it religiously back in the day and I just, I stopped reading it. Don't have an active subscription now. Yeah, so I mean, i don't know how far ah along you got with Game Inform, but when game and GameStop bought them and they were all rolled up into that, the quality started lowering and everything like that.

Speaker: That's been fixed, man. This is like top tier quality for a magazine. And yeah, I love reading physical print um before bed and what better things to read than stuff about gaming.

Speaker: then you Then you have like dreams that are usually fueled with ah gaming content. It's great. It's great. ah Bob, where can we ah where can people find us on Discord? Where do they go?

Speaker: Where the hell do they go to be part of this awesome community we have? First, you're going to need a grab some sage, and then you're going need to collect the dragon dragon balls. I'm fucking with y'all, folks.

Speaker: ah Now you can find us online. You can open up that web browser if you're a choice. I don't judge if you don't use Opera GX. i And you go to https colon whack whack L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E slash shapes of gaming.

Speaker: That's our link tree. You can go there where all of the landing pages, ah you'll find landing page links that redirect you to ah every place you can hear this podcast. YouTube, where maybe in the we're looking in the future, you can see this podcast as well.

Speaker: And you can hit the Discord and all of our other social media sites. um The social media sites, if anybody, nobody's mentioned it, but yes, they are a little inactive right now. I am working through that. um So please be patient.

Speaker: um But once again, you go to HTTPS colon whack whack L I N K T R dot E E slash shapes of gaming. Yeah. So, Thank you.

Speaker: And yeah, go there, support us. If you love the podcast, leave us a review, ah rate us, you know, that helps. ah That helps us reach more people that can join the community.

Speaker: um Three things we've been working on for, i don't know, let's say phase two of Shapes of Gaming. One, we are gonna, we're trying to do video. We're gonna do video soon. We're working on it.

Speaker: There's a lot that needs done for the video part. We're already on YouTube on audio. i there's a lot that goes into that. ah Two, ah we are trying to get a easier but link.

Speaker: So it's not link.t-r-e-e, but we there are some backend pieces for that as well. And three, ah we're we're trying our best with the socials. i We have a person that might be working on that and be a little more engaged in social media.

Speaker: Bob and I aren't even on social media personally. I am, but I'm like a read only. And I think you are too. We do not utilize social media. It's just it for me, it's it just doesn't bring a lot of value for me personally.

Speaker: But we want Shapes of Gaming to be prominent on that. So we're definitely working on that for sure. Uh, but yeah, we are, we are constantly evolving. We are constantly shaping and, uh, let's just call it phase two of, uh, shapes of gaming.

Speaker: So yeah, lighting things. I like that stage two phase. No, this is a gaming podcast. It's stage. Okay. Level two. Level two. I love it. I was going by the MCU, I guess, but I like stage or level stage two, level two.

Speaker: Whatever. Yeah. Chapter two. So um we got a lot of really cool things in mind for the future that we're we're not going to share because they're very unique. And ah it's one of the reasons we started this. So stay tuned. ah what What you so hear now and what you see in the future is just the start of something awesome.

Speaker: we have planned and what we've been cooking up. So yeah, this is ah this is a huge journey we're excited to go on and excited for everyone to go on with us and shape the way we talk about video games.

Speaker: So ah let's get into the news. So what's what's happened this last week Well, I'm going to say, i will say aside, i know we were talking about it before the show here in our document, but I do want to, this is my news of the week that really home um is the legendary, legendary Prince of Darkness himself is no longer with us.

Speaker: um So I want to give out a moment of silence for Mr. Ozzy Osbourne himself.

Speaker: All right. So now that the sadness is over and I can drink drink my my feelings with beer. um A little lot gaming adjacent, if you will. um yeah It's still, ah ah far i it's not a direct video game, but I think it's close enough, um is the ah um Mortal Kombat 2 movie trailer dropped.

Speaker: um This is the follow-up from 2021's Mortal Kombat. um Excuse me. And guys, I got to tell you, The first one and was amazing. I was a huge fan of it.

Speaker: um it was Even though had a couple of issues with it, um looking at the trailer and the second one, I'm on board, man. um I was a little concerned. i let me Let me pitch it over to you, Alex. said Did you see this yet?

Speaker: I have not fully seen the trailer, no. I've seen bits and pieces leaked on like TikTok, but that's been it. Okay. All right. Yeah. I was i was with you when i was watching air i was when I was watching this trailer, and I don't know if you heard this yet. It's it's all in the promotional, so this is nothing spoiler. but um did you like we We kind of got a sense that the sequel was going to be a surrounded or a revolve around a specific character, um Mr. Johnny Cage himself.

Speaker: um So the fan fans, we we all started theorizing who can play Johnny Cage, who can do it the best, because um I don't remember his name ah that played Kano, Josh Lawson. absolutely smashed it in the first movie and was the highlight. So Johnny Cage is kind of one of those purse.

Speaker: yeah I guess you could say he, he put everything into his charisma stat, um, as a character. So I am, with but did you see who's playing Johnny Cage in this movie? Oh, yeah.

Speaker: And it's great casting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carl Urban. Yeah, Carl Urban himself. ah like at all i I was a little taken aback. um I just... I'm like, wait, is that... but what's What's going on here? um But I don't know. say I expect it. It's coming out October 25th, so right around the corner.

Speaker: um Or... Is it 25th? 24th. I'm sorry. 24th of this year. um I am. I'm all for it. um What about what about you there, Matt? You sounds like you're a little interested.

Speaker: Oh, yeah, I'm definitely interested. Looks cheesy and it looks great. And I like the first one. It was a fun, great movie. You know, cheesy.

Speaker: not but not I mean, the writing was all over the place, right? But it's a it's a movie you go just to have fun and laugh and celebrate the Mortal Kombat craziness, right? You don't go in for an engaging story with ah you know plot twists and everything. that You just go to watch people fucking rip a spine out of someone and crush their skull and get a cheesy one-liner from Johnny Cage.

Speaker: Fuck yeah, um man. This looks awesome. Those were $500 sunglasses, asshole.

Speaker: I love in the trailer where he like puts his sunglasses up with his middle finger. Yeah. I think he's going to nail the, you know, Johnny Cage and I think it's going to be great. So yeah I think yeah the one before this, the prequel to this movie, I was one of the better mortal combat movies we've gotten.

Speaker: we've We've gotten some interesting ones. So I like the direction they're going. i like that. They're showing a ton of characters. ah you know, we saw Jade. We saw Jax from the original. We saw Raiden.

Speaker: ah All the all the staples are coming. We saw ah Scorpion ah fighting Noob Sabat. Yes. Yeah, that's ah exciting. So, yeah, I can't wait to see more. And I'm in.

Speaker: I'll watch it. i'mnna I'll probably see it, too. I did like the first one, so we'll see. Maybe we do a watch party for it. I don't know. I'm just thinking about that.

Speaker: ah Because i'm I'm going to be that asshole in there and be like, hey, did you know this? Did you know this? Did you know that? like new For those that don't know, this is that that retro or encyclopedia knowledge. You know Noob Sabat is actually a joke.

Speaker: he Like the name and everything. Yeah, yeah. yeah yeah I'm so for it. oh yeah Oh, yeah. That game series has a ton of little Easter eggs in it.

Speaker: Toasty! yeah So, yeah, I'm glad ah um glad they're doing it. And it it looks fun. um Let's talk about this Pokemon Presents.

Speaker: um Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that. This event. I'm going to mute myself for the next 30 minutes while you guys are looking. We're going to graze lightly on it. We'll just you know cover the the major things ah yeah maybe for five minutes. I don't want to linger on this. But yeah, a Pokemon Presents happened ah Tuesday, Tuesday,

Speaker: last tuesday the twenty s second And ah yesterday, ah two days ago, for people listening now, ah I was hopeful for it.

Speaker: I was hopeful. there they They teased a lot of stuff that didn't even come to fruition. ah But we basically just got some minor new things, but updates on the games we already knew about.

Speaker: ah Mega Evolution for Pokemon TCG. Cool, but I'm kind of out. um It's got a lot of cool cards. um Let's see. We got updates on Pokemon Unite. We got updates on Pokemon Sleep. Nobody cares about that.

Speaker: We got updates on Pokemon Cafe Remix. um Pokemon Go. Oh, this was probably the highlight of the show, which is unfortunate, but ah Poke Park Kanto.

Speaker: There's like ah actual, yeah, like a little theme park based off Kanto from Generation 1 that's going to be in Japan. Uh, that's cool.

Speaker: So yeah, I mean, what else just on the games? We just got like scarlet and violet updates, some terror raids. I don't know. i was there for like new game announcements.

Speaker: Uh, champions looks cool. What do you think, Alex? What'd you think of it? Yeah, it was pretty lackluster. It honestly felt like I was watching an NVIDIA presentation. I'll get onto that later.

Speaker: But, um, yeah, like when, when the highlight is a what looks like a fan art of Dragonite being the mega evolution. Like and that's really sad.

Speaker: They put wings on his head. It's bad. it's It's just as bad as them doing the fucking hats for the terrestrialization. Like, why do you, why did they have to have hats? Why couldn't they just have like the diamond coating that was the color of the terrestrialization type?

Speaker: Like why'd they have to have stupid hats? i don't but I don't understand. Because hats are cool. And come on, man. Pikachu in a top hat's awesome. Eevee in a top hat's awesome. Come on. Yeah, a real hat, but not ah the planet Earth on top of your head or a big old flower and sprouting out of your head saying, oh, I'm a grass type now.

Speaker: Why not just fucking do the gem, the green gem coating around you? I don't know. Stupid. and I've been watching the the anime too Horizon, Pokemon Horizons, search for Lagwa, Lagwa.

Speaker: ah And yeah, the hats just get me every time. On the anime, on the cards, on the games. I just don't know why they did it. So yeah, what else did we get?

Speaker: We got... the Pokemon tales, the misadventures of Sir fetched and pitch you pitch you, however the hell you say it. be che yeah Um, yeah, I mean, it looks like a CG little short Pokemon concierge. That was fun.

Speaker: ah getting a season two. That's cool. Uh, And then they closed the gate the the ah presentation with Pokemon ZA.

Speaker: Like Pokemon Legends ZA. Come on. We don't need to hear anything about this more about this game. I'm sold. I don't know if I'm going to get it. I don't know how it's going to run. ah ah Legends Arceus ran like dog shit on the Switch 1.

Speaker: And then with these performance issues we're hearing for Donkey Kong Bonanza, I guess Donkey Kong Bonanza is the next generation solely. And then Legend ZA was developed for the Switch 1 and has a Switch 2 edition.

Speaker: So I'm hopeful for that. I'm hopeful it'll run well. Uh... But yeah, I'm, I don't know, man. I just want our net, the two main updates I want are either the black and white remake, ah a supposed fire red leaf green remake that was kind of teased that we thought was coming or generation 10. What are your thoughts?

Speaker: Honestly? Yeah. um

Speaker: So I haven't played a Pokemon game since, ah before Sword and Shield because i don't I don't have any of them for Switch. So when when I go back and I look at like what games like would be awesome to have remakes of, yeah, black and white.

Speaker: ah Not so much black 2 and white 2. It's the same games, but um slightly different. Right. But they, especially with the Black Bolt and White Flare stuff, I really, really expected it.

Speaker: But, you know, Pokemon Company has a way of just letting me down all the time. if it's not with the TCG, it's with the games or other media. So it... Doesn't really surprise me anymore at this point. Right. Right. And Game Freak is apparently working on a completely different game for multi-console.

Speaker: ah Beast of the Sanctuary or something like that. What is it called? um I think it is Beast of the Sanctuary. i know what you're talking about, but I'm totally on board for it. um Yeah.

Speaker: That was a huge surprise at Summer Game Fest. Yeah. Like. beast of reincarnation by the way reincarnation yeah i was looking at dang it thanks yeah like let game freak you know open up their wings see what they can do because like obviously i honestly think the pokemon company is really limiting them nowadays yeah exactly uh if you haven't played scarlet and violet uh I loved it.

Speaker: I think playing it, if you when you get a Switch 2, I would highly recommend you just you play it on the Switch 2. It's a great Pokemon game. I love Generation 9. I played them back to back.

Speaker: I don't know why. They ran like absolute shit but they are completely different games on the switch to highly recommend you check them out now that they're on the switch too and they have a free update so if you if you're a huge pokemon fan uh there's a ton of quality of life stuff in there um maybe when you come over next i'll i'll give you i'll show you it on the switch too it's incredible looking it's a new it's It's a new game, man.

Speaker: They, yeah they did a lot. And I can't believe that game was underneath what they gave us at launch. It's just like, come on guys, what are you doing? So, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Uh, yeah, that was Pokemon presents. We were, we just wanted to touch on it lightly. Uh, nothing really new announced in the game space. And then we got a Pokemon legends, Z a bundle, uh, for the switch. It's not even a themed console.

Speaker: They're doing the same thing that they did with, uh, Mario Kart World. And it's a bundle. You get a digital code in there. ah In my opinion, it's the same fucking thing except different art on the box with a different code in the box.

Speaker: And I feel like we're going to see this a lot with the new games. So I'm not a fan of it. I mean, it's awesome for people that want to that. This is a system seller for them and they want the digital game.

Speaker: Awesome. Go buy the bundle $4.99. Great value. You get Legends ZA for like 50 bucks. So, but not for me. Are you going to play ah Legends ZA when it comes out? Did you play Legends Arceus, Alex?

Speaker: No, like I said, I haven't played any of them that were for Switch. So anything past, I played ah Sun and Moon, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon, XY, but I haven't played anything past those.

Speaker: Yeah. um Yeah, i'm like check out Scarlet buy it. They're awesome. The Diamond and Pearl remake is like... i I'm not a big fan Gen 4, so that one didn't even tempt me anyway.

Speaker: I love Gen 4 and I love Gen 5, and I want that black and white remake with the same engine. So... All right, Bob, we're back. he can You can come back. We're done talking Pokemon now. Oh, hey, hey, How's it going, guys? ah what what what what is it we What are we talking about? Snorlax? The news.

Speaker: I'm just teasing with you guys. I know enough about my Pokemon, but... You actually have ZA drafted, so this you should be ah you know supportive.

Speaker: Yeah, sure. I'm i here for it. Yeah, I see it high 70s, maybe low 80s. i I don't know. Legends Arceus got an 83, so I think it'll get low eighty s yeah I wish that, you know, maybe there's a way to do this for a draft instead. is Well, no, that'd be difficult. I wish to think it's sales numbers. And the reason I say that is, but okay either i mean look at Sword and Shield.

Speaker: Look at Arceus. They ran like crap. But then ninten error Nintendo, I almost, but a Pokemon company, they make hand over fist because 35 million copies get fucking sold over its lifetime.

Speaker: Make it make sense, folks. um But, yeah, Well, when you're one of the biggest IPs in gaming, that's going to happen. Just naturally on its own. Yeah. Biggest IPs for Nintendo.

Speaker: ah it's It's crazy. i I played... I didn't play Scarlet and Violet on launch, but I did play it on Switch 1. And, man, it was it was so fun, right? Gameplay's king, ah and the quality of life stuff was there. Really cool new Pokemon.

Speaker: Really awesome world, but... it looked and ran like shit. And I have no idea why they released the game in that state, but I played them back to back because I loved them so much and I could play through the performance issues.

Speaker: So I don't know. I don't know. It's just a sometimes the performance issues blend in the background when you're, when you're, uh, when the gameplay is so good, but with PC, I get it.

Speaker: Like if you're used to the 60 frames and I'm used to 60 frames too, uh, Yeah, I don't know how I did it. And I just, man, playing it on the Switch 2, just kind of dabbling. I'm like, damn, I should have waited.

Speaker: I should have waited, but I didn't. So ah the this last piece of news is in your wheelhouse, Bob. ah a Obsidian drops the price of Outer Worlds.

Speaker: Yes. They dropped it from $79.99 to $69.99 for some reason. I don't know. Why do you think? um Well, I think, I mean, I have my ah my theories and this is might maybe this is I don't know.

Speaker: i don't know looking and analyzing things too much, my tism, if you will, is um Nintendo gave the green light, right? So this is going to happen. um I want to say this up front before I talk. $80 games are coming.

Speaker: Get your wallets ready. Get yourself on a mindset, okay? But I'm wondering is...

Speaker: So Obsidian is owned ultimately by daddy Microsoft. Um, and their arm Xbox game studios has become, has trained their users. And we say this all the time over the last couple of years to not purchase their games.

Speaker: This is my biggest concern with hell divers to next month. and like And well, actually in almost, uh, 30 days, exactly a little over, um is who's going to show up to buy it. I think they saw the pre-order numbers and kind of got scared.

Speaker: I mean, saying Obsidian and Xbox, because they're expected their sales are going to come from um us PlayStation folks. It's going to happen. um I know it's coming on PC, but if you have PC, why wouldn't you do Game Pass anyways, right?

Speaker: So I'm wondering if they saw the lack of pre pre-order numbers ah and thought, well, maybe if we drop it down $10 and back down to the normalization, maybe we can extract some value out of ah the other side of the pond here.

Speaker: um I don't... ah I think that's the best i can answer i can come up with. I think it's a faux pas because you look at the month and it's a crowded fucking window. you're putting a youre you're You're putting this game up against a lot of big bangers for the year.

Speaker: um So um I don't think that's that's necessarily accurate to this. but for all i for But that's my theory. I think they dropped it down because they know who's doing the purchasing and they need to get those numbers up to continue to bridge that ah that relationship with Sony.

Speaker: That makes sense. I'm cool with it. Yeah, I think ah if you see weak pre-order numbers, then, you know, drop the price. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, think about it from ah Concord's perspective.

Speaker: um when they so when they when that beta When they announced the the open beta and weekend and they were going to hurt bring everything out, they brought it from just those who pre-ordered the game to right everybody. So you get you can infer some information ah out of pre-order numbers.

Speaker: um this is This is why I say there This is why I kind of sit on the fence of pre-orders versus not pre-ordering um because i've been we all in this community have been burned by bad pre-orders.

Speaker: ah Yeah, I pre-ordered it. I pre-ordered Borderlands 3 and then it launches like absolute call dog shit. um So yeah, you got to pick and choose. Yeah, and very rarely do you ever see like publishers lower the price.

Speaker: like This is ah rare to see, so it's interesting. let's so We'll see how it goes for them. Yeah, and I will say as a PC gamer too, I've used Game Pass, but there's a million and a half reasons not to use it. nail knew The only one reason to use it is convenience.

Speaker: he um First off, you lock yourself into a payment plan every single month. Right. to be able to play the games and it doesn't have absolutely everything that you might want.

Speaker: There's only select games in the whole Microsoft and Xbox catalog that actually make it to Game Pass. So like I was lucky enough to get Claire Obscure. I loved it, canceled my Game Pass and bought it.

Speaker: yes I didn't want to keep paying for a subscription where I'm going to realistically over the course of a year spend over $100 $50 game. that I might not play every day.

Speaker: he print He canceled his pre-order, got his money back, and then used that money to buy Claire. Right. I don't know why they do that. Yeah, it's a subscription model, and you don't own anything. So i I'm not a big fan of that model, and I've never really used... i mean, I've used PS Plus. I've never used ah Game Pass.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. playstation PlayStation Plus was the only reason why I ever got Hollow Knight to begin with, because it showed up as the free game of the month. um Oh, yeah. Fun fact, i do actually play my PS4 every once in a while. It kind of sits there and collects dust, but sometimes it gets played.

Speaker: Yeah. You're getting a PS5 soon. Yeah, soon. Got to get the Wi-Fi Switch 2 first. But yeah, I'll have a PS5 soon. Heck yeah. Still not converting though. I'm still this big, huge black box here. Still my main.

Speaker: We'll see. We'll see. ah hey you said ah You said you have a piece of news. What's what's new in the the gaming or the PC gaming world? Okay. So this isn't just PC gaming. This is kind of like the tech world in general.

Speaker: Okay. So ah NVIDIA, just literally just the other day, ah successfully became the first $4 trillion company in the world.

Speaker: They have surpassed Apple and Microsoft by almost three quarters of a trillion dollars. Wow. I wish I had stock. Yeah, and to put this into perspective too, this meant that over his tenure in NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, the CEO of ah NVIDIA, has gone from a practical nobody to now the ninth richest person on the planet.

Speaker: Damn. Yeah. That's quite the feat. it It is one hell of a feat, but hey, props to NVIDIA. um I don't personally like them. I think that they're Businesses a little less than, you know, quality.

Speaker: And, but I'll give them props. They've successfully found their market. And I think honestly, it's really just the government buying off all the AI stuff. And it works. da they They went from nothing to something very quickly as soon as their AI chips started hitting the market.

Speaker: Yeah. I got to get props. As much as I might not like them. Right. I don't have a lot of experience with NVIDIA. ah My graphics video cards come soldered to the board on my...

Speaker: consoles so and on your freaking pcs yeah but that's true yeah my pc too my mac um yeah i don't really have to deal with their their i guess this isn't them but they're a huge scalping market and they price gouge the shit out of the newest stuff so nvidia also uh um I could go on a rant about this for hours, so you're going to to reel me in if I go too far.

Speaker: But um and NVIDIA also releases their things at far too high of a price point to begin with. um So like ah I look at NVIDIA as they are the single man's graphics card company.

Speaker: Right. Period. End of story, because ain't nobody with a family going to drop $1,000 on a graphics card that's going to be irrelevant in five years. Right. Right. But hey, they they've made a whole business model out of it, so I can't dog it too much. Obviously, they're doing something right.

Speaker: I'm not a billionaire. um right yeah they're They're making their money and their stock price is just skyrocketing. It's crazy. so ah Bob, you have a piece of news. What do you think of NVIDIA before you get into your next piece of news?

Speaker: it's interesting I think it's funny because they have surpassed all of these other organizations on the market um by selling their their their graphics cards. I think I kind of almost agree with you, Alex, on the single man's, um yeah I'm half joking in this, of course, but the the single man's graphics card, um because if I was going to look at it, I'm not going to buy a graphics card that's $1,000, and then I could get maybe five to 10 years out of it. sounds really good and when you look when you think about it

Speaker: But at the end of the day, it's not really because that's $1,000. That's more than a PlayStation PS5 Pro a Switch 2. um It's almost as much as them combined. Oh, and by the way, those consoles have everything else included. um And on the PC side, I still have to buy the damn pieces together. And then I have to piecemeal it myself. And then, of course, you do all of that. So um I think it's really interesting from that perspective because we we talk about, um and i don't want to get too political, but or I don't want to get political, but we talk about the market. We ultimately look at the economy and where everything's at.

Speaker: And you see people struggling on one hand, and then you see on the other hand, people who say they're struggling buying $1,200 graphics cards and spending $5,000 a month on OnlyFans.

Speaker: Make it make sense, folks. Okay. ah But I digper i digress. Yeah. ah No, at the end of the good for them. I think it's awesome um in terms of ah being able to continue to grow.

Speaker: ah They are doing things outside of just what they're doing to gaming, and they kind of launched their career off of the backs of and the concept of selling good graphics cards from 15, 20 years ago um to now doing AI chips and and all the other advanced stuff that they're working on. So keep it up to them.

Speaker: yeah run yeah I will say, uh, because I know you guys are a little bit more detached from the PC realm. I know, especially, ah matt is um to put it into perspective um going on this steam hardware survey that comes out every year in june um nvidia video graphics cards discrete graphics cards account for 74 of steam users wow holy shit um yeah now if you actually narrow that down the amount that are actually current generation cards is next to nothing but

Speaker: You know, it it is quite a bit. The top 10 most used is all NVIDIA. Interesting. All them being some type of form of a 60 series card.

Speaker: Yeah. And this will probably be in our main topic as well. Yeah. I can't wait.

Speaker: All right. Well, I guess... Yeah. you Any other thoughts on that guys? Cause if not, I got one last piece of news for the group here. Um, yeah, I just, uh, this came out yesterday, um, uh, from when we're recording. Um, uh, so Tuesday, two days ago for when this is in your ears, um, this dropped on the PlayStation block. Uh, and I don't know how I didn't see anything about it.

Speaker: Um, saber interactive finally came, ah up out of the water. Um, and announced a ah they are bringing a new game with an old IP kind of twist in Hellraiser Revival.

Speaker: um It's coming from their PlayStation blog post here. um is Hellraiser Revival is a single-player, first-person, action-survival horror experience that will put you into the dark world of Clive Baker's twisted imagination.

Speaker: From the moment we start this journey... Our team has poured every ounce of passion, creativity, and determination into crafting what we believe will be the definitive Hellraiser gaming experience.

Speaker: um Either of you guys take a look, and then it comes accompanied with a ah game an announcement trailer. Either one of you guys take a look at this? No. i I'll be completely honest, no.

Speaker: I had heard of it, but it's not really my type of game, so it's not really something that's ever going to really be on my radar. I'm right there with you, Alex. ah The first person Kind of turned me off.

Speaker: But i the IP interests me for sure. So I'll keep an eye on it. It's not on my list. It has my curiosity. I'm glad Sabre is working on this and ah collaborating with this awesome IP.

Speaker: So really cool. Yeah. i Out of the middle of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. I will say you want to revive an IP. Can you give us a good Wolfenstein game for Christ's sake? Cause it's been so long since we've had a good one.

Speaker: Yeah. mean I mean, machine games is working on a Indiana Jones DLC. So yeah, so I don't know. Maybe. ah Let's see. An IP I want to revive is Legend of Dragoon. I just picked up a black label copy of that.

Speaker: I ah traded in some games. Picked up a black label copy. Wasn't complete. But then I got the instruction manual on eBay for ah about the complete price total.

Speaker: Very excited for it. I'll show it to you when you come over so you can... You can check it out. Bob can attest to this because I just picked up a PS1 from him. The first game on my list is a complete in-box Black Label Legend of Tribune. Oh, man.

Speaker: like it's that that That has to be the the first game that i'm that I'm going to buy for it. Okay. Because I don't have a complete Black Label. I only have a complete Greatest Hits. Dude, I go. So the the place I picked it up was Game City.

Speaker: Bob was with me. we had some good barbecue up there and hung out. That's the shop up in Monument, isn't it? Monument. Yep. Yep. ah But I go to a lot of conventions. I'm going to Comic-Con, so i will I'll keep an eye out. We're going to MAGFest. I'm always around vintage old video games.

Speaker: The best vintage place around here is up in actually Fort Collins. It's called Games Ahoy. ah Kind of a stupid name, but dude, they have everything you can dream of when it comes to retro. And I'll keep an eye out for that black label for you. I'll pick it up if I see it.

Speaker: Yeah, that would be awesome. that's That's the first one on my list that has to happen. Yeah, I know you're a big fan of ah Legend of Dragon, but man, I want to see that IP. I want to see that IP revived. Put Bluepoint on that, you know?

Speaker: They were talking about it. That's the thing. Yeah, I know. that That was a Reddit post from, what, three years ago? ah yeah. When that rumor came out? So many games on Halloween. They were teasing so many games.

Speaker: And then, oh, we're working on a God of War multiplayer game. And then it got canceled. So now it's like two years. Bluepoint's been working on something that's completely erased.

Speaker: Dude, put them on something. like yeah yeah Put them on a Resistance trilogy. Put them on an Infamous ah you know duology or whatever the hell you call it. Or Legend of Dragoon. I think it's a trilogy now. Infamous has three games, right?

Speaker: Well, yeah, but one's for PS4. That would probably get remastered standalone. Hey, Infamous 1 and 2 were some amazing games.

Speaker: And you can't play them. You can't play them unless you have original hardware, which I do. ah but you, you can't play on the PS3. A lot of PS3 titles are stuck on that cell processing architecture, but yeah, uh, kind of got a tangent there. I'm excited for the hell razor game, not my style. If it was third person, I'd be a little more interested.

Speaker: Uh, but are you really interested in this? Bob? Is it going on your list? Are you excited? um i'm I'm definitely, it's got my attention for sure. I'm going to wait and see. It's a little early on, but based on the trailer, um this has a little bit, I know they they described this survival first person action, but I get a little bit more, I don't want to say dead space because dead space is very more slow paced, but you got this weird like combination of dead space with exploration with a little bit more fast pace of like Wolfenstein going on in here.

Speaker: Um, uh, gory as hell. So um it's got my attention for sure. Um, I think, i think this, I just, uh, I think the description doesn't sell what it is, which is truly just probably going to be a first person shooter with some RPG elements. And I'm using the quotes here, folks.

Speaker: Gotcha. Yeah. Very cool. Uh, Wrapping up the news, i actually have one more thing. I got to talk about it. Very exciting. ah Netflix is actually announced a live action series based off of a video game.

Speaker: And this video game series is Assassin's Creed. ah And it gets me excited because it is the producer or the person that was in charge of Westworld.

Speaker: ah And ah David Weiner, ah the and he did The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead. He did Halo, which unfortunately, eh. And Robert Pitino, Westworld.

Speaker: So um very excited for this. And i can't wait to see what they do with it. And Netflix has been doing a lot of video game adaptations. ah They're working on a hyper light drifter animated series. I would like to see things go more animated ah and the devil may cry that just came out really cool.

Speaker: So I'm excited for this. I don't like it that it's live action. I would rather have an animated, but oh, well, oh, well, um, Yeah, let's ah let's get let's do what we're playing big after.

Speaker: And let's get into the main topic. Why are we here? Alex, this is kind of all you. ah This is an episode specifically on the state of PC gaming. You're heavily into PC gaming.

Speaker: ah Bob and I aren't. And we just wanted to bring you on because you're the ah connoisseur of of PC gaming. And i guess, where do we start?

Speaker: How long have you been, you know, gaming on the PC? What's your rig like? What's your setup? And what's what's the state of PC gaming now? I always see like this dead space came out and the port was completely broke on PC.

Speaker: And I always see, you know, mixed things about the the PC gaming landscape. Uh, what, what's going on in the PC world, Alex? All right. So I've been gaming on PC since, uh, World Warcraft's first expansion, Burning Crusade.

Speaker: Um, my old man, uh, got me a free trial of World of Warcraft back then. And, uh, kind of like that, I think that game and, uh,

Speaker: little series games by wild tangent, uh, the fate games, or it really got me into PC gaming. Um, a little bit of the first far cry as well. Uh, been gaming mostly PC since, um, yeah, my, my setup though, it's not anything crazy, honestly. Uh, go my big old 32 inch, you know, curved monitor, uh, my,

Speaker: ah This is where I'm going to embarrass myself and blank on all my hardware. um ah Got a 7800X 3D processor and a ah AMD 7900XTX.

Speaker: um It's great for 2K gaming, some 4K. I don't ever really play four k but... It's great. It does the job. um Then I've got a you know my lovely m MMO mouse.

Speaker: That's my go-to. It's my Corsair Scimitar. um My Razer Huntsman Mini. like um For PC, I'm quite a bit ah function over form.

Speaker: i don't like Yeah, my setup haszel has all the lights in the world. Yeah, my desk has lights on it too. but Oh, there's RGBs. Yeah, but my PC is just glowing green. That's that's all I have to do.

Speaker: Yeah. To match the theme, it's all my whole setup is all anime stuff because I'm a total anime nerd. Yeah. and I just like to keep things a little little bit more simple. I'm not ah the kind of guy that needs like liquid cooling. I don't need a wall of monitors. I have that at work, and it drives me insane.

Speaker: So it's, yeah, very much function over form. Very cool. um What are what are like the the hard specs on stuff? Okay, so hard specs. um My processor is better than your PS5.

Speaker: um My graphics card is better than your PS5. Anyway, um yeah, so ah all joking aside, have... i have Currently right now, 64 gigs of DDR5 RAM.

Speaker: um That's not just for gaming, though. I also use my ah PC for music production. and

Speaker: yeah Oh, my God. Okay. um we got We got a lot of listeners in. we We got a lot listeners in on it. All right. So we lost Bob, and we we tried to flow through. We tried to flow through. We lost him, I don't know, like five minutes, and he came back.

Speaker: And ah Alex said, we lost Bob. And I put in the chat, when one falls, we continue. When, not if. So, we yeah, we were having fun in the chat. We had to...

Speaker: let people know but yeah you lost internet bob you're you're back and good to go i'm still getting some messages that you're uh having a problem so i don't know i'm here beside well yeah you know what my what love leafy you have exactly so yeah uh yeah some technical difficulties where we're unedited we're unfiltered unscripted whatever But yeah, we were, we were all laughing at that. So a little, uh, Claire obscure expedition 33 Easter egg in the, in the chat we have, but, uh, Alex continue. Sorry. Yeah. That threw me off my whole train of thought. Not going to lie. See, I've got my 7,800 X3D, um, 64 gigs of DDR five Ram, uh, 6,000, uh, speed, um, graphics card is 24 gigs of Ram, a VRAM, um,

Speaker: nothing crazy. Like, I mean, I guess like to a lot of people that might be absolutely insane, but it's really not. um Not to me, at least. I could always have more. But it does everything I need it to When everything's functioning properly, it's the greatest thing in the world. But if I have issues, I'm completely on my own because I don't have PC friends that I can be like, hey, my car isn't powering on properly or hey, my fans aren't spinning.

Speaker: yeah Consult Google and hope to God your PC is even turning on to do that. Yeah, so what kind of specific problems do you run into on PC? Like when you're gaming, like what are the like the top three problems you have ah PC gaming from buying the game to finishing it?

Speaker: Okay, so a big one that depends entirely on the developer. is ah ah because i use AMD cards, the graphics cards.

Speaker: If a game is optimized for NVIDIA, it's going to run a lot worse on an AMD card. Not necessarily bad. um There are some cases, though, like Monster Hunter Wilds when it came out was completely unplayable for me.

Speaker: um Really? but Yeah, ah that was ah whole massive driver update with AMD to make that playable for a AMD users. um problems that I have, uh,

Speaker: that I've had quite often, um, that you might not have to deal with on a, on a PlayStation. Um, if the storage starts getting full on a PC, ah PC starts slowing down dramatically.

Speaker: Um, it is very much reflected in gaming. There's a lot of, when you're gaming on PC, like cash files and cash data that will end up, uh, stacking up over time and you'll fill up all your drives with it. Um,

Speaker: Another one. ah Sometimes. Sometimes. And it it is a big problem. um If you like playing with ray tracing.

Speaker: ah If you're on an AMD card and the game doesn't have um FSR, but it has DLSS or you're on an NVIDIA card on an NVIDIA card and um the game has, you know, only AMD native ray tracing.

Speaker: you tend to have a lot of stability issues. Um, and to the point, sometimes it becomes borderline unplayable and you learn to improvise, adapt and overcome, I guess. Uh, eventually I, I, I do figure most things out or if not, if a driver doesn't fix it for me, because a lot of times it's just, my drivers are out of date. I don't pay attention to it half the time.

Speaker: Um, but a lot of those problems do end up working themselves out. Uh, Other big issues with PC that people don't think about is the power draw.

Speaker: um My electricity bill is higher because I have this PC running. And it pulls way higher wattage than. um The PlayStation would write like a play PlayStation. I'm not sure the top down power on them, but ah it's like 80.

Speaker: It's pretty low. Yeah. ah might look that up My graphics card by itself pulls more than that. Right. um Right. Overall, my entire system is, ah believe it's 900 watts.

Speaker: It's quite a bit. um People don't tend to think that and to take that into account. They also run hot too. um If you leave them running for too long, they will start heating up a whole room, whatever room they're in. And if the room gets hot, the system gets really hot.

Speaker: um Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I was way off. So when you're gaming active gaming PS five titles, you're looking at two 10 to two 14 Watts, a streaming video, media playback, 55 to 60 Watts. And then just home dashboard when you're idle, uh, about 50 Watts. So that's not too bad.

Speaker: Right. That's not too bad at all. I think my monitor probably uses, uh, probably half that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, it's funny. You bring up power consumption, uh, on PlayStation blog, they just announced that in the next update shortly after there's going to be a feature to, uh, reduce power consumption on the PS five for like their green initiative, but it's going to cut the performance of your games.

Speaker: Yes. And I was like, no, um, the way, the way that they do that is by underclocking. Um, it's actually something I have to do with some titles. Uh, gotcha.

Speaker: Because like I'm cooling this whole thing. like My CPU is cooled with a small little 240 millimeter radiator. It's nothing crazy. yeah So if I'm playing a game with ray tracing that's really super CPU heavy, that also uses my graphics card, it will heat this thing up like no tomorrow. So I have to underclock sometimes.

Speaker: Gotcha. Games like League, though, I have a um right about 8% CPU overclock and 15% GPU overclock when I'm playing ah any competitive titles.

Speaker: Yeah. Extra frame rates or extra frame rates. Yeah, so these ah these downfalls or challenges that you you deal with, I guess, are some of the reasons i don't game on PC. I've always been a console gamer.

Speaker: ah You guys are getting a lot of content, though. You're getting stuff from Xbox. You're getting stuff from PlayStation First Party. ah You're not getting the you know bleeding edge titles, right? you didn't get Death Stranding 2.

Speaker: ah you Have you got a Horizon Forbidden West yet? yeah I know you didn't get it on launch, but is that on there? Give me just a moment and I'll let you know. i think Yeah, I think ah what PlayStation is doing, their marketing strategy is brilliant. you know They're saying, here's here's Spider-Man on on PC, but Spider-Man 2, I know you love Spider-Man, right? But Spider-Man 2, you got to get a PS5 for that one.

Speaker: And they'll probably do that. They did it with horizon. They released horizon, uh, for the PC. And then they're like horizon forbidden West. Guess what? You gotta get a PS five for that one. Horizon forbidden West is on PC now, but only the complete edition.

Speaker: Gotcha. Um, you have to buy it on steam. Um, yeah, I mean, it's very enticing. It's the, you know, steam is like an amalgamation of all of the, the big players, except Nintendo. Of course, you're not getting first party titles from Nintendo on your PC. Um,

Speaker: never If only, if only never ah you you can do ROMs and mods and stuff like that, but ah not official ones, but yeah, yeah I'm in the IT t world. I do it t for a living and do endpoint management. I'm like a architect of all that.

Speaker: um And I work on computers all day. The last thing I want to do when I want to just relax and game is fuck with a bunch of settings and drivers and all that shit on PC. It's just why I've never gotten and into PC gaming.

Speaker: I also like sitting on my couch, laying back controller in hand and just diving in, in a very comfortable setting, not on ah a desk with a keyboard and mouse.

Speaker: But that's just me. That's just me. and And i I get that. Absolutely. Like I'm, I've never been the kind of guy that's like, Oh, PC master race. PC is the best thing. Period. End of story. Like, There are games I can't play on PC, but I have a PC because they're games I can only play on PC.

Speaker: Right. Like World of Warcraft is not going to run well on a console. um and Final Fantasy 14 is not on console. And if it is, I'd be really surprised. Counter-Strike is not on console. 14 is on console, I believe.

Speaker: Yeah. It's not as good. It's not as good. I can probably tell you that right now. Because like there there was an MMO ah Terra that I played really heavily before ah its developer shut it down that got a PS4 port um that was not not the same game at all.

Speaker: It was... You're wrong. I still played it because at the time I didn't actually have a PC. I just had a really shitty laptop that I still have. Yeah. But... ah Yeah, no, it's...

Speaker: the and MMOs and things like that being exclusive to PC modability being pretty heavily PC leaning is yeah. Modability being really heavily PC leading. Sorry about that.

Speaker: Um, it's why I'm, I'm on the, I'm on this versus a console mostly. Yeah. Uh, how about you, Bob? You, you game on console mainly. ah why aren't you on, on PC? What are your downfalls? What are your, uh,

Speaker: your challenges that you have.

Speaker: You're muted. Shit, I'm that guy today. and That's all right. It's been one of them days, folks. um But no, seriously, um it comes down to two parts.

Speaker: One is the money, dollar-dollar bills, um like we discussed earlier. So you can get you can get graphics cards that are going to run games. at They're going to run modern-day games. so The problem is they're not going to run modern-day games that you would get out of a high-performance Pro like a PlayStation 5 dare I say the Xbox Series X console. You're just not going to see that, particularly um because you just that's not what they do, right?

Speaker: um And then on top of that, so then there's the there's that piece. On top of that, you have to you have two options in the PC market. And this is, I think, where, um and this is not for just me, but I think where a lot of people ah Why the PC market is not as big as it is ah simply comes down to um when I go to the store and I want to buy a game that can play Death Stranding 2, since that's on my mind right now.

Speaker: ah What do I have to do to get a gay ah so ah ah platform, if you will, that will allow me to play Death Stranding 2? I go over to the section that has the blue stuff. I look at the target employee, that 17 year old that just got done smoking a bowl on his break and say, hey, can you use your magic keys and unlock that PlayStation 5 for me?

Speaker: And then I'm going to take it up to the front register and i'm going to take it out the door and I'm going to go home. And I'm go unbox it, plug in a cable, plug in an HDMI, plug in a power, and it's going to auto update.

Speaker: I'm going connect it to my Wi-Fi and boom, I'm going to play my game. A PC is not that easy. um I built my last PC in 2015, I want to say, give or take. So it's been about 10 years.

Speaker: i It was ah nightmare. i the there is a There was a bad, of I don't want to get too technical, but there was a bad part on one of them on the motherboard.

Speaker: um More specifically, if anybody's curious, it was a bad north side bridge because I couldn't get ah certain peripherals to communicate, um so it wouldn't boot up, all this other stuff. I had to troubleshoot the RAM, the RAM slots, the CPU, the power supply, the graphics card. I had to unhook each individual component and reconnect them to test and see if it worked.

Speaker: um Eventually, I got the PC up and running, and it ran beautifully for the first couple of years. And then new games came out. and then I needed an updated graphics card or I was going to need a new ah a new ah storage capacity. I was going to need this in order to keep it running.

Speaker: um And the only reason I got as far as I did is because I do this stuff for a living. I'm not ah a technician, if you will, a bench technician, um but I've been doing IT work for 12 years. Yeah, you are.

Speaker: I've been doing IT t work for 20 years now, right? I'm no dummy. Do I know much about the latest high-end cooling or liquid cooling processes and stuff? No, but at the end of the day, that's coming from me.

Speaker: Now imagine trying to tell that to a parent because your other option is you go and you buy a pre-built. um And Alex, can I don't know what your, Alex's opinions are on it, but pre-builds are kind of, ah they can be very hit or miss because you're paying somebody else to build it together.

Speaker: um Actually, now I think about it, what what what are what are your thoughts on the pre-built market right there, Alex? Where do I start? Okay. So this isn't from a sense of, this isn't from a sense of pride at all because I've, I built my PC.

Speaker: I've specced everything out. I read the reviews and did it piece by piece, but this is not coming from a sense of pride. Um, I do not necessarily agree with pre-builds for any reason other than convenience because you are spending more money for a pre-build, sometimes 20 to 30% more for a pre-build than if you had just bought the parts yourself.

Speaker: um I get that, yeah. Mom and pop buying a PC for their kid might not know how to put it together. I get that. It's not easy. I've done it a million times and it doesn't get any easier any time.

Speaker: But pre-builds are, like Bob said, really, really, really hit or miss. They're either phenomenal or they're the worst thing in the world. Because you can go on Best Buy right now and buy a $1,000 pre-build that can't game. You can go to Micro Center and buy a $1,000 pre-build that can't game modern titles.

Speaker: Or you could spend $1,000 yourself and spec out something that performs like a PS5. The problem is where you're you're spending more money on a PC than you are for a PS five and I'll fully admit that my, my graphics card alone costs me more than a PS five.

Speaker: So I get that there is that disparity of price. Um, And the whole things moving out are out of irrelevancy, I get that too. I have a 1060 from 10 years ago sitting downstairs in a box and it is my backup graphics card in case I need to be able to boot my PC on because my graphics card died. Because it cannot do anything.

Speaker: And now that's that's just one from 10 years ago and that's a 4 gigabyte card. Gotcha. Nowadays, I believe the PS5 has what, 8 gigs of VRAM?

Speaker: Uh, yes. Something like that. 8 or 12. Yeah. That, that, that tells you how demanding modern titles are. And if you go on something like call of duty, call of duty at 10 ADP high is going to still run 11 gigs of VRAM.

Speaker: Yeah. With no ray tracing. And right. Even more so if you're in 2k and some games are just flat out unplayable in 4k. Like it,

Speaker: Just the way they perform on PC or what? Yeah. um Unfortunately with PC, like if you don't spend the money, like it's very much pay to play. um If you do not spend the money, you're not playing in 4k.

Speaker: If you don't spend the money, you can't even play in 2k. um You're in a is a little bit more inexpensive now. And there are cards that can do some games in 4k, like the video 50, 60, a gigabyte card, which shouldn't exist, but I can get into that later.

Speaker: Um, They can game in 4K, but that doesn't mean they're good. Right, right. Yeah, just, man, hearing all these intricacies and, i mean, PCs are so modular, right? You can replace all the parts on them.

Speaker: I mean, a dude, um' I love building shit. I'm heavily into technology. I would love to build a PC, but yeah, it's the it's a price, the expense, keeping up on the costs of all of the the parts and pieces that go into it.

Speaker: And then a lot of these ports or a lot of stuff is developed on console and then maybe ported to PC and these ports are not great or they don't perform well. And then I like the controller input method ah very much.

Speaker: ah the keyboard and mouse. Like when you were talking about the, uh, clear obscure stuff, you're like, well, in this menu, it's a ABCD or in this menu, it's a E a S Z. And I'm like, I just use circle and square, man.

Speaker: The fact that the fuel full game is played with QW, A S D in a space bar. Yeah. it's Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Uh, Yeah, I mean, I don't want to be too negative on the PC. Like, what are what are the positives, right? Why why do you game on PC? what I mean, the the positive is, of course, like the ultimate performance. If you pay for it, if you build it,

Speaker: ah It will come. But what are what are the the positives? And like why why do you do it? um i can I can start that one off. Yeah.

Speaker: So you mentioned, and it leans into the controller aspect. um I know this is this might get pitchforks at me from the PC community out there, but um I'm sorry.

Speaker: But I don't want to boot up a PC to then plug in a controller to play a game. I plug your controller into my console. um Yeah. And I'm not. ah This is not in all. This is being absolutely true. I'm not trying to be condescending. So please, PC gamers, stay down.

Speaker: But I play real time strategy games and other genres. on a PC because the interface is much more intuitive versus on a controller um with ah with a with a with its regular ah front-facing keyboard keys and paddles and stuff, right?

Speaker: um I don't want to be the old guy in the room, but I didn't have a PS5 controller that I could plug into my PC because there was no... like type of connector you could do that. There was no parallel to PS1 DualShock adapter out there in the 90s or the late 90s. These just didn't exist, right?

Speaker: um So that's why I do that because there are some games. I think a real-time strategy game on a console, if you do that with just a controller, you're a fucking crackhead. There's no nice way to put it, man. Speaking of the controller input method...

Speaker: Speaking of the controller input method, that was another thing on PlayStation blog and another thing for the ah the software coming out to update. You can pair your DualSense now with multiple ah systems, multiple inputs. so you can have it paired to the PS5 and you can have it paired to the ah PC.

Speaker: But yeah, you can of course pair a controller to the PC, but most PC gamers, they don't play on controller. If they did, they'd just get a fucking console and hook it up to a TV. You're doing it on keyboard and mouse. I'll be completely honest. I actually do play Elden Ring with a controller on PC.

Speaker: Gotcha. Of course. The Elden Ring is an entirely different beast on PC though. That that's, that game is the stress test out of everything I've ever played. Um, that's my 4k with ray tracing game all day, every day. It's loads of fun. It's gorgeous.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, but it makes my PC sound like a PS4 trying to take off. Right. Oh yeah. Uh, I'd say positive if I were to ever get into the PC space. One of the reasons I would is for the mods.

Speaker: Did you see? Did you see the is Stellar Blade mod where they made Eve Tifa with a mini buster sword? no No, but this does not surprise me. Yeah, I'll send a picture. Maybe I'll put it in Discord too.

Speaker: um Yeah, mods are hilarious. Dude, in Skyrim, there's a mod where you can turn the dragons into Ohio. The state of Ohio. yeah Yeah, and don't think for a second that I haven't put thousands of hours into Elder Scrolls Oblivion playing the base game.

Speaker: It's very modded. It doesn't look anything like Oblivion anymore. Oh, yeah. um like my My big reason, um I am a massive MMO fan, and until...

Speaker: Until, you know, a good MMO comes out on PlayStation, like not Destiny 2, or Warframe comes out on ah PlayStation, I'm going to stay on here.

Speaker: Right. Like, it's...

Speaker: Yeah. It's all about the genre. Yeah. it Yeah. and Like, don't get me wrong. Destiny 2 was great until it wasn't. i Destiny was great until it wasn't. Warframe was great until it wasn't.

Speaker: Like, they're all like that. Every MMO has a life cycle. It just so happens that once money starts really getting getting going, that's when they die. um Yeah. and Look at World of Warcraft now versus World Warcraft back then.

Speaker: Still play it. Won't complain. It's fine. but i find I fired up a World of Warcraft on my 2010 white MacBook back in the day. And it was... ah Everyone was like, oh yeah, World Warcraft's awesome.

Speaker: I was a night elf and I was collecting mushrooms and doing all these side quests. And I'm like, this game's boring.

Speaker: So was like, hey, I didn't have a lot. I didn't have friends to play with. I was doing a lot of side quests in the beginning. I was just grinding. It's not for me. It's my opinion. World of Warcraft is a commercially extremely successful title.

Speaker: So I'm just telling you my experience and my opinion. Games are subjective, of course. ah If you love World of Warcraft, awesome. I'm super happy for you.

Speaker: There's a ton of content there. It's got a huge gaming community. so before the forks and in the pitchforks and torches come out. That's the thing, dude. Like the like you were saying, the PC elites, right? if Yeah. If you're on PC, like you got to you get they need to understand that art is subjective and you can play on the console you want, depending on the genre you want.

Speaker: I never am like, PC sucks, PS5 is better. If someone came to me and was like, hey, I'm thinking about getting into gaming. What should I get? My first question, it's not going to, it's not going to be a statement. It's like, Oh, PS5 pro. It's awesome.

Speaker: My first question going to be, what kind of games do you like? What do you play? And you tailor that to the genre they play. If they're like MMOs and, uh, you know, I have a awesome ah rig already. I'm like, man, go PC, man.

Speaker: They're like, Oh, third person story driven action, adventure, narrative, heavy, uh, finely crafted titles. Well, you get a fucking PS five pro then. Yeah. And so, yeah, like you're, you're, you're not wrong at all.

Speaker: Um, you got, I do agree. Like the PC elites are a little crazy. Um, But like to the point where you know I know, just as somebody who also owns consoles and also enjoys their consoles, I even take times where I'm not playing the game and I watch Aurora play, my wife, for anybody listening, um play ah on her Switch, play like date everything and stuff like that.

Speaker: I have just much fun doing that. I don't have to be on this big black box here. um But there's a lot of people who have to swear by it. And a lot of it's confirmation bias and and purchase confirmation because you are spending a lot of money on the whole setup.

Speaker: None of it's cheap. and So the people that are like, oh, PC Master Race, how much of that is actually true anymore? Next to none. Right. ah the The fact of the matter is you showed me over your place by firing up Death Stranding 2.

Speaker: You can spend $600 on a PS5 Pro and get the same, if not better, performance than most people's PC games. Yep. It didn't used to be that way, but it is now.

Speaker: And that's, and that's where I think that we're definitely getting into this, this territory. Like you said, that performance, um, it's going to be interesting, uh, over the next couple of years because PCs will, or ultimately the quote unquote more powerful option.

Speaker: Um, that's, i not going to say tradition that's where they have always been, but they kind of always been in that direction. But, um, I, the way I, how do I want to put this?

Speaker: All right. So consoles are always going to be less powerful than a, than a PC. But traditionally, from my experience over the last several decades is when you're playing on a PC, it's because you the developers have been given a dev kit.

Speaker: They know the hardware. ah They know it intimately. They know how to optimize it because it's a box that's been designed to run very efficiently. It's very German. Yeah. It runs efficiently. Uh, that's what they do. They get to squeeze every, uh, bit of, uh, performance they can out of the 250 wants while the PC is a, is just a full on American muscle car. Let's keep throwing enough pistons at it to solve the problem.

Speaker: Um, and it's coming into And it's going to end up coming to a junction. And the reason I say this is because PCs are drawing a lot more power because they are more powerful. But now we're starting to see this movement towards let's not be as... yeah let's Let's be more power efficient.

Speaker: um ah If you remember a couple of years ago, California started putting extra... They started doing some stupid stuff. I'll let you go look it up. About... ah the the the the the amount of power that your PC pulled, put you into ah put that into a different like categorization of commerce so that it was being taxed differently.

Speaker: Yep. See, Alex knows what I'm talking about. ah So we're coming to that to that to that point um where I think there's a good opportunity for both sides to coexist.

Speaker: um i just you've got to You've got to understand that one machine does one thing really well, another machine does another thing really well, and you need to stop fighting over who's ultimately the best because I think they're both on the same ground.

Speaker: Yeah. All that matters is that Xbox lost the console wars. Um, like, but it, I, I 100% agree. Like this draws so much power that like, it's noticeable.

Speaker: Like if I leave my PC going all day while I'm at work and I come upstairs to this game room, this game room is going to be blazing hot by the time I get home. Yeah. It's constantly going. It pulls a lot of power. Like I said, well over 800, 900 Watts.

Speaker: um my wife's laptop back there. It also is a gaming laptop. It pulls a lot of power. My brother-in-law's laptop. It's a gaming laptop. It pulls a lot of power. It's noticeable.

Speaker: Like it's not quite, it's, it's not quite lights flicker when we cut them on bad, but it is noticeable. You can like my PC. You can hear my, um, power supply going.

Speaker: If I cut my fans off, you can hear the coil line on my power supply. It's pulling so much power. So... Dang. Yeah, it's... there is That is a very real thing. It is a very real downside. And yeah, I would love for PC to inter the interject and like intertwine with consoles. And they kind of did, honestly, because PS5 Pro is powered by an NVIDIA graphics processor now.

Speaker: NVIDIA just actually... Recently, this is awesome news, depending on how your wallet feels, is partnering with Asus for a micro machine um that is supposedly somewhere around around the count of like 17,000 CUDA cores for processing.

Speaker: um Dang. It's a little buck solely just for AI. Who says you couldn't use that for gaming? Right. That could be, that could be something right around the corner.

Speaker: Yeah. And project amethyst, uh, PlayStation is partnering with AMD to basically collaborate on the next, uh, I mean the PS six and it's going to be heavily integrated in there. I don't think it'll be modular, but they're it's project amethyst and they're going to pretty much develop and create the PS six with, uh,

Speaker: AMD architecture in mind. And not honestly, that wouldn't be a bad thing. um but not Not at all. Because like the AMD where they're at with their processors now um for any application that isn't I'm sitting in the office working in Excel, they actually do outperform everything versus Intel.

Speaker: all right They're better. They're better at gaming. They're better at rosterization, better at multiprocessing. it Intel just has brute force power. And if AMD is partnering with Sony, like am like uh nvidia is partnering with samsung that's who's helping them with their uh like um some of their nano computing um i foresee like some of amd's like cpu design going into the next gen consoles yeah i think it would be phenomenal Yeah.

Speaker: And yeah, the the lines are blurring, right? With, the you know, price and architecture. i mean, when you came over, i was like, hey, can you build a PC for the price of the PS5 and the power of the PS5?

Speaker: you You almost got there, but you're a little little over. Shipping costs and taxes. Hey, man. Hey, man. You know? Yeah, tried, man. I tried.

Speaker: But the price is is kind of getting pretty comparable to... like I mean, the PS5 Pro is $700. And Almost. You almost built a almost you almost built a PC that was comparable to it.

Speaker: It's comparable to the PS5 Pro. So the the price is sky is going up on the consoles. The Switch 2 is $500 now. Everything's going up and the price gap is kind of narrowing. ah Yeah, pc PCs only get as expensive as you want them to be.

Speaker: Right. and like right like I love that fact. I love that fact. I love the fact that it's modular. You can take your pieces and you can put them all in and create this amazing, incredible machine. I go to like PC S conventions, MagFest.

Speaker: MagFest has a whole PC section where you can like people bring in their custom built PCs and these things are crazy, dude, all themed and everything. yeah And you can just walk the rows and you vote on the best one. And the rigs I've seen are just incredible pieces of art.

Speaker: And i love building things, but you know, I just can't get into it. It's too much. I get that. I will never fault somebody for having, a ah for having whatever reason they have to not touch BC.

Speaker: Like that's, that's, that's where I am. Like it's, Just like I have my reasons for not necessarily wanting a switch to for myself, but I want it for the wife. Right. want a PS five for myself. The wife doesn't give shit that I want a PS five.

Speaker: Right. She's not going to touch it. I'm not going to touch her switch. It's the same reason. Like if you came over here, I wouldn't expect you to hop on my PC and be like, hey, man, I'm going to do this. This is I expect you to go downstairs and grab my my Genesis or the PS one. And that's what it's.

Speaker: I'm actually curious. I'm curious to see 240 hertz or I don't know, 540 or whatever. I just want to see over 120 hertz and see if I can actually tell the difference because our eyes refresh, man. and There's a cap on our refresh rate.

Speaker: Yeah, our the human eye cannot see past 60 frames per second. Then what the fuck is the point of having 120 refresh rate? Uh, that's, yeah. So you know what it is? It's, we it's the big number go per situation. It's a marketing, it's a marketing ploy. And right. 4060 is fine by me. Anything above that, I i think is overkill.

Speaker: You can get better resolution, right? AK 60. Yeah. i The only time that it matters is if you are playing competitive titles. Yeah, yeah, when it's moving super fast.

Speaker: Yeah, if if ah like when Bob and I are playing League, I don't know what his frame rate looks like on League. I know that I get over 400 frames a second when I play it. It does make a difference if you have the skill to make it make a difference.

Speaker: I don't have the skill, but it does make a difference for people that do. 400 frames a second. I want to see that. I just want to see that. It's not even noticeable. It's not noticeable. It's noticeable. Yeah. So it looks like 60.

Speaker: And you have a back end refresh rate, right? For the input and everything. So and I mean, Switch 2, PS5, they do a back end 120 hertz refresh rate for the input lag and everything like that.

Speaker: But anything over 60 visually, I feel like what's the point? yeah You can't see it. And and i I entirely agree. That's been... Actually, big, huge topic for discussion in the PC gaming world.

Speaker: Like 60 is the magic number. We don't have to go above 60. if If I'm gaming in 4K and I'm getting 60, I'm happy. I don't need to be gaming in 4K and getting 200. I'm never going to see the difference.

Speaker: um I can't wait till we get to that, you know, native 4K, not up-res or checkerboarded or PSSR 4K. Native 4K, 60 frames a second, ah ray tracing,

Speaker: That is like the trifecta. so Yeah, no, you're you're absolutely yeah right. I like what you, because before we get to the, and before I can hear the keyboard warriors on a PC ah version, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. I hear the i'm actually stuff. i'm I'm going to go look in at this, but.

Speaker: Um, even if there's some kind of study that talks about, well, the human eye or somebody is going to anecdotally say for their evidence that I can tell the difference between, you know, 45 or 65 and 200 frames.

Speaker: Um, one that's adoal anecdotal evidence at best. And number two, um you're getting into the ground of diminishing returns. It's kind of like what I've said about console gaming at this point, is when we get to... You know why? um There are two games this year, or there's a couple of games, but the two that really fucking slammed home for me this so far this year is Claire Obscure and Death Stranding 2.

Speaker: Death Stranding 2 visually looks... ah It's much better than Claire Obscure. But Claire Obscure still is my game of the year. You know why? Gameplay is fucking king. and The story.

Speaker: I play 2D pixelated games and will think they are they're better than their modern day counterparts. Because um you give me an Octopath Traveler and then you put it up against a... I don't mean to be mean, but you put it up against ah a Monster Hunter.

Speaker: um Monster Hunter is good. But have you played 120 hours of Octopath Traveler where where you get those those lighting effects and you get that story and the mechanics? It outdoes it at the end of the day.

Speaker: So just make sure you don't do an Echoes of Wisdom and crash to six frames per second and we're all good. Right? yeah And actually, Bob, like you mentioned the six frames per second. I was playing League with you not that long ago and my graphics card started dying on me.

Speaker: um Yeah, that's that's ah that's another very real thing. Parts will just go bad. Um, but you can replace them. Like you don't have to replace the whole thing. Yeah, but it's a lot of money. It's still a lot of money.

Speaker: Yeah. like You gotta remember the cost of my graphics card is the cost of PS5. Yeah. So it's, that's, that's crazy. There's the trade off. Well, technically more than the cost of PS5, but that, that's the trade off. My OC channel on my, uh, card completely shit itself.

Speaker: So I'm running it on silent mode now. And I did take a little bit of a performance hit. does It wasn't enough to matter. No. Am I ever going to see the difference? No. yeah it It doesn't matter. I've got enough VRAM with the card that um I'm going to have well more way more overhead than I'm ever going to use.

Speaker: Right, right. There's another thing I think PC gamers need to understand too. You don't need a 24 gigabyte card to play Call of Duty. I'm tired of telling people this on Reddit all day.

Speaker: You can play Fortnite on an iPhone. You don't need a damn fucking 5090 to play Fortnite. i but If I may, youre you're you actually are leaning into something um that is trouble. or I wanted to an angle that I kind of wanted to hit at, and I don't know what you both of you guys think about this, is you can play Fortnite on a phone, right? Yeah.

Speaker: We look at the Pokemon announcements, because Pokemon ultimately, we enjoy it, but ultimately it's for the kids. like That's its target demographic. Yeah, i course.

Speaker: You look at Roblox, um which in and of itself is ah ah is a weird how much of a monster it is, even though it loses money after year after Yeah. um What do you think of this generation then, this upcoming, the generations that are coming? Because I've got three of them.

Speaker: And as much smart as they are when it comes to TikToks and social medias and being able to do videos and stuff, um at the end of the day, vi i gave them basic parts and said, here, build me a fucking computer.

Speaker: They're going to be Patrick Starr. Okay. um yeah So I'm wondering if we're getting to the precipice. And this is where i ah my thoughts, i don't want to see your guys' thoughts, is we're getting to the precipice where it's going to be pre-built or nothing.

Speaker: Custom rigs are going to become a smaller and smaller shrinking market because the new generation doesn't care that I have a $1,200 graphics card that can get, you know, 240 FPS.

Speaker: I don't care. I just want to jump on and play Marvel Rivals or Fortnite with my friends. Yeah, and there's there's not there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. at At the end of the day, that's one of the beauties of PC is there can be guys like me that want to do something crazy.

Speaker: And there can also be the mom and pop that want to buy a PC for their kids so that their kids can play Fortnite. like There's nothing wrong with that. that There has to be the two sides of that coin for this to stay alive as a, you know, a gaming option because people are just going to buy consoles. People aren't going to go out and buy PCs despite the fact you can use them for more than just gaming. I work from home on my PC. I record music with it like it's not just a gaming device for me. It's also just sport like pretty much just entertainment.

Speaker: If I wanted to, I could take this downstairs and plug this into our projector and it could be a TV like this. All kind of options of things I can do with this. But we need to have... i wouldn't say that PC gaming is in a bad spot with the future generations because there's still going to be kids that have a passion.

Speaker: No matter what. like just Just like i was I was the kid playing my parents' video game systems and playing on my dad's computer... Because I saw my dad doing it. At the end of the day, there's still going to be kids that are going to be curious. There's still going to be 13-year-old kid out there 20 years from now that's going to want to pick up an Atari or a Sega Genesis or fucking Game Boy.

Speaker: like That's never going to stop. Yeah. You just have to expose it to them. Exactly. So that the parents out there, if you're a parent listening to this podcast, expose your kids to the good games, the classics.

Speaker: Exactly. I, I, I didn't get into gaming until I was, until my dad came home one day, like, cause I had already had a, mind you a PS one and a, uh, um, Nintendo 64 at this point, but my dad came home one day and was super excited. Cause one of his guys at work gave him a fucking copy of duck hunt.

Speaker: hey And that's what got me. I was like, Oh my God, my dad loves this. And like, I see that more and more with my friends that have kids. Um, you know Their kids are into gaming. While they're into gaming.

Speaker: My parents were into gaming. My grandparents probably not. you know Pong was kind of like a little like small thing going on when my grandparents were my age. If it was even existed at the time. I don't know.

Speaker: um but you know You got you gotta to keep these things alive. And I wouldn't say this generation screwed. I wouldn't say by any means that it's going to die off. I think pre-builds have a space. And this space is for kids.

Speaker: period in the story ah for kids and people that don't have the time or the money to assemble their own system. Right. But then why, you know, if, if you're new into the gaming space, why wouldn't you just get a console and say instead of a prebuilt PC? I, and you're right. The utility of a PC isn't just for gaming.

Speaker: Yeah. You're buying the box, you know, you can do everything on a computer. Like I live on a computer all day, for my job and, uh, So it's not just for gaming, but if they did want to get specifically into gaming, the entry level is usually Nintendo Switch or some sort of handheld. I would do exactly like you said earlier, ask them what they want to play. Right, right. If they don't want to play MMOs, if they don't want to play Warzone 24-7, then I would probably never recommend them a PC.

Speaker: Yeah. Mm-hmm. But... more If you want to play Final Fantasy and things like that, while we get them on PC, they come out a lot fucking sooner for console.

Speaker: Yep. Yep. They didn't like i do. I didn't get Final Fantasy XV on PC until the Super Ultra Royal Edition or whatever it was called came out. Right, right. like Speaking of Final Fantasy Rebirth for PC, I saw that trailer.

Speaker: my God, it looks so good. Yeah, I know. Yeah. He's like, I know because I'm going to be played it. and I'll get back to you on that because that can be as console seller for you.

Speaker: Anyway, i mean do the PS5 pro patch is pretty impressive too, but it does. This is a PC podcast. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. ah you're You're good. I'm just giving you shit. now No, no.

Speaker: I love it. Yeah. Where do you like what ah the state of PC now? Where do you see it going? What like what is the like for for example, the Xbox podcast we talked about, you know, what the state of their industry was. I know PC is a little more broad.

Speaker: It's not just one company. It's like ah thousands of companies. Yeah. On Nintendo, we went through each of the first party. ah popular games. Like what is the the state of PC? Where is it going? I know such a it's it's such a broad market. It's hard to kind of encapsulate that.

Speaker: um what uh what's going on with it is it is it a pot is it positive i know steam you know it leads the show with it steam is supposedly coming on xbox and uh haven't you heard your pc is now on xbox my phone is now on xbox uh yeah i saw that commercial yeah whatever i don't the state of pc like entirely depends on your outlook if i'm being completely honest um I'm on AMD side of things.

Speaker: So I nine times out of 10 don't get to see, don't have to deal with all the negatives. um I'm not dealing with any more, at least as of the last two generations of AMD cards. I don't deal with driver issues every day.

Speaker: Nvidia is like my wife has to constantly, every time she boots on her PC, check to make sure it doesn't have a driver update or league won't even be playable. um Wow. Bob's probably been in calls for that.

Speaker: Yeah. It, yeah It's entirely entirely dependent on where you lie in it. If for myself, I think the PC market right now is phenomenal.

Speaker: Yeah, I think it's oversaturated, but it's phenomenal. There's a million and a half companies that make motherboards. There's a million and a half companies that make fans. There's million and a companies that make the cables to get connect everything together.

Speaker: I can. I use this one specific case manufacturer because I like their their cost effectiveness. oh Like I use Lee and Lee because love that my cases don't cost me $200 and they will last forever.

Speaker: um You definitely have a lot more options. Yeah, we we do. But it's the downside of that is the market is saturated. um Where ah like PlayStation throughout the years, all the biggest thing you had to worry about is for PS one PS two, did you have enough, uh, memory cards?

Speaker: Did you want to control it with or without dual shock? Will the disc read? Yeah. Will the disc read, oh how much storage do you want? Things like that. Maybe what color? I don't know if PS five has different colors, but not really PC. you You have to worry about, are your parts completely compatible?

Speaker: Are they all going to fit together before you even put it together? Are they going to fit together? Um, You can get fins for PS5 to change the color, but the actual color of the PS5 doesn't change. yeah yeah like you have For PC, you have to worry about every single individual little thing. A new person can get very overwhelmed with it, and I see that as a massive negative. um i knew like When I went into Micro Center to build this, I knew what I wanted, where I could find it, how was going to build it, and how much it was going to cost, because I did yeah everything beforehand.

Speaker: um it took all the guesswork out for me.

Speaker: But with there being 300 plus manufacturers for literally everything, not everybody's going to have that same experience. Why... Bob, what did you want to add?

Speaker: No, no, no. He's absolutely right. i wanted do want to say, I think you're you're onto something there. um There's always going to be. So it's weird. a you you The market is quote unquote oversaturated with all the different products out there.

Speaker: um But I get a sense, and I don't know if you see this too, where it's ah PC gaming is always going to exist, but I think it's becoming more of a a hobbyist, enthusiast style market ye where instead of being able to get in for the cheap, I mean, I i could have an entire conversation about that, but but instead of being able to get in for a certain price or a cheap price price point, you've got to really be wanting to do it.

Speaker: You can't just... Buy a console, plug it in, let the kid play around with it. And if they don't like it, sell it on Facebook Marketplace. um Now you've really got to head dedicated to it. Like you said, you went into and you you touched on it, Alex. You went into ah Micro Center and you knew what you wanted in all of this.

Speaker: But that's because I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, you did a bunch of research up front on what you wanted and what kind of benchmarks you were looking for. Exactly. I knew what games, ah what what games I wanted to play, what games were upcoming that I might want to play.

Speaker: And then I wanted to future proof a little bit. Um, I was now my first PC was not like that. I will fully o admit that my first PC that I built was absolutely atrocious.

Speaker: Um, that was a seventh gen until I seven, um, and a 10 60. And that was only 10 years ago. Um, No, was actually my seventh gen Intel was the first time I upgraded the processor.

Speaker: When I got it, that was a fourth gen i5, I believe. um That thing could could, for the time, game, but not even a year later, it was completely useless. I definitely fell under the meme, can it run Crysis? And I could not.

Speaker: that What's the... what's the ah like prime game. Now what's that benchmark game now that everyone's using to like stress their super ah powerful PC. Yeah.

Speaker: There's a couple of them. The big one that I see um that is the make it or break it period point blank period is Stalker 2. Stalker 2 at 4K with ray tracing. If you do not have your stuff built, you cannot play it.

Speaker: um There's graphics cards even going back to the generation prior to what we're where we're at now that can't even boot the game. oh Holy you shit. um that That'd be like the NVIDIA 5060, 4060...

Speaker: if If you are gaming, you cannot launch the game. Right. It natively by itself uses 16 gigabytes of VRAM. Right. Point blank period at the start menu. 16, you said?

Speaker: Yes. Holy shit. It's absolutely ridiculous. um Yeah. Yeah. Now what a lot of people use and what I use as well, we use 3D Mark to tell us where our hardware is at. um That'll give us a score based on all kinds of different factors, whether it be rosterization, ah ray tracing, ah raw power. And if you really want to put it that way, um we'll use that. That's actually available on Steam.

Speaker: um It's a benchmark software and it's actually not that expensive, um but it's kind of the industry standard on what a lot of companies like even actual graphics card manufacturers and CPU manufacturers actually use to test their therere ah software and hardware.

Speaker: Gotcha. Well, ah speaking of the games, right, I'm I'm on. the console of of my choice PS five because of the games and the exclusives I can get.

Speaker: Uh, and you can't really play these anywhere else on launch. They eventually come to other platforms, PC. Uh, but yeah, the games are the reason I'm on PS five, you know, see uncharted. It's the God of Wars, the horizons, uh, the final fantasies as of late.

Speaker: ah What are some of the the games? I wouldn't say exclusive to PC because i that's not really a thing. But what are some of the games that you're excited this year um coming out on PC that's going to stress the the hardware? you know Or what what games are you excited for?

Speaker: There's a related thing that's going to stress the hardware. I don't typically play AAA titles. Gotcha. But um I'm far more into the indie games. Yeah, awesome. More longer running games like Counter-Strike, like I've been playing for well over a decade now.

Speaker: um And I know that doesn't stress anything. There isn't really anything coming out PC exclusive-wise that I can think of that I'm really looking forward to. um I know ah I'm probably going to pick up Ghost of Yote.

Speaker: I don't know if I'll play it immediately, but I'm probably going to pick it up. On PS5, yeah. Yeah, that's true. ah When Death Stranding 2 makes it a PC, I'm picking that up. What games are you excited for on the PC?

Speaker: Ghost of Yote?

Speaker: That'll never happen, I know. Leave me alone, leave me alone. um Yeah, no, Death Stranding 2 will come eventually and I'll play it. um and Are you interested in Outer Worlds 2?

Speaker: Outer Worlds, yes. The Metal Gear remake is supposed to make its way over here. um Gears of War remake is supposed to make its way over here. um Yeah. Those are really like the only like mainstream titles, if you will, that I'm really excited for.

Speaker: um Other than that, you know if I finally ever get Silksong, yeah, they'll I'll definitely be playing that. Maybe this year. Who knows? um hopefully You'll play it on your Xbox ally.

Speaker: Yeah. No, absolutely not. yeah I'm sorry. If I want a handheld PC, I'll just buy a new phone. um Because at least a brand new cell phone doesn't come with all the issues that the ROG ally and all of the other, like the MSI Claws all have.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, Ghost of Yote is not coming definitely not coming on PC. ah Have you played Ghost of Tsushima? Because Ghost of Tsushima is on PC. Cool. Did you? okay Yeah, and that's that's the thing, that you play Ghost of Tsushima, and you're like, oh, I'm excited for Ghost Yote.

Speaker: And PlayStation's like, well, you got to get a PS5 to play it. um Yeah. Yeah. So how about, so yeah. So you said Metal Gear Solid, Snake Eater, Delta. Is that coming on PC?

Speaker: Game Pass. Yeah. yeah Yeah. That's the only way. Right. um like Other than that, like I would have to go into like Steam like upcoming titles.

Speaker: ah Actually, give me a second. I'll do that. Yeah. Upcoming releases.

Speaker: So, and then you're, uh, Oh, the Toho Project games. I love those. Okay. Um, I don't know if any, like, uh, it makes me see seem like childish, but I do love the Toho Project games.

Speaker: Um, the day before is actually a title that I'm waiting for. Okay. Who, who develops that? Uh, the day before is, uh, by fantastic games.

Speaker: Okay. It actually supposedly, it it came out in, ah or it was announced in 2023 and it never actually made its way over here. ah Borderlands 4 is coming to PC.

Speaker: Yes. Very excited for that one. Arc 2 is supposed to be coming to PC. We'll see. Slay the Spire 2. I'll definitely end up playing. ah Little Nightmares 3.

Speaker: I will be playing. That's coming out in October. That's happening. Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, what else? and I'm excited to play that. Requiem's coming to PC. I'm going to pick Requiem up. It's a multi-platform though. yeah Yeah. But I mean, you're you're probably going to play the best technological version of it, right?

Speaker: um Because your your rig is more powerful than a PS5 Pro, you said. We'll see. so i I do sometimes have issues on launch. ah Silent Hill F is coming out ah in September. I'm going to be picking that up. i already have that pre-ordered.

Speaker: um yeah good man oh yeah grounded 2 that comes out in just a couple days i have that pre-ordered as well yeah uh a lot of them are like indie games like alkahest i'm gonna end up playing um vain i'm gonna end up playing crow sworn pragmata is gonna be one i'm gonna pick up as well yep um and you you struggle with the thing we both struggle or all struggle with as well, is you're probably going to play a fourth of those games because time, when am I going to be playing all of these games?

Speaker: Right. You just listed a shitload of games. Yeah. Um, it's all stuff I'm going to pick up. It's a matter of when i think, uh, in order of like when I'll actually like boot them up and play them, I think Borderlands four is going to be the first one.

Speaker: Um, yeah. Oh yeah. grog bar i'm I'm really excited for Silent Hill F. I'm really excited for, um, so we'll see, but like, I got to find time in between work, uh, right. D and d playing magic with Bob and curb stomping him, you know, the little things in life.

Speaker: Uh, yeah. Who was winning me in the other night?

Speaker: Uh, just saying, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I helped you build that, remember? Oh, God. a Anyway. Anyway, yeah, like the the titles I'm excited for are not, exactly they're not PC exclusive.

Speaker: Everybody's going access to them. Right. Yeah. yeah I'm going to end playing them on PC unless I get a PS5 by then. Who knows? We'll see. Right, right. Oh, yeah, you'll get a PS5. They have Switches in stock at Best Buy.

Speaker: I know. I just have to get paid first. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. I totally understand that. ah Yeah. So... thanks for Thanks for coming on and ah sharing your PC knowledge and ah experience and stuff like that. Because this isn't a PC podcast.

Speaker: We're a gaming podcast. We're specifically PlayStation because that's where our roots and what we play mainly are. But we this is kind of part of a four-part series series.

Speaker: of going through the main players of the gaming industry, right? PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox, PC. And we didn't really have a lot to say on the PC front.

Speaker: So um we really... Yeah. I really wish I had better things to say. Like, I'm... I'm not really the kind, I don't have a great reason for playing PC. It's just, I prefer it.

Speaker: Yeah. it's a different perspective. And we appreciate it. I wish could give listeners like all the details on why it's better and like what the benefits are, but I really can't. Like the fact of the matter is we're in a day and age now where it's no different than buying a console.

Speaker: If we're being completely honest. Gotcha. I can't. I will say one last thought for you guys. Did you see this? Speaking of day and age, um Commodore 64 has returned.

Speaker: Oh, nice. Very cool. Yeah. So I'm going to drop a link for you guys to check it out. But there's no there's a Founders Edition that just came out. um It's basically Commodore 64 for the the modern world. Like you can plug in modern stuff and then link it up and everything.

Speaker: opho I'm half tempted to get the Founders Edition. um Might as well. 48 megahertz turbo mode. That's crazy to hear. I know, right? Dang. Excuse me.

Speaker: But yeah, yeah. So that's kind of like our main topic, the state of the PC gaming world, going into a little bit about what it's like playing on the PC. ah Do we want to get into the games we're playing lately?

Speaker: ah Yeah. I mean, you're you're playing something on PC, Alex, right? Yeah. Yeah. and Final Fantasy eight remastered. Very cool. Yeah. I'm taking it slow.

Speaker: I normally when I play Final Fantasy eight, I just speed right through it. But I, this is my first time actually like playing, playing the remastered. I've had it for a while, but I haven't actually gotten around to playing it.

Speaker: Um, the changes are noticeable. I will say, um, I think I still prefer it on PS one though, but yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Speaker: There's nothing wrong with Final Fantasy 8. Just like Final Fantasy 7 doesn't really have anything wrong with it aside from it being overrated.

Speaker: I'll throw a shade at Final Fantasy titles all day. I have no purpose. so Yeah. I hurt your soul there, didn't it? Times are changing, old man. Times are changing. Have you played Rebirth?

Speaker: No. Oh. Oh.

Speaker: That's cute. I'm sorry. My favorite Final Fantasies didn't get need to get remade to be good.

Speaker: Oh, original holds up. The original holds up. Sure, it does.

Speaker: Yeah, the original is a phenomenal game. there's no yeah. Oh, yeah. It's all subjective, man. It's all good. Yeah. I will say, yeah i played that 8 remaster, Alex. it's ah it's a You're right, the changes are noticeable, but I kind of yeah ah kind of dig it. it's It's weird how like there's some modernization effect. I'm glad, I want to say, I'm glad to hear you're taking your time on it.

Speaker: um Because... oh People talk about Final Fantasy VIII. The joke is the best way to play Final Fantasy VIII is not to level up. And I'm like, no, that's because you're not, and I don't want to say you're not playing the game right, but you're not playing the game right.

Speaker: ah Effectively, ah Final Fantasy VIII is about being able to use the junction system. If you don't use the junction system properly and you just spam GF or Guardian Forces or whatever you want to call it, summons,

Speaker: Eidolons, whatever your Final Fantasy flavor text is, um yeah, you can get through the game and you can brute force it on a low difficulty or on ah ah with low leveling. But if you really want to experience what the game can do to you, really work on leveling up and taking advantage of the of the junction system and drawing the correct magic.

Speaker: and linking it to your stats and playing around with that system because you're going to find yourself in a different and experience. um I'm just putting that out there. Yeah, Final final Fantasy VIII, in my opinion, was the first one that was actually difficult.

Speaker: If you didn't play VIII properly, and you just... ah like Obviously, Bob's talking about just spamming the ah the g the Guardian Force ah throughout the entire game. Yeah, it works, but if you want to play the game as God intended, which is to grind it out like you do any other normal RPG, the game is actually quite a bit harder than the other titles.

Speaker: I take it you didn't fight the weapons in Final Fantasy VII. I have. Those are fucking hard. I mean, yeah, you can break the materia, but it takes a while.

Speaker: You, you, you can, um, they're tough. They are, they are absolutely tough. Um, and I think that's, what's great about seven is the optional bosses. Quite frankly, are the, the, the weapons, if you will, or my ah Ruby, like Ruby weapon weapon in particular is known.

Speaker: Um, ah that That is a very difficult ah to very difficult fight. um ah Final Fantasy VIII has some really good... heart It has some more difficult um optionals, like ah the Omega Weapon, for example, um is a really difficult fight.

Speaker: But just going into base, final like the final boss fight itself... um you can do seven and six and a lot of the others um and you'll get through it, right? It'll be difficult that you get through it.

Speaker: If you're not ah anticipating eight, I don't know anybody did that beat Ultimacia is the the protagonist, the antagonist from Final Fantasy eight. um I don't know anybody that's completed that final battle in the first try.

Speaker: Hmm. It is rough. It is absolutely rough. It is difficult. It is. How do I put this without spoiler? It is Simon style.

Speaker: Oh, it's it's been what? 30, 20, 30 years since Final Fantasy eight came out. I think it's safe to say you can do spoilers now. No, I'm playing the remaster.

Speaker: No, yeah no. Spoilers don't have an expiration date. We already got a remaster. It'll be the second one now. Yeah. But I mean, someone might be... In Unreal Engine 2. That's all oh yeah and all I care about.

Speaker: Unreal Engine 5, for sure. Unreal Engine 5, yeah. I don't know. Someone might be here in this podcast or someone might be inspired to play Final Fantasy 8 for the very first time and the remaster's out there.

Speaker: We don't want to spoil anything for them. Yeah, yeah um do it. Come on. like Quest is his best, girl. Do it. Yeah. So yeah, Final Fantasy, i man, i I really want to play it. I didn't finish it. I need to.

Speaker: That and 12 are on like the top of my list. You want a copy for PS1? I've got one sitting around. I have a black label copy. ah So do i look at you. Yeah. Heck yeah. Twinsies. You got the legend of Dragoon though. So we're not really twinsies. We're enemies now.

Speaker: I didn't know you didn't have one. I i mean, ah as big as a fan you are, I thought you had one. I'll keep an eye out. No, I have my, my copy that I had as a kid, which is in four separate but DVD cases now.

Speaker: Oh wow. My greatest hits copy and a sealed greatest hits copy. I don't have a black label at all. Gotcha. Gotcha. If I come across one, I'll grab it for you. They're reasonably priced or I'll send a picture and be like, hey, you want it?

Speaker: Because i I do frequent older game shops. yeah about i'll I'll pull the Futurama and be like, shut up and take my money. Yeah, exactly. but I would love to.

Speaker: Okay. I'll just pick it up then. um We're not playing an older game. But we love older games, but we, ah Bob and I are playing a very new game and we're still in love with it.

Speaker: And we're expanding the chiral network and delivering those packages. Huh, Bob? ah yeah um Yeah. Yeah. FedEx simulator. Huh? Yeah. Yes, it is. ah Your system seller.

Speaker: Yeah, no shit. It honestly is. um Let's see. I guess i'll I'll take into this and then um I know I'm a lot further than you, Matt. So if there's anything afterwards for final thoughts, I'll let you.

Speaker: We can just go from there. um I am chapter eight, I want to say right now. Oh, wow. um yo i I stayed up to like 1.30 in the morning the other night just delivering packages and advancing the story. I'm planning to do that soon.

Speaker: Yeah. Yes. Well, what can I say about this game? um You know what? I'll tell you this. i When people are describing this as the most Kojima game, like back on top, I I took it as a, yeah, you're the okay. I believe you.

Speaker: And now I've got written, reached certain parts of this game, Matt, um, that, uh, and it's not main story stuff. It's little flavor things about the story itself, like little it flares, if you will.

Speaker: That makes me go, holy shit, this is literally, this is Kojima off his leash and allowed to do what he wants from a creative standpoint.

Speaker: um This game is very dark. It's gritty. It's post-apocalyptic, folks. If you don't know that, you might want to come yell at me about the spoiler, but it's post-apocalyptic, right? It's in the marketing. We can talk about the stuff that's in the marketing.

Speaker: But there are pieces to this to where youre Kojima doesn't take himself too seriously. And there's there's there's events, there's cut scenes, there's things around there that'll make you laugh because it's still it's so absurd that it's there, but you got to appreciate the fact that it's there because ah you weren't expecting it.

Speaker: um I have a question for you. Speaking of making you laugh, when you're in the one of the shelters sitting on the bed, right have have you played the song Horizon Dreamer?

Speaker: No, I'm go, do I need to go do that? Yes. So in your private room or one of the private room, okay. Private room when you're sitting on the bed or anywhere, you can go into the music player.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, play horizon dreamer and then talk to doll man. Okay. That's all I needed to know. Uh, and if anyone is playing death stranding two out there, go do it.

Speaker: Okay. Okay. um what else can i say about this uh there's a lot more um to this game that it is this is death straining one but it's really well defined i know we uh there's a trope about well it's the same game like call of duty for example and i'm not beating up on call of duty i'm talking about the trope of it's the same game um it's just got a different skin on it why why are we selling this death training 2 is kind of in that ballpark but it's taking death straining one and it's going, okay, where can we actually leave like make an improvement?

Speaker: What can be done to streamline certain processes? What can things that make this part that people didn't like and make it better? And that's what they did. They kept everything else the same.

Speaker: You still get to run around and build the roads. You get to build the truck. You get to do this. But now you get to do this with the truck. You get to do these types of builds. You've got these different things that are coming along. um And as much as I keep telling myself, I need to just go ahead and push through and finish the game.

Speaker: i find myself getting stuck in a loop where i'm like, well, let me go. Let me go do this real quick. And then I'm going to go do this real quick. And then I'm going to this real quick. um Just because I want to get i want to see what what happens when I get the next star. And then I'm at four stars, pushing for five on almost everybody.

Speaker: ah So Death Stranding 2, I am trying to push myself through as fast as I can. um And I keep telling myself I need to do that. um But i i never I can't stop.

Speaker: um Highly recommend it. If it wasn't for Claire, this would be my game of the year. yeah Oh yeah, same here. Absolutely. Claire's still my game of the year. so Oh yeah. We have a lot of games coming out though. it would take something absolutely life-changing to take Claire out of my goatee contender.

Speaker: Absolutely. Uh, yeah. Do the gameplay loop of death stranding. Cause you, you mentioned you pick up other porters, other players packages. And I was like, I might as well do my encumbrance just maxed immediately, even on like the, the, the stuff I have, the vehicle, right.

Speaker: Uh, And I just, I found myself just wandering around, just delivering packages. as I'm like, I should probably get back to the main story. And that's, I'm about, I'm still about 35 hours in.

Speaker: I plan to really dive in ah this week and next for sure. i mean, I'm going to, I think I'm going to knock out almost 80 hours in one week.

Speaker: I'm planning on it. Just a binge, dude. I don't want to rush it, but have some catching up to do. with Death Stranding. And we have some, a lot of games coming out that I'm excited for, um that I need to prepare for. Yeah, everything I've seen, i' on show I'm on episode or chapter six, so you're two chapters ahead of me.

Speaker: And the chapters are long. They are, they really are. um I do want to give a pro tip for anybody that's maybe playing or thinking about playing. um Just take this piece of advice.

Speaker: The shelters, as you get them upgraded, take all of the resources out of them because you can store those resources in your ship. The, the Magellan it's in the midterm marketing material.

Speaker: You can store everything in your private locker there, and that will allow you to help with rebuilding the roads and, or whatever you got going on. Trust me, you do not want to track halfway across the map because you need 3,400 ceramics.

Speaker: I know. ah Ask me how I know. All right. Here's a question that I don't know. Uh, it is Does the Magellan have a limit to the resources you can put in it?

Speaker: So there are two different contexts this case. So you can store materials in the Magellan like you would any other shelter. Yes. But there's a limit there. But there's a private locker.

Speaker: And there's no limit there. There's no limit there. Oh, God, don't tell me that. I just went alone. I'm probably sitting on almost 7,000 resin inside of my private locker in there. Holy crap.

Speaker: All right. Okay. that is ah That is a good pro tip. Another tip I actually gave you, Bob, is follow the golden path as much as possible because you're going to get so many new tools to do the deliveries you would have otherwise done with the lack of tools in the beginning.

Speaker: you're going to get so many more new tools where you get these and you're like, fuck, this makes it so much easier. So just keep following that golden path. Dude, play it how you want.

Speaker: Go explore. Do whatever you want in this game. you know Throw on some music and just vibe. It's a cozy game. It's amazing. ah It's one of Kojima's masterpieces. But follow that golden path to make deliveries 10 times easier.

Speaker: so And I can't wait for you to start playing it, Alex. Soon. Soon. I can't wait to start playing it. it yeah I liked the first one. And like I've said before, it wasn't it's not really my cup of tea.

Speaker: But I think the graphics alone got me. Oh, yeah, that opener. I'm really big on if if a game is artistically pleasing, sometimes it's all it takes.

Speaker: like I don't particularly care that some of my favorite games aren't the greatest games in the world because they look pretty and pretty colors please the Tism. yup So, yeah, Death Stranding definitely really gives me that.

Speaker: And it's it's absolutely stunning. Oh, yeah. um Anything else you're playing on PC besides Final Fantasy 8 Remastered?

Speaker: ah League of Legends because we just got a new champion and a new patch. That's cool. So league League's always in my constant rotation. Counter-Strike's in my constant rotation of games. um There's one... like yeah this This is where I'm going to sound like a total nerd because I've got 6,000 hours in this... Wow. Wow.

Speaker: six thousand hours in this ah wow Yeah, this. So um I'm really into visual novels. um Specifically, like the Clonad franchise is one of my favorite anime and everything Key Visual Arts does is just gorgeous.

Speaker: um I picked up a years ago, Tomoyo After It's a Wonderful Life. ah And I'm trying to get all the trophies in that.

Speaker: I'm now a little over 6,000 hours into it and I still don't have them all. Wow. Oh, that's crazy. Dude. 6,000 hours is nuts. My most played game of all time is like 2,500. I've got more than that in world of Warcraft. Um, I'm in probably the tens of thousands of hours in wow.

Speaker: Um, and like final fantasy 14 only keeps track of launcher time, but I can show you, tell you how long I've spent with just the launcher being open. Like, and it's normally open for all of two seconds.

Speaker: Um, Final Fantasy 14, have clocked 2,263 hours in the launcher. That's just the launcher. that's just just the launch Yeah. crazy.

Speaker: That tells you I'm very dedicated as a PC gamer. Like when I say like, I'm awesome. The MMOs are my reason. MMOs are my reason. Yeah. like if And if you compare it to Final Fantasy 15, where I have nine hours, it tells you where I fit in these games.

Speaker: Gotcha. Because I'm already at 35 hours in Final Fantasy 8 Remastered and I started playing it four days ago. Wow. Well, it's awesome that you that many hours, dude. That's impressive.

Speaker: No, dude, that just means i was way I was way too single for way too long.

Speaker: I had no life. Nothing wrong with that. The wife keeps me in check, though. I don't quite get my 12 hours of gaming after I get off work anymore. Thank God.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, ah we really appreciate you being on this episode. And we've we've dove into more PC stuff than we ever will with any other episode. I assure you that.

Speaker: ah But we really appreciate your knowledge and your, I'd say, expertise because you know your shit. And most importantly, ah you know Bob, you were you're talking about Keyboard Warriors.

Speaker: let's Let's see it. Bring it on. Become a keyboard warrior. Be nice about it right in the Discord. Don't be an asshole. but Let's hear your thoughts. If you're a PC gamer... You can you like the keyboard warrior if you can type faster than I can.

Speaker: right We want to hear your thoughts. Do you play PC? Do you not play PC? What do you think of PC? Why don't you play on PC? Why do you play on console? ah What are your favorite things about PC? What are the negative things about PC that you you don't play on PC? The reasons.

Speaker: Everything about plus PC. Yeah. Or anything. It's hot dog or sandwich, you know? No. Absolutely not. Yes, it is. No, it's not.

Speaker: Ask that on the Discord, and we'll talk about it on the next episode. Oh, you know what? we got We got it. I apologize. There was a question that was in the Discord. Oh, well, shit. We got distracted. Let's hear it. you guys to just knock it out real quick?

Speaker: Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Yeah, I totally forgot forgot about that. um So who wrote in? ah This came from Altier23. I'm sorry. This is at the end of the episode, but we I just remembered it.

Speaker: um He said, a question while we are on a food topic. chicken wings boneless or traditional what sauce are you choosing or are you getting them plain with dry rub seasoning flappers or drums okay boneless chicken wings are just chicken nuggets for adults tell me wrong agreed yeah yeah boneless chicken wings aren't uh chicken wings they're chicken nuggets and i love them as equally but yeah i agree uh who Who wants to take this first? Matt, you you I see that look in your eye. lets little Let's get that started. with I love boneless wings and traditional. I don't think boneless wings are wings. They're just kind of chicken nuggets. I love them both.

Speaker: i I'm going to go with the flappers. Flappers, 100%. Yep, yep. yeah yeah ah They're easier to eat. I think they're you get a little more meat. You can just do the thing where you just like...

Speaker: skin them right off and get all that meat. Um, I'm going to get, if if I'm going with wings, I'm going to go traditional. I will do boneless, but I don't even consider them wings. I think they're just chicken nuggets. Eat them with a fork.

Speaker: Still delicious. The sauce still gets in your mouth. Uh, the sauce I'm going with is a hybrid. Uh, it's definitely a wet sauce. I like dry rub. I like dude wings are some of my favorite, uh, foods ever. We, we need to go get wings now. Uh, beer and wings are the best.

Speaker: ah But I'll probably have a hybrid of barbecue, like a smoky barbecue and a hot buffalo. And that's that's the that's the sauce I'm going to do.

Speaker: Very traditional. Yeah, yeah. um I do like you know garlic parmesan. And I'm the kind of guy that if I'm feeling up for it, I'll get the the ghost pepper.

Speaker: uh, scorpion pepper stuff, the, the super hot sauce on my wings. But yeah, that, that's a great question. Um, definitely, uh, definitely a huge fan of chicken wings and that's what I'd go for.

Speaker: How about you guys? Okay. So for me, that's a really easy question. Like, yeah, I'll eat boneless wings. Uh, the wife and I will, we'll go to wing stop and we'll get whatever wing deals going on. Normally it's boneless. I don't care.

Speaker: Um, chicken nuggets. Yeah, I i prefer flats. um Always have, always will. I'm a really big fan of solely spicy wings.

Speaker: um For me, like a good mango habanero goes a long way. A good, like nice, good Asian hot is always really good. um But if i if I got to get dry wings and it's an option, like just a good dry lemon pepper wings also really good.

Speaker: ands I can't really complain with any of those three. Most wing places carry one, if not all three. And if they carry all three, I'll get all three.

Speaker: Good. Good. That's a... All right. I guess I got to be the different one of the group. um i Once again, boneless wings are good. um But they will be... This is where I think it's different.

Speaker: I think boneless wings are great with a wet rub. So if you get them a nice lathery sauce, I can pick it up with the fork and eat it, right? um But so i'm ah i'm a but i prefer traditional.

Speaker: um I am a dry grub kind of guy on a wing. You get me the, like you said, the lemon pepper, Alex said, with that that lemon pepper, or you get like an Asian ah ginger garlic grub, or even a this the local grocery store here. Well, now I say local, but it's the Safeway that's near my house.

Speaker: ah They've got a lemon pepper dry rub wing that is out of this world. um You get that crunch. It's kind of like eating a... it It kind of reminds me of a, you know, a salt and vinegar chip almost because you get that crunch with the the outside. um Yeah, I'm not a flappers guy. I don't like the double bones.

Speaker: I want to be cannibal. I don't want to say cannibalistic, but I want to be just visceral and take a big bite and just work my way around that drumstick. There's something enjoyable about that. Big bone.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah. Don't worry. I'll make you choke on it later. on sure Now

Speaker: want wings. wings, damn it. This is what I get for having this question at the end of the podcast. ah yeah but um Thank you, LTR23. That was a really good question. um Keep sending them in, guys. we'll We'll keep reading them off.

Speaker: um We normally do it at the beginning of the episode, though. Yeah, we we sometimes do it in the housekeeping section, but we can do it at the end too, we wherever. ah We love the food questions.

Speaker: ah We were just at a brewery, Metric, rest in peace. They had one of the best wing food trucks in the Springs called Flighty Fowl. And they actually have award-winning sauce ah and it's a peanut butter and jelly wing.

Speaker: And it's like ah maple bourbon jelly with like a peanut sauce all mixed in. and then they, uh, crust it with chopped up peanuts and it was delicious.

Speaker: So I, I like going crazy with the wings too. Um, yeah, and I can do flats or drums. It's really, but I do, I do prefer the ah flaps. So yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Uh, thank you for that question. Uh, that was awesome. That's a real question. Yes, it is. the food questions coming. Yeah, we're foodies and we love the food questions.

Speaker: So yeah, ah this has been episode 13, PC-centric episode. Really appreciate Alex, you coming on for this and sharing everything you know about PC.

Speaker: So we always love guests on the show. If you want to be a guest on the show, let us know. We can do guests anywhere in the world and anywhere in the US. ah We can have a guest on. So our our next episode, episode 14, is going to be rounding out the four-part series. And it's going to be on PlayStation. And couldn't be more excited for that. We are probably potentially having a guest on the show. We're waiting for confirmation on that.

Speaker: um But we'll see. So, yeah. What do you guys say we get the hell out here? And go eat some fucking wings. That's what I was thinking. Fuck. Shit.

Speaker: ah and maybe not tonight, but sometime this week. Now I really want wings. Golden flame up on Stetson Hills. Really good wing place. Yep. I've been there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. we' might have to check it out, but yeah. um thanks so much for listening.

Speaker: And this has been episode 13. So, uh, keep the conversation going. Talk about food, games, whatever. We're on discord. Hit us up. Keep the conversation going.

Speaker: Later, Gator. Later guys. Shapes of Gaming is a podcast shaped around gaming and most importantly, our community. That's you. It is written, created, and recorded in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado by me, Matt Stenson, and my good friend, Bob Harriman.

Speaker: If you would like to be part of this amazing community, be sure to like, subscribe, or follow us on all the social media platforms or the podcast app of your choice. Thanks so much for listening.

Speaker: And always remember, keep the conversation going. And most importantly, keep gaming.