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The Art of Leveling Up | Windbreaker Podcast
7.4k Plays6 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty chat about what makes a good leveling system in games.
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:32
Speaker
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Theme: Leveling Up in Games
00:01:02
Speaker
Oh, hello everyone. Welcome to the Windbreakers podcast. I'm Yachty Croshaw and I'm joined by Frost and Marty, as always. And this week, spring is in the air, I'd say. I've trimmed my beard. I'm not wearing my bathrobe because it's warmed up enough.
00:01:23
Speaker
And so we're thinking about topics of being reborn anew, as it were, with the subject of leveling up. See how I brought it all together? That's why I'm a pro. That was really good. I wasn't sure where we were going there, but you got us there. You laid the point. I'm proud of you.
Leveling Systems in Popular Games
00:01:42
Speaker
Graceful floundering, I approve. Yeah, yes. Leveling up once, basically the characteristic of RPGs now present in more games than it's not.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yep. Is it always appropriate? Would you say? No. Can I think of inappropriate times? Sure. Like in the call of duty, you press F to pay respects. Imagine a leveling up after burying your guys. Yes. Leveling up one's ability to pay respects. Like imagine a level up after the start of The Last of Us, after his door gets shut. Look at all the stuff you've unlocked.
00:02:21
Speaker
Look how mad you are. Put your mad points into your ability to push someone's eyes out through the back of his skull. Oh, I want that. See, he could make it work. In the end, it's all about execution. I've been watching, I finished the first season of the Fallout show on Amazon, which is one of the things that kind of got this idea in my mind because the show does an interesting job of, obviously it's like,
00:02:42
Speaker
follows made up character, I mean, everyone's a made up character, but you know, given the nature of that game, it's not like The Last of Us where you just follow Joel. It's following a sort of original story set in that world, but it is interesting how it's sort of...
00:02:54
Speaker
takes the ideas of leveling up of vats of like very gameplay heavy systems and like translates them into interesting narrative scenarios which just got me thinking about leveling up in general and games that take for granted I think in games that do it well and then when it's either done poorly or in games where it doesn't belong we're like why are you making us do this god of war please stop
00:03:20
Speaker
Well, I don't watch TV, as you know.
Character Progression & Game Mechanics
00:03:22
Speaker
How exactly does it represent the process of leveling up within that context? It is, uh, because... So I guess the classic Bethesda, so I requested the art with the Fallout thing, even though I'm not 100% sure how, I haven't played the old Bethesda games, like the classic, your Skyrims, your Oblivions, your Morrowinds, your Fallout 3s. I believe the way that goes in the Elder Scrolls games, you do things and those level up.
00:03:47
Speaker
Correct? If you're sneaky, you're going to level up your sneakies. If you're using a bow, you're going to level up your bow. If you're shooting spells, you're going to shoot your spells. That is certainly true of the Elder Scrolls games, yes. Yes. And that kind of seems like what the way the Fallout show is doing it. A character starts off, which I guess is just character growth, right? A character starts off and they're kind of bad at something. And then the more they do it, they get more and more confident. And there's kind of like a wink and a nod that they're almost leveling up that ability.
00:04:17
Speaker
Is there a montage? Less a montage, more of like, well, there are some, but yeah, there's actually some montages like that. Some of them are montaging as they're growing through it. Overwatch, famously, was putting out their shorts that would show off the new characters that were coming through and you would see their tiny abilities like Hanzo's. It's like, there's the scatter shot and there's the recon arrow. And then in the end, Ryuga wa gatake wa kuro as he fires it off. Finally, like he's leveled up. Yeah.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, and even in Fallout, the characters that start out in the TV show, the characters that start out in the vault, there's almost like a matchmaking system because it's like everyone in the same vault can't start families with each other because everyone would be inbred. So every once in a while, we need to do people swaps with other nearby vaults so that everyone's not sister kissing. And when they do that, they see, oh, what is my stat? I'm this charismatic, and I am this athletic, and will I be a good match with this person?
00:05:12
Speaker
Whereas I think in the Fallout games, you just do things, you level up and then you get kind of like a D&D system, right? Where you get points to just allocate into whatever the hell you want. Yeah, you just spend your points or whatever you want. So I guess that gets us into the first like hot take question, which is best. A game where you can apply points to whatever you want based on your general experience or a game that just levels up what you use.
00:05:35
Speaker
Because a lot of other games do that. Fable does that. I had a different one on the third one there where it's like you just now have this new power completely. The extra points if I visually look different too. Yes, that's the other thing the other games do is where they just level stuff up without needing your
Critique of Modern RPGs
00:05:55
Speaker
input at all. I think something like Earthbound did that. It just upped your stats without asking you what stats you wanted upped.
00:06:03
Speaker
I like the way Earthbound did it too, because when you'd get new stats, it would get excited if one stat got boosted a bunch and be like, Oh, your psychic power is up by 10. Yeah. Dude, that's funny. And Doke upon it. That's a level of attack attack.
00:06:20
Speaker
I do like, it's funny cause Nick in his latest episode of Unpacked from last week, Nick talked about, kind of bemoaned the menu heavy, the heavy handed menus we've gotten in a lot of even just narrative driven games lately. Like he pointed to the God of War games and a lot of the first party Sony games, honestly. But how the modern God of War games, you'll just constantly be sort of going into your menu cause you got a new thing or you got a new skill point or you got a new piece of hardware.
00:06:48
Speaker
The trouble with the RPG-like skill trees in that sort of game, where it's just thrown in for, you know, flavor, is that traditionally the RPG skill tree was about creating a build. You could create a vastly different character to another player's character. But all these things really do is just lock off standard abilities, and by the end of it, most players have got the same abilities.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, and it does the thing which we talk about where saying, oh, you have point one resistance to poison build is like fucking that doesn't mean anything. Like what is that? Like the leveling up in a game, like when you level up and you feel like you've actually gotten more powerful and getting
00:07:31
Speaker
You can do that in a lot of ways. It can do that by letting you insta-win certain battles. Going back to Earthbound, if you level up enough, you can insta-win certain battles. Giving you new moves, like Frosted, where it's like, oh, this is an entirely new thing I can do, whether it's an attack or a new sort of form of transportation. Or like having it feel more powerful. This is why everyone complains when enemies auto-level to your current level. Because I think it's important to be able to see how far you've come.
00:07:57
Speaker
Yeah. That feels like is that like the get out of jail free card of like balancing a game is hard so this will just sort of auto balance it I guess.
00:08:09
Speaker
I mean, yeah, in a way. I do agree there that if it's got leveling, I want there to be a purpose for it, for like an RPGs. To me, the best RPGs, two people can just level in completely different ways and end up playing essentially two different experiences, be it like the sword and shield in Dark Souls, or like, I'm going to be a pyromancer for this one. Like, okay, that's great stuff for me there as well. The ones that are super involved in it, be it like your ARPGs, right? Massive skill trees. And it's like, okay, I could go in any direction and give an end.
00:08:38
Speaker
choosing where my resources go is as much a skill as the actual skills I'm unlocking. That's why I think it is games like God of War, where it's like a very just, it's just here for looks has kind of what's been inspired the vampire survivors to like really come through is that every time you level up, it's like, okay, do you want a new ability? Or do you want to make the one you already have, like level that one up and make that one even more impressive. So now you've doubled it or tripled it or increase the damage and whatnot.
00:09:05
Speaker
I think, yeah, it's been a bit middling and a lot of general leveling up to the point where I go either be all for it or really just kind of leave it. Like, why? Does it really matter if I choose like one more HP point on Kratos versus one more dexterity point on him?
00:09:25
Speaker
That's why I can't stand fucking gear grinding systems and you go through your gear and think, oh, I better switch to this shirt because it's got plus 0.1% damage. But really, would you even notice if the game just gave you plus 0.1% damage and didn't tell you? Like in Dark Souls, you got the nun outfit for poison and you're just there and like you got proper gauntlets, but you're wearing a fully decked out nun outfit to get through the fucking swamp at the bottom of the lake. I like that.
00:09:54
Speaker
If it's got purpose, absolutely. Otherwise it's just become another thing to do while you're doing something that you're doing. I didn't find a place to mention this anywhere, but I was playing Dragon's Dogma 2. I was equipping the best gear for my current build, but I was playing like a heterosexual man, my character.
00:10:14
Speaker
And the best gear for my build at a certain point was this pair of fishnets with, like, hot, like, underpants. And thigh boots, which was obviously part of a sexy lady costume. And, you know, I wanted the stat boots, but I didn't want to look like fucking Dr. Frankenfurter. So... You could be a sexy man. Yeah, a sexy ranger. Tim Curry, you know? That wasn't my character, dammit.
00:10:42
Speaker
So you want, uh, what is it? Trans, transmogifying? Is that what it's called? Where it's like, yeah, or you can get the stats of one thing, but choose how you want to look. I do appreciate transmoguing when it's available. Yes. Yeah. Like a roleplay aspect of that where it's like, yeah, you're so stubbornly against not wearing that that you'll take damage if you must. Whereas my, I don't care how stupid I look, I will wear the chaps of undying. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
But to get back to methods of levelling up, one of the problems I've observed in the kind of game where it only levels up what you use, is that then you get kind of locked into things. I mean, if you're
00:11:29
Speaker
Gaining points in, say, stealth attacking, that means you're probably good at stealth attacking, which means you probably don't need help in your stealth attacking area. You probably don't need to boost your stealth attack ability when you might need to boost your other abilities.
00:11:47
Speaker
It's, yeah, I noticed a thing, the Ratchet and Clank games, where you upgrade your weapons. I'm very- Oh, God, yes, I was gonna bring that up on this topic, yes. Because when, like, early in the game, I really like it, because it's like, oh, whatever I'm using, that thing is getting more powerful. And so if I like the little Mr. Zircon buddy, who's like an AI who will kill things, or a rocket launcher, or the gun that turns people into pixels, like, that's cool. And then you max those guns out.
00:12:13
Speaker
And you have to make the decision of, do I stick with what I'm comfortable with knowing it's not growing anymore? Or am I like, well, fucking, I guess I'll use the disco ball gun because at the very least killing things is giving me XP that I can use as opposed to just pouring money down the drain. That's exactly what feeling I go through playing a Ratchet and Clank game. I switched to the shit of your guns because I don't want to waste experience.
00:12:39
Speaker
But at a certain point- Then I'm not having fun, because I'm not using the gun I like. Have you ever found, like, maybe it could see you outside your comfort zone and you start to like a new gun that you didn't think you would like? Maybe like, oh, I do like the rocket launcher, or I do like a weird little- Oh, that's Children of Morta. Well, I remember the hype. Well, that could hypothetically happen, but not in my experience, playing Ratchet and Clank at least. What's the Children of Morta way for us?
00:13:03
Speaker
What do you call it? You're playing as a family, right? And they all have different play styles, but you level them up as you use them. And obviously you'd want to just stick on the same one if you want, but they get this like status effect where they're kind of locks them out and you have to play a different one for that to wear out. But while you are playing the other ones, you're also getting these family upgrades.
00:13:24
Speaker
Based on that, and it's actually made me branch out to play styles that I normally wouldn't. I've said this many times, I imprint on the first thing I touch, and I'll want to max that out before I do anything else, but this one's like, hey, try some variety going through here. I really do, I mean, the armored core being like, I'm just going to use this mech for the rest of my life.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, relatedly. Relatedly, I hated in like, say, a JRPG where cast members you haven't got in your party don't gain experience. Yeah. So and then like, the more you not use them, the more useless they get until you might as well not bother. And we're playing Persona 4 for the first time. I'd like stuck with the starting four characters for the whole game just just to prove a point. That was an interesting twist, though, and Pyre.
00:14:09
Speaker
where like, you lose your best guy or you can keep him. It's hard to explain. Yeah. The characters you love and use most are the ones you want to, you know, rescue. And once you've rescued them, you don't have them anymore. Then you're like, Oh, I don't get to lean on this thing in battles anymore. I have to like learn this. My crutches, my crutches. Um, it was interesting case that we're like, like getting rid of the party member was doing them the favor and keeping them was doing them a disservice. It was interesting how that played out.
00:14:39
Speaker
I had this fear, I guess without spoilers, but I had this fear in the pit of my stomach that we didn't actually know what was going on the other side and that we were sending them to like a literal hell. But luckily that wasn't the case. Even when we're talking about like the spectrum of your party leveling up, there's gradients there because there's like the original Pokemon way where it's, even if they're in your party, if they did not interact in that battle, they do not get anything.
00:15:04
Speaker
So you have to do that thing in Pokemon in early games where you're like, okay, I'll start with a low level guy, immediately switch to a higher level guy. Oh, fuck. Trying to get fucking Metamagicarp into Butterberry. Or Magikarp into Gyarados. You get the fucking Sock of Sharing, don't you? Eventually later on in the games, but like in the original game, Sock of Sharing didn't exist.
00:15:27
Speaker
You just have to bring out your fucking metapod at the start of every battle so you can get punched in the face and then stick them back in your bag straight away. A beautiful butterfly. And then there's the other games, you know, there's some games where it's like, oh, your main party all gets a certain amount of XP and then maybe your backups get 75% or your backups get 100%.
00:15:47
Speaker
Persona 3 reload did an interesting, added an interesting mechanic that wasn't in the original Persona 3, which was, it was still, your party members were the only ones who gained XP. If they weren't one of your party members, they didn't gain. However, it added these grandfather clocks you could find in Tartarus every once in a while. And when you find them, you could pay like a small price of like the Tartarus currency to choose two characters to immediately level up all the way to your main character's level.
00:16:15
Speaker
And so if you have the dog and you can use the dog in battle, but you wanted the dog strong, you could just be like, all right, you're immediately boosted 30 levels up to me. Which made sense in Persona 3, because often you'd be aware that in certain areas you were going up against certain enemies with certain weaknesses more often. So it makes sense to switch out the party members that could exploit those weaknesses better. I think in Persona 4 it tended not to matter to so much.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah. And so the five gated leveling up the whole party through one of the NPC story tracks, it was what's his name, the the twat, the 20 runs the website, the one who was obsessed and the fan, the fan. Yeah. Yeah.
00:17:00
Speaker
And then there was also the one, right, the Shoji player could teach you to swap out a character in battle, right? And like sideline someone and pull in someone from the bench, which was also- That was good. That was a good interaction between the two, like, cores of the game, I think.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, I completely agree. How do you feel about, we mentioned souls earlier, how do you feel about a game where you're, there's just one currency, and you can use that to level up, or you can use it to buy equipment, you can use it to buy items, like, I'm always one to where I don't want too many currencies, but I always think, and I'm like, should there be two different currencies in this? Should there be money and souls? Or is that choice the interesting thing of, do I level up or do I buy new armor?
Currency & Crafting Systems in Games
00:17:46
Speaker
I think it's better to have fewer currencies because it creates more, as I just brought up, interaction between game mechanics. If every activity you do gives you the same benefit, you can do whatever activities you like to advance yourself. You can just let one particular side activity kick itself in the balls and fuck off if you don't want to play it.
00:18:10
Speaker
point to the starting bit. Whenever you're leveling up, you've got the items that are worth like, I don't know, 600 souls or something like that. And when you're at low level, 600 souls is a lot of levels, right? But then later on you feel like, Oh, I just this quick fight and I can get 5,000 souls, but it's not nearly enough for a level. I'm going to now do some weapons and stuff like that. Yeah. Trade off there. Uh, I guess as long as it doesn't make itself redundant, I guess like Sultan sanctuary, you kind of had that issue. I think it had two currencies and it was,
00:18:40
Speaker
I guess that's why I don't like crafting systems because in a lot of games, if it's not like a full on survival crafter, a crafting system is just a game with hundreds of currencies. And it's just like the currency is bits of wood and bits of stone and bits of whatever.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. And then you end up flooding your inventory with all this useless garbage because it's because it says it's a crafting ingredient and you don't need and you don't know if you might need it at some point. Yeah. Maybe some some awesome weapon you're going to want to make is going to need that thing. I do agree with you as much as I like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. There were some of those different systems and level up systems in the game. I was just like you could do it yourself game like the internal weapon leveling up. I'm like fucking I don't care.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. What the hell? Just do it yourself. Whereas I liked the original Final Fantasy VII where it was like, okay, you gained XP and just leveled up normally. And then also your individual materias leveled up. I thought that was, I could wrap my head around this. And this, there was just like one or two, too many layers of leveling up to where I was like, I don't care about these. You take care of it and I'm just going to keep slashing things.
00:19:52
Speaker
In a game where you have multiple NPCs in your party, like a JRPG, or maybe something like a Dungeon Siege, I appreciate a game that will just give you a button to level up everything without me having to micromanage every single one of the burgers. For some reason, Mario and Rabbids is so sleeping to mind.
00:20:11
Speaker
I got very bored of spending the upgrade points on all the different party members you have in Mario and Rabbids games. So I just hit the auto button and it would just unlock whatever was most appropriate. Interesting. Which I suppose implies that it was doing that thing we were talking about where levelling up doesn't really matter in terms of picking what kind of character you want it to be and it's just a sort of flat upgrade you don't need to worry too much about.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, I do. I think sometimes making you, instead of having it be, you know, a Souls game or even like a D&D based RPG where you have a shit ton of different stats you could put things into, I think sometimes if you parrot down to, you level up and then you have a choice that's maybe binary or three or four different choices, like a Mario RPG or Paper Mario, when you level up, you have like one of a few things you can add a point to. You can add a point to let him strength, hit points, magic, defense or whatever.
00:21:10
Speaker
I always liked how small-scale the Mario RPG and Paper Mario leveling up stuff was. You just put like one point into health and that gives you like five extra healing points. But it was very tactile, it was very appreciable because the damage numbers were so low generally. Yeah, and then you could feel, you could be like, oh, if I just have five more HP, I can take two extra hits in battle and that's important. Like that's...
00:21:37
Speaker
startlingly large number of monsters in Paper Mario just die in one just have one hit point yeah yeah um and then i mean they're not rpgs but the the sort of the leveling up in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom which has the two separate tracks it has the oh you've done enough shrines to where you can choose to either raise your grip or raise your stamina or raise your health and then there's the found you found enough Korok so you can either raise your
00:22:04
Speaker
weapon capacity, your bow and arrow capacity, or your shield capacity. I like those because you can be like, okay, I want to play dangerously so I don't care about leveling up my health, I just care about leveling up my stamina. Or if you're like, ooh, this game's kicking my ass, I want to focus on leveling up my health and stamina will come later. I like that that
00:22:25
Speaker
That feels like the way I played the game the first time was a little more cautious. Whereas now when I replay the game, I just go fully into stamina and I'm like, I won't get hit. Or if I do get hit, I just blame the game, which is what I do in most games. I tend to take that approach in like Souls likes a lot these days. Just put a lot of points into stamina because if you get hit at all, you're probably doing it wrong. Yeah, it's on you.
00:22:49
Speaker
This is interesting now because we've gone through items, we've gone through equipment, we've gone through party. What are your favorite kinds of leveling up in that sense? Which one were it? It was a roguelike I played where the leveling up was not your character and it wasn't your guns, it was like your hub.
00:23:05
Speaker
and it was allowing you to shoot. You'd get more parts of the map, you know? You could also unlock different abilities based on this little equipment thing that you were unlocking, too. But it started to get a bit egregious to the point where later it just felt like you were leveling up, unlocking the game. I was like, that's really strange gating that you've done. The leveling up was not weaponized against me to really calm down the pace a little bit. I was like, that's kind of strange. Yeah, there's a lot of RPGs that kind of do that.
00:23:35
Speaker
having a home base feed into that. I mean, I guess not on RPG, but Metal Gear Solid 5, like leveling up Mother Base is kind of what gives you more and more things you're able to do. And so you fold more dudes and send them back to Mother Base so that they can work on different R&D and growing out the base and everything, which gives you more things to do actively. I think it's...
00:23:55
Speaker
That sort of approach is sort of reflected in the extraction shooters, isn't it? Where it's not as much about doing stuff as bringing stuff back to the base, like Pacific Drive as well. Yeah, yeah. Or even something like a lethal company, where you're like, oh, this is enough. We've brought enough back. We can pull out of the level. Come and do it again. So as I say, leveling up in every single game is sort of a relatively recent thing. If you look at classic games like Mario,
00:24:25
Speaker
Like there's no real levelling up in Mario. Progress is marked just by collecting stars or whatever. So what do you think has fueled the...
00:24:41
Speaker
ubiquity of leveling up in non-traditional RPG games. In modern games. Is it just to give the player a sense of progress? Yes, I think it's to the point where it's a fetish. The desire to see progress is absolutely fetishized at this point where, because it's just harder to sort of cherish the abstract of like, I've improved, I as a person have leveled up.
00:25:07
Speaker
Whereas it's like, nah, don't give me none of this. It's the journey bullshit. No, I want to see my levels. I want to see them increase. I want to see me have gained stuff. Um, even there speaking like in a service rat doesn't get like 50 arms later on. And he's got arms level.
00:25:24
Speaker
See, I worry that it's just become a sort of standardized system in every like design document now. Like if you're like a lot of studios just use template design documents that have leveling up in them without really considering if it's it's important.
00:25:39
Speaker
Because they just, it's just, you've got to have this now, you've got to have this to create a sense of player progression. I mean, leveling up has become, that's what, like, gamifying outside of the game
Gamification Beyond Gaming
00:25:50
Speaker
spaces, right? Like, Duolingo has gamified leveling up things, uh, uh, fitness.
00:25:56
Speaker
apps have it to where you're like, oh, look, I unlocked a new badge because I did this many push ups today or something like that. So there's I think there's something inherently like the the pessimist in me would be like, oh, they're putting it in there just to inflate the length of the game. And so you could say, oh, yeah, we're charging $70, but it's 35 hours. So you get your money's worth.
00:26:18
Speaker
But I do think clearly people like them. That's clearly why people come back and people like seeing, oh, I have an active streak on this app or this app, or I'm coming back and I'm learning, you know, I don't know, people life itself doesn't have that sort of quantifiable leveling up. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of hotwiring the brain, is there? For a while I was obsessed with maintaining my streak on the New York Times crossword app. Like if I didn't do the crossword in the evening, I'd start getting really panicky. Yeah.
00:26:47
Speaker
And I just forgot to do it one day and lost the entire streak and then I just went, Oh, you know what? I don't care. And then I sort of just stopped doing the crossword for several months. You just described my old Snapchat dating back in the day. So that streak was dead. I don't know. I've done. I don't need to do this anymore. Is it I mean, so is that is it like preying on that sort of part of our lizard brain that
00:27:10
Speaker
I do feel there is a sort of predatory aspect to it. Even if they're not offering, you know, even if they're not asking, it's a single player game without microtransactions, even if it's not asking for any money, you still think there's- Well, even such things as trying to prey on your free time.
00:27:26
Speaker
like even something like Gotham Knights that has no overt live service elements is trying to hotwire your brain into wanting to play it all day just so you know it takes up more of your headspace and which like translates to profits further down the line yeah I think I think it's either or
00:27:42
Speaker
Same thing with when working out because it gets harder to keep track of your weight loss because once you get closer to the weight that you want, you lose so much less. It's easier when you're at excess. So it's like, hey, keep track of your body measurements, keep track of your max and stuff. Well, what you could do, you could do 10 of these last week and now you could do 11 of them. Exactly. So it's as much to keep you coming back as it is.
00:28:07
Speaker
It's nice to have this being able to look back and go, oh, look how far I've come, even though I've done this for two months and it feels like I've not made any progress. Look at how much I've done. So as much as it's part fetish for some people, it is kind of just a thing that keeps them going in life. Yeah, I didn't have an opinion one way or another in terms of if they were... Obviously, when you get to a point where it's like, oh, you could buy things to skip the grind, that's when it's like, clearly, this is...
00:28:32
Speaker
You're just trying to get money out of people, like whatever Assassin's Creed game that was. But if you can't, yeah, I don't have a strong opinion one way or another if it's...
Innovative Game Design Approaches
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah, so if I play whatever games find a way to be fun without needing leveling up elements, it always feels like such a breath of fresh air.
00:28:50
Speaker
That Children of the Sun game I was playing on Yahtzee Tri's recently. I didn't know what to expect from it, but it's a pretty simplistic game after all that, but it kind of draws ye in regardless.
00:29:04
Speaker
Like that's my kind of leveling up. We're just like, Hey, new ability. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. Or like you could see you've gotten better, not because your stats are higher, but like, Oh, I solved this in two turns of the head or the same thing. Like, uh, you know, we were comparing it a little bit to the bite size nature of, uh, neon white.
00:29:23
Speaker
The same thing with that where it's like you're not getting new abilities. You're just like, oh, I've learned this level and I've learned a few new. Skills I've had this whole time. So now I can blaze through the opening levels. It also has gifts, you know, so like you're leveling up your brain. It makes you think, see them out differently.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, I've been working on my review of Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, which has a couple of abilities you have to unlock that opens up new areas, but for the most part, most of your abilities you have from the beginning. And the game just doesn't tell you that you have them. I think it's becoming a bigger and bigger thing. And you just learn how to use them, and then you can reach more interesting places.
00:30:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Very tunicky. Like you said, uh, the game we're not allowed to talk about right now has a bunch of those. So much of that. We're just like, it's not hiding or leveling it up. It's, it was always there. It's my understanding that's leveled up. Yeah. Yeah. I'm maturing. That's it.
00:30:22
Speaker
that's probably a superior method than having to quantify everything in cold hard numbers, I'd say. I think some people don't. Well, it's hard to be concrete for some people in that aspect, that they would actually like to see some sort of progress, same thing with like, that's why some games that feature Battle Pass is not necessarily like even free ones, not necessarily just to eat your time, but because some people are like, well, I'd like to have a sense of something, you know, just a sense of anything while I'm just here, so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You can do that with just like a fucking ice core table. You used to do it, right? Like just give them coins to collect. That gives you the sort of the same brain chemicals. Every game's a Mario now. Yeah. I like it when a little guy eats a mushroom and he goes, do, do, do, do, do.
00:31:16
Speaker
I'll tell you one of my favourite alternative levelling systems that I don't think I've seen any other game, and that's the one from Cave Story.
00:31:24
Speaker
Did you ever play Cave Story? I did. I don't remember how you leveled up in that game. Well, you got a range of weapons, and they can all level up to level one, level two, level three. That increases their ability and effectiveness in a very tactile, obvious way. The projectiles would do much more damage and go much further, et cetera, and look a lot more impressive. But every time you got hit, you lost some of your current gun's experience. And you'd have to pick it up again, like Sonic the Hedgehog.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, you... It was interesting because when you were really powerful, it was easy to start making mistakes and then you'd have to focus on playing more conservatively to build yourself up to be powerful again.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting because that, you know, Cave Story, obviously, just one of the early, huge, Indies, very retro-inspired. And that makes sense because that almost feeds into, like, the upgrades in original, like, the NES Castlevania games, where it's like... You say retro-inspired. Cave Story practically is retro now. It was, like, 2004? Yeah, but, I mean, it looked like a late 80s, early 90s game. It's cold enough to drink. It is, oh, Jesus.
00:32:43
Speaker
But yeah, like the original Castlevania games had, oh, you start off with a shitty whip and then you can get two whip upgrades, but if you die, you lose your whip upgrades. So you're like, I'm stronger now, but do I play the res is the same way. Like in the game res, as you play, you sort of achieve nirvana. But if you die, you lose nirvana. And then you're like, well, I need to do this whole thing in one run because I got to beat it with nirvana.
00:33:06
Speaker
This doesn't make any sense unless you played Resident. Yeah, but it was like that demo I played during the next fest called Umbra Claw, where you're a little kitty trying to get home, trying to get to your little sweet child owner. But every time you die, your character levels up and he's growing stronger and he gains more animal powers, but you die too many times, you go feral. So now you can just demolish the level, but you can't go back to human.
00:33:28
Speaker
But you're like a monster. Yeah, I like that. That's neat. That's a very interesting take. I'm trying to think a couple, two other like weird ones that came to mind, like weird ways of leveling up. One, do you remember how you leveled up your health in Duke Nukem Forever?
00:33:41
Speaker
Yes, you fiddled around with bullshit. Yeah, it was called ego boosts. Yeah. You'd look at yourself in the mirror and you'd be like, I'm fucking handsome. I sort of appreciated that because fiddling around with bullshit was always like the tradition in the original duty to 3D because it was from that.
00:34:02
Speaker
era of first-person shooters where they were really experimenting with loading down the game with weird fun background details like clicking on things to make Duke say a funny thing like when you click on the pinball machine in the arcade he says don't have time to play with myself
00:34:19
Speaker
Your Duke Nukem is weird and I like it. It's weird. Or you could like give bundles of cash to strippers and say, shake it, baby. It's going to be a new Patreon tier. Yahtzee has Duke Nukem records.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, so they sort of gamified that in Newcomer Forever by increasing your health the more random shit you're fiddled with. Which was one of the good ideas in that game. Which did have good ideas, just sort of buried under the 500 million other things it had accrued over the course of its 17 years of troubled development.
Exploration & Curiosity in Games
00:35:01
Speaker
I like, um, I like rewarding the player for, uh, uh, playfulness or for, um, curiosity. Uh, well, a little bit like even the modern Zelda games have a little bit of that with the car ox seeds and everything. You're like, Oh, this looks like if I put an apple in this, in this bowl, will I get something? You do get something. Um, or even like, and I replayed child of classes recently and you get a little bit stronger every time you defeat one of the bosses, but also there's like random lizards.
00:35:29
Speaker
Occasionally in the world and if you kill a lizard and eat its tail you gain like more grip and there's like random fruit You can find if you eat a fruit you can you can get a little stronger just like I don't know small things like that who games with grip stats Love a good grip stat. There's also in
00:35:44
Speaker
I think it was Yakuza Kawami, which was the remake of one, I believe. You had a couple different fighting styles, but then there was the one that you needed to unlock by just randomly encountering Majima.
00:36:00
Speaker
all over the place and so instead of like leveling up normally it would be like oh you have to keep running into this fucking dude who's obsessed with you and it would be like he'll pop up during a side quest or you'll like you'll walk by a garbage can and he'll just pop out of the garbage can and be like I gotta fight you because you gotta get stronger because you've been in jail for too long um yeah just like real real dumb shit
00:36:20
Speaker
I don't know if Rocksteady does this, not Rocksteady. Uh, drug star. Yeah. They do it in bully where you level up through like going to school, doing your classes or fighting the vagabond behind the school where he teaches you how to, how to do more moves and whatnot. Yeah. That's very persona, isn't it? Well, I mean, but that was pre persona three. Ooh, I don't know. Actually bully. Oh yeah. That's that's PS two era. That was a while back around the same time.
00:36:50
Speaker
Yeah, good stuff. Do you want to go super chat? Yes. A bunch of more stuff to mention, but I think they're all... We can bounce off. Yes, we must go super chat.
00:37:02
Speaker
Uh, how does the chats very appreciative of my, uh, a shitty unique of impression. You should bring a new shitty impression every day or every, every episode. Bring your shitty impression to work. I used to play the shit out of genie for three days. I just memorized all his lines. What's his name? John St. John? That's a weird name. That's a weird name. If you were British, it would be pronounced John Sinjin.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yeah, what was I watching? Oh, Mad Men. There's a character named Sinjin. And I was like, how do you spell that? And I put on subtitles. I was like, that's just St. John. What are you doing, Mad Men? It's one of those weird British names where it's pronounced really weirdly based on how it looks. See, also, Fanshawe. Excuse me.
00:37:45
Speaker
Do you want to know how Fanshawe is spelled?
Miscellaneous Discussions and Humor
00:37:48
Speaker
F-A-N-S-H-A-W, Fanshawe. Wrong. It's spelled F-E-A-T-H-E-R S-T-O-N-E-H-A-U-G-H. Nope. We don't know. Or like Siobhan. Siobhan. Yeah, well that's Irish Gaelic. That's their excuse. Shouts to Ireland.
00:38:13
Speaker
Anyway, Dr. Theo, remember for three months in tip jar. Good for them. And then gives $5 and says, some games I didn't know I had upgrade points until several hours in. I don't know what's worse, the game not being clear with me or that I didn't need it at all. The Cuphead reviewer guy got yelled out for when he reviewed Mass Effect. He didn't know he could level up.
00:38:36
Speaker
What a time. I didn't know I could run in Captain Toad. I previewed the entirety of Captain Toad. And I was like, yeah, you move a little slowly. And so I was like, are you holding down the run button? I'm like, oh, interesting. What is this run button you speak of? Run down. Review. New one.
00:38:53
Speaker
Yeah, I've played plenty of games with like really overdone interfaces where I just don't notice that I've got points that I can stick into. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's why level ups tend to be not garish, but like overly celebratory in a lot of games. Yeah. Well, it's like, oh, there's a lot of visual and audio flair to let you know you have leveled up. What was the game? What was the game I did in the artsy pal world?
00:39:18
Speaker
Well, I was just playing pal-willed in the artsy tries. I didn't notice for the longest time that I could level up my stats because the interface was such dog shit. Oh, man. But I will say it's Titanite plus two plus three. Still dog. Absolutely still dog water. Doesn't matter. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's real dumb. What about I feel like we've talked about this. We might have even brought this up on the charity stream last Thursday, which, by the way, you are all incredible. You guys raised what was $13000?
00:39:45
Speaker
Someone close to that? Absolutely phenomenal. All of you people are incredible. One of the golden rules should be if you level up in a game, it automatically tops off your health and management. If I barely get through a fight, but I level up, you got to just give me a nice one. I feel like that happened in the Fallout show. Every time she was near death, the new thing would start up and she would always be topped off for full health. The finger, the other thing. Yeah, it's fine.
00:40:12
Speaker
Just be like Ethan from the Resident Evil 7 and just pour some first aid juice on your severed hand and everything will be fine. Well, that's different because he was a mold man.
00:40:26
Speaker
He was a mold man. Spoiler alert. My husband's a teenage mold man. You know what? The best way of liking games is, uh, I don't know. Yeah. I started one way and then I went the other way. I shouldn't have done it. Um, 19 and I'm also 19. It's fine. Uh, I like games where you level up by talking to a weird dude.
00:40:48
Speaker
Weird dude is non-gendered weird dude. You could be any kind of a weird dude. I like the Duke in Resident Evil 8. He's a nice weird dude to talk to. I like the weird dudes in Killer 7 where like I got some thick blood that I want to use the level up. I like the weird dudes in where plays like Fleur De Lis in Evil Within.
00:41:10
Speaker
Give me more weird dudes in games. I feel like every one of those games, I think Mikami touched. So maybe it's just Mikami likes having weird dudes level up. Yeah, Shadow of the Damned weird dude. Yeah, that's it. All right. Resident Evil 4 weird dude. I think Resident Evil 4 had the original weird dude. I think that is the proto weird dude. Yeah, the merchant.
00:41:34
Speaker
Yeah. What are you buying, stranger? My god, two impressions on the same one. That one's actually really good. That was a good one, though. Yeah. Well, he had a Cockney accent. That's an easy one. God, it's not been that morning, trust you.
00:41:51
Speaker
Bobby, welcome to Tipture. And Kaunte gives two euros and says, despite everything, it's still you. Which I want to say is an Undertale reference. A new lyric that came out of the window. And you look at yourself in the mirror towards the end of the game.
00:42:16
Speaker
I don't know if this was in the original Resident Evil 4, but I liked in Remake. If you bought a rocket launcher, he kind of chastised you. He's like, oh, well, where's the fun in that?
00:42:26
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, I like that, that's good. Smite does that, depending on the god you're playing. Yeah, you don't need to like bully me, but I like giving me a little ribbing of like... If you buy defense and you're playing Athena, who is the goddess of wisdom, she's like, ah, yes, this will improve everything. But if it's like Aries, she's like, no, blood, I want power. Power, yeah. Yeah, I think if you're interested in all four, if you bought a rocket launcher, you'd say, what, you're playing on a hunting elephant, stranger. Good stuff.
00:42:55
Speaker
which you kind of are. Yeah. In Resident Evil 4. There's a lot of big lads, at least. Yeah, a lot of big lads. FoxD gives $5 and says the best leveling systems split the difference. Mountain Blade Bannerlord uses Skyrim leveling for your skills and you get mutually exclusive perk picks.
00:43:12
Speaker
Love a nice perk. Perks. Perks and levels. There's a distinction for you. There you go. I was very in agreeance with the whole, it's easy to get stuck making every playthrough a stealth playthrough for Skyrim because it's so easy to level, right? You're just walking from town to town and you can increase this thing. But I don't mind it if the game is short. Thing is, I'm probably only going to play Skyrim once.
00:43:37
Speaker
I'm still trying to play it once. It's always stealth. I have yet to play through Skyrim once, I will admit. After 10 years of trying, I just can't get it. Well, I haven't been trying. I assume you reviewed the game originally, right? You played through it. Yeah, yeah. I didn't finish it, but I played it. He coined Gotzillaborn. There you go. Gotzillaborn.
00:44:05
Speaker
B.S. Marsh gives $2 and says, Happy Monday, gentlemen. Thank you. Happy Monday. Monday. Fun day. Crazy. That link to Skyrim, what is going on down there? The Skyrim commercial you grabbed is the fucking Switch Skyrim commercial. Mods out of lads. That's not even mods. No, you can get Link's shirt in the Skyrim, in Skyrim for Switch. What? Oh, my God. Man. Crossovers. Oh, Nintendo.
00:44:35
Speaker
Crayseeder gives finalists, says, liked the weapon XP in R and C2, Ratchet and Clank. When there was a single bar per weapon, it forced you to experience the variety of weapons. The new ones have too many levels. Too many levels. Yeah, there's...
00:44:52
Speaker
Oops, all levels. Oops, all levels. Yeah, you can very easily be a little too heavy with that leveling up spice. And if there's too many things going on at once, then you're like, I don't really want to do this. How do you feel about a respec? How rigid should your decisions be? Should you be allowed to as often as you want?
00:45:17
Speaker
If we get a sound board on, we should have a button for it depends. Just a funny voice saying it depends. A little musical jingle. It depends. This means the name of the podcast, if we're honest. That's most questions we answer with, well, it depends. That's dangerous stuff there. I start to overthink it. Because if you see me on Respect, now I don't feel confident in any of the things that I've just chosen. But it's also like, you could only do this once. Then I'm like, oh, god.
00:45:43
Speaker
In some games I'd appreciate at least knowing I have the option of rebuilding myself from the ground up if I've discovered I've built myself into a corner. Like if I could respec in System Shock 2, that would have been nice. It's very easy to find yourself trapped in a fucking useless build by the end of that game. Did the remakes not even...
00:46:03
Speaker
System shock remake doesn't even have leveling up, but then the original System Shock didn't. They are remaking System Shock 2, aren't they? Yes. Yeah, I wonder if that's going to be something that's changed. Yeah, I think there's some games where you can just do it whenever you want, and at that point you're like, well, this is kind of meaningless, and am I just going to like, every time I get to a boss, be like, oh, well, I'll do, I'll put points in whatever makes sense for this specific scenario.
00:46:28
Speaker
It certainly makes context take a hit unless you're playing nanotech augmented man who can rewire his skills in accordance with the situation. My favourite roleplay. I just noticed that we're levelled on the overlay. Yes, Eric's up to his usual tricks as he's long.
00:46:49
Speaker
You were level one. How do I level up? As long as I'm moving up, I'm happy with it. I'm much higher level, so it takes much more experience to level up at my level. Sure. That's another thing we could have brought up. Do you think the amount of experience you need should go up with each level, or should it always be the same amount?
00:47:13
Speaker
Yeah, what is it, Paper Mario's like always 100? Yes. Yeah, and so it's very easy to know, oh, most bosses are going to give me X amount and that thing, whereas other RPGs will be like, oh, once you get to level 50, you're gaining like 30,000 XP per level, or like, you know, souls. It depends, like, do you want me to farm? If you want me to farm, you may grow the boar as you please. If you don't want me to farm, then keep it nice and simple. Yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
Uh, oldhunter77 gives $10 and says, I personally don't see the appeal of skill trees. How am I supposed to know which skills are better if I'm playing a new game? Maybe they just expect us to look stuff up online, but that kills the fun. Yeah, I don't like a game where you have to sort of pick your stat load out at the start without having the slightest clue what the stats do. This was Dead Island 2's problem, that seems to be cool.
00:48:03
Speaker
That's fair. Um, we already played through Far Cry three. That skill tree was a bit wonky. Um, especially cause it would lock you out on top of already locking you out based on how many perks you spent. And I go, is this going to be useful for the rest of the story? I don't know. I just, I just boosted all my sniping stuff. I was pretty OP. Far Cry was in Far Cry three. They represented when you leveled up, you kept getting new tribal tats. New tats. Yep. New tats.
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah, I seem to recall in Dead Island 2, like, among the starting stats of the characters was endurance and toughness. And I was like, well, what's the bloody difference between those into gameplay terms? One's how you can run and the other's how you get bit.
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah, I like a modern thing in a lot of games will show you a little preview of what the if you're investing in a move like out of war. This is what this move looks like. This is, you know, that. Yeah, I mean, even even Dark Souls lets you press the little button that makes the little tooltips come up and tell you what all the stats do.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like a nice skill tree that essentially like definitely departs from itself. Because if they, if they play too close to each other, I go like, well, really, what's the point here? But in like Path of Exile, it's like, Oh, if you want to be tanky, these are probably the ones that you're going to want to go for all the way over here. This isn't like a different zip code than the stuff from like the DPS stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. Yeah. I guess it's intimidating from a completionist point of view. You're just like, dear God. Mm hmm.
00:49:30
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster gives $5, and it was his first super chat, but he didn't add any question or comments or anything. Perhaps he needs to be brought out of his shell. Perhaps he's a little shy. Come and join us here in the fun discussion, Brian J. Lancaster. Perhaps you'll have fun once you get your feet wet.
00:49:53
Speaker
Raspuseum gives $10. It says leveling up makes things easier from a game design standpoint also. Instead of having to design harder levels, like in the original Mario, just require a bigger attack stat to get past the level.
00:50:05
Speaker
I suppose. That doesn't spark joy in terms of design. Just having a thing have more hit points. Yeah, because I'll break it. I'll do it. I'll fucking do it. Yeah. If it's like, oh, this, you know, you can level up or this will take 20 more hits. I'll take the 20 hits. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:26
Speaker
uh, Fox D or snake in the garden number for five months. Look at that. And then Fox Fox day gives $5 and says leveling up. Everything was predicted by BF Skinner before video games or even a thing. We are all rats pressing the food bar for a reward. Thanks. I guess they got the same food every time. Went much of a level up. Yeah. So that was disproven by if you, if you put other means of entertainment for the rat in the box, they won't, they won't gamble.
00:50:56
Speaker
They'll just, yeah, they'll be at a bar having drinks with friends or being on the treadmill or whatever, but they won't gamble, which is a really strange study. I wanna see what's going on at this rat bar. Yeah. Uh, Rasp Museum gives $2 and says, not to say that makes the games better, of course. Following up the earlier comment. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, that's more of, I guess, just the way things are as opposed to being like, this is great. I love this.
00:51:26
Speaker
Brian J. Lancaster comes back with $5 again. Maybe they needed to figure out the system. He says, I prefer games where you earn XP from quests and secrets instead of mindless rat extermination. Deus Ex, SS, Brigand O'Haka, shameless plug. Did you make it? Did you create Brigand O'Haka? That's probably the name set in O'Haka. Oh, it is Brian Lancaster. That's your name.
00:51:52
Speaker
Oh, you cheeky Brian Lancaster. Yeah, that's one of those like solo developed really janky looking immersive sims, isn't it? It looks great.
00:52:05
Speaker
I like games where, again, me doing things, me poking around helps out. I'm a big fan of poking around. All the upgrades in The Last of Us are just like, oh, I've scoured enough bedrooms and stolen their pills and their bits, and now I can make a cool gun and I can be stronger because I explored this man's bedroom after he died. Leveling up, taking weird drugs. That was that one trippy Metroidvania that came out earlier. I forgot what it was called.
00:52:34
Speaker
Ultimately, we're like growing the plants. Yeah, you like level up by doing drugs. Just like real life. That's about right.
00:52:43
Speaker
Red Dwarf 42 gives 4.99 and says, did you mean to pick a topic that dovetails with Nick's too many menus essay? No, we didn't. Not particularly. Thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, I was also watching, outside of Fallout, I was also watching the new anime Solo Leveling, which is about a guy who can see a menu, or suddenly he could see like a... Oh, again with the fucking lit RPG bollocks. Yeah, but you don't realize it. It's like...
00:53:07
Speaker
And Isekai got brought into his world. Think about it. There's already a book about that. It's called Off To Be The Wizard. It's about a dude who discovers the background code of reality and then sort of teleports back to medieval times so he can be a wizard. But in this one, some of his
00:53:27
Speaker
some of his quests, they're becoming a little dark, and you're like, oh, what is this? Are you turning into a villain of some sorts? So, we'll see. Solo leveling, thumbs up. That was awesome. Yeah, yeah. That was interesting. What we've been, we've been, we've been, we've been, we've been podcast.
00:53:46
Speaker
snake in the garden gives side all five euros and says more layoffs at work and I can't stand corporate jargon. So very grateful to the second wing community we built here and the second wind staff. It is a legit escapism. Oh, that's ironic. Because the escape part. Yeah. Cause the escapist. I get it. When Stefani would escape. Yeah.
00:54:08
Speaker
Stake, if you scroll back, you'll, uh, you can listen to me try to pronounce the word Siobhan poorly. Siobhan. Siobhan? Siobhan. Siobhan. Siobhan. Siobhan. Siobhan. Me? Yeah, with a B. That sounds like really good at math, you know. Yeah, and idiot Siobhan. Yep. My friend, idiot Siobhan. I made a text parser game once with a main NPC called Siobhan, just to piss off people who had to type it out every time I wanted to talk to her.
00:54:36
Speaker
See you by the hand! How do I spell this? Incredible. Anyway. Uh, Phil Willis gives $7.99 a dollars, and says, Diablo 4. Monster scaling with level was bad, but at least you had free skill tree reallocation for the early levels. Allowed for experimenting early on. Ooh. Allocation up to a point is interesting.
00:54:59
Speaker
like almost like a refund period for like your first 10 levels you can mess with, but then once you're at 10, they're like, hey, you got to figure your shit out and you got to lock it in now. Yeah. Quite a few ARPGs do that where it's sort of like right now you can mess around with your gear, but then eventually though at this point of like any change you make to this is permanent. Yeah. Like putting us a gem into this armor piece, like it's either going to be really expensive to get it out or you've just broken it. So yeah.
00:55:26
Speaker
That's nice. Funny how, like, increasing the ability of your actual physical body, it can apparently be reversed easier than taking a gem out of something. Yeah, right. Anyway, Tommy Salty, member for five months in Tip Jar. Thanks for that, Tommy Salty, the music man. Thanks, Tommy.
00:55:47
Speaker
And then Tsunami Dusha gives $20 and says nothing. Have a nice day. Thanks for engaging, Tsunami Dusha. It's also Undertale line, I think. Yeah, that's also from Undertale. Oh, well, there you go. The Piss Bandit gives $10 and says, I feel like the proliferation of level systems in non-RPG games is a way to handhold non-gamers through the game instead of requiring them to actually improve out the game. I don't know how well that would work.
00:56:15
Speaker
I mean, stuff like in Game God or in Spider-Man, bosses can get difficult. Yeah, but is messing around in the leveling system any less easier for a non-gamer than the rest of it? Yeah. Would it be harder for them, though? I would think so. How much of a non-gamer are we talking about here? If it's like your grandma who can't even figure out how to look around in a first-person game?
00:56:41
Speaker
She can't figure out that you can move and look at the same time. Yeah, I don't think I would ever, if someone was a non-gamer, I don't think I'd give them a game with leveling up. It just seems like this isn't where we start off. We start off with something nice and basic.
00:56:54
Speaker
I think he's possibly making a no-true Scotsman argument. No real gamer. To handhold the non-real gamers through the game. What's no-true Scotsman? Oh, come on, Marty. You do this every time. Why do you never get my clever intellectual references? I understood it, but... I mean, every time. Have we talked about this before? He said this to you so many times. Have a bad memory! No true Scotsman is when they make the assumption of just like, oh,
00:57:21
Speaker
Uh, no, no Scotsman does this. It's like, Oh, but I'm a Scotsman and I do this. Well, no true Scotsman. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like goalpost moving. It's like begging the question. I know that one. Oh God. I'm going to time loop every time you're as disappointed as you've ever been. Oh my God. Oh Christ. I don't know. I don't think you're thinking of someone else.
00:57:49
Speaker
Tommy Salty gives 10 PLNs and says level up is for casuals. Pros level up their skill. Oh, like the no true Scotsman thing. Yeah. There you go. There you go again. Another classic example of a no true Scotsman argument. This is just sports games. You'll remember this time, won't you? I'm going to quiz you next week. Oh man, we'll see. It's going to be a long week. If it's European, if it's Japanese, no true weeb.
00:58:18
Speaker
Oh, I gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
00:58:21
Speaker
Fungus Finder gives $2 and says, make a video game concept with negative levels, referencing something I brought up in Dev Diary once. This is an idea I had for a game where you'd start off with like, as a character with like a million abilities, like towards the end of an RPG, or an action RPG where they could attack and parry and block and dodge and have a ranged attack and all kinds of stuff. But then every time they get to like the end of a chapter, they have to pick an ability to lose.
00:58:49
Speaker
Which would start off easy because there's a couple of abilities like they just probably found pretty useless. But towards the end like they're having to figure out if they want to remove block or dodge altogether. And it becomes really like a really hard decision.
00:59:02
Speaker
I played a demo like that. It's essentially a precision platformer, but you can make it easier on yourself by giving up one of your 999 lives and you'll balance this out. And the whole goal is to get through it without giving up everything because it is hard as hell. But if you can commit to enough level downs, you can make it through. Interesting. Catherine writes, gives $10 and says, here's to the weird dudes.
00:59:30
Speaker
Love a weird dude. We should have a larger topic on the subject of the one weird dude in games. Our favorite weird dudes? Yeah, the little Dark Souls merchant. Thank you kindly. Thank you kindly. Oh, hello. Yeah, FromSoft games are just riddled with weird dudes. Anyone who's like giggling as I walk up, I'm like, I'm a weird dude. That's like the standard NPC behavior in FromSoft games is just a giggle at the end of every dialogue line.
00:59:59
Speaker
And that's the thing that makes me like draw a sword of like, what was that? What was that last bit? You put turn too far, you'll throw me down a hole. I want to be in the VO recording sessions of all those games because it's like, Oh, that was good. Can you just try it? Like, well, like, well, much, much weirder. Can you be a weird little gremlin when you say this thing? Yeah. Like you put your balls on the sandwich before you served it to me. Yeah. Did you sound like you're steepling your fingers as you say that?
01:00:26
Speaker
Anyway, Hannibal Larr, member for two months in Tip Jar, thank you very much. Whitizism gives $500 and says, hey, Frost, just wanted to drop some support for your latest cold takes. Some of your best work. I expect continued perpetual growth for capitalism. Thank you. I'll be reading some Robert Frost just to try and learn words. I got you. Yeah, this week, everyone watched the one they wanted this morning. It was wonderful. Big fan.
01:00:53
Speaker
Uh, FoxD, you saw your dollars and says, sound bar the get back into life with depends jingle from the old adult diaper commercials. It depends. I didn't even know those were commercials. If you'd like possibly be a four hour time. Wait, my time is your time. I'm kind of old. Oh no, nothing was before my time. Jack's time. Back in Jack's time.
01:01:21
Speaker
He's still the oldest. The old prehistoric Packard, we call him. Jacob Kitty gives $5 and says, making a number go up isn't fun. Getting a new ability is. Fallout games have always realised that. If you say so, Jacob Kitty. That's why I'm addicted to Metroidvanias. I can't get off of them. Yeah, and even sort of along the lines of that, I liked
01:01:47
Speaker
last week for hidden gems, they played this duck paradox game was just a rogue, like, you know, uh, sort of like a bullet hell platformer, uh, puzzle game. But, uh, when you'd, you'd level up or whatever and you'd get a new skill, it would be two blank cards and you wouldn't know what they are. But then once you've experienced something for the first time, anytime that card came up is one of the two cards, you would know what it is. And so it, that became interesting. I don't know. I'm sure other games have done that before, but that became interesting.
01:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, where it was like, ooh, I can go with the thing I know I like, or I can flip this one to see what it is, because even if I don't like it, I'll at least know what it is going forward when it shows up. Ah, that's the devil you know. Exactly.
01:02:30
Speaker
That's very, um, the void reigns upon her heart. Um, find out what it is after choosing it. Also, that's, that's an interesting, has a level up level down mechanic. Cause if you go, you have to risk, you have to gamble for the level up and you're fighting a stronger monster, which gives you better rewards, or you can just coast and play like, okay, I'm going to choose a lower level one. But by the end of it, if you haven't accrued enough levels, you kind of just relying on raw skill, which is kind of crazy.
01:02:56
Speaker
Zachary Pearson gives five dollars and says, for those of us with a tactile aversion to grass, what's your IRL equivalent to levelling up?
01:03:04
Speaker
I don't like how it feels. I think they meant like touch grass. If you don't, yeah, you don't want to mow your lawn. How do you like mark progress in your life? Little treats. Little treats. I like getting out a little hobby or a little skill. Yeah, a little hobby or a skill and getting a little bit better, knowing a little bit more about it.
01:03:25
Speaker
Well, as a parent, I feel for me, it's discovering my youngest has learned a new word. Yeah, I can imagine. Like when we suggest a course of action, she's learned how to say, oh, Kai. You say it like you? When is she going to say, if you like?
01:03:44
Speaker
That's only, I mean, we do have leveling up. We've got birthdays, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You survived another year. You don't get a full health bar and your stamina bar gets smaller over time. I'm currently on a diet where I restrict myself to 500 calories of treats per day. So my leveling up is noticing I've lost some weight.
01:04:07
Speaker
See? Perfect. It's leveling down the waste. It's good. Yeah. If you choose something like cooking, first time you cook something, it might taste like shit. And then if you try it a couple more times, it tastes like shit.
01:04:23
Speaker
Blistered Soul gives $1.99 and says, Star, do you level two choices to earn more plus better tools? Do you like better tools? I don't know what the fuck you want about Blistered Soul, but thanks for the super chat and the money. How does leveling up the stardew work? Do you level up the stardew? Do you just get a bigger one? It's one of the, you get upgrades based on what you do situations. You level up in farming because if you do a lot of farming. Gotcha. Can you go up and kiss it if you date a lot of the people?
01:04:51
Speaker
So I ruined scape in it. I don't think so. Guys, I got up to level seven right now and you guys have only gone up like one or two levels. Cause you're farming rats. I'm out here fighting wolves and yachts is about to kill a dragon probably. Yeah, you're still incredibly low level man. Yeah, but so is the guy in solo leveling cause I got secret leveling going on that you guys don't know cause I can see the screen. You're at the point where the game's still suckering you in by giving you like a level for every mission you complete.
01:05:17
Speaker
Pretty soon it'll be like two missions per level, and then three, and the next thing you know, you're selling your underpants to grind up every slightest maggot. Oh, but I need those. My genitals are on my jeans. At that point where you find out if the game's good or not. Yeah. So where the game starts. Level 70 put 200 hours in, I hate it. Yeah.
01:05:43
Speaker
Jason Hendrix gives $10 and says, this may have been discussed, but what are your opinions on having to rest every time? Not the biggest fan of that myself. Like sleep at night? I think for the levels to lock in. Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
01:06:01
Speaker
If it's a combat game, I love like an ARPGs. You can level up while you're in the middle of a fight and it'll send off a big old blast and you get all your health back. I'm like, Oh man, that feels very satisfying. Uh, having the snooze for the level up that let's a bit out the way. I'm a, I'm a sucker for ins in games.
01:06:22
Speaker
and sort of like the little like party bonding moments. So I like finding a new in in a game and seeing if it's like nice and cozy. And then I like, I mean, Eric showing Final Fantasy 15 right now, which you level up by it's like the end of the night, you're going camping with the boys. You cook a little meal with the boys. Yeah. You play, you play slay the spire yachts. You have to rest to upgrade your cards and that's true. Yeah.
01:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, even dragons often take a little shvitz at your fire, but then goblins might attack you at night and steal your things, which isn't nice. I guess, diddly-do, it depends. If you're making a game that's more focused on the moment-to-moment action or not, because you might appreciate getting a little level-up boost in the middle of a fight. Yeah. And that sort of thing. Winter Survival was kind of cool, because it
01:07:10
Speaker
If bad things happen to you when you went to bed you have horrible dreams and that would mess with your psychosis and you have to pick a psychosis debuff which you could get rid of with side objectives but it was interesting because I was like don't sleep just don't sleep or you're going to get a debuff. Well that's kind of fun. Paul gives two dollars and says what video game would you isekai yourself into?
01:07:36
Speaker
Uh, Mario, you little mushroom, go doo doo doo doo. Uh, one of them Japanese porn games, I guess. I don't know. Interesting. But what if it's one of the sliding puzzle ones and then your whole body got like, well, not that one, obviously. Not that one. Yeah.
01:07:55
Speaker
Just one of those visual novels where there's just a dude and there's five ladies with distinct hair colors and personalities that all want to bone him. What about Persona 5? Because I'm getting ready to buy a ticket to Tokyo and if I got a skied into Persona 5, I wouldn't have to pay $1,500 for a flight.
01:08:14
Speaker
I don't play any game with combat in it. I'll get my ass kicked. Oh, they'll handle that. I don't know how to deal with that. You get to live on the bench. I'll hang out and make fucking curry and coffee. I'll be honest. I think like Mario Kart, you know, probably a racing game. That'd be my thing. You could see a lot of different sites. Hot Wheels. Yeah.
01:08:34
Speaker
Max K.O., remember for three months in Tip Jar, thank you very much. Dr. Cal-X gives $5 and says, I like Metroids levelling where you get better equipment, but Samus herself doesn't level up. Yeah.
01:08:49
Speaker
I like it when it's a visual representation, like the suit gets bulkier, it's purple, which means like you can go underwater and not get fucked up. I mean, I like, I like the unlocking of abilities, especially if the map is made in a way where you go, huh, I wonder what ability, like I can't get there clearly right now. I wonder what it's going to take to be able to get there. You know, a little teaser before you level up. Yeah.
01:09:13
Speaker
Fungus finding his side dollars says, Hey, screw you. Grandma Ma was amazing at the OG Tomb Raider and she played on a Mac too. Also Diablo. Man was she cool. Did she really? Did she play Tomb Raider on a Mac? Hell yeah. Kick ass grands. Grands. There you go. That's the real gaming grandma right there. Yeah. Not the one who ended up being a big racist or whatever. Another one. Damn. Erm. Every grandma's a little bit racist.
01:09:43
Speaker
Uh, ah, gives one 99 and says paying to level up Marty a couple of times. You heard him, Eric. There you go. Someone's paying micro payments on your behalf. Incredible pay to win. Oh my God. Wait, is that negative shit? Oh wow. We know how Eric feels about that sort of thing. I feel like negative nine to nine. It just means it's 99, but like a dark side.
01:10:10
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's if you like level up so many times, it sort of circles around. That's what that's what's happened there. Just under flowed. Now you're like how Gandhi became the most violent kind of civilization. Yeah. Sure. What if every game had a limit of where you could level up and it never told you what it was. And so it would just be like, Oh, you're bad. You're at level one again. Then you have to, but you have to, at any given moment, you could pick like a moment to bank.
01:10:39
Speaker
And if you forget to bank just before it rolls around, like in the weakest link, then you get really frustrated. But the number doesn't stick, so you can't just look at a guide and be like, oh, it's going to be level 45. So banger. Yeah. Did we just make a video game? And the game gives you subtle hints. As I say, don't worry. You're not quite close to the point where it overflow to worry.
01:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. But you don't know if this character is a liar or not. Yeah. I'd say you've got six or seven left, they would say. Right click, save as, export to switch. We just did it. There you go.
01:11:22
Speaker
Uh, the piss band that comes back with five laws and says, I meant that it's a lot easier for devs to simplify the game down to bigger number wins than actually designing interesting encounters and bosses. Yes. That is true. Again, not, you're not condoning it. You're just saying that is. Thank you, piss band. And thank you for not taking our piss because we need that for various activities. You can have, uh, piss.
01:11:51
Speaker
Oh man, what was it like at Woodstock? How wise you are.
01:12:00
Speaker
What did you do in the war, granddad? Don't worry, we all feel that way. Every time Nick speaks, I'm always like, what year is it? But he's going to get there. We've got Amy here, who's like... Yeah, but like, I feel like Nick brings it up more. Amy is not 17. She's 23, he's just very young. I feel like Nick brings up his age a lot, which is just like, you're pretty young for us, but you don't bring it up all the time. I also sound old. Nick is just fundamentally insecure. If it's not his age, it's his height.
01:12:34
Speaker
Well, I just, I just bring it up because I know it annoys him. That's why people become insecure. That's why they become Sunday days. Happy vacation, Nick. Get off Slack. Yes. Have a good time.
01:12:48
Speaker
A snake in the garden gives two euros, says don't know for the perfect chevron pronouncing by yachts. That's how you spell it. Yeah, isn't it weird? Wow. I was thinking C-H-A-U-V-A-I-N. Look at that A. There's like 10 weird things about this word. Then you get to that A and you're like, what do you have a hat on? I love languages like that. Like Welsh, saying Welsh written out. Oh my goodness. Welsh. Is that it? Oh, see. I'm from Wales.
01:13:16
Speaker
You sound like I'm from Holland, isn't that weird? My stereotype involves having sex with sheep. Is that a Welsh thing?
01:13:27
Speaker
That's the old stereotype, yes. The Welsh, the New Zealanders, it's the having sex with sheep thing. Shagging the livestock. And yes, Christian Bale is Welsh, but he's faked an American accent like since he first started being in American films. Yeah. Anthony Hopkins, Greg Davies, Otto Wachman, Martin Sheen.
01:13:53
Speaker
Martin Sheen. Smart and short. Sorry. Not Martin Short. Both American. Martin and Michael Sheen. Michael Sheen. You mean Michael Sheen. Yes, Michael Sheen is Welsh. Martin Sheen would fucking rock my world if he was Welsh. The cheat sheet for the Welsh accent is they insert a little gluffle stop into like when there were two consonants together. So instead of saying bottom, you say bottom. Bottom. Hmm.
01:14:25
Speaker
Well, we'll speak anyway. Yeah. B.S. Marsh gives two dollars and says Marty isn't low level. He hasn't spent his points. Think about it. Oh, what's my level now? My God. Oh, here we go. Let's figure this one out. The square root of twenty five plus two squared. Well, the square root of twenty five is five, obviously, and two squared is four. So nine.
01:14:54
Speaker
I'm not a son of a bitch, I'm just banned now. What happened? What did I do? I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I got kicked out of the club. I
01:15:27
Speaker
Well, I never, I never did that because I hated my brother's guts. Well, there you go. Look at this picture of you and Nick. I didn't realize you knew Nick when he was that young. Granted, Jay looks more like your kid than Nick. No, we, yeah. And I saw that comment appear a lot in the GDC videos. It's nice to see Yahtzee going on a trip with his son, et cetera.
01:15:49
Speaker
It's nice to see how two people can look exactly like Simon Pegg in subtly different ways, etc. The Snake in the Garden gives two euros and says, is a monthly funding goal a level up for content?
01:16:07
Speaker
I don't know, but we seem to have met this month. Well done, everyone. Yeah, we didn't put we have we had an actual exciting new things, but they won't be announced till next month because we're playing all along a little shebang, if you will. A little one. Yes, you will. A shindig, a shebang, et cetera.
01:16:25
Speaker
Uh, witticism comes back with $2 and says, $2 for calling your boss fundamentally insecure. Ah, he loves it. Are we all fundamentally insecure? That's why we're on the internet. Well, yes. I mean, maybe I'm, maybe I'm fundamentally insecure. That's why I'm always cuddling this small dog. What's the opposite of fundamentally? Unfundamentally? Nonfundamentally? Metaphorically? No, the fundamentals are the basics of then be advanced. He's got advanced security.
01:17:00
Speaker
Uh, John Brooks gives five pounds and says board frost. Good morning. Good morning. What language is that? Get the fuck out of here. I saw a video with Michael Sheen teaching Welsh. So I know a little man. You learned his name. You're that.
01:17:23
Speaker
Uh, Will Lund gives $5 and says, hope you get a chance to play Ayudin Chronicle. I backed the Kickstarter and got it early and it's hitting me in all the fields. I guess I overlooked it. I overlooked it because the title's a bollock sandwich, I suppose. And it's one of those... You said that in the Slack. What is a bollock sandwich?
01:17:43
Speaker
Well, this was covered in my semi-ramblematic about how not to title a game. But Bullock's Sandwich is a title that includes both incredibly generic title words, and a made-up fantasy word. I don't know. Like, uh, like, Walson, Lords of Mayhem, and Ereban Shadow Legacy. Uh, can I let you know something? That's not even the full title. The full title is Iodine Chronicle Colon 100 Heroes.
01:18:10
Speaker
Well, that's a little better. Oh, it's better. I didn't think we'd be getting better because the game is a hundred heroes recruit. You can get a hundred people on your body. I mean, that's, uh, at least is informative. Yeah. I didn't chronicle is a, one of those spiritual successors by many of the original developers, uh, like we've seen with, um, my day, number nine and blood stained and whatnot. Uh, this one is of a Suikoden.
01:18:36
Speaker
Kenobi's classic JRPG series, which was renowned for having 108 party members you could recruit. That might be too many party members, I'm going to be honest. There's like 50. I think it's too much. I assume they can't put much work into characterizing each of those party members. Might be too many. So the 13th warrior problem all over again. They shouldn't have had 13 of them. What was that indie game, indivisible?
01:19:05
Speaker
Well, there's also that 33 Immortals coming. That's the Spiritfarer follow-up. That's like the 33-player game. That's too many players. I don't want to play with 33 people. I don't know 33 people. I definitely don't. SpookyShran gives 10 people for a stream. We know chat, you know. We know chat. SpookyShran gives 10 dollars to say paying a microtransaction to unban Marty. Is that just like bail? Like bail money?
01:19:35
Speaker
Do you know what Eric's doing? He's gamifying the superchats. I feel like Eric's done that quite a bit where he'll be like, if you want to see me make a Photoshop, we need money. Eric has like a whole day. If you're not looking at a chat, Eric's like running a rack inside. And let me tell you, I respect it. Top to bottom, I respect it.
01:19:54
Speaker
Spooky Shran gives, oh, I've done that one. FoxD gives $5 and says, better to be fundamentally insecure than to be an insecure fundamentalist. How wild are you in FoxD? That's also a Taylor Swift lyric that came out this week. She says a lot of things.
01:20:11
Speaker
She was with at least one album and then became a double album. That might be too many songs. Maybe just pick 13 songs and just roll with it. She's got to ride the success train while she can. Before you know it, she'll be 40 and peddling pictures of her cellulite to the cameras. That's probably a billionaire silver mine.
01:20:31
Speaker
She's a literal Billy there. I think she'll be okay. Okay. Well, I guess she could just, you know, live on French fancies for the rest of her life. But I wonder what someone like that would want to do with their life after their looks fade. Director. He's going to be an Academy award-winning director. Honestly, probably with other music videos, like they're even Darren was like, you know what? This is cinema. I don't want to spoil his review, but the embargo's up. You know what TV show Darren really enjoyed? Knuckles.
01:21:01
Speaker
Knuckles? Knuckles. Of Knuckles of Sonic. There was a Knuckles TV program and Darren was like, I thought it was delightful. Who's the voice actor? Idris Elba. No way. The show's not really about Knuckles. Man, when does that guy sleep? Oh my god. Him and Keanu. Yeah, he's in everything. Are you excited that Keanu's going to be Shadow the Hedgehog? You have a lot of Shadow the Hedgehog opinions, right?
01:21:27
Speaker
I've on record saying the Shadow of the Hedgehog is sort of patient zero for all the weird places Sonic is gone. The typhoid Mary of the Sonic universe.
01:21:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Great.
Podcast Closing and Farewells
01:21:43
Speaker
Well, that's it for Superchats, unless any more pop up, which they inevitably will while we're wrapping up. Thanks for listening to the Windbreaker podcast. I was Yahtzee, level 99.
01:21:57
Speaker
So I'm presumably going to overflow any second now. And I was joined by Marty and Frost, level one. A shining reference in that Knuckles picture that's currently in the fourth slot. Is that a shining reference? That looks like Jack Nicholson. Well, that's probably why we're here in a second.
01:22:14
Speaker
Hmm. It's not the shining because it's, it's not a door. It's a wall. We don't know if you, what is a door, if not a wall that has not been opened. Well, busting through a wall more makes me think of that one bit in a nightmare on Elm street, part three, where the dude busted through a wall to reconnect with the other party members. Dream warriors. Yeah. Yeah. So it looks like a, here's Johnny. Yeah. Kind of thing going on here.
01:22:40
Speaker
I don't know. It looks more sort of like momentarily offended. Like it wasn't his, he wasn't the one who put the hole in the wall, but he's just noticed it. And I, well, this is going to, well, this is going to be a fucking contractor job. More fucking expense. Everything's blown out. Do you think I'm made of money? Camera?
01:23:00
Speaker
Although, he doesn't have an anger problem, and his whole thing is fist-punching, so... Well, I guess they have to characterize him somehow. He's like that Adam Driver meme from Marriage Story, where he gets mad during the fight and punches the wall. This is what's on the other side of the wall. Ah, good. I feel like. So Knuckles is an abusive spouse now. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family. He's got a family.
01:23:28
Speaker
Well, I remember he had like a million family members in the comics. Damn, then my kidneys would be fucking... Are you sure you didn't see the Snoopy? Snoopy had a bunch of weird family members who'd come over. No, Marty, I have never in my life gotten Snoopy confused for Knuckles the Echidna. What about Garfield? They had a lot of weird... Nerval? Nerval? Nerval? Nerval? Yeah. Nerval?
01:23:51
Speaker
Well, it's possible we're drifting off whatever point we had, so let's wrap things up. I will just say, tune in Wednesday for Fully Ramblamatic, which this week will be on the subject of South Park Snow Day. Try to guess how I feel about that one before that video comes out.
01:24:08
Speaker
Oh yeah, there's been two good South Park games, never mind. Yeah, first one was Stick of Truth was actually pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Actually Bud's Hole had its moments. Sure. So if patterns continue, then obviously the third one will be very good as well. What could possibly go wrong? Also tune in for my stream Yahtzee Tries on Wednesday afternoon. I've yet to figure out what I'm playing on that, but we've got a couple of days to figure that out.
01:24:33
Speaker
and I've got a semi-ramble about it dropping on Thursday, which you all might enjoy too. What else would plug in?
01:24:45
Speaker
You cold takes stop killing games. You know, just finally someone stood up who sounds a lot like Gordon Freeman and said, stop, just stop killing those games. And he's doing a good job and I've signal boosted him. Go watch that. Go support. Yeah. Yes. Stop killing games.
01:25:04
Speaker
So for years we've just sort of accepted that we didn't have an option here, but you know what, maybe we do. Oh, that was us. I didn't think I had to say it, but you know, just stop. Enough of that.
01:25:19
Speaker
We have a big lineup of premium vids this week. We should have a new backdrop by Darren tomorrow. We should have a new bite size by Casey on Tales of Kinzera Zao. We should have a new fully, oh, you're fully rammamatic is on Wednesday. Your semi-rammamatic is on Thursday. Yes, we'll get over those. Design Delve is Friday. Yeesh.
01:25:38
Speaker
Gosh, what a packed schedule. This is probably gonna, the algorithm's probably gonna fuck us over even harder with all the videos we put out. Oh! We don't do algorithms here. This is a battle pass. Exactly. Yeah, we'll have normal streams that we're all on, Hidden Gems later today, Devil May Cry, all that stuff. Nick's not here this week, so we might need to get a little funky and maybe we'll probably stream something else tomorrow. We'll just go with it. We'll figure it out. Why is it cats away?
01:26:06
Speaker
Maybe we can play a Knuckles adjacent game. It's like a Sonic game. I think that's just a Sonic game. Yeah, I'm not sure what a Knuckles adjacent game was. A couple of last Super Chats come in. Alex Hackalges499 says, Frost, I appreciate you mentioning Tony Hawk's American Wasteland in past episodes. It's a solid entry in the series that I feel gets overlooked. And then Fungus Finder gives $2 and says, wait, what do you all think about HP refill upon level? We're broadly in favor. Fungus Finder. Yes. Big Pro.
01:26:34
Speaker
All right. Well, we'll take our leaves then. Bye, everyone. See you next time. Thanks, Eric.